I
_MIRAGE_
"Operations had to be temporarily suspended owing to the mirage."
This sentence from one of Sir Stanley Maude's despatches struck me
as parabolic. There are other, and vaster, issues than a strategic
victory on the Diala River which have been "suspended owing to the
mirage." Let us apply the parable.
The parched caravan sees, half a mile ahead, the gleaming lake
which is to quench its thirst. It toils along over the intervening
distance, only to find that Nature has been playing a trick. The
vision has vanished, and what seemed to be water is really sand.
There can be no more expressive image of disillusionment.
To follow the "Mirage" of receding triumph through long years of
hope deferred was the lot of Labour generally, and it was especially
the lot of agricultural labour. The artisans gained their political
enfranchisement in 1867, and, though they made remarkably little use
of it, still they had the power, if they had the will, to better
their condition. But the agricultural labourers remained inarticulate,
unnoticed, unrepresented. A Tory orator, said--and many of his class
agreed with him, though they were too prudent to say it--that the
labourer was no fitter for the vote than the beasts he tended. But
there were others who knew the labourers by personal contact, and
by friendly intercourse had been able to penetrate their necessary
reserve; and we (for I was one of these) knew that our friends in
the furrow and the cow-shed were at least as capable of forming
a solid judgment as their brethren in the tailor's shop and the
printing-works. There was nothing of the new Radicalism in this--it
was as old as English history. The toilers on the land had always
been aspiring towards freedom, though social pressure made them
wisely dumb. Cobbett and Cartwright, and all the old reformers
who kept the lamp of Freedom alive in the dark days of Pitt and
Liverpool and Wellington, bore witness to the "deep sighing" of
the agricultural poor, and noted with indignation the successive
invasions of their freedom by Enclosure Acts and press-gangs and
trials for sedition, and all the other implements of tyranny.
"The Good Old Code, like Argus, had a hundred watchful eyes,
And each old English peasant had his Good Old English spies
To tempt his starving discontent with Good Old English lies,
Then call the British Yeomanry to hush his peevish cries."
To a race of peasants thus enthralled and disciplined the Mirage
appeared in the guise of the first Reform Bill. If only that Bill
could pass into law, the reign of injustice and oppression would
cease, starvation and misery would flee away, and the poor would
rejoice in a new heaven and a new earth. But no sooner was the
Royal Assent given to the Bill than the Mirage--that deceitful
image of joy and refreshment--receded into the dim distance, and
men woke to the disheartening fact that, though power had been
transferred from the aristocracy to the middle class, the poor were
as badly off as ever. The visible effects of that disillusionment
were Chartism, rioting, and agrarian crime, and there was a deep
undercurrent of sullen anger which seldom found expression. As
late as the General Election of 1868 an old man in the duke-ridden
borough of Woodstock declined to vote for the Liberal candidate
expressly on the ground of disappointed hopes. Before 1832, he
said, arms had been stored in his father's cottage to be used if
the Lords threw out the Bill. They had passed it, and the arms were
not required; but no one that he knew of had ever been a ha'porth
the better for it; and he had never since meddled with politics,
and never would again. In this case the despondency of old age was
added to the despondency of disappointment; but among younger men
hope was beginning to dawn again, and the Mirage beckoned with its
treacherous gleam. The Agricultural Labourers' Union, starting on
its pilgrimage from the very heart of England, forced the labourer's
wants and claims upon the attention of the land-owners, the farmers,
and the clergy.
Those who had been brought by early association into touch with
the agricultural population knew only too well how deep and just
was the discontent of the villages, and how keen the yearning for
better chances. To secure the vote for the agricultural labourer
seemed to be the first step towards the improvement of his lot.
The General Election of 1880 was, as nearly as our constitutional
forms admit, a plébiscite on foreign policy; but to many a man who
was then beginning public life the emancipation of the labourer was
an object quite as dear as the dethronement of Lord Beaconsfield.
It was not for nothing that we had read _Hodge and His Masters_,
and we were resolved that henceforward "Hodge" should be not a
serf or a cipher, but a free man and a self-governing citizen.
We carried our Bill in 1884, and as the General Election of 1885
drew on, it was touching to feel the labourer's gratitude to all
who had helped him in the attainment of his rights. By that time
Gladstone had lost a great deal of his popularity in the towns,
where Chamberlain was the hero. But in the rural districts the
people worshipped Gladstone, and neither knew nor cared for any
other politician. His was the name to conjure with. His picture
hung in every cottage. His speeches were studied and thumbed by
hard hands till the paper was frayed into tatters. It was Gladstone
who had won the vote for the labourer, and it was Gladstone who was
to lead them into the Land of Promise. "Three Acres and a Cow,"
from being a joke, had passed into a watchword, though Gladstone
had never given it the faintest sanction. And the labourers vaguely
believed that the possession of the vote would bring them some
material benefit. So they voted for Gladstone with solid enthusiasm,
and placed their Mirage in his return to power. But alas! they only
realized a new and a more tragical disappointment. In January,
1886, an amendment to the Address embodying the principle of "Three
Acres and a Cow" was carried against the Tory Government; Gladstone
became Prime Minister, and the disconsolate labourers found that
the Mirage had cheated them once again. It is not easy to depict
the sorrow and mortification which ensued on this discovery. The
vote, after all, was only a Dead Sea apple. The energies which
were to have been bestowed on the creation of better surroundings
for English labourers were suddenly transferred to the creation
of an Irish Parliament, and in wide areas of rural population the
labourers sank back again into hopelessness and inactivity. Once
bit, twice shy. They had braved the wrath of their employers and
all the banded influences of the Hall and the Vicarage in order
to vote Liberal in December, 1885. They had got nothing by their
constancy; and in six months, when they were again incited to the
poll, they shook their heads and abstained. The disillusionment
of the labourers gave the victory of 1886 to the Tories, and kept
the Liberals out of power for twenty years.