This partnership of Bishops and Beer is painfully familiar to
British radicals; they see it at work in every election--the
publican confusing the voters with spirits, while the parson
confuses them with spirituality. There are two powerful societies
in England employing this deadly combination--the "Anti-Socialist
Union" and the "Liberty and Property Defense League." If you scan
the lists of the organizers, directors and subsidizers of these
satanic institutions, you find Tory politicians and landlords,
prominent members of the higher clergy, and large-scale dealers
in drunkenness. I attended in London a meeting called by the
"Liberty and Property Defense League," to listen to a
denunciation of Socialism by W. H. Mallock, a master sophist of
Roman Catholicism; upon the platform were a bishop and half a
dozen members of the Anglican clergy, together with the secretary
of the Federated Brewers' Association, the Secretary of the Wine,
Spirit, and Beer Trade Association, and three or four other
alcoholic magnates.
In every public library in England and many in America you will
find an assortment of pamphlets published by these organizations,
and scholarly volumes endorsed by them, in which the stock
misrepresentations of Socialism are perpetuated. Some of these
writings are brutal--setting forth the ethics of exploitation in
the manner of the Rev. Thomas Malthus, the English clergyman who
supplied for capitalist depredation a basis in pretended natural
science. Said this shepherd of Jesus:
A man who is born into a world already possessed, if he cannot
get subsistence from his parents, and if society does not want
his labor, has no claim of right to the smallest portion of food,
and in fact has no business to be where he is. At Nature's mighty
feast there is no cover for him. She tells him to be gone, and
will quickly execute her own orders.
Such was the tone of the ruling classes in the nineteenth
century; but it was found that for some reason this failed to
stop the growth of Socialism, and so in our time the clerical
defenders of Privilege have grown subtle and insinuating. They
inform us now that they have a deep sympathy with our fundamental
purposes; they burn with pity for the poor, and they would really
and truly wish happiness to everyone, not merely in Heaven, but
right here and now. However, there are so many complications--and
so they proceed to set out all the anti-Socialist bug-a-boos.
Here for example, is the Rev. James Stalker, D. D., expounding
"The Ethics of Jesus," and admonishing us extremists:
Efforts to transfer money and property from one set of hands to
another may be inspired by the same passions as have blinded the
present holders to their own highest good, and may be accompanied
with injustice as extreme as has ever been manifested by the rich
and powerful.
And again, the Rev. W. Sanday, D. D., an especially popular
clerical author, gives us this sublime utterance of religion on
wage-slavery:
The world is full of mysteries, but some clear lines run through
them, of which this is one. Where God has been so patient, it is
not for us to be impatient.
And again, Professor Robert Flint, of Edinburgh University, a
clergyman, author of a big book attacking Socialism, and bringing
us back to the faith of our fathers:
The great bulk of human misery is due, not to social
arrangements, but to personal vices.
I study Professor Flint's volume in the effort to find just what,
if anything, he would have the church do about the evils of our
time. I find him praising the sermons of Dr. Westcott, Bishop of
Durham, as being the proper sort for clergymen to preach. Bishop
Westcott, whether he is talking to a high society congregation,
or to one of workingmen, shows "an exquisite sense of knowing
always where to stop." So I consulted the Bishop's volume, "The
Social Aspects of Christianity" and I see at once why he is
popular with the anti-Socialist propagandists--neither I or any
other man can possibly discover what he really means, or what he
really wants done.
I was fascinated by this Westcott problem; I thought maybe if I
kept on the good Bishop's trail, I might in the end find
something a plain man could understand; so I got the beautiful
two-volume "Life of Brooke Westcott, by his Son"--and there I
found an exposition of the social purposes of bishops! In the
year 1892 there was a strike in Durham, which is in the coal
country; the employers tried to make a cut in wages, and some ten
thousand men walked out, and there was a long and bitter
struggle, which wrung the episcopal heart. There was much
consultation and correspondence on episcopal stationery, and at
last the masters and men were got together, with the Bishop as
arbitrator, and the dispute was triumphantly settled--how do you
suppose? On the basis of a ten per cent reduction in wages!
I know nothing quainter in the history of English graft than the
naivete with which the Bishop's biographer and son tells the
story of this episcopal venture into reality. The prelate came
out from the conference "all smiles, and well satisfied with the
result of his day's work." As for his followers, they were in
ecstacies; they "seized and waltzed one another around on the
carriage drive as madly as ever we danced at a flower show ball.
Hats and caps are thrown into the air, and we cheer ourselves
hoarse." The Bishop proceeds to his palace, and sends one more
communication on episcopal stationery--an order to all his clergy
to "offer their humble and hearty thanks to God for our happy
deliverance from the strife by which the diocese has been long
afflicted." Strange to say, there were a few varlets in Durham
who did not appreciate the services of the bold Bishop, and one
of them wrote and circulated some abusive verses, in which he
made reference to the Bishop's comfortable way of life. The
biographer then explains that the Bishop was so tender-hearted
that he suffered for the horses who drew his episcopal coach, and
so ascetic that he would have lived on tea and toast if he had
been permitted to. A curious condition in English society, where
the Bishop would have lived on tea and toast, but was not
permitted to; while the working people, who didn't want to live
on tea and toast, were compelled to!