cannot be expected to lend their aid in increasing the population by
saving the lives of two-thirds of the children who now die prematurely in
our great cities; and so still further overcrowding this unhappy land
with those helpless and expensive sources of national poverty—rational
human beings, in strength and health.
Moreover—and this point is worthy of serious attention—that school of
political economy, which has now reached its full development, has taken
all along a view of man’s relation to Nature diametrically opposite to
that taken by the Sanitary Reformer, or indeed by any other men of
science. The Sanitary Reformer holds, in common with the chemist or the
engineer, that Nature is to be obeyed only in order to conquer her; that
man is to discover the laws of her existing phenomena, in order that he
may employ them to create new phenomena himself; to turn the laws which
he discovers to his own use; if need be, to counteract one by another.
In this power, it has seemed to them, lay his dignity as a rational
being. It was this, the power of invention, which made him a progressive
animal, not bound as the bird and the bee are, to build exactly as his
forefathers built five thousand years ago.
By political economy alone has this faculty been denied to man. In it
alone he is not to conquer nature, but simply to obey her. Let her
starve him, make him a slave, a bankrupt, or what not, he must submit, as
the savage does to the hail and the lightning. “Laissez-faire,” says the
“Science du néant,” the “Science de la misère,” as it has truly and
bitterly been called; “Laissez-faire.” Analyse economic questions if you
will: but beyond analysis you shall not step. Any attempt to raise
political economy to its synthetic stage is to break the laws of nature,
to fight against facts—as if facts were not made to be fought against and
conquered, and put out of the way, whensoever they interfere in the least
with the welfare of any human being. The drowning man is not to strike
out for his life lest by keeping his head above water he interfere with
the laws of gravitation. Not that the political economist, or any man,
can be true to his own fallacy. He must needs try his hand at the
synthetic method though he forbids it to the rest of the world: but the
only deductive hint which he has as yet given to mankind is, quaintly
enough, the most unnatural “eidolon specûs” which ever entered the head
of a dehumanised pedant—namely, that once famous “Preventive Check,”
which, if a nation did ever apply it—as it never will—could issue, as
every doctor knows, in nothing less than the questionable habits of
abortion, child-murder, and unnatural crime.
The only explanation of such conduct (though one which the men themselves
will hardly accept) is this—that they secretly share somewhat in the
doubt which many educated men have of the correctness of their
inductions; that these same laws of political economy (where they leave
the plain and safe subject-matter of trade) have been arrived at somewhat
too hastily; that they are, in plain English, not quite sound enough yet
to build upon; and that we must wait for a few more facts before we begin
any theories. Be it so. At least, these men, in their present temper of
mind, are not likely to be very useful to the Sanitary Reformer.
Would that these men, or the clergy, had been the only bruised reed in
which the Sanitary Reformers put their trust. They found another reed,
however, and that was Public Opinion; but they forgot that (whatever the
stump-orators may say about this being the age of electric thought, when
truth flashes triumphant from pole to pole, etc.) we have no proof
whatsoever that the proportion of fools is less in this generation than
in those before it, or that truth, when unpalatable (as it almost always
is), travels any faster than it did five hundred years ago. They forgot
that every social improvement, and most mechanical ones, have had to make
their way against laziness, ignorance, envy, vested wrongs, vested
superstitions, and the whole vis inertiæ of the world, the flesh, and the
devil. They were guilty indeed, in this case, not merely of ignorance of
human nature, but of forgetfulness of fact. Did they not know that the
excellent New Poor-law was greeted with the curses of those very farmers
and squires who now not only carry it out lovingly and willingly to the
very letter, but are often too ready to resist any improvement or
relaxation in it which may be proposed by that very Poor-law Board from
which it emanated? Did they not know that Agricultural Science, though
of sixty years’ steady growth, has not yet penetrated into a third of the
farms of England; and that hundreds of farmers still dawdle on after the
fashion of their forefathers, when by looking over the next hedge into
their neighbour’s field they might double their produce and their
profits? Did they not know that the adaptation of steam to machinery
would have progressed just as slowly, had it not been a fact patent to
babies that an engine is stronger than a horse; and that if cotton, like
wheat and beef, had taken twelve months to manufacture, instead of five
minutes, Manchester foresight would probably have been as short and as
purblind as that of the British farmer? What right had they to expect a
better reception for the facts of Sanitary Science?—facts which ought to,
and ultimately will, disturb the vested interests of thousands, will put
them to inconvenience, possibly at first to great expense; and yet facts
which you can neither see nor handle, but must accept and pay hundreds of
thousands of pounds for, on the mere word of a doctor or inspector who
gets his living thereby. Poor John Bull! To expect that you would
accept such a gospel cheerfully was indeed to expect too much!
But yet, though the public opinion of the mass could not be depended on,
there was a body left, distinct from the mass, and priding itself so much
on that distinctness that it was ready to say at times—of course in more
courteous—at least in what it considered more Scriptural language: “This
people which knoweth not the law is accursed.” To it therefore—to the
religious world—some over-sanguine Sanitary Reformers turned their eyes.
They saw in it ready organised (so it professed) for all good works, a
body such as the world had never seen before. Where the religions public
of Byzantium, Alexandria, or Rome numbered hundreds, that of England
numbered its thousands. It was divided, indeed, on minor points, but it
was surely united by the one aim of saving every man his own soul, and of
professing the deepest reverence for that Divine Book which tells men
that the way to attain that aim is, to be good and to do good; and which
contains among other commandments this one—“Thou shaft not kill.” Its
wealth was enormous. It possessed so much political power, that it would
have been able to command elections, to compel ministers, to encourage
the weak hearts of willing but fearful clergymen by fair hopes of
deaneries and bishoprics. Its members were no clique of unpractical
fanatics—no men less. Though it might number among them a few martinet
ex-post-captains, and noblemen of questionable sanity, capable of no more
practical study than that of unfulfilled prophecy, the vast majority of
them were landowners, merchants, bankers, commercial men of all ranks,
full of worldly experience, and of the science of organisation, skilled
all their lives in finding and in employing men and money. What might
not be hoped from such a body, to whom that commercial imperium in
imperio of the French Protestants which the edict of Nantes destroyed was
poor and weak? Add to this that these men’s charities were boundless;
that they were spending yearly, and on the whole spending wisely and
well, ten times as much as ever was spent before in the world, on
educational schemes, missionary schemes, church building, reformatories,
ragged schools, needlewomen’s charities—what not? No object of distress,
it seemed, could be discovered, no fresh means of doing good devised, but
these men’s money poured bountifully and at once into that fresh channel,
and an organisation sprang up for the employment of that money, as
thrifty and as handy as was to be expected from the money-holding classes
of this great commercial nation.
What could not these men do? What were they not bound by their own
principles to do? No wonder that some weak men’s hearts beat high at the
thought. What if the religious world should take up the cause of
Sanitary Reform? What if they should hail with joy a cause in which all,
whatever their theological differences, might join in one sacred crusade
against dirt, degradation, disease, and death? What if they should rise
at the hustings to inquire of every candidate: “Will you or will you not,
pledge yourself to carry out Sanitary Reform in the place for which you
are elected, and let the health and the lives of the local poor be that
‘local interest’ which you are bound by your election to defend? Do you
confess your ignorance of the subject? Then know, sir, that you are
unfit, at this point of the nineteenth century, to be a member of the
British Senate. You go thither to make laws ‘for the preservation of
life and property.’ You confess yourself ignorant of those physical
laws, stronger and wider than any which you can make, upon which all
human life depends, by infringing which the whole property of a district
is depreciated.” Again, what might not the “religious world,” and the
public opinion of “professing Christians,” have done in the last
twenty—ay, in the last three years?
What it has done, is too patent to need comment here.
The reasons of so strange an anomaly are to be approached with caution.
It is a serious thing to impute motives to a vast body of men, of whom
the majority are really respectable, kind-hearted, and useful; and if in
giving one’s deliberate opinion one seems to blame them, let it be
recollected that the blame lies not so much on them as on their teachers:
on those who, for some reasons best known to themselves, have truckled
to, and even justified, the self-satisfied ignorance of a comfortable
moneyed class.
But let it be said, and said boldly, that these men’s conduct in the
matter of Sanitary Reform seems at least to show that they value virtue,
not for itself, but for its future rewards. To the great majority of
these men (with some heroic exceptions, whose names may be written in no
subscription list, but are surely written in the book of life) the great
truth has never been revealed, that good is the one thing to be done, at
all risks, for its own sake; that good is absolutely and infinitely
better than evil, whether it pay or not to all eternity. Ask one of
them: “Is it better to do right and go to hell, or do wrong and go to
heaven?”—they will look at you puzzled, half angry, suspecting you of
some secret blasphemy, and, if hard pressed, put off the new and
startling question by saying, that it is absurd to talk of an impossible
hypothesis. The human portion of their virtue is not mercenary, for they
are mostly worthy men; the religious part thereof, that which they keep
for Sundays and for charitable institutions, is too often mercenary,
though they know it not. Their religion is too often one of “Loss and
Gain,” as much as Father Newman’s own; and their actions, whether they
shall call them “good works” or “fruits of faith,” are so much spiritual
capital, to be repaid with interest at the last day.
Therefore, like all religionists, they are most anxious for those schemes
of good which seem most profitable to themselves and to the denomination
to which they belong; and the best of all such works is, of course, as
with all religionists, the making of proselytes. They really care for
the bodies, but still they care more for the souls, of those whom they
assist—and not wrongly either, were it not that to care for a man’s soul
usually means, in the religious world, to make him think with you; at
least to lay him under such obligations as to give you spiritual power
over him. Therefore it is that all religious charities in England are
more and more conducted, just as much as those of Jesuits and Oratorians,
with an ulterior view of proselytism; therefore it is that the religious
world, though it has invented, perhaps, no new method of doing good;
though it has been indebted for educational movements, prison
visitations, infant schools, ragged schools, and so forth, to Quakers,
cobblers, even in some cases to men whom they call infidels, have gladly
adopted each and every one of them, as fresh means of enlarging the
influence or the numbers of their own denominations, and of baiting for
the body in order to catch the soul. A fair sample of too much of their
labour may be seen anywhere, in those tracts in which the prettiest
stories, with the prettiest binding and pictures, on the most
secular—even, sometimes, scientific—of subjects, end by a few words of
pious exhortation, inserted by a different hand from that which indites
the “carnal” mass of the book. They did not invent the science, or the
art of story-telling, or the woodcutting, or the plan of getting books up
prettily—or, indeed, the notion of instructing the masses at all; but
finding these things in the hands of “the world,” they have “spoiled the
Egyptians,” and fancy themselves beating Satan with his own weapons.
If, indeed, these men claimed boldly all printing, all woodcutting, all
story-telling, all human arts and sciences, as gifts from God Himself;
and said, as the book which they quote so often says: “The Spirit of God
gives man understanding, these, too, are His gifts, sacred, miraculous,
to be accounted for to Him,” then they would be consistent; and then,
too, they would have learnt, perhaps, to claim Sanitary Science for a
gift divine as any other: but nothing, alas! is as yet further from their
creed. And therefore it is that Sanitary Reform finds so little favour
in their eyes. You have so little in it to show for your work. You may
think you have saved the lives of hundreds; but you cannot put your
finger on one of them: and they know you not; know not even their own
danger, much less your beneficence. Therefore, you have no lien on them,
not even that of gratitude; you cannot say to a man: “I have prevented
you having typhus, therefore you must attend my chapel.” No! Sanitary
Reform makes no proselytes. It cannot be used as a religious engine. It
is too simply human, too little a respecter of persons, too like to the
works of Him who causes His sun to shine on the evil and the good, and
His rain to fall on the just and on the unjust, and is good to the
unthankful and to the evil, to find much favour in the eyes of a
generation which will compass sea and land to make one proselyte.
Yes. Too like the works of our Father in heaven, as indeed all truly
natural and human science needs must be. True, to those who believe that
there is a Father in heaven, this would, one supposes, be the highest
recommendation. But how many of this generation believe that? Is not
their doctrine, the doctrine to testify for which the religious world
exists, the doctrine which if you deny, you are met with one universal
frown and snarl—that man has no Father in heaven: but that if he becomes
a member of the religious world, by processes varying with each
denomination, he may—strange paradox—create a Father for himself?
But so it is. The religious world has lost the belief which even the
elder Greeks and Romans had, of a “Zeus, Father of gods and men.” Even
that it has lost. Therefore have man and the simple human needs of man,
no sacredness in their eyes; therefore is Nature to them no longer “the
will of God exprest in facts,” and to break a law of nature no longer to
sin against Him who “looked on all that He had made, and behold, it was
very good.” And yet they read their Bibles, and believe that they
believe in Him who stood by the lake-side in Galilee, and told men that
not a sparrow fell to the ground without their Father’s knowledge—and
that they were of more value than many sparrows. Do those words now seem
to some so self-evident as to be needless? They will never seem so to
the Sanitary Reformer, who has called on the “British Public” to exert
themselves in saving the lives of thousands yearly; and has received
practical answers which will furnish many a bitter jest for the Voltaire
of the next so-called “age of unbelief,” or fill a sad, but an
instructive chapter in some future enlarged edition of Adelung’s “History
of Human Folly.”
All but despairing, Sanitary Reformers have turned again and again to her
Majesty’s Government. Alas for them! The Government was ready and
willing enough to help. The wicked world said: “Of course. It will
create a new department. It will give them more places to bestow.” But
the real reason of the willingness of Government seems to be that those
who compose it are thoroughly awake to the importance of the subject.
But what can a poor Government do, whose strength consists (as that of
all English Governments must) in not seeming too strong; which is allowed
to do anything, only on condition of doing the minimum? Of course, a
Government is morally bound to keep itself in existence; for is it not
bound to believe that it can govern the country better than any other
knot of men? But its only chance of self-preservation is to know, with
Hesiod’s wise man, “how much better the half is than the whole,” and to
throw over many a measure which it would like to carry, for the sake of
saving the few which it can carry.
An English Government, nowadays, is simply at the mercy of the forty or
fifty members of the House of Commons who are crotchety enough or
dishonest enough to put it unexpectedly in a minority; and they, with the
vast majority of the House, are becoming more and more the delegates of
that very class which is most opposed to Sanitary Reform. The honourable
member goes to Parliament not to express his opinions, (for he has stated
most distinctly at the last election that he has no opinions whatsoever),
but to protect the local interests of his constituents. And the great
majority of those constituents are small houseowners—the poorer portion
of the middle class. Were he to support Government in anything like a
sweeping measure of Sanitary Reform, woe to his seat at the next
election; and he knows it; and therefore, even if he allow the Government
to have its Central Board of Health, he will take good care, for his own
sake, that the said Board shall not do too much, and that it shall not
compel his constituents to do anything at all.
No wonder, that while the attitude of the House of Commons is such toward
a matter which involves the lives of thousands yearly, some educated men
should be crying that Representative institutions are on their trial, and
should sigh for a strong despotism.
There is an answer, nevertheless, to such sentimentalists, and one hopes
that people will see the answer for themselves, and that the infection of
Imperialism, which seems spreading somewhat rapidly, will be stopped by
common sense and honest observation of facts.
A despotism doubtless could carry out Sanitary Reform: but doubtless,
also, it would not.
A despot in the nineteenth century knows well how insecure his tenure is.
His motto must be, “Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die;” and,
therefore, the first objects of his rule will be, private luxury and a
standing army; while if he engage in public works, for the sake of
keeping the populace quiet, they will be certain not to be such as will
embroil him with the middle classes, while they will win him no
additional favour with the masses, utterly unaware of their necessity.
Would the masses of Paris have thanked Louis Napoleon the more if,
instead of completing the Tuileries, he had sewered the St. Antoine? All
arguments to the contrary are utterly fallacious, which are drawn from
ancient despotisms, Roman, Eastern, Peruvian, or other; and for this
simple reason, that they had no middle class. If they did work well
(which is a question) it was just because they had no middle class—that
class, which in a free State is the very life of a nation, and yet which,
in a despotism, is sure to be the root of its rottenness. For a despot
who finds, as Louis Napoleon has done, a strong middle class already
existing, must treat it as he does; he must truckle to it, pander to its
basest propensities, seem to make himself its tool, in order that he may
make it his. For the sake of his own life, he must do it; and were a
despot to govern England to-morrow, we should see that the man who was
shrewd enough to have climbed to that bad eminence, would be shrewd
enough to know that he could scarcely commit a more suicidal act than, by
some despotic measure of Sanitary Reform, to excite the ill-will of all
the most covetous, the most stupid, and the most stubborn men in every
town of England.
There is another answer, too, to “Imperialists” who talk of
Representative institutions being on their trial, and let it be made
boldly just now.
It will be time to talk of Representative institutions being good or bad,
when the people of England are properly represented.
In the first place, it does seem only fair that the class who suffer most
from epidemics should have some little share in the appointment of the
men on whose votes extermination of epidemics now mainly depends. But
that is too large a question to argue here. Let the Government see to it
in the coming session.
Yet how much soever, or how little soever, the suffrage be extended in
the direction of the working man, let it be extended, at least in some
equal degree, in the direction of the educated man. Few bodies in
England now express the opinions of educated men less than does the
present House of Commons. It is not chosen by educated men, any more
than it is by _prolétaires_. It is not, on an average, composed of
educated men; and the many educated men who are in it have, for the most
part, to keep their knowledge very much to themselves, for fear of
hurting the feelings of “ten-pound Jack,” or of the local attorney who
looks after Jack’s vote. And therefore the House of Commons does not
represent public opinion.
For, to enounce with fitting clearness a great but much-forgotten truth,
To have an opinion, you must have an opinion.
Strange: but true, and pregnant too. For, from it may be deduced this
corollary, that nine-tenths of what is called Public Opinion is no
opinion at all; for, on the matters which come under the cognizance of
the House of Commons (save where superstition, as in the case of the
Sabbath, or the Jew Bill, sets folks thinking—generally on the wrong
side), nine people out of ten have no opinion at all; know nothing about
the matter, and care less; wherefore, having no opinions to be
represented, it is not important whether that nothing be represented or
not.
The true public opinion of England is composed of the opinions of the
shrewd, honest, practical men in her, whether educated or not; and of
such, thank God, there are millions: but it consists also of the opinions
of the educated men in her; men who have had leisure and opportunity for
study; who have some chance of knowing the future, because they have
examined the past; who can compare England with other nations; English
creeds, laws, customs, with those of the rest of mankind;—who know
somewhat of humanity, human progress, human existence; who have been
practised in the processes of thought; and who, from study, have formed
definite opinions, differing doubtless in infinite variety, but still all
founded upon facts, by something like fair and scientific induction.
Till we have this class of men fairly represented in the House of
Commons, there is little hope for Sanitary Reform: when it is so
represented, we shall have no reason to talk of Representative
institutions being on their trial.
And it is one of the few hopeful features of the present time, that an
attempt is at last being made to secure for educated men of all
professions a fair territorial representation. A memorial to the
Government has been presented, appended to which, in very great numbers,
are the names of men of note, of all ranks, all shades in politics and
religion, all professions—legal, clerical, military, medical, and
literary. A list of names representing so much intellect, so much
learning, so much acknowledged moderation, so much good work already done
and acknowledged by the country, has never, perhaps, been collected for
any political purpose; and if their scheme (the details of which are not
yet made public) should in anywise succeed, it will do more for the
prospects of Sanitary Reform than any forward movement of the quarter of
a century.
For if Sanitary Reform, or perhaps any really progressive measure, is to
be carried out henceforth, we must go back to something like the old
principle of the English constitution, by which intellect, as such, had
its proper share in the public councils. During those middle ages when
all the intellect and learning was practically possessed by the clergy,
they constituted a separate estate of the realm. This was the old
plan—the best which could be then devised. After learning became common
to the laity, the educated classes were represented more and more only by
such clever young men as could be thrust into Parliament by the private
patronage of the aristocracy. Since the last Reform Bill, even that
supply of talent has been cut off; and the consequence has been, the
steady deterioration of our House of Commons toward such a level of
mediocrity as shall satisfy the ignorance of the practically electing
majority, namely, the tail of the middle class; men who are apt to
possess all the failings with few of the virtues of those above them and
below them; who have no more intellectual training than the simple
working man, and far less than the average shopman, and who yet lose,
under the influence of a small competence, that practical training which
gives to the working man, made strong by wholesome necessity, chivalry,
endurance, courage, and self-restraint; whose business morality is made
up of the lowest and narrowest maxims of the commercial world, unbalanced
by that public spirit, that political knowledge, that practical energy,
that respect for the good opinion of his fellows, which elevate the large
employer. On the hustings, of course, this description of the average
free and independent elector would be called a calumny; and yet, where is
the member of Parliament who will not, in his study, assent to its truth,
and confess, that of all men whom he meets, those who least command his
respect are those among his constituents to secure whom he takes most
trouble; unless, indeed, it be the pettifoggers who manage his election
for him?
Whether this is the class to whose public opinion the health and lives of
the masses are to be entrusted, is a question which should be settled as
soon as possible.
Meanwhile let every man who would awake to the importance of Sanitary
questions, do his best to teach and preach, in season and out of season,
and to instruct, as far as he can, that public opinion which is as yet
but public ignorance. Let him throw, for instance, what weight he has
into the “National Association for the Advancement of Social Science.”
In it he will learn, as well as teach, not only on Sanitary Reforms, but
upon those cognate questions which must be considered with it, if it is
ever to be carried out.
Indeed, this new “National Association” seems the most hopeful and
practical move yet made by the sanitarists. It may be laughed at
somewhat at first, as the British Association was; but the world will
find after a while that, like the British Association, it can do great
things towards moulding public opinion, and compel men to consider
certain subjects, simply by accustoming people to hear them mentioned.
The Association will not have existed in vain, if it only removes that
dull fear and suspicion with which Englishmen are apt to regard a new
subject, simply because it is new. But the Association will do far more
than that. It has wisely not confined itself to any one branch of Social
Science, but taken the subject in all its complexity. To do otherwise
would have been to cripple itself. It would have shut out many
subjects—Law Reform, for instance—which are necessary adjuncts to any
Sanitary scheme; while it would have shut out that very large class of
benevolent people who have as yet been devoting their energies to
prisons, workhouses, and schools. Such will now have an opportunity of
learning that they have been treating the symptoms of social disease
rather than the disease itself. They will see that vice is rather the
effect than the cause of physical misery, and that the surest mode of
attacking it is to improve the physical conditions of the lower classes;
to abolish foul air, fouled water, foul lodging, and overcrowded
dwellings, in which morality is difficult, and common decency impossible.
They will not give up—Heaven forbid that they should give up!—their
special good works; but they will surely throw the weight of their names,
their talents, their earnestness, into the great central object of
preserving human life, as soon as they shall have recognised that
prevention is better than cure; and that the simple and one method of
prevention is, to give the working man his rights. Water, air, light. A
right to these three at least he has. In demanding them, he demands no
more than God gives freely to the wild beast of the forest. Till society
has given him them, it does him an injustice in demanding of him that he
should be a useful member of society. If he is expected to be a man, let
him at least be put on a level with the brutes. When the benevolent of
the land (and they may be numbered by tens of thousands) shall once have
learnt this plain and yet awful truth, a vast upward step will have been
gained. Because this new Association will teach it them, during the next
ten or twenty years, may God’s blessing be on it, and, on the noble old
man who presides over it. Often already has he deserved well of his
country; but never better than now, when he has lent his great name and
great genius to the object of preserving human life from wholesale
destruction by unnecessary poison.
And meanwhile let the Sanitary Reformer work and wait. “Go not after the
world,” said a wise man, “for if thou stand still long enough the world
will come round to thee.” And to Sanitary Reform the world will come
round at last. Grumbling, scoffing, cursing its benefactors; boasting at
last, as usual, that it discovered for itself the very truths which it
tried to silence, it will come; and will be glad at last to accept the
one sibylline leaf, at the same price at which it might have had the
whole. The Sanitary Reformer must make up his mind to see no fruit of
his labours, much less thanks or reward. He must die in faith, as St.
Paul says all true men die, “not having received the promises;” worn out,
perhaps, by ill-paid and unappreciated labour, as that truest-hearted and
most unselfish of men, Charles Robert Walsh, died but two years ago. But
his works will follow him—not, as the preachers tell us, to heaven—for of
what use would they be there, to him or to mankind?—but here, on earth,
where he set them, that they might go on in his path, after his example,
and prosper and triumph long years after he is dead, when his memory
shall be blessed by generations not merely “yet unborn,” but who never
would have been born at all, had he not inculcated into their unwilling
fathers the simplest laws of physical health, decency, life—laws which
the wild cat of the wood, burying its own excrement apart from its lair,
has learnt by the light of nature; but which neither nature nor God
Himself can as yet teach to a selfish, perverse, and hypocritical
generation.