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-P5?3,3 (?)

HARVARD
COLLEGE
LIBRARY

NINETEENTH

OENTUEY '

A MONTHLY REVIEW

EDITED BY JAMES KNOWLES

VOL. IX.

JANUARY- J ONE 1881

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

I^i-V v> ('^ij

f^>i^. 72,

/ rt/^

/J

UNIVlRSITY
V LIBRARY ;

0-A

r

(Tft^ H|^A^ ^f tfYHuZatiM OMil ^ n;|fr0iiiM^» art reiened )

CONTENTS OF VOL. IX.

■••»■

FAOB

Th8 Dawh of a Beyolutionart Epoch. By H. M. Hyndman «. . 1

The Histobical CiiAihs of Tenant Bight. Bj F. Seebohm . 19
The Psesent Anarchy. By E. D. /. WtUon . . .37

The Thbes * P's.' By Lord de Veaci . . . 53 -

The HiQH Ck>nBT of Justice. By Mr, Jtutiee Stephen . c . 62

A Glihpse at NEWFoyNDLAND. By the Earl of Dunraven u 86

A Day with a Was Balloon. By Captain Eledale, B,E. ^ 108

The Exhibiting of FicrufiBS. By T. ViUiers Lister .. . 123

A Census or Bblioions. By /. O. Hubbard, M.P. ^ . 131 -

PsNirr FrcnoN. By James Payn .u . • • . 145

The Belioion of Zoboastrb. By Professor Monier Williams^

Umi.E, • o • • • • ■ • • 155

The Babutos and the Constitution of the Cape of Qood Hope.

By Sir BaHle Frere, Bart., G.O.B,, 0.0.8 J. ^ . . 177 ^

Ritualism. By the Dean of St, PoaaCs . o . 201

The Transvaal. By Sir BarUe Frere, Bart., 0,0,B,y O.O.S.I. o . 211 ^
Explosions in Collieries and their Cube. By /. Hermam, Meri^

vale ... . . . 237

Firb-Damp. By Colonel ShaJcespear, A.M. Inst, C.E. 245
The Breaking up of the Land Monopoly. By the Marquis of

* Bhndford ....... 249—

La Bochbfoucauld. By the late J^. S. Dallas o , . 269

The IJkited States as a Field for Aobicultural Settlers. By

ihe Earl of AirUe o . . . .292

-^HE Philosophy of Liberalism. By Robert Wallace « . . 302

The City Parochial Charities. By the Bev. B. PL. Wadden 324

A Jewish View of the Anti- Jewish Agitation. By Lueien Wolf ^ 838

Irish Emigration. By /. H, Tvke ..... 358

Abolition of Landlords. By Lord Monteagle , ... 372 -^

• The Ibish Police. By Henry A. Blake .... 385
Eighty Tears. By Miss Charlotte 0. 0*Brien » . .397
Radicalism : a Familiar Colloquy. By W. H, Malloeh . c 415
Art Needlewore. (1.) By Lady Marian Alford. (2.) By O, F,

Watis,B.A 439

iv CONTENTS OF VOL. IX.

FAGS

455
478
491
500
517

- The Cbbed of a Latmak. By Frederic Hcmrison . i>
Smoke Prevention. By Sir Frederick Follock, Bart o
The State, op Paetibs. By T. E. Kehhel .
^ The Parsis. By Frofeaaor Mmier Williams, O.LK {,
Our Next Leap in the Dare. By Earl Fortescue (^

Transplanting to the Colonies. By W. M. Torrens, M.F. . 536

MThe Basutos and Sir Bartle Feere. By William Fowler, M,P.». 547
^^ Long and Short Service. By LieuL-Oeneral Sir Garnet WoUeley,

G.O.B., 0.0M.0. . . . . . .558

^^^^OLLkm) AND THE Transvaal. By W. E, de Beaufort, Member of

the Butch StateS'Oeneral o • • • • 573

^^ The Military [mpotbnce of Great Britain. By Captain Kirch-

hamm^, General Staff, Austrian Army , & , , .577

Working Men and the Political Situation. By Thomas Bivrt,

MJP.t ........ 611—

Persia and rrs Passion Drama. By Lionel Tennyson • . 623

^ The Child-Criminal. By Mrs. Burr b . 649

Reform of Feudal Laws. By the Marquis of Blandford . 664

Jules Jacqubmart. By Frederick Wedmore * . 681
Rebbccaism. By B, D. Green Price » . . .691
La Philosophie de Diderot. By Paul Janet, Member of the In-

etittOe of France © ..... . 695

^ The Incompatibles. By Matthew Arnold . o 709, 1026

Business in the House of Commons. By Lord Sherhrooke . 727

The * Silver Streak.' By Admiral Lord Ihinsany . . 737

^^ Peace in the Church. By A. J, B. Beresford Hope, M.P. 756
George Eliot. By EdUh Simoox . 9 . . .778

Profit-Sharing. By Sedley Taylor • . . . . 802

French Verse in English. By William M. Hardinge o . 812

Religious Fairs in India. By W, Knighton, LL.D. o . . 838

West-End Improvements. By the Ron. Maude Stanley . 849
Carltle's Lectures on the Periods of European Culture.

Transcribed by Professor Edward Bowden 9 , . . 856

The New Irish Land Bill. Bj the Bt^ of Argyll . 880 «-
A Civilian's Answer to Sir Garnet Wolselet. By H. 0.

Amold-Forster ....... 905

A Reviser on the New Revision. By the Bev. G. Vance Smith . 917

What is a Pound? By Henry B. GrenfeU *. . . 937
^ Ernest Renan. By Frederic W. H.Jfyers * . . .949
Pawnbroking Abroad and at HomiT. By the Bev. W. Walter

Edwards ....... 969

The Intelligence of Ants. By George J. Bomanes . 992

Garltle's ' Reminiscences.' By Sir Henry Taylor o . . 1009
The Duke of Argyll and the Land Bill. By George Shaw

Lefevre, MJ?. ....... 1044

Letter to Editor horn Sir B. Spencer Bobvnson . . . 1066 .

jU-.

ft-

THE

NINETEENTH
CENTUEY.

> (

No. XLVn.— January 1881.

t •

THE DAWN OF A REVOLUTIONARY

EPOCH.

Thbb£ have been several periods in the history of Europe when all
thinking men have felt that remarkable events could not long be
postponed. Even within the last hundred years the French Bevolu-
tion and the great Continental movements of 1848 were preceded by
changes which betokened a serious sliock to existing institutions*
Careful observers predicted the approach of both the one and the
other, though neither took precisely the anticipated shape.' But
never, perhaps, has the certainty of approaching trouble, social and
political, been more manifest than it is to-day.^ The issues are more
complicated than ever before, and that they can be settled without
f^ve disturbance is scarcely credible. Of the political dangers by
which Europe is threatened we hear daily. They are serious enough.
With the whole Eastern Question reopened in a most dangerous
uiape— ;with Bqssian Panslayism and German ambition to reconcile—
wtth Italiati aspirations and French, yearning for the lost provinces to

^^raUfy — all the nations being armed for war as they never were

• •

' Since this was written, Baron Hubner has delivered his renyirkable speech in
tbe Austrian Delegations. From his ultra-Conservative point of view, he legards
all Republican or Democratic ideas as proceeding direct from the Author of Evil,
and proposes an immediate renewal of the Three Emperor lieague, or Holy Alliance, '
to st^ the flood of revolution ere it is too' late. Has not the time almo^ gone by
for, this combination of Qoremments against peoples ?

Vol. IX.— No. 47. " B

2 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. January

before — it will be strange indeed if the next few years pass over peace-
folly* The era of redistribution of territory and power has perhaps even
yet barely begun.

These matters, it i^ true, all lie on the surface, and are possibly
susceptible of arrangement by mutual compromise or by general dis-
armament. But there is no appearance of this at present, and mean-
while the social danger which imderlies and intensifies the political
is becoming more difficult of solution each day. Those schemes for
the reorganisation of society which Fourier, Saint Simon, Owen,
Lassalle, Marx, and others propounded are no longer the mere
dreams of impracticable theorists or the hopeless experiments of mis-
guided enthusiasts ; they have been taken down from the closet of
the Utopian investigator into the street, and move vast masses of
men to almost religious exasperation against their fellows. Ever and
anon some accident shows what men are really thinking of; an elec-
tion, a strike, a prohibited meeting give the opportunity, and we see
what manner of difficulties those are which have to be &ced by
foreign statesmen, and which we in our turn may have to deal with
here. For the questions now being discussed by hundreds of thou-
sands on the Continent go to the very foundation of all social arrange-
ments. It is no longer a mere barren argument about the rights of
man to political representation : it is a determined struggle to change
the basis of agreements which have hitherto been considered abso-
lutely essential to the prevention of anarchy. What is more, those
who hold these opinions are gaining in numbers and in strength each
day, though the fear felt and expressed of their doctrines compels
them to more or less of secrecy in the propaganda which they steadily
carry on. Ideas which a few years ago would have caused laughter
or contempt, now arouse fear and indignation, and to-morrow will
stir up hatred and ferocity ; for events move fast in these days, and
alike in Grermany, France, Italy, and Bussia, not to speak of other
countries, we can now see clearly that a large portion of the urban
population are being surely if slowly indoctrinated with notions that
cannot be put in practice save at the expense of those above and
around them. Though the ideas vary with race and climate, the
principle is everywhere the same, and it is one which, if pressed
to its logical conclusious, must shake the whole structure of modern
society.

Nor can we be altogether surprised that this should be so. In the
machinery of our daily life the real producer has as yet counted for
little. The crowded room, the dingy street, the smoky atmosphere,
the pleasureless existence, the gradual deterioration of his offspring —
these things are noted and brooded upon by men who are being
steadily educated to understand the disadvantages of their position,
and are also being drilled to right them. A self-sacrificing enthusiast
like Delescluze does not deliberately throw away his lifeat the^top

1881. THE DAWN OF A REVOLUTIONARY EPOCH. 3

of a barricade for nothing; even miscreants sucli as Hodel and
NofaQing stir men's minds to ask why they thus put themselves
forward as martyrs under circiunstances where they could not hope
for escape. Visionary and mischievous as are their opinions, we can
at least recognise that they believed in the truth of that which they
professed, and that the conditions of life for the multitude do need
reform, even if it be brought about by some sacrifice of the ease and
«somfort now the sole appanage of the wealthier classes. Once more
we are brought to consider the right of man to live, and that right
being granted or confirmed, that he should have the further privilege
to live in such wise as not to deteriorate himself or his progeny.

It can scarcely be doubted that, in Germany at any rate, there are
all the elements of a conflagration ready to hand. This has of late
been so apparent that we may fairly take it into account in estimating
Prince Bismarck's policy. Sut the growth of the party of the Social
Democrats in Germany is in itself a remarkable fact in modem
politics. For there alone have the theorists begun to organise
themselves with a definite object, and there alone are they suffi-
ci^atly educated, and, what is more to the purpose, sufficiently
trained in military affairs, to be really formidable. This militari-
sation of the mob, however viewed, is a strange piece of business in
iteelf. On the one hand, strong repressive measures have been
passed which keep turbulent Berlin in a permanent state of siege,
which render it impossible for workmen to form any union, to publish
any paper, to hold any meeting to canvass for political purposes. At
the same time, the factory laws which had been carried to restrain
the undue employment of children, and to prevent abuse of their
power by capitalists, have been gradually set aside. The pressure of
the times has rendered the position still more grave than it would
otherwise have been. And yet, with men thus exasperated at the
denial of all freedom and the underhand suspension of laws passed
with difficulty for their benefit, the military conscription is still in
full force. The malcontents are passed steadily through the army
exposed to the hated Prussian discipline at the hands of that hard-
handed and hard-headed Junker class whom they are learning to look
npon as more bitter enemies than any foreign foe, and return to
their homes — such of them as do not seek refuge across the Atlantic —
to remember that a million more trained soldiers hold the same
opnions that they do, and await only a favourable opportunity to
show their real strength.

At the polls they have been asserting themselves, and their
successes are no longer confined to the capital or to the few manu-
fiictnring centres. Hartmann the shoemaker's election at Ham-
burgh when he polled twice as many votes as his two competitors,
was more remarkable even than the mere numbers showed, for his
opponents were directly antagonistic to the Socialist laws, and were

b2

4 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. January

both Liberals. In the debates, Liebknecbt, Bebel, Hartmann, and
the other Socialist deputies, are now listened to with attention, as
representing a force which has to be reckoned with henceforth as a
strong political influence. They are the representatives not merely
of their own cities, but of that revolt of industrialism . against
militarism which can in the end have but one result. Not even
the Prussian bureaucracy, with its marvellous organisation, can in
the long run make head against the growing discontent which is
now finding voice in so many quarters. All the repressive measures
in the world will not prevent men from voting imder the ballot in
accordance with what they really think. The desire of excluding
from the polls all who had taken advantage of the free State educa-
tioiy^d not prevent the Social Democrats from casting 600,000
votes at the last general election, nor will prevent them from largely
increasing that number at the next. Persecution has but inflamed
the enthusiasm of the whole party. They are now striving, not
merely for the strange programme which their leaders put forward,
but on behalf of that common freedom, that right to ordinary
liberty, which can no longer safely be denied either to Catholics
or Socialists.

«

But their objects are none the less clearly defined that for the
moment they are hidden from our view by the blunders of the
executive. That tyranny of capital which has so often been
denounced as if it were an embodiment of the evil spirit in a
new and dangerous shape, and which Lamennais inveighed against
as the modem incarnation of the slave-driver without the slave-
idriver*s interest in the life of his property — this it is which the
Socialists are striving to overthrow. Though they recognise, in
Germany at least, the family ties, they are determined, when the
opportunity ofiers, to do away with that vast influence of individual
accumulation which they look upon as wholly harmful. Thus the
State, the BepubUc, the Municipality, the Commune, each in its
way is to be the sole capitalist acting for the benefit of all. A
higher ideal of duty, a nobler view of the future of mankind, will
thus be brought about when each is ready to use his faculties to the
fullest extent for the benefit of his fellows ; when, the privilege of
iindividual inheritauce being done away, the State shall be the
universal legatee, and all shall work together and in concert, where
now the general advantage is endangered by the perpetual occurrence
of selfish conflicts. Then, too, the education of children from their
cradle to their manhood shall no longer be an accident, in which the
poor become more wretched and more ignorant, the rich more
luxurious and more proud. In that (reign of equality jthe full de-
velopment of human energies shall be the sole object, and general
advantage tho common end. The wiser heads admit that the
realisation of this their materialist Utopia must be gradual, that

188L THE DAWN OF A REVOLUTIONARY EPOCH. 5

society is not as yet prepared to transcend all previous experience of

human motives, and rise at one bound to this lofty conception of that

which should be its aim. They would be content to proceed slowly,

would look upon the recognition of their views as something other

than mere dreams, as much already achieved; But this does not suity

the fimatics of the new Socialist gospel. They hold that their day

shall be to-morrow, and that the counsel to proceed slowly means at

BQch a time mere cowardice. A social revolution, they urge, must

work hj violence to start with, if it is to achieve rest and thankful

prosperity in the long run.

And will these more ardent ones not get the upper hand in
the storms now perhaps very close in Germany ? It would be hard
to answer that question with decision in the negative. The pros-
pect seems imfavourable to moderation. Alike in the cities and
in the country the proletariat might become masters of the situa-
tion for a time. For the country population in large portions of
Southern Grermany are not a Conservative force; they too are dis-i
affected, they too look hopefully towards the Communistic Utopia,
they too have felt and feel the pressure of militarisation and the >A
hardness of the times. That very emigration which since 1848 hasjlJ^ -^
been one of the great features of modem Germany is a revolutionary! '
movement; for the men who go are chiefly of the moderately
wealthy middle class. They leave, but they do not return. They
and their children remain to strengthen and enrich the Bepublic
beyond the Atlantic, where conscription is unknown, right of meeting
unfettered, and Jimkerdom abhorred. The memory of the Father-
land remains, but it is a memory only, not a living anxiety to return
to help on its progress or to enhance its prosperity. But this exodus
has been chiefly of the middle class, and the millions who have gone
have but accentuated the difference between the toiling many and
the bureaucratic, aristocratic, and military few who oppress them —
have too left an almost impassable gap between the wealthy land-
lord and the small owner or labourer, between the hand-to-mouth
workman and the capitalist class. The moderate Liberals, the •"
progressive class of Germany, having been driven away to seek
their fortune amid American liberties, those who remain look to
revolution rather than to steady progress to remedy their present
condition.

In a late debate in the German Heichstag, one of the Socialist
deputies declared plainly that, failing to modify the laws which
have been enacted to crush them for the next six years, they must
be driven to try force. For the moment,' every effort is being
made to prevent ^meutes even where the oppression is the greatest^
When strikes occur, the Socialist leaders in Germany and abroad
urge upon their followers caution — tell them their time is not yet.
In home affairs, for the present they work, wherever practicable, for

6 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. January

a pdiicy of decentralisation as opposed to the centralising tendency
now in favour, for individual liberty, for the fair treatment of munici*^
palitie8,and the due regard to the working class in municipal affairs.
But they have not much power in the Assemblies save in conjunction
with those to whom in the end they must be bitterly opposed. So
far it is the blundering of the Grovemment rather than their own
sagacity or political management which has improved their position.
But the organisation is becoming more and more complete, and the
action is taken in accordance with preconcerted arrangements. In
foreign affairs, the policy of the party, with the exception of a
watchful jealousy of Bussia, is more sagacious than their scheme for
hiunan improvement would leave one to suppose possible. They
opposed the annexatj^on of Alsace and Lorraine not only on inter-
national grounds, as tending to^perpetuate that bitter hatred between
France and Grermaijiy which has for centuries been so injurious to'
the peoples of both countries, but also because the competition of the
Alsace manufacturers would bring destruction upon the Crerman
industries, and throw more men out of work than could find employ-
ment elsewhere. The great indemnity exacted from France pushed
these considerations aside for the time; but who can say now
that their fears have not been realised? Even to-day the Social
Democrats are probably the only people in Grermany who see that it
would be well for their country to make such peaceful terms with
France as would result in the restoration, or at any rate the neutrali-
sation, of the two lost provinces. Meanwhile, as has been said,
education and militarisation go hand in hand together, Berlin and
other cities are kept in a permanent state of siege, protection is
fostered in every direction, and the very men who might be the
support of the Empire are driven away or forced into secret hos-
tility. And the man who is chiefly responsible for all this is
regarded by some even in England as the greatest statesman of the
age. Prince Bismarck has been called the greatest revolutionist
of our time, and in so far as reaction can incite to revolution he
is worthy of the title even in domestic affairs.^ His marvellous
success in consolidating Grermany has blinded men's eyes to his
incapacity for any real statesmanship in the wider sense. In place
of helping the mass of the population to a better position, instead
of teaching the upper classes and the royal family that the only
hope of safety for his country in these days is to make common
cause with the people, and lighten the burdens which grind them
down, he has thought only of violence and aggrandisement, of
territorial extension and military power. What is the result ? Of

* The taneatment of the Social Democrats in Hambnzg is a fair example of this.
These people had violated no law whatever. However obnoxious their opinions, they
were a peaceful, qniet, orderly folk. Prince Bismarck has made martyrs of them,
and sent them adrift to preach their doctrines and parade their wrongs. No greater
ontnige upon liberal principles has been committed in our time.

1881. THE DAWN OF A REVOLUTIONARY EPOCH. 7

«11 the nations .of civilised Europe, Grermany is that in which revo-
lution seems nearest at hand, and will when it comes be most
dangerous. The great minister of brute force seats himself by the
shore of modem politics, and orders back in earnest the current of
his time. The waves of the democracy he has dared to trifle with^L
sweep away evea now the sandy basis of his power I

Tozning to France, can anything be more remarkable than the
contrast between the position now and nine years ago ? Then the
honrois of the^downfall of the Commime, the burnings, the destruc-
tion of public monumentR, the murder of the generals, induced
many humane people to overlook the hideous cruelty with which
it was suppressed. Those days when the populace held sway — and
Paris was not so badly governed during that remarkable time —
opened the eyes of the comfortable classes all over the world to
the possibility of similar occurrences nearer to themselves. It
seemed like a social nightmare, and was attributed to a strange access
of excitement due to the prolonged strain of the siege. And now we
see the Conmiune day after day glorifled in journals of the highest
influence. The amnesty of the Communists was carried as prepara-
tory to one of the greatest national fi^tes that France has ever seen.
The returned political exiles and prisoners are regarded as the victims
of tiie bourgeoisie, and the frightful scenes on the plain of Satory, the
dzeadfiil incidents of the voyage to New Caledonia, are remembered as
the martyrdoms of the founders of the new social faith. Certainly,
none could have anticipated that Communist principles would so
soon make head again, not only in the capital but in the provinces.
Yet we see they do. The denounced suspects of 1871 are the coming
party of 1881, just as the ^ fou furieuz ' of Thiers is for the moment
master of France. The great meeting of the Socialists in Paris, when
what we should consider the most subveisive doctrines were openly
promulgated, was significant enough. Their differences simply arose
as to whether it would be advisable to attempt to carry out their
programme by main force or allow legislative changes to work it
out peacefully. As to the main objects to be aimed at there was
practical unanimity, and the removal of private property as the basis
of modem social life was the conclusion arrived at by all. Yet the
Communism of France, though perhaps more outspoken, is not as a
whole so dangerous to the existing principles which govern society as
the Socialiffln of Germany. There are those of the extreme party, no
doubt, who supen^dd to the theories of Lassalle and Marx the com-
pletest acceptance of doctrines which utterly destroy the most rudi-
mentary ideas of family life, and regard the ccmnection between the
sexes as a matter to be ordered solely in accordance with the views of
the persons immediately concerned. In purely political matters the
Rappely the Citoyen, the Mot d^Ord/re^ the Jntravsi^eavi^ and even
the Justice^ go great lengths, whilst the revolutionary sheets of

8 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Januafy

MarseilleB and Lyons are even more pronounced. But the very
openness of all these discussions tends to a less dangerous state
of affairs, and so far the ' principal agitations have heen directed
towards obtaining those cardinal liberties which we ourselves have
secured long ago. Still, the movement has been very rapid there
too, and the cruel expulsion of the monks and nuns shows that
true toleration is not fully understood by those who claim infinite
latitude for themselves. The increasing confidence of the TiouveUea
couches sodalea in their future is very apparent. The election,
of M. Beaurepaire at Besan^on had much the same relation to^
French politics that the election of Hartmann at Hamburg had to*
Grerman. It showed that men of more decided views were gaining
ground on M. Gambetta, whose candidate was defeated, and that the-
French people were getting tired of an opportunism which had ceased
to be opportune. Becent events have but enforced the hint then
given. M. Cl^menceau^s successful visit to Marseilles, and the
defeat of M. Ferry's Cabinet, are only straws which show the flow of
French opinion ; it is clear that the Conservative Bepublic in any
>/veiy Conservative sense is at an end. Frenchmen are weary of the
perpetual officialism which weighs upon them under the BepubMe
as under the Empire ; they long to feel that the Republic, which
divides them the least, will no longer be afraid to trust them as
Bepublicans. The advanced party, however, are ever on the watch,,
and when strikes occur the familiar Socialist catch-words are heard,,
showing that the ideas which brought about the national workshops
of 1848 are ever in men's minds. In France, too, the militarisation
and education of the masses is going steadily on at the expense
of the weU-to-do classes. Men who consider Grambetta reactionary
and Cl^menceau a too reluctant Liberal are far advanced enougb
to try the effect of new theories to their fullest extent.

But the peasantry are distinctly Conservative, though increasingly
Bepublican. That is true, and they may yet act as a drag upon the
cities, though even so there is much more discontent in rural Franee
than is commonly supposed, owing to the action of the mortgage
companies and other credit organisations. A saviour of the society of
small proprietors might still be welcomed, or a semi-Communistic
Empire might come in to bridge over the transition period, if transi-
tion period it be. Seven millions of proprietors are not, however,
likely to join in any loud cry for the division of goods with the pro-
spect of having to divide again a few years later. ^^^eir thrift and
industry have enabled them to make their life tolerably jiomfortablle,
and few people less understand the schemes of the asitators of the
cities. It has been one of Gambetta's titles to dbnndence that he
convinced the peasantry that nothing of the kind was to be feared
from the new Republic. ^

Meanwhile the State is taking the pubUdwoiks of the country

M81. THE DAWN OF A REVOLUTIONARY EPOCH. 9

more completely into control; the mmiicipalities are more and
more adopting the management of their own affairs, and thus tiie-
principle of joint control for the common good is being steadily
introduced. Were it not for the religious difficulty, which has assumed:
BO dangerous a shape, it is still possible that France, which has pre-
viously been the originator of great revolutionary troubles, migfatv/
on the present occasion suffer less than other nations. But the ques-
tions at issue are those which most stir men's minds. Doubts a&
to the right of individual ownership, plans for the confiscation of all
capital in order that an enormous experiment may be tried on the
only scale which it is said will be successful, can scarcely be accepted
without that sort of difference which ultimately leads to bloodshed*
The heads of the French Bepublio are men of vigour and sagacity.
But the power may pass from them to the hotter-headed orators
who are now appealing to the passions of the poorer classes, success-
ful though M. Gambetta seems likely to be at the present time..

As in Germany and France, so, though not to so noticeable an
extent as yet, is it in Austria and Italy. In the former country
decentralisation and home rule are carrying on a political struggle
against the centralising plans which are thought necessary to keep
the empire together, whilst below the social strain is beginning to be
felt. The agrarian difficulties which were aggravated by the crisis of
1873 have not yet been overcome. Himgary itself is in a doubtftil
condition ; throughout the empire, the evictions and the attempts to
check emigration have produced a bad effect. Still, there is far more
liberty than in Grermany, and therefore, in spite of the pressure of the
conscription and the bitterness felt in some instances against the
aristocratic class, the danger to existing institutions is not nearly
so great. Socialism is not yet an orgaiused force. In Italy, not-
withstanding the factious conduct of sections of the Bepublican party^
of the Barsanti clubs, the Irredentist agitation, and the mad language
of some prominent men, the same may be said. The troubles at pre*
sent are likely to be more political than social, though one would affect
the other, and a stir in any other part of Europe would be felt there also.
For we see that even in Norway and Sweden, where the bulk of the
population is well-to-do, and in Denmark as well, no sooner does pres-
sure come than Socialist agitators appear, and the regular Communist
cries are heard. Of Russia it is needless to speak. There the revolution^
if it comes, will probably take an agrarian shape, an outburst of Middle-
Age barbarism, which has little in common with the agitations of
Western Europe. The Nihilism of Russia may possibly be the spark
to fixe the whole European magazine of combustibles, but the igno-
rance of the greater part of the population renders any comparison *^
between the two states of society futile. The Socialist procla.mations of
the Revolutionary Committee are altogether premature. A despotism
has to be destroyed, a people educated, and some idea of political life

10 THE NINETEENTH OENTURY. Januaiy

permitted to grow up before Russian Socialisxa can be really a
practical subject for discussion in the German or French sense. The
conspiracy is interesting on account of its determination and
secrecy; the whole condition of Bussia also is well worthy of
study, but it is quite possible that the political, financial, and
social anarchy there may after aU work itself out for the time by
disruption of the empire or foreign war. The idea of the corrupt and
barbarous Slavonic power as a civilising agency is of course a grotesque
paradox.'

What, however, renders the situation in regard to all countries more
hazardous than would otherwise be the case, is that remarkable facility
of communication which has been the growth of the present generation.
Bailroads, telegraphs, cheap newspapers, may all be said to date for
the Continent since 1848. As we see, excitement is now in the air.
It is felt and communicates itself to vast masses of men without any
apparent reason. A wave of political, social, financial disturbance
passes from one great centie to another now as it never did before. And
those, who are concerned in Socialist manoeuvres are specially ready
to take advantage of this. The two great centres of agitation are
«4jreneva and London. There the exiled speedily come together. The
Socialist from Germany, the Communist from France, the Nihilist
from Bussia, each betakes himself at first to his solitary garret; but all
soon get known to one another, suggest ideas for common action, and
keep one another informed as to the progress made in each country
towards the common goal. Thus has been re-formed an International
Organisation more formidable than that which fell into discredit by
its participation in the Paris Commune. In this way the advance
can be observed all along the line. If baffled in Germany, it is making
head in France; if in France men's minds turn from the new ideas,
Austria or Italy affords encouragement. And thus poor men bound
together by an enthusiasm for what is little more than an abstraction,
resolve to carry out that programme which to most of us Englishmen
seems a very midsummer madness, of elevating the whole race of
civilised men by a complete change of the conditions in which man
has yet been civilised. They resolve, I say, and when they see an
opportunity they mean to execute. The condition of Europe may
favour their plans.

But now comes what is perhaps the most remarkable feature in
the whole of this Continental movement. Much has been said from
time to time of the power of Jews in modem society. Lord Beacons-
^^j^^ field, always proud of his race, has pointed out their superiority in
many directions^ and all would admit that in money-getting and in
music they are in some sort inspired. But the influence of Jews at

* The increasing famine in Russia must play into the hands of the revolutionary
party. Hunger is ever the best insnirectionist, and unless the Govenunent acts
moie wisely than at present the peasantry -wiU beoome disaffected.

1881. THE DAWN OF A REVOLUTIONARY EPOCH. 11

m

tbe piesent time is more noticeable than ever. That they ar^ at the
head of European capitalists, we are all well aware. The fact that
during a long period they were absolutely driven into money-dealing
as iheir sole business, seems to have developed an hereditary Acuity of
accumulation which, money being the power it now is, gives influence
in every direction. In politics many Jews are in the front rank.
The press in more than one European capital is almost wholly in
their hands. The Bothschilds are but the leading name among
a whole series of capitalists, which includes the great monetary
chie& of Berlin and Amsterdam, Paris and Frankfort. They have
forced their way into the nobility of every country, and in all
the vast financial schemes of recent years the hand of the Jews
has been felt both for good and eviL That their excessive wealth,
used as it has been, acts as a solvent influence in modem society,
cannot be questioned. The barriers of religion and caste pre-
judice melt away before it. But whilst on the one hand the Jews^
are thus beyond dispute the leaders of the plutocracy of Europe,
KAl^ing in large as well as in small matters, in the great centres as
well as in the villages of Bussia and Boumania, the power of the
purse, another section of the same race form the leaders of that
revolutionary propaganda which is making way against that very*/
capitalist class represented by their own fellow-Jews. Jews — ^more
ihan any other men — have held forth against those who make their
UYiDg not by producing value, but by trading on the difierences of
value; they at this moment are acting as the leaders in the revolu*
tionary movement which I have endeavoured to trace. Surely we
have here a very strange phenomenon. Whilst the hatred against one
section of Jews is growing in Germany, Bussia, Boumania, uid indeed
all through Eastern Europe, to such an extent that they are per-
sistently persecuted, and the question even in educated Germany
threatens to become a political danger, the more the others, remaining
poor and trusting only to their brains for influence, are gaining
ground on the side of the people. In America we may note a similar
state of things ; the dislike of the rich Jews is increasing among all
the well-to-do classes, whilst the revolutionary Jew from Germany
and France has been at work among the artisan class in the great
cities. Those, therefore, who are accustomed to look upon all Jews
as essentially practical and conservative, as certain, too, to enlist on the
dde of the prevailing social system, will be obliged to reconsider their
ccmclnsions. But the whole subject of the bad and good effects of
Jewish influence on European social conditions is worthy of a more
thorough investigation than can be undertaken here. Enough, that in
the period we are approaching not the slightest influence on the side
of revolution will be that of the Jew.

The position of Great Britain and her colonies, as well as the
United States, differs from that of European countries inasmuch as

12 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Jannarj

the Anglo-Saxon communities have long had nearly all that the people
of the Continent of Europe are still striving for. Bights of public meet-
ing, freedom of the press, and freedom of speech, the fullest possible
personal liberty — ^these have long been secured, and men of our race
have so far been able to work out political problems without that
dangerous excitement which has attended the endeavour to solve them
elsewhere. It is the general belief that this steady progress will con-
tinue in England, and that although the social arrangements of
English life may be greatly modified in time to come, jet that here»
at least, we shall be able to satisfy the legitimate claims of the many

"^without trenching upon the rights or the privileges of the few. But
Communism in the sense of State and Municipal management is
making head continuously, even in the sense of genuine Communism

(t — that the well-to-do should provide for the poor certain advan-

jtages whether they like to do so or not. That competition is being
given up as a principle in favour of organisation for the common
benefit, is at any rate quite clear. The postal and telegraph arrange-
ments are entirely under State management already, and sooner or
later railways will fall imder the same controL In mimicipalities
the provision of gas and water, like the arrangements for street
paving, sewers, or the removal of nuisances, is conducted more and
more by the directly appointed agents of the towns themselves. For
the principle of limited monopoly and regulated competition, we are
steadily substituting State and municipal organisation and control.

^hat the poor law is distinctly communistic has long been urged, and
indeed it is difficult to see how any system could be more completely
so in intention than that which puts it in the power of an able-bodied
man to live upon the earnings or savings of others, because he has
been imlucky or lazy himself. The argument that no man must be
allowed to starve itself leads directly to Communism if strictly ap-
plied. But of course the free-school system, where it exists, is a still
frirther step in this direction. Not only do ratepayers provide a good
education for those who could not afibrd it themselves, but they give
their poorer neighbours the advantage that their children, educated at
the expense of the well-to-do, shall enter into competition in the
battle of life with the children of those who have found the means to
pay £Dr their schooling. The Artisans Dwellings Act was a smaller
step in the same direction ; and the proposal not long since made
that children should be fed in the Board schools at the expense of
the ratepayers was Communism pure and simple. Thus whilst we
axe arguing about Communism, and in some directions upholding the
old idea that competition, not State management, must be the rmle^
we ourselves are slowly advancing, without perhaps observing it, to-
wards the system which when proposed in all its bluntness we denounce
.as a chimera under, the present circumstances of mankind. Poor-law

J relief and the School-Board education are conununistic in principle.

I8«l. THE DAWN OF A RSVOLUTIONART EPOCH. 13

The Poet-Office telegraphs and municipal management of gas and
water involve the principle of the State or Comminne's contrdl. Does
not this, even in sober England, show the tendency of the time ?

In our colonies we see this carried still further. In Victoria there
is tiie most o(»nplete State control. Post, telegraphs, railways, public
wiMrks, education. Crown lands, each and all are managed by bureaux,
and there is no tendency whatever towards getting rid of this
responsibility. In New Zealand the method is carried still further.
There also the whole of these departments are carried on under
State management, and besides the community is taxed in order to
provide fiee or assisted passages for emigrants from England who
cannot pay for themselves. Then comes a time of pressure such as
has lately been seen, and the State has to provide what is to all
intents and purposes national employment for the people thrown out
of work. What is this again but the gradual establishment of a
commonistic method ?. Granted that assisted emigration has proved
--as it has — successful when coupled with State works at which the
emigrants are employed, we still have here the arrangement for which,
in another field, the apostles of the new Socialism contend. The
same reasoning applies to the municipal borrowing arxangements
which are used in the general interest..

All this, however, merely shows that much is going on of a com-
munistio tendency without being observed : the graver features in
our borne life, those which might under conceivable conditions lead
to a straggle between classes on the rights connected with property,
are £ur more worthy of consideration at the present time. My friends,
Mr. Kebbel and Mr. Traill, have ably pointed out, in recent numbers
of this Beview, the serious political dangers which arise from the wide
gulf between the upper and the lower classes, how the vote of the
ignorant many is now the ultimate court of appeal, and how essential
it is from their Conservative point of view that the aristocratic and the
wealtliy, the intellectual and the refined, should try to recover their
waning influence by a closer connection with, and knowledge of, the
people. Hitherto there has been nothing more noticeable in English
society than the noble bearing of the people even under the greatest
prssgore. The Lancashire Cotton Famine, the late period of pro*
longed stagnation of trade, passed over with little or no disturbance.
No other country in the world could in all probability have supported
such a strain as the former without grave internal trouble. Men
recognised the inevitable, and made up their minds to bear with it,
at the same time that the well-to-do endeavoured to alleviate the'^
distress. Nor is there in England that envy of wealth which is to*^
be found elsewhere* K. grand equipages or well-mounted horsemen
were to pass through many puis of Paris or Berlin, they would
scarcely escape without insult or probably injury. In London or
most of our other great cities, there is not this feeling of hatred

14 THE IflNETEENTH CENTURY. January

against the display of riches. The leaders of Continental Socialism
themselves admit that theyhave made little way in England* Our
long political history has not passed for nothing. The working^ classes,
it is true^ feel their own power more and more ; but so long as they
think they can see their way to what they want through constitutional
means, they have no mind to try the subversicMiary doctrines of the
Continental agitators.

A continuance of this attitude nevertheless depends entirely upon
the amount of consideration which they receive. Let any one look
at the state of society in some of the great northern towns, and,
leaving the misery of London aside, he will see that here are all
the elements of the fiercest and, under certain conditions, of the
most uncontrollable democracy the world has ever seen. For it
may almost be said that there is no middle class to break the
force of the collision between the capitalist and those whom he
employs. This vast population of workers has grown up vrithin
the last fifty years. There is the employer, who for the most
part lives out of the city, there are the mean dwellings inhabited by
the hands, and the great factories in which they spend their lives.
But all depends upon one or two trades : there is but little actually
saved by the mass of workers, and, as certain indications have shown,
the spirit of turbulence might again be awakened. When we reflect
for a moment upon the disproportion of numbers, can we &il to
be struck with the danger that might come upon all if some elo-
quent, fervent enthusiast, stirred by the injustices and inequalities
around him, were to appeal to the multitude to redress their social
wrongs by violence ? When we hear or read of the organisation of the
rich, how is it that it so seldom occurs to us that the real capacity
for organisation may lie below, thatlthe hand-to-mouth labourer has
little to lose,\and may even think he has much to gain by a change
in the conditions of his daily existence. The hope for the future
lies in the fact that the rich are slowly beginning to perceive
here both their dangers and their duties, and to understand that the
privilege of possession now accorded to them by the consent of the
majority, can only be retained by entering more fully into the
daily life of the people, and remedying those mischiefs which are
to be noted on every side. Those who best know the dangerous
Htjuarters of our great cities know well that there is a vast unruly
mass of blackguardism which would take advantage of any break above
to sweep away all barriers. Many theories are even now systematically
discussed by the educated artisans which would savour of Communism
to the upper class. But fortunately they are discussed, and therein
is to a great extent safety. The large blocks of city property con-
centrated in the hands of individuals ; the entire exclusion of the
poor man firom the. possession of land; the manner in which in
municipal arrangements the poorer quarters are sacrificed to the rich ;

1881. THE DAWN OF A REVOLUTIONARY EPOCH. 15

the indifference too often shown to the interests of the wage-eanung*
class, when whole neighbonrhoods are swept ont of their place to
benefit the commnnity without proper provision for the housing of
the inhabitants elsewhere; the impossilnlity of obtaining real con-
sideration for the needs of the masses in the matter of recreation,
fresh air, and pure water, especially where vested interests are
involved ; the general inclination to consider the ratepayer first and
the benefit of the population afberwards ; these and other like points
are now being talked over by men who have experienced the evils
of the present system, and are making ready by fair means to put
an end to them. G^ranting that the English people are not democratic
in the Continental sense, admitting that they do respect their 'natural
leaders/ and are ready to follow them politically and socially in orderl j
fiishion, this presupposes that the upper classes are ready to lead, not
for the selfish advantage of their own insignificant section, but for the
benefit of that class which, as has been well said, is really the nation.
The opportunity, and it is a glorious one, is now. We have shown thoj
world how to combine social progress with the widest and soundest
political freedom ; we, as a nation, have laid the foundation of that
great trinity of liberty — ^fireedom of speech^ fireedom of trade, and free*
dom of religion — ^which will remain the title of England to honour and
toieverenoe when all other smaller deeds are forgotten in the mists of
antiquity. It remains for us too to lead the way with safety in
that great social reorganisation which is the work of the immediate
fntore to secure for all the same happiness and enjoyment of life
which now bdong to few. ^

. When poverty and injustice rankle, there we, too, find the most
subversionary ideas have free play under our rule. What can be more
discreditable than the condition of Ireland? A long period of
economical and political misdoing has produced its almost inevitable
result — ^a result which we view, as a nation, with mingled feelings of
anger and di^;ust. What we deplore is an agrarian strike aggravated
by rattening and intimidation in their most atrocious form. A large
proportion of the tenantry have some of their own free will, and many,
in consequence of pressure, entered into a combination against the
payment of what they consider excessive rents. This is nothing less
than a social revolution, and the horrible murders and outrages on
cattle by which it is accompanied ought not to distract attention for
a moment firom the original disease which has led to this climax.
But no sooner does a real difficulty arise in applying the ordinary law
of the country with vigour and efiect than straightway a cry is
raised for a suspension of the first guarantee of all liberty, and Parlia-
mentary lynch law is proclaimed on the housetops as the highest
statesmanship. Suspend the Habeas Corpus Act and run them all in
— such is the political teaching of our very moderate men. That the
bmdloids, whose ' rights of property ' are thus set at nought, should

16 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. January

call out ix) the majority of their fellow-subjects to secure for them^ no
matter how, that to which by the law as it stands they are entitled, is
natural enouj^h ; but only the fact that for months past men have
been engaged in examining the fundamental conditions of all
civilised society, and are somewhat embarrassed by their investigations,
can account for this desperate haste to recur to old despotic methods.
The least that can be said on the other side is that, in order to
•calm dangerous dissatisfaction with existing laws, we must override
some of the cherished theories of ordinary political economy. Thus,
in the face of dangerous agitation, we, like others, find that the only
sound means of maintaining order is by a combination of legal but
almost revolutionary change with more or less pronounced despotism.
/The dangerous communism of the Fenians, who represent the extreme
left wing of the Irish party, is as completely destructive of present
arrangements as the purest socialism of Paris or Berlin. It is
useless to shut our eyes to the facts, unpleasant as they may be.
In stirring times the only safe policy is to recognise that what may
have been wisdom yesterday becomes the height of folly to-day. If
only the plain speaking about Ireland, which is now to be heard all
round, had been in fashion a few years ago, we should not have to
make up our minds to something not far short of a measure for com-
pensated expropriation of landlords.

In England the land question has hitherto scarcely been entered
upon. Economical causes are working a silent revolution, which
will be far more complete than perhaps any of us have as yet fully
understood. The longer an attempt at settlement is delayed, however,
the greater way will be made among the agricultural labourers by
those who are anxious to bring about a change at least as great
as that which settled the French villeins in the possession of
their holdings. Ideas move fast, and though tenant farmers may not
reason to their own case from what is going on in Ireland, will
anybody guarantee that this is so with all who are concerned with the
land ?

Fortunately we need but ordinary care and sagacity to pass

through a period which might prove dangerous with benefit to

ourselves. The English tendency is to build up from the bottom, to

^improve the conditions of life below. There has been much neglect,

but it may be remedied. Meantime, we are at least not creating

enemies to society by deliberate enactment, and then arming them

so that they may be able to overthrow the whole structure. Our

fomigration is in the main beneficial to us. It afibrds a safe and

^honourable outlet for those adventurous spirits who might otherwise

turn their energies into a dangerous channeL They go forth to

America and our colonies, and those who succeed form on their return

a progressive and yet in the best sense a conservative body at home.

With us, therefore, the revolution involved in the change of the

J

1881. THE DAWN OF A REVOLUTlONABiT EPOCH, if

political centre of gravity may be peacefully worked ont^ What has
ocenned and what may occur again in America is, however, worth'
brief consideTation. There, with endless land to &11 back upon
close at hand — which we, however much our land system may be
modified, could never boast — ^the same agitation which threatens
the Continent has burst out into actual violence.' The riots in
Pittsburg and Baltimore are almost forgotten in this countiy, bui
the action then taken by the masses of the large towns was mosii
significant. Thoughtful Americans are well aware that the outbreak
was in the last degree dangerous, and that it might be renewed
at a fiivourable moment. But for the resolute action of one or
two private capitalists, the matter would have gone much further
than it did. In any case hatred of the capit^t class is grow-
ing up among a certain section of the community, and Socialist
ideas are promulgated in St. Louis and Chicago as well as in
Pittsburg, Philadelphia, and New York. Even the Western fkrmers,
who are the closest hands at* a bargain, and assuredly have no'
avowed communistic views in regard to property in general*, are'
not by any means disinclined to deal with railroads and all land
bat their own in a decidedly communistic fashion. If amid the
favourable conditions for general prosperity to be found in America,
these ideas can take root and spread, this is in itself good evidence
that there exists at the present time a decided tendency towards
attempting a new solution of social difficulties. Experiments in
practical Communism, such as those of the Mormons, the Shakers,
the Memnonites, and others are merely interesting as experiments.
They are trifling matters when compared with an agitation like that
in California, or a rising which at one moment bid £Edr to put the
whole railroad system of the Eastern States at the mercy of a furious^
mob.

Thus whichever way we look, whether to the Continent of
Europe or to newly-settled countries, we see plainly that the principle
of State management, which is practical enough within certain limits,
is making way at the same time that notions which extend to dealing
with all property for the benefit of the mass, and not for the
individual, are gaining strength and coherence. The former system
may be peacefully and perhaps beneficially worked out ; the latter
must involve anarchy and bloodshed in the beginning, and can
scarcely under any conditions we can at present imagine prove suc-
cessful in the end. Yet at a period such as ours anything may be
tried* One of the features of the time is the prevailing incredulity
among the educated of all civilised communities. Religious sanctions

* The facilities receotlj offered for saying, and the investment of small sums in
Conaola, tend of course to knit the thrifty of all classes closer to the existing form
of Kx^iety, or at any rate to render its modification, if ever it should prove admis-
sible, leas dangerous to the public peace.

Voi^ IX— No. 47. C

18 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. January

are shaken in every country, political institutions are themselves
in a state of fusion — ^for who shall say that Parliamentary govern-
ment has proved fully successful? — Uie growing knowledge and
power of the masses leads them to consider more and more seriously
the strange inequalities of our existing arrangements, the spread of
ideas fix>m one centre to another is so rapid as almost to defy calcu-
lation* Can it, then, be said that we are safe for any length of
J time from the shock of one of those convulsions which may change
the whole social prospect? Those who condemn democracy, who
look askance at the determination to give political power to every
class in order that all may be able to insist upon their share in the
general advancement, are but rendering more probable the overturn
they dread. The* old days of aristocracy and class privileges are
passing away fsEtst ; we have to consider now how to deal with the
growing democratic influence, so that we may benefit by the expe-
rience of others. This can only be done by a steady determination
at the outset to satisfy the needs and gratify the reasonable ambition
of all. *

H. M. Hykdkav.

1881. 19

the historical claims of tenant

right:.

No one who appreciates the difficulties of the task which lies before
the Goreinment in Ireland would wish to add needlessly to the flood
of literatme already overwhehning the subject.

But after the remarkable statements of Mr. Froude and Lord
Sherbrooke it may be useful to place before the public succinctly
the main facts in the economic history of the Irish peasant tenants*
This is the beat way, I think, to prove beyond a doubt that there is a
very real and practical difference between these peasant tenants and
Mdinazy tenant fiimers of the English type. Until it is clearly
understood wherein, historically and economically, this difference lies,
it is impossible to understand even what laws of political economy
apply to the ease. For the laws of political economy are not mere
empirical rules fitting at random all possible cases ; they are the
neeessaiy result of the interaction of two chief factors, yiz. : Physical
external oonditions and the constitution of human nature, and so
most yary with local variations in the two fiictors, and the historical
eircumstanoes under which they are thrown together.

Wiiat, then, is the Economic History of Irish Peasant Tenures ?
To begin with, peasant tenures are well-known in history. They
exist, or have existed, in nearly eveiy country in Europe. Historically
and economically they seem to have arisen out of a primitive action
of the law of division of labour before the birth of capital.

The two all-controlling economic necessities of primitive society
have everywhere been defence and food — ^war and agriculture.
Hence arose everywhere the division of society in its early tribal form
into two classes — ^military and agricultural. And as the former
were, from the nature of the case, everywhere the stronger, and the
latter the weaker class, it was but natural that Histozy, when first
disclosing the actual condition of things in European nations, should
almost eveiywhere discover the peasantry to be in practical serfdom
to the other class who had assumed the overlordship of the land.

Again, as bees everywhere live in hives and make hexagonal cells^
so }>ea8ant8' land eveiywhere seems to have been at first held in
oomrnoD, under rules supported by custom, and securing the easy
division of its occupancy £rom time to time among them. The

C2

20 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Janiary

method almost universally followed to facilitate this frequent division
(especially of arable land) has been to divide the common fields of a
community into a vast number of small pieces — ^larger or smaller
< acres' — ^a number of which could be allotted to each household,
scattered all over the fields to insure equality in the allotment. So,
speaking roughly as regards the arable land, open fields, divided up
into ^ acres,' became everywhere the mark of peasant tenures ; and
the scattering of the pieces of which it was composed became the
mark of a peasant holding.

Further, certain general economic] facts have everywhere ruled
the historical development of the peasant holdings, and produced the
peculiar legal rights arising out of them. For law, it must not
be forgotten, is the creature of facts. Its business is to recognise
facts. It sometimes tries to control them, and rightly wbere it can.
But unless the facts follow or coincide with the law, the attempt to
control them is idle and futile. As Abraham Lincoln once said, Law
which does not carry facts with it is ^ like a pope's bull against a comet.'

In the absence of capital necessity excluded contract. The peasant
population were upon the land, must live upon the land, and could
not be removed from the land. It had been from time immemorial
under an overlordship claiming from it tribute and services. Long
custom had fixed the services and sanctioned the permanence of the
tenure. The law had followed the fact and sanctioned the custom.
With permanence of occupation grew up habits of practical owner-
ship; and when, for many generations, everything on the peasant
holdings had been done by the tenant, the element of ownership
became more and more completely recognised. At last., when the
necessity came for the law to deal with the result, and to arrange a
severance between the shares in the joint ownership of the landlord
and the peasant tenant, in\'ariably the law followed the fact and gave
the tenant the right to buy out the landlord's interest, and so en-
franchise his holding. In England the same evolution was passed
through as in other countries, only it took place centuries earlier
than in other countries. In England the copyholder was the last
survivor of the peasant tenant, and enclosure and enfranchisement
generally went together, throwing the scattered pieces of which his
holding consisted into one lump, so that he came out of the process
a freeholder of a block of land smaller than his original holding, but,
at the same time, freed from manorial rights. By the same process
the landlord's estate was limited to his demesne land, while his
demesne itself was enlarged.

There is no mystery in the various stages of this process, and it
will be seen that contract did not enter deeply into any one of them.
Economic facts, and the necessities arising out of them, ruled the
course of the history, and the law gradually following the &ct8 threw
its weight into the scale, which long custom had weighted in fietvour
of the ultimate enfranchisement of the peasant tenant.

1881. HISTORICAL CLAIMS OF TENANT RIGHT. 21

Such has been the economic i)istx>ry of peasant tenures in
Bnasia, Chermany, France, and England. Contrast with this the
panllel history of the * tenant farmer ' of the English type, and then
the distinction between the two classes will be clearly manifest.

The 'tenant farmer' is the creature of contract. He has grown
up not on the open field of the peasant land, but upon the demesne
land occupied by the lord himself, which was not subject to peasant
tenures. This lord's demesne did not go with the peasant land into
viUenage or serfdom, and so never needed enfranchisement. The
tenants upon it were free tenants {libere tenerUes), and not peasant or
villein tenants. And the economic history of the < tenant farmer '
is simply this. The owner ceasing to care about tilling his own land,
let or &rmed it out under a contract to a tenant who had capital,
and made agriculture a trade. It was a new and temporary com-
mercial tenure created afresh every time there was a change of
tenancy, and the legal rights of the tenancy were settled and fixed
afiresh each time within the four comers of the contract. The
economic facts which produced the prevalence of tenant-farming in
England'were the depopulation of the Black Death, the breaking up
ef serfdom, the growth of capital, the substitution of wages for
services and the consequent economic division which grew up between
the ownership of land, capital, and labour. These facts produced the
^tenant &rmer,' and the reason why in England the area imder
' tenant fiirming ' and the individual holdings are so large, is that
economic laws have' favoured first the accumulation of capital and
land in few hands, and then farming on a large scale.

Now there are tenant fsmners in Ireland of this modem English
type, wherever peasant teniures have been cleared away and the land
has been let on the English system under a commercial contract to
a man with capital. No one doubts this. But turning to the Irish
peasant tenants, the question arises why the course of economic
evolution in their case has not followed the same lines as those whici*
have ruled the economic history of all the other peasantries of Europe,
converting them into peasant proprietors.

There must have been good reasons for this, and they ought to be
clearly understood by all who wish to comprehend the meaning of the
present crisis.

The main peculiarity in the economic history of Ireland and Irish
tenures arose from the fact that until the sixteenth century English
law ax^ English tenures were in force only within the pale. Out-
aide of it, in Ireland proper, Irish tenures remained untouched.
And the curious result was that these Irish tenures, with those of the
Scotch Highlands at the same period, were remarkable as the latest
European survival into modem times of the ancient system of the
teibal ownership of land by chieftains and septs. The same system
once prevailed in Wales, and it had probably once prevailed all over

22 THE NINETEENTH CENTURT. January

Britain before the Saxon conquest effaced it. But it had' continued
in Ireland for 1,000 years longer than it did in England. Let us
try to realise what this form of land ownership or occupation was in
the days of James I.

In the first place what was a aept f A curious example of an
actual sept occurs in the State Papers of James I.,^ and it shows that
a sept was a community of blood relations using one surname and
holding together under one chief.

In 1606, the whole sept of the ^ Oreames ' (Grahams) under their
chief, * Walter, the gude man of Netherby,' being troublesome on the
Scottish border, were transplanted from Cumberland to Bosc6mmon ;
and in the schedule to the articles effecting this transfer, it appears
that the sept consisted of 124 persons, nearly all beariiog the surname
of Qrame. They were divided into families, seventeen of which were
set down as possessed of 201, and n^wards, four of \0L and upwards,
six of the poorer sort, six of no abilities, while as dependents there
were four servants of the name of Grrame, and about a dozen of irre-
gular hangers on to the sept.

The sept was a human swarm. The chief was the Queen Bee round
whom th^ clustered. The territory occupied by a whole sept was
divided among the inferior septs which had swarm^ off it. And a sort
of feudal relation prevailed between the parent and the inferior septs*

Their main wealth consisted in cattle, and the allotment by the
chief of each sept of his surplus cattle among the members of his
sept, or strangers introduced into it, cemented their relation to him.
So also did the system under which the chief put out his children to
foster among his followers. But personal as was in this way the
relation between the chief and^ sept, there was also an intimate con-
nection between the sept system and its land divisions. The sept
fitted into its territory like a snail into its shell.

Thro¥ring aside Irish terms, it may be said roughly that the
homesteads were in clusters of four or six, and that each of these
clusters was the fourth of a larger cluster or townland — ^the whole
territory of a sept consisting of so many townlands. The townland was
probably the unit of common occupation, and the arable land within
it was divided by the chief among the families or homesteads period-
ically, according to ancient traditional rules. This process was aided
by the division of the open common fields, as already described, into
ridges or acres, which admitted of easy distribution among the family
holdings, according to the arrangement still known as 'run-rig,'
' rundale,' or ' runacre.' This method had been followed for probably
1000 years. Documents supposed to have been composed in the
tenth century ^ represent Ireland as in the sixth or seventh century
divided into 184 septs, occupying 5,520 townlands divided into quarters,
each of which contain€»d six households or homesteads, making the

' 1603-6, p. 554.

^ See the third volume of Skene*s Exttory of Celtic Scctland, p. 155.

1881. HISTORICAL CLAIMS OF TENANT RIGHT. 23

total of the latter 132,480, and suggesting a population of about thie^
quarters of a million. In 1698,' the number of townlands was stated
at 6,814, which would make the number of homesteads 109,000 at
four homesteads to the quarter, and 163,000 if there were six. Ao-
eoiding to a survey of the county of Monaghan takenin 159 1,^ the town-*
lands in that county were found to be divided into quarters, each of
which was a duster of four tates or homesteads. The names of the
oocupiers are also given, and they are evidently blood relations sharing
the same somame, like those in the sept of the Ghreames from Cumber-
land. This curious actual division of the townlands and arrangement
of the homesteads in clusters of four, together with the division of the
fields into ridges, was what facilitated the frequent redivisions of the
lands of the sept and of the common fields amongst the members of
the sept according to their families and the degree of their relation-
ship to the parent stock.

At the same time the intimate relation between sept and chief
was kept up by their sharing the same wild life, and living in the
same simple kind of cabin, as well as by the blood relationship between
them. The relation between them was not that of landlord and tenant,
bat the chief claimed his gifts of food according to his needs^ and lived
upon his followers according to his will and pleasure. The chief had
farther his own lion's share in the tribal land on which his cattle were
herded, and the homesteads of his own immediate servants located.

This was the system of land occupation imder which Ireland
was occupied by the Irish septs ^ down to the time of James L — a
system to which separate ownership and the relation of landlord and
tenant were equally foreign. It was a system as widespread as their
lace, and deeply engrained in their national character by the tradi-
tions of 1000 years. To tell the Irish, therefore, to suddenly change
this system, to adopt English social arrangements, and to adapt them-
selves to English law, was to tell them to do something against their
nature and beyond their power. To speak plainly and to put the
case strongly — ^too strongly, indeed, in degree, but not too strongly to
make plain the principle involved — it was like telling bees no longer
to swarm, but in future to gather honey each on its own hook, build-
mg its separate cells apart by itself instead of in the hive. In spite
of English mandates and English laws, the Irish still show the in-
herent propensity to swarm and to build their cells in the ancient
hive. They still cling with hereditary tenacity to the land of their
sept, and insist upon settling — one might almost say sprawling — their
fiunilies upon it, in spite of law and landlords.

But to return to the times of James I. To his law officers be-
longed the difficult task of converting these Irish tenures into their

' Hogan's De$eriptwn rf Ireland in 1598.

« IngmnUames Cancellaria Sibernue, ii. xxi.

• See Sir John Davis's Hutorieal Tracts^ ^LondoD, 1786 ; Mr. Skene's CeUio Scot-
Immdy yoL ui^ BJoA the prefaoes to Ancient Zatct of Ireland. Ck>mpare the isystem
dewribed in the Ancient Lawi rf Walei,

94 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Jauuary

apposed English equivalents. The interest of the problem and of
their method of solving it lies in the question : How they concluded
to treat the inferior members of the sept, whether as tenants at will
qf the chief as if they were English tenant fermers, or as entitled to
permanent fixity of tenure such as that possessed by English copy*
holders and the serfs of Continental manors.

Sir John Davis was the Attomey-G-eneral of James I. He it
was upon whom the difficult task devolved ; and therefore no better
evidence than his statements could possibly be quoted.

He soon found out the double difficulty which lay in his way.
(1) The chief was not, properly speaking, a landlord, and (2) the in-
ferior members of the sept were not, properly speaking, his tenants.
How then could the English law of absolute ownership or of landlord
and tenant be made to apply ?

He explains this double difficulty thus :

1. By the Irish custom of tanistry the chieftains of every country and the
chief of every eept had no longer estate than for life in their chi&feriee^ the in-
heritance whereof did rest in no man. And these chieferies, though they had
some portions of land allotted unto them, did consist chiefly in cuttings and
coscheries and other Irish exactions, wherehy they did spoil and impoverish the
people, at their pleasure. And when their chieftains were dead their sons or next
heirs did not succeed them, but their tanitU, who were elective, and purchased
their elections by strong hand.

2. And by the Irish custom of gavelkind the inferior tenancies were partable
amongst all the males of the sept ; and after partition made, if any one of the sept
had died his portion was not divided among his sons, but the chief of the sept made
8 new partition of all the lands belonging to that sept, and gave every one his part
according to hift antiquity.

These two Irish customs (Sir John Bavis continues) made all their possessions
uncertaia, being shuffled and changed and removed so often from one to another
by new elections and partitions, which uncertainty of estates hath been the true
cause of such desolation and barbarism in this land.^

The attempt to substitute English tenures instead of these Irish
tenures had never yet been made throughout Ireland. The attempt
had only been made in former reigns in isolated cases, and the system
on which the change had been attempted in these cases seemed to the
Attomey-G-eneral of James I* a mistaken one.

For although that in the twelfth year of Queen Elizabeth a special law was
made which did enable the Lord Beputy to take surrenders and regrant estates
unto the Irishry, yet were there but few Irish lords that made offer to surrender
during her reign; and they which made surrender of entire countries obtained
grants of the whole again to themselves only, and to no other, and all in demesne.
In passing of which grant there was no care taken of the inferior septs of people
inhabiting and possessing these countries under them, but they held theit several
portions in course of tanistry and gavelkind, and yielded the same Irish duties or
exactions as they did before. So that upon every such surrender and grant there
was but one freeholder made in a whole country, which was the lord himself. All
the rest were but tenants at will or rather tenants in villenage, and were neither
fit to be sworn on juries nor to perform any public service. And by reason of the
uncertainty of their estates they did utterly neglect to build or to plant or to improve

• Sir John Davis^s IHseavery of Ireland, 1612, p. 167.

1881. HISTORICAL CLAIMS OF TENANT RIGHT. 26

tbe knd. And therefoze, although the lord were become the king's tenant, hia
country was no whit reformed thereby, but remained in the former barbarism
and desolation.

Bat now (he continues) ^nee his Majesty came to the Crowu, two special
commiaaons haye been sent out of England for the settling and quieting of all the
peoaoarions in Ireland, the one for accepting surrenders of the Irish and degenerate
Engliahy and for regian^g estates unto them, according to the course of common
law : the other for strengthening of defectiTe titles. In the execution of which
oommiadons there hath ever been had a special care to settle and secure the
nnier^enanti : to the end there might be a repose and establishment of every
aabject'a estate: lord and tenant, freeholder and farmer, throughout the Kingdom.

Then he describes in these clear words the course taken under
James I. :

Upon aorrendera this course hath been held from the beginning. When an
Irish lord doth offer to surrender his country, his surrender is not immediately
accepted, but a oommiasion is first awarded to inquire of three special points : —
First, of the quantity and limits of the land whereof he is the reputed owner. Next,
how much himself doth hold in demesne, and how much is possessed by his tenants
and followen. And thirdly, what Customs' duties' and services he doth yearly
xeceiye out of those lands. This inquisition being made and returned, the lands
which are found to be the lord's proper possessions in demesne are dravm into a
particular ; and his Irish duties, as coscherings, sessings, rents of butter and oatmeal,
and the like, are reasonably valued and reduced into certain siuns of money, to be
^id yearly in lieu thereof. This being done the surrender is accepted, and there-
upon a grant is paaaed not of the whole country, as was used in former times, but
of thorn lands mdy which are found in the lord's possession, and of those certain
soma of monej, as rents issuing out of the rest. But the lands which are foimd to
be pooBcased hj the tenants are left unto them respectively charged with these certain
lents only, in lieu of all uncertain Irish exactions.

In like manner, upon all grants which have passed by virtue of the commiasion
for defective titles, the Conmiissioners have taken special caution for preservation
of the eatatea of all particular tenants.''

No words could be clearer than these. But it will be observed
that Sir John Davis had in the earlier quotation spoken of chiefs of
countries and chie& of septs ; i.e. there were septs under septs, and so
chiefs under chiefs; and thus the question might possibly arise
whether this careful plan of distinguishing between demesne and
tenants' land was applied further than as between the superior chief
of the * country ' and the sub-chief of the sept, — whether, in fact, the
inferior chief of the sept inhabiting such and such townlands had his
demesne land separated in the same way as the superior chief from
the tenants' land under fixed rent ?

Now an actual example will make this clear. The members of
the inferior sept were, it will be seen, made into actual freeholders,
sulgect only to a quit-rent.

In a letter to the Earl of Salisbury, written in 1606,' Sir John
Davis describes what was done in the settlement of County Monaghan.
And in this letter he gives the names of the townlands granted to
McMahon, the chief, to be held in demesne, with rents from so many

' Sir John Davis's DUeavery iff the State of Ireland, 1612, p. 273.
• His m$toneal Traete, ed. 1786.

B6 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Jaauazy

other townlands granted to other chiefs of inferior septs, who also
have so many townlands or parts of townlands granted to them in
demesne, while the sub-tenants, members of the septs, had one or
more tates or homesteads allotted to them in freehold, sabject only
to the quit-rents to their chief, part of which went to the king.^

In the Calendars of State Papers of James I.^° can be traced the
gradual accumulation of evidence which induced Sir John Davis to
take this view of the position of the inferior members of the septs*
It was the only natural view to take when the fact was once fully
grasped that imder the sept system of tribal ownership the land be-
longed to the sept, of which the chief was only the elected head.

He had, as we have said, the choice whether he would treat them
as analogous to English commercial tenant-farmers or as analogous to
^English copyhold tenants. He chose the latter alternative, only in-
stead of making them copyholders, requiring future enfranchisement,
he preferred to make them freeholders at once, subject only to fixed
qidt-rents«

And let it be understood that this careful process of converting
the inferior members of the septs into freeholders had nothing to do
with the plantation of Ulster or any other plantation. It ,was the
process applied to the purely Irish estates before the opportunity for the
plantation of Ulster had arisen. These are Sir John Davis's own words :

And thus we see how the greatest part of the possessions (as well of the Irish
9A of the English) in Leinster, Connaught, and Munster, are settled and secured
since his Majesty came to the Crown ; whereby the hearts of the people are so
settled; not onlj to live in peace^ but raised and encouraged to build, to plant, to
give better education to their chUdren, and to improve the commodities of their
lands ; whereby the yearly value thereof is already increased double of that it was
within these few years, and is likely daily to lise higher till it amounts to the price
of our land in England.^^

To go one step further. It will hardly be disputed that if this
legal arrangement attempted by the law officers of James I. had really
been effected fully in fact, and had peaceably continued and remained
under the recognition and protection of the English law, the result
would have been that the lords of Irish manors would have been
fotmd to-day the legal and absolute owners of their demesne lands
only, with such additions thereto as might have been awarded to them
upon the enclosure of the townlands in lieu of their manorial quit-
rents over the rest ; while the mass of their peasant tenants would by
this time, under Enclosure and Enfranchisement Acts, have become
practically the absolute owners of their holdings, like English copy-
holders and Continental peasant proprietors.

But the course of history did not run thus smoothly on a royal
road. In the first place, though the inferior members of the septs
may have been satisfied or, as Sir John Davis says, even * comforted'

• See list of persons to which the several 'tates ' were given, Cal. State Papers,
Jas. L, 1606-8, p. 164. »• 1606-9, pp. 20, 23, 166, 211, 386, &c.

" IHicotery of Irelandy p. 279.

1881. HISTORICAL CLAIMS OF TENANT RIGHT. 27

Ij the notion of legal protection and the snbstitution of fixed finee^
holds for their uncertain holdings, yet naturally it was a sore blow to
a chief to be restricted to his demesne lands and to lose his per^
sonal rule and his capricious and unlimited rights over a multitude of
dependent followers. It was, in fact, too great a change to be effected
suddenly. The habits of a thousand years were not to be set aside by
a stroke of the pen or by the mere wording of the patents.

Mischief very soon began to mar the completeness of the Attorney**

General's settlement of Ireland. First there was the rebelliou of two

great Ulster ohieftains, followed by the English plantation of Ulster.

And let it be clearly understood that by this plantation the work of

Sir John Davis was in great measure set aside. Quite inadequate

provision was made for the native Irish. The rights of the newly

created freeholders were in many places roughly set aside to make

room for the new English and Scotch planters. And these latter

covenanted on paper to allow no Irish tenants on their estates, but to

establish in their place English tenants under certain tenures and

with fixed rents. But, in fact, the restrictions were futile. Before

many years were over the Irish tenants were back upon their old

lands, and the new landlords neglected to give the certain tenures.

Then came the more general rebellion of 1641, its suppression by

Cromwell, and the re~settlement of Ireland under a fresh race of

Scotch and English landowners.

By the Ctomwellian settlement of Ireland, in theory and in law,
nearly the whole land of Ireland tmder Irish owners was confiscated,
and the whole Irish- nation, like the sept of the Greames, was ordered
to be bodily transplanted to Connaught.

But this was more easily* said than done. First, exceptions were
made to this terrible rule, and very soon the order of transplantation
was confined to those only who were ^ proprietois ' and known rebels.
Some landowners, it is known, were transplanted into Connaught
with their tenants ; in some cases the tenants remained behind when
the landlords were transplanted ; and no doubt the wholesale confis-
cation did disturb the legal title of the peasant holdings : so that in a
strictly legal sense we must take it as settled, by the after course of
the law, that the tenancies in dry law began again de novo. Thence«-
forward, the law rightly or wrongly treated the tenants, not as Sir
John Davis had treated them as freeholders subject to a quit rent,
not as peasant tenants with hereditary rights, but simply as commer*-
cial tenants under contracts, or, if without contracts, then as mere
tenants at will. But again facts were stronger than the law. The
legal confiscation on paper of all the previously recognised rights in-
herent in the peasant tenures, did not annihilate them in point of &ct
any more than the paper decree of banishment across the Shannon
transplanted the peasant tenants into Connaught.

Fortunately, evidence is accessible, of the very best possible kind,
proving that the peasant tenants were still, after the Bebellion, in occu«

1» TEE NINETEENTH CENTURY. January

pation of their holdings, in spite of the decree of banishment, and
etill possessed of actual if not legal interests in their holdings, in spite
of the general confiscation. For what evidence could possibly be
better evidence as to the actual position of the tenants after the
Bebellion, than that of the Government official who was sent all
through Ireland to fix the boundaries and define the estates of the
new owners and to assess their value ? This official was Sir William
Petty, and his report and survey are still extant.

Let us apply a crucial test of the tenants' position. In surveying
and valuing the manors did Sir William Petty find the peasant
tenants still on the land ; and if so, did he in valuing the lands of
the new landlords include or exclude the tenants' interests^ or how did
he treat them ?

Now, the plain answer is first that he did find peasant tenants on the
manors. And an equally plain answer can be given to the second ques-
tion. Sir William Petty, in valuing the total value of the land of Irish
landlords after the change was made, eoscepted from the gross value
the value of the tenants' interests in their holdings, thus clearly
showing that he considered that the tenants were not merely modem
conmiercial tenant farmers, but that they were possessed still of
permanent and valuable interests in the land, subject to which in
&ct, however it might be in law, the new landlords took possession
of their manors. This is his valuation :

7^500,000 acres of good, and 1,500,000 acres of coarse, making

9,000,000, is worth per annum £900,000

Out of which the king's quit rents, old rents, &c. .... 90,000

Eests £810,000
The tjfhes whereof are one-fifth .••••*. 162,000

Rests £648,000

The benefit of leases and the yalue of tenants' improvements upon

the said land is one-third, yiz. : — £216,000*

For the hmdlords £432,0001'

So that he estimated the value of the tenants' interests in the land
at about one-third of the whole value of the land of Ireland—- i.«., not
at one-third of the value of the land they occupied, but of the value
of the whole manor under which they were tenants, demesne land in-
cluded. There reniamed to the landlord the other two-thirds.

And that the cabins of the peasantry were valued as belonging to
tiieir one-third share of the land is clear from his urging that the
tenants (not the landlords) should be encouraged to reform their
cabins and build better ones.

Sir W. Petty estimated the population after the Bebellion at
1,100,000 ; 300,000 Protestants or English, 800,000 Papists or Irish.

The said 1,100,000 people do live in about 200,000 families or houses, whereof
there aie ahout 16,000 which hare more than one chimney in each, and about

" Sir William Petty^s PoUUeal AnaUmy of Ireland.

1881- HISTORICAL CLAIMS OF TENANT RIGHT. 2ft

8^000 which haye bat one ; all the other houses, .being 160|000, are wretched
nasty cabins without chimney, window, or doorshut, even worse than those of the
savage Americans, and whollj unfit for making merchantable butter and cheese, or
the manufactures of woollen, linen, or leather.

We may assame that the 160,000 ^ nasty cabins ' were mostly thosef
of the native Irish, accoiding well with the nmnher of homesteads
in the estimate of 1598. And now, when it is recollected that these
little peasant homesteads represented not so much arable as little pas->
tuie &rms, it becomes clear at once that when Sir W. Petty says the
160,000 cabins of the native Irish were mifit for dairies and manufac-
tures, he meant that they were unfit for the purposes for which they were
used. Hence, then, we may picture these peasant tenants after the
Bebellion as having, to a great extent, got back to their old holdings
and as still possessed at least of some &rming stock — some few head
of cattle saved from the herds of their old sept, and some few sheep
grazing on the common pastures ; patches of oats, and of flax, and
perhaps already of potatoes scattered about on the ' run-rig ' system
round the cluster of cabins on the townland. We see the butter and
the cheese made up in the smoke and dirt of the cabins, some beef
and bacon cured for winter use or sale, a few skins stretched and
tanned rudely into leather. We hear the whirr of the spinning
wheel and the rattle of the rough wooden loom, by which the wool
and flax are spun and woven. No wonder. the butter, and cheese^
and doth, and leather seemed ^ scarcely merchantable ' to the eyes of
Sir W. Pe£ty, but then their so appearing to him when he made his
survey is the best evidence we could have that a homely industry
eked out the produce of the peasant holdings. Wretched as they
seemed to him, he set down the value of the peasants' interests in
them at on&-third of the whole value of the country.

Out of the 800,000 Irish, 600,000 'Kred' (he said) 'yeiy simply in the cabins
above mentioned.' And he continues, * As for the interest of these poorer Irish it
is xnanxfestly to be transmuted into English. ... It is their interest to deal with
the l^wg'li^h fyt leases, for time, and upon dear conditions, which being performed
they are absolute freemen rather than [as formerly under their Irish chieftains] to
stand always liable to the humour and caprice of Uieir landlord, and to have every-
thing taken away from them which he pleases to fancy.

He counted, therefore, on the new landlords respecting the tenants*
interests.

But alas I when power was given to the new settlers to create
manors and reserve tenures to themselves, non obstante the Statute of
Quia Emptores, no care was taken of these peasant tenants. . Holdings
which a few years before had been at law freeholds subject only to
quit rents, were now left at law at the mercy of the new landlords,
without the controlling customs which in English manors gave fixity
of tenure to copyhold tenants. And, as was natural, the constant
tendency of the new landlords was to push up the quit rents to rack
rents, so as to transfer to the landlord as much as possible of that

80 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. January

one-third which Sir W. Petty put down as the property of the
tenants. It cannot be said that Parliament deliberately decreed or
sanctioned this injustice to the peasant holders. The whole matter
was simply left as a matter of intra-manorial arrangement with which
it had nothing to do. If the same thing had happened in the
Middle Ages, the peasant tenants would have been made yillemsy
and customs would have grown up within Irish manors as in every
other country in Europe, giving fixity of tenure and tenant right.
But the English notion of freedom forbade that new viUeins should
be created by law in the seventeenth century (though it did not
object to the introduction of negro slaves into English colonies),
and so it simply left the Irish holders tenants-at-will, and forgot
them.

But outside' the law there was a fact which was practicaUy ad-^
mitted and consistently acted upon on the part of the landlords, imtil
it became a general rule and custom almost throughout the whole of
Ireland — a fiact involving the growth of a tenant-right, and logically
leading to something like fixity of tenure.

Sir W. Petty, as we have seen, not only recognises the fact that
the cabins and improvements were the tenants' and not the landlords',
but looked to the tenants and not to the landlords to improve them,
and the general custom through Ireland from that time to this has
followed the same rule. The landlords expended no capital on the
land. The tenants, therefore, had to make its future value.

Now, if any one doubts the truth of the assertion that under such
circumstances a tenant-right must inevitably grow up, and something
like a right to fixity of tenure arise, let him peruse the blue*book devoted
to the explanation of the way in which a similar necessity arose, and
forced itself, in spite of law, upon the legislature of Prince Edward's
Island, obliging recognition of the rights of tenants arising out of
ixnprovements made by them even on the expiration of long leases.
According to the letter of the contracts contained in them, the land-
lord, in renewing the leases, could claim a rack rent. But the law
if^A obliged to mould itself to the facts, and recognise the equities
rising out of them. It was found to be impossible to simply apply
the English law of landlord and tenant to a new country where the
tenant reclaimed and made the value of the land. A tenant-right
was first acknowledged by the Government, and ultimately it was
found needful even to buy out the landlords.'^ Under such circum-
stances the rights of occupancy become stronger than the rights of
ownership.

It was so in Ireland. And the landlords did their best to make
it so. They abandoned their ownership to middle-men so completely
that in a letter quoted by Mr. Fronde, written in 1775, the writer
says : ^ It is well known that over most parts of the country the lands

'< Correspondence relative to the Land Tenure question in Prince Edward Island,
August 1876.

1881. HISTORICAL CLAIMS OF TENANT RIGHT. 31

aie saUet ox deep, so that those who actually labour it are squeezed
to the very utmost' ^^ Thus the landlords and their middle-mea
abdicated the duties of ownership, and sunk into the position of para-
sites, feeding upon the peasant tenants. They robbed them of their
tenani-right by raising their rents, and of their mountain pastures
by intruding graziers upon them.

But amid all their hardships the tenants clung to their holdings,
and still i^;arded the land of their old septs as their own legitimate
inheritacnce, as indeed English law under Sir John Davis had ad*
Hiitted it to be. A hundred years are but three generations, and
fiunily memories reach through longer periods than this.

Arthur Young, writing in 1774, records that :

The lineal descendants of the old families are now to be found all over the
Engdom woridng as cottien on the lands which were once their own« ... It is a
&et that in most parts of the Kingdom the descendants of the okL landowners
n^gnJarly tianamit hj testamentary deed the memorial of their light to those estates
which once belonged to thdr families.

, So then in 1774 the descendants of the old members of the septs
wtte still <m the land, possibly still holding divided amcnag them
the very tates or homesteads assigned to them before the rebellion
by Letters Patent of the Crown.

Mr. Eronde quotes a remarkable manifesto of about the same date,

wbioh akowi how bitterly the hereditary peasant holders resented
the robbery of their mountain pastures and the insecurity of theitf
hoUfngs:

Tour Hononr is senslhle that while, of the land which thor ancestors held at
4a or 6a. an acre, thej got a few acres at £4 to set potatoes in^ they hehayed peace*
aUe aad qioelij. Your Honour is also sensihle that the laws of the land have made
nopiOTiaon for them, and that the customs of the country seem to have been
appinnted for their total destruction and desolation ; upstarts supplanting my poor
people on expiration of thdr leases^ and stocking their lands with bulloclo.

The facts are on the side of the Iridi peasants' hereditary tenant
right, for the landlords had left them to follow the hereditary in-
stincts of their old sept organisation by swarming and spreading
upon the land. In two centuries the 160,000 Irish cabin homesteads
described by Sir William Petty had increased to the number of
600,000 or 700,000 holdings. Half a million fresh homesteads had
thus been built by the Irish themsdves, and all their surroundings
created by the peasants' labpur. ^^

Need there be any wonder that a custom of tenant right in these
half a million cabins should be found to exist at the end of that
period, strong enough in some districts to ensure practical recognition
though unrecognised by the law ?

The £ict is, that the £ng[lish law of landlord and tenant has never

M Fronde,! 27a .

u It ii estimated that it takes from lOZ. to HI to reclaim an acre of land worth
in its uncultivated state 2/. 10».— See Standard newspaper's special oorrespondent,
December 9, 18S0.

32 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. January

fitted the facts of these peasant tenures. It has failed .to control them
and change them. In 1870 it had itself to be changed so as to adapt
itself to them.

Up to that time the law had ignored the fact even of the Ulster
tenant right, though it possessed so strong an inherent reality that
even without the law and against the law it was obeyed. Even before
the Act of 1870 a railway company taking land under compulsory
powers had in practice to buy the tenant's as well as the- landlord's
interest ; and though under no legal obligation to do so bad to pay
about as much to the tenant as to the landlord before getting peace-
able possession of the land.

In 1870 the law had to follow the fact, and by one stroke of the
pen the Ulster cuitom was made law.

In other parts of Ireland the tenants had not succeeded so fully in
maintaining their tenant right. But the facts on which tenant right
and something like fixity of tenure are based applied elsewhere than
in Ulster. Even out of Ulster therefore Mr. Gladstone was com-
pelled in 1870 tardily and with some hesitation to acknowledge the
principle of tenant right and permanence by those clauses of his Act
which gave compensation for disturbance.

And now the law having once recognised the tenant right is mani-
festly bound to protect it with the same care as it protects the land-
lord's ownership. And thus we are brought face to fjace with the
practical question whether after all the cure for the present dead-
lock between landlord and tenant in Ireland be not the still more
full and fair recognition of the facts as they are.

Step by step we have been driven towards, it. The law for two
hundred years tried to control the facts, and failed in controlling
them. In 1870 it conformed itself to the principle involved in
the facts. In 1880 the law has to make itself correspond still more
closely to them. To perpetuate conflicting interests must be bad
policy. To harmonise them on the basis of the actual &cts can hardly
be objected to by either party. Nor does the full recognition of tenant
right involve^ as is sometimes supposed, the confiscation of a portion
of the landlord's property to give it to the tenant. It is merely
the lopping off of overlapping legal rights.

Admit the tenant's right within due limits to permanent occupa-
tion and to the protection of the value of his tenant right. This
admission involves the recognition of his joint ownership with the
landlord in his holding. The recognition of this must involve a
limitation in the landlord's right to raise the rent. Exceptional and
unscrupulous landlords raise the rent, we are told, wherever they can,
and so encroach upon the tenant right. Obviously, they have no
right to do this, and ought to be prevented from doing it. The
landlord may no doubt justly raise the rent to the limit of the
market value of his (the landlord's) own share of the joint holding.

1881. HISTORICAL CLAIMS OF TENANT RIGHT. SS

If this rises in value, he has a right to a higher rent in respect of it.
Bat he has no right to any rent at all, accruing solely out of the
tenant rightj ue. out of the tenant^s share in the joint holding, what-
ever its market value may rise to. This seems obvious and in-
telligible. Nor is there any real loss to either party in this mutual
limitation. The landlord cannot be entitled to a rent from what is
not his property. Nor can the tenant claim to occupy the landlord's
property without paying a rent for it.

Some practical method of arranging this matter of the rent,
according to these clear principles, is obviously a aine qua noUj if a /
modus vivendi for landlord and tenant is to be found for the future
on the basis of tenant right.

Again, as to the landlord's right of ejectment. Why should the
landlord have a right to eject a tenant who has a valuable interest
in his holding, so long as the conditions of the joint holding are
complied with ? Ejectment means a forced sale, or, if a full price
cannot be obtained, a partial confiscation of a valuable property.
The landlord has, imder the Act of 1870, power to eject his tenant
without reason, on giving compensation or on allowing the sale of the
tenant right at the market price. But the market price in a fsBunine
is the price to be obtained by a forced sale, when there are few pur*
chasers. Even the Ulster tenant right fell for the time fifty per
cent, in value during the famine of last year. Is then the landlord
to be able to choose and watch, his time, and buy out the tenant right
at half value ? This power is certainly not consistent with fidly
recognised tenant right. Let landlords, on breach of covenant by
sub-letting or bad fanning, have power to eject and force a sale of
the tenant right at the market value ; but apart from breach of
contract why should the landlord have power to force his tenant to
sell his diare in the joint ownership? To which side does the
permanence of holding matter most? to the landlord who treats
his land as an investment, or to the tenant whose holding is his busi-
ness, his living, and his home? Admitting the fact that the
tenure is a peasant tenure, it should not be forgotten that the
consensus of civilised Europe has, on the contrary, given the tenant
the right of buying out his landlord's side of the joint ownership.

The full recognition of tenant right, logically carried out, brings us
therefore to the creation of a new form of tenure, analogous in many
respects to copyhold and Continental peasant tenures.

Nor does this newly recognised form of tenure seem, so far as we
can see, to be economically considered a bad one. It limits the land-
lord's increase of rent to his own share in any increased value, but it
makes the rent absolutely secure as a first charge on the tenant right.
It limits his right of ejectment, but takes away the reason for eject-
ment. Nor is it bad for the tenant* For, after all, the obligation of a
fail rent to a landlord is better than getting into the clutches of a
Vol. JX,— No. 47. D

84 THE NINETEENTH OENTURT. January

moneylender. The rate of interest paid must be lower, and the pod^
tion of a tenant with fixity of tenure must be better than that of a
mcHrtgagor subject to six months' notice. Few tenants are so over*
done with capital that they ehould, without reason, invest more than
is needful at 3 per cebt. in land. Finally, if the tenant right be
ftiUy Secured by the law, and its lines distinctly marked, it would
nfford almost, if not quite, the same inducement to the tenant to
improve the holding as a system of ownership, whilst if subdivision
cian be guarded against by adequate conditions it would also supply
that ^ preventive check ' t6 too rapid increase in population which
peasant proprletor^p supplies. On the other hand^ the fact that
the landlord remained also interested in the increased value of the
land would enlist another interest in local improvements of a wider
kind — in the opening out of the natural advantages and resources
of the district — all which is of advantage also to the tenant* It
ako would bring the landlord's capital under local burdens as well
as the tenant's, and so enlarge the area over which the stiess of
temporary calamities can be spread.

There are therefore great economic advantages in the mainte*
nance of both the landlord's and tenant's interests. A country with
nothing but peasant holdings, and no other than peasant's capital,
would be, economically speaking, open to the evil that it had all
its eggs in one basket — that bad haiwests would knock the whole
country down at once, that its poor rates would fall upon its paupers^
and its population be likely to stagnate at the dead level of a low
standard of comfort.

Nevertheless, it cannot be 'denied that there are probably dis-
tricts where, owing to mutual desire or the hereditary bitterness
of the relation of landlord and tenant, it may be needfol that the
relation should end. To meet these instances extension may be
needful of the firight clauses, i.€. of the power given to tenants
to buy out the landlord's interests.

Tenatnt right is no doubt half way towards ownership. I &ave
idluded to the fact that in some places, especially in the mountain
districts of the liorth-west, the pieces included in each peasant
holding are scattered all over the townland, and I have said that this
condition of things is a survival of the old system of common open
€elds, known in Ireland and Scotland as the * rundale ' or ' run-rig '
system. In such townlands the holdings are almost sure to be em-
phatically peasant holdings, ' Common sense would suggest that the
proper way to deal with these townlands is by a process akin to what
in England is known as enclosure and enfiranchisement. In the life-
time of our grandfathers, four thousand Enclosure Acts silently
changed the face of the rural parishes of England, sweeping away the
remains of old manorial rights from copyhold land. And surely such
a silent process always going on, consolidating and separating the

1881. > HiaTOBICAL CLAIMS "OF TENANT RIGHT. Sf5

Jaadl«rd*« and the ]pettBant^8 interest,^ sdeari&g'' the tigbte «f pertui^
and perhaps even in some* oases "bnyii^ out the landloM^int^est^in
the-^vhole townland and vesting it in the inhabitants, 'Wlj^ld afford
the> l^est scope for the experiment of peasant prO{Nrietei«hip' that
eooldcwallbe obtained; wykt th^ £ebct that the process ^td^ go-' on
gradinUy, townland' after townland, and year after year^ wtvere^it'wab
most needed) wookl awaken life and indastry and corpomte aetton* ill
the townlands,' at the same time keeping up the feeling' everfwb^i^e
that somethi^ wasahrays being done,and that a prosjpest^pMgtdss
lay in iUie ftttiu«i ^ Bet HdA is not the place to -enter iirto 'details* ''^^R
is eDoagb to have made >the suggestion. Ne doubt i^ will b^ "^ht^
dnty of the law in some way or other to makeproviBions fbi< peasairt
proprietorship where the necessities of the case require it. < And in ' thft
ftovision, together with the full recognition of the new tenure Vtf tenant
right) the solution of the legal problem may perhaps be found. '' ' ^ ^

But i confess that I rise from thd study of the economic histofy'ot*
the Irish peasantry with a deep sefnse that however completely thb
legal proUem'may be eolved, there will still 'renlain an edtriuymib
problem of the greatest gravity. . . ^ .. . . .

For 'the moment, do donbt^ the great question is how to make
peace between landlord and tenant, and how to restore that spirit of
law and order whieh lies at the root ^f all real economic progress;
Hie restoration of law and order and an increasing population will
no doubt soon restore to the landlord the full value of* his qualified
ownership. The tenant', too, of a fair-sized holding with a fully
acknowledged tenant-right will have himself to blame if he do Hot by
thrift and industry become a prosperous semi-proprietor.

But what will become of the tenants of the too small holding^
and of the landless class ? It is well known that the' lot of a labouring
class beneath a class of peasant proprietors or peasant occupiers is
everywhere exceptionally hard.

It is easy to say tiiat the future of this class may be left to economic
laws. But, as we have said, the constitution of human nature is one of
the two feetors from the interaction of which economic laws arisdl
And there* are two peculiarities of the Irish people which mky easily
influence for evil their economic future. 1. The tribal instinct is
not yet altogether overcome. The instinct of the people is still tb
swarm and sprawl upon the land. 2. The priestly influence, so
powerful over the Irish mind, puUs' in the same direction ; partly
becanse the priesthood dreads the mixing up of its aidherents
with those of other creeds, and partly because it is from popu-
lation that it draws its tributes, and upon population that its
maintenance depends. Possibly these influences may be in some
measure counteracted by education, and by the firm enforceiiient of
a wisely arranged poor law, which (justice having been done to the

d2

36 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. January

land, its owners, and occupiers) shall justly cast upon the land of a
district the honest maintenance of its own pauperism.

But, nevertheless, the economic future of Ireland seems to
tremble in the balance between two opposite courses. One is that
into which her peculiar national tendencies would lead her, if they
were allowed blindly to mould the future. Satisfy the labouring
class by giving them land, and the increasLng population by bringing
more and more of Irish waste lands under cultivation. Satisfy the
still increasing demand as one generation succeeds to another by still
increasing the supply. What will be the result of this artificial pro-
cess ? When the extreme limits have been reached, the congestion
of population will continue under higher pressure than ever until
a fresh Irish famine produces another crisis and another exodus.

The other possible future is surely a far more hopeful one. Coun-
teract these peculiar tendencies by a firm resolve to follow that policy
which is really economically sound. Besist the temptation artificially
to provide for the maintenance of population at too high a level.
Wisely accept the fiict that the vastly larger proportion of the sons
of Ireland as well as of England must in the future dwell across the
Atlantic, and therefore at once, and without hesitation, include the
other Irelands and Englands across the ocean in the area within which
economic laws must be expected to work, and then return to the Irish
problem. Compare the waste lands of Ireland with the transatlantic
prairies, and instead, of asking the question whether it will barely pay
to plough up the Irish bog, boldly ask which will pay best, the same
labour and capital expended here or there; and according to the
answer cultivate the Irish bog or leave it alone. Instead of rooting
greater numbers to the soil, let in the daylight of education, and trust
to the growth of individual independence and general enlightenment.
Open the sluice of emigration as wide as possible till a real level in
population is reached, grudging no longer the flow of population to the
place where it is most wanted. Never mind if, having done justice to
the peasant tenants of Ireland, the free course of economic laws should
be found, there as in England, as capital increases, to work in favour
of large rather than of small holdings. Bejoice if Irish tenants find a
better investment for their capital than can be got from a few poor acres
of land, and a wider field for their increasing enterprise and energy than
bogs and mountains afford. If this should be the result of England's
doing justice to Ireland, then the higher happiness and fireedom of
her sons, wherever they may live, will reflect back a greater prosperity
on their old country and upon those who stay at home than any
possible ingenuity could secure by making artificial and uneconomical
provision for them where they ought not to be.

Ireland, or England for her, must make up her mind which of
these two economic futures she wishes to work for I

F. Sbbbohh.

1881. THE PRESENT ANARCHY. 37

TI/B PRESENT ANARCHY.

Fob the past four or five months Ireland has presented a spectacle to
whidi no parallel can be found in any civilised country. Her own
miserable annals, indeed, offer only too many parallels, but the &ct
simply warns us that Irish civilisation is scarcely skin-deep. In
some parts of Turkey and Greece there is imperfect security for life
and property, but even in those border-lands of Europe there is no
o]f;anised conspiracy to defeat and trample upon law. In Ireland
such a conspiracy has been at work since last summer with fieital
success. Early in the autumn the peasants in Mayo and Ckdway
began to boast that * the English law was broke,' and this is now the
langus^ commonly used throughout Connaught and Munster, in a
great part of Leinster, and in some districts of Ulster. This popular
belief has kept pace with the establishment of the branches of the
Land League throughout the countiy and the working out of the
policy long ago proclaimed by Mr. Pamell. Its practical application,
however, goes far beyond the avowed limits of the Land League
system. The Land League recommends the peasantry to combine
for unlawful objects, to enforce by menaces the abrogation of existing
contracts and to intimidate all who do not at once yield to the man-
date of the Leaguers. But the lesson of lawlessness is carried further
by tiiose who are told that legal right may be thrust aside at the
bidding of agitators. The small fiurmers have the strongest induce-
ment to make the. system of the Land League effective, and if mere
threats of popular displeasure and of a social ban such as that by
which Captain Boycott was crushed do not avail, they do not hesitate
to extort submission by murder, torture, incendiarism, and cruel
mutilation of living animals. < Boycotting ' itself can rarely be made
perfect, unless the refusal to carry it into effect is punished by outrage.
When obnoxious landlords and agents are placed under the ban,
it is necessary for the purposes of the Land League policy that no shop-
keeper shall be allowed to deal with them, no artisans or labourers
to work for them, no innkeepers to entertain them, no vehicles to carry
them, no messengers to bring them letters or telegrams. The same
treatment must be rigorously applied to ^ land-grabbers,' as fiurmers
are now called who venture to take holdings from which defiEkulting
tenants have been evicted; and to respectable men who knowing

38 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. January

that they hold their land on reasonable terms and are reluctant to break
their word, are audacious enough to pay their rents without insisting
that the landlord shall accept ' Griffith's valuation.' Against all these
classes are employed the weapons of organised agrarian terrorism which
have been employed in Ireland during several months with almost com-
plete impunity and with too conspicuous a success over a daily in-
creasing area,. In some counties the system has so thoroughly quelled
all spirit of resistance that few outrages are any longer needed to en-
force the Land League Code. In others the struggle continues, and
wherever it is maintained, the record of crime is terribly augmented.
' .The magnitude of the evil was daringly demed^ not by followers
of.MvvP&rnell only, but by English memb^s 'for d^aooratic con--
stitufflicies down to the beginning of December^ It was allied thafe
the amount ;of crime was exaggerated, and that there was reason to*
believe that the powers . of the ^ ordinary law ' were being used te keep
under oontrol that which existed. Mr. Grladstone himself at the
banquet «n Lord Mayor's day, intimated that ^he^ was: still waiting for
denu>n8tniitioDL lof ithe. fact that the ordinary law.had foiled tooope with
thOfeiiemiesariayed.against it in Ireland.. Whoi the Cabinets aftar
fisequfint meetings and rumours of dissension on - this very question,
separated, at. the end of November without taking. steps, to obtain
additional. powQfls. foe the Iriah Exeoutive, tJbe jeporta of outrage did
not oeaae oar lessen, but ^ exaggeration * was the answer in< the mouth
ef< every* Ministerial apologist* On the. opemag of the Winter
Assises for Munster, Leinsteri aad Connaught, the chaa-ges of the
judges . made i a full disclosure of > t^ie actual state, of things. Mr.
Justiee Fitzgerald in Coskj Mj. Justice Bariy in Wateiford, and Baron
Dowse in Gfllway had the same tale to telli . Crime has greatly in-«
creased in amount since. the last suminer assizes, and practically it has.
been: undieoked by public justice. It is unnecessary to zecapitsolate the
fiusts stated .in theae charges : one o v two taken frcNn Baron Dowse's will
be^sufficienL In Gralway (county and city) the police have returned
291 offences of a grave cbaractex as having' been committed since
July last}. b«t-. only twelve cases, have been sent for trial. In Miqno
2S6grave^enoeB:Wfffe returned^ and again. only twelve cases were
forv trials . In,these> two counties 493 peirsons, < either through a desire
to shield theigoilty er through terror,' refuse te give any infiHinati<»i
by. which the criminalsi could ^be brought to justice. ' If this state of
affairs,' says Baron Dowse, ^is allowed to continue much longer;
immediate-danger, to Ireland will be the consequence .and ultimate
disgiaoe to the. empire of. which she forms a part.' Mr. Justice
Barry spoke scarcely less strongly, though in the south-eastern
counties' the. -evil had* not yet reached the same prc^rtioBo as in
Gabfay and Mayo. If, he -said, even one*tenth of the ouioages re-t
ported^betrue^^vnasaneand.candid man can deay that there ensta
in many pavti of this isountry a state of things demanding.graive and

I8»l. THE PRESENT ANABjDHY. 30.

aiUBOus coiisidetatioo*' According to Mr. Jiuitice Fitagferald, ^ia
iuiie4eathB at least oC the cases of reported criminality, no one has
been made amenable ; 'yet < inseveral districts ^oabraciiig a great pavt
of MuBster true liberty has ceased to exist, and aa inttolerable tyranny
prevails* Life is not secure, right is* disregarded, the process of the law
cannot be enforced, and dishonesty and lawlessness disgraoa the land»>

It ia not too much to say with Mr» Justice Fitzgerald that a
enninal oiganisation, ' acting. on the cupidity, the passions,. and the
fears of the peojde,' ^had reduced. some districts of the country to
anarchy and confusion, diJBGsiing little^ if at all, from civil war.' The
lif^iah aympathia^rs with the agrariaa movement in Ireland denied
tinsjdown to the last momjmt. * One escpositor of Badicalism, writing
atttheesid of NoYember, boldly asserted that ^agrarian murdexs and
oiltiagBa bave.not been frequent,' andattnUxuted the prevailing alann
tc^ tha &et thatevenis are viewed ^ threugh the disturbing and ex^
aggeratixig znedinm, of fear.'. ^ Xhei imperturbable ^courage which rer
fasas i& Piocadilly to recognise the dangers threatening other people
in Jiagro at Kexxj is.ifco be admired, but the charges of the Irii^h judges
dispose .of tiie theory that .the crisis has mecely be^a developed /out pi
a ' landlords' panic' The same critic, nevertheless, admitted .that if.it
were showxi that ^ the.qpecation of the law in its normal state was in-
soflMe^iv ^^bftt aseassinations,, outrages,, and other crimen of violence
w^pe being committed in alarming or unprecedented nuinbex;» ttuit
oonstitational.aatbiMity had. completely coUapsedytheije would .be jair
gfomids . foc« the institution of. coercive measiures«' . Most persons will
be<KtopiDion that the required proof has been ahundantly gi^ven in
.the figures, cited by the judges. But those .figures wece .not
faiought to Jiight at the assisBes. They have. been coUeeted. by the
coonty inspeotocs of oonstabulary and, aa a matter of course, the
Government has been made acquainted with them from day to .day.
Mr, Forator baa seen th^ levidenoe grow ;und^ his ^es since , Parliar
JBeni was prorogued; he was able to. lay it before the Cabinet in
JKovember, and it is cunently bddeved that he then represented the
nepeaaity of: giving the Irish Executive peremptory and. smmoary
poswers for the repression of crime. But if he did ep he was overruled
by faia. coUei^ues, ^and he did not emphasise his protest in the only
effective ^way^ by presenting his resignation as the alternative pf the
xqeetion of his. policy*

Whatever were, the causes which determined the conduct of the
Oahinet, and of the Irish Secretary in particular, the faot remaiiw that
the .'anardiy and confusion dijSfering little, if at all, fix^m civil
war,' which is denounced from the judicial bench, were allowed to
make head and to set justice at defiance* The judges lament the
impotenpe of law and the triumph of lawlessness^ But the Crovem*-
ment buas made no sign. The members of the Cabinet, inde^, do

> IbrtfUgktltf Review, ' Home and Foreign Affaira.*

40 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. January

not contradict a report that, when Parliament assembles on January 6,
a Cioercion Bill is to be introduced. The Irish, however, believe that
the hesitation of the Ministry has been due to the threats of Mr.
Pamell. The Home Bule leader, who has repeatedly declared that
he is working at the land question only as the most convenient line
of attack upon the^ British connection, has declared that he will not
allow any measure of coercion to pass, and the peasantry believe him
as they believed O'Connell, when he used solenmly to pledge his word
that in six months Bepeal of the Union would be extorted from
England. They are fortified in this belief by the stress T^ch Mr.
Bright has laid upon the statement of what is in one sense a truism,
and in another an irrelevancy, that ' force is no remedy.' Radical
politicians and publicists harp upon this string, and the new Binning^
ham machine enforces an appearance of unanimity. Meanwhile,
Ireland is going from bad to worse, as surely and swiftly as a fire,
to extinguish which no efforts have been made, wraps a whole pile
of buildings in flame. Mr. Bright and his friends steadily refuse to
call the fire-engines, until there has been a scientific inquiry into the
origin of the fire, and a law passed to compel the use of safety
matches.

It is important to examine carefully the novel application of the
doctrine that ^ force is no remedy ' in which the new Badical policy of
dealing with the anarchy in Ireland is founded. There is nothing in
the reasoning employed which restricts the conclusion to Ireland. If
the mining population of Durham were not only to strike for higher
wages, but were to extort concessions by systematic outrage as the
* Molly Maguires' of the Pennsylvania coal-districts succeeded in
doing for many years, it would be urged, on these new principles,
that no effort ought to be made to put down crime and disorder until
•grievances had been investigated and redressed. In no civilised
society, hitherto, has it been acknowledge4 that the existence of
grievances is a justification of crime, or of systematic defiance of law.
It is true that some apologists for anarchy imagine that the Liberal
party was formerly identified with a different doctrine ; Liberals, it
has been asserted,* have always repudiated < the doctrine that where
widespread disloyalty has arisen from substantial causes submission
to the law should precede popular remedies.' Take the strongest case
possible— the government of the Second Empire in France or the rule
of Austria in Lombardy ; did any sane Liberals contend that assas-
sination, with which Napoleon III. was repeatedly menaced, and
which struck at many Austrian governors and generals, was not to be
punished, so long as those Governments subsisted? Whatever
political inferences might be drawn from their acts, it was clear that
Orsini and other political assassins had forfeited their lives, and the
moral right of the Crovemment they attacked to exact the forfeit was

* Spectator^ December 4.

1881. THE PRESENT ANARCHY. 41

♦ *

ft

indiBputable. In truth, those who use this method of axgument do
not see where it leads them. What does ' submission to the law '
mean ? It means that the crimes which at present are perpetrated
with impunity in Ireland must be made to cease, by whatever means
and whatever the course of Ministerial policy. If Ireland were as
badly governed as the kingdom of the Two Sicilies thirty years ago, it
would still be as imperative as it is a^t present to enforce, in some way
ox other, the elementary securities for life and property without waiting
for political reforms. No step in advance can be taken while there is
impunity for crime. One may feel shame at being forced to insist
upon a point like this ; but when it is contested, in bold or ambiguous
language, by many Liberal speakers, it is necessaiy to reassert it in
the plainest terms*

A confusion of thought is introduced — ^not always, I am afraid,
undesignedly — ^between agrarian outrages and the repudiation of ex-
isting contracts* Both are examples of the lawless spirit which has
sprung up under the influence of the Land League, and in the pre-
sence of an impotent legal system and an apathetic Government.
But it is to the latter that the apologists for the do-nothing policy
turn when they are pressed in argument* It is^ they say, of course
to be deplored that tenants should refuse to pay their stipulated rents
and to surrender possession of their lands upon ejectment ; but, after
all, these are the very rights with which a reform of the land-laws must
deal, and it is not unfair to wait for the Parliamentary settlement* The
mischievous consequences of this doctrine might be pointed out ; but,
admitting that it were consistent with justice and public expediency,
it covers only a narrow comer of the question. Befiisal to pay rent
and resifitance to eviction are comparatively unimportant factors in
the anarchy described in the .Tudges' charges* But the reign of
terror aiganised throughout the larger part of Ireland can derive no
shadow of l^;ality from any changes in the land-laws.' It will neither

* Some politicians who onght to know, and do know, better, are not ashamed to
repeat the stale calumny that the disorders^infireland are morally chargeable upon
the Hooae of Lords. Mr. Slagg, for instance, one of the members for Manchester —
a gentleman who is very indignant with the leaders of his own party because, as he
elegantly phrases it, they ' tnm np their noses at Home Rule ' — ^traces all the pre-
sent troobles to the rejection of the Compensation for Disturbance Bill. Mr. Slagg
▼oied for that Bill, bat» if it is to be assumed that he honestly means what he says,
it la plain that, short as the Bill was, he cannot have read it. The Bill was to come
into operation only when tenants were ejected, and when they could show to the
satisfaction of the County Court judge that the inability to pay rent was due to the
prerailing distress. But during Uie past six months there have been practically no
ejectments in Ireland for the very good reason that, as the Judges tell us, the Queen's
writs do not run in that country. ' Few cases, therefore, have arisen in which the
iptcfpoBed law oonld have been set in motion. Bven, however, if those cases had been
far more numerous, the condition set forth in the Bill as the excuse for ezoeptional
legislation would have failed. The ' prevailing distress ' has disappeared ; a harvest
bofonteons beyond all recent examples has been reaped and turned into money, and
no Coon^ Court judge could possibly decide, in the presence of these facts, that the

42 THE mNBTEENTH CENTURT. Jannaiy

he more nor less unkwfbl after a new Land Act has been -passed, than
it is at present, to commit ttnirder and ferocious assaults, to inflict
torture on men and animals, to destrby property by fire or otherwise,
and to threaten obnoxious persons with any of these outrages. Why,
theuj should tiie GoTemment make the repression of this terrorism
eoEftingent upon l^slative reforms? To do so is to tell the Irish
people that until they are satisfied by remedial legislation, they must
be allowed to be a law unto themselves. They have, in fact^ estalH
lished among ihem the law of the Land League instead of the law of
Parliament, and it is certain that the supremacy of the fi^rmer will
be maintained with ibei results already manifest unless some means
are taken to give public justice new and wider powers. The fiiilure
of the ordinary law can no longer be contested. * A feeble attempt
was made to proved efficiency by the &ct that' under the protection
of a large body of iKrldiers the relief expedition from Ulster was able
to gather in Captain Boycott's crops. - At that very time, however, in
Other parts of Ireland* Boycotting ''was going on merrily, bht the
Lough Mask rescue has not been repeated. Even in Mayo- itself, tiie
presence of the soldiery' guarding Lord Emeu's unfortunate* agent did
not check' for a moment or in the slightest degree the operations of
the terrorists. Another explanation has been more recently devised;
It is asserted that the ordinary law has fistiled to repress crime in
Ireland because it has not been put in force with* vigour, and Mii
Forster's circular to the Msh magistrates' is pointed to as shoeing
4^t ^sting powers have been neglected. But if this be so,- in what
position does it leave the Government ? The Irish magistrates ''as
well as the Irish constabulary are directly controlled from ihe Oastle,
and if the law has deliberately stayed its hand while crime was being
perpetrated on an appalling scale, the responsibility must rest with
the CSrief Secretary -and' the Lord-^Lieutenant. It is impossible to say
what misdbievous inference may not have been dmwn,-before the
meaning of the facts grew as plain as it is now, from the misleading
phrase * force is not a remedy.* . . , -

But there is no reason to suppose that the Iriidi Government was
guilty of this lachesi The incapacity of the oidtnary knr tograp^e
with agrarian crime in. Ireland has been repeatedly demonstrated in
Parliament, and most conclusively in 1871 by two members o£ the
pieeent Cabinet, Lord Kimberley in the Upper House and Loi:d vHiur^
tingtonin the Lower House. But it had been shown to^erist^on
many former occasions. Popular, movements fomented by agitation

•iion-<|Miynient af rent wa^ dm to * €he flcfe of God.' . Tbo B&stnrbance Ball watAd'h$i(9e
been a dead letter^ as Mr. Famell frankly admita, when he aajs that he wDlild him*
self have insnied its rejection if he had joot seen thiatthe House of .Lords were oer^
tain to throw it ont as an nhwarrantable and purposelees attack on ptoperty. -^

* It mnat tie borne In mind that the most active portion of th6 JgiahttaagJHtiiapy
congiata of the reaidente or ^pendiariea» whoar^ Qovenmiantiiffio^a.^. \. ^...^ .

1881. THE PRESENT ANARCHY. 48

drifted into terrorism ; the law was suocessfuU j defied, evidence being
impofisibie to procare, arrests being -systematically obstmcted, and
oonvictions being generally unattainable. Bemedial measm'es were of
no a;vail in such a condition of things ; as Lord Hartington said in mov-
ing for the Westmeath committee of inqniry t ^I cannot see en what
poBBible gronnd it conld be imagined that the establishment of equal'
andjost l^slation should have any eSect on the minds of men who
have a syvtesn of laws of their own-^not jnst laws^ but th^ most unjust,
tiie most arbitr&iy, the most tyrannical, lind- the most barbarous.' In
every case, ooerdon has had sooner br later to be applied, and the
knger the cblay in applying it, the more rigorous did it neeesearily
become in the end. > It never failed io check oxime, and^ those who
contemn it are bound to show that the cessation of outxtige is not in
itself a gain to society. Be the politioal and social system bad or
good, it must be better that^ life and property should be safe than'
that men should go by day and night in fear of the assassin, the in-^
eendioiy, and the eattle-hougher. Fcnrce 4«' a remedy, so ftKfj and
those 'wboreiuse to apply it for this pnrpose when they are in^wer,'
ire mocaUy respensible for aU the crime they might have* pi^evented by^:
promptitude and energy.

It'is' seatoely remembered in these dsys* with what a derfiant
pande of Coroe O'GonnelPs last emancipation -campaign was orowned.
l%e nfitfch of Mr. Lawless into Ulster *at the head of thirty thousand
CSaihelioff fiightened' even the 'Catholic leaders, and Shiel bittetly
Ufrihaided the Wellington Administtalion' with their apathy; • 'The
Oahinei^' he said, ^is little better than a box in an amphitheatre from
whence her Majesty's ' Ministers may survey the business of blood.'
Die eoUiaion was avated by the wise assent of' the -Oovemment to
the popular demand, but the spirit of triumphant "violenoe was not so
easily laidi ' O'Oonnell^ having vanquished the Toriesy was determined
to force the hand of the' Whigs. Id 1881, he set at defiance^a pro*
damation' issued by the Lord-Lientenant, was indicted, and aUowed
judgment to go against him by defaults The QDvemment stated in
Budiament that it. was their > unalterable^ determination' to Met the
law takei its eonrse against himi' 'but the» geneial: election was
approadiing, ninisters .swallowed their scruples^ and^O'Oonnell was
never bron^t up- Ux judgment. He was not the man to abstain
from piesBing an advantage through scmples of ge&erosUy. He was
active at this very time in stirring np the popular passions wMch
presently biased up in the * tithe war.' In the. Speech' from the
Throne at the opening of Parliament in 1882, the attention of the
Legislatme was direeted to ^ the systematic opposition to the pay*>
ment of tithes in Ireland.' The titiie system was a thoroughly bad
bne, hut the representation of it as a- grievous burden upon the pea-
santry is net ooaaatent . with the facts. It was xather awop^ing
than a finuUag impost.) It was officially stated in the House of

44 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. January

Commons that in one parish in Carlow, the sum owin^ by 222 de-
faulters was one farthing each. ^ A return of the actual number of
defaulters whose debts were under a farthing, and rise by farthings
up to a shillings would exhibit a very large proportion of the gross
number. In some instances the charge upon the land amounted to
only seven parCs of a fEirthing. . • • Many of the smaller sums were pay-
able by three or four persons. . . . The highest aggregate charge was
against those who owed individually about twopence.' But stimu-
lated by the great agitator the peasantry rose against tithes as in a
struggle for life and death. A writer of strong Badical opinions
descsibes the state of a£fairs that followed : — ^ Tithe-collectors were
murdered in some places ; in others they were dragged from their
beds and laid in a ditch to have their ears cut off. Five of the police
were shot dead at once by a party in ambush. The peasantry de-
clared against pastures, and broke up grass-lands in broad day.
Cattle were driven off lest the owners should pay tithe upon them*'
In November, 1831, 'when a strong body of police were escorting a
tithe-collector, they were summoned to surrender him to popular ven-
geance, and on their refusal, twelve of them were slaughtered in a
lane and more left fearfully wounded. The captain of police and his
son, ten years old, were among the slain, and tlie pony which the^ boy
rode was stabbed dead. ... A country lad who appeared to be about
thirteen years old went from one to another of the prostrate police,
and finding that five of them still breathed, made an end of them
with his scythe.' These outrages had the effect designed. They
established a reign of terror. ' If any resident pressed by his con-
science, or by his pastor, or by fear of the law, paid the smallest
amount of tithe in the most secret manner, his cattle were houghed
in the night, or his house was burnt over his head, or his flock of
sheep were hunted over a precipice and lay a crushed heap in the
morning. There was a sound of a horn at that time which made
men's flesh creep whether it was heard by night or by day ; for those
who took upon them to extinguish tithes now boldly assembled their
numbers by the sound of the horn, and all who heard it knew that
murder or mutilation or arson was going to be committed* Captures,
special commissions, and trials, were useless. Witnesses dared not
' give evidence ; jurors dared not attend.' The Grovemment bowed to
the storm and passed a relief act, lending a sum of money to the
clergy and undertaking itself to collect the arrears of tithe for 1831.
In the following year Ministers had to admit that out of arrears
amounting to 104,000{. they had been able to levy only 12,000{.,
which had been collected with great difficulty and some loss of life.
The agitators and the peasantry had thus carried their point. But
the social war did not subside. Terrorism was vainly encountered
with police and soldiery. It was in this situation that the first Re-
formed Parliament met in 1833, when Lord G-rey's Grovemment im-

1881. THE PRESENT ANARCBT. 45

mediately brought in a most stringent Coercion BilL It was shown
that dnoe 1829, serious crimes had increased sizteenfold. Lord Al-
thorp stated with his accustomed temperate force the argument of
the Government : — ^ We shall, doubtless, have divers declamations in
praise of liberty, which no man wishes to gainsay ; but the question
is. Is it firom a state of liberty that Ireland is to be rescued ? Is she
not to be rescued from a state of great and severe tyranny ? Is she
not to be rescued from a state of anarchy, where life has no safety
and property no security ? Liberty is something more than a name,
and the benefits of liberty are the protection of life and property, the
protection of eveiy man in doing that which pleases himself and is
not detrimental to society.' The view taken by the main body of the
Whigs was brilliantly illustrated by Macatday during the debates on
the address : — ' The grievances of Ireland,' he said, < are, doubtless,
great, so great that I never would have connected myself with a
Government which I did not believe to be intent on redressing those
grievances. But am I, because the grievances of Ireland are great,
to abstain from redressing the worst grievance of all ? Am I to look
on quietly while the laws are insulted by a furious rabble, while
hoQBes are plundered and burned, while my peaceable fellow-subjects
are butchered ? The distribution of Church property, you tell us, is
unjust. Perhaps I agree with you. But what then? To what
purpose is it to talk of the distribution of Church property when no
property is secure ? Then you try to deter us from putting down
robbeijy arson, and murder, by telling us that if we resort to coercion
we shall raise a civil war. Wearepast that fear. . . • Civil war,indeedl
I would rather live in the midst of any civil war that we have had in
England for the last two hundred years than in some parts of Ireland
at the present moment. ... It is idle to threaten us with civil war, for
we have it already, and it is because we are resolved to put an end to
it that we are called base and brutal and bloody.' The Badicals,
however, joined with the O'Connellites in resisting the Bill, and
especially the clause giving powers to courts-martial to try certain
dasaes of offences. It became law, nevertheless, on the 2nd of April,
and its effect was instantly apparent. Serious crimes in the dis~
tnrbed districts during the month before the passing of the Act num-
bered 472 ; in the month following they were reduced to 162. And this
result was attained mainly by the moral influence of the resolution
shown by Ministers. Not a single court-martial was even sununoiied.
After Lord Grey's resignation and the dismissal of Melbourne, a
new alliance was formed between O'Connell and the Liberals. At
the General Election of 1835, the Opposition had the full advantage
ijl the liberator's support. The manner in which the campaign was
carried on did not tend to tranquillise the people. < Everyone,' said
O'Connell to the electors of his own county, * who dares to vote for
the Knight of Kerry shall have a death's head and crossbones painted

46 THE NINETEENTH OENTURT. Jarinai^

en hia doon' Of anoUier candidate he said^ f^ Whoerer 'shall mippert
him his shop shall be deserted; no nuui shall pa«i his ^reshold ; let
no man deal with him ; let no woman qieak to him ; letthe children
lai^h him to scorn.' Shiel went even further : -speaking of 'a Om<-
aervatiye politidian, he said, 'If anyOatholio should vote for hka,
1 will supplicate the throne of the .Aimiighty that' he-may he«shown
mercy in the next world, but I ask no mercy for him in this;' • ^When
the Whigs returned to* power they feund 'that the excitement had
produced a. recrudescence of vid^ice, and in 18S5, Losd "ltfj0rpeth%
jCoercion Bill, milder than Lord G-rey's^ but still sufficiently, stnaageol^
was passed. This was allowed to expura^in 1840. Budng lAs con<-
tinuance there^ was a steady declinej in. the amount of 'ageaxiatt
crimes, of wbieh 10,229 weze committed in 1887'; €,760in 188^;
4,626 in 1839, and 4^068 in 1840. In .1841^ coercion beiiigsus^
pended, crimes of this class rose to 5r,3'70; ini 1844 to 6>Si27, and in
1845 to 8,095. In 1846, Sir Bobert Peel introduced his Protection
of Life Bill upon statements and arguments .precisely conrespoiKluig
•with those on which Lord Grey's Bill w^s fcmnded. Outrage and
anarchy, it was shown, were confined to particular districts ; but :in
those they had reached sucha height ' as. toi have entirely paxafysed the
arm of the law as it stands, and established^ practically, speaking, an
entire impunity for crimes of the most atrocious description. It is
^aot merely the number of oflfences, but the paucity of convictions
which is the alarming circumstance.' In five counties in* 1845, the
number of indictable ofifenoes reported was 1,188, and the oonvictionB
only 84. It was .notorious that a great • number of outrages were
unrecordedi because the victims feared to give information to the
police. The BiU was defeated by a combination of Protectionists,
WhigSf and Repealers; but no one professed .to believe that it fell
upon its own merits. Its rejection was Sir Bobert Peel's punishm^it
for his conversion to fitee trade. It is difficult to believe that Loi^i
John Russell^ at any .period in his public < career, could have felt
shame for any of his public acts. Yet it is. not less difficult .to und^^
stand how he could have &iled to blush when a month after Sir
Bobert Peel's resignation the Whigs had to produce an Arms Bill^
afterwards withdrawn through fear of a rupture with O'Goxinell* In
1847, however, no political inconveniences were permitted .to obstruct
the enactment of a Crime and Outrage Act stronger, than that pro**
posed in the previous year by Sir Bobert Peel. . .

On every one of these occasions the evidence produced to show
that^an increase of the powers of the Executive were needed was in
effect the same. There was a conspiracy which, partly by working
on the fears of the people and partly by enlisting their sympathies,
was able to cany ojit its objects by the perpetration of crime and to
avoid detection and punishment. Liberal and Conservative ministers
in those days believed that if they allowed law to be thus trampled

1881. THE PRESENT ANABJOHY. 47

upon they wpujld be morallj guilty of compUcity in the permitt^4
crimes. But the modern school of Badicalism. are of a different
opinion. If its spokesmen had been in Parliament in 1833 or in
1847, they would, no d9ubt, have opposed the Coercion. Bills of Lord
Grey and Lord John Bussell with their favourite maxim, ^ fbrcQ is np
remedy.' But neither is a sjtr^t-jacket a femedy for^ man in raging
delirium, yet for his own sake and that of others it may be necessary
to restrain him from violence. The patient, indeed, must be prevented
from stripping off his clothes and brandishing, an open razor,^ what-
ever may be the methp^ of treatment adopted, whether ^ the fever be
allowed to take its course,' or lenitives or stimulants be administeredf
It thus appears that former governments, Whig and Tory, did not
hesitate when ,law was overridden and life and property menaced in
Ireland, to obtain . extraordinary repressive powers from Parliament.
But Badlicalism of the Birmingham type is contemptuous of the ' bad
old methods ' which were approved in the benighted time betbre the
extension of the suffrage and the invention of the caucus compelled
members for the large borough constituencies to pay a perpetual
tribute to the Irish vote. Let us come down, however, to a,l^ter
period when the Dii Majorea of latter-day Liberalism occupied, as
they do now, the Olympian regions of office. . In 1868, the Con^
servative party suffered ruiuous defeat. Mr. Gladstone came into
power with full autiiority to tranquillise Ireland by remedial l^^gisla-
tion, and availed himself amply of his. opportunities. . Yet in the
year following the disestablishment of the Irish Church, when Mr*
Gladstone's Administration was undertaking the task of revising
('positively for the last time ') the relations of landlord and tenant in
Ireland^ there was an outbreak of agrarian crime so threatening that
the progress of the Land Bill had to be postponed in order that Mr.
Chichester Fortescue should be allowed to introduce a Peace Preser-
vation Bill.^ This measure embraced stringent and complex provisions
for dealing with agrarian conspiracy, outrage^ and sedition ; it was
more severe than any Coercion Act previously brought in except Lord
Grey's. But in certain parts of the country it £uled to vindicate the
sapremacy of the law. During the winter of 1870-71, the outcry, pf
the orderly inhabitants of Westmeath and some neighbouring districts
became too great for the Government to ignore, iQthough Ministers
were nnwilling directly to eat their own words, and sheltered themr
selves under a reference to a Parliamentary Coinmittee, As to the
facts, there was really no matter for inquiry. It was known before^
hand to the Government that in the disturbed districts there was, as
has been said, 'a regular organised system among them (the peasantry)

* Hr. Bright Was at this time a niemher of the Cabinet, though he ceased to be so
in tte following Peeember, owing to iU^health, and was out of office when Loid
Haztingtoo's Bill w«a pfu^ped.

48 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. JsLauaij

to oppose the law when they think fit, to exercise an entire control
over the disposition bf property and the receipt of rent.' But as has
always happened, terrorism did not stop short with the relations of
landlord and tenant, but began to extend to all kinds of business and
especially to apply coercion to the Midland Bailway Company of
Ireland, the main line of which passes through Westmeath. Early
in the session of 1871, Lord Hartington made a statement which, he
said, filled his mind with ' painful dismay.' The Peace Preservation
Act had generally put down outrage, but in Westmeath and parts of
Meath and King's County it had fiuled to cope with the terrorist
organisation.

^The reports we receive,' he said, ^show that such a state of
terrorism prevails that the Biband Society has only to issue its edict
to secure obedience ; nor has it even to issue its edidt ; its laws are
so well known, and an infringement of them is followed so regularly
by murderous outrage, that few indeed can treat them with defiance.
Biband law, and not the law of the land, appears to be that which is
obeyed. It reaches to such an extent that no landlord dare exercise
the most ordinary of rights pertaining to land, and no fgurmer, em-
ployer, or agent dare exercise his own judgment as to whom he shall
or shall not employ ; in fact, so fjea does the influence of the society
extend that a man scarcely dare enter into open competition in the
fairs or markets with anyone known to belong to the society.'

This, he concluded, was an intolerable state of things. But it
was even less tolerable that in scarcely a single instance was it
found possible to bring the guilty to account for crimes which were
notorious and flagrant. Injured persons dared not give information,
witnesses dared not give evidence, jurors would not serve, or let it be
known that they would rather be fined, or even perjure themselves,
than be subjected to the unknown and appalling penalties of the
terrorist code. Lord Hartington reminded the House of Commons
that fix)m these causes a great part of the machinery of terrorism did
not appear in the official statistics ; but enough was shown to con-
vince Parliament that a drastic remedy was needed. I have already
quoted Lord Hartington's manful statement that, in his opinion, the
organisers and agents of the terror neither had been nor would be
affected by any improvements in the land laws or other concessions
to the popular claims.

The report of the Select Committee fully confirmed Lord Harting-
ton's statement, and the conclusions arrived at laid bare a state of
things precisely resembling that which has now spread over the
larger part of Ireland, but which was then confined to Westmeath,
and parts of the* adjoining counties. There was no other alternative
before the Grovemment save to acquiesce in the victory of lawless-
ness, or to give the Executive the power of summarily arresting sus-
pected persons, and detaining them without trial for such time as

1881. THE PRESENT ANARCHY. 49

might appear necessaiy. Every other repressive agency, short of
martial law, had been embodied in the Peace Preservation Act, and
had, it was admitted, completely failed. Powers of summary arrest
had been proved to be efficacious during the political disturbances of
1848-^9, and again during the Fenian troubles in 1866-68. On
both occasions the Habeas Corpus Act had been suspended by a
Liberal Ministry. It was generally acknowledged, however, that the
powers granted to the Irish Executive had been exercised with
scrupulous care, and that it would be difficult to abuse them while
the right of Parliament to criticise was deferentially recognised.
There was no parity of conditions between the suspension of the
constitutional liberties of the subject which was entrusted to Vice-
roys like . Lord Clarendon, Lord Kimberley, the Duke of Abercom,
and Lord Spencer, and that which had been the object of popular
sttq[>ieion and hatred in the days of Lord Sidmouth and Lord Castle-
reagh. When, therefore, the question arose what measures should be
taken to put down the reign of terror in Westmeath, the suspension
of the Habeas Corpus Act was suggested as likely to be effectual.
The suggestion was criticised by the same sort of politicians as those
who woi^ now allow law and liberty to be trodden under foot in Ire-
land rather than break some loose and reckless pledges given in the
wanton irresponsibility of Opposition. It is unnecessary to recall
them. There was one pedantic argument, however, which had at
that time some weight, but can no longer be resorted to. It was
luged that the Habeas Corpus Act had never previously been sus-
pended except in relation to political offences of tbe gravest character.
The obvious answer was that the temporary curtailment of personal
Uberties might be more safely cAtrusted to the Executive in the
case of agrarian terrorism than in the case of political conspiracy.
A Government might conpeivably be tempted to rid itself of incon-
venient political opponents by arresting them on suspicion, but
could have no ulterior object in arresting persons suspected of
agrarian crime. At all events, whatever weight the objection had in
187] has been taken away by the precedent then created. The West-
meath Act, dealing with the deplorable state of things disclosed in
the Report of the Select Committee, gave the Lord Lieutenant in
Council authority to order the seizure and detention of persons sus-
pected of complicity in agrarian crime in the proclaimed districts.
Lord Kinoberley, in his speech upon the introduction of the Bill in
the Upper House, confessed that it was painful to have to propose a
restriction of the constitutional liberties of the subject. ^But,' he
added, ^ there is sometlung yet more painful, and that is the spectacle
of crime unpunished, and of a great conspiracy overriding and defy-
ing the law ; and when it is shown that the remedies which
have been already employed are insufficient. Her Majesty's Govern-
ment do not shrink from asking Parliament to give them further
Vol. IX.— No. 47. E

I

J

60 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. January

powers.' The Bill became law in spite of predictions that it would
£Bdl, and of asseverations that ^ force was no remedy.' But imme-
diately after the meeting of Parliament in the following year, the
Attomey-G-eneral for Ireland (Mr. Dowse, now one of the judges)
was able to state that there had been a vast improvement in the con-
dition of the proclaimed districts, an improvement so great that some
Home Bule members contended that the necessity for coercion had
ceased. The Act, however, was allowed to continue in force for the
fixed period of two years. It acted almost as the menace of martial
law in Lord Orey's Coercion Act had done — by moral pressure. It
taught the people that the G-ovemment was really in earnest, and
that crime would not be permitted to secure impunity behind l^;al
technicalities and the fears or sympathies of the peasantry. Before
the Bill passed, it became known to the police that many of the
leading spirits in the agrarian confederacy had quitted the country.
The Attomey-Gteneral stated that ^ four pexsons only had bem
arrested (during the nine months, firom May 1B71 to Fehniaiy 1872, in
which the tranquillisation of Westmeath had been efifocted) under
the provisions of the Act, and of those three only remained in cus-
tody.'

This remarkable chapter of legislation must have been in the
recollection of the Government when it became evident during the
autunm that a similar system of terrorism was being established in
several of the Irish counties. Even in October, after the murders of
Mr. Boyd, Lord Mountmorres, and Mr. Hutchins, servant, a timely
proclamation of five or six well-marked districts under the Westmeath
Act, had it been in force, would almost certainly have stopped the
spread of lawlessness. This was, it is wdl known, the opinion of
almost every official person in Ireland and of the great majority of
persons experienced in magisterial business. But the Chief Secretary
did not insist on consulting his colleagues, and while anarchy advanced
with giant strides, the Cabinet was not called together until the day
following the Lord Mayor's banquet. On that occasion the Lord
Chancellor asserted firmly that the paramount duly of Government
was to provide security for life and property, and Mr. Gladstone said
that, if ' clear demonstration ' of necessiiy were afforded, the Ministry
would not shrink from asking Parliament for extraordinary powers.
Week after week has passed and nothing has been done to redeem
this pledge. There have been frequent meetings of the Cabinet, and
rumours of dissension among Ministers ; but no step has been taken
to make the law obeyed in Ireland, or to protect law-abiding men in
the enjoyment of their lives and liberties. The facts set forth in the
judges' charges must have been in the possession of the Government
almost in their complete form at the first Cabinet meeting. For what
* clearer demonstration' Mr. Gladstone has been waiting, before giving
proof that his recognition at the Guildhall of < the priority of the duty

1881. THE PRESENT ANARCHY. 51

•

before any other of enforcmg the law for the purposes of order/ was
not mere lip-servioe, may perhaps be explained to a sympathetic
House of Commons. The task, however, will be far more difficult
in February than it would have been three months earlier. The
machinery of terrorism has been extended: its agents have been
multiplied, and have found apt pupils throughout the whole of the
south and west of Ireland. Fear has palsied whole sections of >
Irish Bociefrfr, and has done irreparable injury to Irish trade and
industry. The value of landed property has been for the time
annihilated ; no man will invest capital upon any sort of Irish
security, and soon, it is too probable, nobody will venture to give
credit to an Irish mercantile firm. While intimidation is applied to
every person suspected of being ill-affected to Mr. Pamell's govern-
ment and laws, the ulterior objects of the movement are not forgotten.
Behind the cupidity of the peasantry there is a d^gn to make Ireland
an impoasible country to live in for those who are proscribed as 'the
English garrison.' The loyal element in Irish society, the great body
of the professional and the cultivated classes, the ablest and most
sacoeasfol men of business, even though they may not have * as much
land as would sod a lark,' are to be hounded out of the country in the
train of the landlords, because they are Protestant and Saxon. In the
meantime they are being made to drink the cup of humiliation to the
dr^^ The Catholics under the penal law were not more prostrate
or more shamefully insulted. ' The law as it stands,' the fetish of the
Badicals, is dead and despised as Dagon.

It is related that at a critical moment in the French Bevolutidn
of 1 848, daring the terrible ' days of June,' a member of the Bepublican
Government spent the precious hours wringing his hands, and ex-
claiming ^ n &ut prendre des mesuies I H fietut prendre des mesures I *
One is reminded of this valuable oontribution to the solution of a
question which was one of life and death for French society, by the
feeble and vaeiUating speeches of Liberal politicians. Take that ex-
oeDent < high and dry ' Radical, Mr. Dillwyn, who, addressing his con-
stitoents at Swansea a montii ago, told them that * so long as the
Queen's Government is to be the Government of Ireland, law and
<nder, life and property must be protected, and no doubt strong
measures would have to be used.' But after this vigorous assertion
of tlie duty and necessity which have not yet been acted upon by the
JAinistry of the Crown — ^prave 'orts,' as his countryman. Captain
PlueUen, would have said — ^Mr. Dillwyn recoils fix>m the notion of sus-
pending the Habeas Corpus Act, for the strangely incorrect reason
that ' practically it meant putting Ireland under military law.' What
oonoeption of military or martial law was in Mr. Dillwyn's mind it
would be futile to inquire. The absurd error, however, has been re-
peated in a variety of forms, and probably some vindicators of consti-
tational liberty will produce it again in the coming Parliamentary

e2

52 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. January

debates. A signal incapacity to put real meaning into language, and
to stick to it, is the mark of official and unofficial speeches on the
Ministerial side. Is it to continue to paralyse the policy of the
GoYemment, when Parliament is at length consulted ?

The delay has rendered it more than doubtful whether a simple
suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act will now be sufficient to do what
must be done, although it must form a part of the coercive measures
to be adopted. In October or November the arrest of perhaps a dpzen
well-known local organisers of terrorism would have broken down the
system, not only because the masses in Ireland are easily led and
singularly timid when left without leaders, but still more because
Irish conspirators deeply distrust one another, and not without cause.
The arrest of a few * leaders ' — I do not mean political spouters, but
the men who plan and carry out a system of outrage and intimidation
— strikes dismay into the hearts of their accomplices, their tools and
their dupes, who suspect, reasonably enough, that the imprisoned
persons will purchase their own safety by giving information respect-
ing undetected crimes. There is a sudden flight of the worst, and a
desperate e£fort on the part of the rest to show by their conduct that
they are innocent industrious people, who have never dreamed of
wielding the rod of ^ Bory.' Even after the conflagration has been
permitted to rage so long unchecked, these influences may be able to
make themselves felt, but they will have to be supplemented probably
by the re-enactment of the most stringent provisions of Mr. Chichester
Fortescue's Peace Preservation Act of 1870, and the new coercive
law must be enforced consistently and without remission for a long
period. Such is the necessity which Liberal Ministers have created
for themselves by neglect of duties they continued to acknowledge in
wonl while they rejected them in deed. As for the ^ caucuses' and
their organs, which have been proclaiming that a Liberal Government
is bound to show the ' difference ' between it and a Conservative Govern-
ment by refusing to coerce at all, they will doubtless discover that
public opinion is shifting, and will then assure the world that they
have always been in &vour of making lifi^ and property secure in
Ireland, and of exacting obedience to the law. But the significance
of the history of these months cannot be mistaken, and wiU not, I
hope, be soon forgotten.

Edward D. J. WnuBOK.

2881. 53

THE THREE ''F'Sr

I5 attempting to offer any suggestion on the land question, I am
aware that I must, to a great degree, travel over ground that has
heen most ably dealt with by eminent writers ; and, in fact, I do not
pretend to throw any new light on the subject, my object being to
bring afresh to general notice the more salient suggestions that have
of late been so profusely put before the public.

In order to do so, it will be necessary to consider the conditions of
the three principal points likely to be reported upon by the Land
Commission, viz., the existing tenure in the Southern and Western
provinces of Ireland, more particularly those of Leinster and Munster ;
secondly, the extension into those provinces of tenant-right ; thirdly,
the conversion of the present occupiers into freeholders.

I believe that I shall biit express the wishes of the great majority
of the landowners and occupiers, when I say that they hope and ex-
pect from the present Government a measure that will be final in its
settlement, and that will briug to an end the intolerable deadlock at
present arresting the progress and prosperity of their common country.
It was foreseen from the first, by one who knew Ireland and the
people well, that the Land Act of 1870 could not be a final settle-
ment. He, objecting strongly as he did, on principle, to the distur-
bance clauses, held that difficulty would arise, not so much from what
was embodied in the Act, as from what that class of legislation would
iufieJlibly lead an excitable people to seek for through agitation. -

The result has but too well justified his forebodings. The rude
testa of adverse harvests have obliterated the short-lived prosperity
that prevailed during the first few years following on the passing of
the Act, and anarchy prevails.

With r^;ard to the agitation of the Land League under the guid-
ance of Mr. PameU, I have but little to say. The whole conduct of
the League is at present undergoing the test of a legal prosecutioD,
and the question whether or no they have offended against the law of
conspiracy is foreign to the permanent settlement of the land question.
We may accept the assurance of Mr. Herbert Gladstone, that the
Gk>yenunent wish to exhauet all the existing powers of the law before
applying to Parliament for cowcive l^slation. I cannot, however,
pass over the subject without directing attention to the ikct that the
partially avowed object of the agitation is mainly directed against the

64 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Januaiy

existence of large, and even of moderate-sized, holdings. It would be
well for the substantial class of feumers in Ireland, whether Boman
Catholic or Protestant, to remember that, if the extreme views of the
Land League could be carried out, and all landlords compulsorily de-
I)orted, the virulence of the agitation would be directed against
themselves. As proof of this may be adduced Mr. Pamell's remedy
for the distress existing amongst the over-populated districts of the
West, viz., transmigration to the more fertile lands of Leinster and
Munster, as opposed to emigration to our colonies and the United
States. It should be borne in mind, that the big words of the
agitation would matter but little were it not for the notorious
£BM3t that Ireland is full of arms. One thing is certain, that the
country will insist upon the law being respected and enforced, and
it is satisfiBMstory to see that the Premier and the Lord Chancellor, in
their speeches at the Mansion House, expressed their intentions of
doing all in their power to secure this object. The former stated in
the House of Commons that Ireland was within a measurable distance
of ' civil war.' I believe that if with the approaching winter outrages
and assassinations continue and increase, Ireland will find herself
within a measurable distance of ^ Vigilance Committee&f' a state of
things far more deplorable and more disastrous to the reputation of
the Government of a civilised country.

Before entering on the question of the land tenure, I should pro-
test against the manner in which landlords have been attacked for
availing themselves of the provisions in their favour in the Land Act
of 1870 ; notably so in the case of the ^ Leinster leases,' which raised,
at the time they were offered to the tenants on the Dukeof Leinster's
property, a storm of abuse. I believe that, upon examination, this
lease. will be found to contain nothing that the Act does not permit^
and even encourage. Even the late Mr. Butt stated that there was
nothing in the lease that could be construed as straining the pro-
visions of the Act.

There is an assertion that is constantly made by the advocates of
the tenants, viz., that the permanent improvements of the land are
invariably and entirely the work of the tenants* This statement most
be accepted with reservation, for on the estate of the large resident
proprietors, more especially in Leinster and Munster, it will be found
to have but little foundation in &ct. It is, however, maintained
by Mr. Bobertson, one of the ablest of the writers on the land
question, in a letter of some length to the DaUy News of the 2nd of
October* He indeed qualifies his assertion by admitting that land-
lords do sometimes improve, but says that when it is done with money
borrowed from the Board of Works, the improvement is in reality
made by the tenant if he be called upon to pay an increased and fidr
rent for the* increased value of the land. I fiiil to see, when the land
is pennanentiy imiproved at the landlord's expense and risk, ivhat

1881. THE THREE ^JTA" 65

it can make to the tenant where the money comes firom,
whether firom the landloid's own private means^ or from money raised
<m his own personal seoority, or whether it be borrowed &om the
Board of Works on the security of the land. I have not yet heard
of any parallel ease in England — viz., that if improvements are carried
oat with money lent by ^ Land Improvement Companies,' the English
tenant is in the habit of claiming the improvement as his own, if he be
called upon to pay an increased rent. I believe, too, that it will be
fonnd, on the large estates especially, that ^ bona fide ' improvements
by the tenants are the rare exceptions, and that landowners in this
respect hold their own with their compeers in England and Scotland.
On the estates in the West, occupied wholly by cottier tenants, and
where also the burden of the poor-rate on holdings rated under 41. is
bonie entireiy by the landlord, th^e is naturally no incentive lor him
to improve, as he would do so at an expense disproportionate to any
benefit eonfeired on the estate g^ierally.. Moreover, it is difficult in
Eog^and to realise the opposition raised \ij the tenants of this class to
permanent improvtaients, sudbi as drainage, or the demolition and
straightening of the huge and tortuons feoaeSf mostly measuxiDg finwi
seven to ten 3^ards in widths whidi were so strongly condemned by
Lord Spencer during his viceroyalty.

There is, too, a great deal of loose talk about the redamation of
waste land. Putting aside the half*drained land, that would pay
well to thoroughly reclaim, it would be manifestly absurd and throw-
ii^ money away to attempt to reclaim the surface of the peat-bogs so
long as there is an avecage depth of from twelve to twenty feet of
pore peat underneath ; moreover, firom their being the chief source
of fuel supply, it would be waste qi£ labour to reclaim the surfinoe
which would be cut gnuduaUy away as the turf«-banks encroach. The
^aar&ee, too, of cut-away bogs barely repays the outlay of recla-
matien. It would be better and more for the benefit of the country
if they were^ as wisely recommended by jtfr. P» J. Smyth* M.P.,
largely and systematically planted.

The 8o-cdled advantages of tenantnright to the tenant are well
known. The outgoing tenant is almost certain, after paying the un-
paid balance of rent, of receiving a sum of money sufficient probably
in all cases to enable him to emigrate or otherwise to provide for
himself.

Teuant-rigfat, too, would be acceptable to the minority of absentee
landbrds, and to a great number of the land agents. It would be
acceptable to those landowners whose only interest in, and connection
with, the land is the punctual and certain payment of their rents,
without any care for the character or suitability of their tenant? pr for
the improvement of their properties. In this category I do not in-
dnde the large absentee proprietors, on whose properties the outlay is
as large and as judiciously applied as on their estates in England*

56 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. January

Bat I refer more particularly to the smaller absentees, many of whom
are English, unwilling and unable to grant reductions when the
pinch of bad harvests and low prices is felt by their tenants ; to these
I believe the establishment of tenant-right, with the certainty of re-
covering the unpaid rents out of the purchase-money paid by the in-
coming tenant, would be a boon. For this same reason also tenant-
right might be acceptable to some of the land-agents. It would
probably also relieve them of the preparation and carrying out of im-
provements, which would be obvioudy arrested and discouraged on
the estates where tenant-right was introduced ; they would he left
with no duties to perform, save the collection of the half-yearly rents,
but they forget that the natural outcome will be that proprietors
will employ a lower class of agent at a reduced cost to themselves.
In writing this I do not wish to cast a slur on a body of gentlemen
who have so honourably and zealously endeavoured to do their duty,
both to their employers and also to the tenantry under their charge,
often at great personal risk.

The disadvantages of tenant-right can hardly be said to apply
personally either to landlord or tenant, but to the soil itself; where
an incoming tenant has to pay a large, and in some cases a dispro-
portionate, sum for the interest in a farm, and in doing so exhausts
not only his own capital, but also all the means that- he can raise, fre-
quently at exorbitant interest, it is plain that the soil cannot receive
that cultivation and proper application of manures necessary to pre-
serve its inherent fertility.

If, however, it is considered necessary to extend tenant-right, in
a greater or lesser degree, over the Southern and Western provinces of
Ireland, it would be well to refer to Mr. Justice Longfield's very able
article in the Fortnightly Review for August, in which he proposes a
novel system of tenant-right. The writer appears to me at the out-
set to dismiss, without adequate reason, the possibility of enabling
occupiers to become owners of the fee-simple of their ferms. He
clearly points out the reasons for the popularity of tenant-right with
land-agents, and he also shows plainly the objects and advantages of
the office rules on the estates in Ulster. His proposed plan (p. 143)^
as to the buying out of the tenant by the landlord, in the event of
disagreement as to the rent, appears very feasible ; but I think his plan
for regulating the rent, when it can be proved that the improvements
have been made by the tenant, is complicated. In that case it would
be simpler to deduct a certain rate of interest on the value of the
unexhausted improvements from any increased rent demanded by
the landlord, leaving, however, the option to the latter of paying
down the* said unexhausted value, and of thenceforward receiving the
full rent.

When the question of extending the Ulster tenant-right arises, it
will be well to call to mind the dissatisfaction felt by the tenants

188K THE THREE « F'S^ 57

who live under it, which is expressed with moderation by those who
live in the more orderly coonties. The causes of dissatisfEu^ticm are
the rules existing on some of the estates ; such as the right of veto
on the incoming tenant; the limitation of the numb^ of years'
purchase of the rent ; and the occasional revaluation of the same.
Concerning the first of these causes of dissatisfaction, it is diflBcult to.
understand why, if the landlord is supposed to retain any interest in
the management of his property, not only for his own sake, but also
in the interests of the remainder of his tenantry, he should not have
the power to object to a man, who may be of bad character, ignorant
of agriculture, or unprovided with sufficient capital to work the farm.
As to the second one, it is obvious, as I have before pointed out,
that the land must sufier if the incoming tenant be permitted to
exhaust the whole of his capital by paying an exorbitant price
for the tenant-right. Besides, cases may arise, such as that of
a fiurm in the neighbourhood of a rising town, where, if the landlord
wishes to resume possession of the holding for the purpose, say, of
granting building leases, it would be obviously unfair that he should
be called upon to pay his tenant a larger sum than what really re-
presents the inherent value of the fitrm as an agricultural holding.
With r^ard to the third, it is the fashion, occasionally, to talk of
landlord and tenant as coequal partners, yet at the same time, one
of them^ the landlord, is to be denied his share in the increased value
of his property arising from enhanced prices and the depreciated
?alae of money.

There is another solution to the land question which is supported
by the party represented in the press by the Freeman newspaper :
'Fixity of tenure. Fair rents. Free sale,' a bill of fare so lengthy that
it is popularly expressed as the three F's; perhaps I maybe per^
mitted to suggest another term more intelligible to English ears —
namely, ^ Leases for ever.'

But, if we take the three F's one by one, I think we shall find
that the first, ^ Fixity of tenure,' exists all over Ireland, North and
South, except in the case of non-payment of rent. It is, I believe,
the very rarest exception for a yearly tenant to be evicted for any of
the reasons for which he would be in England or Scotland, such as
bad or slovenly fitrming.

^ Fair rents ; ' if by this proposal is meant that the rents should be
submitted to arbitration, I feel sure that it would be welcome to
the great body of Irish landlords ; in the case of the majority of
them, their incomes would probably be increased by half as much

. ^ fVee sale ; ' if by this is meant that the interest in a holding
may be sold to the highest bidder, irrespective of control, I think it
olgectionable for reasons I have given before. It is indeed hard to
understand what is meant by the expression. The agent for Lord

58 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. January

Cork's estates in the county of Cork is reported to have said, in bis
evidence before the Land Commission, that he y^ss in favour of free
sale, but he qualified this statement by saying afterwards that the
landlord should be allowed a veto on the incoming tenant*

Finallyi the question remains, whether, if tenant-right is to be
extended to the Southern and Western provinces of Ireland, it is to
be a gratuitous concession from the landowner to the tenant^ or
whether the latter is to be called upon to pay a sum down, in the
nature of a fine, of so many years' purchase of the rent, such calcula-
tion to be the limit for the future of the sum recoverable from the
landlord, in the event of his wishing to resume possession of the hold-
ing. Lord Lymington, in his article in the Nmeteenth (kntwry for
October, 1880, on the < Portsmouth Custom,' omits to state whether
the tenant-right was freely granted, or whether it was purchased by
the grantee. I shall not further allude to his article than to call
attention to his tacit admission (p. 674) that the improvements aiTC
not as satisfiACtox^ as if they had been made by the hmdlord^ and also
to the fiu^t that a right of veto is reserved by the landlord.

The obvious advantage to an absentee landlord of having a laq^e
and certain income free from deductuons fi>r improvements is plainly
stated, and it is not unnatural to surmise also that it is to the pal-
pable benefit of the Portsmouth estate in England*

It should be remembered that, by Section 2 of the Laad Act,
when a tenant of a holding outside the jNrovince of Ulster can prove
the existence of tenant-right, he is entitled to the same advantages
as if he lived in Ulster. It would be well if^ instead of registering
this tenant-r^ht in the Landed Estates Court, tenants could be
called upon to do so before the Chairman of Quarter Sesaioni, at a
much smaller expense. Registration of improvements also, under
Section 6, whether by landlord or tenant, should be carried out before
the same authority : this would probably encourage both parties to
register more freely than they do at presentr It must be apparent
that the bias of my remarks is opposed to the establishment of tenant-
right where it does not already exist, but I hope that it will not
appear to be from any selfish feeling as an Irish landlord, bat purely
from the injury that I believe tenant-right will cause both to the
inherent virtues of the soil, and to the progress of agriculture. Lcnrd
Palmerston said once, ^ Tenant-right is landlord wrong ; ' I believe it
would be more accurate to say, ^ Tenant-right is land wrong; ' and I
look forward with dismay to the further separation it will cause
between landlord and tenant, severing the former from all interest
in the development and improvement of his property, convertii^ him
into a mere rent-charger, and being a distinct incentive to absenteeism
on his part.

I now come to the third subject of oonsideration--^naQ^yy the
conversion of the present occupiers into freeholders, ttu!OUgh the

1881. THE THREE "J^A" 59

•

medium of what are popularly called the Bright Clauses of the Land
Act ; and, looking to the vast body of evidence that has been adduced
proving the content, love of order, and respect for the law, shown by
small proprietors of France and Belgium, I do not think that I am
too sanguine if I look forward to a similar result following upon a
gradual extension and development of these clauses. I am fully
aware of one strong objection, viz., that the first idea of many of the
amaUar occupiers would be to sublet or subdivide their holdings, and
I acknowledge that, if no check for this could be devised, it would be
a most serious objection, and a great eviL The penalty for this
(since amended) proposed in the 44th Section of the Land Act, as it
stood, was excessive and impossible to carry out.

I propose, instead, that when any occupier under these clauses
equeases a wish to sublet or subdivide, or is detected in so doing,
bdbre the expiration of his rent-oharge, he should be called upon to
pay up in a lump sum the whole of the unpaid balance of the ren^
diaige, according to the scale alluded to in Section 61 of the Land
Act. I believe this would deter most from wishing to proceed
ihrther, and it is probable that at the ezpixati0n of the term of the
lent-chaige, the then owner would see the advantage of keeping his
holding intact and undivided.

One other advantage, too, in the interest of the due cultivation
of the land, may be expected, and that is, that when left to their own
reeouroes, the idle, ignorant, and unthrifty will be eliminated, and
fpwe place to a more capable, more solvent, and more law-abiding
class. I hcfpej too^ that all classes of occupiera will avail themselves
of the benefits of these clauses as opportunity offers ; for, though ex-
cesBiTely large holdings are a mistake, yet surely something more
is required than that a man should only be aUe to produce £rom
his holding sufficient for the bare necessities of life; he should be
aUeto afford himself some small luxuries, and have the means, if need
be, for advancing his children in the battle of life. I look forward,
in &ct, to the gradual formation of a dass of ^yeomen' proprietors.
Some alight difficulties must arise, which are little more than
matters of detaO, such as the purchase by occupiers who at present
hold in ' rundale *— this would have to be considered, but I do not
believe the difficulty to be insurmountable*

It has been objected that, under these clauses, the Executive takes
the place of the landlord, and that as a matter of course it will be
impossible to collect the rent-charge in hard times. I cannot see that
th^re would be any greater difficulty than in collecting quit rent or
any oihest fixed charge on the land. If, with the extension of the
Bright Clauses, ^e reform affecting the laws of settlement, &c., and
which is shortly expressed by the term * Free land,' is carried, it will
be found tliat there are many proprietors, particularly absentees,
wbo woold^ if times improve, be ready and anxious to sell, and who

60 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Januaiy

■

would care bilt little to whom they sold so long as they got a fair
price.

Some writers, and among them Mr. Barry O'Brien, in his Parlia-
merdary History of the Land Laws^ claim that the occupier should
have the right of pre-emption in the event of a sale. I think this
will hardly hold good in the face of the proposal that land should be
as freely sold as a personal chattel, and in the case of * individual'
proprietors I &il to see why they should be obliged to deal with only
one class of purchaser, on such terms as the latter may think fit to
offer. In the case, however^ of * Corporations/ where no hardship
would be inflicted on individuals, I think they might be called upon
to sell, and, as was done with the Church property, the first offer should
be made to the occupying tenants. I would also suggest that the
whole of the purchase-money should be advanced to the occupying
tenants under these clauses, in the event of their being in a position
to purchase the fee-simple of their holdings ; so long as the price
given was not excessive, the advance would be amply secured as a
first charge on the land. The reason for this suggestion is that in a
great many instances (among others, I believe, on the Glebe lands,
near Newry, visited by Mr. Shaw-Lefevre) the purchasing tenants
have heavily mortgaged their properties to raise the proportion of
the purchase-money they were required to pay down.

It may be asked, very &irly, whence the funds are to come,
when the sum authorised (1,000,000^.) under the 54th Section of the
Land Act is expended. Mr. Fawcett has fairly enough objected
to experiments in Irish land legislation being carried out at the
expense of England and Scotland. I think, as suggested by Mr.
Vernon, that amply sufficient means could be provided by calling
upon the Church Commissioners to raise money, under Sections 59
to 64 of the Church Act, on the unexpended balance of the Church
property ; if, however, this proved insufficient, it might be supple-
mented by calling upon the Loan Fund Boards to realise their
investments, and transfer them to the general fund. I believe the
result of this would be of greater permanent benefit to the people than
the work done hitherto by the Boards, meritorious and beneficial as it
has been.

Mr. Shaw-Lefevre has pointed out, in his pamphlet on the working
of the Bright Clauses, that the chief cause of their partial &ilure is the
absence of any Commission to act as link between vendors and pur-
chasers, as was provided for in the sale of the property of the Church.
If such a Commission be appointed, I trust it may consist of the
Commissioners and staff employed under the Irish Church Act ; their
experience would be invaluable in canying out the details of this
measure.

I may make one more suggestion, which I believe to be not alto-
gether foreign to the land question — ^viz., that some means should be

\

1881. THE THREE 'TSr 61

devised, and asBistance given, towards permanently providing houses
and glebes for the nunisters of religion of all denominations. I hope
and believe it would be largely taken advantage of by the parish
priest in the South and the Presbyterian minister in the North.

In condufiion, I would appeal to the Liberal party, to which I have
the honour to belong, and especially to the press, to put the juat con-
struction on the motives and actions of Irish landlords. On many
estates for generations the welfare of the tenantry has been the object
of years of patient care and work on the part of the resident landlords,
striving against diffijnilties alt(^ether unknown in England. When
not long ago a prominent member of the Government resigned his
office, and paused in his political career, surely it was hardly decent
for the first time, then, to bring forward an unsupported accusation
of tyranny and oppression in the management of his estates.

The whole question is so momentous in itself, and the interests at
stake are so great, that any policy of expediency would be intolerable.
The Government, in their endeavours to frame a permanent settlement
of the question, irrespective of passion, prejudice, and religious ran-
ooar, are entitled to the fullest support from all parties ; and at the
nme time every sympathy is due to the flxecutive, on whom fialls the
burden of carrying out the onerous and stem task of repressing dis-
order.

DE Vbsci.

I

62 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Jamiary

THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE.

Ths Council of Judges appointed by the Judicature Act has, under
the powers given to it by the 32nd sectidn of that Act, recommended
the consolidation of the three Common Law Divisions of the High
Court into a single division, to be called the Queen's Bench Divigion,
and the abolition of th^ offices of Lord Chief Justice of the Coxnmon
Pleas and Lord Chief Baron of the Exd^equer. Their report to this
effect will be laid upon the table of each House of Parliament, and
will acquire the force of law unless one of the Houses addresses Her
Majesty against its adoption within thirty days.

The decision of the judges was not unanimous, and the discussion
was conducted in private, but the matter is one which deeply affects
the public interests, not so much in its immediate effects as because
it forms part of a large and important subject — ^the organisation of
the High Court of Justice. Upon this subject I desire to offer some
remarks for public consideration, as I greatiy fear that the proposed
changes, though not of the first importance in themselves, will form
part of a set of changes by which the dignity and efficiency of the
Bench will be greatly impaired, and by which the administration of
justice wiU be deprived of some of its most characteristic and most
deservedly popular features.

It is, I think, much to be regretted that the powers contained in
the 32nd section of the Judicature Act were ever conferred upon the
Council of Judges at all. The effect of that provision is to enable
the Council to make the recommendations which they have made,
but it does not enable them to make any report or recommendation
on cognate subjects. The result is that they were compelled either
to be silent or to recommend two isolated changes, tiie effect of
which can hardly be estimated unless a full statement is given of the
scheme of which they are to form a part. It is impossible to give
a satisfoctory opinion upon a part of a building unless you have a
plan of the whole, and can so judge of the general effect of the
matters on which you are to advise. In the same way I think that
whatever changes are required in the constitution of the High Court
should be made by a statute which can be discussed as a whole in

1881. THB HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE. 63

Parliament, and by the pubUc, and not npon a report of judges to
whom are submitted two specific propositions, which may be advan-
tageous or otlierwise, according to the other arrangements which may
be connected with them. The practical effect of the resolutions
passed by the judges will be that the changes recommended will be
made without any proper public discussion of their nature and effect,
and tl&at when they have been made they will be taken as the foun-
dation for oth^ changes, which they will be said to involve in
principle.

Upon these grounds I wished the Council of Judges to abstain
from the expression of any opinion at all upon the subject, and to
leave to the Executive Government the responsibility, which I think
properly rests upon them, of making by statute such alterations in
the present state of things as they consider necessary.

The alterations themsrives, if they are to stand alone, and if it is
to be understood that no further alteration is proposed, at least at
present, in the constitution of the High Ciourt, do not seem to me to
be of the first importance. It is diJScult to say precisely what would
be the effeet of fusing the three Common Law Divisions into one.
For reasons whidi I will state more fully immediately, Ido not think
that such a fusion would make any great diffM!enoe in the actual
transaction of business. The same^ or nearly the same, number of
divisional comts (as they are called) would have to sit as at present,
and it is by no means clear to me tliat it would in practice be found
easier to make the detailed arrangements necessary for the transaction
of business between fifteen men all consulting together than between
three sets of five Inen, each set consulting by themselves.

With regard to the abolition 6f the two offices, more, no doubt,
is to be said, though I think the question is one which interests the
public much more than the judges. The promotion of a Puisne Judge
to the position of a Chief Justice or Chief Baron has happened (I
think) only once in the course of the last fifty years— -namely, when
Sir William Erie was made Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas.
In every other instance these offices have been conferred upon Law
Officers of the Grown who had proved in Parliament their possession
of Uie various qualities which procure parliamentary success. The
question of their abolition is Accordingly one in which the existing
judges hare praetioally no interest, except so far as they are specially
interested in whatever concerns the efficiency and dignity of their
office.

The argument upon the subject appears to me to stand thus : In
fiivonr of abolishing the offices it is urged that, if the Common Pleas
and Exchequer Divisions are abolished, there will be nothing for the
Chief Justice and Chief Baron to preside over, and that their names
will thus become anomalous, and, indeed, unmeaning. It is added,
that their duties being the same as those of the Puisne Judges,

64 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Januaiy

it is improper to give them a higher salary, superior titles, and the
advantage of considerable patronage. Some persons go so far as to
say that it is a positive advantage to break with the old associa-
tions which the names suggest, and to destroy the very semblance
of continuity between the old courts and the new one. Finally,
to the argument that the abolition of the offices would prevent the
Law Officers from accepting judgeships, and so injure the relations
between the Bench and the Bar, and diminish the authority of the
Bench, it is replied, first, that such persons do not make good judges,
and, secondly, that, though they would not accept puisne judgeships,
they would accept the appointments of Lords of Appeal and Lords
Justices.

To these arguments the following answers are given. It is ad-
mitted that the abolition of the Gonmion Pleas and Exchequer Divi-
sions of the High Court would leave no divisions for the Chief Justice
and Chief Baron to preside over, but it is said that a title may remain
as a title after the circumstances in which it originated have altered.
If a great officer of the State can, without offence, be called Chancellor
of the Exchequer, though he is not a Chancellor in any common sense
of the word, and though no such place or office as the Exchequer
exists, why should not an eminent judge be called Lord Chief Baron
of the Exchequer, though there is no longer any Court of Exchequer,
and though no more Barons are to be appointed ? It is proposed to
keep up the offices of Lord Chief Justice of England and Master of
the Bolls, though the first is only a title, and the second little more.
Why is the existence of four such offices any greater anomaly than
the existence of two ? The real question is whether it is expedient
that either two or four of the judges should be paid more highly
than the rest, both in motiey and rank. The argument that this is
expedient is that otherwise Attorneys-General and Solidtors-Oeneral,
and other barristers who have the prospect of holding such a position,
will not accept judicial office ; and as to their alleged willingness to
accept the place of Lords of Appeal and Lords Justices, the answer is
that the difference between the position of a Lord Justice and a Puisne
Judge (which consists merely in the payment of the circuit expenses
of .the former, and in his being a Privy Councillor) would hardly be
sufficient to induce men receiving alr^^ly a higher salary, probably
more than doubled by private practice, to accept the place ; and that
though the position of a Lord of Appeal is .undoubtedly more attrac-
tive, it is not the one in which the public interests require men of
this • class to be placed. This last argument is of great importance,
and unless it is fully understood it is difficult to appreciate either
the importance of the offices proposed to be abolidied, or the far
more important question of the relation between the Court of Appeal
and' the High Court of Justice. It is based upon the principle that
the business of a Judge of First Instance is of more importance than
the business of a Judge of Appeal, and that it is highly desirable for

1881. TEE HIOH COURT OF JUSTICE. 65

the due administTation of justice that the most highly paid and
highest in rank amongst the judges should be Judges of First Instance.

As to the comparative importance of the business of Judges of
Appeal and Judges of First Instance, the following points are to be ob-
served. In the first place, a large majority of the trials of any im-
portance which take place in this country, and practically all trials in
which the public take much interest, are trials by jury, or rather by a
judge and juiy. This is true without exception in regard to criminal
trials, and true in a great majority of cases not criminal. In regard
to these cases, all that a Court of Appeal ever has to do is to decide
upon questions of law arising out of the trial, and the utmost, stretch
to which their power can go is directing a new trial. The rights of the
parties to an action, the fate of a man accused of a crime, depend in
all cases upon the verdict of the jury, and this is influenced to a great
extent by the summing up of the judge, and by his management of
the triaL Perhaps not one case in fifty presents any diflSculty in
point of law.^ In all common cases the decision of the jury, imder
the direction of the judge, is not only final, but is unquestioned.

In the second place, trial by jury is the really popular and im-
pressive part of the administration of justice.^ It is understood by
everybody. Everybody is interested in it. It is from such trials that
every one, except a vefy small number of lawyers, derives his concep-
tion of the administration of justice and the character of the law. No
one can ever have witnessed such a proceeding without being im-
pressed by it, nor is any part of our institutions more characteristic.
It is surrounded with ceremonies which I must confess do not appear
to me to be in any degree inappropriate to the occasion, or liable to
the duu^ of exaggerating its essential solemnity. If properly con-
ducted, it may cohvey an impression of fairness, of dignity, and mode
ration calculated to give all who are present at it lessons not easily
to be forgotten in many virtues. If improperly conducted, it may
bring the most solemn institutions into contempt ; but the tone and

* I have tried lliindreds of crixninal cases, and I have zeserved only eee (R. v, BiBhop»
acaae on the co^atmction of the Act relating to Lunatic Asylana) for the Court for
Grown Cases Ba^erved. The trial of that case took nearly two days. The point of
law arising onA of it was decided without the least hesitation, in less than half an
faooTy and will reserved not hecause it was really donbtfal, but because the
GoanuarionM in Lunacy wished to have the correctness of a certain interpretalioii
of words o(X the Act put upon the highest accessible authority. In civU oases
the pcopart&on of cases in which new trials are moved for is larger, but it is very

* In at Interesting book just published {The Life tf Sir Eamland Hill, i. p. 135)
there is ^ account by Sir Bowland himself of the impression made on him in boyhood
bj a trill at Shrewsbury. ' Of all that passed before our eyes, or occupied oar
tboagh^ during this ever-to-be-remembered visit, incomparably the most striking and
impietrilte scene was a criminal trial.* He recollected the facts minutely, and de»
ffraitMT^ the whole aoene pioturesqnely many years afterwards^ when writing his reool-
lectiofta In his old age.

Vou IX.— No. 47. P

66 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. January

general character of the proceedings depend to a great extent upon
the judge. Hardly any one who does not pass his life in courts can
Imow how constant are the demands made, not only or chie&y on his
knowledge of law, or on his readiness in understanding intricate &cts
and their bearings on each other, but on his temper, his good mannergr,
his self-control, and his knowledge of mankind, and, in particular, on
his sympathy with the feelings of those who appear before him, either
as counsel, witnesses, or parties.

It must also be remembered that there is much truth in the say-
ing that a judge is an advocate who chooses his side. In summing
up in a case in which strong feeling has been excited, and the ablest
men at the Bar have been engaged on the one side and ihe other,
powers are required of the judge which a man of great learning and
with great capacity for understanding legal principles does not always
possess, and he must also have an understanding of, and sympathy
with, popular feeling which the habit of regarding everything &oiei
the purely legal point of view not unfrequently weakens.

No one doubts the importance of the duties of a Court of Appeal-
Its functions have a strong resemblance to legislation, and in the
present day there is not the smallest reason to fear that they will be
undervalued ; but the qualities which I have been trying to describe
are not required in the transaction of its business. The business
itself is, as a role, hardly intelligible to the public in generaL The
work is exclusively intellectual; there is nothing about it which
appeals to the feelings, and hardly anything which even tries the
temper. There are no witnesses, no jury, no prisoner, and the counsel
have nothing to do but to convince the judges. The proposal to retain
for the judicial Bench the services of the most distinguished members
of the Bar by improving the position of the judges of the Court of
Appeal is like trying to encourage surgery by holding out induce-
ments to the best surgeons iq London to accept positions in which
they would only lecture and never operate.

On the other hand, the qualities required in a Judge of First
Instance are just the qualities which a man who rises to the very first
places at the Bar must possess to a greater or less extent. Such a man
must be in Parliament. He must have seen a great deal of the world.
He must be known not merely to the legal profession, but to the public
at large. He is sure to be a good and effective, and he is likely to hb
an eloquent, speaker. He is also sure to have had occasion to look
at law and the administration of justice (which is not quite the same
thing) firom the political point of view, and to have had occaision to
.acquaint himself practically with the feelings and sympathies of
-jpopular bodies.

' Under the proposed new arrangements, the men who presumably
possess these qualifications will . either remain at the Bar or become

1881- THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE. 67

Judges of AppeaL This proceeds upon the supposition that to tiy a
man for high treason or murder, or for a seditious conspijracy, or to
by a case of libel which may involve the character and prospects in
life of an eminent jpuhlic man, are duties which the most distinguished
men at the Bar cannot be expected to undertake, their eminence being
such that they ought to devote themselves exclusively to the deeisicm of
points of law; such, for instance, as the question whether the owner of
one of two adjoining houses can acquire by lapse of time a right to
throw an unusual degree of pressure upon his neighbour's wall without
his neighbour's knowledge. This seems to me a mistake. I think
that, if it is worth while to make law-officers, and men who look
forward to holding such offices, judges at all, they ought to be put to
the sort of judicial work for which they are presumably best fitted
— ^namely, presiding over trials by jury; but I see no special good
in inducing them to become Judges of Appeal by special pay and
special rank. They will discharge such duties no better than men
who are rather lawyers than advocates. Whether it is or is not
w«Mth while to retain the services of the most eminent advocates as
Judges of First Instance, is a point on which every one can fprm his
own opinion by reading the list of Chief Justices, Masters of the
Rolls, and Chief Barons for the last fifty years given in the note, and
asking himself how many of them would have accepted puisne judge*
ships, and how far the public interests would have been advanced by
their being made Judges of Appeal.'

The substitution of four Puisne Judges for the four chiefs — ^for, as
I have pointed out, it is impossible to justify the existence of the
offices of the Lord Chief Justice of England and the Master of the
Bolls on any grounds which do not apply equally to the two offices
proposed to be abolished — ^would not only deprive the bench of a class
of judges specially valuable, but would also make a. great change in
the relation between the Bench and the Bar — a matter in which the
public have a greater interest than they may know. Till now a seat
<m the Bench has been the highest object of a barrister's ambition.
Law Officers have indeed often refused puisne judgeships, but no
instance occurs to me in which one of the chief justiceships has been
refitted. The result of the proposed change would be to alter this,
and to call into existence a class of parliamentary barristers who will
have no desire to be judges and little sympathy with the Bench ; and
this weuld not only deprive the Bench of its most eminent members,

* Lvrd Ck^fJuttiees of the Quern's Bdneh: hold Dezunan, LordOampbeU^ Sir A.
Cockbaroy Lard Coleridge,

MoMten tfthe RolU : Lord Langdale, Lord Bomillj, Sir G. Jessel.

Lord CkufjMMtioeicfthe Oommm Plsas: SirK. Tindal, Lord Tmxo, Sir J. Jervii^
Sir A. GockbnzD, Sir W. Erie, Sir W. Bovill, Lord Coleridge.

X^rd CkUfBannu : Lord Abinger, Sir F. PoUooik, Sir F. Kellj.

f2

68 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. January

but would go far to lower it in the estimation botk of the Bar and of
the public. I do not think that anything has contributed so much
to give the Bench the specific character which distinguishes it, and
which I suppose the public would wish to be maintained, as the fact
that it is not (as is the case in noiany other countries) a branch of the
ezecutiye government, but an independent body forming the head of
and closely connected with the most active and prominent of the
liberal professions. If it should cease to occupy that position, it
would cease to be regarded with anything like the respect or confidence
which is accorded to it at present. That confidence rests mainly on
the tact that it is composed of men who have won their position by suc-
cess in a strenuous and protracted competition, in the course of which
they have formed connections and associations with the great body of
their countrymen in their political^ personal, and conmiercial affairs
rather than with government officials. If the Bench is to continue to be
filled by men of the stamp of the present judges, it seems question*
able whether it is wise to abolish those seats upon it which attract
to it the very class of persons whose presence it is most important to
secure.

I do not, however, consider the retention of the two offices in
question as the most important point at issue. The true dignity of
a judge's position depends ultimately neither on his rank nor on his
salary, but on the importance of the duties which he has to discharge.
I object to it principally because I have every reason to think that the
abolition of these two offices is merely a step in a process which I
regard as extremely mischievous, and as likely to diminish the dignity
of the Bench by diminishing the importance of the duties allotted to
the judges.

Some explanation is necessary to make this plain. The present
organisation of the Supreme Court of Judicature, the Court of Appeal,
and the High Court, with its five divisions, can be defended by no
one. It is a mixture of two different and really discordant systems,
not to say three.^ It is intolerably' obscure and intricate, and its con-
stitution has been one main cause of an increase of expense and
delay in litigation which are bitterly and justly complained of. My
belief is that these results have been caused by an ill-judged attempt
to carry what is described as the fusion of law and equity further
than it ought to be carried, an attempt founded on a neglect of dis-
tinctions which exist in the subject-matter of litigation. I think
that the changes now proposed to be made will be found to constitute
a long step in this direction, and that they will either produce an
aggravation of the bad results already incurred, or destroy trial by jury
in civil cases. In order to explain the connection between these

* For the sake of simplicity I have omitted from this article all reference to the
boBineas of the Probate, Admiralty, and Divorce DiYision.

1881. THE HIOH COURT OF JUSTICE. 69

subjects, it is necessary to say something of the fusion of law and
equity.

Before the Judicature Act the relation between law and equity
Blight have been described in a summary way as follows : —

1. Law was administered by the Courts of Common Law ac*
cording to one system of procedure, and equity by the Courts of
Equity according to another system of procedure. The class of
eases disposed of in equity was not altogether distinct from the class
of cases disposed of at law, but in the great majority of instances
there was a distinction between them, well recognised, though never
well described.

2. Equity recognised and enforced a whole system of rights and
obligations which were altogether unrecognised by the courts of law,
and which they had no means of enforcing if they had recognised
them.

3. Equity m certain cases provided remedies for wrongs which the
law recognised as such, but for which it provided imperfect remedies.
For instance, at law damages might be recovered for a breach of
contract, but a decree for specific performance of it was to be had
only in equity. In like manner equity in some cases helped people
to enforce their legal rights, as, for instance, by compelling a
defendant to answer a bill of discovery.

4. On the other hand, equity in particular cases had overruled
and practically modified the law by forbidding people to exercise
TightA given to them by law, except upon conditions which the law
did not impose. Li the case of a legal mortgage, for instance, the
mortgagee's interest at law was absolute as soon as the day fixed for
payment had passed without payment, but the mortgagor's right to
redeem was recognised and enforced by equity.

These were the four great points of difference or contrast between
law and equity. The existence of such a contrast had for a great
length of time been regarded as an evil, and its removal as an im*
portant reform in our legal system, and to effect this reform was one
of the leading objects, not only of the Judicature Act, but of some
of the provisions of the Common Law Procedure Acts of 1852 wd
1854. That the object was excellent cannot be denied, but there are
-some qualifications upon the remark which I think were not suf-
ficiently observed in passing the Judicature Act, and to which
regard should be had in further legislation on the subject.

Ko doubt the distinction between law and equity cannot be justi-
fied upon any rational theory of law, though it can be explained his-
torically. But it is equally true that the distinction corresponds, to
a very great extent, to differences inherent in the subject-matter of
litigation, and that the same may be said of the different modes of
procedure appropriate to different classes of cases. The part of the

70 THE NINETEENTH OENX'URT. Jaauaiy

distinction which was mischievous has been effectually removed.
Every right recognised either by law or by equity is now recognised
equally in every branch of the Supreme Court of Judicature. The
possibility of any conflict between law and equity is at an end, and
every court has unlimited power to administer every remedy which
could previously have been administered by either. To this extent
accordingly a fusion has actually been effected between law and
equity, and no one, I suppose, would doubt that this has been a great
improvement.

This, however, is by no means aU that the Judicature Act seems
to have been intended to do. It took a long step in the direction of
attempting to cause all cases to be disposed of by. one court, and by
one method of procedure, especially as regards the- course of appeal
and the mode of trial, and in this I think it .questionable, whether
the Judicature Act did not go too far, and I feel sure that in the
legislation which we must now expect, other principles neglected by
it ought to be considered.

If the question were still an open one, I am disposed to think
that it would have been better, instead of fusing eight courts into one,
to be content with fusing the three Common Law Courts into a single
court, perhaps under the name of the Court of Queen's Bench, and to
have enabled the judges of all the superior courts to act for. each other
in case of need, and to exercise all the powers belonging to any of
them in any case which might require it ; but the Jadicatmre Act was
otherwise conceived, and must no doubt be taken as conclusive. It
would however, I think, be unwise to try to carry simplification
beyond the reduction of the number of the divisions from five to
three, for experience shows that the distinction between the business
of the Equity Division and the business of the three Common Law-
Divisions is very nearly as much founded upon a real distinction in
the subject-matter of litigation as the distinction between the
business of either of them and that of the Probate, Divorce, and
Admiralty Division.

It is not easy to give an unprofessional person a dear notion
of the distinction between the business which goes to the Chancery
Division and that which goes to the Common Law Divisions, but I do
not think any one who is accustomed to the practice of the ooorts
will &il to recognise the existence of such a distinction, though
it is difficult to give a perfectly satis£EU3tory theoretical account of it.
For practical purposes, however, a few general observations' will be
sufficient.

• Nearly all the litigation in the Commop Law Divisions and a
great part of the litigation in the Chancery Division arises out of
contracts and wrongs. But, from the nature of things, such actions
Call into two classes, which are clearly distingoishable firom each othe^.

1881. THE HIQH COURT OF JUSTICE. 71

The first class consists of actions in which two people or two sets of
people are interested, and in which well-marked questions of fact or
law or both are raised, and in which the remedy sought is the pa;yment
of damages. These actions are disposed of in the Common Law
Divisions, almost always by a judge and jury.

In the other class of actions more intricate questions arise both a».
to the parties and the remedies, and the judgments given have to be^
interpreted and enforced by a machinery which the Common Law
Divisions neither possess nor require. These actions are disposed of'
in the Chancery Division.

I think, too, that the questions of &ct which arise in cases in the
Chancery Division differ from the questions of fact which arise in tb^
Common Law Divisions. In the latter the question commonly is
which of two sets of witnesses is telling the truth ? and in such cases
it is essential to see and hear the witnesses, to watch their demeanour,
and to have them examined and cross-examined viva voce. In equity
cases it constantly happens that, though formal proof of facts has to
be given, and though different views of admitted facts have to be
presented, there is no sharp, definite contradiction at all. Evidence-
in such cases can be given &r more conveniently and cheaply on>-
affidavit than by word of mouth.

A classification of the litigation arising out of contracts and!

wrongs into that which admits of simple remedies and that whioht

requires intricate and qualified remedies, and again into that in

which two persons or sets of persons are interested and that in which

more than two persons or sets of persons are interested, may appear

to be unscientific and almost trifling ; but it is extremely conveniait,

and it answers closely to the distinction between cases tried by a

judge and jury and cases tried by a judge alone, and it must be

lememb^ed that the distribution of business between court and court,

or between different divisions of the same court, is not a matter of

science, but a matter of mere convenience and division of labour.

A distinotion which would form a very bad foundation for a treatise

may form a very good foundation for the convenience of suitors

and the despatch of business. If a man were writing a book on

the human body,he would arrange his work with a view to the general

{dan of the body as he understood it, and not with reference to the

remedies which particular diseases or injuries might require; but

the medical profession divides itself into branches having relation not

to the structure of the body but to the treatment of disease. Medical

men are either physicians or surgeons, though all deal with the same

gabject-matter. It is not a mere £Emcy to say that a criminal trial

or an action for damages has a resemblance to a surgical operation,

and a decree in equity to a course of medical advice.

j To » oonddexaUe extent, however, the subject-matt^ with wfaioh

72 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. January

law and equity are conversant differ at least as much as the subject
matter with which either is conversant differs from that of the Divorce,
Probate, and Admiralty Division. The principal subject with which
Courts of Equity are concerned is the interpretation and administra-
tion of trusts, which are the creation of the Courts of Equity, and
form, I believe, a legal conception peculiar to English law. Whether,
if the whole law were codified, this conception would be retained,
and how in that case it would be expressed, I do not say ; but, taking
matters as they stand, it is, I think, obvious that to attempt to fuse
the law relating to trusts with any other branch of law would be
absurd. The thing could not be done, and an attempt to do it
would produce, not simplicity, but confusion and obscurity. It would
make the law hopelessly unintelligible.

There is another matter closely connected with this which will
always make it necessary to keep Law and Equity to some extent
distinct from each other. The establishment of the system of trust
estates, and of the distinction between legal and equitable interests
(which is far too firmly fixed in our national habits to be removed),
has been one of the principal causes which have imposed upon the
Courts of Equity a vast mass of business utterly unlike any which is
transacted by the Courts of Common Law. I refer, of course, to
administration suits, suits in which vast masses of property are ad-
ministered under the orders and by the officers (either permanent or
appointed for the purpose) of the court. The effect of this is that
the Chancery Division has to superintend the management of an.
enormous mass of property, and the transaction of every imaginable
kind of business connected with it, at every step in which it may be
necessary to take the directions of the couH as to the course to be
pursued with reference to the interests, it may be, of a great variety
of persons. Obviously this is a matter by itself, requiring special
experience and a special organisation, and not capable of being fused
with any other branch of the administration of justice.

For all these reasons I think that the fusion of law and equity
has gone as far as legislation can for the present carry it. I also
think that the distinctions already referred to must involve corre-
sponding distinctions in the procedure of the two divisions, but I do
not propose on this occasion to discuss any part of this question
except that which relates to the course of appeal in the Chancery
and Common Law Divisions.

The method of procedure favoured by the Judicature Act, and
which it is now, I apprehend, proposed to extend, is sometimes described
as ' the one judge system,' and its essential feature is that every cause,
whether l^;al or equitable, should be tried in the first instance by
a single judge, to whom it should be allotted firom its commencement,
aad who should preside over it throughout, till he delivers a final

1881. THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE.- 73

jodgment, and that this judgment should be subject to an appeal to
a court of three judges. The original intention was that the decision
of the Court of Appeal should be final, and it was proposed to abolish
the appellate jurisdiction of the House of Lords; but this idea
was given up, and the decision of the Court of Appeal is itself liable
to a final appeal to the House of Lords. I do not think it is pro-
posed to alter this part of the system, and I have no remark to make
upon it.

This one judge system existed in the Courts of Chancery for
many years before the Judicature Act, though it was more common
for two than for three judges to sit in the Chancery Court of Appeals
Since the Judicature Act, it has prevailed in the fullest way in the
Chancery Division, and it is no doubt intended to extend it to the
three Common Law Divisions.

With respect to this proposal, I have the following propositions
to establish : —

1. It cannot be carried out fully without abolishing trial by jury
in civil cases.

2. Any attempt to carry it out fully, without the abolition of trial
by jury, will greatly lower the efficiency and the dignity of the
Puisne Judges of the Common Law Divisions.

3. The imperfect attempts hitherto made to introduce it have
caused great intricacy, delay, and expense in the administration of
justice.

4. A scheme may be suggested which would obtain all the objects
in view without being open to any of these objections, and without in-
volving any expense to the public whatever, or any change in the
business of tiie Chancery Division, and which would greatly diminish
the expense of litigation.

1 . First, then, I say, that the full introduction of what is called the
one judge system is inconsistent with the maintenance of trial by jury
in civil cases. It is surprising to me that this obvious fact should
Tequire to be stated, and should apparently have been generally over-
looked. It is, however, self-evident. The essence of the one judge
system is, that the case is first tried by a single judge, who decides
both the &ct and the law, and then retried by three judges, who also .
decide both on the fB^ct and the law. The appeal, in fact, is a
rehearing.

On the other hand, the essence of trial by jury is, that the jury
find the filets under the direction of the judge who tries the case,
^nd that the judges, to whom the appeal lies, do not enter upon the
question of &ct for the purpose of deciding it, but only fi>r the
purpose of considering the correctness of the direction given to
the jury by the judge who tries the case, in order to decide whether
the matter of &ct shall be remitted to another jury. In tw6

U THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Januaiy

words, where there is no jury an appeal is a r&^trial. Where there is
a jury, a motion for a new trial is the only form of appeal con-
rifltent with the essence of the institution. Therefore, so long a»
trial by jury in civil cases exists, there must be a distinction between
the course of appeal in cases tried bef(»e a jury and cases tried with*
out a jury.

Short and simple as this proposition is, I believe it to be entirely
overlooked by those who wish to introduce the one judge system into
the Common Law Divisions, unless indeed their object is to get lid of
trial by jury by a side wind.

2. My second proposition is that any attempt to carry out fuUy
the one judge system without abolishing trial by jury in civil cases,
will greatly lower the efficiency and the dignity of the Puisne Judges-
of the Common Law Divisions.

This proposition follows from the last, for the result of such an
attempt must necessarily be as follows: there would- be in the
Common Law Divisions a division between the Court of Appeal and
the Court of First Listance similar to that which now exists in the
Chancery Division. The duty of the Puisne Judges would be confined
to trying causes at Nisi Prius. If it was considered that they had
misdirected the jury, or that the jury had given a verdict against the
evidence, or that a new trial should be had on any other groimd, an
appeal would lie to a Court of Appeal of three judges, who, if they
thought fit, would direct a new trial. It is obvious that the effect of
this would be to make the Common Law Judges mere commissioners
for the trial of causes at Nisi Prius, and to deprive them of all con-
nection with the decision of matters of law. That this would greatly
lower the dignity of the judges is obvious. It would practically make
them mere reporters to the Court of Appeal of founts ascertained by the
help of a jury, and would afford an irresistible temptation to them to
be lAdifferent to questions of law, which they would leave entirely tol^e
Court of Appeal. The Judges of First Instance would thus cease, to
a great extent, to require any special knowledge of law, though they
would be appointed from a body of men distinguished rajbher as
lawyers than as advocates. The Judges of Appeal, on the other hand,
would have no special occasion to inquire into facts, though they
would be appointed not so much on. account of their knowledge as
lawyers as on account of their eminence as advocates. The square
meK would be put in the round holes, and . the round men in the
tsqoare. holes.

The same result would be produced upon the efficiency of the
Bencdu It is a thoroijghly well-testabliahed rule, resti]^ irpon obvious
oonrrenflience, tiiat a motion £ar a new trial .should, if pos8iUe,be made
iMfitttt th# judge who tried Uie oase* He. knows aa no: otfier j^dge can
4mbW'Wha4^ that^0vid«iceiwat>aadr2nhat(WeiB his Mwoipf ftr' dmcUng

1881. TEE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE. 75

the jury as be did. If the judge who tried the case is to be a meie
commissioner to take evidence, and is never to sit upon a motion for
a new trial, the court which bears such motions will be deprived of the
advantage of bis presence and knowledge of the case, whilst bis sense
of responsibility for the decision would be greatly impaired, as be will
hear no more of the matter after the verdict has been given.

I know it will be said that under the Appellate Jurisdiction Act^
1876, a Judge of First Instance is not only empowered, but required, as
&r as possible to decide the whole of every case which comes before
him, determining questions of fact by the aid of a jury, and reserving
for further consideration questions of law which cannot be con«>
veniently decided at the trial. No doubt the Act contains a provision
to tiiat effect, but in practice it can be acted upon only m the few
cases which involve no substantial dispute of fact, and the reason is
obvious to any one who is &miliar with trials by jury. The questions
of law which usually arise upon such a trial are almost always
questions as to how the judge ought to direct the jury, or whether
certain evidence should be admitted or rejected. Such questions
must be decided at once, and cannot be properly argued before they
are decided. It would cause an intolerable waste of time and money
to interpolate elaborate legal arguments into trials before a jury.
The judge must decide there and then whether he will admit
evidence or reject it, and whether he will direct the jury in accord-
ance with this or that view of the law. This obvious consideration
seems to me to have been left completely out of sight by the Appellate
Jurisdiction Act of 1876.

The result of all this is that the practical effect of trying to
apply the so-called one judge system to trials by jury must be ta
subordinate the Judges of the Common Law Divisions entirely to the
Court of Appeal, and to make them, as I have said, mete commissionera
to take evidence. I have already given my reasons for thinking
that to do this would be one of the greatest misfortunes that could
be&ll the administration of justice in this country. It would subor-
dinate the more important function of trying causes to the less.
important function of deciding points of law on appeal. It would
assign to men holding a position attained principally by legal know-
ledge functions requiring a combination of a great variety of far
rarer and more important qualities, and it would assign to persons
inresumably possessed of those qualifications the duty of hearing appeals
npon points of law. It would, in other words, be based upon th6 absurd
theory that the ablest advocates at the Bar are the greatest lawyers^
and that the best lawyers are likely to make the best judges for the
^rial of causes. It ic^ as if men were made prefessors of medicine^
3nd restrained firom practice on account of their skill in praotioe,
whilst others wereputdn cbarg«t of boq^itais because titey hadtwritten

I

76 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. January

books displajing much knowledge of the theoiy of their profes-
sion.

Such an arrangement would, in my opinion, injure the Court
of Appeal quite as much as the Courts of First Instance. Appellate
jurisdiction can hardly be exercised as it ought to be, unless the
judges are abo Judges of First Instance whose knowledge of the
actual administration of the law is kept up by constant practice.
Under the present constitution of the Court of Appeal, its judges
possess this advantage, inasmuch as the Presidents of Divisions, who
are members of it, constantly sit as Judges of the Court of First In-
stance, whilst the Lords Justices (with one exception) all go circuit.
An arrangement which tended in any way to put an end to this
advantage would be as unwise as an arrangement which confined
eminent physicians to the task of advising with other members of
the profession in consultation, and excluded them from attendance
by themselves upon sick people. If the two sets of duties were con-
fined to separate courts, the Courts of First Instance would, to a con-
4siderable extent, lose the opportunity of considering and studying
the general principles of law, and the Judges of the Appellate Court
would lose that familiarity with the detailed application of general
principles to current litigation which is essential not only to the
proper apprehension, but to the complete and cautious statement of
legal principles. The two duties are really component elements of
one and the same function, and ought to be discharged by the same
persons at different times. It must of course be remembered that I
am now referring only to cases tried by juries. When the appeal is a
complete rehearing, as is the case with appeals in the Chancery
Division, the Judge of First Instance and the Judges of Appeal each
perform in turn the whole of the same function in the same way, and
in this case the Judge of First Instance differs from the Judges of
Appeal merely in the fact that he is one and they are three.

Another consequence would follow &om the scheme which I
deprecate, of which it is a more delicate matter for a judge to write,
though I do not like to pass it over. I refer to the effect which
would be produced by dividing the judges into two grades, probably
not very unequal in number, but distinguished from each other by a
difference both in rank, and title, and in pay, just marked enough to
be important, but not marked enoi:igh to answer the purpose which
is now answered by the offices which will be abolished. As
matters stand, I cannot say that it would^for the first time introduce
upon the Bench the principle of promotion, but it would give to this
principle much greater force and prominence than it ever had before.
Hitherto the general principle has been that a judge ought to have
nothing eitiier to hope or to fear from any quarter. He has nothing
to fear, but he has something, though it may not be very much, to

1881. THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE. 77

hope for. I do not imagine that any one supposes that this circum-
stance has ever exercised, or that it is probable that it will ever exercise,
any influence on the conduct of any judge on the Bench, but there
are matters in which it is well to be jealous and suspicious, even
though no actual danger may present itself, and this seems to me to be
one of them. I think it ought not to be open to any one to say of a
judge * he wants to be promoted.' No one, of comse, would wish to
interfere with existing titles or allowances, but it would certainly be
an advantage in any scheme that it gave the same title and same advan-
tages to all judges who perfonned duties of the same degree of impor-
tance.

3. My third proposition is that the imperfect attempts hitherto
made to introduce the one judge, system have caused great intricacy,
delay, and expense in the administration of justice.

That great intricacy, delay, and expense do exist in, and arise
out of, the present constitution of the High Court, I suppose no
one denies. It is enough, by way of example, to say that its intricacy
is such that in one sense there is but one court— namely, the Supreme
Court of Judicature ; that in another sense there are three courts —
namely, the Court of Appeal, the High Court, and the Supreme Court
of Judicature ; and that in yet another sense there are seven courts —
namely, the Chancery Division, the three Conmion Law Divisions, the
Probate, Divorce, and Admiralty Division, and the two Divisions of
the Court of AppeaL Each judge of the Equity Division, indeed,
may be reckoned as a court, and, li so, there are in aU ten, or perhaps
eleven, courts.

As regard^ expense and delay I suppose I may take it for granted
that great dissatisfaction exists upon the subject, and I am not
surprised at it, for, apart £rom the expensiveness of the system of
pleading established under the Judicature Act, it is a fieu^t, as certain
as it is little known, that, in respect of Common Law actions, the
liberty of appeal which existed before the Judicature Act has, for
practical purposes, been doubled — I might in strictness say trebled —
though there was no occasion to increase it at alL This has been due
entirely to an omission on the part of the authors of the Judicature
Act to rec<^paise the obvious distinction which I have already pointed
out between the nature of appeals in cases which are tried by a jury,
and appeals in cases which are tried by a judge without a jury. This
I will now proceed to show.

Down to the year 1864 the methods of reversing the decision of a
jury were as follows : first, a writ of error, which was, practically,
hardly ever applicable, as it appUed only to errors apparent on the
record ; secondly, a bill of exceptions, which was seldom employed ;
and thirdly, a motion for a new trial, which last was the method
oommcmly employed. A motion for a new trial was in substanooi

78 TEE NINETEENTH CENTURY. January

though it was not in name, an appeal from one judge sitting at Nisi
Prius to three judges sitting in Banc, and their decision was finaL
As the motion had to be made in the first £6ui days of the first tenn
after the trial, Oommon Law actions were speedily determined^ and
I do not knowthat any special complaint was made of their not being
determined satis&ctorily. By the Conmion Law Procedure Act of
1854 tiiis state of things was altered, and in certain cases an appeal
from the decision of the Court in Banc was allowed to the Court of
Exchequer Chamber, and thence to the House ot Lords ; but practi*
cally such appeals were very seldom brought, because the Court of
Exchequer Chamber was inconveniently large, and could hardly sit
without shutting up the two courts of which it was composed;. and
also because the right to appeal was limited by conditions as to costs
and by other restrictions, the effect of which was that the remedy was
not worth having except in cases which sddom oocuired. In a great
mass of other business there was no appeal at all from the decision of
a Court sitting in Banc. For instance, if the courts refused, or granted
a habeas corpus or other prerogative writ, or if they confirmed or difr-
missed an order made by a judge at chambers, no appeal lay from their
decision. Matters stood thus till the Judicature Act came into foroe
in 1876. It is thus true for practical piiiposes (though the statement
is not perfectly correct), that till the Judicature Act came into force
theie was but one appeal in Common Law actions — ^to wit, an appeal by
way of a motion for a new trial from the decision of the judge and jury
at Nisi Priiffi to the Court sitting in Banc. In other words, there was
an appeal from one judge to three judges. In short, the one judge
system, as it is now called, did actually exist in regard to Common
Law actions in fisM^t, though not in name, down to the year
1876.

It was, as I have said, the object of the authors of the Judicature
Act to apply the one judge system to the Courts of Common Law;
they seem to have overlooked the circumstance Uiatit already existed
there, because they did not recognise the t&at that a motion for a new
trial was really an aj^peal from one judge to three, and they seem to have
considered that uniformity could be produced, or at least that a step to«-
wards it would be made, by substituting the new Court of Appeal for
the old Court of Exchequer Chamber, removing at the same time
the conditions which restricted appeals to the Court of Exchequer
Chamber to a very small number of cases. The Divisional Courts
weie accordingly substituted for the Common 'Law Couits sitting in
Bane, and the Court of Appeal for the Exchequer Chamber, and an
appeal was given in all, or nearly all, oases from the decisum of the
Bivisional Courts to the Court of Appeal, and to Hxa House of Lorda^
The result of this was practically to double, and in £ome cases to
treble, the power of appealing in the Courts of Common Law* On

1881. THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE. 79

evety motion for a new tria!, without any exception or any conditio^
80 firamed as to restrict appeals to matters of importance^ two appeal^
may be made — ^namely, first an appei^ to the .Gonrt of Appei^I, and
next an appeal to the House of Lords. The same power was giifenii^
the case of an appeal from a judge^s order at ehambers»ao that if a
judge orders, say, that the evidence of » witness in Franoei shall b^
taken by commission, an appeal lies to the Divisional Coui^,. to th^
Court of Appeal, and to the House of Lord^ and so strangely are
matters arranged, that, in the final result, two judges may overrule
four ; for the judge at cham()er8, two judges in a .Divisiooal Courts
and one judge in the Court of Ajqseal, may be overruled by the two
other judges in tiie Court of Appeal.

Putting the matter shortly^ the result of the attempt , to. eictend
the one judge system from the Courts of Equity to. the Courts of
Common Law has been to destroy it where it existed and gave fu)l
satisfiution, and to introduce in its place a system certainly not more
efficient, far more dilatory, and probably costing the suitors one-tbir^
more than the old <m6. These results have been caused entirely, as
&r as I can judge, by misunderstanding the nature of appeals i^casep
tried by juries, and by trying to apply to such eases a course of lEtppeal
suitable for cases tried by a judge alone. .

Until this principle is fully recognised and acted upon, it will be
found practically impossible to organise the Court in a satisfactory
manner. It has been supposed that this might be effected by
abolishing ibe Divisional Courts, and the Appellate Juriadic^on Act c£
1876 appears to be based on this view, for.it directs that as far a0
possible single judges shall dispose of all causes,. and that Divisionail
Courts shall be composed of two judges and no more, except in speciajl
cases, when they may be composed of three judges. The Act shows
little practical acquaintance with Divisional Courtfi and their pror
ceedings, and those who suppose that it can be carried out so a^
to economise judicial strength show that they have not masterefl
the subject. If the Divisional Courts are to be discontinued, anfl
if the Common Law Judges are to 4d no business which cannot
properly be done by judges sitting, alone, it will* be necessiary to
increase largely the number qf Judges of the Court of Appeal. The
ftDowing account of the business of the .courte ^may .not) be .quite
complete, but it is complete enough for practical purposes. It dith
tinguishes business which can properly be . done by alcgle judges
from busin^te which requires the presence of more judges, than one. ,

1. All crimiDial business, except. hearixtg cases, in the Court for
Crown* Oases Reserved, can be done by.auagie jmdg^. . The Ponrt fqr
Crown Cases Reserved sits only three or four daya Hi the yeaxi an^
may be left out of aecouuti' «

2. The trial of actions at Nisi Prius can be done by singk judges,

80 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. JanuarT

and in cases where there is no jury, a single judge can carry the case
through to final judgment.

3. Interlocutory orders in civil cases can be made by one judge,
and I may observe in passing, that a few simple reforms relieving the
judges of duties which ought not to be cast upon them, and especially
of what are called judgment debtor sununonses, would be equivalent
to adding another judge to the Bench.

4. There are a few proceedings raising issues of mere law which a
single judge could no doubt decide with propriety, such as demurrers
and special cases. There may be some other matters of the same
kind, but they do not occur to me. I may observe that such cases
are very uncommon. I have never yet had to hear a demurrer
argued. Special eases are commoner, but they are not conmion.

These, I think, are all, or nearly aU, the duties which can properly
be assigned to a single judge. The following, which form the prin-
cipal part of the work of the Divisional Ciourts, clearly ought not to be
dischiurged by less than two judges.

1. Motions for new trials. Such motions are commonly made
either on the ground of misdirection, or on the ground that the ver-
dict was against the weight of evidence, though there are other groundB
which occur less frequently. If such a motion is made on the ground
of misdirection, and if it is made before a single judge, it is in effect
an appeal from one judge to another of equal authority, and this is
obviously wrong. If, on the other hand, the motion is on the ground
that the verdict was against the weight of evidence, it is an appeal to
the judgment of one man on a matter of fiact from the judgment of
twelve men, and if the judge appealed to is the judge who heard the
case, the appeal is either against his summing-up, in which case it is
not likely to be successful, or in favour of his summing-up, in which
case it is likely to be too successful. In all these cases, there ought
clearly to be a plurality of judges. Sir Alexander Gockbum
thought there ought to be three, and I am far from saying he waa
wrong.

2. Appeals from an order of a judge at chambers ought obviously
not to be made to a single judge of equal authority.

3. Appeals from the inferior courts, and cases which go into what
is called the Crown Paper, and, in particular, cases reserved by magis-
trates in the exercise of their summary jurisdiction, are all in the
nature of appeals, and inasmuch as the principles involved in such
decisions may be just as important as if their direct oonsequenoes
were more serious than they are, I think that it would be unsatis&c-
tory to the public if they were decided by a single judge. Ssyeral
of the inferior courts, too, as the Lord Mayor^s Court aaid the
Court of Passage at Liverpool, have a jurisdiction of unlimited
amount.

1881. THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE. 81

. The business of the Divisional Courts is almost entirely made up of
these matters — namely, motions for new trials, appeals from judges'
orders at chambers, appeals from inferior courts, and other business
which ifl, in fact, though not always in name, appellate business*

This jurisdiction represents the business of the old Common Law
Oourts sitting in Banc, and the result of the Judicature Acts has been
to superimpose upon it, in the case of motions for new trials and
appeids &om chambers, a further appeal to the Court of Appeal.
There is thus obviously one appeal too many in these cases.

The business to which I have referred occupies three courts of two
judges each during the whole, or for the greater part, of the four sit-
tings whicfi correspond to the old terms.

Though an appeal does lie, as I have already said, to the Court of
Appeal, appeals are actually brought only in a minority of the cases
iiisposed of, one Appellate Court of three judges being sufficient to hear
them. If, therefore, the Divisional Courts are discontinued, and all
the appellate business is transferred to the Court of Appeal, its
members would have to be largely increased — indeed, I doubt whether
less than two additional divisions of the Court of Appeal could get
through the additional business. In other words, six of the present
Puisne Judges would have to be made Lords Justices.

There is one kind of business transacted in the Divisional
C!ourt8 which is of the very highest importance, and which is not ap-
pellate business, and ought, I think, to be decided on the first hear-
ing without appeal. I refer to applications for prerogative writs, and
^spedally for the writ of Habeas Corpus. The occasions on which such
a writ is demanded are commonly of great importance, and it is surely
the best course in such cases to go at once, whenever it is possible, to
the court by which the matter is to be finally decided. The name is
not very important ; but if a court of three judges is to decide on such
a question (summary proceedings or routine cases before a Judge at
Chambers stand on a different footing), it ought to be brought before
them at once and not by way of appeal.

The result of the whole is that, if the Divisional Courts are to be
abolished, it will be necessary to enlarge the numbers of the Appellate
Court to such an extent that the Puisne Judges would form the ex*
ception. Surely this in itself would be a considerable evil. If most
of the judges were members of the Court of Appeal, the position of
the comparatively small number who were not would be greatily
lowered, but they would still have to discharge what are intrinsically
the most important of all judicial duties.

. So &r I have been engaged in pointing out the defects of the ex-
isting constitution of the court and of the alterations proposed in it.
I now pass to my fourth and last proposition — which is that a
adieme may be suggested which would obtain all the objects

Vol- IX.— No. 47. G

82 THE NIHtETEENTH CENTURY. Japoary

in Tiew without being open to any of these objections, and with-
out involving expense to the public, or any i^ange in the buaiaeBB
of the Ohanceiy Division, and which would greatly diininlrfi the
expense of litigation. The plan is an extremely sixnple dae.
Firsts I would -do away with the intricate phraseology which calls
one eonrt by many names, and enact that, for the future, there
Bhould be one court only — ^namely, the High Gourt^ whidi fov the
distribution of business should be divided into three divisicMis, the
Chancery Division, the Queen's Bench Division, and. the Probate, Ad-
miralty, and Divotoe Divisions. .1 would also provide that the Chief
Justice of. England should be President of .the Queen's Beoudi
Division, and the other chiefiB, if retained, be Vice-Presidents of it.
The Lord CSianceUor (who is President of the Chancery Divimon, though
he never, or hardly ever, aotB as such), the Master of the fiolhs the
President of the Divorce Division, I would leave a&they are. • Sub-
ject tO' these exceptions, and subject to existing , distinctions o£ laiiky
title^and pay, I would have all the judges jcalled by the same.titl8y
receive the same pay, and take precedence according to their
seniority.r In the place of the Court of Appeal I would have ap-
pellate benches, consisting either of three or of two judges,. acQordinj^
to the nature .of the business to be disposed of» Appeals fiom
hearings in the Chancery Division should be, as at poesen^ to a.bench
of three judges. Motions for new trials in the Queen's Bench Divisum
might be heard by benches of three judges ; appeals from inferior
courts or in interlocutory matters might be heard by bendies of two
judges, whose decision^ or faihire to decide owing to a difference of
opinion, diould be final, unless they gave leave to.appeal, in which case
there should be an appeal to a b^ich of three judges, whoae decision
should be final. The Lord Chancellor, the Master >of the Bolls, and
the three Chief Justices should decide from time to time how many ^p^
pellate benches of three or two judges should sit, and how many courts
should sit at Nisi Prius. The judges of each division should depide
amongst themselves by a rota who should sit on appellate benches
and who at Nisi Prius. It. might, I think, be understood that the
bench taking Equity appeals should have, if possible^ one ComnoKHi
Law member, and that a certain number of members of the. CSiaaioeiy
Division should sit on the Appellate Bench for cases from the Queen's
Bendi Division. The Chanceiy Division would have to consist of eight
members, to correspond to tixe Master of the Bolls, three of the
Lords Justices, the three Vice-Chancellots, and Mr. Justice Fry ; and
the Common Law Division of eighteen members, corresponding with
the other three Lords Justices, and the fifteen members of the three
Common Law Divisiims. Of course, the existing Lords Justices would
be called upon to sit only on Appellate Benches, so that the change I
propose would come into force gradually as vacancies occurred amongst

1881. THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE. 83

the Lords Justices I think it would be very desiraible to provide that
(dreoits notwithstanding) four judges should sit continubusly in the
Chancery Division for the trial of causes, for when the tliree Vice-Chan-
oeQors who now sit vacate their offices, their successors will he bound
to go circuit, and I have a strong impression that the public will be
31 satisfied if the business in the Chancery Division is interrupted, and
I have great doubts whether they will be well satisfied if the judges
of the Common Law Divisions have to take their turn in trying
equity cases. Such a course appears* to me to imply a pedantic
determination to overlook the convenience of arrangements for the
division of labour which have been established by practice, in fiivour
of an iU-fbunded expectation 6f giving the law a degree of dmplicity
which does not belong to it.

This plan, it will be observed, maintains the existing number of
judges, but simplifies the constitution of the court, making the
dividon between appeals and trials the foundation of the distribution
of business between different benches of the same court, instead of
being, as it is at present, a ground for a most intricate division of
i)ib court itself.

The judges of the court so constituted would stand upon an
equality, except so &)r as the existing chief^ the Master of the Rolls,'
c6n«tittited to ex6eption, and thus promotion on the Bench would be
practically at an end. The court would no longer be organised on
the ^tlse supposition that appeals are necessarily or as a role more
important than trials. Each of the judges Would take his part in the
trial of causes and in the hearing of appeals, and each would thus be
made fiuniliar, not only with all matters of legal principle decided
on appeal, but with the detailed application of those principles to
actual litigation. The maintenance of the ancient offices of the
Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas and the Lord Chief Baron
of the Exchequer would be consistent with the scheme, and for the
reasons already given I think this would be desirable ; but it is not an
essential part of it. If it were thought best, upon the whole, to
abolish these offices, the only modification which the scheme would
require would be the appointment in their place of two additional
Ptdsoie Judges in the Queen's Bench Division.

The scheme would cost nothing. It would ultimately save a little
if, as the offices of the Lords Justices became vacant, they were filled
by judges whose circuit expenses were not paid. I do not, however,
think tbat the question of saving that small amount is one to which
the pubBc would attach much importance. My own feeling is that
the dignity of a judge's office depends upon the importance of his
duties, on the manner in which they are discharged, and on his inde-
pendence of the executive and even of the legislative branches of the
government. On the question of titles and money I have only to say

g2

84 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. January

that I think it would be well if ultimately all the judges, with the
exceptions I have explained and tried to justify, were to stand on
the same footing.

The great practical importance of the adoption of my proposal
would be that it would reduce the number of appeals and bring
the procedure of the Chancery Division and the Queen's Bench
Division as nearly into conformity in that particular as is possible,
regard being had to the difference between trials by a judge alone
and trials by a judge and jury. The scheme would leave the course of
appeal in the Chancery Division just as it is.

Several persons to whom I have mentioned this scheme have as-
serted that it is a proposal to reinstate the old Court of Exchequer
Chamber. The fact is that it is just the reverse. It is a proposal to
reinstate the old Courts in Banc, and to do away with the unnecessary
intervention of the Court of Exchequer Chamber, which has become
permanent and active under the Judicature Act, instead of being
hardly ever used, as was the case under the old system.

This change would greatly diminish the number of appeals and
the cost of litigation, and it would in particular bring the appeals on
interlocutory proceedings into a reasonable compass. This is a matter
in which the public, and even the greater part of the profession, are
much in the dark, and it was not fully considered in the Judicature
Act. Before that Act passed, appeals from orders in chambers lay by
way of motion to the Court in Banc, and could be carried no further ;
and as the power of the masters of the court to make interlocutory
orders is of very recent date, the result was that upon no order at
chambers, however important it might be, was there more than one
appeal. The Judicature Act gave three appeals in respect of orders
made by judges, and four appeals in respect of orders made by masters,
however trifling the order might be.

It is very difficult for any one, except a judge accustomed to sit
in chambers, to form an adequate notion of the nature of the business
transacted there. It has a great deal to do both with the effidency
of the court and with the expense of litigation. About one-half
of the work, or something between one-half and two-thirds, ought
not, in my opinion, to be put upon the judges at all. I refer to the
judgment debtor summonses, which I think might well be disposed
of in other ways. The remaining half is of all imaginable degrees
of importance. A large proportion of it represents the desire of
quarrelsome people to keep each other at arm's length, and put
each other to expense and trouble, and the desire of fraudulent
people to put off as long as possible the evil day when they will be
compelled to pay their debt or make amends for their wrongs. In
such matters as these a single appeal is quite enough, but cases do
occasionally come before judges at chambers which may turn upon

1881. THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE. 86

principles of the greatest importance, and pi-actically involve the
decision of actions in which character, or property, or personal liberty
are at stake. These are, of course, an essential part of the business of
the courti and in such cases I think the court appealed to would seldom
refuse leave to appeal further in cases in which a further appeal was
really required.

Such is my view of the changes which the constitution of the
High Court requires. I hope they may be thought worthy of con-
sideration before practically irrevocable steps are taken which would
greatly alter, and as I think for the worse, perhaps the most popular
and one of the soundest of all English institutions.

James Fitzjaues Stephen.

86 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Janiiaiy

A GLIMPSE AT NEWFOUNDLAND.

One fine August day a friend of mine and I, being anxious to explore
the hunting-grounds of Newfoundland, embarked on board an Allan
steamship, and after a somewhat boisterous passage, found ourselves
deposited in the city of St. John's.

St. John's, the capital of Newfoundland, is remarkably well
situated on the northern side of a magnificent harbour. The entrance
to the harbour is through a very narrow passage between lofty, pre-
cipitous, rugged cliffs ; but within, the haven expands and forms a
perfectly secure, land-locked, and commodious shelter from the wild
^aves that lash those inhospitable shores. The most noticeable point
-about the city is that all the manufacturing energy of the population
.appears to be concentrated in the making of long fisherman's boots,
and the keeping of public-houses. It produces seal oil and cod-fish,
and consumes rum and tobacco. St. John's is a busy, thriving, money-
•making place, and the prosperity of the capital of the oldest colony of
<xreat Britain is appreciated by the traveller long before he sets foot
upon her classic shores ; for one side of the harbour smells abominably
of dried cod-fish, and the other of seal oiL Judging by the accent,
there must be a large mixture of Irish blood in the population, a
conjecture which is not confuted by the fact that the inhabitants of
St. John's and of the outports — ^as all the other towns and settlements
are called — and of the island in general, are a splendid set of tall,
strong, active, healthy-looking men. Accustomed from childhood to
Ibrave the hardships of a most rigorous climate, drawing their suste-
nance from the teeming but treacherous bosom of a storm-vexed
'Ocean, that rages in vain for ever round a rugged reef-bound coast ;
navigating their frail and ill-found schooners amid tempest, ice, and
fog, the Newfoundlanders have developed into one of the finest sea-
faring populations on the face of the globe. Nowhere can better
mariners be found than among the hardy, adventurous, self-reliant
men who ply their precarious calling along the dangerous shores of
their native island, or on the wintry coast of the neighbouring
mainland of Labrador.

The principal industry of Newfoundland is the cod-fishery, and
the chief centre of the trade is at St. John's, where the process of

1881. A OLIMPSS AT NEWFOUNDLAND. 87

pacing and Bhipping the salted fish may be witnessed to perfection.
The fidi, having been dried on stages erected for the purpose on the
shores of every bay and inlet of the island, are bronght to St. John's
in small sohooners and thrown in heaps upon the wharves of the mer-
diants. There they are culled over, sorted into three or four piles
aooording to their quality by experienced cullers, who separate the
good from the indifferent, and the indifferent from the bad, with great
rapidity and unerring skill. Women with hand-barrows attend upon
the cuIlerB, cany the fish into an adjoining shed, and upset their loads .
beside barrek standing ready to receive them. A couple of boys throw
the ^fiflb into a cask, piling them upafootor so above the brim, mount
<m the top, and having danced a war-dance upon them in their hob-
nailed boots to pack them down, roll the barrel under a screw-press,
where two men stand ready to take charge of it. Grasping the ends
of the long arms of the lever, the men run quickly round a couple of
times, lift their feet off the ground, and, throwing their weight on
the lever to add impetus to the blow, swing round with it, and bring
down the stamp with a duU thud, compressing the cod-fish into a
compact mass. The cask is then rolled out from under the press, and
handed over to two coopers. In a trice the hoops are driven on, the
cask is headed up, and then trundled down an incline into the hold
o€ some vessel, loading for the West Indies or some Mediterranean
pofit. The rapidity with which the whole process is managed is
remarkable.

Sealing operations also are vigorously conducted by the inhabitants
<sS St. John's. In former days the seal fishery was carried on in sail-
ing vessels, and was attended with considerable danger ; but now
that steam-ships are used the risk is much diminished. The paying
natare of the business may be gathered from the fiu^t that steamers
<yf five or six hundred tons burden, built and fitted for the purpose,
and quite useless for any other trade, make a large profit iu average
years, although the sealing season lasts only a month or six weeks.
Early in the spring, about the beginning of March, the ice from the
north strikes in towards the eastern coast of Newfoundland, bringing
with it hundreds and hundreds of thousands of seals, young and old.
Then St. John's wakes up, and the whole island is in a bustle.
Though it entails constant exposure to great cold, and extremely hard
vKnfk, the young men struggle eagerly to secure a berth for the seal-
ing season, for they earn very high wages, and the business is salted
with that elCTient of uncertainty and danger which adds such a
relish to life. At length everything is ready, and a fleet of steamers
from Sk John's, and of sailmg craft, of all kinds and sizes bom,
large coasting schooners down to open boats, issuing from every bay,
start out to look for the ice. The ships, crowded with as many men
as they can hold, make two trips of about a fortnight's duration each ;
the first being devoted to the capture of the young seals, at that

88 THE NINETEENTH CENTfTRT. Jamiary

time only a few weeks old, and the second to the destruction of the
full-grown animals. . The latter are generally shot, while the former
are knocked on the head with clubs. As soon as the ice is reached,,
the men scatter themselves about the field, running over the rough
surface, jumping from block to block of loose ice, tumbling into holes,
and scrambling out again, wild with excitement in their search for
seals. Each man acts independently, doing the best he can for him-
self. When he has killed a seal he stops but a minute to whip off
the skin with the blubber attached, and £uten a cord to it, and then
off again after another seal, till he has got as many as he can drag,
when he returns, towing his load behind him, to the ship. The
men work with a will, giving themselves scarcely time to eat or rest^
for they receive a share of the profits according to the number of
seals that each man brings in, and if the season is successful^ an
active and daring man will make a large sum of money. The seals
are valuable only for the oil which is tried out of their fat, and which
is employed for various lubricating purposes, and for their skins, whicli
axe tanned and used principally, I believe, for shoe leather. They do
not produce the pelt which, when plucked and dyed, is worked up
into those lovely seal-skin jackets that are as destructive to the purse
as they are delightful to the eye. The number of seals brought in
annually is very great, as many as 500,000 having been killed in a
single season, and the business employs nearly 10,000 men. What
becomes of the multitude of surviving seals is a problem I have never
heard satisfactorily solved. The ice, on which they come down in
swarms every year from the north, melts during the summer .months
soon after coming in contact with the warm wate]:s of the Grulf
Stream. What then becomes of the seals ? Do they find their way
back through thousands of watery miles to their polar birthplace, or
do they remain scattered about along the shores of Newfoundland and
the neighbouring continent ? It is a problem in natural history simi-
lar to the eel puzzle at home, for we are still in ignorance as to what
becomes of the millions of full-grown eels that descend our rivers-
with each autumn flood, but which are never seen reascending ihe
stream.

We remained some days in the interesting city of St. John's^
much enjoying the kind hospitality of our friends, but waiting some-
what anxiously for an opportunity to get a lift down the coast to the
neighbourhood of our proposed hunting-grounds. The regular fort-
nightly steamer did not call in anywhere near our destination, and
day after day passed without any coasting vessel sailing in that
direction. From this dilemma we were relieved by the kindness-
of a judge who was about to start on his circuit in one of the
harbour tugs, and who very good-naturedly undertook to put us^
ashore at tiie mouth of the river we wished to ascend. This offer
was most thankfully accepted, and shortly after, my friend and I^

M81. A GLIMPSE AV NEWFOUNDLAND. 8»

with three Mio Mac Indians from Bay of Despair, two birch bark
canoes, one month's provisions and a very limited supply of bag*
gage, steamed out of the picturesque harbour of St. John's in the
august society of the judge and all the functionaries of his court*
The whole court was there assembled, including judge, barristers^
lawyers, clerks, and all — everybody, in fact, except the criminals and
the jurymen ; and it really was a pity they could not have been pro-
vided also ; it would have saved such a lot of time and trouble. As
far as I could see, there was very little work for the court to do. We
would stop occasionally, apparently at any nice likely-looking spot
for a malefactor, and send on shore to see if there was any demand
far our commodity, namely, justice. Grenerally we were informed
that the inhabitants did not require any just at present, but that
perhaps if we would call again another time a little later, we might
be more fortunate; and then we would give three hideous steam
whistles by way of a parting benediction, and plough our way through
the yielding billows to some other settlement, where, if we were lucky,
the court would divest itself of oil-skin coats and sou'-westers, and go
ashore to dispose of the case or cases to be tried.

We were a very jolly party, and amused ourselves by loimging
about the little deck enjoying the fresh air and grand wild coast
scenery, reading 'dime novels' and playing cards in the stifling
saloon below, where we were veritably ' cribbed, cabined, and con-
fined ' — stuffed as close as herrings in a cask. There was something
rather comical in the whole proceeding. To my insular and anti-
quated notions, a judge is an awful form clad in a solemn wig and
wrapped in gorgeous robes and the majesty of the law, and barristers
and the whole personnel of a court of justice are superhuman
creatures, extraordinary mortals to be looked upon with wonder not
unmixed with awe ; and to see eminent counsel staggering about the
slippery deck in long boots and guernsey frocks, and the highest
functionary of the law playing profkne games of cards in his shirt
sleeves, condescending to exchange remarks concerning the weather
with grimy stokers and tarry-breeched seamen, and even experiencing
inner qualms and spasms when our little ship tossed and struggled
across some wide exposed bay, quite destroyed my illusions, and
produced a feeling of somewhat irreverent amusement. The mere
fact of Uie judge going his circuit in a tug-steamer appeared strange
and incongruous, though why he should not go in a steamer just
as naturally as in a train or a coach-and-four, I do not know»
Indeed, it was the natural mode of progression in Newfoundland,
where the ocean is, or was at the time of my visit, the principal
higiiway. Beads in those days — ^and I am thinking of events which
happened some years ago — ^there were none, except in the vicinity of
St. John's and one or two other towns. People who, for their sins^
had to go from one part of the island to another, travelled in the

9&' THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. January-

most mieertain, viagtie, and promiscuous manner, sometimdB taking
days, weeks, or even months, in acoomplishmg quite a short distance,
and sotaietimes never getting to their destination at alL The usual
method of procedure appeared to be to embark in the coasting
steamer, and go ashore as near the place you -wished to visit as the
rdute pursued by the steamer would permit. The traveller might
by ttiat means get within ten or twenty or fifby or one hundred miles
of -hi& destination, as the cato might be. He would then betake
himself to a house or cabin, if there happened to be one m the
neighbourhood, and wait there, or he would build a big fire and sit
on a rock until some coasting schooner, or fishing smack, or open
boat happened to pass by, going 'in the right direction, in which he
would embark and get another lift upon his road. By such means
he would eventually accomplish his object if he was lucky \ but if,
unluckily, no craft going the right way came by^ he would be com-
pdled to take a passage, in some vessel or boat bound in exactly the
opposite direction to that in which he wished to move. I remember
we called in at some place or other — I forget the name— on our way
back to St. John's, after our hunting expedition, and a clergyman came
dn board begging for a passage. ^I understand,' he said, ^that you
are bound round the north end of the island to Halifax. It is rather
out of my way to go there, it is true, for my destination is a few
nule^ "south of thid 7 but I h'aVe been waiting here till I am sick and
tired of it, for a chance of a Uft down the coast, and I shall be truly
obliged to you if you will take me to Hali&x, where I can get the
fortnightly Allan steamer to St. John's, which will be better, at any
rate, tiian waiting here indefinitely.' We replied that we were bound
for St. John's and not for Halifax, as he had supposed, and that we
should be delighted to take him on board. * Oh,' he cried joyfblly,
< that is charming, it will suit me mdch better of course to go straight
to St. John's^ I have been wandering about for weeks and weeks
trying to get to my parish, which is not far from here. I was etayii^
in St. John's on a visit to some friends, when I received a message
saying that one of my parishioners was dead and required to be baried.
As the necessities of the case were pressing, I took my passage in the
eoasting steamer that left the following morning, and ought to have
amved at my destination the same night. Unfortunately, how-
ever, a strong off-shore breeze sprang up, and the steamer beings
unable to call in carried me some distance up the coast to tfaenezt
stepping place. Ilien I was delayed some days till I got a lift in a
fishing schooner, but she was driven by stress of weather into some
littld' harbour where no steamers called, and eventually went bff in a
direction tiiat did not suit me at aU. The same bad luck has pursued
me all aldng, and I have been wandering about ever since, taking^
eveiy opportunity offered me by passing coasting craft • or fishm^
bdats; sometimes being carried miles* away, sometimes getting pret(»7

18gl. A GLIMPSE AT NEWFOUNDLAND. »V

near,' bat never succeeding in actually reaching mj joumey'g'^end/
Ab the season is getting late and winter will soon be upon nsy-L
made up my mind to abandon the attempt for the present, and^'
mmd with you to -Halifax, if you would take me^ and so back to-
St. J(dm'8 to finish my visit ; for as it is now a couple (^ months oS'
so since my services were required- to bury the gentleman, it is
probable that my presence is no longer necessary on that account.' We
were ixmch more astonished than was our guest, at the extraordinary
delays and troubles to which he had been subjected, but aft^ becoming
a little better acquainted with Newfoundland, we perceived that
there was nothing so very unusual in his misfortunes after all, and-
tiiat amilar experiences were looked upon with a calm and philo-
sophical spirit by the natives.

It was] late in the afternoon of a beautiful, still, warm autumn'
day tiiat the < Hercules ' dropped her anchor in the Bay, and after
pirtting us ssdely ashore with our Indians, canoes, and bag^fage, and
after tl»ree hearty cheers and three hideous ear-splitting screams &om
Hkb whistle, steamed away out to sea again and left us to our own
devioes. There was quite a settlement in those parts, consisting of a
small 8aw*mill and house adjoining inhabited by the white man who
laa the mill, and of two or three families of Indians, all rejoicing in.
{he name of Joe. The head of the tribe was old Abraham Joe, a fine
q>ecimen of his race, an active upright man, standing about six feet
two inches in his moccasins, and broad and strong in proportion.
He had spent nearly all his life in Newfoundland, and knew the
interior of the island better than any man living. He was a good
hunter, trapper, and guide, but he was — ^well, he is dead, and I wiU-
pnt it mildly — ^he had the bump of acquisitiveness highly developed.
They had, I should imagine, a very pleasant life, these Indians ; and
if one can judge by the independence of the men, and the nature and
quality of the clothing worn by the girls, they must have been very
well off in this world's goods. They had comfortable little cabins,
in which they spent the winter in comparative idleness, earning little
or nothing. The single exception to this rule was in the case of one
of old Abraham Joe's sons, who carried the mail during the winter and •
spring months between St. John's and the copper mines at the
entrance of the Bay. He was well paid, and deservedly so, for his
was an arduous task. Travelling on snow-shoes backwards and for-
wards over a distance of some hundreds of long, weary, desolate,
monotonous miles, over bare wind-swept barrens, through dense pine
forests and thick alder swamps, without a mark to guide or a hut to
dielter the traveller ; tramping on alone with no companion to cheer
one oa the lonely way, without the chance even of seeing a human
being from one end of the journey to the other ; struggling aloug
from dawn to dark of the short wintry days against snow, storm, or
de^ or in the bitter cold of hard frosty weather ; crouching through

92 THIS NINETEENTH CENTURY. Januaiy

the long nights by a solitary fire with a few bushes stuck in the snow
for shelter ; caught perhaps in some sudden thaw, when the softened
snow dogs and sticks in the netting of the snow-shoes, and progress is
almost impossible ; exposed to mal de raquette^ snow blindness, and
all the chances of a forest life — ^such an occupation is one that fuUy
deserves to be well paid. However, the activity of this particular * Joe '
was abnormal ; the rest of the family spent their winters lounging
about the beach, making perhaps a few mast hoops, butter tubs, or
fish barrels, or sitting by the stove indoors, smoking their pipes and
doing nothing. In the summer they fished a little, and in the
autumn the whole community went up Indian brook and spent two
months in the interior of the island, shooting and trapping beavers
and otters. Fur was pretty plentiful in those days, and a man
could make a good income out of a couple of months' hard work,
furring in the fall. These ' Joes ' appeared to entertain, to a limited
extent, communistic principles, while partially recognising at the
same time the right of private ownership in land and chattels. They
would use each other's boats, canoes, &c. without hesitation, but
spoke of them nevertheless as belonging to some individual member
of the s^t. They wandered about the island in an apparently hap-
hazard, aimless, happy-go-lucky way, and some member or other
of the family was always turning up at odd times in unexpected
places. Sometimes we would meet a Joe striding over some barren
or crossing a lake in his canoe ; occasionally a Joe would drop into
our camp, miles away from anywhere, unprovided with boat, canoe,
provisions or baggage of any kind, and furnished only with a pipe,
tobacco, a rusty gun, and some powder and lead. He would sit down
quietly by the fire and chat a little and smoke a little, and after
a while accept, with apparent viiaouciaTice^ an invitation to eat and
drink, and after consuming enough food for three men and swallow-
ing a few quarts of tea, would say, ^ Well, I suppose I shall be going
now. Adieu, gentlemen, adieu. Yes, I guess I was pretty hungry ;
most starved, I expect. How am I going to cross the lake ? Oh,
that's all right ; we— ^that's old Peter John Joe's son, and I — got a
canoe a little way ofif ; mebbe one, two, three, four miles ; I'll cross in
her, I reckon. Expect likely I'll see you again by-and-by — ^I shall be
coming out again about the end of this moon.' ^ Well, goodbye,' said
we, < but where are you going to ? not trapping, evidently, because
you have got no traps.' ' Yes, Tm a going a trapping, that's so. Not
far — mebbe two or three days back in the woods — ^beaver pretty plenty
there ; left my traps there last fall — ^no, let me see, fall before last, I
guess.' 'But what are you going to live on all the time?' 'Oh,
I got plenty grub, no fear ; not much tea, though ' (showing a little
parcel of the fragrant herb knotted up in a comer of his dirty
blanket), ' and no sweetening ; mebbe you coiQd spare a little tea and
sugar, eh ? No ! ah well, all the same, never mind, suppose my tea

1881. A OLIMPSE AT NEWFOUNDLAND. 93

give out, perhaps make some spruce tea. You see young John Joe, he
got a caclu yonder, away off just across that blue ridge, about one day
or oneday and a half,or mebbe two days' journey, plenty flour there; and
young Peter John Joe and old John Peter Joe, they ccLched their cook-
ing pots on the little stream there, near the north end of big blueberry
pond* See you again soon. Adieu I ' and after a few words in Mic Mac
to our Indians, this particular Joe would walk off, to be seen no more
till he reappeared after some time with half a canoe load of beaver
skins, or perhaps to turn up quite unexpectedly in the course of a day
or two, in company with some other Joe whom he had come across
promiscuous-like in the woods. Over this small community and lai^e
territory old Abraham Joe ruled after the manner of a feudal lord,
settling all little disputes and parcelling out the country into hunting
grounds for each individual member of his family. Indians are very
tenacious of their territorial rights : each man has his own hunting,
or rather furring, ground accurately marked out with the marches
carefully fixed, perhaps up one river from its mouth to its source, then
across in a straight line through the woods to some other creek, and
down that stream to such and such a lake, and so on ; the boundaries
axe all arranged among themselves, and it is considered a most
iniquitous proceeding for one trapper to trespass on the district
belonging to another. Their system of land tenure is similar to
that of most primitive peoples in tribal times. They consider that
the land belongs in common to the clan, but each member has a
certain part of it allotted to him for his temporary use, and he
possesses a limited life-ownership over his own particular share.
Poor old Abraham Joe was very unhappy about the state of things in
Newfoundland. Too much civilisation was destroying the island, in
his estimation. ^ Yes, sir,' he said to me one day, ' things is very
differ^it from what they used to be. Lord I I mind the times when
a man might travel from one end of the island to the other and
never see nobody nowheres. Beavers were plenty then, and there
was a good price for fur too ; now there ain't no price, and beavers
and otters ain't plenty like they used to be. Those d lumber-
men be come up the rivers and scare the game. Why, there ain't a
bay scarcely anywheres without one, mebbe even two liviers ^ in it.
Yes, sir, it's true ; Newfoundland he spoil, too much people come, too
much people altogether in the country, no use furring any more, no
price now for beaver skins, very bad times now, most impossible to
znake a living. Expect you don't want that axe-head, do you, sir ? It
would come in very handy. I lost mine the other day — head flew
clean off the handle into the water. Can't do without it, can't you?
Well, never mind ; mebbe. you won't want to take your canoes out of
the country. I'd like to trade with you for one of them.' He became

> A * livier ' signifies a person who lives all the year round in a locality, in contra-
diftiiiction to one who only visits it dnring the fishing season.

94 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Januaiy

a positive nuisance, did the old man, about the axe-head, and feltowed
US about for days on the chatice of getting it for nothing, pleading
awful poverty, at the same time that he refused an offer of four
dollars a day to ocnne with us for a short time hunting.' '

The sole representatives of the Joe tribe left at home on Ae
evening of our arrival were an old woman and two girls of about
eighteen or twenty, whose dear complexions and good features I most
mippose were to be accounted for by some mysterious influence ex^*
erdsed by the superior over the inferior race, for I should be sorry to
indulge for a moment even in speculation which' might be derogatory
to the conduct and chamcter of former generations of Joes. On
inquiry, we found that most of the family had gone off some dayi
before to the copper mines, to solemnise the wedding of a couple of
fond and youthful Joes, aad were expected home that night. About
midnight they returned ; two large whale-boats full of them, railxer
noisy and very jovial. The unfortunate but loving Joes had not
succeeded in getting married, as the priest, who was expected to
arrive by the coasting steamer, had foiled to put in an appearance (
but nowise discouraged by this untoward event, the party had oon«-
Biimed the wedding breakfast, wisely deciding that tiie cetemoajf
might keep, but the viands would not.' The bride and bridegroMft
bore their disappointment with a philosophical -composure to be found
only among people who attach no value whatever to time. In anawer
to our condolence they replied, < Oh^ no matter ; mebbe he come next
steamer, mebbe in two, three months, mebbe not> come till 'next y^ar,*
and dismissed the subject as though it were a matter of no impott**
ance whatever to them.

We tried hard to obtain the services of aome aUe-bodied Joe, but
they were all bent on going into the woods to huilt beaver on their
own account, and nothing would induce any of the men to take
service with us. We might have had our pick of the women, and we
regretted afterwards that we had not engaged a couple of girls. They
are just as well acquainted with the oountiy as the men ; they can
paddle a canoe and do all that a man can, except carry loads, and are
able to fulfil certain dutiBs that a man cannot — ^for instance, they
can cook, tan hides, and wash and mend clothes. We often regretted
afterwards that we had gone into •the country without a guide; 'The
Joes would not give oar Indians any accurate instructions, and
although an Indian in St. John's had explained' the route to me as
well as he could, it is so difficult for a white man to understand an
Indian's description of a country, that my ideas on the subject were
very vague and hazy. An Indian thinks little of the points of the
compass, and uses them very inaccurately. He seems to rely rather
upon the prominent landmarks and principal features of the country
to find bis way about, and attempts to explain the route by refer^ioe
to solitary pines, high hills, hard wood ridges, swamps, and streams.

1881. A GLIMPSE AT NEWFOUNDLAND. 96

In saying thai a river runs south-west, he probably is taking it the
leyerse way, coupting from the mouth to the source, and really means
that it has a north-east course ; and he invariably caUs all the tribur
taiies of a river by one and the same name : a fieust which leads to
infinite confusion. However, we determined to trust to luck to find
OUT way to the hunting-grounds, and, after spending all the forenoon
in pBtfthing up canoes and arranging the baggage in suitabLeHsized
bundles, we made a start late in the afternoon, poled up to a pic<-
.tmesque .fell some four miles fit>m the. mouth of the stream, made
our ^portage' round it and camped for the night. It was a lovely
evening, and we thoroughly eiyoyed it as we lay on our comfortable
beds of safpvoj ga&ng* through the transparent waUs of our tent, at
ihe moonlight mingling with the fliokeriug flames of the camp fire,
}\a!^Tcijig to the whisper of the wind among the trees, and the distant
.diowKf varying. music of the bXiy smoking our pipes in placid con-
tradment, (Relighted that at last we were fiEdrly launched into the
woods.

We got along very nicely for the next two days, though our pro-

giefis was not rapid, but on the third day the brook became so shallow

that we had great difficulty in advancing any farther. The channel

W9S almost dry in places, and we had to wade all day, heaving stones

out of the w;qr, pushing and pulling our heavily laden canoes ^by

Jiaad, carefidly manoBuvring them among the rocks, and wriggling

our way very slowly up the lessening stream. It was evident that

we must be n^ar the head of navigation, and my companion and I

splashed on ah^ad in the bed of the stream to look out for the

^ portage.' We walked and walked till we felt sure that we must

haye passed the ' carry,' and were on the point of turning back when

I espied a swarthy countenance peering cautiously at us through an

aldorbush. , 'Bojour I' said we, and ^Bojour I' answered old Abraham

Joe^ emeiging fjn>m his covert. ^ Where you going to ? ' ^ Well,' we

reidied, 'we don't exactly know where we are going to, but we are

looking for the ^ portage." Is it anywhere near here ? ' ' Yes,' said

he^ ' dose handy^ just a little ways up the stzeam. Water very low,

ain't it ? Plenty rain pretty soon, and then have good water in , the

brook. You going hunting, I guess ? Not much good, deep: all gone.

You wait, by-and-by we get through hunting ; mebbe one of my sons

show you where to find plenty. Mebbe I go with you myself,' added

the old man,, with an air that seemed to say, ' There, just think of

that: there's ^ chance you don't get every day of the week.' We

camped that n^ht on the portage,:and the next day < carried ' ova:

to a neig^libouring lake in a drenching rain, and pitched our tent

dose to Uie camp of the patriarch and certain other members of the

Joe £unily. The old man's prophecy of ' plenty rain come soon ' was

abondantly fulfilled during the next three days, for it rained and

blew, and blew and rained, the whole time without ceasing. The

96 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. January

natives did not seem to mind it in the least, but lounged about in
the wet as unconcernedly as if water was their natural element. I
remember going over to old Joe^ tent one morning for something
or other, and finding a little French boy that he had with him lying
outside by the dead sodden ashes of the fire, in a most uncomfortable
attitude, leaning on his elbow with his head supported by his hand,
drenched of course to the skin through his tattered clothing, and
shivering with cold, but sleeping soundly all the same. * Why, Joe,'
I said, * what a shame to keep that miserable little boy out in the
cold and wet all night.' ' Oh,' he replied, * he don't mind ; he hard,

hard all the same as one d dog : do him good.'

We remained a few days on the shores of the lake, but finding
no sign of game, crossed to the opposite side, made a short * port-
age' to another lake, traversed that, and after a long and toilsome
tramp over land of some eight or ten miles, arrived at what we
hoped would prove our final destination. What a lovely hunting
country it was ! Not more than half a mile from our camp, which
was placed in a nicely sheltered little island of wood, rose a steep
hill, which commanded an unobstructed view over miles of open
country. Bare, dry, barren, the siu&ce principally composed of rock
covered with lichens on which the reindeer feed, alternating with
patches of softer ground carpeted with the beautiful ivory white
cariboo moss, shallow pools and trickling streams, sheltered depres-
sions in the plain suppoi-ting a sparse growth of junipers and dwarf
pines, combined to form a perfect paradise for game. But, alas I it
turned out to be an empty Eden. Day after day we wore out our
moccasins tramping over the stooy ground, seeking for a sign but
finding none ; day after day we climbed the look-out hiU and vainly
swept the plain with our glasses. That game had once been abun-
dant was very evident, for the plain was crossed in all directions by
paths worn deep into the surface by the countless feet of constantly
passing herds of cariboo, but now rapidly filling up through long
disuse. Patches of sun-dried clay showed footprints that had been
made long before our arrival ; the tattered bark and broken branches
of many a pine-tree showed where a great stag had rubbed his horns,
but the scars were all old and brown ; numerous horns lay scattered
about in evidence of how plentiful the deer must have been at one
time, but they were bleached by the sun, weather-worn and half-con-
sumed. It was plain enough that deer had once frequented those
plains in great numbers, but it was equally certain that not a deer
had visited them for months. The great barrens on which we were
hunting — if a man can be said to be hunting when there is nothing
to hunt — stretch nearly right across the island from east to west, and
occupy all the country from north to south between Grand Pond, a
magnificent lake of some eighty miles in length, and Bed Indian
Pond. The extent of hunting country is very large ; and, thinking

1881. A GLIMPSE AT NEWFOUNDLAND. 97

that surelj there must be some herds of deer out on the barrens
somewhere, we made expeditions from the main camp of a day or
two's journey, and thoroughly searched the country in all directions.
It was in vain ; not a fresh track did we nnd. We proved that there
was not a herd of cariboo within twenty miles or more of us, and,
after spending a fortnight of our valuable time in a most unprofitable
manner, we packed up our goods, and V^ith weary and dispirited steps
returned to our canoes, made the best of our way back to Joe's camp,
and after resting a day, started in the teeth of a fierce gale for Grand
Pond.

Our course led us through a splendid game country. We camped
at nights in the very passages through which, in former days, the
cariboo used to pass in countless numbers during their annual autumn
migration from the north to the south side of the island, but we
were a day too late for the fair. Lumber-men were cutting timber on
the shores of Deer Pond and rafting it down the broad current of the
Humber; white men had invaded -those solitudes, and the cariboo
had abandoned them in disgust. We made a nice camp at the north
end of Grand Pond at the mouth of a little stream from which a
faint trail, blazed some ten or perhaps twenty years before by a
wandering Indian, led up through the pine woods to the open barren
above, and there we stayed for a week, during which time we saw
three hinds and killed one of them. The flesh was welcome, for we
had been living all the time on beaver meat ; but what we wanted
was one or two of the gigantic heads for which the Newfoundland
stags are so famous ; and as it did not appear likely that we should
be successful in that district, we packed up for the third time,
paddled some ten or twelve miles down the lake, lugged our tent,
bedding, and cooking things up a steep hill side, and camped just on
the edge of the barren, about a thousand feet above the lake, de-
termined to make one more attempt. The next morning my friend,
accompanied by one of our Indians, started in one direction, while
young John Joe — who had joined us for a few days — and I tried our
luck in another.

It was a lovely morning as we cleared the woods and emerged
upon the open breezy barren. The sky was cloudless : we could see for
miles round to the south of us and across the lake to the north, but
the sur&ce of the water was hidden by a veil — not of mist, but of
thick solid-looking cloud. The effect was curious, for the whole
vaUey of the lake was filled with a bank of white motionless cloud,
so level that it looked as if the water had been turned into milk.
Suddenly, as the sun rose higher, tliis mass began to move — to roll
about and lift a little in places — and then, almost instantaneously, it
all broke up, curled off in wreaths, vanished in thin air, and disclosed
the placid deep-blue surface of the water beneath. We had not
walked far before we discovered three stags standing distinct against

YoL. IX.— No, 47. H

98 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. January

the skyline on a distant ridge. The ground was so level and so bare
of cover, that it was impossible to get near them unperceived, and I
was obliged to content myself with a long shot. I fired both barrels,
and, to my disgust, saw all three deer trot quietly off together. After
a while they wheeled roimd and stood looking back to see what was
the matter, and gave me a chance for another long shot, which seemed
to satisfy their curiosity, for they turned at once and disappeared
over a little rise. An expression more emphatic than polite escaped
my lips, I fear ; but Joe only smiled, and said, ^ How many deer went
over the rise ? Three, eh ? I only see two now going up the other
side : one stop down in the hollow ; mebbe you hit him, or what he
stop down there for ? * ' By Jove, Joe, you are right,' cried I. ' Let's
after him*' ' No, no ; he all right — he safe enough ; bound to get him
by-and-by. Let's go after the other two. They won't go far, not much
scared — ^no wind, you know — and not much afraid of the noise.' The
stags in truth were not much alarmed, and moreover they were so
fat, so preposterously fat, that they literally could scarcely rim away ;
and after a very hard chase, keeping ourselves as much as possible
out of sight, we got within range again and bagged another stag.
While Joe was engaged upon the dead body of the deer, I noticed some
object moving a long way off, and with the glass made out two men,
one looking towards us, while the other was stooping and working at
something on the ground. < Hurrah, Joe I ' said I, ^ they have got
the other one. Not a bad bag after all, to finish up an unsuccessful
hunt. Luck has turned at last. Plenty of fresh meat for supper
to-night, Joe.' ' Yes,' muttered Joe, with his bloody knife between
l)is teeth, ^ glad of it too. I have not tasted a bit of fresh meat this
year : most tired of ch6wing beaver meat ; you got two days more,
eh? Well, we go out again to-morrow; leave the other men to
fetch the meat in and mebbe get something more. Suppose you let me
have the skins to make snow-shoes : must beat out for something to
make snow-shoes this winter. No deer left in this country now.' So
Joe worked away gralloching the deer, while I, having made a little
smudge of dry lichens and moss to windward to keep off the swarms
of black files that pestered us, smoked my pipe, happy in the
certainty'that we should not suffer the disgrace of returning to St»
John's quite empty-handed.

Scarcely had Joe and I got well away from the camp next
morning, when such a blinding storm pf rain came on that we were
compelled to make a little shelter for ourselves among some dwarf
junipers and wait till it was over. We lit a little fire, boUed some
water in a pannikin, brewed some tea, and talked about hunting until
the clouds lifted and enabled us to see our way about the country ;
but the best part of the day was gone, and we had to return to camp
without seeing anything or even a fresh track. The day following
we were obliged to tet out on our homeward journey^ for we had left

1881. A GLIMPSE AT NEWFOUNDLAND. 99

ourselves only just time enough to catch the tug steamer which was
to call for us in the bay, even by travelling almost night and day ;
but as I was loth to quit the country without one more try, Joe and
I climbed up to the barren before daylight, leaving the others to pack
up, carry the baggage and meat down to the lake, and get everything
ready for a start in the afternoon, Joe got the best of me that day
to the extent of twenty-five dollars, the villain. We had walked
for hours without seeing a thing, when he remarked in a casual
manner, * You have not seen no bears, have you, since you came in
the island ? * * No, Joe,' I replied, * not even a sign. I should have
thought bears would have been plenty enough ; there is lots of feed
for them, goodness knows, for the whole barren is covered with blue-
berries; but they seem to be very scarce.' *Yes,' answered Joe,
^ bear's awful scarce in Newfoundland, but I think I know a place
where we might find one, only I ain't got much time ; want to get
back to my beaver trapping, you know. What you give me if I
show you a bear ? ' * Oh, well,' I said, ' I don't know ; there is no
ohanoe of that now ; but I would give a five-pound note for a shot at
a bear if we had time to look for one.' ' All right,' said Joe ; ' suppose
I show you a bear within shot, you give me five pounds, eh ? ' * if es,
Joe, certainly I will,' replied I. * That's sure, eh ? ' < Yes.' * Well,
look yonder.' And following the direction of Joe's extended hand, I
saw a little black speck moving about near the summit of a neigh-
bouring mountain. ^ Oh, I say, Joe, that is rather too bad,' I re-
monstrated. * I could have seen him just as well a8«you, and got up
to him too, for that matter. However, a bargain is a bargain, so let
us go for him.' The groimd was very bare and open, but Bruin (or
^ Mouin,' as the Indians call him) was so busily engaged eating blue-
berries, that he allowed us to crawl up pretty near. I had to wait
some time for a shot, for the bear would not stand still for a second,
but kept turning himself about restlessly, moving rapidly from bush
to bush, grumbling to himself the while — complaining, no doubt, about
the scarcity of berries that autumn and the difficulty of filling his
ravenous inside. At last I got a good opportunity, but made a bad
shot) striking the animal too low down on the shoulder, and only
breaking his leg. With a violent snort of pain and astonishment,
but irithout looking round for a second to see what was the matter,
away went < Mouin' down the mountain side at a most surprising
pace. * Come on,' yelled Joe. * Try and head him oflF ; if he once gets
down into the timber he is gone sure/ And away we went after him
as hard as we could tear. How Joe jumped and bounded and yelled,
and how the bear did put out down that hill side I He seemed to go
twice as fiist on three legs as any other animal ever went on four.
Sometimes Joe would head the bear and turn him, sometimes the
bear would make a drive at Joe and turn him, which would give me
time to get up; and so we went on yelling and whooping and

h2

100 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. January

plunging through the tangled matted junipers, the bear doubling
and twisting, and sometimes charging us, but always struggling
gallantly to gain the shelter of the woods. We had the best of
Bruin as long as we were on the bare ground near the top, but when
we got among the junipers growing horizontally like creepers along
the ground, not rising more than three or four feet above the surface,
but with stems as thick as yo!ir leg, and interlacing branches as hard
and spriugy as steel, then the bear got so much the best of us, that
we feared we should lose him* Now and then I would get a shot,
but shooting under such circumstances is chance work, and I missed
the bear several times, until at last with a lucky shot I rolled him
over, and Joe and I threw ourselves down exhausted beside his dead
body. Joe's first action was to be violently sea-sick; he then sat
him down on a rock, filled and lit his pipe, and gasped out, ^ Oh, I
thought we should have taken off our breeches ! ' I stared at Joe,
thinking his exertions had produced a fit of temporary insanity, and
said, ^ Why, Joe, what on earth should we take ofif our breeches for V
* What for ? — ^Why, suppose you not got any breeches on, you run
heap faster. Best always take 'em off before shooting at a bear: he
nm such a devil of a pace if you only wound him.' And so, having
rested' a little and skinned our bear, and packed the hide and some
meat on our backs, we scrambled down to the shore, chucked our
burdens into the canoes lying ready laden, and paddled off under the
light of a rising moon.

Our canoes were deep in the water. A straight course led us far
from shore, and once or twice my heart leaped into my throat with a
horrid feeling of apprehension, at the sudden unearthly scream of a
startled loon, sounding exactly like a human shriek of agony denoting
the capsize of one of the following canoes ; but no such untoward
accident occurred, and after some hours of paddling we drew up our
boats at our old camp near the head of the lake, made a fire, cooked
and ate our supper, and after a couple of hours' sleep started again the
following morning, about two hours before dawn. We had hard work
on that day's journey. The river was very rapid : our course lay up
stream, and we had to pole all the way. It is not easy for a novice to
stand upright in a small birch-bark canoe, but after a little practice
he gets his canoe legs, and learns not only to balance himself without
danger to the frail craft, but to exert in safety the whole of his
strength in forcing her up some rapid stream. It is astonishing to
see the apparent ease with which, two good men will drive a
canoe up a rapid. They approach it in the same way as does a fish,
stealing quietly up, husbanding their strength, and taking advantage
of every little eddy to get as close to the fall as possible ; and then
make a rush out into the stream without any hurry, plashing, or
confusion, but with quiet, methodical, concentrated strength. Once
out in the full force of the current, and the struggle begins. For a

1881. A GLIMPSE AT NEWFOUNDLAND. 101

few yards the momentum of the canoe carries her on ; then she stops,
the men throw their whole weight upon their poles, that bend beneath
them and tremble in the glancing stream ; the water hisses by the
side, and curls up in front of the prow as the canoe is forced up inch
by inch against the tide. Hold on now in the stern, while the bow-
man takes a fresh hold. Down slips the canoe half a fathom, while
the man in the stem snatches his pole from the water and drives it
fiercely down again and holds her up once more against the torrent.
Perhaps his pole slips, or gets jammed between two stones, or in spite
of all their efforts to keep her end-on to the stream, the boat's head
slews a little on one side, and away you float helplessly down stream,
only to make another effort, and if necessary another and another,
until the obstacle is oyercome. At last it is overcome : inch by inch,
foot by. foot, yard by yard, the quivering bark struggles up, till with
a final powerful shove she is lifted over the break of the fall, and
glides into still water above. The three principles of poling are :
first, never to put out your strength until you know, by the feel of it,
that your pole is firmly fixed, and does not rest on some loose or
smooth and slippery stone. Secondly, to be careful to exert your
force in a line parallel with the keel of the canoe, and to keep your
pole perpendicularly under you, so that you can draw the canoe
towards it or push her away, according as you may wish. If you plant
your pole too fer out or two much under the canoe, and throw your
weight across her or hang over on your own side, a capsize is probable,
if not inevitable. Thirdly, if your pole gets jammed and you cannot
snatch it out in a second, let go instantly ; for if you hold od and
drag at it, either the canoe will upset or she will slip in the most
miraculous manner from under your feet, and you will find yourself
suspended for a second in space, and then plunged into a raging
flood.

We made camp early that afternoon, for the work had been very
severe, and we needed rest; but seeing a lot of salmon on the shallows,
we determined, in spite of fatigue, to do a little bit of poaching and
bum the water before turning in. An Indian fish-spear is a very
simple affair, but it is far superior to any civilised instrument of the
same kind. It consists of a straight iron spike about six inches long,
let into the end of a pole of ash, or some other heavy wood, and two
wooden jaws lashed one on each side of the spike. These jaws must
be made of some tough elastic material, and are so shaped as to be
fiiniiBhed with broad barbs on the inner sides. There is a space of
about six inches between the points of the jaws, which project an inch
or two heyond the end of the iron spike, but the barbs are not more
than a couple of inches apart ; beyond and inside the barbs the jaws
open out again to a breadth of about four or five inches. When a
fish 18 fairly strack, the wooden jaws expand, the iron spike transfixes

L, the weight of the blow forces him up above the barbs, and the

102 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. January

jaws closing in again, hold him as fast as though he were in a vice.
This kind of spear is very light and handy. It holds a salmon as
securely as any lyster, and it does not gash and mangle the fish. The
material for the wooden portion of our spear was not difficult to pro-
cure^ but we were puzzled to find anything that would do for the
indispensable iron spike, and at last had to make up our minds to
sacrifice the handle of the frying-pan* No sooner said than done. In
a few minutes the rivets were knocked out, and the handle stuck in the
embers of the fire. While some of us were manufiEu^uring the spike by
beating out the handle on an axe-head and afterwards grinding it to
a sharp point on a smooth stone, one of the Indians was hard at work
making the pole and jaws with his hatchet and crooked knife. With
these two implements an Indian will make anything. I have often
watched with admiration a man fell a maple-tree, and in an hour or
two turn out a smooth, delicately poised, accurately shaped axe-hafb
or paddle, with the help of no other tools than his axe and his crooked
knife, an instrument which he generally makes for himself out of a
file, and which resembles in shape the drawing knife of a shoeing
smith. There is one peculiarity about the red man worth mention*
ing, namely, that in using a knife he invariably cuts towards his body,
while a white man always cuts away from his. The Indians of all
the coast provinces are skilful workmen with the crooked knife, and
earn a good deal of money by making butter firkins, tubs, mast-hoops,
and various articles of a similar nature.

By sunset we had finished our spear, and had collected a good
supply of birch bark ; and as soon as it was dark a couple of us
launched a canoe, and after lighting a bimch of birch bark stuck in a
cleft stick in the bow of the boat to act as a torch, started on our
poaching expedition. We all of us had a turn at spearing, and most
comical attempts we made. An empty canoe is 'possessed by a most
malignant spirit of perversity : it floats light as a dry leaf upon the
water, and spins round and roimd, and insists on going in the wrong
direction, and displays a propensity to slip suddenly from under your
feet, and in tsjct behaves altogether in a very fickle and cantankerous
manner. Mishaps, though frequent, were only ludicrous ; for the water
was shallow, salmon were numerous, and in spite of our awkwardness
we had &esh fish for supper that night. We made good progress
next day, and arrived at our old camp on the first lake about sunset.
It rained in perfect torrents that night, and we had a most uncom*
fortable time of it, carrying across to Indian Brook. The water had
fallen so much since we were there, that we found it necessary to
make a portage of six miles instead of two, so as to strike the river
lower down. It is no joke, carrying canoes six miles over a rough
ground, and though our Indians worked splendidly, it did not want
many hours to dawn by the time we had got everything across, and
were changing wet clothes for damp ones, and trying to dry ourselves

1881. A GLIMPSE AT NEWFOUNDLAND. 103

before a huge fire, under the partial shelter of a hastily arranged
leao-to. If we had only known that it was going to rain so hard, we
might have been spared the trbuble of making the long portage, for
when day broke we found the stream had risen at least a foot, and
was coming down in a torrent that bore us rapidly towards the sea.
It was getting dusk when we approached the most ticklish part of the
navigation : we might truthfully have sung

Row, brothers, row, the stxeam runs fast.
The rapids are near and the daylight past ;

and under any other circumstances we would have camped for the
night ; but we were so anxious to save our time with the steamer, that
we determined to chance the rapids, and kept on our way after dark.
It was a lovely night — a night the very memory of which is soothing to
the heart : a night such as xssxk be seen only in high latitudes ; for, in
gpite of all the poetry that has been written on the subject, I main-
tain that no sultry southern night can compare in beauty with the
great glory of the moonlit or star-studded heavens revealed through
tile clear and frosty atmosphere of the icy north. The broad friendly
moon rose above the pine trees, climbed up among the stars, drowning
their feeble beams with a deepening flood of radiance, and hung
suspended in the heavens, a globe of mellow light, searching out the
secrets of the forest, shining white on some fir tree bleached and dead,
throwing black and awful looking shadows &om the living pines,
glimmering on the ragged bark and creamy stems of birch trees,
castiDg the river fringe of alders into deepest gloom, tracing bands
of silver across still reaches of the stream, dancing and flickering on
the lapids, glittering like diamonds on frozen raindrops clinging to
the stiffening blades of grass, half revealing strange mysterious
foriDS, dimly unveiling misty distances, and shedding a peaceful
softoied lustre over the whole scene. The night was still. Silence
settled down upon the earth with the sinking sun — ^a silence broken
now and then by the plunge of an otter, the hoot of an owl, the rise
of some startled wild fowl from the sedge, or the snapping of a dead
stick under the light footfiedl of some beast of the forest, disturbed by
the occasional splash of the steersman's paddle. So drinking in the
iDeauties ci the night, we drifted quietly on till the quickening current
^vrained us to concentrate all our thoughts upon our own safety. The
moonlight was so bright, and objects were so distinctly visible as long
as we were in still water, that we anticipated but little difficulty in
rnnning the rapids, which are not the least dangerous by day } but
as soon as we got among them the difference between the light of
even a cloudy day and the clearest night became very evident. Our
canoes were deeply laden, and so heavy that it was impossiUe to
check than in the strength of the stream ; and we flew down with
80ch velocity that there was no time to pick a channel, and one found

A ^

104 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. January

oneself right on top of some rock or boiling eddy almost at the same
instant that the eye caught sight of the danger. Yet our progress
was slow, for in many places the river spreads out over broad shallows,
and there we had to go very cautiously, creeping along, holding the
canoe back with the paddles, grounding now and then, and having to
back off and seek some deeper place ; and it was long past midnight
when a distant welcome roar showed we were approaching the fall.
There we went ashore, made a fire, brewed some strong green tea,
rested for half an hour, and then having made the short * portage,'
launched our canoes again below the fall. As bad luck would have it,
the tide was out, and we had to pick our way over great flats of sand
miles in breadth, covered by only two or three inches of water, through
which a little narrow shallow channel went meandering to the sea. It
was tedious work, and it was four o'clock in the morning when we got
into deep water, paddled alongside the tug, roused up the crew,
tumbled up on deck, and turned into our bunks below, thoroughly
tired out.

So ended our hunting trip in Newfoundland. It was not very
successful; three cariboo heads and one bear-skin were all the
trophies we had to show. We could not congratulate ourselves upon
the amount of game killed, but at any rate we did not come back
empty-handed, and we had seen something of the country and had
enjoyed a very pleasant month in the woods.

Newfoimdland is not much visited by Englishmen. I know not
why, for it is the nearest and most accessible of all their colonies, and
it offers a good field for exploration and for sport. The interior of a
great part of the island, all the northern part of it in fact, is almost
imknown. The variety of game is not great, there are no moose or
small deer, and bears are, strange to say, very scarce ; but cariboo are
plentiful, and the Newfoundland stags are finer by far than any to be
found on any portion of the continent of North America. The
cariboo, or reindeer, are getting scarce, as they are also in every other
accessible. place. Constant travel across the island interferes with
their annual migration from north to south and from south to north.
They are no longer to be seen crossing Sandy Pond in vast herds in
the spring and fall, but no doubt they are still pretty plentiful in
some remote parts of the country. The shores of Newfoundland are
indented with numerous and excellent harbours, the interior is full of
lakes and is traversed by many streams navigable for canoes, fur is
pretty plentiful, wild fowl and grouse abimdant, and the creeks and
rivers are full of isalmon and trout.

A great portion of the interior of the island consists of barren,
swamp, and water, but there are large tracts of valuable timber, and
of good land suitable in every way for farming purposes. The
climate is very pleasant in summer and the £el11 ; the winters are cold,
though not so severe as on the mainland, but they are protracted far

1881. A GLIMPSE AT NEWFOUNDLAND. 105

•

into the spring, through the chilling influence of the great 'mass 6f
Baffin's Bay ice that comes down the coast about the month of
March. For that reason, and because the extent of good land is
limited, and also on account of the proximity of Prince Edward's
Island and the mainland, where both soil and climate are better
suited to the cultivation of crops, Newfoundland will never be much
of an agricultural country. It has great mineral riches, chiefly con-
sisting of copper, which as yet are only partially developed, but the
true source of its wealth and cause of its prosperity is, and always
will be, the sea. There is a farm which needs no cultivation, a mine
which never ^ peters out*' The hardy Newfoundland fisherman pur-
sues his calling not only among his native bays, but also along the
coasts of the Labrador as &x north as the entrance into Hudson's
Straits ; and yet, in spite of aU his industry and the inexhaustible
riches of the sea, he leads a poor, and too often a miserable life* He
is generally deeply in debt to the nearest storekeeper, and he is com-
pelled to look on while others reap the harvest drawn from what he,
perhaps not unnaturally, considers his own seas. The fishery question
in Newfoundland, and in fact the whole state of the country, is in a
peculiar condition.

Most Englishmen probably suppose that Newfoundland is a de-
pendency of Great Britain ; but that idea is only partially true, for the
sovereign rights of the Crown are recognised only over a portion of
the island. The fishery rights of France, as settled under the treaty
of Utrecht in 1713, still remain in force. Under that treaty the
iaiands of St. Pierre and Miguelon were absolutely secured to France
to enable her to pursue the cod-fishery of the great banks, and she
further retained certain vaguely defined rights over that part of the
island known as the French coast, namely, the shore from Cape Bay
to Cape John, a distance of about 400 miles. The possession of the
two islands above mentioned is of the greatest value to France, and
at the same time causes no practical inconvenience to the Newtbund-
landers. It is true that a great industry has passed from us, and that
the fishery on the great banks is almost entirely in the hands of the
French, who employ about 300 vessels and 10,000 men — half the
number of ships and seamen engaged in their Newfoundland fishery,
in that branch of the trade alone ; but this is not owing to the con-
venience ofiered them by the possession of fishing stations at Sh Pierre,
or to amy lack of industry and enterprise on the part of oiir men, but
is caused by the high bounties given by the French Government, which
enable their fishermen to undersell our people, and renders competition
on our part useless. The state of things existing on the French shore
18, however, looked upon as a real grievance by the English inhabitants
of Newfoundland. France claims a strip of land half a mile in width
nUmg the whole western seaboard of the island. She also, practically
speaking, owns half the interior of the island. What is the exact

106 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Januaiy

nature of the rights which she is entitled to exercise over the fore-
shore has never yet been determined. It was retained for fishery
purposes. The French cannot erect permanent buildings of any
kind, but they may set up temporary huts and drying stages, and
everything necessary for the accommodation of their men during the
fishing season. So much is clearly understood. But whether the
French rights are exclusive ; or whether the English may also make
use of the shore for fishing purposes ; or if not, then whether they are
also precluded from permanently settling and cultivating land, or
working minerals on the French shore, are doubtful points ; but they
will have to be decided some day, for the state of things which now
exists, though it might have been thought little of when Newfoundland
was a mere storehouse for salt, and a drjdng-place for the nets of
fishermen who paid it an annual visit, will become unbearable as the
island develops and is settled up. It is not the fisheries alone that
are concerned. If you make a man absolute master of the door, it is
obvious that he practically controls the room within ; and as the
natural and only outlet for nearly half the island is through the
French shore, it is equally certain that the wealth in mines, timber,
and agricultural produce of many thousands of square miles must
remain imdeveloped until some satisfactory arrangement is arrived at.
Thanks to the tendency of treaty makers to scamp their work, and to
be content to accept vague generalities and to leave inconvenient
details to be dealt with by their successors, a nice muddle exists in
Newfoundland. The Grown exercises sovereign right, and the Colonial
Parliament extends its rule over a portion only of a British colony.
And now, to make confusion worse confounded, we have entered into
more vague and ill-defined eogagements with the United States.
Nobody seems even to know whether American fishermen can exercise
their rights subject to or independent of the local laws binding on
the natives of Newfoundland. Still less can any one pretend to say
what rights, if any, the United States acquired on the French shore.
The Fishery Convention between Grreat Britain and the United
States was of course subject to the provisions of all existing treaties
entered into by France and England, and dealing with the fisheries
of Newfoundland, but nobody knows what those provisions mean.
We may take one view, France a second, Newfoundland a third, and
the Government of Washington a fourth. Who is to say which view
is correct P The result of this confusion is, that there is no law what-
ever on the French shore. That country is inhabited by refugees
from other parts of the island, and emigrants from Cape Breton or
Prince Edward's Island, and from Nova Scotia and other portions of
the mainland. These people, many of whom had urgent private
reasons for thinking a change of domicile desirable, have squatted on
the land and appropriated it — stolen it, in fact, from the Crown. Each
fiEunily or cluster of families forming a little settlement, daima the

1881. A GLIMPSE AT NEWFOUJ/BLAND. 107

land about them, the valley probably of the river on the banks of
which they dweU, and are fully prepared to uphold their claim. It
is a delightfully primitive state of society. No writs run in that
happy land, and every man does that which seems best to him in his
own eyes. Taxes, however, have been raised, but when the Colonial
Parliament passed a Bill giving two members to the district, the
Act was at once disallowed by the Home Grovemment, as interfering
with the French rights ; and the curious spectacle might have been
seen of a population of British subjects in a colony enjoying free
Parliamentary Government, paying taxes, but having no representation
whatever. There are many other inconveniences arising from the
peculiar circumstances connected with the French shore. The
Government is, practically speaking, precluded from making grants of
Crown lands over about 20,000 square miles of country ; nobody cares
to purchase and clear land or prospect for minerals ; millions of feet
of lumber have been cut from off Crown lands without the payment
of one farthing, and the rivers are persistently barred and the salmon
fisheries destroyed. There is, in fact, a state of things existing in
Newfoundland which finds no parallel in any civilised country in the
world, and which is unknown in any other colony of G-reat Britain.
In the midst of a self-governing comimunity a population exists
owning no allegiance to any one, liable to no laws, practically speaking
subject to no Government of any kind. It is an anomalous and
not a veiy creditable state of things. Whether it can be remedied
or not is altogether another matter, but if possible something should
be done for our own credit and for the sake of our fellow-subjects in
Newfoundland. Newfoundland has special claims upon us, for though
sentiment is generally out of place in politics, it cannot be for-
gotten that Newfoundland is England's first-bom. That foggy little
island, although perhaps somewhat of a rough diamond, is a valuable
jewel, and is the first that was set in our imperial crown.

Dtoravbn.

108 TEE NINETEENTH CENTURY. January

A DAY WITH A WAR BALLOON.

L

So many people seem to take a lively interest in balloons and
ballooning, that perhaps it may be worth while to note down the
following short account of some early experiences and first impressions
with balloons before they fade away from the memory.

July 28. — This is the third day that we have been hard at work
making gas for balloons in the Arsenal cat Woolwich with an experi-
mental apparatus. The process of manufacturing hydrogen by
blowing steam through heated iron turnings presents no great
novelty in principle, for the French used it for inflating their
military balloons as long ago as the battle of Fleurus in 1794; and,
to judge by the meagre accounts which have reached us, they appear
to have been very successful in the manu&cture. In these days of
competitive examinations and Staff College certificates the soldier
has to use his pen as much if not more than his sword, and the
military student of the future will be overwhelmed with records only
too voluminous and elaborate of every detail of our military equip-
ment. But in those days, under the stem rSgime of a revolutionary
convention, the sword had decidedly the best of it, so no detailed
records of the French and their work are available. We must be
content to learn our experience &om the beginning, and find out how
to manufacture our hydrogen for ourselves. We are at present very
new to the work, and we have to contend with many difficulties.
Yet we do manage to make hydrogen. The worst of it is that when
we have got it, it is very difficult to keep it, for it is the most
subtle and difficult to retain of any gas which we could possibly use.
So we cannot avoid a serious loss by leakage, though our light balloon
fabric does retain it much better than might fairly be expected*

But to-day being fine and favourable for ballooning, it is time to
forsake the gas furnace, and get a little practical experience as an
aeronaut. The Talisman, as the balloon is named which we propose
to employ, being already half full of hydrogen, is fiUed up completely
with gas, and I first try a captive ascent.

A strong rope, perhaps 4,000 feet long, is wound upon a large

1881. A DAT WITH A WAR BALLOON. 109

drum, whence it can be paid out or hauled in, as required, by means
of a winch and brake. The end of the rope is carefully made fast to
the Talisman's hoop. This is a strong circle of ash, to which all the
terminal cords of the balloon netting above are fastened, and below
which again the car is suspended by proper car-lines or connecting
ropes. I get into the car. A sufficient number of bags of sand as
ballast are introduced, to leave only a moderate lift or ascensional power
in the balloon. The rope pays itself out readily from the drum as
the Sapper in charge eases ofif the brake. The Talisman soars aloft,
and whenever the pace is too rapid it is easily checked by a light
application of the brake.

This is almost my first introduction to captive work, and the
sensation is most decidedly not too pleasant or reassuring. The
great balloon above tugs and struggles, as if perfectly conscious of a
humiliating state of captivity, and longing to be free. This is
especially the case whenever a gust of wind puts a considerable extra
strain on the guy rope. The latter, as I have said, is fastened to
the hoop above one's head. But it rides against the light wicker-
work of the car, which creaks and groans in response in a doleful and
somewhat distressing manner. Were it not for a powerful spring of
india-rubber, which checks the oscillations of the guy rope, and tends
to steady the balloon, the effect on one's nerves might be much
worse than it is.

But, fortunately, there is not too much time for noticing these

matters, for there is a constant necessity for letting go ballast, to

meet the continually increasing weight of suspended guy rope below,

or the balloon would soon cease to rise. At last the ballast is all

expended, and the guy rope is payed out no further. The wind has

caused the balloon to drift off to a considerable distance horizontally

from the point of departure below, and she now settles into a condition

of approximate equilibrium. The height above the ground is shown

by the barometer to be about 1,000 feet. The long guy rope hangs

in a graceful curve below. The portion next the balloon, for

hundreds of feet, is nearly vertical, and that near the ground almost

horizontal. But of this I see little. One or two timid glances are

quite sufficient, for one's head, naturally a very indifferent one

where it is a question of looking down from giddy heights, is not yet

acclimatised to the situation by practice in ballooning. So I cannot

look at the ground under, or nearly under, the balloon without a

shudder and a decidedly creepy sensation. Above all, one must avoid

looking down the guy rope, for this, in its long catenary, extending

far below, reach after reach, and ending almost in a vanishing point,

g^ives a measure to the eye of the giddy height. And to look along

it makes one's brain reel — far worse, as I afterwards find, than looking

down from thrice the height in a free trip where there is no guy rope.

For military purposes, for reconnoitring that is, there can be

L_..

110 TEE NINETEENTH CENTURY. January

no question of the value of such a suspended point of observation as
this. Every detail in the innumerable buildings below — the work-
men going to and fro in their work, the ships passing and repassing
on the Thames, the Beckton gas-works on the further shore and
lower down the river, the Artillery exercise ground on Woolwich
Common, the Herbert Hospital and other buildings further away— ^
everything is seen, and in the clearest possible manner* For there is
a very sensible advantage in the clearness of view from a balloon as
contrasted with that obtained at the ground level, even where the
latter is perfectly free and unobstructed by obstacles. It is well
known to astronomers, and to all who have to make careful obser-
vations of distant objects, that the vision in a horizontal or nearly
horizontal direction is greatly interfered with by the imseen ex-
halations from the ground, and the varying density of the lowest
strata of air at and near the ground. Whereas at a high angle, as
here from the balloon, the rays of light have only to traverse a very
limited amount of these disturbed strata, and are consequently much
more unimpeded and reliable*

But the day is wearing on, and I want to get away as early
as possible for a free run, so I signal with a flag to lower.
The drum is set in motion, and the Sappers below apply them-
selves steadily to wind the Talisman down. This is rather a
long business, and the oscillations of the rope which it causes give
rise to sensations which remind me very unpleasantly of the rolling
of a vessel at sea in a ground swell. It is not without much thank-
fulness that at last terra firma is reached.

The Talisman has lost some considerable amount of gas in the
captive ascent, owing to the expansion due to the diminished baro-
metric pressure at 1,000 feet from the ground. This loss is quickly
repleni^ed, that the start may be made with a full balloon, and about
4 P.M. all is ready.

The getting away, or starting, in a balloon is always rather a deli-
cate and critical operation, and far more ballooning accidents have
occurred probably, in connection with it, than at any other period,
for it is by no means easy to regulate the ascension or lift of the
balloon. This must be sufficient to clear all obstacles on the ground,
but if it be too great the balloon would be carried upwards too fast
and too far.

The case is rendered more difficult on this occasion by the circum-
stance that there are a set of telegraph wires close to the balloon
ground, and down wind, which of course I must avoid. We make
two or three false starts, to try the lift of the balloon, and haul her
down again to alter the weight of ballast. But at last I am off
safely with a moderate ^ascension' at 4.15 p.m. I am quite alone,
as before in the captive ascent, for the balloon is rather too small
to carry two persons well, in addition to^ a sufficient quantity of

1881. A DAT WITH A WAM BALLOON. Ul

ballasts. Moreover, I shall learn my experience far better when thus
left to one's own resources.

After noting with much satisfaction that we have cleared the
telegraph wires, and are rising steadily at a moderate rate, so that
there is time to attend to necessary matters, the first thing to be
done is to see that the valve line is hanging ready to hand, and
disentangled from the other .ropes, for it might easily have got
foul of something in the swaying and bumping of the balloon
before she was set free. I glance upwards at the same time to make
sure that the ^petticoat,' or tail of the balloon, is freely open;
for were this tied up in its normal condition on the ground, the
expansion of the imprisoned gas on rising to any considerable
height would infallibly burst the balloon. The next thing is
to take the aneroid barometer from the case wherein it has hitherto
laiDj for protection from the shocks of starting, and fasten it up
in a convenient position for observation on one of the side car-
lines,

I note while tying it up that it shows that we are rising steadily,
but not too rapidly. Next the pilot line must be thrown overboard,
and left hanging from the hoop. This is a strong cord measuring
100 feet, and its use is to guide the eye as to one's distance from the
ground in descending. It has been lying in a rough coil at the
bottom of the car, to prevent its getting entangled at starting. I
now overhaul it and pay it out of the balloon.

The view of the ground below, which one gets while leaning over
the side of the car, to see that the pilot line has not fouled in its
extension, is the first look I have really had to see what we are
doing and where we are going. These little necessary preliminary
operations have taken up every instant of time, and have been
done, if the truth must be told, with a considerable amount of
nervous haste.

That steady coolness which would clearly be a most desirable
element in ballooning is hardly forthcoming, for this is the first
time that I have foimd myself thus alone in a balloon with the
whole responsibility of its management. So I am nervous just at
starting. By-and-by, with more experience, one may hope to get
steadier.

About this time a strong smell of gas warns me that the balloon
is overfilled by expansion, and it is time to let out gas at the top, if
one does not mean to be choked by the downward rush from the
opening at the bottom. One steady pull on the valve line, and a
sufficient quantity escapes at the top of the balloon to provide for
present security.

Now there is time to look around. Vertically below the balloon,
I dare not look, or only for a moment, my head not yet being educated
to the required point. But looking over the side at a steep angle,

112 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. January

the decks of the steamers far below are a curious and interesting study,
with the long black tails of smoke, which they are apparently dragging
after them, for we are passing over the Thames. It lies below in a
broad silver sheet, with the sun shining upon it. On either side its
numerous windings and snake-like folds are clearly visible, ending in a
forest of innumerable masts and spires on the London side. Con-
spicuous therein are the transverse streaks representing the several
bridges, and a few prominent buildings, such as the Houses of Parlia-
ment and St. Paul's Cathedral. Eastwards, on the side of the sea,
the tortuous folds lose themselves in the broad estuary which opens
out towards the Nore.

Now we are on the Essex side of the river. The balloon has
reached her equilibrium level at about 2,000 feet, and for a short time
she floats horizontally along. For a short time only — for the impos-
sibility of keeping a balloon in such a continuous horizontal course is
a leading difficulty in ballooning, although some approximation may
be made to it by skilful and fortunate management. My belloan
soon begins to settle downwards again.

Were she left to herself she would tend to run down faster and
faster, and soon reach the earth. I allow her to descend slowly,
but I prevent any such acceleration by throwing small quantities of
ballast at intervals, watching the barometer all the time for guidance
as to the amount required. I am most careful not to throw too much
ballast, otherwise she would turn upwards again, and, unless checked
by letting out gas with the valve, would run up higher than before.
By watching carefully, and thus gradually drawing out the balloon's
descending path into a line more and more nearly horizontal, I
manage to get her on a horizontal course at length, and about 100
feet from the ground. Every titne the pilot line — which is 100 feet
long — drags on the ground I throw a little ballast, just enough to lift
it clear again withoftt giving the balloon any decided upward turn.
Thus we glide rapidly along pretty near the ground for several miles,
and I am so successful in this delicate operation of keeping the
balloon in equilibrium, that perhaps at last one grows a trifle careless.
The pilot line drags on a meadow below, and the friction gives the
balloon a downward turn, which increases every instant as more of the
line drags behind in the long grass. I instantly throw whatever
small quantity of ballast is ready to hand at the moment, just to gain
time, and my back having been now for some time turned in the
direction of our course, I glance roimd to see that the country ahead
is clear of obstacles in case we come to the ground. Horror I we are
driving rapidly right on to a high tree. I can only allow myself one
single half-second to make up one's mind whether to throw the grapnel,
open the valve if necessary, and descend at once, or to throw out a
quantity of ballast instead to lift her, and try to clear the tree. The
former course would bring my trip to a premature conclusion, and if

1881. A DAY WITH A WAR BALLOON. 113

the grapnel should not hold very well I shall drive into the tree to a
certainty. The latter is clearly the more sporting line to take^ though
somewhat hazardous. At all events it is the one selected. I seize
a heavy bag of ballast with both hands,* heave it up with all my
strength, and throw it bodily over.

The balloon must have a few moments to turn upwards, but while
she is so doing we are driving rapidly on, and nearing the tree
fasL The collision seems inevitable. But I reckon that when
onoe the balloon has fairly turned upwards she will ascend very
rapidly.

It is an ezcitiug situation, for she does rise so fast that I am in
doubt whether we shall not pull clear up to the very last moment.
Her envelope and netting, as she lifts, brush close past the outermost
twigs without catching in them — only a few seconds more and we
should have cleared the tree splendidly. But now it is too late, for
the car hangs too far below the balloon.

At the last moment, seeing the collision inevitable, I seize two
opposite car lines, or connecting ropes between the car and the hoop
above, pull them well in, that the others in front may shield my
knuckles from the oncoming boughs, hold on to them very tightly,
crouch down at the bottom of the car, with my legs extended
horizontally in front of me, and press my feet firmly against the for-
ward side of the wicker car, to support it with the strength and
momentum of my body. The next instant we are into the tree with
a tremendous crash. It is a large elm, and we strike it perhaps
fifteen or twenty feet from the top, right in the centre, and in a
direction inclining upwards. The next instant I find myself right in
the middle of the tree, with the car dancing like a shuttlecock among
the larger branches. Most fortunately the oval car is end on as
r^ards the tree, so that its smaller and stronger section is presented
to it. All the smaller outside boughs have been wrenched off or
bent aside, and they have no doubt rendered most valuable service by
checking our momentum gradually. I am still crouching low down
in the car for protection, and holding on with all my strength to avoid
being tossed out. On glancing up I am well pleased to see that
nothing has given way. Every one of these slight-looking cords
which suspend me from the hoop would hang me, and the car, and
the ballast, and a barrow-load or two of bricks into the bargain, over
a ]Mrecipioe with perfect safety. Not one of them has gone. On my
side nothing goes, so it is pretty evident that the tree must go.

At every gust of wind the great balloon above tugs and struggles
like a captive Leviathan longing to be free. There is a riving, a
cracking, a smashing, and a rending, and bough after bough is
wrenched aside or torn off. No matter how large and strong they
seem, it is all one.

The car ploughs its way steadily on, foot by foot forwards and
Voi^ IX.— No. 47. I

114 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. January

upwards right through the tree. Soou we are free, and with an
exultiug bound the halloon soars upwards once more. But stay— not
80 fast — there is a tremendous jerk, and, had I not fortunately been
still holding on tightly to the friendly car-lines, I might have been
shot between them right out of the car iuto empty space. The |
sudden check arises from the grapnel rope, which was hanging in a |
single long bight — ^fifty feet below the car. -^ • i . i !

The Ught of the rope has caught over a large boiigh below, and
pulled us up with a round turn. The siluation is a ilftUib a^waad^
for I seem to be hung up half way between heaven and earth** 1^
before entertaining the question o^ cutting away the grapnel: rope,
we will see what the balloom herself can accomplish. Shel tespotkia to
the call, for she surges and tugs more valiantly than eyer. : Again
there are sounds of cracking and rending below : one or two < more
strong jerks, as the rope, after breakipg one large bougfay csAches-' on
another, and we are really free once more. I glance alofij and around.
We have positiyely no damage whatever^ nor any token of the en-
counter, e|X)ept one or two small bougbs^nrtuich we have caxried away
triumphantly sticking in the ooDdaga 9^ve as trophies of our
victory. It is clear from the last part -of the adventure that it is a
mistake where trees are concerned to have the grapnel rope hanging
loose. So my first care is to ms^e it. up into a coil, which I lash
alongside the car. The balloon is risijig.very mpidly, but I will let
her go as high as she will, and even throw more ballast if necessary.
For the present currents near^the gc^uad are taking us nearly strught
for the sea, and I will try if haply the^ is a mcnre. favourable current
up above. Moreover, the successful i^si4t of the ^icounter with the
tree has inspired one with a spirit of adventure^ and I want to see
what sort of a world may be on the other side of the dark cloud
masses above. . Upwards we rush accordingly, and soon enter the
clouds. They are dense. I'^am instaiitly shut in on every side, and
cannot see the width of my ^balloon away in the thick, masses of
whirling vapour.

We still rise rapidly, as is clear from the steady fall of the baro-
meter, but the clouds are so thick that we are a long time in
getting through them.

At last in a moment we seem to emerge, as if from a dose and
stifling pit of Avemus, into bright sunshine and the upper regions.
We soar higher and higher as the hot sun expands the gas. Soon
we have left every cloud far below us, and I find myself indeed in a
new world.

1881- A BAY WITH A WAR BALLOON. 115

11.

Alone in a balloon, far above the highest cloud, and how lonely
irfao in the world below can tell ? Doubtless there is a loneliness on
earth, as we wander in solitude in the wild and xmtenanted desert, on
the lonely ocean shore, or in the mysterious gloom of some huge
tropical forest. And there is a deep moral and spiritual loneliness in
the strange and crowded city, where every one is hurrying on his own
usr^iarding way; or in the fisMcling daylight and oncoming dark-
ness as we linger in some forsaken cemetery, where lie the remains of
those who in life were dearer to us than life itself. But the desert has
its tenants, be it only ihe slinking jackal below, or the soaring vulture
above. The sea is alwa3rs alive and replete with interest, with its
innumerable ripples or its mighty waves in storm or calm. The
forest is peopled, and full of sound and motion, be it of insect, or
animal, or bird. The strange city abounds in human interest. Every
new fiice is a study of a human life, and a record of a brother's ex-
perience. The solitary cemetery, with its sad monumental inscrip-
tions, though it tells of separation, tells also of hope and renewal. It
takes UB back to the past and forward to the future. Even the dust
beneath' our feet is a link to bind us closer to our common humanity.
Eveiywhere there is life or life's associations ; everywhere ties and
eoimeeting cords to appeal to our own human life, and prevent us
from feeling alt(^ether alone. And he knows little of the human
heart who knows not the power of these things and how we cling to
them. The familiar nibbling mouse, the accustomed spider, the
regtdar bugle-caU, the sentry's well-known challenge, have saved
many a poor prisoner in his lonely cell from madness and despair.

But here, in these eternal solitudes, there is no &miliar form, no
accustomed fiEice, no sound, no voice, no life : only one vast untenanted
abyss — only one deep un&tbomable calm.

It is therefore, perhaps, no marvel that the first effect of this in-
tense loneliness is neither moral nor spiritual, but essentially sensuous.
The sensuous soul, the Psyche, sees herself suddenly stripped of all
those innumerable external ties which had a powerful though unseen
hold upon her everywhere below. The great gulfs which lie between
her and them, and that dark, impenetrable cloud-curtain which
everywhere enshrouds them, seem to her quickened apprehension like
long centuries, seons, of dreadful isolatipn and severance. She shivers,.
forlorn and naked, in the unknown void. For a while, indeed, she
struggles and bears up. She is not prepared thus all at once without
an effort to resign, together with all old associations, her hold upon
the past, her volition in the present, her foresight and interest in the
fdture*

i2

116 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. January

All in vain. The situation is far too strong for her. For now, like
deep draughts of intoxicating wine, the subtle but potent influence of
this overpowering repose steals in at every pore. It thrills through
every fibre of one's being. It rises higher and higher, wave on wave,
like a mighty flood. It takes luidisturbed possession. All is for
gotten. The great world below, so lately left, so manifold and rich
in its myriad interests, has become an unregarded lump of pitiful
dirt, which I may possibly have seen in some remote past ; but I
know not, and I care not, whether I shall ever see it again. Home,
family, friends, affections, hopes, ambitions, all fade away. They are
as the memory of a vanishing dream. They are not. The Present,
the entrancing Present, rules absolutely supreme.

I dare not move ; it would be a desecration. Speech were pro-
&nity. The sound of my own voice, breaking in upon this awful
silence, would jar upon the ear as harshly as would the loud boisteroos
song of some profane and drunken reveller disturbing the devout wor-
shipper in the still and solemn aisle of a cathedral at midnight. It
is with extreme reluctance that I force myself to make a slight ne-
cessary movement of one arm. The little creaking of the wicker car
which this involves makes me shudder. The small sound is quickly
gone, it is true. It goes out and returns not. It is instantly de-
voured— ^swallowed up and lost in the imfathomable gulfs which open
out on every side. There is no doud near to give back even the
£Edntest murmur of an echo.

It is only, of course, at first that one's sensations seem so purely
sensuous. Indeed the situation is not without moral and spiritual
lessons of the highest order, and to these, let us hope, we are not
altogether blind or dead. Here there is nothing but the Almighty
and His greatest works. And we can, in some faint and far-off
measure, understand how small in Hid sight must be the little
rivalries, the narrow prejudices, the unworthy jealousies, the petty
anxieties, the fashionable trivialities, which make up so much of our
lives below. Here, far above it all, we feel as if, like Lear and
Cordelia in their coveted prison, we could

take upon us the mystery of things
As if we were God's spies.

His greatest works. Surely sun and sky and cloud are these.
And here there is nothing else, and we see them in an unimagined
perfection. The Sun is no longer the sun which we know so well on
earth. There he is perpetually half obscured, and even on the
brightest summer's day he has to shine through innumerable varying
layers of lower, moister, and denser atmosphere, which half quench
his rays. But here he is a mighty burning orb, illuminating every-
thing with one overpowering flood of glorious light. And such is the
power of his rays, that without a thermometer I should be quite im-

188K A DAY WITH A WAR BALLOON. 117

conscious of the circumstance that the temperature of the surround-
ing air has fjEdlen twenty or thirty degrees since we left the earth.

The sky, when on the ground, was quite obscured by clouds. As
we ascended higher, and it came, here and there, into view, it was of
the usual milky ^ sky-blue ' tint. It has grown brighter and brighter,
bluer and more blue as we rose ; and now it is of an intensely deep
PniB^an blue colour, like its hue at midnight on an exceptionally
clear night. It is a glorious, shining firmament of deepest trans-
parent sapphire* In the whole grand hemisphere there is not one
soUtaiy minutest speck to mar its absolute unity and perfection. For
we haye left far behind every trace of fog or mist or vapour, together
with the whole apparatus for their manufacture. We gaze every-
where uninterruptedly into the transparent blue ether of illimitable
space.

The clouds are all far below. Their first effect when we rose
above them was that of a vast, lustrous, many-rippled lake of snow-
white gossamer cirrus. A little later, as we rose higher, and the
larger masses below came more and more into view, in the wide
intervals between the floating cirrus, they constituted a mighty ocean,
with huge tumbling billows, and each billow seems huger and more
wonderful than the last. But far away, towards the horizon, their
giant forms melt gradually down and mingle with the cirrus, as the
distance continually increases, until at last the vanishing point takes
the form of a distinct and clear horizontal arc. This is as well defined
all round the entire circumference as the ocean horizon at sea, and
upon it I could take a sextant observation fuUy as well.

Besides these three grand elements of Sun and Sky and Cloud, there
is nothing, apparently, in the whole universe but my tiny car, and the
soaring balloon above. Stay — far below, projected horizontally on a
gigantic cloud, I see another and a far larger balloon, with car,
aeronaut, ropes, every detail distinct and clear. It is the shadow of
my own balloon, enormously elongated, half a mile long, or it may be
t^ miles ; for I have no means of judging distances in this vast
abyss wherein I float, an utterly insignificant speck, with no single
known or fixed point anywhere, other than the sun overhead. These
thea make up the apparent sum total of things. A simple total. But
all monotony in the picture is amply dispelled by the wonderful varia-
tions of form and colour in the clouds themselves. From the lightest
snowy flecks of floating cirrus, through all conceivable or inconceivable
shapes of giant cumulus, down to dense impenetrable layers of solid
stratus,— there they are. Their forms, their hues, and grouping
are perpetually changing. Not rapidly, that would be out of harmony
with the scene. But in a slow, silent manner, which seems to
elindnate the idea of motion, and harmonizes well. • And the great
sun above pours down upon them all alike one tremendous flood of
daiszling radiance, giving rise alternately to the brightest of lights or

118 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. January

the deepest of shadows, according as they aie exposed to, or screened
from, his powerful rays.

At first it might well seem a wonder and a pity that no man has
ever seen these magnificent clouds, and that no human eye ever will
see them but mine. To the artist and to eveiy loving worshipper of
Nature in her grandeur and her beauty they would be naught else
than an education, and a supreme delight. Yet doubtless, beings of
another world, and with far better eyes than ours, behold tbeir
marvellous perfection, and rejoice. And, whether or no, let it abun-
dantly sufiSce that the Allseeing eye of the great Creator is upon every
one of them, and that His sovereign approbation has for ever stamped
them as Good.

But now it is high time to attend to the balloon and her path.
On entering the clouds and losing sight of the earth, I had, knowing
that our course might be nearly straight for the sea, fixed a time by
my watch, beyond which, on a rough estimate, we must on no account
remain lost in the clouds, otherwise, on descending, I might find
myself over the water. That time has now expired, or nearly so.
The balloon has been travelling at her own wilL For a considerable
time after rising above the clouds the expansion of the gas due to the
powerful direct rays of the sun sustained her well. But of late she
has been settUng slowly downwards. We are now between 6,000 and
7,000 feet from the ground. The clouds below are less dense than
they were. Through rifts in their dark masses I begin to catch
occasional fleeting glimpses of the earth. I lean over the edge of
the car, and fancy that there is thus dimly to be discerned a long ill-
defined line which might be the coast-line. A few moments later,
and the truth is clear. There it is. The sea is below and most
perilously close. We are driving right on to it. There is yet
considerably more than a mile to fall. Shall I ever get down in
time ? or is it possible to stand on, husband the ballast carefully,
and cross over ? One glance at the size of the balloon and the limited
quantity of ballast available should suffice to dismiss the last idea as
quite impracticable. But I cannot help toying with the thought for a
few moments. The truth is, that I have drank so deeply of that intense
repose which broods over all here like a presiding spirit, that I seize
greedily on any excuse for putting off, just for a few moments longer,
the inevitable time of energetic action. But every moment 'is
precious. We are driving steadily on at an unknown rate. So with
an effort I rouse myself, and seize the valve-line. One, two, three,
four, five, six, — I count the time, holding the great valve on top of
the balloon wide open. It would be sheer insanity, under any
ordinary circumstances, thus to challenge my balloon to a headloi^
course downwards. But I am now fully awake to the situation. A
decided effort must be made, and any half measures would be fore-
doomed to disastrous failure. I calculate that the clouds below will

1881. A DAT WITH A WAR BALLOON. 119

tend to check the inevitable acceleration of speed in our downward
course to a considerable extent. No doubt when we get through them
I shall have to look out, for she will be likely to accelerate greatly ;
bat there is sufficient ballast to enable me to put on a powerful brake
to stop her down below. In any case it seems better to run any
iinknown risk, which the imcertainty as to stopping her involves,
than to incur the absolute certainty of falling into the sea a little
later on.

Down we go accordingly. I employ the short time available
before we reach the clouds in piling up the bags of ballast on the
seat of the car ready to hand for instant dismissal, keeping an inter-
mittent eye on the barometer all the time. When we enter the
clouds the whistle and swish of the light vapour as we rush through
warns me plainly that we are travelling, but although the barometer
is running up rapidly, it does not se^n to indicate any marked
increase of speed. This gives me time to cut adrift the lashing
which ties up the grapnel rope, and to shake out the coils till the
&lling rope hangs in a single bight below. The grapnel itself I
hang by its tines over the side of the car, all ready to let go. The
clouds are thick, and before we are through them everything is in
readiness for a landing. Still rapid progress, but no very marked
acceleration of speed.

Now we are through, and the earth bursts upon us all at once.
The sea is still a considerable distance off, and I am inclined to think
that all is well. One more glance at the barometer — ^we are, say,
3,000 feet £rom the ground. I throw out a few pieces of paper. If
they were to journey down alongside of us we should be falling
rapidly, but at a reasonable rate. But now they rise sharply, and
are soon left far above out of sight. Certainly we are travelling.
I now watch the ground below steadily. We are over an open marsh.
There are one or two solitary shepherds' cottages, and a few dykes
full of water. These objects are apparently moving out from below
to right or left. The rapidly increasing velocity of this, their
angular movement of divergence from the vertical, together with the
progressive enlargement in size of each field, or defined area below,
gives some measure to the eye of the rapid rate of our progress down-
wards, and greater nearness to the ground. I throw more paper.
It runs up faster than before. Shall! ever pull her up? But the
sea is advancing steadily in a swift silent manner, which is not re-
assuring. We are driving fast right on to it. There is plenty of
room under us yet, and I will stand on a little longer. But I heave
up a heavy bag of ballast with both hands, poise it on the edge of
the car, and hold it ready to throw.

All at once it strikes me that she is accelerating frightfully.
The cottage, which at first seemed at rest right underneath us, and
then was creeping slowly out to the left, is now going off at full

120 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. January

gallop like a runaway horse. The whole country immediately below
has become an uncertain sort of moving phantasmagoria. We are
2,000 feet from the ground, by eye, for I dare not lose sight of the
earth to look at barometers. Sea or no sea, I must bring her to
while yet there is room, or surely I shall be smashed to pieces.
Over goes the ponderous mass of ballast, beg and all; and more
follow as fast as I can seize and throw them. Over they go, till I
have only one bag left. The heavy sacks of wet sand go down like
thunderbolts. They ought, of course, to be emptied of their contents,
which would then descend as usual in a harmless shower. ProbaUj
there is nothing but marsh, or only a few cattle, below. But were
there flocks and herds innumerable, and a stray shepherd or two into
the bargain, I should be sorry to assert very positively that they
would not have one and all to take their chance of a bag.

We are still running at a great rate, but it soon l)ecomes clear
that the balloon is losing her way. A little later, and she is bringing
to. There is no longer an upward rush of air against my flattened
hand held horizontally over the side of the car. The moving phan-
tasmagoria has settled down into a well-defined ground plan. A
piece of paper thrown over deaceTida. The barometer, which I can
now again afford to consult, informs me that we are a little under
1,000 feet from the ground. We have gained a thousand iiL pulling up.

Bad judgment, and badly done! For it is clear that I have
greatly overdone the whole thing. Had one thrown only one-half
that precious ballast up above there, just to check the balloon's
course, and the remainder by successive instalments later on as
required, we might now have been nearly on the ground, and moving
towards it at a safe and manageable . rate ; whereas now 6h« has lost
all her way. We are still a long distance from the earth, with the
sea very close. A long white line of hungry-looking foam is coming
straight upon me with the speed of a railway train, and in a weird
silent manner which half fascinates me.

And now her great downward momentum has carried her far
below her true equilibrium level. Now, by all the laws which govern
balloons, she is bound, if I let her go — like a light float driven
forcibly down into a pool of water and then left to itself — to rise
rapidly again. She will run up above the clouds once more, and
carry me thousands of feet higher than we have ever yet been — to
descend later on into the sea, miles from the shore, with a tremendous
crash, for there will then be no ballast to stop her. We must get
down now at all. costs, if not on the land, then as near as possible
to it. Below is a favourable marsh, covered with long rank grass.
I have still one bag of ballast left, and the heavy grapnel to throw.
This I can cut away, rope and all, if necessary ; and she can hardly
gather any very dangerous way now, however much gas I have to
let out to get down in time.

1881. A BAY WITH A WAR BALLOON. 121

There is no time for weighing such considerations as these before
taking action, nor do I need any. For, indeed, at a crisis like this,
as the plot steadily thickens, and your nerves get wound up more and
more to the sticking point, your wits also seem to sharpen continually,
until you anive at a point at which you seize, as it were by inspiration,
at a momentary glance, all the leading points of the situation, and
translate them into instant action with a result as good, or better,
than an hoar's careful consideration would give at an ordinary time.
The instant it became clear that the balloon was bringing to, or had
already brought to, and before she had time to gather way upwards,
I had seized the valve line and opened the valve full. I am now
steadily letting out an enormous stream of gas, while thus reviewing
and deliberately endorsing this sudden resolve. The sea is very near,
and it will be a close race between us. Nevertheless, I am persuaded
that the balloon has got the lead, and this time she shall keep it. So
I do not let go the valve line till we are well on oiu: downward course
once more. I then heave up the last bag of ballast, rest it on the
edge of the car, steady it there with one hand, take the heavy grap-
nel in the other, and stand by to throw them at the right moment.
The half--empty balloon goes rapidly down, gathering way as she goes,
but in the hundreds of feet that are now left she cannot possibly ac-'
celerate as in the thousands up above ; and the more empty she gets
the more her hollow underside tends to hold the air like a parachute.
The last bag goes when we are something over a hundred feet from
the ground. The grapnel follows immediately after, the moment I
am sure that it will reach the ground, as its sustaining rope is a
hnndred feet in length. We are running hard after them ; but the
loss of their combined weight puts a powerful drag upon the balloon,
which has now only me and the light wicker car to carry. She strikes
the ground with a fairly good whack, it is true, but nothing at all to
signify. At the last moment I spring upwards and hold on to the
hoop, that the car may take the first bump. The next instant I am
sprawling at the bottom of the car, with hoop and balloon right on
top of me.

The poor balloon is utterly crippled by the loss of the great
quantity of gas which I had to let out up above, together with all
that has been forced through the pores of the envelope by the great
pressure of air below in her downward rush. She has no heart left
in her, even to attempt to rise again, so there is no question of her
drifting, or dragging the grapnel. Had she been lively and buoyant,
and the grapnel not held very well, she might most easily have con-
trived to dance over the sea-wall into the sea after all, with or without
me.

Now one can afford to sit quietly down for a few moments, to
recover from a somewhat dazed and bewildered state in which the
smart landing, following on such a rapid fall, had left me. No harm

122 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. January

whatever has been done, except that I am partly deaf for a time*
My ears seem half disposed to strike work. They farther express
their resentment at the great and sudden increase of barometric pres-
sure to which their delicate drums have been exposed in such a hasty
descent by sundry cracking[8 and sudden noises at intervals. Two or
three hours elapse before tney recover their normal condition.

We have landed very near the sea-wall, and won the race by about
one minute, more or less. Thus happily ends one of my earliest
ballooning experiences.

Henrt Elsdale.

1881. 123

THE EXHIBITING OP PICTURES}

027CE upon a time Boyal Academicians were fined for not exhibiting,
and the Boyal Academy was reproached for making profits by show-
ing the paintings of outsiders to the public. The contrast between
such a state of things and that which now exists is extraordinary ; it
is greater and probably more permanent than the difference between
the present fashions in dress and those of our ancestors who dyed
themselves with woad; for it is quite certain that thousands of
painters will be anxious to exhibit their works next spring on the
walls of the Boyal Academy^ while no one can venture to afiGbrm that
artr-ladies may not soon cast off their jerseys and stain their bodies
with ' peacock-blue.'

The very useful little book, the title of which is quoted below,
affords admirable materials for considering the struggle for
existence awaiting every picture which comes into the world ; and
to those who can appreciate the study, the hopes, the disappoint-
ments, the praises, and the discouragements which every picture,
however bad, has brought upon its author, a canvas is almost a^ re-
markable ^ a bundle of possibilities ' as a baby.

In our remarks upon the fate of these bantlings we shall make
no distinction between the offspring of artists and amateurs.
Works of art should stand upon their own merits, and the sources
firom which their authors pay their weekly bills afford no means of
classifying such productions or estimating their artistic value. The
broad distinction between the artist and the amateur is this, that the
former lives, or desires to live, by the sale of his works, and that the
latter is more or less independent of such a source of incomei The
artist may produce daubs which no one cares to buy, while the
amateur may paint pictures which would command large prices if he
were williDg to sell them. As a rule most artists are better techni-
cally edocated, can give more time to their art, and are therefore
better painters than most amateurs, but many of them are artists from
circumstances rather than irom natural talent, and it is quite certain
that some amateurs are in every respect superior to some artists.

It is, unfortunately, rather the fashion for artists to speak slight-

' Tk6 Year's Art, B.v Marcus B. Huish, LL.B. (Macmillan & Co., 1880.)

124 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. January

ingly of amateurs ; but as the judgmeut passed upon a work of 'art
should be wholly independent of its author's name and position, and
as the works of the best artists are always very superior to those of
the best amateurs, we are inclined to ascribe all sneers at amateurs
as a class to the natural modesty of inferior professionals.

Now when a man has painted a picture he naturally wishes it to
be seen, either that it may be appreciated, if he is an amateur, or that it
may be bought, if he is a professional artist. It is, therefore, neces-
sary for every painter that he should have the opportunity of showing
his works to the public ; and the object of this paper is mainly to
show how far the existing means of exhibiting answer their purpose,
and how they might be extended or improved.

The Royal Academy demands our first and chief consideration in
this matter, not only on account of its position and pretensions, but
also from the fictitious value popularly ascribed to the judgment it is
supposed to pass upon pictures.

During the London season, the Royal Academy is generally ex-
posed to much abuse. It is reviled as an ill-selected, self-elected
body, with a knighted president and vague privileges, whose duty it
is to exhibit every decent picture that is sent to its rooms, but which
neglects its duty and abuses its privileges by hanging only the miser-
able daubs of its members, and of those painters who have conde-
scended to truckle for their favour. Baldly stated as this is, we may
appear to have exaggerated the charge against the Royal Academy,
but we will venture to affirm that it is no more than a fair summary
of the things that are said about it from the time when the pictures
are sent in till the close of the exhibition.

The main grievance urged against the Royal Academy is that it as-
siunes to judge of the merits of pictures, and judges them very badly.
This is an unfortunately common delusion on the part of the public,
and is especially hurtful to the very persons in whose defence it is
brought forward — the painters of * rejected ' pictures. Its falseness
is well known in artistic circles, but the public in general do un-
doubtedly believe that the exhibition of a picture on the walls of the
Royal Academy is a proof of its merit, and it is common to see in
sale catalogues that the fact of its having been so exhibited is men-
tioned in order to enhance its value. The natural conclusion there-
fore follows that a picture sent in, but not accepted, has been cod-
demned as a work of art by the best painters in the kingdom.

Now it is quite true that the Royal Academy is a self-elected
body, but it would be very unfair to say that its members are on the
whole ill selected : most of the best English painters belong to it ;
there are some very moderate performers in it, and some intolerably
bad daubers, but although there are doubtless some artists still
outside it who are far superior to some who have been admitted, it
is probable that no other process of selection would have secured a

1881. THE EXHIBITING OF PICTURES. 125

better Academy of painters, or would have given greater satisfaction
to the puUic. Plenty of objections can easily be imagined against
every conoeivable mode of selection, from nomination by the Crown
down to drawing by lot ; and although the painters selected might
not be the same, the result of any system would be very similar.
There are good, bad, and indifferent men in both Houses of Parlia-
ment) and in every branch of the Government service. So that, in
spite of competitive examinations, we must own with resignation,
that the infallible method of selection has yet to be discovered.

The Boyal Academicians and Associates, besides putting highly
prized initials after their names, have the privilege of exhibiting
eight pictures apiece in the halls of the Academy. As there are
forty B«A.'8 and thirty A.R.A.'8, they have the right of hanging up
560 pictures, and they are fully entitled to avail themselves of this
privilege. In practice, however, either from modesty or other causes,
they rarely do exhibit their full number of pictures. Last year, for
instance, the members of the Boyal Academy have only hung about
170 of their own works — ^not three apiece — and only two of them
have contributed as many as seven, if we except Mr. Prinsep, whose
one picture shotild count for thirty. There are, moreover, instances
on record in which members have withdrawn some of their own
pictares to make room for the productions of outsiders. It i?, there-
fore, most unfair to represent the Soyal Academy as a selfish body
of painters who take advantage of their privileges to show off tlieir
own works, and to suppress those of their more meritorious rivals.

When the Royal Academy was founded there was certainly no
expectation that its members would avail themselves too freely of
their right to exhibit, for in Rule 17 of the ^Instrument,' the name
given to the original code of the Institution, it is laid down that 'all
Academicians, till they have attained the age of sixty, shall be
obliged to exhibit at least one performance, under a penalty of 51. to
be paid into the Treasury of the Academy, unless they can show
sufficient cause for their omission ; but after that age they shall be
exempt from all duty.'

The same rule prescribes that ' there shall be an annual exhibition
of paintings, sculpture, and designs, which shall be open to aU artists
of distinguished mei%t.^ Now putting the average number of
pictures contributed by Academicians and Associates at 200, there
is space each year for about 1,300 works of other painters. We give
these figures as being tolerably near the mark ; the precise numbers
must of course depend upon the sizes of the pictures accepted. For
these 1,300 places, between 6,000 and 7,000 works are sent in not
only by ' artists of distinguij«hed merit/ but by anybody who thinks
fit to contribute his paintings. The necessary consequence is that
the Royal Academy has to reject from 4,000 to 6,000 works, and
the Council, according to the evidence given before the Royal Com-

126 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. January

mission in 1863, takes gi:eat pains in making what it beUeves to be
a conscientious selection. Here is the great error which causes so
much injustice and discontent. Were the Council composed of the
best judges of pictorial art in its widest sense, and had it the task
of picking out the 1,300 best pictures in all styles from '7,000
so arranged that all could be seen together, it would be sure to make
some xnistakes. But painters are notoriously, bad critics. They
have either the strong sympathies and antipathies peculiar to the
artistic temperament, or, if mere mechanical workmen, have no
tolerance for methods which they do not follow or admire.

A test of the capability of the Eoyal Academy Council for
selecting works of art is given by the purchases made by them under
the Chantrey bequest. The task is a comparatively easy one. They
have only to buy ' Works of Fine Art of the highest merit in Painting
or Sculpture,' executed ^ within the shores of Grreat Britain ' ^ by a
deceased or living artist,' and they are not even bound to spend the
whole or any part of the sum at their disposal ' in every or any one
year.' During the last two years the selection made under these
terms has met with general approval, but an inspection of the
Chantrey bequest collection at the South Kensington Museum can
only fill the visitor with amazement, and lead the most charitaUe
critic to imagine that the Council had almost too consciexitioagly
administered a benevolent fund for the piux^hase of unsaleable
pictures.

The Council moreover cannot be expected to be impartial judges.
In a competition for a prize-essay or poem the names of the writers
are studiously concealed from the examiners until the prize has been
adjudged, and in most cases it is probable that the examiners do not
know anything of the competitors ; but painters are gregarious, they
know a great deal about each other's works, and although it is said
that the names of the would-be exhibitors are never given until the
fate of their pictures has been decided, the authorship of most of
the works sent in must be known at a glance to every member of
the Council ; and under these circumstances no system of selection
except drawing lots could possibly be impartial. We do not believe
that a Coimcil of Becording Angels would, under the circumstances,
be quite free from £Eivouritism.

What, then, is the ordeal to which 6,000 or 7,000 pictures are
yearly subjected ? They are trotted rapidly past a number of very
prejudiced judges, who are bound to reject about 5,000 out of the
whole lot.

And this is what the British public is pleased to call the verdict
of the Koyal Academy upon the pictures contributed.

It is grossly unfair upon the members of the Council, and stiU
more imfair upon the Academicians who did not belong to it, to lay
to their charge all the blunders which must inevitably result from

1881. THE SXHIBITim OF PICTURES. 127

sobh a system, and thej ivonld do w^ll to repudiate as far as posdble

all vespoiliiibility in the matter'; but the AeadeuuDiaiis at least lose

nothing by the decisions they are supposed to have given, while

to tlie ^ainteilB of the so-caUed ' rejected ' pictures the consequences are

.^rary •serious; to some the refusal of their wwks brings bitter dis-

coQtBgement^ to others ruin* No man wh6' has been' to a few Royal

Academy exhibitions would venture to say that they had not oon^

taincd some vary bad pictures, and nb one who knows anything of the

paintings which have been refused,^ ornotseht iu'foor fear of refusal,

would deny that a great many excellent works had been every year

^duded. These things ought not to be, and the system which

neeessarily brings them to pass must be a bad one«

We wish it to be dearly undenrtckxl that we db ^ot in any way
Uame tJie Boyal Academicians. They do thein best^^^with most inade^
qoate means^-^to dischaige the impassible duties 'trtddmre thrust upon
theub l%ey are treated by the public^ as £iifidlible,r'ahd their judg-
ments, when given, are derided* But we do think that the sooner
tiuf eztricate< themsdves from their present position the better it
.will be both for them and for the great body of British artists*

Out of^ say, 6,000 pictures sent in for exhibition, there are
probably quite 4»000 whidi are fit to be seen^ It is not possible to
lung 4^000 pictures on walls where there is only room for 1,300*
The. :£^00. which are sent away are considered by the public to have
been rejected as unworthy of a place, and their pwiters are un-
•deservedly injured^ Either, therefore, the Boyal Academy should have
jpaoeenongh to hang all the fairly good pictuiies which' are likely to be
aent to ita exhibition, or it should decline to receive on approbation
the works of the whole painting world, and should reserve its spare
itMin for ^ artists of diBtiTiguiahcd meritj who should be invited to
^aend in only as many pictures as could be properiy accommodated.
The first plan would do justice to all painters, the second would
saouse them from^the disappointment and injury wMdi so many of
them now undeservedly sustain*

It has h&exk su^fested, in order to gain room for more painters,
that the number of works exhibited by each should be limited to
two, and also that the sise of pictures should be greatly restricted*
Both of these plans are objectionable, the first because it would
impose firssh difficulties on the exhibitors and the Council, and the
second because British art already suffers from the difficulty of
hanging and selling those large works, which in France it is con-
sidered important to encourage by purchases from State Funds.

Another mode by which the Royal Academy might do justice to
more pictures would be by having two exhibitions a year instead of
one* The public has been much indebted to the Eoyal Academy for
tlie Winter Exhibitions of the works of the ' Old Masters,' but if one
of ita duties be the proper representation of contemporary British

128 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. January

Art, that duty would certainly be better fulfilled by hanging
the pictures which it is now obliged to refuse, than by exhibiting a
collection of the paintings of defunct and chiefly foreign artUts.
The task of borrowing and showing these works would doubtless be
taken up by some other society or gallery, as it fonnerly was by the
British Institution in Pall Mall. If, moreover, the Boyal Academy
were unwilling to give up the ^ Old Masters ' exhibition, they might
manage, by opening a little earlier, to get two exhibitions of modeoi
pictures into the period of the London Season, as ^ the Instrument'
only requires that the paintings should remain on view for a month.
This suggestion may possibly cause an outcry against the terrible
labour involved in arranging so many pictures twice or three times
over, but a few hints from Messrs. Christie and Manson, who are
accustomed to hang three rooms full of pictures once or twice a week,
besides showing off innumerable collections of furniture, china,
sculpture, books, &c. &c., would prove the possibility of carrying it
into effect without much difficulty or loss of time.

The Royal Academy is, as we have already said, unfiairly abused
for not fulfilling the expectations which the public has formed of it;
but the constant attacks upon it are not without meaning, and, if
rightly understood, would seem to show that the institution should
either decisively renounce those high expectations, and possibly some
of its own pretensions, or should take effective steps for satisfying
them.

Next to the Boyal Academy the Grosvenor Gallery is perhaps the
exhibition most visited by the artistic sight-seers. It belongs to
Sir Goutts Lindsay, and was started in 1877, 'with the intention of
giving special advantages of exhibition to artists of established re-
putation, some of whom had previously been imperfectly known to
the public' This intention it has doubtless in several instances ful-
filled, but as ^ pictures are only admitted on the invitation of the
proprietor,' the gallery is not a place in which any painter can
pretend to have the smallest right of exhibiting.

The Society of British Artists, in Suffolk Street, had in 1879 a
very good exhibition ; but as the members, who are fifty-seven in
number, and have a preference in hanging, contributed 150 out of
793 works, there was but little room there for outsiders.

The Dudley Grallery exhibits about 450 cabinet pictures in oil
during the winter ; but the members of the committee have a great
advantage in the hanging of their own performances, and the number
of works refused is consequently large.

The Aquarium in Westminster has an exhibition of pictures.
We do not know what are the rules for their admission, but as most
of them are hung in the dark the collection is not attractive either to
painters or sightseers.

There are one or two private galleries also, belonging to dealers.

1881. THE EXHIBITING OF PICTURES. 129

oontaimDg the pictures which they have bought or expect to sell on
(X)iniiiissioii« These are generally well selected, from a mercantile point
of Yiew, but as well-known names are far more valuable than good
pictures, such galleries offer but little chance to merely rising painters.

As regards water-colour drawings the case is very bad. The two
water-colour societies are close corporations which exhibit only the
works of their members, so that one room of the Boyal Academy, a
small space at the Suffolk Street and Dudley Gralleries, and some few
dealers' shops afford the only walls available for the many artists and
amateurs who wish to show their drawings to the public.

Now the moral of this melancholy tale is that a great many more
respectable pictures come into the world than can be exhibited to it ;
that want of space leads to selection, that selection leads to mistakes,
prejudices, privileges, fEtvouritisms, and consequently to injustices,
discouragements, and ruin of deserving men. What is wanted is a
£eur field and no favour. We believe that this cannot be attained
in any gallery where a committee of selection exists ; and what we
should like to see established is a large exhibition building to which
everyone could send his paintings on payment of a small but remu-
nerative rent for the amount of wall-space occupied. This rent to-
gether with admission money and commissions on sales should .make
the undertaking sufficiently profitable. The natural objection to
such a scheme is that so many bad pictures would be sent in that no
good painter would care to exhibit, and that the public would not
come to the gallery. This objection is so serious and well founded that
it can only be met — as all the inconveniences of perfect liberty are
met — ^by laws which contradict or limit the general principle laid
down. While therefore we protest against the selection of the pic-
tures to be exhibited, we admit that the arrangement of them on the
walls must be left to persons competent at least to divide the good
firom the bad ; and in order to prevent valuable space being monopo-
lised by worthless daubs, we would grant to no one the right to keep
his picture on the walls for more than a short time — say a fortnight
or three weeks — unless by the permission or invitation of the mana-
gers of the gallery.

In this way the bad pictures would pass quickly through the exhi-
bition, which should be open all the year roimd, and the good pictiures
would either reniain as more permanent attractions, or would succeed
one another quickly if they obtained a ready sale.

Snch a gallery, and only such a gallery, would secure to every
painter the means of exhibiting his works without truckling for
fayour or risking disappointment. It would relieve the Boyal
Academy firom the absurd pressure now put upon it ; it would enable
the council to reserve their walls, according to the terms of the * in-
stniznent,' to the paintings of artists of distinguished merit, and would
put it in their power to exercise those critical functions with which

Vol. IX.— No. 47. K

130 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. January

they are now falsely credited. The open gallery would give them the
opportunity of judging of the merits of painters hitherto unknown to
them, and they would have a chance of proving hy their annual ex-
hibition that they were not only the best painters but aldo the best
critics, and that they had a fair claim to guide the public taste in
Art. We believe that under; such circumstances the Hoyal Academy
would rise to the occasion, and that its exhibitions would excel any
hitherto seen. Without, however, such a filtering gallery as we have
suggested it will always be believed that many a good picture 46 bom
to blush unseen ; ' and the Royal Academy would best consult its own
credit and the interests of art and of artists, either by obtaining space
i^ hang every painting sent to it, or else by becoming a close corporation
like the water-colour societies. In its present condition it is ^ a de^
lusion and a snare.'

We must repeat once more that no gallery where criticiBm is
allowed to interfere with the admission of any picture can really be
accepted as affording justice to all schools of art. New attempts at
conveying ideas and facts through painting are constantly being made,
old methods are frequently imitated or caricatured. There is gene^
rally some good and some evil at the bottom of each of these efforts,
but all in their turn are over-praised by one set of critics and de-
nounced by another. How few great artists have been appreciated
by the critics when their best pictures were painted ; how many who
enjoyed a considerable reputation have since sunk to their proper
level I The art*critics are as a rule most fallible' guides ; sometimes
obstinate from ignorance, sometimes mad with too much learnings
and frequently so anxious to exhibit their own sesthetic faculties and
fine writing as practically to ignore the subjects of which they treat.
Public, opinion is in the long run the safest test of artistic merit.
The public must take its time in hearing the evidence and arguments
on both sides, but in the end its verdict will be sounder and fairer than
that given by any expert. It is to public opinion that the artist
must look for lasting fame, and it is to public opinion and not to
councils and cliques that we wish him to have the opportunity of
. appealing.

T. ViLLIERS LiSTBR.

1881. 131

A CENSUS OF RELIGIONS.

^ Whsxksb we i^;ard a people merely in their secular capacity, as
partners in a great association for promoting the stability, the opu-
lence, the peaceful glory of a state ; or view th^n in their loftier
character as subjects of a higher kingdom — ^swift and momentary
travellers towards a never-ending destiny ; in either aspect the
degree and the direction of religious sentiment in a community are
subjects of the weightiest import — in the one case to the temporal
guardiMis of a nation — ^to its spiritual teachers in the other. States-
men*-— aware to what a great extent the liberty or bondage, industry
or indolence, prosperity or poverty of any people, are the fruits of its
religious creed, and knowing also h.ow extensively religious feelings
tinge ]x>litical opinions — fibid an accurate acquaintance with the various
degrees and forms in which religious sentiment is manifested indis-
pensable to a correct appreciation either of the country's actual con-
dition or of its prospective tendency, and equally essential to enable
them to legislate with safety upon questions where religious principles
or prejudices are inextricably involved.'

A more appropriate introduction to our subject will not easily be
found than the above extract from the second page of Mr. Horace
Mami's Report to the Begistrar^Greneral upon the accommodation for
religious worship in 1851. Having read it, it is hard to conceive
that any question diould be raised as to the principle involved, or as
to the expediency of adopting the most direct and efficient means for
obtaining the desired information upon the religion of the nation.

In our neglect of a Seligious Census we stand nearly, if not quite,
alone amidst civilised nations. England is unfavourably distin-
•guished, not only from foreign coimtries, but from an important
portion of the United Kingdom. Ireland has a Beligious Census —
why should England be deprived of the advantage which a knowledge
of the religion of the people brings to their good government ? The
Irish Census Act provides that an account in writing be taken of the
Tdigioua profession of every person ; but this item of information is
omitted from the list of requisites to be answered in the English
schedule.

Why is the system pursued on this side of the Irish Channel

k2

132 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. January

different from that pursued on the other ? The importance of the
question has only come into prominence within the last thirty years,
and its inveatigation need not therefore carry our retrospect heyond
that period.

The Census Bill of 1 850 gave the Secretary of State power to issue
questions referring, not alone to the numbers, ages, and occupations
of the people, but also to such ' further particulars ' as might seem to
him advisable, and the Registrar-General was disposed to adopt as an
interpretation of ^ further particulars ' the collection of intelligence as
to the ^number, varieties, and capabilities' of the religious and
scholastic institutions of the country. The House of Peers, however,
raised an objection to the proposed inquiry in connection with the'
penal sections of the Act, and the objection being confirmed by the
law oflScers of the Crown, the proposed extension of the inquiry under
statutory obligation was relinquished.

It was intended that the deficiencies of the Census Act of 1850
should be supplied in the Census Act of 1860, and the Bill was ac-
cordingly presented to the House of Commons with a provision for
obtaining the religious profeseioyij as well as the age, sex, and occu-
pation of every individual. This provision was opposed by the Non-
conformists, and its omission was moved by Mr. Edward Baines,
the respected member fo'r Leeds, in a speech embodying all the argu-
ments that ingenuity and imagination could suggest. He was
answered by Sir George C. Lewis, the then Home Secretary. Sir
George began by showing that all presumptions were in favour of a
Beligious Census — an accessory and assistance to good government
which had found place in the general practice of civilised states ; and
he gave reasons for believing that the difficulties which were appre-
hended would disappear in the face of a well-organised system of
enumeration. Sir George Lewis, with a warmth unusual in him,
contemptuously spumed the insinuation that the Beligious Census
would be perverted into a means of oppression through undue influ-
ence ; he reproved the inconsistency with which the several sects pro-
tested against the record of their religious profession in the national
census, while their very protests were made with an ostentatious dis-
play of their nonconformity ; but he concluded by withdrawing the
provision for the record of a Eeligious Profession. The same sub-
6er\'iency to Dissent was exhibited by the Government in 1870. The
introduction of a return of Beligious Professions into the Census Bill
of 1870 was again opposed by Mr. Baines, and Lord Palmerston
surrendered to the political pressure of the Dissenters in these words :
* We have deferred to their feelings, but we cannot assent to their
reasons.' The House of Lords subsequently inserted a provision for
taking a Census of Beligious, but the clause was struck out by the
Commons before they passed the Bill at the close of the Session on
the 8th of August. There was little reason to expect that the Census

1881. A CENSUS OF RELIGIONS. 133

BUI of 1880 would require a return of religious professionB. .The
Liberation Soeiety had issued its prohibition, and the Government
of Mr. Gladstone were too considerate for the wishes of their Noncon-
formist friends to offend them by a discovery of truths vitally con-
nected with the science of legislation, but dreaded for their exposure
of statistical delusions. The Census Bills which (had they been
earlier laid before the Commons would have provoked discussion)
were prudently kept back till the last days of the Session, and the
brief debate which then ensued was on the side of the Government
confined to the assertion of two most inadequate objections to a
Heligious Census.

First, that the expense of the census would be increased. Secondly,
that the publication of the census would be delayed. To the first
objection it may be replied that the cost of an additional column to
the form of return, and the consequent labour of filling it up, would
be infinitesimally small compared with the whole cost of the census,
tmd not for a moment to be weighed against the national utility of
the information it would convey. To the second, the reply would be
that a decennial census is not like a weather forecast, whose virtue
vanishes with every hour of delay in its publication, and that assum-
ing the very problematical result of an appreciable delay, that
delay would not impair the utility of the return for any practical
purpose.

The complete indictment of a Beligious Census is conspicuously
.set forth in the Nonconformist of the 29th of July, 1880, which
reprints what it describes ^ as the excellent epitome of objections
published in a separate form by the Liberation Society.' This
document, important as expressing the principles, conrictions, and
itfgoments of the Liberation Society, of the eminent Nonconformists
who are members of the House of Commons, and of their ably con-
ducted journal, shall be given m extenao.

Objections to ▲ Gknsus of Helioious Pbofbssion.

1. The inquiry is untoarrantable. What right have Qovemment officials to ques-
tion us about our religious, any more than about our political professions ? The
only place where they can be legitimately elicited is in the polling booth.

3. 7%e inquiry is absurd, or unreasonable. How can every hotel-keeper, eyeiy
JodgiDg-hoase keeper, every master, and every head of a hospital, or prison, or
jioor-house, make a truthful return of the religious profession of ^ every living
penon*who happens to have slept under a certain roof on a particular night P
The inquiry would in many cases be resented as an impertinence, and if the facts
"were gusBsed at, instead of ascertained, they would frequently be, not facts, but
&tk>nflL It would be unjust to householders and inmates alike.

3. 7%e result would be misleading, because of the ambiguity of the inquiry. What

is 'rdigbus profession ' P Is it what a man believes, or only what he professes, or

'what he says that he professes P Or if it means, what religious body does he

^Mong to, what is belonging to a religious body P Then there are many persons

'who cannot really define their religious profesraon, and why should they be obliged

,Ui attempt to do so, or be punished if they refuse to make the attempt P

184 TEE NINETEENTH CENTURY. January

4. T%B return would be incomplete, because it is well known that a large ntimler
o£peison8.woald, on conscientious ground^ feel bound to lefuae the informatiQa
sought for, and many would refuse on other grounds. And if the enumeratora
attempted to supply it, they would inevitably blunder,

6. The return tDould prove faHactous and grossly misleading. Large masses of ths
people make no religious profession ; but^ because they will not like to acknowledge
the fact, they will reply,' ^Church of England.* The- efibct would be to produce
the impression that the Church of England has a far greater body of adha?eoitB .
than all the other religious bodies have, and that is the object of the suggeried
Bdigious Census. . It is wished to use what would be really inaccurate, and in
many cases dishonest returns^ for a political purpose.

6. The inquiry would lead to coercion and sectarian rivalry, and toouid ooeasum
great bitterness of feeling. Many of the Established cleigy and their adherentft
would uae all their influence to induce their dependents and the poor to return
themselves as Churchmen, and numbers of persons would be too ignorant or too
weak to resist such pressure.

7. The inquiry would be contrary to the true purpose of a census. That pur-
pose is to obtain statistics which are likely to be accurate, and to ascertain facts
which can be vexified, and not opinions or professions which are neoessanly vague
and ambiguous, or unascertainable. A census of the population ought to be takea
with the good will of the population : whereas such a Beligious Census as is sug-
gested would excite anger and resistance, and make the census odious to a large
class of the people.

And now what are these objections worth ? They shall be an-
swered seriatim.

• !• A government is warranted in requiring for the public advan-
tage information which it maybe irksome for individuals to give;
but since a declaration of religious profession would necessarily be
voluntary and unconttoverted, it could not involve any infringement
of conscientious scruple.

2. Every householder could ask, and every adult inmate of every
tenement could reply to, the question which concerns his religious
profession. Parents would be responsible for their children.

3. The object of the inquiry is to ascertain every man's account
of his religious profession if he has any. It is impossible to believe
that men would wantonly and aimlessly misrepresent their profession,
and still more to imagine that either intentional or casual errors
could be so many as to affect the essential purpose of the inquii^. ,

4. A refusal on conscientious or capricious grounds to answer the
inquiry might leave the return incomplete numerically as regards
the entire population, but complete and exact as an exposition of the
xelative proportions of the several denominations.

. ,, .5. It masses of the people choose to describe their religious pro-
fession as that of the Church of England, it would be the height of
-tyranny to preclude their doing so. The objection foretells * that the
effect (of the inquiry) would be to produce an impression that the
.Church of England has a far greater body of adherents than all the
jother bodies have.' The prophecy is probably correct, and we have it
here confessed that the objection of the Liberation Society to a

1881. A CENSUS OF RELIGIONS. 135

•

BMgioua Census is that it would enable the majority of the TCiigliah
to declare themselves members of th^ Church of England.

6. Coercion^ it is insinuated, can be exercised only by the clergy
and their adherents ; and, on the other hand, only the Dissenting poor
are deseribed as so weak and ignorant as to succumb to the inflaence
which would be exercised to make them appear Churchmen* Instead
of imagining this double slander, it would be wiset and truei; to
believe that Churchmen respect the convictions of those whom they
employ, and tiiat Englishmen, whether Churchmen or Dissenters,
would scorn to dissemble their religious belief.

7. Certainly a cei^^us should b^ taken ^ith the good will of the
population, and so it w<yuld be if they knew that its object was — ^not
such as it is represented by the Liberation Society — ^but one aiming
at the more just, more tolerant, more religious government o£ the
whole nation. The Liberation Society allege, indeed, that although
they have strenuously and successfully opposed a ^ Beligious Profes-
sion ' Census, they are heartily in favour of the ^ fullest and fisdrest
Beligious Census' in a repetition of that taken in 1851. Well,.let us
inqnire into the so-called Religious Census of 1851.

When Sir Morton Peto brought forward his Burials Bill in 1861,
he aimounced that he proposed that measure in the name of the
majority of the English people. Challenged for his authority, he re-
ferred to the Beligious Census of 1851. The book which he so
•<le6%nated is really entitled ^ Census of Great Britain, 1851, Beli-
gious Worship,' and in a note prefixed to the Beport, Mr. Grx&hsm,
the Begistrar-Greneral, addresses the Secretary of State for the Home
Department thus : ^ My Lord, — When the census of Great Britain
was taken in 1851, I received instructions from Her M^esty's
Govanmoit to endeavour to procure information as to the existing
accommodation for public religious worship.' Sir George Comewall
Lewis, the then Home Secretary, readily assented to a motion by a
member of the House for a copy of the ^ instructions ' referred to
by the Begistrar-General ; but after some delay he informed his
qnerist that ' no copy of the instructions could be produced, for that
no such instructions existed.' Mr. Graham could not of course have
written as he did without some warrant, and the probability is that
although no parliamentary authority had been given, yet that Lord
Pahnerston had verbally assented to the suggestion of his zealouf
subordinate. The abiUty with which Mr. Horace Mann perfonned
the laborious task confided to him by the Begistrar-General has
sever been doubted, but his report upon 'Beligious Worship' is
* deetitate of parliamentary sanction, and cannot be quoted as having
- official authority : its accuracy has been impugned, but it would be
ttneasonable to impute to dishonesty in the compiler, errors attri-
butable to deceitful materials.
• Apart from any question as to Mr. Mann's use of the returns

136 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. January

furnished to him, it is important carefully to scrutinize the nature of
those returns, and the conclusions drawn from them for an object
quite distinct from the purpose of the inquiry.

Mr. Mann's statistics profess to present returns of the number of
churches and chapels, the number of sittipgs provided, and the
number of attendants at public worship, on the Census Sunday,
vi^: —

Accommodation for Worship,

BnildioRi Seats

Church of England 14,077 5,317,915

Nonconformist 20,399 4,894,648

•

Attendance at Worship {supplying hy estimate defects in the Returns),

Morning Afternoon Evening

Ohuich of England . . . 2,641,244 1,890,764 860,543

Nonconformists .... 2,106,288 1,293,371 2,203,906

4,647,482 3,184,136 3,064,449

By assuming that, of the afternoon attendants, one half, and of the
evening attendants, one third, had not been at the morning service,
Mr. Mann obtains a total of

Worshippers in the Ohurch of England 3,773,474

Worshippers of other denominations • • • • • 3,487,668

or in the proportion of fifty-two Churchmen to forty-eight Noncon-
formists. Upon these doubtful data the Liberation Society constructed
their computations, eventuating in the discovery that Nonconformists
constituted a majority of the people of England and Wales. To
reach this result, some efforts of imagination became necessary. (1)
The relative number of the adherents of the several denominations
worshipping on a particular day was to be applicable as a scale for
determining the denomination of all the rest of the population. (2)
The asserted increase of Nonconformist chapels prior to 1851 was
to be continuous subsequent to 1851.

(1) This assumption demands most careful scrutiny, seeing that Mr.
Mann's figures include only 7,261,032, and that the population was
18,000,000. How are the ten millions and more, who were not at
church or chapel on Census Sunday, to be dealt with ? Are they to
be scored off as of no religion, or be apportioned by the simple
operation of a rule»of-three amongst the one hundred and odd deno-
Dodnations tabulated by Mr. Mann ? Neither course would be satis-
factory. There must be many thousands of those who did not worship
publicly on Census Sunday who would still be quite prepared to
declare their religious profession; while, again, an arithmetical
distribution of the non-worshippers would yield a most fallacious
impression of the convictions or preferences personally entertained.

Nonconformily, or separation from the Chiurch, is in its origin an

1881. A CENSUS OF RELIGIONS. 137

evidence of spiritual activity, and its existence is for the most part
accompanied by earnestness and resolution in the discharge of re-
ligious duties. When men become separatists from the denomina-
tion of which they had been members, they are, by the very fresh-
ness of their engagements, inspired with zeal and perseverance for
their punctual fulfibnent ; and thus, as a rule, the newer the sect,
the larger will be the proportion of its members attending its
public services. The Wesleyans, as one of the newest and most
vigorous denominations, wQuld naturally have been represented at
their services on Census. Sunday in larger proportions than the Esta-
blished Church. Mr. Voysey's followers, to take a very novel sect,
might almost all be worshipping in Langham Hall, but it would be
unwarrantable to assimie that for every seven persons counted there,
eleven others elsewhere would own him as their pastor.

(2) The Liberation. Society, affirm that Nonconformity, in the
number of its places of worship and its worshippers, has grown much
fester than the Church since 1851. No authentic information exists
which can justify this conclusion, but such as it has offered may
advantageously be considered. Mr. H. Mann extended his inquiry
retrospectively from 1851 to the commencement of the century, but
the data at his command were imperfect and unreliable, and he
frankly offers the results with serious misgiving. The Nonconformists,
however, pursued a mode of computation so flattering to their own
progress, and instituted in the years 1872, 1873, through their own
agents, an inquiry, embracing, it is true, only some 141 towns, but
eatablishiug iipon the statistics thus obtained, as to both church
and chapel, a result, out of 100 sittings, of 41*2 provided by the
Church, and of 58-8 provided by Nonconformists — the numerical in-
crease of sittings being, for the Church, 293,493 ; for Nonconfor-
mists, 621,699 ; and upon the strength of this statement Nonconfor-
mists assert that Hhere is ample ground for concluding that the
Established Church of England and Wales is now the Church of a
decided minority of the population.'

The information on which this momentous declaration is hazarded
has been often found so gravely inaccurate, that no confidence can be
placed on the conclusions to which it leads ; the individual details are
beyond the reach of private investigation, but the conclusions can
be dealt with upon independent, but thoroughly authentic evidence.

In 1851 Mr. Mann estimated the accommodation for religious
worship to be : —

Buildings Sittings

Church of England 14,077 6,317,915

Other denomiDstions 20,390 4,894,648

The yearly accession of Dissenting chapels to the registered list
may be counted by hundreds. In 1875 it was 534, in 1876 it was
543. How is ity therefore, that the number from time to time is

;138 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. January

mdely fluciuatixig, and that in the register, on 31st of December 1878,
it is only 1 9,977 ? The explanation is to be found in the citcuiafitaiMe
that Dissenters' chapels have no permanent character. Being uncoil
secrated and unassociated with aay religious sentiment, the bulk of
them can be treated as interest and convenience dictate* They smjt
.be. diverted to purely secular uses, or their temporary hire for religious
worship may be discontinued. Of Nonconformist chapels there
were —

Registered on the Ist of January 1875 • • • . . 19,946
The additions registered in 1875 were .. ... 534

1876 „ ..... 543

Which would have raised the number on the Ist January 1877 to 21,023
But that the expurgation of the register which takes place

firom time to time led to the excision in 1876 of . • « 1,959

Leaving an effective total of 19,064

or 1,326 less than the number stated by Mr. Mann, and adopted by
the Liberation Society in 1851. Which solution of this discrepancy
is to be accepted ?

(1) Must Mr. Mann's estimate be admitted to be an exaggera-
tion, and so discrediting all the statistical computations founded on
it? or (2) Must the Registrar-General's report of 1877 force upon
us the conviction that Nonconformity as exhibited in the number of
its places of worship has decreased since 1851 ?

The obscurity attending the consideration of these questions can
be materially dissipated by a study of the * List of Places of Meeting
for Eeligious Worship ' certified to the ' Eegistrar-General, and onthie
Eegister of the 31st of March, 1876.' The total remaining on the
Kegister is given at 18,723, and as the number of chapels once regis-
tered exceeds 22,750, it follows that more than 4,000 must have
been struck oflf at various revisions. Nor is it wonderful that this
necessity should have arisen, when the character of the buildings
registered for religious services is scrutinised, including as they do :

* School-rooms,' * music-halls,' * amphitheatres,' * vestries,' ' temperance
halls,' ' occupied houses,' * rooms in a house,' ' cottages,' ' club-rooms,'

* railway arches,' * bakehouses,' ' malt-kilns,'^ town-halls,' &c., &c. A
selection from the list itself will faithfully illustrate the varied and
ephemeral nature of these ' places of public worship.' The page of
the Blue Book is prefixed to the description of the certified meeting-
place.

Pago

6. A dweUiog-houBe in the occupation of John Poor, labourer, Old Park, near

Brazndean.
16. A room in a house belonging to Mr. R. S. Boyt (Uxbridge), Subecriplion
Reading-Boom^ lijme Regis.

23. Loft belonging to Robert Roe, Lynton.

24. Primitive Methodist preachihg^roomj owned by Henry Nuttall, Eaq.

(Baikby).

1881. A CENSUS OF RELIGIONS. . 139

Pas*

27« ' The Boom ' in the occapatioii of Heniy Geoige Childs (Milbiuy Osmond).)
80. Club-room, Pelican Inn, New Town, Ebbw Vale,

83. Nos. 75 and 76 Railway Arches, under the Eastern Counties Bailway, Nortli
Street, Bethnal Green.
. Amicable HalL
Ch|istiaa Community Memorial Hall.
People's Hall.
Albion Grammar School.
42. Great and Little Bolton Co-operative Hall.
44. Boston Sunday School Union School-room.
46. Hall of Freedom.
62, A dwelling known by the name of Benjamin Wilkins*s Dwelling-HouM,

Chilton Polden.
54. People's Hall.
Assembly Rooms.
Bethel Arch.
Royal British Schools.
56b Assembly Rooms, Fox and Goose Inu, Redditch.
62. Girls' British School in the rear of the Church.
68. Bakehouse attached to the dwelling-house of Mr. Jacob Crabb.
100. Noah'a Ark.

124. New Public HaU, Godalming.

183. Mr. Tanner's Lecture Room, Bohemia Mews, ILkstings.
143. Royal Amphitheatre, 85 High Holborn.
Doughty Hall, 14 Bedford Row.

Claremont Hall, Penton Street, Islington, a hall owned by Mr. John Stabb,
166. Gladstone Music HaU (Leicester).
184. BaOdinga in the occupation of Hezekiah Eitchmaid.
^33. Black Horse Inn Long Room, Reading.

Foresters' Assembly Rooms, Reading.
243. Co-operative Assembly Rooms^ Delph.

A wooden movable building owned by Mr. Edwin Austen, farmer (Little
Bride, Rye, Kent).
245. Justice Room, back of the Porcupine Inn, Tywordoeatb,

248. The Great Hall of Freemasons' Tavern, London.
Royal Music Hall, Holborn, London.

249. The Ark, Victoria Rooms.
360. A Railway Arch, Walworth.

Ten bnild^gs in the occupation of Joseph Floyd atMirfield, Ossett, Thomhill
Lees, Ossett Common, Gawthorpe, Chickenley, Whitley, Thomhill, Briest*
field, Batley Carr, all in Dewsbury Union.

These extracts suffice to indicate how widely consecrated churches
ar« distinguished by their immutability from the registered build-
ings, and how impossible it is to construct from numbers alone^any
comparison of the position and progress of the Church and of Dis-
senters.

As regards the mere fabrics, the cost of the national churches far
exceeds that of Dissenting chapels, although of late, as regards these
last, a great advance must have been observed in their solidity, their
constructional excellence, and their architectural propriety. ' Steeple-
houses ' is no longer the nickname of National churches, and the mo6t

140 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. January

rigid ecclesiologist might be satisfied with the externals, at all events,
of many a Nonconformist chapel. The contrast between the con-
ditions on which the National churches and Nonconformist buildings
are respectively constituted and utilised is very striking. A conse-
crated church must be free from debt, it must, under certain Acts, be
endowed with 5,000Z., and the property must be permanently vested
in the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. A Dissenting chapel may be
built with borrowed money, and be mortgaged for its full value ; it
may be hired for purposes of worship exclusively, or for worship alter-
nately with, any other purposes, however secular or profane. The
•economy of this community of use is obvious, and no less is the
vantage ground which it provides for the display of Nonconformist
statistics. A church with 1,000 seats inay have cost 10,0002., and
the endowment raises the outlay to 15,000Z., but a lecture-room or
dancing-saloon with the same capacity may be hired for the whole
or part of Sunday, and besides the rent, the only condition needful to
ensure its registration is a fee of 28. Qd.

The Sunday rent of the Islington Agricultural Hall would be trivial
compared with its capacity, but what a masterly stroke of policy to
balance by a fee of half-a-crown the vast area of the Agricultural
Hall registered as ^ a place of meeting for public worship ' against the
spacious and solemn nave of St. Paul's Cathedral.

Although the fee for registering a meeting-house for worship is
only 28. 6(i., its registration as licensed for the celebration of mar-
riage costs 32. Of chapels now licensed for marriages there are 8,413,
including probably the more important and durable buildings, so that
there are more than 10,000 for which this privilege of performing
marriages has not been provided. Such are the characteristics of the
so-called ' Beligious Census ' of 1851, a repetition of which the Non-
conformists anxiously desire.

Nonconformists invite us, indeed, in an apologetic strain to admit
that imperfect as the inquiry of 1851 may be, ^it is still to be
accepted as the best system attainable.' Churchmen distinctly decline
this admission, and they point to the < personal religious profession '
as the only honest, truthful, accurate mode of attaining the desired
end. The opportunity for that really effective inquiry unfortunately
oannot recur for another ten years, but it is quite possible to adduce
evidence official and unimpeachable, which, although indirect, is
quite appropriate.

We turn for a part of our denominational statistics to the year
1870. Owing to the subsequent fusion of denominations in School
Boards, that is the latest date at which would be found official returns of
the religious classification of the children attending primary schools.
In the year 1870, according to the Beportof the Education Department,
there were under inspection in primary schools 1,434,765 children, of
whom 72*6 per 100 were in Church schools.

1881. A CENSUS OF RELIGIONS. 141

Of 190,054 marriages in 1878,* 72-6 per 100 were of the Church.
Of 32,361 seamen and mariners employed in 1875, the percentage
of Churchmen was 75*5.^

The army of 183,024 men, having in 187Q as many as 24*0 per
100 Boman Catholics, still showed a proportion of Churchmen equal
to 62*5 per cent.'

Of 101,458 adult inmates of workhouses in 1875, the proportion of
Church people was 79 per cent.*

Of 22,677 prisoners in gaol in 1867, the proportion returned as
Churchmen was 75 per lOO.*

The number of Nonconformist chapels supplied to Mr. Mann
contrasts strangely with the number of ^ Ministers ' recorded in the
enumerated Professions of the Official Census of 1851. In that
Report the Clergy of the Church are stated at 17,320, and the
Ministers of all other denominations at 8,658.

One expects to find some proportion between the number of the
shepherds and the number of the folds into which they gather their
sheep ; but while the Clergy considerably exceeded in number the
churches in which they officiated. Nonconformist ministers of all
sects do not in number equal one half of the buildings for worship
which are said to have been provided for them and are appealed to a?
an evidence of progress.

The official statistics quoted above challenge attention, not by their
numerical magnitude, but by their authenticity and their apposite-
ness as a reliable test within the respective spheres of observation,
and the very diversity of their origin strengthens the conclusion
that a genuine Census of Religions would record about one fourth of
the people of England and Wales as alien from the' National Church.
Some of these statements, when referred to in the House of
Commons, provoked a very amusing commentary from Mr. Bright.

Mr. Bright had been assuming, as usual, that Nonconformity
could claim more than half the people of England, and when checked
by a reference to these returns, including those from gaols and work-
houses, he rejoined : ' Oh, I do not deny that the great majority in
gaols and workhouses are members of the Established Church.' The
reply was ready, clever, and telling, and it came with especial
appropriateness from Mr. Bright, whose pre-eminently respectable
' Society of Friends ' would probably not find a * Quaker ' in either
gaol or workhouse, for the best of aU reasons — ^an erring Friend
would have been excommunicated before he could reach either of those
destinations. With an admirable charity, the * Society of Friends *
supports its members when impoverished through misfortune, and with
inflexible discipline it pronounces the expulsion of those who ^ walk

' Kegistrar-Oenerars 41st Beport. ' P. 132, September, 1876.

» P. 170, September, 1871. * P. 267, September, 1876.

» P. 284, September, 1868.

142 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. January

disorderly ' long before the Friend becomes a criminal. Accidents,
however, will happen in the best societies, and there is on record one
instance of a Quaker being hanged for murder.

But how does Mr. Bright's pleasantry leave the question as a
serious consideration for statesmen ? Can the millions of non-wor-
shippers on Census Sunday be ignored in legislation ? Have they no
rights, no claims upon the State, upoQ the Church, upon their fellow-
countrymen of all denominations ? These claims may be disregarded
by some of the sects ; they certainly are not by all ; they certainly
are not by the Church ; and assuredly the people^s right to declare
their own religious profession is one which ought to be respected.
How can it best be ascertained? By arbitrary inferences? from
statements unauthorised in their origin, and irrelevant in their
character? or by the simple process of giving to every man the
opportunity of declaring voluntarily the denomination to which he
belongs? That such a personal profession must be voluntary is
obvious, for there can be no means of enforcing it, and any but a
spontaneous profession would be worse than useless. As much or
more than any other inquiry, that of religious profession should be
free and truthful, and the character of the census is perverted when
its results can be presented only as statistics of devotions. What,
then, are the opposing views of Churchmen and Nonconformists
touching a Beligious Census. The Liberation Society shall explain
their own. In their epitome already quoted, they say, * The effect
would be to produce the impression that the Church of England has
a far greater body of adherents than all the other religious bodies
have, and thxit is the object of the suggested Religious Census^ It is
wished to use what would really be inaccurate, and, in many cases,
dishonest returns, for a political purpose.'

The general objects of a Beligious Census in the view of Church-*
men are clearly stated in the passage from Mr. Mann's Beport pre-
fixed to this paper. Political purpose they have none. Beligious
liberty with Churchmen of the present day is not a phrase, and they
contend that, whether Nonconformists were proved by a Beligious
Census to be fewer than a quarter, or more than half the population,
they are equally entitled to the fullest measure of liberty of con-
science, liberty of worship, and to personal equality before the law.
Churchmen cherish no enmity and design no injury to Dissenters, but
they would seriously deprecate and resolutely oppose political move-
ments tending to damnify the national religion. The immediate
and direct purpose of Churchmen in asking for a true Beligious
Census was imdoubtedly to demolish by positive evidence the delusive
statistics unwarrantably grafted upon Mr. Mann's report. Indepen-
dently of a love of truth and thirst for knowledge, they wished to
arrest the mischief which has been elaborated from l^at greatly
misused publication. The capricious manipulation of Mr. Mann's

1881. A CENSUS OF RELIGIONS. 143

figures would have been harmless enough, had they not led (borrow-
ing the phrase from the Liberator) ' to inaccurate returns used for a
political purpose,' and the fabrication of deceptive computations to
the detiim^it of the Church. ' Ever since 1860 Burials Bills have
been presented to the House of Commons as measures promoted in
the interest of a Nonconformist majority of the people of England,
and every legislative measure bearing on the national religion has
)een offered for discussion under the same false colours. State
departments, and the commissions connected with them, exhibited
the effects of this sinister prepossession, especially conspicuous in
the proceedings of the Education Department, the Charity Conmiis-
sioners, «id the Endowed Schools Commission. The operation of
this sentiment is aptly illustrated by a letter to the Ti/rruB of the
15th of May, 1875^ from Mr. Boby, the able Secretary and inspiring
genius of the Endowed Schools Commission. Mr. Roby, writing in
disapproval of the scheme proposed for Crewkerne Grammar School,
* protests against ticketing national institutions with the symbols of
what is now the faith of only half the nation.'

If statesmen and influential officials like Mr. Boby can imagine
the nationality of the Church of England to depend upon her out-
numbering 150 sects, it is not surprising that the Liberation Society,
in the name of the more aggressive of those sects, should strain every
nerve to exhibit a preponderance of numbers adverse to the Church ;
for on their success in obtaining a general belief in that assumption
depends, as they think, their crowliing victory in the disestablishment
and disendowment of the Church.

This is not the place for discussing the conditions which would
eventuate in disestablishment, but it may be easily shown that dis-
establishment can be no necessary result of a nice numerical com-
parison between Churchmen and the aggregation of dissentients.
If any one of the sects attained a larger following than the Church,
it might, by a general consensus, supersede it as the expression of the
religious profession of the country, and take its place in the Consti-
tution ; but short of such transposition, the perpetuation of the
Monarchy involves the perpetuation of the National Church, with
which it has been welded by statute with the special object of ' secur-
ing our religion, laws, and liberties.'

Disestablishment, theindispensableprecursor of ^religious equality *
(a phrase which, if it differs in meaning from ' religious liberty,' means
* equality of religions'), may or may not enter into the category of
the practical subjects of the day ; but a course of policy injurious to
the National Church, to its rights of property, and to its religious
liberty, has been pursued for some years, prompted and promoted
by the allegation * that the Church, being outnumbered by the sects,
was no longer the National Church.'

The allegation that a majority of the people were strange to the

144 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. January

Church would uot, even if true, justify the purpose to which it was
applied ; but being wholly destitute of proof, it has, nevertheless,
been allowed to vitiate legislation and prejudice the adoiinistration
of the law in matters which concerned religion and education.

The 'irrevocable past' stands but too frequently pointing to
opportunities neglected, and to years which in their recurrent cydes
offered again and again a power of doing wisely and justly, to be
again and again misused. Another decade must pass before a truer
liberality on the part of those who profess to be Liberals, or greater
courage and independence of party in the Grovernment of the day,
permits the realisation of a Beligious Census for England. In the
interval it cannot be unreasonable to express a hope that the Queen's
Ministers (whoever they may be) will no longer permit the laws of
England to be moulded and administered under the influence of
a gross misrepresentation of the religious profession of the people.

J. Gr. Hubbahd.

1881. 145

PENNY FICTION.

h is now nearly a quarter of a century ago since a popular novelist
revealed to the world in a well-known periodical the existence of the
* Unknown Public,' and a very curious revelation it was. He showed
us that the few thousands of persons who had hitherto imagined
themselves to be the public — ^so far, at least, as their being the arbiters
of popularity in respect to writers of fiction was concerned — ^were in
&ct nothing of the kind ; that the subscribers to the circulating
libraries, the members of book clubs, the purchasers of magazines
and railway novels, might indeed have their favourites, but that
these last were * nowhere,' as respected the number of their backers,
in comparison with novelists whose names and works appear in penny
journals and nowhere else.

This class of literature was of considerable dimensions even in
the days when Mr. Wilkie Collins first called attention to it ; but the
luxuriance of its growth has since become tropical. His observations
are drawn from some half a dozen specimens of it only, whereas I
now hold in my hand — or rather in both hands — nearly half a hun-
dred of them. The population of readers must be dense indeed in
more than one sense that can support such a crop.

Doubtless the individual circulation of none of these serials is equal
to that of the most successful of them at the date of their first discovery ;
but those who read them must, from various causes, of which the most
obvious is the least important, have trebled in number. Population,
that is to say, has increased in very small proportion as compared
with the increase of those who very literally nm and read — ^the peri-
patetic students, who study on their way to work or even as they
work, including, I am sorry to say, the telegraph boy on his errand.

Ifevertheless, notwithstanding its gigantic dimensions, the Un-
known Public remains practically as unknown as ever. The literary
wares that find such favour with it do not meet the eye of the ordi-
nary observer. They are to be found neither at the bookseller's,
nor on the railway stall. But in back streets, in small dark shops,
in the company of cheap tobacco, hardbake (and, at the proper season,
Vol. K.— No. 47. L

146 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. January

valentines), their leaves lie thick as those in Yallombrosa. Early
in the week is their springtime, when they are put forth from
Heaven knows what printing-houses in courts and alleys, to lie for a few
days only on the counter in huge piles. On Saturdays, albeit that is
their nominal publishing day, they have for the most part disappeared. j
For this sort of literature has one decidedly advanced feature, and
possesses one virtue of endurance — it comes out ever so long before
the date it bears upon its title page, and ' when the world shall have
passed away ' will, by a few days at least, if faith is to be placed in j
figures, survive it. j

Why it should have any date at all no man can tell. There is
nothing in the contents that is peculiar to one year — or, to say \
truth, of one era — rather than another. As a rule, indeed, time and i
space are alike annihilated in them, in order to make two lovers
happy. The general terms in which they are written is one of their
peculiar features. One would think that, instead of being as unlike
real life as stories professing to deal with it can be, they were photo-
graphs of it, and that the writers, as in the following instance, had
always the fear of the law of libel before their eyes : —

We must now request our readers to accompany us into an obscure cul de too
opening into a narrow street branching off Holbom. For many reasons we do not
choose to he more precise as to locality.

Of course in this cvZ de sac is a Private Inquiry Office, with a
detective in it. But in defining even hipi the novelist gives him-
self no trouble to arouse excitement in his readers : they have paid
their pezmy for the history of this interesting person, and, that being
done, they may read about him or not, as they please. One would
really think that the author of the story was also the proprietor of the
periodical.

Those who desire (lie says) to make the acquaintance of this somewhat remark-
ahle person have only to step with us into the little dusky room where he is seated
and we shall have much pleasure in introducing him' to their notice.

— ^A sentence which has certainly the air of saying, ' You may be
introduced to him or you may let it alone.'

The coolness with which everything is said and done in penny
fiction is indeed most remarkable, and should greatly recommend it
to that respectable class who have a horror of ' sensation.' In a story,
for example, that purports to describe University life (and is as much
like it as the camel produced from the German professor's self-con-
sciousness must have been to a real camel) there is an tmderplot
of an amazing kind. The wicked undergmduate, notwithstanding
that he has the advantage of being a baronet, is foiled in his attempt
to win the affections of a young woman in humble life, and the
virtuous hero of the story recommends her to the consideration of his
negro servant ;•—

1881. PENNY FICTION. 147

'Talk to hety Monday/ wliispered Jack, ' and see if she Iotob you.'

For a short time Monday and Ada were in close conversation.

Then Monday uttered a cry like a war-whoop.

' It am come all right, sare. Missy Ada says she not really care for Sir Sydney,
and she will bo my little wife,' he said.

' I congratulate you, Monday,' answered Jack.

In half an hour more they arrived at the house of John Badford, plumber and
glazier, who was Ada's father.

Mr. and Mrs. Badford and their two sons received their daughter and her
companions with that unstudied civility which contiasts so favourably with the
stuck-up ceremony of many in a higher position. They were not prejudiced against
Monday on account of his dark skin.

It was enough for them that ho was the man of Ada's choice.

Mn. Badford even went so far as to say, ' Well, for a coloured gentleman, he is
very handsome and quite nice mannered, though I think Ada's been a little sly in
telling us nothing about her engagement to the last.'

They did not know all.

Nor was it advisable that they should.

Still they knew something — ^for example, that their new son-in-law
was a black man, which one would have thought might have struck
them as phenomenal. They take it, however, quite quietly and as a
matter of course. Now, surely, even among plumbers and glaziers, it
must be thought as strange for one's daughter to marry a black man as a
lord. Yet, out of this dramatic situation the author makes nothing at-
all, but treats it as coolly as his drarncUis peraonce do themselves. Now
7ay notion would have been to make the bridegroom a black lord, and
then to portray, with admirable skill, the conflicting eiyiotions of his
mother-in-law, disgusted on the one hand by his colour, attracted on
the other by his rank. But ' sensation ' is evidently out of the line of
the penny novelist : he gives his facts, which are certainly remarkable,
then leaves both his characters and his readers to draw their own con-
clusions.

The total absence of local scenery from these half hundred
romances is. also curious, and becomes so very marked when the
novelists are so imprudent as to take their dramatis personce out of
England, that one can't help wondering whether these gentlemen have
ever been in foreign parts themselves, or even read about them.
Here is the conclusion of a romance which leaves nothing to ^be
desired in the way of brevity, but is unquestionably a Uttle abrupt
and vague : —

A year has passed away, and we are far from England and the English
climate.

Whither ' we ' have gone the author does not say, nor even indicate
the hemisphere. It will be imagined perhaps that we shall find. out
^here we are by the indication ef the flora and fauna* ,

A lady and gentleman before the dawn of day have been cHmbbg up an arid
Boad in the duection of a dark ridge.

l2

148 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. January

Observe, again, the ingenious vagueness of the description: an
* arid road ' which may mean Siberia, and a ' dark ridge * which may
miean the Himalayas.

The dawn suddenly comes upon them in all its glory. Krds twittered in their
willow goigeS; and it was a yery glorious day. Arthur and Emily had passed the
night at the ranche, and he had now taken her up to look at the mine which at all
events had introduced them. He had previously taken her to see hb mothef s
giavOi the mother whom he had so loved. The mine after some delay proved more
prosperous than ever. It was not sold, but is the ' appanage * of the younger sons
of the house of Dacres.

With the exception of the ' ranche,' it will be remarked that there '
is not one word in the foregoing description to fix locality. The !
mine and the ranche together seem indeed to suggest South America. ^
But — I ask for information— >do birds twitter there in willow gorges?
Younger sons of noble families proverbially come off second best in
this country, but if one of them, found his only 'appanage' was a
nune, he would surely with some justice make a remonstrance.

The readers of this class of fiction will not have Dumas at any
price— or, at all events, not at a penny. Mr. Collins tells us how
Morde Christo was once spread before them, and how they turned
from that gorgeous feast with indifference, and fell back upon their
tripe and onions— their nameless authors. But some of those who
write for them have adopted one peculiarity of Dumas. The shore
jerky sentences which disfigure the Three MuBketeers, and indeed all
that great novelist's works, are very frequent with them, which in-
duces me to believe that they are paid by the line.

On the other hand, some affect fashionable description and con-
versation which are drawn out in ' passages that lead to nothing ' of
an amazing length,

* Where have I heen/ replied Clyde with a carelessness which was half forced.
' Oh, I have heen over to Iligham to see the dame.'

' Ah, yes,* said Sir Edward, ' and how is the poor old creature P '

* Quite well/ said Clyde- as he sat down and took up the menu of the elahorate
dinner. ^ Quite well, she sent her host respects/ he added, but he said nothing of
the lodger, pretty Miss Mary Westlake.

And when, a moment afterwards, the door opened and Grace came flowing in
with her lithe noiseless step, dressed in one of Worth's masterpieoea, a wonder of
amber, satin, and antique lace, he raised his eyes and looked at her with an earnest
scrutiny — bo earnest that she paused with her hand on his chair, and met his eves
with a questioning glance.

' Do you like my new dress? ' she said with a calm smile.

* Your dress ? ' he said. ' Yes, yes, it is very pretty, very.' But to himself lie
added, ' Yes, they are alike, strangely alike.'

Which last remark may be applied with justice to the conver-
sations of all our novelists. There appears no necessity for their
commencement, no reason for their continuance, no object in their
conclusion ; the reader finds himself in a forest of verbiage fix>m which

1881. PENNY FICTION. 149

he is extricated only at the end of the chapter, which is always,
however, * to be continued.'

It is true that these story-tellers for the million generally keep * a
gallop for the avenue ' (an incident of a more or less exciting kind to
finish up with), but it is so brief and unsatisfactory that it hardly
rises to a canter ; the author never seems to get into his stride. The
following is a fair example : —

Bat before we let the curtain fall, we must glance for one moment at another
pictaie, a aad and painful one. In one of those retreats, worse than a living tomb,
where reside those whose reason is dead, though their bodies still live, is a snutll
spue cell. The sole occupant is a woman, young and very beautiful. Sometimes
she is quiet and gentle as a child ; sometimes her fits of phrenzy are frightful to
witoees ; but the only word she utters is Revenge j and on her hand she always
wears a plain gold band with a cross of black pearls.

This conclusion, which I chanced upon before I read the tale
which preceded it, naturally interested me immensely. Here, thought
I, is at last an exciting story ; I shall now find one of those literary prizes
in hopes perhaps of hitting upon which the penny public endures
so many blanks. I was quite prepared to have my blood curdled ;
my lips were whetted for a full draught of gore ; yet, I give you my
word, there was nothing in the whole story worse than a bankruptcy.

This is what makes the success of penny fiction so remarkable ;
there is nothing whatever in the way of dramatic interest to account
for it ; nor of impropriety either. Like the lady friend of Dr. John-
son, who congpratulated him that there were no improper words in
his dictionary, and received from that unconciliatory sage the reply,
*You have been looking for them, have you?' I have carefully
searched my fifty samples of penny fiction for something wrong,
and have not found it. It is as pure as milk, or at all events as
milk and water. Unlike the Minerva Press, too, it does not deal with
eminent persons : wicked peers are rare ; fraud is usually conBned
within what may be called its natural limit — ^the lawyer's ofiSce ; the
attention paid to the heroines not only by their heroes, but by their
unsuccessful and objectionable rivals, is generally of the most honour-
able kind ; and platitude and dulness hold undisputed sway.

In one or two of these periodicals there is indeed an example of
the mediseval melodrama ; but RcUpko the Mysterious is by no means
thrilling. Indeed, when I remember that Ivanhoe was once published
in a penny journal and proved a total failure, and then contemplate
the popularity of Ralphoj I am more at sea as to what it is that
attracts the million than ever.

' Noble youth,' cried the King as he embraced Kalpho, * to you we must entrust
the training of oar cayaliy. I hold here the list which has been made out of the
troope "which will come at the dgnal. To certain of our nobles we have entrusted
certain of our ccrps tTarmie, but unto you, Ralpho, we must entrust our horse, for

150 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. January

in that aeryice you can display that wonderful dexterity with the sword which has
made your name so famous. '

' Sire,' cried pur hero, as he dropped on one knee and took the king*s hand,
pressing it to his lips, ' thou hast indeed honoured me by such a reward, bat I can-
not accept it'

' How/ cried the King, ' hast thou so soon tired of my service F '

^ Not so, sire. To serre you I would shed the last drop of my blood. But if I
were to accept this command, I should cease to do the service for the cause which
now it has pleased you to say 1 have done. No, sire, let me remain the guardian of
my king — hu secret agent. I, with my sword alone, will defend my country and
my king.'

' Be not rash, Kalpho ; already hast thou done more than any man ever did
before. Bun no more danger.'

* Sire, if I have served you, grant my request. Let it be as I have said.'

' It shall be so, mysterious youth. Thou shalt be my secret agent. Take this
ring, and wear it for my sake ; — and, hark ye, gentlemen, when Italpho shows that
ring, obey him as if he were ourselves.'

' We will,' cried the nobles.

Then the Song took the Star of St Stanislaua, and fixed it on our hero's
breast

Now, to iny mind, though his preferring to be * a secret agent ' to
becoming generalissimo of the Polish cavalry is as modest as it is
original, RaJ/pho is too goody goody to be called * the mysterious.*
He renunds me, too, in his way of nrixing chivalry with self-interest,
of those enterprising officers in fighting regiments who send in appli-
cations for their own V.G.8 while their comrades remain in modest
expectation of them.

I am inclined to think, however, from the following advertise-
ment, that some author has been recently piling up the virtues of his
hero too strongly for the very delicate stomachs of the penny public,
who, it is evident, resent superlatives of all kinds, and are common-
place and conventional to the marrow of their bones : ' T. B. Tim-
mins is informed, that he cannot he promieed another story lih
" Mandragora,^^ since, va deciding the contents of our jouvTwl, th
tastes of readers have to he considered whose interest cam/not he
aroused hy the impossible deeds of impossible creatures J^ Alas ! I
wish firom my heart I knew what ^ deeds ' or ' creatures ' do arouse the
interest of this (to me) inexplicable public ; for though I have before
me the stories they obviously take delight in, why they do so I can-
not tell.

At the * Answers to Correspondents,' indeed, which form a leading
feature in moat of these penny journals, one may exclaim with the
colonel in Woodstockj when after many ghosts he grapples with Wild-
rake, ' Thou at least art palpable.' Here we have the real readers,
asking questions upon matters that concern them, and from these \fe
shall surely get at the back of their minds. But it is unfortmiately
not so certain that these < Answers to CSorrespondents ' are not them-
selves fictions, like all the rest— only invented by the editor instead of
the author, and coming in handy to fill up a vacant page* It is to

1881. PENNY FICTION. 151

my mind incredible that a public so every way different from that of
the Mechanics' Institute, and to whom mere information is likely to
be anything but attractive, should be genuinely solicitous to learn that
* Needles were first made va England in CJieapsidej in the reign of
Qfisen Mary, by a negro from Spain ; ' or that ' TJiefa/mUy name
of the Duke of Norfolk is Howard^ although the younger members
of it eaU themselves TaJbot*

Even the remonstrance of ' Our Correspondence Editor ' with a
gentleman who wishes to learn ' How to manufacture dynamite ' seems
to me artificial ; as though the idea of saying a few words in season
against explosive compounds had occurred to him, without any par-
ticular opportunity having really offered itself for the expression of
his views.

There are, however, one or two advertisements decidedly genuine,
and which prove that the readers of penny fiction are not so immersed
in romance but that they have their eyes open to the main chance
and their material responsibilities. * Anxious to know,' for example,
is informed that < The widow, unless otherwise decreed, keeps posses-
sion of furniture on her marriage, and the daughter cannot claim,
a ; ' while Skibbs is assured that ' After such a lapse of time there will
be no danger of a warrant being issued for leaving his wife
amd family chargeable to the parish*^

As when Mr* Wilkie Collins made his first voyage of discovery
into these unknown latitudes, the penny journals are largely used for
fbnning matrimonial engagements, and for adjudicating upon aU
questions of propriety in connection with the affections. * It is just
bordervng on foQyi ' Nanct Blake ' is informed, ^ to ma/rry a Tncm
six years your junior J In answer to an inquiry from 'LoviNa
Ouvia' whether ' an engaged gentleman is at liberty to go to a
theatre without takmg his young lady with him^ she is told ' Yes; but
we imagine he would not often do so.*

Some tender questions are mixed up with others of a more

practical sort. 'Lady Hilda' is informed that ^U is very seldom

children are bom healthy whose falher has married before he is

ihree^ndrtwenly ; thfU long engagements are not only unnecessary

hut injurious ; and ^at washing the liead will remove the scurf!

^Lioke' is assured that 'i^ is not necessary to be married in two

dtu/rdies, one being quite sufficient; ' that ' there is no truth in the

saying that it is unlucky to marry a person of the same complexion; '

and that * a gentle aperient wHl remove netH^^ashJ

' ViBonvis ' (who, by the way, should surely be Yirginius) is thus
tenderly sympathised with : —

' It does seem rather hard that you should be deprived of aU op^
jportunity of having a ttte-Oriite with you/r betrothed, owing to her
being cbliged to entertain other company, although there are others
cf the family who can do so ; still, as her Tnother insists upon it.

152 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. January

and will not let yon enjoy the society of her cUiiiglUer uninterrupted,
you might resort to a little harmless strategy, and whenever your
stated evenings for calling are broken in on that way, ask the yowng
lady to take a walk with you, or go to a place of amusement. She
can then excuse h&rsdf to her friends u^hout a breadi of etiquette,
and you can enjoy your titc-^tUe undisturbed.^

The photx)graphs of lady correspondents which are received by the
editors of most of these journals are apparently very numerous, and,
if we may believe their description of them, all ravishingly beauti-
ful. It is no wonder they receive many applications of the following
nature : —

* Clyde, a rising young doctor, twenty-two, fair, with a nice
house amd servants, being tvred of bachelor life, wishes to receive the
cartc^de-visite of a dark, fascinating young lady, of from seventeen
to twenty years of ojge ; no money essential, bvi good birth indis'
pensable. Site must be fond of music and child/ren, and very loving
and affectionate.^

Another doctor, —

' Twenty-nvae, of a loving and amiable disposition, and who has
at present an income of 120?. a-year, is desirous to mxxke an im-
Tnediate engagement with a lady about his own age, who must be
possessed of a litUe money, so that by their united efforts he. may
soon become a member of a lucrative and honourable profession.^

How the * united eflforts ' of two young people, however enthusi-
astic, can make a man an M.D. or an M.R.G.S. (except that love con-
quers all things) is more than one can understand. The last adver-
tisement I shall quote affects me nearly, for it is from an ■ eminent
member of my own profession : —

* Alexis, a popular author in the prime of life, of an affectionate
disposition, and fond of home, and the extent and pressing nature
of whose work have prevented him from m^ixing much in society,
would be glad to correspond with a young lady iwt above thirty.
She must be of a pleasing appearance, amiable, intelligent and
domestic.^

If it is with the readers of penny fiction tl)at Alexis has estab-
lished his popularity, I would like to know how he did it, and who
he is. To discover this last is, however, an impossibiiicy. These
novelists all write anonymously, nor do their works ever appear before
the public in another guise. There is sometimes a melancholy pre-
tence to the contrary put forth in the ' Answers to Correspondents.*
* Phcenix,' for example, is informed that * The story about which he
inquires will not be published in book form at the time fie men-
tionsJ But the fact is it will never be so published at all. It has
been written, like all its congeners, for the unknown millions and for
no one else.

Some years ago, in a certain great literary organ, it was stated of

1881. PENNY FICTION. 153

one of these penny journals (which has not forgotten to advertise the
eulogy) that * its novels are equal to the best works of fiction to be got
at the circulating libraries.' The critic who so expressed himself must
have done so in a moment of hilarity which I trust was not produced
by liquor ; for ' the best works of fiction to be got at the circu-
lating libraries' obviously include those of George Eliot, TroUope,
Reade, Black and Blackmore, while the novels I am discussing are
inferior to the worst. They are as crude and ineffective in their
pictures of domestic life as they are deficient in dramatic incideQt ;
they are vapid, they are dull. Indeed, the total absence of humour,
and even of the least attempt at it, is most remarkable. There is
DOW and then a description of the playing of some practical joke, such
as tying two Chinamen's tails together, the effect of the relation of
which is melancholy in the extreme, but there is no approach to fun
in the whole penny library. And yet it attracts, it is calculated, four
millions of readers-— a fact which makes my mouth water like that of
Tantalus.

When Mr. Wilkie Collins wrote of the Unknown Public it is clear
he was still hopeful of them. He thought it ' a question of time '
only. ' The largest audience,' he says, ^ for periodical literature in
this age of periodicals must obey the universal law of progress, and
sooner or later learn to discriminate. When that period comes the
readers who rank by millions will be the readers who give the widest
reputations, who return the richest rewards, and who will therefore
command the services of the best writers of their time.' This
prophecy has, curiously enough, been fulfilled in a different direction
from that anticipated by him who uttered it. The penny papers — that
is, the provincial penny newspapers — do now, under the syndicate
system, command the services of our most eminent novel writers ;
but Penny Fiction proper — that is to say, the fiction published
in the penny literary journals — ^is just where it was a quarter of a
century ago.

With the opportunity of comparison afforded to its readers one
would say this would be impossible, but as a matter of fact, the
opportunity is 7U>t offered. The readers of Penny Fiction do not
read newspapers ; political events do not interest them, nor even social
events, unless they are of the class described in the Police Newa,
which, I remark — ^and the fact is not without significance — does not
need to add fiction to its varied attractions.

But who, it will be asked, a/re the public who don't read news-
papers, and whose mental calibre is such that they require to be told
by a correspondence editor that ^ any number over the two thousand
will certainly be in the three thousand ' ?

I believe, though the vendors of the commodity in question profess
to be unable to give any information on the matter, that the majority
are female domestic servants.

154 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. January

As to what attracts them in their favourite literature, that is a
much more knotty question. My own theory is that, just as Mr.
Tupper achieved his immense popularity by never going over the
heads of his readers, and showing that poetry was, after all, not such
a difficult thing to be understood, so, I think, the writers of Penny
Fiction, in clothing very conventional thoughts in rather high-faluting
English, have found the secret of success. Each reader says to himself
(or herself), ^That is my thought, which I would have myself
expressed in those identical words, if I had only known how.'

James Fatn.

1881. 155

THE RELIGION OF ZOROASTER.

Thi interchange of ideas between writers and readers of all nation-
alities effected in the present day by increased facilities of com-
munication, and the new light thrown on the religons of the East by
the editing and translating of their sacred books, make a change of
attitude towards non-Christian systems unavoidable. Until recently
it was customary to regard every religion of the world, except Judaism
and Christianity, as unworthy of scientific investigation. Any Chris-
tian who ventured to assert that any human being had benefited by
his &ith in any of the doctrines of a non-Christian religion, or that
elements of truth might possibly underlie such doctrines, was at once
suspected of disloyalty to his own faith. Furthermore, all Asiatic
systems which appeared to be specially saturated with polytheism and
idolatry were stigmatised by a special application of such opprobrious
epithets as heathenism and paganism. They were not mere silly
delusions. They were the outcome of man's diseased imagination,
stimulated by the promptings of the evil one himself. All who be-
lieved in them were sinners. As to their so-called sacred books, they
were held up to reprobation and derision. The writers of them were
guilty of fiEur greater sin than those who believed in them. And any
Christian who attempted to examine them reverently and impartially
on their best side, or from the point of view of those who accepted
their inspiration, was guilty of almost as great a sin. Even unidola-
trous Muhammadanism was denounced in equally strong language—
though its stem iconoclasm and its admitted points of contact with
Judaism and Christianity saved it from the ignominy of consignment
to the general limbo of the more despised and neglected heathen
systems.

No Christian thinker, in fact, suspected— -or, at least, confessed to
anspecting — what the science of religion is now demonstrating : that
all fiilse systems result from perversions or exaggerations of true
idesB; that the principal non-Christian religions of the world-^
Biihmanism, Buddhism, ZSoroastrianism, and Muhammadanism —
could not possibly have held their ground with such tenacity, nor ac-
quired such real power over the mind, unless they had attempted
with some success to solve problems which have from time immemorial

156 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Januaiy

perplexed the human intellect and burdened the human heart ; that
all the religions of the world have some common platform on which
they may meet on friendly terms ; and that Christianity itself is but
the perfect concentration and embodiment of eternal truth scattered
in fragments through other systems — the perfect expression of all the
religious cravings and aspirations of the human race since man was
first created.

Perhaps few more remarkable facts have been revealed by the
critical examination of non-Christian systems than the highly spiritual
character of the ancient creed which it is usual to call the religion of
Zoroaster. Only within the last few years has the progress of Iranian
studies made it possible to gain an insight into the true meaning of
the text of the Avesta — popularly known as the Zend Aveata — which
is to Zoroastrianism what the Veda is to Brahmanism. The know-
ledge thus obtained has made it clear that contemporaneously with
Judaism an unidolatrous and monotheistic form of religion, containing
a high moral code and many points of resemblance to Judaism itself,
was developed by at least one branch of the Aryan race.

Nor does the certainty of this fact rest on the testimony of the
Zoroastrian scriptures only. It is attested by numerous allusions in
the writings of G-reek and Latin authors. We know that the Father
of history himself, writing about 450 years before the Christian era,
said of the Persians that ^ it is not customary among them to make
idols, to build temples and erect altars ; they'even upbraid with folly
those who do.' The reason of this Herodotus declares to be that the |

Persians do not believe the gods to be like men, as the Hellenes do,
but that they identify the whole celestial circle with the Supreme
Being.

We know5 too, that Cyrus the Great, who must have been a Zoro-
astrian, evinced great sympathy with the Jews ; and was stylcnl by
Isaiah *the righteous one' (ch. xli. 2), 'the Shepherd of the Lord'
(ch. xli v. 28), Hhe Lord's Anointed' (ch. xlv. 1), who was commis-
sioned to ' perform all God's pleasure ' and carry out His decrees in
regard to the rebuilding of the temple, and the restoration of the
chosen people to their native land.^

It will be my aim in the present paper to give a brief description
— based on the most recent researches — of the various phases of the
Zoroastrian religion from its earliest rise in Central Asia to its latest
development among the Parsis of India.

Unfortunately, the whole subject, full as it is of importance and
interest, is also fraught with extreme difficulty.

> In Ezra i. 2-4, Cyrus is represented as acknowledging Jehovah to be the Gkxi.
But Canon Bawllnson has shown in a late number of the CoKtemp&raary .Review that
if the interpretation of a recently discovered inscription is to be relied on, Cyrus was
not the monotheist and iconoclast he is generally represented to have been, bat simply
a time-server and syncretist.

1881. THE RELIGION OF ZOROASTER. 157

It« importance must not be measured by the number of persons in
the world— at present barely amounting to one hundred thousand —
who profess the Zoroastrian creed, but rather by its connection with the
history of the ancient Persians who— inheritors of the greatness and
glory of their precursors, the Assyrians and Babylonians — were the first
of all the Aryan races to achieve empire, and ^ere for a time the most
conspicuous and remarkable people on the surface of the globe, influ-
encing by their religious and philosophical ideas, by their literature,
laws, and social institutions, the intellectual development of the whole
human race.

Nor^ again, is the interest of the subject due so much to the inde-
pendent merit of the system itself as to the nature of the doctrines
which it has in common with Judaism, and through it with Christi-
anity,' and to the intimate relationship subsisting between the reli-
gion of the Avesta and that of the ancient religion of our Indian
{eUow-subjects.

On the other hand the intricacy of the inquiry is due to the utterly
corrupt and fragmentary condition of the sacred writings and tradi-
tions on which the whole system rests, and to the conflict of opinion
among scholars as to their interpretation.

With a view to greater perspicuity, I propose to arrange my ex-
planations in the form of answers to the following questions: —
1. What is the probable origin of the people commonly called Iranian,
who became followers of Zoroaster ? 2. What do we know of Zoro-
aster, and what was the character of the religious system he in-
augurated? 3. How did his doctrines become affected by the
migration of his disciples into Persia ? 4. What are the exact nature
and present condition of the sacred writings on which Zoroastrianism
is founded ? 5. Why and how was the system expelled from Persia .
and transferred to India ? 6. What modifications have the Indian
Parsfs introduced into the Zoroastrian creed ?

I. To begin with the early history of the Iranian people. I need
scarcely point out that the Iranians were an offshoot from the great
Aryan stock. The designation Iranian ought not strictly to be
applied to tliem until their settlement in Persia. It is a term derived
from Iran, the name given to ancient Persia in contradistinction to
Turan, the vast region of Central Asia occupied by the uncivilised
Turkish tribes.' For convenience and to distinguish the Iranian
from other Aryan races, especially from the Indo- Aryans, I propose
to call them Irano-Aryans.

There was a time, at least 2,000 years B.C., when Irano-Aryans
and Indo-Aryans lived together as fellow-countrymen, along with the

• The Magi of the New Testament may have been simply wise men from Babylon
or Peniia, but it is more likely that they were Zoroastrian priests or religions emis-
saries deputed to express sympathy with the Jews on the occasion of so great an
crent as the birth of Christ.

* TArftn was so called from Tdr, eldest son of Farldan, a king of Persia who
reigned about 750 years B.c.| and who assigned Turkistftn to his son.

158 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. January

^ ancestors 'of Englishmen and of the principal European nations, in
some central region of Asia — ^probably the extensive tract of table-
land north of the Hindu Kush, usually known as the Panur plateau.
This r^on was the primeval home of all the Aryan races, both
Asiatic and European. There they spoke the same language, wor-
shipped the same gods, obeyed the same laws, and were called by the
same name (aryoj excellent). The climate was in general cold and
ungenial, yet favourable to the developm^at of a hardy race of in*
habitants, partly nomad in their habits, partly agricultural, who
very soon multiplied beyond the capacity of the soil to support
the entire population. Emigration then became a necessity. The
most enterprising led the way. Some descended into the valley of
the Indus and the plains of the Panjab, passing through the passes of
Afghanistan, the Chitral valley, and Ka^mir. These were the
ancestors of the Indo- Aryans. Others either occupied the highlands
and region north of Kabul, or descended into the valley of the
Oxus, following the course of that river and settling in the rich
adjacent country including the whole region afterwards called
Bactria, of which Balkh (the present capital of A%h&n Tjurkistaa)
and Samarkand eventually became the chief cities. These were the
ancestors of the Irano-Aryans or Iranians. When they found, them-
selves becoming prosperous in. their new settlements, they naturally
sent messages to relatives and friends^ urging th.em to follow. Hence
there was a constant succession of fresh arrivals.

Possibly some of the progenitors of the Indo- Aryans may have
first settled in Bactria, and dwelt for a time with the Iranians until
quarrels and rivalries caused a separation, and led them to follow
those who had descended to the plains of India through Afghanistan.
.All the chronology and topography of this period must be more or less
conjectural. Nevertheless many valuable geographical hints are to be
gathered from the first Fargard of the Vendldad, constituting the
opening chapter of the Zend Avesta. Its allusions to localities are
obscure, but they warrant an inference that the primeval seat of the
Aryans was a country in which winter prevailed for ten months of the
year, and that the migrations of the Iranians extended through
Sogdiana and Bactria to Merv and Herat.

When the Irano-Aryans first settled in the valley of the Oxus and
the Indo-Aryans in the valley of the Indus, their language, customs,
and rdigious ideas must have been nearly identical. No sooner,
however, did they begin their new life in their adopted countries than
differences and divergences, the result of differences of climate, cir-
cumstances, and surroundings, began to be developed.

And first as to language. The original Aryan speech went through
a process of greater scientific elaboration in the. one case than in the
other. On the fertile plains watered by the Indus and the Ganges,
a large class of thinking men were set free from agricultural labour

1881. THE RELIGION OF ZOROASTER. 159

to puESue their speculations undisturbed. Their first thoughts' were
directed towards the analysis of speech. The raw material they
brought with them in the shape of their own mother-tongue was like
the finest .ore or clay — ductile, expansible, plastic, capable of being
moulded and fiEishioned with the greatest artistic skill. All that was
wanted was that men should be forthcoming capable of manipulating
it. Such men were the grammatieal giants Paidni, K&tyayana, and
PatanjalL In their hands the rough-hewn elements of speech very
soon acquired regularity and beauty of form, and a language was pro-
duced in upper India, which, firom the perfection of its structure, was
called Sanskrit — a language which, in regard to the light it has thrown
on the science of grammar generally, has never been matched*

The Irano- Aryans, on the other hand, who first settled in Bactria,
were not so favoured by circumstances of climate and position. They
were unable to support a learned class. They brought with them,
like the Indo-Aryans, a form of speech rich in vocabulary and in-
flexions, but they did comparatively little towards improving and
developing it. The East-Iranian language, which by an unfortunate
mistake has been called Zend or Zand — 3. name more correctly appli-
cable to the Pahlavi translation and interpretation of their so-called
book of revelation, the Avesta,^ — attained its extreme limit of develop-
ment in the Avesta. This book, however, presents us with both an
eailier and a later dialect of Zend. The early form is found in the
Gatha portion of the Avesta ascribed more directly to Zoroaster. The
later has its best representative in the Yendldad and Yashts. Zend
and Vedio Sanskrit are really two sisters, and the fiunily likeness be^
tween them is strong.^ The more corrupt system of vocalisation
traceable in the Zend of the Avesta maybe attributed, perhaps, to ita
long continued oral transmission. Many words in both dialects of the
Avesta read as if they were mere corruptions of Vedtc counterparts.
Yet it is certain that the Zend language is not derived from Sanskrit,
that it is ver]( different from Sanskrit, and has even preserved some
more primitivo grammatical fonna than its sister tongue. Unhappily
it has no literature of any kind beyond the Avesta. Nor has it any
lineal linguistic descendants. Zend is absolutely barren in both these
respects. Modem Persian is a descendant not of Zend but of a sister
language, the ancient Persian preserved in the Achsemenian cunei-
form inscriptions, and the line of its descent appears to have been
from this Achsemenian Persian — ^which was formed in Persia by

* Zeod, which should have been written Zand, is from the root san (a Sanskrit
jn^ Greek and Latin 7r« and gno), to know. According to Oppert» Zend means
* prayer,* and Avesta^ * divine law.* West is more probably right in connecting Avesta
witli the Sanskrit O-tid, to make known to (the world). The proper meaning of
ATeata would then be < Divine declaration,' or * revelation/ and Zand is the Pahlavi

* Hang gives as examples iermaomi, I make»yedic kfinmni; jamaitiy he goes
Yedic gamati ; ffercwnSmij I take « Yedic j^kadmi ; so also ahmaiy to him « atmm.

1

160 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. January

Iranian immigrants about the eighth century b.c. — through Pahlavi
and Parsi* to the Persian of the Sh§h NSmah of FirdM, written about
the end of the tenth century of our era. But Achsemenian Persian
is separated fix>m Pahlavi by a blank of five or six centuries. Pahlavi
was the spoken language of Persia during the rule of the Sasanian
kings (commencing with Ardeshir Babakan, a.d. 226).^ It was an-
cient Persian largely intermixed with Semitic (Chaldee) words and
forms. The greater part of its extensive literature has been lost.
Hence it has happened that Iranian literature presents a remarkable
contrast to the continuity of Sanskrit literature. The latter extends
in an unbroken line from the Big-Veda to modem times. But a vast
desert intervenes between the earliest Iranian writings (the Zend-
Avesta and Achsemenian inscriptions), and Firdusfs Shah N&mab,.
relieved only by a few unattractive literary oases, represented by such
works as have been rescued from the wreck of Pahlavi literature.'

In the next place as to religion. I need scarcely repeat what has
been often pointed out, that the Aryan progenitors of Iranians and
Indians were naturally endowed with religious capacities of no ordi-
nary kind. They were profoundly conscious of their constant depen-
dence on the mysterious forces which governed their own existence
and regulated the order of the universe. Of course their ideas of the
due relationship and distinction between spirit and matter were at
first vague and confused. Nor did they at an early period form any
definite conception of a personal god or gods. They worshipped ex-
actly what it was natural for a pastoral and agricultural people to
worship in a bleak inhospitable region, where the welfistre of herds
and crops depended on the seasonaUe return of genial summer days,
and where chilling blasts held undisputed sway for ten months of Uie
year. The influences of heat, light, and moisture were above all
things to be desired and prayed for, while the efifects of cold, dark-
ness, aql storm were above all things to be dreaded and deprecated.
But heat, light, and moisture had their visible embodiments in Sun,
Fire, and Air. Very soon, therefore, personality and power b^;an to
be associated with Sun, Fire, and Air. These three objects began to
be adored as a kind of natural trinity, the triple repository of mighty
beneficent forces whose operation was essential to the welfare of man-
kind.

' P&rsI is merely a later form of vemacnlar Persian later than Pahlavi. It
is sometimes called P&zand. But P&sand, according to Mr. West, meana <re-
explanation^* and ought rather to be applied to Pahlavi when it is transliterated
either in Avestan or modem Persian characters.

' Pahlavi is probably for Parthvl, the Parthians having been the rulers of Persia
when the Pahlavi language was in the act of forming.

* The Dinkard« edited and translated by Dastur PeshetanjI of Bombay, is the most
extensive Pahlavi work that has been preserved ; but the Bundahish, or * Original
Creation,* is perhaps the best known and most interesting. It has just been tran£-
lated by Mr. E. W. West, and forms one of the series of * Sacred Books of the East,*
edited by Professor Max MtUler.

1881. THE RELIGION OF ZOROASTER. 161

Doubtless other objects and phenomena of nature gradually re-
ceived homage, but only in connection with one or other member of
this trinity or tri-unity of divine objects. Audit is certain that in
worshipping Nature through all her multiplicity of manifestations,
the more thoughtful Aryans regarded her as essentially one. They
had a profound conviction that unity, harmony, and order (Bita)
reigned supreme amid the diversity of her interacting and apparently
counteracting and conflicting agencies. They had a distinct concep-
tion of One controlling Spirit of Heaven animating and quickening
all natural operations, and presiding as a monitor over their own wills
and consciences.

And what, it may be asked, were the earliest names given to the
several members of this tri-unity of adorable objects, and especially to
the one pervading and presiding lord of heaven7 Were these names
so cherished by each branch of the Aryan family as to be carried with
them to their adopted homes and there perpetuated ?

This is an important inquiry ; for the character of every religious
system may generally be inferred from the names given to its Grod or
gods. Can any term, for example, be more significant of Christian
Trinitarian truth than the holy name Elohim, a plural noun requiring
a singular verb, or the still more sacred name Yehovah (Jehovah),
expressive of ' I was, I am, I shall be,' or the name most highly
prized by Christians, Yehoshua (Jesus), a compound word meaning
Divine Saviour ? Or, again, what can be more significant of stem
unbending monotheism than the Muslim's Allah, the Almighty One,
always singular and alone, always without a partner in his terrible
Omnipotence ?

Turning, then, to the earliest Aryan designations for divine
beings, and comparing some of the names still in use among Iranians
and Indians, we find that the general name for their objects of adora-
tion was Deva, < luminous ones,' and that the earliest special names
for gun, fire, and air were Mitra (melting), Athar (piercing), and
Vayu or Vata (blowing), respectively, while the earliest name for the
all-investing deity of heaven, sometimes regarded as one supr^ne
Deity, was either Dyaus, which like Deva meant ^ the Luminous One,'
or Yaruna, the All-Investor, or Asura, ' the Breather.' ^ Furthermore,
a title YajcUOj meaning ' worthy of homage,' was applied as an
epithet to all the gods. Not more than three or four other objects
had special names so cherished as to survive the shock of transporta-
tion to distant localities.^^

Such, then, was the simple form of nature-worship which the

' This epiihety which origiDaUj signified <a living deity/ and properly belonged to
tlie chief gods (each as Yaruva, India, Agni, Savitp, Budra), is sometimes applied to
all the gods (see figv. i« 108. 6). Compare Genesis ii. 7, where God is said to have
created Adam and 'breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.'

'* Examples of these are Aryaman (»Zend Airyaman), Yjitra-hA (nVerethra-
g;liiia or Behxftm), Aramati ( • Armaiti), Bhaga ( - Ba^ha).

Vol. IX,— No. 47. M

162 THE NINETSENTH CENTURY. Jaawiiy

Irano- Aryans and* Indo-Aiywis carried with'them, the otte iox (their
Copied country in Baotria^ the other to their first settlem^ts in India.
We have now to account^ for the^differenee^ and ^ntagoniBin which
ultimately arose in* the development of these elementary, raligions
ideas among Indians and Iranians.

We have seen that a large surplus population of non-agrioultuiists
were easily supported in Upper Indian and .that a certain numher
applied themselves to the elaboration of language. A similar class of
thinking men were set free to devote their attention to religioos
investigations.- These men took advantage of the devotional feelings
of their fellow-countrymen to advance their own interests. They
formed themselves into an association of priests, and declared them-
selves the sole channels and instruments of all religious operatiQBS,
the sole appointed mediators between, men and gods. They; even
laid claim to divine attributes and powers in their own persons.
Then, taking the belief in the one living all-investing Spirit of
Heaven (the great Asura Varuna) as the basis of a new spiritual
theory, they maintained that all Kature was a . simple development
or expansion of that Spirit, whose epithets or titles they changed from
Varuna, * All-investor,' and Asdra, ^Breather,' toJJmAwM^** < Expander.'
They themselves were his highest human development, and therefore
to be called Brahmana. Of course so lofty a doctrine could only- he
for the few. The masses were to be enoomraged in their worship of
the Devas. They were to be kept in religious subjection by the
promotion of superstitious ideas. They were to* be instigated to
multiply material objects of adoration ; to conTert heroes and holy
men into new Devas ; to deify or demonise stocks^ and^stones, trees,
rive's, and animals, qualities of the mind, virtues suad vices; to
people earth, air; heaven, and hell, with gods, goddesses, denugods,
and demons of all shapes, sizes, and degrees — semi-f human, super-
human, many-headed, many-armed, many-eyed,. wieldiAg^all sorts of
Weapons, borne through space on all sorts of beasts and birda-r-foIfiL-
ling every possible ftmction a& gods of creation or destruction, good
or evil, beauty or deformity, wisdom or stupidity, peace or war, love
or hatred, mercy or ferocity. Hence the three principal god^ of the
Teda — Sun, Fire, and Air — ^went through a process jof xtxulinpilioation
^rdt by eleven into thirty-three, and ultimately by IQgOOO,800 into
:330^000,(XX). If the higher doctrise of. the BrahmaBs;v«a8.'eza^[e-
gerated spiritual- pantheism, this popular teaching was olearly some-
thing worse than exaggerated polytheism. It was polytheism of the
grossest and most monstrous kind, aggravated by the worst foitms of
fetish superstitions.

In Bactria, on the other hand, the entire Iranian population w^^
eompelled to scjek support in agricultural labour. Each^man had his

" Brahma might perhaps he rendered hy ' Bxpansloxi,* .and Btahm& bj < Ex-
pander.*

1881. THE RELIQIOir OF ZOROASTJSR 163

pieee of land ^asd his homestead. • Each man regarded the tilling of
the soil as> his noblest occupation. Each man, also, was his own
priest, andaq)ired to no higher religion than the worship of the che*
rished gods of his fatherland — the deities of Sun, Fire^ and Air, or the
otJier deified powers of Nature through whose beneficent agency he
cultivated bis fields in peace and plenty. If he belonged to the more
thoughtful minority, his homage was also^ren to the one eternal all-
pervading spirit of heaven, one of whose epithets passed among the
Iranians from Asura into Ahura.

Of course the influence of the idolatrous Turanian races with
whom they came into contact gradually led to some change in the
religious ideas and practices of the Iranian population.

It must be noted, moreover, that the colder Bactrian climate
caused Sun and Fire to receive more persistent and intensified
homage among the Iranians than among the Indo- Aryans ; just as
among the latter the greater need of rain gave greater prominence to
the worship of the spirit of the air, who, though he retained the name
Yayu, was more commonly worshipped in India under the peculiarly
Indian appellation Indra.

In process of time, too, other differences began to show themselves
in the religious notions of the two kindred races — differences brought
about not only by contact with the varying superstitions of the non-
Aryan tribes who preoccupied the soil in both countries, but by a
curious change of attitude in the mind of the Iranians towards some
of the beings called Devas. This change cannot, in my (pinion, be
wholly accortnted for by any theories *^ of different processes of de-
velopment under different influences in different localities, but must
partly be attributed to the springing up of social jealousies, quarrels,
and controversies between neighbouring races peculiarly liable from
their juxtaposition to come into collision with each other.

The non-agricultural Indo-Aryans, be it observed, could not all
be priests or scholars. A large number formed themselves into a
military class, and as fighting men they could not be idle* They
became not only defenders (Kahatriyaa) but aggressors. Nor did
they confine themselves to attacks and encroachments on the ab-
original occi;qpants of Indian soil. They frequently looked witli
bankodng eyes on the possessions of their relatives the Iranians, and
oi^anised raids through the mountain-passes for the seizure of their
flocks and herds. Of course those who were attacked became in their
turn asfiailants, and counter-raids on the part of the Iranians were
probably not uncommon. Often the homesteads assaulted were so
well fortified that severe combats took place, and much blood was
died. Now it was observed by the Iranians, wh« were generally
vanquished} by their more warlike relatives, that before every en-
counter the Indo-Aryans invoked the aid of their Devas, especially
*- Such as the theories elaborated by Professor Darmesteter and otherB,

m2

164 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. January

their ikvourite Indra, supposed to be propitiated by offerings of in-
toxicating Soma-juice. What was more natural than that feelings of
hatred towards some of these Devas should spring up in the mind of
the aggrieved Iranians ? To them the word Deva began to appear
like a synonym for demon, and Indra, the spirit of the power of the
air, became transformed into a spirit of evil. In the same way the \
word Asura, which was cherished by the Iranians as a name for their
deities, acquired among the Indians an exactly opposite signification. l
There can be little doubt that some of the earliest battles of the
world were fought out in Afghanistan and the passes into India, and
were due to the quarrels and conflicts between Irano- Aryans and
Indo-Aryans. At any rate it is certain that these formed the his-
torical basis of the legendary accounts of constant warfare between
gods and demons (Devas and Asuras), which abound in Sanskrit
literature.

It was at a period Vhen the religion of the Irano-Aryans had
begun to suffer from the operation of such disturbing causes, that a
great prophet and reformer appeared to arrest the advance of his
fellow-countrymen in the path of superstition and idolatry, and to
bid them fix their faith on the One Living God, Ahura, thenceforward
to be known as Ahura Mazda, the Everliying and Omniscient Lord."

This prophet and reformer was Spitama Zoroaster.

II. What, then, do we know of Zoroaster, and what was the
character of the system he inaugurated ?

Whether the theory propounded by Darmesteter that Zoroaster
is a mythological personage yvho never existed anywhere except in
myths, can be accepted, is to my mind more than doubtful. I need
scarcely say that l;ie is certainly not to be identified with Abraham,
according to another theory actually propounded by some Muham-
madan writers, and even accepted by a few Europeans. His name,
as it appears in the Avesta, is Zarathushtra. This was Persianised
into Zardusht, and has been Europeanised into Zoroaster. Probably
there was but one great Zoroaster, just as there was but one great
Buddha ; but, like Buddha, he may have been preceded and followed
by other great religious teachers, to all of whom the generic title
Zarathushtra (supposed by Haug to mean 'venerable cHief) may
possibly have been applied. And this theory is supported by the fact
that when the great Zarathushtra is expressly designated, it is common
to prefix his family name Spitama ** as a distinguishing epithet.
Hence we often read of Spitama Zarathushtra, as we do of Gautama

" There is a difference of opinion as to the exact meaning of Ahura Mazda.
Darmesteter and others consider that Ahura means Sovereign or Lord, a secondary
sense, the origins* Asura signifying * living ' or * breathing/ Haug thinks that
Mazda, although phonetically equivalent to Ifedhas, 'wise/ 'omniscent/ also means
< creator.' It is noteworthy that as Deva changed its meaning to dam^ti among the
Iranians, so did Asura among the Indians.

" Grenerally written Spitama, but in Pahlavl written Spitamftn.

1881. THE RELIGION OF ZOROASTER. 165

Buddha. As to the parentage and biography of the great Iranian
prophet nothing whatever of any historical value has come down to
us. Greek and Roman philosophers believed Zoroaster to have been
the inventor of magic. According to Eudozus and Aristotle, quoted
by Pliny, Zoroaster taught his system about six thousand years before
Plato. XanthoB, an historian of Lydia, fixed the period of his career
at six hundred years before the Trojan war, or about 1,800 years b.c.
Other statements and allusions in Greek and Eoman writers are
equally untrustworthy ; as, for example, that of Hermippos of Smyrna,
who asserted that Zoroaster's powers of fasting enabled him to subsist
for twenty years on cheese only. Haug informs us that Berosos, a
Babylonian historian, described Zoroaster as a king of the Medians,
who conquered Babylon about 2,200 b.c. According to others he was
a Babylonian by birth. The Parsis themselves maintain that he
flourished in the time of Darius Hystaspes (Gustashp), between 500
and 550 b.c., and that he was bom at Eagha (Eai), near Teheran.
This is not borne out by any allusions on the trilingual cuneiform
inscriptions, nor by any satis&ctory inferences deducible from other
data. If, as is possible, Zoroaster and his immediate disciples were
the authors of the Gathas, or songs, which constitute the oldest part
of the Avesta, and which in language, metre, and style closely re-
semble some of the Big-Veda hymns, he must have lived nearly con-
temporaneously with, or not long subsequently to, the authors of those
hymns.'^ After a careful consideration of various confiicting pro-
babilities, I am inclined to subscribe to the theory that he was bom
in the neighbourhood of Balkh in Bactria about the twelfth century
B.C.'® A work, called Zard/asht Ndmahj supposed to be his biography,
was written in Persian by a Pars! named Zartusht-Behram in the
year 1277 of our era. Dr. Hyde of Oxford, who, in the beginning of
the eighteenth century, was the first European to inquire scientifically
into the Zoroastrian system, was also the first to give an account of
this Zardusht Namah. Its absolute worthlessness, except as a collec-
tion of ftntastic figments, was shown by the late Dr. John Wilson, of
Bombay, who gave a summary of its contents in his Pdrai Rdigion.
The infimt 2k)roaster is described as having caused much conster-
nation by behaving very differently from other infimts, and bursting
into a hearty laugh when he came into the world. This strange
coindact filled the fraternity of magicians — who appear to have been as
active among the ancient Iranians as among the Egyptians and Jews
— with the utmost dismay. Forthwith they cast about for the best
means of getting rid of so dangerous a child. One stabbed him to

^ No mention is made of Brfthmans in the Avesta. The leaders of the Ihdo-
Aryaas ue called Kavis as in the Yeda. Nor is there any mention of the Medes,
Persiaiia, and ICagians in the Ayesta.

'* To regazd 2k>roaater as a whoUy mythological personage hecanse myths gathered
Toand his name is tantamouit to doubting the existence of half the great personages
of actiqaity.

166 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Jaimary

the heart with a dagger ; another threw him into a bla^Dg fire, in the
midst of which the infant fell peaceably asleep ; a third sent some
oxen, and a fourth some wild horses, to trample him to death. Of
course the child was altogetljer magic-proof. When he had deve-
loped into a youth he was translated bodily to heaven. There he\?as
adnoitted to hold converse with' Grod himself, but not until melted
brass had been poured over hie breast, and the whole inside <)f his
body miraculously taken out and put back again, without causing
him the slightest inconvenience. The first revelation he seems to
have received during this colloquy was that God is formed of light,
and the devils of darkness. He was then taught the whole Avesta
and commanded to proclaim it to the world.

Much more worthy of attention than the extravagant fables of the
Zartusht-Namah is Firdiisrs account in his Shah Ndtnah written
about 1000 A.D. It is there said; ^At the time of King Kai
MustSshp there appeared once a holy man before the king at Balkh;
he called himself Zerdosht ; he held in his hand a vessel containing
miraculous fire, which was smokeless and burnt without wood or in-
cense. He addressed the king and said : *^ I am a prophet, and will
show thee the way to God ; the fire in my hand I received from
Paradise, God himself gave it to me, saying : ' Take it ; therein is the
image of heaven and earth ; receive from me now the true religion;
become enlightened and despise the world.' " The prophet had with
him books which he said had been written by God Himself; he called
them Avesta and Zend, and in their tenets the king was instructed.'

What, then, were the tenets of Zoroaster referred to in the above
passage ? Briefly it may be said that he did not aim at introducing
a new religion, but at reforming an old one. He commenced his
mission at a moment when his fellow-countrymen had begun to doubt
the divinity of some of the Devas conmion to Bactria and India.
Everywhere he found ready listeners and willing disciples. His
objeet was to bring back his fellow-countrymen to what be believed
to be the pure religion of their forefathers — ^the w(H:Bliip of the one
living Grod under the oldest name of the god of heaven, Amira.^^ He
says of himsdf that he was sent to abolish Deva-worship and idolatry
as fatal to body and soul, to spread life and truth and belief in the
!)ne God, to destroy lies and fklsehood, to secure bodily as well as
spiritual welfare, to propagate the blessings of civilisation, especially
agriculture.^^ The Devas were to be resided as demons, not gods.
Yet Zoroaster also says of himself that he had been directed to make
no reforms without placing himself under the guidance of the angel
Srosb (a personification of the national religion)^ He was to deal
respectfully with the ancient creed. He was to perpetuate the adora-

1^ See ^gveda v. 41. 3, 83. 6 ; i. 131. 1 ; iii. 29. li,

» In one passage he la oaUed a prophet of the Spirit of earth, Oeu8>nrv&. (Hang^s
Lecture, p. 9.)

1881. THE RELIGION OF ZOROASTER. 167

tion of fire called Athar, son of Ahura Mazda, as a symbol of the
Deity, and to nudntain the ceremonies conducted by the fire-priests
(Athiava). He was even to perpetuate some of the names of some of
the old Devas, such as Mithra (Sanskrit Mitra) the sun, and Airya-
man (Sanskrit Aryaman) ' the sun's associate.'*® Only they were no
l(XDger to be called Devas or worshipped as Devas. They were to be
des^ated'by the old epithet Yajata (changed in Zend to Yazata),
and to receive homage as semi-divine beings or angels, not as gods.

Of conrse the true character of Zoroaster's religious teaching is
mainly to be gathered from the Avesta, and indeed (as Haug has
shown) firom the Gatha portion of that work only.^® All the remain-
ing portion of the Zoroastrian canon is the result of later accretions,
and represents the system after much corruption. The five Gathas,
on the other hand, which, as we have seen, correspond in chaiticter to
the Aryan Vedic hymns, are supposed to have been directly revealed
to the prophet while in an ecstatic state by a choir of archangels who
sang them in his ear. The heading of the first Gatha (doubtless
prefixed to it by a later compiler) is : ' The revealed thought, the re-
vealed word, the revealed deed of the righteous Zarathushtra.' Pro-
bably not more than two of the five Gathas (the Ahunavaiti and*
Ushtavaiti) are to be accepted as the composition of Zoroaster him-
self. Even in these two leading Gathas occasional sentences appear
to have been interpolated by his disciples. Unhappily, too, the
dialect in which they are written is so obscure, and the text so corrupt,,
that no translation yet made can be wholly trusted. It may be as-
sumed that Hang's version is as nearly accurate as can be expected in
the present state of Iranian studies. We learn from it that Zoroaster
began his mission by assembling his fellow-countrymen before the
sacred fire, and making them a remarkable speech, the commence-
ment of which is here epitomised : —

I will now tell* you who are assembled here the wise sayiags of Mazda, the-
praises of Ahura, ih^ sublime truth which I see arising out of these sacred flames..

Oontemplate the beams of fire with a pious mind. Every one, both men and
womm, ought to-day to choose between the Deva and the Ahura religion.

Ill the beginning there was a pur of twins, two spirits, each active ; these are*
tiie good and the base, in thought, word, and deed. Ohoose one of these two spirita t
Be good, not base !

And thrae two spirits created, one the reality, the other the non-reality. To
the Bar existence will become bad, whilst the believer in the true God enjoys
prosperity.

Of these two spirits you must choose one ; you cannot belong to both of
them.

Thus let us be such as help the life of the future. The wise living spirits are
the greatest supporters of it. The prudent man wishes only to be there where
wisdom is at home.

** A deity associated with Mitra and Varu^a, and presiding over marriages.
* In the O&thas Zoroaster is represented speaking in the first person. Elsewhere
in iiie Avesta he is spoken of in the third person.

168 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. January

The twelfth chapter of the Yasna also deserves attention. It
gives an early form of the Zoroastrian creed, to every article of which
all who claim to be disciples of 2iOroaster are obliged to subscribe.
The more important part of the creed may be thus translated : —

I join in putting an end to the worship of Devas (false gods). I profess myself
a believer in Mazda, the Omniscient, as taught by Zarathustra. I am a follower of
the law of Ahura (the Living). All the universe I attribute to the wise and
good Ahura Mazda, the pure, the majestic. Everything is his, the earth and the
starry firmament. I denounce sorcery and all other evil knowledge. I denounce
false gods, and those believing in them, with sincerity of thought, word, and deed.
Thus Ahura Mazda has taught Zarathustra in the several conferences that took
place between them.

No one can read the above extracts without coming to the con-
clusion that Zoroaster's conception of Ahura Mazda must have pre-
sented his disciples with a very lofty ideal of a Supreme Being, very
different from that previously current among the Iranians^ and not
unworthy to be compared with the grand conception of the Elohim in
the Old Testament. Ahura Mazda was the creator of the universe.
Matter was created by him, and was neither identified with him nor
an emanation from him. He was to be the sole object of worship as
the sole source of life, light, goodness, wisdom, and creative power.
We see, too, in Zoroaster's system the germ of other doctrines which
bring it into striking harmony with Judaism and Christianity.
For example, there is a clear intimation of a future life, without the
slightest approach to the Hindu and Buddhist theories of metempsy-
chosis. There is to be a distribution of rewards and punishments
after death according to deeds done in the body. Even a resurrection
of the dead and a reunion of soul and body are believed to have been
taught. As to the moral code, it was worthy of Christianity itself,
being comprised in six words, ' good thoughts, good words^ good deeds,'
which, again, were comprised in one word Asha^ righteousness.'^

Other doctrines to be noted are the following : — A man's only hope
of salvation was to be in his own self- righteousness. He was to be re-
warded hereafter not according to his belief in any particular religious
dogma, but according to the perfection of his thoughts, words, and
deeds ; of his benevolence, his benedicence (if I may coin a new
word), and his beneficence. He was gifted with free-will. He could
choose his own course ; he was not the helpless slave of fate or destiny.
He was to be judged according to his own works. The soul that
sinned was to die, and no sacrifice or substitute was to be accepted.
Nor w^ salvation or religious merit procurable through self-mortifi-
cation. The Hindu idea of twpaa or self-inflicted torture, as
carried out by Yogis and Fakirs with the object of securing future
beatitude, was an impossibility in the Zoroastrian system. Any one
who compares the Zoroastrian theory of retribution with the teachings

^* This word Atha is believed to be cognate with the Yedic JS^ita, law and order.

1881. THE RELIGION OF ZOROASTER. 169

in the eighteenth chapter of Ezekiel will be strack with the analogy
it presents to the Jewish doctrine.

Furthermore^ we see in Zoroaster's words a clear outline of the
belief in a perpetual conflict between good and evil, and the duty of
overcoming evil by good. Eighteousness {aaha) and unrighteousness,
holiness and impiety, which were at first expressive of simple abstract .
ideas and opposite conditions of man's nature, became, in the end, en-
dowed with real and personal existence. They became good spirits
and bad, angels and demons. Very notewortiiy, too, is the circum-
stance that in the demon-world there was an archfiend, or prince of
the devils, corresponding to the Jewish and Christian Satan, and
thaty in conformity with Christian ideas, the evil one and his subor-
dinates were only to be execrated and fought against, never to be
worshipped or propitiated as in the Hindu system.

Nor did Zoroaster himself, so &r as can be proved from the only
part of the Avesta assignable to his authorship^ ever formulate as
part of his religious teaching any precise dogma of an eternal inde-
pendent existence of two opposing good and evil principles. What
he did was to attempt a philosophical explanation of the origin of
evil, which afterwards developed into the decided dualism held to be
a characteristic of his system. He was an example of a great thinker
confronted with a great moral difficulty* Evil existed in the world.
How could the all wise eternal Creator be its author, or even permit
ita existence ? With the idea of solving this greatest of all myste-
ries Zoroaster enunciated a doctrine which, according to learned
Pfiisis of the present day, may be thus described. He is believed to
have taught that two opposite — ^but not on that account opposing —
principles or forces, which he caUs ' Twins,' were inherent in Ood's
Nature, and were set in action by Him, as His appointed mode of
maintaiQing the continuity of the Universe. The one was construc-
Uve, the other destructive. One created, moulded, and fashioned,
while the other decomposed and disintegrated, but only to co-operate
in the act of creation by providing fresh raw material for creative
energy. There could be no life without death, no existence without
non-existence, just as there could be no light without darkness, no
reality without unreality, no truth without falsehood, no good without
evil. Such opposites appeared to be involved by some eternal and
immutable law of contrast.

Hence the creative force was called Ahura Mazda's beneficent
spirit, or ' Spento-Mainyus ; ' ^ the destructive agency was his malefi-
cent spirit, or ' Angro-Mainyus,' afterwards corrupted into ' Ahriman.'
The two principles were only conflicting in name. They were mutu-
ally helpful and co-operative. They were essential to the working of

^ Darmesteter interprets this to mean < beneficent spirit^* but he connects Spents
with the Sanskrit root 8oi^ and considera that it properly means increasing, flonrishing.
Axigra, or Anhra, is connected with the SaDskrit Anho (or Anhas), evil.

ITO .TSfE NIMTE'ENTH CENTURY. January

thBt altemailDg ptotset^ses involved in all cosmical being. The only
antagonism was between the resulting good and evil, reality and
unreality, trtith and folsehbod, brought about by the free agent tnan,
¥i^ho ooidd Assist oi disturb the processes of nature, retard or hasten
the operation of ' t!he laws of creation and destruction, according to
his own free will and election.

•' How fait Zoir^afitrian influences had affected the religious opinions
a£ Hie infaabitanrts of Babylon in the time of the Jewish captivity is
donbtfiil, hht iStiSt ^ome sort of dualism was confronted and brought
itifto coltision with Jewish teaching is probable from Isaiah xlv. 6 : ' I
am the Lord, and' there is none else. I form the light, and create
darkness. I make peace and create evil. I, the Lord, do all these
things.'

III. The next point for consideration is how Zoroaster's doctrines
became affected by the migration of his disciples into Persia.

The same active and enterprising spirit which led the Irano*
Aryans to extend their migrations from Balkh to Merv and Herat,
impelled them to seek fresh settlements in Persia and Media. Their
first advance into those regions took place, in all probability, about
the eighth century before Christ. But in Persia and Media, as in
India, Pre-Aryan races already occupied the soil. They represented
previous waves of migration from Central Asia, though probably from
more northern localities. The most important of these earlier occu-
pants of Media and ^Persia were called Magians. The Dravidians of
India were in manyrespects their counterpart.
< Botibtless the first collision of Aryans and Pre-Aryans in Persia,
88 in India, must have led to frequent hostile encounters. The conflict
was not merely one of material interests, but of customs, institutions,
and feligidn^. How long the bontest was protracted, and with what
successes or reverses on either side, can only be matter of conjec-
ture* Nothing certain is to be gathered from the earliest records of
that period^ except that Iranians and Magians, in the same way as
Aryans: and Dravidians^ ultimately adjusted their differences and
sirttled down together as inhabitants of the same country. Such a
eotntprtm&m could not have <been e£^ect(^d without a certain amount
of ' sodal blending, and a partial interdhange of religious thought.
The reUgibn of the Magiams^' tdO,' resembled in many respects the
earliest religion of the Iranians. It was a worship of the forces and
phenomena of nature, of t^e sun/ moon, and elements, and of all the
h6Bt of heaven, though itd kpeeial^tsbaract^stic appears to have been
the cultivation of supernatural (hence callecl magical) powers. No-
thing was more likely thaU' thai the mutual attraction of the early
religious ideas common to>t)ie tA^o races should hiLVe facilitated the
adulteration of the piure Zoroastrian doctrine by an admixture of
Magian superstitions.

In point. of faot thereligionhof Zoroast^^ beeame>80 Uended with

1881. THE RELIGION OF ZOROASTER. 17!

that of the Magians that the two systems were often treatfed by clasr^
sical writers as identical. Probably the old lines laid down by
Zoroaster woold have disappeared altogether had liot' periodical re-
formations restored them to prominence and force. One of the
earliest reformations, as has been recently shown, was efifected by
Darins Hystaspes. His edicts, preserved in the Achfiem^nian inscnp^
tions at Behistun — ^first translated by Sir Henrf Bawlinson— bear
testimony to his faith in Ahura Masxla. Moreovety^b^ 1?rotD^Med$&ta
version of the inscriptions,** lately trandated by Dr*- Oppert^ bontaifts
the earliest extant alliasion to the Avesta, and a remai^kable record
of its restoration after a period of neglect and oblivion; It^tlins as
follows : —

And Darius the King says : I have made also elsewhere a book in the Aryan
langnage, that formerly did not exist. And I have made the text of the'DiTine Law
{Avuta), and a commentary of the Divine Law, and the prayer, aod the tnindia-
tion. And it was written and I sealed it. And then the ancient bpQk waa refitoi^d
by me in all nations, and the nations followed it.

With the decline of the Persian Empire came another decline of
the religion. The invasion of the Greeks led to serious religions
poTBecations. It is said, indeed, that soon after the conquests
achieved by Alexander the Great, Zoroastrianism nearly met with
extinction. He is accused, but without good evidence, of having
attempted to destroy all its sacred writings. It is certain that they
became hopelessly corrupted in his time, and that the introduction of
Grecian civilisation and philosophy contributed to the deterioration
of the Zoroastriacn creed. A long period of trial followed upon
Alexander's conquest. Repeated persecutions occurred, and the r^
ligion of ZotosuBter sufiered from neglect and dec&y for at^ least five
centuries. It is even believed that about the second century of ^ur
era, during the rale of the Parthians, a movement was set on foot
with a view to* the merging of the whole system in Judaism and
Christianity. At last, however, with the extinction of the Parthian
a&d the commencement of the SSsinian dynasty^ came a sudden re-
action. Under Ardashir BabaksLn about the year 225 of our' enra^ k
new Zoroastrian revival wscs-inougutated; the scattered fragments <df
the sacred Avesta were c^flected ; FahlarVl ^ translations were* made
for tiie use of the people who could not understand the^anei^nt

*■ I call this version Proto- Median or Proto- Medic, because to call it Median, as
some hare done, is wholly misleading. The Medes and Persians belonged to the same
AiyaiiTaee, and were scazciol^^mare different than the Spanish and Portngnest. The
language of this patticalar inscription is rather that of the Magian and Pre-Aryaa
laeest and is agglntinative like the Proto-Babylonian. > «

^ Fahlsfl, as already explained, was the Vemaoiilar of Pessia under the Sftsftnicuftls.
The F&hlfliTl trandattons were interlineated wiKh theArestan text, and these 'treve
the proper Zand* It is cnrions to note how, as the spoken language changed, other
tnuiBlations became necessary. Pftrsi translations followed the Pahlavl, and when
the ATOta was transferred to India, and Gnjarati became tho'vemacnlar of the IHlrsis,
Gajaiftli and even* Sanskrit translations had to be made. v^^ 'i

172 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. January

Avestan language, and the old religion was once more elevated to the
* dignity of a State religion.

Doubtless the simplicity of Zoroaster's doctrines had begun to be
afifected by corruptions and incrustations even before the migration
of the Irano- Aryans into Persia. Old superstitions gradually revived,
and non- Aryan influences continued to make themselves felt To
follow all the developments and modifications to which in process of
time the original creed became subjected would be impossible. De-
cidedly the first and most important change was the crystallisation of
Zoroaster's undefined dualistic ideas into a hard uncompromising
dualism. Spento-Mainyus was no longer Ahura Mazda's constructive
energy, but another name for Ahura Mazda as the eternal principle
of good ; and Angro-Mainyus, or Ahriman, was no longer Ahura
Mazda's disintegrating energy, but another name for an independent
self-existing spirit of evil. Hence Ahura Mazda (written in Persian
Ormazd) and Ahriman were converted into two antagonistic principles
wholly unconnected and incessantly at war with each other. It was
on this account that a party of theologians who disliked a purely
dualistic doctrine invented a theory according to which the two op-
posing principles were both the product of a Supreme Being called
Zarvcm Akaranaj Boundless Time.^*

The later dualistic phase of Zoroastrianism may be more fully
stated as follows : —

Two opposite worlds or counter creations — a good and a bad —
proceed from each of the two eternal principles, and each is super-
intended by a triple gradation of rulers. On the one side there is a
celestial hierarchy consisting of the Supreme Being (Ormazd), six chief
oelestial rulers (amesha-spentas) commonly called archangels,^ and
innumerable secondary celestial rulers (yazata8= Sanskrit yajata^
adorable), commonly called angels ; on the other side, a triple order
of demoniacal rulers, consisting bf Ahriman, the prince of the devils,
six archdemons, and innumerable subordinate spirits of eviL

. The six chief celestial rulers coming next to the supreme Ormazd
form with Him a supreme council of seven heavenly guardians of the
universe. They are called Vohu^mano^ ' Good Mind,' the source of
all good J thoughts, words, and deeds ; Ashorvahiskta (corrupted into
Ardi-bahisht), ^ Perfect Rectitude or Purity,' presiding over light and
fire"; KhshcUhrorvavrya, * Complete Sovereignty,' ruling especially
over metals ; Spenta Armaitij ' Sacred Devotion,' presiding over the

** This theory of a Supreme Being, called Boundless Time — the Creator of Ormaad
AndJAhriman — was invented during the rule of the SOsftnians. It was founded on
VendldAd six. 9 (Westergaard's edition), which simply states that the Supreme
Being created the good and the bad spirits in boundleti time. Haug quotes a Greek
writer Damascius, who says, * The Magi and the whole Aryan nation consider some
Space, and others Time, as the universal cause out of which the good god as weU as
the evil spirit were separated.*

* The expressions 'archangel * and * angel,* though convenient, are objectionable ;
they^are by no means equivalents for Amesha-spentas and Yazatas.

1881. THE RELIGION OF ZOROASTER. 173

earth ; HaurvcAdd and Ameretad^ ' Health and Immortality ' (both
in the dual number as always associated). All of these personalities *
bear the name of Amesha-spentas (corrupted by the ParsTs into
Amshaspands), ' Eternal Benefactors.' They have been developed out
of what in the CrathSs are little more than abstract ideas or qualities
of the Deity.

Passing on to secondary celestial rulers, called Yazatas (corrupted
by tbe Parsis into Yazads or Yezeds or Izads), and generally trans*
lated by ' angeV we have in the first place the whole Zoroastrian
system collectively personified and practically deified under the name
Sraosh ^ or Srosh s Sanskrit 'Sruti. This divine ruler or presiding angel
became in process of time a very important personification in his re-
lation to human beings. He was the saviour or guardian of the
whole human race against the calamities with which the demons were
ever seeking to overwhelm it. And when in later times the religion
of Zoroaster had lapsed into a system not iar superior to the poly-
demonism of the Hindus and Buddhists, and when the texts, prayers,
and ritual of the Avesta (especially of its Vendidad portion) were
employed as magical spells and talismans against the malice of devils,
Sraosh was the personification of such texts, prayers, and ritual.
But Sraosh is only one of a vast subordinate hierarchy of angels or
spiritual rulers. Everything good created by Ormazd and his six
celestial assessors is presided over by a Yazata or good spirit. For
example, the presiding genius of fire is Athar, called Atar or Adar in
the later system. Nor is this all, for every being in the good creation
is protected by a Fravashi, or guardian angel.^ Such attendant
spirits are innumerable. They are held to be of four kinds :^
(1 ) those of departed heroes, (2) those of future heroes, (3) those of all
living men, (4) those of all deceased persons. The fourth class corre-
spond to the Hindi! Pitris and classical Manes or spirits of the dead,
and, like them, are dependent for strength and nourishment on their
living relatives. Divine honour is paid to them at certain ceremonies
(resembling the Hindi! Sraddhas), and ofierings arie presented not Only
of food, but of clothing.

And now as to the counter-creation which counterbalances the
celestial hierarchy. Ahriman is daevanam daevo (devanam devah),
the demon of demons. He is formed of darkness and falsehood, and
is described as the father of lies. He has under him six arch-fiends,

"^ In the later system Ahura Mazda is not reckoned among the seven Amesha-
flpentaa, being saperior to them all. Sraosh then becomes the seventh. One of the
pxajeiB in the Khordah Avesta makes thirty-three Amesha-Spentas, which bar-
numiBes very cnrionsly with the thirty-three gods of the Veda.

** S^roaster himself is supposed to have had his fravashi. Kot long ago I heard a
aimiljff doctrine eloquently preached bj a Roman Catholic priest in France. He
maintained that homage was due from every man every day towards his attendant
apiiity or guardian angel.

* 8o at least says the Farvardin Yasht, the longest in the Khordah Avesta.

174 :mS NINETEENTH OENTUEY: Jautoy

ctmstituting his chief dcfnkoma^ dounoiUors, the firslv of whom is
AkemrMcmOy ' evil'-iniiid,' the suggester of men'a evil thoughjiis. The
seeondis the Indian god Indra^the tbirdis Saurva (^ the Indian deity
^iva^), the fourth i£ Ndmha/Uhya (=xtbeI&diaB N^satyas). - The fifth
and sixth axe personifications of Darkness and Poison.^^ Again equally
numerous with the angels of the good creation are the demons (devas)
who preside over everything bad in the oounter-cr6ation« Space
would fail were we to continue the catalogue. Let it aufflce to bear
in mind as a comforting reflection that every deva or spirit of evil
has more than his matoh in scHne opposing yassata or spirit of ^^dness.

A similar opposition of good and evil id observable in the religions
of India. The 330,000,000 gods of the Hindu Pantheon are balanced
by a Pandemonium of i^qually numerous proportions. But in the
Hindi! system the gods are often worsted in their oonfiicts with their
foes. And, what is atill more remarkable, the demona of Hindiiiflm
are not necessarily irreligious. They may acquire more than divine
power by the practice of religious austerities. Thus the demon
Havana is described as having compelled all the secondary gods^to do
menial work in his service.

In the religion of. Zoroaster, however, as in Christianity, there is
a (dear recognition of the superiority smd ultimate victory of good
over evil. No demon is therefore propitiated by offerings as in
Hinduism. Nor is the wrath of god or demon appeased by sanguinary
sacrifices. Evil spirits must be fought against and overcome ; and
that, too, by sheer personal effort and hard fighting on the part of
each individual doing battle for himself. The true Zoroastrian is
never guilty of the imprudence of despising Jiis foe. He is fdlly alive
to the subtlety and cunning of his. spiritual advexaaries. . His. whole
life is spent in protecting himself against :their machinatioiis. He
knows that their powar of working mischief is greatly enhanoed by
any impurity of thought, word, or deed. He is taught that.in order
to be demon-proof a man must be perpetually on his ^^uard. against
the slightest persoiial or. bodily defilement. He must be diligmit in
the recitation of certain texts and formularies {manthra). . He must
be careful to wear a sacred shirt (soc^ora), made .of linen or some fine
white substance to typify purity .^^ He must g2rdjbii]iiBel£,.mth a
sacred white girdle (called kuatl\ coiling it roimd his ibody.in .tiiree
coihf, tying it round him in a particular manner and. with^ a particular
knot, taking it off and restoring it five times a day with the due re-
petition of particular prayers in the sacred Zend language which he
does not understand. If, after all, he -should be guilty of any sin of

. ^ I follow Haug in tliis cQumeration. Tl\e priQcipalevilde2aos»are all ^iven in
his Bisays,

. '* More will be said about the shirt and girdle in describing tho custoxuis of the
modem F&rsls. The sacred shirt corresponds to the under-garment worn by a Jewish
child, called Arbang Eanphoth.

1881. THE RELIGION OF Z0B0A8TSE. 176

I

CMomisaion or omiHsloxi, he mmt repeat a form of confession to Qod,
part of. which U thus tranalated : — ■ . ■. ,

All that I ought to have thought aad have not thought, all that I olight to
btfe said and hare sot said, all that I ought to have done and have not done^* all
that I ought not to have thought and yet have thought, all that I ought not tp
have spoken and yet have spoken^ all that I ought not to have done and yet have
done ; for thoughts, words and works, hodily and spiritual, earthly and heavenly,
pray I for forgiveness. • • *1

■ I

« . • , ■ I -

Not that the T^hole of a Zoroastrian's religion consists in elaborate
personal purifications. Fire, earth, and sea are symbolical of various
attributes of the Godhead, and must be carefully protected from defile-
ment. Fire must never be contaminated by the breath. It must
never be kindled in proximity to the mouth (as, for example, in
smoking tobaccp). As to mother earth, she must on no account be
defiled hj contact with impure substances — least of all by dead bodies,
wli^ch are the most impure of all things. They must be exposed on
the top of towers. made of solid granite, and erected on high hiUs.
There they must be left to be devoured by birds of prey. All animals
which fall under the good creation are to be held in veneration, espe-
cially hvUlsj cows, cocks,^^ and dogs. On the other hand, snakes, frogs,
scorpions, mice,, and all belonging to the evil creation, are tp be de-
stroyed. Ajdog must be brought to look at a corpse, that its passage
over, the bridge Chinvat to Paradise may be secured.

Nor must it be forgotten that there exists in Zoroastrianism an
elaborate system of religious services and symbolical ceremonies.^
The highest attributes of the Supreme Being are symbolised by his
creations, fire, light, and the sim. .Of these, fire is the one most ac-
cessible and manageable, and most conveniently isolated in separate
localities. Hence worship is conducted by regularly appointed priests
dressed in pure white garments, in the presence of sacred fire, or
rather with the &ce turned towards it.^^ The fire is first consecrated
by solemn formularies, and then maintained dav and night in fire-
temples by offerings of sandal-wood and other fragrant substances,
every attendant priest being required to wear a veil (penom) before
his mouth and nostrils. Worship may also be performed in the open
air, prayers being repeated with the face turned towards the sun
(oomp^e Ezpkiel viii. 16), or towards the sea, as objects typical of
GcmFs majesty and power. Homage must, of course, be paid to the
whole heavenly hierarchy, the very name Yazata meaning * worthy of
worship.' Kp animals ought ever to be sacrificed ; nor is there any
image worship. . Jdol^try^ snch as is pr^tised by the Hindus of the

*■ The cock is said to be sacred to the angel Sraosh.

» Whether Freemasonry has borrowed, as is often asserted, any of its mysticism
and symboUm from Zoroastrianism, I must leave Freemasons themselves to decide.

** Tire, tfae*iaDii, and the sea, are pcacttcally the Zoroaetrian's Kiblah, as Mecoa is
that of the Mnhammadans, but in reciting the Ormazd Yasht, or prayer to the Supreme
Being, he does not torn his face to any emblem of any kind.

176 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Januaiy

present day, is an abomination to all true Zoroastrians. Yet compli-
cated mystical ceremonies are performed with metal cups and vessds,
with consecrated water (Zaothra), with homa (a liquid concocted
from a plant substituted for the Indian Soma), with pomegranate
leaves, with the sacred twigs or wires'^ (called Baresma or Barsom),
with the Darun or consecrated flat cakes offered to angels and deceased
persons, and with the liquid excretions of cows and buUs.^

In all such ceremonies, to be more fully described in my next
paper, prayers, invocations, and formularies of various kinds are
recif ed, all of which are in Zend and taken from the Avesta. j

IV, The limits of the present paper will not admit of my explain-
ing at any length the contents of the sacred Avesta.

The fact is that the Zoroastrian bible is a simple reflection of
the natural workings, counter-workings, and inter-workings of the
human mind in its earnest strivings after truth, in its eager gropings
after more light, in its strange hallucinations, childish vagaries, foolish
conceits, and unaccoimtable inconsistencies. Here and there lofty
conceptions of the Deity, deep philosophical thoughts, and a puie
morality are discoverable in the Avesta like green spots in a desert;
but tliey are more than neutralised by the silly puerilities and degra-
ding superstitious ideas which crop up as plentifully in its pages as
thorns and thistles in a wilderness of sand. Even the most tolerant
and impartial student of Zoroastrianism must admit that the religious
cravings of humanity can no more be satisfied with such food than a
starving man be kept alive by a few grains of good wheat in a cart-
load of husks. Happily we are not obliged to resort to the Avesta
any more than to the Veda to be spiritually fed, nor yet to be
mentally feasted. . Our object in studying these ancient documents i^
to gain an insight into the earliest thoughts and feelings of our Aryan
forefathers, to follow the gradual growth of their religious ideas, and
to watch the operation of those intellectual, spiritual, and moral
forces out of which our own higher civilisation and more refined cul-
ture have been slowly and laboriously developed.

An account of the expulsion of the Zoroastrian religion from
Persia, and of the modifications it imderwetit among the Parsis of
India, must be reserved for a future paper.

MONIBR WiLLIAVS.

Note. — Professor Darmesteter's translation of the Vendidad^ with an Introduc-
lion, forming one of the Sacred Books of the Eatt, has been publishAd since thi»
paper was written, but has not led me to alter or modify ax^ of the o|nnion8 1
have here expressed. — M.W.

** In the present day metal wires are used for the Barsom, which ought properly
to consist of slender twigs cut from a particular tree. These appear to be alluded to
in Ezekiel yiii. 17.

*• This is called Nirang, and thought to have a very purifying effect.

1881. 177

THE BASUTOS AND THE CONSTITUTION
OF THE CAPE OF GOOD HOPE.

Pdbuc attention is at present so exclusively devoted to Ireland
that there is less chance than usual of much thought being given by
our statesmen and public writers to other parts of the British domi-
aions. South Africa is, meanwhile, passing through a crisis a^
momentous to the fortunes of our colonies as that which occasions so
much anxiety in Ireland, and there is considerable danger of changes,
which may be very serious and very disastrous in their consequences,
being effected in our relations with our South African possessions,
before many on this side the ocean are at all aware of what is being
done.

Since the late Governor was recalled, the extreme members of the
party in England who had so persistently demanded bis recall as t}ie
one thing needed to restore peace and prosperity to South Africa
have changed their cry. They now demand the forcible intervention
of the Home Crovemment to suspend the Constitution granted eight
years ago to the Cape Colony, to take the administration of native
affairs in South Africa imder the direct control of the Secretary of
State, and to revert to the worst features of that form of government
which kept the Cape Colony for sojmany years in continual hot water,
occasioned a constant succession of Kaffir wars, and a steady annexa-^
tion of Kaffir territory. This retrograde and cruel policy is urged on
her Majesty's Government by extreme sections of the Liberal and
humanitarian parties — by men who, if they knew the real fiEu;ts of the
case and the real tendency of the measures they propose, would be the
last to countenance a course which must prove alike fatal to the
liberties and development of the European colonies, and to the
chances of any steady improvement of the native races in civilisation
or the arts of peace.

The deputation which lately waited on Lord Kimberley to advo-
cate the course I have described, received from the Secretary of State
little in the way of encouragement to their designs on the liberties of
ToL, IX.— No. 47. N

178 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. January

their fellow-subjects at the Cape ; but the persistent miEapprehension
and misrepresentation of facts which has already been the cause of so
much mischief still continues, and the advocates of a change in the
Cape Constitution may now refer for support] to two articles in the
Nmeteenth Century of April 1879 and December 1880, as affording
them the countenance of the most experienced philosophical states-
manship and of the highest poUtical morality.

Believing that these articles could not have been written had the
real fieusts of Oxe case been known, I propose to state those facts as
they will, I am sure, be found by any one who has the means and the
will to investigate them. I propose to confine my remarks for the
present to the Basuto rebellion. I believe that an equally strong
cajse could be made out with regard to the Kaffir wars of 1877 and
1878, and the later Zulu war ; but the Basuto question is less com-
plicated by side issues ; it is a more complet^e test of the power of the
Colonial Government and of the way in which that Government is
likely to use its powers ; and, above all, it is used, as the last and
most conclusive argument, by those who would withdraw or contract
and control the powers of self-government which the Cape Colony
now possesses.

It seems generally supposed, by English writers and speakers on
the subject, that the Basutos are an ancient race of mountaineers
long settled in their present country, and for many generations past
in the enjojrment of freedom, and conspicuous for their loyalty and
attachment to the British Crown. This, however, is far from being
the case. Under their present name, and in their present position,
the Basutoland Basutos have no history beyond the memory of many
men still living. They, in fact, owe their existence as a separate
community, their name, and their position, entirely to their old and
able chief Moshesh, who, less than twelve years ago, handed himself
and his people over to the British Government, to save them from
utter destruction and dispersion. The Basutos have, in fact, only
come to what we now call Basutoland within the last generation.
Within living memory, before Chaka created the military organisa-
tion of the Zulus, most of the clans of Bechuanas now settled in
Basutoland lived in the open country, north of the Orange River, be-
tween the twenty-second and twenty-eighth degrees of south latitude
and the twenty-second to twenty-ninth degrees of east longitude.
The Bechuanas were more civilised and peaceful than the Zulus and
other Kaffir tribes between the Drakensbui^ and the sea, and Basuto-
land had then few human tenants save Bushmen.

Early in the century the growing Zulu power disturbed tribes far
inland from the present Zulus. Among the more civilised and peace-
ful Bechuana tribes then inhabiting the Transvaal, was a small
clan ruled by the widow of a chief, who had for her counsellor
Moshesh, a natural statesman and general. Moshesh first of all shared,

1881. THE BASUTOS. 179-

and eventually superseded, the authority of his chieftainess, made
himself independent, and attracted to his rule many of the broken
clans who had been ruined by intestine wars^ or who were flying'
before fiie advancing hordes of Moselakatsse, the emigrant Zulu chief.
On the other side of the Bechuanas^ advancing from the south-west,'
were the forerunners of the great Boer emigration from the Gape'
Colony. Retiring before these adverse forces, Moshesh sought refuge'
in Basntoland, which was then inhabited by few but the aboriginal
Bushmen of the country^ Here, in comparative peace, he consolidated'
his power, his people settled down in the deep valleys and multi-
pfied, drawing to them many fugitives from all quarters, and ovef
these Moshesh ruled with much wisdom and sagacity.

But his people, who had grown in lawlessness, did not give up
the predatory habits they had acquired during their wanderings.
They stole cattle, got into trouble with their neighbours on every
aide, and when Sir George Cathcart, just before the Crimean war, wa9
settling the country which now forms the frontier districts of th^
Cape Colony and Orange Free State, he found it necessary to organise
an expedition to bring Moshesh and his cattle-stealing people to •
account. Moshesh sent messengers and sued for peace. When a
friendly chief remonstrated with Moshesh he replied, with character-
istic sagacity, that ' he could have driven the redcoats then before
him into the sea ; but he knew that ten times their number would
come out of the sea, and eventually destroy him ; hence he was con*^
vinoed that the best use he could make of the strong position he
held was to secure peace and the goodwill of his powerful English
neighbours.'

The peace which Sir George Cathcart accorded to him was in •
every way most advantageous, and might have secured the content,.,
prosperity, and independence of his country ; but the predatory/
habits of the Basutos were not so easily checked, and, after a while,,
brought about hostilities with the Orange Free State ; which, mean-
time, had grown up between the Basutos and the Vaal Biver. In.
this contest the Basutos were effectually worsted ; and the persistent
courage of the Free State Boers under their able President Brand
reduced Moshesh to the last extremity. The Boers were besieging
his stronghold, and must have starved him out, when Moshesh,
advised by the French Protestant missionaries who had settled in his
country, appealed to the English Government to save him. He
opened negotiations both with Sir Philip Wodehouse, the Governor
[ of the Gape Colony, and with the Lieutenant-Governor of Natal, who
was, at the time, in an almost independent* position. With much
natural diplomatic skill Moshesh tried to gain the best terms he
eould by playing off the one English Government against the other,
find both against the Orange Free State. Finally, he decided to
ask to be annexed to the Cape, mainly because he tiiought he could,

n2

18Q THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Janoaiy

tmder the Gape Grovermnent, retain the, few firearmB his people had
acquired ; whereas he knew that, if he submitted to Natal, they would
hare to be surrendered in accordance with the laws of that colony.

The people of the Orange Free State were naturally indignant at
being prevented from completing operations which would have given
them the sovereignty over their troublesome neighbours and added
largely to the territorial resources of the State ; but their remon-
stxances were unheeded. The Secretary of State had at first regarded
the acceptance of the Basutos as British subjects with anything but
favour ; he, however, yielded to the arguments of Sir Philip Wode-
house, and the Basutos were eventually accepted as British subjects
in 1868, and two years afterwards were formally annexed by legisla-
tive enactment to the old Cape Colony, whose fortunes they have
since shared.

When responsible government was granted to the Cape Colony
eight years ago, the Basutos, like all other inhabitants of the colony,
whether of European or native origin, came under the authority of
the colonial Ministers, responsible to the Cape Parliament.

Moshesh appears to have accepted his position as a British subject
with as much equanimity as could be expected from a man who had
all his life been more or less of an autocrat. In public, he was al-
ways profuse in his expressions of conviction that nothing could stand
against the English power ; and constantly exhorted his children and
subordinate chiefs, whatever they did, never to quarrel with or at-
tempt to resist the English Government. He died a few years ago,
leaving his country divided into four portions. Three were assigned
to his sons.. Letsea, the eldest, was an indolent, unenterprising man,
and appears generally to have acquiesced in the wisdom of his &ther*s
^vice to keep on good terms with the English.

Not so, however, his half-brother Masupha. He had always
4ispired to lead the reactionary party — men who preferred Basuto
ways to English ways — who longed for their old independence and
'dicense to sweep off their neighbours' cattle, and who lent a ready ear
4x> all proposals for expelling the white man, and reverting to the old
days of unfettered native rule. He found ready followers in many of
the young men as they grew up, including some of Letsea's sons and
other grandsons of Moshesh.

Molappo, the third sharer in the inheritance which Moshesh be-
queathed to his sons, appears to have taken the same view as his
father did, and submitted to British rule as an inevitable necessity,
without much liking for European ways in the abstract.

The fourth share in the country which Moshesh surrendered to J
JSnglish rule was in the possession of a chief named Morosi, who was
not of near kin to the other Basuto tribes, and who paid little more
than a nominal allegiance to Moshesh. Moroei's people were the
most backward and uncivilised of all the Basuto clans.

i

1881. ^ THE BA8UT08. 181

' From their earliest intercotme with European traders, the'
Basutos had had more or less opportunity of possessing themselves of
European firearms. It might he supposed that when they had
killed off all the game which formerly abounded in the unpopulated^
country they occupied, and when they were secured against aggres-
sions from the Orange Free State, the Basutos, who had a natiiiial
tiun for industrial arts and civilisation, would have given up their
habit of acquiring firearms whenever they could purchase them ; but
no such result followed. When the discovery of the Diamond Fields
presented a new and accessible field for private labour, the' Basutos
flocked thither, earning large wages, of which a portion was invariably
invested in a gun of some kiud. It has since been ascertained that
this habit of acquiring firisarms was less often due to personal taste
on the part of the labourer, than to the injunction, which he always
received from his chief when he got leave to go to the Diamond Fields,
that he should not return to Basutoland without a gim and as much
ammunition as he could purchase. The object of the injunction was
not, at the time, apparent. The Basutos, when asked, gave a variety of
frivolous reasons. * A gun was a mark of manhood and a piece of
personal ornament especially becoming a nation of mountain warriors.'
In vain the authorities of the Orange Free State and the Transvaal
Republics remonstrated upon the subject with the English authorities
of the Diamond Fields and the old colony. The gun, as a part of the
labourer's wages, attracted labourers when nothing else would, and a
variety of ingenious arguments were invented to prove that nothing was
to be apprehended from the general acquisition of arms by all native
trib^. ' The natives,' it was said, ' would not know how to use their
guns — they would speedily rust and become useless, and a native with
a gun was much less formidable than the native with only an assegai.^
The experience of the last three years has sternly refuted all these ar-
guments, and has shown that the acquisition of firearms is as great an
addition to the fighting-power of the Kaffir, as it was in earlier day»
to the archers and pikemen of Europe.

Moshesh had been dead two or three years when the war with
Kreli broke out in the Cape Colony. There is clear proof that in earlier
days Moshesh kept up an active intercourse with Kreli and the chiefa
of Kaffraria, with Cetewayo and his Zulus, and Secucuni and his Basutos,
hut no symptoms of (uMve sympathy had been observed among the
Basutos before the war with Kreli came to an end.

When the Zulu war broke out, many men who were acquainted
with the Basutos in former days, were prophesying that disturbances
<m the Basuto border were imminent ; othera, equally experienced,
affirmed that the Basutos were loyal to the British Government, and
had incoired the lasting enmity of the Zulus by surrendering
Langalibaleli. However, nothing occurred to test their loyalty till
Morosi, whose son had been imprisoned for the third or fourth case

XSa- THE NINETEENTB CENTURY. Jannaiy

of horse-stealiDg of whieh he had been accused^ Teleased has 9011 from
prison, took to the mountainsi and set up the standard, of revolt
This rebellion was not put down till a large coloxufd force bad beeu
moved into his country at great expense, and many lives had been lost.

I would note, in passing, that there is little, if any, foundatioiL
for the praise which has been bestowed on the Basutos genemlly ibr
their loyalty and good behaviour during the war with Kieli. in 1877
and with Cetewayo and his Zulus in 1879. It is quite, true that certain
Basutos, from Natal, joined the other Natal native contingents in the
Zulu war, and did excellent service ; but these Basutos had nothing to
do with Basutos in Basutoland* They were as distinct as Secoouoi's
Basutos, several hundred miles to the north-east of Basutoland. The
undoubted good behaviour of these Natal Basutos proves nothing
whatever regarding the general fidelity or loyalty of the race else*
lf?here.

Morosi's rebellion convinced the G-ovemment of the Gape that
it would no longer be safe to delay extending to Basutoland the
enactments already in force in the Gape Golony, which made it penal
to carry arms without a license. This determination was offidally
annoimced to the Basutos by Mr. Sprigg, the Parliamentary Minister
of the Gape Golony, in person, at a ^ Pitso,' or general assembling of
the Basuto tribes, held in Basutoland in September 1879. The
'Object and scope of the measure were very fully explained at the time,
Jx)th by Mr. Sprigg and Golonel GrifBth, the Gbvemor's Agent, who
was in charge of the administration of Basutoland. From that
f>eriod, till the Disarming Act was finally proclaimed in May 1880,
the subject was one of constant discussion between the magistrates in.
Basutoland, the Basuto chiefs and people, and the French Protestant
^nissionaries settled in Basutoland.

The . French Protestant missionaries have taken a very active
part against the Gape G-ovemment throughout the discussions
•on this question, and have done more perhaps than any other
body to excite public opinion in England and the feelings of the
Basutos against the Gape Ministry. It is necessary, therefore, to
flay a few words regarding the weight which should be attached
to their opinions on the political and administrative questions
before us.

It was not till some time after the Basutos had been officially
informed by the Prime Minister of the Golony that the colonial laws
regarding the carriage of arms would be applied to Basutoland, that
one of the French missionaries sent me a strongly worded rembU''
strance against the measure. In the long discussions which followed,
I can testify that the most careful attention was given by the
Governor and his Ministers to the arguments brought forward, but
they appeared singularly weak.

It was argued that :

1881. THS BA8UT0S. IBS

(1) ^Thei mieasdre was utuidoesslay ; the Basatos w^re and hud*
always been loyal, and would never make a bad use of their firearms.'

To this it was teplxed that ihe recent example of 'Morbsi proved'
the contrary, and established the soundness of the opinion of
the Gai>e lifinistry, the responsible advisers of the Crown, that it
woold not be consistent with the public safety to allow the indiscri**
minate carriage of arms by unlicensed persons even in Basuto^
land.

(2) 'It was unjust and inconsistent. The Basutos had been
allowed formerly and even encouraged to purchase arms, and they
had done so with their own money, and it was unjust, and ah inter^
ference with the rights of private property, to require them to sur^
render those arms.'

To this it was replied that there could be no doubt there had been
formerly muchlaxity in permitting the indiscriminate purchase of arms;
and there was some ground for the assertion that encouragements had
been offered to Basutos to work in the Diamond Fields and railways in
the old colony by permitting them to purchase guns ad libUwm, ; but
that this carelessness or want of forethought on the part of officials in
the old colony and at the Diamond Mines in former days, could not
fetter the subsequent action of the Cape Gbvemment when it found
iihe indiseriminate possession of arms constituted a danger to the pub-
lie peace in any given district. That the law made provision for the
purchase of arms at their full value by Government from all who were
required to surrender them ; that no necessity could be pleaded for
their retention, since there was no game to kill, nor enemies to oppose.'
That the executive Cbvemment was the only competent judge of the
necessity of such measures, which were justifiable on the same grounds'
which justify interference with the unfettered use of private property
in the case of spirits or poisons or daingerous explosives, or other
articles offered for sale. That the public safety was the supreme
object to be attended to ; and that, provided adequate money compen-
sation were given, there was no ground for complaint on the score of
interference with private property.

(3) Subsidiary to objections of the class just noticed* were others,
such as the suspicions of the Basutos that the Goverxmient of the Cape
intended to disarm them, then to seize their lands, children, and
^cattle, and to hand them over to destruction by the Boers of the
Orange Free State. Such objections were obviously so absurd in
tJiemselves that they were only regarded as appeals for delay, and
further »:planation, for which ample time was given. A similar ob* '
Jection was tiiie exorbitant price often paid by a Basuto for guns
irliich, when fairly valued, would leave him a loser even if the com-
pensation were liberally calculated.

(4) But the most frequent and potent class of objections were -
•eoDnected with the! feelings of the Basutos. It was said, * they had

184 THE NmETEENTH PENTUR7. January:

always been used to cany arms ; anns were to them a mark of dig-
nity and znanlinesB. . To deprive them of their anns was an insult^
and degraded them in a manner in which no spirited people could be
expected to submit.'

: To this it was replied that, as firearms were of entirely modem
introduction into Basutoland, as Basutos had for the most part
acquired them only since they became British subjects, no such
custom could be pleaded for their retention and display on all public
occasions and great meetings. That firearms could not be regarded
as necessary marks of dignity or manliness by a European Govern-
ment, whose great men and rulers, like all the population, went about
unarmed. That, for any satisfactory purposes, such as the destruction
of game or wild beasts, the law provided for the granting of licensea
to the Basutos as in England and other civilised countries.

This last class of objections was that most frequently and per-
sistently urged. Of course, in a matter of feeling and sentiment,
it was not to be expected that simple reasoning would have much
weight, and the result of the discussions was always a conviction on
the part of the officers of the Government, that there were reasons
far more potent than sentiment and feeling, rendering the Basutos
unwilling to part with their arms. I do not for a moment suppose
that the French pastors had any suspicion of such undisclosed
objections to the measure which the Government thought necessary
in the interests of public peace. But reliance on the judgment
of the missionaries in such secular matters was much weak^ed by
the extraordinary want of accurate information regarding the consti-
tutional status of Basutoland evinced by the French pastors when
they ca'kne to discuss the legal aspects of the proposed measure.

In judging of the weight to be given to the opinions adverse to*
disarmament which were laid before the Cape Government by the
French Protestant missionaries, it should be borne in mind that,
admirable as were these gentlemen in every spiritual relation, they
were unworldly men, living secluded lives in a remote province — ^na
way responsible for its civil government. In such a case, where, at
first sight, no question of moral right or wrong appears to be involved,
the pastors will naturally side with the popular rather than the un-
popular view. They are . necessarily very imperfectly acquainted
with practical politics and civil administration, and strongly biassed
in favour of their pupils, whom they have rescued from utter barbarism,,
and whose progress in civilisation they are very naturally not in-
clined to under-estimate. To advocate the enforcement of an un-
popular law, however necessary to public safety, is a severe trial to
moral influence. Events have shown that the missionaries were-
utterly mistaken as to the motives of the Basutos for wishing to
retain their guns, useless as they were for any legal purpose. Whilst
the missionaries believed that the Basutos were actuated by no worse-.

1881. TEE BASUT08. 185

motive than a hamdess vanity, the conduct of the insurgent leaders
and their followers has shown that they never meditated and would
never willingly acquiesce in anything less than the substitution of
imfettered native rule in place of colonial law. It may be doubted
whether the spiritual pastors of an uncivilised race are always the
soundest advisers regarding the civil government of their flocks. In
the present case their advice to abstain from any action distasteful
to their congregations was further weakened by the absence of any
alternative suggestion. The nussionaries could not deny the great
danger of the new fashion which had become so popular in a vain
and impulsive race just emerging from barbarism — a fashion which
fed every labourer to invest his savings in buying the best firearms
he could purchase. But as regards any measures for meeting the
danger, the missionaries had no more to suggest than practically to>
fold the hands and await events. It can hardly be matter of surprise
that such advice did not commend itself to practical men responsible
to the Colonial Parliament for the preservation of peace and for the
safety of life and property in that and the neighbouring provinces.

But though the arguments of the Crovemment did not avail
much in securing the concurrence of the French missionaries, the
Ministry finally resolved to take no active measures till the subject
had been formally discussed in the Cape Parliament. The mission-
aries applied to send down a representative with Basuto delegates
to be present at the debate. This request was cordially granted,
and 'the Bev. M. Cochet, attended by a number of Basuto chiefs
and councillors, came to Cape Town, and was present throughout the
debate. It was impossible to have done more to secure for their
arguments a fair hearing. M. Cochet was a French scholar and &
gentleman of ability ; and though on his first arrival at Cape Town
the machinery of a constitutional government was obviously new to*
him, he soon acquired an intelligent appreciation of the situation,
and when the debate concluded in a manner which showed that
the Parliament was resolved to support the Ministry to carry out
the Disarming Acts, he and his fellow-delegates accepted the in*
evitable conclusion, and expressed their hopes that, if the execu-
tion of the measure were not hurried, it might be carried through
without serious opposition, and they returned to Basutoland pro-
mising to use to the utmost their influence for a peaceful solution of
the difficulty.

I would now say a* few words^ regardin^g the altered position of
all questions regarding the defence of the Cape Colony against
native disturbances, which induced the Cape Ministry to regard the
measure of disarmament as imperatively necessary. It is now some
years since the colonists were first informed that it was the settled
purpose of the English Gt)vemment to maintain in the Cape Colony
only such troops as were necessary for the defence of the Cape Penin*

186 THB NINSTEEKTH CENTURY. Jannaiy

add the naVal sUtionB atTaBle Bay and Siindn^ Bajr. Sut
two r^;iment8, witli a piopoitidn of aitillerj/wdre left aYailablein
case of need for any service which mig^t 1)6 requiared in or beyond
the 6olony/ They were disposable aocordiliig ik> the judgment of the
GoYenior, who was likewise Gomtnander-in-Chief; thdngh the adtiv^
command of all military foreesi when in the field, was vested in the
general officer' commancdng her Majesty's forces, local and regolar,
in South Africa. •

Wh^ the war with Kreli unexpectedly broke out in 1877, both
regiments and all the disposable artillery were moved to the frontier,
and the Transkei war and Chdka rebellion w^e arrested by the joint
efforts of her Majesty's regular and colonial forces, under the com-
mand successively dT Gen^als Sir Arthur Oann3rngl>ame and Sir
Frederick lliesiger, now Lord.Cbelmsibrd.

To render available the services of these regular troops, great
efforts had to be made by the Gape Ministry <d Mr. Sprigg, who had
become the Premier daring the course of tiie war, and all the usual
garrison duties at Gape Town and Simon's Bay were taken for many
months during the latter part of the war by volunteers and colonial
forces.

At the conclusion of the Transkei operaticms, in 1876, her
Majesty's Government reiterated their injunctions that the colony
should prepare to defend itaelf against all native enemies within*
the colony, and should for tihis purpose organise a sufficient colonial
force* To those injunctions Mr. Sprigg's Ghyvemment and the
GoloiiiaL Legislature readily and heartily responded. They passed
Acts making legislative provisions &r> raising four deacriptionB of.
colonial forces — a permanent armed and mounted regular xnilitaiy
body (the Gape Mounted Bifles), a force of volunteers of all arms,-
a force of Yeomanry, and an organic burgher miUtia.

To provide means for paying these forces, they imposed new
taxes, including house tax and excise duties, and did everything else
they saw necessary for organising an efficient local force, to aA extent
which dicited the cordial approval of her Majerty'a Goveromient.'

The action of the Gblonial Government waa, in every way, aided
and supported by Sir Arthur Gunnynghame and Lord Chelmfifocd, the

«

* Captain Mills, the able Under Colonial Secretary of the C^pe Colony, gives the
following estimate of the present strength of the colonial forces :—

Cape Mounted Biflemen .•....•• . 1,000

Yeomanry momited •••..••.. • 800

• ToloateerBofaUarmB • • • t « t • • • 8,600

These are aU of European races, drilled and equipped as regular soldiers.

Burgher Militia less perfectly drilled and equipped . . . « 30,000
Levies • • ' • . * . * . 16,000

With a small force of armed and mounted police about 200 strong on. the Northern
(Orange RItbt)' Border. '

1881, :. TEE BA.SUTOS. 1871

g^ienlti in ooikitQaxid of her Mqepty-s fok^ ; but brfctie the aewi
colonial forces could be. oi^xused, the Zulu war broke out> a great,
disastar befell our anny in Zululaxid, and there was uigent need for
reinfoictfnents in Natal. The Oape Ooyemm^dt without hesitatiou-
oonconed in the transfer to Natal of both her Majesty's repmeaiBf
and of all the aurailable artillery which had just .returned to their
usual quartera in the old colony, and undertook to {irovide for erery
militaiy duty (including that of the garrison at €ape Town and>
Simon's Bay) with colcmial forces, as they had done during ibe
Transkei war just concluded. They also sent large bodies lOf
cokoial volunteers to the assistance of their fellow-^solonists in Natal
and Zululand« .

When the Zulu war was ended, the question arose what in future,
in time of peace, should be the force of her Majesty's regiments with-
in the Gape Colony, and where should they be posted ? The Colonial
Ministry, having already accepted the principle of colonial self-defence
laid down by her Majesty's Oovemment, consented to the withdrawal
from the Kaffiraria frontier of the r^^ular force stationed there, and
undertook to make permanent provision for frontier duties on the
line of the Kei by means of colonial troops only.

But her Majesty's Government went much further than this, and
laid down additional restrictions on the employment of her Majesty's
forces in the colony. The Governor had requested the aid of a mili«
tary officer of experience, whom he might depute as a member of a
Commission to visit Pondoland — ^to inquire into disputed questions of
bouncbiy and jurisdiction which had, for many years past, been causes
of unrest and threatened war between the PoUdos and their neighs
hours. The Governor's request was, however, refused by Sir Garnet-
Wolseley, on the ground that the questions at issue between the>
Pondos and their neighbours were merely police cases, in the disposal^
of wluch he would not allow any one under his orders to take part'
without express orders from her Majesty's Government.

Her Majesty's Government upheld and confirmed this refusal, and'
the principle was thenceforward authoritatively laid down that under'
no circumstances should any officer or man of her Majesty's fonses in^
South Africa be placed at the disposal of the Colonial Government,'
or be moved- to take part in suppressing any native disturbances with-
out the previously obtained special sanction of her Majesty's Govern-
ment; and since then this principle has been specially reaffirmed
with reference to the Basnto rebellion. "

Thk was an entirely new principle, and had never before been*
advanced by her Majesty's Government, or contemplated by the
Colonial Gi>vemment. It placed the relations between the Cape
Ministry and her Majesty's forces in a poirition essentially different;
from that which they had previously occupied. The principle was,
liowerer, frankly accepted by the Colonial Ministry, who undertook the

188 THE mNETSBNTH CEHPTORY. Juwaiy

xnanageiinent of the very difficult Basuto* qnesfcion, sulgect to the new
and onerous conditions thus imposed on them.
- No argument is necessary to show how greatly the difficulty of
the task of self-defence which had been undertaken by the colony
was increased by these new and unlooked-for restrictions. Whenever
the Oovemor, in accordance with the instructions of Her Majesty's
Goyemmenty had, on previous occasions, urged the colony to under-
take its own defence against native ememies^ he and the Colonial
Ministry had always contemplated a backbone of Her Majest^s
regular forces in reserve, ready at once to aid the colonial force in any
case of great emergency, and to give help as instructors, critics, and
directors towards rendering the colonial force efficient.

The Colonial Ministers were not' men to shrink from any obvions
duty because it was not easy of performance. But the additional
difficulties thus imported into their task strongly confirmed their
previous conviction of the imperative necessity of disarming all native
tribes, including the Basutos.

By processes already described, the Basutos had become much
more formidable than they were when their old chief Moshesh offered
such formidable resistance to a well-commanded and very efficient
force of regular British troops. The Basutos have since that time
greatly increased in numbers, in organisation, in the possession of
horses and firearms of the best description. They, could on any occa-
sion muster, at a few days' notice, thousands of warriors, mounted
on hardy ponies, and armed with ass^fai lances, excellent European
firearms, and amply supplied with ammunition. They held a very
strong inountainous district in a very central position, enabling
them to descend at will into Natal, the Orange Free State, KaSraria,
or the Cape Colony. They had no legitimate cause for their new
fashion of accumulating firearms, and perfecting a military organi-
sation, which was a standing menace to the colony and to the
peace of Basutoland. The Cape Ministry took a common-s^ise and-
obvious view of this new fashion — ^that it was dangerous to the peace
of the country, and evidence of the Basutos' intention to use their
arms at a convenient season, to regain the independence they had
lost.

The events of the last six months have conclusively* shown that
the Cape Ministry were right in this view, that the danger was a
very great and pressing one, and that the real object of the Basutos
in wishing to retain their firearms was a desire to take advantage of
any opportunity which might offer to shake off the yoke of the
British Crovemment.

In estimating the action of the Gape Oovemment at this period,
it is necessary to bear in mind what was the nature of the disarming
measures which it was proposed to enforce in Basutoland.

The provisions of the Acts of the Cape Legislature on these

1881. . THE BASUT03. . 189

sabjeeto had be^n generally copied from the Irish Disarming Acts
passed of late years by her Majesty's Government in England. The
Acts and the orders of Government regarding their enforcement
provided for the purchase at a fiur valuation of all aims voluntarily
soirendered before a given day ; also for the issue of licenses to all
who could show good cause for carr]ring arms ; and the instructions
of Government peremptorily forbade any domiciliary search for arms
by police or magistrates without fresh precise orders firom the
Oovenmient. The measure, in fact, might have been more properly
deecribed as * An Act for regulating the carrying of arms, providing for
the n^stration of arms, and preventing the carriage of arms by
unlicensed persons,' rather than as a measure of disarmament, and
when properly explained and understood, I have met no reasonable
man, either European or Basuto, who objected to the measure in the
abstract, or who had any more reasonable objection to urge against it,
than that the time of its introduction was inopportune.^

The gravest objections to the course taken by the Cape Govern*
ment are, however, grounded on an opinion recorded by Sir Garnet
Wolseley in a despatch he addressed to the Secretary of State on
the 10th of March, 1880. It is a strong protest against the whole
policy of disarmament, founded on the great number of natives in
Soath Africa who now possess arms, and the certainty that the attempt
to take the arms from them would be resisted, and might lead to a
war of races which would extend throughout the whole of South Africa,
from Gape Agulhas to the Zambesi.

Unfortunately this protest was never forwarded to the Gape
Government till after it had been sent to her Majesty's Government
at home, and had been published to the world in a Blue Book in
May. It thus foiled to reach the Gape Government at the time when
it might have been of use, and only arrived some months after it
was written, in time to embarrass the action of the Gape Govern*
ment and detract from the authority of its decision.

Nevertheless the objections stated by the accomplished general
were very anxiously weighed by the Gape Government. But, though
the dangers of disannament were very forcibly set forth in the
despatch, no alternative was suggested, and the decision already for-
mally ratified by her Majesty's Government that her Majesty's
troops should not be employed in supporting the Golonial Govern-
ment in any such measure as disarmament, effectually precluded the
only alternative which might have suggested itself, that the General,
who ao forcibly depicted the danger to the public peace, occasioned
bj the undesirable armament of native tribes, should be ready with
his troops to protect the colonists whose lives and property were at
stake, from the fully armed hordes around them in the colony.

* For f artber reference on the subject of disarmament in Banito'and see Bine
Book C-2569 on Sonth Africa, pp. 6, 17, 38, 43, and 47.

190 THE NINETEENTE 0SNTUR7. January

< What,' it may iairly be asked^ ^ could an intelligent and faonest
Cape Ministry l)e expected to do under' the circnmstanoes?^ They
judged, and, as events have prored, righily judged, that the general
possession of arms was desired by the Bamtos to enable them to
defy the law, and to assert their indepimdenee of tHe Gobniat
Gt>yemment. They knew that the real qnestion at issue, as troly
stated by Bishop Callaway, was the struggle between civilisation and
barbarism — a contest between the authority of the hw^ and lawless
submission to the will of barbarian chiefs ; that every month increased
the danger both of the ezisting state of things, and of applying any
possible remedy* What under such circumstances was the best and
most patriotic course for the Cape Ministry to pursue ?

I submit that it oould be n6ne other than that which they did
pursue : to uphold, at all risks, law and order ; to enfor^ tiie law, and
to protect the lives and property of all loyal subjects. It is this they
have determined to dp; it is this they are now doing; and I sn1»mt
that in this they are entitled to the sympathy of every right-minded
Englishman.

The Colonial Gbvemment, however, wisely abstained £rom hurry-
ing on the measure necessary for colonial defence.- They allowed the
most ample time to discuss and explain its provisions to the people
affected. Every argument against the measure was heard and careMy
debated in the Colonial Parliament in the presence of the Basuto dele-
gates, and every precaution was taken that arms voluntarily surren*
dered should be adequately paid for, that no domiciliary police visits
in search of arms should be permitted, and that all who could give good
reason for carrying arms should receive a license to possess and carry
them. The Prime Minister, Mr. Sprigg, himi^lf went up to Basuto^
land to assist the local authorities ; but before he arrived there the mal-
content reactionary party had thrown off the mask. Considerable
numbers of Basutos, including Letsea, Moshesh's successor, his nephews,
the sons of Molappo, whose influence extended ovar the north quarter
of Basutoland, and many others, declared their intention of obeying
the law, and voluntarily surrendering their guns for payment; and
many, including Letsea himself, sent in their guns for valuation and
payment— all who thus indicated their intention to obey the law were,
however, instantly attacked by the malcontents, Leteea's own guns
were stopped on their way to the magistrate's office, and taken back
by some disloyal members of his own' family. In some cases, luitives
who were obeying, or who prepared to obey the law, were killed ;
many more saved their lives by flight, but at the sacrifice of. their
cattle and their property; the rebels drove away and intimidated
all who declared themselves willing to ob^ Letsea or the Colonial
Government ; they occupied the roads, passes, and fields, warned off
all who did not belong to their party, plundered tradesmen's stores ;

1881. THE BASUTOS. IM

bdeagaered Boxne of the magistrate's stations, and warned them
that, unless they evacuated the oomitiyj thej would be expelled or
massacred.

There has been much misrepresentation relative to the advice which
Ministers received on this subject firom Colonel Commandant iShriffitb,
who has so long, and with so much credit, filled the office of Governor's
Agent and Chief Magistrate of Basutoland. It was the earnest desire
of the Colonial Government to give every weight to his experienced
opinions, and to guide their operations as £ar as possible by his
advice. Colonel Griffith was fully alive to the gravity of the task
before the Government, and was always an advocate of cautious
procedure; but he acquiesced in each successive step which was
taken, and on the 18th of August last reported that many of the
influential chiefs were in 'open rebellion,' that 'armed bands of
robbers, acting under^the orders of thdr chiefs, have shot down loyal
British subjects who were defending their lives and property,' and
^plundered many other loyal* natives;' that the object of the dis*
.affected chiefs was ' not only to intimidate and prevent the people
from surrendering their arms,' but ' to force the wavering and weak
into their ranks;' 'that the authority of Govenunent has been
opposed, defied, and trampled on,' and that ' all law and order have
for some time been in abeyance.'

' It is very evident,' he adds, ' that the crisis through which we
are passing is an endeavour on^ the part of some of the chie& to
re-estaUish their arbitrary power, and, if possible, regain their inde-
pendence.'

Some of the chiefs, in order to show their determination not to
restore the cattle plundered from loyal natives, had, Colonel Ghiffith
was informed, killed every head of the plundered cattie, down to the
small calves.

Under these circumstances Colonel Griffith strongly urgefi the
immediate assemblage of a large force as the only means of
restoring order ; and concluded with the expression of his conviction
that 'the war party will increase if they are suffered to set our
authority at defiance.'

All tills, be it remembered, was done before a single step of any
kind had been taken by the Cape Government, beyond giving notice
that the law should be carried out. No arms bad been seardbed for ;
only those voluntarily brought in were received and paid for ; not a
single policeman had been employed to search for or collect arms, or
to enforce penalties, nor was a single English volunteer or soldier
moved into the province to support the local Basuto police.

The rebels had thus openly defied the law, and asserted their in-
tention of taking the government of the country out of the hands of
the local magistrates, and of managing it themselves according to their
own will^ in defiance of the Cobnial Government.

192 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Januaty

Is it posfiible that opinions can vary as to what was the duty of
the Cape Government under such ciroamstances ?

Mr, Sprigg and his colleagues, supported by the very strongly
expressed general opinion of th(B colony, took an old-fiishioned view
of their duties, and determined to uphold and enforce the law, to
protect life and property as far as they could, and not to permit
the government of the country to be wrested from them by rebel
leaders.

At first Mr. Sprigg, who arrived on the spot after the rebellioa
had broken out, did not despair of restoring the authority of law with
the aid of the well-disposed Basuto chie&and their followers. * Letsea
had been weak and supine in asserting his own authority as chief
native stipendiaiy administrator within his own quarter of Basuto-
land. But^ roused to action by Mr. Sprigg*s exhortations, he seemed
at first in a fair way of succeeding in doing so. He assembled a force
of about a thousand men, marched up and occupied Thaba Bosigo,
the old mountain stronghold of Moshesh, and there summoned a
general meeting of Basutos. His son Lerothodi, after much vapouring,
promised submission to his father's authority, Masupha, who at-
tended with about 800 armed followers, did not actually resist Letsea ;
and Mr. Sprigg, regarding the rebel leaders as to some extent the
victims of bad European advisers, promised that, if they submitted,
and returned the cattle and other property they had plundered firom
their peaceful fellow-subjects and neighbours, they should be ab-
solved from past ofiences, on pajrment of a fine and on acknowledging
the principle of disarmament by the surrender of a few guns from
each petty chief.

Masupha's answer was characteristic, and showed beyond all
doubt the spirit which animated the rebel leaders. He declined to
' discuss restoration of the cattle he had plundered from those who had
given up theiif guns for payment, unless the guns they had sur-
rendered were first returned to hiroj on the ground that they were the
property, not of the owner who had purchased and paid for them
with the wages of his own labour — and had always retained them —
but of himself as chief.

How the rebellion spread, and what were the motives which
actuated the rebels, is graphically described by a petty border chief,
who, on the 3rd of November last, applied for protection to the
magistrate of Barkly, a district bordering on Basutoland.

' I do riot know whj my people rebelled ; some did not wish to rebel, others
were forced into it. ... I could control mj men until Galalie came about seToa
days ago to M*Jakana*s kraal. . . . These men ordered ail mj cattle to be taken,
three hundred head and thirteen horses. I came out on foot. They threatened to kill
me because they said I was not sacking shops and murdeiing white men like the rest.
1 remonstrated with them, and that is why I am here to-day. ... I tried to find o«t
some time ago from Qecelo, Mantanzima, Bomrana and Soquingato what they wera

1881. THE BA8UT08 193

gmng to do, but they said I was a white man. They would not tell me more than
that they were going to sack shops. When these men heard Tyali was fighting,
they said, ^ Good again, let him fight." *^ Now is our time to join and driye the
white man out.* Long ago, before the fighting, Letsea sent word to the chiefs they
must be ready to fight. The Tambookies haye no grievance. They simply fight
because they hate the white man. The chie& said a lot, but you cannot believe
them; they lie, and then go and Idll the Qovemment. I came out with eleven
followers. . I fought against Government in the war '' Umlangeni," and then I
said we could never win, and I have been loyal ever since.'

Opposed to Buch a spirit, no concessions which Mr. Sprigg could
offer could possibly be effectual. Letsea, after a few days, whether
from weakness or treachery, evacuated Thaba Bosigo, and the rebels
resumed their old position, threatening, plundering, and driving out
of the province all who did not join them, and beleaguering the magis-
trates who stood on the defensive in their head-quarter stations. All
hope of reasonable compromise being thus lost, Mr. Sprigg smnmoned
from distant quarters such reinforcements of Cape Mounted Bifles as
oould be assembled, to rescue and support the magistrates ; and the
troops, when moving for this purpose, were waylaid and attacked by
lai^e masses of well-armed and determined rebels directly they entered
Basntoland.

I have heard it said by those who admit that the prime duty of a
government is to support law and protect the lives and property of
the loyally disposed, that the Government should have collected ade-
quate forces on the frontier of Basutoland before proclaiming that a
measure of disarmament would be enforced. It ought, therefore, to
be here noted that the delay in bringing forward such forces as oould
be collected to support the law in Basutoland was a concession to the
entreaties of many friends of the Basiitos, including some of the mis-
sionaries and of professedly loyal persons among the Basutos them-
selves. They urged that the actually disloyal party formed a very
small proportion of the whole tribe; that the rebels hoped for
support from the ignorance and absurdly groundless fears of many of
their fellow-tribesmen,. and that, if no force were displayed, the igno-
rant and timid might rbe instructed and reassured, and the measure
of disarmament carried out without difficulty.

Since tjiat date every effort has been made by the Colonial
Ministry to do its duty in supporting law and the authority of the
local Government ; all available forces have been moved up ; but when
the movemeftt involves many hundred miles of carriage by ox-wagon
the process is, of course, a long one, and requires time. We have
onlj just heard by post (15th December) that the Volunteer and
Bxugher contingents of the Western provinces had moved. Later
tel^rams tell us that large numbers of these troops have arrived on
the borders of Basutoland, and the proceedings of the next month
will show whether the Colonial Ministry has undertaken a task within
the power of the colony to carry out or not. I feel myself convinced

Vol. IX.— No. 47. 0

194 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. January

that, however great the sacrifices they may be required to make, the
colonists \rill ultimately be the victors in this struggle — a struggle,
let me bnce more repeat, between law and anarchy, between civilisa-
tion and barbarism.

But it is of course possible that this expectation may be dis-
appointed, that the colonists may sustain some serious reverses, such
as the European forces have received in most previous wars, and
their strength may not be adequate to put down the rebellion
unaided. It must be confessed that the colonists are very heavily
handicapped. To confront a foe, which taxed the vigilance and
generalship of Sir George Cathcart when leading a large body
of several thousand British troops, is a severe task for volunteer
levies. Since Sir George Cathcart's time the strength of the
Basutos has enormously increased in numbers, in equipment, in
horses, and in arms* The engagements in which Colonels Clarke
and Carrington, Messrs. Barkly and Surmon, Brownlee and Strahan,
and other colonial leaders have been so brilliantly suocessfiil, have
shown that ten years* of peace have not lessened the courage of
the Basutos, nor deprived them of their skill in a natural strategy
which enables them to surprise an unwary foe. The colonists
have hitherto received little encouragement or sympathy from
this country. The wildest exaggerations of Basuto success and
the -most unfounded calumnies against the colonial forces have been
industriously circulated by the local opposition at the Cape, and
have been too readily accepted by the public in England. Few
public writers profess any belief in the power of the colony to uphold
the law and restore order imaided by Imperial troops, and many have
urged the active intervention of Her Majesty's Government to subvert
the constitution of the Cape Colony, and to take the administration
of native affairs under the direct control of Her Majesty's Govern-
ment ; and this proposal, be it remembered, is not for the purpose of
upholding law and protecting life or property, but avowedly to screen
rebels from the consequoices of their rebellion.

Under such circumstances it would not be surprising if the
colonists were to fail in. the arduous duty of self-defence whidi they
have so gallantly taken on themselves. I believe they will not fail ;
but whether they accomplish what they have undertaken or not, I
think that no true-hearted Englishman, no lover of civilisation, no
one who prefers law to anarchy, and peace and lawfiil indiistry to
war and idle license, will fail to do homage to the courage and
patriotism of the Cape Ministry, and those who support them. No
English statesman could have shown more temper and pnidence,
more humanity, more single-hearted devotion to public duty, than
Mr. Sprigg and his colleagues ; and they will, I feel convinced, when
their case is understood, be rewarded by the ultimate deliberate ap-
proval of all right-judging classes in the old country.

1881. THE BASUTOS. 195

Quite apart from the question how the Basutos have been treate^l
is the qaestion how a people like the Basutos, just emerging from bar-*
harism, i/ught to be treated by their powerful Christian neighbours.

What say the Basutos themselves ? We have the answer of chiefs
like Masupha and Lerothodi, and of the majority of the Basuto
people who have followed them. It has been given in the most com-
plete form and unquestionable terms by their deliberate action
during the past yeat. They will accept the white man's arms of
precision and his saddlery, his ploughs, and some other of his wares ;
but of hit ways, political or social, they will have none. Basutoland
most remain for the Basutos, governed by chiefs practically absolute
and uncontrolled, except by a plebiscite of the tribe in which the
chief is virtually supreme ; for if any one presumes to act for himself,
even by obeying the law of the English Government, or following the
counsel of the French missionaries, let him be ' eaten up ; ' let his
cattle be confiscated to the chiefs use, his wives and little ones made
bondwomen and serfe in the chiefs kraal ; and let the man and his
grown*up sons who dare obey the law rather than the chiefs will, be
slain, unless they can save themselves by flight.

The European sympathisers with the rebels may not go so far
as to approve this' programme in all its details ; but, if their advice
were followed, Basutoland would remain exclusively appropriated to
Basutos ; protected from external enemies by the English and Colonial
Government, but governed by chiefs who. may accept as much or as
little as they please of the advice of the English Government, even on
such vital points as whether the whole population shall be fully
anned and prepared for immediate war, or have arms as in Naial^
Transvaal, and the Orange Free State, only by license or sufferance of
the European Gt>vemment.

But what is the answer of the English Government of the Cape
Colony?

I have no doubt in my own mind what would be the desire of the
present Cape Goverument. They would take adequate security to
pirevent any re-aimament of the Basutos, such as has already led to
such deplorable consequences. They would give adequate protection
to life and property throughout the country by means of a militia and
XK>lice force recruited from the local tribes. They would abrogate the
power of the chiefs as conferred by hereditary right ; they would give
to every Basuto the same means of acquiring private property in
land by individual titie, as opposed to tribal communism, as is now
€snjijj&i bj Europeans throughout the coimtry, and I feel no doubt
that ultimately, when the adequate number of separate holders of pro-
perty within tbe district^ and their state of civilisation, justified its
adnrianon to the same privileges as a district of the old colony, the
Gape Parliament would gladly extend to the inhabitants of Basuto-
land the same representative institutions which are enjoyed by the

o2

196 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. January

inhabitants of other provinces in the colony. They would, in fact,
deal with Basutoland much as the English Oovemment dealt with
Wales and the Highlands of Scotland when the present order of things
took the place of the old tribal system of chiefs and their followers in
the mountain regions of Great Britain.

I cannot imagine what more than this could be desired by the
most ardent advocates for native rights. Space does not admit of my
discussing alternatives which have been suggested, such as the creation
of a native Alsatia, xmder the direct control of the Secretary of State
in England, which shall exclusively belong to the natives, and shall
be entirely independent of colonial interference. I can only state my
conviction that the more such plans are examined, the more utterly
impracticable they will appear, and that there are no probable — I had
almost said no possible — arrangements under which such Ah^tias, or
native reserves as they are called, could be rendered in South Africa
otherwise than a curse alike to the unfortunate natives compelled to
inhabit them, and to the population under European law which may
be in their neighbourhood.

Still more certain am I that, however well intended and honestly
devised the arrangements might be, no such experiment could be
permanent. The English Government and tax-payers would become
responsible to all surrounding European communities for cattle thefts,
and all other disorders and irregularities usually committed by
natives. The reserve system would require money to start it, even
if it could ultimately be made self-supporting, and the money re-
quired would be most certainly withheld by the Imperial Parliament
after the first fervour of the founders of the experiment had evapo-
rated.

But I would ask where is the proved necessity for any such segre-
^tion of the races ? Have they not lived amicably and prosperously
side by side in many districts in the old colony, under conditions
which no reasonable philanthropist would wish to see altered by any-
•thing which the law can do ?

In a paper which I sent to the Secretary of State some time ago^
but which I do not think has been published, I pointed out the
actual fusion which is taking place in the older districts of the
colony between the races of European and African origin. In
speaking of fusion of races, I would be understood as meaning fusion
fiocial and political, which would leave the two races distinct but
living side by side in the same districts, with equal rights and equal
•chances of social and political progress, as Celts and Saxons live in
Wales and Scotland, or Czechs and Grermans in Bohemia.

Such political fusion is, as I have stated, no longer a matter of
hope and speculation in the Western provinces of the old colony ; it is
an actual fact, and is not confined to those districts. It may be seer^
as an accomplished stage in social progress in most parts of the

I

M81. . THE BASUTOS. 197

colony, including some of the latest settled frontier districts. Farms
may ever}rwh|Bre be found, sometimes in considerable numbers,
belonging to native owners in permanent individual tenure, culti-
vated by them and their native labourers, and the number of such
native holdings is constantly increasing.

Everywhere in the old districts of both provinces and in British
Kaffraria, every franchise, political and municipal, is enjoyed without
distinction of race or colour ; and in some districts, and especially in
Cape Town itself, the native vote is very influential, and quite capable,
if miited, of deciding an election.

In and out of the Colonial Parliament there is a considerable
party of educated colonists, having a powerful section of the press at
their disposal, whose object and basis of party union is to secure just
treatment for the native races, and I can testify that they never
found an unwilling audience in either House of the Cape Legislature.

These are the residts of the present system of administration and
legislation under the present free constitution of the Cape Govern-
ment. I would ask what more would the most sanguine practical
philanthropist propose or desire ? I have seen a good deal of native
and European races, side by side, in other parts of the world, and can
honestly affirm that I have nowhere seen conditions so favourable to
a steady progress of the native races, and to their ultimate rise in
civilisation and prosperity, as in the old Cape Colony. Much, doubt-
less, remains to be done. In many points, such as the laws affecting
the sale of liquors to natives, further improvement and legislation
might easily be adopted from the laws of Natal and other quarters ;
but, taken as a whole, I believe that nowhere are the two races, the
natives and the Europeans, to be seen together under conditions
more favourable to the real and steady progress of the natives than
in the Cape Colony.

"VNTiat are the alternatives suggested — suggested, it must be
remembered, before any real proof has been given of the failure of
the present system ? One alternative, which is frequently proposed
both in this country and in Africa, is that the native races in South
Africa ' should be managed as they are managed by the Grovemment
^f India.'

To this I would, in the first place, observe that our manage-
ment of India and its natives is not the result of a plan carefully
xlevised by statesmen in the Cabinet. It has grown, as the English
Constitution has grown, by a happy concurrence of circumstances
favouring the development of certain national characteristic.^. The
natives of India, be it remembered, are not, as a rule, unused
to the domination of foreigners. With very few exceptions, every
native race in India has had ages of experience of rule by foreign
jmasters, and, provided the rule is not harsh, provided it leaves a good
deal to native custom and usage, and protects life and property.

198 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. January

the rule of some foreign nation is not usually distasteful to the
Indian villager and citizen. The practical good sense and reya%no&
for law and right, the courage to confront the strong, and to protect
the weak, which are the natural characteristics so ' common among^
men of our Northern European races, have done much to make oar
Indian services, civil, military, and political, what they now are, very
well-devised members of the machinery of the best practical system
of bureaucratic government now in existence.

But, above all, the agents have been well selected and well
trained, and the greatest stimulants to the growth of a good system
of admimstratioh in India have been the power and responsibility
there necessarily entrusted to all administrators. These powers
created a practical independence of distant control which India
enjoyed for many years, under a powerful corporation, vested with
sovereign powers over a region so far removed from England.

How many of these conditions are obtainable in South Africa?
Whether they be many or few, any sound colonial system for managing
colonial difficulties, including the great native question, must 'he
allowed to grow in the same way as the British Constitution, and the
system of British management in India, have grown. We have in
the ruling race in Africa many of the same elements as in the race
which now rules India. Let those elements grow and develope. It
may be difficult at once to obtain in the colony the well-trained, well-
selected, and well-paid services, the large armies and the ample
financial resources which are at the disposal of the Crovemment of
India. But something of the same kind, or natural substitutes for
them, will grow in . their own way. They cannot be furnished hy
Acts of Parliament, nor by the most admirably devised constitutions
which can be laid down in despatches.

After a long series of desolating Kaffir wars, the English Govern-
ment resolved that the system of allowing colonial management of
colonial affairs to grow and develope itself, instead of being ruled from
England, should be practically tried. The plan has answered &irlj
in other frur-sepamted colonies. It has been for eight years only in
operation at the Cape. I believe it has answered still better there
than it has in Canada or Australia, for reasons which space does not
now admit of my stating. But, even if there are many disappoint-
ments, what are eight years for the growth of such an organism as a
nation? Those who would withdraw from the Cape Colony the gift
of responsible government ask us to act like impatient children, pull-
ing up the seeds they planted yesterday, to see whether or not they
are growing in the right direction.

This consideration, that time has not been allowed to the colonists
to develope a constitution under which they will live, would, it seems
to me, be an amply suffident answer to the second alternative, which
is the favourite suggestion of English politicians who criticise afiairs
at the Cape.

1881. THE BA8UT08. 199

Under variotiB formSy and to various degrees, the general proposi-
siofi is that^ inasmuch as the colony, when suddenly required to do
for itself that which, within our memories, required the services of
13,000 British troops, and because the <solony, so weighted, has
not within six months accomplished a task such as used to take
oar goaerals and their armies years to effect, therefore the Secretary
of State for the colonies should be charged to undertake the direct
management of all the native tribes of South Africa, leaving the
coloniato to manage the rest of their afGEkirs.

The condition of the Gape colonists is indeed, in any case, a hard
one. If they succeed in subduing their rebellious native subjects, the
Secretary of State is to intervene and take the management of such
native subjects out of colonial hands, to prevent the rebels being ovei^
ponished* If, on the other hand, the colonists fieiil in accomplishing
their hard task, assistance to restore peace by the aid of Imperial
foiees niaybe rendered only at the price of the colonists surrendering
their eonstitutional liberties.

Bat if the state of affairs j so far, is bad at the Cape, what ground
hare we for hoping that they will be permanently improved by their
management being transferred from an office in Cape Town to
London ? Can we believe that the number of persons who are deeply
interested in the welfare of the natives, who know what they require,
and how it may be bestowed on them, is greater in England than it is
in South Africa ? Can we persuade ourselves that we are better in-
fonned than they on the spot, or- better disposed to do all that is possible
for the benefit of races which furnish the only steady supply of labour
of eveiy kind which the colonist can hope for ? Is it credible that
the thousands of colonists who go out as Englishmen, well disposed
to perform their Christian duty of doing as they would be done by,
soddenly become both blind and wicked directly they have crossed the
Line? On what other possible suppositions can we believe that any
man, or body of men, residing in England, can do as well for the natives
of Africa as the colonists who are there already ? The difficulty of
steering a ship by means of a speaking trumpet in the hands of the
pilot on shore is proverbial. But surely the difficulty must be
admitted to be insuperable when the pilot on shore is less interested
and worse instructed than ihe captain and his crew.

Even if it were othervrise — ^if. it were possible to hope that a
Secretary of State, liable to quit office with every change of Ministry,
much absorbed in home aflGedrs and foreign affairs, duly controlled by
Parliament, and influenced by voluntary philanthropic and industrial
assodaUons outside Parliament, who occasionally visit him by deputa-
tions—if we could suppose that a statesman so weighted could really
manage th^ natives of Africa better than a Crovemment of intelligent
conscientious Englishmen on the spot, it needs but a moment's re-
flectiim to convince any unprejudiced person that the attempt must

200 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.

from other causes surely fail. There is a period in the life of every
country, as of every individual in it, when the exercise of direct
parental authority is no longer necessary or possible ; when the oom*
munity, like every nian of mature age, is, if not the best, practically
the only possible judge, of what he shall do or attempt within the
limits of law. There is a distance beyond which the wisest and best
parent cannot usefully attempt to control the actions of a son of
mature age and fully developed powers, bodily and mental — a dis-
tance at which it is still more impossible for any Government to in-
terfere directly in the administration of a country containing a
population of hundreds of thousands of such sons, whom, if they were
living in England, no one would dream of controlling, as to their
actions in matters personal and political, within the limits of the law.

When responsible government was given to the Cape Colony, the
question was, ' Has the colony arrived at that stage of material, social,
and political development which renders the exertion of direct parental
authority by the mother-country inexpedient or impossible ? ' The
English nation deliberately answered this question in the affirmative.
It renounced the dvrect parental^ while it retained its sovereign
authority. The decision was accepted by the colony and has been since
acted on. It appears to me — ^it will appear, I think, to any unprejudiced
judge — ^that it is just as impossible for England now to retract this
gift and to subordinate the colony to official management of its African
native affairs from London, as it would be to expect any colonist of
mature age who has been ten years his own master in the colony ta
return voluntarily to direct parental leading strings in England,

The die has been cast, the son has gone forth his own nmster, for
good or for evil ; he may fail of success, or he may perish ; but retum
to the schoolroom and to a state of pupilage is not a possible remedy
for ill-success in life. The parent may and ought to afford sympathy,
and can aid in a variety of ways, but not by attempting to reassert
such parental authority as the child has outgrown.

In the above remarks I confine myself as &r as possible to &cts
which admit of no question. There are many other topics which
have great importance on every bearing of this question ; such, for
instance, as the injurious effect of the possession of firearms on a
vain semi-civilised or imcivilised race — the consequent warfisure which
has afflicted the country, as the revolutionary fever of eighty years
ago affected Europe, or the insurrectionary fever of 1857 affected
India. There is also a still larger question in the bearing of some
form of union on the management of the races of South Africa.

But these are more or less coimected with matters of opinion. I
have desired to confine myself as strictly as possible to matters of
fact ; and want of space, moreover, forbids further discussion of such
subjects at this moment.

H. B. E. Fbsbb.

December 20, 1880.

THE

NINETEENTH
CENTUEY.

No. XLVIIL— February 1881.

RITUALISM.

The greatest novelist of our generation, on whom the grave has just
closed, has described in a powerful story one of those ignoble perse«
cutions which firom time to time disgrace English life. It is not
the persecation of the strong by the strong, or the intelligent by
the intelligent; the result of a keenly contested fight between
incompatible principles and convictions on each side, equally deep
and serious. It is the rising up of all that is poorest and basest in
human nature, its cowardice and selfishness, its ignorance, its cant,
its coarse vulgarity, its vice, its hatred of good, against sincerity in
religion and earnest e£fort to raise the standard of living. A new
clergyman appears in an old-fashioned country town, where all is
sleepy and easy-going, and which, beneath its sleepy ease, is full of
^^rretchedness and sin. He preaches as if he believes what he sajs:^
and he acts as if his words were true. He is a man of energy and
purpoee ; and his preaching, and the interest which it excites, and his
practical measures, begin to make a stir in the dull little place.
Xts privileged sloth and stupidity, its idle gossip and lazy spite take
the alarm, and band together against the disturber. Its worldliness
and its wickedness are frightened and provoked into fiiry, and take
the attitude of indignant championship of honesty, morality, and pure
religion.

The opening chapters of ' Janet's Bepentance,' in George Eliot's
Seeius of Clerical Life^ describe the character of the opposition
Vol. IX.— No. 48. P

202 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. February

raised, and then the measures taken to make the place too hot for
the man who wishes to change the religious ways of Milby. As
the obnoxious innovator touches consciences and attracts confidence,
the town becomes divided into Tryanite and anti-Tryanite. The
opponents of the movement are well-to-do and powerful persons
in the place. There is the keen, self-confident, overbearing attorney,
brutal and drunken at home, the unresisted bully and tyrant abroad,
with all the threads of business in the country round him in his
hands, ^ who, as long as his JNIaker grants him power of voice and
power of intellect, will take every legal mfeans of resisting the intro-
duction of demoralising, methodistical doctrine into this parish/
There is the rich miller, whose education and value for education
are not in proportion to his balance at his bankers', and who wiU not
stick at trouble to put down proceedings which are sure to ruin the
"morality of servant-maids. There is his better-read neighbour, who
talks about Hobbes, and who holds seriously that ^ this sectarian-
ism within the Church ought to be put down ; ' that the unpopular
religionists are * not Churchmen at all, — are no better than Presby-
terians.' And so the list goes on, including ithe sarcastic general prac-
titioner and the sleek churchwarden, with much zeal but a rather loose
reputation. The controversy is a wide one : but the minute point
around which the struggle rages is, whether or not a new Sunday
evening lecture shall be started in the place by the unpopular
clergyman. And the story proceeds to relate the efiforts made by
these worthies to avert the threatening mischief ; how a memorial is
got up to the non-resident rector to disallow the proposed innovation;
how a deputation waits on him, and brings back a favourable answer;
how a popular demonstration, organised by the all-pow:erful attorney,
in favour of * Sound Churoh Principles and no Hypocrisy,' welcomes
the delegates on their return ; and bow the leader of the agitation an-
nounces to his sympathising fellow-citizens the success of his mission.
He assures them of the pleasure which it gives him to witness the
strong proo& of their ^ attachment to the principles of our excellent
Church.'

The pulpit, from which their venerable pastor has fed them with sound doctrine
for half a century, is not to be invaded by a fanatical, sectarian, double-faced,
Jesuitical interloper. We are not to have our young people demoralised and cor-
rupted by the temptations to vice, notoriously connected with Sunday evemng
lectures. We are not to have a preacher obtruding himself upon us, who denies
good works, and sneaks into our liomes perverting the faith of our wives and
daughters.

Dishonesty and unfaithfulness to the Church, priestly meddling,
and the mischief to morality and the peace of families caused by the
new religious methods, and by the intrusion of ambitious and
domineering clergynaen ; these are what are urged by the opponents
of innovation at Milby.

1881. RITUALISM. 203

George Eliot*s story belongs to the times of the Evangelical
movement. The doctrines against which the parishioners of Milby
are called upon to rally to the Church are the ' methodistical ' doctrines
of Venn and Simeon. The object of obloquy and persecution is an
Evangelical clei^man, fervent, self-denying, indefatigable, with
narrow views of the world, and probably not always judicious, but
pure and high in his standard of life, and with the root of the
matter in him in his genuine sympathy for the sinful, the tempted,
and the suffering. The story could hardly be written with any pro-
bability of an Evangelical movement or an Evangelical clergyman
now. Evangelical religion has lived down this kind of opposition.
But nevertheless it could be written, with great truth, as a typ^ of
things that have been going on during the last ten or fifteen years.
The characters, so powerfully drawn in < Janet's Kepentance,' have
not disappeared, nor the occasions which lead them to show them-
selves. The fierce blind antipathies, the implacable bitterness, the
insolent and brutal bullying, the dense and blundering ignorance,
the detestable hypocrisies, there described, still trouble actual Eng-
lish life. They have foimd and fisistened on another quarry. They
are still loud against dishonest and disloyal clergymen. They are
still sensitive to pestilent heresies which threaten the soundness of
the Church. They still appeal to the good old times before changes
were heard of, and complain that they cannot recognise, under the
newfangled fashions, the churched and services to which they were
accustomed. They stiU raise the cry that clerical influences cor-
xnpt morality, and clerical claims endanger the peace of families..
And as it was in the Evangelical days, good men are not always
wise, and earnest men are sometimes extravagant. But another set
of people have drawn on themselves the unpopularity which the
Evangelicids first provoked. If the story were written of our present
times, Mr. Tryan would be drawn as a Kitualist.

But if the story were written now, a fresh element would have
to be added. Mr. Dempster, the shrewd attorney, would hardly have
been equal to himself, if the law had not occurred to him as a means
of annoyance. . The disciples of Thomas Scott and Bomaine were
frowned upon by bishops, mocked at as ^ saints ' by the world, charged
^with Galvinim, AntiHomianism,and Dissenting tendencies by contro-
versialkts, worried and insulted by lazy pluralists and parish despots ;
but no one had the thought of putting down their obnoxious pro-
ceedings by the help of the courts. The new feature in the oppo-
sition to a strong but mipopular religious movement, and one which
has brought us to the brink of a grave constitutional question, is the
active recourse to the tribunals — not to prohibit fe.lse teaching;
resort to them has been given up, since they have clearly evinced
their inclination to be neutral in questions of doctrine — but to arrest
and suppress, by the strongest measures, a certain list of outward

f2

204 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. February

practices in divine service, which are supposed to indicate the ideas
and leanings of a party, and which no pains and no expense have
been spared to get declared illegal, and, which is not the same thing
in popular parlance, unlawful.

In much of all this there is nothing strange. Every strong
religious movement, challenging what is accepted and customary,
and calling on people to change their thoughts and their ways,
must expect to provoke equally strong opposition ; and when once
opposition begins, it will be with each set of opponents according to
their kind. ^ Puseyism ' and * Tractarianism,' to recall nicknames
which are now half forgotten, of course had to meet what had once been
the lot of ' Methodism ' and ' preaching the Grospel.' The teaching
signified by those names was not only argued against and rebuked
by the learned and the dignified ; it was insulted, misrepresented,
vilified, slandered by the ignorant, the vulgar, the malignant. Like
all movements, it had its weak points, and its injudicious and ex-
travagant exponents ; of course it paid heavily for its follies and
faults. Severe blows were dealt it : it was for many years under a
ban, on the part of authority and in the eyes of the public. But the
attempts to put a legal stigma on ^ Tractarianism ' were feeble, and
failed. It was left to fight its battles as it could ; to carry on con-
troversy with divines in the schools ; to live down popular stupidity
and coarseness in the market-place or the vestry ; and it has become
quite a respectable thing now to be an ' old Tractarian.'

But the case has been different with 'Ritualism.' The great
awakening in the Church, sometimes identified with what is called
' Tractarianism,' but which was certainly wider in all directions than
the range of that movement, turned men's thoughts to the enlarging
and deepening their religious ideas, and to the elevation of their
standard of religious life. Newman's Parochial Sermons represent
with singular and typical exactness the belief, the teaching, the
aims of the High Church school, which was at the head — ^was, at
leasts most energetic and coDspicuous — in the general quickening of
the Church. They addressed the thoughtful, the refined, the edu-
cated, the scholarlike, and they did their work. But there was some-
thing more to be done, and something more natural^ followed. The
Church is not only for the refined but for the multitudes, and it does
little if it does not enlist the interest and sympathy of the un-
learned and the half-learned, the men with scanty leisure and much
worldly business. The attempt to popularise followed the work of
the theologian and the moralist. In such an attempt two things
obviously occupied a foremost place : preaching and solenm worship.
In the next chapter of the history of the Church movement, these
were the marked and distinguishiDg features. The men who made
the attempt boldly and systematically soon got a nickname ; they
were called ' Ritualists ; ' and if the wave of interest in the objects

1881. RITUALISM. 205

and teaching of the Church has spread from earnest clergymen and from
iavoured rural parishes to the keen and busy classes of the towns,
the result is very largely due to those who carried on in this new
way the work of the old Oxford movement.

Of the use made by them of the instrument of preaching, I have
not to speak. But they took in hand, also, to improve and raise the
character of public worship. That there was much to improve, few
reasonable people would now deny, though it is equally reasonable
not to he surprised that the best people fifty years ago accommodated
themselves without difficulty to what shocks us now. Men's eyes
are opened as time goes on, on art, on politics ; and why not, without
any disrespect to our fathers, on what is seemly and fitting in wor-
ship ? But surely it is not too much to say that on this subject
most well-informed people were very ignorant ; customs in most places
were very slovenly. The first attempts at remedy, humble as they were,
were involved in the general unpopularity of the so-called ' Tracta-
rians.' They sought to restore the Eucharist to its due place in
public worship, and to make it more frequent : they substituted the
surplice for the preaching gown, and added the offertory and the
prayer for the Church Militant to the ordinary Sunday service;
and these changes, which now excite no remark, were sufficient to
produce furious riots at Exeter, and later, with such additions as a
chanted service and surpliced choir, at St. George's-in-the-East,
which even statesmen deigned to excuse. But the ^ Ritualists '
attempted more. What they attempted was to find a reasonable,
consistent, and appropriate rule and method for using the Prayer
Book in public service. For the Prayer Book gives us its holy
and beautiful words of devotion; it is sparing in its directions
on the many questions which may arise in using them. To take
one instance : except the Ornaments rubric, in which no vesture
is named, and two rubrics in the Consecration Service of Bishops,
there is not a word, I believe, from beginning to end to say that
any particular dress is to be used in service ; the word ^ surplice,'
if I mistake not, does not occur in the Prayer Book. The book
may be used, but the manner of using it indefinitely varied, without
any contravening of its scanty directions ; this is not theory but
obvious fact, to be verified by simply visiting half-a-dozen churches
anywhere. Custom must always go for much in public usages,
such as common worship ; and to give people a custom of which
they could render an intelligent and consistent account was the
object of the reformers of English ritual.

It was certainly not easy to do this — to give people something
more solid than the suggestion of each man's taste, or knowledge, or
sense of reverence ; and it is hardly the time to pronounce on their
success. But they did what it was most natural to do. They turned
to the only authoritative rule, the famous ^ Ornaments rubric,' silent

206 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. February

itself, but directing them to the established order of a certain fixed
date. Some of them, doubtless, did more. They advanced wide and
untenable claims to all prae-Beformation usage not formally prohibited.
Some of them showed a very marked incUnation to find their rules
in modem Koman usage. But their appeal, as a party, was to dis-
tinct Anglican authority, to which they believed that they were
referred in the Prayer Book. They may have added points of their
own ; they may have claimed, where directions were obscure or im«
perfect, to judge what was most seemly and reverent, most accor-
dant with the general usage of the Church. But their appeal has
been throughout, and on principle, to the sources to which they were
sent by the Ornaments rubric, the last and final order of the Church
and Bealm.

The attempt was surely a reasonable one, even if it turned out an
impracticable one. Mere custom, and especially the custom come
down from a time which had not cared much for public worship, was
not so sacred a thing in such times as our own. And how was it met ?

It was met of course with fierce opposition. Men like those who
opposed the Evangelical Mr. Tryan, found in it a new and promising
object on which to direct their hatred of what is energetic and
troublesome in religion ; and enough foolish and intemperate things
were done by some Bitualists to provoke sober-minded people, to dis-
gust sensible ones, and to frighten timid ones. But it is quite idle to
deny that it called forth a response of enthusiasm and sympathy from
numbers of those classes whom the Church had as yet hardly touched.
They certainly welcomed the KituaHsts' interpretation of the Prayer
Book and its use. I do not go into the causes of this. I do not
undertake to estimate its worth. But a man must be blind who
does not see what is the real strength in the Bitualist congregations,
and what is the effect of their services in rallying to the Church
men, young and old, who certainly never came to church before.

One part of this, the opposition, was natural : the other, the popu-
larity, was by most people, I suppose, unexpected. And if this had been
all, Kitualism, like other English movements, would have had to
fight its battles, and take it3 chance ; it would suffer for its ex-
travagances and mistakes, and have the benefit, in the long run, of
what was reasonable and sound in its position ; it would, of cotirse,
come into collision with strong convictions, which were irreconcilable
with its principles, and have to bear the blame, justly or unjustly,
of the strife and confusion that might ensue ; but it would have had
fair play. In time sober judgments could have been formed about
its pretensions. The effects of novelty and changes of custom,
whether irritating or attracting, would gradually wear off; and
people on all sides would be able to make a calmer and clearer
estimate of what was before them.

But a new turn was given to the whole matter when appeal was

1881. RITUALISM. 207

made to tbe law. The law courts had been appealed to in the recent'
controverBies on doctrine, with the result that, except in very extrava-
gant cases, they practically declined to pronounce on the doctrinal
questions submitted to them, and left matters as they were. But
when questions of ritual canke before them, involving a great num-
ber of separate, points^ some of them apparently of a very minute
character, they followed a different course. They pronounced very
peremptorily and decisively. They treated the Bitualists' conten-
tion as groundless, and their arguments as futile and hardly serious.
They prohibited without hesitation, and they marked their dis-
approval of the claims of the Bitualists by giving, in most of the
cases, costs against them.

When once the appeal to the law by the opponents of the
Sitnalists had been successful, other things followed. Inferior
courts necessarily followed the ruling of superior ones. One su-
perior court naturally had regard to the ruling and judgement of a
former one. The matter was assumed to be removed from the sphere
of argument ; and when recourse to the law had proved so successful,
it is not to be wondered at that it should become the convenient
instrument of controversy. Tbe courts had entered on the task of
practically making the law for the Church on the customs of public
worship, and they were making it as the party opposed to the Bitual-
ists desired. The Bitualists found themselves in a position in which
none of the previous religious movements in the Church had been
placed. They found themselves, in matters purely of religious
interest, with the law set in motion against them. They saw, too,
that under the impulse given, the law might claim to meddle with
other things besides Bitualism.

The early prosecutions of Bitualists had been the ventures of
individuals. Their success led to an organisation on a large scale,
to carry on the legal war. And to make matters worse, a step was
taken, which confirmed and encouraged them in their policy. Nomi-
nally to expedite and cheapen ecclesiastical suits — a purpose to which
the results have been in the oddest contrast — ^really, as everybody
knew, to ^ stamp out Bitualism,' the Public Worship Begulation
Act was passed. The authorities of the Church called in the help of
tbe State to scourge the heretics of the hour. An Act of the Imperial
Parliament passed to put down certain dresses and lights and gestures
of reverence, which those who objected to them sneered at as con-
temptible trifles.

Throughout the course of the controversy, two inconsistent lines
of objection have been taken by the critics of Bitualism. Their
doixigb have been alternately represented as mere ^ man-millinery,' and
< tomfoolery .'. unworthy of a sensible man's interest ; and then, as so
formidable as to justify measures against them quite without prece-
dent in our later religious histoty. First their practices were matters

208 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. February

of utter indifference ; then thi5y were things which threatened the
faith and the Church. I do not see what answer can be made to the
Bitualist dilemma. If the things <for which we claim liberty are so
unspeakably unimportant, why do you not leave us alone ? if you are
right in taking so much trouble to put them down, it must be
because they are important, and it is natural that we should fight for
them ; but you have no business to abuse us for making a fuss about
childish follies when you get Acts of Parliament to suppress them.
Of course every one knows that a deep theological antagonism is at the
bottom of the dispute. But the Kitualists have a right to say that
here they are within the law, and challenge their opponents to attack
them on this ground.

The truth is, that the attempt of the Bitualists to find some
intelligent basis for the details of public worship ought to have been
met in a more patient and far-sighted way by the authorities of the
Church. Granting all tliat was provoking and self-willed in some
of the Kitualists, they were not all of this temper ; bishops, too,
have to deal with other provoking men besides Kitualists. The
Ritualists really had something to say for themselves, and they fotmd it
hard to get a fair hearing. The bishops, some of them at least, made
two mistakes : they failed in the power of imagining a state of things
in public worship, of a different type from what custom had made
familiar ; and they undervalued the men whom they looked upon as
their opponents. No doubt to a person accustomed all his life to the
old-&shioned English surplice, the proposal to put on a cope or
chasuble must have seemed at first extravagantly ludicrous. He
would first ridicule it as preposterous. He would then become
indignant at it as a puerile attention to trifles. People forget the
wise saying, that all ceremonies appear ridiculous to those who are
out of sympathy with what they imply. Public sarcasm has not
always spared lawn sleeves and judges' wigs ; and democratic critics
have been heard to speak disrespectfully of the Order of the Garter.
If the question of the reasonableness of the Bitualist interpretation
could be settled, the question of custom and fiEimiliarity would settle
itself in due time, like many other changes from the ecclesiastical
customs of our youth, and even manhood. But, for various reasons,
the bishops as a body — judicious and cautious men — did not at first
take in the strength of the Bitualist case, and thought to repress
innovations by authority. They had to deal with men who, on their
own subject, knew what they were talking about ; and the unfortunate
prejudice that the whole affair was a dispute about trifles prevented
their superiors from feeling this. It seemed impossible a priori that
the Bitualists could be right, and their reasons were discussed not
on their merits, but on grounds of policy and the general aspect of
things. The natural results followed : increasing want of sympathy
on one side, increasing sense, on the other, of being treated imreason-

1881. RITUALISM. 20».

ably and iinfiBdrlj, i^ithout real knowledge of their case or considera-
tion for their olyects : harsh acts and words on one side ; alienation
and resistance on the other ; till it has come to this, that people accept.
mih a grave face the idea of putting down gestures and preventing
more or less of reverence by the powers of law ; and we have had two
or three clergymen in prison, «nd another deprived, for disobedience
to the ruling of the courts on these points.

It is a very old maxim that if people try to settle differences by
the wrong methods they only inflame them. Litigation is not the
right way to settle differences which mean nothing if they do not
arise out of deep religious convictions. At any risk, even the risk of
cases of non-compliance with their bishop's directions on the part
of Ritualists, imable to convince him^ and whom he could not per-
suade, litigation ought from the first to have been steadily discouraged,
and the more so when it sprang, as recent litigation has done, not
out of legitimate complaints of disturbed parishes, but from party
policy and the merely colourable interest of prosecutors like Dr.
Julias at Clewer. All reasonable men owe a great debt of gratitude
to the Bishop of Oxford for the stand which he made in the interests
of the whole Church in a case which presented such a ludicrous coun-
terfeit of the aggrieved parishioner ; but the stand ought to have been
made more widely and earlier. No one can wonder at the bishops'
having been surprised and disturbed at the proposals of the Bitualists.
We are all creatures of habit, and occasionally mistake habit for some-
thing settled and perpetual in the nature of thiugs. But it is to be
wished that they had earlier remembered how often it happens in life
that what shocks us at first sight as unreasonable alters its aspect on
closer acquaintance and on longer familiarity ; and had considered that
it might turn out that there was more truth in the Ritualist allegations,
and more practical good in the Ritualist recommendations, than at
first seemed, likely. That this is so, certainly seems to be the opinion
of an increasing number of sober clergymen who could not be called
Ritualists ; and if more of us had had the sagacity to recognise this
sooner, some, probably, of our troubles and scandals might have been
spared us. I suppose that most of us can trace in ourselves more than
one change of opinion and feeling on the points raised by Ritualism.
We have all had much to learn, and what we have learned has confes-
sedly raised the standard of public worship in our churches. Such an
experience ought to warn us against being precipitate, even when at
the moment we are startled and do not approve. Undoubtedly bishops
are bound to prevent hasty changes from being forced on unwilling
congregationB ; but the history of the last forty years shows to what
extent the feeling of congregations and parishes alters as to what is
seemly and necessary for proper care and reverence in divine service.

It may be that the whole question is entering on a new stage. If
80^ it is to be hoped that the matters involved in it will be discussed

21 a THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. February

on their merits, and without the complications produced by charges
of insubordination, lawlessness, and rebellion, which have confused
and embittered it hitherto. It i& really time to say that to talk of
anarchy in the Church is a misleading and dangerous exaggeration.
The clergy as a body, even those few who differ sharply and painfully
with their bishops, are honestly loyal, and earnestly desirous both to
receive guidance and to render obedience ; and this is not anarchy.
In the strong cases of difference, where clergymen have acted on their
own responsibility and taken the consequences, real and important con-
stitutional questions are raised, on which they may be right or wrong ;
but these questions could be fought out in no other way, in our
present circumstances, than in the way of resistance ; and in spite of
the vehement and often inexcusable language used on all sides, there
has been no intention, in the great majority of these cases, of impairing
episcopal authority, or of setting at nought the law. It is indeed one
of the wants of our time to strengthen episcopal government ; but
this must be done by reasonable methods ; and the vow of canonical
obedience must not be taken, any more than the woman's vow in
marriage, to mean unlimited submission in judgment and conduct.

But if appeals to law go on, we must remember that law is for all
of us. It will not do to be throwing about charges of lawlessness
while we ourselves ignore the law. Even on the theory of the oppo-
nents of the Bitualists we none of us knew what the law was, till the
Court of Appeal declared it. If that law is accepted, it must be ac-
cepted in earnest ; it must be accepted by all, in high station or low ;
it must curtail the liberty which some of us prize of being content with
elastic customs which are not law, but which it would be disagreeable
to change. And more than this, this view introduces a principle of
strict and rigorous exactness in carrying out rubrical law, which may
create unexpected embarrassment, from the peremptoriness of some
directions, and the looseness and imperfection of others. And the
persons who will have to enforce this legal strictness will be, not ag-
grieved parishioners, but our ecclesiastical superiors.

•

E. W. Chubch.

188L 211

THE TRANSVAAL.

Thi TraosTaal is singular, even in the most unhistoric regions of South
Africa, from having no authentic history beyond the memory of men
now living; it has nevertheless, during such brief period, passed
through more revolutions than many ancient states during their
whole existence, involving four almost complete changes of ruling
races, Bechuanas, Zulus, Dutch, and English.

M^i now alive can remember when the greater part of the Trans-
vaal was thickly peopled by Bechuanas, a nation far in advance of
their Kaffir and Zulu brethren of the great Bantu family, as
r^;ards all the arts of life. Fifty years ago the Bechuanas had been
so harassed by Zulu invasions, especially by the great iiuroad of
Moeelekatze, that those who escaped massacre had fled towards the
Kalahari Desert to Secocoeni's country and to Basutoland. English
sportsmen, in 1836, saw elephants, rhinoceroses, and giraffes in the
fertile valleys among the recent ruins of populous Bechuana villages
where now stand Pietoria and Potchefstrom. They visited the camp
of Moselekatze, the Zulu chief, ^ the Attila of South Africa ' as he
was called, the cause of the more recent devastation, just as he was
encountering the *Vortrekkers,' the leaders of the great Boer emi-
gration, who, after many reverses and much severe fighting, finally
drove him to the north-east, where he died, leaving his son to rule
over his people, the Matabele (Zulus), who had finally settled in the
land where they now dwell, 600 miles north of Zululand.

The tendency of the Dutch Boers in the Cape Colony to emigrate
beyond the colonial boundary appears to date from the earliest years
of Dutch settlement. There are on the statute book of the Dutch
govCTnors various regulations which aimed at repressing this ten-
dency. Some of the colonists, after settling for years on what was
then the frontier of the colony, were in the habit of seeking, in the
then unexplored regions beyond the colonial boundary, a land of less
administrative restraint on their wanderings. Efforts were made to
restrain this tendency, by legal penalties ; but nevertheless a steady
emigration of the more enterprising inhabitants of the colony had been
going on for generations when it received a sudden fresh impulse from
the emancipation of the slaves in the old colony. Little discretion

212 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. February

or consideration for the feelings or interests of the Dutch masters
was shovm in giving effect to the English Emancipation Act. In
a great majority of instances the slaves of the Dutch farmer at the
Gape had been better treated than in most of our other colonies,
and a strong sense of injustice and unnecessary harshness towards
the masters was, in the case of the wealthier and more respectable
families, frequently added to the inevitable pecuniary loss caused
by restrictions on the supply of labour to which they had been
accustomed. Hence, when the cry went forth among the Dutch
farmers that ' they must seek a home beyond the British boundary
where they would be free from the interference of the humanitarian
English Government,' the crowd of *Trekkers,' or emigrants,
was swelled by many families of comparative wealth and respect-
ability, who left what had been their homes for many generations
in the best parts of the old Gape Golony, hoping to find freedom
from interference beyond the Orange River. They were by descent
men of a proud and determined race — Dutchmen and French Hugue-
nots, whose ancestors had left their homes in Europe rather than sub-
mit to religious tyranny. They had been within comparatively recent
times subjected to English rule, and their own religious fanaticism
often added to the inevitable irritation of their position, as an in*
centive to found a new and more free territory beyond the English
boundary. Some made their way, in 1835-38, by a direct route to
the Transvaal ; but others travelled beyond the sources of the Orange
Biver, and finally descended into Natal, which, after the cold and
exposed uplands on the other side of the mountains, seemed to them
. a veritable land of protnise.

Natal had then been almost emptied of its inhabitants by suc-
cessive visitations from Zulu ^ impis.' In many parts the scattered
native inhabitants had been reduced to such straits that cannibalism
was rife among them, and thrilling stories may yet be heard, from
old people in Natal, as well as in Basutoland, of the cannibalism of
which they had themselves been the threatened Victims and, in some
instances, the partakers. Here, as elsewhere in South Africa, the
depopulation was quickly followed by an increase of beasts of the
forest, and most of the old inhabitants of Natal can tell of herds of
elephants they had themselves seen ; one of the surest proofs of the
general depopulation of the country.

Dingaan, the Zulu chief, appears at first to have been, like his pre-
decessor Ghaka, well inclined to the white men who visited him, and
to have thought that he might turn their firearms to his own
advantage. In reply to an application from Piet Betief and others
of the Boer leaders for land to settle on, he set them a task to
recover some cattle which had been carried off from his people by
a neighbouring chief. This task was duly performed, and as a reward

1881. THE TRANSVAAL. 213

he ceded to the Boers a large tract of territory, for the most part
void of human beings, and now forming the best districts of the
Colony of NataL But the speed and accuracy with which they had
performed a difiScult service seem to have aroused Dingaan's jealous
fears of what these white men might hereafter do, and the ink was
literaUy barely dry on the document by which he ceded to them the
territory they asked for, when he invited the Boer deputation to a
parting feast, and had them all massacred on the spot, sending out
' impis ' in various directions to surprise and destroy their families
wherever they were found encamped. The memorable story of this
massacre of Piet Betief and his gallant band of followers, and the
subsequent massacres of Boer families on the ^ Bloody Sunday,' in 1838,
will ever be the starting-point of Boer history, and the foundation, in
fioer estimation, of their claims to whatever land they have since con-
quered from the Zulus and other native tribes.

But the Boers in Natal found a more formidable obstacle than
Dingaan in the constitutional claims of the English Grovemment at
the Cape. By that Government the Boers were looked on as runaway
subjects, and as having broken the colonial laws by emigrating from
the colony and setting up a rival dominion in Natal, where a few
English settlers had previously obtained grants from the Zulu chiefs
Chaka and his successor Dingaan. Hostilities between the Boers and
the English Government ensued, which, as in most cases of the kind,
may be narrated from two points of view, according as the narrator
is a Dutchman or an Englishman. But the result was that the
territory of Natal was taken over by the British Government, and
finally erected into a separate colony, in 1844, whilst those Boers who
were not content to remain under the new dominion trekked to
fresh homes in the Transvaal and Orange Free State territory.

The pages of Livingstone's earlier travels show how the Boers,
when ihey settled in the Transvaal, encroached on their weaker native
neighbours.

All these things, be it remembered, are mattera of living memory.
Some of the men who are now leading the Boer malcontents can
remember their original home in the Cape Colony. Many more
have heard of those homes^ from their parents, and most can tell of
their weary wanderings for thousands of miles, of their descent into
the rich valleys of Natal, of the Zulu massacres of their friends and
families, of the strict operation of English law, and of their own final
settlement in lands of which the wild beasts of the field were then
the actual possessors, and which, as they believe, they rendered their
own by building civilised habitations, and substituting flocks and
herds for the elephant and the antelope.

It is well to take note of these things in judging of the present
feeling of the Boers towards us, as well as towards the natives ; and to

2U THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. February

remember that the Boers believe they held the Transvaal by the same
right by which we hold Canada, India, and many other possessions —
the right of conquest.

We must now glance at the different fortunes of the two Dutch
Bepublics founded by the emigrant Boers beyond the Orange Biver.

The practical independence of the Boers of the Transvaal was
from the first assured to them by what is called the Sand Eiver
Cionvention (in 1852), by which their independence was recognised
on conditions mainly directed to prevent their enslaving the native
tribes in their neighbourhood. But the Orange Free State was at
first retained as British territory, and was after some years, in 1854,
cast off by the British Grovemment, greatly in opposition to the ex-
pressed wish of a large number of. its'inhabitants, and formed into a
separate republic.

Compressed within Natal, Basutoland, and the old Cape Colony
on the south, and by the Transvaal Bepublic on the east and north,
the Orange Free State has been restrained within definite limits, and
its present development has been thereby greatly promoted* The
value of this compression was not at first recognised by the Orange
Free State, and its people have not yet forgotten the grievance of
the English Government accepting the submission of theBasutos, and
.declaring Basutoland British territory, just as its ruler was on the
eve of surrendering to the Free State.

After this, in one direction only was expansion possible, towards
the west, and there the discovery of diamond fields, in a territory to
which the right of the Orange Free State was disputed, again brought
them in collision with the English (xovemment. The Diamond Fields
were annexed to the British territory under circmnstanoes which,
however defensible, caused to the G-ovemment and people of the
Orange Free State intense dissatisfaction, which was not entirely
removed by the parliamentary grant of a large sum of money as com-
pensation. There can be no doubt that the neighbourhood of the
English colonies has greatly assisted in the development of the
Orange Free State, but the steady progress of that republic is more
especially due to the statesman who has for many years filled the
office of President. Mr. Brand entered public life at Cape Town as
son of one of the leading citizens. Sir Christofel Brand, who enjoyed
the respect and esteem of all his fellow-colonists as Speaker of the
Legislative Assembly. Mr. Brand had been called to the English
bar, and had practised with great success in lus native colony, when
he was elected for the first time President^of the Orange Free State.
He has since been twice re-elected; and his wisdom and fimmess^
his statesmanlike foresight and sound patriotism, will never be
forgotten as long as the name of the Orange Free State has a place
in history.

1881. THE TRANSVAAL. 215

Very different has been the fortune of the sister South African
Republic in the Transvaal. It was some time before anything like a
central government was established. The emigrant Boers, while they
were still moving, had been in the habit of convening separate Yolks-
raads, or assemblies of the people, as occasion required, at each large
camp ; and for some time after they settled down, though on great
occasions the whole body of the Boers were summoned to meet, there
were practically three republics, making more or less claim to separate
and independent existence and power of legislation. Wakkerstrom,
and subsequently Lydenberg, at first appeared likely to be seats of
government for one republic ; but Rustenberg, on the opposite western
frontier, was a nearer and more convenient capital for those who
settled in that part of the country. Potchefstrom, in a good com-
mercial position, ultimately became the central capital, till the
government was moved to Pretoria.

But the selection of a capital did little to remove the inherent
difficulties of governing so vast and so sparsely inhabited a region
as the Transvaal. The compression from neighbouring states, which
acted so beneficially in the case of the Orange Free State, did not
exist in the TransvaaL Around the whole circuit of frontier, with
the exception of the Natal and Orange Free State boundaries in
the south, were tribes who invited Boer expansion. The sons of
the Yortrekkers, throughout a great part of the Transvaal, were
under no obligation, like their brethren in the Orange Free State,
to submit to the ruling of a central government ; they could move
further afield into the wilderness whenever the central government
affironted them; and hence arose a process of disintegration and
disinclination to obey any central authority, which has been the
real proximate cause of most of the subsequent difficulties in the
Transvaal. Yolksraads were convened with due formality, and
passed numerous laws ; but, practically, it was found impossible to
get the law obeyed, unless obedience happened to suit the views of
individual Boers. I have been assured that it was no unusual sight
for large bodies of Boers, armed and mounted, to threaten a visit to
the l^islature to compel it to rescind obnoxious laws; and even
while the law remained on the statute book, obedience was often
refused by armed bodies sufficiently strong to render it impossible for
the executive to compel obedience: malcontents who did not wish to
remain and resist had always the option of seeking, by a fresh ' trek,'
conntries where obedience to any law would be unnecessary.

The spirit thus engendered led, as &r back as twelve years ago,
to a great emigration across the Kalahari Desert into Damaraland.
Some were discontented with their government ; others were insti-
gated simply by the desire to find a better land, or by love of
enterprise. Moving in bodies of from sixty to a hundred wagons,

216 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. February

they speedily exhausted the scanty supplies of water on their inarch ;
their route was often badly selected, and almost every company of
emigrants suffered terrible hardship from fever and thirsb, from loss
of companions, cattle and wagons, before they reached the healthy
regions on the west of the desert.

This disastrous emigration preceded the annexation of the Trans-
vaal by the English. It was, to a great extent, caused by the
dissatisfaction of the Boers with the then Kepublican Government
of the Transvaal, and the early history of those who undertook and
suffered in the emigration supplies a sufficient answer to much that
is now alleged against the conduct of the English Grovemment in
1877. It would be well if those who now criticise the Act of An-
nexation would make themselves better acquainted with the history of
the Transvaal Boers during the eight or ten years which preceded it ;
but space does not now admit of more than a brief allusion to some
of the prominent facts.

After the first Boer settlements on the north and west of the
Transvaal, a very few years sufficed to bring about a reaction on the
part of the native tribes ; who, instead of giving way as they had at
first done' to the intrusion of white settlers, began to press back into
their old stations, and to resume the practical sovereignty of districts
from which they had been expelled by the Boers — or, earlier still,
by Moselekatze's Zulus. Sometimes the Boers were altogether driven
out from their first settlements; sometimes they were allowed to
remain on payment of tribute to some native chief; but over a
large extent of country from the Waterberg round to the Zulu border,
the Boer population was steadily being driven back and subjected
to the supremacy of native rulers.

It was on the Zulu border that danger of a serious native invasion
in force was most threatening; but on the opposite side, on the
western frontier of the Transvaal, disputes with native tribes had
already brought the Transvaal administration into controversy with
the English in the tract now known as the * Keate Award.'

Between the Potchefstrom District, the border of which was the
original frontier of the Transvaal, and the British territory in Griqua-
land West, is a large and fertile district, occupying the whole space
between the Vaal and Hart rivers. This territory had been waste
and almost uninhabited previous to 1838, but since that time had
been partially occupied by Koranna, Bechuana, and Griqua clans,
interspersed with Boer settlers. As the number of inhabitants in-
creased, dissensions arose between the native tribes and the Grovem-
ment of the Transvaal regarding the true Transvaal boundary, and
the question was referred for arbitration to Mr. Keate, then Lieutenant-
Govemor of Natal. He passed an award which assigned the greater
part of the disputed territory to the native tribes. Mr. Martinus

1881. THE TRANSVAAL. til

Pretorius, the son of the famous Yortrekker, was the President
of the Transvaal Bepublic, and it was understood that personally he
felt bound to comply with the award which had been passed by
Lieutenant-Governor Keate, but permission to do so was refused by
the Transvaal Yolksraad, and this was said to have been the proximate
cause of Mr. Pretorius' resignation of the office of President. The
ijubsequent interregnum, and the weakness of the Transvaal Crovem-
ment, prevented the English Government from adopting the obvious
•course of insisting on the validity of the award, and requiring that
it should be carried out. After a period of much confusion and
prolonged intrigue, the interregnum terminated by Mr. Burgers
accepting the office of President of the Transvaal, which he continued
to hold until the annexation in 1877.

Mr. Burgers belonged to one of the oldest and most respected
Dutch families in the Gape Colony. He had been educated for the
ministry in the Dutch Beformed Church, and was a man of much
natural talent and of considerable reading and accomplishment.
But, in the course of his studies at a European university, he had
imbibed a good many of the modern German rationalistic views,
which were entirely at variance with the Calvinistic tenets of
the Dutch Beformed Church. This had not at all lessened his
influence with that small but active section of his Dutch coun-
trymen who are locally known as ^Liberaals,' or free-thinkers, in
politics and in religion, while his natural eloquence gave him
great popularity among his countrymen, who are passionately fond
of rhetorical oratory. When Mr. Pretorius resigned the Presidency,
there was great difficulty in finding any suitable candidate
who was likely to command the suffrages of any large section of the
Transvaal republicans, and the eyes of the intelligent and pro-
gressive * Liberaal ' party were turned to the eloquent young divine,
whose bold defence of his heterodox views had already made him the
talk of every Presbytery in the old colony. Mr. Burgers accepted
the invitation, gave up theology, and became President. He
lost no time in devoting himself ardently to the cause of progress
in various branches of the administration, but a lack of experience
rendered some of his best-devised schemes of improvement abortive,
and finally brought his administration, and the country over which
he mled, to ruin. He had magnificent designs for popular
education, for reforming the finances and establishing a gold
coinage, for judicial reform and the foundation of good courts of
justice, for developing the resources of the Transvaal and improving
its communications with the outer world, but his plans were, for
the most part, above the comprehension of even the more intelli-
gent Boers, and quite beyond the financial power of the Bepublic
to execute. Mr. Bui^gers visited Europe ; but little practical benefit
Vol. IX*— No. 48. Q

218 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. February

for the Transvaal followed. Even the railway from Delagoa Bay,
which, if carried out, would have been of inestimable value to the
Transvaal, got no farther than the raising of a loan in Amsterdam,
large enough seriously to embarrass the finances of the Transvaal,
but quite insufficient to execute even a section of the railway.

These results were patent to all the world, but there were besides
rumours of advances made by Mr. Burgers to obtain alliances with
more than one European power. German politicians and mercantile
men thought seriously of obtaining a footing in the Transvaal, and
there establishing a more effectual counterpoise to English commercial
and political supremacy in South Africa. These plans were, however,
not encouraged by the German Government, and Mr. Burgers re-
turned to the Transvaal strengthened with little more than sym-
pathy, and a few men of education and ability, chiefly Germans and
Hollanders, whom he persuaded to accompany him to the land of
promise.

But, though these foreign auxiliaries would materially have im-
proved Mr. Burgers' power of administration in the Transvaal, they
by no means advanced his popularity. They were often supercilioxis
and unpopular with the old-fashioned Boers ; more than this, most
of the new-comers were * Liberaals,' and were regarded with jea-
lousy by the orthodox members of the Dutch Beformed Church,
and still more so by the Dopper sect, which formed a large' portion
of the most persevering and industrious of the Boer agricultural
community.

Among the most prominent of Mr. Burgers' difficulties was the
necessity for enforcing the authority of the South African republic
over the Basuto chief Secocoeni. This chief had rallied around him,
in the strong country near the Gold Fields, the remnants of the
Bechuana tribes who had been driven by Zulus from the open country
of the Transvaal. Owing partly to the natural difficulties of attack-
ing his position, and partly to the want of perseverance and defection
of the Boers, Mr. Burgers' expedition to bring Secocoeni to obedience
was, to a great extent, an expensive failure, and proved the immediate
cause of the ruin of his administration.

This brings us to the period when Sir Theophilus Shepstone, in
1877, visited the Transvaal as Special Commissioner from the English
Government. It is not necessary to recapitulate the instructions he
carried with him, nor the history of his visit, as they are to be foimd
in Blue Books.

In judging of the annexation of the Transvaal I would wish it to
be borne in mind that it was an act which in no way originated with
me, over which I had no control, and with which I was only sub-
sequently incidentally connected* The annexation took jdace on the
1 1th of April ; several days before my arrival at the Gape on the 3 1st

1881. THE TRANSVAAL. 219

of March could be known to Sir Theophilus Shepstone, as'the telegraph
line did not then exist, and letters took over three weeks from Cape
Town to Pretoria. I say this from no wish to lessen my own respon-
sibility for anything connected with tlh6 Transvaal, but simply as a
reason why my opinions 6n the subject may be taken as those of an
impartial obfierver.

It was a great qu^stioii then, as now, whether th6 annexation
was justifiable. Let us examine this question as it affected, first
the interest, wishes, and obligations of the Boers. Let us consider
the Boers, in the most favourable light, as an independent people,
who had achieved and wished to retain their national' indepen-
dence.

There can be no doubt that there was, at the time Sir Theophilus
Shepstone visited tiie Transvaal, practically, anarchy and paralysis of
all goyeming power in the administration. Mr. Burgers had no
authority sufficient to enforce the laws^ to realise the legal taxes, or
to protect life or property. Nothing could exceed the desperate
condition of the finances. There was absolutely no money in the
treasury for any purposes of government, to pay salaries or even
postal contracts. The paper currency of the Republic was so depre-
ciated as to be rarely current, and barter was the general 'form of
commerce where English money was not procurable. The Volksraad
turned a deaf ear to Mr. Burgers' passionate appeals that they would
save the State by simply paying the taxes they had themselves
imposed, and obeying the laws they had themselves passed. The
appeal was all in vain. When Mr. Pretorius resigned, no Boer
could be brought forward to accept the Presidentship. The enter-
prising young Cape colonist who had attempted the task was
compelled to confess his failure, and to give up the attempt ;
and when Mr. Burgers threw down the reins there was no one
present who offered to pick them up save Sir Theophilus Shep-
stone, the English Commissioner. These facts ha>^e never been
denied, and they cannot now be gainsaid. All that the ' Boers and
their friends can even now say is, that if they had been left to them-
selves they would have ' pulled through,* and could have organised
their State as well as the Orange Free State ; but no one believed
that this was possible in 1877, and no reasonable man who knows.
the &cts really believes so now. Let those who doubt the accuracy
of this picture consult the file of the Volkstem, the dutch journal of
Pretoria, fcr February and March 1877, and they will there find ia
the reports of the proceedings in the Volksraad, and especially in
Mr. Burgers' speeches, abundant evidence of the fatal paralysis
of governing power, and the wilful abstention of the Boers from'
the only measures which could make self-government any longer*

Q2

22i THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. February

The circumstances of the Orange Free State were, as has been
akeady explained, quite different from those of the Transvaal.

None of the advantages which Mr. Brand found ready to his hand,
and which made his arduous task a possible one in the Orange Free
State, were to be found in the Transvaal. As regarded native enemies,
especially, hedged in by the British and Transvaal territory, the
Orange Free State had no ^ native question.' But in the Transvaal
the gradually widening and weakening circle of Boer ^ trekking ' had
reached its limit, and had for some years encountered an unyielding
circle of fierce and organised savage nations, which the isolated eflTorts
of Boer ^commandos' were quite unable to drive back. To the
north, to the east, and to the south, the Boers had distinctly fidled,
and were giving ground before the native tribes. Intelligent and
patriotic Boers saw that they had no longer power to drive back the
native races. It was one thing to direct the concentrated energies of
the whole of the Vortrekkers' hardy emigrants, trained in habits of
perpetual warfare, and it was quite another thing to attempt, by the
authority of the government at Pretoria, to summon burghers from
their settled homes 400 miles off, to fight Secocoeni with the assistance
of a few mercenary foreign auxiliaries, whilst the Zulus, the Basutos,
and the Matabele were looking on, prepared to join in the battle
against the white men whenever a favourable opportunity might
offer.

Sir Theophilus Shepstone had special and definite certain know-
ledge of the intentions of the most formidable race, the Zulus, which
left no doubt as to the designs of their ruler on the TransvaaL He
had again and again heard from Cety wayo himself, and from his most
trusted messengers, earnest appeals* that the British Government
would not oppose his ^ washing his spears ' in the blood of his neigh-
bours ; that we would allow him to drive the Boers out of the disputed
territory which Cety wayo had himself assigned to them ; and that he
was quite able and eager to sweep them all away iot three hundred
miles up to Pretoria, which he claimed as his by right of Dhaka's and
Moselekatze's conquests.

Whatever we may persuade ourselves as to his feeling towards
Natal, there can be no doubt of his desire and ability to have exter-
minated the Boers, could he but have assured our neuixality. Knowing
this, as certainly as man can know anything regarding the intentions
of another. Sir Theophilus Shepstone was bound to state such an
important fact to the leading men in the TransvaaL It was sub-
sequently made a grievance that he had so informed them. Yet had
he not stated what he so certainly knew, no words would have been
strong enough to condemn such cruel reticence.

But, whatever the danger, the Boers, it may be said, did not
our protection, and we ought to have waited till they did so.

1881. THE TRANSVAAL. 221

What the Boers individually wished for was individual independ-
ence of law and government generally, not of this or that foreign
government, but to obey no one by force of law ; to be far from the
power of compulsion ; to see, as they put it, ^ no other man's smoke ; '
to be free and unfettered in the wilds. This was the object of their
aspirations. For national life and national independence they had a
strong sentiment, but, for national liberty, they were not willing to
make any sacrifice of their individual license, or power to refuse
obedience to law. The limits within which such freedom was possible
had been reached before Mr. Burgers undertook to attempt the task
of governing. It is only the general conviction amongst Boers of
these truths that can explain their passive acquiescence in the
annexation. .

But, it has been said, the measure was accepted by the Boers
under protest ; and the protest, recorded by Mr. Burgers at the time,
has been since appealed to as affording colour to the assertion that
it was an act of force on the part of the British Grovemment. This
theory, however, will not stand the test of examination by the light
of unquestionable facts. For many weeks previously Mr. Burgers had
held a session of the Volksraad ; he had exhausted all his eloquence in
earnest appeals to them to save their country, not by any acts of heroic
self-deTotion, but by simple obedience to the law and payment of
their legal taxes ; but his eloquence produced no result on the legis-
lature. The republic, in fact, died of atrophy, and its death was
certainly in no way accelerated by any action of Sir Theophilus
Shepstone, whatever opinion may be held individually as to the time
and method of annexation.

What then, it may be asked, was the meaning of Mr. Burgers*
fonnal protest ? I am afraid it must be admitted that the protest
was nothing more than a dramatic finale to the attempt to govern,
prompted by a natural desire to reconcile acquiescence in the measure
adopted with the theoretical duty of obedience to the constitution.
But, whatever the motive of the protest, it must have been clearly
apparent at the time that a verbal protest, however strongly worded,
was not the way to stop the annexation. Had the great majority of
the Boers really desired to oppose it, nothing would have been easier
than to have refused obedience to the proclamation ; to have hauled
down the British flag which Sir Theophilus Shepstone had hoisted,
and to have presented him with his passports, and escorted him
to the frontier. There were plenty of men among the Boers, and
advising them, who were well aware that all this might have been done
in a manner which could not possibly have given the English Govern-
ment any just umbrage. Had they been willing to make the slightest
sacrifice in order to secure their own independence, nothing further
was necessary than to elect in Mr. Burgers' place a President who

222 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. February

would undertake the government, and, by paying their taxes, to
give him the means of governing. But no such man was to be foand
at the time, and the Boers as a body acquiesced in the annexation as
an inevitable necessity.

Again, whatever objection may be stated to the annexation on other
grounds, the position of the natives, both in the Transvaal itself and
its borders, has certainly been greatly improved, and yet further pro-
gressive improvement has been secured by coming under the British
flag.

But the question remains. Have not we, the people of England,
any right to complain of the additional burdens imposed upon our-
selves ?

I think not. It was obviously incompatible with the safety of
the English colonies, to allow a state of anarchy and lawlessness to
exist in so near a neighbour. We know now what were the aspira-
tions of the Zulus and other native tribes regarding the Transvaal,
and what they could, and said they would, do if the English Govem-
^ment in Natal would but stand aside and leave them undisturbed to
settle with the Boers. Any one who reads what the Zulus did without
£rearms when the Boers were united, and what the Zulus have since
^hown they could do, organised and armed as they were under
Cetywayo, may judge what would have been the results to Natal and
to Em'opean rule generally in South Africa had the Zulus been
..assured that we should remain quiescent while they attacked the
Boers, as they were only too eager to do.

But there was another danger which was very present to the
ttiind of all who had any hand in the measure, though compaxa^
tively little has been said of it in the official justification of the act.
' There were, as Mr. Burgers and most of his colleagues well knew,
other European Powers besides England who might be induced, if
England would not, to undertake to aid the Transvaal in maintaining
its existence. Mr. Burgers had sought such alliances without muck
^success during his visit to Europe, but there was no reason to suppose
ihat such objections would be maintained if the great Governments
of Europe were once assured that England declined the responsibility,
and would view with indifference the establishment of any other
great Power as protecting Transvaal independence.

The conversion of the Transvaal into an allied colony had been,
and is still, a favourite project among many in the German mer-
cantile world, and in Holland among those who look forward to the
ultimate absorption of Holland into the Germanic Empire. It is
useless to speculate what might have been the result had the German
Government been induced to give encouragement to such projects ;
but assured, as the English Government must have been, that such
a result was possible, it would haVe been suicidal policy, as regards

188L THE TRANSVAAL. 223

our colonies in South Africa, to have hesitated to give to the Trans-
vaal, in some form or other, the assistance which she required to
ipaintain her existence when the Transvaal government was in a state
of such complete paralysis.

It has been contended that the possession of the Transvaal has
inconveniently increased our naticmal responsibilities. The assertion,
I think, admits of more .than doubt. But even if any increase of
responsibility could be proved, the time for limiting our colonial
responsibilities by declining to admit new colonies to be founded
is long since past. The objection might have been a practical one
three centuries ago, before we possessed any colonies; but it is
out of date after a colonial history which from the foundation
of American and West Indian colonies down to that of Fiji, proves,
if it proves anything, that the increase of colonial responsibilities is
not incompatible with growth of national power to hold, to rule,
and to defend them.

Hence, from whatever point of view the matter is looked at,
whether irom that of the interest of the Boer population and their
wishes at the time, or from the interest of the native populations, or
firom that of our own position in Africa, I do not see what other
course could have been adopted consistent with due regard for our
own safety and the real interests of our neighbours, other than
annexation of the Transvaal to the British dominions. Whether it
might not have b^n effected in some better way, or at some other
period, may, like other sp^uli^tive problems, remain a question for
discussion, but it is for those who can suggest such an alternative
to state it. The present question is. Was it possible to leave the
Transvaal to drift further into anarchy, or fall a prey to its native
neighbours ? If not, in what other way could the absolutely, neces*
saiy result of establishing some settled European government have
been brought about?

Xhe members .of th^ Volksraad had hardly dispersed .to their
homes after the proclamation of the anne:^tion when it was discovered
that the new regime would interfere with the position of many men,
chiefly educated foreigners and strangers, who had previously profited
by the state of anarchy, and they had little difficulty in working on
the general feeling of the Boers, and persuading them that the
annexation was uncalled for, and likely to be injurious to their in-
terests.

A mass meeting, with elaborate discussions in questions of poll*
tics, has. a peculiar charm for the Boers, and when they were got toge-
ther it was not difficult to persuade them that they had been
betrayed by their rulers, and might be oppressed by the English
officials, to whom they bore but little love.

Messrs. Kruger, Jorissen, and Joubert were commissioned by the

224 TUE NINETEENTH CENTURY. February

meeting to proceed to Europe with a protest against the annexation.
The deputation was variously represented as a formal prot^t, and as
a make-believe exhibition, intended to satisfy the more advanced mal-
contents that everything had been done to relieve their consciences
for acquiescing in annexation. The deputation reached Europe, but
extracted little beyond ordinary formal courtesy, and an assurance of
the impossibility of revoking the measure. It failed to arouse the
sympathies of any Continental Power, and returned without having
achieved any result satisfsEUstory to the protesting parties. A second
mass meeting and a second deputation followed, in which Messrs.
Kruger and Joubert took part, but no different result followed, and
the members returning from England reached South Afri(!a just as the
Zulu war had broken out and our arms had met with a disastrous
check at Isandhlwana.

If, looking at the whole administrative results of the eighteen
months then elapsed since the annexation, it be said that there was
want of vigour in carrying out necessary reforms and in enforcing
the levy of taxes under the old laws, it must be remembered that Lord
Carnarvon, who understood as well as an English statesman could, the
wants of the Transvaal, had left office, and his loss was a very serious
one to the Transvaal. But above all Sir Theophilus Shepstone had met
with most unexpected opposition in arranging the disputes between
the Transvaal Grovemment and the Zulus.

It is impossible here to go fully into the history of the quarrel
between the Zulus and the Transvaal republican Grovemment, which
was one of the proximate causes of the Zulu war. Cety wayo, during-
the lifetime of his father Panda, had purchased from the Boers the
persons of two of his fugitive brethren, rival candidates for the suc-
cession, who had taken refuge in the Transvaal. A large tract of
land was promised to the Boers by Cetywayo as the price of their
compliance with his desire. The Boers were permitted to occupy the
territory, where they built houses, planted trees, and divided the
country into farms. But the transaction was not approved of by
Panda, the ruling chief, nor by the Grreat Council of Zulu chiefs and
coimsellors, and on this ground the confirmation of the grant was
subsequently evaded by Cetywayo when he became sovereign, and had
consolidated his own power and imagined himself more than a match
for the Boers.

As Secretary for Native Affairs in Natal, Sir Theophilus Shep-
stone had felt more sympathy for the Zulu claims to resume, than
he did for the Boer claims to retain, possession of the disputed
territory; but when he came to look at the question from the
other side, and with the light thrown on it by the documentary and
other evidence produced by the Transvaal authorities, he was con-

1881. THE TRANSVAAL. 225

vinced of the justice of the Transvaal claim. He had always had
great personal influence with the Zulus and their ruler. As soon as
possible after the annexation he went to that part of the frontier
^hioh was the scene of the dispute, in the belief that he might be
enabled to come to an arrangement with the Zulus which would
satisfy the reasonable claims of both parties. At Sir Theophilus
Shepstone's request Cetywayo sent a large deputation of his principal
chiefs and counsellors to meet him on the border, and great was the
astonishment of the English Administrator and of most of those with
bim when, instead of finding that his arrival at the scene of con-
ference was regarded in a friendly light, he was met with every
demonstration of anger, not unmixed with contempt. Zulu chiefs
who had been his obsequious friends while he was Secretary for
Native A£fairs in Natal, spoke to him with imdisguised want of
respect, and, instead of a disposition to accommodate and compromise,
he met nothing but a defiant assertion of Zulu right to the whole
country.

The fact was that the Zulu ruler had always been used to regard
the Boer Government of the Transvaal and the English Grovemment
of Natal' as rival, if not hostile, powers, and he was imable to under-
stand or brook the appearance of his old friend and adviser as the
ruler of the Transvaal and advocate for Transvaal claims.

At first it appeared as if war were imminent, and more than one ex-
perienced observer of Zulu affairs predicted that the Zulu 4mpis' would
at once take forcible possession of the whole of the disputed territory
including portions of two districts which unquestionably belonged of
right to the Transvaal. Immediate hostilities were, however, averted
by the intervention of the Natal Grovemment. The Lieutenant-
Grovemor, Sir Henry Bulwer, sent to Cetywayo offering his good
offices, and proposing to appoint Commissioners with a view to
arbitration. The proposal was acceded to. The arbitrators were all
Natal officials selected by the Lieutenant-Governor, and proceeded
to make inquiry and report on the questions at issue. The Boers
produced their evidence, including many documents proving the
cession by Cetywayo on behalf of the Zulus, then under his father's
rule, of the greater part of the territory claimed by the Boers ;
but they were unable to prove any formal ratification of this
cession by Panda, or by the great council of Zulu chiefs. The
Zulus declined to produce any evidence, or to discuss the question of
cession. They denied that any cession had been made, and advanced
claims which would have embraced a region far beyond the territory
in dispute. They, however, limited their present claim to the
disputed area, and simply announced that that area their king
intended to have.

The Commissioners made a report which, after some references

226 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Febriiaiy

back for further explanations of its purport, was accepted by the
Lieutenant-Governor of Natal, and handed on to me, as High Gommis^
gioner, for approval. The Arbitration Gomniissioners in effect threw
out the whole of the evidence, oral as well as documentary, produced
for the Transvaal. They did not notice the fact that the grant to the
Boers by Cety wayo as the price to be paid for the delivery to him of his
two brothers had never been, till quite recently, denied by the
Zulus ; that it had been a prominent subject in Panda's complaints
to tlie Natal officials of the overbearing conduct of his son and heir,
that ' Cetywayo had made the grant without his authority, and
might get out of the difficulties in which it had involved him as
best he could, for that he — Panda — ^would not ratify the cession.'
The award entirely ignored the private rights which had grown
up during long imdisturbed possession, it did not notice the obliga-
tion which lay on Cetywayo not to retract as supreme chief Uie
grant he had made as virtual regent, and it pronounced, in no
qualified terms, for the cession of the whole area in dispute to the
Zulus,

After a careful review of the whole case, I was of opinion that,
having selected the members of the Commission, the English Crovem-r
ment was bound by their decision, which gave the sovereignty of the
territory in dispute not to the British Grovemment in the Transvaal
but to the Zulu king. It was, however, clear that the private rights
which had grown up in good faith while the territory was in the
actual possession of the Transvaal Crovemment had not been at all in-*
vestigated, and I limited the award to the sovereignty of the territory
in dispute, reserving the private rights of those who had settled on it
during the Transvaal administration. What follows belongs rather
to the history of the Zulu War. We have here only to note its
bearing on the state of feeling in the Transvaal. It must not be
forgotten that the Zulu W^r was in its immediate origin essentially
a Transvaal quarrel. Hitherto it has been generally looked on
entirely from a Natal point of view, and our relations with the
Zulus were no doubt of even more direct importance to the ex-
istence of Natal than to the Transvaal. But the first question
at issue was the territory in dispute between Boers and Zulus;
and, though Natal might be saved firom invasion and destruction
by the surrender of the disputed territory, the Boers of all classes
and in all parts of the Transvaal were extremely indignant at
the result of the arbitration, and few recog^sed any mitigation of
their grievance contained in the reservation of private rights which
had accrued imder the Transvaal occupation.

During the latter part of the time occupied by the proceedings of
the Commission, and the subsequent deliberations of the English
officials. Colonel (now Sir Evelyn) Wood had arrived with the

isai. THE TRANSVAAL. 227

colanui which served under him in the Kaffir War against Kreli.
He had marched through Kaffraria, and was then stationed within the
undoubted Transvaal territory not far from the disputed border.
The Zulus had sent two expeditions into the lands of Limeburg, a
thriving Transvaal settlement of more than twenty german families,
slaughtering the natives who did not save themselves by flight,
driving o£f their cattle and children, and threatening to attack the
village in which the settlers .had entrenched themselves. The
arrival of a detachment from Colonel Wood's column saved Lune-
burg from the execution of these threats. But Colonel Wood
rendered an even more essential service by securing the confidence
and co-operation of some of the best of the Boer frontier farmers.
The name of Piet Uys will ever be associated with the exploits of
his gallant chief. Piet Uys was the son of one of the bravest and
most respected of the Vortrekkers, who had lost his life with many of
his family and friends in the early Zulu war with Dingaan. His
son Piet, attended by several stalwart sons and relations, were most
efficient auxiliaries to iis. Piet himself died a hero's death with many
British officers and men at Hlobane, two days before Wood's great
victory at Kambula* Such examples of their patriotism and heroic
self-devotion as Wood's despatches record should not be forgotten
at a time when there is much temptation to judge harshly of all the
Transvaal Boers.

I had been informed in 1878 that Her Majesty's Grovem-
ment desired I should, as High Commissioner, visit Natal and the
Transvaal. I had pointed out to the Secretary of State that it
was impossible the High Commissioner should usefully exercise any
superintendence over affairs in that quarter, unless the correspondence
between the Lieutenant-Governor of Natal and the Administrator of
the Transvaal with the Secretary of State were communicated to the
High Commissioner, so as to make him acquainted with at least as
much as the Secretary of State could be told of the facts which had
occurred in Natal and the Transvaal, and the views which w^e enter-
tained by the officers administering the government of those
colonies. My suggestion had been acceded to, and it is only from
that period that I had any direct or effectual connection with the
conduct of affairs in Natal or the Transvaal.

One of the first convictions which a perusal of the correspondence
conveyed to me was, that hostilities could not long be averted
either with the Zulus or the Boers. It was a question with which
of the two hostilities were likely first to break out; and it was
possible that success against the first to break the peace might
prevent any breach of the peace by the other power. This view,
however, was not concurred in by the Natal officials. They had a
strong conviction that the Zulus would nev^ resort to hostilities

228 THE I^INETEENTH CENTURY. February

{^gainst Natal. They held that the only ground of Zulu hostility was
our connection, unfortunate as it appeared to Natal, with the govern-
ment of the Transvaal; and regarding the Transvaal they knew
little, and did not concern themselves much.

Sir Theophilus Shepstone was then about to leave the Transvaal
for England, where his presence was required to afford the informa-
tion needful to enable Her Majesty's Government to draw up a
constitution for the Transvaal. He was succeeded by Colonel
(now Sir Owen) Lanyon, who had won the confidence of Her
Majesty's Government by the energy and ability with which he
had administered, under great difficulties, the affairs of the colony
of Griqualand West. The Boers had advertised a mass meeting
early in 1879 to receive the reports of their delegates, Messrs.
Kruger and Joubert, regarding their second mission to England.
They had invited Colonel Lanyon and myself as High Commissioner
to be present at the meeting, and, on the incongruity of any such pro-
ceeding being pointed out to them, they desired that we would visit
their camp before it separated, with a view, to hear what the com-
mittee had to say, and to satisfy ourselves as to the unanimity of the
great majority of the Boer population in protesting against the Act
of Annexation. I had promised that I would comply with their
wishes in this respect, but the check to the British arms at Isan-
dhlwana, and the subsequent suspension of active operations and the
perilous state of affairs in Natal and Zululand before the reinforce-
ments sent from England could arrive, detained me longer than I had
expected, and it was late in March before I was able to leave Natal
for the Transvaal

On my road to the Natal border, through the scenes of Zulu
massacres forty years previous, I had ample opportunity of seeing
how well-founded were the apprehensions which all the old inhabit-
ants of the country entertained with regard to a Zulu invasion. It
was quite obvious that nothing could resist or prevent such an
invasion, except the fear of the invading force having its retreat cut
off, as it returned incumbered with its spoil. The positions occu-
pied by the three columns, which Lord Chelmsford had organised in
Zululand, provided at the moment for such defence; and it was
clear to any one going through the country, that but for the presence
of thosiB columns in Zululand, a Zulu ' impi ' when once across the
border might have swept up to the skirts of the Drakensberg without
any possibility of effectual resistance outside the few fortified 'laagers.'
The reinforcements from England had begun to arrive, and Colonel
Wood's victory at Kambula, of which I heard at Newcastle as I
passed near his camp at the end of March, was sufficient assurance
that the worst part of the Zulu crisis in. Natal was past ; but it was
still unsafe to withdraw any troops from the Zulu frontier, and con-

1881. THE TRANSVAAL. 229

sequently, though the tone of the malcontent Boers in their camp
bad been threatening, I determined to proceed thither without escort,
trusting to the good faith of their leaders, and their power as well
as will, to observe the usages of civilised people.

During the six days' march between the frontier and the Boer
camp, I had every day, and almost all day long, ample evidence that
whatever kept the Boers together in their camp, agreement as to the
wisdom of reversing the Act of Annexation formed no part of the
motives of many who were present. Often on my road I was met
by men, with few exceptions Boers, desiring to know the purport
of the message I was empowered to convey to the Boer eamp,
and most anxious to ascertain whether a reversal of the Act of
Annexation formed any part of my instructions. There eould be no
mistaking either the object or the sincerity which dictated these in-
terrogatories. In very rare cases was there any evidence of sympathy
with the avowed objects of the malcontent Boer leaders. Perhaps
the most frequent opinion expressed was an assurance that my visitor
did not in the least wish that the annexation should now be annulled.
Many said they would rather have remained independent and self-
govemed, but most confessed that the change was for the better, and
ought not now to be undone. In several cases very passionate appeals
were made by wives and families to send back their husbands and
sons who were, they said, detained in the Boer camp against their
will. Several of my informants added that they' had come to the
Transvaal before the annexation, under the conviction that annexation
was inevitable ; others had come since the annexation, and were stiU
more urgent in deprecating any surrender of the country by Her
Majesty's Grovemment to its former misgovemment.

At most of our halting-places after leaving Pietermaritzburg,
we met kind advisers who volunteered suggestions that the visit
to the camp would be attended with considerable danger, and that
I had much better take one of the other roads into Pretoria. Pro-
bably the knowledge that such advice had been given me reached
the Boer camp ; for early on the morning of my visit I received
a letter from the committee, apparently written in ignorance of my
approach, and remonstrating with me in no very courteous terms
on my having deviated, as they supposed, from my formally expressed
intention of meeting them. My appearance was, however, a suiScient
answer to their want of confidence, and a; few xxiiles before reaching
the camp I was met by the committee and a considerable deputa-
tion of tlie leaders.

The limits of a single article do not admit of any ' detailed
description of a very interesting and instructive visit to the Boer
camp, which was followed by several interviews with the committee,
and with individual leaders of the remonstrant Boers ; nor of all

230 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. February

we saw or heard daring some aimoas days at Pretoria, whilst the
violent party in the Boer camp every night threatened an attack^ to
turn out the British Crovemment ' and the handful of 200 sdldiers
who held the barracks, and to shoot or expel those who favoured the
English donoiinion) which would have included the greater part of the
population of the town. I can only briefly summarise the results.

As regards the number of the Boers assembled, they claimed to
have had more than 4,000 men in camp, all armed, and mounted,
ready for active service. But a comparison of several careful
enumerations by those with me, when the Boers were all assembled,
led me to believe that there could not be more than 1,600, or at
most 2,000, when we visited the camp. This reduction in the
estimate did not make the meeting less formidable to the peace of
the Transvaal, but it deducted much from their claim to represent
the general desire of the whole population.

As regards the disposition and temper of the meeting, I had, from
our observations on our way up, concluded that but a very small
proportion of the rural population, and a still smaller proportion of
the people of the townships, really concurred with the more violent
leaders in desiring to resist or annul the annexation. Many
were, we were well assured, present only through intimidation,—
others, while they had felt the annexation a grievance, accepted
it as an inevitable though disagreeable alternative of the previous
anarchy, — ^leaving only a small, though violent and influential, irre^
concilable minority, who would, if they could, have reverted to the
republic.

This conclusion was warmly contested by the Boer leaders, but
their arguments did not at all convince me after what I had myself
seen and heard. It seemed, as far as I could judge, that a great
majority of the men I conversed with, even in the Boer camp, would
be content to remain imder the English Government, provided they
were well and wisely governed, and allowed a reasonable share in the
future government of the Transvaal. This belief was confirmed by
the fact that they were as well aware as we, our means of defence
did not admit of successful resistance to a determined attack on Pre-
toria by one half the men who, at the lowest estimate, were then
present, armed and ready for action, in the Boer camp. It was
the darkest time of the Zulu war, and most of the Boers were
loud in expressing their conviction that, in the Zulus, we had
met more than our match. There was not a n:ian who could then
be spared to reinforce the Pretoria garrison from Lord Chelmsford^s
force, the nearest post of which was 200 miles distant, and the Boers
believed, even more than their actual power warranted, in their own
ability ^ to put the whole apparatus of the English Government^ and
the regular soldiers present to defend it, across the border.'

1881. THE TRANSVAAL. 231

The avowed object of the leaders in inviting us to visit their
camp had been folfilled. They had exhibited their numbers and had
personally expteaaed to me the determination which kept them to-
gether. They had heard from me the most emphatic public assur-
ances of my belief that the Act of Annexation could not and ought
not to be reversed. Unless they intended to resist by force, there was
no one of the declared objects of their meeting to keep them to-
gether.

But the leaders did not find it easy to break up the camp, and
pressed for a promise from me that I would support the prayer of
a memorial which they drew up as a help to them in dispersing
their followers.

This I steadily and distinctly refused to do, and finally the
committee said they would be content*if I would convey to 'Her
Majesty's (Government an accurate report of their wishes as stated
by the committee, and of the amount of support given to] the
memorial by the numbers present in camp.

This being a reasonable request, a verbatim report of the pro-
ceedings, taken from a shorthand writer's notes of our conferences,
was forwarded home by me, after the report had been revised ^and
accepted as correct by the Boer committee. The committee then
gave the word < huis4o ' (homewards), and before the next morning
broke, the late occupants of the camp were streaming in wagons and
on horseback along the roads leading in every direction from their
late camp.

The frdl reports of all the meetings between the High Com-
missioner and the Boers will be found in the Blue Books on South
African affairs, C. 2367 and C. 2374, of July 1879.

The Boers having dispersed, and every day bringing accounts of
the arrival of fresh reinforcements at Natal, Colonel Lanyon (the
Administrator) 4iad arranged to accompany the High Commissioner,
vid PotcheCstrom and the Keate Award, to the Diamond Fields; but
at Potchefrtrom we received despatches which rendered it desirable
that Colonel Lanyon should return to' the Natal frontier to give
what assistance he could to collect a body of mounted Boers for
Colonel Wood's column, and to prepare for operations against
Secocoeni. Before leaving, however, we had arranged the measures
which we agreed to recommend to Her Majesty's Government for
the iutoie government of the Transvaal. These embraced —

1. The creation of an Executive Council, in which some of the
Boers should have a part as salaried members.

2. The creation of a temporary Legislature, capable of passing
laws immediately necessary to strengthen the administration, and
to prqpajpe the way for a representative Volksraad or House of
Assembly.

•232 . THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. February

3. More efficient organisation and better payment to the High
Court of Justice.

4. Some improvement in the position of the worst-paid officials.

5. A careful scientific examination of the line of the Delagoa Bay
Bailway.

6. Administrative reforms which were much needed, and included
the provision of an efficient police force.

7. The finances were to be made the special charge of a financial
commissioner, with a view to equalise revenue and expenditure.

8. As regarded representative institutions for the Transvaal, a
great mass of materials had been collected, including opinions from
the mijiistry at the Cape, from the Chief Justice of the Cape, and
more especially from Mr. Brand, the popular President of the
Orange Free State, who most generously gave all the aid, which
his experience enabled him to afford, regarding the changes which
he tliought might suit the wants of the Transvaal. These ma-
terials were forwarded to Her Majesty's Government, and it was
my intention, as soon as the views of the Home Government had
been expressed, to have convened a conference at which the Trans-
vaal remonstrant party would have been adequately represented,
with a view to draw up such a constitution as might satisfy the
reasonable desires of the Transvaal people for representative institu-
tions. Mr. Pretorius had intimated his willingness to consider with
his colleagues on the commission any proposal that he . should assist
as a member of the Executive. Hopes were entertained that Mr.
Kruger might be willing to take a similar part in the measures
which must precede the enactment of a representative constitution.
But a few days after the news of the final dispersion of the Boers'
camp had been confirmed, a telegram arrived from England, bringing
intelligence of the Despatch of Censure on myself of the^ 19th of
March. Two months later I was superseded as High Commissioner
by Sir Garnet Wolseley, and from that time I ceased to have any
share in the government of the Transvaal.

What has since been done there I can only, like the rest of the
world, gather from despatches published in Blue Books.

When a conference to consider the subject of confederation was
proposed in the Cape Parliament in its last session, Messrs. Kruger and
Jorissen visited the Cape Colony and made a tour .through the coun-
try'districts, detailing the grievances of the. Boers in the Transvaal
and urging thair brethren in the Cape colony to abstain from any
movement with a view to confederation till independence had been
given back to the Transvaal. Their eloquence made a sufficient im-
pression on the constituencies to ensure opposition to the Cro-
vemment proposals. In this campaign the Boer delegates received

1881. THE TRANSVAAL. 233

veiy effectual support from the opposition to ministers in the Cape
Legislature and from the small body of Dutch republicans. Free use
was made of the sympathetic utterances of prominent politicians in
England, and letters firom them to members of the Boer committee
and of the local colonial opposition were quoted as proving that
they would favourably consider the wish of the remonstrants to
have the annexation annulled and the South African republic
restored.

Since that time there has been a visible and gradual increase of
expressed dissatisfaction with the existing government in the Trans*
vaal, recently culminating in acts of violence and rebellion.

But enough has been ascertained to show pretty clearly the real
causes of the recent outbreak. There has been nothiug to aggravate
any real grounds of discontent which existed when I met the Boers in
April 1879. In many respects the action of the Transvaal administra-
tion has been such as to deserve and obtain popular support, and
many advantages have already been secured to the inhabitants of
the Transvaal by the English. Among them protection from the
eucroachment of native tribes, one of the first benefits to be gained
by coming under the British flag, has, there can be no doubt, been
established.

Financial reform, another great necessity, has been effected. Mr*
Sergeaunt's report upon the finances (which he was expressly sent out
to draw np) showed clearly the miserable state of disorder and bank-
ruptcy into which they had Sdlen during the republic. To meet the
moie pressing needs of the administration, the Imperial Treasury
arranged for a loan of 100,0002. The annual revenue has been in-
creased from 70,0002. to 160,0002., notwithstanding the abolition of
obnoxious taxes ; the increase being mainly due to better administra-
tion under Mr. Steele, the financial commissioner, and more honest
collection.

Again, some progress, though not so much as could be desired,
has been made in administrative reform ; and aU salaries are puno-
tually paid.

Lastly, any ground for reasonable discontent on the non-use of
the Dutch language in all matters of public business in time past^
has now been remedied.

What, then, has instigated the Boers to choose the present moment
for a rising, when they have been fairly well governed and effectually
protected for three and a half years, have had some grievances re-
dressed, and have ground to hope that every reasonable and possible
reform would be carried out ?

There can be little doubt, I think, that the present outbreak is
doe to external advice prompted by the embarrassments of the English

> See South African Blue Book, C. 2367, p. 87.

Vol. IX^— No. 48. R

234 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Febniaiy

Crovemment in the United Kingdom. When I met the Boet Coiq:-
mittee, in April 1879, 1 saw reason to address them regarding some
of their advisers — adventurers in the Transvaal* of various races—
broken men of the classes who in eveiy country fotm the active ag;ents
of rebellion and revolution.

Since then, the same adventurous agitators have been actively at
work, stimulating to resistance the Transvaal Boers and their brethren
in other parts of South Africa, and urging them to reject all offers of
self-government under the British flag, assuring them that they had
only to persevere, to obtain unconditional rescission of the annezatioD.
It is much to be feared that unguarded expressions of Englidi
politicians have strengthened this agitation. The removal of many
troops, especially cavalry, and a knowledge of embarrassments to the
English Government nearer home, have certainly been represented as
affording an opening that might not easily recur for gaining all de-
mands by force.

Besides British sympathisers and advisers, the Boers have
active auxiliaries in Continental Europe. There is naturaDy a
strong fellow-feeling with them among many classes in Holland. In
Germany they will have the sympathy of many mercantile men who,
on commercial grounds, advocate the establishment of Teutonic colonies
as a coimterpoise to the preponderating influence of English interests
in colonial commerce ; and they will have the active support of the
ultra-Bepublican and Socialist parties in all parts of the world, whose
main object is the overthrow of all settled and established govem-
jnents.

The more important question, however, now is, what is to be done
^or the future ?

Let not the English nation suppose that by throwing off all
responsibility for the fortunes of the Transvaal we shall either insure
the good government of the Transvaal or make our responsibilities in
the other colonies of South Africa less. With a Transvaal Republic,
ivhich had achieved its independence by open revolt, and had possibly
established itself under the protection of some foreign power, and
with an ill-affected Orange Free State on one side, with a vast
native population north and south, and in its midst, if Natal is to
remain an English colony, it could only be secured by a considerahle
and costly garrison of English troops. We should not, by abandoning
the Transvaal, secure peace or the possibility of civilisation to a
single one of the native tribes round either Natal or the Transvaal,
nor to the old Cape Colony. What has already occurred in the
Transvaal has reopened the divisions which were fast healing up,
and threatens to involve the Cape Colony I have unshaken con-
iidence in the moderation, patriotism, and loyalty of the great
majority of the Cape colonists, and of those who are governing

1881. THE TRANSVAAL. 235

tbem as their responsible ministers; but it is not difficult to
plunge a youthful constitution into troubles which would be too
much for the strength even of the oldest and most consolidated
dominion. No one ean contemplate, without a shudder, the idea of
eivil war between the two principal races which form the European ^
population, and which have, by a combination of diverse great
qualities, raised the Colony to its present condition of strength and
prosperity. It would be impossible to forecast the future of such com-
munities, but if the English Government were to repudiate its re-
sponsibilities in South AMca, I see no better prospect for some
generations than the formation of a knot of small antagonistic
republics, more or less civilised, but for the most part closely
approaching the type of the Sepublics which have succeeded Spanish
dominion in South America.

The first thought of the English Government should be to enforce
submission to the law in the province which has rebeU^d against it,
to re-establish a government able to protect person and property,
and to defend the order which is indispensable to the existence of a
civilised State ; and by so doing to redeem the first and most im-
portant of the promises made to the people of the Transvaal on its
amiezation.

This having been done, no time should be lost in amending
the constitution of the Transvaal, and making it more conform-
able to the wants and wishes of the population. This would not
be difiicult to arrange. I have already referred to the scheme
drawn up for the consideration of Her Majesty's Government, and
embracing the suggestions of some of the leading statesmen
and jurists of the Cape Colony, and also of the able president
of the Orange Free State. I should look with great confidence
to the successful working of any Transvaal constitution which had
the approval of Mr. Sprigg and his colleagues, and of Mr-
Brand.

On another occasion I hope to indicate in what directions the
most important modifications should, in my own opinion, be made,
to secure unity of policy in all such important matters as the
native question throughout all the English colonies in South
Africa, and how, by co-operating with the Portuguese Government,
we may set definite bounds to any extension of English respon-
sibilities to the north of the Grange River and Limpopo basins ; and
so fix geographical limits within which the Anglo-Dutch sub-
jects of the British Crown, and the people of the Orange Free
State, shall have scope to grow as self-defending and self-governing
dominions*

All I would now say is, let us beware of sending out cut and dried
constitutions from England to a people like that of the Transvaal.

ii2

236

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.

February

Of no people is it more true that their institutions must grow with
them, or be adapted to all their peculiarities. The only way in which
a good working constitution can be framed for a country in the podtion
of the Transvaal is to give large powers to an experienced adminis-
trator on the spot, to draw up such a constitution as will be approved
by the best men among the Boers themselves, as well as by the in-
telligent and experienced statesmen who rule the destinies of similar
and kindred communities in the Orange Free State and the Cape
Colony.

H. B, E. Frebb.

1881. 237

EXPLOSIONS IN COLLIERIES AND

THEIR CURE.

I HATE read Mr. Plimsoll*s article in the December number of the
NvnjdeenXh Century^ on * Explosions in Collieries and their Cure ; *
and, agreeing with him that their cure is within the possibilities of
science, beg to add my appeal on behalf of the miner to scientific
men. For mining is now no longer a matter of rule of thumb, and
we cannot hope for any real improvement except from persons who
are thoroughly well acquainted with those natural laws upon which
all science is based. But before they are in a position to grapple
with the question, it seems to me essential that the way should be
cleared for them by some one practically acquainted with mining,
lest their energies be wasted over impracticable schemes, or in the
solution of problems not directly bearing )ipon the point at issue. I
propose, therefore, first, to point out one or two errors into which, it
appears to me, Mr. PlimsoU, in common with more than one person
of the highest scientific attainments, but, as I may conclude, practi-
cally unacquainted with mining, has fallen ; and, secondly, to lay
before your readers the real problem which I believe must be solved
before we can hope to place any definite limit to these disastrous
accidents.

Perhaps I should premise, in order to elucidate further a subject
so technicftl as mining, that coal is found in beds varying in thickness
from a few inches up to several feet, and extending with great regu*
larity over large areas. These beds are seldom found lying either
quite horizontally, or quite vertically, but are found inclined at all
angles between these two extremes. There is also a great variety in
the quality of the seams of coal, in the quantities of gas that exude
from tiiem, and in the character of the rocks between which they lie.
We should, therefore, be naturally led to anticipate, and rightly so,
that there are many systems of working coal so as to suit these
vaiying conditions of its occurrence.

It would be impossible, within the limits of this paper, to describe
even the more important of these methods, but I will try, in a few
words, to make one of them — ^viz. the * Board and Pillar ' system of
the North of England— sufficiently intelligible to your readers for my

238 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. February

purpose. I choose this method of working the coal for explaxtation
in preference to othei*8, because in connection with it goaf-drainage
was, I believe, first mooted* This system of coal working will be
readily understood from a consideration of it, as illustrated by the
name ^ ^shiquier ' which it bears in France and Belgium. The
black and white squares represent the pillars of coal left during the
first working to support the roof of the miae. The lines separating
these squares are the drifts or excavations made in the coal during
the firbt working, or < in working the whole,' as it is called. After-
wards the black and white squares^ i.e. the pillars which have been
left to support the str&ta above, are removed ; and this, the second
working, is called * working the broken,' or * working out the piUars.^
The empty area left by the extraction of the coal, which, however, is
soon filled up by falls of stone from the strata overlying the bed^ is
called the ' goaf.' This term ^ goaf/ plural ' goaves,' is applied to the
area &om which the coal has been extracted, whatever be the syBtem
of working employed. I shall have more to say about the character
of a goaf presently.

A seam, when first cut, gives ofi* inflammable gases in larger or
smaller quantities, according to the character of the coal, which
gases, as Mr. PlimsoU has pointed out, being lighter than air, tend
to collect in the higher parts of the workings. When mixed with
air, in the proportion of one volume of gas to from five to fourteen
volumes of air, they become explosive ; and one of the principBl ob-
jects t>f ventilation is to dilute these gases with sufficient air, so as to
^render them harmless, and then to cany them off out of the mine.
3j gas I shall here mean these infiamniable gases, and by fire-damp
an explosive mixture of these gases and air.

I shall pass quickly over the first four of Mr. PlimsoU's sugges-
tions. Three of them — viz. mordants, collodion' balloons, jand
absorption — would no doubt render valuable aid to the miner if prac-
ticable ; but whether they are so or not I must leav6 to chemista to
decide. One, the absorption of the gas, has already been attempted,
but hitherto without success.^ The fourth suggestion, the Explosion
•of the gaa in regulated quantities after careful examination of ita
first beginning to accumulate, was 'the syst^n in vogue befbre'-the
invention of the safety-lamp. Simonin mentions it in bis book, iia
Vie souterraine, page 179, where aldo may be seen an engf aving tof
.the miner in the dresa specially adapted to hid di^gerous wdrk. i
.oannot do better than quote his description : —

En France, k Rive-de-Gier, on se rappelle encore le temps o& nn homme, com*-

geiix entre tous, venait tous les soirs epflammw le gaz dtas U ibikie) en provo^uer

^'exploston, pour que les chantiers' ^flsent* de souveau aocenildeff le lendamaiw.

, . , . •

* t see, in connection with the Fen^graig accident, which happened so recently
as December 10, that' the Bev. T. JoneiB,^f iUiyamey, is oonliaent that be iias now
diaoovered the Bolntion of his iMt>blem.

1881. EXPLOSIONS IN COLLIERIES. 239

Bool^ dans une couyertuie de laine ou de cuir, la figure prot^g^e par un masque, la
tete coaverte d*im capuchon analogue ^ la cagoule des momes, il rampait sur le sol
pour fie tenir autant que possible dans la couche d*air respirable, car le grisou, plus
I^r que Tair^ monte toujours au sommet des galeries. H tenait d'une main un
long b&ton, aubout duquel ^tait une chandelle aUumde ; et il allait seul, perdu dans
00 d^ale empoiflonn^^ provoquant les explosions par rapproche de sa lampe et d^
composant ainsi le gaz pernicieux. On l*appelait lepitUtent, k cause de la ressem-
blance de son costume avec celui des ordres religieuz ; et ce mot semblait en mSme
temps dict^ par une derision amSre, car souvent le p^nitent^yictime sacrifice d'avance^
ne rerenut pas, emport^ par I'explosion. Sur d'autres mines on nommait oe brave
bomlleor le canannier, Quand le grisou le tuait sur place, on disut que le canonniex
6tait mort h son posto, au champ d'honneur, et c'^tait Ik toute son oraison fundbre.
Le m&ne ouTiier portait dans les mines anglaises le nom expreesif de Jireman, ou
lliomme du feu.

I need hardly add, that though this system, under very careful
management, might do some good service, it has long since been
abandoned.

The method of ventilation proposed by Mr. Plimsoll is good ;
for not only is the gas lighter than air, as he has pointed out, but
the air of the mine, being heated by contact with the warm surface
of the stony strata, is lighter than the cool air coming down from
the surface, and for the same reason it becomes lighter and lighter
tiie further it travels through the passages of the mine. Its natural
tendency is^ therefore, to rise, like the gas, as it proceeds on its
eouzae towards the upcast shaft ; and accordingly the current of air,
as well as the gas, is most easily kept in circulation when this natural
tendency is not obstructed. The downcast, or shaft for entry of air,.
should therefore be placed near the lowest point of the area of the
ooal working; the. upcast, or shaft for exit of air, near the highest
(the area being in almost all cases on an incline). This, a fact well
known to mining engineers, is called, ascensional ventilation, and is
always carried out in the working where practicable ; but sometimes
it ia impossible to carry it out effectually, for many conflicting in-
terests may uiterfere with the choice of a situation for the shafto of a
mine*

t I now come to Mr. Plimsoll's principal suggestion — viz. that the
gas should * be drained off by means of a pipe placed in a hole or
^soiqp ' 'made for it in the roof of the upper exhausted spaces in a
pit, i.0. in the highest point of the goaf^ and carried from this jump
to the upoastvshaft. This idea was brought forward, whether for the
finttime ori.netI cannot say, by Messrs.. Faraday and LyelL at the
Hiaswdl Colliery explosion in 1844. A description of their apparatus
was published by them in the PMiaaophical Magazine (third series^
voLxacvi* p« 16)^ A committee of mining engineers was appointed
hgr .the 4X)al«4iade of the north of England to examine and report
iipoB tlDB scheme. After a most careful consideration of the matter,
th^ {HOBOunced^it not only 4nfeasible^ but of very dpubtftil benefit^

240 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. February

even could it be carried out. Their report * is too long for quotation
in full, but a summary of the parts bearing upon this question will
show the impracticability of the scheme.

Groaves are not limited in their dimensions, but ultimately, by
the continued progress of the pillar excavations, come to be coexten-
sive with the tract of coal-field which is being worked. It thus
happens that there will be a greater or less magnitude of goaf, coire-
sponding with the quantity of coal extracted, and that, at last, the
mine will consist exclusively of goaf in any seam the coal of which
has been entirely removed. It must further be remarked that there
is not any certainty of an open communication between one part of a
goaf and another part of the same goaf : the contrary is indeed the
rule, as may be easily understood from the following considerations.

The immediate eflfect of the removal of a pillar of coal is to pro-
duce a fall from the bed of stone resting upon the coal ; and the
cavity made by this fall of stone is necessarily of a conical form. As
the coal contiuues to be removed, the sides of the cavity lose their
support, the cone is extended ; and this process goes on until the
superimposed strata, no longer sustained by the converging sides of
the cone, subside, and rest upon the broken fragments of the fidlen
stones, which occupy a much larger space than did the same rocks
when in a solid state. The summit of the cone does not then con-
tinue to extend upwards, but, as the excavationjprogresses, the strata
rest upon the mass of stones forming the goaf, and the upper portion
of the goaf becomes parallel with the lines of stratification. This is
proved by the state of the upper beds of coal a few fathoms above the
lower bed, which has already been extracted. The settlements and
fissures there show that in some parts the fallen mass must be
crushed extremely close, and that, in others, cavities may exist ; the
effect produced being, in fact, that of rendering the interior either,
practically speaking, solid, or of dividing it into compartments
which are isolated one from another. It must too be noticed Uiat a
passage will not remain open between the bounding edges of the goaf
and the remaining coal yet unworked. Accordingly, the cavities in
a goaf being isolated and detached, a pipe placed at its upper edge
could not be depended upon as draining it throughout its entire space,
and it would therefore be necessary to have a separate pipe at each
avenue leading into each goaf. Further, at Haswell Colliery, to
carry but one cast-iron pipe of the dimensions proposed by Messrs.
Faraday and Lyell (twelve inches diameter and half an inch thick in
the shell) from each of the fourteen goaves to the upcast shaft would
require rather more than twelve miles of pipes, and would cost about
2l,000Z. As regards the current expense of maintenance) it is im-
possible to form any accurate estimate ; but it would be eztiemeiy
difficult to keep the goaf ends of the pipes in working condition) and a

« Published by I. H. Veitch,the Clironicle office, Durham, 1S46.

1881. EXPLOSIONS IN COLLIERIES. 241

fracture there, ivhich is very likely to occur, would destroy the entire
value of the apparatus* Moreover^ the constant attention which would
be required to keep in order the goaf terminations of the several
ranges of pipes must without doubt, in so dangerous a situation, be
attended with risk of frequent loss of life from falls of the broken strata.
I vrill now quote the last few lines of that portion of the report
which refers to my subject : —

Tour Oommittee have shown that the actual state of goaves is incompatible
with that required for the efficient working of the apparatus suggested bj Messrs.
Faiadaj and Lyell ; and, having also duly considered and ezplamed the extreme
difficulty^ expense, and almost, in their opinion, impracticability, of carrying into
execution the plan xeoommended by those gentlemen, together with the extreme
uncertainty of its success, they regret exceedingly that they cannot recommend it
for adoption.

The proposed scheme of gas drainage, introduced to your readers
by Mr. PUmsoll, is, as I have already said, identical with the above.
It has been before the public for thirty-six years, but no one, as f&r as
I am aware, has attempted to put it into practice.

Several other plans have been proposed at different times with
the same object in view, Le» the draining off of the gas. Many of
them are quite impracticable ; but two, I think, are deserving of the
consideration of mining engineers, viz. : —

Where an inferior seam of coal exists, of suflBcient thickness, a few
£Eithoms above the one which is being worked, drifts might be driven
in it and boreholes put down from these drifts into the goaves and
other places where gas was known to be, or thought likely to accu-
mulate ; and these drifts being put in communication with the up-
cast shaft, a current of air would sweep through the goaves and up
through the boreholes into them, carrying with it the gas. These
drifts would have to be driven a considerable distance ahead of the
workings in the lower seam, so as not only to offer a vent for the
accumulations of gas in the goaves, but to tap the gas also in the
solid ooaL In this way these excavations would also become explor-
ing drifts, and would prove the existence of faults and other geological
features of the area, thus enabling the engineer to lay out his
workings in the lower and more valuable seam to the best advantage.

Another idea, which was carried out with considerable success at
Springwell Colliery, in Durham, is to drive drifts in the solid coal a
few yards to the ' rise ' of each goaf and parallel to it (meaning by
the rise any spot higher up the slope formed by the inclination of the
bed). These drifts may be connected with the goaf, where deemed
expedient, by means of other short drifts, and, the first being put into
communication with the upcast shaft, a current of air is carried
through the goaf into them, and the gas along with it.

There are, indeed, difficulties in the way of carrying out both
tliese schemes, which will be patent to members of my profession ;

342 TEE NINETEENTB CENTURY. Febrwy

bitt^ nevertheless, either of them is possible in some cases, and woold
answer the purpose of draining & goaf, where desired, and at little
expense.

But in the^e attempts to drain the goaves of the gas collected in
themt are we doing all that is needed? Every miner will answei,
^ No I ' Dangerous though these receptacles of noxious matter may
be, we have them under control to a very great extent. We know
where each is situated, we are aware that they are charged with gas,
and we take precautions accordingly.

Accumulations also of gas may be formed in at least two other
ways. Suppose, first, that the ventilating current of air is not
strong enough to dilute, and cany away the gas which exudes from
the pores of the coal forming the front and sides of a drift when
newly excavated. This gas will soon form an explosive mixture with
the air, and lie in some comer of the drift ready to take advantage of
a defect in a safety *lamp or of any carelessness on the part of master
or workman.

Again, outbursts of gas, or ^ blowers,' as I would prefer to call them,
whether they issue from the stone roof and floor or from the coal
itself^ but Qriginating of course primarily in the coal^ most be taken
into account. These are very dangerous, as their oceoxrence is
sudden and generally unexpected. Mr. PlinisoU appears to find a
difficulty in ikccounting for their ^existence at all, principally, peihaps,
because he does not realise at how very high a pressure the gas is in
the interior of our coaji seams. And though there noay not be large
cavities in the surrounding rocks, nor in the seams themselves, there
are .fissures. \arge enough^.when filled with gas at such pc^ssnies
aa we find from experiment to exist, to form more violent blowecs
than any I, have myself. rencountered. And when it is remembered
that a sfifety-lamp cannot be di^n4ed upon in a very rapid cunent
of fire-damp, the gi:eat (langer arising firom these blowers will be
readily, imdierstood.

That there are other parts of a mine in which an explosion is
more likely, to .occur than ip. the goaves is no ideal conclusion. The
Committee^ whose opinioa I, have already referred .to^ report that,
during tihe iburteen years which immediately preceded the. KafweU
.accident, ^ there have ocji^urred eleven great exploraons jm. the
Northtpiberland and Durjbam collieries; and that these have hap*
^iK)^ with .perhaps one jBi^ption— ^though that one i^ <tf a. doubt^
xdifqfm^ — ^where. the respective mines were being worked in the
wh^l that is, in those parts where pillar-working iiad not 7^
(b^cpiiQCimmextf^ed* It is, therefore, clear that, in at least ten cases out
pf ^elev^Ur during the period in question, the goaves have Jiad no oon-
nection with the origin of these accidents.' We see therefore that,
fpi^i^ were.it ppss^bie to^hrain the goaves of gas quite .^fiipctijal^y, we

1881- EXPLOSIONS IN COLLIERIES.] 24S

should still be liable to ezplosioxis^ ^nd that we must deek in wothel:
direction for anything like a radical cure for these disasters. ^

Under such circumstances, it is with very great diffidence that I
Teatnie to make any suggestion of my own.; but an examination of
the story of the different explosions, as told in the ^ Mines' Inspectors'
Beports,' shows that in the vdst majority of cases they were ^tber
caused by actual negligence, or that their origin has nev^ been
discovered. We may, I think, draw the inference that these last
disasters also were, in many cases, due to tcarelessness; and — when it is
remembered that, unlike M other trades^ the lives of the miners are
often in the hands of the ytoungest boy or most ignorant workman
amongst them — ^it is extraordinary tiiat accidents do not even oftener
ooeor. For we must remember that, numerous and distressing ai^
such accidents are, the life of the collier is, after all, safer than that
of most persons employed in other of the more dangerous trades*
The merchant seaman, the railway servant^ or even the sailor in our
Boyal Navy runs greater risks.^

I do not indeed, for my own part, anticipate that the better edu-
cation of our miners, desirable as it is on other accounts, will, have
any very great effect in reducing the number of explosions ; we may
be assured there must always be some careless and ignorant amongst
the large body of men required for the working of a mine. I would
taiher that scientific znen; should turn their attcnitipn to some cure
not depending for its success upon the carefulness of the workmen as
a body, and depending as » little as possiblq even upon the carefulness
of their employers, for the most caz^ful and experienced must ^me^
•times fail. But we knoW' that fire-damp, until raised to a certain
temperature, is not only inexplosiye, but may be breathed for. a time
without ill-effects. Cannot our:men of science give ns light witiiout
heat? The first step in this direction has already been attained by
the invention of luminous paint; another step, and the miner may
beindepend^it of lamp or cai^dle, and an explosion cannot take plape*
If this be impossible, a new lamp, the heat &om which cannot be
communicated to the fire-damp throngh t)ij& neglect of H& owner,
would meet the needs of the case« Our present lamps,, from the
•point of view of safety alone, for jbhe light is but smaU,.are.almc#t
all that can be desired in the bands of a careful person who knows
how-to use them ; but we want « lamp equally safe in the hands qf a
or ignorant' pers(»U' Ther el0ctrio JigU^ 90 reo^iB^tly p^ecte4

* During 1S76, 11*42S merchant seamen lost their lives by drowning alone, 3-2
sailors in the Boyal Navy lost their lives by all classes of accidents, and only 1*81S
miners by all classes of accidents per 1,000 employed. During 1874 the proportion
for railway servants was 3*703 per 1,000. See Proceedings qf North of Englamd
TnttUute of 2Rning and Moohanieal Sngineen^ vol. xzviii. p. 200. 1876 was a
favomable year for mlnexs ; the number killed per 1,000 daring the seven years
ending 1879 is rather below %\ ; but even this compares favourably with the deaths
in the other trades.

244 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. February

by Mr. Swan for household use, may assist us in the solution of this
problem. A main feature of his lamp, and one specially noticeable
in considering its adaptability to the illumination of mines, is that
the light is secluded from contact with the outer atmosphere, i& in
fact in a Tacuum, and if the vacuum be destroyed the light will go
out almost immediately. The miner's lamp at present used depends
for its safety upon a wire gauze which surrounds the flame ; the air
necessary for the combustion of the lamp passes freely through the
gauze to the flame, and along with it the fire*damp, should any be
present ; but the flfime cannot pass out through the gauze. Accord-
ingly, though the fire-damp often explodes inside the lamp, where
the quantity being small no harm is done, it cannot explode outside
the lamp, where the quantity of course may be sufficient to cause a
serious accident. Mr. Swan's light, being in a vacuum, can never
come in contact with the fire-damp at all. A violent current of air
which, as I have already said, will blow the flame of an ordinary
safety-lamp through the gauze and thus cause an explosion should
fire-damp be present, would have no effect upon a vacuum electric
lamp. A defect in a safety-lamp may be easily overlooked, but a
defect in Mr. Swan's lamp would extinguish it. In the case of
fracture of the vacuum tube, while the lamp is lighted, there is almost
a certainty of the simultaneous breaking and consequent extinction
of the incandescent filament ; but even supposing that this did not
occur, all danger arising from this accident happening at the precise
time and place when and where fire-damp is present in dangerous
quantities, might be completely guarded against by the adoption of
the expedient suggested by Professor Tyndall — ^the placing of the
lamp in a glass vessel of water. A Swan lamp, thus protected,
seems to me all that is required as fiir as safety is concerned ; but it
has two practical objections — viz. the expense^ and inconvenience
of carrying wires about underground, and its want of portability.
The first, I think, might be overcome. Can scientific men find a
remedy for the second ?

Shortly, there are, in my opinion, but two problems before us.
We must either have light without heat, or a lamp so constructed that,
without sacrifice of portability, its heat cannot be communicated to
the fire-damp. These problems are no doubt difficult of solution, but
I hope not impossible ; for I feel assured that, so long as coal is mined
from gaseous seams, no precautions that we can adopt, short of these,
will provide a radical cure for explosions in collieries.

J. H. Mebivale.

1881. 245

FIRE^DAMP.

Ths great interest which Mr. Samuel Plimsoll has taken in the
welfisire of sailors has been very naturally extended to colliers, as
shown by his article on ' Explosions in Collieries and their Cure ' in
the Nineteenth Century of December last ; but as he disowns special
knowledge of the subject, and states his object in writing to be that
of starting on foot ' a systematic and painstaking investigation of
the nature and relations of light carburetted hydrogen,' it would
ill become me to criticise his paper except when pointing out
errors which, from the circumstances of the case, clash with my
a]^;ument.

It is of doubtful accuracy to say that much mischief arises
*• because men will not learn, and will not obey, the physical laws of
the universe.' Mr. Plimsoll must bear in mind that knowledge is
progressive, and that science frequently suspects long before proof
can be reached. Indeed, I am inclined to take a different view ; for
my practical experience tells me men will learn, and do obey, the
laws of nature, when there is convincing proof, but they are slow
before proof, and, for the sake of stability, rightly so.

The first great step towards the abolition of anything is to dis-
cover its source ; and as light carburetted hydrogen, or marsh gas,
called in the formulas of chemistry CH^, is the cause of explosions in
collieries, we should find its origin; but whereas that was not practi-
cable two years ago, it seems so now, and if I have not actually solved
the problem, at least I am not far off doing so.

Let me first ask attention to the average of constituents in the
constraction of plants and coal : —

rianta.

Coftl.

Carbon •

. 46-0

S2'0

Hydrogen

. 60

6G

Oxygen «

. 41-0

CO

Nitrogen ,

. 2-1

1-2

Ash •

. i>-n

5-2

IJO-O

iouv)

Here we have before us a visible explanation in figures of the change

246 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Febrtiary

that has taken place during the process of carbonising* The propor-
tion of carbon has aknost doubled, and seven-eighths (|) of the oxygen,
and one-half the nitrogen, have disappeared, leaving the hydrogen
free to form hydrocarbon compounds, while the ash remains the
same.

Now what has become of the portion of gases shown in the plants,
but which do not appear in the coal ? Surely they are still in the
coal strata, but in changed combinations, forming varied compounds
of which the special object of our inquiry, carburetted hydrogen,
is one.

The quantity of carbon which will combine with hydrogen is
variable, and dependent on the degree of heat present. At a high
temperature hydrogen combines with three times its weight of carbon,
forming carburetted hydrogen.

I have now brought down my subject to two problems : —

1 . During the formation of coal was there suflBcient heat to cause
a combination between hydrogen and carbon, and, if so, whence is it
produced ?

2. What circumstances can arise to empower carburetted hydrogen
to rush out of the atrata with enormous velocity ?

Now as to the first. During fermentation great heat is evolved,
and that must have been the case in the formation of coal ; whether
sufficient I am not prepared to say, but there has been another source
of heat. Every coal-field has at some period been overlaid by
strata which denudation has removed, perhaps 10,000 feet more or
less; in which case the heat due to depth would be about 140°
Centigrade = 284** Fahrenheit, which would give a pressure of
three and a half atmospheres, or, say, of steam 541bs. on the square
inch.

As to the second problem, the matter is of great interest ; for the
question involved is the vaporising, liquefying, and solidifying of
gases.

In order to apply this, it must be understood that the only differ-
ence between a gas and a vapour is of degree — a gas being only an
attenuated vapour, and a vapour a condensed gas, the visible change
resulting from falling temperature or pressure, or a combination of
the two.

Carbonic acid gas will condense by the pressure it evolves during,
generation in a strong closed vessel, and comiyiences to do so when
compressed into one thirty-sixth (^) of its volume. If a valve in
the vessel be suddenly opened, snow-like flakes will be formed at a
temperature of about —80° C, which is solid carbonic acid, or, in more
scientific language, solid carbonic dioxide ; but the greater quantity
resmnes the gaseous state. Now the same law applies to all gases ;
and since oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen have been either vaporised

1881. FIRE-DAMF. . 247

or liquefied, we see our way to the origin of those ' blowers ' which
are so ruinous when they get the mastery.

Oxygoi will liquefy at a temperature of —65° C.=85® F. of cold,
when under pressure of from four to six atmospheres, and also at the
moment when it is allowed to suddenly escape into space from a pres-
sure of about 300 atmospheres* Nitrogen requires 200 and hydrogen
280 atmospheres.

It appears that these gases remain gaseous while kept under
pressure (for instance, hydrogen has remained gaseous under 8,000
atmospheres) ; but they liquefy or vaporise on the instant of being
set free after the pressures named, and then expand to their normal
condition. Under pressure they have parted with their latent heat,
and on sudden release the cold attained is intense beyond under-
standing, even — 300° C.

We hare similar effects with compressed air, only in a less degree.

"When sinking a shaft a few years ago in North Wales, I found
large volumes of carburetted hydrogen in the strata twenty yards or
so before reaching the coal, showing the gas to be of recent origin in
comparison with the strata ; and I feel convinced that those gases
are in the strata under enormous pressure, evolved during the process
of carbonisation.

I have known a settling down of strata crumple up 14 feet of solid
masonry, as though it were paper, at 600 yards deep, which has its
effect also on the gases.

Mr. PUmsoll speaks of a pressure of 30 lbs. on the square inch
as if it were a great pressure, and of 1,000 cubic feet as if that
were a large volume. What will he say of ' blowers,' with 500 lbs.
on the square inch, giving a velocity of, say, 550 feet per second,
and of counting gas by the million cubic feet ? Such are the
sort of figures we must use when discussing those colliery explosions
which occur on a large scale. It is absurd to imagine the possi-
bility of constructing reservoirs in the roof, as Mr. PlimsoU
proposes, as receptacles for the vast volumes of gas given off by a
powerful 'blower' that may charge a mile or more of a mine with
explosive fire-damp in a few minutes. Allow 400,000 cubic feet
to the mile, and the magnitude of his proposed reservoirs will be
apparent*.

If the difficulty proceeded from a gradual oozing from the strata,
the reservoir system might be available ; but it is the sudden appear-
ance of vast volumes of gas that is so troublesome, as quantity cannot
be foretold.

I have tmquestionable evidence that mists frx>m blowers have
been seen and passed unnoticed as 'just a little fog ' of no moment ;
but I am now convinced beyond all doubt that the ' little fog ' was
vaporised carburetted hydrogen, expanding to its normal state of gas

248 THE NINETEENTH CENTVRF. February

ready to combine with eight volumes of air, and fire the mine if a
chance light offered.

Having lived in earthquake lands and heard the subterranean
explosions before the shake, I believe the bumps and thumps common
to fiery seams are only £he sounds of the efforts of condensed gases to
expand — incipient earthquakes in real fact.

The remedy is tapping the seams by boring to let the compressed
gas escape gradually.

J. D. Sh^kesfbab.

1881. 249

THE BREAKING UP OF THE LAND

MONOPOLY.

While it is the habit of certain minds to dwell specially on what
thej believe to be the fixed and unvarjing laws that govern human
existence, and to arrive at a knowledge of an absolute criterion from
deductions based on these so-called first principles^ it is the habit of
others to consider the organism and his surroundings as being in a
state of perpetual slow change ; so that whatever ma^ have been the
social laws which have successfully directed our existence in past
times, a perpetual modification of these laws is necessary in order to
adapt human life at every epoch to its new and altered conditions.

The first mode of mind is the d 'priori or Conservative one ; the
second the so-called Sadical. Nevertheless we shall see that, rightly
considered, this latter form of mental structure is the one which accords
most truly with the operation of natural laws, and is therefore neither
Sadical nor revolutionary, since Nature knows nothing of these rapid
changes or cataclysms any way in the history of this world's evo-
lution.

There may be, however, and probably are, points of inflection —
critical points in the curve of human sociology, moments when the
old is breaking up, and a violent birth of the new is forcing itself
into existence. These periods of social crisis may be noticed in the
history of every nation. The strain between the various particles of
the political body increases until the inherent elasticity of the sub*
stance is exceeded. There is a falling apart of the molecules, and a
rearrangement of their respective positions with regard to one another
becomes a vital necessity. What we have therefore to seek for is
that condition of stable equilibriimi in the social body where the
powers of restitution are complete ; and thus, without arriving at
that position of rest which is unknown in the physical as well as in
the political world, the various members of the social body may ever
oscillate about a centre of equilibrium.

There is no question that has so comprehensive an aspect, when
judged of by these ideas, as the elementary right of property. The
lig'ht of eveiy individual to live, and the further right to enjoy the
fruits of his own toil, are the axioms from which we can deduce every
rational social law. These are the ^ natural rights ' of an individual
VoT.. IX.— No. 48. S

250 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. February

or of a race that has risen above the state of savagedom, and has
mutually consented to establish a code, written or implied, in the pkce
of the law of battle and the survival of the fittest.

The first among the rights of property which must have occupied
the thoughts of men before manufactures and arts were known, were
the rights connected with land. Land was the sole source of all
wealth, the sole instrument of production, the most certain or
tangible form of all property. The original title to land must
naturally have been in most cases simply the right of the strongest,
yet it would seem that the rights acquired by occupancy were never
totally ignored. Even among the early serf populations of Europe
thef right of these serfs to occupy the soil which they had for gene-
rations cultivated grew up gradually to be recognised by the seignorial
class, and fiefs and grants of land, either on feudal tenure or on a
payment of ^ cens,' were a species of recognition of the claims of the
cultivating class to certain rights of occupancy amounting in many
casies to fijuty of tenure, which thus became a species of feudal copy-
hold subject only to those rights of the seigneur which a powerful and
insolent nobility have in all countries and in every age forced upon
the classes beneath them, as far as they felt they could safely go
without absolutely starving the population who produced the wealth
which they enjoyed, or reposing themselves to the fury of a general
insurrection.

Of these feudal customs De Tocqueville ^ says : * Tdute institution
qui a ete longtemps donunante apres s'etre etablie dans sa sph^e
naturelle, pen^tre au-dela et finit par exercer une grande influence
sur la partie de la legislation ou elle ne r^gne pas.'

To these customs he attributes the great inequalities in the dis-
position of property and laws of inheritance which had infiltrated
themselves as a practice into ranks of life hi below the noble class,
and had been the source of so much evil to the French peasantry.

The history of landed property in England has in many ways
been very different, though the spirit which has pervaded its laws
has in former times been very similar. Feudalism never actively
survived as it did abroad. The dissimilarity of interest and condition
between the free burghers of the towns and thie serf peasantry outside
had no part in our system. The landed aristocracy wiere not an
absentee class as they were abroad, living perpetually, about the
Court. Their estates, tdo, which in many cases may be traced to
grants from the Crown of what were once Church lands, wei*e mixed up
and interspersed with those of .the small proprietors of the yeoman
olass, who of late years have vanished completely. This latter class,
which at one timefortned one of the most valuable .dements in oar
social economy, were eliminated by thet growing. facilities, of inter-
communication even before railway and telegraph ware introduced.

1 VAnoien RSffimSy p. S15.

1881. THE LAND MONOPOLY. 251

Life bec&me too dear for small, landed proprietors to keep up the old
appearances of liyiBg which, they had been used to; tiiey became,
swamped' by the moneyed closes from the towns, and they found that^
by Belling their estates to new men or to the large landed own^is^;
they could live in towns and keep up a position which they were
unable to do in tiie &ce of the modem competition for aggregating
vast estates. Besides the esdstenoe of this yeoman class, who were
totally distinot from any class that we find on the Continent, there
was another difference between the conditions of landed property in
England and abroad. The peasant cultivator was never a prominent
institution in England, as he was over four-fifths of the Continent.
This is largely to be accounted for by the fact that the love of an
outdoor life in the country has always been a leading feature of the
English character. Every man who had wealth of any sort invested
it in land which he either farmed himself or let, preferring the posi-*
tion of a squire or gentleman to that of a simple rentier or bour-
geoia. Abroad, if a man was bom in a town, he and his family lived
there for ever; in England he took the first opportunity fortune
offered him of leaving the town and buying property in the coimtry.

Again, the great rise and growth of our manufacturing industries
in the beginning of the century in England tended largely to draw off
the attention of the people from simple agricultural life. Neither
have great famines, such as other countries have suffered from in
consequence of ruinous wars, thrown bacl^ the people on the land as
the sole means of existence. Our foreign trade even before the repeal
of the com laws saved us from these dangers ; while, on the other
hand, for many years our maixufactures and the prospects of emigra-
tion steadily drew off the superabundance of population to our
colonies or to our home centres of manufacturing industry. Lastly,
the demands of our fleet and army, as well as of our mercantile marine,
afforded a perpetual opening to that spirit of enterprise and adventure
which is so marked a feature in our history.

We thus se^ that for many years, whether for good or evil, the
mass of the people of England, unlike those of foreign countries, have
Uved independent of, if not estranged from, the soil ; our prosperity has
been a mercantile and manufacturix^, not to say artificial, prosperity.
Those who have remained as simple labourers on the land have, as a
rule, been the least intelligent, the least enterprising. The people
themselves have had no lien on the land. ' Earth-hunger ' has never
arisen as yet in England.'

All these tendencies working together have, as it were, deferred in

' spewing on the Irish land qiiestion on the 17th of May, 1S66« Mr. B. KiU
flald : *■ Xhe Iri^ 'circnmstaDoeB and the Iria^ ideas aa to social and agricaltural
economy are the general ideas and chrcumstances of the human race. It is the
English ideas and circumstances that are pecuUkr. 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^*

S2

252 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. February

England the land crisis which has taken place of recent years in every
other country of Europe, and which has resulted in the transfer of the
land, in one way or another, in Denmark, Bavaria, most of Germany
and Poland, from the hands of the aristocratic class into those of oc»
cupying owners cultivating their lands themselves.

It is highly doubtful if the continent of Europe will ever ofiPer an
exact parallel to England in her methods of agriculture or customs
and laws regarding land, nor is it necessary that we should look
abroad for an absolute guide. The criterion must be sought for from
among the necessities of the English people ; and the first primary
necessity is ' that the land should be made to produce as much as
is possible, and that those who live upon it should be contented and
happy.*

The great landowners, whether the nobles or, in her day, the
Church, did their part fairly well towards their immediate depen-
dents in this country ; nevertheless the system of paternal government
which is an inevitable accompaniment of the alliance that has
always existed between the Church and ancient feudal ideas, is un-
suited, if not absolutely debasing, to the spirit of the people. The first
quality of the individual — ^namely, * independence of character' and
self-reliance — is strenuously discouraged and looked upon with the
greatest disfiivoiu:, if not at once repressed, by both clergy and squire ;
and the species of offensive and defensive alliance which these two,
often very opposite-minded, persons invariably arrive at, is highly
prejudicial to the independence of the people, either morally, socially,
or intellectually.

In their own particular spheres both these parties may have been
possessed of worthy motives after their own lights ; but the ineradicahle
feudal feeling of the landed class towards those whom they have treated
more or less in the light of vassals, and the acquiescence of the
clergy in these pretensions, have for years been the cause of the per-
manence of that species of patriarchal government of which our
unpaid magistracy is the outward and visible sign, but of which the
inward strength has been that survival of medieval notions and
assertion of superior authority by the landed class which remain
in full force in England to the present day in most of her country
districts.

The history of the power of the landed classes in England is
well set forth by Sir E. May in his Democracy i/a Europe. He shows
us how, since the reign of William, the House of Commons had be-
come a sort of close body, representing, no doubt, more or less the
opinions of the country, but more particularly the views of the
landed interest ; the country members were largely nominees of
the great territorial nobles, and bribery and corruption were
acknowledged as legitimate functions of every government. By
these means the landed aristocracy virtually ruled the State and

J

J 881. THE LAND MONOPOLY. 253

manipulated the House of Commons — ^the real power of the Crown
had passed, and in its place the oligarchy of a landed class had risen
on its ashes. The Whigs, who had brought in the new Hgvms,
adhered to Liberal opinions, and the rivalry of parties kept the State
from stagnation. Freedom thus remained, and powerful middle classes
were gradually growing up — the Church, the nobles, and the country
gentry ruled — ^they built noble mansions, laid out woods and parks,
and as leaders of society, as magistrates, they enjoyed the power
without possessing the invidious privileges of feudalism. The
country gentry and aristocracy went hand in hand, the clergy
were largely recruited from their ranks, they owed their benefices
to the peer and the squire, and thus this triumvirate formed a
most powerful society, commanding almost political supremacy, until
another class was destined to rise and contest their power — a pheno-
menon which has revealed itself so strongly in later times.'

An acknowledgment must in fairness be conceded to the great inte-
rest which English landowners have generally taken in their estates,
and the hearty recognition of many of its paternal obligations. Yet we
must not forget the words before quoted of De Tocqueville ; and it
is a great and open question whether the paramount influence which
the landed aristocracy have exercised for so many generations on
those beneath them, can, in the long run, continue to be for the
unmixed good and welfare of the people.

The signs of change in these respects are not wanting; the
efforts which have been made in late years to secularise popular
education and render it compulsory have not been without effect.
The Ballot Act has largely reduced the political power of the land-
owning class, upon which the great Reform Bill first put a certain
limit. The monopoly which, however, has so long existed is not
so easily destroyed ; the Church and the landed interest still fight
hand in hand, and offer, each in its own way, a bitter opposition to
every measure for the public good, which is calculated to impair the
remnantd of their joint authority. The Burials Bill and Game
Act of last year — two of the most moderate measures ever proposed
by a Liberal Ministry — were fought against in a spirit of the most
violent hostility ; the reform of county management, the extension
of the coimty suffrage, and redistribution of seats will also meet with
the most energetic resistance from the landowning class, who will
employ every artifice and conjure up every imaginable party cry to
discredit these measures of reform, which they know are surely
eoming, but which they think themselves bound in honour to ob-
struct as long as they are able. Yet if the agricultural classes are to
be raised intellectually and morally, it must be by teaching them
responsibility ; and the conferring of the franchise on the agricultural
labourer, however little he may at first understand its duties, is the

• Pr6cis from May's Donioeraoy in JSurope, p. 443.

254 TH^ NINETEENTH CENTURY. February

first practical step . in making him realise his stake and interest in
the country. The Tory leaders are not adverse to forming * Con-
servative working men's associations' (whatevier this nondescript
term may mean), and they are equally ready to deliver speeches on aH
questions of interest of the day to large assemblies of the ^unen-
franchised labourers.' They fail to recognise, however, that the
genius of the nineteenth century is hot favourable to the permanence
of feudal customs, or a survival of paternal government, notwithstand^
ing all their efforts to persuade the yokels to the contrary.

The tenant farmers of England have occupied a peculiar position
in the bucolic economy : they have been an auxiliary class between the
landowner and the labourer ; they have accepted, and honestly too, the
interests of the landlords, who, in their turn, have made every effort to
conciliate the farmers with * soft words,* if not always by liberal deeds.
The landlords have certainly never relaxed their right, so long as
they were able to enforce it, of controlling their tenants' votes, or
of quartering on them as much game as they would stand without
giving up their farms. They have carefully for generations regu-
lated the cropping of the land, and reserved to themselves the right
to evict at their pleasure. In fact, they have universally secured to
themselves all the rights of residential advantage, and conceded in
many ways nothing but the burdens of cultivation. It is true that
they have done all the permanent improvements in the way of
building, such as they have been ; but the question of improving the
productive power of the land by encouraging higher farming has
been an impossibility under such a state of arrangisments, the con-
sequence being that too often the farmer himself has sunk into a
general state of apathy, and fails to see how much he might profit
by a better system. Yet the Conservative party have persistently
urged that they alone are the fartners' friends ; that the interests of
landlords and tenants are identical. The former of these proposi-
tions is manifestly false, as any person with an eye to fact can per-
ceive ; the latter should be true as a general theory regarding every
species of joint undertaking ; but, so far as the land goes, while the
interests of the parties have been identical, their ' objects,^ as Mr.
Bear shows in his article in the September number of the NiTieteentl.
Century, 1879, are by no means equally identical.

Things, however, are rapidly changing, and we are at present
entering on a momentous period in the history of the land question;
a critical point, in fact, in its history, such as we have not seen
since the days of the great Eeform Bill. Up to now the tenant
farmer has been contented to accept the position of the disestablished
British yeoman, who had certain social pretensions about him, which
would have brought him in many ways into conflict with the great
landowners.

Another distinctive feature of the tenant farmer's life of the

1881. THE LAND MONOPOLY. 266

present dfty is its nomadic character, whatever .it maj have- been a
hundred years ago. He wanders from |>lad& to place, often changing
his farm for trifling ' reasons ; he feels no tie- in the land/ he has

r • • •

entered &nning as an Occupation or trade because h6 has been
brought up to it by his father, or he has been a man who has made
money in towns by mercantile enterprise in a small way, such as
licensed victualling, brewing, &c. These men often bring with them
to their farms capital ranging from a few hundreds to several thour
sand pounds. Below this wealthier class of farmers there are to be
found in* the neighbourhood oif country towns many smaller men who
do not aspire to keep hunters and give their daughters an education
at fiishionaUe boarding-schools ; this class have more of the working
element about them, they do their farm labour pretty much them-
selves, and have little time for simple pleasure or amusement. It is
noteworthy of this class that during the present agricultural depression
they have in almost every district steadily paid their rent, where
laiger men have all failed.

It should, however, be remembered that the tenant farmers of
England have in many ways been an ornament and a pride to this
country ; and while they have always displayed the most laudable
desire to live on terms of friendly interest with their landlords, they
have in some countries, as notably in Scotland, practised agriculture
as a science, although in too many cases of late they have failed to
make it a profitable transaction. Why ? Is it American competition-,
bad seasons, high rent ? They will tell you that these are the chief
causes. The real reason, however, does not lie here ; the true cause
of agricultural difficulties in England must be sought for from two
sources: (1) Economic laws ; (2) Present methods of agriculture.

Broadly speaking, the profitable cultivation of land in this
country is only possible where farming on a large scale is carried on
by the owner of the land who possesses a large capital as well as other
sources of revenue which can tide him over bad times, or where the
land is held by a small class of farmers who have every security given
them for their capital, and who bring to the undertaking their own
personal labour and that of their family.

We do not require to subdivide land here, as it is in France,
Belgium, Switzerland, &c., or certainly not as it is in Ireland.
Nevertheless, though it will grievously offend many farmers to tell
them so — the truth is best before all things — • the gentleman farmer *
is an impossibility. In no part of the civilised world, not even in
fertile America or the colonies, does a man suppose that he can make
a living out of the land by investing capital in a farm worked
solely by hired labour and for which he pays a full rent, his general
superintendence of farming operations being the only function which
the farmer supplies in the undertaking. Agricultural profits, as every
fieurmer well knows, are a matter of very narrow margins between ex-

J

256 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Febniaiy

penditure and receipt ; and it is only the man who works on the very
largest scale, possessing a large capital at his back, with full, not
limited right of ownership, together with considerable scientific
knowledge and intelligent foresight, who can make this class of fimn-
ing pay. The other alternative is the working man whose whole indi-
vidual energy and thought are given to the care of a small farm where
his own labour is the principal &ctor, and where he feels that every
yard of manure he produces, every ditch, every drain he digs means
so many pence or pounds added to his next year's income.

This class of tenant cannot exist at present under the conditions
of limited ownership by which four-fifths of English land is tied up
in strict settlement ; but when the L^^ature decrees that he shall
exist — or, what is the same thing, allows the natural operation of
economic laws to evolve him — we shall hear a very different tale re-
garding English agriculture. Our present class of tenant fEinneis
must face their fate boldly ; they had better retire from the business
if they wish to live in dignity and ease, and invest their capital in
more profitable undertakings, or they must in a great majority of
cases reduce the size of their farms, cultivate higher, and bring more
of their own personal labour to the work ; and if they show themselves
ready to do these things, which we have not the slightest reason to
doubt, it becomes the imperative duty of the Legislature to abolish
once for all every restriction that has operated so disadvantageously
in the past in restricting the efficiency of agriculture in this country.

It cannot be very long, either, before we shall have to do justice to
the great unenfranchised class of agricultural labourers. The effect
of the last ten years of the new system of general elementary educa-
tion is happily beginning to tell somewhat on his intellectual con-
dition ; the labourer is day by day becoming more fitted to exercise
this privilege, yet his home condition is in many ways most wretched
and backward. It is true that, rough though his life is, it is healthier
and better in every way than that of the mechanic who lives in the
squalid lanes and alleys of manufacturing towns. Even this class,
however, are improving ; and it is to be hoped that before long the
various schemes for improving the dwellings of artisans will have so
far done their work as not only to render it possible for the indus-
trious mechanic to become the owner of his house, but that his less
fortunate fellow-workmen will simply refuse to be quartered in the
dens which they too often still are compelled to live in from want of
better accommodation being obtainable. There is no reason why the
farm labourer should be less well housed than the mechanic, and
every encouragement should be given him to be able to become the
owner of his cottage and garden.

Yet we must not expect much assistance here from the land-
owning class, who, although, so far as their limited means allow them,
they have endeavoured of late years to improve largely the condition

1881. THE LAND MONOPOLY. 267

of their cottage property, have no wish to see the farm labourer
independent ; the hold they have over him by the yearly rental of a
good cottage at a moderate rent is a considerable source of indirect
influence in a country district. In many ways the general condition of
the labourer in England is more backward than in any other civilised
country of Europe ; the more enterprising and intelligent are drawn
off to the towns and manufactures^ and those that remain live a
narrow torpid existence unrelieved by any interest sufficient to raise
them to a better position. The influence of the clergy, though often
of great value in times of distress, is too often calculated to enervate
the eneigies of the people, and teach them to look for help and
charity where thrift, economy, and independence would be better
guides.' Much of the emotional character of the religion of the
poorer class is to be attributed to the complete absence of any in-
terest or stake in life beyond the earning of a weekly wage, which
they can never hope to increase all their lives, and which sickness or
age may rob them of. Their benefit societies have done some good,
yet they have been timidly or injudiciously worked. There are
often far too many of them. They have yet to learn the true
method of 'co-operation' and mutual insurance, those two great
incentives to saving and the forming of joint-stock capital. Thus
it happens that the greatest enemies of the agricultural poor are
often the small tradesmen of country villages, who force the labourer
to deal at their shops by keeping him in their debt, and who are in
many cases the least improving owners of cottage property.

Consider, again, the matter of education. There is still a rage to
teach children everything or anything but their own language or the
principles of their future occupation. The village boy is still taught
the history of the Nprman kings and the latitude of the Cape of Good
Hope, while he is never helped to think for himself by studying Nature
at first hand. Practical lessons in gardening or agriculture, readings
or easy discourses on English literature, would give the lad a chance
hereafter. His future occupations in life would not be entirely
divorced, as they are at present, from his early training, and he would
not after a few years at the plough have forgotten the greatest part
of what was once dinned into him. Let anybody who cares for the
subject study the method of boys' and girls' education in the Swiss
primary schools, and let any one who has travelled attentively through
Switzerland and conversed with her people compare the condition of
the English agricultural class with that of Switzerland ; let him look
at the same time at the generally diffused knowledge of agriculture,
the intelligence and independence, of the people, and then let him
cofme back and maintain, if he can, that our agricultural communities
are not a standing disgrace to the richest country in Europe.

Every one would profit by the improvement in the condition of
the i^icultural labourer. The fetrmer would obtain a more efficient

2SS THE NINHTJSMTS CENTURY. February

workman ; and with more mtelligent and usefbl education, together
with the advantages of good cottages and gardens, the labourer would
soon realise fresh interests in life* He would put forth energies
which have, under his present monotonous condition, long lain
dormant, but which, with the prospect before him of being able to
rise by his own exertions, and become the owner of his own home, or
the tenant or possessor of a small farm, would soon develc^ habits
of thrift and economy to which he has long been a stranger, and
which the operation of our Poor Law has long tended to make him
disregard.

Thus far we have considered mainly the leading features of the
problem, so far as they affect the general methods of agriculture as
practised in this country. We have traced rapidly the respective
positions which the landlord class, the farmers, and the labourers
occupy with regard to one another ^ socially.' We must now return
to the other question which we left behind, namely, the* economic
aspect' of the case. Every political question naturally divides
itself under these two heads ; and that institution is* the most perfect
one in which, after equating the two sides to one another, we find
that the terms mutually cancel, in the sense that for every economic
gain, which a law or custom confers on a people, we have a corre-
sponding social advantage. No human institution probably fully
answers to this'test, and therefore it is by striking a balance between
these two that we are able to judge how far the expense to the State
is justified by the excellence of the institution socially.

This point of view is often overlooked by politicians in judging
the merit of existing institutions ; the Tory mind fondly dwelling
on the advantages which the English people possess in the existence
of various social grades, each offering so many steps along which the
individual can rise till he eventually obtains an entrance into the
magic circle of an hereditary chamber, as a reward for services
rendered to the State, or as a tribute to his intellectual or financial
capacities. The family-founding instinct is thus encouraged, and the
desire to perpetuate a monument to genius is fostered by the creation
of laws which tend to protect from the ravages of time many large
hereditary properties and historical families, whose names are coex-
istent with English history. To this end attempts have been success-
fully made to popularise our social laws, and the landed aristocracy has
been largely recruited from among the ranks of the people ; so that
in England we have no parallel whatever in the condition of its
aristocracy to the exclusive pretensions of the Ebenburtigkeit of
Germany, or the narrow sympathies of the French faubourg. Kadical
politicians, on the other hand, who are less impressed with the
historical associations of our Constitution, see in the existence of a
privileged class nothing but an unmixed evil ; they consider solely
the economic view of the question, and they argue with great show of

1881. . THE LAND MONOPOLY. • 259

justice that our social institutions, eepiecially as they affect the land,
are a standings bilrdem on ihh indtustiy of tha people^ It is the duty
of the int«Uigetit statestnan to strike a balance between the^e con-
tending lines of arg^ument ; and it i« the interest of the landed class
themselves to study the- probli&iti careftdly as it presents itself to us in
the present distressed state of agriculture, and to concede willingly
from out of the plenitude of their privileges .every modification
irbieh .is'' necessary for the weU^beingtof the ' country, and for the
future pennanenee of their own onkr.

There have been times i¥hen, inspire by irresistible impulse,
nations^ Hke' individuals, have thrown aside the qui.eter methods of
^Bscasabui and in a period of social. revoliHion Imve abolished and
overthrown the right of favoured ntiinorities in the same manner as a
bankrupt Btete repudiates its engagements. In a more ordered
community, however, it is the right of every people to eztuoguish at
pleasure. its liabilities by &ir means. The rights and privileges of
a. class which have gradually been permitted to grow up, cannot be
rudely put aside ; the country is bound to recognise its liabilities,
and to pay off its bandholders at par, whether ihey be landowners
or simply possessors of public scrip. All schemes of radical legis-
lation are, therefore, to be deprecated ; they could ' only be carried
out at the expense* of great injustice to individual rights, or. at a
ruinous cost to the tazpaying community. What we require from our
lawgivers are certain prompt and efficient modifications of existing
laws, whidi,: without disregarding the time-honoured lines of our
existing Constitution, shall infuse into our land laws a new vitality,
and adapt them to the ever-altering conditions of a true civilisation.

The great evil of the present state df things is the highly
^ artificial,' not to say unstable, condition of our national prosperity,
so long as we depend solely on our manufacturing activity as a
source of national wealth. The Tories have urged that, since Free
Trade is a recognised principle, it matters but little whence our
sources of food are derived, so long as a Mr field is open to every-
body, our supplies being more cheaply produced abroad than in
England. The misfortune is, that in a rich country like England,
the tendency of a certain class is to consider that the land can be
made the playground for the rich without any hurtful effect to the
people. This is not the case, and the country is as deeply interested
in the general productive e£5ciency of the soil as it is in any of its
mann&cturing industries. It has been argued by many waiters that,
if ^0 producing power of the land were increased, we should be saved
yearly the whole amount which we now pay for: imported food. Taking
our whole yearly home produce at 230 to 250 millions, and our
imports of grain and cattle at 100 milliotis,^ let us suppose that
•by improved methods one-fourth ^ere. gained in atmual produce —

* Bo^d Kinn^a^, Principles 4>/ P)roj»erty in La$id, p. 71.

260 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Febniaiy

about fifty millions — and that we saved, therefore, the cost of carnage
from America of this amount of food, namely, 108. a quarter on
wheat, this alone would give us a gain of eleven millions annually,
equal at 3 per cent, to the interest of nearly half the national debt
We thus see that the application of labour to manufeu^tures instead
of to agriculture is not such a matter of indifference to the welfare of
the country ; for better methods mean more labour employed, and,
therefore, wages coming into Englishmen's pockets instead of going
to American wheat-growers for the supplies we have to purchase.

Nothing has operated more perniciously in keeping up these
artificial conditions than the laws of primogeniture or, more properly
speaking, the custom of entail on the one unborn. Entail itself
which dates back to the thirteenth century, was abolished by the
eourts in the sixteenth. Thellusson's Act, in George the Third's
reign, forbade the accumulation of real or personal estate for
more than twenty-one years after the death of the testator. There
is, however, a law by which estates in land may be limited to the
life of one holder, and a testator may name a succession of such heirs,
provided they be living at the time the deed is executed. Moreover,
though entail was abolished, the heir of entail is not bound to resettle
the property ; the old entail is good imless the heir chooses to set it
aside, which the law gave him power to do. Thus the tenant for life
is in the habit of making terms with the heir of entail, and prevails
on him to mortgage his inheritance in fee, for the consideration of a
yearly provision during the life of the present owner ; and by this
means the custom is kept up from geueration to generation, a fresh
deed being executed each time the heir of entail marries or attains
his majority. Neither can the heir well refuse this arrangement,
since he is entirely dependent on the present owner for means of
existence during the life of the said owner. Charges of evezy
description are thus placed upon the land every generation, for
younger children or for debts incurred by the contracting parties
to the deed ; and thus the burdens on an estate accumulate, to what
extent is unknown except to the family lawyer, since there is no
obligation on a mortgagor to publish the charges on his property.
The tenant for life is thus often placed in a most embarrassing
position; he cannot keep up his position as he would wish, and yet
he either cannot or is unwilling to sell and clear the property; on
the other hand, his heir may be, as is unfortunately too often the
case, highly distasteful to him, and he therefore feels no wish to lay-
out his own money on a property which must by law come to a person
whom he little cares for ; he would naturally sooner save for those whom
he loves; and thus the property is starved, and the money which
should be expended on it is kept back.

The power of mortgaging land is an active source of general embar-
rassment ; it encourages owners to keep land when it would be for the

1881. THE LAND MONOPOLY. 261

advantage of the community that it should be sold, and it renders the
process of simplifying transfers nugatory. If land were liable for debt
in the same manner as personalty now is, it would be impossible to
create preferential charges which would hold good against all other
claims ; money might still be borrowed for temporary purposes, accord-
ing as the credit of the individual was good or b^d ; but it certainly
is an open and debatable question whether the principle of mortgages
should not be totally abolished, and the practice of making charges
and settlements in trust of agricultural ' land generally illegal.

However this might be, a limitation might be iixed by law,
r^ulating the number of years' rental it should be legal to charge
on a property,^ and these charges should be compulsorily registered
in a public Government office.

If it be considered necessary to afiford a special protection to the
holders of titles or landed families, a Government trust office might
be established, where the settlement of estates should be registered,
the aniount of estate settled to be limited to the houses, parks, and
home farms of landowners, while provision might be made for settling
money in the public funds to produce a sufficient income for their
maintenance and that of their owners. The creation of a public
trustee would be a great convenience for all persons wishing to make
settlements of funds for the purpose of family arrangement ; and
there would be no objection, in the interest of the general public,
that public funds or other safe scrip should be thus settled for specific
purposes.

Moreover, if any effectual remedy is to be applied to cheapen
and sitnpnfy the process of land transfers, it is absolutely necessary
that some limit should be put on the powers possessed by owners
of real property to create charges of every description on their pro-
perty. A simple registration of titles in a public office and the
shortening of legal deeds will effect nothing until the title itself is
simplified, by limiting the charges and encumbrances which property
is now made to bear under so-called deeds of entail or marriage
settlements. Land is a different form of property from all others
in one sense only ; namely, its immovability. All otlier natural agepts
are liable to decay, waste, or removal. Land alone, therefore, offers
the temptation to its owner to anticipate its productive value, and
burden it with charges which must materially affect its usefulness to
its possessor. It is, therefore, not the business of the Legislature to
encourage a landowning class to burden their properties by mort-
gages, which are simply a form of preferential debt which the State
renders it legal to effect on this species of property. This argument

• In the Bake of Leinster's interview with his tenantry, on the 18th of December
1880, he is re]X)rted to have given as his reason for inability to redace his rents more
than 10 per cent., that the charses on his property amounted to haVa milUan o£
money*

262 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. February

doefi not apply with' xegard to ihetcantile fetock, &c., 'such as rail-
way plant, for the * natural operation of trade h^re regulates the
amoutit of preferentialfltock.it is safe to put^on the market; and
since in these cases there is no false fsmiily pride' of possession to be
met with as a factor in the problem, an industrial speculation soon
finds its own level, the compaijo^is liquidated, the capital is d^troyed,
a new company is formed, but no natural agent is permanently re-
duced to an unproductive condition.

The present system of land transfer, custom of primogeniture,
and settlement is the result of many ancient customs and laws,
traceable in their origin to a worthy pride in family fame and
dignity of race. The desire to create a family who shall represent a
social unit of merit and distinction is a valuable and legitimate
object for any man to strive for, and we should be .careful to maintain
rather than to destroy the conditions under which these aspirations
can take root among a people. They conduce directly to patriotic
action in the individual and in tlie family ; they have proved them-
selves in history to have operated as powerful motives in inducing
men to sacrifice their talents and their lives to the wel£Eu% of the
State; and they have been directly instrumental in developing some of
our best family instincts. Such aspirations ^e not to be reduced to a
mere logical form; they are the direct product of the sentimental and
less tangible component of human motives ; nevertheless, they are valu-
able as tending to turn men away from simple individual selfishness,
and a disregard for all posterity. In order that these valuable moral
attributes in a people may be preserved and encoun^ed, we must
be careful not to kill while we are attempting to prune, a tree iriiich,
though by process of growth, has somewhat overspread its proper
area, and even for its own benefit and rejuvenation requires judicious
curtailment. Let us remember, if oyer overborne by a renovating
i*age, that it is an Unwise policy of rulers to endeavour to eliminate
individualism. The interest of the many is a grand object, and
humanitarianism is a worthy creed; yet like every other exalted
object, like every transcendental creed, it will never prove the ' live
'motive'' o{ thejmass^ however fervently it may be preached. The
first instinct of our naturo is Jfndividualism, the second sociology,
and whatever be the perfectibility which the >human race is capable
of^ the first factor of civili^tion can never be ignored $ therefore it
should be by modiFyiiig along the old Linea and adapting from,
ancient usages that we must look to. alt^ these cU8t^|n» of ^it^l,.
land transfer, and power of settlem^it'SO as to suit t}iem tp the chang-
ing conditions of the nineteenth century* . ,

The amount of landed property which it 13 for the advantage of the
people to permit the accumulation of in the hands of any one owner
is as difficult to determine as the amount of personal, ridbes, which
we have in this century seen made in business and trade, wotdd

1881. TBJE LAND MONOFOLT. 263

be easy to limit or contcoL The Bystem of land.tsgc or progressiva
income tax are so ipany deterrents to the indiistry of a people and the
productiveness of capital. The power of the State to limit the
testamentaxy power of the individual is an unqu^8tionable right ;
the power to devise by will is a social custom limited by its useful-
ness. There is no inherent right to property after death ; the State
might without direct injustice sequestrate the whole. The inordinate
veneration with which it has been the habit in England to surround
the provisious of a will, however ridiculous or unfair they may be, is
a most peculiar feature of our civilisation, and there is no subject
which in its bearing on the whole land question requires modification
so much as this absolute power which a testator now possesses of
stretching forth his hand beyond the tomb to perpetrate an injustice
or gratify revenge 1 We ^o not, need the Code Napoleon in England^
which operates to encourage jealousy among the children towards
the father where the differences of age are not considerable, and which
largely discourages energy and enterprise; but while^ iu the first
place, we require the immediate abolition of the law of intestacy,
i,e* the law of primogeniture, we i^^quirei a limitation of the power,
of owners of property to ej^clucje any one of the children they
may have brought loathe world, or, in default of children, their
nearest relatives, from a just share of the reversion to the testator's
property. The widow's share should also be fixed by law. Scotch
aw has recognised thjs principle, and a share of the personalty ig
inalienably fibced as the portion of the widow and younger children.
The eustom of primogeniture has long existed in this country ; and,
although it can be defended on no exact logical grounds, it is a
practice which has operated less harmfully than many others con*
nected with the land, question. It has .it^ faults and it has its
merits ; there is no;reason why the eldest, more than any other, should
}^ made the. &voured ii^dividu^l, the representative of the family
unit ; yet as long as we ^oepts the aristocratic principle and continue
to confer peerages for public pervices to the State, which peerages
are transmitted to the descendant, we must elect for some particular
line of BuccessiiHi. Every countiy has had a different civstom.
In GezTDany the ' ip'jdeicojnmiss ' w«a of several forms — the uncle, the
eldest son, the youngest, have. becQ mafle the heirs.of titles and entail ;
yet, .whatever arbitrs^y systeip we do adppt, the point to be dealt
with is, to limit . the , power. o( ike testator ixx gratifying his family*
fomiding instinct pt . desire, fpr v^iiwprthy revenge, and to secure by
law a certain ^xed propprtion of a.m^!s ^goods devolving to his oih&t
children, more espeoiajily the d^ugliterp. It i^ the, strange custom in
England .fpf a m^ to b^vi^t^, the whole Qf hjs property^ of say fifty
to one hundred thousand a yl^ar, io his eldest son, and to settle on
the younger children ^Ueotively. a sum of often not more than ona
year's income ; the daughters when they marry having seldom for-

264 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. February

tunes exceeding ten thousand pounds, certainly not sufficient to keep
them id the position of life that they have been brought up to.

Apart from these questions which affect the distribution of pro-
perty in land, we have the serious question of its management; and
the leading question which assails us here is the vexed matter of
security to the occupier of the soil for improvement effected by him;
which the landlord is now in the habit of securing largely to himself
in the form of increased rent. No part of the whole land question
is so involved as this. The interests of the two contracting parties,
the tenant and the landowner, are so difficult of adjustment by law,
and the variotis remedies that have been proposed have been so far
from meeting with the approval of both parties, that it is difficult to
foresee the right solution. There is no subject which the various
clubs and chambers of agriculture discuss more keenly than this
branch of the subject. The London Farmers' Club and the Farmers'
Alliance have each proposed solutions of the problem, and in the way
of legislative measures we have had the Agricultural Holdings Act of
the late Government, of which all that can be €aid is that a weaker
or more effete measure was never passed ; since, while it conceded
the principle that the landlord had no right to a tenant's improve-
. ment, it passed a measiu:e the only effect of which would be to insure
. that no tenant would be so foolish as to make any implrovements at
all.® The proper function for the State to fulfil is not to enforce any
one particular class of contract, or to draw any hard and fast line by
which the contracting parties must be bound. It is the business of
the State to interpret existing customs, and to determine by pre-
sumption, in the absence of any special agreement, what are the re-
spective claims of the two parties. The Irish Land Act of 1870 has
rightly been conceived as a measure of this sort. It simply rendered
binding by law what had been largely a custom ; and if we find it
necessary to extend this measure to fixity of tenure for fair rents and
fair sale in Ireland, it is because the custom is more or less implied
in equitable arrangements, though there is difficulty in defining the
right in each particular case.

In England we have several different land customs, and it depends
on the farming class themselves to modify these customs by revising
to take land unless they are met in a fair spirit by their landlords.

It is unlikely in England that we shall ever have the same com-
petition for farms as there has been in Ireland, and hence no tenant
right (which is practically a residential value) can be created by the
occupier. Yet there remain the questions. In what way are we to
encourage tenants to invest more capital in farming by giving them
by law some protection for the state of cultivation they have raised

* As Mr. Boyd Einnear sajs, if the Act had provided that the valae for improve-
ments should hold unless both parties chose to put it aside, it would have been quite
another matter. As it was, an opportunity was given to either party to make the
Act of no effect, ' without substituting any other contract.'

1881. THE LAND MONOPOLY. 265

the land to ? and, How are we to insure that the landlord shall not

acquire these advantages by raising his rent ? The answer to this

question is, that it is simply impossible to step in and dictate to

either party what contract shall be made. The freedom of trade

requires that each side to a bargain should be free to make his own

terms ; and all that the State can do is to step in, in the absence of

any other agreement, and decide the right which shall be recognised

by law as appertaining to each side. The farmer is, in most cases,

perfectly capable of taking care of himself, and we can no more by

law regulate the rent of land than we can fix the price of a quartern

loaf. AU that we can do is to turn the occupier into a copyholder

by giving him the three F's ; and it should be very clearly understood

that this is the unmistakable nature of these famous provisions for

the Irish tenant which, it is the belief of many, he has injustice a

claim to ; while others believe, on the other hand, that if he is to

have them given to him he must purchase with his own money.

AU these difficulties were met in England under the old patriarchal
system by yearly tenancies and imdisturbed possession during good
behaviour, low rents, and a general display of good feeling and kindly
interest on both sides. Much of this old state of things no longer
exists ; the competitions of life among landowners and new proprietors
have raised the general rental of farms ; the custom of the country
has been disregarded ; and in the last twenty years we have seen an
increase in the rent of agricultural land of over 20 per cent., which
state of things is rapidly working out its own cm"e to-day.

Thus it has happened that the leasing of land has taken, in many
cases, the place of the old year-to-year custom, twenty-one-year
leases being granted to tenants with capital, as is the custom in
Scotland. The objection to twenty-one-year leases to a small tenant
is, however, the same as the objection any one of us would have to
purchasing the tail-end of a town lease. We should certainly be
protected against having our rent arbitrarily raised by our landlord^
but we should have got a thoroughly unsaleable article ; and if one
of us were to die or change our mode of life, there is no one who
would purchase the remainder of the lease from us except the land-
lord ; in fact, we should be saddled with an unwished-for contract.
Thus a small farmer, who dreads the uncertainty of the seasons and
the advent of bad times, gains nothing by having a lease for twenty^
one years ; he is infinitely better off, as all of them will admit, as a
yearly tenant with a * two ' years' notice to quit ; in fact he would
prefer this to anything. It remains, however, to be considered how
far it might not be advisable for owners of property to sell leases of
their farms for fifty to one hundred years on fines which would repre-
sent say one-fourth of the rental capitalised. It would then be in the
power of a small farmer to lay out some hundreds in purchasing a lease
in the same way as a man invests in house property in towns. He
Vol. IX.— No. 48. T

266 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Februarj

might erect btuldicgs on it, or do any other Bort of improvement,
and feel sure that, if. anything happened to him, his heirs T^ould be

' able to realise the value of his expenditure by the enhanced price
the lease would fetch, in the market ; there would be nothing either to
stop the landowner's entering into a contract with the tenant to agiee
to certain permanent improvements, such as farm buildings, being

.revalued at the expiration of a lease, and the tenant would have no
difficulty in obtaining advances on easy terms from the local banks
for improvements of an exhaustible nature, or for helping him in bad
times. Such a system of loans would be far more profitably and
economically spent than where estates are managed, as they must be,
by agents, when of inordinate size*

Land would come to be a form of investment like the funds ; the
cultivator would be free, and large estates would cease to be as
common as they are now. A landowner would not care for more
property than he could manage himself personally, and his park,
woods, and home farms would represent his own personal stake in
the agricultural interests of the country. This would be in the
end a £Eir happier and easier state of .things for the landowner than
the constant source of care which the deputed agency of a large pro-
perty gives, while it yields none of the personal and political power it
used to do. Indirectly the influence of the landowner would be
much the same ; he would still, by his position and wealth, possess a
considerable stake in the country ; and, while his personal cares and
burdens would be lightened, he would be realising a greater profit
from his property by saving the expenses of agency and repairs, <tc. ;
while the social and aristocratic privileges of the landowning class
would be unimpaired.

It is sometimes asserted that an aristocracy without land is like
a king without subjects ; that the possession of large landed estates
tends to make the Upper Chamber not only independent of the fickle-
ness of popular opinion, but also to bring it perpetually into har-
mony with ail that is most truly stable and national in public thought.
It is ui^ed, moreover, that an aristocracy without land, a house of peers
without large estates endowed with the prestige of hereditary trans-
mission, would infallibly sink to a lower level in the estimation of the
people, and that the balance of the constitutional principle would be
destroyed. The House of Lords is thus supposed not only to re-
present the landed interest of the country, but also to occupy the
often difficult position of a sort of hereditary jury to decide between
the conflicting interests of the two great political parties in the
State, and it is assumed that its usefulness will be impaired if its
peculiar attributes are changed.

It may, however, be doubted if the influence which landed pro-
perty gives is not to be fully compensated by the possession of
personal merit. The interests of the nation require that a better and

188L THE LAND MONOPOLY. 267

largerdistiibutioii df landed property should shortly be brought into
opezEtion by the modification of certain protective laws. It is idle to
contend against these facts, and it would be dangerous for the best
interests of the peers themselves were thej to fail to recognise these
necessities. The cost of their institution t6 the community might
be felt to outweigh the usefulness of their functions, and a feeling
might take root of general avei-sion to the hereditary principle, of
wMch we have seen symptoms in the last session of Parliament.
The House of Lords, as an institution representing essentially the
landowning class, has survived many dangers in past times, [and
preserves to the present day an immense indirect influence on our
I^sl&tive industry. The time is, however, at hand when, if it is to
preserve its influence in the State, it will have not only seriously to
modify its own constitution, but also to divest itself of that peculiar
exclusive landed character it has heretofore possessed. The here-
ditary character may remain, tempered by judicious selection, and
supplemented by the addition of intellectual eminence from other
branches of the Legislatureri^

It is, however, on its own merits, and on the individual character
of its members, that it must be able to survive, rather than on the
sentimental associations connected with an ancient monument.

Land measures will have to be brought before it, however, which
many of its members will believe are destined to threaten the very
existence of its constitution. The keynote of these measures was
stnick last year by no less a person than the late Prime Minister, in
his speech on the Crame Bill, when he warned the noble Lords^that
it was not over such small matters that they must waste their
thoughts, but rather reserve themselves for that great constitutional
battle he felt was coming. The battle wiU undoubtedly come, and
we may expect to see many noble knights appear arrayed for the
fray in armom: of a very antiquated form, which will be of little
avail for modem warfare. Fortunately there are still to be foimd
members of the aristocracy and the landed class who are not so

' The obstructive action of the House of Lords is well exemplified in the history
of Irish legislation, on the four different occasions when important Land Bills came
before them.

In 1829 an^'Arterial Drainage Bill for Ireland was sent up from the Commons and
was dropped in the Lords, though that same year they passed an Arms Act.

In 1845 the Compensation to Tenants Bill of Lord Stanley, after having passed
the Commons, was vigorously opposed in the Lords, and was therefore allowed to
drop.

In 1854, when Mr. Kapler's four Land Bills for Ireland were sent up to the Lords,
they passed the first three bills, which were in every sense landlords' bills, giving
relief and powers to owners of settled estates ; but they carefully rejected the only
bill which was of any interest to the tenant — namely, the fourth bill, which was a
• Tenants' Compensation Bill.'

Lastly, in 1870, the Land Bill of Mr. Gladstone was shorn of some of its most
important provisions through the action of the, Upper Chamber.

See Barry O'Brien's Iriih Land Questian, pp. 37, 75, 101.

T 2

268 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. February

utterly devoid of tactical skill. They will eolist on their side the
great moderating element of the English nation, the large influential
middle class, the employers of labour, the heads of mercantile enter-
prise ; and thus, by timely concessions to the sound common-sense
view of the influential portion of the electorate, the landowning
classes will be saved from themselves and their own rashness. There
are not wanting indications of how bitter the struggle will be-
bitterer in many ways than v the battle that was fought over the
great Eeform Bill ; but when it has been fought, and when it has
been won, the institutions of this country wiU come out stronger
from the fray. The just aspirations of the people will have been
gained ; the land monopoly will have been broken up ; the democratic
element will have been disappointed by seeing institutions which,
if they and the ultra-Tory element had their way, would soon be
destroyed, but which, by the moderating influence of capable states-
men, and the timely concurrence of the Liberal section of the privi-
leged class, wiU have received a fresh lease of existence, pTeser\ang
thus the continuity of our political life, and the true interests of the
English people.

BLAin)roBD.

1881. 269

LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.

EvEBTBOBT has at one time or another quoted La iKocliefoucauId ; i
some with half apology, as though the light shed by his Maxims were
an eyil glamour from the enemy of mankind. But no classical writer
of modem times is so little known and so much the creature of hear-
say. His Maxims, about which he took infinite care, have been until
these latter days most shamefully treated in France ^ and in England
we have added to the falsification of the French text by a set of
translations the most villanous that have ever been perpetrated.
The result is that philosophers refute and rhetoricians rail at La
£ohecfoucauld without knowing much about him, and certainly without
knowing what were his genuine doctrines. In London one may hunt
through all the second-hand book-shops for a day without being able
to procure a single English copy of the Maxims, or any passable
edition of them in French ; and that tells a good deal of the oblivion
into which the celebrated author has fallen, at least in this country,
throogh the imfaithfulness of his editors and translators. Indeed, for
the most part, when people quote La Kochefoucauld, it is not because
tLey have taken the trouble to read his little book as he issued it,
"but because they have culled from other books, or have gathered in \
conversation, half a dozen sentences which cleave to the memory. |
QTiie volume, as he piit it forth, is not to be found in English at all, '
saire in translations which are a travestie, and very often reverse the
meaning in the most ludicrous maimer. As for the fate of the work
ixi Prance, it has been so singular, when we take into account the
splendour of the author's reputation, that it cannot escape our in-
qoiiies ; and in truth it is only by unravelling it that we can fairly
distinguish the true La Bochefoucauld from the fictitious one of
oozz?Jnon report. That unravelling is to come ; but first of all, and to-
it the importance which is due to it, let us glance at the position
Bochefoucauld, and fix a few points in his career as a writer, as
3 jzioirralist, and as a man.

IB^ vench literature has been summarised as follows b; a master : —

Oxitics (he sajs), and especially foreigners, who in these latter days have
Judg^ed our two literary centuries most severely, agree in the acknowledgment that
'vrlist dominated in them, what reflected them in countless ways, what gave thenar

270 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Febrqaiy

their chief oraament and glory, was the spirit of conyersatlon and society, under-
standing of the world and of men, quick and fine apprehension of the seemly and of
the ludicrous, exquisite delicacy of feeling, the grace, the edge, the polish to be
attained in speech. And virtually there indeed — with reservations which will
occur to everyhody, and two or three names such as Bossuet and Monteaqmen
which we put aside — there, up to about 1769, is the distinctive character, the
feature marking out French literature from among the literatures of Europe.

These are the terms in which Sainte-Beuve begins to^ outline his
portrait of Madame de Sevign6, who. must rank with the highest in |
any literature pervaded by the spirit of biography, of society, and of | |
conversation. They are of equal value to indicate the position of] \
La Sochefoucauld in the world of letters. His way was not her way,
but they are both incomparable-^she in letters, he in maxims. And.
although her letters fill a score of large volumes, while his mazims
occupy little more than a hundred small X)ages, he has probahly
packed into his short sentences as much of the life and movement of
his day as the lady has in her long, rambling, and ever delightful
effusions. La Boohefoucauld was himself one of the greatest person*
ages of the most splendid period of French society. He was the
most brilliant talker and the niost polished gentleman of his time.
No one had studied more curiously than he the arts of society, the
sources of conduct, the entanglements of accident, and the meshes of
conversation. His maxims are the most perfect crystallisations of j
the thoughts and fashions and secret influences amid which he stirred.
One of his short sentences conveys the outcome of an hour's voluble
talk, or distils to its drop of meaning all the worth of an intrigue
and all the gaiety of a season. If it be true, as Sainte-Beuve says,
. that up to the Bevolution, French literature is to be considered in
the main as the reflex of polished society, then we may say of the
mirror in La Rochefoucauld's hand, it is certainly a small one, but
it reflects everything. Other consummate artists may have chos^
more popular forms of expression — Madame de Sevigne in letters,
Moli^re in plays, and La Fontaine in tales of arch wit ; but no one
got nearer to the heart of French society than La Boohefoucauld, and
no one gives more of its life-blood than he does in his book. Nor
is it only of French life that he is the exponent ; he had a window
into the human heart, and his Maxims contain the very bones of the
first man. In a word, no one, be his manner of art what it may, can
be placed above La Boohefoucauld for insight into the intricacies of
human motive and for the sharpness with which he reflects the to-
and-firo of social life in exquisitely cut sentences. Voltaire gives him
the further merit of having been the first in Europe after the revival
of letters who taught people to think and to convey their thoughts in
lively, precise, and delicate turns ; but this is too largely expressed.
It may be true of France and all the continent, but it cannot hold in
the country of Francis Bacon.

1881. LA ROCHEFOUCAULD. 271

To most people, however, La Rochefoacauld is repulsive, and it is'
impossible to set on high the man who is hateful, who is supposed
io delight in blackening his kind, and who has ever been accused,
although most unjustly, of assailing the bulwarks of morality. Spite
of the critical commonplaces, that art is independent of ethics, and
that it is possible to achieve greatness with a bad heart, there is
something in the soul which rebels and refuses its homage to genius
however bright when it is detestable. Therefore, to do justice to the
intellectual eminence of La Rochefoucauld, we have to touch on his
moral station and show how he came to occupy it; so that being in
his day the man of highest breeding and sweetest courtesy, truest of
the true, beloved by his Mends in the most extraordinary manner,
bewept at his death, says Madame de Sevigne, as man never was,
and drawing from Mademoiselle d'Aumale the exclamation, ' I know
nothing better than he, and I say all in that ; ' nevertheless, when
his Maxims appeared they excited among many readers a horror of
the man who could find so much wickedness in his heart. The fact
is, that extreme doctrines, whether of the goodness or of the badness
of human nature, are never the discovery of any one man, but rather
belong to the atmosphere in which he lives. In France, of the seven-
teenth century, no fact is more obvious than this — we stumble on it '
at every footstep — that the excessive corruption of human nature was
part of the religious teaching of the day, unmistakable in the oratory
of such Jesuits as Bourdaloue, but most accentuated in the Jansenism
with which La Rochefoucauld had the nearest and most abiding ties.
The most popular religious author of the day was Francis de Sales —
a quaint amalgam of John Lilly, G-eorge Herbert, and Jeremy Taylor.
His Introduction a la Vie dSvote corresponds to Taylor's Holy
Living and Dying, but has much more play of fancy, breathing of
the fields and flowers amid which it was composed. Read what the
gentle bishop says of himself: * Ce bon pdre dit que je suis une fleur,
un vase de fleurs, et un ph^nix : je ne suis qu'un puant homme, im
corbeau, un fumier.' It was the ecclesiastical style of the period.

Since then La Rochefoucauld is not to be judged by himself
alone, but by the age in which he m6ved, let it be noted that, though
one can scarcely speak of him as a religious man, he was part and
parcel of a great religious movement sweeping on from century to
century. We have to think of three centuries, the sixteenth, seven-
teenth, and eighteenth, with a great wave of thought rolling on from
one to another. In the first of these the wave was at its lowest : the
Chorch was fallen, and religion had become very cold. In the
next the Church made a mighty effort to recover its strength, and
France saw the religious wave cresting in two distinct points^
Jesuitism and Jansenism. In the eighteenth century the moral
wave sloped down again with vast intellectual force and lively
spirits to uncleanness of life, to inhuman devilry, to godless liberty.

272 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. February

to utter want of faith except in wild men of the woods and the life
of nature. And what does all this mean? It means that in the
sixteenth century, when the Church was fallen, its leading doctrine
was Pelagianism or semi-Pelagianism ; it denied original sin; it
believed in human goodness ; it put out of sight the overwhelming
need of supernatural grace. Let us leap the next century and glide
on to the eighteenth. There we find the doctrine of human, per-
fectibility, the discovery of savage virtue, the love of nature, and
tales of the age of innocence. But between those two eras there is
the seventeenth century, in which the billow has a diflFerent curve.
The Church has revived ; its most pronounced doctrine is the need of a
Saviour ; and what can be the need of one, if there is nothing to save ?
The fall of man therefore, the power of sin, the frightful corruption
of the heart, and the danger of everlasting punishment, became the
religious watchwords of the day. In England, at the same time, we
know how the Puritans preached the utter worthlessness of man.

* The whole head is sick and the whole heart faint. From the sole
of the foot even unto the head, there is no soundness in it, but wounds
and bruises and putrefying sores ; they have not been closed, neither
bound up, neither mollified with ointment.' This piercing religious
cry might be heard everywhere throughout France in the seventeenth
century, but it was loudest and most thrilling in Port Royal, and in
the penitents who flocked to its spiritual guides. La Eochefoucauld,
when he planned his book of Maxims, lived in the midst of these
people, and many of his sentences were composed in the precincts of
the convent of Port Koyal in Paris, where his fair friend, Madame de
Sable, was leading a half-penitential life, one part in the religious
house, the other in apartments of her own adjoining. There and
elsewfiere he had dinned into his ears : * We have left undone those
things which we ought to have done ; we have done those things
which we ought not to have done ; and there is no health in us.'

* Oh wretched man that I am 1 who will deliver me from this body of
sin and death? ' What wonder that he should give his own experi-
ence as a man of the world to the current religious creed ? His
Maxims were an echo from palace walls of the searchings of heart
and the murmurs of confession heard in dim recesses of the cloister.
It was not he alone who indulged in such maxims. There are people
who can play at religion and make themselves buxom in a shroud.
What the penitent sighed to his Redeemer the courtier twisted into
epigrams. The wail of the broken-hearted sinner became the wit of
the Academy ; and the shriek of the lost soul added dimples to the
beauty of the Pr^cieuae in the blue-room of the Hotel de Rambouillet.

La Rochefoucauld was too sincere a man to indulge in such

levities. Any one can see that, be his Maxims what they may, he is

serious in them, and even stem. Their great, defect, and that which

I separates them from the beliefs of the orthodox, is not that they are

1881. LA ROCHEFOUCAULD. 273

false, but that they suggest no remedy. They preach the depravity
' of the human race ; they say not a word of salvation, or at least give
I DO hint of a Saviour. The world on the whole is Pelagian, and
believes in the excellence of human nature. So strong is this
tendency that one scarcely knows how it fell to the Iqt of a poor
Welshman of the name of Morgan to go to Borne, to have his name
translated into Pelagius, and to bestow it henceforth for ever on the
self-complacency of mankind in its own virtues. There must be an
amazing fund of self-satisfaction in the Celtic nature which could thus
stamp itself permanently in the nomenclature of Christendom. It is
because the world is in the main Pelagian that La Rochefoucauld was
hard hit as a slanderer of humanity and as almost the incarnation of
Diabolos. The world might denounce him ; his reply was always an
appeal to the [Fathers of the Church. The Jansenists were wholly
with him; and the Jesuit Father Bapin put him in the way of
proving his doctrines from writings of the Saints. Now, as then, we
have still to ask the doctors of the Church and her obedient children
. which they prefer, the pleasant creed of Pelagius, with a Saviour for
whom there is no necessity, or La Bochefoucauld's rough doctrine of a
corrupt world in which the corruption is acknowledged, though not the
cure ? Not less have we to ask the admiring disciples of that ancient
Briton, Morgan or Pelagius, why is La Bochefoucauld to be branded
as a misanthrope for doctrines which (details apart and the errors of
fEilse editions excepted) were in their gist received as praiseworthy
from the lips of Bossuet and Fenelon, and from the pens of Amauld
and Pascal ? It may be that we are detracting from his originality
when insisting that it is not he who first discovered the corruptions of
the heart. Not much originality can be claimed for any one in that
respect. His great feat is to have secularised the doctrine, to have
attired it in the phrases of the world, and to have applied it with rare
fineness of observation, with ingenious disclosures of detail, and with
the most incisive wit, to the daily trafiBc of society.

How La Bochefoucauld has been caricatured by being identified
personally with a particular selection of his Maxims, those that say
the worst for human nature, may be shown by the parallel process of
selecting another set of Maxims and taking them for a sketch of his
portrait. In the common idea, he is a monster raised upon the
pedestal of Voltaire's utterly false but universally accepted remark
that there is scarcely more than one truth in the book of Maxims,
that self-love is at the root of all. Having looked on that pictiu*e,
let us try to imagine another from the following confessions and rules
of life.

81. Had we no faults of our own^ we should not take so mucH pleasure to note f-
them in others.

4M^ We have but few faults which are not more excusable than the means we ^
employ to hide them.

274 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Febroaiy

^^ ^ifl0&. Those are mock gentlefolk, who mask their faults to otherd and to them-
eelyes : the true know them perfectly and acknowledge them.
^ ^200. To be truly a gentleman one should be willing at all times to be exposed

to the scrdtiny of gentlefolk.
L> %«^. The true gentleman is one who yaunts himself upon nothing.

358. Humility is the true badge of the Christian yirtues ; without it we hug*
our &ult8, and they are only overgrown with pride, which conceals them firoia
others and oftentimes from ourselves.

537. Humility is the altar on which God wills that we should offer him.
sacrifices.

534. Crowds of people woidd be godly, but no one cares to be humble.
'^'^W. The mind is ever the dupe of the heart.
"^ ^"^ There is no disguise which can long conceal love where it is, or feign it
where it is not.

259. The pleasure of love is in loving, and we are happier in the passion which
we feel than in that which we inspire.

262. There is no passion in which self-love reigns so powerfully as in love, and
one is always more inclined to sacrifice the repose of the person loved than to part
with one's own.

525. The power possessed over us by those we love is nearly always greater
than that which we possess over ourselves.

544. A true friend is the greatest of all blessings and that which we least of aU
dream of securing.

5GI. A man who loves nobody is more imhappy than one whom nobody loves.

434. When our friends have deceived us we owe nothing save indifference to
the marks of their friendship, but we always owe sensibility to their misfortunes.

84. It b more shameful to distrust one^s friends than to be deceived by them<

395. We are sometimes less unhappy in being deceived about one we love than
in being undeceived.

496. Quarrels would be shortlived if the wrong were only on one side.

235. We console ourselves easily for the misfortunes of our friends when they
serve to sjfpialise our affection for them.

433. The surest sign of being bom with great qualities is to be bom without
envy.

218. Hypocrby is a homage which vice pays to virtue.

447. Seemliness b the least of all the laws and the most observed.

510. To punish man for hb original sin God has permitted him to make a god
of his self-conceit, and to be tormented by it in every act of hb Hfe.

512. We dread all things as mortab and we desire all things as if we were
immortal.

Add to these Maxims the extraordinary circumstance that, with
all his insinuating ' address and courtly bearing, La Rochefoucauld
was one of the most bashful of men, and we may construct from them
a portrait of him which, although not complete, must be more so
than the commonly received one made up of other maxims of the
selfish type indicated by Voltaire. It must also be a nearer likeness,
for the fact is that he disowned the more odious of those sayings
which have gone to form his caricature and to fill the mind with hcunror
at the hardness of his heart.

This brings us to the history of his book, which will show that,
he is best known by Maxims which he suppressed a year after they
were published.

1881. LA ROCHEFOUCAULD. 275

. J4a Sochefoueauld publisbed five editions of his Maxims, the first
in 1665, the pth^ers in 1666, 1671, 1675, and 1678. The last is the
anthoritatiye one^ having received his finishing touches and his
ripest observations ; but, as often happens, he is best known by his
first appearance* Now the difiference between the last edition and
the first consists not merely in advancing mellowness of thought and
fitness of expression, but in two things besides — that the author
added many new maxims and that he struck out old ones. With
regard to his iadditions they have an interest of their own, although
in the present connection it is enough to say that, starting in hia
earliest issue with 318 maxims, he added in successive ones until
finally he reached the number of 504. But the important fact to be
noticed is that he suppressed seventy-nine of his maxims, and that no
less than seventy-five belonged to his first edition. The grand auto-
da-fe took place before publication of his second edition. He then
put into the fire sixty-four maxims ; the remaining eleven being
sacrificed firom time to time later on. The sixty-four maxima thus
inundated the year after they were published included some of La
Bochefoucauld's best known utterances. For example, the very
elaborate one on self-love which appeared at the head of his first
edition, and on the strength of which mainly he is regarded as the
champion of the selfish theory of morals, was quashed, and never again
in his lifetime permitted to see the light. It was the same with
that other famous maxim on the misfortunes of our best friends.
Such facts are of the utmost importance to our estimate of La Soche-
foueauld, who has been seriously misrepresented through editors, after
his death, replacing the suppressed maxims in his text, and in promi-
nent positions there, instead of keeping them in a class apart. The
consequence has been that our Shaftesburys, our Bishop Butlers, and
other philosophers, have attacked for his unsoundness not so much the
author of the 504 acknowledged maxims, as the author of the sixty-four
disowned ones. It is not to be denied that in the acknowledged
Tnaxims traces are to be found of the selfish theory ; but they would
scarcely have been noticed were it not for the importance they derive
firom the reflected light of the doctrines which La Sochefoucauld
abjured. And the reintroduction therefore of the discarded maxims
into the text is not merely in itself a falsification of the author's
views, it throws a false glare upon the maxims which he allowed to
remain* Any one who will carefully read the long maxim on self-love
cannot fail to see what a masterpiece of vrriting it is, what a pro-
digious labour of love La Bochefoucauld bestowed upon it, and how
reluctant he must have been to suppress it. Only some overpowering
reason could, have impelled him to the sacrifice. So much the
greater is the wrong which has been done to his memory in the im-
doing of his deliberate intention.

He died in 1680, and thirteen years afterwards friends, who must

276 TEE NINETEENTH CENTURY. February

have had access to his ^pers, published a new edition of his Maxims.
They did their work badly. In the first place, they prefixed
to the edition fifty maxims, all seemingly new, although upon ex-
amination it will be found that only twenty-eight are new, while the
rest are but repetitions of those in the recognised collection* It is
odd that this misreckoning was not detected by any Frenchman for
160 years. From the date of their first publication in 1693 until
Duplessis published his charming Elzevirian edition in 1853, these
fifty maxims have been printed by a long succession of French editors
as if they were all posthumous. But there is a worse fsiult in the
edition of 1693. Those friends of La Bochefoucauld who knew so
little of his book that they published the fifty maxims as if all were
new to the world, took it upon themselves to disinter the chief TnAxi'm^
that on self-love, which had been slain and buried by the author, and
to install it in the foremost place at the head of the maxims and
immediately after the title-page. Probably they were well-meaning,
however weak. They saw the perfection of the writing in this, the
most eloquent, the most polished, and the most vehement of all La
Bochefoucauld's maxims ; they could not understand why he put his
foot upon it ; and thinking more of the form than of the substance,
they determined to revive it. Here was the entrance of evil and the
beginning of confusion. In the next important edition of the
Maxims, that of Amelot de la Houssaye, published in 1714, we have
the whole of the suppressed maxims brought back into the text and
intermingled, nobody knows how, with the sentences to which La
Bochefoucauld gave his sanction. The process of corruption and
misrepresentation went on until, towards the middle of the century,
the Abbe De la Boche prepared an edition of the Maxims in which
they were frankly mixed up with the Christian Maocima of Madame
de la Sabli^re, and hers were confounded with those of La Boche-
foucaiild^s great friend, Madame de Sable, and with those of Abbe
d'Ailly, Madame de Sable's confessor. Imagine the masculine sense
of the great French classic herding with anything so sickly and silly
as this, which is contradictory in its very terms. * In intercourse
the most innocent between persons of different sex, there is always a
kind of spiritual sensuality which weakens virtue if it does not
destroy it altogether.^ Such nauseous nonsense had before then, it
is true, been published in conjunction with La Bochefoucauld's
Maxims, but it had been printed apart in a section by itself. The
Abb^ de la Boche now mixed all up and confused them in a new
arrangement — a sort of alphabetical one, in which sentences on the
same subject were docketed together with the addition of footnotes,
part of his own device, part borrowed from Amelot de la Houssaye.
This is the worst of all the editions of La Bochefoucauld, because, as
we shall presently see, the model upon which (with corrections and

1881. LA ROCHEFOUCAULD. 277

tetrenchments) was formed the only English edition of the Maxims
'which has still a place in our book-market.

There was no sign of improvement, nothing but changes in the
mode of adulteration, until the eve of the French Revolution, when
the AbbS Brotier found extreme difficulty in procuring a single
genuine copy of La Eochefoucauld's work. He was so astounded at
this discovery and so much interested in the work itself that he made
many researches in public and private libraries — the outcome being
an edition of the Maxims (bearing date 1789) the most perfect that
had appeared since the decease of their author. He provided a
trustworthy and rightly numbered text of the Maxims as left with the
author's last touches in his last edition ; as for the suppressed Maxims,
he kept them by themselves under the name of Premieres Penates ; and
he added notes, full of curious information, which has never been dis-
puted, although presented on his own sole voucher without reference to
authorities. The Abbe Brotier, however, committed mistakes. He
reckoned the number of the First Thoughts at 121, which of course
included more than » were suppressed ; and he took no account of the
posthumous Maxims. Moreover, in 1731 there had been published
anonymously seven essays, which were attributed to La Rochefoucauld,
which have since been proved to have really come from his pen, and
which have embedded in them a number of his acknowledged
Maxims. The accomplished Abbe thought he could carve these
essays into a supplementary series of Maxims, instead of being
faithful to his trust in giving the author's text precisely as he left it.
Whether for this reason or for any other, such as the recoil of a
nation, wild with dreams of a millennium at hand, from any de-
pressing view of man, glorious, original man, the edition of Abbe
Brotier does not seem to have made much way in France ; and we
have to pass on to the year 1822, when that of Aim6 Martin came
out with a flourish of trumpets. The date is supposed to mark an
era in the history of the Maxims, as though, then for the first time,
they were presented to the public pure of text. It is a mistake.
Aim6 Martin was a roaring, raving ranter, but he had not a spark
of the critic in him. One stares at him with wonder as, with loud
professions of religion, he goes bellowing against La Rochefoucauld
through hundreds of pages. It seems as if he expected to go down
to posterity with the Duke — ^bane and antidote. But what right
had he to speak until he had first proved his mastery of the Maxims ?
He is one of those editors who did not know that a score of La
Sochefoucauld's posthumous maxims were, as we have seen, published
in his lifetime. Moreover, his terrific bellowing is a proof that,
though mechanically in his pages the suppressed maxims were
fenced off from the authorised ones, they were in his mind insepa-
rably intermixed. No, indeed ; after the conscientious work done by

278 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. February

the Abbe Brotier in the most unpretending manner towards the
establishment of La Bochefoucauld's text, we are not going to exalt
'Aim6 Martin because he inherited his predecessor's labours and
sUghtly improved upon them.

It was not until 1853 that a critical edition of the Maxims
appeared which was entitled to precedence over that of Brotier.
This was the beautiful little Elzevir edition of Duplessis, the same
who discovered for the first time in France that the fifty maxims
announced as posthumous were not all such. Some strange errors
have crept into the volume ; but the text fairly represented I^i Hoche-
foucauld; the annotations, full of pith and point, are of curious
felicity ; and the whole work is so fine and so good that it will never
be quite superseded, although since its issue our knowledge of its
subject has been greatly extended. But mark the date of it— 1853;
as likewise that of the Abbe Brotier's performance — 1789. From
the date of La Bochefoucauld's last edition — 1678 — ^France had to
wait 111 years before she ever again saw an edition of the Maxims
as the author left them. She had to wait 175 years before she had
a good critical edition of the Maxims with an absolutely correct
rendering of the suppressed ones and of posthumous discoveries.

It is remarkable that all this time no one had thought of piying
into La Bochefoucauld's MSS. at the Chateau of Bochegayon. In
1863 M. Barth61emy was allowed to make the inquisition, and,
among other treasures which need not occupy our attention at
present, he discovered,'tin the handwriting of the author himself, a
copy of the Maxims as. at first projected. The collection contains
259 maxin», and may be described as a preliminary or sketch
edition. Here is his little book as he first wrote it and put it
together. It is really his first edition, although it did not see the
day until 198 years after the volume actually known as such was
published. It is a most interesting MS., both as containing a fev
maxims previously unknown, and as enabling us to see how the
author advanced in his composition from good to better and hest
In these respects the French editors do it every justice ; but they
have failed to perceive wherein its chief value consists. It consists
in proving that La Eochefcrucauld's keynote was in his first thought
what it was in his last ; and that when in his first pnhliehed edition
he struck another keynote (that by which all the world knows him)
he silenced it immediately^ because it was false. The keynote of all
that he has written is the necessity of truthfulness, the immanence
of deceit, the ambiguity of appearance, the want of reality in human
life. Theil the frontispiece of his book as finally authorised in an
emblem of his meaning throughout : it is the picture of a boy-love,
named Love of Truth, plucking a fair mask from an ugly face, which
is none other than the bust of that great professor — Seneca. Thus
also the motto to his Maxims, placed at their head, and cont^iining

1881. LA ROCHEFOUCAULD. 279

their essence, is a statement that ^ our virtues are very often but
vices in disguise.' The first of the mayiniH after this contains the
statement that ^ it is not always from valour and from chastity that
men are valiant and women chaste.' l^ow these two maxims placed
in the forefront of La Eochefoucauld's book, and giving its leading
idea, are the two maxims which also stand first in his MS. edition,
and give the leading idea there also. He is thus consistent with
bimself in his earliest and in his later editions. But in 1665 he
proposed to give the world a first edition, and in a moment of
aberration he changed all. He knocked aside the two leading
maxims about truthfulness of conduct ; and he gave the places of
honour to four maxims on selfishness of conduct, the first being the
most elaborate of all his compositions — the long account of self-love.
It is impossible to read these four maxims on self in such a collocation
without supposing that this is the string on which he means to harp,
and without regarding him as the great expositor of the selfish theory
of morals. Some temporary bitterness must have got possession of
him ; for whereas in his MS. volume he simply said : ^ The ruin of a
neighbour pleases friends and enemies,' lie intensified this in his first
edition to the fierce declaration: <In the adversity of our best
£riends we always find something which is not displeasing to us.'
We have seen that the aberration did not last long, since in the
following year he made a massacre of sixty-four maxims contained in
thb edition. The discovery of LaORochefoucauld's MS. proves that in
doing so he was not entering upon a new path, but only falling back
upon his original intention with clearer views and more settled purpose.

Little more need be said upon this point beyond the expression
of some disappointment at the delays of French editors. After the
discovery of La Bochefoucauld's MSS., several editions of the Maxims
-were announced, but the only one which has appeared is that edited
by the late M. Gilbert in the collection of Les GraTids Ecrivains de
la France, published under the direction of M. Eegnier. His work
has been admirably done, but it is still, after ten years, unfinished,
for he died during the siege of Paris. He left his work incomplete
in a double sense, for it was to include the editing of all La fioche-
foucauld's writings in three volumes. He published but one volume,
containing the author's moral writings, and even this is still deficient
in the sheets which are to supply biography, bibliography, and lexi-
c<^;raphy. His successor, M. Grourdault, published, in 1874, a second
volume allotted to the author's memoirs ; and we are told that we
have still to wait for the third volume before the first, devoted to the
Maxims, can be rendered complete by the delivery of the missing sheets.

The book of Maxims fared so badly in France that it is difficult
to imagine a lower deep for them in England. In the course of two
centuries they have been translated nine times, and, if we put one of
the versions, and that an obsolete one, aside, not indeed as good or

280 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. February

free from the gravest errors, but as not positively disgraceful, it
may be said of the others that their failure is outrageous, going far
beyond all permissible bounds of error. It is not for mere failure of
style, the lack of terseness, dulness of edge, or coarseness of colour,
that they are to be condemned ; but for downright perversion of
meaning. To the iniquities of the French editors the English
translators added the bewildering eccentricity of not understanding
French. It would seem as if they thought that La Rochefoucauld
could be translated offhand like ordinary authors, with a mere inkling
of his language. When Miall undertook to translate the Provincid
Letters of Pascal into Latin, he went into a course of training for it;
and the training was to read Terence over with the utmost care,
translating him into French, putting the French back into the
proper Latin, and so to steep his mind in the phraseology of the
great comic writer. He thus produced a first-rate Latin version of
the Letters. To translate La Eochefoucauld into one's mother-tongue
may not demand the same kind or the same amount of previous
gymnastics ; but assuredly it is by no means so easy a task as it has
been deemed, and it is not to be done, as our translators have attempted
it, with a flying pen, and with an ignorance of French of the seven-
teenth century.

The evil fate that pursued La Sochefoucauld's Maxims first
declared itself in England. In 1685, before any of his countrymen
could do him harm, he had the ill-luck to be introduced to English
readers under the fostering wing of the most odious woman that
ever took up a pen, Mrs. Aphra Behn. If one of her sex was more
likely to be spumed than another by La Eochefoucauld and all his
set, it was she, with her vulgar manners, her lewd life, and her impu-
dent speech. The license of the French Court in those days will not
bear a very close investigation, though still there are writers of
mark in France who hymn the praises of La Eochefoucauld and
Madame de la Fayette for their mutual tenderness, for their faithful-
ness to each other, for the unfailing devotion with which in ad-
vancing years they went down the hill of life linked arm in arm.
These tokens of deep and enduring attachment drew the admiring
gaze of their contemporaries and surrounded them with the best
society in Paris, including women of unsullied purity, such as
Madame de Sevigne, who was indeed the most intimate friend of
Madame de la Fayette. It may be absurd to set up for a pattern
the standard of life as conceived by Madame de la Fayette, who, on
the retirement of Madame de Bambouillet, became the leader of
Parisian tastes and fashions, and who afterwards, when La Eoche-
foucauld was dead, lived to repent with tears of what her world had
60 much praised ; but, at the least, we need not misrepresent it ;
and it is violently misrepresented in a phrase, common at the time
and still common among historians, which gave the name of French

1881. LA ROCHEFOUCAULD. 281

maimeTS to the gross immoialitieB of Charles the Second's ieigD» as
though these were a weak imitation of something far worse beyond
the Channel in the strongholds of Papistry and Jesuitism. ISie
reverse was the fact. It was enough to make La Sochefoucauld
writhe in his tomb to know that his Maxims were to keep company
in a Miscellany with the lusts and ribaldries of Aphra Behn, and
that he was to make his first appearance in England side by side
with her and the obscene jesters of her crew. The translation, which
appeared in the Miscellany, bore the title of ^ Seneca Unmasked,' in
allusion to the frontispiece of the French edition, and the author
was announced as the Duke of Bushfoucave. Mrs. Behn presented
English readers with but three-fourths of the maxims ; she floun()ered
about piteously in the rendering of them, and she thought to enliven
some of them by bedecking them with her impudence and addressing
them to her. Lysander — an insult to a man who, in the portrait which
he drew of himself, and which all the world might read while yet he
livedo could boast that never in the presence of women had he
uttered a syllable which could give them pain. As for her plea-
santries, they must pass without citation. And for her mistakes here
is a single specimen. ^ Coquetry,' said La Bochefoucauld, ^ is the
basis of character in women.' Mrs. Aphra Behn made him say, ' To
be a coeket or talkative is the humour most natural to women.'

In 1694 appeared a new and anonymous translation which, al-
i^^hough not good, was yet preferable to that of Aphra Behn. It was
made, however, not from the complete edition of La Bochefoucauld's
Maxims, but from the fourth, containing but 413 sentences, to which
was added an appendix of 152 more, borrowed from other sources.
What is most remarkable, however, about the collection is that
"although La Bochefoucaidd's name stands upon the title-page ^
<daiming possession of the whole, only half of it is his. The small
volume is divided into four parts, of which two alone belong to the
author announced. The otiier two are allotted to the maxims of
Madame de Sable and to those of' her £Either confessor, the Abbe
d'Ailly, who published both hers and his own together a few months
^fterr she died. These last two parts are interesting, because ap-
parently it has not hitherto been known that the maxims of Madame
•de Sable and of the Abbe d'Ailly have been rendered into English.
The entire book was accepted for what it professed to be — a collection
of JLa Bochefoucauld's Maxims, and of none but his. Twelve years
afterwards, namely in 1706, a second edition of this translation was
issned, with more maxims of La Bochefoucauld, and with the ' Chri»*
tian ^laxims ' of Madame de la Sabliere — all on the title-page attri-
bated to one and the same author.

In the same year came forth also^two editions of a new version.
One of these editions gives no hint whatsoever of the translator's
xtame ; but the other appears at the end of a volume which is chiefly
Vou IX.— No. 48. U

282 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. February

taken np with translations of Esprit's Discourses on the DeosUfvln/m
of Humane Virtues. These are said to be * done out of French by
William Beauvoir, A.M., and chaplain to his Grace, James, Dnke of
Ormond, to which is added the Duke de la Bochefoucaut's moral
reflections.' It is not quite clear from this that Beauvoir translated
La Bochefoucauld as well as his great friend Esprit, but there is
something in the style which makes it probable ; and if so it is odd
that he should attach his name to the one book and not to the other.
One might infer from it that after the ill-&me attaching to the
Maxims from their appearance in Mrs. Behn's noisome Miscellany^
a parson was afraid to put his name to them. Whoever did the work
it was well done in some respects. It gave the Maxims precisely as
they stand in La Bochefoucauld's final edition. It is true that it
revived the remarkable piece on Self-love, but this was placed in an
appendix at the end. And as for the fifty posthumous maxims, the
translator pointed out, what no Frenchman had then discovered, that
only twenty-nine of them could be accepted as such. With all its-
merits, however, this version fidled of success, and soon became
obsolete, partly through the translator importing into its phraseology
that fieishionable slang which is supposed to be lively, but is in troth
deadly, and partly through a long-windedness which would seem to
fix the authorship upon Beauvoir, and, although allowed in the pulpit,
is not to be endured as an imitation of La Bochefoucauld. Here is^
his translation of one of the maxims with his verbiage in brackets:—
^ Tis not always from [a principle of] valour that men are valiant, or
from [a principle of] chastity that women are chaste.'

With French examples before them, however, it was not possible
for English translators to keep to the right path indicated by the
foregoing version, the only one we have had which did not seriously
misrepresent La Bochefoucauld. In 1749 appeared an English
version founded on the most unjustifiable of all the editions of the
Maxims, that of the Abbe de la Boche. In 1775 there came forth
what may fairly be called a new translation on the same models
especially if we take it as improved in successive editions which
appeared in 1781, 1791, 1795, and quite recently from the publishing
house of John Camden Hotten, with his successors, Messrs. Chatto and
Windus. By reason of continual alterations from fresh hands, these
versions, in a comparison of the first with the last, claimed to be two
different translations ; but it may sufiSce if we limit our attention to
the edition published in the G-olden Library of Messrs. Chatto and
Windus — the only version of La Bochefoucauld which circulates in
England. It consists of 507 maxims (really 506, for one is given
twice over) made up of some that are authorised, some that were
43uppressed, and some that are posthumous, together with two of
Madame de SahWs maasims, all arranged in a supposed alphabetical
ord6r. ^ La politesse de I'esprit,' says La Bochefoucauld, ' consi&te a

1881. LA ROVHEFOUCAULD. 283

penser des choses honnetes et d^licates.' 'Politeness of mind,' we
are told in this odd translation, < consists in a courteous and delicate
conception,' whatever that may mean ; and if we wish to look for the
maxim again we must tie a knot on our handkerchief and try not to for-
get that it is to be found under the catchword of Understanding. The
collection of maxims thus arbitrarily chosen and arbitrarily arrayed is
badly translated. In the first place it affects curtness, as if that were the
style of La Rochefoucauld, and the same thing as terseness. Besides
this, it is full of blunders and always rough. La Rochefoucauld has
much to say of parease — which in his time and in his hands had the
force of its original, pigritia — sloth. The translator gives it the
modem sense oticUenesSy incapable of seeing that the maxims in which
the word occurs are nought unless it means the cause of idleness. At
times he reverses the sense. Thus La Rochefoucauld says (No. 382)
that ' Our actions ate like rhyme-endings (the game of bouta-rirrUay
which each of us tags together by what lines we please.' The rhymes
are fixed ; the game is to supply the best lines leading up to them.
The translator says that ^our actions are like the terminations of
verses which we rhyme as we please,' the very thing we are not to do.
Dozens of examples such as these might be given, and dozens more of
examples of roughness of treatment — the translator rendering a sen-
tence void by not attending to small qualifying words and shades of
meaning. Here is an example of his rough hard touch. We all know
the maxim already quoted — ^ In the adversity of our best friends we
always find something which is not displeasing to us.' It is a grievous-
error to place such a maxim in the text among those sanctioned by
La Rochefoucauld ; but being' there it should be given exactly. La.
Rochefoucauld said adversity, his translator makes him say distress ;.
filing to perceive that so far from being identical, the one may exist
without the other, or, in like manner, prosperity without enjoyment.
Passing over a doleful metrical translation of the Maxims which
appeared in 1795, we come to the seventh version, which made its
appearance in 1839, and had the merit of giving the text of La
Sochefoncauld with as much accuracy as the French editors had then
reached. It was a pretty little edition, almost intended for the
waistcoat pocket, and it was issued with only the publisher's name —
J. W. Southgate, Library, 164 Strand. The translation, however, is
1)ad both in form and substance. In form it errs in a want of sim-
plicity, and brevity arising firom an attempt to get rid of what the
translator calls * the quaintness of style peculiar to the age in which
the Maxims were written.' In substance, its errors are most ingenious
in the art of finding out some nonsense to palm off upon La Roche-
foacanld. One example at least must be given, because it is typical
of the treatment which the great moralist has received. The trans-
lator, though he announces the leading maxim on self-love as
suppressed, and presents it as such in a supplement with the other sup-

u2

28A THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Febnai,

pressed sayings, seems not to have realised what this meansy aiidto
bave held stubbornly to the vulgar opinion that the fundamental
truth of the maxims is an assertion of the universal dominion of self-
love. With this idea in his mind he comes to Maxim 71: ^ There
are few people who are not ashamed of having been in love when
they cease to love each other,' and he renders it as follows : — ^iiaeK,
persons are ashamed of self*love when its fits are passed.' Perhaps
the reader ought like to look at the original, and here it is : < II
n'y a gu&re de gens qui ne soient honteux de s'etre aimes quand ils
ne s'aiment plus.'

So determined were Englishmen not to understand the meaxung
of the word * suppressed ' as applicable to the Tuaxims of lii Roche-
foucauld, that in 1850 Messrs. Longman published what professed
to be a new translation. So it was, but it was based on the South-
gate translation, correcting the more absurd of its trespasses; and
yet with this same version before his eyes, the translator deliberatelf
took all the suppressed maxims he could find, including those on
self-love and ^the adversity of Mends, and mixed them up again
confusedly with the true text, planting the great maxim on self-
love in its old place at the head of alL He was not going to let
La Rochefoucauld know his own mind and choose his own gronsd.
The translation itself is fiedrly though not finely done ; and it is not
free firom considerable errors. Thus we have < Fair bourgeois ' rendered
^rusticity;' and, in common with all other versions, M'honnete
homme,' the phrase which in the seventeenth century replaced the
^ gentilhomme ' of Montaigne, is mistranslated into ^ the honest man,'
unless when the translator encounters a maxim like the foIlowiDg
(No. 353) : — ^ A gentleman may be enamoured like a lunatic, hot
not like a fool,' — where it is suddenly revealed to him that ^ I'honnete
homme ' is not an honest man, but a man of sense. Let us take
another word — amour propre — ^which iUustrates what we have had
to see firom so many points of view, how editors and ti^nslators fetter
La Rochefoucauld to the one idea of self-love, and will not let him
escape from it. This word has three distinct meanings — (1) self-love;
(2) in a good sense, self-respect ; and (3), in a disparaging sense, the
mixture of pride and vanity known as conceit or self-conceit. The
second is the favourite meaning of the word in modem times, but La
Rochefoucauld eschews it, and his translators imagine that he employs
the word in the first sense alone. It is impossible for sach a
man to think of anything but self-love when he mentions amour
propre. Here is an example — ^No. 261 — * L'&]ucation que Ton donne
d'ordinaire aux jeunes gens est un second amour propre qu'on leur
inspire.' This is always translated as though it referred to self4ove;
but if the true meaning be not at once clear, it will be found in La
Rochefoucauld's MS., where the word as first written was orgu^^
while the last and best of the French editors has shown how he

1881. LA ROCHEFOUCAULD. 285

undentanda the passage by placing it in his index under the head of
Vaiuty. To foist the name of self-love into this and other such
maximfl is not merely to make a mistake in these particular
sentencesy but also, by inserting the notion of self-love in passages
where La Bochefoucauld never thought of it, to make it seem more
prevalent in his doctrine than it really was.

The last of the translations appealed in 1871, the joint work of
Messrs. Hain Friswell and I. Willis Bund, in a collection of small
volumes known as the Bayard Series. It gives one a fair idea of
what Dryden had in his mind when he poured the torrent of his
wrath upon Shadwell : —

The rest to fiome faint meaning make pretence,
But Shadwell never deyiates into sense.

There is scarcely a page of this work which is not disfigured by
some incredible blunder of translation, of history, of logic, or of typo-
graphy. It would do the book too much honour to give examples, and
it must be enough to say that it has the distinction of running a close
race with the worst translation of any author that ever was produced.
Ill as we have to speak of the English versions of La Bochefoucauld,
there is something to be said in extenuation of their errors, since the
French themselves are often strangely at fault in their attempts to
catch, not the meaning, but the manner of this great writer. Let us
take Sainte-Beuve for an example, a critic so clear-sighted, that
whether it were or were not in his power to draw the bow of La
Bochefoucauld, at least one might expect him to know for certain
whether he had succeeded or failed. Now let us turn to his portrait
of the Duke published capriciously among his Portraits de Fem/mes.
At the end he presented his readers with fifty of his own maxims.
Much acquaintance with the author, he said, had made maxim-
making contagious ; and these fifty which he offered would be found
* more or less analogous in form or in spirit ' to those of La Bochefou-
cauld ; even if they failed they were at least a tribute of homage to
the great master. It is astonishing to see what a great gulf there is
between the maxims of the two writers, and how incapable Sainte-
Beuve was of seeing it. His maxims are egotistical, effusive, meant
for startling effect rather than for unadorned truth, built upon
metaphor, tackled with explanations apt to be wordy, and wanting in
finish. Sainte-Beuve seldom gave out his meaning in one irre-
movable wor^. In the commencement of this essay there is a sentence
of his, descriptive of French literature, which is in his most charac-
teristic manner. He throws out a happy phrase, but it is insufficient ;
he tries again, and that too is not quite right ; but by one phrase
that foils short, another that goes too far, and others which are beside
the mark, he achieves his thought, as he would say, and indicates
clearly enough what he would be at. His maxims are really formed

286 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. February

upon the model of Joubert's, and they have litUe or no resemblaaoe
to those of La Bochefoucauld.

The style of this extraordinary man belongs to the rarities of art,
and is almost a mystery, for none was ever so strong of grasp and
fine of point, while yet so plain and effortless. We know, indeed, the
strength of it, how much it tells and how far it carries ; but welitUe
think of its amazing simplicity and even barrenness of means. Kit
is to be matched at all in its nakedness, we must look not to any
modem language for its like, but to that of Athens. It makes the
nearest approach to the Attic manner which a Frenchman ever
a^ttained, and this one was ignorant of Greek. A large word indeed
is Atticism, including many positive excellencies, and chief of all the
most expressive and flexible dialect of a speech that has never been
surpassed. Furthermore, if we had to describe Atticism truly, we
should have to allow that in the Athenian nature there was an
oratorical element that tended to showiness and is very much put out
of sight when in modem times we refer to the Attic manner. It is
impossible to praise a mere negation, and yet it is a kind of nation
that we have in our minds chiefly when we try to define the most
marked sign of Atticism — call it as we may — severity, simplicity,
modesty, temperance, quietness, its opposition to the loaded style
known in different degrees as Bhodian and Asiatic. Many people
imagine that they have the Attic salt because they have abundance
of wit : they are unaware that its prime quality is to produce a
flavour without suggesting the salt ; so that many a modem when he
reads the Ghreek anthology (which, by the way, is not exclusively Attic,
and might therefore be adduced to prove that the literary quality
we are regarding was not exclusively Attic) lifts his eyebrows and
declares that this epigram is pointless, and that inscription has
nothing in it. Now in the style of La Bochefoucauld what impresses
one even more than its fineness of tum, conciseness, and precision, is
its Attic avoidance of surprising effect, its trust in conoimon expressions,
its absence of glitter, may I say its mate colour? Attempt at
shining, use of strong words, show of any kind is effectually suppressed
in it, and we have before us in 600 short sentences the last triutaph
of style — to efface itself.

What first catches the eye in it is the iteration of word and phrase.
This, however, is a peculiarity which belongs not to La Bochefoucauld
alone, but also to the best French of the period. < A critic I am
fond of quoting,' says Sainte-Beuve, but without mentioning his name,
^ has said, — It is very remarkable to see how much under Louis XIV.
the French language in all its purity and as it was written by Madame
de la Fayette, Madame de Sevigne, M. de la Kochefoucauld, was com-
posed of a small number of words which recur unceasingly in discourse
with a sort of charm.' This is marked in all La Eochefoucauld's
writings, but doubly so in his Maxims, finom the fewness of the sen*

1881. LA BOOHEFOUCAULD, 287

tences and the selectne^ of the vocabulary. It is coavenient too in the
Maxims, when the terms are in a manner titles indicating the subjects
of the several sayings, to have one name instead of many by which to
trace the theme, be it bravery, indolence, or fortune, through the
various sentences. But the ^uneness and paucity of La Bochefoucauld's
vocabulary go beyond this. He is never afraid of flat phrases and
bald words, nor does it occur to him that repetition of expressions «

deadens the sense while variety quickens it. His adjectives come like
•a few coins — ^shillings, and sixpences and sovereigns — ^with which one
can count up millions. Good and hadj Tauch and littU, true and false^
difficfuU and easy — ^there is the mintage of his realm, and if he were
•expected to say alight or slender for little^ or to ring changes on the
synonyms for good and bad^ he would feel no richer than an English
traveller who has all the coins of Europe intermingled with his pounds,
shillings, and pence. The effect of the style will be felt if we string
together a few of the scattered maxims to show the stereotyped phrase.
Let us take the verb to hide^ which is one of his favourites ; some-
times he employs disguise instead ; but one or other he is almost
sure to introduce where, for the sake of variety, more modem writers
would, at least in English, be trying doakj Tnaskj veil, conceal, screen^
vetneer^ and ever so many more. In the following set of maxims,
which might be greatly extended, it has not been deemed necessary to
^ve all the sentences in fiilL

69. If there is a pure love, it is hidden at the bottom of the heart and unknown*

70. There is no disguise which can hide love long.

245. It shows great cleyemess to be able to hide one's cleverness.
257. Gravity is a mystery which the body makes to hide defects of the mind.
344. Most men, like plants, have hidden properties which chance discovers.
368. Most virtuous women are hidden treasures.

406. Ck)qUietteB make it a rule to be jealous of their lovers to hide their envy of
-other women.

It does not follow that he absolutely refuses variety. Thus in
MaTJm 20 he says, ' The stead&stness of the sage^is but the art of
locking up the tumult in his breast : ' when his first thought no doubt
was to say in his own proper manner, * the art of hiding.^ Also when in
one and the same maxim, repetition becomes too obvious. La Boche-
fofucauld finds no difficulty in giving variety to his phrase by finely
rounded turns. Thus in No. 215, 'II y en a qui sont braves a coups
*<l'^pee, et qui craignent les coups de mousquet; d'autres sont assures
anx coups de mousquet, et apprehendent de se battre a coups d'ep^e.'
But even here one can see how, while he is taking pains to variegate
the terms in which to describe bravery and fear, he is perfectly un->
eonoemed at the inultiplication of his ccmp«.

Look next at the meekness yriih which La Bochefoucauld resigns
himself to the precise formulas and minute articulation of the French
igxammar. To an English ear the chain of French speech is made up

288 THE NINETSENTE CENTURY. Februarv

of an excessive number of little words ; particles and tiregome con-
necting links. An Englishman can always express himsdf in fewer
words. The French must say Vhomme where we say man; and
VhoTwme que vous savez where we can say the man you hnm. In
the most mod^m Fiench much of the verbosity of concatenation is
boldly thrown aside by means of the jotting style introduced by
Pascal, as diseur de bons motSj mauvaw carudirei but in the
seventeenth century few ellipses were permitted, and one <k>uld not
clear a circumlocution by a running leap. Even to this day itmakesi
an Englishman go mincingly when he has to follow syllable by
syllable the articulation of such formalities as qu'est-ce qiCil yam
qu^esUce que (feat que ca ? and it is not in the nature of our langoage
to give anything like a reflection of their detail in translation. In
the time of La Eochefoucauld this detail was even more marked, but
he submitted to it without apparent resistance. He is unrivalled for
terseness, and most people think of terseness as first of all implying
a riddance of superfluous words. That of La Bochefoucauld iscbiefiy
in his thought : in his phraseology there is no solution of gramma-
tical continuity, no suppression of any the least particle. I quote firom
Mr. Sala the following sentence written in Paris, and reflecting the
modem French idiom : * I began to ima^ne that our loge must be on
a level with the topmost tier. Error ! We had not yet attained the
level of the stage.' That is not only the French idiom, but is fest
also becoming an English one ; and it is the very opposite in spirit
of seventeenth-century French and of La Kochefoucauld's manner.
There is no style, however, so opposed to his as that of our most
classical poet, who is above all things known for correctness. • Bead
the Essay on Man. See there the extreme of an elliptical style, and
Pope's impatience of the lagging gait caused by prepositions and con-
j unctions, pronoims and auxiliary verbs. La Eochefoucauld could not
have written the line — * Man never is, but always to be, blest.' In his
diction it would be, Man is never blest, but he is ever about to be blest.
Here is one of La Eochefoucauld's own sentences, rendered three times,
to show the ordinary English form, the ordinary French form, and his
own ordinary form, the articulation being more minute as we pass
from the one to the other in the order indicated : —

English form : — Wit should have yariety ; those who have but one sort cannot
please long.

French form : — Wit should have variety ; those who have but one sort cf if
{en) cannot please long.

La JRochefoucauld'sfomi : — Wit should have variety ; those who have but one
sort of wit cannot please long.

In the original it runs thus: 'II faut de la vari^te dans I'esprit;
ceux qui n'ont que d'une sorte d'esprit ne peuvent pas plaire long-
temps.' And here we light upon one of the tokens ot La fiochefou*
•cauld's manner, which no doubt led Voltaire to eitcA precisian as-

188L LA ROCBEFOUCAULD. 28»

the mofit marked feature of the style : though we in EDgland perhaps-
might ask : Is the precision of La Bochefoucauld, as displayed in the
foregcxing example, in any way more unmistakable than that of the
English idiom ? Is it not over-precision ?

Be that as it may, it is evident that the elaborate articulation to^
which La Sochefoucauld submitted in piecing together his sentences,,
while it conduced to their precision and stateliness, interfered with
their fieedom and rapidity of movement. As for the lack of freedom,.
La Bochefoucauld showed it in that great test — his incapacity of
managing a parenthesis : with him no saving clauses, no irresistible
digiessiQiis, no passing allusions, no wayside flowers. And as for the
want of rapidity, read such a sentence as this (No. 533), which is
taken from the posthumous maxims, but is typical : ^ On loue et on
blame la plupart des choses parce que c'est la mode de les louer ou de
las bybner.' Note, by the way, as an example of exceeding articula-
tion, la plupart des chases for the English most thvngs. That,.
Iiowever, is not peculiar to La Rochefoucauld ; it is a bit of chain-
work which he could not give up without giving up his language.
Hia peculiar mark is to be seen in the conclusion of the sentence..
In English the whole would run : ^ We praise and we blame most
things because it is the fashion,' or more accurately, < according to
the &shion.' La Bochefoucauld works out the logical contents of h^
idea to the last grain ; < because it is the fashion to praise them or ta
blame them.' For another example turn to Maxim 393 : * L'air bour-
geois se perd quelquefois dans I'armee, nuds il ne se perd jamais a la
cour.' * The cockney manner sometimes wears off in the army, but
pt] never [wears off] at court.' There are dozens of other instances
at hand to show how La Bochefoucauld never fretted at a round-
about locution nor tried to get over it ; the conciseness at which he
aimed being of thoi^ht, as already said, &r more than of words..
Mingling as he does the neatest curves of expression with the slow
formulas of an unwieldy grammar, he reminds one of the often dull
seesaw of Attic prose in which the writers, with the most perfect
phrasing at command, seem not to be aware of the monotonous
oscillation of their sentences on the pivots of 6 fiiv — 6 £^, to fiiv —
TO S/, rib fiiv — rh Si.

Not only is La Bochefoucauld thus unpretending in his style,.
choosing the commonest words with quaint iteration, and following .
the grooves of a many-syllabled syntax with unswerving routine, as
though he could not escape from the cogs of a wheel ; he is also free,
in nearly every line that he has written, from any attempt at orna-
ment or even at mere play of thought. If I seem to make an
exception, it is because, in his earlier writings, the Essays, he some-
times liked to trace a comparison throughout all its ramifications
until it assumed the importance of an .aUegory, and that, too, * as
beadstrong as the allegory on the banks of the Nile.' It is difficult

290 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. February

to prove a negative and to show by the want of ornament that La
Bochefoucauld avoided it. But he himself has in one of his maximB
^Xo. 250) given a definition of eloquence which is a perfect descrip-
tion of his own practice : ^ True eloquence consists in saying all that
is needful and nothing more.' There will always be disputes, however,
as to what is needful. The close expression which may contain a
•thought in its entirety, may yet be insufficient without reasons, illaa>
trations, repetitions — ^a good deal of mere play — to make it clear to
ordinary minds, and to give it the force of conviction. LaBochefou*
cauld himself was content in his most mature work to state his ideas
clearly and tersely ; but he left it to his readers to embroider them
with £Emcies, and to sustain them with arguments.

HiS^ethod of arriving at his niaxims is interesting, and may be
seen disunctly in his earlier ones. His later ones he threw out
perfectly formed, and we can find little or no trace of work upon tiiem.
It is in the earlier ones that we can follow his conceptions from his
first grasp of them on through successive mouldings to the fiiuil
execution. He first of all projected his thought as any one else would,
with the suggestions that led to it, with the reasons which seemed to
justify it, and perhaps with illustrations to explain it. When ideas
flash upon us, we are all more or less conscious of the thunderdoads
firom^ which they lightened, and are apt to bring all the storms of oar
doubts and perplexities before others, in order to show them distinctly
how the electricity gathered upon us, how the two clouds came
•together, and where the bolt struck. It is curious to see what a
number of La Bochefoucauld's earlier ideas are expressed in this way,
with the accompaniment of explanations and inferences. A consider-
able number of his Maxims will be found interwoven with his Essays :
the context is afterwards cut away, and we have then the maxim in
the form he strove after, that of bare outline. Probably in the
maturity of his powers, for he was never a writer of what the French
^call the first jet or throw, he worked in the same way, throwing his
idea upon paper with preliminaries, accessories, and corollaries; bat
practice had taught him to suppress all this husk of outlying detail,
useful to him in determining his thought, but useless to readers for
its apprehension. His manner of peeling away phrase after phrase
and detail after detail until he got to the kernel of his matter,
demands perhaps an example : and we take the maxim on Jealousy,
j(No. 32), as it appeared in successive editions, until it was reduced to
perfect form. It should be stated, however, that the first form given
below comprises two maxims (Nos. 128 and 65) as they appear in the
original MS.

First fomij as in the original MS, : — Jealousy subsists only in doubts and lives
only in new disquietudes. The remedy for jailousy is the certainty of what we
fear, fur it puts an end to life or an end to love. It is a cruel remedy^ but it is
luilder than doubt and suspicions.

1881. LA ROCHEFOUCAULD. 291

^'' Second formy m in thejirst puhUthed Edition : — Jealousy subsists only in doubts \
its substance is uncertainty ; it is a passion which everyday seeks for new grounds
of disquietude and for new torments. We cease to be jealous the moment we are
enlightened as to the cause of jealousy.

Thud form f as in second Edition : — Jealousy feeds on doubts. It is a passion
which seeks always for new grounds of disquietude and for new torments ; and it
turns to fury as soon as we pass from doubt to certainty.

Fourth and Jimal form : — Jealousy feeds on doubts, and it turns to fury or it
«nd8 as soon as we pass from doubt to certainty.

Snch is the style of the man, and we should now go onto examine
the substance of his writings and the nature of his ideals. This
article is, however, already too long, and further elucidations must be
reserved. The labour of the present paper is but a clearing of the
ground, a statement of preliminaries and a demand for a new study
of La Bochefoucauld.

E. S. Dallas.

292 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. February

THE UNITED STATES AS A FIELD FOR
AGRICULTURAL SETTLERS.

The subject of this paper is not only a large one, but it is one on
which much has been said and written already. It is also true that a
most able and exhaustive report on the agricultural capacity of
America has been recently issued by the commission which wa»
appointed by the late Grovemment to inquire into the causes oF
agricultural distress in this country. But I approach the subject from
a somewhat different point of view. The purpose for which the
assistant-commissioners were sent to America was to inquire into and
report as to the probable effect of American competition on the owners
and occupiers of land in this country. My object is rather to inquire
what are the prospects of those who contemplate emigrating to America,
with a view to bettering their condition, and to point out what in my
judgment are the localities best suited for intending emigrants.

I shall confine myself, as the title of this paper indicates, to
the United States, not because I wish to ignore or disparage in any
way the claims of Canada, but because I am not a competent witness
with respect to that country. When I was last in America* I was
not on Canadian soil at all, with the exception of a few hours which
I passed on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls. As regards the
great and fertile district of ' Alanitoba I could say nothing which had
not appeared already in books or newspapers. And even in respect
of the United States the knowledge which I have acquired from
personal observation is limited to two regions, Western Oregon and
Colorado, though I have endeavoured to avail myself of the best sources
of information within my reach as to other parts of the country.

Agricultural emigrants may be divided into two classes : first, those
who intend to cultivate their farms by the labour of their own hands ^
second, persons possessed of more or less capital, or perhaps, I should
rather say, a class of larger capitalists, for, as I think I shall show
presently, everyone who goes to the United States with the intention
of owning lan^, ought to be possessed of a certain amount of capital.

The class of larger capitalists may be again subdivided into arable
and pastoral farmers. In the more newly settled Western states this
line is much more sharply drawn than it is in this country. In
Illinois and the other middle states there are many persons who
pursue a system of mixed husbandry, who raise grain crops and who

* A few months ago.

188h EMIGRATION TO THE UNITED STATES. 298

Also own fine herds of cattle. But in the more newly settled states
the arable farmers for the most part possess very little live stock
except their horses and a few cows, while those who apply themselves
to rearing cattle or sheep do very little with the plough*

As r^ards the agricultural labourer I doubt whether a man who
has been bred to agricultural labour only, and who has not the com-
mand of some little capital, is likely to do himself much good by
•emigrating to the United States* Wages, no doubt, are high while
there is work to be done, but there is not so much constant employ-
ment as in this country* It is very much the practice in the United
States to take men on by the job and to discharge them after the
work has been done* And as there is very little green crop grown in
the United States, there is much less employment there for women
^d children than there is here* These observations are borne out by
the Beport of the assistant-commissioners which has lately been issued*
They say : —

Tbe fiom labourer can hardly be said to exist as a dislinct class in the United
States, unless it he among the coloured people in the middle and Southern states.
In the large farms of the west the bothy system is canied out, and buHdings
are put up in which the summer men mess and sleep. In winter they are off to
the towns and cities, and it is seldom the same faces are seen two years running
on the farm.

It should be remarked that though wages may appear high, the hours of
labour from spring to autumn are long, and winter is a period of almost complete
•ceasation from work for man and beast on the American farm. The very few
labourers that are required upon a great .wheat-growing farm in America during
the dead winter months is surprising. In one instance we were told that only two
men were kept upon 5,000 acres. When the longer days and the harder work of
the American labourer, together with his being employed only when he is wanted.
are taken into account, the annual cost of labour per acre is much less than the
amount paid in England.

At the same time there is no doubt that an energetic active man,
who can put his hand to anything, who can, for instance, take a spell
at Inmberiog or at carpenter work when agricultural employment is
scarce, is likely to do exceedingly well in the United States.

To return to the classes who are possessed of some capital. The
emigrant who wishes to cultivate his farm with his own hands may
either enter on the Government land which is reserved for homesteads,
in which case he has nothing to pay beyond the cost of the survey,
amounting only to a few pounds, or he may purchase land and pay
for it by instalments spread over a term of years. In the case of the
Government lands he cannot homestead more than 160 acres, but he
may also pre-enQ>t, as it is called, 160 acres more, paying for it at the
rate of $1 ^ an acre if more than 20 miles from a railroad, or /2|, or a
little more than lOs. an acre, if within 20 miles. He has to pay about
l8. an acre down, and the balance at the end of five years, by which
time he must have executed certain improvements. In some states
he may pre-^mpt 640 acres of what are called desert lands, that is, lands
which will not grow crops without irrigation. He must in this case

394 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. February

at the end of five years produce a certificate that he has irrigated
the land so as to make it grow crops.

And in some states the settlers may acquire from the Goyermnent
160 acres by planting 10 acres, and producing a certificate at the
end of eight years that a certain number of trees are in a healthy
growing state.

It may perhaps be asked what amount of money a settler ought
to have to start with. To begin at the beginning, the journey out
from Liverpool, say of a man with a wife and two children, to the
place where they intend to locate themselves, will cost some 45{.^
more or less.^ As to the rest I will take the estimate of Mr.
Eaton, a successful farmer who owns a considerable quantity of lanf
in Colorado. Mr. Eaton's letter, which gives the amount required in
detail, and which, besides, contains a great deal of valuable informa-
tion, may be found in a pamphlet entitled ^ Farm Lands in Colorado/
published by the Colorado Company, of which Mr. Barclay, M.P. for
ForfiEirshire) is chairman. Mr. Eaton calculates that a man with a wife
and two children will require 3262. to support himself and feanily,
and bring a &rm of 80 acres, which is about as much as a man with
a pair of horses can till, into cultivation. If we add 452. for the cost
of the journey out, we have a sum of 3712. as the amount which is
required to support the family, and meet the necessary outgoings of
the &rm imtil the first crop has been reaped and marketed. In the
case of the man who enters on a homestead we have to deduct 42{.,
which Mr. Eaton puts down as the first instalment of the purchase
money^ because the homesteader has nothing to pay for the land, and
we thus get 3292., or say, including the cost of survey, 3352., as the
amount required. The man who enters on a homestead with this
sum in his possession ought, if this estimate is correct, to be free from
debt and able to invest the proceeds of his crop, beyond what he may
require for the support of himself and his family, in any way that
may seem best to him. But there are some drawbacks. In order to
get a homestead a man must now go very far West. He will in all
probability not be very favourably situated as regards access to
markets, and consequently the prices he will obtain will be low. For
the same reason he may probably have difficulty in procuring many
comforts that he has come to look upon almost as necessaries of life,
and he may have to pay very high prices for them. In the North-
western states the winters are very long, the cold is intense, and the
winds are piercing. Lastly, even in the remote North-west, great
part of the best lands has been taken up already. When I was
returning from San Francisco to New York, I met a man who told
me that he had gone into the territory of Dakotah to look for land, and
that there was no good land to be had, except by purchase, within
500 miles of Bismarck, which is the furthest point to which the

' The above is about the cost of the journey to Denver ; to Western Minnesota it
will be somewhat less.

1881. EMIGRATION TO THE UNITED STATES. 295

Northern Pacific Bailroad has yet been extended, and which is some
1 ,200 miles north-west of Chicago. On the other hand, the emigrant
who purchases can choose his own location, and the payment is
generally made easy to him by being spread 07er a term of years.

Hitherto I have been referring to those who intend to till their
&rms themselves. I now come to the class who are possessed of more
capital, and who wonld desire to obtain land in larger quantities. If
the settler's capital is large enough, I think it is better to buy not
less than a section, i.e. a sqnare mile, or 640 acres. A smaller lot
coBts more to fence in proportion to its size. Land can be pur-
chased firom the railway companies to whom the Gk>vemm^t has
made grants, or bom parties who have acquired land from them. In
Western Oregon improved farms, that is, farms with a house and
some fences on them, may be purchased at from 52. to Sh an acre if
near a railroad. Unimproved and imdeared lands can be had at all
prices down to ,^2*50 an acre. The land in the valley is open
prairie ; on the rolling ground at the foot of the hiUs a good deal of
it is covered with oak scrub. The cost of clearing is said to vary
from t5 to $iS per acre. The average yield is reckoned at about 20^
bushels an acre, and it is said the crop can almost always be depended
upon. The whole of Western Oregon is within comparatively easy
reach, of Portland, whence the grain is shipped. The vdley is
drained by the Williamette rivsr, riiich is navigable for a great part
of its course ; there are also two railroads, and another is in course
of being constructed. Land at some little distance from the existing
railroads can be purchased, I believe, for about SL an acre. The
settler in Western Or^on has the great advantage of an abundant
and cheap supply of timber. The sides of the mountains and the
edges of the streams are covered with splendid firs, some of them
200 feet high. When I was going over the proposed line of the
Or^onian railway, I came across a splendid fir tree which was being
bumed down by means of a live coal put into the heart of it. I
asked to have it measured, and found it squared 7-^ feet. They told
me that there was not enough timber in the strip where this tree
stood to make it worth while to put up a sawmill, and that the
cheapest mode of getting the tree out of the way was to bum it.

In Eastern Oregon land may be bought of the Northern Pacific Bail-
road Company for ^2*60, or about 1 2a. an acre. In some seasons this land
is said to be very productive, yielding as much as 40 bushels of wheat
per acre, but the country is sometimes subject to droughts, water is
scarce in some places, and there is a deficiency of timber. The rates
to Portland are also very high, but this will probably be remedied in
time by the construction of a new line of railroad, and I think there
csm be no doubt that those who purchase land at present prices will
find their property rise considerably in value in the course of the
next few years.

' The. only other state as to which I can speak from personal know-

296 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. February

iedge is Colorado. Good land can be bought there at present for
about 1^10, or a little over 22. an acre. The right to take water for
irrigation from one of the canals costs about \L an acre. Land in
"Colorado, from the extreme dryness of the climate, is of little nse
wiless it is either irrigated artificially or flooded in winter by a stream.
A section of good land with the necessary water rights will cost
about 2,000Z. The price may be spread over a term of years, but
the rate of interest in Colorado is high, not less than 10 per cent on
feurming lands, so that those who possess the requisite amount of
capital will probably prefer to pay the money down. lAx, Barclay
puts the cost of bringing the land into cultivation, not includiog
interest on the purchase money, and charging contract prices for the
work done, at about 2Z. per acre for the first year, so that the whole
outlay on 640 acres, including the purchase money, will be about
^300^ To this estimate of Mr. Barclay's I think some other items
should be added, as, for escample, from 802. to 1002. for a house and
the cost of fencing, which, for 640 acres, should probably be about
2002. But with a capital of something less than 4.0002. a man
ought to be able to make a very good start on a fiarm of 640 acres.
As regards the question whether a settler had better locate himself in
Oregon or in Colorado, or in one of the North-western states, per-
haps I shall best answer it, so far as my opinion is worth anythizig,by
stating what I have done myself. After having traversed the United
States from New York to Puget Sound, and having obtained the
best information which I could procure, I have purchased land in
<]!olorado for a near relation of my own, who intends to go out as a
settler. My reasons are, (I) the yield on irrigated land is larger than
^ther in Western Oregon or the North-western states, (2) prices of
agricultural produce are higher. Mr. Barclay and Mr. Eaton both
<9oncur in stating that after the first year 25 bushels of wheat an
4)cre may fairly be looked for on irrigated land in Colorado. In
Western Oregon the average yield is put at 20 bushels an acre. In
the North-western states it is a good deal less. Sixteen buahek an
acre is looked upon as a large crop in Minnesota, one of the great
wheat-growing states. In Iowa it is less. In Dakotah 25 and some-
times even 28 bushels are raised, but these cases are exceptional, and
Are found on the monster farms, where the cultivation of wheat is
brought to great perfection. From the best information I can ob>
tain, the average |H:oduction of Dakotah does not much exceed 15 or
16 bushels. Then as to prices. When I was in Portland, wheat was
selling for 87 cents a bushel. In Denver the price was at one time
iil^l*20, and it has never, I believe, been below 1^1-10 this year. When
we look at the prices in the North-western states, the difierence is
even greater. In Western Minnesota and Dakotah 75 cents a boshd
is considered a good price for wheat. Without going into elaborate
calculations, I think any one who will work the figures out for himself
will see that it will pay better to give Jfl5 an acre for land that will

1881. EMIGRATION TO TEE UNITED STATES. 297

grow 25 bushels, which will fetch ,^1*10 a bushel, than to give $5 an
acre for land that will grow 16 bushels, with the probability that the
price may fall much lower. In each case the price of the land will
be paid off in about the same time, but when that has been done, the
owner of the higher priced and more fertile land will be in possession
of a much more remunerative property. But are the high prices of
agricultural produce in Colorado likely to continue ? I think so.
Prices there do not depend on the European markets. There is a
large local demand from the mining camps, considerably larger than
the state itself can supply.

Then the quantity of land which can be profitably brought under
tillage is restricted by the amount of water which can be utilised for
irrigation, and in the more settled parts of the state there will soon
be very few streams remaining which are available for that purpose.
As regards a possible fisdl in price in consequence of importations from
other parts of the United States, the Colorado farmer has a very
considerable natural protection, by reason of the great distance over
which agricultural produce has to be carried. Take the article of
hay, for instance, which is in great demand. Large qiiantities of hay
are brought into Colorado from Kansas City, a distance of over six
hundred miles. The freight from Kansas City is ^10 or a little over 22.
a ton, which of itself is considered a very good price in most parts of
the United States. Great part of Western Kansas is almost a desert
on account of the want of rain and the dearth of water. And though
in time freights from Kansas City may be somewhat reduced by the
construction of competing Unes, the distance can never be much
shortened, inasmuch as the Kansas Pacific runs almost in a straight
line from Kansas City to Denver.

Other articles of agricultural produce are also high in price.
When I was last in Denver potatoes were selling at 82. a ton, whereas
we consider 42. a veiy good price in this country. No doubt the
prices both of hay and potatoes were somewhat exceptional last year^
as the season had been dry and the crop therefore short. Still I
Bnderstand that these articles always fetch a high price as compared
with what can be obtained for them in most other parts of the United
States. There are, too, great developments projected in the shape of
railroads connecting with the Colorado lines, and passing through
Arizona and Mexico to ports on the Pacific. I think there can be no
doubt that the construction of these lines will tend to stimulate the
growth of Denver and of other towns in Colorado. I believe that
any one who purchases land judiciously in Colorado at the present
time will not only receive a very handsome return for his investment^
but that the capital value of his property will be very largely enhanced
in the (iourse of the next few^years.

The climate of Colorado is dry and bracing, owing to the circum-
stance that even the less elevated part of the state on which the town
of Denver stands is some 5,000 feet above the sea. It is never
Vol. IX.— No. 48. X

:298 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. February

oppressively hot. In winter the temperature is sometimes very low ;
towards the end of last November the thermometer fell to 20^ below
Zero. But the piercing winds which in winter sweep over the prairies
of Iowa and Minnesota seldom prevail in Colorado. Neither is the
settler in Colorado liable to suffer fix)m ague, a complaint which
sometimes attacks the inhabitants of that part of Western Oregon
which may be described as the valley of the Williamette river. Indeed,
invalids from many parts of the United States now resort to Colorado
in search of purer air than they can find at home. By way of illus-
trating the extraordinary clearness of the atmosphere a story is told
of an enthusiastic tourist who started from Denver, hoping to reach the
top of Pike's Peak, the highest mountain in sight, and return next day.
The base of the mountain is more than seventy-five miles from Denver,
and the summit more than 13,000 feet above the sea, or 8,000 feet
-above the level of the town. I should not myself have estimated the
<ii8tance of Pike's Peak from Denver at much more than twenty miles.

From an agricultural point of view Colorado has one drawback.
Owing to the absence of great heat in summer it is not possible to
^ow large crops of Indian com as is done in many parts of the
United States. Com is grown, but the yield is so small that I donbt
whether it is a profitable crop. In respect of other hindrances to
^successful farming, the Colorado beetle, as Mr. Barclay stated in an
article which appeared about a year ago in the FortnigJUh/ Review j
has never been seen in Colorado.

Grasshoppers did a good deal of damage at one time, but I under-
stand that they have not made their appearance of late years, and
the farmers now say they are not much afraid of them, even if they
should come, both because the area under crop being considerably
larger than it was a few years ago, the damage done would be spread
over a wider surface and therefore less felt, and also because they think
they could find means of destroying them.

To anyone who is fond of sport Colorado offers great attractions.
The mountain lakes are full of trout, and the marshy lands swarm,
with ducks. Deer and both brown and grizzly bears are to be found
in the mountains.

I have as yet referred only to those emigrants who desire to
settle upon arable lands. But it is well known that the breeding and
rearing of cattle has attained large proportions in the United States.
The profits of this business are not what they were, though they are
still large. I have been told that a few years ago it was not uncommon
for a cattle breeder to clear 80 or even 100 per cent, on his capital
But the profitable nature of the trade has induced large numbers of
persons to engage in it with the usual and indeed inevitable result,
that there has been a fall in profits. Still, I believe that with good
management from 25 to 30 per cent, can still be obtained on the money
invested. The business of cattle breeding in this country requires con-
siderably more capital than arable fitrming, and this is the case also

1881. EMIGRATION TO THE UNITED STATES. 299

in the United States. I believe the smallest number with which it
is worth while to start is about 1,000 head of cattle. A mixed herd —
that is, a herd of cows and calves, yearlings, two-year-olds and three-
jear-olds of this number — if composed, as is usually the case, partly
of Texan and partly of what are called graded cattle — ^Texan or
Colorados crossed with shorthorns or Hereford bidls — will cost about
3,0002. It takes three men to look after 1,000 cattle^ and each of
these men will receive about 75L a year with his board. Then each
man requires several horses or ponies. No ^ cowboy ' ever thinks of
walking ; if he were to make his appearance on foot among the cattle,
they would either charge him or there would be a general stampede.
I do not think it would be prudent for anyone to go into the cattle
business without a capital of some 4,0002. And the larger capitalists
have a considerable advantage, because a large herd can be much
more economically worked than a small one. The reason is that the
number of men who have to be employed in looking after the cattle
does not require to be increased in the same ratio as the herd. It
takes three men to look after 1,000 cattle, but five men can look after
.2,000, and a herd of 20,000 cattle can be worked much more econo-
mically than one of 2,000. I do not think that Colorado is a good
place for the small capitalist, the man with 4,000Z. or 5,0002., to
enter upon the cattle business. I was told that what was called the
free ranches, the lands, that is, on which any one may turn out his
cattle, were all overstocked ; and that in consequence the cattle on
them did not thrive or fatten as they used to do.

The really good ranches are virtually in the hands of a few
owners. In theory it is open to any one to turn out his cattle on the'
plains, but the water frontages have been bought up and fenced off, and
as the land is of no use without water for the cattle to drink, the man
who owns the water frontage also practically owns the pasturage adjoin-
ing it; so that if any one now wishes to go in for cattle in Colorado^
<he must begin by buying out some one who oums a water &ontage.

But there is still abundance of land in the United States over
which a man may run his cattle free of charge. In Texas there are
inunense masses of fine pasture land as yet unoccupied. I should
not, however, from what I have heard of the country, advise any one
to go to Texas. The people in many parts of the state are veiy wild
and lawless, and settlers in the southern part, near the Bio G-rande, are
exposed to the depredations of the Mexicans who come across the fron-
^er and carry off cattle. Then Texas is very unhealthy for the better
class of cattle. Cattle of improved breeds, if brought into Texas after
they are twelve months old, succumb to the climate, and it is only by
bringing them in very young that it is possible to acclimatise them. As
for the native Texan cattle, they are the type of all that a beef produc-
ing animal should not be, they have narrow chests, long legs, and backa
like razors. I never handled one, but they look as if they had very hard

x2

300 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. February

Lair and skins. Their beef is hard and stringy, and fetches the lowest
price in the Amerfcan market.

In the Territory of Wyoming there is still grazing land to be had
free, and in Dakotah and Montana there are large tracts still open.
The ranchman has many hardships to bear. In summer he has to
follow his cattle under a burning sun. In winter he has often to
camp out in the snow. He has to be absent for long periods of time
from civilised society, he has to live on hard fare, and often to dis-
pense with many comforts which we have come to look on as neces-
saries of life. He sometimes suffers heavy losses from dry smnmers
and severe winters. Still, to many men, the free life in the open air
has a quiet charm. I hardly think, however, that a settler, going
out from this country, would act wisely in at once entering on the
cattle business. It is a business which has to be learned like any
other, and I think a young man going to the United States would do
well to wait a year or two before he starts a herd of his own. This
business is not like that of arable farming. Many men go out from
this country to the United States who know very little of farmings
and who after a time get on very well. They may make mistakes at
first, but they come right at last. But then the land is always them
to fall back on. But if a man invests his money in a herd of cattle,
and mismanages them, he may lose not his income pidy, buthis
capital, or a great part of it. Sheep-breeding is poetised on a large
scale in Eastern Oregon and California, and in Montana, New Mexico^
and Texas. The profits are large, but the risks are considered to be
greater than in the case of cattle. Sheep require more attention
than cattle. They are subject to scab and other infectious diseases to
which cattle are not liable ; and it is more difficult to bring them
through a severe winter. In some of the ranges of Colorado Uiere is
a poisonous grass which kills sheep. Cattle either do not eat it or
do not suffer from it. A considerable number of lambs are destroyed
every year by the prairie wolves. As in this country, cattle and
sheep do not thrive on the same pastures. The sheep eat out the
best grasses, and leave nothing for the cattle but the coarser herbage.
As a natural consequence, the men who turn out sheep on the &e&
ranges are very unpopular with the breeders of cattle. It does not
appear that much attention has as yet been paid in the United States
to the improvement of the breed of sheep. At the great cattle show
held at Chicago in November last, the sheep from Canada, both
Merinos and Cotswolds, were very superior to any that were exhibited
by the flockmasters of the United States.

And now let me express a hope that none of those who may read
this paper will be tempted to invest their means in this or that state,
on the strength of what they may have read, without first making full
enquiry for themselves. I should be very sorry to have such a respon-
sibility put upon me. And let me put in a word by way of caution

1881. EMIGRATION TO THE UNITED STATES. 301

to those who may be tempted by the offers of land in America on
the part of the various companies which sometimes appear in the
newspapers here. We may depend upon it these offers are not made
out of pure benevolence, and that the vendor does not fail to put a
very handsome bonus in his pocket. I will give an instance of the
large profits which these middlemen sometimes expect. Some time
since a company, with which I am connected, was offered a tract of
land in Texas for 60 cents, or about half-a-crown an acre, by an
American. We had sent out to the United States a gentleman from
this country in whom we had confidence, with instructions to examine
the lands which were offered for sale and to report on them. He
informed us that the parties who were in possession of the Texas land
grant offered the land at 40 cents, so that if we had closed with
the offer of the American land speculator, he would have pocketed a
<*onm]iBsion 6f 50 per cent. As it happened, we did not purchase
the land, but if we had bought it direct from the owners, the dif-
ference between the price which we should have given them and
that which would have been received by the land speculator would
have more thaJn covered the remuneration and expenses of the gentle-
man whom we sent out to report, though he was several months in
America, and travelled many thousand miles. If any considerable
nomber of persons should think of trying their fortunes in the
United States, I think they could not do better than follow the
^example of the farmers in the south of Scotland. Some two years
ago they clubbed together and sent out some of their number to
examine the country and report upon it. Any one who may go out
with the view of obtaining information either for himself or his friends
will find many of his countrymen either settled in the state and in
CSanada, or residing there temporarily, who will be- ready to give him
all tbe assistance in their power. And in every part of North
America I believe that English and Scotch settlers are very popular ;
there is no jealousy of them, but they are welcomed as men who are
likely to make good citizens, and to develop the resources of the
.country,

AlBLIE.
POSTBCBIPT.

Since the above paper was written, the contract between the Canadian Government
-and the Syndicate which has been formed for constructing the Canadian Pacific
Bailway has been laid before the Dominion Parliament. If I am rightly inf oimed
■aa to the terma of that contract, no maximum rates for freight are to be imposed on
the railway company, but they are to be allowed to charge as much as they can get;
and, farther, the construction of any line that might compete with the Canadian
I^cific is to be prohibited for a period of twenty years.

It may be that the political necessity for constructing the Canadian Pacific rail-
road is so great that the Canadian Government has had no choice but to accept these
czierous terms. But I am afraid that they will militate very much against the rapid
settlement of the country. It is clear that settlers in North- Western Canada^ who
are dependent on a railroad which has such an unqualified monopoly conferred on it,
wiU be placed at a great disadvantage as compaied with their neighbours in the
United States, where any one can obtain a charter for a railroad if he can find the
pital reqniied to build it.

302 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Februarj

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LIBERALISM.

Two of our most prominent Liberal statesmen have incidentally fur-
nished the public with definitions of Liberalism, and, in doing so,
have, for the moment, by a curiosity of fate, exchanged r6U8 in the
matter of literary expression. In more than one speech, Mr. Gladstone,
has, with a brevity and point that recall Lord Sherbrooke, said in sub-
stance that ^ Liberalism is trust of the people tempered by prudence,
Conservatism distrust of the people tempered by fear.' At a Colston
banquet, rather more than four years ago. Lord Sherbrooke, then Mr.
Lowe, with a copiousness usually regarded as a characteristic of the
Premier, gave four notes of a true Liberal. He was a man who,
firstly, hoped more from the good that is in human nature than he
feared from its evil ; secondly, looked to the embodiment of great
principles in legislation rather than to the manipulation of details by
rule of thumb ; thirdly, subordinated personal, sectional and local to
national interests ; and fourthly, respected institutions not because
they were, but because they ought to be. Liberalism, in short,
according to Lord Sherbrooke, works from faith in human nature, by
means of general principles, in behalf of universal interests, and to-
wards an ideal standard. Conservatism, he implies, may be conceived
by reversing this picture.

The value of these definitions, struck out as they have been by the
force of circumstances from minds at once enriched by the best cul-
ture of their time and continiially in contact with public afiairs, lies
not merely in the abstract truth which they undoubtedly express, but
in their adaptation to the practical realities of the case. The dis-
tinctive attitude of Liberalism has long been, still is, and to all ap-
pearance long will be, that of an attack upon the positions of Conser-
vatism. In this attack, both the authorities quoted, and one of
them in certain respects &r more prominently and powerfully than
the other, have been intimately engaged, and it is almost inevitable
that a description by them of what they have been doing should
furnish the directest attainable guide to Liberalism as a present and
living fact. In this light, it is important to observe that the defini-
tions given by the two statesmen are complementary and explanatoiy
of each other. Whether or not Lord Sherbrooke's account of the notes

1881. THE PHILOSOPHY OF LIBERALISM. 305

of Liberalism, if rigidly criticised, miglit be found to sin against the
laws of logical division, it would not be difficult to show that his
root-principle of faith in human nature gives origin to all the rest,
while it is clearly the justification of Mr. Grladstone's assertion of
^ trust of the people ' as ^the substance of present political wisdom*
This latter maxim again furnishes the practical method by whi^LLord'
Sherbrooke's generalisations are to be applied to the facts of life.

Is this root-principle of Liberalism sound ? Is faith in human
nature a safe ground to go upon ? Is it true that more is to be hoped
from the good than to be feared from the evil that is in mankind in
general ? The question, it should be observed, has regard to a com-
parative, and not to an absolute state of things. If it had been put
with reference to the perfection, or even, perhaps, the perfectibility, of
human nature, there could have been no hesitation about the answer.
There is too much to find fault with in all men, and in some men
there are depths of evil which one feels are too gently described by
such terms as insane, inhimian, infernal, diabolical, or the most
sinister epithets to be found in the vocabulary of condemnation.
What is asked however is only whether for political issues, and in the
construction of society, the nature of man may be assumed to be
essentially a good or a bad, a trustworthy or an untrustworthy thing.

Here we are encountered by certain well-known and extensively
accepted theological views, which represent human nature as entirely
depraved. On this showing, there would, at first sight, appear to be
no ground whatever for the faith on which Liberalism proposes to
act. It is not necessary, however, to enter upon the formidable
task of examining the theologian's proofs of his position, and that
for three reasons. First, he does not affirm that the human nature
at any given time existing on the face of the earth is entirely
depraved, but only that it would be so, were it not for a special
divine interposition of a corrective character, which, he assures us, is,
and always has been, at work. Next, as he does not know on what
scale this alleged interposition may be going on, and can only form
a eoujecture from what he sees, like other people, he is not in a posi-
tion to say that it may not embrace all the faculties of all men.
Lastly, he admits that his views are, in no case, inconsistent with.
the existence of any amount of what to all appearance are personal
and social virtues, against which he has nothing to say except that ia
some instances, though in none for certain, they may be destitute of a
peculiar religious character and value, required on what he claims as
the authority of revelation, but which in no way unfits them for the
purposes of ordinary life.

Feeling ourselves therefore at absolute liberty to put the ques-
tion. Is human nature, as we find it, essentially good or evil ? we
open our eyes, and what do we see ? Perfection ? By no means. A
vast amount of wickedness, folly, and weakness, but a vast amount of

304 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. February

virtue, wisdom, and strength as well, in perpetual conflict with
the other ; and what we have to consider is whether the better do not
preponderate over the worse elements in the struggle. That is a
consideration which every one must deal with for himself on each
evidence as lies within his reach. There is the net result of all
human effort and struggle in the past, in the condition of the
organised societies of the world as we see them. Some of them,
it is true^ are not much to boast of, but is not the worst of them a
proof that the influences that go to put things right are stronger
than those that go to put them wrong ? There are the people one
comes across or hears authentically of in life. They are not all saints
and sages certainly, but does not experience convey the impression
that the number of individuals who are applying a fair amount of
good sense and right motive to the business of the world, far out-
weighs those whose activity is of an opposite character ? Then Uiere
is one's own nature and career, of which, in the deeper springs of
them, each man is generally a juster judge than those who can only
bestow a glance on them from the outside. Is it <conceivable that
from any given number of men who have been induced to perform
an efficient process of introspective criticism, a majority of reports,
or even a single report, would be returned of an absolutely condem-
natory character ?

What now is the joint effect of these' different testimonies, all of
them imiversally accessible? Does it differ from the conclusion
drawn by Evolutionary Science, working in a more recondite sphere,
that the good elements in human nature have the power of a present,
and the promise of a growing, victory over the evil ? The answer of
Liberalism is distinctly. No. It affirms as a £EU)t of Nature, that
humanity as a whole merits respect and confidence, and that poUti-
cians and all who in any way occupy themselves with the protection
and improvement of human society are engaged, not only in a gene-
rous, but in a hopeful, undertaking.

G^ it be said that Conservatism founds upon this creed? It
would be invidious, and in many cases unjust, to say of individual
Conservatives that they either despise the rest of society or are indif-
ferent to its well-being. As private persons, dealing with humanity
in concrete cases, they may be all that not only justice, but courtesy
and kindness require. But that is not the point that is in question,
and it merely furnishes an additional illustration of the common-
place that men are often better than their creed. We have to do
with them as members of a public organisation that seeks to deal
with society in the mass, and their estimate of mankind must be
measured by the spirit which really gives life and shape to the body
which they help to form. The two great political tendencies, the
one to change and the other to resist change, have inevitably worked
up the individual constituents of society into two colossal organisms

1881. THE PHILOSOPHY OF LIBERALISM. 305

or personalities, the resultant of whose pulling in opposite directions
determines the stage of advance occupied by society at any parti-
cular moment. These organisms naturally maintain themselves in
existence by the continual attraction .and assimilation of new
individual members. The latter, as they emerge from political
thoughtlessness, or political sleep, find themselves, from family or
social circumstances, &om personal predisposition or conviction, or
otherwise, drawn into sympathy and ultimate incorporation with one
organism or the other. Once in, however, they become filled with
the animating and distinctive character of the structure of which
they have become a part, and whatever the peculiarities of their
private mind and feeling may be, their public spirit is the spirit of
the organism, and the spirit of the organism is one which is trans-
mitted from series to series of its component members, the traditional
essence of it being, of comrse, subject to such modifications as the
incidents of its history may impose.

Apart, then, firom the private sentiments of individual Conserva-
tives, what is the spirit of Conservatism as a public power ? It is
certain that nothing will account for its character and history so
satisfactorily as the theory that it starts from a low view of human
nature, especially as it is found in the great masses of society. When
the Conservatism, with which the Liberalism of to-day is still in con-
flict, is traced back, its origin will be found in a conquering caste
which managed by force or craft, or other outrageous means, to sub«
ject the rest of the community to its will. The history of Liberalism
13 mainly the history of the struggle of the subjugated conununity to
emancipate itself firom the bondage imposed on it by the conquering
oligarchy, both lay and priestly, whether in the form of striking the
fetters from its own liberties, or abolishing the privileges with which
the dominating class had sought to fortify its position. It needs no
detailedfproof that at this stage of its career Conservatism was iden-
tical with a contempt of human nature, looking as it did upon the
mass of men as fit only to be the thralls of the few.

It may be said that, even then. Conservatism must have respected
human nature as represented in itself. That, however, may be
doubted. Bespect for the exception does not cancel contempt for the
rule, and in the present instance it may be questioned whether even
the respect for the exception could be very complete. The presence
of pride in the use of power to subdue, the absence of certain elements
of justice and generosity involved in treating other men as fit only
for serfdom, form serious deductions from the needful warrants of
£elf-respect, and their place is not supplied by eminent qualities for
the council or the field.

Modem Conservatism may not be composed so exclusively of
pride of superior power and the exercise of it in conquest as it was in
its more ancient form, but those elements are still present in it in

306 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. February

more than sufficient abundance. The political tendency, for ex-
ample, which has obtained notoriety under the name of Imperialism,
is a revival of the old instinct of conquest. Moreover, there is a
tendency on the part of many people who rise in life, and who appear
not to be able to make more of their success than a ministry to their
own self-esteem, to gravitate towards Conservatism, an indication
that the ^ barren principle of pride ' and sympathy with it are still
abundant and strong in its composition.

In the case of those who rise by the acquisition of wealth, this is
not so surprising as it is in those whose superior education gives them
a position. Universities were meant to enlarge as well as strengthen
the whole nature of those who undergo their training, and it need
not be said in how many instances they have served, or, at all events,
have not defeated, this purpose. But in numerous cases also, the
very opposite result is produced. Whether the fault lie in the kind
of education given, or in the nature of the person receiving it, the
possession of the conventional title of ^ educated ' spoils many men.
Their education goes to their heads in the wrong sense. The chief
use they make of it is to sustain a consciousness of being better than
other people, and under the influence of this conceit of culture, often
quite baseless in reality, they naturally drift towards the party whose
historical origin and traditional spirit are identified with contempt
for the mass of mankind. It is a singular commentary on the edu*
cation furnished by Oxford and Cambridge that both Univeisities
return Conservatives to Parliament. Conservatism boasts of the
preponderating adherence of the educated classes. The &ct, however,
if it be one, suggests less the superiority of Conservatism than the
doubtful value of much of our ^ higher ' education, and the rarity of
the moral qualities necessary for carrying the full intellectual cup.

Another clearly marked survival of the feeling of the conquering
caste is shown in the attitude of Conservatism whenever the question
of property, and particularly property in land, comes into prominence.
The principle of property, as opposed to that of a community of
goods, stands on a sufficiently impregnable basis of argument. It
has a higher public utility on its side than any other scheme for the
distribution of possessions, and what more can any institution want
to have said in its favour ? But Conservatism seems to regard this
as too pale and passionless a statement to rest on in the case of any
attack, real or imaginary, on the principle of property. Its exponents
treat those who wish to discuss the question as a social problem not
so much in the light of erring controversialists whose reasonings
require correction, as of a predatory horde that must be driven back
from the camp with all possible speed. We have captured this booty i
for ourselves, touch it who dare I is no exaggerated representation of
the tone in which Conservatism too frequently approaches property
discussions. The idea of property as an arrangement based on social

1881. THE PHILOSOPHY OF LIBERALISM. 307

expediency seems an insufficient justification. Because the in-
dividual has managed to be the first to get hold of something, he is
entitled to keep it, as against the community, who are at the same
time hound to protect him in possession. The plea comes as near as
can be imagined to maintaining that property is theft, and quite
right too. It is not, however, an unnatural plea in the mouth of a
party whose traditions come down from those who took what they
could get with the strong hand, the rest of society, or anything re-
sembling rights on their part, not being worthy of consideration.
That such spoliators, while they had the power, should make laws
studiously protective of their own interests, and oppressive, whenever
necessary, of the remainder of a coiomunity which they regarded as
good for nothing but serfage, was no more than logical consistency
demanded, and it would have been expecting too much to suppose
that their political descendants would not be deeply tinged with the
same spirit of class selfishness.

The spirit of contemporary Conservatism would, however, be very
imperfectly analysed were it made to consist merely in pride of
sup^ority and the assertion of class interest. In the struggle, in-
evits^le everywhere, between patrician and plebeian, between the
oligarchic and democratic tendencies in society, a time arrives lirhen
the people become too strong to be treated in the old contemptuous
way. They have been gradually proving that there is more in them
of good of every kind than they had been credited with, and the fact
th^ it is so now begins to make itself felt. At the critical period of
their recognising this fact a change comes over the spirit of the
dominant class. It passes into a phase for which no better expres-
sion could be foimd than Mr. Grladstone's formula of ^ distrust of the
people tempered by fear.' The traditional feeling that the people-
must be kept under has in no way disappeared &om the mind of the
ruling class, but it is seen that it must be made effectual by different
means. Formerly a scornful use of the requisite force was con-
sidered sufficient to put down any attempt at popular self-assertion.
That, however, being no longer possible, argument must be resorted
to. A resurrection is made of the Aristotelian distinction between
those meant by nature to rule and those whom she means to be ruled,
and Conservatism tacitly assumes that the first class consists of itself,.
and the second of the people. It is argued that the people are too
ignorant, stupid, and selfish to be emancipated and trusted with
power, and that if they get the upper hand in any way, society will
go to pieces. It is not necessary to assume insincerity on the part
of all Conservative advocates of such doctrines. Most of them are
probably quite heartily of opinion that loss of power by themselves
is equivalent to the destruction of society, the people being certain,.
in the madness which is assumed to be somehow or other inseparable
from their position in the social scale, to wreck every institution
that ministers to social well-being.

308 TEE NINETEENTH CENTURY. February

When matters have reached a crisis like this. Conservatism usually
receives a great accession from two of the more weak and timid
sections of society, whose presence serves to dilute the traditional
imperiousness and fierceness of spirit hitherto characteristic of it,
thereby imparting to it what, in its new circumstances, is the un-
doubted advantage of greater plausibility. The first of these classes
consists of those who have become genuinely alarmed at the growth of
popular power. Free, in a great measure, from the old harsh disdain
of the people, they would gladly see them well governed, if they
themselves were allowed to do it, but from popular self-government
they shrink in terror. The people, they are certain, will seliSshly
combine to rob and oppress the other classes, or will foolishly force on
legislation that must end in national ruin. Accordingly, they unite
with the hitherto ruling class in an obstinate resistance to change.

In this they are joined by another class, whose characteristic is
inertia, of mind or of will. Inertia of naind reveals itself in multi-
tudes of people — it is they who expose Conservatism to the nickname
of the ' stupid party ' — in a dulness of imagination, which disahles
them for shaping the idea of things as they are being ever replaced
by an equivalent, to say nothing of a better, substitute. Their inhom
detestation of change is shared by others whose inertia of will springs
from indolence, and who, foreseeing that the introduction of new
political ideas will involve a vast amount of trouble and the putting
forth of increased energy to meet the new arrangements that must
follow, set their faces against innovation from the very first as the
most promising security for ease in the circumstances.

Such, then, is the genesis and the structure of fully developed
Conservatism — the instinct of tyranny, allied with pride, class-selfish-
ness, timidity, and inertia, all uniting in an under-estimate of
the popular deserts and in a common chorus of ^ No I ' to every
proposal from the popular party tending to their advance in liberty
or power. If there should ever be some seeming abandonment of
this attitude of universal negation, as when Conservatism yielded
the Beform Act of 1867, it is not to be interpreted as a true and
permanent departure from ^distrust of the people,' but simply as
^ proof that this distrust is being ' tempered with fear,' and is gene-
rally the act of some clever leader using the party's instinct of self-
preservation, to make it don for the nonce a mimetic Liberalism and
offer a concession to popular demands, with the view, whether vain or
otherwise, of better preserving the remainder of its ascendency.

The Conservatism of to-day, recruited, and at the same time
softened, as its original nucleus of imperiousness and domination has
been, by tributary elements of political influence, no longer confides
in mere force, but seeks to justify its position by argument. The
«um of this argument, as we have already seen, is that the people are
not to be trusted. Sometimes a preliminary objection is taken, that
Liberalism is false to fact and to public interests in setting np a

1881. THE PHILOSOPHY OF LIBERALISM. 309

4

separate party of < the people ' at all, that ^ the people ' means the
whole people, rich and powerful people, as well as poor and uninfiu-
ential people, and that Conservatism is the true party of the people,,
inasmuch as the policy it promotes is that which is best adapted to
the interests of the whole community, and not of a section only. The
answer is that the separation is unavoidable, because history cannot
be cancelled. It is a tBLct that the comparative few had taken it
npon them to govern the many at their own pleasure, necessarily im-
posing upon them in the process many oppressive disabilities. If the
few had a right to do this, the many had just as good a right to say
that they preferred governing themselves, and if they and their
leaders have called themselves the party of * the people,' it is because
those whom Conservatism represents had previously divided the com-
munity into ' the people ' and their masters. Liberalism is pressing
on, as &st as Conservatism will allow it, towards the state of things
when there shall be only one people, and need be only one party of
the people, but that cannot happen until every unnecessary privilege^
inequality, and relic of class domination has been replaced by arrange-
ments befitting an undivided community that means to manc^ it&
own affairs. Liberalism, when interpreted by its aims rather than by
its necessities, is not a battle for the supremacy of a class, but an
effort to heal up a separation of classes originally made by a totally
different social power.

Meanwhile, we must take * the people ' as they have been put be-
fore us, and consider what there is in the Conservative assertion of
their political untrustworthiness. ' Thirty millions, mostly fools,' is
the description given of them by one who has certainly not been Con-
servative in some very important matters, although in this' criticism
Conservatism seems to agree with him. The saying is a hard one.
Is it true ? Fools, if you will have it so, they may be in many
things : in art, literature, science, eloquence, and the like. But the
question here is not about such matters, but about what la needed to-
promote the widest difiusion of happiness in such a society as ours.
Are they fools on such questions ? They have been closest to the
difficulties, and have been compelled to learn day by day, that prac-
tical wisdom which life teaches in its sternest school. How have
they, on the whole, profited by the discipline ? Look at our per-
centages of crime and pauperism. It is a pity they are not smaller,,
but taken as they stand, they show that the people keep themselves
respectable and independent. In view of the fight that life presents^
to most, a population capable of that achievement are not entirely
fools. In philosophy and sesthetics, for the refinements of intellect
or taste, their capacity may not be great, but it would be strange if
on some of the most perplexing and pressing political problems they
could not contribute some elements of valuable judgment which we
should look for in vain among those whose training has been acquired
in the school of ease and pleasure, not of labour and necessity.

510 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. FeT)ruray

The quarters of society in which the statesman is most wanted
xtre where the pressure of the social fabric is felt most keenly, aad
those are its foundations. What light should people of fortune aad
xsulture be able to throw upon this ? It is natural for them to fonn
jSk world of their own, by which their aptitudes are determined, and in
which these are serviceable. But it does not follow that because they
are authorities in their own world, they should be so out of it. No
one is entitled to blame them for making the best for themselves of
their own world, and for, consequently, having little direct acquarn-
tance with problems lying outside, or ability to solve them. But, on
that very account, they are bound to acquiesce in the outside people
having something to say in the outside affairs. The exasperation of
the poor against the rich, which has so often in history led to revolu-
tion, has not been due to the mere contrast of fortune. The number
^f people who grudge the fiEiirly earned prosperity of others is small;
but it is a very different matter when the poor feel themselves ex-
cluded by the rich £rom a voice in redressing those social wrongs
which they reasonably believe they understand best, and whose re-
moval they conceive would give them a fair chance of achieving their
natural share of well-being. In such a case, anger is not only pro-
bable, but proper.

Education, it must be remembered, is a relative term, and it is
certain that much of our education has little to contribute in the way
of producing political wisdom. Too often its principal effect is to
mislead its possessor into the belief that he must be an authority,
with the certain result that he will neglect those inquiries without
which it is impossible to see what is the political difficulty which, at
the moment, really requires to be grappled with, and what is the true
way of settling it. Tried by experience, the political capacity of the
people contrasts favourably, and in the most marked manner, with
that of the classes who have claimed, in virtue of their better educa-
tion, to be their rightful rulers and guides. The last half-centuiy
has seen a series of great acts of legislation, in all departments, con-
stitutional, industrial, fiscal, educational and ecclesiastical, without
parallel in the history of this country or probably of any other. The
whole of this has been effected through the support of the people,
bitterly opposed at every turn by Conservatism, in the name of all
that was cultured and sacred. Fifty times it has been prophesied that
society was going to pieces. Forty-nine of those times the prophecy
has proved absolutely £Eilse, and as society is still holding together
since the fiftieth, that will most likely prove fidse too.

If this does not show that in the present state of our education a
iine gentleman is not necessarily a fine politician, and that a plain
man who lives nearer the hard realities of life, and receives his
teaching firom them, may possess a more robust political intelligence
than one who is familiar only with the notions floating in the world

188L THE PHILOSOPHY OF LIBERALISM. 311

-of pleasure, it will be difficult to say what can be proved by fact and
experience. It may be said that in many of those acts of legislation,
the people were simply vindicating liberties for themselves, and that
it requires no political wisdom for work of that sort. This plea, how-
ever, granting it to the utmost extent warranted by fact, only famishes
an opportunity of refiiting a special ground on which Conservatism
seeks to justify its distrust of democratic progress. It is said that
the people will combine to use their power for inflicting injustice on
the richer classes. Apart from the immense disadvantage under
which those whose time is mainly engrossed in gaining their livelihood
would labour in attempting such a combination, as compared with
the facilities both of leisure and influence possessed by the rich for
forming a combination of resistance, it may be asked is there any
4[>roof that the people have wished to commit such injustice when
they had the opportunity ? While demanding liberty for themselves,
can it be shown that they ever insisted on more than that the law
should deal out even-handed justice to rich and poor ? The discipline
of hard work conduces quite as much to the formation of a sense of
justice as the life of luxury, and it is incredible that any proposal to
make the law more favourable to the poor man because he is poor, or
more oppressive to the rich man because he is rich, would receive any
jcoimtenance from the bulk of the people of this country. Whether
Conservatism, in opposing the concession of popular liberty, was giving
to others the justice it claims for itself, is a question on which there
is abundant room for at least a second opinion.

It is further said that, after all, the people have little credit in the
political achievements in question, since they did no more than follow
in the train of leaders who sprang from the rich and educated class.
Without raising the question how far leaders are successful merely in
proportion as they furnish the supply to a previously existing demand,
the objection may be admitted in all its breadth, while at the same time
claimed as substantiating what has already been advanced. The &ct
that so many great popular leaders have come from the classes above
the people is a striking proof of the general theorem regarding human
nature, which has been insisted on io opposition to the depreciatory view
of it involved in the acts and pleas of Conservatism. That Liberalism
should owe so much to the class whose temptations, prejudices, and
interests tend so powerfully to generate Conservatism, is not only a
xemarkable tribute to the virtues and intellect of the great men who
have thus overcome the force of their circumstances, but is further a
proof that, however situated, human nature is ultimately able to pro-
dace an amount of good far more than sufficient to counterbalance its
eviL As regards the assertion that the people have done little more
than follow such leaders, as a mere matter of argument the apologist
of the people is not concerned to deny it. The wildest democrat has
.never allied that the people are able to excogitate in detail the

312 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Febniaiy

measures that are essential to the public good. Politics is a special
branch of acquired skill, higher in degree only than shoemaking, and it
is not necessary that the people should be their own politicians any
more than their own shoemakers, if in both cases they know where
the shoe pinches. The working politician must study his craft as
much as the working shoemaker, a consideration which reduces the
question to one of leisure. As a rule the people cannot be expected
to rear their own most finished leaders, simply because their position
does not admit of the necessary amount of spare time.

It is really here that the opportunity of the Consecvatiye classes
lies. If they would employ their leisure and opportunities in aequiriog
the true power that lies in political knowledge, sagacity, and sym*
pathy, there might never be a question of antagonism between liberal*
ism and Conservatism. As things stand, it is the leisure which
wealth procures that has sent the greatest leaders of Liberalism from
among the rich. As fitr as the education current among those who
can best afford it goes, probably the chief assistance derived fiom it
for a political career is the art of reading. But the time and the
access to information ensured by wealth are invaluable, and those
who have employed these in the right spirit to gain a masteiy of
politics as a ministry to human happiness, have almost of necessity
had the people at their command. What the people have con-^
tributed has been mainly in the way of suggestion and recognition.
Being nearest the points at which the social system presses most
severely on society itself, they have been able to intimate to the com-
petent statesman where his first task lay, and it has been their dis-
tinction that when they have heard the language of justice and
practical wisdom, they have known its value and made it victorious^
by their support.

This is not to say that the people are infallible. Liberalism
does not profess to maintain such a thesis. Its * trust of the people'
must be * tempered witii prudence.' The people are not, in the mass,
fully trained politicians, just as they are not fully trained anatomists
or physiologists, and they might without knowing it be led fistr enough
astray if left to themselves or to designing or unskilful handling..
But is not the same thing true of the Conservative classes ? Would
it be difficult to persuade the House of Lords to do a foolish thing?
Might not Convocation itself be lashed into most unholy rage by
some excited zealot ? No doubt a self-seeking demagogpie may abuse
the honesty and ignorance of the people ; but almost every clever
swindler succeeds for a time with the people he practises on. Con-
servatism itself has occasionally been victimised by the adventurer
and the charlatan. The true popular leader, accordingly, who under-
stands his function and feels his responsibility, will never forget that
while the people have the capacity as well as the right to direct in
their own affairs, their wisdom necessarily has its limits, and he will

1881. THE PHILOSOPHY OF LIBERALISM. . 313

not shrink from putting himself forward to oppose the fool, the
fanatic, or the knave, when he sees them seeking to lead the people
beyond their depth. Such has undoubtedly been the history of the
Liberal statesmanship of England. From time to time crowds here
and there have been deluded by unscrupulous or incompetent
agitators. But wise and earnest leaders have not been afraid to pit
themselves against such pseudo-leaders, in the belief that while the
people might be temporarily deceived by the glitter of the false
metal, they would not fail to recognise the ring and weight of the
true when it was presented to them. And the result has fully justi-
fied their confidence. The whole history of English Liberalism is a
proof that there is not only no danger, but the most invaluable
positive good, in democracy when wisely and courageously led.

Yes, but what security is there that it will always be wisely and
courageously led ? is the Conservative rejoinder. Who knows how
soon it may fall into the hands of the political rogue or mountebank ?
Here again we have the root-heresy of Conservatism, its disbelief in
the capacities of human nature, presenting itself with a persistency
of iteration which irresistibly suggests the suspicion that the human
nature with which Conservatism, is conversant in itself may be too
largely composed of those lower elements which are admittedly allied
with the higher. The security we have for a wise and courageous
leadership of the English people in the future is exactly the same
as the security we have for a water-supply in the future. We know
there will be rain, because we know there will be the ocean to yield
clouds at the bidding of the sun. Humanity as represented in the
Kngljiili race is as much a fact of nature as the ocean, and its produc-
tive capacities are as much to be relied on. "What reason is there to
suppose that the race which has given us the great statesmen of the
past and the present cannot give the world their equals in the future ?
The conceit which thinks that there will never be anything seen
again on earth like itself, it may be hoped will prove correct, though
in a dififerent sense from its own. But the race may wear out. So,
we are told, will the supply of coal ; but surely it would be prudence
run mad to provide for that. If the time comes when the leisured
elasB of England cannot produce political leadership for the busy, it
will matter very little to England whether she is misruled by a
headless mob or an efifete aristocracy.

The charge against Conservatism is a serious one. In any case
it is a singular thing for a comparatively small number of people in
a nation to stand up and say to the rest, ^ You sit still, we will do
the whole business.' The nation might very well answer, as it has
answered, ' Thank you, we prefer to do our own business ourselves,
and if you try to stop us, we shall not let you.' If the people were
clearly incapable of doing the business, there might be some show of
justification for saying, ^ These madmen will bring themselves and

Vol. IX.— No. 48. Y

314 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. February

us*to ruin ; we must put them down, and guide things our own way.'
But when, as the issue has shown, the people have a fund of political
wisdom which Consen'atism lacks, the whole position becomes
ludicrously untenable. And yet this mistaken contempt for human
nature as represented in the mass of the nation lies beyond doubt at
the heart of Conservatism, in spite of the Beform Act of 1867,
granted because it was impossible to make a better of it, and not in
the faith that an increase of popular power was right in itself, and
would strengthen the State. It is not respect for the people which
prefers military glory among foreigners to the development of
domestic civilisation, and believes that the people whose vital
interests are thus neglected will be delighted with the gewgaw suh-
stitute ; or which, when the nation emphatically condemns such a
way of dealing with its fortunes, accounts for its verdict by insulting
considerations ; or which, when a large section of the population,
rendered desperate by immediate calamity and the accumulated
wrongs of past misrule, becomes clamorous and dashes out wildly in
all directions for relief, slights a policy of reasonable concession as
the justification of reasonable firmness, and regards effectual suppres-
sion by brute force as the best that such rebels deserve.

To this initial mistake on the point of fact may be traced all those
shortcomings of Conservatism which, as already mentioned, Lord
Sherbrooke indicates through their Liberal antitheses. Of these
latter, one is that Liberalism works for national interests, and not for
those of the individual or the class. Believing in man^ it works for
man, and not merely for certain men. Conservatism virtually reverses
the process. How should it do otherwise ? A low view of human
nature leads to cynicism, and cynicism to selfishness. Why trouble
ourselves about a crowd of fools or brutes ? let us fence in a life of
power, plenty, and elegance for ourselves — ^is the natural language of
those who, seeing nothing great and worth working for in general
humanity, remain strangers to the highest aim in public life ; and
although the sentiment may not always or commonly be put so
harshly, it states the standard by which the different degrees of it
may be measured. That Liberalism should be dissatisfied with things
as they are — if they are not what they ought to be — ^and should aim
at the ideal state of society, is a necessary corollary from its adoption
of universal interests as the object of its action, as also is its employ-
ment of general principles in policy and legislation as its means toils
end. What it wants to effect is the highest happiness, not of a chiss,
but of all, and as long as the ideal state of society has not been
reached, it has no seicurity that some portion of it may not be suffer-
ing unnecessarily. Moreover, it knows that ideal grievances may
often be as prolific of pain as material ones. To many, liberty is (hiIj
second to food, and a needless inequality as vexing as an excessiTO
tax. For forwarding such an ideal state, the application of general
principles to politics is indispensable. Without them universal justice

1 881. THE PHILOSOPHY OF LIBERALISM. 3 1 5

is unattainable ; it is of them alone we can be sure that they will find
their way through every passage and into every nook and cranny of
society, rectifying, on their path, every rectifiable abuse to which they
are adapted ; and Liberalism accordingly is, in one aspect of it, an in*
cesaant effort for the realisation of the general principles of social
well-being, in its ideal form, to the utmost extent, and at the earliest
date, that practical emergencies will allow.

To Conservatism, all this necessarily seems foolishness. Bealising
the ideal state of society is for it a dream. At any given stage of
history it is satisfied that the best attainable condition of things is
already in existence, the wonder being that it is so good. Even if man-
kind deserved to have any risk incurred for them, the risk is too
great. They are so foolish and so selfish that to give them liberty to
lay bands on the existing framework of affairs would infallibly lead
to mischief, and probably ruin. Accordingly, while Liberalism, in
the case of any proposal of social improvement which makes out a
probable case, acts on the presumption that society ought to be cre-
dited with the will and capacity to do it justice, to Conservatism the
only safe policy seems resistance to change. We know what we have,
we do not know what we may lose. As for general principles of
social amelioration, what zeal on their behalf is possible in presence
of this despairing and everlasting No ?

In the light of this contrast of Liberalism and Conservatism in
respect of their psychological basis, it is equally easy to understand
and to disregard much of the alarm ^ by which Conservatism is at the
present moment agitated in view of some of the actual proceedings
and all^;ed tendencies of Liberalism. A sort of * Badicalism ' is said
to be rising into influence, which, if it gets its own way, will not only
injnre the British Constitution, but absolutely destroy society. This
is formidable enough, if true, but the same cry has often been heard
before, and has not hitherto been followed by much that need have
been feared. ' Badicalism ' is a vague term which can easily be made
to cover a great deal. A Badical has been defined by an eminent
authority as an ' earnest Liberal \ ' and this account of the relations
of the two might probably be completed by defining a Liberal as a
pradent Badical. It being of the essence of Conservatism to be sta-
tionary, division in its ranks is abnormal. There can be no separa-
ting where everybody stands still. Liberalism, being the party of
movement, almost of necessity splits into a faster and a slower section,
the question between them referring, not to the destination, but to
the pace. The rule has been that Liberalism, as a whole, has in the
end put in force the anticipations of Badicalism, so called, and if the
present alarms of Conservatism are not a mere beating of the air, they
must be intended to intimate that, as usual. Liberalism as a whole will

* For some illustrations of tliis reference may be made to Mr. Mallock's article

* The Philosopbj of Conservatism ' in the Nineteenth Centvry for November, 1880.

t2

316 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. February

drift into adopting the speciality of Badicalism, and that this time it
will end in the destruction of society.

In proof of this, it is said that Badicalisin is tempting LiberaUsnk
on to undermine the principle of property. If that be true, it may
with safety be predicted that Badicalism has no chance of success.
The institution of property is too deeply rooted in the self-love and
sense of justice of mankind for the principle of thorough-going com-
munism ever to obtain any extensive or permanent hold in society.
A certain amount of it is probably inseparable from all State life—
since property is merely a matter of expediency, and possesses no reli-
gious sacredness, while State life is impossible unless the individual
and his possessions to some extent belong to all. But a native and
healthy egoism makes it a pain for every man to part with what Lis
own powers have produced or acquired. It is like lopping off a part
of himself, and nothing can heal the amputation except the substi-
tution of what he considers an equivalent. So strong is this feeling
that the attempt to work society universally and permanently on any
other footing would be found impracticable. But the mass of men
have sufficient acuteness and sense of equity to understand that they
can be allowed to retain their own productions or acquisiti<Hi8 only
on condition of every other person being allowed to retain his. That
this involves acquiescence in inequality of property is plain, and there
is no proof that men spontaneously grudge this inequality, where it
has not directly or indirectly been brought about in an unnatural,
violent, or otherwise inequitable manner. In that case they will
probably demand the interposition of the State to redress the in-
equalities created by traditional or contemporary injustice, or by
public calamity ; but such an interposition will be not an invasion,
but a restoration, of the principle of property.

Communistic or other principles hostile to property seldom find
much acceptance except where large classes are next door to destitu-
tion, where, though labouring to the fullest extent of their ability,
and even beyond, they can with difficulty secure the barest necessaries
of life. Among people who have so little experience of the * magic of
property,' it is not surprising that there should not be much zeal in
its behalf. Besides, such a condition of the labouring class is very
frequently the result of past misgovemment, carried out in the name
of the whole community, and it is a genuine hardship demanding
some redress, if one class has to bear all the disadvantage which mis-
govemment is certain to cause somewhere, while the others enjoy
such compensatory advantages as it may have been used to snatch.
In any case, it will always be a consideration for a wise statesmanship
whether, in such an emergency, an effort on the part of the State
ought not to be made to start a desperate and therefore dangerous
class on a career in which they may come to feel what property is.
Although this can of course only be done by means of the property of

1881. THE PHILOBOPHY OF LIBERALISM. 31T

•others, it would be pedantic literalism to call it communism. It is
really using property to secure property. In the present condition
of English Liberalism, however, there is no symptom of the slightest
relaxation of the notion of property. Accordingly, a reproduction of the
Aristotelian arguments against a community of goods, and elaborate
defences of complete liberty to acquire property, on the ground that
it is the stimulus to all those exertions of the individual by which
society profits most highly, that it gives scope for the development
of the benevolent virtues, &c., are entirely superfluous. Quia
vUuperavit f

Badicalism, it is said. But has it ? Even Badicalism should not
be painted blacker than it is. What are the cases in which Badicalism
has done this evil thing ? For one, we are pointed to the Irish Com-
pensation for Disturbance Bill of last year. Badicab'sm, it is said,
entered into the Government, and under its disastrous influence they
proposed this Bill for undermining the principle of property and so
destroying society. But the Bill as described by its promoters was
the very reverse of this. On their showing it was a bill for conserv-
ing society with a view to strengthening the principle of property.
As far, therefore, as its avowed doctrine is concerned, the Badicalism
that desired this Bill is imjustly accused. But the Bill, it is
maintained, led by necessary consequence to the dangerous conclu-
sions stated. Let us see. A great calamity had made so many small
lenants in Ireland unable to pay their rents, that, in the peculiar and
too well-known circumstances of that country with regard to land,
the rigid enforcement of the law reg^ating contract for rent was, as
stated, on his responsibility, by the head of the Government, bring-
ing matters 'within a measurable distance of civil war.' It was
-accordingly proposed that the law, enforcing the payment of rent,
should be suspended for a short time in certain districts, when the
-tenant was demonstrably unable to pay through the calamity, and
was willing to enter into reasonable arrangements as to the future.
A proposal like this, it is alleged, subverts property and destroys

aociety.

First, it is said, there is no more reason why an Irish landlord
should make up his tenant's losses out of his own pocket, tlian why
the second party in any other contract, anywhere else in the country,
should have his calamities made good by the first. A poor curate,
it is argued, must pay his wealthy tailor's bill, or take the con-
sequences, and it is hard that a landlord should be refused his rent
i)ecau8e he is &t or vulgar, or keeps a French cook. But such carica-
ture loses its efiect, through failing to mark the vital diflerence
lietween a private and a public calamity. A great calamity that pro-
strates whole classes and districts and threatens to shake the social
fabric, may demand an interposition of the law that is not called for
in the case of sufiering by an isolated individual, which, however

318 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. February

hard upon him, does not menace society. But in that case, it is said,
why should not the burden be borne by the whole community ? why
should the landlord be made to bear it all ? But does he ? and if he
did, why should he not ?

The case put by the Radicalism that befriended the Bill was, that
the evicting landlord would be enabled, by the calamity that had
occurred, to effect his purpose without providing the compensatioa
which he would have been compelled to give ill ordinary circum-
stances, so that no hardship was imposed on him by creating some
counterpoise to this unforeseen and unintended advantage. Moie*
over, the design of the measure was that the rent should ultimately
be paid in full. Besides, the Bill was part of a great policy in-
tended, and fitted, to produce in Ireland a peace, order, and content-
ment, which it has not known for centuries, and the effect of which
must be to make property more secure, and therefore more valu-
able. It may suit the conceptions of human nature entertained by
Conservatism, to maintain that the chronic discontent of the Irish
peasantry, which means the bulk of the Irish people, is due to mere
wanton wickedness, has no foundation in any wrong that is arguable
before the tribunal of natural justice, if nowhere else, and that the
only course to be taken with them is to enforce the law, by dragon-
nade if necessary, and leave the victims of it to starve if they can-
not comply. But Liberalism would be imtrue to its faith in humanity
if it assumed that the continuous cry of a whole people could be
absolutely unreasonable, or that the policy of meeting what might be
found reasonable in such a ciy would not obviate the necessity of
resort to what might prove virtually civil war. If such a policy
created peace and security, the ultimate gain to owners of property
would far more than compensate any temporary sacrifice that might
have been required of them in carrying it out,

A further question, however, has to be answered. Does the
doctrine of property require that in all circumstances, no matter how
abnormal, society shall secure the holder of property in absolute and
unimpaired possession of it, without the possibility of risk, or the
dream of loss? Such a demand seems inconsistent both with the
principle and the practice usually associated with property. It must be
repeated that there is nothing more sacred or inviolable in property
than in any other institution. It is an aiTangement justified by the
good of society, and may be infringed when and as far as the good of
society demands. Now society, by its practice, does not appear to un-
dertake the absolute securing of the ovmer in his property. As regards
the natural disasters to which property is exposed, this requires no
illustration. But it applies in other ways as well. The State will do
its best to protect the owner of property against fraud and robbery,
but if the protection fails, he must take his chance ; and every owner
of property must be understood to have taken it on that understand-

1881. THE PHILOSOPHY OF LIBERALISM. 319

ing. Is not this substantially the case of the Irish landlord at the
present moment ? It may be a misfortune for him and for every-
body that his land should be the centre of a ceaseless social war,
maddened by poverty and traditions of injustice, and it is clearly^^his
interest that his property should be rescued from this peril, and
made tenable by him under safer and more creditable conditions.
Bat is he entitled to demand that society shall do this for him
gratis? It is not existing society's fault that his land is at the
bottom of all this mischief. As matters go, the State cannot be
expected to guarantee him absolutely against all loss. The line must
be drawn somewhere, and to draw it at social war does not appe^
unreasonable. The State is bound to do its best to quell the social
war — of course not by inhuman methods — ^and to extricate his^ pro-
perty for him, but if in the process of pulling it out some fragment
of it has to be parted with, he must simply take his chance of that.
Had the State improved his land for him, he could not have objected
to a special rate on his land in return, and in the circumstances of
Ireland there would be no invasion of principle or practice in regard
to property, were landlords asked to make a sacrifice in order to
secure a settlement.

But, it is further alleged, the Disturbance Bill, and all similar
proposals, teach the people a bad lesson. Once relieve them from
paying rent, and they will wish to be relieved always ; once relieve
them from their obligations to landlords, and they will wish to have
a similar deliverance from bakers, grocers, butchers, &c. Then the
people of England and Scotland, seeing the people of Ireland thus
privileged to put their hands into their neighbours' pockets, will
desire to possess a similar privilege, and so property will be extin-
guished, and society will be destroyed. The answer to all this is
that the people are neither such knaves nor such fools as Conserva-
tism takes them for. They can comprehend the logic of an exception.
After all it is not so difficult to understand that taking medicine when
yoa are ill does not carry with it the abandonment of food for ever
afterwards. That the people of Ireland would have desired to convert
the proposed exception into a permanent and universal rule, and having
once in their dire necessity been temporarily relieved, after strict
legal inquiry, from the penal consequences of obligations they were
unable to meet, would have deliberately formed the purpose of never
afterwards paying what they owed to any one, and that the people of
England and Scotland would have followed them in this determina-
tion, is so extraordinary a proposition that very powerful proof ought
to be produced by those who put it forward. No such proof, however, is
oflTered except that such is human nature, which is sufficiently met
by the counter-assertion that human nature deals reasonably when it
is reasonably dealt by.

The Conservative suspicions, apprehensions, and ill-disg«ised

320 . THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. February

olasBHielfislmess of the House of Lords have prevented us from seeing
how the Disturbance Bill would have actually worked. The exas-
peration arising on its rejection, and the opportunity which that re-
jection furnished to politicians whose aims avowedly go far bejond
land reform, make it impossible to regard what has since happened
in Ireland as affording any key to what would have followed the
passing of the Disturbance Bill into an Act. But the refusal to pay
rent, and defiance to the law to take its course, is certainly not cor-
rectly interpreted when it is set down to a communistic motive. It
is simply a piece of political tactics, indefensible if you please, but
directed to other aims than the subversion of the idea of property.
On the other hand, it is noticeable that the very wildest schemes of
land reform are those which, on the £Bice of them, promise to do most
for establishing property as an institution. To create half a million
of small landlords by buying out the necessary number of large ones
with many millions of national money would be a practical token of
respect to the notion of property that could not be easily paralleled.
Laboured attempts are made by Conservative critics to show that
the system of small properties in landj if carried out into all other
spheres of property, would practically destroy the stimulus to exertion
in the acquisition of property by which society benefits so laigely.
But to make this argument good, it would require to be shown that
those who advocate the encouragement of small properties by law,
also advocate the prevention by law of all except small properties. If
there are Radicals who desire this, their number is so limited that
they cannot count in any fair endeavour to estimate the actual or pro-
bable drift of the popular mind. Radicalism may be a very bad
thing, but there is no evidence that it is doing anything with the
principle of property beyond .seeking to make some new and, as it
believes, more profitable applications of it, or that, if it did, it
would receive any countenance from the common sense and justice
of the people at large. The destruction of society, accordingly, by
Liberalism, on this score, may be set down as a bugbear.

Another way in which Radicalism is said to be . dragging
Liberalism towards the destruction of society, has reference to its
alleged hostility to an hereditary peerage, and its functions in the
legislature. The abolition of the House of Lords is a question
which there will probably be abundance of time to consider, but
meanwhile it may be remarked, that unless Conservative writers
and speakers have some better argtunents in reserve than those which
they are in the habit of using, .the case for their favourite institution
must be weaker, than might otherwise have been supposed* The idea
involved in a Second Chamber is one for which we shall seek in vain
for a parallel in any other department of business, ^liat municipal
council, railway or banking board, commercial firm, single trader,
professional man, or head of a family, ever wants another council,

1«81. THE PHILOSOPHY OF LIBERALISM. 321

boards firm, trader, practitioner, or family head with power of veto to
prevent it or him from getting on with the work ? The answer made
is that rashness is unadvisable, and that delay mky often be nsefdl
in I^slstion or administration, as if there were no delay provided in
the House of Commons. But rashness is onadvisable in everything,
yet it has ]>a8sed iato a proverb that delays are dangerous, the
(^iniom- of mankind apparently being that the best course on the
whole is not to lose time in executing a resolution to which one has
come after the best consideration he has been able to give to it, and
to accept the correction of experience if a mistake has been made.
Why should it be otherwise in the business of a nation? What
national benefit has been gained by the repeated instances in which
the House of Lords has thwarted the House of Commons and then
yielded ? Has the delay, or rather stoppage, of the Irish Disturbance
Bill been proved ta be a blessing ?

But, it is said, the House of Lords, being responsible to no con-
stituents, can furnish an independent criticism unattainable other-
wise. But that is precisely what it cannot do. The House of Lords,
like every political body, naturally falls into two parties, and party
leadership and opinion belong to the Commons. If on any special
point the House of Lords should be recalcitrant, the minister who
leads the dominant party in the House of Commons has, in his power
of creating new peers, an effectual weapon for securing consent, and
the knowledge of this makes really independent criticism by the
House of Lords, except in trifies, impossible. You may, if you like,
elect to conduct your business on the plan of planting an adviser
opposite you, empowered to stop you when he sees you resolved on
doing something rash, but if at the same time you produce a revolver
and give him to understand that he had better not stop you when
you really want to go on, most people will think that you have given
yourself a good deal of trouble for nothing. Yet in what other posi-
tion does current Conservative apology leave the country in relation to
the House of Lords ?

On its showing it does not appear that society would be
destroyed, or even much damaged, were the feeling against an here-
ditary Second Chamber ascribed to Radicalism to be successful in its
aims. The legitimate power of the higher classes in the public
life of the country would still remain, and an influential Parliamen-
tary career would still be open to * hereditary prudence, hereditary
honesty, and hereditary ambition,' wherever they might be found.
There is not the slightest reason to suppose that a man who had used
the opportunities which wealth had given him to perfect his cha-
racter and capacities for public usefulness, would be otherwise than
greatly aided in the attainment of popular leadership and p6litical
influence by the presumption in his favour legitimately created by
tiie possession of an historic name and that perfection of manbets

322 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. February

"which is the distinction of an aristocracy \7ith traditions. To this
not even hereditary title is essential, and the question might be left
perfectly open, whether title, if retained at all, nught not be more pnK
fitably employed as a reward for personal service alone. It is no part of
Liberalism to make a blind tilt against inequality, but only against
unjust or inexpedient inequality. The same instincts which natu-
rally prompt the mass of mankind, when not maddened by want, to
acquiesce in property, dispose them also to acquiesce in inequality.
The two are indeed indissolubly bound up together, and recognition
of the one involves recognition of the other.

To have my own and all I can gain for myself, I must allow
everybody else the same right. Hence in a state of society where
the law has not interposed to give one individual the advantage over
another in the race of life, there will be no room for envy, and there
wiU not be much envy. Inequalities clearly traceable to nature, or
even to better luck^ and not tainted by injustice, will be accepted by
the mass of mankind, as will also those official inequalities which are
necessary for the performance of the work of the State. It needs no
argument to prove that this sentiment holds good of power and
honour, as well as possessions. Where the law creates an inequality
which is clearly irrational, as when it patronises one religion in pre-
ference to another, while destitute of the infedlibility necessary to
decide which, if either, is true, its action is resented. In such a case
the sense of what is due to public utility is outraged, since, for any-
thing the law knows, it may be enervating the public mind by super-
stition, instead of strengthening it by truth and virtue. Where
again the law gives power or honour to some and denies it to
others, for no reason of public utility, but seemingly out of mere
favouritism. Liberalism must seek the removal of the inequality, both
because in such a case the sum of general happiness is diminished by
the unjust disappointment caused to those who are neglected, and
because a spirit of servility is encoiuraged in the community by every
act of respect and obedience which is exacted for artificial reasoos.
But where a man's power and honour are his own, either because be
has fiurly won them by his merits, or has fairly come by them in
some way, or where he wears them as the reward or the instrument
of public service, the assent of Liberalism is instantaneous and un-
hesitating. For this reason the upper classes have, in the leadership
of a people daily adding educated intelligence to the teachings of
life, an opportunity of rising to the enjoyment of a power which is a&
much superior to that exercised by their ancestors among their
villeins by aid of sword and halter, as moral influence is to material
force.

This consideration also disposes of another charge of destroying
society brought against Liberalism in its relations to the new
Radicalism* The latter is said to be busy propounding the doctrine
that Fajrliament exists not to pass laws for the people, but to give

1881. THE PHILOSOPHY OF LIBERALISM. 32$

fonnal sanction to laws which the people have already virtually
passed. Even had Radicalism taken to preaching this, it would be
nothing so very far amiss, when properly understood. It is surely
not going to be maintained that Parliament is to spend its time in
passing laws which the people do not need ; and what key can be had
to the people's needs, unless it be their expressed wishes ? Grievance
before Supply is no novelty in the constitution, and it is to be hoped
there is no design anywhere to have the spirit of that arrangement
reversed. That the people should take a deep interest in the pro-
ceedings of Parliament, and should make their remarks on them, is
inevitable, more particularly now that through the telegraph and the
press the great council of the nation virtually conducts its business in
the immediate presence of the nation. In the initiative of national
business, and in all parts of the making of laws dependent on the
special political skill which the legislator ought to possess, a com-
petent Parliament is not more likely to be interfered with by the
people than a tried family solicitor by a sensible client in transacting
the business of the estate and drawing the necessary deeds. At times
the solicitor may anticipate or even overrule the client's judgment for
his good, in the certainty of an ultimate indemnity. But does that
imply that Parliament is to make a rule of going on in contemptu-
ous disregard of the national will as to the necessity, the nature^
and the great structural principles of legislative measures ? What
Btrength^iing of society is expected from such procedure ?

There is the less necessity for alarm on this score, that the for^
mation of the national will is greatly in the hands of competent
politicians, if they choose to exert themselves. No more signal or
instructive illustration of this is to be found than the remarkable
achievement of the present Premier in overthrowing the late G-ovem-
ment by a persistent appeal to the people on gprounds of reason, fiict,
and sound policy. It is right that the wiser part of the world should
g^de those who, in the particiUar matter in question, may not be so
wise, while yet wise enough to recognise wisdom when they hear it.
But if those who are wise dislike the necessary trouble, if they prefer
to go into a comer and sulk at the success of inferior men, all that
can be done is to rebuke them for their self-indulgence, and remind
them that they should be the last to complain. Liberalism, how-
ever, would be false to its creed and to the patent facts of English
political life if, in despair of wise leadership for the people or popular
preference for wise leadership, it should pause in any course dictated
by the demands of social justice. When a nation's seciuity ceases
to be consistent with the progress of justice, it has passed its prime^
and no amount of Conservatism will arrest its decline. There then
remains for the patriot only the tragic consolation, that although a
people may fail, the race has an inexhaustible fiiture.

RoBEBT Wallace.

^24 THE NINETEEKTH CENTURY.] February

TNB CITY PAROCHIAL CHARITIES.

Tkb question of the City parochial charities mast soon receive the
attention of the Legislature. It is fully ripe at any rate for diacus-
sion, and the interval which must elapse before its final settlement
may well be occupied by efforts to contribute to the solution of a
-sufficiently perplexing problem. A crude or hasty measure of reform
would be much more disastrous than the existing state of things,
for at present the mischief is local and disorganised.

The story may be briefly retold. Centuries ago, London meant
the City, and the City meant London. The suburbs, as we have
them in these days, were the country ; the West-end of to-day was
non-existent ; south of the Thames were a few steady-going villages
and the quaint ' Boro' ; ' the East-end, instead of teeming with that
dull, uncomplaining, laborious life of which few of us know much,
^vas dotted with picturesque hamlets ; the large mass of the people
of the metropolis dwelt within the square mile, which is now almost
exclusively identified with the mercantile life of the metropolis, but
which then was synonymous with the word ^ London.*

With the view of helping their fellow-citizens, good folk, living, be
it remembered, in ages differing widely from our own, often bequeathed
lands or money to be administered by the authorities of the parish in
which they had passed their days. One legacy would take the form
of providing the poor with bread or clothing or coals ; another would
be intended to insure the maintenance of the parish church and the
•continuation of its services ; a third would make provision for ap-
prenticing poor boys or bestowing a marriage portion on needy
inaidens ; a fourth would be designed to found pensions for old and
unfortunate parishioners. These purposes may once have been wisely
and regularly fulfilled. Whether they were or not, is of no conse-
quence now ; probably it did not much matter at the time, for the
amount to be administered was often so small that its misapplication
eould not have been very harmful to the community.

But at the present time the complexion of the question is quite
changed. The poor people, for whose direct or indirect benefit these
bequests were intended, are not now, as a class, or to any considerable
degree, resident in the City of London. The provision which was

1881. THE CITY PAROCHIAL CHARITIES. 325.

made for them has, by reason of the altered value of money and pro*
perty, increased to an eitent which could never have been foreseen.
Chiefly, much of the work which these charities were primarily meant
to do is now effected by the agency of settled law, and what in by*
gone ages was considered, and perhaps actually was, generous and
beneficial to the poor, is in our own day admitted to be dangerous and
disastrous to the public well-being. This is the story in outline ; it
will be necessary to fill it in.

It is requisite, first of all, to realise the rapid decrease of the
residential population of the City ; and the Royal Commissioners, upon
whose recent Eeport I propose to base most of the facts of this article,
felt that sufficient illustration of this was afforded by noting th& varia-
tions of the last three censuses. The number of inhabited houses has
thus decreased : —

1861 14,786

1861 13,484

1871 9,304

The diminution in population, showing a small decrease in the pro>
portion of persons to each house, is equally striking : —

1861 131,127

1861 114,039

1871 76,236

There is every reason to suppose that the next census will show a still
further decrease, a presumption sufficiently warranted by the fact that
during the last eight years the reduction in the number of children
attending elementary schools within the City limits has been fully
25 per cent.' But to take the population as it was ten years ago, an
analysis of the 76,236, thus shown to be actual residents of the City,
diacloaes that only 1 6 of the 108 parishes, into which the civic area
is divided, have populations of over 1,000. These 16 account for
55,262 of the inhabitants, thus leaving 20,974 persons to be assigned
to the remaining 92, an average of 227 parishioners a-piece. But
this is not all ; 22 parishes — one must use the word for want of a
better — cannot show over 100 inhabitants ; 5 have not even 50.

The cause of this decline is of course ready to hand. Within less
than a generation the City of London has been quite transformed.
New thoroughfares, railway stations, piles of stately offices and hideous
warehouses now occupy space on which stood the dwelling-houses of
rich trader and poor artisan. The shopkeeper has not had much to
complain of. The transit from residential citizenship to suburban
life has been smoothed by the award of a generous arbitrator, and,

> I take this fact from the Beport of the Educational Endowment Committee of
the London School Board. Their investigation into the. City parochial charities,
pnxsned ander great difficulties and disconragements, is a triumph of patience and
care.

326 TEE NINETEENTH CENTURY. February

though no louger sleepiog within the City, the evicted tradeeman
is practically as much a citiasen as ever. It has been otherwise vith
the labouring man. The civic happy hunting-grounds are his no
longer, and not only has the City ceased to be the home of the
wage-earning classes, but what are vaguely styled ^the poor' are
no longer to be found, as a body, dwelling within its boundaries. Of
this abundant testimony is given by the witnesses before the Boyal
Commission. ^ There are no resident poor;' 'we have no actual
poor in the parisli ; ' ' the Cannon Street Bailway station occupies
a great part of the parish ; ' ' there are about twenty persons who
have claims on the parish, of whom scarcely one resides in the parish
now;' ^ practically there are no poor in the parish;' ^Ihave tried
in vain to find these poor persons ; I cannot find a poor person who
has any possible claim on the parish ; ' < we have no poor : St. Bar-
tholomew's Hospital comprises all the parish, save one house, and
the only residents in the parish are the hospital staff ;" there may
be a poor person, one cannot tell ; but there is very little chance
of there being poor in St. Christopher-le-Stock, because the whole
property is now absorbed in the Bank of England ; ' ' there is one poor
widow who lives in the parish : she lives over one of the warehouses ;'
^ there are no poor at all ; ' ' the parish is becoming more or less
desolate.' Emphatic statements like these are made by the represen-
tatives of more than one half of the City parishes.

I pass now to a consideration of the amount available for the
charitable or spiritual benefit of the people of the City of London.
Strangely enough, it has. for a long time been bearing an inverse ratio
to the ends it was designed to meet. The people have decreased ; the
money meant for them has increased. In 1865 the gross income of the
parochial charities was 67,480{. 16& 6i2. ; five years later it had risen to
85,210^. 68. 8(2. In 1876, the year taken by the Royal Commissioners
for the piuposes of their inquiry, it amounted to 104,9042. 136. 4(2. ; of
this latter sum 81,0142. 158. 1(2. was under the uncontrolled adminis-
tration of the local authorities, schemes for the disposal of the
balance having been obtained firom or submitted to the Court of
Chancery or the Charity Commissioners. Nor is there any reason to
suppose that the various properties from which the income of these
charities is derived have yet reached their maximum value. As leases
&11 in, they are obviously only renewable in proportion to the largely
enhanced value of all City property. The parish of St. Peter-le-Poer
is now receiving 1,4502. a year for an estate which till seven years ago
only produced 60^. This is one instance of many. The parish estate
of St. Martin Vintry will increase very considerably in the course of
seven years : ' there will be an enormous increase.' In St. Christopher-
le-Stock there will be * for the future a very considerable surplus.' The
parish estates of St. Dunstan in the East will * continue to increase.'
The properties of St. Giles, Cripplegate, and of St. Bartholomew, Moor

1881. TEE CITY PAROCHIAL CHARITIES. 327

Lane, are ' still increasing in value : ' in St. Mary Aldermary ^ there
will most likely be a large increase in the income of the parish chari-
ties in the course of a few years : ' the value of Lady Bacon's estates
in the parish of St. Michael Bassishaw ^ must very largely increase '
less than three years hence ; and at a more remote date the rents
due to St. Michael, Queenhithe, ' will be very large.'

We niust now turn to the question of administration, which is
really the pivot of the whole matter. The people may have dimi-
nished and the money may have increased, but neither of these circum*
stances could justify the application of the pruning-knife or, it may
be, the axe, unless it can be shown that, broadly speaking, the
money is wasted, and the people whom it was designed to help
injured and degraded. The indictment is not hard to draw up;
the witnesses before the Royal Commissioners shall help to do it.
First of all, as to the disposal of the money. In some cases the
income is admittedly far more than sufficient to meet any legitimate
demands upon it. The evidence from the parish of St. Alban, Wood
Street, says that ^ the receipts from the various gifts amount to only
302. ; we do not want it, but while it rests with us we do the best
we can with it.' All Hallows Barking, St. Anne and St.. Agnes, St.
Mary Bothaw, St. Sepulchre, each possess money which is a positive
encumbrance. St. Margaret, Lothbury, has a surplus of 3002. a year,
for the disposal of which no provision whatever is made. The
authorities of St. Augustine have invested in consols 2,1912., 'the
produce of income which has not been used,' and the accumulations
of each year now reach 1502. In St. Mildred, Bread Street, Hhe
annual income of the parish charities is about 9202. more than we
can apply to church expenses : we have 2,0002. accumulations.' The
funds of St. Olave, Old Jewry, are ' constantly accumulating,' and
even tlie bread gifts, usually so easily got rid of, are unclaimed. The
church estate of St. Michael, Comhill, produces 2,5002. per annum,
for which, so long as the church is kept up in proper order, ' the parish
has no real use.' The vestry of St. Mary-at-Hill have employed the
excess of income over church expenses in building operations which
have paid ' very well indeed.' So ^ well indeed ' has the experiment
succeeded, that, though the parish has 20,0002. in the hands of the
Aocountant-General, it is over 5,0002. in debt. Its mania for buying
and building had not ceased at the time of the investigation of the
Soyal Commission, and was still going on, heedless of the opinion
of its principal parishioner : ' I do not see why parishes should be
land-jobbers at all.'

The large annual income of 'the parochial charities finds various
outlets. Something like 40,0002. is applied to what are known as
^ Church purposes.' The question of the position of the Church in
the City of London will form an interesting and astounding field for
inquiry, but need only indirectly be touched upon here. In a word,

828 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Fehroary

it is anomalous. Non-resident, clergy, rectories and vicarages let al;
high rents as offices, deserted and expensively equipped churches^
drowsy services, empty benches or packed congregations— this ii
an accurate enough picture of things' as, in the maiti, tkej are.
True, there exist exceptions — I am happily connected with one
myself — ^but I am speaking broadly of the efficiency of the machineij
which' is supposed to galvanise the citizens of London into spiritual
life. The machinery will not work, primarily perhaps because it has
often no work to do. It might be better to take it to pieces and set
it up somewhere else, but meanwhile it is open to doubt whether it
needs so large an expenditure of oil. The sum mentioned above is
not inclusive of the krge clerical stipends which have made the Citj
an ecclesiastical Paradise separated by an impassable gulf from the
Gehenna of Bethnal Green. It takes in merely the odds and ends of
ordinary church apparatus. Warming and ventilating and repairing,
the salaries of pew-openers and other minor officials, the purchase of
sacramental wine — expenses such as these, which, even in some of the
most poverty-stricken quarters of the metropolis, are met by the free-
will offerings of self-denying. Christian people, are charged upon
the ecclesiastical charities of the various parishes.. There are other
items of course. Organists, choirmen, lecturers, preachers of special
sermons — by the way, one witness gravely defends the deUverj of a
religious discourse on the Spanish Armada— and general hangers-on,
all help to get rid of the sum appropriated to ' Church purposes.*

About 18,000/. a year is spent on the education of children within
the City. Some of the schools are not under Government inspection—
a fact which rather dispels confidence in the wise expenditure of the
money — ^and the cost of the education given is on a scale at which
most metropolitan ratepayers would feel aggrieved if called upon tp
pay for it. Still, the money devoted to education is the best spent
of the charity funds of the City, and till the whole question comes
up for resettlement it would be hard to find within the civic limits
any worthier objects on which to employ it.

The same cannot be said for the 2,0002. available for the purposes
of apprenticeship. Apprenticeship is practically out of date. Perhaps
we have been too precipitate in letting it go before we had filled its.
place by a sound system of technical schools. Be that as it may, the
administrators of the charities devoted to this object have not
achieved any remarkable results in this direction. In the parish of
St. Benet Fink there is a charity ' for apprenticing ; the surplus is
invested ; we have now 300Z. in hand ; there are veiy few applicants.
There is no opportunity of apprenticing boys : there are plenty of
funds, but no boys come forward.'. In St. Benet*s, Paul's WTiarf,'St
Bride's, St. Martin's Vintry, St. Faith's, St. Mary's Woohaoth, the
story is the same. The money is there, but no one claiihs it. The
accumulations in St. Margaret's, Lothbury, reached as much as l,300i.

1881. THE OITY PAROCHIAL CHARITIES. 329

or 1,400Z., and were paid over to the corporation of Middle Class Edu-
cation. The Drapers' Company and the Saddlers'- Company, both of
which hold funds intended to apprentice boys from the parish. of St.
Catharine, Coleman, refuse to part with the money on the ground that
the conditions are not complied with. In St. Catharine Cree the un-
claimed apprenticeship funds are carried to the general account of
the parish charities, and in Christ Church, Newgate Street, ^ the money
is left in hand until there is enough to build a house on the estate'
from' which it is annually derived.

The considerable sum of 10,00()2. a year is expended in a manner
which in almost every case is open to question and in many instances
cannot be defended at all — the payment of poor rates. There is
something ludicrous in the failure of the efforts of the Royal Com*
missioners to convince witnesses that the appropriation of charitable
funds to the i-ednction of the poor rate was entirely to the advantage
of the rich. What, for instance, can be done with a witness like
this?

5481. Handiog oTer so large a propoilion of the charities to the poor rate as
jou do, do not you think that it would be desirable to ascertain whether the letter
of the trust allowed such a thing P — The property was left, I should presume, for
the henefit of the poor, and I cannot conceive anything more lawful than to pro-
vide for the poor out of the proceeds.

5482. Does not it now go for the benefit of the rich P — No, for the benefit of
the poor.

5483. Are not you bound equally to pay for the poor whether you have these
charities or not P-- Yes ; but when we have money left for the benefit of the poor,
we can apply it in no better way than to pay for the poor.

5484. Would not the poor receive the same whether these charities were left or
not?— Yes.

5485. Is not it the rich who are benefited ? — The poor benefit by getting ths
money.

Or with another like this ?

GQB&, As regards Clarke's g^fl you apply that to pay poor rate ? — Yes.
5086. It is left to the ' poor/ not to the poor rate P — \N « hope it is applied to
the poor. ...

5687. Is not paying it to the poor rate making it a gift for the rich and not for
Ihe poor P — ^It goes to the relief of the large amount which we have to pay for poor
rate.

5688. It goes to the relief of the rich, does it not P — It goes to the relief of the
-parisUoDers.

In some cases the practice is defended on the plea that the estate
from the proceeds of which the rate is defrayed is property which in
<times gone by was purchased with parish money. The contention may
sometimes be valid, but it is certainly often more than doubtful. To
«ite the words of the Royal Commissioners, som e of tbe^e estates ^ are
stated to hav? been purchased by moneys raised by parochial rates;
others to have been repurchased by the parishioners after having be^n
YOL. IX.— No. 48. Z

330 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Fehniary

confiscated at the Rrformation^ or during the troubles of the sevjen-^
teenth century. In some instances the title-deeds of the estates have
disappeared, having been burnt, as it is suggested, in the Great Fire
of London. Host ordiniary people, it is pardonable to imagiBe, will
endorse the recommendation that ^ these statements should be suIh
mitted to closer legal investigation.' There are several cases in which
the witnesses openly admit this misappropriation of funds undoubtedly
designed for another purpose. The excuse is not only plausible hut
natural. ' The parish possesses money for which it cannot find use.
The parish is rated heavily for the support of poor of whom it knows
nothing and cares less. The money may as well be spent as saved.
The practice has the sanction of established custom.' Perhaps so;
but it is none the less unjust and inmioral, and, to quote again the
opinion of the Commissioners, ' should cease.'

I come now to the most harmful item of the whole expendituie--
the sum of about 30,0002. a year disbursed in doles, gifts, pensions,
and the like. And this summons up the main question whether, the
parochial charities of the City of London are helpful or harmful to
the large mass of the people who are affected by them. To assist the
poor, to relieve the destitute, to liberate the oppressed, to set on his
legs again and start afresh the victim of fraud or disaster or mis-
fortune— ^these are the functions and privileges of all true charity.
The point is questioned by no man who is wise and sane. The dif-
ference is as to the means. The old style of alleviating distress was
to scatter shillings and pay no heed to the consequences. The prin-
ciple of our vicious Poor-law — at any rate of its administration— is to
lend its sanction to waste, dissipation, extravagance, improvidence, hy
refusing State help until a man is practically beyond the need of any
help, and then either to doom him and his to perpetual pauperism
or to torture them by inadequate outdoor relief. The system of doles
moves practically on the same lines. Their very existence encourages
the presumption that thrift is imprudent. They are cruel to the old,
for they are rarely of sufficient magnitude to afford the bare neces-
saries of life : they curse the middle-aged, for they discount all efforts
towards independence : they menace the highest interests of the
young, for they furnish the suggestion of a profitable life of pleasant
thraldom. No experience — no experience of responsible and thinking
men — can adduce one testimony in their favour. They stand con-
demned in presence of millions of lost opportunities and deluded
lives and broken hearts.

It would be too much to expect any very emphatic endorsement
of this opinion among those with whom the administration of this
system is associated with cherished ideas of private patronage and cheap
philanthropy. Happily, however, there is a fairly strong consensus
of opinion, based on the best of all reasons, in the right direction. In
the parish of All Hallows Barking, ^ it was found that the distribution

1881. THE CITY PAROCHIAL CHARITIES. 331

of doles on New Year's Day did not tend to the sobriety of the district :
the money was thrown away.' In St. Botolph, Aldersgate, < doles were
an evil ; ' in St. Catharine Coleman they are admitted to * pauperise
the people ; ' in St. Lawrence, Jewry, they are ^ not of much good to
the poor ; ' in St. Mary-at-Hill they are ' doing great harm ; ' in St.
Yedast Foster they are < useless.' A statement by a witness from St.
PeteF-le-Poer suggests something wider and not less important than the
moral issue involved in their debasing effects : ' The persons residing in
the parish are chiefly office-keepers, and ought to be paid sufficiently
by their employers.' Perhaps indeed they are, but any one who appre-
ciates the working of the English Poor-law and the state of the labour
market before 1834 may reasonably refuse to be reconciled to the
possible practice of relieving wealthy merchants and bankers at the
expense of the charities of the City of London. But the dole system
has its apologists. Such opinions as the following are proof against the
shock of logic or the testimony of fact. ^ In a great many cases — in
the majority of cases — the bread given away does the recipients good.
The money is very well applied.' ^ The charities distributed in bread
and coals have been a great boon; many lives have been saved
through them/ ' The present form of distribution of charity by way
of doles is of great value ; witness would be sorry to see it altered.'
' The small doles do good in a most marked manner by keeping up a
local connection between the people who are recipients and their
parish.' Ought oue to sigh or smile ?

There would hardly seem to be room for two opinions as to the inex-
pediency of requiring attendance at divine service as a qualification
for receiving a few paltry loaves. Such a practice, at any rate, opens
the door to the degradation of religion and the profession of hypo-
crisy. * We have,' says one witness, * a number of people who come
to OUT church every Monday for bread ; and it is a dreadful system ; it
makes hypocrites of them.' But another defends the custom on
the ground that it brings the recipients to their religious duties on a
week night I A third complacently distributes a gift 'among the
poor people who come to church, especially those who receive the
sacrament ! '

The relation of the dole system to outdoor relief is well illustrated
in the City of London. In the Poor-law division, which is identical
with the civic area, it is usual to grant out-relief on what is, by com*
parison with some other metropolitan unions, a generous scale. Mr.
Hedley,one of the Inspectors of the Local Government Board, gives it
as his opinion that < the Guardians of the City are not fully alive to the
eyil of a liberal administration of outdoor relief, and have not fully
appreciated the benefits of applying the workhouse test in cases of
alleged destitution.' Perhaps the cause may be found in the fact that
the enormous rateable value of the City makes the incidence of
taxation to be rarely oppressive, and provides thus easily a large

z2

3S2 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. February

revenue which it is yeiy tempting to dispense with freedom and even
munificence. Bearing in mind. all along that the doles distributed
among the City poor amount to more than 30,000/. a year, it is
noticeable that the ratio of outdoor to indoor relief is in the City
of London Union as 1*1 to 1, a test which places it in a wone
position than 19 and in a better than 10 of the other Unions within
the metropolitan area ; that the ratio of paupers to population in the
City is 1 in 16, a proportion which for London generally is 1 in 37
and for the Union of Whitechapel only 1 in 51 ; that the annual cost
of out-relief per head of population is for the City 4s. 4^, while
for one other Union it is between 3s. and 4s., for another 2s., for 12
others between Is. and 2s., and for 15 under Is.

Doles, then, do not diminish pauperism : it seems a fair inference
that they aggravate it. Nor is this matter of surprise when it is ad-
mitted that, in many instances, persons in the receipt of parish relief^
and even inmates of the workhouse, have participated in these dia-
tributions of charitable gifts. Rarely could the Royal Commissioners
find, on the part of trustees or poor-law officials, any practical en-
deavour to prevent the overlapping of two forms of relief, which
ought to differ widely in their administration and effects. It is a
mere chance whether a recipient is not being played upon by two
distinct forces with the obvious result of perverting charity and
vitiating the Poor-law. One responsible witness did not know even
the name of the relieving officer ! So lax, indeed, is the administia-
tion that the Commissioners are able to report that ' it is perfectly
possible that thft same individual may be a recipient of charitable
gifts in more than one parish.' The evidence of fact further justifies
the statement that he may also be receiving a very comfortable
measure of out-relief from the guardians.

So far I have said nothing of those eccentricities of expenditure
which lend such a picturesque variety to the disbursement of the
City parochial charities. And yet I must not pass them over, for
they greatly help to make out a case for reform. Take, for instance,
the practice of paying parish officials an undue proportion of theii
salaries for parochial services out of charitable funds. The obvious
consequence is the relief of the ratepayers who ought to pay their
officers adequately, and the perversion of money intended for the
benefit of the poor to purposes quite alien. It is hardly surprisuig
that the Report recommends that this ^ should at once cease.' Nor
can a better defence be offered for charging upon charity moneys the
cost of convivial entertainments. Drinking sherry and saying prayers
do not quite harmonise, and yet more than one witness passionately
pleads for the retention of the ancient custom of providing wine be-
fore and after divine service for the clergy and churchwardens and
whomsoever they bid to join them in their potations. One parish
employs eight wine merchants! Another spent 71/. 2$. 6d* on

1881. THE CITY PAROCHIAL CHARITIES. 333

< visiting the tombs;' another I66Z. 78. lOd. on the 'hospitalities'
of a single year; a third expended 74L 11«. 6(2. in a dinner at the
' Ship,' Greenwich, ' pursuant to a resolution of the vestry ; ' < sup-
plies for the church and sundries,' amounting to 108Z. Os. 4(Z., com-
prehensively includes ' a parishioners' Easter dinner.' Again, ' it was
thought it would promote good feeling between the rector and
parishioners if they went to the Crystal Palace and had a dinner : it
cost 382.' And so on and so on, though it is worth recording that in
the parish of St. Yedast Foster * from time immemorial there has
been a pint of wine placed in the vestry every Sunday,' which happens
to be port of a vintage chosen by the sexton, who is good enough to
oblige the rector by drinking it.

There is another catalogue of funds misapplied to the purposes
of granting testimonials to acceptable clergy and churchwardens ;
another of charitable bequests united with current parish accounts ;
a third of disproportionate payments and diversions of trusts; a
fourth of sums lumped vaguely imder the head of ' other expenses.'
Some instances of increases in the income of property not proportion-
ately applied to the original purposes of the foundation have already
reeeived the grave censure of the Charity Conmiissiotoers. In most
cases there is no adequate system of auditing the accounts. ' Lai^e
balances are at times held by the churchwardens ; in some cases no
banking accounts have been kept, and moneys belonging to the
parish have, in other instances, not been forthcoming when called
for.' Further, the Commissioners ' cannot but remark on the number
and amount of the undetailed items in the accounts submitted to the
Charity Commissioners.' Some charities are lost: others are in
abeyance.

Even less satisfactory is the plan of administration. Practically,
the clergy and churchwardens have the exercise of a huge system of
private patronage. The vestry meeting is often a &rce. Twelve is
in many parishes a large attendance : in some it sinks to three or
four : in St. Botolph, Aldersgate, the ' recipients of the charities do
not feel themselves disqualified from attending.'

I might prolong, but I could hardly strengthen, this indictment.
Confusion, recklessness, defiance of all considerations of political
economy, in a word, chaos reigns, with one or two exceptions,
through every one of these parishes. The story cannot bear the light
of day, for it has to tell of money which might, wisely applied on
a wider area, change the face of a neighbourhood or of a generation,
frittered away and wasted. It has to tell, too, of poverty encouraged,
pauperism generated, independence stifled, hypocrisy sanctioned.

What, then, is to be the remedy ? I will tiy to indicate a part of it.

1. Obviously the first thing to be done is to institute a more
searching investigation than was possible to be made by the recent
Bojal Commission. The members of that body unanimously report

884 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. February

' that they hkve been unaUe to undertake ^ an examination into the
original deeds and charters of the charities, and to determine wbat
portion of the funds held bj each x^i the several parishes is properly

• applicable to the purposes for which they are now used, aoid what
portion ought to be otherwise used and administered.' ^ To do so
effectually,' they continue, ^ within a reasonable time will necesBitate
the employment of their whole time and attention by those who shall
be entrusted with this inquiry, besides the qualification on the port

r of one at least of their number of considerable legal knowledge of
r« technioal character.' There is, therefore, reconmiended the tp-
f pointment of a temporary commission empowered to examine into
the trusts, charters, deeds, and documents, in any way pertaioing to
' the City chanties, or to their administration ; ^into the leases granted
' by the trustees and the employnlent of the feyenne ; and to emnine
'• into their aocouiits for 'the last seven years past.' It will be for Par-
' liaihent to> use its wisdom* as to tiie? amount of authority to Men-
'. trusted to this Executive Commission. The work befoile it will
-inv^hre -very great interests, and demands men of weight tod power.
'No less thaiithiity*five parities, for instance, daim to holdesbttes
^ free frouL -any trust and secured^ them by all the sanctions wUeh
'confirm private persons in the possession of their property. Id other
' cases no title-deeds at all are forthcoming, or the origin of the fands is

• quite unknown. There arises, too, the wide and difficult question of
' olassification. The charities, may be grouped generally under tiie
" headings of eleemosynary and ecclesiastical, but the line of difitinc-
rtion has often been drawn, to the advantage of one side or the other,
'in obedience to^ other motives than those of equity. There ibuiit be

no instructions to presume in favour of either alternative, and in this
/ibatter the Boyal Commissioners have not appreciated' either tlie
-. temper of the age or the probable action of the LegMalnra;^ Ihe
I work of a.-straog and Just Eicecutive Conunission would -te nweh
-? weakened by an injonotion that eeclesiastical charities were to^uielaie
< not^ only those funds which' by the terms of their existencaefiwere

applicable only to church purposes,: ^ but also* suoh as have been for a
•iiAig period of years apfdied to suoh uses, though not specifically
t «i]|oi(aed by the will of the founder.' Three of the seven membm o>f
/timiBoyal Commission have placed on record their dissent fiom^tiHs
ipvtipo^ion,' and the Rev. W. Rogers, Rector of Bishopsgateyhastkos
ffiubeihotly stated the objection of Sir Farrer H^schell and Mr. Albert
. Sell, as well as of himself : —

'* ' 'It appears to me that the funds here spoken of haye been applied to paiochol
purpona, and that tho ' gradual disa^ipeamnce and diminution of other patctthU
^ohjects haa caused the parkh ^efaurch to oocupj a very prominent place in the
schemes of distribution ; . but that they are still parochial funds and not dnnchfanda,
aud that in each case their proper application ought to be an open question io be

* decided on consideration of all the circumstances, as in any other case of failure of

* ol)jects.

1881. THE CITY PAHOCHIAL CHARITIES. 336

There ought not to be any reason why a classification on broad,
liberal, and just grounds should fail to give satisfaction. It is not a
matter to wrangle about, and both sides must be prepared to accept
equitable decisions given in the spirit of true compromise. Mean-
while there must be a fair field and no favour.

2. The duties of such an Executive Commission as is recommended
will not admit of hurry. Perhaps a limitation of two years would
•not be an extravagant allowance for the work. But there seems no
good reason why in the interval things shall be allowed to get worse.
To draw a precedent firom a much greater, though not more necessary,
fefoim, a measure is wanted for suspending the creation of fresh
vested interests. Perhaps a few people may be injured, and more
are sure to be disappointed. It always is so, and it always must be
flo. But in this case, as in others, the end will justify the means.
Some old folk may have to dose their days in the workhouse instead of
.snooeeding to the doles of 8<mie dead neighbour ; the assistant to some
<ilerk of a trust must go without the shoes for which he has been so
patiently waiting ; a prospective churchwarden must be content with
a diminished and still diminishing patronage. It is irritating, no
doubt, but vested interests in a threatened institution crop up like
jnuahiooms in b night. The sanction of Parliament might reasonably
be extended to an enactment decreeing that from a certain date — ^the
day, say, of the introduction of the measure — ^no new interests should
ibe created in any shape or fi>rm. Exception would of course be made
in fiivour of schemes for which application had already been made to
the Charity Commissioners, and it would not, I apprehend, be difficult
to arrange for temporarily filling up vacancies in the management of
any trust.

3. Another movement towards order might be similarly prooeed-
ing. At present the trusts of the various charities are 1,330 in
vomber. ' That many of them are models of management it is im-
possible to deny ; it is equally true that the reverse is sometimes the
ease. But the issue I would raise is of another kind, and suggests
the unadvisability, on economical and economic grounds, of per-
mitting corporations to be possessors of such a large and varied
amount of real estate. It is the opinion of Sir Charles Trevelyan,
than whom no one has better right to speak on this subject, that the
paarochial charities of the City, if properly realised and placed in the
poblio funds, would produce treble their present annual value. I
cannot do better than quote fully from his evidence : —

The bequests repieaent every variety of private property, such as houses,
<^»ttegeB» stableSi gardens; workshops, warehouses, wharves, and country fiinna.
Shaies in houses was one of the commonest fonns of bequests. . . . Property of
this description is with difficulty made the most of, even by the thrift and close
personal attention of individual proprietors, prompted by the strongest interested
morivee. ^Vhat, therefore, is to be expected from the action of the ephemeral
sharchwardens of phantom parishes, who are neither stimulated nor checked by

.336 THE NINETEENia CENTURY. February

local puUic opinioQ ? ^ya8tey deterioratioO| and total loss constantly come to the
surface in the records of these charities. . . . For this broken-down, wasteful^
demoralising state of things there is only one remedy : to convert the whole of the
City parochial estates into private property by selling them to the highest bidder,,
and ta invest the proceeds in the funds.

And again on the economic aspect of the case : —

• The best result of all would be the process of reconstruction and impruvement

.upon. which these neglected estates would enter. For attracting the inveBtmaDt

of private capital, for encouraging industry, for increasing production, and for

maintaining our population in a contented, moral, and hopeful state, there b

nothing like the magic of private proprietorship.

»

In a word, then, what is wanted is capUaliaaiion. This mi^t
begin at once and proceed as, by the falling in of leases and so on,
occasion offered. The process would be gradual, but the questioH
would have been advantageously simplified and cleared.

I will allude but briefly to the recommendations of the Boyal
Commission. That they were ever intended to be carried out—
at any rate, that they were ever considered likely to be carried
out — is hard to think. The Seport wants firnmess. It reads halt-
ingly. There is an unhealthy straining after one end. It eon*
demns, it is true, decisively enough the existing state of affairs,^but
there crops up all through a tenderness of compassion which the
evidence certainly does not justify. The Commissioners might have
spared* themselves the assurance that they had been actuated by^the
4lesire to perform their work ^ with as little disturbance of existing
ideas and interests as is consistent with the effectual discharge of the
duty imposed ' upon them. Nothing, to take an example, could be
less likely to commend itself to public confidence than the suggested
constitution of the Board which is to administer for the b^iefit of
London generally such eleemosynary- funds as may remain over after
the wants of the City have been supplied. Fifteen members are to
be chosen from the representatives of the City parishes, and two from
the Common Council. The Metropolitan Asylums Board and the
Metropolitan Board of Works are each to send two more, and there
are to be four co-optative members. The one answer to such an ar-
rangement as this, or to anything in any way approaching it, is that
the right of the City to control these charities is not admitted. They
belong, by all considerations of justice, to London and to Londoners.
A prolonged and anomalous possession enables the City to raise daims
which must be fairly met ; but, that done, it is almost ludicrous to
suggest that the charitable and philanthropic interests of the rest of
the metropolis are to be governed in this matter by a packed Board.

If the parochial charities of the City are to be rescued from their
present pernicious and useless purposes, and applied to the real bene-
fit of the metropolitan poor, the rearrangement must be made on
bold and enlightened lines. Charity is becoming a system if not a

1881. THE CITY PAROCHIAL CHARITIES. 337

science. * Men are beginning to see that the old methods of helping
the poor often effected precisely opposite results, and that the truest
kindness which the rich and benevolent can do to them is to
help them to help themselves. The other plan has had its trial.
For three centuries already the English Poor Law has oppressed the
English poor as no other institution has ever weighed down upon
any other class. It has, moreover, given the cue to that reckless,
indiscriminate, inadequate charity which is only a refined form of
cruelty. We are coming, it is to be hoped, upon days when the
wealthy, taught by the lessons of the past, will direct their money
to the removal of organic and radical defects in the condition of
the poor, and when the- poor will appreciate the truth that doles
and gifts and casual unearned relief constitute little less than a
curse and a blight. And so these charities cannot be allowed to
become more injurious than now they are by being scheduled,
codified, arranged for purposes which a few years hence will be
almost universally recognised as disastrous. The Soyal Commis^
sioners would have done well to adopt the emphatic memorandum
which was offered to them by Mr. Pell, who could speak in this
matter from a wide measure of experience gained as a Guardian
of the Poor in an East-end Union. He suggested that < the fund
should be so applied as to encourage any legitimate effort which the
poorer classes may be themselves now or hereafter making to meet
the wants and attain the objects which the founders of these charities
had in view, when these may be in harmony with the conditions of
society in modem times. In other words, that provident institutions
supported by the poorer clasps shall have the first claim on the
fund.'

These words strike the keynote of the only possible solution.
Let Parliament lay down the broad principle here involved, and
asfdgn to a strong representative Board, composed of members practi-
cally acquainted with the poor quarters of the whole metropolis, full
liberty to carry it into action. Let the ecclesiastical funds be simi-
larly accessible to the starving parishes of the diocese. Let the^e
charities come to be recognised as the property of the living and not
of the dead, as meant to bless and not to curse. The lot of the poor
of London is hard enough ; there is here a chance of giving to it wise
and permanent relief.

R. H. Haddbn.

638 THE NINETEENTH CENTURT. Febniay

A JEWISH VIEW OF THE ANTI-JEWISH

AGITATION.

Thou haat spoken of the Jew as the persecntion of such as thou art has made him.
rHearen in ird has driven him from his country, but industry has opened to him the
only road to power and to influence which oppression has left unbarred. Bead tlie
jmcient histoiy of the people of God, and tell me if those, by whom Jehovah wrouj^
such marvels among the nations, were then a people of misers and usurers I — And
know, proud knight, we number names amongst us to which your boasted northern
nobility is as the gourd compared with the cedar — ^names that ascend far back to
those high times when the Divine P^resence shook the mercy««eat between tiie
cherubim, and which derive their splei^dour from no earthly prince, bat from the
awful Voice, which bade their fathers be nearest of the congregation to the
Vision. Such were the princes of Judah, now such no more! — ^Yet there are
those among them who shame not such high descent. I envy not thy blood-won
lionours ! I envy not thy barbarous descent from northern heathens ! I enTj
thee not thy faith, which is ever in thy mouth, but never in thy heart nor in thy
practice. — Sib Walter Scorr, Ivankoe.

Sind Ohrist und Jude eher Ohriat und Jude
Als Mensch ? — Lsssing, Nathan der Weise,

wave of anti-Jewish agitation which is now sweeping aoron
almost the entire world, and which has reached its fiercest and most
49ignificant torrents in Germany, is not so phenomenal as most people
think, although it certainly derives an aspect of some importance
from the apparently paradoxical circumstances of its appearance. It is
probably the last time that we shall witness the surgingsand swelliogs
of this hoary visitation in any remarkable prominence ; for this is the
£rst occasion upon which its current has been at all impeded, and it has
found itself impotently splashing against an adequate breakwater — ^the
br^kwater of a highly educated and vigorous Uberulism* To my mind,
indeed, it is almost a subject of congratulation that this agitation has
reappeared so soon after the emancipation of my people, in dimensions
sufficient to attract the consideration of the thinking world and to
evoke the protests of the most cultured and highly venerated amongst
us. What Dean Milman calls the ^ iron age of Judaism ' has now
endured for more than a thousand years. Consecrated by aoi-disant
holy records and countenanced by secular traditions, nursed into a

1881. THE ANTI-JEWISH AGITATION. 339

' numstroufl adolesoenoe by legend, and vulgarised by fable, the hatred
of the Jew has grown and grown until its indoctrination has ranged
from the dicta of popes and emperors to the refrains of nursery
lullabies. Can it be wondered at then that this passion has entered
deeply into the natures of the dominant races of the world ? Its
resuscitation at this moment, when it is gekierally contidered that
civil and religious liberty is not a mere theory, but an established and
- indispensable oopestone in all well-ordered politics, is a sufficient
proof that its complete eradication is a work of very slow develop-
ment. Hitherto it has luxuriated in congenial surroimdings, and
its outbursts have been, if not quite unchecked, at least compara-
tively successful. When the last violent ebullition of anti-Jewish
prejudices took place, just sixty years ago, the state of things in
Europe was, as &r as the moral receptiveness of all classes of society
was concerned, very different from that of the present day. The
' autocracies were then in the ascendant, and the excesses of the French
JKevolution had discredited those dreams of popular freedom and of
religious liberty which have reached a certain degree of realisation in
our own times. Under these circumstances the existence of a class
burdened with disabilities was no inconsistency, and their occasional
; persecution no anomaly. Since then the political changes whieh
"liave been effected are enormous, and in theory at least the equality
■ of all classes has been fully established. Still, however, the hatred of
'. tiie Jew has continued to Ixurk illogically amongst the primary pas-
sions of non-Jewish nature, and now, but shortly after our emancipa-
tion, it has broken out in much of its ancient violence.

There can be no doubt, however, that it has this time been
effectually checked. In its first reappearance but a vulgar revival of
I mediseval prejudice, it was sternly met by the simple but irrefutable
. xebukes of modem philosophy. Since tJien its changes of fronts in
' the endeavour to assert itself successfully, have been beyond number,
and if it hae attempted, as it certainly has, to vindicate itself on
. philosophic principles, it is a sign of its weakness, as it clearly shows
the nature and strength of the weapons with which it has had to cope.
Can there, then, be any doubt as to the result of this conflict between
the- unanswerable propositions of modem liberalism and the casuis-
tical justifications of an anachronistic prejudice ? It must end in the
well-merited disgrace and degradation of the latter, and thus one of
the most important works of the age will be largely proceeded with.
Its complete success cannot of course be immediate, but, once branded
with despicable failure, another generation will be slow to receive
its tarnished traditions, and then gradually its paroxysms must
weaken and weaken until they die away altogether. It is for this
reason that I regard the latest outbreak of anti-Semitism with a
species of eoeur iSger ; and I must confess that I do not approach an
investigation of its history, its arguments, and its aims, with any

340 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Februaiy

of those dire forebodings which have characterised so many other
disquisitions on the subject which I have bad the advantage of
perusing.

If this latest revival of Judeophobia is not infelicitous in it»
appearance amongst a people through long ages addicted to a display
of passion in this direction, it is certainly deserving of attention on
account of its not being confined to one country. The effervescence
of a certain feeling against the Jews is apparent in almost all the
large states of the world, with the single exception perhaps of
France. Eastern Christianity, which Mr. Gladstone has ventured b
characterise as carrying the torch of civilisation in the Orient, has
signalised itself, for some time past, in outrages upon the Jews,
before which the excesses of Batak may be relegated to a categoiy of
comparative humanity. The ' fiery cross ' has been adopted by the
smaller Mohammedan States, and has left a smoking trail over the
whole of the southern littoral of the Mediterranean ; oven in Italy,
where so many Israelites occupy positions of prominence and re-
q)onsibility, ugly rumours, quasi-justified by a certain deafness to the
sufferings of the Soumanian Jews, have been heard of high personages
cherishing a prejudice against the Jews ; in America the ^ Boycotting'
of Jews is a common occurrence, and in this coimtry we have been
recently told that the agitation which was commenced by Professor
Groldwin Smith, and continued by some of the lights of the Liberal
party, is only slumbering until other more pressing affairs shall have
been disposed of.

And yet, strange to say, there is nothing even in the latest
phases of this agitation to commend it to that high standard of in-
telligence which is accepted as the spirit of the age. The involved
and often contradictory arguments in its favour which are now so
numerously put forward did not generate the present agitation,
but were really generated by it under the pressure of being forced to
adopt a programme capable of whitewashing it into the required
degree of respectability. It broke out in precisely the same way as it
hjw always broken out before. The hatred of the Jew by the Christian
has become, as I have already pointed out, one of those acquired habits
which proverbial philosophy teaches us are as secondary instincts, h
normal passions there is a community of feeling which embraces all
ages, from the darkest to the present day, and amongst these pasdoss
Judeophobia has long been ranked. In our present development of
intellectual strength, these passions do little more than balance the
relatively enlightened sentiments which we evolve from a calm and
educated appreciation of equitable law ; but let this equilibrium be
once disturbed, and they immediately rise into the ascendant Vam
when the holy aspirations of the Crusades degenerated into vulgar
fiuiaticism, the Jews were persecuted ; when the balance of mind and
passion was disturbed by the appearance of the Black Death, the

1881. THE ANTI-JEWISH AGITATION. 341

primary prejudices of Christians associated the Jews with their visita*-
tion, and their wholesale massacre became inevitable ; in 1820, Oer*-
many found itself loaning under fearful burdens, and when in their
despair their fretful eyes by chance alighted upon a few Jews who had
managed to amass wealth, the Germans gave vent to all their grievances
in one mighty outburst of their most congenial prejudice. See too
how, in this country, when party feeling reached the highest pitch it has
ever reached in English history, the Hebrew extraction of the then
Prime Minister was sufficient to induce a host of writers and
speakers to vent all their party spleen on the Jewish race. Similar
circumstances have generated the present agitation. Germany has,
during the last ten years, fallen from the position of one of the richest
and happiest, to one of the poorest and most disturbed of states.
Bowed down beneath the intolerable burden of an immense standing
anrmy, and distracted by failing trade and intense political conflict,
the country has presented a melancholy appearance, and consequently
the Jews have become the scapegoats of all the popular discontent.
The vague and illogical murmurs of the people have been taken up
by all extremes of political opinion ; and Socialists and Conservatives,
Protestants and Catholics, have alike found in Judeophobia an
identity with their own interests. This fact alone is sufficient to
show the blindly instinctive — as distinct from the intelligently
deliberate — nature of the agitation, and it is therefore hardly likely
that it will survive in its integrity the inevitable return to calm,
bononrable, and immortal principles.

Before, however, I examine the most noteworthy amongst the
arguments of the anti-Semites, it may 1)e desirable that I should
briefly sketch the history of the recent outbreak, in illustration of
my theory of the inherent nature of the prejudice which has brought
it about.

During the late Busso-Turkish war the Jews all over the world
were loud in their condemnation of what they, in common with a
huge number of their countrymen, regarded as the hypocritical
dedgns of Bussia. Carried away by the heat of party conflict, which
then ran phenomenally high, many of them even ventured to appear
at public meetings and to express the tendency of their opinions
with the courage and outspokenness of citizens and patriots. Political
differences rapidly fermented until they reached the highest point
of violence, and then, boiling over, they degenerated into vin-
dictive personalities and low abase. This was the opportunity for
signalising themselves required by the more narrow-minded of the
opponents of the national programmes in England and Hungary.
In this country Sir ToUemache Sinclair, and in the Cisleithan king-
dom an individual named Istoczy, seized with avidity upon the
tlieme, and, having discovered that Lord Beaconsfield was of Hebrew
parentage, and that Jews generally - supported the Bussophobic

342 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. February

poIil;y, they abandoned the more complex problems of the Eaetem*
question — to the solution of which they had not been able to contri-
bute anything — for the more simple outcry that the Jews were at the
bottom of all the mischiefs of which they complained. At that
moment the German people were, by a combination of the elements of
depression, particularly susceptible to an attack of Judeophobia ; the
contagion was not slow to reach them, and it soon became apparent
that the vague murmurs of the multitude, which were speedily beard,
only required some directing and organising agency to give them
more than ordinary point and effect.

Singularly appropriate was the anti*Semites' first choice of a
leader. This was made in the person of one Wilhelm M&rr, an
obscure G-erman journalist, who appeared to hold sufficiently gloomy
views on the Jewish question to reconmiend him to the public, and
these he very soon embodied in a pamphlet which he entitled 'Dtpc
Sieg des Jvdenthwma vber daa Oermcmenthum.

In this work the author mournfully and lugubriously exclaimed
that Germany was becoming thoroughly Judaised. He explained
that the Jews were gradually ousting native Germans from every
post of value and importance in the country, and that, by their re-
markable discipline as a class, their rapid multiplication, and their
demoralising avocations, they were in a £eiir way, if not to exterminate
the Teuton race altogether, at least to subjugate it. To such a pitch
of despair did Herr Marr work himself in this unique literary pro-
duction that he concluded with this very distressing peroration :—
^ A voice in the desert has been raised, and has stated facts— un-
deniable facts. Let us accommodate ourselves to the inevitable, if
we cannot remedy it. Vob victie, Ji/nia Oermanice ! * There was,
however, some method in Herr Marr's melancholia. Notwithstanding
the cheerless view of the prospects of his fatherland which he took
in the body of his pamphlet, in a short pre&tory address to his
readers he suddenly brightened up, and called upon his countrymen
to join with him in preventing the consunmiation of the Hebrew
conspiracy which he had discovered, hy founding a social ani
political weeJdy Tiewapaper, to be edited by himself.

Unfortunately, everything was so ripe for an outbreak of Judeo-
phobia that the German public did not trouble itself to inquire into
Herr Marr's motives. It read his brochure with avidity, and within
a few days six editions were exhausted. The Ultramontane and
Conservative organs eagerly seized upon the theory promulgated
by Marr ; the former accepting it as a novel form of an old and
cherished polemical whetstone, the latter recognising in it a plausi-
ble basis on which to avenge all the wrongs which an impoverished
and intolerant Junkerthum attributed to the Jews. Diatribe after
diatribe was launched from the colunms of such representative
prints as the OermaniOj the Vaterkmdy the ReicJisbotey and the

1881. THE ANTI-JEWISH AGITATION. 348

KreuZ'ZeUv/ag^ and gradually Herr Man's theory became exagge--
rated^ until, under the name of ' International Semitism,' it was
proelaimed that the danger extended to the whole of the civilised
world.

Marr then published a second pamphlet, called Der Weg zum
Siege dea Oermanenthums uJber das Jvdenthum, in which, whilst
advocaticg a great national anti-Jewish movement, he also endea-
voored to prove that the conmiercial avocations of the Jews were
and always had been a standing menace and danger to the people
amongst whom they dwelt. Eeal work, he told his readers, the
Jews would not undertake, preferring always those dark byways of
Schachem und Wuchem, which were the ^ sole reasons that they had
always been hated from the beginning of history.' A number of other
pamphleteers followed in the same strain, the most notable being Die
Jv/ienfrage, by Waldegg, Neupaldstina^ Wo ateckt der Mauschd f hj
B^mond, VorurtheU oder berechtiger Hass? by von Wedell, and
Minister Maybach und der Oifibaum, by Naudh. The patriotism
of the Jews was also attacked by Subens, Bohling, and Todt^ with:
casuistical analyses of Babbinical Judaism, and then suddenly the
so-called economical aspects of the agitation. attracted the attention
of the Eev. Herz Stocker, one of the court chaplains, and a pillar of
communistic socialism.

This impulsive ecclesiastic, having founded an association called
the Christian Social Working-man's Party, intended to work wonders
in the way of ameliorating the condition of the German working-
man, commenced to lecture on the Jewish question before his rough
disciples ^with a ferocious energy,' to quote the words of the
Berlin correspondent of the Timea, < which would have endeared
him to th soul of Martin Luther and of John Knox.' He re-
vived all the charges which had fruitlessly been brought against
the Jews five years before by the Kreuz-Zeitung, preaching that
they were the authors of a new caste and of a new source of social
oppression, and that they were endeavouring to create amongst them-
selves not only an aristocracy of finance, but also a dangerous autocracy
of capitaL The prevailing depression in commerce and agriculture
recommended these views to the most sensitive sympathies of the
German working classes. The belief rapidly spread that all the
miseries from which Germans were suffering were really due to the
unholy accumulations of the Jews, and, as a consequence, the popular
excitement ran so high that on the occasion of a Jewish festival one or
two personal attacks upon Hebrews were chronicled by the papers. The
excitement increased ; vague advertisements appeared in the Berlin
and Dresden newspapers calling upon the opponents of Judaisation
to send their names to certain addresses, and at last, about eighteen
months ago, a number of anti-Semite leagues were announced, with
head-quarters in the two great centres of German Protestantism and

344 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Febmaiy

Catholicism. The following is a translation of the first statutes of
these leagues adopted by the members : —

1. Tlie object of the Anti* Semite League, founded by non-Jewa, is to unite
all non- Jewish Gemuinfi of all persuasionB, all parties, all stations, into one oqmmon
league, which, setting aside all separate interests, all political difGarences, shall striTe,
with all earnestness and diligence, for the one end, viz., to save our Qennan iatlier-
land from becoming completely Judaised, and render residence in it supportable to
the posterity of its aborigines.

2. ^is object is to be striren after in a strictly legal way, by renstiDg' with all
lawful means the further supplanting of Germanism by Judusm, by making it its
task to thrust the Semites back into a station corresponding to their numerical
strength ; by delivering the Germans from the oppression of Jewish infloenoe
weighing down upon them in the social, political, and ecclesiastical spheres, and
securing to the children of Germans their full right to offices and dignities in the
German fiitherland.

8. To attain this object the League avails itself of the following means:
(a) Granting aid to its members and to other societies having the same tendency in the
shape of money, lectures, communications, itinerant teachers, libraries, by the press,
etc., and by favouring non-Jewish competitors in all spheres and stations of life,
(d) Public and private agitation for the removal of Jewish preponderance in the
administration of the community and the State, in the legislature, and society, bv
instruction, by aiding aspiring young talent, by education and scholarships, bj
rescuing unfortunate victims from the hands of the usurers, etc. (c) Opposing the
Jewish press by aiding and starting non-Jewish journals*, and finally {d), by
forming exclusive circles, clubs, and the like, to which Jews are not admitted.

4. The symbol of the League, combining religious faith with the fatherland (ifc)
[meaning, of course, the love of the fatherland or patriotism], is the cross resting
on an oak-leaf. This circumstance alone proves that the League is by no means
aj^gressive. All violence, all baiting (Hetze) is foreign to it.^ Politics are exdnded
from all the meetings of the League.

6. The members are divided into ' called ' and ' chosen ' ones.

6. Every respectable non-Jewish man of twenty-four years of age, able to read
and write, and offering guarantees that he joins the League for the sake of its objects,
not from mere curiosity or impure motives, can become a ' called ' member. £x-
oeptionally, men under twenty-four may be admitted too.

7. The candidate has to apply in writing to the office of the League, to send in
his photograph, furnished with his name in his own hand, and must be able to
lefer to two ' called ' ones, or one ' chosen ' member. On his being admitted, hi?
photograph, furnished with the stamp of the League, will be returned, and tbe
symbol of the League handed to him. The two will serve him at meetings or in
conferences with an individual member as his legitimation.

8. Each member has to pay an admission fee of three marks, one mark fait
thie symbol, and fifty pfennings for the bye-laws. Also a monthly contributioa of
one mark has to be paid to the office of the League. Larger contributions are pw-
mitted.

0. Every member is fully entitled to aid on the part of the Lea^pie, so far a?
its objects are concerned, and is, on the other bond, iu duty bound to promote
them to the best of his abilities. On matters of the League the members have to
observe the strictest secrecy towards non-members.

* In more than one detail the agitation of the Anti-Semite Leagnc bears a re-
semblance to that of the Irish Land Leagne. Loth ostentatiously parade their
disapproval of personal violence, and yet all the outrages which have taken place
within the area of their influence arc directly traceable to their encouragement.

1881. • THE ANTI-JEWISH AGITATION. 346

These statutes afford an excellent insight into.the nature of tl^
anti-Semite leagues and of the feelings which l»roaght a]i)oiit their
establishment. They had not been long promulgated when H^
agitation received a powerful auxiliary in the, person of Professor von
Treitschke, a distinguised littircUeur, and a personal friend of Prince
Bismarck. In the course of an article on the Jewish question in the
Prussian Jahrbiicher^ a monthly magazine edited by him^ he enlarged,
upon its ethnological aspects. After a very fuiciful account of how
the Jews were crowding into Germany,, he laid it down as pre-
eminently dangerous to Crerman independence, that a hardy race,
more or less nomad in character, shoidd invade the fatherland in
such numbers, and, being charged in a higher degree than the
Teutons with virile energy, should, in one generation or another,
gather to themselves the greatest prizes in the country without
holding out any prospect of eventually returning them to Uie natives
by intermarriage, or without ensuring that they should not be carried
from the country. Since then the agitation has grown to bloated pro-
portions, and I am assured that 100,000 is a modest figure at whidito
estimate the number of definitely aflSliated members of the leagues*.
The leagues themselves have spread even into Hungary, and, not-
withstanding protests from the highest and most intellectual
quarters, neither leaders nor members have been deterred from con-
tinuing their zealous propaganda, which is already not insignificantly
stained with blood. This is briefly the history of the agitation
in (jermany ; its recent developments are too familiar to everyone
to need any detailed description at my hands.

That this account of the inception and progress of anti-Semitism
in Germany bears out my theory of the commonplace charaeter of
the agitation ^ill not^ I think, be easily denied. It came from the
unreasoning multitude exactly in the same way as its historical
prototypes always sprung into existence ; its leaders were at the
commencement below mediocrity, and now it has not more than half-
a-dozen well-known names connected with it. Somewhat of a eomic
aspect is, too, imparted to it by the Titanic exertions of its incom-
petent chiefs to supply it with a rational gospel. The blunders they
made were terrible, and only a week or two ago I was amused to read
in the JudiecJte LitercUurblatt an article in which it was shown how
inappropriate was even the very name of the agitation. Quoting
Delitzsch, the writer pointed out how Shem (from which name the
word Semite is, as everyone knows, derived), the son of Noah, was
exalted above his. brothers in his &ther's prophecies, and that, in
accordance with these prophecies, as well as the literal meaning of
the word * Skem^ ' Semitism ' should mean * Godliness.' It will,
therefore, be app^trent that in calling themselves 'anti-Semites,'
Herr Marr's disciples have fallen into a ridiculous error. This little
incident is a pregnant argument in favom* of my theory of the wholly
Vol. IX.— No. 48. A A

346 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. February

irrational character of the agitation. It would not have been in
harmony with the profonnd and scientific natilre of modem thought
to have revived what Oliver Wendell Holmes would call the * polarisa^
tidn ^ of the word < Jew.' It had been so synonymous with benighted
medisevalism ; it was the word which had lit the fires of the luqui-
sition, and upon which the Flagellants had called down fiuiatical
curses during the Black Death. * Down with the Jews ! ' had been
the cry of the ignorant mob five hundred years before ; to revive it
now would have been to raise with it its own condemnation.
What, then, did they do ? They were not very distinguished scholars
— ^probably they will point out, if they are sufficiently well acquainted
with histoiy, tJiat all the apostles of great theological movements
have been humble individuals — and therefore, with that craving for
long words which characterises the ignorant, they seem to have
referred to some book of synonyms, and, having discovered a term
which was capable of an ending in *-ism,' and the derivation of
which was, as far as they were concerned, obscure, they adopted it as
calculated to invest their agitation with a certain novelty, and a
claim to cultured consideration. The arguments of the Anti-Seniites
have been invented in precisely the same manner, and, as I will now
show, they have been equally ridiculously misapplied.

The object of these arguments is to show that Anti-Semitism is a
secular movement quite distinct from the Judenhetze of other times,
perfectly firee of religious prejudice and growing out of a combination
of circumstances entirely of modem development. This interpretation
of the movement has been put forward over and over again with
painful accentuation, and it is no doubt in the hope of its ^ immortal
truth' outliving base and calumnious misconstruction that the
An.ti«Semites stick so tenaciously to their agitation. The move-
ment has been condemned by the flower of G-erman learning and
intelligence; it is said to be in conflict with the most glorious
traditions of German literature, to be dragging in the dirt the im-
mortal teachings of Lessing, to be falsifying the fervently expressed
hope of Gt>ethe that his countrymen would never forget ^tlie divine
lessons' of Nathan der Weise ; but to all this the Anti-Semites have
opposed the stolid declaration that their cause is rational and intel-
ligible, and that it is perfectly innocent of the odium theologicum* It
is difficult,' however, to believe this, even without being «oquainted
vrith the history of the agitation. If the Jews have certain evil qualities,
why not aim at counteracting the exercise of these bad qualities,
instead of broadly anathematising an entire people? It is too ridicu-
lous a proposition to put forward that ail Jews are unaompulous
and unpatriotic. If the common law of Germany be not strong
Plough to deal with dishonesty and conspiracy, by all means let
leagues be formed to counteract them ; but why assume to < Boycott'
an entire class in order to reach this comparatively small end ?

1881. THE ANTI-JEWISS AQITATIOHT. 347

And then, why should the Jews be mentioned by their social and
theological name if the logical outcome of the agitation is not that
if iiiey wiU only conform to the prevailing type of Christianity aU
their criminality will be at an end ? And, strange to say, onlookers
are not left to arrive at this interpretation of the object of the
movement without some explicit assistance from the Anti<-Semites
themselves. In the same breath that the Jews are told that
they are steeped in crime, and dangerous to the commonwealth^
they are informed that the best way to improve themselves is to
marry Ghristiatis, and merge themselves into the Grerman nation.
It is very extrsiordinary to me that such stem moralists can view so
dreadful a contamination with equanimity ; this is, however, one of
those very interesting points where the new-bom arguments of the
Anti-Semites are crossed by the aspirations of mediseval fimaticism.
^Dog of a Jew I' thundered the Grand Inquisitor to the Hebrew
trembling at the stake, * you have inherited the responsibilities of the
crucifiers of Christ : but confess your sins and embrace this holy
cross, and all ^ill be forgiven/ The Anti-Semites are — at least so
they say — not at all animated by this ancient &naticism ; it is, of
course, a very different thing when they say ' Semites I in your
present position yoti must be, by all ethnological, economical, and
philosophic rule, a danger to the countries in which you dwelL We
are consequently compelled, as discriminating philanthropists, to
exclude you from an equality with your fellow-citizens, unless, of.
<x>ur8e, you consent to give up your theological and social charac-
teristics, and to lose your moral obliquity in the infinity of our
virtue.' There are some people who will say that they cannot see
the differ«n<te between these two renderings of Judeoi^iobia, and I
must oonfees that I am one of them. Put it how they will, Anti-
Semitism il^ after all as bitter a theological agitation as the Jew-
hating df ' the^ Middle Ages, and it is as deeply tinged with the
proselytising' niania.

These argfilments, however, form so admirable an opportunity for
the denoiolition df at least one very tmjust prejudice with respect t^
the Jewsj thlit I will Hot' shirk their consideration because of theit
assumed ba^ having no real existence in fact.

In the fiist pkc^ let me examine the most popular arguttient,
vias., that by iheit depraved av<^tions — particularly usury — ^the
Jews are an itlpdrtant faclior iti the demoralisation of any country in
which th^^liVte. <The Jews hate real work,' says Marr in one of his
pamphlets, ^ Sie sind hochJtaleniirt zum ReaZismua, and are there-
fore inUertotly bi^ly tnotiey-grubbers.' Beymond harps upon the
same theme. '^ The Semitic character,' he says, ' is the antithesis of
all ideaKty; in the commercial as well as in the domestic life of the
Jews, the preVailiqg influence ii^ selfishness.' ' The Jew will not do any
hard or honourable work,' says Waldegg in Die Judenfrage ; < who

▲ a2

348 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. February

ever heard of a Jewish locksmith, blacksmith, builder, or miner ? '
And they all concur in the conclusion that it is for this reason tlmt
Jews are, and always will be, hungry and unscrupulous usurers.
Popular as is this idea, I must confess that I am rather astonished
that it should be soberly put forward, in vindication of what is sap-
posed to be a philosophic and thoughtful attack upon Jevrs. I thiiik
it was Lord John Eussell who, in a speech on the Jewish emanch
pation question, said, that Christians generally should welcome a
measure intended to mete out justice to a people on whom they had
inflicted so much wrong ; arid yet now, not half a century after our
emancipation, we are credited with vices entirely due to nearly fifteen
centuries of Christian persecution. The Anti-Semites invoke histoiy
to their aid ; but, as with all their invocations and arguments, it is
only to be hoist with their own petard.

In the early Biblical times the Jews, so far from being money-
grubbers, were a romantically Arcadian people. In the highest
degree poetical in all their ideas, they knew no other occupation
than agriculture, and there are but few Jewish laws relating to
earning one^s living which are not based on the assumption tiiat
agriculture would always be the principal interest to be catered foe.
During their Egyptian slavery the Jews had' to do hard work, if
ever a people had, and on their entrance to the land of Canaan they
had to fight stoutly and bravely. In Palestine their occupations
were principally in the field and vineyard, and about the time of
Jesus they began to devote some attention to industry, there being
every proof, according to Gesenius, that they were proficient as potters,
weavers, furriers, rope-makers, goldsmiths, basket-makers, soap-boilers,
engravers, pewterers, builders, stonemasons, miners, coppersmiths,
cutlers, and locksmiths. According to Schleiden, too, they were
able physicians, poets, judges, musicians, and theologians, and three
of their tribes (Zebulun, Dan, and Assur), living on the coast of the
Mediterranean, divided the import and export trade with the Fhos-
nicians. They were also good soldiers and astute generals, and so
far from being averse to military service, they were subject to a
severe conscription by which every young man entered the army
when he reached his twentieth year. Nor did they abandon these
occupations when their Temple was destroyed and their homes devas-
tated. In the Boman Empire they were farmers and vine-dressers,
handicraftsmen and manufacturers, wholesale merchants, soldiers,
physicians, scientists and state officials. The influence which drove
the Jews from these honourable occupations was the influence of a
dominant, revengeful, and bigoted Christianity, which, with its adop-
tion as the state religion of the Boman Empire by Constantine in
323 A.C., immediately devoted it« attention to intensifying the hatred
which had long divided Jews and Christians. A spirited description

1881. THE ANTI-JEWISH AGITATION. 349

of the inception of this antagonism appears in Leckj's History of
European Morals.

Soomed or hated by those around him^ his Temple levelled with the dust, and
the last Testige of his independence destroyed, he (the Jew) clang with a des-
perate tenacity to the hopes and principles of his ancient creed. In his eyes the
Christians were at once apostates and traitors. lie could not forget that in the last
hour of his country's agony^ when the armies of the Gentile encompassed Jerusa*
lam, and when the hosts of the faithful flocked to its defence, the Christian Jews
had abandoned the fortunes of their race, and refused to bear any part in the
heroism and the sufferings of the closing scene. They had proclaimed that the
promised Messiah, who was to restore the faded glories of Israel, had already come ;
that the privileges which had so long been the monopoly of a single people had
paased to the Qentile world ; that the race, which was once supremely blessed, was
for all future to be accursed among mankind. The Ghiistians viewed with exulta-
tion the calamities which fell upon the prostrate people whose cup of bitterness
they were destined through long ages to fill to the brim. It is not, therefore, sur-
prittng that there should have arisen between the two creeds an animosity which
paganism could never rival.

This animosity was in the Jew soon transformed into the harmless
and whispered prejudices of humility, but in the heart of Christianity
it rankled and flourished on the garbage of its own excesses, and
with the earliest assumption of power by the Church, it became the
business of its authorities to gratify it to repletion. In 357 a.d.
Constantius forbad the employment of Christian slaves by Jews,
dealing a severe blow at their power of competition in industry
and agriculture, as in those days slave-labour was for the most
part used. Previous to 418 the Jews laboured under no disability
except the one I have mentioned, and their eligibility for public
oflices and the learned professions they had largely availed them-
selves of. In this year, however. Flavins Houorius disqualified them
from all state employment except pleadiug in the law courts,
and in 439 even this privilege was denied them by Theodosius II.
The Jews, however, still occupied honourable positions everywhere, and
as men of science were highly esteemed ; Schleiden tells us that they
were the only physicians trusted by the public. In 476 the Soman
Empire fell to pieces, and with the tenacity which distinguishes the
race the Jews immediately reverted, in the new German States, to
the useful toil and equally valuable professions which had charac-
terised their best days in their own land. In Germany they became
savants, manufacturers, and agriculturists, and in France they were
soon found in every department of work, from state employments to
tilling the soil. The Christian Church, however, was not long in re-
turning to its malignant Judenhetze. In the year 600 Gregory the
Great, who, it must be confessed, was otherwise disposed to treat the
Jews with justice, revived, in his attempt to extinguish slavery, the old
ordinance of Constantius. Writing to Brunhilda and Theodebert II.
of Anstrasia, and Theoderich of Burgundy on the subject of slavery he
sacoeasfully represented to tiiem that the possession of Christian

350 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. February

slaves by Jews in their dominions was a scandal to the Qiuroh.
Fourteen years later Glotaire II. ^opted the recommendations of the
Clermont and Ma^on Councils, that Israelites should not occupy
positions in the State service, which would give them authority over
Christians, and during the following year the Council of Paris resolved
that they should be dismissed &om all State employment altogether.
Charlemagne and Louis le Debonnaire prohibited the Je^ fiom
buying or selling sacred Church, vessels, from receiving Christian
hostages for debt, and from dealing in wine and cereals, and CharleB
the Bold ordered in 877 that whilst Christians paid one-eleventh of
their earnings to the king, the Jews should pay one-tenth. During
all the time that these efforts were being made to render life more of
a vale of tears to the Jew, simply on account of his religion, it must
be mentioned that the principal, if not the only merchants were
Jews, and that not only was their cotomercial morality above sus-
picion, but by many their value to the community at large ivas
reckoned deservedly high. There was consequently not the slightest
justification for harassing them ; and in the gradual restriction of
Jewish enterprise, and the proportionate development of Christian
aggressiveness, its material and moral disadvantages became speedily
evident. Already pointed at, as the bearers of an hereditary reproach,
their position was not improved by the celebrated EucharisUc con-
troversies which broke out about this time. The disputes of Pas-
chasius Sadbertus with Batramnus, and of Berengarios with Lanfranc,
tended in an important degree to revive the bitterest issues at the
basis of the mutual hostility of Jew and Christian, iand when these
and other similar influences — ^particularly the theory put forward in
Anselm's Cur Deua Homo — joined to form the mighty confluent of the
Crusades, the position of the Jews of Europe as the hated and de-
spised of every class was settled. The first blood drawn by the Cru-
saders was Jewish blood. Dean Milman says : —

When the first immense horde of undisciplined fiinatlcs of the lowest order,
under the command of Peter the Hermit and Waltei^ the Penniless, lo^d under the
guidance of a goose and a goat, assembled nekt the city of Treves, a mnimmr lapidly
spread through the camp, that, while they were advancing to recover the sepokliTe
of their Redeemer from the Infidels, they were leaving behind worse unbeHevers^
the murderers of the Lord. . . . With one impulse the Crusaders rushed to the city
and began a relentless pillage, violation, and massacre of every Jew th^ could find.

• *

This was the definite commencement of a history of persecution
which, for its long duration and calculated malignity, its sustained
barbarity and complete injustice, is unexampled — ^persecution* which,
whatever the outcome of the conflict of creeds^ will never reease to
cast a shadow upon the history of Christianity. The ^ysical and
moral corruption of the Jews was now rapidly proceeded witii. Whilst
the perpetual inmiinence of personal attack ms destroying raU the
manly qualities that they possessed, their systematic ezolusicMa from

1881. THE ANTI-JEWISE AGITATION. 351

hoDoarable walks in life droye them speedily to those contracted habits
of thought and action —

Deep; hollow, treacherous, and fbU of guile.

which have not unnaturally lingered in their posterity. They were
driven from the possession of lands and the membership of trade
guilds ; Gregory the Seventh in the throes of his conflict with Henry
the Fourth of Bavaria^ thundered his fiercest Bulls against them, and
then, having no place in the prevailing feudal system, they became
the disposable property of the various monarchs, and were* bought,
sold, pledged, and plundered, as so much merchandise.

At the fourth Lateran Council, when it was resolved that all herfs-
sies against the doctrine of Transubstantiation should be deaJLt with by
the secular arm, Jews were specially mentioned as worthy whetstones
for the zeal of a zealous Christianity, and in 1 257 Alexander the Fourth,
fearing that this suggestion of Innocent the Third was not religiously
enough followed, issued a Bull in which he particularly exhorted the
King of France aad other potentates to see that the Jews wore a dis-
tinctive garb, and recommended them also to bum all the copies upon
which they could lay their hands, of the books ' qui Thalmuth vulgariter
appellantur, in quibus continentur errores contra fidem catholicam ae
horribiles et intollerabiles blasphemie contra don^num nostrum
Ihesum Xpum et beatam Mariam virginem matrem eius.'

According to Kiesselbach the Jews soon found themselves compelled
to deal only in used or second-hand articles, as their exclusion from
markets prevented them from buying sufficiently advantageously to
enable them to compete with Christian merchants ; and others, having
a little capital and no means of employing it, resorted to money-lend-
ing. It may be interesting to those Anti-Semites who ;iow so glibly
charge the Jews with a natural tendency to usury, to know that the
earliest Jewish money-lender, of whom we have any record, was not a
common type of Jew, but a learned French fiabbi — B. Jacob Tarn —
who so &r from finding anything congenial in the placing of monies
at interest, bitterly complained in public of the harsh necessity which
prevented him from earning his living in any other way.

I may also be permitted to say a word on the subject of high in-
terests At the time that Jews first resorted to money-lending these
was but little security for the lender, and interest was consequently
very high. Instead of letting its fluctuations take their own course,
the rates became fixed — ^generally equitably fixed — by Boyal and mu-
nicipal edicts^ and sometimes they were as high as 86f per cent. These
rates not changing with the times, the money-lenders naturally became
used to large profits, and so the evU indulgence stuck to them through
the entire period of their social ostracism.

It 'would be tedious to recount all the various jdiases of the Jew^
baiting of the subsequent seven hundred years; every student

35S THE NINETEEMH CENTURY February

of history is sufficiently acquainted with at least its broad lines.
This, however, must be said : whatever notable act of persecution
took place, whether it assumed the form of wholesale massacre or
wholesale expulsion, whether the Jews were forbidden to emerge
from their Crhettos, to don an ordinary dress, or to exercise
honourable professions, it could always be traced, not indirectly but
directly, to Christian ecclesiastical influences, although it was cer-
tainly enthusiastically carried out by the trained bigotry of the
people. I may then boldly ask who is primarily responsible for that
demoralisation of the Jews of which the Anti-Semites now complain
if not the ancestors of their present opponents? ^Each of the
great changes,' says Dean Milman, ^ which were gradually taking
place in the state of the world seemed to darken the condition
of this unhappy people, till the outward degradation worked inward
upon their own minds/ It is not quite clear what is meant here
by * great changes,' but there can be no doubt that Milman
clearly appreciated — although he did not definitely expound it^Uie
demoralising influence of the persecution to which the Jews were
exposed. On this hea'd the eminent historian was evidently con-
fused by his desire to place in a favourable light the few apologies for
the Jews which, for various political reasons, were issu^ firom the
Vatican, quite oblivious of the &ct that these apologies were but poor
compensation for the ordinances which had primarily subjugated the
legitimate aspirations of the Jews. However, there can be no question
tiiat it was solely in consequence of Christian persecution, brought
about by authoritative Christian encouragement, that Jews were made
gradually to imbibe all the vices of servitude.

It is then in the highest sense indecent for Christians now, so
shortly after our emancipation, and when, too, we have already made
such astonishing progress, to reproach iis with evil qualities generated
by their own cruelty. Nay ! in fece of our unmurmuring patience, it
is the vulgar cowardice of the bully to endeavour to reawaken a per-
secution on these disingenuous charges. If the Jews, instead of being
so full of vitality and intelligence, so ready to forgive the injuries of
the past, and so cheerfully prepared to bear their share of national
burdens and responsibilities, were a by-word for depravity and crime,
Christians, so far from blaming them, should blush with a conscience-
stricken shatte whenever a recollection of their existence crossed their
minds. Had they, under the fearful tortures which they have endured,
become a nation of idiots, they would only have formed a fitting
monument to the brutality and infamous uncharitableness with
which through the ages they have been wantonly persecuted by the
aoi-disant votaries of a Gospel of Mercy.

Schlegel, in referring to the miseries of Jewish ostracism, remarks
that 'it is a problem whether any other people placed in a similar
situation • • . would have done better; or whether mankind in
general subjected to similar trials would have come off more success-

1881. THE ANTLJEWISH AGITATION. ,353

fully/' I quote this generous reflection of the by no means
biassed son-in-law of Moses Mendelssohn, because it is a text from

«

which I may review the miscellanea of the arguments of the Anti-
Semites, which are all of a somewhat kindred character.
• To the problem I have quoted I answer emphatically that no other
people could have done so well or could have come off so successfully,
for the simple reason that no people exists which po^esses the method
of consolation and the staff of hopefulness of which the Jews were and
stiU are the sole possessors. Their method of consolation they found
in their peculiarly domestic religious ceremonial ; their staff of hope-
fulness was the optimism which was bred of the simplicity of their
theology and the never-ceasing demonstration of the practical
superiority of their religion. Now, what the Anti-Semites, and even
their abettors in England, ask of us — of course not on religious
grounds I — is that we should abandon, by intermarriage with the
Grentile, this &ith which has preserved us so marvellously. They
say that whilst the Jews do not adopt this course they are virtually
foreigners in whatever land they may reside, and that their exclusive-
ness and distinctiveness must earn for them suspicion and dislike.
This is the comparatively moderate view taken by the Spectator on a
recent occasion; Professor Groldwin Smith and the German Anti-
Semites go further, and say they cannot be patriots whilst they
retain such distinctiveness.

These arguments are evidently conceived in an entire ignorance of
the more practical differences between Christianity and Judaism.
Whilst the former ip, so to speak, a Sabbath religion, the latter is an
everyday religion, exercising a purifying influence over every detail of
domestic life. The Christian who has never lived in a Jewish family, or
studied its mode of life, can have no conception how intimate, so to
speak, is the Jew with his God ; how to this day, even, he observes in
every arrangement of his hoiisehold, every act of his home life, some
wise ordinance, of eiiiber a hygienic or moral nature, which has been
handed down to him as a consecrated peculiarity of his religious de-
nomination. The?e observances are only discretionary with Christians ;
on Jews they are obligatory, and their wisdom is so imiversally ac-
knowledged that they form an indissoluble link between the Jew and his
religion. It is then not an abstract theological question which divides
the two creeds, but practical difficulties, for the solution of which
Christians will not make any permanent sacrifices and Jews dare not.
It has occurred to me that a curious apology for the social distinctive-
ness of Jews might be made in the spirit of that metaphorical interpre-
tation of the Scriptures which is so much in vogue with a certain class
of polemical disputants, although it would be at variance with the
curse which the Israelites are supposed to realise by their homeless
state. In an earlier portion of. this article I have referred to the
origin and meaning (according to its philological history) of the

354 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. February

word ^ Semite.' Now there can be no doubt that the meaning of the
blessings which Noah foretold for the descendants of his song Japhet
a^d Shem was that in the case of the former his posterity Bhoiild
enjoy all the advantages of temporal dominion and wealth, whilst
spiritual supremacy should be the destiny of the issue of the latter.
' God shall enlarge Japhet,' said Noah, whereas of Shem he said,
^ Blessed be the Lord Ood of Shem.' Shem was then to have been,
according to the commentary of Delitzsch, the bearer of the Divine
Name, the repository of the religious tradition, and there is farther
evidence that in this capacity, and for the purpose of carrying out a
mission of religion and enlightenment, his descendants were to have
been a wandering people, wandering too amongst the sons of Japhet
Noah himself says, ^ and he (Japheth) shall dwell in the tents of
Shem,' showing that the former in the course of his worldly enter-
prises would require the spiritual ministrations of the latter. Again
at Exodus xix. 6, we find the confirming passage : ^ And ye shall he
unto me a kingdom of priests and an holy nation ; ' and in the sixth
verse of the sixty-first chapter of Isaiah is a most extraordinary
foreshadowing of this destiny of the Jews in the words ' Ye shall he
named the priests of the Lord : men shall call you the ministers of
our Grod ; ye ahaU eat the riches of the OentUea and in their glory
ehall ye boost yourselvesJ* It would therefore appear that the Jews
remain distinct for the purpose of preserving in their integrity certain
theological teachings and a certain enlightening influence, which it
will one day be their mission to impress upon the world. This theoiy
I advance, of course, only as a literary curiosity, but it is one which
might be used with effect when so many preachers are intent upon
justifying the persecutions of the Jews and the missionary enterprises
of Christians with casuistical interpretations of more or less obscure
passages in the Scriptures.

And now as to the political bearing of the distinctiveness of the
Jews. Here again we meet with an extraordinary illustration of the
contradictory character of the arguments of Anti-Semitism. Pre-
suming that the argument of natural depravity has been answered,
and the perfectibility of the Jews established by numberless instances
of the eminences to which they have risen during the short period since
their emancipation, the restless and chameleonlike hatred of the
Anti-Semites breaks out in this form — I quote from an article in the
Reichsbote: —

Foreign nations should know that the Qennan people allows its Freae to he written
and its public opixuon Ibrmed by Jew% that our authors and artists sigh Trnder the
censorship of a Judaistic literaturci and that the real beat of the national Gensan
pulse cannot he felt because the Hebrew critic hampers it. In England rules the
Englishman ; in France the Frenchman ^ and all we want is that in Germany the
Qennan» and not the Jew, shall ^ve the tone. We wish the world to be influenced
with respect not only for German arts, but also £)r Gextnan crnlisation ; hut tBis

1881. TBE ANTI-JEWISH AGITATION. 355

•

caimot be if these 4ure stifled \fj an OTennsstenng Judaism. We wish to haTe no
Boman Empre of the German nation, but neither do we desire a Jewish Empire
of the German nation. What we want is a Grerman Empire of the German nation,
and that we can only get when the German becomes and remains the bearer and
disseminator of wealth and culture.

The meaning of this is that the Anti-Semites regard the intel-
lectual activity of, the Jews with as much discontent as their depravity
-^a statemoit of a somewhat contradictory nature, but still soberly
put forward. Wherever they look they complain that they see their
country weighted with Jewish influence. Their universities are deeply
tinged with Jewish teftohings, their foremost philosophers and their
most popular journalists are Jews. German aspirations and opinions are
thus, they say, asphyxiated by a predominance which cannot be accept-
able to the nation because it is Jewish. Granted that these aspirations
and opinions have proved their weakness and stupidity by their in-
ability to cope with the dominating influence, still this weakness and
stupidity represent the legitimate pulsations of the German people,
and they therefore crave for their ascendancy. But, it may be asked,
why should not Jews, bom and bred in Germany, be as capable of re-
presenting the patriotism of the nation as votaries of any other creed?
The Anti-Semites simply reply, ^ because they are Jews.' Now this is
no new argument, no such novel evolution of modem philosophy, as the
Jpji&nfreaaem seem to think it. Close upon a century ago the very
same point was publicly discussed and logically answered. M. de
Talleyrand observed in the AaaembUe NationaU in 1791 : —

There can be no difference between these men (the Jews) and ourselves but in
the exerdse of their religious worship ; take that away, what can we see in them
bat feUow-dtizens and brothers P Were it othenoke, it wauid be religion that gives
civU andpoiitieid rights; but it is birth^ domicile^ or landed property that confers
them. If we reject the Israelites as Jews, we pumsh them for being born in one
reli^on rather than in another ; this is a manifest infraction of all laws^ humane
or dviL

On the same ground it may be said that if the argument of the
Anti-Semites is followed to its logical conclusion, it is religion, and
religion alone, which can evoke the patriotic instinct, and consequently
that a man's patriotism Aould be under the direction of his religious
opinions. There might be some reason for taking up tiiis charge
against the Jews if it could be 'shown that they have, at the dictates
of leligioas prejudice, ever been unfidthful to the land of their adop-
tion or birth. The very contrary is the case. The Jews have ever
been amongst the most orderly and attached of oitizens^and when
they have risen to position and responsibility in the State their duties
have been discharged with conspicuous. zeal and impartiality. There
are some who have the assurance to assert that the tendency of
Judaism itself is to subjugate the interests of the Gentile neighbour
and fellow-countxyman to tribal interest. As, however, thare is not

356 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. February

the shadow of a foundation for this statement, and no attempt at its
justification has ever been made, let me merely ask whether the r(k
played by Judaism throughout the long period that its votaries were
persecuted, was ever of so immoral a character as to warrant this charge?

The answer is emphatically, No I Whilst the demoniacal attitude
of Christianity was outwardly transforming the Jew into a cringing,
spiritless, and narrow-minded chifonnieVf in his heart of hearts a
spark of his former self was kept alive by his ancient faith, and pre-
vented that complete demoralisation from which, had it really taJcen
place, there would have been no returning.

The Jew was never so demoralised but he had a sympathy for his
brethren ; he never fell so low that he forgot his God ; and that his man-
hood never entirely deserted him is proved by the many occasions
when, having to choose between dishonour and death, he heroically de-
cided to die. This question of the patriotism of the Jew has been so
exhaustively dealt with by other writers, and so triumphantly settled in
his favour, that it were a work of supererogation for me to dwell upon
it. On the other hand, the conviction of the prejudiced that the Jew
cannot be a patriot, is so shifty and unsettled, so nervously ready with
new ol^'ections^ and so desirous to avail itself of every flimsy weapon
that sophistry and superstition can invent, that I feel bound to state
that I cannot believe that it ever really had any logical birth. It is
evidently only one of those proverbial suspicions which haunt the
minds of the guilty, very naturally put forward, now that we are rising
in the world, by Christians who, in homely parlance, have a tendency
to ^ measure other people's com by their own bushel.'

I could say much more in defence of my co-religionists against
the charges of the Anti-Semites, but having, I hope, conclusively de-
monstrated the commonplace vulgarity of the whole agitation, and
the artificiality and clumsiness of its gospel, I will Joe satisfied. It
may be imagined that as a Jew I have followed the progress of this
new attempt to revive against my people the prejudices of medisevalism
with an all-consuming indignation, and that it is under the influence
of strong passion that I have penned the foregoing pages. For this
I make no apology, and none I think will be expected of me. I know
so well by my own feelings, and by a thorough appreciation of the
unwarped sympathies of my co-religionists, that a more gratuitous
revival of rancour never was attempted ; and when I remember the
persecutions to which my race have been subjected in the past, the
splendid spirit of conciliation and forgiveness which they have ever
manifested, and that in spite of all this the tendency of modem
Christianity is to foster, if not the hatred, at any rate the contempt
and suspicion, with which the Jew is regarded, I cannot repcess my
indignation. In face of the general culture of the Jews, their re-
markable capacity for progress and -the high distinction which they
have earned for themselves, it is more than a disgrace that by noisy

1881. THE ANTI^EWISH AGITATION. 357

missions and by the explicit lessons of the Christian prayer-books the
general public should be taught to believe that the Jews stand upon
an inferior moral level to themselves. Now, however, that this
agitation has broken out, and that the whole of the enlightened world
has been startled by thi^ proof that religious hatred still exists, the
philosophic teachings of the day must, for the credit of civilisation,
combine for its extinction. I look forward, with, I hope, not too
much sanguineness, to a period when Jew and Christian will appreciate
one another — when, in the words of Lessing's monk, the Christian will
say to the Jew, ^ Ihr seid ein Christ ! Bei Gott, Ihr seid ein Christ !
£in beszrer Christ war nie,' and like the immortal Nathan, the Jew
shall reply, * Was mich Euch zum Christen macht, das macht Euch
mir zum Juden/

LuciEN Wolf.

368 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY, Februaiy

IRISH EMIGRATION.

In laying before the public last spring the result of my inquiries
into the distress in Ireland, I ventured to express the opinion that
for the poorest class in certain tracts in the West — ^poor from the
inherent poverty of the soil — the only remedy was systematie and
organised emigration. ^ For these people^' I wrote,^ ^ the dwellers at
Camus, or Garraroe with its five-and-twenty miles of alternate huts
and boulders, neither peasant proprietary nor fixity of tenure can be
expected to be rei!nedial measures, and if it be objected that these are
exceptional cases, it would not be difficult to bring forward many
other localities of which, in varying degrees, the same might be said.'
For these I urged that emigration, in the absence of local employ-
ment, seemed a remedy much to be preferred to scattering them
over waste lands in Ireland, which needed the tardy and costly oper-
ation of reclamation; adding, ^whatever may be the merits of
'^scattering," I cannot think that its claims can compete with
emigration.' And in reply to the argument that the natural forces
at work, now drawing thousands to seek a livelihood in other lands,
are sufficiently powerful without any legislative interference,' I pointed
out that, as a matter of fact, these forces rarely touched the very
poorest, who were unable to help themselves; further adding:
' That what seems to me to be needed is that families should be
assisted to emigrate from overcrowded parts of Ireland under care-
ful and systematic supervision, and that this oversight should not end
in Ireland, but should be continued under the charge of properly
qualified agents in Canada or elsewhere, whose object it should be to
give assistance in the selection of land or in obtaining employment
for the emigrants.'

A more influential pen than mine writes in the same strain. In
a paper recently laid by Lord Dufierin before the Irish Land Com-
mission, after enumerating the measures which he recommends for
adoption, he adds (see Timesy January 4) : —

But for the extreme west of Ireland, what hope is there from any of the fine-
going devices P Along that region there extends a broad rihand of hopeless miaerf
which no change in the present relations of landlord and tenant is likely to aUeviatab

> Iriih JHMtreu and its Momedies, 6th edition, pp. 109-.10. Bidgwaj ^ Co.

1881. IRISH EMIGRATION. 359

Pezeonial destitation aocentoated by periodical seasons of famine has been the sole
ezperienoe of its inhaUtants daring the . present century. To convert these poor
people into peasant proprietors would be impracticable. To make them copy-holders
under a quit-rent would be scarcely more to the purpose. Even to give them the
land for nothing would not prove a permanent alleyiation. Many of them, indeed,
have no land at dl. What then is to be done? Manifestly the only remedy is
emigration. At this moment emigration is being much discredited, but to anyone
who, like myself, bM seen its effects, such an outcry has no meaning. In my opinion
it b simply inhuman to perpetuate from generation to generation a state of things
which has been deplored by every traveller who has visited those parts during the
last eighty years. Within the compass of little more than a week, after a pleasant
voyage, a proportion of these unhappy multitudes might be landed on the wharves
of Quebec, the women healthier, Ihe children rosier, the men in better heart and
spirits than ever th^ have been since the day they were bom. Four or five days
more would plant them without fatigue or inconvenience on a soil so rich .that it
has only to be scratched to grow the best wheat and barley that can be raised on
the Oontinent of America.

With the object of seeing for myself these fixture harvest fields of
the world, and of inquiring how far they could be peopled with ad-
vantage by the poor people of the west of Ireland^ I paid a visit to
America last autumn, and returned a few weeks ago. I paid particu-
lar attention to the rising and important States of Iowa and Minnesota,
and to our own Province of Manitoba in the great North-Western
Territory, meeting with a large number both of older residents and
of newly-arrived emigrants from Europe, Canada, and the more
easterly States of America. From these gentlemen I invariably re-
ceived the greatest courtesy in the prosecution of my inquiries, and
from them as well as from other sources I received very explicit in-
formation which enables me to corroborate all that has been said of
the fertility of these vast tracts. In Minnesota, the < Catholic Colo-
nisation Association,' directed by the splendid energy of Bishop
Ireland, is providing a home and an honourable future for many a
poor Irishman or others from the eastern States ; while in Manitoba
the Canadian Grovemment is holding out the most liberal inducements
to any who will come to till the soil. Without wishing to recommend
the Canadian territory as a more suitable field for Irish emigration
than that offered by the United States, I shall refer to it chiefly in
the following remarks ; for if there is to be, as I uphold, organised
emigration (gradually carried out) on a scale to be termed national,
it is manifestly more natural and convenient to deal with our own
eokmy of Canada than with a foreign Crovemment, even although it
be as friendly as that of the United States. There is also the additional
reason for doing so that the Canadian lands are offered free, whilst
those in the States must now be purchased at a cost of 1 O^. to SOa. per
acre. But anything that I have to say in favour of western Canada
as a field for Irish industry may be considered to apply with equal or
^nreater force to the States of Minnesota and Iowa.

The great prairie region of north-western Canada consists of a

\
I

360 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. February

triangle, having its south-west angle in Manitoba, its base stretch-
ing about 1,000 miles along the parallel of latitude 49^ (the
boundary of the United States), its second side running 700 or 800
miles northward along the base of the Rocky Mountains, and its
third side following a broken line of lakes, beginning with the Great
Peace River in the north, and passing through Lake Athabasca and
Deer Lake to Winnipeg. This represents a tract of about 250,000,000
acres of fine agricultural country, nearly ten times as large as all
Ireland. The southern portion of it is watered by the Saskat-
chewan River, which with its two great branches flows through the
rich central districts into Lake Winnipeg. It has been navigated for
Tuore than 1,000 miles. Lake Winnip^ itself is 300 miles long b;
fifty to sixty miles wide. Its outlet is by the Nelson River to
Hudson's Bay, at a point eighty miles nearer to Liverpool than is New
York. Through this vast region the Canadian Pac^c Railway, the
scheme for carrying out which is now being warmly discussed in the
Ottawa Parliament, is intended to be carried.

By this project it is proposed to unite the Atlantic seaboard of
Canada in the East with the province of Columbia and the Pacific
Ocean in the extreme West, and thus to render our Canadian posses-
sions independent of [the United States for the conveyance of grain
or other merchandise.

Whatever portion of this vast project may be relegated to the
distant future, that which extends 400 miles eastward from Winnip^
to Lake Superior,'' and 700 or 800 miles westward to the Rocky
Mountains and thence to British Columbia, seems within reach, under
spirited management, in the next three or four years. Already some
portions of this railway have been completed, and by its southern
branch to Emerson, Manitoba and Winnipeg are connected with the
Western States by means of the great network of railways which
extend through Minnesota to Chicago and thence to Canada and the
States.

Manitoba with its 9,000,000 of acres stands like one square on this
great chess-board, and is watered by the Red River and Assiniboine,
whose streams unite at Winnip^, flowing thence northward into the
lake. The deep alluvial soil of this district is unequalled for cultivation
of wheat, and although the moisture of some portions may for a time
hinder their development, the wonderful fertility of the Red River
lands must cause tiiem to come much, more fully under cultivation.
Indeed, they are fisLst being taken up, while settlements are already
in formation, 200 to 300 miles west of Winnipeg, the capital of
INIanitoba. Among recent emigrants I met a considerable numl)er
who had selected tracts along the Saskatchewan, and heard of other
settlers even by the more remote Peace River.

Is this newly-opened colony fitted to be the home of thousands
or it may be of tens of thousands, of poor Irish emigrants ? This was

1881. IMISH EMIGRATION. 361

the question I set before me. At first sight it may seem an easy onie
to answer. Here are millions of acres of most productive land to be
given away, or sold so cheaply that an acre may be bought for the
wages of one to three days' unskilled labour. Tliere U a waste of
boulders, and brown moor, swept by the drenching Atlantic gales.
Here there is a great and increasing demand for labour at a high
rate of wages. There are tens of thousands of strong hands and
arms needing, nay demanding, to be employed. Is this not the very
place we want ? the long-sought for ^ paradise ' for the Irish peasant?
Yes, if we can only bring the peasant to the ^ paradise.' This is the
problem to be solved, and to be solved in the best manner possible.
The primary difficulty which is more or less common to all emigra-
tion schemes is the cost of bringing out the emigrant. Here it
would be magnified by the great cost of travelling from the eastern
seaboard (say 2,000 miles) to a distant inland territory ; and this
land conveyance cannot be taken at less than 62. per head, including
food, in addition to the sea-passage costing 51. or 61. more.

In estimating the other ^difficulties that present themselves, it
wiU be convenient to consider them under two heads as they affect
(1) the emigrant as a labourer, (2) the emigrant as a farmer without
means.

1. The Emigrant Labourer. — The ordinary rate of wages in
Manitoba is as follows : — For unskilled men, 1^ to 2 dollars per day ;
for boys, 15 or more dollars per month and board; for bricklayers
and carpenters, 3^ to 4 dollars per day ; for gardeners and coachmen,
30 to 40 dollars per month ; for female servants, 12 to 25 dollars per
month and board. For single men board and lodging may be had
for 4 dollars per week, and for a married man and his wife it would
cost littie more.

But high as these rates are, it has at once to be understood that

the climate for nearly half the year forbids any employment on the

soil or in building. Unskilled labourers, therefore (unless engaged

for the year), and bricklayers are, to a large extent, dependent on a

seven months' wage for a twelve months' maintenance. That a large

nmnber of unskilled labourers might find employment at a distance

of from seventy to one hundred miles as lumberers is certain, but for

married men with &milies it would hardly answer to be separated

for flo long a period. We have, then, to consider whether the seven

months' wage would suffice, taking it at say ten dollars per week,

with board and lodging costing four dollars. Would the margin

after providing clothing and other necessaries suffice ? With great

fingality, and the employment obtained by the younger members of

the fieunily, the evidence of other parts of Canada or the States proves

that it might. Washerwomen, for instance, can earn a dollar a day

and food. But coal or wood costs 51. or 61. per ton. A large supply

of warm clothes and bedding is also necessary. And for the first year

Vol. IX.— No. 48. B B

362 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. FebruMj

or two no doubt the very closest economy would have to be practised:
after all nothing new to the Irish peasant we have before us. After
their first year I think there would be no question as to the labouiers'
doing well.

But it must be remembered that any large influx of labooren
upon a limited population, as in Manitoba, would inevitably tend to
the reduction of wages, unless they were employed on some spedai
work which would not otherwise be taken in hand. Such work might
be found on the Canadian Pacific Bail way. It is true that the nearer
portions of the western section are very light, involving compaia-
tively little labour. Last autumn two gangs of forty men each were
laying down nearly a mile a day. But further West as well as
eastward of Winnipeg, towards Thunder Bay, more labour will be
needed, and it was probably in reference to these sections that
Mr. Lynskey, the Superintendent of the Canadian Pacific Railway,
informed me 5,000 men would readily find employment.

Should it be proposed to bring out large working gangs for the
Canadian Pacific Baiiway, it is^to be helped that a well-digested plan
may be devised for their oversight from the day they land on the conti-
nent. The drinking saloons of Winnip^ already abound, and ample
experience has shown how often demoralisation and ruin have attended
the pioneer workmen of other railways on this continent. It would
probably be best to give only part wages in money to the labourer
on this railway ; the balance being given in proper shelter and food,
with allotments of land on completion of the line. The labourers
would thus become eventually small &rmer8 and confer a doable
benefit on the country. Their advent would then be hailed with
satis&ction, in place of their becoming a bye-word and reproach to
our civilisation.

1 was informed by tiie Hon. I. Byan, of Portage<-la-FraJrie, 70
nules west of Winnip^, that it would answer to employ labour on
land, bringing increased quantities into cultivation, if men could be
had at, say, 150 dollars per annum with board. At this rate he
thought thousands of acres in his district now unproductive would be
brought under the plough, and hundreds of industrious men and
women might readily find work. This appears «i important matter for
consideration as regards the emigration of single men and women.

From the evidence of Archbishop Tach^ of St. Boniface^ Mani-
toba (who has special knowledge on this subject), and of others, I
believe that while there would be a natural and strong olgection to
the sudden importation without due notice into their ncddfit of tboo-
sands of Irish labourers, the colonists would heartily welcome a
limited number of families^ and in this way a very considerable
number might be yearly absorbed.

Leaving the emigrant labourer, I take up-^

2 Tht Emigrant Farmer without maane. — ^At this point lei us

188U

IRISH EMIGRATION.

363

consider the offer made by the Canadian Government to all emigrants,
which is as follows :—

Each hon&'Jide settler, on the payment of a fee of 21. to the
Dominion Land Office, will have a grant made to him of a ' quarter
section'* of land of 160 acres, to be chosen by hinxself or his
agent, within certain assigned limits on the line of the Canadian
Pacific Bailway or other miallotted land in the north-western terri-
tory. He will further have the right of pre-emption of a second
^quarter section' of 160 acres in the same neighbourhood at fixed
prices, varying from one to two and a half dollars per acre.

The Canadian Government will probably also give to the settler
and his family assisted passages from Liverpool to the American or
Canadian port ; that is, they will enable them to come for a fare of 51.
per head, the regular steamer fare being 61. Lastly, the Canadian
Government will place at the disposal of the settler the services of
their Emigration Department, to help him from his arrival in the
coontry till he reaches his destination.

With this offer before us we have to consider the best means dnd
the outlay necessary to place the poor emigrant farmer on his land,
with the means of existing until he has tilled it and raised a crop
safficient for his wants. For it would be only to court failure were

s The lands of Manitoba, as well as of Minnesota, are divided into townships,
each measuring six miles square, and each divided into thirty-six sections of one
mile square, or 640 acres. They are numbered as follows : —

N

W

31
30
19

is

7
6

32

29

20

17

8

6

33

28

21

16

9

4

34
27
22
15
10
3

35
26
23
14
11
2

86

25
24
13
12

1

E

S

£ach section again is divided intD four quarter sections, each containing ICO acres,
uid each of these again into fourths, or sixteenths of a section of forty acres each,
as diown below. The unit of property is the quarter section o! 160 acres.

N

V

BB 2

13
12

14
11

15
10

16
9

5
4

6
3

7
2

8

1

E

364

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.

February

we to place him on the richest untilled land in the world without
tools or shelter, or the means of procuring them and maintaining life.

And, first, as to the outlay. If we are to deal with large numbers,
every item must be scrutinised and kept as low as possible.

After much inquiry and most careful deliberation with several
Canadian gentlemen, I believe that the following estimate may be
looked on as a fair basis for calculation. It will be seen that it
involves an outlay of lOOZ. for a family of five persons.

Sea voyage, 3 adults at 5/.^ 2 under age at 21. IO9.
LaDd-transport, 2,000 mileSi including food, to Winnipeg
Cost of conveyance to allotment ....
Food and fuel needed after arrival until wages are earned

Total up to the point of settlement on the land .

Erection of a small house, » 18 x 12 ft., i^lOOJ .

Sinking a well, S2Q

Stove, bedding, cooking utensils, simplest possible kind, ^^40
Two ploughings of, saj, 8 acres B.t If ^
Seed (wheat, oats, or potatoes) at i^l'oO per acre
Harrowing, sowing ditto, at $2 per acre .

Land fee paid to Government

Oontingencies

Total

I

n.

i.

20

0

0

25

0

0

1

0

0

4

0

0

50

0

0

20

0

0

4

0

0

8

0

0

6

8

0

0

8

0

3

4

0

2

0

0

4

0

0

£100

0

0

This I consider the lowest figure at which we can place the cost
of starting a family of five persons in possession of 160 acres of good
land, with a house and utensils sufficient for their wants, and with
eight acres cropped. It allows nothing, it will be observed, for outfit
before leaving Ireland, or for agricultural tools, far less for cattle or
pigs. The plough &c. must and can be hired until the farmer can
aflford to buy.

Supposing the emigrant thus landed in the early summer, be
must support himself by manual labour, of which I have already

; said there is abundant demand, until his first crops are ready. He
•might earn for 4 months 1^ dollars a day, or say 36^. a week, or 30/.

~ for the season, and this, with the eamiugs of any other able-bodied
member of his family, and with the crops or vegetables sown, should
*be ample to provide for them until the following spring. From this

...also he must pay the cost in his second spring of breaking up other

V S or 10 acres of land, at $A: per acre, of ploughing again the land of
last season at $V50 per acre, and of seed for the whole. This will
cost from \QL to 12!., for without those of his own he has to hire
both plough and cattle^ This second year he should earn by labour
at least as much as in the first year, 302. He will have the crops on
1 6 to 18 acres — at least 250 bushels, worth say 502. If no unforeseen
i^ircumstances arise, this will enable him to buy —

< The hut should be built and the ground broken up before the emigrants'
Arrival, ar.d arrangements will be required for this.

1881. IRISH EMIGRATION. 365

2 pigs at /5

1 cow.

1 yoke of oxen or horse

1 plough .

Total .

$

10

25

100

15

^150 or 30/.

He will thus begin liis second winter better off than his first, and with
a year's experience*

At the beginning of the third year our emigrant will be in an
almost independent position, the owner of 1 60 acres of good land, of
which eighteen are broken up, and in possession of the needful imple-
ments to break up as much more as he feels able to undertake. This
is no imaginary picture ; it may be verified from many cases now to
be found in Manitoba or Minnesota. All may not make such rapid
progress. They may not have done more in the third year than is
sketched above in the second. But is this not better than they are
doing now in Gralway and Mayo ? Better in every way, whether as
regards the present or prospective good of the people, than the re-
fi;alts of any similar outlay of capital in the west of Ireland.

It has been shown that 1002. are necessary to place a fa^iily on a
prairie allotment of Canada ; and I think it will be generally agreed
that, along with the free grant of land and the assistance rendered
to the emigrant, the principle of self-help should be stimulated by
requiring the repayment of the money advanced.

In this, I feel assured, the Canadian Grovemment would be willing
to assist by placing this advance in the position of a registered first
mortgage, and withholding the grant of the patent or title to the land
until the amount is repaid. That the advance on well-chosen lands
given by Grovemment would be perfectly secure is, I think, evident.
The improvements and buildings would probably give it a market
value of from 5 to 10 dollars per acre, and make the whole 160 acres
worth firom 150Z. to 3002., according to situation, &c.

I estimate that the 1002. advanced, with 5 per cent, interest,
might be repaid by the emigrant within seven years. But by what
agency are these payments to be recovered? On this question I
regret that I can give no very distinct reply. If the Canadian
Government would undertake to do it through their existing], tax-
collectors, I think that would be the simplest agency to employ.
But various objections have been raised, to this mode of collection.
The difficulty is increased, moreover, by the consideration that the
Canadian Government disapproves, from political and other reasons,
of establishing purely Irish colonies. Bishop Ireland in Minnesota
aljso considers it.of great importance that the Irish settlers should be
mixed up with others, say Germans, Scotch, Canadians, &c. The
consequence is that if large numbers were gradually to come out
they would be spread over a very considerable area, and hence the

366 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Fehraary

cost and difficulty of collecting the instalments become considerable.
But I cannot admit this as an insuperable objection to a scheme
otherwise sound, and I cannot doubt means will be found to over-
come it.

Assuming then that under a well-devised system an organised
Irish emigration could be carried out with great benefit alike to
the emigrant and to the parent country, and that such an emigra-
tion should be assisted by the English Grovemment, the question
by what machinery shall this be done demands consideration. I
might well be content to leave it with those so much more competent
than myself to form an opinion, but having had the opportunity of
conversing with men of various shades of opinion in Canada on the
question, as well as the privilege of speaking most freely with the
Governor-General, and Sir John Macdonald, and other leading mem-
4>ers of the Canadian Government, I shall venture to record the
rresults of these conversations upon my own mind.

Three suggestions have been made.

I. That the emigration shall be undertaken by the joint action of
the Imperial and Canadian Gbvemments, the former supplying the
capital at a low or nominal rate (say 2 or 3 per cent.), repayable over
a term of years, and the latter undertaking the entire care and over-
sight of the emigrants, and the recovery of the advances made to each
family.

II. That a Colonisation Association should be formed x^mpoeedof
a number of leading English, Irish, and Canadian gentlemen, to whom
the Home Government should, under carefiiUy-considered regulations,
make the advances required, also repayable at a low rate of interest
over a term of years; or that the Association should obtain the

>^money by shares in the market as a conmiercial taransaction.

III. That the Home Government should appoint an Emigration
'Conmiission, consisting of two or three well-known and competent men
^to whom the whole work of the emigration should be entrusted. In
^his case, as in the first, the Home Government would advance the
viecessary capital, but the Commission would arrange for the recovery
-of the instalments.

I. In examining these suggestions it will be felt that (regarded
from an English point of view) the first possesses the merit of great
dmplicity, and involves the transfer to the Canadian Goyemment of
the whole responsibility of settling the enugrants. And, considering
that these emigrants will for the future belong to tiie Dominion,
this seems only right and proper. But members of the Canadian
Govemm^it urge weighty objections to this plan. One I have
already alluded to— -their objection to reoovering the advances from
the settlers as a part of their taxes. They urge beadea the Ul^>08Bi-
Ulity of eviction on the part of a Government in case of non-payment,

1881. naSB EMIGRATION. 367

and the openings afforded to jobbery and to political difficulties in
reference to voting in the newly settled districts.

II. The same difficulty of recovering the capital advanced would
present itself to some extent, were the emigration managed through an
association, whether it received a loan from the Home G-ovemment or
raised the capital by shares. Yet there seems little reason to fear that
such an association, undertaking the work on sound commercial prin-
ciples, purchasing the land in Minnesota or in the north-western terri-
tory, and employing its own agents for recovering the advances, might
be carried on without financial loss. Bishop Ireland's Catholic Coloni-
sation Association in Minnesota, to which I have already alluded, shows
this to be practicable. There will, however, always be a feeUng that
where the interests of tens of thousands of our Irish fellow-subjects
are concerned, those responsible for their emigration should be directly
accountable to Parliament, and not merely to a private or commercisj
association, however well disposed.

III. We come, then, to the third suggestion — an Imperial Emi-
grcUion CoTwrniasion. This suggestion would have the strong approval
of Sir John Macdonald and other influential Canadians. It would,
I believe, have the entire support of their G-overnment, who would
be willing to place at its disposal, free of cost, the whole of their
Emigration and Land Commission staff. The Commissioners ap-
pointed would be above the reach of political or other influence, and if
really practical business men, willing to devote themselves loyally to
the work and to go into every detail, the scheme could hardly iail of
Bucceas. One of the Commission ought probably to be a Canadian,
iiaving an intimate knowledge of the country, and, if possible, a prac-
tical acquaintance with the agriculture of the north-west territory.
With the aid given by the Canadian Government, the cost of this
Oonunission should not be much beyond the salaries of the officers*
It would be their duty to arrange for the emigrant's journey from
Mb cabin in Gonnaught to the ship, and to see that he had a suJBBcient
outfit ; to settle the terms of his voyage to America, to receive him
on landing, and have him promptly forwarded to his allotment,
and fed on the journey ; to have a hut ready for him there, and
a patch of land broken up and sown ; to put him in the way of
hiring implements and of obtaining work ; to keep him if possible
oat of the way of the grog shop ; to keep before his mind in the
heat of smnmer that a cold winter was approaching, such as he
had no conception of, and to insist, therefore, on his providing
himself with fuel and bedding to withstand its rigour.

Everything would depend on the gentlemen selected for this
Cixnmissian. I cannot doubt that competent men are to be found
for such duties as I have described, and, once foimd, this system
would probably give the best chance to the Irish emigrant. Nor
need we fear that commissioners, having obtain^ this personal

368 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. February

knowledge of the emigiante, vroiild fail in devising some plan for
recovering the advances made to them*

Lest I should be'accused of trying to set colonisation to Mani-
toba in too rosy a light, of trying to prove too much, it is right that
I should notice the objections often made to it^ which ought to be
fully considered. These objections are : —

1. The water in some districts is said to be alkaline and un-
wholesome. No doubt there is some truth in this, and to strangers
at Winnipeg, for instance, it forms a serious drawback. The wdl&
being shallow are often impregnated with alkaline and other objec-
tionable qualities. There is, however, an abundant supply, and, with
care as to boiling, any injurious tendency is much lessened. This is just
one of the points to be attended to in selecting sites for emigrants.

2. Fuel is very scarce and dear, and for a time this presents serious
difficulties. There is little timber on the prairies, except on the banks
of the streams, and the burning of the grass interferes with the growth
of timber, for which otherwise the land is admirably adapted. In
Minnesota I found prairie grass tightly twisted into wisps used as a
fuel, and I was assured that a man in three days could mow enough
for the year's supply. If this can be generally adopted, it gives a
ready and cheap ftiel. But ere long the eastern and northern
extensions of the Canadian Pacific Bailway will be carried through
forest tracts, and timber no doubt will be sent into Manitoba at a
low price, as at present it is to the settlers along the railway through
Minnesota. Coal, too, is to be found on the Souris and Saskatche-
wan river districts, and Mr. Stephen, of Montreal, who is largely
interested in the subject, assured me that within two years they
would be able to lay down coal at Winnipeg, from southern Minne-
sota, at 1^6, or 248. per ton. At present it costs nearly 52.

3. The heavy rains. Settlers from western Ireland are not likely
to object to moisture, and the country as a whole has an extremely
dry atmosphere. In fine weather on the prairies one is almost
independent of roads, and, except over swamps, can drive nearly
anywhere. But at some seasons the settlers must be prepared for
heavy rains, which soak into the rich alluvial soil, and make roads
and plains almost impassable. This is one of the drawbacks to be
faced in some districts, and it is almost a necessary evil where anyone
is living on lands of such deep rich fertility. As population increases
no doubt the roads will be improved.

4. The intense cold, and the long winter. This must be duly
acknowledged. From the beginning of December until the end of
March frost reigns supreme, and a thermometer standing 30^ to 40''
below zero is a cold we can hardly imagine in England. The climate
is, however, so dry and the air so still that, with the exception of occa-
sional storms of blinding snow and wind, the residents state that
the cold is by no means unpleasant or difficult to bear. There ia a
great absence of illness, and persons suffering from asthma often

1881. IRISH EMIGRATION. 369

come into Manitoba to reside for the sake of the pure dry air. The
freedom from all malarious fevers in autumn is also important to
notice. Horses and cattle also seem to endure the cold winters with-
out injiury.

Looking at the map and noticing that Manitoba is quite to the
south of the great north-west territory, one would be apt to suppose
if it is cold there, it must be still colder further north. But as a
matter of fact it is not so, for the isothermal line which cuts the
south end of Lake Winnipeg, runs from thence north-west as Ear as
the Peace Biver, keeping to the north of the whole basin of the Sas-
katchewan. The mean temperature from April to August is 58\ In
the summer the days are exceedingly hot, but the nights are always
cool and fresh. On the whole, I am disposed to think that the
severity of the weather is not more felt than it is generally through-
out Canadiu At the same time, it is most important that emigrants
should understand and provide for it.

Here, it may be asked, has the poor Irish peasant, whose prosperity
we are planning, got within himself the necessary qualifications to fit
him to be an emigrant ? Has he got the self-help, the industry, the
forethought, the self-command ? In reply I can only point to what
his brethren have done already — not to the poor, degraded Irishmen
of New York and other eastern cities, but the numberless instances
both in the United States and Canada, and to others who have already
settled in the far west and succeeded.

I may mention one or two instances which came more especially
under my notice. Whilst at Ottawa I was told by the member for
the county that a large number of his constituent were Irishmen^
many of whom are the descendants of those who fled from the famine
of 1846-7. These people had at that period taken up small tracts
of most unpromising forest-land, and by their energy and perseverance
had cleared the timber and become possessors of well-cultivated farms.
He spoke of them as a thrifty and industrious race, contented and
well-to-do.

In many other districts I heard the same statement made ; ^ the
Irish on the land are a thrifty and industrious pepple, whatever they
are in the towns, with the degrading influences aroimd them.' In
Minnesota I had two counties pointed out to me, chiefly in the hands
of Irishmen, which were remarked for their good cultivation.

The same was told me in several districts of New York and
Pennsylvania, and the Hon. J. S. Hewett, of New York, informed
me that the majority of the Irishmen employed in his extensive iron
works had lands of their own, which were well cultivated, and had
been much improved since the men, who had been tenants, were
allowed at their own request to become purchasers.

On this subject I may be allowed again to quote Lord Dufferin.
He says : —

370 THE mmCTXENTH OEKTURT. Febmry

If it 18 objected that the pauperised popnlatkm of -the west would mak) bat
poor emigraDta^ I would reply that their previoua life will have fitted them infiiiitelr
better for their new destinies than the Icelanders, who have been driven forth fiom
their Arctic abodes by an analogous necessity, since these last had never seen a
plough, a road, a tree, or a field of com ; yet so delighted are they with thdr nev
poesesmon that they have called it ' Paradise.'

There remains one other point to be noticed, and that not an easy
one. In my pamphlet on ^ Irish Distress and its Remedies,' I men-
tioned what is well known, that the Irish priesthood of the Chnrch
of Home frequently object to emigration. It is not necessary to ascribe
this, as is often ungenerously done, to their pay depending on the
number of their flocks, which makes them reluctant to lose any
parishioners. The pay is poor enough ; and they earn it, for whatever
be their failings, the priests look after their people. What they urge is
that in the great American cities men and women^become alike demoral-
ised, and lose their simplicity. Their clerical brethren write*to them to
send no more out. Better, they say, that they should starve at home
than run the risk of ruin there. But Bishop Ireland's Association
meets this difficulty. The priests go with the people and enter into
their interests. Schools and chapels are opened at once, and strict rules
are enforced against the sale of spirits. I am glad that I am again sup-
ported by the opinion of Lord Dufferin when I say I am convinced
that, if tliere is to be successful emigration on a large scale firom
western Ireland, it will be needful for the Government to unite with
the priesthood, and to give them every assistance in providing for the
religious care and oversight of their people. If priests oonld be sent
with their flocks, it would be money well laid out to afford them a
free passage, and a grant of land in their new settlement. In Canada
this would be looked on as a perfectly natural arrangement.

I fear that some of those whose sympathies I should like best to
enlist in favour of organised emigration may take exception to this re-
cognition of the Boman Catholic Church. I can only ask them fully
to consider the question as I believe I have done. Conversions from
the]^Bomish Church have not been very frequent in Ireland, and arc
dot in the future likely to be more successful among a half-staived
peasantry in Connaught than among prosperous settlers in Manitoba.
It must surely be admitted that the people are likely to learn more
good than evil from their priests, and that in the prairies it is better
that they should have their priests than be altogether without re-
ligious teachers. At any rate I am not now proposing any scheme for
conversion, but a'^ scheme for lifting up a very poor and miserable
class of people who exist almost at our doors, and making them into
prosperous and independent farmers and labourers.

I cannot but see that any Government emigration sdieme at
present for Ireland would meet with hot opposition. It would be
denounced as a treacherous device for weakening the country for the
final struggle with England. We should be blamed as heaitlefls

1881. miss SMI6RATI0N. S71

Saxons for wishing to drive a poor people from tlieir ancestral homes.
We should be assured that there is untold wealth still within its
narrow seas, and that Ireland's bogs might be drained so as to
support half as many more than its present population. All this we
must expect. I advocate emigration in the cause of humanity, and
not in that of any political party, for it is no party question. I
would ask my opponents, who after five years will be most pros-
perous— the peasant possessing 160, acres of the finest wheat-land
in America, on which he is paying off a debt of only 100^., or his
brother who elects to stay in Ireland cultivating an inferior soil, to
drain and improve every single acre of which a sum of 101. or 15L
has to be expended. Consider what can be done upon land in Ireland
with 1002., as compared with the same sum in the United States or
Canada. I am no advocate for enforced emigration, but I wish that
the Irishman should have clearly placed before him ^the opening
which awaits him to go in and possess the good land.

Doubtless be will have hardships to endure, no emigrant's life has
been begun without. But the hardships he will be called to suffer
he will suffer in conmion with the sons of gentlemen of culture and
position^ with large fermers from Canada or England or Scotland,
who with the golden hope of the future before them are willing to
brave the rigours and difficulties of a life in the Saskatchewan or
Bed Siver valleys.

I cannot do better than close what I have to say in the words of
a valued friend in the Nvrveteevdh Century for January.

Mr. F. Seebohm writes as follows : —

Besist tike temptation artificially to provide for the maintenanee of population
at too high a levaL • . . Oompare the waate landaof Irelandwitli the trana-Atlantio
prairies, and instead of asking the question whether it will haroly pay to plough up
the Irish bogy holdly ask which will pay hest, the same labour and capital expended
here or there; and according to ihe answer cultivate the Irish bog or leave it
alone. . • . Open the sluice of emigration as widely as possible till a real level in
popidatioii is reached, grudging no longer the flow of population to the place where
It is most wanted. Never mind if, having done justice to the peasant tenants of
Ireland, the free course of economic laws should be found there as in England, as
capital increases, to work in favour of large rather than of small holdings. Bejoice
if Irish tenants find a better investment for their capital than can be got from a
few poor acres of land, and a wider field for their increasing enterprise and energy
than bogs and mountains afford. K this should be the result of England's doing
justioe to Ireland,* then the higher happiness and freedom of her sons, wheretver they
may live, wiU reflect back a greater prosperity on their old country and upon those
irho stay at home than any possible ingenuity could secure by making artificial
and uneconomical provision for them where they ought not to be.

J. H. TUKB.

372 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY February

ABOLITION OF LANDLORDS.

It may seem superfluous tx> English minda to discuss what appears to
them so revolutionary a scheme as a general, compulsory, and imme-
diate transfer of the land of Ireland from the landlords to the tenants.
The idea has, however, not only gained a strong hold over the minds
of the peasantry, but is even regarded with considerable &vour by
some advocates of the landlord's claims ; while in England too there is
probably an increasing body of opinion in large popular constituencies,
if not within the walls of the House of Commons, in &vour of drastic
changes, the effect of which on the British taxpayer himself is not
very clearly understood. It may, therefore, be worth while to
inquire how the suggestion presents itself to Irish minds, what the
results would be in Ireland, and whether the British taxpayer is
likely to accept cheerfully the part assigned to him in the matter.

' Expropriation ' is regarded by many thoughtful people in Ireland
as the only possible alternative for a reform which should give to the
tenant the practical security and joint interest in. the land, which
the scheme popularly called the three F's aims at affording him.

It is not merely that the relations between landlord and tenant
are at present over a large portion of the West strained and dis-
turbed, but the state of affairs has disclosed to many minds grave
social dangers from the operation of the Land Laws, even under the
protection given to the tenant by the Land Act of 1870, which were
unsuspected by good landlords, but for which they are nevertheless
suffering ; to which, now they are known, many landlords are anxious
to apply a remedy, and which amount to an extensive {edlure of the
English system.

No one now denies that the State has a right itself to take pos-
session of property by compulsory purchase at a price ' not less than
the market value, where the public interests require such a transfer
to be made. The State has also an unquestionable right to compel
owners of property to sell to public bodies or other parties on similar
conditions. The price in such cases has usually been calculated on a
basis more liberal than that which the state of the market at a given
moment under a forced sale would afford, and considerable allowance

1881. ABOLITION OF LANDLORDS. 373

has been made for the prospects of improvement in the market or
the possibility of deyeloping the property in question.

Landed property is no exception to the general principle ;
transfers of this kind constantly take place in the case of railways,
streets, and in the furtherance of other public objects. And if a
sufficient cause were shown, no principle can be laid down on which
even a wholesale compulsory transfer of property in land should not
be made from one class to another — always supposing that the latter
are able to pay on the conditions stated above.

It may be desirable to point out that such a scheme differs from that
connected with Mr. Bright's name, not only in the important point of
compulsion, but also in the hardly less important respect of being
wholesale and immediate — in 6ict, the difference is very much the
same as that between reform and revolution.

It is not seriously contended by any party, except the Land
League, that if such a change be desirable in Ireland it shall be
effected at the expense of the class to be compelled to part with their
property. Nor is it conceivable, either that the House of Commons
would listen to such a proposal, or that any community, however
democratic, which was not actually in the vortex of a revolution,
would sanction such a formidable attack on the constitution of
society, unless in the name of systematic communism. At any
rate it is unnecessary at the present moment to entertain any such
considerations or to discuss them in detail. And it may be assumed
that any scheme of expropriation to be examined will not treat the
whole body of Irish kmdlords as criminals to be visited with pains,
penalties, or fines. General indictments are too much the fashion in
these days in the country of Edmund Burke, forgetful of its great
men of old ; but an indictment against a whole class cannot claim
much more respect or credit than one against a whole nation.

Supposing, however, for the sake of argument, that the Irish
landlords, short of actual criminality, are so grasping and oppressive a
class that justice and expediency require their entire and immediate
abolition, what is the extent of the change contemplated, how
is the change to be effected, and what are likely to be the conse-
quences ? And finally, is it practically possible ?

The extent of the change socially is the removal from all con-
nection with the land of 10,000 landlords, and the creation of
500,000 peasant proprietors. The pecuniary extent of the change is
measured by Mr. Pamell's estimate of the rental of Ireland at
15,000,000^., which at twenty-four years' purchase (the average price
realised by the sale of lands to tenants in the Landed Estates Court)
would represent a capital of 360,000,0002. Estimates of rental are
not easy to verify, and certainly Mr. Pamell's estimate, placing
the rental at 50 per cent, above Griffith's valuation, would be gener-
ally considered as much higher than the real figure. The common

374 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Februaiy

imprefisioii among those who have considered the subject seems to be
that the capital value of agricultural land in Ireland is sometiiin^
oveor 300,000,000^. This figure -may for purposes of argbment be
used as sufficiently correct.

Three hundred millions ! It is a sum ' imagination bogles at'
Where is it to come from ? There has never been any answer given
to this question but one — a Government loan. It is said, ' Oh, no
money is required, nothing but paper, Gtovemment paper.' It is just
as well, however, clearly to understand what is meant, and the opera-
tion of the proposed transaction. It is very siknple. Govemment
is to raise a loan, and advance to the tenants the whole, of part, of
the capital sums, or Goveif'nment stock, necessary to buy lip the
property. The landlords are to walk away with Govemment stock;
the tenants are to repay the Govemment loan by instahnents,
which are to discharge principal and interest in a certain number
of years, at the end of which time they will have their land rent
free.

Postponing for &. while the consideration of the scheme in detail,
and suf^posing that it is perfectly feasible, just, and financially
pradent for the three parties concerned, the State, the landlord, and
the tenant, the important question arises. What are likely to be the
consequences to those inomediately interested? And here a larger
field is included, for other classes must also be considered, espeeidlj
the agricultural labourers, while such a gigantic change most have
results for the whole community which it would be rash to attempt
to forecast. Such a transaction cannot be viewed in a merely com-
mercial light in its eflFeCts upon the two parties to the transfer, even
though the class of agricultural tenants are, with their families, about
half the population, nor as a matter of financial adjustment or
actuarial calcidation. It is, in fact, a question of high policy
demanding the earnest thoughts of wisest statesmanship.

The points that specially demand attention are tolerably obvious,
and may at any rate be indicated without presumption, despite the
magnitude' of the issues at stake and the sagacity which their deter-
mination demands.

The three classes who now divide the produce of the land
occur first to the mind. These classes are naturally found in very
various combinatibns in difierent parts of the coimtry. In parts of
Connaught there may be said to be only one class, that of small
peasants — a separate class of labourers working for hire without land
being absent, and few of the landlords being Resident. In parts of
Leinster, on the other hand, the farmer class prop^ is but scanty,
the land being held in large grazing tracts by landlords or by gianers.
And these exceptional conditions, as they may be considered, perhaps
present the greatest difficulties in regurd to this as also in regard
to all other schemes of Land Beform. It is not intended, however,

1881. ABOLITION OF LANDLORDS. 375

on this occasion to discuss these |)eculiar cireumstaDces, or do more
than indicate their existence.

Taking then the broad case of the greater part of the conntiy
where all three classes are found, what would be likely to be the effect
on them?

L On the landlords one effect is obvious — ^they would be ^ disestab*
lished' but not ' disendowed ' ; in place of being ^ acred,' they would
be ' consolled.' It would be an exchange highly acceptable to many of
the individualfr now composing the class, if they suffered no diminu-
tion of income ; and some might, perhaps, even think the security of
the new position compensated for some reduction. It is often said, and
has been boldly stated on public platforms to his constituents in Tippe*
rary, by Mr. P. J. Smyth, that there would be a clear loss to the c-ountry
of the rent-charges paid to Government, which would be sent out of
Ireland instead of being spent in Ireland by the landlords. But this
argument assumes that the landlords would all leave the country. If
they remained, the State would be paying them interest which would
be brought into the countiy, and would more or less balance the sum
sent out of it by the quondam tenants in form of rent-charges paid
to Government.

The great question is, therefore, whether the landlords would remain
in the country ? And there may be a difference of opinion as to the
answer, both among those who would retain them in the country as
resident gentry and among those who would wish them away as an
alien aristocracy. Some would, doubtless, be induced to stay by
interest in fiEirming (they would of course retain their demesnes), love
of sport, and other country pursuits ; others by love of nature, attach-
ment to their houses, their country, and the people amongst whom
they were bom and bred. It can scarcely be maintained that such
tesidents could advantageously be dispensed with, and those who have
lived among the Irish peasantry could hardly be persuaded that their
it>om would be preferred to their company, while here and there a
man might even cherish the hope that he might be more useful as a
neighbour than as an autocrat. But when it is remembered that no
definite and necessary duties would remain, and no tie bind them to
the soil stronger than chance tastes or still more fleeting pleasures,
it cannot but be feared that many would gravitate towards brighter
ddes or scenes of more various excitement, and become cosmopolitan,
or at least metropolitan. Definite and necessary duties are what give
true dignity to Irish country life, and self-imposed tasks can but rarely
be depended upon to supply the same healthy stimulus. Every one
knows the too frequent history of wasted powers and dissipated
energies of the man who is ' cursed with a competence,' without
duties or fixed occupation; and though there must always be dis-
agreeables connected with the receiving of money by the richer class
from the poorer, the desire on the part of the former to escape from

376 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. February

the position is sadly near the ignoble claim of ^ rights without dutiefl,'
If the aristocratic idea as applied to land has to a great extent been
found wanting in Ireland, in oases where the motto of ' noblesse oblige *
has been forgotten, it will at any rate be admitted by all but pro-
fessed revolutionists that every effort should be made to retain the
service of a ^ leisured class ' in the conununity ; and when its eneigies
can no longer be utilised in respect of land, to direct their full force
into channels in which they partly flow already — -Poor Law, education,
social and material improvement of the labouring classes, county
government — where their true position would be as the natural leaden
of a free people. Much may be done in furtherance of this object by
a judicious reform of the Grrand Jury system, by which at present the
whole government of the county is carried on. But supposing the
landlords suddenly removed from all connection with the land, no one
could assert with any confidence that such occupations, which are also
about to be modified in important particulars at this very moment,
would be sufficient to induce them to remain. A doubt in such
a matter would be serious, and it is difficult not to entertain even
more than a doubt on the subject.

II. In considering the effect on the farmers, it is necessary to fore-
stall one part of the financial question which was postponed. It may be
assumed that no scheme could be applicable to a wholesale conversion
of tenant farmers into occupying proprietors, which either required
them to find a portion of the price, or increased the present liabilities of
the existing tenants ; for probably the majority of them would be
absolutely unable to pay more than their present rent. The feasibility
of a scheme which should fulfil this condition must be adverted to
by-and-bye. It is sufficient for present purposes to lay down this
axiom, which would be universally accepted in Ireland. What then
would probably be the effect on the tenant farmer if, by some financial
conjuring, the programme of the Land League could (without injustice
to the landlord) be realised, of securing to him the fee simple of his
farm rent free, after paying his present rent for thirty-five years ?

The essence of the transaction is that the farmer gets something
for nothing. The question whether it costs the State anything will
come later. But there can be no doubt that the &rmer under the
supposed arrangement would get an enormous bonus, the difference
between the present value of a terminable annuity payable for thirty-
five years and the present value of the permanent rent liable to increase.

Now, without going into barren controversies as to the Celtic
nature, or the historical, climatic, or other causes of national character,
it may safely be said that, though the use of adversities may not
always be sweet, the effect of a sudden and unexpected accession of
good fortune on any nation or class will be demoralising. If it rained
gold upon Ireland from another- planet it would not be for the red
advantage of the people. From the Grreek wagonar, who prayed in

1881. ABOLITION OF LANDLORDS. 377 .

▼ain to Hercules until he put his own shoulder to the wheel, down to
the beggar on horseback, who rode further than he bargained for,
human effort has been blessed, and waiting upon fortune has been
cursed even when fortune seemed most kind. If the sudden abroga-
tion of landlords' duties seems of doubtful advantage to that class,
Furely the effect on the tenant class of a general windfall can be a
matter of no doubt whatever.

But, it may be said, for thirty-five years the present rent must be
paid ; the existing tenants, will get no windfall, and the security of
possession will be such an incentive to industry that the rising
generation will certainly grow up in habits of thrift. The magic of
property will supply an unfailing stimulus when the rent-charge
comes to an end in thirty-five years' time. The answer is that though
the windfall is not an immediate possession in hand, it is there all
the same, in the form of a deferred annuity as it were, or reversionary
estate ; and that it may be discounted in just the same way as the
heir of an entailed estate may sell his reversionary interest before he
succeeds. The vague and indefinite interest thus existing in expect-
ancy would be too likely to be magnified in the imagination of the
farmer, especially as it had been caused by no toil, and would even
precipitate the ruin, which might otherwise be delayed until the son
found himself rent free. Moreover, it is in expectancy also that the
magic of property is most potent as a stimulus to labour. The peasant
who by industry and thrift has a chance of becoming the owner of his
house or his farm, or of buying such in the market, may well be ex-
pected to contribute to the stability of society, and to retain the habits
by which he wins his way. But if, quite irrespective of industry and
thrift, he is made a present of house or land, few, very few, would
not be rather the worse than the better for the acquisition, and none,
it may be confidently asserted, would develop these virtues under such
circumstances, if they were not endowed with them already.

The principle of the Bright clauses is thoroughly sound, which
demands an effort fi*om the peasant who would become the owner of
his land. Even here, perhaps, there is danger of the son being
demoralised when, by his father's toil, he has his land rent free.
But there is Mr ground for hope that example and precept, during
the struggle to pay off the rent-charge, may inaugurate habits that
may be more or less hereditary. But if no special effort is demanded
from the existing occupiers, and less than none from their children,
what hope could there be? The magic in such cases would too
probably be found a decidedly black art.

Nor under such circumstances could that improvement be looked
for which should be the speedy consequence, in a half-developed
country like Ireland, of any measure which secured to the cultivator
absolutely the fruits of his labour, and which would be almost the
l)est result that any legislation could have. Without the apprentice-
Vot. IX.— No. 48. C C

a78 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. February

ship, too, of sustained and special effort, there would be much more
reason to fear the reappearance of subletting and subdiyigion. A
new land system might arise out of the ashes, but it would be
impossible to say what form it might take.

Most people of experience in Ireland would say.tbat a new race
of most oppressive landlords would spring up ; that if the old land-
lords chastised the people with whips, the new landlords would
chastise them with scorpions. There is a pretty general impression
abroad that the purchasers under the Landed Estates Court have
been hard landlords, in fisu^t rather land' speculators than landlords.
A remarkable confirmation of this idea will be found from comparing
the number of such sales in different counties with the number of
evictions and agrarian outrages. A table given by Mr. C. S. Boondell,
now M.P. for Grantham, in a most interesting paper on ^ Agrarianism,'
in the Fortnightly Review of May 1871, shows that the counties
where sales have been most numerous are among those which display
the greatest number both of evictions and outrages. And when it is
remembered that the proposal is by a wave of the wand to reduce the
whole country to a dead level of petty proprietors, the risk of the
worst possible form of ' landlordism ' arising on a gigantic scale
appears one that any statesman would shrink from. In every view,
therefore, the dangers to the farming class from such a change
would appear to be formidable, nor is it easy to see where they
would end.

III. Coming now to the labourers, it is obvious that any change
which tended to diminish the number of resident gentry would he a
direct pecuniary loss to them, whatever it might be to the fanners,
and apart from any social advantages which might be curtailed by the
disappearance of the upper class. The cases are already not few in
which during this winter landlords have been obliged either to
reduce, or put down altogether, their demesne expenditure in labour,
owing to their rents being unpaid : while the works of drainage, 4c,
initiated under the special loans of last winter, which were of
immense value in some parts of the country, have been suspended in
many places owing to the same causes, landlords naturally hesitating
to charge their properties with loans, fur the improvement of their
tenants' farms, in face of an organised resistance to the payment of
contracted rents. This danger was not overlooked by Mr. Pamell,
who, towards the end of his autumn campaign, strongly urged the
tenants themselves to employ extra labour, where they had withheld
their rents from the landlords. It may be doubted whether his
advice would have been followed to any extent, but it is not likely
just at present to be put to the test ; for if, as seems to be intended,
public relief works are to be again set on foot this year, the relief
will extend to the Land League, which will have removed from ifc<
shoulders the responsibility of finding work for those whom the land-

1881. ABOLITION OF LANDLORDS. 379

lords were forced to throw out of employment. Pablic relief works,
however, cannot be resorted to by any Grovemment unless in time of
exceptional distress ; they would certainly not be thought of at a
time of wholesale transfer of land from one class to another.

Btrt, supposing the same change, which diminished the employ-
ment given by landlords, also removed or weakened the stimulus to
industry on the part of the £Eu:mer, the labourers would (failing
public relief works) suffer a double loss.

Nor can we even console ourselves with the hope that the Land
League organisation would remain as a beneficent despotism for the
protection of the labourer, by combating the interests of the class
that gave it birth, and insisting on their employing labour. On the
contrary, the probable result would be a labour trades-union for the
purpose of extracting their rights from the feirmer, beginning by
claiming work for fair wages, and tempted, perhaps, before long, to
better the instruction of the Land League, and ask for wages with-
out work.

No greater boon could be conferred on all classes of the country
than if, by putting the acquisition of land, by strenuous effort, within
the reach of the peasantry, the stimulus to industry were quickened
and invigorated. This would at once afford bracing education to
the farmer, encourage the employment of agricultural labourers and
artisans, develop trade, and last, not least, give increased stabi-
lity to the whole social system. But all these benefits would be
imperilled, if not actually reversed, if the prize were dropped into
the mouth.

Again, if the whole agricultural land of the country were trans-
ferred at one sweep to the fieurmer, the chances of the labourers now
without land obtaining any would be worse than ever.

There is a clause in the Land Act of 1870 enabling the landlord
to take up any portion of a fiarm, not exceeding one twenty-fifth part,
for the purpose of building labourers' cottages, with or without allot-
ments, without being liable to any claim for compensation for dis-
turbance. This provision has been, so far as the present writer can
ascertain, almost inoperative ; but from whatever cause the &ilure has
arisen, the intention of the Legislature was clearly to make some
provision for the improvement of the labourers' position, and the en-
deavour should now be to extend this provision and make it more effec-
tive, certainly not to cut off all possibility of achieving the purpose.
The Land Act of 1870 (whatever may have been the intention of
its authors) practically gave the tenants, where tenant-right did not
exist, some kind of proprietary interest in the soil. The principle
of the clause in question is to exempt from any such claim land (up
to one twenty-fifbh part of the whole) required for labourers. In
other words, a locus etaindi. is clearly given to the labourers, on an
-equal footing with the formers, as claimants for a limited portion of

cc2

380 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.

February

the BoiL In any scheme for transferring the land from landlord to
tenant, such a principle should equally find a place. But if the
proposal were to make the transfer summary and compulsory, the
labourers' claim would be doubly strong, because of the uncertamties
attaching to such a violent change. It is poaaibUf for instance, that
if the demand for employment increased, labourers might be able to
save and buy small plots of land. Such a result would be eminently
desirable. But it is quite impossible to say whether aggregation and
consolidation might not prevail over other tendencies, and prevent suck
a process. And if it is said^that the arrangement and apportionment
of the land should be left to free-trade and the working of economic
laws, the, reply is that the scheme now being discussed is very far
from free-trade, and that if there is to be State interference in the
interest of the tenant, or of any class or classes, the labourers have
an equal claim to consideration.

The agricultural labourers cannot be estimated at a figiu-e much
below the number of tenant farmers. The majority of these probably
have not as much land as ^ the place of a head of cabbage,' in the
common phrase. This condition has been repeatedly pronounced 1^
commissions and high authorities, private and official, to be most
unsatisfactory. But though there might be much difference of opinion
as to the means by which their acquisition of land might be encou-
raged, there would be general agreement that no effort should be
spared by the Legislature to facilitate such an object, while any
measure to exclude them would not only be condenmed by most
thoughtful minds, but might lead to serious conflict between labourers
and farmers.

It must be remembered, moreover, that the Irish labourer is un-
represented in Parliament. The Irish labourer has no vote even in
cities and boroughs, and the compact and energetic party in the House
of Commons, which declaims . in the name of ' the Irish people'
represent mainly the single, though important, class of tenant fanners.
At present the sympathy of the working classes of England, while
reprobating outrage, is enlisted on the side of the tenants as against
the landlords; and, Irish labourers having for the present thrown
in their lot with the Land League, the English public is too likely
to forget their existence, and that their interests may be affected
almost as much as those of the other two classes by legislation on the
Land Laws,

IV. But it must not be forgotten, after adverting to the probable
effect of change upon the agricultural classes, that, though Ireland is
mainly agricultural, there are of course other classes and interests
which it is the anxious desire of statesmen of all parties to foster and
develop. Any sweeping change in the Land Laws would exercise a pro-
portionately greater effect on their interest than in a country like
England, where agriculture does not hold the same position of pre-
eminent and almost exclusive importance.

1881. ABOLITION OF LANDLORDS. 381

And the consequences we have been contemplating, as likely to
result to the agricultural classes from ' expropriation/ must certainly
react most powerfully, not only on the medical and legal professions,
and the voluntary Protestant Church (which latter would probably
disappear altogether), but also upon trade and commerce, and artisan
labour. The three latter interests could hardly fail to benefit by a
gradual growth of peasant proprietary, which should be the goal of
industry and intelligence. But with an upper class diminished, if
not destroyed, a demoralised middle class, and a disappointed lower
class with nothing to lose, such interests could hardly fail to suffer.
This branch of the inquiry is too complicated to be further pursued
here ; nor is it intended to discuss the political aspects of the ques-
tion, though it would be well to remember that it has been stated on
high authority in Ireland that this agitation is only the prelude to
Home Rule, while in America there is no attempt at concealing that
the real end in view is complete separation.

Reverting now to the question of the feasibility of the scheme
financially, it will be remembered that it was assumed above that no
such scheme could be generally carried into effect which increased
the present liabilities of the existing tenants, or required them to find
a portion of the purchase-money. What does this lead to? The
sales to tenants of their farms, effected in the Landed Estates Court
to JIarch 1878, average 24:^ years' purchase of the rent. It is
improbable that, if Parliament were forcing a sale, the rate would,
under these circumstances, be less than 25 years' purchase. Sup-
pose the case of a &rm rented at 402. a year. The landlord's
compensation in case of expropriation would at this rate be 1,0002.
It was calculated in 1870 that the lowest rate of interest, at which
money coidd be advanced by .the State to tenants for purchasing
their farms, was 3^ per cent., or a terminable rent-charge of 5 per
cent, to pay off principal and interest in thirty-five years. The
interest on 1,000Z. at 5 per cent, is 502. ; but by hypothesis the
tenant is not to pay more than his present rent. The State, then,
must lose 102. per thousand or 1 per cent, for thirty-five years ; 1 per
cent, on 300 millions is 3,000,0002. a year, which is about equivalent
to 2cZ. on the income tax. This is supposing the national credit to
be unchanged.

But it is sometimes argued that Government can raise money
much cheaper now than ten years ago. Consols are nearly at par ;
the conversion of 3 per cents, into stock at a lower interest has been
much discussed of late ; the State will probably be able to advance
to the Irish tenant at less than 3^ per cent., and the repayment of
principal might be spread over a longer period of years, so as by
this double change to reduce the terminable rent-charge to the same
level as the present rent. As to extending the period of repayment,
no responsible statesman would be likely to let it much exceed a genera-

382 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. February

tion<i or to prolong the time during which the State would practically
be landlord. Am to reduction of interest, there seems to be some '
doubt whether even Mr. Gladstone's financial genius can effect any
considerable change at present ; but one thing is quite certain, that
such a change could not take place concurrently with the raising of a
loan of 300 millions, which would be an addition to the National Debt
of 38 per cent. The reason that consols have been rising for several
years is, roughly speaking, that there is more capital seeking the
highest class of investment than Grovemment desires to borrow.
The demand for consols is in excess of the supply. But suppose the
supply suddenly increased 38 per cent., and it is obvious that the
price of consols must fall, or, in other words, the rate of interest
must rise.

No less an authority than the present Postmaster-Grener&l, Pro-
fessor Fawcett, has shown most clearly and conclusively the results
that would follow such an operation as the ^ nationalisation of the
land ' advocated by the < International Society,' and which meant the
purchase by the State, as landlord, of the whole land of the country.
He estimated the capital for such a purpose at 4^500 millions,
the raising of which he calculated would increase the rate of interest
at which Grovemment could borrow to at least 4^ per cent. If the
raising of 300 millions did no more than counteract the gradual
decrease in the rate now going on, the minimum loss to the State
would, as we have seen, be three millions a year for tliirty-five years.
It is needless to ask whether the taxpayers of England and Scotland
are prepared to bear such a burden. They certainly could not he
asked to do so by any Irishman who respected himself or his country,
and it may be observed by the way that if Ireland stood by herself,
with an independent exchequer and financial system, the operation
would not only be questionable for the Irish taxpayers, but wholly
impracticable financially.

But this is not all. The payment of the rent-charge depends on
the industry and solvency of the tenant, on good or bad seasons, on
prices of agricultural produce. No portion of it could be omitted hy
the State except at the expense of the general taxpayers ; and con-
sequently in the case of the Church tenants, who bought their holdings
with money advanced by the State, no abatement could be given, or
has been given during the recent bad years. The secm-ity for the
payment of the instalments is of course the land acquired by the
tenant, on which the State loan is a first charge. The instalments
have been paid even in the last year with very few exceptions, but it
must have been in many cases with money borrowed at ruinously
high interest, or by some sacrifice of capital in form of live stock or
otherwise. But failing payment, the State must clearly realise its
security and sell the land. So long as the number of such mortgages
is relatively small, or increasing only gradually, the security is amply

1881. ABOLITION OF LANDLORDS. 383

sufficient. But a wholesale conversion would give a dangerous handle,
to agitation, and without an almost absolute certainty that the debt
would not be repudiated or an agitation, Parliamentary or otherwise,
got up for abatement or remission, could any Grovernment venture
upon such a policy ? And if the prize were obtained without effort,
the danger would be increased. If the State made occupiers a present
once, they would be the less backward in making renewed applica-
tions ; once the eelf-respect of any class is broken down by eleemosy-
nary grants of public money, systematic mendicity is not £sir off.
The remainder of the cake would be always there : ' cut and come
again ' would become the national motto. It has been too common
for members of many classes in Ireland to go a-begging of Govern-
ment and Parliament. And this is due in great measure to the system
of ' sops ' that has been often pursued. It is time this system were
succeeded by careful study of the nature and wants of the coimtry,
and the application of well-considered remedies ; it would be mis-
chievous to extend it at all, but on such a scale absolutely disastrous.

Finally, is there sufficient cause for incurring all these risks ? Are
the Irish landlords generally so grasping and oppressive that justice
and expediency require their entire and immediate aboUtion ?
Putting aside the small class of professed revolutionists, it is hardly
conceivable that the individual tenants desire to drive their landlords
out of the country. Their object at first was security and an end to
the conflicting interests of the two classes, which has grown, under
the influence of agitation, into what is practically at bottom, as Mr.
Pamell says, a demand for the reduction of rent. Amongst landlords
and others outside the tenant class, who advocate the proposal, it is
on the broad ground that the differences between landlord and tenant
are irreconcilable, and there is nothing for it but heroic remedies.
On both sides it is chiefly a feeling of impatience and irritation at
the present dissensions. But two considerations are here worth notice.

Firsts that the land system cannot have been practically so in-
iquitous as it is frequently described, or the country so highly inflam-
mable as its present state seems to indicate. The land agitation
began in Mayo in April 1879, and yet in spite of the distress of the
following summer and winter, and the vigorous agitation that was
carried on, it can hardly be said to have spread beyond Mayo and
Galway during that year ; and it required a good deal of petroleum
to be pumped on the rest of the edifice to set it on fire this year. If
the Land Laws were imiversally oppressive, and the relations of landlord
and tenant hopelessly irreconcilable, a single match would have been
sufficient to set the whole country in a blaze. Mr. Forster has
alluded in the House of Commons to the state of Limerick as being
specially significant. That county during 1879 and the early part of
last year enjoyed a happy immunity from agitation. Last summer
the relations of landlord and tenant were undisturbed, rents were

384 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. February

being well paid, eylctionR (which were increasing over the country as
a whole) decreased, and during the first 8 months of the year the
agrarian outrages were 20 in number. Parliament was prorogued in
the beginning of September, and in that month and October there
wa^ a decided increase of agrarian outrages in the west ; in Limerick
they numbered 32, making 52 in all for the 10 months; of these,
however, only one was an offence against the person. On the Ist of
November a monster demonstration was organised in Limerick in
Mr. Pamell's honour, which was followed by a rapid development of
Land League branches and meetings all over the country, and in that
one month the outrages numbered 59, more than the total of the
preceding 10 months, and of these 4 were offences against the person.
In December they rose to 75, of which 3 were against the person.
Such figures require no comment.

The second consideration is that nothing has yet been done,
either to restore order, or to remedy the admitted defects of the
Land Laws and give security to the tenants. Till order and reform
have both been given an opportunity of obtaining the desired result,
it would be highly unstatesmanlike to rush to extreme conclusions.
Many Liberal Irishmen believe that the object may be gained by a
firm adherence to these two lines of policy, and if they should prove
right in their opinion, many even of their opponents will rejoice.

To sum up : a wholesale ' expropriation ' of landlords appears, on
an appeal to moderate arguments and generally recognised principles,
to offer more difficulties and dangers than compensating advantages
— to promise emigration of landlords, or exclusion from national life
if they remain — demoralisation of tenant farmers — and very probable
injury to the labourers. It would inflict certain financial loss on
the State in the first instance, and the possibility of more serious
evils in the future : it would be a revolution for which there is no
sufficient cause.

Extend the Bright clauses and make them really operative, and you
will, with the almost unanimous support of all parties, effect on a sound
financial basis a gradual change in land tenure which will be at once an
education to the occupier, and a source of strength and stability to
the community. Any such measure will necessarily leave out the
worst and most helpless cases ; and these last can only be dealt with
by giving adequate security to the tenant in some form or other,
which will probably necessitate an appeal to the Court in disputes as
to rent. But wholesale expropriation only lands you in the inevitable
dilemma that if the occupier cannot make the effort necessary to buy
up the rent, the difference must come out of the pocket, either of the
landlord, or of the general taxpayer ; and as the first alternative may
be postponed until Home Bule is granted, and the second, if pos-
sible, to a still more distant period, the scheme may, on the whole,
be regarded as not only mischievous but impracticable.

MONTEAGLB.

18S1. 385

THE IRISH POLICE.

Thb unsatisfactory state of Ireland brings into relief the machinery
for the prevention and detection of crime in that country. When
we find a great increase of a kind of crime always present to a greater
or lesser degree, we are likely to be driven to the conclusion that
the Irish police system is bad ; or that the members of the force
are not faithfully discharging their duty ; or that the causes of crime
lie so deep that it cannot effectually be reached by any police system
based on lines of British freedom.

The origin of the English constable dates back probably five hun-
dred years before the Norman Conquest. ' Constable ' is a compound
name of comparatively modern date, but the * borseholder, or borough-
elder,' has preserved his title unchanged from the early Saxon times ;
the Saxon word borge, borrow, or borhoe signifying a pledge, and
ealder the chief or head man of the pledges. This Teutonic police
system of guild or tithing is so well known that it requires but a
passing mention. The male inhabitants were joined in sections of
ten men, who became mutually security for the good conduct of
each other. The section, or ' tithing,' elected one of their number
to answer for them, and probably invested him with a certain amount
of authority over them in arranging the proportion to be paid, by
each, of the amercements that might be imposed upon the tithing
for murder or robbery committed by one of their number. This
man so elected was called the borrow-elder, or, in other words, the
chief of the pledge. Each group of ten tithings then became a hun-
dred which was in a lesser degree responsible in so far that a fine too
large to be paid by a tithing was chargeable to the hundred. Any
man not enrolled as a member of a tithing became an outlaw, and
for his murder no fine could be exacted by liis relatives. The system
of Peace-Pledge is admirably traced by Pike in his History of Crime
in ETiglavd. It is evident that if offences against the peace could
have been tried by tribunals independent of the hundred, the system
would offer the most ample safeguards. But its benefits were oblite-
rated by the form of trial. If the fellow tithing men of the accused
swore that they believed him innocent he escaped punishment, and
they averted the imposition of a fine, of which each one of them

386 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Febmry

must have paid a portion. This trial by compurgation was not trial
by jury. The compurgators were simply witnesses to character before
the lord in whose court the offender was tried, but the effect of their
unanimous declaration of belief in his innocence was precisely that
of a verdict of * not guilty * by a jury. Down to the middle of the
fourteenth century, the establishment of these courts was entirely at
the discretion of the lord of the soil, the borrow-elder being a deputy
from the tithing, and an executive officer of the law as declared by
the lord or his steward. But about that time the increased power
of the towns enabled them to resist the claims of any lord to interfere
in their affairs ; they established their own police, and public opinion
set in strongly against private justice. When parishes were formed
for the more regular collection of tithes and distribution to the poor,
the borrow-elder became in most places the parish constable, and
continues to this day, elected by the parishioners or churchwardens
to assist the county constabulary instituted under a new system.
The English parish constable thus represents the principle of minute
local government carried down from days long anterior to the
Norman Conquest. The police system of Ireland has not so
grown with the growth of the people. The first mention of constables
that I can find is in the 10 Hen. VII., when it was enacted that every
subject must have an English bow and a sheaf of arrows, or a jack
fallet, and that the men in daily service of lords, knights, and
esquires must be supplied with those weapons. Two wardens of the
peace were to be appointed to every barony, and in every parish
' constables of able persons, inhabitants within said parish,' who were
to have a pair of buttfl erected, and to see that on holidays every
man was to shoot two or three games or pay a fine of three pence.
This enactment of 1495 evidently extended only to the portions of
Ireland inhabited by Englishmen, and in 1495 large territories were
still unconquered.

This is shown by the statutes of 1566. The 3 & 4 Ph. and
My., an Act prohibiting the unlicensed distillation of whisky, began
thus : ' Forasmuch as aqua vUce, a drink nothing profitable to be
daily drunken and used, is now imiversally throughout the realm of
Ireland made, and especially in the hwdera of the Iriehryj <S:c.;' and
the last struggle of Hugh O'NeiU was not over until the beginning of
the seventeenth century. The extension of baronies and parishes then
continued until the whole country was so divided.

It is probable that during the seventeenth century the parish
constable, like the parish clergyman, was changed with changing
reigns, reforming with Henry and Elizabeth; becoming Catholic with
Mary ; Proteistant with Cromwell ; again oscillating between James
and William. The struggle of 1690 settled the religion of the parish
constables for a century, and the 27th Geo. III. chap. 40, authoris-

1881. THE IRISH POLICE. 387

ing the grand jury to appoint sixteen petty constables for each barony,
or half barony, ordained that these constables must be Protestants.

Thus far we find that the system of police in Ireland has been a
purely English institution, introduced at first for the benefit of the
English settlers within the Pale. At this time the penal laws against
Soman Catholicism were in force, and it is improbable that these
constables, exclusively Protestants, would have been regarded by the
Catholic people otherwise than as the instruments of persecution. As
preservers of the peace they were useless. They did not even satis-
factorily execute criminal warrants, which were frequently executed
by private persons with the aid of the troops or yeomanry. They
became practically hangers-on to dififerent magistrates, who used
them more often as workmen or messengers than as constables, and to
whom they brought from time to time scraps of information gathered
from the conversation of the people, by whom they were as distrusted
as they were disliked.

Their uselessness as preservers of the peace was quickly demon-
strated, but it was not until 1814 that a peace preservation force was
formed in parts of Ireland. This force had no cohesion. Under the
Peace Preservation Act the Lord Lieutenant could proclaim any
county or city to be in a state of disturbance. These parts of the
country were divided into districts, each placed for police purposes
under the control of a chief magistrate. A number of the peace
preservation force were placed under the orders of the chief magistrate,
who made what changes he pleased in their drill, discipline, and
uniform.

The following description of a turn-out of the peace preservation
force is from the History of the Irish ConstahvZary, by Mr. Curtis,
an old constabulary officer. A brother officer told him as follows : —

I was standing at assize time in the street of Maryborough (a town only fifty
miles from Dublin) near the hotel, when I heard the sound of horsemen rapidly
approaching, and suddenly a body of forty men came sweeping round the
comer at a sharp trot, scarcely giving me time to get' out of their way. They
drew up opposite the hotel, under the conunand of a Major Nicholson, who was
conunandant of so much of the peace preservation force as were in the province of
Leinster. This officer wore a dark blue jacket, closely braided in front with round
black silk cord, and small buttons ; red cufb and collar, red and gold lace girdle,
and tall beaver cap and feathers, with crescent Turkish-Shaped scimitar. Of the
men, ten wore scarlet cloaks over their uniform, reaching down over theb horses'
tails, brass helmets and plumes, ' Waterloo ' on the helmets ; ten were in hussar
uniforms, with loose jackets slung over the shoulder, hussar saddles with sheep-
skins, &c. Ten others were in a uniform which I cannot now describe, but sitting
behind them on pads were voltigeurs with short rifles resting on the thigh. These
Toltigeura were made to dismount and remount occasionally by their eccentric
commander.

The inconvenience of this system was apparent. The force only
existed in proclaimed districts, and it was the interest of magistrates
and men that the crime and outride should not be entirely suppressed.

388 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Februaiy

A member of the force transferred from one proclaimed district to
another found himself under different conditions of drill and work,
and each transfer necessitated fresh instruction. However, during
the serious troubles of 1816, 1817, and 1818, the peace preservation
force so completely failed that in 1822 an Act was passed authorising
the formation of a constabulary force of 5,000 men. The Lord
Lieutenant appointed an inspector-general for each of the four
provinces ; the appointment of officers was also in his hands. The
power to appoint the constables was given to the magistrates, and for
the first time since the battle of the Boyne Catholics were enrolled
as constables for the preservation of the peace. In this form the force
continued for thirteen years, during which it performed efficient
service. Faction fights were then of frequent occurrence, as many as
a thousand people on each side being sometimes engaged. In May
1831 a number of police under the command of my father, then chief
constable in Westmeath, interfered to stop a faction fight at Castle-
pollard. Both sides attacked the police, who were at last obliged to
fire upon them, killing thirteen and wounding a great number. In
June, the same year, seventeen people were killed and many wounded
by yeomanry, who turned out in support of the police at Newtown-
barry, where the people attempted to rescue cattle seized for tithes.
Again in December at Carrickshock an attack was made upon thirty
constabulary who refused to deliver up a process server whom they
were protecting. Here the people were successful. A volley was
fired by the constabulary, by which two of their assailants were
killed ; before they could reload the people were upon them ; four-
teen men with their officer were killed, and eight badly wounded.

The evils resulting from a difference of system in the four pro-
vinces led to the ultimate amalgamation of the force, and in 1836
the constabulary was reorganised under the provisions of the 6
& 7 Wm. IV. chap. 13. The provincial inspectors-general were
done away with, and the entire force amalgamated. The Irish
constabulary now consisted of an inspector-general, a deputy, and
two assistant inspectors-general, who formed the head-quarter staff;
35 county inspectors, 217 sub-inspectors, and, in round numbers,
10,000 constables and men ; and, fluctuating between that number
and 12,000 men, it has continued practically without change for
forty-four years.

By this Act the constabulary ceased to be a local force. The
appointment of constables no longer rested with the magistrates ; but
no candidate was accepted who was not recommended by a magistrate,
or an officer of the force. A certain number of constables were
allocated to each county, half the expense of which force was to be
borne by the county, half by the consolidated fund. If the magis-
trates of any county required additional men over the complement,
the county was to be charged with the entire expense of such addi-

1881. THE IRISH POLICE. 389

tional force. A reserve force of 200 men was formed at the central
depot in Dublin and paid for out of the consolidated fund ; and it
may be stated at once that, a few years later on, the entire cost of
the Irish constabulary was made an Imperial charge, save for the
extra number required for counties in a disturbed state, thus relieving
the Irish taxpayers of the payment of over l,lOO,OOOf. sterling per
annum.

I have so &r endeavoured to point out the difference in the
growth of police systems in England and in Ireland. A police
force is theoretically the internal executive power established by a
civil society of free men, united together for mutual protection, and
acknowledging mutual rights and duties. Such a power, so esta-
blished, must of necessity be supported by the majority of the com-
munity, on whose active assistance in the execution of legislative
decrees the constable can count. This describes accurately the
position of the constable in England. Now let us imagine such a
civil society conquered and annexed by another community whose
legislative decrees are different, and whose opinions on matters of
internal rights of person or property are divergent. Let us further
suppose a portion of the conquering community settled among the
conquered. At first their settlement is a purely military matter,
leaving out of account the society that has been annexed. Then as
numbers follow, and the conquerors are firmly established, they adopt
the legislative views and the police power they left at home. Little
by little they absorb the lands of the conquered society ; a large
number even adopt its views. But the regulations for the internal
conduct of the weak society are formed upon the public opinion of
the strong ; so far as its members are concerned the executive power
is not of their making, and does not represent the outcome of their
mutual agreement for protection.

This represents pretty fairly the establishment of police in Ireland.
The laws regulating its internal affairs and dealing with the security
of person and property are laws that satisfy the English conscience.
For centuries the Irish people doggedly refused to be bound by
English laws, however beneficial ; and of all the seven hundred years
since the landing of Strongbow not sixty have elapsed since the
Celtic Irishman was first admitted to the office of petty constable.

It is not, then, surprising that before 1822 the constable was
regarded with great disfavour. The executive power was practically
in the hands of the yeomanry — a body, if tradition be true, whose
cruelties in 1797 were only equalled by their weakness in 1798 — and
the constables were regarded as their jackals. The establishment of
the Irish constabulary secured a force strong enough to overcome
any opposition from a society however lawless; with a thorough
knowledge of the people, from whom they were drawn ; and animated
by a sympathy that. demanded their friendship, while faithfully and

390 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Febrttaty

efficiently discharging duties never faithfully and efficiently dis-
charged in Ireland before.

The end and object of a police force is the preyention of crisoMe
and the detection of offenders. A police force succeeds or &ils in
proportion to the amount of crime prevented or detected, and its
success or failure must be gauged by its success in prevention as
much as by the sum of its detection.

But the duties of the Irish constabulary are by no noieans confined
to its duties as a police force pure and simple. Leaving out of
account their duties as to the prevention or detection of crime, the
police have to act as water-bailiffs ; look after the safety of the roads;
remove cattle found wandering, and summon for toad nuisance ; serve
summons for attendance of jurors at assizes; the same at quarter-
sessions ; act as game preservers under the Poaching Prevention Act;
collect the census statistics; collect annually the agricultuial
statistics ; issue and collect voting papers for the election of poor-
law guardians ; execute loan fund warrants ; keep a register of all
houses in the district, numb^ of forges, number of carts available
for troops in case of emergency, number of licensed dogs ; look after
the suppression of illicit distillation ; and dozens of other duties not
dreamt of by an English policeman. In fact, to understand what
their duties are, one need only add together the duties of every person
in England connected with the collection of statistics, the preserva-
tion of fish or game, the supervision of the roads, and the business
of the police. Everything in Ireland, from the muzzling of a dog
to the suppression of a rebellion, is done by the Irish constabulary.

No policeman in Europe receives the same amount of theoretical
training for his duties. The recruit having been accepted after his
antecedents and those of his family have been inquired into, and an
examination passed in reading and writing, he spends six months at
the depot in Dublin, where he learns as much drill as will enable
him to use properly the arms with which he is supplied for emer-
gency, and prevent a number of men assembled in discharge of their
duty from being a mere armed mob. Each day he is instructed by
an experienced head constable in the various branches of his duty.
Crimes, with their possible motives, are gone over, and broad lines of
action in certain cases are mapped out, and by the time he has learned
his drill he. is thus well grounded in theoretical knowledge of his
duty. Here his instruction differs from that of any other police
force of which I know. Nothing is left to be learnt by rule of
thumb. His powers and his duties are regularly taught to him, and,
if he has an opinion on cases that come under his notice, he must be
prepared to give legal reasons for the faith that is in him. Here-
after as a trained policeman he may be sent to the. north of Ireland,
or to the south. He may never be stationed in his own county. He
is thus saved the awkwardness of having to perform duties, often

1881. THE IRISH POLICE. 391

unpkasant, among those who have been his firiends and companions.
He is paid from 20$. to 248. a week. A constable's pay is 722. a year,
and a head constable's 902. to 1012. All have in addition lodging,
clothings and firing. This rate of pay is far beyond what an ordinary
farmer's son conld hope to earn, and the force offers every induce-
ment for success in bringing offenders to justice.

Passing over the prevention of crime for the present, let us
examine the probabilities of detection in Ireland. There are two
kinds of detectives besides the men in large towns who wear no
uniform so that they* may not appear remarkable, but are well
known as policemen. I shall call them the English and the foreign
types. The English typical detective is a policeman in plain clothes,
clever in the collection of materials from which a chain of evidence
can be woven, quick in the appreciation of the smallest items of
information, with a good memory for faces, and a genius for possible
causes of outrage, or probable subsequent action of a known criminal.
The foreign type is the man or woman in society, or the baker, or
butcher, or servant, or criminal, in the pay of the police, and is a
spy pure and simple. Of such a one it may be accepted as a truism
that the man who spends his life in deceiving those with whom he
comes in contact will have little compunction in deceiving his em-
ployers— the Government — if it be his interest to do so. The utility of
the English type, on the other hand, depends very much upon the
readiness or truthfulness ^ith which his inquiries are answered. At
the same time there is in England a superstition that a detective can
discover anything if he only likes, and the supposed failure of detec-
tion in Ireland is accepted as a proof of the failure of the police.

The following case will illustrate the difficulties attending the
detection of agrarian crimes : —

A man has been murdered, and it is generally known that his
life has been taken in consequence of some action of his respecting
a farm lately. come into his occupation. There is but little difficulty
in saying who murdered him. Everybody in the neighbourhood
mentions his name in a whisper to each other, but will not open
their lips to a stranger. A policeman hears the circumstances from
a friend, who tells him without reserve the entire story of the con-
coction of the plot, and possibly the amount of money paid to the
murderer. The policeman, being energetic and anxious, after trying
to induce him to come forward as a witness, compels him to come
before a magistrate for examination. In answer to the justice the
person says he knows nothing of the matter, and only told the
policeman what he heard somebody say in a fair. He does not even
know the man who said it. He is sworn, and repeats this statement ;
and now, if he came forward to-morrow, his evidence would be worth-
less, for his sworn denial of its truth is recorded. It would be
difficult to formulate a plan by which this man could be compelled to

392 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. February

speak the truth. If he did, he would either be obliged to expa-
triate himself, or to live for years under the protection of the police.
A detective — ^for there are detectives in Ireland — has been for some
time in that neighbourhood. He is possibly a butcher, or drover, or
labourer. He has heard the murderer himself acknowledge the
crime. Here one may assume that justice will be done. But such
a detective would only be accepted as an informer ; and it is an in-
flexible rule that the evidence of an informer is worthless except so
far as it is corroborated by untainted evidence, or by circumstances.
The effect of bringing forward the detective of the neighbourhood
would be that while the prisoner would be acquitted, the detective
would be useless for the future, and the valuable preventive informa*
tion that he might hereafter glean would be lost. As to any stranger,
policeman or otherwise, obtaining information, it is impossible. Un-
fortunately, not one in five hundred of the community, be he gentle-
man or peasant, looks upon the commission of crime upon another as
a matter affecting anybody but the Grovemment. It is entirely a
matter for the police, and neither the desire for security nor the
temptation of a large reward will induce any person to offer assist-
ance. I know myself a man who was an involuntary witness to a
murder. He is penniless; his wildest dream of wealth probably
never went beyond the possession of ten pounds. Two thousand
pounds were offered to him if he would divulge the terrible secret of
the murder. He refused. He was asked' to name his own sum. He
answered that life was sweet, and prefers eking out a wretched
existence to braving the danger of giving evidence. It is thub
not strange that detection, or rather conviction, of crime in Ireland
is difficult, but that any convictions can be obtained where society
seems to have lost the instinct of self-preservation. It is worthy of
remark that in cases of murder in England, committed by Irishmen
upon Irishmen, the English police are powerless. No clue has
been discovered in either the case of the Sheffield murder or the
late assassination at Solihull. These murders bore the maxks of
being the woik of a society ; but there, as in Ireland, accomplices can
hold their tongues.

I have hitherto not spoken of the details of the Irish constabulary
system. The head-quarter staff is composed of an inspector-general,
a deputy, and three assistants, who inspect the stations from time to
time in the different counties. Each county is conmianded by a
county inspector, and is divided into districts, each in charge of a
sub-inspector. The districts are in turn divided into from eight to
twelve sub-districts, each in charge of a constable, who has four or
five sub-constables stationed with him. There are 1,415 such stations
in Ireland ; and as the total area of the island, independent of
lakes, is 20,192,186 acres, the average acreage of each sub-district is
14,270 statute acres. A few of the officers are promoted from

1881. THE IRISH POLICE. 393

the ranks, but the large majority have entered as cadets by competi-
tive examination. The pay, including allowances, is — Inspector-
general, 1,5002. ; deputy-inspector general, 1,0002. ; assistants, 6002.
to 8002.; county inspectors, 5002. to 6502. ; sub-inspectors, 2502. to
4502. The pay of the lower grades I have given before. The force
is absolutely homogeneous, and promotion is by seniority independent
of counties, with power of rejection. The regulations as to the
guidance of the force are identical to the minutest detail ; and the
sub-constable in the wilds of Donegal will answer the same questions
in the constables' daily examination as to his knowledge of police
duties, get up at the same hour, parade at the same time, and fold
his barrack-bedding in exactly the same pattern as his brother
stationed in the quiet glens of Wicklow or the troubled city of Cork.
Every outrage occurring in the sub-district is verbally reported
without delay to the nearest local magistrate, and a written report
sent to the sub-inspector, who visits the scene and reports in triplicate
to the inspector-general, the county inspector, and the resident
magistrate. All complaints go through the sub-inspector to the
county inspector, who transmits them to the inspector-general. In
cases of serious outrage the county inspector is supposed to visit the
place and see that no necessary steps have been neglected ; and the
telegraph is at the service of any policeman who may require to seiid
a telegram on police service. This system has many advantages ; for
in the flux and reflux of large numbers of men — ^now to the north to
keep party processions from each other's tliroats, now to the west to
protect process servers from the attentions of an angry peasantry,
possibly to the south to meet more serious troubles — the diflFerent
parts of a heterogeneous force would be all at sea. The interchange-
ability of the men is useful in another way, for men who have served
in towns and become acquainted with the criminal classes there con-
gregated may know them when they set out upon a tour of mischiefi
I remember a case in Belfast where a serious crime was conimitted
by two men who escaped from the town. Two hundred notices were
printed, and sent to every station in the north of Ireland, naming
one man and describing both. Next day a sub-constable in a country
station thirty miles away who had been stationed in Belfast, recog*
nised one of the men, and both were captured. In England a
criminal from London, Liverpool, or Birmingham, who takes the
precaution of leaving his own town, is safe from recognition except
be happens to meet a detective from the place.

I have said that a police force must be judged by its preventive
action as well as by the sum of its detection. Putting the former
aside, I find, on examining hard facts, that the Boyal Irish Con^
stabulary can afford to base its claims on its detection alone. I have
before me the following Blue Books : — (1) ' Judicial Statistics, Eng-
land and Wales, 1879 ; ' (2) * Police, Counties and Boroughs, 1879 ; '
Vol. IX.— No. 48. D D

394 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. February

(3) 'Beport of the Commissioners of the Police of the Metropolis,
1879;' (4) « Statistical Tables of the Dublin Metropolitan PoUce,
1879 ; ' (5) ' Betum Agrarian and other Grimes (Ireland).' The first
four returns give identical tables for 1879, so far as indictable offences
go, and are, therefore, on all fours for purposes of comparison. The
fifth is a Parliamentary return of indictable offences in Ireland firom
the 1st of May 1878, to the 31st of December 1879. In the want of
method in its compilation, and the paucity of information given, the
return compares very unfavourably with the exhaustive reports pre-
sented yearly by every English county and borough, as with the in-
formation contained in the Dublin police report. The Irish crime
report merely states the crimes, and does not separate indictable
crimes tried at petty sessions from those in which the persons made
amenable were discharged or committed for trial. The other reports
make this distinction, and I have extracted from the Irish report the
materials for a similar table. For purposes of comparison of averages
it does not much matter that the Irish report covers six months'
longer time. There are two offences in the Irish return that have no
place in the English tables. They are threatening letters and riots;
one being by its nature as impossible to detect, as identification is
certain in the other. Of the 5,526 offences mentioned in the return
no less than 900 are threatening letters, and 60 riots or assaults on
police, for which 680 persons were made amenable. Both these
offences I deduct from the return, as I also put aside 339 cases in
which 650 persons were made amenable but tried at petty sessions,
as is the custom in Ireland whenever possible, and fines under five
pounds imposed, or imprisonment under two months inflicted. This
leaves the number of indictable offences 4,227, for which 2,508 persons
have been made amenable.

I give in the table on the opposite page the same information for
the several districts of England and Wales, and for Dublin, with the
average percentage of detection for each district. I distinguish the
reports from which the figures are extracted by the numbers L, II.,
in., &c., and give the pages as far as possible.

The table speaks for itself. I have added the statistics for a
couple of English and a couple of Irish seaports whose popula-
tions approach equality. It must be remembered that there is a
larger police force in the Irish towns in proportion to population, but
still the disproportion in percentage of apprehensions is very striking.
Taking the three great districts of England — ^the London MetropolitaD,
the London City, and the DubUn Metropolitan police districts — and
comparing them with the efficiency of the Boyal Irish Constabulary,
it will be seen that the force is second of the seven in its average of
apprehensions. I do not wish to load this paper with more statistics;
but I find, deducting the same class of offences as in the other case,
that in 269 agrarian crimes reported in the same time 120 persons,
or 45*6 per cent., were made amenable.

1881.

THE IRISH POLICE.

395

Eastern Counties, Mid-
land^ and North Wales
district . .

Narthem district .

South England and Sonth

Wales .
London (Metropolis) .

London (City) .

Cork.

Birkenhead

BelliEut

Newcastle-upon-TTne

Dublin (Metropolitan

Police) .
} Ireland (Koval Irish Con-
1 stabulary)

Blue Book

n.p.ii7, \

p. 14 f

n.p.2io, (

p. 124 f

n. p. 881
m. p. 18

|Lp.2,)

I p. XXI. (

V.

m. p. 135
in. p,* 176

IV. p. 2
V.

Population

Komber

of

PoUoe

5,666,696

7,886,189

6,890,965
8,810,744

74,897

78,882

80,667

174,394

128,160

311,983
6,026,923

4,892

9,190

6,080
10,711

828

182
111
677

1,126
11,095

J Number
Number ' of

of I Persons
Crimes appre-
hended

7,590

21,206

6,162

23;284

17,479

118

364

76

710

8,785
4,227

Aveimge
peroont.1

64-6

46-0

66-2

67-3

31-7

92-3
36-2
84-2
300

40-6
69-3

If the constabulary return were completed for the twelve months
of 1880, 1 do not suppose the result would be so favourable to the
force. This will be understood when we consider that the maximum of
detection takes place when society is in a condition of perfect quiet.
As social troubles become pronounced the percentage of detection
must decrease until disturbance becomes rebellion, when police work
ceases, and gives place to miUtary operations. Whether the social
troubles in Ireland will modify or become intensified is not within
the argument of this paper ; but it is not to be denied that within
the past twelve months appreciable progress has been made towards
the latter position.

It will be seen that the proportion of poUce to population in
Ireland is considerably greater than in England except in the metro-
polis ; but the necessity for sending two men in Irehmd on every
duty, except in Belfeat, practically reduces the proportion, as &r ^
supervision goes, to something below that in En^and. When we
remember tiie unfiftvourable circumstances under which they act
their success can only be accounted for by their superior training and
mtelligence. While it is necessary that in Ireland the constabulary
force should be homogeneous, there is room for improvement in ite
internal arrangements. There is as much diflference between the
police needs of one county and another in the north and south of
Ireland as between the police necessities of Kerry and Norfolk. The
ruling tradition of the constabulary is centralisation. All reports
are drawn to the inspector-general's ofl^ where instead of beinir
annually collated and published for reference, as in England, they
Ue forgotten in the receptacles for old papers. The county inspector
in Ireland occupies the same position as an English chief constable.

396 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.

He is supposed to closely supervise everything going on in his
county. He is responsible to some extent for the cleanliness of the
men, and for their efficiency. But power he has none, as almost all
reports against the men must be sent on to the inspector-geneiaL
With a force of 400 or 500 men in small detached parties there is,
one way or another, a considerable amount of complaints aboat dis-
cipline. If a man is over an hour, late for roll-call, the oonnty
inspector cannot deal with the complaint, but must forward it to
head-quarters. If he is reported for drunkenness it must go up. If
he is reported for smoking in his bedroom, or not making his bed,
or not cutting his hair, or the most trivial offence that one man can
be charged with by another, and denies it, the county inspector must
send it forward that a court of inquiry, consisting of two officers, maj
be directed to assemble by warrant transmitted from the inspector-
general to the county inspector, who would examine soleminly upon
oath the witnesses pro and con^ and decide the guilt or innocence of
the accused. All this reduces the county inspector to the position
of a transmitting clerk. He has practically no power to grant a
favour to officer or man, and nearly as little to make them fear his
displeasure. The time that might be profitably spent in giving the
benefit of experienced supervision in his county is devoted to for-
warding reams of paper to assist in the congestion of the inspector-
general's office, and he is deprived of the responsibility necessary to
bring out a strong man's powers. The inspector-general and his
assistants suffer equally from emulating the elephant's trunk. The
two permanent officials in Ireland whose responsibilities are greatest
are the imder-secretary and the inspector-general of constabulaiy.
With the inspector-general's intimate knowledge of the country his
matured opinion is of great importance ; but no man can do more
than one thing well at a time, and the ordinary routine business, with
which the office is flooded under the system established long before
the present inspector-general came into office, is more than enough
to engross every moment of the time of any man who does it
thoroughly. The present system is as if a general, in command of
11,000 men in the face of a vigilant enemy, were ordered to do all
the regimental work of the battalions and elaborate his tactics in the
intervals of escape from the fiddle-faddle of the orderly room. There
are smaller points of detail in which the working of the constabulary
might perhaps be improved, that I could not touch upon in the space
of ^is paper. I have, therefore, confined myself to giving a glimpse
of history that may help to explain the attitude of the people, and
showing a few of the difficulties of a force now hastily condenmed by
the confident ignorance of some English papers.

Hbsrt a. Blake.

THE

NINETEENTH
CENTUEY.

No. XLIX.— March 1881.

EIGHTY YEARS.

In 1861 Mr. Goldwin Smith wrote as follows : — * It may readily be
graated that unless the union was for the good of both parties it was
for the good of neither/ Has it been for the good of Ireland or
indirectly for the good of England ?

One hundred years ago Ireland entered the only epoch of her
modem history to which she can look back with pride — the days
when she was guided to independence and prosperity by Grattan and
the volunteers. 1779 had been, like 1879, a year of great depression,
owing to the interruption of Irish trade by the British Government,
in order to prevent supplies reaching America from Ireland. At this
tiiae Ireland, though nominally independent, was in point of fact
governed by England. The present organised insurrection in Ireland
is daily reproached as being in its spirit purely mercenary ; but it
should not be forgotten that the prime mover in the uprising of
Ireland in 1780 was also a great commercial depression. The coasts
of Ireland were then threatened by American and French privateers.
England, being unable to protect the country, permitted the enrol-
ment of the 'volunteers.' The movement began in Belfast in 1779,
and before the end of April in the following year Grattan passed his
&mous resolution in the Irish House of Commons — ' That no power
on earth save the King, Lords, and Commons of Ireland had the right
to make^laws for Ireland.' England, hampered with diflSculties, and
Vol. IX.— No. 49. EE

398 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Maieh

face to face with a well-armed nation, conceded this, and bound her^
self for ever to these conditions.

Ireland was free and the nation rejoiced, though as yet the natioo
was not free, for the Penal Laws still existed. The Parliament too,
though having shown itself capable of great things, was still hampered
by elements of weakness and corruption. The English Government
represented by the Castle and its officials watched every opportmuty
to undo the work of the volunteers. A parliament composed excla-
sively of a dominant caste and religion, placemen, representatiYes of
rotten boroughs, and so-called independent members who were often
broken-down gentry, was no efficient guard against the systematic
encroachments o? a wealthy, unscrupulous, and powerful government
— a government too not wholly foreign, but subject to the one object
of loyalty at that time^-the Crown. It is remarkable how strongly
loyalty was insisted on by the volunteers. Loyalty is a word ahnoet
forgotten now, and yet it might so easily have survived, had not the
Crown systematically neglected Ireland.

All Europe was convulsed in the end of the century by the French
revolution, and Ireland did not escape. By 1798 the National Party
in parliament had fallen asunder, and to some extent the rule of the
country lay again in the hands of the Lord-Lieutenant, with however
this serious difference from the state of things previous to 6rattan*»
declaration, that the Parliament and, behind the Parliament, the
people were legally independent. Self-reform had been rejected by
the Irish Parliament, and though Grrattan and his Tparty struggled
for Catholic Emancipation, prejudice and the power of caste were too
strong for him. The natural result followed in the rising of the
* United Irishmen,' which was soon crushed both in the north and
0outh by the executive. In Wexford the unprepared people were
goaded into a rising by means described by General Cockbum,a
servant of the Government, as follows : — * Though the people in many
places were driven to retaliation, it was not before murder, burning,
destruction of property, and flogging, drove them to desperation.^
JBLowever this may be, the Catholic atrocities of Wexford were followed
by the Orange atrocities, pitch caps (a cap full of hot pitch allowed
to harden on the head, then wrench^ off, hair and scalp, the eyes
too often destroyed by the pitch), and abominations without number.
Little more than a month ago two men died who were then more
than lads, llie particulars of these horrors have been happily for-
gotten, but the almost more dangerous undefined sense of cruelties
in the past lingers, nor is it likely to be uprooted by the spread of
education.

In 1799, Ireland then stood in this position. A Boman Catholic
people admitted at last to the franchise, but not capable of election ;
admitted to the bar, but not capable of its higher offices ; excluded
from the magistracy, and in point of fact from all responsible

1881. EIGHTY TEARS. 399

poBitions ; almost uneducated, and, as far as law could do it, without
mimejj standing, or responsibility in their native country. Above
4hem stood a race of squireens, well-to-do gentry and nobles, Protes-
tants aind often Orangemen — ^the Orange Society having been founded
in 1775. These Protestants, being the owners of the soil, counted
their political power (and their money price — each member's vote
was estimated worth 2,0002.) by the heads of their tenants, the forty
shilling freeholders (holders of leases valued at forty shillings over the
reserved rent). Parliament was composed of placemen, holders of
rotten boroughs, and of those gentlemen who were able to drive the
largest show of tenants to the polL It is surprising that even so
laige a number of independent men as were found in the last Irish
Parliament managed to exist under such circumstances in the face of
the enormous corruption used to pass the Union. Pitt stuck at
nothing; 1,260,0002. is supposed to have been the price paid in
cadi, and promises, bribes, places, and honours fell to the share
of every man who would acc^t them. Lord Comwallis, the then
Lord-Lieutenant, wrote to his friend General Ross on the 8th of
Juoe 1799 : ^I despise and hate myself every hour for engaging in
SQch dirty work.' The confusion caused by the civil war of 1798
was aggravated by permitting the cruelties of the Orangemen, and
the OathoUcs were offered emancipation as the price of Union. It
was passed in 1800 by a majority of 43 in the Commons, of 49 in
the Lords, against the expressed wish of an immense majority of
the people, led by the men who had made the fame of Ireland.

Civil war, a corrupt parliament, a people straggling to free
themselves from penal law, a tremendous residuum of misery left by
these laws among the agricultural population — could prosperity
coezist with such a state of things ? Let us see the testimony of the
time. 1799. Foster, Speaker of the Irish House of Commons, says:
' We carry on at present a considerable cotton manufiicture, increas-
ing eveiy day in every part of the kingdom.' Lord Sheffield says t
^ Ireland has made an extraordinary progress in glass manufactures ; .
again, * Perhaps the improvement of Ireland is as rapid as any country
ever experienced.' Earl Crrey : ^ There was nothing in the advance-
ment of England to parallel the progress of Ireland.' The Guild of
Merchants, Dublin, resolved, ^That the commerce of Ireland has
increased and her manufactures improved beyond example since th&
independence of this kingdom was restored.' January 13, 1800..
Boraan Catholic meeting, Boyal Exchange : ' That we are of opinion
that the improvement of Ireland for the last twenty years is to be
asoribed wholly to the independency of our legislature.' Lord Plunket
deseribed Ireland in 1798 ^as a little island with a population of
4,000,000 or 5,000,000 people, hardy, gallant, and enthusiastic;
poese^eed of all the means of civilisation ; agriculture and commerce
well pursued and understood ; laws well arranged and administered ;

ee2

400 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. March

a constitution fully recognised and established ; her revenues, her
trade, her manufactures, beyond the hope or example of any other
country of her extent.' But these were advocates of independence to
be taken < with a grain of salt.' What said FitzGibbon, Lord Clare,
the moving spirit of the Union ? 'There is not a nation on the &ce
of the habitable globe which had advanced in cultivation, in agri-
culture, in manufacture, with the same rapidity in the same period
as Ireland.' England, too, was jealous of the progress of Ireland, as
various resolutions showed. In 1785 the English mannfactoieTS
complained ^ that Ireland would in progress of time beat them in
their own markets.'

The English manufacturers had no reason to fear. The Union
was passed, and the reign of famine began again. From the Union
to 1847,'Insurrection Acts and committees to inquire into the state
of the poor were the staple produce of parliamentary government for
Ireland. It will be necessary to look somewhat closely at the histoiy
of the chronic famine, the memory of which has been washed onthy
the flood of horrors of 1845, 1846, 1847. In 1821 the mannfactoies
of Ireland were dying or dead ; in the numbers employed in ever;
trade a terrible falling off is seen ; the unemployed tradesmen were
crowded in misery in the cities of England and Ireland. As early as
1815 complaints were made before the Mendicity Committee in
London that 20,000^. went in relief to the starving Irish in St. Giles.
In Dublin the tradesmen are described as huddled together in coroen
of the rooms, trying to keep in life by mutual heat. In Uie oountiy,
for political purposes, the people were being manufactured into forty-
shilling freeholders, who increased on the potato. In 1821 this crop
failed. Other crops were abundant in the country, but the people were
unable to buy the dearer food. 300,000^ and 14,000 tons of seed
potatoes were voted by Parliament in addition to private charity
amounting to 334,589^. Parliamentary committees and other
sources show the people to have been dying by inches yet increasing
in number. Nations increase recklessly when absolutely hopeless.
Distress in a well-to-do population checks increase, but let a people
once despair, and they will take no thought for the morrow — for the
children that are to be bom, or for the old age that is to be left
•destitute.

The 'terrific' famine, as it was called till 1847, came in 1821.
In 1830 a committee of inquiry reports *that the number of destitute
ipoor in Ireland is exceedingly great, and that numbers of them peridi
gradually of inanition, or are carried off by chronic or inflammatory
matter produced by wet, cold, and hunger.' Dr. Doyle describes
more individually the process of perishing by inanition. 'The peasant
lies down on a little straw upon the floor, and, remaining there
motionless nearly all day, gets up in the evening, eats a few potatoes,
then throws himself again upon the earth.' He says death is better

1881- EIGHTY YEARS. 401

than such a life. What causes were given by this English com-
mission for such a state of things — ^a state of things of which I could
multiply. evidence if needed? Absenteeism, tithes, high rents, low
wages, and want of employment. Also, in 1829, the forty-shilling
franchise ceased, and the committee add ' that the number of the
unemployed, as well as of the destitute poor, has been exceedingly
increased, and their sufferings proportionally aggravated by the
system of ejecting the smaller tenantry from their holdings and con*
solidating farms.' The people, who had been allowed to increase for
a political purpose, being now of no further use, were swept away by
the landlords like flies off a window-pane.

After this time Sir C. G-. Duffy speaks of a ' famine every other year '
to 1845. The description is so true, that when the great fandne came
in the almost total destruction of the potato crop, Government refused
to believe that things were much worse than usual, till three com-
missions had reported the destruction of the food of the people.
The papers talked of the 'famine mirage' when the nation had
been shown to be without food four months earlier. It is almost
amusing in its grimness of ignorance to find Sir Bobert Peel,
the premier, writing to the Lord-Lieutenant to ask, in November
1845, ^ if any stock of old potatoes (of 1844) remained in the coun-
try' (to avert &mine), the Lord-Lieutenant gravely answering
that no such stock existed. They appear to have thought potatoes,
like oats or hay, capable of indefinite storage. The com laws were
repealed as the first help to meet the famine ; the measure merely
lowered the prices of Irish produce. The Indian meal was intro-
duced ; oats and com went away to pay rent, &c. ; the meal was an
unpalatable food for a continuance, the Irish neither knew how to
prepare it, nor, having it prepared, could eat it. The unvaried diet
produced scurvy and bowel complaints, but even this food was
denied to them unless at such prices ' as would not interfere with
local trade.' Naturally local trade, where it existed (as a mle it did
not exist in the worst parts), rose to famine prices, and the Oovem-
ment stores followed suit ; but even in many cases the Government
stores were not permitted to sell, lest they should interfere with the
rise of a (previously non-existent) local trade, so tliat men actually
died at the doors of the depots with money in their hands. It would
be a heartless task to bring up again the story of those three years.
I am thankful to say that though then a child I cannot recall that
time, but when I read and when I remember that some of the men
now heading our present insurrection lived and suffered through it
^11, 1 can understand how it is they said to the people, when last
year treading on the verge of another great famine, ' You shall not
starve — ^the first right of man is existence.' I can recognise the
central thought of the Land League song :

They died that ye migrht eat and live, God ! they hare died in rain.

402 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Maiek

My' first eonseiimg > rtf oogditLoii of public interests was < seeing womeB
snatob food 'from the 'hands of their childreQ^ and hearii^ reniarb
en the ^ demovalisatioii ' of the people by the famine; Mr. FanieU^
tDo^ was bom idto the famine. These are impressions not to be
wiped> out with a sponge. '

Since 1841 Ireland has lost 3,000,000 people, some through the
most ghastly experiences of famine, some throogh an emigntion
that ^at first was almost an emigrating to death. And for thoae who
lived how bitter and how terrible was this going forth into a strange
land) among -^ a > people that knew them not! 'Weep ye not for
the dead^ neither bemoan him, but weep sore for him that goeth
away : for he shall return no more, nor see his native country.* The
misery of the moment was indeed to bear fhut. A seed was tiies
oast into the ground, the least of all nations, a little people, was thea
cast<mt ; now it is making wide the borders of its tabemade, the
desolate hath many more children than she which hath a hosbsiui
^^^butihe end is not yet come.

• Ireland is now more thinly peopled than almost any eomntij in
Europe, yet if the year 1880 had been another bad year^ we shiroU
at thiS' moment have thousands in need of public charity. As it ia^
"we have a social insurrection. What are its causes?

In 1742 am Act was passed enabling Catholics to holdleaees with
^bhese conditions, and some relief for a few years from taxes that
would naturally fall on landholders. The [land leased ' mast be
Wiprofitable bog, which bog should not be deemed unprofitable
unless it were at least four feet from the surfiMse to the bottom of
it' when reclaimed, and that such bog should be, at leasts one mik
from >8ny ^ty or market-place.'

This permission to hold leases of apparently valuelesa land had
beeui previously rejected by Parliament, as tending to eaoouxage
Popery. On this Act, which was largely taken advantage d^was
doubtlees founded in part the claim the people have all along fought
for*^the interest of the cultivators in the land. Large portions of pro^
fitaUe land were, at that time and afteiT) absolutely Tnada b^the
people themselves; and ever since the same process of redeemiag
what any other less miserable population would deem worthless has
been going on«

That the agiicultural population of Ireland was even at the time
of the Union as miserable as it well could be is doubtless trae^bot
it should be lemembered that the population of Ireland was tiiea
only about what it is now, and that the rise of trade woidd have
tended to correct the evils left by the hideous penal laws and mis-
go^enunent preceding the declaration of independence. The Iridi
Parliament took in 1793 the first important political stqp -towards
emancipation, by giving the franchise to the CSatbolios. .> This
should have brought goody but it in fact brought evil) for it.caiifled

ISBi. EIQHTY T£AR& 408

ttia «itatiion of .the foityrshilliog feeeholders* . In tbia we may dis^
iioMy ^^ that'tbe Uoion worked hanafiiUjr ; for in i^ couatiy where
tbe great-mass of the people, weoe Catbolios, and where the most dis^
tifflguished Protestants desired equally with the Catholics a oomplete
equality, of rights? what would have been the natural effect of tbe
frattobise ? Suxdiy almoet immediate . emaneipation. Emancipation
ims a.tbiQg so close before tbe ^esof the people, that Pitt in passing
tbe Union distinctly promised it aa part of the Union policy. What
really happened ? Year after year for tw^ity-four years Grattan
wasted bia splendid eloquence on the English House of Commons ;
year, after year tbe most liberal and thoughtful of Englishmen
supported their appeals ; yet one year witb. another tbe Catholics
seemed no near^ to tb^ rights, .and in fact they themselves seem to
toe eonk into a state of aoquiesceoce aod despair. But a leader ap-
peued. O'ConnellfoimdedtheCatholic Association in 1823* As now
ia the land question, as in the f utiire will pirobably happen with the self*-
j^yemment question, Ireland lay apparently dead and stagnant like
a daouned-»up.riv«r. Tbe touch, was; given, tbe tide swept all before
it ; in 1 829 those very forty-sbiUii^ freeholders who, if tbe govern-
laent bad^laeen, as in England^ sensitive to public opinion, would
bave^ long before this time, gained tbeir liberty, now gained it inr
doed, but at the. coat, one may say^ <^. their very lives. - Wben they
mese obedient tools in their landlords' bapds tbe franchise was left
to them ; wben they acted as freemen they were thrust back agaia
iato fllaivery. Tbe bill introducnng CatboUc Emancipation, disfran-
ebised tbe forty-sbilling freeholders, . .

Previoua to this time tbe social war l^etweeu landlord and tenant
bad been ^more or less acute, but benceforwaid: it became a greater
eoforce of danger than before* But tbe tithe question came to tbe
front first. Tithes paid by a people oS one religion to tbe offieers of
another religion were a manifest injustice ; but it needs not to say
that the doing of justice was then considered tbe counsel of mfidels,
the loeseoing of the bonds of re]igioB,:and that reform was booted at
from under tbe cloak of bigotry* The people, bowever, took tbe law
into tbeir own bands in a way only to be paralleled by our present
position, and doubtless tbe * leader of priests and savages,' O'Connell,
was then nmde responsible for all outiageR, as Mr. Pamell is at tbe
pieasnt. moment. 'Boycotting' tbw was as common as now; all
goods distiiined for tithe .were branded, nonoi would buy them. The
most ghastly forms of ontaige, to which our most exaggerated tales of
ontrag^' bear no propcMction, were common* A tr^ooendously strong
Cloeieion Bill was found useless.; after a struggle of two years tbe
43ovenanent bad to compromise^ /Che landlords took on themselves
tbe .paymaitr*of tbe adjusted tithes,; they readjusted tbe rents, and so
the tenant . actually paid tbe tttbe^ though in a less obnoxious form.
It ia surprising that the people luupiug^foug^t so: long should have been

i04 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Idaick

satisfied with sach a juggle, but O^ConneU's influence was on the side of
the settlement, and pethaps the immediate effects were more of a
relief than the ultimate outcome ; for the social evib of the loss of
the franchise, and also of the rise of rents to replace tithes, cannot^
I think, have been at once apparent, because the main body of the
tenantry were leaseholders for life. The landlords jnrobably, therefore,
could not at once either evict extensively or raise rents ; though evei
in 1830, at the commencement of the Tithe War, the ejectmeDts
were given as a cause of ' the exceeding increase of destitution.'

Foreign observers were able at this time to put their hands oi
the land laws of Ireland as the fountain of evil, and even Irish land-
lords and agents in Ulster acknowledged tenant right to be the secret
of the prosperity of their province. Had Ireland been even at this
time governed by her own parliament, a lai^e number of members
being Catholic and of the people, is it conceivable that a state of
things due in the main to law, and described by foreigners as

* indescribable,' would have been able to go on through insurrection,
coercion, famine, emigration, the loss of three • millions of people,
Fenianism, and to the threat of famine again, to land us after eightj
years in the most formidable rising of the century ? The landlords,
-had Ireland stood alone, would have been compelled to grant secoiitj
for the outlay, labour, and homes of the people, or they would have
been cast out to the void, as happened in France, as impediments to
the national life.

In 1837 De Beaumont said: ^ Irish misery forms a type bj
itself; . • • one recognises that no theoretical limits can be asBigned
to the misfortunes of nations.' In 1847 Mr. W. K Forstersaid:

* Famine is there no new cry.' In 1880 Mr. Take said: * Of the
destitution and misery found in these bog dwellings I feel, after
a lapse of twenty-four hours, I can hardly bring myself to write. It
is not merely the unusual distress of to-day.' Colonel Dease reports
to the Duchess of Marlborough's Fund, of the islands on the ^rost
coast, 15th of August, 1880: *It is not too much to say that at
least one -fourth of the houses are unfit for human habitation.' Mr.
W. J. Fox reports to the Mansion House Committee, 3rd of J0I79
1880, of Mayo: < Everywhere the condition of the children was
dreadful.' I pass over 1846, when the starved dogs lived on the
flesh of the dead, and one surveyor collected 140 bodies on the
roads.- That is a story one dare not unveil. In the autumn of 1880,
Colonel Gordon, writing at the time of a good harvest, said he!^hid
seen nothing like the state of the west of Ireland in any part^of tbe
world. (I cannot quote his letter.) No^ it would be un&ir to
say that Ireland all round is as wretched as fifty years ago. She
is not, but misery dwells undisturbed in large districts, and her
prosperity is very uncertain, as shown last year. Hitherto the
people in one district have not known what was going on in another,

1881. EIGHTY YEARS. 405

and it appears to me that the faet in our present insurrectjiQn, that
the well-to-do parts are fighting for the weak parts, the northern
Protestants more or less openly with the soathem GathoUcs, is a
pvomise of that internal union wMch has seemed hitherto unattainable.
The press has to be thanked for this, which has brought to light
stories (true or false) of the oppression of the poor in out-of-the-way
parts. I have seen the results from day to. day. I have seen the awaken-
ing of sympathy with unknown sufferers. I know that farmers who
last year thought of nothing but their own family, now at least say,
^ It is shameful the labourers should be housed like dogs.' When Mj.
Plamell said to the men of Tipperary, \ You are well off, you are
comfortable, but you must organise, for the men of Mayo are in
danger,' he said what would make us a nation.

That the Act of 1870 failed to go to the root of the evil is
admitted now that the Land League rules Ireland. Was it admitted
before? Was the Land League necessary? If England had but
opened her ears to hear, it need not have been ; but every effort, and
the efforts were numberless, of the Lrish members to at^tract attention
to its &ilure, was in the ears of the English members ^ as much to the
purpose as dogs baying to the moon.' ' Every Bill introduced was
simply extinguished. The Irish members spoke to houses composed
of Irish members, but at the divisions the strength of party was used
without hesitation against them. This is the history of one debate,
which shows constitutional action versus agitation.

On February 6, 1878, Mr. McCarthy Downing introduced for the
second reading Mr. Butt's bill on Land Tenure Reform. In an in-
teresting speech, he set. about to show that the Act of 1 870 had
&iled, inasmuch as it left to the landlord the power of exacting ex-
cessive rents by capricious eviction. He showed that for the three
years before 1870, the notices to quit were 4,253; the three years
after, 5,641 ; that the return for the two years from October 1875
•to October 1877 showed 8,439 notices to quit, which meant that over
40,000 persons were in danger. The returns for six years of notices
to relieving officers to provide shelter, gav6 an average of 10,651
persons yearly threatened with eviction. These fiigures might, we
may suppose, have secured attention, but to them there are certain
stereotyped answers. 1. That on many estates a yearly notice to
quit was the estate rule, not necessarily meaning anything. Gnmted,
-but does not the answer show a worse face than the figures it attempts
to lessen? Tenancy at will from year to year is bad enough, but
tenancy with such a sword of Damocles capable of being brought to
bear without fiirther notice is far worse. 2. That where evictions did
take place, the tenants were often put back as caretakers. There is
as much difference between a caretaker and a tenant as between a
man in a ship and a man on a plank of his former ship on the on^n

> Professor Bogers, January 3, 1881. Reading Liberal Association. .

406 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Uaick

fleas. 3. Thttt sales mxe pushed on by creditors, axfd tke haufionb
tiot resf^cmsible^ However tliat tnay be, I think <we may ginat the
«abjecfe wte wbrthy of inquity^ when affootiiig so serioiisly'the gnat
interest of the nati<m. Mr. McCarthy Downing then -eaUedsttentm
to thetrial for libel of a man named Casey, who had aocnsed Mr.
Buckley of hatsh and unjust dealings. Two murders had, I tkhik,
happened on the estate. Mr.* Casey was acquitted aft^ the manage^
ment of the estate had been inquired into by Judge Barry and Judge
Fitzgerald* Judge Barry described how in January 1874 a demand
was made on the tenants for a rise in rent, to be paid from the
25th of March then next. He explained that this demalid iras
illegal, because ' tiie tenants wese by law entitled to hold at the old
rent to the end of the year.' He observes : ^ I shall not eommeat on
the pregnant use of the word ^ submit " in this document, but eveiy
tenant who did not submit, so far as I can gather, was served with a
notice to quit. - Again, still quoting from Judge Barry : ' The increase
of tent forced after this fariiion upon these tenants ranged from fi% ]

to 500 per cent, on the old rents, and this is in many instanoes also- |

lutely true. The average increase on* the > whole of them is nunre
thdn 100 per cent.'

Now who orwhat were the people thus called upon to pay more
than 100 per cent* increase of rent, and- that nine months before it was
legally due ? Were they wealthy merchants, independent farmers, or
skilled artisans able to tuni elsewhere fcftz, living ? No ; they were
probably the descendants of those poor Catholics who had been per- |

mitted to reclaim < unprofitable h^^ They lived 1,500 feet above \

the sea, on the wild slopes of the QalteeB. The Ghdtees are withii
distant sight of my home* Many and many a day, when aU was green
and warm and sunny about me, I have looked towaxds tboae womf
tains, and have seen them beautiful in theiar radiant coating of hail,
or frost, or snow. Beautiful in the tiistance, but hard and cold ftr
the poor dwellers on tiny &rms amid bog^ and heather, and boddo;
^A Land Valuer '^ in a very interesting ' pamphlet quotes evidoioe
ehowing how such land is reclaimed; (It should be iindarstood thai
the plains are limestone, the hiUs sandstone.)

Q. Will you tell me how you reclaimed that land P

>1. To go to the limestone quarry that was on the low land, and to fill mj
lord a litUe donkey car ; to fillahout six cwt., to drm oa until we begftB' to |0t
egainst tiie steep MU ; to unload a portion until we got.iiiiU>. another cHff^ to ■&-
load a portion again, and in the, long run you would not know what oolonr was
the horse, only white, like the day he was foaled, with sweat ; and, upon m^ oatb,
there would not be more than one cwt. when it reached the kiln.

This little bit out of :most interesting evidence may.shaw lAtt
farming on. the slopes of. the Ghaltees is like. It hacdly needs sbevr

' FiooUy of Tenure at Fair Bents imjtraatieahle at a Final Stttlement, Bf a liMl
Valuer. . M. H^ OiU, Dublin, . - •

IMl. BIQHTY TSAMB. 40T

iDgihaiioilera like these were not aUe to take the<law ogaizist every
ridi mafi* If thej had doue ao, and had gained ^thieir cauae^ etiU .they
would have been eyicted. Theymi^t haye^had a little mcmeyin
their pockets, but that liable to law eaqpensesy other olaimSf and
quite inadequate to the anpport of their fiEuniiies. . Jnstioe Fitz^
gerald, epeaking on the same case, said : ^ Let us take any one of the
oocapieiB en this town land. To him his farm is eferTthing. He
has probably liyed and worked on it all his life, is skilled in>no other
labour, has no other means of ezistenoe ; and if deprived of it may
beeome a wanderer without a home, until ultimately he finds one in
the workhouse.'

This was not the only case brought fcMrward by Mr^ McCarthy
Downing* In another which also came before the courts, the agent
was proyed to have served notices of which this is a sampb* The
tenant held at 162. 1 6<. ' Unless you to-morrow at nine o'clock execute
a lease of your fiirm at 302. a year, I shall increase my terms to 40L a
year, and my attorney's foil cdiarges of three- guineas a lease;' Mr.
McCSarthy Downing hoped * the House would agree* with him tiot he
had given the eztremestcases of oppression and disr^^ard of all equity
and justice/ and surely one might have expected the House to listen,
and examine a demand for reform so backed up. No. ^ The time of
the Houst^ could not be taken up week after weeL by irisb Land
Acts.' The Irish had got the Act of 1«70, they should besatiBfiedo
Tbe bill was thrown out by a majority of 200. I can speak for my**
self. I took this ease at the timeas a test case. ^ Is it iposaiUe to
get justice done in London to the weak and oppressed in Ireland ?'
I a^ed myself. Thousands doubtless felt the same, for it was com-
mented: en in every paper. In the faee of the* fact that Irish
nuNnbers tried over and over again to call the attention of Parlia^
ment to .a state of things which was producing outrage, which
mi^t-*-in fact did — ^produce insurrection, that they were simply
tfamst on one side, I asked myself could this go on if the Parliament
which governed Ireland were really sensitive to Irish opinion ?
Cavour, an upholder of the Union, says : ^ Without feree Ireland will
never obtain anything from England, bat her force sgainst England
consiBts in agitation.' True enough, but that he should have used
the word insurrection instead of agitation. We who experience
insunection feel it a heavy price to pay for legislation. In thirty-
five years this is the third insurrection and fiar the mostdangerous^
I fed almost (^rtain that if self-government is not granted peaceably
another twenty years will show us a fourth, if indeed it is not at our
very doors, and if we do not get it I think it is a question whether we
should not be better simply ruled by the sword, without the fiurce of
elections^ &e. As we are at present we cannot go^m oursdves^ and
England refuses to attend when reforms are needed, then throws the
blame on m for her neglect. A single responsible despotic governor

408 THE NINETEENTH 0ENT0R7. Mmb

might perhaps do better, but I fear he too would be hampered by
the ignorance of his fellow-countrymen. Give us Lord Dnffezin.
Let him settle this land question as he likes, he appears to me to see
further into it than any one whose ideas I have yet seen. Give him
absolute power and do not interfere with him. I dare say we shoold
do very well ; but at least let us get rid of this Union which is no
Union, this government by Parliament which is not responsible to
our public opinion.

That the legislation of Ireland has hitherto been only won at the
point of the sword is easy to show. Since the Union our meet
memorable Acts have been Catholic Emancipation, Commutation of
Tithes, Disestablishment of the Church, the Land Act of 1870, and
our present legislation on. land tenure^ In five-and-twenty yean
parliamentary action failed to advance the first in an appreciable
d^;ree ; five or six years of the Catholic Association, and it was won
all along the line. Thirty years failed to do away with tithes; two
years of the tithe war, the question was settled. O'Connell by the
influence he had gained over the people affected the legislation for
Ireland during the remainder of his life. The famine forced attention
on Irish affidrs, and the Encumbered Estates Court and other minor
legislation rose out of. it. Then came a pause till the Fenian scare.
It swept away the Church and forced on land reform. Obstruction
may or may not have given us the Intermediate Education Bill; it is
hard to say as yet how far it was a sop. Now we have the Land
League, and are trying to make up for the neglect of ^ the stitch in
time which saves nine.'

It is folly to blink the fact that the Irish people have taken to
heart O'Connell's maxim, ^ Ireland never yet trusted but she was
betrayed.' For myself I have the strongest confidence not only
in the good intentions of Mr. Gladstone and of Mr. Forster,
but of the great mass of the English public, but I look back
into history and see that men who as regards their English career
showed themselves worthy of trust, yet failed in Irish matters;
not because of a want of will, but because they had to work against
an impossibility, namely, the setting to rights of a state other than
their o¥ni in which almost every part was radically wrong. ItwiUbe
said, ^ That may be true, but now the work is done.' That is the
mistake England has always made. She has wanted to rest on her
oars, and meanwhile the tide was bearing her whither she knew not
Our education is not settled ; our franchise, our labour question, our
migratory labour question, our poor law question, our waste land
question, are not settled. The land question cannot be settled by a
stroke of the pen. The waste lands, which were a ^ question ' fifty
years ago, still remain waste ; indeed, I believe have been added to of
late years by land falling out of cultivation and gradually becoming
junfit for cattle-feeding. These waste lands Lord John BusseU pro-

1881. EIGHTY YEARS. 409

poeed to reclaim in the fiunine years. He spoke of the employment
it would give, of the produce in food, &c. It was opposed ; he dropped
it without a struggle, and the people died. Lord George Bentinck
tried heart and soul to get the money then wasted on useless labour
employed on railways. He failed, and even now railways are wanted
in those very districts where the present danger had its birth. Last
flefision the people of Donegal tried to get a railway allowed in the
House of Lords (it appears we pay on an average 2,000{. on every
petty bill passing the House). Lord Hedesdale threw it out because
of its being a narrow gauge. The country is too poor to carry an
expensive railway, but if Lord Bedesdale had travelled through it he
would have known a steam wheelbarrow would be better than its
present roads.

These wild parts of Ireland, where the soil, even to an Irish person,
seems hopelessly bad, and where the people live as Mr. Tuke
described this spring, are a very fountain of danger to the whole
country. Mayo, where the Land League had its birth, was also the
birthplace of famine and fever. Fever was actually there, the famine
was stayed. Lord Lifford is right in saying there was plenty of food
in the country. There was, but the people had not money to buy it.
The loss in potatoes, 10,000,000{. in three years, told all over Ireland,
bat especially among the ^ mountainy ' people in tiny fSsums. Mayo
and the whole north-west suffered from a source special to themselves.
Thence came the harvest labourers of England and Scotland, whose
-bits of land were more like the villa residences of business men than
like actual fitrms. These ^ idle Irish ' habitually leave home from
March on, toil through the whole spring and summer in England and
Scotland, if work is to be had, remain even up to Christmas ; then
return to their families for a few weeks, bringing money to support
wife and child and rent during the following year. I have seen the
Don^;al- harvest men returning home, small, sturdy, ugly, rough-
looking fellows in very poor clothing, but doubtless with money in
tiheir pockets. Why do these people not settle in the country where
they work ? The poor laws prevent them. If any Irishman iaHl sick
or i& brought to the workhouse, at least in the country parts, he is
drafted home to his naUve place by the next ship. He must there-
fore cling to his home there, or he would find no home but the
workhouse. But for this the major part of the population of Mayo
would, doubtless, have settled in England and Scotland. I presume
they have been too poor to emigrate largely to America. In 1878,
20,000 men went from Mayo alone, but of 1878 we hear that it was
so bad a year in England that many had to borrow money to pay
their way home. This was the beginning of the distress in Mayo,
combined with a bad potato harvest. In 1879 it is to be supposed
that the early goers sent back bad reports, for only 15,000 went that
year, throwing 5,000 men on the labour market of a very limited

410 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. March

area at one stroke. Their loss in wages for that year is estimated to
have been 100,0002. The potato crop at h6ine had fiiiled, and those
who had gone to England came back empt^jr-handed, with* the partial
loss of travelling expenses. * A veiy bad year, the worst I ever reool*
lect,^ is the report for 1879 as i^egards English and Scotch wages.
The old debts, money borrowed to go to England and to retnin,
money borrowed to support the &mily, the wages of 1878 having
largely failed — and the landlords — stared them in the face. Frozb
whence could the landlord's money come ? Ph>bably this came home
as a life and death question to thousands, answered then most likdy
reverently, ' The Lord only knows,' or, * It is in the will of Cted.'
But the memory of the great famine was not dead. Claremorris and
Swinford were then, as last year, words of ill omen. At Caiiaioe in
Galway, at a large eviction, the women fought the police, and thdr
blood on the bayonets gave life to the nascent Land League. This
was under Mr. Lowther in 1879. Then the cry arose 'We will not
lie down and die, as our others lay down and died thirty years ago.'
This was where and how the Land League arose, though it was in
existence some months earlier under Mr. Davitt's care.

The sudden and very heavy losses in 1879 had terrified the whole
of Ireland. The farmers felt, as I think is doubtless the case, that
if years like 1879 were to come frequently, they would be nttedj
ruined. Inflated by the good years preceding 1877, they had ran
heavily into debt, bid wild prices for the good-will of iianns, and
agreed often to rack rents, where they had independence to make
their own bargains, and where they had not, the landlords had raised
the rents at their pleasure. The cry of rescue came from the fiEir-away
country, of the circumstances of which they knew little or noUnng.
It found an echo in every man's heart. Their way was shown by
leaders of great ability ; they learnt to combine and to be fearless.
Then came the natural temptations of ell combinations. < He that
is not with us is against us.' The movement must be universal, or
it would fieiil man by man. Supplies to the enemy's camp must be
stopped on the instant. No consideration for good, &ir, and popular
landlords could be allowed to stand in the way of the success of a
class war. At this time an earnest and upright man, whom the
people could, and I believe at heart do^ respect^ came instead of the
flouting and jeering Mr. Lowther. A premier who appealed to
Parliament with all his wonderful eloquence to save the home right
of the people, came in place of a premier who, when the ciyof
£unine was in the land, mocked a people threatened with death.* I

'" NoTember 11, 1879. After the deputation of seventy membenof IParllameot,
and another from the Somali Catholio bishapa and archbiahopB,.bad dedazed the
oountiy in danger of famine, Lord 3eacon8fie}d at the Lord Mayor^s banqnet spoke
as follows about the distress in Bngland and Ireland, and that the Engliah diatress
was not accompanied by agitation. ' Vtj Lord, I -wish that our brilliant bretfaoea in

1881* EIGHTY YEARS. 4U

thought this change might stay the current ; it fietiled to do so. Mr*
Foister and Mr. G-Iadstone used all their new-won strength to build
a small rampart between the people and their landlords. They
fidled, but they did hot fiiil in convincing the people they > were in
the right. ^ Boycotting,' and outrage, and a state of terror which has
multiplied the true outrages tenfold, have brought the whole executive
to a standstill. We are compelled to take stock of our position.
England has a problem of immeasurable difficulty before her. How
oan she deal with these 35,000 poor Connaught labourers who must
be yeaxB in arrears of rent ? If she forcibly expatriates them, she
raises for herself enemies in foreign lands ; she thrusts out her humble
unknown servants, who have been patiently tilling her lands and
reaping her fields ; who, indeed, have been flung aside before now, for
if one of them fails through toil or sickness, he is returned at once to
be a burden on his own poor home, which already bears the care and
education of his wife and his children. Two men may be working
side by side in one field, an Englishman and an Irishman : an accident
disables both. The Englishman is carried to his own home, outdoor
relief is given to him, his wife and children stand about his bed, he
returns to his labour when able. The Irishman is taken to the work-
house ; his native place is inquired. * Mayo.' ^ Oh, then he is none
of ours.' Sent home as soon as possible, he must go to the work-
house, no outdoor relief (I think rightly) being given in Ireland.
When he recovers he is hundreds of miles from his work, his season
is lost, and likely enough more than one season. But the cries of
them that have reaped have entered into the ears of the Lord
of Sabaoth. From these poor neglected harvest men has arisen a
danger to the empire not yet sounded.

In that we landlords knew in some degree of evils going on, and
did not to the full cry out against them, we deserve what will come.
But how little power we had, even the best of us I Those most
sensible of the wrong-doing perpetrated, by members of their class
eould still do nothing to save themselves. The cleverest, most liberal^
most upright man, can do nothing for his country as things stand.
Unless prepared to fly at the throat of England, he is no fit tool for
the people. He must stand on one side and wait, till England's
neglect and Ireland's misery crush him to the ground.^ His intellect,

Ireland would be a little more emulous of this example. They perhaps can hardly
be expected to follow sach a regular and logical course of reasoning as this, and they
are not so much favoured ; but I confess I am utterly at a loss to comprehend how
the Irish people have brought themselves to believe that the best remedies for
economical distress are political agitation and social confusion. . . • But I would
venture to hope that the Irish people, convinced upon reflection that the sympathy
of JSngland is a sentiment which baa never been scantily applied to them, will 0Mi»
eondeteend to recollect that, though they have had a bad harvest, their harvest is
nmch better than the harvest of England ; and though I am aware that the harvest
of IreUuid is a matter of greater importance than the harvest of England, stiU that
is a circomstanoe which should not be omitted from their memoi7««

412 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Match

his education, are worthless to him and his country. They show him
the dangers of Home Rule, but they show him also the blondering of
England* He chafes, as any man would chafe, at being bound hand
and foot to a foreign government which he sees incompetent, at being
represented by men whom he dislikes. I think the instinct of the
people is in the right, that only as an independent nation can Ireland
make use of her great powers. ^ The most illiterate and uninfoimed
creatures upon earth are judges of a practical oppression,'^ and I
believe such an oppression is holding down Ireland, and will hold her
down, while her people's voice is not directly, heard, save through
agitation and outrage. You English have undertaken what one of
yottr own greatest statesmen described thus : — ^ The whole scheme of
union went on that false and abominable presumption that we ooold
legislate better for the Irish than they could for themselves, a prin-
ciple founded upon the most arrogant despotism and tyranny.' ^

In 1780 we were at least a nation. Our leaders w^e gentlemen,
and the Catholic people were ready followers. In 1880 we aie
shattered in pieces, our gentlemen are crying for defence against
their own countrymen, an army of 25,000 men is needed to hold
the country down, we have stepped from Ssunine into insurrection, our
only trade is in great danger, our parliamentary representation is given
only to those who will be as wolves at the heels of England. We
had gained through an extreme of misery 3,000,000 people, we have
lost them again through unspeakable suffering. But Uiis is not
all. We have gone forth as the Jews through every city and through
every people. We are counted by millions in your midst.^ Our little
island, our little fountain of tears and blood, has sent forth a stream
now a mighty river. We are in the hands of the Lord. We will not
try like David to number our people. If they be fifteen or twenty
millions, or more, that is only for to-day. We are no race bom to die.
I do not fear for my race, but I do fear for our little island. I fear
more for England. England has all to lose, we have nothing. Which
is strongest tiien ? It is not yet too late to give us back our country, to
live hand in hand in freedom. By the history of eighty years, I ask
the young and Sadical opinion of England, was not Charles James Fox
right when he said ^ we ought not to presume to legislate for a nation
in whose feelings and affections, wants and interests^ opinions and
prejudices, we have no sympathy? '

Is ^ Home Rule ' then possible ? No. I think not in its ordinaiy
meaning. I cannot see how a parliament, composed of men who,
like bulldogs, have been tossed and gored by England, yet who have
driven her half-mad, could work harmoniously with England. I do
not see how a House of Lords of ' old Whigs,' Tories, and Orangemen

* Burke. • C, J. Fox,

^' * One in seren of the xopjlit'on of the towns of ScDtU n^, one in thirl een in the
towns in EDglandc

1881;. EIGHTY YEARS'. 413

oould work with them or with the cotiatry.' Above all, I don't believe
the Castle and its authorities, dependent on' English faction, could
ever be other than rightly unpopular. No. I should dtep out of
this train which has wrecked us — I should clear the lines, and fetch
up a new engine. I should note the fact that three times in late
years Irishmen have attempted self-govetnment, always on the same
lines, always ¥riith success in the internal working. The Protestant
Church has a constitution consisting of manhood suffrage^ parochial
nominators, diocesan nominators, diocesan synod, general synod,
hierarchy. The Fenians had universal suffrage (practically manhood),
local centres, local head centrcis, Dublin head centre, executive strong,
and from outside, not originally elective. The Land League has univer-
sal sufl&age, local leagues, county leagues, head league, and strong ex-
ecutive, not originally elected. Cannot we stop, and see the way the
mind of the people is workiiig ? The Irish, to be well governed, must
be absolutely free, because they are in daily communication with
America ; because the country swarms with clever ready-witted men,
who talk politics and think them too frdm morning to night ; because
they are half-educated already, and will never be content with less
than freedom. The Irish, to be well governed, must be governed by
a strong executive, because they are ordy half-educated, because they
are rash, excitable, prone to try to right their wrongs by illegal
methods, and because they are clever and need a balance. The Irish,
to be well governed, must have their nationality respected. They
read with shame and indignation their history, but they do not wish
to cease to be Irishmen. They know that every race in the west of
Europe has contributed to miJs^e of them one people, but they are
now all Irish. Ireland is their country, Ireland their home, their
hope, their pride, their sorrow, their interest. Irishmen they are,
and must remain. We want freedom, a strong executive, nationality*
Except for the memory of Grattan, the people thoroughly distrust and
dislike parliamentary government. I would do away with it. I
would go on the lines the people have themselves marked out. I
would give universal suffrage to elect local members for limited dis-
tricts who would form provincial assemblies, numbering in members
say one hundred for each province. (Munster understands no more
of the life of Connaught than England does.) They should elect a
council, say twenty-five from each province, to meet in Dublin. I
would have all local affairs managed by the province, all public
affairs managed by the council. I would have at the head of the
executive an Irishman appointed by the Crown, permanent and un-
connected with English party. Two such men might be at once
pointed out — Sir C. Gr. Duffy and Lord Dufferin. I woidd give
the whole power of the executive and army into his hands. I would
have no official responsible to the English Parliament. The
Governor-General should only be removed by vote of both Houses of
Vol. IX.— No. 49. F F

414 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Mtircb

Parliament in England^ or by vote of two-thirds of ihiee local
tiariiamoEitfl, one-third of the fourth, and majority of the eouadl
in Ireland. I would govern the people by elected mi^fiBtrates mi
crown resident magistrates, elected grand juries and crown judges;
a police governed by the local assemblies, an army governed by
the crown* I believe if an Irishman, such as Lord Dufferin,
whom the nation is proud of, was given at one stroke the mamge-
mentof the country into his hands, along with individual freedom,
Ireland might do very well yet, if not interfered with by Englani
Lord Dufferin disbelieves in the three F's as a final settlemeot,
so do the people, as far as one can judge, though in the diffioidl;
of an immediate change they would be accepted as a stopgap. Lord
Dufferin considers peasant proprietorship to be just in the abstract,
so do the people. Surety some solution might be come at even
in this supremely difficult question if the nation felt itself respoofi-
ble. At present it is going its own wild way. It is responsible
neither to the present nor to the future. It knows well oaly a
small paring of its demands will be granted, but it can wony Eng-
land and frighten the landlords. Make the nation responsiUe^ and
you place a bridge over the morass ; make the nation free, and you
draw the teeth of sedition ; give every man the opportunity of ex-
pressing his thought legally, you bring the brains of the nation to the
side of peace.

Chablottb Gr. O'Bbies.

1:881.

415

/.'• ^.l' .*

RADICALISM: A FAMILIAR COLLOQUY.

Mbs. Huyex was a lady of some importance ia London, and of great
. importenoe afc CaaiiM. ' At this latter place she was possessed of the
latges^ villa^ and the one best arranged for receiving in \ adid her
'gardens, further, were so. exceptional in > their beauty that though
countless notices proclaimed them to be strictly ptirate, there were
few genuine touri^ who did not make a point of visiting them. - Mrs.
Hiervey had two lawn^tennis courts, the delight of the young and
active; and some unique brown shorry, the delight of the wise of
. etery agew ^e had personal ohanns, moreover, which almost equalled
h«B adventitious ones ; it was therefore only in the nature of things
ihaiail her. parties were eKoeUent, and composed exclusively of the
pick of Cannes society. Nor was social selection always the only
thing she embodied in them. Herself the daughter of a staunch
CoQflervative peer, and the wife of a Conservative ex-minister, her
smaller gatherings had a delicate party flavour ; and though jfiEtshion-
aUe Sadicals even might secruit their popular energies on her tennis-
courts, they were kept like weeds out of bar luncheon and her dinner-
listsL These contained none but such as were on the right side in
poIiticB, with the exception of a few distinguished Whigs, who
appeared there like rare exotics.

To^y there was wanting even this alien element. As pure a
Conservative clique as ever Inoke bread together had just risen from
aa eaily lunch or breakfiuBt, and had settled in easy chairs under the
sihade of the broad verandah. The glow, though, and the glare of the
sun.was warming everything]; the air of January was soft as the air
of Jime; fountains splashed hard by amongst tall and slender euca-
lyptus trees, and through spiked palm-Jeaves showed the blue depths
of the sky. Cigarettes, coffee, and liqueurs were being handed round ;
and wh«i, under this new dispensation of comfort, conversation again
developed itself our fidends began deploring the shattered state of
their party, and the imminent ruin of their own country in conse-
quence. Their views, as is]uBual upon such occasions, were gloomy in
an extreme degree. One brighter remark only, like a soUtary star, had
twinkled through the clouds for a moment, and was again lost in them.
This proceeded from a newly-created peer, who had received his

¥ F 2

416 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. March

honoors from the dying hands of the late Government, and who was
heard in one period of the convernation assuring Mrs. Hervey that
England^ through all its changes^ was still beneath the sur&u^e
thoroughly aristocratic in its sentiments.

' My dear lady/ he said, ^ you may talk as you will, bat it's a
feeling that goes through all classes. Your own butler has as much
of it as you or I. He makes each one of those powdered fellows call
him sir ; and they, too, when they come to be butlers, will exact just
the same deference from their own subordinates.'

* So they do now,' replied Mrs. Hervey, * for matter of that I
overheard John, one day, abusing the hall-boy ; and I can tell yon,*
she said laughing, ^ that he swore like any lord at him.'

^ Exactly,' said my lord approvingly ; < it's exactly what I saj.
And it always will be so — at least in England — ^always will be so.'

< That is,' said Mrs. Hervey, ^ if Mr. Gladstone leaves ns any
footmen or any hall-boys at all.'

< Ah,' replied his lordship, relapsing again into pessimism/ the
situation is certainly very serious.' And with that the bright gleam
faded. The grounds for (conservative confidence disappeared from the
conversation ; and Conservative forebodings again became uppennost.

^ My goodness I when will they stop ? ' exclaimed a young man in
a very impatient undertone. He was speaking to a handsome girl
next him, who seemed to lose no pretext for raising her eyes to his.
*' Croak, croak, croak,' he said. ^ There they go ; it's the true Oa-
servative chorus. If this doesn't stop soon, I shall have to get up
and go.'

< No, don't go,' said his £Eiir companion winningly. < Why should
this fidget you ? You are not a Radical, are you ? '

< If I were it would delight me, not fidget me. It is because thej
are my friends that I can't bear to hear them exposing thian8elve8.
All these gloomy predictions really mean nothing. They neither wan
any one, instruct any one, nor frighten any one. They are simply
an annoying form of small-talk. I b^ your pardon, though ; I must
eat my own words again. They do warn, they do instruct^ and they
do frighten me ; not, however, because they throw much light mi the
troubles that are to come in the future, but because they throw much
light on the weakness of our own party in the present. This quemloos
despondency of Conservative conversation shows how little our aFerage
Conservatives understand the strength of their cause ; and it may really
tend for a certain time to reduce it. Idiots I since their last defeat
they have done little but complain how complete it was. It lias
been, for all the world, as though they were crying, ^' Come, kick me."*
And, on my word, were I a Radical, I should like to go and do it'

< Well,' said the young lady, ^ there is no use shirking facts. Last
year we were beaten, and beaten terribly. Five of our fiunily wre
in the last Parliament, and only two in this.'

1881. RADICALISM: A FAMILIAR COLLOQUY. 417

* That may well be ; bat that does not alter what I was saying.
Every cause at times suffers repulses, and it is for its own good that
it does so. But no cause deserves to win that cannot endure defeat.
Now our noble friend over there made one very sane remark just now,
but the strange thing was that he dropped it as soon as made.'

* And what remark was that? — that the Conservative cause had
a sure future before it, because Mrs. Hervey's footman was heard to
swear at the hall-boy ? '

*' Precisely ; and I shall remind him again of it, when he has
done whispering about me to Mrs. Hervey; for that's what he is
doing now — I know it is by the look of him.'

Nor was this conjecture wrong. * Who's that young man ? ' his
lerdship was just then asking. < You told me his name at luncheon,
but I couldn't quite distinguish it.'

* Oh,' said Mrs. Hervey, * that is young Mr. Seacorts, who con«

tested South shire at tJbie last election, and who was only beaten

by six votes. I think you must have heard of him.'

' Heard of him I God bless my soul^ of course I have t How are
7011, my dear fellow — how are you ? Fm a trifle deaf, and I didn't
catch your name just now. Why, your father and I were at school
together, at college together, and in the House of Commons together.
I wonder what he'd have thought of the present state of affairs, eh ?
Ton ought to be in the House of Commons too, if the people had
only known their duty.'

* Oh,' laughed Seacorts, ^ I can afford to wait.'

^ffm,' sighed the other, ^ these are bad times for waiting. The
real fact is you're a great deal too gentlemanly for the electors.
They don't want a gentleman now if they can help it.'

^ I should be sorry to think that myself; and I am surprised that
you should think it. You said, but a few moments ago, that the
country was still, under the surface, thoroughly aristocratic in senti-
ment.'

^ Ahy' said his lordship, not without some surprise, ^ I was thinking
of social matters then, not of politics. So fitr as politics go, I believe
tiie masses to be profoundly Badical ; and where it will all end.
Heaven only knows. Isn't that your opinion? Hasn't your experi-
ence told you that ? '

' No,' said Seacorts, ^ I can really not say that it has. The masses
themselTes I do not believe to be Sadical.'

* Then where,' interposed Mrs. Hervey, * would you say the Badical
power came from ? '

' I should say that it acted through the masses, but that it does
notjoriginate in the masses. Its origin is higher in the social scale.
It springs from a certain section of the middle class, and it is really
al 'middle-class cause, and not a popular one.'

^This is just,' said Mrs. Hervey, < what you spoke to me about

418 TUB mNBTEElSTB CENTURr. Manh

yeeterdttf/^ and' t]M)re' was a convexsation ^ou- baAr h^d iriiQMioine
fiadieal aequaintance o£ yoors^whidi you pionosad rta repeatto^M^
But you kncyw my opinion is, that thai middle'claasea are ezcfMdia^jp^
ti^TirfiadicaL They may be safe* ateady^^ix^/Iibei&fa^ ifyoa liby
but thexe is notfadng.in their cieed that is:inr the least Badka) wi
alanEOBg.' : . • .

I ^ fiadioalism^' said Seacorts, Ms not a ereed ; iiiswnply a fine^
of temper.*

' Thexe/ said Mrs. Hervey, ^ again we differ. I dioold ha^e
thought the middle classes, the most phlegmatic part ot thevcsDh^^
munity.'

:<The middle classes,' said Beacoits,^ ^are a misceUaneoui body;
and certain sections are doubtkss as you deacnbe them^ Bat the»
section that I allude to is at once smidl and peculiar. I shall doctibfr
it by* a somewhat .vague, and yet. Yeiy suggestive telsn, aifitW
disaffected section. The disaffection I ascribe to it is aliig^y
complex thing; a variety of causes go to. the production. of itr aod
it is only when- we study the causes^ that we oan. really UndetttaDd
the effeet. What I mean is, in other words, this : if we woidd uBdet^
stand Badiealism, we should study, the biography of Jotadicaisi hjAl^
mean now by Badicals, not the rank and file of the party^ butthe-
leaders more or less prominent, who, either in public or in pdvatie,'
have zeal to spread their opinions*'

'I thought,' replied Mrs. Hervey, 'that you said they had^ao'
opinions — nothing but a piece of temper.''

'Yes; but a piece of temper, when it gets beyosid ejaculations^
always expresses itself in the form of certain opinions, ladefidf
developed ill-temper «s a set of opinions ; that.is the - analysis of it;
and these often seem to have an extreme coherency, and are aasoDted
t0 by the persons holding them with a vigour and fieBoenesaoC.luiih
which it is hard elsewhere to parallel. But* their speeial peeuIkzUif >
lies in the ground they are held upon ; and this is simply the imagi-
nation in a certain excited state. It was De Quixic^^ I thinkjwho
observed that of all foims of im^fination, the imagination of ill-
temper is the strongest. It is stronger than the poet's ; it is sbroager
even than the lover'8,.except in those frequent cases wheto the- tv(^
are identical. You know, Mrs. Hervey — at least, I hope yon doa't
hnoW'^how bitterly two lovers^ when, they quarrel, will aaclifleieacb
other ; how they will draw .up in, an instant hatefol^ wantoD^ind^
ment8,.tissues each of them of circumstantial £silaehooda; :anfik.kow
these falsehoods for the moment will seem to have all the veaooi-'of
truth in them, and will curse i equally both those who giviSianditake
them. . Well, social ill«temper is the same sort of thing BsHmlaxei*^
eiieeptithat it lasts langier, and is mare.easy to commumGat^^'r.no- ;•

^ Grive us an instance,', said his lordship gnurely. • ^ I ooniBSiiliai
at this moment I.don't quite. foUon^ you.'. . . *. ,>> * :. ^.m'

1«81. RADICALISM: A FAMILIAR COLLOQUY. 419

> ^I can give yoa an ^tiaxmxHj aiiDplefme* , An engaged eouple go-
together tO(a balL . Theman meets.a foir friend of fonner days, and,,
with a puxaly bKotberlyf feeling, says a few friendly wozds to her..
The,/iancfe thinks he is flirting, takes sudden o£fence, and fat. the*
reeiof the evening .site out on the baok-stairs with a guardsman.
The entertaimnent eomes to an end, and the happy couple drive
home together. What do they say to. each other ? The man is
sullen ; the lady b^pns the battle. ^ Well,'' she exclaims, ^ and a
pretty way you bdbaved to-night. But it's always the same. I quite
knew what to expect. You can never see a single pretty girl —
always provided that you are not engaged to marry her — ^but you sit
HI her pocket the wbole ev^ning long. And you always choose th&
person that you know I should most object to. It's not that you care
for her, or admire her, or think her the least bit pretty ; but that
you long and desire to slight and irritate me." Tliere's the lover's
temper. The Badical's is just the same; only what excitea the
Badical is a condition of society in which be must always have
superiors ; and it is with these superiors that his imagination busies
itself. Bank, birth, breeding, and any riches that are in excess of his
own, are distorted by his imagination into hateful or absurd abuses.;
and he attacks them as such with the diseased ingenuity of a lifetime.'

Mr8«' Harvey was a "true woman, even in the way in which- her
thoughts would wander. ^ I've been wondering, Mr. Seacorts,' she
said, ^ all this time, what is the exact dass of people you are speaking
about. Are .they people one would meet, do you mean ? or what ? '

^ I don't know. wheUier y<yii personally would meet them, Mrs^
Hervey. I should think very likely not ; but I can't define the .class:
veiy aocurately^ because it is, a^ it were, a kind of secret society, and
the points of agieement between its members are often jbr below ihe>
surfiu^. One thing, however* we may say, I think, quite safely^
Badiealsi as a rule, are people without land, and have but slight sooial:
connection with the landed interest.'

' I wish,' said his lordship, ^ I could believe that were so. But
there were actually sixty peers who voted for Mr« Crladston^'s
Disturbance Bill«'

*But they did that,' said Seacorts, ^as liberals, not as Badioab;
and though I think that as Liberals they acted on this occasion
wrongly^ yet a true Liberal is, at leajst in will and intention,.as antir
Badical as any true Conservative. If jou want to know what a real
Badical is — ^I had last week: a long discussion with one; and X
premised Mrs. Hervey to give her some .account of it. Indeed, if I
hadn't found such a party assembled here^ I meant to have, told het
about it this momiog.'

• ^^Fell ua-QOW^' said.Mss.jHervey ; ^ we should all like to hear,ia&d
Fm longing taknow what you thii^ a jreal lUdical is.'
• ^ Of M>mrse,' said Seacorts^ < a Badieal is. a vague* word, and many

}

420 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Maich

people may apply it to themselves who would reject the meaning
that I put upon it. But I use it as I do, because my meaning, I
think, corresponds to the fedingsy if not to the thoughts, that in
general conversation are bound up with it. But you shall judge of
this for yourselves, if you really wish for my story. The Sadical heio
is a gentleman named Sprigsby. He is the son of a small solicitor
who lives in the town near us, and his mother was the daughter of
one of my father^s farmers. The boy was extremely sharp, he did
wonders at his grammar-school, and then did wonders .at Oxford;
and when I mj^lf went to Christ Church, I found him a full-blown
don. But he was more than a mere don — he was a don with
vehement views on political and social matters. His chief bugbear
in politics was the House of Lords ; his chief social bugbears were
what he considered aweUs, generally; and the chief things he
insisted on were the rights of knowledge and intellect. At that time
knowledge in his case meant chiefly a knowledge of the Feloponnesian
war. He had all the details of it at his fingers' ends, and, strong in
the consciousness of this fact, he gave a lecture at Birmingham on the
English system of land tenure. Soon after he went to London,
where he wrote for various papers; and he is now secretary to the
Society for the Abolition of Feudalism.'

' What is he like ? ' said ilrs. Hervey. * Does he dress wdl ? is
he at all like a gentleman ? '

< He is,' said Seacorts, ' not at all a bad fellow in some ways ; bat
his manner and look are, I must say, a little against him. At Oxford
his get-up was shocking. He had inky nails, and a grey flannel
shirt. But since he's taken to London, he is rather spruce than
otherwise, and has become the sort of man who wears a tall hat in the
country. His real misfortune, however, is his manner. It's the
rarest thing with him to be properly at his ease. He seems always
afraid that you will not think enough of him; and for fear yoa
should be supercilious to him, he is never civil to you. Well, such
is the man with whom I had that discburse which Mrs. Hervey wants
now to be told about. It happened in this way. I left Cannes last
week that I might spend a few days at San fiemo, where, who
should I meet, the morning after my arrival, but my friend Mr.
Sprigsby, in the hotel garden. I think, I must say, he was really
jdeased at seeing me, as he knew no language but his own, and bad
no English acquaintances. His greeting, therefore, was as nearly
cordial as I had ever known it to be ; and having seen, by the way
he had begun to step out, that he was bent on a walk, I proposed
to go with him, and we set off together.

' ^^ You were surprised, no doubt," he hegan presently, ^* at finding
me here. These idle places are not much in my line, it is true ; but
the £act is, I have fairly overworked myself, and I have been posi-
tively obliged to come away for a month or two. And yet even here
I am not quite idle ; I still find something to be busy with.**

1881. RADICALISM: A FAMILIAR COLLOQUY. 421

* I observed, as he said this, that he had several printed papers
with him, and asked him what they were. He did not at the time give
any direct answer, but he proposed that by-and-by we should find a
seat somewhere, and then he said he could show me. Meanwhile he at
once plunged into politics, and with a peculiarly grating hruaquerie
he reminded me of the last election. '^ The day of the lords and
squires," he said, ^^ is gone by, even in the counties. I am sorry for
you personally ; but you have been bom fifty years too late, and in
tliis generation you are like a fish out of water. However, there's
XK> use regretting it ; the whole thing's gone, and it can never be
called back again."

< He said all this in a high, half-mincing voice, accompanied now
aid then with a little nervous laugh of condescension. The man did
not mean to be rude, but his anvmu8 on the subject was too strong
for him, and he could not help himself. This put me on my mettle,
and I answered him rather sharply. ^^ The day of the lords and
squires," I said, ^^ is by no means so far spent as you think : and sup-
pose it were, would the days of navvies be much improvement on it? "

< My friend said nothing to this. He only looked straight before
him through his spectacles, and lengthened his thin lips into a set,
continued smile. I was thoroughly provoked by him. I could see
he detected this ; and I could see too that it pleased him, for he still
preserved the same grimacing silence, and his face for a good five
minutes was a discourse in dumb show on his own superior wisdom.
At length he began, with the air of a college lecturer. ^^The history
of this century is a history of the popular triumph. It is that, and
nothing but that. One after one we have taken the strongholds of
privilege; and those that are yet untaken are about to £Bdl presently.
Even now they are tottering. We have got at last to the dtadd ;
the people are at last at the land laws ; and by this time twelvemonth
we shall have made pretty work of them, I can assure you. Do you,"
he said, with another little laugh, <^ think of again contesting the
county ? " I said, '* Certainly." " I should advise you not," he
answered. ** If you do it will be a painful thing for you. The country
was bad enough for you, I fancy, last election ; but by the next you
wiU find it &r worse. By that time you will have to face the en-
finnohised labourers, and I should hardly advise you to try that."
^Did you never," I said, f^hear of a reaction? Popular feeling,
whenever it is set moving, always for a time sways to and fro, like a
pendulum." Again Mr. Sprigsby gave a little high petulant chuckle.
*^ You might as soon," he said, ^ expect that brook there to flow up-
hill as expect the resolution of the people now to either fiedter or
peverse itself. Till the people knew their strength, as long as they
did but vaguely suspect it, they might vacillate, and there nught be,
perhaps, reaction. But that's all changed now. They are the
masters, and they mean to use their mastery." ^^ I can't see myself,"

422 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. llzsAi

L said^ ^' that tiiene is much chaoge in the 'situatioii." '^ Oan't you ? "
he. answered. ^'WeU, then, the dutnge is thiB. Edueaitioia vA in*
t^Uect have oqw reached the people ; and education and intdleok
know nothing of rank or privilege. The only rank, and- the only
privilege known hy them is that of the dearest head and the most*
comprehensive vision ; and it is under these henceforward that tb
people will array themselves." ^ And pray who," I said^ ^^ is to settle
whose vision is the most comprehensive ? " ^^ The conmion sense of'
the multitude when alive to its own interests. A great art <aitic was
once asked the requirements for painting a great picture, and. his
answer was this — < Know what you want to do, and'do it.' It is pie*
cisely the same advice that the Badical gives the people ; and lAat
the Badical leader does is to teach them what they want. lAHandet's
words, he holds the mirror up to them. What tiiey have .bofc felt
confusedly he professes to utter plainly ; and though they tbeniBcl!?eB'
could not 'have expressed the truth, they can instantly recognise it,
let it once be expressed for them. That is the reason why we have
now the ear of . the country. That is the reason why we can addnv
the people with confidence. Now with what cry, I ask yon, ooold
you again go to the country ? What could you promise the caa*
stituents whose ititerests you would profess to advocate ? NoQiing>'
absolutely nothing. You couldn't say to them, There is my kou8$y
and there is my jmepwrk. See how muck of the land loocwpg; 1
eat up va a year whatwovM keep fifty of you m eomfart. Ae tiits
has gone on for a given number of cewturiee^ you must have ibt
affection, for it thai cornea out of old. acquavntance^ and tiier^&ny
as meniomd Englishmen^ elect me for the conaerveMon of iU^
'i No," I said drily. ^ I admit I could not say that ; . and yrt .that is
just a Badicars notion .of what an honest Conservative would say.**
^^ See," said Sprigsby, ''let us go along that footpatibu There is a
place I have discovered there where we can sit down pleasanily ; sad
there I will show you a few of these papers I have witii me."

< I was charmed for a moment to have some respite fiDm politiea;^
and for the first time in our walk we began to enjoy the.8ocaeiy>
Our way when we had left the town had been up a zigzag road tbst
scaled a gigantic hillside, and by^and^by led away .amofngst Uie
mountains. On either side of us had been orange and lemon gmvei^
under whose shades the grass was as green nearly as in England. • Xke
whole declivity was traversed with water^^sourses, and our eat caught
continually the sound of fiEJling waters. The path we nawentfared
lay through a lovdy orange orchard, slanting so steeply thaib^^
deep aaure of the Mediterranean was the complete. backgrouad; of
nearly iialf the trees. Across it went a grey . mediaeval aqusdnet^
whichy thoi^h it looked pioturesq^uely ruinou% still later»tk«d&'a' ^
of watec to a.moss'frown nodUbelofw us.. We followed .tfaeicguiae of
tl^e aqueduct till we came to the fimntaia it waa&d bjib > fThi^gwahodi

IWK RADICALISM: A FAMILIAR COLLOQUY. 423

o«l froni^th^JbiUmde as clear as crystal) and two gnarled olive t^?ees"
idade^i gifeeii'ibalde aver its^cvadlew There^ was a baak at hand tliat
wM a^onee warm and dry^ aad on that we>8ettled onrselred. '< Look,'^
lMsaid,*^'at^)<»e^me 'tUB^spriiig was no donbt held sacred^ Those
br^kensteiies^by the <dive tree^ must ha^re onoe been a saint's^ shrine.'*
^'Probably,'' said my friend ; ^ and if you look a little to the^left you
will see a wooden crueifiz." And with that, to my surprise^ he broke<
oat into a piece of poetry.

The suns haye branded black, the rains
. ' Striped gray l^at piteous God of theirs.
■ The faoe is fall of prsjers and paios
... To which they brisg their pains and prajers^^

' One of the xnost softening elements in 3prig8by'8 chaxacter was a
genuine, though suppressed, taste for poetry and for scenery; and
both of .t]^em, I wajs happy to see, were having a soothing effect upon
hijB. ^ Seie," he said, as he unfolded his packet of papers, ^^ these are
the things that I said I'd show you. You'll find several things there^
I fancy, that are well worth your attention."

' I took the^ p&p;ers, and found they were various tracts or
pfonpblets issued by the Society for the Abolition of Feudalism*.
**^That is the way," he said, " in which our party appeal to the people." .
One of these productions was an invective against the game laws ;
another against deer forests^ another against yachting, and another
against primogeniture. Then there was one with the rather whim-
8)e^ title of Touchvag your Hat — v^hy not to do it \ and another
headed, On the use of the^ word ' Sir; ' or, Ind&pendeace versus Ser-^ ,
t^^y. And here I came to something of a rather different character*
It ,w^ a speech of a Bussian Nihilist^ . made at , Brussels, before . a
Gongrees of Social Democrats. '^ G-ood grsic^ous I '' I exclaimed, " and .
so you have Bussiaii Nihilism here^ have you, as well as English
Badicalism? " '* We print," he said very quickly, " the chief utter-
ances, of all th^ pemocratic Societies on tixe Continent. That was
dQDe upon my recommendation ; though I am not myself responsible,
either for the selection or the translation. What you have there I
have not yet read myself; but I have had a number of letters, which,
t^ me that it is exceptionally fine. We print these things, you see^
ngfc. because we acquiesce in the details of the Continental pro-
gramme, bi^ because we are entirely at one with the real spirit and
^iiDBof it. Oppressions in some countries are more crying than even
i^ purs ;. and, they therefore excuse, if they do not justify, somewhat
Sitaronger jnrotests. But our differences, are only on the surface*
The It^cal partyj.all the world over, is at heart a united brother-
hood*" .^, WeU," I answered, '^ let i^ see what your Nihilist says for
himself." And I began to read aloud. I can't remember the whole

424 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Maieh

of it, but the sound was certainly terrible. It was full partly of
scientific and partly of scriptural phrases — the latter naturally
turned to a new significance. The way it ended was this : — Jfuefc
is dime, hut much rernai/na to be done. Yea, much remaimsj a/nd
yet how little ! The mine is prepared, the powder is etored. It
only rests for us to apply the mxUch to it. It is but the work of a
moment ; hut in thai tumultuous Tnoment shaU he compressed tA«
events of eras. Dynasties shall have crumbled — princes, wMfs,
plutocrats, priests, and armies, all shall have disappea/red. Th
two great curses that have hlighted man^s existence shall have gone
for ever — religion and dvUisalion. Yes, do 7u>t start. Do iwt hi
awed hy words. Religion and dvUisaMon, we shall destroy both
of them. We shall destroy this temple, and in less than three days
we shall have raised another. In a momsnt, in the twinUmg of
an eye, all the world will he changed ! and then shall have amen,
self-created, a new heaven and a new earth. The hour is coming;
let vs not fear to welcome it. The chariot of RevclutUm is roUvng,
^ and gnashing its teeth as it roUs.^

^ The effect of this passage on my friend was not a little amusing.
I took a furtive look at him every now and then as I was readmg it,
and his face was like that of a man who is taking some nasty medi-
cine, and is for trying to hide his extreme distaste at the flavour.
At last, when I came to that truly wonderful climax, he caught the
paper from my hand, and declared I was inventing. When he found
I was not, he was a little subdued in manner, and he b^;an to talk
to me as though I were almost his equal in intelligence. ^Of
course," he said, '^ all that tall talk is foolish, in so far as it is tall talL
But we must judge it in the light of its special occasions, and
tiie special men it was addressed to. I have heard apologists of
Catholic fetishism try to disarm our ridicule of the spangled and
crinolined madonnas by saying that such tawdry finery represented
to the peasant worshippers all that was really splendid. And the
defence, I think, is quite sound in its way, though it is a defence of
the peasantry and not of the superstition that enslaves them. Now
we may say just the same thing of this hasty oratory of the Demo-
crats. It may be wretched to the eye of criticism, and may yet
speak a profound truth to the men it wad intended for. I certainly
myself should not have allowed that speech to be printed by our
society had I myself seen It. But that is not because I disallow the
real meaning that is embodied by it, but because to the English
reader the style would do that meaning injustice. What we want
to bring home to the minds of the English people is that their cause
is a universal cause. Nothing will increase, as that will, their self-
respect, their dignity, and their determination. The social relation-

* This last sentence is transcribed from the report of an actual speech made by a
Oerman Socialist during the course of the past year.

1881. RADICALISAf: A FAMlLIAJt COLLOQUY. 425

ahip of England, with regard to the Continental countries, we
conceive briefly to be this. From them we shall catch fire and
enthusiasm ; from us they will catch moderation and sound sense."
«* And what," I said, " is your view with regard to Ireland ? What
lesson is that to teach you ? " ^^ The same lesson," he said, ^^ that
we learn from Grermany, France, and Russia. We learn from
it courage and determination. We learn from it that the people
have, only to combine, and in little more than an instant they
will secure their freedom. We learn from Ireland lessons be-
yond value. We learn the weakness of privilege and the strength
of freedom. Ireland is at this moment doing this great deed for
us — ^it is laying bare the rock on which the socieirfr of the future
is to be founded. Don't think, however, that we are apologising
for murder or mutilation, or any form of terrorism. We con-
demn them as strongly as the most bigoted or the most timid of
Tories. We consider them atrocious and guilty, even more distinctly
than they do. We only impute the guilt to the really guilty
parties; and these are the victims, they are not the perpetrators.
To provoke murder is more wicked than to murder; to tempt is
more devilish than to fidl. However," he went on, as though con-
scious he had committed himself, '^ I can hardly expect you to admit
that. You too are an Englishman, and you must judge of the Badical
cause by the form it assumes in England, and the demands it makes
tiiere. Turn from that speech that you have just been reading, and
you will see a little pamphlet of my own. You will find there no
fine phrases and no vague prophecies. You will find there perfectly
sober, simple, and rational demands ; and principles that, when once
stated, even you will not contradict." He took the pamphlet
himself, and b^;an to read to me. His title was, I think. An
Address to the Idle Classes. There was nothing very new in the
matter of it, but I can still remember one or two of the sentences: —
Does wealth make a man wiser than his fellows, or does birth make
Jwm better f Does the constant pursuit of frivolous pleasure, does
the oonstani pampering of his own appetite, does the jealously
preserved vnaptUvde for any useful occupation — does aU this, I
say, fit a man to govern ? Does a class of msn deserve to be re^
garded as our superiors, when their only distinctive ma/rk is an
ostentatious inferiority? Two idols hitherto have overawed the
people — Wealth and Birth. Their power has been great; but it
was founded only on superstition, and ike superstition it was
fovmded on is already dissolving. My lords amd genMemen, %t is
well that you should be awa/re of this fact. You can, indeed,
hardly yourselves be blind to it. The demearumr of the people
towards you is no longer what it once was. Tou can see it in
thevr torus and gestures ; and you will do well if you a/re warned
vn time by it. You have lived long enough in your present- un^

_ J

426 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Maifch

natwral condition. The healih> of ths body police wUl suffer ym
to do 80 no-longer. You haw dtiven men from their homes to
"make way for you/t deer; you, have let the crops he.rmnei tto
your game might grow fat upon them; you have divertedihe ddU
that should he bwUdmg vessels for commerce^ so that it shfmid
buUd yachts for yowr ovim idleness. It is time that you shoM
come to your senses^and that these follies should eeaeei The sooner
you come to your senseethe better will it be for yoursebm.- Tke

.demands of the people* are firm., bul they are not uncowteoeei^mr
fvUl they be unless you force them yourselves to become m. .Sli^

• cfyndemruxHon passed is at present ordy upon yowr enmronmeei.
It will be on your ownheads diavld it hanis evento faU'upon'yem'
eel/vesi. ^^ No- doubt/' said Sprig^by, ^^ you tbiiik all that yerf.yiA&iL
I suppose m soctety " (here he gave a titter) ^ it would beiiadfad
exfaremely vulgar*. But I put it to- your ownoaudoup^ iaitfnoldnte,
every ivord of it ? Is there one sentence in it that i» not on ibeMie
of justice and reason ? Is there one sentence in it that thepopulir
common sense will not at once say Amen to ? Or, to put the matter
in a stiiotly practical way^ will you ever, on the Gonservative side,
be able to make such a moving speech as^ that ?- ;I spoke of the
matter, of course,^' he added, ^^ not. the style." '

^ And do you mean,' said the newly*created peer, ^ that an (Mai
don would speak to you like this? I hope to goodness you didn^t
r^ly to the fellow,'

^ On the contrary,' said Seacorts, * I replied with great interest ;
and my reply was this : ^^ As for your general maxims, Mr. Spiigsby,
I cannot dispose of them off-hand. I may say, however, that I
could engage, on the Conservative side, to appeal to the people even
more forcibly than you can do. Like you, of course, I refer not to
style, but to matter." Sprigsby looked quite aghast . at me foe a
moment ; but then suddenly his look softened, and he began toqpeak
in a more genial way than I had yet known him to do. ^^Hum," ke
said, ^ you are not naturally a se^h man. Tell me >now, would you,
for the sake of a fe^ fiEmcied advantages, which can never be extended
beyond a very limited circle — would you wish, even suppose you
could do so, to blight the lives for generations of the greater port of
your race ? Have the pride of birth and the deoeitfolnesa of riches
hardened so utterly the hearts of you and yours ? And yet I fear
that it is so. The power of selfishness is greater than the power of
£sdth. It can keep fixed the mountains of prejudice wh^ every
otiier force is at work to remove them." These last words roused me.
^ You are wrong," I said. '^ You and your whole school deoeiTe
yourselves. You look upon life and its miseries, and then firom the
real^world you turn to an ideal one. There every wrong that here
offends you is righted. Everything is bright, and free, and bspfj;
and as you contemplate this fancied future, the more, indignant sod

1881. RADICALISM: A FAMILIAR COLLOQUY. 427

sorrowful do you become over this present. Such you consider to be
your special infdght^ — the monopoly of your school. How little do
yon know either of human nature or history ! Such visions as these
are not peculiar to revolutionaries. They visit all of us; they
visit the heart of man. They make no distinction between the
Tory and the BadicaL A week ago I was on a famous spot. I
was on a hillside, as we are here, that went down to the Mediter-
ranean. I was seated on a marble seat, beneath the shade of immense
ilex trees. The leaves of two of them made an oval frame before
me, and this living frame was filled by a diminutive world-famed bay.
On either horn of it was an Italian fishing village, crowned with the
towers of a . mouldering feudal fortress ; and the sea between these
flashed, and glowed, and sparkled, and beyond, paler and paler,
stretched out to the high horizon. I felt, as I sat there, full of a
strange excitement; and the cause was this^ I had just climbed up
thither &om the beach below, and I bad been looking on the beach
at. a small dilapidated villa that stood close to the water's edge, and
against whose walls the shingle was always chafing. Why should
this have moved me ? I will tell you. I had been talking for some
time to an old boatman — a bronzed and decrepit man, who was sitting
quietly sunning himself. I asked him about the villa, and whom he
remembered as having Kved there. 'Once,' he told me — Hhatwas
when I was a young man — there was an English poet lived there ;
and all the people in the village used to call him The Angel. And
then,' he added, and his voice sank low^r, Hhere was another
English poet who at times would come to visit him, and hia aspect
was quite different. Do you understand me now ? The place was
Lerici, and the villa I had been looking at was Shelley's ; the spot
under the ilexes, where I was sitting, had been Shelley's favourite
haunt. I am not a hero-worshipper — I am not an enthusiast, but
still I had oome to Shelley's abode as a pilgrim ; and the incidents of
the day had set every chord of my imagination vibrating. All
nature about me was looking lovely and beautiful, and the hopes and
the aims of life, and the possible future of mankind, seemed in a
manner to be transfigured before me. Eingless continents, sinless as
Eden, filled the visionary future — the homes of noble thoughts, and
brotherly love, and fireedom ; and my memory began to echo with the
songs and prophecies of the inspired poet of Communism. The lan-
guage of your friend the Nihilist would at that moment have not
seemed to me meaningless ; but there was nobler language than his
at that moment ready for me : —

Another Athens shaU arise.

And to remoter time
Bequeath, like sunset to the skies,

The splendour of its prime :
And leave, if nought so bright can live,
All earth can take, or Heaven can give.

428 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. ifareh

Saturn and love their long repose

Shall burst, more bright and good
Than all who fell, than One who rose^

Than many unsubdued ;
Not gold, not blood, their altar dowers,
But votive tears and symbol flowers.'

Do you think it is Radical eyes only that can see such visions, and he
moved by them ? These are peculiar to no parties. They affect the
hearts of every one of you ; and the imagination will at times
present them to every reflecting man."

' " Ah I " exclaimed Sprigsby, " you admit all this, do you ? Well,
now you can see why our society publishes such speeches as that one
of the Nihilist. You have explained my own position even better
than I could do myself. Understand the spirit of the movement,
and even rant — or what seems like rant — will come to have a
meaning in it. But," he continued, ^ since you admit all this, can
you resolve, consistently with either reason or common sense, to come
forward again on the side of stagnation and selfishness, or try to
cajole the people with acquiescing in their own degradation? Will
your conscience let you try to do so ? or will your common sense let
you hope that you will succeed ? " " Yes," I said, " my conscience and
my common sense will let me do both these things. Let me trespass
on your patience for a few moments longer, and I shall veiy soon
explain myself. All these visions of some transfigured future for
man — they are beautiful, they are alluring ; they move and appeal to
us in any degree you like ; but they are altogether impracticable. We
not only cannot ever realise them perfectly. In their newer distinctive
features we cannot even approach them. I will give you an instance.
Liberty and equality — in all the Eadical visions the two ideas are
prominent. Well, in an ideal world the two look well enough together ;
but in the real world they can never be united. The two are irre-
concilable." "Irreconcilable !" exclaimed Sprigsby ; "why, the whole
course of modern history has been the history of their gradual union!*
^^ So your school think," I said ; ^^ and there are certain reasons, though
I can hardly with propriety mention them to you, which will probably
make it think so for some time longer. However, though I have no
hope of convincing you, I can at least show you the grounds on which
I shall hope to convince others, if it shall ever again be my lot to
appeal to a constituency. In the first place, then, you will let me
observe shortly, that there is no necessary connection whatever
between a thing being vividly picturable and its being in the least
degree practicable. We can picture to ourselves angela with wings,
or floating in the air without them ; and we can wish we had wings
ourselves, and we can dream of flying about and soaring. But we
know tliat as a matter of course men will never float nor fly. I
maintain, then, in the first place, that the Badical Utopia would be

* Shelley, Helloi,

1881; RADICALISM: A FAMILIAR COLLOQUY. 429

no whit more impracticable than it is at present, were one of its prin-
cipal features the growth of wings on its citizens. But how shall I
prove that ? I cannot do so at length now, but I can show you the
chief line of the argument. And I shall show you this by the aid of
your Continental sympathizers. I admit as fully as you do that
your cause is bound up with theirs. They have, however, gone a
little further into the matter than you have in England ; and they
are a little more conscious of their own meaning and principles.
They have not been content with looking at the social mirage from
a distance. They have gone nearer to it — though not near enough
to see that it is a mirage only — and they have seen certain of the
laws and principles, and certain of the conditions of human nature
that are of necessity implied by it. Here, then, are some of them.
They are not of my own invention, but have been gathered
from the language of the Ck)ntinental Radicals themselves. For the
production of the Radical Utopia — for the production of the only
thing that gives Radicalism any meaning, three things amongst
others are indispensable. Private property is to be abolished. Mar-
riage is to be abolished. Physical labour is to be shared equally by
all." * ** Oh yes," exclaimed Sprigsby impatiently, " we have all heard
that.** " If you have," I said, " it seems you have not considered it.
I have, and it seems to me well worth considering. These three
points I have just mentioned — doubtless we have all heard of
them ; but let us consider them a little further. There is a good
deal implied in them that does not lie on the surface. Private pro-
perty is to be abolished. What is meant by that ? No human being
is to save anything. Every one is to be a state pensioner. That is
the condition of the ideal human being of the future. What fur-
ther? Physical labour is to be shared equally by all. That is
expressed also in another and more suggegtive way. There is to be a
normal day of labour. This provision seems to mean that everyone
shall be insured a due proportion of leisure. It is really a protection
a£[ainst thought, skill, and industry. It is a menace to the industrious,
not a promise to the weary. But that is not all. Its design is not
only to crush individual industry, but to extinguish individual genius.
liCt a man be fit for the higher work, he is to be shackled, like the
dullest dolt, to the lowest. Hours that might have produced a
Hamlet, are to be occupied in cleaning sewers." Sprigsby tried to
interrupt me. "Pooh," he said, **all this is nonsense. Nobody
means this," ** It may be nonsense," I said, " but for all that many

* The demand of modem socialism : ' 1. The abolition of money, inheritance, and
private property ; 2. Restriction of the isolated household, and development of the
ajBsociated honse ; 3. Freedom of sezoal interoonrse; 4. Compulsory and equal sharing
of all physical labour; 5. Economical arrangements for the prevention of waste;
6. Organisation of labour ; 7. Equal division of the means of existence and enjoy-
ment ; 8. Universal diffusion of education, science, and arts.* — Social Architecturep
l>y an Szile from France. (Quoted by the Rev. M. Eaufmann.)

Vol. IX.— No. 49. G G

430 THE NINETEE^H CENTURY. March

.people mean it. Whether such people are really of power and im-
portance is more than I can say. You, at any rate« think they are.
You . have said yourself that they belong to your party, and that
their views are one with yours. Be patient with me a moment
longer. Let me speak of one point more. Marriage, say the Con-
tinental Sadioals, is to be abolished." '^ True," said Sprigsby, "but
only as a sacrament and a superstition, not as a solemn contract. Why
marriage, my good feUow," he said, ^^is the basis of all society."
^^ And it is precisely because it is so," I said, ^< that your Continental
friends declare it must be done away with. They see what it means
well enough ; they see what is implied in it ; and they only strike at
it that they may strike at something beyond it. What they want
to strike at is the family and the home. The home, the hearth,
with all the affections that cluster round it and flourish by it— there
is the real centre of all Conservatism. There is the perfect patten
of private property ; there is a perpetual protest against all fonns of
Gommimism*' What then is Radicalism, or Socialism, or social Demo-
oracy, or Ooo^munism ? It is ostensibly, and to the minds both of
its apostles and its proselytes, a struggle towards an ideal that is, on
the face of it, allrbeautiful. But what it is really is something vecj
different. To see its real character you must look long and haidat
it ; and as you look at it thus, you will see it begin to change, Yoa
have seen the well-known picture of the head of a dead Christ, with
closed aad heavy-lidded eyes, which is so painted that if you look in
a certain way at it, the eyes of a sudden seem to you wide open.
The &ce of Communism, if you look at it, is of something the same
kind. It at first seems the Selcc of an angel ; stare at it long enough
and you will find jffx are confronted by a fiend. The ideal that
Commtmism aims at is an ideal that is essentially impracticable.
Human nature will not ever admit of its being realised. How do we
know this ? The very Communists themselves bear witness to it
Though they do not perceive this, their own programme confesses it,
and the ntore complete their programme grows the more complete
becomes this eonf^ion. And what is the alarming result, that
makea me oompare Communism, to a fiend ? I will tell you. Con-
spiring .to produce what human nature makes an impossibility,
Communism, is nothing more nor less than a conspiracy against
human nature^ The demands it miakes itself unconscioudy betray
thi& Evi^ one ^f these in reality is a demand for coercion. Tum
to what side of human nature it will, in every instinct, in every
appetite, and in every affection it finds a secret, but an irreconcilable
foe» Nature makes men imequal. To equalise them Commnnism
has to war with^ nature. Its ideal government is a vast system of
police, in whose eyes the chief crimeb][are exceptional talent, excep-
tional industry, any form of individuality, any personal attachmeDts,
or any cra\ing fpr iineedom. It has been well said that revcdutioos

1881. RADICALISM: A FAMILIAR COLLOQUY. 431

devour their own children ; and this is true not only of men but of
principles. It is but yesterday that the Badical cry was for liberty.
Poets ranted about it, philosophers reasoned about it. Blind mobs,
and blinder leaders of mobs, shrieked,, and squeaked, and shouted for
it. And now— what now ? They are asking not that liberty should
be given men in a greater degree than it is already, but what
they already have should be taken away from them. The motto of
these madmen within two generations has reversed itself. It was at
firsf, ^ Let us develop human nature; ' now it is, ' Let us crush it.*
Popular movements proverbially are ignorant of their own meaning ;
but never in the world's history has there been one to compare with
this. Never has the irony of fate been so swifb and so unmistakable.
Never has any party, like our modem Sadicals, been forced so utterly
to renounce their own principles ; and in the short space of a single
twenty years to blaspheme at the end every important principle
which they adored at the beginning as an axiom or a sacred dogma."

' Sprigsby had been listening to all this with a silence that sur-
prised me — thanks, I at first thought, to his patience. Patience,
however, had in fact very little to do with it ; what kept him silent
was simply the breathlessness of irritation. But at last he found his
voice, though it b^[an with being little more than a gasp. ^ You
are talking nonsense," he said. ^^ You don't know what you are
speaking about. If Badicalism has renounced its principles it is no
longer Radicalism ; it is no longer the same party." ^ Not so," I said.
*^Tfae continuity of Badicalism is beyond the reach of principles.
Principles are its servants, not its master. Its master is a passion,
that is its real adfi this is the thing which is essential and continuoiis
in it. It only invokes principles that it may gratify this passion."
*^ And what passion," said Sprigsby, still gasping, ^' is that ? " ^' It is
the passion," I said, '^ of envy, hatred, and malice. It is envy reduced
to a system, and made the foundation of all politics. Envy is the
one passion that the Socialist party appeals to as a really moving
force; and though there are many fairer ambitions that it pays
homage to, by the way, it is envy that it is secretly titillating all
the time. And yet such is these men's infatuation, such is their self-
deception, that a polity which is formed in hate will be completed,
they say, and made lasting by love."

c « Good gracious me ! good gracious me I " exclaimed Sprigsby.
^ I hardly knoW^ where to begin ; I hardly know how to answer you.
You are so utterly wrong on all points. What do you mean ? What
are you talking about? Are you speaking to me? Has all this
aoyUiing to do with 9n6 ? Do you want to convince me of anything ?
If 80, you are only tilting at windmills. I am an English Badical,
not a Cpntinential Socialist. Why, the two are as the poles asunder.
They have nothing whatever to do with each other." Here he sud-
denly recollected himself ; he came to a dead stop for a moment, and a

00 2

I

432 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. March

slight blush overspread his face. " I zneaD," he went on, " we of course
have aims in common. That is what I was just now sayiog to yon.
But all these extreme doctrines — they are nothing to us. These are
the very points in which we correct our C!ontinental allies, not the
points in which we follow them. Nothing can do a sober cause like
that of English Eadicalism such a wrong as confusing it with Con-
tinental Ommunism." '^ If you mean by doing it such a wrong,
striking such a practical blow at it, then I entirely agree with you;
and it is precisely such a blow I am anxious to see struck.*' ^'Ah,"
cried my companion, "that is a fine Conservative utterance. You
would try to discredit a party by maligning it to a credulous populacel
But you, Seacorts, I have a better opinion of you personally. You do
not seriously mean that you would resort to such an artifice yourself.
Come now, and tell me this candidly. Do you in sober earnest
suppose, do you even suspect that a man like me, for instance, would
strike at such institutions as marriage, or domesticity, or the security
of property, or any of those habits or institutions which all history,
from its earliest dawn till now, has taught us are essential to society?
Why many of our leading Radicals are men of large fortune, are
merchants, or manufacturers, who continue, and presumably approve of,
their occupations all the while they are conducting their campaigD
in politics. Surely the implicit sanction that these men give to
property is a sufficient guarantee that their party is not at war with
it. Then take again the question of equality. Equality is a word
which, as we use it, you must not push into any extreme sense. It
has a valuable practical meaning; but this is valuable practically
because we do not overstrain it theoretically."

* " Mr. Sprigsby," I said, " do not misunderstand me. You, and the
more educated Radicals in England — any of you who in any way have
the least chance or the least hope of leading — I attribute to none of
you any of these Continental ideas. I believe them to be entirely re^
pugnant to you. You told me, for instance, when I last saw you in
London that you were paid four hundred a year for managing this
society you are connected with. Agents of the Land League in Ireland
draw even more than that as professional agitators. No ; pray do not
mistake me. No one in his heart hates equality niore than does aa
English Radical ; no one in general has a sharper eye to basiness."

* " Stop," cried Sprigsby, in a voice shrill with excitement, "you
are wrong again. We do not hate equality. We only demand that it
shall be rational, comparative — based on the real facts of life. Our
real demand is, not that there shall be no inequality, but that there
shall be no artificial inequality." ** Well," I replied, ** I will for argu-
ment sake admit all that on this score you say of yourself. I do, as a
feet, not only admit a great part of it, but my own view of the sitiia-
tion stands and falls with the truth of it." ** And yet," says Sprigsby,
** admitting all this, admitting the prudence, the sagacity, the

1881. RADICALISM: A FAMILIAR COLLOQUY. 433

moderation of the English Eadical, you declare that your own
political tactics would be to traduce him to the English masses by
associating him with the wildest and the most impracticable schemes
which the friends of freedom on the Continent have done themselves
so much harm by propounding I** ^' You admit," I said, '^ that those
schemes are impracticable. Well, now, listen to me. Your party
prides itself on having the support of ther people. Your force is in
the fimcied adherence of the masses. You imagine they will always
support you. And I admit that you have on the siuface some
grounds for this confidence. But in what way do you seek this
support? You appeal, you will say, to the people's reason, to
their sense of justice, to their sense of their own power, and
so on, and you promise that if they will lend their force to you, you
will do all kinds of fine things for them. But what you mean by your
eloquence, and what the people think you mean by it, are quite dis*
tinet things ; and your programme of action, though yourselves you
-Ao not know this, is to apply force for one purpose which has been
•committed to you for another."

' '^ And pray what," said Sprigsby, '^ do the people think we mean,
that is beyond or different from what we do mean ? " ^^ I was wrong,"
I answered, '^ when I used the word thi/nJc. I should have used the
word fed ; for what you appeal to is not popular thought at all ; it is
popular /s^iT?^. Indeed, of thought, as a moving principle, there is
next to nothing on either side. What moves your party are certain
passions, and you, by it, stir up in the people like passions also. But
one thing you quite forget. Words and sentiments which for you have
one significance, have for the people another. You repudiate the
teachings of Continental Communism ; the people of England have
never even thought them out for themselves. . But you and the Com-
siunists are doing really the same work. You are appealing to exactly
the same turbulent and anarchic passions that they have appealed to
— passions which, as you yourselves admit, can never be satisfied, and
whose demands can only be stated in the language of self-contradiction.
You tell me you don't believe in absolute equality yourself; and, as
I told you before, I can well believe that. But when you talk about
equality to the people, when you preach to them the virtue of an in-
dependent spirit, what meaning do they attach to your language ?
One, I can tell you, that is very different from your own. What you
mean is that you, and those who feel as you do, are equal to your su-
periors." ^ And pray whom," exclaimed Sprigsby, with what he took
for a fine irony, *^ would you call my superiors ? " ^^ You are perpetually
talking about them yourself," I said, ^' and I believe you call them the
•aristocracy." " The aristocracy are Tiot our superiors," said Sprigsby,
^¥ith a sudden accession of emphasis. ^^ The superstitious reverence
recorded to the hitherto govenung classes has been the most blighting .
of all the influences that have ever touched our politics. It is a kind of

434 THE mNETEEN!tH OENTl^RT. Unch

political popeiy, and it is the first thing that a free and edtitsted
Badicalism protests against.'* ^' It i^** I said ; '< I most eottmlyagtee
with you. English Radicalism is really a protest against ttristociiaiftjr ;
it is not a protest in favour of equality. But what I am telling ;ftm
is that while in your owtk hearts you feel it to he the fermef^^iti yto
general language and in your professions to the people yoti pi^MMis
it to be the latter. Here it is that your party is ' weak; - It is not
fighting under its t^e colours. It is not conscious of this hdUettaiedB.
I do not lay this to its charge ; hut the deepest unrealities are often
those of which we are least conscious ; and some day, aiiould <he
political strife ever grow keen enough, the mask it now wears wfll be
stripped from it. Then it will be seen that this party, which is at pre-
sent thought by some to utter the real voice of the people, is notiiiDif
but a class protest, in the narrowest sense of the word. - And now,
Mr. Sprigsby, I beg you will mark this ; for we are here tienehiogron
rather difficult ground, and I hinted just now that I doubted if I
could venture on it at all with yoja< The class that xnakes this pro-
test has doubtless many merits. It unites a large amduilt of exdtnre
and knowledge, and here and there its members are meh of wealth.
But however excellent this class may be, yet regarded as a elastfiCis
one that can never be popular. If the English' people are to hsfe
superiors at all, they prefer aristocratic superiors; and (ynce let their
eyes be opened, the last thing they would consent to would be to play
into the hands of a middle-class as such, and invest it with the my
power which it had itself declared should belong to nobody. Let tiie teD
you a little story of what happened to me at the Snow Hill StatioD
at Birmingham. I had just seated myself in a first-class carriage,
when an old gentleman entered, attended by a porter. I was stmck
by the pleasantness of his manner to the man, and by the respect and
willing attention of the man to him. The porter had hardly quitted
the carriage, when he was hailed by another passenger^ who was. also
about to take a place in it. ' Here,' cried the new corner, roughly,
<go and fetch my bag and rugs out of the waiting-room, and patio
a foot-warmer. Ah,' he cried with a smile, when he. saw the rid
gentleman, *good morning, my lord. Hi, pdrter, eome backhe*e,I
tell you. Put in a foot-warmer for his lordship dso. Wrc*
Birmingham fellows never know their business.' Thebld gentlanan
answered with a somewhat stiff politeness that he had jiist deeliflsd a
foot-warmer, as he had a spedal -objection to one. Tlie other, a little
confused, walked across the platform to 'a bookstdl, and when the
porter returned, I asked 'who that gentlemtowas?' -^SenflwaMi
sir,' said the porter, with a curious twinkle in hit 5^e,' * wbyttat**
Mr. Nix, one of these bere Badical agents.' And^looking'^g^ oa
my other f<^low-tmveller, I recognaied in bim a^ aligki tfeqvaintoce
of my own— one of the chief eoii8©fvativ6'pe«r8''Of<tte midkad
counties.'*

1881. RADICALISM: A FAMILIAR COLLOQUY. 436

* I had not mea&V Seaeorts went en, ^Uy hava told tine 8t<»7 to
Spzigsby. Considering his position it was not a fair thing to haye
done, and I began to feel hot ^the very moment afterwards, for I could
see in an instant that I had made him Tory angry, or more hurt than
angry — ^I was puzzled to tdl whieh. He explained- it himself in
another moment, as he rose suddenly from the ground and took his
stick, •*Nix I ** he said ; ^ why Nix is my own brother-in-law.*' Ah,
me, fer the perils that beset the unguarded speaker. I was th<»roughly
embarrassed for a moment, but a happy inspiration came to me, and
I took thebuU by the horns. ** Well,'- 1 said, " Tm sorry I spoke; but
what I have told you is, all the same, the truth, and Fm sorry you've a
brother-in-law with such a singularly unfortunate manner. If I hadn't
heexk talking to such a thorough gentleman as yourself, I should have
be»i very much annoyed at such a sHp of the tongue; but I know
ihot you must see the thing I mean. Mr. Nix has too grand a way
with him, and a natural air of command which is terribly out of
keeping with an ex officio friend of the people." I was driven to lie
— I eouldn't help myself; but my lie worked upon Sprigsby like
magic, and though he would not admit it,, aitirely^ healed the wound..
Poor fellow, I doubf if he was ever so flattered in his life as by what^
1 then said to him. This little incident, however, brought our
politioal discussion to a dose, for I would not dsae to continue on what
had become such tender ground. I could, therefore, not redeem my
promise of showing him how the Conservative party might easily go
to the country with a cry just as popular as could the wildest
Radicals. But what I did not say to Sprigsby, I could say with less
emfaairassment here.'

^JBut, my dear felfow,' said the newly-created peer, 'our great
difficmlty Hes in this simple fact, that we are too high-minded to
descend to agitation. We^ don't understand this sort of thing. We
are — well — ^well — as a matter of fact, we're too gentlemanly for it.'

^ I hope,' said Seacorts, 'we may never have any need to take to
it. I hope the common sense of the country may be only so sound
and stable that there will be no need for our applying to it any
sensational correctives. But if there be any ground^ for the vague^
alarms which, as we all. know, are distuibing many people^T-if &e
future force in polities is to depend on sensational appeals addressed
directly to the imagination of multitudes, as the Badical party are,
beyond doubt, flattering themselves ; then I shqidd wish it to be ^
realised by our party, and as soon as possible, that this iaa game at
nvfaieh botii parties can play, and that onoe. let them take 'to real hard
bitting, the €!onservative blows would be probably much the hardcaet.
Sven at the present moment, despite all that is said on the oi^er
side, the English .people is instinct with latent Conservatism.^
Tbey have inherited it ; it has been bred in -them ; it is ihe trans- ^
xnitted temperament of centuries, and they cannot get rid of it

436 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. March

lightly, even if they would. Take, for instance, that one great point
that I have already spoken of, the home — the family, and marriage.
Does anyone mean to say that the English nation, as a whole, has
not a profound and passionate reverence for home and the mar-
riage tie ? Why, even the collier who kicks his wife would resent
another man kicking her, and would resent still more another man
making love to her. Under the hard outer skin of the whole Eng-
lish people there is a tissue of nerves of most extreme sensitiyeness,
and Badicalism will feel its weakness the moment it pricks this. The
home is only one point. Property is another. The EnglishmaSypoor
or rich, adores property. One of the greatest desires of the poor is
very often to accimiulate ; and even the man who never wished to
save, would not submit to the tyranny that would make his saying a
crime. It is to such a tyranny that Badicalism leads ; and it is on
this fact that I would, if necessary, fix the eyes of the people. 1
could show them that Badicalism, if consistent, must come to tiiat;
or else, if it is not consistent, then it is merely what I have just said
it is, a class-selfishness, or a class-petulance, of the meanest and least
popular kind, masquerading in a set of principles which it neither
endorses nor understands. Some people fear Ontinental Socialism.
In England I at least should not fear it. It would be powerful in
England only as long as its real meaning Vas undistingaishei
Without fear, then, and with the utmost confidence, I should direct
the attention of the English to the whole programme of the
Socialists; I should show them, what they would not be slow to see,
that it was but the explicit statement of what Badicalism says im-
plicitly; and I should then show them the tyranny that this pro-
gramme embodied. It will break up your homes, I should say, it
will rifle your money-boxes, it will whip you to your work, and it will
whip you back to your play. It will leave you nothing you can call
your own. It professes to be based on the abolition'of property ; and
truly it will show itself even better than its word. It will not only
take from a man his money, but his home, his wife, bis children, his
friends, and his affections, his choice, his freedom, and his will.'

* But,' said Mrs. Hervey, ' even suppose all this to be implied in
Socialism, we always hear that it has made great way on the Conti-
nent. What reason have you for supposing that if it once reaches
England it will not have equal influence here ?^

^ I have many reasons,' said Seacorts. ^ Nations, like individuals,
have their special characters, and they command our trust or distrust
in something the same way. The character of England is totally
distinct from that of any Continental nation. It has been brought
up in a different way, and its temper is the result of very different
experiences. Between the aristocracy and the people of England
there has never been any deep feud. Their mutual relationships
have been almost unique in their kindliness ; and such hard words

1881. RADICALISM: A FAMILIAR COLLOQUY. 437

a^ may have been passed between them have rather proved the funda-
mental good feeling than so much as tended to disturb it. Such has
been, and such is stilly the characteristic of our nation ; and in virtue
of a temper like this England may still have an august mission before
her. It may be hers to teach other nations, amongst all the excite-
ment caused by maddening and impossible hopes, what is the
rational, the sober, the humane course to pursue. And her past
history will be a comment on her present example. She will stand
forth as the embodiment of a sound and profound Conservatism —
as, in literal truth, a saviour of society. But she will stand forth
as more than this. She will declare that the reason why she is thus
conservative is that she has always also been liberal. She is conser-
vative because she has always been giving herself the best things to
conserve. This is what I trust England will do ; and the thought
and the hope that she may do so is a thought fit to inflame the purest
possible patriotism and the l^itimate self-interest of all, from the
lowest to the highest. Her only enemy is this diseased modem
Badicalism, which is at present doing all it can to debauch the
national imagination, and which, instead of taking as its aim the
amelioration of inequalities, is trying to excite hopes of an impossible
or a suicidal equality. Happily it will find in this coimtiy that it
has set a hard task to itself; it will find, too, that its foes are they
of its own household. In the ranks of these modern Badicals are to
be found, we are told, not a few of our farmers. If this be true,
what sort of farmers are they ? Are they the farmers who lived in
plenty because they lived in simplicity, or the formers who a single
bad season can paralyse, because they are always straining their
incomes that they may make a show of gentility ? They belong,
I believe, chiefly to this latter class ; and if they wish to live in a
certain style I do not know that I have any right to blame them.
Bat should such men raise any voice against our aristocracy, or
demand any land reform of a socialistic tendency, then I should say
to the people this : ^' Can you believe that such men as these are
sincere in their protestations ? Can you believe that on any sound
principles they disapprove of an aristocracy, when the chief aims to
which all their ambition is directed is to make their own lives an
extremely unsuccessful imitation of it ? " That is the sort of question
I should like to put to the people. And yet no — I am wrong. I do
not mean what I am saying. It is the question of all others I should
not like to put. The thing of all others that I should really most
shrink from is the use of any language that should set class against
class. I have a large acquaintance amongst fistrmers myself; and the
British &rmer is full of admirable qualities. What you were saying,
Lord , is, I believe, quite true ; and the British farmer at heart

is as sound an aristocrat as any of us, and he respects his landlord's
position because he respects his own. True Conservatism would con-

4S8 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. March

ciliate every class, and tnie Liberalism would show it the way to do
80. The great aim that States should have now before them, is not
to destroy claims, or to shift classes, but to bring each class to its
best ; to give opportunilr^ to all who cam, rise, and rational oontentp
ment to all who cannot, or to all who haye no ambition to do so.
And if I were ever again to address a constituency, the gist of my
appeal would be very much like this : ^^ I belong to a party that
makes no irrational promises. We don't tell you that we have
any nostrums for making this world a paradise. We believe, on the
contrary, that there will be always suffering and disappointments in
it. But at the same time we have all — ^we have every one of us —
much that we would not lose ; and we have much also that we cer-
tainly can mend. If, then, we have any good things that we treasure
— ^homes, family ties, or religion — ^let us guard these things like Con-
servatives ; if there are evils that we see our way to removing, let us
try to remove them, like Liberals ; and what we do not wish to con-
serve, but what we see no way to removing — these things let us bear
like men." *

W. H. Mallock.

1881. 439

ART NEEDLEWORK}

L

Djcab S1R9 — ^It is indeed well for the women of England without
employment, or who when employed are only half paid, that public
attention should be claimed for the question of their right to live, and
tiieir means for obtaining a maintenance according to their abilities.

If a woman is not strong enough to be a maid of all work, if she
is not smart enough to wait behind a counter, nor ingenious enough
to make bonnets, nor clever^ enough to keep a lodging-house, nor
soflEiciently educated to be a governess, nor suflSciently intellec-
tnal to translate foreign books into moderately good English, nor
yet strong-minded enough to write novels that will sell, what is she
to do ? In each of these occupations the struggle ^ for the survival of
the fittest ' is most severe, and those whom natiure and education have
not made strong enough to succeed must starve, or be supported by
private charity, which is degradation, or by public charity, which
means the workhouse. It has been said, and echoes through all time,
that a woman's proper avocation is to ^ suckle fools,' &c« But many
more women are bom than are needed for this laudable purpose;
and so Providence has arranged that there should be a good many
to spare for inferior uses. If the laws of marriage should be revo-
lutionised (and the deceased wife's sister would be the thin end of
the wedge), perhaps a moderate bigamy might be l^alised, and so
more fools would be the consequence, and more women would find
oooupation. Meanwhile the wisdom of ages only suggests one other
alternative, ^ G-o spin, you jades.'

Women did spin, and they wove and worked too within the last
fifty years, till steam, and the power loom, and machine embroidery
wrested firom them their ^ woman's work,' and gave it to the strong
man, that thenceforth all textile inventions should be manufiEMstured
by thousands of yards, to be paid for cheaply, and sold only a little

• ' This pap«r was written in reply to a letter aBking inf onnation, and stating that
a series of articles upon the remnnerative employment of gentlewomen was contem*
plated for this Review.— fin.

440 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. March

less cheaply. From that time women have mostly served in herds as
*' hands ' in the crowded manufactories. I remember when I was
yowig, more than half a century ago, seeing a beautiful girl at TivoU
who was much courted by the youth of the place as being industrious
and capable, and likely to make an excellent wife. She sat at her loom
weaving from daylight till midday, and then embroidered till sunset,
when she arrayed herself in some of her own work and went to enjoy
the public walk in all the bravery of her picturesque costume aud
the acknowledged supremacy of her loveliness, till the stars announced
supper-time, after which she spun till midnight. Her name was Rosa
Dante ; and she enjoyed her own creations in coloured worsteds on
linen she had herself woven, more than her great namesake ever
enjoyed the creations of his own sad and majestic genius. We caunot
dwell on these pleasant pictures of the past without wishing to re-
vive them, as far as we may, for the benefit of at least some of our
countrywomen.

But English girls are mostly ambitious. They are the boys'
equals at the board-school classes, and help to cram their little
brothers for the examinations, and though helping also the drudgrng
mother at home, they despise her sordid life, and emulate for them-
selves a higher future. Some who, though very poor, belong to the
better class, work at night in the Art School of their district, or they
read for diplomas, and strive for college honours, admitted, though
not yet awarded. They try to become doctors, and fieiiling in that
they fight the doctors on their common platform, the hospital waid,
a melancholy sight for gods and men ; they are all seeking to do good,
but they are not yet entirely educated to the sense of what their
position must be, and if we believe all that is said, it appears that
there is none that doeth good — no^ not one. Yet surely, if there is
one thing that a woman ought to be fit for, it is the nursing of the
sick, also the teaching of little children ; but the schoolmaster is
abroad everywhere, and the village schoolmistresses are few and &r
between. In both these professions the ranks are filled. There are
already too many nurses and teachers : and the pretty and innocent
crowd of girls who are still young enough to hope are pressing for-
ward. They crush, many fall, and their cry is still for bread, and for
the work to^show for it. The strong man emigrates, but there is no
phase of life in the Bush for women yet, though some of the colonies
are beginning to send for domestic servants and wives.

Why repeat all this ? The grievance is not new. It has been
the. subject of much eloquence and much nonsense, and of a little
practical help. In your letter you inquire how far the Boyal School
of Art Needlework has advanced towards a partial solution of this
problem, ^ How to employ gentlewomen far removed from independ-
ence.' We may tnily answer that it has set a fashion : and that is
the first step towards creating an industry.

1881. ART NEEDLEWORK. 441

It is now only eight years since the school made a modest begin-
ning in a small room in Sloane Street with twenty workers, all
taught by Lady Welby with the assistance of Mrs. Dolby, who was
already known as the authoress of a practical book on ecclesiastical
embroidery. It was the urgent need for employment for women of
education, bom ladies, and reduced to poverty by the misfortimes or
mistakes of their parents, that suggested this revival of decorative
needlework. There was a blank also in the idle occupation of the
rich woman who, nauseated with German patterns of Berlin wool
work, had fallen back, like Queen Anne, to knitting and crochet.
No wonder that the revival of * crewels on linen,* and other more
splendid material and work stitches, should have been hailed with
delight, and that every woman embarked in a piece of so-called * art
needlework.' The name was new, the colouring and the stitches were
old, and the style elastic enough to admit any degree of originality
for the ambitious, or servile copying for the humble.

The little school grew so fast under the fc^stering care of its active
president, H.R.H. the Princess Christian, that in the course of three
years it had to be removed twice to more roomy quarters ; and in 1875
it was finally settled in the Belgian Annexe in Exhibition Boad, when
the Queen graciously became the patron ; and in 1878 it was formed
into an incorporated association under the Board of Trade, with a
president and vice-president, a manager and staff, and a council of
management, a finance committee, and a fine-art sub-committee.
No trouble has been spared to make it a permanent institution, as a
school and as a centre for the recognised auxiliary art of decorative
needlework in the United Kingdom.

Including the Branch School at Glasgow, the Royal School of Art
Needlework give? permanent employment to about 135 ladies, of
whom ninety are needlewomen ; and these are always busy executing
orders, and preparing work for amateurs or specimens .for the show-
room.

The studio employs about eighteen young artists, some of them
pupils of the South Kensington School of Design. These^ leave
the school when they find that they can obtain more satisfactory work
elsewhere. ^

The very large correspondence and the necessarily somewhat in-
tricate book-keeping are, under the manager, carried out by the
assistant secretary, the accountant, and their assistants, seven in all.
The actual embroidery is superintended by a most competent head,
who has learnt her craft in foreign sphools ; under her are teachers in
different styles ; and lessons are given in private houses as well as in
classes at the Royal School itself.

There is not space to enter into further details, but in answer to
one of your questions I would state that an average worker earns
about 25s. a week, a very good one about 2?., and the lowest^ slowest.

442 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Maioh

or least able worker no more than \&8. This oan hardly be called a
Uving, but it is better than no occupation at all.

The Royal School of Art Needlework claims to be in every sense
the mother school of the numerous branches, salerooms, and societies
which hare followed its lead. It preceded them all ; it aroused the
taste and style of the day, and continues' to originate and to teach.'
The School has published this year a Handbook of the Art of Embroi-
dery^ and lectures have been promised to be given at the school in
the course of the coming season.

The school is an association, self-supporting and solvent, in spite
of the general depression in trade of the last two years, which sensibly
affected its financial prosperity, though the council was never forced
to diminish the number of workers. It courts publicity as to the
working of its organisation, and the council are always grateful for
intelligent criticism. The financial department has received much
generous help in gifts, and loans &om members of the council and
other friends, and these form the working fund ; the loans will be
eventually repaid, and we hope replaced by gradually accumulating
working profits which, by the laws of the association, must be entirely
placed to the benefit of the school itself, or the objects it had in view
at its foundation.

I hope that this necessarily short, and therefore imperfect, state-
ment may yet answer your questions, and justify the claim of the
Boyal School of Art Needlework to be a teacher and promoter of re-
munerative women's work, and to be the authority on the art of
decorative needlework in the United Kingdom, as successors to the
' Broiderers Company ' incorporated and patronised by Queen Eliza-
beth in 1561.

I am tempted to say something as to the claims of needlework to be
considered as Art. The fact is that so much weight and interest are
now attached to all decorative art that hardly a reviewer a periodical
appears that does not contain an article in which it is discussed. In
Germany it has been most learnedly and fully treated by such men
as Semper, Bock, and others. They have removed the study of
archeeology in art from the regions of frivolity and superficiality.

The study of style in even the smaller arts is no longer intended
only to help graceful design, and please the eye and protect us from
what is ugly or unbecoming. It is forced into the service of the
scientific history of civilisation.^ And style as fully asserts itself in
embroidery as in architecture or painting. If I may be allowed
here to make a few remarks on the embroiderers of the past, I shall
perhaps be able to strengthen my plea for the respect due to the
efforts we are making to-day.

I have sought for information regarding our own art of embroideiy,

* With what measure of artistic suooess the subjoined letter from Kc. Watts will
testify better than any evidence from those connected with the School could do^

1881. ART NEEDLEWORK. 443

and I find that Semper gives it high pre-eminence as to antiquity,
making it the foundation and starting-point of all art. He clothes
not only moTi, but architecture with the products of the loom and the
needle, and deduces from them in succession painting, bas-relief, and
sculpture.

In the earliest dawn of civilisation the arts were the repositories
of the myths and mysteries of national faiths. Embroidery was one
of them, and the border which edged the garment of a divinity, and
the veil which covered the grave of a loved one, or the flower-buds
and fruit which fringed the hangings and curtains in the Sanctuary,
each had a meaning, and therefore a use. These symbolical designs
and forms were constantly reproduced, and all human ingenuity was
exercised in reforming, remodelling, and adding perfect grace to the
expression of the same idea.

Let us give some instances of symbolical patterns : —

The cross was a sign and a pattern in prehistoric art. It was the
double of the Tau, the Egyptian emblem of life ; and while the Jews
reject the Christian Cross, they still claim to have warned off the
destroying Angel by this sign in blood over the lintels of their doors
in the first Passover. The Gamma was the sacred letter of the
Greeks, and arranged in different forms had different meanings.
In the second form it was called the Gammadion, and under this
name was woven into stuffs for ecclesiastical use, as late as the
thirteenth centuiy.

Can any invention of man show more intention than the wave-
pattern ? The airy leap drawn downwards by the force of gravitation ;
controlled, and again made to return, but strong to insist on its own
curve of predilection, rushing back under the same circle ; strengthened
by the downward movement to spring again from its original plane ;
beginning afresh its Sisyphus labour, and facing the next effort with
the same grace and agility. Undying force, and eternal flowing un-
rest— ^these are the evident intention of the wave-pattern. There is
near Bologna an ancient Phoenician burial place. Many of the
strangely formed tombstones have the wave-pattern roughly carved
upon them. It is to be found wherever their universal commercial
activity led them. Perhaps the pattern was sacred to the Phcenicians,
who were always being borne over the sea, and to whom the wave
must have been most familiar and significant.

Needlework has passed through many phases since the Aboriginal
prehistoric woman with the bone needle, to which we have already
alluded, drew together the edges of the skins of animals she had pre-
pared for food.

For absolute necessity, in forming the garment and covering the
tent, work need go no further than the seam. This, however, in the
woven or plaited material must fray where it is shaped, and become
fringed at the edges. Every long seam is a suggestion and every

444 • THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. March

shaped edge a snare. The fringe lends itself to the tassel, and the
shaped seam suggests a pattern ; up-stitches are needful for binding
the web, and before she is aware of it, the worker finds herself adorn-
ing, embroidering.

The style of decoration called by the French * Primitive * is the
earliest known and classed, and is found in all savage attempts at
ornament. It consists mainly of straight lines, zigzags, wavy lines,
dots, and little discs.

Gold discs of many sizes, and worked with a variety of patterns,
are found both in the tombs of Agamemnon at Mycen® and in
Ashantee, and the buttons remind one of those found in Etruscan
tombs in design, though the execution is far more advanced and
finer. They appear to be the origin of the clavis or nail-headed
pattern woven into silks with gold in the Palace of the Csesars. The
last survival of this pattern recorded is in materials woven for
Ecclesiastical purposes in the middle ages.

Of very early art we can only obtain here and there a glimpse hy
passing allusions in early poetry, illustrated by fragments of early
art.

We know not what the actual heroes of the Iliad and Odyssey
wore ; but we do know that what Homer describes he must have seen.
Was Homer, therefore, the contemporary of the siege of Troy? or
does he describe the customs and costumes of his own time, and
apply them to the traditions of the heroic ages of Greece ? Of the
uncertain date of Homer himself we can reconstruct the house and
the hall, and even furnish them : and clothe the women and the
princes, the beggars and the herdsmen, with help from contemporary
art.

From the remains of Egyptian, Babylonian, and Assyrian art, we
can guess at their different styles, and perceive their affinities. Of
these it would be difficult to date any very ancient fragments, as
there was probably but little change of style in an art which in the
East was essentially consecutive and imitative.

The Babylonian and Ninevite embroideries have a masculine look,
which suggests the design of an artist and the work of slaves. There
is no following out of vague fancies ; one set of selected forms, each
probably with a symbolical intention, following another. The effect,
as seen on the bas-reliefs in the British Museum, is royally gorgeous,
and one feels that creatures inferior to monarchs and satraps, could
never have aspired to such splendours. Probably the embroideries
on their garments were executed in gold wire, treated as thread, and
taken through the linen, and the same system was carried out in
adorning the trappings of the horses and chariots. The solid masses
of embroidery may have been afterwards subjected to the action of
the hammer which would account for their appearing like jewellers
work in the bas-reliefs.

1«81. ART NEEDLEWORK. 445

The corslefc given by Amasis, King of Egypt (according to Hero-
dotus), to the temple of Minerva, at Ehodes, was probably worked in
this style, for Babylonian embroidery was greatly prized in Egypt,
and imitated. The second corslet given by Amasis to the Lacedso-
monians was worked in gold and colours, with animals and other
decorations. This was in the seventh century b.c. Amongst the
arms painted in the tombs of Bameses at Thebes (in Egypt), is a
corslet apparently of rich stu£f embroidered in colours with lions and
other devices.

The fine b'nens which the Jews, more than a thousand years
before this date, carried with them from Egypt are aU gone to decay.
We can only judge of this wonderful material from a very few frag-
ments of the wrappings of mummy-cloths, and of \he\i embroidery
from some morsels in the mUseum of Turin and the Louvre ; but the
hangings of the Tabernacle are so carefully described in the book of
Exodus, that we can see in fancy the linen curtains, blue or white,
embroidered in scarlet, blue, purple, and gold ; the cherubim in the
woven material ; the fringes enriched with flowers, buds, fruit, aiid
golden bells.

Deborah sings of ^ divers colours of needlework on both sides, fit
for the necks of those that divide the spoU,' as being part of the
anticipated plunder which Sisera was to bring home. It is ciuious
that this work, ^ the same on both sides,' still prevails in that part of
the East.

It is touching to read of the Babylonian embroidered garment
which tempted Achan at the fall of Jericho, and brought such a ter-
rible expiation on himself and all that belonged to him.

David describes the bride as the ^ king's daughter all glorious
within. Her clothing is of wrought gold. She qhall be brought
before the king in raiment of needlework.' If the bride is really
the prophetic tjrpe of the visible Church, how truly has she appeared
for many centuries adorned with needlework and cloth of gold.

Greek embroideries we can perfectly appreciate by studying
< Hope's Costumes of the Ancients,' Millingen's works, <S:c., also the
Greek fictile vases in the British Museum. On these are depicted
their gods, their heroes, their wars, and their home life. The worked
or woven patterns on their draperies are infinitely varied, and range
over several centuries of design — and they are almost always beau-
tifiiL It is melancholy to have to confess that in this, as in all their
art, the Greek taste is inimitable ; yet we may profit by the lessons
it teaches us. These are variety without redundancy; grace without
affectation ; simplicity without poverty; the appropriate, the harmo-
nious, and the serene ; rather than that which is painful, astonibhing,
or awful.- These principles were carried into the smallest arts, and
-vee can trace them in the shaping of a cup or the decoration of a
mantle as in the frieze of the Parthenon itself.
ToL. IX.— No. 49. H H

446 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. March

Homer makes constant mention of the women's work; Penelope's
web is oftenest quoted. This was a shroud for her absent lord.
Ulysses, however, brought home a large collection of fine embroidered
dresses, contributed by his different fair hostesses during his travels.

Pallas Athene, who patronised the craft of the embroiderers in
Athens, appeared to Ulysses in the steading of EumsE^us the swine-
herd as ^ a woman fair and tall, and skilful in splendid handiwork,'
and Helen gave of her own needlework to Telemachus. * Helen, the
fair lady, stood by the coffer wherein were her robes of curious
needlework, which she herself had wrought. Then Helen, the fiedr
lady, lifted one, and brought it out ; the widest and most beautiMj
embroidered of all, and it shone like a star,' and this she sent as a
marriage gift to his future wife.

The great ladies in Persia did not work themselves, but left it to
their slaves — witness the pretty story of Alexander's gift to the
family of Darius, with the advice that they should embroider the
mantles of Grecian materials. They were much hurt, feeling that it
was a suggestion of slavery. When he was aware of this, he said he
had intended to do them honour, as the materials had been woven b^
the women of his own family. We may here mention, whilst on the
subject of Persia, that LucuUus brought back from thence, as a part
of his pillage, 5,000 suits of embroidered and other clothes. Horace
says that he gave them to the theatrical wardrobes of tlome.

I suppose there is little doubt that all the Bomans knew or felt
of art was borrowed, directly or indirectly, from Greece, first throogh
Etruscan and PhcBnician sources, and finally by conquest. Eyery-
thing we have of their art shows their imitation of Grecian models.
Had we any of their embroideries they would assuredly have shown
the same impress.

Greece, herself crushed and demoralised, had to send her artists,
as well as her accumulated treasures of art, to Rome ; and, evra so
late as the Eastern empire, gave her the fashion of the Byzantine
taste, which she at once adopted, and caUed it the Eomanesque.
This style, which was partly Arab, became European, and still
prevails in Russian art, having clung to the Greek Church.

At Ravenna one learns much of the di-ess of this early ClM&tisn
period from the mosaics in the churches. The Empress Theodora
and her ladies appear to be clothed in Indian materi^. lliefle had
long been drifting into Europe by the Red Sea. Ezekiel menti<ms
the Indian trade through Aden (500 B.C.) Theodora's dress has a
deep border of gold embroidered with Roman warriors pursuing each
other with drawn swords. Works enriched with precious stones now
appear for the first time and testify to their Oriental origin.

The next European phase was the Gothic; this is Arab and
Moresque, steeped in Northern ideas ; and finding its coBgenud soil,
it grew into the most splendid, thoughtful, and finished style — ^fiur

1881. ART NEEDLEWORK. 447

traoscending anything that it borrowed originally from Eastern or
Southern sources.

All these transitions were accompanied by the service of the
gmaller decorative arts, mosaics, ivories, and jeweller's, and smith's
work in metals ; and last, and not least, splendid embroideries to
adorn the altars and vestments of the priests, and the dresses of
monarchs and nobles.

When taste was imperfect or declined, then the carvings were
rode, and the embroideries likewise : but when all these crafts rose
again and added to themselves grace and beauty, by study and by
experience, then needlework in England^ G-ermany, France, Italy,
and Spain, grew and flourished.

Then came the £eformation, which in Germany and England
gave a sad blow to the arts which had reserved their best efforts for
the Church ; and the change of style effected by the Benaissance was
not suited to the solemnity of ecclesiastical decoration. The styles •
of the fifteenth and sixteenth century embroideries adapt themselves
better for secular purposes ; though their extreme beauty as archi-
tectural ornament in Italy reconciles one to their want of religious
character, on the principle that it was allowable to give to the
Church all that in its day was brightest and most precious.

The style of those centuries was called sometimes the Arabesque^
and sometimes the G-rotesque. The feishion was really eopied from
the excavated palaces and tombs of the best Boman era. BaphaeL
admixed them, and caused his pupils to imitate and copy them, and
they influenced all decorative art for a considerable period.

Spanish and Portuguese embroideries of the sixteenth and seven-
teenth centuries are especially fine. Their Benaissance, which went
by the name of the Plateresque, is a style apart. The reason of its ■
name is that it seems to have beeooi originally intended for, and is .
best suited to, the shapes and decoration of gold and silver plate. It
ifl extremely rich and ornate, not so appropriate to architecture as to
the smaller arts^ and wanting perhaps in the simplicity which gives
dignity. The style called Louis-Quatorze, following on the Be-
naissance in Germany, England, Spain, Italy and France, assumed
modifications which served to distinguish them, but into which we
have not time to enter now. In this style France took the lead and
appropriated it, and rightly named it after the nutgnificent monarch <
who fostered it* This was a splendid era, and its fuzniture and wall
decorations, dress, plate, and books, shine in all the fertile, rieliness
and grace of French artistic ingenuity. The new style asserted itself
everywhere and remodelled every art, but the long reign of Louis
Quatorze gave the fashion time to wane and change. Under Louis
XV. the defects increased and the beauties diminished.. The fine
heavy borders were broken up into fragmentary forms. All flow and
strength were eliminated, and what remained of the Louis-Quatorze

H H 2

448 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. March

Btjle became, under its next phase, only remarkable for the sparkling
prettiness which is inherent in all French art.

In Italy this sixteenth century style became what is called the
^ Setter-centOj and was a chastened imitation or appropriation of the
Spanish Plateresque and the French Louis-Qoatorze. In Crermanyit
was a decided heavy copy of both, of which there are splendid ex-
amples in the adornment of the German palaces, royal and epificopal.
In England was fidntly reflected the continental taste during the
reign of Queen Anne and the first Georges, but except in the uphol-
stery of the family of Chippendale, and one or two palaces, such as
Blenheim and Castle Howard, we did not produce much that was
original in the style of that day.

Under Louis XV., Boucher and Watteau, in France, produced
designs that were well suited to tapestries and embroideries. All the
heathen gods, with cupids, garlands, floating ribbons, crowns, and
cyphers, were everywhere carved, gilded, and worked. It was the
visible tide of the frivolity in which poor Marie Antoinette was
drowned ; though before the Bevolution she had somewhat simplified
the forms of decoration ; and straight lines instead of curves, and
delicacy rather than splendour, had superseded, at least at court, the
last efforts of royal palatial furnishing and taste.

This was followed by the Bevolution, and then came the attempt
at classical severity (so contrary to the French nature) which the
Republic affected. Dress was adorned with embroidered spots and
Etruscan borders, and the ladies wore diadems, and tried to be as like
as possible to the Greek women painted in fictile art. Napolecn
attempted a dress which was supposed to be Boman, at his ooronatiaD.
Trophies were woven and embroidered ; and the honeysuckle, key,
and egg-and-anchor patterns were everywhere. With the Empire
the classical taste collapsed, and the E^gyptian, Greek, and Boman
furniture and materials fell to hotels and lodgingrhouaes. In most of
the palaces on the Continent an apartment is still to be seen famished
in this style. It was the necessary tribute of flatteiy to the great con-
queror, who in that character inhabited so many of them for a short
space. But there was no sign of the style being taken up con amm
anywhere out of France.

We have reached the middle of the second decade of our own
(Century, and we cannot now enter into all the causes that have led to
the revival of embroidery in England, and of Art in general in iU
present phase.

It is reaUy a conglomerate of preceding styles, suited to our
new archseological tastes and ideas, in which the antique, the haroc;
and the rococo each have a share, and are harmonised apparently hy
careful colours and neutral forms, which do not assert any especial
date of design. But out of these elements possibly a real and
accentuated style may be crystallising around us, without our being

1881. ART NEEDLEWORK. 449

conscious of its existence, so that a hundred years hence a genuine
work of to-day may be recognisable by an absolute * cachet ' of its
own*

The Art Committee of the Boyal Society of Art Needlework is
fully aware of its own responsibilities, and strives to keep and raise a
standard which shall assist to guide and inform the decorative tendency
of our day.

I remain, dear Sir,

Yours truly obliged,

Marian Alfobd,

Vict-Premdent of the Boyal School of Art Needleworks

450 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. March

ART NEEDLEWORK.

II.

DsAR Ladt Mabian, — I have been much gratified and indeed sur-
prised by what I saw in your school of needlework at South EensmgtoD.
An amount of perfection has been reached which E was by no means
prepared for ; indeed, it is difficult to imagine how anything of \h&
kind can be better than some representations of plumage and of
lea£ELge I saw worked in silk and in what I think is called creweL

Needlework, which has been woman's occupation since the days of
Penelope, is worthy on its own account of vigorous efforts to preserre
its vitality. As one of the best means of carrying taste into household
siuTOundings, it cannot be too highly prized ; as affording honourable
employment to many whose condition must be a source of great pain
to all but the most thoughtless, it takes a place among the important
considerations of the time. The necessity to work is far more widely
extended than formerly, and every lady knows with what peculiar hard-
ship it falls in many cases. A wide employment in use of needlework
would supply a means of relieving pressing need in a better manner
than anything that could be invented. Having executive skill at
command) two other things only are want<ed, designs and purchaseis.
Beautiful designs you can always get for money, but it is not so easy
to create a demand. It can hardly be expected that an age which
sets so little store by the charm of beauty for its own sake, and &ils
to perceive practical value in art of any kind, will take much interest
in your school until its practical vidue can be demonstrated and
generally felt. And this will take time; the impulse that will cany
you through and establish your position must come from the sympathy
of those who may be expected meanwhile to thoroughly appreciate yoar
objects.

It seems to me that as it has been, it must be, for at least some
time — woman's work : a word of more limited signification may he
used — ^ladies' work, and a work that every lady in the land should take
up. All honour to those who have worked so hard, and created a
school of such ability.

1881. ART NEEDLEWORK. 451

And now the ladies of England should make it a point of honour
' to carry the work through. An effort on their part might well be
' made, and something spared out of what is not seldom employed on
things that yield but little real satisfaction — something spared and
devoted in order to encourage a fashion that might become an im-
portant agent in our real civilisation while holding out a band of help
to some among others (though sisters all) whose position in the sociid
scale places them literally within such hand's reach.

This real sympathy is not too much to ask for or expect. Our
little life is poor indeed if bounded by our own personal requirements
and fancied requirements ; and serious reflection enforces the conclu-
sion that perhaps what we leave undone is a more weighty matter
than what we do. What we do is often the result of misconception, of
pressure, of the insanity of excitement, of haste; what we leave
undone we have had time to think over and reject. Habitual indiffer-
ence to the right may be more culpable than hurried plunges into
wrong. There are few who would not shrink awestruck from the
certainty of witnessing the end of the world by physical convulsion,
few, if it befell, standing on such a brink, who would not regret their
best feelings had not been more active ; yet to each the end of the
world will surely come ; eveiy tick of the clock may be counted as an
audible footfall, as step by step we pass on the road. And if, at the
end, it should be asked not only what active evil we have done, but
whether we have seen any fallen by the way, or drowning, without
extending our hands to save, will it go well with us ? And before
this, if the end of the world come not while we are young, are there
not two ways of growing old ? Equally inevitable the end ; tottering
and stumbling, still groping in the ground till we mix with it in the
darkness, or rising, as some aeronaut, the world sliding gradually away,
leaving us as we still rise with more extended view, while in the grand
space the things that seemed so mighty take their relative proportions
— ^towns and cities lose their individuality, and become part of
the great whole, and the contention of life, better understood, comes
with a confused hum, not altogether unmusical, up in the tranqml
atmosphere, free from the impurities of the lower air. Such is the
evening of a noble life, like mercy ^ twice blessed,' blessed by
its own good works, and blessed by the affectionate loyalty of the
benefited.

It seems to me not seldom that the evening of our life as a
powerful nation comes on apace, and I would that the eyes of younger
nations should foUow our progress with admiration. This will be if
a great national spirit can be encouraged to animate us alL

In the case of your school I should have an appeal made to the
ladies of England, some earnest reminder how many anxieties may be
leUeved, how much taste diffused, by a little active but widely spread
oo*operation on their part. If the queens of &shion would (as they

I

452 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Mawb

could do) make the practice of needlework SEishionable, everythiBg you
strive for would be attained. Of course you must have the best desigiis
the most accomplished masters can give you ; that alone will keep up
the character and extend the influence of your institution as a school
of art ; and it is of paramount importance that your school should be
able to show examples of the best that can be done. But I should like
to make a step in a side direction.

Art, and especially such art, to fulfil its mission, should have a
thoroughly natural and home side. She must not always be intro-
duced with a flourish of trumpets by a professor, not always dt in a
chair of state, or be treated like a visitor, for whom we put on o«r
sedate manners and ceremonious apparel ; she must be one of the
ordinary household, consulted upon domestic matters, with her sleeves
tucked up, busied in the kitchen, and very much at home in the nur-
sery, not merely a friend of the family, but one of the fiEunily. This
cannot be if Puritanic severity be at all times insisted on ; a thing
may be

Too great and good
For human nature's daily food ;

and we no more at all times want the perfection of professional art
than we at all times want professional music, professional billiards
or professional lawn tennis. The standard may be raised so high as
to render endeavour hopeless, and in this way much of the healthy
and recreative essence of art dissipated.

The best, and that which will remain as a landmark for all time
in art and music, must surely be professional, for such production is
the work of a life. But taste may be too fastidious and exacting,
making at all times demands which should be reserved for certain
occasions. To sing and play out of time and tune should not be tole-
rated, but singing and playing with but little voice and execution wiU,
on fit occasions, and if in good taste, often give very great pleasure.

There is no interest like personal interest, and I should like to
see ladies sending, for th&i/r own special use, their own designs to be
worked — ' ladies' own (intellectual) materials made up ' — not in com-
petition with professional art. Many a lady whose interest is too
languid to feel more than a passing pleasure even in the very hest
specimens of beautiful work, would find much natural gratification in
having her own room beautified by her own designs produced in needle-
work. If such a fashion could be stimulated, the best results migkt
be expected. Attempts to produce designs with this object, while they
would excite liveliness of interest in art work, would at the same time
sharpen observation of natural beauty and variety ; and intellectoal, in-
terested observation of natural beauty in curves, of graceful combina-
tions of line, which might often be copied without change^ might be
expected to go far towards correcting errant taste in dress, and supplying

1881. ART NEEDLEWORK. 453

for it fiome definite principles. And, indeed, in designing for needle-
work the amateur might often successfully compete with the professor,
as in the lighter branches of literature ; the technical knowledge and
acquired skill of the painter are not necessary, and taste and fancy
have not to contend hopelessly with the diflSculties of execution.

In decoration, especially needlework decoration, a moderate
amount of artistic acquirement, assisting natural sensibility, niight
often achieve very satisfactory results. Guided by a few simple
rules, many a lady with but the ordinary habit of drawing might find
herself producing very graceful designs, which, if not possessing
sufficient fibre to bear public criticism, would be very pleasant in
her own house. Professors of all kinds incline to look coldly on the
amateur element, dreading it as antagonistic to true and severe study*
I think, on the contrary, in art especially, it is to be encouraged^
creating as it does a lively interest in many, in addition to and not
diminishing the earnestness that can only be felt by few.

Before the art of writing was commonly practised, people went
to a professional letter-writer to convey what they had to say. Here
I think I perceive some resemblance. The general habit of writing
one's own letters has not struck at the root of literature.

A few simple principles maybe laid down, such as avoidance of all
forms that will not adapt themselves' to undulations of surface and
change of direction of plane, also all forms that suggest decay, all
that makes an appeal to the emotional and intellectual side of our
impressions. Such things are out of place on furniture, drapery, &c.;
the graceful alone is desirable — ^those things which are suggestive of
youth, and light, and enjoyment. Bepresentations of creations that
are beautiful in form and gorgeous in coloiu', birds, butterflies, beetles,
&c., can be worked with very great perfection, and may be rendered
with as much or as little actual truth as the occasion may require,
to be used in furniture, decoration, or in dress ; and it is but reason-
able to expect that such application of design and industry would
king about the abolition of the barbarous and abominable practice
of destroying myriads of exquisite birds. A whole creation of
loveliness is in danger of being swept from off the face of the
earth, for the object of sticking stuffed specimens about wearing
apparel, where they are, notwithstanding their supreme beauty^
wholly in bad taste, the extreme improbability of the real creature's
presence in such places making the effect more grotesque than
charming. But while the appearance of the stuffed bird perched
on a lady's muff or entangled in her skirts is absurd or disagreeable,
the beautiful and acknowledged imitation could be worn with per-
fectly good taste, and here should be a most lucrative source of
employment, not demanding expensive outlay for designs — shining
and beautiful things in thousands which, as acknowledged imitations,
would work into dress ornaments with great effect, and with how

454 TEE NINETEENTH CENTURY. March

muoh gain I First, the study of the exquisite creation and ooose-
quent artistic improvement ; secondly, employment given ; thirdly,
improvement in ornamentation and effect in dress ; fourthly, a right
direction of expenditure in such matters ; and, fifthly (if but occa-
sionally), awakened conscience as to right direction of such expendi-
ture. All this and more; for evermore does one habit lead to another
and shape us body and soul.

a. F. Wato.

1881. 455

THE CREED OF A LAYMAN.

Onb of the hardest of the many hard sayings of Auguste Cointe is
this : Mofti* becomes more a/nd more religious. People look back to
history, to the times of the early Christians, or the mediaeval saints,
to the Bible heroes or the authors of the Evangelical revival, and
they deny the truth of this. In the growing abandonment of all
theological belief by so many persons here, and by so many more in
Europe, in the emptying of the chapels and the churches, in the visible
advance all along the line of Atheism, Agnosticism, Materialism,
and Secularism, it certainly does seem that Man is growing less and
less religious, at least in one meaning of that term.

Far more than this. The schools of thought which are most in
the ascendant are continually reducing the sphere of Beligion to a
roinimum, and many of them systematically discard it — seek to free
human life from religion altogether. Many teachers, either openly
or silently, consciously or unconsciously, would substitute for religion.
Science, Free Thought, Common Sense, the Infinite, or the Un-
knowable.

Notwithstanding all this, Positivism — ^whioh is popularly sup-
posed to be Materialism, Secularism, or Atheism; which is most
certainly Positive^ i«e. scientific, which accepts no Bevelation, no
imaginary beings or worlds, trusting to the realj to this world and
this life ; which has nothing to say about the Creation or direction of
the universe, or about a Celestial existence after death — this Posi-
tivism still continues to repeat with perfect firmness and confidence,
^ Yes I Mam, does become more and more religiousJ^

It is plain that we are using religion in some different sense, not
in the sense in which it is popularly used to-day, when it is taken to
imply divine beings and extra-tellurian life. We are using it in the
true and real sense, in the old meaning ; that meaning which, in the
shrinking process, in the retreat along its whole line. Theology has
abandoned. Still, we say, that this is the true and original meaning
of Beligion — ^that which Beligion all along in theory has ever claimed
to be ; and when it is candid, feels that it ought to be.

That meaning of Beligion is this. It is a scheme of thought
and life whereby the whole nature of individual men and societies of

456 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. March

men are concentrated in common and reciprocal activity, with refer-
ence to a Superior Power which men and societies alike may serve.
In popular use the latter phrase alone in the definition has survived ;
and that in a particular aspect of it. When the various qualities of
a man, and of masses of men, can be brought to work together to a
great common object of Devotion — then you have Religion.

The essence of the idea is, that the faculties can all be brought
by it into harmony and proper relation ; that it binds up great
multitudes in one feeling and one thought.

But to put aside for a moment any discussion about terms, to
take this idea, this harmony of the whole nature and welding
together of society, to use a phrase which was invented by a great
master of expression, this ^ consolidation of co-operation ' (religion is
really that and nothing else), it is manifest that this harmony indeed
increases from age to age.

In the old pre-historic ages there was no harmony within man,
when he was the wild untutored (it may be the noble) savage. There
could be no true unity of classes under Caste, or Brahminism, under
Slavery, in the ages of systematic conquest, in the moral anarchy
and intellectual inequality of the Greco-Boman world. Is there
harmony and unity under Islamism, was there in the feudal class
system, or in the arbitraiy, mystical, spasmodic era of Catholicism?
Could there be any real humony in Protestantism and Dissent, whidi
mean divergence, dispute, conflict ? Could there be unity anywhere
until Science had asserted its independence of blind faith, until
Industry had gained the victory over War, until the people had won
their full and equal place in modem society ?

Now Classes are being swallowed up in the Bepublic ; races and
nations are being brought together ; industry, science, humanity, are
slowly asserting their superiority. The solidarity of Peoples, the
Federation of mankind, or what is foreshadowed by such terms, is
an idea which grows. The 'consolidation of co-operation' is at
hand. Unity of classes and races, harmony in the realm of thought
and feeling are only now becoming practicable hopes. It is hardly in
modern life, only indeed in the Future, that we can see as a vi8i<m,
the true unity of the race, the harmonious concentration of Thought
and Life.

If we mean by Beligion that which makes man more complete,
which makes societies united, it is plain that we are more and more
converging towards this state.

Those who say, ' Leave this convergence to itself, it is not a thing
to strive for ; the destiny of man is one of infinite differentiation
without any corresponding process of co-ordination ' — ^such men are
talking against all the facts, the experience, and instincts of human
nature.

Civilisation implies increasing co-ordination, consensus, and

188L THE CREED OF A LAYMAJT. 457

8]^pathy of the vast human organism ; though it be indeed a subtler
ccM)rdination, a more rational consensus, a more equable sympathy.

We need not argue mth those who can contemplate with patience,
can actually promote, the state of discord, cross-purpose and con-
fusion in the spirit of man ; the disruption and antagonism between
societies of men.

This can mean nothing but waste of our himian faculties, struggle,
and antipathy, not ^ peace and good-will amongst men.' It is need-
less to argue such a theme — for every system of belief, philosophy,
all schemes of society, morality, social progress, theories of civilisa-
tion, and plans of reform — ^all imply some discipline of our social
nature — 8<ynie bond to unite society.

So far we are pretty much agreed, at least all rational and serious
persons are — that human nature must be got to work with the
minimum of waste — and society with the minimum of friction, the
maximum of correlation. But then the non-theological schools of
the day are for the most part content to trust for this : either to
some purely intellectual doctrine or doctrines: some say Science,
some Truth, some say the principle of Evolution, or logical examina-
tion ; some vaguely say Free-Thought, the Spirit of Inquiry, the
right of Private Judgment, some mystical gift for always beiug right
of which we have never learned the secret.

Or, if they give up this, they practically trust to chance, and say
human nature will work it all right in the end.

No doubt it will : but we must give human nature its fair chance,
and accept what it demands ; and if human nature calls out for
Beligion, religion it must have or die.

Trusting to luck, or chance, or the ultimate triumph of i^hat is
called Truth, almost all the non-theological schools, disciples of
Science, of Free Thought, of Democracy, of Secularism, and the like,
repudiate anything like an organised att^pt to reduce life as a
whole to harmony by a central principle of life ; they reject systematic
discipline of life : they start back from Worship, from any formal
appeal to the Feelings, from the very idea of Devotion of spirit to a
great Power — in a word they turn with disgust or mockery from
Beligion.

Not indeed that they have ever proved this to be the sum of
Philosophy, or the true teaching of History. Far from it, they
assume it ; they affect to know it by the Light of Nature as an in-
tuitive trutii. Mention to them worahipy devotion^ religion^ the
discipline of heart and practice in the continuous service of the object
of devotion — in a word utter the word Beligion — ^and they smile in a
superior and satisfied way.

All the teaching of History, the entire logic of Philosophy, the
perennial yearnings of the human heart, the intensest hopes of the
best men and the best women, all these are against them. Philo-

458 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. March

sophy means just putting one's thoughts into relation with eadi
other, and witJi the facts and circumstanoes of human natuie.
Wherever in the story of mankind a grand epoch or movement is
seen, there we have passionate devotion working with an over-
powering belief at the bottom of it. Charlemagne and Alfred,
Cromwell and Washington, St. Louis and Hildebrand, St. Paul,
Mahomet, Confucius, Moses, were men whose whole natures were
fused through and through — brain, heart, and will, all together by that
which was at once to them Thought — Besolve — ^Love. They moved
men and created epochs — not because they had got hold of some
particular truth, or not merely by that, but because their mighty
natures had been kindled with a high passion — because their Uves
were seen to be transfigured in its light.

Wherever around us to-day we see a beautiful character and a
noble life, there we see something more than a set of opinions and
implicit reliance on the principle of free inquiry. What is it that
we do see ? We always find a passionate resolve to make life answer
in &ct to some end that is deeply believed to be right. We have the
three things— belief — enthusiasm — practice*

Why, if we really wish something to act on the lives of men,
why are we to surrender any one of these agents — belief, enthusiasm,
practice? We want them alL All are not enough. To neglect
any one is to leave human life one-sided, maimed, and incomplete.
We can all see how empty is enthusiasm without knowledge and
intelligence; how dry and formal is practice without entimsiasm.
How is it that we fail to see how poor a thing is knowledge without
enthusiasm and without practice ?

The Revolt against the old faiths has been carried out blindly—
too violently. Those who would sweep away Religion merely mean
to sweep away the theological phase of religion. Those who re-
pudiate Wordbip are simply dissatisfied with the old objects of
Worship. To rebel against the ecclesiastical discipline of life is not
to prove that life should have no discipline. To cease to venerate an
unthinkable Creator and an unspeakable Mystery is not to cease to
be capable of veneration towards anything. If our hearts feel void
within us when we are bid to serve Grod, does this mean t]mt our
hearts are doomed to a void for ever ? If our Faith in things super-
natural is slipping from imder us, does this mean that we must live
for ever in this world of to-day without any Faith, with no Hope,
no sense of Devotion to anything anywhere ?

It is the delirium of revolt which screams out to us to cast out
the faculty and the habit of faith along with the object or the form
of our old faith. Besides it is cant : mere delusion to suppose it is
d6ne, or can be done. Neither enthusiasm, nor discipline, nor &rth,
nor reverence, nor devotion to a cause, nor love for a Power greater
than ourselves, are at all dying out in the world. They are not

1881. THE CREED OF A LAYMAN. 459

growing weaken They are even in the midflt of change, growing
wider, deeper, more universal.

The political and social movements of our age show us as noble
examples of unselfish devotion to a cause as any in history. The
martyrs of science, of industry, of civilisation and progress, are of that
same old stuff whose blood has of yore watered churches. Patriotism
is a living passion. Our humanity deepens and widens, our sympathy
grows tenderer, our earnestness to keep fresh the memory of the
great dead grows more into a habit. Our civilisation is more con-
scious of its high destiny and its accumulating Duty.

The Schools that are the most eager to iq>root all religion are
themselves conspicuous for enthusiasm, devotion, self-sacrifice. No
men have come nearer to the spirit of religious martyrs in our
modem times than some of those devotees of the socialist, commu-
nist, democratic Grospel. The very Nihilists have shown us wonderful
examples of discipline and faith. The Atheists, the Secularists, the
Materialists stand almost first beyond the believers in creeds in
constancy, fervour, and what a Christian would call an earnestness to
save souls; and in nothing are they more conspicuous than in
devoted reverence and submission to the heroes and teachers of their
choice.

There is as much capacity for reverence in the world as ever-—
as much and more — scattered and incongruous as the objects of
reverence have become. There is as much zeal, and force of heart,
as much power of devotion as ever, as much capacity for association
as ever. No moralist, no politician, no reformer for an instant doubts
the power of ideas, the value of discipline, the temper of devotion,
and none of them certainly propose to forego the appeal to these.
Man does become more and more religious in the range and univer-
sality of the religious instinct.

All this capacity for religious imity is checked in the present
day by the prevailing theories. What has happened is that know-
ledge and belief do not range with devotion ; practice is out of joint
with profession ; and reverence itself bears the standard in Bevolt.

Positivism is a scheme for brioging all these three — ^belief, dis-
cipline, worship — ^again (or rather for the first time) really into line,
and training this consolidated force to bear on Life and on Society.
It says : ^ Man has a mind, and an enormous accumulation of know-
ledge. We have to satisfy that mind, and give order to that know-
ledge. Man has energies ; we must give them a full scope, and yet
keep them in due bounds. Man has a soul fitted for great devotion ;
we must fill that soul with a worthy object of devotion, strengthen it,
purify it by constant exercise. If we leave out one of these sides,
human nature is cramped, harmony is destroyed. And what is more,
not only must all three sides be appealed to alike, but they must be
appealed to by some great principle that can inspire them in one
work.'

460 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. March

If this can be done, it is plain how enormous must be its power
over life. If there be such a principle, all else in human nature is of
little moment till we have it. If harmony in the whole nature be
possible, it must be the supreme good dreamed of by the philosophers
of old* It must be happiness, duty, wisdom, peace, and life all in
one.

And why, because we live in the midst of revolt against super-
stition and formalism, why are we to assume so confidently that there
is no such harmony, that human nature shall drag on in the oscillations
of eternal conflict, in misunderstanding and crossed purpose, for ever
till this planet chills into its last phase of silent ice ? Why take for
granted this tremendous and terrible fate ? Why do we not turn to
any shadow of divinity that is left us ? Why do we not cling to God,
Church, Book, and call upon Jehovah, Jove, or Lord, or (if men prefer
it) call upon science, philosophy, progress, and all the spirits of our
age to tell us if such a thing be, or be not ? Strange that we do not
all, day and night, incessantly seek for the answer to this, of all ques-
tions the most vital : ' Is there anything by which man can order his
life as a whole ? Is there anything by which our nature may gain its
unity, our race may acknowledge its brotherhood ? ' Why do we not
make up our mind, or try to make it up ? Why do we not resolve in
which camp we will stand ? How long shall we halt between two
opinions ?

It is mockery to talk about science, enlightenment, progress, free
thought, to the myriads of men and women, and to tell them that these
ought to serve them. What can they want more — ^why ask for
religion ? The rude men who sweat and swelter in mines, in furnaces
and factories, the hedger and the ditcher, and the cottager with his
pinched home, the women who stitch and serve, the children wander-
ing forlorn and unkempt into rough life, bow are these to be sustained
and comforted by science and enlightenment ? How will free ihaugld
teach discipline to the young, and self-restraint to the wild ? What
sustenance will the imaginative and the devotional nature receive
from the principle of free inquiry ? Human nature is not a thing so
docile and intellectual that it can be tamed by fine thoughts ; nor is
socieiy amenable to pure ideas. It is playing with the question to
ofifer us anything less than a systematic philosophy, a grand and
over-mastering object of reverence, a resolute scheme of social and per-
sonal practice.

Positivism does offer these. What else is there that does ? We
speak, of course, to those who have deliberately, on one ground or
other, put aside Church and book, ritual and creed. We would dis-
turb the faith of none who are satisfied in these. Here are the two
questions?

I. Can we expect to see the real regeneration of human life (we
speak to none who do not desire this) if we deliberately forego that

1881. THE CREED OF A LAYMAN. .461

•

which has been at the bottom of e^eiy regeneration of life — an appeal
to the undying instinct of reverence, devotion, in the human heart ?

II. Where can we place that devotion, so that it be an integral
part of modem acieiice and modem society, unless it be in the ever
present image of that Humanity, of which we are children and
servants?

The problem is this — Human life and society are in want of a
revivifying and reforming force.

The force of a great devotion has been the most potent of all re-
forming powers.

It must be a devotion that wholly satisfies and coincides with
scientific, logical intellect ; and, therefore, must be not superhuman.

It must be one that wholly satisfies and appeals to our practical
energy, our craving for work and life on earth; and therefore, it
must be not supra-telluric.

Now the old creeds, Bible and Salvation, no longer even seem
to satisfy these latter conditions.

I will not say that these have been thrust aside by science
and industry. Bather they have themselves slipped out of the way,
fled firom science and industry — ^got themselves out of sight and out of
mind, retreated to some cloud-capt and inaccessible mountains, far
away from life, never to return.

The old law of Bible and Salvation having abdicated, resigned
(in the earthly field of Thought and Work, in the real and the practical
world), what remains ?

Free inquiry, interminable free inquiry, scepticism, indifferentism,
research and then more research, waiting for something to turn up,
whilst, all the while, vice, ignorance, strife, moral helplessness and
mental indecision do not wait, but grow and enlarge. Or else (and
this is the alternative) the devotion of brain, and heart, and energy
to the service of that Mighty Power which stands beside us day and
night, of which every act and thought of ours is but the reflection,
the aggregate force of the lives of true men in the past, the present,
and the future, in which civilisation is incarnate and lives a con-
tinuous and visible life.

What else is there, but this, if the sons of this age of light and
labour are to have devotion at all ?

There is much talk now about what some ingenious person has
named ' Fervent Atheism,' and it is declared that fervent Atheism is a
contradiction in terms. I am inclined to agree with this in a literal
sense. The idea of basing a really devotional frame of mind, or any
working enthusiasm of a genuine kind, on any negation is truly
ludicrous. But to pass from Atheism or the assertion that there is no
God — to pure Agnosticism (that you know nothing about God or any
other object of worship), or to Evolution or the laws of matter, or in-
VoL. IX.— No. 49. 1 1

462 TEE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Mareh

finite differentiation, or the ITnknowiable^ or the Universiim, as Stxttufis
calls it, or the Infinite as some metaphysicians saj, or the AH, or tbe
Good, or any other ideal of the inanimate world ; how utterly hollow is
the notion that any real enthusiasm can be based on this ! We need
something that we conceive able to reach our human sympathies, to
be of nature akin to our own, something that we caa really conunune
with in a moral union — something living not dead— organic not
inert. That is the hoUowness of Pantheism in every form.

Look at things which have touched sympathies. The Church,
the Chosen People, the Soman race, the city of Atiiens, of Sparta,
Christendom, Islam, the Bible, the Republic, the Socialist Utopia,
all of these have been the basis of true creeds, real enthusiasm,
practical working religions. They have spoken to men face to &ce.
And now when they or many of them are passing away; when
Bible, Christendom, Islam, the Church, are all fiuling into tiie
pages of history as the creed of Abraham and Isaac, and the divinity
of Rome, of Athens and Sparta, have faded ; now when we see how
narrow, partial, inadequate is each of these, how wanting in breadth
and continuity even is the ideal Republic, even our own contemporaiy
human race — ^what is there left, I say, what other idea can become
the basis of a mundane faith but the idea of Humanity, which in-
cludes all ? The collective destiny of men in the past, the present, and
the future, is the real whole of which all these smaller ideas are bat
the broken reflections, or germs, is broadly human in its spirit, and
touches the profoundest chord of sympathy. It is a power towards
which we can feel the sense of brotherhood, and sonhood, and loyal
sense of service.

What else is there to love and serve — ^if we seek to love and serve
the greatest loveable and setveable thing on this earth, and we have
ceased to lovfe and to serve a supra-mundane Being?

Let who will and can love God and Christ, looking for a celestial
crown ; let them serve these. Biit let no one pretend to l6ve or to
.serve the Infinite, or Evolution, or the Idea of (rood. It is a ferce.

This I take to be the one indispensable, imperishable, truth of
Positivism — the one central point round which everything else may
be left to group itself. It holds up to us a Power : human, real, demon-
: strable, loveable — one that we can feel with, and work for, and learn
t4;o understand, who provides for us, and whose good we can promote.
It shows us something we can love and be proud to serve, something
that can stir all our intellectual efforts, reduce them to system, some-
thing too that can dignify and justify our best exertions. And this
isomething is the same for our whole nature, and it knits together onr
whole nature in harmony. It is always here, on earth.

The theological believers say ^ Have &ith and all things shall
'be added unto you I* So we may say, believe in Humtoity (no!
it is imnossible to disbelieve in Humanity) — ^but habitually come to

188L THE CREED OF A LATMAK. 463

look at Humanity as the converging point 'Of your whole exifltfence,
thoughts, feelingB, and labour; and all other things may be oon-
sidered hereafter. It may be that they may be modified, enlarged,
reformed. We are not about to claim for the vast intellectual and
social programme of A. Comte, any sort of infallibility, or any ap-
proach to finality. It will have of course, like all things, to develope
with the growth of thought ; it may be in parts revised in the pro-
gress of knowledge. Conclusions as to historical facts, judgments of
men and of ages, scientific theories, logical dogmas, institutions of
society, principles of government, details or ideals of social reform.
Church, Priesthood, sacraments, and formulas may all, for aught
we know, put on new forms or gain new meanings as future ages
may require them. That is no affair of oms, and is not a practical
matter*

But the one thing that in Positivism represents the Saving Faith
is this : — ^That in the sense of devotion to the vast Human whole, of
which each of us is an infinitesimal member, there Ues the harmonising
Prindple that can give unity and force to our mundane nature.

Too much has been made of the deductions and corollaries of the
human feiith by those who have assailed it, and perhaps to some extent
by those who have maintained it. The details, the Utopias, the sug-
ge8tions''and illustrations of Comte have been criticised with ridiculous
minuteness, and with exaggerated importance. No one of these
critics has ventured to dispute the great central Principle of a human
synthesis for thought and life, the principle that in convergence
towards our common Humanity we may at last find complete repose
for our efforts — peace within us, peace amongst men.

None of them have ever shaken that great conception — ^which if it
had stood alone would have made Positivism the greatest achievement
of modem thought. The critics more or less distinctly or consciously
adopt the principle. In fact Mr. Mill, M. Littrd, and Mr. Lewes
have most empl^atically expressed their general adhesion to it. I
hardly know what other universal principles there are (outside of
theology) imless it may be Evolution and Nirvana.

Let us hold on to this idea, and all other things — doctrines, in-
stitutions, practices — ^will be made clear, or will be hereafter built
up on their true foundations.

Now, if there be such a central point of Thought and Life, it
follows as a certain deduction that the first of all our duties is to
obtain for ourselves, and procure for others, a sound,, complete, real
education, an education not merely scientific, but moral and emotional,
and not merely moral, but formed by practice into habit.

Deeper than all social reforms, before all political institutions,
before all forms of government, more vital than any burning ques-
tion whatever— lies the great want of a true education— -an education
to make this unity a reality.

ii2

464 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. March

Tbe systematic concentration of our human faculties of brain,
sympathy, activity, will not come about by itself or be maintained by
itself, by talking about Man or by ejaculating Humanity, It will
need a constant systematic education : training of mind, of heart, of
habit.

But if there is to be a systematic education there must be trained
and organised educators.

It would be a delusion, indeed it would be frivolous, to imagine
that a really comprehensive and positive Synthesis (a scheme for a
oneness of life based on facts) can be maintained by itself without
continual, disciplined, organised efiforts to sustain it.

A systematic education implies organised teaching ; and as the
education would be a dry, logical, inefifective thing, if it were limited
to intellectual truth alone, so the organised teaching must extend to
the moral and emotional nature ; must advise, assist, modify the active,
practical, and industrial nature as well.

If a systematic education mean more than the imparting of know-
ledge— ^suid so it surely does — organised teaching must mean more
than the lessons of academical professors.

It must mean some appeal to our deepest feelings, some forming
of the character, some influence over action and habit.

This then is at bottom what Auguste Comte meant when he
spoke of Church and a Priesthood. He used words which have come
to be connected with Theology and with arbitrary authority, whilst
of course he meant nothing of the kind. But he used words which
imply a moral and a religious community, and moral and religious
training — simply because he did mean a moral and a religious com*
munity, and he did mean a moral and religious training.

The meanings, other than this, which by association have gathered
round these words, differ essentially from anything that is dreamed of
by Positivism.

If Positivism have real religiou, that Beligion is uniformly
natural, not supernatural ; human, not theological ; scientific, not
imaginary.

^ fieligion which was first spontaneous, then inspired, lastly re-
vealed, has now become demonstrated and demonstrable.'

If Positivism have any Priesthood, those priests, so called, will be
simply the educators in science : philosophers, physicians, artists,
moralists, practical teachers of real and practical things; without
wet^th, with no State establishment; with no political authority,
with no legal monopoly, with no privileges or endowments, no anti-
social tradition, no spiritual prestige — ^with no inspired books, no
mystical Church ; with no Heaven to promise, no Hell to threaten—
with nothing but their knowledge, their usefulness, their high
character, their sweetness of nature, to give them any influence
whatever.

1881. THE CREED OF A LAYMAN. 465

Why need any man fear such a Church and such a Priesthood —
rather let me say such an education, such trained teachers ?

It may be that the world is not ripe for the bare idea of an
organised teaching, cannot tolerate the experiment of a systematic
education at all. But if this be so, the world must as yet bid fare-
well to the hope that man will ever arrive at a permanent Synthesis
at all — at any common centre of action for all sides of our nature
and all parts of society.

Some provisional Synthesis men must have, whether they
choose to call it Beligion, Philosophy, or Truth. Some organised
agency to keep that synthesis together they must have ; call it
Church, EducatioD, Priesthood, Leaders of Thought, or Spirit of the
Age.

If the ways and thoughts of modern civilisation reject everything
that is not scientific, real, and organic, then the only Synthesis or
Central Principle of Life that is left us, is the Devotion of our lives
to Humanity. This is the one centre which is perfectly real and in-
telligible, wholly practical, entirely human, and yet most utterly
sympathetic.

Thus only can Feeling be raised to its true place, that of inspiring
our whole being.

Thus only will the Intellect be seriously stirred to work with
Feeling, and to devote itself to enlighten, guide, and do the work
of Feeling.

Thus only will Energy find a truly moral and sympathetic object
of work — ^politics being controlled by morals — politics here meaning
Industry as much as Government, so that man's practical activity as
a whole may be moralised.

^ Life in all its Thoughts as in all its Actions is brought imder
the inspiring charm of Social Afiection.'

An answer that. I often hear is this — ' Very true, it is a beautiful
ideal ; but we do not want social afiection : we fail to see the charm.'
What can be the reply to this ? I know but of one reply. ' Your
life will be wasted^ will finally be miserable ; the society around
you will share your doubts, will go on becoming more discordant till
you all do feel it. If you cannot feel the charm of social affection,
you will feel the horror of social discord, of utter lawlessness and
self-wilL'

What has Theology, or any religion, to say to the man who
deliberately declares that he prefers vice, self — his lower nature?
If the priest says. Hell, the man of vice laughs : and the Priest is
now ashamed of saying. Hell. But this cynical avowal is not true.
All this is a controversial sophism, a boast, affectation, but it is not
-fact. The very man who says this is a tender husband, a self-deiiy-
ixig father, a true friend, a warm politician, an ardent patriot, a
devoted public servant, an excellent citizen. No man's life is a con-

466 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Much

sistent caieer of selfishness. Notbing can be founded on systematic
selfishness.

Let us see of what elements Religion consists, and try how far
Humanity afibrds a base for each of these.

First, of course, Bdigion implies a belief. We always except the
Religion of Nature, or of the Unknowable, or the Religion of the
Infinite-— which are mere phrases — meaning only that the supposed
believer would like to believe something if he could only make up
his mind. But all serious Religion implies belief.

The belief of Theology is definite enough, but it is very limited.
Grod made the world and Christ died for it ; and it is the duty of
man to worship and serve them, preparing for his soul a future of
Heaven or of Hell.

Now not only is this belief in continual conflict with reason, but
it has nothing whatever to say to the reason itself, throughout the
whole vast range of our intellectual interests and achievements.

The creed of Humanity is not merely the belief that Humanity
is. That is obvious. It is the belief that man's highest function
consists in the true understanding of Humanity and perfectin^^
Humanity through sympathy.

Here our whole intellectual nature is supplied with a purpose,
and ia concentrated on an object. To understand Humanity and ita
conditions is to imderstand History, Social Philosophy, Morals, the
laws of Mind, the laws of Progress. To understand the indispens-
able conditions of Humanity is to understand Science, the laws of
Life, the laws of Matter, the nature of the Earth on which Man
abides. To perfect Humanity is to bring all our knowledge to bear
on human life, to utilise science and make knowledge bear firuit for
good. Man needs every shred of real knowledge attainable : bat he
most of all needs it made efficient ; co-ordinated and systematized
to working harmony. Thus the Belief which can alone support
a religion of Humanity is science : only. Science grouped around
the Science of Man, and all leading up to that — and one thing
more— so ordered that it will ennoble the human heart and enrich
human life.

Thus Humanity throws across our whole mental range, and everj
process of thought, a great central creative Principle. It explains
Man to himself, explains the world of Nature and his relation to it^
explains to him his Duty in the double condition of his own nature
and his external surrounding on this planet.

But every Religion that ever was must have something more than
Belief. It has some kind of externiJ Devotion : Worship-'Com-
memorati<»i — ceremony — thanksgiving.

It is here that the modem sceptic, agnostic, materialist, even the
■ modem Deist, -or Theosophist, is most Scandalised, most satdrioal, or
-most hostile to Positivism^ But what is' worship ? Simply the out-

1881. THE CREED OF A LAYMAN. 467

yf^oA expression, the visible emotion, of Veneration, and of Self-
surrender to a Power or a Being that we love and serve.

But no men are without it, or wish to discard it altogether. The
outward expression of Veneration, Love, Devotion of Self, is not dead
even in our puzzled, divided, shy, material England of to-day, on the
dry ashes of the Calvinist Volcano, in the Gospel of Plutonomy, and
each for himself. It is not extinct even in the most negative and
atheistic school. No living men show a deeper sense of Worship — if
worship be the visible expression of Reverence and of Self-sacrifice —
than some of the maddest communists, materialists, and social^
democrats. They are for ever making demonstrations of their
enthusiastic regard for some, public cause — some social ideal. The
commemoration of Voltaire is worship, the annual visit to the graves
of the slaughtered Communists is worship, the devotion to the Bed
Flag, or the White Flag, or the Tricolor, is worship. When Atheist,.
Voltairean, Democratic Paris pours out on All Saints' Day in a mass .
to the cemeteries, Paris is performing an act of worship, such as
Protestant, serious England, with her Established Church and her
thousand sects, never knew.

But Worship is a thing far other than public demonstrations in
churches or processions. If Worship be the visible or conscious out-
pouring of our affection, attachment, self-sacrifice, it is about us ever
(thanks be to Humanity) in our homes, and in our souls, alone, or in.
our fisuxiilies, as in great gatherings of men and women. All acts of
public homage and respect, all private offerings of friendship and of
duty are acts of Worship. All honest rejoicing at a marriage and a
birth, all real mourning at a funeral, the visible emotions in the
sacred quiet of the household, axe acts of Worship, if only they are
real, unselfish, spontaneous. The yoimg mother as she hangs breath-
less to watch her child asleep, the married pair as they sit side by side
watching their children as they blossom into life, the daughter at
the grave of her mother, the mother weeping over the letters of her
son, two friends who rest true to each other, though duty, space, or
death separate them, every man who in silence and in pmity of heart
resolves that somebody or something shall be the better for him ere
he die, every hpnest man who throws his heart into his work — all of
these are fulfilling an irresistible act of Worship.

Away, then, with the peevish paradox of pedants and cynics that
mankind has outgrown Worship. Man never was more prone to
Worship, for he worships no longer in terror, ignorance, self-interest.
He worships all that he finds of Good in the world; he worships
freely, and he worships thoughtfully, wisely, and sweetly.

And why are we to discard this irrepressible appeal to Emotion ?
If human life is to be warmed and guided by a high purpose and
a noble affection, we must cultivate that affection, consciously appeal
to it, stimulate it, give it free play, frankly and heartily show our

468 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. March

sense of tlie beauty of it, without shame and without stint. Affec-
tion^ self-devotion, social duty of all kinds, are powerfully kindled by
the very act of expression. In matters of the heart the expression
is the act. We love most when we show love. We grow nobler by
acknowledging every real and noble resolve. We come closer to one
another when we vow to stand close for ever. We surrender ourselves
most purely when we are uttering our sense of adoration. Emotion,
like every sound feeling, grows as we give it play. * We tire of
acting,' says Auguste Comte ; * we tire even of thinking ; we never
tire of loving.'

What an infinite field for Worship is there opened in the ReUgion
of Humanity 1 There is the expression of our Reverence, attach-
ment and Devotion to the onward Progress of our race, itself perpe-
tually stimulatiug us to add something to its sum of good ; there
is the commemoration of every worthy life, the continuation of the
memory of the great dead, the acknowledgment of all the unceasing
Providence it provides us.

But Worship in our faith is not limited to this. Our duty to
our great Western Commonwealth of nations, to our own country,
to our city, to our immediate community, to our families, to those
dearest and closest, our responsibility for those dependent on us, on
those who serve us, on the poor around us, on all whom we can help,
every quality of civic, or domestic, or personal duty, the spirit of
loyalty, chivalry, of protection, of submission^ of discipline, of
brotherliness, of courtesy, of graciousness, every quality of man, every
serious act of our public or private lives, — ^may alike be ennobled
and inspired, when deepened by the expression of a true and pure
Emotion.

I say nothing of all those solemn and public acts of expression
by which Auguste Comte has proposed to celebrate the long past, the
great Power, the high hopes of Humanity, a series of public com-
memorations going through each great epoch of civilisation.

I say nothing now of those ceremonies by which he sought to
clothe every civic and domestic act with the outward and visible
mark of a great social character. I say nothing of those ceremonies
(which he called sacraments), by which he sought to stamp on the
personal life of each of us the social destiny that awaits us.

I say nothing of all of these. They remain for the Future to work
out. They might be to many a difficulty. They may find some
further development. I insist on none of these, for they are at most
but on trial, in their germ.

All that I do insist upon is this — that a direct and visible appeal
to our sense of Duty is as natural now as it was when the Athenians
at Salamis were heard by the Persian host chanting the songs of Hie
Grods before the greatest battle of the world, or when French
Democrats went smiling to death singing the Marseillaise.

1881. THE CREED OF A LAYMAN. 46»

Man cannot forego the expression of noble feeling, if he is to
have noble feeling at all.

And in the History of Man, in the life of Man, in the duties and
relations of man to man, we shall find an inexhaostible field for the
eipression of every note in the gamut of human feeling.

Thought and Feeling are not enough. We need Practice— Action.
Hence the elements of Religion are not only Belief, that is, an intel-
lectual scheme, and Worship, or an appeal to the highest Feeling,
but Discipline (or Scheme of Life).

Here, again, in active life the central point of Humanity ofiers
ns a dominant Principle. Theology with its ideal Heaven and
unearthly rewards always draws off its devotees from active life,
treats it as a stumbling-block to godliness, has really nothing to say
to it, except to hope that it will be saintly. What more have the
Metaphysics of the Universum or the Infinite to say to active life ?
How is the Unknowable, or Infinity, or the Universal Mind, to be
made the basis of practical enei^gy ?

Theology and Metaphysics renounce the domain of active life, as
a hermit might shun a battle.

The only practical Gospel which now directs active life in the
retreat of Theology and of Metaphysics from that which is the real
end of Man's existence — ^the only Practical Gospel now current is
the so-caUed Economic Gospel of Each for Himself, and the World
coming right at last by every one pursuing his personal interest.

Between the fantastic unworldliness of Theology, and the cynical
worldliness of mere Plutonomy, stands Positivism with its claim to
base man's active existence on an unselBsh co-operation in the prac-
tical welfare of Humanity — with no extravagant self-renunciation,
but as the natural and healthy end of human activity, under the
impulse of social sympathy, as in the long run the best for us all, and
the truest source of happiness. This is, in fact, the principle of
'The greatest happiness of the greatest number ' — utilitarian in effect,
though not utilitarian in motive, but social, unselfish, benevolent.

If it be said that this is an impossible ideal — a Utopian standard
of duty — how much less Utopian and alien to human instincts is it
than the Theological crown of glory I

If it be said that it is an appeal from the more violent selfish in-
stincts to the less potent unselfish duties — ^what religion that ever
deserved the name did not seek to curb the selfish instincts by
invoking the superior charm and permanence of the nobler elements
of the human spirit ?

The practical, sensible, free service of Humanity by intelligent
work towards the general well-being of the Race stands between the
artificial dreaming of Theology and the bestial self-seeking of
Plutonomy, without asceticism, without unreality, without vulgarity
— working happily and naturally, devoted to Industry but xuo^

470 THE NINETEENTH CENTOMT. Matcb

ecraggerating InduBtry, seeking material results, but only as the
stepping-stone to moral results, dealing with the world like prodaoers,
citizens, politicians, but acting so . that all work shall conduoe to
Beauty, Wisdom, Goodness*

I put this question to all who from any point of view believe
that human life is in need of mending. Is anything (in this age of
knowledge and civilisation) at all worth trying unless it can assert its
power over the Intellectual World, the Moral World, and the Practical
World ?

Does any one but a professing Christian believe that Theology, in
any one of its shifting forms, really asserts its power alike over all
three?

Is there anything that does assert it, or can assert it — ^bring to
this test, Pantheism, or Atheism, Evolution, . the Unknowable— is
there anything that stands the test of all three but the Principle of
referring all to the Humanity that is, that has been, that is to be?

This idea, we may say, is in the air, about us everywhere, and is
ever growing up unconsciously in men's minds. Still, it does not
follow but that it will meet with endless objections. But what are
objections ? and why need we expect to satisfy them ? It is the age
of objections, and of objectors : a large portion of the cultared
classes think the true function of the human brain is to manu&cture
objections. What is called ' literature ' and < criticism ' is for the
most part the trade of supplying the public with objections, just as
the business of the * Opposition ' in Parliament is always to show
that the Crovenmient is wrong, and of the counsel on the other side
always to show that his ' learned friend ' has no case. Such is the
fertility of the enstatic genius that the trade flourishes in the Houses,
in the Courts, in letters. A critic wpuld, indeed, be a tyro if he
could not find a hundred ^ objections ' to every religion and every
philosophy from Moses to the Latter-day Saints.

But men who mean to do anything do not occupy themselves
largely in satisfying objections, or the still more hopeless task of
satisfying objectors. Ideas, schemes, institutions, slowly win their
way upon the world by virtue of their power to assimilate mental
and moral forces, and their general fitness . for a given sitnatioo.
In how small a degree do they succeed by logical triumphs ! Vfithr
out pretending any comparison \^hich many would resent, one may
say this : Christianity would have made slow way, if it had waited
till it had an answer to all the philosophers ; or Protestantism, if
it had waited till it had satisfied the objections of its Catholic critics.
Nor would what is vaguely called Liberalism or Progress have pro-
gressed very far, if it were bound to silence its opponents, those who
were so by conviction, and those who were so by profession. The
human faith, like every faith, will win its way by affirmations and
proofe, not by rejoinders and surrebutters.

1881. THE CREED OF A LAYMAN. 471

This would still be so, if the human faith were something new ;
but it is not new. Shouts of laughter are raised at the very idea of
a New Beligion. Let us grant freely that there is something laugh-
able in a new fieligion, thoi^h Moses, Christ, and Mahomet did not
think the idea a lau<^1ung matter. Sober modems, as we all now
profess to be, will, however, agree that thei;e is something at least
hugely paradoxical about the idea of a really new religion. The
human faith is in truth the old faith ; it is the oldest of aU religions ;
it brings the newer phases of religion into relations with the older*
There is nothing really new in the Religion of Humanity except. the
fonnal and systematic embodiment of aU those yearnings of heaart and
imaginative visions of the world which formed the inner life of so
many forms of tentative religion. Moses, St. Paul, Mahomet, and
Luther now meant, as we can show, the same essential thing in a vague
mystical way — so too did Bouddha and Confucius — they all sought
that great conception which should explain to Man himself and the
World around him, the law on which both rested, so that thereby
Man, finding it, should have peace, and rise to the purity and might
of his full nature. And they all found peace,'found purity and might,
for a time in a limited degree, and they called their great key to the
infinite, Jehovah, Islam, the Bijble, Nirvana, the Bight Bule.

All kinds of religion have sought these two things. (1) the truth
of man'? relation to the Universe. (2) the true source and canon of
man's duty. All sorts of incomplete, poetical, or mystical answers
have been given to these two questions. Positivism now simply says
— (1) The true relation of Man to the Universe is the relation proved
by Science ; (2) the source and canon of man's duty is to be found in a
true and full knowledge of human nature. How can any one call this
new ? Kvery kind of religion has tried to give the answers in a par*
tial way, in imaginative, anthropomorphic, or fanciful impersonations*
They all, says Positivism, bad their strong points and should be
utilised, provided they be reduced to science, that is, to systematised
common sense, and be made mutually consistent.

What has happened in the case not of every new Beligion (there
is no such thing possible), but of every new conception of Beligion,
is this : that spiritual men, struck with some crying evil or void in
the old conception, have ardently pressed on the society of their time
a new, or purer, or larger conception. In. so doing, they have often
n^lected, sometimes have even piuposely neglected, the strcmg side
of the old ccmception. All new sy^ms or new readings of old systems
conquer, when they succeed, by virtue of some great want that they
fil^ not by satisfying the subtlest doubt in every ingenious mind.
Polytheism afibrded an inexhaustible field for the fancy and the ^energy
of anci^it civic life. Christianity, burning to restore tf^ a corrupt
aiad orueL age the srase of purity, humility, and humanity^; flung
^side beauty, joy^ freedom, patriotism^ philosophy, and manly cultvre^

472 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Maich

in order to cast itself with passionate contrition before an ascetic
and terrible image of Man and Grod. The Cros?, Sin, Death, Damna-
tion came into the world, doing great things, crushing oat great
tilings. IVfahomet, again, trampled on the gross hagiology of the
Grreek Church, and called his warriors to rally round their one God
and His immutable Will.

All systems of religion have insisted powerfully on some great
element of spiritual life, and have been systems of religion because
they did so. They were usually indifferent, contemptuous, or hostile
to the great elements of their predecessors. The great Polytheists
repudiated the confusion and grossness of Fetichism ; the Monotheism
pointed with shame and scorn to all that had been sacrificed when
Venus was made a goddess, and Mars, Mithras, and Apis were jumbled
into one indiscriminate pantheon ; still more did the Seformers rave
against all the vices of Mariolatry and Hagiology, and what had come
out of a celibate priesthood and a powerful hierarchy.

The good sense of mankind in the long run throws off these one-
sided efforts to make religion first all energy and versatility ; then all
ecstasy and self-control; then all submission and austerity; and,
finally, all mysticism and spiritual recileptivity.

It is inevitable that, each time a stronger and more rational con-
ception of religion begins to prevail, the devotees and the advocates
of the old conception should cry out that they are being robbed of
the particular feature of religion which the old conception represented.
The old conception invariably in course of time had come to exag-
gerate and even caricature its special element. Nowadays deep aod
tender souls cry out < where else can you find that intense force to
wring and curb the heart which we have in the image of an allnseeing
Ood in whose eyes the most secret sin, the faintest gust of passion, is
an offence to be expiated only by the blood of his own Son ? ' No
doubt it is a tremendous force and has had infinite command over
human passion. But the question is whether the idea is true,con8i^
tent with the rest of man's knowledge, and on the whole an adequate
explanation of human life. The question is whether people still con-
tinue to believe it ; whether too much is not sacrificed in trying to
get them to believe it. If the world still believes this explanation,
we shall hear little of Positivism. If the world has ceased to beUeve
it, it is useless to tell Positivists that they are without this teiiific
engine of morality. Positivists reply that the terrific engine having
now ceased to work, it is best to £ei11 back on such human and rational
motives of social duty as moral science and history suggest.

Suppose the United Eangdom Temperance Alliance were to preach
that every glass of ardent spirits had the effect of oxalic acid and
would bum up the vitals of the drinker in ten minutes : suppose that
temperance orators had actually persuaded a very ignorant population
that this was true. The people at last find them out and take again

1881. THE CREED OF A LAYMAN. 473

to drink. A more sober body of temperance advocates appeal to them,
in the name of moral and social duty. Whereupon the advocates of
the oxalic acid theory cry out — ^ The most potent of all the tem-
perance arguments is being abandoned ! ' Potent, no doubt, so long
as it is believed in, and provided it be true. It is not difficult to get
potent arguments either for an agitation or for a religion, if you feel
at liberty to resort to your invention for your moral and religious
sanctions.

So too with the whole apparatus of ecstatic bliss, endless torment,
seraphic rejoining with loved ones, the eternal recompense for earthly
pain, the everlasting communing of congenial souls, the heavenly
contemplation of infinite goodness — all these have been the force of
Christianity, the force of Catholicism, the force of Protestantism.
How often has the overburdened spirit felt peace amid agony and
bereavement : how often have the djdng lips smiled in peace : what
trust and calm have beamed in the eyes of the weakest, the most
afflicted, the most forsaken I We know it all. We too have felt all
these things. We are not cynics, swinishly deaf to the spiritual
voices. Why ask us if we have any such things in our faith ; if we
can give these seraphic raptures, these superhuman joys and hopes ?

Certainly, not. It is quite possible that no rational faith what-
ever has any exact equivalent to these ecstasies, or can work these
miracles in subduing sense, and galvanising certain chords of emotion.
Perhaps not 1 But the question again is, are they true, are they
real, or are they artificial ? Because if they are, if men once begin to
suspect that, after all, these joys are pious hopes, pious fancies, pious
frauds, it will go ill with the believers as well as with the preachers.

It is idle, therefore, now to cry out that we are robbing men of
this exquisite bliss, and hope, and trust. There is no trust, no bliss^
or hope in it; if men come (they know not how) to doubt if it be
true — rather there is an awful abyss and void. In these days the
business before the orthodox is not to show how sublime or ecstatic
these hopes are (if they be real) — but whether or not they are real.
This is work enough for the present.

It is beside the question, therefore, to expatiate, as do curates and
the semi-theological journals, on the infinite sublimity or pathos* of
the current gospels and creeds. Do not expatiate on their beauty ;
but restore us our trust in their credibility and reality. You might
as well enlarge on the superior advantages of immortality here oa
earth, and argue that therefore it is materialism to believe in death
at all. Or you might call on us to be as the Angels are, and to pass
like Seraphim into serener worlds than this. The sublimity of a
conception is no proof of its reality ; gives us no guarantee that it is
not a dream — rather the contrary. Children long to be angels^
fiuries, or stars. Men desire to be the best that mortal men on this
^la^net can become.

474 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. March

The ooly question for serious instructed men in the Nineteefltb
Century is this : what, with all the lights of modem science, higtoty,
and philosophy, is the soundest and completest view, to take of Han^s
place in the world, and Man's duty to himself and to others? It is
qi^te possible that the answer may not include the ecstatic and gor-
geous visions of the Gospel, but it will include a vast deal tbat the
Gospel shuts out, and its practical effect on the entire scope of human
life may be far more equable and complete.

. . Some Christian devotees seem in a chronic state of cataleptic pre-
disposition. Civilisation would come to an end, or would return to the
condition of the twelfth century, if this artificial condition of spiritual
tension were common to the busy millions on the earth. Real rdigion
is not to be measured by the hysterical sensibilities of a few selected
men and women, who have leisure to nurse their emotions, who know
very little ofthe world and nothing, it may be, of history. Canitbethat,
for all time, and for the whole human race, the conditions of Beligion
must be squared to the visions which the author of the ^ Imitation'
saw in his cell, and the author of ' Pilgrim's Progress' saw in his
prison ? If we take a broad view of the spiritual manifestations of the
whole human race, we shall find that this particular type of soolis
one amongst many, one of the most beautiful, one of the most memo-
rable, but still one highly artificial and strung upon a single chord.
The heroism and the graces of the ancient world were not drawn from
this type; nor was the imposing strength of the Eastern religions;
nox are the rich and splendid resources of modem civilisation. The
human faith will make no attempt to talk in the language of monks
and puritans ; it will talk to men in the language of men.

We often hear that there is much uncertainty as to what Hmna-
nity is, and still more as to what its past history has been. There
may be sopie margin of uncertainty as to what the English people i^s
and a greater as to what has been the history of the English people.
But both ideas are amply sufficient for the feeling of patriotinn and
the work of politics. Humanity is a general term for a reality that
can only be varied within very moderate limits, and the general
course of civilisation is sufficiently clear for practical purposes. The
olgection to the vagueness of humanity comes but strangely from the
mouths of theologians who interpret the being of the Godhead and
the nature of Christ in infinite modes, all of th^n being professedly
a 'priori hypotheses. Whatever Humanity may be, or its history may
have been, it appeals exclusively to scientific proof and recorded &ets.
Argument and difference are possible as to the exact value of those
facts, as about the solar system, or spontaneous generation. But the
whole discussion from beginning to end is in the field of science ; and
its. methods are rational and experimental.

Those who in the main adopt the scheme of Auguste Comte will
think of Humanity and its Past as he does, as explained by the whole

188). THE CREED OF A LAYMAN. 475

courae of poeitive Sociology. But the practical effidacy of the Humati
Synthesis will not need to wait for this. It is exerting already its
influence over masses of men, who conceive of it loosely and feebly
perhaps, who are almost blind to its true continuity, but who are able
to feel its reality and dominant control. Since it is the real solution
of the problems wMch have lain at the root of so many types of re-
ligion, its property is to appear by degrees through the dissolving
fragments of other creeds. For a century at least, since the later
half of the last century, it has been the real force that has stimulated
and disciplined society. As the orthodoxies fail men and the older
Churches and societies give way, men tall back instinctively and
unoonsciously on fiiunanity, for guidance, for help, for discipline.
Humanity has no need to be brought down or revealed to men. It is
there amongst them, as it has long been, working and shaping them.
It needs only to become familiar and articulate.
« What a picture of human life may we not see, as in a vision,
under the influence of this vivifying principle !

Underneath all lies the indispensable institution of a universal
Education — an education for all, free, open, without conditions, an
education which may put the capable artisan on an intellectual level
with any other citizen, an education continued long after the child-
hood or boyhood, until the maturity of manhood, which is now. only
thought the privilege of the rich. An Education, universal in another
sense, that it will be a real training in science, not a mechanical
exercise in language, an Education leading up to a practical know-
ledge of man'& history and his social and moral nature.

Whence is such an Education to come, it is said ? Whence, but
from the sense of social duty, and of social necessity in those who
hold the material and intellectual resources of society, the rich and
the learned ? If the zeal of all the social reformers, the conscience
and public spirit of all the patriotic citizens, the patience of the man
of science and the philosopher, the enthusiasm of the missionary, the
evangelising spirit of the Christian,, all pulled one way, and converged,
as they now diverge and counteract each other, what would not result ?
Now 10,000 pulpits are fulminating against 10,000 newspapers,
reviews, and lectures, and the fervour of the socialist reformer is
quenched in the cold logic of the anti-social economist, and the crude
sense of the practical statesman. Find them a common doctrine,
fuse science, religion, socialism, economy, progress, conservatism, in
one purpose, and the force of the educating power (now frittered
away in internecine combat) would be beyond the reach of thought.

Out of such an educating body (call them philosophers, men of
science, lecturers, preachers, priests, or thinkers) would rise up ne-
cessarily a spiritual, moralising force. The intellectual activity of a
world based on the ever present Image of Humanity, could not rest
in Material Science. Its whole intellectual system would converge

476 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Jlarch

towards the focus of Man. The Science of Uumaa Nature, as the
noblest part of Science, would be the Crown and End of Science; and
the noblest faculty of Man would be the subject of the Science of Human
Nature. ^ Men of Science ' would not mean men who cut up frogs,
and resolve nebulae into new star worlds ; but it would primarily
mean moralists, social philosophers, historians. Science, philosophy,
literature, law, would not be -fields for accumulating a fortime, or
winning some personal prize : they would be the great functions on
which society itself depends.

Nor would this education be an intellectual one alone. It would
be a training of the moral nature, of the feelings, of the heart
Women would be the great educators and moral regenerators— none
being doomed to struggle in an idle competition in physical force
with men, they would form the spirit of the young, become the moral
providence of the home, and the moral inspirers of society— pre-
senting in public and in private life the highest standard of spiritual
truth. And life in public and private would be continually renewed
by a set of institutions and practices that recalled to us its meaning
and referred it to its higher purpose.

Enlightened by a systematic and scientific philosophy, moralised
and dignified by a constant appeal to duty, man's active life would

be set free to devote all its resources to the amelioration of our

«

human lot. Industry would be moderated, inspired, and moralised,
until it purged itself of the detestable aim of piling up fortunes and
securing personal enjoyments, and set itself to raise the condition of
the workers themselves — capital being held in trust as the puhlic
instrument of the community, captains of industry feeling themselres
as much bound to watch over the welfare of their soldiers, as are
captains of armies in the field. The business of the rich would he to
use wealth in the noble spirit of social advancement that the hest
philosophers have shown in the use of their knowledge, and the hest
rulers have shown in the use of their power. The incalculable
resources of modem civilisation and the boundless ingenuity of
modem invention would all be resolutely concentrated, not in the
task of scrambling for wealth over the bodies and souls of the
creators of wealth, but in an intelligent resolve to mitigate the lot of
the toiling masses, and to provide against the consequences of social
disorder. A few generations would suffice to make the world forget
(as if it were the dark ages) this sordid Battle of Pelf (with its self-
help and survival of the unfittest) in which we live, until Industry
itself passed by an almost unconscious transition into the mere cul-
tivation of Art and Beauty, and work was concentrated in the
expression of pure and noble Feeling.

In Humanity human life meets and rests at last. Science and
Philosophy by it become human, moral, co-ordinated. Devotion
becomes rational and practical. Art becomes religious, social, crea-

1881. THE CREED OF A LAYMAN. 477

live. Industry becomes beneficent, unselfish, ennobling. PoUtics
become a public duty, not an ignoble game. Education becomes a
rational preparation for a true life. Beligion becomes the bond of
spirits within, and of multitudes without. The People enter upon
their true Sovereignty, for their well-being is the grand object and
care of society. Women at last receive their dUe place, for theirs is
the largest part in the moral and spiritual guidance of their age.
The Past is summed up and expressed in the Present, and the two
become the natural parent of the Future. And so the whole human
race slowly after centuries puts off the habit of War, as it has put off
the habit of slavery, and becomes conscious of the vast Brotherhood
whose mission is to people and to improve this Planet.

Faedebic Habbison.

Vol. IX.— No. 49. K K

47«

.THB mi^nTEmm. omwry.

Mardi

> I

(

..u-

SMOKE PREVENTION.

It is now two hundred and twenty years since John* Evelyn called
attention to the evils of the smoke of London^ In 1661 he pnblidied
a tractate, with the title : Fv/mifugium^ or, the inconvenience of the
Avr and smoke of London dissipated, together with some remedies
hunibly proposed by J* E, Esq. It bears on the title-page a motto
from Lucretius :

Carbonumque gravis vis, atque odor insinuatur
Quam facile in cerebrum I

— a truth which all who have to work with their brains now in Londoo
will have no difficulty in acknowledging. The book is dedicated to
the king, as a lover of noble buildings, gardens, pictures, and all
royal magnificence, and his Majesty is appealed to with confidence
as one who must needs desire to be freed from the prodigious annoy-
ance, then only beginning seriously to invade the metropolis. But
Charles the Second loved other things more than the objects of fine
taste, on behalf of which the author of Sylva appealed to him, nor was
public opinion then ripe for listening to wise counsels and solemn
warnings on such a matter. In vain was it pointed out how the perni-
cious nuisance could be reformed, and how the whole city, with its
great natural advantages, might be made one of the sweetest and most
delicious habitations in the world. At that time London had extended
but little beyond the boundaries of the City proper, the nobility still
dwelt in it, or in the Strand, and there were abundant open spaces
about their houses ; yet Evelyn complains that the gardens would
no longer bear fruit, giving as the reason for this the increase of
coal-smoke, and he mentions orchards in Barbican and along the
river, which were observed to have a good crop the year in which
Newcastle was besieged (1644), because but a small quantity of coals
was brought to London that year. He calls the smoke one of the
foulest inconveniences and reproaches that can possibly befall so
noble and otherwise incomparable a city, and claims that it should he
relieved from what renders it less healthy and more offensive, and
which darkens and eclipses all its good attributes ; and this is nothinj^
else but ^ that hellish and dismal cloud of sea-coal.'

Evelyn enumerates among the greatest offenders in csusing

1 881 . SMOKE prevention: 479

smoke, bakehouses, breweries, together with the places in which
their trades, requiring fires or furnaces, are carried on, and eren
specifies a lime-kiln on the Thames in the heart of London. His
proposed remedies, it must be confessed, were not very practical, and
mainly consisted in recommending the use of wood instead of coal as
fuel, and in removing the chief offensive trades to a short distance
from London.

What was bad two hundred years ago has beooma enormously
worse in our own times. The area of London has increased to some-
thing like one hundred square miles, its inhabitants may be estimated
at four millions, and the number of chinmeys emitting smoke' at pro-
bably three or four millions, consuming a vast quantity of coals
annually, of which a fourth part is wasted in the shape of smoke* It
is. certain also that, with modem notions of comfort and deske of
g^reater warmth, more fuel is now burnt in proportion to the number
of chimneys and inhabitants than was formerly the case.

It may seem almost superfluous and unnecessary to remind any
dweller in, .or visitor to Loudon of the manifold* evils due to the
presence of smoke as it now exists in the metropolis. We see it at
its very worst when combined with actual fog in that unholy and un-
wholesome alliance, so well described by the President of the Boyal
Society when speaking at the public meeting held at the Mansion.
House early in last January. But it is always with us, around us,^
or above us, a constant ^ smoke-curse,' spreading like a baleful pall of
darkness across the fair face of heaven, as described in a letter firom
Sir Frederick Leighton, President of the Boyal Academy, which was
read upon the same occasion. Even when the lower atmosphere is
comparatively clear, and can be breathed without difficulty, the per-
vading obscurity is felt, and there is the incessant deposit of uncon-
sumed particles of fuel, either in the shape of flakes of falling soot,
or in a more minutely divided, but yet more mischievous and in-^
sidious form of attack upon all that is most precious to us.

Considerations of life and health must of course take precedence
of all others ; and here we find, from statistics which cannot be denied
.or disputed, the fearful havoc made by London fogs upon the well-
being of the community.

The increase of mortality during the fogs which, more or less,
were prevalent in London from November 1879 to February 1880,
has been discussed .by Dr. Arthur Mitchell, and the results published
in the Journal of the Scottish Meteorological Society — and it must
never be lost sight of, in dwelling upon them, that the mischief done
.is not due to the fog alone, which outside of a smoke-laden atmosphere
jDight be innocuous — and that whenever in such accounts we en^
counter the word fog, it really means fog plus smoke. The increase
in the deathrrate during this murky and dismal period was indeed
frightful. The mortality in the seven weeks ending on the 2l8t of

kk2

480 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. March

Febraary 1880, as taken from the Registrar-General's reports, shows
an addition of many thousands to the average and normal rate of
death. Sufferers from asthma were the chief victims, and in their
case the mortality increased to 220 per cent, above the average,
during the week of the most oppressive fogs* The deaths from
bronchitis rose at one time to a total which was 331 per cent, above
the average. The number of fatal cases in pneumonia, pleurisy, and
other lung diseases was largely added to ; and, as may be easily under-
stood, the mischief did not cease with the disappearance of the fogs,
but frequently must have remained with greater or less malignitj,
ending in early death, or in constitutions permanently enfeebled and
deteriorated. The rise in the number of fatal cases of whooping-
cough was also remarkably great. Dr. Mitchell's paper received able
notice in Nature in December last (from which the above figures are
taken), a periodical which, as becomes its high scientific reputation,
has sustained a prominent and most useful part in the campaign now
being carried on — in the combat between suffering humanity on the
one hand, and the destroying smoke-demon on the other.

Nor must other phases of illness and discomfort, although Ming
short of mortal disease, be forgotten. There is the cold which cannot
be got rid of; the tiresome cough ; the constant headache, depiesdon
of spirits, and unfitness for work, from which few are so fortunate as
to escape during a time of fog — that is to say, in London, of fog and
smoke. It seems needless to pass in review other great and unfortu-
nately too familiar forms of evil engendered by fog. The interruption
of traffic in the streets, with all its concomitant dangers to life and
limb and property ; the total stoppage or interruption of many kinds
of business and employment ; the facilities given to plunder, either
by stealth or violence, are only too obvious.

The physician cannot be summoned to aid the suffering patient,
whose state may have been rendered more critical by a deadly ftg; or
if summoned, is unable to reach the place where his services are to be
rendered. Less serious perplexities arise when the invited guest must
perforce remain for the night in the house of the entertainer, from
which the universal darkness prevents departure ; or when the mem-
bers of a club have to use such suddenly improvised accommodation
as can be provided for them under similar circumstances.

Turning to the region of art, the calamities and evils of a smoke-
laden atmosphere are indeed serious and manifold. In time of actual
fog the painter cannot see to paint, nor is the lover of pictures able
to see them. The life of a painter and amateur of his art in London
during the winter is one of patience, trials, and constant disappoint-
ment. At all times valuable pictures in London require such pro-
tection as is not needed elsewhere. The responsible custodians of
public picture galleries, as well as private owners, are compelled to
resort to the expedient of covering their most treasured canvases

1881. SMOKE PREVENTION. 481

with glass, which is equivalent to destroying a large proportion of
the advantage and pleasure to he gained hy looking at them, hut is
a measure of aheolute necessity if succeeding generations are to
inherit our present possessions in a state of fiEdr preservation.

The buildings of London are blackened, and the very stones with
which they are faced are decomposed, by the erosive and destructive
qualities of some of the ingredients of coal-smoke, and other products
of combustion. The finest architectural effects are thus spoiled, as
may be seen notably in St. Paul's Cathedral and the palace of West-
minster. The unhappy statues in the open air are mehmcholy
objects, enveloped in a black and furry coating of deposited soot. AU
objects of an are exposed to constant injury and deterioration.
Books which in the Ubrary of a country house would retain the fresh-
ness of a new binding for almost a lifetime, lose it in London in
almost as many weeks as it would take years to destroy it if beyond
the reach of the arch-destroyer.

The artists of the dramatic stage, the opera, and the concert-room,
and all who have to exercise their voices in public, suffer exceedingly
in times of fog, as do the audiences, whose enjoyment is marred by
the enforced incapacity of the performers to gratify them according
to their wont, when the choking atmosphere interferes with their
best exertions.

Last, but not as the least evil, must be mentioned the baleful
effect of smoke upon the parks and gardens of London, and on all
vegetation exposed to its influence. A letter from the Bev. Septimus
Hansard, rector of Bethnal Green, addressed to the joint Fog and
Smoke Abatement Committee of the National Health and Kyrle
Societies, and read at one of their meetings in last December, ex-
plains very clearly the extent of this mischief, but also happily
gives good hope of a remedy, if only it is sought for with patience
and 'perseverance. Sixteen years ago, when Mr. Hansard took pos-
session of this rectory, he was told that not a blade of grass would
live upon his lawn, and he was laughed at for thinking of growing
flowers. Altogether he had to deal with nearly four acres of open
groimd, but surrounded by houses, and in close proximity to eight
manufacturing chimneys, all of low elevation. He availed himself
of the Smoke Nuisance Act, and enlisted the sympathy of his poorer
neighbours to assist him, and especially asthmatic invalids, and women
who had clothed to put out to diy, and other individual sufferers.
By steady continuance in this course the result is, that Mr. Hansard
now has a lawn fit to play croquet or lawn-tennis upon, for which he
challenges comparison with any lawn in the most distant suburbs of
London* He can now grow no less than thirty-nine annuals ; lilies
of various kinds flourish with him, and gardeners will not fail to
appreciate the improvement obtained, upon learning that Mr. Han-
sard can now boast of his specimens of asphodel, his Greek acanthus.

482! THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Marck

hia ladian pinks, and his Phl(xcJ}rummcmdiu: The mtAoi of Bethnal
Gteen points x)Ut. that what has been^done- in one parish can be done
in another, and thai the police, if duly kept acquainted with infringe-
ment of the law, which they cannot be expected in every case to
notioe for themselves, are always willing to do their duty. His
experience further enables Mr^ Hansard to say that the owners of
offending chimneys are, itx iiie most x)art, ready to do the right
thing when duejattention is called to them. Tliat it is clearly for
their pecuniary interest to consume tiie fuel which is so largely and
;ab6olutely wasted, and thrown away in the shape of smoke, needs no
'denioustration. Every particle of coal which is driven off as smoke,
.and is not burnt in the furnace or fireplace as flame, is so much good '
combustible matter lost to the person who has paid for it, and all the
labour and time occupied in putting it into the fiimace, or on to the
fire, is just so much labour and time altogether lost and rendered un-
productive.

Having now gone over the various counts of a most formidable
indictment for nuisance, it is certainly strange to have to remark
that evils of such magnitude and persistence as those arising from
London smoke should have been allowed to continue with so little
effort made to check them. It is true that l^slation has not been
wholly neglected in the matter. In 1847, a general Town Begulati<m
Act contained a provision for factories to consume their own smoke.
The Act for smoke abatement passed in 1853, and eittended in 1856,
ifaas done something for the relief of the metropolis. The Sankaiy
Act of 1866 prohibits black smoke issuing from chimneys iii soch
quantity as to be a nuisance. Nor were similar prohibitions omitted
from the Public Health Acts for Scotland, England, and Ireland,
passed respectively in 1867, 1875, and 1878. But ohimneys of
private dWeUing-houses are excepted from the operation of all these
statutes.

When Lord Palmerston was at the Home Office, he applied his
vigorous common sense to the due enforcement of the earlier acts,
which, however, as has just been mentioned, applied only to mann-
fectuiring fires and furnaces. For many years past indifference or
misplaced toleration has led to considerable neglect in using the
l^gal powers which exist to prevent smoke. A long interval was
allowed to elapse during which little or no action was taken, and
with the growth of the metropolis the smoke has also grown, and
become the monstrous incubus pressing upon it, against whidh a
suffering population has for so long been almost helpless.

Recently, however, a combined effort has been made towards
endeiivOuring to obtain a better state of things. The National
Health Society, which made its seventh annual report in 1880, has
ta'ken the matter up, and, in conjunction with the mo^e reoeiitty
foAned Kyrle iSociety, is now organising a movement from which

l«8l/ SMOKH PREVENTION. 483

mach may l)e expected. The objects of the ^sb-naiaed m^ciety, as
its name imports, are to promote the ineans of averting preventible^
disease, and to diffuse the knowledge essential for healthy life in the
community. Under its auspices lectures have been given on such
subjects as House Architecture, Workmen's Homes, Food, Cookery,
Fresh Air, Elementary Physiology, and other cognate matters. The
smoke prevention question seems to fall strictly within the scope of
this society's operations, and it is allied in its present enterprise with
the Kyrle Society, whose general intentions are of a more sesthetio
character ; but to which this question also properly belougs in its
efforts to render more happy the exist«ice of thfe people at large, to
assist in any work which will tend to procure for them greater en-
joyment of the open spaces of London, to render easier the cultiva-
tion of flowers in private gardens and windows, and to preserve workrf
of art from premature and avoidable destruction;

A joint committee of the two societies has been appointed, and is
actively at work. The co-operation of the authorities of the Science
and Art Department at South Kensington has been secured, and
arrangements have been made for an exhibition to take place in this
jeat, to advance the cause of economy of fuel and bright skies,
against the predominance of waste and gloom. The resources of
South Kensington for such a purpose are unrivalled for exhibiting
apparatus, and for conducting experiments' upon fuel, and contri-^
vanbes for its most benefidial Consumption. Improved fire-grates^
furnaces, kitcheners, cooking and warming apparatus of kll kinds
for avoiding smoke, or burning smokeless coal, will be collected and
•experimented upon ; so also will be brought together and practically
examined dtfl^rent varieties of coal and othet fuels. Experiment^
will also be invited and encouraged upon a large scale at the premises
of proprietor of furnaices and factories who will permit their being
made ; and all* this will be conducted under the direction of a skilled
•comiziittee of experts. The results to be hoped for and expected
will be, foi^ the future, a more scientific and economical employment
of coal ; iitiptovements in the domestic fireplace ; a more completer
knbwli^ge of the various available kinds of coal, and their suitabilitf
for different purposes ; practical suggestioiis for the amendment or
•extension of" the existing Acts for the regulation of smoke-producing
furnaces, &c. ; and reports upon the use of gas as a means of supplying
heat, and generally to test inventions for the avoidance of smoke, and
the economical use of all kinds of fuel. Funds aie want^ to com-
plete the amount necessary to defray the expenses of the exhibition
and ttle experiments mentioned. Subscriptions have already been
recel^edi and further contributions may be paid to the secretary or
treasurer of the i^og and Smoke Abatement Committee, at No. 44-
Beni€flP8 Sttec^, Oxford Street, London.

It is not intended in this place to pronounce any opinion upon

484 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Mawh

the vast number of ingenious contrivances invented and in piogress
of invention for the prevention of smoke in trade and mann&cturiog
furnaces. This is so for two reasons : one, because the vast vdinne
of London smoke now escapes from domestic fireplaces ; the other,
because it is clear that the existing Smoke Prevention Acts, if properly
worked, together with some future possible extension of their pro-
visions, may be made almost entirely to cure the existing evil ao &r
as they can be made to bear upon it. The main principle of ail in-
ventions for smoke-consuming furnaces is the same — ^namely, to keep
the interior of the furnace as hot as possible, and secured from un-
necessary intrusion of cold air, and to insure a gradual supply of fod;
or, in other words, to provide good mechanical and automatic stoking.
But all require more or less personal attention, and it is rather to the
want of knowledge and diligence on the part of attendants, than to
any want of power to consume smoke in the various inventions, that
their frequent failure must be attributed. Ignorance and indolence
in using them lead to the same mischief as they do when human
attention alone has to be entirely relied on in stoking. The same
caution has to be observed in both cases — ^that is, not to introduce
more fuel at a time than can be at once, or almost at once, made to
burst into flame, and so that it shall not continue to give out Uack
smoke for more than a few moments. In the instances where the
attention of the owner is sharply called to the neglect of the persons
employed by him, through a police summons under the Smoke Pre-
vention Act, it generally turns out that the apparatus is not in ftult,
and it is thereupon made to do its duty.

In attempting to deal with the domestic fireplace many things
have to be carefully recollected. If an Englishman's house is his
castle, the domestic fireplace is the keep of the castle, the very ooitre
and citadel of the stronghold. If any way could be devised of im-
proving the grates of our Uviug-rooms, and the ranges of our kitdiens,
by anything at all approaching to coercive legislation, the matter
would be one of great difficulty for the Grovemment which might be
so bold as to undertake it. At present, persuasion, example, and an
appeal to motives of self-interest seem to be the only methods open to
adoption; but a good deal may &irly be expected by endeavours
made in these directions. Few people would be inclined to give up
the habitual open fireplace, with its cheerful blaze and good venti-
lating powers. It has many charms and advantages, and after all
that can be said in favour of other modes of warming a room, the
radiant heat from an open fire has merits with which nothing else can
compete when all things are taken into consideration. Certainly it
is wasteful of fuel, expensive, and makes a great deal of dirt; hot we
cling to it, and love it all the same. No sudden or immediate
change can be expected ; there is no heroic remedy to be recommended
or administered, but patient insistence on the benefits to be gained

1881. SMOKE PREVENTION. 485

in health, comfort, and pocket may gradually do much, if not every-
thing, to remove the reproach of the misfortune which now weighs,
upon the capital of England.

The exhibition at South Kensington, promoted by the National
Health and Kyrle Societies, will probably be the means of suggesting
some improvements upon the best existing domestic fireplaces, and
in the fuel to be burned in them, and the mode of using it. But
there are now many excellent and inexpensive kinds of fireplace which
can be procured with ease, and many old fireplaces admit of altera-
tion by lining them with fire-brick, for example, or otherwise^
Indeed, there has been great progress in attention to the principles
which should guide the construction of a good fireplace during the
last twenty or thirty years. Well-built houses are now pretty certaia
to contain such ; and even in the inferior class of dwellings the modem
fireplaces are fiEur better than they formerly were.

It is now eighty years since Count Bumford, the founder of the
Boyal Institution, and to whom the science of heat owes so much,,
first began to improve the domestic fireplace, and the practical
directions he gave have since been largely followed. To him is due
the contraction of the opening of the chimney immediately above the
fireplace, the abolition of the hobs, and the setting of the sides of
the opening of the fireplace at the best angle for reflecting heat into
the room. He also insisted upon surrounding the burning fuel with
a non«conducting material, such as firestone or fireclay, which
retains the heat and materially assists complete combustion, so that
double the amount of heat may be obtained with the consumption of
the same. quantity of coal. The fire-brick grates, now so common,
are almost all made in conformity with the essentials laid down by
Humfbrd, and indeed many of them are superior in some respects to
those constructed under his own superintendence. He condescended
also to study the proper mode of laying and maintaining a fire so as
to avoid the unnecessary production of smoke, insisting upon the
proper distribution of coal in the grate, which should be in pieces of
a convenient size, and placed so as to allow of the firee passage of air
between them ; while in replenishing the fire also with fresh coals
the same thing should be observed, so that it should never be
smothered by too large a supply of fuel thrown on at once.

For lighting a fire, when the ordinary coal used in London
is employed, some such directions as the following should be
observed. Over the bottom of the grate should be placed a
little paper to light the wood, but not too much, as paper in.
the mass is far from being a very combustible substance, and it
leaves in burning a heavy ash, which is apt to damp the fire. Then
should come the wood, which of course ought to be quite dry, and
not packed too close r and over all the coal, hand-picked, and not
shovelled on, but arranged so as to leave openings for the circulatioa

486 THE KIKSTSSNTH CSifTURY. March

of air and the escape of the gas and smoke, which, as soon as they
are sufficiently heated, bum into flame. The fire sifter lighting
should be watched for a minute or two, to see that the Vood has
kindled and is communicating its heat to the coals. For non-
bituniinous coals much more wood is wanted, and the coal must be
in large pieces, and will take long to bum up/ It is very desiiable
that the proper mode of lighting a fire, together with some other
matters of practical elementary physics, should be taught in the
schools where our future housemaids may be receiving their edncatioD.
Without disparaging other subjects of instruction, it is enough to say
that few would be more really useful in every-day life ' than this. It
must not be forgotten, as the first thing of all, to ascertain that there
is no down-draught in the chimney, otherwise the fire when Eghted
is certain, for some time at least, to vomit forth the prodnets of
•combustion into the room, with all the familiar concomitant miseries.
The best way of doing this is to hold a piece of lighted paper aho?e
the grate, and see whether the flame ascends or is blown downwards,
in which latter case the door of the room must be shut to cut off the
-communication with the air in the rest of the house, and a window
opened. Even more detailed directions may be wanted than these,
unless the domestic engaged in the operation is an intelligent sf^ecimen
•of her class, for it has been known that, orders having been given to
hold a piece of paper up the chimney, as above mentioned, the house-
hold auxiliary has been found some minutes afterwards on her knees
before the hearth, and sedulously holding up in her hand an unlighted
piece of f^per, expecting this, as it may be supposed, to operate
:as a charm. There have been many mechanical contrivances fer
feeding the open fireplace with coal, so as to avoid smoke, in which
the principle is to supply the fresh fuel at the bottom of the fire.
This has been attempted by having a reservoir of coal beneath the
j;rate, to be raised by a winch or by a simple lever as more coal
was wanted. But these things easily get out of order, and none
have had any practical success. There have also been designs for
rotatory grates, by the action of which the fresh coal, after bdfig
placed on the top of the fire, may be made to assume a position
undem'eath it, so that the freshly generated smoke must pass through
the hot coal above, and so become ignited.

We have dwelt, perhaps, at too much' length on these simple and
homely details, but it is because by attention to these apparently
little things fires can be well lighted, and made to bum well
during their appointed times. And every fire properly lighted, and
made to bum properly afterwards, means so mudi smoke prevented,
^nd is a small but distinct diminution of the prevailing nnisanoe.
If every domestic fire in London was mam^^ as well as it might be,
the volume of London smoke would be unquestionably veiymatenally
<]imixii8hed.

1881. SMOKE PREVENTION. 487:

It is not proposed here to discuss the: questioxiB oonneeted with
the causes, or possible prevention under certoin drcumstances, of the
oocurrence of fogs. They axe among the great and ordinary meteoro-
logical phenomena which go to make the planet, upon whose surface
we Ure, what it is« They can only be controlled very partially and
in extremely limited locsdities, and are no more under human direo-
tion than are the seasons and the general weather. In eztensive
ge<^raphical regions fogs are perpetual, they flank certain sea-<;oasts
like an impenetrable wall. In general, however, this appearance is
fortunately rare, and their continuance in a particular spot depends
either on the absence of wind to disperse them, or on the existence
of vast atmospheric circular currents, cyclones and anticyclones,
which keep the fog floating about in the same place, like chips in
the eddies of a stream of water. Mention, however, should be made
of the ingenious theory of Mr. John Aitken, communicated to the
Koyal Society of Edinburgh in December last. He concludes that
there would be no visible vapour of water in the world unless there
were present in the air particles of minute dust to assist and promote
its formation. Laboratory experiments, on a small scale, seem to
afford some support to this hypothesis, which Mr« Aitk^i pushes to
the extent of asserting that if the^re were no dust in the atmosphere
there would be no fogs, no clouds, no mists, no visible steam, and
probabfy no rain. This, of course, means that wherever these constant
phenomeiia odcur, even in the highest regions of the atmosphere,
there must be dust suspended in the air ; a conclusion so vast and
novels and importing so many fresh points to be considered in the '
coikBtitution of the world in which. our lot is cast, that one may be.
exooaed for not hastily adopting it,, and for waiting at leagt for flirther
artificial experiments ui)on a much larger scale ; and.it is to be hoped
that Me. Aitken will continue his most interesting and useful line of
research.

A very able contribution to the subject of London fog was made
by Dr. Alfred Carpenter to the Society of Arts in December last, and
he points out that the jMrevailing smoke nuisance in London, and
other large towns, such as Brighton, is not really due to fog, but
simply to the presence of upeonsumed particles of carbon in the air,
arisiiig not from factories, but from the chimne]^ of dwelling-houses.
At Srig'hton there are no factories, but a large collection of well-to-do
fawn lies, who would have well-replenished fires in all their rooms,
^Aid.esp^oially in the kitchen towards the usual hour of dinner in the
late afternoon, when the smoke of Brighton is at its worst. In
LondiDn, where the Sunday dinners of the great mass of the inhabitants
take place about the middle of the day, and are more important
meals than on other days, it is at or before noon that most smoke
inaT^ be expected on a Sunday.

Dr* Alfiied Carpenter relies inuch upon the substitution of gas for

488 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. March

coal in the domestic fireplace, and contends that it might he sup-
plied for this purpose at a price which would make its use economical.
His own experience is in favour of gas stoves, so arranged that at
first sight they cannot be distinguished from an ordinary coal fire;
and he says that if he had gas in all his rooms he could do with one
servant less in his household. He adds that gas fires can be fitted to
existing grates, and points out their enormous advantages in a sick
room, to give a constant temperature by day and night, and by which
the noise of poking the fire and putting on coals is entirely avoided.
Dr. Carpenter's proposal of an impost upon badly constructed firepkce»
in private houses is, for the present at least, inadmissible. Hearth-
money was always a hateful tax, and would not now be tolerated evea
in the interests of health and economy. Other matters of scientific
value are discussed by him, but these references are intended to deal
solely with the more practical parts of a most useful paper.

Mr. BoUo Bussell, in his recently published pamphlet on LoodoD
fogs, truly shows that artificial London smoke, without any natural
fog to combine with, is alone sufficient to occasion great darkness in
London, and, of course, it is alone sufficient to produce all the dirt
of which we have to complain. A stratiun of smoke may form in
the upper region of the atmosphere, and then act as a thick pall to
intercept the rays of the sun, which may at the time be shining qnite
brightly in the open country, beyond the reach of metropolitan
smoke. This phenomenon of smoke without fog may be sometimes
seen, at Brighton, when the wind blows &om the shore and the smoke
of the town is carried out to the sea, over which it is flung for miles
like a black and dismal banner, blotting the bright sky of that
naturally sunny place. So, as Mr. Bussell remarks, may the long
line of smoke from its funnels be seen lingering in the track of a
steamer long after it has passed ; and in the country the smoke &om
a cottage chimney, on a still day, will form a fiat cloud in its neigh-
bourhood. Mr. Bussell also shows that the climate of the ooontrj
regions surrounding London is now injuriously affected by London
smoke. Bichmond is not now what it used to be, but is invaded hy
smoke ; and once, after two days of north-east wind, he counted one
hundred and six particles of soot on a square inch of snow in Rich-
mond Park. Mr. Bussell's personal observations of London fogs are
very interesting and valuable ; and he dwells vrith much force and
sympathy upon the deleterious infiuence of London smoke upon the
poorer classes, who have not even the resource of occasional escape
from it into the purer air of the country.

The lecture delivered at the Society of Arts in January last, bj
Mr. W. D. Scott Moncrieff, was too remarkable not to be here men-
tioned. It contained the outline of a vast and ingenious scheme bj
which all the coal to be consumed in London should be rendered
smokeless. By the aid of the gas companies, it is proposed that

1881. SMOKE PREVENTION. 489

smokeless coke shall become the imiversal fuel of the future ; but that
the coal, from which the coke results, shall not be so far deprived of
its inflammable gas as to render the coke also incapable of burning
with a flame. Mr. Scott Moncrieff estimates that four millions of
tons of coal are annually consumed in the house fireplaces of London,
together with two millions of coals which are reduced to coke in the
process of extracting gas from them by the gas companies ; and these
four millions of tons of coal would form a square rectangular solid
mass with a base of about 200 yards, and a height of the cross on
St. Paul's Cathedral. He proposes that all this coal should be used
for making gas, and should therefore pass through the retorts and
gasometers of the companies; and this, it is a£5rmed, would double the
illuminating power of the gas supplied, and also double the com-
mercial value to the companies of the residual product, besides saving
the value to the public of the present yearly loss of fuel which escapes
unconsumed from the fireplaces of London in the shape of smoke,
which he calculates at over two million pounds sterling.

This is indeed a gigantic proposal, but even if the gas companies
were tempted to undertake its reduction to practice, the questions
would have to be asked, whether the space at their disposal would
admit of such an extension of their operations, and suffice for
placing additional apparatus for the manufacture of gas, or still more
for the storage of the whole coal supplies of London, and of the re-
sulting coke, the enormous quantities of which have been just now
indicated ; and whether such a monopoly, and such an interference
with existing interests, are likely to be allowed. The simple practical
remark may also be made, that the result of a hot fire without smoke,
but with flame, may be at present easily obtained by a judicious
mixture of bituminous coal and of the ordinary coke as now sold by
the gas companies.

The object now in view is to try to explain what are the practical
bearings of the great smoke question, and especially to point out that
the great source of the existing evil is the domestic fireplace, to which
it will be difficult, if not impossible, to apply any legislative coercion
or control. But an attempt has been made to show that without
any, or with but little, alteration in existing grates, much may be done
to abate the mischief, if only attention is given to enforcing the pre-
cepts of common sense, and by making the best use of our existing
means, and the simple precautions within the reach of all. If every
householder will learn the art of laying, lighting, and replenishing a
fire, and will impress the necessity of knowing it upon all the
members of his family by example and instruction, and will bring, if
necessary, some pressure to bear upon the enforcement of the right
thing to be done, some advance will be made while we are waiting for
more complete and scientific remedies. The gain would be great if we
could only get rid of a quarter of the present amount of smoke.

490 THE NINETSmm OElfTURY. Maid

Twenty-five per cent, would be a diminution well worth stniggliDg
for ; fifty per oent. would be a vast improvement indeed, and theie
need be no despair of this much at least being achieved. We are
engaged in a war with the powers of darkness, and it is a conltesi^for
life, health, and happiness, for the vigorous prosecution of .wbidi
it is worth while to take a good deal of pains, to incur some trouble,
and to go to some expense — and it need not be great expense— in
modifying old grates.

It is indeed, in Boman phrase, a fight *• pro aris et focis,' but ooe
in which, unfortunately, the domestic hearth is often found ranged as
an enemy, and in rebellion against th^ interests of the household
goda. There is, however, happily no fixed reason why London should
be the murky place it so often is. At early morning, before the fires
are lighted, the atmosphere is as clear as that of Paris. X<egislato»
returning home from a long sitting of their house, and all who are
either out late or up early, may still look upon a London as fair as
that which Wordsworth gazed on from Westminster Bridge, wl^n he
' saw it all bright and glittering in the smokeless air.'

To restore the air of London to its natural purity, to diminish the
present amount of preventible disease and death, to bring back the
roses to the cheeks of the London children, and to the London paib
and gardens, to prevent our buildings, our pictures and other works
of art, our libraries, and all our belongings, from destruction and filUiy
defilement by the soot-demon, is an object surely worth as much
energy and perseverance as we are capable of devoting to it. All must
devoutly wish that the public efforts now being made towards the
accomplishment of such objects may be crowned with early success.
But it is on individual exertion that the triumph of the general and
combined effort must ultimately depend.

W. F. Pollock.

1881 491

. ' .

.Ml' ■:.••; • . . '

THE STATE OF PARTIES. '"".

The condition of the House of Commons at the present moment can
hardly be considered satisfactory by any one of the various parties
which now sit within its walls. Of the two sections into wliich the
Liberals are divided, neither can avoid the reflection that it occupies
a &lse position. The Conservatives must feel that while the present
distribution of forces remains unaltered they are deprived of their
natural allies, and compelled to submit to representations of their
own principles at the hands of both friend and foe which are damaging-
to their usefulness and popularity. The House, upoi^ the whole, pre-
sents a scene of much confusion ; and the impatience of party disci-
pline which is visible on both sides finds its counterpart in that
contempt for the authority of the House at large which actuates
the workers of obstruction. If it is true in any sense that lookers-on
see most of the game, the remarks of one, however humble, who has
looked on at the game of politics for a good many years with deep
interest may contain perhaps some particles of truth not wholly un-
worthy of consideration.

Nothing is more frequently repeated by members of the Liberal
party, whenever reference is made to its alleged want of unanimity,
than that such must necessarily be looked for in a party constituted
like their own. Freedom of thought, they say, is of the essence of
Liberalism ; discord, not harmony, is its vital principle ; it must have
room in which to speculate and expatiate —

As far as may l)e to carve out i (

Free space for every human doubt
That the whole mind may orb about.

Without this independence, this free play of idiosyncrasy, it
would cease to be Liberalism ; and it is useless, tiberefore, to complain
of a characteristic which makes the thing to be what it is. If it
somtetimes. places the party at a disadvantage in conflict with a more
united and homogeneous antagonist, this is more than counterbalanced
by the superior breadth and vigour which it imparts to their counsels
and their policy. But it seems to us that those who use this language
habitually overlook a distinction which materially affects the value of
this peculiar virtue. The Liberal party is an equivocal term in this

>,

492 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. March

country. It may mean either one of the organs of Parliamentaiy
government : a body of gentlemen whose business it is to assist the
ministers of the Crown in the transaction of necessary business, and
at the same time to watch over the interest of certain recognised
political principles ; or it may mean one whole division of the nation
outside of Parliament, which, with certain watchwords and certain
aspirations in common, is subdivided into numberless groups or sects
each with its particular chief, roaming freely over the whole expanse
of political and religious thought, and owning little or no allegiance
to any one general system or supreme lord. In this sense of tlie
word no political party can wear the harness and submit to the disci-
pline, the silence, and the subordination which are necessary to Parlia-
mentary efiBciency ; and it is mainly because Liberals are so slow to
lecognise this truth, and will persist in fancying that the Liberal
party in the House of Conmions must be just what it is out of it,
that the anomaly is prolonged to which we are about to call attentioD.
The party, in the second of these two senses, is of comparatiTely re-
cent growth ; it belongs to an age of speculation ; it is necessarily
hostile to restraint, privilege, or tradition. The country is large
enough to hold it: the House of Commons is not. The same
quality which constitutes its strength in the one, constitutes its weak*
ness in the other.

Hence it has followed that this great outside party, by tbe
necessities of its position, has come to be dually represented in the
Lower Chamber ; informally, unconsciously, gradually, but really and
effectively. The theory to which old-fashioned politicians still &>
fondly cling, namely, that the Liberal party in the nation is repre-
sented by a party in Parliament exactly as the Conservative party in
the nation is represented by a party in Parliament, no longer works.
It is, in fact, obliged to be represented by two if not more parties.
And this, in our opinion, has led by degrees to a very serious derange-
ment of the whole political machine, amounting almost to an inversion
of Hie rule by which it is supposed to be conducted. Farliamentarj
government is supposed to be government by majorities. But govern-
ment by majorities becomes impossible, unless there is a clear pre-
ponderance in the House of those who think alike, and can be relied
upon to act alike, on all important questions. With three parties we
tend towards government by minorities. It is idle to maintain that
this has always been to some extent the case ; and that cliques and
coteries have always existed in Parliament aspiring to hold the balance
between the two great parties, and to give the victory to either a^
cording to the exigencies of the moment. There have been such
cliques, of course ; but they belong to a period of our history when
the conditions of Parliamentary warfare were totally different, and
when manoeuvres of this kind had no material or lasting effect on
first principles of policy. Nobody would dream of calling the

1881. THE STATE OF PARTIES. 493

Sadical party in the House of Commons at the present moment a
clique or coterie; and the absurdity of comparing its action to
the action of the King's friends or of the Grenvillites, or of the
Canningites, each of whom in turn aspired to the position we
have mentioned, needs only to be named to be recognised. The
position of the Badical party in the reformed House of Commons is
something entirely new. It has a definite and distinctive creed to
which it is resolved if possible to give efifect. It has as good a locus
standi in the House, exhibits as many notes of a regular Parlia-
mentary party, as either Whigs or Tories, Liberak or Conservatives.
It is at present a small minority, yet it is virtually master of the
situation ; quite strong enough, as events have shown, to neutralise
the will of the majority, and to extort compliance with its own ideas,
in spite of the notorious fact that the greater weight of opinion
in the House of Commons is secretly opposed to them. It may be
that this anomaly is even now drawing to a close. It' is perfectly
possible that, brought face to &ce with each other in the same cabi-
net, the Whigs and the Badicals have already learned a lesson which
could never have come home to them otherwise, through the medium,
that is^ of those indirect and casual communications which, though
they may indicate tendencies, do not naturally evoke ultimatums.
Office sublimates opinion ; and the intensity and tenacity with which
particular views are entertained by certain members of Her Majesty's
Government may now be better understood than they were twelve
months ago. But as long as the Radicals remain where they are, their
party will be Mayor of the Palace. Hitherto it has done well for
itself; and though it might still do better by taking up a position
of perfect, instead of one of imperfect, independence, nevertheless
in the kind of triangular duel which parties have been fighting in
the House of Commons it has certainly come off the best.

The result, however, is, as I have already stated, in direct con-
tradiction to the only principle of Parliamentary G-ovemment which
the people of England understand. According to this the majority
ought always to be able to impress its will upon Parliament ; and
with only two parties in the House it always can. With three parties
it may possibly be prevented from doing so, and a small minority
overrule for the time being vastly superior nmnbers both in and out
of Parliament. We may be told, perhaps, that those who agree to
act together for the time being must be regarded as one party ; that
Tre have no right to look below the surface, and that the combination
of the Whigs and Sadicals in the present House of Commons is, for
all practical purposes, a majority. This I deny. The fallacy lurks
in the word majority. In the old days of party this meant a
conabination of men who thought alike on all the great questions of
the day, not the temporary union of men who think very differently
on them all for the attainment of a particular object. This used to
Vol. DL— No. 49. L L

494 TEE NmETEENTH\ CENXU£Y. %ck

be balled ft 6oaiitiqn«- iiAxid tbediSereace is.m^, i^ipogrtaiit Be-
oause, unless it is to' be- the test of. the xmijo^ x>f a -^flkctji ^i th^
£D(^e, of tihe legitimacy - of its. majority^ that it/jioQi^tt^nk alike on,
the cardihal priiiciplesiof govemnDent^ it is imp^s^blio^ for t^e4X)ii-
stutuenmes .to know 'Witiii any certainty what th^.a^ al^outinaa
eleotioDi * If Badicals^ aztd Liberals .m^y be amp^x^ to-day.aad two
to^morroW) according! to circumstances^ the minds. of the electors who
Hidine tt> that .sdde in politios must be in a.^tjB^te pf hopeless con-
fusion ; and men will>8lip iato BarUamenib only ,to swell thestiengtlioi
parties with whioh many of those who helped to return thein have do
sympathy whatever. We return^ theti&fpre^ to our original position,
that we have now three regular parties in the House of CommonB;
that the system of Parliamentary govemnient as establii^hed by our
forefathers never contemplated more than two ; that with more than
two the machine cannot work properly^ and inevitably tenida to
throw an undue share of power, and soiQetiLmes the supreme control,
into the hands of minorities.

If we suppose, instead of three, five or six different parties in
the House of Commons^ it would be easy to show that the conse*
quences must be still worse. For' an able minister could always play
one against the other, and with the help of his official eTitouroj^ beat
them in detail. We must remember, moreover, that the more parties
there are, the more they must resemble &ctions, and that the more they
resemble &ctions the more unpopular they are certain to become.

It is important to bear in mind, the footing on which parties
fltood between the Bevolution of l^SS and the Beform Bill of 1832,
the pmod within which the system was gradually matured. We
mention these two dates because they are the most £uniliar land-
marks. The system did not finally settle down into working order
till some years after the first, and became a little unsteady for some
years prior to the seeond. But my meaning wiU be clear enough.
During the greater part of that long period, xK>mprising very nearly a
century and a half, the speculations of political philosophy found
little or no echo within the walls of Parliament. A few broad
and simple questions then divided politicians &om, each other, and
on most of them the vast majority of Englishmen were ready vitb
their ayes and noes. Thus it was quite possible for the two parties in
Parliament to represent the two parties outside intq which the nation
was divided. The questions which distract us now had not then come
in to complicate our party organisation. Controversies as to the nature
of property, the value of a State reli^n, the uses of an aristocratic
order, lay £BLr apart from the practical life of the period, and never
lent even a tinge to Parliamentary co^roversy ; noir did. they> in-
deed, interest any oonsideraUe section of ithe jpublio. ^Tbe divisions
of public opinion and the division of Fa^ai^entary pasties exactly
corresponded. .. % ? . : '

1881. THE STATE OF PARTIES. 495

Can this correspondence be restored without breaking up the

House into such a number of sections as shall virtually destroy the

party. system? .To this question we need not despair of being able

to give an affirmative femswer. If, under all the various names and

shades which greet us on the surface^ English political thought is still

capable of being divided into two essentially distinct schools^ it

ought not to be impossible, it ought even to be easy, to reconstruct

two parties in Parliament which should represent them with suffi*

cient accuracy. We must not enter at any length in this article

into an inquiry which could only be adequately pursued in a separate

essay, but we believe it might be shown that between the two theories

of society represented respectively by the principle of equality and the

principle of subordination, there is really no middle term. Those who

look forward to the realisation of the first of these ideals, though they

may differ widely among themselves in enthusiasm, in intensity

of conviction, and in eagerness for immediate action, aU belong

to one party, and ought to be able to act together in Parliament

without any sacrifice of principle. All such, on the other hand,

as believe that equality was not made for man, and that he is

the happiest and noblest when he has something to look up to and

to reverence, also belong to one party, and should be able to act

together as a Parliamentary connection without any but superficial

differences. Legislation and progress are as necessary for the one as

the other. But the Conservative will reform our institutions with

the view of retaining their original intention, and the Badical

with the view of discarding it. The distinctive characteristics

of the two parties might be drawn out at great length, but the

further we went the more clearly should we see that they start

from contradictory ideas between which compromise is impossible.

You may cut either creed in half, but by so doing you destroy

it. Well then, the question is whether we cannot make the

above two principles, which are perfectly distinct from each other,

^nd are baroad enough to embrace a great many minor shades of

difference, serve as the bases of two great Parliamentary parties,

neither of which need require of its members either to suppress or

abandon anything which they believed to be necessary, or to under-*

take or support anything which they believed to be n^chievous.

If it diould be possible to do this, and if such an idea should ever be

.actually realised, the system of party will be placed once more upon

SL healthy footing, and we may, perhaps, hope to hear the last of the

<leclimng efficiency of Parliament.

A word or two may be given to the present arrangement of
parties, and to the results which flow from it not only in the
Bha.pe of giving power to minorities, but also of impeding that
texnperate constitutional progress which all but fanatics desiderate.
The Tory party was originally distinguished from the Whigs by its

ll2

496 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. March

zeal for the Boyal prerogative, and under a Joseph the Second miglit
have been the Liberal party in the State. Unfortunately, when^ey
fell back from this their primitive position, and came to occupy
ground on which there was very little real difference between them-
selves and the Whigs, it seems to have been still thought necessary
to keep up the old distinction, and for this purpose new names were
found desirable. The Tories became Conservatives and the VHiigs
became Liberals. By right, after 1832, there should have been a new
division of parties. But instead of this they tried to go on as before;
and we now see what came of it. The Whigs, by the necessities of
their position, were obliged to place themselves in opposition to a
party which was confessedly the supporter of the Constitution. Thus
they ceased in the eyes of the people to be what they had always
prided themselves on being, the constitutional party in the country.
It became gradually impossible to maintain that the Whig fdnction
was any longer the guardianship of the Constitution against all umo-
vators. Had the Whigs in 1832 passed a less sweeping Beform Bill
they might have kept together a party at once popular and constitu-
tional. But as it l^is, they have allowed these two attributes ta
become separated, and the so-called popular party in the nation to
be exhibited in an attitude of constant antagonism to the supporteis
of our national institutions.

The Tory party, on the other hand, as a further consequence of
this mistake, has tended ever since to become more exclosiTely a
defensive party, and to expose itself to charges of dishonesty, or
inconsistency, or immorality, or nobody knows what monstrous ciime,
if it attempts any vigorous reform. The existing arrangement
paralyses at one and the same time both the conservati?e force of
the Liberals, and the liberal force of the Conservatives. But in
the contingency we have supposed this could hardly be the case.
When Parliament knew of only two parties — the organic reformers
who believe our whole social and political fabric to be founded
on falsehood, and the constitutional party which thought exactly
the reverse, it would be • impossible to tie down the latter to a
policy of inaction. A party combining in itself the traditions of Pitt
and Canning, and Bussell and Peel, and Althorpe and Grrey, could
hardly be accused of insincerity for introducing any series of ad-
ministrative or social reforms which left the essence of the Constitution,
the integrity of the Empire, and the structure of society untoucbeA
Under the present false division of parties, constitutional progress
of this kind becomes impossible. While the Whigs are united with
the Badicals, the Badical element must, as we have said, prevailt
and the Whigs be towed along, however unwillingly, *at the wheels of
their triumphal car.' The Conservatives, in turn weakened by
separation from their kindred, will be always exposed to those taunts
and reproaches both from their friends and their enemies to which we

1881. THE STATE OF PARTIES. 497

have already refened, if they propose any effectiye legiBlation ; taunts
and repicadies which it is hardly in human nature to defy, and
which are constant temptations to the silken couch and the slumbrous
policy from which they awaken to destruction. But fuse the two
parties, which are abready one in heart, in principles, and in tra-
ditions, and you directly have a party strong enough and popular
enough to be at once constitutional and progressive, without laying
itself open for a single moment to any charge of inconsistency or dis-
honesty.

If, finally, we turn to the Badicals, we find a party which, being
the legitimate issue of the Beform Bill of 1832, occupies an intelligible
position, and is strong in proportion. It is in fEu^t so strong, that it
would be perfectly well able by itself to discharge the duties of oppo-
sition, reinforced, as it certainly would be, by a considerable number
of ^ Liberals ' who are now Badicals at heart, though they do not as
yet choose to call themselves by that name. The whole Liberal
party, in fiust, is divided into three sections, those who would be Con-
servatives if they were obliged to choose, those who would be Badicals
if they were obliged to choose, and those who are Badicals already.
These last two sections if united might be nearly two hundred strong,
quite powerful enough to act as a check upon the (jovernment, espe-
jciaUy if we allow them the assistance of the Home Bulers. The real
Badical party, in fact, is now sufficiently numerous in the House of
Commons, and supported by a sufficient body of public opinion
outside^ to be entitled to take the place of a responsible Parlia-
mentary opposition, and it ought if possible to be compelled to
assume this function. It should be drawn out &om behind the
Whigs, and set on a hill by itself in broad daylight. The country
would then be better able to judge of its aims and aspirations, which
it cannot well do while the party lies beside its aristocratic friends,
shoots its arrows from behind their backs, and catches the reflection
of their opinions to such an extent that the discordant elements of
the whole heterogeneous mass seem insensibly to melt into each
other. Under the influence of this illusion the innocent British
public imagines that the Badicals are being ^ kept straight ' by their
allies. That day is passed for ever. The conditions of the game are
altered. The players have changed places. What the Whigs once
did to the Badicals, the Badicals are now doing to the Whigs.

Democracy cannot be dodged. It is time that idle dream were
given up. But it may obtain successes out of all proportion to its
real strength, through the blunders or supineness of its adversaries.
I offer no opinion on the actual strength of the democratic party in
England, or the popularity of democratic opinions at the present mo-
ment. I only say that if they possess the power which is sometimes
assigned to them, no mere 'management' will long arrest their
triumph; and that if they do not, they are more likely to acquire it

498 THE mNETEENTH CENTURY. March

(While the trumpet of their opponents gives foith as nndertain ficnffld,
and the friends of the existing order are divided and distracted, than
-when the voice of the majority declares with unmistakeable and decisive
emphasis that it is resolved to maintain that order* I know what is
to be said against^ a haiid and fast* line;' I shall he told, perhaps^
that an exclusively JEladical opposition m^ns' in due oouise of
time an exclusively Badical Government, with fhr more power to
give e£Fect to revolutionary principles t^an is in sinybody^s bands at
present. The answer is the same. The power would be none the less
for a smaU infusion of aristocrats, who would have no real inflaence,
and only help to throw the public off their guard. We can undersUnd
the objection to having all the Conservative party ranged on one side,
and all the Revolutionary party on the other, with nothing to break
the collision, or moderatei the * ugly rush.' But it seems to me thai
this is the state of things which practically exists now, ia,nd that the
Whigs, who are sprinkled among the Liberal party, are so much lost
to the Conservatives without really doing anything to weaken the
power of the Radicals. Does not the course of events durmg the last
twelve months conclusively prove as much ?

In an article published two or three years ago by Mr. Ooldwin
Smith in the Fortnighthf Review, the writer dwells with great power
and some bitterness on the relations between these two parties. He^
indeed, took the view which down to last April was the prevailing one,
namely, that any change in the relative strength of parties which
might be expected from a general election would be all in feronr of
the Wliigs ; and that if Lord Beaconsfield were displaced^ a moderate
Whig Government would follow. But what does he say ? What is
his advice to the Radical party ? Why, it is to have no more to do
with these allies unless they will declare boldly for the whole Eadical
programme. This he believed was impossible, and therefore he re-
commended his friends to consult their own dignity and credit br
forming an independent opposition, even at the risk of remaining out
of power many years. Events have turned out differently, and be
might now perhaps give them different advice. But I quote
his opinion because it shows that his conception of the situation was
substantially the same as my own ; that in his opinion the alliance
between the Whigs and Radicals had hitherto resulted in placing one
or other, if not both, in a false position ; and that the Radicals would
do themselves a great injustice by consenting to consort any longer
with their aristocratic friends, on condition of either sacrificing oi
postponing any of their own &vourite ideas. This notion, then,
that a mixture of Whiggism can temper the asperity of Badical
principles, and dispose the whole party to acquiesce in a poller
of Conservative compromise, belongs to the past, and derives no
support at all from anything which is Tisibkf at present; The
stronger party simply keeps the weaker on one side, so that it may

1881. THE STATE OF PARTIES. 499

be well out of the way in the coming struggle. And the ugly rush,
if there is any chance of such a thing, would be just as probable with
the Whigs where they are now, as if they had followed the example
of '93, and gone over to the Tories. They would be borne along with
the torrent, which they would have no more power to arrest than the
farmer has to stem the flood which he sees about to sweep away his
flocks. Thus the argument in favour of three parties, drawn from the
supposed danger of a hard and fast line, collapses when seriously ex-
amined, and leaves the objections to the system which I have here stated
without any countervailing advantage, It transfers to minorities the
power intended for majorities, and Hius creates a want of harmony
between Parliament and the country ; it is a bar to the formation
of a party which most moderate men desire, uniting the Con-
servative instincts of the Tories with the reforming traditions of the
Whigs ; and robs the party of order and prescription throughout the
nation of a great part of its natural strength. When I began to
write this article I meant to lay the most stress on the first of these
evils ; and if I have failed to do so, I still think it the most serious :
more likely than any of the others to weaken the confidence of all
but the very lowest classes in the representative character of the
House of Commons, and to loosen the foundations of that system of
party without which, as many persons think. Parliamentary Goveni-
ment on the principles of the English Revolution could no longer be
conducted.

'^ £ Kebbel.

500 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Maich

THE PARSIS.

The Parsis, who are merely colonistg in India, derive their name
from Pars (in Arabic, Fars), the proper name of a particular province
of their mother-country. The name was afterwards applied more
generally to a whole territory which was thence called by the Greeks
Persis, and became known to us as Persia. The Persians call their
own country Iran, and themselves Iranls — names derived from the
same root as the Sanskrit Arya. Ethnologically indeed both Peraaas
and Par^ are quite as truly Aryans as the Brahmans. The Panis
are, moreover, followers of a religious system based on a modifica-
tion of the original Aryan creed. This was the system which was
developed in Bactria and reconstructed on a purer basis by the
reformer Zoroaster, as described in a previous paper. When Z<»oa8-
trianism passed into Persia proper it was again modified by the cir-
cumstances of its contact with the Magian system, and whea it
ultimately reached India — brought there by fugitive Persians flying
from the persecuting Muhammadans — ^it was again subjected to
changes through its contact with the Indian systems.

Like the Jews the Parsis are a peculiar people — a people who
have had to suffer great persecutions at the hands of others, and iriio
have been driven from their native land by fimatical Muhammadans
— adherents of a monotheistic creed not altogether without points of
similarity to their own. Persia, the holy land of the Paras, and
Palestine, the holy land of the Jews, are both held by Muhammadan
races. The Parsis, however, are far less numerous than the Jews ;
nor have they been scattered throughout other nations in the same
manner. A few thousand still remain in their &therland, Persia,
chiefly at Yezd and the surrounding villages. The remainder hare
found an asylum in India. These are the sole surviving repres^ta-
tives of a religious system which once prevailed over an immense
extent of territory, and was adopted by the whole Iranian nation.

Numbering little more than 70,000 persons in India, the P&nis of
the present day would be lost to observation in the vast ocean of that
country's population were it not for certain peculiarities which caose
them to stand out conspicuously from the countless millions by

1881. THE PABSIS. 501

whom they are surrounded. Their distinctive character is marked
by their dress. No one who has lived in any large Indian city can
fidl to be fiAmiliar with the picturesque costume of the followers of
Zoroaster, their high brimless hats set a little back so as to form an
angle with the head. Even in the crowded thorough£Eures of London
and Liverpool the dismal monotony of European dress is occasionally
enlivened by a ParsI head dress ; for no prohibitory laws of caste,
like those in force among the Hindus, exist among the members of
the Pars! community, and no fear of excommunication deters any
individual of this enterprising race from seeking his fortune in
<K>untries beyond the sea. Doubtless, custom and tradition exercise
no slight influence over his conduct, but they do not overrule all
other considerations. The one ruling passion of a genuine Pars! is
the love of making money. His solitary idol is the solid rupee. He
•turns with disgust from the hideous idolatry practised by his Hindu
fellow-subjects. He offers no homage to blocks of wood and stcme,
to monstrous many-headed images, grotesque symbols of good luck,
or four-armed deities of fortune. But he bows down before the silver
image which Victoria, the Empress of India, has set up in her Indian
dominions.

Let me now reply to the two questions left unanswered in the
previous paper, namely. Why and how was the religion of Zoroaster
«expelled from Persia and transferred to India ? What modifications
have the Indian Parsis introduced into the Zoroastrian creed ?

In replying to the first question, it will be necessary to go back
<br a moment to ground already traversed.

A rapid survey was before taken of the early history of the Irano-
Aryans. After the line of monarchs commonly called Achsemenians
-came the Seleucidad and Arsacidad (= Persian, Ashkanl), who ruled the
Persian empire in succession. Then followed the patriotic Sasanian
dynasty (Sasanidffi), so called from Sasan, the grandfather of their
first king, Ardashlr. This line of kings addressed themselves
earnestly to the task of restoring Persian nationality, which had
almost become extinct. The first monarch, Ardashir Babakan, col-
lected, as we have already seen, the scattered fragments of the
2oroastrian sacred writings, and revived the ancient Persian religion,
infusing into it much of its old vigour and activity. For a period of
about 400 years from his reign in the third century (about a.d. 225)
to that of Yazdagird, the last king of the same dynasty (a.d. 651),
Zoroastrianism escaped all persecutions, and throve in the sunshine
of royal favour.

Yet it could scarcely have taken firm root in the heart of the
people, for when the &natical Muhammadans, under the Khalif
Omar, overran the country with the sword in one hand and the
Kuran in the other, terminating their military successes by the
defeat of the last Sasanian king, Yazdagird, at the battle of NSha-

502 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. March

vand,' in the middle of the seventh century, a very small proportion
of the people had the courage to adhere to their national religion.
True, the two religions had this in common — ^tfaat tliey were both
nominally monotheistic, and both unidolatrous. They had other
elements, too, which tended to mutual attraction and affinity. Bnt
the supplanting of the Avesta by the Kuran, and of the prophet
Zoroaster by Muhammad, could scarcely have been effected had not
the hold of the Zoroastrian system on the religious convictions of
the nation been gradually weakened. In point of fact, the memory
of the Bactrian prophet was no longer fresh. The Zoroastrian canon
of Scripture had been tampered with, mutilated, and almost de*
Btroyed, and the Zend language, in which its doctrines were contained^
was no longer generally understood.

Yet tbe entire Persian community did not embrace the new faith.
A certain number manfully resisted all pressure and remained tine
to their ancient creed. These took refuge in the mountain fastnesses
of Khurasan, or in the outlying deserts, where they practised their
national religion in peace for about a hundred years. Even there,
however, in course of time persecution overtook them ; and, although
a certain proportion continued to occupy Yezd and Kirman (where
they still linger in a wretched conditiotL of ignorance and poverty
even to the present day),^ a large numbelr emigrated to the island
of Orinus, at the entrance of the Persian Gulf. Eventually this was^
found to be a station too accessible to their Muhammadan persecu-
tors, and, after a stay of fifteen years, the Zoroastrian fugitives
engaged vessels and set sail for' the west coast of India. Their first
halt took place at Div or Diu, one of the earliest settlements of the
Portuguese, at the south-eastern extremity of Kathiawar. There,
for the first time, the Parsis made themselves acquainted with the
language, habits, and customs of the Hindus during a sojourn which
is believed to have lasted for about fifteen years. Thence they moved
on by sea to Sanjan in Oujarat (twenty-five miles south of Daman),
landing there about a.b. 717. The district around SanjSLn was ruled
by an enlightened Hindu chief, named Jadao Hana. Before alloiriDg
the Zoroastrians to settle in his territory, he demanded a declaration
of their religious creed, which they were careful to give in such a
form as to bring into prominence any points of agreement between
Zoroastrianism and the Hindu system. * We worship,' they said,

> Also written Nihavand. The date of the battle is believed to have been abotit
the year 642 of the Christian era.

* These were visited by Professor Westergaard, of Copenhagen, in 1843. He found
the majority in a miserable state, much oppressed and unfairly taxed by the Persian
Government, aa they still are. Their ignorance of their own religion was eztniordioKty-
No complete copy of the whole Avesta existed among them, though there wereagrea^
many copies of the Khnrdah Avesta, and a few of the YendldAdand Yasna. Thevarc-
contcmptnously called Gabars by the Persians, and being debarred from many means
of livelihood, often become gardeners.

1881. THE P ARSIS. 50S

^ the Supreme Being, the sun, and th^ five elements. We make
ofierings to fire ; we are worshippers of the cow ; we practice ablu-*
tions with go^mutta (liquid excretion of the cow). We wear a sacred
garment (sadara) and girdle (kusti) ; we pray five times a day ; we
ufie music at our marriage ceremonies ; we perform annual religious
rites on behalf of our ancestors.' ^

The Hindu £aja Was satisfied with this explanation, and allowed
the fugitives to settle at Sanjan, where they erected their first fire
temple in their adopted country as a thank-offering to Almighty
God for having at length granted them a resting place (a.d. 721).

For three hundred years after this date the PSrsis are said to
have resided quietly at Sanjan, enjoying peace and prosperity, and
multiplying so rapidly that many of them were compelled to seek
other settlements in Grujarat, at Surat, Nowsari, Broach, Cainbay, and
elsewhere. It is supposed that about this period, and for two
hundred years subsequently, their numbers were increased by repeated
arrivals of fresh emigrants from Persia.

At the beginning of the sixteenth centiuy a powerful Muhammadan
chief, who had established his authority in a neighbouring district,
attacked Sanjan. He was at first repulsed by help of the Parsis,
who fought valiantly on the side of the Hindu Raja, but in a subse-
quent battle the Muhammadans were victorious, and the ParsTs being
Touted left Sanjan, and sought refuge with the colony at Nowsari,
taking with them the sacred fire which they had consecrated eight
hundred years before, and maintained in the same fire temple ever since.
Some time afterwards jealousies and disputes occurred between the
old and new colonists. The fire was, therefore, removed to Udwilra,
32 miles south of Surat, where it still continues in the most ancient
of all existing fire temples, and is held in the greatest veneration by
all orthodox Parsis.

After the establishment of the English factories at Siirat in 1611
the Parsis who had settled there rapidly increased in numbers, and
by their energy and aptitude for business achieved great eminence as
traders. In process of time they even won the confidence of the
Muhammadan Nawabs of Surat, and were elevated to influential
ofiices in the State. Some of them became great shipwrights, and
one of their number, named Nek Sat Khan, an artisan of unusual
skill, foimd favour with the Mogul Emperor himself. This man is
said to have obtained important concessions for the English merchants
at Surat.

Of course, the English had no sooner gained possession of the
island of Bombay than Pars! traders and shipbuilders began to estab-
lish themselves there also.

In short, from the first dawn of our political ascendency on
the west coast of India, the history of the Parsis has been one of

• See Dosabhoy Framjee's Parsees, p. 112.

504 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. March

uninterrupted advance and prosperity. But the community has
never increased numerically except within itself. Proselytising has
never been attempted by the Zoroastrians since their arrival on Indian
soil. No person, as a matter of fact, ever becomes a Pars! except by
birth.

In my repeated visits to Bombay I had many opportunities of
conversing with a high native Pars! authority, Mr. K. B. Cama.
^ How is it you make no efforts to gain proselytes ? * I once asked.
To this he replied in the following manner : —

There is nothing in our reli^on which forbids our making converts. Chi the
4!ontrai7, it is clear from the Avesta that there were formerly missionary fire
priests, Athravas (Athoryans). History tells us that great wars were waged
against neighbouring tribes for declining to accept the religion of Zoroaster. The
Shah Namah mentions wars of this kind. Zoroaster was commanded by Ormasd
to teach the wicked as well as the pious. It is true, however, that at present we
have no missionary organisation, and that we admit no one within the pala of
Zoroastrianism except the children of Parsi parents/ We consider that we have
enough to do in making converts among our own people, who are generally quite
ignorant of the truths of their own religion.

Such being the present state of feeling among the Parsis, it is
evident that any great increase of their community, now numbering
less than one hundred thousand souls, is highly improbable.

The second inquiry to which we have to address ourselves is.
What modifications Zoroastrianism has undergone through its trans-
ference to Indian soil ? It must not be forgotten that India, though
once closely connected with Persia, and possessing much in common
with it, is a country teeming with a heterogeneous population of its
own, and abounding in every variety of race, language, creed, and
superstition. Brought into connection with so many fresh associa-
tions, it was inevitable that the religion of Zoroaster should suffer
change and adulteration. Even before it was banished from Persia
Zoroastrianism had not escaped the usual fate of all human religions.
It was already lapsing into that confused jumble of doctrines and
superstitions which appears to be the ultimate outcome of the action
and interaction of man's devotional faculties in all countries where no
powerful resisting influences, like those of Christian dogmatic truth,
neutralisie the ordinary tendencies of human religious thought It
was already drifting in the same direction as Hinduism. In point of
&ct its sacred writings appear to have been constructed on somewhat
similar lines to those of the Hindu religion. Both series of writings were
the work of numerous authors who succeeded each other during many
succeeding generations. Both begin with monotheistic ideas. Both
exhibit as they proceed an increasing deviation from the simplicity

* Occasionally the illegitimate children of P&rsI fathers and Hindft mothers faav«
t)een admitted, and in rare instances domestic slaves or seirants, bat the l^aHty of
such admission is disputed by orthodox P&rsi parents.

1881. THE P ARSIS. 505

of their first theistic conceptions. Both tend to polytheism and
pantheism ; the one through fimcifol personifications of philosophical
abstractions, the other through more coarse and material processes of
impersonation. In both there is a combination of dualism with poly-
theistic and polydemonistic ideas. In the Avesta we have the eternal
principles of good and evil evolving innumerable antagonistic forces
which confront each other in eternal opposition; in the Indian
Sastras we have an infinite number of persotkal gods and demons
arrayed against each other in actual conflict. But here the resem-
blance stops. The deterioration of Zoroastrian doctrine was arrested
at a definite point, whereas Hinduism developed into an all-compre-
hensive corrupt system which may be described as a loose conglomerate-
of pantheism, dualism, polytheism, and polydemonism held in cohesion
by an alleged monotheism.

Even the Yendidad, though it reveals a perpetual dread of personal
demons, and is far inferior as a literary production to the Atharva-
Veda and code of Manu, never teaches the necessity of propitiating
or worshipping any other Being but the One God.

Hence, notwithstanding the transference of the 2^roaBtrian scrip-
ttires to India and the drawing of the two ancient religions, which
had always many similar doctrines and practices, more closely to-
wards each other, the Indian followers of Zoroaster have always set
their faces like a flint against idolatry, and have never adopted any
ritual beyond that of the ancient fire ceremonial, which was once
common to both Irano-Aryans and Indo-Aryans, but has now been
nearly abandoned by the flatter, and would soon disappear from India
altogether were its continuance not secured by the Pars! colonists.

Of course it would be impossible to deal exhaustively with all
the peculiarities of Indo-Zoroastrianism within the limits of a single
paper. The subject has so many ramifications that a volume might
be devoted to its treatment. All I propose doing is to give an
outline of Pars! religious ideas, based on my own personal inquiries
and observations in Western India. And perhaps it may conduce
to clearness if I introduce the sketch by recapitulating briefiy some
principal points of the monotheistic creed taught in the oldest portion
of the Avesta. We there learn that there is but one omnipotent
Supreme Being, called Ahura Mazda (or Ormazd), the creator of
the universe and the source of all life, power, wisdom, and truth.
In his wisdom he ordained that while all matter — ^which every
2k>roastrian believes to have been absolutely created by Him and
not an emanation from Him — remained substantially one and the
same, it should be ever assuming new shapes. Infinite change
and infinite succession were to be necessary factors in the per-
fect economy of the cosmical system. New matter was never to
be created, but old corporeal frames were to be constantly broken
up to furnish material for new formations. The creative agency of

506 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. March

the Supreme Being Tras called his Spento-Mainyus, tlie destructive
or disintegrating agency his Angro-Mainyus ( Ahriman).' The latter
was quite innocent of all malevolent intention; it tnerely helped
the former by providing the raw material of creation. But man was
'Created a free agent. He might choose evil or good. He might resist
natural laws or precipitate the action of the creative and destructive
agencies by his own self-will. He might help to destroy matter by
his own ignorance or wickedness. Hence the evil associated with
destruction was not the work of Angro-Mainyus but of man only.

And, according to Zoroastrianism, whatever is done by human
beings to assist creation is good, and helps them to heaven ; whatever
is done to hasten destruction is bad, and leads them to hell. The
very word for sin now in use among Parsis is Grunah ( = Sanskrit,
VinSs'a), meaning destruction ; for when evil or sorrow are connected
with such destruction, man's wickedness alone is responsible. There
is no real evil in death, nor is Ahriman an enemy of Ormazd, but
rather his own appointed agent of dissolution and disintegration —
the complement of his own creative power. Of course, the popular
mind was unable to grasp these ideas. In process of time Ahriman
was converted into an evil being, existing as an eternal principle
opposed to Ormazd, the good principle. Thus arose the later dual-
ism, with the various orders of good and evil spirits ranged against
•each other in eternal opposition as already described.

Turning now to the latest phase of the Indo-Zoroastrian creed, I
may state that a religious catechism was written in Grujarati for the
use of schools about half a century ago. In that catechism Farsi
-children are taught to say : —

We believe in the One God who created the heavens and eailli, the angels, .«an,
moon, and stars, fire, water, and all things. Him we worship, invoke, and adore.
Our God has neither face, nor form, nor fixed place. There is no other like Him.
We cannot describe his glory, nor can our minds comprehend Him, He is said to
have one thousand and one names ; but his principal name is Hormazd, ' the M-
wise Spirit.* He is also called Pak, * Holy ; ' Dadar, ' Distributor of Justice ; ' Par-
wardagar, * Provider.* In worshipping the holy Ilormazd * we should turn towards
fiome of his creations of life and glor^', such as the sun, fire, water, and the moofn.
Our prophet Zoroaster has taught us to know God as one, and Zoroaster as his
prophet ; to belieye in the Avesta ; to beheve in the goodness of God ; to submit to
his wiU and obey his commands ; to do good deeds, speak good words, and have
pure thoughts ; to pray five times a day ; to believe in the reckonuig of justice on
the fourth morning after death ; to hope for heaven and fear hell ; to believe in a
day of resurrection.

The foregoing creed, though of course a very incomplete state-
ment, may help to correct the popular fallacy that the ParsTs are
fire worshippers. Fire is to them a mere symbol of Almighty power
and purity. It is their Kiblah, to which they turn when they address

* But it is affirmed that in reciting a particular prayer caBed the Hormo2d Ta.«ht,or
prayer to the Supreme Being, the face is not to be turned towards any symbol.

1881. THE PARSIS. 507

the Supreme Being. It is on this account that the term*fire temple,
as used by Anglicised Parsis, is objected to by the more orthodox, on
the ground that it is suggestive of idolatry, whereas fire is never
worshipped as a god. Herodotus expressly affirms that the Persians
had no temples. . Yet sanctuaries of some kind for guarding the
sacred fire nmst have existed in his time, for they are refei*red to in
the Avesta. It is common for orthodox Parsis, in speaking of fire
sanctuaries, to name them from one or other of the three kinds of
«acred fire, Atash Behram,^ Adaran, and Padgah. The popular
vernacular term is Agiary, 'fire abode' (from Hindi ag-f-illi). In
Persian works the term used is simply Atash-khana, * fire house.'
The expression Sagri is only applied to temples erected for the
performance of funeral rites neat the, Towers of Silence.

I may here mention that the principal fire temples I visited at
Bombay, Surat, and Poona did not differ externally from small
private houses surrounded by their compounds, I .was not allowed
to view their interior arrangements, but was told that an ordinary
temple consists of two oblong quadrangular rooms separated by a
partition, one room being set apart for the fire sanctuary, or holy of
holies, and tbe other assigned to lay worshippers. In the larger
temples there are often other rooms for the performance of certain
ceremonies. The sanctum sanctorum has a large central stone, on
which rests the vase-like censer containing the sacred fire, kept con-
tinually burning and fed day and night with offerings of fragrant
wood and gums, such as sandal-wood, benjamin, and frankincense.
Sometimes a goat is killed, not sacrificially, but for the sake of its
fat, which is dried and thrown into the embers, on special occasions,
to produce a brilliant flame. The priests, called Mobeds, who are
always present in the sanctuary, have a piece of fine linen cloth
(called Penom, or Panam) tied in front of the nostrils and mouth, to
prevent the risk of polluting the fire by their breath or saliva while
reciting the customary prayers.

A distinction is observable in the fire temples of the two parties,
or sects of Parsis, who differ by a month in their modes of calculating
the calendar. The revised calendar party (called Kadmis) close
their fire sanctuary against the gaze of the people ; whereas the
Conservative party (Shahanshahis), who are by far the most
numerous,^ make an aperture in the screen pf the holy of holies,

• The Behrftm, which is the most sacred, is only located in six places, Udwara,
Xaos^rl, two places at Sorat, and two at Bombay.

* Abont two centuries ago a learned Zoroastrian, named Jamasp, arrived at Siirat
from Persia, and expostulated with his coreligionists for having inserted an inter-
calary month (Kablsah) at the end of periods of 120 years, and so thrown out the time
of observing their festivals by thirty days. This led to a long controversj' which
derived its importance from the fact that the efficacy of prayers is thought to depend on
naming the year, month,.andday on which they are offered. At last in 171C a certain
number of Parsis, led by one Mulla Firoz, separated from the majority and revised

508 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. March

and allow the fire to be seen by lay worshippers from a certain
direction.

Five different kinds of fires are specified in the Avesta. The dif-
ference between them is not well understood even by the most learned
Farsis of the present day. They are explained to denote variouff
calorific forces existing in nature. The Atash Behram fire, now
regarded as the most sacred, is believed to be compounded from one
thousand and one sources ; and the Yendidad ^ describes some of the
different fires needed to form it. These several fires are collected
at an enormous expense whenever a new Atash Behram has to be con-
secrated.

With regard to the priests who serve in the temples, they belong
to a distinct class or tribe of men, like the Hindu Brahmans and
Jewish Levites.^ The most general name for a religious instructor
among the Parsis is Herbad, but the usual name for the sacerdotal
class is Mobed ; the lay community as distinguished from the priests
being called Behadin. No one can be a priest unless he is bom in
the sacerdotal class, which is divided into the two orders of Dastur
and Mobed (the latter being a corruption of the word Magapati, chief
of the Magians). The Dastilrs, or chief priests, are not numerous.'^ I
was introduced to the head Dastur, a kind of Archbishop of Canter-
bury, who resides at Poena, and found him a venerable old gentle-
man, courteous in manner, and very learned in his own way. The
priestly class is always distinguishable by their costume from the
laity. Every priest wears a perfectly white dress to denote purity.**
Another distinctive mark is that he never shaves either head or &ce.

All the ordinary work of the priesthood — ^such as the daily service
of the fire sanctuary, the observance of a complicated ritual, and the
performance of all public and domestic ceremonies — :falls to the lot
of the Mobeds. The sons of Mobeds are held to be Herbads, but are
not obliged to follow the sacerdotal profession. Any Herbad may,
like a Brahman, devote himself at his own option to secular occupa-
tion, and may discard the white turban for a dark one. Those
Mobeds, who are trained, to priestly functions from their earliest
years, are generally very ignorant, and scarcely ever know the meaning
of the Zend prayers and invocations they repeat at their ceremonies.
Nor do they always imderstand the hidden significance of their own
ritual, though they go through the whole detail with perfect pre-
cision. Professor Haug was permitted to witness some of their most

their calendar according to the ancient Persian reckoning. This reforming party is
still small. The two parties do not differ in religions doctrine.

• Westeigaard's Edition, viii. 81-96.

* Many of their purificatory rites may be compared to those enjoined in LeTiticQ&
*• Probably not more than six or eight in nmnber. There are only two for the

Shdhansh&hl sect in Bombay, and one for the Kadmls.

*> Whether the white neckcloth of a Christian clergyman has a similarsignificanoe
I do not undertake to say.

J881. THE PiRSiS. 509

important rittial acts, such as those of the Paragnah, the Yasna, or
Ijashne, and the Darun.'^

An elaborate Yasna ceremony was also performed in my presence
^^hen I was last at Bombay, by order of Sir Jamsetji JijibhSi. Much
^tbat I witnessed reminded me of the descriptions in Leviticus, and
the priests who performed the ceremony might have been lineal
descendants of Jewish Levites. The analogies to Vedic ceremonial
Nwere also obvious. The two Mobeds who officiated were dressed in
the usual sacred shirt and girdle, with waistcoat, trousers, and brimless
turban of pure white linen. A low quadrangular stone table or
platform in the middle of the room supported the ceremonial imple-
ments, consisting of vessels filled with consecrated water, cups and
-saucers all of brass, a ring, two crescent-shaped tripod stands ^^ with
a bundle of wires, now used in place of the Barsom, or sacred twigs,
which once played an important part in ritual observances. A metal
jreservoir filled with water, large enough for the immersion of all the
implements, and two or three Lotas, stood close to the stone platform.
On its northern side was a low stone stool on which sat the chief
officiating priest, called the Zota, with legs folded under him in the
usual Indian fashion. On the southern side was a vase-like vessel
or censer containing the sacred fire, which, during the progress of the
ceremony, was fed with fragrant sandal-wood and frankincense, and
otherwise attended to by the second priest, called Raspi (Rathwi),
whose nose and mouth were, of course, protected by the usual linen
veil.

The chief Mobed, after washing his hands, face, and feet, began
the ceremony by pouring water six times over the stone platform.
Then the metal cups and saucers were placed in various positions
— sometimes, when filled with water, erect, and sometimes, when
empty, upside down — with much recitation of prayers and invoca-
tions. The metal ring was deposited in one of the cups, and at a
particular point in the ceremony taken out and bound round with
three hairs from a white calf, to symbolise the eternal universe puri-
fied by Zoroaster's three precepts, ^ pure thoughts, pure words, and
pure deeds.' One wire was laid horizontally on two cups to represent
body and soul presided over by the supreme Creator, Ormazd, while
a bundle of twenty-two wires was placed on the two crescent-shaped
tripods to typify the superintending care of that number of Yazads
j(or secondary angelic rulers), these again being boimd round with
eiz threads from a palm leaf to denote their subordination to the six
Amesha-spentas, or Archangels. Then one wire was singled out

'' Dartln is the name of the consecrated flat cake used at this ceremony. Notes
deflcriptiTe of the ceremonies he witnessed are given at the end of West's edition of
Hang's Essays.

>* The three legs of the tripod represent the three precepts of Zoroaster--pnre
^.honghts, pure words, and pure deeds.

Vol. IX.— No. 49. M M

610 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. March

from the twenty-two, and laid alone on the tripods to denote the
overruling power of the chief angel Srosh, exerted for the protection
of the entire human race.

An important part of the ceremonial consisted in preparing tlie
Homa. The chief Mobed took some broken stalks of the Homa — said
to be a species of sea-plant brought from Pei*8ia — and putting them
with pieces of pomegranate root into tL mug-shaped receptacle made
of metal, pounded them with a metal pestle, which at intervals he
struck repeatedly against the side of the vessel, the ringing somid
thereby produced being held to be an essential part of the ceremony^
Then, pouring water three times over the compound, he converted
the whole into a purifying decoction, part of which is dinmk by the
priests, and part reserved to be given to dying persons and new-bom
children. The Homa, of course, corresponds to the Vedic Soma.

The ceremony lasted for at least an hour. It appeared to me
that its elaborate symbolism could scarcely have been followed intel-
ligibly by any ordinary worshipper. The priests seemed to be intent
on going through their appointed routine by rote with scrupulous
accuracy, but without entering seriously into the significance of their
own acts. All the duties of a Pars! priest are in fact mechanicaL
He has no didactic functions of any kind. He never preaches to the
laity, as Hindu teachers and the Muhammadan clergy do. The
result is that Parsi laymen are, as a general rule, disgracefuUv
ignorant and indifferent on religious subjects. They know nothing
of their own scriptures, and even the better educated can only under-
stand the Avesta texts by means of Pahlavl, Pazand, or Crujaratl
translations.

To this rule there are, of course, some remarkable exceptions. A
really pious layman is careful to perform his appointed religious
exercises with scrupulous exactness. Indeed, the daily duties of an
orthodox Pars! are almost as onerous as those of a Hindu. His first
act on leaving his bed is to put on the sacred shirt called Sadaia»
His second act is to wind the sacred cord or girdle (Kusti) round his
waist with what are called the Kusti prayers, recited in the Zend
language, unintelligible to the reciter. He takes the cord with both
hands, holding it by its most central part. Then touching his fore-
head with it he invokes the aid of Ormazd for the destruction of aD
evil spirits and evil rulers. This sacred shirt and cord constitute the
chief distinctive badge of a modem Zoroastrian. His investiture
with them corresponds very curiously to that of the Jewish child
with the under-garment called Arban Kanphoth or TaUeth. It also
answers to the Hindu boy's investiture with the sacred thread
{yajnopavit)j and may be compared in a manner to the Christian rite
of baptism.

The Pars! child is taken at the age of seven to one of the fire
temples, and in a room outside the sanctuary placed on a low stone

188K THE PAR8IS. 511

stooL There the initiatory rite is commenced by a kind of baptism
performed by a Mobed who pours water over the child's head. Next
it is taken out into the precincts of the temple, placed on another
stool, and made to eat one or two leaves of the pomegranate — a tree
held sacred by the Parsis, and always planted near their fire temples
for use in purificatory ceremonies. Then the child, after being washed
or rubbed with nirang, is required to drink a little of this nauseous
fluid, held to be more efficacious as a purifier if it comes from the
body of a white bull.

The act of investiture follows. It constitutes the most important
part of the ceremony, and ought to be performed in the fire temple
by several Mobeds, presided over by a Dastur. When, however,
parents are poor two Mobeds, or even one, may be sufficient, and a
private room may answer the purpose of a temple. The Mobeds sit
on the ground, and the child, whether male or female, is again placed
on a stool before them. The sacred shirt is then put on, and the
white woollen cord fsuttened on around it while prayers are recited and
the child itself is made to repeat word for word the form of prayer he
is required to say ever afterwards whenever the girdle is taken off or
tied on again. The rite is concluded by one of the priests pronounc-
ing a benediction and throwing over the child's head fh^ments of
coooa-nut, dates, and pomegranates.

The Parsi shirt is made of fine white calico, linen, or cambric,
according to the rank of the wearer. It has very short sleeves, and
is shaped in a peculiar way at the neck, with a little pocket about
one-inch square in front. This is always left empty, to show that
the 2iOroastrian religion is entirely spiritual, and its God invisible.
The shirt often has a heart, symbolical of true faith, embroidered in
fiont, and two stripes at the bottom, one on each side— each separated
into three — to represent the six months of the half-year.

The Kusti, or girdle, is a long flat cord of pure white wool, rather

like a broad lady's stay-lace. It is woven by the women of the

priestly class, and afterwards consecrated, like the Hindu sacred cord,

by the priests. It consists of seventy-two threads in the warp to

denote the seventy-two chapters of the Yasna. Each of the two ends

of the girdle is left without woof, and then braided to within an inch

of the two extremities, where it is divided into three short braided

ends. The girdle is tied over the shirt, and coiled three times round

the body by holding the middle of the cord in front of the waist,

taking the two halves behind and bringing them back to the front,

where a double knot is tied in a peculiar manner. The remaining

cords are then carried back behind, and another double knot tied

there. In fact^ the shirt and girdle are, in the belief of every Zoroas-

trian, a veritable sacred panoply without which he would be perpetually

exposed to the assaults of evil demons, supposed to be ever hovering

round him, watching for an opportunity to accomplish his destruction*

HX2

512 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Much

It is easy, therefore, to understand the importance he attaches to the
proper manipulation of this spiritual armour.

But it is believed that elaborate personal purifications with nauseoDs
animal fluids are also needed for a householder's protection.

Hence his third duty, after leaving his bed in the morning, is to
rub fiace, hands, and feet with the liquid excretion {nvrang) of a cow
or ox, reciting at the same time what is called the Nirang prayer.
This prayer ends with words to the following effect : ' All the evil
thoughts, words, and deeds which I have thought, spoken, done, which
are become my nature, all these sins, bodily, spiritual, earthly, heavenly,
O Lord, pardon.'.

After the application of Nirang the Kusti prayers are a second
time recited, and again a third time after cleaning the teeth. Thej
are repeated before all the regular daily prayers, before and after
every meal, before all the necessary operations of nature, and before
going to bed. It is not too much to say that with the great body of
Parsis this constitutes the siun and substance of all religious service.

Not that the attendance at fire temples, or the repetition of other
prayers, is altogether neglected even by hard*working laymen. The
temples are open day and night, and every day in the year. Perhaps
the attendance of worshippers is largest on the two months dedicated
to the angels presiding over fire, namely, Ardibahisht and Adar,'^ aod
especially on the third and ninth day of these months, which are also
called Ardibahisht and Adar respectively. Moreover, the seventeenth
' day of every month, called Srosh, and the twentieth, called Behrain,
are thought to be most appropriate for visiting the temples ; not,
however, for common prayer and congregational worship, which are
as unknown among the Parsis as they are among the Hindiis. The
laity are, indeed, enjoined to pray five times a day, in addition to the
regular Kusti recitations, but there is no fixed time or place. They
may visit the fire temples at any hour convenient to themselves, or
may omit to visit them altogether. They may pray in their own
houses, or in the open air with the face tiuned towards the sun or
the sea. The daily prayers used in addition to the Kusti recitations
may be what are called the Nyayis — that is, praises of Ormazd, or of
the sun (Mithra or Mihr=Mitra), or of fire (Behram), or of the mo<Hi
(Mah), or of the water (Ardvisur) — or they may be \h& Yashts, which
are also rather praises than prayers addressed to the supreme Creator,
Ormazd,'^ or to his six chief assessors, the Amshashands, or to the
.angelic beings (Yazads) presiding over all natural objects and
^elements. Patets, or confessions of sin, are generally recited before
•going to bed.

^* Adar is tbe genius of material fire, whereas ArdibaJhislit is not material fire^
but immaterial truth which is symbolised by it.

^^ The Ormazd Yasht is especially used, and may be recited without turning
"towards any Frmbol.

1881, THE PARSiS. 51$

If a layman visits a fire temple his usual, practice is as follows.
On entering the courtyard he applies to an attendant, who helps him
to wash his facej hands, and all the uncovered parts of his body. No
one can approach the sanctuary without purifying his person by
ablutions. Next, the worshipper must unfasten his sacred girdle,
and tie it on again with all the usual forms and recitations. On
passing into the anteroom he repeats particular prayers. If he has>
said his daily prayers at home he has only to recite the Atash prayers*
He does this with his face towards the sacred fire visible through the
aperture in the screen. Then standing before the aperture he presents
an offering of sandal-wood, which the attendant priest places on the
fire. When the wood is consumed the ashes are brought in a flat
spoon to the worshipper. He touches them with his finger, applies
the finger to his forehead, and departs.

It is allowable for Pars! women to visit the fire temples equally
ivith men, and to recite the same prayers ; but, as a matter of fact,
they seldom go there, except on occasions of birthdays or marriages,
or on the great Adar festival, and then only in the middle of the day,
when males are likely to be absent. Formerly it was much the custom
for women to worship at the temples in the fulfilment of vows made
to avert sickness and calamity, or in acknowledgment of blessings
prayed for and received ; but the modern ladies of the period, though
they have broken through many of the restrictions which kept them,
like other Eastern ladies, in seclusion, and are passionately fond of
appearing on public occasions, rarely show themselves at fire temples.
In fact, they are qidte as averse &om church going as the Pars! men
of the period are. Yet it should be carefully noted that, in contrast
to Hindu customs, a Pars! female is not debarred firom any of the
religious privileges enjoyed by the male sex. Qirls are invested with
the sacred girdle exactly in the same manner as boys ; and when they
grow np are more punctilious than men in going through all the
formalities of winding and unwinding, fastening and un&stening,
making knots in the cord, and muttering unintelligible prayers.

It might be supposed that immediately after initiation a parent's
next anxiety would be for his children's education. No one, however,
who has resided in Eastern countries could entertain such a mistaken
idea for a moment. An ordinary ParsI parent's chief solicitude after
his child's investiture is for its betrothal and marriage. His notions
in this respect are very little in advance of those of a Hindu or
Mnhanunadan, and he is far more extravagant than either Hindu or
Muhanunadan in decorating his offspring with costly dresses and
Jewellery.

Kot imfireqnently children are betrothed before their investiture,
and even sometimes when infants ; but the usual age is between
seven and eight. The marriage takes place with all the tedious
tawdry and noisy pageantry customary among the Hindus, and is

514 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. March

often celebrated at great expense before the bridegroom bas com-
pleted his twelfth year, an auspicious day being fixed by the fiunily
astrologer. Only recently have reformers laboured to abolish the
foolish and demoralising practice of early marriage. The ceremonies
of marriage resemble in many particulars those of the Hindus, and
ought to include a marriage procession. An important part of the
ritual consists in placing the juvenile couple on two seats opposite to
each other, tying their right hands together with a silken cord, hold-
ing a cloth between them and gradually winding the cord arouDd
their bodies, while a priest with a fire-censer in his hand stands by
their side and exhorts them in the following manner :

Enow ye that both of you have loved each other and are therefore now mnted.
Look sot with impious eye on otheis, but make it jour study to love, honour, ind
cheiish each other ; avoid quarrels ; adhere to truth ; be always pure in thought,
word, and deed. Desire nototber men's property, try to increase your own. Cul-
tiyate friendship with the good. Hold out a helping hand to the poor. Continue
to respect your parents.

During the exhortation incense is cast into the censer by the
priest, and at the utterance of a particular word the bride and bride-
groom throw rice-grains on each other, the popular belief being that
whoever succeeds in striking the other first will have the upper hand
throughout life.

Of course, contact with Europeans, and the spread of English ideas
are greatly modifying all social customs. But enormous siuns are still
spent on marriage festivities, which would be fiEur more sensibly
bestowed on the young couple, as a grant in aid, on their first start
in life. As it is, the pair cannot afford the comfort of a separate house-
hold, but, when permitted tx) live together, continue, like youthfdl
Hindu couples, to reside under the parental roof. In some households
at least a hundred persons are sometimes congregated, including 9M
and grandsons with their wives. The Parsis take great credit to
themselves that they have not imitated the Hindus in prohibiting
the re-marriage of widows, and thait their religion forbids the taking
of more than one wife, except under very special or urgent circum-
stances.^^ The validity of such circumstances was formerly settled
by the Panchayat — an assembly elected by the community to regulate
its affairs, and decide upon all great sociid questions.

The power and influence of this Panchayat has lately much
decreased, but it is still a useful institution and does good service in
the management of charitable funds.

When the young ParsI wife is about to becoihe a mother, she is
immediately removed to the ground floor, where she remains excluded
from all communication with her family for forty days. The birth
of a child in the lowest part of a house is supposed to symbolise the
feu^ that a man's life should commence in humility. Five days after

" Such as a wife*6 immoral conduct or banemieflSL

1881, THE PARSiS. 516

the event an astrologer casts its nativity, draws out its horoscope^ and
predicts its destiny. . He also settles its name, taking the first letter
from the particular planet under which it was bom. These practices
:are said to be borrowed from the Hindus. They are quite as likely
to have come from Persia ; for a faith in astrology was as natural to
the ancient Persians as it has always been to all the nations of the
•earth at early stages of their development. The wonder is that an
intelligent an^ advancing people like the PSrsIs should still be under
the dominion of such senseless superstitions. Surely the better edu-
<cated among them can have no more Sedth in the family astrologer
tlian an Englishman has in a gipsy fortune-teller.

As to the Pars! funeral rites they have been fully described by
me in previous essays. It is remarkable that in whatever polhts the
Parsis have become imitators of Hindus, Muhammadans, and Chris-
iians, in one respect they still keep themselves quite distinct. Their
method of exposing their dead to be devoured by vultures on open
stone towers — called Towers of Silence — and the funeral ceremonies
•connected with this practice are unique, and without a parallel in
any other country of the world.'^

It is generally believed that the spirits of deceased persons hover
about in the neighbourhood of the Towers for three days after death.
On the morning of the fourth day the soul is taken to the judgment
seat of Mithra, and there judged according to its works done in the
body. It has then to pass a narrow bridge called Chinvalr-peretumj
'*' the bridge of decision,' the entrance to which is supposed to be
.guarded by a fierce dog. Sinful souls find themselves imable to pass
this bridge, which, sharp as a razor — an idea borrowed from the
Musalmans — is the only passage over the gulf of hell to the gates of
paradise. All their efibrts are fruitless, and they ultimately fall into
the chasm. The righteous aJone are able to accomplish the feat, and
;are admitted to eternal bliss.

Before concluding this paper I must observe that in proportion to

tbe greater intelligence and energy of the Parsis has been the ben&»

ficial effect of English education and civilisation on their character

and customs. The change brought about and progress made are fiur

caore marked than in Hindus and Muhammadans. Old superstitious

practices, many of which have been derived from the Hindiis, are

being rapidly abandoned, English manners adopted, early marriages

discouraged, and female education promoted. A growing desire is

also evinced to inquire intelligently into the principles of the Zoroas-

•trian faith, to study the original text of the Aveeta on which it is

founded, and to sweep away the incrustations which conceal its purer

•doctrines. A large number of thoughtful Parsis are becoming earnest

^thinkers, and not a few are tending towards a form of simple Theism

^w^Iiich, like that of the Brahma Theistic churches, may be gratefully

*' See my Modern India and the Indians, (Trubner and Co), third edition, p. 80.

616 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Mardi

accepted by those who are labouring for the spread of Christiamiy
as a stepping-stone towards the wished-for goal.

At any rate it may be safely asserted that the Parsis are eagerly
availing themselves of all the opportunities and advantages which the-
Oovemment of Great Britain places at the disposal of every single
individual among its millions of Indian subjects, irrespectively of
race^ rank, or creed. They are advancing steadily on the path of in-
tellectual development ; they have established schools for their young;
people of both sexes which are models of good management, and they
are the only natives of India who encourage physical exercises with a
right sense of their importance as a factor in the education of the
whole man. It is common, indeed^ to accuse the Farsis of too great
fondness for sensual pleasure and good living, and it is quite tnietha^
fasting and abstinence form no part of their religion. But in fairness
it must be admitted that they take as much care of their own poor
as of themselves. Charity is an essential part of Parsi religious dntj.
Not a beggar is to be found in the whole community.

In short, it is greatly to be desired that the Parsis may multiply
more rapidly than they have hitherto done, and enlarge their coast
beyond the limits of their present Western settlements. They are
much wanted as an influence for good in all parts of India. They
already constitute an important link between Hindus and Europeans,
and, in their energy and industry, their desire for knowledge, their
efforts at self-culture, their loyalty to authority and obedience to law,,
they set an invaluable example to all classes of the community, and
not unfrequently put their English rulers to shame.

MONIEB WILLIA1C&

1881. 517

OUR NEXT LEAP IN THE DARK.

The practice of having a subject carefully inquired into either by a
Parliamentary Committee or a Soyal Commission previous to legis-
lating upon it, is happily not quite given up, though of late somewhat
&llen into abeyance. It is satis&ctory to know that a Boyal Com-
mission is now engaged on a searching investigation into the working
of the different systems of land tenure in Ireland as a preparation for
the. measure which the Government have announced their intention<
of introducing on the subject. Indeed, the results of legislation thus
preceded by special public inquiries have in several conspicuous
instances, sudi as the Factories' Regulation Act of 1833, the New
Poor Law Act of 1834, the Public Health Act of 1848, and the Act
for regulating the Employment of Children in Mines, been so success-
fill as to encourage further recourse to the same practice. On some
questions the publication of the reports and evidence largely modified,
on some actually reversed, the public opinion before prevalent, and
on some created a public opinion where none had previously existed.

Many large, and important measures have since been passed, and
yet more proposed, by successive governments, but comparatively
few based upon special previous inquiry.

Among these few cannot be reckoned any one of a series of Beform
Bills brought in from time to time, culminating in the only one
carried, viz. the Seform Act of 1867, most of the provisions of which
are still in force ; nor can the Ballot Act which followed it in 187 2»
The first of these two Acts, the outcome of a kind of Dutch auction
between the two political parties, and therefore at the time deprecated
by but few of us, was truly described in the House of Lords by one
of its authors as a ' leap in the dark.' The second, the Ballot Act^
might have been described as a leap into the dark, not indeed from .
the light, but from another variety of darkness.

We had had no experience up to 1867 of any quite satisfactory
parliamentary franchise — satis&ctory, I mean, not only as to the
genend character of the representatives elected under it, but also
as to the general feelings of the people, electors and non-electors.
Parliament, however, set to work in 1867 to amend it, on a plan which
seemed rather the result of deduction from abstract reasonings as

.518 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Maioh

"the principl^es propounded were applied chiefly with the aid of regis-
tration lists and census tables, than the result of induction from
:ascertained facts as to the actual working of our electoral system,
parliamentary and municipal. These are facts not to be found in
statistical tables, but only to be learnt from experienced elec-
i:ioneerers, familiar not with parliamentary contests alone, but also
with the manipulation of municipal, with a view to parliamentaiy,
•elections.

It is asserted by ^perienced conductors of similar of analogous
investigations that if the preparation of the scheme for the Seform
Bill of 1867 had not been confined to the Cabinet — if officers of
practical experience, in the habit of^ sounding and exploiiogv witt a
view to electoral action, the depths into^ which the leap was to be
taken, had been previously consulted — if such officers bad been con^
suited as clerks of guardians who had been in the habit of 'actn^'as
election agents in parliamentary contests, or town clerks* vtssAto
•dealing with municipal elect6rs, among whom corruption has long
been rife — they would have thrown much light on the whole sabject;
They would have pointed out, as morally certain to happen^imder such
legislation, exactly what has been shown by the recent *4hqiiirie8 of
the commissioners to have really happened under that Act, and vmdd
4iave confidently predicted the consequences which hKve excited so
miich surprise in the unsuspecting general public '

Then as to the other leap in the dark, the Ballot Act, the Cdn-
■servatives were all in dismay about it, convinced tha;t it would be
their destruction as a party ; the Liberals all in exultation, rgoidng
in the identically same prospect. But the official witneflses above
indicated, with their knowledge of the electoral masses, were confident
that both parties were mistaken, and that the Ballot w^iild only do
just what it has done, viz. very little for either party.

It is under that Reform Act and the Ballot Act that those
•numerous instances of exteiisive electoral corruption have last year
taken place, which, have attracted so much attention abroad as well
as at home, and have done ^ so much to discredit the constitutioD
under which we live. '

Foreigners, unaccustomed to costly elections, cannot be persuaded
that candidates would spend siich large sums to get into thft Hdose of
Commons unless they expected to obtain some pecuniary or other
personal advantages in return. And must not the wage class draw
much the same infercfnce-from this excessive expenditure^ aod tbe
increased proportion of lawyers and directors of companies among
the candidates ? And do not many of them say, ^ Why Bhocdd I not
only give the candiilate my vote for nothing, but sacrifice some of
my working time for him besides, when he expects to gain somethiog
worth having for himself by winning the seat ? Why should I help
a rich director or pushing lawyer gratis to gain what he wants.

1881. OUR NEXT LEAP IN THE DARK. 619

^he& he {^ets highly paid for all his own time and work in his own
business?'

We are led very soon to expect a further Ileform Bill from the
present Government. But it is to be feared that they, like their
piedecessors^ will take no steps to acquire the information requisite
for the due preparation of a measure that must so seriously influence
for good or ill the future destinies of the British Empire, and that it
IB more likely to be based upon ^ flesh and blood ' or such like theories
^han upon the well-considered results of carefully ascertained fsicts
land recorded experience. There are as yet no indications that with
regard to the causes, as distinguished from the fact, of the existence
of such extensive electoral corruption, the Government have formed
any plan for either instituting any special inquiries to ascertain those
causes, or even for turning to account for that purpose, as £Bur as they
would be available, the commissions already engaged in the investi-
rgation of the corrupt practices themselves. It should be remembered,
however, that these investigations are limited to certain constituencies,
4EUid are only held in consequence of the special reports of the pre-
valence of corruption there from, the judges who tried the election
petitions in them. Yet those causes are surely well worth investi-
gating, and any moderate delay in consequence would be well worth
incurring. Certainly the partial light thrown incidentally by the
commissions last year upon the results of the leap in the dark is lurid
enough. Indeed, judging from information reaching me from several
quarters, with r^^d to the very extensive corruption practised at
the last election in one borough, long notoriously corrupt, where, in
the interest of both parties, a threatened petition was by agreement
, given up, it is to be feared that the disgraceful disclosures already
made respecting several constituencies last year have been but as it
were the Ufting up of a comer of the curtain, which still veils a
multitude of at least equally disgraceful instances of extensively
• corrupt constituencies.

In the four contests which I fought at Plymouth, I never re-
member so much as a rumour of more than a very few isolated and
admittedly exceptional instances even of treating on either side ; and
I was at the time assured that there had been no more than that since
the Beform Act of 1831. But of late years I have been pained to
hear a very different account of my old constituency, and I must add
of several others generally reputed to have been formerly pure. In
fact there seems reason for apprehending that too many victories on
both sides last year, triumphantly appealed to since by each re*
spectively as conclusive evidence of genuine political feeling, really
proved no more than that one party or the other in the particular
place had the longer purse, or superior dexterity in organising syste-
•matic corruption.

As I have said, it is clear from these election trials and inquiries

520 THE NINETEENTH OENTDRT. MarA

that the large addition made since 1867 to the borough constitoencieff
has not rendered them pure, if indeed, as seems in many cases pro-
bable, it has not produced quite the opposite effect. It has unques-
tionably placed the representation of the boroughs absolutely in the
hands of the wage class, whenever they choose to take it*

Thoughtful men had for years confidently anticipated a decided
lowering of the franchise into a much larger as well as lower
stratum of the community before long, and felt convinced of the
serious consequences to be apprehended from it, unless accompanied
by some corresponding wider extension of eilectoral power among the
more highly educated, as distinguished from the merely wealthier,
classes. It was this anticipation and this conviction that about a
quarter of a century ago induced between 200 and 300 men, all well
known^ and many of the highest eminence in literature, in science,
and in art, with the concurrence of such veteran Liberals as Lord
Brougham, Lord Badnor, Lord Eversley, and my father, to sign a
petition to Parliament on the subject, in collecting the signatures to
which I took some part. In that petition they prayed that a separate
representation might be given locally, not professionally, to men whose
higher education had been publicly and responsibly certified ; such,
e*g,, as graduates of the universities, lawyers and medical practitioneis,
associated to form in each large county, or combination of small
counties, a separate constituency to elect its separate member of the
House of Conunons. It was specially proposed that they should vote
locally, not professionally, so that they might represent the higher
education of the country generally, and not the particular interests
or feelings of the different liberal professions separately. The idea
was too novel '^to obtain favour either with the then leader of the
Conservative party in the House of Commons, whose writings have
all indicated a belief in a kind of democratic Toryism, or with the
Liberal party, too many of whom seemed then, as they seem now, to
consider a further lowering of the franchise one of the most urgent
requirements of the country.

When, as we are led to expect from the past votes and speeches
of many, and the quite recent declarations of some, of the present
ministers, household suffrage for the counties is given to all the
residents outside the borough boundaries, the political supremacy of
the wage class, rightly described by Mr. Lowe as ^ our masters,' wiU
be complete. They are more nmnerous than all the other classes of
the community put together, &r less educated, and more habitually
indifferent about politics, but capable of being roused into great
excitement on some particular question, political, religious, social,
or even (e,g. the Clainuint) personal, which happens at the time to
have engaged their attention. We cannot doubt the vnll — can we
doubt the power ? — of the ministry to cany such a measure, and tiiat
speeidily.

1881. OUR NEXT LEAP IN THE DARK. 521

It will then be (is it not already ?) too late to inquire what has
4)een hitherto the general course of action here, and what, therefore,
TTould be the probable legislation of the wage class even as respects
"themselves — too late to draw any lesson from the votes of almost
«veiy democratic representative assembly, colonial or foreign. To
the students of Adam Smith and Stuart Mill, of Bastiat and Chevalier,
it appears to be thoroughly protectionist, and particularly injurious
to the true interests of the wage class. In the judgment of political
-economists its tendency has been, by raising wages factitiously, to
reduce the purchasing power of the money received by them as wages,
^nd to raise prices against themselves. Are not Jack Cade's speeches
about the seven halfpenny loaves for a penny, and the three-hooped
pots that were to have ten hoops, typical of various wage-class
leaders' speeches since ? Can anything be conceived much more dis-
-couraging to superior skill and industry than the objection of so
many workmen to piece-work — any policy more suicidal in a nation,
absolutely requiring a large export trade to pay for the large imports
of food necessary to the sustenance of a large portion of the popula*
tion, than their too often triumphant opposition to the introduction
of new labour-saving machinery ? Mr. Stuart Mill, while earnestly
protesting against the folly and injustice of this opposition, gave
«ome amusing instances of it — e,g. masons not only refusing to build
with machine-made bricks, but to have hand-made bricks brought to
them on wheelbarrows instead of hods. Then as to their generally
large expenditure in drink — some 60,000,000f. a year — and corre-
sponding refusal to spend anything like the same proportion of their
income, as all other classes do, to provide decent and wholesome
habitations for themselves and their families, can any practice (to
put it on the lowest ground of mere economy of working power) be
more wasteful and improvident ? To the ordinary operative, whose
sole capital consists in his competent strength, competent skill, and
-competent character, any failure of health renders that capital un-
available. And yet, partly from his personal habits, partly from his
^inwillingness to pay for decent and wholesome lodging, and partly
from general defects in structural arrangements for sewerage, water
supply, &c., which he individually has no means of improving, it is
certain that he loses on the average, in comparison with his con-
temporaries of the middle and higher classes, many more working
<lays in the year through sickness, and many more working years of
his life through premature old age, and death still more premature.
Some Bay the remedy is to lower the franchise still further, so as to
include more sufferers from unsanitary conditions, and enable them
to elect men who in the municipality and Parliament respectively
will support measures to prevent and remove these evils. But expe-
rience has unfortunately shown that with no class is sanitary reform
«o unpopular as with the wage class. I remember when ^ the poor

522 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Jlawh

man's pig ' was a most potent election cry in various borough oon*
tests ; and it was difficult to say whether the pig-keepers th^iaelves
or their non-pig-keeping next-door neighbours suffered most from
the close proximity of the animal, or were most indignant at his
compulsory removal. The men of their choice, too, have generally
been hostile, or, at best, disdainfully indifferent, to sanitary reform.
Most of the popularly elected town councils throughout the kingdom
long resolutely obstructed sanitary measures; and the London vestries,
in particular, fiercely denounced them and their authors. Indeed, it
can even now by no means be said that nearly all these bodies take
at all a just or enlightened view of their duties in this respect, ^b.
Bright, and too many politicians of all parties, began by opposingy
and have ever since notoriously neglected and contemned, sanitary
reform, not at all to the detriment of their popularity, but rather
the reverse. Indeed, he with perfect consistency, when President of
the Board of Trade, strenuously resisted legislation for the detection
and punishment of adulteration, even when not only fraudul^t, bat
injurious to health, though the poor unquestionably suffer much more
than the rich from these nefarious practices. ^ Fancy franchises^
having been successfully denounced by that too influential minister
— far more distinguished for magnificent oratory than for legislatire
capacity, administrative efficiency, or sound political economy — it \&
useless now to plead on their behalf. It is too late now to ask with
regard to boroughs whether fair indications, even short of proo& of
habits of thrift as well as industry, happily much increasing in the
wage class, might not be as deserving of consideration in fixing the
qualifications for the franchise as conclusive proofs of being a horn
fide lodger within a borough could be.

And then as to constituencies. There are several seats now
vacant to be disposed of, and under a comprehensive Beform BUI
there would probably be more. But it is, I fear, too late to expect
any competitive examination to be held as to the fitness of the several
constituencies proposed as candidates for them — their fitness, I mean,
as being likely to contribute useful members to the Legislature in
the men they elect. Sir John Lubbock, indeed, considering that the
universities, which cultivate letters and theology more than science,
are still allowed members, has proposed that a representative should
be given to the Boyal Society as one seat of science. The new
Victoria University may be said to be another, and the Society of
Arts, a chartered society a century and a quarter old, might have a
concurrent claim. And if curative science and art, in the persons of
the doctors, were considered entitled to a separate representative,
then preventive science, at least as important to the community,
would, in the persons of the few thousand officers of health, have
corresponding services to plead. Certainly electors belonging to
either of these bodies would hardly get drunk, break windows, and

1881. OUR NEXT LEAP IN TEE DARK. 623i

j^uire keeping in order by the police at election times, or be open^
to wholesale bribery and treating, which may be reckoned among the-
negative qualifications desirable in a new constituency. But is not
Sir John Lubbock's, and are not aU analogous proposals too late ?
Would the wage class approve of such * fi&ncy constituencies ' any
more than their eloquent, but (according to a late Liberal Prime
Minister) ^ narrow-minded,' representative, Mr. Bright, approves of
< fancy franchises ' ? And we must not forget that the wage elass are-
already ' our masters ' in the boroughs, and that the present Minis-
ters have promised they shall be so in the counties likewise. For
when their new Beform Bill is carried the votes of the wage class,
wherever they choose to give them, will suffice to swamp those of all
the other classes put together in every constituency except the
universities.

Of coiirse on the ^ flesh and blood' theory this is right and
desirable. But many, who were Liberals long before the gifted
statesman who endorsed that theory became one, and some of us
still surviving followers of theirs, always protested against such an
abstract theory, and contended that good government with orderly
h'berty was the end to besought whether in framing new or reforming:
old constitutions; that no Government could be considered good,
which did not give adequate security for freedom, and which did not
work not only well, but on the whole acceptably, to the governed ;
and therefore that it was essential for a large proportion of the
people to have a voice in the election of their representatives in
Parliament.

When the leap in the dark was spoken of in the House of Lords
as a durable if not permanent settlement by one of those Tories
who reluctantly acquiesced in it, I ventured to reply that it seemed'
U> me to have unsettled everything and settled nothing ; that I felt
sure it would be altered before two years (it was before one) had
elapsed ; and that no Beform Bill could be deemed just, satisfactory,,
or likely to last, which did not give the same franchise to the rural
population as Mr. Disraeli's Bill did to the urban.

I added that the rural population was, in most counties at leasts .
equally fit for it, not only because notoriously a smaller proportion
of them were, according to the returns, convicted of crime or appre*
hended for drunkenness, but also because in many counties (though
in all a majority of the sharpest boys sought better paid employment
in towns) they were equally well educated with the borough popu-
lation in other counties. I had previously got a friend to move in.
the House of Commons, while the Bill was under discussion, for a
return in counties and districts giving the proportion of signatures^
to marks in the marriage register. I then showed that in my own.
county for instance, Devonshire, according to this the best available-
test, not only w^e the adult males in the Devonshire borough regis-

524 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. March

tration districts better educated than those in the Lancashire borough
districts, ^nd in the Devonshire rural districts better than in tibe
Lancashire rural districts, but that those in the Devonshire rural
districts were actually better educated than those in the Lancashire
'borough districts; and that the same held good with regard to
several other manufacturiDg and mining counties. I then indicated
very briefly my view as to the general principles on which, after
what had passed, this just enfranchisement of the agricaltoral
labourer could be most safely and satisfactorily effected. All that I
have heard, read, and seen since, has confirmed me in my opinioB,
which, for that reason, I venture to explain now at somewhat greater
dength than I did then in the House of Lords.

In considering the fitness of the rural population for the duties
and responsibilities of electors in comparison with that of the town
population of the same grade, it should be remembered that they are
far less exposed to the demoralising influence of the horrible over-
crowding so prevalent in our larger towns. For in these, house-rent
being much higher, a whole family has too often, what is virtually
unknown in rural life, only a single room to live in by day and deep
in by night ; and comparatively very few of the lower wage class in
most towns enjoy the amount of accommodation becoming more and
more general in the country districts, partly from the building of
better new cottages, partly from the utilisation of existing farmhouses
and cottages left vacant as the rural population diminished.

Now this view of the subject is really a very important one. I
speak as a sanitary reformer of nearly forty years* standing who has
worked hard and suffered seriously, if he has effected but little, in
that good cause.

In preparing my address as President for this year of the Congress
of the Sanitary Institute, I have had occasion to refer to some of the
old authorities which I studied when preparing my lecture on the
health of towns in 1845. In Mr. Chadwick's Sanitary Report of
1842 and in the general report of the Health of Towns Commission of
1845, and the detailed reports of their Assistant Conunissioners, I
found absolutely conclusive proofs that, as a rule, dirt, disease, vice
and crime, together with gross ignorance on almost every subject
Bxcept what is most demoralising in literature or the drama, are con-
current in the same districts and dwellings ; and I found, from an
almost continuous chain of evidence, that this has held good doTm to
the present time. I am taking no low or materialistic view of maH)
marvellously compounded as he is of body, soul, and spirit; I am not
questioning at all the elevating and purifying influence of Christian
pastors and of Christian missionaries of either sex, or of Christian
schools, ragged or otherwise, upon the unhappy denizens of filthy
overcrowded and fever-haunted dwellings ; much less am I doubting
the fact that bright examples of consistent Christian excellence are

1881. OUR NEXT LEAP IN THE DARK. 525

even frequently found in them, when I repeat, after thirty-five years
of additional experience, what I stated in 1845, that ^ as a rule, men
cannot lodge like pigs and live like Christians.' The reason for this
is most forcibly explained by Dr. Lyon Playfair in his admirable
report on Lancashire towns in 1844, when, after citing the striking
testimony of Mr. Clay, the benevolent chaplain of Preston Gaol,
corroborated by that of the Inspector of Prisons in Scotland, as to
the physical causes of disease becoming indirectly the cause of crime,
he goes on to say : —

All the experience acquired durixig this inquiiy points out that one immediate
effect of the operatiun of morbific causes, even when not present in sufficient
intensity to produce direct disease^ is to create an appetite for Ticious indulgences.
It IB too common a mistake to transpose the effect for the cause^ and to ascribe th&
disesse to the indulgence of those propensities which in the first place were created
by the low saoitaiy state of the district.

Pr.Play£ftir had been speaking of the condition of the inhabitants
of large towns. It contrasts in many respects strikingly, and in
morals very unfavourably, with that of the mostly rural population
of Irish counties. Yet I found firom some old statistics relating to-
the four counties of Ireland with the then largest and smallest pro-
portion of one-roomed mud-hovels respectively (the proportion of
families occupying such tenements being in the first rather more-
than double what they were in the second case), that the same general
hiw held good. The proportion of crimes of violence and passion, on
an average of eight years to 1842, was 72 to 32 ; of rapes and assaults*
with intent, &c., 44 to 17 ; and of deaths from epidemics 48 to 36
per ] ,000 in the four counties with the most and with the fewest of
one-roomed mud-hovels respectively.

Dr. Playfair further remarks, with reference to the effect of
premature and excessive mortality, that ' the tendency to crime be-
comes increased by the comparatively few old and experienced men
left to counteract the haste and inexperience of youth.' It is sad
and discouraging to reflect that, in spite of all our subsequent
sanitary legislation (at first, in 1848, enlightened, but also too much
in advance of public opinion, then retrograde and confused, and only
latterly again both practical and enlightened), premature and ex-
cessive mortality has not been yet at all diminished as it might
and ought to have been, since those wise and true sentences were
written by the right hon. gentleman.

I thought in 1867, and think more strongly now, that, considering
the greatly increased facilities for locomotion and transport, and the
consequently greatly increased habitual intercourse and traffic of late
between the town and country population, their sentiments and inte-
rests have become to a much greater extent identical than they used
to be, except in the very large towns ; and that, except in their case^
Vol. IX.— No. 49. N N

.626 . THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Maich

there appears to be no adequate reason for keeping up any loog^ a
now in general simply arbitrary distinction between them, and all
the less because many boroughs include within their bonndarieg a
-certain extent of purely agricultural land, and some, thankB to
the survival of the freemen's franchise, an additional proportion of
rural and other non-urban electors.

In order to continue a separate franchise to a certain number of
electors with a somewhat larger stake in the country, I wisbed, and
wish, as at present advised, to see every parish in England made part
both of a borough and of a county, so that its householders migbt
have the borough franchise, labile those of its inhabitants who
possessed the county qualification might enjoy the county franchise.
Except in the case of the largest towns, which have a reasonable
«claim to consideration as being to a certain degree separate commu-
nities with separate interests, I should like to see the boundaries of
boroughs extended for representative purposes so as to meet aciosi
the counties, so that, for instance, the cottagers in my parish of
Filleigh should have votes for the neighbouring borough of Barn-
staple ; the farmers, the coal and manure dealer, and the shopkeqter
at the station, renters of more than 12Z. a year, having votes, as now,
for the Northern Division of Devonshire ; while similarly in Mr.
Daniel's parish of Stoodleigh, adjoining the river Exe above Tivertoni
the cottagers should have votes for that borough, the farmers equally
remaining voters for North Devon. The very large cities to be dealt
with exceptionally might (as Exeter, Norwich, Newcastle-on-Tjne,
and a few other ancient large cities have been for centuries) be made
^ counties of cities,' with their boundaries, perhaps, somewhat modified
to fjEUiilitate improvements in their sewerage, drainage, and water
supply ; and might then have their third member elected on a county
franchise instead of under the unsatisfactory minority clause, which
Titterly fails in its operation whenever a single vacancy occurs. We
should thus, while giving general household suffrage, keep up a
separate constituency as at present in the counties, with a decidedly
higher qualification, which represents in the country, in rural villages,
and in small market towns, a far greater difference of social status
than it does in the large towns.

Moreover, as one who in Devonshire stood for years almost alone
with my father in advocating representative county boards, now
xecognised by all parties as desirable, I venture to think that such an
arrangement as I have suggested might tend to strengthen count?
feeling and to facilitate the unification and consolidation of local
areas of rating and of local administration for various purposes, whose
present chaotic confusion everywhere outside the boundaries of
municipalities so much increases the trouble and impairs the quality
of the local business transacted in them piecemeal, with great waste
of time and cost. Parochial action has been within my own lifetime

mi: OUR NEXT LEAP IJSr THE DARK. 527

superseded for almost all purposes. The parish, once the unit of

English administration for the relief of the poor, the repair of the

bighivays, and the maintenance of law and order, can, it has been

truly said, only be described now as a place where a church-rate can

be made but cannot be levied. I trust it may be replaced as the unit

of local rating and administration by the union, witli boundaries by

inutual adjustment rendered conterminous with the counties, and all

the petty municipalities, with their independent areas, merged for all

purposes in the union. For these independent areas, generally very

ill managed, are all the more absurd and inconvenient because they

often comprehend large purely rural tracts. The municipality nearest

me, for instance, in addition to several hamlets, many detached fiurm-

houses and cottages, besides thousands of. acres of arable pasture and

woods belonging to several owners, includes one-third of my deer

park and my largest covert, in which we recently found several wild

red deer.

I am aware that such a proposal about the constituencies, though
based to a certain extent on the old lines of the Constitution, woidd
be littie likely to be received with favour by ihe smaller boroughs,
whose inhabitants, Uianks to the privilege bestowed upon their
forefathers of choosing and sending up burgesses to Parliament^ have
unjustly and anomalously retained in the Legislature an influence
much beyond that due eitlier to their population or their contribu-
tions to the Exchequer, or, indeed, to anything except their past
history — ^and that, alas I has not always been unsullied. And they
would like it the less because the greatly enhanced value of each
-elector's vote in a small as compared with a large constituency has
notoriously often proved a temptation whi6h too many of them have
felt unable to resist.

The other alternative would seem to be that of equal electoral
tlistricts. But I confess my own strong preference at present for
•almost any arrangement, not too glaringly unfieiir, that would continue
at least some of the traditions of our not inglorious past, and pre-
s&rvBj in an altered, but still recognisable, form, some parts of that
Constitution which, in spite of its imperfections, made England for
centuries the envy and admiration of all lovers of liberty throughout
the world.

In the absence of any scheme proposed by any member of the
Legislatitre other than the simple assimilation of the county and
borough franchise by making both equally low, which it is hardly
-conceivable could be applied alone, without touching at all the general
question of the representation, I have ventured to suggest these views
with regard both to the franchise and to the constituencies. I have
done so, if only to prove that all, who have for years considered the
agricultural labourer at present imfairly dealt with in comparison
with the lodger in some alley of some borough, do not agree with

K H 2

628 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. March

Mr. Trevelyan as to the best mode of doing the labourer justice as a
British citizen.

But I still entertain, as I said before, the strongest conviction
that the vitally important question of a further reform of the repre-^
sentation of the people in Parliament ought not again to be legislated
upon in the dark ; but that the franchises, the constituencies, and
the mode of voting best to be adopted under present circumstances^
should be the subjects of ample and careful public inquiry, before
Parliament proceeds to legislate upon either of them. Vestigia wuUa
retr(yr8U'm. Leaps of this kind once taken in the dark cannot be
retrieved, however grave the lurid light of experience may afterwards
show their consequences to be.

The next question that arises is as to the best mode of voting.

The ballot in England has probably protected the voter from the
much diminished amount of intimidation to which he still remained
exposed ; though, according to an American statesman in a recent
number of the Contemporary Review, it has completely fiiiled to d(v
this in the United States ; while, according to the same authority^
bribery is believed to have somewhat increased there latterly under
the ballot. Be this, however, as it may, the evidence taken at the
trials of election petitions last year, and still more that didted since
by the special commissions, conclusively prove that the ballot has
been very far from preventing, if indeed it has diminished, while
shielding, electoral corruption. I never believed that it would;
though after having, as long as I satin the House of Commons, some-
times at the risk of my seat, steadily opposed the ballot as being
*' likely to do a little harm and less good,' I, later on, when called up
to the peerage, supported the ballot as being Mikely (owing to the
spread of trades unionism) to do a little good and less hannJ I did
so, however, only because I despaired of the adoption for parUamentair
and municipal elections of what I have always considered to be a &r
better system, viz., that estal)lished under the New Poor Law of 1834
for the election of guardians, which I have had some opportunities
of studying as a pretty diligent guardian for more than thirty-five
years, and secretary to the Poor Law Board for nearly four. Tlus
has gone on ever since side by side with the old unsatisfiBictoiy mode
of voting at parliamentary and municipal elections, which obliges
the voter to poll, whether by ballot or othervdse, at a polling jdace —
a mode very expensive to candidates, as they know well to their cost^
and so troublesome to electors, that a large proportion of them raielj
vote at all in large constituencies unless conveyed to the poll in
carriages, and either bribed or worked up into a state of excitement
for the occasion. Even with all this, from one-fourth to one-third of
the parliamentary electors in large boroughs generally have proved
obstinately deaf to appeals of all kinds, and have not cared either to
go, or be taken, to the poll. There was a contest in each of the

1881. OUR NEXT LEAP IN THE DARK. 52»

twenty four largest boroughs in Great Britain at the general election
of 1874, and the aggregate number of electors who polled in them
was less than two^thirds of those on the register. In that of 1880
there ware contests in twenty-three of them, and the aggregate
number of electors polling was only about three-fourths, notwith-
standing the immense exertions made and yast sums expended.^

In the election of guardians we have now had experience for more
than forty years of the system of voting by voting-papers first left,
and subsequently collected, by a public employs at the voter's resi-
dence. Only last October, at the Poor Law Conference of representa-
tives of the boards of guardians of the North-Westem district, a
resolution, approving the principle of the system, was carried after
discussion by forty votes to twelve in spite of the opposition of the
President, Mr. Hibbert, M.P. No wonder, when I find firom, I be-
lieve, the last retum^moved for in the House of Lords on the subject,
that the total number of parishes, in England and Wales, in which
there had been any question about the election of any g^uardian, during
the years 1874 and 1875, serious enough to require an inspector
being sent by the Local Crovemment Board to hold an inquiry into
it, was seven, of which four did not occupy at most more thim one
day each, one not more than two days, and two, in two parishes in
<xreat Yarmouth, taken together, not more than thirteen days between
them.

Another testimony in its favour is that I hear its principle has
not unfirequently been adopted in the returns to postal circulars,
substituted on account of their cheapness and convenience for a ^ test
ballot,' to ascertain the comparative acceptability of the respective
candidates, when several have been started on the same side for the
same constituency ; thus securing unity of action in the party^ and
sometimes saving the expense of a contest altogether. Postal circulars,
-enclosing forms and envelopes duly prepared, have long been used to
^collect the votes and proxies of shareholders in companies and sub-
-scribeis to charities.

Till the appointment of the Committee of the House of Commons
in 1878, its practical success was never, to my knowledge, seriously
impugned. I remember, indeed, some time after I resigned the
iKcretaryship of the Poor Law Board, something like an attack upon
it being threatened. I immediately wrote a memorandum on the
sobject for my late chiefs private information. Mr. Baines, as soon

1 I obtained these aggregate results bj adding together the votes of the first and
third sncoessfnl candidates in boronghs with three members, and in other boroughs
the votes of the candidate of each party highest on the poll; and then comparing
them with the number of electors on the register. The proportion varied in 1874
from about }{ in Westminster to little more than ^ in the Tower Hamlets, and in
1880 from rather more than ^ in Sheffield to little more than ^ In the Tower Ham-
lets; the total number of electors on the register being increased by, in round
nnmben, 60,000 to 7SO,000 in 324 boroughs.

63ff THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. MaicU

as he had read it, asked my permission to make it a public document^
that it might be moved for in the House of Commons, soon after
which it was equally moved for in the House of Lords in 1855.

In that memorandum, after citing fix>m the EdMUywrgh Rmew'
the fact that at the general election of 1852, in contests for twelve
large constituencies averaging over 14,000 electors each, hundreds
more than Marylebone then had, only 55 per cent, voted, I men-
tioned an instructive contiast in the operation of the two modeB of
voting upon the ratepayers in the same parish. Under the Act
of 1834, the Poor Law Commissioners thought they had the power of
issuing orders to St. Pancras, and an election of vestrymen took
place accordingly in 1837 on the new system. At that time the
ratepayers were about 13,000, besides a certain number of owners
with votes given them by the new Poor Law Act, of whom more Uum
7,600 voted. St. Pancras, however, and other parishes under previous
local acts, were afterwards decided by the courts not to be subject to
the Poor Law Commissioners' orders. So St. Pancras reverted to its
old franchise and mode of voting under Hobhouse's Act. Under that
there was a contest in 1853, when the ratepayers had increased to
about 20,000 ; and though it was described as causing great excite-
ment in the parish with colours, banners, and processions of cabs, the
utmost number that could be brought to the poll was little over
2,700. But in 1879, out of the eight wards there, four with over 12,000
on the list were contested, when over 5,500 voted by voting papei^
collected from house to house. Mr. Bendle, Medical Officer of
Health, told the Committee of the House of Commons on the Metro-
}x>lis Local Management Act, of which Mr. Stuart Mill was a
member, that in his parish some 3,000 votes were collected out of
some 5,000 voting papers sent out for the election of guardians; that
while not one in a himdred in the parish knew much about the
vestry election, and the vestrymen were usually practically dectedby
ten or twenty people, the guardians were usually elected by 2,000 or
3,000 ; that he himself was elected a vestryman by teia or twelve
people, but a guardian by some 1,200. The Committee unanimously
recommended the adoption of the system in use for the election of
Poor Law Guardians. I never pretended that, owing to the very
imperfect arrangements, consequent upon the very sdoaII remuneia-
tion allowed to the officers for this work (only a halfpenny per held
of the population when there was a contest in parishes with under,
and only a farthing with over, 500 inhabitants), there were not some
£Eicilities for malpractices, of which, independent of accidental caie>
lessness, a certain number of instances could readily be found. I
pointed out, however, that some of these facilities might easily and
at slight expense be removed : indeed, I have learnt that some of
them have since been obviated accordingly. Nor did I contend that
the system admitted of being brought to such perfection as to protect

1881. OUR NEXT LEAP IN. THE DARK. 531

the voter effectually from being coerced either' into destroying or'
making void his voting paper, or into filling it up in a manner contrary •
to his convictions. I only pointed out that a fiEir greater proportion
of electors were induced to vote by the ease and comfort with which
they were thus enabled to do so ; and that, therefore, the general
result of an election so conducted, notwithstanding any possible
careless or intentional suppression of some voting papers, or any
compulsory perversion in the filling up of others, gave a more
fidthful representation of the real deliberate feelings of the whole
Ixxiy of electors than going to the poll gave, whether under the
ballot or not.

I ended by expressing my conviction that the same system might
advantageously be applied to parliamentary elections. I may add
that the electors practically thus encouraged, not to say enabled, to
vote instead of remaining unpolled, are by no means the least sen*
sible or honest of the constituency. For, as I said in a pamphlet on
^ Local fiepresentative Self-Govemment for the Metropolis,' which I
published in 1863 shortly before my triumphant return for
Marylebone —

it has been shrewdly observed that, especially in the middle and lower ranks,
those who occupy themselves most about elections and politics are either the best
or the worst citizens. The best take part in public affairs from a sense of duty,
religions or patriotic, from a generous spirit of attachment to the person or the
cause they espouse. The worst busy themselves in party contests either from love
of the excitement, the conviviality and gossip attending an election, or from the
expectation of deriving advantages in the shape of patronage or jobs, which mor&
highr-minded men scorn. There is, however, a large intermediate class of men of
svemge industry and character, who, caring much for their own interests and their
families, and comparatively little for public measures or public men, can with
difficulty be prevailed upon, however decided their preference, to support either
one side or the other at the sacrifice of any of that time and trouble which they
Talue so highly, and know so well how to turn to account.

The fact that increasing competition in work and business causes
private afiBurs more and more to pre-occupy the thoughts and
monopolise the time of more and more sensible and useful citizens^
renders it the more important to fskcilitate their giving the public
the benefit at elections of the very little leisure and attention at their
cUsposal ; that little being much more likely to be used to the public
advantage than the days readily given up by the idle and thought-
less, or the labour devoted by the schemers and jobbers of either
party to electioneering.

Besides having at different times, for nearly twenty years com-
mencing with 1839, taken a part in contests in various places to
aBsist Liberal candidates, I fought five contests myself, one unsuccess-
fally, because I refused to bribe, as my opponents did, whom I
unseated on petition ; and I was five times returned to Parliament^

582 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Maieh

ODoe only without oppodtion. So I have had, in my day, a fair
ahare of experieDce in contested elections.

My recollection is exactly what I hear from good authority [is
the general statement of experienced election agents. The great
difficulty, always and everywhere, is to persuade industrious men who
know and care comparatively little about politics, but know a great
<ieal about their own business and care a good deal about their
families, to sacrifice their time and trouble in order to record their
votes. And, of course, the difficulty is greater in large consdtuencieB
where the great number of electors renders each vote of mudi len
individual importance than where the nimibers are comparatively
small. Each elector at Liverpool is about a sixty-thousandth, at
Portarlington about a hundred-and-fortieth, part of the constituency.
To some going to the poll in a carriage is something of a compen-
sation, the pleasure of the drive, rather than the saving of time for
work, being its recommendation to these voters. In my contest for
Marylebone the cost of cabs, almost entirely for the conveyance of
voters to their rarely at all remote polling-places, was 365Z. out cf a
total of about 5,000^., though I did not poll quite 7,000 votes, scarody
more than half the electors — a number, however, very much larger
than ever had been polled there before. A friend of mine has re-
ceived from several experienced election agents information to the
same effect. They all agreed that very strong excitement was Deeded
to induce electors to take the trouble of voting, unless other induce-
menis had been either added at the time, or had been recently added
at some municipal or parochial election.

We have the strongest evidence that under, no less than before,
the ballot, polling at polling-places, when there has been no cormp-
tion direct or indirect, has led in large constituencies to the return
of the representative not of the majority, but of an impassioned, and
often a sectarian, minority.

To take one instance only out of many. The Roman Catholics at
Manchester are pretty well known not to exceed at most, if they
amount to, one-sixth of the population. Yet at one School Board
election (and there is no reason happily for believing that School
Board contests are yet appreciably tainted by corruption) a Bicnnan
Catholic was returned at the head of the poll, evidently only in con-
sequence of greater zeal and superior organisation among his co-
religionists. It is good that minorities should be fairly represented,
but very bad that they should, owing to a defective system of voting,
obtain over-representation, and, still worse, domination. The cost
of these School Board elections is most serious, and has frequently
deterred the most highly qualified and eligible labourers in the caose
of education from becoming candidates. In large towns hundreds,
^ay, thousands, have been spent on School Board elections, and yet
the proportion of electors voting was often notoriously not large,

1881. OUP. yEXT LEAP JN THE DARK. 533

though I am unable to say what it avenged ; while the average cost
of the 710 contested elections of guardians in England and Wales (in
1S75) was under \dL each — no small consideration in these dajs of
increasing rates, of distressed agriculture, and depressed, though we
hope at last slowly reviving, trade; I may add that in 1879 there
were one or more contests in 627 unions, or parishes on the footing of
unions. In the parishes or wards where there were contests, there
were a little over 1,500,000 ratepayers on the list, of whom very
nearly 700,000 voted; but the total expense for all was under 20,500{.

I know that much of what I have here suggested will, if they
•ever hear of it, be unfavourably regarded by those election agents
whose income largely depends upon their reputation for bringing up
voters to the poll in numbers, which, under the present law, nothing
but the hardest work guided by the greatest skill and experience
•enaUes them to do. Nor do I expect it to be better received, if they
•deign to notice it, by managers of caucusee^ who would equally find
themselves to a certain degree superseded by voting arrangements
which would render much of their well-planned organisation and well-
directed labour superfluous. But I am satisfied that there is nothing
in what I have here written at all contrary to those Liberal principles
which I have consistently supported for more than forty years, and
am still as warmly attached to as even

I have not the presumption to suppose that I have in this paper
suggested a thoroughly satisfactory Beform Bill, or a complete
remedy for the great and growing evils of electoral corruption. I
only venture to hope that I may be considered to have made out
some case for full and public inquiry into the vitally important
question of the future representation of the people — that is, for en-
deavouring carefully to ascertain the best practicable constituencies,
franchises, and mode of voting for adoption before again legislating
upon them — and that I have adduced some valid evidence and
arg^uments in favour of such previous inquiry, and against hastening
wildly to take another ^ leap in the dark.'

FORTESCUE.
January y 1881.

POSTSCaiPT.

Since writing the above I have seen the Bill of the Attomey-Greneral. No Jbir
man can donbt that it proceeds from a sincere desire on the jiart of the (zovemment
to prevent for the f attire practices which have not only disgraced our Gonstitotion in
•the eyes of the civilised world, but tend also seiionsly to demoralise more and moxe
of onr population, of which the borough electors form a oonsiderable and increasing
proportion. That its stringent provisions will deter many from giving and receiving
bribes and liquor, I earnestly hope and believe. But I am not sanguine of the Bill's
eoroplete success, even in this respect, much less that its operation as a whole would

534 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY, Mareb

probably be, if at all, nearly as beneficial as its authors anticipate. . As I think I
have shown already, the great difficulty even now is to induce voters to take the
trouble of going to the poll. And that will not only continue, but inciease^
since much of the machinery now available for persuading the reluctant to vote
is to be abolished and forbidden under penalties. The most respectable election
agents being quite aware of this, and hopeless of producing in large oonstitaendesy
without thoroughly organised and systematic canvassing, the results expected by
their employers, will more and more, I believe, decline the ungrateful office, and
make way for others of a lower grade and with a lower standard. This of
itself would be undesirable. But further, when the object to be attained is so
very much sought after, we can hardly doubt that agents will soon be found ready^
for an adequate consideration, to do the [work of corruption, taking the risk of
detection, exposure, and punishment. We have heard that in China a man mar
be got by liberal payment to undergo vicariously any punishment, even death.
Impriwnment will have little terror, and exposure none, for a certain class of in>
struments. I have been credibly informed that one of the most active and effective
agents at the election for a very large borough in 1874, at which, it is said, mnch
more money was spent than had been supposed, was a person who was afterwards
publicly announced as Liberal candidate for it. We shareholders leamt to our cos^
by his transactions as chairman of a large company, for which he was convicted and
imprisoned, that the dread of the law was inadequate to deter him from illicit gains.
But even if, contrary to my expectation, agents of a low class are found to be prettr
effectually repelled, my fear is that these severe penalties will encourage the creation
of secret organisations to do the work — one of the most dangerous tendencies of the
present day.

Taking, however, the most hopeful view, and assuming that neither shameless
agents nor secret organisations will be extensively employed to induce the electors
to poll, we shall find another danger. The Attomey-Oeneral*s Bill leaves upon the
discharge of the important civil duty of voting a tax of trouble, which long ex-
perience shows to be prohibitory upon average electors in an average state, not of
necessarily positive indifference as to the member to be returned, but of reluctanc(^
to spend the time and trouble required for polling. This practical ris infrtia is
only to be counteracted by some corresponding motive power, either personal or
political. If political, this practical apathy can only be overcome by adequate
political excitement. Personal canvassing allowed the adjustment of this to the
requirements of each voter. The substitution of oratory for canvassing will lead to its
being often employed with a fervour perhaps not more than just sufficient to roase
some of the electors from a state of what may be described as political coma, but
likely to produce in others a superfluous, nay mischievous, amount of what may be
described as political frenzy. It is surely a great misfortune that voting in a cahn
and reasonable, if somewhat indolent, frame of mind should be so much discouraged.
The danger is of members being reiumed by insignificant minorities of the con-
stituency, either impassioned on behalf of some special religious or secular measure
which they have honestly much at heart, or moved by some purely local feeling:
about some purely local matter, or else actuated by a keen sense of some deep
personal interest or intense personal feeling. We should, I fear, find an utterly di5-
proportionate influence exercised by extreme enthusiasts of all kinds — Ultramontanes,
Ritualists, No-Popery men, Anti-State-Church men, Permissive- Bill men, denoonce»
of the Contagious Diseases Act, Anti-Vivisectionists — all honestly convinced that
their own particular question has the first claim upon the attention of a Legislatnre
charged with the interests of a whole Empire on which the sun never sets. Or we
should find local, as distinguished from public, interests and feelings of predominant
influence, and have donors of parks, founders of almshouses, and other oonspicnoos.
but purely local, benefactors, of too often doubtful disinterestedness, retumed, irre^
spective both of their politics and of their qualifications as l^sliitors. Or else ve
shall find personal interests the motive power. And that these must be pretty
intense to induce the average elector of a large constituency to go to the poU, we
learn from the experience of the great conmiennal companies, which have only
dozens, instead of thousands, of shareholders attending their meetings. Indeed, bol

1881. OUR NEXT LEAP IN TtiE DARK. 535

for the resource of postal circnlars and the house-to-house collection o£ proxies, it
is notorious that these concerns would every now and then be shattered b}' the
unreasonable or sinister small minorities alone willing to attend.

Where a personal interest or public sentiment much stronger than that of a share-
holder in a company is required to induce average electors to go to the poll, is it not
formidably likely that such adequate private interest will be sinister; or that sucli
adequate public sentiment will be the fruit, not of a quiet and reasonable political
opinion, but either of intense yet narrow sectarian enthusiasm, or of violent yet
petty local partisanship ?

F.
Febrttartf, 1881.

^36 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Maich

TRANSPLANTING TO THE COLONIES.

In the competitive examination of remedies for Irish ill-content,
each claiming the first place and confidently undertaking to answer
the most trying questions, we cannot fail to discriminate hetween
those that are well grounded in subjects of general applicability, and
that are good for all, and the special topics, more difficult, bat, if
possible, more indispensable, for the cure of local and exceptional
need. In a recent letter to the Times^ Lord Meath points out snc-
cinctly, but suggestively, the duty of keeping the distinction in
mind ; and while dealing with the well-to-do portions of the country
only as they may require, grappling boldly, by measures adminis-
trative rather than statutory, with the overcrowding of half-fiunished
sea-coast counties of the west.

Over-population never was less true as a general description of
Ireland, and never more true of particular districts than at the
present hour. What aggravates the mischief and misery is the
obvious and unchangeable &ct that the paralysing and pitiable con-
gestion exists where the soil and climate are comparatively un&vour-
able for small husbandry, or the maintenance in comfort of a peasantry
dependent on its produce alone. The venerable earl, who has had
ample experience as resident proprietor, popular representative, lieu-
tenant of his county, and contributor to all useful works in the Lrisii
metropolis, wisely endorses the recommendation already urged by the
best and ablest men of every degree, that Crovemment should initiate
a liberal and comprehensive scheme for finding farms and homesteads
in our colonies for those who are not, and cannot be, accommodated
as they ought to be in Donegal, Mayo, Kerry, and Clare.

Whatever be the tenor of the forthcoming Land Bill, this I am
sure is a aine qua non of future prosperity and peace. From
personal observation I know the condition of most of these dis-
tricts well ; and I am convinced, not as of yesterday, that a more
mistaken policy cannot be conceived than that which would tether
the willing but wageless conacre man to a miserable patch of
half-reclaimed bog or mountain, the rent of which he can only earn
by harvest-work elsewhere, and the produce of which, even in a dry
summer, cannot yield more than the barest and lowest subsistence
for his family. Legislative changes more or less beneficial in Wexford

1881. TRANSPLANTING TO THE COLONIES. 637

or Antrim, Tipperary or Tyrone, can have no adequate effect on him.
If you gave him his (miscalled) holding fi«r nothing, it would not ma^
terially mend his plight to-morrow ; and after to-morrow that plight
would he as hopeless and insecure as now. Primary schools, mode)
farms, creeping railways, cheap postage, teetotal lectures, newspapers-
without stint, tracts on cleanliness, and the multiplication of bxanch
banks, all can avail nought to put firm ground under his feet. To>
use his own familiar phrase, 'his &ther was the like before him, and
he never had a chance of doing better.' He knows that some of hi»
kin are doing well in America ; and in a wet season he wishes he wa»
there too. With sunshine and new seed he laughs again ; but if the
^crop should forget to come up,' he curses the rent which the over-^
bidding of men like himself has made high, or the gomihein he can-
not pay. Again he wishes himself over the sea, where good land i&
plenty and wages are to be earned every day in the week. But the
season is late, and he has not the means to go, and he lingers on
moodily, wondering what may turn up, and ready to swell with his
despair the voice of political discontent. The indisposition to labour
often ascribed to him is refuted wherever abroad he gets the oppor-
tunity to work ; but, where regular wages are not to be had from a
want of middle classes of various degrees, the languor of disappoint-
ment and despondency grows habitual ; and until the poor cottier
tenant of the west is transplanted to happier soil, where his old
griefs and habits may be alike forgotten, he can never be rescued
from his destitution and discontent.

In a recent circular Mr. Vere Foster publishes a statement of
applications for aid to single individuals to emigrate to Canada and
the United States during the past year. Of these 335 were from
Soman Catholic and 77 from Protestant clergymen, dispersed
throughout the various dioceses firom Baphoe to Cloyne. The cost
of transit, about 91. per head, was generally made up by contribu-
tions of three-fourths advanced by friends and relatives on promise
of repayment, when possible, and one-fourth contributed by charitably
disposed persons from a fund long established for the purpose. The
parish priest, when vouching for the respectability of the applicant,
seldom failed to speak of the necessity with regret ; but he did not on
that account refrain from backing the urgency of the claim. And if
thi» be so when the intending emigrants are yoimg and single women,
how much more cheerfully might he not be disposed to recommend
assistance for youths of the other sex, or in cases where whole fami-
lies might be transplanted together ! The want of sufficient means
is the only obstacle in the way, for every consideration, moral, social,
and political, tells in the balance in favour of household or village
emigration, in preference to desultory efforts to aid the most healthy
and adventurous members of the family. Ample experience proves
that those who are thus assisted to go forth and seek their fortune

538 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. March

are not ungrateful or unmindful of the help afforded them in their
hour of need ; and every year since the humane miethod of asakt*
ance was first organised in 1848, large sums have heen remitted in
instalments to relations and neighbours left behind.

There is no reason why the same melody of affection, thiilliog
and true in every note, should not be arranged with accompaniments
and chords ; there is no reason why greater volume and power should
not come of the harmony of concerted parts than of the single voice.
Time out of mind the family has been the natural unit of emigra-
tion. If the roots must be loosened in the native soil, we believe
without argument that they are likelier to take hold of foreign earth
when removed in the bulb, and not exposed to chill and damage, one
by one.

To the least imaginative or foreseeing of humankind the fear of lone*
iiness casts a certain gloom over anticipations a&r off. Oay one-and-
twenty, without qualm for riven ties of friendship or companionship,
xeadUy dashes away the parting tear^ and enters freely into careLess chat
with the first fellow-passenger on board that looks disposed to make
the best of it. But the nature of the Celt, though venturous at ^ort
a(^ice, is not for the most part deliberately enterprising. Courage is
•one thing ; the confidence which the clear calculation of distant results
can alone impart is another. The Gulway peasant at fault for a living
at home may screw up his nerves to go, and neither wince nor waver
when it comes to the point. On a cold dark morning he bustles
through leave-taking and is even glad to be off ; but all the same he
has yearnings and misgivings for weeks or mouths beforehand of
being stranded by some imlucky chance beyond the reach of help or
pity ; and his fancy conjures up whole tissues of possible or impos-
sible, improbable or incompatible bad luck, that may be awaiting
him beyond the sea. And what he painfully stifles, mother and sister
-and old folk by the hearth dream aloud ; or tJiey read in the once
^cheerful fire a sad fate of the bnoghUy the cabin's pride, or the dark-
eyed colleen that never slept from under its low but loving roof.
Could they all go together in the same ship it would be nothing, and
if two or three of their neighbours as well, — ^it would be more of a
new hiving than a clearing out. This would not be eviction, but
joint and several emergence from the slough of despond on to firm
ground of safety and hope. The risks and chances inavertible from
all great changes in human life would remain; but they would no
more haunt the silence of the night or the weary hours of the day.
Content would supersede repining, and mutual encouragement take
the place of reciprocal reproach ; crossing the ocean would be migra-
tion rather than emigration — change of home rather than forsaking
it. Looking at the matter from mere. expediency's point of view,
would it not be worth a rich and much troubled kingdom's while to
invest a good round sum in such an eiperiment ? Apart firom all

1881. TRANSPLANTING TO THE COLONIES. 5S9

xight and wrong, high sense of duty and bitter after-taste of neglect,
— ^would it not pay ? But without simultaneous action the experi-
ment cannot be made with any hope of appreciable effect. Even to
retrieve and reform a single county where the anarchy of ruin now
prevails, whole villages and hamlets must have the opportunity
brought home to them — not by persuasion or driving— but simply
by letting the alternative be plaiidy and honestly placed within their
reach ; and with patient faith in its e£Scacy, if not next week or next
month, that eventually its intrinsic worth would be realised. Let a
third-class emigrant ship under Government orders, and with Crovem-
ment responsibility for care in transit of each passenger, be advertised
to sail on the first of each month from each western port for Canada or
Australia ; and empty or full let its foresail be spread to the wind ;
and before three months a bustling concourse of competitors for places
in the floating cabin woiild be found at each point of departure, the
only rule among which would be, first come first served. This is the
true and the safe way to cleanse the full bosom of the perilous stuff
that weighs upon the country's heart.

Third-class trains across the ocean ; empty, half empty, or full, let
them go. Like penny posts they might not everywhere pay at first :
but they would all pay in the end. Laiaaezfavre is the easiest and
the cheapest rule of the markets for shirtings, bacon, pig-iron, brown
middlings, and the discoimt on three months* bills; but laissez
/aire in cases of brain fever, half-famine — social convulsion — ^and
moral dynamiEe in the ground story of one whole wing of empire, is
the logic of idiocy. If you are up to your work the less time you
waste in pottering and palavering about things finding their own level
the better. Mere admonition, conciliatory, plausible, eloquent, is all
to no purpose or something worse. * There is no speculation in those
eyes,' they are glazed and blinded by the perplexity of things, and
there can no good come of waiting and gazing. It is time to be
up and doing while happily there is still external peace, and freedom
from foreign interruption or distraction. It is the time for gathering
our colonial children together and drawing them closer by the bonds
of mutual interest as well as affinity, and offering them ungrudged
participation in all the honours and privileges of ancestral power and
long-established strength ; that when the evil day of foreign envy,
jealousy, and revenge comes, as sooner or later it will, we may feel
assurance that the seed of our loins will not be wanting for our help and
stay. And to this end it is above all things desirable, nay, indispen-
sable, that we multiply the unpurchasable bonds of mutual affection
and benefit, with our three great groups of colonies. The Canadian
Dominion craves more people to occupy and own its boundless wheat
fields in the West. The younger Australias are ready. to receive
ighiploads of healthful and capable settlers (and we ought to think of
sending them no others) ; and all doubt and danger being now at an

540 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. March

end regarding New Zealand, there is in a less, but not nnimpoTtant
degree, room and to spare for many a decade to come for sheep fann-
ing and all manner of agricultural trades and employments. It i*^
mere captious cavilling to say that stimulated emigration, however
successful for a time, cannot go on for ever. After some years the
colonies might find they were getting more hands than they wanted,
and we that we were having too few. Yes, and then the tonic would
he dispensed with because the low fever had passed away. But our
business is not with a dim and uncertain future ; it is with the actual
exigency of our own time, which we can thoroughly understand and
deal with if common-sensically set about and mastered. Advantages
for the purpose, of which our fathers never dreamed, which we our-
selves can remember scientific discovery displaying as fanciful shades
in a magic lantern, have fallen at our feet by the inscrutable mercy of
Heaven ; and what are we about if we &il to put forth our hand to
take and be satisfied, to eat and be fall ?

Steam has bridged the ocean, and the telegraph has abolished
space. Fine gentlemen and fair women in want of amusement spend
more days on shipboard now for mere health or diversion than are
required to carry husbandmen or artisans from the breeding grounds
of penury to the pleasant places of independence and plenty. Once
clear of our social congestion in particular parts of the realm, society
may be expected to form anew healthfully and solvently ; and if so^
ten or twenty years hence it will need no specific appliances for the
continued redistribution of its working population. But, if instead
of this, we let the greedy and griping selfishness of laissezfaire have
its way, and look on while here and there the more daring prisoners of
poverty jump the moat, and join on the other side their brethren
who escaped before them, how can we wonder if, thinking of all they
have left behind in anguish, insecurity, and squalor, they listen to
the insidious promptings of bad men, and, out of the first savings of
toil for unaccustomed wages, send their contributions to the privy
purse of sedition, muttering literally, in the vulgar tongue of exile>
the words of the malcontent of Venice ? —

Ouned be your laws, and cursed your constitution^

The curse of growing factions blight your best endeavours.

The great line of railway from ocean to ocean,-by which alone the
British Colonies of America can be brought into the industrial union
which now exists only on political maps aifd in magniloquent
speeches, is at length in a fair way of being made. Before Christmas
the Dominion Parliaioient was summoned, as the Viceroy explained,
several weeks earlier than usual, ^ as no action could be taken by
contractors to prosecute the work, and no permanent arrangement
for the organisation of systematic emigration from Eiuope to the
north-west territory could be satisfactorily made until the policy of

1881. TRANSPLANTING TO THE COLONIES. 641

Parliament with respect to the railway had been decided.' Three
members of the Colonial Cabinet had visited England during the
Autmnn, to make financial arrangements for the all-important work
by means of a company, assisted by grants of money and land by the
Colonial Government ; and their efforts were so far successful that
contracts had been entered into with a syndicate of well-known
capitalists for the completion of this inestimable undertaking. It
would indeed be strange, while the United States had constructed
two lines of through traffic across the continent, and the venerable
M. de Lesseps has begun cutting the Isthmus of Panama by joint-
stock means, raised in France, if our engineeriog and monetary
resources were found inadequate to execute a work more obviously
called for by every consideration of commercial policy and imperial
power. The paramount want of the New Country seems at this
moment providentially to meet the importunate needs of the old
realm.

To make the Canada Pacific line, thousands of rough hands
eager for work with fidr wages are required ; and settlers to occupy
the prairie grounds on either side of the length and track, to furnish
the elements of traffic. On the other hand we are at our wits' end
what to do with our small farmers in Connaught, who, though they
got their holdings rent free, would never be safe to make a decent
living out of them, and who in their despondency, too naturally wrought
in their minds by a succession of bad harvests, have fallen into a state
of desperation alike pitiable and perilous to themselves and the
country at large. It does seem incomprehensible how impartial
statesmen and philanthropists should hesitate to seize such an oppor-
tunity for lightem'ng the old ship by manning the new craft that is
advertising for crew and cargo. Seldom in the entanglements and
contrarieties of national life has such an honourable and profitable way
presented itself of solving a double difficulty. Nor is the trans-
plantation of small £Euiners, in want of cheap and fiiiitful lands, to
holdings, with fixity of tenure at nominal price, with fireedom of sale,
a mere stopgap for this year or next. Lord Lome announced, in his
speech already quoted, that two additional sections of the great
line had been recently opened — one from Winnipeg to Portage la
Prairie, the other from Cross Lake to Kee Wating — in all 264 miles.
IKentp-firee allotments in perpetuity, varying in size, are filled up on
either side by emigrants as fest as they offer to pay down one-tenth
of the purchase money of 12. an acre, acquiring thereby the right
to obtain the remainder on the same terms as soon as they can.
"Wheat and other cereals of every kind grow without manure, and
trhere is no forest to clear on taking possession. The new province of
2lf anitoba, through which the Bed Biver flows, is by all accounts
declared to be the great granary of the future, that only awaits the
o]>ening of the railway to yield unexhaustible supplies to the cities
Vol. IX— No. 49. 0 0

64t^ THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Madi

j(xa both' sides of the Atlantic ; and the thousand miles of the ]iio-
jeeted' line, 'with its countleBS fee-simple farms as g(dden fri&ge, loK
pasa over its prolific bosoms During the gradual execution of the
.work, labour at weeldy wages will be at th^ option of every aotiTe
and thrifty settler in turn ; and his tun) is sure to be just at the
time when he is most likely to urant means in addition to those he
has brought out with him, ot can realise out of the produce of the
dGu^t fields he tills. There is literally room enough and to spake for
isvery family now eating its heart out in squabbles with landiordbni
sJti 'hf)me^ oir in competing for the possession of a miseiable soap tf
inferior land not worth wasting life upon.

., TI^ rulers-of Canada qani¥>t indeed be expected to. take.o?er
bodily unprovided 'Crowds from Gonnaught whom diBencha&taeat
.with dreams of peasant proprietorship, or disappointment of extrava-
gant hop^ from the Land Bin,- may suddenly itupel to .take xsf tiuu
beds and walk the decks of the emigrant ship during this sumina ot
Ujext. A movtog bog is a spectacle sddom beeut and oae.wfaidi few
q)ectators ever desire to aee'a^;ai|i> If Imperial Grbvermsentybural
at length into making some effectual effott io put an ehftiqthe
cQn^equenioes of top long neglect, should offer the traoafer oKaay
iaoxyiinate ^uml^r of cottier ^nd conacre folk- from the affluents of
the Shannon to those of the Sa^katchew^ the Colonial QdvenUBeiit
would .not consent to -tiieir wholesale establishment in..>paztifdtf
places, for reasons which are too obvious for dispute* . Excessive and
ixKiiscriminate aggregation is a btvindar. everywhere-— noiBrheae moie
to: be deprecated than in the foundation of kiew commnbitiesi^ Qo
statesmen of the D<wi|iion will understand that the atrengthof tiwir
growing <K>unt|y depends in no small degree* apoa the' o^intaaboUfB
chafacter of the elements ^^t composait ; and to its firaedqm thenbf
secured against its becoming a me(re reproduction of any uld iconDlacy'
3¥orsted in the race of European life ; or what would be istill/vme^
])eing made the new ;battle-ground of iactions, each of them.tMrtvak
to gain complete ascendency, and each too strong inlooallr coin**
pacted niunbers to b^ subdu^ or. assimilated*^ All thesey ho^vei» do
not deter, enterprising men with sufficient tesourees to risktiQcaiiiooal
loss and disappointment ; . but to the poorer -sort they are ooattea
requiring to be carefully weighed, and insured against ina leB^onaUe
degree. Even parii&l Mlure from causes capable of being' fiucaeea
would, be just matter of reproach, aiid would be oertaii |[m% ^
retard the future development of the Colony* The YsouxBe. of adsfeo**
ture and settlement from various quarters already heralds the vaf
towards the north-west. In the graphic language of Sir A* Gait,
^ Settlers in Manitoba are already dotting the trail across the pnine
to even more favoured regions, with their ferms. in every direction.
Villages are springing up many hundreds of miles west of Winnipeg;
churches are being built ; mills to grind the future crop are having

1881. TRANSPLANTINQ TO THE COLONIES. S^,

their steani ebgiiies wearily dragged acro^g the plainB. By Aet.of
the Dominion Parliament one*foQrth of the whole public domain- in<
the North-west territories is devoted absolutely to free g^rants tor
actual settlers, another fourth is lield at their option for th^e^ years;
at one half the Govemment seUing price, and th;e remaining one half
is to be sold at prices varying from four shUlinga to one pound per.
acre. The free grant lands alone are nearly twice as extensive as the.
whole Of England.''

On the other hand, Mr. J. A. Blake, M.P., who has lately traversed-,
the expectant region, gives warning of difficulties that require atten-
tive consideration in order that they may be overcome. The Colonial
Crovemment has already granted much of the good land near the
intended line of railway, to settler^ or speculators^ desiring to make a:
profit on its assignment ; and the Hudson's Bay Company still retain
immense tracts of the most desirable portions of the province ; while
without drainage other parts would prove unworkable for profit.
During the brief and briUiant summer, mosquitoes are Baid to be a.
plague, and sometimes the ^ grasshopper is a burthen.' Tbrough-
out the long winter scarcity and deamess of fuel will continue to*
be felt as a serious drawback until the railway is completed, ciave in
those districts where natural wood abounds : and « these are often fiu:.
between. For settlement in the less occupied prairies, stretching firomf
Manitoba to Cblumbia, Mr. Blake puts the cost of outfit, habitation^
living, and first year's feuming, a good deal highar than that which.
]Mr. TukC calculiri;e8 as sufficient in the oountiy of the Bed River.;
Early frosts wl^eh injure materially unhoused com, and prairie^-
fires whoso devastations are well known, must not be forgotten in
the caIc)ilation of caiBualties. Mr. Tuke, indeed, is confident tiiat
an emigrant used to fiirming with li hundred pounds in hand wd
a &nuly partly grown up to help him in the manifold tasks of a .
settler^B life, may secure an allotment of 160 acres; and providect
he is wise enough not to go out too early in the year, plough too-
deep, which does not answer, and be content with garden culture
and a moderate sowing of com for the first season, he may easily
pat Up a toug shanty and offices before winter, and be, ready
for extended cultivation when the spring returns. As r^^ards the
actual pressure which Parliament is asked to relieve in Ireland,
there are yet three months and more during which measures
of help and encouragement may be matured, in time to enable
an active and industrious man to migrate with the price of hia
tenant-right,: or with the realised value of his crops or dairy produce
during- the present season Nox are there wanting in Ulster and
Lieinster thrifty and keen tenants at will of absentee or spendthrift

proprietors who, not knowing what is before them, and seeing no

»

> Paper read before the Colonial Institute, January 25, 1861,. . ^

002 —

644 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.] Much

provision available for their sturdy sons, might be indaoed witli

little argument and no coaxing to take themselves out of theagtaiian

trouble by which they are on all sides encompassed. Wcmld it not

be well worth while to throw the casting weight into eveiy sach

wavering siale, were it only for the sake of the room it wouU affori

and the abatement of ruinous competition it would cause? What

signifies the loss, even if it be an ultimate loss, of the whole cost of

transit, for such a man and his family to the central pndrie of Canada,

and of the office fees and charge^for title of his £Eurm there, if he lodges

pound for pound before starting, as the best of pledges that he is no

pauper or ne^er-do-weel, and therefore no unfit or undeserving oolonisi?

Of course it will be said, why should the imperial treasuzy

be asked to help men who, if left to themselves, may posnbly

find their way out next year or the year after ? As well might

it be said, why run the risk of cold or getting wet by helpisj;

to put out a neighbouring fire when perhaps it may bum oat

of itself? A great country cannot afford a parsimonious rule of

economy. When misfortunes come, no matter whence or how, the

wisest and best course is to meet them by any means which does not

throw the burthen on particular classes or districts to the exonentioa

of the rest of the community ; not because public money ougbt to

be spent lavishly on undeserving objects, but because the benefit

done exceptionally to persons who have no individual claim is often a

great and solid benefit to the whole realm. We pay millions annually

to keen-witted contractors for building us floating towers of hideoos

aspect and of murderous might ; and, if no naval war ensues, nobody

gains by the outlay but those who design and equip our ironclads.

But if the fact that we have not shrunk from the cost averts a naval

war, have we not after all the best of the bargain ? Far more so if

by a temporary and limited expenditure we help to quench the

hazard of a servile war, and at the same time help to strengthen and

ensure a noble appanage of empire that yearns for such reinforcement?

The colonies do not always need or bid for the same sort of settien;

and We are bound at all times to have regard to their feelings in this

respect, and even to their passing prejudices. New Zealand, for

•example, is said just now to be disposed to deprecate any stimulation

•of the ordinary movement thither, which has been somewhat checked

from causes which need not be examined here* Then be it so, and

let us not incur for a moment the reproach of trying to shift a portion

of our burthen upon her. Ten years ago, when the standing ganisoD

was recalled before the Maories had finally subsided into peaceliil

neighbourship, the Home Government was urged to advance a million

sterling to encourage emigration ; and at first the acconmiodation

was refused. But appeals in Parliament and in the press on behalf of

New Zealand after a while prevailed ; and no one in his senses would

say now that Lord Granville (then Colonial Secretary) committed a

1881. TRANSPLANTING TO THE COLONIES. 646

in yielding, although in the change of times another decade
finds New Zealand in a different case, and in another mood. There
is one rule, however, which never seems to vary. No colony will
submit patiently to be saddled with a worn-out, sickly, or pauperised
crowd, who cannot get work in our towns, or make a living }jj agri-
culture here. British colonists have not quitted home in former
years, and spent their prime amid the perils and privations of the
wilderness, to have their evening spoiled and the morning of their
children overcast by the penury and misery our negligence has suf-
fered to accumulate in our great towns or forlorn seaboards. It is
no use arguing about the matter. The. colonies have now local self-
government, magnetic intelligence, and a free press ; and they won't
be put upon in this way. If, therefore, we invite them to contribute
towards the acceleration of a transfer of residence, whether urban or
agricultural, it must be conditional on the artisan or husbandman
giving some proof that he is worth helping. . And this was the
reason why the advocates of assisted emigration in a former parlia-
ment fearlessly provoked the shortsighted objection of those who
penuriously pleaded that the central treasury ought not to contribute
in passage money or settlement fees, for persons who might possibly
manage to do without it. But there is no reason why various classes
of agriculturists should not have the benefit of the contributory
system. In our children's colonial house there are many mansions,
and room for many small as well as large denizens ; and if the system
of associated emigration of neighbours and relatives from the same
locality were once recognised and organised on a proper footing, there
is no cause to doubt that the authorities of Manitoba or of Aus-
tralia would adapt their regulations so as to accommodate, at all events
by way of ezperiment,.the sort of families who would be most willing
probably to move from Ireland at the present time. The example of
what has been done in the contiguous States of the Uoion to provide
comfortable, though humble, homes for people of this description^
cannot have been lost on the emulous authorities on the northern
side of the border. With a paramount aim of getting the great
Dominion railway completed as rapidly as possible Canada will
not throw difficulties in the way, we may be sure, of replanting each
side of the line with stout and active Fcttlers, though some bring
thither less ready money than others of their coimtrymen are
able to do.

Left to itself the efflux of population drifts naturally in the easiest
channels, no general thought being apparently taken of consequences
to the empire, iinmediate or essential. Of 41,296 who quitted Ireland
in 1879, no less than 30,058 went to the United States; while only
8,198 sought homes in the Polynesian group, and but 2,317 in
Canada. I have reason to believe that the returns for 1880 will prove
still more suggestive ; showing that in the past year 166,570 persons

U6 ' THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Much

i^ Btitish or Iiish birth emigrated to the United States, and 60,972
t6 other places. What a commentary on the doctrine of leaviog
ev^iything to find its own level I Our nearest and greatest sister
rdaima 1)e7ond sea which lack population the most for eveiy purpose,
and which for every reason we shonld most earnestly desire to see ie>
iplenished with men of our own race, are stinted and starved, whfle
our jealous rivals in manufactures and trade absorb seventy-two pei
<Dent. of the whole.*

The ascendency of the working classes in Victoria, smce the coo-
cession of universal suffrage, and their persuasion that profitable
manufiEtctures and trades of every kind can be best promoted bj
rigorously limiting the competition of sea-borne goods and hands,
has for some years practically caused Melbourne to be omitted in the
calculations of intending emigrants. The nobler policy of New Sooth
Wales has, on the other hand, adhered steadily to the principles d
free trade and free competition in labour ; and Sydney welcomes to
her splendid and ever-growing marts the products of European and
American industry, and the willing worker from every clime and
realm, and of every race and <Areed. There are already settled in this
'most hospitable and happy State a considerable number of Irish hj
descent or birth, who assimilate well with other portions of the popa-
lation, and unnoticeably contribute to that social fusion ; it is the best
antidote to any recurrence of the political confusion and conflict that
fitill afflict their mother-land. The Legislature, thpi;^h democraticallT
chosen, has never shown the jealousy betrayed by her ambitious neigh-
bour and rival in the disposal of land or the employment of skiH
From time to time considerable assistance has been offered to the
better class of emigrants from the old country in order to keep pace
with growing wants and new developments of industry. Whether
these inducements will continue to be held out, having regard to the
facilities which exist for a constant immigration from China, time aloDe
can tell. But there are younger States on the Southern Main which
istill need aids to colonisation, and which, if liberally and wiselr dealt
"with by the Imperial Grovemment, would doubtless see their advan-
tage in accelerating the advent of new settlers from Ulster, if not
from Connaught. If the atmosphere is not as humid or the weather
as variable as that of Ireland, fevers, coughs, and rheumatic affections
are proportionately rare ; and as farms of every size, from twenty to
eighty acres and upwards, are to be had in perpetuity under the ex-
cellent laws of simple transfer and sale originally devised by the late
member for Cambridge, when Minister for South Australia, at le«s
than one year's rent at home, the opportunity seems to be within oar
^each for settling half the perplexities of the land question in Ireland

W. M..TORlUDfS.
* Emigration Setums, by Board of Trade, February 10, 1880.

1«81. 547

THE BASUTOS AND SIR BARTLE FRERE.

^ The circumstances under which the Basutos became subjects of the Crown are
peculiar, ,9nd impose upon Her Majesty's Goyemment a special responsibility for
thdr welfare/ — Tht Eorl ofKimberley^ ^. ,

Tex history of the Basutos has certainly been a sad one. As to that
there will be no dispute* They had a time of rapid improvement
and much prosperity, and now thej are being driven back into*
barbarism by men who call themselves civilised. They asked for the
means of developing their nation in security under the Government
of the Queen, and so long as faith was kept with them they prospered*
They showed a most loyal and friendly feeling to¥rards the Que^i and.
the Government, even during the deepest crisis of the Zulu war, and
their reward is that they are being massacred by white troops, because '
tihey are said to be in ^ rebellion ' against the same Government. It
is a remarkable change, and its causes are well worth considering.

In the January number of this Beview there is an article l)y the:
late Governor of the Gape, which sets forth the history of this simple
people in terms so misleading, that I am desirous to call attention to
the real facts of this sad story — a story, as I think, rarely surpassed
in the gloomy annals of misrule.

It is needless to refer to the obscure history of the formation of
this tribe. Suffice it to say that, after many disputes with their
neighbours, in 1869 they requested Sir P. Wodehouse to accept them
as subjects of the Crown. He did this, he tells us {Tvmes, December
23, 1880), after < a full aud free discussion with all the leading,
members of the tribe,' and he adds that ' it was distinctly agreed that
they should not form part of the Cape Colony, but that British
authority should be exercised over them by the Governor of the Cape
in his capacity of High Commissioner.'

The next date is 1871, when, under Sir H. Barkly, the Basutos
were annexed to the Cape Colony, but, as Sir P. Wodehouse believes,-
* without consultation with the tribe.'

By the Act of 1871 it was provided that the power of making,
repealing, amending and altering laws and regulations for the
Oovemment of Basutoland should be vested in the Governor, and

548 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Maieh

no Acts of the Cape Parliament could be extended to the Basatos,
unless they were expressly named in the Acts, or unless the Governor
issued a proclamation or notice to extend or apply the Act to their
territory. If the Governor should do this, he must lay the laws and
regulations so proclaimed before Parliament within fourteen days of
its assembling.

It is, I think, pretty clear that, whatever the change thus made
might involve, the Basuto chiefs understood that something had
happened bringing them into close relations with the Cape ColoDy,
for in the early months of 1872 they presented a petition to Sir E
Barkly asking for representation in tiie Cape Parliament.

The reply of the Governor is very remarkable. He reminds them
that, if their request were granted, they would lose their peculiar
privileges, and would ^ be placed in a similar position to the ordinaiy
Kaffir population.' Their own customs would be superseded by
Colonial laws. Europeans would be allowed to acquire land and
settle in their territory, and they would lose other privileges, as the
exclusion of spirituous liquor, from their country.

The next great event was the conferring of responsible Govern-
ment on the Cape Colony. This has altered the position of the
Basutos; for the present war would probably have been impos-
sible under the former condition of things. But it seems dear
that, however important the change may have been, it was made
without any proclamation to the Basutos, who assert — and this is
confirmed by M. Mabille — ^that they did not understand what had
happened till 1879. Lord Kimberley seems to assume that this in»
so in his recent instructions to Sir Hercules Bobinson. But, as he
observes, the powers of the Governor are * technically unaltered.' Theie
is, however, a most important distinction, to which the Basutos seem
to be now alive. The Governor has now to take the advice on these
matters of his ministers, who are dependent for their power on the
Colonial Parliament, whereas before the Act of 1872, the Governor
was responsible to the Minister of the Crown, and the Parliament of
England really governed Baautoland. Surely Sir P. Wodehouse may
be believed when he says, * It was by these operations and by these
alone, and not by their choice, that the Basutos were cut off from the
immediate protection of the Home Government.'

It is of course not very easy to be positive as to what was said
and done by every one concerned in affairs so complicated, and where
we are speaking of men not accustomed to all the nice distinctioiu
of government by Crown or by Colony with which we are fiuniliar,
but it seems very clear that these simple people looked to the Governor
and not to the Cape Parliament, where they were not represented,
and that they had a kind of guarantee from ^ H. Barkly, that if they
remained satisfied with their former status, they would retain all
their peculiar privileges, would keep < Basutoland for the Basatoa^

1881. THE BA8UT0S AND SIB BARTLE FRERE. 549

would exclude intoxicating liquors from their people, and w6uld
otherwise be independent so long as they were loyal. Bepresentation
was refused, and they fell back, as they supposed, on the old con-
dition of things.

But the deed is done and cannot at present be undone. The
Colonists have the right to loake this war, and they ask at present
no aid from England.

The next period in the history of the Basutos is one of continued
and remarkable prosperity. It would seem that no tribe in South Africa
has ever made such rapid progress in all respects. This is admitted
by Sir Bartle Frere, but he uses this fact as an argument in favour of
disarmament, because, as he suggests, a tribe which has become so
rich in cattle and horses and grain, and is at the same time armed
with guns, is &r more dangerous than when, though less advanced
towards civilisation, they were comparatively poor. He treats them
as still barbarous, though they build houses and churches and schools,
for he asserts that the contest for disarmament is a contest between
civilisation and ^ barbarism.' Such is not the opinion of those who
have lived amongst them. The French missionaries insist strongly
on the progress towards peaceful habits which has been made by their
converts, and by the whole tribe. It would seem natural to suppose
that men who have so much to lose would be more disposed to peace
than when- they were so much less provided with the comforts and
Inxnries of life.^ But Sir Bartle seems to see a possible enemy in
every black man, and the more he possesses the more dangerous he
becomes in his eyes. What says Colonel Griffith, the Governor's
Agent, who has so long and so ably served the Cape Crovemment in
Basotoland ? Referring to the alienation of Morosi's land to which he
strongly objected, he says : ^ Instead of having as at present a con-
tented, hapP79 fli^d confiding people to deal with, we shall have the
very reverse — ^we shall have a discontented lot, who will be always
thinking and pondering over their grievances.' This letter is dated
the 27th of November, 1879, and is very prophetic in its tone (C. 2569,
p. 34). Sir Bartle Frere himself (C. 2569, p. 7 ) under date of the 2nd
of March, 1880, says : < They are a very intelligent people, with many
excellent special national characteristics, such as industry and frugality ; '
but, as he adds, they have weaknesses which he thinks characteristic of
native races, * inordinate vanity and a sense of self-importance,* One
need not go far from Westminster to find many examples of such

> CknDpAre the words of the Gommittee of the Paris MisBionary Society in Pftper
C 35699 p. 6 :— < We can bear to the Baeatoe the testimony that» owing to the teaching
of tJie Gospel, and their daity inereatinff tatte for dviUioHcih they became more and
2Dore avene to evexything resembling war. The very men who may now consider
the ^UAannament as an Insnlt and a threat, suffered their guns to rust in a corner. It
would be lamentable to see a people so peacefully inclined, so promising, sabjeded
to a treatment by which they might be led to acts which result in the shedding of

550 TEE NINETEENTH CENTURY. March

weaknesses. . He blames them for sus^Acion tad distmt of t^e Gape
Crovemment. This is easily explained by the £act of their peisistoit
convictioti that they were and always have been dizieot sabjects of ths
Queen. But vanity or even suspicion is a poor reason for diaimiii^
a loyal and industrious people.

It is not perhaps necessary to say niore as to the cancdtion
of the people when these disputes arose.. But the following ivocds
from the Cwpe Argus of the 12th of July, 1880, are, I think, worth
quoting : —

The people at home know that in the Basutos we are confronted by no wretched,
besotted; savage race, living precariously upon hunter's garbage and baibamxifood*,
but a serious and iatelligendy indtkstrious people thickly populalang a fertile kod,
4uidc' in agriculturey eofomercially aequintive^ cafeful berdmtieiiy making the \uk
of their country^ educatmg their children in schools^ and purchasing largely good&
of European and colonial manufacture.

During the Zulu troubles the Basutos were most loyal. Memhera
of their tribe fought most bravely on our side at Isandwlana, and Mr.
Sprigg (C. 2569, p. 42) acknowledges their perfect loyalty until the
outbreak of Morosi — a petty chieftain, of mixed blood, not a true
Basuto — ^who had always been of dubious loyalty even to his nati?e
chief, Moshesh. Letsie, the chief of the tribe, at once assisted to
put down Morosi, and Mr. Sprigg acknowledges, * with pleasure,' tiie
^rvices of 2,000 Basutos, * in putting down the rebellion,' He also
acknowledges the efforts of Letsie * to bring Morosi to a sense of his
duty.' It should be observed in passing that, on this occaision at any
fate, the arms of the Basutos were found useful to the Grovermnent,
diid these 2,000 men would have been of little use had they been
previously disarmed.*

Notwithstanding these events, Mr. Sprigg attended the *Pitso' of
the Basutos in 1879, and there informed the tribe that they vodd
have to surrender their arms. The chiefs protested, but in vain.
The Minister was firm. Accordingly, in January 1880, the chief and
people through Letsie presented a petition to the Grovemor, which is
certainly a most pathetic document, though Sir Bartle Frere makes
light of it in his despatches. They do not refine to give up their
arms, and to this hour Letsie has remained loyal and has kept many
of bis tribe with him. But they state how much this proceedin;

9

* Compare the following from the Daily I^ews of the 2l8t of Jannaxy, 18S1 :-^
The War and the Finooes.— A Correspondent writing from Mbnln, in Fingo*
land, says :— -< Htmdieds of onr people (the Fingoes) are off for the war. Uj beazt
was sore to see them going away to meet an armed force, many of them with onlj
ksobkeeries and sticks, and most of them with only one assegaL Their own hettts
were low. « Why," they said, « did Government take away onr arms, bom theaw
and teU ns that we would be protected, and now when many of oar friesdi la^
been robbed of their all and many also kiUed, we are called upon to defend
onrselves with these sticks, whilst our enemies have gnns? We oamiot tnit
Goremment any more." *

1881. THE BASVTOS AND SIR BARTLS FRERE. 651

grieves them, as undesei^ved and disgracefull They narrate the history
of their loyalty, and they say —

We pray you will favourably conmder the tears of your servants, and ou
account of your high position, may you he willing to grant us our prayer. • • •
Hitherto we have been known first as the faithfiil finends and allies of the Queen,
iand then as her faithful subjects. Up to the Zambesi and down to Cape Town we
are known as such — ^wa are named the children of the Queen. If we are disarmed,
.will not other tribes say that we have offended against the Government P

I do not believe that there is a word of exaggeration in this docu-
ment. The statements are true, and are admitted. But it is replied
by Sir Bartle Frere and his Ministers that it is intolerable to have
so many native men in oiir territories who are possessed of arms*
They histve decided to disarm other native tribes, and the same law
must apply to the Basutos. What can they want arms for, it is
asked. The game is gone, and the enemies are gone. They must
have intentions they do not divulge, or they would not cling to their
.arms so stubbornly. Sir Bartle is fond of comparing these people to
children. It is astonishing that he does not see that children cling
to what gives ornament or fancied dignity when they have no evil
designs. And even civilised men are fond of military display when
they are most peacefully disposed* I have sat at the hospitable board
of Mr. Speaker, surrounded by civilians in military costume, which
they wear as a mark of persoiial dignity, although they are, above all
things, guardians of the public peace. Can we, then, be «o much
surprised if simple and ignorant natives cling to arms which they
liave purchased by hard work, and which are supppsed to lend some
dignity to them as men — to say nothing of their use for purposes of
sport or defence ?

Of course we all admit that it would be well to have the sanae
population laboui'ing peacefully and without arms, but surely we ask
too much from people so recently civilised when we demand from
them so great a sacrifice, and a sudden abandonment of those means
of defence to which they have been ever accustomed^ It is. most
tmfair to assume that they mean mischief l)ecause, being accustomed
to possess arms, they desire to continue to do so even after they have
b^^im to appreciate civilised life. So we see that Sir G. Wolseley,
£ully alive to the danger that may arise from the possession of arms
by an active and excitable people, yet insists that the dangers of dis-
arinameiit are far greater than the danger incident to a policy of con-
fidence in native loyalty. His despatch of the 10th of March, 1880
(C. 2569, p. 36) is a conclusive answer to Sir Bartle Frere's lengthened
warnings.' He refuses to be frightened out of his senses. He warns
Ckyvermnent of the danger, and he uses these ' tnost remarkable
^otds ^—

That we have never had any general rising of the natives against the white maa
Id South Africa is, I believei because we have pever yet adopted any line of poUcy

552 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Marcli

that was calculated to unite them geneially against us. • . • With a people vho
may be said to have no fixed ideas of religion, it is difl&cult to conceive any qtm-
tion of dispute arising unless we ignored all regard to justice, which would be of t
nature to make itself felt by all tribes, and so possibly unite them in one commoa
band against us — except this question of disarmament.'

Sir Garnet says he writes this without knowing Sir Bartle Frere's
views. There is no evidence that he has changed his mind.

I do not think any perusal of Sir Bartle's views would ha?e
changed the sentiments of Sir Gramet. It is astonishing how easily
an able man may deceive himself in order to confirm himself in any
line he may have taken up. Sir Bartle now fidls back on the history
of the present war as conclusive proof of the treasonable designs of
the Basutos. In other words, having driven many of them, by his
demands, to resistance, he assumes that they always intended to rebel
on the first opportunity. It is difficult patiently to consider such an
argument. One might as well say if one should get into a quarrel
with a neighbour by reason of an insult of one's own making, that one
always knew he meant mischief, because one never liked the looks of
him. There is one satisfaction in the use of this argument by Sir
Bartle. It makes one feel as if he was pushed very hard for evidence,
when he can condescend to such an argument No doubt he considers
that it was the duty of the whole tribe to follow Letsie, and surrender
their arms at once on receiving orders. The same argument would
put an end to all resistance to authority under all circumstances. It
is an old weapon now grown rather rusty, and less likely to be useful
in England than anywhere else, seeing that Englishmen, though very
obedient to law, have shown over and over again that they know how
to resent and to redist oppression, whether enforced under the forms
of law, or attempted without the sanction of law. I think that most
of Sir Bartle's countrymen will be rather disposed to admire the
patience of Letsie and his followers than to wonder at the actire
resistance offered by the rest of the tribe.

It is natural to observe here how perplexed the natives must be
by our action as to arms. At one time we encourage them to buy,
and then we force them to disarm. To use the words of Dr. Mo&t,
^ The Government allows its merchants in town and country to sell
firearms to the native tribes to any amount, and gives licence to
traders to go far and near to sell and barter with firearms. • • . 6 j-
and-by John Bull prepares a proclamation and it goes forth, that all
those over whom he has power are to be disarmed — that is, deprived
of the property for which they have honourably, and in some cases
enormously, paid.' Si^ Bartle in reply to this (C. 2676, p. 43) says

> A most remarkable oonfirmation of Sir Oamet*« opinion is to be foond in the
Jast Blue Book (0. 2766 : ISSl). Major-Qeneral Sir H. Clifford, Administrator s(
Gape Town, writing to Lord Kimberley, under date the SOth of September, 1880,
after the disturbances had commenced, recommends that no Imperial troops be
allowed to take port, and he goes on, ' I am of opinion that it was not neoessiiy to
disarm the Basutos' (p. 169).

188L THE BASUTOS AND SIR BARTLE FRERE. 658

that be has always set his face against these proceedings. That
may be sufficient to preserve his consistency, but it does not remove
the difficulty which arises from the inconsistency of the Government,
for the purchase and sale of firearms was strictly legal, and a native
who has never used them, except to aid us, may well wonder what
has occurred to justify such a sudden change, and such a wholesale dis-
credit of peaceable citizens.

The more carefully we analyse the arguments of Sir Bartle Frere,
the more clear it is that they all resolve themselves into one — ^that of
fear. He has adopted a scare which he cannot get rid of, and, having
conmiitted himself to this impulse, he is driven forward to lengths never
probably anticipated by himself. Writing on the 17th of April, 1880,
Mr. Ayliff, * Secretary for Native Affairs ' (C. 2676, p. 45), says that his
Government are unwilling to believe that the enforcement of this
law would drive even a part of the Basutos into rebellion. And it
is clear that, even long after this date, the Government were com-
forting themselves with a hope that all would go well. They
exaggerated their own power and disparaged the courage of a brave
]>eople, and we see the result.

Sir Bartle lays very much stress on the changed position of the
Colony as a ground for increased alarm as to the designs and power
of the natives. Formerly the Colony could fall back on England.
Now the small force at the Cape is not at the beck and call of the
Governor for Colonial purposes. Sir Garnet Wolseley refused to be
alarmed when the Pondos seemed to be disturbed, and referred Sir
Bartle to the police. So Sir Bartle refuses to be comforted. He
must be on the safe side, and must get hold of these arms at any risk.
This policy of the English Government is nothing very new. For ten
years past it has been announced and acted on with more or less con-
sistency. Assuming the natives to have evil designs, the danger of
the Colonists is of course enhanced, and they have organised them-
selves accordingly. But if I am right as to the meaning and inten-
tions of the Basutos, there was no serious danger in remaining as
you were, and a most serious risk in attempting an undeserved dis-
armament, so that Sir Bartle, knowing his reserve force to be gone,
has rushed madly into danger. Probably his Ministers thought
^ England will help us if we are in any real trouble,* and this made
them venturous. But they were warned by the present and by the
late Secretary of State that they must not depend on England — that
England did not see the need of these measures, and would not fly to
the rescue. They have not heeded this warning, and finding now the
evil consequences of their rashness, they seek to defend themselves by
assuming that England is indifferent to their fate, and that therefore
they must defend themselves as best they may, by any means at their
disposal, however harsh and irritating to the natives. England is
not indifferent, but she .objects to being dragged into such wars

554 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Mneb

against, her will, and she is not disposed to help those who do not
know how to help themselves by wise conduct.

Sir Bartle is very anxious for. the gradual fusion of thetaces^
^ social and political,' and in this all will agree with him. But surely
in order to effect this fusion there must be something like nmiual
confidence. Sir Bartle's paper shows that he has no confideace in
the natives, or, if he has, that he has an odd way of showing it, and I
cannot help thinking that no man has done so much to destroy all
chance of any, confidence of the natives in white men as the chief
author and supporter of the Zulu and Basuto wars. His conduct is
consistent, I admit. He does not trust the native, and he shows lus
want' of tmst by his acts, but he expects the ignorant native to
develop a perfect confidence in the white man. He plaids that the
situation is complicated, and that people on the spot must know fiu:
more about what ought to be done than even a Secretary of State, too
often badgered as he is by philanthropists. That is tru^, but the
people of the Cape Colony are, many of them, hostile to Sir Bartle^s
pplicy, ^nd the Crown has not lost its aovereignty over the Colony, as
he admits. It has not, therefore, lost its responaibilUy^ and the
Parliament of England, as the sovereign power, ip bound: to eo&stder
these grave matters, and if injustice is beii^ or has l^een don^ it is
also bound, Qot merely to express an opijiion, but also tp usecfveiy
possible effort; tx> 8ecu];e' a change of policy, and the restoiatym of
righi^ and justice to men of every race under its svmy.

Th^re are some omissions in Sir Bartle Frere's argmoent whiob de-
serve special attention in considering its value. .

(1.) Hq makes, allusion to the Morosi rebellion, and; is disposed
to fioLsten on the tribe a serious resp(»isibiUty fi>r bis acta, .although he
admits that his allegiance to Letsie was only ' nominal.' He even
goes so fiu: as to hint that the conduct of Morosi was one of the prin-
cipal causes of the disarmament. But he never alludes to the &ct, so
fireelyacknowledged by his Government, that Letsie and 2,000 men of
his tribe assisted the Cape government in quelling Morosfs rebellioiL
Such an omission is certainly not generous, for the conduct of Letsie
was strong evidence of loyalty, and if the conduct of Morosi ims
adduced on one side, that of Letsie ought not to have been &r-
gotten.

(2.) There is something more than an omission as to the Chief
Letsie. No ope has yet denied that this man has behaved with ^
much loyalty as dignity in his relations to the Cape Government. He
has surrendered his arms, and has sought to persuade his. people to
do the same; but Sir Bartle (p. 193)hints that his abandonmentofthe
stronghold of Tbaba Bosigo since the commencement of the war may
have resulted from treacheiy, and not from necessity. He gives no
evidence to support this insinuation. He omits to give credit to
Letsie for. his good conduct, and he seems quite ready to believe him

X98t.: THE SA8UT03 AND SIR BARTLE FRERE. 5lii

eskpai^ of treachery, without offering any reason. Had any on^
teedted Mr* Sprigg in this fashion, Sir Bartle would have been the
first t^ Tindicate his reputation. It would seem that Letrie was right
-^the black man must be in the wrong, and his fault of colour proves
him capable of any kind of moral obliquity.

It must of course be admitted that in the recent correspondence
Colonel Crriffith and others accuse Letsie of weakness, but it seems to
xaerijbat they hardly make enough allowance for the difficulty and
dagger of his position, and at any rate there is, so fiEkr as I can see,
iM>tliing to justify the harsh insinuations in this article to which I have
xelerred.

. . It ought to be added that, when the critical moment arrived, Letsie
WB8 not supported by the Government as he should have been. As
early as the 29th of April 1880, Mr. G. H. Bell, one of the resident
magistiates, warned the Government that the people preferred waiting
for ordera firom their chiefs, to obeying orders from the Government,
so long as that Government had no force in the country, because they.
feared the risk' of having their families murdered, and their cattte
captured, if tiiey abandoned their amis (Cape Blue Book, A« 12 : 1880):
In fact, the Government rushed unprepared into the war, and so ajf-^
gravated theit difficulties, by giving no visible sign of ati intention
to pproteet loyal natives.. Aa Sir H. Clifford puts it (C. 2755, p. 169),
\ When the order waa given to the Basutos to surrender their arms,
arraogemeats at the same time should have been made to protect
tiiOBe who immediately complied with the order from those who
would not.'

(3.) I think Sir Bartle is guilty of an omission as to Mr. Sprigg,
Imt it is ixK th^ other direction. He praises him for his temper, pru-'
dence, and humanity, but he seems to have forgotten all about the
Vagrancy Acts and the Pass Acts, which seem to the ordinary
Englishman to be neither prudent nor humane. But probably Sir
Bartle thinks sueh.proceedii^ necessary in dealing with black men,
and therefore justifiaUe, and certainly if the conduct of Government
as to this war be humane, there is not much to be said as to former
acts ; but I object to our judgment as to recent proceeding? being
clouded by reference to the character of any one, unless we have it set
before us more fully and clearly than in general phrases which may
mean much or little according to the bias of the writer. The evidence
would s«em to show that Mr. Sprigg has always been aa advocate of
stem repression of the coloured race, and as such be is consistent in
hia present course ; but it is too much to ask us to credit him with
great humanity, when we see such misery and desolation resulting
firom his measures.

There can be no question that the Vagrancy Law has caused ter-
rible suffering to perfectly innocent people with black skins. It is
certainly not a * humane ' law, whatever else maybe said about It.

556 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Maich

A minister of the Presbyterian Free Church at Umgwali was, less
than a year ago, arrested for travelling without a pass, and had to
spend the night in the common prison, when he was merely on bis
way to attend a meeting of the Presbytery. The arrest was, I suppose,
legal, but it was as harsh as it was absurd.

About two years ago occurred the Koegas massacre and that of
the Korannas, both of which made no small stir at the time, and
would seem to show thait the Government of the Cape is £eir from hu-
mane. It cannot be a cause of surprise if many natives should^rink
from coming under the absolute control of white men, so regardleBs
of justice to the black race as in these cases officials of the Gorem.
ment were proved to be. The less said about humanity the better.
Some would, I suppose, say that inhumanity to black men is unavoid-
able. At any rate it is best to call things by their right names.^

(4.) Another most serious omission oecurs with reference to Cobnel
Griffith. Sir Bartle asserts that the Colonel acquiesced in each step
of the Cape Government and advised an appeal to force before the
Government did anything. The reader is left imder the impreasioQ
that the Colonel is a thorough supporter of the policy of the Cape
Government as to Basutoland. But the iajct is that the Colonel hu
expressed himself most fiivourably towards the tribe, and when it was
proposed by Sir Bartle Frere to confiscate the land of Morosi, and
treat it as no longer part of their territory, he wrote a most firm

* In confirmation of what I have said as to the administratioD of the law, I qnote
a few wozds from the address of Mr. J. A. Fronde to Lord Kimberlej in introdnciog
a deputation on the 27th of May, last year. Referring to these two measara, be
says : — * An inquiry was ordered, and at last, after various delays — ^not» howe?er, till
nearly a year had paa<)ed— the Cape Government undertook a prosecation, a&d %
jadge came down to Victoria West to try the farmers for murder. It was known
that at Victoria West, among their own relations, there was not the slightest prospect
of a verdict against them. The prosecuting barrister himself telegraphed, before
the trial, to the Attorney-General to tell him so, and to b^ that the case migfat be
removed to the Supreme Court in Cape Town. The Attorney-General ordered him
to go on where he was. The Koegas case was tried first. The prisonezs were
indicted for the murder of the six women and children on the march. Th^were
distinctly proved to have shot them ; but the Attorney-General had n^lected to
produce the formal proof that they had been killed, and the result, as had been
expected, was an acquittal. The escort who had shot the five men were to be tried
the next day. The prosecuting barrister again telegraphed to the Attoiney-Genenl,
telling him what had happened, and again begging that the second trial might be
held elsewhere. Again the Attorney-General instructed him to go on, and again
with the same result. The muiderers were acquitted. When the verdict was given
in, the whole court rose and cheered, and one of the jury openly said that all
Korannas ought to be shot. Such is justice at this moment In the Gape OoIoDyi aod
it is to be remembered that these field-comets held commissions under the Colonial
Government, and were acting in the Qaeen*s name and under the British flag. Bat
the story is not yet over. The editor of the Argya newspaper, whidi has alwajs
bravely defended the native interests, published an indignant article, refleotiog
justly and sternly on the Attorney-General's conduct. The Attoni^-GeDenl
prosecuted him for a libel, demanding ten thousand poimds damages. The damages
given were small, scarcely more than nominal, but they carried costa, and the editor
or proprietor of the paper had to pay several hundred pounds.*

1881. THE BASUT03 AND SIR BARTLE FRERE. 667

remonstrance which had great weight with Lord Kimberley, and he
has always been most anxious to maintain friendly relations with the
Basato chiefis. A few words from this letter, dated the 27th of Novem-
ber, 1879, are worth quoting (C. 2669, p. 34) : — ^ I fiedl to see why the
Basutos who have staunchly supported us should be punished for the
acta of the rebel chief Morosi and his followers who have paid the
penalty of their crime with their lives. . • • The Basutos will at
once conclude that this is only the thin end of the wedge, and that
upon one pretence or another they will eventually be deprived of all
their country/ More than this, in a letter dated the 26th of January,
1880, addressed to the Secretary for Native Affairs, he mentions four
measures, and amongst them disarmament, as likely to cause disaffec-
tion ; and he says, * I cannot but feel that I have been placed in an
equivocal position ; ' and again, * I am loth to run the risk of losing
^8 hard-won reputation without raising one warning note.' It is cer-
tainly most strange that the actual opinions of Colonel Griffith should
have been thus concealed from his readers by Sir Bartle.

It is proper to add, though Sir Bartle does not mention it, that
Colonel Griffith's view was entirely approved by Lord Kimberley, who
in his despatch of the 20th of May, 1880 (Blue Book, p. 49), expresses
very strongly his wish that the land of Morosi should be. kept for the
Basutos, and not handed over for sale to natives and whiter without
discrimination — so breaking the compact made, as he insists, that
Basutoland should be for the Basutos.

I have thus endeavoured to state the case of the Basutos as it
strikes Englishmen who try to look at it without prejudice and who
merely desire the welfare of all parts of our dominions. I never
met Sir Bartle Frere. I have judged his public conduct as set
forth in public documents open to all the world. If he had allowed
the case to rest on those documents, I dare say others would have done
the same. But he has not done so. He has sought to vindicate his
conduct in an elaborate article. It is, I think, natural that those
who differ from him should endeavour to frame a reply. I have
desired in these pages to make allowance for the difficulties of his
position. But in reviewing his conduct it is of no use to conceal
one's sentiments and to use mild phrases when one feels a strong
disapproval. The case is now before the world, and before Parlia-
ment. Sir Bartle has evidently satisfied his own conscience as a
man. He has done his best. It is fo^ others to judge whether he
has done well.

WiLLUM FOWLSB.

Vol. IX.— No. 49. P P

l55^ THE itlNET]^ENTH CENTURY. ' ' Maicl

LONG AND SHORT SERVICE.

Oaeat misconception exists in the minds of the public as to the real
meaning of * short service/ and as to its effect npon the present coo*
dition of our army. This ignorance is even very largely shared ky
the army, many of whose older members, \rith that unqnestidning
courage for which the British veterati has idways been distingoidied,
condemn ii without understanding either the reasons that begot it
or the objects it was intended to secure. I think it may b^ Bafelr
asserted that a large proportion of those who are loudest in coDddmD-
ing it have never read the^ parliamentary papets in which its pro-
visions are explained, or the speeches in which Mr. Gardwell and Ms
colleagues explained the Enlistment Act of 1870. It is the ttiM
i^ith the localisation scheme : how few comprehend i\J& provisioiu, or
iave taken ihe trouble to ^tudy the Beports of the CoMmittee on the
Organisation of the Military Forces of the country, dated 1872-73.
Were it possible to collect information on the subject, how interestisg
and instructive it Would be to furnish Parliament with a return
ishowin^what proportion of those, whoin the military olubs are loudest
In denouncing the present army System, hare ever read the ttep(Htof
the Militia Committee o^ 1876, of which Colonel Stanley— the lat^
abl^ ^oretary of State 'for War — was president. How few of our
older officers are aware that our new army organisation is based npoB
the proposals contained in a very remarkable memorandum by tos
RoyaMtigbnees the 7ield^m«rshal Commandingwin-chief, written is
1871,' which ^as presented to Parliament in 1872. Every aitment
from^whioh<yar<army,in common with all armies, periodically suffei^
is attributed tt> the recent reforms effectjed in our military orgaaisaiiont
it being entirely forgotten that those 'reforms have been based upon
the valuable suggestions contained in the above-mentioned memo-
randum of bis Royal Highness the DiUce of Cambridge.

Those "unacquainted with our army and the habits and mode of
thought of our officers, especially of those of the old school, may veiy
natorally inquire how this comes about : why is it that men who are
honest, truthful, straightforward, and loyal in the very highest accep-
tation of those terms, many of them of considerable experience in
public affairs, all of whom have seen a great deal of the world, and
have received the average education of the ordinary English gentle-
man—-why should they be prejudiced in an unreasoning manner, and

1881. LONG AND SHORT SERVICE. 559

combine to condemn a system of which a large proportion of them
know so little ? To the civilian mind this may be difficult to under-*
stand ; but to the man who has himself spent a quarter of a century
in camp and quarters surrounded by all those subtle influences which
imperceptibly discipline the officer's mind without his being conscious
of the process going on in it, this fact requires no proof. When I
joined as an ensign in 1852, 1 heard the same complaints then that
are to be heard daily in our clubs now, as to the deterioration of the
army ; that neither officers nor men were as good as they had been in
previous epochs of our military history, and that all the reforms that
had then been recently effected in the law of enlistment, abolishing,
enlistment for life and for twenty-one yea;rs, and establishing ten
and twelve years as the terms for which our infantry and cavalry
were thenceforward to be respectively engaged, were in themselves
essentially bad, and must eveatually ruin the army* The symptoms
that mark this military disease of chronic grumbling, of whining
pessimism, are the same, yesterday, to-day» and will be so for ever, in
the same way that the arguments used in Parliament in 1847 by the
old generals, who then oppos^ with all their power and influence the
Short Service Act of that year, are almost identical word for word with
those in which the recently effected reforms have been apd are still
denounced. There is a certain class of officer who seems to believe
that the world, as far as armie^. and military science are concerned,
stands still; they see around them the most marvellous changes effected
by steam, electricity, and mechanical inventions, and they accept them
as a matter of course, ignoring or unconscious of the fact that all such
discoveries and inventions react upon armies and military science, and
that, as education and the intelligen,oe which is its grandchild spread
through the social strata from which we obtain our recruits, we , ace
obliged to treat them in a different manner from that in which we
dealt with their illiterate and stupid fore&thers. The private soldier
of the last century, and even during our great struggle with Napoleon,
was treated by us in an almost brutal manner ; we dealt with him as
if be were an unreasoning mechanism which, foi^ veiy contrariness
sake, weiiit frequently out of order. We caught him as a sort of wild
man, and^ instead of endeavouring to raise him in the scale of humanity,.
we brutalised him by treating him as an unreasoning being. Those
who wpuld still wish to flog the soldier as the keeper does his
wilfal spaniel, who are never tired of reminding us of the glories
achieved by our troops imder Wellington, and of referring to that
army that < could do anything and march anywhere,' forget the
atrocious and fiendish horrors of Badajos and of Ciudad Bodrigo ;
there is much ado because an occasional henroost may be robbed
nowadays on the line of march during operations in the field, whilst
all remembrance of the scenes of indiscipline during Moore's retreat
to Corunna, or the great Duke's retreat to Lisbon, are entirely for-

pp2

560 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. March

gotten or ignored. There is a great deal of talk of the good old
times, and of their glories, and of the imagined magnificence of our
soldiers then, of their splendid physical appearance, and of tbeir
high moral qualities of discipline, &c. ; we are daily treated to com-
parisons in heroic language between the soldier of to-day and tk
soldier of the beginning of this century: the murders, and the
robberies, and the drunkenness of the soldiers of eighty and a
hundred years ago are forgotten, and we remember only their
splendid achievements. In those days, as at present, splendid
success was only secured when really able and scientific generals
commanded in the field ; and then, as now, when incompetenoe
directed our military operations, failure and disgraceful disaster were
the result. It should never be forgotten that our army that won
Waterloo was pronounced by its great commander to be the worst he
had ever commanded ; whilst I think it will be freely admitted by the
student of military history, that the physique and discipline of the
little armies which are now only remembered by reason of the mis-
fortunes and calamities that overtook them, were often of the Terj
highest' order. It was the character and military attainments of
their commander to which the difference in result is to be attributed.
The old soldier lives upon the past, and the young gentleman joininga
regiment is so accustomed to hear his older brother oflScers, to whom he
looks up as his masters and teachers, dilate upon the excellence of the
previous generations of soldiers, and upon the failings and shortcomiogs
of those he sees around him, that he adopts these views unhesitatinglj
and in an unquestioning spirit. Such is the influence of discipline
upon us, that if our military rulers, by thought, word, or action, allow
it to get abroad and be generally understood, that any proposed re-
form or recently effected change is, in their opinion, contrary to oor
traditions, and certain to be injurious in its effects, our older officos
take up the cry, imtil it rings in every mess-house, and its echo comes
back to us from the morning room of every military club. Discipline
is apt to make parrots of us all; we have much -less individoalitj
than the members of civil professions. This, in my opinion, accoonts
very largely for the opposition with which all Mr. Card well's refonns
have been, and even still are, received by the army, although other
very potent agencies have also strengthened that opposition. All
armies and navies are naturally conservative in their tendencies, and
consequently view with great suspicion any changes effected in their
organisation by a Liberal Grovemment. An article of &ith with
every British soldier is that the authorities of the Horse GtiardB are
his natural protectors, whilst the War Department offidab are hi£
enemies, always looking for opportunities to deal him out scant
measure, and they are suspected of ^ sharp practice ' in their Inter-
pretation of warrants and regulations regarding the soldier's pay and
allowances. The consequence is, that when any scheme of army reform

1881. LOm AND SHORT SERVICE. 661

is started which is supposed to have emanated from the War Office,
and to be distastefiil to that impersonality the ' Horse G-uards,' it is
•condemned off-hand, and often those who are most outspoken in de-
nouncing it have never even taken the trouble to learn its nature or
its objects. Its parentage is enough of itself to damn it in their eyes ;
but when club gossip asserts that the Horse G-oards have refused to
adopt it or even to be its godfathers, although solicited by the War
Minister to accept that conventional responsibility, there is no measure
to their unreasoning condemnation of it.

The facts disclosed in the General Betum of the Army, which is
<x>mpiled at our military head-quarters and annually presented to
Parliament, prove so incontestably the improved condition of our army
since the introduction of the short service system, that I can only
account for the determined opposition it encounters in military circles
in the manner I have done in the foregoing remarks. I have the
highest authority for pronoimcing that system to be a great success,
for in a speech made by his Royal Highness the Commander-in-chief
in May 1878, he said as follows: * We have been passing for some
time through considerable changes in the army, under the new sys-
tem of short enlistment, and we were not aware what the exact effect
of that system might be ; but circumstances have enabled us to test
it, and I am happy to say that the success of the measure has been
'Complete. When it was first introduced by my noble friend Lord
Oaidwell, I had some doubts whether it would answer, but it has suc-
ceeded in a manner that neither I, nor any one connected with the
army, could have expected ; ' and he added, ^ so far as the army is
concerned, it is everything that could be wished.'

Those who are never wearied of pointing back to the condition of
onr army under the old system of long service, should compare that
•statement with the condition of the army at the end of the last and
the early years of this century, as described in the second volume of
Mr. Clode's Military Forces of ^ the drown. We there learn that in
tlioee days criminals, paupers, debtors, and vagrants were forced in
laige numbers to serve in our ranks, and that daring the Peninsular
War three regiments were formed, and others recruited, by the system
of pardoning criminals on condition of their serving abroad. If we
turn to the pages of the Duke of Wellington's despatches, what a pic-
ture he draws of the discipline and moral condition of the army that
his great military genius enabled hiin to ¥rin brilliant victories with !
In 1809 he writes to Lord Castlereagh : * It is impossible to describe
to yon the irregularities and outrages committed by the troops.' He
udds, * We are an excellent army on parade, an excellent one to fight,
bat we ate worse than an enemy in a country ; and take my word for
it, that either defeat or success would dissolve us.' . The army then
-^ras 80 unpopular that, as he again writes in 1811, * none but the
worst description of men enter the regular service,' although the levy

662 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Maich

f^ and bounty money for each recruit from this degraded cla^'amoonteS

^ to more than 40i.

In endeavouring to account for the dislike with which short scn
Vice is generally viewed in the army, the fact that it adds very
considerably to the daily work of regimental officers most iia/i be
forgotten. Under the long service system, a regiment in ordinary
times required very few recruits each year ; now the battahoiig on
honiie service, having not only to keep their own ranks fuU,'bot alsb
to furnish men for their battalions abroad, are, with the exception
of those first for foreign service, little more than great depots or mili-
tary schools for the manufacture of drilled soldiers. They resemble
very closely the battalions of the German army during peace.
Unfortimat^ly our regimental officers have not yet learned to accqjt
the position which the Grerman officers have long occupied, namelj,
that of instructors in drill, discipline, and in those minor tactics
which are so well taught in every Prussian barrack. Formerly the
Ismail number of recruits joining a battalion were easily drilled br
the few non-commissioned officers specially allotted for that daty;
now the number of recruits who join the home battalion is so
large that unless the company officers assist in their instnictioD,
the necessary number of manufactured soldiers cannot be turned out
annually. Henceforward the mode of life of the regimental' officer
will have to be very different from what it used to be ; many hooR
of idleness daily, the long periods of leave, must be abandoned ; he
must make up his mind to the constant drudgery of tea3ching bis om
men, as the officers of the German army do ; and, like them, hevill
sooner or later have to content himself with the six weeks* leave
which is the maximum allowed, even to the officers of the Empeior
William's Guard Corps. Hitherto our army has been a pleasant home
for idle men; generation after generation^ of officers have been
attracted to it by the ease and pleasure it secured to the Englisb
gentleman — enjoyment that was only heightened by ttie opposfe
extremes of privation and hard work which an occasional campiigB
afforded. All this must sooner or later be entirely changed by the
system of short service : is it, therefore, to be wondered at that short
service should be unpopular with many of our regimental officers?

In considering short service, and with a view to throw some light
upon a subject so little understood, I shall briefly state, first, ^
reasons why it was adopted ; secondly, the objeots it was intended te
secure ; and thirdly, the effects it has had already upon the army.

The collapse of our military power towards the latter days of ti»
siege of Sebastopol was so appalling that, for the time, it'fi^ihtened
the nation, and set our educated officers a-thinking to aocoont hrrif
and to devise some scheme which should be tepable of saving ts
from its possible repetition in the future. Proin ' 1845 to- 1864 w
had lived upon the military reputation which the genius of the.'Dnhe

r

1881. LONG AND 8H0BT SERVICE. 563

•

of Wellington had won for us in Europe. During that period no
great wars had startled the world. No new commander, by newly-
devised tactics, and with an army raised upon any new system of
organisation, had carried out any important campaign to a brilliant end,
overturning in the process some other nation whose military power
rested upon the systems that had been matured in the Napoleonic
era. The idea that periodical reforms were as necessaiy to the
healthy existence of military institutions as they were to every
political constitution, had not been born, or, if contained in the
maxims of the great commanders of previous ages, had been for-
gotten. Up to 1 852 our army and Wellington were nearly synonymous
terms, so completely was he its undisputed master in nearly all
things. As he had grown older the conservatism of old age took
hold of him more firmly every year, until at last he deprecated any
change. To the soldier of liiature years whose mind is still alive to
the necessity for constant army reforms, it is sad to peruse the history
of 1847, and see the obstinacy with which the Duke opposed the first
step then made towards the introduction of short service. We know
that he was against the change from flint to percussion locks, and it
was not until he had passed away in the fulness of time amidst the uni-
versal and vety natural grief of the nation whose greatness he had
i;^uaided and increased, that we were able to obtain rifled muskets. He
had lived to see the system of short service, coupled with army reserves,
well developed in Prussia, without perceiving how peculiarly suited
fiueh a system is to England, where the spirit and instincts of the people
are so opposed to the maintenance of a large standing army. He
was not, however, in any way to blame for the general unpreparedness
for war in which we found ourselves in 1854. The idea of peace, of
eternal peace, had taken hold of the national mind, and no Govemr
ment, no matter which party might have been in power, could have
induced Parliament to maintain, in a condition fit for war, even
the small army we had on foot prior to that year. The conse-
'qaence was that the declaration of war with Bussia in 1854 found us
unready in every way for the great struggle into which our ministers
bady from ignorance of war, allowed us to drift. The Committee of
the House of Commons of 1855 on the stsite of the army reported
that ^at the date of the expedition to the East no reserve wa^
provided at home adequate to the undertaking. Mr. Sidney
Herbert states in his memorandum of the 27th of November : '^ The
army in the East has been created by discounting the future : every
regiment at home, or within reach, and not forming part of thp
army, has been robbed to complete it. The depots of battalions
under Lord Baglan have been similarly treated." ' We hegai^
that war by the despatch of a small army of about 20,000 m^oi to
the East, but in order to complete the battalions sent out we
were obliged, as described in the above quotation^ to obtain a large

564 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Much

number of men from the regiments remaining behind, most of which
were subsequently sent out themselves, when they in their turn had not
only to find men to supply the place of those whom they had a few
months before given as volunteers to the corps originally despatehed
to the Crimea, but also to complete their numbers to war strength by ob-
taining volunteers from every battalion still left in Great Britain. His
system of completing the numbers of a regiment going abroad, especi«
ally for active service, by obtaining volunteers from other corps, is a
very old one, and has always been resorted to. Yet those who are
anxious to decry short service at all hazard, presuming upon the ignor-
ance of the non-military public in the history of former wars, would
have us believe that this system of ^ volunteering ' is a new one, and
is the offspring of short service. In most of the newspaper articles
and after-dinner speeches, wherein short service is denounced, the
most prominent point selected wherewith to point their moral,- as well
as adorn their tale, is the alleged fact that esp^^ de corps and the
regimental system are being now destroyed by the short service law,
which entails the transfer and volunteering of men from one regiment
to another. We read accounts, told in harrowing sentences, of the
manner in which the regiments sent to South Africa after the
Isandhlana disaster were made up to their required strength hy
obtaining volunteers from regiments remaining in England. If those
who pen these thrilling narratives would examine into the history of
the Crimean War, they would find that, under the long service system
to which most of them would have us go back, the re^ments that
fought in it had their numbers also made up to the required strength
in a similar manner.

No one can dislike this plan of largely filling up the ranks of a
battalion by volunteers from many other regiments more than I do ;
but I am anxious to show my non-military readers that this system
is by no means new, and has no necessary connection whatever with
short service. Indeed, it is because I am most anxious to see this
objectionable practice put an end to that I am such a warm upholder
of short service, for through it and by means of it alone can we ever
hope to create such an army reserve as will enable us to complete
our regiments to war strength when it is necessary to do so, without
having recourse to the old system of volunteering. If in 1854
we had had an efficient army reserve of say 60,000 men, we
should not have had to go round cap in hand to all the regimenU
staying at home begging for men, and offering them bounties to
volunteer into those ordered to the East. If we had had such a re-
serve in 1878, we could easily have obtained the three or four thousand
volunteers required for Zululand from it, without asking for a soldier
serving in any home garrison.

In 1854*55, when all the soldiers we had in our small homeaimy
had been sent to the Crimea, and all our colonies and Mediterranean

1881. LONG AND SHORT SERVICE. 565

stations had been robbed of every available drilled man, their places,
where it was absolutely necessary, being temporarily filled by militia,
we found ourselves at the end of our military resources ; having no
reserve to fall back upon, we were reduced to the undignified expe-
dient— an expedient unworthy of a great nation— of raising foreign
legions. When Lord Raglan in this extremity was informed by his
Government that 2,000 more recruits would be sent him, he bqgged
they might be kept where they were. He said he preferred to wait,
as those last sent to him * were so young and unformed that they
fell victims to disease, and were swept away like flies.'

Surely those who now advocate a return to our old army system, if
system it can be called, must either be ignorant of or have forgotten
the sort of drafts that under it were annually sent from England to
India, and also the condition in which they were sent, to fill up the
regiments serving there. Before the Mutiny, under the long service
system, I have seen driEifts of many hundreds of men embark for that
country in a state of inefficiency that few of our younger officers could
now realise. Not only were they from extreme youth utterly unfit
for Indian service, but most of them were entirely undrilled, many
of them never having had even a musket in their hands. With a
large draft of this nature for the regiment I had been gazetted to, I
landed at Rangoon in the middle of the Burmah War of 1852, and
with them I went into action for the first time, where the great bulk of
them fired a musket for the first time in their lives. Like the
recruits described by Lord Raglan, they also died *like flies.' Our
battalions in India at that time were very fine, the result of the
natural law, the ' survival of the fittest.' None but the strongest
bore up against the climate to which they were exposed in the im-
xpaturity of their ^ teens,' and as a matter of course the residuum con-
stituted, physically speaking, a splendid corps. But their appearance
on parade only told the bright side of the army system then : its sad
chapters were alone to be learnt in the graveyards of the Indian stations.

Nor were the regiments sent to the colonies in those days all that
imagination paints them at this distance of time. I know of an
instance of a battalion hurried off from England during the rebellion
in Canada, in such an inefficient condition that it landed without
either arms or accoutrements and most imperfeotly clothed. And
what was the moral condition of the men in those halcyon days of
long service ? In the year 1858 — it was certainly an exceptional year
— over 20,000 men deserted, and in the following year the number of
desertions was 11,328.

The Indian Mutiny of 1857 again found us unprepared for the
strain of war ; we had no army reserves, and all that our military
administrators could devise as means to obtain men was the old
expedient of going into the labour matket to purchase men by the
indnoement'of large bounties. Although they lowered the standard

666 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. ilarch

jbo five feet three inches at the same time, it was impossible to eom*
ptete the anny establishment. That very low standard was continued
for some years, and yet we find in the evidence given before the
Secruiting Commission that made its report in 1860, that 7,000 men
were still wanting in 1859 to bring the anny up to the numbers voted
by PaDrliament, although boys instead of men had been enlisted. The
Becruiting Commission of 1866 again ealled attention to the serious
defect then ^ existing in the extreme youth and short service of the
soldiers sent abroad ad reliefs.' That Commission went on to say : —

' A return, prepared for us, of the ages and periods of service of men sent out
as drafts to India during the last two years (between the 1st of January, 1864,
and the 31 st of December, 1866) shows that out of a total number of 5,623 ne
lees than 2,093 were imder twenty years of age, and 796 between twenty and
twenty-one yeaxs. Thus there were more than one-half (2,889) under twenty-one
ye^rs of age, and in some regiments the proportion was much greater.'

I wish my readers to remember that these remarks referred to a time
lof peace under the long service system.

The war in Bohemia of 1866 drew attention in a striking manner
•to the Pmssiaa3; system of army organisation, and the means by wfaidi
a very poor State was enabled to put a, very large army in the field
for warj without keeping the great bulk of it under arms during
peace. A study of the Prussian -organisation showed that its founda-
tions were based upon the obligation of every healthy, full-grown
man to serve in the ranks, and upon the creation of a great army
reserve by means- of short service. England was not, nor is she now,
pf epaxed to adopt the principle of universal service, but the creation
of a reserve, the men composing which, after a thorough training in
the anny, should, during peace, follow civil avocations, and live to all
intents and purposes as ordinary citizens, seemed peculiarly suited to
the genius and habits of the English people. This idea having more
or leas taken hold of the public mind, simmered and grew stronger,
and when the great events of 1870 startled the world, most of us held
our breath as we asked each other, ^ Were we safe as a nation ? ' We
at last seemed to realise tliat it might at any moment become
necessary for us to send a force of one or two army oorps to Belgium
in accordance with ou^ treaty engagements, and realised at the same
time that to do what we did in 1854, that is, send an expeditionary
iorce abroad, unless we had behind it a reserve at least equal to it iD
numb^s^ would only 'be to court the humiliations that befell us then
^nd in the following year.

All serious thinkers upon our army requirements^ then, at last
seemed to agree to the three following-postulates : —

. Ist,. Ths^t for V the protection of these islands front invasion, for
ihp defence of our foreign ^possessjions, for ihe maintenance of our
xule in India, and to enable us to ;falfil our* treaty obligations in
^urope^ we ^ might at any moment find it neoessary to put in thf

1881. lONG AND SHOMT SERVICK 567

field an anny df about 60,000 men, which should have behind it a
thoroughly efficient reserve of well-trained soldiers of at least equal
nmnbeTs;

2ndlyj It would only be by a system of keeping the great bulk of
that forde during peace as an inexpensive reserve, that we could hope
to induce Parliament to sanction its formation ; and,

' 8idly« That it was only possible to have such a reserve at all by
altering the terms of the 6oldier's engagement, so that when he ha4
learnt his work thoroughly by a few years' service with a regiment, he
should pass the remaining portion of that engagement as a reserve
jnan in civil life, with the obligation to serve when called upon to do
«o in-time of war.

To a very large extent, these are the conclusions upon which most
of the great continental military systems are based; if we add the
gtoerally-accepted axiom that, when a soldier is kept in our service
much over twelve years, there is a moral obligation on the part of
the State to provide fc^r his old age by giving him a pension, and the
corollary upon it, that for economy's sake it is most undesirable to
keep men so long with the colours that they can justly claim c^uch a
4x>oQ, then I think I may say these were the reasonathat in 1870 led
Xiord Cardwell- to introduce the existing short service syst^n into our
«rmy. He saw that our military requirements could only be supplied
•by means of short service, and he therefore based our reformed
onilitary organidation upon it. .

To those who will carefully study the problem he had to solves
jE think it will be clear that we cannot at one and the same time hav^
A really efficient army reserve upon which to rely in time of war, and
have also during peace a standing army of old soldiers with the
colours.

• I am well aware that a- large proportion of our very oldest
officers demur to these conclusions; their aspirations do not soar
beyond "the creation of a standing army of well set-up, perfectly
drilled soldiers, such a6 we possessed before the Crimean War. They
don't believe in a reserve they cannot see, and they believe only i|L
the men whom they can daily inspect in Hyde Park or at Aldershot.
They should, however, remember how that fine army, to which their
thoughts recur with satisfaction, melted away quickly before the
diiead realities of our greatest siege^ and that whilst the brilliant
Tietories of Ahna, Balaclava, and Inkerman are now forgotten im
Evrope, the story of our subsequent humiliation is well remembered;
And what was the cause of that humiliation? It was because -our
JKrmy then was' incapable of' any sustained effort, owing te the want
"&i noEi army reserve to supply its losses in* the field. It is* because
'I remember those days whcm I raiw our military power collapse on the
'Sobastopol plateau, that I shudd^ as i hear men talk calmly of
fi^HMciSmg to the long service system of that time. An army composod.

568 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Maidi

as ours was then, of a first line and nothing more, is worse than a
sham, for it deludes the nation into a -false confidence in its military
strength, which must always sooner or later lead it to Uke misforttme.
Amongst the many objects it was hoped to secure by the intro-
duction of the present system of short service with the colours wu
that of removing the unpopularity of the army with the classes from
which we must look for recruits. Before 1870 the great majority of
the men who enlisted served for the full term of twenty-one years,
which entitled them to a small pension. This pension was not large
enough to support even those who had no fiunilies, and many were
so broken down by service in tropical and unhealthy climates as to
be unable to earn wages by hard work. In every parish there were
consequently discharged soldiers whose miserable condition was a
warning to all the young men of their neighbourhood to shun the
army as an occupation. Two-thirds of our army were constantly
abroad, and a youth who left his friends to join a regiment at a
foreign station was r^;arded as lost for ever to his family, so few
comparatively ever returned home. Under a system of long service,
even when we reduced the standard of height and chest measurement
to a boy's dimensions, and offered large bounties even for immature
striplings quite incapable of supporting fiitigue, we were still unaUe
to fill our ranks when the least strain was brought to bear upon our
army. It was a dreadful thing this enlistment for twenty-one yean;
it meant the severance of every tie with home, and even those who
left the army after a ten years' engagement often found themsdves
adrift on the world, with impaired health ; they had no connection
with civil life, and were often little better, indeed, than strangers in
the districts where they had lived in boyhood. The heavy oUigation
of lengthened service to be undertaken upon enlistment deterred
numbers from joining the army. The poor man could not hope to
purchase his discharge, and all knew that the heaviest penalties were
incurred by desertion. The doggerel describing the sailor's horror of
a visit to Lagos gives a fair idea of the way in which enlistm^t for
long service in the army used to be regarded: —

The Bight of BeniiiD, the Bight of Bennio,
Whence few come out, though many go in.

The long service system gave us a number of old non-commissioned
officers and privates who were incapable of supporting the fttig!i^ of
active service. Every regiment that went to the Crimea left many
of such men behind it.

It is curious that whilst we hear on all sides a cry for rapid
promotion amongst the officers, we hear one also for old non-oom-
missioned officers. If the latter had the same opportunities for
ventilating their views, it is tolerably certain their cry would be the
reverse of that of the commissioned officer ; they would natmally say.

1881. LONO AND SHORT SERVICE. 569

^ Give U8 quick promotion, and the slower the promotion amongst
the officers of our re^^ent the better, as we shall have fewer young
gentlemen to drill and teach military duty to than at present.' Now
I believe that it is as essential to have young sergeants as it is to
have young officers. If promotion is very slow amongst the corporals
and sergeants, it kills ambition [amongst your best men. I hope
we shall very shortly see great improvements effected both in the
pay and position of our non-commissioned officers. They are very
badly remunerated at present, and they and their families are by no
means as well provided with accommodation in barracks as they should
be. But anxious as I am to see them well paid and raised in social
position, I hope they may not be retained as a rule with their line
battalions more than about fourteen or fifteen years, after which
period of service they should pass into one of the militia battalions
belonging to their regiment, or into one of the volunteer corps of
the county or district to which that regiment belongs.

Short service was designed to bring about these reforms, to which
Lord Gardwell attached so much importance. He hoped thereby to
induce a better class to enlist, so as to widen the field from which
really well-educated men could be selected for the ranks of corporal
and sergeant. Formerly a large proportion of our non-commissioned
officers had little or no education at all. The old colour-sergeant of the
eompany, or the old sergeant* major of the troop, relieved his captain
of much of the work that properly speaking should have been done
by the officer, whereas with young sergeants, who after perhaps ten
years' service in that rank leave for service in the militia or volim-
teers, the captain has more responsibility and more duty thrown upon
him. Is it therefore unnatural that the officer should cry out in
favour of the old-fashioned sergeant, although he was more stupid
and not nearly so well-educated as the sergeant of the present day ?
However,, we must not attach too much weight to cries of this sort,
for there are at all times those who believe that what is past and
gone was best, and that everything and every institution of the day
is inferior to those of past years. Before the introduction of the
present short service system, we had much difficulty in keeping the
ranks of the army full, although we only required from about 10,000
to 15,000 recruits annually, and paid a bounty to every man who
was attested. I have already described how during the Peninsjolar
"War we had to empty our prisons to obtain soldiers, although we
were offering a bounty of 40Z. for every recruit ; how during the
Crimean War, when high bounties were also offered, we so completely
failed to obtain ;i:ecruits at home in sufficient numbers, that we had
to beat up for them, in the purlieus of continental towns; and how we
were unable to keep our regiments full during the Indian Mutiny
although we enlisted weedy boys unfit for a soldier's life. How dif-
ferent have, been our recruiting returns since 1870! In 1876 we

570 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Mawk

enlisted over 29,000 men ; in 1877 and in 1878, over 28,000; and
in 1879 — the last year embraced in our published retiinis-H)V6r
25,000.

But it is said we are now enlisting boys : the extracts I hare
already given from the Becruiting Commi^ions of 1860 and of 1866
describe the worthlessness of the recruits we obtained under the long
Service system of those times; so even were it impossible to show
that the men who now enlist are of a better type, it conld not be
affirmed with any regard for accuracy that we are worse off now undei
the existing system of short service. I think, however, that a perusal
of the tables given in the last Greneral Annual Betum of the Biitisli
Army, which was presented to Parliament last year, will prove in-
contestably that man for man the recruits we obtain now are moYally
better, and physically stronger, than those we enlisted prior to 1870.

At page 62 of that Eeport it is shown that from the year 1861
down to 1870 the number of recruits of superior education in every 1,000
enlisted ranged from 52 to 68, whilst in the first year given in the
table after the introduction of short service, that proportion rose with
a bound to 137, and went on annually increasing until we find iimt on
the 1st of January, 1880, it stood at 576 per^' 1,000 men. In 1865
there were 109 courts-martial to every 1,000 men in the army; in
1879 that proportion had fallen to 85. In 1869, thenumber of minor
punishments inflicted by order of conmtianding officers was 1,405 par
1,000 men^ and in 1879 it had fallen to 1,386. In 1861 the per-
centage of deserters to recruits was 41, in 1879 it had fallen to 16.
In 1871 and 1879 the strength of the army was identical, so we can
compare the returns for those years with advantage ; in the former
year the net loss by desertion was 3,055 men, being a percentage of
1*66 on the total establishment of the army, while in the latter ye«r
those numbers were 1,807 and 0*99. If statistics are of any valne,
these figures tell a healthy story of moral improvement in our anny
that no amount of club gossip and irresponsible letter-writing can
gainsay.

With reference to the physique and youth of the reomits we
obtain now, there seems to be a generally accepted belief that the
immaturity of the men we enlist and send to India is directly attri*
butable to the short service system. I hope to prove that the reeniits
who now join are far superior physically to those we sent to the
Crimea, whom Lord Baglan condemned as worse than useless, or than
those we sent to India during the Mutiny, whom the Reoruitiog Com-
mission referred to as *boys.' But were I unable to do so, I should in
any case wish to impress upon my readers that there is no necessarf
connection between the short service system and the phyaiqae of the
men who enlist, beyond the fact that, as enlistment for short service with
the colours is more popular than for a long term, we are more likely
to obtain stronger and in every way better men under the former

1881. LONG AND SEORT SERVICE. 571

than under the latter system. Were it thought advisable to do so,
there is no reason why we should not now lay it down as a rule, that
no man under twenty-five years of age and five feet ten inches in
height should be enlisted* We could do so under the short, quite as
well as under the long, service system. The only point involved, and
it would be common to both systems, is, that you will have to offer
the man of twehty*five fiEir better pay than the youth of nineteen or
twenty years of age* This question of age is not one of sentiment, it
is one a£ money* The man of twenty-two, twenty-three, or twenty-
four years of age has already adopted some settled means for earning
a livelihood; to' enlist would not be to better himself, and conse-
quently we obtain very few recruits of that time of life. It is different
with the veiy young man of nineteen or twenty years, for he is still
more or less, as it were, a waif and stray, and is more elEisily attracted
by the. glamour which must always in some degree hang round the
career of a soldier.

We hear on all sides complaints that our recruits are younger and
weaker than those we obtained formerly, and because short service is
distasteful to many of our older officers, we are told it is that system
to which these melancholy results are attributable. Here is what
our published statistics tell us. In 1846, before the introduction of
the ^ Limited Service Act,' in the cavalry and infantry the number of
men per 1,000 imder twenty years of age was 126*9; in the army
generally in 1871 there were 190, whilst in 1880 there weie only
100 per thousand undier that age. In 1871 there were in the army
490 men per 1,000 between twenty and thirty years (this is the class
of men that forms the backbone of every army), of whom there were
664 per 1,000 in 1880. This satisfactory result is obtained without
including our army reserve, who in the event of war would rejoin the
colours^ and who, being all men of between twentyrfour and thirty
years of age, would, had their numbers been included in the returns
firom which these figures are taken, have made the comparison be-
tween former years and 1880 still more strikingly in favour of the
army of to-day. The average age of the recruits who joined in 1863
was twenty years . and three months ; since then there has been a
^adual but small increase in age; and in 1877, the last year included
in the return from which I quote, that average age Was twenty years
and sev^QL months.

The standard of height for the in&ntry of the line is now five
feet six inches, and for chest measurement it is thirty-four inches ,
no recruit is accepted who does not fulfil these requirements, which
are in excess of those in all, and are much higher than those
in most continental. armies. Some indeed are in &vour of lowering
these standards, because in consequence of them we are forced to
reject so many recruits whose chest measurement is only thirty-three
inches, but whom, in every other respect, it would be desirable to enliBt.

572 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. March

Without ia any way going back to the very low standards to which
we have often had to resort in the days of long service, we oonld at
any moment increase the number of our recruits very considerably
by reducing our standard to that of Germany or of France. In
1873 there were in every 1,000 men in the army 412 under 5ft. 7in.,
and 588 over that same height; in 1880 the numbers were 398 and
602 respectively. Surely these facts show a decided improvement m
the physical strength of our soldiers, and afford a positive denial to
all the wild statements which are so commonly bandied about as to
the inferiority of the recruits who now enlist under the short service
system, compared with those we used to obtain formerly.

All changes, all reforms are very distasteful to some of our oldest
officers, who, in order to enlist the popular sympathy on their side,
declare that short service and the recent reforms in our military
organisation are destructive to discipline, to esprit de cai'pa, and to
the regimental system. These expressions are shibboleths wherewith
to conjure on all military questions, just as a cry of ' No Popeiy,' or
'The Church in danger,' has before now been used to excite the
masses politically. Outside the army very few indeed know what is
meant by the ' Regimental System,' but they know it is the common
name for a military idol. No one can value more highly than
I do the three essentials to military excellence that I have named.
Without discipline and esprit de corps no army can hold together
on active service or ever be worth much, and every one who has
really served in one of our regiments during war, who has com-
manded a company on active service, knows as well as I do that
our admirable regimental system is above all things calculated to
foster the growth and further the maintenance both of discipline
and of esprit de corps. It is, however, because I wish to have
better material, both in a moral and a physical sense, to work
upon and to imbue with these attributes, that I rejoice in the fiict
that the old order of long service has given place to the new one
of the present day; and it is because I wish to see them intensi-
fied and extended so as to embrace the militia as well as the army,
that I advocate the complete fulfilment of the localisation scheme
embodied and fully described in the Beport of the Militia Conmiittee,
over which Colonel Stanley, the Secretary of State for War undtf
the late Government, presided. I cannot in this article enter upon
any description of that scheme — I may possibly do so later on — bat
I earnestly hope that Mr. Childers may not be deterred by any snch
clamour as that now raised against short service, the unsoundness of
which I have endeavoured to expose, from carrying out that scheme
in its entirety, and to its only logical conclusion.

Gr. J. WoLSELBT, Lieutenant-GcneraL

188L 573

HOLLAND AND THE TRANSVAAL.

It would be necessary to go back to the years 1830 and 1831 in
Dutch history to find the parallel to the national movement which
has passed over Holland in the first months of this year.

The news of the axmed rising of the Transvaal Boers has pro-
duced the effect of an electric shock through the whole of the Nether-
lands. All classes, all political parties, all religious denominations,
have equally shared in the general enthusiasm. The smallest
villages and remotest districts have followed the example of the large
towns in organising meetings to discuss the interests of the Transvaal,
and to raise money for alleviating the sufferings caused by the war in
South Africa. One of the most considered of Dutch savants, the
almost septuagenarian Professor of Natural Science at the University
of Utrecht, Dr. P. Harting, has taken the lead in drawing up a
memorial to the British nation, which, after having been signed in a
few days by a nmnber of Dutchmen forming the most distinguished
part of the nation, has been sent to England and published by the
various organs of public opinion. Under the auspices of the same
Professor, a Transvaal Committee has been formed, composed princi-
pally of men holding high scientific positions, whose object is to
enlighten public opinion as much as possible about the dispositions
and intentions of the Boers.

The whole Dutch press, irrespective of its political opinions, has
declared itself in favour of the Transvaal Boers. The Dutch papers
have daily devoted a great part of their columns to the Transvaal, in
order to satisfy the universal interest. In a word, no foreign event
has for years excited the minds in Holland so much as the present
war in South Africa.

It need hardly be pointed out that the general movement in this
country has a very peculiar character, completely different from the
isolated manifestations in favour of the Boers in Germany, France,
and America. In Frankfort, Paris, or New York, either political
calculations or the indefinite sympathy for all nations fighting for
their independence may have had their influence, but in Holland the
feeling of conmiunity of race was uppermost.

We have ancestors in common with the African Boers, of whom
we are justly proud. In struggling for their independence, the Boers
Vol. IX.— No. 49. Q Q

674 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. March

axe doing now what our common ancestors did three hundred years
ago, when they declared themselves free from their allegiance to the
mighty king of Spain. The history of that ever memorable eighty
years' struggle, which since our schooldays has been a household tale
with us, is remembered in South African homesteads with as mach
enthusiasm as on the marshy soil which witnessed it. In those
South African farms Dutch manners and customs prevail^ Dutch
Calvinism is professed in its most characteristic form, and the same
language which is spoken at Amsterdam and at the Hague may he
hesuxi on the Drakensberg and among the rocks of the Lang Nek pass.

When, a hundred years ago, the American colonists rose against
England, a strong political party in what was then the Republic d
the United Netherlands succeeded in forcing the Stadtholder to give
his assistance to America. Dislike of England, more than sympathy
for the Americans, was the motive of that party.

Fortunately at present the situation in the Netherlands is wholly
changed. Not an atom of hostility towards England is mixed up
with the sympathy for the Boers. On the contrary, it is the general
respect and cordial friendship for Ghreat Britain which keep the friends
of the Transvaal in Holland from too loud protests.

No Dutchman will accuse England of having annexed the Trans-
vaal from mere love of conquest, or from any idle wish to increase
the number of her subjects. We willingly recognise that the fonn
of government of the Transvaal was imperfect, and that the politioal
institutions which the English Government established were in theory
much better ; we do not doubt for a moment that Sir Bartle Freve
and Sir Theophilus Shepstone were actuated by a sincere wish for the
welfiare of the inhabitants of the Transvaal ; we accuse English officials
of no tyranny, and we are fully convinced of the truth of the deckra-
tion of Sir John Lubbock in the House of Commons, that ^the
Transvaal will be none the less free because it forms a part of the
great Empire of G-reat Britain.'

But we recognise as decidedly the right of the Transvaal Boers
to refrise all those benefits. If they prefer their imperfect form of
government to the better organised English administration, simply
because the one is self-government and the other a form of govera-
ment imposed by a foreign Power, they do exactly what the Spaniards
did in the beginning of this century. Wh^i Napoleon wanted to
replace their own mediaeval type of government by more free insti-
tutions, they found a powerful ally in England in their just resist-
ance to the constitutional king imposed on th^oa by France.

We, of course, do not mean to compare the motives of the Fkencfa
Emperor with those of the English Grovemment of 1877, but in both
cases the result was the same. What the Boers are doing now, we
believe every European nation that loves its independence would do.
We Dutchmen would be the first to act in a similar way if a covetous

1881. HOLLAND AKD THE TRANSVAAL. 675

xkeighbour, under the pretext of giving us the benefit of his institu-
tions, threatened our independence. There can be no doubt that,
apart firom the special connection of Holland with the Transvaal, con-
siderationfl of this nature have largely influenced Dutch opinion. To
deny the right of nations and states to dispose of their own destinies
at their own pleasure and to judge for themselves what is conducive
to their happiness, is a most dangerous principle for the existence of
small States, eq[>ecially where annexations are carried out from th^
purest motives. The good aims which one power exercises in realitj
are too easily made a pretext by another, and soon evejy conquest
and annexation, however iniquitous and unwarrantable, is complete]^
justified.

Sir Bartle Frere, in his interesting article about the Transvaal
which appeared in the last number of this Review, speaks of Dutch*
men * who look forward to the ultimate absorption of Holland into
the Germanic Empire.' We do not know whether such Dutchman
actually exist — ^we fortunately have never come across any — but this
we do know, that it is that section of the Dutch nation which, if ther^
were any danger of the absorption of their country into the Grerman or
any other £m|>ire, would appeal to England in the first place, that
has been most painfully impressed by the events in the Transvaal.

But those Dutchmen, of whom Sir Bartle Frere suspected the
existence, would, accordii^ to him, wish for the conversion of the
Transvaal into an allied colony of Germany. Where, as I stated
above, the persons themselves are unknown quantities to me, I can«
not judge of their wishes and objects. Among the Dutchmen of mj
aoqoaintance there are few who have ever contemplated the even-
tuality of a German connection with the Transvaai|^and there is not
one among them who would contemplate such a combination with
equanimity.

The position of our race in South Africa would not certainly be
improved by being ensconced between two great powers. The relations
between the Dutch and English already have given rise to difficulties*
With the German race the Dutch have much less in common, and
thej would find it, in the long run, impossible to live on good terms
with them. The uneasy relations between the German missionaries
and the Transvaal Boers somewhat illustrate this fact.

There exists besides a more general reason why no Dutchman will
wish for any intervention of Germany in South African afiairs. It is
a reason which is self-evident, and can be better appreciated in
England than in any other country in the world. No English
statesman can wish that either Germany, or Italy, or any other non-
colonial European power, should make the acquisition of colonies
an object of its policy. And if one of the most powerful European
Stat^ with the largest colonial dependencies in the world, objects to
the prospect of new colonial rivals, how much more strongly will that

676 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.

objection be felt by a people with much smaller dependencies beyond
the sea and with a European territory comparatively much smallei!

A Grerman protectorate, is certainly the last thing we wish for
our Transvaal brethren. If they cannot live without protection, then
may England discharge those functions; but we are not yet convinced
that they are unable to protect themselves, A population which of
its own accord leaves its homesteads to defend its independence on its
frontiers against an enemy superior in numbers, shows, it seems to
me, that it possesses sufficient energy and national vigour to be able
to maintain its independent existence. That they are less skilled in
the difficult science of government than the civilised European nations
who have had a long experience is natural. And even in some civiUsed
States of Europe such conflicts between the executive and the legis-
lative powers as appear to have taken place in 1877 in the Transvaal
are not unknown. President Burgers may have uttered bitter words
about the Volksraad, and the Volksraad may have shown itadf
intractable towards the President, but at least let it not be forgotten
that the one thing they agreed in was a protest against the annexation
by England.

Will such an annexation, which, as its partisans must themselves
admit, has never received the formal sanction which they maintain
it might .so easily have obtained, be upheld by the English Govern-
ment against the manifest will of the people ?

As a foreigner I will abstain from criticising the colonial policy
of the present English Government in South Africa. As a Dutcdi-
man I hope that the claims of my countrymen in South AMca may
be weighed and considered with as much care as those of the races
in the Balkan puainsula.

England's prestige on the Continent is sufficient not to reqniie
for its sake an easy military triumph over a weaker and badly equipped
enemy.

However great may be the tension and anxiety in Holland, we still
trust in the justice and impartiality of the English Government, and
in the feelings of generosity and loyalty of the British nation.

W. H. DE Beaufort.

THE

NINETEENTH
CENTUEY.

No. L.— April 1881.

THE MILITARY IMPOTENCE OF
GREAT BRITAIN.

On November 9, 1876, Benjamin Disraeli, as Premier of Crreat Britain,
made a speech at the Lord Mayor's banquet in London vrhich at-
tracted inmiense notice. The political importance of the speaker,
the tone of the speech, the universal echo it found in the country,
justify the reproduction of its most noticeable phrases at the com-
mencement of this paper. ^ There is no country,' said Disraeli, ' so
interested in the maintenance of peace as England. Peace is especially
an English policy. She is not an aggressive Power, for there is
nothing which she desires : she covets no cities and no provinces.'

Who was not reminded by these words of the memorable
speech of Louis Napoleon, when Prince-President, at the banquet of
the Chambers of Commerce at Bordeaux, on October 9, 1852, which
culminated in the famous phrase, < L'empire c'est la paix ' ? The
lEmpire which this speech was to introduce came, but it was war ;
war in the Crimea, in Italy, in Cochin China, in Mexico — ^in France.
Disraeli had surely only to thank his famous predecessor, if the
world did not entirely believe in * Peace so especially the policy of
ISngland.' To be sure, the noble lord who from 1874 to 1879
governed the British Empire with strong hand did his best to keep
alive this distrust in. the truth of his words. Although nothing
existed which England could wish for, althoujgh she desired no states,
no provinces, yet she has pushed forward the boundary lines of her
power within the last five years. In 1874 England occupied
Xiahedsch, in Arabia, and annexed the Fiji Islands ; in 1875 pur-
Vol. IX.— No. 60. K K

578 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. April

chased Mobammereh, at the mouth of the Euphrates, and by the
acquisition of 177,000 Suez Caual shares gained a casus vnUrctiir
tionia in Egypt; in 1877 she occupied Khetta, in Beloochistan, and
annexed, in spite of the protests of the population, the Transvaal
Kepublic in South Africa ; in 1878 she occupied Cyprus. During
this period she felt herself threatened and disturbed by tlie
French, the Turks, the Bussians in India, and by the first-
named also in Africa. She has had repeated differences with Egypt,
and quite lately also with Burma; has been very near a warlike
collision with ^Guatemala, China, and Bussia ; and has actually gone
to war with the Ashantis, Afridis, Afghans, and Zulus.

This, then^ is peace — the policy so peculiarly ErvghmSil
Nevertheless, we are of the same opinion as Disraeli — that there is do
country so interested in the pr^s^rvation of peace as England. A
State whose prosperity, imder the blessings of peace— as Porter
informs us — amounts to the yearly sum of 80,000,000/., dreads
naturally the burning questions of high policy, and their solation
through blood and iron. But still more, powerful than the interests
of Britain is the spirit of the age. In the struggle for existence, tbe
recognition of the importance of economic factoiB and the pursuit of
material gain become every day more universal. Whereyer the
spirit of enterprise spreads its wings it encounters the resistance of
Great Britain — hitherto the Farmer-General of the profits of the worii

In this daily-widening contest Engird recognises her conflicting

interests, and feels that she will be obliged to want states and

provinces — nay, even to make war — if she is to preserve her existent,

' The British Empire, spread oyer the whole world, must have its

'military representatives, ready to fight and prepared to strike for the

protection of its interests throughout the world.

Is this, however, the case? Does England's readiness for war
correspond to the world-wide extent of this empire, and to the
dangers involved in it ? Does it correspond to the requirements of
modern warfare ? The Premier of England answered these qnestioos
with a proud ' Yes.*

' Bat although the policy of England is peace/ he continued in his speech at tie
banquet, * there is no country so well prepared for war as our own. "What she wishes
is to ruaSntain and to enjoy the unexampled empire which she has built up, asdvhicli
it is her pride to remember exists as mudi upon sympathy as upon force. If she
enters into confliot in a righteous cause^and I will not believe that England vH
go to war except for a righteous cause — ^if the contest is one which concern he
liberty, her independence, or her empire, her resources, I feel, are inexhaustible.
She is not a country that, when she enters mto a campaign, has to ask heneli
whether she can support a second or a ^rd campaign. She enters into a cam|ttip
which she will not terminate till right is done.'

The eflTect of this speech on the audience was, as might be
expected, highly inflammatory. The subdued rage which had been
aroused in the nobility and gentry of the country by the consideration

1881. MILITARY IMPOTENCE OF GREAT BRITAIN. 579

of Asiatic affairs dissolved under the impression of the bold words of
the noble lord in a feeling of power, self-consciousness, and pride. Before
the speaker, perhaps, hovered the form of the great Pitt ; before his
mind's eye, perhaps, rose up that proud time of English history when
British gold gave life to the coalition of Europe against France, set her
troops in motion, and healed her wounds ; that period when England
deluged the Continent with her agents, and fought the French
Bapublic by smuggling in false assignats, by tricks and conspiracies ;
that proud time when countless troops of English soldiers fought now
on the Continent, now in the Colonies, and English war fleets covered
every sea. It was only natural that Disraeli's speech should produce
a fiery effect throughout the whole of Great Britain. We, however,
who are not Englishmen, nor boon companions of the Lord Mayor of
London, can, without eliciting any rebuke, apply the knife of
criticism to this important after-dinner speech, and with sharp shears
separate the truth and falsehood which are so remarkably mingled
together in it.

' There is no country,' says Disraeli, ' that is so well prepared fbr
war as England ;' and, in full consciousness that he is addressing the
richest country in the world, he proceeds: Mt is not a countiry
which, at the outbreak of a war, requires to ask whether it can
support a second or a third campaign.'

In iMs sense, doubtless, also General le Bceuf, French Minister
of War, had a full right to exclaim to the deputies who thronged
around him at the memorable sitting of July 10, 1870, * Nous sommes
archi-pr^ts.' If any country, surely France — ^France, crushed in so
unprecedented a maimer in 1870-1 — can declare that her resources
are practically ine^diaustible. And yet history replied to the phrase
' Nous sommes arcbi-prSts ' with the battles of Metz, the catastrophe
of Sedan, the capture of the Bhine army, the capitulation of Paris,
the surrender of Alsace-Lorraine, and the payment of 5,000 million
francs as a war indemnity. Here, as on each of her pages, history
furnishes a proof that all the resources, all the riches in the world, are
inadequate to compensate for the want of a military organisation
suited to the times.

If we deavre to obtain a dear netion of Great BvUavrCa capa-
hility for going to war^ we must turn our attention to its military'
Tesources compared with the political problems it has to face*

Gbeat Britain as a Nayal Power.

For fully ten years, from 1858-1868, IVance maintained — without
proof, indeed, yet without challenge — the position of first naval
Power. Since the war with Germany, however, she has been content
with the second place ; and England has taken the opportunity to
resame her natural position as first naval Power.

rr2

1

X

580 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. April

Britain's naval and mercantile fleets stand alone in thdi
grandeur.

According to the comparisons, equally well grounded and objec-
tive, instituted by Ward Hunt and Beed— comparisons which in spite
of differences of method have given a similar result — ^the British
ironclad fleet of to-day is one-third stronger than that of the French.
Still more favourable, however, is the proportion of the British mer-
cantile navy to that of her rival.

The tonnage of British sailing vessels compared with that of all
other naval Powers combined is as 1 : 2, the tonnage of its steam
vessels as 1 I 1.

No other country has Great Britain's capacity for building,
equipping, and manning a navy at such short notice. No other navy
possesses the British freedom of action, as no other possesses such a
net of coaling stations, harbours of refuge, and repairing docks,
spread over the whole world and connected by submarine cable.
Great, however, as is the war navy of Great Britain taken absoluidyi
its political tasks are far greater. To contend with foreign war
fleets, to protect British and capture foreign merchant vessels sailing
on every sea, to secure the communication between the single parts
of the United Kingdom, and between it and the colonies ; to support
the land troops in protecting the mother-country and the foreign
possessions, as well as, finally, to carry on offensive warfare — ^what a
varied programme I

The British navy stands in but a dubious position when compared
with the great and manifold tasks which await it. The rdaiive
weakness of the British navy appears at once, from its local distribu-
tion. ^TheMistribution of the English war navy — ^that is to saj, of
^ ships in commission' — on October 2, 1880, was as follows : —

In the United ^Kingdom for coast defence and

harbour service 87 vesselsi including 8 irondAds

Channel squadron 5 ,^ 4 „

Detached squadron 4 ,, 2 „

Mediterranean fleet 23 ., 7

East Indies 10

Indian troop service 5

China .••«•••• 19

Australia 0

North America^nd West Indies ... 13 „ 1

South-east coast of America .... 4

Pacific station 15

East coast of Africa 1

West coast of Africa and Cape ... 8

Particular seryice • 0

Survejring .••••••• 0

Ordered home 0

In the harbours of Chatham (1), Poitsmouth (16),

and Devonport (12) . • . . . ^9 „

V

n
tt
n
»

n
n

Total . 203 vessels, including 27iroDd«di

1881. MILITARY IMPOTENCE OF GREAT BRITAIN. 581

The British war navy, then, to correspond with the colonial
possessions and the commerce of the kingdom, is scattered over the
whole world.

England is most strongly represented at sea on the way to India,
China, and Japan, Australia and New Zealand. No less than sixty-
one ships of war, including ten ironclads, keep guard on these seas.
The chain of harbours on this route is undoubtedly strong. Gibraltar,
Malta, Cyprus, Aden, Perim, Galle, Singapore, and Hong Kong,
enable British ships to take in coal along the entire route.

It can cause no surprise that this is the route on which Great
Britain is most strongly represented. It is her most important
commercial route ; yet on no other does she find herself so insecure.
Before all, France must cause her anxiety, whose war navy — at the
end of 1879 was not less than 498 vessels, including 59 ironclads — is
for the most part stationed in Europe, directly opposite her own.

The road to India leads through the Mediterranean, far too
distant from England, and at present much more a French than an
English lake. It is questionable whether Gibraltar and Malta could
supply a large steam fleet for any length of time ; while there is no
doubt that France would be fully equal to the task, more especially
since she has fully secured the possession of Algeria. Thus this
route, which is by far the most important line of operations and
communications for Great Britain, passes through a defile com-
manded on either side by France. Pressing as she does on this
defile with the weight of a first-class naval Power, France obliges the
British Mediterranean Fleet to be kept up to its full strength even
in time of peace. Further, by means of her well-developed network
of railways, France can in a few days collect strong masses of troops
on the coast, and ship them over to England in a few hours. Still
more insecure is the second defile of this world-thoroughfare, the
Suez Canal. It is, in fact, in foreign hands. England could only
assure herself of this important link in the chain after a military
occupation of Egypt. The occupation of Egypt, however, leaving
out of sight the rivalries of other great Powers, would require an
expenditure of military strength of which Great Britain is only very
conditionally capable.

Lastly, a third defile belongs still to the future. The aspirations
of Italy toward Tunis are well known. Their realisation would
produce yet another narrow strait, no wider than the Channel
between England and France.

On the Atlantic, above all the theatre of the world's commerce,
Oreat Britain is even weaker than in the East. On this enor-
mous expanse — 1 ,626,000 geographical square miles ^ — she places only
twenty-five ships of war, including one ironclad, leaving out of con-

1 The areas thronghoiit are measured in German geographical miles, one-fifteenth of
a degree. — Tramlatar,

682 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. April

sideration the reserve fleet disbanded in time of peace, and fheveisdg
engaged in coast defence and harbour s^rice in the United Eing^
dom. Nevertheless, the British believe that even here they- aro
stronger than any other Power, and think that even an American
combination, owing to the weak condition of the United States D&yy
at present, could effect nothing against them.

This is true only for the beginning of a war, and then only oon-
ditionally on naval warfare being regarded as solely a contest between
ships of war. Yet even so the British cannot put -very moch eonfi-
dence in their position.

The maritime position of the United States is undoubtedly
better to-day than it was at the beginning of the war of 1812-li
At that time England stood at the zenith of her naval power, and vas
the undisputed mistress of every sea ; while the United States
possessed only six frigates and an inconsiderable number of smaller
vessels. It was this very war which brought the American naval
power into such repute among other navies, and gained her the
greatest distinction. In all single engagements, with one esoeptioo,
the Americans were the victors.

At the beginning of a war, however, the* Americans would perhaps
be at a disadvantage as compared with the British* But a na^
war with England is always a long business. The Americans would
find time to create a fleet ; and what they are capable of in this line
they showed in the war of secession, 1861-5. Counting at the
beginning of the war forty-two vessels, only partly seaworthy, they
raised themselves in the space of a year to the first rank amoog
naval powers \ while at the end of the war their fleet consisted of no
less than 761 ships of war, including seventy-one ironclads.

The naval basis of operations which the United States possefi m
the western shore of the Atlantic is without a doubt immeBsely
superior to that of the British. The United States navy is supp<»ted
by an admirably developed coast line extending nearly 5,000 nautical
miles, and providing the most copious resources. For the British, <m
the other hand, Halifax and Bermuda are undoubtedly of high value,
but as yet they are united by no cable. St. Helena and the Falkland
Islands are important stations in the South Atlantic Ocean : bat the
former still lacks telegraphic conamunication with the Cape, and the
latter, commanding the route round Cape Horn, is completely un«
protected. In the Pacific Ocean Great Britain ia the weakest of aU,
British ships of war are stationed to the ntmiber of nineteen in
phinese watefrs, nine in Australia, and only eleven on the west ooast
of the two Americas. Melbourne and Sydney, Adelaide and fin3ha&«>
the Bay of Islands, Auckland, Dunedin, and Fiji, are either insoffi*
cjlently guarded or not at all, and further, are not in possesaon of
iX)mplete telegraphic communication. Victoria and Vancouver's Island
are in a similar case, while between these and Fiji and Hong Song)

1881. MILITARY IMPOTENCE OF GREAT BRITAIN. 583

England possesses no naval station at^alL On this enormous ex-
panse of water — 3,3Q0,0Q0 geogiaphioal square miles — with its bright
fpnge of harbour cities and network of steamer-lines, Grreat Britain
requires at all times a strong maritime force to represent her. . And
it is now all the more.necessai^, as it is ^becoming daily more and
more the chief theatre of commercial traffic, ^nd, as the United States
already declare it, an American lake.

The relative weakness of the ^ngUsh navy comes all the more
distinctly into view when we fix our eyes on the actual character, of
naval warfare. In war at . sea, as distinguished from, war on land^.
the claims of commerce and private property belonging to the enemy
are held to be of minor importance.. It is one of the heaviest tasks,
of the British navy to protect the countless merchant vessels which
cover every sea, and are freighted with goods of enormous value.'

It is just owing to this development and extent that English
commerce is more exposed to attack than any other ; and the history
of privateering does not tend to diminish the apprehensions which
English merchants entertain on this score. England should r^nember
that in the war of 1812-14 the United States cruisers captured, in
the first six months, more than 200 British merchant vessels*
Still more fresh in the memory of the English mercantile world are
the lessons of the North American war of secession of 1861-5.. It
remembers how successful were the enterprises of the privateers
fitted out by the Southern States, in 9pite of the fact that they had
no development of maritime power, and were at the time blockaded
by the fleet of the Union ; ^ and how the fleet of the Northern States,
although at the end of 1863 it had reached a strength which already
surpassed that of the French as well as of the English navy, yet did
not succeed in putting a stop to the operations of the Southern priva-
teers. It remembers that the marine insurance premium, under the
heavy losses which privateering continued to inflict on American
conunerce, reached such a height that the States of the Union
found themselves compelled to denationalise their mercantile fleet.
It sailed almost exclusively under the English flag* Under the
influence of j^hese reminiscences, great disquietude was aroused in
the English mercantile world in 1878 when Bussia took steps for

- In the year 1877 the British mercantile fleet numbered 25,733 vessels; the
entire import and export amounted in value to 646,765,7022.

* The five comparativelj smaU privateers, AMamay Georgia, Florida, Noikville,
and Takony, alone had by the middle of the year 1863 destroyed 125 larger merchant*
vessels, including a considerable number of steamers. The Alabama in particular,
in the three last months qf 1863 annihilated no less than 28 large merchant- vessels.
The privateer TaUaka$$ee counted 15 prizes in 11 days. In vain did the Union
Minister of Marine send 1 2 ships, one after another, in pursuit of her. Finally,
when blockaded by cruisers in the harbour of Halifax, when she was taking in ooal,
ahe slipped out again, and, after capturing 35 merchant-vessels and carrying on a
successful running fight with the blockading squadron, she ran into the harbour o£
Wilmington in good condition.

584 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. April

equipping cruisers, and with this design purchased the steamers
^ Gimbria,' and ' State of California,' as well as the ' Alsatia,' ^ Hamon-
nia,' and ^ Thuringia ' from the Hamburg-American Company. As
is well known, the United States of North America did not assent to
the declaration of Paris of April 16, 1856, which proclaimed the
illegality of privateering. It was remembered in England that the
Unionists, embittered by the partiality shown by Great Britain in
the war of secession, declared that they should consider themselves
justified in equipping an entire fleet of privateers under the flag of
Afghanistan or Thibet, on the day on which England should find
herself at war with any seafaring people among her Indian neighbours.
Such a panic was aroused in the English mercantile world, that it has
never yet recovered its feeling of security. Opinion went so far as ta
look upon the centres of the three Indian presidencies, Calcutta,
Madras, and Bombay, as the possible prey of a single bold stroke,
and even to take into consideration the eventuality of the Suez Canal
being closed. The anxiety of the English mercantile world was
certainly in no small degree grounded on the apprehension that
England's opponent would meet with the most thoroughgoing support
in all parts of the world. The British have had a bad conscience
ever since they first exercised their arbitrary power on the seas.

Well might prudent people try to stem that panic by urging
that the operations of the Southern cruisers were so successful only
because the fleet of the Union was entirely absorbed in the blockade
of the Southern coasts : well might they refer to the fact that Great
Britain is far the strongest naval power, and that the ^ Alabamas ' of the
future, when chased by English ships of war, will surely have a sboiter
term of existence granted them than their illustrious predecessor en-
joyed. Bv;t even the soberest Englishrruin came to the coruiusion thaty
in the event of war, the denationalisation of the British mercafUHs
fleet would be the only means of protecting it from destruetum^
The proud queen of the seas sailing under a foreign flag I What
Briton of Nelson's days would not blush at the very thought I Conld
anything show more plainly the enormous change of the times ?

But according to the experience of present times, the share which
a fleet in general, and the British in particular, may take in the opera-
tions of a land army cannot be held a very important one. The

* I refer here to a most valuable article in Golbum's United Service Mttgadm^
1876, <Oar Naval Strength.' It is there stated in so many words:— * If England
therefore engages in a war with any European power, the probable result will be ft
transfer to some nentral flag of a very large portion of onr mercantile marine, in
order that their employment in the carxying trade might go on Qninteiraptcdlj.
Shipowners, as a class, would snffer terribly, and the carrying trade of the conntif
would doubtless receive a severe blow from which it would not easily recover : bot,
except indirectly, other classes would not suffer greatly, and our supplies of food,&c.
from without, as well as our exports of all except contraband of war, might go co
as if in peace, only in foreign instead of in English ships — or rather, it sfaoold be
said, in English ships that had been transferred for safety to a foreign neutnl flag.*

1881. MILITARY IMPOTENCE OF GREAT BRITAIN. 586

power of attack by a fleet on foreign coasts has been very much di-
minished in our times by the progress in the art of fortification, in
the science of artillery and submarine mining. The small results
obtained in 1854-5 by the English Black Sea fleet, in the North-
American Civil war 1861-5, and in the Busso-Turkish war 1877-8
afford abundant evidence that naval expeditions, except when directed
to the debarcation of important land forces, possess a very subordinate
value. But the development of the means of defence in all European
States in the last ten years makes demands at all events, in Europe, on
the forces landed, which Great Britain's army could by no means satisfy.
Besides, the introduction of steam into the English navy has to a
great extent diminished that prestige which the superiority of her
seamen gained for her at a time when navies consisted exclusively
of sailing vessels. The introduction of ironclads has diminished the
numbers of ships of war, and produced a distinction between men-of-
war and merchant vessels, which was undreamt of at the beginning
of this century. At that time the merchant navy could to some
extent be looked upon as a reserve of the war navy, inasmuch as the
adaptation of a merchant vessel to the requirements of warfare did
not present any very great difficulty.

.Were the case the same at the present day. Great Britain as a
naval power could make head against any coalition of Powers ; for, as
stated above, the tonnage of her sailing vessels bears to that of all
other powers combined the proportion of 5,494,577 : 10,535,017,
or in round numbers 1:2; while the tonnage of steamships is as
2,215,760 : 2,250,461,* in round numbers 1 : 1. Great Britain's
fleet of steamers is as strong as that of all other seafaring nations
combined.

These proportions, though so remarkably &vourable to Great
Britain, show clearly how severely she has suffered in point of naval
power through the changes in the nature of warships. Against the
conversion of mercantile vessels into men of war, besides their sensi-
tiveness to modem artiUery and ramming, is also the &ct that their
construction is too weak to carry the heavy ordnance of the present
day. Yet it cannot be denied that England possesses in her mer-
cantile steam navy a valuable resource in case of war. Their won-
derful celerity, and their capacity for remaining a long time under
steam, insure their manifold and profitable employment in all cir-
cumstances. Nevertheless, for purposes of war, the decision must
ultimately depend on the numerical strength of the war establish-
ment. The number then of British ships of war bears to that of all
other naval powers the proportion of 313 : 1,583, ^ or roughly 115;
the ironclads included herein being in the proportion of 64 ! 244,^
or roughly 1 I 4.

It follows, however, from this, that first, the other naval powers

* These numbers refer to the end of 1878.

586 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. April

provide their mercantile marine with a protection num^cally three
times as powerful as Great Britain does for hers ; and secondly, that
she has not ventured of late years to create afresh that relative pie-
ponderance of which she made so immoderate and indiscreet a use at
the beginning of this century. Her first attempt would be followed
by the immedia.te coalition of all naval .powers. Of the immense
alteration in these proportions Great Britain has already had notice, in
the Declaration of Paris, 1856, and the Treaty of Washington, 1871.

It might be supposed that, owing to the wealth of her financial
resources, Crreat Britain could extend her war navy to any limits she
thought fit. This, however, is not the case. Of all war TwaUrid^
maritime appliances are the most sensitive to technical iHx>gres8.
The fact that no one can foresee what weapons of attack or defence
the next day may . require, and the enormous expenditure entailed
by the construction of modem ships of war, make it imperatiTely
necessary even for England to exercise foresight and moderation in
the establishment of her war navy.

If we summarise the preceding remarks, we arrive at the foUowing
conclusions: at the present day. Great Britain is abaolvidy the
strongest naval power ; rdativdy as such she is weak. This relative
weakness is the result of the dispersion of her ships over the whole
world, of the enormous distances which separate the individoal
squadrons, and of the fact that her base of operations, though of wide
extent and all embracing, is yet full of weak points.

The distances which separate the squadrons, and the deficiency of
telegraphic communication, exclude the possibility of united co-
operation on the part of the. scattered portions of the fleet, and expose
single squadrons and marine stations to the eventuality of an over-
whelming foreign attack. The British war navy can afford so slight
a protection to the mercantile fleet, that, in case of war, the latter
must be denationalised. The power of attack possessed by the war
navy is very much smaller than it was. The united strength of the
other powers is, in proportion to Great Britain, greater than ever.
The time is past when she, as queen and mistress of the sea, could
prescribe rules for other seafaring nations.

From these comparisons, it can cause no surprise that of late
English military authorities have been taking into earnest con-
sideration the practicability of an invasion of the United Kingdom*

It must always remain the first and most important task of
British military power to protect against invasion the United King-
doni, the heart of the British empire, and central point of its vital
system. The opinion held by English military circles on this point
a[^)eat8 &om the most recent declaration on the subject : namelj^
from two reports read before the Royal United Service Institution in
London, in April 1877, by Admiral Selwyn, their author. General
Collinson, R.E., being prevented by illness fix)m appearing in person.
The object of these reports was to make it clear to military, and

1881. MILITARY IMPOTENCE OF GREAT BRITAIN. 687

especially to political circles, how slight was the security of the
island kingdom against invasion.

It is worthy of notice that a superior officer of engineers, entrusted
with the system of coast defi^ce^ felt himself constrained to bring
under discussion the all-important question of an invasion of England ;
and that a naval officer of high rank, an admiral, became the mouths
piece of a general of the land army.

General GoUinson holds that the state of the island kingdom, as
far as regards the defence of its coasts, is in a condition not more
satisfactory than when it was threatened with invasion by Napoleon L
He is also of opinion that steamers would feicilitate an invasion enor-
mously, inasmuch as they make it possible to take the country by sur-
prise. The introduction of ironclads has been followed by a diminution
in the number of ships of war — -that is to say, a diminution of the
means of defence — which again makes an invasion more practicable.

Creneral Collinson bases his calculation on the readiness for action
of Germany, France, and Bussia. According to his reckoning, within
a fortnight there could be embarked, with all supplies necessary for
a transmarine invasion, by Germany three, by France four, and by
Bussia two, army corps of 30,000 men. According to an English
officer's calculation, fourteen days would suffice for 50,000 German
troops, not merely to be embarked, but also to be landed in England.

As the coast defence of England is virtually entrusted to the
fleet. General Collinson investigates its active strength, and furnishes
proof that it by no means corresponds to the great hopes placed in
it. There are so many difficulties in the way of the equipment of
the reserve fleet, that it would be scarcely possible to set 8,500 men
in motion for this purpose before the lapse of three months.

Besides, each of the Continental powers mentioned possesses a
sufficient number of ironclads to form an escort for her transport
fleet, which would be ^trong enough to make head against the ships
of war which — leaving out of count those employed abroad — the
English Admiralty can dispose of on the home coasts. Collinson —
and as it appears also, his reporter — does not expect that the English
fleet could prevent the landing. He represents that instances of
English squadrons being surrounded by foreign fleets have occurred
tolerably often, and may easily occur again.^ Further, he refers to
the fact that according to the teaching of the history of war, most
landings have been eflected successfully ; as, for instance, the landing
in French Canada in 1758, Bonaparte's, at the mouths of the Kile,
in 1 798, the landing of the English expedition for the recovery of
Egypt in 1801, and that of the French and EngUsh in the Crimea,
in 1864.7

• It is only necessaxy to recaU Nelson's famous chaser of the Toulon fleet, which
began on the 19th of January, 1805» and lasted, without succel^s, for seven months,
till he was finally obliged to put in to Portsmouth.

' The sum total of the troops disembarked by the allies amounted to 63,000 men.

588 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. April

CollinsoD then admits the probable success of an attempt to effect
a landing.

How widely bis view tbat the fleet alone would afford no suffident
protection was shared by persons in authority in England, is shown
most convincingly by the fact that, when England was at the zenith
of its economical prosperity, at a time when there was an undisguised
shrinking from unproductive expenditure, namely, since I860, moie
than 10,000,000^. has been laid out on coast defence; and that
already several plans are extant for transforming London, the giant
city with its 3,620,868 inhabitants, into a fortified town like Paris.^

Grbat Britain as a Land Powbr-

Gollinson admits — ^as stated already — the success of the landing,
and supposes it to take place in the neighbourhood of the mouth of
the Thames. All that England could bring forward, to arrest the
progress of the hostile advance on the capital, would be at most
50,000 men. A decisive engagement could not long be delayed. A
defeat of the English troops in the neighbourhood of London would
be decisive as to the occupation of the capital. But with this the
most important part of the country, both strategically and politicallj,
&lls into the hands of the invader.

Such is General Collinson's opinion. It may, perhaps, be objected
that he has painted too gloomy a picture. That a general and an
admiral should paint den Teufd an die Wand^ for the purpose of in-
ducing their countrymen to render their fighting establishment more
efifective, may be a view worth consideration ; but when thoroughly
examined, such an argument would be as defective ds incorrect.

How so ? Is England unable to bring more than 50,000 men to
check an enemy advancing from his landing-place on the capital of
the country ? Are there, then, no more than 100,000 regular troops
in the United Kingdom ? Cannot the United Kingdom dispose of
113,000 militiamen, 10,500 yeomanry troops, and more than 200,000
volunteers ? Would not any invading army be crushed immediately
after its landing ? Would it not, in a very short time, be cut off
from its base and given up to famine ?

These objections lead us direct to the investigation of the British
military forces.

Collinson's calculation, according to which England could meet
an invading army, a few days after its landing, with 50,000 troops

with 12S gims. The French brought the fixst 20,000 men and 18 gems, with tkii
horses and harness, to land within four honrs. Further, the barges and boats oon*
▼eying the troops had to traverse a considerable space by means of oais. At ibt
present day, when ships of war are provided with steam laonches, and transport and
mercantile steamers with mechanical appliances for nnloading, far better peif onnanoes
may be confidently anticipated.

* Ck)lonel Dmmmond Jervois has proposed to surround London with 50 detacbed
works : Major Palliser with SI.

\8S\. MILITARY IMPOTENCE OF OREAT BRITAIN. 589

ready for action^ is rather too sanguine. The 200,000 volunteers,
just as the 10,500 yeomanry troops, cannot, owing to their oiganisa-
tion, equipment, and training, be employed for a regular campaign.
Consequently, two-thirds of them were originally destined for coast
defence, one-third for garrison service.

The 100,000 militia are, firom a military point of view not much
more effective. The system is based on the act of 1852, of which
the most important clause runs thus : ^ The objects of this institution
are to be effected with as little pressure as possible on the ordinary
occui>ation of the people.' Their framework of officers Chargen^
Rahmen) is of very little value, and their training extremely super-
ficial. As to their ability to march and readiness for action, we
may draw a conclusion from the condition of the standing army.

In 1880-81, the standing army in the United Kingdom numbers
101,541 men, composed as follows :

Begimental estaUiBlimenta 83,016

I)ep6t8 13^57

Half of Auxiliary Forces 6^09

101,541

The sum total of supplementary corps, so fiar as they were derived
from the regular army, amounts only to 16,651 men. For the
artillery and cavalry there are absolutely no reserve corps in existence.
In time of peace, the English army knows nothing of the higher
tactical units — such as brigade, division, corps. The medical, trans-
port, and commissariat departments, have not their full complement
even for the reduced establishment. Compared with the great armies
of Europe, the English army, considered as an < army in the field/ is
absolutely unorganised.

It follows from this that every mobilisation is accomplished only
after enormous firiction. The smallest expeditions, such as those
against Abyssinia and Ashanti, required months of preparation.
In 1878, in the period between the conclusion of the treaty of San
Stefano (March 3) and the meeting of the Berlin Congress, Great
Britain was not in a position to place in the field a single army
corps. In order to calculate the numerical strength of the forces
which England could oppose to an invading army a few days after its
landing, important considerations are suggested by the dispersion
during time of peace of its standing army. On Js^nuary 1, 1880, it
was distributed throughout the United Kingdom as follows : —

There were stationed in England .... 65,111 men
„ Scotland .... 8,464 „

„ Ireland . . . . 20,248 „

„ the Channel lalandB . . 1,501 „

Total . 0O,32r ^
The &ct that in time of peace there should be stationed in Soot-

/

590 TBE NINETEEKTE CENTURY. Apiii

land, with an aiea of 1,443 square miles, 3,464 men, bat in Ireland,
with an area of 1,529 square miles, 20,246, is important for eooside-
xations based on the distribution of troops. The numerous risings
of which Irish history tells its m^oiories preserved in the history of
war (in 1689 the landing of James II. with French taroops, in 1793
the appearance of a French fleet, with a landing foroe of 25,000 men)
at so late a period as 1867 the Fenian agitation, and the present
social and political condition of Ireland, justify the condusi^Hi that
in the event of war the peace garrison of the Emerald Isle would be
so shackled, that not only could it not send off a single man for tlie
protection of England, but would rather require a very oensideEaUe
reinforcement.

The necessity for strong reinforcements in Scotland af^^ean
equally indisputable : for it is obvious that the peace establisbment
of Scotland, 3,464 men strong, would never be sufficient to cover
Edinburgh.

On paper there are 65,111 men in the standing army, and 70 per
cent, of the first-class, army reserve, 16,651 strong, to be employed
for the defence of England and Wales, and for reinforcing the gain*
sons of Scotland and Ireland. From this number we must deduct

Unfit for servioe . . 31 per cent

In hospital 7 ^

Deserters 4 ,,

Under arrest 2 »

Total . 44 per cent

There remain then 48,787 men fit for service. Granting [^thoi all
conceivable readiness to march and preparedness for action, leaTing
out of consideration the reinforcement of the garrisons of Scotland
and Ireland, admitting even what is practicably impossible, that the
entire existing force should be concentrated on one point — ^in other
words, that all other places should be completely denuded of regnlsr
troops ; yet with all concessions England would not be capable of
meeting an invader with 50,000 men.

We see from this that an invading army, £aur from running any
risk of being crushed after a successful landing, would, if consistiDg
of a force of only 50,000 men, have on its side that numerical
superiority which is the surest guarantee of success in tactics. Hub
victory would secure to it the possession of London — ^firom a strategical
as well as from a political point of view, the most important
portion of the country. With London must fall also Woolwich : that
is to say, the only war arsenal of the land army would be in the
enemy's hands. Owing to the entire absence of any system of inhind
defence, on the fall of London, Chatham and Portsmouth would at
once be threatened : the war harbours, namely, in which Great
Britain has almost exclusively concentrated her maJUriel for the
equipment of her war fleet.

1881. MILITARY IMPOTENCE OF GREAT BRITAIN. 591

Finally, the question of feeding the invading army, when
closely examined, presents no very great difficulty. The parts
of the United Kingdom directly exposed to invasion — ^namely, the
south and south-east of England— are precisely the districts where
agriculture and cattle-breeding pre-eminently flourish. The invading
army is entering upon a country, one of the richest in all resources
in the whole world, and can throughout and for a long time subsist
on what the country furnishes. In spite of all, the invasion of
Great Britain will remain always a great military problem. That,
however, it is possible at the present day is not open to doubt. The
protection of the United Kingdom cannot be entrusted to the fleet
alone. The British army, however, with which an enemy who had
effected a landing would have to cope, is so fieur behind the require-
ments of modem warfare in oi^nisation, readiness for marching, and
preparedness for war, that any inv^ion of England is synonymous
with an actual surprise.

The declaration of the absolute integrity of Belgium and Holland
has a most important bearing on the military security of the United
Kingdom. The security of the island kingdom would be in a most
critical position, were Holland to be seized by Germany, whose
maritime power is so rapidly developing, or Belgium by France,
whose position as regards England is at the present day so over-
whelmingly strong. Over and over again has France striven for the
possession of Antwerp, a harbour capable of holding 1,000 to 1,200
ships. In possession of the mouth of the Scheldt, she would, to use
Pitt's expression, hold a pistol at England's breast. Great Britain
should be prepared then to come to the assistance of Holland and
Belgium at the first note of alarm. The English assistance must
come at the very beginning of the invasion and on the very largest
scale. We do not doubt that the Belgians, as the Netherlanders,
would fight for their freedom and independence with the courage of
lions. But having regard to the overwhelming superiority of force
with which an invading army on the part of the Great Powers,
France and Germany, would enter on the theatre of war — to the
marvellous celerity with which they are able to mobilise their forces —
to the proportionately small territory to be occupied (Belgium,
534*33 square miles, Holland 596*40) — it may be assumed with
certainty that within a few days both countries, with the exception of
certain strong points, would fall into the hands of the invader.

It was shown by the German-Danish war of 1864 how, in these
days, the drama of invading a small state is played out by a superior
power — in this case the proportion being only 60,000 : 33,000.

A German invasion of Holland would, at the present day, be
accomplished with a rapidity which would surely not fall behind that
of the invasions of 1787 and 1795. In fourteen days at the most,
after the issue of the order for mobilisation, the German army

592 TEE NINETEENTH CENTURY. April

columns would cross the frontiers of Holland. Neither the line of
the Yssel, nor that of the Grebbe, lying two marches behind it, could
arrest the invasion which in two marches farther would ertend to
Utrecht, and with that reach Holland's chief line of defence. In the
first fourteen days the Dutch can oppose to this invading army at
most 35,000 men in alL In this period all the country east <tf the
Zuyder Zee falls into the hands of the invader. Thus, in all probubility,
the Dutch army would be deprived of the possibility of collecting its
full war establishment of 62,000 men (including the Schutterij);
which, supposing the work of mobilisation were undisturbed, could only
be carried out in two months at least. It remains then with at most
25,000 men to hold the chief line of defence. It is not inconceivable
that the Dutch would abandon this line as being too extended for
their forces, and retreat upon the central position of Amsterdam, in
which undoubtedly a long resistance is possible.

Belgium, if attacked by France, appears even more defenceless.
The years of war 1745, 1792 and '1793, furnish evidence of the speed
with which the fate of this country may be decided ; the French
army under Gerard, which crossed the Belgian frontier November
15, 1832, appeared before Antwerp four days later, on the 19th, and
that city capitulated December 23.

A French invasion of Belgium would be a farce of the same dia-
xacter. The fact that in 1832 the Belgians received the French as
friends, while to-day they would oppose them as enemies, has but a
slight bearing on the result ; inasmuch as the Belgian army (whose
war establishment is 99,851 men), must, in presence of an over-
whelming invasion, content itself .with a retreat upon the entrenched
camp of Antwerp, and remain in the district of Termonde-Malines-
Lierre, Antwerp. This, and an attitude of defence in anticipation of
help from England, constitutes the entire system on which Belgium's
safety rests.

We see, then, the Dutch, as well as the Belgians, in a few days
after the invading army has crossed their frontier, thrown back
upon their central position, and there beleaguered by overwhelming
forces. Would they be able to make a stand ? Would England be
able to come to the rescue ?

This last question leads us to determine next what mifitory
strength Great Britain could put forth outside the limits of ths
United Kingdom.

The volunteers, yeomanry, and militia, independently of their
usefulness for a campaign, cannot be employed in a war abroad, as
they are not enlisted for foreign service. To this last purpose it is
the standing army exclusively which is applicable. As in no case
can a diminution of the peace establishment in Ireland be thought of,
so even supposing Great Britain to call up its regular army to the
last man, it can only dispose of a maximum of 70,000 men, or two

1881. MILITARY IMPOTENCE OF GREAT BRITAIN. 693

army corps, for active service. Even supposing it to place the
whole of this force in Belgium and Holland, it could effect no change
in the fate of these small States. But in the event of war against
France and Germany, the danger of an invasion of England would
become so serious and pressing that the latter would require every
man for the defence of its own soil, and would be unable to dream
of offensive undertakings abroad. She must, whether she will or
not, abandon Belgium and Holland to their &te.

The defensive condition of the coUmiaL posaesaions of Great
Britain is still less favourable than that of the United Kingdom
itself. There are three forces which render their defence difficult :
the enormous superficial area and population of the British colonial
possessions ; the circumstance that they are not united in one com-
pact whole, but scattered over the entire world ; and, lastly, the
weakening effect produced by great distances.

We learn from history how enormous distances, separating
colonies from the mother country, weaken all military action entered
on by the latter on behalf of the former.

Li spite of a struggle lasting eight years, full of the greatest
efforts, England was unable to prevent the separation of the present
* United States,' which counted at that period not more than
3,000,000 inhabitants. Again^ in the two years' war of 1812-14,
Grreat Britain did not succeed in getting the upper hand against the
young and as yet weak republic. In St. Domingo the negroes fought
for and succeeded in gainix^ their freedom against mighty England
as well as against powerful France.

Spain and Portugal have been, equally with England, incapable of
retaining their American possessions. Just as Buenos Ayres had
previously thrown off the Spanish yoke in 1806, so between 1810
and 1825, in spite of the efforts of Spain, Columbia, Peru, La Plata,
Uruguay, Chili, and Bolivia, Paraguay and Mexico freed themselves,
while Cuba and Porto Rico alone remained to the Spanish Crown.

This truth is further confirmed by the history of late years. In
a similar manner. Napoleon lU., who had determined to create a
monarchy in Mexico in the expectation that the civil war would lead
to the break-up of the States of North America, was obliged to
abandon the American expedition immediately on the United States
demanding the recall of the French troops at the conclusion of the
civil war.

It was only in February of last year that the insurrection in Cuba,
which broke out in October 1868, reached a temporary end. It has
obliged Spain to send in a single year since King Alphonso's acces-
sion 24,445 soldiers to Cuba. The memorandum of the Spanish
Government of February 14, 1876, from which these figures are
derived, states that the number of native insurgents never exceeded
1,000.
Vol. IX.— No. 50. S S

694 TEE NINETEENTH CENTURY. ApcU

• Oq the- evideiiQe,ftfaeB4 of .the history .of vthewais. of ftevpot
oeBtury, itappea^rs that 116 [Euiopeaii power^-^HioteaEoqpitmg eren^ the
gr^at naval powerey Fuancef and /£iigland-'«*ean bring •&• cnufaiag
military force into aotioa in the New Wovld.

The United Statest^ above ; any otber< power, exeroifio in- i^uertioia
affecting the New .World r a decisive iBfluenee^ both militaiy and
political. In just xecogaitioa of this truths France under the Fint
Consul sold LouisiaxMi to tto 'United States i& 180S; and Spain
followed this example with Florida in 1819. • •

• It is self-evident that this is equally tPoavio&tversSL Qsl their
si(3bB as well the United States are unable to throw intO' the 1 scale in
Europe any considerable military foxree* . It is true thafc in 1815 an
American fleet punished the |aratioal State of Algiers 3 but, en ihe
other hand, all attempts to obtain possession of an island in tk
Mediterranean, as a permanent port f<Hr protection of their eommaioe)
have failed through. the protests of England. >

The recognition o£ the impossibility of protectiiig tha.odoniei in
a serious war by reinforcements from the 'OOkother country has giTCD
the latter the bint, to, ^put them on a military footing of thiaic am.
How far this design , baa been canied out hitherto, shall be disenand
in its proper place. ...

Let us next fix onv attention on the American colonies posaeattd
by England-r^namely, the. Union of Canada, NewfieMmdlaad, Bnnoe
Edward's Island,. the Bermudas, and . Bahaipaas, fifte^L of the small
A&tilles, and Jamaica^ Honduras^ and British Gkiiaiia. AU tltese
colonies come so far within the range of .the pow^rof.tiie. United
States, predominant in both Amprioas^ that England canaMt think of
protecting the continental. part; of them at all ^eventa. against the
Uniqn. The grounda of this^assertioa- are--rthat while these. ooknies
;:are .separated fro^a the mother country by a vast ooean (from Liver-
pool to Quebec it is 9^634 niaotiflaL miles, andofiramfiouthamplon to
;:St. Jhomaa 3|$70), th^y.^a^e. within^ arm's length of the great Be-
public. /

r. frThe military protecti^QWhioh the mother coOntiry could affoid its
American coloniesjs y^insignificant* According toitfaaoajoolatioa
4>f»the Budget i^r. 1 890-9^1,. onl^r a .single garrison is i^Bpi up in tke
Dominion of Canada, whose area is 103,745. aquascmilfia, and popnla-
-tion 4,127,526. , Th^re are stationed in Halifax, only 1,843 EoJb^
troops. Besides these, Bermuda is garrisoned by 2,158 ; the other
West Indian Islands by 3»361 men — ^namely, 8L ia the Bahur'^s,
196 i^ Honduras, 885 ia Jamaica, 1^182 in the Windward and
Leeward Islands. This protection, iheo^ is marely oominaL On tbe
other hand^ it has indued ther Dominion of Canada to do som^ing
for its own defence. In 1868, in Aonseq^ence of tbe diff^enoes with
the United States and the Fenian outbreak, it caUed into eristenoe
the militia for the defence of the country. It embraces all aubjecta

188\. MILITART IMPOTENCE OF GREAT BRITAIN. 595

from eighteen to sixty yean of age/and is divided into the active and
the reserve militia. The first, which has alone received some military
training, numbers 45,152 men ; as reserve it is supposed to be able
to dispose of the tremendous number of 655,000 men !

The African colonial possessions of Great Britain seem to be in
a more secure position than the American. They comprise O-ambia^
Sierra Leone, the Gold Coast, Lagos^ Gape Colony, Natal, Transvaal,
Ascension Island, St. Helena, Tristan da Cunha, Mauritius and its
dependencies, St. Paul and New Amsterdam. These colonies seem
in a safer position, because in those |)art6 of the Dark Continent in
which England has a firm foothold she has at the moment no Euro-
pean rival to fear ; while against the natives and the Boers she can
bring to bear the overwhelming weight of her weidth and civilisation,
and of European military sci^icew Great Britain looks upon Africa
as the prize of the commerce of the future, as the great area of con-
sumption which will compensate her for the loss of the European and
American market. To this point also the numerous exploring
expeditions. The recent war against the Zulu-Kaffirs, and the
attempts of France and Italy to gain a footing in Africa, show dearly
that if England wishes to mamtainand extend her colonial posses-
sions in Africa, she requires in this continent as well a strong military
representation.

The fact that Plymouth and the Cape of Good Hope are separated
by 5,780 nautical miles must have a very weakening effect on any
action originating in the mother country. The Government was^
therefore, desirous to relieve the colonies, e^cially the Cape, from
military dependence on the mpther country.

But hitherto the colonists have not shown much zeal in seconding
the Gt>venunent in this endeavour. In these African colonies, with
a total area of 10,839 square miles, and a population of 1,367,000
souls, there are stationed, according to the calculations of the Budget
for 1880-81, 6,697 men in all— namely, 5,386 in Cape Colony,
including Natal ; 228 at St. Helena, 458 at the Mauritius, 429 at
Sierra Leone, and 196 on the Gold Coast and at Lagos.

The third and most important group of English cobnial posses-
sions comprises the British colonies- in Asia and Australia^ We may
conveniently speak of them as a single group, because a single route
oonnects them with the mother coimtry — that, namely, by which the
commerce of the world passes through the Suez Canal. This group
i<r*ttbe most important one for Enjg^land, as on its possession is
grounded England's dominating position in the Indian Ocean, as well
as in the Pacific. It is the inexhaustible source of the economical
prosperity, of the thriving and successful condition of the mother
country. The enormous importance of these colonial possessions is
shown — if not fully, yet very remarkably — ^by the figures of the
commercial transactions between them .and the mother country. In

8S2

596 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. April

1877 imports and exports together reached the colossal total of
151,000,000?. sterling.

Of this great group the Australian colonies — namely, the entire
continent and the islands Tasmania, Norfolk, New Zealand, the
Fanning and the Fiji group, 144,760 square miles in area, with
1,720,475 inhabitants — are, from a military point of view, in a
tolerably secure situation. Of the Australian, as of the African
colonies of England, Montesquieu's view holds good, that their
extreme remoteness from the mother country has not a prejudicial
effect on their security. * As the mother country is too distant to
protect them, so are her enemies and rivals txx) far off to conquer them/

There is no power at the present day which would have a
sufficiently strong interest and the power to endanger England's
colonies in this part of the world. As, however, the possibility is ly
no means excluded that Melbourne, New Zealand, Sydney, Adelaide,
Brisbane, Auckland, Dunedin, Fiji, and Vancouver's Land might
receive some passing damage, the mother countiy, while ceasing to
ganison the Fiji Islands, as hitherto, with ninety-six men, has
seconded endeavours which have led to Australia's military separation
being partially accomplished. The New South Wales colony has
already some troops of its own to dispose of, and is on the point of
creating a fleet.

Lettus turn now to England's colonial possessions in Asia. Aden,
Perim, Ceylon, the Straits Settlements (Singapore, Penang, the
territory of Malacca), Hong Kong, and Labuan, are, without doubt,
very important stations ; but in comparison with the Indian Empire,
whose importance far outweighs all remaining British colonies united,
they need hardly be taken into consideration.

In the Indian Empire, its most costly possession, Great Britain
finds itself threatened in a twofold manner — ^from within and from
without. To be able to estimate frilly the greatness of this menace,
we must fix our attention more closely on the circumstances of British
India.

With that steady regard for material gain which characterises
the Anglo-Saxon race, England has had firm foothold on the soil of
Further India — the Italy of the East — for nearly 300 years. Up to
the middle of last century her progress was fairly moderate ; since
then it has been very great. By vigorous and fortunate wars, and
by prudently turning to account the enmities of weak native Princes,
she has made herself by the present time, with the exception of some
small possessions, mistress of the whole of Further India. She rules
now over an area of 70,000 square miles, or 4,187,000 square kilo-
metres, with a population of 240,000,000 souls. The East India
Company and its legal successor, the Crown of Great Britain, laid hold
of this costly prize in a spirit quite different from that of Alexander,
the mighty King of Macedon. India was and is to them a milcb-cow,

1881. MILITARY IMPOTENCE OF GREAT BRITAIN. 597

•

which supplies England with butter. The necessary consequence of
the British system of self-enrichment is the material ruin of India.
It is true that Great Britain has restored internal peace to Further
India, has laid out roads to develop agriculture, has executed enor-
mous irrigation works, has built 11,300 kilometres of railways, and
— last, not least — has founded an Anglo-Mohammedan university in
India. She has, however, completely destroyed native manufactures,
has tried to reap enormous crops without manuring the soil (den
Raubbau obne geniigende Diingung provocirt), has burdened the
country with intolerable taxation, and introduced the village money-
lender, with bis 12, 24, or 60 per cent. While every year there
come from India to England 20,000,0002. of British profits, Indian
society under British rule is impoverished to a frightful extent.
The investment of capital is not known in India ; all monetary
transactions take place through English gold. The finances of
the Indian Empire have for a long time been very unsatisfactory.
In the last twenty years India has had a deficit sixteen times,
and the sum total of the deficits in the last four financial years
reached nearly 21,000,000Z. ; 45 per cent, of the total revenue
is taken up with military expenditure. The British system of
government in India has brought its fruit. The priests, Hindu as
well as Mohammedan, the military party and those who have
received a political education, the native warriors and chieftains
who have been dispossessed, and finally, the mob, are irreconcilably
hostile to England. How Uttle trust the British Government places
in the native Princes may be gathered from the fact that in the
spring of 1878 — ^at a time, that is, when the outbreak of war with
Rossia was imminent — it took steps for the reduction of the armies
of these native Princes, which together number 305,235 men, with
5,252 guns. The very moderate Bombay Gazette wrote plainly : —
' The armies of the native Princes are an open threat to the British
power in India.' Kevolution was so openly preached by the Indian
daily press, and the people, by its means, so goaded on to a struggle
with t^eir foreign masters, that the Viceroy found himself in 1878
forced to suppress the liberty of the press.

From these circumstances it can cause no surprise that all states-
men who return home from India own without disguise to the most
pessimistic views. Rawlinson states plainly that England is in
truth standing on a volcano in India, which may burst forth in
eruption any day and annihilate British supremacy.

In its Indian Empire, resting on so insecure a basis. Great Britain
has long found herself daily threatened by greater dangers from
vithout^^on the part of the greatest continental power in the world
— ^namely, Bussia.

In the course of this sketch it has been shown that Grreat Britain
could not defend by military force its continental possessions in

598 THE NINETEENTH CENTUBfTi April

ft

America against the United States, because* in aiL-i^^tack on Caa&da
the United States could bring to bear an enormous militaiy pre^
ponderance, which would not be weakened by having to tiaTene
vast distances and an entire ocean, as must be- the case with any
military action on the part of Great Britain. •Similar, though &r
more dangerous from Great Britain^s point of view, are the circam-
stances we find in Asia. ....

As in the former the ^ Union ' is Canada's neighbour, so here
Bussia forms the neighbour of the Indian Empire. At present,
indeed, the contact is not direct : Afghanistan^ still lies as a buffer
between the two rivals. But Great Britain has already gone to war
with Afghanistan for the third time, to prevent its falling imder
Bussian influence. The direct contact of the two rivals will sooner
or later be an accomplished fact. A collision between the two is
inevitable, as matters are here situated dififerently for Great Britain
to what they are on the American continent.

The North American Union is not an aggressive power, as at iht
present day nothing exists which she can desire. Her body of States
unites in itself all the necessary conditions of that unprecedented
material prosperity which excites the just admiration of the world.
In the enormous expanse which it occupies between the two oceans
within the frontiers of the Union, countless important problems,
tasking the powers of generations, lie awaiting their 8(dution. It L«
with the implements of the arts of peace that the United States are
building up the iabric of their greatness. Peace is, indeed, e^
daily their policy.

Bussia, on the other hand, is a State overmastered and dnTen
forward by a marvellous power of expansion. The empire, which at
the time of its foundation by Peter the Great was almost an inland
State, has since pushed forward its frontiers to the Baltic and the
Black Sea. Proceeding against its neighbours with the mathematical
regularity of the blockade of a fortress, it has swallowed up Fislani
Ingria, Esthonia, Livonia, Courland, Lithuania, Gongiess-Poland,
Bialystock, Vollhynia, Podolia, part of Ukrania, BessaraUa, the
Crimea, Taurida, Kuban, the Caucasus, Greorgia, and Armenia;
annexed about 50,000 square nules in Central Ada, enlarged the
Amoor territory, set a firm foot on Sachalin in the fieffthest Ea&t,
and, what is most important of all, has not yet readied that for which
it must always strive — ^the free entrance on the free sea, the oom-
mercial thoroughfere of the world. For a State of 21,500,000 square
kilometres (330,000 square miles), and 85,200,000 souls, the free
entrance on the free sea is, in the truest sense of the word, a condi-
tion of existence. . As the Arctic Ocean is without importance as
regards the commerce of the world, while the entrance to the Sea of
Okhotsk and the Behring's Straits is quite inaccessible ; the Sound
and the Bosphorus (the latter the real mouth of aU the gnat rirers

188L MILITARY IMPOTENCE ^OF^ GREAT BRITAIN. 399

filisda) are m fomig^ Iiasri8^ii^]id>f0tt9>&t tojmoment be dosed.
It is a simple fiicttJmb theviBinpke of fiossia is ere^at the present
day faraathiog thioughi>fiMign axr^duunnttlsi . Sq(^ a condition is, as
a lasting one, intdlenkhley ' and we cam ^therefore understand that
Russia makes the greatartiefforts to:eliaige»it to her own advantage.

There are three roads <whaeh lead; (Ba^nS' towards this longed-for
goaL The pursuit of the finst^aimii^ at the possession of the Baltie
tSousid, • would, preoipitete a ^ stru^jle iiniiich JBussia' does not feel
ke&BcIf capable of canrfing th^coughi with suooess. The second leads
■to Ocnstantinople^ ' Bossia has already trodden ! this. load again and
again.; bat always in vaixu' She ^has. ahvejrs found united £ujx>pe
•staad. to oppose her advanoe^ongjthis road* Even the last victorious
war confirms the expressions used in 1868 by an Austrian officer of
high rank, in a pamphlet on the subject : —

• 'I • ' ' ' ■ ,

All the 8tn2ggle8 on the. Danube and the Balkans are lost labour. The whole

dizedion of her policy toward the Aja Sophia is a mistake. Russia's road towards
the conquest of Constantinople leads across Austria, which presses with the whole
weight of her military strength directly or indirectly upon the strategic defile be-
tween the Carpathians and ti^e Black Sea.

Taking into consideration these hindrances and the prospect of a war with a
European coalitiop, Btisda will most probably in the future seek to give expression
to her yearnings for the open sea on the Asiatic side, as the main point of pressure.

The entrance to the Indian Ocean through the Persian Gulf opens ;
the world to Bussia. This direction is moreover in perfect harmony
^th her political ideal (Staats-Idee), which has been expressed by-
one of her clearest heads, General Heinrich Antonowitzch Leer, ia.
almost the following words : —

Every nation that has been organised into a polity baa a mission of its own. It .
was in fulfilment of hers that Busaa acted as the bulwark o^ Europe against tbo
Tartars, against an inroad of fresh peoples, and thus saved the civilisation of '
Western Europe from a repetition of the devastations of the fifth century. Bat
-RiiflBia's misiion is not complete with that ; she has the task of rendering the
CLvilisation of Western Europe a^oeessible to the peoples of Asia. The military
tasks of Busda follow in natural sequence from this political progzamme ; namely, .
a defenfiive attitude towards the West, and an offensive advance towards tbfir
East.

The great programme of the Eussian Empire may be stated thus r
* entrance on the open sea^ through the Persian Gulf to the Indian
Ocean, which opens the world to us.' In carrying out this programme
it must encounter the resistance of Great Britain. Recognising thfit
this great progranune can only be realised through blood and iron,
Bossia hafi accepted universal conscription. With the incalculable
xeaoorces she possesses in a population of 85,000,000 souls, she trill
at her own time proceed to the solution of. the question, affecting
the whole worlds of the mastery in Asia. Will England be able to
wit)i8tand the onset of the Colossus of the North ? *

600 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. April

We see, then, that England's greatest colonial aeqaidtion is dso,
from a military point of view, the most precarious. The ciicum-
stance that Bombay is 6,779 nautical miles distant from Liveipool
obliged the mother country at a very early period to place the East
Indian colonies on their own military footing.

As the number of Europeans resident in India is but veiy insig-
nificant (according to the census of 1871, 64,061 souls), these codd
not form the basis of Indian military strength. European troops
have always been stationed in India, as guardians of the Indian
Empire. As these have never sufficed numerically for the require-
ments, the English at an early period made use of the suitable native
element for military service. In 1877-8 the Anglo-Indian Govern-
ment had the following military force at its disposal : —

1. English troops ordered to India • . • 62,653 men

2. Regular native troops, namely, the armies of

Madras, Bombay, and Bengal together • 125,871 „

In all 188,524 „

Further, the Government encourages the formation of volimteer ooqM
of Englishmen resident in India.

The Anglo-Indian army is above all chaiged with the task of ap-
holding English supremacy in India ; that is to say, preserving internal
quiet in the English provinces, and giving security to the GovemmeotB
of the dependent States. It is in consequence not so much an annj
for use against a foreign enemy as a militarily organised police force.
How proportionately weak it is even as such, is seen when we find that
for every area of 66*83 square kilometers (-^-'if^'yl-^) or for eveiy
3,830 natives (-^^^^^ there is but one English soldier. The last
proportion, if applied to European capitals, would give as garrison to
Paris 483, Vienna 218, Berlin 215, Petersburg 174, and Rome 64
men. What Government would dare to realise this proportion ?

We see from this how necessarily the English troops in particular
are bound to the soil of the Indian Empire. For military puiposes
without the frontiers of India, not even a small fraction of them need
come under consideration. As, however, in a struggle vrith a Euro-
pean foe the native troops are not to be relied upon, the necessity of
abundant assistance on the part of the mother country is fully obvious.
WiU England be able to afford it ? and in what strength ? and
when?

A strategical review of the British colonial empire teaches us
that not a single colony can in military respects wcUk alone. Thdr
peace establishments a/re so tiny, that the military proiedion
afforded them is only nominal. All the colonies without exception
are dependent on aid from the mother courUry, which alone hs
the disposal of such troops as may he at hand omd of the material
for transport requisite for their efmbarhation ; and whidi may he

1881. MILITARY IMPOTENCE OF GREAT BRITAIN. 601

looked upon as the central reserve post of imperial defence from
which, in case of needy stream, forth reinforcements to the colonies.
If then we consider how manifold are the pwrely defensive tasks
alone of these 70,000 men, which under the best drctimstanxies the
United Kingdom has at its disposal; when we keep before us the
insuperable difficulties which beset the mxmd m^astery of a theatre
of war extending over the whole world ; when we keep in view the
weakening effect of the im/mense distances to which are subject all
operations for reinforcement ; when^ lastly, we fix our attention
upon the antagonist with whom Great Britain must eventually
struggle; we see in full clea/rness the enormous disproportion
between the organised military power of Great Britain and the
tasks which aivait it.

CoNGLUDi^a Rbmabks.

If, however. Great Britain is unable to defend its territorial
integrity against foreign attack, far less can it hinder those altera-
tions of power in the political world which great powers may endea-
vour to bring about, who in pursuit of their design are determined
to have recourse to the uUi/ioa ratio. England was unable to prevent
the separation of Scbleswig-Holstein from Denmark; she cannot
protect Belgiidn and Holland ; she is utterly unable to defend the
wide territory of Turkey against the assault of Bussia, which the
treaty of June 4, 1878, binds her to do. In just rec(^;nition of the
inadequacy of British military power for , operations abroad, the
Army and Navy Gazette wrote in May 1 875 : ' We see that foreign
States are advancing with great strides in the reorganisation of their
armies and the perfection of their weapons, in adding legion to
legion, and straining every nerve to expedite their mobilisation.
While they work out beforehand even the smallest detail, we must
admit that, in comparison with other continental powers, we have
absolutely no army at all. Our few battalions, without reserves,
which must be crumpled up together, to bring them up to a war
footing, are so weak, that the threat of appearing with them on a
European theatre of war would be greeted with scornful laughter from
the Pyrenees to the Neva.' The recognition of the military impo-
tence of the Empire, in atta^ as weU as in defe/njce, is the key to
Oreat Britain^s foreign policy svifice the Crimean war. This re-
cognition is the ultimate ground of that ^ policy of non-intervention,'
that ^ masterly inactivity ' which Gladstone once represented : as
well as of the policy of half-measures and haggling to which Beacons-
field was condemned — ^a policy which, as was strikingly remarked by
a member of Parliament, < began useless wars against the weak, and
trembled before the strong,' — ^and of the poUcy of the Naval Demon-

e02 . THS NINETEENm CENTURY. Ajftil

fi^tioD, tlia ^rrt actof wluclsit^iind Q( gforiokus teinovmatioainihettBt
jDe^der of Dul<jgiu>. . ^ PaHwivixktiKfiixm^
A In the two last cleoades Ckeftt firJtoiaJba^- jmff^^ tbe: most ish
po?rt9iit altemtioBfi of power to tak^^plm^a ; alteratumt wluGhlu»9.<)a
^ach ocqasloxi dimuudied the weight of ber inflneage^ Xhe lireaking^
up of the Aiistiwi authority m Italy taod Chenaany has^ certainly not
istiieogthpned the politioal importanoe of Qxeat JBcitaiiu: In lital;
fib^ ha^ bred up a lival xather than axL ally, and has certuoly aot
e^^tended tbe ppheie of hm znosal :influ»ice. in Franoe* Gveat
JBritain's ^Val vi.tbe.N«w.;\^orld)itbe North American. lkio%ha$
come forth strongei: thaDk^eyer, fiom a civil war whiehvthreaUnkedlur
/^Btence : a fact which w^^ the most important consequenoes^
both commercial and political.

Germany has become the fimt power in the European concert,
and, having become also a naval power through the possession of
Schleswig-Holstein, muat soon reckon with Great Britain. In tlie
farthest East, on the shores of the Pacific Ocean, she is already, in
conmierce, England's most formidable competitor. <But the altera-
tions which are most dubious for Great Britain are those whidi have
accomplished themselves in the East since the Crimean war. For the
most important English interest, the< commercial policy, it u
scarcely possible to conceive a more fevourable state of affairs than
that produced by the Crimean war. Inasmuch as Kussia, by the
peace of Paris, gave up the mouths of* the Danube together with a
piece of territory, relinquished all claim to the one-sided Protectonte
over Christians in Turkey and over the Banubian Principalities,
restored Kars, promised not to establish any arsenal on the Black
Sea, and not to station there more ships than the Porte, she recognised
the superiority of the Western powers in the East*

The Western powers had rescued Turkey from the ruin whidk
threatened her, and which she could not have escaped without th^ir
help. i(fo wonder, then, that Ttirkey acknowledged the influeaee of
the Western powers, and before all that of England. Turkey— too
weak either to live, or to die — always needed foreign assistance, and
became the true element of English diplomacy, of English oommer*
cial spirit. So long as Turkey preserved intact her territorial in-
tegrity, she was the welcome ^ buffer ' between England and Bossift.
It was owing to the wide extent of Turkey and the military capadty
of the Osmanli people, that Russia could never, .without a great war,
reach the point at which British interests ^ould be directly touched,
the point in possession of which Bussia could endanger England's great
political and military route to the far East^ the sources of her wealth
and power* Great* Britain was pre-eminentiiy the State which had the
most vital interest in securing the permanency of the arrangement of
'the Eastern world created by the peace :of Paris. But what alterations
have come to pass since then I Bussia has completely suljugated the

1881. MILITARY IMPOTEWX OF .GREAT BRITAIN. 603

mountain tribes o€ the Cancasusy ' 4h& giiardiana^f ihe Indiaa empuse^'
has arbitrarily repudiated the stipulsiions of the peaee ^f> Paris ^reM
ferring to the Bl^xsk Sea^ Ias stepped over its glacis (off theOauoasos)^
is lord of Batum^ ArdahaBy and Kaiis^and ^thnS'has^vanced^seriouslf
nearer the Saez Canal. . Russia is again mistress of ^ the mouths of
the Danube, de faeto proteetor of Boumania, Bnlgarjay Serriaf and
Montenegro. In the South she has. laid mines beneath the Balkaasy
which are a perpetual threat to Turkey, inasmuch as they miay i e&«
plode at any momenta Busria has ruined ; Turkey for ever, boih
militarily, politically, and materially. Bussia has ^ce advaaoed
from the Syr-Darja to the AmurDarja,and har inflo^oce over the
whole Eastern world has become enormous. .: . . v. ^

How has Great Britain behaved in presence of all these shifting^
of power? She has, in due appraisement of her military impotence,
refrained with good judgment from appealing to the sword, the last
and most extreme measure of policy. She has confined herself ez^^
clusively to political and diplomatic action, and eonsequently, in the
North American war of Secession and in the Alabama question, ia
the German-Danish war of 1864, in the Franco^German war, and isk
the Black Sea question, in the last Busso-Turkish war, and later
she has played a really lamentable part. It can cause no surprise
that Great Britain's position as regards foreign policy has &llen e^r
lower and lower since the Crimean war. In this century of. statistics
it is impossible to keep secret the ultimate ground for so feeble an.
appearance presented by a power that at one time interfered- so
vigorously in the destinies of the political wgrldr^namely, the mHi^
tary impotence of England. Military book-^keeping and military
arithmetic have advanced too far to admit delusions as to the effec*?
tive power of any State. The universal recegniti(m of the miUtary
impotence of England, and her consequent sanction of political and
diplomatic action alone, even in the most weighty political questions,
has been followed by one important result — the discontinuance of
that deference of the cabinets — that awe which England used to
inspire in the cabinets of other nations, which was the offspring in
particular of the Napoleonic wars, and survived to our times. But it
was only a single step from the cessation of this cabinet-respect to
the loss of all weighty influence on- the destinies of our planet.

Here, however, we find the key to the remarkable fact^ that all
attempts which England has- made of late years to qualify herself by
means of alliances for a poUcy depending on material strength, have
met with so miserable a failure. • In- France, as in Germany, the
siren voices of Ekigland have awakened only a mocking echo. One
of the most notable signs of the times lies in the fajd that even tha<^
power which has ever been most susceptible to English- influence^
Austria herself, r^ected the British alliance at a moment when its
acceptance seemed- an act of self-preservationy and. at the same

604 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. April

time opened up the most seductive vista in the future. It is not,
however, difficult to understand how this occurred. The statesman
who ruled Austria could not help saying tc himself, that the shares
of the capital deposited in this joint-stock company would be too
unequal, and, as far as Austria was concerned, in no proportion to the
gains to be expected. He had to say to himself that England could
contribute as good as nothing for decisive, i.e. military action ; that
Austria alone must bear the entire burden of all military undertakings.
That Austria, pressing upon the Moldo-Wallachian defile with
1,200,000 men, was in a position alone to solve that problem, did not
admit of the smallest doubt. But a war with Bussia would have cost
150,000,000^., a sum which England would not have willingly
offered for the purpose, even though a great State of 37,000,000 souls
and a whole people in arms offered their neck to the hangman in
return for the subsidies. There remains, then, still England's mozal
support. How trustworthy and valuable this is, who does not know!
Truly Austria has good grounds to congratulate herself that on this
one occasion she laid to heart the teaching of the past, and did not
again pull the chestnuts out of the fire for England. To-day — to be
sure, it is only to-day — England is doing this for Russia. Would it
be possible to find a more apt illustration of the proverb, ^ Lm txr
trimes se touehent ' ?

Taking a survey of Great Britain's position as regards foreign
policy, we find that at the present day it has not a single ally it can
count upon, to take its side in the tremendous and inevitable conflict
which must decide the question of the Eastern world. Herein, how-
ever, lies one of the radical differences between the past and the
present.

It was an easy task to give life to the coalition of Europe against
the ideas which menaced all existing institutions of the first French
Bepublic, and its son and heir, the terrible oppressor of nations:
easy to lead the way into the struggle and never relinquish it * till
justice were accomplished.'

These circumstances of the political world, so peculiar and so
extremely favourable to England, preserved her from the danger,
which had so often threatened her, of a struggle for existence : as the
allied powers, who supplied the actual armies, completely absorbed
the energies of France. It sufficed that England, for her share, should
contribute auxiliary troops and subsidies.

All is changed now. It is easy to foresee that Bussia, once she
has seized on the mastery in Asia, will exercise an enormous pressure
on Europe, now no longer young. But to all appearance this danger
lies too &r off, and the States of Europe are occupied by questions
lying so much nearer to hand, for the supposition to be entertained
Uiat they would be inclined to make very early preparation to oppose
a State which, fulfilling its mission in the East, has for more than

1881. MILITARY IMPOTENCE OF GREAT BRITAIN. 605

half a century acted on its western frontier strictly on the defensive.
In the East, however — in Central and Eastern Asia — no European State
has interests vital enough to make it join England in the struggle.
Turkey alone, whose military and political constitution is sapped, and
which is hastening to its ruin with giant strides, will perhaps range
its power on the side of the British.

The British empire, then, must eventually he exclusively limited
to the power of the United Kingdom.

And this empire, now reduced to the power it can call forth from
itself alone, must before long incur the risk of a struggle for exist-
ence : and herein lies the second radical difference between the past
and the present ; as who can doubt that the inevitable struggle for the
mastery in Asia is for England a struggle for existence I

Without a position of ascendency in the East, the British Empire
cannot be maintained for any length of time. With India, England
remains the dominating power in Asia. The loss of India would be
followed by the most terrible consequences for England. It was by
force that the unprecedented empire, which the Anglo-Saxon race has
built up in the course of three centuries, was founded : it is by force
alone that it can be maintained.

The loss of India, her greatest and costliest possession, would be
the most unmistakable proof of England's impotence and inability to
preserve her integrity. This loss would inevitably entail that of her
other colonies. Fulfilling already the conditions of self-existence,
they all have an interest in belonging to the British Empire just so
long as it, in virtue of its great position, ensures them the most
trustworthy military protection, and a place in the front rank of the
commerce of the world.

The dominion of Canada, the Cape Colony, Australia, and New
Zealand would probably shake themselves free on the day on which
Great Britain lost possession of India.

As, however, the existence of the United Kingdom is founded on
industry and commerce, as it is based on a colonial empire which
embraces about one-seventh of the territorial extent of the globe, and
nearly one-fourth of its inhabitants — a colonial empire whose super-
ficial area is sixty times as great as that of the mother country —
with the loss of India the eiitire artificial structure of its economy,
nay England itself, would fall to pieces.

The wonder that England, which in the density of her population,
in the n^agnitude and complexity of her social life, and the gigantic
size of her towns, possesses more material for a social conflagration
than perhaps any other country, while the informality of her public life
and the insignificance of her bureaucratic and military establishments
afiford but very slight means for quenching it, — the wonder that Eng-
land has hitherto remained free from the fever of socialism can be
accounted for in many natural ways ; the most important reason.

606 THS NINETEENTH CENTURY. Apri

however, lies^ in the fbot that up to the pieseat day- England has been
the farmer-general of the profits of the wortd. *

That England is unablei to'pres^ve in-iperpetuity the staJtw quo
in Asia with the forces it possesses now., recimres no -psooi, *

It is, however^ filled with the belief'that' its wealth will provide it
in case of need with the means of waking legions -spring from the
earth. In this belief in the almighty power of gold— ^ which the
great majority of Englishmen pay blind'^homage-^it entirely fails to
apprehend the change of thetimes^ the^power,- resistless as an elsment,
which modern warfare has at its comoaand, and the reqairements
which it makes of an army. The days of recruited armies are over.
They can neither in number nor quality sufiice for the requirements
of modem warfare* But even supposing that from point of niunben
they were to suffice^ and that other classes in Eog^land besides tiie
non-propertied classes were to obey the summons to the oolouisin
sufficient numbers, yet this would never provide more than newfoima-
tions. The history of the North American war^-ria wfaidi nev
formations were ' opposed to new formations — has made it suffieientlj
clear with what fearful birth-throes an army, is created by a people
that has not possessed a military organisation suited to the times, aod
part of the national life. Even if, as is most improbable, the course
of modem warfare which in a few weeks overthrows military powen
of the first rank should leave England time to form these new troops,
still these new formations would: everywhere £nd the old ones
obstacles in their path. What the former must in such, a case expect,
has been abundantly shown by the catastrophe of Bourbaki's army ;
which, although struggling against Werder with a force three times
as strong, was crushed as against a rochet^ de bronze, .

The days of improvUaUon^ anddilettantiHm iTi^mUitarymattm
are over, and herem lie9 theihird grea^ difference. between ike Pod
and the Present The G-erman victories of 1870, were not the ranilt
of an improvisation, but; of long sustained work.

Since the Peace of Tilsit (writeA Leer ^ with truth) the solation of thi» militaij
problem [the struggle with France] has been worked at, and tmly in an exemplary
•manna*/ by 'serend generations of Prassian statesmen/fr^m Stein, Scliarahont,
and Qneisenau to Bismarck, Moltke, and Boon. In thisi ia - previcnis. prepsiato
in every directioUi with the. utmost .dilijrence,. perseverance, ^nd patience, is to be
found not only the most important and primary reason of fill tl^ great soocesseJ
of the late war, but also the source of all that ia truly great in every department
of the Prussian Qovemment's activitv. *

■r

At the present time the English people lacks . all appreciation of
this great truth* so far as it applies to nsilitary questions. The de-
ficiency of this appreciatioQ, however, is oqo of the most Xisal hiDdraoces

• Uher dh Wichtiglteit drr Vttrhereitnng svm Kriege^ J^c. by H. AC Leer, Hajor-
General, Professor at the Kikolal General Staff Academy (Organ of tbe UaioQ of
Military Science^ vol. ziv. p. 451).

\%%l. MILITARY IMPOTENCE OF GREAT BRITAIN. 607

to the eanyiiig out of aiorjr ^TBtem of military reform based upon utti^'
yersal liability to Rerviee. TUseanoaude no surprise; Since the battle
of Colloden, that is to say siiiGe 1746, the soil of the Iidand Eingdomy
thanks to its wateiy rampart^ has been trodden by no fixeign foe.

The overthrowof Napoleon, greeted^in Great Britain n[K>re thait
inany other eountty as a brilUant triunifphyhas ^gendered in the
English people a feeling of«ecuritywhioh alone wonld suffioe to put a
stop to all development of mllitai]4power« In ^addition to (Aiis, the long
duiBition of the war and the enormous subsidies paid to the allies,
weakenedits forces. During the struggle England had not been sensible
of any diminution of them ; now, howe^^r, the eshaustion was all the
morekeenly felt* Reaction raised its head more threatenlngiytfaan ever.
The power of the Government and the pretensionsof the aristocracy had
increased in pvoportion as the standing army had be^i emlalrged. To
break the power of the Government and the aristocracy, the attempt
was made on principle, and by every means, to discitedit the military
element. 'The English people had placed all its hopes on the time when
the green olive branch of peace should flourish all over the earth.^ This
peace, an unexampled peace of nearly forty years, came, and brought
— after a hard struggle against the persons and classes 'exceptionally
&voured by traditional law or the existing principles' of the constitu-
tion— ^freedom and prosperity such as has seen no parallel; The mil^
lennium seemed* to have dawned. The nations^ it was said, desired
nothing mote warmly, ' than to iive in' mutual sentiments of genial
brotherhood : ' the progress of industry and the eittension of commerce,
so it was preached, demanded imperiously^ the abandonment of all
frontiers to land and sea ; war^ it was 8aid,Jshouid be a custom as
absurd as barbarous in international intercourse ; let the time for
standing armies be for ever pasty and the whole world unite in the
single cry of Peace ! - ^

For more thau'half a century, then, the political and<still more
the economical development of England has made it impossible to
foster her military power. Besides, the old principle of universal
liability to service had vanished in the course of a centuty from the
consciousness of the people. Even the militia bad fidlen into oblivion,
and, although revived by statute in 1852^ bad drooped again after the
Crimean War. The warlike spirit of the English people has completdy
vanished. The English army is formed on the system of recruiting by
bounty. If, however, a State with an astonishingly developed
industry and an immeasurable commerce has i^course to recruiting,
it must be inevitably thrust into the background in the men-market
by industrial and commercial undertakings: it is only the pauper class,
which is physically and morally most backward, the class which takes
to service finally only out of despair — consequently the class of least
value from a military point of view — which comes into the army.

It can, then, cause no surprise, that in humanitarian England cor-

608 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. April

poral punishment was quite lately stignoatised in Parliaments^ as an
intolerable means of preserving discipline ; and it is understood that—
as in 1877 for instance, no less than 7,500 men could desert {romtbe
numerically insignificant army of the mother country — it is being
taken into earnest consideration in England whether the brandmg of
deserters by means of tattoo-marks should not be introduced afresh.

Finally, up till quite lately, with a few exceptions applying to the
scientific corps and the marines, promotion from the rank of lieutenant
upwards was procurable by purchase. But it is obvious that at a time
when every day opens up fresh vocations for talent andindustiy,
new sources of activity, and opportunities for speedy success, all
talent would throw itself into civil pursuifs, and superior men would
no more enter upon the military calling.

Under these circumstances, it can cause no surprise tjiat the
military profession sank ever more and more in estimation, and even
became despised ; that the soldier was completely deprived of that
national honour which he receives elsewhere ; that the English people
looked upon its army as something quite distinct from itself; and
that the consciousness of the great function of the army in the State
and its ethical importance in the nation is completely lost.

The nineteenth century development of the nature of war has
completely escaped not only the English people but also its most
prominent intellects. Neither the one nor the other has in the least
grasped the enormous alteration in the intrinsic nature of war, that
has been accomplished in the great continental States — an alteration
which, as was strikingly remarked by Lorenz von Stein, is perhaps the
greatest fact of our century, far outweighing all others in its con-
sequences.

Yet Henry Thomas Buckle, undoubtedly one of the most
remarkable spirits of later England, misconceives war as ezdosivelya
brutal act of force, and places the military classes in formal contra-
distinction to the intelligent, saying that ^ the contrast then between
these and the military classes is clear : it is the contrast between
thought and action, between the within and the without, between
argument and force, between Persuasion and Bodily Strength, or, in a
word, between men who live by the arts of peace and those who live
by war.'

The idea that war, in following out always its tendency towards
that which is most without (die Tendenz zum Aeussersten), claims the
highest services from thought as well as action, from the within as

'• On the 26th of March 1878, Mr, O'Connor Power, M.P., proposed the redaction
of the highest measure of corporal punishment from 50 lashes to 15 ; his propc«al.
however, was rejected by 233 votes to 84. A second proposal to forbid tiie repetition
of corporal punishment within a year was rejected by 251 votes to 39 ; athird,£DalIj,
that compulsory labour and corporal punishment should not be applied as ponisb-
ment for misdemeanours, met with the same fate, and came to giief by 291 votes
against 28.

1881. MILITARY IMPOTENCE OF GREAT BRITAIN. 609

^ell as the wtthout, from ai^piment as well as ficnrce, firom persuasion
iss well as bodily strength, seems never to have occurred to Buckle.

This entire misconception of war as a military problem would
•bave caused us less surprise than that an historian like Buckle should
have so radically misimderstood war as an historical phenomenon.
Buckle has no notion of the idea which Napoleon seized with the in-
4niition of genius, of war as a necessity arising out of the struggle for
^existence, the nature of mankind and the conception of the State.
That a great war (eiti iiickliger Krieg) every fifty years, acting as a
kmd of moral thunderstorm, is as indispensably necessaiy for man-
kind as in the natural world are hurricanes and tempests^ hail and
thunder and lightning : that without war mankind soon falls into
ihat slough of sentiment, that sluggishness of life, that foul sewer of
stinking egoism — ^in a word, into those conditions which are the pre-
-cursors of the inner dissolution of a state, or an invitation to stronger
peoples to come and overthrow those which have grown feeble and
£dnt-hearted — this view of Napoleon, true, whatever a weaker gene-
cation may say against it, does it not speak to us in the accents of all
past centuries ?

How can one succeed in making a people see clearly, where its
most trusted leaders are struck with blindness ?

But it is not merely a moral preparation for military reform on
(modem principles that the English nation requires ; the difficulties
interposed by its social structure are enormous.

The English constitution is essentially aristocratic. This funda-
mental principle is an obstacle in the way of equality of rights
between all classes — ^how much more, then, in the way of equality of
duties, one of which is universal liability to service !

The wealthy classes with their monstrous privileges are far too
much creatures of habit to be able to rise to the notion that their duties
to the state should consist in anything beyond money payments. The
introduction of universal liability to service would indeed justify this
;all-powerful aristocracy in crying,<Thls is the true beginningof our end.^

The middle-class townspeople are too much dominated by the
supposed interests of industry and commerce, too much filled with
the belief that universal service is prejudicial to their progress and
success, to the continuance of their present life of financial prosperity,
not to set their &ces decidedly against it.

A middle class of country people, such as in other nations forms
the great bulk of the army, and provides the best soldiers, absolutely
does not exist in England."

*' AooQrding to the oenBiis of 1871 there were in England and Wales, oat of an
entixe population of 22,712,266 persons, only 22,964 who lived on their own gionnd
and floil, and 1,657,038 engaged in agricnltore. In France, on the other hand, in
1866» from an entire popolation of 38,147,523 persons, there were 3,226,705 in*
dependent proprietors who derived most of their sabsistence from the produce oi
their own gronnd.

Vol. IX.— No. 50. T T

610 THE NINETEENTH OENTURT. April

There remains then only the fourth, the rum-propertied chus : it
is in England certainly far the most numerons. As late as 1865
there were counted in the United Kingdom no less than 18,000,000
persons who with difficulty supported themselves, and 1,500,000 pau-
pers requiring maintenance.

It is then this numerous and discontented class, both morally and
physically the least developed of all, which must inspire itself mth
the idea that patriotism and the duty of service are identical 1 Truly,
if we consider the social structure of the English people, we can un-
derstand that no party and no ministry can venture to undertake with
earnestness the great question of military reform.

The reform of the English military forces on the principle of
universal liability to service corresponds so little with the aristocia&
character of its institutions, with the traditions of the English people,
and with the materialism of its view of life, that it is very impro^
bable that it will be carried out before England has met with a
catastrophe such as Prussia, France, and Austria have already ei-
perienced. But will the artificial edifice of the British Empire sur-
vive such a catastrophe ?

We hope it may. We hope it may, as we are fully conscioas of
the high function of the British Empire in the political and inteilee-
tual organism of the globe. It is a bulwark of civilisation, that pre-
cious inheritance we have received from our forefathers. It is a
mighty agent, a strong and keen fighter in the great straggle betveea
mankind and all that is hostile to it on earth.

AlEXAKDER ElBGHHAMlCEB.

Captain in the General Stqjf Intend
Royal Austrian Army,

1881. 611

WORKING MEN AND THE POLITICAL

SITUATION.

yfiBLhx do the workiiig men of England think of the present political
sitoation ? What do they say of the Irish Land League, of coercion
for Ireland, of obstruction in the House of Clommons, of the way in
which obstruction has been dealt with^of the general proceedings
in Parliament in the first two months of the present session, and of
the probable effect of these proceedings on the parliamentary in*
stitutioQs of the future ? These questions, and others of a similar
kind, hare in varied phraseology been repeatedly put to me during the
last few weeks.

The questions, though apparently simple, are by no means easy to

answer. Those who are generally classified as working men, namely,

the manual labourers of the country, very much resemble other people

who tMnk at all ; they often differ widely in their opinions on the

great public questions of the day. It cannot, therefore, always be

truthfiolly said that there exists a working-class opinion as distinguished

firom tiie opinions of the rest of the community. Moreover, no man

has a right, unless specially authorised to do so, to speak for a body

of men so laige and so diversified in character and in opinions as are

the working men of England. I certainly arrogate to myself no such

right. What I may £edrly claim, however, is to have had a long and

close connection with large bodies of working men — to have had for

many years, and to have still, good opportunities of knowing their

thoughts and feelings on the leading social and political topics of the

time. In the following pages I shall therefore profess to give only my

own individual opinions, and the result of my own observation ; though

in doing so I have strong reason to believe that I shall at the same

time express views which extensively prevail among working men in

the North of England.

I may have occasion to criticise the proceedings of Mr. Pamell
and his followers, but I shall endeavour to perform that operation in
no captious or offensive spirit. If I attack their policy, I shall take
care neither to impugn their motives nor to asperse their character.
I am personally acquainted with many of those gentlemen, and £ael
great respect for them. With many of their aims, if I rightly under-

XX 2

612 TEB NINETEENTH CENTURY. Apt!

stand them, I am entirely in sympathy. I have given some pioof of
this. An examination of the records of the House of Commons for
the last few years wUl show that scarcely any English Member of Pai-
liament has voted so often with them as I have done. While ap-
proving of many of their objects, however, I have felt an ever-increafflng
aversion to their methods. At the risk of apparent inconsistency,!
have steadily voted against them whenever I considered thdr motions
of a dilatory and an obstructive character.

Some of the ablest and shrewdest of the Home Sule leaden in the
House of Commons have frequently stated to me that their great hope
of achieving anything good for their country was by enlisting tiie
sympathies and securing the assistance of the Badicals and workingmen
of Grreat Britain. They believed, and rightly believed, that the gie&t
majority of the English people had no interest in the misgovemment
of Ireland, and no wish to maintain the union between the two
countries otherwise than in a spirit of justice to the Irish people and
on terms of perfect equality. No one can doubt that of late strenuoos
and persistent efforts have been put forth to secure such an alliance.
Nor was the time altogether inopportune. There were, indeed, nianj
circumstances, negative and positive, very favourable to its aooom-
plishment. The old anti-Irish feeling which operated with soch
force, bitterness, and intensity among English workmen and artisaos
some years ago had happily disappeared, and no provocation seemed
capable of reviving it. The great mass of Englishmen of eveiy das
and creed had become fully sensible of the wrongs inflicted upon
Ireland by centuries of misgovemment, and there was at last a genuine
desire to make amends for past errors and to do justice to the people
of that country. The action of the Government, too, at the begbming
of the session appeared to afford favourable opportunity for agitation
among the great constituencies of England. Seldom has such oombosti-
Ue material been prepared and placed ready for fierce declamation aod
passionate appeals to popular sympathies. The case was put thus:
^ There was in Ireland a wretched starving peasantry, in too manj in-
stances robbed by unjust laws of the fruits of their industry. The land
laws were admittedly unjust, and other grievances called loudly for I^
dress. But instead of reform there was a drastic measure of coenm
While resisting this measure, the Irish members were silenced, and
afterwards expelled from the House of Commons. New rules were
specially devised to push this hateful bill with all speed through Parlia-
ment. Mr. Davitt, one of the ablest leaders of the Land L^goe, vis
arrested and sent to prison without any reason being assigned for his
incarceration.' The Irish Members of Parliament had all this excellent
material for agitation and declamation. They had in their ranks meo
capable of making the best possible use of it — able, eloquent speakeis^
ready at any personal sacrifice to address public meetings in every part
of the United Kingdom. The artisans, labourers, and trades-unionists of

1881. WORKING MEN AND THE SITUATION. 618

the country were appealed to, and asked what they as free independent
Britons thought of this unheard-of tyranny ? To elicit an expression
of their opinion, the potent machinery of agitation was set in motion.
An Anti-Coercion League was established ; public meetings were or-
ganised, large demonstrations were held in the chief centres of industry
throughout the country, addressed by some of the most eloquent
speakers of the Irish party. And what has been the result ?

It can hardly be said that the agitation has been successful.
No doubt, crowded, enthusiastic, and in some cases unanimous meetings
have been held. But I think no one will pretend that the great mass
of the artisans and working men of England, or any considerable
number of them, have been won over to the side of the Irish Land
League, have been led to endorse the policy adopted by the active
section of the Home Bulers in the House of Commons, or have had
their faith in the Liberal Grovemment to any appreciable extent
destroyed or weakened. The great trades-unions of the country have
certainly given no response whatever to the appeal. Even in the
northern counties, where one of the most powerful and widely cir-
culated of the Liberal newspapers warmly espoused the cause of the
Irish members, the result has not been at all commensurate with the
efforts put forth. Why, with so many circumstances in favour of
the agitation, was so little effect produced ?

Though the Irish members had much in their £a,vour, they had,
on the other hand, great difficulties to encounter. A powerful Liberal
Government had just succeeded to office, and though the working men
disliked coercion, they had very great confidence in the Government.
In the Cabinet were men who had fought long and bravely, and had
won great popular victories. At the head of the administration was a
veteran statesman who had a stronger hold on the heart and imagina-
tion of the people than ever statesman had before. There was almost
boundless faith in the Government, and that faith was not to be shaken
and overthrown in a day.

The autumn and winter campaign of the Land Leaguers in
Ireland did not at all help them with English public opinion. I was
in Northumberland at the time ; I was daily associating with large
numbers of working men, and had good means of judging of the effect
produced. Their sympathies at the beginning were wholly with the
Irish peasantry and tenant-farmers. But the reports of the speeches
delivered at League meetings tended to weaken that sympathy, if not
to extinguish it altogether. I have no means of knowing whether the
newspaper reports were accurate. They were doubtless very imper-
fect; they might sometimes be distorted and garbled. What I Imow
is that we were told of large and enthusiastic meetings addressed by
Irish Members of Parliament. The speakers were reported to have
inveighed strongly against the Liberal Government, frequently
attacking by name some of its leading members. There was not a word

614 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. April

of frank acknowledgment tliat the G-overnnient had tried, lKmeTaii&.
perfectly, to deal with the question of land reform; not a whisper of
•censure was uttered against the House of Lords for having thrown out
the Compensation for Disturbance Bill. Every available shaft of ridi-
cule, every arrow of Bareasm, was hurled at the Gbvemmeat^ and the
Irish peasants were toMihat it was utterly hopeless to look to any Bri-
tish House of Commons or to any British party for remedy or ledieaB.

I shall not stop to -ask what effect language of this kind, addressed
to an excited people smarting under a sense of injustice, was Ukelj to
produce. I am dealing with its effect on English opinioa, and I
know it estranged great numbers of Sadicals and wcnrking men wh»
otherwise were &rourably disposed to the Irish peasantry. I met
scores of working men, and Liberals of other classes, who Ihought
that Mr. Pamell and his friends were behaving exceedingly ill to the
Oovemment. ^ For six years,' they said, ^ we had a compact Tor;
administration, which neither did anything, nor attempted to do any*
thing for Ireland. Every measure, however &ir and moderate,
-brought forward by the Irish members themselves, was soomfbllj
rejected by overwhelming majorities. Mr. Pamell and his followen
accepted these rebuffs with apparent equanimity. But no sooner is a
Liberal Government placed in power, a Oovemment known to be well*
disposed towards Ireland and giving clear and speedy evid^iceof that
good disposition, than a fierce and violent agitation is commenced
against them, and carried on with the utmost vigour throoghoat
Ireland.' This may not be a just presentment of the case, but I have not
the slightest doubt that considerations of this kind have driven away,
and perhaps made entirely hostile, great numbers of Englishmen who
might bave been staunch and resolute friends. If the agitation made
converts to the Land League in Ireland, it certainly offended and
alienated large numbers of Englishmen.

It may, indeed, be fairly asked whether, if the object aimed at
was to obtain a really good Land Bill for Ireland, there was not an
altogether fatal mistake conmiitted in the field selected for the
campaign. Mr. A. M. Sullivan, in a speech delivered a few days ago
in the House of Conmions, said he had warned his friends that they
were committing a grave error in addressing meetings in Ireland and
leaving English public opinion uninformed or misinformed. It
seems to me that their chief, if not their exclurive, attention should
have been given to England. Instead of agitating on the other side of
the Irish Channel they should have been aiding the English Liberals to
educate public opinion on this side. The Irish tenants could require
no arguments to convince them of the necessity of land reform. All they
needed was thorough union, and they should have been able, with some
little help from intelligent sympathisers, to perfect their organisation.

Another mistake made in the recent agitation was in basing it too
much on narrow, exclusive class grounds. The trades-unions were

188U WORKING MEN AND THE SITUATION. 615

appealed to, and asked to flupportthe Irish tenaat^fajmers who "i^ene^
fighting a great^battle on behalf of the cause of labour. I do not say
that it was altogether improper to make a class appeal, but it was. ,a
great error to emphamse it, and to make this point the. foundation .
of the movement. We, no doubt, have classes, and shall continue to
have them, if not always, at least for f^ long time, to come; but
olass feelings, class distinctions, and class prejudices are fast dyiug out,
and the sooner they are altogether obliterated the better. Workiiiig
men are much more likely to be inftuenced by some great chivalrous ,
idea, which may even appear thoroughly utopiaji, than by an appeal, to
their sordid material interests. In spite, of the unreasoning disincli-
nation of many Englishmen to even so much as discuss the question
of the legislative independence of Ireland, au agitation carried on .
openly with that object and advocated in a broad, generous, candid
^irit would be much more likely to win the support of Briti^
working men than any appeal, however forcible and eloquent, to their
class feelings and prejudices.

That very large section of English- working men connected with,
trades^unions viewed with great dislike the many references by Irish.
members ta disturbances . arising out of the miners' strike in
Lancashire, and to the trades-union outrages which occurred at.
Sheffield several years ago. Nearly every day while the strike in
Lancashire was going on, the Home Secretary was asked by some Irish
Member of Parliament if his attention had been called to the riots
which were taking place and if he was prepared to take steps for the
protection of life and property in the disturbed district. Everybody
in the House of Commons knew, of course, that the. questions were,
ironical, and were simply meant to convey the notion, too well-
founded, I fear, that British ministers have one cure for riot in Ire-
land and another for riot in England. But at a time, when it was
desirable to conciliate and win the help of English working men, it
was unwise to do anything likely to offend them.

The Irish Land League has been compared to the English trades-
unions. Mr. Pamell gave great offence to many trades-unionists by
referring to the outrages perpetrated by the unions some years ago.
I heard Mr. Pamell's speech, and though I think the reference might
as well have been omitted, I did not consider his remarks were
either unfedr or imgenerous. His argument was that every popular
class movement in its earlier stages has been accused of lawlessness
and outrage by those whose interests were threatened. And he in-
stanced the trades-unions as a case in point. His general principle
was sound ; the example by which he illustrated it was not, I think,
happily selected. It is quite true that the trades-unions were accused ;
it is equally true that outrages were encouraged and committed by some
of the officials of the unions. But Mr. Pamell did not state that the
uzuons generally repudiated and denounced these outrages. That in

616 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. hjpt

itself was Dot perhaps of much consequence ; for I believe it is a fact
that no one condemned the Sheffield malpiactices more loudly thao
Mr* Broadhead himself, who was afterwards proved to have been oDe-
of the chief agents in their perpetration. But what is of greater im-
portance is the fact that the Koyal Commission, appointed at the^
request of the unions, conclusively proved that the crimes and out*-
rages were confined to a very small section of the trade societies of two*
towns. The great mass of the imiomsts — an army some hmidreds^
of thousands strong — were entirely free from all complicity in outrage-
or illegality of any kind. The subsequent conduct of these societies haa
been such as to place them in a position which needs no vindicaticHL

There is undoubtedly some similarity between the trades-unions
and the Irish Land League. Both alike aim to uplift a class and to-
euable the toiler to reap the fruit of his industry. There is, too,,
some identity of method in the pursuit of these objects. Boycotting^
which has been such an effective weapon in the hands of the Land
League, has been practised in one shape or another not only by
English trades-unionists, but by men of nearly every rank and profes-
sion in society. If the practice has never before been carried out so*
widely and so cruelly, it has probably been from difference of ciicom*
stances and from lack of power rather than from difference of pruK
ciple or dissimilarity in the character of the men concerned.

But here I think the comparison must end. The responsible anA
recognised leaders of trades-unions have always urged upon their mem-
bers to obey the law. They have never advocated breach of contiact.
They have reconmiended adherence to contract and obedience t»
law even when they knew the law was unjust,' and the contract of the^
most one-sided and iniquitous character. They have used the power
of their associations to alter and amend the law and the contract ; but
until that was accomplished they have felt that their honour as men
and their loyalty as citizens alike imposed the strictest obedience^
The unions have, except in cases of general strikes and lock-outs, hsesy
carried on by money subscribed by their own members ; and th^ have
almost invariably been conducted by men connected with their own^
respective trades. The most successful of their leaders have made it
their chief business to organise the members, to guide and educate
them, and to counsel self-control and moderation, rather than to in-
flame their passions and rouse their anger during times of ezcitement
and social revolution.

These considerations may, to some extent, account for the coldness
of the response to the appeals of the Irish Land League and fivr the
lack of sympathy shown by the English trades-unionists with tte
policy followed by that association.

But the obstructive tactics pursued in Parliament have done more
than anything else to alienate and drive away English Badicals, and
to make it impossible that any real and hearty co-operatian should

1881. WORKING MEN AND THE SITUATION. 617

exist between them and the followers of Mr. PamelL If the intention
had been to insult and degrade the House of Ciommons, to entirely
prevent the transaction of the business of the country, and to strike a
fatal blow at the very prindple of representative government, the
methods followed could hardly have been better adapted to their end
than they have been. It is quite true that obstruction was not invented
by Mr. Pamell. Leading politicians and statesmen of both parties
have practised the art — sometimes with great skill and persistence*
But tiieir efforts were fitful and occasional, and they always knew
when to stop. Never before was obstruction systematised, reduced to
a principle, pursued for its own sake, and carried out in a way to set
the feeling of the whole House of Commons, and that of the majority
of the people outside, against those who practised it.

It is not simply the attitude taken this session that is objection*
able. G-reat allowance would have been made, and has been made,
for the conduct of the Irish members in using every form of the House
to delay the passing of the coercive measures of the Grovemment*
But long before the beginning of this session an evil reputation had
been made by Mr. Pamell atkd his party, and it was easy to exhaust
the small remnant of patience that was left, and to bring about a
crisis. Had the Home Sulers put forward half-a-dozen of their best
speakers to utter a strong and dignified protest against the Coercion
Bill — that, with the able speeches of Mr. Cowen and Mr. Laboubhere,
would have prepared the way for a really effective appeal to the
country in their favour. Instead of this, they have talked against
time ; they have forced needless divisions ; they have adopted a policy
of escasperation ; they have broken the rules of the House, bid defiance
to the authority of the Speaker, and so acted as to necessitate their
expulsion from the House of Commons. Whatever sympathy there
was with them among the working classes in their resistance to
coercion — and I believe there was much — I have found none whateves
with their mode of carrying out that resistance.

There is, however, < a soul of good in things evil,' and vexatious
and mischievous as obstruction is, it has forcibly illustrated the
necessity of certain reforms, which are greatly needed, but which^
-without the action of the Irish members, might have taken a much
longer period to ripen and develop. One of these reforms is the
alt«»tion of the rules of debate in the House of Commons ; and the
other is one of still greater importance — the lessening of the enormous
and ever-increasing quantity of business thrown upon Parliament, by
lemitting that portion of it which is essentially local in its nature te
local representative bodies.

The rules of the House of Commons, whether written or unwritten,
have grown up or been firamed with a view to secure one object
— the full and exhaustive discussion of every topic brought before
Parliament. Every member may speak on every topic, and may talk

618 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. April

aft long» as he likes. In Gomxnittee lie may speak as maay tiisjes m
he wishes^ and here, agaia, there is no limit to the lei^;tiL of tiiAe he
may occupy. The possibility of too mach talk, and the desixabSky
of bringing the debate to an end, seem never to hare been ooDteni'
plated* In the spaoioiis, leisurely times of the past no great piaetioal
inconvenienee ensued. Business was much less in quantity and mucli
less urgent in chaxacter thaa now* Fewa: members took part.ia the
debates, and those who spoke were less likely to abuse their privileges
because they were more .amenable to the general feeling of the Hoose
than are the Irish members at the present time. Anyone inclined
to transgress unduly and to become a bore could usually be silenced
by one or other of the methods for stopping irrelevant speech which
the House of Commons knows so well how to fHmcti8e» If he could
not be put down by clamorous shouts of ^ divide,' ^ divide,' ^li^ieed/
^agreed,' he might ba silenced, or at least made inaudible, by thab
murmuring conversation all round, that ostentatious inatt^tioa
which is so chilling to any orator who speaks only to advance Iu«
cause. If he were proof alike against hostility and indifference he
could be left to waste his strength, if not his sweetness and light, on
the deserted benches around him. With the almost universal feeling
of the House of Commons against him, with no public sentiment
outside to sustain and cheer him, he must either have be^ a veiy
obstinate man or have had great oonfidence in the justice of his eanse
if he could for long have maintained this attitude of hostility. . But
given a compact and resolutebody of members, some of whomcanspeak
really well when they have anything to say, many of whom can talk
at great length without saying anything in particular, all of whom
can speak either to a hostile or an inattentive audience^ or witiiont
any audience whatever — a body who do not lose but who actually
gain popularity with their constituents the more they annoy, irritsfce,
and insult the feelings of the House of Conunons — ^the problem, under
these circumstances, becomes a very different one. It is a problem sa
difficult, indeed, as to necessitate some radical change, if the
public business of the country has not to be brought entirely to s
standstill.

As it is, the House of Conunons is struck with paralysis. Nothing
can be done except under pressure of 'urgency.' The rules of
' urgency ' cannot be voted without the help of the Conservatives, and
they will ;aever help except to pass measures of the character of the
Coercion BilL Parliament can coerce, but it is impotent to remedy.
The rules of urgency are of doubtful value, since they can, firom their
very nature, be applied only intermittently. As soon as ordinary
business is resumed, the flood-gates are thrown open, and the torrent
of irrelevant and unprofitable talk rushes forth with all the more
force &om having been temporarily checked and dammed back.
The fixing of a certain hour for ending a debate is not a satis&ctoiy

188L WORKING MSN AND THE SITUATION. 619

way of dealing with the difficulty. Let us suppose that a bill is in

Committee. Its discussion has occupied an unconscionable time.
Palpable and ostentatious obstruction has been practised. Then it is
resolved that at twelve o'clock that night every amendment on the
notice paper shall be put forthwith. The whole interval may be
utterly wasted and trifled away ; but when the hour is reached, every
amendment, however important, must be voted upon and decided in
hot haste, without debate or explanation. This, to put it mildly, is
not a rational mode of proceeding. And yet what else can be done ?
It is proverbially easy to criticise ; it is difficult to suggest a better
method. I am aware, too, that any judgment of n:iJne upon a point
of this kind will carry little weight. One or two things, negative
and positive, are, however, clear to me. The remedy for obstruction,
whatever it may be, is not to vote urgency. The aim should be to
lay hold, of the individual offender, ^d to treat him with finxmess, if
not with severity. Suspension for a single sitting is little better than
a £surce, unless you are dealing with a man of a highly sensitive nature,
end the practised obstructionist is not always a man of that type.

The notion that the ddture in one shape or another will have to
be adopted by the British House of Commons is gaining ground very
fast. At first its foreign name made against it in the minds of
working men. But this insular prejudice soon disappeared when the
tiling signified waa understood, and was thought to be necessary and
advantageous. On the &ce of it, it seems reasonable that the House
of Commons, like nearly every other legislative assembly in the
world, should have the power to bring a debate to an end, even
though every member of the six hundred and fifty may not have
talked until he has exhausted his strength, and long after he has
exhausted the patience of his hearers.

The working classes of England feel great pride in the House of
Commons, with its grand history and its noble traditions. Though
not well versed in historical lore, they know something of the struggles
by which its powers and liberties have been achieved. They owe some-
thing to it, and they expect much from it. They have almost bound-
less faith in peaceful and constitutional agitation. They have learned
by experience that in this country free discussion ripens puUio
opinion, and that every demand founded on justice ultimately becomes
law. Those, therefore, who act so as to discredit and weaken the
authority of Parliament can never expect to win the confidence and
approval of the working people. But though our labouring population
respect and revere the House of Commons, their reverence, does not de-
generate into superstition. They do not make a fetish of its forms.
They like fine speeches ; but, after all, they consider that the para*
mount duty of the House is to do the work of the country, and that
•oratory, however brilliant and however beautiful, is valuable only so
far as it conduces to wise and beneficent legislation.

620 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. April

I have criticised freely — I hope not unfairly — ^the obstmctiTo
methods followed by a section of the Irish members. I think that
their conduct is most mischievous, and that it contravenes the first
principles of representative government. I have, therefore, the
strongest possible aversion to it. Bat in fairness we must remember
that these men represent Ireland and Irish opinion, and not England
and English opinion. They are supported and applauded by their
constituents. The real and sad significance of it all is that they aie
engaged in rebellion against British rule. They know they cannot
fikce the power of Britain on the battle-field, so they carry the spirit
of rebellion into the High Court of Parliament. ^ They are,' as the
writer known as ^ Verax ' has well said, ^ a party of belligerents, who
have managed to get inside the citadel, and are resolved to blow it
up if they cannot force the garrison to surrender.' They hope^
perhaps, by clogging the wheels of the legislative machine, to compel
Parliament to buy them off by surrendering to the cry for national
independence. In this they are doubtless entirely mistaken. They
may prevent useful and much-needed legislation for England. They
may deprive Englishmen of dearly cherished rights and liberties;
but they will never wrest from a British Parliament by menace what
they cannot win from it by reason and fair argument.

Still, let us never forget that there are grave and terrible grievances
in Ireland. Whole districts of that unfortunate country have really
been passing through a great social revolution. The dire wretched*
ness of the people has driven them to desperation and to the verge of
civil war. The motive power of the upheaval has been agrarian. But
behind the land question there is a political problem. Mr. Pamell has
more than once declared that he cares for land reform only so £eur as it
will help forward the independence of Ireland. Whatever Parliament
can do to place land tenure on a just and satisfactory basis we may
hope will before long be done. But there still remains the political
diflSculty to be grappled with. That ought to be boldly £Bu»d, and
freely and fearlessly discussed. The patriotic feeling that buns \b
the hearts of tens of thousands of the best and bravest of Irishmen
is a grand and noble sentiment, and we should at least show Uial
we respect that sentiment, even if we cannot give it complete satis-
faction.

I do not venture to say what shape our recognition of the claims
of Irishmen to some measure of self-government should assume. It
need not necessarily be the system known as Home Rule. I must
confess that, though I have always mysdf voted for Home Bule, my
confidence in it has not of late been increasing. Of one thing I an
quite sure, instead of having made headway among the working dasstt
of the north of England, it is much less popular with them than
it was some years ago. This is due, not to any diminished sympathy
with Ireland, or to a less ardent desire to do justice to that ooimtij.

1881. WORKING MEN AND THE SITUATION. 621

bat chiefly, I think, to the fact that the Efystem is imperfectly under-
stood^ never yet having been thoroughly shaped and formulated by its
advocates.

Irishmen are often exhorted to look at Scotland, where they will
see a people who have ceased to make wars of insurrection, who have
cordially participated in English rule, and who have become an integral
part of the British Empire. They are told to follow that ezcell^it
example. The example is most instructive, though it does not perhaps
convey the lesson which the critics of Irish policy wish to inculcate.
Never was the spirit of nationality stronger than in Scotland ; never did
the pure flame of patriotism bum more brightly than in the hearts of
the people of that country. They loved their independence, and fought
for it with a determination and a courage which were unconquerable.
Scotland was for centuries just as hostile and irreconcilable as Ireland
is to-day. Now all this is happily changed. There is real and com-
plete union, perfect harmony of spirit and feeling, between the
northern and the southern portions of the island. What has pro-
duced this happy change ? Several causes may have co-operated.
But it is certain that Englishmen quite as much as Irishmen
have lessons to leam from Scottish history. So long as we attempted
to rule Scotland by sheer force without regard to the feelings
of the people, there was rebellion, open or concealed. For many
years now Scotland has had a large share of self-government. Her
own special laws and usages have been respected and recognised. The
administration of Scottish affairs has been placed largely, if not alto-
gether, in the hands of Scotchmen. But suppose we sent an English-
man as Lord Lieutenant to govern Scotland, appointed an Englishman
as Lord Advocate, and English barristers as judges to administer
justice in Scotland, and, abolishing every Scottish law and usage,
enforced our sjrstems and methods upon the inhabitants of that
country ; suppose we rejected, not once or twice, but systematically
and without variation, every bill brought in by a Scotch Member of
Parliament and supported by nearly all the representatives of that
country in the House of Commons ; suppose we flouted JEUid opposed
the national sentiment and ran counter, not only to the prejudices,
but to the clearly expressed and reasonable wishes, of the Scotch people
in every particular and on every occasion. Does any one believe that
Scotchmen would for long tamely and quietly submit aiid remain
loyal, contented, and attached subjects of the Grown ? A poliqr simi-
lar to this, however, is what we have been piu^idng, and to some
extent are still pursuing with regard to Ireland. That policy must
be reversed.

The outlook at present is not hopeful, but we have advanced thus
&r, that the great majoiity of Englishmen are sincerely anxious
to do justice to Ireland. They want to govern Ireland, as far as can be
done, according to Irish ideas. This is much ; but it is not exactly the

622 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. April

light thing, and it is not enough. As Mr. Boyd Kinnear, in a very able
and suggestive pamphlet on Irdand, has said : ^ The truth which we
ought to grasp is that it is our duty not to govern Ireland at all, but
to let Irishmen govern themselves. And if ever we must interfere, it
ought not to be to indulge ^< Irish ideas," but rather when it may be
necessary, to oppose Irish ideas, if at any time party spirit, prejudice, or
miseonception, should lead Irishmen to adopt a course at variance with
principles of justice.'

English statesmen must endeavour to take in hand and sub-
stantially settle this Irish question. And it is surely not too much
to ask Irishmen of influence not to increase the hardness of a task
that is already bristling with difficulties. Chronic disquiet and
dissatisfaction cannot go on for ever. Amid mueh that is doubtful and
confusing, one thing is to my mind clear and certain. The time is
•&st coming, if it has not already arrived, when public opinion in tbis
country will not allow Ireland to be ruled contrary to the deliberately
expressed sense of justice of the great bulk of its people. K the
Union between this country and Ireland must be maintained, we diaU
have to give, as we perhaps can give, stronger and better reasons for
it than the supposed necessities, tiie fears or the interests of England.

Thouas Bust.

1881. 623

PERSIA AND ITS PASSION-DRAMAS

The eminencei the nobleness of a people depends on its capabilitj of being
by memories, and striving for what we call spiritual ends, ends which consist
not in immediate material possessioni but in the satisfaction of a great feeling that
animates the collective body as vrith one souL (Gbobgs Eliot, Impressions of
Theaphrastus Such.)

Of the great dramatic literatures of the world — the Indian, the Greek,
and the modem European — ^we may say that the two last were essen-
tially popular in origin, while the first did not display unmistakable
popular characteristics till somewhat late in its history. The requi-
sites for a national drama are (setting aside the individual genius of
authorship) a national history, a national progression or expansion,
and a refining influence : a national history supplies material with
which the audience is &miliar ; a national expansion creates a un-
animity and interest which bestow encouragement on those connected
with the representation ; a refining influence — ^the result, of course, of
many and varied circumstances — endows the literature with an
ennobling and lasting truth.

The first beginnings of the Indian and the Ghreek theatre are
shrouded in obscurity. The modem European drama owes so much
to the influence of the Senascence that, though probably in no country
did a truly national drama come into being, unless the elements of
dramatic, and original dramatic, representation had previously existed
in that country, yet it was the revival of ancient letters that gave to
the modem drama its form, its literary value, and its popularity.
Such being the case, an inquiry into the originating causes of the
theatre of to-day in a great measure resolves itself into a due apprecia-
tion of the influence first exercised upon its rude beginnings by the
Benasoence, and to what extent each branch of it ultimately emanci-
pated itself. Such a simplification may be said to deprive in some
degree the inquiry of its interest.

It is with eagerness, then, that students of such matters should
turn to Persia, where there exists at the present time a Passion-drama
on a scale hitherto unknown, and which seems to give promise of a

> I express my gratef al acknowledgments to Monsieur Chodzko and Mr. WoUaston
for their supervision of the proofs of this article.

624 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. April

standard drama which may fulfil the conditions of the best national
literature. To what extent it does so now I purpose to investigate.
Before proceeding, however, I would disclaim all hope and desiie of
casting any new light on subjects which have already been sifted by
Orientalists, or of in any way appearing in competition with those to
whom any pretension of mine to Eastern learning must seem arrogant
$md unwarrantable. The Persian Play has been treated of, in its
contemporaneous aspects, by M. Chodzko, the Gomte de Gobineao,
and Sir Lewis Pelly (each of whose works contain selections from the
plays themselves), and Professor Dozy, in an essay which also deals
with the whole history of Mahomedanism.' I may claim, however,
to. have pushed my inquiries somewhat further than these authors,
with a view to ascertaining, from works of travel and history, how &r
the existing phenomena can be aocoimted for by pre-existing and co-
existing circumstances.

In respect to its Passion-drama, Persia stands alone am<Kigst
Mahomedan nations. The Sheeah doctrine has been called * a protest
of Aryan thought against Semitic ideas ' — a protest which has gra-
dually created for itself a dramatic form. * There is no instance of a
drama, properly so-called, in any Semitic language.* The contrast
between Aryan and Semitic civilisation is of the utmost importance
in the appreciation of Mahomedan history. In it lies the key to
the long succession of Mahomedan dissensions, had it not been for which,
Charles Martel might have succumbed on the plain of Tours, and
Eastern Europe, too, have failed to stem the tide of infidel invasion.
The Semitic mind is not in the highest sense imaginative. Thifi
higher imagination contracting, as it does, a belief in immortality is
at the bottom of all drama. The Semitic peoples had no such belief;
it was imknown to the early Arabians, to whom it at length found
its way through Persia and colonists from the East.

Sheeism may be said to be, in one of its aspects, a want of appre-
ciation of the individuality of Mahomed, resulting firom the anti-
Aryan restriction of thought which such a belief imposed.

The domination of Mahomed was the principal cause of the rapid
propagation of Mahomedanism, and entailed the simplicity which
rendered that religion easy of adoption : but in this, its essence, lies
the secret of its non-pliability. It is a religious despotism : a mon-
arch elected by acclamation is often the most despotic of kings. Thus
it will be readily understood that while Persia resented the freedom
of institutions introduced by their nomad invaders, they were none the
less opposed to the exclusive tyranny of the Caliphs. After the
domination of the Greeks and Parthians, the Sassanid dynasty came
to the Persian throne as part and parcel of the nationid life and

' I may also mention Mr. Vereschagin's work on the GancasiUy which though
written in an unfamiliar langoage, contains illustrations of the Passion Flay bj his
excellent pencil.

1881. PERSIA AND ITS PASSION DRAMA. 625

viving the national religion. The circumstances themselves, how-
ever, of the Sassanid restoration defeated the hopes of its supporters.
The constitution had lost its popular character and the monarohy
had ceased tp be elective. The idea introduced by Buddhist mission-
aries from India of ' the. divine right of kings ' had been incorporated
in the national creed ; and thus it was that, despite the retention
of many of the liberal characteristics of ancient times, reverence
for kingship militated against the domination of Mahomed. The
antagonism between Sunnee and Sheea is not so much religious as
political and national. In point of fact it resides in a difference
of belief as to the transmission of the supreme power.

On the death of Mahomed Aboo-bakr, his uncle was declared
his successor to the exclusion of the inhabitants of Medina, who had
claimed the office as a reward for the priority of their belief in the
Prophet. This election was probably intended by Mahomed, and
was politic inasmuch as it invested Mecca with the hegemony of
Arabia. Omar and Othman succeeded Abou-bakr, and after them
Alee, the son-in-law of Mahomed; the latter was assassinated
shortly after his accession, and the Caliphate no longer continued in
his fJEtmily. The Sheeas, however, refuse to recognise Aboo-bakr,
Omar, and Othman as Caliphs ; and declare that Alee was Mahomed's
only lawful successor, and after him his two sons Hasan and
Husain. This is the main subject of difference between Sunnee and
Sheea. The dispute is as old as Alee himself, who was not only
called the first Caliph by his contemporaries, but was said to inherit
the divinity of Mahomed. His death, too, originated the doctrine
of the ^ concealed Imam ' which has been since transferred to the
twelfth Imam, Mahdee. The Persians of the present day believe that
the government is held for Mahdee by his lieutenants, and that he
will return one day to claim his kingdom. The establishment of
Sheeism as the prevailing religion may be ascribed to the ninth cen-
tury, and in the succeeding century Ahmad Muizz-ed-Daulat founded
the Muharram celebration ; but during the repeated dynastic changes
and invasions to which Persia was subsequently subjected, the attach-
ment to the national religion became weakened, so that it was not
till the accession of the Sufawee kings at the end of the fifteenth cen-
tury that Sheeism reasserted itself and was constituted the national
religion of modem Persia. The victory .won on the plains of
Kadisia was of vital importance to Mahomedanism ; for, though the
sons of the desert were corrupted by the luxury of the conquered
people, yet the Persians became proselytisers of the new religion, and
<K>loured it with their national beliefs. By her superior civilisation,
the cause of her downfall, Persia was enabled to reassert her own
identity. In the ages directly succeeding Mahomed, Sheeism
spread itself far and wide. East and West the Moslem colonies
Buocumbed to it. It invaded the holy places themselves, so that
Vol. IX.— No. 50. U U

626 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. April

the true descendants of the Prophet, from the isolated table-lands
of Spain, whither they had been driven by internal dissensions,
beheld heresy committing sacrilege in their shrines, and exclaimed
with indignant amazement: ^In our country not a shadow of
heresy is tolerated; churches and synagogues have vanished firom the
land.' It seemed indeed as if the Prophet looked down from Para-
dise, under which it was fabled that the Alhambra stood, and guided
his people in the way of the true &ith. But in Persia alone did
Sheeism become the national religion, and its establishment as such
gave to a country ' in which patriotism was unkno¥m, a principle of
union, of equal, if not greater, force.' The misfortunes of Alee, Fatima,
and the holy Imams, typify the melancholy past and the dreary present
of the Persian nation. It is on these scenes of calamity that the
Passion-play dwells, awakening an answering echo in the breast of
the spectator. Perhaps there is no better instrument for arousing
the public spirit of a country than the discovery of a parallel to the
wrongs of the present in the annals of the past.

The annual theatrical performances of the Muharram constitute a
most sacred ceremony ; the whole of Persia unites to commemorate the
history of < the femily of the Tent,' as the Shee martyrs lure called
Every one strives to render assistance. Mothers send their sons to dis-
tribute provisions amongst the crowd; rich men lend their costly rogi
and garments for purposes of decoration. . The atheist, the infidel,
and the alien are all equally requisitioned, for the cause is national
There is a takyah, or theatre, in every town (excepting in parts of
the country where the drama is not known) ; in each quarter of every
city, there are takyahs belonging to guilds, to nobles, to merchants,
to the king himself. To give a tazyah, or representation, is to do
a meritorious act. The description of the takyah of the Shah is a
curious one. It stands in the principal of those wide and dusty spaces,
broken only by low mud walls, and filled with irregular mounds and
deep, break-neck ruts, which in Tehran, as in other Persian cities,
represent tbe squares of Westehi towns. The appearance of the fajade
is characteristically described by Mr. Arthur Arnold.

The front of this building is a good specimen of modem Persian aTchitecturev
which in England we should recogmse as the Rosherville or Cremome style, t2ie
gewgawy pretentious, vulgar, and ephemeral style, erected in those places of- amuse-
ment only to be seen at night and to last for a season. The fa9ade is shaped lib a
small transept of the Crystal Palace and' covered with florid coarse deooratioiis in
plaster, with headings of bits of coarse looking-glass, bright blue, red, yellow, nd
green being plentifully laid upon the plaster wherever there is opportunity.

How strange a contrast to the solemn scenes that are enacted within !
yet how typical of the want of discrimination of Persian taste ! '

* In the tekyehs belonging to the town wards, some convoiient square is cixvca
so that the upper classes look down from their windows and gaUeries on the per-
formance while the crowd squats below. A parallel to the beginning of our own
theatre is here suggested.

1881. PERSIA AND ITS PASSION DRAMA. 627

The interior is one vast parallelogram or circle, in some theatres
containing only one or two thousand spectators, in others as many as
twenty thousand. In the midst of this stands the saJcoo^ or stage,
about five feet above the level of the floor and accessible by steps at
either end. Around it are erected black posts, bearing poles of the
same sombre colour, whose office it is to sustain the coloured lanterns
and lamps to give light during the interludes of music and preaching
that continue throughout the night. Over the audience is stretched
a vdameTi, or awning, to protect them from the summer heat or the
winter blast, for the time of the Muharram celebration varies from
year to year. Opposite to the aakooy or stage, is a ^ lege,' or box,
called the ^ tajnuma,' raised about fifteen feet from the ground, the
residence of stage-royalty. There, surrounded by the most costly
stuffs, the rarest china, the most brilliant glass-ware, Yazeed the traitor,
the murderer of Husain, holds his court. Round the walls of the
tahyah are the boxes of the nobility, which, in like manner, glisten
with barbaric splendour. These are free to the first comer, if not
occupied before the representation begins. On the folds of the costly
ahawl) wrought in the highlands of Kashmere, leans the unwashen brow
of the mendicant ; in the silver goblet, at other seasons reserved for
princely lips, he plunges his greasy mouth and uncleansed moustachios.
Prince and peasant, Ghebie and Barbar, Jew and Christian, jostle
together in indiscriminate confusion.^ Only the Sunnee is absent.
^ Hasan and Husain ' is all their thought ; ^ Hasan and Husain I '
they wail forth in inharmonious concord. One is reminded of those
times, long before Sunnee or Sheea existed. When, once a year, king,
courtiers, and people used to dine together in one splendid banquet.

In and out of the motley multitude that crowd the arena, wander
faeautiftil Persian boys, sons of wealthy parents, who have made a vow
of th^ children's services on this occasion. They are a picturesque
sight, with their jewelled turbans and flowing ringlets, as they
distribute water in memory of the martyrs. Venerable old men,
wealthy merchants, learned mirzas sprinkle rose-water in the name of
Hasan and Husain. Even the noblemen's servants, reckoned in
Persia, as in most countries, the proudest of all classes, do not disdain
to circulate refreshments amongst the dregs of the populace. Mixed
^with the throng are also the vendors of pipes and pastilles scented
Mdth musk, made of dust from the holy desert of Karbala, the
scene of the Imam's sufieriugs ; on these the Sheea rests his forehead
2Uid prays. There are sellers, too, of cakes and lozenges of millet
^iv^hich is supposed to induce tears.

The play begins at 5 a.m. and consists of the representation of a
single scene of which each iTnpresario possesses a varied collection.
QTliroughQut the night large processions bearing banners draped in black

* From recent acconnts it appears that the freedom of entrance is being restricted
l>y the priests, brought about ostensibly by the misconduct of European attacJUs.

UU 2

628 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. h^

— for the whole nation mourns during the Muhanam— troop from
tekyeh to iekyeh, headed by the Said Booze Khans, or friars, chaunting'
wild refrains and crying ^ Ay Hasan I Ay Husain ! ' while in the t^eb
the friars preach simple, moving discourses', touching on the sufferings
of the martyrs, till the throng shouts again and again ^ Ay Hasan!
Ay Husain I ' Particular days in the festival are iUustnted by
characteristic processions/

As they sit waiting for the commencement of the play they present
a strange medley of haggard faces which tell of that power of sleepless-
ness so incomprehensible to Europeans. They are silent till someone
rises and starts a refrain of ' Ay Hasan I Ay Husain ! ' whiek tbe
audience take up and continue with increasing vehemence, beating
with the hollowed palm on the naked shoulder, for during the
Muharram the men of the lower classes throw off all clothing fromthe-
right side of the breast. At length, however, the leader falls bad
exhausted, and the wild sound ceases. Now enters a band of Barbais,
Moslem Africans by descent, whose ancestor, it is said, derided
Mahomed. They dance the fanatical measure of the ]>ervi8h, prick-
ing themselves with needles ; the sight of blood inflames the audience^
and as Barbar after Barbar sinks dizzy to the ground, their eicitement
becomes intense. At last the dusky leader gives the signal to cea^^
and the wearied dancers lift their hands to heaven crying ^ Ya AMr
Some such part as this did the Jews play in the carmvals of tk
Middle Ages. A sermon now foUows from one of the Seid Boos
Khans, and continues till the kemaa, or trumpets, announoe the
arrival of the players, and the actual play begins.

Of the three translations of the Persian drama which exist— i.e
those by M. de Crobineau, M. Chodzko, and that produced under
Lewis Felly's superintendence — the latter is the only one
professes to give the whole narrative of the tragedy, and, together ^tb
Mr. WoUaston's excellent explanatory notes, constitutes a -y&j
interesting and complete account of the Passion-play. It is this work
that I shall follow in my outline.

The performance begins with a prologue, in which, inasmuch as ft
may refer only indirectly to Sheeism and be chiefly concerned with
secular history, M. de Gobineau recognises the possible beginning*
of a standard secular drama* The conversion to Sheea belief of the
conqueror Timur is a fjEivourite subject for the prologue; but in Sir
Lewis Pelly's collection the theme chosen is ' Joseph and his Bretbren.*
The disappearance of Joseph, the treason of his brothers, the woe of
Jacob, are all prototypes of the martyrdom of the Imams. Gal^et

* During the Muharram the entire rSpertaire is performed, bat not neoessarilTb
chronological sequence : only on the lOth, which day is consecrated to the deftth ci
Husain, it is the custom for aU the pompanies of actors who happen to be peifonD*
ing in a certain town to combine and play that stirring scene on an open tipKe oil-
side the walls. Also the 7th is generally devoted to the marriage of Easim.

1881. PERSIA AND ITS PASSION DRAMA. 629

Appears to Jacob in his grief: < God sendeth thee salutation, saying,
<' What thinkest thou, 0 stricken man ? Is thy Joseph more precious
than the dear grandson of Mahomed ? " ' Jacob sees his error, and
xeplies, asking to be shown the desert of KarballU <A thousand
Josephs be the dust of Husain's feet. The curse of God rest on
Yazeed for his foul murder I ' The answer of the archangel terminates
»the scene. ' Alas I the tyranny of the cruel spheres ! who can hear
the sorrows of Karballi ! Injustice and oppression, hatred and enmity,
on that plain of trial shall be consummated in the children of God's
Prophet. Nought shall be heard from that &mily but the cry for
^read and water. Their sad voices shall reach the very throne of the
Majesty on high. Their tears shall soak the field of battle. The
children of that holy King of kings shall feed on their 0¥m tears
alone.' The desire of Jacob to see Karbal& is therefore the dramatic
raisan cCStre of the Tazyah.

The first scene as given by M. Chodzko differs in motive from
that of Sir Lewis Felly's version. In the former, the voluntary sacri-
fice by Mahomed and Alee of Hasan and Husain for the redemption
of the Sheeas is more emphatically put forward. The latter, however,
appears to possess the greatest literary merit, and is, perhaps, the most
natural scene in the collection. Gabriel exacts from Mahomed the
sacrifice either of his own son Ibrahim or of his grandson Husain,
Bince God has judged that there should ^ not be two loves in one
iieart, for no end is gained thereby.' Mahomed yields up his own
and only son in pity for his daughter Fatima, and in return for this
act of generosity Gabriel promises that God shall have mercy on
Mahomed's people in the Day of Judgment for Husain's sake, if Mahomed
will grant his grandson in propitiation for their sins. The Prophet
'Consents to this se^nd sacrifice, and with Israeel the Angel of Death
goes to fetch Ibrahim from his school. They find him reading the
Koran, and at the sight of the beauty of his child the father is smitten
«with sorrow. Ibrahim starts with terror at the appearance of Israeel,
but his fiikther endeavours to calm his fears by a speech that exhibits
something akin to the irony of Greek tragedy. * Fear not this vene-
rable man ; he is the companion of thy way, my child. He will
Accompany thee on this thy journey.' They return to Mahomed's
bouse ; the child is smitten with fever, and a touching scene between
Ibrahim and his sister ensues, while the awful Israeel stands over them.
^ Dost thoa fear death ? ' Fatima asks. * I fear rather the Angel of
Death,' her brother replies with natural simplicity. His sufferings
-are at length terminated by smelling an apple which Israeel gives him,
and he dies with the Mahomedan confession of £Edth on his lips. ^ I
therefore bare witness that there is no other God but Gt>d.'

Other scenes follow which have for their motives the simplicity

«and {generosity of Mahomed, the chivalry of Alee, his right to succeed

to the office of the Prophet, and the power and importance of Husain.

630 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. April

The historical events thiis delineated are the death of Mahomed^ tk
seizure of the Caliphate by Aboo-bakr, the assassination of Ali in the
mosque at Kufa ; and the martyrdom of Hasan, poisoned, it is said,
by his wife at the instigation of the Syrian governor Muawiyab. Then
the tragedy of Husain, for which all the preceding scenes are merely pre-
paratory, commences, and step by step, scene by scene, the sad stoiy is
told. The end is foreshadowed by the martyrdom of Muslim and his
sons, whose helpless wanderings are most pathetically describei
The inhabitants of Kufa had invited Husain to come amongst
them, saying that they would support his claim to the Caliphate;
but Husain is advised to test the sincerity of their offers by sending
Muslim before him as his herald, with the result that Muslim and
his sons are added to the list of Sheea victims. At length Hnsais,
who has persistently refused to take the oath of all^;iance to Yazeed,
feels his insecurity at Mecca, and is induced to try his fortune at
Kufa ; but it is with a sense of approaching doom that he comes to
this determination.

^ Troops of gloom have suddenly invaded the heart, capital of %
soul of man ; they have plundered all her property — ^patience, tm-
lution, and fortitude ; they have laid waste her fortifications. Fate
has become the guide to the commander of the caravan of faith, and
Doom ever and anon cries out: '^Bind up your litters and stait!"
We must one day set out, 0 my soul, firom tiiis transitory abode, lod
travel onwards to our eternal home.' He leaves Mecca on the first
day of the Muharram. The next scene relates how Husain and hia
followers are compelled, even in sight of Kufa, to turn aside bm
the road by the approach of an army sent against them by Yazeed.
For a moment Husain becomes impatient and wrestles with his
destiny. ' Ye crooked conducted spheres, how long will ye tyranniBe
over us ? how long will ye act thus cruelly to the family of God's
prophet? ' But it is love for his sister that produces this momentaij
revolt. In vain he turns to go back to Medina ; his &te has already
encompassed him. His horse becomes dull and spiritless. 'Art
thou,' he exclaims, ^art thou exhausted by the burden of trust? Itei
thou know, winged horse, what awaits us in Karbala?' He exduisges
his horse for another ; but this, too, has lost its courage. ' Tell m^
good man, what plain is this ? ' he asks the camel-driven ^Karbala,'
the man answers. ' Then,' says the Imam, ' my lot therein will be
afSiction and triaL' He gives the order to halt, and his follovers
pitch the camp on the fieital plain. The Sheeas are now deciznated bj
the losses they sustain in single combat, and earn the crown of
martyrdom by disdaining to be seduced into treachery by the offers
of their enemies.^ The patient Husain again begins to rqiine and

• Dr. Brngsch mentions a pretty cnstom now existent in Persia, and CTidently »
relic of the old Sheea brotherhood. At this season of the year two Persians go before
the < Moolla ' and sweai a lifelong brotherhood with each other.

1881. PEH8IA\AND ITS PASSION DRAMA. 681

to rail against the spheres, as he sees his fisdthful comrades fall, and
them whom he most loves tortured by the pangs of thirst ; soon, how-,
ever, he recovers himself, and after calmly prophesying his death on
the morrow, exclaims : ^ It is not a thing to be grieved at, that I and
all my companions should be slain, since it works for the salvation of
the people of my feither's father, the Prophet.' Yet when he witnesses
the death of his eldest son. Alee Akbar, he breaks for the first time
into an uncontrollable passion of grief. Misfortune follows on nus-
fortune, death on death, while the horrors of thirst intensify their
sufferings. A strange and characteristic incident is the marriage of
Husain's son, Easim, to the daughter of Hasan, in fulfilment of an
agreement previously made between the two brothei:s. It is a
favourite with both audience and actors — with the actors because
they receive for their own the wedding gifts presented by the wealthier
among the spectators ; with the audience because of the moving and
ghastly contrast of the forms of joy in the midst of the realities of
\?oe ; the marriage bed of Kasim lies by the side of the bier of Alee
Akbar. The nuptials are celebrated, and the bridegroozp sallies out
to death amongst the foe ; once he returns crowned with victory ;
a dxaught of water would make him strong again, but no water is
to be had, and h^ goes forth to meet his fate. (M. de Gobineau's
version of this scene is considerably fuller than that of Sir Lewis
PeUy.)

At this poiat of the drama, Husain's temptations are presented
in a physical form ; he is miraculously transported to India in order
to save a Sheea Bajah from the jaws of a lion, which noble beast offers,
to help him against his enemies. Similar offers are made by the
angels and the djinns ; but nothing can prevail upon Husain to
abandon his trust, for he has resolved on martyrdom and the redemp-
tion of the world.

The Imam now takes leave of his relations, plunges into the fight,
and returns wojonded to his camp to die. His mother appears, in
company with the Prophet, to comfort him, while his enemy Shimar,
watches )u8 dying struggles, brandishing a dagger at the throat of his
yictim. Husai^, after a few loving expressions to his relations,
expires, with the words, * Forgive, 0 merciful Lord, the sins of my,
grandfather's people, and grant me bountifully the key of the tre^sur^
of intercession.' Thus ends the tragedy of Husain.

The fortimes of his survivors are now followed out, and the con-
nection of Persia with early Sheeism, through Husain's Persian wife
Shahrbanu, ia especially insisted on. The influence of the Shee,
doctrine on other nations is . exemplified by the conversion of a
Christian ambassador at the sight of Husain's head, of a Christian
lady to whom Mahomed appears in a dream on the plains of Karbala,
and of. a Christian king,. who, having punished a party of Sheeas for,
their celebration of the Muharram, is brought to a sense of the tjuth

6S2 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. April

by being made to experience prematurely the torments of helL Kor
must we omit to mention a scene which appears to be represented (»
some occasions with the most ruthless realism, so that the feelings of
the audience are excited to such a pitch that they fall on the chief
actor in it, and make him pay a heavy penalty for his histrionic
power. A camel-driver comes on the stage where has been set up the
tomb of Husain, which he breaks into and rifles, defiling the hody
of the martyr with the most insulting expressions and actions. The
concluding scene represents the Besurrection. At the third blast of
the trumpet of Sarafeel, Jacob, Joseph, David, Solomon, Mahomed,
Alee, Hasan, and all the Sheeas, except Husain, assemble to watdi
the sinners . being borne away to punishment. Mahomed tries to
save his followers ; Alee and Hasan help him, but their joint efforts
are of no avail, and the Prophet, angered by the slight thus put upon
him, casts away his turban, his rod, and his cloak. At length
Gabriel explains to Mahomed that Husain must assist him to
obtain pardon for his followers, and that he must yield the key of
intercession to him who has suffered most. Husain now appeals,
and an altercation arises between him and Jacob as to the relative
magnitude of their sufferings ; this dispute is settled by a message
from God in favour of Husain, and the Prophet thus charges him:
' Go thou, and deliver from the flames every one who has in his life-
time shed a single tear for thee, every one who has in any way he^
thee, every one who has performed a pilgrimage to thy shrine, ^
mourned for thee, and every one who has written tragic verses for
thee. Bear each and all with thee to Paradise.' ^ God be praised!'
chant the sinners as they enter Paradise, ^by Husain's grace ne
are made happy, and by his favour we are delivered from destruc-
tion.

Such is the Persian Passion-play. Mr. Matthew Arnold vss
struck* with the peculiarly Christian character of the virtues displayed
by the Imams ; and, throughout, the reader is not only astonished
by the likeness of the principal doctrines to those of Giristiaaitj,
but he is constantly reminded of the New Testament even in tke
most subsidiary circumstances. There is, however, one great radical
difference between the Persian play and all the other mysteiy-pIaT^
of the Middle Ages : the Persian play is ^ the noise of the mounuBg
of a mighty nation.'

Before I am at liberty to treat my subject in the manner I pro-
pose, I must record my reasons and my proofis for considering the
Persian drama as an outgrowth of modem times. Previous and sab-
sequent to the Greek conquest Persia was thoroughly conversant with
the Attic drama. Greek was the language of political and oonunenaal
intercourse throughout that part of Asia. Mr. Morier speaks of hariog
discovered the ruins of a Greek theatre* in the centre of the oeuntiy;
but when Greek civilisation was minimised by the Parthian domina-

1881. PERSIA AND ITS PASSION DRAMA. 633

tion, Greek drama was blotted oat from the literature of Iran, and
does not appear to have recovered its popularity, though subsequently
Greek philosophy became the favourite study of the courts. Whether
there still remain traces of it in the tragic dance of the Bakhtyaree,
or in certain details of the drama itself, is merely food for speculation.
The origin of the present drama is involved in obscurity. I have in
vain applied to orientalists for information ; but neither I nor they,
who have access to documents, alas I inaccessible to me, can find any
authoritative statement on this point. It may have commenced
nnder the national dynasty of the Sufawees -in the sixteenth or
seventeenth century, as some have thought, or it may not have arisen
till considerably nearer our own time. It may have been introduced
from India, where, as at Beejapore, the Portuguese established an
imitation of the European mystery-play, or it may have been im-
ported direct into Persia from the Portuguese settlement at Ormuz.
The mere question of origin and date of introduction, however,
matters little to us. There is sufficient proof, I think, that the
drama, as it now exists, was not popularised in Persia before the end
of the last and the beginning of the present century, though, since
any test that I can apply is by elimination, it is of necessity subject
to correction. M. de Gobineau writes of having spoken with Persians
who remembered when the tazyah was acted with one or two actors
alone, which, arguing from Greek analogy, would point not only to
the date of the commencement of the drama, but also to the fact that
it was never introduced, and arose, like the Greek drama, out of the
country itself. The first mention that I can discover of its existence
IS by Francklin, who travelled during the years 1786--87, and would
seem to imply a somewhat earlier origin than M. de Gobineau assigns
to it. It is a slight description, and merely recounts how the Said
recites the story of Husain out of the ' wakaSbj which is ^ written with
ail the pathetic elegance the Persian language is capable of ex-
pressing,' and how ' each day some particular action of the story is
represented by people selected for the purpose of personating those
concerned in it.' He also notes the marriage of Kasim, as being the
favourite scene, and adds, ^ The frenzy which exists during the pro-
cessions is such as I never saw exceeded by any people.' A still
more important point is the absence of any allusion to dramatic
representation by those authors who devote considerable space to the
Muharram. Such being the case, there is no assumption in stating
that the popular influence of the Persian drama dates from quite
recent times.

At the beginning of this paper I proclaimed my purpose of in-
vestigating how far the Persian drama contained the requisites of a
great national dramatic literature, and the first of these I stated was
a national history, as supplying material ftmiliar to the audience.

The reader will have abeady perceived that the histoiy of Sheeism

634 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. April

is the history of Persia, From the time of the Abbassides to the
present dynasty usurpers have constantly played upon the religious
feeling of the people in order to compass their own ends. It has
been remarked how great a stimulus is given to Sheeism by the fact
that the tombs of the Imams are on Turkish ground. The founders
of the last two dynasties and the infidel Nadir, though he afterwards
dreaded the feelings he had aroused and prohibited the practice of
Sheeism under pain of mutilation .and death, did not fail to strengthen
themselves by appealing to the religious patriotism of their subjects
and pointing to those holy relics across the frontier. Sheeism has
preserved the continuity of the nation ; aud throughout Uie many
dynastic changes which Persia has undergone, its steadfast light has
never ceased to bum, and when threatened with extinction^ has only
exhibited a brighter flame.

Nothing proves more completely that the present of Persia is
centred in the past than a glance at the existing state of her liters*
ture. The legendary past contained the entire history of Persia's
greatness when her famous poets Firdusee, Sadee, Hafiz, and otiiers
wrote, and they appear to have handled these legends in such a.
manner as to stamp them on the memories of their countrymen in
verses which have become proverbial, and thus to preclude the
popularity of any other rehabilitation of the same themes. Such
also seems to have been the case with Homer. Bustam and Sohiab
and the'snow-haired 2jal,'Ardasheer, Shapoor, Noosheerwan, still remain
the Persian ideals of greatness, of moral excellence^ of nobility, of
chivalrous valour; and the most natural way for on0 P^gian to
express his admiration for another is to institute some comp^uj^on
between him and those heroes of old. The &mous apron of Kaf bad
often led the Iranese to victory and conquest ere that banner bowed its
head before the green standard of Islam. Thus the Persian of to-day
looks back through the vistas of history on the past pre-eminence of
his country, and sighs for those glorious times till the remote figures of
antiquity become ' larger than human ' in the mist of legend that
gathers round them, like Sir Bedivere's figure as he strode across the
frozen hills. The traveller, as he journeys across the arid plains of
Iran in the tedious caravan, is ever looking backward or forward to
some splendid range of mountains, the natural colours of whose cliffs
as they rise abruptly from the plain, their summits, crowned with
snow, present a striking contrast to the burning sai^ds of the
desert. Seldom is his gaze directed to his immediate surroundings ;
he hastens forward to the hallowed city vrith its precious water, its
waving palms, its towering cypresses, its mysterious fiuies, its silent
streets, its thronging bazaars. He hurries forward or he r^gr^ the;
city he has left behind. So the interest of the Persian is div(»oed
from his surroundings and centred in the distance of hiitorici^ s^d
nKythical times. He lives for the past. In his mouth are the

1881. PERSIA AND ITS PASSION DRAMA. 635

quotations of poets of the olden time, who in their turn celebrated
the deeds of heroes long antecedent to them. The libraries of the
greatest nobles contain little else than the works of the classical
poets — a knowledge of them <is a liberal education.' A certain
portion of every day is devoted to their study. An appropriate
quotation makes a friend for life. Afal erasers' taken from Sadee
or Hafiz determines the most important matters. A historian, an
astronomer, or a poet is respected by all, and has a place of distinction
in every company. But for a few shillings any schoolboy can tiurri
off a copy of verses in honour of a stranger. There are many poets
in Persia. The meanest artisan of the principal cities can repeal
passages of the' Persian classics; the rudest and most unlettered
soldier will listen with rapture to the mystic love-songs of Hafiz.
There is an instance on record of a native who, with no other pre-
tensions to be a leader than a good voice and the ability to sing a
song of the olden time, created a provincial revolution. But with
all this worship of literature there appears to exist no spontaneity of
invention at the present time. It may be that the constant looking
back on the past has destroyed the capacity to grapple with the
problems of the present, and that owing to this their compositions
are little else than a literal imitation of their classics ; or it may be
that the old mine is exhausted,- and that a new shaft must be sunk.
A sentence out of Mr. Ghreen's History of England, referring to the
period of English literature between the death of Chaucer and the
Elizabethan revival, presents a literal description of the condition of
Persian letters, if not actually of the present, at least of the previous
generation.

The only ttsce of mental activity is to be found in the numeroufl tr^atisee on
alchemy and magic, on the elixir of life, or the philosopher's stone, the fimgous
growth which most unequivocally witnesses to the progress of intellectual decay.

Yet since this was a passing condition, one may consider it not so
much a decay as a stagnation of literary energy ; the running stream
was dammed by a temporary obstruction, but the water in the mean*
time filtered through the porous soil till it reached new germs of life
beneath. The revival of English literature came from the middle
classes; the dramatic movement in Persia springs from the lower
tmder the leadership of the middle classes. And here we arrive at
the second division of our sulyect, viz. that a national expansion or
progression is necessary to the establishnxent of an original drama.

We are told tha^; Mahomedanism is rapidly becoming extinct in
Persia and giving place to Soofism and free^thought, that the contact
with Western civilisation is resulting in the introduction of Western
ideas. M. de Ghobineau, however, whose keen good-sense has thoroughly
analysed the Persian mand and pointed ontits illc^cal character, indi-<
Ofttes how feur fre&ptUought has in reality made its way. The Peraan will

636 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. April

graft on to one system another qnite at variance with it, and betieve
in both till the energy of youth yields to the repose of middle age,
and he returns to orthodoxy. One is reminded of the beauUM
poetical contradiction of thought in Mr« Fitzgerald's translation of
the Soofee poet, Omar Khayyam,

The stars are Betting, and the caravan

Starts for the dawn of nothing. Oh^ make haste I

The Persian character is the reverse of analytical, the reverse of
consistent. He resembles a child now haughtily reserved, now
babbling his personal secrets. He shrinks from the commonplace of
existence. His everyday ride must be varied with * jereed ' or some
<»ther boisterous game. It is a serious problem how to prevent the
Persian from using the white telegraph insulators as marks for
his bullets. He seeks to enliven the monotony of life with practical
jokes. He will pardon any liberty for the sake of amusement. He
has earned the title of Frenchman of the East, because of his intelli-
gence, politeness, quickness, and agreeableness. He gauges a man
by his powers of conversation. But passion and avarice haTe
corrupted his better qualities. Hospitality — a virtue common to
most nations early in their history and reconmiended in the Avesta
— has degenerated into ostentation : and the host, during the enter-
tainment, constantly endeavours to get the better of his guest in
some point of etiquette ; indeed the love of ceremony is carried so
far that a noble travels at night with lanterns that indicate his rank.
The ancient Persians, says Herodotus, were taught to ride, to speak
the truth, and to draw the bow. Two-thirds of their education still
remains the same, though the bow has been superseded by the rifle.
But the truth is a stranger to Persia. < Believe me, for, though a
Persian, I speak the truth,' is a common form of asseveration amongst
them. Mr. Morier and Lady Shell agree in thinking that ^the
people are false, the soil is dreary, and disease is in the climate.'
The one redeeming point of honesty in Persian character appears to
be his affection for his country. In the midst of the comfort and
luxury of Western Europe and surrounded with its delicate meats
and drinks, he is ever longing to be in his native land, to slake his
thirst at the fountain-head of the far-famed wine of Shiraz, and listen
to the rapturous odes of Hafiz. Such is the character of the Persian
upper class, to all appearance incapable of spontaneous and combined
movement; let us descend in the social scale.

Early travellers have told us how the constant Rhifhing of the
crown from usurper to usurper weakened the old nolnlity, and an
aristocracy sprang up of adventurers whose interests ran counter to
those of the true Persian. In most Eastern countries the aristocracy
and official body have no sympathy with the inferior classes: in
this division is very strongly marked. Amongst the lower

1881. PERSIA AND ITS PASSION DRAMA. 637

classes of a European country we look for earnestness and conviction ;
in the East, where character is more volatile and despotism unmiti-
gated, we cannot expect to meet with these qualities in the same
degree, but there are features in the constitution and social composi-
tion of Persia not to be found in other Mahomedan countries.

* The most absolute sovereigns of Asia are the slaves of public
opinion,' says Sir John Malcolm; and the monarch of Persia i»
exceptionally so, though her government has been called the most
absolute of monarchies. Externally it justifies such a description.

'To maiiitain on opinion/ says Sadee, 'contnirj to the judgment of the king^
were to steep our hands in our own blood ; verily, were the king to say '' This is
night," it would hehove us to reply " There are the moon and the seven stars."'

The king's will is law. A passionate or drunken word may cause
to fisdl the head of the highest in the land. The circumstance of
the Shah's court is truly despotic, for he is waited on by magnates
who literally perform the menial offices indicated by the title?
of European courtiers. When the Shah experiences that desire
to wander which is the degenerate remnant of the nobler instinct
that moved his nomad ancestors, he travels in a magnificent pro-
gress like a flight of locusts spreading desolation through the land.
The poor man's fold is plundered, his crops are gathered, his store
of sustenance for barren months impounded for the table of the
royal wanderer ; and, in the words of Sadee, ^ firom the plunder of
five eggs made with the sanction of the king, his troops stick a thou-
sand fowls on their spits,' so that the advent of the sovereign among
his people is far from a matter of rejoicing to them. They have
been known to prevail on him to stay at home with offers of money.
After the fashion of the Tudors, the reigning Shah makes away with
possible rivals, or leaves them utterly wrecked and crippled for life.
In this respect, however, the Kajars have reversed the policy of their
ancestors. They no longer immure their princes in the Zenana till
they become innocuous victims of sensuality, but send them as
governors to the provinces, to plunder the people and save the coffers
of the State.^ In the hands of the Persian despot rests unlimited
patronage, and office is only coveted as a means of emolument.
However there is another side to this dreary picture. The people
possess weapons and safeguards which can in a measure protect them
from oppression. The State ministers are men of low origin elevated
by the king, and subject without restriction to deposition : accordingly
this precariousness in their tenure of the seals renders them to a certain
degree circumspect in their exactions, for the whole nation has firee

' Mr. Anderson relates a significant anecdote iUostrating the present policy of
the Shah. When ZU-i-Snltan (Nasr-nd-deen*s eldest son but not the heir-apparent)
presented, as is onstomary, his sword to the Shah, on the renewal of his appointment
as Qovemor of Irak, it was inscribed with the pregnant motto

< The keenest edge wins the prize.*

638 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. April

access to the person of the king ; and the reigning Shah^ having
usurped much of the power delegated by his predecessor to repiesen*
tatives, the despotic power of the throne has of late years become dis-
tinctly weakened.® Similarly the publicity of the courts of law provides
a considerable guarantee, even in Persia, against injustice ; and, lastly,
one of their most valuable privileges the people can command — ^the
good offices of the upper priesthood as mediators with the king* I
dall presently have to speak of the priesthood at greater length.

In the larger towns there is a system of trade-guilds, each presided
over by an officer elected by the members of the guild, subject to the
king's approval : these appointments, when once made, are hardly ever
cancelled or interfered with. The chief magistrates are also selected
from the inhabitants, and must of necessity be acceptable to them in
order to be able to carry on their duties. They are often, it is true,
compelled to be the instruments of oppression, but their sympathies
are regulated by the interests which they have in common with their
fellow-citizens. Sir John Malcolm considered the liberties of the towns-
people in Persia well secured. Yet throughout that country the
poorer classes have substantial grievances. The war against the en-
croaching desert can only be waged with the aid of money and per-
severance, neither of which essentials is forthcoming in Persia. The
proprietor of lands on the fiat eastern coasts of England knows what
it is to battle with the encroaching sea, but the desert is a fiur more
deadly and insidious enemy. Every inducement is given by the
Government and encouragement by the Church, but the desert is still
advancing. ' The best districts in Persia,' says a traveller, ^ are but
an oasis surrounded with desert.' And it is at the expense of those
struggling combatants with drought and famine that the State main**
tains itself, and that inducements are furnished to office-seekers.
The noblemen and the richer merchants are almost privileged classes.
But the spirit of the town populations, only in a lesser d^;Tee sufferers
from extortion, has lately received a new element of freedom. In
the victorious days of Persia, her troops were chieSy recruited from
the nomad tribes. Soldiers drawn from this source had fifteen centuries
before excited the admiration of Alexander the Grreat, and still create
a favourable impression on the minds of the military instmctors
furnished by the civilised powers of Europe. But Persia has ceased
to be a military power, and the occupation of these tribes is gone.
Fath Ali broke the power of the Iliats, and the great Khans have dis^
appeared. The Persian tribes never had the riches of the Turk tribes,
and soon fell into abject poverty. They therefore graduated towards
the towns, where in recent years they have established themselves as

' The present Shah is aware of the instability of his power, and possesses a
morbid, but not unwarrantable, dread of the antagonism of despotism and knowledge.
This feeling he not long ago evinced by suddenly recalling from Paris thirty or forty
young Persians, sent there to reap the benefits of Western civilisation.

1881. PERSIA AND ITS PASSION DRAMA. 639

citizens/ and submit, for the sake of employment and 'a livelihood, to
the same restrictions as the townspeople themselves. Yet such an
acquisition *of new blood has given a stimulus ond breadth to their
endeavomrs after emancipation. This composite body finds its natural
leaders in the merchant class, who are but little amenable to the fiscal
government, and who, having spent a considerable portion of their
lives in civilised countries, are fully cognisant of the backward con-
dition of their own country. Their sentiments, if not their interests,
are antagonistic to the sentiments and interests of the aristocracy and
the G-ovemment. Another element of freedom is the liberty of speech
which all classes seem to possess.

The exercise of these influences on the lower classes does not, how-^
ever, appear to have diminished their religious belief. It would seem
as if, on the contrary, their intolerance towards the infidel was still
on the increase, while the hatred of Sheea for Sunnee, however much
it may be mitigated amongst the upper classes, has not abated its
ancient virulence amongst the people. The old quarrel between the
Imams and the followers of Yazeed remains as fresh in their minds
as if it had happened yesterday. The Persian archer, when he shot his
arrow into the air, Chardin tell us, cried * May this go to the heart]of

Omar I' so, in*^ modem days, the streets of the Persian towns echo
to the monotonous chaunt of the workmen, invoking curses on the

head of Omar.

Giye me a brick then, my life,

sings the master-bricklayer,

And may the cune of God light on Omar !
Give me another now, my darling I
Omar will not haye any luck*

The woes of Alee and the wickedness of Omar, Mr. Eastwick tells us,
now form the subject-matter of the songs of itinerant minstrels. Their
own hardships, and the natural disadvantages of their country, com-
bine no doubt to keep the love of Alee and his followers in the minds
of the people. Mr. Arthur Arnold gives a striking instance of this
affection and veneration for the Imams.

I showed a sketch of Earbal& (he eays) to our aervants and to a knot of by-
standers, telling them what it represented. Immediately the picture was in danger :
all tried to kiss it, to press it to their lips, and cried, ' Ah Husain ! ' with an ex-
presnon of deep regret more true and tender in the ardour of sincerity than one
expects to find uttered over a grave wMch has been closed for twelve centuries^

Husain is indeed the favourite of all Persia : love for him seems to
have'superseded veneration for the founder of Mahomedanism.

In the lower classes, then, in contradistinction to the higher social
grades, we find earnest convictions together with a vague and hardlj

640 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. April

realised desire for freedom favoured by local instiiations : and we
may reasonably expect therefore to discover traces of am extended
popular movement. Such a movement i» undoubtedly being aooom-
plished, gradually and in silence, even while I write: the chief evidence
afforded of it is the gradual transfer of popular influence from thehigher
ranks of the priesthood to the lower, and its chief symptom the devebp-
ment of the Passion-play.

The full significance of this shifting of the seat of popularity can-
not be understood without a glance at. these two bodies of ecclesiasticfl.
Zoroastrianism was a hierarcliy — ^Monotheism grafted on to Magian
sacerdotalism. The importance of the priest is everywhere insisted
on in the early history of Iran : it is laid down in the Sudder that
good deeds are worth nothing without the approval of the priest as a
passport to Paradise : the great king Ardasheer placed the highest
value on an alliance between Church and Throne. Notwithstanding,
however, that Persia stands alone among Mahomedan nations in this
respect, the hierarchical and temporal powers have never amal-
gamated. The priesthood maintains an existence apart. It has a
separate legal system over which it presides. It abstains from active
politics. It shrinks from interference with the decrees of the temporal
courts ; but when it tenders its advice to the Shah that advice is seldom,
if ever, neglected. Its dwellings are sanctuaries and its influence has
often lightened the burden of cities. The principal ecclesiastics an
called ^ moojtahids,' and in them alone the chief privileges of the
order are vested. All travellers agree in according them ilie highest
respect ; even Kaempfer, who is not otherwise complimentary to those
priests, says the title of moojtahid ^ is only granted to him who
is master of seventy sciences, and even then he must be held in the
highest consideration both by the king and the people/

But the decline of the priesthood has long ago conunenoed and
dates from the days of Nadir Shah, who pillaged the (3iurch to pay
his soldiery. Any change in their position of later years may \»
ascribed to the want experienced by the people for a class of in-
structors who would stand in closer relation to them than the
canonised priesthood. The immediate cause of the perception
of this want is not apparent, but in all probability is owing to
influence from the West, to which the lower classes would pre-
sumably be easily accessible ; for though the aristocracy receive an
imperfect education, disproportionate to their social position^ the
lower classes, as such, are, it is said, well instructed. Thus, while
the upper priesthood have gradually separated themselves from con-
tact with Uie people and drawn closer to the throne, their places have
been occupied by the popular friars, the Said Booze Khans. These
courtiers of the people did not receive a good character from Sir John
Malcolm at the beginning of the century ; and from a glance at this
passage it will be readily perceived that a change has taken place

1881. PERSIA AND ITS PASSION DRAMA. 641

since his day. The Said Kooz^ Khans, he says, consist of pretended
descendants of the 'Profhet, moollas who lay fictitious claims to learn-
ing, and hajjees who have gained a sort of cheap sainthood by having
visited the holy city of Mecca. ^ Take the ass of Jesus to Mecca ; on
its return it will still be an ass,' Sadi remarks of the Hajjees. In the
words, then, of the English Herodotus, ^ the lower ranks of the priest-
hood are seldom entitled to that praise which has been bestowed on
some of the superior branches. They neither enjoy, nor can they ex-
pect popular fame. • • • So that we can believe that there is truth
in those accusations which represent them as being equally ignorant,
corrupt, and bigoted.' No historian of to-day could write these words
of the supporters, the authors, the originators of the Paasion-play of
the Muharram.^ That it owes its origin to the Said Booze Khans I
will endeavour to make evident.

The dramatic element was existent in Persia centuries before it
acquired the dramatic form. The baUet performed 'in Ghardin's
time was in itself a mute drama, and as complete as the similar re-
presentations in Turkestan at which Mr. Schuyler lately assisted.
This seems to have survived in a curious dance of sixty-four of
Husain's relations jnentioned by Mr. Morier in his description of the
tazyah in 1818. The story-tellers, too, presented in their own persons
studies of many characters and passions ; so vivid, indeed, were their
impersonations that they moved to laughter and tears persons igno-
rant of the language in which their tales were told.^^ Then there
were the Marionettes, who, long before flesh and blood, trod the
Persian stage. Of these the principal is the Punch, Kachal Pahlawan,
of whom M. Chodzko gives a very interesting account. Kachal
Pahlawan derives his name from his baldness, and is curiously typical

* There is no contradiction here, since the Passion-play had at this period attained
little popularity, and Malcolm himself says that the Persians possess nothing worthy
be name of drama.

>• Monsieur Ferrier gives so striking a description of a story-telling Siud, that I
cannot forbear quoting it in extenao : ' A tale indifferently well told, though most im-
probable in fact, will interest a Persian intensely, and if in a sermon the Synd
thorooghly anderstands his business and arranges his subject skilfolly, developing it
by degrees, and in a way to rouse little by little the emotions of his hearers, which he
will do easily by dexterously throwing in the marvellous and the sentimental, he reaches
the climax : his voice falters, he is overcome with feigned emotion, and a deluge of
tears is seen to flow down the cheeks of his audience. His own are always at his
command ; is he telling a tale, he is sure to shed them at the proper moment ;
for example, when his hero sprains his ankle, or wants to smoke and thero is no
kalian ; bat, if he is dying of thirst, or falls into the hands of the enemy, oh, then the
groans and lamentations are past belief ; the men cry like calves, the women like does,
and the children bawl loud enough to make a deaf man hear ; and the unfortunate
victim who, like myself, is condemned to listen to aU this trash, has no resource but
to 0top his ears, or resign himself to be kept awake by these scenes of desolating
grief. The tale or sermon finished, the Syud proposes a cheer for the Prophet, and
after that, one for Ali, the same for Houssein, for Hassan, for Abbass, for all the
tainted Imams (and there is a long list), and lastly one for himself the Syud.*

Vol. IX.— No. 50. X X

642 THE NINETEENTH OENTURT. AptU

of the Persian* He is the Persian Tartuffe, and the penKHuficatioii
of a people in whom thirteen centuries of oppression have prodaoed
hypocrisy, dexterity of evasion, and suppleness of conscience. And
lastly, this actual dramatic form has existed from beyond historical
times in the strolling buffoons, the Eastern ^'ori^Zeura or Zoot^ee, ^hoae
representations are varied with apes, bears, and jugglers, and whose
impromptus bristle with local allusions, personal bons moto, and im-
proprieties of word and action. But in Persia and throughout the
East, as in medisBval Europe, these illiterary perfoxmanoes se^n to
have had litUe or no influence on the rise of the drama proper, whidi
originated out of the Muharram ceremonies established ne&dy athou*
sand years ago. The burning of the body of Omar ftimished one of the
ehief interests of these celebrations, and still survives. It is mentioned
by Sir Antony Shirley in 1601 : Abbas the Great,

first to extirpate intrinsicke factions, then to 'secure himself more firmly sgiiiBt
the Turke . . . had in use, once a yeere^ with greate solemnitie to barne poUid?,
as maine Hereticks, the effigiea of Omar and Ussen; then doth he cause ids gxeit
men publichely (in sooine of their institution) to goe with a Plagon of 'Wine,
carried hy a Footman, and at every village where they see any assemUie of people
to drink ; which himself he also useth, not for the love of wine, but to 8caiida£»
so much more the contrarie relifnon, that by such a profaning of it they may veir
the respect of it out of the people's hearts.

Another account of the burning of Omar is given by Herb^ about a
quarter of a century lata:, and contains a mention of the origin of the
Passion-play in the prominence of the part played by the ' Caddy ' who
< bawles out a pathetique oration*' But neither this nor .the etcefriing
quaintness of the style justifies its insertion in this already too
lengthy paper. A more pertinent quotation may be made from the
^orks of Delia Valle, who travelled about the same time as Hecbeit.
The entire population is dressed in black, the streets are filled witli
naked fematics, some painted black, others red, singing ' the praise
•of Houssein, and descriptions of his martyrdom ; beating time with
pieces of wood or ribs of certain animals, which prodace a melancholy
£ound, and dancing all the while in the midst of the crowd.' At
noon ^ a muUa of the race of Mahomet ' mounts an elevated pulpt
and proclaims the virtues of Houssein, recounting the circumstances
of his death, ^ exhibiting occasionally to the people, extremely atten-
tive to what he says, certam figures repreaentrng the circumsUuMS
to which he aUudeSj and endeavouring to excite eommiseixdum and
tea/rs. This ceremony is likewise copied in the mosques and the most
public parts of the streets, which are adorned and illuminated fsx tk
purpose^ the audience, all the while bathed in teaxs, sighing and
moaning, beating their breasts, and displaying the greatest afflictiaD,
frequently repeat, with much expression of agony, these last verses of
one of their poetic monodies : * Ya Hassaun I Shah Hussein ! '

1881. PERSIA AND ITS PASSION DRAMA. 643

We have in these quotations the history of the Passion-play very
plainly indicated. The Persian nature is, as Mr. Morier says, pecu-
liarly adapted for the drama: this is evident from the practices
which existed in centuries gone by. The popular sentiment clung to
the Muharram celebrations, the people felt themselves the modem
types of the Imams, and the Saids were required to excite those
feelings of commiseration in which generous pity was mingled with
selfish complaining. Whether the discourses of the preachers some-
times failed of their object, or whether a rivalry between them led
them to adopt other means more effective than words, is a matter of
conjecture ; we find them, however, appealing to the eye with images
of the Imams, and such a presentation was no novel idea ; for many
years the eflSgy of the hated Omar had been burnt with savage exul-
tation by the populace. Then in the latter half of the last century
we read of the Passion-play in the travels of Francklin as a recognised
institution. The other point to which I drew attention, viz. that the
Said Booze Khans were the originators of the Passion-play, I think,
admits of no doubt. The higher priesthood has constantly inveighed
against these performances, nominally because the representation of
life is contrary to the principles of the Koran and brings ridicule on
their religion, but really because they perceive that the popularity of
the Saids involves the decline of their own importance. Stringent
measures have been attempted to suppress the tazyah : the present
Shah actually issued a proclamation to that effect, but it was without
result. It has become part and parcel of the national life : in times
of illness or calamity a number of tazyahs are vowed to Husain,
just as Soman Catholics promise masses to the Virgin: and the
ministers, to whom popularity is of paramount importance, like the
Greek and Boman politicians of old, make bids with tazyahs for the
favour of the people.

I may add another sign of change in the popular temperament,
which is more significant than it at first appears. Chardin and
travellers of his time note the costume of the Persian as bright and
full of colour ; but, according to the descriptions of travellers of
the present day, the dress of the lower classes has now adopted a
sombre tone.

Whatever direct refining influence may be exercised on the tassyah,
it must of necessity come from within : for, though the takyahs have
profited already by imitation of the technique of Western theatres,
the Persian play is a thing so peculiar in itself^ that any modification
of it in the direction of our manner of dramatic representation must
lae degradation.

As to the literary qualities of the tazyah, we find various esti-
xnatea recorded. Francklin speaks of the elegance of its language,
JMalcolm and Morier are contemptuous over it ; M. Crobineau so lap-
-turous that M. Chodzko considers him suffering from the common

X X 2

644 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. April

malady of translators. The tazyah, it seems, is written iq the simple
lang^uage which speaks to the hearts of the people, with the same
avoidance of Arabisms that distinguished the patriotic poets ; and,
though to our ears its style may seem overburdened with florid imagery
and involution, we must not forget that these are characteristics of
all Eastern literature. We fail, however, to discover therein the
grander elements of the Attic drama, or the rude but lifelike touches
of humour and character that enlivened the mediaeval molalities of
Europe ;^^ and since, like the Ober-Ammergau play, the tazjah re-
solves itself into a succession of pictorial scenes, there is an entire
absence of that forcible language which accompanies definite action.
The only relief which is afforded to the ^ wo, wo, unutterable wo'
of the whole representation is to be found in some pretty touches
of child-life and the arrogant boasting of the Syrian enemies. In
the irresponsibility of the dramatists — who, being an inferior oider
of clergy, write anonymously for fear of sacerdotal interference— the
Tazyah is deprived of the ameliorating agency that arises from the
rivalry of authorship : yet, the Shah and the aristocracy hating
become its patrons, men of real literary taste have been found to
revise the versions which have become their property. The diiect
action of collective criticism by the audience on the text is peculiazl;
effective ; as, throughout the performance, the whole body of spec-
tators is expected to wail and weep, any portion of the text which
fails of producing this result is condemned, and in the succeeding
representation gives place to a passage of a more stirring natoie.

Quand Tautel eat sooill^, la douleur est rencens.

This catering for tears is not, of course, an unmixed good, from a
literary point of view, but it brings together the auditorium and the
stage in a manner incompatible with our civilisation and mixed
audiences.

Another proof of the sensibility of the Persian, and one which
relates to the necessity of purification of the manner, as well as of
the matter, of the words uttered by the heroes of the tazyah, is the
fact that the sympathetic characters speak in music, while the antipa-
thetic personages are not allowed to ascend above the level of ordi-
nary speech. (The same peculiarity is observed in the Chinese
drama.) This curious distinction, paralleled in some degree h;

" Mr. MouDsey describes a oomic scene in which Yazecd is seated at a table covered
with medicine bottles, attempting to core himself of indigestion. His eflforti an
however, fruitless, until a messenger enters bearing the head of Hosain on aplittei,
at which sight Yazeed's malady vanishes. There appears, however, to be no comic in-
tention in this scene, which is a popular one. The writer of the eloquent article is
the January number of the Edinburgh Review j 1880, remarks : ' There is no attempts
individualise characters. They are all alike and talk alike. The only trace of ongin-
ality we can find is in the child Sukaina, who is perpetually screaming and defying
all her aunt Zaineb's attempts at consolation.

1881. PERSIA AND ITS PASSION DRAMA. 645

Shakespeare's use of prose and verse, necessitates a recognition by the
audience of the merits of different performers. A boy with a good
voice earns a handsome income, and, for the time being, is almost as
much a notoriety as a Western histrionic genius, though boys are
associated with ^ the only really weak part of the performance,' the
female rdles.^^ But beyond this there is nothing, not even applause,
to give prominence to the individual actor, ^ on ne temoigne jamais
une admiration venant de Tesprit.' Were this not so the imperso-
nator of the holy Imam would become an object of interest as well
as the Imam himself, and the drama would speedily be secularised.
The peculiar position of Ober>Ammergau has enabled it hitherto to
resist the influence of idolisation, and thereby to preserve the saored
character of its Passion-drama. There is, however, one person con-
nected, though indirectly, with the representation on whom the
Persian audience vents its approval ; he is the modem representative
of the choragus; on him the success of the whole performance
hinges. He does not retire behind the scenes when the play begins,
but remains to form the connecting link between the actors and the
audience ; he makes audible comments and explanations ; he solicits
the pity of the spectators where he considers an exhibition of pity
due ; he arranges everything ; he perfects the children in their parts,
places them on the stage, buckles on the swords of the actors, and
supplies them with anything they may require. He is recognised as
the mainspring of the tazyah, and his person is sacred. He is called
' oostad ' or master, a title which retains something of the simple
reverence of the olden time. It is an act of piety, and a part of the
performance itself, to present him with costly gifts. Many a rich
shawl is handed to him in sight of the whole audience.

The excessive impressionability of the Persian precludes the
necessity of any attempt at realism on the stage, and thus, while
facilitating the expression of approval and disapproval, swamps the
Belf-critical faculty, and creates a uniformly low standard of literary
excellence. There is an entire absence of illusive effect in the
dramatic accessories ; and though here and there we find evidence of a
feeling for sesthetic imity, all artistic propriety seems to be sacrificed to
the attainment of barbaric magnificence.'' A vague and inharmonious

*' The Persian mnsic, which, as in all religions drama, heightens the effect pro-
daced by the representation, is of a very simple character, though the principal rSles
are highly ornamented, and therefore necessitate considerable execution on the part
of the performer. In the beginning of European musical history, and at the time of
the Crusades, there can be little doubt that many of its salient features were
borrowed from the East ; Persia, for example, had developed a system analogous to
that in use at the present day. Since then, however, she has made little progress in
the musical art, and there, as throughout the East, the study of harmony is not
practised.

>• The poles which surround the stage are covered with skins of wild beasts, and
Adorned with warlike weapons.

646 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. April

splendotir reigns throughout' the tazyah; and the actors— even the
Prophet himself, who was wont to attire himself in the coarsest
gannents — are clad in the costliest and most brilliant appaieL There
is no attempt to maintain the illusion of entries and exits, or
differences of place and time ; a distance of miles is represented bj
steps ; an actor never quits the sakooy but only withdraws to the side.
A mark of distinction is conferred on the hero of the particular scene
enacted by his being permitted to sit on a couch hy the side of
Husain. No scenery is possible, since there is no background to the
stage. Chopped straw represents the sand of the desert, which is
poured on the head in sign of grief, and a copper basin the waters of
the Euphrates. It is evident that in a theatre where half the
audience are gazing at the actor^s back the finer touches of acting
would be wasted, and it is curious to remark that, when we aie
spectators of acting in such or similar conditions, our intellect does
not demand a greater artistic perfection than that of which the
circpnstances admit. This truth lies at the bottom of all progress
in the histrionic art. We are not, therefore, astonished that the
actors of the tazyah do not pretend to the science of the professional
artists of Europe, but possess as their sole accomplishments grace of
action and resonance of voice, which, combined with a natural simpli*
city and earnestness, render deeply affecting, even to persons ignorant
of their language, the woes of ' the Family of the Tent.' They even
carry their parts in their hands and refer to them when their memory
fails them. It is with no feeling for art or verisimilitude that the
Sheea attends the Muharram celebration ; he is no rational being at this
season, merely a fanatic. He goes to weep. Husain, he beUeves,
< will intercede in favour of every one who has shed a single tear for
him.' The representatives of the brutal Syrian soldiers themselveB
burst into weeping as they insult the holy Imams. From the earliest
times the mooUaa have preached the value of such an offering. Tears
so shed were collected by the priests as a sovereign remedy against
death. The sole object, therefore, of the dramatists is to elidt ' the
passionate music of tears.'

Lea sanglots (says M. Ghodzko), tout auad contagieux en TOrient qae le rm
chez noi]B, devinrent de plus en plus bruyants et finirent par le cii spontan^ on,
pour mieux dire, par un rug^ssement d'un millier dlndividua qui nona saisit d'e&)i*

No artistic consciousness can reside in the minds of people so irrational
as to incur the risk of death by suffering their bodies to be baiied
in the earth in order to represent the decapitated Imams, and vho
cannot restrain themselves from lynching the impersonators of the
enemies of their country.'^ Fanaticism is a dangerous, if not sd
insuperable, antagonist to any refining artistic influence, since it hcb,

<« In the little town of Damawand a flght annually takes place in which serer&I
persons are killed. But whoever dies during the Muharram goes to Fandise.

188L PERSIA AND ITS PASSION D.RAMA. 647

and militates against^ the refiectiye quality without which progress is
impossible.

The only question which seesni now to^ remain for> disoussion is,
whether' the &naticism will, oar -c^n^ ever be toa^d dolm- into thee
moderation requisite for deTek^ment^ Professor Lewis -Campbell
has truly said : ^ Intense participation in a great cause, as in Dantei
and Milton' .... is 'but little favourable to purely dxamaticr
art.' . t

We find an upper class supporting the representation of the Passion-
play, not 80 much &om motives of patriotism as from a selfish desire
to obtain popularity. It is possible that this feeling, which is entirely
removed from fanaticism, may, first from the necessity of rivalling
contemporaries, next from a true feeling for art engendered by such
rivalry, familiarise the lower classes with the moderation necessary
for the development of self-criticism. It may be, too, that the
merchants who preside over the practical working of the Muharram
celebrations will form for themselves a higher ideal, based on the
master-pieces of foreign literatures, and so influence the people. But
this is mere speculation. We must, however, signalise the absence
of a great central metropolis which, in the case of all great European
dramas, has always famished a focussing centre and school of improve-
ment. At present we can only console ourselves by pointing to the
beautiful mosques at Koom, Ispahan, and other Persian cities, to the
classic ruins of Persepolis, and — ^if the conjecture of Major Murdoch
Smith be correct — to the famous Alhambra itself, as evidences of
the artistic capabilities of Persia. The Muharram Play is not the
cry of a people raising itself from oppression ; it is not the outcome
of regret for greatness that is past. The legends of the pre-Moham-
medan kings and of the Persian Hercules have no place therein. It
is a passive complaint for the misery of the present, the dcemon of a
people that has discovei*ed its own degradation. Art cannot exist on
grief alone : it requires quiescence for its development, and quiescence
implies a degree of prosperity. If we wish, therefore, to prognosti-
cate &vourably with regard to the drama in Persia, we must forget
that its mosques and minarets are tumbling to decay, and that its
precious tiles are trampled under foot by the passing traveller ; we
must forget the encroachments of the desert and the ravages of
famine, and remember that it is still the desire of great nobles and
influential ministers to leave behind them public works as memorials,
and that the Persian may in the few weeks of spring, at Ispahan
where nature assumes her loveliest garb, and around the classic walls
of Shiraz, amongst the shubberies of cypress and orange with their
beautiful latticework of light and shade, and their long and lovely
vistas terminated by lordly mountains, together with the vision of
possible happiness and content, store up materials for a literature

648 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. kfA

that will deal with the bright as well as the gloomy side of
life.

The great danger is, that a yidons and effete administration nukj
not survive to yield gradually to the pressure exerted upon it by an
expanding and unanimous people, but may be swept away by asoddoi
invasion or revolution; and that the palace of art, its foundations
undermined, should collapse, and the work of an age of peace be swept

away by the violence of a moment.

«

LlOKEL TeKBTSON.

1881. 649

THE CHILD^CRIMINAL.

What shall we do with the child-criminal ? '

This is the unanswered question of the day. Our Home Secretary,
alive to its momentous import and the urgent need that it should
be soon and satisfactorily answered, has recently invited opinions and
suggestions respecting it from numerous quarters; but up to the
present moment efiforts appear to have been for the most part futile
to find the true solution of as difficult a problem as ever yet perplexed
humanity.

' How shall we order the child, and how shall we do unto him ? *
aniioualy asks the politician of the philosopher, and the philosopher,
in his turn, of the philanthropist. But the philosopher's brain,
tJiough exercised profoundly, has not yet yielded satisfactory response,
and the heart of the philanthropist, stirred to its depths, sighs only,
' It is not in me.'

One fiu;t is indubitable, viz.: that letting the child-criminal
alone wajo offers no security for his letting society alone hereafter.
The quick-eyed, ragged urchin, who just now transferred some
trifling article from the shop-window to his trousers pocket, will in
a few years (if his present pilfering be not prevented) develop into
the desperate burgby*, who will find a dozen ways of intruding him-
self into your dwelling by any other entrance than its front door.
The squalid child of severe Mother Street, driven by hunger-gnawings
to commit a petty theft for the break&st which his search among
the refuse heaps in the gutter fails to furnish, will soon, if unbe-
firiended and unfed, master the easy rule of progression in crime.
For example, a young acquaintance of ours, late in the Homerton
Truant Scho6l, graduated, in a fortnight, from stealing twopence to
taking a paraffin lamp, and from taking a paraffin lamp to driving
off in a horse and cart not his own. And when, from constant
practice, the child^s nimble fingers have attained dexterity in the art
of thieving, he will not only brag of his exploits among his young
companions, but also initiate them in the tricks of his trade. Thus
he becomes ' captain ' of a gang of child-rogues, who drink in with
avidity his thrilling tales of hair-breadth escapes from shopmen's and
policemen's clutches, and eagerly covet similar experiences. Some

1

650 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. April

follow him, chiefly from that boyish love of adventure which a career
of petty theft furnishes so many opportunities to gratify, while otben
join the band simply to satisfy the natural craving of empty stomacbg
for food otherwise not forthcoming. For instance, ^ What did you
steal ? ' we once inquired of a child, whose appearance fiiiled alto-
gether to suggest starvation. ^ I stole half a crown, and spent it in
sweets, and gave them to boys,' was the prompt reply. ' And what
did you take ? ' we asked of a boy, of half-famished expreBdon of
countenance. ^ Please, mum, I stole a lot of sausages, and ate them
raw,^ was the answer.

ifet the sad, half-famished, juvenile offender must no more be
permitted to pilfer his daily bread, if we can hinder him, than the
better fed, high-spirited child, who climbs your garden-wall with cat-
like agility, may be suffered to rob you, because he steals more
from love of boyish enterprise than of the sour apples which he
flings to his companions, agape with admiration below.

And thus we watch for each, and we pounce upon each, and as
one struggles, and the other snivels, in our firm grasp, we look almost
hopelessly into each other's faces, asking the still perplexing question,
' iVhat shall we do with them — how shall we deal with them ? ' If
the court is sitting, the usual course is to take them at once before
a magistrate, to whom Section 10 of the Summary Jurisdiction Act
gives power to adjudge each a whipping of ^ six strokes with a birch
rod, either in addition to, or instead of, any other punishmeDl'
But, if the magistrate be a humane man, he will probably regard the
pale, thin child with a perplexed air, very doubtful of the potency of
a whipping to prevent a boy from living to steal, who steals to lire.
Possibly, also, the words of the wise man may occur to him, ' Men
do not despise a thief, if he steal to satisfy his soul when he is
hungry.' He has less compunction in dealing with the lively, high-
spirited offender. This is precisely the boy who does not eare for a
flogging, so he gets one, and goes whistling out of court to play his
pranks again on society at his earliest convenience. But with regard
to the half-starved child, what can the magistrate do with him ? The
inquiry, *What shall he not do with him?' is far less bewildering;
and we would earnestly exclaim, do not send him to prison, and, above
all, do not order him to an industrial school, if he be a litde boy, until
you have industrial schools solely for the reception of Ztftfeboya;
but of such industrial schools more hereafter.

We say, do not send him to prison, if you would not hinder the
advance cf civilisation and humanity; for, despite the arrogant
utterances of magisterial pomposity which have reached us from some
of the provinces, we cannot be satisfied that all the fiats of our
justices were unexceptionally wise which condemned 7,416 childrai
in the year just expired to breathe the tainted atmosphere of pri«»
life. Hundreds of these were offenders under twelve years of

1881. THE CHILD^CRIMINAL. 651

age, some of them little fellows barely able to bring their matted
heads and tear-stained &ces to the level of the dock^ — creatures of
neglect rather than of crime, living only to struggle, because every
struggle was needed to live. Only very recently we heard a magis-
trate aver that children brought before him for theft and othet
offences were sometimes so small he was obliged to order them to be
^ lifted up ' that he might see them, and that occasionally so great
was their terror of being locked up in prison cells that the gaol
officials humanely placed them in the infirmary, feariog, if they did
otherwise, the children might fall into fits through fright and be
found dead in the morning. And if a large percentage of such
children are adepts in the pilfering art, it is because many of them
have no alternative but to steal, if they would not starve. The
children of the very poor are not naturally more predisposed to dis-
honesty than the cherished children of the affluent, but their tempta-
tions to the commission of this sin are more pressing and abundant
in proportion to their larger need. The babe born of a besotted
woman in a dismal den, where no ray of sunlight penetrates the rag«
stuffed window, is quite as guileless, tender, and innocent a creature,
as susceptible in time of good impressions, and as capable of attaining
moral excellence, under efficient training, as the infant in costly
cradle, whose father is a peer of the realm. Let those two children
change places and conditions. Take the coarse wrap firom the beggar's
brat, and robe it in cambric and lace. Guard the babe from the
htrceauTiette with holy and happy surroundings, and

Shed in rainbow hues of light
A halo round the Good and Right
To tempt and charm the baby's sight.

Lict it, as it grows, associate only with well-taught and well-bred
children, sheltered carefully from contact with the vicious and the
mean, and we hesitate not to affirm that when that child becomes a man
you shall fail to trace upon his honest brow the faintest stain of infamous
origin, or brand of ignoble birth. On the other hand, let the infant
of high degree, by some terrible mischance, inhale only the impure
atmosphere of vicious indigence among the brutal and miserable. Let
him suffer from hunger, cold, experiencing none of the countless endear-
ments which should ever fall to the lot of early childhood. A little crea-
ture, never without care, let him as he older grows listen only to the
corrupt conversation of the depraved and the abandoned.

With ready and obedient care

To learn the tasks they teach him there —

Black sin for lesson^ oaths for prayer.

LfCt him be cuffed, and kicked, and scolded, till he become almost in-
sensible to rating and callous to blows. Let him be driven out into

662 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. April

the cold street to ateai^ if be cannot heg^ the breakfast that none pro-
vide him, and see then if, despite his noble birth, he will not prefer to
pilfer rather than siitfer the pangs of hunger. Mark if he will notseize
the milk- can on the door-step (meant to be presently taken la) aad
gulp down its contents as rapidly and cimningly as any low-born delin-
quent, and make off with feet as nimble to escape capture. Only leave
that child among evil companions to pursue a pernicious course un-
checked, and though he first saw the light in a ducal mansion* all too
soon he may develop into the degraded felon, with slouching gait and
hangdog expression of countenance. Vice is a heritage as surely and
equally bequeathed to the children of the so-called ^ better classes' as
to the offspring of the poor ; and if the former have no recollection,
as they older grow, of the fields ' where cockles grow instead of barley,*
it is that they were early led from them by virtue's path inco healthier
pastures, led by holy teachers, wise counsellors, and good companions.
Crime contains contagion that is speedily communicated by contact,
and let us not then too hastily censure an unfortunate child for
sickening morally amid the pestilential exhalations of a dissolute
locality. But when he has so sickened, and the malady is virul^t
enough to taint a whole district, let us be less anxious to deal out
punishment to the sin-stricken child than to discover how best we
may treat and isolate him, with the double object of preserving otheis
from infection, and securing his own moral restoration. Therefore
we rejoice that the public mind is stirring and the pubUc voice pro-
testing against the mistaken policy of committing young offenders to
gaol in the belief that such a measure must be remedial of crime.
Crime in the bud, which might be nipped in the hud, becomes crime
full-blown, if the young plant be placed in a hot-house of moral un-
healthiness ; therefore it is not desirable that naughty little children
with the imitative faculty strong and active within them should be
early acquainted with the evil ways of adult criminals. It is not for
U8 to make young eyes and ears familiar with the debasing sights
and sounds which must occasionally be seen and heard wherever foil
fledged gaol-birds congregate ; for the impressionable heart of child-
hood is even more yielding to the hideous stamp of vice than to the
softer imprint of virtue, and vainly we shall essay hereafter to ob-
literate the deep disfiguring scar. We are aware that greater care
has been exercised of late in isolating children as far as possible from
adult criminals ; but despite precautionary measures, young offenders
often acquire in a gaol much objectionable knowledge.

But if we decline to lead young offenders through the hu^
gates of a prison, past dismal gratings, down long stone passages, to
dreary cells, to be introduced one day perchance, through having
imdergone imprisonment, as apt learners, to practised villains who
can strike with master-touch every note in the gamut of crime, and
who are able as willing to communicate their corrupt knowledge--

1881. THE CHILD'CRIMINAL. 653

if we will not commit them to gaol^ where shall we place them ? what
shall we do with them ? The great question with which we have to deal
is notj how shall we most severely punish the child-criminal ? but
how shall we soonest and most surely effect his reclamation ? If a neg-
lected urchin of seven or eight strays in a forbidden path, will a
hwchi/ag prevent his future wandering there, when you send him back
to tread it again, because you supply no guide to lead him into a safer
way ? The unhappy child of depraved parents, who breaks the law, will
not be reformed by an occasional monition or even a sound whipping ;
what he needs for such reformation is to be trained to good
behaviour under moral and religious influences ; and training is not
the result of spasmodic effort, but of a course of patient, continuous
exertion. And where is he to get this training — and from wham
shall he receive it ? Where f The damp cellar or gloomy garret,
which it were bitter irony to hallow and dignify by the name of
home, is not a place well adapted for the giving of such a course of
instruction ; nor, if the magistrate wisely remands the juvenile offender
to the workhouse, should he remain sufficiently long there to enter
upon it.

To the workhouse it appears to us, under existing circumstances,
best that he ahoiUd be remanded, isolated entirely for a few days (if
he deserve severe punishment) from the other children in an empty
room or cell, in which he should be furnished with some manual occu-
pation, and which he might be permitted to leave for half an hour,
morning and afternoon, during the children's schoolhours, to take exer-
cise in the airing-ground under the supervision of an adult pauper.
After two or three days, if his conduct be good, he might be allowed
to attend school, sitting somewhat apart from the rest of the scholars.
When, pending the sessions, the time of remand is lengthened (occa-
sionally lasting three months), if the child's behaviour has been uni-
formly good for three weeks, we see no objection to the treatment
being relaxed under continuous watchfulness. A child-criminal
should not be permitted (even in a workhouse) to sleep in the same
room with other children. His bed were better placed near some
trustworthy adult's, who would take charge of him at night.

For very young offenders solitary confinement is seldom desirable,
save for short periods during daylight hours. Darkness fills the cell
with imaginary terrors, all too real for the timid child, and per-
manent injury to the brain has frequently resulted from fright.

But as to the requisite training of such children, if hovel and
workhouse fail to furnish facilities for teaching them better habits
of life, where shall we educate them ?

And here, before we proceed further, let us remark that in this
paper we are treating solely of criminal children^ not young
persona.

Under the Summary Jurisdiction Act, a child remains a child

654 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Apa

under the age of twelve. A young person is a person who is of the
age of twelve and under sixteen. And for suitable establishments,
in which to commenoe the training process for reforming javenile
offenders (numbers of whom are only seven, eight, or nine yean of
age), we have at present searched in vain (it may be for lack of fuller
information) among the two hundred inspected reformatory and refuge
schools in England, Scotland, and Wales. Most that we have visited,
read of, and heard of, appear to us unsuitable^ and for this reason.
Little boys ^ found wandering,' lively children caught playing mis-
chievous pranks from sheer overflow of animal spirits, and children
of tender age, convicted of petty theft (theft in many cases perpe-
trated only to appease the pangs of hunger), are all relegated to
industrial schools without classification of age, or r^;ard to degree of
crime committed, there to herd with older offenders, many verging
on sixteen years of age, and experienced enough in the ways of evil
to tutor new-comers in vicious habits, of which they were in total
ignorance before entering the school. We would not for a moment
be so misunderstood as to allow our readers to doubt our cordial
sympathy with the philanthropic labours of many self-denying
managers of weUnsoiidAioted industrial schools.

We believe they are doing, and have done, a great and beneficent
work, in rescuing numbers of children firom degradation and crime,
and by subjecting them to salutary influences, under which they
learn to start afresh in the paths of honesty and usefulness. Yet we
.cannot but express our belief that the promiscuous intercourse of
children of tender years with 'young persons' of fifteen or sixteen
years of age is sorely prejudicial to the interests of the younger.

We would not soil our pages by doing more than hint at abomi-
nations that creep into schools through this mingling. Enough
that we are sufficiently aware of their deep gravity to fed that we
cannot be true to the children's interests if we pass them over
without that slight indication of their existence which may prompt
the good and thoughtful to the use of means which would make
corrupt practices impossible in industrial schools.

The small window in a master's chamber, through which he may
peer into the boys' long sleeping-apartment when noise or confusion
arouses him, is practically useless for complete supervision. Yet thi^
.supervision should be thorough and incessant by night as well as I7
day, because it is essential to the moral prosperity of a school where
criminal ^young persons ' and children are gathered under the same
roof. Therefore we shrink not from avowing our belief that if
these ^ young persons ' do not retire to rest in the aams rooms as
those occupied by labour and school master, and at the same hour,
the services of the night-watchman are as indispensable in their
dormitories as in the workhouse casual ward. It is more than
depressing to be compelled to fear that under the sorfiu^ sparide,

1881. THE CHILM3KIMINAL. 655

often described in inspeotors' reports, of < clean, bright, healthy, and
,well-cared«for children,' a dark under-current of secret vice may
silently flow. 'Do you talk after you go to bed? ' said a friend of
oars to a little fellow in an industrial schooL ' Oh yes/ was the
reply ; ' no one comes near us when we're in bed, and so the big boys
often get up and show us how they used to pick pockets ; ' and it
would be well for the little ones if their instruction in evil were
confined to picking pockets. Thus we turn reluctantly from many
industrial schools as at present arranged and governed, still in quest
of suitable trainers and suitable training institutions for juvenile
offenders. And what, let us inquire, are the indispensable require-
ments of a young child, in order that it may grow up virtuous, well*
behaved, and respectable ? They are but two in number — a goad
Toother and a decent home — and it may be superfluous to remark
that the two rarely exist apart. And if the good mother and the
decent home are absolutely necessary for his moral and physical
welfare, and he becomes an offender feom lack of either or both, is it
not plainly a pressing and a public duty to attempt the child's
zeformaticNDi by supplying the deficiency as &r as possible? And
can this be done more effectually than by the provision of artificial
advantages, closely resembling those he would have enjoyed had his
natural (or unnatural) mother and his home been of desirable char-
acter ? If a child be motherless, or worse than motherless, he yet
sorely needs and craves for a mother. K he be homeless (though
perchance not houseless), he still reqv/ires a home. Love of mother
is the strongest passion in a child's breast. Wilful, stubborn, and
disobedient though the girl or boy may be, or base and cruel the
abandoned mother's conduct, the love through all is still abiding.

Terrible and touching was the tale, and painfully illustrative of the
truth of our statement, which reached us a few months since from an
industrial school in the south of England. A boy, for some offence not
uncommon among neglected children, was sent from a wretched home
.and a drunken mother (so at least she was described) to the school
in question. There he so bitterly and continuously bemoaned his
separation firom her, that reason lost her balance, and the child was
.removed to a lunatic asylum. We. read a statement firom the doctor
who attended him, attributing his insanity solely to grief for enforced
separation from his mother. We are glad to add that when suffi-
ciently recovered to leave the asylum, his discharge was obtained and
he retiuned to his home.

And not one whit the less than well-nurtured children do so-
oalled ' waifs and strays ' stand in need of home comfort and mother-
care ; and if society would be free from the annoyance of grown-up
' waifs and strays ' hereafter, let it place them in early childhood
under the training of as good foster-mothers as can possibly be found
for them, in houses as much resembling plain family homes as it can
make them.

666 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Apttt

The low Yillains who insalt women, garotte and plunder, and
make lonely walks after dark unsafe, were once neglected little boys,
whose energies went into the wrong instead of the right direction,
and who became bad men as they are, because none deemed it worth
their while to provide them when young with shelter under good
women's care.

Beligion and education are attempting much, and doing aome
thi/ngj to thin the ranks of what are termed * the dangerous dafisea,'
and our industrial school reports inform us that a large percentage
of the children once in the schools are ^ doing well.' Yet we cannot
but be dubious of the well-^loing of many of the children so reported
on, and th^re will be scant lack of recruits to fill the gaps, if we do
not materially alter the treatment of the bulk of oiur neglected and
criminal children. It appears to us that institutions, closely resem*
bling family homes in their domestic arrangements, might Terr
usefully be provided for such children by the StatCj not in any case
by school boards* Members of school boards have already abundant
occupation in supervising the educational training of children who
have not ' lapsed into crime,' and a task of this amplitude may wdl
suffice them. There are other than themselves, specially gifted men
and women, social and moral reformers, peculiarly adapted to
undertake the reclamation of young offenders — men and women
wlio would engage in this important work con amoi^j regarding it
as their true vocation.

The annual reports of the cottage homes of Famingham for little
boys, and also those of the industrial homes of Mettray in France,
chronicle many happy results from the introduction of the funily
element into these institutions. In many respects we might Mow
their lead with advantage, although we believe that criminal
children under the ^ young person ' age would derive even larger
benefit from womanly care and management, whether boys or girls.

Homes, sufficiently large for the reception of fifty or sixty children
(of whom none should be above ten years of age when admitted)^
managed by well-educated and competent women, are real necesaities
for our destitute and criminal boys and girls. Two or three sach
women, a care-taker, and a cook, would adequately staff each home.
If the home be in the vicinity of a good school, the children might
be marched thither morning and afternoon (or, as half-timers, morn-
ing or afternoon), reaching the school a quarter of an hour after the
assembling of the ordinary scholars, and leaving it, when called ftff)
a few minutes later or earlier than the rest take their departure.
Thus all danger to the regular scholars from moral contamination of
criminal children would be avoided. Prayers would, of course, be
offered in the home, and religious instruction given to the children
prior to their going to school. And they would probably walk
thither three abreast (where the width of the footway permitted)

1881. THE CHTLD'CRIMINAL. 657

rather than in couples, for the prevention of small, mischievous con-
fidences, seldom entrusted to more than one pair of ears. The boys
or girls of the home should play in their own recreation ground, and
practise drill there also. Nor, if we bear in mind the proficiency of
many women in this healthful exercise, need we hastily conclude
that the services of the drill-sergeant must be requisitioned to have it
taught efficiently.

Some of our existing industrial school buildings might with
advantage be converted into homes of the character indicated, each
home staffed by an adequate number of women under a matron-
superintendent.

Every institution of this kind should have a few rooms specially
designed for the reception of new juvenile misdemeanants, who might
be sent at magisterial discretiou at once to the homes rather than to
workhouses and prisons. The specific offences with which these
children were charged, their circumstances, mode of living, and
previous history, as far as known, should be communicated to the
matron by the officer who conveys them to the home. And we fully
concur with our Home Secretary that officers whose duty it is to look
after juvenile delinquents should be State employes, as. in the United
States of America. If the selection of the matron has been wisely
made, the corrective or penal treatment of the children may be safely
left in her hands. Her discipline will be firm and effective, but she
will rarely, if evevj resort to the use of corporal punishment. Her
vocation is to soft;en the hardened, to win the child's confidence, and
to lead wandering feet back into duty's path ; and the birch is not
exactly the instrument to promote these desirable ends. Without
affirming that its use is never beneficial, we differ vn toto from those
who believe it a universal corrective. So long as children vary in
phyaiquej sensitiveness, and bent of disposition — so long as circum-
stances under which they commit offences differ-;— the same amount
and kind of correction cannot judiciously be administered to each
and all without distinction and discrimination.

The same punishment for the same misdemeanour might be too
lenient in one case, and unduly severe in another. Temporary isola-
tion and detention in bed during daylight hours for youthful offences
have a deterrent effect which the birch sometimes fails to exercise.
At all events a suitable matron may be entrusted to administer cor-
rection suitably. - And on the selection of a suitable woman to fill
this responsible position the prosperity of the home must wholly
depend. Among a host of ladies of culture and irreproachable cha-
racter, able to produce high testimony from high quarters to their
excellence and varied ability, few would really possess the special
qualifications requisite for the true parental oversight and government
of the large neglected families to gather in the homes. Yet, though
this be so, there are good women enough to be found among us, suffi-
VoL. IX.— No. 60. Y Y

658 THE NtNETEENTH CENTURY. April

ciently courageous, able, and enthusiastic to undertake cheerfiillj,
and perform successfully, the onerous duties which as home-motlieis
would devolve upon them, — women of tact, fertility of resource,
organising talent, unlimit'ed patience and self-devotion— women
diligent without fussiness, large-hearted without laxity — calm womoi,
seldom dull — firm women, not often stem — women who can be
strict disciplinarians, without inspiring their charge with slavish
fear — ^loving, motherly women, who, while careful to retain their
authority, know how to win the full confidence of their foster-children,
- develop their kindly affections (cruelly stunted in growth), and kindle
in them noble ambitions and aspirations — ^vigilant women, observing
everything, yet at times seeming to see nothing — pious women,
whose daily conduct bears the quick, incessant watchfulness of childish
glances that detect no inconsistency. Women, such as we describe
(and such women there a/re) would be centres of influence and a£fedioD
In homes for criminal and neglected children, whose power for good
it were impossible to estimate.

Only let us have these institutions governed by such capable
women, and we may safely leave the selection of competent assistants
in their hands* They would enlist the services of young women with
a natural love for childroi, able (or willing to maks themselves able)
to instruct the boys or girls in cookery, laundry and house work,
knitting, netting, sewing, patching, and darning; clever also ifl
some light and useful handicraft, such as paper-bag or card-box
manufacture, fret-work, chair-caning, or slipper-making. Articles
made by the children might be disposed of at an annual sale, the
proceeds of which would augment the funds of the home. The care-
taker should be a * handy man,' with some knowledge of the use of
carpenters' tools, which he might impart to the young inmates of the
institution. We once met with a man of this type in a day industxiai
school in Liverpool, attended by an average of 100 boys and girl«
under female superintendence. He was the only man upon the
premises, an active fellow, and an excellent mechanic. He had
voluntarily gone to prison for a week to learn list-slipper making
which he taught the children, as well as chair-caning and wire-fiiere
manufacture. Wood-chopping, though to a certain extent a health-
ful exercise, either for boys or girls, should not furnish their 9cif
industrial occupation. It is monotonous, and awakens no industrial
intelligence. When incessantly practised it injures that delieate
sense of touch required in some trades and occupations which the
children may hereafter follow. The numerous wounded little hands,
strapped with plaister, which we have frequently noted with regret,
and even occasionally a missing finger-joint, long ago convinced ii^
that wood-chopping is not suitable as a constant occnpatioii for
young children in industrial schools. Children taught to make and
mend their garments may in time earn good livings as tailors and

1881. THE CHILD-CRIMINAL. 659

dressmakers, but those whose days are wasted in wood-chopping only
will 071^2^ be wood-choppers. Should a garden be attached to the
home, its cultivation will supply the children with healthful and
profitable employment. The matron will encourage the planting of
useful herbs, such as mint, thyme, sage, &c. (aU easily growi.), which
when gathered and dried furnish smdl hands with abundant occupA^
tion in stripping the leaves from the stalks, rubbing them to powder,
and storing it in bottles for sale and household use. She will also
permit the children to rear and tend a few dumb animals, knowing
that restless boys and girls are less likely to abscond, when in doing
so they must desert domestic pets, dependent for life upon their daily
feeding ^nd care. Once visiting an industrial sphool, indifferently
provided with common comforts, containing 100 children, many of
whom were out at elbows, and had a weakly, ill-fed appearance, we
learned with some surprise that, though the house-door frequently
stood open, attempts at absconding were rare. However, we soon
saw the explanation of this in the playground, where some leggy
cockerels strode among a flock of pigeons, and a large mongrel lay
basking in the sun. Here were the loadstones whose powerful attrac-
tion held the children to the spot.

The home-mother will also be anxious that her boys or girls
should have suitable and durable clothing. She wiU prefer to be
supplied with flannel rather than with cotton for their imder-garments,
to be worn summer and winter by children of either sex. Thus
covered they will be less liable to contract illness through the ohilling
of the skin daring perspiration. The boys' shirts will button behind,
notiD. front of the neck, that when at work without jackets their
bare chests are not exposed, as we so frequently see them in industrial
schools. She will be specially solicitous that the children's feet are
not harmed by misfitting boots. Chilblains are a veritable plague
in some of our schools ; and though we do not believe they are fflways
preventible, we are of opinion that their number might be materially
decreased, and their type become less aggravated, were proper at-
tention given to the coverings of the feet. Even the close pressure
of a boot round the ankle frequently creates chilblains on the toes.
If the circulation is impeded, the foot becomes cold and chilblains
appear. We have seen children in sore distress, and unable to
w^k, in industrial schools, whose misery was simply the result of
wearing tight boots. Chilblains, or frost bites, wait on dampness
as weU as coldness, and therefore boots should never be worn by
children vneide a school. Much suffering might be obviated by
placing slippers in rows on the floor of a small room near the en-
trance door, which the girls or boys should put on immediately the^
enter the house. Lines might be stretched overhead, on which the
children could hang their boots to dry, either by the laces or simple
S hooks, in the loops behind. So, less dirt would be carried into

tt2

660 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. April

the institution, and the constant washing of its floors rendered un-
necessary.

With regard to the dietary scale of the home, consideiable
latitude should be allowed the matron in arranging it ; for we cannot
but arrive at the conclusion that cutaneous eruptions would be raier
than they are among industrial school children, were they supplied
with food in greater variety. When fresh vegetables are cheap, they
should eat them freely; and when these begin to fail, white cabbages
may be sliced and placed in vinegar for household consumption. The
cabbage procured for a penny may save the spending of a pound in
curing skin disease, and it has the advantage of being as ready for
eating the day after pickling, as it is good for months to come.
There is no necessity to give the children the vinegar. This may he
utilised to pickle another cabbage after the first has been consumed.
Sows of giant rhubarb should also be grown in the grounds of indus-
trial schools fortunate enough to have garden^. The stalks of this
useful vegetable may be pulled till late in the ai^ltumn, and, when
stewed and eaten with rice by the children, are wholesome as palatable.
And with rhubarb the first expense of planting it is the last^ as
once placed in a garden it will be found there ever afterwards. We
are convinced that scalp humours, so common among school-children,
frequently break out in consequence of an insufficient supply of green
vegetables ; therefore turnip-tops (when abundant), should be supplied
them freely, and large Portugal onions (when cheap) might, chopped
fine, usefully supplement the bread-and-cheese dinner.

Coarsely-ground Scotch oatmeal, prepared after Mrs. Bnckton's
receipt, we prefer to cocoa for the children's breakfasts. We are of
opinion that it is not true economy, nor is it desirable, to apportion
them bread by weight. Children's appetites vary as widely as their
dispositions, and frequently one child may leave a part of his portion,
while another of the same age arises from the meal still hungry.

In a school which seemed to be conducted on the laiasez-fairt
principle — for each child appeared to a certain extent to do what
was right in his own eyes — we observed tame rabbits in the play-
ground, feeding in their hutches off piles of pieces of bread. These
pieces, we ascertained, were the leavings of some of the children at
meals. From another school we heard of boys stealing six quartern
loaves at once from the larder to appease the pangs of hunger, one
child averring that he was so famished as to feel compelled to * stuff
the sheet ' in his mouth when he went to bed.

We were glad to meet with an industrial school in the North of
England where the children at meals were wisely permitted to have
as much as, and no more bread than they required.

Tlie sleeping arrangements of the family in the home will be duly
considered by the matron, and she will doubtless represent to the
female Government inspector of industrial homes (should the SM»

1881 THE CHILD'CRIMINAL. 6Q1

wisely appoint one) or to her committee of lady -managers, the desira-
bility of her own and assistants' dressing or sitting rooms opening
into curtained spaces within the children's dormitories. There their
beds should be placed, so that no sound should escape the ear. Much
expense would be avoided if the Industrial Schools Act were so
amended that probational sentences might be passed upon some
juvenile offenders. Six or twelve months' detention in a home under
wise womanly supervision might effectually accomplish the reclama-
tion of many children of respectable parents. And here we would
suggest that parents in good circumstances should always be re-
quired to pay so largely to the support of their offspring, that keeping
them at home would' prove a lighter burden.

In fixing amounts of contribution of parents to their cliildren's
maintenance, a distinction should be drawn between the vicious, and
the destitute. The former are frequently in a position to pay the full cost
of their children's keep in industrial schools ; and any measure enacted
by the Government, to permit local authority to enforce such pay-
ment, will be hailed with universal satisfaction. With the destitute
the case is altogether different ; but should their circumstances im-
prove, they ought not to remain exempt from contributing to the
support of their children. The permanent removal of children from
the influence of vicious parents is most desirable, and emigration opens
a wide door of hope to these young unfortunates, after they have
imdergone a course of salutary training in industrial homes. Evexy
effort should be used to induce depraved parents to consent to a
separation so likely to be promotive of their offspring's welfeire ; or,
fisuling these, the children should be placed in situations where they
would be lodged and fed as far from their wretched homes as possible.

If situations are not to be found, or it be deemed expedient for
the boys or girls to experience a longer course of training, they must
pass from the home and sole female supervision into schools for

* young persons ' under male and female superintendence. Probably
some would find their way to industrial training ships, but only
stout and healthy boys, with a strong bias for sailor-life, should
be received in these. Weaklv' lads' constitutions soon succumb to
the inevitable exposure to which such training subjects them, and the
special and expensive preparation required for a seafaring life is often
thrown away even upon the healthy. In 1879 there occurred on the

* Mars' industrial school ship (Dundee) no less than six deaths
among the 355 lads, < a very large mortality ' as the inspector remarks.
In the ' Akbar' reformatory ship (Liverpool) there were three deaths
in the year 1879 among 174 lads, and seven boys discharged on
account of disease. On the ' Clarence ' (Birkenhead), 230 boys, there
were four deaths in the same year, and three discharged from disease.
On the industrial training ship ' Cumberland ' (Dumbarton), 377 boys,
there were eight deaths in 1678, and in 1879 three children died, and

662 THE minSTEENTH CENTURY. April

twelve were discharged on acoount of disease. The inspector has good
catise to remark, * Greater care should be exercised in the lecepdon of
cases suitable for sea-service.' The London School Board training ship
< Shaftesbury ' commenced receiving boys in August 1878, and at the
end of 1879 had 350 on board ; yet though the net cost of these
children per head annually, including profit or loss on indastrial
departments, was 3U. I6d., we find that up to December 1880 oat
of forty-one discharged fourteen boys only had gone to sea. Thus an
expensive education for nautical life is frequentlv tlirown away upon
children who are either physically unfit or unwilling to become
sailors ; and as parental consent is also necessary to the disposal of
boys in sea-service, it would be well if industrial school committees
obtained such consent previous to sending lads to training-ships.
Ships, of all dwelling^iouses, are the- most costly ; and as the sabsti-
tution of steam for sailing vessels daily decreases the demand for
sailor-lads, the State will probably wisely decline to certify any more
training-ships than we have at present.

' As we just now hinted, a competent lady-inspector appointed by
Q'ovemment would more efficiently supervise homes containing young
children than any gentleman, however capable and well qualified for his
Work he may be. Women are usually better acquainted than most
men with the causes and nature of childish ailments, and with simple
remedies for their removal or alleviation ; they have more * nous' in
dealing with the refractory and sullen, and more tact in devising and
directing what means may be best employed for the varied treatment of
ohildren of varied constitutions and dispositions. Therefore, should the
State see fit to make an appointment of the character indicated, we
may reasonably augur that it will result in sensible advantage to
our criminal children.

' The home-mother will gladly avail herself of the counsel and
sympathy of a well-selected body of lady-managers, whose duty it
shall be to visit the institution and inspect its management at iriH
These ladies will report monthly to the inspector of the prosperity or
otherwise of the home, every fresh admission being noted in thdr
report, and the circumstances of the child's parents, together with
the amount they believe them able to contribute towards his or her
maintenance, being also recorded therein.

The managers should also have full liberty to impart religioQS
instruction to the children on Sunday afternoons or evenings, and to
invite a few persons of well-known Christian character to assist tiiem
in such useful labour. In homes such as we have described, how
much happier would be the condition of mere infants of the tendtf
age of seven, whom we so frequently compassionate when we note
them among children of larger growth in industrial schools t

The sick among the little ones would also derive much benefit
from feminine ministrations, and we should then be less likely to be

1881. , THE CHILD-CRIMIJSAL. 663

pained, as we were a short time since, by the sight of a child suffering
fiom hip-disease, lying in a room whose walls were washed with
melancholy blue, with no single coloured print to brighten them ;
nor had the poor fellow even a broken toy or picture-book to beguile
his weary hours. We were not surprised at the remark of a friend
who visited the school with us : ' Were I shut up long in this doleful
place, I should certainly lose my reason.'

And now that the Home Secretary is devoting his attention to
the proper treatment of juvenile offenders, and collecting opinions on
tliis important subject from magistrates all over the kingdom, we
confidently anticipate the revision of the statute law with respect to
industries schools at no distant date. And when the wh^ question
shall come before Parliament, we devoutly trust that however the
State tnay decide to deal with * young persoTis ' convicted of crime,
itmaywisdy' decree that criminal children shall be placed under
feminine supervision.

Elizabeth Subb.

664 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. April

REFORM OF FEUDAL LAWS.

Thb condition of our land laws in England presents to us a vast
problem, one which in its whole bearings on the social welfare of the
people is often little recognised ; yet there is hardly a question of
political interest to the country which is not more or less indiiectl;
influenced by them ; and there is no subject which, during the next
few years, will form so important a controversial public question.
The entire fabric of modem society, of which our aristocracy is the
leading feature, is deeply interested in this great question, and the
very permanence of the order is menaced in the changes that may
take place. Nevertheless it will be the conviction of all thoughtful
and serious persons that the sooner the whole subject is not onlj
brought up for discussion but is satisfactorily dealt with by the Legis-
lature, the sooner will certain grave dangers to the stability of oar
national institutions be removed.

It is marvellous to any observer who has had the advantages
of foreign travel, and who has used his opportunities with intelligence,
to notice the total and fundamental contrast which exists not only
between the land systems prevailing abroad and in England, but also
between the social and intellectual condition of the agricultonl
classes in England and on the Continent. The enormous wealth of the
landed proprietors of England, their paramount social influence over
the lower classes, their considerable political power, and the dass
feeling which binds them together, notwithstanding slight dif-
ferences of party feeling, into one great freemasonry of common
interest, stands in vivid contrast with the degraded condition of our
agricultural labourers and working classes generally.

In order to analyse this problem we should note the consequences
which have resulted in England from the long survival of our feudal
land laws, not only in the upper classes of English society, but also on
the general condition of the whole people, especially on those clasBei
more or less engaged in the cultivation of the land ; we should tiBoe
further the natural effect which must result if reform of these la^
was to be long delayed ; and lastly, taking note of the mode in which
this problem has found its solution in other countries of the Continent,
we may consider the merits and demerits which can be uiged in

1881. REFORM OF FEUDAL LAWS. 665

favour of the various existing customs abroad, especially the claims of
those who advocate the creation of a body of cultivating owners of
land. Thus we shall arrive at a knowledge of those modifications
which must be brought about in the laws of this country so as slowly,
and with as little injury to individual or class interest as is pos-
sible, to bring about those great changes which are necessary to
stimulate the diffusion of wealth and landed property more widely
than heretofore throughout the people of this country.

The condition of Ireland at the present time offers us many valu-
able suggestions for selecting a path of wisdom in dealing with the
land problem in England, and avoiding those evils from which the
present race of landowners in Ireland are suffering ; evils, too, of very
ancient date, yet traceable distinctly to causes which have been
slowly and surely operating to create a very gulf between the interest
of the propertied classes on the one hand and the poverty-stricken
tenantry on the other. Absenteeism and the deputed management
of estates may have had much to answer for in the past in Ireland,
yet to-day no amount of personal residence or paternal management
of a property will weigh in the scale ; the divergence of interest
between classes is complete ; the contest of feeling has become too
acute to be adjusted by any act of propitiation by the one class to the
other. There is an ingrained feeling of antagonism existing on all
sides which has extended itself as a canker into the very heart of
social relations in that coimtry, manifesting itself in the socialistic
propaganda of the Land League and the bitter outcry against English
rule. It was to causes not very dissimilar to these that historians
have attributed the origin of those great political movements which
have resulted in a land revolution in almost every country of civilised
Europe, and it is therefore of the highest importance that this state
of things, which fortunately has no existence as yet in England, should
not be allowed to take root. Small symptoms of discontent are not
wanting; though labourers and &rmers' leagues are but in their
infancy in England. The remedy is as yet entirely in our own hands.
The wretched plea of the Tory party that the national faults of the
Irish character were the chief cause of the present political crisis is a
most disastrous doctrine to rely upon, and the theory of relying
perpetually on force alone to allay a popular movement which has
been growing for generations is a feeble cure for such deep-seated
evils. A political party that argues thus has purposely blinded itself
to the testimony of history, if they think that in the long run the
movement of a whole people can be extinguished by repressive
measures.

The ineradicable fault in Ireland, if it lies anywhere, is to be found
with those who believe that a system can be indefinitely preserved
which has permitted 744 individuals to become the owners of half the
soil of Ireland, while 1,942 owners possess two-thirds of the 20,000,000

666 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. April

acres which this country contains. The entire population of cultiTatoxB
are thus divorced from the only important source of indostiy whick
the country possesses, since in the face of the protective laws regard-
ing entail and settlement the divisions of estates into small parcels has
been carefully prevented, and it has thus been hopeless for the culti-
vating class ever to look forward to becoming owners of landed
property, or to have any goal of prosperity or contentment to strive
for. Labourers must be labourers, tenants nothing more than tenants,
all their lives ; the only hope they could cling to being that their
rents might not be raised, and that in times of distress they might
be supported by largesses from the great territorial landlords, or by
a demoralising system of public charity.

Can a more degrading state of things than this be conceived to
the moral and social well-being of a people ? Can a more fertile
seed-bed be provided for hatching out every communistic theory,
every wild socialistic idea ? The origin of the evil is lost in the
dispute, the true lines of liberal legislation are discarded, abuse and
hatred is levelled not at the exaggerated results of unfair laws of
property, but at the English Government, because the State does not
step in and divide the land gratia among an ignorant peasantry—
^ landlordism is to be abolished,' * the land of the people is to be
nationalised,' ' the land-grabber is to be hunted down.' Surely to
any rational mind there is food for reflection here ? Can we wonder
then that moderate statesmen stand confounded often at the diffi-
culties of their task ? On the one hand we are saddled with the
incubus of these wretched land laws, of which nothing but time
can moderate the effects ; while on the other we are besieged with the
rampant appeals of demagogues, who are steadily preaching a most
dangerous social revolution.

There is no great middle class in Ireland composed of manufac-
turers, intelligent traders, shopkeepers, and farmers to moderate the
political tide of socialism. There is nothing but the few helpless,
Jand-loggedj mortgage-bound landlords, and the huge struggling
class of indigent cultivators.

Does any one suppose for a moment that if it were not for the
influence and power of England we have here the elements of a social
revolution on the most complete scale, which, of its own accord, would
manifest itself without a day's delay. The people would rise as one
man against the owners of all property, and abominable crimes of
every description would be committed. Forsooth, we have only to
thank our good fortune that we can consider this problem to-day while
England is imtainted by this same antagonism of classes, and thus we
may yet solve in time a social problem which possesses potentiallj
factors of the most dangerous and far-reaching character, which the
Tory party have too long had the audacity to disregard.

It has in good sooth been truly said that a beneficent genius has

1881. REFORM OF FEUDAL LAWS. 667

heretofore watched over and guarded the ivy-grown walls of our
ancient social monuments in England? and in the words of Pitt, in
one of his speeches to the House of Commons after the French Kevo-
lution, ' The spires and domes of ancient buildings arise again above
the flood which has so nigh overwhelmed them completely.'

So may it ever continue to be the case in England ! Let those
though who have studied history tur^ over once more its pages to
the period of the great French Bevolution, a revolution such as the
history of the world affords us no parallel^ extending its influence ibx
beyond the confines of the French territory, and producing a cyclone
of political disruption of which France was the centre chief seat,
manifesting itself therein by a reign of terror and of political atrocity
and crime, which for centuries will afford food for the calm con-
templation of the psychological philosopher, and a subject for grave
and careful study to the intelligent statesman.

Yet the voice was not in the tempest for us in England ; the
whirlwind of revolution passed by us and England's institutions
remained. By slow degrees, and in former times, through the
liberalising influence of the early Beformation and the wise conduct
of patriotic statesmen, we had modified the social abuses of the Church
and feudal nobles, which in other countries were the immediate cause
of the storm.

The revolution of 1640 had on^e for all asserted the right of the
public to being the supreme arbiters in matters of the general wea^ ;
the people ruled through their representatives to this extent that no
well-defined expressions of public opinion could ever be safely ignored
by English statesmen. Hence, at a tiipe when all around. abroad was
ruin, there survived in England the remnant of former land laws and
customs in our Constitution which, in other countries, had been ruth-
lessly swept away or destroyed. A compromise also in the shape of the
great Beform Bill of '32 was eventually effected between the people
and our ruling classes, which, with small niodifications, has existed
down to the present day. By this compact the English people secured
to themselves the full advantages of party government and of popular
representation, while it left untouched those greater matters re-
garding the rights of property which have tended to preserve in the
hands of the privileged class the sole ownership of the soil in Eng-
land.

The solution, however, was bound to come, and for years tokens
have not been wanting that the struggle could not long be delayed.
For many years past able writers on political economy, both in Eng-
land and abroad, have written on the English and Irish land questions.
Able statesmen also, like the late Mr. Cobden and Stuart Mill, have
warned us that our condition in England touching the laws encoura-
ging a monopoly regarding land, and the powers of settlement and
entail, were the chief cause of the ignorant and miserable condition

668 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. April

of our lower classes, which, working together, would sooner or later
raise up a very Frankenstein to judge us. On the other hand, effoits
of a herculean character have been made by the landed classes to
retain their old position, and induce the lower classes beneath them
to accept the paternal form of government of old, and thus stave off
indefinitely all projects of reform. Attempts to evade the points at
issue, to misstate the arguments of political opponents by covermg
them with contumely and reproach as revolutionists and republicans,
can scarcely much longer be of avail save it be to increase the diffi-
culty, were such attempts unfortunately for a time to be successftiL
The classes of the electorate who to-day support the Conservative
party will melt away from their allegiance in a period of critical excite-
ment, as the mountain snows before a tropical sun, if once the fierj
cross of the demagogue and the ominous thunder of the proletariate
manifest themselves. An impotent wail will arise from the upper
class at injustice, such as we hear to-day in Ireland. Violent de-
nunciation of moderate statesmen who have vainly laboured for a
solution will have done its work, until nothing be left to temper the
wind to the shorn lamb, save it be an ^ orderly transference of pro-
perty from one class to the other.' ^

Such is the prophecy far-seeing statesmen have made regardifig
the future of the landowing classes of this country, unless our system
of land laws is profoundly modified. It would, therefore, appear that
an attentive consideration of some features of the problem wonld not
be out of place at the present time.

The titles to property in land are very different in England to
what they are in Ireland. In a few pages of the January number of
the NineteerUh Centuryj Mr. Seebohm has traced in a most able
manner the originating cause of the grievance which has so long
existed between the Irish landlord and the cultivator. The dispute
is virtually one of ^ title to the soil,' and the tenant persistently
claims to be reinstated in the position which able statesmen like
Sir J. Davis, who was Attorney- General in James I.'s reign, and

> The National Assembly in France, on the motion of the Vicomtc de NoaillcN
abolished the feudal exemption of the nobility from taxes in 1789, and on tbe
memorable August 4, 1789, the Duo d'Aguillion said in the National Assembly:
< Who does not groan over the scenes of horror which France at this momeot ci-
hibits 7 The effervescence of the people who have conquered freedom when guiltr
ministers thought to ravish it from them, has now become an obstacle to freedoix] a
a time when the views of the Government are again in harmony with the wishes d
the nation. It is not only the brigands who, with arms in their hands, wish t«
enrich themselves in the midst of public calamities, in many provinces the ootiff
mass of the peasantry have formed themselves into a league to destroy the chatcsci,
ravage the lands, and above all, get poasession of tlie charter chests where tbe fen^
titles arc deposited. They seek to shake off a yoke which for centuries has weipbeJ
on them ; and we must admit that though that insurrection was culpable (vhsi
violent aggression is not so ?) yet it finds much excuse in the vexations which bad
produced it.* We might even fancy an Irish peer delivering this speech in the Irish
Parliament, did it still exist in the present ccntur}*.

1881. REFORM OF FEUDAL LAWS. 669

Sir W Petty, in George II.'s, recognised as being his just and inde-
feasible right. The Irish landowner ia^ and always has been, more
in the position of a ^ rent-charger ' towards his tenant, than an
absolute owner in the sense of the English landlord.

The troubles which have so long existed in Ireland are traceable
in their origin, first, to the laws which have allowed and encouraged
the aggregation of colossal estates ; and, secondly, to the fact that the
owners of those estates have used their power for generations to endea-
vour to oust the tenant from his legal right, and place themselves in
a position towards their tenantry similar to that which the English
landlord occupies, thus depriving the cultivator of the soil of a right
which he has for centuries fought for, and which, notwithstanding
every war, every oppression which Ireland endured in former times,
be has unceasingly continued to claim as being his just birthright
and inheritance. Such is the problem that has to be solved in Ireland,
and many must be the difficulties that must be overcome in dealing
with it.

In England fortunately the second of these causes is absent,
namely, the claims of divided ownership, yet the first is sufficient of
itself to produce all the evils which we see to-day in Ireland if left
to work out its natural consequences. Not only is it clear from
what has been urged before that the system of limited avmerahip
has tended steadily to starve the soil of England and to impoverish
every class connected with this industry — la/ndlarc!^ tenant-farmerj
and labourer — but we have seen that it has been injurious in its
effect on family relations, it has operated to destroy independence of
character in the people, to quench all spirit of enterprise in the
farming class, all wish to improve their holdings, for fear of having
their rent raised and a fine being placed on their industry. It has
also tended to render the education of the agricultural classes noto-
riously backward, and to render them therefore peculiarly fitted to be
led away by the fallacious teachings of modem socialism, which
panders to those very faults on which an upper class have relied
to keep back the condition of the people, namely, a disposition to
look to the State for aid in the industrial struggle of life sooner than
to personal exertions. Lastly, we have endeavoured to show that the
system in England which has operated to destroy all absolute owner-
fihip in land, by holding it for ever in trust for unborn generations,
in the furtherance of family pride of race, has not only destroyed the
power of the limited owner to improve his estates and develop their
latent resources, but has effectually driven from the land the large
class of British yeomen farmers, men who cultivated their own lands,
and at one period of our history formed the most valuable bulwark
against the democratic propaganda of the tovms in the sudden im-
pulses of popular fickleness.'

* Men of exalted rank and birth, says Mr. Kay (^Free Trade in Land, chap, x.),

670 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. April

In other countries of Europe, where the greater portion of tk
soil is owned and cultivated by the same class, we find the mofit
conservative spirit. The cultivators in France who have grown richb;
their own exertions (and have in every way a happier lot in life Uum
any we can find in England), are, with all their republican selfishness,
thorough-going Conservatives, and on the smallest suspicion of the
rights to property being threatened by the democratic masses in the
towns, they come to the poll as one man to aseert their adherenoe to
moderate principles.

In the parts of Germany too where a similar state of things pre-
vailed, the bauerschaft, whose lands were so lately enfranchised by Stein
and Hardenburg, form the most powerful influence which the State
possesses to counteract the growing socialistic tendencies of the laige
towns and the subversive doctrines of Lassalle. The Channel islands
• also, which are part of our own dominions^ afford us an instance ivhich
it would be well to study of the extraordinary prosperity an agricnltoial
people may arrive at who, without possessing any peculiar superioiitj
rof soil or climate, have for centuries enjoyed the advantages of peaaant
ownership.

Mr. Thornton in the last edition of his PUa for Peasa'ni Pn^
prietara (p. 37 and following), conclusively proves the supe-

wbo might be excused for feeling some repngnance to a social organisation vfaich
has to a large extent been erected on the rains of their class, have been among tbe
most earnest champions of occupjring proprietors.

M. Passy, who was a peer of Fra(nce and a Membre de I'Institut under Lou^
Philippe, states it as his opinion ' that in the present state of agricaltnral knowledge
and practice it is the small farm, ' la i)etite colture,' which, after dedacdng the eos:
of production, yields, from a given surface JEuid on equal conditions, the greatest nett
produce ; also, that this same system of cultivation, by maintaining a laiger rozil
population, not only thereby adds to the strength of the State, but affords a betU:
market for those commodities, the production and exchange of which stimulate tbe
prosperity of the manufacturing districts.*

M. de Beaumont, iHiio visited Ireland in 1835-S7, states in hia work entitK
Z*Irlande Sociale, that the creation of peasant proprietors is the real remedj for
the evils of Ireland, and that the laws of primogeniture and entaU should necessarii}
be repealed. ' Hasten,' he says (tome ii. p. 200), < to render the land free to oois-
merce ; divide, subdivide the land among ' acttuU owners 'of it as much as you cad:
the only means of raising the lower class of Irish is by overturning an aristooracj
which ought to fall. The only means of reformation is to bring the land within tbe
reach of the people ; it is necessary, above all things, that the people of Ireland 8boal<l
become proprietors.'

M. de Saveigne, who was alao a Membre de llnstitut, says, writing in 18®:
' The best cultivation in France on the whole is that of the peasant proprietors aod
the subdivision of the soil makes continual progress. Progress in both respects w3>
indeed retarded for a succession of years after 1848 by political causes, but it h^
brilliantly resumed its course of late years. All round the town in which I write-
Toulouse— it is a gain to profitable operation to buy land in order to reaeU it ic
small lotfi ; ' and then he adds, ' the 7/utrket price of land has qttadntpledinteMjfeart'

Lastly, speaking of the cottages of the peasant farmers, he says : * There is nothin^c
so delightful oa the interior of these humble cottages — ^so dean and oideriy,theTei7
air about them breathes peace, industry, and happiness, and it is pleasing to thisX
that they are not likely to be done away with.'

1881. REFORM OF FEUDAL LAWS. 671

nor productiveness of small over large farms in every country of
Europe, thereby disproving M^GuUoch's prophecy, in 1823, that in
half a century France would be the greatest ^ pauper warren ' in
Europe. He states that the gardening farmer of Flanders is the
direct progenitor of all the best improvements in crops and general
agriculture which we practise to-day at home ; that this style of
farming has brought under cultivation successfully soils which
naturally are nothing but an infertile desert, which, by means of con-
tinual attention and manure, are now made to carry stock to the extent
of one cow to the three acres, thus producing in abundance that
absolute necessity of all high farming, lai^ge quantities of foal-yard
manure, which we too little understand in England. Also, he shows
that whereat, according to Mr. Caird, 26^ bushels is the average corn-
field per acre in England, in Jetsejj where the average size of farnts
is 16 acres, the average official . return is 4Q bushels ; in Flanders,
originally a coarse siliceous sand, 32 to 36 bushels. - Of potatoes in
England 10 tons an aore would be considered a good average ; ip
Jersey we have 1$ tons, and in Flanders 12 tons as the average returns.
Lastly, whiUe average land in Jersey and G-uemsey lets for 4Z. a^
acre, and in Switzerland the average rent is 62., by comparing the
gross produce of England and the value of her food imports with her
population and agricultural area, we have in England an average of
one person per acre and a half supported by the land ; in Ghiemsey
the same calculation gives us hoo persons for eveiy acre and a half,
and in Jersey four persons on the same average. The population in
England gives us one cultivator to 1 7 acres, in Jersey and Guernsey
one to fou/r^ while the agriculture of these islands maintains a non-
agricultural population respectively tivice and four times as dense as
that of England. And in the words of Mr. Thornton, ' this difference
does not arrive firom any. superiority of soil or climate possessed by the
Channel islands, for the former is naturally rather poor, and the latter
is not better than in the southern coimties of England. It is owing
entirely to ^ the aeaiduous cwre of thefwrmera and to the abundant
use of manure.

Surely, then, we do not want evidence to show that small owners
of property are a source of riches and happiness to every country that
possesses them, and that the question of over-population in England
is a myth when we compare the condition of agricultural England
with that of our own Channel islands. It cannot be too clearly realised
therefore what a discouraging influence is produced on the agricul-
tural activity of the nation by the sweating effect these large pro-
prietors exercise on our industry, and the huge burden they impose
on the productive power of the land. The barren lands of Flanders,
the rocky detritus of Switzerland, the snow-bound slopes of Norway,
which latter in England and Ireland would at the best be snipe bogs or
woodcock coverts, are in these countries made to produce the food and

672 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. April

happiness of the people. Many of the vast tracts in Scotland which
have been enclosed of late years, producing nothing but a few miser-
able stags, would in other countries, under the magic effect oi pro-
perty, be, if not as Arthur Young says, ' converted from a barren waste
into a garden,' any way the feeding ground for innumerable flocks of
sheep, goats, and rough Highland cattle. If this be denied, let any
one of the thousands of English visitors to the Engadine every
summer take note of that district, where there is not a foot of waste
land, the lowest part of which is not much lower than the top of
Snowden.

If, therefore, we have had for so long to forego the economic ad-
vantages of small owners cultivating their own lands in England, we
may fairly ask. Have the people gained social and moral improvement
in their lot which have compensated for these other disadvantages?
The more we consider this matter the more we shall see that all
writers on this subject, all travellers who have studied the conditions
of the peasantry abroad, are unanimous that not only the well-
instructed peasantry of Germany and Switzerland, but the, education-
ally speaking, backward cultivator of France and other Boman Catholic
countries, are not to be mentioned in the same breath with onr
labouring agricultural class in England, to say nothing of Ireland.

Yet it was not always so. In the reign of Henry IV.,
when England possessed a large race of cultivating owners, we have
continual sumptuary laws enacted regarding the English yeomen.
Little by little, however, we can trace the change ; statutory tenancies
or holdings in copyhold were gradually absorbed into demesnes, large
grass farms were made, and pauperism made its appearance even before
the suppression of the monasteries, which many writers have consideied
as being the cause of distress.' The fact was that firom Heniy
YIII* onwards the breaking up of the monastic orders threw an
immense amount of property into the hands of the Crown, who, unable
to retain it as a whole, granted it to the great nobles in gifts for
services to the Crown, and thus were evolved the nuclei of those
colossal estates many of which remain to the present day in the
hands of our old families in England.

It is not difficult to see the encouragement which was thus given
to the nobles to absorb the properties of the small owners of land ; the
progressive acts r^arding pauperism in the reign of Elizabeth, which
culminate in the establishment of our poor law (43 Elizabeth, c. 2),
are a silent proof of what was going on. Slowly and by d^^rees
a fine yeoman peasantry gradually became absorbed by the great
territorial owners, who relet the land to the former freeholders on
leases for lives, or on yearly agreement. From this moment the moral
and sociaj degradation of the people began, their independence was
lost, and they gradually fell under the domination of that triumvirate,

■ Lord Baoon'8 SMory of Benry VTL^ vol. v. p. 61. Quoted by Thornton.

188 !• REFORM OF. FEUDAL LAWS. 673

the peer, the sqmre, and the clergy, who have so long exercised that

form of paternal government which we alluded to in a former article.

The system by which this transfer was effected is graphically

suggested in Massinger's Sir Giles Overreach, quoted by Mr. Thornton :

111 bay some cottage near his manor,
' Which done, 111 make my men break ope his fences,
Ride o'er his standing com, or in the night
8et fire to his bams, or break his. cattle's legs.
These trespasses will draw on suits, and suits expenses,
Which I can spare, but will soon beggar him.
When I have harried him thus two or three years.
Though he sue in formd pauperis^ in spite
Of all his thrift and care he'll grow behind hand.
Then, with the favour of my man at law,
I will pretend some title : want will force him
To put it to arbitrament ; then if he sells
For half the value, he shall have ready money
And I possess his land.' *

The foregoing affords us a valuable picture of the manner in
which 'Boycotting' was probably carried out in the sixteenth century.

We are too often in the present day accustomed to find in England,
even among the better class of tenant farmers, a grumbling spirit of
hopelessness at the existing state of things, while among the labourers,
whose lives are little better than those of the original serf population
of Europe, we find a complete absence of the spirit of independence
and self-respect, which manifests itself in the general pauperism of the
people, in their small care for their, home comforts, apd in their utter
improvidence regarding marriage and future provisions for family or
old age. In truth has it been said that in France no sooner has a child
come into the world than its parents set to work to save for its future ;
the cultivating owner of France and other countries feels that he has a
stake in the country, a position of independence to maintain ; there is
a recognised ' standard of comfort ' among his class of which he is as
proud and as little willing to forego as the highest noble in. England.
Family life is far more developed abroad than in England ; .self-respect
binds together each member of the social unit, and instcftd of a per-
petual subdivision of property in land taking place, Mr. Thornton
ably shows that for the last 200 years in the Channel Islands the size
of properties has not diminished; while in France and Germany
not only does property act as a wise deterrent to too early marriages,
but it encourages the people to seek abroad, and in emigration, an
avenue to wealth where subdivision of the family estate would
produce the pauperism of its various members. Lastly, not only is
a country possessed largely by cultivating owners capable of support-
ing a larger agricultural and non-agricultural population, but the
condition of the agricultural population, as to social happiness and

* Nen Way to Pay Old Debti.

Vol. IX.— No. 60. Z Z

674 THE NINJBTEENTE CENTURY. April

moiSBl Well-beingy varies diredly with fhe growth or diminqtioii
pf the great landed properties cultivated by tenants either boidiiig by
lease or from year to year.

If we want an experimental illustration of {his assertdoft, truly Ire-
land affords us a significant example. Here we have a fertile soil, an
equable climate, and a Celtic people, similar in many ways in character
to the French, yet what a contrast I It would not be untrue to say
that the present conditioti of a Papuan savage is a less diBgraoe to
humanity than the social and moral condition of the Irish are to tlie
United Elingdom* Foolish or purposely disingenuous peopleseek for a
reason of this state of things in the character of the Irish people ; yet
a moment's consideration, not to say an hour's study, would convince
them that the causes of this wholespread degradation of an entire peo-
ple, who naturally possess some of the noblest qualities, and who in-
dividually have given to England some of her greatest men, is solely
and entirely to be attributed to the perverse obstinacy which has in-
sisted on perpetuating in Ireland these abominable feudal land laws.*
It may be said that the various arguments here stated are by no
means new ; that while the rosy side of small properties is dwelt
upon, the darker side of the picture is purposely excluded' from obser-
vation; and that moreover, whatever may have been the success whidi
the peasant proprietary system has met with on the Continent, the
juncertainty of our seasbns and qualified fertility of our soil would

-reduce a class of occupying owners to starvation and bankruptcy in a
ehort period of time. Arguing thus, it is further asserted that a class

^of landowning capitalists is the only system which can succeed in
England, and that tenants under good landlords are infinitdy better

.off than small owners, who, experience has shown, have universally

. succumbed before improved modem method^ of agriculture.

In the first place it must be remembered that th^ landowners of

- this country are probably the poorest class in many ways in the social

-community ; their estates are all universaliy' more or less mortgaged,
to what extent we cannot exactly say, as there is no compulsory
registration of land chiurges in England; but it would' probably be a

:not unfair ventiu'e to assert that the large proportion of prop^es in
£ngland and Ireland were- burdened with various charges to tlie
extent of one-third of their gross rental. " Thii cost of these mortgages
is probably about four per cent.,' whereas we khowthat the net retun
pn capital invested in land does not "exceed two per cent.; thus in a

4 It could hardly be asserted that the Irish Land. Conuni^AonefV' who hare joA
issued their report are likely to sympathise with Badical or uojost. vievs on tbe
subject of the right of property. Yet the general agzpemei^t they come to^ althongfc
expressed with different limitations, amounts to this, thkt the oobdition of Irelan)
requires a drastic land measure to sare the people' from perpetual beggarf, and f^^
the only certain method of producing peace and oontentment throughout Uie taasAjj
is to devise an efficient scheme for the creation of a class of peasant proprieton co
a large scale.

1881. REFORM OF FEUDAL LAWSi 675

property of 1 OfiOOl. a year, if the estat^ be mortgaged to half its
value, which is certainly often the case, the entire income of the
properiy is abscNrbed in^ paying the mortgages and barely keeping th^
permanent buildings in repair. No improvements of any sort can be
carried out,- and the whole of this estate, with its entire agricultuM
population, is forced to remain in a state of absolute stiignation,
because the owner is either prevented by settlements or is unwilling
to sell.

Besides, being thus crippled with an estate verging on this con-i*
dition of financial insolvency, a landowner feels himself compelled, in
virtue of his social position, to keep up a style of living which his
real ineome is not capable of supporting. He spends large sums in
election ^cpenses, on general entertainments, and country sports, to
say nothing of his London house, and the demands of his wife and
daughters towards providing them with the luxuries of a London life.
Farms have to be repaired somehow, subscriptions to local charities
kept up, gardens, game, agents, horses, servants, all have to be
paid for out of) whatever outward appearances may be^ what becomes a
very narrow margin of income. There are many instances, no doubt,
where the landowner is not in this position, where his wealth is
supplemented by other resources, such as mines, house property in '
large towns, &c., but in the great majority of cases, where the estatis
is a purely agricultural oi^^ the ^ tenant for life ' is surrounded by
all these difficulties combined.

Again, it is urged in argument based on particular instances where
we see the estates of wealthy owners well managed and the people well
cared for, that such a state of things is the pride and happiness of a
country. 11^ must not beYergotten, however, that all this 'state of appa!^
rent prosperity is entiarely dependent on the ^personal character of orie
man ' — namely, the present owner. His son, or successor^ may turn
out to be a spendthrift, may go on the turf and become ruined ; th^
whole of this vast property is then placed in the hands of trustees.
Not a penny is spent in improvements^ evexything is saved for
creditCMTS and to obtain a small margin of income for the ruined
owner, and thus perhaps for forty or fifty years, especially' ih the case
of a minority, a property may remain like a talent buried in a napkiti,
the Court of Chancery and a lot of indifierent trustees and hungry
lawyers in London being the sole arbiters of the welfare of entirb
districts inhabited by a large and struggling people, all condemned tb
Uve in quasi-pauperism because no one will spend money on thefr
yearly holdings, while they themselves naturally dare not invest
capital for which they can obtain no sort of security. '

There is- not a solicitor in London, or hardly a person in any wajr
connected with landed estates, who could not name off-hand many
existing instances of this state of things, yet we are asked, How are
the poor to be provided for ? How are churches and schools to be

zz 2

676 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.. April

built, model cottages erected, and the well-being of the people caied
for if the landed gentry are swept away ? No one, who is not a com-
munist, wishes to see the landed gentry swept away, and thdr
mansions, parks, and estates destroyed and divided up as they were
in France under the operations of the Bands Noire* It is an advan*
tage in every way for the well-being of the people that our wealthf
classes and nobility should continue, as they have done, to porsiie %
country life and set the example in all improvements inhushaQdry,to
say nothing of the beneficial influence their personal example may exert
morally on their smaller neighbours ; but the time has come when the
people of this country should be disabused of the idea that the farmeis
and agricultural laboiu^rs are a mass of children who have heen or-
dained by Providence to be dictated to, and ruled by a form of paternal
administration of which we see an admirable illustration in those recent
letters of the I'irnes^ Irish special correspondent containing his account
of the best managed properties in Ireland. The curse of the present
state of things is not so much the poverty of the agricultural popula-
tion as the utter want of energy and independence of character which
is the marked feature of their condition* Thus compare the intelli-
gent Swiss cultivator or the French peasant with our own people.
It is true we meet with none of the servility of manners and deference
to superiors which the English villager has instilled into him from
the days when he attends school upwards; nevertheless every traveller
will admit that a more civil, well-mannered, manly, and independent
race does not exist than the agricultural classes on the Continent;
their hospitality and obliging behaviour to strangers is testified to by
all ; the neatness and comfort of their small homes has been the subject
of panegyric with many writers, their frugality and care for the
future of their children is a marked feature in their condition; and
lastly, as we have before said, their hatred of all socialism and demo-
cratic movements against the just rights of property is notorious to
all who have studied this question.

A vast danger exists in this country for our social institutions
until a complete change is brought about in our land system. We
have ^ no great middle party of order ' connected with our landed
interest, we have nothing but an antiquated system of hereditary landed
rulers, and a dependent peasantry ; the old yeoman class has been
absorbed, and there is nothing as yet to take its place. No serious
thinker can view this state of things, however peaceful the ^pearanoes
may be for the moment, without grave apprehensions. Various State
measures affecting county management and popular representation
must shortly become law, and a struggle will at once b^n between
conflicting interests, attended with consequences which will anbitter
the relationships of those three classes who are now interested in the
land. The only safeguard that can be devised is to abolish without
delay all protective laws such as the powers of settlement of land in

1881.

REFORM OF FEUDAL LAWS.

677

life interests, the^accumulations of family charges, and the unlimited
power to mortgage estates* If once these laws be abolished, a
natural operation will shortly begin to disintegrate vast properties ;
buyers will appear in plenty so soon as land transfer is simplified, and
properties, instead of being thrown wholesale on the market, as they
would be in revolutionary times (as we shall not improbably see in
Ireland), the value of land will keep up, and eventually we shall find that
instead of the price of land falling it will rise, as it has done in every
country that has abolished feudalism,«to double what it was under the
old system.^

Nothing has a more injurious efiect than the unlimited power of
mortgaging land. It encourages persons to purchase and hold it
whom the most exceptional conditions of fertility of soil and
personal hard work, could alone enable to pay off the liabilities,
in many ways it has operated badly both in France and G-ermany
among the peasantry, and has driven the people into the hands
of the local money-lenders. With regard to our large English
estates the power of creating these secret preferential charges has had
the most injurious effect, by allowing persons to retain nominally the
ownership of property which to all intents and purposes has passed
from their hands. It has afforded a magnificent field of operations
to the great number of insurance offices, who are practically nothing
more than a vast aggregation of money-lenders, whose rate of interest
derived from perfect securities is considerably above the current rate.
It has also proved itself a most useful tool in the hands of lawyers for

* At page 173 of Mr. Brodrick's Englith Land, he gives us a risvinS of his own and
Mr. Bateman^s analyses of the Domesday returns of 1875. He divides the owners of
land into eight classes. Peers, great landowners, or commoners holding properties
over 3,000 acres ; squires owning estates from 1,000 to 3,000 acres ; greater yeomen,
include estates between 300 and 1,000 acres; lesser yeomen, owning estates between
100 and 300 acres ; small proprietors, including lands from 1 to 100 acres ; cottagers,
including all holdings under an acre ; public bodies as included in the Government
return of 1876.

At page 187 he gives us in a short table the summary of these returns for England
.^md Wales.

Peers and Peeresses .

Greater Landowners .

Squires . . . . .

Greater Yeomen

Lesser Yeomen ....

Small Proprietors

Cottagers

Public Bodies : —

The Crown, Barracks, etc. .

Beligioos and Educational.

Commercial, etc. . . .
Waste . . . . .

Total .

Ko. of Owners

Extent in Acres

400

6,728,979

1,288

8,497,699

2,529

4,319,271

9,685

4,782,627

2M13

4,144,272

217,049

3,931,806

703,289

161,143

14,459

165,427

947,665

330,466

1,624,624

973,011

9

34,623,974

678 THE NINETEENTH CENTURF. April

devising intricacies of every description in the titles to land, bo that
not only present owners but intending purchasers are irresistibly cangU
in the meshes of their legal nets, and the transfer of this q^ecies of
property is rendered ruinously costly and difficult*

Since then the owner of mortgaged estates derives no corresponding
return for the disadvantages he suffers from, it would be no hardship
to him for the State to decree, that after a certain date from the
passing of the Act (say twenty-five years), all existing mortgagee
should cease to be legal documents if they exceeded in valae more
than a certain number of years' purchase of the rental (say five years).
The State should moreover decree that from the date of the passing
of the Act no mortgage exceeding five years' rental of any parcel of
land should be executed ; that every species of charge and mortgage
should be registered in a public land-registry office, and that every
title should within a specified time (say again twenty-five years) he
registered in the aforesaid public office, of which there would be
branches in all chief towns of quarter sessions ; and tiiat a number
of years, which should be named in the Act (say seven, and in the
case of dispute twenty-one years), should be held to be sufficient to
prove a title, public notice to be given for twelve months pre-
vious to registry, in order to afford opportunity for any dispute regard-
ing the title to be brought up for trial. The expense to owners of land
in thus registering their titles would not be very large if time was Urn
given for the operation to take place gradually.

A second Act would also be required to deal with the question of
testamentary dispositions and entail. This Act should first provide
for the establishment of a public trustee office for the purpose of
registering all trusts, with head quarters in London, Edinburgh, and
Dublin. Such a court might be a development of the present Court
of Chancery, Secondly, the power to make a life interest of any sort
should be abolished, except as regards the houses, parks, and
pleasure domains of land owners, or of residential house pro-
perty in towns. These it might still be permitted to an owner
to settle in trust for an eldest son, or whoever else the owner
chooses ; the power of resettlement of these residential domains should
be abolished except where the contract is intended to form part of
a marriage settlement : Le. an arrangement nwst be made inter vivos^
and no settlement made by will shall be legal. All charges for join-
ture, younger children's portions, and mortgages of every description
beyond the life of the testator, shall be illegal, the executors of a
will being only empowered to hold land for sale to the best advan-
tage, to fulfil the money provision of a testament. Personal and
real estate will thus be merged under the same legal provi-
sion, and in case the owner die without making a will, the whole
property shall be divided in equal shares among his children, or in
de&ult of children, in graduating proportions among his rela-

1881. REFORM OF FEUDAL LAW8. 679

tions. A testator shoold be given full liberty to bequeath his'property
absolutely to whomsoever he chooses, no provisoes as to marriage or
other limiting clauses to be considered good in law* A limit should,
however, be placed on the power of any individual to exclude his wife
or any of his children from a share of his property, and taking the
Scotch law regarding personalty as a basis, one-half should be set
aside as the ' inalienable portion ' of the younger children and widow or
widower, the portion of the latter to be permitted to be controlled
by whatsoever limitation the testator chooses to insert in his testa-
ment.^

Such, in a few words, are the lines which might be adopted for
creating an Act to regulate the land laws of England; a companion
Act dealing with the powers of testamentary disposition is absolutely
necessary to give any completeness to a scheme for obviating the
evils which now exist. The hitherto sacred character of testamentary
provisions has worked incalculable evil, both directly and indirectly,
to the land ; yet it would be manifestly unjust to curtail the powers
of landowners without at the same time dealing with the right of
bequeathal generally to every other species of property.

Thus we should insure the just and fair authority of the £Either over
the children, and at the same time control the father from acts of
injustice and overbearing conduct towards those who are more or les&
necessarily dependant on him for their future, and who were brought
into the world by his desire.

That the passing of such laws as this would operate an immense
change in the disposition of landed property in the period of one
generation cannot be denied, yet the evil consequences which have
resulted from the long continuance of old laws are not to be eradi-
cated by less heroic means, neither would such measures as are here
sketched out perpetrate acts of injustice or expropriation on present
holders of property. The State has a right to define the powers of

* Mr. Brodrick, in his able work on the English land, when discussing the evils of
limited ownership, says, p. 347, * that the abolition of life estates in land is, therefore,
perfectly consistent with the maintenance or toleration of life interests in personalty,
if public opinion is not yet ripe for a radical alteration in the form of ordinary
marriage settlements. It is also perfectly consistent with the practice of vesting a
family property whole and undivided in the eldest son, and charging it for the
benefit of a widow and younger children. It would even be consistent with the
practice of directing a property to be sold and settling the proceeds as personalty,
yet allowing the sale to be postponed so long as the parties interested should be
willing to accept interest out of the undivided property in lieu of capital sums out
of t^e proceeds.' — Certain advantages might be gained in such a family arrangement
as IB here described, as it would enable the influence of the whole ftoilly to exert
itself much as it does under the French comril de familUj which is recognised as
a social institution in the C«de. An insuperable objection, however, exists to the
plan Mr. Brodrlck recommends of allowing' a testator the full powers of bequeathal
over hia property cff all sorts ; and as a confirmation of this we need only refer to the
case of Wilson v. Birchall, as reported in the papers of February 16, ISSl, by which
it will be seen that a testator left the whole of his wife's fortune of 40,0002., which
she inherited from her father, to his mistress and his two illegitimate children.

680 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. April

testamentary disposition which should be allowed to the individual,
and it cannot be said that if a fair time be given for the working oat
of such measures, the value of landed property would be diminished.
Sales would undoubtedly become more frequent, especially of small
portions of land ; owners would be .tempted to break up oatrlying
estates and put them up to sale 4n small lots,' after having registered
the title and cleared the charges thereon. Plenty of buyers would
turn up immediately the various difficulties of title and expenses of
transfer were got rid of, the various building and land societies in
the country are even now, under the present involved state of our
land laws, working in this direction, and we can readily conoeive the
impetus which would be given for further developing these useful
projects*

Labourers would soon become the owners of gardens and cottages.
Farmers would often purchase their farms outright. A stimulus to
save would be created throughout the whole nation, when cTeryoue
could look forward to purchase a house and a small freehold from
out of their savings.

Can anyone (even the most outrageous Conservative) deny that
the re-establishment of a yeoman class of labourers or farmers would
be other than an inestimable boon to this country, and would even-
tually raise up a class who, instead of being antagonistic to the lights
of property, will be among its staunchest defenders. Surely we have
in the state of political thought on the Continent enough to warn us
that we require in this country to throw up a popular rampart
against the growing fallacies of Communism. Is Nihilism, Socialism^
and Internationalism to be the creed of the labouring classes on the
Continent only, and are we to be for ever free from this &tal political
disease ? If so, these objects must be secured, and we cannot too earlj
set to work to inaugurate just laws encotunging the greater division of
property in land, and thus arm the whole nation against these sub-
versive hordes from the larger towns and restless centres of industry.
Can it be supposed otherwise that in the day of trouble arguments
.and lengthy speeches on political economy wiU be of any avail The
Tory party, who are rampant to-day at the very thought of the curtail-
ment of the right of the landowners in Ireland, seem not to be able
to see the consequences which would result were they successful in
their opposition. It is impossible, however, in Ireland, as also it is
in England, for one class for ever to monopolise every rational source
of happiness in a country, and to place up notice boards to warn off
trespassers along every avenue of enterprise, except the one long high
road of daily drudgery and labour, or the demoralising bypath of
drunkenness, poverty, and crime.

Blandfobd.

1881. 681

JULES JACQUEMART.

Thbre died, last September, at his mother's house in the great high
road between the Arc de Triomphe and the Bois, a unique artist
whose death was for the most part unobserved by the frequenters of
picture galleries. He had contributed but little to picture galleries.
There had not been given to Jules Jacquemart the pleasure of a very
wide notoriety, but in many ways he was happy — ^in many fortunate.
He was fortunate, to begin with, in his birth ; for though he was
bom in the hiywrgeoisie^ it was in the cultivated bourgeoisie, and it
was in the bourgeoisie of France. His father, Albert Jacquemart,
the known historian of pottery and porcelain, and of ancient and
fine furniture, was of course a diligent amateur of beautiful things,
so that Jules Jacquemart was reared in a house where little was
ugly, and much was exceedingly precious; a house organised,
albeit unconsciously, on William Morris's admirable plan, 'Have
nothing in your home that you do not know to be useful or believe to
be beautiful.' Thus his own natural sensitiveness, which he had in-
herited, was highly cultivated from the first. From the first he
breathed the air of Art. He was happy in the fact that adequate
fortune gave him the liberty, in health, of choosing his work, and in
sickness, of taking his rest. With comparatively rare exceptions, he
did precisely the things which he was fitted to do, and did them
perfectly, and being ill when he had done them, he betook himself to
the exquisite South, where colour is, and light — the things we long
for the most when we are most tired in cities — and so there came
to him towards the end a surprise of pleasure in so beautiful a world.
He was happy in being surrounded all his life long by passionate
affection in the narrow circle of his home. His mother survives him
— ^the experience of bereavement being hers, when it would naturally
have been his. For himself, he was happier than she, for he had
never suffered any quite irreparable loss. And in one other way he
was probably happy — in that he died in middle age, his work being
entirely done. The years of deterioration and of decay, in which
first the artist does but dully reproduce the spontaneous work of his
youth, and then is sterile altogether — ^the years in which he is no
longer the fashion at all, but only the landmark or the finger-post of

682 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. April

a fashion that is past — ^the years when a name once familiar is uttered
at rare intervals and in tones of apology as the name of one whose
performance has never quite equalled the promise he had afoietime
given — these years never came to Jules Jacquemart. He was spared
these years.

But few people care, or are likely to care very much, for the
things which chieSy interested him, and which he reproduced in his
art ; and even the care for these things, where it does exist, does
unfortunately hy no means imply the power to appreciate the art by
which they are retairied and diffused. ^ Still-life,' using the awkward
expression in its broadest sense — the pourtrayal of objects, natural or
artificial, for the objects' sake, and not as background or accessory-
has never been rated very highly or very widely loved. Here and
there a professed connoisseur has had pleasure from some piece of
exquisite workmanship ; a rich man has looked with idly caressing
eye upon the skilful record of his gold plate or the grapes of his
forciog-house. There has been praise for the adroit Dutchmen, and
for Lance, and Blaise Desgoffe* But the public generally — save
perhaps in the case of William Hunt^ his birds' nests and primroses-
has been indifferent to these things, and often the public has been
right in its indifference, for often these things are done in a poor
spirit, a spirit of servile imitation, or servile flattery, with which Art
lias nothing to do. But there are exceptions, and there is a better
way of looking at these things* William Himt was often one of these
exceptions ; Chardin was always — ^save in a rare instance or so of
dull pomposity of rendering ; Jules Jacquemart, take him for all in
all, was of these exceptions the most brilliant and the most peculiar.
He, in his best art of etching, and his fellows and forerunners in the
art of painting, have done something to endow the beholders of their
work with a new sense, with the capacity for new experiences of
enjoyment — they have pourtrayed not so much matter as the very
soul of matter. They have put matter in its finest light : it has got
new dignity. Chardin did this with his peaches, his pears, his big
coarse bottles, his rough copper saucepans, his silk-lined caskets.
Jacquemart did it — we shall see in more of detail presently — ^veiy
specially with the finer work of artistic men in household matter and
ornament ; with his blue and white porcelain, with his polished steel
of chased armour and sword-blade, with his Renaissance mirrors, with
his precious vessels of crystal and jade and jasper. But when be was
most fully himself, his work most characteristic and* individual9 he
shut himself off from popularity. Even untrained observers oonM
accept the agile engraver as an interpreter of other men's pietores^
of Meissonier's inventions, or Van der Meer's, or Greuze*#— but they
could not accept him as the interpreter at first hand of th^ treasnies
which were so peculiarly his own that he may alniost be said to have
discovered them and their beauty* They irelre not alive to the

1881. JULES JACQUEMART. 683

wonders that have been done in the world by the hands of artistic
men. How could they be alive to the wonders of this their repro-
duction— their translation^ rather, and a very free and personal one —
into the subtle lines, the graduated darks, the soft or sparkling lights^
of the artist in etching ?

On September 7, 1837, Jacquemart was bom, in Paris, and the
profession of art, in one or other of its branches, came naturally to a
man of his race. A short period of practice in draughtmanship, and
only a small experience of the particular business of etching, sufficed
to make him a master. As time proceeded, he of course developed ;
he found new methods — ways not previously known to him. But
little of what is obviously tentative and immature is to be noticed
even in his earliest work. He springs into his art 'an artist fully armed^
like Bembrandt with the wonderful portrait of his mother ' lightly
etched.' In 1860, when he is but twenty-three, he is at work upon
the illustrations to his father's Hiatoire de la Porcelainey and though
in that publication the absolute realisation of wonderful matter is not
perhaps so noteworthy as in the Gemmes et Joyaux de la Couronney
there is evident already the hand of the delicate artist and the eye
that can appreciate and render almost unconsidered beauties*
^Exquisite matter and the forms that art has given to common things
have found their new interpreter. The Hiatoire de la Porcelame
contains twenty-six plates, most of which are devoted to Oriental
china, of which the elder Jacquemart possessed a magni&cent collect
tion at a time when the popular rage for ' blue and white ' was still
xmpronounced. Many of Albert Jacquemart's pieces figure in the
book ; they were pieces the son had lived with and which he knew
familiarly. Their charm, their delicacy, he perfectly represented, and
of each individual piece he appreciated the characteristics, passing
too, without sense of difficulty, from the bizarre ornamentation of the
East to the ordered forms and satisfying symmetry which the high
taste of the Benaissance gave to its products. Thus, in the Hiatoire
de la PoTcelaine — amongst the quaintly naturalistic decorations from
China (pieces whose beauties Mr. Lang might chaffingly sing about
as made to perfection ^in the reign of the Emperor Hwang'), and
amongst the ornaments of Sevres, with their pretty boudoir graces and
airs of light luxury fit for the Marquise of Louis Quinze and the sleek
young abb6 her pet and her counsellor, we find, rendered with just as
thorough an appreciation, a Broeca Italienne^ the Brocca of the
Medicis, of the sixteenth century, slight and tall, where the lightest
of Benaissance forms, the thin and reed-like lines of the a/rabeaque — no
mass or splash of colour — ^is patterned with measured exactitude, with
rhythmic completeness, over the smoothiah surface. It is wonderful
how little work there is in the etching and how much is suggested.
The actual touches are almodt as few as those which Jacquemart

684 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. April

employed afterwards in some of his light effects of rock-crystal, the
material which he has interpreted perhaps best of all. One counts
the touches, and one sees how soon and how strangely he has got the
power of suggesting all that he does not actually give, of suggestiog
all that is in the object by the little that is in the etching. On such
work may be bestowed, amongst much other praise, that particular praise
which, to fashionable French criticism, delighted especially with the
feats of adroitness, and occupied with the evidence of the artist's dex-
terity, seems the highest — IL n^y a rieUy ctily a toni.

Execution so brilliant can hardly also be faultless, and without
mentioning many instances among his earlier work, where the defect
is chiefly noticeable, it may be said that the roundness of round
objects is more than once missing in his etchings. Strange that the
very quality first taught to and first acquired by the most ordioaiy
pupil of a Government School of Art should have been wanting to an
artist often as adroit in his methods as he was individual in his vision!
The Vase de Vieux Vincennea, from the collection of M. Leopold
Double, is a case to the point. It has th^ variety of tone, the seeimng
fragility of textiu-e and ornament, the infinity of decoration, the
rendering of the subtle curvature of a flower, and of the transparency
of the wing of a passing insect. It has everything but the roundness
— everything but the quality that is the easiest and the most common.
But so curious a deficiency, occasionally displayed, could not weigh
against the amazing evidence of various cleverness, and Jacqaemait
was shortly engaged by the publishers and engaged by the French
Government.

The difference in the commissions accorded by those two— the
intelligent service which the one was able to render to the nation in
the act of setting the artist about his appropriate work, and, broadlj
speaking, the hindrance which the other opposed to his individual
development— could nowhere go unnoticed, and least of all could go
unnoticed in a land like ours, too full of a dull pride in laissez-
favre^ in private enterprise, in Government inaction. To the initiative
of the Imperial Government, as Mr. Hamerton well pointed out when
be was appreciating Jacquemart as long as twelve years ago, was due
the undertaking by the artist of the colossal task, by the fulfilment of
which he secured his fiime. Moreover, if the Imperial Govemment
had not been there to do this thing, this thing would never have
been done, and some of the noblest and most intricate objects of art in
' the possession of the State would liave gone unrecorded — ^their beautv
unknown and undiffused. Even as it is, though the task definitely
commissioned was brought to its proper end, a desirable sequel that
had been planned remained untouched. The hand that recorded the
ordered grace of Renaissance ornament would have shown as well as
any the intentions of more modern craftsmen — the decoration of the
Eighteenth Century in France, with its light and luxurious elegance.

1881. JULEB JACQUEMART. 68$

The EUtovre de la Poroelainej then — ^begun in 1860, published
by Techener in 1862 — was followed in 1864 by the Gentmes et Joyaux
de la Cauranne. The Ghalcographie of the Louvre — the department
which concerns itself with the issue of commissioned prints — under-
took the publication of the Qem/mea et Joyaux. In the series there
were sixty subjects, or at least sixty plates, for sometimes Jacquemart,
seated by his window in the Louvre (which is reflected over and over
again at every angle in the lustre of the objects he designed), would
etch in one plate the portraits of two treasures, glad to give ' value '
to the virtues of the one by juxtaposition with the virtues of the
other : to oppose, say, the brilliant transparency, of the rock-crystal
ball to the texture, sombre and velvety, of the vase of ancient
sardonyx. Of all these plates M. Louis Gonse has given an accurate
account, sufficiently detailed for most people's purposes, in the
Gazette dea Beaux-Arta for 1876. . The catalogue of Jacquemart's
etchings there contained was a work of industry and of very genuine
interest on M. Gronse's part, and its necessary extent, due to the
artist's own prodigious diligence in work, sufficiently excuses, for the
time at least, an occasional incompleteness of description, making
absolute identification sometimes a difficult matter. The critical
appreciation was warm and intelligent, and the student of Jacquemart
must always be indebted to Gonse. 3ut for the quite adequate
description of work like Jacquemart's, there was needed not only the
French tongue — the tongue of criticism — but a Gautier to use it.
Only a critic whose intelligence gave form and definiteness to the
impressions of senses pretematurally acute, could have given quite
adequate expression to Jacquemart's dealing with beautiful matter —
to his easy revelry of colour and light over lines and contours of
selected beauty. Everything that Jacquemart could do in the
rendering of beautiful matter, and of its artistic and appropriate
ornament, is represented in* one or other of the varied subjects of
the Oemmes et JoyatLX, save only his work with delicate china.
And the work represents his strength, and hardly ever betrays his
weakness. He was never a thoroughly trained academical draughts*
man : a large and detailed treatment of the nude figure — any further
treatment of it than that required for the beautiful suggestion of it
as it occurs on Benaissance mirror-frames or in Benaissance porcelains
— ^would have found him deficient. He had a wonderful feeling for
the unbroken flow of its line, for its suppleness, for the figure's
liarmonious movement. He was not i^be master of its most intricate
anatomy ; but, on the scale on which he had to treat it, his suggestion
was faultless. By the brief shorthand of his art in this matter, we
are brought back to the old formula of praise. Here indeed, if any-
where, U n*y a rierij etUy a tout.

And as nothing in his etchings is more adroit than his treatment
of the figure, so nothing is more delightful, and, as it were, unex*

686 THE NINETEENTB CENTURY. April

pected. He feels the intricate unity of its ourve and flow— how it
gives valae by its happy accidents of line to the fixed and invariable
ornament of Benaissance decoration : an ornament as orderly as well*
observed verse, with its settled form, its repetition, its refirain. I
v^ill mention two or three instances which seem the most notable. One
of them occurs in the drawing of a Benaissance mirror — MWwur
Frangaia du Seizihne Si^de — elaborately carved, but its chief giaoe>
after all, is its fine proportions^— not so much in the perfection of the
ornament as in the perfect disposition of it. The absolutely satisiiBustoiy
filling of a given space with the enrichments of design, the occupation
of the space without the crowding of it — for that is what is meant bjr the
perfect disposition of ornament — ^has always been the problem for the
decorative artist* Becent fashion has insisted, quite sufficiently, that it
has been best solved by the Japanes3 ; and they indeed have solved it,
and sometimes with a singular economy of means, sug^stiog rather
than achieving the occupation of the space they have worked upon.
But the best Benaissance design has solved the problem quite as well,
in fashions less arbitrary, with rhythm more pronounced and yet
more subtle, with a precision more exquisite, with a complete com*
prehension of the value of quietude, of the importance of rest If
it requires ' an Athenian tribunal ' to understand Ingres and Flazman,
it needs^ at all events some education in beautiful line to undeistand
the art of Benaissance ornament. Such art Jacquemart of eonne
iLnderstood absolutely, and against its ordered lines the free play of the
nude figure is indicated with touches dainty, faultless, and few. Thus
it is, I say, in the Mirair Francis du SeizUme Si^de. And to the
attraction of the figure has been added almost the attraction of land-
scape and landscape atmosphere in the plate No. 27 of the GemmcB d
JoyauXy representing scenes firom Ovid, as an artist- of the Beoais*
sance had pourtrayed them on the delicate liquid surface otcrisUddi
roche. And, not confining our examination wholly to the Gemrn/BBd
Joyaux — of which obviously the mirror just spoken of cannot form a
part' — ^we observe there or elsewhere in Jacquemart'sw<Hrk how his treat-
ment of the figure takes constant note of the material in whidi the first
artist, his original, was working. Is it raised porcelain, for instance^
or soft ivory, or smooth cold bronze, with its less close and subtle
following of the figure's curves, its certain measure of angularity in
limb and trunk, its many facets, with somewhat marked transitioQ
from one to the other (instead of the unbroken harmony of the real
figure), its occasional flatnesses ? If it is this, this is what Jacquemart
gives us in his etchings — ^not the figure only, but the figure as it
comes to us through the medium of bronze. See, for instance, the
V^us Marine, lyi^g half extended, with slender 1^ ; long a pos*
session of Monsieur Thiers, I believe. You cannot insM too much on
Jacquemart's mastery over his material — doisonnS, with its many
low tones, its delicate patterning outlined by metal ribs ; the coarse-

1881. JULEB JACQUEMART. 687

*

ness of rpugli' wood, 9b xh the SoMHre de Troyea ; the sharp cleai?
swotd-blade, as the sword of Francois Premier, the signet's flatness
and delicate smoothness — ' CTest U emet du Boy 8ant Lome * — and
the red porphyry, flaked, as it were, and jspeckled, of an ancient vase,
and the clear soft mictuous green of jade.

And as the material is tnarrellously varied, so are its combinationis
curiQus and wayward. I saw last autumn, at Lyops, their sombre
little chmrchof Ainay, a Christian edifice built of no Gothic stones,*^but
placed, already ages ago, on the site of a Roman Temple-^the Temple
used, its dpirk columns cut across, its black stones rearranged, and so the
church completed — Antiquity pressed into the service of the Middle
Age. Jacquemart, dealing with the precious objects he had topour-
tray, came often upon such strange meetings: an antique vase o£
sardonyx, say, infinitely precious, mounted and altered in the twelfth
century for the service of the Mass, and so, beset with gold and
jewek, offered by its possessor to the Abbey of Saint Denis.

It was not a literal imitation, it must be said again, that Jacque-
mart made of these things. These things sat to him for tibeir
portraits; he posed them; he composed them aright. . Placed by him
in their best l^hts, they revealed their finest qualities. He loved an
effective contrast of them, a comely juxtaposition ; a legitimate ac-
cessory he could not neglect— that window, by which he sat as he
work^, flashed its light upon a smiace that caught its reflection ; in
so many different ways the simjde expedient helps the task, gives the
object roundness, betrays its lustre. Some people bore hardly on him
for the colour, Avarmth, and life he introduced into his etchings.
They wanted a colder, a more impersonal, a more precise reoon).
Jacquemart never sacrificed precision when precision was of the
essence of the business, but he did not care for it for its own sake.
And the thing that his .first critics blamed him for doing — ^the com"
position of his subject, the rejection of this, the cl^oice of that, the
bestowal of fire and life upon matter dead to the common eye — ^is a
thing which artists in ^ arts have always done, and will always
continue to do, and for this most simple reason, that the doing of it
is Art.

Not Tery long after the Gem/mea et Joyaux was issued as we now
have it, the life of Frenchmen was upset by the war. Schemes of
work waited or were abandoned ; at last men began, as a distinguished
Frenchman at that time wrote to me, ' to rebuild their existence out
of the ruins of the Pa^t.' In 1873, Jacquemart, for ills part, was at
work again on his own besjt work of etching. The Histoi/rt de Ut
Ceramique^ a companion to the Hiatoire de la Porcdaiite^ was in that
year put)U8bed. To an earlier period (to 1 868) belong the two exquisite
plates of the light porcelain of Valenciennes, executed for Dr. Le
Jeal's mQUOgraph on the histoiy of that fabric. And to 1866 belongs
an etching already familiarly known to the readers of the QazeUe des

688 THE NINETEmTH CENTURY. April

Beaux- Arts and to j)08se88or8 of the first edition of Etchers ani £tek-
ing — ^the Tripod — a priceless thing of jasper, set in golden carringB
by Gouthidre, and now lodged among the best treasures of the great
house in Manchester Square*

But it is useless to continue further the chronicle of the triumphfl
that Jacquemart won in the translation, in his own free &8liioii of
black and :^hite, of all sorts of beautiful matter* Moreover in 1873,
the year of the issue of his last important series of plates, Joles
Jacquemart, stationed at Vienna, as one of the jury of the Int»-
national Exhibition there, caught a serious illness — a fever of the
typhoid kind — and this left him a delicacy which he conld never over-
come. Thenceforth his work was limited. Where it was not a weari-
ness, it had to be little but a recreation — a comparative pause. That
was the origin of his performances in water-colour, undertaken in the
South, whither he repaired at each approach of winter. There re-
mains, then, only to speak of these drawings and of such of his etched
work as consisted in the popularisation of painted pictures. Asa
copyist of famous canvasses he foimd remunerative and sometimes
fame-producing labour.

As an interpreter of other men's pictures, it fell to the lot of
Jacquemart, as it generally falls to the lot of professional engravers,
to engrave the most different masters. But with so very personal as
artist as he, the interpretation of so many men, and in so many years,
from 1860, or thereabouts, onwards, could not possibly be always of
equal value. Once or twice he was very strong in the reproduction of
the Dutch portrait-painters ; but as far as Dutch painting is concerned,
he is strongest of all when he interprets, as in one now celebrated
etching, Jan van der Meer of Delft. Der SoldcU und das lacherdt
Mddchen was when Jacquemart etched it what it still remains— ooe
of the most noteworthy pieces in the rich cabinet of M. Leopold
Double. The big and somewhat blustering trooper common in Dutch
art, sits here engaging the attention of that pointed-foced, subtle, hat
vivacious maiden peculiar to Van der Meer. Behind the two, who
are occupied in contented gazing and contented talk, is the bare sub-
lit wall, spread only with its map or chart — the Dutchman made his
wall as instructive as Joseph Surface made his screen — and by the
side of the couple, throwing its brilliant, yet modulated light on the
woman's face and on the background, is the intricately patterned
window, the airy lattice. Rarely was a master's subject or a master's
method better interpreted than in this print. Frans Hals once or
twice is just as characteristically rendered. But with these ezcq)tioDS
it is Jacquemart's own fellow-countrymen whom he renders the best.
Seldom was fmish so free from pettiness or the evidence of effort as
it is in the DifUS des populations lorrames devant VImpSratrice a
Nancy. Le Liseur is even finer — Meissonier agam ; this time a
solitary figure, with bright, soft light from window at the side, as in

W81. JULES JACQUEMART. 689

the Van der Meer of Delft. The suppleness of Jacquemart's talent —
the happy speed of it, rather than its patient elaboration — is* shown
by his renderings of Greoze, the R6ve d'amour^ a single head, and -
L*Orage, a sketchy picture of a young and frightened mother kneel*
ing by her child exposed to the storm. Greuze, with his cajoling art —
which if one likes, one must like without respecting — is entirely there.
So, too, Fragonard, the whole ardent and voluptuous soul of him, in
Le Premier Baiser. Labour it is possible to give in much greater
abundance ; but intelligence in interpretation cannot go any further
or do anything more.

Between the etchings of Jacquemart and his water-colour draw-
ings there is little affinity. The subjects of the one hardly ever recall
the subjects of the other. The etchings and the water-colours have
but one thing in common — an extraordinary lightness of hand. Once,
however, the theme is the same. Jacquemart etched some composi-
tions of flowers ; Monsieur Gonse has praised them very highly : to
me, elegant as they are, fragile of substance and dainty of arrange-
ment, tbey seem inferior to that last-century flower-piece which
we English are fortunate enough to know through the exquisite
mezzotint of Earlom. But in the occasional water-colour painting of
flowers — especially in the decorative disposition of them over a surface
for ornament — Jacquemart is not easily surpassed ; the lightness and
suggestiveness of the work are almost equal to Fantin's. A painted
fan by Jacquemart, which is retained by M. Petit, the dealer, is dex-
terous, yet simple in the highest degree ; the theme is a bough of the
apple-tree, where the blossom is pink, white, whiter, then whitest
against the air at the branch's end.

But generally his water-colour is of landscape ; a record of the
South. Perhaps it is the sunlit and flower-bearing coast, his own
refuge in winter weather. Perhaps, as in a drawing .of Monsieur
May's, it is the mountains behind Mentone — their conformation,
colours and tones, and their thin wreaths of mist — a drawing which
Monsieur May, himself an habitual mountaineer in those regions, as-
sures me is of the most absolute truth. Or, perhaps, as in another
drawing in the same collection, it is a view of MarseiUea ; sketchy
at first sight, yet with nothing unachieved that might have helped
the effect; not the Marseilles, sunny and brilliant, parched and
southern, of most men's observation — the Marseilles even of the
great observer, the Marseilles of Little Dorrit — but the busy port,
with its ever-shifting life, under an e£fect less banal, less connu ;
the Marseilles of an overcast morning : all its houses, all its ship-
ping, all its quays, grey, and green, and steel-coloured, in infinite
variety. Such a work is a masterpiece, with the great quality of a
masterpiece, that you cannot quickly exhaust the restrained wealth of
its learned simplicity. To speak about it one technical word, we
may say that while it belongs by its frank sketchiness to the earlier
Vol. IX.— No. 50. 3 A

690 THE ISINETEENTH CENTURY. Apfl

order of water-ooloiir art, an art of rapid effect as practised best b;
Dewint and David Cox, it belongs to the later order — ^tocontempoiaiy
art — by its unhesitating employment of body colour.

The true source of the diversity of Jacquemart's efforts, which I
have now made apparent, is perhaps to be found in the vivacity of his
Intellect, in his continual alertness to all passing impressions. These
alone make a variety of interests easy and even necessary. They posh
men to express themselves in art of every kind ; they push men to he
collectors as well as artists, to possess as well as to create* Jacque-
mart inherited the passion of a collector ; it was a queer thing that
he set himself to collect. He was a collector of shoe leather; foot-
gear of every sort and of every time. His fs^ther, Albert Jacqu^nait,
had said that to know the pottery of a nation was to know its histoxy.
Jules saw many histories, of life and travel, and the aims of tra?el,
in the curious objects of his collection. Their ugliness — ^what would
b^ to most of us the extreme distastefulness^of them— did not repel
him. Nor were his attentions devoted chiefly to the dainty sUppers
of a dancer — souvenirs, at all events, of the art of the ballet, ?eiy
saleable at fancy fairs of the theatrical profession. Nor do we owe to
him, as to Jules de Goncourt, a young girPs relics, the Pandoufles de
Mademoiselle MarciUe. He etched his own boots, tumbled out of
the house's worst cupboard. He looked at them with affection—
souvenirs de voyage. The harmless eccentricity brings down, for a
moment, to very ordinary levels, this watchful and exquisite artist, so
devoted generally to high beauty, so keen to see it.

What more would he have done had the forty-three years heen
greatly prolonged, a spell of life for further work accorded, Hezekiah-
like, to a busy labourer upon whom Death had laid its first warning
hand ? We cannot answer the question, but it must have been much,
so variously active was his talent, so fertile his resource. As it is, what
may he hope to live by, now that the most invariably fatal of all fonns
of consumption, the most fatal and the least suspected, la phtkisie
laryngSej has arrested his effort ? A very gifted, a singuburly agile
and supple translator of painter's work, he may surely be allowed to be
— and a water-colour artist, perfectly individual, yet hardly actu-
ally great ; his strange dexterity of hand at the service of fact, not at
the service of imagination. He recorded Nature ; he did not exalt or
interpret it. He interpreted Art. He was alive, more than any ooe
has been alive before, to all the wonders that have been wrought i&
the world by the hands of artistic men.

Fbedebick Weovobs.

188L 691

REBECCAISM.

In these days of the Irish Land Leagne, it is curious to turn to the
Welsh Anti*Salmon League, now making itself disagreeably felt in a
portion of South Wales where flow the Wye and its tributaries.

About half a century back a small band of Welsh dissenters, in
their fondness for Bible quotations, chose their name from Genesis
xziv. 60, where, speaking of Bebecca, it is said, <Be thou the mother
of thousands of millions, and let thy seed possess the gate of those
who hate them.'

Thus a secret society of * Bebeccaites ' was formed for redressing
in their own fi&shion the grievances that then existed in the excessive
number of turnpike gates throughout South Wales.

About that time, and shortly before the introduction of railways,
the magistrates in these districts had set themselves to make new
roads, as well as to widen and improve the gradients of the old ones,
and to pay the cost of this they had increased the turnpike gates so
much, that there :was not a small town or scarcely a village that was .
not approached by a gate. This multiplied the tolls so much as to^.
cause a heavy tax upon travellers going long distances, as was often
the case in those days, especially on formers and dealers frequenting
fairs, or going from Cardiganshire, Carmarthenshire, Breconshire,^
or Badaorshire into the midland counties. Dressed as women,^
sometimes armed, and riding good horses, this band made a clean
sweep of such gates as they thought objectionable, tearing down the
houses, throwing the gates into the rivers, and creating quite a
panic in these usually quiet districts. The police were powerless, and'
the military were called out, but not a single * Bebecca ' could be
taken. The gates were no sooner reinstated than * Bebecca ' and her
daughters redemolished them. The attention of Government was
called to the question, and, thanks to the able handling of the subject
by the then representatives of South Wales, an Act of Parliament was
passed, called * The South Wales Turnpike Act,' which has proved ai^
inestimable benefit to South Wales. Its chief provision is that no
gate shall be erected within seven miles of another, unless they free
one another. Power is given to raise money on easy terms to pay
off existing debts, and a system of Grovemment control and inspection

3a2

692 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Apt!

is adopted, in addition to a well constituted County Soads Board, in
each county.

The result has been in every way satis&ctory'; the heavy debts
have disappeared, splendid roads everywhere distinguish South Wales,
and the road rates are not oppressive.

* Rebecca ' and her children disappeared from the scene as if for
ever, but a few old men survived, and a new grievance having gprusg
up, very much after their own hearts, young recruits were not wanting
when the enforcement of the law for the protection of salmon by the
Board of Conservators made their autumn and winter sport of salmon*
spearing a grave offence.

It soon became the popular thing among the town and village
populations to turn out at night on the banks of the Wye and its
tributaries to see * Sebecca lighting the water ; ' and picturesque it
undoubtedly is to see in midstream half a dozen stalwart youDg
fellows, dressed to the waist in white, with bonnets or handkerchiefs
over their heads, and with disguised faces, some with flambeaux on
poles, and the others with spears, all standingin a line across a gravelly
ford. The poor emaciated salmon, disturbed from his boring in the
gravel by the unexpected light, runs like a moth into the candle, and
is transfixed by the unerring aim of ^ Bebecca.' Tossing it high in the
air with a shout of triumph, speedily taken up in responsive echo by
the sympathising crowd on the bank of the river, often numberiDg
more than a hundred persons, it is then thrown into a bag, or, as too
often is the case now, wantonly left on the river side, a prey for
carrion crows. Perhaps in the midst of the fun there is a cry of
' water bailiffs I ' and then the lawless part of the business comes out
in strong relief. ^Bebecca' on the river bank flings a volley of stones,
and often fires off a gun in the air by way of warning ; the crowd jostle,
chaff, and sometimes add their threats against the intruders, who, ii
plucky enough to make a dash at their men, nearly always are
worsted, and have to retire with broken heads or sore ribs firom nailed
boots, and the poachers triumph.

Every year, for the last five years, has this tussle between law and
disorder been getting more serious. The Duke of Beaufort, having
valuable fishing rights on the tideway of the river, has become chair-
man of the board, and, to protect these interests as well as those of the
middle proprietors on the river, he has set himself energetically to
work to crush this destruction of fish, while ' Bebecca ' on her side
only becomes bolder and more pugilistic^ until in the present winter
twelve serious riots have taken place in Badnorshire alone, and the
increase of the police force by twenty men is not considered too
;strong a measure of precaution.

The area over which this secret organisation extends is about
150,000 acres, of which Badnorshire embraces two-thirds, uid Brecon-
fibire one-third, and it is impossible not to be alive to the £ict that

1881. REBECCAISM. 693

a genuine grievance is believed to exist among this population, and
that the landowners- are at no pains to undeceive the people on a
question where their own interests lie in the same direction.

Shortly, what ' Bebecca ' says is this. < I used to be able to have
a fish (salmon) when I likedj I could catch him with rod and line, or
spear, from the commons adjoining the river for many a mile, or on
neighbour Jones's land, and a kippered fish in winter was my greatest
luxury. I could catch as many samlets as I chose, and my lads could
do the same, and it kept them out of mischief. There were plenty of
salmon and to spare in those days, and my landlord never interfered nor
ordered me not to do it. No keeper interfered with us. They were
generally good hands at spearing themselves, and taught my lads the art.
Now we are not allowed to look at a salmon, much less to take one.
To use a spear is unlawful, and the possession of one dangerous.
My old fishing-ground, the conmions, has been taken away from me
by Inclosure Acts, and has gone to the large landowners. I dare not
use a rod and line for a salmon without payment of a heavy annual
license. It is equally unlawful for me or my lads to catch a small
samlet or laspring as long as my finger, although there are thousands
on the streams below my house, and my wife says they are the
sweetest Uttle things she ever tasted. There are strange men
parading the river night and day, like spies, daring us to touch what
we always thought we had a right to take. There are scores of fish
there under our eyes, but they belong, they say, now to the Duke, or
somebody else, and we have to look on and see them preserved for him,
or others for whom we care nothing. Our landlords are not much
better off than we are. We are told that the Duke's tenants catch
thousands, and that they, and the people below Hereford, are allowed
by law to net night and day, except on Saturday and Sunday, and
that this prevents any fish coming into our streams until the breeding
season begins. Wc will stand this no longer. We upset the bad law
about gates, and we will upset these unfair laws about salmon. We
are a Grod-fearing people, and wish to respect the laws^ wherever just
and fair, but the salmon were sent us as our lawful food, and no
board shall deprive us of them.'

The result is easily told. The Wye, the most beautiful salmon-
river in England or Wales, is being denuded of its breeding-fish,
steadily but surely, and the number of sporting-fish that reach the
upper waters in the fishing season is also diminishing every year.
Take the past season, as rather better than its predecessors for summer
floods to take up the fish, and we shall find the results lamentably
deficient in the best rod-fishings. In MaesUwch water, for instance^
in Radnorshire, let at about 5002. a year, there have only been fifty
fish caught throughout the season, which makes each fish caught cost
10^, exclusive of keepers, &c. Other fishings show a similar return,.

694 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. April

and it needs a strong and united effort to prevent a tot41 collapse of
the prince of freshwater fish, the noble salmon, in the Wye.

To expect the present Board of Conservators to find a remedy is,
I fear, hopeless, made up as it is of three divergent interests, so diffi-
cult to harmonise. Of late years the upper proprietors, although
numerically superior to the middle and lower proprietors, have been
fairly out-generalled. Their bylaws for abolition of night-netting
have been rejected by the authorities at the Home Office, and they
have now practically retired from the board, and lefb the business
almost entirely in the hands of its present noble chairman and the
net-fishing interests. Conciliatory and anxious for the preservation
of the river as the noble chairman unquestionably is, he shares no
feelings in common with ^ Bebecca ' and her daughters, and there is
little chance of any offer of mediation or concession coming from the
board.

Can nothing be done to stem this evil torrent, which disgraces so
£Biir a district ? Will not a Liberal Grovemment, for whom Wales has
shown so noble a devotion, come forward and legislate beneficially?

B. D. GrBEEN PbICX.

1881* 695

LA PHILOSOPHIE DE DIDEROT.
LE DERNIER MOT UUN MATERIALISTE}

La philosophie de Diderot, qui avait ^te n^glig^e et d^daignde peu-
dant un assez long cours de temps, a repris une grande faveur depuis
quelques atin^s, par suite de ses affinit^s avec les tendances pr6-
dominantes de la philosophie contemporaine. On pent dire que
Diderot, en effet, a 6te I'un des pr^curseurs de cett« philosophie.
Beaucoup d'id^ repandues aujourd'hui et d^veloppSes avec 6clat
par les maitres modemes se trouvent en germe dans ses oeuvres.
C^tait en effet un des esprits les plus auggestifa que Ton pfit trouver
de son temps. Ne lui demandez pas des oeuvres m^ditees, composes
avec art, ^ites avec gout, li^es dans toutes leurs parties : rien chez
lui ne vient k maturity ; tout est jet^ avec profusion, mais sans
ordre et sans r^gle. Ce ne sont jamais que des fragments, des lueurs
eclatantes, mais passag^res, d'admirables improvisations : mais tout
ce qui est raisonnement suivi, liaison d'id^es, enchainement syst^ma-
tique de propositions, enfin construction r^guli^re et ^uilibree, est
chose inconnue j)0ur cet esprit fumeux oh tout est sans cesse k
r^tat de bouiUonnement et de fermentation. Diderot, malgr6
d'^minentes qualit^s qui approchent du g^nie, n'a done pas laissS de
chef-d'oeuvre ; quoique plus riche en idfes peut-6tre que Voltaire et
Sousseau, il ne pent £tre nomme qu*apr^ eux parmi les grands
hommes du sitele; et k plus forte raison n'6gale-t-il pas Montes-
quieu et Buffon. Cest un sublime improvisateur ; telle est Tid^e
que s'en sont toujours faite ses juges les plus sympathiques et les
plus felair^s ; et la nouvelle Edition de ses osuvres, la plus complete
de toutes, ne modifiera en rien, nous le croyons, cette opinion.

Cette ^tion se distingue de toutes les pr^c^entes par la publi-
cation de pi^es in&iites qui ont ete recueillies dans les papiers de
Diderot rest& en Russie k la Bibliothdque de I'Ermitage. On sait
en effet que Diderot, appel^ par la grande Catherine k St.-P^ters-
bourg, y resta quelques ann^es, et qu'il y avait laiss^ nombre de
travauz Merits par lui pendant cette p^riode. Ce sont ces travaux

^ (EMxrei eompUtet de Diderot, revues ear les Editions originales et sor les
mannscrits in^dits, oonservfe k la Biblioth^ue de rErmitage, avec notices, notes,
table analytiqne, par J. Assezat, chez Oamier frdres, Paris 1876, 20 volumes in-S.

696 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Aptl

qui ODt £te coUatiotiii^s avec soin et ajout^ par le nouvd ^diteor a
toutes les (Buvres d6j^ connues* En outre, depois 1821|datedela
deroi^re edition de Diderot, des supplements partielaassezimpoitants
avaient ete public separement ; et il ^tait urgent de les incorporer
auz oeuvres completes. Eniin, comme il y avait lieu de craindre
que, dans les editions ant&ieures, comme il arrive souvent, le texte
n'ait 6te alterS, le nouvel 6diteur a confronts ce texte, toutes les foiB
que cela a et6 possible, avec le texte des editions originales donnees
par Diderot lui-m6me. G'est done, on pent le dire, Tedition defini-
tive de Diderot que le public a aujourd'hui entre les mains. Cette
Mition nous est une occasion naturelle de remettre en lumi^
quelqucs-unes des pens^s les plus importantes d'un auteur si cel^bre
et cependant si peu lu* Nous croyons qu'il est permis, sans tiop
forcer les choses, de distinguer, dans la philosophie de Diderot, trois
periodes oil elle se pr^sente sous des aspects assez diflE^rents. Bans
la premiere, il n'est encore qu'un d^iste ; il s'attaque seulement au
Cbristianisme ; mais il defend, et nous le croyons avec sincerite, le
principe de la religion naturelle. Dans la seconde, il est devenn
tout entier lui-mSme ; il arbore le drapeau du materialisme, mais
d'un materialisme singulier, aux tendances panth^istiques ; enfin,daiis
une demi^re p^riode, il semble quHl soit amene a un commencemeDt
de reaction centre le materialisme ; au moins s'en s^pare-t-il ti^
decidetnent au point de vue moral ; et il se rapproche, pour les ten-
dances, des moralistes de I'^cole ^cossaise.

CTest surtout cette troisidme phase de la pbilosopbie de Diderot
que nous voudrions faire connaitre d^aprds les documents nouveauxi
nous devons seulement rappeler les traits essentiels de la doctrine de
notre auteur, telle qu'elle r^sulte de ses Merits ant^rieurs, et notam-
ment des deux principaux : LHnterprStcUion de la nature et le Biv
de d'Alembert Cette philosophic est g^neralement caracterisee par
le nom de materialisme, et Diderot est regarde ]>ar tous comme le
coryphee du materialisme au XVIIP si^cle. On ne pent dire sans
doute que cette qualification soit inexacte ; mais il &at reconnaitFe
en mSme temps que c'est un materialisme original et assez different
de ce que Ton appelle d'ordinaire de ce nom. Le vrai type en effet
du materialisme, c'est Tatomisme de Democrite et d'Epicure : c'est
rhypothdse que tous les changements de Tunivers sent dus k la ren-
contre et a la combinaison des molecules primordiales dont les pit>-
.prietes essentielles sont Fetendue et la solicUte. Faire naitre rordre
de Tunivers de la rencontre fortuite des atomes, et expliquer la sensi-
bilite de la pensee par la mixtion et la combinaison de ces atomes,
.voila le vrai materialisme, et mSme, a parler rigoureusement, la seule
doctrine qui puisse etre appeiee de ce nom : car pour etre materisp
liste, il faut evidemment ramener toutes choses a la mati^ ; mais
il faut alors qu'elle soit definie, et reduite aux qualites qui soDt le
propre de tous les corps, par consequent aux proprietes physiqaes

1881. LA PHILOSOPHIE BE DIDEROT. 697

«t mecaniques. Si au contraire on commence par placer dans la
matiere les qnalit^s propres k I'esprit, on peat se demander si cette
hypothese ne ressemble pas au spiiitualisme autant et plus peut-^tre
qu'au mat&ialisme: or c'est 1&, nous I'allons voir, la philosophic
propre de Diderot.

Cette doctrine sur Tessence de la matidre est au fond celle que
Maupertuis, sous le nom du ' Docteur Baumann,' avait expose dans
une thdse ^crite en latin, et qu'il a depuis publi^e en fran^ais sous le
titre de Systhne de la N(xtwre? Dans ce travail, Maupertuis com-
battait la thdorie des atomes, celle des natures plastiques, celle des
archies et enfin celljB de I'emboitement des germes ; et il substituait
a toutes ces hypotheses celle d'une sensibility essentielle k la mati^re.
II attribuait aux molecules primordiales le d^sir, I'aversion, la md-
moire, I'intelligence, ' en un mot, toutes les qualites que nous recon-
naissons dans les animaux, que les anciens comprenaient sous le nom
d'ame sensitive, et que le docteur Baumann admet, proportion gard^e
des formes et des masses, dans les particules les plus petites de la
mati^ comme dans le jdus gros animal.' Diderot fait quelques
reserves sur cette hypoth^ ; mais elles nous semblent plus appa-
rentes que reelles, et sont plutot des precautions que des objections.
II y voit des perils pour I'existence de Dieu et I'exist^nce de Tame ;
mais ces deux questions mises a part peut-dtre par simple prudence,
il accepte au fond I'hypothdse tout en cherchant k Tatt^nuer. II ne
&llait pas, suivant lui, se pr^cipiter dans I'espdce de mat6rialisme le
plus seduisant en attribuant aux mol^ules organiques le desir,
Taversion, le sentiment et la pens^e. II fallait se contenter de sup-
poser une sensibilite mille fois moindre que celle que le Tout-Puis-
sant a aceord^e aux animaux les plus voisins de la mati^re morte.
En vertu de cette ^ sensibility sourde,' Diderot suppose que chaque
molecule, sollicitee par <une inquietude automate,' cherche k se
procurer la situation la plus commode de toutes, comme fait I'animal
dans le sommeil ; il eut d^fini I'animal un ' lefystdme de molecules
organiques qui, par I'impulsion d'une sen&tion semblable k un
toucher (jbtuSj se sont combing, jusqu'a ce que chacune ait ren-
contre la place la plus ^convenable k sa figure et a son repos.' 11 est
difficile de d6m61er la difif(£rence qu'il y aurait entre un tel systdme
et celui de Maupertuis. Gelui-ci n'entendait certainement pas que
les atomes poss6dassent les m6mes facultes que les animaux sup&ieurs ;
il n'aurait pas chicanS sur le degr^, et sans doute il ne se serait pas
refuse k admettre que la sensibility qu'il pr6tait aux molecules est
* mille fois moindre ' que celle du moindre animalcule ; car le degre
ne fiiit rien k I'affaire. Diderot tie se s^pare . done de Maupertuis
qu'en apparence : au fond il lui emprunte son hypothec, en ne la
modifiant que dans la forme. Si nous es^ayons de remonter k I'origine
de cette hypothdse, il est facile de voir qu'elle derive directement de

* OSuvTM de Mhv^ertuii, torn. 2.

698 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. April

la monadologie de Leibniz. Maupertms ^tait le pr&ident de VAca*
d^mie de Berlin, fond^ par Leibniz ; or cette Academie itait le
centre du monadisme leibnizien. Maupertuis lui-memey sur biai
des points (par esemple sur le principe de la moindre action), se
rattache directement aux Leibnizianisme. Or, on sait que Leifamz
d^finissait la substance ' ce qui est capable d'action,' et il y recon-
naissait deux attributs fondamentaux, VappStit et la perception. H
suffisait de supprimer I'attribut de I'^tendue pour que de telles
substances simples, actives par essence, perceptives et appdtitires,
fussent de v^ritables &mes ; et Leibniz disait en effet qu'elles sont
'analogues & nos ames/ C'est ce systdme que Maupertuis avait
d^velopp^ et que Diderot lui emprunta comme 'le mat^rialisme le
plus s^uisant.' Mais on pent se demander encore une fois si uq tel
systdme ne m^riterait pas plutot le nom d'ultra-spiritualisme, puis-
qu'au lieu de faire I'esprit analogue k la mati^re, comme lesatoimstes,
il repr^nte au contraire la matidre comme analogue a TespriU

Dans le Rive de cPAlembertj Diderot a repris en son propre nom
et soutenu bardiment Tbypoth^ d'une sensibility esaentielle a la
mati^re ; il y expose une sorte de panth&sme vitaliste et hylozoiste qui
se rapprocherait plus de la philosophic stoicienne que de la philoeophie
^picurienne. ' II n'y a plus qu'une substance dans I'univers, dans
rhomme et dans ranimal* La serinette est de bois;' rhommeest
de chair ; le serin est de chair ; le musioien est d'une chair divene-
ment organis^e ; mais I'un et I'autre out une m6me origine, ime
mfime formation, une m4me fin/ D'Alembert objecte que si la sen-
sibility est essentielle k la matidre, il faut que la pierie aente.
' Pourquoi non ? ' r^pond Diderot. II pretend qu'on fait ' du marixe
avec de la chair, et de la chair avec du marbre,* en broyant le
marbre, en le mettant en poussi^re, en I'incorporant a ime tene
v^g^tale.' n distingue une ' sensibility active,' celle des Stres vivants,
et une ' sensibility inerte,' celle de la mati^re morte. Enfin il ooo-
clut que 'depuis Tel^phant jusqu'au puceron, depuis le puoooa
jusqu'i la molecule sensible et vivante, Porigine de tout, pas un point
dans la nature entidre qui ne souffre ou qui ne jouisse.' Toutes ces
propositions ^taient d6j& implicitement contenues dans le livrede
Vlnterpr nation de la nature. Mais id Diderot creuse plus avant
que n'avait fait Maupertuis, et qu'il n'avait feit lui-m£me dans le
livre pr^o^dent: il se s^pare nettement de la doctrine monadiste.
Cette doctrine en effet consiste & donner & I'individu unevalenr
substantielle, et & r^duire les corps k des substances simples don^
chacune de caractdres propres et individuels. Si on admet de tella
substances, on admet par 1& m6me des ames ; et I'&me humaine n*e^
qu'une de ces substances, dou^ de la faculty de T6tL6chiT et de se
replier sur elle-mSme. Diderot est entidrement oppos6 & oette

' Diderot vient de comparer rorganisme vivant tl un instrument de mnaaqpe*

1881. LA PHILOSOPHIE DE DIDEROT. 699

doctrine. Pour lui, il n'y a point d^individu. ' Que voulez-vous dire
avec vos individus ? II n'y en a pas ; non^ il n'y en a pas. II n'y a
qu'un seul grand individu : c'est le tout* Dans ce tout, comme dans
une machine, comme dans un animal quelconque, il y a une partie
que vous appelez telle ou telle ; mais quand vous donnez le nom
d'individu k cette partie du tout, c'est par un concept aussi faux que
si, dans un oiseau, vous donniez le nom d'individu k I'aile, a une
plimie de Tailed' S'il n'y a pas d'individu m6me corporel, k plus
forte raison n'y a-t-il pas d'individu spiritueL L'ame est inutile;
' Vous en voulez,' dit d'Alembert, ^ k la distinction des deux sub-
stances ? ' ' Je ne m'en cache pas,' r^pond Diderot* ' Cependant ne
fautril pas un entendement, distinct de I'instrument dont il se sert ?
Non, il faut seulement distinguer I'instrument philosophe de Tinstru-
ment clavecin. L'instrument philosophe est sensible ; il est a la fois
le musicien et I'instrumeBt. Nous sommes des instruments dou^s de
sensibilite et de memoire.' ^ Mais,' dit d'Alembert, ^ la sensibility est
iine qualite simple, et incompatible avec un sujet, un suppot divisible.
' Cralimatias I ' r^pond Diderot. <Ne voyez-vous pas que toutes les
qualites sont essentiellement indivibibles ? II n'y a ni plus ni moins
d'imp^n^trabilit^ ; il y a la moiti^ d'un corps rond, mais non la
moitie de la rondeur.' Enfin Diderot, qui ne se soucie pas beaucoup
de cons&juence et de coherence, invoque ' I'indivisibilite de I'atome,'
quoiqu'il n'admette pas d'individus. Ce n'est pas ici le lieu de
discuter toutes ces idees ; disons seulement que Diderot ne va pas au
fond de la difficulte : cette difficult^ est que la rondeur et I'imp^n^-
trabilit^ ne se per^oivent pas elles-m&nes, n'ont pas consq^ence
d'elles-mSmes : leur unit^ vient de la pensee qui les pense; mais
d'o& vient I'unit^ de la pens^ qui se pense eUe-mSme ? Diderot
croit expliquer ce fait par la memoire: mais comment deux id^es
sont-elles k la fois presentes a I'esprit, et celle que je pense actuelle*
ment, et ceUe que j'ai pens^ autrefois ? Diderot ..hous dit que ' la
corde vibrante sensible oscille longtemps encdre aprds qu'on I'a
pinoSe, et qu'eUe en ^t fr^mir d'autres.' On pent se demander si ce
ne sent pas 14 de pures m^taphores.

Nous n'insiBterons pas sur un des points les plus curieux de cette
philosophie, qui a £t6 r^mment mis en lumi^re par un savant
fran^ais avec un grand talent, k savoir le transformisme de Diderot.^
n est bien certain, d'apr^ les textes cites par M. Caro, que le veri-
table anc6tre du transformisme en France n'est ni Lamarck, ni
Robinet, comme on I'a dit, mais Diderot. C'est lui qui a dit le pre-
mier qu'il n'y a jamais eu qu' ^ un seul animal,' et que la nature
enti&re n'est qu' ' un mSme ph^nomdne transforme.' C'est encore \k
un trait original et sup^rieur qui distingue son mat^rialisme de celui
de ses contemporains. II n'attribue pas la production des 6tres de

* Jlewe des Deux-MondeSt 15 Octobre 1879, ■ De I'ld^e transformiste dans Diderot '
par E. Oaro.

700 • THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. April

la nature a de simples oombinaisons ext^rieures. II voit dans runi.
vers entier, comme les stoiciens, un Stre vivant qui a en lui-m^me
le principe de son developpement* Ce systdme est moins materia-
lisme que spiritualisme. C'est une sorte de vitalisme uniTersel
tr^ superieur au fortuitisme (s'il est permis d'ainsi parler) d^
anciens atomistes

Non-seulement le mat^rialisme de Diderot est d'nn ordre snpe-
rieur k celui de son temps, mais nous allons voir que lm-m6me (et
c^est un des r&ultats les plus nouvcaux de la publication ricente)
semble s'Stre ^loign6 plus tard de son propre point de vue, et qn^i la
fin de sa vie, provoqu^ par les ezc^s de ses propres opinions, et en
particulier par le livre plat et superficiel d'Helv^tius, il avait &it ua
xnouvement en arri^re, et ^lev^ lui-m6me des doutes et des objections
contre le principe et les cons^uences du mat^ialisme* Cest oe qui
ressort de sa BSfutation de Vouvmge cPHelvSti/us intituU FHammef
refutation &;rite en 1773 ou 1774. I^^sumons les principauz points
de cette curieuse refutation.

Helvetius avait pos^ ce principe, d'oii derive tonte la psychologie
materialiste : serdvr^ c^est 'penaer. Ce principe avait dej4 ete Tobjet
d'une forte et p^netrante discussion de J.-J. Rousseau dans le
Vicaire Savoyard, Diderot parait incliner vers Topinion de
Bousseau, et se s^pare de celle d'Helvdtius : < Sentir, c'est juger,'
dit-il. Cette assertion, comme elle est exprim6e, ne me parait pas
rigoureusement vraie. Le stupide sent, mais peut-4tre ne jnge-t-il
pas. L'etre totalement priv^ de m^moire sent, mais peui>4tre ne juge-
t-il pas : le jugement suppose la comparaison de deux idees. Diderot
voit trds-bien le noeud de la question : c'est de savoir ^ comment
nous avons deux id^es pr^sentes k la fois ; ou comment, ne les ajant
pas pr^sentes, cependant nous les comparons.' Tout le dix-buiti^me
si^le, sur les traces de Condillac, avait explique jusque la toutes les
operations intellectuelles comme des transformations de la sensation ;
^t I'on peut dire que Diderot lui-m6me dans ses Merits materialiBtes
avait admis implicitement cette doctrine. Ici au contraire, il s'en
separe decidement, ou du moins il eidve contre elle les doutes les
plus serieux. 11 affirme que cette doctrine ^convient a Tanimal
plutot qu'4 I'bomme.' II insiste sur le caract^re hypotbetique de ces
transformations arbitraires: 'Passer brusquement de la sensibilite
physique, c'est-sl-dire de ce que je ne suis pas une plante, une piene,
un metal, a I'amour du bonheur, de I'amour du bonheur a I'inteift^
de I'interet k I'attention, de I'attention ^ la comparaison des idees;
je ne saurais "nCaccoTnmoder de ces gS7iiralitSs4a ; je suis bomme^
et il me faut des causes propres & I'bomme.' Ces doutes ne portent
encore que sur le principe de la psycbologie sensualiste. Void qni
va plus loin, et qui touche jusqu'au materialisme m&me: 'J'esti'
merai davantage,' dit-il, ' celui qui par I'experience ou robservation
demontrera rigoureusement que la sensibilite pbysique appartient

1881. LA PHILOSOPHIE DE DIDEROT. 701

aussi easentiellement k la mati^re que rimpenetrabilit^, ou qui la
deduira sans r^plique de I'organisation*' II montie les difficultes
des deux hypoth^s : d'une part en efifet * 11 faut convenir que VoTga-
niacUionj c'est-a-dire la coordination des parties inertes, ne mdne
point du tout a la aenaibiUM.^ D'autre part, ^ la aenaihilitS gSrUrale
des moUculea n^eat qu'une supposition qui tire touts sa force des dif-
ficultSs dont eUe debarrasse : ce qui ne suffitpas en bonne phUosophie.^
Ainsi cette bypoth^e que Diderot avait avancee dejil apr^s Mauper-
tuis, dans V Interpretation de la nature^ et qu'il avait developp^ si
hardiment dans le Rive de d^Alembert, n'est plus pour lui qu'une
supposition arbitraire pour se debarrasser des difficultes, ce qui ne
suffit pas en bonne philosophie. NWblions pas d'ailleurs que I'autre
hypoth^, celle qui fait naitre la sensibUite de Torganisation, a tou-
jours paru inadmissible k Diderot, et qu'elle ne peut lui etre impute.
Enfin, lors m6me qu'on admettrait cette proposition d'une sensibilite
essentielle a la mati^re, ce serait encore, nous Tavons vu, ime ques-
tion de savoir si cette proposition elle-mSme serait un aveu de mate-
rialisme, ou si elle ne serait pas plutot le renversement meme du
materialisme*

G'est encore s'floigner du materialisme que de distinguer, comme
fait Diderot dans ce dernier ecrit, la condition et la cause presque
dans les memes termes que Font fait Platon, Aristote, et Leibniz,
Helvetius disait : ' La sensibilite pbysique est la cause unique de nos
actions et de nos pensees.' Diderot r^pond : ^ Condition primitivej
cela est incontestable ; mais la cause^ la cause unique, c'est ce qui
me semble presque aussi evidemment faux.' L'exemple qu'il cboisit
pour prouver cette distinction, rappelle celui de Socrate dans le
Phidon : ' II faut que je marche pour aller rue St* Anne, causer avec
un certain philosopbe que j'aime ; mais n'y vais-je que parce que j'ai
des pieds? Ces actions sont sans doute rMuctibles en demiSre
analyse k la sensibilite physique, mais comme condition^ mais non
comme cavscy but, ou motif J* C'est tout k fait dans le mSme sens,
et presque dans les mdmes termes, que Socrate disait :

N*est-€e pas oomme si quelqu^un disait : tout oe que Socrate fait, il le fait avec
inteUigence, et qu'euBuite, voulant rendre raiflon de chaque chose que je fais, dirait
qu*aujourdhui, par exemple, je suis ici assis but mon lit, parce que men corps est
compost d*08 et de neris ; que les os, ^tant dura et solideSi sont s^par^ par des
jointures, et que les muscles lient les os avec les chairs, et la peau qui les reuferme
et les embrasse les una et lea autres . . • ; ou bien encore, c'est comme si, pour
expliquer la cause de notre entretien, il la cherchait dans le son de la voix, dans
Tair, dans 1 ame, et dana mille autre choses semblahles, sans songer & parler de la
viSritable cause ; savoir, que lea Ath^niens ajant jug^ qu'il ^tait mieux de me con-
«lajnner, j*ai trouv^ aussi qu*il ^tait mieux d*etre assis sur ce lit et d*attendre
tranquillement la peine qu'ils m'ont imposSe ; car je vous jure que depuis longtemps
cea muscles et ces os aeraient & M^gare ou en B^otie, si j'avais cru que cela f&t
mieux, et si je n*avais pens^ quo cela fiit plus juste et plus beau de raster ici pour
subir la peine 4 laquelle la patrie m*a condamn^, que de m*^happer et de m*enfuir

702 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. April

comme iin efldaye. Mais il est trop ridicule de donner oefl Taisoi»-U . • • ovtrs
eihose est la cause, et autre ehoee ce eons quci la cause ne strait jamais cause.

Diderot revient avec insistance sur cette distinction fondamentale
de la condition et de la cause: 'Jcvous contredis, doncj'eiiste;
fort bien ; xnais : je vous contredis parce que j'existe, cela n'est pas ;
pas plus que : il faut un pistolet pour £a,ire sauter la cervelle ; done
je fais sauter la cervelle parce que j'ai un pistolet. • • II faut nne
scie pour scier ; mais il n^a pas vu qu'on ne sciait pas par la laisoD
qu'on avait une scie.'

Sans doute, il faut se garder de rien exag^rer, et de prater ici a
t)iderot plus de spiritualisme quHl n'en a ; car le fond de son objec-
tion est qu'Helv^tius a attach^ trop d'importance aux sens externes,
et pas assez a I'organe interne, k I'organe cerebral lui-m6me :

n 7 a dnq sens ; rcalk les cinq t^moins ; maiB hjuge cu U rtgjporteurf II j i
un organe particulier, le cerveau, auquel les cinq t^moins font leor rapport, oet
organe m^ritait bien un examen particulier. H y a deux sortes de stapides: In
uns le sent par des sens li^b^t^ ; les autres, avec des sens exquis, par nne maaruK
conformation du ceryeau. CTest oil j'attends I'auteur qui a pris Toutil n^oessaire t
Touvrage pour la raison de Touvrier ... II y a cinq sens excellents, mais k tete
est mal oiganiste ; les ttooins sont fid^FeSi mais le juge est corrompu.

II ne s'agirait done, apr^s tout, que d^opposer le cerveau aux sens
externes ; ce qui n'aurait, sans doute, rien de contraire a un materia-
lisme intelligent. Mais nous avons vu plus baut que Diderot crojait
peu a I'explication de la sensibilite (et a fortiori de rintelligence)
par Torganisation, et pr^fSrait I'hypoth^se d'une sensibility essentielle
a la matidre ; et encore ^tait-il tout prds de reconnaitre que c'etait
la une supposition gratuite. On voit a combien peu se reduisait en
definitive son materialisme.

Quoi qu'il en soit, d'ailleurs, et quelle que fut Fessence de ce qu'il
appelait la raiaonj Vame, il Fopposait, comme Font fait Aristote on
Bossuet, a la sensibility physique en termes des plus explicites :

Pourquoi lliomme est-il perfectible P (dit-il), et pourquoi Fanimal ne Feflt-O
pas P — ^L'animal ne Test pas parce que sa raison, s*il en a une, est dominSe par on
seul despote qai le subjugue. T&tUe Pdtne du ckien est au bout de son ties, Toote
l%me de I'aigle est dans son cell ; F&me de la taupe est dans son oreille. Mais il
n'en est pas ainsi de lliomme. H est entre ses sens ime tella harmonic qu'aocon oe
pr^omine assez sur les autres pour donner la loi k son entendement: c'estsos
entendement au contraire ou Torgane de sa raison qui est le plus fort CTest m
juge qui n'est ni corrompu, ni subjugui^ >par aucun des t^moina ; il oooserTs toafe
son autorit^, et il en use pour se perfoctiouner.

• Diderot se demande ce qui arriverait si Fhomme etait rednit i
n'6tre autre chose qu' *un oBil vivant ou une oreille vivante.' Un tel
^tre serait^il capable de juger, de penser, de raisonner ? ^ Od,* M
Helv^tius, ' car cette ceil vivant aurait de la memoire.' * Tjconaaa,^
dit Diderot (conclusion d&jk tr&s large). ' S'il a de la memoiie,' dit
Helv^tius, * il comparera ses sensations ; il raisonnera.' * Oiii,' <fit

1881. LA PHILOSOPHIE DE DIDEROT. ^03

Diderot, ' mais comme le chien raisonne ; moins encore/ II en est
de m6me des autres sens ; et * Thonune d'Helvetius se r^duira 4 la
reunion de cinq consciences tr^s imparfEutes.' En un mot, ce qui
manque 4 Thomme d'Helvetius, et ce que Diderot reclame avec pro*
fondeur et sagacity, c'est I'unit^, le Hen, le eenaorium ccymmune :
'Sans un correspondant et un juge commun de toutes les sensations,
sans un organe commStnoratif de tout ce qui nous arrive, Pinstrument
sensible et vivant de chaque sens anrait peut-gtre une conscience
momentanee de son existence, mais il n'y aurait certainement aucune
conscience de I'animal ou de Thomme entier/ Sans doute, Diderot
veut parler ici d'un organe central ; mais cet organe central lui-m6me ^
n'est-il pas compose d'organes ? il leur faut done un centre ; et ce
centre des centres sera encore lui-m6me compost, et cela a I'infini,
tant qu'on ne sera pas arrive k un centre veritable, c'est-&-dire k une
unite veritable, et non d. une unite de composition. C'est ainsi que
la critique d'Helvetius conduirait insensiblement Diderot, s'il suivait
sa pensee jusqu'au bout, k des conclusions decidement spiritualistes ou
idealistes.

Au reste, notre philosophe n'admet pas seulement un organe
central ; il en admet deux : I'un qui est le centre des idees, I'autre le
centre des emotions. Le premier est le cerveau; le* second est le
diaphragme : Helvetius n'a etudie ni I'un ni I'autre. II y a cepen-
dant deux sensibilites : I'une physique, propre k toutes les parties de
I'animal ; I'autre propre au diaphragme : ' C'est la le si^ge de toutes
nos peines et de tons nos plaisirs : ses oscillations ou crispations sont
plus ou moins fortes dans un Stre que dans un autre ; c'est elle qui
caracterise les ames pusillanimes et les ames fortes ; la tete fait les
hommes sages ; le diaphragme les hommes compatissants et moraux/
I/opposition de la t^te et du diaphragme correspond pour Diderot a
ropposition de I'esprit et du coeur. Ce qu'il reproche a Helvetius,
c'est d'avoir ignore ^ ces deux grands ressorts de I'homme.' Mais il
oublie de se demander k lui-mSme *si ce sont Ik denx centres separes
et independants, et si I'un n'est pas. subordonne a I'autre ; dans le
premier cas, il y aurait deux consciences distinctes ; et oil serait alors
ce qu'il appelle lui-meme ^ la conscience de I'homme entier ' ?

II n'est done pas douteux qu'en cherchant I'essence de I'homme
non dans les sens extemes, mais danq I'organisation interieure, Diderot
tend a s'eioigner de plus en plus du materialisme, m^me lorsqu'il
cherche encore dans les organes I'explication de la pensee et du sen-
timent: car c'est s'eioigner du materialisme que de se retirer du
dehors au dedans. Signalons encore, dans le m^me ordre d'idees,
quelques points, curieux et interessants de cette critique. Helvetius,
expUquant tout par le dehors, cherche une loi qui etablisse un certain
rapport entre la sensation et ce que nous appellerions aujourd'hui
rexcitatian^ c'est-^-dire I'impression produite sur I'organe par une
action extern^. Voici, suivant Diderot, la loi proposee par Helvetius :

704 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.

April

< Un coup,' ditp*!!, * feiit de la douleur a deux ^tres different dang le
rapport de deux a un ; iin coup double produira une douleur double
dans I'un ou dans I'autre.' Cette loi en supposeraitd'aborduneautie:
c^est qu'un coup double produit sur chacun separ^ment une doulenr
double. Or, ce serait la un resultat contraire aux fails, s'il bUait
8*en r^f(£rer a la cel^bre loi (ires contestee d'ailleurs) connue sous le
nom de Loi de Fechner. Suivant cette loi, en effet, la sensatiou ne
croitrait pas comme I'excitation, mais comme le logarithiM de Vexci-
tation. Mais laissons de cot^ le rapport de la sensation a reicitatiou
dans cbaque individu, et considerons le rapport des deux dements
dans deux individus dififerents. C'est ici que se presente robjectiou
de Diderot : il s'en faut de beaucoup, suivant lui, qu'il soit permis
d^admettre comme une loi que la sensation soit toujours propor-
tionnelle a I'impression :

Qui Y0U8 a dit que le plaisir et la douleur aoient dans le rapport constant des
impressions? Un mouvement de joie 8*excite dans deux etres parunrfoit;la
suite du recit double Fimpression dans Tun et dans lautre ; et Toiljl Jean qui rit de
plus belle, et Pierre qui se trouve mal. Le plaisir s*est transform^ en douleur ; la
quantity qui dtait positive est devenue negative. Le coup simple les fait crier torn
deux ; le coup double rend le cri de Tun plus aigu, et tue Tautre. On ne saursit
accroitre & discretion le plaisir et la douleur ; le plaisir extreme se transfonne eo
douleur ; TextrSme douleur am§ne le transport, le d^liie, rinsenabilit^ et la mort

C'est encore en faisant predominer I'lmportance de Torganisation
interne sur PorganisatioR exteme, et du centre sur les parties, que
Diderot oppose a Helvetius I'instinct propre dans les esp^cesanimaH
et la vocation speciale et differente des individus parmi les hommes.
Dans rhypoth^e, en effet, du pur sensualisme, I'homme ou Taniinal
ne serait qu'une table rase ; les individus dans Thumanite, comme les
especes animales, ne differeraient que par des accidents exterDe^.
De la cette opinion celebre d'Helvetius que toutes les intelligences
sont egales, et ne different que par I'education. Diderot poursuit
cette doctrine par les arguments les plus nombreux et les plus
decisifs.

II insiste d'abord sur le caract^re sp^cifique de I'lnstinct chez les
animaux :

On ne donne pas du nez ft un l^vrier : on ne donne pas la vitease du Unifr
au cbien-couchant ; vous aurez beau faire : cdui-ci gardera son nez, et celui-l*
gardera ses jambes. Pourquoi n*en serait-il pas de meme parmi les hommes?
I'ourquoi n*7 aurait-il pas dans Tespece humaine la meme Tari^t<S d'indiridiis qw
dans la race des chiens, pourquoi chacun n*aurait-il pas son allure et son gibier?

Helvetius veut tout rapporter aux circonstances exterieures, aux
accidents de I'education, et, en dernier mot, au basard. A ce compte
r^ducation devrait tout faire : * Si je vous con6e cinq cents enfismt^,
combien nous rendrez-vous d'hommes de g^nie ? Pourquoi pas cinq
cents ? ' Helvetius cite comme exemple de hasard qui provoque la
vocation, Vaucanson qui, enferme par sa m6re dans une cellule soli-

1881. LA PHIL080PHIE DE DIDEROT. 706

taire, n'avait pour se distraire qu'une horloge dont le balancier eveilla
sa Goriosite. Mais comment ce hasard a^t-il pa developper ce g^nie
de la m^canique, si ce genie ne pr^zistait pas auparavant ? ' Don-
nez-moi la mdre de Vaucanson, et je ne ferai pas davantage le flAteur
automate. Envoyez-moi en ezil, ou enfermez-moi k la Bastille, je
n'en sortirai pas le Paradia perdu a la main." Suivant Helv^tius,
J.-J. Sousseau pouvait encore Stre consid^r^ comme un chef-d'oeuvre
du hasard. Ce serait par hasard qu'ayant vu le programme propose
par 1' Academic de Dijon sur I'influence morale des lettres et des arts,
il avait refu de Diderot lui-m§me, alors k la Bastille, la premidre
impulsion qui devait decider de toute sa carriSre d'^crivain. < Mais/
r^pond Diderot, ' Rousseau fit ce qu'il devait faire parce que c^^tait
lui; j'aurais fait tout autre chose parce que c'etait moi ... si I'im-
pertinente question de Dijon n'avait pas ^t^ pos^e, Rousseau eAt-il
^te moins capable de faire son discours? on sut que Demosthdne
etait eloquent quand il eut parl^ ; mais il I'etait avant d'avoir ouvert
la bouche.' Helv^tius confond done encore ici I'occasion ou la con-
dition accidentelle avec la cause essentielle. Un baril de poudre
pent rester sans explosion si une ^tincelle ne vient I'enflammer.
Mais ce n'est pas I'etincelle qui rend la poudre ezplosible. De pliis,
I'education et les hasards peuvent-ils rendre passionn^s les hommes
nes froids ? On pent, par T^ducation, rendre les hommes bons ou
mechants; on ne pent les rendre spirituels 'Un pdre pent con-
traindre son fils a une bonne action ; mais il serait une bSte feroce,
s'il lui disait: Ma/roufle^fais done de VeapriV Les id^es, dit Hel-
vetius, viennent de la m^moire. Fort bien ; mais, la m^moire d'o&
vient-elle ? La m^moire, dit-on, peut dependre d'une chute, d'un
accident ? Oui ; mais pourquoi pas aiu^si d'un organe naturellement
vicie ? Suivant Helvetius, on peut se faire a volonte, podte, orateur
oa peintre. Rien de plus faux : ' On citerait k peine un seul homme
(Michel Ange par exemple), qui ait su faire en mSme temps un bon
po&me et un beau tableau.' Parmi les ecrivains chacun a son st^le,
s'il est original, et ne peut I'^hanger contre le style de son voisin ::
' Yoici trois styles difif&ents : celui-ci est simple, clair, sans figures,,
sans mouvement, sans couleur: c'est le style de d'Alembert et du
g&>mdtre. Get autre est large, majestueux, a][)ondant, plein d'images ;
c'est celui de I'historien de la nature et de BufifoQ. Ce troisidme est
v^b^ment, il touche, il trouble, il agite^ il el^ve ou calme les pas-
sions: c'est celui du moraliste ou.de Roiisseau.' Qui croira que
d'Alembert pourrait, s'il le voula^t,*ecrire comme Rousseau, et Rous-
seau comme Buffon ? . Helvetius i>ousse le paradoxe jusqu'4 soutenir
qu'Stre capable de comprendre une verite, c'est Stre capable de la
d&x)uvrir. Or tons les hommes, suivant lui, sont capables, avec de
I'^tude, de comprendre le systdme de Newton. lis pourraient done
Favoir d^couvert. Diderot conteste d'abord la mineure de ce raison-
nement, k savoir que tons les hommes sont capables de comprendre
Vol. IX.— No. 50. 8 B

V06 THE NINETEENTH CENTURt. April

'dertaineB v^rit&i : * Pendant longiemps, il n'y eut que trois hommesen
'Eui6p6 oapables de comprendre la geometric de Descartes.' Mus de
nplus, ' quelle assertion, grand Dieu I Inventer une chose on rentendie,
et I'entendre avec un maitre, c'est la m6me chose I ' Helvetiosr^doit
tout au hasard. Cependant ^ lorsqu'on demanda a Newton comment il
avait d^couvert le systSme du monde, il ne r^pondit pas : par hasard ;
mais : en y pensant toujours. Un autre aurait ajoute : et parce que
c'^tait lui.' On voit que Diderot est in^puisable et infeitigable dans
sa refutation du c^ldbre paradoze d'Helv^tius, H savoir T^galite radicale
des intelligences, paradoxe qui suppose que toutes les diffi^renoes sont
accidentelles. Diderot admet au contraire des inneites : il cherclke
la cause des differences en dedaDs et non au dehors ; et en supposant
que le materialisme fut d^sinteresse dans la question et pdt s'acoom-
moder d'une opinion aussi bien que de I'autre, au moins &udiait-il
admettre qu'un materialisme qui cherche Tezplication dii genie dam
la constitution intime de Torgane le plus delicat et le plus subtil, est
d'un ordre superieur k celui qui ramdne tout k des circonstances
fortuites : car Torganisation au moins est ime cause, et le hasaid n'eo
est pas une. Et d'ailleurs, le memo mode d'argumentation que
Diderot emploie centre Helvetius pourrait fitre pousse plus loin, et
contre toute explication physique : car on pent tout aussi bien diie
■du cerveau ce qu'Helvetius dit des sens eztemes ou des circonstances
-fortuites, a savoir qu'U n'est que la condition, mais non la cause dtime
-des phenomdnes de la pensee.

Le point le plus important de la refutation d'Helvetius, et pai
4equel Diderot s'eioigne le plus du materialisme, c'est la discussion j
du paradoxe par lequel Diderot ramSne a la sensibilite physique tontes
les qualites morales et toutes les vertus. Ici c'est le cceur du philo-
rsophe qui se revolte ; c'est son ame genereuse et passionnee qui prend
parti contre une des consequences les plus evidentes et les [Jqs
facheuses du systeme materialiste. II parle presque commeJ.-J*
Rousseau dans VEmUe: ^Que se propose celui qui sacrifiesane?
Godrus et Decius allaient-ils ohercher quelque jouissanoe physiqiie
dans im sepulchre au fond d'un abime ? ' Suivant Helvetius, le
remords ne serait que ^ la prevoyaDce du mal physique anquel le
crime decouvert nous exposerait.' — * C'est la,' repond Diderot, * le
remords du sceierat.' Mais n'en est-il pas un autre ? Lois meme
que le plaisir serait le but des actions, encore devriona-nons dis-
tinguer ^ le plaisir et I'attente du plaisir,' distinction que &isait deji
Epicure lui-meme. Le plaisir est tout physique; I'attente du plaisir
est deja un phenomene de tout autre ordre. ' La maladie et la
crainte de tomber malade sont-elles une mSme chose ? La faim ^
dabs le gosier ; la crainte de la £eiim est dans I'entendement.' Helve-
tius disait brutalement que pour le soldat qui va a la tranchee. Teen
de la soldo est ' representatif d'une pinte d'eau-de-vie.* Diderot lui
oppose I'exemple de oe soldat k qui Ton ofifrait oent loois pour trahir,

188!- LJL PHILOSOPHIE DE DIDEROT. 707

et qui r^pottdait : ' Mon. capitaine, reprenez vos cent louis : cela ne
06 fait pas pour de Targent.' A la plate et paavre doctrine d'Helv^-
tins, Diderot oppose I'enthousiasme du savant, du patriote, de lliomme
religieox :

Commeiit iteUdres-yotu, en demidre analyse, sans un pitoyable abus de mote,
ee g<6n6iei]z enthousiasme qui expose les hommes k la perte de leor Ubert^i de lenr
fortune, de leur honneur et de leur vie P Quel rapport entre I'h^roisme insens^ de
quelques liommes religieuz et les biens de ce monde ? Oe n*est pas de s*etiiTrer de
vins d^licieux, de se plon^^^er dans un torrent de volupt^ sensoelles ; ils 8*en passent
id, et n en esp^rent pas U haut ; ce n*est pas de regorger de richesses ; ils donneut
ce qu*il8 en ont. Voili ee qu'il faut expliquer. Quand on ^tablit une loi g^n^rale,
il faut qu*elle embrasse tous les phenomtoes, et les actions de la sagesse et les hearts
de la folie.

Dans la doctrine d'Helvetius la plupart des rdgles de la morale
s'expliquent par des conventions sociales. Diderot combat encore
cette doctrine : ^ Qu'un sauvage,' dit-il, ' monte a un arbre poui
cueillir des fruits, et qu'un autre sauvage survienne pour s'emparer
de ses fruits, celui-ci ne s'enfuira-t-il pas avec son vol ? II me sembie
que, par sa fuite, il d^cdlera la conscience de son injustice et qu'il
s'avouera punissable ; il me sembie que le spolie s'indignera, pour-
suivra le voleur, et aura conscience de I'injure qu'on lui aura faite*
Le sauvage n'a pas de mots pour designer le juste et I'injuste ; il
crie ; mais ce cri est-il vide de sens ? N'est-ce que le cri de Panimal ? '
Entre Thomme et Tanimal, il se pent que la seule loi soit la loi de la
force : mais en est-il de m6me dliomme k homme ? * L'homme
pense-i-il d'un lion qui Tattaque comme d'un tyran qui I'ecrase?
Non. Quelle difiGSrence met-il done entre ces deux malfaiteurs, si
elle ne derive pas de quelque prerogative naturelle, de quelque id^
confuse de la justice? Mais si le persecute a cette id^e, pourquoi
manquerait-elle au persecuteur ? '

On pent trouver que cette refutation d'Helvetius n'est pas assez
philosophique, qu'elle est oeuvre de sentiment, plus que d'analyse
et de critique severe. Lui^mSme sembie le dire : * Get ouvrage
m'attriste de tout, il m'ote mes plus douces illusions.' Peu nous
importe : car il ne s'agit pas ici pour nous de r^futer H elv^tius : ce
qui nous int^resse, c'est de voir Diderot se r^volter k son tour dotitre
les consequences morales du materialisme. G'est le mSme sentiment
qui a animS Sousseau dans le Vicai/re Savoyard^ et qui lui ^vait fait
ecrire egalement un examen critique d'Helv^tius. L'un et I'autre
defendent la conscience et la morale. du cosur controls scepticisme
moral : ' Je consens que le fort opprime le faible ; ce 4ue j'ai peine a
concevoir, c'est qu'il n'ait ni la conscience de son injustice, ni le
remords de son action. Fut-il un temps oii lliomme piit Stre con-
fondu avec la brute ? Je ne le pense pas.' ..Comm6 Rousseau, Diderot
defend encore centre Helv^tius le sentiment de la piti^. * Pourquoi
le cerf aux abois m'^meut-il ? ' C'est a cause de la nouveaut^ du
fiEut, dit HelvJtius. Mais ^la nouyeaut^ surprend et ne touche pas.

'3*B 2

/

/

/

708 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. April

Cette commiseration est d'animal a animal : c'est une illusion npide
amende par des symptomes de doulenr communs k Phomme et i
Tanimal, et qui nous montre I'homme & la place d'on cerf.'

Tel est en substance cet 6crit, compose de notes firagmentaiieg, et

que Ton ne peut appeler un ouvrage, mais qui est trte important,

parce qu'il parait 6tre le dernier &;rit philosophique de ranteor, et

qu'il marque une phase nouveUe dans la doctrine de Diderot On ne

pourrait aller jusqu'4 dire que c'est une retractation et un d&aveu :

ce serait depasser la verity ; mais c'est au moins un arr^t, et nn

commencement de retour en arridre. H est certain que les deoz

livres d'Helvetius, le livre de V Esprit et le livre de T^omTn^, ont ete

le point extreme et culminant du mat^rialisme audix-huitidmesiicle.

A partir de VEmUej les idees oppos^es, reveiliees par reioquence de

Sousseau, ont repris la preponderance, fiousseau, Turgot, Beinardin

de St.-Pierre, et au d6but du si^le suivant Chateaubriand et Mme

de Stael^ voila le mouvement progressif qu'a suivi depuis cette

epoque Topposition au mat6rialisme. Or, il est visible que, sans en

avoir tout k fait conscience, Diderot a ete entraine un des }Henden

dans ce mouvement. II y avait en lui un souffle et une vie qm

debordaient au dela des limites etroites et des formules s^es do

materialisme. S'il eut eu plus de science philosophique, pins de

force de raisonnement, il eut 6ie plus loin dans cette voie. Nul

doute qu'une philosophic comme Tidealisme allemand de notre siede

ne I'eiit facilement conquis. Ce ne sera done toujours qu'avec quel*

ques reserves que Ton devra donner k Diderot la qualification de

mat^rialiste, et en ajoutant que son materialisme, s'il merite ce nom,

est d'un ordre superieur & celui de d'Holbach, d'Helv6tiu8, et de

Lamettrie. C'est pourquoi Groethe, qui estimait si peu la philosophie

franpaise du dix-huitiSme sidcle, a toujours mis k part la personne et

le g^nie de Diderot. II se reconnaissait en quelque sorte lui-meme

dans cette nature enthousiaste et encyclop^dique, passionnSe a ]a fois

pour les arts et pour les sciences, ivre de vie en tous sens. Ce qtd

manque cependant k Diderot pour dtre Groethe, c'est I'art et la po^sie. II

y a^ toujours en Diderot quelque chose de grossier et de sensuelqui

ne lui permet pas de s'elever au premier rang : mais il est le premier

des hommes de genie du second rang. Quelques admirateurs excessifi

pourront trouver peut-fetre encore ce jugement trop severe: c'est

jusqu^ici cependant celui qu'a port6 la posterity ; et nous ne croyoos

pas quMl y ait lieu k le reviser.

Paul Jahr.

1881. T09

THE INCOMPATIBLES.

The Irish Land Bill has not yet, at the moment when I write this,
made its appearance, and it seems we are not to set eyes upon it until
April is a week old. An additional paper on Irish affairs, even if the
Land Bill could be discussed in it, is an offering which, perhaps,
people may be expected to receive with weariness and terror rather
than with a cheerful welcome. And above all, they may resent being
troubled with a paper on these grave and sad affairs by an insignificant
person, and one who has no special connexion with Ireland.

But even the most insignificant Englishman, and the least con-
nected with Ireland and things Irish, has a deep concern, surely, in
the present temper and action of the Irish people towards England,
and must be impelled to seek for the real explanation of them. We
find ourselves, though conscious, as we assure one another, of nothing
but goodwill to all the world — ^we find ourselves the object of a glowing,
fierce, unexplained hatred on the part of the Irish. * The Liberal
Ministry resolved,' said one^of our leading Liberal statesmen a few
years ago, when the Irish Church Establishment was abolished, 'the
Liberal Ministry resolved to knit the hearts of the empire into one
harmonious concord, and knitted they were accordingly.' Knitted in-
deed I The Irish people send members to our Parliament whose great
recommendation with their constituencies is, says Miss O'Brien, that
they are wolves ready to fly at the throat of England ; and more and
more of these wolves, we are told, are likely to be sent over to us.
These wolves ravin and destroy in the most savage and mortifying way;
obstruct our business, lacerate our good name, deface our dignity,
make our cherished fashions of government impossible and ridiculous.
And then come eloquent rhetoricians, startling us with the prediction
that Ireland will have either to be governed in future despotically, or
to be given up. Even more alarming are certain grave and serious
observers, who will not leave uis even the cold comfort of the rheto-
ricians' alternative, but declare that Ireland is irresistibly drifting to
a separation from us, and to an unhappy separation — a separation
which will bring confusion and misery to Ireland, danger to us.

For zny part, I am entirely indisposed to believe the eloquent
rhetoricians who tell me that Ireland must either be governed as a
Crown colony or must be given up. I am entirely indisposed to

710 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. AptSl

believe the despondent observers who tell me that Ireland is irras-
tibly drifting to a separation, and a miserable separation, from England.
I no more believe the eloquent rhetoricians than I should believe them
if they prophesied to me that Scotland, Wales, or Cornwall would have
either to be governed as Crown colonies or to be given up. Inomoie
believe the despondent observers than I should believe them if they
assured me that Scotland, Wales, or Cornwall were irresistibly drifting
to a miserable separation from England. No doubt Ireland presents
many and great difficulties, and England has many and great faults and
shortcomings. But after all the English people, with 4ts ancient and
inbred piety, integrity, good nature, and good humour,' has consider-
able merits and has done considerable things in the world ; — ^in presence
of such terrifying predictions and assurances as those which I have
been just quoting, it becomes right and necessary to say so. I refuse
to beKeve that such a people is unequal to the task of blending Ireland
with itself in the same way that Scotland, Wales, and Cornwall are
blended with us, if it sets about the task seriously.

True, there are difficulties. One of the greatest is to be found in
our English habit of adopting a conventional accoimt of things, 8ati»-
fying our own minds with it, and then imagining that it will satisfy
other people's minds also, and may really be relied on. Croethe, that
sagest of critics, and moreover a great lover and admirer of England,
noted this fault in us. ' It is good in the English,' says he, Hhatthey
are always for being pi:actical in their dealing with things ; aber sk
sind Peda/rUen^ — but they are pedants. Elsewhere he attributes this
want of insight in the English, their acceptance of phrase and conven-
tion and their trust in these, their pedantry in short, to the habits of
their public life and to the reign amongst them of party spirit and
party formulas. Burke supplies a remarkable confirmation of this
accoimt of the matter, when he complains of Parliament as being
a place where it is ^ the business of a Minister still further to con-
tract the narrowness of men's ideas, to confirm inveterate prejudices,
to inflame vulgar passions, and to abet all sorts of popular absurdities.'
The true explanation of any matter is therefore seldom come at by
us, but we rest in that account of things which it suits our class, oar
party, our leaders, to adopt and to render current. We are pedants,
as Goethe says ; we adopt a version of things because we choose, not
because it really represents them ; and we expect it to hold gtxxl
because we wish that it may.

But, *it is not your fond desire or mine,' says Burke again,
< that can alter the nature of things ; by contending against which, what
have we got, or shall ever get, but defeat and shame ? ' We shall solve
at last, I hope and believe, the difficulty which the state of Ireland
presents to us. But we shall never solve it without first imderstanding
it ; and we shall never understand it while we pedanticaify accept
whatever accounts of it happen to pass current with our class, or party

1881. THE INC0MPATIBLE8. 711

or leaders, and to be recommended by our fond desire and theirs.
We must see the matter as it really stands, we must cease to ignore,
and to try to set aside, the nature of things ; ' by contending against
which, what have we got, or shall ever get, but defeat and shame ? '

Pedantry and. conventionality, therefore, are dangerous when i^e
are in difficulties ; and our habits of class and party action, and our,
ways of public discussion, tend to encourage pedantry and convention-
ality in us. Now there are insignificant people, detached from classes
and parties and their great movements, unclassed and unconsidered,
but who are lovers of tiieir country, of the humane life and of dvili-r
sation, and therefore grievously distressed at the condition in which
they see Ireland and Irish sentiment, and appalled at the prophecies .
they hear of the turn which things in Ireland must certainly take.
Such persons-— who after all, perhaps, are not so very few in number —
may well desire to talk the case over one to another in their own quiet
and simple way, without pedantry and conventionality, admitting^
unchallenged none of the phrases with which classes and parties
are apt to settle matters, resolving to look things full in the face and
let them pass for what they really are ; in order that they may ascertain
whether there is any chance of comfort in store, or whether thinga
are really as black and hopeless as we are told. The editor of tlus
Beview is a kind and charitable soul, and he is willing to make room,
among his statesmen and generals, for an insignificant outsider who .
proposes only to talk to other insignificant outsiders like himself in a
plain way, and to perish in the light, at any rate (if perish we must),,
and not in a cloud of pedantry. But we must take the benefit of
our kind editor's charity when we can, and he insists on extending it
to us at this moment, when the Land Bill is not yet made known.
However, it is possible that a knowledge of the Land Bill might
not much help us ; at all events, it is not essential to our purpose,
which is to look fairly into the incompatibility, alleged to be incurable,
between us and the Lrish nation.

Even to talk of the people inhabiting an island quite near (o us,
and which we have possessed ever since the twelfth century, as a
distinct nation from ourselves, ought to soem strange and absurd to
us; as strange and absurd as to talk of the )»Qople inhabiting Brittany
as a distinct nation j&om the French. However, we know but too
well that the Irish consider themselves a distinct nation &om us, and
that some of their leaders, upon this ground, claim for them a parlia-
ment, and even an army and navy, and a diplomacy, separate and
distinct from ours. And this, again, ought to seem as strange and
absurd as for Scotland or Wales or Cornwall to claim a parliament, an
army and navy, and a diplomacy, distinct from ours ; or as for
Brittany or Provence to claim a parliament, an army and navy, and
a diplomacy, distinct from those of France. However, it is a &ct
that for Ireland such claims are made, while for Scotland, Wales,

712 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. April

Cornwall, Brittany, and Provence^ they are not. That is becann
Scotland, Wales, and Cornwall are really blended in national
feeling with us, and Brittany and Provence with the rest of Fraooe.
And it is well that people should come to understand and feel that it
is quite incumbent on a nation to have its parts blended together in a
conmion national feeling ; and that there is insecurity, and reason for
mortification and humiliation, if they are not. At last this, at least,
has been borne in upon the mind of the general public in England,
which for a long while troubled itself not at all about the matter,—
that it is a ground of insecurity to us, and a cause of mortification and
humiliation, that we have so completely £sdled to attach Ireland. I
remember when I was visiting schools in Alsace twenty years ago, I
noticed a number of points in which questions of language end
religion seemed to me likely to raise irritation against the French
government, and to call forth in the people of Alsace the sense of
their separate nationality. Yet all such irritating points were smoothed
down by the power of a common national feeling with France ; and
we all know how deeply Grerman and Protestant Alsace regretted, and
still regrets, the loss of her connexion with France Celtic and Catholic.
Undoubtedly this does great honour to French civilisation and its
attractive forces. We, on the other hand, Grermanic and Protestant
England, we have utterly failed to attach Celtic and Catholic Ireland,
although our language prevails there, and although we have no
great counter-nationality on the borders of Ireland to compete with
us for the possession of her affections, as the French had Germany on
the borders of Alsace.

England holds Ireland, say the Irish, by means of conquest and
confiscation. But almost all countries have undergone conquest and
confiscation ; and almost all property, if we go back far enough, has
its source in these violent proceedings. People, however, go about
their daily business, gradually things settle down, there is well-being
and tolerable justice, prescription arises, and nobody talks about con-
quest and confiscation any more. The Frankish conquest of France,
the Norman conquest of England, came in this way, with time, to be
no longer talked of, to be no longer even thought of.

The seizure of Strasburg by France is an event belonging to
modem history ; it was a violent and scandalous act, but it long ago
ceased to stir resentment in a single Alsatian bosom. The English
conquest of Ireland took place little more than a century after the
Norman conquest of England. But in Ireland it did not happen
that people went about their daily business, that their condition im-
proved, that things settled down, that the country became peaoefol
and prosperous, and that gradually all remembrance of conquest and
confiscation died out. On the contrary, the conquest had again and
again to be renewed, the sense of prescription, the true security of all
property, never arose. The angry memory of conquest and confisca-

1881. TEE JNC0MPATIBLE8. 718

tion, the ardour for revolt against them, continued to bum, and bums
still ; the present relations between landlord and tenant in Ireland
offer only too much proof of iL

But this is only saying over again that England has failed to
attach Ireland. We must ask, then, what it is which makes things,
after a conquest, settle peaceably down, what makes a sense of pre-
scription arise, what makes property secure and blends the conquered
people into one nation with the conquered. Certainly we must put,
as the first and chief causes, general well-being, and justice. Never
mind how misery arises, whether by the fault of the conquered or by
the &ult of the conqueror, its very existence prevents the solid settle-
ment of things, prevents the dying out of desires for revolt and
diange. Now let us consult the testimonies from Elizabeth's reign,
when the middle age had ended and the modem age had begup,
down to the present time. First we have this picture of Irish misery
by the poet Spenser : —

Out of eveiy comer of the woods and glens they came creeping forth upon
their haods, for their legs could not bear them ; they looked like anatomies of
deathy they spake like ghosts crying out of their graves ; they did eat the dead
carrions, happy where they could find them, yea, and one another soon after,
insomuch as the very carcases they spared not to scrape out of their graves ; and if
they found a plot of water-cresses or shamrocks there, they flocked as to a feast for
the time, yet not able long to continue these withal ; that in short space there were
none almost left

Then, a hundred and forty years later, we have another picture
of Irish misery, a picture drawn by the terrible hand of Swift. He
describes ' the miserable dress and diet and dwelling of the people,
the general desolation in most parts of the kingdom.' He says : —

Some persons of a desponding spirit are in great concern about the aged,
diseased, or maimed poor ; but I am not in the least pain upon that matter, because
it is very well known that they are every day dying and rotting by cold and fiEmiino,
and filth and yermin, as fast as can be reasonably expected.

And again : —

I confess myself to be touched with a very sensible pleasure when I hear of a
mortality in any country parish or viUage, where the wretches are forced to pay,
for afilUiy cabin and two ridges of potatoes, treble the worth; brought up, to
steal or beg, for want of work ; to whom death would be the best thing to be
wished for, on account both of themselves and the public.

Next, after the lapse of a hundred and fifty years more, coming
down to our own day, we have this sentence, strong and short, from
Colonel Grordon: —

The state of our fellow-countrymen in the south-west of Ireland is worse than
that of any people in the world — ^let alone Europe.

I say, where there is this misery going on for centuries after a
conquest, acquiescence in the conquest cannot take place ; a sense of
permanent settlement and of the possessors' prescriptive title to their

714 THE NIlfETEENTH OENTURY. April

property cannot spring up, the conquered cannot blend themaelyei
into one nation with their conquerors. English opinion attribotes
Irish misery to the faults of the Irish themselves, to their insobonii-
nation, to their idleness and improvidence, and to their Popish re-
ligion. However the misery arises, there cannot, as I have already
said, be fusion and forgetfulness of past violences and oonfiscationB
nubile it lasts. Still, if it is due to the faults of the Irish, it is in
curing faults on their side that we have to seek the remedy, not in
curing faults of our own.

Undoubtedly the native Irish have the faults which we attribate
to them and a good many more besides. Undoubtedly those Anglo-
Irish, who lead them, too often superadd to the passionate unreason of
the natives our own domestic hardness and narrow doggedness, and it
makes a v'ery unpleasant mixture. Undoubtedly it is not agreeable
to have people oflFering to fly like wolves at your throat — ^these
people knowing, at the same time, that you will not put out your foil
strength against them, and covering you on that account with all the
more menace and contumely. England must often enough be dispofied
to answer such assailants gruffly, to vow that she will silence them
once for all, and to ejaculate, as Csesar did when he threatened to
silence the tribune Metellus : ^ And when I say this, young man, to
Bay it is more trouble to me than to do it.' Were there ever people,
indeed, who so aggravated their own difficulties as the Irish people,
80 increased the labour and sorrow of him who toils to find a remedy
for them ? ' Always ready to react against the despotism of &ct,'—
so their best friend among their French kinsmen describes them.
* Poor brainsick creatures ! ' — ^a sterner critic among these kinsmen
says — ^ poor brainsick creatiures, distraught with misery and incoraUe
ignorance I by inflaming themselves against the English connexion,
by refusing to blend their blood, their habits, their hopes, with those
of the leading country, they are preparing for themselves a more
miserable future than that of any other people in Europe.' It seems
as if this poor Celtic people were bent on making what one of its
own poets has said of its heroes, hold good for ever : ^ They went forth
to the war, bvi they cUways feU.^

All this may be very true ; but still we ought to know whether the
faults and misery of the Irish are due solely to themselves, and all
we can do is to hold down the poor brainsick creatures and puniah
them — which, to say the truth, we have done freely enough in the
past ; or whether their state is due, in whole or in large part* to
courses followed by ourselves, and not even yet discontinued by ns
altogether, in which it may be possible to make a change.

Now, I imagine myself to be at present talking quietly to open-
minded, unprejudiced, simple people, bee from class spirit and party
spirit, resolved to forswear self-delusion and make-believe, not to be
pedants, but to see things as they really are. Such people will be

1881. TEE INCOMPATIBLES. 715

• • • ■

most anxiou^, as I too was anxious, on this question of the rights
and wrongs of England's dealings with Ireland, to put themselves in
good hands ; and if they find a guide whom they can thoroughly
trust, they will not be restive or perverse with him ; they will admit
his authority firankly. Burke is here a guide whom we can thus trust.
He is the greatest of English statesmen — ^the only one, it seems to
me, who traces the reason of things in politics, and who enables us to
trace it too. Compared with him. Fox is a brilliant and generous
schoolboy, and Pitt is a schoolboy with a gift (such as even at school
not unfrequently comes out) for direction and government. Burke
was, moreover, a great Conservative statesman — Conservative in the
best sense. ' On the French Revolution his utterances are not entirely
those of the Burke of the best time, of the Burke of the American
War. He was abundantly wise in condemning the crudity and
tyrannousness of the revolutionary spirit ; still, there has to be added
to Burke's picture of the Revolution a side wMcb he does not furnish ;
we ought to supplement him as we read him, and sometimes to correct
him. But on Ireland, which he knew thoroughly, he was always the
Burke of the best time ; he never varied ; his hatred of Jacobinism
did not here make him go back one hair's breadth. ' I am of the
same opinion,' he writes in 1797, the year in which he died, * to my
last breath, which I entertained when my faculties were at the besi*
Mr. John Morley's admirable biography has interested all of us afresh
in Burke's life and genius ; the Irish questions which now press upon
us should make us seek out and read every essay, letter, and speech of
Burke on the subject of Ireland.

Burke is clear in the opinion that down to the end of his life, at
any rate, Irish misery and discontent have been due more to English
misgovemment than to Irish faults. * We found the people heretics
and idolaters,' he says ; * we have, by way of improving their condition,
rendered them slaves and beggars ; they remain in all the misfortune of
their old errors, and all the superadded misery of their recent punish-
ment.' It is often alleged in England that the repeated confiscations
of Irish lands, and even the Popery Laws themselves, were necessitated
by the rebelliousness and intractableness of the Irish themselves ; the
country could only be held down for England by a Protestant garrison,
and through these severe means. Burke dissipates this flattering
illusion. Even the Penal Code itself, he says, even * the laws of that
nnparalleled code of oppression, were manifestly the effects of national
hatred and scorn towards a conquered people, whom the victors
delighted to trample upon, and were not at all afraid to provoke.
They were not the effect of their feara^ but of their security. They
who carried on this system looked to the irresistible force of Great
Britain for their support in their acts of power. They were quite
certain that no complaints of the natives would be heard on this side
of the water with any other sentiments than those of contempt and

716 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. April

indignation. In England, the double name of the complaiiuuit)
Ififlh and Papist (it would be hard to say which singly was the most
odious), shut up the hearts of every one against them. They were
looked upon as a race of bigoted savages, who were a disgrace to
human nature itself.'

And therefore, although Burke declared that ' hitherto the plan
for the government of Ireland has been to sacrifice the civil prosperiij
of the nation to its religious improvement,' yet he declared, also, that
' it is injustice, and not a mistaken conscience, that has been the
principle of persecution.' That ^ melancholy and invidious title,' he
says, ' the melancholy and unpleasant title of grantees of confiscatioD,
is a favourite.' The grantees do not even wish ' to let Time draw his
oblivious veil over the impleasant modes by which lordships and
demesnes have been acquired in theirs and almost in all other countries
upon earth.' On the contrary, ' they inform the public of Europe
that their estates are made up of forfeitures and confiscations from the
natives. They abandon all pretext of the general good of the com-
munity.' The Popery Laws were but part of a system for enabling
the grantees of confiscation to hold Ireland without blending with the
natives or reconciling them. The object of those laws, and their
effect, was ^ to reduce the Catholics of Ireland to a miserable populace,
without property, without estimation, without education. They
divided the nation into two distinct bodies, without common interest,
sympathy, or connexion. One*of these branches was to possess aH
tlie franchises, cdl the property, aU the education ; the other was to
be composed of drawers of water and cutters of turf for them.'

In short, the mass of the Irish people were kept without well-being
and without justice. Well might Burke adjure all concerned to ' reflect
upon the possible consequences of keeping, in the heart of your country,
a bank of discontent every hour accumulating, upon which every de-
scription of seditious men may draw at pleasure.' Well might he
austerely answer that Bristol Philistine who remonstrated with them
against making concessions to the Irish : ' Sir, it is proper to inform
you that^our measures vnuat he healing.^ ^ Well might he add, ' Their
temper, too, must be managed, and their good affections cultivated.*
Burke hated Jacobinism, the angry and premature destruction of the
existing order of things, even more than he hated Protestant ascen-
dency ; but this, he remarked, led straight to the other. ' If men are
kept as being no better than half citizens for any length of time, they
will be made whole Jacobins.'

In 1797 this great man died, without having convinced Parlia-
ment or the nation of truths which he himself saw so clearly, and had
seen all his life. In his very last years, while he was bailed as the
grand defender of thrones and altars, while Greorge the Third thanked
him for his Reflections on the French Revolution^ and while the

* The italics are Burke's own.

1881. THE INCOMPATIBLES. 717

book was lying on the table of every great house and every parsonage
in England, he writes that as regards Ireland he is absolutely without
influence, and that if any Irish official were known to share his views
he would probably be dismissed. What an illustration of the truth
of Gh>ethe's criticism on us : ' Their Parliamentary parties are great
opposing forces which paralyse one another, and where the superior
insight of an individual can hardly break through !'

Burke died three years before the Union. He lefb behind him two
warnings, both of them full of truth, full of gravity. One is that
concessions, sufficient if given in good time and at a particular con-
juncture of events, become insufficient if deferred. The other is that
concessions, extorted from embarrassment and fear, produce no grati-
tude, and allay no resentment. ^God forbid,' he cries, ^that our
conduct should demonstrate to the world that Great Britain can in
no instance whatsoever be brought to a sense of rational and equitable
policy, but by coercion and force of arms.*

Burke thought, as every sane man must think, ' connexion between
Great Britain and Ireland essential to the welfare of both.' He was
for a Union. But he doubted whether the partjicular time of the
closing years of the last century was favourable for a Union. Mr.
Lecky, in his delightful book. The Leaders of Public Opvaion in
Irdandj expresses a like doubt. The restrictions on Irish trade
had given to the Anglo-Irish and to the native Irish a joint interest
adverse to Great Britain; they had acted together on behalf of
Irish independence ; the beginnings of a common national feeling
between them had sprung up. The Catholics had been admitted to
vote for members of Parliament, and it seemed likely that they
would soon be declared capable of sitting in Parliament. The
Union came, and imported into the settlement of that matter a
new personage, the British Philistine. For thirty years this per-
sonage, of whose ideas George the Third was the faithful mouth-
piece, delayed Catholic emancipation. Wesley wrote, Mr. Lecky
tells us, against the withdrawal of the penal laws. At last, in 1829,
the disabilities of Catholics were taken off, — ^but in dread of an in-
surrection. A wise man might at that moment well have recalled
Burke's two warnings. What was done in 1829 could not have the
sufficiency which in 1800 it might have had ; what was yielded in
dread of insurrection could not produce gratitude.

Meanwhile Irish misery went on ; there were loud complaints of
the * grantees of confiscation,' the landlords. Ministers replied, that
the conduct of many landlords was deplorable, and that absenteeism
was a great evil, but that nothing could be done against them, and that
the sufferers must put their hopes in * general sympathy.' The people
pullulated in the warm steam of their misery ; famine and Fenian-
ism appeared. Ghreat further concessions have since been made— the
abolition of tithes, the abolition of the Irish Church Establishment,

71« THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. April

the Land Act of 1870 — but with respect to every one of them Barked
warnings hold good ; they were given too late to produce the eieet
whi<^ they might have produced earlier, and they seemed to be gjivet
not from a desire to do justice, but fi-om the apprehensicm of danger.
Finally, we have to-day in parts of Ireland the misery to vhieh
Colonel Gordon bears witness; we have the wide-spiead agitatioa
respecting the land ; we have the Irish people, if not yet ^ whole
Jacobins,' as Burke said we were making them, at least in a &ir way
to become so. And to meet these things we have coercion and the
promised Land Bill.

For my part, I do not object, wherever I see disorder, to see
.coercion applied to it. And in Ireland there has been, and there ig,
much disorder. I do not agree with the orators of popular meetiBga,
and I do not agree with some Liberals with whom I agree in general,
I do not agree with them in objecting to apply coercion to Irish difr-
order, or to any other. Tumultuously doing what one likes is the
ideal of the populace ; it is not mine. True, concessions have often
been wrunj; from governments only by the fear of timiults and dis-
turbances, but it is an unsafe way of winning them, and concessions
so won, as Burke has shown us, are never lucky. Unswerving fimmess
in repressing disorder is always a government's duty ; so, too, is on-
swerving fimmess in redressing injustice. It will be said that we ha^e
often governments firm enough in repressing disorder, who, after re-
pressing it, leave injustice still imredressed. True ; but it is our
business to train ourselves, and to train public opinion, to make
governments do otherwise ; not to make governments irresolute in
repressing disorder, but to make them resolute, also, in redressing
injustice.

^ Sir, it is proper to inform you that our measures must be hid-
ing*^ We do not yet know what the new Land Bill will be. But
we have the Land Act of 1870 before our eyes, and we are told that
proceeding a good deal further upon the lines of that Act is what is
intended. Will this be hecdi/ng ? — that is the question. I confess
that if one has no class or party interests to warp one, and if one is
resolved not to be a pedant but to look at things simply and naturallj)
it seems impossible to think so.

The truth is, as every one who is honest with himself must per-
ceive— the truth is, what is most needed, in dealing with the land in
Ireland, is not to confer boons on all tenants, but to execute justice
on bad landlords. Property is sacred, will be the instant reply ; the
landlords, bad or good, have prescription in their favour. Property is
sacred when it has prescription in its favour ; but the very point is,
that in Ireland prescription has never properly arisen. There has
Jbeen such lack of well-being and justice there, that things have
never passed — at least they have never throughout the length and
breadth of Ireland passed — out of their first violent^ confiscat^Hy stage.

1

.1881. THE INC0MPATIBLE8. 719

^ I shall never pzaise either confiscations or counter-confiscations,' says
Burke. A wise man iriU not approve the violences of a time of con-
fiscation, but if things settle down^ he would never think of proposing
ooonter-confiscation as an atonement for these violences. It is far
better that things should settle down and that the past should be
forgotten. But here things have not settled down, and the harsh-
ness, vices, and neglect of many of the grantees of confiscation have
been the main cause why they have not. ^ The law bears, and must
bear, with the vices and follies of men, until they actually strike at
the root of order.' In general, the vices and follies of individual
owners of property are borne with because they are scattered, single
cases, and do not strike at the root of order. In Ireland, they repre-
sent a system which has made peace and prosperity impossible, and
which strikes at the root of order. Some good landlords there
always were in Ireland ; as a class they are said to be now good ;
certainly there are some who are excellent. But there are not a few,
also, who are still very bad ; and these keep alive in the Irish people
the memory of old wrong, represent and continue, to the Irish mind,
the old system. A government, by executing justice upon them,
declares that it breaks with that system, and founds a state of
things in which the good owners of property, now endangered along
with the bad, will be safe, in which a real sense of prescription can
take root, general well-being, that necessary condition precedent of
Ireland's cheerful acquiescence in the* English connexion, may become
possible, and the country can settle down. Such a measure would be
a truly Conservative one, and every landowner who does his duty
would find his security in it and ought to wish for it. A Commission
should draw up a list of offenders, and an Act of Parliament should
expropriate them without scruple.

English landowners start with horror at such a proposal ; but the
truth is, in considering these questions of property and land, they a/re
pedants. They look without horror on the. expropriation of the
monastic orders by Henry the Eighth's Parliament, and many of them
are at this day great gainers by that transaction. Yet there ia no
reason at all why expropriating religious corporations, to give their
lands to individuals, should not shock a man, but expropriating indi-
vidual owners, to sell their lands in such manner as the State may
think advisable, should shock him so greatly. The estates of
religious corporations, as such, are not, says the conservative Burke,
severely but truly, ^ in worse hands than estates t« the like amount
in the hands of this earl or that squire, although it may be true that
so many dogs and horses are not kept by the religious.' But it was al-
l^;ed that many monastic establishmentiS, by their irregularities and
vicesy were a cause of public harm, struck at the root of order. The
same thing may most certainly be said of too many Irish landlords at
HbAs day, with their harshness, vices, and neglect of duty. BeasDii of

720 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

State may be allied for dealing with both. In the mode of dealing
there oan be no parallel. The monks were expropriated wholesale, good
as well as bad, with little or no compensation ; of the landlords it is
proposed to expropriate only the worst, so as to found for the good ones
security and prescription ; and the compensation assigned to the bad
expropriated landlords by the English Parliament is sure to be not
insufficient, rather it will be too ample.

For the confiscations of the lands of the native Irish themsehes,
from Elizabeth's time downwards, the plea of justification has been
this : the reason of State, the plea that the fisiults of the Irish possessor
* struck at the root of order.' The confiscations were continnous and
severe ; they were carried on both by armed force and by legal diicane ;
they were in excess of what the reason of State, even at the time, seemed
to fair men to require. ' By English Acts of Parliament,' says Barke,
'forced upon two reluctant kings, the lands of Ireland were put up to
a mean and scandalous auction in every goldsmith's shop in London;
or chopped to pieces and cut into rations, to pay the soldiery of Giom-
welL' However, the justification was this, as I have said : the reason
of State. The faults of the Irish possessor struck at the root of order.
And if order and happiness had arisen under the new possessors, not a
word more would ever have been heard about past confiscations. But
order and happiness have not arisen under them ; a great part of the
Irish people is in a chronic state of misery, discontent, and smouldering
insurrection. To reconquer and chastise them is easy ; but after
you have chastised them, your eternal difficulty with them le-
conmiences. I pass by the suggestion that the Irish people should be
entirely extirpated ; no one can make it seriously. Tliey must be
brought to acquiescence in the English connexion by good treatment
The acquiescence has been prevented by the vices, harshness, and
n^lect of the grantees of confiscation ; and it never will arise, so long
as there are many of these who prevent it by their vices, harsh-
ness, and neglect still. Order will never strike root. The very same
reason of State holds good, therefore, for expropriating them, which
held good in their predecessors' eyes, and in the eyes of Englidi
Parliaments, for expropriating the native Irish possessors.

However, the expropriation of English or Anglo-Irish landlords is
a thing from which English ministers will always avert their thoughts
as long as they can, and another remedy for Irish discontent has bees
hit upon. It has been suggested, as every one knows, by the Ulster
custom. In Ireland, the landlord has not been in the habit of doing
for his farms what a landlord does for his fisurms in England ; and
this, too, undoubtedly sprang out of the old system of rule on the
part of the grantees of confiscation as if they were lords and masters
simply, and not men having a joint interest with the tenant. ^In
Ireland,' says Burke, Hhe farms have neither dwelling-houses n<ff
good offices ; nor are the lands almost anywhere provided with fi^Qoes

1881. THE INC0MPATIBLE8. 721

and communications. The landowner there never takes upon him, as
it is usual in this kingdom, to supply all these conveniences, and to set
down his tenant in what may he called a completely furnished farm.
If the tenant will not do it, it is never done.' And if the tenant did it,
what was done was still the property of the landlord, and the tenant
lost the henefit of it by losing his farm. But in Ulster, where the
tenants were a strong race and Protestants^ there arose a custom
of compensating them for their improvements, and letting them sell
the value which by their improvements they had added to the property.
But a bad landlord could set the custom at defiance ; so the Land Act
of 1870 regulated the custom, and gave the force of law to what had
before possessed the force of custom only. And many people think
that what ministers intend, is to. develop considerably the principles and
provisions of that Act — so considerably, indeed, as to guarantee to
the tenants fair rents, fixity of tenure, and free sale ; and to extend
the operation of the Act, so developed, to the whole of Ireland.

The new Bill is not before us, and I speak besides, as I perfectly
well know and frankly avow, without special, local knowledge of Irish
affairs. But a scheme such as that which has . been indicated has
inconveniences which are manifest, surely, to every one who uses
his common sense, and is not hindered from using it freely by the
obligation not to do what would be really effective, but still to do
something. It is evident that ownership and tenure will thus be
made quite a different thing in Ireland from that which they are in
England, and in countries of our sort of civilisation generally, and
this is surely a disadvantage. It is surely well to have plain deep
concimon. marks recognised everywhere, at least in all coimtries pos-
sessing a common civilisation, as characterising ownership and as
characterising tenancy, and to introduce as little of novel and fanciful
complication here as possible. Above all this is desirable, one would
think, with a people like the Irish, sanguine and imaginative, who, if
they are told that tenancy means with them more than it means else-
'cvhere, will be prone to make it mean yet more than you intend.
Jt is surely a disadvantage, again, to put a formal compulsion
on good landlords to do what they were accustomed to do willingly,
and to deprive them of all freedom and credit in the transaction.
And the bad landlord, the real creator of our difficulties, remains
on the spot still, but partially tied and entirely irritated ; it will
be strange indeed, if plenty of occasions of war do not still arise
between him and his tenant, and prevent the growth of a sense of
reconcilement, pacification, and prescription.

Landowners hate parting with their land, it is true ; but it may
be doubted whether for the landlord to assign a portion of land in
absolute property to the tenant, in recompense for the improvements
hitherto effected, and in future himself to undertake necessary im-
provements, as an English landlord does, would not be a better, safer.

Vol. IX.— No. 60. 3 C

722 THE NINETESNTH GENTURY. April

ttnd more pacifying solution of tenant-right claims, than eitha tbe
Act of 1870, or any Act proceeding upon the lines there laid down.

However, there are many people who pnt their faith in the Land
Act of 1870, properly developed, and extended to tbe whole of
Ireland. Other people, again, put their faith in emigratioii, as the
means of relieving the distressed districts, and that, they say, is all
that is wanted. And if these remedies, either the Land Aet smgly,
or emigration singly, or both of them together, prove to be sofiBdent,
there is not a word more to be said. If Ireland settles down, if its
present state of smothered revolt ceases, if misery goes out and well-
being comes in, if a sense of the prescriptive right of the legal owner
of land springs up, and a sense of acquiescence in the EBgUsh coo*
nezion, there is not a word more to be said. What abstracted
people may devise in their study, or may say in their little compankg
when they come together, will not be regarded. Attention it will
then, indeed, not require, and it is never easy to procure attention 6r
it, even when it reqiures attention. English people live in classes and
parties, English statesmen think of classes and parties in whatever thej
do. Burke himself, as I have said, on this question of Ireland wMch
he had so made his own, Burke at the height of his fame, when men
went to consult him, we are told, * as an oracle of God,' Burke himself,
detached from party and class, had no influence in directing matters,
could effect nothing. ' You have formed,' he writes to a friend in
Ireland who was unwilling to believe this, < you have formed to mj
person a flattering, yet in truth a very erroneous opinion of m;
power with those who direct the public measures. I never have been
directly or indirectly consulted about anything that is done.'

No, the English are pedarUs, and will proceed in the ways of
pedantry as long as they possibly can. They will not ask themselves
what really meets the wants of a case, but they will ask what naj
be done without offending the prejudices of their classes and parties,
and then they will agree to say to one another and to the world that
this is what really meets the wants of the ease, and that it is the only
thing to be done. And ministers will always be prone to aroid
facing difficulty seriously, and yet to do something and to pnt ik
best colour possible on that something ; and so ' still further to con-
tract,' as Burke says, ' the narrowness of men's ideas, to confirm
inveterate prejudices, and to abet all sorts of popular absurdities.' But
if a Land Act on the lines of that of 1870 fiEdls 'to appease Ireland, or
if emigration fails to prove a sufficient remedy, then quiet people who
have accustomed themselves to consider the thing without pedantry
and prejudice, may have the consolation of knowing that there is
still something in reserve, still a resource which has not been tried,
nnd which may be tried and succeed. Not only do we not exceed
our duty towards Ireland in trying this resource, if necessaiy, bnt,
«ntil we try it, we have not even gone to the extent of our duty.

1881. THE 1NC0MPATIBLE8. 723

And when rhetoriciaBs who seek to startle tis, or despondent persons
vbo seek to lighten their despondency by making ns share it with
them, when these come and tell us that in regard to Ireland we
have only a choice between two desperate alternatives before us, or
that we have nothing before us except ruin and confusion, then
simple people, who have divested themselves of pedantry, may
answer: 'You forget that there is one remedy which you have
never mentioned, and apparently never thought of. It has not
occurred to you to try breaking visibly, and by a striking and
solenm act, the expropriation of bad landlords, with your evil and
oppressive past in Ireland. Perhaps your other remedies may suc-
ceed if you add this remedy to them, though without it they can-
not/ And surely we insignificant people in our retirement may
solace our minds with the imagination of right-minded and equitable
Englishmen, men like the Lord Chief Justice of England, and Mr.
Samuel Morley, and others whom one coiild easily name, acting as a
Commission to draw up a list of the thoroughly bad landlords,
representatives of the old evil system, and then bringing their list to
London and saying: 'Expropriate these, as the monks were expro-
priated, by Act of Parliament.' And since nothing is so exasperating
as pedantry when people aire in Saious troubles, it may console the poor
Irish, too, when official personages insist on assuring them that certain
insufficient remedies are sufficient, and are also the only remedies
possible, it may console them to know, that there are a number of quiet
people over here who feel that this sort of thing is pedantry and make-
believe, and who dislike and distrust our common use of it, and think
it dangerous. These quiet people know that it must go on being used
for a long time yet, but they condemn and disown it ; and they do
their best to prepare opinion for banishing it. .

£ut the truth is, in regard to Ireland, the prejudices of (Mur two most
influential classes, the upper class and the middle class, tend always
to make a compromise together, and to be tender to one another's
w^eaknesses ; and this is unfortunate for Ireland. It prevents the
truth, on the two matters where English wrong-doing has been deepest
— the land and religion — from being ever strongly spoken out and
fairly acted upon, even by those who might naturally be expected to-
IxAve done so. The English middle class, who have not the prejudices.
and passions of a landowning class, might have been expected to sym-
pathise with the Irish in their ill-usage by the grantees of confiscation,.
and to interfere in order to relieve them from it. The English upper
class, who have not the prejudices and passions of our middle class^
mig^ht have been expected to sympathise with t6e Irish in the ill^
treatment of their religion, and to interfere to relieve them from it»
JSut nothing clouds men's ndnds and impairs their honesty like pre-
j udice. Each class forbears to touch the other's prejudice too roughly^
for fear of provoking a like rough treatment of its own. Our aristo-

3c2

724 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. April

oratic class does not firmljr protest against the unfair treatment of
Irish Catholicism because it is nervous about the land ; our middle
class does not firmly insist on breaking with the old evil system of
Irish landlordism because it is nervous about Popery.

And even if the middle class were to insist on doing right with the
land, it would be of no use, it would not reconcile Ireland, unlesB
they can also be brought to do right with religion. It is veiy im-
portant to keep this in full view. The land question is the question
of the moment. Liberals are fond of saying that Mr. Gladstone's
concessions will remove Irish discontent ; even the Pall MM GaaeUt^
the most serious and clear-minded of the exponents of Liberal ideas
talks as if a good Land Bill would settle everything. It will not;
and it is deceiving ourselves to hope that it will. The thing is to
bring Ireland to acquiesce cordially in the English connexion. This
can be done only by doing perfect justice to Ireland, not in one
particular matter only, but in all the matters where she has soffeied
great wrong. Miss O'Brien quotes an excellent saying of Fofs:
^ We ought not to presume to legislate for a nation in whose feelings
and affections, wants and interests, opinions and prejudices, we hare
no sympathy.' It is most true ; and it is of general application.
Mr. Bright is said to be desirous of dealing thoroughly with the
Irish Land Question. With the wants and interests of the Irish
people in this matter, even with their feelings and affections, opinions
and prejudices, he is capable of sympathy. But how as to their
wants and interests, feelings and affections, opinions and prejudices,
in the matter of their religion? When they ask to have their
Catholicism treated as Anglicanism is treated in England, and Fresbj-
terianism is treated in Scotland, is Mr. Bright capable of sympathy
with them ? If he is, would he venture to show it if they made their
request ? I think one may pretty well anticipate what would happen.
Mr. Caii^ell Williams woidd begin to stir, JVIr. Jesse Collings woold
trot out that spavined, vicious-eyed Liberal hobby, expressly bred to
do duty against the Irish Catholics : The Liberal party has empia^-
caUy condemned religiaus endowTnent; — ^and I greatly fear that
Mr. Bright would pat it approvingly.

* Sir, it is proper to inform you, that our measures muit he
healmg. Who but a pedant cotdd imagine that our disestablish-
ment of the Irish Church was a satisfaction of the equitable claims
of Irish Catholicism upon us ? that it was healvag ? ^ By this policy,
in 1868, the Liberal Ministry resolved to knit the hearts of the
empire into one harmonious concord ; and knitted they were accord-
ingly.' Parliament and public of pedants ! they were nothing of the
kind, and you know it. Ministers could disestablish the Irish
Church because there was among the Nonconformists of Enghod and
Scotland an antipathy to religious establishments ; but justice to
Irish Catholicism, and equal treatment with Anglicanism in Englsiul

1881. THE INCOMPATIBLES. 726

and Presbyterianism in Scotland, they could not give, because of the.
bigotry of the English and Scotch of the middle class. Do you
suppose that the Irish Catholics feel any particular gratitude to a
Liberal Ministry for gratifying its Nonconformist supporters, and
giving itself the air of achieving ' a grand and genial policy of con-
ciliation,' without doing them real justice? They do not, and
cannot ; and your measure was not healing. I think I was the only
person who said so, in print at any rate, at the time. Plenty of
people saw it, but the English are pedantSj and they thought that
if we all agreed to call what we had done ' a grand and genial policy
of conciliation/ perhaps it would pass for being so. But ^ it is not
your fond desire nor mine that can alter the nature of things.' At
present I hear on all sides that the Irish Catholics, who, to do them
Justice, are quick enough, see our 'grand and genial ' act of 1868 in
simply its true light, and are not grateful for it in the least.

Do I say that a Liberal Ministry could, in 1868, have done justice
to Irish Catholicism, or that it could do justice to it now ? ' Go to
the Surrey Tabernacle,' say my Liberal friends to me ; ' regard that
forest of firm, serious, unintelligent faces uplifted towards Mr.
Spurgeon, and then ask yourself what would be the effecc produced
on all that force of hard and narrow prejudice by a proposal of Mr.
Gladstone to pay the Catholic priests in Ireland, or to give them
money for their houses and churches, or to establish schools and
universities suited to Catholics, as England has public schools and
universities suited to Anglicans, and Scotland such as are suited to
Presbyterians. What would be Mr. Gladstone's chance of carrying
such a measure ? ' I know quite well, of course, that he would have
no chance at all of carrying it. But the English people are improv-
able, I hope. Slowly this powerful race works its way out of its
confining ruts, and its clouded vision of things, to the manifestation
of those great qualities which it has at bottom — piety, integrity,
good-nature, and good-humour. Our serious middle class, which has
so turned a religion full of grace and truth into a religion full of
hardness and misapprehension, is not doomed to lie in its present
dark obstruction for ever, it is improvable. And we insignificant
quiet people, as we had our consolation from perceiving what might
yet be done about the land, when rhetoricians were startling us out
of our senses, and despondent persons were telling us that there was
no hope left, so we have our consolation, too, from perceiving what
may yet be done about Catholicism. There is still something in
reserve, still a resource which we have not yet tried, and which
claeses and parties amongst us have agreed never to mention, but
which in quiet circles, where pedantry is laid aside and things are
allowed to be what they are, presents itself to our minds and is a
great comfort to us. And the Irish too, when they are exasperated
by the pedantry and unreality of the agreement, in England, to pass

726 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. April

off as * a great and genial policy of conciliation ' what is nothing
of the kind, may be more patient if they know that there is an
increasing number of persons over here who abhor this make-believe
and try to explode it, though keeping quite in the background at
present, and seeking to work on men's minds quietly rather than to
bustle in Parliament and at public meetings.

Before, then, we adopt the tremendous altematiye of either gov-
eming Ireland as a Crown colony or casting her adrift, before we
afflict ourselves with the despairing thought that Ireland is going
inevitably to confusion and ruin, there is still something left for us.
As we pleased ourselves with the imagination of Lord Coleridge and
Mr. Samuel Morley, and other like men of truth and equity, going
as a Commission to Ireland, and enabling us to break with the old evil
system as to the land by expropriating the worst landlords, and as we
were comforted by thinking that though this might be out of the
question at present, yet perhaps, if everything else failed, it might
be tried and succeed, — so we may do in regard to Catholicism. We
may please ourselves with the imagination of Lord Coleridge and the
other Mr. Morley, Mr. John Morley, and men of like freedom with
them from bigotry and prejudice, going as a Commission to Ireland,
and putting us in the right way to do justice to the religion of the
mass of the Irish people, and to make amends for our abominaUe
treatment of it under the long reign of the Penal Code — a treatment
much worse than Louis the Fourteenth's treatment of French Protes-
tantism, and maintained without scruple by our religious people, while
they were invoking the vengeance of heaven on Louis the Fourteoith,
and turning up their eyes in anguish at the ill-usage of the distant
negro. And here, too, though to carry a measure really heaiing may
be out of the question at present, yet perhaps, if everything else fiiils,
such a measure may at last be tried and succeed*

But it is not yet enough, even that our measures should be healing ;
*the temper, too, of the Irish must be managed, and their good affec-
tions cultivated.' If we want to bring them to acquiesce cordially in Uie
English connexion, it is not enough to make well-being general and
to do justice, we and our civilisation must also be attractive to themu
And this opens a great question, on which I must say something
hereafter. For the present I have said enough. When a good-natured
editor, with all kinds of potentates pressing to speak in his Review,
allows an insignificant to talk to insignificants, one should not abuse
his kindness.

Matthbw Arnold.

1881.

BUSINESS IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS.

In the Kevembep- number of this Beview I took the liberty of
drawing the attention of its readers to the extremely critical
state of affairs with regard to the transaction of business in Parlia-
ment. I tried to point out that the art of wasting time was be
oome a kind of profession, and that no time was to be lost if that
assembly, on whose wisdom and foresight everything depends, was to
be saved &om inevitable decline and disgrace. I do not think that
any one took the trouble to reply to me ; I was unanswered and un-
heeded. Every one must, one would think, have foreseen the inevit-
able attempt to defeat the Irish Coercion Bill, but nobody seemed- to
think the matter worth a thought. I confess that I fully expected
that before entering on the discussion of such a measure the Govern-
ment would have taken some pains to place the House on a level
with the other states of Europe and America ; and would not have
rushed into an ignoble and hopeless quarrel, from which they had
nothing to expect but defeat. I was not at all surprised to see that
the whole of the month of January was wasted, without any per-
43eptible progress being made : the result appeared to me perfectly
certain beforehand. All the methods which the ingenuity of every
country but our own has devised to check the practice of speaking
against time lay before the Government, they had nothing to do but to
take their choice ; they did choose at last, and, as.it seems to me, they
chose very unfortunately. They had recourse to the last and worst re-
source of a defeated and dispirited party — ^that is, a despotism — ^resting
on what was sure to prove, and has actually proved, a vain hope, that
they could avoid the delays which the introduction of new rules and
the passing them though the House were sure to involve, the Govern-
ment hit upon what I must consider the unhappy device of establish-
ing two states, one of quiet and one of emergency, leaving the latter
to be ruled by laws which the Speaker alone was authorised to make,
without even consulting Parliament, and for which he alone was respon-
sible. Let us look at this proceeding from a legal point of view. There
is no doubt that the House of Commons possesses the power to make
laws for its own guidance, for the power has been freely executed for six
centuries ; it is surely a very bold, nay, I will say a very rash, experi-
, jnent^ to tamper with constitutional arrangements of such elaborate

728 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. April

completeness and such venerable antiquity. The right of regulating
its own proceedings is undoubtedly in the House of Commons, but
■where are we to find the right to delegate this right to another bodj,
or to a single person ? Can any case be imagined to which the maxim
Delegatus non potest delegare could be more properly applied than the
case where a great and ancient assembly breaks through the practice
andtraditionsof many centuries in order tostripitself of oneof itsnoblest
prerogatives, the right of regulating its own proceedings, in favour of
a single man who is to issue these laws without being obliged to consult
any one as an alternative to the existing law ; for whose laws no one
but himself is responsible, and for the revocation of whose lawsortheii
correction, as far as I can see, no provision whatever is made ?

An old proverb says that it is a miserable servitude where law is
vague or uncertain. Look at the state to which the House of Ccmi-
mons has reduced itself I It has two laws, and can never be certaiii
under which it has to live. Most men find it hard enough to make
themselves acquainted with one law, but it is hard indeed to hare
to reckon with two, and not two running side by side, like law
and equity, but one at the shortest notice and for the most incon-
ceivable reasons superseded by the other. We have been accustomed
in times of emergency to submit to certain restrictions on our liberty,
which vanished in easier times ; but to find ourselves in time of peace
living under two laws alternately is a trial which I believe no nation
except ourselves has ever been called upon to endure, much less has
imposed on itself.

We are really practising a course of proceeding — allowance being
made for the difference of manners and institutions — not unlike the
course adopted by the Romans when the Consul was directed to take
care that the city should receive no damage ; and just as this violent in-
vasion of the law paved the way for the ruin of the Republic, so these
newly instituted invasions of the law and practice of Parliament have an
obvious tendency to weaken and shatter our ancient constitution, and
to rend the House of Commons, on which our liberties rest, into dis-
orderly fragments, instead of welding this great assembly into one
harmonious and compact whole. It is the nature of all great assembliffi
to split and subdivide themselves into factions. Which is the better citi-
zen— he who bears with patience the evils of the Conunonwealth and
seeks for remedies within the Constitution, or he who, unable to enduie
with patience the checks and disappointments of public life, seeks io
indemnify himself for his mortification by violent measures, whieb
tear up old landmarks, and are the usual forerunners of further and
worse change ? It is hard to prove a negative, but I believe you maj
ransack the history of England since the Conquest without finding
anything like a precedent for the recent proceedings in the House of
Commons. War and treason and violence you will find in abundance,
but a deliberate act, by which any community of free Englisfamen

1881. BUSIJS'ESS IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 729

flurrendered to a single man the power of making laws for their
guidance — ^for such an act, I believe, you will search the annals
of England in vain. It may be said, and said with perfect truth)
that the present Speaker of the House of Commons is the very
last man by whom these enormous and hitherto unheard-of powers
would be likely to be abused. I grant it freely; but this only
shows the height from which we ha^^e fallen, when we are reduced
to place our confidence, not in the manly instincts of a free self-
governed people, but in the moderation and patriotism of a single
man, to whom we have entrusted what ought never to have passed
out of our own hands. It is so much easier to confide in a
single man than to frame and carry a law, that the experiment of
appointing a dictator has been a favourite in all ages, but in
England at least it has never found favour until now. The tendency
by which such violent steps are dictated is a very natural one. It
offers an escape from a situation of great embarrassment and diffi-
culty ; if it succeeds, those who framed it take the lion's share of the
credit, and, if it fail, the dictator is always there to bear the blame
which ought to be awarded to those who trust to men rather than to
measures to cure the disorders of the State.

The evil of the course is, as it seems to me, the more to be deplored,
because, except from the returning wisdom of Parliament itself, it
seems to be entirely without a remedy. Even supposing, as I think,
that the maxim Delegatus non potest ddega/re applies, and the House
of Gonunons has no more right to delegate its powers of making the
law for its own guidance than it would have to transfer its legislative
powers to the mayor and aldermen of London, where is the court, where
is the tribunal, before which such an issue can be tried ? The House
has always claimed and maintained that it is the only judge of its own
practice and proceeding, and I apprehend that it is perfectly clear that
there is no jurisdiction known to our law which would presume to inter-
fere with what has been done. If what is done is wrong, it is, I
believe, absolutely without remedy, except from the wisdom of Par-
liament itself.

I confess I am not without a strong feeling of impatience, or
even of shame, when I read that the House of Commons has been
invited to declare a state of urgency. It is an evil period in the
history of States when they come to use great words for small things.
Great emergencies may fairly call upon us to do things from which
in calmer moments we should shrink; but who could suppose
that no simpler method for checking the ignoble art of talking
against time could be found than that of splitting the business of the
House into two, and making a distinction of the most arbitrary and
illogical nature, under which the rules to be applied depend, not on
the importance of the subject, but on the importunity of the orators ?
It eeema to me very difficult to imagine a more vicious system than

730 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. April

the one now proposed and adopted : the tendency obviondy is to
q^rtioa the time of the House between two classes of persoos, those
who bring forward the measures of the Government, and those who
employ their time in obstructing and opposing them. Between theee
two classes the best men of the House will be, as happens at present,
effectually shut out. It was a most unhappy thought to institate
two different methods of procedure, not only because of the confittioQ
which the existence of two sets of rules on the same subject'-znatter
must inevitably introduce, but on account of the alternate tensioii
and relaxation which the change from one to the other must per-
petually create. All difficulties and mistakes will be borne with les
patience when it is remembered that they are not in the nature of
things but exist in the House's own creation : it is not in humsa
nature that members should work two opposite systems in the same
spirit, and the equality and fairness of the old system will oontnst
very favourably with the harsh dictatorial and unequal spirit of the
new.

Where there has been considerable tension there will be a oone*
ponding relaxation, and it may very probably be found thai the
remissness of one period is a natural sequel to the dictation of an-
other. It must also be remembered that, even granting that this plan
18 a remedy, it is by no means the only remedy that is open to us,
^nd that it is quite possible to take perfectly efficient measures fw
preventing the evils of obstruction without dragging the Speaker fron
the dignified position which he has filled so long and so admirably
and without making new and tyrannical laws, or inflicting on fk
already sorely weighted House of Commons the vexation of a dooUe
set of rules and orders, and the disgrace of being forced to admit that
it is no longer able to bear the mantle of its historic predecessors. It
is the misfortune of an ancient and venerable office, like the Speaker*
ship of the House of Commons, that although it is easy enough to
destroy it, it is impossible to recreate it. Let any one who aoqniesces
in the assumption by the Speaker of the new functions that are throst
upon him, compare for a moment what the Speaker has been with what
he is about to become. He has hitherto been the representative of the
whole House without distinction of party ; ever ready to smooth ova
as far as lies in bis power the little asperities from which pariiameo-
tary life is never wholly exempt, raised far above all reality and aU
suspicion of partiality, the guide, jdiiilosopher, and friend of the distis-
guished body which he gracefully and fairly represents.

Mark the change. Is there a hard or unpopular thing, to he doDe,it
is the Speaker who must do it. Is there a harsh but it may be a just and
salutary regulation to be passed, the Speaker must enact it, thus re-
lieving the political leaders on either side of the odium^ and coooeB-
tiating it all on himself. If the law turn out a failure^ as the be^
meant laws sometimes will, how delightful for party leaders ta tiiiov the

1881. BUSINESS IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. T31

blame on the Speaker, and bless their stars that they are net as other
men are, nor even acr he I It is hardlj too much to say that instead
of being the representative of the whole house, the Speaker has became
by the recent changes an official on the side of the party which is in
power for the moment ; and that upon him henceforth the hardest and
most invidious parts of public duty will fall. He may continue to bear
the name of Speaker, but the essence of his position will be gone. It
is extremely veicatious to reflect how di£ferent might have been the
state of aflfiedrs if the Government had addressed themselves to dis-
coveiing an efficient remedy for the obstruction which had made itself
so manifest during the last session, instead of plunging at (moe into
the irritating question of the Irish Bill» The time that was wasted
during the whole month of Januaiy would have been sufficient in all
probability to have carried a really efficient and useful measure, which
would have effectually prevented the scenes which have disgraced Par^-
liament during the present year. I venture to think tliat the Clottkre
pure and simple, as it is applied in other assemblies, would have been
a perfectly efficacious and appropriate remedy.

How little the measure of Grovemment was to be relied on may be
judged of from the fact that it was only by what I suppose I must call
a lucky accident that it ever came into effect at all. The Government
were driven to do what can scarcely be called a legal act when they
supported the Speaker in refusing to hear any further debate and
forcing on a division while the speakers were yet unexhausted. But
even this would have availed nothing if it had not been for the
singular blunder of the Irish members, who contrived to get them-*
selves turned out of the House, while if they had remained in it they
might have made the passing of what is called the Speaker's coup
cPStat impossible. Fortune favoured the Government, but it was a
good fortune that they had no right to expect.

Yet even with this unexpected piece of good luck the machinery
that the Speaker devised seems unequal to what is required of it.
After all the trouble and all the violence which has been necessary to
obtain these laws, the result seems to be that they will not work ;
indeed it was not likely that they should. Favoured as th^ have
been by fortune, the Government seem likely to profit very little by
their success. They seem to have foimded their hopes on the supposi-
tion that the Opposition, whose business it is to differ from them as
much and as often as possible, would always be ready to give them
help. Strange as it may appear, this sanguine hope has only once been
realised and then promptly disappointed. It really was not worth while
to commit all this violence to break so many rules and traditions in
order to obtain a power which can only be used when the two rival
fiictions in the House are in perfect agreement. It is their business
to differ, and the Government assumed that their agre^aent was eer^
tain. It therefore comes to this, that after straining dieir powers to the

732 TEE NINETEENTH CENTURY. April

very utmost and doing things which nothing but success could excuse,
the Oovemment find themselves accommodated vitha machine whidi,
as might haye been foreseen, refuses to work for the very purpose fw
which it was created.

I have hitherto confined myself to recent events, which have
naturally attracted, in an especial d^ree, the attention of the countiy,
hut the truth is, that this is only part of a larger subject to which
the attention of Parliament must very shortly be directed. Itie<)mte
evident that the new machinery, for whatever reason, has brc^en
down, and that, if we are not to be the laughing-stock of nations of
whom we have hitherto been the admiration, we must find some
expedient for restoring it to its ancient efficiency. As regards the
question ofwhich we have just been treating, I respectfully salxnit that
there is but one remedy, and that remedy the one which almost every
other nation has adopted. Of course the remedy that I point to is the
Cloture, but the Cloture divested of all the embarrassing and on-
popular elements with which it is connected in our present dispensa-
tion, I have shown, I think, very sufficient reasons why, in the fint
place, there should be no special rules at all, and, in the next place,
why they should not be placed in the bands of the Speaker. There
should be no special rules at all, because every well-ordered State ought
to be able to select the best laws for its purpose, and should not have
recourse to the miseiable makeshift of an alternative. There should be
no special person delegated to bring these special rules into fence,
because, if that person is of no dignity or account, be is unfit for so gre^
a trust; and if be be, like the Speak
and consideration, you lower and rui
with such an office.

I can see no reason why laws int
order and the transaction of pu'
other laws, always valid, always
the notion that we are to have
into effect simply because we are ii
the highest degree childish and ui
why we snonld not have laws th)
no special person to put them in ezi
Cloture in whatever country it hai
is of opinion that some other mem1
encroaching upon the indulgence of
other country but our own, in his p
House on the subject without debat
that decision there is no appeal,
and just : the time is not the time (
ti>e House in general, and it is for thi
properly expended or no. Nothing oa
it should be left to the unrestrained

1881. BUSINESS Ilf THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 733 ^

power of spendiDg it, to what extent they will use or abuBe that power,
No man is a good judge in his own case. The public time is a
possession of inestimable value, and it is the highest degree of waste
fiilness and prodigality to suffer it to be expended at his pleasure
by any one who may chance to obtain possession of it. The only
real corrective, therefore, of the state of things that has just oc-
casioned so much trouble is to give the House the power, not by
noise or by obstruction of any kind, but by a vote which can be taken
in the ordinary course of business, of stopping a debate whenever a
majority of members think it necessary to put an end to useless
discussion. There is also this advantage, that, whereas the person
who is admonished by the Speaker necessarily feels a certain degree
of anger and ill-will at the treatment he has received, the expression
of impatience by the House raises no personal animosity, and passes
away with the circumstance that occasioned it. Time is not the
possession of the individual, but of the State, and the State that
allows it to be filched from it is wanting in the duty which commands
it carefully to hoard every precious thing that it possesses.

But it is not merely in questions like these that the opportunity
for vast improvement exists. Let us think for a moment over the
whole course of business now carried on in the House of Commons.
The quantity that has to be got through is something stupendous,
and not only is it extremely great but it is multiplied many times
more than it need be. The whole machinery of the House of
Commons was directed towards a certain object, to resist and prevent
the encroachments of the Crown. It is in order to prevent the Grown
firom refusing the reasonable demand of the subject that grievance
always comes before supply. That was no doubt a wise and necessary
precaution at the time when the Crown was an object of fear and
apprehension to the people; but in the days in which we live it
ceases to be justifiable. The right of putting grievance before supply
has now no effect whatever on the Crown, but it greatly impedes and
retards the transaction of public business. The same thing may be
said of the different stages of a bilL These were no doubt required, not
because our ancestors wanted to hear the same thing over and over
again, but to prevent any chance of a matter being inserted by which
the Crown might gain some advantage over the people. It is in the
simplification of our procedure that the true method of enabling the
House of Commons to overtake the vast amount of duty laid upon it
is to be found. I hope therefore that I may be excused if I treat
this important subject a little more in detail.

The cause of our troubles is not far to seek : it consists in using
an instrument which was devised for one purpose for the prose-
cution of another. The last thing that ever entered into the minds
of those who made these rules was that they should be employed to
cramp the rights and liberties of the subject. It is quite easy to see

784 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Apt!

that the. rules and orders of the House of Commons were devised vitii
a imgle object, to protect the House agaiust the overweexdng power
of the Grown. The object was to prevent surprise, and, if soipxise
should take place, to give abundant opportunity for reconaideratioQ
and redress. The liberties of England were won step by step, gnmt^
ing supplies in return for the abolition of obnoxious claims and law&
We have long arrived at the point where ^ rights conceded leave m
none to seize.' Bub with true British tenacity we adhere to the fonn
when the substance has departed, and insist on embarrassing oaxBelves
with rules whose reason is gone and whose utility it requires an anti*
quary to discover.

Let us trace the passage of an imaginary bill through tlie
House, and mark the redundancies and superfluities as we go
along. Why should a bill be read a first time at all? It was quite
reas(mable in the days before printing, when bills were short and
when many members could not read, and those who could had no
copies, but it is quite superfluous now. Again, when a bill has been
read, why should not the House proceed at once to discuss it in com-
mittee ? and if the bill pass without serious alteration, why should it
not pass at once ? The advantage of a second Chamber is that it cu
correct oversights and mistakes in the first, and it is, I think, bi better
that a slip should sometimes occur that can thus be mended than
that valuable measures about which there is no serious dispute should
fail session after session because there is no time to consider them
over and over again.

Then again as regards questions. Can anything be more deplorable
than to see a full House waiting for two hours, the first and best part
of thesitting, while Ministers are employed in answering sixty quesdoni
which might just as well be proposed by placing them as now on the
printed proceedings of the House and answering them on the
paper of the following day. A reservation might be made in &TODr
of persons who have been Cabinet Ministers to meet cases of uifene^*

It would seem not to be an unreasonable rule that no one except the
person having charge of a biU. should speak more than onoe on the
same point in committee. The bill itself is more important than the
eominittee on the bill, and yet on the bill itself only one speech is
allowed.

Of course with the prohibition to read a question aloud would &I1
the power of moving the adjournment of the House even where the
right of asking a question verbally was reserved to ex-Cabinet Minis-
ters. The Speaker might also be permitted, where on a division there
appears to him to be a large majority, to require what he believes to
be the minority to stand up, and if he proves to be right, to record
their names only.

These may suffice as insta^sa how much lies in the power of the
House of Commons as regardir^e economy of time, and how frrjthe

1881. BUSINESS IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 785

House of Commons is from having exhausted improvements of
the simplest and most inoffensive nature in its own proceedings;
but the question of questions, in comparison with which all others
sink into comparative insignificance, is the question of the disposed
of the time of the House. It is the most valuable thing the House pos-
sesses, but as to any property or control over it the rules of the House
are silent. It must be assumed that it is infinite in quantity, since
everyone is permitted to take, and I may say to waste, just as much
of it as he pleases. This omission to make provision against the
waste of time probably arose from the cause already indicated^ the fear
that advantage might be taken by the Crown of restrictive rules to
cramp the freedom of debate. That reason exists no longer. What,
then, is the rule as to time In the House of Commons ? simply that a
member must not speak twice on the same suhgect with the Speaker
in the chair. It is from the strange omission of any rules with re-
gard to time that all these rivers of bitterness flow. I cannot believe
that this enormous omission, as mischievous in practice as it is
anomalous in theory, will much longer be allowed to exist. Be
lavish if you will of your money, for that you may recover, but
be thrifty of irretrievable time.

What, then, shall we do with it ? To whom shall we give the
right to dispose of it ? It is really time that the question should be
answered. My answer would be—* The time of the House is the
property of no private person, it is the property of the House of
Commons, and it is the absolute right of the House of Commons to
dispose of as it thinks best for the public service.' It is little lees
than a crime to allow, the wanton waste of this most valuable of
human possessions. It remains, then, to consider what use the
House should make of this priceless treasure. Shall the House
throw its time open to be seized by the first comer and applied as
bis dulness, his ignorance, or his vanity may direct ? Or shall it not
rather keep the key of this tieasure in its own hand, and reserve to
itself the right of seeing that it is properly expended ?

The question then remains, by what machinery shall the House
of Commons exercise that power over the time of the House which it
undoubtedly possesses. Had it not been for the Speaker's rule re-
quiring a majority of three to one, I should think the right of the
House to decide by a simple majority how long a debate is to last
was too clear for argument. The rule that the majority shall decide
is adopted not because the majority is necessarily in the right, but
because we must decide somehow, and the question is not what is
rights but what at a given moment is the will of the assembly. The
coimting of members is not a sure way of ascertaining truth, but a
perfectly sure way of ascertaining what we want to know, the will
of a certain body of men at a certain time. It merely says that
the strongest party shalL prevail, leaving the question open for fresh

736 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. April

discussion. The claim of the majority being thus established on this
perfectly fair and reasonable basis, can anything be more absurd than
to refuse the House the liberty of closing the debate when such is the
^11 of the majority ? I can understand saying, as we do when not
under the clutches of urgency, that a debate must go on as long as
there is anyone tiresome enough to speak ; that is, that the House
ought to have no power over its own proceedings. But to say that
it ought to have that power, but that it shall not be exercised unless
a majority of three to one agree to it, passes my comprehensi0&.
How can we, without falling into the grossest contradiction, act on
the rule that the majority shall prevail, and then pass a law placing
the majority under the minority by saying that 299 members shall
be outvoted on a division by 100. The inference which I wish to
draw from this argument is of great importance, and it is this— that
whenever the Cloture is applied, the question shall be put as on any
other question and the majority shall carry it. This, in my opinion,
is the key of the whole position. Do this, and the House of Com-
mons is master in its own house. Omit it, and the House will
be, as it has been hitherto, at the mercy of every self-complacfflt
bore, or of every professed obstructor, who degrades himself in order
to degrade it.

It may be said that if we restore to the majority that natuial
right of which it ought never to have been deprived, the right of
disposing of its own time, we are placing the minority utterly in the
power of the majority. I apprehend no illusion can be more ground-
less against such an abuse. The absolute ubiquity of parliamentaiy
proceedings, as secured by railway and telegraph, is a perfectly adequate
remedy. A party in a minority could desire nothing better than that
the majority should use their power to prevent their adversaries from
using arguments which they were unable to answer. The press would
take care that nothing was lost. Besides, it is not the interest <^
either party to introduce a practice by which, If once introduced,
they would be sure to sufifer in turn —

Debita jura vicesque superb®
Te maneant ipsunu PrecibuB non linquar inultis.

From a somewhat long experience of the House of Commons I
should say that it is the last assembly in the world that would give
any countenance to an attempt to stifle fair and bond ^/EcZ^ discussion;
and that when the time arrives in which the Parliament of England
is not willing to hear both sides, it will be, not a question of rules
and orders, but of a complete change of the machinery of Govern-
ment, that will have to occupy the attention of the nation.

SHSBBB00I&

THE

NINETEENTH
CENTUEY.

No. U.— Mat 1881.

THE 'SILVER STREAK.'

The ^silver streak of sea' is a phrase that has grovm familiar to us, and
often repeated by our statesmen it soothes the public ear.

It appears but a picturesque expression without much political
significance, yet taken with all it involves and implies, it is the
most momentous expression of a fact unique in the world's history,
or of a delusion as dangerous as any which has deceived a nation.
Briefly the phrase embodies an Englishman's belief that, thanks to the
^ Silver Streak ' which surrounds his shores, he alone of the earth's in-
habitants need never fear foreign invasion. Strange that the ^ great
highway of nations' should for his enemies be impassable I Yet if
such be the fact and the ^ Silver Streak ' is the Palladium and the
charm which guaranteen us from the worst of cakmities — if it be the
sufficient substitute for colossal armies, conscription, a fortified metro-
polis, and a war establishment in peace time, it is an imspeakable
blessing, and worth the trouble of understanding, were it only to avoid
giving foolish reasons for our national belief.

But what if the supposed immunity be a delusion, and the ' Silver
Streak ' one of those Ceital phrases which, like the ^ invincible army '
of France, lull a nation to such sleep as preluded the catastrophe of
1870 and the infinite humiliation of Sedan ? Without prejudging
the question whether the ' Silver Streak ' be passable or not for a
foreign invader, it is at least <^rtain that the reasons usually given
for thinking it so are worthless, and will not bear examination.

Let us briefly review the most usual and important of these reasons.
Vol. IX.— No. 61. 3 D

738 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. May

The first assigned will probably be the superiority of our Navy—
^ superior,' to use the words of a leading journal, ^ to any other navy or
any two other navies combined — practically superior to all other navies
united.' This is a very bold statement, or rather it embodies three
statements, but the first is doubtful, the second untrue, and the third
an absurd exaggeration. Our navy may or may not be superior to
that of France ; experts like Sir Spencer Robinson' hesitate to decide
on that point ; but so far from'^its being superior to any two navies,
if we add one navy — say the Italian — to that of fVance, they would be
vastly superior to the British — intrinsically superior in strength, but
still more so strategically for two reasons. England (»nnot concen-
trate all her forces for defence, having to proteet her conmiunications,
commerce, and colonies, whereas France could concentrate her whole
fieet for attack. It may therefore be fairly assumed that strategically,
as the assailant operating against one point, while we must cover
many, France by herself would have a great naval superiority for
attack. This, as will be shovm, is a simple fact, and, considering the
official theory, that our navy ought to be equal to any probable com-
bination of navies against us, a very important fajcX^ That so niany
persons should in the present day, in the teeth of &cts and figures,
assume such a superiority of our navy above others united, is a
singular instance of a belief surviving the facts in which it originated.
For it was ortce well founded, that is towards the dose of the great

<

^ Admiral Sir Spenoer Robinson (see Nineteenth Centwry for March 1880) mites
with the ezpezi^ioe of seTeral years as * ComptroUer of the Navy/ the departneDt
qbajTged with the oon»tmotion of our fleet. ' As sudh he was neoeBaarily aoqiiiist«d
with the nature and mlae of every ship in our servioe, bnt he acquired from offid&l
and other soarcevfnll details of the French navy also. He.pnts the actual 40m««^2^
line^f-battle foroe at 24 English to 22 French (in 1880). This prop(^on nnes
.•slightly from time to time, bat we may ezpeot hcoicef orwaid to see tiie Frendi nrr
maintained on nearly a level with otir ow:A. Ftanoe has diaoovered'the secret of k:
-own vast az»d unsuspected resoarces, and possibly gi^iged the weakness of our oavtl
rsystem. The following statement gives the efforts making by both countries to ia*
<srease- thdr fleets : — ' At the present moment England has eight ironclads either on
-the stocks or lannched and being oompleibed for sea— namely* the' ''Inflexible,*'
1M06 tons; the'<Ajax" and <• Agamemnon," eaich of 8,492 tons; the^Cokssos*
imd " Majestic/* each of 9,160 tons; the « Conqueror " and *« Oollingwood/ eadi of
6,200 tons; and the '< Polyphemus/' an armonred ram of 2,640 tons; while two
aimonred cruisers, each of over 7,000 tons, are to be shortly l>egan. Fzaoce hu
twelve ironclads either launched and being: completed for sea or on the stocb-
xiamely, the <'Amiral Duperr^/* of 10^4.86 tons, the '<Amiral Bandin" asd *< For-
midable," each of ll,44Jl tons; t^e ."Turenne," " Du^esdin," "Taahan," vA
<* Bayard,*' ironclads of the second cla«,'eaeh of M86 tons; the *« Caiman,'*''!^
qois," *Mxid0mptBble;' and** Tenable," 'arewmrc^ eoMt^Mence.vetaelsof tiwfin^
C}asq,thefii8t-niunedr0f 7,239 ton^ the other. thiee»f 7,164 tonseaeh; the '* Forieax '
— ^alsp an armoured coast-defepoe.vess^ of tbafii^ ol^^bv^t o\ 6,69iS,toof onlj:
while four ironclads of the first dass^the "Hoche,** " iiarceau," «*M|igenta/' vA
^^Neptnne "•^-are Jto / be immediately began. Italy, has. three iBonolads< boUdins ^
completing foi;'8ea*T-p^mely» the .^< iDfyi^d^/' of. 10^6^0, t^nfv and. tJbe^^^tsIia** vA
"Lepan'to,".each^f 13,700 tons j wMle^»not|i«fi^9ivH.lWP<>^.»lK>«^ J%W*^
to be taken in hand this year.'— ^. Jamm\» Gazsfte, Hard^ 2, 18S1.

1881. THE ^SILVER STREAK: 739

'war witli France, and the' superiority 'of otir fleet over the aggregate
fleets of Europe maj be said to have lasted up to 1830 or a few years
later. At two epochs since then, when France built the first success-
ful screw line-of-battle ship, the * Napoleon,' and a few years later
invented ironclads, she for a tinie took the lead and actually possessed
a temporary superioriiy at sea,l)ut bur faith in the * Silver Streak ' was
unaltered.

Not less unfounded is the belief thM individually our ships are
superior to all others. As a &ct about which any man may satisfy
himself, Italy possesses two ships, the ^ Dandolo * and * Duilio,* far more
powerful for ofience of defence than any We possess, and is engaged
in building two more, to surpass those aboVe named. Two or three
years at least must elapse hefore we could produce ships of equal
force.

Compelled then to admit, as any one who takes the trouble to
inquire must he, that our ships are neither c6lle6tively nor individu-
ally superior to all others, the believer in the * Silver Streak ' theory
will perhaps rely upon the suppose superiority of our sailors. Now
what is a sailor ? Primarily a man employed about sails and saiUng,
a man pursuing his vocation

• ' • • •» «

. . Poised in mid.air upoA the gjddy mast.

^ut sails are ahblished in out n^w navy, txtA ships n6 lodger sail— they
steam, owing nought to the sailor's art, tod this involves a vast change
in his relative value. He never goes aloft Sti the n^w ironclad which
has no masts. In the olden time the qualtficadons of an * A.B.' (Able
Seaman) were briefly summed up in the formula ^Oatt hand, reef;
steer, and heave the lead.' The first two have no place in our modem
navy, and ships iiow ar& steered evetl by steam-^power, while as to
heaving the lead a yoting landsman learns it in a month. But that
is far from beihg all the change in the vahie 6f a sailor. The sailor
of the olden time was hot only the mover and conductor of his floating
citadel, he was in a gre^t dbgree its eoHstruetc^ ;' spiderHke he wove his
own web. The inert hull alone was the work of the* shipwright, but
all that wondrous supersftructure ahove the deck was created and main-
tained by the sailor's skill. Day hy day, tend in' very few days, he raised
those towering masts, securing them so skilfully by shrouds and stays,
all his own handiwork ; then he got up those huge yards, he bent those
sails, he gave wings t6 the ponderous hull^ and his sldll managed those
vrings. It used to be said that the French built better and fester ships
than we did, yet they rarely escaped us when chased. Why ? Because
we were better sailors, cotdd aail our dups better, ^ mare speed out
of them, by that nice adjustment of the -sails^ and^trimof the ship
which may be. compared to jockey sVp in racing. But much more
was our sailora' skill shows in .repairing with: surpassing ability the
havoc made by an enemy's fire in this ingenious fabric Upon that

3d2

740 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. May

skill, and upon rapidity in its exercise, the fiite of a battle often de-
pended, and the superiority in such sailorlike efficiency was on our side.
. But what part has the sailor either in the construction or repair of
the machinery which has superseded masts and yards and rigging and
sails ? It may almost be said of him ^ Othello's occupation's gone,' and
that in great part he is now a passenger rather than the opeiator.
At best he is a marine artilleryman in his iron casemate.

Under circumstances so totally altered, then, we cannot say that
England, having better sailors than her rivals, must win the day. If
seamanship or sailor skill in Nelson's day counted for seventy-five ia
the hundred, it does not count for ten now.^ Our sailors may be
victors in the future as in the past ; but we must not draw inferences
as to the future from the past, for all is changed.

It is not then to a fleet ^ superior in all respects to any probable
combination against us ' that the believer in the 'Silver Streak' can
look, but perhaps he may turn to the obvious and natural argument of
< past experience.' Eight hundred years' immunity from invasion (at
least on a large scale^^when opposed) may seem a very long prescrip-
tive title.

Unfortunately we can neither appeal to 800 years', nor one year's,
nor even to one day's experience as at all relevant to present circum-
stances. We have never been at war with a naval Power since tiie
days of steam fleets, of ironclads, of huge steam transports, and
colossal armies not only on a war footing but so constituted as to
take the fleld at a week's notice. To draw inferences as to the preset,
when such things are, from the past, when no such things existed,
would be absurd.

No great combinations such as an invasion would require, were
possible in the days when the movements of a fleet dep^ided on wind
and weather. Could lamd forces even carry out any combined move-
ments if they depended on wind or weather ? Would the battle of
Waterloo have been ever fought if ^ trusty old Bliicher,' instead of
informing Wellington that he might rely on the support of the
Prussian army on the 1 8th of June, had made that support con-
ditional on there being no change of wind, no storm, no calm ? '

But with steam, armies escorted by fleets can be carried far more

* A French naval writer in the Revus des Deux-Mtmdes describes with admitatioD
the brilliant manoenvre of a British frigate, commanded by Sir T. Symonds (nov
Admiral of the Fleet) during the attack on the f<>rtB of Odessa, A strong hreexe was
blowing, making it necessary to reef topsails. The frigate had caxiied sail to bafle
the enemy*s artillerymen by the rapidity of her movements. When it became neces-
sary to shorten sail, she delivered one broadside, hove in stays, reefed her topsaib
while tacking, and then delivered the other broadside. No sach biiUiant tnr i»
force can be ever performed now.

* One might posh the argument from this instance even farther. The weather on
that June morning did actually, and perhaps fatally for the French, delay their at-
tack for several hours (until 11 A.M.). That rain oould have bad no ^ect ooansnor
embarked.

W81. THE ^SILVER STREAK.\ 741

certainly, more rapidly, more conveniently, by sea than by land. In
the late highly crieditable march of Sir F. Eoberts, his army covered
seventeen miles per day, and has been very deservedly lauded for
that performance. Had they been embarked, twelve times that
distance would have been below an average rate, and fifteen times
would have been possible. The voyage too, unlike the march,
implies neither fatigue to the men or horses, nor any wear and tear
of material. Our regiments sent to the Cape of Good Hope this
spring traversed the Equator and penetrated far into the Southern
Hemisphere, say a voyage of 6,000 miles, in less time and with
infinitely less strain in every way than would have attended a march
from end to end of this little island. The march to the Gape by
land woidd not have been effected (on firiendly territory) in a
twelvemonth! But the strangest idea connected with the < Silver
Streak ' is that the transport of material by sea is an insurmount-
able difficulty ! The refutation of this fallacy is the argumentum
ad abeurd/am. If transport by sea be difficult, transport by land
is impossible ; therefore there can be no future war I Any one seeing
for the first time a ship discharge a cargo, say of 2,000 tons, must
have been astonished at the multitude of carts and baggage animals
required, and the miles of road covered by that single cargo.^

But no one acquainted with military affairs or the ordinary opera-
tions of commerce will doubt that in these days all the impedimenta
of an army can be carried by sea with far greater facility than by
land. Another common misconception is that an opposing land
force can resist a disembarkation with advantage, but this is an utter
delusion. That a force covered by a fleet will make good its landing is
a foregone conclusion, as experience no less than reason must show.
No army could expose itself to the unsubdued fire of a fortress, and
A fleet is a fortr^ with far heavier artillery. Of course it is assumed
that the invading force chose a suitable landing-place (say Pevensey
Bay), and I do not remember a single case in naval history of a
landing being prevented or even opposed upon an open beach of the
kind. The first four popular reasons for assuming the invulnerability
of our island have therefore no force whatever, but a fifth has
somewhat more weight. Though a landing covered by a fleet
cazmot be opposed by a land force, it may be said, ^ What if the
enemy be attacked by sea at the moment of disembarkation ? ' Un-
questionably the danger to the invaders would be great, but is war
hj land or sea ever free from danger and difficulty ? Would not an
anny attacked when debouching firom a defile or forest without time

* The calculation is easy. Suppose English farm-carts to carry one ton each, a
liberal allowance for a march. Bach horse and cart occupies about IS feet, or 6
yards ; therefore a string of 2,000 carts cairying 2,000 tons wlU (in single file) occupy
12,000 yards, or 6 miles and 1,440 yards, nearly seven miles. Of course on roads
broad enough to admit of a doable line the length would be but halved. If we sub*
«tatate beasts of burden for carte, the ground occupied would not be less.

742 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. May

to deploy be in equal danger, or, for that matter, when on the line
of marcji in a long column that would require some days for ooncen*
tration ? Any one reading the history of the war of 1870-1 will see
that the van of the Crerman armies was often a hundred miles in
advance of the rear. Of course, if a French army suddenly coiice&-
trated could have attacked those long straggling columns in flank,
they might have been destroyed, but it was the business of tiie
German commanders to prevent any such thing, and they undei*
stood their business*

So also in the supposed case of an invading force it would be
the business of the commander-in-chief not to attempt a diseml»r-
kation at all likely to be interrupted. Now in these days of electria
telegraphs a fleet could hardly escape the notice of ^ps in commaai-
cation with a coast telegraph, but beyond this an invader would lely
first on his look-out ships, and secondly upon his covering fleet, which
must be assumed as superior to the British. Twenty look-out ship$
(small craft) at distances of fifteen miles apart would cover aline
of 300 miles' length, and thus give, say, thirty hours' notice of an
enemy's approach, and much could be done in that time. But the
issue of the enterprise would depend upon the conflict between the
covering fleet and our own. Upon that conflict the future history of
England and the world might depend, and therefore, after all, the &te
of England would depend upon our having a awperwr force in tiienghi
place at the right moment* Where then is the peculiar value of the
* Silver Streak ' ? Would not any country be equally safe from attack
by land under the same conditions ? The superiority of for<^ (as will be
proved further on) would in all probability be on the side of an
invader choosing his own time and point of attack ; and as to onr
fleet being on the right spot at the right time, that would depend
upon the Admiral Commanding-in-Chief not being drawn off by a
feint, as Nelson was by Villeneuve in 1805. Yet Nelson has been
justly called ' the greatest seaman of all time.'

There are no doubt less obvious difficulties unsuspected by all
but professional minds, matters of detail in fact which have more
value than those generally relied on ; but of these hereafter. Thus
it appears that the weightiest of the popular reasons for relying on
the ' Silver Streak ' is very far from conclusive, while the others are
either misconceptions of the facts or arguments of no value. Still
it may be contended that popular errors dp not alter the questioib
and that at all events the responsible British statesman with full know-
ledge of all the facts must see reason to think England is safe in
presence of an armed Europe. Unfortunately it is only too certain
that British statesmen (of both parties alike) are far less conversant
with military afiiairs than continental statesmen. Foreign cafaiDetSy
taking the French for example, always contain more or less of the
military element, and all classes have some idea of the first principles

1881. THE ^SILVER STREAK: 743

at lea^ of thfe seienoe of war. Bat it is no exaggeration to say that
the ignorance of those principles among our own statesmen even of
the first rank is stupendous and alarming. There are probably few
statesmen having devoted their lives to the public service who havB
yet found time to acquire so much general information as Mr. Glad-
stone. In fact, his gteat powexs of accumulating knowledge are
equalled by his avidity in doing so, and if we find him controverting
the elementary principles of the military art, what can we expect
from minor stars ? It has been held by all military authorities that
the possession of Belgium by France would in case of war be a great
danger to Knglandi Napcdeon held this opinion very strongly, and
expressed it in his usual vigotous language, but Mr. Gladstone dififers
with him and accuses him of talking nonsense.

In the Nineteentii Century for September 1878 (p. 74) Mr.
Gladstone, after detailing the means taken by his Government in
1870 to defend the neutrality of Belgium, says : ' But it was not (in
my view) properly ^ danger to any immediate British interest. The
Napoleonic eaying about Antwerp is exaggeration carried to the
confines of nonsense.' But Napoleon's opinion was that of Marl*
borough in the eighteenth century, of Wellington in the present, and
of every soldier or sailor from the days of Louis the Fourteenth to
our own ; for the same primary rules apply to the defence of a
country by sea and by land, and in this case the principle involved is
very plain. Fmnce and England (and from Fmnce alone could
successful invasion ever come) face each other from the two sides of
the Channel as two armies drawn up face to face. All the vigilance
of England would be sufficiently occupied in watching the enemy in
front. Now it was the opinion of Napoleon that if France could place a
fleet on the left flank of England at Antwerp, it would in the first place
double the area needing such vigilance and offer double the assail*
able area ; secondly, assuming that all oiu: land forces were needed
to defend our south coast (as they would be), a landing on the east
coast would take those forces in flank and rear — that is, at the
greatest possible disadvantage. This is surely obvious; but Mr.
Gladstone {probably relied entirely on the ^ Silver Streak.' StiU, if
he sees no more disadvantage in having an enemy threatening two
coasts than one, it would follow that there would be no more danger
in having an enemy threatening three coasts and being in possession,
suppose, of Ireland as well as Belgium. Surely no one conversant
with the first principles of war would admit thld.

A colleague of Mr. Gladstone's, a man of ability in civil affairs,
showed an equal disbelief in the received maxims of military science
in a lecture delivered at the United Service Institution.* We do not

» On the 15th of May, 1S72, Sir W. HarcoTirt (now Home Secretary) undertook to
demonstrate the impossibility of invasion in a lecture of great ability, but his
reasoning, though supported by statistics ingeniously ^krrayed, did not convince the pro

744 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. May

of course expect our statesxDen to equal our admirals or generals in
professional knowledge, but it is alarming to find members of a Cabinet
totally unacquainted with the conditions on which the national defence
depends.

For it is our statesmen, not, as some people think, the profeBsioD&l
members of the Admiralty, that really decide upon the force and form
of our navy, and this accounts for its manifest insufficiency to meet
emergencies. We heard much lately about ^ scientific frontiers,' ie.
frontiers devised by experts to meet the requirements of science, but
we certainly have not at present a ^ scientific navy ' to answer such a
definition, nor have we had one for many long years. The truth is, onr
navy is a ' House of Commons navy,' devised to suit financial, or, as
the French would say, ' Budgetary ' considerations, and to meet the
criticisms of a body profoundly ignorant of all military and tedinical
principles. No naval officer would contend that in a war with France
alone, our present ironclad navy could protect our colonies, our com-
merce, and our communications with India, and likewise provide a
superior force to defend our shores. By concentrating every ship ve
possess, in the Channel, we might possibly do the latter, but that
would be to abandon India and all our colonial possessions, and to
deliver our conmierce (including our food supplies) a prey to the
enemy. To prove how completely inadequate our navy is as a ' war
navy,' let us even suppose some mystic virtue in the ' Silver Streak,'
making it impassable, and merely consider our commerce involving
our food supplies and our means of defending it.

Of the whole world's commercial shipping, England owns 58 per
cent, or more than one half, and Mr. Gi£fen considers ' the tendency
to be towards a change still more rapidly in our fiEivour.' France, o&
the other hand, owns but 11 per cent, of t<he world's commercial
shipping and only one-sixth of England's. One would imagine that

f easioDal audience he addressed. 8ir William was compelled by the ciFcomstanoes
of the moment to take Gteimany, not France, as the assumed invader,' because, f^ncb
territory being then occupied by German armies, the other siipx)06ition would hare
been too obviously improbable. But this, of course, substituted the German Ooeao
for the * Silver Streak,* and changed the whole basis of the argument. Yet fortiier,
Sir William went back to the Crimean War, with its sailing ships cocqTing
eight days to traverse 300 miles, and carrying a mere fraction of the nombeis
now carried by steam transports. Again, he imagined a difficulty in finding
under the supposed invader's flag, suffident shipping to txansport an army, and
assumed that * international law * would restrain neutrals from selling or luiiog
ships to a belligerent. Becent history shows us that Bussia would have foand
no such restraints had hostilities broken out with England, and to a nation with
the wealth and credit of France the whole world's markets would be open for tbe
purchase or chartering of as many ships as she wanted. Sir William lasUy a»m«d
that we should closely blockade every French port, because the United States, haiiag
a fleet, blockaded the Confederates, who had none. To blockade an enemy jon vaA
have a superior force, but even with one the days of blockades are past. A hlodading
fleet would be a perpetual target for torx>edoes and submarine mines, and how ooold
the supply of coal be kept up in the open sea ?

1881. THE 'SILVER STREAK: 7 AS

our fiist cruisers for the protectiou of our own commerce or the capture
of an enemy's would be in the same proportion, but so far from this,
in the special forces needed for the purpote, France has an actual
superiority. How can this be explained unless by supposing that the
French naval force is constituted to meet the exigencies of war, and our
own to meet the exigencies of home policy ? Qui: mii^ans of protecting
our shores, which we consider unassailable, are naturally less adequate
even than our means of protecting the commerce which we admit enjoys
no such immunity. Nor is it easy to see how any ministry awaking
to the danger could apply the only remedy by a large expenditure. We
have got into a groove out of which there seems no escape, by prac-
tically losing that superiority which we still dream that we possess and
declare to be a vital necessity. A minister who realised this fact and
determined practically to recover our supremacy by building a score
of ironclads would not only incur the censures of opposition, but would
violate the tradition of his own party. Both parties in the State
have for years acquiesced in the fiction of our having a navy superior
to any two others and the reality of our having nothing of the kind.
Some twenty years ago the Prince Consort, a man of clear judgment,
and under no delusion about ' Silver Streaks,' wrote to the Duke of
Somerset, First Lord of the Admiralty : * The French have unfor-
tunately got a year's start of us, which I am afraid they will keep
unless we make very great exertions and are more successful than
we have been at present. It must be borne in mind, however, that
numerical equality with France means real inferiority.'^ At this
period, when, as usual, the fiuth of Englishmen in the ^Silver
Streak' was unaltered by the facts, the patriotic vigilance of the
excellent Prince may have saved us from unknown disaster. He at
least was not asleep, nor did he allow the ministers responsible for
the country's safety to live in a < Fool's Paradise ' of security, for to
Lord John Bussell we find him writing : ^ It is a perfect disgrace to
this country, and particularly to the Admiralty, that we can do nothing
more than hobble after the French, turning up our noses at their ex-
periments, and, when they are established as sound, getting horribly
frightened.' ^ That this was no hasty expression of alarm may be
judged from the fact recorded by his biographer, who states^: ^A
copy of a report (December 1, 1860) by Lord Clarence Paget, sent
to the Queen, revealed the tsLCt that just as, in 1858, we found to our
dismay that the French equalled if not surpassed us in the number
and strength of line-of-battle ships, so now they possessed, in iron-
plated vessels built and building, a force considerably more than
double our own.'

Yet twenty years after the good and wise Prince had so written,
we find a flag officer of great ability and exceptional opportunities of

* Hfe of the Prinee Contort^ bj Theodore Martin, yoL v. p. 257.
' nid. voL y. p. 256.

746 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. . May

judging between the French navy and our oim hesitatftg to decide
which is really the fitrongest — the strongest absolutely, not tda-
tively to the commercial and colonial needs of the two PoY^rs. To
add to this great fact it TjUjDi^ be remembered that a first-classiiondad
cannot be run up in a few months like our old wooden ships, but re-
quires from two to four yeSra for its construction. Thus the popular
and very natural assumpttoA that the government of the day, with its
special knowledge of the £acte, must have provided against the posa-
bility of invasion, melts ittfay before examination like all the other
grounds of the blind belief in the ^ Silver Streak.' That there are
great obstacles and serious difficulties in the way of invasion oo one
ever doubts, but the term ^ difficulty ' has in all cases some relation to
the object to be achieved. We find this in private as well as public
life. The deterrents which are effectual when the end in view is of
little value, disappear or are forgotten when a great object is to be
attained. A man proposes a foreign tour with his family, but is de-
terred by some small inconveniences or difficulties. He then leans
that the life of a wife or child requires such a change of air, and the
difficulties vanish.

Napoleon's invasion of Egypt was a case in point. The difficnltieg,
a hundredfold greater in those days than now, were immense; kt
BO were the supposed advantages of success, and three generations of
Frenchmen have applauded the enterprise, doomed as it was to utter
failure. A still more remarkable and apposite case was his projected
invasion of England in 1805. Napoleon admitted that Nelson's ap-
pearance on the scene during the disembarkation would be &tal to
him and his army. But he considered the occupation of Londim vas
an object justifying the risk. For a successful invasion of England
implies advantage to the victor simply incalculable, reducing the
dangers and difficulties of the attempt to insignificance. We
know the utmost penalty of failure, the total loss of the fleet and
army, but who can estimate the advantages of success, military, poli-
tical, commercial, financial, moral or sentimental ? Are the Fiendi
smarting under the memory of recent humiliations ? These would
I be more than effaced. They love * glory.' It would be theirs beyond
precedent or imagination — empire surpassing the dreams of Napoleon
because extending far beyond Europe. Commercial grandeur in pro-
portion, a ransom, but in short more than can be conceived or ex-
pressed!

Having, as it is believed, justly stated and controvCTted the
popular reasons for believing in our insular invulnerability, let us see
what reasons can be alleged for the contrary opinions here maintained.

The general conclusion arrived at by the writer after many yeare'
study of the question is that, balancing the obstacles on each sid^
invasion by sea in Uieae days is less difficult than invasion by land ;
or, to state the conclusion with particular reference to England, tbat

1881. THE 'SILVER 8TBEAK.\, 74Z

on the wjbole the existence of the ^ Silver Streak ' would in sonie
degree faeiUtate eiicoestful invasion from France; Bat is the writer
alone in this distrust of the ^ Silver Streak/ or is it shared by the ' in-
telligent foreigner' to whose judgment we often .appeal in argument?
Let the reader turn to the last number of the Nmeteenth Century on
' The Military Impotence of Great Britain ' from a foreign point of
view, and let him bear in mind that foreigners like Captain Kirch-
Iiamn;ier, the able writer of that article, use the term ' military ' as in-»
eluding ' naval/ It is in fact to our naval as much as our military
podtion that he addresses himself, and with what result ? He looks at
our widely extended, far-distant, and scattered possessions in the four
quarters of the globe ; he sees our rich commerce distributed over every-
ocean, and, looking at our shrunken navy, asks : Is there any propor-
tion between the tempting prize and the scanty forces that guard it?
But Captain Kirchhammer goes further. He is no believer in our
national superstition about the ^ Silver Streak ' as a guarantee against
invasion, and he thinks that a hostile force once landed would meet
with but feeble resistance. As an officer of the General Staff of Austria
it is his business to study the resources offensive and defensive of
oth^ Powers; he has done so with respect to England, neither
overlodung her immense absolute strength nor her relative weakness^
and he comes to the conclusion that weighed in the balance of nationa
we are found wanting. Nor let our complacent optimists say, ^ That
n&ay be the opinion, of a foreigner, an Austrian little acquainted with
naval affairs.'

Unfortunately his details as to our naval resources rest chiefly on
the authority of distinguished British officers of the sister services.
Indeed the blind believers in our island security would find grounda
for changing their opinion in the pages of the Jowmal of the Royal
United Service Inatitutionj which may be called the organ of pro-»
fessional science for the two branches of the service.

In discussing this question it must be imderstood that the as-
sailant is assiuned to be France, that country alone having the
requisite geographical conditions of proximity and other advantages
indispensable to success. As happily at this moment nothing is more
improbable than war with France, the matter can be discussed entirely
from a theoretical and professional point of view, and imder no feeling
of suspicion or hostility, still less of panic.

Looking then at the advantages which would be on the side of
France, the First, and a very important one, would be the general
belief in England that invasion is rendered impossible by the * Silver
Streak.' Nations do not provide against the impossible, and hence a
hundred necessary precautions would have been omitted, and a first
success against our shores would create confusion and panic unspeak-
able.

Secondly, it was a maxim of Napoleon that rivers form bad

748 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. May

military frontiers because they prevent acquiring intdligeDoe of an
enemy's movements (by spies, scouting, and otherwise), and conceal an
enemy's movements, while they can always be passed under sufficiently
heavy fire of artillery. The first reason applies equally to the ' 8il?er
Streak.' We should know nothing of the movements of the enemy's
armies. It may be objected that we should see ' the concentration
of transports in the enemy's harbours,' but no such concentration
would take place in these days of steam until the last moment Of
this hereafter.

Thirdly, an invader by land, having decided the point at irfaich
the enemy's frontier is to be crossed, must fix a corresponding basb
of operations whence to draw his supplies, thus revealing his line of
attack ; but where a fleet is the basis of operations no such indica-
tion is given.

Fourthly, an army invading by land must move so as to secnie
its communications, and, having chosen its objective point, cannot
change its line of advance. A naval armament carrying ita onn
supplies may change its direction as often as may be desired without
the least inconvenience.

Fifthly, a large army invading by land advances from ten to
fifteen miles a day. The same army embarked advances 240 miles
a day or upwards. The army invading by land incurs fettigne to
men and horses and considerable wear and tear of boots, clothes,
wagons, draught cattle, and material of all kinds. By sea the same
army avoids all such wear and tear and waste of material.

Lastly, a large army when marching, being confined to roads, can
only move in columns of length proportioned to its nambers. Thus,
as in the Franco-German War, the head of the column may be a
hundred miles or more from the rear, and several days may be re-
quired before such colunm can be concentrated for batUe. The armj
embarked can move in close order, the whole within sight and capable
of landing so as to form at once for attack or defence.

In this comparison the action of an enemy has been purposdy
excluded &om both sides. No one denies that a superior British fleet
attacking the armament iri its transit or while landing would be a
great, perhaps fatal, peril to it, but no greater than that to an army
attacked on the line of march, or indeed an army badly defeated and
forced to retreat in an enemy's country.

It seems hard then to escape the conclusion that in these dajfs
when (for short distances) ships can carry from 1,000 to 3,000 soldien
with their arms and anmiunition, conveying them at the rate of, say,
twelve statute miles an hour, without halt, &tigtte, or wear and tear, a
sea frontier presents peculiar facilities of invasion.

It is impassible to conceive a more formidable armament than as
army so supplied with wings and threatening not one only bat every
point of an island.

1881. THE 'SILVER STREAK: 749

How can an army marching two or iliree miles an boor, and that only
along roads, cope with an army moving twelve miles an honr in any
direction it pleases? Is such an armament steering for Cork ? Its
destination is probably Pevensey Bay. Is it making for that point
preparing to land ? Its designs are on the north shore of the Thames.
It can change its course this hour, and resume it the next. It can
sepaiate, reunite, disperse, only to meet again at a given rendezvous;
No sagacity can foresee its movements, no cavalry even keep pace
with them. Briefly, such an armament alone can invade by surprise,
since the slow approach of an army by land can be known for days,
while the naval armament in the enemy's ports at this moment may
be on our shores in a few hours' time. With these advantages, then, in
favour of invasion by sea, with the advantages always belonging to
the assailant, and with the strategical advantage belonging to France,
implying correspondent disadvantages to England, let us glance at
the general conditions of a successful attack.

The first condition would obviously be suddenness and secrecy in
embarkation ; the second, avoidance of a superior British fleet during the
transit ; the third, the choice of the best point or points of invasion ;
the fourth, rapid and orderly disembarkation.

These points involve the highest professional skill and ability, and
still more such a deep study and mastery of the whole problem as we
may safely attribute to our gallant neighbours. It is morally certain,
though not capable of proof, that at different times, under Louis-
Philippe and Napoleon the Third, the problem of invading England
must have been fully worked out and elaborated. When some future
historian has access to the secretpapers, now pigeon-holed in the French
Admiralty and War-office (and no more interesting secret literature can
be imagined), such historian will no doubt show a profound difference
between the French system and our own. Englishmen know little of the
French navy, which, not being a House of Commons navy like our own,
is constructed and governed upon professional principles as a * war
navy ' with a definite purpose. Although there is much reticence in
France about that purpose, we can clearly see that it has reference to
our navy. While we talk about ^ the paramount necessity for our fleet
being superior not only to any other but to any probable combination
of other fleets,' the French, content with maintaining a real equality,
leave us to dream of possessing such superiority. Twice, as already
said, in the present generation, France by her inventive genius ob-
tained for a time an actual superiority when she invented screw line-
of-battle ships in 1851, and ironclads a few years later.

After the disaster of 1870-1 the urgent necessity for strengthen-
ing ttieir army led to the French navy falling below its normal
strength, but at the beginning of last year (teste Sir S. Sobihson),
silently, quietly, and by good management, it was raised to a numerical
equality with our own, implying an absolute superiority on any given

750 THE mNETESNTB CENTURY. %

point. AsbbSl when we consider t^at Franoe obtained tMi relatiTe
position at far less cost than we pay for our own navy, is there not
.reason to believe that the genius which created the Fieaeh iia?j
oould employ it with terrible efficacy in active warfare?

Ld; Its then assume with the best authorities that in number and
force of ships the two navies are about on a par at the brealoBg out
of hostilities. Would any British naval officer deny that cfxism
jemima, the power'of striking the heaviest blow must, in' the nature of
things, be on the side of France ? We do not want her few colonies;
her merchant ships axe but a sixth of our own ; we can only aeton tiie
defensive. But I^Vanoe becoming the assailant has the! choice of two
objects,' on either of which she may concentrate h^ whole force. She
may attack ns either at home or abroad, witJi the immense strategical
advantage her geographical position between the Channel and the
Mediterranean, with impregnable harbours in each sea, gives her.
She can in tajci force us to divide bur fle^t while she can snddenlj
concentrate her own ; for the Minister who kept our whole fleet at home,
the only means of securing equality of force there, would be inm.
from poiwer in a week^ and his successor (too late) would send half
our fleet to the Meditenanean to secure our communications with
India. But though bur existing navy is manifestly unequal to it, ve
may assume as a normal dkpdSitioii that one half will always be in the
Mediterranean or iii more distant seas,^ the other half left* for the de-
fence of Great Britain and — ^a vulnerable point at present— Irehnd.
The whole of our < efEtetive fleet ships intended for a gesenil and
combined action,' after deductiag ships of obsolete proportions or
otherwise unserviceable, amounted last year to twenty-four. He
French ships similarly defined amounted to twenty-two. Out of these
England has eleven Urstola&s'and' thirteen second class, France
havings ten first dads and twelve second class. The special ships
r--thaJb is, those that are adapted to . eo-operation widi fleets in
a general action a^id for defensive purposes'^-^are about equal is
ntimber andvalue on both sides.^ This estimate, which may be
thoroughly relied on, <wiU appear very startKng, and not to corre-
spond with official statements. But the difference arises fiom de
exclusion of all but yettUy efficient shipsh-^a Mfting which onfymeD
acquainted, like Sir Spencer, with the secrets of-office would be eqnl

* British gtatesmen 6n bbth sides have often declared the absolute necessity of
maintBUiing ont mUita^ communications with India bj-iiayDf Egypt. lV)dos!,
then, with France for an adversary, we should require the wliole of om praot
scanty force in the Mediterranean. - Where, then, is-onr. Chamiel fleet to be fomd, or
squadrons to protect our trade and colonies 7

9 8ee^ article 'In Nwetedfn^ Century for Mareh 1 SSO by Admiral Sir Spencer Bolxn*
son, £'.CVB:k» fonve9ely.C«mptec>Uey of Ihe Nirry^A Qftptaii»iKlniihaatB«r alkwB tfe
English navy a 'Superiority of one third 'or^- the Freaoh naty, i^hioh hes^ooo-
siders insufficient for our needs ;. but, for the reasons already given^ Sir S. BobisKA's
ei^cnlation is more to be relied on. Captain ^rchhamiiter cbnsldas ihM tiie total
of the -worM's navieiB is to the English as 244 to 44^ or say 4 to 1^^, in IroBdsdL

1891. TMJE ' SILVm JITMSAK: . 761

to. . >ni(yvi|^ tbi9 proiKMritioft betw©04 kh^ twQ. ^4ett» n^ V4ry pUgfcUjl
in faturei it n»j l)e tiMc^u as .the :»opnHal r^tioa to wi^ok Sntis^.
9iildatri^8 <^f ^Qth parti0s have: qpw ^peconoUed themfielves^ , ■

Thus, as the trlQiog diSeqence hpre shown K soo^tm^s oo oue
side &nd scws^timea on.the.Mkeir^VQ m^y ^onsidor tjbe twA.Piivies
nuzi^iac^y: ^qual, which) ^ already said, m^wa. a pr^^tlcal i^feripirity
lor iEnglaiKU Biit this do^ not only a;rise £rom the multifaiiou^ dutiesi
calHi(g:off our fle0td to amneir^dus w^ak. points* There is ^stratef^oal
flupericHrity^on.the side oftFra^oe £rot9 th^ fact thajb shQ is^goographin
cally h^tw^n us .and our JndiSin Empire. Furth^r^^ for .Qur iHTf^nt
purposer-^iQTasion-r^he would;pQs$<»9s a;StiU greater .superiority aa the
assailant, ohoQ^ing the point and time of attack*' Tb0 prahlem then
for a Freneh oommander oharged to throw a fgr^e of, sjay, .1.00,000,
men on an/eootemy's coast guarded by an inferior nayal force, does not
aeem so impossilde as we caiielessly assume it to he. . But pos^hle or
not, there are two in(>re popular deluaiona on the .subject which
Englishmen would do well to dismiss firom their, mindst .

Firstly^ arguing from irrelevant past experieiiQe,. it ia imagined,
that French admirals, though brave,, are incompetent. . A isecond de-
lusion ia that invasion would be> planned on,the one side and resisted
on the: other as in the olden time^ although all .the oonditi<ms are
changed* (Now, regarding the first debision, if there is a body of
highly educated; seientifi<^ and in every way cQmpet&Dtiinen' in; the
whole world, so far as la.ffraTide guerre is ooncemed, it is to be
found in .the upper, ranks of the Fr^ich navy. In pwe ^ aailorship,'.
to coin a word x^ more restrioted sense than Seamanship, they ttiay not
equal their >Engli8h brethren,, but , the French admirals, have a £ac
larger sphere of action^ They are o&m Qahioet -Ministers, And no
CNoe 'wooers to see tb^oci so^ They a>:[e jsoAetimes anihas^ciQ)} yeiy
uBuiEdly goiv'emon^ of ool6ni^8. Ii^i the s^pr^Qie /hour of f>ench
danger, the defence of the Parisiian forta w^ entri}ate4 to tbem^ and
well did- they discbarge that truat.^^ Fre»ch ad3gaij»lA.fl^TnnwJ0ided
divisions of the army, ai^ always with credit if not with.sjocces^t . .But»
wUftt la fqiuaUy to the purpose, tbe constitution. q£ tijiej J^renchr navy
and the share, allotted to the . nav»l .offioersin itsi Jmaintendiu^ and
gotemmenfc give tb^m an inaight into what, ma{y be. lealled. great
questioitt d :pda<grrrtuffi(>uslyi denied to our own-c^AJ^hat. would be
said to a Naval Lord of the Admiralty who prepnpned tP teU a First
liOrd.that'jthe.QQnntry waa not sale with a. r^jfj har^ij&q3lt4 to.th^

* r . • . • r '

M Host rosters of profeestonal woik3 will hay»4«ad Admiral de la Qppqier^-le-
Koury's elalK)rate a^icl 8ciex>tific work on the defence of th6 Parisran forts, which will
ever be -associated with hiar nattie, aHhongh he was ^assisted' bT^s^veral'etlielr •Admirals.
One mighfc)ntfiftaim6a|r Vrancb Ckbhiet tfiaisie]!^ inrtrmnt^feor^ irhpyrwr^ vi^r^^n
the gallant JapfigiulMrry, PothtuuifDe 8a)ss€t,all Miiustersof ftfanne.; AdfTtixal
Fomichon, War Minister ; Admiral Jaurte, recently appointed Ambassador to Spain.
Generals CSi^zyraild Faidberbe, Ihoi iao«t'dli9tifigttisHe^'inr-4}ie^7ra]ic(y>G.eTia«J» War»
bad both served in the French navy.

752 TBE NINETEENTH CENTURY. May

French ? He certainly would not have a second opportonity of giving
a professional opinion on a * House of Commons navy.' In France,
where the head of the navy is often an admiral, it is veiy differait,
and in a navy equal to our own we see the results.

But of this we may be sure : the French Admiralty, a professional
body, has often discussed and thoroughly threshed out all the con-
tingencies of a naval war, invasion included. As to the second rf the
two delusions just referred to, we may rest assured that when all the
conditions of naval warfare are changed, the methods of attack and
defence will be equally so unless the boundless facilities for great
military combinations on the attacking side are to be thrown awaj.
When armies in peace are not only increased tenfold, but are orgaDised
above all things for sudden operations — ^when ships can be timed to
reach a given spot at any given moment — an expedition will not be
concentrated at one point for weeks and months beforehand. Nor
will our fleets, as has been fondly supposed, hermetically seal tlie
ports of France by blockades, which are things of the past The
French at least will never allow their fleets to be blocked up again as
in the days of sailing ships. Getting rid then of mere delusioiis and
misconceptions, we come to the actual means of transporting an army
across a very narrow sea, France being assumed as the assailant To
point out the precise mode of effecting a great combined operation of
the kind would be presumption in the writer, but the SlUe of the
French navy have doubtless thought it out, as they cannot be as-
sumed to believe in any mystic virtues of the ^ Silver Streak.'

Without then pretending to go into details, any one who has studied
the subject can describe in rough outline the necessary conditionB of
success. We may be sure that, so far. from concentrating the ^ole
expedition in the port nearest the object of attack, the opposite plan
would be pursued. If Pevensey Bay (fatal spot where the two Con-
querors of England landed ^') were aimed at, the main body of troops
suddenly moved down might embark at the more distant ports,
affording no indications of the true design. Again^ still assuming the
same objective point, one or more small expeditions would probably
be directed against other points, even sacrificing them entirely to pro-
mote the main object. What consequence would 10,000 or 20,000 or
40,000 men be to a country counting its soldiers by millions?

But of course the first object of the invader would be (as Napoleon
planned) to draw off our fleet or the greater part of it to a distant
quarter ; and this, under actual circumstances, would be easy* An
attack or a mere feint on Egypt would infallibly take half or more of
our force a fortnight's sail from our shores, and as that attack could
be^made without the aid of the ironclad fleet the whole of the latter
might assemble in the Channel to cover the main attack.

" Sir G. Airy, the afltronomer, a learned antiquary, considered Pertwcy tkt
STOt where JnliuB Gsesar landed.

1881. THE 'SILVER STREAK: 753

Napoleon said, * Give me command of the Channel for twenty-four
hours, and England will have lived ; ' but in the case here supposed
the French might have that command for several days. The main
difficulty then overcome, the next point is the embarkation of the
army, which would need all that accurate and intelligent organisation
for which the French are famous. People have doubted whether any
country but England can produce the required shipping for the
embarkation of a large army. But this is an error,'' and involves the
further error of supposing that a belligerent can only employ its own
ships. War knows no meum or tuum. Every English ship that could
be laid hold of, every neutral ship that could be hired or collusively
seized — in other words, any amount of transport— could be secured
in a few days. Each ship with a French officer on board would be
consigned to a given port, and there appropriated to its special duty.
Some ships of course would be seized by our cruisers, but more would
escape, and for predatory warfare the French have faster cruisers than
we possess. Thus in a few days harbours previously empty would
fill with transports, and the different corps cParmSe (each complete in
itself under the present system) would be simultaneously marching to
their point of embarkation. The exact time required in each instance
for getting the corps on board would depend upon the amount of
convenient wharfage and the skill of the officers employed ; but such
cases as the embarkation of our army at Varna afford no sort of guid-
ance. Whatever despatch intelligence and experience can insure we
might expect from the French ; and in their own harbours there is no
reason to doubt that working day and night an army corps with all its
material could embark in forty-eight hours." Other corps of course
would do the same, and four or five army corps might very con-
ceivably be embarked in the ports of Toulon, Marseilles, Bochefort,
Li*Orient, Brest, and Cherbourg (a few years hence we are promised a
capacious harbour two hours' sail from Dover, but that is in the
unknown future). So &r, then, even the believers in the efficacy of
the * Silver Streak ' will, if ever so slightly acquainted with warlike
operations, see no difficulty, and we have at the various French
ports an armament of from 80,000 to 100,000 soldiers afloat in
harbours inaccessible to us. Can they cross the ^ Silver Streak ' and
land on our inviolate shore ?

In their iavour the assailants have first the incalculable advantage
that Englishmen believe invasion to be impossible, and secondly

1' No one doubts that a French agent sent to a foreign port, such as New York,
could suoceed in buying or chartering ten or twelve first-class steamers, and what one
agent was doing in that port other agents could do simultaneously in other ports.
Nor must it be foigotten that on the first rumour of war British shipowners would
hasten to transfer their ships to foreigners. What should prevent French agents
securing as many as they needed 7

*■ Thiers tells us that the different army corps intended for the invasion of
England had learned to embark infantry, cavalry, and artillery in six hours !

Vol. IX.— No. 51. 3 E

754 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Blay

that while the invader knows his own plans and chooses his own
time. Ins opponents can know neither. A third immense ad?an-
tage would be found in the different system under which the two
navies are constituted — ^the French a professional, our own a House
of Commons navy. With all these advantages does any one
doubt that the First Napoleon would have managed to embark his
160,000 men of ' the army of England,' and throw them on our shores?
It would be child's play compared with the task he actually proposed to
himself in 1805. True, Nature is sparing of such abnormal genius
as his, and no ordinary commander would inspire the same confidence.
Still, so &r as the mere transit is concerned, the chances seem greatly
in its favour. If we suppose the passage, say to Pevensey Bay,
safely accomplished, we may assume the disembarkation of the troops
effected also, as of course that most important and vulnerable point is
practically defenceless, and resistance to a landing there would be im-
possible."

Here, however, the real difficulty, or rather inevitable delay, would
occur, and that in no imaginary obstacle. Though the immense and
concentrated wealth of England in supplies and provisions of all
kinds would enable an invading army to reduce its impedvmeTda to
a minimmn, still the indispensable amount could hardly be landed in
forty-eight hours, or only by the greatest exertions. A feeble com-
mander might find it impossible, but it would be one of those ' im-
possibilities,' which genius turns to opportunities. However that may
be, the soldiers at least, with sufficient ammunition and provisions for
two or three days, would be landed very rapidly, detachments occupy-
ing Hastings on one flank, and Eastbourne on the other. The village
of Pevensey with its old ruined castle rising above the marshes would
afford a strong position for its centre and cover the landing of the
military stores. The rich towns already mentioned, with the adjaoeut
villages, would supply the army with draught horses, carts, and rations*
and a considerable district might be securely held before any British
force could muster. The disembarkation effected, the invaders*
policy would be to ^ bum the bridge behind them,' certain that if
London were ever reached it would be unnecessary. So far then as
the ' Silver Streak ' was concerned, the problem would have been solved^
and it is beyond the purpose of this paper to prosecute the subject
further. Whether the invaders would reach London, striking a mortal
blow at the heart of the Empire, who shall say ? This indeed we may
assume. The news that our inviolate shores had been reached and
occupied — that our navy, asserted by authority to be equal toaU emer-
gencies, had proved the contrary — would kindle such blind rage amon^r

" The little obsolete * martello towers/ mounting a very small and unserviceable
gnn each, conld not be used at all in modem warfare. The shingle with which ther
are smtonnided would, when struck by an enemy's skot, covei the towers with such
showers of stones as wonld overwhelm the defenders.

1881. THE ^SILVER STREAK: 755

the masses, and lead to such riots and insubordination, as would greatly
assist the enemy. The Admiralty would naturally be the first object
of popular vengeance, and the First Lord of the day, possibly an ex-
ceptionally good one, would probably be the first victim. Of all the
positions in which a statesman could find himself, his would be the
most pitiable if he escaped with his life, for on his head would fall the .
very natural maledictions of the people. But the mob would most
likely hang the First Lord and bum the Admiralty, following up that
outrage, after the manner of excited mobs, by attacking the Horse
Guards. If the then Commander-in-Chief and War Minister did not
anticipate the action of the mob, they would probably be its next
victims. But all this would not improve matters or contribute to the
national defence. A new First Lord, a landsman of course, and a
new War Minister, perhaps a lawyer, would have to be found, and mean-
while the enemy is advancing. The march from Pevensey to London,
sixty-five miles, traverses no defiles like the Kyber or Bolan passes,
no mountain ranges, gloomy forests, broad rivers, or sandy plains.
London once sighted by an enemy is taken, or would be after one
shell had hurtled through the air, or one rocket had roared through
its murky canopy. Unconditional capitulation would be a necessity,
and the idle fancy that ^ the retreat of the occupying army might be
cut oflf * is sufficiently answered by ' .Ty suis, j'y reste.' To buy out the
enemy, to furnish him with any number of golden bridges, would be
our task, but he could neither be fought out nor starved out of the
world's wealthiest market. The enemy might perhaps be bribed by the
cession of our navy, our Indian and our colonial Empire, and a war
indemnity of some 500,000,0002., with free transport for the army,
to relinquish our shores ; but what would he leave behind ? The
democracy, justly incensed by the proved incapacity of the govern-
ing classes to discharge the first duty of a government, would depose
them from power. The complex framework of English society
would fall to pieces. Industry would be paralysed and public credit
destroyed. ' L'Angleterre aura v^cu: ' the one country in Europe that
had for eight centuries been free from invasion would have felt the
conqueror's heel. A land whose monarchy had been the expression,
whose sovereigns the loved guardians, of the popular liberty, would
have owned a foreign master, and the fiction of the ^ Silver Streak '
have been dispelled by the realities of an iron age.

DUNSANT.

3b2

56 TEE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Hay

PEACE IN THE CHURCH.

I.

THB PUBLIC WOBSHIP BBQULATION ACT.

VVhkn I had first agreed to consider the policy of the Public Worship
Begulation Act, I felt some misgivings at my temerity. But in the
interval all apprehensions have quite disappeared, and I can nov
buckle to, not, I hope, with a light heart, but in a txustful spirit
The truth is, that meanwhile the question has been raised, and virtually
settled, in a sense corresponding with my own conclusions, not by any
casual layman, but by the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury and bis corn-
Provincials in sacred Synod assembled, as well as by the Hoiue of
Lords. *

When a householder sends for the slater, or the plumber, or the
carpenter in a hurry, the reasonable inference is that lie suspects
something amiss about his dwelling. But when carpenter, plumber,
and slater are all commanded to meet over the condition, not of that
one mansion only, but of the whole row in which it stands, then, in-
deed, it may be concluded that extensive repairs are called for to
restore the buildings to tenantable condition. The Archbishop of
Canterbury's proposal, accepted by the Ministry and House of liords,
for .a Boyal Commission upon Ecclesiastical Judicature, is more than
an excuse for a plain-spoken retrospect of the origin and policy of
the Public Worship Regulation Act.

This concession has made the doings of seven years ago ancieit
history, and justifies me for treating it in the free method appropriate
to a retrospective inquiry.

I am apt to become suspicious if I find any writer who embark
upon an historical research too loudly boastful of his impartiality.
Industry and accuracy are among the chiefest requisites for a trust-
worthy historian. But of these good qualities, assuming the honesty
of the writer, there can be no more sure guarantee than the conscious-
ness of some message to deliver, some mission to fulfil, some opinion
to establish. The student who is indifferent as to the goal to which
his researches may lead him lives under a perpetual temptation oi
preferring the e&sy. the picturesque, or the popular. Intending then
to be scrupulously accurate in my statements, I do not claiffl the

1881. FEACE IN THE CHURCH. 757

cold and negative merit of viewing the Public Worship Regulation
Act from the neutral position of a disengaged bystander. My
place is among the members of that old High Church party, the
^ historical High Church party/ which has, for some years past, had
abundant cause for astonishment at finding that in proportion as
Situalists and Bitualism are denounced for the capital offence of un-
popularity, it is itself being constantly hurried to the edge of that
dangerous abyss which, as we know, yawns for those of whom all men
speak well.

Accepting for the moment the startling statement of the late
Prime Minister, that the Public Worship Bill was brought in to put
down Bitualism, I shall attempt to recall the light in which the
measure, so explained, presented itself to the members of that
historical High Church party of whom, in his subsequent sentence,
Mr. Disraeli had nothing but good to say. To speak very plainly,
I consider it to be one of the gravest misfortunes of that Public
Worship legislation, that it has created a wholly fictitious eidolon of
^ Bitualism, irrespective of the rites which may make it up ; ' and in
providing special machinery of the ^ urgency ' class to suppress its
own figment, it has cast a slur upon, and done an injury to principles,
the disallowance of which would be the dissolution of the actual
Church of England. It has embarked Puritanism in a sacred war
against ceremonial en bloc^ and it has often made it a point of honour
with Bitualists to defend en bloCj as if they were inseparable, a variety
of usages which might otherwise have been separately considered on
their respective merits.

I am not a Bitualist. Long before Bitualism eo nomine was
heard of, I had matured my ceremonial convictions, and taken my
stand as an ecclesiologist upon certain principles of English Church
worship, which I find in the Prayer Book of 1549, and also in that of
1552, and for ourselves most authoritatively in the actual statutable
book of 1661, and which I recognise expounded, exemplified, and
illustrated in the writings and in the doings of Andrewes, Wren, and
Cosin, of Sparrow and Sancroft, and of Wilson and William Palmer.
Secure in this position, I can look with equanimity upon that mis-
cellaneous muster of phenomena which are ignorantly classed together
as Bitualism.

While I find in that fluctuating array of actions and theories
things which make me grave and sorry, I add with gratitude that I
recognise much which lifts up my heart in thankfulness at toil, dis-
comfort, and privation, faced and borne for the glory of God and
the salvation of mankind.

To pass from Church to Forum, I am driven to conclude that any
general definition of Bitualism, so firamed as to be cognisable as an
offence by Act of Parliament, is an absurdity, so long as the Prayer
Book exists as a schedule to a statute. To create an indiscriminate

76^ THE JSriNETEENTH CENTURY. May

moral offence of Bitualism is equally absurd, when so many. incidents
which pass under that name ar^ the inevitable and meritorious results
of that great revival during the last half-century of holiness and zeal
in the Church of England, in which — outside of the regulated opposi-
tions of parties — every writer has found something to praise, with the
eccentric exception of an historian who finds his way to the ear of
cultured Englishmen by his exquisite style, ' Owing, as we do, to
this revival,' in the words of the Archbishop of Canterbury's recent
Charge, ^ a more reverent appreciation of the value of the outward
forms of religion,' we find, as must always be the case in payments in
full of debts long contracted, that all the coin will not pass cunent
at the bank. To say that a movement is rapid, popular, and unex-
pected, is to say that such must be the result, and the enemies of
High Church ceremonial have no more right to be jubilant on the
&ct than its supporters have need to be downcast.

^ Movement ' is a noun of multitude, and when you have a number
of men in movement, some of them must, &om physical causes, alwap
occupy an extreme position.

Such, as I venture to lay down with much fear of contradiction,
but with no fear of refutation, is the truth about ' Bitualism.' But
what was the theory about it which lay under, and invited that at-
tempt to put it down with which we are concerned ? I shall b^
vmake my explanation clear by borrowing an illustration from modem
medical science. All who are familiar with contemporary therapai-
tics must be familiar with the great and increasing attention which
is being paid to the phenomenon of blood-poisoning as the kej to
many maladies, the results of which had hitherto been so deadly be-
cause their origin was not appreciated.

Many a blood-poisoned patient has been cured by being treated
for blood poisoning. But obstinately to assume that the man who
has dislocated his shoulder is victim to the vicious condition of his
•circulation, and to substitute alkaloids for spUnts, may sometimes
kill the patient. I should be sorry to think that there had ever been
;any risk of this calamity having been reached firom riding hard the
theory which appears to me to underlie the policy of the Pablie
Worship Act, that Bitualism was the poison which had infected the
life-blood of the English Church. Still, no other supposition can
account for the peculiarities of the measure. Of course, if such was
the case, the results which followed were the mishaps inevitaU;
incident to all mistreatment, even by the ablest practition^s.

I may note in passing, that I have seen a statement by an
authority which we are bound to respect, that the Public Worship
Act was the natural growth of the recommendations of that JSitoal
Commission which sat from 1868 to 1872, and in particular of the
reconmiendations of its first report, which called to life the ^ aggrieved
parishioners.' As a member, of that Commission, and one who, in

1881. PEACE IN THE CHURCH. 759

signing that report, bad to add' an explanation in the sense of my
present remarks, I must very distinctly contend that the recollections
of my respected friend are not quite clear. The report dealt specifi-
cally -with vestments as markecUy distinct from the general body of
rubrical observances, and pronounced that these dresses ought to be
^restrained.' This word was intentionally suggested by the High
Church members of the Commission in preference to any other, as
not involving definite abolition, but some elastic machinery of regu-
lation. The same High Church members wisely or unwisely sug-
gested restraining, through the machinery of a plurality of ^ aggrieved
parishioners,' as an improvement on the single delator provided by the
Church Discipline Act.

This recommendation of the Commission, I repeat, was one having
reference to some process of ^ restraining ' in contrast to ' forbidding,'
and that in regard to one particular ceremonial usage which was fisur
more strange in 1868 than it is in 1881.

Every argument of policy which might have recommended it
within this limited range was its condemnation, if applied to the un-
limited uses of the Public Worship Begulation Act. The true fulfil-
ment of the spirit of the recommendation would not have been the
introduction of that measure, but a concordat on the Eucharistic
dress. If the concordat had failed, still the Public Worship Bill
would stand in no logical relation to the attempt to make it.

The lay memorial against ceremonial, presented during the
summer of 1873 to the Archbishops assembled at Lambeth, was,
no doubt, the public incentive to legislation, and unhappily that
emanated neither from the Bight nor the Left Centre, but from the
pure Left. A better form of pastoral — something more gmve and
•ecclesiastical — might, I venture to think, have been devised for reveal-
ing the coming event than the leading article which appeared in the
Times on the 10th of March, 1874, with the effect of diverting some
portion of that public attention which was at the moment concentrated
on the just past general election and the incoming administration.

In due time the Archbishop of Canterbury brought into the House
of Lords the Public Worship Begulation Bill, in a speech evidently
intended to be moderate, but which was dashed by an unhappy over-
sight. The Archbishop was led in his exposure of motives to refer,
in illustration of tiie necessity of such legislation, to some proceedings
which had recentiy occurred in the diocese of Durham, then presided
over by Bishop Baring. But when persons asked what were the
Bitualistic enormities which had produced that stir, the discovery was
made that his Grace had placed in his hands the case against a
clergyman as moderate as he was eminent, the late Dr. Dykes, for
doing no more than taking the Eastward position. This incident
seemed to imply that the menaced men were not the Bitualists so
called, but the whole High Churchy party — the great phalanx of the

760 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. May

Purchas remonstrants. I have no doubt that his Grraoe iras speaking
from superficial information, and I greatly, therefore, regret having to
refer to the mistake of one whom we all so deeply respect. But histo-
rical truth compels me to refer to an incident which had so tmfoitmiate
an influence in attuning the feelings, not of Ritualists, but of the old
Church party, who felt that they were being swept into the net This
was not the only unfortunate appearance which the Eastward position
made in the House of Lords, for later on in the debates, the Bishop
of Peterborough, with peace-making intentions, proposed a schedule
of neutral things which virtually meant that rite, and the Loid Chan-
cellor with impetuous zeal suggested ballasting it with the Athanasian
Creed. Nothing more was heard of any neutral schedule.

But I am outstepping the march of events in the House of Lords,
The mischief of the Bill as it was brought in was, that it set up a
meddlesome system of Church discipline, based upon minute mtei-
ference, and incongruously mated with existing organisations. The
sting of the measure as it left the House of Lords, and after it had
been manipulated by Lord Shaftesbury, who had met it with scora
in its first form, was that it had become as despotic in its provisioni
as it was innovating in its changes. The principles of the two forms
of the measure were not simply divergent, but contradictory. But yet
the same prelates who were eager to push it in its first form continued
to be equally eager to push it in its second. This fatal bond of con-
tinuity linked in one not only the formal stages of the Bill, but the
persons and the desires of its active promoters. Churchmen wen
bewildered at the spectacle of changed measures and unchanged
men, and had nothing to answer to the cynical inquiry of irreligious
bystanders, whether the whole afiair did not sum up in the old proverb
that any stick was good enough to beat a dog with.

The first draft of the measure was that of the creation of a series
of anomalous tribunals in every diocese, to be presided over by an
anomalous bevy of epicene authorities, not quite lawyers, nor yet
quite judges; not quite magistrates, nor yet quite umpires; too
coercive to be paternal, and too paternal to be authoritative — a juris-
diction novel, motherly, and bewildering. This curious conception
was flashed on the public without any previous consultation with
Convocation, and when Convocation — justly susceptible at so strange
a slight — was consulted, the time conceded to it was so scanty, and
the conditions of debate so contracted, that the result was practically
to substitute one form of dissatisfaction for another.

In the meanwhile a real demagogic power was at work. The
Prelacy had brought their project into their own House of Parliament
only to find a great lay will taking advantage of the opportunity
which they had so recklessly conferred upon him, and utilising tbo
second reading of a Bill against which he fulminated by blotting out,
in the guise of Committee amendments, their work; and instead

1881. PEACE IN THE CHURCH. 761

writing in, strong and large, his own CsBsarean edicts, destructive as
they were of old principles of diocesan organisation and ecclesiastical
order, as in other respects, so in the substituting for the two official
Provincials, of Canterbury and York, deriving their mission from their
respective metropolitans, one judge for all England. The Episcopate
had to bow the head and accept this new-coined doomster, and him a
judge forbidden to exist without the co-operation of the civil power
— subject, that is, to the Prime Minister — such as no spiritual judge
ever was from the days of Augustine, of Anselm, of Cranmer, of
Parker, or of Tillotson, till, for reasons which I cannot pretend to
fathom, our metropolitans made sacrifice of their prerogatives at the
bidding of Lord Shaftesbuiy. Ay, and because he derived spiritual
authority from the elect of the ballot-boxes, he was to be relieved,
as the Queen's Bench has lately taught us, from all the old solemn
ceremonies of ecclesiastical appointment. This freshly devised
autocrat, too, was not only to occupy the chief seat in either pro«
vince, but was, in despite of ancient jurisdictions, and whatsoever
may be the inherent prerogative of the Catholic Episcopate, to wander
as universal inquisitor into every diocese of the land. Such was the
£ill as it left the House of Lords.

The Bill did not reach the House of Commons till very late in
the Session, and it was for some time doubtful whether it would live.
There were difficulties in finding a sponsor, and the choice which was
ultimately made, although probably well suited for a crisis of general
effervescence^ was far from being a stroke of &r--seeing strat^;y. The
lot fell upon Mr. Bussell Gurney, Becorder of London. But universally
respected and beloved as was that eminent judge, his sympathies, al-
ways manfully confessed, for that section of the Church which stands
nearest to Dissent, unavoidably provoked criticism upon his being named
leader in a movement against the advanced phases of High Church-
xnanship. The assertions that the Bill meant nothing but fair play to the
School of Andrewes, Wilson, and Hook were received with the respect
due to grave utterances from high-placed authorities, but the thought
could not be repressed — why, then, pick out the Becorder ?

It is incumbent on me to add that Mr. Gumey discharged his
difficult task with eminent courtesy and moderation. Upon the in-
cidents of that distempered night, when the debate on the second read-
ing commenced, and upon those of that still more unhappy Wednesday,
when a new House of Commons in a spasm of turbulent unreason
read the Bill a second time, I decline to dilate, for the recollections of
these days would hardly make for peace. The tide of popular im-
pulse was on that second day at its very highest. I had been long
enough actively mixed up in Church controversy to recollect the
excitement, culminating in sacrilegious riots, fomented by Lord
John Bussell's Durham letter, and so pejora pasaua I was not so
much terrified as some of my friends of a later generation. A few

7e2 TBB NJNETMKTH CENTURY. May

days showed that the tide was turning in the adoption hy the Com-
mittee of the Honse of Commons of Mr. Hubbard's equitable amend-
ment, which put defect on the same footing as excess. Happily the
moderation of High Churchmen has left this provision a dead letter,
but it was none the less needful to place it on the statute book.
Another action of the Committee was not so equitable, which refused
to make bishops amenable to that same discipline which they were so
prone to forge against priests. The division list showed conspicuous
Liberals side by side with Sir Stafford Northcote, Mr. Hardy, and
Lord John Manners in supporting the amendment of which, as I shall
ever remember with satisfaction, I was the mover.

So the Bill went back to the House of Lords, and while there the
regrettable spectacle was afforded of a divided episcopate. The
question was whether the bishop's discretion to refuse his permission
for a frivolous or vexatious suit should be hampered by an appeal
to the metropolitan. Happily the majority of lords spiritaal vas
in harmony with the majority of the House in refusing to admit the
limitation. After what has passed within the last month in Con?o-
cation we may inoffensively conjectiu'e that no regret any longer exists
at the decision.

I hurry over much which has passed since the Bill became hw.
A choice of judge, not among jurisdictions where some knowledge of
ecclesiastical law still lingered, but in tribunals more conversant ivith
putting asunder what God had joined together, than with bringing
together and binding up ; disputes about salary where salary seemed
already to exist ; perplexity as to where to sit and what to rule when a
sitting place had been borrowed ; scandals about customary confir-
mation and canonical declaration are not incidents which have tended
to create among Churchmen that confidence in, and respect for, the
Public Worship fiegulation Act which had yet to be built up, in spite of
the loud shouting of its promoters. One incident may be noted, as
especially to be regretted, manifesting as it did the underlying, though
doubtless unconscious, influence of that blood-poisoning prejudice
which I have already noted. I refer to a collective pastoral of neariy
the entire Episcopate, of which, out of respect for those whose names
are affixed, I will say no more. The Pastoral of 1851, child of the
Wiseman-Bussell panic, is forgotten, signed though it had been bf
Blomfield and Wilberforce, but denounced by Phillpotts, except so
far as it survives in the incisive words addressed to his clergy by the
Bishop of Exeter. I am glad to believe that no more enduring
vitality can be predicted for the Pastoral of 1875.

The apologists for the Public Worship Act are fond of urging that
some of the prosecutions which have hampered the Church within
these recent years have taken place, not under that statute, but under
the Church Discipline Act. The argimient is legitimate in their
mouths, but it is based upon a misconception of the grievance of those

1881. PEACE IN THE CHUROH. m

who regret the legislation of 1874. Their complaint is that the in-
tolerance which that measure encouraged^ and the litigious persecuting
spirit which it evoked, were so abundant and virulent as to overflow
the margin of the Act itself, and spread abroad their pernicious in-
fluence. All the ceremonial prosecutions since 1874 may not have
been prosecutions under the clauses of the Public Worship Begulation
Act, but they were all prosecutions under the policy of the Public
Worship Begulation Act.

The conclusion which I should desire to submit to those who
have thus far followed me is, in the hopes of some no very distant
remedy, not too nicely to dogmatise upon the status, in the eyes of
canonists, of the Public Worship Act jurisdiction. The complications
which have, since the Eefoimation, marked the relations of the English
Church and State, would make the investigation of their legitimacy
in the eyes of the Church law a veiy entangled inquiry. But I do
claim to have established that there are grave causes to justify the
wide dissatisfaction which that statute has created, and to call in the
ripeness of time for a liberal reform, reviving the diocesan courts, and
restoring to the Metropolitical sees their unadulterated appellate
jurisdiction as the consideration for a generous amnesty. I feel most
deeply the risk of any present appeal to Parliament, and so I abstain
firom the responsibility of dictating times and seasons, and, indeed, the
question has passed into the hands of the Boyal Commission.

II.

LIBEBTY NOT LICENCE.

I have no pretension to be a leader of thought; my place is
that of an industrious and, I hope, a trustworthy labourer, whose
ambition is to gather up, and present the thoughts of those who
have gone before, and who claims a hearing for conclusions of
other men which he essays to reproduce^ not only because he
respects the minds from which they proceed, but because he beUeves
that, in owning to this respect, he is the mouthpiece of a large
number themselves worthy of consideration. I have nothing to
pull down, and if I propose to build up anything, it will be with
seasoned materials prepared and laid down ready for the artisan.- My
theme is 'liberty not licence,' in reference to existing difficulties in the
Church of England ; and I believe that as much liberty, not only as
can be good for any Christian community, but as much as any Chris*
tian community can stand and withal cohere, is found within the
authentic historical documents of the Church of . England, compre-
hending not only the Articles, which all parties claim for their views,
but also its series of successive Prayer Books, which are so often ap-
pealed to in proof of divergent doctrine, but which I prefer to look
on as one majestic symphony. It is to these Prayer Books taken as a

764 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Mt?

•

whole, and reciprocally explaining each other, that I appeal a^ giving
us a common historical ground upon which, in this national dbnrcb,
imder the actual conditions of clerical subscription, all lecognised
parties, High, Low, and Broad, within the Church of England canli?e
together, study together, and labour together, virith advantage alike
to the body politic and to their own distinct schools of thought and
work. The advantages from this comprehensive treatment of doca*
ments which I claim for myself as a High Churchman I equaUj
claim for the other parties, for I am thoroughly convinced that it
would be an evil day alike for the Church of England and for rdigion
in general if any one of these three parties were to be cast out of, to
be estranged from, or to retire from, the one mother Church of the
country. The High Churchman may have his preference for the
Book of 1549, and the Low Churchman for that of 1552, while the
Broad Churchman, if he is sensible, will probably come to the oon*
elusion in which High and Low will also practically agree, that, all in
all, it is safer to adhere to the forms of the Prayer Book in the shape
in which it has come to us with a more than two hundred years' pre-
sumption and the testimony of the eighteenth no less than of the
seventeenth and of the nineteenth centuries, than to risk the distur-
bance inevitable to legislative change. Thus each section may fomm-
late its conditions of contented acquiescence ; each will have its par-
ticular reason, but the result will be identical and common. Let oor
present task be to develop this somewhat neutral attitude of reciprocal
toleration into the more active one of real liberty, by showing how it
conduces to insuring common respect for the differing convictions of
every section. If the three Prayer Books represented hostile or
antagonistic systems, there might be acquiescence, but there could
not be harmony ; there might be a forced truce, but there could not
be peace, and therefore, things being in a state of siege, there could not
be liberty.

My appeal is to the documents themselves, and the question to
which I demand an answer from them is this : * Is it peace or war
between yourselves ? *

This appeal is the loyal one of a devoted member of the fieformed
Church of England, accepting fully its reformation in spirit no lea
than in form. Whatever controversy may exist about the commence-
ment or the close of the Beformation period, it must be acknowledged
that with the promulgation of the English Prayer Book the English
Church had entered upon its reformed phase of existence.

I repudiate as strongly as any one who has signed Bishop Pen/$
counter memorial, ' the reintroduction of long discarded ceremonial
which symbolises doctrines repudiated by our Church at the time of
the Beformation, and which is therefore identified with the saper-
stitious doctrines and practices of the Church of Rome.* Such rein-
troduction would be licence, not liberty. But I equally repudiate ai

1881. PEACE IN THE CEURGH. 765

the abridgment of liberty imputing to ceremonial becauBe it may
be mifamiliar,or to doctrine because it may be liable to be misunder-
stood by the ignorant or the prejudiced classes, the blame of symbol-
ising Roman superstition, when, in fitct, such ceremonial and doctrine
only represent one phase of Anglican verity.

But where, I shall be asked, shall I find my touchstone which is to
discriminate between what I praise as verity and what I ban as
superstition ? I seek it very near at hand, in documents which exist,
thank Heaven, for the guidance of every one. I mean our three
Prayer Books of 1549, 1552, and 1661 — documents which I refuse to
consider apart from each other. This test of ecclesiastical liberty is,
as every man must own, a practical one.

The liberty, then, which I claim for the three parties in the
Chiurch of England as sufficient for the present condition of society,
and resting on an historical and documentary basis, is that of the
conclusions which may be deduced from the fair and grammatical,
but not narrow or technical, comparison of the three Prayer Books,
respectively illustrating and qualifying each other, and all of them
read in the light of the actual form of subscription. I know that
this form of subscription was not long since made light of because it
was so moderate and elastic. I leave such eccentric arguments to
the enjoyment of their authors.

I am bound in commencing to vindicate my comparative way of
treating the successive editions of the Prayer Book, and show cause
why each of them should not be regarded as having superseded, and
in superseding, passed something like a censiure upon the one which
it was replacing. Had each revision been launched upon the world
without any explanation profiered by an authority equal to and, so to
speak, incorporated with its own, or rather being the very source of
that authority, there might have been some plausibility in such an
objection. But it is notorious that the facts of the case are in direct
contradiction to this convenient supposition, seeing that each Prayer
Book became law in virtue of an introductory Act of Uniformity
which gave the reason for the modifications.

If any later Act of Uniformity had condemned the preceding
Prayer Book, that book would have become useless as an element of
a cumulative series of documents reciprocally explanatory. But if,
on the contrary, the language of the statute is that of commendation,
then, of course, the supersession can be only operative for practical
purposes, while leaving the documentary value of the composition as
a record of opinions untouched. So I betake myself to Edward the
Sixth's second Act of Uniformity, that of 1552 (5th and 6th Edward
VI., chapter i.), which was passed to supersede the first Prayer Book
and to estabUsh the second one, and in it I find that very Book of
1549 described in these words :

'Where there has been a very godly order set forth by the authority

76ff THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. }tsj

of Parliament for common prayer and administration of the Sacra-
ments to be used in the mother tongue within the Church of England,
agreeable to the word of G-od and the primitive Church, yeiycomfortr
able to all good people desiring to live in Christian conversation, and
most profitable to the estate of this realm.'

Was ever eulogy more complete or more enthusiastic ? The reaaon
given in the' Act for the change of Book is not a little curious, being in
effect a confession that the prior form was too good for the people far
whose behalf it was intended, and for the age on which it had Men.

The writers and speakers who have from time to time commented
upon the first Book as a halting and imperfect attempt at Reformation,
a half-hearted desertion of Romanism which had been deservedly sup-
planted by the complete work of 1552, can never have read, or must
have entirely forgotten, the Act of Uniformity which gave its legality
to the Book of 1552. I cannot think so poorly of the controveiaai
honesty of any man as to suppose that with that Act stamped on his
recollection he could have indulged in such accusations.

I desire to press the importance of the declaration of the Act of
1 552, as fixing the permanent value of the formularies of 1 549, with all
the urgency which I can command, for I believe that its absolute statu-
table value as an authentic declaration of the principles which govern
the legal condition of the Church of England has never been suffi-
ciently brought out. The words are not found in a statute setting up
the Book of 1549 with all its details, for any such declaration would
necessarily lie under some suspicion of partiality, and it wotdd have been
incumbent on me to show that its force had not ceased with tbense of
the Book itself. There are expressions in Edward the Sixth's first
Act of Uniformity commending the book which it legalises ; but these
I pass over, for the evidence may be objected to as interested. But
when that very statute which was passed for the purpose of varying an
existing document is absolute and effusive in an unlimited encomium
on that document in its original unvaried form, the proof is perfect
that the variation is due neither to difference of opinion nor intended
depreciation, but to the conclusion that under the circumstances of
the times it had become expedient to say the same thing in other
words, while — ^because with other words it remained the same in sub-
stance— it was felt due to offer the explanation put forth with all the
authority of an Act of Parliament — that the new words and the old
words still meant, and were intended to mean, the same thing. We
must accept this statement of facts as historical truth, and then un-
questionably the testimony of the Act of 1552 is established as hmg
of the highest legal and moral value in regulating the opinions of the
whole Church of England, and in contributing to fix the formal inter-
pretation of its various documents as a consistent progressive whole.
The Churchmen and statesmen who superseded in various partieuhrs
the Book of 1549, declared in their own statute of supersessioo that it

1881. PEACE IN THE CHURCH. 76r

was a godly order, agreeable to the word of God and the primitiy^
Church, very comfortable for all good people desiring to live ia
Christian conversation, and most profitable to the estate of this realm.

I can ask no more, nor can any one else who looks with respect
upon the specialties of the Book of 1549, to prove that that respect
has by the mouth of the authorities of 1552 been solemnly declared
consistent with the most absolute loyalty to the Church of England,
as affected by the proceedings of * 1552 itself. In return, those who
cling to the specialties of 1552 have the right to claim the same
reciprocal acknowledgments from the other school, while both ought -
to, and can, unite upon the Book of 1661. For recalling to the reason
and conscience of living Churchmen the fact which has fallen inta
much oblivion, that the Prayer Book of 1549 still lives in the enjoy-
ment of the highest testimonials of its Anglican orthodoxy by the
mouth of that unrepealed statute which the unlearned have schooled
themselves to believe was its condemnation, I may have opened
myself to the imputation of having a bias in favour of that formula.
Accordingly, I desire at the earliest moment to explain that there are
points on which I beUeve that the Book of 1552 is an improvement
upon the preceding one, and that it possesses special features of worship
which I should be very sorry to see the Church of England abandon.

I shall marshal the direct contributions which the Prayer Books
of 1552 and 1661 respectively yield to the liturgical treasure-house of
the Beformed Church of England, by naming the features in which
each of them respectively differs from the one which came next before
it. Behind this catalogue of difference stands the great phalanx of
agreements which unites the three main editions of the Beformed
English Prayer Book into a true triangle of forces.

The modifications which I deem to be the distinctive gains of the
Book of 1552 upon that of 1549 are found in its order of morning and
evening prayer, and are compendiously the enrichment of the Church
by the daily confession and absolution, the use of the Creed at both
services, and the enlarged list of days on which the Quicunque Vult
is said. In 1661, in contrast with 1552, we must look for gains in
the Communion Office, and in the occasional offices which I now pass
over, as they are not required for my main argument. Earliest comeS'
the first order for kneeling among the initiatory rubrics. ^ Oblations '
are introduced into the Prayer for the Church Militant, and its final
petition appears blessing God's holy name for His servants departed thi9
life in His faith and fear, and beseeching Him to give us grace so to
follow their good examples, that with them we may be partakers of
His heavenly kingdom, returning, as this does, in a modified form
from 1549. The rubric prescribing Hhe communicants being conveni-
ently placed for the receiving of the Holy Sacrament ' contributes to
g^ood order; the term 'Offertory' is introduced in reference to the
alms of the congregation, which are only treated in the Book of

*•

68 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. May

1552 as a remembranoe of the poor without any definite God-waid
reference.

The absolation is called the Absolution, and is allotted to the
bishop, when present. The rubric is introduced before the pnyer of
consecration beginning, ' When the priest, standing before the table,
hath so ordered the Bread and Wine, that he may with the more
readiness and decency break the bread before the people, and take the
eup into his hands.' Whatever may be the particular meaning of the
rubric, it undoubtedly makes for reverence. The manual directions also
— inclusive of that of the fraction of the bread — are embodied in rubrics
to the Consecration Prayer instead of being left to the celefaranfs
common sense. The directions for further consecration appear for the
first time. In the final declaration of kneeling, the protest against
adoration of any ^ real or essential presence of Christ's natural flesh
and blood ' is changed into < spiritual presence.' I have left to the last
two differences between the Books of 1661 and 1552, because they are
variations upon the Book of 1552, made in Queen Elizabeth's repuUi-
cation of 1559, and retained from that edition — the first is, the resto-
ration in the form of administration of the declaratory words of the
Book of 1549 : ' The body of Our Lord Jesus Christ which was given
for thee ' (and ' the blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ which was died
for thee '), ' preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life.' The
other one is, with a grammatical modification, that ornaments rubric
of which all that I dare to say after the Purchas and Bidsdale judg-
ments is, that while those documents, taken in combination with the
Advertisements and Canons, order a distinctive Eucharistic dress
in cathedral and collegiate churches, respectable authorities, such as
Bishop Cosin, Sir William Palmer, Bishop PhiUpotts, the judges in
Liddell v. Westerton, the late Sir John Coleridge — and (previouslj
to these judgments) Lord Coleridge, Chief Justice Bovill, Chief
Baron Kelly, Lord Justice James — ^took it as allowing that dress in sU
churches.

I do not cavil with those who may think that the Prayer Book d
1552, with all the burden on its back of its recognition of 1549, bad
better not have been touched in 1661. The liberty of such an
opinion in 1881 is incontestable. But I claim as the liberty of other
Churchmen, whom I know to be a very large party, to appreciate the
modifications of 1661 as clearly embodying a more distinct expressioii
of the idea of offering in the Eucharist and of a presence of Our Loni
in the Sacrament, which is not the ' corporal ' presence that Home
vainly pretends, but which at the same time, because it is 'spiritual/
does not forfeit the designations of ' real and essential.' Nowhere,
however, does the Book of 1661 pass any stricture upon that of 1552,
and the proof is accordingly quite wanting which could establish any
breach of continuity between 1549 and 1661, bridged over as the gap
is by 1552 and 1559. There was one salient ceremonial distioctioo

1881. PEACE IN THE CHURCH. 769

between 1549 and 1552 which we are forbidden by the statute of the
latter year to assume as having a doctrinal signification — namely,
the reduction of the schedule of ministerial dresses given in the Rubrics
of 1549 to a single one of its items, namely, the surplice. But this
reduction only lingered as a note of our Beformed Church for less
than two years, that is, till Edward the Sixth's death, when, in 1553,
Mary's reaction became responsible for five more years, and in
1559 began our present era, in which certainly the recognition of the
Eucharistic dress finds a place, were it only under the limitations of
the Ridsdale judgment.

The specialty of the Book of 1549 resides in its Communion
service, and upon this I need not dwell with the minuteness which
the established status of the Book of 1661 demanded. The car-
dinal features of this office, in contrast with the others, are its re-
capitulation of the Eucharistic dress, and the combination with
its prayer of consecration of what are now the separate prayer for
the Church Militant and the first thanksgiving after Communion,
these being emphatic declarations of that same phase of doctrine
which the changes of 1661 intentionally brought into renewed pro-
minence.

A form of consecration prayer closely approximating to that of
1 549 has been preserved not only in the special Communion office of
the Scottish Episcopal Church, but in the only form recognised and
in force throughout all the extent of the Protestant Episcopal Church
of the United States, and cordially accepted alike by the lowest and
the highest Churchmen of that community.

One word must be dropped in passing in further reference to the
incontestable disuse of any distinction of dress between the morning
and evening, and the Communion service, even in cathedrals, by the
prescriptions of the second Book. I am not the panegyrist of this re-
trenchment, but I am willing to recognise that it was a genuine recoil
from that which was at the time certainly a grievance — the burden-
someness and fulsomeness of pre-Beformational ceremonial. National
recoils are seldom guarded by excessive moderation.

It is quite possible very logically to acquiesce in this theory of
the Book of 1552, and yet to believe that it has become antiquated by
the changed circumstances, when the world in so many directions is
spending its energies in levelling all forms and traditionary usages.
At the same time I think it is only respectful to the Churchmen to
whom this train of thought may be unfamiliar to address a few words
to the argument, that it may be very well to appeal to the Act of
1552 in behalf of the body of the Services of the Book of 1549, but
that no defence of its vestiary rules of 1549 can be drawn from the
commendations of 1552.

I accept the challenge, and I put the question in this form : We
Vol. IX.— No. 51. 3 F

770 TUE NINETEENTH CENTURY. May

have on one side the Book of 1549, which orders certain dresses, and
that of 1552, which only orders a single one. But, at the same time,
these vestiary orders stand so apart from the body of the Eocharisdc
office in either case that the office of 1549 could be as perfectly cele-
brated in a surplice as that of 1552 in a cope, as actually in its fotm
of 1559 it was celebrated in cathedrals, such as Canterbury tmder
Archbishop Parker, and Durham down to the middle of theeighteeDth
eentury, and in college chapels, such as that of Lincoln College^
under Archbishop Williams's vlsitorship. Let us, then, test the
grounds on which Archbishop Parker could have justified the yen-
ture at Canterbury, or Archbishop Williams in his Oxford 'cfaapel,
namely, from. the language of the office of 1552, ^nphatically, that
is, on Anglican grounds, and not upon that imitation of Some which
Bishop Ferry V paper assumes, and still less upon the exaggerated and
perverted views of Eucharistic doctrine taught in the Boman Ghmdi
-—in a word, upcm the view of the Holy Communion-, to windt the
Beformed English GhiJ^rch dings as a sacrament instituted by Qukt
Himself, and generally necessary to salvation. Can we or can weoot
find in the Communion office of 1552 expressions such as would justift
some such increment of beauty and solemnity in its celebration as ▼odd
be naturally symbolised by the specific dress which history telh us
was used in cathedrals, and in royal and collegiate chapels, during the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries ? If we succeed in the search,
then the claim for some present recognition of such cbessmajhe
wise, or may be the contrary, but it cannot be dislo3ral to the
Church of England, a straining of its doctrines, or a contradiction of
its history.

The first exhortation tells us of ^ this holy communion.' It is
also a * holy sacrament,' here and elsewhere in the service. To the
faithful communicants it is said, ^ When we spiritually eat the fle^h
of Christ and drink His blood, then we dwell in Christ and Christ io
ufi, we be one with Christ and Christ with us.' Again, in the same
exhortation, we come across ^holy mysteries,' that }^iase ako
recurring in a later part of the office. In the prayer of consecration
again, the reception of Hhese Thy creatures of bread and wise'i^^
declared to be ^ according to Thy Son our Saviour Jesus Christ's holy
institution.' I could multiply quotations, but these phrases are enoogii
for me to assert that at all events the claim for the vesture eaanot
be put out of court by the phraseology which marks the Con-
munion service of 1552. In face of the evidence of its use iB
churches, sucli as Canterbury and Durham after 1559, 1 may be n^
with the question : If, then, as you show, you possess the realitj (^
which the dress is only a symbol, why care for the symbol ? Thi5
is cruelly abstract logic, but it would sweep away the Queea?
crown, and the maces of the Speaker, of the Lord Mayor, and of
the Vice-Chancellors at the universities. Let the claim stand upon

1881. FEACE IN THE CHURCH. lU

the same footing as the reasons which exist for maintaining those
secular symbols. It can be further justified by the laudable feeling
which refuses to repudiate pious similarities with other churches, and
older days, in things innocent and laudable, and which cannot find
Popery in a usage which is authoritative in the national worship of
all the three Scandinavian kingdoms. Finally, it must be owned,
for it cannot be denied, that all who, in compliance with the Purchas
and Bidsdale judgments, admit the distinctive dress in cathedral and
coll^^te churches, the mother and model churches of the whole
Church, let in the whole principle in its most salient form. As to the
attempt to make out that chasuble indicates one thing and cope
another, in a church which at a critical date of its existence ordered
either to be used indiacrirrdnatdy aa the English Euchan^atic drees,
I can only characterise the pretension as puerile, wheth^ urged by
ultra^Situalist or ultra-Puritan. In a church which has ruled one
series of conditions for the chasuble and another for the cope, neither
of them d^^nding on natural, but both on positive, law, the question
of course is wholly different. But the Church of England took par-
ticular pains in 1649 to break down the distinction between the two
patterns of richer dress, and for my own part, as an English Church-
man of the Beformation, I do not see the quarter firom which I can
claim or take the vesture except under the arrangements of 1649,
which are ^ the second year of the reign of King Edward the Sixth,'
the year, that is^ which gives its name to the Parliament which
enacted the fixst Prayer Book.

I shall probably be asked after what practical end I am driving ;
am I working for a conditional restoration of the Use of 1649 as well
as for an unconditional recognition of the unquestionable truth,
loyalty, and edification of its contents ? I desire to answer with
a frankness equal to that with which I presume the question to have
been put. I should be glad if means could be found for that condi-
tional use of the Book of 1649 which would give to the faithful
Christian of the English Communion that type of consecration prayer
which he has now to seek in the Scottish Episcopal Church or in the
United States, and that Eucharistic dress which recent judgments
tell him he must only look for in cathedral and collegiate churches.
But any regulation dealing with the words of the Prayer Book
demands the intervention of Parliament, and to the provocation of
Parliament, as Parliament is now constituted, to deal with the Prayer
Book I have an insuperable objection. So my practical conclusion is
to invite High Churchmen, Low Churchmen, and Broad Churchmen
to unite in a recognition of the three Prayer Books as reciprocally
illustrating each other as the Church of England's charter of Liberty
not Licence.

3f2

772 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. May

III.

BITUAL BSCONCILIATION.

Having probed with, I hope, a gentle hand, the sore of the Public
Worship Begulation Act, and having endeavoured to set forth that
liberty not licence which is the rightful claim of the High Church
party, I have something still to say upon a matter which, although in
itself a detail, has by the drift of events been forced into a prominence
which imperatively claims for it the commensurate attention of those
who have the power and the will to insure peace in the Church. I
mean the permission to use a distinctive Eucharistic dress in pari^
churches corresponding to the obligation to use such dress in cathedral
and collegiate churches which has been declared to rest upon their
clergy, irrespective of rubrical prescriptions, in virtue of the Adver-
tisements of 1566 and of the Canons of 1604, by the Purchas and
Ridsdale judgments.

The conclusions which I shall present are not trumped up for the
occasion, but have long been formed in my own mind, for I have al-
ready published them so far back as 1 874 in my ' Worship in the
Church of England,' when the materials for the discussion were not
so full as they now are, and I have more than once recalled attention
to them. The grievance is of a moral even more than a ceremonial
nature, for it presses on so many law-loving clergy and* laity, who are
imable to reconcile the prohibitions of recent decisions with what they
conscientiously believe to be the facts of history and the words of the
rubric.

I venture to think that there is a way out of this dilemma which
would leave it imnecessary to investigate the legal value of the Ad-
vertisements and Canons or the soundness of the conclusions reached
by the Judicial Committee in the two suits, for it is one which may
be equally accepted by those who take the most and the least iavoor-
able view of those decisions.

The legality or the reverse in parish churches (in contrast to
cathedral and collegiate churches) of a distinctive Eucharistic dress i»
commonly held to turn upon whether, as the Judicial Conmiitteelap
down in Clifton V. Eidsdale, the Advertisements of 1566 are or are
not to be read into the Ornaments Eubric of 1661, so that if they are
to be, then such distinctive dress must be ill^;al, but thatif thejare
not, then it is legal.

I must very respectfully demur to this representation ; and sul-
mit that the opinion is tenable, that even if the Advertisements mu§t
be read into the Kubric (as to which I claim the most complete libertj
to reserve my historical and literary independence), still the adopti<»

1881. PEACE IN THE CHURCH. 773

of sach dress in parish churches would not thereby be forbidden, but
only the obligation of its use relaxed.

This may seem a bold position to take up, but I believe that, in
spite of the research which has been bestowed, particularly in recent
days, upon the legal value of the Advertisements as a whole, there has
all along been a natural but unfortunate tendency to take for granted
a certain traditionary interpretation of their details, which has come
down from days when their meaning was supposed to lead to no prac-
tical result. I cannot therefore too earnestly insist upon the neces-
sity of considering these details, like those of any other document, by
the double aid of history as now studied, and of their own gramma-
tical signification.

Those who place the legal value of the Advertisements at the
highest, accept them as the statutable fulfilment of a certain provi-
sion of Elizabeth's Act of Uniformity of 1559 ; but in reading that
provision they ought to quote it as a whole. In its entirety it
comprises two consecutive paragraphs of the Act, and runs as
follows : —

XXV. Provided always, and be it enacted, that such oniaments of the Ohurch,
and of the ministers thereof, shall be retained, and be in use, as was in this Church
of £ngland, by authority of Parliament^ in the second year of the reign of King
Edward the Sixth, until other order shall be therein taken by the authority of the
Queen's Majesty, with the advice of her Ck)mmie8ioners appointed and authorised
under the Great Seal of England for causes ecclesiastical, or of the Metropolitan
of this Realm. '

XXVI. And also, that if there shall happen any contempt or irreTerenoe to be
used in the ceremonies or rites of the Church, by the misusing of the Orders
appointed in this book, the Queen*s Majesty may, by the like advice of the said
Commissioners or Metropolitan, ordain and publish such further ceremonies or
rites as may be most for the advancement of Qod*s glory, the edifying of His
Church, and the due reverence of Christ's holy mysteries and sacraments.

The first of these two paragraphs is commonly quoted as if it
comprised the entire provision ; and so taken by itself it may reason-
ably be read as pointing to some intention of further reducing the
ritual. But when both paragraphs are considered together such an in-
terpretation becomes impossible, inasmuch as the immediate conclusion
from the initial premiss is to contemplate the necessity for and to give
the reasons which should lead to ^ ordaining ' ^ further ceremonies and
rites,' all necessity for and all reasons possibly leading to the retrench-
ment of existing ceremonies being markedly, and no doubt intention-
ally, omitted.

We may at once pass on to the Advertisements, which I shall, like
the Judicial Committee, treat for the purpose of this memorandum as
iDeing the ^ other order,' the taking of which is contemplated in those
ipvords from the Act of 1559 which I have just quoted. The Adver-
t;isements important to our inquiry are these : —

774 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Ma^

Iteni, — ^In the minutiation of the holy Comnnmion in cathednOl and colkgiate
churches, the principall minister shall use a cope with gospeller and efnstoler
agreeably ; and at all other prayers to he sayde at that communion tahle, to lue do
copes but surplesses.

Item, — ^That the daane and prebendaries weare a surplesse with a oik hoode in
the quyer; and when they preache in the cathedraU or collegiate chnrdi6y toweue
their hoode.

Item, — ^That every minister sayinge any publique prayers, or ministringe the
sacramentes or other rites of the churche, shall wear a comely surples with aleefefli
to be provided at the charges of the parishe; and that the parishe provide adeoente
table standing on a frame for the communion table.

From first to last I am unable to find any prohibition in these Ad-
vertisements of the ornaments which were in this Church of England
by authority of Parliament in the second year of the reign of King
Edward the Sixth, and which are still to be sought (as far as the minis-
terial dress goes) in the Bubrics of 1549. Ktheir authors intended the
declaration to be prohibitory, they might have said that the principal
ministers in cathedral and coll^;iate churches were to wear ^ copes,' bat
not to wear ^ albes ' or ^ vestments,' but they do not say so. They might
have laid down that while the parish was bound to provide the paESon's
^surplice,' and he to wear it, the parish should be forbidden to provide
^ vestment,' ' cope,' or ' albe,' and the parson also be forbidden to
provide them at his own cost, or in any case to wear them, whoever
might have been at charges for them.

The Advertisements might, I repeat, have said all this, and thej
naturally would have done so, if intended to be prohibitoiy. Bot
they Bay nothing at all of the kind, and do not even refer to the olda
provisions which they are supposed to repeal. All which they say is
direct and obligatory in the direction of putting on, but not of taking
off. The principal minister, when there is a Communion in a caihe*
dral or coll^iate church, shall wear a cope. The £pistoler and Gos-
peller shall be dressed ' agreeably.' On other occasions of woiship
the dignitaries shall wear surplices and hoods. In parish chnicheB
the parish shall provide a surplice, and the parson shall use it

Upon the other vestures, presumably legal up to the date of the
Advertisements, they say nothing ; only these are in a very delicate
and dexterous way taken out of the schedule of obligatory ornaments
by the constructive repeal of the obligation to procure them. Cathe-
dral and collegiate churches were rich corporations, so they had \fi
buy their own copes and surplices. The smrplice of the less opolent
parish church was to be provided at the charges of the parish— «.«.
by the Church-rate, the only parochial exchequer which the law re-
cognised— which was thereby virtually exonerated from the cost of
any more expensive vesture, and at the same time kept tight to the
sometimes unpopular surplice. But for this residuary limitation, the
policy of the Advertisements would be the same as that which has in
our time settled the Church-rate question itself. The compubion of

1881. PEACE IN THE CHURCH. 775

Church-rates has gone ; Church-rates remain. No parson was to be
punished for not wearing the dress, nor yet for wearing it. Without
pressing the argument too far I may observe that between the acces-
sion of Elizabeth and the Commonwealth there is direct evidence that
the use of copes was in excess of the compulsion of the Advertisements
in cases where no Church-rate came in to condition the acquisition
of the dress, namely, in Chapels Eoyal and the Chapels of Colleges and
Bishops' palaces, namely in sacella, which the most loose use of lan-
guage could not include under ^ Collegiate Churches.' In one case-*^
Lincoln College, Oxford — the copes were given by that well-known Low
•Churchman Archbishop Williams, as visitor of the college wheu Bishop
of Lincoln* Does not the reading of the Advertisements wbich I o£fer,
etxaightforward and grammatical as it is, simplify a tangled episode in
our Church history, an episode more than 300 years old, and still going
on ? If it can be accepted, there will be no need to settle the com-
paxative force of Rubric and of Advertisement and Canon, because
there will be no longer any fundamental contrariety between them.
The regal sanction to the Advertisements may be received or may be
xejected ; and ^ reading into ' will be a very harmless phrase when the
thing read in is in feet identical with that into which it is read. One
class of provisions will express the hard absolute law as it is written,
and the other the popular explanation of that law as it may be
worked. The objection that in Tudor or Stuart days such a thing as
ritual permission or elasticity was unknown is at once refuted by
&cts over which there is no dispute, and which, like the vestiary
question, are connected with the Prayer Book and Canons. Every
successive Prayer Book enjoins daily prayers on every minister, and
yet the use of them in the vast majority of parish churches has been
continuously disregarded. But there is a still stronger evidence. The
Canons of 1604 (Canons 14 and 15) actually order service ^upon suoh
days as .axe appointed to be kept holy by the Book of Common Prayer
and upon their eve?,' besides prescribing the Wednesday and Friday
Litany, and are silent on daily prayers ; while the Prayer Book has
gone on repeating in every edition the order for the daily prayers. In
&ct the daily prayers of the Rubric versiia the holy days' services and
twice a week Litany of the Canon is an absolute parallel to the modicum
vesture as provided in the Rubrics versus the modicum vesture as
provided in the Advertisements and Canons. In each case a named
part does not exclude the partly-named whole. The principle of the
daily prayers or of the holy days' services and bi-weekly Litany is the
same, that of sanctifying week days no less than Sundays by public
worship. Only the more strict provision lays down ideal perfection,
and the less strict one respects practical material difiSculties. The
same distinction rules the two classes of vestiary prescription. The
Rubric which orders a distinctive Eucharictic dress in augmentation of
the normal garb of ministration in every church is the ideal per^

776 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Ih,

fection. The Advertisements and Canons which limit this obligation
to cathedral and collegiate cbiurches are the concession to practical
material difficulties. But this concession makes the import of the
obligation within the retained area more emphatic. If the Eucba-
ristic dress of the Bubric of 1549 symbolises, as we are so often
told, unsound doctrine, still more stringently and offensively must
the Eucharistic dress which the Advertisements and Canons incoik-
testably force upon bishops and dignitaries symbolise that same
unsound doctrine, which these prcelati are in virtue of their prah-
twra commanded to set forth ; for the higher placed a num is, the
greater must be his responsibility. Unquestionably, then, the moral
influence of a Bishop's or Dean's dress in the * mother church ' of the
diocese is far more powerful than that of a Vicar or Curate in a
mere parish church. The Bishop celebrating the Holy Communion in
his cope at that mother church is the proxy for the whole diocese for
whatever the cope used in that conjunction may or may not symbolise.

With the reciprocal concession at this stage of the inquiry that
upon the face of the Advertisements either interpretation is equallj
plausible, we may profitably turn to history for collateral light So I
must ask who were the foes at whom the Advertisements, whether
regal or only archiepiscopal in their authority, were aimed ?

These foes must be sought within the Church of England, for in
the eye of the law, at that date, the Church and the State of Enghnd
were conterminous and identical. Were they persons, whoever thej
might be, who hankered after the older forms, and cherished hopes of
retroceding even behind 1549 ? There is not the slightest hint in his-
tory of any action in any form from such agitators within the pale of
the Church of England. Whatever any one may have felt, the men of
reactionary activity fell off to Rome. Was it the party which sou^t ite
standpoint at 1549 ? No hint of any such party bestirring itself can
be found except as represented by one, or at most two persons. These
were Queen Elizabeth and perhaps Archbishop Parker ; so by the
supposition they would have launched the Advertisements against
themselves. Elizabeth, moreover, was angered at the opposition
directed so soon after her accession against the ceremonial of her own
chapel. The party which was troublesome, discontented, and tarbn-
lent, and in the eyes of Queen and Bishops disloyal and dangerous,
was that which later on was known as the Puritan — men ready to
wreck Church and State rather than wear a surplice — so the Adreh
tisements were aimed at aud came down upon them as a measure ot
coercion, by no means sweetened by the active part which the Low
Church Bishop Grindal took in working them. We know that the
publication of that manifesto was to these clergymen an incitemeot
towards further disturbances. The abundant historical evidence of
the turbulent action of many of the London clergy has within these fet
months been vividly supplemented by the publication, by the Camden

188L PEACE IN THE CHURCH. 777

Society, of a most interesting and graphic contemporary journal by no
less an authority than John Stow, the antiquary.

Yet the ire of these bold and conscientious, but unruly men, was
incited by the demand made upon them to adopt the surplice. To
them the order to wear the surplice did not come as a compromise,
but as the unwelcome instalment of a repulsive system. They were
strong enough to cause apprehension even to so masterful a sovereign
as Elizabeth, while she and Parker had to rely upon the support of
the more conservative party in the Church — the party whose alle-
giance to the Beformed Church of England was proof against their
appreciation of traditionary ceremonialism leading them on to secession,
but who appreciated ceremonial all the same. Is it conceivable that
the authorities would have taken such an opportunity of disgusting
their friends by a curt prohibition of that ceremonial, so contemp-
tuous as not even to name that which it was forbidding ? Clearly the
tacit appeal to them was to rest content with the enforcement of the
surplice, while other things, except in cathedrals, were to rest in
virtual abeyance.

It would be a happy event for the Church of England if a more
critical reading of the Advertisements could be established, so as to
open the way to a peaceful and moderate modu8 vivendi upon the
ceremonial debate being generally reached by the peaceable way of
opinion, and without recurring to the perilous and inflammable agency
of law courts or of Parliament.

I am not writing as a lawyer, and if I content myself with noting
the difficulties which may arise from the special application made by
the judges in Clifton v. Bidsdale, it is not because I undervalue it or
desire to slur them over. But it does not require to be a lawyer to dis-
tinguish between the general principle and the special application.
Agreement on a general principle is a most important step before ad-
justing special details, which are most probably different in each dif-
ferent case, and are, therefore, within the compass of a distinction.

A. J. B. Beresfobd Hope.

778 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Mty

GEORGE ELIOT.

Whkn a great writer has passed away, the published expresdons of
criticism, admiration, or regret are not an in&llible sign of the
feeling that predominates among either the writing or the readiag
world. There is a degree of friendly regard that expresses itself with
even exaggerated fulness on such an occasion, while profoundar
depths of feeling take refuge in silence, or a tacit assumption that
the largest claims are self-evidently just* In the case of George
Eliot there is a further reason for such silence ; most of those who
might have been able and willing to speak in appreciation of the
writer or her books are disabled by the overpowering sense of their
personal loss in the death of the best of women and the best of fiiends.

Mr. Lewes once observed to the present writer, ' I do not Uusk
you ought to review her books, any more than I ought ; ' and many of
those who are best qualified to speak of our common loss fed no
doubt that criticism is impossible to them, and therefore pnise
should be left to more impartial or indifferent judges. But I thiid^
we should have George Eliot's authority for the view that affectioa
may quicken as well as impair the vision, and the instinct which
imposes silence on the nearest friends of a great man during his
life has never acted as a bar to their letting the world know after
his death what they alone are able to tell it. The present writer,
indeed, has no such claim to special knowledge; all who loved and
reverenced her whom the world calls George Eliot know equally well
the qualities of mind and character and the unequalled charm
of manner by which she fascinated so many and such opposite
natiures. Only it may be suggested that the best critics of a writer
whose works exercised the same kind of influence as her personalitj
are not those who manifest an exceptional indifference to the pecoliar
power of both.

It is natural to wish to begin our acquaintance with a fiivourite

author at the earliest possible date. To do so we may turn to the

motto of the fifty-seventh chapter of Middlemarch^ in the sixth

book: —

Thev numbered scarce eight summers when a name

Rose on their souls, and stirred such motions there
As thrill the buds and shape their hidden frame
At penetration of the quickening air :

1881. GEORGE ELIOT. 779

His name who told of loyal Evan Dhu^

Of quaint Hndwardine, and Yich Ian Yor,
Making the little world their childhood knew

Large with a land of mountain, lake, and soaur,
And larger yet with wonder, love, belief,

Toward Walter Scott, who, living far away.
Sent them this wealth of joy and noUe grief.

The book and they most part, but day by day,
In lines that thwart like portly spiders ran
They wrote the tale from Tully Veolan,

Somewhere about 1827 a friendly neighbour lent Waverley to an
elder sister of little Mary Evans. It was returned before the child
had read to the end, and in her distress at the loss of the fascinating
volume she began to write out the story as far as she had read it for
herself, beginning naturally where the story begins with Waverley's
adventures at Tully Veolan, and continuing until the surprised elders
were moved to get her the book again. Elia divided her childish
alliance with Scott, and she remembered fastening with singular
pleasure upon an extract in some stray almanac from the essay in
commemoration of 'Captain Jackson,' and his 'slender ration of
single Gloucester,' and proverbs in praise of cheese-rind. This is an
extreme example of the general rule that a wise child's taste in
literature is sounder than adults generally venture to beHeve.

Not many years later we may imagine her a growing girl at
schooL Almost on the outskirts of the old town of Coventry, towards
the railway station, the house may still be seen, itself an old-
fashioned five-windowed Queen Anne sort of dwelling, with a shell-
shaped cornice over the door, with an old timbered cottage facing it,
and near adjoining a quaint brick-and-timber btdlding, with an
oriel window thrown out upon oak pillars. Between forty and fifty
years ago, Methodist ladies kept the school, and the name of ' little
mamma,' given by her schoolfellows^ is a proof that already some-
thing was to be seen of the maternal air which characterised her in
later years, and perhaps more especially in intercourse with her own
sex. Prayer-meetings were in vogue among the girls, following the
example of their elders, and while taking no doubt a leading part in
these, she used to suffer much self-reproach about her coldness and
inability to be carried away with the same enthusiasm as others. At
the same time nothing was further firom her nature than any scep-
tical inclination, and she used to pounce with avidity upon any
approach to argumentative theology within her reach, carrying
Paley's Emdences up to her bedroom, and devouring it as she lay
upon the floor alone.

It is seldom that a mind of so much power is so free from the
impulse to dissent, and that not from too ready credulousness, but
rather because the consideration of doubtful points was habitually
crowded out, as one may say, by the more ready and delighted

780 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. May

acceptance of whatever accredited facts and doctrines might be
received unquestioningly. We can imagine George Eliot in youth,
burning to master all the wisdom and learning of the world ; we
cannot imagine her failing to acquire any kind of knowledge on the
pretext that her teacher was in error about something else than the
matter in hand, and it is undoubtedly to this natural preference for
the positive side of things that we are indebted for the singolar
breadth and completeness of her knowledge and culture. A mind
like hers must have preyed disastrously upon itself during the yeais
of comparative solitude in which she lived at Foleshill, had it not
been for that inexhaustible source of delight in every kind of intel-
lectual acquisition. Languages, music, literature, science, and phi-
losophy interested her alike : it was early in this period that in the
course of a walk with a friend she paused and clasped her hands with
a wild aspiration that she might live ' to reconcile the philosophy of
Locke and Kant ! ' Years afterwards she remembered the very turn
of the road where she had spoken it.

Before she was twenty she wrote verses like other youths, but the
silence (as to original production) which lasted more than fifteen
years after that date was owing to a characteristic mixture of intense
ambition and diffidence. She did not choose iierself, indeed she
thought it wrong to

Dull the world's sense with mediocrity,

and she was resolved to do nothing (except the honaely duties she
held sacred) unless she could do what was excellent. The translation
of Strauss and the translation of Spinoza's Ethics were undertaken,
not by her own choice but at the call of friendship ; in the first place
to complete what some one else was unable to continue, and in the
second to make the philosopher she admired accessible to a friendly
phrenologist who did not read Latin. At all times she regarded trans-
lation as a work that should be undertaken as a duty, to make acoe^
sible any book that required to be read, and though undoubtedly she
was satisfied that the Leben Jesu required to be read in England, it
would be difficult to imagine a temper more naturally antipathetic to
her than that of it3 author ; and critics who talk about the ^ Straus
and Feuerbach period ' should be careful to explain that the phrase
covers no implication that she was at any time an admirer or a dis-
ciple of Strauss. There are extremes not only too remote but too
disparate to be included in the same life.

In 1849 Miss Evans lost the father to whom her life hadheen
devoted from the time she was sixteen. Two or three years later she
was induced by Dr. Chapman to undertake some share in the conduct
of the Weatminst&r Review ; but excellent as her work of this kind
was, the task of criticism was distasteful to her, and though she ad-
mitted the usefulness of such work, it was a relief to her to give itupi

188L GEORGE ELIOT. 781

She preferred accepting vhat was valuable in a book as it stood to
elaborating a statement of how and why it was valuable, and in addi-
tion to this natural disinclination for the .reviewer's work, she had an
almost exaggeratedly scrupulous sense of responsibility, which contri-
buted to make it laborious to her. But that it is unreasonable to ex-
pect all work equally from the same hands, we might be tempted to
regret that she has not given us more criticism like her review of
Lecky's Rationaliam in the first number of the Fortnightly, and the
article in the WeatTniTiater (January 1 857), on * Worldliness and Other-
wordliness ' apropos of Dr. Young of the Night Thoughts. It is a
culpable indiscretion, of the sort most unwelcome to George Eliot, to
disinter what an author has wished to have forgotten, but when there
is no immaturity of expression, and when we know the thought to have
remained unchanged, it is a lawful indulgence to quote what is not
now generally accessible — at least one passage giving her opinion
upon a subject as to which it was often asked. She is commenting on

Young's lines :

* As in the dying parent dies the child.
Virtue with Immortality expires.
Who tells me he denies hia soul immortal.
Whatever his boast, has told me he's a knave.*

We can imagine the man who 'denies hb soul immortal' replying: It is
quite possible that ycu would be a knave, and love yourself alone, if it were not
lor your belief in immortality, but you are not to force upon me what would
result from your own utter want of moral emotion. ... I am honest, because I
don't like to inflict evil on others in this life, not because I'm afraid of evil to
myself in another. The fact is, I do not love myself alone, whatever logical
necessity there may be for that in your mind. ... It is a pain to me to witness
the suffering of a fellow-being, and I feel his suffering the more acutely because he
is mortal, because his life is so short, and I would have it, if possible, fiUed with
happiness and not misery. Through my union and fellowship with the men and
women I /tave seen, I feel a like, though a fainter, sympathy with those I have not
seen ; and I am able so to live in imagination with the generations to come, that
their good is not alien to me, and is a stimulus to me to labour for ends which
may not benefit myself but will benefit them. . . . And I should say, that if you
feel no motive to common morality but your fear of a criminal law in heaven, you
are decidedly a man for the police on earth to keep their eye upon, since it is a
matter of world-old experience that fear of distant consequences is a very insufficient
barrier against the rush of inmiediate desire. . . . And in opposition to your theory
that a belief in immortality is the only source of virtue, I maintain that, in so far
as moral action is dependent on that belief, so far the emotion which prompts it
is not truly moral,' is still in the stage of egoism, and has not yet attained the
higher development of sympathy. In proportion as a man would care less for the
rights and welfare of his fellow, if he did not believe in a future life, in that pro-
portion is he wanting in the genuine feelings of justice and benevolence ; as the
musician who would care less to play a sonata of Beethoven finely in solitude than
in public, where he was to be paid for it, is wanting in genuine enthusiasm for music.

Then after conceding that the * other-wOrldly ' emotions dwelt
upon by Young may depend on this belief, she continues : —

* Cf . Newman to Kingsley, * Why, **for its anm sake " belongs to the very idea of
virtue.'

782 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. May

But for certain other elements of virtue which are of more obvioua impartanoe
to untheolog^cal minds — a delicate sense of our neighbour's rights, an active partici-
pation in the jojs and sorrows of our fellowmen, a magnanimous acceptance of
privation or suffering for ourselves when it is the condition of good to others, in a
wordy the extension and intensification of our sjmpathetio nature — ^we think it of
some importance to contend that they have no more direct relation to the belief in
a future state than the interchange of gases in the lungs has to the plurality of
worlds. Nay, to us it is conceivable that in some minds the deep pathos lying ia
thoughts of human mortality — ^that we are here for a little while and th^i vanish
away ; that this earthly life is all that is given to our loved ones and to our many
suflferiog fellowmen — ^lies nearer the- foundations of moral emotion than the eonesp-
tion of extended existence. And surely it ought to be a welcome fret if the
thought of mortality, as well as of immortality, be favourable to virtue. . • . To as
it is matter of rejoicing that this latter necessity of healthful life is independent of
theological ink, and that its evolution is ensured in the interaction of human
souls as certainly as the evolution of science and art, vnth which, indeed, it is but
a twin ray, melting into them with undefinmUe limits..

, «

These passages are probably prior in date to the writer'^ familianify
with the works of Comte, and they explain the bent of mind which
led her to welcome with ^ reverence and gratitude ' his earlier politi-
cal and philosophical writings and to prefer permanently that her
< feelings of this order abould be exaggerated in the conception of the
public rather than that she should be ranked with those who are ad-
mired for the cheap wisdoI^ of dissidence/

It is of course interesting to possess George Eliot's opinions as to
other women novelists, written before she was silenced by her own
greater £Ame. As an artist, she wrote in 1852, Miss Austen sorpesKs
all the male novelists that ever lived, and for eloquence and depth of
feeling no man approaches Creorge Sand. But in general the litera-
ture of women ^ may be compared to that of Rome — ^a literature of
imitation ; ' and she insists both in this article and in one on a kindred
subject, some years later, on the importance rather of recognising and
using to vary and extend the range of literature, whatever specific
differences there might be in the perceptions and intuitions of men
and women. It may be doubted, however, whether, notwithstanding
such clue, and the confident divination of Dickens, if the secret of
€reorge Eliot's sex had been preserved, opinion would not have remained
divided on the subject* We have heard of a canny Yorkshire man, re-
joicing in the possession of an odd volume of Adam Bede^ who declined
altogether to credit the assurances of a too well-informed tourist that
his favourite book was written by a woman : there was the gentl^nan's
name for one thing, and besides, how could a woman know what the
men were thinking of? The other articles are, it need hardly be said,
careful and thorough, only with too much subordination of tiie writer
to the subject in hand (e.g. the *Life of George Forster ')to supply mudi
of personal interest, except perhaps the one on Madame de Sable,
whose foibles are handled with pretty and characteristic indulgence.

In 1854 Miss Evans found what had been wanting to her lomg

1881. GEORGE ELIOT. 783

and generous nature since her father's death — some one < whose life
would have been worse without her.' In return we owe to Mr. Lewes
the complete works of Creorge Eliot, not one of which would have been
written or even planned without the inspiriting influence of his con-
stant encouragement, his obvious, unfeigned, unforced delight in her
powers and success, his total freedom from — ^we will not say jealoucfy-^
but the least inclination towards self-comparison : even more might be
said, but to say more would be to quote words which were not written
to be published. It is needless now to guard such statements against
the misinterpretation satirised in Middiemw/rck, where we read, of
Fred's and Mary's authorship, how Middlemarch satisfied itself ' that
there was no need to praise anybody for writing a book, because it was
always done by somebody else.' Mr. Lewes had written novels^ and
Miss Evans had transhited Crerman books; theiefore when George
Eliot published stories and Mr. Lewes a Life of Gaethej the critics
of the day agreed, with the worthies of Middlemarch, that eadi was
inspired by the other, and so the work of neither ought to count for
much. But it will not be out of place to acknowledge a further
obligation. It is the snare of versatile and sympathetic natures to
feel almost as if they themselves were convinced by the opinions held
by those with whom they sympathise for reasons they have takea
pains to understand. Mrs. Lewes was conscious of a temptation to
agree too readily under such circumstances, to identify herself as it
were dramatically with the views she did not really share, and she
acknowledged a debt of gratitude to Mr. Lewes for his scrupulous
anxiety that she should not be biassed in that way by him. He was
careful to guard her mental independence even against her own too
great readiness to defer to another, even though that other might be
himself.

Such obligations as these can be mentioned ; it is scarcely poB«-
sible, without intruding on the sanctity of private life, to allude to
the perfect union between those two, which lent half its charm to all
worship paid at the shrine of George Eliot. She herself has spoken
somewhere of the element of almost maternal tenderness in a man's
protecting love : this patient, unwearying care for which no trifles are
too small, watched over her own life ; he stood between her and the
world, he relieved her from all those minor cares which chafe and fret
the artist's soul ; he wrote her letters (a proceeding for which he would
say laughingly her correspondents were Tiot grateful) ; in a word, he
so smoothed the course of her outer life as to leave all her powers free
to do what she alone could do for the world and for the many who
looked to her for help and guidance. No doubt this devotion brought
its own reward, but we are exacting for our idols and do not care to
have even a generous error to condone, and therefore we are glad to
know that great as his reward was, it was no greater than was merited
by the most faithful perfect love that ever crowned a woman's life.

784 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Maj

All those who pleased themselves by giviog that name to their love and
admiration were content to know that their devotion was welcome to
the one whose devotion exceeded theirs — ^their fellow-worshipper,
George Henry Lewes, who counted it, I think, for his chief glory to take
the lead in this cult. And here let us encounter what has been aaid or
whispered by some who knew that Creorge Eliot was the centre of a
throng of ardent worshippers, and doubted perhaps, in Baconian phrase,
whether it was possible to love and be wise, or, at all events, to be wise in
loving with the unreserved enthusiasm of admiration common to tiiose
for whom George Eliot was the one woman in the world, the Hhroned
lady whose colours they wore between their heart and their armour.'
It is not usual for men or women to be called on to justify in words
their strongest feelings of personal attachment. These are usually
accepted as an ultimate fact, and when we see such feelings subsist-
ing with imwonted strength between two otherwise commonplace
individuals, we conclude that they cannot both be wholly common-
place, since one or other must have an exceptional power of lonng or
inspiring love. In like manner, let us be content to know that if
George Eliot was the object of much passionate and romantic woistup,
it was because her nature was so framed as to subdue to this same
result numerous and very diverse characters. Men and women, old
friends and new, persons of her own age and of another generatioD,
the married and the single, impulsive lovers and hard-headed ^^ilo-
fiophers, nay, even some who elsewhere might have passed for cynics,
all classes alike yielded to the attractive force of this rare chanicter,
in which tenderness and strength were blended together and as it were
transfused with something that was all her own — the genius of sweet

goodness.

Now, if we admit as to the objective side of a character that its
e88e is percipi (and any other view is hard to establish), it follows that
George Eliot was what she appeared to this band of worshippers. It
has been suggested that this worship was a fashion that had to be
adopted for the sake of uniformity by all acquaintances ; but the con-
jecture shows how little, after all, was understood of the intense feeling
she inspired. The commonplaces of superficial admiration can be
picked up and repeated at the call of fashion ; but Mrs. Lewes wi^
accustomed to hear, and her worshippers to speak, another language,
which cannot be borrowed at will, and, to do her acquaintances justice,
few or none of them were rash enough to play the hypocrite before »
keen a judge. But another doubt too has been hinted at. The T(k
of idol is a trying one to play : granted that Geoige Eliot's worship-
pers had all reason on their side at first, does not so much incen^
end by becoming in some sort a necessity to its recipient ?

In friendship George Eliot had the tmconscious exactingness of a fall
nature. She was intolerant of a vacuum in the mind or character,
and she was indifferent to admiration that did not seem to have its

1881. OEOROE ELIOT. 785

root in fundamental agreement with those first principles she held to
be most ^necessary to salvation.' Where this sympathy existed, her
generous affection was given to a fellow-believer, a fellow-labourer,
with singularly little reference to the fact that such full sympathy
was never unattended with profound love and reverence for herself as
a living witness to the truth and power of the principles thus shared.
To love her was a strenuous pleasure, for in spite of the tenderness
for all human weakness that was natural to her, and the scrupulous
charity of her overt judgments, the fact remained that her natural
standard was ruthlessly out of reach, and it was a painful discipline for
her friends to feel that she was compelled to lower it to suit their
infirmities. The intense humility of her self-appreciation, and the
unfeigned readiness with which she would even herself with any
sinner who sought her counsel, had tlie same effect upon those who
could compare what she condemned in herself with what she tolerated
in them. And at the same time, no doubt, this total absence of self-
sufficiency had something to do with the passionate tenderness with
which conuuonplace people dared to cherish their immortal friend.

It is scarcely possible that a sect of fanatics should have developed
itself by a spontaneous identical mistake in all parts of the world at
once, that enthusiasts with a bent towards imreasonable adoration
should have agreed in professing the same feeling for the same object
without a common sufficient cause. The enthusiasts, at all events,
are satisfied with the solution of the problem given in The Spanish
Gipsy : —

But is it what we love, or how we love,
That makes true good P

Oh, subtlety I for me
Tis what I love determines how I love.
The goddess with pure rites reveals herself
And makes pure worship.

It may be said of almost all love that it is deserved by those who are
able to inspire it continuously, and reasons neither need nor should be
given for such merely private feeling. But many of George Eliot's
friends were first attracted to her by admiration for her writings, and
though some of these ended by putting even her writings in the
second place, the double intercourse with herself and her works was
so far intermingled that explanation is possible up to a certain point.
We are conscious in her works of a many-sided sympathy with
the various phases of real existence, with its commonest experiences
as well as with its finest emotions, together with a keen intelligence
of the laws which regulate, and the general truths which bear upon,
the best and worst possibilities of human life. In like manner, her
character seemed to include every possibility of action and emotion :
no human passion was wanting in her nature, there were no blanks or
negations ; and the marvellous thing was to see how, in this wealth of
impulses and desires, there was no crash of internal discord, no
V0L.IX.— No. 61. 3G

786 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. May

painfol collisions with other human interests outside ; how, in all her
life, passions of volcanic strength were harnessed in the serviee of
those nearest her, and so inspired by the permanent instinct of devo-
tion to her kind, that it seemed as if it were by their own choice thej
spent themselves there only where their force was welcome. Her
very being was a protest against the opposing and yet cognate
heresies that half the normal human passions must be strangled in the
quest of virtue, and that the attainment of virtue is a dull and un-
desirable end, seeing it implies the sacrifice of most that makes life
interesting. She was intolerant of those who find life dull as well as
of those who find their fellow-creatures uiiattractive, and both for the
same reason, holding that such indifference was due to the lack of
vital energy and generosity in the complainer, since the same world
held interests enough for those who had enough impulses and affe^
tions of their own whereby to entangle themselves in its affairs. But
though she set herself chiefly to preach the worth of conmion things,
the admirableness of obscure good deeds, the value of common lives,
and the sacredness of commonplace people in the crisis of the great
primitive emotions, though she preached thus to the conviction of her
hearers and her readers, there was reserved for her friends another
experience, not indeed invalidating the other doctrine, but sup{de-
menting it with a truth she did not preach. If ordinary folks, with
but mediocre powers of intelligence and attraction, were deserving of
affection and respect — even from herself — could any intensity of such
feelings transcend what was due to one who rose as Ceir as she did
above this margin of mediocrity within which she thought the
•choicest feelings of our nature might find ample food ? To be con-
tent with the rest of the world, and to have her to adore par-dess^
Ze TnarchSj was a happiness she gave to many, perhaps to some who
without her might have remained entangled in the heresies she con-
demned. And I think the world, in counting what it owes her,
^should not forget the welcome reminder given by her life, that the
level of respectable mediocrity, which we are not suffered to dequse,
may yet be broken for us by the advent of an ideal nature whose laxe
/ powers and yet more rare unselfishness create anew the impressions to
which the language of religion owes its birth, ovroi opsv Seov.
. — And in this context it may be well to consider the mnch-dehated
• question whether the general impression left by her writings, the
, general tendency of her teaching, is melancholy or otherwise. It
follows fix)m what has been said that the consolations she had to offer
were of a strenuous sort. She cameras a very angel of oonsoIatioD to
those persons of sufficiently impartial mind to find comfort in the
hint that the world might be less to blame than they were as to those
points on which they found themselves in chronic disagreement with
it. But she had nothing welcome for those whose idea of oansMM
is the promise of a deus ex machvn& by whose help they may gtther

/

1881. OSOmiS ELIOT. 787

jg;rapes of thorns and figs of thistles. She thought that thefe was much
needed doing in the world, and criticism of our neighbours and the
natural order might wait at all events until the critic^s own character
and conduct were free from blame. Imperfect agents might lend a
hand in mending what was amiss, it was only unhelpful criticism
tiiat stirred her anger ; and the observation may have been present to
faer mind that people usually have a sneaking kindness for their own
handiwork, even while it continues to fall short of the desired perfec-
tion. One who does not care for china in itself will survey with com-
placency a neatly mended fracture, and her severity in this direction
must have been due to the perception that long orations upon the
evils of creation proceed most readily from the lips of those who are
otherwise at little pains to lessen the evils« To a friend who once
playfully called her optimist she responded, ' I will not answer to
the name of optimist, but if you like to invent Meliorist, I wiU not
say you call me out of my name.' She felt so strongly that there
was a worse and a better, almost at every turn in every life ; and this
being so, since it was in the power of human beings again and again
to help each other to prefer and reach the better, the continuous
passive dwelling upon all the possibilities of evil, whether in resent-
ment or despair, assumed in her eyes the shape of a foUy closely
verging on crime.

Of course sincere and industrious reformers may suffer from
melancholy as well as more cynical pessimists, and to such infirmity
6he could be tender enough, but in herself or others die gave the
name of weakness to the unmotived depression which leads some
people to do all their doings* sadly. Her own view of the world as
a whole was too veracious to be summed up in a phrase. Her mind
was a mirror, upon which the truth concerning all human relations
was reflected with literal fidelity. What one generalisation can
cover so wide a range ? You can no more draw one moral lesson '
from her books than you can from life itself; you may draw a
thousand if you will, but merely to read one of her books in an
impressionable mood is to see such a portion of the world with her
eyes and to share in the multiform influence exercised by the vision.
The mind unconsciously becomes atttmed to the set of ideas by
which all her single perceptions were dominated and explained, and
without having drawn a single inference in thought, the reader is
lured into the mood which, become permanent in a sw^t woman of
genius, inspires the writer and the friend we mourn.

Before the publication of the Scenes of Clerical lAfCj Mrs. Lewes
(for George Eliot as yet was not) had written nothing of the same
kind,' except a description of a village, which, with the- reticence we
have many reasons for regretting, was never afterwards published.
From that day to this her writings have been subjected to much
criticism, some good, some bad, and some indifferent after the

3g2

J^

788 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Mij

maimer of the day, and tbongb, perbspe, Done bave been completd;
satisfactory, oi worthy of their subject from a literary point of view,
the time has not come for us to wish to have the want supplied.
Many who, while Creorge Eliot lived and wrote, thought only of ber
books, may now be inclined to search her books not merely for the
familiar characters, scenes, or epigrams, but also in the hope of
. discerning those passages in which the writer's self is speaking, not
merely through the actors of her drama, bat more or less clear); in
her own person.

It is in the Scenes of Clerical Life more especially that tlw
interestingness of commonplace livee is insisted on ; the doctrine is
defended in passages too numerous to quote, and its truth is demon-
stnited \fj each story as a whole, seeing that the interest they inspire
ia in about an inverse ratio to the presence of the ordinary elements
of romance. The ground of appeal is latber that

tbese eommonplaca people — many of them — hear a conscience, and liaie felt the
suUime prompting to do the painful right ; tJiey have their unspolieD wimn,
ind tbeti Mcred joys ; their hearts hara perhaps f^one out towards their fiiM-hva,
and they bare mourned over the irreclaimable dead, Kaj, is there not a pttboa
in their very insigniBcance, in our comparison of their dim and narrow existentt
-with tlie glorious possibilities of that human nature wliicb thej sbare P

And this charitable divination is called on to act retrospectively :—

To those who were familiar only with the grey-haired vicar, jogging lanmlf
along on bis old cbestont cob, it would perhaps have been hard to believe that ht
had ever been tbe Maynud GUfil who, with a heart full of passion and tviAaom,
bad urged bis black Eitty to her swiftest gallop on tbe way to Callam, or that tlie
old gentleman of caustic tongue, and bucolic tastes, and sparing habits, had kocnni
all tbe deep secrets of devoted love, bad stniftgled through its days and ni^uof
■ngnisb, and trembled under its unspeakable joys. And, indeed, the Mr. Gilfil of
those late Sbepperton days had more of tbe knots and niggednese of poor honu
nature than there lay any clear hint of in the open-eyed loving M&ynard. Bet it
is vrith men as with trees ; if you lop off their finest branches, into ithjch th>l
were pouring th«r young life-juice, tbe wounds will be healed over witb soau
rough boss, some odd excrescence ; and wht
panding into liberal shade, ia but a whimsical
fault, many an unlovely oddity, has come (
and maimed tbe nature ju&t when it was ei
the trivial erring life which we vi^t with <
unsteady motion of a man whose best limb ii

In Jan^» ReperUance, besides tl
the writer dwells with lingering pati
human goodness in a brutalised nati
to the special claim of earnest and i
the same measurs of intelligent tole:
already extorted on behalf of lower ni

It is apt to' be so in this life, I think. '\^
career, sneering at his mistakes, blaming hi
tkat man, in bis solitude, is perhaps eheddin

1881. GEORGE ELIOT. 789

hard one^ because strength and patience are failing him to speak the difBcnlt word,
and do the difficult deed. . . • Yet surely, surely the only true knowledge of our
fellow-man is that which enables us to feel with him, which gives ns a fine ear
for the heart-pulses that are beating under the mere clothes of circumstance and
opinion. Our subtlest analysis of schools and sects must nuss the essential truth,
linless it be lit up by the love that sees in all forms of human thought and work
tke life^nd-death struggles of separate human bdngs,

George Eliot's charity sets lilnits to itself, and she does not
shrink from reprobating the intolerant stupidity which has power to
wound while it can hardly help even its friends. It is said of
Mr. Tryan : * However strong his consciousness of right, he found it
no stronger armour against such weapons as derisive glances and
virulent words than against stones and clubs : his conscience was in
repose, but his sensibility was bruised.' And the mass of ordinary
folks may be reminded of the responsibility attached to this power
of heedlessly wounding those whom they may yet come to recognise
as their best friends. It might be said of men and women, with a
wider fame than that of the Milby curate :

It was one of the weaknesses of his nature to be too keenly alive to every harsh
wind of opinion ; to wince under the frowns of the foolish ; to be irritated by the
injustice of those who could not possibly have the elements indispensable for
judging him rightly ; and with this acute sensibility to blame, this dependence on
sympathy, he had for years been construned into a position of antagonism. . . .
He had often been thankful to an old woman for saying, ' God bless you ; ' to a
little child for smiling at him ; to a dog for submitting to be patted by Mm.

Only an obtuse reader of George Eliot's books can fail to discern
traces in the author's self of an intensely — ^just not morbidly— acute
sensibility. In one of her later works she speaks of ' the feeling of
repulsed tenderness that is almost more of a sensation than an emotion ; '
and it takes little imagination to divine how, in the earlier years of
such a woman, the common causes of indifference, shyness, obtuseness,
or carelessness, as well as more rare ill-will or misconstruction, must
have made this painful sensation only too familiar. And yet we
need not travel beyond her published writings to feel also that this
experience has been powerless to chill or to restrain the generous
impulses of tenderness or trust. On the contrary, it is in her later
works, perhaps most of all in Middlemarch^ that she ventures to give
the largest space — while keeping within the limits of obvious pro-
bability— to the power of one character over another, a power of
which the first condition is the ability to put on one side the con-
sciousness of any personal hurt or slight, and join with the other soul
in considering only its present feelings and its present good.

Adam Beds is perhaps the most purely objective of her works,
the one in which it is least possible to recognise the writer's self in
any part of either of her characters. But if we look beyond the
subtle analysis of character and passion and the fascinating idealisation

790. THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Mi|

of rustic humour, the sione profound sympfttby, the same tolenint..
knowledge as iu^ires the rare sentences of reflection, will be found
underlying every passage in the drama. But probably most readers
feel that the interest of the work culminates in the remarkable pages
before the charming scene in which lasbeth rouses Adam to the.
consciousness of his new love — a passage quoted by the reviewer in
Blackwood, whose appreciation of the finer and less obvious shades of
meaning was gratefully acknowledged by her : —

Fpr Adam, though you see him quite master of himself, workiiig haid and
delighting in his work, after his inborn, inalienable nature, had not outliyed lu»
sorrow — had not felt it slip from him as a temporary burden and leave him the
same man again. Do any of us P Ood forbid. It would be a poor result of aH
our anguish and our wrestling if we won nothing hut our old selves at the end of
it y if we eould return to the same hlind loves, the same self-confident blame, the
same frivolous goaeip over blighted human lives, the same feeble senee of tiist
Unknown towards which we have sent forth irrepressible cries in our loneliness.
Let us rather be thankful that our knowledge lives in us as an indestructible force,
only changing its form, as forces do, and passing from pun into sympathy— the
one poor word which includes all our best insight and our best love. Not that this
transformation of pain into sympathy had completely taken place in Adam yet ;
there, was still a great remnant of pain, and this he felt would subsist as long as
her pain was not a memory, but an existing thing, which he. must think of as
renewed with the light of every new morning. But we get accustomed to mental
as well as bodily piun, without, for all that, losing our sensibility to it : it becomes
a habit of our lives, and we cease to imagine a condition of perfect ease as posaUe
for us; Desire \b cjisstened into submission, and we are contented with our day
when we have been able to. bear pur grief and act as if we were not suffeziDg.
For it is at such periods that the sense of our lives having visibie and invisible relatitms
beyond any ofv^iich either our present or prospective self is the centre grows Uke a
muscle that toe are obliged to lean on and exert.

That is a base and selfish, even a blasphemous, spirit which lejoioes sad i»
thankful over the past evil that has blighted or cruiiied another, because it has
been nude a source of unforeseen good to ourselves ; Adam could never cease t»
mourn over that mystery of human sorrow which had been brought so dose to
him ; he could never thank God for another^s misery. . . . But it is not ignoUe to
feel that the fuller life which a sad experience has brought us is worth our own
personal share of the pain ; surely it is not poe^ble to feel otherwise any mors than
it would be possible for a man with cataract to regret the painful prooeas by
which his dim bluired sight of men as trees walking had been exchanged for cisar
outline and effulgent day. The growth of higher feeling within ua is like tlie
growth of faculty, bringing with it a sense of added strength ; we can no more
wish to return to a narrower sympathy than a painter or musician can widi to
return to his cruder manner, or a philosopher to his less complete formula.

In The Mill on the Floss the action runs more nearly upon lines
which have had their parallel in the author's thought and feelingt
but we ought not to exaggerate the parallelism, especially since such
exaggeration is an implicit charge of transgression against the
' duteous reticences ' spoken of in Theophrastus. Read by the light of
the really autobiographic sonnets, ' Brother and Sister/ even the tragic
passages in poor little Maggie's childhood appear less painful \ one
is apt to undervalue the compensations, the mere increment of

1881. GEOBQE ELIOT. 791

bappiaess, that comes from the ' sweet skill of loving much.' But in
this book the moral problems, as to which so many readers desire
chiefly to know Greorge Eliot's thoughts, are more nearly discussed,
the writer's own judgment more nearly delivered in express terms,
than in any of her other works. No didactic purpose is obtruded,
but here, more than anywhere else, the crisis of the story turns upon
the question in one of the actor's minds : What <mght I to do ?

Eveiy one to whom Greorge Eliot is a moralist as weU as a story-
teller knows the spirit of the answer given, and criticism has a clumsy
look when it attempts to supply a formula which the artist has not
seen fit to construct. We know in general terms that Greorge Eliot
believed the force of moral obligation to lie in the keen personal
feeling of the claims and needs of others, while the influence of such
general rules of conduct as are commonly accepted seems in her
mind associated rather with a sort of reverential custom than with
the ^ categorical imperative ' of speculation. No personal bent is
accepted as virtuous unless in the human relations of life it brings
forth the fruits of virtue ; a passion that exists by natural bias apart
from justifying conditions is the one form of passion for which she
has little sympathy to show.

We see this in her treatment of the cherished quality, constancy
and ^ faithfulness,' which

mean something elae besides doing what is easiest and pleasantest to ourselves.
They mean renouncing whatever is opposed to the reliance others have in us —
whatever would cause miseiy to those whom the course of our lives has made
dependent on us.

Contrast with this the estimate of mere unchangeableness in
Daniel Deronda : —

We object lees to be taxed with the enslaving excess of our passions than with
our deficiency in wider passion ; but, if the truth wereknowui our reputed intennty
is often the dulness of not knowing what else to do with ourselves. Tannhaiiser,
one suspects, was a knight of ill-furnished imagination, hardly of larger discourse
than a heavy guardsman ; Merlin had seen his best days, and was merely repeating
himself when he fell into that hopeless captivity ; and we know that Ulysses felt
so manifest an ennui under similar circumstances that Oalypso herself furthered his
departure.

The kind of faithfulness after which poor Maggie struggles vainly is
exemplified by Mary Garth's not quite effortless constancy to her
boyish lover.

When a tender affection has been storing itself in us through many of our years,
the idea that we could accept any exchange for it seems to be a cheapening of our
liTOS. And we can set a watch over our affections and our constancy as we can
over other treasures.

It was not the least among G-eorge Eliot's personal fascinations
that opposite qualities appeared in her, each developed to an extent
that might at first sight have seemed incompatible with even

792 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. May

moderate indulgence of its opposite. Conservatism — the affectionate
clinging of memory and affections to the past — is less a principle than
an instinct with her ; from the pretty touch of feeling which makes
Silas Mamer prop up his broken pitcher in its accustomed comer, to
her own utterance * I love the very stones the better, the longer I
have known them,' there is nothing but tender constancy in her
frequent moods o{ Looking Backward. But joined with this con-
stitutional conservatism there was an inexhaustible freshness of
susceptibility to every new impression, a readiness to respnnd to
every new appeal, to enter into every new interest and wdcome
every new affection. There was room in that large soul for the love of
both past and present ; the relations of retrospective reverence and
present service, each had a wide enough world of its own, created
for itself. Few persons perhaps have recognised so many claima, yet
none of them found themselves * crowded or jostled in her affections.'
But, to return to the moral problems of The Mill on the Floss,
The writer's most general conclusion is that almost every situation
has a right of its own, that there is no royal road even to the dis-
cernment of what is really right, but that the guiding intuition
comes from an upright, unselfish life, which enables the determining
motive— of consideration for the good of others — to act predominat-
ingly at last upon the inmost feelings, without whose co-operation even
right action is little more than uncertain and laboured affectation:—

The great problem of the shilling relatioD between passion and duty is detr to
no man who is capable of apprehending it : the question whether the moment Ins
come in which a man has fallen below the possibility of a lenunciation that inD
carry any efficacy, and must accept the sway of a pasdon against which be hid
struggled as a trespass, is one for which we have no master key that will fit aH
cases. The casuists have become a by-word of reproach ; but their perverted spiit
of minute discrimination was the shadow of a truth to which eyes and heaits an
too often fatally sealed ; the truth, that moral judgments must remain fiilse and
hollow, unless they are checked and enlightened by a perpetual reference to tbe
special circumstances that mark the individual lot.

All people of broad, strong sense have an instinctive repugnance to the men of
maxims ; because such people early discern that the mysterious complexity of our
life is not to be embraced by maxims, and that to lace ourselves up in formulas of
that sort is to repress all the divine promptings and inspirations that spring from
growing insight and sympathy. And the man of maxims is the popular repreeentft-
tive of the minds that are guided in their moral judgment solely by general nleSi
thinking that these will lead them to justice by a ready-made patent method,
without the trouble of exerting patience, discrimination, impartiality — without anj
care to assure themselves whether they have the insoght that comes from a hardlr
earned estimate of temptation, or from a life vivid and intense enough to hxn
created a wide fellow-feeling with all that is human.

All her works abound in acute psychological interpretations of the
subtle impressions out of which the belief in supernatural spiritoal
influences is woven ; as in the case of Mr. TuUiver's dim feeling—

that if he were hard upon his sister it might somehow tend to make Tom hoi
upon Maggie at some distant day ... for simple people like our friend Mr. Tnlfiver

1881. OEOBOE ELIOT. 793

axe apt to clothe unimpeacliable feelings in erroneoiis ideas, and tliis was his con«
fused way of explaining to himself that his love and anxiety for ' the little wench'
had given him a new sensibility towards his sister.

And so of Dinah's leadings it is said : —

Do we not all agree to call rapid thought and noble impulse by the name of
inspiration P After our subtlest analysis of the mental powers, we must still say,
as Dinah did, that our highest thoughts and our best deeds are all given to us.

But it is in SUaa Mamer that the real power of this supersti-
tion of the feelings is dwelt upon with most insistence and sympathy.
The dim theological confabulations of Silas and Dolly have a point
lent them by that vivid presentation of all that is acting on their
consciousness, which makes this one of the writer's master-pieces : —

* There's things as we can niver make out the rights on. And all as weVe got
to do is to trusten, Master Mamer, to do the right thing as fur as we know, and
to trusten. For if us, as knows so little, can see a bit o' good and rights, we may
be sure as there's a good and a rights bigger nor what we can know — I feel it i' my
own inside as it must be so. And if you could but ha' gone on trustening, Master
Mamer, you wouldn't ha' run away from your fellow-creaturs and been so lone.'

' Ah, but that 'ud ha' been hard,' said SUaa, in an undertone ; ' it 'ud ha' been
hard to trusten then.'

'And so it would,' said DoUy, almost with compunction; 'them things are
easier said nor done; and I'm partly ashamed o' talking.'

* Nay, nay,' said Silas, ' you're i' the right, Mrs. Winthrop, you're i' the right.
There's good i' this world ; Pve a feeling o' that now, and it makes a man feel as
there's a good more nor he can see, i' spite o' the trouble and the wickedness. That
drawing o' the lots is dark, but the child was sent to me ; there's dealings with us —
there's dealings.'

It is easier to feel than to find exact words to describe the sug-
gestions of the passage where she described, ^ not without an inward sob
over its symbolism,' the bewildered eagerness with which the weaver

looked out on that narrow prospect round the stone pits, listening and gazing, not
with hope, but with mere yearning and unrest. . . . lie stood and listened, and
gaied for a long while ; there was really something on the road coming towards
him then, but he caught no sign of it ; and the stillness and the wide trackless
snow seemed to narrow his solitude, and touched his yearning with the chill of
despair. . . . We see no white-winged angels now. But yet men are led away
from threatening destmction ; a hand is put into theirs, which leads them forth
gently towards a calm and bright land, so that they look no more backward ; and
the hand may be a little child's.

A clearer intuition of the course of spiritual causation is given by
the series of scenes than by the most unexceptionable of moralisings :
the native j>iety^ which will attach itself to inanimate objects rather
than perish altogether, is made familiar to us before we are called
upon to see the hand of some plain fate or providence in the deliver-
ance that follows when the piety finds and welcomes a fitting object
for itself again. This recognition of the deep sense in which men
are their own and each other's providences has its share in inspiring
the passionate fervour with which Oeorge Eliot welcomes everj mani*

794 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Haj

festation of common hmnan goodness^ After oonfessiBg to bobm
moments of hypocritical assent to tiiose select natures who concur in
the experience that all great men are over-estimated and all small
men insupportable, she says (in Adatn, Bede) : —

I herewith discharge my conscience and declare that I have had quite en&ih
fiiaatic movements of admiration towards old gentlemen who spoke the worst ^-
lifih, who were ocsasionally fretful in their temper, and who had never moved in &
higher sphere of influence than that of parish overseer ; and that the way in wfaieh
I have come to the conclusion that human nature is loveable — ^the way I hvn
learnt something of its deep pathos, its sublime mysteries — ^hasbeenh^fiTiog^i
great deal among people more or less commonplace and vulgar, of whom joa
would perhaps have heard nothing very surprising, if you were to bqime ahont
them in the neighbourhoods where they dwelt.

The commonest acts of human kindliness assume in her eyes a
sacredness out of all proportion to their apparent merit or effect, he-
cause it is from such chance wayside springs that now and again a
worn-out traveller quenches his mortal thirst, while every passer-bj
goes on refreshed. And side by side vdth this sense of the incalculable
effects that may follow from a single act, or from ^ one of those souJl
leavings-undone that make a great difference to other lives,' there was
present a sort of religious awe of the unseen power, made by inta-
lacing streams of righteous influence and overshadowing even the lives
that seem most forlorn.

Looked at from a sufficient distance, there is a certain temptation
to group together the three next works — Eomolay Felix HdU^ and
The Spanish Oi/psy — notwithstanding their conspicuous differences
of form and subject. The undercurrent of thought flows aloDg
another channel. The mental attitude is the same, but the &miliar
world is viewed in a fresh aspect. The prevailing impression is les
that of the bearing of single lives upon each other and of the bearing
of the widest spiritual facts on single lives, than of the d^;Tee is
which the duty of individuals may be conditioned, and the fortnnes
of individuals shaped, by the visible forces of national histoiy and
external obligation. In JRomola the acceptance of a wider duty
gives meaning and purpose to a life that has missed its private good,
but Bomola takes her place among Florentines in virtue of the
positive womanly sympathies whose exercise is needed as well as the
transfigured patriotism which played so large a part in SavonaroWs
religion. In Feli^ HoU and The Spanish Oipay, more than in any of
her other writings, there is the suggestion of some outward force,
some external, constraining rule, limiting the natural &eed<»n of the
passions, and creating fresh susceptibilities for a scrupulous moraht;
to respect. In the one case class loyalty, in the other loyalty of race,
serve to symbolise this embodiment of an external oonsciousnesi ; in
each case it is possible to see in the feelings, which make deserto
wear the aspect of a crime, an illustration of t^e wider oUigi||tioB6 of

1881. OEOmE ELIOT. 1^

mere human fellowsliip* .The temper of the uawojrldly radical is thali
ofZarca: — ►

So abject are the men whose blood we share,

Untutored, unbefriended, unendowed ;

No faTOurites of Heaven, or of men.

Therefore I cling to them I Therefore no lure

Shan draw me to disown them, or forsake

The mesgre wandering herd that lows for help

And needs me for its guide, to seek.mj pasture

Among the well*fed beerea that graze at will.

Because our race has no great memories,

I will so liye, it shall remember me

For deeds of such divine beneficence

As rivers have, that teach men what is good

By blessing them. I have been schooled — have caught

Lore from the Hebrew^ deftness from the Moor —

Know the rich heritage, the milder life,

Of nations fathered by a mighty Past ;

But were our race accurst (as they who make

Good luck a god count all unlucky men) .

I would espouse their curse sooner than take

My gifts from brethren naked of all good,

And lend them to the rich for usury.

This would not be a true, at least not an exhaustive, account of
the vatention of these works, but it was an impression she was
satisfied for them to make ; and, as Daniel Deronda was to prove
later, there was something especially attractive to her in the idea of
nationality as a sort of intermediate condition, giving definiteness to
duty and aspiration. Historically, however, the motive of the poem
is to be found in the contrast — suggested by an Annu7iciai!ion at
Venice — between a young girl's dreams and hopes and the burden
laid on her of a nation's lot : —

«

0 mother life,
That seemed to cherish me so tenderly.
Even in tbe womb you vowed me to the fire.
Laid on my soul the burden of men*s hopes
And pledged me to redeem.

The direction given by such outer voice need not be any easier to
discern than the true course of private duty, but the good of the
many is sought and served by the same means as the happiness of the
one, and single-minded devotion cannot greatly err : —

■

For still the light is me^ured by the eye.
And the weak organ fails. I may see ill ;
But over all belief is faithfulness.
Which fixlfils vision with obedience.
So, I must grasp my morsels.

There are some who think that none of George £liot*s later
imtings ar9 fully equal to tl\e lir^t two or t^ree — an opinion compaoii;

796 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. May

enough to make it worth noting for the present generation (the next
will be impartial) that a similar preference is felt by maDj other
readers for that one of her works which they happen to have read
first: even Fdix Holt has been assigned the first place on this
account. Such an effect is natural enough in the case of a writer
always so unlike others and so equal to herself ; but it should be
allowed for, to escape the injustice of making an esteemed author his
own most dangerous rival.

When the time for fair comparison arrives, it will not besorpridng
if Middlemarch is ranked among the greatest of her great works.
But it is not our business now to estimate the artist, and something
of special interest attaches to the character of Dorothea, partly
because of the strange far*off likeness she bears to her creator, and
partly because the * Prelude ' and * Finale ' permit and indeed invite
us to look in her history for a revelation of George Eliot's feeling to-
wards the aspirations of any miniature S. Teresas who may be amoDg
us now. Nay, mq^ e, it has been and is asked, What was her attitude
towards, her opinion about the forms taken now by the aspirations
and ambitions of her own sex ? and this is the fittest place for making
some response to the natural curiosity.

Was it a falling away for Dorothea to marry Will Ladisi&i
instead of devising more ^ plans,' and continuing to occupy herself
with model ' dwellings for the poor ' ? Is the constant exaltation of
the domestic relations in Creorge Eliot's writings to be taken as
implying any disparagement of what perhaps, for the sake of distinc-
tion, we may be allowed to call professional philanthropy, or any
acceptance of the views generally characterised by references to
* woman's sphere ' ? Was it possible for George Eliot, of all people
in the world, to take a despairing view of the moral and intellectual
capabilities of women^ or to be out of sympathy with any phase of
social aspiration or reform ? In the tranquil seclusion of married
life and literary industry there is little call or opportunity for the
public expression of feeling or opinion on such points as these ; and
though those who know her writings best will have little difficulty
in answering the questions for themselves, perhaps an explicit reply
may be of use to others.

Undoubtedly, in the case of either men or women, Greorge Eliot's
sympathies went out more readily towards enthusiasm for the dir
charge of duties than for the assertion of rights. It belonged U>
the positive bias of her character to identify herself more with vhat
people wished to do themselves than with what they thought somehodj
else ought to do for them. Her indignation was vehement enough
against dishonest or malicious oppression, but the instinct to make
allowance for the other side made her a bad hater in politics, and
there may easily have been some personal sympathy in her desaip-
tions of Deronda's difficulty about the choice of a career. She wis

1881. GEORGE ELIOT. T97

not an inviting aaditor for those somewhat pachydennatous philan*
thropists who dwell complacently upon ' cases ' and statistics which
represent appalling depths of individual suffering. Her imagination
realised these facts with a vividness that was physically unbearable, and
unless she could give substantial help, she avoided the fruitless agita-
tion. At the same time her interest in all rational good works was of
the warmest, and she was inclined to exaggerate rather than undervalue
the merits of their promoters, with one qualification only. < Help
tlie millions by all means,' she has written ; ^ I only want people not
to scorn the narrower effect.' Charity that did not begin at home
repelled her as much as she was attracted by the unpretentious kind-
ness which overlooked no near opportunity ; and perhaps we should
not be far wrong in guessing that she thought for most people the
scrupulous discharge of all present and unavoidable duties was
nearly occupation enough. Not every one was called to the high
but difficult vocation of setting the world to rights. But on the
other hand it must be remembered that her standard of ezactingness
was high, and some of the things that in her eyes it was merely
culpable to leave undone might be counted by others among
virtues of supererogation. Indeed, it is within the limits of possi-
bility that a philanthropist wrapped in over-much conscious virtue
might imagine her cold to the objects proposed, when she only failed
to see uncommon merit in their pursuit. No one, however, could
recognise with more generous fervour, more delighted admiration,
any genuine unobtrusive devotion in either friends or strangers,
whether it were spent in making life easier to individuals, or in
mending the conditions among which the masses live and labour.
In weighing the comparative charm of the two vocations, she held
the balance even, estimating the pro's and con's, and making allow-
ance for the opposing dangers of narrowness and diffusion, the
enlarged egotism of the family and the lukewarm sensibility that
comes from dealing only with abstract masses.

All that has been said on this point in general applies equally,
with perhaps a touch of more acute personal feeling, to her views with
regard to women. She gave unqualified and unhesitating assent to
what might be called the most ^ advanced ' opinions on this subject ;
only the opinions had to be advocated in practice with large tolerance
and disinterestedness, and she wished to be assured that nothing of
what is valuable in the social order of the past should be sacrificed in
the quest of even certain future good. In matters intellectual she
had, what is perhaps equally rare in men and women, the same
standard for both sexes. In an article in which we trace her hand on
< Silly Novels by Lady Novelists ' ( West. Rev. October 1856) we read :
* It must be plain to every one who looks impartially and extensively
into feminine literature, that its greatest deficiencies are due hardly
more to the want of intellectual power than to the want of those

798 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. May

Inoral (][cialities that contiibtrte to literary exceUence, patient dili-
gence, a sense of the responsibility involved in publication, and an
appreciation , of the sacredness of the imter's art.' Upon the two
latter points she felt with peculiar strength, though reluctant, as
herself a successful writer, to express all she thought. No amotmt rf
demand for the ' trash that smothers excellence ' seemed to her a
justification for the manufacture of slipshod compilation or trivial
torrents of small talk in print. As a step towards the recognition
of a higher standard, at least by women, she naturally looked towards
an improved education, and it will be remembered that among the
first gifts towards the foundation of the college which is now Girbon
^as 100^. from ' the author of Adam Bede^ with whom at that date
such sums were not superfluously plentiful. With her delight in tk
mere acquisition of knowledge of all kinds for its own sake, there nas
necessarily something almost comic in questions as to the capacity of
feminine brains ; but it niust be admitted that she is the first woman
who has carried so complete a panoply of learning without bang
oppressed, not to say smothered, under its weight.

An incident in the composition of Danid Deronda well illustrates
the conscientious care with which every detail in her works vas
elaborated. It will be remembered that Deronda was to saoifioe
academical honours to his friendship for Hans, and her first thooglit
was that the latter had been rusticated for some piece of misdiirf-
an Hogarthian caricature of the college authorities — ^but on satisfying
herself that in these days men were usually ' sent down ' for un-
interesting breaches of discipline calling for little sympathy, she at
once sacrificed the incident — which in itself could not but have been
admirably done (she had paid a visit to the ^ Hogarths ' at the National
Gallery on purpose), on the ground that ' when one has to invoke the
reader's sympathy, anything equivocal in the probabilities is a deadly
defect' — and substituted the unnoticeable explanation that Hans
caught cold in his eyes by travelling third class for economy after
some bit of extravagance.

Of the minor poems, besides the well-known sonnets, the ^ Minor
Prophet ' is the only one which gives a glimpse at one real moment in
the writer's life. It is dated 1865, and it is pleasant to imagine
that the

Patched and plodding citizen,
Waiting upon the pavement with the throng.
While some victorious world-hero makes
Triumphal entry,

had a real existence — was one of the crowd lining the roads to
Sydenham when London was delighting to honour Gri^baldi, and that
George Eliot's eyes fell on him when the hero had passed, and he
began

1881. GEORGE ELIOT. 799

To tiiink idth pleasure there is jnst one bun
Left in Ms pocket that may serye to tempt
The wide-eyed lad, whose weight is all too much
For that young mother's arms.

It is painful to think that we narrowly escaped — by Mr. Lewes's
insistence — Shaving this poem permanently withheld from publication.
We welcome it especially for the explanation it affords of the element
of affection in so much of Greorge Eliot's tolerance. A flavour of
onion impregnates all Colin's visionary joys i^—

Speaking in parable, I am Colin Clout.
A clinging flavour penetrates my lifoi
My onion is imperfectness :

• •••••
Nay, I am apt, when floundering confused
From too rash flight, to grasp at paradox
And pty future men who will not know
A keen experience with pity blent ;

• .••••
A foolish; nay, a wicked, paradox !
For purest pity is the eye of love
Melting at sight of sorrow ; and to grieve
Because it sees no sorrow, shows a love
Warped from its truer nature, turned to love ,'

. Of merest habit, like the miser's, greed..
But I am Colin still : my prejudice
Is for the flavour of my daily food.

When one comes to think of it, a prejudice agamat this flavour
is the surest sign of a dyspeptic constitution*

The oalj poem wMch has not been republished was written in
the spring of '74, at a time when the author's health and spirits were
unequal to oth^ work, and as usual she hesitated long before con-
senting to its appearance, mainly on the ground that people would
look to it for a complete profession of faith, while there was as much
left out as said. When it was published, after four years, the original
title ^ A Symposium ' had to be altered because of the recent writings
bearing that name in this Keview. Even if they had not had the
|9ad distinction of being the last, the two chapters of more or less
perscmal confession or reminiscence which intro4uce the Impreaaians
of Theophrastua Such would have had a special interest. A charm*
ing magnanimity mingles with the subtlety of the ruthless self-*
ezamioation : —

1 really do not want to learn from my enemies: I prefer having none to leam
from. Instead of being glad when men use me despitefully^ I wish they would
beihaTe better and find a more amiable occupation for their intervals of business.
In brief, after a dose intinuicy with myself for a longer period than I choose to
mention, I find within me a permanent longing for approbation, sympathy, and love.

But finding experimentally that the demand for sympathy is in
excess of the supply —

800 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. May

while my desire to explain myself in private ears haa been quelled, the habit
of getting interested in the experience of others has been continually gathering
strength, and I am reaUy at the point of finding that this world would he worth
living in without any lot of one^s own. Is it not possible for me to enjoy the seeneiy
of the earth without saying to myself, I have a cabbage garden in it ? Bat this
sounds like the lunacy of fancying oneself everybody else and bdng unable to play
one's own part decently ; another form of the disloyal attempt to be independeot
of the common lot and live without a sharing of pain.

One passage in the Looking Backward reminds us of the pride
Adam Bede felt in answering strangers, ' Fm Thias Bede's lad : ' * It
seemed to me that advanced age was appropriate to a father, as indeed
in all things I considered him a parent so much to my honour that
the mention of my relationship to him w|is likely to secure me regard
among those to whom I was otherwise a stranger.' At the present
day it is likely that visitors to Loamshire might find their inquiries
answered hy thriving countrymen, * Old Mr. Evans of GriflF ? I knew
Mr. Evans,* as if such knowledge were itself a guarantee of respect-
ability in the county.

In lingering over these memories one can only feel the powerless-
ness of words to characterise the sweetness and the power of all she
was. Nothing has been said of her fellowship with that side of the
artist nature, its large demands and passionate vehemence, of which
Fedalma's dance and Armgart's song are images ; nothing of such
traits as her delight in all fragrance, ^ from that of syringas or sandal-
wood to that most spiritual of incense which comes from the tone in
which one is spoken to ; ' nothing of the scrupulous tenderness which
made her — if for a moment in conversational eagerness she had let
some caressing word or gesture pass without response — come bsck
upon it as an omission to be repaired ; nothing of her delight in
beauty, almost Hellenic in its reverence for a good gift of the gods
which should be matched with worthy living; nothing of that refine-
ment of sensibility which made her shrink from direct praise and
note, as one of the paradoxes of emotion, that she was less touched by
any tribute to herself than by reading of a great tribute to some one
else whom she admired — by the account of a similar incident that
occurred to Dickens in the streets at York than by the address of an
unknown lady, ^ Will you let me kiss your hand ? ' as she was leaving
the concert room at St. James's Hall on Saturday aftemoon.

It is to be feared that posterity will never know exactly what mi
the living aspect of George Eliot's face ; only a very great painter
could have seized at once the outline and something of the vaiying
expression, and her reluctance to have her portrait taken, ber private
person made to a certain extent public property in that way, has de-
prived us of any such memorial. Future generations will have to
draw on their imagination to conceive a face cast in the massive
mould of Savonarola, but spare and spiritualised into a closer
brotherhood with the other Florentine of the Ditriva Ccmmedia. The

1881. GEORGE ELIOT. 801

features might be too large and rugged for womanly beauty, but when
the pale £Bkce was tinged with a faint flush of tenderness or animation,
when the wonderful eyes were lighted up with eager passion, and the
mouth melted into curves of unutterable sweetness, the soul itself
seemed to shine through its worn framework with a radiance of almost
unearthly power, so that a stranger, seeing her for the first time, asked
why he had never been told she was so beautiful.

No doubt there was something in the sense of security, the con*
sciousness that the utmost wisdom and knowledge were within reach
in the background, but the special charm of her intimacy sprang
rather from the purely personal influence, the feeling of being face to
face with a most beautiful soul, and on the whole there was more
thought of love than of instruction in those who sat at her feet.
Thus, even if all could be said well and worthily that here is but feebly
hinted, it would still be necessary to appeal to the trust men have a
right to ask from each other for belief in what only a few can fully
know. We can only look to this trust and the loyalty of a long line
of spiritual descendants to hand on the tradition, that precious as the
writings of Greorge Eliot are and must be always, her life and charac-
ter were yet more beautiful than they.

Edith Sihgox.

ToL.IX.-No. 51. 3H

w

802 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. May

PROFIT-SHARING,

Some forty years ago Cbanniog delivered to a Boston aodienoe a
course of lectures ^ On the Elevation of the Working Classes.* l%ese
lectures possess many conspicuous excellences of thought, feeling,
and expression, but pre-eminent even among these are the piercing
clearness of vision with which the remote goal for a workman's beib
efforts is descried, and the energetic precision with which it is pointed
out.

There is (writes Channing) but one elevation for a labourer and for all other
men. There are not different kinds of dignity for different orders of men, but one
and the same for all. The only elevation of a human being- consists in the exerase,
growth, energy of the higher principles and powers of his eoul. A bird maj \»
shot upwards to the skies by a foreign power ; but it rises, in the true sense of tk
word, only when it spreads its own wings and soars by its own living power. So
a man may be thrust upward into a conspicuous place by outward accidents ; bat
he rises oidy in so far as he exerts himself and expands his best faculties and
ascends by a free effort to a nobler region of thought and action. Such is the de-
ration I desire for the labourer, and I desire no other. This elevation is, indeed, to
be aided by an improvement in his outward condition, and in turn it greatly im-
proves his outward lot ; and, thus connected, outward good is real and great ; but
supposing it to exist in separation from inward growth and life, it would be nothing
worth, nor would I raise a finger to promote it.

While, however, Channing saw thus clearly wherein consisted the
only real elevation of the. working classes, and also recognised the
powerful influence exerted by their outward condition on their imier
life, he was unable to perceive, save vaguely and dimly, the agencies
by which a genuine rise in the labourer's condition was to be brought
about. He hoped much from increased temperance, eodDomy,
hygienic knowledge, education, reading and clearer devdo^anent of
Christian principle, but how these vital influences were to be organised
as direct consequences of changed industrial relations was a problem
the very statement of which would probably have appeared to him
visionary and futile.

By a remarkable coincidence, at the very time when Chaimisg
was definiug in America the spiritual aim to be set before the working
classes, Leclaire in Paris was preparing an industrial revolution, which,
though based at first on purely economic considerations, was destioed
in his master hand to bring in its train precisely that moral reooTa-

1881. PROFIT-SHARING. 803

tion to which Chaxming looked forward. I refer of course to the
principle of participation by workmen in the profits of enterprise.

In the Nineteenth Centu/ry for September 1880, 1 gave a some-
what detailed account of the remarkable chain of associated institutions
grouped by Leclaire around this central principle.

They constitute a permanent industrial Foundation, unique both
in the nature of its organisation and in the extent of the benefits,
material and moral, which it bestows on its members. This unique-
ness, however, while it attracts public attention in an eminent degree
to the Maison Leclaire, is calculated to discourage with equal force all
imitation of an establishment so elaborately and munificently organised,
founded too by an exceptionally situated man of unquestionable genius.
The very completeness of the organisation thus tends to obscure the
merits of the principle on which it is based. I hope, therefore, to do
service by showing that participation in profits, organised on a xfiuch
less extensive scale and on simpler plans in a large number of industrial
and commercial establishments on the Continent, is producing results
of the same kind, though not so far-reaching, as those attained by .
the Maison Leclaire.

In the present article, after indicating the principal sources of in-
formation in regard to these establishments, I shall describe selected
instances of the main types on which participation has been organised
in them. The results obtained shall be characterised, as far as
practicable, in the words of those who have experienced them. A
cursory survey of the ground already covered by participatory opera-,
tions abroad wiU then lead to a few closing remarks on the applica-.
biUty of similar methods in this country.

Of published works on participation by far the most important
is that of Dr. Victor Bohmert,^ director of the Soyal Statistical
Bureau, and Professor of Political Economy at the Polytechnicum
at Dresden. It rests on an international investigation of the most
extensive kind, carried out with extraordinary industry and per-
severance. In describing the systems adopted by individual houses,
extracts from regulations, statements of account, indeed all kinds of
fiirst-hand information, are abundantly supplied, and the results
flowing from the methods adopted are often stated in direct commu-
nications made by the masters, and, in a few important cases, also
by the men employed.

For the results in Paris alone, the chief authority is a volume
by M. Fougerousse,^ which includes a number of cases not described
by Bohmert.

A further source of trustworthy information is the periodical
Bvlletm^ published by a French society formed in 1879 in order ' to

> Die OewinnUiheiUguTig, Leipzig, Brockhans, 1878.

* Patrant et Oucrieri de Paris. Paris, Chaiz, 1880.

' Bulletin de la SociHS de la Participation aux B6nifioe$. PariSi Chaiz,

3h2

804 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Mij

tucertain and make known tbe diSerent modea of participatioii
actually enaplojed in industry .*

It vill be readily understood that, besides these general irorks,
there exists a great mass of separate publications dealing with the
oi^nisation of individual houses. These are fiir too numerous lot
specification save in a catalogue raisonnS of such literature.

In selecting the types of participation to be described in this
article, I have followed the mode of classification introduced by M.
Fbugerousse, based on the manner in which the workpeople's share in
profits is made over to them.

The simplest system is that which distributes this share in ready
money at the close of escb year's account without making any condi-
tions as to the disposal of the sums so paid over. This mode of
proceeding is adopted by but a very limited group of firnis, the most
important among which is the pianuforte-making establishment of
M. Bord,* rue des Poissonniers, Paris. Participation was introduced in
1865, in consequence of a strike, on the following basis. After
deduction from the net profits of interest at 10 per cent, on M. Bord'i
capital embarked in the business, the remainder is divided into tvo
parts, one proportional to the amount of interest oo capital drawn by
M. Eord, the other to the whole sum paid during the year in wag«
to the workmen. The former of these two parts goes to M. Bord, the
latter is divided among all his employes who can show six months'
continuous presence in the bouse up to the day of the annual distri-
bution. The share obtained by each workman is proportional to tbe
sum which he* has earned in wages, paid at tbe full market rate
during the year on which tbe division of profits is made. The nnmber
of M. Bord's employes was, at the beginning of 1 878, a little over 400,
and the sums he has paid in labour-dividends during the last three
years are, as he has been kind enough to inform me, 3,784/,, 2,874i.
and Z,$i8l., which represent 15 per cent., 12 per cent., and 16 per
cent, respectively on the men's earnings in wages during those yeais.
Tbe total amount thus paid, exclusively out of profits, since the intro-
duction of this system in 1865 is 39,3001.

M. Bord has satisfied himself t"
is made of these annual labour-di
effect of the system in attaching
influence on their relations toward

From the system of immediate
cally opposite procedure introdu
auspices of M. Alfred de Courcy, i
sttrance companies of Paris, the Co
Five per cent, on the yearly profiti
to it« stafl", which numbers about 25'

• Bohmert, § 35.

• Bohmert, g 76.

1881. PROFIT'SHARim. 803

salaries are at least equal to those paid in non-participating in-
surance offices at Paris. No part of this share in profits is handed
over in annual dividends. Each successive payment is capitalised
and accumulates at 4 per cent, compound interest until the bene-
ficiary has completed twenty-five years of work in the house, or sixty"
five years of age. At the expiration of this period, he is at liberty
either to sink the value of his account in the purchase of a life annuity
in the office, or to invest it in French government or railway securitief •
Should he decide on the investment as against the life insurance, he
is allowed to draw only the annual dividends arising from it, as the
company retain the stock certificates, and not till after his death
abandon their hold on the principal in favour of such persons as be
may designate by will to receive it. M. Ae Courcy, managing
director of this company, is well known as the ardent and eloquent
advocate of this system of long-deferred, or even only testamentarily
transmitted, possession. He insists on the large sums which it has
accumulated in comparatively short spaces of time, mentioning the
instances of a simple bookkeeper, in whose name 4802. stood to the
good after fourteen years of work, a sub-cashier with 800Z. at the end
of twenty-five years, and a superior official with 2,6002. after a similar
period. From the company's point of view he alleges the increased
permanence, steadiness, and assiduity which the deposit account has
produced in its staff of employes, and instances, in particular, the
redoubled efforts which they willingly make at the seasons of heavy
pressure of business. From a letter addressed to me by M. de Courcy
in November last I translate a few sentences which contain his most
recent views on this subject : —

My present opinion is more favourable than ever both to the principle of par-
ticipation and in particular to my system of deferred possession. The institution
has now had thirty years of experience, that is to say of unvarjing successes. Each
year^ by augmenting the account of the employ^, makes him feel more strongly the
advantage of the deferred participation. Each jear, too, the company appreciates
better what it gains in fidelity in return for these sacrifices. My general principle
is that there are no thoroughly satisfactory business transactions except those
-which are satisfactory to both the parties concerned. Experience has justified our
institution from each of these points of view. It is excellent for the employes and
excellent for the company.

The great majority of participating houses combine the two sys-
tems just described ; they distribute a part of the workpeople's share
of profits in cash-bonuses, and invest the remainder for purposes
of saving. Among establishments thus organised, I select for de-
scription the firm Billon et laaac^ a joint-stock company manufiic-
turing parts of the mechanism of musical boxes, at St. Jean near
Geneva. The results in that house have been described and com-

• Bohmerty § 6.

S66

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.

Hay

tiiented upon with great fulness of detail by M. Billon in a sepaiate
volume, and by members of the working staff in statements commu-
nicated to Professor Bohmert and published in his treatise. The
system adopted rests on the following exceptionally liberal basis.
After deduction of interest on capital and payments to the reserve
and maintenance funds, the entire net profits are divided into two
equal parts. One of these parts goes to the shareholders and tbe
administration ; the other part constitutes the portion assigned to
labour. Of this latter sum one half is annually distributed in cash
bonuses proportional to wages earned individually during the yesur, and
the remaining half is invested in the gradual purchase, for the respective
beneficiaries, of 41. shares in the company, which carry with them
votes at its general meetings. The material results of participation
in this house since its first introduction In 1871 appear from the
following table, in which the sums stated in francs are given true to
the nearest pound : —

Year

No. of
Participants

Totol average shaze allotted
to a workman

Proportion of tbis dun to fafai
entin annoal iragn

1871-72

1872-73
1878-74
1874-76
1876-76
187ft-77
1877-78
1878-79
1879-80

103

109

92

102

140

98

82

89

89

£

8
14
11
12

9

2

0^

4

6

Percent.

18i
28^

0^
8
10

It will be seen from the above figures that participation has, in
this house, had to pass through the ordeal of severe industrial depres-
sion, directly following on a period of abounding prosperity. His
fact should be borne in mind in reading the opinions now to be
cited, which were written when the effects of bad trade had ali^J
made themselves felt.

The exceptionally complete insight into the working of pBiticip&-
tion afforded us in the firm Billon et Isaac will, I trust, be held to
justify somewhat fuU quotation from the important judgments on
that system expressed by members of the house.

I begin with an extract from a letter written by a workman to
Professor Bohmert in 1877 : —

Since the iotroduction of participation in profits into this house impoztsBt
changes have become visible. There is no denying the fact that the woikman ^
receives only fixed wages and knows beforehand that however much pains he mar
take with his work he will not on that account receive an additional farthing fioa
his employers — ^that this workman becomes more and more negligent and does coS
bring to bear^ as he might do, his full physical and intellectual capacities.

' Rnsso-Turkish war.

1881. PROFIT-SHARim. 807

To my great regret I am bound to confess that this kind of thing occurred only
too often among ourselves. Such negligence, moreover^ does not show itself in the
workshop only, it also invades family life. The workman, once sunk to this point,
will in the end care as little for the good of his own family as for that of the esta-
blishment which employs him. ... If he has a numerous family to support, it
often happens that, in order to avoid seeing his ovm poverty, or to escape fh>m the
complaints of his wife, he seeks a refuge in the pot-house. The inevitable conse<*
quence of this conduct is the steadily increasing degradation of this workman and
of his family ; similar instances present themselves in abundance at Geneva.

Nevertheless, to remedy such evils is not so difficult a task as one might sup-
pose. For proof of this it suffices to institute a comparison between the circum-
stances of the workman in our house before participation in profits vdth those
which we now find there after the introduction of that system.

The undersigned has been working for the last eight years in this factory ; he
has therefore had sufficient opportunities for observation in this respect, and he can
testify that participation in profits has done real wonders in it ; one might even
«ay that it has entirely altered the mode of life and habits of the workmen.
Formerly, no one thought save of himself and of his individual interests ; quarrels
about work were nothing out of the common way. Now, on the contrary, all
consider themselves as members of one and the same family, and the good of the
establishment has become the object of every one*s solicitude, because our own
personal interest is bound up in it.

It is with pleasure that one remarks how each man strives to fill up his time
with conscientious effort to effect the utmost possible saving on the materials, to
collect carefully the fallen chips of metal ; and how, if one or other now and then
is guilty of some negligence, a joking remark from his neighbour suffices to bring
him to order again.

If now we cast a glance at the workman's family, we cannot help seeing that
there too a notable change for the better has been produced. . . . Those men who
formerly spent the chief part of their spare time at the public house, where they
^ve vent to such sentiments as the following : ^ None of us can ever come to any-
thing,' have now got hold of quite different ideas. The first payment of shares in
profits has laid in their minds the foundation-stone of a new way of looking at
things, and awakened hopes for the realisation of which saving is an indispensable
condition. One cherishes the hope of purchasing a cottage ; another wishes to set
up a little shop ; a third thinks of accumulating a small sum towards his old age,
and, perceiving that the thing may prove possible, takes to staying at home : his
wife^ overjoyed at this change, strives to make his fireside as pleasant to him aa
possible, and supports him in the enterprise which he has taken in hand.

The benefits of the system introduced among us are still more manifest in times
of commercial crisis like that through which we have passed this vdnter. For a
considerable time we have been reduced to seven hours of labour, and the earnings
of a workman with a family on his hands barely sufficed to find food and clothing.
^Nevertheless one's house-rent had to be paid, and, inasmuch as here nearly all
lodgings are paid for three months in advance, more than one of us> would have
had to sleep with the stars for roof, had not the deposit-accoimt come opportunely
to the rescue. ^

I take the foUowiDg extracts from a joint opinion signed by seventy
of Billon et Isaac^s employes in the same year : —

Every workman who has become a shareholder and joint proprietor with his
^employers devotes his utmost attention to the success of the undertaking. The
workman, having the same interests as his employers, and perceiving that he is no
longer treated like a machine, works with energy and courage : our hearts aro

808 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. May

warmed and cheered by contact with thoee of our emplo jeia^ who are ahraja nadj
to set ne a good example.

Piece-work, premiums, the raising of wages . . . can in nowise repUoSyisr
theworkman*8 heart and the master's advantage, participation in profits: under
this principle one works with good heart, which is the same thing as saying Ihil
one works more and better. It is no longer a mercenary work.

Next hear the opinion of M. Billon in 1877 : —

We soon became aware of the good influence which the prospect of shaibg b
profits exercised on our workmen. An entirely fresh zeal for work, and a hvdj
interest in the house, showed themselves among them : a genuine solidarity was not
slow in establishing itself, each man comprehending that all negligence in the pei^
formance of his duty was prejudicial alike to his colleagues and to himself. The
task of superintendence became easy to us, and we were able thenceforward, vift-
out fear of ofiending any one, to insist on points of detail to which we had hitherto
been obliged to shut our eyes. Moreoyer, the feeling of security with which tlie
attitude of our workmen inspired us, permitted us to give ourselves up wholly to
the development of our business. ... It has often been said to us, * You have not
had difficulties with your workmen, thanks to good years. But let an industrial
crisis arise, and great will be your embarrassment when you are obliged to disDus^
your employes.' This contingency, which assuredly we had /breaeen when onp^
msing participation, has presented itself; and we can say henceforward that it hu
done nothing but confirm our faith in the principle. . . . The criaia has served to
demonstrate that, in bad as in good years, we are better situated in reference to
the men than are those who have not applied the principle of participatiun. As to
our workpeople, it has made them imderstand, better than any arguments coold
have done, the benefits of obligatory thrift. Those among them who have shared
in profits during these five years have received an annual average of 20 per cent on
their wages, so that, if they have laid by the entire fruit of the partidpatioo, thej
possessed at the time of the last division a sum equivalent to one year's wages.*

In reply to a letter of inquiry, M. Billon was good enough to
send me his most recent views, on November 15, 1880, in the follow-
ing terms : —

You ask me my present opinion on the working of participation in our house.
I am happy to tell you that this principle continues to work to our entire satis-
faction. . . . After ten years of experience we congratulate ourselves more and
more on having adopted it. Its application has to such a degree become ingrained
I into our modes of doing business that we should not know how to get on without
•^ it \ the management of an undertaking appears to us no longer possible without
I this element of justice, harmony, and peace.

»

After referring to piece-work, premiums, &c., as all good in their
places and measures, M. Billon adds : —

These methods are all inadequate to obtain the complete adhenon of the work-
man (Touvrier tout entier) ; it is only by participation in profita accorded on a
suitable scale that his interest in the economic side of an undertaking (care of
materials, products, &c. &c.) is thoroughly aroused, and that the sentiment of
solidarity is developed and bears its fruits.

* Parttmpation des ouvrier$ anx hirUfioes de8 patrons, par Jean BiUon. Geo^
H. Georg, 1877, pp. 28, 30-31.

1881. PROFIT-SHARING. ^ 809

Before quitting, as limits of space compel me to do at this point,
the methods practised in individual houses, I will roughly indicate
the amount of progress which the system has as yet m&de, and the
varieties of industry to which it has been successfully applied. Putting
together the most recent data, I shall be below the mark in saying
that OTIS hundred continental firms are now working on a participa-
tory basis. The principle has been introduced with good results into
agriculture ; into the administration of railways, banks, and insurance
offices ; into iron-smelting, type-founding, and cotton-spinning ; into
the manufacture of tools, paper, chemicals, lucifer-matches, soap^
cardboard, and cigarette-papers ; into printing, engraving, cabinet-
making, house-painting, and plumbing; into stockbroking, book-
selling, the wine trade, and haberdashery.

This list does not profess to be anything like complete, but it will
probably suffice for the purpose now in view. The establishments
which it summarises differ in size and importance as much as in the
character of the industry which they pursue, from the paper-mills of
M. Laroche-Joubert at Angoul^me with its 1,500 workmen, to the
establishment of ^. Lenoir at Paris, with its forty house-painters. I
may add that the movement is making decided headway, a consider-
able nimiber of houses having given in their adhesions during the last
two years.

The benefits accruing from participation successfully practised
may be thus summed up. It furnishes to the workman a supple-
mentary income under circumstances which directly encourage, or
even by a gentle compulsion actually enforce, saving ; and, by asso-
ciating him in a very real sense with his employer, it arouses aspirations
from which great moral improvement may be confidently anticipated.
The employer, besides sharing in whatever surplus profits are realised by
the more efficient labour which participiation calls forth, obtains the
boon of industrial stability and the support of a united corporate feeling
elsewhere unknown. Independently of these advantages to the two
parties directly concerned, the customer of a participating house
finds in its very organisation a guarantee for enhanced excellence of
workmanship and rapidity of execution.

On the fisicts set out in the preceding pagea it seems natural to
ask whether there is any reason why a system which is producing
abroad results of so much value should not prove equally beneficial
if properly introduced among ourselves. It is no sufficient answer
to point to half a dozen English experiments in which the system
after a few years of trial was eventually abandoned, and say that
the principle ^ has been tried and has failed.' In order to infer from
the abandonment of a system the unsoundness of its central prin-
ciple, evidence must be forthcoming to show that the evUs which
led to the failure were necessary consequences of the principle. This
has certainly never been proved with respect to the unsuccessful

810 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. May

English experiments ; and my confident "belief is that, in tiiie most
conspicuous cases of failure both here and on the Contin^it, tiie
causes which led to the break-down can be distinctly shown to have
been extraneous to the principle of participation.

A more satisfactory mode of investigating the adaptability of the
system to English circumstances lies in ascertaining, first, what are
the conditions under which it promises an economic success, and next,
whether those conditions hold to any important extent in this
country.

The fund on which participation draws is the surplus pn^t

\ realised in consequence of the enhanced efficiency of the w<Mrk dooe
tmder its stimulating influence. Such extra profit is, therefore,
obtainable wherever workmen have it in their power to increase the
quantity, improve the quality, or diminish the cost price of their
staple of production by more effective exertion, by increased economj
in the use of tools and materials, or by a reduction in the costs of

^ superintendence. In other words, the surplus profit realisable will
depend on the influence which manual labour is capable of exerting
upon production. Evidently, therefore, this influence will be greatest
1^ in branches of industry where the skill of the labourer plays the
/ leading part, where the outlay on tools and materials bears a aoall
ratio to the cost of production, and where individual superintendence
is difficult and expensive. It will, on the contrary, be least effecti?e

^ in industries where mechanism is the principal agency, where the
interest on capital fixed in machinery is the chief element of cost
price, and where the workmen, assembled in large fiEu^tories, can be
easily and effectively superintended.

Participation would, therefore, be applied with the best prospects
of success to such industries as agriculture, mining, building, carpen-
tering, decorating, &c., where wages form* a leading element of cost;
while the least promising field would be supplied by cotton-spinning,
weaving, and other machine^dominated branches of production. That
agriculture offers a peculiarly valuable opening will not be doubted
by those who are acquainted with the extraordinary results attained
during Mr. John Scott Yandeleur^s Irish experiment at Balahine in
the years 1831-3, where an intelligently planned system of profit-
sharing secured a complete local triumph over an acute crisis of
agrarian discontent and outrage.^

In coal-mining I am assured on excellent authority that a gieat
amount of preventible waste is occasioned by timber, plate% &^
being carelessly buried under dibris and thus finally lost. That

* See Fare*8 Co-operatize Agrieultwet Longmans, 1S70, and a series ci pftpes
commenced in the Co'Operative News of April 16, 1881, by Mr. £. T. Craig, who «33
the Secretary, and to a great extent the practical organiser, of the * Balahine Asv-
elation.' The attention of persons interested in the future of Irish agricalttzal
labourers cannot^ at the present conjuncture, be too urgently invited to thedeiail»
of this startlingly successful and suggestive experiment.

1881. PROFIT-SHARING. 811

much time is frittered away, and much material and gear wastefuUy
dealt with, by workmen employed in the house-industries to which I
have referred, will not be disputed. It is clear, then, that English
workmen have it largely in their power to enhance profits by con-
tributing better and more economical labour. That they will be
ready to make the more assiduous efforts involved in such labour, as
soon as they have thoroughly grasped the motives for increased zeal
which participation holds out, appears to me equally certain. If,
however, the experiment is to be tried, it is obviously from the em-
ployers that the initiative must come. They will, of course, make
no trial of the system without a preliminary study of the methods
adopted on the Continent, with regard to which so much trustworthy
information has now been accumulated by French and German re-
search. In view, however, of the great results which participation
seems to promise in raising masses of the labouring population out of
the proUtai/re or hand-to-mouth class, and thereby drying up a main
source of our national pauperism, it is to be hoped that employers of
labour, productive or distributive, whether on a large or on a small
scale, will consider that a complete examination of the whole subject
treated in^is article, undertaken with a direct view to practical
action, is urgently called for.

Sedlet Taylor.

Postscript.

A special Society is now (April) being formed to disseminate in this country
translations from the best foreign fiources, and other trustworthy information^ on
Participation in Profits. Persons inclined to join this Society are iQvited to write
to me at Trinity College, Cambridge, S. T.

812 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. May

FRENCH VERSE IN ENGLISH.

Tbakslation from so flexible and tender a language as French into
our more * brutal * ' English — prose or verse — will always have some-
what the effect of a thing looked at through a magnifying glass. Nor
is this an effect to be quite deprecated, inasmuch as it should be
better to see too clearly anything that is worth seeing than not to
see it at all, provided that one see it in some sort of proportion.
Which forms, in the main, my excuse for the verses which I purpose
setting forth in this paper ; and if they nm a chance of offending a
critical eye and jarring on a sensitive car by their directness and the
rather cumbersome rules with which I trammel them, I shall try at
least to save them from baldness and coarseness, extremes into which
practice shows one that such work, so trammelled, is most likely to
run. I would add that these renderings are to be regarded as experi-
mental, and were, many of them, written for music.

We have become familiarised of late, to an unprecedented d^ree,
with French originals of all kinds in English dress, and we are ahrays
being reminded by the stage and by our lighter reading how little
that which charms us most is native here. In the work, for instance,
of our young poets, we hear something louder than an echo firom
French singing of a bygone age, and perhaps the best turn this can
serve is the sending us to the originals to find out with how much more
grace these very things were first said or sung. Mere translation of
such originals need not be an imthankful task. Hard indeed it is to
pour the wine * from the gold into the silver cup without spilling a
drop,' as has once and again been done, but there is a sincere pleasure
in handling them so far as to register, however inadequately, each turn
of their expression and their thought to enrich another language. 1
speak only of translation into verse, recognising indeed nootiiermodc
of rendering poetry which allows of showing how intimately ' the
small and the great ' are there commingled, how much the worth of
the whole depends on the arrangement of the parts ; and I cannot help
thinking that the closer and harder one makes one's rules, the nearer
will the likeness of^one's translations be to the originals, such at least
as are rather ^ fine ' than ' broad,' and from these my examples wiU be
mostly taken.

To be brief, then, while in no haste to disparage other ways of
work, should this be proved untenable, I want rhythmiooi and n^

1881. FRENCH VERSE IF ENGLISH. 813

seldom ayUabic egyxdity, and a variation of rhyme to correspond to
the intermixture of the ' rimes masculines et feminines,' which I see
no means of gaining in English but through rhymes in single and
double syllables.

Anticipating, although not accepting, the objection that French
poetry is not rhythmical, while English verse must be, to suit our
taste at all, I propose (in doubtful cases) the teat of usual reading
for decision of accent in the graver measures, and the test of music in
the lyrical.*

There is nothing more painful by way of preface than destructive
criticism, and the task were endless did one dare to face it, and al-
ways open to the retort of failure ; there is risk, moreover, of losing
heart and temper over the positive and negative &ults of most trans-
lators, their selfishness and their want of care. It will be better to
begin my examples as early in French literature as I possibly can, and,
where I touch upon some poem which has suffered from such treat-
ment, to try and make it illustrate what I say. After all, it is in one's
examples that the merits of one's own fashion of translating mmt be
shown; it is by them that it must stand or fall. But there are
sundry little books before me highly praised by many courteous reader?,
which I too would gladly praise for a certain delicacy of touch, were
not their demerits of too glaring and detrimental a nature to be lightly
passed over. Their tone is misleading and their measures inaccurate,
and faults which in less graceful and scholarly volumes would be
swamped by coarser faults are here forced into their due prominence.
It is bad to give no distinctiveness to the poets of the sixteenth cen-
tury, to deaden their colour into a uniform grey of regret and spoil
their singing ; but it is worse for any French student to do this to de
Musset and rob him of his satire and his wit as well as his ^ intention '
and his metrical charm, inasmuch as de Musset, of whom I shall want
to give several specimens after my manner, is more definitely French
than any other poet of his land. He is modern, direct, Parisian.

What I have to say upon technique, too, will find its place with
such of my examples as may call severally for technical explanation,
tiresome in the gross unless to some half-dozen readers : but I pre-
mise generally that, in the matter of rhymes, I shall count such
words as ^ flower ' dissyllabic at the end of a line, unless where I may
spell them as monosyllables and rhyme them with ^ our.' They are
ia sufficiently marked contrast to the masculine monosyllable (although
our rhythmic English will not allow them dissyllabic value), and our
double rhymes are too few for us to spare them. He would be over-
daring, however — ^I do not say he would be wrong — who should use *our '

> With the mnsician it rests first to decide the accent in lyrics ; but there is also
a further responsibility that rests with him, on which there is much to be said, which
my subject gives me inclination but not leave to say ; diirefford 0/ rhyme, ofrhfthm,
and fi/eluion being the fault of nearly aU musical settings of French words, saving
tboee by French composers, and sometimes of those too.

814 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Maj

and the like spellings of the same so and as dissyllabic, and I shall not
venture to do this, though Mr. Bossetti's Song of ths Bower proves
that no less an artist than he can do so. But then he has not bound
himself to dissyllables, and might object that he never meant the
other rhymes as such, . and that the halves of each stanza aie of
diverse form. Mr. Bossetti is one of the translators whose perfect
work disheartens me, because, while raised above carping by a cerUun
original and poetic touch, it is not amenable to what I cannot hut
consider as the first rules and tests of translation.

Villon's ballade Of Dead Ladies, for instance, contains but three
rhymes, as such a ballade must in French, and should in Englidi, hot
Mr. Bossetti's version contains no less than eight. His first verse is
faultless, but his second does not belong to it as Villon's seccmd does.
One could wish it might ; ^ only that this can never be I ' The com-
panion ballade to this. The Lords of Old Time, has been rendered,
with some words of preface too diffident in tone, by Mr. Swinbarae
in a manner wholly accurate and praiseworthy. This translation, if
inferior in interest to the ballade Of Dead Ladies, is &r its supe-
rior in point of conscience. Indeed Mr. Swinburne's translatioDs
from Villon, given us together only lately in his second series of
Poems aitd BaUads, are just as good as they can be, and it is instrao-
tive to compare his BaJUad of the Oibbet (in its wholesome iambic
verse) with Mr. Lang's, as {alnthearted and metrically inaccuiatea
piece of work as may be.^ Henceforward must be left to Mr. Swinbome

Villon, our sad, bad, glad, mad brothei^s name,

as, with an echo of Mr. Browning's incisive verse, he calls him.
Excellent as is Mr. Payne's translation, Mr. Swinburne's verse alone is

Beauty making beautiful old rhyme
. In praise of ladies dead, and lovely knights.

Again, while Mr. Bossetti's John of Tours will suit the traditioiial
music very well, his rendering of The Three Princesses will in nowise
fit the beautiful old song from which the French words are insepara-
ble. The colour indeed is kept, but the form is gone. It is the
work of a painter^ not of a mfusician. One is surprised to see amoog
poet-<;ritics Mr. Swinbmme marvelling at Mr. Bossetti's consnmmate
accuracy in translating a song into a poem that will not sing to the
song's tune at all, and is not even, rhythmically speaking, its fellow,
and Mr. Crosse in a most thoughtful essay praising Mr. Lang's ^care-
ful translation' of a rondel, which he has just said consists ne-
cessarily of fourteen lines, into a little English poem of twelve! One
pities the student of French poetry who is to learn from these samples
of work what is this ballade, or this rondel, or this song.

* In his Ballads and Lyriet of Old IVance, to which I must make further r^enoci
bj-and-by. Mr. Lang's translation of the Arbor am&rU, by the way, if ooiiect i& its
order of rhymes.

1881. FRENCH VERSE IN ENGLISH. 815

Making verse txanslationn is, after all, very like making jars.
Happiest Uiey who, with the original shape, turn out the colour of the
original to artist eyes, but, failing both, the scientific observer and the
student must have the shape matched first of all. It is only now and
again that the iridescence or the ' deep blue ' of the pattern is matched
in an unspoiled mould, but the failures may be counted by hundreds.
lict us start with determining that the fashion of our poems shall follow
their originals, and then pray that something of their glow be upon
them which indeed cannot so be wholly absent, rather than set to
"work to reproduce what we arbitrarily call * the colour,' and, failing
here, be found to fail in all. But even thus, where the colour is, let
us give thanks though the shape be changed, provided the contents
be held as well.*

M. Leon Contanseau, in his useful little ^ Precis ' of French litera*
ture, gives the following as his very first specimen of verse ^ in the
laTigue cPo'ilj dating it 1160, and prefacing it ^nous nous sentons la
dans notre pays : ' —

When the violet breaks to flower,

And the rose and \^d rose spring,
And the birds are carolling,

Then the little loves have power ;
Then they gaily sting.

Long since I hushed my string,
Now will I sing.
And will bring
Little songs for dower
For my love's love, to her bower,
Where erewhile my heart took wing.

The next lines he offers are from Thibaut IV., ^ Thibaut of Navarre,
who made love^songs for Queen Blanche, St. Louis' mother, whom he
loved with passionate worship.' But reproductions of troubadour-
singing are only of service where one can set them side by side with
the original ; so I will pass on to his sample of Alain Chartier's work,
which he dates an. 1450, towards the close of the poet's life : —

Ye ladies, and each gentle maiden.

If joy draw near to you of heaven,
Hear this hard news wherewith I am laden,

Who learned it but this new year's even ;
And know what hath my steps persuaden

That do not often seek to yours.
Till, of your gnce, my dole be stayed in

Comfort and help and hearteniug lures.

For this befell me on that night

A-waiting for the sunrise, where
I lay, not roused nor drowdng quite,

At cockcrowing or earlier :

* It is hardly necessary to premise that, with Mr. Swinburne, I find elision < a
neoeiBity, not a luxury ' in English verse.

816 TEE NINETEENTH CENTURY. May

Even Love, made plain before my sight

At my l>ed*8 head with bow astrain.
Who me beepake : ' Disloyal Knight,

Lo here thy listing-fees again ! '

It is 80 pretty that one hardly wonders at * fair Scotch Margaret,'
the wife of Louis XI., kissing Chartier when she saw him one day asleep,
in despite of his ugliness. ' For it is not the man,' she said to those
ahout her, * that I kiss, but the mouth whence so many lovely things
have come.'

M. Contanseau's ' presentment ' of Charles d'Orleans' famous rondel
is, like Mr. Lang's translation of it, not a rondel at all, only that
Mr. Lang gives the poem only twelve lines and M. Contanseau six-
teen ! * Here is a literal, not to say bald, rendering from the real
rondel form given by Mr. Crosse in a paper to which I have alluded
already: — *

The year has laid his mantle by,

Acold and wet from winter's prison,
And is in radiant vest uprisen

Of sunshining embroidery.

No beasts nor birds but sing and cry

In jargon at this merry season :
The year has laid his mantle by,

Acold and wet from wintei-'s prison.

Bivers, and springs, and brooklets lie,

New-liveried where the ice has wizen,
And on the freshening leas they christen,

Are silver studs for jewellery :
The year has laid his mantle by,

Acold and wet from winter's prison.

It has a lovely shape with its recurrent burden for which no vague
rendering, however graceful, compensates ; and were one tracing an
analogy between the arts one might compare these formal poems—
the Rondel, the Ballade, the Vilanelle, and so forth — ^to pieces of
studied painting or of music. So we may find in * genre ' or landscape
the prominent feature reproduced throughout the picture in form or
colour,'and so a phrase of tune recurs in the movements of a symphony,
to destroy which were to destroy the very essence of the thing. I shall
relieve these old-fashioned and descriptive ditties by an epigram from
Clement Marot, the most illustrious poet of his school, who brings as
into the sixteenth century. To a Lady who had longed to see him :—

She read my books untH she felt indeed
She saw me ; then would see what, sooth, my face is.

Yea, and hath seen it dark in greybeard weed.
Yet stand I none the less in her good gracee.
0 gentle heart ! (for noble, maid, yoor race is,)

* M. Contanseau*8 version is really a confusion of two rondels ; tfa« one of sprinf

* Le temps a laissiS son manteau,*

the other of summer :

* Les fourrieis d'est6 sont Tenus.*

* < A Plea for certain Kzotic Forms of Yeise.' ComkiU Mgffozme, July, 1877.

1881. FRENCH VERSE IN ENGLISH. 817

You reason right ; this frame already grey,
It is not I — ^It is my prisoning clay :

And in the books you read which are my creatures,
Your lovely eyes, in simplest truth I say,

Saw better me than when you saw my features.

To head the writers of the sixteenth century, I have selected tiliree
distinctive pieces from Sonsard : (1 ) a fragment as given in Auguste
Brachet's Morceaux Choiaia : —

My pleasant youth is passed, and broken
The strength of earlier days : for token
My teeth are Uack, and white my head ;
My nerves relaxed, so cold my body
The blood that in my veins was ruddy
Is nothing else than water red.
• ••••#

Farewell I I feel my days decline ;

No joy wherein my youth delighted

Stays with me now in age benighted,
Save only fire, and bed, and wine.

My head is drowsed, and deaf, and dreary,

With too long years and sickness weary.
And straitened on all sides am I :

Whether I stay or whether wander,

Always I look behind and ponder
If I shall see that Death draws nigh ;

Who, mayhap, at this hour betidetb,

To lead me low, to where abideth
Some Pluto 1 know nought about.

Whose cave yawns wide for every mortal,

A^th easy access at the portal.
But thence one cometh never out.

(2) a sonnet in which, for duty's sake and not for satisfaction's, I have
precisely retained the Alexandrines of the French : —

If I were Jupiter, Sinope, you should be

Juno, my spouse divine ; if I were king of ocean.

You should my Tethys be and guide the waters* motion

And for your palace home possess the sounding sea.

Or if the earth were mine, we two together, we
Would rule earth's fruitful breast with many a righteous notion :
Gar-mounted, golden-tressed, enshrined in man*s devotion.

Along the world you'd ride, a very deity I

But no I no god am I — can one like me be royal,
Whom Heaven has only made to be your servant loyal ?
At your fair hands alone I take mine enterprise.

You for my good and ill through life are set above me :

I will be Neptune, dear, if only you will love me,
Be Jupiter, be king, find wealth and gain the skies.

And (3) a verse quoted by Sainte-Beuve as a ^ couplet spirituel,' of which
he iBight have said as he did of another little verse, ' cela vaut nn
grand po^me : ' —

Vol. IX.— No. 51. 3 I

818 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY^ Mk^

Go forth, mj eong ! thj goal remember,

And, entering raj lady's chamber,

When her white hands thy kiss hath prest.

Say, if to health she would restore me,
« She need but do this favour for me.
To take and hide thee in her breast.

Two pastoiak of Yauquelin de la Freenaye, in their laie qnaiiii-
ness, may stand in contrast with that passionate fn^^meat of Boomd.

Among the lily flowers, to-day,

How deep asleep my Phillis lay 1

And where her pretty face was showing.

The little loves, a childish rout.

Wantoned and played in mirth about.
Seeing there the heavens reflected glowing.

I* gazed upon her loveliness,

Right worthy worship I confess,

Till fancy whispered : ' Foolish lover.

Why waste your time P for hours once lost

Are often sold at countless cost :
Oh ! rarely come such hours twice over/

Thereat I stoop my body low,

I creep along upon tiptoe

And Idssed her lips of crimson beauty:

So tasting such a good, I wis.

As is the part in Paradise
Of saintly souls devout in duty.

I have kept the tenses as in the original. In the next the changes
rung by the double rhymes, which, coarsely as they represent the ^ rimes
fiSminines,' I would on no account nor ever forego, will be still more
perceptible. In translating such poems as this one cannot boiM
to envying Chaucer and his contemporaries their store of qmn-
dissyllabic rhyme, in such plurals as < featys ' for ^ feats ' and the
mute final e, absolute correlative in look and sound to the feminine
rhyme of the French.®

Soon as, with neighbour hinds, Fve led
My flocks and herds from stall and shed,
111 go to-morrow, pretty Frances,

To sell a buUoek at the fair
And buy what serge the fashion fancies,

To make a kirtle for your wear.

There will I buy bxight knives for you,

And scissors, and a girdle too.

That purse with pincushion enhances ;

And these sliall be my g^fts. But smile.
And kiss me, I pray thee, pretty Fnnces,

Once and again this waiting whiie.

* When Chancer uses the ballade stanza (of more or lass than eightHaajk ^ ^
noteworthy that he confines himself to the legitimate tkne rhymes.

188r. FRENCH VERSE IN EmilSE, 81^

Then come to-xnorroweTening back^
When nifvht puts on her garb of black,
And fetch my presents, pretty Frances,

Here in this copse ; for surely thus
Not all your mother's prying glances

Shall guide her to discoTer us.

In English verse of the same period we have the same fanciful
substance, and the same grace in divers arrangements of double
and single rhymes. In its longing, as for its style and tone, we might
compare Constable's old song,

Diaphenia like the daffadowndilly,

with these pastorals of Vauquelin. ^ Comme presque partout, en poesies
fran9ai8es ce sont les toutes petites choses qui restent les plus jolies.'
But these poems should have come into our anthology at a some-
what later date, for the Avril of R^my Belleau, roughly handled too
often, must by no means be passed over without comment. And
anent this song I would explain further what I mean by the ^ tests of
usual reading and of music ' whereby I proposed to decide the due
accent of rhythm in English translations. This is clearest shown by
examples. Here is a verse of the original : —

Ayril, llionneur et des bois,

Et des mois ;
Avril, la douce esp^rance
Des fruits qui, sous le coton

Du bouton,
Nourissent leur jeune enfance.

Now what is noteworthy in that strophe (besides its exquisite

rhyming) is that it reads and sings ^ anapsestically ' (although it may

be hammered into ^spondees '), and there are at least two settings of the

French words to music where the accent is on the second and not

the first syllable throughout.^ My own translation of the song was

made for singing to the song^s own tune, but of course (being EngUsh)

there is only one way to accent it — as anapaestic — the syllabic coimt-

ing^ of French verse allowing choice. Mr. Lang^s translation^ however

fjEu;ile (counted apparently on the fingers and with none but single >

rhymes), will fit no fiimiliar musical setting, and (also being English)

will read only one way — this way :

April, pride of woodland way*
And glad days.

^'^here the original seems to dance it marches ; it is a dirge and not a
caroL .< I will give a few verses with the same beat that the original

' The itaditiDiifll obb in; tke JBtkoB du UnpijHiitS, «ad a beaatifol modem one
by Mr. A Thomas.

3x2

820 TBE mNETEENTH CENTURY. Mi;

has (decided by my teste of < usual reading and music ') to dtow that
it is a merrier measure thaa that : —

Sweet April, pride of tie w«ya

And the days,
Sweet April, hope that art bringiiig
To fruits on bougha, that beneath.

The bright sheath
Of bud and of bloom ate swinging.

Sweet April, thine is the hand

On thi. land,
That gathers from Nature's bosom
The harveet of many a scent.

Dewy eprent.
And balms earth and air with blossom.*
The courteous winds of thy prime

To our clime
Hake welcome every new-comer.
The swallows that fly from afar.

And that are
Tlie messengers of the summer.
The nightmgale with her song,

All night long,
Makes mnnc in lonesome meadows,
With many a trill of her love

From above,
As she aaga amid the shadows.
Hay boBsIa of fragrance to suit

Her ripe iVuit,
And prospering dewfall'a sweetness
And manna she hath without fail.

And the pale
Brown honey to be her witness ;
But I forego not my pnise

Of these days.
That lake their name of her glory.
Who rose, in beauty that grew

Ever new.
From foam of

So definitely 'anapEcstic' a re
of rhythm in French verse whic
man would hardly comprehend
cated French ear to the sway ol
At the risk of giving a poec
self bound to quote Passerat's
late at Mr. Lang's bauds, who gi
cally, and, for a vouder, with ;

■ In my rerEion pablished to mosic
all hazards be literal.

* The space at my disposal compel
Baif which I had Intended sboQld figu

1881. FRENCH VERSE IN ENGLISH. 821

Gounod's musical setting of these verses proves the real flexibility
of French poetry, for in the last couplet of each stanza he shifts the
accent, so that, in English^ one must shift one's rhythm to follow him.

Oh, hence with sleep^ and leave thy bed

This radiant morning !
For us the day her brows of red

Is just adorning.
And now that skies are fair and gay
In this enchanted month of May,

LoTe me, belovM !
In gladness let us quench our fire ;
There*s nought in life that*s worth desire

From it remov^.

. Come, through the woodlands walk with me,

Where boughs are shady ;
And hear the birds* sweet minstrelsy.

My lovely lady.
But listen ever over all
The nightingale rings musical

And never weary ;
Well lay aside our grief and care,
And with the birds be blithesome there.

Ere days be dreary.

Old Time, that heeds not lover*s tears,

EUith wings for flying,
And, as he flies, our crowning years

With him are hieing.
When wrinkles thou one day shalt see.
This burden to thy plaint will be :

' Ah I foolish creature,
WTiy have I ne'er proved beauty's sway
That time so swiftly stole away

From each fair feature P '

Hence ! tears and sorrows, waste your spite

On age that chides us ;
Stil young we cull the blossoms bright

That youth provides us.
And, now that skies are fair and gay.
In this enchanted month of May,

Love me, beloved I
In gladness let us quench our fire ;
There's nought in life that's worth desire

From it removed.*®

I have tried my hcud also at Passerat^s pretty vilarhelUy of which
Mr. Crosse speaks so highly ; and here, despite the exigencies of the

** To suit Qounod*s music, the refrain of the first and last verses maj run : —

' In delight let us quench our fire ;
Nought is in the world worth desire.'

And of the second verse : —

' Let us lay aside grief and care
For the nightingale's gladness there.'
The ihird is not set.

822 ^ THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. .1%

•rhyming, I have forborne to serve up compound and simple words*-
•* call ' and recall ' for instance — as rhymes, although inclining myself,
with Mr. Swinburne, to regard ^ recall ' as not only a v^ goodthjme
to * call,' but, with the exception of * call ' itself, quite the hed. I
dare hardly claim for this translation any merit but its absolute faith-
fulness of form.

0 my dove ! what doth befall her ?

Surely it is she I hear ;
Fain Td fly and fain recall her.

Plainest thou thy mate, poor brawler ?

I, alas I bewail my dear.
0 my dove ! what doth befall her P

If thy heart's wound grows not smaller,

So my faith is still sincere ;
Fain Td fly and fain recall her.

Louder still thy murmurings, all her
Charms lament. 1 weep her here.
0 my dove I what doth befall her ?

Since I see not nunc enthraller,
Nothing now can fair appear ;
Fain I'd fly and fain recall her.

Death ! no more my hearths appaller,

Take thy slave, I have no fear.
0 my dove what doth befall her ?
Fain Fd fly and fain recall her.

It was my intention, before going on to writers of the preseit
epoch, to offer several passages from Millevoye and others, where the
^ rimes masculines et feminines ' are interchanged at haphazard, for
there the license is greater ; but the necessity of giving several speci-
mens from Hugo and de Musset to get any 'taste of their quality'
induces me to cut down my examples (between the sixteenth and the
nineteenth centuries) to one fable of La Fontaine's, a few verses of
Gilbert's well-known ode, and two small ' camei ' of Andre Chenier's
finely finished work. The following fable is as well known, and so as
easily criticised, as any : The Monkey and the Cat: —

Bertrand the wily ape, and Master Puss the cat.
Together shared a room and had one common master ;
A merry mess indeed for the naughty beasts was that^ *
For^ one with the other, they feared no sort of disaster*
If anything was found spoilt in their lodging there.
No need, I wot, to lay the blame upon the neighbours :
Bertrand stole everything, while Pussy, for his share.
Directed not so much to mice as cheese his labours.
At the fireside one day our two young tricksters are.

Where chestnuts roast upon the bar.
To steal these chestnuts, sooth, would be a fine employment:
The knaves see thus their way to reap twofold enjoyment' —

1881. FRENCH VERSE IN ENGLISH. 829

To their own selvee doing good, and hann to some one else.
Said Bertrand then to Puss : ' Mj friend, to-day compels

Tour paws to victories sendceable :
Draw forth these chestnuts — come ! If Heaven had made me able

To pull out chestnuts from the grate.

Oh I cheery were the chestnuts' fate ! '
No sooner said than done: for Puss with claws began a

Baid in the most consummate manner :
Dispersed the ash a bit ; pulled back his paws in pain,

But put them in and in again.
Snatched out one chestnut first, then two, then stole a third.
' Crack I ' Bertrand's teeth meanwhile were heard.
At last a maid runs in : farewell, my boys ! But Puss,

They say, was scarce contented thus.

Neither, I think, is one at all among those princes

Who, flattered by this sort of thing,
On the provincial hot-bar winces

For doing service to a king.

These next verses from Gilbert's fGimous ode, AfUr Many Psalms^
form a striking contrast to this < naive ' fable ; but there is near a
hundred years between them. The stanzas I give are those quoted
by M. Contanseau : —

My heart before the God of innocence I Jay me.

The tears I weep He doth behold :
Hy sorrowing He hath healed, His shield and buckler stay me,

The wretched are His care of old.

Blest be Thy name, my God, who gavest me for guerdon

Innocence and its noble pride !
Thou who, to g^rd the sleep that must this body burden,

Wilt watch my desolate bier beside.

In life's gay feasting hall, a luckless reveller bidden

One hour I sit, one hour I die :
I die, and on the grave where soon I shall be hidden

No man will come to heave a sigh.

Hail ! fields I used to love : hail! hedges' leafy sweetness,

And lonely, laughing woodland prime ;
Heaven, canopy of earth, and nature's fine completeness.

All hail \ All hail, this one last time !

Ah ! long may those my friends behold your hallowed beauty,

Deaf though they be to my goodbyes !
Hay they die full of days, bewept of tender duty !

May one that loves them close their eyes I

While adhering strictly to the system proposed, I have fried in the
last two excerpts to change the tone, so as to give somewhat of Ik
Fontaine's colloquial ease of style in the one, and of Gilbert's safl
eamestnefls in the other. In the following passages from Gh^nier I
shall fhrther try to contrast the artificial and the simple, the sent!-

824 THE NIHBTEENTH CENTURY. May

mental and the pathetic. This is the twelfth ^ fragment ' from the
elegies, a translation itself from Ovid and not an original piece.

Fly hence, fly hence, my songs ! in yoa my hopes abide,
Fly hence to touch her heart and disallow her pride !
Make moan and supplicate, implore, till peradirenture
At length she suffer you before her face to enter.
Then go ! and at her knees declare the dole ye bring.
With ashes on your brows bowed down in sorrowing ;
And see no more again this wilderness my garden.
Until from her sweet mouth ye bring me gracious pardon.

And this the fourth fragment of the Poesies diversea : —

From native country torn, where friends and parents are.
Forgotten upon the earth, from all my kinsfolk far.
Oast hither by the sea on these rough shores that breaketh,
Hardly the happy name of France my lips forsaketh.
Lone at the darkling hearth I cower and weep my fate,
I pine for death, I count the moments while I wait,
With never a single friend to come with welcome cheery
To seat him at my side, and seeing my face so dreary.
Hang bathed in tears of grief downnlrooping to my breast.
Say ' What's the matter then P ' the while my hand he pressed.

The plaintive tone of this last quotation is amply accounted for by
the comment that follows the lines preceding the fragment, to the
effect that they were written ^ couche et souffrant ' on the steamer
between Calais and Dover. They are none the less touching that their
instigation is from sea-sickness, and they gain force when one remem-
bers what the company of a friend was to Chenier on his death-day in
the last trial when he stood with Boucher on the scaffold and thej
recited together the first scene from Bacine's Aridrama^^ So
fiiendEhip stole away from death his sting, and enthusiasm his pain:
< Tl est si beau de mourir jeune I ^

T cannot, be it understood, insist upon this method of translation as
applied to the drama. The difference between a French and Eoglish
Alexandrine, spoken, is too marked. They are as different indeed as
the look of the lines. Their ^ sing-song ' in English unfits them quite
for purposes of speech, unless in purely rhetorical passages, where the
effect is too well known ; but one has only to hear the swiftly-uttered
French Alexandrines (of fiacine for instance) declaimed by Mdlle.
Sarah Bernhardt, to perceive that they are not weightier than our fiill
iambic lines, always the best mould for dramatic speech in this lan-
guage. With the sonnet too in these Alexandrines we shall never be
pleased, although its shortness and the ^ distraction ' afforded by the
arrangement of its rhymes may lessen the tedium. I have alreadv
given one from Bonsard (doing some violence to myself, as I cannot
but prefer, the French sonnet rendered, as Mr. Lang has rendered iU
into the familiar English form), and I shall give another from de

1881. FRENCH VERSE IN ENGLISH. 825

Musset, as well as one in very short metre, and even a scene from his
play A quoi rSvent lesjeunesjiUes ? where the monotony of the rhymed
Alexandrines — intolerable else — is broken by a lyrical measure. Nor
do such simple ballads as Beranger's repay this form of translation,
more of the spirit of them being kept when there is no question of
erudite order, and the rhymes fall as things of chance. This is what
I meant at starting when I said that the literal method of reproduc-
tion was better instanced in * fine ' work than * broad-'

In the present century there is such bewildering store of matter
that I have decided to insert here only examples from Victor Hugo
and Alfred de Musset^ at once the test and the terror of a translator ;
but I shall separate them by one metrical study from Th^opfaile
Gautier, and one from the work of a modem French poetess, the Com-
tesse de Castellana, as severally representative of the French styles of
finished work and songs for singing.^^ Here then are my examples
from Victor Hugo, without ado of needless introduction.

1. From The Eaatems — * The Veil,' a poem of great concentra-
tion and full of local colour. Its motto is from Shakespeare : ^ Have
you prayed to-night, Desdemona ? '

THE BIBTEB.

TVhat ails^ \rliat ails you so, my brothers,

That thus you bend your brows in care P
Like lamps funereal darkness smothers,

The glances from your eyelids glare.
Your belts hang all unloosed around you,

Already thrice have leapt in play
The falchion blades wherewhh you have bound you.

Half glancing from their sheaths away.

THE ELDEST BBOTHEB.

Have you not lifted up that veil of yours to-day P

THE BI6TEB.

Hetuming from the bath, my brothers,

My lords, returning from the bath,
Hidden from gaze of Giaours and others

— The rough Albanians — ^in my path,
Just as I passed the mosque, I mind me,

In mine uncovered palanquin,
I loosed the swathing folds that bind me,

And let warm airs of noonday in.

THE SECOBD BBOTHEB.

A man passed then ? a man in caftan dyed with green.

THE BIBTEB.

Tis very like ; but all his boldness

Has never seen my features bare . . .
But look, you speak with tones of coldness,

With coldness you are muttering there.

" My intention was to have added one example, if not more, from my versions
of Kadand's songs, but as some at least of these may be found elsewhere published
to music I have decided to omit them.

«26 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. May

Must you have blood? I swear that no man
Could see — yes, by your souls I am right.

Pardon I my brothers, shield a woman
Who stands so helpless in your sight I

THE THIRD BBOTHEB.

Methinks the sun was red at sunsetting to-night.

THE BIBTEB.

Pardon I what have I done P Oh pardon I

God t there are four wounds in my side !
Nay ! by your knees I fall thus hard on . • •

My veil I my veil so white and vride I
Ply not my hands this blood is staining ;

Brothers, assist my faltering breath ;
Across mine eyes whose glance is waning

Extends itself the pall of death.

THE FOUETH BBOTHEB.

A veil at least is that, no hand upgathereth.

2. From the Autumn Leaves : —

Before the songs I joy in singing,

So young, such wafts of perfume bringing.

Endured the brunt the world allows,
Far from the crowd and all its crushing.
Ah I how they bloomed, a garland blushing,

How green and fragrant, on my brows I

Now torn from off the tree that beareth,
Flowers which the blighting northwind teaieth,

— ^Like a dream's leavings pitiable—
They wander, scattered hither and thither,
In dustiness and mud to wither.

At the winds' and the waters' will*

And like dead leaves in autumn showered,
I see them, of their bloom deflowered,

Blown all along the barren lea ;
The while a crowd that presses round me,
And treads to earth the wreath that crowned me,

Goes laughing at the naked tree.

And the first four verses of the Prayer for all (Ora pro nobis):—

My daughter, hence and pray ! see, night is steaHngo'er us,
Golden the planet dawns to pierce the clouds before us:

Grey mist now veils the hills — ah I faint, ah ! vague are they;
And scarce one distant wheel rolls through the shadows. listen I
All seek their rest at home, and where the highways glisten.

The trees to evening winds shake out the dust of day.

And twilight, opening forth night's realm the stars that hideth,
Bids each bright orb declare where each in light abideth ;

The gradual fringes red in western skies decay ;
Like silver in the shade, the night of waves is showing ;
' Furrows, and hedge,' and wood, all indistincter growing,

Until the traveller misdoubts him of the way.

1881. FRENCH VERSE IN ENGLISH. 827

The day for evil is, for weariness and anger. '

Pray : for the nigbt is here serene in calm and languor !

The shepherd old, the winds through ruinous towers that sweeps
The waterpools, the flocks, with hoarse and broken bleating,
All sufier, all complain. The land at length is treating

Her long fatigue to lovoi to worship and to sleep.

And angels at this hour unfold to babes their treasures.
The while we haste away to seek our empty pleasures,

And Utile children now, with eyes upturned abore,
Bared feet and folded hands, upon the pavement praying.
All at this selfsame hour, one selfsame prayer are saying ;

Pray God forgive our sins — ' our Father' God of love I

And 3. Frdm the Songs of Twilight three pieces of diverse
metre, which illustrate three distinct phases of Victor Hugo's lyrical
genius — the song ; —

Hope, child ! to-morrow ! Hope I and then again to-morrow.

And then to-morrow still ! Trust in a future day.
Hope ! and each morn that skies nei^ light from dawn shall borrow.

As God is there to bless, let us be there to pray.

Our faults, poor angel mine, are cause of our affliction*

Perhaps if on our knees we rest incessant thus,
When on the innocent God pours His benediction.

And the repentant, last He will remember us.

A portion of the metrical study — Momvng — where the value of this
plan of rendering should be particularly apparent : —

Glances morning hither.

Now the shade is past ;
Dream and fog fly thither

Where night goes at last ;
Open eyes and roses
Which the darkness closes ;
And the sound that grows is

Nature waking fast.

Murmuring all and singing.

Hark I the news is stirred.
Hoof and creepers clinging.

Smoke and nest of bird )
Winds to oaktrees bear it,
Streams and fountains hear it
Every breath and spirit

As a voice is heard.

All takes up its story,

Child resumes his play,
Hearth its ruddy glory.

Lute its lifted lay.
' Wild or out of senses, -
Through the world immense if
Sound as each commences

Schemes of yesterday."

'' So slight quotation means no nndervalning of the poem, but merely that I
fndge to such short lines the space they occupy.

828 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. May

And the Lowly Flower — a lovely specimen of pure * poet's poetry :'—

To tlie light butterfly said thus the lowly flower :

* Fly not so I
Here am I fain to rest (how diverse b our dower !)

Thou canst go !

' Yet is love ours, we dwell far from each human creature

— ^None are nigh —
And yet is likeness ours, for both are flowers by feature,
Thou and L

' But me, alas ! the earth enchains while wind conveys thee—

Gruel care I
I long to embalm thy wing with scent upbreathed to pnise thee
Through the air.

* But no ! too far thy flight, mid flowerets of the meadow

Lies thy way,
While lonely, round my stem I watch my turmng shadow
All the day.

* Thou fliest and thou retum'st, then fliest to shine to-morrow

Otherwheres,
And «very dawn again beholdest me for sorrow
Bathed in tears.

' Oh ! that our love may pass some days in peaceful gliding.
Sovran mine !
Take thou a root like me, or give me wings dividing
Just as thine t '

Eirvoi TO • • •

Roses and butterflies, the tomb must reunite us

Soon or late.
Why then await the tomb P Let some brief while delight us,

Mate with mate.

Some brief while heavenwards bent, if flight thy gentle pleasare

High in air!
Or, in the meadows if thy chalice spills its treasoie

Even there 1

Where*er thou wilt ! what care have I ? yea, be thou breath or

Oolouring,
Butterfly gaily dyed, or flower in fostering weather.

Bloom or wing !

To live together ! this the one prime needful leaven

For life*s worth ;
Afterwards we can choose at hazard, if in heayen

Or on earth I

The Emarix et CaToSes of Gautier, which form a most attractive
and tantalising subject for translation, have aflforded me the next
poem upon Art. It is the one selected as sample of them by Hr.
James in his interesting volume of essays on Frevich Poets and
Novdiata^ where he speaks of it in very fortunate terms as almtst

1881. FRENCH VERSE IN ENGLISH. 829

* tinged with inteUectual passion,' for ^it is the distinct state-
ment,' he says, ' of Gautier's intellectual belief • • • aesthetic convic-
tion that glows with a moral fervour.'

Tes, the work comes excelling
From substance to the hold

Bebelling,
Verse, marble, onyx, gold.

No false constraint I crave for :
But Muse, to walk, you need

To have your
Buskin to fit indeed.

Fie on an easy metre !
Tis like too large a shoe

AU feet are
Able to get into !

Nay, sculptor, do not linger
O'er clay jou idly mould

With finger.
While mind stands out acold !

Fight with Oarrara*s quarries,
With Paros stone that sure

And rare is ;
These g^rd the outlines pure

Sicilian bronze procure you.
What features sweet or fierce

Allure you.
Firmly therethrough shall pierce.

In reins of agate follow
A face with skilful hand :

Apollo
Shall glance at your command.

Fly water-colour painting,
And fix your pigments fast

From fainting
At the hot oven's blast.

Make the blue Siren songsters,
Twisting their tails awry ;

The monsters
Of blazoned heraldry.

Or in their threefold glory
The Virgin and her Son ;

Or story
Of what the cross bath done.

All pass : to art Fate giveth
Long life alone of all ;

Outliveth ''

The bust a city's fall.

J

8a» THE NINETEENTE CSNTUUY. X«j

Hard ooia ft workoiaB 8te«b uft
Out of earth's priaoning

Beyeals us
The features of a king.

The very gods aie waning :
Lo I still verse rojal is

Bemaining
Past brasen iiuages.

Be thy work carved on, g^yed in,
. So shall vague dreams sublime

Be saved in
Blocks that outrival Time.

That is an instance where I have felt myself bound to he not
only rhythmically but syllabically accurate throughout. If one's ears
are not charmed as with Gautier's own music, one sees at least the
precise shape and size of the poem, and apprehends its laboured and
exquisite * finish,* which no other form would quite avail to show.

I have chosen the following translation of Madame de Castel-
lana's Vans et Moij as a short and facile sample of the typical modem
song, to contrast with Gautier's elaboration, and introduce some echo
of a special feminine charm :—

Your eyes, serene and pure, have deigned to look upon me,
Your hand, a fluttering bird, has lingered in my hands;

And yet the words I would — alas I — have all foregone me,
Because your way and mine lie through such alien lands.

You are the riang sun that fiur day follows after.
And I the deep of night, the gloomy clouds and grey :

You are a flowV, a star, a burst of tuneful laughter,
I am December drear, and you the merry May!

You steep yourself in rays and breathe the breath of roses,
For you are dawn of day and I the twilight set ;

Needs must we say farewell, ere time the why discloses.
For you are very Love, and I am Love's regret.

We have reached de Musset at last ; for though he should perhaps
have preceded Victor Hugo as the past precedes the present, he seems
always the youngest of all poets by reason of the pervading air of
youth that hangs about his verses, sad or gay. He was spoken of
more fitly and fairly as a < child (than as a dwarf)-Byron.' I had ]ie[ say
much about his work, had I space left to speak of him, but he speaks
best for himself, eo I would refer my readers to the book of Mr.
James's that I have already mentioned (in an allusion to Gautier) for
an appreciative and sufficient English essay upon his qualities as a

poet.

The following ^ impromptu,' made for answer to the question of

Louise Bertin» ^What is poetry?' may serve well enough £>r

im. FRSNCH VERSE W ENGLISH. 831*

starting-point. Though it has perhaps least of de Musset^s felicity of
musical expression, its intention is expressive of his own.

To scout mere memories^ and Ibid the ihoiiglit be holden
. Kept balanced ever safe, on some bright centre golden^

Nor once let wander thence, though fierce and quick it seem ;

To g^ve eternity to a single moment's dream ;

To love the true, the fair, and seek for their fMtion,

While hearkening deep at' heart the echoes of his vision ;

To sing, laugh, weep, alone, without an aim, at chance ;

And from a single word, a sm£le,a. sigh^ e glance.

To forge his perfect wwk, most temble, mo«t tender,

To turn a tear to a pearl of splendour :
Herein is manifest the poet's living fire.
This is the good his goal, his life and lids desire.

There could scarcely be better witness of the truth of this — taking
the word * poetry,' of course, in a limited lyrical sense — than any one of
his own songs, this for instance : —

Warrior fair, to the battle-field going.
What afe you doing
So far from me P
Do you not see that the dark night is lonely.
In the world only
Is grief to dree P

You that believe that a love once forsaken
Her flight has taken
From memories,
Heyday ! heyday I you that seek where fame's crown is.
Look! your "renown is
Like smoke that flies.

Warrior fair, to the battle-field going,
What are you doing
Far from my feet P
I must go weep, whom you told when beguiling.
How that my smiling
Was all too sweet.

Or this, which might be Moore : —

When one has lost, by sad annoyance,
One's hope of joyaunce
And one's delight.
The remedy for melancholy
Is music holy

And beauty blight t

More wins and more compels our duty
A face of beauty

Than strong man armed.
And best to song our griefs we render.

Song sweet and tender _;

Erewhile that chaimpd I . .

QxrtliiB^ «hk2l.mii^b& Heine: —

852 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. %

See, my neighbour's window curiam

Moves as if she lifted it I
And she will, I*m almost certain.

Take the air for a bit.

Now the casement open blowing — *

Ah I I feel mj breath to catch.
For perhaps she would be knowing

If I am on the watch.

But, alas 1 'tis idle dreaming;
For my neighbour loves a lout,
. And it is the wind that's seeming
To push the curtain out.

After three songs I cannot give less than two sonnets, in contrasted
rhythmical form. I have spoken of hoth already. The first is the
au lecteur of the Premieres PoSdes : —

This book has all my youth inside it;

I made it ere I gave a thought.
That*s clear enough, even I descried it,

And might have changed it, had I sought.

But while man changes far and wide, it

Were best, methinks, to alter nought.

Hence the poor bird of passage, brought
To rest at last where God shall guide it 1

AVhoe er thou art that readest me,
Bead all thou canst read patiently,

And Idll thou hast read me spare thy curses.
My first songs are a child's, in sooth.
The next but singing of a youth.

The last are scarcely f ullgrown verses.

And this next, an early poem too, I have preferred to any I liave
translated from his later volume as more distinctive of de Mosset,bere
rather as a Parisian than a poet : —

How well I love this first keen shivery winter feeling !

The frozen stubble, stiff beneath the sportsman's tread,
The magpie, where o'er fields the gamer scent is stealing,

And deep in ancient halls the wakening embers red;

Now is the time for town I Oh, just a year has fled
Since I returned and saw great Louvre her dome revealing,
Queen Paris with her smoke no goodliest charm concealing

(Still rings the drivers' cry, as fast their horses sped).

I loved this ashen time, these passers by the river,
Beneath her thousand lamps, reclined as sovereign ever 1
I came to winter back — and back, my life, to thee 1

Oh I in thy languorous glance I felt to swoon already ;

I hailed thy very walls. • . For who could tell, my lady.
That in so little while thine heart had changed for me ?

I am very sorry to he ahle to offer no better substitute for 'Madame'
than * my lady.' * Bad's the best,' and * my lady,* if a little vulgar, if

188 1 • FRENCH VERSE IN ENGLISH. 838

fit least nearer the mark than ^my queen.* Apropos of this ^Madame/
one may plead, for a certain sameness of rhyme that must come with
English dissyllables, no less an excuse than the aamenesa of rhyme in
French* One is pretty certain to 6nd ^ ame ' where one sees a line
that ends * Madame,' and if it is not * ame ' it is < flamme/

I must add one rondeau of de Musset's, though of the Bondeau-
form itself I need say nothing after Mr. Gosse : this example is fuller
of assonance than a rondeau is bound to be, for the refrain is related
to the lines (as in another rondeau in the same volume) instead of
being wholly independent of them. I have tried to reproduce this
assonance in my English version.

There never was, my heart, a sweeter aching
Than thine, when Manon sleeps in mine embrace !
The pillow all her treases^ perfume has ;

In her fair breast I hear her heart still waking,
While dreams divert her to and fro that pass.

80 sleeps the wild rose in the summer, as
A palace for tbe bee her petals making :
I rock her, I, methinks a dearer place

There never was !

But the day dawns, and rosy mom, outshaking
Her spring^e flowers, enchants the winds. Alas !

With comb in hand, her pearldd eardrops taking,
Manon forgets me quite before the glass.

Ah ! love with no to-morrow and no forsaking

There never was !

It is because he is the poet of youth, I suppose, that one finds oneself
smiling over de Musset's sorrows, and growing grave over his laughter :
for after it the veil must be lifted up which he never lived to lift,
the illusions dispelled which, for his muse at least, were fresh until
the end.

I had meant to give the whole of the first scene from his charm-
ing comedy A quoi rivent lea jeuneafiUea ? rendered in this tentative
fashion, but want of space forbids it, and I am fain to detach some
mere lines of the delightful idyll, just for the sake of hazarding the
interpolated song, surely the loveliest of all de Musset's singing :

NiKOV. [Alonej drawing the holt"]
With spurs of silver and a cloak of velvet stuff!
A chain ! and then a kiss I A strange adventure rather.

[She Ut$ down her hair.
This headdress suits me ill — ^my hair*s not long enough.
Bah ! I had guessed aright !— it doubtless was my father.
Ninette is such a goose t — He saw her passing there.
Yes ! 'tis quite clear, his child, what harm in kissing her P
How well my bracelets look I [She undoes theni]

Of that young man I*m thinkiog,
The stranger who comes here to-morrow night to dine,
A husband whom they mean to get us, I opine.
How droll it sounds ! I feel even now a sort of shrinking.

Vol. IX.— No. 61. 3 K

884 TSS NINETEENTH CENTURY. M»j

WluitgowiiBhalllputoDf [Sht/oatobtd]

I tbink a lummer dren.
No : winter, for that gives tu sir that's more befitting—
No; munmeT, that looks yoiuKt ^"^ ^^ studied leas.
Between us two, no doubt, at table be irill be nttiiig,
VLj aMer please bim best P — bah I alwajB — we shall see I . . .
So, spun of silver and a velvet cloak had he I
Heav'ns I for sd autumn nigbt this beat is most oppreasiux-
I must sleep anjwaj. IKd not I hear a sound P
lis Flora coming back ; no — no one, that's a blesang.
Tra la, tra deri da I What peace in bed is fouod I
How hideous my aunt looked, in thosa old tufts of feather,
Last night at supper time! How white it is, mj arm I
Tra deri da — moustache 1 — ray eyeUda close together —
He ' stnuoB her to bis breast, then fliea as in alarm.'

[£As drwoiet. Through the mttdoa a guUar m htard and a wkc lujt.

Thb Voicb. Ninon, Ninon, why pass thy life in sorrow P

Fast fliea the hour, and day treads hard oo day,
A rose to-night, and fallen to-morrow,
How canst thou live that hast no lover ? say I

NisoK. ^Awaking] Is this a dream P methought, outfflde one sang his Ut.
Thb Voiox (mtiout). Condder thee, thou maiden youthful,
Thine heart beata ; thy bright eyes are trathfiil ;
To-day thy springtide is, Ninon, to-morrow frost.
What ! thou that hast no star, must thou at sea be tossed f
Journey without a ho(^ ? go trumpetleas to battle P
What ! thou that hast no love, of living wilt thou prattle P
I, for a little love, would lay my lifetime down ;
Yea, lay down life for nought, were life without love's crown.
NmoK. No : I am not deceived — full strangely sounds the mnging !
And — how to account for this t — the singer knows my name.
Perhaps she too is called ' Ninon ' that b his flame,
Thb Voicb. What boots it that to^ay should end, a new day biingisg—
When all the heart is ringing
With life-tide mutual proved P
Blossom and blow, young flowers t If death should spoD yonr gitmuv^,
> Our life is but a sleep, and love its sweetest dreaming.
And well you shall have lived,

I have scarcely given as yet i
where it rings real, for, of eoun
enough. In the following verses I
haps at its strongest : —

Yes : she was &ii, if 1

If Night the dusky
(Carven of Michel An

Can be called fair t

Yes : she was good, if

By hands that give
Without Qod's seeing

If gold makes alms

1881. FRENCH VERSE IN ENGLISH. 835

Yes : and she thought, if when there rings
Sound of a sweet voice tuned to laughter '

Like the light brook that bounds and ongs.
We dare to trust that thought lies after ;

Yes : and she prayedi if two &ir eyes

Now to the ground their glances bending,
And now uplifted to the skies,

Can be called prayer without offending ;

Yes : she had smiled, if in the grove
Young flow'is could burst the bonds that fret them,

And open to the freshness of

The winds that pass and that forget them.

Yes : she had wept, if hands we lay
Crossed cold on heart that heaves not even,

Had felt but once in human clay
Such dews of grace as fall from Heaven.

Yes : she had loved, were't not that pride,

Like some poor useless lamp, uplighted
To bum a funeral bier beside.

Watched always at her heart benighted ;. •

Yes : she is dead, whose lips were stirred

By no live breath to living glory :
Out of her hands has dropt the story,

Whereof she never read a word.

For the verses to PSpa, the Rappelle-toi^ and other test pieces,
I had hoped in vain to find room ; they will, however, appear else-
where in company, I hope, with some completer version of de
Musset^s longer pieces. With regard to the verses To i/uana, without
which no selection from his writing can be quite characteristic — for
they are the breath of his very self — I have something more to say.
It is not worth while to speak of most translations of them ; but, at the
risk of bruising what is too fragile to be so dealt with, I must say
thus much of Mr. Lang's (and we must bear, in mind that it is the
only sample of de Musset's work in his collection) : he has sacrificed
the "poet to the production (in his name) of a graceful little English*
poem — some pretty verses of regret — ^without one spark of the origi-
naFs distinctive qualities. For the keynote of the French poem is^
its irony and smart. The very first line of it, " 0 ciel, je vous revois
— Madame I ' contains a change from passionate surprise to courteous^
satire — ^indeed in his work of this sort, where these are not, there is
not de Musset. So here is my Hteral, if I grant unmusical, version) ^^

1* That I may not seem to speak with no due deference of Mr. Lang, let me-
oonfess that I like his poem— for it is his — ^hnt that the first line of it, ' Again I see-
you, ah my queen * is no equivalent for the line quoted above ; that ' o'6tait, je crois^
r6t6 deraicx* is not 'How the last summer days were blest;* that 'm» vieillOk
maitxesse* • • .'is not /How old we are ere spring be green' — nor 'je m*^veillais,
touB lea qoarb d'heore ' 'all night I lay awake.' Least of all is the, wonderful Un^

3k2

THE NINETEENTH CENTUHY. Mij

Oh Heavena I I see thee Bgua, my ladj 1
Of all my soul hu lored slreadj

The first and Ux the tendereat yet.
Say, doee your heart recall our alory ?
For me I keep it in ila glory :

Last summer — if I don't foiget I

Ah Madam, when we think upon it.
That foolish time of ours that's gone, it

Escapes as if it had not been.
Old ttiistresa mine, do you remember,
— It aeems a jest I — come next December,

I shall be twenty, and jou eighteen ?

'Well, well ! my Iots, I do not flatter ;
And if my rose be pale, what matter,

So she retain her beauty's pride P
Ohnd I never yet in Spanish city
AVas head so empty, nor so pretty —

Do you recall that lummer-tide ?

Our erenings, and our famous quarrel f
You gave me then, to point the moral,

Your golden necklace for my bliss.
And three long nightP, on my existence,
I wokeateach ten minutei^ distance

Only to see it and to kiss I
And your confounded old duenml
That daylong frolic of Gehenna —

Hy pearl of Andaluiia,
While your young lover died of pleasure,
Tbe old Marquis, jealous of bis treasure.

Of en^7 Dearly died that day !
Ah lady I but beware, I pray you.
This love of ours, for all you say, you

Shall find again in other days.
The heart that once your spell encbuneth,
Juana, no other love profaneth ;

None vast enough to fill tout pbce.
'What do I Bay F The i
How ahould I wrestle w

Whose waters have U'
Oto«e eyes and arms anii
Farewell, my life I Fai

This the world's motii
^nme flies; and on bis ta
The flying feet of spring
And life, and days we h

All fast upborne as ea.

Hope and the fame fo]

You, whose sweet hei
And I, my love, that loi

'Adieu ma vie, adieu madame,' ■ Farewell, t
of Hi, Lang's poem is so nice that it seen:
'•pray,' and that ' yon that not remember it

1881. FRENCH VERSE IN ENGLISH. 837

Not but that de Musset could write a farewell, when he would, with-
out satire or fever ; only then it was a better thing than Mr. Lang's
Juana, having less repining in its tone and more strength and more
love. That he could write such a * goodbye ' let this last quotation
show. Every nuance of the metre, even the halting of it, has its
value, and I shall reproduce them carefully. The whole of the little
serious poem is a sigh, and it blinds the eyes for further reading.

Farewell ! for while this liie hesets me

With you I feel I shall not dwell.
Grod passing caUs you and forgets me,

In losing you I learn I loved you well.

No tears, no plaint all unavailing.

What is to come I may not rue.
So, speed the vessel for your sailing,

And I will smile when it departs with you I

Forth fare you, full of hope ; high-hoarted

You will return again to shore ;
But those who suffer most when you're departed.

You will not see them any more.

Farewell I You go a pleasant dreaming,

To drink your till of dangerous delight ;
The star that now upon your path is beaming

Shall dazzle yet awhile your Tristful sight.

One day you will learn, to your profit^

To prize a heart that feels for one,
The good we find in knowing of it,

And . . . what we suffer when it's gone.

Such as they are, the translations which form the bulk of this
paper are my work, selected almost at haphazard from a quantity of
material which might perhaps have afforded me fairer samples, but
that I have chosen them rather for their accuracy than intrinsic skill*
They were put together at various times and at the request mostly of
musicians ; that there should have been such demand is their sanc-
tion, and there needs always, to my mind, be some such warrant for
the existence of translations at all. * In the world they fill up a place
which may be better supplied, when' — ^from whatever cause, the
spread of taste or the much-vaunted culture — ^ they have made it
empty.'

WiLLIAH M. HaBDIKGB.

838 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. May

RELIGIOUS FAIRS IN INDIA.

Chauceb's Canterbury Tales have made us familiar with the p3-
grimages of the middle ages in Europe. Those of the Hindus con-
tinue now what they were in the time of Chaucer and for centimes
before. It is chiefly in autumn that the fairs on the sacred streams
are held, particularly on the banks of the Granges and the Nerbadda.
The places are consecrated by poetry or tradition, as the scoie of
some divine work or manifestation.

These fairs, and the pilgrimages to them, are at once festive and
holy. Every person who comes enjoys himself as much as possiUe.
At the same time they all seek purification from sin by bathing aiid
praying in the holy stream, just as the merry pilgrims to the shrine
of St. Thomas at Canterbury sought absolution by praying at his
shrine. It is expected of course that laudable resolutions will be
made, at the same time, for the future, and if those resolutions are
not kept, why, humanity is frail : —

Thaniie longen folk to gpon on pilgrimages,

And palmers for to seeken straunge strondes.

To feme halwes/ koathe in sondry londes ;

And specially, from every schires ende

Of Engelond, to Cantorbuiy they wende,

The holy blissful martjr for to aeeke,

That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke.

The motives and the procedure are similar in the East now.

Vishnu is supposed to descend into the nether world (Putal) to
attack and oppose Indur. There he stays four month s^ from Jane
to October, and, during those months, festivities are suspended. But
at the date of the reappearance, which depends upon the moon, all the
world of Hinduism assembles with glee to hail his resurrection. The
intense heat has passed away. All nature is rejoicing.

* When the mela^ or religious fair, is about to take place, the mff-
chants congregate first with their wares. They establish themselves
under shady trees, and expose their goods for ssde. Horses, elephants,
camels, bullocks, buffaloes, cows and donkeys ; different kinds of
cloth, ornaments, sweetmeats, and a variety of wares are thus exposed
for sale. Thousands congregate around. The women are no longer

1 To distant holy places known in snndry lands.

1881. RELIGIOUS FAIRS IN INDIA. 839

veiled, and seem glad to have the opportunity of seeing and being
seen. Happy excitement characterises the family for days before the
great event. Food is prepared. If food be prepared with ghee
(clarified butter) or oil, it may be removed to any distance, and
eaten anywhere, provided it be not profaned by unholy hands. It is
jyukka food. But food not wholly dressed in ghee or oil is kutcha^
or kachcha^ and would be rendered unclean by removal.

Attired in their best clothes — the women with all their ornaments
on — they start in every kind of conveyance, but chiefly in carts drawn
by oxen, for the scene of the fair. Some have conveyances for their
women and children only, and walk themselves. A few on horses,
camels, or elephants, are seen wending their way along. The women
are still veiled and concealed. But, once arrived at the happy goal,
all such restraints are thrown aside. * If a scrupulous respect and
delicacy towards the female sex are points that denote 'civilisation,'
said Sir Thomas Munro, and with truth, ^ then the Hindus are not
inferior in civilisation to the people of Europe.'

Hundreds of thousands assemble at some of these fairs. The
women display themselves in all the bravery of their fine and many-
tinted attire, with tinkling ornaments. Children are dressed in their
finest clothes, with gold and silver rings about their wrists and ankles.
Men with white or dyed turbans and caps, mostly too with long coats
and waist-cloths, display themselves to the best advantage, usually
<5arrying swords, or staves, or ornamental sticks. Only the few com-
paratively have tents, the families usually encamp imder the mango
trees, their conveyances near, and they sing and chat merrily round
their fires at night. The Hindus learned first from the Mohammedans
to conceal and veil their women, and the practice soon became fashion-
able amongst them. But at religious gatherings that practice is
altogether renounced, and they revel in their new-found freedom,
and know how to use it.

Bathing and the reciting of special prayers, or names of the Deity,
in the water, are the most usual acts of devotion at these Taelaa. As
fioon as the bathing is over, they walk to the temple close by, bow to
the idol, repeat a few short ejaculatory prayers or invocations, and then
retire, making an offering as they go. They constantly repeat the
xiame of some deity, such as * Bam, Bam,' with m6notonous iteration,
as they go to and return from the bathing-place.

Whilst the majority of the members of a family are gone to the
bathing-place, one or two are left behind to take care of the property
brought with them, for thieves and rogues abound in the radaa as
elsewhere. When the morning's devotions and meal have been
"finished, the men go strolling about to see the fun of the fair, the
women remaining behind, sitting under the trees, gazing at the
«mwonted sights, and often singing to beguile the monotony of the day.
Children are often lost at these mdas^ some snatched and drowned in

bio THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. May

bathing by diver-thieves, for the sake of their ornaments, othen lost
or kidnapped. The custom of putting large quantities of gdd or
silver on the children, in the shape of ornaments, renders itneoeaeaiy
that they should be well watched. Some of the thieves dive skil-
fully under the water, and carry off a poor wondering child before its
guardians or itself become aware of its danger. An alligator is iha
said to have been the destroyer.

Would any one grudge tbem the pleasures of their annual mdal^via Mi.
Routledge). Perhaps it is not refined, perhaps not very enlightened; kit tbej
evidently enjoy it, as they sit and laugh and chat at their tent doors. For two
long miles it is one perpetual scene of — what shall we call it P — enjoyment Yes,
without doubt, it is enjoyment, and of a kind that we faaTo no right to interfieaeintk,
for it is as staid, as i^espectable, as decorous, as an Exeter Hall meeting. Nobodj
runs against anybody else intentionally. No rude boys jostle the women, as they ^k)
in High Street, Islington, London. The women, tired as many of them seemed to
be, carried big babies, some of whom could have walked as well as their mothen,
and evidently carried them too without a murmur. Low, debasing, hnitaliaDg!
Very likely, but we saw. nothing of all that. A remarkable phase of hiimi&
nature, resting on old traditions of old sacred books, extending back tfaioii^ tki
mist of Ages, and yet containing as little of the sacred and the solemn as it is ei^
to conceive in the way of a festival. Of course one ought to be shocked at the
Jugganauth Gar. It is proper and respectable to be so, and we are reallj im
sorry that, after trying our best to be so, we could not be shocked. We tried
hard, looking as gruff as possible, tried to feel sour too, but t£ie sight of those wet
lads and lassies growing up, of those men and women, happy after their otb
fashion for a day or two, drove all the grimness and g^vity away. One tfaiog
alone we missed of the attractions of an English &ir — there was not one grog^dwp,
not one tent licensed to sell foreign and British spirits, wholesale or retail Stnngt
to say, too, over the whole line of road, amid many thousands of revellers, ve did
not see one person tcorse/or Uquor,

One of the most picturesque of these gatherings is the Pokor&ir,
near Ajmere, in Bajputana. The lake of Pokur is a holy lake, and the
various classes that assemble there in October every year to wish
away their sins are picturesque and varie^ted. Gentlemen Thakois
come from the wilds of Marwar and Bikanir, portly Seths from Jey-
pore, ferocious-looking Afghans from beyond the Khyber Pass,attena«
ated opium-eaters from Malwa, camel-breeders from Sind,Par8i8fion
Nussirabad, and British officers, civil, political, and military, from all
the neighbouring country, assemble here ; for devotion some, and
some for trade, and some to satisfy curiosity, like ourselves. Mitfsolr
man, Hindu, and Christian all meet here, and greet each other with
affected cordiality.

The lake and city of Pokur are situated in a vast tract of aasd
entered from the AraveUi range. The shining lake, with its manj
twinkling lotus flowers, the gilded summits and whited walls of the
Hindu temples, the multitudes of gaily-dressed people, and the rugged
mountains that fill up the background, form .a picture whid, (»ct
seen, is never likely to be forgotten.

1881 . RELIGIOUS FAIRS IN INDIA. 841

Arrived within the Tnela^ the noise is deafening. Soars as if from
exasperated lions, groans as from djing giants, the bellowing of
buffaloes, the lowing of oxen, the neighing of horses, the braying of
mules and asses, the barking of dogs, the shrill calling of women, and
the shouting of men form a chorus of most admired confusion, suffi-
cient to give the most hlasi Londoner a new sensation. The Euro-
pean is quite bewildered wit& the din. He is^t a loss to account for
the uproar. Those acquainted with the camel, however, soon recog-
nise many of the unearthly sounds as coming from him. He is a
ventriloquist, and manufactures fearful sounds deep down in his in-
terior, far below the region of the vocal organs that serve other less
favoured animals with noise-producing powers*

For miles over the plain little is to be seen in the distance but
herds of camels, noisy Indian camels of all kinds, roaring, g^roaning,
gasping, hissing, bubbling, belching, moaning, and bellowing. Reli-
gion is the ostensible cause of the gathering — bathing in the holy
Pokur lake — ^but advantage is taken of the festival to make it ag^nd
cattle mart, and^^of the cattle disposed of, camels form the largar
portion. Mild, patient animals, the camels, Europeans think them,
Europeans fresh from the study of Buffon, Goldsmith, and Wood.
When a purchaser desires a nearer inspection of a camel, or when it
becomes necessary to seize and load it, then the noise m^e by that
individual camel is appalling. The patient animal will often seize
with its teeth the innocent purchaser, or the servant who is loading
it> inflicting terrible wounds.

Passing frt>m the herds of camels, we dive into the space appro-
priated to bullocks, a space somewhat smaller than that alloted to the
camels, but not Tauch smaller. The bullocks chew the cud, and look
apathetically upon all the fun of the fair — ^animals very much more
patient they than the camels. But the ox is a sacred animal to the
Hindu, and the bullock is apparently conscious that a certain odour of
sanctity appertains to him. Perhaps he feels satisfied in his mind,
knowing that it is not his fate to be killed and eaten, like his big
brother of Europe. He certainly indulges in a gravity of demeanour
that does not belong to the bullocks of other countries. Something
may be due to the effect of climate and Hindu breeding. The lamb
and the goat do not skip and play so merrily in India as their
brethren of Europe. It might have been the sand, but certainly the
lambs at Pokur fair did not < skip like feuries,' nor did they ^ lick the
hand just raised to shed their blood,' as the poet asserts is the wont
of lambs in England.

The most fiivourite lounge in the fair, for Europeans, Afghans,
Pathans, and Arabs, is the horse market. There was a large collec-
tion of almost all kinds of horses, the very inferior descriptions vastly
preponderating. The Thakurs of the native states of Marwar,
Jeypore, and Meywar breed horses extensively, and bring them to

842 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. }Ss]

Pokur fair for sale. Large country-bred mares were most sought
after, although some good Arab and Persian horses from Busliiie aod
Bussorah, from Muscat and Oman, w^e there also. The ooontry-
bred mares will do more work than the more slightly bailt Arab,
-particularly in the sandy plains of Bajputana. For military por-
poses the mares and geldings are more efficient than entire hones.
They are more tractable and enduring.

The air and gait of the Thakurs, as gentlemen horse-dealers, m
exquisite. The indifference and nonchalance with which they lounge
about, as if, although willing to sell, they were by no means anxiom
about the matter I Around each man's tent his stud is picketed.
During the first days of the Tnda they will hardly answer a question
about the price. They were not brought there for sale, or, if it was
admitted that they were, a fancy price was asked. By-and-by whole
batches of them were bought at reasonable prices by officers for Govern-
ment purposes. A thousand rupees would be asked for an animal worth
less than half that amount. Three, four, and even five hundred rupees
would be asked for a pair of bullocks to be obtained subsequently
for a hundred to a hundred and fifty. An easy-going iSami camel
would be valued at two to three hundred rupees, and common
b&gfg^g® animals from sixty to a hundred rupees. This is fully
twenty per cent, dearer than the same animals could have been
purchased for a few years ago. The greater number of the camels
came from Jeysulmir and Bikanir, where they are bred in immense
numbers. They cost little or nothing to their owners for keep,
and if eight or ten are disposed of, the master of the herd goes on
his way rejoicing. He has sufficient money to satisfy his simple
wants for a year, and takes home the remainder of bis stock willingly.

A native will let out his beasts of burden to natives for half what
he will let them for to Europeans, not because he fears he will not
be paid, not because he fears maltreatment, as some will say, bnt
dimply because European baggage consists of hard, heavy, angnlar
boxes, difficult to pack, and much more likely to gall the heasts
of burden, where carts cannot be used, than the softer and bulkier
bundles of the natives.

In the parts of the fair devoted to merchandise, camel-hair rope,
camel-hair clothes of rough texture, coarse cloth, woollen and cotton,
of native manufacture, and English calicoes, were chiefly exposed for
sale. Finer descriptions were procurable, we were told, but they
were not exposed. Of grain there was little sold except what iras
necessary for the wants of the fair. Grass was in great demand, and
we were told is conveyed firom districts miles away, very little grow-
ing in the neighbourhood of Pokur. Guns, pistols, rifles, revolvers,
powder, lead, shot, saddles for camels and horses, looking^gh^ses,
iiunting-knives, and telescopes were largely sold, and seemed to be is
great demand.

1881. RELIGIOUS FAIRS IN INDIA. 843

The religious and commercial parts of the mela are quite distinct,
and totally different both from the pleasure part of it. The sweet-
meat sellers drove a roaring trade. Whatever his rank or profession
the native is fond of sweetmeats. Hundreds of dusky children might
be seen- making themselves sick, one would suppose, with lumps of
ghee (clarified butter), sugar, flour, and split almonds. Then there
were parched dhall, huge piles of chupatties, kabobs, and even soda-
water and brandy. The Bajpoots are not abstainers from alcohoU
like the Moslems, not even nominally, and many of them think, like
other natives of India, that the strength and force apparent to them
in soda-water become the property of the drinker. Venders of holy
water from the Ganges too were there, emissaries from the various
temples, touting for their various shrines, like the touters for the
hotels at an Italian railway station. Beggars, lame, halt, blind, and
robust, were there to add to the din, and thrice holy men with mud
in their hair and on their bodies, with nails uncut, and full of the
odour of sanctity, and filth, and nakedness.

Most of the visitors in the early morning passed to the bathing-
place, and yet the lake abounds with crocodiles. Accidents are not
numerous of course, but they do sometimes occur. A few years ago
a young girl was seized by one of these crocodiles whilst immersed in
the lake. A European passing at the time with a loaded revolver saw
the struggle, fired at the crocodile before he could secure his victim,
shot him in both eyes, and thus saved the poor girl from death. The
natives were very angry that a sacred muggur (crocodile) should have
been thus treated, for all the crocodiles in Pokur lake are sacred I
They mobbed the European, and would have dealt more severely with
him but for fear ; so he was dragged to the nearest magistrate, and
accused of wantonly violating their religious feelings. The magis-
trate saw the section in the Penal Code before his eyes under which
punishment should be inflicted for wantonly offending the religious
feelings of the natives. < But where is the dead viugguT ? ' he asked.
Nobody knew. ^ I cannot condenm this man,' said he, ^ unless I see
the dead muggur.^ As the uncles and the aunts, the parents,
cousins, and friends of the deceased had probably already dis-
posed of him, it would not have been easy to produce the dead
animal, and on that shallow pretence, by way of subterfuge, the case
wag dismissed. The natives were satisfied. The magistrate knew
their little peculiarities. Great credit is due to the police for the
order and regularity generally prevalent at the Pokur fair.

Far away amongst the mountains, at Seepee(or Sipi), there is a
religions fidr held early in the year. A grassy glade, surrounded by
cedar-pines — a magnificent grove of these splendid trees stretching
for miles on both sides of the open space — and a- pretty wooden
temple, ornamented like a Swiss chaldt, towards the right, are the
most prominent features of Seepee. If it had been situated amongst

844 JHE NINETEENTH CENTURY. May

the rocky xdoud tains, our American cousins would have called it a
parky perhaps Seepee Park, like Esters Park, A murmuring rivulet
runs down the glade and adds animation to the scene ; deep larines
bound it on the fisu'-oif north-east side, where nature is all grandeur
and sublimity.

It was on Friday that I visited it. The bridle path leading to
it is precipitous ; now you are overshadowed by tall trees on either
side, and at another time buried in sloping verdant banks, beautiful
with wild flowers of every hue. Large waving ferns cover the firown-
ing rocks here, whilst there they project rough and rugged and bare
from the mountain's side. The wonder is how, with such roads,
the natives contrive to collect together such a variety of animalfl amd
goods. Seepee is some marches from Simla, nestled in where the
mountains are most grand and inaccessible, and there a holy temj^
is the object of pilgrimage, and thousands from all the neigbboaring
country visit it every April.

In every direction the beautiful valley, when our party visited the
fair, was full of human beings and inferior animals ; the hum of many
voices wandered away up the hillsides, and assailed our ears long
before we saw anything of the fair itself. They seemed all hajyy,
those many-tongued people ; they were dressed in their gala garments
of every hue and in every variety of costume. This bright oolooiing
and variety of costume add very much to the picturesque character
of the scene when compared with pilgrimages or fairs in Europe.
Nowhere in Europe could you see such kaleidoscopic effects^ or sodi
a multitude of diversified people, in raiments so different and various.
Merry-go-rounds were busy on both sides of the valley, workiiig away
as hard as panting humanity could send them round ; and ai^
laughter I so ringing and joyous, so light of heart, and revtf berating!
It did one good to hear that laughter.

Tents, nearly as various as the people's raiment, were to be seen
dotted over the level part of the valley, with awnings of all colours
and shapes ; carpets were spread out under the awnings, with bolster,
cushions, and native chairs, and hangings of cloth appeared every-
where, blue, red, yellow, and white, crimson, scarlet, purple, and puDlc
All colours were there except black. Long lines of booths and stalk,
with toys and sweetmeats, stretched far away into the cedar groves, all
teeming with looking-glasses, beads, necklaces and rings, armlets and
anklets, brooches, pins and ornaments for the head ; whilst the cook-
shops sent forth pleasant odours, and the sweetmeat men displayed
their wares in tempting luxuriance. Further away, in the groves,
horses, mules and asses, camels and elephants, were picketed about in
thousands, the grooms and muleteers lying under the trees, sleeping
off their fatigue. They were often sheltered by small tarpaulins, the
ropes of which are a constant trap to unwary feet. Facing the menry-
go-rounds was a high and sloping bank, covered with w<nnen aU in

1881. RELIGIOUS FAIRS IN INDIA. 845

their brightest apparel, watchiog the fun of the fair, and laughing to
each other as heartily as those in the swings.

There were Thibetans, too, men and women from Ladak; the
women with their peculiar head-dresses, a leathern strap going over
the top of the head and hanging down the back, the said strap
incrusted with beads and stones of various colours. The hair was
usually brought tightly back from the forehead and drawn together
into one long plait, hanging down the back, and adorned at the end
with three scarlet tassels. The men wore flat caps, which by no
means improved their faces, for they are an ugly race, these Ladakis.
Those from the Kanacour and Kooloo valleys were much better look-
ing, the women wearing a jaunty little smoking-cap on the side of
their head, and all their massive black hair loose. Then there were
Sikhs, Afghans, and Pathans, Hindus from Delhi and the North-West
Provinces, and Mohammedans from Sind and the Doabs. Even the
Bengali Babu had his representatives here, and I have no doubt
went away from Seepee much richer for the fair. The hill people
mustered, as might be expected, in great numbers, most of them
clean-looking and well-dressed for the occasion. Cleanliness is not
usually the characteristic of the hill people, but, for the fair, they
made themselves look clean. Their women wore tight jackets, coming
down to the hips, loose-fitting drawers of every hue, a scarf of
some bright colour, silk or woollen usually, drawn over the head, and
covering the body as far as the knees, with a marvellous display of
nose- and ear-rings, and bracelets and anklets, all tinkling merrily as
they walked, a costume pleasing in its effect and more picturesque
than those usually seen in India. The men dress much in the same
style, their jackets adorned with uncouth decorations, sometimes with
rich embroidery, but more generally with beads, claws, teeth, and
trophies of the chase. In addition they wear caps or turbans. The
poorer portion of the hill people substitute dahlias and rhododendrons
for the metal ornaments of their more prosperous compatriots, and
not without improving on them.

Conjurors, jugglers, snake-charmers, and minstrels abounded,
whilst the merry-go-rounds were filled with laughing tremblers,
snatching a fearful joy as they dashed through the air. The pavilion
in the centre was occupied by a number of well-dressed natives, a
couple of silver sticks at the entrance preventing the crowd from
intruding. There was no pushing or shoving, none of that rude
^larking' so common in European, and particularly in English,
crowds. Nor was there any intoxication caused by alcohol, although
I suspect there were other forms of indulgence equally objectionable —
opium-smoking, bhang and ganja, majun and rindi.

Two principal figures were seated in the places of honour, as we
entered the pavilion. One was a fat man, mild-looking and dull,
with a great gold chain round his neck and an enormous turban on

846 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. May

his head. This was the Bana of Eothie* The comitty ftmnd
belonged to him, and had belonged to his ancestors for many
generations. The people around.were for the most part his sobfects.
Bj his side was a spare, cunning-looking, active-eyed man, whose
beard had been dyed a deep maroon. The £lt man was tadtnnL
The spare one, Bana of Dhamie, was vivacious and talkative. Tbe
latter was one of the neighbouring hill chieftains, at present a gaestof
his friend of Kothie. Behind and around were the dependents of each,
in various conditions of adornment outwardly, but marvellously im-
pleasant to the nostrils. With the Dhamie Bana were his two sons,
intelligent youths of twelve or fourteen years of age. The eldest had
a morocco case of which he was evidently very proud. His fiither
encouraged him to show it to our party. There were three of us,
Europeans. With shy pride he opened the case, and displayed a
silver watch, quite a conmion-looking specimen of workmansbip,
which we duly admired. Then with a silent chuckle, that moved
his portly frame hugely, and evidently with no little inward satisbo
tion, the Bana of Kothie took out of his ample girdle a gold watch.
There was nothing remarkable about it, but the pride with whidi
it was exhibited was marvellous. His fat &ce beamed with huge
satis&ction as he put his gold watch beside the silver one of the
young Dhamie. Then we were persuaded to show our watches, aU
three of us, and all- three had; gold watches, whereupon Kothie
chuckled more violently than ever, almost audibly, and with many a
Burghley-like nod and many a broad grin he drew the attention of
the Dhamie people to the fact that his watch was gold, and the
sahibs' watches were all three golden also — singular coincidence !

Presently we took our seats, and the Bana's levSe^ which our
entrance had temporarily suspended, was continued. Each of his
subjects came forward to the tent door, more or less awkwardly, and
presented his nazr of a rupee. The Kothie man looked affectionately
first at the giver and then at the rupee, but he had hardly time to
regard the latter with satisfaction before the inexorable prime
minister beside him swept it away into a bag prepared for the pur-
pose. Several similar bags, probably of a thousand each, stood by
his side. The Bana evidently makes a good thing of the Seepee fiui'
No wonder he smiled benignantly ; no wonder he nodded with
Burghley-like gravity and wisdom ; no wonder he chuckled ao
marvellously.

Hookahs were introduced, and we all smoked. Soon after a man
came bearing a box of native perfumes. From this he took a phial
containing essence of rose, atf^irgulabj and poured some of it into
our hands, a few drops into each. The Kothie Bana then began,
with much ceremony and imperturbable gravity, to rub down the
Dhamie Bana with it, just as if he. were rubbing him for the
colic He then offered to rub us down, but we declined this littb

X881. MELIGIOUS FAIRS IN INDIA. 847

attention. The Dhamie man, not to be behind his fat friend in
courtesy, began to rub him down in the same fashion. We com-
promised t.he matter by having a drop or two sprinkled on onr hand-*
kerchiefs.

When these tedious ceremonial observances were complete, games
were introduced. Bows and arrows were brought forward^ the arrows
blunted. One of the Bana's attendants armed himself with a bow
and some of these arrows, whilst another, with an axe in bis hand,*
described a series of frantic leaps and contortions, brandishing his
axe the while with marvellous rapidity. The man with the bow, at
a distance of twenty paces or so, sent the arrow flying at the wild
gesticulator again and again, but always without effect. Either it
flew harmlessly past him, or was arrested by the swift revolving axe.
This amusement continued for some time, and seemed mightily to
amuse the Ranas and their suites. All the time our ears were
tickled by the martial sounds of a band, consisting- of various pipes
and reeds of antique and venerable fonn, a kettle-drum, and a
trumpet some four feet long. Is it possible that some mail-coach
guard migrated to the Himalayas, with his trumpet amongst his
baggage?

This fair continues three or four days. Its principal charm is to
be found in the beauty of the locality, the strange commingling of
races, and the variety of the costumes and customs.

In sailing down the Ganges during the month Katik, our
October, one may pass in the course of a single day half a dozen holy
fairs, each with a multitude of pilgrims equal to the population of a
large city. All of them are rendered picturesque by the tents and
equipages of the wealthy, the variety of the animals, and ^ the bright
colouring in which the natives delight — those descendants of the
ancient Aryans of India, * in many respects the most wonderful race
that ever lived on earth,' as Professor Max Miiller calls them. At
night all these tents and booths are illuminated, so that the scene is
hardly less animated by night than by day, and all without tumult
and disorder. Every one of these localities is hallowed by some
mythological tradition, and the firmest faith is reposed by the
pilgrims in the truth of those traditions. Engrafted for hundreds,
nay, thousands of years, in the minds of the people, they have grown
up with them articles of faith, strengthened with their strength.
* Your words are good. Sahib, your teaching is excellent,' said some
native headmen of villages" to a Christian missionary in Oudh, < but
go and preach elsewhere. We do not want it. Our fathers' faith is
enough for us. What should we do in your heaven ? You want us
to go there when we die. We had rather be with our fathers who
-went before us. What should we do in the heaven of the Sahibs J '
This is no fanciful picture. These are the very words spoken in
Hindustani to an enthusiastic missionary by the simple villagers.

848 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. May

And what could he say in reply ? He felt the force of them, although
he did not allow them to paralyse his efforts. The religious n\Au
are attended by thousands of devotees on the same principle that
prompted the villagers' words to the missionary. They were ohseired
by their fathers. Creneration after generation has attended them.
Hindu, or Moslem, or Christian the rulers may be, but the 9nd(u
are still the same, and, looking back into the vista of vanished
centuries, we still see the same crowds, the same devotions, the same
amusements, food, clothing, and attendant animals. When Britons
were painted savages it was so, and now that Victoria, Queen of
England, is Empress of India, it is so still.

W. KKiGniox.

1881. 849

WEST-END IMPROVEMENTS.

Sir Bichard Cross gave notice of a motion for April 5 in the House
of Commons for a select committee to inquire into the working of the
Artisans' Dwellings Act. As was the case with other matters of impor-
tance this session, circumstances stood in the way, the House was
counted out that evening, and no discussion will probably arise on
the question for some time.

The displacement of the working classes for urban improvements
is a subject which is often looked upon with apathy and indifference.
The reason of this must be that those who do not feel an interest
in it are ignorant of its great importance, and do not consider that
a great portion of the demoralisation amongst the lower classes arises
from the bad dwellings and the crowded houses in which they so oft«n
live. It is evident that Sir fiichard Cross, who has the welfare of the
labouring classes much at heart, and who brought in the Artisans'
Dwellings Act in 1875, is not satisfied with the working of the Act,
which has been hampered, it is said, by the difficulty of buying
land at a sufficiently low rate to make the building of workmen's
houses possible, and by the enormous expense of the machinery of
expropriation. The object of his committee would probably be to
find out how the first of these difficulties can be met, either
by money lent by the Government, or by private enterprise if it
were possible to bring about the compulsory sale of land on
those portions which are scheduled to the Act and set apart for
dweUings of the labouring classes. Under the Artisans' Dwellings
Act comparatively small spaces have been improved, as it has power
only over insanitary areas ; but a great scheme was brought forward
in 1877 by the Metropolitan Board of Works, called * The Metropo-
litan Street Improvements Act,' which had, as the promoters said, a
twofold object : Firstly, the opening out of two main thoroughfares,
one north and south, from Tottenham Court Boad to Charing Gross,
and another west to east, from Piccadilly Circus to Bloomsbury,
both streets crossing at a circus on the site of the present Five Dials.
The advantage of this new street would be very great in facilitating
the traffic of the metropolis, making in the one instance a con-
VoL. IX.— No. 51. 3 L

860 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. May

tinuous street, extending six miles from west to east. Bat another
great object of the Act was to improve a very bad neighbourhood of
streets and courts about the Five Dials, at present the haunts of vice
and crime, which could not come under the action of the Artisans'
Dwellings Act, because the condition of the courts and streets is not
insanitary.

In bringing forward this Bill, the Metropolitan Board expresEed
great impatience to see its scheme carried out ; but four yeais have
now passed, and no part of the district scheduled for the new street
has been cleared. The reason given for the delay is the 33rd sectioiL
This section, they say, prevents their setting to work, and daring
last winter the Board passed a resolution to apply this session to
Parliament for power ' to amend or repeal so much of section 33
of the Metropolitan Street Improvements Act 1877 as prohiUts ik
Board from taking, for the purposes of that Act, fifteen houses or more
occupied by persons belonging to the labouring classes, until suffident
accommodation has been provided for them elsewhere on the lands
mentioned in that section ; to remove or alter the restrictions so im-
])osed, to alter or repeal the two concluding provisions of that section,
or parts thereof, and to confer further powers on the Board witl
respect to such houses ; to vary and extinguish rights which would
interfere with the objects of the Bill.'

It is for the purpose of calling the attention of members of botii
Houses of Parliament to this section 33 of Act 40 and 41 Viet
(1877), to which the Metropolitan Board attribute the More of
the scheme, that these pages are written.

Let us therefore inquire first how the clause came to be inserted
in the Act, and what object it had in view.

According to the then Standing Order 211 of the House of Lords,
the promoters of a Bill intending the disturbance of the working classes
were required to make a return of the number of persons to be so
disturbed. The order did not oblige the promoters, as in the case (rf
the Artisans' Dwellings Act, to make a return house by house and
family by family, but the numbers might be given according to the
houses of the scheduled streets. The object of the promoters of sucb
bills would be to return as small a number as possible. Wbec
landowners, trade, or leasehold interests are affected, the person or
persons so interested can bestir themselves and see if the returns an
correct. But when a Bill affects the interests of working people*
what can they do ? They probably know nothing of the Bill, or of
the injury it may do them, and even should they know it, how can
they bestir themselves to get this evil averted ? Fortunately for the
interest of the labouring classes on the line of this West-Eoii
Improvement Bill, the numbers set down of displaced persons vei«
so glaringly wrong that an independent census was takoi of iis
scheduled houses, and instead of only 1,753 persons, as stated hv the

1881. WEST-END IMPROVEMENTS. 851

Metropolitan Board, being disturbed, the number was found to be
6,637. A petition was therefore prepared from the inhabitants of
these streets to the House of Commons, praying that provision might
be made for the displaced persons. This petition was put into the
hands of the member representing the petitioners in Parliament,
but unfortunately it was only presented after the second reading of
the Bill, too late to be of the slightest use. A second petition was
therefore presented from the same persons to the House of Lords, and
was placed in the hands of the Marquis of Lansdowne, who did not
fail to present it on the order for the second reading of the Bill, and
on that occasion a short discussion took place, in which the Bishop of
London represented the suffering caused by the reckless demolition of
houses when no provision was made for the inhabitants.

Another petition was lodged by an owner of property in the line
of the new street, and Mr. Lyulph Stanley appeared before the select
committee of the House of Lords as counsel on behalf of the peti-
tioner, who opposed the Bill only for the purpose of obtaining the
introduction of a protecting clause for the interest of the working
people who were unable to speak for themselves. So outrageously
erroneous had been the figures of the Metropolitan Boaxd in their first
return to Parliament, as proved by the independent census mentioned
above, that they took a new one, bringing their figures &om 1,753,
as first stated, to 4,233, the difference between this last figure and
the 6,637 given by their opponents arising from the fact that they
deducted 1,300 who, they said, were artisans and not labourers, and
they deducted 1,500 more, because they said that though these 1,500
were within their lines of deviation, they would not be interfered with
in making a new street.

Surely, when such inaccuracies are possible, gravely affecting the
interest of large numbers, some means should be taken to make mis-
takes of a like nature impossible for the future. If the machinery
used under the Artisans' Dwellings Act were applied in all cases
where the labouring classes are to be disturbed, the interests of
the working people would be better protected. When a scheme is
laid before the Secretary of State for carrying out the Artisans'
Dwellings Act, the Home Secretary in his provisional order most
carefully recites the actual number of people who were found
dwelling in those tenements before they were pulled down. The
number of the families is then recited, and it is stated whether they
occupy one room, two rooms, or three rooms, and the Secretary of
State causes plans to be deposited at the Home Office in which
those blocks are set out, and in those places the local authority, the
INIetropolitan Board of Works, are bound to rebuild tenements dis-
tributed into one, two, or three-room tenements. A block plan is set
out so that there can be no mistake about it, and that also is deposited
at the Home Office.

3l2

852 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. May

So careful has been the Secretary of State to watch o?er the
interests of the working classes, that in one case a provision was
made for storerooms for costermoDgers' barrows, and in another case
stabling was provided for the donke3's of the costermongers.

The Artisans' Dwellings Act not only provides for the rehoosmg
of the working classes so &r as their numbers are concerned, kt
also insists that they should be rehoused in the same locality. The
Metropolitan Board had no such intentions. They proposed in their
Bill of 1877 to accommodate the displaced people of the West Eni
in Gray's Inn Soad — a good mile from their present dwellings. This
extra mile represents an hour a day in time lost, to say nothing of
the fatigue. These unskilled labourers get 4d. or 5d, an hour, and
5(2. an hour per day is 28. 6(2. a week, a tax that would be pnt on
the workmen by removing them to a distance. But even moie in-
jurious to them than this tax is the fact that the home is in this waj
broken up. As one of the witnesses brought forward by Mr. Stanler
said, it is sending a man to get his dinner in a public house instead
of having it at home, and it is not merely the sum of eightpenoe ^
sixpence which he would have to pay for his dinner, which woqU,
had he dined at home, have paid for the food of the whole ftiniljif
his wife had bought and cooked it, but the man gets into the habit
of going to the public house, where he must drink for the good of die
house as well as eat, and so the respectability is broken up, one of
the chief securities for the improvement of the working elates.

The Metropolitan Board said, in support of their proposal of
placing the people a mile further east, that it was immaterial where
they lived, as they were weU known to be migratory. Bat with
regard to the migratory nature of the working classes it was shown
in evidence that they often remain weekly tenants in one house for
ten or twenty years, and in some cases have been known to occupy
the same room as weekly tenants for forty or fifty years.

Their employment obliges them to remain stationary. The fiishion-
able shops of Begent Street, Bond Street, and St. James's do not
move, and they require their workmen near at hand. The numeioos
coach factories are still about Long Acre. The large warehouses of
Crosse & Blackwell in Soho Square, where over 1,000 hands are em-
ployed— men, women, boys, and girls — are supplied from ih^ nei^-
bouring streets. Govent Crarden, with all its dependents of coster-
mongers and labourers, who have to begin work at four in the moniio^f
is still flourishing, and therefore these working people now living on
the West-End line of improvement must continue to live there, or is
many cases they would be thrown out of employment, to their ff9^
loss.

In answer to the plea brought forward by the Board that Grra/s ba
Boad, being only a mile from the scheduled part, was not too &r
for the working classes to be removed from their work, it was shown

1881. WEST-END IMPROVEMENTS. 853

in evidence, that it was impossible for those employed by the West-
End shops, either as tailors or shoemakers, to live more than a mile
off, as their work has to be fetched sometimes two or three times a
day, thus causing employers to refuse work to those living beyond a
short distance from their shops. Another very important point
brought forward in evidence was this, that it is not only the father
who works, but also the children, sons and daughters, are wage-
earning, and in London, at least at the West End, unlike the northern
manufacturing towns, it is usual for families to keep together, and
for the sons and daughters not to leave the home, though it may
consist of only two or three rooms, until they marry and make a
home for themselves ; a custom which conduces much to the morality
of the girls who work at trades or in factories, as by Uving at home
they remain under the protection and care of their parents.

In former Bills the accommodation of the working classes had
been thought of in these words, that when fifteen houses or more are
removed, accommodation must be found for those occupying them
at the time of the clearance ; but it was easy in various ways to evade
this order, and to cast off the burden of providing equivalent
habitations to those that were demolished. It follows, therefore,
that the last part of clause 33 is the most important of all. It runs
thus: —

Provided always, that before the Board shall, without the consent of one of Her
Majesty's principal Secretaries of State, take for the purpose of this Act fifteen
houses or more occupied at the time of the passing of this Act either wholly or
partially by persons belonging to the lahouring classes as tenants or lodgers, the
Board shall prove to the satisfaction of such Secretary of State, that sufficient
acconunodation in suitable dwellings has heen provided elsewhere upon the before-
mentioned lands coloured blue, or upon such other lands as may be approved by
such Secretary of State, for the same number of persons, having regard to the
mmibers set forth in the schedule to this Act and to the details relating thereto
proved before the said conounittee and deposited at the Home Office. Provided
further, that one of Her Majesty's principal Secretaries of State may, if he think
fit, after or even before the Board has acquired any of the said lands so coloured
blue, release the Board from the obligations imposed upon them by this enactment
with respect to such lands or any part thereof, provided the Board substitute in
lieu thereof other lands equally available for the purposes described in this enact-
ment

The words in the above passage, * occupied at the time of the passing
of this Act,' are those which make this clause so efficient. The number
of the labouring classes is calculated at the normal amount before the
operations of the promoters have begun to disperse them. A record
is kept of these numbers at the Home Office, and of the house-to-
house schedules taken in compliance with the Standing Orders, and, in
the case of the Act of 1 877, is initialled by the chairman of the select
conmiittee. There is no trouble in ascertaining these numbers, it is
merely a noatter of reference.

This is now the clause objected to by the Metropolitan Board

864 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. May

as one impossible to ^ork. They say that the displacement of 4^
persons is a mere temporary inconvenience, which should gladly be
put up with by them for the sake of the improvement of tbe
metropolis.

We can hardly expect the working classes to consider it a privilege
to be disturbed, because the ratepayers of London wish for some great
improvement for their own benefit. If they wish for a great street.
so as to go more rapidly from one end of London to the other, eqiial
justice should be done to the respectable working classes as is dome
by the Artisans' Dwelling Act in the case of houses of a low descriptioD
which are often the dens of vice and crime ; and if Parliament says is
the one case you must take a census of the people before you disturb
them, and you must rehouse them on land immediately adjoining, the
same strict order should be made and carried out on all urban improTe-
ments.

For this object it is greatly to be desired that the Standing Orders
of Parliament should be amended, so as to render the insertion of
proper clauses compulsory in every case by a self-working machineir,
instead of leaving the protection of the working classes to the varying
views of different committees and the accidents of parliamentary
contests.

The Metropolitan Board say that it would be impossible for them
to recoup themselves su£Biciently for the expense they will be put to
in buying up the existing houses if they have to replace liie working
classes on the same locality ; but let me use Mr. Stanley's words, taken
from his speech before the Committee of the House of Lords on their
Bill upon this point : —

I do trust that before this Bill leaves your Lordships* Committee, joa wSl tike
care that such improvements are marked upon the map, and such obligatioos pn:
upon the promoters, as that all these labouring people shall be rehoused wlten*
their work and livelihood is, and that they shall not be driven out in tiie vide
world in order that the Metropolitan Board of Works may recoup themadfes &
little for the cost of the improvement. But after all, what is the case f Yon kre
been told that the difference of cost for the whole of London, between taking the
sites for artisans* dwellings and the general mercantile value of the land, ia abrai
60,000/. ; that is a mere fraction of the cost upon the whole expenditure in Louden.
They are going for a net expenditure, after all recoupment, of dose upon tliree
millions of money — two and three-quarter millions at any rate ; and they an goii^
to spend this immense sum, which will be spread over sixty yean — ^for theylMxrov
for an immense period — and for the sake of saving 60,0001, and it would not be
60,000/., it would be 60,000/. ; but supposing that was the extra cost, what is it
for housing persons who are not wholly in the West-End Improvement.' Sr
Sydney Waterlow has given you evidence — and no man knows better ahoat thnr
things than he does — ^that so great is the increaaed value of those industrial dwell-
ings, that in the Goswell Road their increased value, compared with whit tkj
superseded, is threefold. No doubt, though it might be possible if their sugida
expectations are realised, that they might not get so much on this West-End Is-
provement in buildings such as were shown to you with shops below, as tbev
would for other shops with everything above at their £ree disposal, I caimot sap-

1881. WEST-END IMPROVEMENTS. 865

pose it would add 50fl00l. to the whole of the cost of the scheme if they were to
rehouse the whole of the people of London involved in their scheme. What is
50,000/. to he horrowed hy the Metropolitan Board of Works as a chax^ upon the
rates for sixty years P Why it would come to about 41, Bs, per cent., and if it was
5 per cent, it would not be 2,500/. a year to the ratepayers of London ; and for the
sake of saving that, will you say that this intense suffering shall be caused to these
poor people ?

There is very often an outcry raised against the tyranny of the
landowner who, to make a deer forest or to enlarge a park, will turn
out the labourer and destroy the shepherd's cot. If this is unjust,
how much more flagrant is the injustice when we count'the suflferers
by hundreds and thousands instead of by units. Because the tyrant is
a many-headed monster in the shape of a Board, instead of the one self-
seeking landlord, the evil is not less and the consequences are more
terrible. If one street housing the working classes in this densely
populated town is destroyed without adequate provision being made
for those who are displaced, the suffering is great, and vice and crime,
the result of overcrowding, will increase. One of the highest duties
of legislators is to see to the well-being of the labouring people.
On their prosperity depend in a great measure the honour and the
prosperity of the whole nation, and there is no more certain way of
improving the working classes than by giving them the means of'
living in healthy and decent dwellings.

Maude Stanley*

8fi6 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. May

CARLYLE'S LECTURES ON THE PERIODS

OF EUROPEAN CULTURE.

From Homer to Goethe.

€ DxTESTABLB mixture of prophecy and playactorism ' — so in bis
lUminiacencea Carlyle describes his work as a lecturer. Tet we are
assured by a keen, if friendly, critic, Harriet Martineau, that HhemeriU
of his discourses were so great that he might probably have gone on
year after year till this time with improving success and peihapsease,
but the struggle was too severe,' i.e. the struggle with nervous excit^
ment and ill-health. In a friendly notice of the first lecture ever
delivered (May 1, 1837 ^) by Carlyle before a London audience, the
Ti/mea observes : * The lecturer, who seems new to the mere techni-
calities of public speaking, exhibited proofs before he had done of
many of its higher and nobler attributes, gathering self-possesBion u
he proceeded.'

In the following year a course of twelve lectures was deUvered
* On the History of Literature, or the successive Periods of European
Culture,' from Homer to G-oetbe. As &r as I can ascertain, except
from short sketches of the two lectures of each week in the Exawim
from May 6, 1838, onwards, it is now impossible to obtain an account
of this series of discourses. The writer in the Examiner (perbaps
Leigh Hunt) in noticing the first two lectures (on Crreek literature)
writes : < He again extemporises, he does not read. We doubted on
hearing the Monday's lecture whether he would ever attain in thii
way to the fiuency as well as depth for which he ranks among cele-
brated talkers in private ; but Friday's discourse relieved u& He
<< strode away " like Ulysses himself, and had only to regret^ in common
with his audieuce, the limits to which the one hour confined him.'
G-eorge Ticknor was present at the ninth lecture of this coarse, and be
noted in his diary (June 1, 1838): 'He is a rather small, spare,
ugly Scotchman, with a strong accent, which I should think he takes

> The 1st of May was iUostrions On the eyening of that day Browidog's Stnf-
ford was pioduoed by Macready at Covent Qaiden Theatre. Dr. Cfaalmen wasat tbi$
time also lecturing in London, and extensive reports of his lectures are giren in t^
Timei and the Mornitig Chronicle,

1881. CAELYLE'S LECTURES. 857

DO pains to mitigate. • . • To-day he spoke — as I think he commonly
does — without notes, and therefore as nearly extempore as a man can
who prepares himself carefully, as was plain he had done. He was
impressive, I think, though such lecturing could not well be very
popular ; and in some parts, if he were not poetical, he was pictu-
resque.' Ticknor estimates the audience at about one hundred.

A manuscript of over two hundred and fifty pages is in my hands,
which I take to be a transcript from a report of these lectures by
some skilful writer of shorthand. It gives very fully, and I think
faithfully, eleven lectures ; one, the ninth, is wanting. In the
following pages, I may say, nothing, or very little, is my own. I have
transcribed several of the most striking passages of the lectures, and
given a view of the whole, preserving continuity by abstracts of those
portions which I do not transcribe. In these abstracts I have as far
as possible used the words of the manuscript. In a few instances I
have found it convenient to bring together paragraphs on the same
subject from different lectures. Some passages which say what
Carlyle has said elsewhere I give for the sake of the manner, more
direct than that of the printed page ; sometimes becoming even
colloquial. The reader will do well to imagine these passages
delivered with that Northern accent which Carlyle's refined Bostonian
hearer thought * he took no pains to mitigate.'

At the outset Carlyle disclaims any intention to construct a
scientific theory of the history of culture ; some plan is necessary in
order to approach the subject and become familiar with it, but any
proposed theory must be viewed as one of mere convenience.

There is only one theory which has been most triumphant — that of the planets.
On no other subject has any theory succeeded so far jet. Even that is not perfect ;
the astronomer knows one or two planets, we may say, but he does not know what
they are, where they are going, or whether the solar system is not itself drawn
into a larger system of the kind. In short, with every theory the man who knows
something about it, knows mainly this — that there is much uncertidnty in it, great
darkness about it, extending down to an infinite deep ; in a word, that he does
not know what it is. Let him take a stone, for example, the pebble that is under
his feet ; he knows that it is a stone broken out of rocks old as the creation, but
what that pebble is he knows not ; he knows nothing at all about that. This
fiystem of making a theory about everything is what we may call an enchacted.
state of mind. That man should be mided, that he should be deprived of knowing
the truth that the world is a reality and not a huge confused hypothesis, that he
should be deprived of this by the very faculties given him to understand it, I can
call by no other name than Enchantment.

Yet when we look into the scheme of these lectures we perceive
a presiding thought, which certainly had more than a provisional
value for Carlyle. The history of culture is viewed as a succession of
faiths, interrupted by periods of scepticism. The faith of Greece and
Rome is succeeded by the Christian faith, with an interval of Pagan
scepticism, of which Seneca may be taken as a representative.

858 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. May

The Christian faith, earnestly held to men's hearts during a great
epoch, is transforming itself into a new thing, not yet capable of
definition, proper to our nineteenth century ; of this new thing the
Goethe of WUhdm Meister and the Wesi-dsilicher Divan is the
herald* But its advent was preceded hy that melancholy interval of
Christian scepticism, the eighteenth century, which is represented by
Voltaire and the sentimental Groethe of Wertkerj which reached its
terrible consummation in the French Revolution ; and against which
stood out in forlorn heroism Samuel Johnson. Carlyle's general view
is a broad one, which disregards all but fundamental differences in
human beliefs. The Paganism of Greece is not severed from that of
Bome ; Christianity, Catholic and Protestant, is essentially of one and
the same epoch.

There is a sentence which I find in Goethe full of meaning in this regard. It
must be noted, he says, that belief and unbelief are two opposite prindples is
human nature. The theme of all human history, so far as we are able to pezeeire
it, is the contest between these two principles. All periods, he goes on to 8ay,t&
which belief predominates^ in which it is the main element, the inspiring principle
of action, are distinguished bj great, soul-stirring, fertile events, and worthy of
perpetual remembrance : and, on the other hand, when unbelief gets the upper
hand, that age is unfertile, unproductive, and intrinsicallj mean ; in which ther^
is no pabiUum for the spirit of man, and no one can get nouiiahment for hiina^
This passage is one of the most pregnant utterances ever delivered, and we shall do
well to keep it in mind in these disqideitions.

In attempting ^ to follow the stream of mind from the period at
which the first great spirits of our Western World wrote and flourished
down to these times,' we start from Greece. When we ask who were
the first inhabitants of Greece, we can derive no clear account firom
any source. ^ We have no good history of Greece. This is not at all
remarkable. Greek transactions never had anything alive [for ns?] ;
no result for us ; they were dead entirely. The only points which
serve to guide us are a few ruined towns, a few masses of stone, and
some broken statuary.' Three epochs, however, in Greek histoiy can
be traced: the first, that of the siege of Troy — ^the first confederate
act of the Hellenes in their capacity of a European people; the
second, that of the Persian invasion ; the third, the flower-time of
Greece, the period of Alexander the Great, when Greece * exploded itself
on Asia.'

Europe was henceforth to develop herself on an independent footing, and it ha^
been so ordered that Greece was to begin that. As to tiieir peculiar phyaogniBBv
among nations, they were in one respect an extremely interesting people, hot ia
another unamiable and weak entirely. It has been somewhere remarked bj pei80D>
learned in the speculation on what is called the doctrine of races, that the Pdtfgi
were of Celtic descent. However this may be, it is certain that there is a lenark-
able similarity in character of the French to these Greeks. Their first feature «s>^
what we may call the central feature of all others, exhausting (?y tehementtj not

« MS. « existing.'

1881. CARLYLE'S LECTURES. 859

exactlj strenffthf for there was no permanent coherence in it as in etrength, but a
sort of fiery impetuosity ; a yehemence neyer anywhere so reniarkable as among
the Greeks, except among the French, and there are instances of this, both in its
good and bad point of view. As to the bad, there is the instance mentioned by
Thucydides of the sedition in Corcyra, which really does read like a chapter out of
the French Kevolution, in which the actors seem to be quite regardless of any
moment but that which was at hand.

The story of the massacre is briefly told, which recalls to Carlyle,
as it did to Niebuhr, the events of September 1792.

But connected with all this savageness there was an extmordinary delicacy of
taste and genius in them. They had a prompt dexterity in seizing the true relations
of objects, a beautiful and quick sense in perceiTing the places in which the things
lay, fldl round the world, which they had to work with, and this, without being
entirely admirable, was in their own internal province highly useful. So the
French, with their undeniable barrenness of genius, have yet in a remarkable
manner the facility of expressing themselves with precision and elegance, to so
singular a degree that no ideas or inventions can possibly become popularised till
they are presented to the world by means of the French language. . . . But in
poetry, philosophy, and all things the Greek genius displays itself with as curious a
felicity as the French does in frivolous exercises. Singing or music was the central
principle of the Greeks, not a subordinate one. And they were right. What is
not musical is rough and hard and cannot be harmonised. Ilarmony is the essence
of Art and Science. The mind moulds to itself the clay, and makes it what
it will.

This spirit of harmony is seen even in the earliest Pelasgic archi-
tecture, and more admirably in Greek poetry, Greek temples, Greek
statuary. A beautiful example may be found in the story of how
Phidias achieved his masterpiece at Elis.

When he projected his Jupiter of Elis, his ideas were so confused and bewildered
as to give him great unrest, and he wandered about perplexed that the shape he
wished would not disclose itself. But one night, after struggling in pain with his
thoughts as usual, and meditating on his design, in a dream he saw a group of
Grecian maidens approach, with pails of water on their heads, who began a song
in praise of Jupiter. At tiiat moment the Sun of Poetry stared upon him, and set
&ee the image which he sought for, and it crystallised, as it were, out of his mind
into marble, and became as symmetry itself. This Spirit of Harmony operated
directly in him, infonning all parts of his mind, thence transferring itself into
statuary, seen with the eye, and filling the heart of all people.

Having discussed the origin of Polytheism, Carlyle speaks of divi-
nation.

It is really, in my opinion, a blasphemy against human nature to attribute the
whole of the system [of polytheism] to quackery and falsehood. Divination, for
instance, was the great nucleus round which polytheism formed itself— the con-
stituted core of the whole matter. AU people, private men as well as states, used
to consult the oracle of Dodona or Delphi (which eventually became the most
celebrated of all) on all the concerns of life. Modem travellers have discovered
in those places pipes and other secret contrivances from which they have concluded
that these oracles were constituted on a principle of falsehood and delusion. Gicero,
too^ said that he was certain two Augurs could not meet without laughing ; and
he was likely to know, for he had once been an Augur himself. But I confess that

860 THE HINETEENTM CENTURY, Mij

on resdiiifr Herodotus then appears to ma to have been yery little qnackerj tbotit
JL I can quite readilj fancy that there was a g-reat deal of tcason m tb mde.
The seat of that at Dodona was a deep, dark cbaem, into which the dinim cotcnd
when he Bought the Deity. If he was a man of devout frame of mind, he met
surely have then been in the beet state of feding for foreseeing the flitui*, ud
giving advice to others. No matter how tbia was carried on — by ditioitiixi a
otherwise— so long as the individual sutToed himself to be wrapt m muon ititli t
higher being. I like to believe better of Greece than that she wss comfJelelj u
the mercy of ftaud and &lsehood in these matter*.

So it was that Fheidippidee, the runner, met Pan in themonntun
gorge.* * When I consider the frame of mind he must have beenin,!
have DO doubt that he really heard in hie own mind that voice ot the
God of Nature upon the wild mountain side, and that this was not done
by quackery or falsehood at all.' But above and around and bduod
the whole system of polytheism there was a truth discovered by the
GreekE —

that truth which is in every man's heart, and to which no thinking man can vbm
his assent. They recognised a Destiny I a, great, dumb, black power, ruUug dnriufi
time, which knew nobody for its msster, and in its decrees was ssiofleiiUcM
adamant, and every one knew that it was there. It was sometimes called ' If oin,'
or sllntmBnt, part, and aometimes ' the Unchangeable.' Their gods ntn oA
always mentioned with reverence. There is a Strange document on the p(iiit,tlie
Prometheoa of ,/Eschyliia. jEschylus wrote three plays ot Prometheus, bat only
one has survived. Prometheus had introduced fire into the world, and vu
punished for that ; hia design was to make our race a little le«a wretched this it
was. Personally he seems to be a taciturn sort of man, but what he doeaipeit
seems like a thunderboH against Jupiter. . . . Jupiter can hurl him to Tuttiw;
At* time ia coming too; he must come down; it is all written in the hnki^
* Destiny.' This curious document really indicates the primeval qualities of mu.

Stories from Herodotus, ' who was a clear-headed, candid man,' d
the Scythian nation who shot arrows in the stormy air against thai
god, and of another people who made war upon the south-viiid,
similarly illustrate that the ancient reverence for their deities vss not
the reverence for that which is highest or most powerful in the mu-
verse.

From the religion we pass {Lee
Greeks. ' The Riad or ^mg of Jl
call ballad delineations of the varit
then, rather than a narrative of I
in the middle of it, and, I might sai
only argument in favour of Homer 1
from the common opinion and from

There appearo to me to be a great imp
an epic except in writing. ... I began in
which I had not looked at since I left schot

' Corlyle tells the story ol Pheidippides
acourately.

1881. CARLTLE'S LECTURES. 861

alone I became completely convinced that it was not the work of one man. . . .
As to its unity — its value does not consist in an excellent sustaining of characters.
There is not at all the sort of style in which Shakespeare draws his characters ;
there is simply the cunning man, the great-headed, coarse, stupid man, the proud
man ; but there is nothing so remarkable but that any one else could have drawn
the same characters for the purpose of piecing them into the lUad. We all know
the old Italian comedy, their harlequin, doctor, and columbine. There are almost
similar things in the characters in the lUad.

In fact the Iliad has such unity — not more and not less — as the
modem collection of our old Bobin Hood ballads.

Oontrasting the melodious Greek mmd with the not yery melodious English
mind, the cithara with the fiddle (between which, by the way, there is strong re-
semblance), and having in remembrance that those of the one class were sung in
alehouses, while the other were sung in kings' palaces, it really appears that Robin
Hood*8 ballads have received the very same arrangement as that which in other
times produced ' the Tale of Troy divine.'

The poetry of Homer possesses the highest qualities because it
delineates what is ancient and simple, the impressions of a primeval
mind. Further,

Homer does not seem to believe his story to be a fiction ; he has no doubt it is a
truth. ... I do not mean to say that Homer could have sworn to the truth of his
poems before a jury — far from it — but that he repeated what had survived in
tradition and records, and expected his readers to believe them as he did.

With respect to the ' machinery,' gods and goddesses, Homer was
not decorating his poem with pretty fictions. Any remarkable man
then might be regarded as supernatural; the experience of the
Greeks was narrow, and men's hearts were open to the marvellous.

Thus Pindar mentions that Neptune appeared on one occasion at the Nemean *
games. Here it is conceivable that if some aged individual of venerable mien and
few words had in fact come thither his appearance would have attracted attention -,
people would have come to gaze upon him, and conjecture have been busy. It
would be natural that a succeeding generation should actually report that a god
appeared upon the earth.

In addition to these excellences,

the poem of the Iliad was actually intended to be sung ; it sings itself, not only
the cadence, but the whole thought of the poem sings itself as it were ; there is a -
serious recitative in the whole matter. . . . With these two qualities. Music and
Belief, he places his mind in a most beautiful brotherhood, in a sincere contact with
his own characters ; there are no reticences ; he aUows himself to expand with
some touching loveliness, and occasionally it may be with an awkwardness that
carries its own apology, upon all the matters that come in view of the subject of
his work.

In the Odyssey there is more of character, more of unity, and it
represents a higher state of civilisation. Pallas, who had been a
warrior, now becomes the Goddess of Wisdom. Ulysses, in the Iliad
' an adroit, shifting, cunning man,' becomes now * of a tragic signifi-

* Isthmian ? See Pindar, Olymp. viii. 64.

862 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. May

cance.' He is now Hhe 7auch''end/uTing^ a most endearing of
epithets.' It is impossible that the Odyaaey could have been vrittai
by many diflFerent people.

As to detailed beauties of Homer's poetry, we have a toucbing
instance in Agamemnon's calling not only on gods but rivers and staig
to witness his oath ; ^ he does not say what they or^, but he feels tbat
he himself is a mysterious existence, standing by the side of them,
mysterious existences.' Sometimes the simplicity of Homer^s similes
make us smile ; ' but there is great kindness and veneration in the smile.'
There is a beautiful formula which he uses to describe death : —

< lie thumped down falling, and his arms jingled about him.' Now tnml as
this expression may at first appear, it does convey a deep insight and feeling of
that phenomenon. The fall, as it were, of a sack of clay, and the jingle of anDovr,
the last sound he was ever to make throughout time, who a minute or two befote
was alive and vigorous, and now falls a heavy dead noiass. . . • But we most quit
Homer. There is one thing, however, which I ought to mention about Uljases,
that he is the veiy model of the type Greek, a perfect image of the Qreek gemos;
a shifty, nimble, active, man, involved in difficulties, but every now and then bobbing
up out of darkness and confusion, victorious and intact.

Passing by the early Greek philosophers, whose most valuable
contribution to knowledge was in the province of geometry, Carlyk
comes to Herodotus.

His work is, properly speaking, an encyclopsBdia of the various nations, and it
displays in a striking manner the innate spirit of harmony that was in the Greel&
It begins with Croesus, King of Lydia ) upon some hint or other it suddenlj goes
off into a digression on the Persians, and then, apropos of something else, we bare
a disquisition on the Egyptians, and so on. At first we feel somewhat impalieat
of being thus carried away at the sweet will of the author ; but we soon find it to
be the residt of an instinctive spirit of harmony, and we see ail these varioos
branches of the tale come pouring down at last in the invasion of Greece bj the
Persians. It is that spirit of order which has constituted him the prose poet of
his country. ... It is nudnly through him tiiat we become acquainted witli
ThemiBiocles, that model of the type Greek in prose, as Ulysses was in song. . . .

Contemporary with Themistocles, and alittie prior to Herodotus, Greek tngedj
began, ^schylus I define to have been a ti-vly gigantic wumr— one of the Uxgest
characters ever known, and all whose movements are clumsy and huge like those
of a son of Anak, In short, his character is just that of Prometheus himself as be
has described him. I know no more pleasant thing than to study JBechylns ; jon
fancy you hear the old dumb rocks speaking to you of all tb^ogs ' they bad beea
thinking of since the world began, in their wild, savage utterances*

Sophocles translated the drama into a choral peal of melodv.
* The Antigone is the finest thing of the kind ever sketched by man.*
Euripides writes for eflfect's sake, * but how touching is the effect
produced ! '

Socrates, as viewed by Carlyle, is * the emblem of the dedine of
the Greeks,' when literature was becoming speculative.

I willingly admit that he was a man of deep feeling and morality ; but I as
well understand the idea which Aristophanes liad of him, that he was a man gdif

1881. CARLYLE'S LECTURES. 863

to destroy all Greece vith his innovation. ... He shows a lingerbg kind of awe
snd attachment for the old religion of his country, and often we cannot make oat
whether he believed in it or not. He must have had but a painful intellectual life,
a painful kind of life altogether one would think. . . . He devoted himself to the
teaching of morality and virtue, and he spent his life in that kind of mission. I
cannot say that there was any evil in this ; but it does seem to me to have been of
a character entirely unprofitable. I have a great desire to admire Socrates, but I
confess that his writings seem to be made up of a number of very wire-drawn
notions about virtue ; there is no conclusion in him ; there is no word of life in
Socrates. He was^ however, personally a coherent and firm man.

We pass now {Lecture III.) to the Bomans.

AVe may say of this nation that as the Greeks may be compared to the children
of antiquity from their naXveU and gracefulness, while their whole histoiy is an
aurora, the dawn of a higher culture and civilisation, so the Romans were the
men of antiquity, and their history a glorious, warm, laborious day, less beautiful
and graceful no doubt than the Greeks, but more essentially useful. . . • The Greek
life was shattered to pieces against the harder, stronger life of the Bomans. • • •
It was just as a beautiful crystal jar becomes dashed to pieces upon the hard rocks,
90 inei^pressible was the force of the strong Roman eneigy.^

The Romans show the characters of two distinct species of people
— the Pelasgi and the Etruscans. Theold Etruscans, besides pos-
sessing a certain genius for art, were an agricultural people —

endowed with a sort of sullen energy, and vrith a spirit of intensely industrious
thrift, a kind of vigorous thrift. Thus with respect to the ploughing of the earth they
declare it to be a kind of blasphemy against nature to leave a clod unbroken. • • .
Now this feeling was the fundamental characteristic of the Roman people before
they were distinguished as conquerors. Thrift is a quality held in no esteem, and
is generally regarded as mean; it is certainly mean enough, and objectionable
from its interfering with all manner of intercourse between man and man. But I
can say that thrift well understood includes in itself the best virtues that a man
can have in the world ; it teaches him self-denial, to postpone the present to the
future, to calculate his means, and regulate his actions accordingly ; thus under-
stood, it includes all that man can do in his vocation. Even in its worst state it
indicates a great people.^

Joined with this thrift there was in the Romans a great serious-
ness and devoutness ; and they made the Pagan notion of fate much
more productive of consequences than the Greeks did, by their con-
viction that Rome was fated to rule the world. And it was good
for the world to be ruled sternly and strenuously by Rome : it is the
true liberty to obey.

That stubborn grinding dovm of the globe whicii their ancestors practised,
ploughing the ground fifteen times to make it produce a better crop than if it were
ploughed fourteen times, the same was afterwards carried out by the Romans in
all the concerns of their ordinary life, and by it they raised themselves above all
other people. Method was their principle just as harmony was of the Greeks.

* Here Carlylo speaks of Kiebuhr, whose book * is altogether a laborious thing
but he affords after all very little light on tlic early period of Roman history.*

* See, to the same effect, 'a certain editor ' in Frederick the Great, b. iv. chap. 4.

864 TEE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Ifaj

The method of the Itamuu wu a sort of humony, but not thftt bMoliful grae^l
thing which wm the Qroek humonj. Thw« was a harmonj of pUu, in u^
tectnral hannony, which was diaplsjed in the arraogiDg of practical autecedeon
and coDseqiieiicee.

The * crownicg phenomeaou ' of their hiatory was the strnggLe
with Gaith^e. The Cartii&ginianB were like the Jews, a sUff-nedud
people ; a people proverbial for injustice.

I most uncere] J rejoice that they did not suhdne the Bomane, but that theBauu
got the better of them. We have indicationi which show that thej wsra i Bean
people compared to the RomaDS, who thought of nothing hut commsTce.wQddio
anything for money, and were exceedingly cruel in th«r measures of iggnadi»-
ment and in all theii measures. . . . How the Romans got on after that «i cu
see by the Oommentaries which Julius C»aar has left us of hie own procmUiigi;
how he spent t«n years of campaigns in Oaul, cautaouslj planning all lui mcHuiw
before he attempted to carry them into eflect It b, indeed, a most utlAreilii]^
book, and evinces the indomitahle force of Soman energy ; the triumph of dTil,
methodic man over wild and barbarous man.

Before Csesar the gOTemmeiit of Rome BeemB to have been a

Tery tumultuous bind of poli^, a continual Btni^i;le between tJie Pabidua ud
the Plebeians. . . . Therefore I cannot join in the laraentationa made by soms ant
the downfkll of the Bepublic, when Offisu took hold of it. It had bean bnt x
constant struggling scramble for prey, and it was well to end it, and t« «m tb
wisest, cleanest, and most judicious man of them pUee himself at the top of U. ...
And what an Empire was it I Teaching mankind that they should be tilhng Ut
ground, as they ought to be, instead of fighting one another. For that is tLs ml
thing which every man is called an to do — to till the ground, and not to slij hb
poor brother-man.

Coming now to their language f-^A wtorainro — +>«i naflt>i;.rio.)i^
tingnishing character of the laugi
Btracture, finely adapted to come
written on the face of the pUnet
great works were done Bpontaneousl

The p<HDt is not to be aUe to write a b
il.. Everything in that case which a nati<
mind. If any great man among the Ron
had never done anything bnt till the groi
cellence in that way. They would have i
a great man does carries the traces of a gr

Virgil'e JSneld

ranks as an epic poem, and one, too, of
Homer. But I think it entitely a difie
There is that fatal consciousness, that kni
plot, the style, all is vitiated by that one
them to be compared to the healthy, wl
much-enduring Ulysses, or Achillea, or
poem, is a lachrymose sort of man altogel
a storm, but instead of handling the tackli
ate still, groaning over his misfortunes.

1881. CARLYLE'8 LECTURES. 865

ttmate as I am P Chased fiom port to port by the persecuting ddties, who give
me no respite/ and so on; and then he tells them how he is 'the pious iEneas.!
In short, he is just that sort of lachrymose man ; there is hardly anything of a man
in the inside of him.

*■ When he let himself alone,' Virgil was a great poet, admirable
in his description of natural scenery, and in his women ; an amiable
man of mild deportment, called by the people of Naples < the maid.'
* The efiPect of his poetry is like that of some laborious mosaic of
many years in putting together. There is also the Koman method,
the Boman amplitude and regularity.' His friend Horace is ^ some-
times not at all edifying in his sentiments;' too Epicurean; <he
displays a worldly kind of sagacity, but it is a great sagacity.' After
these, Boman literature quickly degenerated.

If we want an example of a diseased self-consciousness and exaggerated imagi-
nation, a mind blown up with all sorts of strange conceitSi the spasmodic state of.
intellect, in short, of a man morally unable to speak the truth on any subject — ^we
have it in Seneca. ... I willingly admit that he had a strong desire to be sincere,
and that he endeaTOured to convince himself that he Yms right, but even this when
in connection with the rest constitutes of itself a fault of a dangerous kind.

But — such is the power of genius to make itself heard at all times
— the most significant and the greatest of Boman writers appeared
later than Seneca.

In the middle of all that quackeiy and puffery coming into play turn about in
eveiy department, when critics wrote books to teach you how to hold your arm and
your leg, in the middle of all this absurd and wicked period Tacitus was bom, and
was enabled to be a Boman after all. He stood like a Oolossus at the edge of a
dark night, and he sees events of all kinds hurrying past him, and plunging he
knew not where, but evidently to no good, for falsehood and cowardice never yet
ended anywhere but in destruction.

Yet he writes with grave calmness, he does not seem startled, he
is convinced that it will end well somehow or other, ' for he has no
belief but the old Boman belief, full of their old feelings of goodness
and honesty.' Garlyle closes his view of pagan literature with that
passage in which Tacitus speaks of the origin of the sect called
Christians.

It was given to Tacitus to see deeper into the matter than appears from the
above account of it. But he and the great Empire were soon to pass away for
ever ; and it was this despised sect—tiiis Chrittus guidam — ^it was in this new
character that all the future world lay hid.

The transition period {Lecture /F.), styled * the millennium of
darkness,' was really a great and fertile period, during which belief
iiras conquering unbelief; conquering it not by force of argument
but through the heart, and ^ by the conviction of men who spoke into
convincible minds.' Belief — ^that is the great tact of the time. The
last belief left by Paganism is seen in the Stoic philosophers — ^belief
Vol. IX.— No. 51. 3 M

866 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. May

in oneself, belief in the high, royal nature of man. But in thdr
opinions a great truth is extremely exaggerated : —

That bold assertion for example, in the face of all reason and fact, thAt pun
and pleasure are the same thing, that man is indifferent to both. ... If we look
into the Christian religion, that dignification of man's life and natine, we shall find
indeed this also in it, — ^to believe in oneself. . . . But then how nnqeskalily xbor
human is this belief, not held in proud scorn and contempt of other men, in cpal
disdain or indignation at their paltriness, but received by exterminating piide ahiiy-
gether from the mind, and held in degradation and deep human sufieriogB.

Christianity reveals the divinity of human sorrow.

In another point of view we may regard it as the revelation of Eternity: Everr
man may with truth say that he waited for a whole eternity to be bom, ud that
he haa a whole Eternity waiting to see what he will do now that he is bom. It is
this which g^ves to this little period of life, so contemptible when wdghed agiios
eternity, a significance it never had without it. It is thus an infinite arena, wbae
infinite issues are played out. Not an action of man but will have its truth mhA
and will go on for ever, . . . This truth, whatever may be the opiDions we hold oq
Christian doctrine, or whether we hold upon them a sacred silence or not, we m^
recognise in Christianity and its belief independent of all theories.

If to the character of the new faith we add the character of the
Northern people, we have the two leading phenomena of theMiddk
Ages. With much shrewdness, the still rude societies of Europe M
their way to order and quiet. Then, there was that thing which le
call loyalty. In these times of our own

loyalty is much kept out of sight, and little appreciated, and many minds regiid
it as a sort of obsolete chimera, looking more to independence and some mch
thing, now regarded as a great virtue. And this is very just, and most suitable
to this time of movement and progress. It must be granted at once that to exac:
loyalty to things so bad as to be not worth being loyal to is quite an unsuppor-
able thing, and one that the world would spurn at once. This must be conceded;
yet the better thinkers will see that loyalty is a principle perennial in haiaaD
nature, the highest that unfolds itself there in a temporal, secular point of Tiew.
In the Middle Ages it was the noblest phenomenon, the finest phasis in sodetj
' anywhere. Loyalty was the foundation of the State.

Another cardinal point was the Church. ^ Like all other matters^
there were contradictions and inconsistencies without end, but it
should be regarded in its Ideal.' Hildebrand represents the Medisral
Church at its highest power. ^ He has been regarded by some chssi
of Protestants as the wickedest of men, but I do hope we have at tiiis
time outgrown all that. He perceived that the Church was the
highest thing in the world, and he resolved that it should be at the
top of the whole world, animating human things, and giving tbeo
their main guidance.' Having described the hundliation of the Ebh
peror Henry the Fourth at the Castle of Canossa, Carlyle proceeds.*—

One would think from all this that Hildebrand was a proud man^'but he wt5 sii
a proud man at aU, and seems from many circumstances to have beoi 'oo ^
contrary a man of vexy great humility ; but here he treated himeelf as the ref(^

1881. CARLYLE'S LECTURES. 867

sentative of Christ, and far beyond all earthly authorities. In these circumaUnces
doubtless there are many questionable things, but then there are many cheering
things. For we see the son of a poor Tuscan peasant, solely by the superior spi^tual
love that was in him, humble a great emperor, at the head of the iron force of
Surope, and, to look at it in a tolerant point of view, it is really very grand ; it is
ihe spirit of Europe set above the body of £urope ; the mind triumphant over
the brute force. . . . Some have feared that the tendency of such things is to
found a theocracy, and have imagined that if this had gone on till our days a most
abject superstition would have become established; but this is entirely a vain
theory. The day that is about man is always sufficiently ready to assert its
rights ; the danger is always the other way, that the spiritual part of man will
become overlaid with his bodily part. This then was the Church, which with the
loyalty of the time were the two hinges of society, and that society was in con-
sequence distinguished from all societies which have preceded it, presenting an
infinitely greater diversity of views, a better humanity, a largeness of capacity.
This society has since undergone many changes, but I hope that that spirit may go
on for countless ages, the spirit which at that period was set going.

The grand apex of that life was the Crusades.

One sees Peter [the Hermit] riding along, dressed in his brown cloak, with the
rope of the penitent tied round him, carrying all hearts, and burning them up with
zeal, and stirring up steel-clad Europe till it shook itself at the words of Peter.
What a contrast to the greatest of orators, Demosthenes, spending nights and
years in the construction of those balanced sentences which are still read with
admiration, descending into the smallest details, speaking with pebbles in his
mouth and the waves of the sea beside him, and all his way of Hfe in this manner
occupied during many years, and then to end in simply nothing at all ; for he did
nothing for his country, with aU his eloquence. And then see this poor monk
start here without any art ; for as Demosthenes was once asked what was the
secret of a fine orator, and he replied Action, Action, Action, so, if I were asked it,
J should say Belief, Belief, Belief. . . . Some have admired the Crusades because
they served to bring all Europe into conmiunication with itself, others because it
produced the elevation of the middle classes; but I say that the great result which
characterises and gives them all their merits, is that in them Europe for one
moment proved its belief, proved that it believed in the invisible world, which
surrounds the outward and visible world, that this belief had for once entered into
the consciousness of man.

It was not an age for literature. The nohle made his signature
by dipping the glove-mailed hand into the ink and imprinting it on
the charter. But heroic lives were lived, if heroic poems were not
Teritten; an ideal did exist; the heroic heart was not then desolate
and alone ; the great result of the time was ^ a peipetual struggling
forward.' And a literature did come at last; heautiiul childlike
utterances of troubadour and trouv^re ; lasting, however, but a little
while, in consequence of the rise of a kind of feeling adverse to the
spirit of harmony. Petrarch, the troubadour of Italy, and the Nibe-
lungenlied represent the period. The spirit of the age did not speak
xauch, but it was not lost. ^ It is not so ordered.' When we hear
nide, natural voices singing in the distance, all is true and bright,
because all false notes destroy one another, and are absorbed in the
air before they reach us, and only the true notes come to us. So in
the Middle Ages we only get the heroic essence of the whole.

3u2

/

868 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. May

Of the new-formed nations the Italian ' first possesses a claim oa
our solicitude.' {Lecture F.)^ Though Italy was not a great
political power, she produced a greater number of great men distm*
guished in art, thinking, and conduct than any other country — and
to produce great men is the highest thing any land can do. The
spokesman of Italy in literature is Dante — one who stands beside
iEschylus and Shakespeare, and * we really cannot add another grett
name to these.' The idea of his Divina Commedia^ with its three
kingdoms of eternity, is ^ the greatest idea that we have ever got at^
* I think that when all records of Catholicism have passed away, when
the Vatican shall be crumbled into dust, and St. Peter's and Strasbnzg
minster be no more, for thousands of years to come Catholicism viU
Survive in this sublime relic of antiquity.' Dante is great in Ids
wrath, bis scorn, his pity ; great above all in his sorrow. His great-
ness of heart, united with his greatness of intellect, determine his cha-
racter ; and his poem sings itself, has both insight and song. Dante
does not seem to know that he is doing anyUiing very remarkable,
differing herein from Milton.

In all his delineations he has a most beautiful^ sharp grace, the qmckest isd
clearest intellect ; it is just that honesty with which his mind was set upon his saV
ject that carries it out. . . . Take for example his description of the dtj of Db
to which Virgil carries him ; it possesses a beautiful simplicity and hones^. Tbe
light was so dim that people could hardly see, and they winked at him^ just »
people wink with their eyes under the new moon, or as an old tailor wioki
threading his needle when his eyes are not good.

The passage about Francesca is ^ as tender as the voice of mothen,
full of the gentlest pity, though there is much stem tragedy in it. . . .
The whole is beautiful, like a clear piping voice heard in the middle
of a whirlwind ; it is so sweet, and gentle, and good.* The Divirye
Comedy is not a satire on Dante's enemies.

It was written in the pure spirit of justice. Thus he pitied poor Francesca, and
would not have willingly placed her in that torment, but it was the justiee d
God's law that doomed her there. . . . Sudden and abrupt moTdments are fre-
quent in Dante. He is indeed full [of what I can call military moyemeatBi . • .
Those passages are yery striking where he aUudes to his own sad fortunes; there
is in them a wild sorrow, a savage tone of truth, a brealdng heart, the hati«d o£
Florence, and with it the love of Florence. . . • His old schoolmaster tells hin
' If thou follow thy star thou canst not miss a happy harbour.' That was just it
That star occasionally shone on him from the blue, eternal depths, and he feh br
was doing something good ; he soon lost it again ; lost it again as he fell bask isto
the trough of the sea. . . . Bitter I bitter I poor exile, — ^none but soobimIrIIt
persons to associate with. . . . The Inferno has become of late times mainlj tkt
favourite of the three [parts of the poem] ; it has harmonised well with tbe taste
of the last thirty or forty years, in which Europe has seemed to covet nioR i
violence of emotion and a strength of convulsion than almost any other qpaJatj. . . .
but I question whether the Pnrgatorio is not better, and a greater thing. . . •

* I make few excerpts from this lecture, for a good part of its substance ^ftas%
in the lecture <The Hero as Poet,* in Heroes and Hero-wor$Hp,

1881. CARLYUrS LECTURES. 869

Men haye of course ceaaed to befieTe these things, that there is the mountun
rising lip in the ocean there, or that there are those Malebolgic black gulfs ; but
still men of any knowledge at all must belieye that there exists the inexorable
justice of God, and that penitence is a great thing here for man ; for life is but a
series of errors made good again hj repentance, and the sacredness of that doctrine
is asserted in Bante in a manner more moral than anywhere else. . . . One can
well understand what the Germans say of the three parts of the Divina Commediay
yiz. that the first is tfie architectural, plastic part, as of statuary ; the second Ib the
pictorial or picturesque ; the third is the musical, the melting into music, song.

Lecture VL — Dante's way of thinking, in the nature of things,
could not long continue. With an increased horizon of knowledge,
his theory could no longer fit. ' All theories approximate more ox
less to the great theory which remains itself always unknown. • • •
Every philosophy that exists is destined to be embraced, melted down
as it were into some larger philosophy.' Universities, the art of
printing, gunpowder, were changing the aspects of human life during
the two centuries that lie between Dante and Cervantes. Loyalty
and the Catholic religion, as we saw, gave their character to the
Middle Ages. Chivalry, the great product of the Spanish nation, is
a practical illustration of loyalty ; and chivalry includes, with the
German valotur of character, another German feature, the reverence
for women. The Spanish nation was fitted to carry chivalry to a
higher perfection than it attained anywhere else.

The Spaniards had less hreadth of genius than the Italians, but they had, on the
other hand, a lofty, sustained enthusiasm in a higher degree than the Italians, with
a tinge of what we call romance, a dash of oriental exaggeration, and a tenacious
vigour in prosecuting their object ; of less depth than the Germans, of less of that
composed silent force ; yet a great people, calculated to be distinguished.

Its early heroes, Viriathus and the Cid (whose memory is still
musical among the people), lived silent ; their works spoke for them.
The first great Spanish name in literature is that of Cervantes. His
life — that of a man of action — is told- by Carlyle in his brief, pic-
turesque manner. Don Quixote is the very reverse of Dante, yet has
analogies with Dante. It was begun as a satire on chivalry, a
burlesque ; but as Cervantes proceeds, the spirit grows on him.

In his Den Quixote he portrays his own character, representing himself,
with good natural irony, mistaking the illuflions of his own heart for realities.
But be proceeds ever more and more harmoniously. . . . Above all, we see the
good-humoured cheerfulness of the author in the middle of his unfortunate
destiny ; never provoked with it ; no atrabiliar quality ever obtained any mastery
in bis mind. . • . Independently of chivalry, Don Quixote is valuable as a sort of
sketch of the perpetual struggle in the human souL We have the hard facts of
♦ViR world's existence, and the ideal scheme struggling with these in a high
enthusiastic manner delineated there ; and for this there is no more wholesome
vehicle anywhere than irony. ... If he had given us only a high-flown panegyric
on the Age of Gold,* he would have found no ear for him; it is the self-mockery in

• Carlyle had previously made particular reference to the scene with the goat-
berda.

870 THS NINETEENTH CENTURY. May

which he enyebps it, which reconciles us to the high bunts of entimaafiD, t^
will keep the matter aliye id the heart as long as there are men to read it It it
the Poetry of Comedy.

Cervantes possessed in an eminent degree the thing critics call
h/u/mour.

If any one wish to know the difference between humoor and wit, the laogiiter
of the fool; which the wise man, by a fiimilitade founded on deep earnestiMa,
calls the crackling of thorns under a pot, let him read Cerrantes on the onelnai
and on the other Voltaire, the greatest laugher the world erer knew.

Of Calderon Carlyle has not read much, * in fact only one pUy
and some choice specimens collected in Grerman books,' and in tbie
German admiration] for Calderon he suspects there is ^ very modi of
forced taste.' Lope was ^ a man of a strange &cility, but of wA
shallowness too, and greatly inferior to Calderon/ In the histoij of
Spanish literature there are only these two beside Cervantes. Why
Spain declined cannot be explained : ^ we can only say just this, thai
its time was come.' The lecture closes with a glance at ' that am-
-flict of Catholicism and Chivalry with the Beformation commonlj
called the Dutch War.'

Lecture VIL — ^The Beformation places us upon German soil
The German character had a deep earnestness in it, proper to aioedi-
iative people. The strange fierceness known as the Berserkirngeis
also theirs.

Bage of that sort^ defying all dangers and obstacles^ if kept down suffidentk,
is as a central fire which will make all things to grow on the sm&oe aboYeit. . . .
On the whole it is the best character that can belong to any natioD, producij:^
strength of all sorts, and all the concomitants of strength — ^perseyerauoeigleidjDeaN
not easily excited, but when it ib called up it will have its object acoompHabed.
We find it in all their history. Justice, that is another of its coDeoBiitai)t»;
strength, one may say, in justice itself. The strong man is he that cu be
just, that sets everything in its own lightful place one above the othet.

Before the Beformation there had been two great appeaiances d
the Crermans in European history — ^the first in the overthrow of the
Empire, the second in the enfranchisement of Switzerland. The
Beformation was the inevitable result of human progress, the old
theory no longer being found to fit the facts. And ^ when the mini
^begins to be dubious about a creed, it will rush with double fan
towards destruction ; for all serious men hate dubiety.'

In the sixteenth century there was no Pope Hildebrand ready t^)
sacrifice life itself to the end that he might make the Church tfe-
highest thing in the world. The Popes did indeed maintain the
Chiurch, ' but they just believed nothing at all, or lielieved that th^T
got so many thousand crowns a year by it. The whole was ooe ^
mera, one miserable sham.' Any one inclined to see things in tha'
proper light ' would have decided that it was better to have nothing
to do with it, but crouch down in an obscure comer someirhcre,
and read his Bible, and get what good he can for himself in that nj?

1881. CARLYLE'S LECTURES. 871

bat have nothing to do with the Machiavellian policy of sach a
Church.'

At such a time Luther appeared, Luther < whose life was not to
sink into a downy sleep while he heard the great call of a far other
life upon him.' ^ His character presents whatever is best in German
minds.

He IB the image of a large, substantial, deep man, that stands upon truth,
justice, iaimess, that fears nothing, considers the right and calculates on nothing
else; and again, does not do it spasmodically, but quietly, calmly ; no need of any
noise about it ; adheres to it deliberately, calmly, through good and bad report.
Accordingly we find him a good-humoured, jovial, witty man, greatly beloved by
every one, and though his words were half battles, as Jean Paul says, stronger
than artillery, yet among his friends he was one of the kindest of men. The wild
lond of force that was in him appears in the physiognomy of the portrait by
Luke Cranach, his painter and friend ; the rough plebeian countenance with all
sorts of noble thoughts shining out through it. That was precisely Luther as he
appears through his whole history.

Erasmus admitted the necessity of some kind of reformation : —

But that he should risk his ease and comfort for it did not enter into his calcu«*
lations at all. ... I should say, to make my friends understand the character of
Erasmus, that he is more like Addison than any other writer who is familiarly
known in this country. . . .- lie was a man certainly of great merit, nor have I
much to say against him . . . but he is not to be named by the side of Luther, —
a mero writer of poems, a littSrateur^

There is a third striking German character whom we must notice,
Ulrich Hutten — a straggler all his days ;

much too headlong a man. He so hated injustice that he did not know how to
deal with it, and he became heart-broken by it at last. ... He says of himself
he hated tumult of all kinds, and it was a painful and sad position for him that
wished to obey orders, while a still higher order commanded him to disobey, when
the standing by that order would be in fact the standing by disorder.

His lifting his cap, when at the point of death, because he had
reverence for what was above him, to the Archbishop who had caused
his destruction, ^ seems to me the noblest, politest thing that is recorded
of any such a moment as that.' And the worst thing one reads of
Erasmus is his desertion of Hutten in his day of misfortune.

The English nation (Lecture VIII,) first comes into decisive notice
about the time of the Eeformation. In the English character there is
^ a kind of silent ruggedness of nature, with the wild Berserkir rage
deeper down in the Saxon than in the others : ' English talent is prac-
tical like that of the Bomans, a greatness of perseverance, adherence to
a purpose, method ; practical greatness, in short. In the early history,
before Alfred, * we read of battles and successions of kings, and one
endeavours to remember them, but without success, except so much of

* Much of what Carlylc says here of Luther reappears in Heroes and Her(h

872 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. %

this flocking and fighting as Milton gives us, viz, that the; were the
battles of the kites and crows.' Yet the history of England was theo
in the making. ^ Whoever was uprooting a thistle or hramUe, or
drawing out a bog, or building himself a house, or in short leaving a
single section of order where he had found disorder, that man was
writing the History of England, the others were only obstmcUng it'
The battles themselves were a means of ascertaining who among them
should rule — who had most force and method among them* A wild
kind of intellect as well as courage and traces of deep feeling are scat*
tered over their history. There was an affirmativeness, a larg^essof
soul, in the intervals of these fights of kites and crows, as the doings of
King Alfred show us.

About the time of Queen Elizabeth the confused elements amalgar
mated into some distinct vital unity. That period was * in many respects
the summation of innumerable influences, the co-ordination of many
things which till then had been in contest, the first beautiful oatflodi
of energy, the first articulate, spoken energy.' After centuries the
blossom of poetry appeared for once. Shakespeare is the epitome of
the age of Elizabeth ; he is the spokesman of our nation ; like Horner^
^schylus, and Dante, a voice from the innermost heart of nature; a
universal man.*^ His intellect was far greater than that of any other
that has given an account of himself by writing books. ^ There is no
tone of feeling that is not capable of yielding melodious resonance to
that of Shakespeare.' In him lay < the great, stem Berserkir n^
burning deep down under all, and making all to grow out in the most
flourishing way, doing ample justice to all feelings, not developfng
any one in particular.' What he writes is properly naiurey * the in-
stinctive behest of his mind. This all-producing E^h knows not the
synmietry of the oak which springs from it. It is all beautiful, not a
branch is out of its place, all is symmetry : but the Earth has itself
no conception of it, and produced it solely by the virtue that was
in itself.' Shakespeare has a beautiful sympathy of brotherhood with
his subject, but he seems to have no notion at all of the great and
deep things in him. Certain magniloquent passages he seems to
have imagined extraordinarily great, but in general there is perfect
sincerity in any matter he undertakes. It was by accident that he
was roused to be a poet, ^ for the greatest man is always a quiet man
by nature. We are sure not to find greatness in a prurient, noisy
man.'

We turn from Shakespeare to a very different man — Jdm Knox.

Luther would have been a great man in other things heiode the Befonnition, %
great substantial happy man, who must have excelled in whatever matter b»
undertook. Knox had not that faculty, but simply this of standing npontniUL
entirely ; it iBn*t that his sincerity is known to him to be sinoeritj, bat it sris»

>• Many things said of Shakespeare and of Knox In this lecture are repeated io
Heroe$ and Henhwonhip.

1881. CARLYLE'S LECTURES. * 873

from a flense of the imposailiUitj of any other procedure. . • . Sbncerifry, what is it
bnt a divorce from earth and earthly feelings ? The sun which shines upon the
eu^, and seems to^uch it, dbesn^ touch^lEe earth at all. So the man/ who is
free of earth is the only one that can maintain the great truths of existence, not by
an ill-natured talking for ever about truth, but it is he who does the truth. There
is a great deal of humour in Knox, as bright a humour as in Chaucer, expressed in
his own quaint Scotch. . . . Thus when he describes the two archlnshops quarrel-
ling, no doubt he was delighted to see the disgrace it brought on the Church, but
he was chiefly excited by the really ludicrous spectacle of rochets flying about, and
vestments torn, and the struggle each made to overturn the other.

Milton may be considered ' as a summing ap, composed as it were
of the two, Shakespeare and Knox/ ^^ Shakespeare having reverence
for everything that bears the mark of the Deity, may well be called
religions, but he is of no particular sect. Milton is altogether sec-
tarian. As a poet ^ he was not one of those who reach into actual
contact with the deep fountain of greatness ; ' his Paradise Lost does
not come out of the heart of things ; it seems rather to have been
welded together.

There is no life in his characters. Adam and Eve are beautiful, graceful objects^
but no one has breathed the Pygmalion life into them ; they remain cold statues.
Idilton*s sympathies were with things rather than men ; the scenery and phenomena
of nature, the gardens, the trim gardens, the burning lake ; but as for the phenomena
of mind, he was not able to see them. He has no delineation of mind except
Satan, of which we may say that Satan has his own character.

^Lecture IX, is wanting in the manuscript. The following points
from the notice in the Eocamiirier may serve to preserve continuity
in the present sketch. The French as a nation ' go together,' as the
Italians do not ; but it is physical and animal going together, not
that of any steady, final purpose. Voltaire, full of wit and extra-
ordinary tidents, but nothing final in him. All modem scepticism is
mere contradiction, discovering no new truth. Voltaire kind-hearted
and ' beneficent,' however. French genius has produced nothing ori-
ginal. Montaigne, an honest sceptic. Excessive unction of Babe-
lais' humour. Bousseau's world-influencing egotism. Bayle, a dull
writer.]

Lecture X. — ^The French, as we have seen, sowed nothing in the
seedfield of time; Voltaire, on the contrary, casting firebrands
among the dry leaves, produced the combustion we shall notice by-
and-by. No province of knowledge was cultivated except in an un-
fruitful, desert way. Thus politics summed thetoselves up in the
Contrat Social of Bousseau. The only use intellect was put to was
to ask why things were there, and to account for it and argue about
it* So it was all over Europe in the eighteenth century. The quack
was established, and the only belief held was ' that money will buy
money's worth, and that pleasure is pleasant.' In England this

*> 80 Taine, in his more ahstract way, says that Hilton sums np the Benaissanoe
and the Reformation.

874 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Ihy

baneful spirit was not so deep as in France : piurtly because the Tea-
tonic nature is slower, deeper than the French ; partly because Eng-
land was a free Protestant country. Still it was an age of logic, not
of faith ; an age of talk, striving to prove faith and morality by
speech ; unaware that logic never proved any truths but tbose of
mathematics, and that all great things are silent tbix^s. ' In qnte
of early training I never do see sorites of logic hanging together, pot
in regular order, but I conclude that it is going to end in some
measure in some miserable delusion.'

However imperfect the literature of England was at this period,
its spirit was never greater ; it did great things, it built great towu,
Birmingham and Liverpool, cydopean workshops, and ships. There
was sincerity there at least, Arkwright and Watt were evidently Bin-
cere. Another symptom of the earnestness of the period was that
thing we call Methodism. The fire in Whitfield — ^fi^ not logic-
was unequalled since Peter the Hermit.

As to literature, ' in Queen Anne's time, after that most dis*
graceful class of people — King Charles's people — ^had passed amy,
there appeared the milder kind of unbelief, complete formalism. Yet
there were many beautiful indications of better things.' 'Addino
was a mere lay preacher completely bound up in formalism, bat be
did get to say many a true thing in his generation.' Steele had
infinitely more naivete^ but he subordinated himself to Addison.

It ifl a cold vote in Addison^s favoar that one gives. By far the greatest man
of that time, I tbitJc, was Jonathan Swift, Dean Swift, a man entirely deprind of
hie natural nourishment, but of great robustness, of genuine Saxon mind, not vitb-
out a feeling of reverence, though from circumstances it did not awaken in him. •#.
He saw himself in a world of confusion and falsehood ; no eyes were clearer to aaa
it than his.

Being of acrid temperament, he took up what was fittest for him,
^ sarcasm mainly, and he carried it quite to an epic pitch. Thae is
something great and fearful in his irony ' — ^which yet shows some-
times sympathy and a sort of love for the thing he satirises. By
nature he was one of the truest of men, with great pity for his fellow-
men. In Sterne

there was a great quantity of good struggling through the superficial eriL H#
terribly failed in the discharge of his duties, still we must admire in him tfai
sporting kind of geniality and afiection, a son of our common mother, not cued up
in buckram formulas. . . . We cannot help feeling his immense lore for tbiiig)^
around him, so that we may say of him as of Magdalen, ' Much is forgiTen his
because he loved much.'

As for Pope,

he w^as one of the finest heads ever known, full of deep sayings, and attenzf
them in the shape of couplets, rhymed couplets.* '^

^^ It is interesting to compare Thackeray's estimates of Swift and Stemeviife

Carlyle's.

1881. CARL7LE*S LECTURES. ' 875

The two persons who exercised the most remarkable influence
upon things during the eighteenth century were unquestionably
Samuel Johnson '' Khd David Hume, ^ two summits of a great set of.
influences, two opposite poles of it. . . • There is not such a cheering
spectacle in the eighteenth century as Samuel Johnson/ He contrived
to be devout in it ; he had a belief and held by it, a genuine inspired
man. Hume's eye, unlike Johnson's, was not open to faith, yet he
was of a noble perseverance, a silent strength.

The History of England failed to get buyers ; he bore it all like a Stoic, like a
heroic silent man as he was, and then proceeded calmer to the next thing he had
to do. I have heard old people, who have remembered Home well, speak of his
great good humour under trials, the quiet strength of it ; the very converse in this
of Dr. Johnson^ whose coarseness was equally strong with his heroisms.

As an historian, Hume ^ always knows where to begin and end.
In his History he frequently rises, though a cold man naturally, into
a kind of epic height as he proceeds.' His scepticism went to the
very end, so that ^ all could see what was in it, and give up the un-
profitable employment of spinning cobwebs of logic in their brain.'
His fellow-historian, Robertson, was a shallow man, with only a power
of arrangement, and ^ a soft sleek style.' Gibbon, a far greater his-
torian than Kobertson, was not so great as Hume. ^ With all his
swagger and bombast, no man ever gave a more futUe account of
human things than he has done in the Decline and Fall of the RoTnan
ErnpireJ

Lecture XL — It is very strange to contrast Hume, the greatest of
all the writers of his time, and in some respects the worthiest, with
Dante ; to contrast scepticism with &ith. * Dante saw a solemn law
in the universe pointing out his destiny with an awful and beautiful
certainty, and he held to it. Hume could see nothing in the universe
but confusion, and he was certain of nothing but his own existence.
Yet he had instincts which were infinitely more true than the logical
part of him, and so he kept himself quiet in the middle of it all, and
<lid no harm to any one.' But scepticism is a disease of the mind, a
fatal condition to be in, or at best useful only as a means to get at
knowledge ; and to spend one's time reducing realities to theories is
to be in an enchanted state of mind. Morality, the very centre of
the existence of man, was in the eighteenth century reduced to a
theory — ^by Adam Smith to a theory of the sympathies and Moral
Sense ; by Hume to expediency, ' the most melancholy theory ever
propounded.' Besides morality, everything else was in the same
state.

A dim, huge, immeasurable steam-engine they had made of this world, and, as
Jean Paul sajs, heaven became a gas ; God, a force; the second world, a grave. . . .

** The criticism on Jolinson, being to the same effect as that of Carlyle*s essay^
I pass over.

876 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Hay

In that huge tuuTerse become one vast steam-engineyas it were, the new geDentum
that followed maat have found it a very difficult position to be in, and peiiectlj
insupportable for them, to be doomed to live in such a place of falsehood and
chimera ; and that was in fact the case with them, and it led to the second great
phenomenon we have to notice — th6 inth>duction of Wertherism.^^

Werther was right : —

If the world were really no better than what GK)ethe imagined it to be, there
was nothing for it but suicide ; if it had nothing to support itself upon but theae
poor sentimentalities^ yiew-hunting trivialitiesy this world was reallj not fit to li?B
in. But in the end the conviction that this theory of the world was wrong came
to Goethe himself, greatly to his own profit, greatly to the world's profit.

The same phenomenon shows itself in Schiller's Robbers. life to
the robber seems one huge bedlam, and a brave man can do nothing
with it bat revolt against it. In our own literature Byron represents
a similar phasis. He is full of 'rage and scowl against the whole
universe as a place not worthy that a genuine man should live in it
He seems to have been a compound of the Bobbers and Werther put
together.' This sentimentalism is the ultimatum of scepticism. That
theory of the universe cannot be true ; for if it were there would be
no other way for it but Werther's, to put an end to it ; for all man-
kind ' to return to the bosom of their Father with a sort of dmnb
protest against it. There was, therefore, a deep sincerity in the sra-
timentalism, not a right kind of sincerity perhaps^ but still a strug-
gling towards it.' '^

All this — scepticism, sentimentalism, theorising, dependence on
the opinion of others, wages taken and no duty done — ^went on and
on. And then came the consummation of scepticism. ^ We can well
concave the end of the last century, the crisis which then took place,
the prurience of self-conceit, the talk of illumination, the darkness
of confusion.' The new French kind of belief was belief in the
doctrine of Rousseau, ^ a kind of half-madman, but of tender pity too,
struggling for sincerity through his whole life, till his own vanity
and egotism drove him quite blind and desperate.' Then appeared
one of the frightfullest phenomena ever seen among men, the French
Bevolution. < It was after all a new revelation of an old truth to
this unfortunate people ; they beheld, indeed, the truth there dad
in hell-fire, but they got the truth.' It b^an in all the golden
radiance of hope ; it is impossiUe to doubt the perfect sincerity of
the men. At first ^ for the upper class of people it was the joyfullest

^* A notice, far from accurate, of the origin of Gk>ethe'8 Werth^ here follows, and
the time is thus characterised by the future historian pf Frederick : ' It was a time
of haggard condition ; no genuine hope in men's minds ; all outwards was fibe—
the last war for example, the Seven Years* War, the most absurd of wars ever under-
taken, on no public principle, a contest between France and Germany, from Frederick
the Great wanting to have Silesia, and Louis the Fifteenth wanting to give IfadsBe
de Pompadour some influence in the affiurs of Europe; and 60,000 men were shot to
that purpose.'

^ A notice of Ooetz von BerUehinjfen follows.

1881. CARLTLE'S LECTURES. 877

of news; now at last they had got something to do; • • • »
certainly to starve to death is hard, but not so hard as to idle to
death.*

But the French theory of life was false — that men are to do their
duty in order to give happiness to themselves and one another. And
where dishonest and foolish people are, there will always be dishonesty
and folly ; we can't distil knavery into honesty. Europe rose and
assembled and came round France, and tried to crush the fievolution,
but could not crush it at all. < It was the primeval feeling of nature
they came to crush, but [the spirit of France ^^] rallied, and stood up
and asserted itself, and made Europe know even in the marrow of
its bones that it was there.' Bonaparte set his foot on the necks of
the nations of Europe. Bonaparte himself was a reality at first, the
great armed soldier of democracy, with a true appreciation of the
Bevolution, as opening the career to all talents; but at last he
became a poor egotist, and, stirring up the old Berserkir rage
against him, he burned himself up in a day. * On the whole, the
French Revolution was only a great outburst of the truth that the
world wasn't a mere chimera, but a great reality.'

Having seen how scepticism burned itself up, it becomes
interesting to inquire {Lecture XII.\ What are we to look for now ?
Are we to reckon on a new period of things, of better infinitely extend-
ing hopes ? We do see good in store for us. The fable of the phcenix
rising out. of its own ashes, which was interpreted by the rise of
modem Europe out of the Roman Empire, is interpreted again in the
French Revolution. On the spiritual side of things we see the
phoenix in the modem school of German literature.*' We might
inquire. What new doctrine is it that is now proposed to us ? What
is the meaning of German literature? But this question is not
susceptible of any immediate answer, for German literature has no
particular theory at all in the front of it. The object of the men
who constructed it was not to save the world, but to work out in
some manner an enfranchisement for their own souls. And —

seeing here the blessed, thrice-hlesaed phenomenon of men unmutikted in all that
constitutes man, able to believe and be in all things men, seeing this, I say, there
is here the thing that has aU other things presupposed in it ... To explain, I
can only think of the Kevehition, for I can call it no other, that these men made
to me. It was to me like the rising of a light in the darkness which lay around,
and threatened to swallow me up. I was then in the very midst of Wertherism,
the blackness and darkness of death. There was one thing in particular struck me
in Goethe. It is in his Wilhdm Meister. He had been describing an association
of all sorts of people of talent, formed to receive propositions and give responses
to them, all of which he'described with a sort of seriousness at first, but with irony
at the last However, these people had their eyes on Wilhelm Meister, with great

!• Word omitted in MS.

** Gailyle is assured that there are few in his audienc? able to read German, but
anticipates a better time.

878 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. May

cmiidng watching^ over lum at a diatanoe at first, not interfering with him too
soon ; at last the man who was intrusted with the maoagemeiit of the thing took
him in hand, and began to give him an account of how the association acted. Now
this is the thing, which, as I said, so much struck me. He tells l^lhelm MiNflter
that a numher of applications for advice were daily made to the association, which
were answered thus and thus ; but that many people wrote in particular for recipes
of hapfnness ; all that, he adds, was laid on the sheLf, and not answered at alL Now
this thing gave me great surprise when I read it. ' What ! ' I said, ' is it not the
recipe of happiness that I have been seeking all my life, and isn't it precisely he-
cause I have failed in finding it that I am now miserable and discontented ? ' Had
I supposed, as some people do, that Goethe was fond of paradoxes, that this wu
consistent with the sincerity and modesty of the man's mind, I had ceirtainly rejected
it without further trouble ; but I couldn't think it. At length, after tnnuog
it up a great while in my own mind, I got to see that it was very true whtt
he said — ^that it was the thing that all the world were in error in. No mo
has a right to ask for a recipe for happiness ; he can do without happness ; there
is something better than that. All kinds of men who have done great things—
priests, prophets, sages — ^have had in them something higher than the love of
happiness to guide them, spiritual clearness and perfection, a far better thing thst
than happiness. Love of happiness is but a kind of hunger at the best, a ciaviag
because I have not enough of sweet provision in this world. If I am asked what
that higher thing is, I cannot at once make answer, I am afraid of causing mistake.
There is no name I can give it that is not to be questioned ; I couldn't speak
about it; there is no name for it, but pity for that heart that doeanotftelit;
there is no good volition in that heart, l^is higher thing was onoe named the
Cross of Christ — ^not a happy thing Mtf^,' surely.*^

The whole of Grerman literature is not to be reduced to a seeking
of this higher thing, but such was the commencement of it. The
philosophers of Germany are glanced at.

On

I studied them once attentively, but found that I got nothing out of them.

e may just say of them that they are the precisely opposite to Hums. . . .
This study of metaphysics, I say, had only the result, after bringing me rapidly
through difierent phases of opinion, at last to deliver me altogether out of meti-
physics. I found it altogether a frothy system, no right beginning to it, no xi^t
ending. I began with Hume and Diderot, and as long as I was with them I na
at atheism, at blackness, at materialism of all kinds. If I read Kant I antred at
precisely opposite conclusions, that all the world was spirit, namely, that thete
was nothing material at all anywhere ; and the result was what 1 have stated,
that I resolved for my part on having nothing more to do with metaphysics at alL

After the Werther period Croethe ' got himself organised at List,
built up his mind, adjusted to what be can't cure, not suicidally
grinding itself to pieces.' For a time the Ideal, Art, Painting, Poetxy,
were in his view the highest things, goodness being included in these.
Grod became for him ' only a stubborn force, really a heathen kind
of thing.' As his mind gets higher it becomes more serious too,
uttering tones of most beautiful devoutness. ^ In the West-O^ickar
Diva/n^ though the garb is Persian, the whole spirit is Christianity, it
is Goethe himself, the old poet, who goes up and down singing litUe

>• C!ompare with this passage * the Everlasting Yea * of Sartor Be$arhu»

1881. CABLYLS'S LECTURES. 87^

snatches of his own feelings on different things. It grows extremely
beautiful as it goes on, full of the finest things possible, which
sound like the jingling of bells when the queen of the fairies rides
abroad.' **

Of Schiller the principal characteristic is Va chivalry of thought,
described by Goethe as the spirit of freedom struggling ever forward
to be free.' His Don Ca/rloe

is well described as beiog like to a lighthouse, high, far-seen, and withal empty.
It is in &ct Tery like what the people of that day, the GKrondista of the French
Revolution, were always talking about, the Bonheur du people and the rest. . . •
There was a nobleness in Schiller, a brotherly feeling, a kindness of sympathy for
what is true and just There was a kind of flolence too at the last. He gave up
his talk about the Bonheur du peuphf and tried to see if he could make them
happier instead.

The third great writer in modem Grermany is Riohter.

Gk)ethe was a strong man, as strong as the mountain rocks, but as soft as the
green sward upon the rocks, and like them continually bright and sun-beshone.
Bichter, on the contrary, was what he has been called, a half-made man ; he
struggled with the world, but was never completely triumphant over it. But one
loves Bichter. . • . There is more joyous laughter in the heart of Ricbter than in
any other GenuMi writer.

We have then much reason to hope about the future ; great things
are in store for us.

It is possible for us to attain a spiritual freedom compared with which
political enfranchisement is but a name. ... I can't close this lecture better than
by repeating these words of Bichter, Thau, EtermU JPromdencey wUt cause the day to
dawn.

Nothing now renuiins for me but to take my leave of you — a sad thing at all
times that word, but doubly so in this case. When I think of what you are, and
of what I am, I cannot help feeling that you have been kind to me ; I won't trust
myself to say how kind ; hut you have been as kind to me as ever audience was
to man, and the gratitude which I owe you comes to you from the bottom of my
heart. May God be with you all I

Edward Dowden.

'* A defence of Goethe from the charges of over-serenity and political Indifference
follows.

880 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Ihy

THE NEW IRISH LAND BILL.

The reserys which is observed in each House of Parliament upon
the subject of measures which are before the other, made it impossi-
ble for me, in speaking in the House of Lords on the 8th of April, to do
more than indicate in the most general terms the prUicipal objectioQ
which I entertain to the Irish Land Bill of the Government The
same reticence need not be observed in discussion ' out of doon;' aod
indeed it seems to be almost the duty of those who have given much
attention to an important subject, that they should^ contribute irbat
they can to the public consideration of it. • •

Let me in the first place deprecate the attitude of mind which is
impatient of all argument on the subject. It is an attitnde not
only common: it is prevalent. ^Something must be done, ne?er
niind what.' The weary cycles of Irish discontent^ the savage and too
often the disgusting crimes, the odious requirements of repression-
all these may well drive us, at momenta, into conduct bom of mere
recklessness and despair. There is, indeed, a time for everything.
There are moments in politics, as in other affairs, when ordinaxy
rules must be suspended. But no time can ever come when in tk
work of permanent legislation we can afford to forget what that work
involves for the future as well as for the present. Least of all can
such forgetfiilness be afforded when one of the greatest evils we hare
to deal with is a chaos of opinion — a confounding of the plainest
distinctions not only in matters of fact and of policy, but in morals.
Simply to yield without caring to think what is yielded — ^is not tie
way to mitigate but the way to aggravate that most fruitful kind of
mischief. Neither the peculiar social problems of Ireland nor those of
any other country can be solved in such a spirit. It is one thing to
act upon a real political necessity ; it is another thing to go beyond
the action which that necessity requires. It is yet another thing--and
a very different thing indeed — ourselves to create or to aggravate the
necessities to which we profess to yield, and to raise a new crop of
such necessities for those who come after us*

No politician who was responsible for the Land Act of 1870, and
who defended the Disturbance Bill of 1880, can be accused of being
insensible to the demands of circumstance or to the exigencies of

1881. THE NEW IRISH LAND BILL. 881

the moment. On the other hand, those who have agreed to ex-
ceptional measures can never justly be accused of inconastency
because they decline to advance farther and farther upon divergent
paths. There were in the Land Act of 1870, as there are in every part
of our constitution, a great many so-called * principles' involved
which, if carried farther, would effectually destroy other * principles'
of far more fundamental obligation. It must never be forgotten ,
that in politics, as well as in higher matters, the limits within which
a principle is applied are, or may be, an essential part of that principle
itself. The whole system of government under which we live depends
on our constant recollection or on our instinctive sense of this truth.
In the present paper I wish to put on record some of the principal
objections I entertain to the proposals of her Majesty's Government .
for the further alteration of the law affecting the Ownership and
Occupancy of land in Ireland.

The fundamental principle of these objections may be stated in a
few words. Every measure which can be prudently and justly taken
with a view to increase the number of the Owners of land in Ireland
is a measure tending in the right directioD. On the other hand,
every measure which tends gratuitously to impair or destroy Owner-
ship altogether, by cutting out of it some of its most essential ele-
ments, and by reducing all Owners, more or less completely, to the
position of mere rent^chargers, must be a measure tending in the
wrong direction, not only at the present moment but for all time to
come.

It has long been one of the professed aims of the Liberal party
to modify or remove the restrictions which constitute what is called
* limited Ownership ' in land, — with the great object of making every
Owner as immediately and as directly interested as possible in the
good management of his property. Legislation — ^however exceptional,
provided only it be just — with a view to increase as rapidly as posrible
the number of persons who own land in Ireland, is, in my view, most
expedient. Legislation tending unduly and needlessly to limit the
freedom of such Ownership, when it has been acquired, is, in my
view, not only inexpedient, but mischievous in the highest degree.

These two lines of legislation are not only different, but they are

opposite in direction. Tenants may well refrain from buying those

incidents of ownership which they expect, by agitation, to get for

nothing. Capitalists who are not tenants will be little tempted to

invest their money in land if they cannot buy with it the powers

essential for its management. Thus the value of the Purchase Clauses

will be destroyed, or much diminished, by the Occupancy Clauses.

It will do little good to multiply the number of Owners in Ireland if

they are to be deprived of the powers which are essential to the

discbarge of those functions in which the whole virtue of Ownership

consists. The thoughtlessness prevalent on this subject is astonishing.

Vol. IX.— No. 51. 3 N

882 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. May

la Ireland it is now commonly laid down as an indisputabk pro-
position that if a landowner receives a certain annual reat it ib all
h» requires, and that everything else he values in Owneiship is
a ^ mere sentiment.' This is true only in the same sense in which, it is
true that 'sentiment' is the one great power which gives force and
dignity to all the pursuits of life. ' Even in those callings in which the
love of money seems to be predominantly concerned, men can and do
get deeply interested in better things. In the excellence of the pro-
ducts in which they deal — in the skill of their workmen — ^in the satis-
faction of customers — ^in the contribution they make to the wants of
others and to the material progress of the world, — in one or other of
these ways all men in all callings do contrive to cherish and to be im-
pelled by ' sentiments ' other and better than those which are inspired
by the mere enjoyment of money. The Ownership of land may at least
be credited with some share in this higher savour among the pursoiti
of life. The management of an estate is, or ought to be, as much
a business as the management of any other concern. The ' sentiment'
which delights in seeing the improvement of a landed property is a
sentiment of the highest value to the State. No man could const
the millions which, under the stimulus of this ' sentiment,' have been
laid out on the improvement of the soil in these kingdoms. And yet
it is a kind of outlay which those who are not concerned in it may
-never see. In other branches of industry capital takes a more visiUe
form. Great buildings, forests of chimneys, miles of houses, the
-confused noises of machinery — these are all evident to the eye or to
the ear. But the investments of capital in the soil often, like the
dead, ' lie silent underground,' or are visible only in changes of
vegetation which the mine-owner or the mill-owner would never
notice. Not, generally, in great works which catch the eye ; not in
gigantic reclamations which are trumpeted in newspapers ; but in
the ceaseless outflows of continual interest and attention — ^nov on
this £arm, now on that; now on one field, now on another — ^has this
^^ sentiment' of Ownership been fertilising and redaiming land for
generations past. It has at least as high elements in it as the
sentiment which prevails in any other secular pursuit whatever. It
may pay, but it never pays highly. Men are not incited to it merely,
^r even mainly, by the love of money. The doctrine that they ought
to be contented with the position of mere rent-chargers is a doctrine
founded on the ignorance or the prejudices of those who know nothing
themselves of the management of land. Every act of l^islation
which is inspired by this doctrine will not only be unjust as r^[ards
the present time, but most injurious for all time to come.

This would be true anywhere. But it is even more true of Ireland
than of any other country in the world. If the unfortunate history
of that country has led, and indeed has almost compelled, many land-
owners there to be contented with the position of mere rent-receireis,

1881. THIS NEW IRISH LAND BILL. 883

or has discouraged or prevented them from having any other, there
is all the more reason and necessity for favouring the change in this
matter which has undoubtedly been in progress. If there has been
one fact brought out more clearly than another by the evidence taken
before the Commission, it is the large and unacknowledged share
which landowners have frequently contributed to the improvement of
Ireland. There is, indeed, an immense range of variation as to the
practice in this respect — ^a range of variation which all the more
condemns legislation which is founded on general assumptions and
which gives indiscriminate rights. I doubt whether in any part of
England or of Scotland an instance could be found of more spirited
outlay than that which has been detailed before the Commission as
the outlay of the Duke of Leinster and of some other landowners
on the main drainage of an important district.^ Only one general
assumption on this matter would be safe, and that is, that the
* sentiment ' of Ownership should be encouraged and developed to
the highest possible degree. Ireland needs, above all things, an
active and enterprising Ownership in land. In most parts of
England the land has been under cultivation for centuries. Its
condition has been the result of the outlay of many generations
of Owners, and of the labour of many generations of tenants. In
such cases, the existing Owner may have comparatively little to do
except to keep buildings and other improvements abreast of the
science of the time. But Ireland is, as regards a large portion of it,
a country in a backward stage of agricultural industry. There is
a vast amount of land which may be reclaimed. There is another
vast amount of land only half cultivated, which requires to be
thoroughly improved. Above all, in a large part of Ireland the
tillage of the people is so rude, their habits so antiquated, and their
holdings so scattered and so miserable, that it is very often an indis-
pensable preliminary to all improvement that they should be re-
arranged and more or less consolidated. Every * sentiment ' which
can induce capital and enterprise and knowledge to come to the help
of sluggishness and ignorance and poverty, in such a country, ought
to be stimulated and encouraged, instead of being checked by legis-
lation and denounced in speeches.

I'here is, therefore, obviously the strongest objection in principle
to every limitation on the Ownership of land in Ireland which is not
justified or demanded under one or other of these three following
categories : —

1. Limitations arising out of rights, legal or equitable, acquired
by existing Occupiers from contract, or from usages capable of being
supported by reasonable evidence before a Court.

2. Limitations which can be honestly said to be essential to the
conduct of agriculture as a business.

» BessboroQgh CJommission Beport, vol. iii. Q. 40, 62S.

3n2

884 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Ma,

3. Limitations intended for the exceptional protection of extreme
helplessness and poverty.

These are limitations which give the widest scope to the recog-
nition of every local circumstance, and all the special oonditi(His
of Ireland.

Under the first of these heads came all the limitations imposed
by the Act of 1870 in clothing with legal force the Ulster cmtoia
and all other similar usages wherever their existence could he proved^
as applicable to each individual case. In doing this the Act went
ery far : because many of the usages thus legally enforced had never
been of the certain and accepted character which alone constitntesa
legal custom in England. Many of them were nothing more Uian
the rides or allowances of individual liberality on the part of ownen
— allowances which were thus entirely changed in character.

Under the second of these heads came all the limitatioxffi imposed
by the same Act, securing compensation for improvements, and for
the encouragement of leases.

Under the third head came the Disturbance Clauses, which were
avowedly of an exceptional character, and were carefully framed, aiul
as carefully explained, so a^i to exclude the idea^ that they were in-
tended to acknowledge a divided Ownership, and to make it plain
that they were intended simply to compensate for disturbance in a
profitable business. Nothing could be more definite and precise than
the language of Mr. Gladstone in 1870 in explaining the* Distnrhasce'
Clauses : — * That which is our main contention is this — that the gxeat
remedy which, apart from custom, ought to be provided for the Irish
Occupier, should be provided for him in the shape of a shelter against
eviction, but not on the footing of a joint property in the soiL When
he has paid his money that gives him such a property — inconvenient
as it may be — with the consent, or the fairly presumed consent, of
his landlord, he is entitled to be protected. But I am pot prepared,
nor are any of my colleagues, to admit that the just protection of liim
afibrds either an apology or a reason for endowing him with a joint-
property in the soil.' And, be it observed, this disclaimer did not rest
only, or even mainly, on the declarations of the Government. It rested
on the structure of the Act. If the compensation for disturbance had
been intended as the price of a right of property, that price would hare
been higher in proportion to the size and value of the holding. But,on
the contrary, the rate of compensation was graduated on a scale de-
creasing with size and value, and increasing with smallness and poverty.

It is now proposed to confer by law upon every tenant in Irehnd
(except existing lease-holders), indiscriminately, and without the
least reference to the fact whether he has ever acquired it, or had the
smallest reason to claim it, a right to sell his holding ^ior the he£t
price that can be got ' — that is, to the highest bidder, unless tiie
Owner can object to that bidder on some specified ground proved

1881. THE NEW IRISH LAND BILL. 885

t)efore a legal Court. There are limitations proposed in respect to
price and in respect to the division of the price to which I shall refer
presently. But these do not affect the proposition that the right to
-sell is to be bestowed universally and indiscriminately. This indis-
-criminate right of sale is to be given by statute, however such right
may have been excluded when the tenant took his farm ; or however
little he may have earned it by special outlay ; or however much
the Owner may have himself executed the improvements — or however
much in other ways the saleable value of the farm may have arisen
from causes with which the tenant has had nothing to do.

I wish it to be distinctly understood that my objection to the
right of selling Occupancies lies only against giving it universally and
indiscriminately. I do not speak of the right of sale established and
regulated by mutual agreement: nor of the right of sale as gained by
custom and acquired by purchase : nor of the right of sale agreed to
by the Owner as an alternative to paying * compensation for disturb-
ance : ' nor of the right of sale similarly agreed to as compensation
for improvements. I speak, and speak only, of the right of sale
^ven universally — as an inseparable incident of agricultural tenure
— irrespective of all special circumstances and of all the conditions
•on which men may have let and hired yearly tenancies in Ireland.

This sweeping proposal cannot be defended on the ground of any
rights which have been equitably acquired ; because it is to apply
to all cases without discrimination. It cannot be defended on the
^^tmd that it is necessary for the successful prosecution of agricul-
ture ; because the best agriculture in the world is to be found where
DO such right of sale exists, or could be entertained. It cannot be
-defended on the ground that it is required for the protection of mere
poverty and helplessTiess ; because it embraces thousands of tenancies
in respect to which no such circumstances can be pleaded.

A law So regardless of the varieties of circumstance, and of the
^uities which are inseparable from them, will constitute an entirely
Tiew system of things, — involving, if not by the strictest logic, yet
at least by the most powerful and insuperable implications of
popular feeling, — the idea and all the consequences of a divided
•Ownership, with the benefits of full Ownership left to nobody. The
Tiniversal and indiscriminate right of selling Occupancies given to
all yearly tenants without the least reference to any legitimate
expectation or method of acquiring it, constitutes a share, and it
-may be a large share, of Ownership, suddenly transferred from
those who now have it, and who may have sacrificed much to keep
^t, to those who have never had it, and have never paid one six-
pence for it.

I could not use the argument which seeks to identify or even to
•connect this new statutory right of selling Occupancies with the
<;onimon law of assignment. It may be perfectly true that by

886 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. May

the common law of Ireland, as by the common law of England,
Occupiers, in the absence of agreement to the contrarj, have a
right of assigning their own interest, whatever that might be.
But they could not assign an interest larger or greater than that
which they themselves possessed. They could not give away that
which was not their own to give. By law the Owner had the right b
turn out the assignee when the interest which had been assigned to
him had expired. This counter right, inseparable from Owneiship,
was as essential a part of the law as the right of assignment It is
surely, therefore, a most misleading representation of the conditioDs
under which men have long acquired both the Ownership and the
Occupancy of land in Ireland to put forward the right, of assignment
as fundamental, and the counter right by which it was limited and
qualified as accidental or adventitious. The opposite position— the
very converse — ^is the truth. The argument which confounds the
new right of sale with the old privilege of assignment is purely tech-
nical. The argument, on the other hand, which maintains the right
of the Owner to have an effective choice in the selection of his own
. tenant is founded on all the considerations alike of policy and of
equity which affect the case. The Owner has, and be ought to he en-
couraged to feel that he has, a paramount interest in the character a&d
in the qualifications of those who hire his land. In no country in the
world is this just interest exposed to such dangers as in Ireland. There
is abundant evidence taken before the Commission which proves bow
. violent and unscrupulous many of the Iri^ Tenants are in their
dealings with each other : and how exacti^zg towards the labouring
classes who have no land. The right of assignment, therefore, not only
always was, but always ought to be, absolutely qualified and limited
by the counter rights and by the duties of Ownership. Und^ this
qualification and limitation, and out of the balance between the two
rights, the sale of holdings becomes of necessity a matter of arrange-
ment and agreement between the Owner and the Occupier. I do
not for a moment argue that under such agreements the sale of
holdings may not, under the conditions which prevail in many paits
of Ireland, be both a jtist and a convenient arrangement. I have,
indeed, reason to know that it has sometimes many advantages, as^
for example, where it provides quietly for the consolidation oi small
holdings by enabling the more wealthy tenants to buy out the poorer,
and so to remove them without the evils and dangers of evictioo.
But such conditions are essentially local. They famish no jnstifiea-
tion, and, in my opinion, no excuse for a compulsory law, mabo^
the right of sale inseparable from the tenure of land on hire under
all circimistances and in all parts of Ireland.

Then there is another argument used in support of this nniveisal
and indiscriminate right of selling Occupancies, which seems to me
quite as indefensible as the last. It is said that under the Distorhanoe

1881. THE SEW IRISH LAND BILL. 887

Claases of the Act of 1870 "we did give an * interest' to Occtipiers
which has in fact been found to have a money value. It is urged
that tfaerefoie we mustj allow, or may as well allow, this ' interest '
to be saleable. But is it possible to sustain the doctrine that every
valuable ' interest ' which a man may have, he must necessarily be
entitled to transfer by sale to anybody else? That valuable interest may
be so interwoven with the superior or with the concurrent rights of other
men, that, on the contrary^ it may involve the greatest possible injus-
tice that the law should step in to enable him to sell it. How would
this doctrine of the universal and compulsory saleability of all valu-
able ^interests' be toleratedin the conmiercial world ? What ^interest'
is more valuable than a partnership in a thriving commercial busi-
ness ? But does it follow that'the law should interfere to make all such
interests liable to sale ? And what would it avail, in arguing for such
a proposal, to point out the indisputable fact that such ^ interests ' do
possess a money value, and that men are able to borrow money on
the security they afford ? Personal qualities which are incapable of
proof or even of appreciation before a Court of Law are of the essence of
a thousand valuable ^ interests ; ' but these interests are so interwoven
with the rights and the dearest interests of other men, that it would
involve the greatest possible injustice compulsorily to make them
saleable. The Owners and Occupiers of land are, in some respects,
in the position of partners in one of the most important industries in
the world. Nor is there one in which personal qualities may be of
higher moment and account. There may be cases — ^in Ireland
there may be thousands of cases — ^in which it is a matter of
indifference to the Owner whether one man or another is tenant
of a holding. But there may be also, and there are, thousands of
other cases in which no such indifference prevails. Indeed it may
be said with truth that such indifference, where it does exist, is one of
the bad features of a condition of things which it is the highest
interest of the State to discourage rather than to encourage and to
perpetuate. There is an increasing number of landowners in Ireland
who are sensible of the duties of their position, and whose great desire
is to choose tenants who are active, skilful, and industrious. To all
these the universal saleability of farms will be ' a heavy blow and a
great discouragement.'

But, even if it could be asserted, which it cannot, that all the
existing tenants of Ireland have by usages or expectations, however
indefinite, acquired this right of selling their farms, what excuse
can be offered for affixing this right indelibly to all future tenancies ?
The Act of 1870 carefully provided that even in Ulster and elsewhere,
whilst this right of sale was to be respected and protected whenever
it had been acquired, it might be bought up and paid off, so that the
farm might be cleared of it for evermore.

Under this provision an inducement was held out to enterprising

888 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. May

and improving Owners that at least by purcbaee they could regain
that complete freedom of dealing in their land whidi is the ooiy
healthy condition of business of any kind. But now it is piopoaed
to cut off even this hope for the application of Owners' capital to the
improvement of Ireland. A man may buy up and pay off everj
existing right or expectation ; he may buy up every new right giyen
by this new proposed law ; he may lay out his money in buildings, in
drainage, and in reclamation ; but he is never to be allowed to let
the land so freed and so improved except under the dishearteniDg
condition imposed by law, that the man to whom he lets it is to ha?e
the power of selling it the very next day, or month, or year, to some
one else of whom the Owner may know nothing, or of whom he may
have the best reason to believe the worst.

Let us look at the operation of such a law in combination irith
the new scheme for increasing the number of the Owners of land in
Ireland. Let us take the favourite case of a tenant who has done
whatever has been done in the way of. improvement. Under the new
Purchase Clauses he buys his own farm ; and it is expected that
under the stimulus of Ownership and of the ' sentiment ' which it in-
spires, he adds greatly to the improvements whicli he had executed
before. He builds a better house; he drains his land better; he
makes new fences ; he reclaims bits of bog or bits of moontain.
Suddenly there happens to him some one of the many contingencies
of life which changes or arrests its usual course. He becomes unaUeto
cultivate bis farm himself as he had been wont to do. But his attach-
ment to the spot, always great, has become greater stilL Another
generation is coming on, and to one or other of his sons, when they
are older, he desires and hopes to continue the home and the property
he has acquired. . In the mean time, for perhaps some five or ten yeais,
it may be almost indispensable that he should let his farm. Under
the proposal of this Bill he will be unable to do so without the tenant
acquiring an inalienable right to sell the Occupancy to some third
person who may be a bad farmer and a litigious man, or who maybe
obnoxious to the Owner for many reasons which he could never make
good in a Court of Law. Is it possible to defend such a law as this on
> any plea of either justice or expediency ? This, however, is only one
out of a hundred cases which might be put. There is no distisctioD
in justice or in principle between a new proprietor who has bought,
and an old proprietor who has inherited, his land, except this : that
existing Owners are more likely to be encountered and encombered
by subordinate interests equitably acquired. But even on the oldest
estates there will be many cases in which no such interests exist-H?
where they may be extinguished — or where the Owner desires to let a
farm which he has himself improved and furnished. There is bo con-
ceivable reason why in such cases, or in others which might be
specified, Owners should be prohibited by law from letting their

1881. THE NEW IRISH LAND BILL. 889

land without the power of sale attaching to the occupancy. Such a
prohibition goes &r beyond anything which can be justified on the
plea of defending local usages. It is a gratuitous introduction of the
evils of divided Ownership where it did not exist before, and a stand-
ing impediment in the* way of any return in Ireland to a healthier
condition of things.

I admit, indeed, that the Bill of the Grovemment makes a gallant,
and I am sure a sincere, attempt to avoid or tp mitigate the evils
which have often been pointed out as the accompaniment of what is
called ^ Free Sale.' It is proposed to put statutory limitations on that
freedom which shall qualify the initial declaration of the first clause
that the Occupier may sell ^ for the best price that can be got/ These
limitations have two objects in view. One is to prevent, as far as it
may be possiUe to prevent, the exaction of extravagant prices for the
' goodwill* or occupancy of farms. The other object of the limitations
is to secure to the Owner some share in the selling price of bis own
farms, where a recognisable portion of that price ought clearly in equity
to belong to him. Both of these objects are essential— one of them in
respect to policy, the other of them in respect to justice. If the
selling price of Occupancies were to be unlimited, the whole advantage
of low rents would be intercepted by the individuals who happen to be
Occupiers at the present time, and not one shilling of that advantage
would pass on to the Occupiers of the future. And so likewise if these
existing Occupiers are to be allowed to carry off, in all cases and under
all circumstances, the whole selling value which may have arisen from
the sacrifices which Owners have made in the shape of cheap rents, or
from the outlay they have made in the shape of improvements, there
would be a wholesale and most unjust transfer of property from one class
to the other. The Government does recognise both these obvious
truths, and the Bill does endeavour to respect them. But these are
exactly the principles on which even in Ulster the right of sale has
been regulated and limited by various rules on various estates, and it
is precisely against these rules and regulations that the most strenuous
resistance has arisen and the most violent condemnation has been
pronounced. Even if the statutory limitations, which are to come in
the place of the limitations imposed by custom and by agreement, were
in themselves perfectly well framed, the question arises how far they
are likely to be permanent. Mere logic in politics does not always run
its course. But there are conditions of pressure under which it does,
and very quickly too. Moreover, under these conditions the logic is
apt to be very loose and very one-sided. The inferences which have
been drawn from the Act of 1 870, and the arguments which, as we
have seen, have been founded on it, show that such conditions are
present in all their force when we give new rights by law. The Bill
gives new impulse to the forces which tend to override every limita-
tion, however much that limitation may be founded either on policy

890 THE NINETEENTB 0ENT0R7. May

or on justice. The universal right of sale given to all Occupiers
indiscriminately and without any reference to pre-existing rights, or
even pre-existing expectations, or to varieties of circumstance, is a
right which has it in its very nature to swell and grow, and to eat up
every other right, however equitable, which comes across its path.

There is, as it seems to me, a curious illustration of this teudencj
in the Bill itself, and in the very definition of the limitations which
it is proposed to put upon the tenant's right to sell that which has
never been his own. It is proposed by the Bill that if the iInpIov^
ments on a farm have been done by the Owner, he may apply to the
Court to have such improvements valued, and any moneys found due
to him on such valuation shall be paid to him out of the purdiase
moneys of the tenancy. The principle of this provision is of obvioos
necessity if any regard whatever is to be paid to equity. But thoe is
this curious deduction made — that the Court may find that the hud-
lord's right to the value of his own improvements has beenadequatdj
met and compensated * by increased rent or otherwise.' Now let us
look at the idea and the principle which is involved in this deductum
from the general provision.

If I execute improvements upon land hired from another man,
there is an excellent and most equitable reason why my interest in
those improvements should be exhaustible by lapse of time. Hutt
equitable reason lies in this — that the results of the improvement I haie
executed are due not only to my capital, or to my labour, but ak)
to the capital of the Owner invested in and represented by the qualities
of the soil. When, therefore, I have reaped the results of the im-
provement for a time long enough to repay me the capital I have
laid out, with interest, and perhaps a handsome profit, — ^then the
time has come when the Owner becomes justly entitled to a suhstau-
tial share in the results which have been so largely due to that which
belonged to him. But, it is a turning of the tables indeed to main-
tain that an Owner can ever lose by any lapse of time his right of
property in his own improvements upon his own land. The mere
payment of rent for land so improved, however long that payment may
continue, can never give the Occupier any right to that to which be
has contributed nothing. If I hire land which is not only owned, but
has also been improved, by another man, then the rent which I maj
pay him for the right of cultivation can never by any lapse of time
entitle me to any share whatever in the selling value of that whidi
is entirely and exclusively his. If by the mere payment of reut I
can ever be entitled to possess myself of the selling value of the
capital which he has invested in improvements, then on the same
principle the mere continuous payment of rent may entitle me to
possess myself also of that other portion of his capital which has been
invested in the Ownership of the soil* This is indeed a new aad a
very cheap way of purchasing land ! It seems to be in strict accord-

1881. THE NEW IRISH LAND BILL. 891

anoe with a speech made during last wint.er by some member of the
Land League who told the tenants whom he was addressing that they
had paid rent for so many years that they had paid the capital value
of their farms over and over again, and they might now ikirly claim
them as their own.

Perhaps I am wrong in the interpretation I put on this strange sub-
section of the first clause of the Land Bill ; and if I am right I feel sure
that it will be altered. But if such consequences as these are capable
of being drawn from the right of sale by those who are led to follow
them in the drafting of a Bill, how much more easily will unjust and
extravagant consequences be drawn in the imagination of Irish tenants
under the stimulus not only of self-interest but of political agitation I

These are some of the direct consequences of this proposal. But
the indirect consequences are numberless, and equally open to
objection.

The universal and perpetual statutory right of sale must carry
with it the perpetual exclusion of freedom of bargain in respect to
rent. In a healthy condition of agriculture, and among a people
with an adequate and civilised standard of life, a farm let at its
market value ought not to have any saleable value in addition to
the rent. Therefore, to keep up the perpetual saleability of farms^
there must be a perpetual provision for keeping down the market-
ability of rents. This may be tolerable, and even necessary for the pro-
tection of men who have bought or have otherwise equitably acquired
a saleable interest. It is unreasonable for the protection of men who
have simply hired land without having paid anything whatever for
goodwill, and stiU more of men who step into a holding equipped by
the Owner.

Even as regards existing tenants in Ulster and elsewhere who
have acquired or who have been allowed a right of sale, there is
obviously the utmost difficulty in laying down any principle on which
any definite proportion is to be maintained between the letting value
and the saleable interest. In what shares the Owner and the Occupier
are to divide the total value of a farm is a question on which there
is no intelligible rule to guide us. This is a difficulty to be borne
as best it may where a quasi joint Ownership has been established by
custom, and when that custom may itself supply some standard of
valuation. But to raise this difficulty gratuitously where it does not
now exist, and to stereotype it by law for all future generations,
seems to me to be indefensible, and at variance with the practice and
with the legi9lation of all civilised nations on the Ownership and Occu-
pancy of land.

It is a matter of great importance to observe the connection be-
tween this universal, indelible, and permanent right of sale, and the
corresponding permanence of some provision for the State r^ulation
of rents, and the artificial abatement of them by law. Yet the Bill

892 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. May

distinctly and definitely professes not to contemplate or provide for
this permanence of State valuations and regulations. In the case of
future tenancies — tenancies created after the passing of the BQl— the
Occupiers are not to have a permanent and indelible right of appealiog
to Courts on the subject of rents. Yet they are to have the permanent
and indelible right of sale. But the right of sale would become valudeas
under the system of full market rates of rent. In order, therefore,
to preserve this indelible right of sale, it will be contended that the
State must never retire from the duty of dry-nursing every Iridunan
for all time to come, in the making of his bargain for a farm.

But although this is not the proposal of the Bill, and is only one
of the many consequences to which the adoption of it will probably
lead, the proposal which the Bill does make in respect to the State-
valuation of Bents seems to me to be much too sweeping. We
must remember what the new definition is of a 'present' Tenancy.
It may continue to be ' present ' till the crack of doom. Death does
not put an end to its existence. Sale does not put an end to its
existence. Even bankruptcy does not apparently in all cases pat an
end to its existence. It passes from generation to generation and
from hand to hand for ever, or until one or other of two contingencies
occurs. It may be forfeited by breach of certain conditions : or it
may be extinguislied by being bought up by the Landlord. Strange
to say, however, there are counter-limitations even upon this power oi
the Landlord to buy back the complete interest in his own hind. As
the Bill is now drawn, it looks as if an Owner could not get rid of a
* present ' Tenancy even if he buys it at the Tenant's own desire, or
acquires it as the highest bidder in the open market. It is expressly
enacted that ' during the first fifteen years after the passing of this
Act a purchase by the Landlord of a Tenancy in exercise of his right
of pre-emption shall not determine a Tenancy.' Why not? What
can be the use of pretending that a ^ present ' tenancy has not been
determined, when under any circumstances or at any .time the Owner
has bought out the < present * Occupier ? Such a provision is dearly
not inspired by the simple policy of defending existing interests. It
seems rather to be a policy hostile and discouraging to that most
natural and most legitimate method of returning to, or reaching, a
healthy and natural condition of things — ^namely, the process by which
Owners may redeem the full possession of their own land. At all
events the utmost possible permanence and continuity is given to the
occupancy of every Tenant now holding land in Ireland. We must
bear this in mind when we try to estimate the sweep and duration of
an enactment which declares that every one of these men may at any
time, and as often apparently as he likes, ' from time to time,' appeal
to a Court to revise and to reduce his rent. Surely this is a [unopo-
sition going far beyond what is required to meet even the peculiar
conditions existing in Ireland. Much has been made of the Tague

188i; THE NEW IRISH LAND BILL. 893

words used in the Beport of the Richmond Ciommission. The
words are these : — ' Bearing in mind the system by. which improve-
ments and equipments of a farm are very generally the work of the
Tenant, and the fact that a yearly Tenant is at any time liable
to have his rent raised in consequence of the increased value
that has been given to his holding by 'the expenditure of his own
capital and labour, the desire for legislative interference to protect
him from an arbitrary increase of rent does not seem unnatural, and
we are inclined to think that by a majority of landowners it would not
be objected to.' Mr. Gladstone has argued, and I do not dispute the
argument, that these words point to the establishment of a Court
empowered in some measure or degree to deal with the question of
rents. But there is a wide margin indeed for choice among measures
which would satisfy this general proposition. I agree that there are
weighty considerations of policy in the present condition of Ireland
which point to the high value of some public authority being em-
powered to arbitrate between landlord and tenant where such arbitra-
tion is desired by both parties, or in certain limited and defined cases,
where such arbitration is desired by one of them alone. The case
pointed to by the Commission is clear enough. It is the case where
increments of rent, undue in frequency or in amount, are charged
upon Tenants who have executed improvements upon their holdings.
By all means let such cases be met, and let the power of appeal be
wide enough to meet them. But surely the reasonableness which
may be pleaded for a proposal of this kind does not extend to the
very different proposal of allowing every present Tenant in Ireland to
claim from the State a revaluation and a regulation of his rent irre-
spective altogether of improvements, irrespective of. any poverty, and
irrespective of any lapse of time during which he has been paying
the rent which he undertook to pay. Moreover this new right
of appealing to the State for a valuation of rents does not even
profess to aim at the mere checking of undue increments of rent upon
improvements. It aims at revaluation upon a new basis, and with a
different object altogether, that object being the establishment and
defence of the indiscriminate right of sale, which may never have been
contemplated by either party when farms were let and taken. In the
present condition of Ireland it may be most desirable to have a Court able
to mediate in those affairs which, in happier lands, are better regulated by
agreement between man and man. But everything depends on the rules
by which such a Court is to be guided and the aims which are set before
it. I cannot admit that it ought to be the object, still less the pre-
scribed duty, of a Court to establish and maintain an artificially low
standard of rent in order to bolster up on behalf of all Occupiers,
whether they have equitably acquired it or not, a right to charge a
fine upon the occupation of all those who come after them.

We are often told that we must abandon all ^ abstract ' arguments

894 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Ihy

on this matter, and consider it only with reference to the pecnli&r con-
ditions of Ireland. Well, let us do so. What, then, is said to he the one
great peculiarity of that country ? We are told it is the prevaloioe
of * earth-hunger.' But what does this mean ? It means that for every
Irishman who has a farm there are two, or three, or perhaps even five
other Irishmen who want one. Does it follow that the hest means
of meeting this evil is to take every possible artificial measure to secuie
that the minority of Irishmen who now hold the farms should be
maintained in continuous and exclusive possession of them, and that as
few opportunities as possible of acquiring farms should be allowed to
the majority of Irishmen who are all hungering to get them ? And this
artificial limitation of the supply of farms to hire is to be kept up for
the indiscriminate protection of all existing holders, without reference
to the question whether in each case the existing holder may not be
in every respect inferior to several other Irishmen who wotdd be
delighted to get the farm, and would be much more able and much
', more willing to cultivate and improve it. The * survival of the
I fittest ' is the rule of Nature. Special and elaborate securities for the
survival of the unfittest seem to be the favourite panacea for the ills
of Ireland.

Let us put a case, and it is a common one. There are five Irish-
men, all of whom look to the hire of land as a means of living. Let
us call them respectively Huffy, Guffy, Cuffy, Ruffy, and Duffy.
Huffy has got a farm which he holds at an easy rent. He has all the
characteristics which belong to men accustomed to a low standard of
living, and who can earn that living without exertion. His principal
* improvement ' is a hovel, in which his children play with the poultry
and with the pigs. The dunghill is at the dogr — not without heavy
detachments of it inside the door. The patches of com are yeHot
with weeds. But the potatoes are a fair crop, and the few cows do
not fail in milk. Huffy is contented in his own way, and even happy.
There may be reasons for letting him remain where he is. But these
reasona have certainly no logical connection with the earth-hunger of
four Irishmen out of every five. It may well be that in Hufly's case not
only are there four other men ready and eager to succeed him, but
either Guffy, or Cuffy, or Ruffy, or Duffy — any one of them— would
make a much better tenant. Some one of them may have much more
skill and energy ; another of them may have more capital ; and a third
may have more of both. It would be immensely for the interest not
only of the Owner, but of Ireland, that some one or other of these foor
better men shotdd get the farm, with, of course, full compensation to
Huffy for any right he may have legally or equitably acquired. Under
the Land Act of 1870 this compensation may amount to about one
third, or more, of the whole capital value of the land. Is it any rational
remedy for the peculiar condition of earth-hunger in Ireland that we
should resort to artificial legislation to keep Huffy in perpetual posses-

^

1881. THE NEW IRISH LAND BILL. 895

sion — ^that we should enable him to charge a heavy fine on every
successor — and that we should prevent an improving Owner from
choosing the best of the many better men who are willing to take
the farm on reasonable conditions ?

The obvious truth in this matter has been well put by Judge
Longford : ^ The advocates for a general settlement of rent by valua-
tion endeavour to bring every case within an exception by alleging
that tbe landlord has an unfair advantage ; as the tenant who applies
for the farm has no other resource against starvation, and that there is
undue competition, as when one farm is vacant there are sis men
seeking for it. There is no foimdation for this argument. It is not
pretended that the five men starved who did not succeed in the compe-
tition, or that the successful applicant was in utter destitution when
he obtained it. On the contrary, it is probable that he had some
capital to stock and cultivate the farm. He takes the farm merely
to improve his condition.'

I fear that the plea founded on the ^ peculiar condition ' of Ireland
is too often used, not for the purpose of meeting any vague abstrac-
tion of so-called Political Economy, but for the purpose of avoiding
and evading all reasoning and all forethought on problems of legisla-
tion which, perhaps more than any other in the world, require the
most of both.

The truth, indeed, is that many of the most peculiar conditions
of Ireland are conditions which will be made worse and worse by
needless and elaborate interferences with the intelligent management
of landed property. If in the most desolate wastes — the most arid
deserts of Irish poverty and misery — ^we see anywhere some green spot
of better cultivated fields, and of more comfortable homes, there we
may be sure that the result has been due to some enterprising Owner
who has attained that result, and could only attain it, by dperations
which some parts of the new Land Bill will fatally discourage, if they
will not altogether prevent.

The universal and unlimited right on the part of ev ery ' present * /
Tenant at any time to appeal to a Court for the lowering of his rent
would have a most discouraging effect on capital, and a most de-
moralising effect on Tenants. A man ma; have got his farm by out-
bidding all other competitors and by giving an extravagant price for
goodwill, and then, when once in possession, he may appeal against
his landlord at any time, and * from time to time,' — may represent that
his own offer was excessive, may profit by his own wrong, and may
get his rent reduced. The temptation to every kind of deceit and
false evidence under such a system would be insuperable.

' If I could conceive,' said Mr. Gladstone in March 1 870, * a plan
more calculated than anything else, first of all, for throwing into con-
fusion xhe whole economicararrangements of the country ; secondly for
driving out of the field all solvent and honest men who might be

896 THB NINETEENTH CENTURY. May

bidders for farms, and might desire to carry on the honourable \mL-
ness of agriculture ; thirdly, for carrying widespread demoraliEatioii
throughout the whole mass of the Irish people, I most say, as at
present advised — I confine myself to the present and until otherwiae
convinced — it is this plan and this demand that we should embody in
our Bill, as a part of permanent legislation, a provision by whidi men
shall be told that there shall be an authority always existing, rsady to
release them from the contracts they have deliberately entered into."
But such is the proposal of the new Bill, not indeed for ever, but for
all the time during which all *• present tenancies ' shall survive, whether
they be large or small, rich or poor, under whatever circumstances of
freedom and deliberation they may have been constituted at fiist I
have seen no reason to change the opinion thus powerfully expressed.
Neither the lapse of ten years, nor the lapse of any number of years,
can abate its force. It is not an extreme opinion, or one founded ob
any abstract dogma of Adam Smith, or of Ricardo, or of MilL It issa
opinion founded on common sense applicable to the conduct of men
in all ages and in all countries, and perhaps even more applicable to
the Irish character than to the character of any other nation upoa
earth. I rejoice indeed at the endeavour to save out of the wreck of
this conmion sense some little floating plank of hope in the distinction
which the Bill proposes to establish between present and future tenan-
cies. Bat such a perpetual right to reopen bargains, and to break down
contracts, when given indiscriminately to all ' present tenancies,' will
certainly be demanded by, and will probably be conceded to, all tenan-
cies of the future. There is nothing — or at least there may be notJbing
— to separate the two cases except an arbitrary date. Thousands of
Tenants who made their baiigain ten, twenty, or thirty years ago, were
just as free in doing so as any Tenant who can enter upon a ^ future'
tenancy under this Bill when it becomes an Act. We see what has
become of a distinction founded on this basis in the Act of 1870.
Mr. Gladstone warned all Irishmen in 1870 that in future tenancies
they must bargain for themselves. Yet every existing bargain, how-
ever old or however new, is now to be reopened. What security is
there that bargains made after 1881 are to be more respected than
bargains made after 1870 ? No man in his senses would ever invest
his money or spend his time on the improvement of Irish land under
conditions which would make life one long struggle against per-
petually recurring fraud and falsehood.

Again, however, let me acknowledge another most important
endeavour which the Bill makes to provide for a better future. It
provides that where all the improvements on a farm have been exe-
cuted by the Owner, the Court * may, if it think fit,* disallow the
application of the Tenant to have his rent valued and fixed by the
State. But surely this is the very minimum of concession to a prin-
ciple of fundamental policy and justice. The immense variety of d^

1 881. TH^ NEW imSH LAND . BILL. ««7

grees in which Owners have contributed for generations to the yalne of
land-r-the equal variety of degrees in which' Occupiers have been rej^aid
over and over again tor any outlay they have made — ^the certainty
.that thousands of ^ present' Tenants have been perfectly able to make
their own bargain, and that they ought not to be allowed to reopen it
— all indicate that the intervention of the State in the regulation of
pre-existing contracts ought to be made as clearly exceptional and
temporary as possible.

The objections against the scheme which now goes under the
name of the ' Three Ps ' were urged and vindicated with the same
•force by the same Minister during the debates of 1870. These
objections have never been met or answered. The . Bill does hot
adopt that scheme in its entirety. But> the differences between
it and the general result or the inevitable consequences of the scheme
before us, are differences which, though by no means unimportant
in theory, are but too likely to yield to pressure. Practically,
every ' present ' Tenant will have the power of bestowing the * Three
F's' upon himself by the simple process of appealing to a Court*
The risk he runs of possibly having to pay a somewhat increased
rent, and of having that rent liable to periodical revision every
fifteen yean^this .risk is the only deterrent. But this risk is
small. The Court is bound to protect his new saleable interest ;
and the value and amount of that saleable interest will tend more
and more to be measured by the > cheapness of rait which he may
have long enjoyed. Instead, therefore, of the Owner's th^i^etical
right to increments of rent being available to check the swellings
of tenant-right, it is much more probable that the statutory right of
sale will, on the contrary, be effectual to check and ultimately to
extinguish the right of Owners to enjoy any appreciable share in the
increasing value of their own land. An Owner will only be able to
increase his rent by paying for it its full capital value.

I must add a few words on the position into which we have come
in respect to the whole of this Irish land question.

In the first place, no member of the present Government came into
office pledged directly or indirectly to a new Irish Land Bill of this
kind. On the contrary, such pledges as were given during the
General Election were pledges pointing to measures in other fields of
legislation which have all been interrupted, postponed, and perhaps
endangered by the Irish land agitation. It was, indeed, universally
expected that we should remedy the admitted fidlure of tiie Purchase
Clauses of the Act of 1 870. But neither Mr. Gladstone, nor any of
us, were pledged or expected to unsettle all that had been done by that
Act in respect to the relations between Ownership and Occupancy.

It was justly expected of us that we should take steps to extend
Ownership, and this, too, by some measure of large proportions.
Vol. IX.— -No. 61. 3 0

898 TUJi NINETEENTH CENTURY. May

Nobody expected us to break it down by depriving it of all freedom
of action, and of all discretion, in the management of property.

Suddenly the accumulated efifects of three disastrous eeasons
brought extensive distress among the cottier tenantry of the West^
and simultaneously an active organisation, aiming at the severance of
the Kingdoms, was established to take advantage of that distreae for
its own purposes.

The proposal of the Disturbance [Bill last session, to meet a local
and temporary emergency, the failure of that Bill, and the speeches
made upon it on both sides, tended to reopen many questions.

Under the pressure of this combination of circumstances, the
Government agreed to appoint a Boyal Commission to inquire into
the operation of the Act of 1870.

It was our duty to be open to conviction on this subject. But
there was no adverse presumption against the Act of 1870 becaiue
three bad harvests had brought distress and even want on the poor
and crowded tenantry of the west of Ireland. Mr. Bright has lately
addressed some excellent good sense to men who have been agitating
for a revival of the fallacies of Protection. He has told them thst
we have all been suffering of late — ^manufacturers and agiicultaiisti
alike — from too little sun and too much water. Impatience under
distress may be the means of disclosing real evils. But it is mnch
more liable to suggest quack remedies.

We waited for the results of the inquiry of our GonamisaoiL
What have they been? One result has been what Mr. OhMktcne
calls a ^ litter ' of Beports. I venture to add that if the Beports have
been a * litter ' the examination has been a mess.

In the first place, I think we have good reason to complain of the
manner in which the inquiry was conducted. It is not a graciouB task
to make any such complaint. Men who give their time, at the re-
quest of the Government, to conduct a great public inquiry, are not
to be lightly criticised. But, on the other hand, interests of the
highest importance to the future of Ireland, and to the right under-
standing of a great question, must not be compromised. I am bound
to say, therefore, that the inquiry of the Bessborough Commission was
so conducted by some of its principal members as to give Hlq impresooa
that it aimed from the very outset — not so much at an impartial in-
vestigation of £acts, as— at the establishment of a for^[i»ie condusioiL
The programme of the ' Three F's ' was the programme of the Com-
missioners who chiefly conducted the examination of the witnesses
This is especially true of Baron Dowse. Leading questions soggestod
this programme on all occasions. The doctrine that the Ownership
of land ought to be reduced to the ownership of a rent-charge waa
effusively patronised and encouraged. The examination of the verj
first witness is an excellent example. That witness was one of the
County Court Judges, Mr. Thomas De Moleyns, Q.C. This genUantf

1881. THE NEW IRISH LAND BILL. 899

had been the County Court Judge for the county of Solkenny for nine-
teen yean. His experience, therefore, extended over the whole time
sinoe the Land Act of 1870 came into operation. Kilkenny has not
the enormous area of some of the Irish counties in the mountainous
difltricts of the West. But it is one of the largest and most important
coanties in the great Province of Leinster. Its population is over
100,000, and the number of its agricultural holdings is between 12,000
and 13,000. Out of this great mass of small holdings, averaging some-
where about 30 acres of arable land, how many cases of ^ disturbance '
had come before the judge ? Not more than sixteen during the whole
ten years since the Land Act had passed ! And of these how many
cases could be called harsh on the part of the landlords ? Only perhaps
one or two, and of these again were there any in respect of which the
judge was unable under tiiat Act to give adequate compensation ?
Not one I ' I have never met with a case where I have given the fiill
amount I had the privilege of giving.' ^ Then there is another ques-
tion not less important. The Land Act of 1870 did not contemplate
the regulation of rents by the State. But indirectly and in extreme
cases it did authorise the judges to take notice of rents obviously exor-
bitant. Had any such cases come under the notice of the judge ? Not
one.' ^ I am not aware that I have had any case of the Mud.' Now it
is to this witness that Baron Dowse puts the following question — ^in
comment upon the fiEtct stated by Mr. De Moleyns that no custom
similar to the Ulster custom (of sale) existed in Kilkenny.^ ^ Do you
think it an advantage or otherwise to have different land laws prevail-
ing in different parts of Lreland ? '

This is obviously a leading question to draw from the witness
an opinion in favour of the scheme of extending the Ulster custom
(or the essential part of it) to the whole of Ireland. And what a
question I Is it possible to pack more fitllacies into a few words
than are packed into that question? To most men it appears
obvious that the same land laws do ^ prevail over the whole of Ireland,'
when those laws aim at securing to all men in each locality that which
they may have there lawfully and equitably acquired. But the learned
Baron's idea of identity in Land Law seems to be that the same rights
ehould be given to men in one part of Ireland where these men have
never possessed them, as are justly recognised as belonging to other
men in other parts of Ireland, where these other men have paid largely
to acquire them I Mr. Gladstone put this idea in its true light with
admirable clearness in his speech of March 11, 1870: *We distinctly
decline to admit that it would be giving one law in substance to Ire-
land, though it might be so in form, if we were to provide the same
legislation and the same compensation for men who have paid nothing
at all when they took their holdings as we provide for those who have

' BessboroQgh CommisBion Report, vol. ii. Q. 19.
■ IMd. Q. 42. * Ildd, 9. 64,

900 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. May

invested large sums of money ; and upon that subject we cannot Ik
too explicitly understood by the hon. member for Kilkenny.' Bat a veiy
able lawyer like Baron Dowse has the power of bamboozling almost any
witness by leading questions such as that above quoted* Even Qaoen^s
Ciounsel seem unable to resist him. Accordingly Mr. De Moleym
was led into some veiy ambiguous and not very dear-headed leplies,
until at last, finding himself in deep waters on the whole sobject
of the Ulster Custom, of which he had no special knowledge, he
sounded a very wise retreat : ' I really would widi this part of my
evidence, which I ha/ve been more or less drawn intOj to be taken
with this qualification, that I do not consider myself a jndge.*^
Now this is a sample of the method in which the whde ex-
amination of witnesses was conducted, and we can imagine its
efiect on men even less able than Mr. De Moleyns to resist or to detect
the &llacies and confusions of thought which are so prevalent on a
difficult and complicated subject.

But this is not all.

If the Grovemment were to be accused of seeking to legislate oo
the Irish Land question on the principle of simply yielding to tk
demands of those who happen t/O be tenants at the present moment,
without any regard to the possibility of those demands being of an?
value to tenants of the future, and without any r^;ard to the pe^
manent interests of agriculture as a business, such an accusatioD
would justly have been repudiated as a calumny. Yet in the Teiy
first day's proceedings of the Commission we have this principle of
legislation not obscurely indicated by Baron Dowse. The high prices
charged for tenant-right, under the pressure of open competition, are
among the facts which prove that the price payable in Ireland for
the hire of land cannot, in the long run, be abated by Iq^isbtion,
and that * firee sale ' would simply result in giving to those now in
possession a statutory interest in the property of others for wbich all
future tenants must pay the highest competitive prices. As a matter
of &ct, where firee sale has been established by custom, the price of
the Occupancy of a &rm often exceeds the price of the Ownership,
and the result is that it becomes as difficult to acquire the goodwill
pf a farm as to acquire the fee-simple of it. This consequence If
brought out by a question put by the O'Conor Don. In reply to it
Baron Dowse makes the following observation: — ^ What we hare to
deal with is the condition of the people who are already in possession,
not with that of those who are not in possession, but who may be
desirous of becoming so in the future.' ^

The plain meaning of this doctrine is, ^ Satisfy existing damoor,
BAid never mind the future.' It is indeed evident that this idea ii
unconsciously at the bottom of half the reconunendations which aie
popular. But it is rare to find it so candidly avowed.

* Bessborongb Goimniasion Beport, vol. u. Q. 887. « Tbuk Q. lH

1881. THE NEW IRISH LAND BILL. 901

There is another remarkable feature of the mode in which the in-
quiry of the Commission was conducted. Whilst every tenant in
Ireland was invited to tell his own story about the deamess of his
own rent, the value of his own improvements, and the injustice of
increments of rent charged upon them, no adequate attempt seems to
have been made by the Commission to test these statements by careful
and competent inquiry on the spot. The only substitute for this
indispensable work has been the mere transmission of the evidence
so given to certain owners and agents whose conduct was inculpated.
But this is no real equivalent for a testing inquiiy into leading cases.
Those who read the principal evidence may never read the rebutting
evidence. Thus allegations which are shown to have been utterly
&l8e and slanderous are widely spread — affect insensibly the opinions of
men, — and are made the basis for legislative proposals, whilst the
contradictions, although circumstantial and conclusive, are left un-
supported by an independent examination.

Setting aside, however, the method in which the inquiry has
been conducted, and looking at the result of the evidence alone, the
following points seem to me to be established : —

1. That the laiger estates of Irish landowners have been and still
are the great and only agencies which have modified and abated the
extreme prices arising out of an unhealthy competition for land in Ire-
land among tenants accustomed to a very low standard of living.

2. That the rules and regulations of management which have
been established upon such estates have hitherto been the only barriers,
over a large part of Ireland, against the revival and aggravation of the
worst evils of the cottier holdings (such as sub-letting and sub-division)
among an ignorant and indigent population.

3. That these evils are so connected with the inveterate habits of
the people that they can only be prevented by the vigilance of owner-
ship, and by the ultimate right of the Owner to replace a bad Tenant
by a good one.

4. That the new landowners, who have bought in the Encum-
bered Estates Court, or have otherwise recently acquired, property in
Ireland, are very often the most active and improving landlords in
the country, and that their improvements have only been effected and
can only be continued by the use of all that remains of freedom in
dealing with the management of land.

6. That the Land Act of 1870 has completely succeeded in giving
all needful security to Tenants for bonAfide improvements, and has
only disappointed those who expected and who attempted to found
upon its provisions exaggerated and even fraudulent charges. It is
proved that these charges have often been thirty and forty times more
than was just.

6. That there has been a total failure to show that exorbitant
increments of rent have been (except in the rarest oases) demanded for

902 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. May

farms in Ireland, or any inorements at all at unduly short mterals
of time. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred in which thig
allegation has been made, the facts even as stated by the witaesBes do
not support it. The increments complained of are frequently after
intervals of twenty, thirty, and even sixty years.

7. That in Ulster the right of the Owner to periodical incremaitB
of rent has not been eating up the value of the tenant-right (Qaestioiu
4480-81) ; but that, on the contrary, the demands of tenant-right
have a marked tendency to eat up the owner's right to share in the
increasing value of his own land, which is his capitaL^

8. That the right of selling the Occupancy of holdings can woik
with justice only where it is the result of agreement or of custom, and
where the respective shares of the Owner and the Occupier have come,
in consequence, to be self-adjusted; and that even under these
conditions it tends to absolve and discourage the Owner from spend-
ing any part of the income of his land upon the improvem^it of it.

9. That no appreciable number of evictions has taken place in
Ireland since the passing of the Act of 1870, which, with the least
reason, can be called ^ capricious.' That they have been almost always
evictions arising out of the non-payment of rent and out of tiie in-
capacity of the Tenant to cultivate the land with any advantage to him-
self or to the Owner or to the State, or out of the necessity of some
removals wheie holdings are to be improved.

10. That a very large proportion of the smaller Tenants have come
to be deeply in debt to money-lenders ; that the evil is increasing ; and
that in this way any new pecuniary interests, artificially and gratui-
tously bestowed upon them, have already been, and will again be,
discounted without the least benefit to Occupiers as a dassyorto
agriculture as an industry.

11. That the want of more definite security of tenure in Ireland
is largely if not mainly due to the unwillingness of the Tenants

' themselves to accept or submit to reasonable leases.

For these and many other reasons which cannot be stated fully
here, I come to the following conclusions : —

1. That the head and front of the new Land Bill ought to have

' The evidence here referred to is so remarkable that it may be weU to quote it
Mr. Samuel 0. McElroy, who represents the County Antrim Central Tenants* Bi^t
Association and the Route Tenants' Defence Association, is asked, < Do yon find thit
the ayerage selling price of holdings has been smaller during the last ten yean?'
£Qs reply is, * No, not smaller.* He is asked again, * Or even during the latter part
of the past ten years ? * He replies, ' No ; the prices are nothing smaller. Tenant
right has increased in value during the last fifteen years.* On the other hand, &e
evidence is abtmdant that the sense of ownership to which the right of sale gives
rise among the Ulster Tenants is developing rapidly into a denial of the landJords*
right to increment of rent even at the longest and most reasonable interrals.
Numerous witnesses lay down the doctrine that every shilling added to rent is s de-
duction of twenty shillings from the selling price, which, they say, belongs to tbe
occupier.

188L THE NEW IRISH LAND BILL. 90S

been the provisions for the easy and extensive acquisition of Ownership
in land in Ireland. I attach no paramount importance to the many
arguments which have been and maybe brought against the State buy-
ing and dealing in land. It is avowedly an exceptional operation. It is,
of course, open to many objections. It involves some evils — even per^
haps some risks and dangers. There will certainly be many failures.
But there is an immense object to be gained, and that object is the
establishment of a more numerous, and of a more indigenous, body of
landowners in Ireland.

2. That all Owners, whether new or old, should be left all the
remaining powers of dealing with their land which are consistent
with other existing interests legally or equitably acquired and ascer-
tained in each individual case ; and that all the new Owners by purchase
whose land will more frequently be free from such pre-existing
interests, should have complete liberty to deal with it by contract,
subject only to such conditions as may be deemed necessary for the
successful prosecution of agriculture as an industry.

3. That any legislation which tends further to limit that freedom,
or to confuse and confound the rights and duties of those who own
and of those who hire land, is injurious and retrograde legislation.

4. That the indelible right of sale, artificially, indiscriminately,
and gratuitously attached to every Occupier, is the very heart and
centre of all the doctrines and of all the habits that tend to make this
confusion worse confounded.

6. That, nevertheless, in view of the unfortunate past history of
land tenure in Ireland, and the chaos of opinion which prevails in
consequence, it is Intimate and expedient that the State should
ofiTer the means of judicial arbitration in all cases in which both
Owner and Occupier desire to have recourse to it.

6. That, also, in consideration of the same exceptional circum-
stances, this right of appealing to a Court may be given, for a time
at least, to one party alone, where exceptional poverty and weakness
justify some unusual and temporary protection. This was the prin^
ciple adopted or the idea embodied in the Act of 1870, and it is a
reasonable principle under the circmnstances of the case.

7. That all decisions so arrived at should have the effect of hold-
ing good for a definite time, and thus constituting all or some of the
conditions of a lease. Increments of rent at frequent or at uncertain
intervals are a great eviL But it is not an evil which has been shown
to prevail at aU extensively, or against which violent remedies are re-
quired. That the acceptance by a Tenant of an increased rent should
constitute a lease for a definite term is not an unreasonable provision^
where it is really necessary to interfere at all.

8. That the State, in assuming such powers, should assume also
the duty of seeing that its decisions are respected ; and therefore
that rents and other conditions so determined should be enforced by

&04 TtiS NltfETEBtfTB OENTURY.

the authority which imposes them, or by processes of a nature to be
as much as possible beyond the reach of political agitation.

These conclusions are consistent with portions — with large poi-
tions — of the Bill. But they cannot be reconciled with other poitioDs
of it which seem to me not only to go far beyond the necessitieB of tk
case, but to establish new principles injurious to the extended Own»-
ship which we are desirous of establishing. I fear that under this
Bill much of the land in Ireland will be placed in the positioB
described by The O'Conor Don in his report : * The Owner would be
deprived of the real position of Owner, whilst the Occupier would not
have gained that position. The magic influence of Ownership would
be taken away from both parties ; no one would feel that he was
Owner, and one of the strongest incentives to exertion would be dooe
away with.' I fear that the general effect of the proposals now made
will be to discourage all expenditure of Owners' capital on the impio?e-
ment of land in existing and even in future tenancies in Ireland. The
only hope of escape from the mischiefs of such a system is that under
the Purchase Clauses the number of Owners may some day — and IJie
sooner that day comes the better — be so numerouB in Ireland tkt
they will rebel against the irrational and injurious restrictions whid
are now to be placed on the kind of property they acquire. Truths
which are sacrificed for the moment, under the pressure of political
emergency, will perhaps be recognised at last, when they have oome
to * enter in at lowly doors.'

Abgtll

7^

//

THE

: NINETEENTH
OENTUEY.

No. LII.— June 1881.

A CIVILIAN'S
ANSWER TO SIR GARNET WOLSELEY.

^ In the multitude of counsellors there is safety,' says the wise king,
and, if the rule be without exception, the British army is indeed
beyond the reach of peril.

Despite, however, the undeniable authority of the proverb, there
is perhaps some reason to doubt the soundness of the conclusion.
There are certainly many who are of opinion that, notwithstanding
the number and variety of the suggestions that have been made for
its improvement, notwithstanding the exhaustive reports that have
been furnished as to its condition, the safety of that time-honoured
institution is anything but assured.

And yet to those who read the recently published report of
liOrd Airey's commission, side by side with the speech of the Secretary
for War on introducing his new scheme, it did seem as if a time had
at last come when diversity of views had for once disappeared, and
that, for a short period at any rate, our military chiefs and their
civil coadjutors were about to dwell together in harmony.

From the report one thing at least was plain — namely, that
the enormous majority of combatant officers believed the system
as existing at present to be intolerable; and in the speech signs
were not wanting that Pall Mall was of the same opinion as White-
haU.

So novel and satisfactory a conjunction of views could not fail
to be gratifying to those outsiders who had so long contemplated
Vol. IX.— No. 52. 3 P

906 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. June

with sorrow and amazement the results of each saccessive ^aimy
reform.*

How rudely this pleasant picture has been shattered by the
appearance of Sir Garnet Wolseley's recent article in the Niiideei^
Century y it is easy to imagine. So far from being dissatisfied witli
existing arrangements, we find one of our most experienced and
most brilliant officers devoting his facile pen to the task of fiiiowing
that the system, which so many hoped was about to disappear, is in
reality a useful, a well-designed, and a practical method of providing
for the defence of the nation ; and that to depart from it can only
be the work of prejudice or ignorance.

It is intended in this paper to suggest some reasons why the
public should in this case accept the view of the great majority of
the army as against that of one of its members, accomplished soldier
and clever littSrateur though he be.

It is intended at any rate to enforce this conclusion, that what-
ever may have been the faults of the systems which preceded it,
whatever may be the merits of plans which it is proposed to sub-
stitute for it, the present organisation is, to all intents and purposes,
an absolute and disastrous failure.

It may seem somewhat presumptuous for a civilian to enter upon
the discussion of army matters with a military man, especially when
his opponent is an officer of such great and well-deserved repatation
as Sir Garnet Wolseley. But a not unnatural diffidence upon this sab-
ject is to some extent dispelled by the words of the gallant writer
himself. It would doubtless be eminently desirable that some soldier
of high standing and wide experience should take up the cudgels in
favour of a reform which, it is well known, is almost universally desired
throughout the army. But, unfortunately, Sir Garnet Wolseley
has so effectually ruled out of court all those of his own cloth, that it
seems reasonable that one of that large body of civilians, to whose
intelligence he pays a graceful if indirect compliment, should enter
the lists.

It is of course unfortunate that our officers — especially * those of
the old school ' — are ^ prejudiced in so unreasoning a manner that
they combine to condemn a system of which a large proportion
of them know scarcely anything.' It is to be regretted that the
< young gentlemen joining a regiment adopt unhesitatingly and in
an unquestioning spirit ' the opinion of their seniors. Bat, if it be
the fact, it is plain that no contribution on the other side of the
question from a military writer could be of much value except as
representing prejudice and ignorance.

However this may be, it is at any rate somewhat hard to lay
down as a general proposition that ' it is an article of the Briti^
soldier's faith to look to the authorities of the Horse Guards as his

1881. ANSWER TO SIR GARNET W0LSELE7. 907

natural protectors, whilst he regards the War Department officials as'
his enemies.'

It is perfectly true that a large nmnber of officers disapproved
of the short service reforms which emanated from the War Office.
It is equally true, however, that a very large number of them hailed
with satisfaction the recent proposals which have been made by
Mr. Ghilders, and have only complained that they do not go far
enough. It is plain, therefore, that there is a method in their
madness ; and that if they distrust the War Office it is because the
Department in Pall Mall has been responsible for changes of which
they distinctly disapproved, and not from any blind prejudice against
the Department as such.

It is not uncommon to hear those who defend Lord Cardwell's
short service scheme assert that in fact it has never had fair play,
and that any shortcomings which may appear in our present organi-
sation are due, not to the imperfections of the plan, but to the
defective way in which it has been worked. It may be said that
Sir Garnet Wolseley is one of this number, and that the short
service system which he defends is some unknown quantity, made
up of what the present system ought to be and what he wishes
it were. If that be so, there is, of course, nothing more to be said ;
there are probably a good many other ideal systems which, never
having passed out of the region of thought, are not likely, for the
present at any rate, to be of much service for the defence of the
country. But it is evident that Sir Garnet Wolseley is not con-
tent to figure as the champion of our system as it might have been ;
for the greater part of his article is devoted to defending it as
it is.

To one part of the working of our present arrangements Sir
Garnet frankly does object, and, in justice to his argument, this
objection should be stated as early as possible, in order to give it
due weight, and in order to enable us to judge how far the removal
of this particular fault would affect the other shortcomings to which
we shall shortly refer.

Sir Gurnet Wolseley speaks out very plainly upon what he con-
siders to be the inadequate amount of work done by our regimental
officers ; and there can be no doubt that the requirements of modern
warfare do demand closer application and more complete knowledge
than have hitherto been' considered necessary. Before, however, we
accept the suggestion that our officers dislike the present system on
the ground that it gives them too much work, and before we commit
ourselves to the conclusion that there is no remedy, short of de-
manding from them the same sort of attention which a Prussian
officer gives to his company, two points should be considered. In
the first place, in justice to our own captains and subalterns, it should

3f2

908 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Jime

be said that they are just as often idle because they have no men to
instruct, as from any disinclination to work. And, in the fleo(»d
place, it is most important to bear in mind that as our rank
and file are recruited on a different system from that of other armies,
so our officers serve on conditions which have no parallel elsewhere.
An officer, like any other member of the community, must reodfe
some consideration for his services. This consideration may take
many forms. In the case of the British officer it takes the form of
social position and a certain amount of freedom ; it is emphatically
not of a pecuniary nature. Practically, an officer does not, and
indeed it is hardly contemplated that he should, Uve upon his pay.
Turn his work into drudgery, deprive him of his freedom, and you
take away from him the main inducements which he now has to
serve his country for nothing. It may be, of course, that even under
these strict conditions our officers may be willing to show by theli
sacrifices another proof of the military spirit which has always
animated them. But it is hardly a thing that can be safely counted
upon. It is no answer to say that in Germany the career of an officer
is as honourable, though far more arduous than it is here. In the fint
place, in Germany military service is an aid to civil advancement,
instead of being, as with us, a heavy drag. Again, the style of living
on the Continent is such that military pay is far more nearly eqnira-
lent to an actual livelihood than it is here. And, lastly, it is more
than doubtful whether the class from which we draw our officers has
really any parallel in Prussia.

It may be said, and with truth, that all these considerations are
beside the mark ; that what is wanted is men who will work hard,
and work under prescribed conditions ; and that if the present holders
^f commissions are not prepared to render their services on those
^erms they should be replaced by others who will do so. This is a
very strong argument, and possibly unanswerable ; only it is as well
to bear in mind what the change may involve. A captain, like a
4sarpenter, must be paid in some way. He may take presUge and
position instead of cash, but most assuredly he will not be content
without either the one or the other.

But apart from this need for reform. Sir Garnet Wolseley sees
much in our present organisation to rejoice at. Let us there-
fore note what are the circumstances which give him so much
satisfaction, and inquire how far they commend themselves to
those who are not committed to the merits of any particular set A
principles.

And here we may pause for a moment to call to mind what
are the points of real interest to a civilian, what are the essentials
which he demands, and what are the failings which he cannot
pardon.

1881. ANSWER TO SIR GARNET WOLSELEY. 909

In the first place be it remembered that the country pays at this
moment for its military forces an annual sum of nearly 25,000,000Z.^
For this sum it naturally desires to obtain a force which shall be as
near perfection as possible, which shall be able to fight its battles
abroad, and defend its liberties at home. As to the nature and com-
position of the force which will best satisfy these requirements, the
people of England have always shown themselves careless to a degree
most surprising in a nation so imbued with the military instinct, and
at the same time so jealous in controlling its own affairs. For many
years past the organisation of the army has been left more entirely in
the hands of those technically responsible for it than that of any
other branch of the public service. The public have hoped, with a con-
fidence as amazing as it was complete, that everything would be done
for the best if only they would provide the money necessary for the
undertaking. This being so, we must put ourselves in the position of
the great mass of Englishmen, and, demanding only the amount of
efficiency above referred to, consult those who regulate our military
matters as to the best way of obtaining it.

It is fair then to follow Sir Garnet Wolseley's advice, and turn to
the proposals which Lord Card well himself brought forward, and to the
various suggestions to which they gave rise, all, we may presume,
made with the hope of remedying existing evils, and of supplying a
sufficient and serviceable army in the future.

Foremost among the benefits which the short service system was
to secure for us was the formation of two army corps, the regiments
composing which were to be kept up to a war footing, or very near it,
and which were to be ready at a moment's notice to undertake duty
in any part of the world.^ Nothing could look better on paper than
these compact little armies of 37,000 men apiece always ready to
bear the brunt of the first attack, and to give us time to complete
and strengthen the weaker regiments which remained. What, how-
ever, would have been the result had a sudden emergency arisen to
put the efficiency of these arrangements to the test ?

The following figures, which are given at page 471 of the Blue
Book, form an instructive answer : —

* I include the approximate cost of the British troops in India, who, although not
paid for out of the home revenues, are in fact a portion of the home army.

^ I am aware that in the original scheme the two complete army corps were not
an essential feature. In the Commander-in-Chief's minute and the report upon it,
published in 1872, the state of preparedness is made to apply to the first thirty-six
regiments on the roster, of which half were to be maintained at a strength of 820, and
the remainder at a strength of 700 each. The division into corps adopted in the
Army List, however, naturaUy led to the idea of maintaining one, and eventually two
such divisions in a state to take the field at the earliest opportunity. This intention
seems to have been recognised in the compilation given at page 471 of the report of
Lord Airey*8 commission.

910

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.

June

First Abmy Cobps.

I

Men

HorECs

Guns 1

1

\rae«B3

1

Establishment for field service . . . j
Actual strength

Required to complete

37,013 ;

20,852 '

12,597
4,789

90
90

1,631
244

16,161

7.808

1

1,387

Hqw to he syjpplied : —

From army reserve

From militia reserve ....
Drafts from other corps ....
P.y enlistment, requisition, or otherwise .'
To be purchased

Total

7,513

4,822

3,130

696

2,378

667

4,763

1

1
1

1,387

16,161 I

7,808

1,387

Second Army

COBPS.

Men

Horses

Guns

Wngca

Establishment for field service .

Actual strength ......

Required to complete

37.013
16,829

12,597
4,155

90

90

1 1.631
173

20,184

8,442

, 1.468 ,

JImv to he tfuj)plied : —

From army reserve

From militia reserve ....
Drafts from other corps ....
By enlistment, requisition, or otherwise .
To be purchased .....

Total

1

8,274
8,438
2,325
1,147

1

696
7,846

—

1
1

1

1,458

20,184

8,442

. 1.458

These, be it remembered, are the divisions of the army whose motto
is supposed to be ' Semper paratus/ Let us see how the otiier divi-
sions upould fare. Supposing the various processes indicated in the
above table as being necessary had been safely gone through and a
respectable contingent were able to take the field, there would then
remain the duty of falling back upon our remaining reserves for the
double purpose of keeping the two first corps up to their proper
strength, and of filling up the enormous gaps in the remaining six of
our paper armies. It is interesting to find that for this operation
there would be available no less than 363 men of the first class army
reserve, or about two men per line battalion, and 12,064 of the militia
reserve who may or may not be a trifle better than raw recmits.
Side by side with these facts it is instructive to study the calculations
which experience has supplied as to the average waste of a battalion
in time of war, which is variously estimated at firom 40 to 70 pa*
cent.

There may be, and doubtless are, admirable reasons to account for

1881. ANSWER TO SIR GARNET WOLSELEY. 911

these deficiencies. But it must not be forgotten that, after all, the
formation of an efficient reserve is the very essence of the short service
system. But if the assistance we are likely fx> obtain is no greater
than would appear from the latest figures upon the subject, the
British public may fairly complain that they have got a scarcely
perceptible ^ halfpennyworth of bread to a most intolerable deal of
sack.'

Sir Crarnet Wolseley tells us that the long service was like

The Bight of Bennlxiy
Whence few come out^ though many go in.

The quotation might be applied with still greater propriety to the
capacity of the present system for absorbing those who ought to pass
through the active army into the reserve. Between 1871 and 1878
no less than 184,110 recruits joined the army, yet at the present
time the* reserve which these short service men were supposed to
feed has not yet reached the modest figure of 20,000 men. Indeed
it appears from very careful calculation that even under the most
favourable conditions our infantry reserve can never exceed 45,000
men. Where are the rest of the recruits who have been enlisted ?
The facts given under the head of ' waste ' explain how the deficiency
arises, but they do not and cannot supply us with a reason for
wishing that so microscopic an addition to our resources should be
allowed to continue.

Leaving the subject of the two promised army corps, we come to
the linked battalion scheme, which, while it insured the permanent
efficiency of the regiments in the field, was to preserve intact the
esprit de corps and solidarity so characteristic of the regimental
system. It is interesting to observe how these arrangements have
worked in practice.

There is no soldier's grievance which comes home so readily to
the British public as the complaint that regimental traditions are
broken up and ruined by the pernicious plan of drafting men from
one corps to another. The hardship and unwisdom of it are so pal-
pable that it is difficult to understand what can be said for a system
of which it appears to form so essential a part That it was a practice
widely resorted to was well known and deeply regretted in the army.
It was not until the present time that the public had an opportunity
of judging to what an extent it prevailed. By a brief calculation from
the figures hereafter referred to we find, for instance, that in five
regiments which took the field in 1879 no less than 1,414 out of a
total strength of 4,435 men were drafted from other battalions.
These men^ be it remembered, had in all probability never seen their
officers till the day of embarkation, and doubtless many of them were

912

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.

June

re-transferred as soon as they had learnt to know and trust tkir
leaders during the vicissitudes of a campaign.

As regards the question of age the present condition of our in-
fantry force seems as unsatisfactory as it can possibly be. Every-day
experience and scientific opinion unite in regarding a youug man
under twenty as scarcely formed, and unable, except in rare instances,
to bear the hardships of a soldier's life. The report before referred
to is instructive on this point. In paragraph 59 we find the opinion
of Surgeon-Major Adams formed as the result of the inspection of
25,000 recruits, to the effect that ' it is not only pernicious to the
interests of the service, but also cruel, to expect a lad in his ^teens'"
to do the work of a full-grown man.' In the next paragraph we find
an extract from Professor Parkes's valuable work on military hygiene,
in which he speaks of the immaturity of the recruit of eighteen yeaiB
of age, and dwells upon the necessity for withholding him from the
active duties of a soldier's life till he is at least twenty. It is not
necessary to dwell upon these expressions of opinion, nor indeed to
supplement them as they might be supplemented by the evidence of
almost every witness who was examined. The conclusion which the;
point to is one which we should all support from our own knowledge.
Indeed, Sir Garnet Wolseley himself is fully alive to the evils which
attend the employment of very young soldiers ; but he seems to
derive some comfort from the fact that ten or twenty years ago things
were just as bad or even worse than they are now. For the general
public who are not concerned about the merits of any system, whether
it be old or new, but who simply desiie a serviceable army, this is
perhaps not much consolation. But, be this as it may, it is not essy
to believe that the condition in which regiments took the field
formerly was worse than what it appears to be at present; and
whether better or worse, the service state of our battalions seems so
hopelessly bad that it is hard to conceive of a change which
would leave them less efficient than they are. The following are a
few statistics as to the condition of the regiments which embarked
for active service in Africa in 1879 — regiments, be it rememheed,
which were presumably first on the roster for foreign service, and
therefore supposed to be ready to start fully manned and equipped at
the shortest notice.

Nome of battalion

Total

stmigth

Men under Men under
2 years' 12 montlis*

service , service

1

Ifen under

SO years of

age

Drafted , T«f|
from other ^^^^
corps

21st Regt. (2nd batt.) .
58th „ ...
60th „ (3rd batt.) .
91st „ ...
94th „ ...

Tot.ll ....

8S8
884
889
893

881

4,435

545

285
218
477
497

2,023

305
44
75

260

221

119
106
152
218
193

282 355
197 193
215 131
374 179
346 1^7

905

688 1 1,414 1,045

1881. ANSWER TO SIR GARNET WOLSELEY. 913

Sir Garnet appears to attach considerable importance to the fact
that the soldiers who followed Wellington in the Peninsola were
exceedingly bad characters. So doubtless they were. They may
have been brutal, unreasoning, cruel, but the fact remains that, to
accept the writer's own quotation, ' they could go anywhere and do
anything ; ' and not only could do so, but did whenever the occasion
arose. After all, the first requisites of a soldier are that he should
fight well and march well. If he possesses these qualifications, but
adds to them others less desirable, so much the worse. But the
antithesis which is suggested is neither a fair nor a reasonable one.
The choice is not necessarily between immoral soldiers who can
march and fight, and young men of exemplary character who cannot
march at all, and who are not always able to fight.^

The temper of the age, the general feeling with regard to the
conduct of war, and the spread of education are all infiuences which
have been at work during the last sixty years, and which have borne
fruit in the army no less than in civil life.

The fact that a recruit is enlisted for ten years instead of six is no
reason why we should 'brutalise him and treat him as an unreasoning
being ; ' but it is quite conceivable that it may be a very strong
reason why we should expect him to be an experienced and seasoned
soldier in the one case and not in the other.

The 'dictum' elpressed by Sir Garnet Wolseley to the effect that
success in war depends upon the skill of the general and not upon
the excellence of the men is barely half the truth. It is something
like a truism to say that 'in the Peninsula days, as at present,
splendid success was only secured when really able and scientific
generals commanded in the field ; ' and that ' then as now, when in-
competence directed our military operations, failure and disgraceful
disaster were the result.' But even this statement must be taken
subject to important qualifications. In the first place, if we eliminate
the phrase ' splendid success ' and content ourselves with instances
where victory has rewarded our arms even though unattended by
great and immediate results, many instances will at once occur in
which one part of the proposition at any rate has been falsified. At
Albuera, at the Alma, at Inkermann, it was emphatically the good
qualities of the soldiers and not the skill of the general which gained
the day. And, indeed, in the last instance it is hardly necessary to
deny to the heroic defence of the heights of Inkermann a first place
not only as regards the valour displayed, but also as regards the im-
portance of the results obtained by it.

In short, the obvious fact is this, that a good general will do best
with good troops, and even with bad ones may sometimes achieve
success. Good soldiers, on the other hand, will sometimes help an

■ See evidence cf Colonels Glyn, Pemberton, and others.

914 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. June

incompetent commander out of a difficulty. But there is no reascm
at all for permitting any other combination than the first oftener
than can be helped. To hold otherwise would simply mean that an
economical and well-advised administration would deliberately look
for its recruits in the ranks of the halt and the maimed, whose
loss would be the least felt by the commimity, and whose infirmi-
ties would present no obstacle to ^a really able and scientific
general.'

Sir Gtimet Wolseley, in common with some others, se^ns to be
of opinion that the failure is rendered less important by proYing that,
after aU is said and done, things were just as bad twenty or thirty
years ago. This form of argument might be relevant in discnssing
the point as to who was responsible for the greatest amount of £Eulnre.
But it is not an argument which ought to be addressed to the
public, to whom the question of a good or bad army is evexything,
while that of the merits of this or tiuit reformer is, in comparison^
nothing.

That the army which we now possess is not a good one, but on the
contrary a very bad one, seems to be the teaching of every line of the
recently published report.

One of the greatest difficulties experienced in bringing about any
radical or useful reform in army matters is the impossibility of
making the public realise the magnitude of the disease. Our tro(^
are so scattered, are so little en ividencej that popular attention is
never concentrated upon them with the intensity which characterises
it in detecting the shortcomings of those branches of the public
service which come in contact with men's daily lives.

It requires a catastrophe to convince us that anything is wrong,
and even the temporary agitation which some more than usually
flagrant collapse creates, subsides almost immediately, and we relapse
into our usual happy-go-lucky indifiference.

It is most unfortunate that this should be so. It is most unfortu-
nate that an Aldershot field day or review cannot be reproduced once a
month in Hyde Park.

It requires no military knowledge, no educated eye, to realise that
the little companies which pass in brief array before the saluting point
are not, either in numbers or in physique, what a British regiment
ought to be. Let any one, fresh from reading Napier's descriptimi
of our infantry on the field of Albuera, place himself as near as he
can to the flagstaff at an Aldershot review. Let him bear in mind
the passage that describes how ' nothing could stop that astonishing
infantry ; no sudden burst of imdisciplined valour, no nervous enthu-
siasm, weakened the stability of their order ; their flashing eyes were
bent on the dark columns in their front ; their measured tread shook
the ground ; ' and then apply it to what he sees. The quotation may

1881 • ANSWER TO SIR GARNET WOLSELEY. 915

be somewhat fine writing, but no possible adaptation could make it
a fair description of some of the battalions which we may see now-a-
days.

It would be impertinent as well as useless to venture upon such
strictures as these if they were not borne out by the almost universal
testimony of every oflficer whose opinion is recorded in General Airey's
report. They are made in no spirit of disparagement of the courage
and patriotism of oiu: infantry soldiers, which have been so conspicu-
ously proved of late. The Englishman is still, as he always has been,
equal — perhaps more than equal — to men of any other race in
fighting power. But it is neither fair nor reasonable to demand
that he shall exhibit the high qualities which he possesses under
every sort of artificial disadvantage.

It is easy enough to argue that, our army being a voluntary one, it
must of necessity differ widely from those of the great continental
powers. The fact is beyond dispute, but the inference to be drawn
from it is this — that if we hope to hold our own against troops drawn
indiscriminately from the manhood and strength of a great nation,
we must either appeal to the same sources of strength, or we must
be careful to make our artificial blade as keen and as finely tempered
as the resources of science and wealth will allow.

Those who are anxious to know how nearly we have approached
to that ideal under our present system should carefully study the
evidence given before Lord Airey's Commission.

Once more let it be said. Sir Garnet Wolseley's arguments are,
as far as the outside public are concerned, beside the mark. The
army that won at Salamanca and Talavera may have been a very
bad one. The men who enlisted before 1870 may have been very
inferior. The collapse in the Crimea may have been very complete.
In a word, our army may have been in a very bad way before Lord
Cardwell's scheme came into operation. But all these considerations
do not touch the real question, which is this : * Is the condition of
things now so much better than it was, that we can or ought to be
satisfied with it ? ' Sir Garnet Wolseley himself gives the answer.
We require an eflScient reserve of 60,000 men. We have not got
it. Going round hat in hand is an objectionable practice. Five
regiments could not be put into the field without begging. We
ought at any time to be able to put into the field an army of
60,000 men, which should leave behind it a thoroughly efficient
reserve of well-trained soldiers of at least equal numbers. If, by
superhuman efforts, we got together oiu: 60,000 men, our reserve, it
appears, would number 363.

These are the salient facts which strike a civilian. The short-
comings that meet his eye lie on the surface — he who runs may read.
The new system was, on its own showing, to have provided us with

916 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. June

certain definite safeguards, and at present these safegoaids do not
exist.

If indeed, as he suggests, Sir Gramet Wolseley have some new
scheme in the hackground by which all these faults are to be
remedied, well and good. But whether it involve long service or
short, it is allowable to prophesy that it will commend itself to the
public in exact proportion to the extent to which its results differ
from those which attend the working of our present system.

H. 0. Abkold-Fobsteb.

1881. 917

A REVISER ON THE NEW REVISION.

In the following remarks on the revised version of the New Testament
it is scarcely necessary to say that I propose to speak only as one of
the multitude of readers usually designated as ^ the public,' to whose
perusal and judgment the work is now at length committed. Although
from the commencement a member of one of the Revision Companies,^
I have no right to speak as from any special knowledge which that
position may have given me ; for it was a rule acted upon throughout
that the work done in the Jerusalem Chamber, as well as the opinions
expressed by the members, with the results arrived at, and the
grounds on which changes were either made or left immade, should
all be considered ^ private and confidential.' This rule was under-
stood to apply to all that took place, and it was carefully observed —
except only as r^farded such little details as were given each month
in some of the newspapers, respecting the days of meeting, the mem-
bers present, and the passages gone over from time to time.

AMiile this was the case, however, it is equally true that every
individual member of the company is left now at liberty, in his
private character, to judge and criticise the completed work of the
whole body of revisers. The results arrived at were determined by
vote, as the pre&ce to the volume now published informs us; no altera-
tion being finally made as against the Authorised Version except by a
majority of two to one of the members present. The minority, how-
ever, although outvoted, were not supposed to be also silenced for all
future time, or prohibited from expressing their dissenter the reasons
for it ; but, on the contrary, naturally retained their right to do so,
on and after the publication of the volume. Of this privilege I pro-
pose fdmply to avail myself; but I shall endeavour of course to guard
against any breach of the understanding indicated by the old and
familiar words ' private and confidential,' printed upon all the different
sections of the work, as they were successively issued for the use of
the two companies during the progress of the revision. I have nothing
therefore to tell respecting anything said by any one at the meetings,
or the numbers of the votes given either for or against any alteration
made, or anything of this kind. I have simply to take the work as
it is now issued, and, so fieur as may be practicable within the limited

' So called after the example of 1611.

918 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Joae

space at my command, to express my own individual judgment on
the new text, basing this simply upon such general knowledge of the
subject as is &miliar, or easily accessible, to every critical student
of the New Testament.

The volume which gives occasion to these remarks is a handsome
octavo of 594 pages, without counting the Preface or the American
Suggestions, which will make up some forty to fifty pages more, ac-
cording to the size of the edition in which they are printed. The
work professes to be 'the version set forth a.d. 1611, compared with
the most ancient authorities and revised a.d. 1881.' This latter date
might have been more fully given as a.d. 1870 to a.d. 1881, for the
task has been close upon eleven years in hand, including the time
occupied in printing, having been commenced on the 23rd of June,
1870, and' being now published on the 17th of May, 1881. Time
enough certainly for its preparation, enough too for no small amomit
of elaborate over-correction, such as I greatly fear many readers will
find in its pages.

The preface forms a very interesting and valuable introduction to
the volume, and to this our attention must in the first instance
be turned. After giving a brief account of the origin and character
of the Authorised Version, the imperfections of which are fully ac-
knowledged, it proceeds to speak of the formation of the two com-
panies for its revision, and of the rules that were laid down for the
execution of their undertaking. These were drawn up in May 1870,
by a Committee of the Convocation of Canterbury,^ and were in sub-

' The following membeis o£ ConTOcation constituted this committee for the ^'«v
Testament : — Bishops Ellicott, Moberley, and Wilberforce, the Prolocutor Dr. Bicker-
steth (now Dean of Lichfield), Deans Alf ord and Stanley, and Canon Blakeslcy (m)W
Dean of Lincoln). This Committee had authority to invite the co-operation of others
* to whatever nation or religious body they might belong ' — a wise and just proviaot
considering the interest which all sects and parties have in the book to be leTised.
Accordingly, the following were invited to take part in the work : — Dr. Angus
(Baptist), Archbishop Trench, Dr. Eadie (Scotch United Presbyterian), Rev.Dr.H«xt
(of Cambridge), Rev. W. G. Humphry, Professor Kennedy (of Cambridge), Arob-
deacon Lee, Dr. Lightfoot (now Bishop of Dnrham), Professor Hilligan (Soofcdi
Church), Professor Moulton (Wesleyan Methodist), Dr. J. H. Newman (now Cardinal),
Professor Newth (Congregationalist), Dr. A. Roberts (Scotch Cliurch), Dr. Vance
Smith (Unitarian), Dean Scott (of Rochester), Dr. Scrivener, Dr. Tregelles (Congre-
gationalist), Dr. C. J. Yaughan (now Dean of Llandaff), Professor Westcott T«
these some additions were subsequently made, namely. Bishop Wordsworth. (St
Andrews), Dr. D. Brown (Scotch Free Church), Dean Merivsile. The Ixvst namd
withdrew from the work before it had made much progress. Dean Alford, Bishop
Wilberforce, Dr. Tregelles, and Dr. Eadie all died previous to 1876 j and Dr. Newman
declined the invitation. On the death of Bishop Wilberforce, his place was taken by
Professor (now Archdeacon) Palmer. The number o£ members has throughoiLt beeo
about twenty-four, of whom the average attendance has been sixteen, during the ten
and a half years of working time. The Company has met monthly, under the presi-
dency of Bishop EUicott, ten times each year, with one or two exceptions only, an^
has made a total working time of 412 days, of aboiat seven hours each, to say nothing
of the time necessarily spent in private study connected with the work. Clearly
the revisers deserve a good name for application and industry.

Ik

1881. A REVISER ON THE NEW REVISION. 919

stance as follows: (1) To introduce as few alterations as possible . . •
consistently with fadthfulness ; (2) Alterations to be expressed in the
language of the Authorised and earlier English versions ; (3) To go
twice over the work; (4) The text to be adopted to be that for which
the evidence is decidedly preponderating ; (5) To make or retain no
change on the second or final revision, unless two-thirds of those
present approved of the same, but on the first revision to decide by
simple majorities; (6) Befers only to postponement of a decision in
certain cases ; (7) To revise the headings of chapters and pages,
paragraphs, italics, and punctuation ; (8) When considered desirable,
to refer to others not in the Company for their opinions. (It does
not appear from the preface that this last rule has ever been acted
upon.)

In these rules two features are very prominent: first, the extreme
care for the Authorised, which wa9 not to be altered except by a vote
of two to one of the members present from time to time ; secondly,
the great care as to the style, that is to say, the words, in which
alterations were to be made ; for these were to be limited, as far as
possible, ^to the language of the Authorised and earlier English
versions.' These two rules should have been sufficient, if known, to
allay the apprehensions of some notable opponents of the project of
revision, one of whom spoke of the revising process as if it were the
same as putting the Bible into a crucible and recasting it ; or again,
as laying it on the table of the anatomist and dissecting it. Arch-
bishop Thomson was reported in the papers of the day to have ex-
pressed himself to this effect in his speech against revision in the
York Convocation. He thus spoke much as if he were not aware
that honest men who did not deliberately intend to misrepresent
their original would be guided by the laws of the language from
which they were translating ; or as if he thought that a body of men
appointed to the work, such as the Westminster revisers, were likely
to corrupt or mutilate the English Bible under the pretence of re-
moving its manifold and everywhere admitted imperfections. The
Eaxl of Shaftesbury in a letter to the Ti/mee expressed himself with
equal disfavour or hostility to the work. A revision of the Bible,
he feared, would dilute and lower its style, would modernise and
Frenchify it. Such anticipations were perhaps excusable on the part
of a layman who may be supposed to be but slightly acquainted with
the nature of the work to be executed. But they were not to be ex-
pected from a man professedly learned in the Scriptures, although I
am half inclined to confess that in several respects the results which
have been arrived at in the volume as now published go some way, if
not to justify, at least to illustrate the doubts and fears of those who
were against revision. But yet it will be seen on consideration that
the adverse anticipations alluded to could not, by the nature of the
case, be largely fulfilled. The rules just cited show at least that they

920 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. June

ought not to have been fulfilled in any serious degree. Perhaps I ought
to add that the two eminent opponents before named, if they had sup-
ported the project of revision instead of opposing it, might pooibly
have exercised a salutary influence upon the work and prevented
some of the more objectionable changes, of which I shall have to
speak in the course of this paper.

It is singular at all events, and worth noting, that gentlemen
could be found, who, while professing to receive the Bible as the

* inspired Word,' the very * Word of Grod,' could yet be satisfied to
go on placing it before the world, in tens of thousands of copies
annually, in an imperfect form, with all its well-known false readings
and errors of translation. It would almost appear that they looked
upon the English version, errors and all, as < given by inspiration of
G-od,' for on what other principle could they rationally object to its
correction at the hands of earnest, religious, and competent men—
and surely no others were likely to undertake such a task ?

The fourth of the above rules was one of primary importance.

* The text to be adopted,' that is to say, the Greek text to be followed,
was to be that for which there was ^ preponderating evidence.' This
meant, in effect, that the revisers were to form their own 't^'^
they went on, judging according to the evidence of the 'readu^'
t^at offered themselves. This was the only rule that could be laid
down in such a case. It would indeed have been easier at once to
adopt a critical text, as that of Griesbach, Tischendorf, or Tr^eDes,
and relying upon the judgment . of the editor to have followed him
implicitly, without further investigation. But to do tiiis would have
been to attribute to any text so adopted a degree of authority which
it might not deserve. Even the best of editors — ^with all ie?eieQce
be it said ! — is not infallible. Gfriesbach is, indeed, one to be most
highly esteemed for breadth of knowledge and soundness of judg-
ment, but he had not in his hands all the materials possessed br
later scholars ; and Griesbach's theory of recensions tended sometimes
to lead him astray. A similar remark applies more or less, mniaiU
mv4;andi8, to any other critical authority that might be named; and
so it remained for the revisers to look at the various readings for
themselves, to estimate their value in their own way, and to fottov
their own judgment. This it will no doubt be found that they bare
done carefully, and with sound results. But the task ^tailed
labour, and would take much time ; not so much perhaps as might
be thought at first sight, at least by ordinary readers. For the
materials for judging of the comparative value of readings have been
wonderfully brought together, simplified, and systematised by the
careful labours of the last hundred years in this department of
learning. Almost every various reading of any importance in the
Greek manuscripts, as well as in the ancient versions and the
quotations so largely made by the Church fathers, has been noted

1881. A REVISER ON THE NEW REVISION. 921

and set down at its proper place in the great editions, so as to enable
a modem critic to judge for himself as to the originality of the text
in any given case.

Such being the fact, the labours of the revisers in this part of
their work were greatly lightened and simplified. Indeed, it will be
found that alterations in the English translation rendered necessary
by change of text in the original are comparatively few. Moreover,
it must be said that, numerous as are the differences of readings
found in the manuscripts as compared with each other, they are
commonly of very small importance in point of meaning. In
multitudes of cases they are so trivial as to be scarcely capable of
exact expression in a simple English rendering, or they are scarcely
worth expressing. And so it results that alterations in the English
version of an important character, arising from difference of original
reading, will not exceed a few dozens in number. The great mass of
changes will be found to consist of corrected and closer renderings of
the old Greek text — ^the Textus Beceptus. Thus it further appears,
that the terms in which critical works are apt to speak of different
' texts,' and ^ readings,' and ' types of text,' are a little misleading.
Differences there are, no doubt ; and there are manuscripts which
run together in groups — some exemplifying one class of differences,
while others agree in exemplifying another — the standard of com-
parison being the Textus Receptos. But such differences after all
are, as just said, but slight; insomuch that the reader who has
only the old Oreek text in his hands is in possession, through that,
of every substantial statement and doctrine of the New Testament.
This £Eict is too apt to be lost sight of; but it is worth remembering,
although it by no means justifies the opposition to revision that was
raised in certain influential quarters ; nor indeed was this the gnmnd
on which opponents professed to stand in speaking as they did. They
have to their credit, so fiar as appears, nothing but a blind impulse of
opposition to change, through fear of changing for the worse, although
all the probabilities of the case so plainly lay in the contrary direction.

It was no part of the duty of the revisers, however, to form a new
Greek text, nor have they, as the Preface is careful to note, attempted
anything so considerable. But something very like this has been
done, nevertheless, as the result or accompaniment of their labours.
For it is announced by the University Presses that an edition of the
Greek text is to be at once published, incorporating all the readings
followed by the revisers, and giving the displaced readings at the foot
of each page. This work is not, however, prepared by the Revision
Company itself, but by one or two of their number at the request of
and for the University Presses.' It may be anticipated that this

* A second work of a sixnilAr kind is to be the Greek text used in 1611, with the
variations from it given at the foot of the page. This wiU be edited by Dr, Scrivener ;
t.he other by Archdeacon Palmer.

Vol. IX*— No. 52. 3 Q

922 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. June

volume will in all important points be in Bubstantial agreement vith
the text of Tischendorf^ or perhaps ev^a more nearly 'with that of
Westcott and Hort. The work will, however, necessadly be infmcff
in value to that of Tischendorf, inasmuch as it will not fainidi tlie
manuscript and other evidence relating to the preferred readings.

The Pre&ce goes on, after stating the rules as aboYe given, to
speak of the way in which they have been carried out. ^ These lules
it has been our endeavour faithfully and consistently to follov.'
^ Faithfulness ' to the original, it will be remembered, was to be \k
great and dominating principle ; but, consistently with this, tbe
alterations were to be ^ as few as possible.' I must feuildy say at
once, I do not think this fundamental rule has been observed so Yell
as it might have been. The alterations, in my own humbU judg-
ment, are not ^ as few as possible,' but rather the coiUfrary'j and is
many cases, while minute and literally accurate, they sesoa to he so
in such a way as even to run counter to the very principle of ^tb-
f ulness to which they ought to have been subordinated. My meaning
in this statement will become clear as we proceed.

The character and extent of the revision are indicated by tbe
statement of the Pre&ce itself as to the nature of the alteratioD^
which have been made. These are enumerated under five heads:-
(1) alterations from change of reading ; (2) where the re&denng of
the Authorised was incorrect ; (3) from obscure or ambiguous loean-
ix^ to others clear and express ; (4) alterations for the sake of con<
sistency of rendering, that is, to make words and passages hannonioi^
or parallel in the Euglish which are so in the G-reek ; (5) alterations
by oonaequevuie^ or arising out of changes already made, even tboagl
not in strictness required by the general rule of {iaitlifulneaa. These
various grounds, it will be admitted, are just and reasonable in than-
selves ; yet when we come to the details of work in which they aie
exemplified, too much is found to which exception is to be taken, and
probably will be taken, even by the most tolerant and sympathising
critic — ^if a critic, in such a case, can or ought to be toloant and
sympathising.

It will be convenient in what follows, in the first place, to take
the order of the Preface in the illustrations which it gives of theniode
of proceeding in the different classes of alteration just enumeiated.
Then, having done this, we may proceed to notice a few of what n&J
be termed the more special and salient features of the^new text Tbe
great mass of little changes will necessarily be passed^over unnotio^
Most of these will, of course, be found to be rightly and carefollj
done, although a great proportion of them may be held to have bees
imcalled for. These will be considered by most readers as mere in-
truders, breaking in upon the old fitmiliar music of the Authorised
and doing so without any gain of sense by way of compensation— mj^
sometimes even veith a loss.

1881. A REVISER ON THE NEW REVISION. 923

In exposition of the method of proceeding we are told, first, that
where a word is found to occur in a book with characteristic fre-
quency, care has been taken to render it uniformly, so as to exhibit
the characteristic word in one way, as far as possible. This was ob*
yiously a just principle, too much overlooked by the translators of
1611. It has been duly carried out in some instances, as, for example,
in the rendering ^ straightway,' a favourite word of the second GrospeL
It is much to be wished that the same principle had been equally well
remembered in words of greater importance. But of this more shall
be said by-and-by.

The rendering of the tenses, we are next informed, has been care-
fully attended to. The results are not always happy. The Greek
aorist is too often represented very baldly, by a correspondent indefi-
nite past — the old and fuller rendering by have (which is often quite
as correct) being rejected. Thus, Matt. x. 8, ^ Freely ye received,'
for * freely ye have received ; ' Luke xix. 17, * thou wast found faith-
ful ' for ^ thou hast been found faithful ; ' John xvii. 4, 6, ^ I glorified
thee on the ^sarth,' ^ I manifested thy name.' So it is many times
through this chapter, and in numerous other cases. In all of them I
venture to think the old renderings were mostly preferable, not only
in sound, but in aptness to the context and to the general character
of the passage. That the old renderings read better probably no one
will dispute. The change to a greater formal accuracy is therefore
dearly bought, and was in truth not worth the price paid for it. This
kind of alteration will often strike the reader, and generally with an
unpleasant effect, while yet it may be hoped that it will in time be-
come familiar, and perhaps agreeable.

Eut more than this : it cannot be doubted that in the use of the
tenses in New Testament G-reek there is very much of the Hellenistic
influence. Men whose native language was so closely akin to the
ancient Hebrew, and to whom Greek was only an acquired tongue,
would not be likely, ought not to be expected, to have used the varied
and copious tenses of the Greek verb with the freedom or accuracy of
a Xenophon or a Thucydides. This is abundantly seen in the Septua-
gint, and also in the Apocrypha ; and why should it not appear in
the New Testament ? The fact is that it is extremely visible and
undeniable. The same general cause accounts for many instances of
a^wkwardness of expression, not only in connection with verbal forms,
but in the use of other words. It is much to be feared that our re-
visers have not made due allowance for all this. The consequence is
bhat, with great literalness of rendering, they have not always well
brought out the sense, and they have certainly often produced rough
md jerky effects, which it would have been better to avoid. This is
^2:eniplified in such renderings as Matt. v. 22, ^ hell of fire ' (of which
Qore hereafter), with which compare Bom. viii. 6, ^mind of the flesh,
mind of the spirit,' compared with ^ sinful flesh ' (v. 3) ; why not

3q2

924 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Jane

< flesh of sin' also ? So Bom. viii. 21, ' liberty of the glory,' «od
many similar cases. The clumsiness of such renderings as Jolm ir.
23, 24, will strike most readers. The fault, indeed, here is not from
the needless rendering of any Hebraism, so much as from a qmte
gratuitous literalism, by which nothing in point of sense appeais to
be gained.

In reference to the rendering of the article similar remarks nay
be made. As the rule, it is too often expressed. This sometiioes
injures the idiom of the English, and in truth impairs or misrepre-
sents the force of the original. What, for instance, is gained id
Matt. y. 15, 'Neither do men light a lamp and put it under the
bushel, but on the stand' ? The article is used to generalise as wdl
as to render definite ; and it may be so here, as the words are dorij
connected with a general precept. If so, then a is better than tie,
and the change made in the Authorised is uncalled for. In Bom.E
27, we have a contrary case, the article left out by Hefaraiflm,irat
better retained in the English, though absent from the Greek, 4 kw
of fiedth.' Here the word exemplifies the common Hebrew usage of
the omitted article with a noun which is qualified and rendered defi-
nite by another noun, even without any article, as in the two first words
of the first G-ospel. The over-rendering of which I am now speaking
often occurs ; thus. Matt. vi. 25^ ^ Is not the life more than the food,
and the body than the raiment ? * The sense would have been girei
by omitting the article rather than retaining it with fooi and m-
ment. So Matt. vii. 24, 25, ^ the rock ; ' < a rock ' is more smtaUeto
English idiom; as in 2 Cor. xii. 12, where the Gf-reek is ra fih (r^/tf»
Tov airooTciXjoVf rendered ^ the signs of an apostle.* Here the gene-
ralising force of the article is recognised, and the rendering isoorrect
In this case, the form followed in Matt. v. 15 and elsewhere would
not have been admissible, showing us that the change there vas
unneeded, and that the Authorised is right.

The worst case of this kind is perhaps in Matt. viii. 12 and tbe
parallel places, ' There shall be the weeping and gnashing of te^^
The wonder is that, with the strange zeal for literalisms which appeis
to have animated the revisers, they have not given us here ott ^
articles, ^ the weeping and the gnashing of the teeth.' This fooH
have been too much ; but the rendering followed is almost ss nnjor
tifiable. Probably it was adopted because of the reference to ^
end of the world or age, which some think may be referred to int
previous verse (v. 11). Granting this, still how is this shown ^
keeping the article before * weeping * ? In truth, the addition only
weakens the phrase. * Weeping and gnashing of teeth ' is a tarse
and idiomatic expression, about the purport of which there can ix
no mistake, whether it be referred to the second coming of Onst
and the last things, or whether it stand alone, withoat any sA
reference. * There shall be the weeping ' is poor and feeble in cob-

1881. A REVISER ON THE NEW REVISION. 925

parisoo. Theie is, as observed before, too much of this literal
accuracy, tending not to strength but to weakness, and, in too many
cases, impairing the fedthfulness of the English, regarded as the
repres^itative of the Greek. Matt. vii. 6 is a bad case of this kind :
'neither cast your pearls before the swine.' Are we to suppose that
the writer had some definite animals in view, and was speaking,
therefore, of them ? Or is it not that in this precept he simply
generalises by means of the article, and so renders his precept in a
sense imiversal in its spirit ?

The Pre&ce goes on to speak of the rendering of pronouns.
Particular care, it is stated, has been taken in their expression (or
non-ezpression, if absent in the Greek), and in regard to ' the place
they occupy in the sentence.' This refers to such cases as that in
the example last given: 'cast your pearls.' The Authorised has:
' cast ye your pearls.' But the Greek is without the word ' ye,'
and so the revisers have left it out ! But then it is latent in the
verb, and many readers will think that the English sounds better
with it, while nothing is gained to the sense by leaving it out. In
other cases no doubt the effect is happier, and the correction is
rightly made, whether by the omission or the insertion of the pro-
noun.

The next paragraph relates to the particles, in which * uniformity
of rendering ' has been carefully observed. But so much as this can
scarcely be said in regard to the point following. This is the
rendering of the prepositions, of which the fEuniliar iv may be more
especially instanced. In the New Testament this word is constantly
used after the manner of Hellenistic Greek, and can only be under-
stood when attention is paid to the way in which the Hebrew Beth
is expressed in the Septuagint. It is constantly used of the vnstrU"
ment, frequently of the ma/finer or accompaniment, and also of the
<xi/U8e. The instrumental force of the word the revisers have some-
times recognised and sometimes not, and this quite arbitrarily, for
anything that appears. Even where they have recognised it, they
have done so apparently without confidence, and have actually given
a mazgin, to infonn the reader that the original was m, as if there
was some mysterious virtue in this little word, which it was feared
might be lost, unless it were duly noted that the original meant in
and not by. An early example to this effect may be seen in Matt.
iii. 11:^1 indeed baptise you with water, . . . but he that cometh
after me ... . shall baptise you with the Holy Ghost.' The original
is ivf but, as here used, we have it in its usual Hellenistic sense, deno-
ting the instrument or means with which ; and why, therefore, should
it not have been so rendered without a comment which tends only
to perplex ? The rendering in the text is the true sense, here as so
often elsewhere. So far as the English is concerned, the marginal
^ in ' would have been simply wrong, and it was needless to say any-

92ft TSS NINETEENTH CENTURY. Jme

thing about it. I hope, however, that no Baptist Moid will take
offenoe at this view of the case !

In some places, however, the original iv has been retained-4bat
is to say, its English equivalent has been used. The result mij
speak for itself; we have it, for example, in Heb. i. 1, ' God, haviog
of old time spoken unto the fathers in the prophets by divers partiois
and in divers manners, hath at the end of these days spoken unto \£
in hia Son : ' * in the prophets,* * in his Son.' The word here surdy
denotes simply the instrumental agency. It can mean nothi&g ek
according to the Hellenistic usage, of which the New Testament is so
fall. The change from the Authorised seems,, therefore, to have been
quite uncalled for, and the words as they stand tend only to pozzies
reader, imparting also an awkwardness to the passage, which does
not appear either in the Crreek or in the Authorised. This comes (^
too great literalness in translating, combined with too great readiscsg
to forget the peculiar character of New Testament Ghreek^ The ane
idiom occurs in Matt. iz. 34 : ' By the prince of the devik csste&
he out devils.' Here the translation is correct, but it is carefully noted
that the original of hy is iru But, if it be so, what else canitfiMim?
as, indeed, is seen in Luke xi. 20 : ' If I by the finger of God cast oat
devils ' — literally, * in the finger of God.' Is it not inconsbtait to
omit the margin here, seeing that the use of in in this case lonld
appear to be even more singular than in the other, and must there
not, therefore, on the principle of literalness, have been some reason
for using it ? In truth, there is nothing remarkable in sudi cases.
The word occurs quite normally as a usual way of expressing instru-
mentality, and it could not have been correctly Englished bjanj
other word than by. This is recognised in 1 Cor. iv. 21, 'with a
rod ; ' but why is the marginal warning inconsistently omitted?

The new rendering of Heb. i. 1 has just been quoted. It will
very probably be regarded as one of the least happy passages in the
new text. It is extremely literal certainly ; but in this lies its fanltt
while it gives no improvement upon the Authorised in point of sense^
none at least that is worth speaking of. The phrase ^divers portions'
is the only one which conveys a little more of the original rosm^
than we had before, but the difference is so small that many readers
will remain insensible of the gain arising from the disturbance of ^^
old and familiar words. The new tsjct stated, or intended to bes.
is that the conmrnnications made by the prophets in old times weit
not made all at once, but in separate and successive portions. Ih^
is little different from what was at least suggested by the 'sondn
times ' now displaced. Again, the words ' Kia Son ' ought cert&is?
to have been corrected into ^ a Son,' as in the margin. FonDer
revelations were by prophets, the latter by ^ a Son.' The Logos ii
Christ was 'a Son,' one of many such according to the phibao-
-phical conceptions of the time, and according to the developed

1881. A REVISER ON THE NEW REVISION. 927

Logos doctrine fiuniliar to Philo a centuiy before the Epistle to the
Hebrews was written. So that the Greek here is in liarmony with
these ideas, which its English representative is not. Bat modem
theology takes a different view of this subject from that which would
be fieimiliar to the writer to the Hebrews, and therefore the superfluous
his of the Authorised is retained. It is much to be wished that more
of the passage in its fine old English form had also been retained ;
for example, not only the preposition by, but the old rendering of
the verbs, and the words displaced for ' at the end of these days,'
which scarcely yield an intelligible sense. In this passage it is too
clear that the English reader has lost much and gained little by the
revision.

It is unnecessary to speak with equal detail of the particulars
enumerated in the remainder of the Preface. The revisers being
directed to make their alterations, as far as possible, in the language
of the Authorised earlier English versions, have carefully done so,
thus preserving uniformity of Uterary style and colour. Archaisms
have been removed, where they seemed to occasion misconception of
the meaning ; otherwise they have been left. Cases still appear, how-
ever, in which an uncouth archaism might better have been changed.
The form ' for to ' before the infinitive is now only a vulgarism. The
form ^ to US-ward ' seems clumsy. The inversions of words some
times give strength and variety to expression ; in such cases they are
rightly left ; but there are instances in which they are objectionable
in English, and would seem to have come in from the German of
Liuther, with which our earliest translators were familiar. Such
forms as ^ then fell she down straightway,' ' neither went I up to
Jerusalem,' ^ then departed Barnabas for to seek Paul,' are in accord-
ance with a well-known German idiom, but hardly with good
English usage in our day. Nor are they pleascmt reading.

The marginal notes, we are informed, represent a large amount
of careful and elaborate discussion. This will readily be believed.
The remark will most probably be made that this part of the work
is a little overdone. Marginal notes in particular giving alterna-
tive renderings, as well as those giving more exactly the force of the
original, are too numerous. The feult is perhaps on the right side ;
but yet it tends to perplexity when renderings occur even in the
margin which really convey little sense in themselves, or when they
add nothing that assists the understanding of the text. What, for
instance, is the use of the firequent margin ' Or, t7i ' ? or of this, ' (3t.
before the face of hie entering in ' (Acts xiii. 24), the full meaning
of the Hebraism being already in the text ; or of this, ' Or, wrvtHl,
added to the right rendering ^for a season'? Or of this, ^Gr.
im/preee'* (Matt. v. 41) ; or of this, *Gr. dig through^ (Matt. vi.
19) ; or of this, ^ Gr. ixike alive ' (Luke v. 10) ; in all these cases the
true meaning, the apt and intelligible meaning, being given in the

928 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Jme

text. There are multitudes of marginal notes equally iiivial and
eqiially useless. On the other hand, there are cases in which a
margin would have had great interest and some importance, but it
has been omitted. For example, in 1 John v. 7, the spurious woids,
' the Father, the Word, and the Holy Grhost, and these three are one,'
are, with the connected words, quietly dropped out of the tett,no inti-
mation of this being given to the reader. Of course he can find (rat
the omission for himself, if he should compare the old with the re-
vised version, or if he should remember that the words were thse
once. But it would seem to have been better work to have gim
notice that there was here so great a change. This has been done in
Mark ix. 44, 46 ; and it is duly indicated that the concluding verses
of the second Gospel are of doubtful authenticity, as well as tlie 8e^
tion of John, from vii. 53 to viii. 11. •

Several other matters of less moment are next referred to, and
their treatment explained ; namely, the use of italics, the dimon
into paragraphs (the old verse numerals being retained), the mode of
printing quotations from the Old Testament, the punctuation, and
lastly, the titles of the books. On these it need only be oheened
that the mode of giving the quotations from the Old Testament does
not appear to be a very successful experiment. The printing is
parallelisms spoils the imiformity of the page too much, and was not
worth adopting, unless the parallelism was a good one. In many of
the cases it is very imperfect ; and, indeed, passages that are puzelj
prose have been broken up into parallelisms for no other reason appa-
rently except that they are quotations from the Old Testament It
has been overlooked that large portioiis even of the prophetical boob
are as prosaic as prose can be.

As to the titles of the books, the revisers have ^ deemed it best*
to leave them as they were. Perhaps this was unavoidable; but it
is a pity nevertheless, for to the common reader a sanction will
appear to have been given to statements which, to say the least, aie
in several cases extremely doubtful, and in some unquestionably wrong.
< The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Hebrews ' ought not to have
been left ; for what manuscript authority has it ? And surely a majoritj
of the revisers themselves would not have voted it to be a justifiable
addition to the sacred text.

The remainder of this paper may best be occupied with the coih
sideration of a few renderings of special interest and importance in
the new text, which may serve too to illustrate and to justify the ]H^
ceding remarks.

We come at once, on the second page of the volume, to instances
which cannot be passed over without critical conunent and qnestiixi'
*Holy Ghost,' Matt. i. 18. On this, the first occurrence of the*
words, we have a marginal note, * Or Holy Spirit^ and so throughoitf
this book.' Such is the usual form of notice to the reader at ik

1881. A REVISER ON THE NEW REVISION 929

first place in each book where these words are found. But the ques-
tion is inevitable, Why was not the word ^ Spirit ' taken into the
text and adopted as the rendering of the Greek wvevfia ? It is a
good word, of rich and comprehensive import, and it corresponds to
tiie original in a way whish cannot be alleged of the term used. The
Greek word is found in a multitude of cases standing cdone, that is,
without any connected adjective or equivalent word. In such cases,
^ Ghost ' cannot be used. Hence the necessity, arising from the use
of the latter, of having two words in the English version to repre*
sent the single word of the original. This consideration itself affords
a strong reason against the introduction of the word ^ Ghost ' at all.
For why employ two terms when a single one is sufficient ? The one
referred to is an impracticable kind of word, and may indeed be said,
like many other things, to be growing obsolete, except only in ecclesi-
astical use.

It will be found, however, that in a few cases in the earlier books
as here revised, the Authorised ' Ghost ' has been changed into
^ Spirit.' On what principle this has been done does not appear ; but
it would almost seem as if it had been intended to make the change
in cases in which power or infiv^nce was supposed to be mainly
denoted by irvsvfui, and in others, to which a personal character
was presumed to belong, to leave the Authorised as it was. If this
were the case, the revisers would seem to have abandoned the task of
discriminating between the two significations as beyond their power,
or they may have turned from it shocked, perhaps, at the daring of.
their own hands in making such an attempt. The Authorised, it
may be noticed, has the rendering ^ Holy Spirit ' only in some three
instances, so that the transktors of 1611 were at least fairly consis-
tent in what they did, which is more than can be said for their
successors of 1881. The present revision has kept these three in-
stances, and added to them about half-a-dozen others (as Luke ii. 25,
26, iv. 1 ; Acts ii. 4, vi. 5). There may be a few more, but nothing is
said in the Preface as to why the change was made. Of the three
places in which ^ Holy Spirit ' occurs in the Authorised, and which
our revisers have retained, one has been treated in a remarkable way.
It is Ephesians iv. 30 : * Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby
ye were sealed unto the day of redemption.' I purposely quote the
Authorised, that the proceeding of the revisers here may more clearly
appear. It would of course have been intolerable to say * Holy Ghost '
in this case ; but yet, while rightly retaining the Authorised ' Spirit,'
the revisers have so far departed from it as directiy to suggest the
personal meaning, by their treatment of the relative pronoun con*
nected with it. They have rendered, * Grieve not the Holy Spirit of
God, in whom ye were sealed.' This, of course, is in harmony with
the mode of rendering the preposition ip followed in other cases, and
so often given in the margin, as before pointed out. It is also in

930 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. June

harmony yn\h the established theology on the subject; but it is the
exact opposite of the common usage of the reyisers in theii tranda*
tion of the relative pronomi personal : ' Our Father whvk ait in
heaven,' and so in nearly all similar cases, the archaic ^ which* being
persistently preferred to 'who.' Against this use of * which' the
American revisers remonstrate, the seventh of their suggested correc-
tions being that who (or that) should everywhere be substitated for
it. The old word, however, is not unpleasant to the English ear, and
there was no occasion to change, and nothing would be gained by the
change, except a certain modernising of the old and well-aooepted
word. But, if which might do for ' Our Father,' why should it not
have served for ' Holy Spirit ' ? why, except more distinctly to sug-
gest what is not in the original, namely that the word Trvcvfui has
here a personal meaning? I am sorry to ask the question, but it is
unavoidable, not only in this case but in others which are related to
it. Moreover, as to the words ' in whom ye were sealed,' what do
they mean ? Have they any intelligible meaning ? Can any intetli-
gible meaning be assigned to the Greek, except the obvious inBtn-
mental sense so constantly met with ? ' Grieve not the Holy Spirit
of God by which ye were sealed ' — by the reception of which, or the
inspiration of which, ye were marked out, set apart, secured as diaciples
unto the expected day of the second coming. Such is clearly the
sense of the verse, but it is missed altogether by the new version.

Betuming, however, to the rendering ^ Holy Ghost,' it may be
observed that the English is perhaps the only existing version of im-
portance in which the word itpsv/jui has received a twofold equivaleint
It will indeed be said that the two renderings are identical in value.
But this is surely not the case* 'Ghost' has £Eur more of the personal
force in it than the other, and far more than the original wvAjia^
which indeed is entirely without it, except sometimes in a certain
figurative sense. At any rate the words are so different that there
are multitudes of instances where Ohost cannot be used at all and
Spirit can. The former can only be written with one particular ad-
jective, and in one single phrase, whereas the word mvevfuij for which
it stands, is used with various adjectives and in all sorts of connections.
We can say the Spirit of God, but not the Ghost of Gtni ; the Spirit
of Christ, but not the Ghost of Christ; the Divine Spirit, the eternal
Spirit, the almighty Spirit, but we could not substitute Ohost in any
such cases, without a shock to the reverent feeling of a reader. It is
vain therefore to say that the two words are of identical force and
meaning ; and it is much to be anticipated that the judgment of the
public on this crucial point will fietil to recognise in tiie revisers that
judicial freedom from theological bias which was certainly to be ex-
pected from them.

The personal turn so gratuitously given to the pronouns in con-
nection with the word ^ Spirit ' is visible in other instances beside?

1881. A REVISER ON THE NEW REVISION. .931

the one just mentioned. Thus in Bom. viii. 16, the Authorised has
^ the Spirit itself beareth witness.' This has been changed into ^ the
Spirit himself,' although the Greek for the last word is, of course, the
neuter pronoun airro. In such cases, and there are several of them,
the true faithfulness would have been, not only to render by Spirit
everywhere, but to have kept (or introduced) the neuter pronouns, U,
itsdf, which. I do not indeed deny that a quasi-personality is occa-
sionally attributed to irvevfia. It is so in Bom. viii. 16, for to bear
witness is the act of a personal agent. But the same kind of per-
sonality is attributed to charity (love) in 1 Cor. xiii. 4, 5 : ^ Charity
^uffereth long and is kind, • . • doth not behave unseemly, seeketh not
her own, is not provoked.' But here the revisers have not thought it
necessary to keep up the personal idea in the pronouns. They have
actually changed the Authorised personal pronouns feminine into the
corresponding neuters; they have even given us 'seeketh not its
own,' instead of a correct rendering of the Greek, ' seeketh not her
own.' This, we might be ready to believe, has arisen from oversight
or accident. But the same kind of change — a change, that is to say,
in a certain direction and with a certain visible tendency — occurs in
other instances, and it is much to be regretted that this should be
the case.

Another example of the same perverse method of proceeding
occurs in Matt. i. 21, in the force given to the pronoun airros. This
word is sometimes used in the New Testament Greek without any
special emphasis. Often indeed it means ^ himself,' or carries with it
some equivalent meaning; but it is used also for 'he ' simply, and
with no greater force. This is recognised by the revisers in Matt,
xii. 50, xvi. 20 ; Luke v. 17, zix. 2, and in other instances. Has the
pronoun any greater or more special force in Matt. i. 21 ? The
Authorised has ' he shall save his people from their sins ; ' the revised
reads, < it is he that shall save his people,' giving a very special
emphasis to the pronoun which was quite adequately expressed by the
word ^ he.' It must be admitted, however, that the best authorities have
taken opposite sides on the question whether airos ever occurs in the
New Testament with the simpler meaning. This may be so, though
it would seem to be strange enough to have a doubt on the point. It is
clear, at all events, that the revisers were ready to throw the benefit of
the doubt in a particular direction, small as its value is, and in truth
hardly worth reckoning — not worth reckoning at all, so as to jeopardise
the credit of the revision for the strictest ' faithfulness.'

Passing on to the next page we come to the rendering of Matt,
ii. 1, ' behold wise men from the east came to Jerusalem.' So in
ii. 7. In this case the revisers have preferred the alternative ex-
pressed by the words ^ as few as possible ' to that of ' faithfulness '
(Bule 1). The original here does not mean ' wise men ' at all I It
is the word fidyoij magi or magians, as the margin informs us. But

932 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. June

why not place a word of such distinct historical import and interest
in the text ? Was it not one of the main objects of the revLdon to
make corrections of this kind ? The Magians were a sacred order
among the Persians and other ancient oriental peoples. They were
priests, soothsayers, and interpreters of dreams, and to have their
approval or recognition was important to the character or saccesa of
any undertaking. So these great personages come seeking ^ the child
Jesus,' and desire to ^ worship him,' the greatest act of homage that
they could offer him. To designate such men as merely ^ wise ' is to
rob them of all their distinctive value. They were * Magians' whose
testimony to the new-bom Christ would, in the estimation of all be-
holders, at once establish his Messianic character. This is no doobt
what the evangelist intends us to understand in introducing so parti-
cularly and carefully the fact of their visit to Bethlehem. But oor
revisers have strangely left all this out of sight. For some resso&f
best known to themselves, they have rubbed out the historic colouriDg
of the passage, by putting the right word in the margin, where itirill
not be read, and the wrong one in the text, where it will.

Perhaps it will be thought that this may have been done out of
consideration for ignorant readers who would only have been puzzled
by so strange a word as Magians. But the admission of a new word
would have had an obvious advantage. It would have given occasion
to such readers to inquire what it meant, and so probably to extend
their knowledge. At any rate, it would seem to be as reasonable to
substitute the right word for the wrong one here as to have changed
the old familiar ^ deputy ' in several cases into * proconsul,' Acts
xviii. 12, &c. It may be noted, too, that in Acts xiiL 6, 8, the word
fiirfos is rendered after the Authorised by ^ sorcerer : ' so that the
harmonising spirit, which has led to important changes in sevend
instances, has here been off its guard, and a word of a comparatively
vague and colourless character has been allowed to represent one that
is very definite and distinctive, as much so, perhaps, as the words
' publican ' or ^ pharisee.'

We come next, passing over various minor points, to three in-
stances in which the new rendering ^ the evil one ' invites our at-
tention. In Matt. V. 37, we read, ' Let your speech be. Yea, yea:
Nay, nay: and whatsoever is more than these is of the e?il
OTie.' The margin runs, 'Or evil: as in ver. 39; vi. 39.' This
tells us that affirmations which are stronger than Yea, yea : Nay,
nay, are the suggestion of Satan. Can this really have been the
speaker s meaning ? Such a saying looks too like the utterance of
mere fanaticism, to have come from the lips of that calm and gradoos
Teacher to whom the words are ascribed. But then consistency of
rendering would seem to have required the assimilation of the ren-
dering here to that adopted in Matt. vL 13, ^ Deliver us from the
evil one ; ' for, if this be correct, the same rendering could hardly be

1881. A REVISER ON THE NEW REVISION. 933

refused to the identical words ^ in v. 37, although, strange to say, it is
refused to them in v. 39, * Resist not the evil man.* Why then is
consistency sacrificed here ? Something may be reasonably allowed
for the context, and this may have determined for * man^ rather
than for * Ijie evil one.' But if so, why was not the same regard for
the context allowed its weight in the Lord's Prayer ? For, let it be
observed, although the words rov irovripov may be grammatically
rendered ' the evil man^ * the evil one^^ or * the evil,' i.e. * evil ' in
the abstract, yet the expressions immediately associated with the
phrase in the Lord's Prayer require the last of these meanings and
exclude the two others. There is no question that o irovripos is used
for Satan, as in Matt. xiii. 19, comp. Mark iv. 15 : but this meaning
of the words is here determined not only by their certainly masculine
form, but also and still more by the immediate context. This clearly
requires a personal agent to make the sense complete ; and so it is
in one or two other cases, where the personal meaning appears to be
intended — as, perhaps (not certainly), in 1 John v. 1 9. But in the
Lord's Prayer (to which John xvii. 15 is in this point parallel), there
is no necessity of this kind to fix the personal meaning. On the
contrary the associated words and ideas exclude it. ^ Forgive us our
debts,' ' lead us not into temptation,' and immediately afterwards, ^ if
ye forgive not men their trespasses ' : debts, temptation, trespasses,
are all words of a general or quasi abstract meaning, with no per-
sonal meaning at all. To these words ^ evil ' is parallel, but ^ evil
one ' is not so. This would appear to be in itself a sufficient reason
for leaving the Authorised alone, and putting * evil one ' in the margin
as no doubt a possible alternative. It was certainly a sufficient
reason on the principle of the first rule, to make the changes ^ as few
as possible.'

But there is other and even stronger ground than this. The
words TO irovTjpop occur twice in the New Testament with the
general or abstract meaning, as similar phrases often do in classical
writers. The two places are Luke vi. 45, *The evil man (6 irovqpos)
. . . bringeth forth evil ' (to irovqpov) ; Bom. xii. 9, * abhorring
evil ' (to irovffpSv). These cases are beyond question, and they
would abundantly have justified the retention of *evil,' as in the
Authorised form of the prayer. But then Satan was a personage of
supreme importance with the old Church Fathers, as indeed he still
is with no small number of modem theologians. They saw him and
his bad influence everywhere, as they are still seen by multitudes.
Hence the incredibly superstitious notions which the same Fathers
held respecting the actual present exercise of diabolical agency in
their own day, and in some cases, as they believed, under their own
eyes. Any one may see the evidence of this by referring to an easily
accessible book, Conyers Middleton on the Miraculous Powers, in

* The preposition in Matt, v, 37 and John xvii. 15 is in; in Matt. vi. 18 it is Airo.

934 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. June

which it is shown, by the citation of their words, that the Faiihen
held the belief in Satan in the most gross and supeistitLoiu foim.
They make statements on the subject which are incredible, and oooli
only proceed from ignorant and inconsiderate men. As a matter of
course the Grreek Fathers read the Lord's Prayer by the hirid light
of such ideas.

Naturally, therefore, to such men the words under notice could
mean nothing else but ^ the evil one ; ' and accordingly a long seiies
of passages may be drawn from their writings, in which they appeai
to assent to and accept this interpretation of the words. Of couiae, as
Grreek was their native tongue, it must not be said that the words
cannot mean what these writers tell us they mean. But they were
not infallible. They were very much the contrary ; and the prola-
bility is, when all the considerations bearing upon the subject are
duly weighed, that the Fathers were wrong, and that they were
simply misled to interpret the words as they did by the superstition of
their times, the bondage of which weighed so heavily upon themselves.
At the same time it is not to be questioned that the belief in Satan
was held by the ^ Teacher ' himself; but it is not necessary to hold
that He embodied it in this passage of his teachings. It would then
have been perfectly reasonable, out of regard to the probabilities of
the case, to put ^ tlie evil one ' into tUe margin, in the usual way, for
the use of such as prefer it ; but it does seem to be unpardonable to
lower the character of this otherwise beautiful and comprebeoiBiTe
prayer by introducing into it for modem use so gross and unspiiitaal
an idea — to do this, too, without absolute certainty that it is coned
And that such certainty did not exist, even in the minds of the re-
visers themselves, is shown by the fact of the alternative rendering
which they have placed in their margin.

Another passage in the same neighbourhood calls for a few re-
marks— remarks again not of approval but of disapproval and pro-
test. Matt. V. 22, ^ shall be in danger of the hell of fire' — and so
in two other instances. In the Authorised Version, < hell ' is the
rendering of two different words, Oehenna and Hades, The latter of
these is to be no longer so expressed. Being a proper name, it is left
by the revisers imtranslated ; and so the revised text will be enriched
by a new word — ^new at least to the English Bible — ^the word Hades,
which wUl be found to occur eleven times. This treatment of the
word, in as much as it is a proper name, is correct; but then
Gehenna is a proper name also I Why, therefore, has not this been
retained, but rendered by the ugly word ' hell ' ? And ' hell of fire'
seems especially objectionable, for two reasons : first, only one land
of hell is known to the New Testament, while this phrase suggests
other hells of a different nature, thus indirectly and quite needUesslj
importing into the Christian books the conception of certain Fftgan
mythologies, as to hells of a variety of kinds ; — secondly, the added

1881. A REVISER ON THE NEW REVISION. 935

words 'of fire' (or 'of the fire'), are they more than a siinple
Hebraism ? If not, the meaning of the expression ' Gehenna of fire,'
is most probably ' the burning Gehenna,' and no more. The reader
may see a similar form in Luke xviii. 6, 'judge of unrighteousness,'
properly Englished by ' unrighteous judge.'

The probability of this interpretation arises £rom the nature of
the case. G^hexma was the name of a valley near Jerusalem. The
word by its Hebrew etymology means 'valley of Hinnom,' an ancient
name found in the Old Testament (2 Kings xxiii. 10, 2 Chron.
xzviii. 3). In former times it had been the scene of idolatrous rites
and of human sacrifices to the god Moloch. Hence to the later Jews
it was a place of abomination, and to mark its character it was de-
filed by the various refuse of the city there thrown and kept burning
that it might be consumed. A veritable place of fire, deserving of
its name and reputation I where amidst corrupting matters worms too
might live, until the all-consuming element swallowed them up.
Thus there was here literally a irvp auovvov, an age-enduriog fire, an
' unquenchable fire ' — a place ' where their worm dieth not and the
fire is not quenched ' (Mark ix. 43, 48).

It is easy to understand that, Gehenna being such a place as this,
it would become the representative, in popular speech, of the place
of punishment reserved for the wicked and the unbelieving, who
were doomed to destruction at the final judgment on the coming
of the Messiah. The ungodly should be cast into the burning
Gehenna and consumed : it does not appear that they were to be kept
aUve, burning for ever, this being a later addition to the ancient
conception. The ideas associated with the medisBval hell — such as
may be seen painted on the wall of the Campo Santo at Pisa — are
unknown to the Gospels, and have only been added to the original
name in its modem form by the lively imaginations of speculative
theologians. In other words, the representation of 'Gehenna' by
' hell ' is clearly unjustifiable, because this terrible word now suggests
ideas of horror and misery which have no foundation in New Testa-
ment usage, when due regard is paid to the origin and history of the
word Gehenna. It might have been expected that a body of revisers
such as the Westminster Company would have been able to raise
themselves above the popular conceptions of our day, and would have
given us a rendering of the words in question which was fairly based
not upon the long-descended notions of the darkest ages of mediaeval
superstition, but upon the just historical considerations which are
applicable to the subject. Those who expected so much as this, it is
a pity to think, will be disappointed ; and so it is reserved for a
future revision, if ever such a thing shall come to pass, to do justice
to words and thoughts which, in connection with this subject, have
been so long misrepresented — to the sore discredit, with many
thoughtful minds, of the Christian Gospel.

936 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. June

Bat here, leaving roany interestiog passages, changed or ud-
changed, without comment, I must bring this paper to a close.
Whatever the imperfections of the revised version may be, stilly it
must be admitted, the revision is a good work accomplidied. It will
at least awaken thought and stimulate inquiry, in quarters in which
these have been too apt to slumber. It breaks the spell which the
old Authorised had thrown over the religious world, or at least the
English Protestant part of it. People will no longer look upon the
English Bible, chapter headings and italics included, as if it had heeo.
dropped from heaven just as it is ; and perhaps it will be more easr
than it was to get a truth of modem science into the heads of ordi-
nary religious people, even in the face of apparent difficulty arising on
the side of the Bible. This will be a gain to the cause of Truth and
Beason which all truthful and reasonable men will be glad to see.

Gr. Vakcb Smith.

1881. 937

WHAT IS A POUND?

This old question which Sir Hobert Peel so much rejoiced in has
once more cropped up, and in the remarks I wish to make upon it I
desire to say a few words upon what was a pound and what raay be
a pound.

In his speech on the Bank Act of 1844 he says of the principle
of the metallic standard : ^ It must at the same time be admitted
that it would be quite consistent with that principle to adopt some
other measmre of value than that which we have adopted. It would
be consistent with that principle to select silver instead of gold as
the standard, or to have a mixed standard of gold and silver, the
relative value of the two metals being determined, or to dispense
with gold coin altogether, and regulate the amount and value of the
paper currency by making it convertible only, according to the pro-
posal of Mr. Bicardo, into gold bullion of a given minimum amount.'

The authority of this great financier may therefore be cited as
showing that bimetallism as now proposed is not otherwise than in
accordance with the principle of the metallic standard.

The Earl of Liverpool made his proposal for a gold standard on
the ground that Crreat Britain is ^ so distinguished for its afiSuence
and for the extent of its commercial connections, that gold coins are
best adapted to be the principal measure of property.'

The monometallists in the present controversy maintain this doc-
trine, and assert that the superior wealth of England enables her to
keep her gold standard, while less wealthy nations, such as Germany,
Italy, &c., could not do so. On the other hand, the bimetallists
declare that this supremacy would continue and even increase if
England submitted herself to a general law agreed on in concert
with other nations. The Americans believe that their wealth, intel-
ligence, commercial activity, and undeveloped resources will enable
them, if they are forced into a gold standard, to outstrip England in
the race for wealth, and to draw from England's store of gold a suffi-
cient amount to place them in the foremost rank.

The present controversy dates from the first monetary conference
in Paris, which sat in June 1867, and which was called for the purpose
of < appreciating more earnestly the advantages which would be derived
from the unification of coinages.'
Vol. DC.— No. 52. 3 B

938 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. June

9

At the very first meeting the question of standards arose, and on
its arising the existence of the douhle standard seemed so litUe under-
stood that the delegate from Russia, having been placed among those
representing the double-standard countries, declared that there was
only one standard in Russia, that of silver ; but he was corrected by
Monsieur de Parieu, the French delegate, who informed him that
both metals were legal tender in both countries.

On the 20th of June, at the third sitting, the proposition 'that
the desired result, namely, monetary unification, is attainable on the
basis and condition of adopting the exclusive gold standard,' was
carried with one dissentient voice.

In 1871 the Grerman demonetisation of money commenced, and
in 1873 an act of Congress was passed by which silver was l^allv
demonetised in the United States, which act was, however, corrected
by what is called the Bland Bill, enforcing the coinage of a certain
amount of silver monthly. In 1878 another international monetary
conference assembled at Paris, at which the German Empire was not
represented, but, notwithstanding the absence of that important
element, the European States, through their delegates, agreed 'that
it is necessary to maintain in the world the functions of silver as
well as those of gold,' thereby coming to a conclusion at variance
with that at which the previous conference had arrived.

A third conference is now sitting. Since the demonetisation of
silver in Germany, a change which was the legitimate consequence of
the verdict of 1868, a continued fall of prices has taken place, and
one of the subjects of dispute between those engaged in the battle of
the. standards is, whether that depreciation of prices and the existing
depression of trade are due to the usual ebb and flow of conunercial life
caused by bad harvests and the cupidity and folly of man, or whdher
they are due in a great measure to the currency revolation of 1873.

The English system of metallic currency is founded on Lord
Liverpool's letter to the King on coins, on the report of the Bollion
Committee of 1810, and on the various Acts relating to the resomp-
tion of what were called cash payments, or the right to receive
standard coin in exchange for banknotes.

Most people are aware that previous to 1819 our circulation was
a paper one, but few are aware that, previous to the suspension of
cash payments, it was bimetallic, and not measiired by a gold
standard. Of this fact it must be supposed that Sir Robert Peel was
not conscious when he made his famous speech on the resumption of
cash payments in 1819, the peroration of which contains the follow-
ing sentence : ' Every consideration of sound policy and every ob-
ligation of strict justice should induce us to restore the ancient and
permanent standard of value.'

Now, this is precisely what he did not do, but what the M-
metallists are now advising. What they wish for is a return to Hie

1881. WHAT IS A POUND? 939

^ ancient standard of the realm ' in common with the rest of the nations
of the earth.

The fall of prices which took place after the institution of the
modem, not ancient, gold standard of 1816, and that which has taken
place since the demonetisation of silver in Germany, have both been
the subject of a most voluminous literature.

The evils connected with the fall in prices are disputed by some
economists, so in alluding to them I prefer to quote the remarks of
those whose orthodoxy is undoubted. Mr. Gififen said in 1879 : —

I liaye come to thd conclusion that not only is there a decline of prices at the
present time from the high level eBtahlished a few years ago, but that this decline
is more Serious than the downward fluctuations of prices usually exhibited in dull
times, and that it may be partly of a permanent character, unless some great
change should occur in the condition of business at an early date. . . .

The reason is that a sudden pressure on the precious metals at a given period
tends to disturb the money markets of the countries using them. ....

Altogether, during the last six years, Germany has coined 64,000,000, the
accumulation of gold in the United States amounts to 30,000,000 sterling.

A £Eklling ofif in the supply of gold, as well as the increased de-
mand, is then described.

Now, if these things are admitted by the monometallists, the
question arises to what extent is the fall in prices an evil ? and what
is evil, and what is good, to a writer on political economy ?

In my humble opinion, violent, sudden, and frequent oscillations
in the price of commodities are an evil. A long continuance of the
inability to obtain the due return for their labours, be they what they
may, is an evil to ordinary men. It is an evil for those who have '
made fair and honest calculations, founded on a belief in a continu-
ance of steady returns of any kind, to find them permanently falsified
to their loss and detriment. It is bootless to tell us that we must
consider this as a chronic question, irrespective of the immediate
effect of such sudden changes. If an enormous depreciation in prices
of all things produced in England be not an evil, then I admit the
bimetallist would be very wrong to press his views on the public
notice.

The inflation of prices in 1872 was felt to be a most undoubted
evil to consumers ; to those who produced nothing it was an unmixed
evil. To these same persons the state of commercial depression is
rather a good than an evil. They receive as much now as they did*
before, and they pay less for what they consume. But to those who
are neither enthusiasts nor doctrinaires the sudden inflation of prices
^which went by the name of the coal famine was a great evil, though
perhaps not so great as the present depression, which, though' less
sudden, appears more lasting, and therefore may be more mischievous
in its results.

Consumers may be the better for this state of things, but it must

3b2

940 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. June

be allowed that if the interests of consumers who have produced
nothing are to be weighed against those of consumers who hue
produced 'Something — that is to say, the drones against the working
bees — these working bees always have been, and always most be, the
objects of first consideration.

Philosophers tell us to postpone all thoughts of the interests of
producers, in the hope that fifty years hence all things may he set
straight again and trade go on as before, even though ^all prices be
approximately doubled or halved, the interest of creditors and dehi(^
being affected to that extent while the change was in progress.'
Neither creditors nor debtors would bear the doubling their property
with modesty, or the halving it with equanimity, even though the
operation might vindicate the perfection of the doctrines of Locke
and of Lord Liverpool.

Having stated the extent to which I believe certain evils exi^
I proceed to say what bimetallism is and what it is not.

The bimetallism proposed is the free mintage of the two precious
metals at a given fixed ratio of 15^ to 1 in all countries agreeing to
a convention for the establishment of the principle. It naionllj
would entail the legal tender of either metal at the option of the
debtor for the payment of all debts.

Bimetallism is not an attempt to make sllvc^r or erold, or hoth to-
gether, the currency of any country, the probability Demg that under
such an arrangement no alteration would take place as to .the m
in which the ordinary transactions of life are carried on. Bankeis
would, as they do now, hold in their tills just such notes, ooio, or
change as their customers require, and would not, any more than
they do now, force their creditors or depositors to take away sacb
of five-franc pieces or crowns when they want cash with which to paj
their wages or bills. Legally, of course, this could be done ; but as
the habit now is to keep precisely that form of currency which de-
positors require, so would it be under a bimetallic system. Tbe
example of this is to be found in England in the last century. The
law was bimetallic, but the practice was a gold currency. In Ii^dia,
if a bimetallic law were promulgated to-morrow, in practice silver
would continue to be used.

Bimetallism existed in this country from 1717 to 1778, durk;:
which period an Englishman could pay his debts either in gold or i^
Bilyii^T to the amount of 25L in tale and any amount in weight. Bi-
metallism existed in France from the beginning of this century to
1873, during which period it is net denied that both gold and silref
have been the prevailing currency of that country, though not both it
the same time ; nor is it denied that during that period the relatire
prices of gold and silver were kept almost exactly at the legal rate J
151- to 1, not only in France, the bimetallic country, but in tk
markets of the world, or that England, having been bimetallic pe-

1881. WHAT IS A POUND? 941

yiously, returned to cash payments in 1819 in gold alone, thereby
causing an important loss to debtors and gain to creditors.

The following may be shortly stated as the fundamental proposi-
tions of bimetallists, which they assert have not been answered.

1. That the precious metals used for circulation are so large a
proportion of the existing mass that the amount in use for any other
purpose is too small to have any influence on their value.

2. That the amount used by the larger States so far exceeds
that of the rest of the world that any agreement made by them for
the regulation of the relative value must of necessity fix it to the
world at large.

3. That there is nothing impossible or impracticable in an
international agreement for the fixing of the rate.

4. That the ratio of 15^ to 1 having been maintained for
nearly the whole of the present century by the French bimetallic
arrangement, it would be the best ratio at which to fix it.

At the present moment it is of paramount importance that these
propositions should either be answered or proved to be beside the
question. Those who are occupied in discussing it are apt to treat it
as if it were only a chronic question, and not one requiring immediate
attention. If it had not been the subject of attention in 1868,iVi8
quite true that no one would have dreamed of stirring it in 1881.
Both parties to the controversy are agreed that it would have been
far letter if Germany had never followed up the conclusions of 1868.

To those who argue that this is a chronic question and not neces-
sary to be immediately considered, the following facts are not un-
worthy of attention.

It has been shown that by the admission of the advocates of mono-
metallism the evils of trade depression are to be traced to the dimi-
nution of the supplies of gold, and to the increased demand for it,
and it is now proposed to show that the latter cause is likely to be in-
creased if Germany throws her silver on the market, if Italy resumes
cash payments in gold, and if America completes her gigantic task of
resumption and recall of her bonds by resorting, as many of her
financiers wish to do, to a monometallic gold currency.

Mr. Jevons admits this when he says : —

It Btands to reason, of course, that if several great nations suddenly decide that
they will at aU cost have gold cuiTcncies to be coined in the next few years the
annual production cannot meet the demand, which must be mainly supplied/ if at
all, out of stock. The result would be a tendency to a fall in prices.

The question, then, is not whether a change in currency is a good
thing or a bad thing, because we are all agreed that it is a bad thing,
but whether the change of England to bimetallism or that of the
Latin Union and the United States to a monometallic gold standard
would be the greater evil.

Some of the adherents of the single standard assure us that it is

942 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. June

aa error tx) suppose that it is possible to make such a doiaxige as this
at all, and, granting that possibility, that we insure greater steadiness
in prices than at present. Again I prefer to quote Mr. Jevons rather
than to express my own opinion.

In his work on Money and ike Mechanism of Exchange he
says: —

I have no doubt whatever that M. Wolowsld is theoretically quite correct in
what he says ahout the compensatory action of the doable-standard fl^rstec
English writers- seem to have completely misunderstood the quefltion^ aaeerting' thi:
the system exposes us to the extreme fluctuations of both metak. . . . Nor is tin iht
whole error of English writers. A little reflection must show that MM. Wolofvui
and Courcelle Leneuil are quite correct in urging that a compenaatoiy or, as I
should prefer to call it, equilibratory action goes on under the French currency
law, and tends to maintain gold and silver more steady in value than they would
otherwise he.

Imagine two reservoirs of water, each subject to variatioiis of supply and de-
mand. In the absence of any connecting pipe the level of the water in each reser-
voir will be suhject to ita own fluctuations merely, but if we open a oonnecdfsi,
the water in hoth will assume a certain mean level, and the eflect of any excem^
supply or demand will be distributed over the whole area of both reeeirroiis.'

From this it will be seen that the more serious of the
metallists admit the superior steadiness of the bimetallic system.

One of the objections to bimetallism is that it would vitiate con-
tracts and alter prices. I have shown that in these respects we cannot
shut ourselves up in our insular security. There is no ' silver streak *
in oommerce ; prices have been disordered by Grennan demonetuatioD,
and the perfection of the English system no longer carries with it the
success which was supposed to attend it. Prince Bismarck, who ad-
ministers the affairs of Germany, and who adopts the tndkional
policy of Frederick the Great, to attain to glory by following erefj
road which leads to it, desired to confer upon his countary somedung
of the conmiercial supremacy of England. He believed, <»* rather his
economical advisers believed, that the metropolitan position of Eng-
land in commerce was due to her single gold standard, and not to her
vast capital, her ships and colonies, and her industrial reeooicea. He
acted on this opinion, and widespread ruin has been the conseqneDoe.

Giving full credit to Lord Liverpool for the perfection of his
treatise and for the completeness of his system, I am led to examine,
as he would have done, under what circumstances his so-called in&I-
lible dogma originated. His letter was written when England was
struggling for existence with the rest of the civilised world, and in
like manner, in the reign of King William the Third, when Locke
was writing, England was engaged in a war for the defence <^ the
liberties and independence of mankind, and neither of these vriters
had any idea of cosmopolitan agreement upon such mattera.

What Lord Liverpool said was, that in a given countiy it m^
better to have a single metal made into coins, which should he the

1881. WHAT IS A POUND'? 943

standard of value and national legal tender, but he cites as an ex>
ample of that necessity the practice of the commercial - states and
countries on the Continent making foreign bills of exchange, and
sometimes other bills, exceeding a certain amoimt, payable^in what is
usually called bank money.

Now this important example is to me the most telling argument
which can be used in &vour of bimetallism by agreement. That
bank money which is described by Lord Liverpool as being a neces-
sity in Venice, Genoa, Amsterdam, and Hamburg in past days,
seems to me to be more required in London than in any place in the
civilised globe. London is now to the world what all those places
put together were in other days, and if we strip the bimetallic
discussion of all extraneous matter, I should be content to see it
argued upon the question of whether bank money could not be made
of two metals, either of which would pay a bill of exchange.

If silver were money nowhere, either in the Latin Union, Ii^dia,
Russia, China, or America, it would certainly be better that all thipgs
should be reckoned by the London gold standard ; but as it is a fact
that several of these countries are wholly silver, that the United
States is trembling in the balance, and that Italy is desirous of
resuming cash payments in the best possible metal, we have to &ce,
as usual in this nether world, the facts as they stand, and not as we
wish them to be. And this is precisely what Lord Liverpool did*
He examined carefully and exhaustively every fact of past history,
and surveyed every circmnstance which surrounded him, and his
decisions are based upon those facts and upon his personal ex-
perience. Viewed in this light, his term of bank money as an
expression for convention currency is of paramount importance to
the discussion. He described this bank money as being used to pay
bills of exchange in certain limited places, and the necessity for it
arose from the debased state of the coins in those places, as well as
from the variety of them current for ordinary transactions in such
centres of commerce, where anything but the payment in a perfect
currency would produce great embarrassment in all commercial
dealings, and would render the exchange very much against such
state or country.

If then the bank money, that is, gold or silver or receipts for
them at a fixed relative value, is the same in New York, Frankfort,
Vienna, Rome, Paris, and London, and is of a greater certainty and
more steady in its value as regards the mass of commodities than
either gold or silver separately, then such bank money would
approach more nearly the ideal standard of Lord Liverpool than gold
bank money alone.

But Mr. Jevons himself has demonstrated that although the
variations of the two precious metals measured in commodities would
be perhaps more frequent, they would be less violent, and seeing that
we have the example of France befere us, where a single bimetallic

944 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. June

countxy not only obeyed the above law, but actually kept the ielati?e
prices between the precious metals themselves without any important
change, how can it be doubted that if the transactions of all Europe,
the Unite<}' States, and India were added to those of France, the fimc-
tions of bank money could safely be entrusted to both gold and silver ?

Measuring the value of Lord Liverpool's doctrine and his match-
less treatise, we must not forget who and what Lord Liverpool wa&
He was an official mainly occupied with the phenomena which he
watched from an official standpoint, and, though practically conversant
with almost every branch of official life, he had no real knowledge of
the cosmopolitan commercial machinery which it is our business now
to discuss.

Monometallists seem to think that the subject has received its
last touch from Lord LiverpooFs mind. Against his authority I
cannot help quoting that of Alexander Baring, first Lord Ashburton,
who lived a generation later than Lord Liverpool. He had perhaps
the largest and most complete experience of affairs of every kind,
except military affairs, of any man of his day. Before he was forty
he was the confidential intermediary between Napoleon and the
English G-ovemment, and shortly afterwards he was the rival of the
first Rothschild in financial operations. Subsequently he was the
Cabinet friend of Peel and Wellington, and he finished his career by
a treaty with America which still goes by his name.

I find that he gave evidence in 1828 as to the consequences
which had followed a blind adherence to Lord LiverpooFs doctrines^
in which he said —

he had always thought that it was possible and desirable to maintain in this conntiy
a silver currency as a legal tender founded on the proportion of silver to gold
established in the cuirency of France, or something very near it.

And he gives as a reason for that opinion —

that a sudden change from peace to war^ a bad harvest, or a panic year arising from
over-trading and other causes, imposes upon the Bank of England, which is the
heart of all our circulation, the necessity, for the purpose of protecting itself, to
stop the egress of specie, sometimes even to bring in laige quantities into the
country.

Now it is evident that the Bank wishing to reinforce its supply of specie can ^o
80 with infinitely increased facility with tlie power of either drawing* in goM w
silver than if it were confined to only one of the metals.

These opinions of Lord Ashburton were given without any wish to
stir in the matter, but merely as a contribution to the mass of
knowledge in the possession of the Grovemment on the subject.

It may now be well to notice some of the objections that have
been made by those who have frankly admitted the superior steadi>
ness of the proposed system over that now in existence. I will take
those which seem to me to be perhaps the most important.

One is that it is a direct attempt to force the stream backwards^

1881. WHAT IS A POUND? 945

that the tendency of all the wealthier and more civilised nations of
the world is towards a monometallic gold standard, the superiority of
which is so clearly established by the commercial supremacy of that
country which for a long time was the only one which had succeeded
in enforcing it ; that it is idle and impossible to attempt any ar-
rangement founded on another system ; that as the experiment
made to force silver dollars into use in the United States has failed
and might fail under a convention, it is possible that payments in
gold might be made a point of commercial honour.

A great many things are possible, but as it has never been found
that in commerce or in any other profession people pay more as a
point of honour than they are bound to do, and as all payments are
made, with the exception of unimportant balances, by paper currency,
book transfers, or cheques, it must be clear to every one that that
metal or those metals which are the legal security for the ultimate
payment of paper in various countries would be the foundation of all
legal as well as honourable payment.

I confess, then, that I am not alarmed at this objection. It is
founded, without doubt, upon a review of what has taken place in the
United States in the eagerness which her citizens have displayed to
seize the foremost place both as to national and commercial credit.

Another objection made by a very able writer is that, whatever
may be the evils connected with the depreciation of prices and
the depression of trade in England, the damage done to India by
the fall in the exchanges is wholly imaginary. He states that it
' is political economy of the most elementary description, that the low
rate of exchange ruling between England and India has the efifect of
checking exports to India, and of stimulating imports thence, and
that this is precisely what is wanted if India is to pay her obliga-
tions here in any shape, and that without such fall in the exchange
her financial straits would be much worse than they are.'

There is some truth in this assertion, but then it is utterly incom-
patible with the arguments generally used by the monometallists, that
to raise the value of silver and to depreciate that of gold to their old
ratio would inflict a loss upon gold-using countries and confer a great
benefit upon those using silver.

One writer has estimated the loss of England by such a transac-
tion as 8,000,0002. on her stock of gold, and the profit of France on
her stock of silver as 16,000,0002.

Nothing can show more clearly the divergence of opinions held
by monometallists as to the practical effect of the carrying out of
their doctrines to their legitimate conclusion than these two surmises,
made by equally competent thinkers and writers.

The next objection which I am bound to notice is the fear which
exists in the minds of monometallists as to what would happen in
time of war. We ^re told that a war-making nation would necessarily
break the convention and refuse free minting : that is to say, that

946 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. J^e

if Bussia or Chili go to wiu: and issue a forced paper currency, thb
act would be in breach of the bimetallic couventipiL.

Now, what really happens on such an event taking place ifi that a
belligerent nation does not increase the volume of its own currencj
by using pieces of paper instead of metal, but by exporting its own
metal it increases the volume of the currency in the world at la^
Its pieces of paper being discredited, it is obliged to use the precioos
metals for the payment of everything to be bo]aght abroad, and for itg
belligerent operations,.and it can and does enforce upon its subjecti
the duty of receiving and paying in pieces of paper at home.

The monometallist seems to imagine that at the same monat
when a belligerent is by a natural process exporting its predots
metals, some other country or body of merchants, either fiom moe
curiosity or from a desire to test the convention, would send predoos
metals back into that belligerent country and have them minted.
This proposition is so absurd that it need only be stated cleaiij to
secure its refutation.

The issue of p&per by a belligerent would have, under a UmetalEc
convention, precisely the same efifect which it has now. The explaoft-
tion of the operation would, however, lead me'into a too. lengthy papet
I content myself, then, with stating my belief that the temponuy effect .
of war and of forced paper currencies would be somewhat the saise as
a large discovery of the precious metals, and would be spread ov»a
larger surface and more evenly under an international himetallie
convention than with the present separate national standards.

Having answered some of the most recent objections started \»
bimetallism, I approach the consideration of certain remedies which
have been suggested in substitution of it. One proposal is to pemit
the raising of the limit of legal currency of silv^ coin to five pounds,
instead of two pounds as at present. Considering that any ooe may,
if he like it, pay forty shillings in discharge of a debt, and ikt,
as far as my experience goes, it is never done, it is highly imprabaUe
that any one would dream of carrying about sums of two, thiee, or
four pounds in his pocket in silver for the purpose of vindicating
the rights of that beautiful metal.

Another plan is to issue twenty or thirty millions of one-poimd
notes, of which twenty might be on securities. Thus we find ma
who are aghast at the notion of a currency which,^ though it does not
rest upon gold alone, is yet founded upon a metallic basis quite leedj
to increase the circulation by emitting a large amount of paper,
having no tangible metallic basis at all. If this proposition mea&>
anything, it means that in England, as is now the case in Ireland and
Scotland, every one would use one-jftund notes instead of sovereignii
Those who are in favour of this proposition would do weU to read
the chapter in Lord Liverpool on paper currency, in whidi h«
says: —

1881. WHAT IS A POUNDS 947

It is certain tliat the smaller notes of the Bank of England, and those issued l^
country bankers, have supplanted the gold coins^ usurped their functions, and
driven a great part of them out of circulation : ill some parts of Great Britain, and
especially in the southern parts of Ireland, small notes have been issued to supply
the place of nlver coins, of which there is certainly a great deficiency.

I will first observe, that if this Jpiaotice is suffered to continue, as at present,
without any limitation, there can be neither use nor advantage in converting bullion
of either of the precious metals into coins, except so far as it may serve for the
convenience of your Majesty *s subjects in their most private concerns ; that is, lio
greater quantity than many of the writers who have of late speculated on this sub-
ject will allow to continue in currency : the bullion of which these coins are made
had better be exported in its natural state, Jike any other unmanufactured commodil^
for the use of which the trade of the country has no occasion. The coins of your
Majesty, when carried into foreign countries, will only be valued as bullion ; and
the precious metals, whether exported in coins or in bullion, will equally serve the
purpose of a commercial capital ; and it is useless and absurd to impose upon the
public the expense of making coins, merely for the purpose of sending them out ef

the kingdom.

»

I have now endeavoured to show that international bimetalUsm
would be in accordance with the opinions and principles of sonije of
those who are looked up to by economical writers with profound and
deserved veneration ; that Sir Bobert Peel admitted bimetallism to
be in accordance with the principle of the metallic standard ; that
Lord Ashburton had good reason for thinking that it would have the
effect of facilitating the return to commercial calm after ordinary
stormy weather ; and that the views of Lord Liverpool as to the value
of bank money would be more nearly acted upon by creating an in-
teinational measure of value than by adhering to a separate national
standard.

The most singular part of the ^hole controversy is that both .this
country and the United States fieem to have abolished the silver
element in their standard accidentally.

It has already been shown that in 1819 the question of silver
hardly foimd a place in the resumption discussion in England, and
with regard to the United States Mr. Groesbeck, the delegate of that
country at the conference of 1878, stated that the demonetisation, of
silver in 1873 was passed ^ through inadvertence,' and on being asked
what he meant by it he said that it had occurred when the Govern-
ment was in a state of suspension, and when public attention was not
sufficiently directed to the subject, and further that a number of
members of Congress had confessed to him that they had not known
what they were domg.

The Conference at Paris has now been adjourned till the 30th of
June, in order that the delegates may receive fresh instructions.
The opinions pf most of the governments were already so well known
that, beyond bringing the questions at issue into a still more definite
and condensed shape than they were before, there is little fresh to
remark upon except the important propositions made on behalf of

948 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. J^e

the Indian Grovemment by Sir Louis Mallet, and by Baron de TMel-
mann on behalf of Germany.

The former is simply a promise not to demonetise silver. Tk
German proposition is founded on the admission that 87,000,0002. of
gold had been coined, that 54,000,000{« of silver had been demonetiaed,
and that the expenses of this operation had amounted to 2,200,0001.,
while 25,000,0002. of silver still remains in Germany.

To enable those countries where silver had not been demonetised
to carry out the reforms which the Conference had met to ooDader,
the German Empire is willing to abstain from all sales of silver for
a fixed period, and to confine itself afterwards to such a lindled
amount as would not encumber the general market.

Thalers might be forbidden to be sent to the mints of the bi-
metallic union, or those mints might refuse to take them, so as to make
the operation of selling them too costly.

Germany would also be willing to recall the gold pieces of fire
marks and the treasury notes of the same value and to re-issue five
and two mark pieces to the amount of about 8,OOO,O00Z., taking as a
base a ratio between the two metals as near as possible to 15| instead
of that which, according to the present law, equals a ratio of about 1
to 14.

Having heard the above propositions from Germany, the eoe^es
of the Conference were devoted on the one hand to the persuasicm of
the English delegates to make some concessions, and on the other to
induce France and the United States to proceed to a practical solution
in case England should be unwilling to accede to their wishes.

It would be obviously improper for me to offer any opinioss on
the projects submitted or to be submitted to our Government in
furtherance of the common object which all parties have in view-
namely, the steadying of the prices of the precious metals in relation
to commodities.

In this discussion my wish has been to keep clear from anything
like zeal and enthusiasm. I am absolutely without any prejodice
in the matter, and I have confined myself, in the evidence 1 have
quoted, with the exception of that of Lord Ashburton, to the fecb
honestly brought out by those from whom I differ, so that I may
say that the small bias which exists in my mind upon the subject
is almost entirely due to the study of my opponents^ opinions.

If, then, I am forced to answer the question ' What is a pound?'
I incline to answer it in the words of Sir Robert Peel — namely, that
we ought to return to ^ the ancient standard of the realm,' or, as the
Americans call it, ^ the dollar of our fathers," rather than to adhere
to the measure carried by that statesman, and founded upon Lord
Liverpool's letter.

H. E. Grenfeu.

1881. 949

^

./

/#

ERNEST RENAN.

The little town of St. Benan in Cornwall, and various springs and
waters in other Celtic regions, preserve for us the memory of an ano-
malous and a formidable saint. Bonan or Benan, indeed, seems pro-
perly to have been one of those autochthonous divinities, connected
with earth and the elements, who preceded almost everywhere the
advent of more exalted gods. He was received, however, after some
hesitation, into the Christian Pantheon, and became the eponymous
saint of a Celtic clan. This clan of Benan migrated from Cardigan-
shire to Ledano on the Trieux in Brittany, about the year 480, and
have ever since lived in honourable,poverty, engaged in tilling the
ground and fishing on the Breton coast ; one of the families who there
form an unexhausted repository of the pieties and loyalties of the past.
From this simple and virtuous stock, in this atmosphere of old-world
calm, Ernest Benan was bom sixty years ago. In a charming series
of autobiographical papers * he has sketched his own early years ; his
childhood surrounded by legends of the saints and of the sea ; his
schooling received from the pious priests of Treguier ; and then his
sudden transference, in 1836, as the most promising boy of his district,
to the Petit Seminaire Saint Nicolas du Chardonnet at Paris, where
for three years he was one of M. Dupanloup's most eager pupils.
Thence he was sent for four years to Issy, the country establishment
of the Seminaire Saint-Sulpice, to receive his final preparation for
the priesthood. For to that life he had always aspired, and had he
been left beneath the shadow of his Breton cathedral, he might have
become a learned and not an unorthodox priest. But now his educa-
tion had gone too far ; sojourn in Paris, even in a seminary, had
awakened his critical and scientific interests, and he began to feel
that such a career was impossible to him. He left it with hesitation
and much self-questioning, but without bitterness and without sub-
sequent regrets. Much pain naturally followed on this disruption of
life-long affections and ties. There were material hardships too, but
his sister's devoted care solaced and supported him till he had made
friends of his own, and reached an independent position. His attain-

* Kemt dc$ Devx JUondei, September, October, 1876 ; November, 1880.

950 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. June

menty in 1847, of the Volney Prize for a treatise on the Semitic
languages, afterwards developed into a general history, may be taken
as the first step in a long career of successful literary and scientific
labour. To one episode in that career — his professorship of Hebrew
at the College de France — we shall have to recur again ; but with
this exception we may confine our attention to his published works
alone ; always the most satisfactory course in the case of a yet living
man whose writings, and not his actions, have made him a public
character.

The subjects of these works axe so various, and they indicate so
far-reaching a study of the development of the human mind, that
some brief sketch of their scope is essential if we would understand
on how wide an induction the views of this great historical critic are
based. It is in the garden of Eden that M. Kenan makes his first
appearance on the field of history, and his localisation of that cradle
of the Semitic, — perhaps also of the Aryan race, — in the Beloortag,
near the plateau of Pamir, at the junction of the Beloortag with tibe
Himalayas, forms one of the most interesting discussions in his histoid
of the Semitic languages.^ It is at this point in the world^s career
that he is inclined to place the beginning of articulate speech; and
his treatise on the origin of language ' embodies a theory of great in-
genuity, but which, however, our increasing knowledge of piimitive
man is daily rendering less plausible. From the great delicacy and
complexity of some of the oldest idioms which have reached us, and
from the &ct that the history of language, almost everywhere that we
can trace it, is a history of simplification and dissolution, M. Benan
argues that language appeared at once in a highly-organised state, as
the suddenly projected image of the mental operations of f^Tniiips of
mankind far removed &om barbarisuL Comparative philology has
entered on a dififerent phase since this treatise appeared, and should
it ever be re-written its author will have to take into account many
further observations on the phenomena of savage speech, many new
conceptions as to the development of the mind of primitive man.
From these prehistoric questions we pass on to the great settled
civilisations, Gushite, Ghamite or Turanian, of the early world* On
Ghina,^ Nineveh,^ Sgypty^ M. Kenan has puUished admirable essays,
but essays which show power of generalisation rather than smy spe-
cialised acquirement. A brilliant paper on Berber Society,^ and some
pages on the Soudan,^ come under the same category. At Babylon
he enters the field as an independent investigator. His tractate ^ On
the Book of Nabathsean Agriculture ' (which survives for us in an
Arabic form) is held to have disposed of Professor Chwolson's thecxy

2 Hittoire OifUrale des Langue* SSmituiuet. * JDe VOrigine du Zoftgofg.

* L'Irutructiofi Publique en Chine, * Za Dieowoerte de J\lim«.

• VAneimne tgypte, \ La SoeUti Berlhre. • Le I>Ssert et Je JS^tuian.

1881. ERNEST RENAN. 951

that a literary civilisation existed at Babylon 3,000 years before our
era.

Coming now to the Semitic stem we find the traces of M. Benan's
labours on every member of this group of languages. His dnnr-
pcvrative Hietoryy — a standard, work,* — ^has been ahready referred to.
The Phoenicians are his especial province. His work on the mission
to Phoenicia,^ a Grovemment expedition of archsBological survey in
which he took part in 1860, is recognised as the highest authority on
that ancient people ; and the Phcsnician department of the great
collection of Semitic inscriptions ^^ has been entrusted to M. Renan,
and is at present the object of his labours. On the Arabs he has
written much which carries great weight. His exhaustive mono-
graph on Averroes ^^ is a complete guide to one of the most complex
byways of philosophical history. His essay on Mahomet,^^ and his
articles on Hariri, Mapoudi, Ibn-Batoutah,^^ compress into a short com-
pass the very spirit of Arab literature and life. It is, however, on the
history and literature of the Jews that he has expended most time
and thought. Without dwelling on minor performances, in the
Journal de la SociStS Asiatique and elsewhere, we may notice first
his translations of Job ^^ and of Solomon's Song,*^ as admittedly equal
to any German work for thoroughness and accuracy, while showing
in their style and in the introductions prefixed to them a literary
grace and insight which are M. Benan's own. The preface to the
Book of Job, in particular, may well lead us to look forward with a
peculiar interest to that History of the Jewish People by which it is
understood that M. Benan purposes to complete his account of the
origins from which Christianity sprang. In the meantime it is with
the birth of Christ that his systematic treatment of Jewish history
and literature begins. The Vie de JSsuSy which forms the first
volume of the Originea du Chrietianieme, owes both to its merits
and its defects a celebrity which has tended to cast into the background
other works of its author, which possess at least equal value. The
Vie de JSeus has been followed by Lea Apdtresj Saint PavX, VAnte-
christy lea EvangUea, L*Egliae Chritienne^ and the series is even now
being concluded by Marc-Aurile, which last volume leaves the
Christian Church an established power in the full light of day. The
completion of this long series — ^the Tnagny/n optbS of M. Benan's
career — renders some general review of his labours especially appro-
priate at the present time.

These labours, however, have not been confined to the Semitic
race. Turning to the Aryan stock, we find, to begin with, an essay on

* Miuion de PMnicie. '* Corpu% Ifuoriptiofinm Semiticarum,

* AverroU et VAverroUme, " In the Etudes tPERttoire Beli^use,

" In the MilcmgeM d^Eigtaire et de Voya/fes. " Le Livre de Job, &c.

^^ Ze CoMtique dee Cantiqites, kc.

952 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. j^

tihe Primitive Grrammar of India, and, for the Persian branch, an
article on the Schahnameh J® On the Grreco-Boman l)rancli of tk
family he has written much of interest, though not often in a separate
form. Essays on the Grreek grammarians, on the philology of the
ancients, on the Secret History of Procopius, indicate unlooked-for
stores of learning held in reserve. The volumes on the Oiigin of
Christianity deal with the history of the earlier Empire with a ?iTid-
ness and mastery unequalled by any other historian of that age. In
Marcus Aurelius, especially, he has found a hero on whom he can
dwell with all the eloquence of complete sympathy. Descending noi
to the Latin nations of modem times, we find an interesting essaj on
Mussulman Spain, and two on the revolutions of Italy, and Dom
Luigi Tosti,*^ the second of which will be recognised as a masterpiece
by all who are £Etmiliar with the great story of Italy's resonectioD.
French history may conduct us from the Latin to the Celtic hraodi
of the Aryan stock. And here too M. Renan fills a leading place.
He has been an important collaborator in the great Benedictine history
of French Literature, which, begun a century and a half ago, is ^
far from completion. In conjunction with M. Victor le Clerc he
supplied the history of the fourteenth century, taking the progress of
the fine arts as his especial department. His history of Gothic archi-
tecture is full of learning and originality, though sug^ting (were
this a fitting occasion) many topics of sesthetic controversy. Minor
essays on the cause of the decline of mediaeval art, on the sources of
the French tongue, on the farce of Patelin, &c., indicate how com-
pletely he has made this period his own. The numerous essap on
Frenchmen of more modem date, Thierry, de Sacy, Cousin, Lamen-
nais, Beranger, Yillemain, belong rather to literature or to phiteophj
than to history proper. To conclude, then, with the Celtic ^od^to
which M. Benan himself belongs. Nothing that he has written is
better than his essay on the poetiy of the Celtic races,*^ amoddof
that kind of composition, erudite without ostentation and attisctitre
in the highest degree without loss of dignity or of precision.

I will not extend the list further. It will be obvious that 31.
Senan has not spared his pains ; that his opinions are not founded od
a narrow historical induction, on a one-sided acquaintance with the
development of the mind of man.

We must now inquire what are the main lines of the teachifig
which he can support, if necessary, by so varied an appeal to the leg8«j=
of the past. This teaching resolves itself into three main branches
educational, political, and religious. I might add the heading of philo-
sophy, under which one at least of his most attractive works wooid
seem naturally to fall.*^ But his own view, as indicated in his essaj

'• In the MeUmget tTHiitoire ct d^ Voyagei. " In £$$aU de Morale et ii Ottij*
" In the same volume. " IHalogutM et Fragment* Philowphiqwi,

1881. ERNEST RENAN. 953

on the Future of Metaphysics, is less ambitious, and prefers to regard
philosophy rather as a comprehensive term for the mere aggregate of
the highest generalisations than as* forming a distinct and coherent
department of human study.

M. Kenan's educational convictions do not need any elaborate
historical support ; nor will they be openly disputed in this country.
They are, briefly, that the higher instruction should be untrammelled,
and that it should be thorough. That the most competent teachers
should be appointed, irrespective of any considerations of sect or party;
that they should then be allowed to exercise their functions without
interference from Church or State ; and, on the other hand, that it is
their imperative duty to follow truth with their best efforts whither-
soever she may lead ; these are the substantive themes of many essays
of M. Henan's, whether he is praising the Institut for its catholicity,
or the ColUge de France for its independence, or the Academy for its
permanent and stable power. These topics, indeed, may seem little
more than truisms, but truisms may acquire a certain dignity when
a man is called upon to suffer for their truth ; and it so happens that
31. Benan's own career contains an episode which well illustrates the
dangers to which honest and candid teaching may still sometimes be
exposed, and the spirit in which such dangers should be met.

In the year 1857 the death of M. Quatremdre left vacant the
chair of * the Hebrew, Chaldaic, and Syriac languages ' at the ColUge
de France. The College de Frances was founded by Francis I. ex-
pressly for the purpose of providing a lay and independent arena for
the exposition of studies which were treated by the Sorbonne under
closer restrictions, and in accordance with traditional rules. There
is at the CoUige de France no theological chair, nor has the institu-
tion ever been connected with any Church. The functions of its
Hebrew professor are in no way hortatory or polemical ; on the con-
trary, it is the place above all others in France where real philological
teaching, unbiassed by considerations external to philology, may
fkirly be looked for. The appointment virtually rests with the other
professors and with the members of the Academy of Inscriptions,
i¥hoee recommendation, addressed to the Minister of Public Instruc-
tion, is ratified as a matter of course.

Perhaps through some timidity as to the result of eith^ the
appointment or the non-appointment of M. Kenan to the vacant chair,
the Emperor did not fill it up till 1861. In that year the Minister
of Instruction inquired, according to custom, what candidate the ex-
isting professors proposed to nominate. These professors and the
Academy of Inscriptions nominated M. Kenan, and his appointment
^ras confirmed in January, 1862.

It is customary at the CoU^e de France, as in most other aca-
demical lecture-rooms, that a newly-elected professor, of however
and minute a character his subsequent teaching is to be, should
Vol. IX.— No. 62. 3 S

954 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Jane

take in his inaugural discourse a wider scope, and give some genenl
sketch of the manner in which he conceives his subject. To ha?e
evaded this custom in this special instance would have been to
abandon, on the threat of personal inconveniences to follow, the zigiit
and duty of those to whom the higher education of their countiy is
entrusted to speak with frankness, though of course witii moderation,
on all such topics as fall within the competence of their chair. H.
Benan did not thus shrink. He gave a masterly sketch of the
function of the -Semitic peoples in the history of civilisation, and
needing to touch on the greatest Figure whom those races have pro-
duced, he described him as ' un homme incomparable — ^si g^rand que,
bien qu'ici tout doive 6tre jug6 au point de vue de la science positive,
je ne voudrais pas contredire ceux qui, £rappes du caractdre exoep-
tionnel de son ceuvre, Tappellent Dieu.' ^ Jesus of Nazareth,' said
St. Peter, ^ a man approved of God among you ; ' and if M. Benaa
had been willing by a turn of phrase to use the Apostle's words fir
his own, it would have been hard for the orthodox to find an occasion
of censure. As it was, the demonstration which had been prepazed
against him was held in check by a large body of students who maio-
tained order during his lecture and accompanied him home. He had
announced that his future lectures were to be purely grammatical ;
but the imperial government, which was at that time much under the
influence of the clerical party, pronounced that a continuance of \3bt
course would be dangerous, and closed his lecture-room. M. Benan
lectured for two years in his own apartments. The government tfaen
announced to him his appointment to a post in the Lnperial labraiy,
a post which he could not fill so long as he held the professorship, at
the same time abolishing the emolument of his professorship by an
ingenious meanness of administrative detail. M. Benan refused to
accept the post in the Library, or to resign the professorship. Anoth^
professor was appointed, held the post for a few years, and died. On
his death in 1870, M. Benan was again selected by the CoU^ de
France and the Institut as the fitting candidate. And now the
Emperor consented, but M. Ollivier shuffled, and the war came. It
was the Government of National Defence which in Novemb^ , 1870,
signed the decree which re-established the dispossessed professor in
the chair which he now fills.

The Grand Inquisitor, like Pope and Pagan, has in our age ksl
most of his teeth. There can hardly be a surer way, and this episode
shows it, of conferring a benefit on a man of learning and virtue than
by persecuting him for his opinions' sake. He gets aU the advantage
of adversity without disablement, and obloquy without disgrace. He
has the opportunity (too rarely occiurring in the savaT^s quiet
career) of showing courage, sincerity, and dignity of character. And
meantime his influence is not impaired but increased ; his books be-
come more widely known, his personality is invested with greater in-

1881. SBNEST RENAK 955

teiest* The time, xnoreoTer, is pajst when anything can be done for
opinions accounted orthodox by raising those who hold them to posts
for which they are otherwise unfit* ^ese are not days when income
can give influence, or official precedence make proselytes-
Attempts of this kind to make conformity with received opinions
rather than intellectual competence the first requisite in a teacher
have, in fact, their origin in a mood of mind of which religious in-
tolerance is only one manifestation. They spring from a deep-rooted
infidelity as to the principles themselves on which all higher education
rests. Those principles are, that it is good to have a mind as active
and open as possible, and to know all the truth about the universe
which can be known. But though these principles are seldom openly
contested, many men, — ^most even of those whose business in life it is
to apply them, — hold them in reality in a quite different form. They
hold that it is good to have a mind well-trained for purposes of work
or enjoyment, and to know enough about the universe to enable us to
live well and happily. Now this second view, though it may in some
minds be almost identical with the first, may also drop in other minds
to a level at which mental training becomes little more than a re-
X>ertoiy of artifices, and knowledge than an accomplishment. The ten-
dency to keep the mind shut and to be contented without knowledge
is so strong that it is only by stedfastly regarding knowledge as an end
in itself that we can be safe against its gradual limitation, till even
the arts which affect our material well-being are starved by its decay.
The force with which Germany has grasped this principle has
been, it need hardly be said, one of the main elements in all her suc-
cesses. She has had more scientific curiosity, more interest in truth
for truth's own sake, than any other nation, and she has reaped her
reward in the serious and painstaking habit of mind, open to new in-
formation, and resolved to see things as they are, which has in its
turn led her to military and political greatness. It has been one of
M . Benan's life-long tasks to hold up to his countrymen the example
of Grermany, to insist on the need of laborious thoroughness in study,
on the nobility of the self-forgetfulness which makes a man neglect
his own fiune in the interest of his subject. Some of his most striking
essays, — those, for instance, on Creuzer, Eugdne Bumouf, J. V. le
Clerc, — ^are devoted to the setting forth of such a life with a kindred
enthutiasm. And both in France and England such exhortations are
greatly needed. Physical science, indeed, is in both countries ardently
.pursued. But the philological and historical sciences are apt in France
to form the mere material for rhetoric, in England the mere machinery
.of education.

One of the main directions in which the influenee of M. Benan's
lustorical-mindedness is felt is in his utterances on politics. There,
at any rate, the study of history has saved him from any tendency to
rashness or idealism. It has taught him, above all, the doctrine of

3s2

956 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. i^

compeDsations, — ^the application, as one may say, of the law of the
conservation of energy to states and nations, which assures us that
more than a certain sum of efficiency cannot be extracted from any
one race, and that, after gross errors have been avoided, what is gained
in force by the body politic in one direction is likely to be lost in
another. On the examples of this thesis M. Benan delights to dvell,
itom the Berbers, enjoying absolute social equality and govenimeDt
by conunune at the cost of all national or even tribal coherence, to
the Crerman Empire, its collective strength *based on a fiiaon of
bureaucracy and feudalism which, in M. Benan^s view, must neees-
sarily involve the painful self-abnegation of the mass of men.

One may say, indeed, that the greatness of a nation depends on her
containing a certain amount, but only a certain amount, of unsdM-
ness; on her keeping her spiritual life neither above nor below a
certain temperature. She can achieve no powerful collectiye exist-
ence if public virtue in her have grown so cold that she contains no
class ready to make serious sacrifices for the general good. And ^
the other hand, if the popular devotion to some impersonal idea be
raised to too glowing a pitch, the nation loses in concentiati(nwhat
she gains in diffusion ; her idea takes possession of the world, bntsbe
herself is spent in the effort which gave it birth. Greece pen^
exhausted with her creation of art and science ; Bome disappearing,
like leaven in the mass, in her own universal empire ; Judsa ex-
piating by political nullity and dispersion the spiritual int^tywhid
imposed her faiths, in one form or another, upon civilised man; sodi
are some of the examples with which M. Benan illustrates tliis
general view. And such, to some extent, is his conception of tbe
French Bevolution. In the spiritual exhaustion and unsettionent
which have followed on that crisis, France has felt the reaction bom
that fervour of conviction and proselytism with which she sent foitii
her * principles of '89 ' to make the circuit of the world. But tliose
principles were not wholly salutary nor wholly tme; they were the in-
sistance-— exaggerated by the necessary recoil from privilege and
inequality — on one side only of the political problem, on the individual
right to enjoyment without regard to those ties and subordinatiooi
which make the permanence and the unity of states.

The French Bevolution, indeed, was but the manifestation, in a
specially concentrated form, of a phase through which the awakening
consciousness of the masses must needs conduct every dviliied
nation in turn. Its characteristic assertions of the independence,
the essential equality of men, are apt to lead^ if rashly appM
not to any improved social structure, but to sheer individoalisia)
to the jealous spirit of democracy, which resents the existence
of lives fuller and richer than its own. This spread of an en-
lightened selfishness is in the moral world,' as M. Benan bas i^
marked, a fact of the same nature as the exhaustion of coal-fields is

1881. ERNEST RENAN. 957

the physical world. In each case the existing generation is living
upon, and not replacing, the economies of the past. A few words of
explanation will make this view clearer. As a general rule, we may
roughly say that the self-regarding impulses of brutes and men are
limited in the last resort by the need of a certain amount of social
instinct, if their family or their species is to be preserved at alL
And this instinct, if it may be said without paradox, is often more
moral than choice. For reasoning powers, though probably acquired
as the result of highly social habits, sometimes partially destroy the
very habits out of which they arose ,by suggesting that more imme-
diate pleasure can be obtained by reversing them. For instance,
male monkeys are not systematically cruel to female monkeys. In-
stinct teaches them to divide the work of the family in the way best
suited to the attainment of healthy offspring. But in Australian
savages the &mily instinct is interfered with by a reasoning process
which shows them that men are stronger than women, and can unite
to make them their slaves. They enslave and maltreat their women
with the result that they injure their progeny, and maintain so low
a level of vigour that a slight change in their surroxmdings puts an
end to the race. Something of the same kind is the contrast be-
tween the feudal peasant of the middle ages and the self-seeking
artisan of the present day. The mediaeval peasant owed his very
existence to the high development of certain social instincts, — ^fidelity,
self-abnegation, courage in defence of the common weaL And thus
in a Highland clan, for instance, the qualities which enable a society
to hold together existed almost in perfection. The sum of social
instincts with which each of its members was bom far exceeded any
such self-seeking impulses as might (for instance) have led him in
time of war to enrich himself by betraying his chief.

Instinctive virtue of this kind, however, can hardly be main-
tained except by pressure from without. As civilisation develops,
the need for it becomes less apparent. The self-abnegation which in
a rude society was plainly needed to prevent the tribe's extinction
now seems to serve only to maintain a pampered and useless court
or aristocracy. The proletariat gradually discover that they are the
stronger party, and their instinctive reverence for their hereditary
leaders dies away. If circumstances are favourable, they devote
themselves to pleasure and money-makilig ; if not, they rise, perhaps,
as in 1789, and Mecapitate the nation,' leaving themselves incapable
of self-government, and certain to be made the prey of military
force, the only power left standing among them.

Meantime it is not only the proletariat whose coherence in the
body politic is loosened by the dictates of an enlightened selfishness.
The feudal leader, quite as much as his retainer, subsisted by virtue
of his possession of certain social instincts, — courage in defending
his clan, and a rude identification of his interests and pleasures with

d58 THE mmSTEBNTH CENTURY. J^ne

theirg. Even amid the more refined scenee of the'Ben£fi9Baxiee,tlie
noble had Btill much in common ' with the ' peasant ' The young
^stocrat (to take M. Renan'a illustration), whose iKtatiage proces-
Aoti defiled through the streets of Gubbio or AbSsol^ha delightmg
the populace and himself by the same action. ' Hto'instinctvssio
share his pleasures thus with the commonalty, and hb enjoyed tbem
the more for so doing.

But as civilisation becomes more assured, there Is no Xotags
anything which the nobleman feels plainly called on to do for the
common people, who are protected by law without his aid. And
moreover, as numbers get vaster, and differences of wealiih m»
extreme, the rich man finds his pleasure more and more aloof bm
the poor. His instincts, both of leadership and of compamoosldpy
tend to decay ; he lives in some luxurious city, and convertB lui
territorial primacy into a matter of rente.

Individualism, in short, as opposed to active patriotism, beeomes
increasingly the temptation of rich and poor alike. Questions ss to
forms of government, rivahies of dynasties, are of small importanoe is
compared with the progress of this disintegratitig tendency, iMcb
forms a kind of dry-rot in all civilised states. The reserve hrm of
inherited and instinctive virtue (to return to the simile of the coal-
fields) are becoming exhausted, and while we live in a society irfakb
has been rendered possible by the half-consciotis self-devotions of the
past, we have not as yet discovered a source of energy which is^
maintain our modem states at the moral teilnperature requisite £x
organic life.

Beflections of this nature, long familiar to M. Benan, wezefiirced
upon all Frenchmen by the Franco-Grerman war. That contest, »
has been often observed, repeated the old histories of the inconions
of the barbarians into the declining Boman Empire in its oontost
between the niuve and self-devoted imityof the one force, and tbe
Self-seeking apathy which ruined the other. The main differeoce
was that tlie Germans, having applied their patient efibits to self-
education as well as to warfare, united in a certain sense the advaiH
tages of a civilised with the advantages of a barbarous people.

The war passed by, and M. Benan's was perhaps the wisest voice
Ivhich discussed the maladies of France. France seemed to hare
before her then the choice of two paths ; the one leading thioogb
national self-denial to national strength, the other through dmo-
cratic laxity to a ikiass of private well-being, likdy to place its offn
continuance above all other aims. In a collection of political esssp^
publi^ed in 1871, M. Benan advocates the sterner policy in a series
of weighty suggestions tod detailed for insertion here. Tet he {eds
the diflSculty of carrying out this r6gvm6' bf penitence and effort
without the 'help of a commanding central power. ' He r^rets (^
he had already foreseen) the impossibility of placing' at the head c4

* La Mtforme InUUectntlle et Morale de la Fnmce,

188L ERNEST RENAN. 959

France a strong dynasty, capable of direction to serious ends. All
her dynasties have fallen ; the e^^perience of 1830, 1848, 1870, has
shown that not one of them can survive a single blow ; nor can th<^
departed instinct of loyalty be revived by. partisans wielding the
weapons of superstition, corruption, insolent bravado. Already when
M. Benan wrote there seemed no choice but a Bepublic; and i^
striking passage (put, it is fair to say, into the mouth of an ima*
ginary speaker) will indicate with how mixed. a hope he regarded
that prospect : —

Des T^formeSy supposant que la France abjure ses pr^jug^'d^mocratiquesy sont
des rndfohned chim^ques. La France, eroyez'-le, restera un- pays de-gens aimabke,
dooz, honn^tes, droits, gais, superficids, pleins de bon cceur, de faijble intelligence
politique ) elle conaeryera son administration m^diocrjs, ses comit^s entet^, sef
corps routiniersi persuad^e quails sont les premiers du monde ; elle 8*enfoncera de
plus en plus dans cette voie de mat^rialisme, de rdpublicanisme vulgalre vers laquelle
tout le monde modeme, except($ la Prusde et la Russie, paralt se tounier.

Saoh a state, in M« Benan's view, can* never hope to jival
Prussia's strength in the field,--^a strength foimded on a social
organisation which can transform itself into a military organisation
when need is, without shock, unwillingness, or delay* The revenge
of fVance, he thinks, is likely to be rather of that insidious kind
which ' saps the enemy's robust self-denial by the spectacle of ease
and- luxury, and gradually draws down its. neighbours to a self-
indulgent impotence like its own.

The events of the ten years which have elapsed since this prophecy
was uttered may seem to have tended towards its fulfilment. On
the one hand, theve is visible in Germany an increased impatience of
the hardships of the Prussian rSgim6j a growing exodus of the lower
class to states which demand less of risk and self-sacrifice traai their
constituent members. And on the other hand, the prestige of Paris
as the city of pleasure has revived ; the wealth of France, and her
eagerness in the pursuit of wealth, are greater than ever before. Her
habits and institutions (as M. Benan predicted) are . undoubtedly
assimilating her not to Germany,^ but to the United States. The
example of the United States, — capable, under strong excitement, of
putting forth such military energy from the midst of a society
apparenUy so self-seeking and incoherent, — ^may well prevent us firom
asseiting that democratic France can never wage a successful war
with Germany. But such strong impulses will be rare, and for the most
part it would seem that we nuist look on France as swelling that
dominant current of the modem world which sets in the direction of
mere wealth ^and luxury, and threatens to dissolve the higher aims
and unity of nations in its enervating flow.

' Without war,' says Von Moltke, ^ the world would stagnate, and
lose itself in materialism/ The problem is. to prevent this ; to seoure
that as the worlds gradually changes from, a place of struggle into a

960 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. June

place of enjoyment, the change shall not sap the rootfl of Tutoeor
the structure of society. As the old social superiorities, defined by
birth, and resting ultimately on force and conquest, tend to disap-
pear, we must create new social superiorities, marked enough to com-
pel the respect of the multitude to their fitting leaders, and attained
by enough of effort to give to the character of those leaders the same
force and self-confidence which were previously won in war.

In pursuing this train of thought M. Renan surprises the Engliah
reader by his apparent want of acquaintance with the ^ioiihir specu-
lations of Comte. Yet these two greatest thinkers of modem FiaDoe
traverse to a considerable extent the same ground. Full; to note
their points of agreement and of difference would demand a separate
essay. They agree in the spirit, — ^historical, scientific, pontirein
the best sense of the term, — in which they approach these social
problems, and which guarantees them alike against revolutionaiy
vehemence and against the mere sentimentality of reaction. On the
other hand, Comte's confident dogmatism, and the prophetic and
hieratic pretensions of his later years, are little in accord with M.
Senan's gentle and sceptical irony, his strain of aristocratic bod-
chalance. In their respective views as to the nature of the goven-
ment of the future, these divergences are plainly marked. Comtes
senate of bankers is the conception of a complacently industrial, a
frankly optimistic age; while in M. Benan's &stidious attitude to-
wards material prosperity we discern a certain loss of moral prestige
which wealth has tended to undergo even while its practical predomi-
nance in the world has increased. Wealth is, of course, the form of
superiority which the multitude tend more and more exdusLveif to
respect as the traditional reverence for birth declines. And, in some
cases, wealth is a tolerable criterion of merit, as indicating diligence
. and ability in those by whom it is made, habits of refinement in those
by whom it is inherited. But, unfortunately, it becomes increasiogij
evident that the criterion is too rough ; there is too much iil^tten
wealth in the world to allow us to respect it without inquiiy; snd
the dishonest rich man is not merely not better, but is more aeti?ely
mischievous than his neighbours. America, in short, has become our
type of a country which has sought wealth with success ; and Ameiica
is not a country where * kings are philosophers and philosophers are
kings.' Virtue, again, is not easy to recognise on a public arena, and
its genuineness is not recommended to us when it loudly claims reo(^
nition. We are driven back upon intellectual superiority ; and here
the problem is to find that disinterested wisdom which is, in Cut, a
part of virtue, and not the mere plausibility of skilfiil ^[oism.
There is no certain method of attaining this, but the method which
looks most promising is to raise a considerable number of thecituens
to a pitch of knowledge and culture, which aught^ at least, to t^adi
them to look on human affairs as philosophers, and not as adveituroi

1881. ERNEST RENAN. 961

or as partisans. And this, at least, we can do ; by the thoroughness
of our higher education we can create a new aristocracy, an aristo*
cracy which will not press its services on the multitude, but will
constitute a weighty court of appeal from popular passion and
prejudice. Some such position, indeed, has long been held by men
of talent in France, owing to the inadequacy of the French nobleascj
which never performed important political functions, and has now
practically disappeared. And in other countries, too, the public is
learning to recognise a sort of senate in one group of learned
men, — in the professors, namely, of the physical sciences. Their
superior knowledge can be palpably proved and is readily believed
in ; their advice is urgently needed about many matters, and the
decisiveness of utterance natural to men much occupied with definite
and soluble problems is in itself convincing to those who wish for
guidance. But to the devotees of the historical sciences the world
has hitherto paid less attention. Philologists cannot hit upon lucra-
tive inventions; rival critics cannot demonstrate their historical
insight by a crucial experiment. The historian is not so convincing
as the physicist, nor does he labour so manifestly for the practical
good of mankind. Gomte, indeed, claimed to have done away with
both these distinctions. He claimed to have given to the science of
society a precision which enabled it to be at once applied as an art,
and he was eager to subordinate even the highest speculations to the
actual needs of men. M. Benan, on the other hand, while desiring
DO such direct dogmatic influence, is not disposed to shape the course
of his researches according to their immediate bearing on the common
weal. That ^ passion for truth in itself, without any mixture of pride
or vanity,' which Gomte condemns as ' intense egoism,' is the very
breath of M. Eenan's being ; and, as is wont to be the case when
truth rather than utility is aimed at, there are many matters on
which he is unwilling to preach any very definite doctrine. ^ La
v^rite est dans une nuance,' he says ; and again, ' Qui salt si la
finesse d'esprit ne consiste pas a s'abstenir de conclure ? ' It is the
part of men like this to protest against all extreme views, all patrio-
tic illusions, to sit dispersed amid the countries of civilised men, and
to try their hopes and creeds by an appeal to the laws of their own
being, and to their own forgotten past.

* Ex necessitate est,' the old saying runs, ^ ut sit aliquis philoso-
phus in specie humana.' In order that humanity may be fully con-
scious of itself there must, we instinctively feel, be somewhere on
earth a life disengaged from active or personal aims, and absorbed
in the mere exercise of intellectual curiosity. And such a life, which
sometimes seems to us to lie outside all human interests and emotions,
^ill sometimes also appean as the centre of them all. For the
universe in which man is placed so far transcends his power to grasp
it, the destinies amidst which his future lies are so immense and so

962 THE NtNETEENTH CENTURY. j^ie

obscure, — ^that the most diverse manners of bearing ooiselvesamoDg
them mil in turn occupy oor full sympathi^, satisfy our cbasging
ideal. Sometime^ a life of ad;ion se^ms alone worthy of a man; nt
feel that we exist in Tain unless we manage to leave some benefioest
trace of our existence oil the world mrbund us; xuiless we enridi it
with art, civilise it by ieducation, extend it by discovery, padff it
with law. Sometimes, again, ou)r relations to the Unseen ^tsk
possession 6f the soul ; thought id lost in love^ and emotion seems to
find its natural outlet in spiritual aspiration and prayer. Andthoe
is a mood, again, in which' all action, all emotion even, loob btik
as the sport of a «hild \ when it is enough to be a percipieni atom
swayed in the. sea of things ; when the one aim of the uniTeiae seems
to be consciousness of itself, and all iiiat is to exist only that it nay
at last be known.

There was a time when all these strains of feeling coidd coexi^
effectively in a single heart. Plato, 'the spectator of all tiine ud
of all existence,' was also the centre of the religionof the wmUL And
if this can rarely be so now, it is not necessarily or always titat
saints and philosophers in themselves are smaller men, but raUier&it
man's power of thought and emotion has not expanded in propoitiaD
to the vast increase of all that is to be felt and known. Thereby
been a specialisation of emotions as well-as of studies and industries;
it has become necessary that what is* gained in extension dioddm
some degree be lost in intensity, and that the wisdom that ooopie*
hends the world^ should cease to be compatible with the faith tint
overcomes iU

Let us not, then, expect all things from any man. Let m wel-
come tibe best representative of every mood of the mind. And if the
philosophic mood can scarcely find expression without some pi^
consciousness of the ignorance and error which envelop the rndtitodt
of men, let us remember that this<;ompa8dionating tone, thoagb it cai
hardly be made agreeable to the mass of men, may neverthde^ be
^ost salutary. For so much knowledge is now diffused amon; men
of ordinary education, that it is difficult to remain steadily eonscioai
how small a fraction this is of what it imports us to know. It is not
that we fail in admiration for eminent talents ; never peiiutpsbss
eminent talent been more admired. But we cannot habitnally lealia^
to ourselves our incapacity to form true opinions ; we decide where
doctors disagree ; we rush in where a Choethe has feared to tread. ^^
hav^ to make up our minds, we say, for we have to act fieit sfv
but we must be content to be reminded that in that case our deci-
sion proves nothing, except that we were anxious to decide.

In the domain of the physical sciences we are less tempted this
tashly to dogmatise, and th^ blunders to whidi our dognuitiiaa letfis
tis are 'more easily seen. It is whoi we deal witii questkros affediBg
the inner' being, the profbunder belieft -of men, that we are aUe cob-

1881, ERNEST REFAN. 963

ientedlyto forget that 'these beliefe repose ultimately od bistolncal
and philological considerations with which we hate made no effort to
acquaint ourselves. Yet as the conception of science broadens and
deepens, this apathy must pass away ; and already during recent
years there has been a marked awakening in the European mind, a
growing perception that the historical science will prove to be as essen-
tial to our guidance through life as the physical sciences have already
shown themselves to be. * L'union de la philologie et de la philoso-
phies' says M. Benah, ^de ^erudition et de la pensee, devrait etre le
caract^re du travail intellectuel de notre ^poque.' And again, ' CTest
aux sciences de l'humanit6 qu'on demandera d^sormais les elements
des pluEl hautes sp^ulations.'

But desiiiting from further summary of discussions whose fulness
and subtlety make them almost impossible to summarise, let us test,
by a few concrete instances, the value of this philosophical outlook
on contemporary history. M. Eenan has lived in close contact with
the French and Germati people, and with the * Bretons bretonnants '
who linger around his early home. Let us inquire if there be any-
thing in his way of regarding these nations, which indicates a mind
accustomed to an impartial weighing of the fates of men ; anything
beyond the conventional glorification of France, the conventional
bitterness against Germany ; anything which penetrates beneath
surface characteristics to a racers true genius and essential power.

And inasmuch as philosophy is an aroma which should penetrate
every leaflet of the tree, I will take my illustration of M. Senan's
insight into the character of his own countrymen from a short article
on the Theology of Beranger,'* called forth by the appearance of a
family edition of the works of the poet of ^ Lisette and Chambertin,* at
first sight so ill-adapted for domestic perusal.

'De toutes les parties du systlme po^tique de B^ranger/ says M. Kenan, after
some admirable commenta on the moral eide of Ids poems, ' celle qui me surpiit le
plus, quand je le lus pour la premidre fois, ce fut sa th^logie. Je connaisaaiB peu
alors Tesprit fran^ais ; je ne savais pas les singuli^res altematiyes de l^gtot^ et de
pesanteur, de timidity ^troite et de foUe t^meriU, qui sent un des traits de son
caraetdre. Toutes mes id^es furent troubles quand je vis que ce joyeux com-ive,
que je m^^tais figure m^cr^nt au premier chef, parlait de Dieu en langage fort
azT^t^, et engageait sa maStresso k

Lever les yeux vers ce monde invisible
Ou pour toujours nous nous r^unissons.

' La naivete toute bourgeoiee de cette th^ologie d'un genre nouveau, cette fa^on
de s^incliner le verre en main devant le Bieu que je chercbais avec tremblement,
furent pour moi un trait de lumi^re. A Tindignation que me causa Fid^ d'une
oonfratermtd religieuse avec ceux qui adoreht de la sorte se mSla le sentiment de ce
qu'il y a de fatalement lixuit^ dans les mani^zes de voir et de sentir de la France.
L'incurable m^diocrit^ religieuse de cegrand pays, orthodozej usque dans sa guet^,
me fut r^v^^, et le Dieu des bona gens m'apparut comma Tdtemel dieu gauloia
Centre lequd httterait en tain toute tentative de philosophie et de religion ^pur6e.'

*i In QuetHmti Contemporaine$.

964 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. June

And from this text he argues how closely akin are licence and
bigotry ; how it is the same spirit of contented shallowness which in
each direction is impatient of modest self-restraint ; which leads to
easy vulgarity in the domain of morals, empty rhetoric in the domain
of literature, ready and confident dogmatism in the domain of idi-
gion. To protest against each of these in turn has been the miseioa
of M, Eenan, and surely by no other example or exhortation oonld be
have deserved better of France.

It is needless to say that he can also praise his country with grace
and enthusiasm, though never with that monstrous adulation to wfaidi
she is sometimes too willing to lend her ear. More remarkable is the
generous candour with which, in the very shock and crisis of the war,
when nothing was heard on either side but outrage and execration,
the French philosopher did justice to the impulse which urged Ger-
many to assert her unity and her place among great nations*^

S'il y a une nationality qui ait un droit Evident d*exister en toute son ind£-
pendance, c'est assur^ment la nationality allemande. L*Allemaj![ne a le meOktir
Utre national^ je veux dire un r61e historique de premiere importance, une ame, aae
litt^rature^ des hommes de g^nie, une conception particoli^re des choses diTines et
humaines. L'Allemagne a fait la plus importante revolution des temps modemo,
la B^forme ; en outre, depuia un si^le, TAllemagne a produit un des pliu besax
d^yeloppements intellectuels qu'il j ait jamais eu, un d^veloppement qui a, si joee
le dire, ajoutd un degr€ de plus k Tesprit humain en profondeur et en ^teDdue^ si
bien que ceux qui n'ont pas psuidcip^ ^ cette culture nouvelle sont & ceux qui Font
traverse comme celui qui ne connait que les math^matiques ^l^mentaires est &
celui qui connait le calcul diff^rentiel.

He proceeds to draw a picture of what united Grermany might be-
come, the Prussian leaven disappearing when it has leavened the
whole lump, and leaving a nation open, perhaps, beyond any other,
to the things of the spirit ; more capable, perhaps, than any other of
founding a State organisation on a scientific and rational basis. And
he concludes with a dignified appeal to the moral intervention of
Europe in the present extremity, a dignified protest against the dis-
memberment and degradation of France.

On reading the letter to M. Strauss, firom which this passage is
taken, a letter full of large general views and scrupulous candour,
one is tempted to think that it must be an easy thing for a professed
philosopher to retain his philosophy evenj^as the ancients said, ' when
earth is mixed with fire.' A curious incident to which this corre-
spondence gave rise may be quoted, however, as showing how diflS^colt
it is in these moments of excitement, even for the controversiali^
whose arguments are supported by thirty legions, to maintain a tone
on which he can afterwards look back with satis&ction. The corre-
spondence in question was begun by M. Strauss, who addressed a letter
to M. Kenan in the Augsburg Gazette of the 18th of August, 1870.

*» Zettre A Jf. Stravsi,

1881. ERNEST RENAN. 965

M. Renan caused a translation of this letter to appear in the Journal
des DSbata of the 15th of September, — no easy matter, as may be sup-
posed, in that fury of rage agaiust Germany ; and, on the 1 6th of
September appeared M. Kenan's own reply. The Augsburg Gazette
refused to insert this reply of M. Benan's ; and perhaps no one cir-
cumstance was more significant than this of the temper of Germany
at the time. There was not a word (it is needless to say) in M.
Benan's letter which could give just offence ; but, nevertheless, the
organ of the victorious nation, having itself challenged a discussion,
refused to insert the courteous reply of the vanquished party. It
might have been thought that under these circumstances M. Strauss
would withdraw with displeasure from his connection with a news-
paper which took this view of what was fair and honourable. But it
was not so. On the contrary, he wrote a reply to M. Benan's letter,
and inserted it in the Augsburg Gazette on the 2nd of October, 1870,
at a time when the Prussian blockade of Paris of course prevented
M. Benan from receiving the newspaper. By this ingenious method
of controversy, M. Strauss was able to appear to challenge a champion
of the opposite side to an impartial discussion, then to permit the
suppression of that champion's reply ; then to write to him again in
a still more violent tone (with misrepresentations on which I need
not dwell), and to choose a moment for this rejoinder when his
antagonist could not possibly receive or reply to it. All this he did
as one philosopher communing with another philosopher, and with
the consciousness thai he belonged to an entirely virtuous nation,
which was justly chastising a nation sunk in ignorance and corruption.

I have said that M. Strauss permitted the suppression in the
Augsburg Gazette of M. Benan's letter. He chose, however, to give
it to the world in another fashion. He translated it into German
and published it, along with his own two letters, for the benefit of a
German military infirmary.

The Nouvelle lettre a if. Strauss (September 1871) in which M.
Benan gently recounts these transactions, and indicates some parti-
culars in which the great German people may seem still to fall short
of perfection, affords perhaps as good an instance as this century has
to show of the sarcastic power of the French language in hands that
can evoke its subtleties and manoeuvre its trenchant blade. The
paragraph which I quote below appears as if its only anxiety were to
make excuses for M. Strauss. But it would be hard to find any pas-
sage since Pope's ^ Atticus ' which it would be more disagreeable to
have addressed to one.

II est vrai que vous m'ayez fait eosuite un honueur auquel je suiB sensible comme
je le dob. Vous avez traduit vous-meme ma rdponse, et Tavez r^unie dans une
brochure k vos deux lettres. Vous avez voulu que cette brochure se vendit au
profit d'un ^tablissement d^invalides allemands. Dicu me garde de vous fiEiire une
chicane au point de vue de la propri^t^ litt^raire I L*oeuvre a laquelle rous m*avez

966 THE mNETEENTH CENTURY. Jum

fait contribiier est d*ai]lear8 une oauyre dliumanit^^ et si ms ch6ti?eprosi|a
procurer quelques cigares & ceux qui out pilld ma petite maiaon de Sevres, je Tom
remercie de m'ayoir fourni Toccasion de conformer ma conduite a quelqueft^uns des
prtoptes de J^sus que je crois les plus autheuliques. Mais remarquez enooie ca
nuances l^&res. Certainement^ si tous m'aviez permis de publier un 6crit de toqs,
jamais, au grand jamais, je n'aurais eu Tidte d'en faire une Mition an profit deaotn
H6tel des Inyalides. Le but vous entndne ; la passion tous empeche de v(bi c«
mi^TTeries de gens blas^ que nous appelons le gout et le tact.'

From the temper of mind which calls forth M. Kenan's stioDgegt
expressions of repulsion, — ^this temper of domineering dogmatism
and blind conceit, — let us pass to the opposite extreme. Let oi
turn to the race from which M. Kenan sprang, the race whose da-
lacter is traceable in all that he has written* The nationality of
the romantic, emotional, impractical Celt, surviving in his west^
isles and promontories frovn an age of less hurrying effort, less stenlj
moulded men, has fallen into the background of the modem wodi
Yet every now and then we are reminded — by some perdsteat
loyalty, as in la Vendee, to a dethroned ideal ; by some desperate
incompatibiUty, as in Ireland, with the mechanism of modem pro-
gress— that there exists by our side a nation whose origin, language,
memories, differ so profoundly from oiu: own. M. Kenan is a Celt
who has become conscious of his Celtic nature ; a man in whom
French savoir-vivrey German science, are perpetually oonteDdiif
with alien and ineradicable habits of mind, — ^ comme cet animal
fabuleux de Ctesias, qui se mangeait les pattes sans s'en dooter.'
This mixed nature, the result, as oue may say, of a modem intelli-
gence working on a temperament that belongs to a &r-off past^and
making of him 'un romantique protestant centre le romant.isme,mi
utopiste prechant en politique le terre-Jl-terre, un idealiste se don-
nant inutilement beaucoup de peine pour parsdtre bouzgeois,* has
rendered M. Kenan's works unintelligible and displeasing to many
readers. ^ Twy-natured is no nature ' is the substance of manj a
comment on the great historian's union of effusive sympaUijaod
destructive criticism. But there is a SQ^se in which a man maj be
double-minded without being hypocritical, and the warp and woof of
his natiure, shot with different colours, may produce for this very
reason a more delicate and changing charm. In his essay on Celtic
poetry M. Kenan has abandoned himself to his first prediIectio]&
Nowhere is he more unreservedly himself than when he is depicting
that gentle romance, that half humorous sentiment, that devout asd
pensive peace, which breathe alike in Breton, in Welsh, in Irifih
legend, and which, after so many a journeying into the imaginaiy or
the invisible world, find their truest earthly ideal in the monasteries
of lona or Lindisfame. Here it is that we discern his spiritoal kin;
among these saints and dreamers whose £Emcy is often too unre-
strained, their emotion too femininely sensitive, for oommeice widi

1881. ERNEST RESAN. 967

the world, these populations who to the faults inherent in weakness
ha^e too often added the faults that are begotten of oppression, but
yet haye never wholly sunk to commonness, nor desisted from an im^
worldly hope. There hare been races which have bad a firmer grasp of
this life. There have been races wliich have risen on mqre steady and
soaring wing when they would frame their conceptions of another.
But there has been no race, perhaps, which has borne witness more
unceasingly, by itti weakness as by its strength, to that strange
instinct in man's inner being which makes him feel himself as but a
pilgrim here ; which rejects as unsatisfying all of satisfaction that
earth can bring, and demands an unknown consolation from an ob-
scurely encompassing Power.

'O flares de la tribu obscure/ exclaims M. HeHaOy 'au foyer de laquelle je puisai
la foi & rinvisible^ humble clan de laboureurs et de marins, & qui je dois d'avoir
conserve la vigueur de mon ame en un pays ^teint, en im si^cle sans esp^rance, vous
errates sans doute sur ces mers enchant^es ou notre p^re Brandan cherchait la terre
de promission ; tous parcourutes avec saint Patrice les cercles de ce monde que nos
yeux ne savent plus voir. . • . Inutiles en ce monde, qui ne comprend que ce qui
le dompte ou le sert, fuyons ensemble vers I'Eden splendide des joies de TtLme, celui-
la meme que nos saints yirent dans leurs songes. Gonsolons-nous par nos chim^res,
par notre noblesse, par notre d^dain. Qui salt si nos reves, a nous, ne sont pas plus
vrals que la r6alit<S P Dieu m*est t^moin, vieux p^res, que ma seule joie, c^est que
parfois je songe que je suis TOtre conscience, et que par moi vous arrivez a la vie et
a la Yoix/

Enough, perhaps, has now been said to give a general conception
of the sum of powers and tendencies which M. Renan brings to bear
on the complex problems of man's life and destiny. We have seen
that his mind is stored with wide-reaching knowledge, thoroughly
penetrated with the scientific spirit. We have seen at the same
time that he is by instinct conservative ; that his sympathies are
aristocratic rather than democratic ; but aristocratic in the highest
sense, as desiring to fortify or replace the aristocracy of birth by an
aristocracy of unselfish wisdom, which may serve as a barrier against
the ignoble deference too often paid to wealth alone. We have seen,
again, that this philosophy which he preaches is in himself no merely
nominal or idle thing; but has enabled him not only to bear
himself with dignified firmness under the mild persecution of
modem days, but also — a harder achievement — to recognise, though a
Frenchman, the faults of France, and in the crisis of an embittered
struggle to admit with generous largeness the essential worth and
mission of the foe. Lastly, we have traced his sympathies to their
deeper roots, and have discerned in his vein of emotion — ever between
a smile and a sigh — the latest self-expression of a gentle old-world
race, the dreamy prophesyings of the Merlin of a later day.

We shaU thus, it may be hoped, be better qualified to estimate (in
a succeeding paper) M. Kenan's views on those great matters to which

968 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. June

his thoughts have mainly turned ; man's position, namely, in the
spiritual universe, as he has himself in di£ferent ages regarded it, or
as to us it may now appear ; and especially the story, full of ever
new interest and wonder, which tells how one conception of moii
Creator and his destiny has overcome the rest, and one life of pofect
beauty has become the model of the civilised world.

Fbbdebig W. H. M1S1&

1881. 969

PAWNBROKING ABROAD AND AT HOME.

The accumulative power of money^ is very great, and against it,
when heaped up in large masses, society has always had to protect
itself. Solon and Moses both forbade usury. The former allowed
moderate rates of interest ; the latter guarded against the evils of
debt by including the debtor who had become his creditor's servant
within the scope of the year of jubilee. The absolute ownership of
the soil of the earth by individuals is a comparatively recent inven-
tion, so that in the olden days a man could rarely pledge more than
his person or his property. The disorders of usmy gave birth both in
Greece and Italy to various remedies, of which the chief was the es-
tablishment of banks or money-changers' tables, at which loans could
be had on the deposit of articles of value. The rpaire^Tat of Athens
were regarded as holding an honourable office, and at Alexandria rich
men were urged, and even constrained, to deal in money and to lend
to the public. As at Athens, the banker was regarded with esteem,
and his office was hereditary. The Soman law condemned a robber
to restore double the value of the article he had stolen ; the usurer
fourfold.* Cicero speaks' of the long-established Hables' of the
money-dealers ; and to these, centuries before, the Consul Lsevinus is
related by Livy to have iu*ged the senators themselves to carry their
plate and jewels in order to raise funds for the expenses of the Punic
war. There were also in Some the Menace TraUianoruTOj kept by
tbe natives of Tralles in Lydia, who especially a£fected this branch of
business, and the Menace Olearioe^ at which oil, one of the prime
necessaries of life, was lent to the poor of the city.

In the early middle ages there seems to have been no effort made to
check the ravages of the Jews and usurers. In the twelfth century
the Lombards became known as money-dealers. Mention is made by
Matthew Paris of a Papal Nuncio named Etienne, who was sent on a
journey to collect money for the Pope from bishops, abbots, and priors
under threat of excommunication if not paid on a certain day. The
envoy had the happy idea of carrying with him a Lombard, or banker,
who was prepared to buy or lend money on the security of the sacred
vessels or other plate. The Lombards soon had their establishments

> 1)9 re Eustiod, * Pro Cacind.

Vol. DL— No. 52. 3 T

970 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Jone

in every part of Europe ; and it is not difficult to see what the con-
nection in their husiness was between their trade in money and thdi
trade in gold and silver plate and jewels. The forerunners of the
great banking firms of the City were pawnbrokers before they were
anything else.

In tiie middle of the fifteenth century the evils of usury had
reached their greatest height. Most States had become deeply in-
debted to the Jews and to the Lombards. Vast numbers of familifis
were ruined. The bankers received as miich as sixty or eighty per
cent, interest for their money, and in the end they almost always
were able to appropriate the articles of value which had been depcBited
with them. Commerce was being ruined, and the wealth of indhi-
duals and of States was passing into the hands of the bankers.

It was as a remedy against some of these evils that the Monte^li-
pieta ' was established. Nor let it be supposed that the remedy w«s
inefiectual either in its scope or its extension. To Perugia belozigs
the honour of the invention of one of the most important of beneficent
institutions of modem times. Towards the middle of the fifteenth
century certain charitable persons of that town, touched by the mis-
fortunes caused by Jews and usurers, collected a sum of money, which
was lent out without interest, on the security of valuable articles de-
posited with them. The persons intended to be benefited were first
the poor generally, but next the smaller merchants, dealers, trades-
men, and manufacturers. The boon conferred on the poorer Perugiam
was very great indeed. Whilst the distressed artisan was able to tide
over a passing misfortune, without incurring the contamination c^ a
charity which was then as now often contemptuously bestowed, the
trader found in the Monte-di-pieta a secret and assured resource in &
moment of commercial depression or any trade crisis. The inhabi-
tants of Perugia were greatly relieved by the new institution, whidi
attracted much attention throughout Italy. It is not too much to
say that the tender-hearted and most wise charitableness of the
cultured Perugians — ^the fellow-citizens of Pietro Pemgino and
Saphael — led them to effect a soci£d revolution such as has addom
been surpassed for good.

The Church at once recognised the Monte-di-piet& as a work of
charity, and the institution soon spread. Sixtos IV. estabiisbed
a Monte-di-pieta at Savona, his native city, by boll, in 147S.
Private persons of wealth supplied the funds. Iimooent VUL set
one up in 1488 at Cesena, or confirmed one which the inhabitant*
had already established. In the same year Mantua became possessed
of a similar establishment. By this time the advantage of hie i
tution was fully recognised, but considerable difficulty was

* I have been unable to find any satisfactory deriTaUoa of this naatt ; Ooitt^
writing at Padoa in 1753, makes the same lemark. It means simply a ' mMmtaitt ^
^ietyt'—ia zathez oharity. The French speak otpUU en»er9 tn mdlkmitemr.

1881. PAWNBROKim ABROAD AND AT HOME. 971

enced in providing the necessary funds. The inhabitants of Padtia

having consulted several skilfnl doctors-of-kw and theologianls of

that &mous university as to the propriety of charging 5 per cent.

interest, and the answers being fiEivoarable, established a Monte-di-

piet4 in 1491. The result of this step was that the Jews' banks,

which charged 20 per cent., were shortly afterwards closed. The

Florentine doctors, being applied to by their fellow-citizens, assured

them that there was < no sin, even venial,' in charging low interest to

support a Monte-di->piet&, and thus in 1492 Florence also became the

seat of one of these most useful institutions. The usurers, however,

were not likely to submit tamely to the losses to which they were now

subjected. Their chief source of profit, the oppression of the poor,

was slipping away from them. They attacked the new establishments

with acrimony, accusing their founders of being usurers under the

guise of Christian philanthropists. The controversy, however, was

brought to a close in 1539, when the Lateran Goimcil solemnly

approved the principle of the Monte-di-pieta.

Italy was the first home of the new institution, but liVance
did not long lag behind in the good work. Avignon had a Mont--
de-piet^ in 1577 ; Arras in 1624. Paris, however, which is now
distinguished by the excellence of its Mont-de-pi6t£, was with---
out one until 1777. Dr. Cerreti of Padua, travelling in France in.
the middle of that century, expresses his astonishment that so
necessary and important an institution should be wanting in the
foremost city of the world, and the centre of civilisation. A similar
feeling is experienced by those foreigners who, being acquainted with
the beneficent action of the Monts-de-pi4t£ abroad, find, to their
astonishment, that the poor of England, as weU as the struggling small
traders, are still subject to the same exactions as those from which^
the corresponding classes in France, in Italy, in Holland, in Belgium>
in Germany and other countries have long since been set free.

Before proceeding to explain in detail the present position and
method of working of the best Monts-de-piete in Europe, it is con-
venient that we should examine the general scope of these institu-
tions ; and that we should consider how far England, in which country
alone the State takes upon itself the full charge of the indigent
poor, is thereby excused for her apparent neglect in disregarding an
institution which has received for centuries the universal and practi-
cal approval of foreign philanthropists.

As has been already hinted, the scope of the Mont-de-pi^t6, or pub-
lic pawnbroker's shop, is twofold ; it supplies the temporary person&l
needs of the wage-earning classes, and also the temporary commercial
embarrassments of small tradesmen and manufacturers. With regard
to the first of these two classes, the advantage of possessing an un£Ekiling
resource close at hand in case of need is obvious. Those persons who
bave given much thought to the question of charitable relief, and the

3t2

972 THE NINETSENTH CENTURY. June

best method of maintaining the independence of the poor, properij
attach the highest importance to all efforts which enable them to
dispense with external assistance. We have it stated on the highest
autiiority that it is the giver who is blessed rather than the recipieat
A &vourite subject for the modem poet's idyl is the Lady Bonntifiil
of the village, scattering blessings on all sides from her well-stocked
purse and basket* The wise economist of the future will torn Us
back on such relics of feudal dependence, and will see true pathos,
the groundwork of all poetry, in the visit of the working-man to the
pawnshop, where he will find on easy terms the means by which he
may ward off the passing effects of unavoidable calamity. It is im-
possible for the earner of wages to foresee and guard against all the
ills of life. His friendly club will shelter him against sickn^s and
perhaps old age. But in our present crowded state of populatico,
waves of commercial depression must occasionally cause suffering I7
depriving even the best workmen of occupation for a time. The
little hoard may soon become exhausted. Work and prosperity maj
be in sight, yet there may be a few days or weeks to be tided orer
before they actually come. This is the critical moment of the work-
ing-man's life. If only he can manage to pass through it without
the contamination of public or the degradation of private charity,
it will be indeed well for him. When a man has once tasted
the sweets of either form of extraneous help, he has taken the fii^
step downwards. It cannot, of course, be contended that such hdp
can always be avoided. It is only asserted, in words as strong as
human language can devise, that the philanthropist who has ofeed
the working-man a means of self-escape from his dilemma without
degrading him has deserved well of God and man.

It is not the object of the present article to decry a highly re-
spectable body of men, the pawnbrokers of this country ; moA of
them have the reputation of carrying on their business in an intelli-
gent and honourable manner. But the interest which the law allows
them to take from their customers is very high. There is, in &cU
scarcely any limit to it, inasmuch as a special contract maybe entered
into between the pawnbroker and his customer by whidi the latte-
may undertake to pay, on loans of more than 21., any rate of interest
that may be agreed upon. This special rate varies from 15 to 30 per
cent, or even more. But if no such contract is made, the legal rate
charged — ^in addition to Id. for the ticket-r-is 25 per cent, per annam,
or \d. per month for every two shillings lent when the loan is 2L or
under, and 20 per cent, from 21. to lOZ. There can be no doubt what-
ever that, even on these onerous terms, the English pawnbarokefs an
a great advantage to many of their customers. Yet the price paid
for the accommodation is so high that the working classes liave a
natural repugnance to making use of this resource. The pawn-^op
is no Mont-de*pi6t£. It is associated with the idea of <£»sipatkiL|

1881. PAWNBROKIKG ABROAD AND AT HOME. 973

drunkenness, unthrifl, and recklessness. The man who is forced to pay
such a rate of interest as that exacted must be indeed in a bad way.

This observation holds good still more strongly in the case of the
small manufacturer who finds himself temporarily embarrassed. Dr.
Ceireti pointed out that one of the main objects of the Mont-de->
pi^t^ in Perugia was the relief of the dealer whose credit would be
irretrieyably shaken if he could not take up a bill of exchange for a
small sum about to come due. By the deposit of some of his raw or
half-worked-up material he was enabled to tide over the difficulty, ob-
taining the assistance he required with the utmost secresy and without
delay. But what would be thought of the English tradesman or petty
manufacturer who had recourse to the pawnbroker under similar cir-
cumstances ? The remedy would probably be .worse than the disease.
No business established on a firm foundation could stand a drain of
20 or 25 per cent, for temporary accommodation. The Mont-de-pi4t6
distinctly lays itself out for this class of business, and it is by no means
certain that the good it effects by relieving the pressing "necessities of
the petty trader is not at least equal to that bestowed upon the suffer*
ing working class. We shall consider the danger of fraud in connec-
tion with this branch of the subject in its proper place. All that is
insisted upon now is that in the Mont-de-pi6t^ those who carry on
petty industries of various kinds find the same resource which dealers
of a higher grade find in their bankers. Why should not a manufisu;-
tiirer on a small scale be able to rely on an advance on his goods in
the same way as the City magnate raises money temporarily on dock-
warrants or bills of lading ?

That the principle of the Mont-de-pi^t^ should never have' been
recognised in England is quite of a piece with our public and t^om-
pulsory system of relief of the poor. In theory, at least, there is no
room for any such institution. Qur Poor Law is framed with a view
to help every indigent person throughout the length and breadth of
the land. A man who is poor enough to pawn his shirt or his saw is
poor enough to claim his right as a Briton to be assisted out of the
public funds. But, although this is a very symmetrical theory, it very
frequently breaks down in practice. It is fortunate for England that
it does so. It would be a very serious matter for us if the people of
this country were to make use of the Poor Law to the full extent of
their imdoubted right. As it is, they have made astonishing efforts to
keep themselves free from its trammels. Their Friendly Societies,
i^hich are already achieving a great success^ their use of Savings
Sanks of various kinds, and even the extent to which the existing costly
pavmbroking system is used by the working classes, are proofe of the
earnest desire which they feel to be independent and live self-con-
±suned lives. They stand, however, at a great disadvantage in com-
parison with the inhabitants of many other countries. The State^
txsLYing discharged its theoretical duty to the indigent by imposing

974 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. June

upon itself the heavy burden of a Poor Law, does not 6ee any nxna
for further e£forts in the same direction. Society at large thinks that
it has done enough when it has paid its poor rates. This iswhy lAst
may be called the scientific relief of the poor is a subject which until
recently has been little studied in England. Whilst conferences are
frequently held at Milan,^ at Paris, and at many other places on the best
methods of relief, the subject has hitherto been put aside as settled once
for all in England. Now, however, a change is taking place in puUie
opinion, and the operations of the Poor Law are being greatly cur-
tailed, chiefly 'through the restriction of out-door relief. Hencefiir-
ward there will be more room for charity among us. Bat it must
not be a {iaJsely-called charity of doles and gifts. We must help the
poor to help themselves. I do not know that any better way of hdp-
ing them could be found than the establishment of a Mont-de-piete
:in each of our great centres of industry.

Within the last few months I have personally visited the Moots-

'de-pi^t^ of Paris, of Brussels, and of Amsterdam, and I have colleded

a mass of information on the subject, of which I now propoee to gi^e

as extended a Ti»u/m6 as the limits of the space at my disponl will

permit.

We take first the case of the Monts^e-pi6t^ of France : for al-
though the institution is not originally of French growth, it has greatly
flourished on French soil, is progresave, and may best be studied ia
that country. The Mont-de*pi^t4 of Paris is little more than a
hundred years old, but it affords, both from the extent of its opeia-
tions and its admirable organisation, an excellent example of lAat
^ charitable institution should be.

I have before me a copy of an unpublished report made hj the
O-eneral Inspection of the > charitable establishments of France in
1876 to the Minister of the Interior. According to the French ^s-
tem exhaustive reports on this and similar subjects are made about
every twenty-five years. In this document, then, we have the maans
of comparing fully the present condition of the Monts-de-piete with
that of a quarter of a century ago.

There are in France forty-five of these estaUishments. If this
number appears small, it must be remembered that they are cmly aUe
to be established in the great centres of population, where a soffident
{»nount of business can be done to justify the heavy expenses whidi
have to be borne. In Paris there are several branch establidunente
{Bwccwraalea), and in some instances provincial Monts-de-pi^te hare
similar dependencies in neighbouring towns. Four new Monts-de-
pi^t6 have been opened since 1851, one being situated in AlgieR.
Three have been closed in the same period, that of Dieppe having
been suppressed in consequence of the bad conduct of an offidal,

« September 1880.

1881, PAWNBROKINQ ABROAD AND AT HOME. 976

whose defalcataons plunged the institution into hopeless difficulties.
In 1851 the capital employed — independent of buildings and plant —
in the Mont&<le-pi4t^ de France was nearly 30,000,000 francs, of
which Paris engrossed 19,000,000. In 1876 these amounts had in-
creased respectively to 68,000,000 and 43,500,000 francs. It will be
observed that the operations of the Mont-de-piet6 of Paris are larger
than those of all the other establishments in France put together.

In 1851 the total amount of loans in France rose to 37,500,000
francs on 2,600,000 articles deposited. In 1875, 77,000,000 francs
were lent to nearly 4,000,000 borrowers.

The Mont-de-pi4te is not a State institution, but it enjoys State
protection, and, being a monopoly, is free from private competition^
The law recognises it as a * work of public utility,' and as such bestows
upon it certain privileges, the most tangible one being exemption
from stamp-duty, and from registration of documents coimected with
the administration. A Mont-de-pi^t^ is permitted to be established
only by decree of the President of the Bepublic, and with the consent
of the local municipal council.y/The council of admioistration is
presided over by the mayor of the commime ; in Paris by the Pr^fet
of the Seine. The members are appointed in Paris by the Minister
of the Interior, in the department^ by the Prefet, and must be taken
one-third from the municipal council, one-third from the adminis-
trators of charitable associations, and one-third from other citizens
resident in the commune. /xhe councils are renewed by thirds each
year,

The question of raising sufficient funds for carrying on the vast
operations of the Monts-de-pi6t^ of France is surrounded with diffi-
culty. The property possessed by them is seldom large, and frequently
iK>thing, so that even rent has often to be paid for the buildings
which they occupy. The seventy-seven millions of francs (say over
three millions sterling) required for the service in 1876 was made up
£x>m various sources. The produce of property stood for between
six and seven millions of francs. Sather more than three miUions of
francs were lent by various charitable establishments, by communes
or by savings banks. The next item is composed of four and a quarter
millions, which are deposited as a guarantee of fidelity by the officials
of the Monts-de-pi6t^. Kather more than one-third of a million is
produced by articles which have been sold but not claimed. Lastly,
nearly fifty-two millions, or about two-thirds of the whole, are raised
by loan on the security of the Monts-de-piete themselves, which
deservedly enjoy a high credit, as may be judged &om the &cility
'mth which this large amount appears to be obtained. On. the other
band, the interest paid for the use of the capital required is a
beavy charge upon the institutions, and greatly restricts their utility.
The rate of interest paid by the Mont-de-piSte of Paris is 3'89
francs, in the rest of France 3-22 francs. The security is not that

976 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. June

of the institutions alone, but also that of the hospices mth^chjOtey
are connected. The lenders are generally small capitalists.

We come now to the rate of interest charged to the perBonswho
pledge their property. It is very high in all save a few establish-
ments which possess a large amount of capital. In Paris the rate »
9 per cent, in addition to one-half per cent, allowed ia this and
some other Monts-de-pi^t6, to the official known as the commimn
priseuTy or estimator of the articles pledged, whose functions will be
presently described. The highest rate of interest is that of the nevlj
created Mont-de-pi6t6 of Dunkerque ; it is no less than 14 per csA.
On the other hand, a large number of the establishments work at&
rate as low as 6, 5, and even 4 per cent. In five places — Grenoble^
Nice, Montpellier, Toulouse, and in the fondation Masurd at lille—
no interest is charged. But the operations of these Monts-de-piete
are limited. At Nice, for instance, only about 100 advances aie
made, amounting in all to 6,000 francs. The operations of theMont-
de-pi6t6 of Paris are, as we have seen, very large indeed, and the
organisation of the institution with its various depenaencies in the
suburbs is exceedingly perfect, yet it is compelled to charge theii^
rate of 9^ per cent, in order to guarantee itself against loss, hepite
of this rate, however, four-fifths of the operations are carried on at a
loss ; it is only the remaining fifth, comprising large advances, ibich
not only covers the losses, but produces an actual profit on the whole.

It is perfectly well tmderstood by the authorities that the pin*
cipal point to be aimed at is a reduction of the high rate of int^esl
now charged in too many establishments. If we look \)ack to the
state of affairs in 1851, we shall see that no small progress has been
made in this respect during the last quarter of a century. We find,
for instance, that the rate at Lim^ville has been reduced firom 18 to 9
per cent.; at Besan^n from 12 to 9^; at Nancy from 12 to 6;
at Boulogne from 12 to 9 ; at Limoges from 12 to 8 per cent Xor
does this by any means exhaust the list of reductions. There is ncit
a single instance of increase in the rate of interest charged.

There are various ways in which it is expected that this rate maf
be reduced ; of these, idlusion need only be made to two. It is
thought that the increasing estimation in which the Mcmfrde^pi^te is
held, as a work of true charity and as one of the best methods of
assisting the poor without degrading them, will attract the attenti<m
of the wealthy. The gifts and legacies which they have hitherto re-
ceived have been small, but they have greatly increased of late years.
The value of the property increased from 2,699,807 firancs in 1851,
to 6,234,673 francs in 1876. But it is rather to another refonn
which Is in full progress that the position of the Monts^de-pi^e wiS
owe a material idteration. It is clear that it is of vital impoitanoe
that these institutions which depend so largely upon borrowed capitil
should not be carried on at a loss, and in order to attain this end

188L PAWKBROKim ABROAD AND AT HOME. 977

they are obliged to set before themselves the object of making a
profit. Originally the connection between the charitable institu-
tions {AesiBtance Pvhlique) and the Monts-de-pi^t^ was so close
that the latter were r^;arded as merely branches of the former, and
were compelled to hand over to them all the profits which they made.
Already in 1851, however, twenty-seven Monts-de-pi6t^ had become
independent of the other charitable establishments. Tn 1876 this
nmnber had increased to thirty-seven. One now divides its profits
with the charities, and three — against nine in 1851 — ^pay to the
charitable institutions the whole of the gain they make. Inasmuch,
however, as Paris is one of these three, about 60 -per cent, of all the
profits made by the Monts-de-pi^t£ in France is absorbed by the
Assistance Publique. A great controversy has been carried on for
some years past on this subject. The Assistance is the owner of the
buildings in which the central Mont-de-pi^t6 operates, and is re-
sponsible for an enormous amount of borrowed capital. The managers
of the former decline to allow that there is any sufficient reason given
why they should surrender so considerable a source of income as that
from which they expected to receive about half a million of francs in
1879-80. They contend that more good can be done to the poor with
this sum, as expended by them, than by reducing the rate of interest.
On the other hand, the directors of the Mont-de-pi6t^ of Paris argue
that 5 per cent, being the legal rate of interest in France,^ it is im-
proper that a public institution should be compelled to charge more,
and that there is no truer charity than that which enables necessitous
persons to help themselves. It is probable, then, that sooner or later the
controversy will be decided in Paris as in the rest of France, and that
the Mont-de-pi^t^ of the capital will find itself in possession of such
an income as will enable it in time to amass capital enough to allow
a reduction of the rate of interest to be made. Eventually it will
become necessary to find some means of again disposing of these
profits, for after a certain amount of capital has been realised, there
will be no further need of the annual income. It may then properly
recur to the charitable institutions.

A question of great importance which has been much discussed by
the administrators of public charity in France, is that which relates to
the lowest rate of interest that ought to be exacted firom the clients
of the Monts-de-pi£t6. It is recognised that there is a real danger
in making the rate too low. If it were either entirely or nearly
gratuitous, considerable dangers would arise, for the advantages offered
would be seized by many who were not really in a necessitous con-
dition. On the other hand, the loan could be granted only after an
inquiry which, however discreetly it might be conducted, would
probably wound just susceptibilities, and destroy sjbaken credit, and,
in any case, would cause to the borrower a delay which would be

* Six per cent, in commeroe.

978 TEE NINETEENTH CENTURY. June

incompatible with the neoescdty of his position. This delioacy of
feeling towards the poor underlies all the dealings of French phihn-
thropists with charitable questions, and is very greatly to be oooi-
mended. Englishmen who are familiar only with the operatioiDs of
the Paupers' Board-room and the Hospital Waiting-room have litUe
idea of the extent to which it is practised in France. No better
illustration of it could be found than in the unwillingness of the
managers of the Monts-de-pi^te to pemdt an application for a loia
to depend upon inquiries* The much-used English formula *a
deserving case ' is comparatively unknown in France. The diflkolij
of successful inquiry is regarded as almost insurmountable. But if it
is resolved on the one hand that all shall pay a fidr rate of interest
on the other it is suggested by the Inspection GSnerale that a bad
should be accumulated by every Mont-de-piSt^ and placed at tlie
disposal of the Bureaux de Bienfaisanoe. These associations are
necessarily intimately acquainted with all the real pov^ty wbiek
exists within the sphere of their operations^ and they would have ne
difficulty in disposing of this fund, either by a partial or by a
complete release of the articles pawned by the very poor. There is
indeed no more favourite or reasonable way of assisting the indigent
than this. La Mar&;hale Macmahon devoted every year considaUe
sums, during the Septennat, to this purpose, and with great advssitage
to the poor. The admirable o]^;anisation and co-operation of tbe
Monts-de-pi^t^ and of the Bureaux de Bienfaisanoe render the proper
application of such funds an easy matter* There seems to be lifiOe
doubt that, whilst gratuitous operations should be avoided by the
Mont-de-pi£t^ the establishment of such a fimd as that snggeitod
would enable relief to be aflfoxded to the most indigent banooeEi.
There must necessarily be a large number of clients of eveiy such
establishment who, whilst it would be unfair to eX'cdnde tiMm
altogether from the power of borrowing on the seeurity of aitieleB of
value, have no claim whatever to any giatoitous advantage. Stand-
ing in the office of a Mont<ie-pi6t6 I watdied the borrowers as thi^
came up one by one to effect a loan. At last there came a fistfihioiiably
dressed young woman who laid a pile of valuable jewellery beCase the
official. In reply to my question, '£st-ce une dame ou use
demoiselle?' my mentor replied, '£lle est quelque chose entie ki
deux — ^nous avons une forte clientele dans ce genre-lJU' Neither to
this class nor to the student of the Quartier Latin, who^ acoordii^ ts
the Figa/ro (September 9, 1880), is just now greatly addicted to
gambling, in which vice he is much aided by the Mouts-de-piel^y
ought a loan efwr gage to be anything but a dry matter of busuiesa.
It ought not, however, to be supposed that even the vicioos and ^bt
dissipated deserve no protection or consideration. These dedft
benefit from the Mont-de-pi6t6, and are thus often enabled to esatp^
from positions in which they would inevitably sink lower in tiiesodsl

1881. PAWNBBOKim ABBOAD AND AT HOME. 979

scale were it not for the cbance-'H>ften the last one— of escape from
complete degradation which is offered to them.

It is often assumed that Mont8-de-Pi^t6 and pawnbrokers' shops
a£ford great facilities for the disposal of stolen articles of value.
The statistics given in the report of the Inspection Cr^n^rale show that
this is not the case. The police of France and all the agents of
justice have the fullest possible power of communication with and
surveillance over the MontB-de-pi^t^.x^henever an object of value
is stolen, inquiries are always instantly made by the owner, so that it
maybe assumed that full and reliable statistics are available/ It
appears that in 1872 the officers of justice seized in Paris 1,125
articles which had been pledged for 16,641 francs; there were,
however, only 235 different transactions. In addition, the Adminis*
tration of the Monts-de-pi^t^ spontaneously denounced either to the
police or to the judicial authorities the suspicious character of trans-
actions in which 143 articles had been pledged for 2,307 francs, as
well as 188 articles on which 3,733 francs had been promised but not
actually handed over. Lastly, by means of a service of organised
surveillance which exists not only in Paris but in all the great towns,
the Monts-de-pi6t^ of Paris had restored 35 stolen watches, which had
been pledged for 990 francs, to their legitimate owners. The toM
of 1,491 articles stolen, or suspected of having been stolen, and^
jdedged for 23,671 francs, can hardly be considered excessive in view
of the fact that in the same year 1,430,974 articles were pledged for
28,019,549 francs. The proportion of suck transactions is about 1
in 1000, and 85 centimes in 1000 francs, ^nie general result of the
strict surveillance exercised both within and without the Monts-de-
pi6t6 tends to show that thieves prefer, as a rule, to sell the spoil to
receivers of stolen goods, although these would undoubtedly pay
them far less .than they would get on loan if they dared to approach
the public establishment. /It is greaUy to be feared that the English
system is far more favourable to dishonestjy It is, however, im-
possible to procure any statistics. upon the subject. The only infor-
mation at hand is that which is derived from the police reports in
the daily papers, from which it would seem certain that our thieves
are by no means so much afraid of the pawnbroker as the corre*
sponding class in France is of the Mont-de-pi^t^.

The Mont-de-pi£t£ being a charitable institution, it is regarded

as a matter of primary importance that as large a sum as possible

should be lent to the borrower who is compelled to have recourse to

this method of relieving his necessities. What could be more

painful than the discovery at the last moment that the sacrifice he

lias determined to make is insufficient to give him the means of

escsape from his embarrassment ? The method of fixing the value is.

a simple one, but has a tendency to act against the borrower. A

^x^rnrniaaaire^priaeurj who acts as valuer, is attached to every esta-

980 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Jute

Uishment, and is an intermediate agent who stands between the m&r
tution and the public. He fixes the amount to be advanced, and if
the article is not redeemed, it is sold, and he has to make up any logs
which may have accrued. On the other hand, any excess realised goes
to the owner, who may claim it within three years. This exoeeis
technically known as the boni, and if not claimed reverts to the esU-
blishment at the end of the period named.

As may easily be supposed, the inconvenience of having only m
establishment in so great a city as Paris has not escaped attention*
On its original foundation the attempt was made to confine all
business to the central bureau, but in a very short time it i?as luxai
that commUswnnaires were transacting a considerable portion of the
business. An attempt was made to put these down, but witihoat
success. They are now legally recognised, and are attached to
succwrsaleB^ or branch establishments, in various parts of Paris.
The conuniBsioners are limited to twelve in number, and they now
transact only one-fourth of the business of the Mont-de-pid;& The;
are placed under very strict regulations, having to furnish guarantees
of fidelity and being severely pimished in case of any in&actioD of
the rules. The commission they receive is 2 per cent, of the loin
advanced by the central establishment, and 1 per c^at. for leoewals
or releases (cUgagemente). Originally these oonunissionen lere
merely agents acting on the one hand for the Mont-de-piete, asd
on the other for the borrower, but the impatienoe of pressing
necessity obliged them to make immediate advances. These are
generally higher than the sums lent by the central office, and the
excess is known as the difffrence^ on which the oommifflioiier chaiges
6 per cent, interest. I was told that a short time before my visii to
the head office some diamonds on which the apprSci4xUwr hi
offered 6,000 firancs had been pledged at a succursdis for 8,000
financs. The commissioner who undertook the transacti(m vonld
thus receive 2 per cent, francs of commission on 6,000 fianos, and 6
per cent, interest on the remainder. He would ran tiie lidc, bow-
ever, of making a loss if the jewels were eventually sold at less than
the amount advanced. Every article pledged in Paris is ignored
for safe custody to the central MontHle-pi6t6 in the neighbooxhood
of the Halles Centrales. It is hardly necessary to say that in the
vast warehouses where the property of the poor is stored up, the
utmost order prevails, and the greatest precautions are taken againit
fire, any loss by which would fall upon the Assistance Pabliqne. h
spite of the elaborate system of euccursalesy and the assidaons care
which is taken to treat the borrower with consideration and the least
possible delay, it is a fexA, that a not inconsid^aUe illicit leodia;
trade is carried on by many of the inferior tradeamen, piincipaOj
jewellers, in Paris. For some inscrutable reason the veiy poor ofteo
have an idea that an institution of a public character is likdjto

1881. PAWNBROKim ABROAD AND AT HOME. 981

take Bome unknown advantage of them. The more ignorant of them
prefer to place themselves in the hands of men who will certainly rob
them. It is probable, however, that the evil complained of, though
real, is not very extensive.

The rate at which loans are estimated at the central bureau is fixed
at four-fifths of the intrinsic value of plate and gold, or articles com-
posed of the precious metals. No allowance is professedly made for
the artist's skill, which is r^;arded as too indefinite to be valued by
the ordinary appriciaieur. Other objects are accepted at two-thirds
of their value. As an instance of the extraordinary skill to which
the apprSciateura attain, I may mention that the official valuers in
the chief offices of Paris, Brussels, and Amsterdam put exactly the
same value upon a watch which I exhibited to them as a test. Of
course it may be said that I was not a genuine borrower, as I was in
each][case obviously a mere dilettante inquirer; but it must be
allowed that the agreement as to value was something more than a
coincidence.

A discussion of considerable interest has recently taken place in
Paris on the question of the possibility of including securities {titrea)
among the objects on which the Mont-de-pi^t^ might be authorised
to make advances. One of the great aims of French statesmen has
been, for many years past, to draw the people into the charmed circle
of owners of property. In order to effect this, the public funds and
a large proportion of the stock of public companies is divided {frac-
tionnS) to such an extent that even the smallest capitalists in remote
villages are enabled to aspire at something higher than, as in England,
a deposit in a savings bank, open once a week on market day for a
couple of hours, and yielding 2^ per cent, interest. Thus large
numbers of Frenchmen are possessors of the securities which represent
small incomes. Such persons may occasionally need a temporary
advance. Could not the Mont-de-pi£te lend it to the owner of a
•satisfactory security of this class? It has been decided that the
special knowledge required for such an addition to the business of the
Mont-de-pi^t^ could not easily be acquired by the existing staff of
officials, and that it must therefore be declined. '

The discussion, however, suggests a number of questions to an
Englishman. Why should the British small capitalist have been so
long kept out of the means of making small investments ? Why
should it be impossible for an Englishman or Scotchman to obtain
an advance on movable property of value without discredit ? A noble-
man in distress may pawn his acres without losing caste, but a farmer,
a tradesman, or a labourer must not think of raising five or ten pounds
OB the plate or jewellery he possesses. Closely connected with this sub-
ject is that of loan offices, which, in such seasons as those which have
recently occurred, have been driving a roaring trade. Throughout the
length and breadth of the land, both town and countiy are placarded

982 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. j^

inth invitationitf to the neceBsitoud to borrow money ^ wiifaoat publicity
or security.' Oolumns of the London and provincial daily papes aie
daily filled with adyertisements of the same mendadcms chaneta.
The absence of publicity means the publication of a bill of sale in tlie
London Oazette. The security required being generally that of stock,
growing crops, ftimiture and farm implements, or stoi^ in tnde in
tlie case of shopkeepers, is such as should enable a borrower to ob-
tain a loan at 5 per cent. ; the rate of interest chaxged taries bm
20 or 30 per cent, to 80 or 100. The Joint Stock banks ha^ dou
much to diminish the evil, but they work maialy on the principle ef
giving an advance to a fiedrly substmitial maH in need of temponzy
assistance, covered by one or two sureties of a solid charaoter. The
conditions are thus harder to fulfil than those of a loan office, &r fet
fanners or tradesmen care to expose their a£Fairs to the gazeof otheo-
indeed it would be generally imprudent to do so. The evil of thelom
offices is a gigantic one, and is greatly aggravated in the connti; l^tk
right of landlords to priority in the case of rent. The abdlitim of
the power of distraint in t^eir case would not, indeed, lemove the
difficulty felt by farmers who desire to raise a loan, but it hqkM alle-
viate it. What is needed is the establishnient of banks of the people,
of Monts-de-pi£te, and of similar institutions where the fixst caie
should be taken of the interests of the borrower, rather than of thoee
who desire to make a large profit out of the necessities d otten.
French economists are at the present moment disctissiog tiie posa-
biUty of founding a bank, or branch of the Mont-de-^t^ wbid
should o£fer fieu;ilities to agriculturists for raising money on eqoitsUe
terms on the security of their growing crops.

The statutes of the Monts-de-pi6t^ generally fiix the sunimnmof
the sum that can be advanced. It varies from 1 to 3 francs. At
Nantes it is fixed at the high rate of 6 francs. Only 15 Moota4e
pi^t^ are bound to linut the maximum of a loan. At Paris the limit
is 10,000 francs ; the rule of 500 francs in the auocwrsales is fi^
quently l»t)ken. At lille the amount is 6,000 francs; atToaloQ9e,
Brest, and Boubaiz, 3,000, at Dunkerque and Nimes 500, at Angeis
only 40 francs. Dbring the last ten years the gratuitoos braneb
{fondaMon Maaurd) of the Lille Mont-de-pi^t^ which is one of
the few establishments in France that do not charge any into^ at
all, has raised its maximum progressively from 30 to 150 fivocs. It
is clear that a Mont*de-pi^t6 might sometimes be placed in an em-
barrassing position if no rule existed as to a TttSLTiTniiTn^ as it m^
be called upon to advance sums which were beyond its power. Od
the other hand, the law gives to these institutions, in most of the
countries in which they are established, the monopoly of the bosDesF
of lending money upon pledges, and it is an obvious injustice to the
borrower to turn him away from the door on the ground that the
resources of the establishment are instifficient to meet his demafid.

188L PAWNBROKINQ ABROAD AND AT HOME. 983

He then has no other resonrce than to apply to those illicit lenders
who are sure to spring up wherever therie is a demand for them, and
to submit to their extortion. The law thus becomes indirectly an
instrument of injustice. This does not, however, often occur, for it
is to the interest of the Mont*de»pi6t6 to encourage the large trans-
actions which alone bring in a profit.

The interests of the borrowers axe carefully looked after. The
law permits the owners of pledges to require their sale by the Mont
de-Pi^te at public auction three months after the original loan was
effected, and a year or thereabouts before they would be sold in the
natural course of events. The object of this regulation is to diminish
the traffic in pawn-tickets {reconnaiaBaaice6\ which, although not
illegal, is generally disadvantageous to the owner of the property
pledged. The advantage of being able to insist upon the iiomediate
sale of the articles pledged is evident. If, after three months or
longer, the owner finds it improbable or undesirable that he should
ever redeem his property^ he can at once realise the difference between
the amount for which it was pledged and its selling value. New mer-
chandise, however, can only be sold at the end of a year ; a wise
regulation made in order to avoid the conversion of the Mont»de-pi6t6
into an ordinary establishment for the reception and sale of goods.

The average of loans on pledges throughout France rose from 14
francs 46 centimes in 1851 to 19 francs 44 centimes in 1875. In
Paris the average in the latter year was 22 francs. The following
table shows the v^ extensive use made of the institution by the
poorer classes of the population :

Clan of loan

Average

unoiuit of

lofthineach

class

Proportionate

nnmber of

loans

Proportionate

amount of

loans

Under 5 francs

From 6 to 10 francs
„ 11 „ 26 „ ,
„ 2(S ,, 50 „ .
„ 51 „ 100 „ ,
„ 101 „ 600 „ ,
„ 601 ., 1,000 „ ,

Over 1,000 francs

Francs

3

7

17

38

73

194

728

2,947

Percent.

27-47
40-85
16'91
8-18
4-41
204
0-08
006

Peroent.

4-77
1614
14-10
16-67
]8-43
21-00
2-92
6-97

*

—

100 frs.

100 frs.

This table (which relates to all France) is singularly instructive. It
^will be observed that nearly 95 per cent, of the loans are for 50 francs
(2{.) or under. It is fair to assume that a similar average prevails
in England. The English law allows pawnbrokers, as we have
seen, to charge'25 per cent, interest, as well as a small sum for the
ticket^ upon all advances on pledges for forty shillings and under. It
is only when the amount is higher that the rate is reduced, so that

984 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. June

the poorer a borrower is the more he has to pay. This i^ection
should alone excite grave doubts in the minds of philanthropists as to
whether the example set by so many foreign countries should not be
followed by us. The fact that all but a minute number of bornnracs
bring, in their poverty, only objects of small value is a clear proof of
the great value of the institution.

As we have seen, a certain fixed proportion of the selling value of
articles pledged is advanced. Thus, on plate worth 75 francs asd
clothes worth 60 — in all 135 francs — only 100 francs would be lent
It is clear, therefore, that large sums would accrue in case a cooader-
able number of pledges were left unredeemed. And this, in fact, is
the case. In 1875 the amount due to the Monts-de-piete oq the
pledges left on their hands was 4,465,495 francs. When these were
sold by auction as the law directs, they realised 1,186,951 francs be>
yond that sum. The law requires that every pledge should be Iceft
for one year and three months from the date of the original loan. It
is then sold by auction, but the honiy or profit, if any, does not be-
come the property of the establishment for three years ; at any time
within that limit it may be claimed by the owner. There were
in 1875 nearly 4,000,000 borrowers or separate transactions. Pled^
were taken out of pawn by 2,744,611 persons. The loans were re-
newed by the payment of interest in 1 ,036,046 cases. About 200,000
pledges were sold. But nearly 134,000 of the owners of the last
came forward to claim the balance of the value of their property ;
the amount of bonis paid to the rightful owners beings no les than
845,888 francs. The value of bonis confiscated in the same year
was 382,327 francs, which formed a large portion of the total jKofiti
of the Monts-de-pi6t^. The losses on the sale of pledges io 1875
were 179,417 francs, but as these were borne by the oomTHMoms-
priseurSf they do not enter into the account. The English law is
more severe upon the poor. The same period of three years from
the commencement of the transaction is allowed, during whidi the
pledger is entitled to demand payment of any sum which may have
been realised on the sale of the pledge beyond the sum due to the
pawnbroker, who is allowed to sell only by auction. It would be in-
teresting to know what number of pledgers use their right of inspect-
ing the books of the pawnbrokers, and oi claiming the balance, if any,
due to them. There are, however, no statistics available. 11^
English law gives the pawnbroker the absolute ownership oE all
pledges of less than ten shillings which ranain unredeemed beyond a
year and seven days. Now it will be seen by the table printed abore
that over 68 per cent, of the transactions in France are tor sums of
10 francs and under. It may be certainly assumed that at least this
proportion of the pledges taken in England are for less than 10 shil-
lings. Thus, then, in a large majority of cases, English pledges aie
deprived of the privileges which are accorded to all in Fiance^ andta

1881. PAWNBROKim ABROAD AND AT HOME. 985

the owners of more valuable pledges in their own country. If the
English law had prevailed in France, the surplus value of over 91,000
pledges would have been lost in 1875. The gross profit on sales is
35 per cent, on the amount advanced, so that if about the same
average is gained in England our pawnbrokers must have in the item
of confiscation alone a large addition to their already not inconsider-
able earnings. Under the English system the Monts-de-pi^t^ would
have gained in 1875 nearly one-fifth, or 20 per cent., of the bonie
which were claimed by the rightful owners, in addition to the 382,327
properly confiscated. In concluding this branch of the subject it
may be stated that in most Monts-de-pi6t^ the period for which the
loan is granted is one year ; in six it is only for six months ; in a
few cases the term is much longer, and in one (Beaucaire) reaches
two years. When the period has expired, it can be renewed on
payment of the interest, and, if necessary, a revaluation of the object.
So carefully are the interests of the owners of pledges looked after
that, in the case of a profit of a franc or upwards having been made
on the sale of a pledge, a letter is forwarded to the address of the
pawner to inform him of the fact.

In order to avoid as far as possible all irregularities, the person
who presents himself with an object to pledge is obliged to show that
he is connu et domicil/U^ that is to say, he must prove his identity by
means of his caHe de sijour or other papers ; or, in case he is imable
to do this, he must be accompanied by another person who is himself
connu et domicUiS, There is no reason to suppose that this regula-
tion presses hardly on the poor, who always have the means of identi-
fication in France ready at hand.

Any value which may attach to this sketch of a most useful,
flourishing, and progressive institution is greatly enhanced, as I ven-
ture to think, by the statistics which are included in it, and which
throw light, not only on the habits and rights of French, but also of
English, pledgers. As they have never yet been published in this
country,^ it is not perhaps unfair to assume that they should influence

* Nor has the information on which this article is mainly based been published
in France. I am indebted for the Report of the Inspection Q^ntode to M. A,
Chevalier, Chef des Services Administratifs de TAssistance Publique. I trust the
egotism may be pardoned which prompta me to print a portion of a letter which I
received from the most competent authority on the subject in France in reference to
an article published in this Review in March 1879, on * The Poor in France : * —

< Minist^re de Tlnt^rieur, Paris, le 17 aodt 1879.

* Monsieur, — . . . J'ai re^u, en mars dernier, votre tr^-int^ressant article sur les
Pauvres de France, et je me le suis fait traduire pour mieuz m'en rendre compte.
Vous avez parfaitement ezpos^ le systdme de Tassistance appliqu6 en France, et j'ai
6t6 trte flatt6 de voir qu'en le comparant avec le syst^me anglais, vous aviez la loyaut6
de reconnaltre qu'il 6tait pr6f Arable au vOtre. Je vous remercie d*un aveu qui fait
lionneur & votre franchise, bien qu'il ait dd codter & votre patriotisme. Agrtez,
^nonsieur, Tassurance des sentiments les plus distinguds de votre d6vou6

<A. Chevalibb.'

Vox. IX.— No. 52. 3 U

944 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. June

country not only obeyed the above law, but actually kept the relative
prices between the precious metals themselves without any important
change, how can it be doubted that if the transactions of all Europe,
the United' States, and India were added to those of France, the func-
tions of bank money could safely be entrusted to both gold and silver ?

Measuring the value of Lord Liverpool's doctrine and his match-
less treatise, we must not forget who and what Lord Liverpool was.
He was an ofiScial mainly occupied with the phenomena which he
watched from an official standpoint, and, though practically conversant
with almost every branch of official life, he had no real knowledge of
the cosmopolitan commercial machinery which it is our business now
to discuss.

Monometallists seem to think that the subject has received its
last touch from Lord Liverpool's mind. Against his authority I
cannot help quoting that of Alexander Baring, first Lord Ashburton,
who lived a generation later than Lord Liverpool. He had perhaps
the largest and most complete experience of affairs of every kind,
except military affairs, of any man of his day. Before he was forty
he was the confidential intermediary between Napoleon and the
English Grovemment, and shortly afterwards he was the rival of the
first Bothschild in financial operations. Subsequently he was the
Cabinet friend of Peel and Wellington, and he finished his career by
a treaty with America which still goes by his name.

I find that he gave evidence in 1828 as to the consequences
which had followed a blind adherence to Lord LiverpooFs doctrines,
in which he said —

he had always thought that it was possible and desirable to maintain in this country
a silver currency as a legal tender founded on the proportion of silver to gold
established in the cuirency of France, or something very near it

And he gives as a reason for that opinion —

that a sudden change from peace to war, a bad. harvest, or a panic year arising from
over-trading and other causes, imposes upon the Bank of England, which ia the
heart of all our circulation, the necessity, for the purpose of protecting itself^ to
stop the egress of specie, sometimes even to biing in large quantities into the
coontry.

Now it is evident that the Bank wishing to reinforce its supply of specie can do
00 with infinitely increased facility with the power of either drawing in gold or
silver than if it were confined to only one of the metals.

These opinions of Lord Ashburton were given without any wish to
stir in the matter, but merely as a contribution to the mass of
knowledge in the possession of the Government on the subject.

It may now be well to notice some of the objections that have
been made by those who have frankly admitted the superior steadi-
ness of the proposed system over that now in existence. I will take
those which seem to me to be perhaps the most important.

One is that it is a direct attempt to force the stream backwards^

1881. PAWNBROKim ABROAD AND AT HOME. 987

pledges are brought on the second day to the central establiflhraenty
which is a large and fine building, and presents the appearance of a
government office. As in France, considerable care is taken not to
advance money to any but the rightful owner of the objects presented,
or to his accredited agent. I saw a workman who brought some
rings sent away to procure an authorisation from the possessor.
Otherwise the business is transacted rapidly, a couple of minutes
being often sufficient to complete the loan, as soon as the applicant's
turn arrives. The officials are of opinion that it is not the working
classes who mainly bring business to the Mont-de-pi6te ; it is rather
the classes immediately above them which feel the pressure of sudden
necessity, and are in possession of objects which are worth pawning.
The rate of interest charged in Belgium is 7 per cent., which is some-
times reduced to 6 per cent. The profits made are added to the capitaL
In case of loss of the article pledged, it is made up at its full value.
Instalments are received on account, as in French Monts-de-pi^t^

As we travel northwards, we find that the efforts made on behalf
of the poor are more energetic and extensive. In Amsterdam, the
charitable institutions are on a vast, lavish scale, with the result of
creating no small amoimt of the pauperism which they profess to re-
lieve. This reproach does not, however, attach to the Mont-de-pi6t6
of Amsterdam, which fitly enjoys the credit of being one of the best
managed institutions of the kind in Europe. The central office
has nine dependencies in Amsterdam, and the tenth is being built.
There are Monts-de-piete in the Hague, Utrecht, fiotterdam, and
also in some smaller places. The nucleus of the working capital of
the institution in Amsterdam is a sum of 500,000 florins (about
1,000,000 firancs, or 40,000i.) The ' caution ' money of all the em-
ployes of the town, amounting to 200,000 florins, swells the capital,
and an average of 200,000 florins is borrowed. The rate of interest
(which has been recently reduced) charged for loans between 40 cents
{Sd.) and 1,000 florins is 10 per cent. ; above that amount 8 percent.
Considerable gains (an average of about 4 per cent.) accrue to the
institution.

No less than 75 per cent, of the advances made are upon gold
and diamonds. The benefits of the institution are much used by
tradesmen, and especially by the smaller diamond merchants. There
is a special office for the accommodation of persons who desire to
borrow more than 100 florins, and prefer to transact their business
with the greatest possible privacy. Among the articles on which
advances are refused are the following : —

Property that is not personal (immeubles, onroerende goederen).
Ornaments and other objects belonging to the service of the church.
Military articles, and arms.

Bibles or church books marked with the names of societies.
"VVet linen.

Sv2

946 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. June

if Bussia or CMli go to war and issue a forced paper currency, this
act would be in breach of the bimetallic coDventipn.

Now^ what really happens on such an event taMng place is that a
belligerent nation does not increase the volume of its own currency
by using pieces of paper instead of metal, but by exporting its own
metal it increases the volume of the currency in the world at large.
Its pieces of paper being discredited, it is obliged to use the precious
metals for the payment of everything to be bought abroad, and for its
belligerent operations,.and it can and does enforce upon its sabjects
the duty of receiving and paying in pieces of paper at home.

The monometallist seems to imagine that at the same moment
when a belligerent is by a natural process exporting its precious
jnetalsy some other country or body of merchants, either from mere
curiosity or from a desire to test the convention, would send precious
metals back into that belligerent country and have them minted.
This proposition is so absurd that it need only be stated clearly to
secure its refutation.

The issue of paper by a belligerent would have, under a bimetallic
convention, precisely the same efifect which it has now. The explana-
tion of the operation would, however, lead me into a too. lengthy paper.
I content myself, then, with stating my belief that the temporaiy effect •
of war and of forced paper currencies would be somewhat the same as
a large discovery of the precious metals, and would be spread over a
larger surface and more evenly under an international bimetallic
convention than with the present separate national standards.

Having answered some of the most recent objections started ta
bimetallism, I approach the consideration of certain remedies which
have been suggested in substitution of it. One proposal is to permit
the raising of the limit of legal currency of silver coin to five pounds,
instead of two pounds as at present. Considering that any one may,
if he like it, pay forty shillings in discharge of a debt, and that,
as far as my experience goes, it is never done, it is highly improbable
that any one would dream of carrying about sums of two, three, or
four pounds in his pocket in silver for the purpose of vindicating
the rights of that beautiful metal.

Another plan is to issue twenty or thirty millions of one-pound
notes, of which twenty might be on securities. Thus we find men
who are aghast at the notion of a currency which^ though it does not
rest upon gold alone, is yet founded upon a metallic basis quite ready
to increase the circulation by emitting a large amount of paper,
having no tangible metallic basis at all. If this proposition means
anything, it means that in England, as is now the case in Ireland and
Scotland, every one would use one-|16und notes instead of sovereigns*
Those who are in favour of this proposition would do well to read
the chapter in Lord Liverpool on paper currency, in which he
says: —

1881. PAWNBROKINO ABROAD AND AT HOME. 989

all demandB for money lent on the goods are complied with^ loans may be made in
other forms.' But looking into the accounts of the monte, one finds that with a
capital of fifteen millions, only two millions are applied in the manner last indicated,
and this, between one expense and another, at the enormous interest of 10 per cent.,
whereas the remaining thirteen millions are loaned out on mortgage or against
good securities at 6 per cent. This is but an example. The so-called Monti-^
pietdt are in reality mountains of injustice, fraud, and oppression. In small towns
and rural districts, for instance, where people can neither read nor write, the
pledgers often forget when the exact time expires, and, when they present them-
selves with the pawn-tickets, find that their cooking utensils, their bits of homespun
linen, or what not, have been sold at far below their real value.

I am compelled to admit that a long personal experience of
Italian afifairs leads me to believe that this is probably an accurate
picture. Under these circumstances it has seemed to me advisable
to take the French Mont-de-pi^tS rather than the Italian as the model
for imitation.

In Spain the institution is not unknown, but according to a re-
cent report, alluded to by M. Glaveau as having been published by
the Mont-de-piet^ of Madrid, there is no restraint upon private pawn-
shops. The results are deplorable; the proprietors of the latter
succeeding in exacting from borrowers, by means of various arith-
metical artifices {con 8U aritmStica pecvZia/r de djvstar loa intereaea
par mensualidades) as much as 60 or 70 per cent.

M. Henri Bichelot, the writer of the article on Monts-de-piSt^ in
the Dictionnaire de VAdmmistroMan Frari^aise, gives a brief but
interesting account of the institution as it exists in Prussia. In that
country they are dependent on the commune and are associated
with the savings banks. Berlin has even a royal Mont-de-pi6te.

In times of popular distress, the State sometimes organises loan*
offices (Da/rlehnskassen), when either no pledge is required or one-
which cannot be deposited. Since 1869, the law permits any person
to open a pawn-shop, but he is under the surveillance of the local
authority, and his license may be withdrawn if it be found that he
has been guilty of excessive charges, or any offence against public
order.

In Austria and Bavaria a Mont-de-pi^t6, or a pawn-shop, can
only be opened when authorised by the authorities.

Is it possible, and, if possible, is it advisable, to transplant the
institution which has been described to English soil ? I believe that
an affirmative answer may be given to both parts of this question.

The first difficulty would, of course, consist in finding the capital
necessary to establish a Mont-d&-pi6t^ the seat of whose operations
should be, to begin with, in London. We have no municipality
^hich would be willing, as in Amsterdam, to put down 40,0002.
to start the good work. Although we might, perhaps, look to the
wealthy corporation of the City of London to make a loan of, say half
that amount on similar terms, we shall no doubt be wiser to leave

990 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Jme

any such help oat of the aooount. The basis on whidi we may
&irly start our proposal is the fact that, of the forty-three and a half
millions of francs employed in Paris in a single year, fortf-one
millions were borrowed from the general public, mainly on the secoiity
of the concern and the vast property committed to its charge. Itia
true, indeed, that the Assistance Publique is likewise responsible for tk
debts of the Mont-de-pi^t^^ but it may be held that the real aeeority
consists in the pledges held by the establishment. The whole of tiie
above amount was not required at one time, and the rate of ioterest
averaged something under 4 per cent. Let iis assume that a number
of benevolent Englishmen desired to tiy the experiment of otabM-
ing a Mont-de-pi^t^ in London. I apprehend that the following
might be regarded as something like the best modus operandi:— A
hundred persons should agree (as is always done in France when i
Mont-de-pi6t6 is started) to guarantee a sum of 1,0002. each; or two
himdred 5001. each, of which only one-fifth should be paid np at ooce
without interest. These should be shareholders in a limited Mflitr
company, and their risk would not therefore go beyond the 1,0001.
or 500L advanced. If thought advisable I am convinced tbat tke
concern could even afibrd to pay interest to the guarantors^ When
operations are commenced and half the capital in band — 10,0001—
has been advanced to pledgers, a sum of, say 8,0002., may bebonowed
on debentures at probably 4 per cent., or perhaps 5 }>er o^t, until
the donfidence of the public had been gained. As transactions in-
crease, the property of the Mont-de-pi^t^ would increase, and there-
fore pa/ri passu the power of issuing debentures ; for it most be
remembered that, adopting the foreign system, no advance wodd be
made exceeding four-fifths or three-fourths respectively of theeasilj
realisable value of the different classes of property. If the institatioD
flourished, it might be expected that in a few years the balance ^cet
of capital would stand thus : —

Guarantors' advance £20,000

Borrowed on dehentures 100,000

Total £120,000

and in a very short time longer a profit would begin to acenie. This
profit should, I think, be added to the capital of the institutios,
which would thus in course of time become a wealthy and self-
supporting institution. The Mont-de-pi6t4 of Paris earned 26,000t
in 1875, after paying interest on a vast amount of borrowed capital
and no less than 3,4002. for rent. It is difficult to see why an Ed^
institution of the same kind should not be equally suoceasfoL It
would of course be carried on under the existing PawnbrokerB' Act

The advantage to the poor would be very great, even if the
English Mont-de-piete charged as high a rate of interest as that oi
Paris; even then little more than one-third of the pawnbroker*^
charges for loans of 22. and under would have to be paid Ifeit a

1881. PAWNBROKINO ABBOAD AND AT HOME. 991

•considerable proportion of the property of those who are unable to
redeem their pledges would no longer be confiscated, as is now the
case. The managers would have to exercise the greatest care to
avoid the reproach which is so often brought against the lower class
of English pawnbrokers of assisting the operations of persons who
have come by property dishonestly. This would not be so easy as in
France, as no system of police registration by means of the carte de
s^our exists with us. It may be observed, however, that every
pledger in England is now required to give his name and address.

But is the foundation of a Mont^e-piet^ in England advisable ?
If the borrowing classes were to combine to establish a self-supporting
institution of the kind, there could be no doubt as to the answer to
•this question. ^ But the needy are the last persons in the world to
whom combination is possible ; and the idea, however admirable it
may be in conception, must, it is to be feared, be dismissed as
impracticable. The only way in which a start can be made is by
private philanthropy. Nor in such a cause can there be any reason
to hold back. It is true that there is a tendency to do a great deal
too much for the poor in the present day. There is hardly a phase of
liis life in which a poor man may not, if he choose, avail himself of
public or private charity to procure those necessaries which he finds
it irksome to provide for himself. The remedy for this state of
things is, no doubt, to leave the poor a great deal more than they
are now left to their own resources. Above all, a constant protest
should be raised against the growing and pernicious habit of looking
to the State to undertake functions which are properly beyond its scope,
and are much better performed by those who are personally concerned
in them. But in the case of the Mont-de-pi^t^ it is the reidly poor and
the necessitous of all classes who are to be assisted. In such a case
charity may properly intervene, at any rate to a limited extent. The
assistance which is afforded is of the best kind, for it helps the needy
t/o help themselves.

W. Walter Edwajeids.

List of Attthobitisb.

Mirioire des Mants-de^U, par Dr. Oerreti. Padcuei 1752.

^Sitiuxtum admmigtrative et^financiire de$ MmUs-de'pieU, Bapport pr^sentd au nom
du Conseil des Inspecteurs G^n^rauz par M. 0. Glaveau. Paris, Imprimeiie
Nationalei 1876 (not published).

JBudg^ des Hecettes et DSpetues de VExercice, 1879. Paris, 1870.

JXctiannaire de rAdtnmutratum I^angaiie, Par M. Maurice Block. Paris, 1878.

Verdag van den Toestani der Oemeente Amsterdam gedurende het Jaar 1878. Am-
sterdam, 1870.

Jieglement vaor de Stads Bank van Leening te Amsterdam, 1867.

jPlaiimbrokers" Act, 35 and 86 Vict. ch. 93.

uiperqik Historique 9ur Us Btablissements de Bienfaisanee de la VUle de BruxeUm,
Par J. F. Vander Rest. Bruxelles, 1860.

Xoi sur la lUorganisation des Mants-de-Pi^te. Bruxelles, 18G8.

992 TEE NINETEENTH CENTURY. }^

INTELLIGENCE OF ANTS.

I.

I HATE frequently been much struck by the absence of infonnatioQ,
even among professed naturalists and professed psychologists, cod-
coming the intelligence of ants. The literature on the subject b»Bg
scattered and diffused, it is not many persons who have either t!^
leisure or the inclination to search it out for thenL8elYe& Most of is,
therefore, either rest in a general hazy belief that ants are vonder-
fully intelligent animals, without knowing exactly in what wa^and
degrees the intelligent action of these animals is displayed; orebe,
having read Sir John Lubbock's investigations, we come to the
general conclusion that ants are not resdly such very intelligeat
animals after all, but, as was to have been expected from their squQ
size and low position in the zoological scale, it only requiied some
such methodical course of scientific investigation to show that pre-
vious ideas upon the subject were exaggerated, and that,vbe&
properly tested, ants are found to be rather stupid than otherwk.
I have therefore thought it well to write a paper for this videij
circulated Beview, in order to difiuse some precise informatioD ooik
coming the facts of this interesting branch of natural history.

Not having any observations of my own to communicate, I hsie
no special right to be heard on this subject ; but as I have lecaitlr
had occasion to read through the literature connected with it, I
am able to render what I may call a filtered abstract of all the &et»
which have hitherto been observed by others. It is needfii], how-
ever, to add that the filter has been necessarily a dose one ; if I
had a large volume instead of a short paper as my contaioiog
vessel, the filtrate would still require to be a strongly condeDad
substance.

Powera of Special Sense. — Let us take first the Beaaae of a^^
Sir John Lubbock made a number of experiments on the infloence of
light coloured by passing through various tints of stained glass, with
the following results. 1. The ants which he observed greatly dis-
liked the presence of light within their nests, ' hurrying about in
search of the darkest comers ' when light was admitted. 2. Some
colours were much more distasteful to them than others; for while uiuler

1881. INTELLIQENOE OF ANTS. 993

a slip of red glass there were on one occasion congregated 890 ants,
under a green slip there were 544, under a yellow 495, and under a
violet only 5. 3. The rays thus act on these ants in a graduated
series, which corresponds with the order of their influence on a
photographic plate. Experiments were therefore made to test the
efifect of the rays on either side of the visible spectrum, but with
negative results. In considering these experiments, however, it is im-
portant to remember that other observers (especially Moggridge in
Europe and M^Cook in America) have described other species of ants
(genus Aita) as fond of light. It would be interesting for any one
who has an opportunity to try whether ants of this genus do not show
towards the rays of the spectrum a scale of preference the reverse of
that which Sir John Lubbock describes.

As regards hearing. Sir John found that sounds of various kinds
do not produce any effect upon the insects, nor could he obtain any
evidence of their emitting sounds, either audible or inaudible to
human ears.

It has long been known that the sense of smell in ants is highly
developed, and it appears to be the sense on which, like dogs, they
mainly rely. Huber proved that they track one another's footsteps in
finding their way to food, &e. ; for he observed on drawing his finger
across the trail so ^ as to obliterate the scent, that the ants became
confused and ran about in various directions, till they again came
upon the trail on the other side of the interrupted space. By
many ingeniously devised experiments Lubbock has amply confirmed
Huber's statements, and concludes that in finding treasure * they are
g^ded in some cases by sight, while in others they track one another
by scent,' depending however more upon scent than upon sight.

There can be little doubt that ants have a sense of taste, as they
are so well able to distinguish sugary svibstances ; and it is unques-
tionable that in their antenns they possess highly elaborated organs
of touch.

Sense of Dvi*ection. — ^It is certain that ants, in common with many
other animals, possess some unaccountable sense of direction, whereby
they are able to find their way independently of landmarks, &c. Sir
John Lubbock tried a number of experiments in this connection, of
which the following is perhaps the most conclusive. Between the
nest and the food he placed a hat-box, in each of two opposite sides
of which he bored a small hole, so that the ants, in passing fi'om the
nest to the food and back again, had to go in at one hole and out at
the other. The box was fixed upon a pivot, where it could be easily
rotated, and when the ants had well learnt their way to the food
through the box, the latter was turned half round as soon as an ant
had entered it ; < but in every case the ant turned too, thus retaining
her direction.'

Sir John then placed in the stead of a hat-*box a disc of white

D94 THE NINETEENTH OENTURY. i^

paper. When an ant was on the disc making towards the food, lie
gently drew the paper to the other side of the food, so that the asi
was conveyed by the moving surface in the same direction aa that in
which she was going, but heyiynd the point to which she intended to
go. Under these circumstances the ant did not turn round, bat leot
on to the further edge of the disc, ' when she seemed a good deal sur-
prised at finding where she was.'

These results seem to indicate that the sense of direction is due
to a process of registering all the changes of direction which maybe
made during the out-going journey, and that this power of legistn-
tion has reference only to iMeral movements ; it has no referaieeto
variatiohs in the velocity of advance along the line in which ike
animal is progressing.

Powers of Commv/aicaMon. — Huber, Forel, Kirby and Speooe,
Dujardin, Burmeister, Franklin, and other observers have all ex-
pressed themselves as holding the opinion that ants are ahle to
communicate information to one another by some system of lan-
guage or signs. The facts, however, on which the opinion of these
earlier observers rested, have not been stated with that degne of
caution and detail which the acceptance of their opinion wonldreqoiie.
But the more recent observations of Bates, Belt, Moggridge^Hapie,
Lincecum, M^C!ook, and Lubbock, leave no doubt upon the solved.
Two or three instances will be enough to select in order to prove the
general fact. Hague, the geologist, kept upon his mantel-ahdf a
vase of flowers, and he noticed a file of small red ants on the wall ahoTe
the shelf passing upwards and downwards between the latter and a
small hole near the ceiling. The ants, whose object was to get at tte
flowers, were at first few ; but they increased in number during sevenl
successive days, until an unbroken succession was formed all the nj
down the wall. To get rid qf the ants, Hague then tried freqaeaUy
brushing them o£f the wall upon the floor in great numbers ; but tk
only result was that another train was form^ to the flowers asoeod-
ing from the floor. He therefore took more severe measuieB^ aod
struck the end of his finger lightly upon the descending train oeai
the flower- vase, so killing some and disabling others. ^ The effed of
this was immediate and unexpected. As sck)n as those ants which
were approaching arrived near to where their fellows lay dead aod
suffering, they turned and fled with all possible haste, and in half an
hour the wall above the mantel-shelf was cleared of ants.' The sbeaffl
firom below continued to ascend for an hour or two, the ants advaaciDg
^hesitatingly just to the edge of the shelf, when, extending ther
antennae and stretching their necks, they seemed to peep cautioodj
over the edge until beholding their suffering companions, when th^
too turned, texpressing by their behaviour great excitement aad
terror.' Both columns of ants thus entirely disappeared. ForKtoal
days there was a complete absence of ants : then a few b^as to

1881- INTELLIGENCE OF ANTS. 995

reappear ; ' but instead of visitixig the vase which had been the scene
-of the disaster, they avoided it altogether,' and made for another
vessel containing flowers at the other end of the shelf. Hague here
repeated the same experiment with exactly the same result. After
this for several days no ants reappeared ; and during the next three
months it was only when fresh and particularly fragrant flowers were
put into the vases that a few of the more daring ants ventured to
fitraggle towards them. Hague concludes his letter to Mr. Darwin,
in which these observations are contained, by saying : —

To turn hack these stragglers and keep them out of sight for a number of days,
. somethnes for a fortnight, it is suffident to kill one or two ants on the trail. . . .
The moment the spot is reached an ant turns abruptly and makes for home, and in
^ little while there is not an ant yidble on the walL

Many other cases might be quoted to show that ants are able to
.communicate information to one another ; but, to save space, I shall
pass on to Sir John Lubbock's direct experiments upon this subject.
Three similar and parallel tapes were stretched from an ant's nest to
three similar glass vessels. In one of the latter Sir John placed
several hundred larvsB, in another only two or three larvae, and the
third he left empty. The object of the empty glass was to see whether
any ants might not run along the tapes without any special reference
to the obtaining of larvse ; and this was found not to be the case.
Sir John then put an ant to each of the other two glasses ; they each
took a larva, carried it to the nest, returned for another, and so on.
Each time a larva was taken out of the glass containing only two or
three. Sir John replaced it with another, so that the supply should
not become exhausted. Lastly, every ant (except the two which had
first been put to the larvse), before reaching home with her burden,
vas caught and imprisoned till the observation terminated.

The result was that during 47^ hours the ants which had access
to the glass containing numerous larvae brought 257 friends to their
assistance ; while during an interval of 5^ hours longer those which
visited the glass with only two or three larvae brought only 82 friends.
This result appears very conclusive as proving some power of definite
communication, not only as to where food is to be found, but also as
to the road which leads to the largest store. Further experiments,
however, proved that these ants are not able to describe the precise
locality where treasure is to be found. For, having exposed larvae as
before and placed an ant upon them, he watched every time that she
<isme out of the nest with friends to assist her ; but instead of allow-
ing her to pilot the way, he took her up and carried her to the larvae,
allowing her to return with a larva upon her own feet. Under these
circumstances the friends, although evidently conaing out with the
intention of finding some treasure, were never able to find it, but
'-wandered about in various directions for a while, and then returned

996 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. June

to the nest. Thus, daring two hours, she brought oat altogether m
her successive journeys no less than 120 ants, of which number only
five in their ungoided wanderings happened by chance to find tbe^
sought-for treasure.

Memory. — The general fact that whenever an ant finds her way
to a store of food or larvae she will return to it again and again in a
more or less direct line from her nest, constitutes ample proof that
the ant remembers her way to the store of food. It is of interest to
note that the nature of this insect-memory appears to be identical with
that of memory in general. Thus, a new fact becomes impressed
upon ant-memory by repetition, and the impression is liable to be-
come effaced by lapse of time. Sir John Lubbock found it necessary
to teach the insects, by a repetition of several lessons, their way to
treasure, if that way were long or unusual. With r^^ard to the
duration of memory in ants, it does not appear that any direct ex-
periments have been made; but the following observation by
Mr. Belt on its apparent duration in the leaf-cutting ant may be
here stated. In June 1859 he found his garden invaded by these
ants, and on following up their paths he found their nest about a
hundred yards distant. He poured down their burrows a pint o{
diluted carbolic acid. The marauding partis were at once drawn off
from the garden to meet the danger at home, while in the bomM^
themselves the greatest confusion prevailed. Next day he found the
ants busily engaged in bringing up the ant-food from the old banow9-
and carrying it to newly formed ones a few yards distant. Tlieee,
however, turned out to be intended only as temporary repositories r
for in a few days both old and new burrows were entirely deserted,
so that he supposed all the ants to have died. Subsequently, how-
ever, he found that they had migrated to a new site, about two htm-
dred yards from the old one, and there established themselves in a
new nest. Twelve months later the ants again invaded his garden,
and again he treated them to a strong dose of carbolic acid. Hie
ants, as on the previous occasion, were at once withdrawn fiom his
garden, and two days afterwards he found < all the survivors at woik
on one track that led directly to the old nest of the year befbie,
where they were busily employed in making new excavations. • . It
was a wholesale and entire. migration.' Mr. Belt adds: ^Ido not
doubt that some of the leading minds in this formicarium reoolleetetf
the nest of the year before, and directed the migration to it.' Of
course it is possible that the leaders of the migration may have singly
stumbled on the old burrows by accident, and, finding th«n alrea^
prepared as a nest, forthwith proceeded to transfer the food and^
larv89 ; but as the old and the new burrows were separated fiom>
one another by so considerable a distance, this supposition does not
seem probable, and the only other one open is that the ants
bered their former home for a period of twelve months.

i881. INTELLIGENCE OF ANTS. 997

position is rendered the more probable from a somewhat analogous
oase recorded by Karl Vogt in his Lectwrea on UsefvX and Ha/rmlesa
Animals* For several successive years ants from a certain nest used
to go through certain inhabited streets to a chemist's shop six himdred
metres distant, in order to obtain access to a vessel filled with syrup.
As it cannot be supposed that this vessel was found in successive
working seasons by as many successive accidents, it can only be con-
cluded that the ants remembered the syrup store from season to
season.

Recognition. — I shall now pass on to consider a class of highly
xemarkable &cts. It has been known since the observations of Huber
that all the ants of the same community recognise one another as
friends, while an ant introduced from another nest, even though it be
4U1 ant of the same species, is known at once to be a foreigner, and is
usually maltreated or put to death. Huber found that when he re-
moved an ant from a nest and kept it away from its companions for
^ period of four months, it was still recognised as a friend, and
>€aressed by its previous fellow-citizens after the manner in which ants
4show friendship, viz., by stroking antennsa. Sir John Lubbock, after
repeating and fully confirn^ing tiiese observations, extended them as
follows.

He first tried prolonging the period of separation beyond four
months, and found that it might be made more than three times as
long without the ants forgetting their absent friend. Thinking that
this fact could only be explained, either by all the ants knowing each
other's personal appearance, or by their all having a distinctive smell
peculiar to each nest, or by their all having a sign, like a pass-word,
<liffering in dififerent nests. Sir John tried separating some ants from
a nest while still in the condition of larvae, and, when they emerged
as perfect insects, transferring them back to the nedt from which they
had been taken as larvae. Of course in this case the ants in the nest
-could never have seen those which had been removed, for a larval ant
is as imlike the mature insect as a caterpillar is unlike a butterfly;
neither can it be supposed that the larvae, thus kept away from the
nest, should retain, when hatched out as perfect insects, any smell
'belonging to their parent nest ; nor, lastly, is it reasonable to imagine
that the animals, while still in the condition of larval grubs, can have
been taught any gesture or sign used as a pass- word by the matured
animals. Yet, although all these possible hypotheses seem to be thus
fully excluded by the conditions of the experiment, the result showed
tmequivocally that the ants all recognised their transformed larvae as
Jiative-bom members'of their community.

Next, therefore, Sir John Lubbock tried dividing a nest into two
parts before the queen ants had become pregnant. Seven months
^fter the division the queens laid their eggs, and five months later

95« THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Jnne

compensations, — ^the application, as one may say, of the law of the
conservation of energy to states and nations, which assures us that
more than a certain sum of efficiency cannot be extracted from any
one race, and that, after gross errors have been avoided, what is gained
in force by the body politic in one direction is likely to be lost in
another. On the examples of this thesis M. Kenan delights to dwell,
from the Berbers, enjoying absolute social equality and govenunent
by commune at the cost of all national or even tribal coherence, to
the German Empire, its collective strength abased on a fusion of
bureaucracy and feudalism which, in M. Benan^s view, must neces-
sarily involve the painful self-abnegation of the mass of men.

One may say, indeed, that the greatness of a nation depends on her
containing a certain amount, but only a certain amount, of unselfidH
ness; on her keeping her spiritual life neither above nor below a
certain temperature. She can achieve no powerful collective exist-
ence if public virtue in her have grown so cold that she contains do
class ready to make serious sacrifices for the general good. And od
the other hand, if the popular devotion to some impersonal id^ be
raised to too glowing a pitch, the nation loses in concentration what
she gains in diffusion ; her idea takes possession of the world, but she
herself is spent in the effort which gave it birth. Greece perishing
exhausted with her creation of art and science ; Some disappearing,
like leaven in the mass, in her own universal empire ; Judsea ex-
piating by political nullity and dispersion the spiritual intensity which
imposed her faiths, in one form or another, upon civilised man ; such
are some of the examples with which M. Eenan illustrates this
general view. And such, to some extent, is his conception of the
French Revolution. In the spiritual exhaustion and unsettlement
which have followed on that crisis, France has felt the reaction from
that fervour of conviction and proselytism with which she sent forth
her < principles of '89 ' to make the circuit of the world. But those
principles were not wholly salutary nor wholly true; they were the in-
sistance — exaggerated by the necessary recoil from privilege and
inequality — on one side only of the political problem, on the individual
right to enjoyment without regard to those ties and subordinations
which make the permanence and the unity of states.

The French Kevolution, indeed, was but the manifestation, in a
specially concentrated form, of a phase through which the awakening
consciousness of the masses must needs conduct every civilised
nation in turn. Its characteristic assertions of the independence,
the essential equality of men, are apt to lead, if rashly applied,
not to any improved social structure, but to sheer individualism,
to the jealous spirit of democracy, which resents the existence
of lives fuller and richer than its own. This spread of an en-
lightened selfishness is in the moral world,' as M. Benan has re-
marked, a fact of the same nature as the exhaustion of coal-fields in

1881. INTELLIOENCE OF ANTS. 99^

tried burying some specimenB of Lasiua niger beneath an ant-road ;
but none of the ants traversing the road made any attempt to release
their imprisoned companions. He repeated the same experiment with
the same result on various other species. Even when the friends in
difficulty were actually in sight, it by no means followed that their
companions would assist them. On imprisoning some friends in one
bottle, the mouth of which was covered with muslin, and some strangers
of the same species {F, fuaca) in another bottle similarly protected,,
and placing both bottles in the nest, ' the ants which were at liberty
took no notice of the bottle containing their imprisoned friends. Th&
strangers in the other bottle, on the other hand, excited them* consi-
derably.' For days they crowded round this bottle, endeavouring to
gnaw through the muslin by which its mouth was closed. This on
the seventh day they succeeded in doing, when they killed the im-
prisoned strangers. ' The friends throughout were quite neglected,'
so that this experiment, as Sir John observes, seems to show that ^ in
these curious insects hatred is a stronger passion than affection.' This
experiment always gave the same result in the case of this species ;
but when tried with Formica rufeacena^ the ants took no notice of
either bottle, and showed no signs either of affection or hatred ; so
that, as Sir John again observes, ^ one is almost tempted to surmise
that the spirit of these ants is broken by slavery ' — i.e. by the habit
of keeping slaves.

But there is no lack 6{ evidence to show, per corUra, that the
tenderer emotions have a place in ant-psychology. Even the hard-
hearted species which Sir John Lubbock observed grew sympathetic
towards sick or injured friends. Thus he observed that a specimen
of F, fused, which was congenitally destitute of antennae, and which
had been attacked by an ant of another species, excited the sympathy
of a friend on being placed near her own nest. This friend ' examined'
the poor sufferer carefully, then picked her up tenderly, and carried
her away into the nest. It would have been difficult for any one whO'
witnessed this scene to have denied to this ant the possession of
humane feelings.' Again, Moggridge has seen one ant carry another
sick and apparently dead ant ' down the twig which formed their path
to the surface of the water, and, after dipping it in for a minute,.
carry it laboriously up again, and lay it in the sun to dry and re-
cover.'

But some species of ants seem habitually to show affection and
sympathy even towards healthy companions in distress. Thus Belt
writes of the Eciton humata, that ^ one day watching a small column
of these ants, I placed a little stone on one of them to secure it. The
next that approached, as soon as it discovered its situation, ran back-
wards in an agitated manner, and soon conmiunicated the intelligence
to the others. They rushed to* the rescue,' and by their concerted
action effected the release of their companion. Similarly ants of thi&

1000 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. June

species which Belt buried were always dog out by their friends. To
quote one such instance, the ant which first found the buried one

tried to pull her out, but could not. It immedutely set off at a great nte,
«nd I thought it had deserted her comrade^ but it had only gone for nswi»n» ;
for in a short time about a dozen ants came hurrying up, eridently fnlly in&nned
of the circumBtances of the caae, for they made directly for their impriuiied
comrade and set him free. I do not see how this could be instinctiTe. It wu
sympathetic help, such as men only among the higher mammalia show. The
excitement and ardour with which they carried on their unflagging exertions fat
the rescue of their comrade could not haye been greater if they had been hmaaa
beings.

Forel and M^Cook have also observed displays of sympathy and affsc-
tion by other species.

NuT8mg, — This may appropriately be considered in connection
with the emotions, as it seems to imply something akin to matenial
affection. The eggs will not develop into larvsB unless nursed, and
the nursing is effected by licking the surface of the eggs, which under
the influence of this process increase in size, or grow. In about a
fortnight — during which time the workers carry the eggR from higher
to lower levels of the nest, and vice versa, according to the Guvmn-
stances of heat, moisture, &c. — ^the larvae are hatched out, and require
no less careful nursing than the eggs. The workers feed ttan by
placing mouths together — the larvae stretching out their heads to re-
ceive the nourishment after the manner of young birds. When fdUy
grown the larvae spin cocoons, and are then pupae, or the ' ants^ ^Sg^'
of the pheasant-rearers. These require no food, but still need in-
cessant attention with reference to warmth, moisture, and deanh-
ness. When the time arrives for their emergence as perfect inseets,
the workers assist them to get out of their larval cases by biting
through the walls of the latter. When it emerges the newly-born
ant is enclosed in a thin membrane like a shirt, which has to be
pulled off. ' When we see,' says Biichner, ' how neatly and gently
this is done, and how the young creature is then washed, brushed, and
fed, we are involuntarily reminded of the nursing of human babies.*
The young ants are then educated. They are led about the nest and
taught their various domestic duties. Later on they learn to distin-
guish between friends and foes ; and when an ant's nest is attacked
by foreign ants the young ones never join in the fight, but confine
themselves to removing the pupae. That the knowledge of here-
ditary enemies is not wholly instinctive is proved by the experimait
of Forel, who put young uneducated ants of three different species
into a glass case with pupae of six other species — ^all the nine species
being naturally hostile to one another. Yet the young ants did wA
quarrel, but worked together to tend the pupae. When the latter
hatched out, an artificial colony was formed of a number of naturaDy
hostile species, all living together like the ' happy fiaimilies ^ of tba
showmen.

1881, INTELLIGENCE OF ANTS. 1001

. Keeping Aphides. — ^It is well and generally known that various
spedea of ants keep aphides, as men keep milch-cows, to supply a
nutritious secaretion. Huber first observed this fact, and noticed
that the ants collected the ^gs of the aphides, and treated them
with as much apparent care as they treated their own. When .these
eggs hatch out, the aphides are usually kept and fed by the ants.
Sometimes the stems and branches on which they live are encased
by the ants in clay walls, in which doors are letl large enough to
admit the ants, but too small to allow the aphides to escape. The
latter are therefore imprisoned in regular stables. The sweet
secretion is yielded to the ants by a process of ^ miUdng,' which
consists in the ants stroking the aphides with their antenna.

Sir John Lubbock has made an interesting addition to our
knowledge respecting the habit in question, as practised by a certain
species of ant {Lasius Jlatm8\ which departs in a somewhat
remarkable manner from the habit as practised by other species.
He says: 'When my eggs hatched I naturally thought that the
aphides belonged to one of the species usually found on the roots
of plants in the nests of Laeiua flaws. To my surprise, however,
the young creatures made the best of their way out of the nest, and,
indeed, were sometimes brought out of the nest by the ants them-
selves.' Subsequent observation showed that these aphides, bom
from eggs hatched in the ants' nest, left the nest, or were taken from
it, as soon as they were hatched, in order to live upon a kind of
daisy which grew ai'ound the nest. Sir John then made out the
whole case to be as follows : —

Here are aphides, not living in the ants* nests, but outside, on tbe leaf-stalks of
plants. The eggs are laid early in October on the food-plant of the insect. They
are of no direct use to the ants, yet they are not left where they are laid, where
they would be exposed to the severity of the weather and to innumerable dangers,
but are brought into their nests by the ants, and tended by them with the utmost
care through the long winter months until the following March, when the young
ones are brought out and again placed on the young shoots of the daisy. This
seems to me a most remarkable case of prudence. Our ants may not perhaps lay
up food for the winter, but they do more, for they keep during six months the eggs
which will enable them to procure food during the following winter.

As a supplement to this interesting observation, I may here
append the following, which is due to Herr Nottebohm, who com-
municated it to Professor Biichner. This gentleman had a weeping
ash which was covered by millions of aphides. To save the tree
he one day in March cleaned and washed every branch and spray
before the buds bad burst, so removing all the aphides. There
was no sign of the latter till the beginning of June, when he was
surprised one fine sunny morning to see a number of ants running
quickly up and down the trunk of the tree, each carrying up a single
aphis to deposit it on the leave?, when it hurried back to fetch

Vol. IX.— No. 62. 3 X

a002 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. .June

«iu)ther« 'After some weeks the evil was as greai as ever* • • . I
had destroyed one colony, but the ants replanted it l^ faringiiig nev
ioolomstsi from distant tsees and setting them on. the yoniig Ifsave^* .
' Aphides, are not the only insects which axe utilised by ants as
eows. Gall insects and cocci are kept in just the same way ; but
•MOook - observed that where i^hides and cooci are kept by the
eame ants, th^ are kept in separate chambers, or stalls. Gats-
pillars of the genus Lgeama have also been obcierved to be kepi bj
ants for the sake of a sweet secretion which they supply*

Stavery.-^Tbe habit or instinct of keeping slavea obtaina at leait
among thiee apecies of ant. It was first observed by B. Hubec ia
Formica rufeaeena, which enslaves the species ^F. fusca, the THff?inhm
^ which are appropriately^ coloured black. . The slav^makiiy anta
attack a nest of F.fueea in a body; there is a great fight with maek
slaogfater, and, if victorious, the slaves-makers can^ off the popm ni
the vanquished nest in order to hatch them out as slaves. Wbes these
pupao hatch out^ the young slaves b^fin their life of work, -aiul seoa
ti^regaid their masters' home as their own ; for they never attempt to
esci^, and they fight in defence of the nest should it be attagfced.
The work that devolves upon the slaves differs acoordlog to the
species which has enslaved them. In the nests of F. aanjrutneo the
comparatively few captives are kept exclusively as household slaves,
all the outdoor work of foraging, slave-capturing, &e^ being per-
formed by the masters; and when for any reason a nest has to
migrate, the masters carry th^ slaves in their jaw& On the oth»
hand, F. mfescens assigns a much larger ahare of work to the slaves,
which they capture in much larger numbers to take it. In this
species the masters do no work whatsoever, unless the captunng of
slaves be regarded as such. Therefore the whole conmiamt| is
entirely dependent upon its slaves ; the masters are not able to make
their own nests, to feed their own larvae, or even to feed tbemsdves ;
they die of starvation in the midst of favourite food if a slave shonid
not be present to hand it in proper form. In order to confirm this
observation (originally due to Huber) licspds placed a piecae of
moistened sugar near a nest of these slave-makers. It was soon
found by one of the slaves, which gorged itself and returned. Other
slaves then came out and did likewise. Some of the masters nesi
came out, and by pulling the legs of the feeding slaves reminded
them that they were neglecting their duty. The alaves tha
immediately began to serve their masters to the sugar. Had thev
not done so, there is no doubt they would have been punished, fer
the masters bite the slaves when displeased with them. Ford and
Darwin have also confirmed these observations of Hubar* Indeed,
the structure of the mouth in F. rufesc&iia is such as to render sd^
feeding difficult, if not physically impossible. Its long and nanov
jaws, admirably adapted to pierce the head of an enemy, do vat

1881. INTELLIOENCE OF ANTS. lOOa

admiii of being used for feeding unless liquid food is poured into
them from the mouth of a slave.

Ants do not appear to be the only animals of \7hich ants make
slaves ; for there is at least one case in which these wonderful insects
enslave insects of another species, which may therefore be said to stand
to them in the relation of beasts of burden. The case to which I
allude stands upon the authority of Audubon, who says that he has
seen certain leaf-bugs used as slaves by ants in the forests of Brazil.

TVhen these ants want to bring home the leaves which they have bitten off the
trees, they do it by means of a column of these hugs, which go in pairs, kept in
order on ^ther side by accompanying ants. They compel stragglers to re-enter the
ranks, and laggards to keep up by biting them. After the work is done the bugs
9ze shut up within the colony and scantily fed.

Wars, — On the wars of ants a great deal might be said, as the facts
of interest in this connection are very numerous ; but for the sake
of brevity I shall confine myself to giving only a somewhat meagre
account. One great cause of war is the plundering of ants' nests by
the slave-making species. Observers all agree that in the case of
the so-called Amazon slave-making ant, this plundering is effected by
a united march of the whole army composing a nest, directed against
some particular nest of the species which they enslave. According
to Lesp^s and Forel, single scouts or small companies are first sent
out. from the nest to explore in various directions for a suitable nest
to attack. These scouts afterwards serve as guides to the marauding
excursion. When the scouts have been successful in discerning a
suitable nest to plunder, and have completed their strategical inves^
tigations of the locality to their satisfaction — ^the latter process being
often a laborious one, as it has special reference to the entrances of
the nest, which are purposely made difficult to find by their
architects — they return to their own fortress. Forel has seen them
then walk about on the surface of this underground fortress for a
long time, as if in consultation, after which some of them entered
and again came out leading the host of warriors ; these streamed
from all the gateways, and ran about tapping each other with their
heads and antennae. They then formed into a column, composed of
between 1,000 and 2,000 individuals, and set out in orderly march
to pillage the nest which had been examined by the scouts. Accord-
ing to Lesp^, the column is about five metres long and fifty centi-
metres wide, marches at the rate of a mdtre per minute, and, on
account of the distance which may have to be traversed, the march
sometimes lasts for more than an hour. When they arrive at their
destination a fierce battle begins, which, after raging for a time
with much slaughter on both sides, generally, though not invariably,
ends in the robbers gaining an entry. A barricade conflict then
takes place below ground, and, if the attack proves successful, the

3x2

1004 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Jone

m

slave-making ants again stream out of the plundered nest, each ant
carrying a stolen pupa. The Amazons cannot climb, and this &ct
being known to the other ants, when thej find that victory is on the
side of the enemy, they devote themselves to saving what treaffore they
can by carrying their pupae up the grasses and bushes snrronnding the
nest. When the marauders have obtained aljl the booty that they can,
they set off on their homeward march, each carrying a pnpa. Tliey do
not always follow the shortest road, but return exactly on the tnck
by which they came, no doubt being guided entirely by the soent
left on the ground from their previous march. When they arrive
home they commit the pupsa to the care of the slaves. Ford found
that a particular colony of slave-makers watched by him sent out
forty-four marauding expeditions in thirty days, of which number
twenty-eight were completely successful, nine partially so, and the
remainder failures. The average booty obtained by a successful expe-
dition was 1,000 pupae, so that during a single summer the total num-
ber of pupae captured by this colony might be put down at 40,000.

Forel further tried the following experiment. He kept nests of
two species of slave-making ants in two separate sacks, and when he
saw that an expedition of a third species (Amazons) had found a
slave-nest to plunder, and were fairly on their march towards it, he
turned out one of his sacks upon the nest. A fight at once began
between the slave-ants and sanguine ants which he had turned loose
upon them. Then the vanguard of the Amazons came up; bat
when they saw that the sanguines were already on the field they dretr
back and awaited the approach of the main army. In close order i]u>
whole army then precipitated itself upon the already struggling best
of sanguine ants. The latter, however, repulsed the attack, and the
Amazons retired to reform. This done they made a second assault^
which appearing as if it would end successfully, Forel, to compHcate
matters, poured upon the field his second sack containing the third
species of slave-makers. All three species then fought together, till
at last victory declared itself on the side of the Amazons. After
overcoming their enemies they paused for a breathing space before
beginning the work of plunder. They then ravished the nest of the
slave-ants, which, however, fought desperately, so that it seemed zs
though they courted death. They even followed the Amazons right op
to their own nest, harassing them all the way. On arriving at the
nest of the Amazons the slaves of the latter came out and assisted
their masters to fight. These slaves were of two species — one bezBg
the same as that which was being plundered, so that these sU^es
were fighting for their masters against their own kind. Altogether,
therefore, in that day's warfare there were six different species of ant?
engaged, three in alliance, and the rest in mutual antagonism.

The military tactics employed by the sanguine ants above nam-
tioned are different from tho?e employed by the Amazons. l!hey dd

1881. INTELLIOENCE OF ANTS. 1005

not seek to cany the fortress of the slave-ants by storm, but lay a
regular siege, forming a complete circle round the nest, and facing it
with jaws held fiercely open and antennos thrown back. Being indi-
vidually large and strong, they are able thus to confine the whole nest
of slave-ants. A special guard is set upon the entrances of the nest,
and this allows all slave-ants not carrying pupsB to pass, while it stops
all the slave-ants which carry pupae. The siege lasts till most of the
slave-ants have thus been allowed to pass out, while all the pupae are
left behind. The forces then close in upon the entrances and com-
pletely rifle the nest of its pupae — a few companies, however, being
told off to pursue any slave-ants which may possibly have succeeded
here and there in escaping with a pupa.

Wars are not confined to species of ants having slave-making
habits. The agricultural ants likewise at times have fierce contests
mth one another. The importance of seeds to these insects, and the
consequent value which they set upon them, induce the animals,
when supplies are scarce, to plunder one another^s nests, prolonged
warfare being the result. Thus Moggridge says : ^ By far the most
savage and prolonged contests which I have witnessed were those in
which the combatants belonged to two different colonies of the same
species. . . • The most singular contests are those which are waged
for seeds by A. harbara^ when one colony plunders the stores of an
adjacent nest belonging to the same species ; the weaker nest making
prolonged, though, for the most part, inefficient attempts to recover
their property.' In one case the predatory war lasted for forty-six
days, during which time it became evident that the attacking nest
was the stronger, for

streams of ants laden with seeds arrived safely at the upper nest, while close
oheervation showed that very few seeds were successfully carried on the reverse
jouniey into the lower or plundered nest. Thus, when I fixed my attention on one
of these robbed ants surreptitiously making its exit with the seed from the thieves'
nesty and having overcome the oppositions and dangers met with on its way,
reaching, after a journey which took six minutes to accomplish, the entrance to its
own home, I saw that it was violently deprived of its burden by a guard of ants
stationed there apparently for the purpose, one of whom instantly started off and
carried the seed aU the way back again to the upper nest. . . . After the 4th of March
I never saw any acts of hostility between these nests, though the robbed nest was
not abandoned. In another case of the same kind, however, where the struggle
lasted thirty-two days, the robbed nest was at length completely abandoned.

Lastly, M^Cook records the history of an interesting engagement
"which he witnessed between two nests of Tetramori/aTa coespUum in
the streets of Philadelphia, and which lasted for nearly three weeks.
Although all the combatants belonged to the same species, friends
were always distinguished from foes, however great the confusion of
the fight. This fact is always observable in the case of battles be-
tween nests of the same species, and M'Cook thinks that the distinc-
tion appears to be effected in some way by contact of antennae.

964 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. June

And from this text he argaes how closely akin are licence and
bigotry ; how it is the same spirit of contented shallowness which in
each direction is impatient of modest self-restraint ; which leads to
easy vulgarity in the domain of morals, empty rhetoric in the domain
of literature, ready and confident dogmatism in the domain of reli-
gion. To protest against each of these in turn has been the mission
of M. Renan, and surely by no other example or exhortation could he
have deserved better of France.

It is needless to say that he can also praise his country with grace
and enthusiasm, though never with that monstrous adulation to which
she is sometimes too willing to lend her ear. More remarkable is the
generous candour with which, in the very shock and crisis of the war^
when nothing was heard on either side but outrage and execration,
the French philosopher did justice to the impulse which urged Ger-
many to assert her unity and her place among great nations.^

S^il J a une nationalitS qui ait un droit Evident d*exister en toute son isdi-
pendance, c^est assur^ment la nationality allemande. UAllemagne a le meOkor
titre national, je veux dire un r6le bistorique de premiere importance, une ame^uDe
litt^rature, des hommes de g^nie, une conception particulidre des choses divines et
faumaines. L'Allemagne a fait la plus importante revolution des tempa modena,
la lUforme ; en outre, depuia un aitele, rAilemagne a produit un des plus besoi
d^veloppements intellectuels qu*il y ait jamais eu, un d^veloppement qui a, si jose
le dire, ajout^ un degrd de plua & Tesprit humain en profondeur et en ^tendae, a
bien que ceux qui n'ont pas participd & cette culture nouvelle sont ft ceux qui Font
traverse comme celui qui ne oonnait que lea matb^matiques el^mentaiies est i
celui qui connait le calcul diffSrentiel.

He proceeds to draw a picture of what united Germany might b^
come, the Prussian leaven disappearing when it has leavened the
whole lump, and leaving a nation open, perhaps, beyond any other,
to the things of the spirit ; more capable, perhaps, than any other of
founding a State organisation on a scientific and rational basis. AikI
he concludes with a dignified appeal to the moral intervention of
Europe in the present extremity, a dignified protest against the dis-
memberment and degradation of France.

On reading the letter to M« Strauss, from which this passage is
taken, a letter full of large general views and scrupulous candour,
one is tempted to think that it must be an easy thing for a professed
philosopher to retain his philosophy even; as the ancients said, ^ when
earth is mixed with fire.' A curious incident to which this corre-
spondence gave rise may be quoted, however, as showing how difficult
it is in these moments of excitement, even for the controversialist
whose arguments are supported by thirty legions, to maintain a tone
on which he can afterwards look back with satis£EK;tion. The corre-
spondence in question was begun by M. Strauss, who addressed a letter
to M. Renan in the Augsburg Gazette of the 1 8th of August, 1870.

«* Lettre h M, Strauss,

1881. INTELLIGENCE OF ANTS. 1007

Bates also has described similar facts with regard to ants of
another genus — ^the Ecitons.

Play and Leisure. — The life of ants is not all work, or, at least,
is not so in all species. Huber describes regular gymnastic sports as
practised by the species prateTiaie. They raise themselves on their
hind legs to wrestle and throw pretended antagonists with their fore
legs, nm after each other, and seem to play at hide and seek. When
one is victorious in a display of strength, it often seizes all the others
in the ring, and tumbles them about like nine-pins. Forel has amply
confirmed these observations of Huber, and says that the chasing,
struggling, and rolling together upon the ground, pulling each other
in and out of the entrances, &c., irresistibly reminded him of romping
boys at play. ^ I understand,' he says, ^ that the matter must seem
wonderfiol to those who have not witnessed it, particularly when we
remember that sexual attraction can here play no part.'

M^Cook and Bates also give similar accounts of the habits of play
and leisure among species of the Western hemisphere.

Funerals, — ^The habit of carrying their dead out and away from
their nests is very general, if not universal, among ants ; and being
no doubt due to sanitary requirements, has probably been developed
as a beneficial instinct by natural selection. M'Cook says of the
agricultural ants : —

All species whose manners I have closely observed are quite alike in their mode
of caring for their own dead, and for the dry carcases of aliens. The former
they appear to treat ^ith some degree of reverence, at least to the extent of giving
them a sort of sepulture without feeding upon them. The latter, after having ex-
hausted the juices of the body, they usually deposit together in some spot removed
from the nest.

Experiments made on ants kept in confinement showed that the desire
to remove dead companions was one of the strongest that they ex-
hibited.

So great was the desire to get rid of the dead outside the nest, that the bearers
would dimb up the smooth surface of the glass to the very top of the jar, labori-
ously carrying with them a dead ant. This was severe work, which was^rarely
imdertaken except under the influence of this funereal enthusiasm. Falls were
frequent, hut patiently the little ' undertaker ' would follow the impulse of her
instinct and try and try again. Finally the fact of a necessity seemed to dawn
upon the ants (the jar being closed at the top so that they could not get out), and
a portion of the surface opposite from the entrance to the galleries, and close up
against the glass, was used as a burial-ground and sort of kitchen-midden, where
all the refuse of the nest was deposited.

This author also records in his recently published work an in-
teresting piece of information to which he was led by Mrs. Treat.

A visit was paid to a large colony of these slave-makers (JP. sanguvned), which
is established on the grounds adjoining her residence at Vineland, New Jersey. I
noticed that a number of carcases of one of the slave species, Formica fusca, were
deposited together quite near the gates of the nest. They were probably chiefly

1008 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. June

Uie dry bodies of ants brouglit in from recent raida. It was noticed tbat tiie dwi
ants were all of one species, and therefore Mrs. Treat informed me tbat tbe red
slaye-makers never deposited tbeir dead witb tbose of their black eerritoiBy hot
always laid them by themselves, not in groups, but separately, and were caiefiii
to take them a considerable distance from tbe nest. One can hardly resist
pointing here another likeness^between the customs of these social hymenopteia aad
those of human beings, certain of whom carry their distinctaona of race, conditkn
or religious caste even to the gates of the cemetery, in which the poor body monlden
into its mother dust I

Geobgb J. RoiIAKfi.

1881. 1009

CARLYLE'S 'REMINISCENCES:^

The publication of Carlyle's ReminiscenceSj with all, or, if not all,
far too much, of what is said in them of his friends and acquain-
tances, has thrown a sad element of bitterness into the outburst of
admiration and sorrow which followed upon his death. It could not
be otherwise, and the Upas is not the tree that should be planted on
the grave of a great man.

I knew him for, I think, nearly fifty years, and what I know best
is that he was not easily to be understood. One thing about him it
is almost needless to say — that he was like nobody else. The world
must judge men by its experience ; and when the guidance of ex-
perience is wanting, the world is in a way to misjudge. It has had
no experience whatever of men like Carlyle ; and the circumstances
imder which most of these Beminiscences were written may have
made them even more liable to be misunderstood than, under any
ordinary conditions, Carlyle himself would be.

Those to which any exception can be taken were written in deep
distress, in the autumn and winter following the death of his wife.
And ^ so singular was his condition at this time,' Mr. Fronde tells us,
^ that he was afterwards imconscious of what he had done, and when
ten years later I found the Irving MS. and asked him about it, he did
not know to what I was alluding.'

In such a state of disturbance if a man's mind can be saved, it
must be by occupation ; and if any occupation is possible, it will be
that which has been habitual. The habit of Carlyle's mind was to
look into the past, to describe what he saw there, to give it shape and
colour in language, and to write about it ; and this was the resource
to which he betook himself.

Mr. Froude avows frankly enough his undivided responsibility for
the publication of what had been so written.^ He avows his responsi-

' Meminisceneei, By Thomas Carlyle. Edited by James Anthony Fronde. 2 vols.
(London : Longmans and Co., 1881.)

* Mr. Carlyle's will is now published, and adverts to the MS. in these terms : —
« The manuscript is by no means ready for publication ; nay, the questions how, when
(after what delay, seven, ten years), it, or any portion of it» shall be published, are
still dark to me ; but on all such points James Anthony Froude*s practical summing
up and decision is to be taken as mine.'

1010 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. imt

bility ; bat, to judge by what he has donej with no adequate sense of
what it amounts to. ' The reader has here before him,' he says, 'Mr.
Carlyle's own handiwork, but without his last touches, not edited by
himself, not corrected by himself, perhaps most of it not intended for
publication.' Just so ; and th^ reader as he reads, if he feels as I do,
will feel himself to' be overhearing a soliloquy ; and not the less a
soliloquy because the diction is now and then strained and orei-
wrought. It is for the most part less so than was usual with him;
and men who have made the moulding of language the business
of their lives may naturally fall into the practice in solUoquy from
the force of habit.

If then many of the things in this book which we are gricTed to
find in it had merely passed through Carlyle's mind, imspoken and
unwritten, should we have thought him so very much to blame? Do
we not all of us, when not determined to shut our eyes, see failings
and disfigurements in our friends and associates, and find no fiuiit
with ourselves for seeing them, provided we make no mention of
them?

. But it will be said that in some instances Carlyle has imagiBed
faiilts and disfigurements which did not exist, and has failed to see
merits and attractions which did. That also will happen to most of
us; allowing ourselves in our silent meditations to come to concltmons,
both positive and negative, from . inadequate premisses and \f ith im-
perfect discernment.

No doubt it would be much better if we did no such thing ; better
if our secret thoughts went quite another way ; especially vhcD
measuring the merits of those who have been kind to us ; anditisBot
surprising that when the misappreciation is made known it should be
angrily denounced by the friends of those who have suffered wong.
They may * be angry and sin not.' And there are instances in which
even others who stand apart must feel strongly in sympathy with those
who are ag^eved. On the other hand, not a few of thesehastjor
unfounded judgments, as they impute no moral infirmity and inflict
nothing that can be caUed a personal injury, need not be matter of
personal reproach to their author ; and those to whom they c5ome
amiss, whether on private grounds or on the ground of public interests
involved in literary reputations, will be better employed, if thej
happen to be competent witnesses, in the rectification of what thej
know to be wrong than in censure and complaint.

As an example which fails to my own lot, I will advert to what is
^aid about Wordsworth. Carlyle's insensibility to his pow&s u
a poet it is needless to deal with. His work is before the world,
and the world knows what it is worth. But everything that cfm throw
light upon him is interesting, and when I read what Carlyle saji d
his conversation, I feel it due to his memory to say something of iC3
effect on myself. And the more as it was through me that Carljk

1881- CARLYLE'S ' REMINI8CENGE8: 1011

became acquainted with Wordsworth, and most of the conversations in
question took place in a house which he speaks of as mine.' He
accords great praise to Wordsworth's faculty of delineating the men of
his time* ^ Never, or never but once, had I seen a stronger intellect,
a more luminous and veracious power of insight, directed upon such
a survey of fellow-men and their contemporary journey through the
world.' ^ So far well ; and it is evident that there was no desire to depre-
ciate. But on another occasion when the talk was about ^ literature,
literary laws,' &c., Wordsworth is represented as * joyfully reverent of the
" wells of English undefiled," though stone dumb as to the deeper rules
and wells of Eternal Truth and Harmony, which you were to try and
set forth by said undefiled wells of English or what other speech you
had I To me a little disappointing, but not much, though it would
have given me pleasure had the robust veteran man emerged a little
out of vocables into things, now and then, as he never once chanced
to do.' ^ There is a good deal more of the like tone and tenor in
giving an account of divers other conversations.

Now, all this might be a fair inference enough from what Garlyle
happened to hear from Wordsworth in conversation ; and Garlyle,
speaking to himself, may not have thought it necessary to say to
himself that an inference from a few examples is no more than an
inference hue usque. But the inference was certainly an erroneous
one. Those who have had a large experience of Wordsworth in con-*
versation know that it was mere matter of accident whether he trod
upon the earth or mounted into the skies. He never dreamt of
display, and whatever topic, celestial or terrene, happened to come
across him, he was equally ready to deal with. Whilst, therefore, I
maintain that there is no ground for imputing to Carlyle any delibe*
rately unjust disparagement, I think that I may claim more credit, as
founded upon more knowledge, for my own estimate of Wordsworth's
powers in conversation ; and what that estimate was at the time of
those conversations in my ^'end's house in London, and what it is
still, is expressed in a letter written there and then, though no doubt
prompted by other examples than those at which Carlyle happened to
be present : —

This old philosopher is one of the most extraordinary human phenomena that
one could have in the house. He has the simplicity and helplessness of a child in
regard to the little transactions of life ; and whilst he is being directed and dealt
with in regard to them, he keeps tumbling out the highest and deepest thoughts
that the mind of man can reach, in a stream of discourse which is so oddly broken
by the little hitches and interruptions of common life, that we admire and laugh at
him by turns. Everything that comes into his mind comes out ; weakness and
strength ; affections or vanities ; so that if ever an opportunity was offerod of seeing

* It was the house of an elderly lady, a friend and connection of mine, with whom
I was in the habit of staying when she was iu London.

* Vol. ii. p. 336.

* VoL ii. pp. 332-3.

1012 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Jane

a human being through and through, we haye it in the person of ^'(Mnaii
eloquent.' •

Of Coleridge's gifts of speech Carlyle is still less appreciatiTe
than of Wordsworth's : —

I had him to myself once or twice in various parts of the garden walk aodtzied
hard to get something about Kant from him — about reason verm* undterstan^
and the like — ^but in yain. Nothing came that was of use to me that dnj or, is Ivt,
any day. The sight and sound of a sage who was so venerated by those aboo:
me, and whom I too would willingly have venerated but could not— Uus was alL^

So in the Reminiacencea. But not altogether so in the Life
of Sterling.^ There we find Coleridge to be * A sublime man; iho
alone in those dark days had saved his crown of spiritual loao-
hood; escaping from the black materialisms and revolationaij
deluges with '^ God, Freedom, Immortality " still his : A king of
men.' And though this is followed by a long train of ofiets,iitii
denials of any meaning being to be gathered from the mysteries of
his doctrinal declamations, yet, all this notwithstanding, there vere
' glorious Islets ' to be seen ^ rising out of the haze ' — *' bahnj, soooj
Islets, Islets of the blest and the intelligible ' — and * eloquent artisti-
cally expressive words you always had; piercing radiances of & most
subtle insight came at intervals ; tones of noble, pious sympathj,ie-
cognisable as pious though strangely coloured, were never wanting
long.' My experiences of Coleridge's conversation were in accord
with what is thus expressed in the Life of Sterlvag^ and by no means
with the passage from the Remmiacencea. What opportunities Garlyfe
had of listening to Coleridge, I know only from the Remvmmio^
They may not have been very ample. And there is this to be
borne in mind — that Carlyle himself had a great gift of speech, and
when these gifts confront each other, however amicably, tiie giftaoC
auscultation, whether on one side or the other, are not genecallr
found to be great in proportion. My own opportunities were not so
abundant in the case of Coleridge as in that of Wordsworth, but they

• Mr. Carlyle*8 description, or rather his wife's, adopted by him, of Mrs. Woriswonh.
whom they once saw, or thought they saw, at a dinner party, is ao wholly oppoBte,BiA
only to what she was, bnt to what she was manifestly seen to be by those vfao d^
not know her as well as by those who did, that I cannot but think there was ampij
a mistake of one person for another. She was not * little ' but rather tall ; and as to
the other misrepresentations, what I have to say is, that her manner and depcBtaeEt
were in entire harmony with her character — unexceptionable in theirquietgiaoead
easy simplicity ; and that, like another dweller in the woods and mountains knows td
her husband. Nature had said of her when she was bom, —

' This child I to myself will take.
She shall be mine and I will make
A Lady of mine own.'

This was absolutely true of Mrs. Wordsworth.

• Vol i. pp. 230-1.

• Life of SUrlingy chapter viii.

1881. CARLTLE'8 ' REMIMSOENCES: 1013

were probably equal to those of Carlyle. It is only in his latter
jears and in his decline that he could be seen by either of us, and what
I recollect is, that I could not sleep at nights after hearing him talk.
Between April 1823 and February 1824, 1 kept an occasional diary,
in which the last entries are these : —

February 24, 1824. — Coleridge said he did not perceive his daughter *& beauty.
The perception of female beauty was the only thing in which his mind was conscious
of age. It had decayed with him. I expressed my admiration of a distinct con-
tour of features. Coleridge concurred, but said, ' the contour of the &ce should be
an act of the face, and not something suffered by the &ce.'

Felfruary 26, 1824. — Certainly the most extraordinary evening I ever passed ;
Coleridge with his luminous face and white head, Irving's wild dark locks and
wilder eyes, and the keen analytical visage of Basil Montagu. The poring and
mining of Wordsworth out of the depths of his intellect is not half so wonderful as
Coleridge was to-night, and the buoyancy of Southey is only more delightful.

August 5, 1824. — At Coleridge's agiun, and with the same company. He was
this evening less vehement than I have heard him, but no less extraordinary and
admirable. Ilis language was less interrupted by logical catches, and more fanciful
and romantic. For instance, in speaking of men led by age to fix their thoughts
on that which was permanent within them, * when their eyes grew dimmer and
their ears less apprehensive, and the objects which surrounded them more shadowy
and cold, &c., &c . . . He did not say that this would be the case with the man
who had spent all his life in trading, with only the principle of money-getting, or
in the pursuit of a not less foolish ambition, — the man who chained himself to the
wheel of events and was rolled rapidly on without being able to stop himself for an
instant to think of anything further than the objects which surrounded him ; who
was in fact only a reflection of the surrounding objects — it was not to be said, wheo
the objects grew dim and disappeared, but that he would go out — ^it was not to ba
said but that the mirror would be a blank, when the objects which were its popu-
lation were removed,' &c

My diary goes no further, but I can add a supplement from a
letter (February 18, 1829):—

I have been two or three times to see the old gentleman this winter, and his
talk has been sometimes exceedingly curious and sometimes very magnificent. I
never knew such a scope of mind exhibited in any man, — such lurgeness of views,
together with such subtlety of insight, and a vivid imagination flashing through
all.

If Carlyle is less than just to Wordsworth and Coleridge, on the
other hand his description of Southey is genial as well as faithful and
true* It was through me that they became known to each other —
the time soon after the publication of Carlyle's work on the French
Sevolution. Southey, in speaking of it to me, called it < a Pindaric
History,' adding that he should probably read it six times over. This
augured well for a meeting between them, and, judging from the RemU
niaceTVceSj the meeting was an unalloyed pleasure to Carlyle, nor is
there, in the case of Southey, any backing out from his first impres-
sions* Southey was of all the men of letters of his generation that I
knew the most personally attractive, and he found favoiu: with
Carlyle.

972 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. June

best method of maintaining the independence of the poor, properly
attach the highest importance to all efforts which enable them to
dispense with external assistance. We have it stated on the highest
authority that it is the giver who is blessed rather than the recipient.
A favourite subject for the modem poet's idyl is the Lady Bountiful
of the village, scattering blessings on all sides from her well-stocked
purse and basket. The wise economist of the future will turn his
back on such relics of feudal dependence, and will see true pathos,
the groundwork of all poetry, in the visit of the working-man to the
pawnshop, where he will find on easy terms the means by which he
may ward off the passing effects of imavoidable calamity. It is im-
possible for the earner of wages to foresee and guard against all the
ills of life. His friendly club will shelter him against sickness and
perhaps old age. But in our present crowded state of population,
waves of commercial depression must occasionally cause suffering hj
depriving even the best workmen of occupation for a time. The
little hoard may soon become exhausted. Work and prosperity may
be in sight, yet there may be a few days or weeks to be tided over
before they actually come. This is the critical moment of the work-
ing-man's life. If only he can manage to pass through it without
the contamination of public or the degradation of private charity,
it will be indeed well for him. When a man has once tasted
the sweets of either form of extraneous help, he has taken the first
step downwards. It cannot, of course, be contended that such help
can always be avoided. It is only asserted, in words as strong as
human language can devise, that the philanthropist who has offered
the working-man a means of self-escape from his dilemma without
degrading him has deserved well of Crod and man.

It is not the object of the present article to decry a highly re-
spectable body of men, the pawnbrokers of this country ; most of
them have the reputation of carrying on their business in an intelli-
gent and honourable manner. But the interest which the law allows
them to take from their customers is very high. There is, in fact,
scarcely any limit to it, inasmuch as a special contract maybe entered
into between the pawnbroker and his customer by which the latter
may undertake to pay, on loans of more than 2{., any rate of interest
that may be agreed upon. This special rate varies from 15 to 30 per
cent, or even more. But if no such contract is made, the legal rate
charged — ^in addition to Id. for the ticket-^is 25 per cent, per annum,
or ^d. per month for every two shillings lent when the loan is 2L or
under, and 20 per cent, from 2{. to 102. There can be no doubt what-
ever that, even on these onerous terms, the English pawnbrokers are
a great advantage to many of their customers. Yet the price paid
for the accommodation is so high that the working classes have a
natural repugnance to making use of this resource. The pawn-shop
is no Mont-de-pi^t6. It is associated with the idea of dissipation,

.1881. PARLYLE'S 'REMINISCENCES: 1016

ai^d tJtie stxuggle was mU^urall; fierce as well as brave. No one can
wonder that a spirit of Qppugnancy should have been generated, or
ihatit should have come into the keenest encounter with the favourites
of that so unfriendly world.

The feelings with which, he fought his way were softened when
the victory was won ; but then came his isolation after the death of
his wife, which took him back to his earlier life ; he fought his old
battles over again, and whilst loving with an agony of love her whom
he had lost, the morbid, and morose contempt with which he had
looked down upon the world that ktkew him not, possessed him once
more. Even at other .seasons, and indeed at all seasons, except that
of his first youth, there was an habitual naoumfulness which pervaded
his views of mankind and lowered his estimate of their gifts and
felicities* I find, myself writing in 1844 (in a letter) of a man I
knew (who was afterwards to take a high place in polijkical life), and,
after giving my. owu view of him, quoting Carlyle's :— ^< He is a calmy
immovable man, very learned and very active in mind.' • • • < Carlyle
says '^ he is a melancholy, mournful man, like an old ruined bam
filled with owlets ; " but I think the moumfulness is Carlyle's own,
yrho takes a mournful view of everything.'

The effect of low q>irits in lowering Carlyle's estimates of man-
kind may be the more clearly seen by comparison with those he
formed at an earlier and healthier season — a short one unfoirtunately,
lasting only from 1815, when he was nineteen years of age, till 1818,
when he says: ^I was beginning my four or five most miserable,
dark, sick and heavy-laden years. I was without experience or con-
nection in the sphere of human business, was of shy humour, proud
eaough and to spare, and had begun. my long curriculum of dyspepsia
which has never ended since.' ^^ Before that gloomy after-life had set
in, the spirit in which Carlyle regarded his fellow-creatures was by no
means generally uncharitable. In his walks he

lodged with shepherds w4io had clean solid cottages ; wholesome eggs, milk, oat-
biead, porridge, clean blankets to their beds, and a great deal of human sense and
unadulterated natural politeness. Canny, shrewd, and witty fellows when you set
them talking. . • • No sort of peasant labourers I have ever come across seemed to
me so happily situated, morally and physically well developed, and deserving to be
happy, as those shepherds of the Cheviots. 0 fortunatos nimium I But perhaps it
id all altered not a little now, as I sure enough am who speak of it, ^*

No doubt ; and had he happened to see the same peasants again after
the alteration in himself, whether or not they had undergone altera-
tion, he would probably have spoken of them in an altered tone.

Nor Is it only in the class in which he was bom that he found at
this earliest and undiseased period of his life much to be pleased
with. In one of his expeditions he came across a Mr. Campbell and
bis sisters, ' of a superior richly furnished stratum of society ; ' Mr.

w Vol. i. p. HI. «' Vol. i. pp. 136-6.

1016 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Juae

Campbell < practical and most polite/ and his sisten'excelleBtkui
old ladies, with their wild Highland accent, wire-drawn kt mm
good manners, and good principles.' '^ And the fnends and com-
panions of these happier years wore an ever bright aspect to his eves
in after life, clouded only by pity for their afflictioiis or eonow for
their death.

Irving, though it is rather nominally than actually tluit he is the
subject of a volume, is of course the most conspicuous in thegnHips;
and, in order to undecstand the depth and ardour of which Cul^
was capable in his personal attachments, it is above all neceaaij to
trace Uie course of his relations with Irving in each of their Bevenl
stages and tmder the iufluence of the varying circumstances bebqgiDg
to each. But whilst the portion of IteminisceTices to which bring's
name givQS a title, supplies the necessary clue, the Danatioii is so
entangled with undergrowths and intersected by cross-roads, tk
something more than merely reading it through is neoessaiytoget
any distinci conception of what the friendship was and of what it
went through in the story of its life.

I will endeavour to give it a more clear and consecotife eftct,
and if I should succeed, I think it will be apparent thatCvIjJe,
under all the trials of time and circumstance, never lost hold of his
great love for Irving, and never for more than a passing moioe&tlost
sight of the inborn qualities of Irving's noble and generous sitoie;
retaining, even at the parting of the ways and in moments vhen
sympathy was impossible, some -colours of the radiant admiraSiaD
which had sprung up in the dawn and daybreak of the firiendshipi

In their youthful and cheerful life at Kirkealdy from 1815 to
1818 there was no strain put upon Carlyle's sympathies. Eadins
peculiarly fitted to be the other's companion, by force of gam, by
intellectual and literary tastes, and, what is perhaps still more poti*
nent to the charms of companionship, by a sense of humour.

The first change of circumstances was when in 1818 the; both
threw up the occupation of schoolmaster at Kirkcaldy and wentcaa
venture to Edinburgh. In Carlyle's case the change from a small
but certain income earned by dull but quiet labour, to a haphazaid
income to be earned how he could, may have had something to do
with the change to gloom and iU-health which followed. Iniog ^
sanguine by temperament. Carlyle was not.

Irving^s Toice (he says) was to me one of blessedness and new hope. He iM
not hear of my gloomy prognostications ; all nonsense that I should never get osto:
these obstructions and impossibilities ; the real impossibility was that sacha tikst
&c., should not cut itself clear one day. He was very generous to ereirbodVi
' talent/ especially to mine ; which to myself was balefolly dubious, nothing bet
bare scafibld poles, weather-beaten comer-pieces of perhaps a 'potential taleQ;
even yiBible to me. His predictions of what I was to be flew into the oompietelT

" Vol. i. pp. 130-1.

1881. CARLFLE'S * REMINISCENCES: 1017

incredible ; and, however welcome, I could only rank them as devout imaginations
and quiz them away. ' Tou will see now/ he would say, ' one day we two wiU
shake hands across the brook, you as first in literature, I as first in divinity ; and
people will say, ''Both these fellows are from Annandale. Where is Annan-
dale ? " ' This I have heard him say more than once, always in a laughing way,
and with self-mockery enough to save it from being barrenly vain. *'

The next change was a separation, but a separation in place of
abode only, Irving going to Glasgow to be an assistant to Dr.
Chalmers. Intercourse by visits and correspondence never ceased,
and the relations between them were the same as before.

The third change was a serious one for Irving and a sad one for
Garlyle. In 1821 the good repute which Irving had established for
himself at Glasgow brought him an invitation to London, and he ac-
cepted the ministry in Hatton Garden. The * hurly-burly of business '
attending the arrangements was hardly over when there came upon him
what Garlyle calls his ' flaming popularity, spreading, mounting without
limits ; and, instead of business hurly-burly, there was whirlvrind of con-
flagration : ' — in which whirlwind the intercourse between the friends
went to wreck. Garlyle looked and longed for the accustomed letters
in vain. * In some sense,' he says, f I had lost my friend's society
(not my friend himself ever) from that time.' He was hurt and mor-
tified and indicates a suspicion that his pride as well as his love had
been wounded by Irving's silence, and that there had been a lurking
jealousy as well as a sense of neglect. For Garlyle, if occasionally
severe in his judgment of others, is, in his gloomier moods of self-in-
quisition, not very charitable towards himself. No doubt it was not with
altogether unmixed feelings that he regarded bis friend's popularity,
the news of which reached him in such ^ vague, vast, fitful and decidedly
fvligvaoua forms,' and which had made Irving for a time * the property
of all the world rather than of his friends ; ' but his love for Irving was
unabated and his spleen spent itself upon Irving's worshippers and the
nature of the homage they rendered : — ^ For though there were beautiful
items in his present scene of life, a great majority under specious
figure were intrinsically poor, vulgar and importunate.'

This sadness of silence was not to last for more than a few months.
Irving, though ceasing to write, had not been forgetful of his friend,
and the proof of care and remembrance given in providing him with
Charles Buller for a pupil did much to reassure Garlyle and soften his
feelings of separation. But when the enthusiasm which Irving had
created carried him further and further into the wilderness, it was
not the separation only which Garlyle regarded with regret ; for he
was disturbed by doubtful forecasts of what would come of it to Irving.
Still, so long as all that he saw was seen from a distance, and Irving
himself was joyful and triumphant, he could feel a genuine satisfac-
tion in his friend's success.

" Vol. i. pp. l87-«.
Vol. IX.— No. 52. 3 Y

.1018 THE mNETEENTH CENTURY. June

r It wa9 whan Carlyle went to liondon in 1824 that a severer tmd
iras to come. He then found himself in personal contact with Irving
himself and with his preachings and popnlarities, and his Mend seemed
to him ^ nothing like so happy as in old days ; inwardly confiised,
anxious, dissatisfied ; though as it were denying it to himself, and striv-
ing, if not to talk big, which he hardly ever did, to think big upon all
this. • • . Happiness, alas, he was no more to have, ever, even in the
old measure, in this world ! ' And as Irving wandered into wilder and
darker regions, Carlyle traced his erratic courses to inordinate aspira-
tions, and a noble but not unambitious belief that he was himself to be
the apostle of a new Christianity throughout the world. Nevertheless,
whilst the delusion, and the swarming admirers and enthusiasts who
ministered to it, were sad subjects to contemplate, tJiere was a large
measure of attributes left in Irving to be contemplated with sympathy
and a loving appreciation : —

He had much quiet seriousness^ beautiful piety and charity, in this bad time of
agitation and disquietude, and I was often honestly sorry for him. Here was st5\
the old true man, and his new element seemed so false and abominable. Hooesth,
though not 80 purely sorry as now — now when element and man are alifca gone,
and all that was or partook of paltry in one's own view of them is abo moom&llj
gone!

Carlyle's own condition during the ten months he spent in Lcndon
(from June 1824 to March 1825) was less than ever &TOUiable to
seeing things on their bright side*

The accursed hag Dyspepsia had got me bitted and bridled, and "vras e\%r
striving to make my waking living day a thing of ghastly nightmares. I resisted
what I could ; never did yield or surrender to her ; but she kept my heart r^
heavy, my battle very sore and hopeless.

And it can now be understood what he meant when he said that,
from the time Irving went to London, he had ' in some sense ' lo^
his friend's ^ society.' They met frequently in London, but with a still
diminishing freedom of commtmication, owing only to the polpit
popularity—

.the smoke of that foul witches* cauldron ; there waa never anything else to bkme ;
Irving was sorrowfully occupied in scanning and surveying tlie wrong ade of thar
inmiense popularity, the outer or right side of which had been so splendid and }aA
given rise to such sacred and glorious hopes. The crowd of people floeking itss^
him contmued in ahated but still superabundant qoantaty.and vivacity, bat ma not
of the old high quality any more. The .thought that the Chziatian rdigioa vas
ag^ to domioate aU minds and the world to become an Eden by hia thxiee Uesad
means, was &tally declaring itself to have been a dream, and he could not eonsesi
to believe it such, — ^never he I That was the secret of his inward
resolutions ; out into the wild struggles and clutchmgs towards the
the unregainable, which were more and more conspicuous in the sequeL Cb

•now, I gradually found, listening to certain interpreters of prophecy, tbinKng ti>
cast his own great &culty into that hopeless quagmire along with them.

And in this stage of Irving's career Cariyle took leave of him^ asd.

1881. GARLYLP8 ^REMINISCENCES: 1019

having nothing more to do in Lcmdon, betook himself to a farm called
Hoddam Hill in Annandale.

I

Hitherto the widening distance between the friendfihad grown out
of religious divergences in Irving alone ; but henceforth there was to
be a religious change in Carlyle. In his solitary life at Hoddam Hill,
and while Irving was plunging into more and more unfathomable
depths, Carlyle was to rise into ethereal altitudes. Neither before nor
after this period does it appear that Carlyle, when denouncing the
creed of his friend, intimated what creed, if any, he would propose to
substitute. Hitherto the negative and destructive forces seemed ex-
clusively at work. And even now what part.the affirmative and con-
structive had to play is much of a mystery.

I lived very silent, diligent, had long solitaty rides ... my meditatings, musings
and reflections were * continual ; my thoughts went wandering (or travelling)
through eternity, through time and through space, bo &r as poor I had scanned
or known, and were now to my endless solacement coming baek with tidings to
me I This year I found that I had conquered all my scepticisms, agonising douht-
ings, fearful wrestlings with the foul and vile mud-gods of my epoch ; had escaped
as from a worse than Tartarus, with all its Phlegethons and Stygian quagmires,
and was emerging free in spirit into the eternal blue of ether, where, hlessed he
Heayen I I have for the spiritual part ever since lived, looking down upon the
welterings of my poor fellow-creatures in such multitudes and millions stUl stuck
in that fatal element. . • . I had in effect gained an immense victory, and for a
number of years had, in spite of nerves and chagrins, a constant inward happiness
that was quite royal and supreme. • • • Nowhere can I recollect of myself such
pious musings, communings silent and spontaneous with Fact and Nature, as in these
poor Annandale localities. The sound of the kirk-hell once or twice on Sunday
mornings from Iladdan Kirk, about a mile off on the plain below me, was strangely
touching, like the departing voice of eighteen hundred years.

No one who knew Carlyle, least of all Irving, could fitil to rejoice
at the personal enfranchisement and illumination^ so triumphantly
announced ; but if no substance of doctrine was brought to light along
with it, it would be of little avail to turn Irving from the error of his
ways or bridge over the. gulf between them; and if Irving, knew no
more (and it does not appear that he knew anything) of Carlyle's
new religion than is thus announced, he would learn as little of any
articulate beliefs from Carlyle, as Carlyle learnt from < the tongues '
which were soon to break out in the Irvingite congregations, and which,
five or six years later, Carlyle had an opportunity of overhearing in
Irving's back drawing-room. And although the lights from Heaven
which burst upon him in 1826 remained with him forty years later,
when he wrote his R&niiniscence8j there is no revelation from first to
last firom which his ^ poor weltering fellow-creatures ' can divine what
he did beUeve and what be did not.

Carlyle had a certain ^ harsh kind of sorrow ' about Irving, and a
consciousness growing more bitter that each was losing his hold of the
other, as the hostilities and contentions Irving was provoking grew
more wild and tempestuous ; but he made no attempt to save him

3y2

1020 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. i^

in this stage of bis journey downwards, and felt that ^ for the preie&t
it was better to be absolved from corresponding with him.*

The next stage was in 1827, when Garlyle was married aad
living at Edinburgh, whither Irving came on some religious emad,
and in the midst of troubles, haste, and controveisy, paid Carlyleud
his wife a visit of half an hour, but seemed much changed, and
before he went away insisted upon praying with them, much agaiut
their will, and left them with a dreary impression that they were
' not a little divorced from him and bidden to shift for themsdves.'

This, however, was but one of the vicissitudes through which tlie
friendship had to pass. When Irving next came to Scotland k
stayed with Garlyle for a day or two at Craigenputtoch; and tlu
time, being on a mission which involved him in no struggles or ooo-
troversies, he was in an easy and cheerful mood ; the fidends fimmd
themselves, on some points at least, in accord ; ' he was quite alooe
with us, and franker and happier than I had seen him for a long
time; ' and ^ it was beautiful summer weather, pleasant to sannter ii
with old friends in the safe green solitudes, no sound aadible bat
that of our own voices, and of the birds and trees.'

Their next meeting was not till 1831, and the scene im m
London. By that time the prophesyings and ' the tongues 'had been
let loose in all their raving extravagances, and Irving, riding on the
whirlwind, having become a scare to the Scotch Church, had heea
indignantly cast out of its pale. The meeting between the frieiHls,
however, was quiet ; Irving was ' brotherly as ever ' in his reception
of Garlyle, and they spoke without reserve on the religious qnestion
The result of course was that they found the division between them
more and more hopeless, more and more sorrowful; and Culfie,
whilst intimating that the friendship stood its ground, and that
they were both anxious it should do so, ascribes to Irving, as tbe
nobler of the two in friendship, the larger share in the recoociliiig
element.

In the course of the winter the crazy antics which the weaker
brethren gave way to led to a division amongst the Irvingites them-
selves, and there were brawlings and riots in their own choicL
Garlyle looked upon it all with profotmd grief, but with anger too.
That it should have been with anger as well as grief, is to be de-
plored; but is it always to be assumed that with the more anger
there is the less love ? I think not ; and, at all events, when GaHjle
had relieved his feelings by telling Irving plainly what he thought,
and his expostulations had been met ^ in a style of modesty and
of friendly magnanimity which nobody could surpass,' the anger vas
all gone, and there was nothing left but a sad anticipation of the
end to come, with the feeling * How are the mighty fallen 1 ' Vhcn
the fall was so soon after into the grave, there remained a most lonog
remembrance of all they had been to each other in their happier da,^

1881. CARLYLirS 'REMINISCENCES: 1021

of all they had continued to be when their ways lay unhappily asunder,
and of all that they never ceased to be till parted by death.

Such is the story to be educed, or rather extricated, from the
strange, rambling, sometimes confused but often luminous and always
sincere narrations, which occupy almost entirely one volume of the
JUminiacences. And I have dwelt upon it at some length because
lam anxious that those who are indignant (justly I admit) with
some occasional disparagements which have seen the light they
ought never to have seen, should be led themselves to exercise the
charitable judgment they find to have been occasionally clouded by
mi^nthropic moods in Garlyle, and, on a survey of the evidence
afforded by the Remvniacences as a whole, give him credit for the
great and enduring love . and the genial sympathies and admirations
of which he was capable, and in which in his better days he
abounded, and do their endeavour to forget the instances in which
his sad and solitary musings took a taint of moroseness.

I have little to say of the second volume. It is occupied for the
most part with a funereal commemoration of his wife, sometimes
passionate, sometimes prosaic; the threnodies interrupted by long
tracts of genealogical and other details which he must have known
to be so wholly uninteresting to any reader unconnected with the
fiunily, that there is perhaps in no part of the Reminiscences stronger
evidence that they were not meant to be read by others. His
tributes to the attractions and virtues of his wife, and his penitential
reflections upon himself and his relations with her, may seem to
point in the other direction; but repeated as they are again and
again in almost identical terms, they are more likely to have been
mere ejaculations for the relief of his mind from an intolerable burden.

Of the lady thus commemorated such an interesting and charm«
ing account has been given by Mrs. Oliphant,'^ whose intimacy with
her was far beyond what I could claim, that it would be idle for me
to follow in her steps. My meetings with Mrs. Garlyle were chiefly
in a country house where so many eminent persons were accustomed
to assemble that she would naturally be more disposed to listen than
to talk, and I knew more of her powers of conversation from what
has been told me by others than from personal experience. I had
ample opportunities of appreciating Carlyle's own powers in that
kind ; and as, in opposing my own to his estimate in the cases of
Wordsworth and Coleridge, I have produced contemporary notes of
the impressions made upon me, I am glad to be able to do the like
by Garlyle himself. They were put together in a work intended for
posthumous publication and privately printed three or four years
ago ; and I have the more satisfaction in quoting them, as, owing to
an accidental occurrence, they came to Garlyle's knowledge. A
common Mend of his and mine happened to have the book in her

i« In Maemillan'M Magacine for ApriL

1022 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Jnne

hands when he paid her a visit, and he asked if he might be aflowei
to see it. She naturallj referred the question to me ; and though I
had doubts as to the reception it would meet with at his hands, I
did not like to find myself saying of him behind his back what I would
not be prepared to say to his face, and I gave my consent Hj
doubts were soon dissipated, for in returning the book to onr friend
he told her he had been greatly pleased, and that 'sometimes I bui
been much too flattering, though in describing his characteristics I
was sometimes quite out.' The passage is the last of a series of
sketches of eminent men with whom I had been acquainted, and with
it I conclude what I have to say of Carlyle and his i2emint8eenc».

• . . I have reserved to the last place — ^why I know not, unless it
be on the principle that the last should be first and the first last-K»ie
with whom England, Scotland, and CFermany have almost as intimate
and as friendly an acquaintance as I can claim for myself— Thomas
Carlyle : and yet the acquaintance I can claim is very intimate and
most firiendly.

His relations with the people are without a precedent, as fir as I
am aware, in these times or in any; the human paradox of ^ period.
He is their ^ chartered libertine,' assailing them and their rights, in-
flisting that they should be everywhere ruled with a rod of iron, and
yet more honoured and admired by them than any demagogue who
pays them knee-worship. In courting the people it is easy,nod0abt,
to err on the side of ol^equiousness, and to lose their respect Butit
is far from easy to defy them, and yet to conquer. How the conquest
has been achieved by Carlyle is a perplexing problem. Is it that the
man being beyond all question a genuine man, there is nevertheless
something unreal about his opinions ; so that the splendid apparitions
of them are admired and applauded by the people, as they woiild
admire a great actor in the character of Coriolanus and another in
the character of Menenius Agrippa, and still more an actor who coold
play both parts in turn ?

But then it may be asked, how are we to reconcile the imdonbted
sincerity of the man, with the questionable reality of the opinions?
And it is the solution of this problem which, to my apprehension,
discloses the peculiar constitution of Carlyle's mind.

He is impatient of the slow processes by which most thonghtfol
men arrive at a conclusion. His own mind is not logical ; ani
whilst other eminent writers of his generation have had perhaps to>)
much reverence for logic, he has had too little. With infinite in-
dustry in searching out historical facts, his way of coming by political
doctrines is sudden and precipitate. What can be known by ina^
without conscious reasoning, or at least without self-qnestiofiis;
operations of the reason, he knows well, and can flash upon us ^
words which are almost like the ' word which Isaiah the son of Amos

1881. OARLYLBPS 'REMINISCENCES: 1023

saw: But when he deals with what is not so to be known, being
intolerant of lawful courses, and yet not content with a negative, or
passive, or neutral position, he snatches his opinions, and holds them
as men commonly do hold what they have snatched, tenaciously for
the moment, but not securely. And thence comes the sort of un-
reality of opinion which I have ventured to impute to the most
faithful and true-hearted of mankind.

An unlimited freedom of speech is permitted to his friends, and
I remember w;hen some wild sentiments escaped him long ago, telling
him that he was an excellent man in all the relations of life, but that
he did not know the difference between right and wrong. And if
such casualties of conversation were to be accepted as an exposition
of his moral mind, any one might suppose that these luminous shafts
of his came out of the blackness of darkness.

Perhaps, too, he is a little dazzled by the reflex of his wildfire, and
feels for the moment that what is so bright must needs show forth
what is true ; not recognising the fact that most truths are as dull as
they are precious ; simply because in the course of ages they have
worked their way to the exalted, but not interesting, position of
truisms.

He was one of the most valued and cherished friends of Lady
Ashburton ; and as he and I were both in the habit of paying h^
long visits in the country (at Bay House, Alverstoke, when she was
Lady Harriet Baring, at the Grange when her husband had succeeded
his father), I had opportunities of knowing him such as London
cannot provide. And from Bay House I find myself writing of him
to Miss Fenwick thus (January 22, 1848) : —

We have bad Oarlyle here all the time^ — a longer time than I have hitherto
seen him for. His conversation is as bright as ever, and as striking in its imagina-
tive effects. But his mind seems utterly incapable of coming to any conclusion
&bout anything : and if he says something that seems for the moment direct, as
nvell as forcible, in the way of an opinion, it is hardly out of his mouth before he
says something else that breaks it in pieces. He can see nothing but the chaos of
his own mind reflected in the universe. Guidance, therefore, there is none to be
got from him ; nor any illumination, save that of storm-lights. But I suppose one
cannot see anything so rich and strange as his mind is without gaining by it in
some unconscious way, as well as finding pleasure and pain in it. It is fruitful of
both.

And I wrote in the same sense to Aubrey de Vere : —

As to the rest of the people we have had at Alverstoke, some of them were
agreeable, but none interesting except Oarlyle, who from time to time threw his
blue lights across the conversation. Strange and brilliant he was as ever, but
more than ever adrift in his opinions ; if opinions he could be said to have ; for
they darted about like the monsters of the solar microscope, perpetually devourinf^
each other.

I did not mean to imply, of course, that he had not, what he
has made known to all the world that he had in a superlative degree^

1024 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. }^

divers rooted predilections and unchangeable aTeraons. Both aie
strong in Lim ; whether equally strong, it is not easy to ^j. There
have been endnent men in all ages who have combined in different
measures and proportions the attributes of idolater andioonochsL
They ^e imdoubtedly combined in Carlyle ; the former perhaps pte-
dominating in his writings, the latter in his conveisation. ^Hiat
was unaccountable was that such a man should have cbosen as the
object of his idolatry, ^iste stultorum magister' — Snocess. Long
before his life of Cromwell came out, I heard him insistiiig in ooo-
versation upon the fact that Cromwell had been throughout hiscaner
invariably successful ; and having with much satisfaction traced the
long Une of his successes from the beginning to the end, he added,
' it is true they got him out of his grave at the Bestoration and stock
his head up over the gate at Tyburn, — ^but not till he had quite done
with it.'

He would scarcely have sympathised with the sentiment to ifaidi
the last breath of Brutus gave utterance, —

I shall have glory by this losing day
More than Octayiua and Mark Antony
By their yile conqueat shall attain unto —

and the vile Conqueror Frederick could engage more of hisadimndon
than most honest men will be disposed to share. Perhaps, hoverer,
it was a waning admiration, — ^less as he proceeded with his histoiy
than when he began it ; and it should not be forgotten that he ended
by entitling it a life of Frederick ^ called ' the Great.

His powers of invective and disparagement, on the other hand,
are exercised in conversation sometimes in a manifest spirit of eoD-
tradiction and generally with an infusion of humour, giving them at
one time the character of a passage of arms in a tournament oiim.
fight, at another that of a grotesque dance of mmnmers; sothit^
forcible as they often are, they are not serious enough to give offenee.

He delights in knocking over any pageantry of another mans
setting up. One evening at the Grange a party of gentlemen,
returning from a walk in the dusk, had seen a magnificent meteor,
one which filled a place in the newspapers for some days afler«aid&
They described what they had beheld in glowing colours and with
much enthusiasm. Carlyle, having heard them in silence to the end,
gave his view of the phenomenon : —

' Aye, some sulphuretted hydrogen, I suppose, or some mbbi^ of
that kind/

In his invectives as well as in effusions when it wonld be Ies»
unexpected, there would generally be something which met the eje.
When he spoke of a thing, under whatever feeling or impulse, he
seemed to see it. He paid a visit to Lord Ashburton at a shootiog
box in Scotland, at a time when the cholera was supposed to he

1881. CARLYLKS 'REMINISCENCES: 1025

approachisg, and there was a retired physician staying in the house
to be ready for any emergency. Garlyle was not well, and was very
gloomy, and shut himself up in his room for some days, admitting no
one. At last Lady Ashburton was a little disturbed at his ways, and
begged Dr. Wilson just to go in to him and see whether there was
anything seriously amiss. The Doctor went into his room, and
presently came flying out again ; and his account was that Garlyle
had received him with a volley of invectives against himself and his
whole profession, saying that < of all the sons of Adam they were the
most eminently improfitable, and that a man might as well pour
his sorrows into the long hairy ear of a jackass.' As in most of his
sallies of this kind, the extravagance and the grotesqueness of the
attack sheathed the sharpness of it, and the little touch of the
picturesque, — ^the ' long hairy ear,' — seemed to give it the character
of a vision rather than a vituperation.

Henbt Tatlob.

1026 THE NINETEMTH CENTURY. Juae

THE INCOMPATIBLES.

Concluded.

' Sir, it is proper to inform you that owr measures must he hciing.'
The Irish Land Bill is now before the world, and it is easy enoogh,
no doubt, to pick holes in its claim to be called heaJmg, Theliki
chafe against the connexion with this country ; they are exasperated
with us ; they are, we are told, like wolves ready to fly at the tbroit
of England. And their quarrel with us, so far as it proceeds bom
causes which can be dealt with by a Land Act — ^th^ qnand with m
is for maintaining the actual land-system and landlords of iFehndby
the irresistible might of Great Britain. The grievance which (hej
allege against the land-system and landlords is twofold ; it is hoth
moral and material. The moral grievance is that the system and
the men represent a hateful history of conquest, confiscation, ill-
usage, misgovemment, and tyranny. The material grievance is that
it never having been usual with the landowner in Ireland, as it is ia
England, to set down his tenant in what may be called a compIeteiT
furnished farm, the Irish tenant had himself to do what was requisite;
but, when he had done it, it was the landlord's property, and the
tenant lost the benefit of it by losing his farm.

As to the material grievance there is no dispute. As to the
moral grievance, it is urged on our side that ^ the confiscations, the
public auctions, the private grants, the plantations, the transplao-
tations, which animated,' says Burke, ^ so many adventurers to Iri^
expeditions,' are things of the past, and of a distant past ; Uiat thej
are things which have happened in all countries, and have bea
forgiven and forgotten with the course of time. True ; but in Ireland
they have not been forgiven and forgotten ; and a &ir man will ijA
himself brought to the conservative Burke's conclusion, that this is
mainly due to the proceedings of the English incomers, with whom
their ' melancholy and invidious title ' of grantees of confiscation vas
for so long a favourite, and who so long looked upon the native Irish
as a race of bigoted savages, to be treated with contempt and tyranor
at their pleasure. ' Even the harsh laws against popery were the
product,' says Burke, ^ of this contempt and tyraimy, rather than i>^
religious zeal. From what I have observed, it is pride, airogaoos,

1881- THE INOOMPATIBLES: 1027

and a spirit of domination, and not a bigoted spirit of religion, that
has caused and kept up these oppressive statutes.' Th6 m^nory of
the original ^ terrible confiscatory and exterminatoiy periods ' was thus <
kept alive, and the coiintry never settled down. However, it is urged,
again, that the possessors of the soil axe now quite changed in spirit
towards the native Irish, and changed in their way of acting towards
them. It is urged that some good landlords there always were, and
that now, as a class, they are good, while there are many of them
who are excellent. But the memory of an odious and cruel past is
not so easily blotted out ; and there are still in Ireland landlords,
both old and new, both large and small, who are very bad, and who
by their hardness and oppressiveness, or by their contempt and
neglect, keep awake the sense of ancient, intolerable wrong. So
stands the case with the moral grievance ; it exists, it has cause for
existing, and it calls for remedy.

The best remedy, one would think, would be a direct one. The<
grievance is moral, and is best to be met and wiped out by a direct
moral satisfaction. Every one who considers the thing fairly will
see that the Irish have a moral grievance, that it is the chief source
of their restlessness and resentment, that by indirect satisfactions it
is not easy to touch it, but that by such an act as the expropriation
of bad landlords it would be met directly. Such an act would be a
moral expiation and satisfaction for a moral wrong ; it would be a
visible breaking, on the part of this country and its Government,
with the odious and oppressive system long upheld by their power.
^ The law bears with the vices and follies of men until they actually
strike at the root of order.' The vices and follies of the bad landlords
in Ireland have struck at the root of order ; things have gone on
without real and searching cure there, until the country is in a re-
volutionary state. Expropriation is, say objectors, a revolutionary
measure. But when a country is in a revolutionary state you must
sometimes have the courage to apply revolutionary measures. The
revolution is there already ; you must have the courage to apply the
measures which really cope with it. Coercion is a revolutionary
measure. But it may be very right to apply coercion to a country
in Ireland's present state ; perhaps even to apply a coercion far more
stringent and effectual than that which we apply now. It would be
a revolutionary measure to have the bad landlords of Ireland scheduled
in three classes by a Commission, and, taking twenty-five years' pur-
chase as the ordinary selling-price of an Irish estate, to expropriate
the least bad of the three classes of scheduled landlords at twenty
years' purchase, the next class at fifteen years' purchase, the worst*
at ten years' purchase. But it would be an act justified by the revo-'
lutionary state into which the misdoing of landlords of this sort, pre^
venting prescription and a secure settlement of things from arising,
has brought Ireland* It would fall upon those who represent the ill-<

1028 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. j^e

doers of the past, and who are actually ill^doers themaelves. And
fiiudly, it would be a moral reparation and' satisfactioD, made for a
great and passionately-felt moral wrong, and would, as soch, un-
doubtedly have its full effect upon the heart and imagination of tbe
Irish people. To commute the partial ownership which the Irish
tenant has in equity acquired by his improvements of the land culti-
vated by him for absolute ownership of a certain portion of the land,
as Stein commuted the peasant's partial ownership in Pni88ia;ti)
give facilities, as is now proposed, for emigration, and for tiie poicbue
of land and its distribution amongst a greater number of pioptieton
than at present — this, joined to the expropriation of had laiidloids,is
what might naturally occur to one as the simple and direct way of
remedying Irish agrarian discontent, and as likely to he effective and
sufficient for the purpose.

The Land Bill of the Government has provisions for fortheriog
emigration, and provisions to facilitate the purchase of knd. Bat
the moral grievance of the Irish occupier it does not dealiritiiata]l;
it gives no satisfaction to it and attempts to give none. It directs
itself exclusively to his material grievance. It makes no distimt'oo
between good and bad landlords — ^it treats them all as alike; ktto
the partial ownership which the occupier has in equity acquired in
the land by his improvements, it gives the force of law, establishes a
tribunal for r^;ulating and enforcing it, and does its best to make
this sort of partial ownership perpetual. The desirable thing is, on
the contrary, as every one who weighs the matter calmly mnstsoiel;
admit, to sweep away this partial ownership — ^to sweep away tenaot-
right altogether. It is said that tenant-right is an Irish in?eoti(%
a remedy by which they themselves have in some degree met tk
wants of their own case, and that it is dear to them on that amount
In legislating for them we ought studiously to adopt, we are toU,
their inventions, and not to impose upon them ours. Such reiso&eis
forget that tenant-right was a mere palliative, used in a state of
things where thorough relief was out of the question ; tenant-rigbt
was better than nothing, but ownership is better still. The absolate
ownership of a part, by a process of commutation like Stein's in
Prussia, engages a man's affections far more than any teLantHrigbt,
or divided and disputable ownership in a whole. Such absolute
ownership was out of the question when the Irish occupier invented
tenant-right ; but it would please him far better than tenant-ri^t,
and commutation might now give it to him. The Land Bill, on the
other hand, adopts, legalises, formulates tenant-right, a descriptioD
of ownership unfamiliar to countries of our sort of civilisation, and
very inconvenient; it establishes it throughout Ireland, and, by &
scheme which is a miracle of intricacy and oomplicatioD, it invites
the most contentious and litigious people in the world to tiy con*
elusions with their landlords as to the ownership divided between

1881. THE INCOMPATIBLES. 1029

them. I cannot think sach a measure healing. A divided ownership
of this kind will probably, however, no more be able to establish
itself permanently in Ireland than it has established itself in France
or Prussia. One has the comfort of thinking that the many and
new proprietors who will, it is to be hoped, be called into being
by the Purchase Glauses, will indubitably find the plan of divided
ownership intolerable, and will sooner or later get rid of it

I had recourse to Burke in the former part of these remarks, and
I. wish to keep him with me, as far as possible, to the end. Burke
writes to Windham : ' Our politics want directness and simplicity. A
spirit of chicane predominates in all that is done ; we proceed more
like lawyers than statesmen. All our misfortunes have arisen from
this intricacy and ambiguity of our politics.' It is wonderful how
great men agree. For really Burke is here telling us in another way
only what we found Goethe telling us when we began to discuss these
Irish matters : the English are pedants. The pedant, the man of
routine, loves the movement and bustle of politics, but by no means
wants to have to rummage and plough up his mind; he shrinks
from simplicity, therefore, he abhors it; for simplicity cannot be
had without thinking, without considerable searchings of spirit. He
abhors simplicity, and therefore of course his governments do not often
give it to him. He has his formula, his catchword, which saves him
from thinking, and which he is always ready to apply ; and anything
simple is, from its very simplicity, more likely to give him an opening
to apply his formula. If you propose to him the expropriation of bad
landlords, he has his formula ready, that the Englishman has a respect
for the eighth (xym/niavdmjent ; if you propose to him to do justice to
the Irish Catholics, he has his formula, at one time, that the sovereign
Tntist Tiot violate his coronation oaihj at another, that the Protestants
of Ghreat Britain are implacably hostile to the endowment of Catholic
ciam in any shape or form, or that the Liberal party has eirvphaticaUy
condemned religious endowment. A complicated, intricate measure
is the very thing for governments to o£fer him, because, while it gives
him the gratifying sense of taking in hand something considerable, it
does not bring him face to face with a principle, does not provoke
him to the exhibition of one of the formulas which, in presence of a
principle, he has always at hand in order to save himself the trouble
of thinking. And having this personage to deal with, governments
are not much to be blamed, perhaps, for approaching their object in
an indirect manner, for eschewing simplicity and choosing complica-
tion. The Irish Land Bill does not meet the moral grievance of the
Irish occupier at all, and it meets his material grievance in a round-
about, complicated manner, and by means that are hard upon good
landlords ; but it does meet it after a fashion, and in meeting it it does
not challenge the presentation of any of the pedantic Englishman's
stock formulas, while it effects, at the same time, some very useful

dO30 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. j^

things bythe way. 'And certoinlygoT^ramentfiwldch BedctooomiMa
their ends in this manner do not incur that severe ooDdeaoation
which Borke passes upon nainist^s who. make it their buanes^stil
farther to contract the narrowness of Jenen's ideas, to confirm invete-
rate prejudices, to inflame vulgar passionB, and to abet aQnrtBof
popular absurdities.' No, not by any means do they deserve ttiis
formidable blame. But when Burke writes to the Doke of Bidi-
mond of that day, that without censuring his political friends, lie
must say that he perceives in them no regular or steady eodeavodr
of any kind to bestow the same pains which they bestow on canjiog
a measure, or winning an election, or keeping up family interest ifi
a county, 'on that which is the end and object of all electiong-
namely, the disposing our people to a better sense of tbar coodilioiL'
. — ^when Burke says this, then he says what does toudi, it seems to
me, both the present government, and almost all governments wM
come and go in this country ; touches them very neady. Utey
acquiesce too easily in the mass of us being, as Goethe aays, pedants;
they are too apprehensive of coming into conflict with ooi pedantij;
they show too much respect to its formulas and catchword Thg
make no regular or sustained endeavours of [any kind to dispofle
us poor people to a better sense of our condition* If tJbe; tcqmesoe
so submissively in our being pedants in politics, pedants we diiU
always be. We want guidance from those who are placed in & con-
dition to see. ' God and nature never made them,' says Bnriie d all
the pedantic rank and file of us in politics, ' to tJaink ortoactfitlKnt
guidance or direction.' But we Hardly ever get it from our govenimeDt
And I suppose it was despair at this sort of thing in bis ovntime
and commonwealth which made Socrates say, when he was i^mnehed
for standing aloof from politics, that in his own opinion, by t^tbe
line he did, he was the only true politician of men tbaliYing.
Socrates saw that the thing most needful was ' to dispose the peo^to
a better sense of their condition,! and that the actual politiaus
never did it. And quiet people at the present day , wlra have do
Socrates to help them, may well be inclined at any rate to standasdeas
he did from the movement of our promin^it politicians and jonnialiis^
and of the rank and file who appear to fallow, but who leally ^
oftenest direct them — to stand aside, and to try whether thqr cansot
bring thmi9dve8j at all events, to a better sense of their own condition
and of the condition of the people and things around tbem. T^
problem is to get Ireland to acquiesce in the English coosexioii £
cordially as Scotland, Wales, or Cornwall acquiesce in it^ We qoi^
people pretend to no lights which are not at the ^igpmal of alltk
world* Probably if we were mixed up in the game of polities^
should play it much as other people do» according to the laws of tbt
routine. We do not suppose, even, that we can point out courses whi(^
politicians and newspapers, as people and parties now are^ will l)e li

188J. THE INCOMPATIBLES. lOSl

#

aUlikely to .eniertaixL. But we may be able to suggest, perhaps,
courseB which quiet people may think over in their minds as possible
means to help us out of our difficulties, and which will remain to be
tried, and to save us from, deqoair, if the means which politicians and
newspapers are now recommending, and of which the public mind is
full, should proTe/when they are tried, not to be successful. In this way
we were led to suggest a mode of dealing with the agrarian trouble in
Ireland which our politicians and newspapers are not at all likely to
entertain, but which to quiet, simple people may perhaps commend
itself as reasonable enough, and as ofifering refuge and hope if other
courses, when they are tried, fail.

Meanwhile, however, let us treat the endeavours and plans of other
people without pedantry and without prejudice, remembering that
our one business is to see things as they really are. Ireland is to be
brought, if possible, to acquiesce cordially in the English connexion ;
and to this end our measures must be healing* Now, the Land Bill
of the Government does not seem to deserve thoroughly the name of a
heaUng measiure. We have given our reasons for thinking so ; but
the question is, whether it proposes so defective a settlement as to
make, of itself, Ireland's cordial acquiescence in the English con-
nexion impossible, and to compel us to resign ourselves a prey to the
alarmists. One cannot without unfeumess and exaggeration say this of
it. It is offered with the best intentions, it deals with the material
grievance of the Irish occupier if not with his moral grievance, and it
proposes to do certain unquestionably good and useful things besides
redressing this grievance. It will not of itself make the Irish acquiesce
cordially in the English connexion. But then neither would a tho-
roughly good Land Bill suffice to do this. The PaU Mail QazetU says
indeed, or did say formerly, for we will by no means oblige it to remain
in a particular opinion which seems unsound — the Pall Mall Oaaette
said formerly: 'A good Land Bill will take the political bread out of
Mr. Pamell's mouth.' Now. Mr. Pamell maintains that he and his
• friends ^ have the forces of nature, the forces of nationality, and the
.forces of patriotism' working for the separation of Ireland from Eng-
land : and so th^ have at present. A good Land Bill will not suffice
to stay and annul the working of these forces, though politicians who
are busy over a Land Bill will always be prone to talk as if it would
suffice]to do whatever may be required. But it will not; much more
than a good Land BiU is necessary in order to annul the forces which
are working for separation. The best Land Bill will not reduce to im-
potence the* partisans of separation, unless other things are accom-
plished too; the present Land Bill is not so defective as that it need
prevent cordial union, if these other things are accomplished.

One of them has been mentioned already in the former part of
these remarks. I mean the equitable treatment of Catholicism. To
many of the Liberal party it is a great deal easier to offer to Ireland

.1032 THE JUINETEBNTH CENTURY. w

a &ir Land Bill than to offer to her a fieur treatment of CaiholiasB,
You may offer as fair . a Land Bill as you please ; but if^ praentk
when the Lish ask to have public schools and univenities Boited to
Catholics, as England has public schools and univenitiessmtedto
Anglicans, and Scotland such as are suited to Presbyteriaiu, }<m Ul
back in embarrassment upon your formula of pedants, Tht UmL
"party has emphaiicaUy condemned religious endowmerUj yso, giye
to the advocates of separation a new lease of power and mfliience,]fQiL
enable them still to keep saying with truth that they have *the foiQei
of nature, the forces of. nationality, and the forces of patriotism* a
their side. ' Our measures muet be healing,^ and it is not only as to
rlrish land that healing measures are necessary ; they are neoeasuju
to the Irish people's religion also.

. If this were in. any goodmeasure accomplished, if, even,ire oBeied
.the Land Bill which Mr. Gladstone brings forward now, and if we offered
.a treatment of Catholicism as well intentioned and as fiur in ita laj,
jjthen indeed things would have a look of cheerful promise^and politidaiB
would probably think that the grand consummation had bee&ieached,
and that the millennium was going to begin. But a quiet bystander
n^ight still be cool-headed enough to suspect that for winniDg and at-
taching a people so alienated from us as the Irish something more, erai,
is required than healing measures in redress of actual mi»-iiageaQd
wrong ; * their temper, too, must be managed, and their good aSeetioB
cultivated.' Many of us talk as if the mere calculation of their interest,
of the advantage to their commerce, industry, and seeoiity&omtiie
English connexion, must induce the Irish to blend readily with us, if
they were but treated fairly. But with a people such as the Irisk, ud
when once such a feeling of repulsion has been excited in themi^ve
have managed to excite, the mere calculation of their interest ii sot
sufficient to win them. They must find in us something that in general
suits them and attracts them ; they must feel an dLitauctist foice
drawing and binding them to us in what is called our ciTiliatun.
This is what blends Scotland and Wales with us ; not alone their iflta-
est, but that our civilisation in general suits them and they like it
This is what so strongly attached to France the Germanic Al8aoe,aod
keeps it attached in spirit still; the wonderfidly attractive power of
French civilisation. •

Some say that what we have in Ireland is a lower ciYilisat»A
hating the advent of a higher civilisation from England, and rd)elliiig
against it. And it. is quite true that certain obvious meiits of tk
English, and by which they have much prospered, such as their exaetaes
and neatness, for. instance (to say.no more than what eveiybody mifit
admit), are disagreeable to Irish laxity and slovenliness, and are resistel
by. them. Still, a high civilisation is naturally attractive ; the tan
and habits of the French have much that is irksome and provokiDgt<i
Germans, yet French civilisation attracted Alsace poirerfully. It

1881. THE INCOMPATIBLES. 1033

behoves us to make quite sure, before we talk of Ireland's lower civili-
sation resisting the higher civilisation of England, that our civilisation
is really high, high enough to exercise attraction.

Business is civilisation, think many of us ; it creates and implies it.
The general diffusion of material well-being is civilisation, thought Mr.
Cobden, as that eminent man's biographer has just informed us; it
creates and implies it. Not always ; and for fear we should forget what
business and what material well-being have to create before they imply
civilisation, let us, at the risk of being thought tiresome, repeat here
what we have said often of old. They are signs of expansion and parts
of it ; but civilisation, that great and complex force, includes much
more than even that power of expansion of which they are parts. It
includes also the power of conduct, the power of intellect and knowledge,
the power of beauty, the 'power of social life and manners. To the
building up of human life all these powers belong. If business is
civilisation, then business must manage to evolve them ; if a widely
spread material well-being is civilisation, then that well-being must
manage to evolve all these powers. It is written : Man doth not live
by bread alone.

Now, one of the factors of civilisation is, without doubt, singularly

absent from ours — the power of social life and manner?. ' The

English are just, but not amiable,' was a sentence which, as we know,

even those who had benefited by our rule felt themselves moved to

pass on us. We underrate the strength of this element of civilisation,

underrate its attractive influence, its power. Mansueti po89idd>uni

terram — the gentle shall possess the earth. We are apt to account

amiability weak and hardness strong ; but even if it were so, ' there

are forces,' as George Sand says truly and beautifully, < there* are

forces of weakness, of docility, of attractiveness or of suavity, which

are quite as real as the forces of vigour, of encroachment, of violence,

or of brutality.' And to those softer but not less real forces the Irish

people are peculiarly sensible. They are full of sentiment, they have

by nature excellent manners themselves, and they feel the charm of

manners instinctively. ^ Courtesy,' says Vauvenargues, ^ is the bond

of all society, and there is no society which can last without it.' If

courtesy is required to cement society, no wonder the Irish are

estranged from us. For we must remember who it is of us that they

mostly see, who and what it is that in the main represent our civili-

Hation to them. The power of social life and manners, so far as we

have it, is in Great Britain displayed above all in our aristocratic

class. Mr. Carlyle's tribute to the politeness to be found amongst

them, and to the great value of it, will be fresh in our minds : ^ With

due limitation of the grossly worthless, I should vote at present that,

of classes known to me in England, the aristocracy (with its perfection

of human politeness, its continual grace of bearing and of acting,

steadfast '^ honour," light address, and cheery stoicism), if you see

Vol. IX.— No. 62. 3 Z

1034 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. j^^

well into it, is ax^tually yet the best of English claas^' Bat qqi
ATutocracy which have, on Mr. Carlyle's diowing, this power d maa-
ners so attractive to the Irish nature, and who in Englaod fill solarise
a place, and do really produce so much effect upon people's mii^
and imaginations, the Irish see almost nothing (£ Its membos
who are connected with Ireland are generally absentees. Mi. Leeky
is. disposed to regret very much this want in.Irelandof a re&deat
aristocracy, and says that the Irish people are by nataie profouadlj
aristocratical. At any rate, it is capable of feeling strongly the attiu-
tioa of the power of manners in an aristocracy, and withauaiisto-
cracy filling the place there which it fills in Great Britain, Iiebd
would no doubt have been something very different from what it
is now. While I admit, however, the merits of our aristocracy, whik
I admit the effect it produces in England and the important place
it fills, while I admit that if it were resident in Ireland we Md
probably have Ireland in another and a more settled state, yet I do
not think that a real solution would have been thus reached theie
any more than it has been reached,! think, here. I mean,ifliek)d
had had the same social system as we have, she would have beea
different from her present self indeed, but sooner or later she would
have found herself confironting the same difficulty which we in Eng-
land begin to feel now ; the difficulty, namely, that the social ^em in
•question ends by landing modem conmiunities in the happy posstseor*
ship of an upper class materialised, a middle class vulgarised, a Iotis
class brutalised. But I am not going to discuss these matteis sow.
What I want now to point out is, that the Irish do not much eoi&e
across our aristocracy, exhibiting that factor of civilisation, the power
of manners, which has undoubtedly a strong attraction for tkm.
(What they do come across, and what gives them the idea the? kre
of our civilisation and of its promise, is our middle class.
i I have said so much about this class at divers times, andw\atl
have said about it has made me so many enemies, that I prrfei to
take the words of anybody rather than myself for showing tlieimpies-
tiion which this class is likely to make, and which it does make, upoQ
the Irish, and the sort of idea which they form of the attractions of its
civilisation for themselves, or for mankind in general, or for any one a-
cept us natives of G-reat Britain. There is a book familiar to us all, aBJ
the more familiar now, probably, to many of us, because Mr. Ghdstooe
solaced himself with it after his illness, and so set all gQodLibeiali(o>^
whom I wish to be considered one) upon reading it over again. Ivm
David Copperfidd, Much as I have published, I do not think it bas
ever happened to me before to comment in print upon any productk^
of Charles Dickens. What a pleasure to have the opportunity of prauii^
a work so sound, a work so rich in merits, as David CoppetMi
Man Use nicht die Tnit-atrebende^ rniUmirkendey ssys Goethe: (it
not read your fellow-strivers, your fellow-workers. Of the conteo-

1881. THE INCOMPATIBLES. 1035

poiary rubbkfa which is shot so plentifully all round us, we can^
indeed, hardly read too little. But to contemporary work so good as
David Coppci'Jield, we are in danger of perhaps uot paying respect
enough, of reading it (for who could help reading it ?) too hastily, and
then putting it aside for something else and forgetting it. What
treasures of gaiety, invention, life, are in that book ! what alertness
and resource ! what a soul of good-nature and kindness governing the
whole ! Such is the admirable work which I am now going to call in
evidence.

Intimately, indeed, did Dickens know the middle class ; he was
bone of its bone and flesh of its flesh. Intimately he knew its bringing
up. With the hand of a master he has drawn for us a type of, the
teachers and trainers of its youth, a type of its places of education. Mr.
Creakle and Salem House are immortal ; the type itself, it is to be hoped,
will perish, but the drawing which Dickens has given of it cannot die.
Mr. Creakle, the ' stout gentleman with a bunch of watch-chain and
seals, in an arm chair,' with the flery face and the thick veins in his
forehead ; Mr. Creakle sitting at his breakfast with the cane, and a
newspaper, and the buttered toast before him, will sit on, Uke Theseus,
for ever. For ever will last the recollection of Salem House, and of
* the daily strife and struggle ' there ; the recollection

of the frosty mornings when we were rung out of bed, and the cold, cold smell of
the dark nights when we were rung into bed again ; of the evening schoohoom
dimly lighted and indifferently warmed, and the morning schoolroom which was
nothing but a great shivering machine ; of the alternation of boiled beef with toast
beef, and boiled muttou with roast mutton ; of clods of bread and butter, dog's-
eared lesson-books, cracked slates, tear-blotted copy-books, canings, rulerings, h^-
cuttings, rainy Sundays, suet-puddings, and a dirty atmosphere of ink surrounding
aU.

A man of much knowledge and much intelligence, who died not
long ago, Mr. Baring Gould, shortly before his death published a
book about Germany, in which he gave testimony which in a curious
maimer proves how true and to the life this picture of Salem House
and of Air. Creakle is. The public schools of Gerniany come to be
spoken of, and the training which the whole middle class of Germans
gets in them ; and IVIr. Gould mentions what is reported by young
Germans trained in their schools, who have afterwards served as teacheis
of foreign languages and ushers in the ordinary private schools for the
middle class in England. With one voice they tell us of establish-
ments like Salem House and principals like Mr. Qreakle. They are
astonished, disgusted ; they cannot understand how such things can
be, and how a great and well-to-do class can be content with such an
ignoble bringing up ; but so things are, and they report their ex-
perience of them, and their experience brings before us, over and
over again, Mr. Creakle and Salem House.

A critic in the World newspaper says, what is very true, that in

3z2

1036 THB NINETEENTH CENTURY. ]^^

this country the middle class has no naturally defined limits, tht it
is difficult to say who properly belong to it and who do not^ and that
the term is taken in different senses by different people. Uni is
most true, and therefore, for my part^ to prevent ambiguity loj
confusion, I always have adopted an educational test, and by tbe
middle class I understand those who are brought up at establishiDeDts
which are more oj less like Salem House, and by educators who aie
more or less like Mr. Creakle. And the great mass of the middle
part of our community, the part which comes between those vbo
work with their hands, on the one side, and people of fortune, on
the other, is brought up at establishments of the kind, thoogh there
is a certain portion broken off at the top which is educated at better.
But the great mass are badly taught, and brought up on a biei
plane than is right, brought up ignobly. And this deteriorates their
standard of life, their civilisation. True, they have at the same time
great merits, of which they are conscious themselves, and of which all
who are in any way akin to them, and disposed to judge them furlj
and kindly, cannot but be conscious also. True, too, there are ei-
ceptions to the common rule among the establishments and educators
that bring them up ; there are good schools and good scboolmasten
scattered among them. True, moreover, amongst the thonsandaibo
undergo Salem House and Mr. Creakle, are some bom lovers of the
humane life, who emerge from the training with natures unscathed,
or who at any rate recover from it. But, on the mass, the tiainisg
produces with fatal sureness the effect of lowering their standard d
life and impairing their civilisation. It helps to produce in tbeni,
and it perpetuates, a defective type of religion, a narrow laage of
intellect and knowledge, a stunted sense of beauty, a low staadaid of
manners. And this is what those who are ndt akin to than, who
are not disposed to be friendly observers of them, really see in them.
This is what the Celtic and Catholic Irish see in them. The Scotch
of the Lowlands, of far the most populous and powerful put of
Scotland, are men of just the same stock as ourselves, and biee^l
Murdstones as naturally as we do. Wales is Celtic, but the Welsh
have adopted with ardour the Murdstonian religion, and this at once
puts them in sympathy with our middle-class civilisation. With the
Irish it is different. English civilisation means to the Iri^ t!y
civilisation of our middle class, and few indeed are the attractiooi
which to them, with their quickness, sentiment, fine manners, sifi
indisposition to be pleased with things English, that civilis&ti<3i
seems to have. They do not see the exceptions in our middle clas?:
they do not see the good which is present even in the mistraiDe'^
mass of it. All its members seem of one type of civilisation to as
Irish eye, and that type a repulsive one. They are all tarred vit^
one brush, and that brush is Creakle^s.

We may even go further still in our use of that valuable as*

I

I

188L ^ THE INCOMPATIBLES. 1037

instructive book, Hie History of David Copperfiddj and may lay our
finger on the very types in adult life which are the natural product of
Salem House and of Mr. Creakle, the very types of our middle class,
say of Englishmen and the EngUsh nature in general, as to the Irish
imagination they appear. We have only to recall, on the one hand, Mr.
Murdstone, with his firmness and severity ; with his austere religion
and his tremendous visage in church ; with his view of the world as
'a place for action, and not for moping and droning in ; ' his view of
young Copperfield's disposition as ^ requiring a great deal of correct-
ing, and to which no greater service can be done than to force it to
conform to the ways of the working world, and to bend it and break
it.' We may recall, too. Miss Murdstone, his sister ; with the same
religion, the same tremendous visage in church, the same firmness,
with her ' uncompromising hard black boxes with her initials on the
Uds in hard black nails,' her ^ hard steel purse,' and her ' numerous
little steel fetters and rivets ' ; severe and formidable like her brother,
' whom she greatly resembled in face and voice.' These people, with
their hardness, their narrowness, their want of consideration for other
people's feelings, their inability to enter into them, are just the type
of the Englishman and his civilisation as he presents himself to the
Irish mind by his serious side. His energy, industry, religion,
exhibit themselves with these unpleasant features ; his bad qualities
exhibit themselves without mitigation or relief. Now Murdstone
may be called the natural product of a course of Salem House and
of Mr. Creakle acting upon hard, stem, and narrow natures. A dis-
position to hardness is perhaps the special fault and danger of our
English race in general, gping along with our merits of energy and
honesty. It is apt even to appear in all kinds and classes of us, when
the circumstances are such as to call it forth. One can understand
Cromwell himself, whom we earnest English Liberals reverentially
name ' the great Puritan leader,' standing before the Irish imagination
as a glorified Murdstone ; and the late Lord Leitrim, again, as an
aristocratical Murdstone. Mr. fience Jones, again, improver and
benefactor as he undoubtedly is, yet takes a tone with the Irish which
may not unnaturally, perhaps, affect them much as Murdstone's tone
affected little Gopperfield. But the genuine, unmitigated Murdstone
is the common middle-class Englishman, who has come forth from
Salem House and Mr. Creakle. He is seen in full force, of course,
in the Protestant north, but throughout Ireland he is a prominent
figure of the English garrison. Him the Irish see, see him too
much and too often; and he represents to them the promise of
English civilisation on its serious side, what this civilisation accom-
plishes for that great middle part of the community towards which
the jnasses below are to look up and to ascend, what it invites those
wno blend themselves with us to become and to be.

The thing has no power of attraction. The Irish quick-wittedness,

1038 IHE NINETEENTH CENTURY. j^e

gentimeDt, keen feeling for social life and manners, demand gome-
thing which this hard and imperfect civiBsation cannot givetliem.
Its social form seems to them unpleasant, its eneigy and indtisby to
lead to no happiness, its religion iklse and repulsive. A fiiend tf
mine who lately had to pursue his avocations in Lancashire, in the
parts about St. Helens, and who has lately been transferred totiieicst
of Ireland, writes to me that he finds Mth astonishment that 'eren
in the farthest vMima Thvle of the west, amongst Hterallj the inoEt
abjectly poverty^trioken cottiers, life appears to be more enjoyd
tiian by a Lancashire faetory-'hand and family who are in the receipt
of five pounds a week, father, mother, and children together, from
the mill.' He writes that he finds ' all the country people here so M ,
of courtesy and graciousness ! ' That is just why our civilisation lias
no attractions for them. So far as it is possessed by any great body
m our own community, and capable of being imparted to any grest
body in another community, it has no courtesy and gradonsaeasjit
has no enjoyment of life, it has the curse of hardness upon it The
penalty nature makes us pay for hardness is dulness ; if we are hi^
oar life becomes dull and dismal. Our hardness grows at last vesiy
of itself; in Ireland, where we have been so hard, this ha been
strikingly exemplified. Again and again, upon the English ooot^wfor
in his hardness and harshness, the ways and nature of the dovn-
trodden, hated, despised Irish, came to exercise a strange, an iiresbt-
ible magnetism. < Is it possible,' asks Eudoxus, in SpeJners Tvx
of the Stdte of Ireland, ' is it possible that an Englishman, bionglit
np in such sweet civility as England affords, should fisid'soefalikiDg
in that barbarous rudeness that he should foiget his own Datme tad
forego his own nation ? ' And Spenser, speaking tmder tiie oaoe of
Irensens, answers that unhappily it did indeed happen so. Ik Pnh
testant Archbishop Boulter tells us, in like manner, that aader the
iron sway of the penal laws against Popery, and in the time of their
severest exercise, the conversions from Protestantism to Popery few
nevertheless a good deal more numerous than the oonveroons froo
Popery to Protestantism. Such, I say, is nature's penalty npoo
hardness ; it grows irksome to itself, it ends by wearying those who
have it. If our hardness is capable of wearying ourselves, can «
wonder that a civilisation stamped with it has no attractioDsfortbe
Irish ; that Murdstone, the product of Salem House and of Mr.
Creakle, is a type of humanity which repels them, and that they (i«
not at all wish to be like him ?
' But in Murdstone we see English middle-class civilisation by it«
severe and serious side. That civilisation has undoubtedly also ^
gayer and lighter side ; and this gayer and Ugfater 8ide,a8^**
the other, we shall find, wonderful to relate, in onr allHJimtaifflf
treasure-house of the History of David CoppeffidcL Ut. QoinioB.
with his gaiety, his chaff, his roujgh coat, his incessant smflUng) te

1881- THE INCOMPATIBLES. W)3»

brandy and water, is the jovial, genial man of our middle elass civili^
sation, prepared by Salem Hoase and Mn Creakle, as Mr. Murdst^d^
is its severe man. . Qoinionwas not precisely ^nd literally Mm*dstone^8'
partner, forOrinby, we are told, was hjs partner; but Qninion washift
manager, and is truly his pendant. He is the answer of our middle-
class civilisation to the demand in man for beauty and enjoyment,
as Murdstone is its answer to the demand for temper and manners. To
a quick, sentimental race, Quinion can be hardly more attractive than
Murdstone. He produces our towns considered as seats of pleasure^ as
Murdstone produces them considered as seats of business and religicrn.
As it is Murdstone, the serious man, whose view of life and demands
on life have made our Hell^holeSj and the dissidence of dissent and the
Protestantism of the Protestant religion, and the refusal to let Irish
Catholics have schools and universities suited to them because their
religion is a lie and heaihenish superstition, so it is Quinion, the
jovial man, whose view of life and demands on it have made our
popular songs, comedy, art, made the City Companies and their feasts^
made the London streets, made the Griffin. Nay, Quinion has been
busy in Dublin too, for have we not conquered Ireland ? The streets
and buildings of Dublin are full of traces of him ; his sense of beauty
governed the erection of Dublin Castle itself. As the civilisation of
the French middle class is the maker of the streets and buildings of
modem Paris, so the civilisation of the English middle class is the
maker of the streets and buildings of modem London and Dublin.

Once more. Logic and lucidity in the. organising and administering
of public business are attractive to many ; they are satisfactions to that
instinct of intelligence in man which is one of the great powers in his
civilisation. The immense, homogeneous, and (comparatively with
ours) clear-thinking French middle class prides itself on logic and
lucidity in its public business. In our public business they are con-
spicuous by their absence. Our public business is governed by the
wants of our middle class, and is in the hands of public men who
anxiously watch those wants. Now our middle class cares for liberty;
it does not care for logic and lucidity. Murdstone and Quinion do
not care for logic and lucidity. Salem House and Mr. Creakle have
not prepared them for it. Accordingly, we see the proceedings of ova
chief seat of public business, the House of Commons, govemed by
rules of which one may at least say, without risk of being committed
for contempt, that logic and lucidity have nothing to do with them.
Mr. Chamberlain, again, was telling us only the other day that
^ England, the greatest commercial nation in the world, has in its
bankruptcy law the worst commercial legislation of any civilised
country.' To be sure, Mr. Chamberlain has also said that if in Eng-
land we fall behind other nations in the intelligent appreciation of art,
we minister to* a hundred wants of which the other nations have no
suspicion^' As we are a commercial people, one would have thought

1040 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. jra^

that logic and lucidity in commercial legislation was one of these wants
to which we . minister ; however, it seems we do not. Bub, oatade oar
own immediate circle, logic and lucidity are felt by maoy people to
be attractive ; they inspire respect, their absence provokes ridicuk.
Probably the Irish themselves, though they are gainen byitylaogli
in their sleeve at the pedantries and formalities with which our
love of liberty, Murdstone and Quinion's love of libeii^, and thek
total want of instinct for logic and lucidity, embarrass our attempts
to coerce them. Certainly they must have laughed outright, hehig
people with a keen sense of the ridiculous, when in the infonna&o
to which the traversers had to plead at the late trials, it was set
forth that the traversers ' did conspire, combine, confederate, and
agree together, to solicit, incite, and procure,' and so on. We most
be Englishmen, countrymen of Murdstone and Quinion, loving liberty
and a 'freedom broadening slowly down from precedent to precedent;'
not fastidious about modem and rational forms of speech, about logic
and lucidity, or much comprehending how other people can be b-
tidious about them, to take such a jargon with proper seriousDesg.

The dislike of Ireland for England the resistance of alowercifi-
lisation to a higher one I Why, everywhere the attractions of tliis
middle-class civilisation of ours, which is what we have leallytooSa
in the way of civilisation, seem to fail of their effect. 'The pQzde
seems to be,' says the TItms mournfully, ^ where we are to look for
our. friends.' But there is no great puzzle in the matter if we will
consider it without pedantry. Our civilisation, as it looks to out-
siders, and in so far as it is a thing broadly communicable, seems to
consist very much in the Murdstonian drive in business and the
Murdstonian religion, and in the Quinionian joviality and gaial^.
Wherever we go, we put forward Murdstone and Quinion, and call
their ways civilisation, and our governing class nervously watditheii
ways and wishes, and back up their civilisation all they can, bat it
does not prove attractive. The English in South Africa will aU^ie
commercial gentlemen, says Lady Barker, their wives will be ladies,
they will not even tend poultry. The English in the Tram^ve
hear again, contain a wonderful propoi^tion of attorneys, speculators,
land-jobbers, and persons whose antecedents will not well beai in-
spection. Their recent antecedents we will not meddle with, bat one
thing is certain : their early antecedents were those of the Eoglii
Quddle : class in general. They have almost all, we may be soie,
passed through the halls of a Salem House and the hands of a Mr.
Creakle. They have the stamp of Murdstone or Quinicm. Indeed «e
are so prolific, so enterprising, so world-covering, and our middle
class and its civilisation so entirely take the lead wherever we go, tha)
there is now, one may say, a kind of odour of Salem House all round
the globe. It is almost inevitable that Mr. Sprigg should hare bees
reared in some such establishment ; it is ten to one that Mr^ Bearf^

1881. THE INCOMPATIBLES. 104X.

an old papil of Mr. Creakier And when they visit Europe, no.doul)t.
they go and see Mr. Creakle, where he is passing the evening of his
days in honourable retirement, a Middlesex magistrate, a philanthro-
pist, and a member of the Society of Arts. And Mr. Berry can tell
him of a happy country all peopled by ourselves, where the Murdstone
and Quinion civilisation seems to men the most natural thing in tl^e
world and the only right civilisation, and gives entire satisfaction.
But poor Mr. Sprigg has to report of a land plagued with a large
intermixture of foreigners, to whom our unique middle class civilisa-
tion does not seem attractive at all, but they find it. entirely dis-
agreeable. And so, too, to come back much nearer home, do the
Irish.

So that if we, who are in consternation at the dismal prophecies
we hear of what is in store for Ireland and England, if we determine to
perish, as I say, in the light at any rate, to abjure all self-deception,
and to see things as they really are, we shall see that our civilisation,
in its present state, will not help us much with the Irish. Even if
we gave them really healing measures, yet stilj, estranged as they now
are, it would be further necessary to manage their tempers and
cultivate their good affections by the gift of a common civilisation
congenial to them. But our civilisation is not congenial to them. To
talk of it, therefore, as a substitute for perfectly healing measures is
ridiculous. Indeed, the pedantry, bigotry, and narrowness of our
middle class, which disfigure the civilisation we have to offer, are also
the chief obstacle to our offering measures perfectly healing. And
the conclusion is, that our middle class and its civilisation require to
be transformed. With all their merits, which I have not now much
insisted upon because the question was how their demerits make them
judged by unfriendly observers — ^with all their merits, they require, as
I have so often said, to be transformed. And for my part I see no way
so promising for setting about it as the abolishment of Salem House
and of Mr. Creakle. This initiatory stage governs in a great degxee
all the rest, and with this initiatory stage we should above all deal.
He has got on hia old hobby again ! I think I hear people saying.
Seally they ought rather to commend the strictly and humbly practical
character of my writings. It was very well for Mr. Garlyle to bid us
have recourse, in our doubts and miseries, to earnestness and reality, ^nd
veracity and the everlasting yea, and generalities of that kind ; Mr.
Garlyle was a man of genius. But when one is not a man of genius, and
yet attempts to give counsel in times of difficulty, one should be aboye
all things practical. Now our relations with Ireland will not in any
case be easily and soon made satisfactory, but while our middle class is
what it is nqw they never will. And our middle class, again, will not
be easily and soon transformed, but while it gets its initiation to life
through Salem House and Mr. Creakle, it never will. The great thing
is to initiate it to life by means of public schools. Public schools for

104» TUE^ NlNETEmTH (TENTURY. j^

the middle classes are not a panacea for onr ills, bat they, are- die
indispensable preliminary to oar real improvement on almost dl the
lines where as a nation we now move with embarrassment If the
consideration of oar difficulties with Ireland had not, like so mod
dse^ brought me at last full upon this want which is capital, but £ir
too little remarked, I should probably not have voitored to introde
into the discussion of them. However terrified and dejected \fj the
alarmists, I should have been inclined to bear my burden silently in
that upper chamber in Grub Street, where I have borne in sileace so
many sorrows. I know that the professional people find theintenreD.
iion of outsiders very tryiujy in politics, and I have no wish to provoke
their resentment. But when the discussion of a matter tends is-
evitably to show the crying need which there i& tot transformiDgoar
middle-class education, I cannot forbear from striking in; if I do Dot
i^ak of the need shown, nobody else will.

Yet the need is, certainly, great and urgent enough to attnet
notice ; but then the middle class is very strong and sdf-satii&ed,
and every one flatters it. It is like that strong andenonnonsoeatme
described by Plato, surrounded by obsequious people seddig to
understand what its noises meant, and to make in their torn the
noises which might please it. At best palliatives are now andfiwn
attempted, as there is a company, I believe, at this moment pnjecUd
to provide better schools for the middle classes. Alas I I should not
be astonished to find presently Mr. Creakle himself am(»ig the
directors of a company to provide better schools for the middle
classes, and the guiding spirit of its proceedings, so for as his magis-
terial functions, and his duties on philanthropical committees and
on committees of the Society of Arts, permit him to take part in
them. But oftener our chief people take the bull by the honu^ud
actually congratulate the middle class on the character and cooditioas
of its education. And so they play the part of a sort of qaiitoal
panderer to its defects and weaknesses, and do what in them lies to
perpetuate them. Lord Frederick Cavendish goes down to Sieffidd
to address an audience almost entirely trained by Salem Honieaad
Mr. Creakle, and the most suitable thing he can find to say to them
is, he thinks, to congratulate them on their energy and self-idiaDee
in being so trained. But this is an old story, a fomiliar proceeding,
for which the formula has long since been given: namely, that the
upper class do not want to be disturbed in their prepcmderance, dot
the middle class in their vulgarity. * But if we wish cordially to
attach Ireland to the English connexion, not -only must we give
healing political measures, we must also^ and that as speedily as «e
can, transform our middle class and its social civilisation.

I perceive that I have said little of foults on the side cS the Insk,
as I have said little of the merits which accompany, in oar middle
ciass, their failure in social civilisation ; and for the same reBSOB—

1881. TEE INCOMPATIBLES. 1049

because the matter in hand was the failure on pur part to do all in
our power to attach Ireland, and how to set about remedying the
failure. But as I have spoken with so much frankness of my own
people and kindred, the Irish will allow me, perhaps, to end with
quoting three queries of Bishop Berkeley's, and with recommending
them to their attention : —

1. Whether it be not the true interest of both nations to become
one people, and whether either be sufficiently apprised of this ?

2. Whether Ireland can propose to thrive so long as she entertains
a wrong-headed distrust of England ?

3. Whether in every instance by which the Irish prejudice Eng-
land, they do not in a greater degree prejudice themselves ?

Perhaps, also, they might do well to perpend the good bishop's
caution against 'a general parturiency in Ireland with respect to politics
and public counsel ; ' a parturiency which in clever young Irishmen
does often, certainly, seem to be excessive. But, after all, my present
business is not with the Irish but with the English — to exhort my coun-
trymen to healing measures and an attractive form of civilisation.
And if our countrymen insist upon it that attractive their form of
civilisation is, or ought to be, then we who think differently must
labour diKgently to follow Burke's injunctions, and to ,* dispose people
to a better sense of their condition.'

Matthew Abnold.

1044 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. i^

THE DUKE OF ARGYLL AND THE

IRISH LAND BILL.

The retirement of the Duke of Argyll from the Govermnent, and his
separation from colleagues with whom he has been associated tluoogb-
out his political career, is at once the subject of universal i^t to
Liberals, and the strongest testimony to the strength of his objecdons
to the proposed land legislation for Ireland, so cogently expresedin
his article of last month. Although in the interval the Land Bill
has been fully discussed in the House of Commons, it may be wtfftli
while to deal with these objections more specifically than has jet
been done, with a view to the consideration they are likely to leodve
in the Upper House, where they will have most weight, and naj
influence the fate of the measure.

The tone, however, of the article is so temperate and &ir,
and so much is conceded, that we may hope the Duke'd treatment
of the measure when it reaches the Lords will not be of a ray
destructive character; his attitude may probably be not different from
that of the present Lord Chancellor, who, under somewhat similar cir-
cumstances, refused office in 1869 under Mr. Gladstone, rather tiun
be a party to the Disestablishment of the Irish Church. This did
not, however, prevent him joining the Ministry after the pasasg
of a measure which his personal feelings and regard for conflstencT
disabled him from supporting, but which his statesmanship recog-
nised as inevitable.

It is, indeed, evident that the Duke of Argyll admits in tk
fullest manner the necessity of reopening the question of Irish Land
Legislation, which it was hoped the Act of 1870 had finally det^-
mined. Like many others, he shows an unexpected and somewtet
tardy interest in the development of the policy for multiplying
ownerships among the occupiers of land in Ireland by means of State
assistance and loans. He is prepared to go a long way in ths
direction, with the object of bringing into existence a class of small
owners, who may prove a support and prop to the rights of propertr.
He thinks, however, that the clauses of the Bill which have this
object are contradictory to those which give further security to exasting
tenants ; and he fears that so much is conceded to tenants onder

1881. THE IRISH LAND BILL. 1045

these other parts of the measure, that there will be little inducement
to them to undertake the small increase of present burthen which
will convert them into owners. It is true that the two parts of
the Bill proceed on different lines — ^the one aiming at the spread of
full ownership among the occupying class, the other placing restric-
tions upon existing ownerships in &vour of the occupying tenants ;
and to whatever extent the latter is a full remedy for the grievances
complained of, the tenants may be less inclined to avail themselves
of the former. These objects, however, are supplementary rather
than antagonistic to one another. It is impossible that any scheme
for promoting ownership among occupying tenants can be otherwise
than gradual in its operation, unless we are prepared to adopt the
principle of expropriation, or to offer terms so favourable as to give
rise to an universal demand for the expropriation of landlords. What
answer then is it to tenants whose interests are being absorbed and ap-
propriated by a rack-renting landlord, that on a neighbouring property
more favoured tenants have been assisted in becoming owners ? On
the other hand, whatever may be the extent of protection accorded
to the tenants by the Bill, there wiU still remain a vast disproportion
between the number of tenants on the one side and the number of
landlords on the other ; it is most desirable therefore that the ranks of
the latter should be greatly reinforced, and that the class of persons
ordinarily tenants should be largely infused with those who have the
interest and instincts of owners. The terms offered by the Bill to
tenants desirous of purchasing have evidently been framed so as to
give such inducements to occupying tenants as will result in a con-
siderable accession of them to the class of owners, but not such as to
result in agitation for the universal application of the scheme. It is
obvious, therefore, that even if this part of the measure should have
all the success its friends desire, and should result in a very con-
siderable addition to the number of occupjring owners, it is no remedy
for the wider evils which have led to the demand for legislation, and
which are at the root of the agitation in Ireland.

The question, then, remains — What is to be done in respect of the
much larger class who must still remain tenants, and who cannot avail
themselves of the opportunities and assistance for becoming owners,
or where owners are unwilling to sell ? What also is the evil, and
what is the extent and effect of it ? The defect of the Duke of
Argyll's argument is, that, while admitting the necessity of certain
legislation, which goes a long way in a direction opposed to all precon-
ceived doctrines, he appears not to appreciate the facts which alone
can justify it. He admits the expediency of some intervention of the
State to prevent excessive rents, but he justifies this departure on the
ground only * that exceptional poverty or weakness justify some un-
usual or temporary protection,' and he seems to be quite unaware of
the nature and extent of the evils which have led to the present state

1046 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. j^

of things. Elsewhere, alluding to increments of rent at frequent
and at uncertain intervals as a great evil, he adds, ^butitisi^tiA
evil which has been shown to prevail at all eztensively, or agmst
which violent remedies are required.' This raises a question of bidt,
and must be decided upon reference to the evidence. It turns aho
in great part upon another question of fact, on which the Duke hu
also come to an opinion different in a great measure from that of
most of those who hold legislation to be necessary and defensible, and
a right and full xmderstanding of which is necessary before we can
appreciate the effect upon the tenant's interest of the arbitrary raising
of rent — namely, the extent to which tenants in Ireland have tbeoh
selves effected improvements upon their holdings. Througbout tk
whole of the article there i& no sufficient appreciation of the kt
that the tenants as a rule have effected all improvements aDd that the
landlords have done little or nothing.

^ If there is one fact,' he says, ' brought out more clearly than
another by the evidence taken before the Commission, it is the large
and unacknowledged share which landowners have frequently con-
tributed to the improvements of Ireland.' This is not, I think, the
conclusion which will result from a careful study of the evidence of
both Commissions. On the contrary, the general effect of theendooe
is to confirm in the fullest manner the common opinion, that sub-
stantially throughout Ireland, whatever may be said to distinguish
the land from the imcultivated waste or bog, whatever there is of
building or farmstead, or of drains and fences, has been effected h;
tenants and not by landlords. There are exceptions to this ; there are
individual cases where landowners such as Lords Fitzwilliam and
Leoonfield, Mr. Mahoney of Dromore, Mr. Crosbie of Ardfert, and
others, have acted on the English plan — have effected improvements at
their own cost, and have erected fiarm buildings ; but these are few and
far between : they do not interfere with the general result, 11m isr
deed is no new view of Ireland ; it was stated in the broadest tenns
in the Beport of the Devon Commission in 1844. After speaking of
the state of England, it said : —

In Ireland the case is wholly different. It is admitted on all htods that, a-
cording to the general practice in Ireland, the landlord boilda neither dwdfin^oBft
nor farm-houaes, nor puts fences, gates, &c, into good order before ha lets hiskai ta
a tenant. In most cases, whatever is done in the way of biulding or fencing ia dose
by the tenant ; and, in the ordinary language of the country, dweUing-houae^ £bb
buildings, and even the making of fences, are described by the general word' iifi-
provements,' which is thus employed to denote the necessary adjnnctB to a to
without which in England or Scotiand no tenant oonld he found to rent it

After quoting this before the Commission of last year, Ur. M.
O'Brien, the valuator and surveyor of the Irish Temporalities Commit
sion, who has had unusual opportunities of inspecting properties in
every part of Ireland, said : —

1881. THE IRISH LAND BILL. 1047

•

That expresses what is now the g^nefal case of Ireland. Of couebb there are
properties where hmdlords spend money. There are particular farms on estates
where landlords do spend money. It is bj agreement >Wtli the tenant. It has
suited them both, but it certainly would not be remunerative to the landlord to do
it in a general way ; but I don't think he has done it, or ever does it, as a rule.^

The majority also of the Duke of Bichmond's Commission speak
of the ' improvements and equipments of farms in. Ireland as very
generally the work of the tenant.'

A committee of Irish landowners, it is true, have put forth an
imposing array of figures with the object of showing the expenditure
of landlords on a considerable number of properties. They allege that
in respect of 4,200,000 acres of which they have been able to obtain
information, and which probably represent the property of the larger
and highest class of owners, 3,542,0002. has been spent by the land-
lords in from thirty to forty years: when the figures are worked out, it
appears that an average of about li^. per acre has been spent, spread over
forty years, or at the rate of 2^ per cent, of the rent in each year. It
further appears that more than one half of this expenditure was pro-
vided for by loans &om the State for drainage, in respect of which the
tenants paid the interest and instalments of capital, and cannot there-
fore be said to have been provided by the landowners.

An interesting illustration is afibrd^d by the evidence before the
Duke of Bichmond's Commission of the way in whicfi these figures are
made up, and how Irish landowners may persuade themselves that
they have effected vast improvements on their tenants' holdings. A
landowner, in arguing against the claims of the tenants, alleged that in
the past twenty-five years he had himself expended no less than 150,0002.
upon his estate of 20,000 acres. When cross-examined it appeared that,
of this great amount, all that was laid out for the benefit of the tenant
was about 10,0002., of which 5,4002. was on drainage (for which the
tenant paid interest), and 3,1502. on buildings ; the remainder had
been spent in planting and beautifying his demesne lands, or in
other directions which could in no way be counted as improvements
of the tenants' holdings.^ Even without deduction for exaggerations of
this kind, the return of the Landowners' Committee confirms rather
than refutes the general statement that the Irish landowners have not
materially contributed to the improvement of their tenants' holdings.
In some cases they have provided slates and timber for building,
and tiles for drainage ; but even this aid, it is alleged, has been with-
drawn since the Land Act of 1870. It will be found that nearly all
the leading land-agents who gave evidence before the Bessborough Com-
mission speak of the Act as having checked landlords' assistance to
tenants' improvements. The Act having recognised the right of the

* Duke of Richmond's Commission, q. 2221.3.
> Duke of Bichmond's Commission, qq. 25630-54.

1048 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. j^

tenants to their improvements, it is said that the laodloidsbesitate
to contribute the slates or timber, the value of which might i»t be
very appreciable in the shape of interest and rent, bat wouU go
to swell the tenants' claims for compensation on leaving their tums.

It should never be forgotten, however, that there is an economic
cause for the improvements being effected by the tenant latherthanlif
the landlord, where a system of agriculture exists such asthatof IidsDd.
The landlord cannot make improvements, build hooses and fam
buildings, and maintain them after the English faishioii, for a vast
number of small holdings varying from 5 to 50 acres. He has not
the capital to do so, if he has the will, nor would it be wise on liis
part to attempt it. The tenant can effect such improvenaents it
much less cost than the landlord ; his own labour enters largely into
the matter ; he knows best what he wants. The landlord who ahoold
be disposed to undertake this work for his tenants would have no
peace, and but a small proportion of his rent would find its way to ids
banker. In England, under a system of large farms, it is different;
the economic argument, equally with the general practice, nay be in
favour of the landlord supplying the capital necessary to equip the
farm with buildings and to maintain them, leaving the tenant fiee to
use his capital in his business as farmer, rather than lock it up in
permanent improvements ; but the result of the English system is,
that the drain upon the capital of the landlord is very hoiTy, not
merely for new buildings and other improvements, but for mainte-
nance and repairs.

A change of tenancy is the almost certain cause of a danaod
upon the landlord to put the farm buildings in order. The labonrefs'
cottages are also at his charge, and it is notorious that capitil ex-
pended on them, even when new, seldom gives a return of nMnetbn
1 per cent. The expenditure in improvements and maintenance
on a well-managed property in England seldom averages leas than 15
per cent, of the income, and of this but a small part brings any
return in the shape of interest or increased rent. It is profaaUethat
in most parts of England from one-third to one-half of the interest
of the landlord in his land consists of his own and his predeoesBors'
investments of capital in it, and the remainder only is the natnnl
value of the land unimproved. In Ireland the reverse is the case:
throughout its length and breadth the landlords and their prede-
cessors, with rare exceptions, have done and can do but little or
nothing. On this point the evidence of Mr. R. V. O'BrieD, agent to
Lord Inchiquin's estates in Clare, is very much to the point :--

At present (he says), the Tandlords in Ireland have hardly sufficient capital ti
make the improvements which are necessary to make the Arms hahitaUe isd
easily cultivated by the people ; and it is very difficult for them to do so on tcc/xA
of the size of the farms. When there are 200 acres takoi up hj ten ftms, tk
Commission can understand that building farmsteadB for ten farms of 20acRsi><>

1881. THE IMISH LAND BILL. 1049

TBij dilbxetit thing hsjm building a farmstead for one fiurm of 200 acres. Eyeu
with the best intention, I do not think that any landlord can afford to build farm-
steads for so many small holdings.

How could the tenant be in a better position in that respect P
He can work much cheaper and he can do it as he pleases himself; he has his
own horse, and be has his own time for doing these things j andl find that he
works for about half the expense that the landlord does.'

Under the present conditions, therefore, of Ireland, it is no sah*
ject for blame that the landlords have not effected improvements, but
have left them to the tenants. Inasmuch, however, as tenants can
only be expected to make improvements when they have ample security
for them, those landlords are much to blame who have not given
this security. The very fact, also, that the tenants are expected to
make these improvements, and to maintain them, and that they can
effect this at a cheaper rate and more advantageously than the land-*
lords can do, entirely alters their relation to the land and to their
landlords ; they look upon the land they have improved, and upon
the houses they have built, with very different regard to that of the
mere capitalist in the English sense of the term. In the latter the
landowner has never lost dominion over the land, and has continuously
exercised the function of owner. In the former the tenants have
put their labour and capital into the land, and have acquired what
must necessarily seem to them a permanent interest in it. Given,
therefore, a general system of small holdings, not largely intermixed
and supported by ownerships as in France and Belgium, but asso-
ciated with universal tenancy, it is certain that the status of the
tenant must be gfreatly affected by it, and that a claim will grow up
for the recognition of rights totally different from anything that has
been claimed by or conceded to the English tenant.

It ifl difficult to point out in the civilised world a single case
similar to that of Ireland, where a very general system of small
holdings nists, unsupported by a widely distributed ownership, or
where the occupiers have not claimed and attained a right to con-
tinuity of holding, such as to give them security for their cultiva-
tion and improvements, and inducement to industry, leavened with
content and respect for the law. It may be recollected that the
Boman law, the justest system of jurisprudence which has ever been
promulgated by man, recognised under similar circumstances the
right to a perpetuity of a tenant who by himself or his predecessors
had paid rent for forty years. We have ourselves been compelled
to recognise the same prindple in India, where, under the legislation
of 1859, a continuous holding for only twelve years entitleg the ryot
to a perpetual occupancy, subject to revision of rent by a legal
tribunal. The numerous cases distributed throughout Europe of
perpetual tenancies at fixed rents, subject to fines on alienation or

' Duke of Richmond's Commission, q. 28389, et ieq.

• Vol. IX.— No. 62. 4 A

1050 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. j^ng

bequest, are illustrations of the same kind : they were originated, oq
the example of the Soman law, by the ecclesiastical owners of such
lands when, freeing in early times the cultivatoisfromserflon^it
became necessary to determine the nature of their tennie. The
necessary distinction, then, between the economic condition of the
Irish small holdings and the English large holdings— Iwtween &
Irish peasant cultivator and the English capitalist {Earner— is tk
fundamental principle which must be conceded before any step em
be taken towards land l^slation in Ireland,

It may be said by many, perhaps, that, looking broadly at the two
systems, the English system of large holdings and capitalist tenaat,
and of separation of ihe rural community into three distinct classes
of owner, tenant, and labourer, is economically sounder and better
than the Irish system of two classes only— of owner and peasant ed-
tivator. The question is too large to discuss fully in this paper;
it is scarcely necessary to do so ; he would be a bold man whoshooU
proclaim that it is the duty of England to impress its system upon
Ireland, and legislate with a view to the suppression of small
tenancies and the conversion of their tenants into laboaren. The
merits of the English system are by no means dear ; it is Yoyexcep-
tional ; it is not certain that it will stand the test of advemiy; Qm
condition of the agricultural labourer under it is fiur fix>m aatisbeboiy.

We must then accept the Irish system as it is, and makeiheM
of it ; it is more in harmony with the general conditions of other
civilised communities in Europe than is the system of England, md
all experience shows that it is compatible with a cultivatioQ ?ag(lj
better than that which exists in Ireland, and with a pioqperitf sod
content which unfortunately are now absent ; and there can belittle
doubt that this absence is due to the want of security to theftessats'
capital, which a widely-distributed ownership or a fuller sjstem d
tenant-right would supply /" It is certain that this conflict d tio
systems, and the instinct of the Irish people that English hi ui
English ideas endeavour to force upon them a system oi^Msite to
their own, alien to their traditions, and contrary to thdr ideal rf
happiness and civilisation, have much to do with the bitterness, and
even ferocity, with which the Land Question is surrounded. NjLceliDdi&,
and for all legislative purposes must be, considered and treated u a
country of small cultivators. Such as it is, it is capable of n^
improvement. It is our duty, then, to make the conditions sochthat
the system may be tried under the best advantages, and venntit
cast aside all idea of shaping its' laws so as to fiualitate or pro-
mote the substitution there of the English system. It is in tUi
respect that it seems to me the Duke of Argyll fiuls throagbotf
his article. His ideals are those of the English and Sootcfa systes:
he evidently thinks the Irish system unsound ; he admits the neoeastr
of some remedies, but they are temporary and transitional; he lods

1881. THE IRISH LAND BILL.

.0^

forward to the day when another system will be substituted; hiB
remedies^ then, must of necessity be insufficient and futile.

Assuming, then, the general prevalence in Ireland of a system
where the tenants make and maintain the permanent improvements,
where for economic reasons it is better that they rather than the
landlords should do so, and where for the same reasons it follows
that the value of such improvements should not merge in the
original and natural value of the land, but should pass from out-
going tenant to incoming tenant, the question arises, How, under such
<!onditionB, should rent be determined ? and how far under the existing
law the tenants are protected in their past improvements, and have
sufficient inducement to undertake further improvements in the
future ? That the rent should be assessed so as not to encroach upon
the value of the tenants' improvement will not be denied. No honest
man upholds the contrary. Till 1870, however, the law placed the
tenants' improvements wholly at the mercy of the landlord, and
although the majority of landlords were honest men, and did not
avail themselves of the power given by law, a minority felt no
scruple in doing so, and not unfrequently appropriated the fruits of
their tenants' labour and expenditure by arbitrary evictions and by
raising of rent. The Act of 1870 endeavoured to remedy this grave
evil. It reversed the presumptions of English law. It gave to
tenants the legal right to the improvements effected by themselves or
their predecessors. This was a great step in advance. It practi-
cally recognised a valuable interest of the tenants in their holdings.
It endeavoured, however, to secure this interest indirectly, and in a
manner consistent with leaving full dominion over the soil to the land-
lord. It aimed at giving full security to the tenant, putting an
end to evictions, giving practical fixity of tenure, and preventing the
raising of rent to a point which would eat up the tenant's interest. It
proposed that the tenant on eviction, whether arbitrarily or because
he refused to pay a higher rent, should be entitled not merely to
compensation for improvements, but to a payment for disturbance,
varying according to the size of the holding. It made no provision,
however, to protect the tenant, who should be unable or unwilling to
leave his holding, against a rise of rent which would encroach upon
his interest. It proceeded on the assumption that the fine and com-
pensation on eviction would at once be sufficient protection to the
tenant and a deterrent penalty upon the rack-renting proclivities of
the worst class of landlords.

Unfortunately, the experience of the Act, illustrated by the evi-
dence of the two Commissions, has shown conclusively that the method
of the Act of 1870 has not been adequate for its purpose — ^that it has
Bot been a protection to tenants, and that landlords have discovered
the means of evading it.

The Duke of Argyll appears to think that the Act has been opera-

4a2

1062 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Jnae

tive to a great extent, and that the cases where landlfirdi ban
succeeded in evading it are rare. The evidence, howe?er, it wn.
elusive as to the number of cases where landlords have ddibe-
rately set to work to undermine the principle of the Act, ud li^
increases of rent to encroach upon the tenant's interest. The OMg
are so numerous that, although the majority of landlardfi nij be
eitculpated, the minority of wrong-^doers is sufficient to tpiead ihim,
distrust, and ill-feeling throughout the length and faresdOi of In*
land. It is commonly said that these practices are confined to tb
purchasers under the Landed Estates Court : sudi penoos ue tbe
scapegoats for all complaints of this kind ; if there were no othen,1i»
number might be very large, as one-fourth of the area of Jrehndbtt
passed through the Encumbered Estates Court during the lastthnty
years. But the evidence shows that the cases are not confined tottos
class, and that many of the older landowners, whether thnrogh iga(^
ance or wilfulness, whether urged by penury, or whether applying to
their properties ideas with which they have been imbued in fke
management of their English properties, have screwed np their nots
to the point of destroying the tenant's interests. The evideooe on
which these statements rest is not that of tenants only, but of Iiod-
agents and landowners in every part of Ireland. Mr. Mvpbj, tk
agent for properties extending over 50,000 acres in Donegal tod
Down — a gentleman who also acts as valuator for numeroos nilvij
companies in the north of Ireland — ^said in his evidence i^-^

I tbink if the Act of 1870 had been loyally reeeived, it would have Im vex-
ing well now. But it was not. Some landlords thou^t that tbeir si^totm
invaded, and they set to work to counteract it. It is poaaible that IiidM br
xaiaing rents may eat up and do away with tenant-right. It is a TerynnfenBite
thing that it should be so. The consequence is, that the tenants have i Mag of
insecurity that their tenant-right may be absorbed in that way, and in eonRquDce
ihey do not make improvements. There are instances where estates km ^
most generously managed and where the tenants lived as happily as poaSilfeiW.
when another hindlord come into possession all this was changed. ' Aootte^'
arose, who knew not Joseph.' That has been the root and evil of land-jottiaig'

Mr. Johnston, another agent for ^0,000 acres of land in Leitni
and Longford, said to the same effect : ' —

I think the Land Act failed in protecting tenants against a rise of lents. Ib^v
one case in particular where an estate was over-valued, and many of the \isss&
asked me what they were to do P They could not pay the rents and five ; sdllv^'
were they to do P If they broke up their homes and brought a land dun, t^
would have nowhere to go — ^they could do nothing but emigrate. Hentt M
elected to pay the increased rent, and did pay it for a few years. Nov Uiej b^
ikiled, and have not paid either last year or this, and at present ars in « itotzis
rebellion.

* Earl of EesBborongh's Commission, q. 10111, ti nq. * Ibid. q. Wit

1881. THE IRTISH LAND BILL. 1068

Groing further south, Mr. Keane, agent for 100,000 acres in Clare,

said:^ —

I haye known many cases where tenants laid out monej in improTements, and
the reetdt was that their rents were adfanced.

Mr. Vernon, agent for properties worth 90,0002. a year, in all parts
of Ireland, spoke ^ of the feeling of insecurity caused by the office rules
in the North, malring the sale of tenant-right subject to the condition
of a rise of rent, and of the paralysing effect of such an unjust sale.
Mr. Leahy, agent for very large properties in the South of Ireland
said:^ —

There is no question that on certain estates, a great number of them purchased
by the parties I hare mentioned, it is absolutely necessary that there should be
some court of arbitratioB. The landlord, if he is willing and wishes to do so, can
in a great measure nullify tiie tenant-right interest by raising the rent unduly. I
cons^er that it is a practice that should be positively put down, and that calls for
legislation.

Mr. Andre Ker, agent for Lord Dartrey and Colonel Clements : *—

I have known some estates where the landlords haye been in the habit of
raising the rents. It has had the effect of checking improyements and ruining the
tenants, and of injuring the landlords in the long run.

Mr. Jackson, agent to Lord Arran in Donegal : ^^ —

I know that the fioeling in the minds of the tenantry is that of gpneat insecurity.
I beliere that improrements would go on 40 or 60 per cent, more than they do if
they were sure that rents would not be raised for their improyements.

Mr. Evans, agent for 10,000 acres in Westmeath : " —

I haye known cases on some estates of raising the rents of the smaller tenants
at comparatiyely short interyals and by small amounts. It haa had a yexy dis-
couraging effect, and places the tenants in a yery uncertain position. They do not
know what to expect. It has a yeiy deteirent and injurious effect as r^ards
improyements.

Mr. Beeves, landowner of 3,000 acres in Clare : *^ —

Hiere is a class of landowners who are yeiy rapacious^ and if they could be
chedced I think the country would be the better for it.^*

This evidence of land-agents is confirmed by scores of other
witnesses. Judge Flanagan, the able chief of the Landed Estates
Court, who must well know what takes place, has said : *^ —

• Earl of Bessborough's Commission, q. 367. * Ibid. q. 36269, et seq.

• Duke of Biehmond*s Ckmunission, q. 33868.

• Earl of Bessborough*s Commission, q. 8170, et uq, ** Ibid. q. 14906^
" Duke of Richmond's Commission, q. 24083, et teq.

'* Earl of Bessborough's Commission, q. 28870.

*' I quoted some of these extraots in the recent debate on the Land BiU. Jhey
are so important that I feel justified in inserting them here at greater length.
** Duke of Biobmond'a CommJMlon, q. 21448.

1064 THE NINETEENTH OENTURT. j^je

In the Encumbered Estates Court there was a number of land speeaktoEa.
These men would rbuy land for a very small sum of money, and when they nt tb
land they yery often turn out the tenants tit fflobo, or raise the rents yerj oonideiUT
upon the tenants* The small proprietors are the worst landloidfl in theeomtiT.
My belief is that the purchasers of that kind are in a great messore theeanaeof
the agitation about rent. I have no doubt there are many cases of hiriAm {
belieye that when one case of hardship is committed, people inisr tint beeaioe ooe
bad man has done so and so, other men are doing likewise ; and the agitation gotv^
in that way goes on increasing and swelling firom day to day, and all landloriaaR
treated indifferently and looked upon in the same light.

Professor Baldwin and Major Robertson, specially selected by
late Crovemment to report upon the general conditions of Iidaod,
fully confirm these statements* The former said : ^^ —

We compared the North-eaat with the North-west; we compared LocdBowB-
shire's estatesi for instance, where there is unlimited freedom of sale and pnetiallj
no increase of rent, with Lord Arran's estate in the North-west of Ira]iuid,ite
there is a constant nibbling at rents, an increment of 25 per cent, pat on emf tioe
that there is a change of tenancy, no matter what the change of tenancy k We
may mention now to the Commiasion, as the result of a good deal of obBontiaoiii
Ulster, that increase of rent is not confined to two or three estates; itisaveir
general system where there is a change of tenancy in Ulster. SnoelifpeiRd
here last I have been examined before Lord Bessborough's CommiBBion,8Dd Istited
that I had lately been in a part of Ulster and found three estates adjoiniog. Tiiw
are what are called office rules, and on one of these estates up to a recent pood the
limit on the tenant's interest was 16^ per acre ; on the second estate tha limit vu
10/. per acre ; and on the third estate the limit was 51, per acre. Now those te
estates meet at a certain point, and round about that point I ezamkiBdamnl
farms at a distance of say a quarter of a mile, and I found not oolj theaenzpe
office rules turning, as it appears, the Ulster custom into ridicule, bntextraoidiMiT
difierences as to the rents. On one estate the rent was 00 per cent more tbait
was on the adjoining estate, the lands actually meeting at a point ; andtkRW
a difference between 61. and 16/. an acre in the tenant-iight. The tenants oooipiBa
that the landlords unduly raise their rents. That is a common complamt in Dkii,
and 1 am bound to say that the result of actual observation, Terified hfiaeaou-
nation of the receipts of the tenants, and by a reference to the office Voohoftbe
land-agents, is that 1 think the complaint is thoroughly justified by themanberof
cases that occur. The number of cases is a great deal larger than IbefieTsi^
was.

It may be conceded that the majority of larger landlords aie men

of juster and wider views, imbued with the traditions of the coontij,

anxious to live and let live, men to whom Dryden's lines may teU

apply : —

They take posseemon of their just estate.
Nor rack their tenants with increase of rent.

But a minority have from time immemorial, from generations before
the Encumbered Estates Court, been notorious for a grasping rapadtr;
the direct descendants of those of whom Spenser said more tbas
three hundred years ago, ' Many of the landlords of Irdand shamefoDj

>> Duke of Richmond's CommiBBion, q. 29004, H seq.

1881. THE IRISH LAND BILL. 1055

rack their tenants, exacting from them, besides their covenants, what
they please ; ' men against whom even the prayer at one time con-
tained in the English liturgy ^^ against rack-renting landlords would
have no avail.

It was against such men that the Act of 1870 was directed ;

they have discovered the means of evading that Act, of undermining

its spirit, and by trading on the unwillingness of the tenants to

leave their holding or to &ce a lawsuit, have squeezed up their rents

to the point of destroying the tenant's admitted and acknowledged

interest. What is equally clear from the evidence is, that a few such

cases occurring in a district spread a feeling of alarm and distrust in

all directions, and are the direct deterrents of improvement. No

tenant feels that he is safe where such cases occur. The present

landlord may be honourable and wholly above such action, but he

may be succeeded by bequest or purchase by another who is ignorant

of the traditions and customs of the property, and who may follow

the example set to him by his grasping neighbour. What stronger

evidence can be given of this than that of Professor Baldwin, who

states that he found an universal distrust among tenants of the

^stem of prizes for cultivation, so generously established by Lord

Spencer, arising from the fear lest the better appearance of their

farms should lead to an increased rent. This is at once the strongest

proof and the best argument of the effect upon the general condition

of a country of a system of small holdings without security of tenure.

It results, and must result, in a general unwillingness of tenants to

effect improvements, lest their rents should be raised, and even in an

affectation of poverty where it does not really exist. It is matter of

common observation and remark in Ireland that even the occupants

of the poorest and most squalid cabins often have means altogether

out of proportion to their ostensible style and means of living.

Security alone can induce such persons to expend their labour and

capital upon their holdings, and the want of such security gives rise

to a simulated squalor and misery even where it need not or does not

** The piayer aUuded to is to be found in the Primer of Edward VI., and may
interest those who are not aware of it : — * The earth is thine and all that therein
is, notwithstanding thou hast given the possession thereof to the children of men.
We heartily pray thee to send thy Holy Spirit into the hearts of them that
possess the grounds and pastures of the earth ; that they, remembering themselves to
be thy tenants, may not rack and stretch out the rents of their houses and lands, nor
yet take unreasonable fines and incomes, after the manner of covetous worldlings ; but
so let them out that the inhabitants thereof may be able to pay the rents and to live
and nourish their families and to relieve the poor ; give Ihem graoe also to consider,
that they are but strangers and pilgrims in this world, having here no dwelling-place,
but seeking one to come ; that they, remembering the short continuanoe of their life,
may be content with that which is sufficient, and not join house to house, nor couple
land to land, to the impoverishment of others, but so behave themselves in letting
oat their tenements, lands, and pastures, that after this life they may be received
into everlasting dwelling-places I *

1056 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. June

really exist. Economic argmnent6) therefore, equally witk oonttka^
tiona of justice, demand that a remedy shall be found, and ifaiterer
reasons there were for the Act of 1870 apply wHh equal or gnte
force at the present time in favour of a further advance.

It is not too much to say that the commcm oonduskm aniyed it
alike by those who have investigated the subject, andbyfhednevicst
men who are connected with property in Ireland, is that, in fhehtoat
equally of landlords as of tenants, it is necessary that the State ghoaU
intervene between titiem in oider to determine the rent where it ii
complained of as encroaching upon the tenant's inteiest Thii isthe
cardinal point of the Land Bill ; it is that from which all its oAs
provisions directly and logically follow. It seons to me that tk
Duke of Argyll, while accepting in a hesitating and tentative namer
the principle of State inteiyention as to rent, has fidled tonndentiDd
the meaning of the principle which he thus adcqpts, and in Us ob-
jections to this measure has fastened upon a subordiniite piadple
and holds it up as the main clue to the measure.

He thinks it possible to confine the appeal as to nat to the
smaller and weaker tenants, and for a limited period ; bat where ue
we to draw the line whenever such a principle is adopted? b itto
apply only to the cottier tenants of the West and South? or iiitto
embrace the class of peasant &rmers with holdings up to 50 mrs
who constitute the great bulk of the cultivators of Ireland, and from
whom the chief demand for protection has come ? A prineiple
such as this, involving a wide departure from previous policy or frma
English principles, cannot, from its very nature, be limited to
exceptional cases; it must necessarily become the general nde,cB
which exceptions may be grafted, as proposed by the Bill, in ass
where, from the previous relation of landlord kdA tenant, as vkre
the landlord has effected all improvements, the reasons for its appli*
cation do not exist.

From this principle of State intervention as to rents it aeoenuiij
follows that the decision must hold good for a term of years, aadtkat
there must be continuity of tenure subject to periodic leTisioDg q(
rent. It equally follows that the interest thus secured to the tesnt
must be made negotiable, and that the sale of the tenant's interest,
subject to reasonable restrictions, should be permitted.

The Duke of Argyll, however, appears to be of opimon that tbe
statutory right of sale precedes in point of order and importance
the principle of statutory regulation of rents. He considers tht
^ this indiscriminate right conferred upon tenants constitiites a sbaie^
and it may be a large share, of ownership, suddenly tnmsfened
from those who now have it, and who may have sacrificed modi
to keep it, to those who have never had it, and have never psid
one sixpence for it.' He thinks that this is the main principle of tk
measure, and that it necessarily carries with it the further principfe

1881. TBE IRISH LAND BILL. 1067

of a State determination of rent. In this, however, it seems to me
that he has inverted the order and importance of the principles of
the BilL The judicial tribunal of rent does not follow upon the
right of firee sale of the tenant's interest, for it would be quite pos-
sible, as has been the case in the greater part of Ulster up to the
present time, for firee sale, to be conceded without any appeal to a
tribunal as to rent. On the other hand, when the principle of a
judicial rent is conceded, where it is laid down that the rent must be
fixed with due regard to the tenant's interest, it must certainly foUow
as a logical necessity that a term or perpetuity should be conceded to
the tenant, and that the tenant should also be permitted to realise the
value of the interest by sale or ^otherwise. The Duke speaks of this
right of sale as if it were a novelty, an invention new to Ireland and
to the law ; ^ereas in fiict it is the traditional practice and custom
in Ulster, a right already recognised there by the law, though
limited on some estates by office rules, which the Ulster tenants
allege to be unwarranted invasions of their customs ; it is also familiar
to both landlords and tenants in every part of Ireland, for there are
hundreds of properties out of Ulster where it is practically conceded.
No part of the evidence before the two Commissions is more in-
teresting and important than that of the land-agents and land-owners
who have spoken on this point. It is clear that the sale of the tenant's
interest, as between outgoing and incoming tenant, exists already
to a degree which landlords are hardly aware of. They try to prevent
it or to limit the amount paid ; but the custom of the country is too
strong f<»r them, and transactions take place behind the back of the
agent, sanctioned by the usage and traditions of the people themselves.
Mr. Eirkpatrick, agent to Lord Portarlington, speaks as follows on
this point : *^ —

The sale of the goodwill is allowed now on the estates as a general rale. It
has crept in in the sonth and in other places. Landlords did not know of its exist-
ence, as £Eur 88 I am aware, ten years ago; bat now Lord Portailington is quite
wiUiBg to grant tensni-right or sale of the goodwilL It wasi told him flist tibat
it existed, for he did not think it existed tan years ago. He made the remark
perhaps ten years ago—' There is no tenant-right on my property/ and I said,
' There is, whether you heard of it or not. Undoubtedly it has been going on, and
it is yerj greatly to yoar advantage. A bad tenant, who would be a burthen to
you, gets something from a good tenant for going. In erery case these bad tenants
kove been replaced by ezcdient tenaats ; the outgoing people ore no burthea to
you ) eyeiybody is satisfied, and your property is greatly benefited.'

It is dear from this witness, and from many others to the same
effect, that e? en under the law as it now stands, without due security
against an increase of rent soeh as to destroy the tenant's interest, in-
comii^ tenants are ready, without the knowledge of the landlord or his
jtgent, to purehase the goodwill of the outgoing tenants, and to give
large sums for it. Itisequally certain that this, when admitted by the

IV Earl of Beasborough's Commission, q. 379.3, et $eq.

1058 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Jnne

landlord, can be done without encroaching on the Cur rent d the
landlord, and with direct advantage to the landlord, bysabstitotinga
good tenant with capital and energy for an outgoing tenant vho is
leaving probably because he cannot make the holding pay.

The sale of tenant-right as between outgoing and incomingtenuit
has also this advantage, that it is the best and only true test of Qte
value of the tenant's improvements and interest. At present tk Act
of 1870 concedes to the tenant the value of his improvements, but he
can realise this only by a suit against his landlord. If the sale of
the interest be permitted, there need be no litigation on the subject;
the rent being fixed and a term having been granted under the pro-
posed provision, with a right of renewal, the tenant who desiies to
leave wiU obtain the value of his interest from the incomer, and all
further litigation between himself and his landlord may be dispensed
with. Whatever, then, may be the tendency under the eiistmg law
for this motive of sale of tenant's interest to grow up, it is certain
that when the law shall have determined the rent, it will be whoUj
impossible to prevent it : —

Naturam ezpellas fdrca, tamen uaqae lecarret

Whoi a tenant who desires to leave his holding has a valiuUem-
terest, and when the extent of that interest is already detenmnedbj
the judicial decision as to rent, and when there is another person of the
same class ready to pay money for the position which the tenant desiie
to quit, it is quite certain that, do what we may, forbid by ¥hate?er
penalties we please, the transaction is certain* to take phioe. It is
equally right and expedient that it should be permitted. We ha?e
already recognised the tenant's interest by the Act of 1870 ; ve aze
proposing to hedge it with additional securities ; we are giving a
certain term with the right of periodic renewal with revision of rat;
it is certain that this right will lose a great part of its vaioe if
it be unsaleable. The evidence before the Commission is most
clear and certain that on those properties where tenant-right is cob-
ceded, and where sale of this interest is permitted, there is the heit
condition of things ; there is the greatest security to the tenant;
there is full inducement for improvements ; there is the greatest
certainty to the landlords of recovering their rents ; there is that
general feeLLng of content which is so essential to a social system, h
Ulster, it is true, that on some estates attempts have been madeio
limit the amount of tenant-right and to fix the payments which
shall be paid by the incoming tenants. It is obvious, howev», that
where a tenant has himself paid the regulated amount of say 52. per
acre, and is prohibited from receiving a greater amount in his ton
when at some future time he desires to leave, all inducem^t to
improve is taken from him.

It is clear from the evidence that in the long run the rent of

1881, TEE IRISH LAND BILL. 1059

properties where tenant-right is conceded is at least equal to, if it
does not exceed, that where it does not exist. The sums given in
many parts of Ulster may appear to be very high — often equal to
and sometimes exceeding the value of the freehold or the landlord's
interest ; there is, however, reason to believe that in very few cases
is it more than a full and Hberal estimate of the tenant's improve-
ments. Professor Baldwin says that in every case where extreme
prices for tenant-right had been pointed out to him, he had on
inquiry found that the incoming tenant had received good value
for his money. In one case where a tenant had 85L for the tenant-
right of a small holding of 8 acres at (Jweedore, rented at only XOa.
per acre, he found on inquiry that the outgoing tenant had built a
very good house and had reclaimed most of the land from a bog ; the
improvements, therefore, were well worth the money which he received
from the incoming man, and the latter had not a bad bargain, on the
assumption that the rent would not be increased. He says of Lord
Portsmouth's property that very laige sums have been given by
tenants on entering their £BLrms, but after careful examination he had
not been able to find a single case where the purchaser did not get a
&ir return for his outlay without entering into the question of good-
will at all. The tenant-right as a rule runs as high on the Downshire
property as on any other estate in Ulster. It averages about 402. per
Irish acre, or 252. per English acre. The farms average about 25
acres. On such a holding the &rm buiidings and the tenant's im-
provements it is said may well be worth 1,0002., and are often of
greater value. The tenant or his predecessor has erected these build-
ings and made these improvements, and by the custom of the estate
he is secure in their property ; rents are but seldom raised, and only
with every r^fard to the tenant's interest ; the value of the land is ap-
praised by the agent <»ily in its natural state. The result of this
system cannot be doubted. The tenants are described by the agent as
contented and prosperous ; their fieuining is very good as compared
with other parts of the country ; they get more out of the soil,
and are very industrious. The land is poor and will not grow per-
manent grass. Notwithstanding the inferiority of the soil, the people
are prosperous. There is less pauperism than elsewhere. In spite of
the sums which they have to pay on entry into farms for tenant-right,
and although the rent is as high as elsewhere, the farmers are able
to save money and to give portions to their children. Such are the
statements made by Lord Downshire's agent ; they are confirmed by
many other witnesses of the same class from properties where tenant-
right is fully conceded and is rigorously guarded against unjust raising
of rent.

What the Bill substantially proposes to effect is no more than what
the best of landlords in Ulster and elsewhere concede. Nine out of ten
land-agents and landlords before the two Commissions make it their

1060 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Jme

l^oast that they never evict a tenant except for noa-payment of rati
they disclaim altogether the idea of competitive rents ; their toIr,
they say, are fair rents, with due regard to the tenant's interest. It
is equally clear that the custom of Ulster implies not merely the
right of selling the goodwill, but the right of continuous oceupation
at a fair rent, to be assessed fitim time to time with due regard to the
tenant-right. There can be no more safe and certain guide then ftr
legislation than the course which custom and experience point oat u
successful in securing and promoting good cultivation^ industry, and
content. Whatever theoretical objections there may be to a divided
ownership, or to a system of t^ancy burthened with payments fiv
tenant-right, they pale and disappear when submitted to the test of
experience and &ct. Howev^ novel, also, and however contrary te
English ideas, mskj be the prindple of submiting to a tribunal tbe
determination of rent, experience in Ireland riiows tliat it is neoe»-
sary to do so in order to prevent wrong and injustice being done. It
is not a question of political economy, but ci justice. The only way
of giving protection to eodsting and admitted rights is by am wpfetl
to the law courts ; and those who deny this appeal, and who allege
that it is opposed to freedom of contract or contrary to principks of
political economy, must pre&ce their arguments by a denial of these
rights, and by admitting that the tenant's interest should be subfeet
to extinction or appropriation by such raisings of rent as are com*
plained of.

It is not necessary here to discuss the question as to the direction
to be laid down for the ascertainment of a fcdr rent. However in-
portant this may be, it is very subordinate to the main quesHon,
whether rents should be the subject of judicial arbitration. Evoy-
one, however, must agree that in the definition the tenant's intcnit
must be regarded equally with that of the landlord. If the kndloid
be secured a fair rent, he can have no claim for compensation ; nhat
is taken from him is only the potential right of oonfiscatb^ the
tenant's interest by a rise of rent, which a landowner in giving eii-
dence has called ^a feather in his cap.' If by securing to the tenant
a fair rent we are giving to him a saleable interest, that is not, as the
Duke of Argyll seems to think, a deduction from the value of te
landlord's right, but an interest irtiieh already exists in the tenant,
and of which he is often unjustiy deprived under the present law. It
will be time to discuss the question of compaiisation when proposals
are formulated with that object by those who consider it to he yastu
It may be adced, however, who are the landlords that are to be eonr
pensated? Are they to be those who by rack-renting their tttoants have
brought about the present state of things in Ireland ? or are they to be
those who, Hke Lords Downshire and Portsmouth, have acted in ac-
cordance with the principles of theBill, and who find thatwfaile thair veal
int^estshave not suffered, their tenants are proqwrous and oonieni?

1881. THE IRISH LAND BILL. 1061

If it be alleged that those who are dealt with should be allowed the
option of surrendering their properties to the State at a prescribed
number of years' purchase of their rratal, the question still remains^
What is to be the basis of this transaction ? what is to be the rent on
which the terms of purchase are to be calculated and completed ? Is
the rack-rented property to be bought on the same terms as the mode-
rately rented property? When a court has determined the basis
of rent, there is no reason to doubt that the owner will be able to
obtain a full and fair price for it in the open market.

The purchase clauses of the Bill, and the facilities offered to
tenants to become owners, will, if properly worked, operate greatly to
raise the value of property in Ireland, and will afford the opportunity
to those who desire to part with their land to get rid of it on
favourable terms to their tenants. It is easy to show that if a land-
lord should be willing to part with' his land to his tenants at a fidr
average price, say at twenty-two years' purchase of a fair rent, he may
effect the operation so that he will receive three-quarters of the pur-
chase^money from the State, or sixteen years' purchase, and he may
leave the remaining one-fourth on mortgage of the holdings of
those of his tenants who are imable to produce the balance of the
purchase-money. The charge to the tenants under such an operation
will be very little more than their previous rent. Every year their
position will improve, and a sensible portion of the loan by the State
will be repaid by the occupying purchaser, and every year the security
for the remaining one-fourth of the purchase-money left on mortgage
will be increased by the amount which is repaid in the annual in-
stalment to the State. The loan of money by the State at a low rate
of interest, repayable by instalments, to facilitate such purchases, is in
fact a very great boon, and when properly understood must have a
vride effect.

It is frequently urged, in tbe interest equally of landlords desirous
of parting with their properties as of tenants willing to purchase or
become owners, that the terms offered by the State should be even
more liberal, that the whole of the purchase-money up to a given rate
should be advanced by the Government, and that the repayment by
the occulting purchaser should be spread over a longer period, so
that no greater burthen need be borne by the tenant than his previous
rent. A simple calculation shows that at twenty-two years' purchase
of the rental, an annual payment, reckoned at three and a half per cent.,
equal to the previous rent, will repay the whole of the purehase-money
and free the holding from the mortgage to the State in forty-three years.
If such terms were acceded to and carried out in respect of a con-
fiiderable portion of Irish tenants, they would be so fi&vourable as
almost necessarily to give rise to an agitation from all others for
similar treatment. Suppose, for instance, that one-fourth of the
occupying tenants should become owners upon the terms of paying a

1062 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. i^

fixed annual sum for forty-three years equal to thdr former rent;
during each year a portion of the purchaee-money will be repaid, «&d
the interest of the occupying ovmers will be continually ineieuel
without any extra exertion or any additional burden, till at tbe end
of the period the payment ceases, and they will be free from anj
charge. During the same time the remaining occapying tenants
will continue to pay rent, and at the end of the term will still be rant*
payers in perpetuity, liable to periodic increases of rent The
inequality of the position of the two classes would be most glaring,
and would be difficult to justify. How in such case woold it le
possible to resist the demands of the three-fourths for the same
treatment as the one-fourth ? Such terms then would almost cer-
tainly result in the eventual expropriation of aU hmdloids and the
substitution for them of the State as the ostensible mortgagee, bat
virtual landlord for a term of years varying according to the number
of years* purchase agreed to.

It is unnecessary here to dilate upon the economic and other
disadvantages of expropriating all landlords. Even the Land Leagne
has abandoned the programme which it originally put forward, of
universal expropriation, and confines its present claim totheexpio-
priation of the smaller class of bad landlords, though it does nolt
explain how the bad are to be distinguished from the good.'* No such
transaction has been carried out elsewhere. No instance can be
produced where a State has expropriated all its landowners. Ik
agrarian changes in Europe often alluded to as preeedenta of this
nature were of a different character. As a general rule the tenant
class were already fixed upon the soil ; they occupied small holdings
on the condition of rendering services to the landowners in the
cultivation of their much greater demesne lands ; and the geneni

>" In the coarse of the recent debates on the second reading of the LudBQl,
Mr. Pamell more than once emphatically denied that the Land League had ]«t
forward snch a programme, or that he had personally made a propool that^
landlords in Ireland should be expropriated. It is well to refer to the progiuine of
the Land League, agreed to at the l^ational Land Ck>nf erence at Dablin, i|nl %
1S80, with Mr. Pamell in the chair, which oontains the following resolntion:—

< Where any tenant tenders to the landlord for the purchase of his faoldiog a Rm
equal to twenty years of the Poor Law valuation thereof, the Gommisaon of Land
Administration wiU execute the ccmveyanoe of the said holding to the tenant, aod
will be empowered to advance to the tenant the whole or any part of the pmcha^'
money/

Speaking at Navan on September 26 of the same year, Mr. PameU, in ezpIanatioB
of the programme of the Land League, said : * The task we have now set before » ■
to secure in the soil every man who works on the land of Ireland.* After denoancio;
all such schemes as fixity of tenure at fair rent or periodic revisions, or the eztensioo
of the Ulster custom, he went on to say : < I see no difficulty in anlTing at such a
solution by the payment of a ^r rent for the space say of thirty-five yeaI^ after
which there would be nothing further to pay.' The meaning of this caniiot be
doubted — ^namely, that the State Is to expropriate all the landlords at twratj jeaz^
purchase of a fair rent, which the Land League had fixed at the Poor Ism faloatioo,
averaging about twenty-five per cent below existing rents.

'««

1881. THE IRISH LAND BILL. 1063

effect of the change was to confirm the tenants in the possession of
their holdings, and to invest them with the fiill rights of owners,
subject to a rent-charge to their owners in commutation of the services
due to the landowner, and which rent-charge could be redeemed on
favourable terms through the intervention of the State credit. The
landowners on their part remained in possession of their demesne landiB,
and often of a share of the tenants' holdings, free from any rights
or obligations to their former tenants, and able to cultivate them
by free labour or to let them on fiirm leases to free tenants. As a
general rule the landowners retained possession under these terms
of about two-thirds of their former estates, and nothing in the nature
of a general expropriation of the class took place.

The existing condition of Ireland presents little analogy to that of
Crermany and Russia before the agrarian changes of those countries.
The Irish landowners have but a very small extent of demesne
land, as distinct from that let to tenants. The conversion of all
tenants into owners by aid of a State loan would therefore be rela-
tively a &r greater and very different operation, and would result in
the virtual expropriation of all the landlord class, who would cease
to have a raison WHre in the country ; and imder such a scheme
Ireland would be reduced at once to a dead level of small owners,
paying for a long period of years their previous rent to the State in
redemption of tiie purchase-money ; and as the loan for carrying out
an immense operation of this kind would necessarily be raised out of
Ireland, the economical result would be that for a length of time the
whole of what is now the rent of that coimtry would be remitted out
of it in payment of interest, and the principal evils of absenteeism
would be multiplied fourfold. It follows from these considerations
that any general scheme of expropriation of landlords would be
economically disastrous to Ireland, and that the terms offered by the
State to assist in the conversion of tenants into owners must not be
such as to lead necessarily to its universal application. The terms
already offered by the Bill are most favourable to occupying tenants
desirous of buying and to landlords desirous of selling. They are
likely to have considerable effect, but they are properly such as to
throw some immediate though small burthen upon tenant purchasers,
and will not, it is believed, lead to a further demand from those
who remain as tenants.

The division on the second reading of the measure in the
House of Commons shows that its main principles are safe so far as
that branch of the Legislature is concerned, and that it will reach
the Upper House, after discussion, more or less prolonged, in Com-
mittee, and, it may be, with amendments conceded to fair argument,
whether for making clear what is intended, or for giving extension
where this can be with justice done, but with its cardinal points
unaltered. The question wiU then arise, What will the Lords do with

1064 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Jime

it ? It will be in the power of the Tory Peers to deal with the
question, for the moment, as they please. Unfortunately also dming
the past fifty years Irish questions have too frequently been the batfie-
fields of parties in that House, and the action of the nugority has
seldom in such questions been such as they can locJc back upon wUh
satis&ction and boasting. It would not be possible to cite a sin^
case of the many, in whidi the Lords have diflfered from the Lower
House on Irish questions, in which subsequent experience has justified
their action.

Looking back at the past, the Peers will find precedents enough
for every course which Ls open to them.

1. They may reject the Bill, as they rejected all proposals for
Reform of the Irish Church between the years 1833 and 1838, as
they rejected measures for the repeal of Tests and for removal of
Disabilities. But subsequent experience has shown that they were
ultimately compelled to adopt more extreme measures. The latest
Irish measure which they dealt with in this manner was the Cod^md-
satiou for Disturbance Bill of last year. There are probably fisw who
do not regret the course then taken. The Beport of the Duke of
Bichmond's Commission more than justified the proposal, for if at
ordinazy times legislative interference is necessary to protect Irish
tenants from arbitrary and excessive rent, how &r more neceseaiy
must such intervention be in time of famine and distress, on behalf
of a class of tenants in the West of Ireland, of whom the Bichmond
Conmiission say that ^ they are satisfied that with the veiy sUgfate^
failure of their crops the tenants would be unable to exist on the
produce of their fiEurms, even if they paid no rent ; ' and on behalf (^
others of whom they say that ' the depression has fallen with extzeme
severity upon the smaller £Bkrmers — ^that they have reason to fear tfat
a very large proportion of them are insolvent, and that the boontifQl
harvest of 1880 alone prevented their entire collapse.' Tliere cauDot
be a doubt that the agitation of the past winter has been greatly due
to the rejection of this BiU. It is impossible to suppose that the
Peers frill take upon themselves the responsibility of rejecting the
present measure, unless they are desirous of forcing on issues in
Ireland of a most formidable character.

2. The Peers may refrain from rejecting the Bill, bat they may
return it to the Lower House with vital amendments, striking at its
main principles, and such that neither the Ck>vemment nor the
House of Commons can accept. They have not unfirequently adopted
this course, as in the case of Irish Municipal Beform, between 1836
and 1838. There is, however, little distinction between this and
pure rejection.

3. They may accept the main principles of the measure, but may
endeavour to nibble them away by amendments, whicli will prevent
the full working of the scheme, which will take from it much of its

1881. THE IRISH LAND BILL. 1065

grace, and which will leave unsettled grievances and wrongs ; they
may enter upon a wrangle with the Lower House on such points, and
compel them to make concessions for the sake of securing the main
principles at issue, and unwillingly to give way on points which
they know to be detrimental. They have adopted this course in
many cases, such as Irish Parliamentary Beform and the Land Act
of 1870. It is demonstrable that the Lords' amendments on the last
of these measures did much to prevent it being a settlement of the
question. It is above all things necessary that when the main
principles of a measure are conceded, its details should be framed
in the most liberal spirit, and not in a grudging mood. Its prospects
of ultimate success depend greatly upon removing minor points of
difficulty and complaint.

4, They may accept the measure frankly, and endeavour to make
the best of it rather than the worst of it ; and fortunately there is a
precedent of this kind in the Church Disestablishment Act of 1869,
which, treated in this manner, has been one of the most successful of
the achievements of the Imperial Parliament on Irish questions, and
which has left no remnant of the grievance it was intended to allay.

It is greatly to be hoped the Peers will deal with the Land Bill
in the same wise and politic manner. Looking broadly at the Irish
Land Question, it must be clear that we are passing through an
agrarian movement not dissimilar in its tendencies and objects from
those of which most countries in Europe have had experience during
the present century; one closely connected with the advance of
democracy, and aiming at greater independence for the cultivating
class. The first act of this movement was in 1870 ; we are now in
the second act. Whether there is to be a third and more extreme
movement must depend upon whether in the main the present
measure will remedy the grievances and wrongs of which immediate
complaint is made ; and whether it will satisfy the yearnings for
greater independence and security on the part of existing tenants,
and provide machinery for the rapid extension of full ownerships in
the future.

G. Shaw Lbfbvbe.

Vol. IX.— No. 52. 4 B

1066 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. June

To the Editor of The Ninetbbkth Cbittitbt.

8iB, — A very able and weighty article from the pen of Lord Dnxuanj afipeaied
in the May number of this Review. It pointed out with remarkable cleaxneai Uat
the < Silver Streak * had been transformed &om an impassable ditch to a magnifiecn(
highway, and proceeded to dednce some extremely Ic^cal oonclaaxMis from this
fact, basing and enforcing his reasoning to a considerable extent on a deBcriptiao of
England as a naval power which I had written, and which was published in No. 37 of
the Nineteenth Century,

A writer in the Pall Mall Gazette, taking quite a different view of the questian
from that enforced by Lord Dunsany, impugned the accuracy of my deacnpdoB of
the English and French fleets, quoting an American publication by Mr. King at
having dearly established the inaccuracy of my comparisons, on which Loid Danmaj
had for the most part relied. I found the work referred to. War Ski^ and Nama^
the World, w^A written by a distinguished engineer officer of the United Sliates
Navy, Mr. J. W. King. Mr. King had enjoyed considerable opportunities of fomisg
a judgment on the navies of Europe, and I believe had made valuable reports to his
GK>vemment as the result of his observations. He quotes at some leng^ at pages
262-265 of the American edition of his work, that part of my article which iododes
a comparison between the fleets of France and England, and criticisea it to the
following effect. He says in substance that I disparagingly analysed the maUriel^
the British navy ; that my acknowledged want of familiarity with the condition aad
real efficiency of the French ships precludes any attempt at a thorough analyas of
their list ; that if I had applied the same severe rules (which I used in redudng the
number of effective English ships) to the French fleet, there would not have remained
more than six or seven of the same class ; that it is improper to exclude fron tfce
effective fleets of either nation new ships not fully completed, or those undergoii^or
needing repairs or requiring new boilers. He illustrates the erroneous and "«»^«»^'"g
nature of my comparison by saying that I have included among the French ah^ of
the first class wooden ships of the old type having thin annour ; that I set thsBi
against modem ships Uke the * Devastation ' and the ' Thunderer ; * that to make ost
the number of French ironclads of the second class I must have taken iliips
rated as coast defenders, or incompleted ships, or obsolete ships, wadb. ships being
expressly deducted from the English fleet ; and that my compariaoEn of the un*
armoured fleets is equally misleading.

On reading these remarks I thought it would not be proper, considering mj
position as a British admiral, formerly Controller of the Navy, to let them pass en-
noticed.

I think 'that even those' who are most opposed to the convictions to idiich
I have given utterance in this Beview would agree with me on the in^wUcj and en-
wisdom of overrating our naval strength, or of relying on such statements of the
efficiency of our fleets as could not be sustained if critically tested.

With this object in view I wrote in February 1880 the article on * England as a
Naval Power,' which appeared in No. 37 of this Beview. I endeavoured to do so
impartially, and in answer to Mr. King's criticism X will proceed to show how the
results I gave were obtained.

In the first place, my object was to make evident that a wide distinction exwtei
between paper or dummy ships, as they have been called, and ships effective and
absolutely ready for service at a given date ; and, in the second place, to

1881- LETTER TO THE EDITOR. 1067

wbat woTild be the oomparative fleet-fightiiig force of the two countries after a
reasonable time for preparing on both sides had been allowed. For the first purpose
I took a parliamentary return, moved for by Sir John Hay, which gave an accurate
and complete account of the state and condition of every ship of the British navy on
the 1st of January, 1879. Excluding the three monitors given or lent to the colonies,
Sir John Hay's list included sizty-siz ironclads.

After deducting from that list all ships recorded by the parliamentary return as
incomplete or not ready for actual service, frcm whatever cause, and also a large
number of ships which for given reasons were not qualified to act as fleet-fighting
ships, though capable of performing other service in a navy, I found that the number
of fleet-fighting ships ready on the Ist of January, 1879, was thirteen ; of these I
remarked that ' six of these ships are unequalled by the like number in any navy of
the world,' a statement which might perhaps have been challenged as rather boastful,
but which in my judgment is far from disparaging.

In making this analysis) I had before me for the English fleet a public document
accessible to all the world ; no such documents respecting the French fleet are made
public; and the information sought for by a careful inquirer is often furnished
confidentially, and can only be used, as I have said, with considerable reserve.
Perfect accuracy as to the state and condition of every ship in the French navy on
the 1st of January ^1879 being unattainable by a foreigner,.! did not attempt to
compare a perfect wit h an imperfect list, acknowledging that in that respect my
information with respect to French ships was not complete. But though 1 did not
and oould not give an 'analysis of the sixty -two French ironclads similar to that I had
made of the sixty-six English ships, I could accomplish the second object I had in
view — that of comparing the relative force of the two Powers in fleet-fighting ships as
it would probably be about the middle of the year 1880, the basis of this comparison
being the exclusion from it of all ships of either Po^er only protected by 4^-inch
armour, and the supposition that aU the ships on the respective ofllcial lists of the 1st of
January, 1879, whether repairing at that time, or requiring repair, or completing after
launching, could be and would be ready for active service shortly after the middle
of the year 1880. According to my judgment and experience this was the fairest
comparison possible, and it is that which I adopted. I found as the result of an
investigation on this basis that Eogland would have eleven and France ten fleet-
fighting ironclads of the first class, and of the second cla£s England would have
thirteen and France twelve.' For reasons which I think conclusive, ships not launched
when the article was written were not included in these numbers. Mr. King ap-
parently objects to three French ships, the ' SujSren,' the < Oc^an,' and the ' Marengo,'
being ranked in the first class of fleet-fighting ships; he says that I have set them
against the < Thunderer ' and ' Devastation.' I have, on the contrary, included one of
this class, which was ready for sea on the 1st of January, 1879, as among the six ships
which I said were unequalled by the like number in any navy of the world.

In my judgment ships of 7,600 tons and upwards, plated with armour 7*8 inches
thick, possessing a speed of 14 knots, cannot be excluded from first class fleet-ships
at the present m oment, whatever may be the case in 1886, on the pretext that they
are built of wood.

Neither in our own nor any other navy is it the case that ships of the same class
are of equal fighting value. The displacement and thickness of armour, approximate
indications of this quality, vary extremely in the first class ships of both nations.
In our navy the d isplacement of such ships ranges from 8,320 tons to 11,600 tons.

* From information I obtained since writing in February 1880 I find that I
reckoned amongst the thirteen English ironclads of the second class one ship, the
< Belleisle,' which would much more properly have been ranked as a special ship, and
that I had thus over-estimated by one the true number of English second class fieet-
tighting ships. In the same way, two French ships with 13-inch armour, though
classed officially among the euirauh d^etcadre^ or fieet-fighting ships, would be more
properly placed among the special ships.

4b2

1068 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.

in the French navy from 7,500 to 10,500 ; and the thickness of armov-platii^titk
OS from 7 to 24 inches, with them from 7*8 to 21*87 inches.

The same remark holds good with reference to the second class faoncladsoiVitli
countries. On the English side the displacement varies from 4,390 tons to 7^180
tons, the armour from 6 to 9 inches. This thickness of 9 inches is found in tfam
ships onlj, and there partially distributed. On the French side the HigiiMamff^
varies from 5,688 to 6,429 tons, the armour from 5*9 inches to 13 inchesintwo li&n
only.

All the ships composing the French second class in this comparisoa an oosnted
as firtt class by the French official list ; they figure as ew/ratth d'eteadn, u doa
the ' Amiral Duperr^.' Though nine out of the twelve are built of wood, and are sot
modem ships — indeed, they will, without doubt, in the course of time, be replaced br
others — ^yet hitherto they have always formed part of the squadrons of SToh^; in
were in commission in 1879, and three in 1880. I see no reason for exdodingfna
the second class ships whose speed is 14 knots, and whose displacement and tiikkaesg
of armour have been given above ; who are, moreover, very much alike, and wdl cal-
culated to act together.

As I said, when comparing the second class ironclads of the two ooantriea, this
the displacement and thickness of armour of the English ships wexe reiy nncfa k
excess of those of the French, I can see no ground for the assertion that I bavt ait:-
cised disparagingly the EngUsh matSrielf or applied^different rules as tothe effidacf.
of ironclads according as they were French or English. It would take op too and
space if I were to attempt to enter into any details as to the compaiatiTe tSam
for the work they have to do, of the unaimoured fieete of the two coontnes. It n
enough for me to say that the insufficiency of fast cruisers to defend ouiooBmffoe
insisted upon in that article is universally admitted, and that serions aod well-
directed efforts have been made to remove the danger of such a state of tlmgs. b
numbers and size the English unarmoured fieet was greatly superior, bat in fs:
cruisers, able to realise a speed of 14 knots and upwards, such as are neoesoijk
the protection of our trade, we were inferior to the Frendi.

The length to which this defence has already extended precludes me from adding
to it by giving the names of the ironclads referred to. To ' experts ' the isdiettioB
given at pages 397 and 898 of the article in No. 37 sufiiciently point oot the sbips I
have enumerated ; while to non-experts a long list of < Devastations,* ^FnloiBUts,'
and ' Thunderers' could convey no further knowledge, neither could itadd fone t9
the plain statement of &cts which I have already given« These, I c(nfident!ral>-
mit, entirely exonerate me from the serious charges brought against me in tbe Wtr
Ships of the World.

BOBEST Spekceb Bobd^s.

61, Eaton Place : .May 18, 1881.

INDEX TO VOL. IX.

The titles of articles are printed in italics.

ACG

ACCIDENTS in mines, 243
Mn»id, Carlyle 8 criticism of the,

864r-865
Agrarian crimes, difficulty of detectingi

S91^892
Ahura Mazda, 164, 168
Airlie (Earl of), The United States as a

Field for Agricultural Settlers, 202-

801
Aitken (John), his theory of fog, 487
Alford (Lady M.), Art Needlework,

439-440
Althorp (Lord), on Irish anarchy,

quoted, 4Jb
America, spread of Socialist ideas in, 17
— . emigration to, 292-^1, d6&-371,

640-644
Anarchy, the Present, 37-62
Anti-Jewish Agitation, a Jewish View of

Me, 338^367
Anti-Salmon League, Welsh, 691
Anti-Semite leagues, Qerman, 343-346
Ants, Intelligence of, 992-1008
Appeal, Courts of, their Ainctions, 66, 66
Aquarium, Westminster, picture exhibi-
tion at the, 128
Argyll (Duke of). The New Irish Land

^itf, 880-904
Argyll, the Duke of, and the Land Bill,

1044-1066
Aristocracy without land, 266-267
Army, British, weakness of the, 688-

690, 909-910

— cost of the, 909

— reforms, the prejudice agunst, 668-
661,907

BLA

Army recruiting, 670-672, 912
Arnold (Matthew), The Incompatibles,

709-726, 1026-1043
Amold-Forster (H. 0.), A Civilians

Answer to Sir Oamet Wolseley, 906-

916
AH Needlework, 439-464
Artists and amateurs, 123
Aryans, the, 168
Ashburton (Lord), on the currency, 944

— Carlyle's visit to, 1024-1026
Austria, political and social state of, 9

— refusal of the English alliance by,
603-604

Avesta, the, 167, 176

jyALLOON, War, a Dag with a, 108-
-^ 122

Ballot Act, the, 618

~ working of the, 628, 632

Basutos, the, and the Constitution of the

Cape of Good Mope, 177-200
^ and Sir Bartle JFY-ere, 647-667
Beaufort (W. H. de), Holland and the

Transvaal, 673-676
Behn (Aphra), her English yeraion of

Rochefoucauld, 280
Belgium, importance of, to England, 743
— monts-de-pi^t^ of, 986-988
Belleau (lUmy), poetry of, 819-820
Belt, his obe^ations of ants, 996, 999-

1000
Bismarck (Prince), rule of, 6-7
Blake (Henry A.), The Irish FMse,

386-396

1070

INDEX TO VOL. IX.

BLA

Blake (Mr. J. A.), on emigration to

Canada, 643
Rlandford (Maiquis of), The Breaking-

up of the Land Maiu^y, 249-268

— Reform of Feudal Laws, 664r-680
Boers, history of their settlement in the

Transvaal, 21&-218

— Sir BarUe Frere*8 visit to their camp ,
229-231

— cause of the recent outbreak among
the, 233-234

Boycotting in the sixteenth century,673

Brahmanism,' origin of, 162

Brand (Mr.), President of the Orange

Free State, 214
Brodrick (Mr.), on the abolition of life

estates in land, 679 note
Burgers (Mr.), the late President of the

Transvaal Bepublic, 217-218
Burke, on the causes of Irish misery and

discontent, 71&-716
Burt (Thomas), Working Men and the

Political Situation, 611-622

CANADA, as a field for Irish emigra-
tion, 369-366
Canadian Pacific Kailway, 301, 640-

641
Ctqfe of Good Hope, the Constitution of,

and the Batvtos, 177-200
Carlgle^s Lectures on the IMods of

European Culture, 866-879
.— 'Reminiscences,' 1009-1026
Carpenter (Dr. A.), on the smoke

nuisance, 487-488
Catholicism, Irish, our treatment of,

723-726, 1031-1083
Cattie, breeding of, in the United States,

298-300
Census of Religions, a, 131-144
Cervantes, Carlyle's jud|<ment of, 869-

870
Channing (Dr.), his lectures on the

elevation of the virorking classes, 802
Ohantrey bequest, the, 126
Charities, the Citg Ftiroehial, SQ4r^S7
Charles d'Orl^ans, rondel of, 816
Chartier (Akin), poetry of, 816-816
Ch^nier (Andr^, poetry of, 823-824
ChOd-Oriminal, the, 649-^3
Christianity, Hindu objections to, 847
Church (Dean), Ritualism, 201-210
Church, Peace in the, 760-777
Clouds, reflections above the, 116-118

Coal, smokeless, for domestic firejiacefiy

489
Conl-mining, the 'boaid and pilkt*

system of, 237-288
Cod-fishing of Newfoundland, 86-87
Coercion Acts, Irish, 45-50
Coleridge, Carlyle's impressions oi, lOli
Collieries, Explosions in, and their Ckre,

237-248
Collinson (Gbnend), on the ^BaofaOikT of

an invasion of England, 687-688
Colonies, Transplanting to the, 636^546
Colonies, defence of the, 593-^600
Colorado, prospects of agricoltnral tm-

grants to, 296-298
Commons, Souse of, EuMmeas « t&e,

727-736
Commons, House of, oLatructioa b tk,

616-619
Communism, a conspiracy agaiBit

human nature, 490

— evidences of, in Engiand, 15-lS
Compensation for DisturbanDeBO], 317-

320,884
Conservatism, ^6-^08
Constable, English, origin of the, 38&-

386
Constabulary, Irish, 388, 380, 39^-893
Creed, the, of a Lagnum, 466-477
Crime promoted by uxuanitaiy sunwnd*

ings, 626

— juvenile, genesis of, 661-662
Crimean war, shortoomings of oar ann'

system in the, 662-666
Crocodiles, superstitioua veomtina of

the Hindus for, 843
Cromwell, settlement of Ireland by, 27
Crusades, the, 867

DALLAS (E. S.), La Rochrfmemdd,
269-291
Dante, Carlyle's opinion of, 868-860
Davis (Sir John), his scheme fior the

settiement of Irelaiid, 24-S6
De Muaset (Alfired), poetry of, 831-

837
Diderot, la PhOoeophie de, 005-706
Divination, 869-860
Domesday returns of 1875, 677 note
Dowden (Prof. £.), TVaneer^ ofCm-

hfle's Lectures on the Periode of Ser^

peon Culture, 866-879
Dudley Gallery, 128
Dufferin (Lord), on emig^ration as t

INDEX TO VOL. IX.

1071

DUN

remedy for Irish distreesy quoted^ 8/!l8-

869,870
Dunraven (Earl of), A OHtnpse at New^

fawndkmdy 86-107
DunsaDj (Lord), The * Silver StreaX,*

737-762

EDUOATION, connection of, with
pontics, 806, 810

— universal, 476-476

Edwards (Rev. W. Walter), Faum-

broking Abroad and at Home, 969-

901
Eighty Years, 897-414
Elections, difficulty of persuading voters

to attend, 628-629, 682
Electoral corruption, 618-620
JSliot, George, 778-801
Eliot (Qeorge), her story of intolerance

at Milby, 201-208
Elsdale (Captain), A Day with a War

Balloon, 108-122
Embroidery, history of, 442-448
Emigratum, Irish, 868-^71
Emigration, agricultural, to the United

States, 292-^1
England, social condition of, lS-16

— the land question in, 16

— possibility of invading, 687-688, 787-
766

Entail, the custom of, 260

Europe, political and social dangers of,

1-2
Evelyn (John), ' Fumifugium ' of, 478
' EvU,' the word, 982-984

-p'S, the Three, 68-61

"^ Farmers, English tenant, 264-266

Farms, small, superior productiveness
of, 671

Feudal Law, Eeform of, 664-680

Fiction, Penny, 146-164

Fires, how to light, 48-486

Fogs, theory of, 487

Forel, his observations of the warlike
habits of ants, 1004-1006

Forteecue (Earl), Our Next Leap in the
Dark, 617-686

Fowler (William), The BamUos and Sir
Bartle Prere, 647-667

France, progress of Oommunist princi-
ples in, 7

HAG

France, fishery rights of, in Newfound-
land, 106-106

— is an invasion of England possible by,
747-764

— monts-de-pi^t6 of, 974-996

— naval strength of, 1067-1068
Franchise, county, the proposed exten-
sion of the, 620

Frem^ Verse m English, 812-887

French literature, 269

Frere (Sir Bartle), The Basutos and the

Constitution of the Cape of Good

Hope, 177-200

— The Transvaal, 211-286

Frere, Sir Bartle, the Basutos and, 647-

667
Friends, Society of, 141

GAUTIER (Th^phile), poetry of,
828-880
Qehenna, 984 -986

Germany, the Socialist movement in, 8-
7

— anti-Jewish agitation in, 841-846

— the Reformers of, 870-871

— literature of, 877-^79

— the currency question in, 948

' Ghost,' retention of, in the revised New

Testament, 928-980
Gififen (Mr.), on the evil effects of a fall

in prices, quoted, 989
Gilbert, poetry of, 828
Gladstone (Rt. Hon. W. E.), his

definition of Liberalism, 802

— his explanation of the Disturbance
clauses of the Land Act, 884

Ghrahams, sept of the, 22

Grattan, his declaration of Irish inde-
pendence, 887

Great Britain, Military Impotence of,
677-610

Gh!eece, ancient, people of, 868-869

— religion of, 869-860

— literature of, 860-868

Grenfell (Henry R), What is a Pound 1

987-948
Ghfey (Lord), Coercion Act of, 46
Ghrosvenor G^allery, exhibitions of pic-
tures at the, 128

HADBEN (Rev. R. H.), The City
Parochial Charities, S24t-3S7
Hague, his observations of ants, 994

1072

INDEX TO VOL. IX.

HAN

Haneard (Rev. Mr.), his battle against

the smoke nuisance, 481-482
Haidinge (William ItL), French Verse

in EngUeh, 812-837
Harrison (Frederic), The Creed of a

Layman, 455-477
Helvetius, Diderot*s refutation of, 700-

708
Herodotus, Oarlyle's judgment of, 862
Hildebrand, Carlyle's judgment of, 866-

867
Holland and the Tranewud, 673-^76
Homer, Oarlyle*s judgment of, 860-862
Hope (A. J. B. Beresford), Peace in the

Church, 756-777
Hubbard (Rt. Hon. J. G.), A Cenmu of

BeUgiane, 181-144
Hugo (Victor), poetry of, 825-828
Hydrogen, manufacture of, 198
— carburetted, in coal seams, 246-248
Hyndman (H. M.), The Dawn of a

Reocivticnary Epoch, 1-18

ILIAD, Oarlyle's criticism of the, 860-
861
Incompatiblea, the, 709-726, 1026-1043
India, Rdigioue Fair$ in, 838-848
India, introduction of the religion of
Zoroaster into, 501-503

— perils to British rule in, 506-599
Indians, North American, land tenure

of, 93
Industrial schools, eyils of, 654-655
Iranians, origin of the, 157-164
Ireland, the Crime in, 19-61
Ireland, economic history of peasant

tenures in, 21-32

— anarchy in, 37-52

— proposed solutions of the land ques-
tion in, 55-60

— condition of, on the eve of the Union,
398-400

— fiuninee in, 400-402

— eviction in, 405-407

— government of, 412-414, 709-710

— emigration from, 536-539, 545

— English opinion concerning the agita-
tion in, 612-621

— land system of, 665-666

— why England has failed to attach, 713

— the landlord question in, 718-721

— the religious question in, 723-725,
1031-1032

Irieh Emigration, S5SS71

LAM
Irish Police, the, 385-396

— Land BUI, the iVeir, 880-904

— The Duke of ArgyU and tt<,1044-
1065

Irish, the grievance of the, 1026
Irish members of Parliament, oli6tn»>

tive tactics of, 616-^20
Irving (Edward), Car]yle*8 Meaddop

with, 1016-1020
Italy, political condition of, 9

— literature of, 868

^ monti-di-piet& of, 970-971, 96^169

TACQ UEMAET, Jules, 681-^
^ J&net (Paul), La mesofkk ie

Diderot, 695-708
Jevons (Mr.), on the cunency, pdd^

941-942
Jews, influence of the, 11

— the popular movement agaiut^ is
G^ermany, 341-345

— history of their perseeationsy SI8-
352

— their distinctiveness, in its sodal lad
poHtical bearings, 353-366

Justice, the High Court of, 62-85
Juvenile oflfonders, homes for, 656-663

KEBBEL (T. E.), The Side (f Mia,
491-499
Kirchhammer (Captain), J%e MjBbii
In^Mitence of Oreat Britam, Sn-
610
Knighton (W.), E^igious Fan k

India, 838-848
Knox, John, 872-873
Kyrle Society, 483

LABOURERS, agricultural, conditioD
of the, 256-257

— in the United States, 293
La Fontaine, poetry of, 822-623
Lamps, safely, 243-244

Land BiU, the New Irish, 8d0-90i

— The Duke of Argyll and the, 1044-
1065

Land Monopoly, the Breaking rtptf^y

249-268
Land Act, Bright clauses of the, 5M0,

877
evasion of, by landlords niaog

rents, 1052-1054

INDEX TO VOL. IX.

1073

LAN

Land improyements, tenanta' interest in,
54-55

— League, the, 37-38

— — compared to trades^tinionsi 615-
616

— question; English, 16
Landlords, Abolition of, 372-^384

— rack-renting, f prayer in our old
liturgy against, 1065

Landowners, Irish, the alleged im-
provements of, 1046-1049
La Eochefoucauld, 269-291
Law and equity, distinction between,

69-70
Layman, the Cfreed of a, 455-477
Leap in the Dark, our Next, 517-535
Leases, farm, 265
Lecky on the Jews of ancient Rome^

quoted, ^^
Lefevre (Rt. Hon. G. Shaw), The Duke

of Argyll and the Land BUI, 1044-

1065
Lewis (Sir G. 0.), on a religious census,

132
Liberal party, duality of the, 492
LAberaliem, the PhUoeophy of, 302-323
Limerick, the land agitation in^ 383-

384
Lister (T. ViUiers), The Exhibiting of

Pictures, 123-130
Liverpool (Lord), gold standard scheme

of, 942-943

— his observations on the one-pound
note, quoted, 947

Loan offices, 981-982

Lombards, the, 969-970

London, the smoke nuisance in, 478-482

Lang and Short Service, 558-572

— Reply to, 905-916

Longfield (Mr. Justice), his proposed
system of tenant-right, 56

— on the settlement of rent by valua-
tion, quoted, 895

LfOrds, House of, obstructive treatment
of Land Bills by the, 267

— the question of its utility, 320-322
Lubbock (Sir John), his observations of

ants, 902-1001
Lruther, Oarlyle s picture of, 871

MACAULAY, on the repression of
outrage in Ireland, quoted, 45
M'Oook on the habits of ants, 1006,
1007

OBR

Biagians, the ' wise men ' of the New

Testament^ 930-931
Mallock (W. Bu),Badicali9m, a FamUiar

Colloquy, 415-438
Mamtoba, rate of wages in, 361

— division of the lands of, 363

— climate, &c., of, 368-569

Mann (Horace), his report upon religious

worship, 131, 135-137
Marot (Clement), poetry of, 816
Marr (Wilhelm), his pamphlets against

the German Jews, 342, 343
Materialism, the doctrine of, 696
Maupertuis, materialistic doctrine of,

697
Merivale (J. Herman), Colliery Exph-

eiom, 237-244
Metropolitan Board of Works, the, and

the dwellings of the labouring classes,

850-855
Miguelon, island of, 106
Military In^ence of Great Britain,

577-610
Milman (Bean), on the persecution of

the Jews by the Crusaders, quoted, 350
Milton, John, 873
Moggridge on the warlike habits of ants,

1005
Moncrieff (W. B. Scott), his scheme for

rendering coal smokeless, 488-489
Monetary Conference, the, 947
Monteagle (Lord), Abolition of Land-
lords, 372-384
Monta-de-pi^t^, 971-991
Mortgage of knd, 260, 677
Moshesh, history of his relations with

the British Government, 178-180
Myers (Frederic W. R.), Ernest Benan,

949-968

NATIONAL Health Society, 483
Navy, British, strength of the,

580-586
— compared with the French, 738-739,

1067-1068
Needlework, Art, 439-454
Nevrfoundland, a Glimpse at, 86-107
Nonconformity, growth of, relatively to

the Church of England, since 1851,

336-138

O'BRIEN (Miss Charlotte G.), Eighty
Years, 397-414

1074

INDEX TO VOL. IX.

OGO

(yConnell, emancipation campugn of,
43-46

Oletruction in Parliament, 616-620

Odysseji Carljle's criticism of the, 861

OfficerSi regimental) work of, 662, 907-
908

Orange Free State, the, 214

Oregon, prospects of agricultural settlers
in, 295

Ornaments rubric, the, and the Adver-
tisements, 772-777

PAHLAVI language and literature,
160
Parliament, functions of, 822-328
— obstruction in, 616-820
ParriB, the, 600-616
Partiea, the State of, 491-499
Passerat, poetiy of, 820-822
Pavmbroking Abroad and at Home,

969-^1
Payn (James), Penny Fiction, 146-164
Peace in the Church, 766-777
Peace-pledge, 886
Peasant proprietorship, testimonies to

the system of, 670
Peel (Sir Bobert), on the metallic stan-
dard, 987
Perjta cmd its Pamon-Drama, 628-648
Persia, introduction of Zoroastrianism

into, 170
Persian language, 169-160
Perugia, origin of the monte-di-pietik at,

970
Petty (Sir W.)i his valuation of Ireland,

28
Phidias, the Jujdter of, 869
Picturee, the Exhibiting of, 128-180
Playfair (Dr. Lyon), on the connection

between unsanitary surroundings and

crime, 626
PlimsoU (Mr.), his suggestions for the

prevention of colliery explosions, 287-

248
Pokur, yearly fiur of, 840
Police, the Irish, 386-396
Politicid SituaHon, Working Men and

the, 611-^22
Pollock (Sir W. F.), Smoke Prevention,

478-490
Positivism, the religion of, 466-477
Pound, what isaf 937-948
Prayer Books, Anglican, liberty under

the, 763-771

SAL

Price (R, D. Green), IUIbecemmi,m-

694
Primogeniture, 260, 263
Profit-Sharing, 802-811
Prussia, army organisation of, 666

RADICAL party, the, 497-499
Madicalism, a FamSkar CaUofmi,

415-488
Radicalism, the Conservative outoy

against, 31&-817, 820
Rebeecaism, 691-694
Beform of Feudal Laws, 664-680
Reform Act of 1867, 617
Reform Bill, proposed new, 519, 633
JRdigion, the, of Zoroaster, 156-17^. See

ParHs.
Religion, persecution in, 201-204

— the Positivist meaning of^ 465-466
Rdigions, a Census of, l-il-144
Renan, Ernest, 949-968

Eevision, New, a Eemser an the, 917-

936
jReixduticnarg Epoch, the Dawn efoyl-

18
EituaUem, 201 210
Ritualism, the legislation against, 757-

768
Robinson (Sir R. Spencer), on the re-
lative strength of the "Rngli^ih and

French navies, 1066-1068
Romanes (George J.), The IntMgence

of Ants, 992-1008
Rome, ancient, people of, 863-864

literature of, 864-865

Ronsaid, poetry of, 817-318

Royal Academy, selectioD of plefcares

for exhibition by the, 124-127
Royal School of Art Needlewoifc, 440-

442
Rumford (Count), hia improvemfinta in

fireplaces, 486
Russell (RoUo) on the smoke nuisaooe,

488
Russia, political condition of, 9

— danger to England from, 697-699

SAILOR, the modem, 739-740
St John's, Newfoundland, 86
St. Pierre, Newfoundland, island oi, 105
Sainte-Beuve, * Maxims ' o^ 285
Salmon-fishing in South Wales, 683-
694

INDISX TO VOL. IX.

1075

SAN

Sanskrit language, 159
School Board elections, 632
Scotland, oneness of, with England, 621
Seal-fisheries of Newfoundland, 87-88
Seehohm (F.)> The Hiitorical Clninu of

Tenant Right, 1&-36
Seepee, religious fair of, 843-847
Sept, what it was, 22
Service, Long and Short, 558-672
Shakespear (Oolonel), Colliery Explo^

MOM, 245-248
Sheeism, 624-626
Sheep-breeding in the United States,

300
Sherbrooke (Lord), Bueiness in the

HoMe of Commom, 727-736

— his definition of Liberalism, 302
' ^ver Streak; the, 737-752

Simcox (Miss Edith), George Eliot, 778-

801
Simonin on coal-mining, quoted, 238-

239
Smith (Bey. G. Yance), A /deviser on

the New Revision, 917-936
Smok^ Prevention, 47&-490
Socialism, workings of, on the Continent,

2-10

— modem, demands of, 429
Society of BritiBb Artists, 128
Socrates, Oarlyle*s judgment of, 862-^863
Spain, literature of, 869-870

— money-lending in, 989

Speaker, new functions of tbe, 729-731

Standard, metallic, 937

Stanley (Hon. Mis^ude), Wes^end Im-
provements, 849-855

Stepben (Hon. Mr. Justice), The High
Court of Justice, 62-85

St5cker (Rev. Herz), his attacks on tbe
German Jews, 343

Strauss, Benan's correspondence witb,
964r-966

Street Improvements Act, proposed
amendment of tbe, 850

Surr (Mrs.), The Child- Criminal, 649-
663

Swan (Mr.), safety lamp of, 244

rPAYLOR (Sedley), ProJU-Sharing,

JL 802-811

— (Sir Henry), Carlyle'e * Retninis-

cences; 1009-1025
Tenancies, perpetuity of, by lengtb of

occupation, 1040

WIL

Tenant Right, the Historical Claims of,

19-36
Tenant right, 55-67, 58
Tender, legal, 946
Testament, New, revised version of the,

917-936
Torrens (W. M.), Transplanting to the

Colonies, 536-^46
Tory party, altered cbaracter of tbe,

496
Trades unions and tbe Land League,

615-616
Training ships, 661-662
Transfomusm, doctrine of, 699
Transplanting to the Colonies, 536-546
Transvaal, the, 211-236
— Holland and the, 573-576
Trevelyan (Sir 0.), on the administration

of tbe Oity charities, 335-336
Trial by jury, 65-66; tbe one-judge

system in, 72-79
Tuke (J. H.), Irish Emigration, 358-

371

TTLSTER custom, 32, 721
tJ United States, the, as a Field for

Agricultural Settlers, 292-301
United States, maritime power of tbe,

582-^583
Usury, 969-970

VAUQUELIN de k Fresnaye, poetry
of, 818-819
Vesci (Lord de), The Three Fs, 53-61
Vestments question, tbe, 772-777
Vir^, Garlyle's estimate of, 864-865
Voting, systems of, 528-531

WALES, the laws for the protection
of salmon in, 692-694
Wallace (Robert), The Philosophy of

Liberalism, 302-323
War Balloon, a Dag with a, 108-122
Watts (G. F.), Art Needlework, 450-

454
Wedmore (Frederick), Jules Jacque-

mart, 681-690
West-end Improvements, 849-855
Westmeath, the Riband outrages in,

47-50
Whigs, altered cbaracter of tbe, 496
Williams (Prof. Monier), 7^ Religion

of Zoronster, 155-176

1076

INDEX TO VOL. IX.

WIL

Williams (Prof. Monier), The Pdrrii,

600-616
Wills, the law relating to, 263
Wilson (E. D. J.), The JP^eient Anarchy,

87-62
Wolf (Luden), A Jettnsh V%ew of the

Anti-Jewish Agitatum, 838-367
Wolseley (Sir Garnet), Long and Short

Service, 668-672
WoUeley, Sir Oamet, a Civilian sAntwer

to, 906-816
Women, employment of, 439-440
Wordsworth, Carljle's impressions of,

1010-1012
Working Men and the PoUtiedl Situation,

611-622

ZTTL

Workmen, participation of, in Mi em-
ployers' profits, 803-611

Wordiip, pnUic, registered huildii^
for, Id8-ld9

— Ritoalist innoTalions in, 206-206

— Eeguladon Act, retrospect of the
origin and -policy of the, 766-763

I

ASNA, a Parsi rite, 609-610

y£ND language, 169
^ Zoroaster, the Meligion of, 166-1 76
Zulus, dispute of the, with the Boeis,
224-226

f1

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gmtimeDt, keen feeling for social life and manners, demand sonie-
thing which this hard and imperfect civilisation cannot give tfaem.
Its social form seems to them unpleasant, its energy and industry ix>
lead to no happiness, its religion false and repulsive. A Mend of
mine who lately had to pursue his avocations in Lancashire, in the
parts about St. Helens, and who has lately been transferred to the west
of Ireland, writes to me that he finds With astonishment that * even
in the ferthest ultima Thule of the west, amongst literally the most
abjectly poverty-stricken cottiers, life appears to be more enjoyed
tdian by a Lancashire factory-hand and family who are in the receipt
of five pounds a week, father, mother, and children together, firom
the mill.' He writes that he finds ' all the country people here so fiill
ol courtesy and graciousness I ' That is just why our civilisation has
no attractions for them. So far as it is possessed by any great body
in our own community, and capable of being imparted to any great
body in another community, it has no courtesy and graciousness, it
has no enjoyment of life, it has the curse of hardness upon it. The
penalty nature makes us pay for hardness is dulness ; if we are hard,
our life becomes dull and dismal. Our hardness grows at last weary
of itself; in Ireland, where we have been so hard, this has been
strikingly exemplified. Again and again, upon the English conqueror
in his hardness and harshness, the ways and nature of the down-
trodden, hated, despised Irish, came to exercise a strange, an irresist-
ible magnetism. ' Is it possible,' asks Eudoxus, in Spetiser's View
of the State of Ireland, * is it possible that an Englishman, birmght
up in such sweet civility as England affords, should find ' such liking
in that barbarous rudeness that he should foi^t his own nature and
forego his own nation ? ' And Spenser, speaking under the name of
Irenseus, answers that unhappily it did indeed happen so. The Pro-
testant Archbishop Boulter tells us, in like manner, that under the
iron sway of the penal laws against Popery, and in the time of their
severest exercise, the conversions from Protestantism to Popery were
nevertheless a good deal more numerous than the conversions firom
Popery to Protestantism. Such, I say, is nature's penalty upon
hardness ; it grows irksome to itself, it ends by wearying those who
have it. If our hardness is capable of wearying ourselves, can we
wonder that a civilisation stamped with it has no attractions for the
Irish ; that Murdstone, the product of Salem House and of Mr.
Creakle, is a type of humanity which repels them, and that they do
not at all wish to be like him ?
* But in Murdstone we see English middle-class civilisation by its
severe and serious side. That civilisation has undoubtedly also its
gayer and lighter side ; and this gayer and lighter side, as well as
the other, we shall find, wonderful to relate, in our all-containing
treasure-house of the History of David Copperfidd. Ml*. Quinion,
^th his gaiety, his chaff, his roujgh coat, his incessant smoking, his