CONSULTATION.
They were sitting one morning at breakfast—that pleasantest of meals,
unless you have to be up at an unusually early hour to catch the train
and be off to London. Modern life is not such an improvement on that of
the past as we are apt to fancy. The breakfast was the one meal at which
people could meet and discuss matters—private, local, political,
literary, or religious, in an informal way. We have no pleasant
breakfast in these more ostentatious days, when society is too large to
admit of friendship; but it seems to me that in my younger days we got a
good deal more pleasure out of life. No wonder, then, that we sigh for
the good old times, and long for their revival; that we have Queen Anne
furniture, and houses built in what is called the Elizabethan style, and
an effort to do away with the rail, and to revive the far-famed coaches
with four horses which were the delight of the nation in the Georgian
days.
I can call well to mind the time when I held the coachman of a certain
Royal Mail, which made its appearance in our benighted village about
breakfast-time, to have been one of the most eminent men of the day, and
felt at least a foot taller when, as was his wont, he gave me, boy as I
was, a friendly nod of recognition. As to seeing the horses changed,
that was a scene I would not have missed on any account. How we all
stood admiring as the panting steeds, which had galloped gloriously their
stage, were led sweating away, and the fresh team, with cloths on, and
their hoofs newly-cleaned, and everything about them bright and shiny,
took the vacant places! What a pleasure it was to see them as they stood
pawing the ground, impatient to be off! How glad we were when the
coachman, as he climbed up into his lofty seat, and gathered up the reins
in his capacious hand, gave the signal, ‘Let ’em go!’ How beautiful it
was to us lads to see the coach bound off like a thing of life, while the
guard blew a farewell flourish on his horn, and the horses settled down
steadily to their work after a playful flourish or two!
Woe is me! I, and other miserable sinners like unto me, come to town
through tunnels, and over the tops of houses, or along cuttings in which
one gets an unlovely view of the backs of dirty houses and slovenly
yards, in a closely-packed railway carriage, where we can neither talk,
nor hear, nor read, and grow nervous as the engine screams and shrieks on
all occasions, while the railway porters close the doors with a bang
sufficient to send one into a fit. Life in our railway age is hard for
us all.
Wentworth and his wife were at breakfast, as I have said. London had
been disturbed by rumours as to the claim to the titles and estates of
the deceased Baronet. Newspapers were not so full of twaddle as they are
now; that spawn of the press, the newspaper interviewer, had not as yet
sprung into existence. But still then, as now, there was a great deal of
unmeaning gossip that did manage to find its way into the columns of the
weekly and daily journals. It has ever been so. Apparently, it seems as
if it ever will be so. The fashion originated in the servants’ hall. ‘A
chambermaid to a lady of my acquaintance,’ writes Dean Swift, ‘when
talking with one of her fellow-servants, said: “I hear it is all over
London already that I am going to leave my lady.”’ In this respect she
resembled the footman who, being newly married, desired his comrade to
tell him freely ‘what the town really thought of it.’ From the servants’
hall the habit spread to Grub Street, and thence to the West-End, to
become the leading feature in journals only written for men, or
gentlemen, or ladies, as circumstances required. We laugh at the old
divine who wrote a threepenny pamphlet against France, and who, being in
the country, hearing of a French privateer hovering along the coast, fled
to town and told his friends that they need not wonder at his haste,
which he accounted for from the fact that the King of France, having got
intelligence of his whereabouts, had sent a privateer on purpose to carry
him away. How ridiculous was good Dr. Gee, Prebendary of Westminster,
who wrote a small paper against Popery! Being ordered to travel on the
Continent for his health, he disguised his person and assumed another
name, as he fancied he would be murdered, or put into the Inquisition.
But are we less ridiculous, or rather has not that ridiculous
exaggeration of the personal, which is the foundation of newspaper
twaddle, become more of a nuisance than ever?
Again, we all of us think too much of money and money-making. Is it not
time that we utter a word of warning in the matter? It is inconvenient
to have no money, most of us know by practical experience; but the
possession of much of it is not after all a guarantee of respectability
of character, or individual capacity. We call ourselves a Christian
people, we profess to be actuated by Christian principles. The Master
was a poor man—a carpenter’s son—His disciples were poor men. If any
class are particularly referred to in the New Testament as far from the
kingdom, they are the rich. All modern society is based on the opposite
idea. We give the rich man the chief place in the synagogue. The
society journals delight to do him honour. He has even made church-going
the fashion. This is no age of poor geniuses. Our artists, our poets or
teachers are all of the well-to-do. A Burns, or a Bloomfield, would be
thought nothing of in our time. The modern woman is impossible in a poor
community. When a lady writer is described in our magazines and
newspapers, the writer dwells at painful length on the costliness of her
surroundings; her dresses, her parties, the expensiveness of her
furniture, and the signs of wealth she everywhere displays. The
millions—how they toil and how miserably they live! The rich—what an
idle life they lead! And then think of the way in which that wealth,
which is often a curse to them, is obtained! Far away indeed is the new
heaven and the new earth in which dwelleth righteousness; infamous as are
the means by which the wealth we envy and admire is obtained, how ready
we are to do homage to its possessor, poor as he may be in spirit, and
unclean and unlovely in his life! Wentworth saw, as we all do, this
unsatisfactory side of all human affairs. The time had come, he thought,
for an effort for something better, for a state in which the wealth
earned by the labourer should be more equitably distributed. There was a
divine order in life, he believed, which had been lost sight of, and
forgotten, and the result was unmitigated poverty and wretchedness. For
this society was responsible, and especially its rulers, who had
increased the sufferings of the poor, who had trampled on the weak, who
had played into the hands of the rich and the strong; he did not believe,
as some of our modern lights do, that the masses were always right and
the classes always wrong. It seemed to him that there were good and bad
amongst them all, that circumstances were such, that there was little
hope of change for the better. Circumstances were too strong for the
individual to conquer. Take intemperance, for instance, the main cause
of England’s wretchedness; how is it possible to grapple with that in
society, where intoxicating drink is deemed, in most circles, a daily
necessity of life?
‘You must form new social conditions,’ said Buxton as he entered: ‘I have
just left,’ he said, ‘a friend of mine. We were fellow students. He was
the leader in all the classes, and graduated with high honours. He took
his doctor’s degree and then became a clergyman, acquired great
popularity, was the means of drawing together a large congregation,
became one of the ornaments of the temperance platform, was for awhile a
power in Exeter Hall, had everything that heart could wish, a charming
wife, a comfortable income, a large family; and now he has become a sot
and a drunkard, and I see no hope for him as long as he lives. I can
only believe that he was born with a hereditary taint—and that after
fighting against it all his life, it has broken out at last and proved
his master.’
‘Then you think drunkenness is a disease, and that a man is not
responsible for it?’
‘In many cases I do, and I smile when I hear the parson denounce him as
guilty of a heinous sin, or the judge brand him as a criminal offender.
Examine the drunkard’s body after death, and you see in the stomach, in
the liver, in the heart and brain signs of a diseased condition. At the
same time, I am ready to admit that there are many who drink out of mere
cussedness or who are so wretched that they take to it for temporary
relief; or who just drink because they live in a drunken set, and like to
do as others around them do. Whatever the immorality, the vice, or the
sin of drunkenness, in a very large number of cases the drunkard is more
to be pitied than blamed, as the subject of disease. If you get him to
take the pledge, the chances are that he will break it, and that the last
state of that man will be worse than the first.’
‘Ah! that helps me to what I have been long thinking of,’ replied
Wentworth.
‘What is that—a community planted where no drink can be had? That is all
very well; but while you are about it, you may as well go a step further.
There are other hereditary diseases besides drunkenness: why permit them?
Man is an animal,’ said Buxton. ‘I am, of course, speaking only from a
medical point of view. What do we do with animals? Why, we stamp out
the disease, and thus we get a new generation. It is thus we battle with
lung disease in bullocks, swine fever and glandered horses. We must
stamp out disease in men and women as we stamp it out of other animals.’
‘And then pay compensation to the owner. That would be rather a costly
matter.’
‘No; I would put it the other way. Take, for instance, a consumptive
couple in humble life. They marry early. The mother has a large family.
The father dies of consumption before he has reached middle age, after
being in a hospital for months, supported at the public expense, and he
leaves his children, if they live, to be supported by the parish. If
there is to be compensation, it is not the State that ought to be asked
to pay it. If drink be one cause of poverty, surely hereditary disease
is another. In a perfect community neither should be allowed to exist.
Think of such awful things as epilepsy and insanity, and cancer and
scrofula, none of which science can cure! Why not ask society to stamp
them out? It is downright wickedness to allow them to be propagated in
our midst.’
‘Public opinion would never consent to that.’
‘No,’ replied Buxton; ‘I am quite aware of that; but I would create a
public opinion that would regard such marriages with horror, and then
they would gradually become rare. Men and women have duties to society,
and have to think of something else than the gratification of selfish
passion or mere animal instinct. It is thus hereditary disease may
disappear, and the nation be all the stronger and happier and richer. I
know there are good people who look upon such afflictions as the result
of the Lord’s chastening hand, and as they bury wife, or husband, or son,
or daughter, learn to kiss the rod—as they call it—and to thank the Lord
that He thus is weaning them from the world, and preparing them for a
better world, whither they tell us their loved ones are already gone. I
have no sympathy with that state of mind. It seems to me almost
blasphemous, as the bereavements they rejoice in for their supposed
sanctifying effects are simply the natural result of their own folly and
imprudence and disregard of natural law. In the days of ignorance how
did we treat the insane? Why, they were regarded as victims of Divine
wrath, and the priest was called in—and of course well paid—to exorcise
the evil spirit. That we do not do so now is a proof that we are a
little wiser than our fathers—that, in fact, we are not quite such
thundering fools; but we have a good deal yet to learn, nevertheless.’
‘The fact is,’ said Wentworth, ‘a man must learn to deny himself for the
public good. Rather a difficult task that. If the victim of hereditary
disease refuses to marry and have children, hereditary disease will die
out. Is not that asking too much of human nature?’
‘There we must appeal to the law for the protection of the general
public. The community is of more importance than the individual.’
‘But there is no law that cannot be evaded.’
‘Exactly so. Laws against drunkenness are constantly broken, but they
have a beneficial effect nevertheless. A prohibitory liquor law goes too
far. To act on the idea that a glass of claret, or beer, or cider does
mischief to anyone is absurd. Walter Mapes was right when he wrote in
praise of drink. As the old monk writes—
‘“A glass of wine amazingly enliveneth one’s internals.”’
‘You are right there,’ replied Wentworth. ‘Last summer I was at a
seaside watering-place. There had been a regatta there, and I had
written a description of it for our paper. In a day or two after the
event was celebrated by a grand dinner at the leading hotel, to which I
was invited. Unfortunately, on the day of the dinner I was desperately
ill. My head was splitting; my skin was as tough as the hide of a
rhinoceros; I ached in every limb. I went to the medical men of the
district; there were two of them in partnership. No. 1 made me believe
that I was in a bad way; No. 2 made me out worse. “Could I go to the
dinner?” I asked. “By no means,” was the reply. “Take this medicine, go
home and go to bed, and we will come and see you in the morning.” Ill as
I was, I went to the dinner. It was a very jovial one, and I sat
drinking champagne till late. I went home, slept like a top, and woke up
as well as I ever was in my life. The next morning the doctor came.
“Ah,” he said, “I see you look all the better for my medicine.” I said,
“I did not take a drop of your medicine. I went to the dinner, drank
champagne all night, and it was that which cured me.” “Very strange
that,” said the doctor. “The very things we think poison have often
quite a contrary effect.” My own opinion is that if I had taken the
medicine I should have been ill for a week at least. I don’t take wine
as a daily drink, because I can’t afford it, for one reason, and for
another because I believe, taken daily, it has a mischievous effect. But
there are times when it does good, and life is not so joyous that we can
afford to dispense entirely with the pleasant stimulus of wine. I would
not prevent its manufacture. No society has ever existed without the
winecup for its feasts and holidays. I would not put down the liquor
traffic. I would only shut up the drink shops. It is they that cause
the drunkenness which does so much mischief, and there is no need for
their existence at all.
‘But let us hear what her ladyship has to say,’ said Buxton.
‘What are you talking about?’ she said.
‘A regenerated State.’
‘Ah, there is need for it,’ she said. ‘But how are you to get it? That
is the question.’
‘Oh, nothing is easier. Buy a farm in Essex and form there a model
society.’
‘With a cheap train to take your people to London in an hour or two?
That will never do.’
‘Well, then, let us go to Canada and plant our Utopia there.’
‘And fail, as others have done,’ said she.
‘But we shall take picked men and women, and with them we cannot fail.’
‘But they are not immortal.’
‘Happily,’ said Buxton, ‘none of us are that. We’ve all got to die and
make room for the new generation.’
‘And can you answer for the new generation?’ asked Rose, ‘that they will
remain shut up in your Utopia to labour, not each for himself, but for
mutual benefit; that they will conform to your ideas as regards drinking
and matrimony; that no selfish passion will run riot; that no serpent
will come into that paradise to tempt another Eve; that the new Adam will
be wiser than the old one?’
‘Why, I thought you were in favour of the idea,’ said her husband.
‘But I am a woman.’
‘And therefore have a full right to change your opinion,’ added Buxton.
‘Of course, there must be some failures. It is by them we learn how to
succeed,’ replied Wentworth. ‘We learn from the failure of past
organizations the way to form better and more successful ones. Are there
not successful Shaker settlements in America?’
‘You make me laugh,’ said the lady.
‘This is no laughing matter. We are very much in earnest.’
‘Well, if you are in earnest, let me have the selection of the candidates
for the new society.’
‘Very good; but I am afraid you will only pass the good-looking ones, and
forget the old time-honoured maxim that “handsome is as handsome does.”’
‘A maxim I laugh to scorn.’
‘Of course you do.’
‘Well, you want healthy men and women, don’t you? And good looks are
only to be found with physical health. It is by over-eating and
over-drinking and over-working that you get a diseased and ugly race. Go
to our east coast seaside resorts and see what fine men and women there
are there. Contrast them with the operatives of the mine and factory.
They scarcely seem to belong to the same race. A good-looking girl is
happier than a plain one. You men are all for good looks. A fine
physical organization indicates something more desirable. Nor do I blame
them. “The soul is form, and doth the body make.” The homage we pay to
beauty in man or woman is but rational. What made Alcibiades a power in
Athens but his good looks? Did not Jew and Greek alike agree in doing
honour to Adonis? The outward form indicates the inner disposition. If
men are to have a brighter world we must people it with brighter people.
But I think on the whole you had better stop where you are. Society in
one way does improve. Progress is slow—but institutions are hard to
remove, bad habits harder still. Why go out into the wilderness to teach
people to be content with an agricultural life? Better fifty years of
Europe than a cycle of Cathay. Better to bear the ills we have than fly
to those we know not of.’
‘Your ladyship is poetical!’
‘Not a bit of it—only practical, as we women always are when you men are
up in the clouds. I believe, as soon as the peasant has got back to the
hind, we shall have a new era for England, I believe the agricultural
labourer who is helped to emigrate to Canada can better his condition at
once. But I am not an agricultural labourer. I have no wish to pass my
days in milking cows and rearing poultry; I have no wish to pass my days
thousands of miles away from London, or Paris, or Rome. Am I not the
heir of all the ages underneath the sun? I am for stopping at home and
doing all the good I can. I do not feel called upon to dress like a guy,
as the Shaker women do; nor do I see how you can make any settlement that
can last. It may succeed for a time, if the conditions are favourable,
and you select the men and women whom you take out. But as the old ones
die off and the young people grow up there will be all sorts of
difficulties. Wordsworth, Southey, and Coleridge had similar dreams. It
was fortunate for them and the world that they were unable to carry them
out. They did much better work at home. As long as human nature remains
what it is we must build on the old lines.’
‘How then, would you regenerate society?’
‘By the regeneration of the individual. What is society but a collection
of men? Save the man and the mass are saved. Buxton believes in
science; Wentworth, you believe in politics. Well, both are means to an
end; but more is required.’
‘And that is?’
‘Christ in the heart.’
‘Rather an exploded idea in these enlightened times. Why, you take us
back to the dark ages!’ said Buxton.
‘Dark ages, indeed! At any rate they were ages of faith—when men
believed in God, and did mighty works. Alas! we have no such men now.’
‘And why not?’
‘Because this is the age of material organization, of mechanical
progress, of the exaltation of the mass over the individual, of an
artificial equality; an age that has lost faith, an age of despair, when
the rich man cries “Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die;” when the
statesman recklessly legislates, believing “After me the deluge;” when
the people “feed on lies.” “The light shineth in the darkness, and the
darkness apprehendeth it not.”’
‘Nevertheless,’ said Wentworth, ‘I feel inclined to make a start in
Canada. Rose, I know, will come after a little pressing; and if you will
come with us, I have a friend who has placed some land at my disposal. I
have found some men and women of the right stamp who are ready to
emigrate. They live in unhealthy homes, they have bad food, and are
diseased in consequence. They are surrounded by evil companions, and
that leads them into crime. Man is, to a certain extent, the creature of
circumstance.
‘Yes, that is too true,’ replied Buxton; ‘but what do you propose as the
remedy?’
‘Well, that is what I am coming to. Remove the pauper, place him in a
new world, and with better surroundings, and he will become a better man.
My friend is quite prepared to do so; he is ready to help the poor to
emigrate to the colonies or America.’
‘But if the colonies or America will not have them, what are you to do?
They may object—in fact, they do object to the poor of this country being
thrown destitute and helpless on their shores.’
‘That is true; but my friend is resolved to send out only deserving men
and women whose characters will be carefully inquired into, and to send
them out under competent guides. He proposes to buy a large estate in
some eligible part of the world, where land is cheap, where the climate
is healthy, and where all that is wanted to develop the fruits of the
earth, and to ensure health and happiness to the people, is human labour.
Of course, he does not propose to deal with the masses; but he has an
idea, that if he makes an attempt and it succeeds, other wealthy and
benevolent men will follow his example, and thus the amount of crime, and
misery, and poverty in England may be diminished.’
‘But why not try such a scheme in England?’
‘The expense is too great; the rates and taxes are too heavy, and the
difficulties created by land-laws and lawyers are too great. Besides,
there would always be the danger of the men breaking away in sudden fits
of ill-humour and discontent, and getting back to their old bad habits
and evil companionship. They must leave all the evils of the old world
behind them and start clear. You will come with us, Buxton?’
‘With all my heart,’ was the reply.