century social conditions were about as bad as can well be imagined.
The incursions of the Goths had rubbed out all the old Roman law and
the customs of the various nations had been obliterated in the
disorder of the migration of the nations, when might absolutely made
right. Gradually out of the inevitable lawlessness of the Dark Ages
the Church, by her beneficent influence, brought the beginnings of
{418} law and order so far as barbarous peoples could be lifted up. In
the sixth century there was nearly everywhere in Europe social chaos.
During the next centuries came the gradual uplift. Christianity in
Ireland did much even in the preceding century, and then helped in the
regeneration of Europe in the succeeding centuries. Charlemagne helped
greatly, as his name chronicles, and Alfred, well deserving of the
name the Great, carried on his work. In the tenth century everywhere
the dawn of better things was to be seen. In the eleventh century
organization of civil rights begins to make itself felt; in the
twelfth century the universities were coming into existence; and then
with the thirteenth century there was a great rejuvenescence of
humanity in every department, but, above all, in the social order.
Under feudalism men had no rights of themselves except such as were
conferred on them by some external agency. In the thirteenth century
the essential rights of man begin to make themselves felt and find
confident assertion.
It is not hard to trace the steps of the development. Magna Charta was
signed in 1215. The First English Parliament met in 1257. The
representative nature of that parliament became complete in the next
twenty years. The English Common Law was put into form about the
beginning of the last quarter of the century and in 1282 Bracton
published his great digest of it. The principle there shall be no
taxation without {419} representation, our own basis for the
Declaration of Independence five centuries later, was proclaimed as
early as 1260 and was emphasized by the great Pope Boniface VIII at
the end of the century. Early in the century, the great Lateran
Council decreed that every diocese in the world should have a college
and that the Metropolitan Sees at least should have such opportunities
for post-graduate study as we now call universities. The first great
Pope of the century, Innocent III, laid the foundation of a great City
Hospital in Rome and required that every bishop throughout the world
should have one in his See and that the model of it should be that of
the Santo Spirito Hospital in Rome. Leprosy was an epidemic disease
among the people, somewhat as tuberculosis is now; measures were taken
for the segregation of lepers, leper hospitals were built for them
outside of the town, and these great generations solved a problem in
hygiene as difficult as is ours with regard to tuberculosis.
Above all, the rights of the people were assured to them. At the
beginning of the century probably the most striking thing among the
population of the various towns, if a modern had a chance to visit
them, would be the number of the maimed and the halt and the blind. We
would be apt to wonder where were the industrial and manufacturing
plants responsible for all this maiming of the people, and look in
vain for the belching chimneys of factories or trains. It was {420}
another form of selfishness that produced cripples in the twelfth
century. Punishment was by maiming. For offences against property a
man lost an eye, or a hand, or a leg. Very often the offences were of
a kind that we would resent punishment for in the modern time. If a
man were caught poaching on a nobleman's preserves of game, and
sometimes it was the hunger of his children that drove him to it, he
lost a hand. For a second offence, he lost an eye. For failures to pay
various taxes, if the offence were repeated, maiming was likely to be
the consequence. All this was in as perfect accordance with law as our
fellow-servant or contributory-negligence doctrines. So that the
sight of the maimed person might deter others from following this
example of recalcitrancy, it was hoped that these cripples would not
die, though in the imperfect surgery of the time they often did.
Always the selfish pleasures of the upper classes so-called, when they
are thoughtless, mean the loss of all possibilities of happiness for
the lower classes. The ways of it all may be different from age to
age, the results and the responsibility are always the same.
In the thirteenth century all this was changed. St. Louis of France
sent one of his greatest noblemen who had unreasonably punished
student poachers on a penitential pilgrimage to the Holy Land and
inflicted a heavy fine, and all notwithstanding the protest of the
most powerful nobles {421} of his kingdom whose rights were invaded.
How we do always hear about the invasion of the rights of the
entrenched classes. In England men, even men without any patent of
nobility or clerical privilege, began to have rights and others had
duties towards them. Above all, men were given opportunities to bring
out what was best in them. The great cathedrals were built, the great
monasteries, some of the greatest castles, some of the fine colleges
at the universities. Many of the municipal buildings were erected in
the glorious architecture of the times. At these men were employed in
what is probably the happiest work that a man can do. They had the
chance to express themselves in the beautiful achievements of their
hands. The village blacksmith made gates, and locks, and bolts, and
hinges for cathedrals that are so beautiful that all the world has
wondered at them ever since. The stained glass is the finest ever
made. The illuminated books are beautiful beyond description, the
handsomest of all times. The needlework of the vestments stands out as
the most beautiful in history. The men and women who did these things
were happy in the execution of beautiful works of art, and as the
population was only scanty a large proportion of them were closer to
beautiful things than the world has ever known.
Blessed is the man who has found his work. These men had found their
work and were happy. Instead of going out to the deadly routine of
{422} work they did not like, but that they had to do, because they
must earn enough so as to get bread enough to eat for themselves and
family, so that they might live and go out and work once more
to-morrow and to-morrow, and so on to the end of recorded time, the
workman dreamt of the beauty that he might express; went out hoping to
achieve it; failed often but still hoped, and hope is life's best
consolation; came away reluctantly, thinking that surely he would
accomplish something on the morrow. It is the difference between mere
routine work and the handicraftsmanship that satisfies because it
occupies the whole man. Is it any wonder that our workman is
discontented; is it any wonder that the England of that time should be
called merry England and the France and Italy gay France and Italy?
All this organization of the workmen was accomplished by the
university men of the time. They were mainly clergymen, but they had
in them not only the wish, but the faculty to help those around them,
and so there arose the beautiful creations of that time in art,
architecture, literature and political freedom which did so much for
the masses of the people. There were more students at the universities
at the end of the thirteenth century to the population of the various
countries of Europe than there are at the present time. That seems
impossible, but so do all the other achievements of the thirteenth
century,--their cathedrals, their arts and crafts, their {423}
universities, their literature,--until you go back to study them.
There is absolutely no doubt about these statistics. These university
men were trained to self-government and to the government of others in
the university life of the time. They took that training out with
them, not for selfish purposes alone, but for the help of others. What
they accomplished is to be found in the social uplift that followed.
There is scarcely a right or a development of liberty that we have now
that cannot be found, in germ at least, often in complete evolution,
in the thirteenth century. The Supreme Courts of most of our states
still make their decisions following the old English common law which
was laid down in that century.
But it will be said, while so much was done for the workman, have we
not heard that his wages were a few cents, almost nothing, and that
his hours were long and he was little better than a slave? Only the
first portion of this has any truth in it. He did get what seems to us
a mere pittance for his day's wages. As pointed out by M. Urbain
Gohier, the French socialist, when he visited this country to lecture
a few years ago, the workmen of this time had already obtained the
eight-hour day, the three eights as they are called, eight hours of
work, eight hours for sleep and eight hours for themselves. Besides
they had the Saturday half-holiday, or at least, after the Vesper
hour, work could not be required of them, and there was more than one
holy-day of {424} obligation every two weeks, on which they did not
work, and on the Vigil of which work ceased at four o'clock. As for
their wages, by Act of Parliament they got fourpence a day at the end
of the century and this does not seem much, but the same Act of
Parliament set the minimum wage and the maximum price that could be
charged for the necessities of life. A pair of hand-made shoes could
be bought for fourpence, and no workman can do anything like that for
a day's wage at the present or usually for more than double his daily
wages. A fat goose cost but twopence halfpenny, and when the father of
a family can buy two fat geese for his daily wages, there is no danger
of the family starving. Our wages are higher, but the necessities of
life have gone up so high that the wages can scarcely touch them.
In the parliament that passed these laws the greater proportion were
college men. I suppose probably three-fourths of the members of both
houses had been at the university. Now that the question of the
abolition of the House of Lords is occupying much attention, we
sometimes hear of it as a mediaeval institution. It is spoken of as an
inheritance from an earlier and ruder time. I wonder how much the
people who talk thus know about the realities. They must be densely
ignorant of what the House of Lords used to be. At the present moment
there are in the English House of Lords 627 members, only {425} 75 of
whom do not owe their position directly or solely to the accident of
birth. Even about half of this seventy-five can only be selected from
the hereditary nobility of Scotland and of Ireland. In the Middle Ages
it was quite different. Until the reformation so-called the Lords
Spiritual formed a majority of the House of Lords. They consisted not
only of the bishops but of the abbots and priors of monasteries and
the masters of the various religious and knightly orders. This upper
chamber of the olden time was elected in the best possible sense of
the word. They were usually men who had risen from the ranks of the
people and who had been chosen because of their unselfishness to be
heads of religious houses and religious orders. There were abuses by
which some of these Lords Spiritual obtained their places by what we
now call pull, but the great majority of them were selected for their
virtues, and because they had shown their power to rule over
themselves had been chosen to rule over others.
They were men who could own nothing for themselves and families, and
in whom every motive, human and divine, appealed to make life as happy
as possible for others. They were all of them university men. Compare
for a moment the present House of Lords with that House of Lords and
you will see the difference between the old time and the present. No
wonder England was merry England, no wonder historian {426} after
historian has declared that the people were happier at this time than
they have ever been before or since, no wonder men had leisure to make
great monuments of genius in architecture, in the arts and in
literature. No wonder the universities, in the form in which they have
been useful to mankind ever since, were organized in this century; no
wonder all our rights and liberties come to us. Great generations of
the university men nobly did their work.
Young men, you are graduating from a college that is literally a
lineal descendant of those old-time universities. You have had the
training of heart and of will as well as of mind that was given to
these students of the olden times. You have been taught that the end
of life is not self, but that life shall mean something for others as
well as yourself, that every action shall be looked at from the
standpoint of what it means for others as well as for yourselves, and
that you shall never do anything that will even remotely injure
others.
You are not only going to lead honest but honorable lives. You are
going to be true to yourselves first, but absolutely faithful to
others. They are telling a story in New York now that, perhaps, some
of you have heard. It is of the young man who had graduated at the
head of his class at the high school and delighted his old father's
heart. He kept up the good work, and came out first in his class at
college. Then, when {427} he led a large class at the law school, you
can understand how proud the old gentleman was. Tom came home to
practise law in a long-established firm where there was an opening for
him. Some six months later he said, one day, to his father, "Well, I
made $10,000 to-day," and the old gentleman said, "Well, Tom, that is
a good deal of money to make. I hope you made it honestly." The young
man lifted his head and said, "You can be sure that I would not make
it dishonestly." "That is right," the old man said. "Tell us how it
came about." Then Tom told how he knew that a trolley line was going
to run out far from town and that he had secured an option on some
property through which it was going to pass. "You know old Farmer
Simpson out on the Plank Road?" he said. "His boys have left him and
gone to the city; he cannot work his farm any longer himself, and he
cannot hire men for it, and he wants to get rid of it. I got positive
information yesterday through one of our clients that a trolley line
is going out through that farm. When I went out to see the old man he
knew me at once, spoke about you, and when I offered to try to sell
the farm for him and suggested the advisability of signing an option
on it to me at a definite figure, so that I may be able to close the
price with any one who wanted it, he signed at once at a ridiculously
low figure because, though, as he said, he did not care to sign the
papers for lawyer folk, {428} he knew I was different. I have got the
farm at so low a price that $10,000 is the smallest profit I can look
for. I think I will get that profit out of the company for the right
of way, and then I will have the rest of the farm for myself. It will
make a mighty nice country place."
Then there was a pause. The old gentleman did not lighten up any over
the story, as Tom seemed to think he would. After a minute's silence
the old man said, "Well, Tom, that was not what I sent you to college
and law school for, to come out here and take advantage of my old
neighbors. I thought that you would be helpful to us all, and that
there would be more of happiness in the world because of your
education. You may call that transaction honest, and perhaps it is
legal, but I know that it is dishonorable. Tom, if you don't give
Farmer Simpson back his option I do not think I want you to live here
with me any more. Somehow I couldn't feel as if I could hold up my
head if ever I passed Farmer Simpson and his wife, if you did. You may
act as his attorney if you will and take a good fair fee for it, but
you must not absorb all the profits just because the old man is in
trouble and is glad to trust an old neighbor's son."
Of course Tom's father was dreadfully old-fashioned and out of date.
Of course there are some people who will say that this sort of thing
is quixotic. Now, this sort of thing is what higher education should
mean, and does mean, in a {429} Catholic college. Your principles are
not taught you for the sake of exercises of piety, nor attendance at
religious duties. These you have got to do anyhow, but they are meant
to inflow into every action of your life and to make the basic
principle of them all, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself."
You are graduating from a Catholic college with high aims, you have
had many advantages, more than are accorded usually in our time to men
of your years in the training of heart and will as well as intellect,
and much is expected of you. You are rich in real education and a
stewardship of great intellectual and moral wealth is given over to
you, and you must be better than others and be, above all, ever
helpful to others. Your education was not given for your benefit, but
for that of the community. Your neighbors are all round you. See that
at the end of your life they shall all be happier because you have
lived. If you do not do so you shall sadly disappoint the hopes of
your teachers and, above all, you shall be false to the trust that has
been confided to you.
Pass on the torch of charity. Let all the world be dear to you in the
old-fashioned sense of that dear old word charity, not merely
distantly friendly in the new-fangled sense of the long Greek term
philanthropy. Be just while you are living your lives and you will not
have the burden of philanthropy that so many rich men are now
complaining of in your older years, and, above all, {430} you will not
have the contempt and aversion of those who may accept your bounty,
but who know how questionably you acquired the means of giving it and
are not really thankful.
I have done but for just one word. Be just and fear not. If you will
be just in your dealing with men, you will have no need for further
advice and no need for repentance. I thank you.
{431}
NEW ENGLANDISM
{432}
"It isn't so much the ignorance of mankind that makes them
ridiculous as the knowing so many things that ain't so."
--Josh Billings, _writing as "Uncle Esek" in the "Century."_
{433}
NEW ENGLANDISM [Footnote 27]
[Footnote 27: The material for this was collected for a banquet
address in Boston on Evacuation Day, 1909, before the Knights of
Columbus. It was developed for various lectures on the history of
education, in order to illustrate how easy it is to produce a
tradition which is not supported by historical documents. In its
present form it appeared as an article in the _West Coast Magazine_
for July, 1910, at the request of the editor, Mr. John S. McGroarty,
with whom, more years ago than either of us care to recall now, I
had learned the New England brand of United States history at a
country school.]
There is a little story told of a supposed recent celestial
experience, that seems, to some people, at least--perhaps it may be
said without exaggeration, to most of those alas! not born in New
England--to illustrate very well the attitude of New Englanders, and
especially of the Bostonese portion of the New England population,
towards all the rest of the world and the heavens besides. St. Peter,
the celestial gate-keeper, is supposed to be disturbed from the
slumbers that have been possible so much oftener of late years because
of the infrequent admissions since the world has lost interest in
other-worldliness, by an imperious knocking at the gate. "Who's
there?" he asks in a very mild voice, for he knows by long experience
that that kind of knocking usually comes from some grand dame from the
terrestrial regions. The reply, in rather imperative {434} tone, is,
"I am Mrs. Beacon from Boston," with emphasis on the Boston, "Well,
madam," Peter says in reply, "you may come in, but," he adds with a
wisdom learned doubtless from many previous incidents of the same
kind, "you won't like it."
Of course, the thoroughgoing admiration of New England people, and
especially of Bostonians, for all that is New England, and, above all,
all that is Boston, has been well recognized for a long while and has
not failed of proper appreciation, to some degree at least, even in
New England itself. To Oliver Wendell Holmes we owe that delightful
characterization of it in the "Autocrat of the Breakfast Table,"
"Boston State House is the hub of the solar system. You could not pry
that out of a Boston man (and _a fortiori_ I think it may be said out
of a Boston woman) if you had the tire of all creation straightened
out for a crowbar." James Russell Lowell expressed the same idea very
forcibly in other words in some expressions of his essay on "A Certain
Condescension in Foreigners," that have been perhaps oftenest quoted
and are dear to every true New Englander's heart. Of course, he meant
it a great deal more than half in jest, but who of us who know our
Down Easterners doubt that most of them take it considerably more than
half in earnest? Their attitude shows us very well how much the
daughter New England was ready to take after mother England in {435}
the matter of thinking so much of herself that she must perforce be
condescending to others.
Lowell's expression is worthy to be placed beside that of Oliver
Wendell Holmes for the guidance of American minds. They are keys to
the situation. "I know one person," said Lowell, "who is singular
enough to think Cambridge (Mass.) the very best spot on the habitable
globe. 'Doubtless God could have made a better, but doubtless he never
did.'" It only needed his next sentence fully to complete the
significance of Boston and its academic suburb in the eyes of every
good Bostonian. "The full tide of human existence may be felt here as
keenly as Johnson felt it at Charing Cross and in a larger sense."
Of course there is no insuperable objection to allowing New Englanders
to add to the gayety of nations in this supreme occupation with
themselves, and we would gladly suffer them if only they would not
intrude their New Englandism on some of the most important concerns of
the nation. But that is impossible, for New Englandism is most
obtrusive. It is New England that has written most of the history of
this country and its influence has been paramount on most of our
education. It has supplied most of the writers of history and moulded
most of the school-teachers of the country. The consequence has been a
stamping of New Englandism all over our history and on the minds of
rising generations for the better part of a century, with a {436}
perversion of the realities of history in favor of New England that is
quite startling when attention is particularly directed to it.
The editors of the "Cambridge modern History," in their preface,
called attention to the immense differences between what may be called
documentary and traditional history. They declare that it has become
"impossible for historical writers of the present age to trust without
reserve even to the most respected secondary authorities. The honest
student finds himself continually deserted, retarded, misled, by the
classics of historical literature, and has to hew his own way through
multitudinous transactions, periodicals, and official publications in
order to reach the truth." Most people reading this would be prone to
think that any such arraignment of American history, as is thus made
by the distinguished Cambridge editors of history in general, would be
quite out of the question. After all, our history, properly speaking,
extends only over a couple of centuries and we would presumably be too
close to the events for any serious distortion of them to have been
made. For that reason it is interesting to realize what an unfortunate
influence the fact that our writers have come mainly from New England
and have been full of the New England spirit has had on our American
history.