and conjecture. They might be of interest in the future.
Some joined personally.
By this times the "Captain" had blossomed into a "Major." Owing to urgency the Committee had to acquiesce in many things. Garibaldi being in the field, and often no one knew where, it was futile to ask questions and impossible to get them answered.
The Government no doubt knew all about the expedition. Captain De Rohan, or, as he styled himself, "Admiral De Rohan," was in command of the "Excursionists." He marched up and down the platform, wearing a ponderous admiral's sword, which was entirely indiscreet, but he was proud of the parade. By this time he had assumed the title of "Rear" Admiral. De Rohan was not his name, but he was, it was said, paternally related, in an unrecognised way, to Admiral Dalgren, of American fame. Of De Rohan it ought to be said, that though he had the American tendency to self-inflation, he was a sincere friend of Italy. Honest, disinterested, generous towards others—and the devoted and trusted agent of Garibaldi, ready to go to the ends of the earth in his service. When the English Committee finally closed, and they had a balance of £1,000 left in their hands, they were so sensible of the services and integrity of De Rohan that they gave it to him, and on my introduction he deposited it in the Westminster Bank. He was one of those men for whom some permanent provision ought to be made, as he took more delight in serving others than serving himself. In after years, vicissitude came to him, in which I and members of the Garibaldi Committee befriended him.
As our Legion was going out to make war on a Power in friendly relation to Great Britain, Lord John Russell was in a position to stop it. The vessel (the Melazzo) lay two days in the Harwich waters before sailing. There were not wanting persons who attempted to call Lord John's attention to what was going on, but happily without recognition of their efforts. No one was better able than Lord John to congeal illicit enthusiasm.
Mr. E. H. J. Craufurd, M.P., chairman of the Committee, myself, my brother Austin,—who was unceasing in his service to the Committee and the Legion—W. J. Linton, and other members of the Committee, travelled by night with the Legion to Harwich. Mr. George Francis Train went down with us and explained to me vivaciously his theory, that to obtain recognition by the world was to make a good recognition of yourself. Train did this, but all it gave him was notoriety, under which was hidden from public respect his great natural ability and personal kindness of heart. When I last met him, I found him—as was his custom—sitting on the public seat in a New York square, interesting himself in children, but ready to pour, in an eloquent torrent, the story of his projects into the ear of any passer-by who had time to listen to him.
It was early morning when we arrived at Harwich. As the ship lay some distance out, it took some time to embark the men, and it was the second day before she set sail. To our disappointment De Rohan did not go with the troops, which we thought it was his duty to do, but suddenly left, saying he would meet them at Palermo. He alone had real influence over the men. No one being in authority over them, feuds and suspicions were added to their lack of discipline.
The vessel was well provisioned, even to the pleasures of the table. There was that satisfaction.
It may interest readers who have never sailed in a troopship to read the regulations enforced:—
1. The men will be allotted berths and divided into messes, regularly by companies, and their packs are to be hung up near their berths.
2. With a view to the general health and accommodation of the men, they will be divided into three watches, one of which is to be constantly on deck.
3. A guard, the strength of which is to be regulated by the sentries required, is to mount every morning at nine o'clock.
4. The men of each watch are to be appointed to stations.
5. The men not belonging to the watch are to be ordered below, when required by the master of the ship, in order that they may not impede the working of the vessel.
6. In fine weather every man is to be on deck the whole day.
7. The whole watch is to be constantly on deck, except when the rain obliges them to go down for shelter.
8. Great attention is to be paid to the cleanliness of the privies. Buckets of water are to be thrown down frequently.
9. The bedding is to be brought on deck every morning, if the weather will permit, by eight o'clock, and to be well aired.
10. The men are to wash, comb, and brush their heads every morning.
11. At sunset the bedding is to be brought down, and at any time during the day on the appearance of bad weather.
12. At ten o'clock in the evening, every man is to be in his berth, except the men on guard and of the watch.
13. The chief of the watch is to be careful that no man interferes with the windsails, so as to prevent the air from being communicated.
14. The men are strictly forbidden sleeping on deck, which they are apt to do, and which is generally productive of fevers and flushes.
With a view of preventing accidents from fire, a sentry will be constantly placed at the cooking place or caboose, or one on each side, with orders not to allow fire of any kind to be taken without leave.
1. No lights are to be permitted amongst the men except in lanterns. All are to be extinguished at ten o'clock at night, except those over which there may be sentries.
2. No smoking on any account to be permitted, except on upper deck.
3. No lucifer or patent matches to be allowed.
4. The officers are strictly charged to trace when going their rounds between decks, and to report instantly any man who shall presume either to smoke there, or to use any lights except in lanterns.
Every possible precaution is to be taken to prevent liquor being brought on board ship.
Regularity and decency of conduct are peculiarly required on board ship. It is the duty of those in command to repress, by the most decided and summary measures, any tendency to insubordination, to check every species of immorality and vice, and to discountenance to the utmost of their power whatever may disturb the comfort of others, or interrupt the harmony and good understanding which should subsist on board.
We had trouble in London. One day at a Committee, held at my house, an applicant, who was contracting to supply 900 rifles, attended to show certificates of their efficiency. The legal eye of the chairman (Mr. Craufurd, M.P., one of the prosecuting counsel of the Mint), detected them to be forgeries. On his saying so, the applicant snatched them from his hand. The chairman at once seized the knave, when a struggle ensued to obtain the false credentials. As it was not prudent in us to prosecute the presenter and have our proceedings before a court, we let him go.
There being no legal power to enforce order was the cardinal weakness of the British Legion. A competent commander should at least have been appointed, and an agreement of honour entered into by each volunteer, to obey his authority and that of those under him, on penalty of dismissal, and a certain forfeiture of money. These conditions, though not of legal force, would be binding on men of honour, and place the turbulent without honour at a disadvantage.
At the Queenwood community, in Robert Owen's day, no contract of this kind was thought of, and any one who declined to leave could defy the governor, until he was ejected by force—a process which did not harmonise with "Harmony Hall."
De Rohan met the Excursionists at Palermo on their disembarkation. "Captain Styles" was prudently absent, and no more was heard of him. The spurious commissions could not be recognised, and commotion naturally arose among those who had been defrauded. Captain Sarsfield, Colonel Peard, known as "Garibaldi's Englishman," De Rohan, Captain Scott, and others on the spot, with colourable pretensions to authority, took different views of the situation. Appeals were made to the Committee in London, on whose minutes stormy telegrams are recorded. Mr. Craufurd, though he had the prudent reticence of his race, would sometimes fall into impetuous expressions. Yet the second statement of his first thought would be faultless. This quality was so conspicuous that it interested me.
The first man of the Legion killed was young Mr. Bontems, only son of a well-known tradesman in the City of London—a fine, ingenuous fellow. He was shot by the recklessness of a medical student of the London University, as Bontems stood in a mess-room at Palermo. It was said not to be the first death caused by the criminal thoughtlessness of the same person. Mr. Southall, another London volunteer like young Bontems, was a man of genuine enthusiasm, character, and promise. He became an orderly officer to Garibaldi, by whom he was trusted and to whom he gave the black silk cravat he wore on entering Naples.*
me by request of a soldier who died on the field.
When Garibaldi retired to his island home, he sent to England the following testimony of the services and character of the Excursionists:—
"Caprera,
"Jan. 26, 1861.
"... They [the British Legion] came late. But they made ample amends for this defect, not their own, by the brilliant courage they displayed in the slight engagements they shared with us near the Volturno, which enabled me to judge how precious an assistance they would have rendered us had the war of liberation remained longer in my hands. In every way the English volunteers were a proof of the goodwill borne by your noble nation towards the liberty and independence of Italy.
"Accept, honoured Mr. Ashurst, the earnest assurance of my grateful friendship, and always command yours,
"G. Garibaldi."
Allowing for Garibaldi's generosity in estimating the services of the Legion, it remains true that the majority deserved this praise. Many were of fine character. Many were young men of ingenuousness and bright enthusiasm, prompt to condone lack of military knowledge by noble intrepidity in the field.
The Legion cost the Italian Government some expense. Claims were recognised liberally. The men were sent back to England overland, and each one had a provision order given him to present at every refreshment station at which the trains stopped. Count Cavour was a better friend of Italian freedom than even Mazzini knew. It was only known after Cavour's death, how he had secretly laboured to drag his country from under the heel of Austria. Cavour had the friendly foresight to give orders that the members of the English Legion were to be supplied on their journey home with double rations, as Englishmen ate more than Italians. The Cavourian distinction was much appreciated.
The sums due to the men until their arrival in England were paid by the Sardinian Consul (whose office was in the Old Jewry), on a certificate from me that the applicant was one of the Legion.
A request came to me from Italy for a circumstantial history of the Legion and such suggestions as experience had furnished. The story made quite a book, which I sent to Dr. Bertani. When after his death I was in Milan, I learned from a member of his family that no one knew what had become of it. And so I briefly tell the story again, as there is no one else to tell it Bertani was the confidant and favourite physician of Mazzini and Garibaldi. No one knew so well or so much as he who were the makers of Italian Unity. What has become of his papers?
Among friends of Italy who appeared at our council in London was Captain Sarsfield, the son of the Duke of Somerset. Pallid, with an expression of restrained energy, handsome beyond any face I had seen, it might have been carved by a Grecian sculptor. His high breeding struck me before I knew who he was. He took out for me an important letter to Garibaldi, who had then no postal address. On Sarsfield's return home, he took, as was his delight, a furious ride in a high wind. Washington did the same, and it killed him, as it did Captain Sarsfield. Difficulty of breathing ensued, and it was necessary that Dr. Williams should be called in to perform an operation—all in vain. The Duchess of Somerset lay all night on the carpet-floor by the dead body of her son, for whom she grieved exceedingly. In her distress she said Dr. Williams had been wanting in promptness or in skill. His great reputation could not be affected by an accusation made in agony, and his own explanation would vindicate him. But he took the brutal course of dragging the distressed and distracted mother into the law courts. In consequence of remarks I published upon this unfeeling and egotistic outrage, the Duchess sent me a letter of thanks, and requested me to call at her residence. So much for the two men who mainly made Italy a nation. What Castelar said to the Italian patriots in general, he might have addressed to Garibaldi and Mazzini individually:—
"That which Julius II. could not effect with his cannon, nor Leo X. with his arts, that which Savonarola could not make a reality by giving himself to God, nor Machiavelli by giving himself to the Devil, has been done by you. You have made Italy one, you have made Italy free, you have made Italy independent."
CHAPTER XXI. JOHN STUART MILL, TEACHER OF THE PEOPLE
One reason for commencing with the remark that John Stuart Mill was born on May 20, 1806, at No. 13, Rodney Street, Islington, London, is to notify the coincidence that Gladstone, another man of contemporaneous distinction, was born in Rodney Street, Liverpool, three years later. Rodney Street, London, where Mill was born, was a small, narrow, second-rate, odd, out-of-the-way suburban thoroughfare. But in those days Islington had the characteristics of a rural retreat A little above this Rodney Street, in what is now known as the Pentonville Road, stood the "Angel," a favourite hostelry, where Thomas Paine wrote part of one of his famous books, near the period of Mill's birth.
The familiar books concerning J. S. Mill,* treat mainly of his eminence as a thinker.
I concern myself with those personal characteristics which won for him the regard and honour of the insurgent industrial classes—insurgent, not in the sense of physical rebellion against authority, but of intellectual rebellion against error, social inferiority and insufficiency of means. Mill regarded the press as the fortress of freedom. All his life he gave money to establish such defences, and left the copyright of his works to Mr. John Morley, to be applied in aid of publications open to the expression of all reasoned opinion, having articles signed by the names of the writers. Mr. Mill was the first who made provision for the expression of unfriended truth. It would be a surprising biography which recorded the causes he aided and the persons whom he helped. He was not one of those philosophers, "selfish, cold and wise," who, fortunate and satisfied with their own emancipation from error, leave others to perish in their ignorance. Mill helped them,* as did Place, Bentham, Grote, Roebuck, Molesworth, and other leaders of the great Utilitarian party. For ten years I knew Mr. Mill to receive and write letters of suggestion from the India House. He would see any one, at any hour, interested in the progress of the people. As Mr. John Morley has said in the Fortnightly Review, "It was easier for a workman than for a princess to obtain access to him."
endeavour, often irrespective of agreement with it.
A pamphlet by me on the "Liberal Situation" in 1865* being sent to Mr. Mill, he wrote me the following letter:—
"Avignon,
"April 28, 1865.
"Dear Sir,—I have received your pamphlet (the 'Liberal Situation') which I think is one of the best of your writings, and well calculated to stir up the thinking minds among the working classes to larger views of political questions. So far as I am myself concerned I cannot but be pleased to find you in sympathy with some of the most generally unpopular of my political notions. For my own part, I attach for the present more importance to representation of minorities, and especially to Mr. Hares plan, combined with opening the suffrage to women, than to the plural voting which, in the form proposed by Mr. Buxton, of attaching the plurality of votes directly to property, I have always thoroughly repudiated. But I think what you say of it likely to be very useful by impressing on the working people that it is no degradation to them to consider some people's votes of more value than others. I would always (as you do) couple with the plurality the condition of its being accessible to any one, however poor, who proves that he can come up to a certain standard of knowledge.—I am, yours truly,
"J. S. Mill.
"G. J. Holyoake."
One night when a great Reform League meeting was held in the Agricultural Hall, Islington, I accompanied him from the House of Commons to it. There were rumours of danger in attending it. This did not deter him. The meeting itself was ill spoken of by the press—still he went. The crowd about the place made it perilous for one so fragile-looking as he, to force a way in. He never hesitated to try it When we arrived on the thronged platform, it was a struggle to get to the front. The vast amphitheatre, with its distant lights and dense crowds—the horsepit presenting a valley of faces, the higher ground hills of men, the iron rafters overhead were alive with hearers who had climbed there—was a strange Miltonic scene. No sooner did the stout voice of Manton—which alone all could hear—announce the arrival of Mr. Mill than every man was silent; though few would catch the low, wise, brave words he uttered. Afterwards I returned to the House of Commons with him, he being interested in an expected division.
The Islington meeting that night had been denounced as illegal. He went to justify the right of public meeting by his presence, and to share the responsibility of those who convened it. What man eminent as a thinker, save he, or Mr. John Morley, would incur the odium, peril, and discomfort of attending, for such a purpose, a workman's meeting such as that?
The first time he made a speech at a public meeting was at the Whittington Club, before a gathering of co-operators. I asked him to address them. I was as glad as surprised when he consented. Had it not been for the presence of women taking interest in co-operative economy, he probably had not spoken then. In a sentence he defined the higher co-operation. He never spoke in vain.
When in business in Fleet Street I signed bills for the convenience of a city friend, who, like William Ellis—Mill's early associate—was a munificent supporter of progressive endeavour. By putting my name on his bills I incurred a liability beyond my means of meeting. My more than imprudence was indefensible because it involved the business in which the money of others was invested. Learning that my resources fell short by £70 of the amount for which I was answerable, Mr. Mill sent me the £70 from himself and a friend. When the bills were repaid me from the estate of him for whom I had signed them, I sent the £70 to Mr. Mill, who returned me half as a gift, on the condition that I did not sign another bill, which I never did, unless I was able to pay it if my friend did not, and I was willing to pay it if he could not.
Mr. Mill had quoted portions of my "History of the Rochdale Pioneers," in his "Political Economy," which was a great advantage to a cause whose success I much desired. In many ways I was much indebted to his friendship, and have never changed in my regard for him. Yet this did not involve spontaneous acquiescence in all his views. Upon the ballot I dissented from him. It seemed to me a just condition that the people should be, for one minute in seven years, free to vote for their political masters (as members of Parliament are) without control, intimidation, or fear of resentment Mr. Bright himself and Mr. Berkeley were impressed by my view as stated to a meeting of the Reform League. Mill thought it conduced to manliness that the elector should withstand adverse influences at whatever peril—which assumed the universal existence of a heroic spirit of self-sacrifice. Since the elector by his vote subjects his fellow-citizens, it may be, to perilous mastership, Mill inferred every man had a right to know from whose hand came the blessing or the blow. There is still force in Mill's view which commands respect. On the other hand, secret voting is not without its disadvantages. The citizen may be surrounded by disguised adversaries. The fair-seeming dissembler he trusts may stab him at the poll. The independence given by the ballot may betray the State, and the traitors be shielded from responsibility. The secret vote also rests on a vast assumption—that of the universal paramountcy of conscience and honesty in electors—which paramountcy is as scarce as political heroism. Those who so trust the people incur the greater and ceaseless responsibility of educating them in political honour. They who have shown their trust in the people, alone have the right of claiming their fidelity. Mr. Mill was foremost in teaching the duty of independent thought, and, to do him justice, my dissent from a principle he had come to hold strongly, made no difference in his friendship. He was once a believer in the ballot himself.
Mr. Mill was an instance which shows that even the virtues of a philosopher need, as in lesser men, good sense to take care of them, lest the operation of lofty qualities compromise others. His unguarded intrepidity in defence of the right cost him his seat for Westminster. Things were going well for him, on his second candidature, when one morning it appeared in the newspapers that he had sent £10 to promote the election of Mr. Bradlaugh. That £10 was worth £10,000 to his Tory opponent, and cost Mill's own committee the loss of £3,000, which was contributed to promote his election. When I was a candidate in the Tower Hamlets, Mr. Mill sent a similar sum to promote my election; but I prohibited the publication of an intrepid act of generosity, which might prove costly to Mr. Mill At his first election Dean Stanley nobly urged Christian electors to vote for Mr. Mill; but at the second election, when it became known that Mr. Mill was subscribing to bring an Atheist into Parliament, most Christians were persuaded Mr. Mill was himself an Atheist, and only the nobler sort would vote for him again. It was right and honourable in Mr. Mill to stand by his opinion, that an Atheist had as much right as a Christian to be in Parliament, and that ecclesiastical heresy was no disqualification for public or Parliamentary service. To maintain your opinions at your own cost is one thing, but to proclaim them at the cost of others, without regard to time, consent or circumstance, is quite a different matter.
Mr. Mill had refused on principle to contribute to the expense of his own election, on the ground that a candidate should not be called upon to pay for his own election to a place of public service, I though it was perfectly consistent that he should contribute to the election of others. But his committee could not convert the electorate to this view. There is nothing so difficult as the election of a philosopher. Mr. Mill was in favour of the civil equality of all opinions, but it did not follow that he shared all opinions himself. But the electors could not be made to see this after the £10 sent to Northampton became known, and England saw the most famous borough in the land handed over for unknown years to a Tory bookseller, without personal distinction of his own, and a book writer of the highest order rejected by the electors in favour of a mere bookseller.
Mr. Mill's father, openly advocating the limitation of families in the interest of the poor, bequeathed to his son a heritage of disadvantage—of liability to frenzied imputation. No man is to be held responsible save for what he himself says and what he himself does. No man is answerable, or ought to be held answerable, for the construction others put upon his conduct, or for their inference as to his opinions. No writer ever guarded his words and conduct more assiduously than J. S. Mill. Yet few have been more misrepresented by theological and Conservative writers. Upon the question of "limitation of families," Mr. Mill never wrote other or more than this:—
"No prudent man contracts matrimony before he is in a condition which gives him an assured means of living, and no married man has a greater number of children than he can properly bring up. Whenever this family has been formed, justice and humanity require that he should impose on himself the same restraint which is submitted to by the unmarried."*
Further instruction of the people upon this subject J. S. Mill might not deprecate, but he never gave it He never went so far as Jowett, who wrote: "That the most important influences on human life should be wholly left to chance, or shrouded in mystery, and instead of being disciplined or understood, should be required to conform to an external standard of propriety, cannot be regarded by the philosopher as a safe or satisfactory condition of human things."*
Mill's views, or supposed views, naturally excited the attention of wits. Moore's amusing exaggeration, which, like American humour, was devoid of truth, yet had no malice in it, was:—
What's vastly unreadable, call very clever;
And whereas Mill senior makes war on good breeding,
Mill junior makes war on all breeding whatever."
The way in which opinions were invented for Mill is shown in the instance of the London Debating Club (1826-1830), which was attended by a set of young men who professed ultra opinions. Mr. J. A. Roebuck was one. It was rumoured that at a meeting at which Mr. Mill was present, a pamphlet was discussed entitled, "What is Love?" attributed to a man of some note in his day, and of | unimpeachable character in private life. Mr. Mill might have been present without knowledge of the | subject to be brought forward, and may have been a listener without choice.
But in those days (and down to a much later period) the conventional fallacy was in full vogue—that civility to an opponent implied a secret similarity of opinion. Courtesy was regarded as complicity with the beliefs of those to whom it was shown. He who was present at an unconventional assembly was held to assent to what took place there—though neither a member, nor speaker, nor partisan.
CHAPTER XXII. JOHN STUART MILL, TEACHER OF THE PEOPLE
(continued)
Mill was so entirely serious in his pursuit of truth, and entirely convinced of the advantages of its publicity, that he readily risked conventional consequences on that account. He held it to be desirable that those who had important convictions, should be free to make them known, and even be encouraged to do so. In thinking this he was in no way compromised by, nor had he any complicity with, the convictions of others. But this did not prevent him being made answerable for them, as in the case of the distribution of papers sent to him by friends in his company. A copy of it came into my possession which assuredly he did not write, and the terms of which he could never have approved, had they been submitted to him. On one occasion he sent to me a passionate repudiation of concurrence or recommendation in any form, of methods imputed to him.
These eccentricities of imputation, supposed to have died by time, were found to be alive at Mills death.
The chief resurrectionist was one Abraham Hay-ward, known as a teller of salacious stories at the Athenaeum. He was a man of many gifts, who wrote with a bright, but by no means fastidious, pen. In some unexplained, inconsistent, and inexplicable way, Mr. Gladstone was on friendly terms with him. No sooner was Mill dead, and illustrious appreciators of the great thinker were meditating some memorial to his honour, than Mr. Hayward sent an article to the Times, suggesting intrinsic immorality in his opinions. He also sent out letters privately to deter eminent friends of Mill from giving their names to the memorial committee. He sent one to Mr. Stopford Brooke, upon whom it had no influence. He sent one to Mr. Gladstone, upon whom it had, and who, in consequence, declined to join the committee.
Hayward was, in his day, the Iago of literature, and abused the confiding nature of our noble Moor.* Yet, when Mr. Mill lost his seat for Westminster, Mr. Gladstone had written these great words: "We all know Mr. Mill's intellectual eminence before he entered Parliament. What his conduct principally disclosed to me was his singular moral elevation. Of all the motives, stings and stimulants that reach men through their egotism in Parliament, no part could move or even touch him. His conduct and his language were in this respect a sermon. For the sake of the House of Commons, I rejoiced in his advent and deplored his disappearance. He did us all good, and in whatever party, in whatever form of opinion, I sorrowfully confess that such men are rare."
Knew Him," was written to show Mr. Gladstone the answer that
could be given to Hayward.
There was no tongue in the House of Commons more bitter, venomous, or disparaging of the people than that of Lord Robert Cecil, afterwards Lord Salisbury; yet I record to his honour he subscribed £50 towards the memorial to Mr. Mill. One of the three first persons who gave £50 was Mr. Walter Morrison. The Duke of Argyll, the Earl of Derby, the Duke of Devonshire, Sir Charles and Lady Dilke, Mr. and Mrs. P. A. Taylor were also among the subscribers of £50 each. Among those who gave large but lesser sums were Mr. Herbert Spencer, Stopford Brooke, Leonard H. Courtney, Frederic Harrison, G. H. Lewes, W. E. H. Lecky. Sir John Lubbock, G. Croome Robertson, Lord Rosebery, Earl Russell, Professor Tyndall, and Professor Huxley. So Mr. Mill had his monument with honour. It stands on the Thames Embankment, and allures more pilgrims of thought than any other there.
Purity and honour, there is reason to believe, were never absent from Mill's mind or conduct; but trusting to his own personal integrity, he assumed others would recognise it His admiration of Mrs. Taylor, whom he frequently visited, and subsequently married, was misconstrued—though not by Mr. Taylor, who had full confidence in Mr. Mill's honour. No expression to the contrary on Mr. Taylor's part ever transpired. It might be due to society that Mr. Mill should have been reserved in his regard. But assured of his own rectitude, he trusted to the proud resenting maxim, "Evil be to him who evil thinks," and he resented imputation—whether it came from his relatives or his friends. Any reflection upon him in this respect he treated as an affront to himself, and an imputation upon Mrs. Taylor, which he never forgave. A relative told me after his death, that he never communicated with any of them again who made any remark which bore a sinister interpretation. If ever there was a philosopher who should be counted stainless, it was John Stuart Mill.
In the minds of the Bentham School, population was a province of politics. It would seem incredible to another generation—as it seems to many in this—that a philosopher should incur odium for being of Jowett's opinion, that the most vital information upon the conduct of life should not be withheld from the people. To give it is to incur conventional reprehension; as though it were not a greater crime to be silent while a feeble, half-fed, and ignorant progeny infest the land, to find their way to the hospital, the poor house, or the gaol, than to protest against this recklessness, which establishes penury and slavery in the workman's home. Yet a brutal delicacy and a criminal fastidiousness, calling itself public propriety, is far less reputable than the ethical preference for reasonable foresight and a manlier race.
Mr. Mill's success in Parliament was greater than that of any philosopher who has entered in our time. Unfortunately, very few philosophers go there. The author of "Mark Rutherford" (W. Hale White) writing to me lately, exclaimed: "Oh for one session with Mill and Bright and Cobden in the House! What would you not give to hear Mill's calm voice again? What would you not give to see him apply the plummet of Justice and Reason to the crooked iniquities of the Front Benches? He stands before me now, just against the gangway on the Opposition side, hesitating, pausing even for some seconds occasionally, and yet holding everybody in the House with a kind of grip; for even the most foolish understood more or less dimly that they were listening to something strange, something exalted, spoken from another sphere than that of the professional politician."
Mr. Christie relates that in the London Debating Society, of which Mill was a member when a young man, it used to be said of him in argument, "He passed over his adversary like a ploughshare over a mouse." Certainly many mice arguers heard in Parliament, who made the public think a mountain was in labour, ended their existence with a squeak when Mr. Mill took notice of them.
The operation of the suffrage and the ballot, questions on which Mill expressed judgment, are in the minds of politicians to this day, and many reformers who dissented from him do not conceal their misgivings as to the wisdom of their course. "Misgivings" is a word that may be taken to mean regret, whereas it merely signifies occasion for consideration. The extension of the franchise and the endowment of the ballot have caused misgivings in many who were foremost in demanding them. The wider suffrage has not prevented an odious war in South Africa, and the ballot has sent to the House of Commons a dangerous majority of retrograde members. John Bright distrusted the vote of the residuum. John Stuart Mill equally dreaded the result of withdrawing the vote of the elector from public scrutiny. I agreed with their apprehensions, but it seemed to me a necessity of progress that the risk should be run. While the Ballot Act was before the House of Lords, I wrote to the Times and other papers, as I have elsewhere related, to say that the Ballot Act would probably give us a Tory government for ten years—which it did. I thought that the elector who had two hundred years of transmitted subjection or intimidation or bribery in his bones, would for some time go on voting as he had done—for others, not for the State. He would not all at once understand that he was free and answerable to the State for his vote. New electors, who had never known the responsibility of voting, would not soon acquire the sense of it Mr. Mill thought it conduced to manliness for an elector to act in despite of his interest or resentment of his neighbours, his employer, his landlord, or his priest, when his vote became known. At every election there were martyrs on both sides; and it was too much to expect that a mass of voters, politically ignorant, and who had been kept in ignorance, would generally manifest a high spirit, which maintains independence in the face of social peril, which philosophers are not always equal to. No doubt the secrecy of the vote is an immunity to knaves, but it is the sole chance of independence for the average honest man. The danger of committing the fortune of the State to the unchecked votes of the unintelligent was an argument of great power against a secret suffrage. Lord Macaulay, though a Whig of the Whigs, gave an effective answer when he brought forward his famous fool, who declared "he would never go into the water until he had learnt to swim." The people must plunge into the sea of liberty before they can learn to swim in it. They have now been in that sea many years, and not many have learned the art yet. Then was found the truth of Temple Leader's words, that "if the sheep had votes, they would give them all to the butcher." Then when reformers found that the new electors voted largely for those who had always refused them the franchise, the advocates of it often expressed to me their misgivings as to its wisdom. Lord Sherbrooke (then Robert Lowe) saw clearly that if liberty was to be maintained and extended, the State must educate its masters.
But has this been done? Has not education been impeded? Have not electoral facilities been hampered? Has not the franchise been restricted by onerous conditions, which keep great numbers from having any vote at all? Has not the dual vote been kept up, which enables the wealthy to multiply their votes at will? Before reformers have misgivings concerning the extension of liberty to the masses, they must see that the poor have the same opportunity of reaching the poll as the rich have. George Eliot, who had the Positivist reluctance to see the people act for themselves, wrote: "Ignorant power comes in the end to the same thing as wicked power."* But there is this difference in their nature. "Ignorant power" can be instructed, and experience may teach it; but "wicked power" has an evil purpose, intelligently fixed and implacably determined.
Does any reflecting person suppose, that when the vote was given to the mass of the people, they would be at once transmuted into intelligent, calculating, and patient politicians—that their passions would be tamed, and their vices extinguished—that they would forthwith act reasonably? Much of this was true of the thoughtful working men. But for a long time the multitude must remain unchanged until intelligence extends. We have had renewed experience that—
A word's enough to rouse mankind to kill.
Some cunning phrase by fiction caught and spread,
That guilt may reign, and wolves and worms be fed."
But the reformer has one new advantage now. He is no longer scandalised by the excesses of ignorance, nor the perversities of selfishness. Giving the vote has, if we may paraphrase the words of Shakespeare, put into
The means to cancel his captivity."
It is no mean thing to have done this. There is no reason for misgiving here. If the people misuse or neglect to use their power, the fault is their own. There is no one to reproach but themselves.
Abolitionists of slavery may, if supine, feel misgivings at having liberated the negroes from their masters, where they were certain of shelter, subsistence, and protection from assault of others, and exposed them to the malice of their former owners, to be maltreated, murdered at will, lynched with torture on imaginary or uninvestigated accusations. Those who aided the emancipation of the slaves are bound to ceaseless vigilance in defending them. But despite the calamities of liberty, freedom has added an elastic race (who learn the arts of order and of wealth) to the family of mankind, and misgivings are obsolete among those who have achieved the triumphs and share the vigils and duties of progress.
Mr. Mill was essentially a teacher of the people. He wished them to think on their own account—for themselves, and not as others directed them. He did not wish them to disregard the thoughts of those wiser than themselves, but to verify new ideas as far as they could, before assenting to them. He wished them not to take authority for truth, but truth for authority. To this end he taught the people principles which were pathways to the future. He who kept on such paths knew where he was. Herbert Spencer said he had no wrinkles on his brow because he had discovered the thoroughfares of nature, and was never puzzled as to where they led. Mr. Mill was a chartmaker in logic, in social economy, and in politics. None before him did what he did, and no successor has exceeded him. By his protest against the "subjection of women," he brought half the human race into the province of politics and progress. They have not all appeared there as yet—but they are on the way.
CHAPTER XXIII. ABOUT MR. GLADSTONE
Mr. Gladstone's career will be the wonder of other generations, as it has been the astonishment of this. Mr. Morley's monumental "Life" of him will long be remembered as the greatest of all contributions to the education of the British politician. It is a life of Parliament as well as of a person. Those who remember how Carpenter's "Political Text Book" was welcomed will know how much more this will be valued.
Never before was a biography founded on material so colossal. Only one man was thought capable of dealing with a subject so vast and complicated. Great expectations were entertained, and were fulfilled in a measure which exceeded every anticipation. The task demanded a vaster range of knowledge than was ever before required of a biographer. Classic passages, not capable of being construed by the general reader, are translated, so that interest is never diverted nor baffled by flashes of learned darkness. When cardinal and unusual terms are used, which might be dubiously interpreted, definitions are given which have both delight and instruction. He who collects them from Mr. Morley's pages would possess a little dictionary of priceless guidance. A noble action or a just idea is recognised, whoever may manifest it Some persons, as Mr. Gladstone said of Kinglake's famous book, "were too bad to live and too good to die." Nevertheless, their excellence, where discernible, has its place in this biographical mosaic Thus unexpected pieces of human thought emerge in the careers of the historic figures who pass before the reader, by which he becomes richer as he proceeds from page to page. Illuminating similes abound which do not leave the memory—such fitness is there in them. Historic questions which interested those who lived through them, are made clear, by facts unknown or unregarded then. Men whom many readers detested in their day are discovered to have some noble feature of character, unrevealed to the public before. Mr. Morley is a master of character—a creator of fame by his discernment, discrimination, impartiality, and generosity to adversaries, from which the reader learns charity and wisdom as he goes along. Knowledge of public life, law, and government, come as part of the charm of the incidents related. Memorable phrases, unexpected terms of expression, like flashes of radium, gleam in every chapter. The narrative is as interesting as the adventures of Gil Bias—so full is it of wisdom, wonder, and variety. From all the highways, byways, and broadways of the great subject, the reader never loses sight of Mr. Gladstone. All paths lead to him. Like Bunyan's Pilgrim, the biographer goes on his shining way, guiding the reader to the shrine of the hero of the marvellous story. Mr. Gladstone moves through Mr. Morley's pages as a king—as he did among men. He sometimes fell into errors, as noble men have done in every age, but there was never any error in his purpose. He always meant justly, and did not hesitate to give us new and ennobling estimates of hated men. His sense of justice diffused, as it were, a halo around him. Mr. Morley's pages give us the natural history of a political mind of unusual range and power which was without a compeer. As Mr. Gladstone began, he advanced, listening to everybody, to use one of Mr. Morley's commanding lines: "He was flexible, persistent, clear, practical, fervid, unconquerable."
In "Vivian Grey," Disraeli foreshadowed his bright and vengeful career. In the same way, Mr. Gladstone wrote the whole spirit of his life in his first address to the electors of Newark. His career is in that manifesto, which has never been reprinted. The reader will be interested in seeing it Here it is:—
To the Worthy and Independent Electors of the Borough of Newark.
"Gentlemen,—Having now completed my canvass, I think it my duty as well to remind you of the principles on which I have solicited your votes as freely to assure my friends that its result has placed my success beyond a doubt. I have not requested your favour on the ground of adherence to the opinions of any man or party, further than such adherence can be fairly understood from the conviction that I have not hesitated to avow that we must watch and resist that uninquiring and un-discriminating desire for change amongst us, which threatens to produce, along with partial good, a melancholy preponderance of mischief, which I am persuaded would aggravate beyond computation the deep-seated evils of our social state, and the heavy burthens of our industrial classes; which, by disturbing our peace, destroys confidence and strikes at the root of prosperity. This it has done already, and this we must, therefore, believe it will do.
"For a mitigation of these evils we must, I think, look not only to particular measures, but to the restoration of sounder general principles—I mean especially that principle on which alone the incorporation of Religion with the State in our constitution can be defended; that the duties of governors are strictly and peculiarly religious, and that legislatures, like individuals, are bound to carry throughout their acts the spirit of the high truths they have acknowledged. Principles are now arrayed against our institutions, and not by truckling nor by temporising, not by oppression nor corruption, but by principles they must be met. Among their first results should be sedulous and especial attention to the interests of the poor, founded upon the rule that those who are the least able to take care of themselves ought to be most regarded by others. Particularly it is a duty to endeavour by every means that labour may receive adequate remuneration, which unhappily, among several classes of our fellow-countrymen, is not now the case. Whatever measures, therefore, whether by the correction of the Poor Laws, allotment of cottage grounds, or otherwise, tend to promote this object, I deem entitled to the warmest support, with all such as are calculated to secure sound moral conduct in any class of society.
"I proceed to the momentous question of slavery, which I have found entertained among you in that candid and temperate spirit which alone befits its nature, or promises to remove its difficulties. If I have not recognised the right of an irresponsible Society to interpose between me and the electors, it has not been from any disrespect to its members, nor from any unwillingness to answer their or any other questions on which the electors may desire to know my views. To the esteemed secretary of the Society I submitted my reasons for silence, and I made a point of stating those views to him in his character of a voter.
"As regards the abstract lawfulness of slavery, I acknowledge it simply as importing the right of one man to the labour of another; and I rest upon the fact that Scripture—paramount authority on such a point—gives directions to persons standing in the relation of master to slave for their conduct in that relation; whereas, were the matter absolutely and necessarily sinful, it would not regulate the manner. Assuming sin is the cause of degradation, it strives, and strives most effectually, to cure the latter by extirpating the former. We are agreed that both the physical and moral bondage of the slave are to be abolished. The question is as to the order and the order only; now Scripture attacks the moral evil before the temporal one, and the temporal through the moral one, and I am content with the order which Scripture has established.
"To this end I desire to see immediately set on foot, by impartial and sovereign authority, an universal and efficient system of Christian instruction, not intended to resist designs of individual piety and wisdom for the religious improvement of the negroes, but to do thoroughly what they can only do partially. As regards immediate emancipation, whether with or without compensation, there are several minor reasons against it, but that which weighs most with me is, that it would, I much fear, exchange the evils now affecting the negro for others which are weightier—for a relapse into deeper debasement, if not for bloodshed and internal war.* Let fitness be made the condition of emancipation, and let us strive to bring him to that fitness by the shortest possible course. Let him enjoy the means of earning his freedom through honest and industrious habits, thus the same instruments which attain his liberty shall likewise render him competent to use it; and thus, I earnestly trust, without risk of blood, without violation of property, with unimpaired benefit to the negro and with the utmost speed which prudence will admit, we shall arrive at the exceedingly desirable consummation, the utter extinction of slavery.