_1849-50:—AN EPISODE._
At the time when my brother’s Harrow engagement came to an end, I had
just settled in a London house, and, to my great delight, he proposed
to come and live with us, and occupy our spare room in Upper Berkeley
Street. Besides all my other reasons for rejoicing at this arrangement,
which you may easily imagine for yourselves when you have read thus far,
there was a special one just at this time, which I must now explain. The
years 1848-9 had been years of revolution, and, as always happens at
such times, the minds of men had been greatly stirred on many questions,
and specially on the problem of the social condition of the great mass
of the poor in all European countries. In Paris, the revolution had
been the signal for a great effort on the part of the workmen; and some
remarkable experiments had been made, both by the Provisional Government
of 1848, and by certain employers of labour, and bodies of skilled
mechanics, with a view to place the conditions of labour upon a more
equitable and satisfactory footing; or, to use the common phrase of the
day, to reconcile the interests of capital and labour. The Government
experiment of “national workshops” had failed disastrously, but a number
of the private associations were brilliantly successful. The history of
some of these associations—of the sacrifices which had been joyfully
made by the associates in order to collect the small funds necessary to
start them—of the ability and industry with which they were conducted,
and of their marvellous effect on the habits of all those engaged in the
work—had deeply interested many persons in England. It was resolved to
try an experiment of the same kind here, but the conditions were very
different. The seed there had already taken root amongst the industrial
classes, and the movement had come from them. Here the workpeople, as a
rule, had no belief in association except for defensive purposes. It was
chiefly amongst young professional men that the idea was working, and it
was necessary to preach it to those whom it most concerned. Accordingly
a society was formed, chiefly of young barristers, under the presidency
of the late Mr. Maurice, who was then Chaplain of Lincoln’s Inn, for
the purpose of establishing associations similar to those in Paris. It
was called the Society for Promoting Working Men’s Associations, and
I happened to be one of the original members, and on the Council. We
were all full of enthusiasm and hope in our work, and of propagandist
zeal: anxious to bring in all the recruits we could. I cannot even now
think of my own state of mind at the time without wonder and amusement.
I certainly thought (and for that matter have never altered my opinion
to this day) that here we had found the solution of the great labour
question; but I was also convinced that we had nothing to do but just
to announce it, and found an association or two, in order to convert
all England, and usher in the millennium at once, so plain did the
whole thing seem to me. I will not undertake to answer for the rest
of the Council, but I doubt whether I was at all more sanguine than
the majority. Consequently we went at it with a will: held meetings at
six o’clock in the morning (so as not to interfere with our regular
work) for settling the rules of our central society, and its offshoots,
and late in the evening, for gathering tailors, shoemakers, and other
handicraftsmen, whom we might set to work; started a small publishing
office, presided over by a diminutive one-eyed costermonger, a rough and
ready speaker and poet (who had been in prison as a Chartist leader),
from which we issued tracts and pamphlets, and ultimately a small
newspaper; and, as the essential condition of any satisfactory progress,
commenced a vigorous agitation for such an amendment in the law as would
enable our infant Associations to carry on their business in safety, and
without hindrance. We very soon had our hands full. Our denunciations of
unlimited competition brought on us attacks in newspapers and magazines,
which we answered, nothing loth. Our opponents called us Utopians and
Socialists, and we retorted that at any rate we were Christians; that
our trade principles were on all-fours with Christianity, while theirs
were utterly opposed to it. So we got, or adopted, the name of Christian
Socialists, and gave it to our tracts, and our paper. We were ready to
fight our battle wherever we found an opening, and got support from the
most unexpected quarters. I remember myself being asked by Mr. Senior, an
old friend of your grandfather, to meet Archbishop Whately, and several
eminent political economists, and explain what we were about. After a
couple of hours of hard discussion, in which I have no doubt I talked
much nonsense, I retired, beaten, but quite unconvinced. Next day, the
late Lord Ashburton, who had been present, came to my chambers and gave
me a cheque for £50 to help our experiment; and a few days later I found
another nobleman, sitting on the counter of our shoemakers’ association,
arguing with the manager, and giving an order for boots.
It was just in the midst of all this that my brother came to live with
us. I had already converted him, as I thought. He was a subscribing
member of our Society, and dealt with our Associations; and I had no
doubt would now join the Council, and work actively in the new crusade.
I knew how sound his judgment was, and that he never went back from a
resolution once taken, and therefore was all the more eager to make
sure of him, and, as a step in this direction, had already placed his
name on committees, and promised his attendance. But I was doomed to
disappointment. He attended one or two of our meetings, but I could
not induce him to take any active part with us. At a distance of
twenty-two years it is of course difficult to recall very accurately
what passed between us, but I can remember his reasons well enough to
give the substance of them. And first, as he had formerly objected to
the violent language of the leaders of the Anti-Corn-Law agitation,
so he now objected to what he looked upon as our extravagance. “You
don’t want to divide other people’s property?” “No.” “Then why call
yourselves Socialists?” “But we couldn’t help ourselves: other people
called us so first.” “Yes; but you needn’t have accepted the name. Why
acknowledge that the cap fitted?” “Well, it would have been cowardly
to back out. We borrow the ideas of these Frenchmen, of association as
opposed to competition as the true law of industry; and of organizing
labour—of securing the labourer’s position by organizing production
and consumption—and it would be cowardly to shirk the name. It is only
fools who know nothing about the matter, or people interested in the
competitive system of trade, who believe, or say, that a desire to
divide other people’s property is of the essence of Socialism.” “That
may be very true: but nine-tenths of mankind, or, at any rate, of
Englishmen, come under one or the other of those categories. If you are
called Socialists, you will never persuade the British public that this
is not your object. There was no need to take the name. You have weight
enough to carry already, without putting that on your shoulders.” This
was his first objection, and he proved to be right. At any rate, after
some time we dropped the name, and turned the “Christian Socialist”
into the “Journal of Association.” And English Socialists generally
have instinctively avoided it ever since, and called themselves
“co-operators,” thereby escaping much abuse in the intervening years.
And, when I look back, I confess I do not wonder that we repelled rather
than attracted many men who, like my brother, were inclined theoretically
to agree with us. For I am bound to admit that a strong vein of
fanaticism and eccentricity ran through our ranks, which the marvellous
patience, gentleness, and wisdom of our beloved president were not enough
to counteract, or control. Several of our most active and devoted members
were also strong vegetarians, and phonetists. In a generation when beards
and wide-awakes were looked upon as insults to decent society, some of us
wore both, with a most heroic indifference to public opinion. In the same
way, there was often a trenchant, and almost truculent, tone about us,
which was well calculated to keep men of my brother’s temperament at a
distance. I rather enjoyed it myself, but learnt its unwisdom when I saw
its effect on him, and others, who were inclined to join us, and would
have proved towers of strength. It was right and necessary to denounce
the evils of unlimited competition, and the falsehood of the economic
doctrine of “every man for himself;” but quite unnecessary, and therefore
unwise, to speak of the whole system of trade as “the disgusting vice of
shop-keeping,” as was the habit of several of our foremost and ablest
members.
But what really hindered my brother from taking an active share in our
work was not these eccentricities, which soon wore off, and were, at the
worst, superficial. When he came to look the work fairly in the face,
he found that he could not heartily sympathise with it; and the quality
of thoroughness in him, which your grandfather notices, would not let
him join half-heartedly. His conclusion was reached somehow in this way:
“It comes to this, then. What you are all aiming at is, the complete
overthrow of the present trade system, and the substitution of what,
you say, will prove a more honest and righteous one. It is not simply a
question of setting up, and getting a legal status for, these half-dozen
associations of tailors and shoemakers, and these grocery stores. If the
principle is good for anything, it must spread everywhere, and into every
industrial process. It can’t live peaceably side by side with the present
system. They are absolutely antagonistic, and the one must cast out the
other. Isn’t that so?” I, of course, could not deny the conclusion.
“Well, then,” his argument went on, “I don’t see my way clearly enough
to go on. Your principle I can’t object to. It certainly seems truer,
and stronger, and more in accord with Christianity, than the other.
But, after all, the business of the world has always gone on upon the
other, and the world has had plenty of time to get to understand its own
business. You may say the results are not satisfactory, are proofs that
the world has done nothing but blunder. It may be so: but, after all,
experience must count for something, and the practical wear and tear of
centuries. Self-interest may be a low motive, but the system founded upon
it has managed somehow, with all its faults, to produce a very tolerable
kind of world. When yours comes to be tried practically, just as great
abuses may be found inseparable from it. You may only get back the old
evils under new forms. The long and short of it is, I hate upsetting
things, which seems to be your main object. You say that you like to see
people discontented with society as it is, and are ready to help to make
them so, because it is full of injustice, and abuses of all kinds, and
will never be better till men are thoroughly discontented. I don’t see
these evils so strongly as you do; don’t believe in heroic remedies; and
would sooner see people contented, and making the best of society as they
find it. In fact, I was born and bred a Tory, and can’t help it.”
I remember it all very vividly, because it was a great grief to me at
the time, chiefly because I was very anxious to have him with us; but,
partly, because I had made so sure of getting him that I had boasted of
it to our Council, which included several of our old school and college
friends. They were delighted, knowing what a valuable recruit he would
prove, and now I had to make the humiliating confession, that I had
reckoned without my host. He continued to pay his subscription, and to
get his clothes at our tailors’ association till it failed, which was
more than some of our number did, for the cut was so bad as to put the
sternest principles to a severe test. But I could see that this was done
out of kindness to me, and not from sympathy with what we were doing.
But my disappointment had at least this good result, that it opened
my eyes thoroughly, and made me tolerant of opposition to my own most
earnest, and deepest, convictions. I have been what I suppose would be
called an advanced Liberal ever since I was at Oxford, but have never
been able to hate or despise the old-fashioned Tory creed; for it was
the creed of almost the kindest, and bravest, and ablest man I have ever
known intimately—my own brother.
I must, however, add here, that he always watched with great interest the
social revolution in which he could not take an active part. In 1851, the
Industrial and Provident Societies’ Act, under which the co-operative
societies of different kinds first obtained legal recognition, was
passed, chiefly owing to the exertions of Mr. Ludlow and other members
of our old Council. There are now more than 1,000 societies registered
under that Act in England alone, doing a yearly business of ten millions
and owning property of the amount of £2,500,000 and upwards; and as he
saw the principle spreading, and working practically, and, wherever
it took root, educating the people in self-control, and thrift, and
independence, he was far too good an Englishman not to rejoice at, and
sympathise with, the result, though I doubt whether he ever quite got
over the feeling of distrust and anxiety with which he regarded even a
peaceful, and apparently beneficent, revolution.
You all know how much I wish that you should take a thorough and
intelligent interest, and, in due time, an active part, in public
affairs. I don’t mean that you should adopt politics as a profession,
because, as matters stand in this country, poor men, as most of you will
be, are not able, as a rule, to do this and retain their independence.
But I want you to try to understand politics, and to study important
questions as they arise, so that you may be always ready to support, with
all the influence you may happen to have, the measures and policy which
you have satisfied yourselves will be best for your country. Of course I
should like to see you all of my own way of thinking; but this is not at
all likely to happen, and I care comparatively little whether you turn
out Liberals or Tories, so that you take your sides conscientiously, and
hold to them through good and evil report; always remembering, at the
same time, that those who are most useful and powerful in supporting a
cause, are those who know best what can be said against it; and that your
opponents are just as likely to be upright and honest men as yourselves,
or those with whom you agree. My brother’s example taught me this, and I
hope it may do as much for you.
There is a little poem of Lowell’s, which brings out so well the
contrast between the two forces constantly at work in human affairs, and
illustrates so beautifully the tempers which should underlie all action
in them, that I am sure you will thank me for quoting it here. It is
called “Above and Below:”—
ABOVE.
I.
O dwellers in the valley land,
Who in deep twilight grope and cower,
Till the slow mountain’s dial-hand
Shortens to noon’s triumphant hour—
While ye sit idle, do ye think
The Lord’s great work sits idle too,
That light dare not o’erleap the brink
Of morn, because ’tis dark with you?
Though yet your valleys skulk in night,
In God’s ripe fields the day is cried,
And reapers, with their sickles bright,
Troop, singing, down the mountain-side:
Come up, and feel what health there is
In the frank Dawn’s delighted eyes,
As, bending with a pitying kiss,
The night-shed tears of earth she dries.
The Lord wants reapers: oh, mount up,
Before Night comes, and cries “Too late!”
Stay not for taking scrip or cup,
The Master hungers while ye wait;
’Tis from these heights alone your eyes
The advancing spears of day may see,
Which o’er the eastern hill-tops rise
To break your long captivity.
BELOW.
II.
Lone watcher on the mountain height!
It is right precious to behold
The first long surf of climbing light
Flood all the thirsty east with gold:
But we, who in the twilight sit,
Know also that the day is nigh,
Seeing thy shining forehead lit
With his inspiring prophecy.
Thou hast thine office: we have ours:
God lacks not early service here,
But what are thine eleventh hours
He counts with us as morning cheer;
Our day for Him is long enough,
And when He giveth work to do,
The bruisèd reed is amply tough
To pierce the shield of error through.
But not the less do thou aspire
Light’s earlier messages to teach,
Keep back no syllable of fire—
Plunge deep the rowels of thy speech.
Yet God deems not thine aëried flight
More worthy than our twilight dim—
For brave obedience, too, is Light,
And following that is finding Him.