justify, any sort of charitable benefactions. Did not Mr. Peabody give
his glass of champagne to a man in need? He might have spent all his
money on himself if he had been driven to building Chatsworths, and
hanging their walls with Raffaelles. How will he escape the reproach of
having done what was criminal and pernicious? And what are we to say of
the conduct of London plutocrats who abetted his proceedings by their
applause though they abstained from following his example? Is there any
apology for them at all but one essentially Christian? Not that
Christianity makes any great fuss over munificence, or gives political
economy reasonable ground for apprehension on that score. Plutocracy
deifies Mr. Peabody; Christianity measures him and pronounces his
millions worth less than the widow's mite.
In my lecture I have applied my principles, or tried to apply them,
fairly to the mechanic as well as to the millionaire. I have deprecated,
as immoral, a resort to strikes solely in the interest of the strikers,
without regard to the general interests of industry and of the community
at large. What has my critic to say, from the moral point of view, to
the gas stokers who leave London in the dark, or the colliers who, in
struggling to raise their own wages, condemn the ironworkers to "clamm"
for want of coal?
I would venture to suggest that Mr. Greg somewhat overrates in his paper
the beneficence of luxury as an agent in the advancement of
civilization. "Artificial wants," he says, "what may be termed
extravagant wants, the wish to possess something beyond the bare
necessaries of existence; the taste for superfluities and luxuries
first, the desire for refinements and embellishments next; the craving
for the higher enjoyments of intellect and art as the final stage--these
are the sources and stimulants of advancing civilization. It is these
desires, these needs, which raise mankind above mere animal existence,
which, in time and gradually, transform the savage into the cultured
citizen of intelligence and leisure. Ample food once obtained, he begins
to long for better, more varied, more succulent food; the richer
nutriment leads on to the well-stored larder and the well-filled cellar,
and culminates in the French cook." The love of truth, the love of
beauty, the effort to realize a high type of individual character, and a
high social ideal, surely these are elements of progress distinct from
gastronomy, and from that special chain of gradual improvement which
culminates in the French cook. It may be doubted whether French cookery
does always denote the acme of civilization. Perhaps in the case of the
typical London Alderman, it denotes something like the acme of
barbarism, for the barbarism of the elaborate and expensive glutton
surely exceeds that of the child of nature who gorges himself on the
flesh which he has taken in hunting: not to mention that the child of
nature costs humanity nothing, whereas the gourmand devours the labour
of the French cook and probably that of a good many assistants and
purveyors.
The greatest service is obviously rendered by any one who can improve
human food. "The man is what he eats," is a truth though somewhat too
broadly stated. But then the improvement must be one ultimately if not
immediately accessible to mankind in general. That which requires a
French cook is accessible only to a few.
Again, in setting forth the civilizing effects of expenditure, Mr. Greg,
I think, rather leaves out of sight those of frugality. The Florentines,
certainly the leaders of civilization in their day, were frugal in their
personal habits, and by that frugality accumulated the public wealth
which produced Florentine art, and sustained a national policy eminently
generous and beneficent for its time.
Moreover, in estimating the general influence of great fortunes, Mr.
Greg seems to take a rather sanguine view of the probable character and
conduct of their possessors. He admits that a broad-acred peer or
opulent commoner "may spend his L30,000 a year in such a manner as to be
a curse, a reproach, and an object of contempt to the community,
demoralizing and disgusting all around him, doing no good to others, and
bringing no real enjoyment to himself." But he appears to think that the
normal case, and the one which should govern our general views and
policy upon the subject, is that of a man "of refined taste and
intellect expanded to the requirements of his position, managing his
property with care and judgment, so as to set a feasible example to less
wealthy neighbours; prompt to discern and to aid useful undertakings, to
succour striving merit, unearned suffering, and overmatched energy."
"Such a man," he says, in a concluding burst of eloquence, "if his
establishment in horses and servants is not immoderate, although he
surrounds himself with all that art can offer to render life beautiful
and elegant though he gathers round him the best productions of the
intellect of all countries and ages, though his gardens and his park are
models of curiosity and beauty, though he lets his ancestral trees rot
in their picturesque mutility instead of converting them into profitable
timber, and disregards the fact that his park would be more productive
if cut up into potato plots though, in fine he lives in the very height
of elegant, refined and tasteful luxury--I should hesitate to denounce
as consuming on himself the incomes of countless labouring families, and
I should imagine that he might lead his life of temperate and thoughtful
joy quietly conscious that his liberal expenditure enabled scores of
these families as well as artists and others to exist in comfort and
without either brain or heart giving way under the burdensome
reflection."
It must be by a slip of the pen such as naturally occurs amidst the glow
of an enthusiastic description that the writer speaks of people as
enabling others to subsist by their expenditure. It is clear that people
can furnish subsistence to themselves or others only by production. A
rich idler may appear to give bread to an artist or opera girl but the
bread really comes not from the idler but from the workers who pay his
rents; the idler is at most the channel of distribution. The munificence
of monarchs who generously lavish the money of the taxpayer is a
familiar case of the same fallacy. This is the illusion of the Irish
peasant whose respect for the spendthrift "gentleman" and contempt for
the frugal "sneak" Mr. Greg honours with a place among the serious
elements of an economical and social problem.
But not to dwell on what is so obvious how many let me ask, of the
possessors of inherited wealth in England or in any other country,
fulfil or approach Mr. Greg's ideal? I confess that, as regards the mass
of the English squires the passage seems to me almost satire. Refined
taste and expanded intellect, promptness to discern and aid striving
merit and unearned suffering, life surrounded with all that art can do
to render it beautiful and elegant, the best productions of intellect
gathered from all intellects and ages--I do not deny that Mr. Greg has
seen all this, but I can hardly believe that he has seen it often, and I
suspect that there are probably people not unfamiliar with the abodes of
great landowners who have never seen it at all. Not to speak of artists
and art, what does landed wealth do for popular education? It appears
from the Popular Education Report of 1861 (p. 77) that in a district
taken as a fair specimen, the sum of L4,518, contributed by voluntary
subscription towards the support of 168 schools, was derived from the
following sources:
169 clergymen contributed L1,782 or L10 10 0 each
399 landowners " 2,127 " 5 6 0 "
2l7 occupiers " 200 " 18 6 "
102 householders " 181 " 1 15 6 "
141 other persons " 228 " 1 12 4 "
The rental of the 399 landowners was estimated at, L650,000 a year.
Judging from the result of my own observations, I should not have been
at all surprised if a further analysis of the return had shown that not
only the contributions of the clergy but those of retired professional
men and others with limited incomes were, in proportion, far greater
than those of the leviathans of wealth.
To play the part of Mr. Greg's ideal millionaire, a man must have not
only a large heart but a cultivated mind; and how often are educators
successful in getting work out of boys or youths who know that they have
not to make their own bread?
In my lecture I have drawn a strong distinction, though Mr. Greg has not
observed it, between hereditary wealth and that which, however great,
and even, compared with the wages of subordinate producers, excessive,
is earned by industry. Wealth earned by industry is, for obvious
reasons, generally much more wisely and beneficially spent than
hereditary wealth. The self-made millionaire must at all events, have an
active mind. The late Mr. Brassey was probably one man in a hundred even
among self-made millionaires; among hereditary millionaires he would
have been one in a thousand. Surely we always bestow especial praise on
one who resists the evil influences of hereditary wealth, and surely our
praise is deserved.
The good which private wealth has done in the way of patronizing
literature and art is, I am convinced, greatly overrated. The beneficent
patronage of Lorenzo di Medici is, like that of Louis XIV., a
chronological and moral fallacy. What Lorenzo did was, in effect, to
make literature and art servile and in some cases to taint them with the
propensities of a magnificent debauchee. It was not Lorenzo, nor any
number of Lorenzos, that made Florence, with her intellect and beauty,
but the public spirit, the love of the community, the intensity of civic
life, in which the interest of Florentine history lies. The decree of
the Commune for the building of the Cathedral directs the architect to
make a design "of such noble and extreme magnificence that the industry
and skill of men shall be able to invent nothing grander or more
beautiful," since it had been decided in Council that no plan should be
accepted "unless the conception was such as to render the work worthy of
an ambition which had become very great, inasmuch as it resulted from
the continued desires of a great number of citizens united in one sole
will."
I believe, too, that the munificence of a community is generally wiser
and better directed than that of private benefactors. Nothing can be
more admirable than the munificence of rich men in the United States.
But the drawback in the way of personal fancies and crochets is so great
that I sometimes doubt whether future generations will have reason to
thank the present, especially as the reverence of the Americans for
property is so intense that they would let a dead founder breed any
pestilence rather than touch the letter of his will.
Politically, no one can have lived in the New World without knowing that
a society in which wealth is distributed rests on an incomparably safer
foundation than one in which it is concentrated in the hands of a few.
British plutocracy has its cannoneer; but if the cannoneer happens to
take fancies into his head the "whiff of grapeshot" goes the wrong way.
Socially, I do not know whether Mr. Greg has been led to consider the
extent to which artificial desires, expensive fashions, and conventional
necessities created by wealth, interfere with freedom of intercourse and
general happiness. The _Saturday Review_ says:
"All classes of Her Majesty's respectable subjects are always doing
their best to keep up appearances, and a very hard struggle many of us
make of it. Thus a mansion in Belgrave Square ought to mean a corpulent
hall-porter, a couple of gigantic footmen, a butler and an under-butler
at the very least, if the owner professes to live op to his social
dignities. If our house is in Baker or Wimpole street, we must certainly
have a manservant in sombre raiment to open our door, with a hobbledehoy
or a buttons to run his superior's messages. In the smart, although
somewhat dismal, small squares in South Kensington and the Western
suburbs, the parlourmaid must wear the freshest of ribbons and trimmest
of bows, and be resplendent in starch and clean coloured muslins. So it
goes on, as we run down the gamut of the social scale; our ostentatious
expenditure must be in harmony throughout with the stuccoed facade
behind which we live, or the staff of domestics we parade. We are aware,
of course, as our incomes for the most part are limited, and as we are
all of us upon our mettle in the battle of life that we must pinch
somewhere if appearances are to be kept up. We do what we can in secret
towards balancing the budget. We retrench on our charities, save on our
coals, screw on our cabs, drink the sourest of Bordeaux instead of more
generous vintages, dispense with the cream which makes tea palatable,
and systematically sacrifice substantial comforts that we may swagger
successfully in the face of a critical and carping society. But with
the most of us if our position is an anxious one; it is of our own
making and if we dared to be eccentrically rational it might be very
tolerable."
Nor is this the worst. The worst is the exclusion from society of the
people who do not choose to torture and degrade themselves in order to
keep up appearances and who are probably the best people of all. The
interference of wealth and its exigencies with social enjoyment is I
suspect a heavy set off against squirearchical patronage of intellect
and art.
Those who believe that the distribution of wealth is more favourable to
happiness and more civilizing than its concentration will of course vote
against laws which tend to artificial concentration of wealth such as
those of primogeniture and entail. This they may do without advocating
public plunder though it suits plutocratic writers to confound the two.
For my own part I do not feel bound to pay to British plutocracy a
respect which British plutocracy does not pay to humanity. Some of its
organs are beginning to preach doctrines revolting to a Christian and to
any man who has not banished from his heart the love of his kind and we
have seen it when its class passions were excited show a temper as cruel
as that of any Maratist or Petroleuse. But so far from attacking the
institution of property [Footnote: The _Saturday Review_ some time
ago charged me with proposing to confiscate the increase in the value of
land. I never said anything of the kind nor anything I believe that
could easily be mistaken for it.] I have as great a respect for it as
any millionaire can have and as sincerely accept and uphold it as the
condition of our civilization. There is nothing inconsistent with this
in the belief that among the better part of the race property is being
gradually modified by duty or in the surmise that before humanity
reaches its distant goal property and duty will alike be merged in
affection.
A TRUE CAPTAIN OF INDUSTRY.
The vast works of the railway and steamboat age called into existence,
besides the race of great engineers, a race of great organizers and
directors of industry, who may be generally termed Contractor. Among
these no figure was more conspicuous than that of Mr. Brassey, a life of
whom has just been published by Messrs. Bell and Daldy. Its author is
Mr. Helps, whose name is a guarantee for the worthy execution of the
work. And worthily executed it is, in spite of a little Privy Council
solemnity in the reflections, and a little "State Paper" in the style.
The materials were collected in an unusual way--by examining the
persons who had acted under Mr. Brassey, or knew him well, and taking
down their evidence in shorthand. The examination was conducted by Mr.
Brassey, jun., who prudently declined to write the biography himself,
feeling that a son could not speak impartially of his father. The result
is that we have materials for a portrait, which not only is very
interesting in itself but, by presenting the image of beneficence in an
employer, may help to mediate between capital and labour in a time of
industrial war.
Mr. Helps had been acquainted with Mr. Brassey, and had once received a
visit from him on official business of difficulty and importance. He
expected, he says, to see a hard, stern, soldierly sort of person,
accustomed to sway armies of working-men in an imperious fashion.
Instead of this he saw an elderly gentleman of very dignified appearance
and singularly graceful manners--"a gentleman of the old school." "He
stated his case, no, I express myself wrongly; he did _not_ state
his case, he _understated_ it; and there are few things more
attractive in a man than that he should be inclined to understate rather
than overstate his own case." Mr. Brassey was also very brief, and when
he went away, Mr. Helps, knowing well the matter in respect to which his
visitor had a grievance, thought that, if it had been his own case, he
should hardly have been able to restrain himself so well, and speak with
so little regard to self-interest, as Mr. Brassey had done. Of all the
persons whom Mr. Helps had known, he thought Mr. Brassey most resembled
that perfect gentleman and excellent public man, Lord Herbert of Lea.
Mr. Helps commences his work with a general portrait. According to this
portrait, the most striking feature in Mr. Brassey's character was
trustfulness, which he carried to what might appear an extreme. He chose
his agents with care, but, having chosen them, placed implicit
confidence in them, trusting them for all details, and judging by
results. He was very liberal in the conduct of business. His temperament
was singularly calm and equable, not to be discomposed by success or
failure, easily throwing off the burden of care, and, when all had been
done that could be done, awaiting the result with perfect equanimity. He
was very delicate in blaming, his censure being always of the gentlest
kind, evidently reluctant, and on that account going more to the heart.
His generosity made him exceedingly popular with his subordinates and
work-men, who looked forward to his coming among them as a festive
event; and, when any disaster occurred in the works, the usual parts of
employer and employed were reversed--the employer it was who framed the
excuses and comforted the employed. He was singularly courteous, and
listened to everybody with respect; so that it was a marked thing when
he went so far as to say of a voluble and empty chatterer, that "the
peas were overgrowing the stick." His presence of mind was great; he had
in an eminent degree, as his biographer remarks, what Napoleon called
"two o'clock in the morning courage," being always ready, if called up
in the middle of the night, to meet any urgent peril; and his faculties
were stimulated, not overcome, by danger. He had a perfect hatred of
contention, and would not only refuse to take any questionable
advantage, but would rather even submit to be taken advantage of--a
generosity which turned to his account. In the execution of any
undertaking, his anxiety was that the work should be done quickly and
done well. Minor questions, unprovided for by specific contract, he left
to be settled afterwards. In his life he had only one regular law-suit.
It was in Spain, about the Mataro line, and into this he was drawn by
his partner against his will. He declared that he would never have
another, "for in nineteen cases out of twenty you either gain nothing at
all, or what you do gain does not compensate you for the worry and
anxiety the lawsuit occasions you." In case of disputes between his
agents and the engineers, he quietly settled the question by reference
to the "gangers."
In order to find the key to Mr. Brassey's character, his biographer took
care to ascertain what was his "ruling passion." He had none of the
ordinary ambitions for rank, title, or social position. "His great
ambition--his ruling passion--was to win a high reputation for skill,
integrity, and success in the difficult vocation of a contractor for
public works; to give large employment to his fellow-countrymen; by
means of British labour and British skill to knit together foreign
countries; and to promote civilization, according to his view of it,
throughout the world." "Mr. Brassey," continues Mr. Helps, "was, in
brief, a singularly trustful, generous, large-hearted, dexterous, ruling
kind of personage; blessed with a felicitous temperament for bearing the
responsibility of great affairs." In the military age he might have been
a great soldier, a Turenne or a Marlborough, if he could have broken
through the aristocratic barrier which confined high command to the
privileged few; in the industrial age he found a more beneficent road to
distinction, and one not limited to the members of a caste.
Mr. Brassey's family is stated by his biographer to have come over with
the Conqueror. If Mr. Brassey attached any importance to his pedigree
(of which there is no appearance) it is to be hoped that he was able to
make it out more clearly than most of those who claim descent from
companions of the Conqueror. Long after the Conquest--so long, indeed,
as England and Normandy remained united under one crown--there was a
constant flow of Norman immigration into England, and England swarms
with people bearing Norman or French names, whose ancestors were
perfectly guiltless of the bloodshed of Hastings, and made their
entrance into the country as peaceful traders, and, perhaps, in even
humbler capacities. What is certain is that the great contractor sprang
from a line of those small landed proprietors, once the pillars of
England's strength, virtue and freedom, who, in the old country have
been "improved off the face of the earth" by the great landowners, while
they live again on the happier side of the Atlantic. A sound morality,
freedom from luxury, and a moderate degree of culture, are the heritage
of the scion of such a stock. Mr. Brassey was brought up at home till he
was twelve years old, when he was sent to school at Chester. At sixteen
he was articled to a surveyor, and as an initiation into great works, he
helped, as a pupil, to make the surveys for the then famous Holyhead
road. His master, Mr. Lawton, saw his worth, and ultimately took him
into partnership. The firm set up at Birkenhead, then a very small
place, but destined to a greatness which, it seems, Mr. Lawton had the
shrewdness to discern. At Birkenhead Mr. Brassey did well, of course;
and there, after a time, he was brought into contact with George
Stephenson, and by him at once appreciated and induced to engage in
railways. The first contract which he obtained was for the Pembridge
Viaduct, between Stafford and Wolverhampton, and for this he was enabled
to tender by the liberality of his bankers, whose confidence, like that
of all with whom he came into contact, he had won. Railway-making was at
that time a new business, and a contractor was required to meet great
demands upon his organizing power; the system of sub-contracts, which so
much facilitates the work, being then only in its infancy. From George
Stephenson Mr. Brassey passed to Mr. Locke, whose great coadjutor he
speedily became. And now the question arose whether he should venture to
leave his moorings at Birkenhead and launch upon the wide sea of
railroad enterprise. His wife is said, by a happy inspiration, to have
decided him in favour of the more important and ambitious sphere. She
did so at the sacrifice of her domestic comfort; for in the prosecution
of her husband's multifarious enterprises they changed their residence
eleven times in the next thirteen years, several times to places abroad;
and little during those years did his wife and family see of Mr.
Brassey.