no attempt was made to enforce the law which, theoretically, treated the
killing of a man in a duel as wilful murder; but, on the other hand,
debt was punished with what often was imprisonment for life. A woman
died in the County Jail at Exeter after forty-five years' incarceration
for a debt of £19. Crime was rampant. Daring burglaries, accompanied by
every circumstance of violence, took place nightly. Highwaymen infested
the suburban roads, and not seldom plied their calling in the capital
itself. The iron post at the end of the narrow footway between the
gardens of Devonshire House and Lansdowne House is said by tradition to
have been placed there after a Knight of the Road had eluded the
officers of justice by galloping down the stone steps and along the
flagged path. Sir Hamilton Seymour (1797-1880) was in his father's
carriage when it was "stopped" by a highwayman in Upper Brook Street.
Young gentlemen of broken fortunes, and tradesmen whose business had
grown slack, swelled the ranks of these desperadoes. It was even said
that an Irish prelate--Dr. Twysden, Bishop of Raphoe--whose incurable
love of adventure had drawn him to "the road," received the penalty of
his uncanonical diversion in the shape of a bullet from a traveller whom
he had stopped on Hounslow Heath. The Lord Mayor was made to stand and
deliver on Turnham Green. Stars and "Georges" were snipped off
ambassadors and peers as they entered St. James's Palace.
It is superfluous to multiply illustrations. Enough has been said to
show that the circumscription of aristocratic privilege and the
diffusion of material luxury did not precipitate the millennium. Social
Equalization was not synonymous with Social Amelioration. Some
improvement, indeed, in the tone and habit of society occurred at the
turn of the century; but it was little more than a beginning. I proceed
to trace its development, and to indicate its source.
FOOTNOTES:
[9] I have since been told that this happy saying was borrowed from Sir
Francis Doyle.
IX.
THE EVANGELICAL INFLUENCE.
Mr. Lecky justly remarks that "it is difficult to measure the change
which must have passed over the public mind since the days when the
lunatics in Bedlam were constantly spoken of as one of the sights of
London; when the maintenance of the African slave-trade was a foremost
object of English commercial policy; when men and even women were
publicly whipped through the streets when skulls lined the top of Temple
Bar and rotting corpses hung on gibbets along the Edgware Road; when
persons exposed in the pillory not unfrequently died through the
ill-usage of the mob; and when the procession every six weeks of
condemned criminals to Tyburn was one of the great festivals of London."
Difficult, indeed, it is to measure so great a change, and it is not
wholly easy to ascertain with precision its various and concurrent
causes, and to attribute to each its proper potency. But we shall
certainly not be wrong if, among those causes, we assign a prominent
place to the Evangelical revival of religion. It would be a mistake to
claim for the Evangelical movement the whole credit of our social reform
and philanthropic work. Even in the darkest times of spiritual torpor
and general profligacy England could show a creditable amount of
practical benevolence. The public charities of London were large and
excellent. The first Foundling Hospital was established in 1739; the
first Magdalen Hospital in 1769. In 1795 it was estimated that the
annual expenditure on charity-schools, asylums, hospitals, and similar
institutions in London was £750,000.
Mr. Lecky, whose study of these social phenomena is exhaustive, imagines
that the habit of unostentatious charity, which seems indigenous to
England, was powerfully stimulated by the philosophy of Shaftesbury and
Voltaire, by Rousseau's sentiment and Fielding's fiction. This theory
may have something to say for itself, and indeed it is antecedently
plausible; but I can hardly believe that purely literary influences
counted for so very much in the sphere of practice. I doubt if any
considerable number of Englishmen were effectively swayed by that
humanitarian philosophy of France which in the actions of its maturity
so awfully belied the promise of its youth. We are, I think, on surer
ground when, admitting a national bias towards material benevolence, and
not denying some stimulus from literature and philosophy, we assign the
main credit of our social regeneration to the Evangelical revival.
The life of John Wesley, practically coterminous with the eighteenth
century, witnessed both the lowest point of our moral degradation and
also the earliest promise of our moral restoration. He cannot, indeed,
be reckoned the founder of the Evangelical school; that title belongs
rather to George Whitefield. But his influence, combined with that of
his brother Charles, acting on such men as Newton and Cecil and Venn and
Scott of Aston Sandford; on Selina Lady Huntingdon and Mrs. Hannah More;
on Howard and Clarkson and William Wilberforce; made a deep mark on the
Established Church, gave new and permanent life to English
Nonconformity, and sensibly affected the character and aspect of secular
society.
Wesley himself had received the governing impulse of his life from Law's
_Serious Call_ and _Christian Perfection_, and he had been a member of
one of those religious societies (or guilds, as they would now be
called) with which the piety of Bishop Beveridge and Dr. Horneck had
enriched the Church of England. These societies were, of course,
distinctly Anglican in origin and character, and were stamped with the
High Church theology. They constituted, so to say, a church within the
Church, and, though they raised the level of personal piety among their
members to a very high point, they did not widely affect the general
tone and character of national religion. The Evangelical leaders,
relying on less exclusively ecclesiastical methods, diffused their
influence over a much wider area, and, under the impulse of their
teaching, drunkenness, indecency, and profanity were sensibly abated.
The reaction from the rampant wickedness of the eighteenth century drove
men into strict and even puritanical courses.
Lord Robert Seymour wrote on the 20th of March, 1788: "Tho' Good Friday,
Mrs. Sawbridge has an assembly this evening; tells her invited Friends
they really are only to play for a Watch which she has had some time on
her Hands and wishes to dispose of."
"'Really, I declare 'pon my honor it's true' (said Ly. Bridget Talmash
to the Dutchess of Bolton) 'that a great many People now go to Chapel. I
saw a vaste number of Carriages at Portman Chapel last Sunday.' The Dut.
told her she always went to Chapel on Sunday, and in the country read
Prayers in the Hall to her Family."
But where the Evangelical influence reached, it brought a marked
abstention from such forms of recreation as dancing, card-playing, and
the drama. Sunday was observed with a Judaical rigour. A more frequent
attendance on public worship was accompanied by the revival of family
prayers and grace before meat. Manuals of private devotion were
multiplied. Religious literature of all kinds was published in great
quantity. A higher standard of morals was generally professed. Marriage
was gradually restored in public estimation to its proper place, not
merely as a civil bond or social festival, but as a chief solemnity of
the Christian religion.
There was no more significant sign of the times than this alteration. In
the eighteenth century some of the gravest of our social offences had
clustered round the institution of marriage, which was almost as much
dishonoured in the observance as in the breach. In the first half of
that century the irregular and clandestine weddings, celebrated without
banns or licence in the Fleet Prison, had been one of the crying
scandals of the middle and lower classes; and in the second half, the
nocturnal flittings to Gretna Green of young couples who could afford
such a Pilgrimage of Passion lowered the whole conception of marriage.
It was through the elopement of Miss Child--heiress of the opulent
banker at Temple Bar--from her father's house in Berkeley Square (now
Lord Rosebery's) that the ownership of the great banking business passed
eventually to the present Lord Jersey; and the annals of almost every
aristocratic family contain the record of similar escapades.
The Evangelical movement, not content with permeating England, sought to
expand itself all over the Empire. The Society for the Propagation of
the Gospel and the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge had been
essentially Anglican institutions; and similar societies, but less
ecclesiastical in character, now sprang up in great numbers. The London
Missionary Society was founded in 1795, the Church Missionary Society in
1799, the Religious Tract Society in the same year, and the British and
Foreign Bible Society three years later. All these were distinctly
creations of the Evangelical movement, as were also the Societies for
the Reformation of Manners and for the Better Observance of the Lord's
Day. Religious education found in the Evangelical party its most active
friends. The Sunday School Society was founded in 1785. Two years later
it was educating two hundred thousand children. Its most earnest
champions were Rowland Hill and Mrs. Hannah More; but it is worthy of
note that this excellent lady, justly honoured as a pioneer of
elementary education, confined her curriculum to the Bible and the
Catechism, and "such coarse works as may fit the children for servants.
_I allow of no writing for the poor_."
To the Society of Friends--a body not historically or theologically
Evangelical--belongs the credit of having first awoke, and tried to
rouse others, to a sense of the horrors and iniquities involved in the
slave-trade; but the adhesion of William Wilberforce and his friends at
Clapham identified the movement for emancipation with the Evangelical
party. Never were the enthusiasm, the activity, the uncompromising
devotion to principle which marked the Evangelicals turned to better
account. Their very narrowness gave intensity and concentration to their
work, and their victory, though deferred, was complete. It has been
truly said that when the English nation had been thoroughly convinced
that slavery was a curse which must be got rid of at any cost, we
cheerfully paid down as the price of its abolition twenty millions in
cash, and threw the prosperity of our West Indian colonies into the
bargain. Yet we only spent on it one-tenth of what it cost us to lose
America, and one-fiftieth of what we spent in avenging the execution of
Louis XVI.
In spite of all these conspicuous and beneficent advances in the
direction of humanity, a great deal of severity, and what appears to us
brutality, remained embedded in our social system. I have spoken in
previous chapters of the methods of discipline enforced in the services,
in jails, in poorhouses, and in schools.[10] A very similar spirit
prevailed even in the home. Children were shut up in dark closets,
starved, and flogged. Lord Shaftesbury's father used to knock him down,
and recommended his tutor at Harrow to do the same. Archdeacon Denison
describes in his autobiography how he and his brothers were thrashed by
their tutor when they were youths of sixteen and had left Eton. _The
Fairchild Family_--that quaint picture of Evangelical life and
manners--depicts a religious father as punishing his quarrelsome
children by taking them to see a murderer hanging in chains, and as
chastising every peccadillo of infancy with a severity which makes one
long to flog Mr. Fairchild.
But still, in spite of all these checks and drawbacks and evil
survivals, the tide of humanitarianism flowed on, and gradually altered
the aspect of English life. The bloody Penal Code was mitigated. Prisons
and poorhouses were reformed. The discipline of school and of home was
tempered by the infusion of mercy and reason into the iron regimen of
terror. And this general diminution of brutality was not the only form
of social amelioration. It was accompanied by a gradual but perceptible
increase in decency, refinement, and material prosperity. Splendour
diminished, and luxury remained the monopoly of the rich; but
comfort--that peculiarly English treasure--was more generally diffused.
In that diffusion the Evangelicals had their full share. Thackeray's
admirable description of Mrs. Newcome's villa is drawn from the life:
"In Egypt itself there were not more savoury fleshpots than those at
Clapham. Her mansion was long the resort of the most favoured among the
religious world. The most eloquent expounders, the most gifted
missionaries, the most interesting converts from foreign islands were to
be found at her sumptuous table, spread with the produce of her
magnificent gardens ... a great, shining, mahogany table, covered with
grapes, pineapples, plum-cake, port wine, and Madeira, and surrounded
by stout men in black, with baggy white neckcloths, who took little
Tommy on their knees and questioned him as to his right understanding of
the place whither naughty boys were bound."
Again, in his paper on _Dinners_ the same great master of a fascinating
subject speaks the words of truth and soberness when he says: "I don't
know when I have been better entertained, as far as creature comforts
go, than by men of very Low Church principles; and one of the very best
repasts that ever I saw in my life was at Darlington, given by a
Quaker." This admirable tradition of material comfort allied with
Evangelical opinion extended into my own time. The characteristic
weakness of Mr. Stiggins has no place in my recollection; but Mr.
Chadband I have frequently met in Evangelical circles, both inside and
outside the Establishment. Debarred by the strictness of their
principles from such amusements as dancing, cards, and theatres, the
Evangelicals took their pleasure in eating and drinking. They abounded
in hospitality; and when they were not entertaining or being
entertained, occupied their evenings with systematic reading, which gave
their religious compositions a sound basis of general culture.
Austerity, gloom, and Pharisaism had no place among the better class of
Evangelicals. Wilberforce, pronounced by Madame de Staël to be the most
agreeable man in England, was of "a most gay and genial disposition;"
"lived in perpetual sunshine, and shed its radiance all around him."
Legh Richmond was "exceedingly good company." Robinson of Leicester was
"a capital conversationalist, very lively and bright." Alexander Knox
found that Mrs. Hannah More "far exceeded his expectations in pleasant
manners and interesting conversation."
The increasing taste for solid comfort and easy living which accompanied
the development of humanitarianism, and in which, as we have just seen,
the Evangelicals had their full share, was evidenced to the eye by the
changes in domestic architecture. There was less pretension in exteriors
and elevations, but more regard to convenience and propriety within. The
space was not all sacrificed to reception-rooms. Bedrooms were
multiplied and enlarged; and fireplaces were introduced into every room,
transforming the arctic "powdering-closet" into a habitable
dressing-room. The diminution of the Window-Tax made light and
ventilation possible. Personal cleanliness became fashionable, and the
means of attaining it were cultivated. The whole art or science of
domestic sanitation--rudimentary enough in its beginnings--belongs to
the nineteenth century. The system which went before it was too
primitively abominable to bear description. Sir Robert Rawlinson, the
sanitary expert, who was called in to inspect Windsor Castle after the
Prince Consort's death, reported that, within the Queen's reign,
"cesspools full of putrid refuse and drains of the worst description
existed beneath the basements.... Twenty of these cesspools were removed
from the upper ward, and twenty-eight from the middle and lower
wards.... Means of ventilation by windows in Windsor Castle were very
defective. Even in the royal apartments the upper portions of the
windows were fixed. Lower casements alone could be opened, so that by
far the largest amount of air-spaces in the rooms contained vitiated
air, comparatively stagnant." When this was the condition of royal
abodes, no wonder that the typhoid-germ, like Solomon's spider, "took
hold with her hands, and was in kings' palaces." And well might Sir
George Trevelyan, in his ardent youth, exclaim:--
"We much revere our sires; they were a famous race of men.
For every glass of port we drink, they nothing thought of ten.
They lived above the foulest drains, they breathed the closest air,
They had their yearly twinge of gout, but little seemed to care.
But, though they burned their coals at home, nor fetched their ice
from Wenham,
They played the man before Quebec and stormed the lines at Blenheim.
When sailors lived on mouldy bread and lumps of rusty pork,
No Frenchman dared to show his nose between the Downs and Cork.
But now that Jack gets beef and greens and next his skin wears flannel,
The _Standard_ says we've not a ship in plight to hold the Channel."
So much for Social Amelioration.
FOOTNOTES:
[10] For a lively description of Andover School in the eighteenth
century, see the _Memoirs of "Orator Hunt_.'"
X.
POLITICS.
I now approach the political condition at the turn of the century, and
that was to a great extent the product of the French Revolution. Some
historians, indeed, when dealing with that inexhaustible theme, have
wrought cause and effect into a circular chain, and have reckoned among
the circumstances which prepared the way for the French Revolution the
fact that Voltaire in his youth spent three years in England, and
mastered the philosophy of Bacon, Newton, and Locke, the Deism of the
English Freethinkers, and the English theory of political liberty. That
these doctrines, recommended by Voltaire's mordant genius and matchless
style, and circulating in a community prepared by tyranny to receive
them, acted as a powerful solvent on the intellectual basis of French
society, is indeed likely enough. But to pursue the theme would carry us
too far back into the eighteenth century. In dealing with the
recollections of persons whom one's self has known we must dismiss from
view the causes of the French Revolution. Our business is with its
effect on political thought and action in England.
About half way through the nineteenth century it became the fashion to
make out that the effect of the Revolution on England had been
exaggerated. Satirists made fun of our traditional Gallophobia. In that
admirable skit on philosophical history, the introduction to the _Book
of Snobs_, Thackeray first illustrates his theme by a reference to the
French Revolution, and then adds (in sarcastic brackets)--"Which the
reader will be pleased to have introduced so early." Lord Beaconsfield,
quizzing John Wilson Croker in _Coningsby_, says: "He bored his audience
with too much history, especially the French Revolution, which he
fancied was his forte, so that the people at last, whenever he made any
allusion to the subject, were almost as much terrified as if they had
seen the guillotine." In spite of these gibes, historians have of late
years returned to the earlier and truer view, and have deliberately
reaffirmed the tremendous effect of the Revolution on English politics.
The philosophical Mr. Lecky says that it influenced English history in
the later years of the eighteenth century more powerfully than any other
event; that it gave a completely new direction to the statesmanship of
Pitt; that it instantaneously shattered, and rendered ineffectual for a
whole generation, one of the two great parties in the State; and that it
determined for a like period the character and complexion of our foreign
policy.
All contemporary Europe--all subsequent time--quivered with the shock
and sickened at the carnage; but I have gathered that it was not till
the capture of the Bastille that the events which were taking place in
France attracted any general or lively interest in England. The strifes
of rival politicians, the illness of George III., and the consequent
questions as to the Regency, engrossed the public mind, and what little
interest was felt in foreign affairs was directed much more to the
possible designs of Russia than to the actual condition of France. The
capture of the Bastille, however, was an event so startling and so
dramatic that it instantly arrested the public attention of England, and
the events which immediately followed in rapid and striking succession
raised interest into excitement, and excitement into passion. Men who
had been accustomed from their childhood to regard the Monarchy of
France as the type of a splendid, powerful, and enduring polity now saw
a National Army constituted in complete independence of the Crown; a
Representative Body assuming absolute power and denying the King's right
to dissolve; the summary abrogation of the whole feudal system, which a
year before had seemed endowed with perpetual vigour; an insurrection of
the peasantry against their territorial tyrants, accompanied by every
horror of pillage, arson, and bloodshed; the beautiful and stately Queen
flying, half naked, for her life, amid the slaughter of her sentinels
and courtiers; and the King himself virtually a prisoner in the very
Court which, up to that moment, had seemed the ark and sanctuary of
absolute government. All over England these events produced their
immediate and natural effect. Enemies of religious establishments took
courage from the downfall of ecclesiastical institutions. Enemies of
monarchy rejoiced in the formal and public degradation of a monarch.
Those who had long been conscientiously working for Parliamentary reform
saw with glee their principles expressed in the most uncompromising
terms in the French Declaration of Rights, and practically applied in
the constitution of the Sovereign Body of France.
These convinced and constitutional reformers found new and strange
allies. Serious advocates of Republican institutions, mere lovers of
change and excitement, secret sympathizers with lawlessness and
violence, sedentary theorists, reckless adventurers, and local
busybodies associated themselves in the endeavour to popularize the
French Revolution in England and to imbue the English mind with
congenial sentiments. The movement had leaders of greater mark. The Duke
of Norfolk and the Duke of Richmond, Lord Lansdowne and Lord Stanhope,
held language about the Sovereignty of the People such as filled the
reverent and orderly mind of Burke with indignant astonishment. In Dr.
Priestley the revolutionary party had an eminent man of science and a
polemical writer of rare power. Dr. Price was a rhetorician whom any
cause would have gladly enlisted as its champion. The Revolution
Society, founded to commemorate the capture of the Bastille,
corresponded with the leaders of the Revolution, and promised its
alliance in a revolutionary compact. And, to add a touch of comedy to
these more serious demonstrations, the young Duke of Bedford and other
leaders of fashion discarded hair-powder, and wore their hair cut short
in what was understood to be the Republican mode of Paris.