And how is it in the twentieth century? Have conditions been much
improved? There are great Englishmen who do not think so. I quote
Robert Buchanan, a poet who spoke for the people, and who
therefore has still to be recognized by English critics. He
writes of the "New Rome", by which he means present-day England:
The gods are dead, but in their name
Humanity is sold to shame,
While (then as now!) the tinsel'd priest
Sitteth with robbers at the feast,
Blesses the laden, blood-stained board,
Weaves garlands round the butcher's sword,
And poureth freely (now as then)
The sacramental blood of Men!
You see, the land system of England remains--the changes having
been for the worse. William the Conqueror wanted to keep the
Saxon peasantry contented, so he left them their "commons"; but
in the eighteenth century these were nearly all filched away. We
saw the same thing done within the last generation in Mexico, and
from the same motive--because developing capitalism needs cheap
labor, whereas people who have access to the land will not slave
in mills and mines. In England, from the time of Queen Anne to
that of William and Mary, the parliaments of the landlords passed
some four thousand separate acts, whereby more than seven million
acres of the common land were stolen from the people. It has been
calculated that these acres might have supported a million
families; and ever since then England has had to feed a million
paupers all the time.
As an old song puts the matter:
Why prosecute the man or woman
Who steals a goose from off the common,
And let the greater felon loose
Who steals the common from the goose?
In our day the land aristocracy is rooted like the native oak in
British soil: some of them direct descendants of the Normans,
others children of the court favorites and panders who grew rich
in the days of the Tudors and the unspeakable Stuarts. Seven men
own practically all the land of the city and county of London,
and collect tribute from seven millions of people. The estates
are entailed--that is, handed down from father to oldest son
automatically; you cannot buy any land, but if you want to build,
the landlord gives you a lease, and when the lease is up, he
takes possession of your buildings. The tribute which London pays
is more than a hundred million dollars a year. So absolute is the
right of the land-owner that he can sue for trespass the driver
on an aeroplane which flies over him; he imposes on fishermen a
tax upon catches made many hundred of yards from the shore.
And in this graft, of course, the church has its share. Each
church owns land--not merely that upon which it stands, but farms
and city lots from which it derives income. Each cathedral owns
large tracts; so do the schools and universities in which the
clergy are educated. The income from the holdings of a church
constitutes what is called a "living"; these livings, which vary
in size, are the prerogatives of the younger sons of the ruling
families, and are intrigued and scrambled for in exactly the
fashion which Thackeray describes in the eighteenth century.
About six thousand of these "livings" are in the gift of great
land owners; one noble lord alone disposes of fifty-six such
plums; and needless to say, he does not present them to clergymen
who favor radical land-taxes. He gives them to men like
himself--autocratic to the poor, easy-going to members of his own
class, and cynical concerning the grafts of grace.
In one English village which I visited the living was worth seven
hundred pounds, with the use of a fine mansion; as the incumbent
had a large family, he lived there. In another place the living
was worth a thousand pounds, and the incumbent hired a curate,
himself appearing twice a year, on Christmas day and on the
King's birthday, to preach a sermon; the rest of the time he
spent in Paris. It is worth noting that in 1808 a law was
proposed compelling absentee pluralists--that is, clergymen
holding more than one "living"--to furnish curates to do their
work; it might be interesting to note that this law met with
strenuous clerical opposition, the house of Bishops voting
against it without a division. Thus we may understand the sharp
saying of Karl Marx, that the English clergy would rather part
with thirty-eight of their thirty-nine articles than with one
thirty-ninth of their income.
There is always a plentiful supply of curates in England. They
are the sons of the less influential ruling families, and of the
clergy; they have been trained at Oxford or Cambridge, and
possess the one essential qualification, that they are gentlemen.
Their average price is two hundred and fifty pounds a year; their
function was made clear to me when I attended my first English
tea-party. There was a wicker table, perhaps a foot and a half
square, having three shelves, one below the other the top layer
the plates and napkins, on the next the muffins, and on the
lowest the cake. Said the hostess, "Will you pass the curate,
please?" I looked puzzled, and she pointed. "We call that the
curate, because it does the work of a curate."