£ s. d. £ s. d.
Sept. 15. Balance [102] 1221 0 8
20. Kate 100 0 0
26. —— at Venice, Antonio [103] 50 0 0
Oct. 1. Secretary 25 0 0
3. Downs 50 0 0
5. Gift [104] 20 0 0
10. Loan 200 0 0
” Jackson 50 0 0
————————— 495 0 0
----------
Oct. 15. Balance £726 0 8
==========
III. I print the following letter with little comment, because I have
no wish to discuss the question of the uses of Dissent with a
Dissenting Minister; nor do I choose at present to enter on the subject
at all. St. George, taking cognizance only of the postscript, thanks
the Dissenting Minister for his sympathy; but encourages his own
servant to persist in believing that the “more excellent way” (of
Charity), which St. Paul showed, in the 13th of Corinthians, is quite
as truly followed in devoting the funds at his said servant’s disposal
to the relief of the poor, as in the maintenance of Ruskinian Preachers
for the dissemination of Ruskinian opinions, in a Ruskinian Society,
with the especial object of saving Mr. Ruskin’s and the Society’s
souls.
“September 14th, 1876.
“Dear Mr. Ruskin,—Mr. Sillar’s ‘valuable letter’ in last month’s Fors,
(a) would have been more valuable if he had understood what he was
writing about. Mr. Tyerman (in his ‘Life and Times of Wesley,’ p. 431,)
gives the trifling differences between the present Rules of the
Methodist Societies and the first edition issued in 1743. Instead of
‘interested persons having altered old John Wesley’s rules’ (he was
forty years old when he drew them up) ‘to suit modern ideas’—the
alterations, whether good or bad, were made by himself.
“The first contributions in the ‘Classes’ were made for the express
purpose of discharging a debt on a preaching house. Then they were
devoted ‘to the relief of the poor,’ there being at the time no
preachers dependent on the Society for support. After 1743, when
circuits had been formed and preachers stationed in certain localities,
their maintenance gradually became the principal charge upon the
Society’s funds. (See Smith’s ‘History of Methodism,’ vol. i., p. 669.)
In 1771 Wesley says expressly that the contributions are applied
‘towards the expenses of the Society.’ (b) (‘Journal,’ vol. iii., p.
205.) Certainly Methodism, thus supported, has done far more to benefit
the poor and raise them, than any amount of mere almsgiving could have
done. Methodist preachers have at least one sign of being in the
apostolical succession. They can say, with Paul, ‘as poor, yet making
many rich.’ (c)
“‘Going to law’ was altered by Mr. Wesley to ‘brother going to law with
brother,’ in order, no doubt, to bring the rule into verbal agreement
with 1 Cor. vi. 6. (d)
“‘Usury’ was defined by Mr. Wesley to be ‘unlawful interest,’ (e) in
accordance with the ordinary notions of his day. He was greatly in
advance of his age, yet he could scarcely have been expected to
anticipate the definition of Usury given, as far as I know, (f) for the
first time in Fors for August, 1876. I don’t see why we Methodists
should be charged with breaking the laws of Moses, David, and Christ
(Fors, p. 253), if we consider ‘old John Wesley’s’ definition to be as
good as the ‘modern idea.’
“Of course St. George, for whom I have the greatest respect and
admiration, will correct Mr. Sillar’s mistake.
“I am, Sir,
“Another Reader of Fors (which I wish you would sell a little cheaper),
and
“A Methodist Preacher.
“P.S.—Why should you not copy old John Wesley, and establish your St.
George’s Company on a legal basis? In 1784 he drew up a Deed of
Declaration, which was duly enrolled in Chancery. It stated the
purposes for which his Society was formed, and the mode in which it was
to be governed. A Deed of Trust was afterwards drawn up for one of our
chapels, reciting at length this Deed of Declaration, and all the
purposes for which the property was to be used. All our other property
is settled on the same trusts. A single line in each subsequent chapel
deed—stating that all the trusts are to be the same as those of the
‘Model Deed,’ as we call the first one—obviates the necessity and
expense of repeating a very long legal document.
“Success to St. George,—yet there is, I think, ‘a more excellent way.’”
a. Mr. Sillar’s letter did not appear in last month’s Fors. A small
portion of it appeared, in which I regret that Mr. Sillar so far
misunderstood John Wesley as to imagine him incapable of altering his
own rules so as to make them useless.
b. I wish the Wesleyans were the only Society whose contributions are
applied to no better purpose.
c. I envy my correspondent’s complacency in his own and his Society’s
munificence, too sorrowfully to endeavour to dispel it.
d. The ‘verbal’ agreement is indeed secured by the alteration. But as
St. Paul, by a ‘brother,’ meant any Christian, I shall be glad to learn
from my correspondent whether the Wesleyans understand their rule in
that significance.
e. Many thanks to Mr. Wesley. Doubtless his disciples know what rate of
interest is lawful, and what not; and also by what law it was made so;
and always pause with pious accuracy at the decimal point whereat the
excellence of an investment begins to make it criminal. St. George will
be grateful to their representative for information on these—not
unimportant—particulars.
f. How far that is, my correspondent’s duly dissenting scorn of the
wisdom of the Greeks, and legality of the Jews, has doubtless prevented
his thinking it necessary to discover. I must not waste the time of
other readers in assisting his elementary investigations; but have
merely to point out to him that definitions either of theft, adultery,
usury, or murder, have only become necessary in modern times; and that
Methodists, and any other persons, are charged by me with breaking the
law of Moses, David, and Christ, in so far only as they do accept Mr.
John Wesley’s, or any other person’s, definition instead of their
utterly unquestionable meaning. (Would T. S., of North Tyne, reprint
his letters for me from the Sunderland paper, to be sent out with
December Fors?)
IV. I reprint the following paragraph chiefly as an example of our
ineffable British absurdity. It is perfectly right to compel fathers to
send their children to school; but, once sent, it is the schoolmaster’s
business to keep hold of them. In St. George’s schools, it would have
been the little runaway gentleman who would have got sent to prison;
and kept, sotto piombi, on bread and water, until he could be trusted
with more liberty. The fate of the father, under the present
application of British law, leaves the problem, it seems to me, still
insoluble but in that manner. But I should like to know more of the
previous history of parent and child.
“The story of George Widowson, aged fifty-seven, told at the inquest
held on his remains at Mile End Old Town on Wednesday, is worth
recording. Widowson was, as appears by the evidence of his daughter, a
sober, hard-working man until he was sent to prison for three days in
last December in default of paying a fine for not sending his son, a
boy eleven years of age, to school. The deceased, as several witnesses
deposed, constantly endeavoured to make the child go to school, and had
frequently taken him there himself; but it was all in vain. Young
Widowson when taken to school invariably ran away, the result being
that his father was driven to distraction. His imprisonment in December
had preyed on his mind, and he took to drinking. He frequently
threatened to destroy himself rather than be imprisoned again. Hearing
that another summons was about to be issued against him, he broke up
his home, and on the night of the 30th ultimo solved the educational
problem by throwing himself into the Regent’s Canal. Fear of being
again sent to prison by the School Board was, his daughter believed,
the cause of his committing this act. The jury returned a verdict in
accordance of this opinion; and although George Widowson was wrong to
escape from the clutches of the friends of humanity by putting an end
to his life, those who blame him should remember that imprisonment to a
bonâ fide working man of irreproachable character, is simply torture.
He loses all that in his own eyes makes life worth preservation.”—Pall
Mall Gazette, July 7th, 1876.
V. The next extract contains some wholesome comments on our more
advanced system of modern education.
“Indian Civil Service.—At a meeting of the Indian section of the
Society of Arts, under the presidency of Mr. Andrew Cassels, a paper on
‘Competition and its Effects upon Education’ was read by Dr. George
Birdwood. In the course of his remarks, he commented at length upon the
India Office despatch of Feb. 24, regarding ‘the selection and training
of candidates for the Indian Civil Service,’ and feared that it would
but serve to confirm and aggravate and rapidly extend the very worst
evil of the old system of competition—namely, the degeneration of
secondary education throughout England.... The despatch tended to make
over all the secondary schooling of the country to the crammers, or to
reduce it to the crammers’ system. They were making the entrance
examinations year by year more and more difficult—as their first object
must necessarily now be, not the moral and intellectual discipline of
the boyhood of England, but to show an ever-growing percentage of
success at the various competitive examinations always going on for
public services. ‘The devil take the hindermost’ was fast becoming the
ideal of education, even in the public schools. If they seriously took
to cramming little fellows from twelve to fourteen for entrance into
public schools, the rising generation would be used up before it
reached manhood. A well-known physician, of great experience, told him
that the competition for all sorts of scholarships and appointments was
showing its evil fruits in the increase of insanity, epilepsy, and
other nervous diseases amongst young people of the age from seventeen
to nineteen, and especially amongst pupil-teachers; and if admission
into the public schools of England was for the future to be regulated
by competition, St. Vitus’s dance would soon take the place of gout, as
the fashionable disease of the upper classes. This was the inevitable
result of the ill-digested and ill-regulated system of competition for
the public services, and especially the Indian Civil Service, which had
prevailed; and he feared that the recent despatch would only be to
hasten the threatened revolution in their national secondary schools,
and the last state of cramming under the despatch would be worse than
the first.... The best of examiners was the examiner of his own pupils;
for no man could measure real knowledge like the teacher. What should
be aimed at was regular moderate study and sound and continuous
discipline to start the growing man in life in the healthiest bodily
and moral condition possible. He objected to children striving for
prizes, whether in games or in studies. The fewer prizes won at school,
the more would probably be won in life. Let their only anxiety be to
educate their children well, and suffer no temptation to betray them
into cramming, and the whole world was open to them.”—Daily Telegraph.
VI. The development of ‘humanity’ in America is so brilliantly
illustrated in the following paragraphs, that I have thought them worth
preserving:—
From ‘The American Socialist, devoted to the Enlargement and Perfection
of Home.’
“THE FUTURE OF SOCIETY.
“An American, visiting Europe, notices how completely there the various
functions of the social body are performed. He finds a servant, an
officer, a skilled workman, at every place. From the position of the
stone-breaker on the highway, up to that of the highest Government
official, every post is filled; every personal want of the traveller or
the citizen is attended to. Policemen guard him in the streets, lackeys
watch for his bidding at the hotels, railroad officials with almost
superfluous care forward him on his way. As compared with American
railroad management, the great English roads probably have four
employés to our one. This plentitude of service results from three
things—viz., density of population, which gives an abundant working
class; cheapness of labour; and the aristocratic formation of society
that tends to fix persons in the caste to which they were born. The
effect is to produce a smoothness in the social movement—an absence of
jar and friction, and a release in many cases from anxious, personal
outlook, that are very agreeable. The difference between English and
American life in respect to the supply of service is like that between
riding on a highly-finished macadamized way, where every rut is filled
and every stone is removed, and picking one’s way over our common
country roads.
“Another thing that the traveller observes in Europe is the abundance
everywhere of works of art. One’s sense of beauty is continually
gratified; now with a finished landscape, now with a noble building,
now with statues, monuments, and paintings. This immense accumulation
of art springs in part of course from the age of the nations where it
is found; but it is also due in a very great degree to the employment
given to artists by persons of wealth and leisure. Painting, sculpture,
and architecture have always had constant, and sometimes munificent,
patrons in the nobility and the Established Church.
“Observing these things abroad, the American asks himself whether the
institutions of this country are likely to produce in time any similar
result here. Shall we have the finished organization, the mutual
service, and the wealth of art that characterize European society?
Before answering this, let us first ask ourselves whether it is
desirable that we should have them in the same manner that they exist
abroad? Certainly not. No American would be willing to pay the price
which England pays for her system of service. The most painful thing
which one sees abroad is the utter absence of ambition in the class of
household servants. Men who in this country would be looking to a seat
in the legislature, [105] and who would qualify themselves for it,
there dawdle away life in the livery of some noble, in smiling,
aimless, do-nothing content, and beget children to follow in their
steps. On seeing these servile figures, the American thanks heaven that
the ocean rolls between his country and such a system. Rather rudeness,
discomfort, self-service, and poverty, with freedom and the fire of
aspiration, than luxury purchased by the enervation of man!
“Still, cannot we have the good without the bad? Cannot we match Europe
in culture and polish without sacrificing for it our manhood? And if
so, what are the influences in this country that are working in that
direction? In answering this question, we have to say frankly that we
see nothing in democracy alone that promises to produce the result
under consideration. In a country where every one is taught to disdain
a situation of dependence, where the hostler and the chambermaid see
the way opened for them to stand even with the best in the land, if
they will but exercise their privilege of ‘getting on,’ there will be
no permanent or perfect service. And so long as every man’s possessions
are divided and scattered at his death, there will be no class having
the secured leisure and the inducement to form galleries of art. Why
should John Smith take pains to decorate his house with works of art,
when he knows that within a year after his death it will be
administered upon by the Probate Court, and sold with its furniture for
the benefit of his ten children?” (Well put,—republican sage.)
“In a word, looking at the æsthetic side of things, our American system
must be confessed to be not yet quite perfect.” (You don’t say so!)
“Invaluable as it is for schooling men to independence and aspiration,
it requires, to complete its usefulness, another element. The Republic
has a sequel. That completing element, that sequel, is Communism.
Communism supplies exactly the conditions that are wanting in the
social life of America, and which it must have if it would compete with
foreign lands in the development of those things which give ease and
grace to existence.
“For instance, in respect to service: Communism, by extinguishing caste
and honouring labour, makes every man at once a servant and lord. It
fills up, by its capacity of minute organization, all the social
functions as completely as the European system does; while, unlike
that, it provides for each individual sufficient leisure, and frequent
and improving changes of occupation. The person who serves in the
kitchen this hour may be experimenting with a microscope or giving
lessons on the piano the next. Applying its combined ingenuity to
social needs, Communism will find means to consign all repulsive and
injurious labour to machinery. It is continually interested to promote
labour-saving improvements. The service that is performed by brothers
and equals from motives of love will be more perfect than that of hired
lackeys, while the constantly varying round of occupation granted to
all will form the most perfect school for breadth of culture and true
politeness. Thus Communism achieves through friendship and freedom that
which the Old World secures only through a system little better than
slavery.
“In the interest of art and the cultivation of the beautiful, Communism
again supplies the place of a hereditary aristocracy and a wealthy
church. A Community family, unlike the ephemeral households of ordinary
society, is a permanent thing. Its edifice is not liable to be sold at
the end of every generation, but like a cathedral descends by unbroken
inheritance. Whatever is committed to it remains, and is the care of
the society from century to century. With a home thus established, all
the members of a Community are at once interested to gather about it
objects of art. It becomes a picture-gallery and a museum, by the
natural accretion of time, and by the zeal of persons who know that
every embellishment added to their home will not only be a pleasure to
them personally, but will remain to associate them with the pleasure of
future beholders in all time to come.
“Thus in Communism we have the conditions that are necessary to carry
this country to the summit of artistic and social culture. By this
route, we may at one bound outstrip the laboured attainments of the
aristocracies of the Old World. The New York Central Park shows what
can be achieved by combination on the democratic plan, for a public
pleasure-ground. No other park is equal to it. Let this principle of
combination be extended to the formation of homes as well as to
municipal affairs, and we shall simply dot this country over with
establishments [106] as much better than those of the nobles of England
as they are better than those of a day-labourer. We say better, for
they will make art and luxury minister to universal education, and they
will replace menial service with downright brotherhood. Such must be
the future of American society.”
“To the Editor of the ‘American Socialist.’
“In your first issue you raise the question, ‘How large ought a Home to
be?’ This is a question of great interest to all; and I trust the
accumulated answers you will receive will aid in its solution.
“I have lived in homes varying in numbers from one (the bachelor’s
home) to several hundred; and my experience and observation lead me to
regard one hundred and twenty-five as about the right number to form a
complete home. I would not have less than seventy-five nor more than
one hundred and fifty. In my opinion a Home should minister to all the
needs of its members, spiritual, intellectual, social, and physical.
This ordinary monogamic homes cannot do; hence resort is had to
churches, colleges, club-rooms, theatres, etc.; and in sparsely settled
regions of country, people are put to great inconvenience and compelled
to go great distances to supply cravings as imperative as the hunger
for bread. This view alone would not limit the number of persons
constituting a Home; but I take the ground that in a perfect Home there
will be a perfect blending of all interests and perfect vibration in
unison of all hearts; and of course thorough mutual acquaintance. My
experience and observation convince me that it is exceedingly
difficult, if not impossible, to secure these results in a family of
over one hundred and fifty members.
“In simply a monetary view it is undoubtedly best to have large Homes
of a thousand or more; but money should not have great weight in
comparison with a man’s spiritual, intellectual, and social needs.—D.
E. S.”