ecclesiastical rags with which the new foundation of 1827--the mock
St. Katherine's--has been wrapped in imitation of the old. In an age
when the universities have been secularized, when the Fellows of
colleges are no longer required to be in Orders, when every useless
old charity is being reformed, and every endowment reconsidered with a
view to making it useful to the living as, under former conditions, it
was to the dead, they actually proposed to increase the uselessness
and the waste by adding a fourth Brother (which has not been done),
and raising the stipends of Brothers and Sisters. They also
recommended the establishment of an upper school, with 'foundation
boarders.' Considering that the upper and middle classes have already
appropriated to their own use almost every educational endowment in
the country, this proposition seems too ridiculous. The whole Report
is indeed a marvellous illustration of the tenacity of old prejudices.
Yet it did one good thing; it recommended that the accounts of the
Hospital should be submitted every year to the Charity Commissioners,
thus distinctly recognising the fact that the new foundation is not an
ecclesiastical institution, but a charity.
The Report mentions several propositions which had been laid before
the Commissioners during their inquiry for the application of the
revenues. The Committee of the Adult Orphan Institution thought that
they should like to administer the funds; the Rector of St.
George's-in-the-East thought that he should very much like to use them
for the purpose of converting that parish into 'a collegiate church,
under a dean and canons, who, with a sisterhood, might devote
themselves to the spiritual benefit, etc.'; others suggested that a
missionary collegiate church should be established 'as a centre of
missionary work for the East of London, with model schools, refuges,
reformatories, etc., conducted by the clergy.' Others, again, pleaded
for the use of the money in aid of the crowded parishes near the
Precinct.
The Commissioners were of a different opinion. The Hospital, they
said, never had a local character. This is the most startling
statement that ever issued from the mouth of a Lord Chancellor. Not a
local character? Then for whom were the services of the church held?
Where were the Bedeswomen found? Where the poor scholars? Where did
the church stand? Who got the doles? Not a local character? We might
as well contend, for example, that Rochester Cathedral and Close and
School have no local character; that Portsmouth Dockyard has no local
character; that Westminster School has no local character. St.
Katherine's Hospital belonged to its Precinct, where it had stood for
some hundred years. As well pretend that the Tower itself has no local
character. The 'local character' of St. Katherine's grew year by year:
the founder thought only to make a bridge for her children from
purgatory to heaven by the harmonious voices of the Master, the
Brothers, and the Sisters; but purpose widens. Presently purgatory
disappears, and the whole ecclesiastical part of the foundation,
except service in the church, vanishes with it. There remain, however,
the revenues, and these belong, if any revenues could, to the
locality.
In the year 1863 the proportion of waste to profit was as 12-1/2:1.
Has this proportion in the quarter of a century which has elapsed
increased or has it decreased?
From time to time, as we have seen, the question forces itself upon
men's minds--whether this revenue could not be administered to better
advantage. Lord Somers encounters the difficulty in the year 1698;
Lord Lyndhurst in 1829; Lord Hatherley in 1871. I suppose that even a
Lord Chancellor does not claim infallible wisdom. Therefore I venture
to insist upon the facts that the Reformation destroyed the Religious
House of St. Katherine; that the changes made by Lord Somers only made
the old Hospital useless; and that the Royal Commission of the year
1871 confirmed, in the new foundation, the later uselessness of the
old. The House of Shams and Shadows in Regent's Park is not the old
St. Katherine's at all; that is dead and done with; it is a fungus
which sprang up yesterday, which is not wholesome for human food, and
uses up, for no good purpose, the soil in which it grows.
Yet, because one would not be charged with unfairness, what does the
Rev. Simcox Lea, in his history of St. Katherine's Hospital (Longmans,
1878), say?
'St. Katherine's Hospital is an Ecclesiastical Corporation, returned
as a "Promotion Spiritual" in the reign of Henry VIII., and so
acknowledged by law in the reign of Charles I. It takes its place as a
Collegiate Church with Westminster and Windsor. The Clerical Head of
its Chapter, the Master of the Hospital, will be entitled, unless Her
Majesty shall see fit otherwise to direct, to the style of Very
Reverend and the rank of Dean. The Brothers have the status and
dignity of Canons Residentiary, and through the Sisters of the Chapter
the parallel dignity of Canonesses is preserved, under another style,
to the English Church of our day. The Collegiate Chapter holds its
entire revenues subject to certain eleemosynary trusts embodied in its
original constitution, the ecclesiastical and the charitable charges
belonging alike to all the estates instead of being assigned
separately to different portions of them.... All these principles of
the constitution of St. Katherine's must be kept in view in any scheme
which it may be proposed to submit, or in any suggestions which may be
offered through the press, for the consideration of the Lord
Chancellor in reference to the advice which he may submit to the
Queen.... St. Katherine's Hospital is no more a "Charity" than
Westminster Abbey is a Charity, and to describe it as such, after the
true facts of the case are known, will leave any writer or speaker
open to the charge of discourtesy, directly offered to a capitular
body whose personal constitution is worthy of its high and ancient
corporate ecclesiastical dignity, and indirectly through the members
of the Chapter, to the Queen.'
It will thus be seen that those of us who think that the place is a
Charity, and therefore call it one--including Lord Eldon and Lord
Lyndhurst, the Report of the Charity Commissioners in 1866, and Lord
Hatherley in 1871--are open to the charge of discourtesy. Well, let us
remain open to that charge; it does not kill. If it is not a Charity,
what is it? A place for getting the souls of rich men out of
purgatory? But the souls of rich men no longer in this country have
the privilege of being bought out of purgatory. Then what is it? A
place where seven well-born ladies and gentlemen are provided with
excellent houses and comfortable incomes--for doing what? Nothing.
Let us, if we must, offer a compromise. Let the Master, Brothers, and
Sisters, now forming the Society of New St. Katherine's, remain in
Regent's Park. We will not disturb them. Let them enjoy their salaries
so long as they live. At their deaths let those who love shams and
pretences appoint other Brothers and Sisters who will have all the
dignity of the position without the houses or the salaries. We may
even go so far as to provide a chaplain for the service of the chapel,
if the good people of the Terraces would like those services to
continue. But as for the rest of the income one cannot choose but
ask--and, if the request be not granted, ask again, and again--that it
be restored to that part of London to which it belongs. One would not,
with the person who communicated with the Commissioners, insult East
London by founding a 'Missionary' College in its midst unless it be
allowed to have branches in Belgravia, Lincoln's Inn, the Temple, St.
John's Wood, South Kensington, and other parts of West London; we will
certainly not ask permission to turn St. George's-in-the-East into a
Collegiate Church with a Dean and Canons, 'and a sisterhood.' But one
must ask that the pretence and show of keeping up this ugly and
useless modern place as the ancient and venerable Hospital be
abandoned as soon as possible. That old Hospital is dead and
destroyed; its ecclesiastical existence had been dead long before, its
lands and houses and funds remain to be used for the benefit of the
living.
Ten thousand pounds a year! This is a goodly estate. Think what ten
thousand pounds a year might do, well administered! Think of the
terrible and criminal waste in suffering all that money, which belongs
to East London, to be given away--year after year--in profitless alms
to ladies and gentlemen in return for no services rendered or even
pretended. Ten thousand pounds a year would run a magnificent school
of industrial education; it would teach thousands of lads and girls
how to use their heads and hands; it would be a perennial living
stream, changing the thirsty desert into flowery meads and fruitful
vineyards; it would save thousands of boys from the dreadful doom--a
thing of these latter days--of being able to learn no trade; it would
dignify thousands, and tens of thousands, of lives with the knowledge
and mastery of a craft; it would save from degradation and from
slavery thousands of women; it would restrain thousands of men from
the beery slums of drink and crime. Above all--perhaps this is the
main consideration--the judicious employment of ten thousand pounds a
year would be presently worth many millions a year to London from the
skilled labour it would cultivate and the many arts it would develop
and foster.
It is a cruel thing--a most cruel thing--to destroy wantonly anything
that is venerable with age and associated with the memories of the
past. It was a horrible thing to destroy that old Hospital. But it is
gone. The house of Shams and Shadows in Regent's Park has got nothing
whatever to do with it. Its revenues did not make the old Hospital;
that was made up by its ancient church; by the old buildings clustered
round the church; by the old customs of the Precinct, with its Courts,
temporal and spiritual, its offices and its prison; by its
burial-grounds, with its Bedesmen and Bedeswomen, and by the rough
sailor population which dwelt in its narrow lanes and courts. How
_could_ that place be allowed to suffer destruction? But when the old
thing is gone we must cast about for the best uses of anything which
once belonged to it. And of all the uses to which the revenues of the
old Hospital might be put, the present seems the most unfit and the
least worthy.
Again, if Queen Matilda in these days wished to do a good work, what
would she found? There are many purposes for which benevolent persons
bequeath and grant money. They are not the old purposes. They all
mean, nowadays, the advancement and bettering of the people. A great
lady spends thousands in founding a market; a man with much money
presents a free library to his native town; collections are made for
hospitals; everything is for the bettering of the people. We have not
yet advanced to the stage of bettering he rich people; but that will
come very shortly. In fact, the condition of the rich is already
exciting the gravest apprehensions among their poorer brethren. We can
trace, easily enough, the progress and growth of charity. It begins at
home, with anxiety for one's own soul first, and the souls of one's
children next. Charities give way to doles; doles are succeeded by
almshouses; these again by charity schools. The present generation has
begun to understand that the truest charity consists in throwing open
the doors to honest effort, and in helping those who help themselves.
Else what is the meaning of technical schools? What else mean the
classes at the People's Palace, the Polytechnic, the Evening
Recreation Schools, and the City of London Guilds Institute?
I believe that a conviction of the new truer charity, and of the
futility of the old modes, is destined to sink deeper and deeper into
men's hearts, until our working classes will perhaps fall into the
extreme in unforgiving hardness towards those whom unthrift,
profligacy, idleness, have brought to want. But with this conviction
is growing up the absolute necessity of more technical schools and
better industrial training. We want to make our handicraftsmen better
than any foreigners. More than that, there are some who say that the
very existence of the United Kingdom as a Power depends upon our doing
this. Can we afford any longer to keep up, at a yearly loss of all the
power represented by ten thousand pounds a year, that house of Shams
and Shadows which we call by the name of the ancient and venerable
Hospital of St. Katherine's by the Tower?
THE UPWARD PRESSURE:
A PROPHETIC CHAPTER FROM THE 'HISTORY OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY'
The most striking part of the great Social Revolution which was
witnessed by the earlier years of the twentieth century was the event
which preceded that Revolution, made it possible, and moulded it;
namely, the Conquest of the Professions by the people. Happily it was
a Conquest achieved without exciting any active opposition; it
advanced unnoticed, step by step, and it was unsuspected, as regards
its real significance, until the end was inevitable and visible to
all. It is my purpose in this Chapter, first to show what was the
position of the mass of the nation before this event, as regards the
Professions; and next to relate briefly the successive events which
led to the Conquest, and so prepared the way for the abolition of all
that was then left of the old aristocratic régime.
Speaking in general terms--the exceptions shall be noted
afterward--the Professions during the whole of the nineteenth century
were jealously barred and closed in and fenced round. Admission, in
theory, could only be obtained by young men of gentle birth and good
breeding. Not that there was any expressed rule to that effect. It was
not written over the gateway of Lincoln's Inn that none but gentlemen
were to be admitted, nor was it ever stated in any book or paper that
none but gentlemen were to be called. But, as you will be shown
immediately, the barring of the gate against the lad of humble origin
was quite as effectually accomplished without any law, mule, or
regulation whatever.
The professional avenues of distinction which, early in the twentieth
century, were only three or four, had, by the end of the century, been
multiplied tenfold by the birth or creation of new Professions.
Formerly a young man of ambition might go into tho Church, into one of
the two services, into the Law, or into Medicine. He might also, if he
were a country gentleman, go into the House of Commons. At the end of
the century the professional career included, besides these, all the
various branches of Science, all the forms of Art, all the divisions
of Literature, Music, Architecture, the Drama, Engineering, Teaching,
Archaeology, Political Economy, and, in fact, every conceivable
subject to which the mind of man can worthily devote itself.
In all these branches there were great--in some, very great--prizes to
be obtained; prizes not always of money, but of honour: in some of
them the prizes included what was considered the greatest of all
rewards--a Peerage. The country, indeed, was already beginning to
insist that the national distinctions should be bestowed upon all
those--and only upon those--who rendered real services to the State.
One poet had been made a Peer. One man of science had been made a
Privy Councillor, and another a Peer; two painters had been made
baronets; and the humble distinction of Knight Bachelor, which had
been tossed contemptuously to city sheriffs, provincial mayors, and
undistinguished persons who used back-stairs influence to get the
title, was now brought into better consideration by being shared by a
few musicians, engineers, physicians, and others. Nothing could more
clearly show the real contempt in which literature and science were
held in an aristocratic country than that, although there were a dozen
degrees of peerage and half a dozen orders of knighthood, there was
not one order reserved for men of science, literature, and art. Feeble
protests from time to time were made against this absurdity, but in
the end it proved useful, because the chief argument against the
continuance of titles of honour in the great debate on the subject, in
the year 1920, was the fact that all through the nineteenth century
the men who most deserved the thanks and recognition of the State were
(with the exception of soldiers and lawyers) absolutely neglected by
the Court and the House of Lords.
Let us consider by what usages, rather than by what rules, the
Professions were barred to the people. In the Church a young man could
not be ordained under the age of twenty-three. Nor would the Bishop
ordain him, as a rule, unless he was a graduate of Oxford or
Cambridge. This meant that he was to stay at school, and that a good
school, till the age of nineteen; that he was then to devote four
years more to carrying on his studies in a very expensive manner; in
other words, that he must be able to spend at least a thousand pounds
before he could obtain Orders, and that he would then receive pay at a
much lower rate than a good carpenter or engine-driver.
At the Bar it was the custom for a man to enter his name after leaving
the University: he would then be called at five or six-and-twenty. A
young man must be able to keep himself until that age, and even
longer, because a lawyer's practice begins slowly. There were also
very heavy dues on entrance and on being called. In plain terms, no
young man could enter at the Bar who did not possess or command, at
least, a thousand pounds.
In the lower branch of the law a young man might, it is true, be
admitted at twenty-one. But he had to pay a heavy premium for his
articles, and large fees both at entrance and on passing the
examination which admitted him. Not much less, therefore, including
his maintenance, than a thousand pounds would be required of him
before he began to make anything for himself. A medical man, even one
who only desired to become a general practitioner, had to work through
a five years' course, with hospital fees. Like the solicitor, he might
qualify for about a thousand pounds.
In all the new Professions, chemistry, physics, biology, zoology,
geology, botany, and the other branches of science, engineering,
mining, surveying, assying, architecture, actuary
work--everything--long a apprenticeship was needed with special
studies in costly colleges.
In Teaching, he who aspired to the more distinguished branches had no
chance at all, unless he was a graduate in the highest honours of
Oxford and Cambridge.
In the Arts--painting, sculpture, music--long practice, devoted study,
and exclusive thought were essential.
The Civil Service was divided into two branches, both open to
competitive examination. The higher branch attracted first-class men
of Oxford and Cambridge; the lower, clever and well-taught men from
the Middle Class Schools. But the latter could not pass into the
former.
In the Army, the only branch in which a man could live upon his pay
was the scientific branch, open to anybody who could compete in a very
stiff examination after a long and very expensive course of study, and
could pay £200 a year for two or three years after entrance. In the
other branches of the services, a young lieutenant could not live upon
his pay.
In the Navy the examinations were frequent and severe, while the pay
was very small.
The barrier, therefore, which kept the Professions in the hands of the
upper classes was a simple tollgate. At the toll stood a man. 'Come,'
he said, holding out an inexorable palm. 'With an education which has
cost you already a thousand pounds, be ready to pay down another
thousand more. Then you shall be admitted among the ranks of those for
whom are reserved the highest prizes of the State--viz., Authority,
Honour, and Wealth.'
It is apparent, then, that no one could enter the Professions who had
no money. No need to write up 'None but the sons of gentlemen may
apply.' Very many sons of gentlemen, in fact, had to turn away
sorrowfully after gazing with wistful eyes upon that ladder which they
knew that they, too, could climb, as well as a Denman or an Erskine.
As for the sons of poor parents, they could not so much as think of
the ladder: they hardly knew that it existed: they cared nothing about
it. As well sigh for the Lord Mayor's gilt carriage and four, or the
Field Marshal's baton. No poor lad could aspire to the Professions at
all. In other words, out of a population of thirty-seven millions, or
eight millions of families, the way of distinction was open only to
the young man belonging to the half million families--perhaps
less--who could expend upon their son's education a thousand pounds
apiece.
Nor for a long time was the exclusion felt or even recognised. He who
wished to rise out of the working class either became a small master
of his own trade, or else he opened a small shop of some kind. But he
did not aspire to become a physician or a barrister or a clergyman.
And it never occurred to him that such a career could be open to him.
But as happened every day, such a man had got on in the world and was
ambitious for his son, he made him a doctor or a solicitor, these
being the two Professions which cost least--or perhaps he made him a
mechanical engineer, though it might cost a good deal more. Perhaps if
the boy was clever, he managed to send him to the University with the
intention of getting him ordained. Such was the first upward step in
gentility--first, to become a master instead of a servant; then, to
belong to a profession rather than a trade. Always, however, one had
to settle with the man at the toll.
He was inexorable. 'Pay down,' he said, 'a thousand pounds if you
would be admitted within this bar.'
The young man, therefore, whose father worked for wages, or for a
small salary, or in a small way of trade, could not so much as dream
of entering any of the Professions. They were as much closed to him as
the gates of Paradise. But during the nineteenth century a new
Profession was created, and this was open to him. This they could not
close. It had already grown went and strong before they thought of
closing it. It was open to the poor man's son. He went into it. And
with the help of it, as with a key, he opened all the rest. You shall
understand immediately what this was.
I have spoken of certain exceptions to this exclusion of the lower
classes. There were provided at the public schools and the
Universities scholarships founded for the purpose of enabling poor
lads to carry on their studies. 'The schools had long ceased to be the
property of the poor for whom they were designed: their scholarships,
mostly of recent foundation, were granted by competitive examination
to those boys who had already spent a large sum of money on
preliminary work. The scholarships of the colleges at Oxford and
Cambridge were also given by examination, without the least
consideration of the candidates' private resources. There was,
however, a chance that a poor lad might get one of these. If he did,
everything was open to him. The annals of the Universities contain
numberless instances in which lads from the lower middle class made
their way, and a few instances--a very few--here one and there one--in
which the sons of working men thus forced themselves upward. We must
remember these scholarships when we speak of the barrier, but we must
not attach too much importance to them. One may also recall many
instances of generosity when a bay of parts was discovered, educated,
and sent to the University by a rich or noble patron.
In the Army, again, many men rose from the ranks and obtained
commissions. In the Navy, this was always impossible, with one or two
brilliant exceptions--as the case of Captain Cook.