LET me begin by asking the ladies who are interesting themselves in this
good work, whether they have really considered what they are about to do
in carrying out their own plans? Are they aware that if their Society
really succeeds, they will produce a very serious, some would think a
very dangerous, change in the state of this nation? Are they aware that
they would probably save the lives of some thirty or forty per cent. of
the children who are born in England, and that therefore they would cause
the subjects of Queen Victoria to increase at a very far more rapid rate
than they do now? And are they aware that some very wise men inform us
that England is already over-peopled, and that it is an exceedingly
puzzling question where we shall soon be able to find work or food for
our masses, so rapidly do they increase already, in spite of the thirty
or forty per cent. which kind Nature carries off yearly before they are
five years old? Have they considered what they are to do with all those
children whom they are going to save alive? That has to be thought of;
and if they really do believe, with some political economists, that
over-population is a possibility to a country which has the greatest
colonial empire that the world has ever seen; then I think they had
better stop in their course, and let the children die, as they have been
in the habit of dying.
But if, on the other hand, it seems to them, as I confess it does to me,
that the most precious thing in the world is a human being; that the
lowest, and poorest, and the most degraded of human beings is better than
all the dumb animals in the world; that there is an infinite, priceless
capability in that creature, fallen as it may be; a capability of virtue,
and of social and industrial use, which, if it is taken in time, may be
developed up to a pitch, of which at first sight the child gives no hint
whatsoever; if they believe again, that of all races upon earth now, the
English race is probably the finest, and that it gives not the slightest
sign whatever of exhaustion; that it seems to be on the whole a young
race, and to have very great capabilities in it which have not yet been
developed, and above all, the most marvellous capability of adapting
itself to every sort of climate and every form of life, which any race,
except the old Roman, ever has had in the world; if they consider with me
that it is worth the while of political economists and social
philosophers to look at the map, and see that about four-fifths of the
globe cannot be said as yet to be in anywise inhabited or cultivated, or
in the state into which men could put it by a fair supply of population,
and industry, and human intellect: then, perhaps, they may think with me
that it is a duty, one of the noblest of duties, to help the increase of
the English race as much as possible, and to see that every child that is
born into this great nation of England be developed to the highest pitch
to which we can develop him in physical strength and in beauty, as well
as in intellect and in virtue. And then, in that light, it does seem to
me, that this Institution—small now, but I do hope some day to become
great and to become the mother institution of many and valuable
children—is one of the noblest, most right-minded, straightforward, and
practical conceptions that I have come across for some years.
We all know the difficulties of sanitary legislation. One looks at them
at times almost with despair. I have my own reasons, with which I will
not trouble this meeting, for looking on them with more despair than
ever: not on account of the government of the time, or any possible
government that could come to England, but on account of the peculiar
class of persons in whom the ownership of the small houses has become
more and more vested, and who are becoming more and more, I had almost
said, the arbiters of the popular opinion, and of every election of
parliament. However, that is no business of ours here; that must be
settled somewhere else; and a fearfully long time, it seems to me, it
will be before it is settled. But, in the meantime, what legislation
cannot do, I believe private help, and, above all, woman’s help, can do
even better. It can do this; it can improve the condition of the working
man: and not only of him; I must speak also of the middle classes, of the
men who own the house in which the working man lives. I must speak, too,
of the wealthy tradesman; I must speak—it is a sad thing to have to say
it—of our own class as well as of others. Sanitary reform, as it is
called, or, in plain English, the art of health, is so very recent a
discovery, as all true physical science is, that we ourselves and our own
class know very little about it, and practise it very little. And this
society, I do hope, will bear in mind that it is not simply to seek the
working man, not only to go into the foul alley: but it is to go to the
door of the farmer, to the door of the shopkeeper, aye, to the door of
ladies and gentlemen of the same rank as ourselves. Women can do in that
work what men cannot do. The private correspondence, private
conversation, private example, of ladies, above all of married women, of
mothers of families, may do what no legislation can do. I am struck more
and more with the amount of disease and death I see around me in all
classes, which no sanitary legislation whatsoever could touch, unless you
had a complete house-to-house visitation by some government officer, with
powers to enter every dwelling, to drain it, and ventilate it; and not
only that, but to regulate the clothes and the diet of every inhabitant,
and that among all ranks. I can conceive of nothing short of that, which
would be absurd and impossible, and would also be most harmful morally,
which would stop the present amount of disease and death which I see
around me, without some such private exertion on the part of women, above
all of mothers, as I do hope will spring from this institution more and
more.
I see this, that three persons out of every four are utterly unaware of
the general causes of their own ill-health, and of the ill-health of
their children. They talk of their “afflictions,” and their
“misfortunes;” and, if they be pious people, they talk of “the will of
God,” and of “the visitation of God.” I do not like to trench upon those
matters here; but when I read in my book and in your book, “that it is
not the will of our Father in Heaven that one of these little ones should
perish,” it has come to my mind sometimes with very great strength that
that may have a physical application as well as a spiritual one; and that
the Father in Heaven who does not wish the child’s soul to die, may
possibly have created that child’s body for the purpose of its not dying
except in a good old age. For not only in the lower class, but in the
middle and upper classes, when one sees an unhealthy family, then in
three cases out of four, if one will take time, trouble, and care enough,
one can, with the help of the doctor, who has been attending them, run
the evil home to a very different cause than the will of God; and that
is, to stupid neglect, stupid ignorance, or what is just as bad, stupid
indulgence.
Now, I do believe that if those tracts which you are publishing, which I
have read and of which I cannot speak too highly, are spread over the
length and breadth of the land, and if women—clergymen’s wives, the wives
of manufacturers and of great employers, district visitors and
schoolmistresses, have these books put into their hands, and are
persuaded to spread them, and to enforce them, by their own example and
by their own counsel—that then, in the course of a few years, this system
being thoroughly carried out, you would see a sensible and large increase
in the rate of population. When you have saved your children alive, then
you must settle what to do with them. But a living dog is better than a
dead lion; I would rather have the living child, and let it take its
chance, than let it return to God—wasted. O! it is a distressing thing
to see children die. God gives the most beautiful and precious thing
that earth can have, and we just take it and cast it away; we toss our
pearls upon the dunghill and leave them. A dying child is to me one of
the most dreadful sights in the world. A dying man, a man dying on the
field of battle—that is a small sight; he has taken his chance; he is
doing his duty; he has had his excitement; he has had his glory, if that
will be any consolation to him; if he is a wise man, he has the feeling
that he is dying for his country and his queen: and that is, and ought to
be, enough for him. I am not horrified or shocked at the sight of the
man who dies on the field of battle; let him die so. It does not horrify
or shock me, again, to see a man dying in a good old age, even though the
last struggle be painful, as it too often is. But it does shock me, it
does make me feel that the world is indeed out of joint, to see a child
die. I believe it to be a priceless boon to the child to have lived for
a week, or a day: but oh, what has God given to this thankless earth, and
what has the earth thrown away; and in nine cases out of ten, from its
own neglect and carelessness! What that boy might have been, what he
might have done as an Englishman, if he could have lived and grown up
healthy and strong! And I entreat you to bear this in mind, that it is
not as if our lower or our middle classes were not worth saving: bear in
mind that the physical beauty, strength, intellectual power of the middle
classes—the shopkeeping class, the farming class, down to the lowest
working class—whenever you give them a fair chance, whenever you give
them fair food and air, and physical education of any kind, prove them to
be the finest race in Europe. Not merely the aristocracy, splendid race
as they are, but down and down and down to the lowest labouring man, to
the navigator—why, there is not such a body of men in Europe as our
navigators; and no body of men perhaps have had a worse chance of growing
to be what they are; and yet see what they have done! See the
magnificent men they become, in spite of all that is against them,
dragging them down, tending to give them rickets and consumption, and all
the miserable diseases which children contract; see what men they are,
and then conceive what they might be! It has been said, again and again,
that there are no more beautiful race of women in Europe than the wives
and daughters of our London shopkeepers; and yet there are few races of
people who lead a life more in opposition to all rules of hygiene. But,
in spite of all that, so wonderful is the vitality of the English race,
they are what they are; and therefore we have the finest material to work
upon that people ever had. And, therefore, again, we have the less
excuse if we do allow English people to grow up puny, stunted, and
diseased.
Let me refer again to that word that I used; death—the amount of death.
I really believe there are hundreds of good and kind people who would
take up this subject with their whole heart and soul if they were aware
of the magnitude of the evil. Lord Shaftesbury told you just now that
there were one hundred thousand preventable deaths in England every year.
So it is. We talk of the loss of human life in war. We are the fools of
smoke and noise; because there are cannon-balls, forsooth, and swords and
red coats; and because it costs a great deal of money, and makes a great
deal of talk in the papers, we think: What so terrible as war? I will
tell you what is ten times, and ten thousand times, more terrible than
war, and that is outraged Nature. War, we are discovering now, is the
clumsiest and most expensive of all games; we are finding that if you
wish to commit an act of cruelty and folly, the most costly one that you
can commit is to contrive to shoot your fellow-men in war. So it is; and
thank God that so it is; but Nature, insidious, inexpensive, silent,
sends no roar of cannon, no glitter of arms to do her work; she gives no
warning note of preparation; she has no protocols, nor any diplomatic
advances, whereby she warns her enemy that war is coming. Silently, I
say, and insidiously she goes forth; no! she does not even go forth; she
does not step out of her path; but quietly, by the very same means by
which she makes alive, she puts to death; and so avenges herself of those
who have rebelled against her. By the very same laws by which every
blade of grass grows, and every insect springs to life in the sunbeam,
she kills, and kills, and kills, and is never tired of killing; till she
has taught man the terrible lesson he is so slow to learn, that, Nature
is only conquered by obeying her.
And bear in mind one thing more. Man has his courtesies of war, and his
chivalries of war; he does not strike the unarmed man; he spares the
woman and the child. But Nature is as fierce when she is offended, as
she is bounteous and kind when she is obeyed. She spares neither woman
nor child. She has no pity; for some awful, but most good reason, she is
not allowed to have any pity. Silently she strikes the sleeping babe,
with as little remorse as she would strike the strong man, with the spade
or the musket in his hand. Ah! would to God that some man had the
pictorial eloquence to put before the mothers of England the mass of
preventable suffering, the mass of preventable agony of mind and body,
which exists in England year after year; and would that some man had the
logical eloquence to make them understand that it is in their power, in
the power of the mothers and wives of the higher class, I will not say to
stop it all—God only knows that—but to stop, as I believe, three-fourths
of it.
It is in the power, I believe, of any woman in this room to save three or
four lives—human lives—during the next six months. It is in your power,
ladies; and it is so easy. You might save several lives apiece, if you
choose, without, I believe, interfering with your daily business, or with
your daily pleasure; or, if you choose, with your daily frivolities, in
any way whatsoever. Let me ask, then, those who are here, and who have
not yet laid these things to heart: Will you let this meeting to-day be a
mere passing matter of two or three hours’ interest, which you may go
away and forget for the next book or the next amusement? Or will you be
in earnest? Will you learn—I say it openly—from the noble chairman, how
easy it is to be in earnest in life; how every one of you, amid all the
artificial complications of English society in the nineteenth century,
can find a work to do, a noble work to do, a chivalrous work to do—just
as chivalrous as if you lived in any old magic land, such as Spenser
talked of in his “Faërie Queene;” how you can be as true a knight-errant
or lady-errant in the present century, as if you had lived far away in
the dark ages of violence and rapine? Will you, I ask, learn this? Will
you learn to be in earnest; and to use the position, and the station, and
the talent that God has given you to save alive those who should live?
And will you remember that it is not the will of your Father that is in
Heaven that one little one that plays in the kennel outside should
perish, either in body or in soul?
“A MAD WORLD, MY MASTERS.” {271}
THE cholera, as was to be expected, has reappeared in England again; and
England, as was to be expected, has taken no sufficient steps towards
meeting it; so that if, as seems but too probable, the plague should
spread next summer, we may count with tolerable certainty upon a loss of
some ten thousand lives.
That ten thousand, or one thousand, innocent people should die, of whom
most, if not all, might be saved alive, would seem at first sight a
matter serious enough for the attention of “philanthropists.” Those who
abhor the practice of hanging one man would, one fancies, abhor equally
that of poisoning many; and would protest as earnestly against the
painful capital punishment of diarrhoea as against the painless one of
hempen rope. Those who demand mercy for the Sepoy, and immunity for the
Coolie women of Delhi, unsexed by their own brutal and shameless cruelty,
would, one fancies, demand mercy also for the British workman, and
immunity for his wife and family. One is therefore somewhat startled at
finding that the British nation reserves to itself, though it forbids to
its armies, the right of putting to death unarmed and unoffending men,
women, and children.
After further consideration, however, one finds that there are, as usual,
two sides to the question. One is bound, indeed, to believe, even before
proof, that there are two sides. It cannot be without good and
sufficient reason that the British public remains all but indifferent to
sanitary reform; that though the science of epidemics, as a science, has
been before the world for more than twenty years, nobody believes in it
enough to act upon it, save some few dozen of fanatics, some of whom have
(it cannot be denied) a direct pecuniary interest in disturbing what they
choose to term the poison-manufactories of free and independent Britons.
Yes; we should surely respect the expressed will and conviction of the
most practical of nations, arrived at after the experience of three
choleras, stretching over a whole generation. Public opinion has
declared against the necessity of sanitary reform: and is not public
opinion known to be, in these last days, the Ithuriel’s spear which is to
unmask and destroy all the follies, superstitions, and cruelties of the
universe? The immense majority of the British nation will neither
cleanse themselves nor let others cleanse them: and are we not governed
by majorities? Are not majorities, confessedly, always in the right,
even when smallest, and a show of hands a surer test of truth than any
amount of wisdom, learning, or virtue? How much more, then, when a whole
free people is arrayed, in the calm magnificence of self-confident
conservatism, against a few innovating and perhaps sceptical
philosophasters? Then surely, if ever, vox populi is vox coeli.
And, in fact, when we come to examine the first and commonest objection
against sanitary reformers, we find it perfectly correct. They are said
to be theorists, dreamers of the study, who are ignorant of human nature;
and who in their materialist optimism, have forgotten the existence of
moral evil till they almost fancy at times that they can set the world
right simply by righting its lowest material arrangements. The complaint
is perfectly true. They have been ignorant of human nature; they have
forgotten the existence of moral evil; and if any religious periodical
should complain of their denying original sin, they can only answer that
they did in past years fall into that folly, but that subsequent
experience has utterly convinced them of the truth of the doctrine.
For, misled by this ignorance of human nature, they expected help, from
time to time, from various classes of the community, from whom no help
(as they ought to have known at first) is to be gotten. Some, as a fact,
expected the assistance of the clergy, and especially of the preachers of
those denominations who believe that every human being, by the mere fact
of his birth into this world, is destined to endless torture after death,
unless the preacher can find an opportunity to deliver him therefrom
before he dies. They supposed that to such preachers the mortal lives of
men would be inexpressibly precious; that any science which held out a
prospect of retarding death in the case of “lost millions” would be
hailed as a heavenly boon, and would be carried out with the fervour of
men who felt that for the soul’s sake no exertion was too great in behalf
of the body.
A little more reflection would have quashed their vain hope. They would
have recollected that each of these preachers was already connected with
a congregation; that he had already a hold on them, and they on him; that
he was bound to provide for their spiritual wants before going forth to
seek for fresh objects of his ministry. They would have recollected that
on the old principle (and a very sound one) of a bird in the hand being
worth two in the bush, the minister of a congregation would feel it his
duty, as well as his interest, not to defraud his flock of his labours by
spending valuable time on a secular subject like sanitary reform, in the
hope of possibly preserving a few human beings, whose souls he might
hereafter (and that again would be merely a possibility) benefit.
They would have recollected, again, that these congregations are almost
exclusively composed of those classes who have little or nothing to fear
from epidemics, and (what is even more important) who would have to bear
the expenses of sanitary improvements. But so sanguine, so reckless of
human conditions had their theories made them, that they actually
expected that parish rectors, already burdened with over-work and vestry
quarrels—nay, even that preachers who got their bread by pew-rents, and
whose life-long struggle was, therefore, to keep those pews filled, and
those renters in good humour—should astound the respectable house-owners
and ratepayers who sat beneath them by the appalling words: “You, and not
the ‘Visitation of God,’ are the cause of epidemics; and of you, now that
you are once fairly warned of your responsibility, will your brothers’
blood be required.” Conceive Sanitary Reformers expecting this of
“ministers,” let their denomination be what it might—many of the poor
men, too, with a wife and seven children! Truly has it been said, that
nothing is so cruel as the unreasonableness of a fanatic.
They forgot, too, that sanitary science, like geology, must be at first
sight “suspect” in the eyes of the priests of all denominations, at least
till they shall have arrived at a much higher degree of culture than they
now possess.
Like geology, it interferes with that Deus e machinâ theory of human
affairs which has been in all ages the stronghold of priestcraft. That
the Deity is normally absent, and not present; that he works on the world
by interference, and not by continuous laws; that it is the privilege of
the priesthood to assign causes for these “judgments” and “visitations”
of the Almighty, and to tell mankind why He is angry with them, and has
broken the laws of nature to punish them—this, in every age, has seemed
to the majority of priests a doctrine to be defended at all hazards; for
without it, so they hold, their occupation were gone at once. {276} No
wonder, then, if they view with jealousy a set of laymen attributing
these “judgments” to purely chemical laws, and to misdoings and ignorance
which have as yet no place in the ecclesiastical catalogue of sins.
True, it may be that the Sanitary Reformers are right; but they had
rather not think so. And it is very easy not to think so. They only
have to ignore, to avoid examining, the facts. Their canon of utility is
a peculiar one; and with facts which do not come under that canon they
have no concern. It may be true, for instance, that the eighteenth
century, which to the clergy is a period of scepticism, darkness, and
spiritual death, is the very century which saw more done for science, for
civilisation, for agriculture, for manufacture, for the prolongation and
support of human life than any preceding one for a thousand years and
more. What matter? That is a “secular” question, of which they need
know nothing. And sanitary reform (if true) is just such another; a
matter (as slavery has been seen to be by the preachers of the United
States) for the legislator, and not for those whose kingdom is “not of
this world.”
Others again expected, with equal wisdom, the assistance of the political
economist. The fact is undeniable, but at the same time inexplicable.
What they could have found in the doctrines of most modern political
economists which should lead them to suppose that human life would be
precious in their eyes, is unknown to the writer of these pages. Those
whose bugbear has been over-population, whose motto has been an
euphuistic version of