I. I hope my kind correspondent will pardon my publication of the
following letter, which gives account of an exemplary life, and puts
questions which many desire to have answered.
“My dear Mr. Ruskin,—I do not know if you have forgotten me, for it is
a long time since I wrote to you; but you wrote so kindly to me before,
that I venture to bring myself before you again, more especially as you
write to me (among others) every month, and I want to answer something
in these letters.
“I do answer your letters (somewhat combatively) every month in my
mind, but all these months I have been waiting for an hour of
sufficient strength and leisure, and have found it now for the first
time. A family of eleven children, through a year of much illness, and
the birth of another child in May, have not left me much strength for
pleasure, such as this is.
“Now a little while ago, you asked reproachfully of Englishwomen in
general, why none of them had joined St. George’s Company. I can only
answer for myself, and I have these reasons.
“First. Being situated as I am, and as doubtless many others are more
or less, I cannot join it. In my actions I am subject first to my
husband, and then to my family. Any one who is entirely free cannot
judge how impossible it is to make inelastic and remote rules apply to
all the ever-varying and incalculable changes and accidents and
personalities of life. They are a disturbing element to us visionaries,
which I have been forced to acknowledge and submit to, but which you
have not. Having so many to consider and consult, it is all I can do to
get through the day’s work; I am obliged to take things as I find them,
and do the best I can, in haste; and I might constantly be breaking
rules, and not able to help it, and indeed I should not have time to
think about it. I do not want to be hampered more than I am. I am not
straitened for money; but most people with families are so more or
less, and this is another element of difficulty.
“Secondly. Although I do not want to be further bound by rules, I
believe that as regards principles I am a member of St. George’s
Company already; and I do not like to make any further profession which
would seem to imply a renunciation of the former errors of my way, and
the beginning of a new life. I have never been conscious of any other
motives or course of life than those which you advocate; and my
children and all around me do not know me in any other light; and I
find a gradual and unconscious conformation to them growing up round
me, though I have no sort of teaching faculty. I cannot tell how much
of them I owe to you, for some of your writings which fell in my way
when I was very young made a deep impression on me, and I grew up
embued with their spirit; but certainly I cannot now profess it for the
first time.
“Thirdly (and this is wherein I fear to offend you), I will join St.
George’s Company whenever you join it yourself. Please pardon me for
saying that I appear to be more a member of it than you are. My life is
strictly bound and ruled, and within those lines I live. Above all
things, you urge our duties to the land, the common earth of our
country. It seems to me that the first duty any one owes to his country
is to live in it. I go further, and maintain that every one is bound to
have a home, and live in that. You speak of the duty of acquiring, if
possible, and cultivating, the smallest piece of ground. But, (forgive
the question,) where is your house and your garden? I know you have got
places, but you do not stay there. Almost every month you date from
some new place, a dream of delight to me; and all the time I am
stopping at home, labouring to improve the place I live at, to keep the
lives entrusted to me, and to bring forth other lives in the agony and
peril of my own. And when I read your reproaches, and see where they
date from, I feel as a soldier freezing in the trenches before
Sebastopol might feel at receiving orders from a General who was dining
at his club in London. If you would come and see me in May, I could
show you as pretty a little garden of the spade as any you ever saw,
made on the site of an old rubbish heap, where seven tiny pairs of
hands and feet have worked like fairies. Have you got a better one to
show me? For the rest of my garden I cannot boast; because out-of-door
work or pleasure is entirely forbidden me by the state of my health.
“Again, I agree with you in your dislike of railroads, but I suspect
you use them, and sometimes go on them. I never do. I obey these laws
and others, with whatever inconvenience or privation they may involve;
but you do not; and that makes me revolt when you scold us.
“Again, I cannot, as you suggest, grow, spin, and weave the linen for
myself and family. I have enough to do to get the clothes made. If you
would establish factories where we could get pure woven cotton, linen,
and woollen, I would gladly buy them there; and that would be a fair
division of labour. It is not fair that the more one does, the more
should be required of one.
“You see you are like a clergyman in the pulpit in your books: you can
scold the congregation, and they cannot answer; behold the congregation
begins to reply; and I only hope you will forgive me.
“Believe me,
“Yours very truly.”
II. It chances, I see, while I print my challenge to the Bishop of my
University, that its neighbouring clergymen are busy in expressing to
him their thanks and compliments. The following address is worth
preserving. I take it from the ‘Morning Post’ of December 16, and
beneath it have placed an article from the ‘Telegraph’ of the following
day, describing the results of clerical and episcopal teaching of an
orthodox nature in Liverpool, as distinguished from ‘Doctor’ Colenso’s
teaching in Africa.
“The Inhibition of Bishop Colenso.—The clergy of the rural deanery of
Witney, Oxford, numbering thirty-four, together with the rural dean
(the Rev. F. M. Cunningham), have subscribed their names to the
following circular, which has been forwarded to the Bishop of
Oxford:—‘To the Right Rev. Father in God, John Fielder, by Divine
permission Lord Bishop of Oxford.—We, the undersigned clergy of the
rural deanery of Witney, in your Lordship’s diocese, beg respectfully
to offer to your Lordship our cordial sympathy under the painful
circumstances in which you have been placed by the invitation to the
Right Rev. Dr. Colenso to preach in one of the churches in your
diocese. Your firm and spontaneous refusal to permit Dr. Colenso to
preach will be thankfully accepted by all consistent members of our
Church as a protest much needed in these times against the teaching of
one who has grievously offended many consciences, and has attempted as
far as in him lay to injure the “faith which was delivered to the
saints.” [4] That your Lordship may long be spared to defend the truth,
is the prayer of your Lordship’s obedient and attached clergy.’”
III. “Something startling in the way of wickedness is needed to
astonish men who, like our Judges, see and hear the periodical crop of
crime gathered in at Assizes; yet in two great cities of England, on
Tuesday, expressions of amazement, shame, and disgust fell from the
seat of Justice. At York, Mr. Justice Denman was driven to utter a
burst of just indignation at the conduct of certain people in his
court, who grinned and tittered while a witness in a disgraceful case
was reluctantly repeating some indelicate language. ‘Good God!’
exclaimed his Lordship, ‘is this a Christian country? Let us at least
have decency in courts of justice. One does not come to be amused by
filth which one is obliged to extract in cases that defame the land.’
At Liverpool a sterner declaration of judicial anger was made, with
even stronger cause. Two cases of revolting barbarism were tried by Mr.
Justice Mellor—one of savage violence towards a man, ending in murder;
the other of outrage upon a woman, so unspeakably shameful and horrible
that the difficulty is how to convey the facts without offending public
decency. In the first, a gang of men at Liverpool set upon a porter
named Richard Morgan, who was in the company of his wife and brother,
and because he did not instantly give them sixpence to buy beer they
kicked him completely across the street, a distance of thirty feet,
with such ferocity, in spite of all the efforts made to save him by the
wife and brother, that the poor man was dead when he was taken up. And
during this cruel and cowardly scene the crowd of bystanders not only
did not attempt to rescue the victim, but hounded on his murderers, and
actually held back the agonized wife and the brave brother from
pursuing the homicidal wretches. Three of them were placed at the bar
on trial for their lives, and convicted; nor would we intervene with
one word in their favour, though that word might save their vile necks.
This case might appear bad enough to call forth the utmost wrath of
Justice; but the second, heard at the same time and place, was yet more
hideous. A tramp-woman, drunk, and wet to the skin with rain, was going
along a road near Burnley, in company with a navvy, who by-and-by left
her helpless at a gate. Two out of a party of young colliers coming
from work found her lying there, and they led her into a field. They
then sent a boy named Slater to fetch the remaining eight of their
band, and, having thus gathered many spectators, two of them certainly,
and others of the number in all probability, outraged the hapless
creature, leaving her after this infernal treatment in such plight that
next day she was found lying dead in the field. The two in
question—Durham, aged twenty, and Shepherd, aged sixteen—were arraigned
for murder; but that charge was found difficult to make good, and the
minor indictment for rape was alone pressed against them. Of the facts
there was little or no doubt; and it may well be thought that in
stating them we have accomplished the saddest portion of our duty to
the public.
“But no! to those who have learned how to measure human nature, we
think what followed will appear the more horrible portion of the
trial—if more horrible could be. With a strange want of insight, the
advocate for these young men called up the companions of their atrocity
to swear—what does the public expect?—to swear that they did not think
the tramp woman was ill-used, nor that what was done was wrong. Witness
after witness, present at the time, calmly deposed to his personal view
of the transaction in words like those of William Bracewell, a collier,
aged nineteen. Between this precious specimen of our young British
working man and the Bench, the following interchange of questions and
answers passed. ‘You did not think there was anything wrong in
it?’—‘No.’ ‘Do you mean to tell me that you did not think there was
anything wrong in outraging a drunken woman?’—‘She never said nothing.’
‘You repeat you think there was nothing wrong—that there was no harm in
a lot of fellows outraging a drunken woman: is that your view of the
thing?’—‘Yes.’ And, in reply to further questions by Mr. Cottingham,
this fellow Bracewell said he only ‘thought the matter a bit of fun.
None of them interfered to protect the woman.’ Then the boy Slater, who
was sent to bring up the laggards, was asked what he thought of his
errand. Like the others, ‘he hadn’t seen anything very wrong in it.’ At
this point the Judge broke forth, in accents which may well ring
through England. His Lordship indignantly exclaimed: ‘I want to know
how it is possible in a Christian country like this that there should
be such a state of feeling, even among boys of thirteen, sixteen, and
eighteen years of age. It is outrageous. If there are missionaries
wanted to the heathen, there are heathens in England who require
teaching a great deal more than those abroad.’ (Murmurs of ‘Hear hear,’
from the jury-box, and applause in court.) His Lordship continued:
‘Silence! It is quite shocking to hear boys of this age come up and say
these things.’ How, indeed, is it possible? that is the question which
staggers one. Murder there will be—manslaughter, rape, burglary, theft,
are all unfortunately recurring and common crimes in every community.
Nothing in the supposed nature of ‘Englishmen’ can be expected to make
our assizes maiden, and our gaol deliveries blank. But there was
thought to be something in the blood of the race which would somehow
serve to keep us from seeing a Liverpool crowd side with a horde of
murderers against their victim, or a gang of Lancashire lads making a
ring to see a woman outraged to death. A hundred cases nowadays tell us
to discard that idle belief; if it ever was true, it is true no longer.
The most brutal, the most cowardly, the most pitiless, the most
barbarous deeds done in the world, are being perpetrated by the lower
classes of the English people—once held to be by their birth, however
lowly, generous, brave, merciful, and civilized. In all the pages of
Dr. Livingstone’s experience among the negroes of Africa, there is no
single instance approaching this Liverpool story, in savagery of mind
and body, in bestiality of heart and act. Nay, we wrong the lower
animals by using that last word: the foulest among the beasts which
perish is clean, the most ferocious gentle, matched with these
Lancashire pitmen, who make sport of the shame and slaying of a woman,
and blaspheme nature in their deeds, without even any plea whatever to
excuse their cruelty.”
The clergy may vainly exclaim against being made responsible for this
state of things. They, and chiefly their Bishops, are wholly
responsible for it; nay, are efficiently the causes of it, preaching a
false gospel for hire. But, putting all questions of false or true
gospels aside, suppose that they only obeyed St. Paul’s plain order in
1st Corinthians v. 11. Let them determine as distinctly what
covetousness and extortion are in the rich, as what drunkenness is, in
the poor. Let them refuse, themselves, and order their clergy to
refuse, to go out to dine with such persons; and still more positively
to allow such persons to sup at God’s table. And they would soon know
what fighting wolves meant; and something more of their own pastoral
duty than they learned in that Consecration Service, where they
proceeded to follow the example of the Apostles in Prayer, but
carefully left out the Fasting.