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CASSELL’S NATIONAL LIBRARY.
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Friends in Council
First Series
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BY
SIR ARTHUR HELPS.
[Picture: Decorative graphic]
CASSELL & COMPANY, Limited:
_LONDON_, _PARIS & MELBOURNE_.
1891.
INTRODUCTION.
ARTHUR HELPS was born at Streatham on the 10th of July, 1813. He went at
the age of sixteen to Eton, thence to Trinity College, Cambridge. Having
graduated B.A. in 1835, he became private secretary to the Hon. T. Spring
Rice, who was Chancellor of the Exchequer in Lord Melbourne’s Cabinet,
formed in April, 1835. This was his position at the beginning of the
present reign in June, 1837.
In 1839—in which year he graduated M.A.—Arthur Helps was transferred to
the service of Lord Morpeth, who was Irish Secretary in the same
ministry. Lord Melbourne’s Ministry was succeeded by that of Sir Robert
Peel in September, 1841, and Helps then was appointed a Commissioner of
French, Danish, and Spanish Claims. In 1841 he published “Essays Written
in the Intervals of Business.” Their quiet thoughtfulness was in accord
with the spirit that had given value to his services as private secretary
to two ministers of State. In 1844 that little book was followed by
another on “The Claims of Labour,” dealing with the relations of
employers to employed. There was the same scholarly simplicity and grace
of style, the same interest in things worth serious attention. “We say,”
he wrote, towards the close, “that Kings are God’s Vicegerents upon
Earth; but almost every human being has, at one time or other of his
life, a portion of the happiness of those around him in his power, which
might make him tremble, if he did but see it in all its fulness.” To
this book Arthur Helps added an essay “On the Means of Improving the
Health and Increasing the Comfort of the Labouring Classes.”
His next book was this First Series of “Friends in Council,” published in
1847, and followed by other series in later years. There were many other
writings of his, less popular than they would have been if the same
abilities had been controlled by less good taste. His “History of the
Conquest of the New World” in 1848, and of “The Spanish Conquest of
America,” in four volumes, from 1855 to 1861, preceded his obtaining from
his University, in 1864, the honorary degree of D.C.L. In June, 1860,
Arthur Helps was made Clerk of the Privy Council, and held that office of
high trust until his death on the 7th of March, 1875. He had become Sir
Arthur in 1872.
H. M.
CHAPTER I.
NONE but those who, like myself, have once lived in intellectual society,
and then have been deprived of it for years, can appreciate the delight
of finding it again. Not that I have any right to complain, if I were
fated to live as a recluse for ever. I can add little, or nothing, to
the pleasure of any company; I like to listen rather than to talk; and
when anything apposite does occur to me, it is generally the day after
the conversation has taken place. I do not, however, love good talk the
less for these defects of mine; and I console myself with thinking that I
sustain the part of a judicious listener, not always an easy one.
Great, then, was my delight at hearing last year that my old pupil,
Milverton, had taken a house which had long been vacant in our
neighbourhood. To add to my pleasure, his college friend, Ellesmere, the
great lawyer, also an old pupil of mine, came to us frequently in the
course of the autumn. Milverton was at that time writing some essays
which he occasionally read to Ellesmere and myself. The conversations
which then took place I am proud to say that I have chronicled. I think
they must be interesting to the world in general, though of course not so
much so as to me.
Milverton and Ellesmere were my favourite pupils. Many is the heartache
I have had at finding that those boys, with all their abilities, would do
nothing at the University. But it was in vain to urge them. I grieve to
say that neither of them had any ambition of the right kind. Once I
thought I had stimulated Ellesmere to the proper care and exertion; when,
to my astonishment and vexation, going into his rooms about a month
before an examination, I found that, instead of getting up his subjects,
like a reasonable man, he was absolutely endeavouring to invent some new
method for proving something which had been proved before in a hundred
ways. Over this he had wasted two days, and from that moment I saw it
was useless to waste any more of my time and patience in urging a scholar
so indocile for the beaten path.
What tricks he and Milverton used to play me, pretending not to
understand my demonstration of some mathematical problem, inventing all
manner of subtle difficulties, and declaring they could not go on while
these stumbling-blocks lay in their way! But I am getting into college
gossip, which may in no way delight my readers. And I am fancying, too,
that Milverton and Ellesmere are the boys they were to me; but I am now
the child to them. During the years that I have been quietly living
here, they have become versed in the ways of the busy world. And though
they never think of asserting their superiority, I feel it, and am glad
to do so.
My readers would, perhaps, like one to tell them something of the
characters of Ellesmere and Milverton; but it would ill become me to give
that insight into them, which I, their college friend and tutor, imagine
I have obtained. Their friendship I could never understand. It was not
on the surface very warm, and their congeniality seemed to result more
from one or two large common principles of thought than from any peculiar
similarity of taste, or from great affection on either side. Yet I
should wrong their friendship if I were to represent it otherwise than a
most true-hearted one; more so, perhaps, than some of softer texture.
What needs be seen of them individually will be by their words, which I
hope I have in the main retained.
The place where we generally met in fine weather was on the lawn before
Milverton’s house. It was an eminence which commanded a series of
valleys sloping towards the sea. And, as the sea was not more than nine
miles off, it was a matter of frequent speculation with us whether the
landscape was bounded by air or water. In the first valley was a little
town of red brick houses, with poplars coming up amongst them. The ruins
of a castle, and some water which, in olden times, had been the lake in
“the pleasaunce,” were between us and the town. The clang of an anvil,
or the clamour of a horn, or busy wheelwright’s sounds, came faintly up
to us when the wind was south.
I must not delay my readers longer with my gossip, but bring them at once
into the conversation that preceded our first reading.
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_Milverton_. I tell you, Ellesmere, these are the only heights I care to
look down from, the heights of natural scenery.
_Ellesmere_. Pooh! my dear Milverton, it is only because the particular
mounds which the world calls heights, you think you have found out to be
but larger ant-heaps. Whenever you have cared about anything, a man more
fierce and unphilosophical in the pursuit of it I never saw. To
influence men’s minds by writing for them, is that no ambition?
_Milverton_. It may be, but I have it not. Let any kind critic convince
me that what I am now doing is useless, or has been done before, or that,
if I leave it undone, some one else will do it to my mind; and I should
fold up my papers, and watch the turnips grow in that field there, with a
placidity that would, perhaps, seem very spiritless to your now restless
and ambitious nature, Ellesmere.
_Ellesmere_. If something were to happen which will not, then—O
Philosophy, Philosophy, you, too, are a good old nurse, and rattle your
rattles for your little people, as well as old Dame World can do for
hers. But what are we to have to-day for our first reading?
_Milverton_. An Essay on Truth.
_Ellesmere_. Well, had I known this before, it is not the novelty of the
subject which would have dragged me up the hill to your house. By the
way, philosophers ought not to live upon hills. They are much more
accessible, and I think quite as reasonable, when, Diogenes-like, they
live in tubs upon flat ground. Now for the essay.
TRUTH.
Truth is a subject which men will not suffer to grow old. Each age has
to fight with its own falsehoods: each man with his love of saying to
himself and those around him pleasant things and things serviceable for
to-day, rather than the things which are. Yet a child appreciates at
once the divine necessity for truth; never asks, “What harm is there in
saying the thing that is not?” and an old man finds, in his growing
experience, wider and wider applications of the great doctrine and
discipline of truth.
Truth needs the wisdom of the serpent as well as the simplicity of the
dove. He has gone but a little way in this matter who supposes that it
is an easy thing for a man to speak the truth, “the thing he troweth;”
and that it is a casual function, which may be fulfilled at once after
any lapse of exercise. But, in the first place, the man who would speak
truth must know what he troweth. To do that, he must have an uncorrupted
judgment. By this is not meant a perfect judgment or even a wise one,
but one which, however it may be biassed, is not bought—is still a
judgment. But some people’s judgments are so entirely gained over by
vanity, selfishness, passion, or inflated prejudices and fancies long
indulged in; or they have the habit of looking at everything so
carelessly, that they see nothing truly. They cannot interpret the world
of reality. And this is the saddest form of lying, “the lie that sinketh
in,” as Bacon says, which becomes part of the character and goes on
eating the rest away.
Again, to speak truth, a man must not only have that martial courage
which goes out, with sound of drum and trumpet, to do and suffer great
things; but that domestic courage which compels him to utter small
sounding truths in spite of present inconvenience and outraged
sensitiveness or sensibility. Then he must not be in any respect a slave
to self-interest. Often it seems as if but a little misrepresentation
would gain a great good for us; or, perhaps, we have only to conceal some
trifling thing, which, if told, might hinder unreasonably, as we think, a
profitable bargain. The true man takes care to tell, notwithstanding.
When we think that truth interferes at one time or another with all a
man’s likings, hatings, and wishes, we must admit, I think, that it is
the most comprehensive and varied form of self-denial.
Then, in addition to these great qualities, truth-telling in its highest
sense requires a well-balanced mind. For instance, much exaggeration,
perhaps the most, is occasioned by an impatient and easily moved
temperament which longs to convey its own vivid impressions to other
minds, and seeks by amplifying to gain the full measure of their
sympathy. But a true man does not think what his hearers are feeling,
but what he is saying.
More stress might be laid than has been on the intellectual requisites
for truth, which are probably the best part of intellectual cultivation;
and as much caused by truth as causing it. {12} But, putting the
requisites for truth at the fewest, see of how large a portion of the
character truth is the resultant. If you were to make a list of those
persons accounted the religious men of their respective ages, you would
have a ludicrous combination of characters essentially dissimilar. But
true people are kindred. Mention the eminently true men, and you will
find that they are a brotherhood. There is a family likeness throughout
them.
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If we consider the occasions of exercising truthfulness and descend to
particulars, we may divide the matter into the following heads:—truth to
oneself—truth to mankind in general—truth in social relations—truth in
business—truth in pleasure.
1. Truth to oneself. All men have a deep interest that each man should
tell himself the truth. Not only will he become a better man, but he
will understand them better. If men knew themselves, they could not be
intolerant to others.
It is scarcely necessary to say much about the advantage of a man knowing
himself for himself. To get at the truth of any history is good; but a
man’s own history—when he reads that truly, and, without a mean and
over-solicitous introspection, knows what he is about and what he has
been about, it is a Bible to him. “And David said unto Nathan, I have
sinned before the Lord.” David knew the truth about himself. But truth
to oneself is not merely truth about oneself. It consists in maintaining
an openness and justness of soul which brings a man into relation with
all truth. For this, all the senses, if you might so call them, of the
soul must be uninjured—that is, the affections and the perceptions must
be just. For a man to speak the truth to himself comprehends all
goodness; and for us mortals can only be an aim.
2. Truth to mankind in general. This is a matter which, as I read it,
concerns only the higher natures. Suffice it to say, that the
withholding large truths from the world may be a betrayal of the greatest
trust.
3. Truth in social relations. Under this head come the practices of
making speech vary according to the person spoken to; of pretending to
agree with the world when you do not; of not acting according to what is
your deliberate and well-advised opinion because some mischief may be
made of it by persons whose judgment in this matter you do not respect;
of maintaining a wrong course for the sake of consistency; of encouraging
the show of intimacy with those whom you never can be intimate with; and
many things of the same kind. These practices have elements of charity
and prudence as well as fear and meanness in them. Let those parts which
correspond to fear and meanness be put aside. Charity and prudence are
not parasitical plants which require boles of falsehood to climb up upon.
It is often extremely difficult in the mixed things of this world to act
truly and kindly too; but therein lies one of the great trials of man,
that his sincerity should have kindness in it, and his kindness truth.
4. Truth in business. The more truth you can get into any business, the
better. Let the other side know the defects of yours, let them know how
you are to be satisfied, let there be as little to be found as possible
(I should say nothing), and if your business be an honest one, it will be
best tended in this way. The talking, bargaining, and delaying that
would thus be needless, the little that would then have to be done over
again, the anxiety that would be put aside, would even in a worldly way
be “great gain.” It is not, perhaps, too much to say, that the third
part of men’s lives is wasted by the effect, direct or indirect, of
falsehoods.
Still, let us not be swift to imagine that lies are never of any service.
A recent Prime Minister said, that he did not know about truth always
prevailing and the like; but lies had been very successful against his
government. And this was true enough. Every lie has its day. There is
no preternatural inefficacy in it by reason of its falseness. And this
is especially the case with those vague injurious reports which are no
man’s lies, but all men’s carelessness. But even as regards special and
unmistakable falsehood, we must admit that it has its success. A
complete being might deceive with wonderful effect; however, as nature is
always against a liar, it is great odds in the case of ordinary mortals.
Wolsey talks of
“Negligence
Fit for a fool to fall by,”
when he gives Henry the wrong packet; but the Cardinal was quite
mistaken. That kind of negligence was just the thing of which far-seeing
and thoughtful men are capable; and which, if there were no higher
motive, should induce them to rely on truth alone. A very close vulpine
nature, all eyes, all ears, may succeed better in deceit. But it is a
sleepless business. Yet, strange to say, it is had recourse to in the
most spendthrift fashion, as the first and easiest thing that comes to
hand.
In connection with truth in business, it may be observed that if you are
a truthful man, you should be watchful over those whom you employ; for
your subordinate agents are often fond of lying for your interests, as
they think. Show them at once that you do not think with them, and that
you will disconcert any of their inventions by breaking in with the
truth. If you suffer the fear of seeming unkind to prevent your
thrusting well-meant inventions aside, you may get as much pledged to
falsehoods as if you had coined and uttered them yourself.
5. Truth in pleasure. Men have been said to be sincere in their
pleasures; but this is only that the taste and habits of men are more
easily discernible in pleasure than in business. The want of truth is as
great a hindrance to the one as to the other. Indeed, there is so much
insincerity and formality in the pleasurable department of human life,
especially in social pleasures, that instead of a bloom there is a slime
upon it, which deadens and corrupts the thing. One of the most comical
sights to superior beings must be to see two human creatures with
elaborate speech and gestures making each other exquisitely uncomfortable
from civility: the one pressing what he is most anxious that the other
should not accept, and the other accepting only from the fear of giving
offence by refusal. There is an element of charity in all this too; and
it will be the business of a just and refined nature to be sincere and
considerate at the same time. This will be better done by enlarging our
sympathy, so that more things and people are pleasant to us, than by
increasing the civil and conventional part of our nature, so that we are
able to do more seeming with greater skill and endurance. Of other false
hindrances to pleasure, such as ostentation and pretences of all kinds,
there is neither charity nor comfort in them. They may be got rid of
altogether, and no moaning made over them. Truth, which is one of the
largest creatures, opens out the way to the heights of enjoyment, as well
as to the depths of self-denial.
* * * * *
It is difficult to think too highly of the merits and delights of truth;
but there is often in men’s minds an exaggerated notion of some bit of
truth, which proves a great assistance to falsehood. For instance, the
shame of some particular small falsehood, exaggeration, or insincerity,
becomes a bugbear which scares a man into a career of false dealing. He
has begun making a furrow a little out of the line, and he ploughs on in
it to try and give some consistency and meaning to it. He wants almost
to persuade himself that it was not wrong, and entirely to hide the
wrongness from others. This is a tribute to the majesty of truth; also
to the world’s opinion about truth. It proceeds, too, upon the notion
that all falsehoods are equal, which is not the case; or on some fond
craving for a show of perfection, which is sometimes very inimical to the
reality. The practical, as well as the high-minded, view in such cases,
is for a man to think how he can be true now. To attain that, it may,
even for this world, be worth while for a man to admit that he is
inconsistent, and even that he has been untrue. His hearers, did they
know anything of themselves, would be fully aware that he was not
singular, except in the courage of owning his insincerity.
* * * * *
_Ellesmere_. That last part requires thinking about. If you were to
permit men, without great loss of reputation, to own that they had been
insincere, you might break down some of that majesty of truth you talk
about. And bad men might avail themselves of any facilities of owning
insincerity, to commit more of it. I can imagine that the apprehension
of this might restrain a man from making any such admission as you allude
to, even if he could make up his mind to do it otherwise.
_Milverton_. Yes; but can anything be worse than a man going on in a
false course? Each man must look to his own truthfulness, and keep that
up as well as he can, even at the risk of saying, or doing, something
which may be turned to ill account by others. We may think too much
about this reflection of our external selves. Let the real self be
right. I am not so fanciful as to expect men to go about clamouring that
they have been false; but at no risk of letting people see that, or of
even being obliged to own it, should they persevere in it.
_Dunsford_. Milverton is right, I think.
_Ellesmere_. Do not imagine that I am behind either of you in a wish to
hold up truth. My only doubt was as to the mode. For my own part, I
have such faith in truth that I take it mere concealment is in most cases
a mischief. And I should say, for instance, that a wise man would be
sorry that his fellows should think better of him than he deserves. By
the way, that is a reason why I should not like to be a writer of moral
essays, Milverton—one should be supposed to be so very good.
_Milverton_. Only by thoughtless people then. There is a saying given
to Rousseau, not that he ever did say it, for I believe it was a
misprint, but it was a possible saying for him, “Chaque homme qui pense
est méchant.” Now, without going the length of this aphorism, we may say
that what has been well written has been well suffered.
“He best can paint them who has felt them most.”
And so, though we should not exactly declare that writers who have had
much moral influence have been wicked men, yet we may admit that they
have been amongst the most struggling, which implies anything but serene
self-possession and perfect spotlessness. If you take the great ones,
Luther, Shakespeare, Goethe, you see this at once.
_Dunsford_. David, St. Paul.
_Milverton_. Such men are like great rocks on the seashore. By their
resistance, terraces of level land are formed; but the rocks themselves
bear many scars and ugly indents, while the sea of human difficulty
presents the same unwrinkled appearance in all ages. Yet it has been
driven back.
_Ellesmere_. But has it lost any of its bulk, or only gone elsewhere?
One part of the resemblance certainly is that these same rocks, which
were bulwarks, become, in their turn, dangers.
_Milverton_. Yes, there is always loss in that way. It is seldom given
to man to do unmixed good. But it was not this aspect of the simile that
I was thinking of: it was the scarred appearance.
_Dunsford_. Scars not always of defeat or flight; scars in the front.
_Milverton_. Ah, it hardly does for us to talk of victory or defeat, in
these cases; but we may look at the contest itself as something not bad,
terminate how it may. We lament over a man’s sorrows, struggles,
disasters, and shortcomings; yet they were possessions too. We talk of
the origin of evil and the permission of evil. But what is evil? We
mostly speak of sufferings and trials as good, perhaps, in their result;
but we hardly admit that they may be good in themselves. Yet they are
knowledge—how else to be acquired, unless by making men as gods, enabling
them to understand without experience. All that men go through may be
absolutely the best for them—no such thing as evil, at least in our
customary meaning of the word. But, you will say, they might have been
created different and higher. See where this leads to. Any sentient
being may set up the same claim: a fly that it had not been made a man;
and so the end would be that each would complain of not being all.
_Ellesmere_. Say it all over again, my dear Milverton: it is rather
hard. [Milverton did so, in nearly the same words.] I think I have
heard it all before. But you may have it as you please. I do not say
this irreverently, but the truth is, I am too old and too earthly to
enter upon these subjects. I think, however, that the view is a
stout-hearted one. It is somewhat in the same vein of thought that you
see in Carlyle’s works about the contempt of happiness. But in all these
cases, one is apt to think of the sage in “Rasselas,” who is very wise
about human misery till he loses his daughter. Your fly illustration has
something in it. Certainly when men talk big about what might have been
done for man, they omit to think what might be said, on similar grounds,
for each sentient creature in the universe. But here have we been
meandering off into origin of evil, and uses of great men, and wickedness
of writers, etc., whereas I meant to have said something about the essay.
How would you answer what Bacon maintains? “A mixture of a lie doth ever
add pleasure.”
_Milverton_. He is not speaking of the lies of social life, but of
self-deception. He goes on to class under that head “vain opinions,
flattering hopes, false valuations, imaginations as one would.” These
things are the sweetness of “the lie that sinketh in.” Many a man has a
kind of mental kaleidoscope, where the bits of broken glass are his own
merits and fortunes, and they fall into harmonious arrangements and
delight him—often most mischievously and to his ultimate detriment, but
they are a present pleasure.
_Ellesmere_. Well, I am going to be true in my pleasures: to take a long
walk alone. I have got a difficult case for an opinion, which I must go
and think over.
_Dunsford_. Shall we have another reading tomorrow?
_Milverton_. Yes, if you are both in the humour for it.