THE “EPOCH” RUNS AMOK
In those never-forgettable summer weeks in the mammoth city the
converted _Epoch_ published a series of denunciatory articles without
parallel in the history of the modern press. The _Epoch_ was now an
organ of opinion, indeed, but not of opinion made to order, or governed
by the exigencies of political party. Its independence was a fact,
and not a polite fiction. It dealt with men as men and as members of
specialised professions. It ranked politics as one of the professions,
and not the most honourable, and it tarred the “ins” and the “outs”
with one and the same prickly brush. The new departure made it clear
that the freedom of the press, as hitherto understood, was itself a
mere fiction.
In law the newspaper had no greater freedom than the individual critic.
Political opponents might, indeed, be attacked and misrepresented
with an impunity begotten of necessity, and the pot-and-kettle system,
inherited from the journalistic organs of Eatanswill; but beyond that,
the only freedom consisted in the right to publish what a jury of
twelve tradesmen might not consider libellous. Journalism, in fact, was
analogous to advocacy. The pot called the kettle black, and the kettle
declared that the pot was blacker. Both pot and kettle, meanwhile,
had an eye to business. That was perfectly legitimate and natural,
but the radical mistake of the public lay in its view of the press
as a philanthropic institution bent only on maintaining the cause of
peace and happiness, truth and justice, religion and piety throughout
the realm. It was obvious to the reflective worldling that no journal
could be run on truly ethical lines with ultimate advantage to the bank
balance of its proprietors; just as it was plain to the world-fearing
Christian that practical Christianity would never “pay.” No journalist
or Christian admitted these facts. They knew them quite well, but they
ignored them, and placidly drew around themselves the comfortable robes
of organised hypocrisy.
The very last thing that any well-conducted journal would have dreamed
of would be the printing of a slashing and remorseless attack upon the
great Middle Class--the backbone of the country and the mainstay of
modern journalism. Censures of the “smart set,” foolishly so called,
and of their social descendants, of course had been administered _ad
nauseam_, thereby giving to a limited body of showy persons (with
more money--or credit--than brains) an exaggerated sense of their
own interest and importance. The lower orders, too, had met with
stern rebuke (for their thriftlessness, their laziness, and their
self-indulgence) but only in journals which the lower orders never
read. The _Epoch_, however, assailed with tooth and nail the denizens
of the great middle country, the buffer state in which dwelt all the
respectables--the clergy, the doctors, the lawyers, brokers, dentists,
accountants, surveyors, merchants, shopkeepers, active and retired, who
“made England what it was,” and what the _Epoch_ roundly declared it
ought not to be.
As a journalistic programme this was considered part and parcel of
the midsummer madness that had fallen on the distracted capital.
Fleet Street, Printing House Square, Bouverie Street, Shoe Lane, and
Whitefriars, as embodied in the persons of representative journalists,
shook their heads. “It was playing the fool”; it was “not cricket”;
it was “quarrelling with your bread-and-butter,” or killing the
goose that laid the golden--or at least the gilded--eggs; it was “the
reckless destruction of a splendid commercial property”--in short, such
bad “biz,” that no editor would pursue it unless under orders to ride
deliberately for a fall. In particular, to assail the Church! the Law!!
the Medical Faculty!!! in one fell charge! Midsummer madness, indeed!
To fall foul, not merely of one learned profession--especially when the
_Epoch_ might have gone for one of them (the clergy for choice), and
with impunity; but to attack all three was--well it was pure, absolute,
and undiluted lunacy. Thus quoth Fleet Street. But the onslaught
continued. From the archbishops down to the deacons, none was spared.
It was admitted that there were good and true soldiers in the clerical
ranks--some such pitiful minority of righteous men as those for
whose sake Abraham, in his prayerful and pathetic apology, entreated
that the Cities of the Plain might be spared. But for the rest?--the
time-serving right reverends on the path of promotion, with one foot
in the sanctuary and the other in the temple of Mammon; the deans
and archdeacons who clung to high benefice, and forgot the solemn
ordination vows of their early manhood; the canons whose intellectual
vanity found vent in sermons and pamphlets that argued faith in the
cardinal doctrines of Christianity to be only a delusion and a snare;
the holders of rich livings who had waxed fat and kicked against all
the labours of parochial duty; the popular preachers who did not
practise what they preached; the faithless stewards of the mysteries
who declared there were no mysteries at all; and the flaccid curates
who feebly bleated in the pulpit to a congregation of martyrs in
the pews--for these, and all of these, the _Epoch_ let loose the
chastisement of journalistic whips and scorpions.
Somewhat less sweeping was the treatment dealt out to the profession
of the healing art; but here, too, condemnation was not spared. The
claptrap of the calling was its blight; the “abracadabra” of its Latin
prescriptions; the bestowal of long names on short ailments; the fetich
of the medicine bottle; the hoodwinking of the patient’s friends; the
solemn-faced acquiescence in the patient’s mendacious explanations of
his or her symptoms; the decorous delusions indirectly fostered in the
best “bedside manner”; the pandering to the egoism and self-importance
of opulent “sufferers”; the frequent farce of “second opinions”; the
puff paragraphs countenanced by eminent practitioners in relation to
their visits to eminent patients; the etiquette that supported the
“lumping” of fees, and the continuation of “professional services” long
after such services had ceased to be necessary: these, perhaps, were
but the stereotyped faults which unthinking men regard as justified
by custom or their own necessities. The rank and file of the medical
brotherhood, the _Epoch_ admitted, had much work and scanty wage. But
the sins of their leading men were more heinous. The selfishness which
made them contend for the retention of great hospitals in unsuitable
localities; the enormous fees exacted from private patients on the
strength of hospital reputation; the too ready use of the operating
knife on the human subject, and the tortures of vivisection inflicted
in the abused name of science upon the dumb creation: these, indeed,
were sins that cried aloud for reproof and repression.
But the _Epoch_ was more scathing still in its bombardment of the
system of judicature, and the legal ministers thereof. It began with
the House of Lords as a legal tribunal--” the gilded asylum in which
judicial patients suffering from the incurable disease of old age
delivered very occasional judgments in exchange for princely salaries
and exalted rank.” The Royal Courts of Justice were characterised as a
gigantic honeycomb in which clerkly drones got as much as they could
for doing as little as possible; a mighty mill in which the machinery
stood still during vacations which lasted about a third of the working
year; a vast temple in which the servers were ever engaged in piling
fuel on the altars of precedent and practice.
Then the writer, or writers, went on to deal with the legal
practitioners, whom he or they described as “Locusts of the Law”;
but here, again, there was no condemnation for the honest rank and
file--the barristers in their chambers and the solicitors in their
offices, who were fair and square in their dealings, and manfully
struggled to keep their footing under almost impossible conditions.
But for the brilliant leaders of the Bar--the advocates who walked
in silk attire and siller had to spare--there was no gentleness.
“Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!” For them, said the _Epoch_, the
whole pretentious fabric of our legal system was maintained; for their
advantage the monstrous delusion of honorary services; for their
immunity the supposed dissociation of forensic labour from forensic
fees; and the helpless position of suitors whose causes they mismanaged
or neglected.
Contempt was poured on the “representative bodies” which misrepresented
the forensic profession--the General Council of the Bar, with its
policy of tithe, mint, and cumin, and its neglect of the weightier
matters of the law; the Benchers, with their limpet-like clinging to
ancient funds and obsolete traditions; the circuit messes, with their
petty jealousies and selfish trade-unionism.
But here, in the middle-class multitude, if anywhere, lay the true
strength and stay of the nation. With all their faults, these men were
mainly of the right sort. But they were selfish, supine, indifferent,
save to their own immediate comfort and advantage. In politics they
were swayed by purely party cries, or else not moved at all. In
municipal affairs they allowed themselves to be swamped by noisy
social democrats; in religion, if not actually hostile to the Church,
they maintained a cautious “non-committal” attitude. They placidly
acquiesced in government by permanent secretaries--men of clerkly mind,
the clustering, clinging barnacles on the great ship of State. But when
conscription was talked of--when the idea of devoting a few years to
military training, and, in some dire emergency, their lives, if need
be, to the service of king and mother-country--they held up their hands
in pious horror at the bare thought of anything so “un-English,”--and
so very inconvenient!
Thus may be very briefly summarised the outspoken and unflinching
attacks on bodies of men and institutions which it had always been
considered right to pat on the back, and on the leading members
thereof, (to whom, as they already had much, it was servilely
considered that more should be given). It certainly was manifest
that the _Epoch_ writers had been given a free hand, and had used
it, with _magna est veritas_ for their war-cry. Naturally, protests,
remonstrances, denials, poured in from the attacked; for to few is it
given to see ourselves as others see us.
Yet, after all, it was but a twentieth century echo; a rough and
trenchant postscript to a certain sermon preached long, long ago on a
Syrian mountain-side to listening multitudes who were astonished at the
Preacher’s doctrines.
Whether this stirring of the dry bones would ultimately make for
greater righteousness time alone could show. Dark are the workings of
destiny; and in the path of reform immediate results can rarely be
recorded. Undoubtedly the proximate outcome of the _Epoch_ campaign was
a strengthening of the cause of the malcontents. The numbers of the
Leaguers still grew and grew. They had, in fact, become an army on half
pay; for every Leaguer, unemployed and unemployable, drew something
from the coffers of the organisation, and thus the body of Adullamites
drew in every one that was in distress, and every one that was in
debt, and every one that was discontented. In effect, the rate-payers
of London, who were for buying peace at any price, had provided their
enemy with the sinews of war, and thereby hastened the approaching
climax.