The Chartists have made as much noise in the world as they knew how--yet
to the generation of to-day they are ambiguous. They have had no
historian. Carlyle went to look at them in prison, and defamed them with
that bitterness and contempt he had for partisans who lacked the sense
of submission to the dictates of those superior persons who knew what
was best for everybody, of whose aspirations they knew nothing, and for
whose needs they had no sympathy. Chartism, however, has won conspicuous
treatment in fiction. What it was in fact, is a very different thing.
There is the Church Chartist by Canon Kingsley, and the Positivist
Chartist by George Eliot, drawn by two famous artists. The pictures are
hung upon the line in the great gallery of literature. So brilliant
is the work of Kingsley that it has imposed on so accomplished a
connoisseur as Dean Stubbs, who, in his life of the fervid Rector of
Eversley, has taken it for a painting from real life. I present the
Church Chartist first.
In my time I have seen much good done by Christians with a view to
extend their faith. Some few, like Samuel Morley, who excelled all
lay Dissenters I have known in the manly sense of the dignity and
independence of Nonconformity, would do generous things from the
humaneness of their own minds alone. Some Quakers and Unitarians have
had this quality. Others, Churchmen, Roman Catholics, and orthodox
Christians, I have known to mitigate privation for the "Lord's sake,"
not for humanity's sake. This was to some extent the case of the Rev.
Frederick Denison Maurice, Canon Kingsley, and their noble colleagues,
Edward Vansittart Neale, Judge Thomas Hughes, and J. M. Ludlow.
They became Christian Socialists not so much because they cared for
Socialism, as Maurice owned his "object was not to Socialise society,
but to Christianise Socialism." Startled by the dislike and even
resentment against Christianity expressed by men of poverty and
intelligence at being asked to adopt a belief which brought them no
relief, Maurice, Kingsley, and their associates concluded that privation
was the cause of alienation from the Church. In like manner Dissenters
thought that it was the bad condition of industrial life which
kept working people from chapel. None realised that alienation from
Christianity had its seat in the understanding--in intellectual
dissatisfaction with the tenets of Theology. The absentees from church
and chapel alleged that no relief came of belief, and never had since
the days when manna fell in the Jewish wilderness, and loaves and fishes
were miraculously plentiful on the hills of Galilee. There was no sense
or profit in adopting a faith which had been unproductive for nearly
2,000 years. It had taken the slave, the serf, and the hired worker
a long time to see this. But at last experience had told upon the
thoughtful. But the theologians neither in the dominant, nor dominated
camps perceived it.
Very generous is Kingsley's sympathy, in "Alton Locke," with the lot of
working people, but he believed that when the rebellious shoemaker fully
realises that good priests would mitigate the lot of those who labour
in workshops or in fields and mines, he will become reconciled to the
Thirty-nine Articles. Alton Locke is a Church Chartist--not one of the
Chartists of real life whom I knew, who were current in Kingsley's days,
who signed the famous document which Place drew and Roebuck revised.
They had principles. They did not seek paternal government of friendly
Churchmen, nor of Positivists, nor that nobly organised kind of
passive competence which Mr. Ruskin meditated for the people. The real
Chartists--like the Co-operators--sought self-government for the people
by the people. The alienation of the people from church and chapel was
not founded on lack of spiritual patronage, or thirst for it, but from
intellectual dissatisfaction with theological tenets.
Christians, from the Vatican to the Primitive Methodist conventicle,
are all so persuaded of the infallibility of their interpretation of the
Scriptures, and are so convinced of the perfect sufficiency of their
tenets for the needs of all the world, that they regard difference of
opinion as springing from wilful misunderstanding, or from the "evil
heart at enmity with God"--a mad doctrine beneath the notice of the
average lunatic. Natural variety of intellect, the infinite hosts of
personal views, and the infinitude of individual experience--which
silently create new convictions--are not taken into account, and
conscientious dissent seems to the antediluvian theologian an
impossibility. Even the most liberal of eminent Unitarians in England,
W. J. Fox, regarded, what we now know as the Agnostic--hesitation to
declare as true that which the declarer does not know to be so--as a
species of mental disease.
That Kingsley lived in a refracting medium, in which the straightest
facts appeared bent when placed in it, was evident when he wrote:
"Heaven defend us from the Manchester School, for of all narrow,
conceited, hypocritical, and atheistic schemes of the universe the
Cobden and Bright one is exactly the worst." There was no reason why
Kingsley should be a Chartist, since he had all he wanted secured, and
had contempt in his heart for Chartist tenets. He wrote: "The Bible
gives the dawn of the glorious future, such as no universal suffrage,
free trade, communism, organisation of labour, or any other Morrison
pill measure can give." He exulted in the existence of the forces which
made against the people. He exclaimed: "As long as the Throne, the House
of Lords, and the Press are what I thank God they are!" he was grateful.
The state of things which existed, it was the object of Chartism to
change.
These rampant ideas of Kingsley were far from being Chartist sentiments.
At a meeting in Castle Street, London, the Rev. Charles Kingsley and Mr.
Thomas Hughes were present, working men comprising the audience, an old
grey-headed Chartist, of a Republican way of thinking, whose experience
of monarchy was limited to his share of taxation for its support,
hissed at the introduction of the Queen's name. Mr. Hughes, then a young
athlete, turned upon the old Six Points politician and said: "Any one
who hissed at the Queen's name would have to reckon with him"--meaning
that he would knock him down, or put him out of the meeting. If, at a
Chartist meeting, one athletic leader had similarly threatened an old
grey-headed Royalist who hissed some Republican name, it would have been
described, in all respectable papers, as "a ruffianly proceeding." The
Hughes incident showed Christian Socialist sympathy with Chartism was
not of an enthusiastic character. At other times Mr. Hughes had nobler
moods, but he, like Kingsley, had few qualifications for delineating
Chartists.
Judge Hughes, like Canon Kingsley and his Christian Socialist
colleagues, saw everything in the light of Theology. He saw nothing else
by itself. He relates "the appearance of a little grey, shrivelled man
at the grave of Mr. Maurice at the cemetery at Hampstead, one of the
staff of the leading Chartist newspaper," as a proof of his conversion.
This was gratitude, not conversion. Had I not been at the Bolton
Co-operative Congress at the time, I should have been at the same grave.
When the news came of Maurice's death, it did not occur to his friend,
Mr. Neale, that the Congress would pass a resolution in honour of
Maurice. I suggested it to him, and he said to me, "You had better draw
up the resolution," which I did, and moved it. It was unanimously and
gratefully passed. Though I was foremost to express the respect of
working men, and the sense of obligation they were under, for Maurice's
great services to Co-operation, and his establishment of the Working
Men's College, it did not imply that I had come to accept the
Thirty-nine Articles. Relevant appreciation, real gratitude, and
admiration, do not imply coincidence of opinion on other and alien
questions.
How little the creator of Alton Locke was a Chartist, or a sympathiser
with Chartism, was seen when he described "Mr. Julian Harney and Feargus
O'Connor and the rest of the smoke of the pit." Kingsley said "his only
quarrel with the Charter was that it did not go far enough." All his
meaning was that it should have comprised social, instead of political
reform, which was what all who were opposed to political freedom said.
This only meant that he wanted Chartists to take up social, and drop
political reform. This appears in the passage in which he said, "The
Charter disappointed me bitterly when I read it. It seemed a harmless
cry enough, but a poor, bald, constitution-mongering cry as ever I
heard. The French cry of organisation of labour is worth a thousand of
it."* Organisation of labour is a great thing, but it is not political
equality or liberty. Kingsley's Chartist had no political soul.
There is noble sympathy with labour, and there are passages which should
always be read with honour in "Alton Locke." But the book is written in
derision of Chartism and Liberal politics. Alton Locke himself was like
his creator. Kingsley's acts were the acts of a friend, his arguments
the arguments of an enemy; and Alton Locke, despite the noble personal
qualities with which he is endowed, was a confused political traitor,
who bartered the Kingdom of Man for the Kingdom of Heaven, when he might
have stood by both.
* Prefatory Memoir, by T. Hughes, p. 16.
So much for the Church Chartist. Now turn to the Positivist Chartist,
and see whether there be any backbone of political emancipation in
him, or whether his vertebra is of jelly, like Alton Locke's. To the
Positivist Chartist is given the stronger name of "Radical."
One of the remarkable volumes George Eliot gave to the world bears the
name of "Felix Holt, the Radical." But when she comes to delineate the
Radical, he turns out to be a Positivist--of good quality of his kind,
but still not a Radical.
As Canon Kingsley drew the Church Chartist, so George Eliot drew the
Positivist Radical. Neither drew the selected hero as he was, but as
each thought he ought to be.
A Radical is one who goes to the root of things. He deals with evils
having a political origin, which he intends to remove by political
means. Radicals were far older than the Chartists. Radicalism was a
force in reform before Chartism began. The Radical more or less evolves
his creed by observation of the condition of things surrounding him; the
Chartist had his creed ready made for him. The Chartist may be said to
begin with political effects, the Radical with political causes. Anyhow,
the Radical was always supposed to know what he was, and why he was
what he was. Felix Holt was not built that way. George Eliot had greater
power of penetrating into character than Kingsley, but she made the same
mistake in Felix Holt that Kingsley made in Alton Locke. Felix Holt is
a revolutionist from indignation. His social insurgency is based on
resentment at injustice. Very noble is that form of dissatisfaction,
but political independence is not his inspiration. Freedom, equality
of public rights, are not in his mind. His disquiet is not owing to
the political inability of his fellows to control their own fortunes.
Content comes to Felix when the compassion of others ameliorates or
extinguishes the social evils from which his fellows suffer. He is
the Chartist of Positivism without a throb of indignation at political
subjection. That may be Positivism, but it is not Radicalism.
Felix Holt discloses his character in his remark that "the Radical
question was how to give every man a man's share in life. But I think
that is to expect voting to do more towards it than I do."
"A man's share in life" was the Baboeuf doctrine of Communism, which
English Radicals never had. Holt's depreciation of the power of voting
was the argument of the benevolent but beguiling Tory. It was part
of the Carlylean contempt of a ten-thousandth part of a voice in the
"national palava." This meant distrust, not only of the suffrage, but of
Parliament itself. When both are gone, despotism becomes supreme. When
Felix Holt talked so, he had ceased to be a Radical--if he ever was one.
The power of voting has changed the status and dignity of working
men--not much yet, but more will come. Hampered and incomplete as the
suffrage is, it has put the workers on the way to obtain what they want,
though they are a little puzzled which turning to take now they are on
the road.
Felix Holt continues: "I want the working men to have power.... and I
can see plainly enough that our all having power will do little towards
it at present.... If we have false expectations about men's characters,
we are very much like the idiot who thinks he can carry milk in a can
without a bottom. In my opinion the notions about what mere voting will
do, are very much that sort" Felix declares that all the "scheme about
voting and districts and annual parliaments [all points of the Charter]
will not give working men what they want."*
* See "Felix Holt, the Radical," vol i. pp. 265-266,
Blackwood's edition of George Eliot
Felix has much more to say in disparagement of political aspiration
which is like reading one of Lord Salisbury's speeches when he was Lord
Cranborne, but without the bitterness and contempt by which we knew the
genuine Salisbury mind. The Eliot spirit is better--the argument more
sympathetic, but the purport is the same. It means: "Leave politics
alone. You will find all the redress that is good for you elsewhere."
This, if true, is not Radicalism which sought to help itself, and not
rise by compassion. Radicals may have expected too much from political
reform--they may have thought political power to be an end instead of a
means whereby better public conditions can be obtained, by which social
effort could better be compassed, and its projects carried out. It
is true that social condition can be improved by men of purpose and
character under despotism, but this does not prove that despotism is
desirable, since it can make itself at will an effectual obstacle
to progress, and as a rule does so. The policy of seeking the best
political condition in which social progress can be made, is Radicalism.
The policy of contentment with things as they are, seeking social
condition apart from politics, is Socialism, as it has been understood
in England. "Felix Holt," like "Alton Locke," abounds in noble
sentiments, exalts the character of working men, vindicates their social
claims with eloquence. But Felix Holt was no more a Radical than Alton
Locke was a Chartist. Alton Locke is against Chartism. Felix Holt is
against Radicalism. Sir Leslie Stephen has written the most fascinating
estimate of the writings and genius of George Eliot that has been
produced. He has interesting things to say of Felix Holt, but it does
not occur to him to say what he was so well able to say, whether he
was a Radical or not--or if one, of what species. Therefore it has been
necessary to place before the reader the evidence which will enable him
to decide the question for himself.
In reference to this chapter, Mr. J. M. Ludlow wrote to me, saying:
["That you above all men should find fault with Kingsley or any one else
for setting social above political reform, I own, amazes me. But it is
not true in any sense of the words that Kingsley wanted Chartists to
'take up social and drop political reform.' In his first letter to
Thomas Cooper (Life, vol. i. p. 182), he expressly says: 'I would shed
the last drop of my blood for the social and _political_ emancipation
of the people.' [The italics are mine.] Again, you misquote General
Maurice's (not Mr. Maurice's) words, when you say that 'Maurice owned
that his object was not to socialise society, but to Christianise
Socialism.' General Maurice's words are: 'Beyond all doubt he dreaded
becoming the head of a _party_ of Christian Socialists. His great wish
was to Christianise Socialism, not to Christian-socialise the universe'
(Life, vol. ii. p. 47).
"Your story about the 'old grey-headed Chartist' and T. Hughes does not
tally altogether with the statement in Mr. Maurice's Life (vol. ii. p.
13), but as I do not recollect being present (nor, I believe, were you)
on the occasion, I cannot say which is right. I should have thought that
an 'old greyheaded Chartist' would have had more courtesy as well as
more sense than to hiss the Queen."
Mr. Ludlow's letter throws a flood of light on the mistakes of Canon
Kingsley and his colleagues. Mr. Ludlow "is amazed that I above all men
should blame any man for setting social above political reform." It is
now some fifty years since Mr. Ludlow first did me the honour to notice
what I wrote or said. Yet I think he never knew me to subordinate
political to social reform. I always thought it base to teach men to
barter political freedom for social benefits. The leaders of early
co-operation in the days before Mr. Ludlow knew it--being like Robert
Owen, mostly of a Tory way of thinking--deprecated political reform,
and thought its pursuit unnecessary, as their social remedy would do
everything for the people. I always dissented from this doctrine and
resented it, as the politician, if you do not watch him, will come some
day and throw the savings of a century into a sea of imperial blood. Mr.
Ludlow quotes a letter from Kingsley to Thomas Cooper, in which he says
he "would shed the last drop of his blood for the social and political
emancipation of the people." What! for the "smoke of the pit"? as he
described the agitation for the Charter. What! "shed his blood" for a
"Morrison pill measure"--shed the last drop of his blood" for a poor,
bald, constitution-mongering cry as ever he heard"? I agree that this is
extraordinary political enthusiasm. Still it was no proof that Kingsley
was a Chartist, and that was my point. General Maurice's version of his
father's saying that "his object was not to socialise society," shows
that Maurice cared no more for Socialism (which at that time meant
co-operative communism) than Kingsley cared for Chartism. Both meant
well to the people in a theological--not a political way. The old
grey-headed Chartist hissed the Queen's office, not herself. Republicans
ever made that distinction.]