penal code; they were the resolute opponents of every
political or social reform; and they had their reward from
the nation outside parliament. The Bishop of Bristol had his
palace sacked and burnt; the Bishop of London could not keep
an engagement to preach lest the congregation should stone
him. The Bishop of Litchfield barely escaped with his life
after preaching at St. Bride's, Fleet Street. Archbishop
Howley, entering Canterbury for his primary visitation, was
insulted, spat upon, and only brought by a circuitous route
to the Deanery, amid the execrations of the mob. On the 5th
of November the Bishops of Exeter and Winchester were burnt
in effigy close to their own palace gates. Archbishop
Howley's chaplain complained that a dead cat had been thrown
at him, when the Archbishop--a man of apostolic
meekness--replied: "You should be thankful that it was not a
live one."
The people had reason for this conduct--as you will always find they
have, if you take the trouble to inquire. Let me quote another member
of the English ruling classes, Mr. Conrad Noel, who gives "an
instance, of the procedure of Church and State about this period":
In 1832 six agricultural labourers in South Dorsetshire, led
by one of their class, George Loveless, in receipt of 9s. a
week each, demanded the 10s. rate of wages usual in the
neighbourhood. The result was a reduction to 8s. An appeal
was made to the chairman of the local bench, who decided
that they must work for whatever their masters chose to pay
them. The parson, who had at first promised his help, now
turned against them, and the masters promptly reduced the
wage to 7s., with a threat of further reduction. Loveless
then formed an agricultural union, for which all seven were
arrested, treated as convicts, and committed to the assizes.
The prison chaplain tried to bully them into submission. The
judge determined to convict them, and directed that they
should be tried for mutiny under an act of George III,
specially passed to deal with the naval mutiny at the Nore.
The grand jury were landowners, and the petty jury were
farmers; both judge and jury were churchmen of the
prevailing type. The judge summed up as follows: "Not for
anything that you have done, or that I can prove that you
intend to do, but for an example to others I consider it my
duty to pass the sentence of seven years' penal
transportation across His Majesty's high seas upon each and
every one of you."
#Suffer Little Children#
The founder of Christianity was a man who specialized in children. He
was not afraid of having His discourses disturbed by them, He did not
consider them superfluous. "Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven", He
said; and His Church is the inheritor of this tradition--"feed my
lambs". There were children in Great Britain in the early part of the
nineteenth century, and we may see what was done with them by turning
to Gibbin's "Industrial History of England":
Sometimes regular traffickers would take the place of the
manufacturer, and transfer a number of children to a factory
district, and there keep them, generally in some dark
cellar, till they could hand them over to a mill owner in
want of hands, who would come and examine their height,
strength, and bodily capacities, exactly as did the slave
oweners in the American markets. After that the children
were simply at the mercy of their oweners, nominally as
apprentices, but in reality as mere slaves, who got no
wages, and whom it was not worth while even to feed and
clothe properly, because they were so cheap and their places
could be so easily supplied. It was often arranged by the
parish authorities, in order to get rid of imbeciles, that
one idiot should be taken by the mill owener with every
twenty sane children. The fate of these unhappy idiots was
even worse than that of the others. The secret of their
final end has never been disclosed, but we can form some
idea of their awful sufferings from the hardships of the
other victims to capitalist greed and cruelty. The hours of
their labor were only limited by exhaustion, after many
modes of torture had been unavailingly applied to force
continued work. Children were often worked sixteen hours a
day, by day and by night.
In the year 1819 an act of Parliament was proposed limiting the labor
of children nine years of age to fourteen hours a day. This would seem
to have been a reasonable provision, likely to have won the approval
of Christ; yet the bill was violently opposed by Christian employers,
backed by Christian clergymen. It was interfering with freedom of
contract, and therefore with the will of Providence; it was anathema
to an established Church, whose function was in 1819, as it is in
1918, and was in 1918 B.C., to teach the divine origin and sanction of
the prevailing economic order. "Anu and Baal called me, Hammurabi, the
exalted prince, worshipper of the gods" ... so begins the oldest legal
code which has come down to us, from 2250 B.C.; and the coronation
service of the English church is made whole out of the same thesis.
The duty of submission, not merely to divinely chosen King, but to
divinely chosen Landlord and divinely chosen Manufacturer, is implicit
in the church's every ceremony, and explicit in many of its creeds. In
the Litany the people petition for "increase of grace to hear meekly
Thy Word"; and here is this "Word," as little children are made to
learn it by heart. If there exists in the world a more perfect summary
of slave ethics, I do not know where to find it.
My duty towards my neighbour is ... To honour and obey the
King, and all that are put in authority under him; To submit
myself to all my governours, teachers, spiritual pastors,
and masters: To order myself lowly and reverently to all my
betters.... Not to covet nor desire other men's goods; But
to learn and labour truly to get mine own living, and to do
my duty in that state of life, unto which it shall please
God to call me.
A hundred years ago one of the most popular of British writers was
Hannah More. She and her sister Martha went to live in the
coal-country, to teach this "catechism" to the children of the
starving miners. The "Mendip Annals" is the title of a book in which
they tell of their ten years' labors in a village popularly known as
"Little Hell." In this place two hundred people were crowded into
nineteen houses. "There is not one creature in it that can give a cup
of broth if it would save a life." In one winter eighteen perished of
"a putrid fever", and the clergyman "could not raise a six-pence to
save a life."
And what did the pious sisters make of all this? From cover to cover
you find in the "Mendip Annals" no single word of social protest, not
even of social suspicion. That wages of a shilling a day might have
anything to do with moral degeneration was a proposition beyond the
mental powers of England's most popular woman writer. She was
perfectly content that a woman should be sentenced to death for
stealing butter from a dealer who had asked what the woman thought too
high a price. When there came a famine, and the children of these
mine-slaves were dying like flies, Hannah More bade them be happy
because God had sent them her pious self. "In suffering by the
scarcity, you have but shared in the common lot, with the pleasure of
knowing the advantage you have had over many villages in your having
suffered no scarcity of religious instruction." And in another place
she explained that the famine was caused by God to teach the poor to
be grateful to the rich!
Let me remind you that probably that very scarcity has been
permitted by an all-wise and gracious Providence to unite
all ranks of people together, to show the poor how
immediately they are dependent upon the rich, and to show
both rich and poor that they are all dependent upon Himself.
It has also enabled you to see more clearly the advantages
you derive from the government and constitution of this
country--to observe the benefits flowing from the
distinction of rank and fortune, which has enabled the high
to so liberally assist the low.
It appears that the villagers were entirely convinced by
this pious reasoning; for they assembled one Saturday night
and burned an effigy of Tom Paine! This proceeding led to a
tragic consequence, for one of the "common people," known as
Robert, "was overtaken by liquor," and was unable to appear
at Sunday School next day. This fall from grace occasioned
intense remorse in Robert. "It preyed dreadfully upon his
mind for many months," records Martha More, "and despair
seemed at length to take possession of him." Hannah had some
conversation with him, and read him some suitable passages
from "The Rise and Progress". "At length the Almighty was
pleased to shine into his heart and give him comfort."
Nor should you imagine that this saintly stupidity was in
any way unique in the Anglican establishment. We read in the
letters of Shelley how his father tormented him with
Archdeacon Paley's "Evidences" as a cure for atheism. This
eminent churchman wrote a book, which he himself ranked
first among his writings, called "Reasons for Contentment,
addressed to the Labouring Classes of the British Public."
In this book he not merely proved that religion "smooths all
inequalities, because it unfolds a prospect which makes all
earthly distinctions nothing"; he went so far as to prove
that, quite apart from religion, the British exploiters were
less fortunate than those to whom they paid a shilling a
day.
Some of the conditions which poverty (if the condition of
the labouring part of mankind must be so called) imposes,
are not hardships, but pleasures. Frugality itself is a
pleasure. It is an exercise of attention and contrivance,
which, whenever it is successful, produces satisfaction....
This is lost among abundance.
And there was William Wilberforce, as sincere a philanthropist as
Anglicanism ever produced, an ardent supporter of Bible societies and
foreign missions, a champion of the anti-slavery movement, and also of
the ruthless "Combination Laws," which denied to British wage-slaves
all chance of bettering their lot. Wilberforce published a "Practical
View of the System of Christianity", in which he told unblushingly
what the Anglican establishment is for. In a chapter which he
described as "the basis of all politics," he explained that the
purpose of religion is to remind the poor
That their more lowly path has been allotted to them by the
hand of God; that it is their part faithfully to discharge
its duties, and contentedly to bear its inconveniences; that
the objects about which worldly men conflict so eagerly are
not worth the contest; that the peace of mind, which
Religion offers indiscriminately to all ranks, affords more
true satisfaction than all the expensive pleasures which are
beyond the poor man's reach; that in this view the poor have
the advantage; that if their superiors enjoy more abundant
comforts, they are also exposed to many temptations from
which the inferior classes are happily exempted; that,
"having food and raiment, they should be therewith content,"
since their situation in life, with all its evils, is better
than they have deserved at the hand of God; and finally,
that all human distinctions will soon be done away, and the
true followers of Christ will all, as children of the same
Father, be alike admitted to the possession of the same
heavenly inheritance. Such are the blessed effects of
Christianity on the temporal well-being of political
communities.
THE COURT CIRCULAR
The Anglican system of submission has been transplanted intact to the
soil of America. When King George the Third lost the sovereignty of
the colonies, the bishops of his divinely inspired church lost the
control of the clergy across the seas; but this revolution was purely
one of Church politics--in doctrine and ritual the "Protestant
Episcopal Church of America" remained in every way Anglican. The
little children of our free republic are taught the same
slave-catechism, "to order myself lowly and reverently to all my
betters." The only difference is that instead of being told "to honour
and obey the King," they are told "to honour and obey the civil
authority."
It is the Church of Good Society in England, and it is the same in
Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, Charleston.
Just as our ruling classes have provided themselves with imitation
English schools and imitation English manners and imitation English
clothes--so in their Heaven they have provided an imitation English
monarch. I wonder how many Americans realize the treason to democracy
they are committing when they allow their children to be taught a
symbolism and liturgy based upon absolutist ideas. I take up the
hymn-book--not the English, but the sturdy, independent, democratic
American hymn-book. I have not opened it for twenty years, yet the
greater part of its contents is as familiar to me as the syllables of
my own name. I read:
Holy, holy, holy! All the saints adore Thee,
Casting down their golden crowns around the glassy sea;
Cherubim and seraphim bowing down before Thee,
Which wert, and art, and ever more shall be!
One might quote a hundred other hymns made thus out of royal imagery.
I turn at random to the part headed "General," and find that there is
hardly one hymn in which there is not "king," "throne," or some image
of homage and flattery. The first hymn begins--
Ancient of days, Who sittest, throned in glory;
To Thee all knees are bent, all voices pray.
And the second--
Christ, whose glory fills the skies--
And the third--
Lord of all being, throned afar,
Thy glory flames from sun and star.
There is a court in Heaven above, to which all good Britons look up,
and about which they read with exactly the same thrills as they read
the Court Circular. The two courts have the same ethical code and the
same manners; their Sovereigns are jealous, greedy of attention,
self-conscious and profoundly serious, punctilious and precise; their
existence consisting of an endless round of ceremonies, and they being
incapable of boredom. No member of the Royal Family can escape this
regime even if he wishes; and no more can any member of the Holy
Family--not even the meek and lowly Jesus, who chose a carpenter's
wife for his mother, and showed all his earthly days a preference for
low society.
This unconventional Son lived obscurely; he never carried weapons, he
could not bear to have so much as a human ear cut off in his presence.
But see how he figures in the Court Circular:
The Son of God goes forth to war,
A kingly crown to gain:
His blood-red banner streams afar:
Who follows in His train?
This carpenter's son was one of the most unpretentious men on earth;
utterly simple and honest--he would not even let anyone praise him.
When some one called him "good Master," he answered, quickly, "Why
callest thou me good? There is none good save one, that is, God." But
this simplicity has been taken with deprecation by his church, which
persists in heaping compliments upon him in conventional, courtly
style:
The company of angels
Are praising Thee on high;
And mortal men, and all things
Created, make reply:
All Glory, laud and honour,
To Thee, Redeemer, King....
The impression a modern man gets from all this is the unutterable
boredom that Heaven must be. Can one imagine a more painful occupation
than that of the saints--casting down their golden crowns around the
glassy sea--unless it be that of the Triumvirate itself, compelled to
sit through eternity watching these saints, and listening to their
mawkish and superfluous compliments!
But one can understand that such things are necessary in a monarchy;
they are necessary if you are going to have Good Society, and a Good
Society church. For Good Society is precisely the same thing as
Heaven; that is, a place to which only a few can get admission, and
those few are bored. They spend their time going through costly
formalities--not because they enjoy it, but because of its effect upon
the populace, which reads about them and sees their pictures in the
papers, and now and then is allowed to catch a glimpse of their
physical Presences, as at the horse-show, or the opera, or the
coaching-parade.
#Horn-blowing#
I know the Church of Good Society in America, having studied it from
the inside. I was an extraordinarily devout little boy; one of my
earliest recollections--I cannot have been more than four years of
age--is of carrying a dust-brush about the house as the choir-boy
carried the golden cross every Sunday morning. I remember asking if I
might say the "Lord's prayer" in this fascinating play; and my
mother's reply: "If you say it reverently." When I was thirteen, I
attended service, of my own volition and out of my own enthusiasm,
every single day during the forty days of Lent; at the age of fifteen
I was teaching Sunday-school. It was the Church of the Holy Communion,
at Sixth Avenue and Twentieth Street, New York; and those who know the
city will understand that this is a peculiar location--precisely half
way between the homes of some of the oldest and most august of the
city's aristocracy, and some of the vilest and most filthy of the
city's slums. The aristocracy were paying for the church, and occupied
the best pews; they came, perfectly clad, aus dem Ei gegossen, as the
Germans say, with the manner they so carefully cultivate, gracious,
yet infinitely aloof. The service was made for them--as all the rest
of the world is made for them; the populace was permitted to occupy a
fringe of vacant seats.
The assistant clergyman was an Englishman, and a gentleman; orthodox,
yet the warmest man's heart I have ever known. He could not bear to
have the church remain entirely the church of the rich; he would go
persistently into the homes of the poor, visiting the old slum women
in their pitifully neat little kitchens, and luring their children
with entertainments and Christmas candy. They were corralled into the
Sunday-school, where it was my duty to give them what they needed for
the health of their souls.
I taught them out of a book of lessons; and one Sunday it would be
Moses in the Bulrushes, and next Sunday it would be Jonah and the
Whale, and next Sunday it would be Joshua blowing down the walls of
Jericho. These stories were reasonably entertaining, but they seemed
to me futile, not to the point. There were little morals tagged to
them, but these lacked relationship to the lives of little slum-boys.
Be good and you will be happy, love the Lord and all will be well with
you; which was about as true and as practical as the procedure of the
Fijians, blowing horns to drive away a pestilence.
I had a mind, you see, and I was using it. I was reading the papers,
and watching politics and business. I followed the fates of my little
slum-boys--and what I saw was that Tammany Hall was getting them. The
liquor-dealers and the brothel-keepers, the panders and the pimps, the
crap-shooters and the petty thieves--all these were paying the
policeman and the politician for a chance to prey upon my boys; and
when the boys got into trouble, as they were continually doing, it was
the clergyman who consoled them in prison--but it was the Tammany
leader who saw the judge and got them out. So these boys got their
lesson, even earlier in life than I got mine--that the church was a
kind of amiable fake, a pious horn-blowing; while the real thing was
Tammany.
I talked about this with the vestrymen and the ladies of Good Society;
they were deeply pained, but I noticed that they did nothing practical
about it; and gradually, as I went on to investigate, I discovered the
reason--that their incomes came from real estate, traction, gas and
other interests, which were contributing the main part of the campaign
expenses of the corrupt Tammany machine, and of its equally corrupt
rival. So it appeared that these immaculate ladies and gentlemen, aus
dem Ei gegossen, were themselves engaged, unconsciously, perhaps, but
none the less effectively, in spreading the pestilence against which
they were blowing their religious horns!
So little by little I saw my beautiful church for what it was and is:
a great capitalist interest, an integral and essential part of a
gigantic predatory system. I saw that its ethical and cultural and
artistic features, however sincerely they might be meant by individual
clergymen, were nothing but a bait, a device to lure the poor into
the trap of submission to their exploiters. And as I went on probing
into the secret life of the great Metropolis of Mammon, and laying
bare its infamies to the world, I saw the attitude of the church to
such work; I met, not sympathy and understanding, but sneers and
denunciation--until the venerable institution which had once seemed
dignified and noble became to me as a sepulchre of corruption.
#Trinity Corporation#
There stands on the corner of Broadway and Wall Street a towering
brown-stone edifice, one of the most beautiful and most famous
churches in America. As a child I have walked through its church yard
and read the quaint and touching inscriptions on its grave-stones;
when I was a little older, and knew Wall Street, it seemed to me a
sublime thing that here in the very heart of the world's infamy there
should be raised, like a finger of warning, this symbol of Eternity
and Judgment. Its great bell rang at noon-time, and all the traders
and their wage-slaves had to listen, whether they would or no! Such
was Old Trinity to my young soul; and what is it in reality?
The story was told some ten years ago by Charles Edward Russell.
Trinity Corporation is the name of the concern, and it is one of the
great landlords of New York. In the early days it bought a number of
farms, and these it has held, as the city has grown up around them,
until in 1908 their value was estimated at anywhere from forty to a
hundred million dollars. The true amount has never been made public;
to quote Russell's words:
The real owners of the property are the communicants of the
church. For 94 years none of the owners has known the extent
of the property, nor the amount of the revenue therefrom,
nor what is done with the money. Every attempt to learn even
the simplest fact about these matters has been baffled. The
management is a self perpetuating body, without
responsibility and without supervision.
And the writer goes on to describe the business policy of this great
corporation, which is simply the English land system complete. It
refuses to sell the land, but rents it for long periods, and the
tenant builds the house, and then when the lease expires, the
Corporation takes over the house for a nominal sum. Thus it has
purchased houses for as low as $200, and made them into tenements, and
rented them to the swarming poor for a total of fifty dollars a month.
The houses were not built for tenements, they have no conveniences,
they are not fit for the habitation of animals.
The article, in Everybody's Magazine for July, 1908, gives pictures of
them, which are horrible beyond belief. To quote the writer again:
Decay, neglect and squalor seem to brood wherever Trinity is
an owner. Gladly would I give to such a charitable and
benevolent institution all possible credit for a spirit of
improvement manifested anywhere, but I can find no such
manifestation. I have tramped the Eighth Ward day after day
with a list of Trinity properties in my hand, and of all the
tenement houses that stand there on Trinity land, I have not
found one that is not a disgrace to civilization and to the
City of New York.