I.--Moved on.
Ginx's Baby's brothers and sisters would have nothing to say to him.
Mrs. Ginx declared she could see in him no likeness to her own dear lost
one; and her husband swore that the brat never was his. The couple had
latterly been pinching themselves and their children to save enough
to emigrate. For this purpose aid and counsel were given to them by a
neighboring curate, whose name, were my pages destined to immortality,
should be printed here in golden letters. Rich and full will be his
sheaves when many a statesman reaps tares. Finding that a thirteenth
child was imposed on them by so superior a force as the law of England
the Ginxes hastened their departure.
Their last night in London, towards the small hours, Ginx, carrying our
hero, went along Birdcage Walk. He scarcely knew where he was going, or
how he was about to dispose of his burden, but he meant to get rid of
it. On he went, here and there met by shadowy creatures who came towards
his footsteps in the uncertain darkness, and when they could see that he
was no quarry for them flitted away again into the night.
He passed the dingy houses, since replaced by the Foreign Office, across
the open space before the Horse Guards, near the house of a popular
Prime Minister, and up the broad steps till he stood under the York
Column. The shadow of this was an inviting place, but a policeman
turning his lantern suspiciously on the man walking about at that silent
hour with a child in his arms frustrated his wish. Slowly Ginx tramped
along Pall Mall, with only one other creature stirring, as it seemed
for the moment--a gentleman who turned up the steps of a large building.
Seating the child on the bottom step and telling him not to cry, Ginx
instantly crossed the road, turned into St. James's Square, passed by
the rails, and stealing from corner to corner through the mazes of
that locality, reached home by way of Piccadilly and Grosvenor Place.
Henceforth this history shall know him no more.
II.-Club Ideas.
Scarcely had the shadow of his parent vanished in the gloom before
Ginx's Baby piped forth a lusty protest: the street rang again. Ere long
the doors at the top of the steps swung back, and a portly form stood in
the light.
“Halloo! what's the matter?” (This was a general observation into
space.) “Why, bless my heart, here's a child crying on the steps!”
Another form appeared.
“Is there nobody with it? Halloo! any one there?”
No answer came save from poor little Ginx, but his was decided. The two
servants descended the steps and looked at the miserable boy without
touching him. Then they peered into the darkness in hope that they might
get a glimpse of his mother or a policeman. A rapid step sounded on the
pavement and a gentleman came up to the group.
“What have we here?” he said gently.
“It's a child, Sir Charles, I found crying on the steps. I expect it's
a trick to get rid of him. We are looking for a policeman to take him
away.”
“Poor little fellow,” said Sir Charles, stooping to take a fair look
at Ginx's Baby, “for you and such as you the policeman or the parish
officers are the national guardians, and the prison or the poor-house
the home..... Bring him into the Club, Smirke.”
The men hesitated a moment before executing so unwonted a demand,
but Sir Charles Sterling was a man not safely to be thwarted--a late
minister and a member of the committee. The child being carried into the
magnificent hall of the Club, stood on its mosaic floor. From above the
radiance of the gas “sunlight” streamed down over the marble pillars,
and glanced on gilded cornices and panels of scagliola. A statue of the
Queen looked upon him from the niche that opened to the dining-room;
another of the great Puritan soldier, statesman, and ruler, with
his stern massive front; and yet another, with the strong yet gentle
features of the champion Free-Trader, seemed to regard him from their
several corners. On the walls around were portraits of men who had
striven for the deliverance of the people from ancient yokes and
fetters. Of course Ginx's Baby did not see all this. He, poor boy,
dazed, stood with a knuckle in his eye, while the porter, lackeys,
Sir Charles Sterling, and others who strolled out of the reading-room,
curiously regarded him. But any one observing the scene apart might have
contrasted the place with the child--the principles and the professions
whereof this grandeur was the monument and consecrated tabernacle, with
this solitary atomic specimen of the material whereon they were to work.
What social utility had resulted from the great movements initiated by
them who erected and frequented this place? Ought they to have had, and
did they still need a complement? While wonderful political changes had
been wrought, and benefits not to be exaggerated won for many classes,
WHAT HAD BEEN DONE FOR GINX'S BABY?
The query would not have been very ridiculous. He was an unit of the
British Empire--nothing could blot out that fact before heaven! Had
anything been left undone that ought to have been done, or done that had
well been left undone, or were better to be undone now? Of a truth that
was worth a thought.
“What's all this?” said a big Member of Parliament, a minister renowned
for economy in matters financial and intellectual. “What are you doing
with this youngster? I never saw such an irregularity in a Club in my
life.”
“If you saw it oftener you would think more about it,” said Sir Charles
Sterling. “We found him on the steps. I think he was asking for you,
Glibton.”
This sally turned a laugh against the minister.
“Well,” said another, “he has come to the wrong quarter if he wants
money.”
“I shouldn't wonder,” said a third, “if he were one of the new
messengers at the Office of Popular Edifices. Glibton is reducing their
staff.”
“If that's the case I think you have reached the minimum here, Glibton,”
cried Sir Charles.
“Can't the country afford a livery?”
“Bother you all,” replied the Secretary, who was secretly pleased to be
quizzed for his peculiarities--“tell us what this means. Whose 'lark' is
it?”
“No lark at all,” said Sterling. “Here is a problem for you and all
of us to solve. This forlorn object is representative, and stands here
to-night preaching us a serious sermon. He was deserted on the Club
steps--left there, perhaps, as a piece of clever irony; he might be son
to some of us. What's your name, my boy?”
Ginx's Baby managed to say “Dunno!”
“Ask him if he has any name?” said an Irish ex-member, with a grave
face.
Ginx's Baby to this question responded distinctly “No.”
“No name,” said the humorist; “then the author of his being must be
Wilkie Collins.”
Everybody laughed at this indifferent pleasantry but our hero. His bosom
began to heave ominously.
“What's to be done with him?”
“Send him to the workhouse.”
“Send him to the d----” (there may be brutality among the gods and
goddesses).
“Give him to the porter.”
“No thank you, sir,” said he, promptly.
The gentlemen were turning away, when Sir Charles stopped them.
“Look here!” he said, taking the boy's arm and baring it, “this boy can
hardly be called a human being. See what a thin arm he has--how flaccid
and colorless the flesh seems--what an old face!--and I can scarcely
feel any pulse. Good heavens, get him some wine! A few hours will send
him to the d---- sure enough.... What are we to do for him, Glibton? I
say again, he is only part of a great problem. There must be hundreds
of thousands growing up like this child; and what a generation to
contemplate in all its relations and effects!”
The gentlemen were dashed by his earnestness.
“Oh, you're exaggerating,” said Glibton; “there can't be such widespread
misery. Why, if there were, the people would be wrecking our houses.”
“Ah!” replied the other, sadly, “will you wait to be convinced by that
sort of thing before you believe in their misery? I assure you what
I say is true. I could bring you a hundred clergymen to testify to it
to-morrow morning.”
“God forbid!” said Glibton. “Good-night.”
The right honorable gentleman extinguished the subject in his own little
brain with his big hat; but everywhere else the sparks are still aglow,
and he, with all like him, may wake up suddenly, as frightened women in
the night; to find themselves environed in the red glare of a popular
conflagration. Well for them then if they are not in charge of the
State machinery. What an hour will that be for hurrying to and fro
with water-pipes and buckets, when proper forethought, diligence, and
sacrifice would have made the building fireproof.
III.--A thorough-paced Reformer--if not a Revolutionary.
By the kindness and influence of Sir Charles Sterling, Ginx's Baby that
night, and long after, found shelter in the Radical Club. He gave
rise to a discussion in the smoking-room next evening that ought to be
chronicled. Several members of the committee supported his benefactor
in urging that the child should be adopted by the Club, as a pledge
of their resolve to make the questions of which he seemed to be the
embodied emblem subjects of legislative action. Others said that those
questions being, in their view, social and not political, were
not proper ones to give impulse to a party movement, and that
the entertainment in the Club of this foundling would be a gross
irregularity: they did not want samples of the material respecting
which they were theorizing. To some of the latter Sir Charles had been
insisting that, whether they kept the child or not, they could not
stifle the questions excited by his condition.
“You may delay, but you cannot dissipate them. We are filling up our
sessions with party struggles, theoretic discussions, squabbles about
foreign politics, debates on political machinery, while year by year the
condition of the people is becoming more invidious and full of peril.
Social and political reform ought to be linked; the people on whom
you confer new political rights cannot enjoy them without health and
well-being.”
“But all our legislation is directed to that!” exclaimed Mr. Joshua
Hale. “Reform, Free Trade, Free Corn--have these not enhanced the wealth
of the people?”
“Partially; yet there are classes unregenerated by their reviving
influences. Free trade cannot insure work, nor can free corn provide
food for every citizen.”
“Nor any other legislation: let us be practical. I own there is much to
be done. I have often stated my 'platform.' We must clip the enormous
expenditure on soldiers and ships; reduce our overweening army of
diplomatic spies and busybodies; abstain from meddling in everybody's
quarrels; redeem from taxation the workman's necessaries--a free
breakfast-table; peremptorily legislate against the custom of
primogeniture; encourage the distribution and transfer of land; and,
under the aegis of the ballot, protect from the tyranny of the landlord
and employer their tenants and workmen.”
“Very good, perhaps, all of them,” replied Sir Charles, “but some not at
the moment possible, and all together are not exhaustive. Why do you
not go to the bottom of social needs? You say nothing about Health
legislation--are you indifferent to the sanitary condition of the
people? You have not hinted at Education--Waste Lands--Emigration--”
“Oh! I am opposed to that altogether.”
“I forgot, you are a manufacturer; yet the last man of whom I should
believe that selfishness had warped the judgment. You have done and
endured more than any living statesman for the advantage of your
fellow-citizens, so that I will not cast at you the aspersion of
class-blindness. Still, I can scarcely think you have looked at this
matter in the pure light of patriotism, and not within the narrow scope
of trade interests.”
“Quite unjust. Our best economists reprehend the policy of depleting our
labor-market. Emigration is a timely remedy for adversity and to be very
sparingly used. Labor is our richest vein--”
“We may have too much of it. Take it as a fact that you now have more
than you can use, and the unemployed part is starving; what will you do
with them?”
“That is a mere temporary and casual depression, to which all classes
are liable.”
“But,” said Sir Charles, “which none can so ill bear. Nay--what if it is
permanent? You look to increased trade. Do you suppose we are to retain
our manufacturing pre-eminence when every country, new and old, is
competing with us? Can our trade, I ask you honestly to consider,
increase at the rate of our population? Besides, for heaven's sake, look
at the thing as a man. Grant that we have a hundred thousand men out of
work, and hundreds of thousands more dependent on them--do you think
it no small thing that the vast mass should be left for one, two, three
years seething in sorrow and distress, while they are waiting for trade!
By the time that comes they may have gone beyond the hope of rescue.
Ah! if an elastic trade comes back to-morrow, you can never make those
people what they were; ought we not to have forecast that they should
not be what they are? But I contend that depression has become chronic,
the poverty more wide-spread and persistent--how then shall we, who
represent these classes among the rest, face the prospect?”
Here interposed a gentleman high in office, a pure, keen, rigid
economist of the highest intellectual and political rank.
“My dear Sterling, pardon me if I say you are talking wildly. Perhaps
you don't see that you are verging on rank communism. The working of
economic laws can be as infallibly projected as a solar eclipse. You can
secure no class from periodic calamity, and so regulate laws of supply
and demand by guiding-wheels of legislation and taxation as to save
every man from penury. You wish us to send away our bone and sinew
because we have no present employment for it, and next year, or the
year after, under a recovered trade you will be wringing your hands and
cursing the folly that prompted you to do it.”
“I should be too glad of the opportunity,” replied Sir Charles,
sturdily, “but in truth there is an incubus of excessive numbers that
no revival of trade will provide for, even if it is beyond our extremest
hopes, and I for one will not be guilty of the inhumanity of keeping
fellow-creatures in misery till we can find a use for them. You have
forgotten that there are other economic laws besides those you glance
at. Several millions of acres of unoccupied land belonging in a sense
to the people of this country are to be kept untilled in defiance of the
plainest policy that nature and God have indicated to us, namely, that
labor should come in contact with land! For want of this conjunction our
colonies are to be checked, while at home miserable millions are gaping
for work and food.”
“Oh! let them take themselves out. There are too many going already.
They will follow natural laws, and where labor is required thither the
stream will flow.”
“Mere surface talk, my clever friend,” replied the other, “the men who
are trooping out at their own expense are our most sober, careful, and
energetic workmen. Else they could not go. They go because here so many
indifferent ones are weighing down their shoulders. And where do most of
them go to? Not to strengthen and develop our colonies, but the United
States--a not always friendly people, and just now your free-trader's
bugbear!”
“Well, well,” said the minister, “drop that question. It's utterly
impracticable at this time. We couldn't entertain the demand for
State-help for an instant. I tell you again you're a Fourierite. You
virtually propose to put your hand in the pocket of the upper classes to
pay all sorts of expenses for the lower.”
“You may call me a communist if you please,” replied Sir Charles
Sterling; “I do not shrink from shadows. Perhaps I am in favor of
something nearer to communism than our present form of society. One
thing I am clear about: no state of society is healthy wherein every
man does not own himself to be the guardian of the interests of the
community as well as his own--does not see that he is bound, morally
and as a matter of public policy, to add to his neighbor's well-being
as well as his own. Does not society, by its protection and aggregation,
make it possible for the rich to grow rich, the genius and the ambitious
man to pursue their aims, the merchant to gather his vails, the noble to
enjoy his lands? For these privileges there is more or less to pay, and
it may be that the proper proportion which the capable classes should
be called upon to contribute to the common weal has never been correctly
adjusted. The first fruit of practical Christianity was community of
goods, and but for human selfishness we might hope for an Eutopian
era--when, while it should be ruled that if a man would not work neither
should he eat, there should also be brought home to every man the care
of his poorer, or weaker, or less competent brother. I never expect
to see that. I do hope to see the men of greatest ability pay more
generously for the privileges they enjoy. The best policy for them
too. The better the condition of the general community the better for
themselves. You cannot alarm me with epithets. But these views are
happily not essential to the support of the Emigration policy.”
“O dear! O dear! mad as a March hare!” cried the minister, as he stumped
from the room.
“Sterling is a good fellow,” said he to a colleague with whom he walked
down Pall Mall, “and a thorough-paced Liberal. Besides, he carries great
weight in the House. But he is an enthusiast, and, therefore, not always
quite practical.”
By PRACTICAL the minister meant, not that which might well and to
advantage be done if good and able men would resolve to do it, spite of
all hindrances, but that which, upon a cunning review of party balances
and a judicious probing of public opinion, seemed to be a policy fit
for his party to pursue. The first, original and masterly statesmen are
needed to initiate and perform--the other is simply the art of a genius
who knows how most adroitly to manipulate people and circumstances.
IV.--Very Broad Views.
Sir Charles Sterling, Mr. Joshua Hale, and others continued the
conversation interrupted by the minister's exit. What was to be done
with Ginx's Baby? In the great dissected map of society what niches were
cut out for him and all like him to fill? Most of the politicians were
for leaving that to himself to find out. The term “law of supply and
demand” was freely bandied between them, as it is in many journals
nowadays, with little object save to shut up avenues of discussion by a
high-sounding phrase.
Then of these “statesmen,” most clung, if not to self-interest, to
personal crotchets. What is more darling to a man than the child of his
intellect or fancy? How the poor poetaster hugs his tawdry verses as if
they were the imperial ornaments of genius! Just in the same way does
the politician love the policies himself hath devised, pressing them
forward at all hazards, while he is blind to the utility of others.
This is the basis of that aspect of selfishness which often mars in the
approbation of a country a really honest statesmanship--an egotistic
tenacity of one's own creature as the best, which yet is not the
criminal selfishness of ambition. Still that egotism is not seldom
disastrous to the people's interests. While these statesmen nursed their
own bantlings and held them up to national notice, they were apt to
avoid or too lightly regard the views of men as able as themselves. For
instance, Joshua Hale--who is far above these remarks generally--had
put forth a scheme for the solution of the St. Helena property
question--very likely a good one, albeit revolutionary, and nothing
would convince him that any other could succeed. He wished every man
in St. Helena--a turbulent adjunct of the British Empire--to be a
landowner, and I do think, neither desired nor hoped that any man in
that island should be happy until he was one. Yet there were other men
ready to offer simpler remedies, and to prove that if every man in St.
Helena became a landowner it would become a very hell upon earth,
and more unmanageable than it was before. If these gentlemen do not
sacrifice their pet fancies for the sake of a settlement, what will
become of St. Helena?
Just now they were discussing Ginx's Baby. One thought that repeal of
the Poor-Laws and a new system of relief would reach his case; another
saw the root of the Baby's sorrow in Trades' Unions; a third propounded
cooperative manufactures; a fourth suggested that a vast source of
income lay untouched in the seas about the kingdom, which swarmed with
porpoises, and showed how certain parts of these animals were available
for food, others for leather, others for a delicious oil that would be
sweeter and more pleasant than butter; a fifth desired a law to repress
the tendency of Scotch peers to evict tenants and convert arable lands
into sheep-walks and deer-forests; a sixth maintained that there were
waste lands in the kingdom of capacity to support hungry millions. In
fact earth, heaven, and seas were to be regenerated by Act of Parliament
for the benefit of Ginx's Baby and the people of England. Sir Charles
listened impatiently, and at last burst forth again.
He said: “When you consider it, what we are all trying to do nowadays
is--vulgarly--to improve the breed; but we go to work in a round-about
way. At the outset we are met by the depreciated state of part of the
existing generation; and one problem is to prevent these depreciated
people from increasing, or to get them to increase healthily. No one
seems to have gone directly to such a problem as that. The difficulties
to be faced are tremendous. Your dirtiest British youngster is hedged
round with principles of an inviolable liberty and rights of Habeas
Corpus. You let his father and mother, or any one who will save you the
trouble of looking after him, mould him in his years of tenderness as
they please. If they happen to leave him a walking invalid, you take him
into the poorhouse; if they bring him up a thief, you whip him and
keep him at high cost at Millbank or Dartmoor; if his passions, never
controlled, break out into murder and rape, you may hang him, unless his
crime has been so atrocious as to attract the benevolent interest of
the Home Secretary; if he commit suicide, you hold a coroner's inquest,
which also costs money; and however he dies you give him a deal coffin
and bury him. Yet I may prove to you that this being, whom you treat
like a dog at a fair, never had a day's--no, nor an hour's--contact
with goodness, purity, truth, or even human kindness; never had an
opportunity of learning anything better. What right have you then to
hunt him like a wild beast, and kick him and whip him, and fetter him
and hang him by expensive complicated machinery, when you have done
nothing to teach him any of the duties of a citizen?”
“Stop, stop, Sir Charles! you are too virulent. There are endless means
of improving your lad--charities without number----”
“Yes, that will never reach him.”
“Never mind, they may, you know. Industrial schools, reformatories,
asylums, hospitals, Peabody-buildings, poor-laws. Everybody is working
to improve the condition of the poor man. Sanitary administration goes
to his house and makes it habitable.”
“Very,” interjected Sir Charles Sterling, dryly.
“Factory laws protect and educate factory children----”
“They don't educate in one case out of ten. They don't feed them, clothe
them, give them amusement and cultivation, do they?”
“Certainly not--that would be ridiculous.”
“Why, the question is whether that would be ridiculous!” replied Sir
Charles. “I do not say it can be done, but in order to transform the
next generation, what we should aim at is to provide substitutes for
bad homes, evil training, unhealthy air, food and dulness, and terrible
ignorance, in happier scenes, better teaching, proper conditions of
physical life, sane amusements, and a higher cultivation. I dare say you
would think me a lunatic if I proposed that Government should establish
music-halls and gymnasia all over the country; but you, Mr. Fissure,
voted for the Baths and Washhouses.”
“Who's to pay for all this?” asked Mr. Fissure, pertinently.
“The State, which means society, the whole of which is directly
interested. I tell you a million of children are crying to us to set
them free from the despotism of a crime and ignorance protected by law.”
“That is striking; but you are treading on delicate ground. The liberty
of the subject----”
“Exactly what I expected you to say. These words can be used in defence
of almost any injustice and tyranny. Such terms as 'political economy,'
'communism,' 'socialism,' are bandied about in the same way. Yet
propositions coming fairly within these terms are often mentioned with
approval by the very persons who cast them at you. In a report of a
recent Royal Commission I find that one of the Commissioners is quite
as revolutionary as I am. He says it is right by law to secure that no
child shall be cruelly treated or mentally neglected, over-worked or
under-educated. Some people would call that communism, I fancy. But
I think him to be correct as a political economist in that broad
proposition. Why? Because a child's relation to the State is wider, more
permanent, and more important than his relation to his parents. If he
is in danger of being depreciated and damned for good citizenship, the
State must rescue him.”
“A paternal and maternal government together!” cries Lord Namby--“a
government of nurses. You know I should like to stop the production of
children among the lower orders. Your propositions are far in advance
of my radicalism. The State must sometimes interfere between parent and
child; for instance, in education or protection from cruelty. But, if
I understand you, you actually contemplate a general refining and
elevation of the working class by legislative means.”
“Assuredly: I should aim to cultivate their morals, refine their tastes,
manners, habits. I wish to lift from them that ever-depressing sense of
hopelessness which keeps them in the dust.”
“So do most men; but you must do that by personal and private
influences, not by State enactments. How would you do it?”
“How? I think I could draw up a programme. For instance: Expatriate a
million to reduce the competition that keeps poor devils on half-rations
or sends them to the poorhouse; Take all the sick, maimed, old, and
incapable poor into workhouses managed by humane men and not by ghouls;
Forbid such people to marry and propagate weakness; Legislate for
compulsory improvements of workmen's dwellings, and, if needful, lend
the money to execute it; Extend and enforce the health laws; Open free
libraries and places of rational amusement with an imperial bounty
through the country; Instead of spending thousands on dilettanti
sycophants at one end of the metropolis, distribute your art and
amusement to the kingdom at large; The rich have their museums,
libraries, and clubs, provide them for the poor; Establish temporary
homes for lying-in women; Multiply your baths and washhouses till there
is no excuse for a dirty person; Educate; Provide day schools for every
proper child, and industrial or reformatory schools for every improper
one; Open advanced High Schools for the best pupils, and found
Scholarships to the Universities; Erect other schools for technical
training; Offer to teach trades and agriculture to all comers for
nothing--you would soon neutralize your bugbear of trades-unionism;
Teach morals, teach science, teach art, teach them to amuse themselves
like men and not like brutes. In a land so wealthy the programme is not
impracticable, though severe. As the end to be attained is the welfare
of future generations, no good reason could be urged why they should not
contribute towards the cost of it--a better debt to leave to posterity
than the incubus of an irrational war.”
Will any sane political practitioner wonder to be told that at the end
of this harangue the smoking-room party broke up, and that some, as they
laughed good-humoredly over Sterling's egregia, recalled the number of
glasses of inspirited seltzer swallowed by the orator? He was so far
in advance of the most radical reformer that there was no hope of
overtaking him for an era or two: so they determined to fancy they had
left him behind.
V.--Party Tactics--and Political Obstructions to Social Reform.
In the Club our hero revelled awhile under the protection of Sir Charles
Sterling, and the petting of peers, Members of Parliament, and loungers
who swarm therein. Certain gentlemen of Stock Exchange mannerism and
dressiness gave the protege the go-by, and even sneered at those who
noticed him with kindness. But then these are of the men with whom every
question is checked by money, and is balanced on the pivot of profit and
loss. I dare say some of them thought the worse of Judas only because
he had made so small a gain out of his celebrated transaction. To foster
Ginx's Baby in the Club, as a recognition of the important questions
surrounding him, though these questions involved hundreds of thousands
of other cases, was to them ridiculous. Of far greater consequence was
it in their eyes to settle a dispute between two extravagant fools
at Constantinople and Cairo, and quicken the sluggishness of Turkish
consols or Egyptian 9 per cents. I do not cast stones at them; every man
must look at a thing with his own eyes.
But it was curious to note how the Baby's fortunes shifted in the Club.
There were times--when he was a pet chucked under chin by the elder
stagers, favored with a smile from a Cabinet Minister, and now and then
blessed with a nod from Mr. Joshua Hale. Then, again, every one seemed
to forget him, and he was for months left unnoticed to the chance
kindness of the menials until some case similar to his own happening to
evoke discussion in the press, there would be a general inquiry for
him. The porter, Mr. Smirke, had succeeded, by means of a detective,
in discovering the boy's name, but his parents were then half-way to
Canada.
The members of the Fogey Club opposite, hearing that so interesting a
foundling was being cherished by their opponents, politely asked leave
to examine him, and he occasionally visited them. They treated him
kindly and discussed his condition with earnestness. The leaders of the
party debated whether he might not with advantage be taken out of their
opponents' hands. Some thought that a judicious use of him might win
popularity; but others objected that it would be perilous for them to
mix themselves up with so doleful an interest. In the result the Fogies
tipped young Ginx, but did not commit themselves for or against him.
Thus a long time elapsed, and our hero had grown old enough to be a
page. He had received food, clothing, and goodwill, but no one had
thought of giving him an education. Sometimes he became obstreperous. He
played tricks with the Club cutlery, and diverted its silver to improper
uses; he laid traps for upsetting aged and infirm legislators; he tried
the coolness of the youngest and best-natured Members of Parliament
by popping up in strange places and exhibiting unseemly attitudes. At
length, by unanimous consent, he was decreed to be a nuisance, and a few
days would have revoked his license at the Club.
No sooner did the Fogies get wind of this than they manoeuvred to get
Ginx's Baby under their own management. They instructed their “organs,”
as they called them, to pipe to popular feeling on the disgraceful
apathy of the Radicals in regard to the foundling. They had him waylaid
and treated to confectionery by their emissaries; and once or twice
succeeded in abducting him and sending him down to the country with
their party's candidates, for exhibition at elections.
The Radicals resented this conduct extremely. Ginx's Baby was brought
back to the Club and restored to favor. The Government papers were
instructed to detail how much he was petted and talked about by the
party; to declare how needless was the popular excitement on his behalf;
and to prove that he must, without any special legislation, be benefited
by the extraordinary organic changes then being made in the constitution
of the country.
Sir Charles Sterling resumed his interest in the boy. He had been
gallantly aiding his party in other questions. There was the Timbuctoo
question. A miserable desert chief had shut up a wandering Englishman,
not possessed of wit enough to keep his head out of danger. There was
a general impression that English honor was at stake, and the previous
Fogey Government had ordered an expedition to cross the desert and
punish the sheikh. You would never believe what it cost if you had
not seen the bill. Ten millions sterling was as good as buried in the
desert, when one-tenth of it would have saved a hundred thousand people
from starvation at home, and one-hundredth part of it would have taken
the fetters off the hapless prisoner's feet.
There was the St. Helena question always brooding over Parliament.
St. Helena was a constituent part of the British Empire. Every patriot
agreed that the Empire without it would be incomplete; and was so far
right that its subtraction would have left the Empire by so much less.
Most of its inhabitants were aboriginal--a mercurial race, full of fire,
quick-witted, and gifted with the exuberant eloquence of savages, but
deficient in dignity and self-control. Before any one else had been
given them by Providence to fight, they slaughtered and ravaged one
another. Our intrusive British ancestors stepped upon the island, and,
being strong men, mowed down the islanders like wheat, and appropriated
the lands their swords had cleared. Still the aborigines held out
in corners, and defied the conquerors. The latter ground them down,
confiscated the property of their half-dozen chiefs, and distributed it
among themselves. By way of showing their imperial imperiousness, they
built over some ruins left by their devastations a great church, in
which they ordered all the islanders to worship. This was at first
abomination to the islanders, who fought like devils whenever they
could, and ended by accepting the religion of their foes. But the
conquerors, afterwards choosing to change their own faith, resolved
that the islanders should do so too. Forthwith they confiscated the big
church and burying-ground, and, distributing part of the land and spoils
among their most prominent scamps, erected a new edifice of quite a
different character, in which the natives swore they could neither see
nor hear, and their own clerics warned them they would certainly be
damned. To make the complications more intricate, these clerics owed
allegiance to an ancient woman in a distant country, who had all the
meddlesomeness and petty jealousy of her sex, and was, besides, much
attached to some clever wooers of hers, wily sinners who covered their
aims under the semblance of ultra-extreme passion for her. The prominent
scamps died, to be succeeded by their children, or other of the hated
conquerors, from generation to generation. The islanders went on
increasing and protesting. T hey starved upon the lands, and shot the
landlords when a few gave them the chance, for most lived away in their
own country, and left the property to be administered by agents. The
Home Government had again and again been obliged to assist these people
with soldiers, to provide an armed police, to shoot down mobs, to catch
a ringleader here or there and send him to Fernando Po, or to deprive
whole villages of ordinary civil rights. Then the yam crop failed, and
nearly half the people left the island and crossed the seas, where they
continued to hate and to plot against those whose misfortune it had been
to get a legacy of the island from their fathers. It would be wearisome
to recount the absurdities on both sides: the stupidity or criminal
absence of tact from time to time shown by the Home Government--the
resolve never to be quiet exhibited by the natives, under the prompting
of their clerics. Upon
“--that common stage of novelty--”
there were ever springing up fresh difficulties. Secret clubs were
formed for murder and reprisal. A body called the “Yellows” had bound
themselves by private oaths to keep up the memory of the religious
victories of their predecessors, and to worry the clerical party in
every possible way. Their pleasure was to go about insanely blowing
rams'-horns, carrying flags and bearing oranges in their hands. The
islanders hated oranges, and at every opportunity cracked the skulls of
the orange-bearers with brutal weapons peculiar to the island. These,
in return, cracked native skulls. The whole island was in a state of
perpetual commotion. Still, its general condition improved, its
farms grew prosperous, and a joint-stock company had built a mill
for converting cocoanut fibre into horse-cloths, which yielded large
profits. The memory of past events might well have been buried; but the
clerics, in the interest of the old woman, fanned the embers, and the
infamous bidding for popularity of parties at home served to keep alive
passions that would naturally have died out. Besides, latterly folly had
been too organized on both sides to suffer oblivion. Everybody was tired
of the squabbles of St. Helena. At length there was a general movement
in the interests of peace, and to pacify the islanders Parliament was
asked to pull down the wings of the old church edifice, remove some of
the graves, and cut off a large piece of the graveyard. Some were
in favor also of dividing all the farms in the country among the
aborigines, but the difficulty was to know how at the same time to
satisfy the present occupiers. These schemes were topics of high debate,
upon them the fortunes of Government rose and fell, and while they were
agitated Ginx's Baby could have no chance of a parliamentary hearing.
Many other matters of singular indifference had eaten up the legislative
time; but at last the increasing number of wretched infants throughout
the country began to alarm the people, and Sir Charles Sterling thought
the time had come to move on behalf of Ginx's Baby and his fellows.
VI.--Amateur Debating in a High Legislative Body.
While Sir Charles was trying to get the Government to “give him a night”
to debate the Ginx's Baby case, and while associations were being formed
in the metropolis for disposing of him by expatriation or otherwise, a
busy peer without notice to anybody, suddenly brought the subject before
the House of Lords. As he had never seen the Baby, and knew nothing or
very little about him, I need scarcely report the elaborate speech in
which he asked for aristocratic sympathy on his behalf. He proposed to
send him to the Antipodes at the expense of the nation.
The Minister for the Accidental Accompaniments of the Empire was a
clever man--keen, genial, subtle, two-edged, a gentlemanly and not
thorough disciple of Machiavel; able to lead parliamentary forlorn
hopes and plant flags on breaches, or to cover retreats with brilliant
skirmishing; deft, but never deep; much moved too by the opinions of his
permanent staff. These on the night in question had plied him well
with hackneyed objections; but to see him get up and relieve himself of
them--the air of originality, the really original air he threw around
them; the absurd light which he turned full on the weaknesses of his
noble friend's propositions, was as beautiful to an indifferent critic
as it as saddening to the man who had at heart the sorrows of his kind.
If that minister lived long he would be forced to adopt and advocate
in as pretty a manner the policy he was dissecting. Lord Munnibagge, a
great authority in economic matters, said that a weaker case had never
been presented to Parliament. To send away Ginx's Baby to a colony
at imperial expense was at once to rob the pockets of the rich and to
decrease our labor-power. There was no necessity for it. Ginx's Baby
could not starve in a country like this. He (Lord Munnibagge) had
never heard of a case of a baby starving. There was no such wide-spread
distress as was represented by the noble lord. There were occasional
periods of stagnation in trade, and no doubt in these periods the poorer
classes would suffer; but trade was elastic; and even if it were granted
that the present was a period when employment had failed, the time was
not far off when trade would recuperate. (Cheers.) Ginx's Baby and all
other babies would not then wish to go away. People were always making
exaggerated statements about the condition of the poor. He (Lord
Munnibagge) did not credit them. He believed the country, though
temporarily depressed by financial collapses, to be in a most healthy
state. (Hear, hear.) It was absurd to say otherwise, when it was shown
by the Board of Trade returns that we were growing richer every day.
(Cheers.) Of course Ginx's Baby must be growing richer with the rest.
Was not that a complete answer to the noble lord's plaintive outcries?
(Cheers and laughter.) That the population of a country was a great
fraction of its wealth was an elementary principle of political economy.
He thought, from the high rates of wages, that there were not too
many but too few laborers in the country. He should oppose the motion.
(Cheers.)
Two or three noble lords repeated similar platitudes, guarding
themselves as carefully from any reference to facts, or to the question
whether high rates of wages might not be the concomitants simply of high
prices of necessaries, or to the yet wider question whether colonial
development might not have something to do with progress at home. The
noble lord who had rushed unprepared into the arena was unequal to the
forces marshalled against him, and withdrew his motion. Thus the great
debate collapsed. The Lords were relieved that an awkward question had
so easily been shifted. The newspapers on the ministerial side declared
that this debate had proved the futility of the Ginx's Baby Expatriation
question. “So able an authority as Lord Munnibagge had established that
there was no necessity for the interference of Government in the case
of Ginx's Baby or any other babies or persons. The lucid and decisive
statement of the Secretary for the Accidental Accompaniments of the
Empire had shown how impossible it was for the Imperial Government to
take part in a great scheme of Expatriation; how impolitic to endeavor
to affect the ordinary laws of free movement to the Colonies.” Surely
after this the Expatriation people hid their lights under a bushel! The
Government refused to find a night for Sir Charles Sterling, and after
the Lords' debate he did not see his way to force a motion in the Lower
House. Meanwhile Ginx's Baby once more decided a turn in his own
fate. Tired of the slow life of the Club, and shivering amid the chill
indifference of his patrons, he borrowed without leave some clothes
from an inmate's room, with a few silver forks and spoons, and decamped.
Whether the baronet and the Club were bashful of public ridicule or glad
to be rid of the charge, I know not, but no attempt was made to recover
him.