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‘Why not triennial Parliaments?’
‘Why, then things would be no better than they are now. There would be the same excitement and bitterness. The new M.P. would be remiss in his attendance the first or second year, while in the last session his only aim would be to gain the goodwill of the electors of his district. Again,’ added Mr. Wentworth, ‘as a rule the people are indifferent to politics. You only move them from their torpor at the time of a General Election. When that is over they become indifferent and apathetic again. With an election once a year you would have the people anxiously discussing political questions. It would be an education for them. It would ensure all the advantages without the disadvantages of the present system.’
‘Upon my word,’ said the parson, ‘there is a good deal in what you say, though I never thought of it before. An election would then be a very commonplace affair.’
‘And then,’ said Wentworth, ‘under such an arrangement the people would be better educated. As it is, it is hard work to get them to the poll at all. Practically, England never gives a verdict—never expresses her political opinions. And I mean by England, Scotland, where the people are better educated than they are here, and Wales, where the people are far more religious. We have a Tory or a Liberal Government in office in consequence of the support of the Irish M.P.’s returned by illiterate voters under the rule of the Roman Catholic priest—who hates England, because it is a prosperous and Protestant nation. The Irish “praste,” as his people call him, creates all the bad blood that has done so much mischief in Ireland. If the Tories are in power, they can only maintain their position by pandering to the Irish members, and if the Liberals are in power they have to do just the same. This difficulty arises from the fact that, whether as regards property or population, Ireland is over-represented. If Sir Robert Peel had had his way, and been able to pension the Irish priests, we should have had no such wretched state of affairs. The “praste” would have taken jolly good care that the Irish M.P. was loyal to the Government that granted him an independent income.’
‘But Peel could not have done so had he wished. You forget the English Evangelicals, with their hatred of Popery in any shape, and the Scotch Presbyterians, and the English Dissenters, who object on principle to any State support of religion.’
‘Alas! I know it too well,’ replied Wentworth; ‘yet had Peel or Pitt had their way, we should have had no Irish difficulty. As it is, Ireland has her revenge. It is she who decides the fate of parties, the rise and fall of ministries, the policy of our great empire, with its conflicting interests in every corner of the globe. Oh that the Green Isle were a thousand miles away! The difficulty would be removed if Ireland had only her fair share of representation, but that is an impossible reform.’
A curious character was that old parson; professedly a Presbyterian, and calling himself such, he and his people were Unitarians. He lived on an endowment left by Lady Hewlett, whose charities were such a bitter bone of contention between the Unitarians and the orthodox Dissenters; but Parliament interfered, and a Bill was carried to render all further litigation impossible. He preached in a grand old red-brick chapel in the busiest part of the town. He had an old-fashioned pulpit with an old-fashioned sounding-board above, and in front of him were great square pews lined with green baize; while behind, in the little red-brick vestry, there were quaint portraits of old divines, of whom no one knew anything. Now, in his meeting-house, with its memorial tablets of departed workers, the worshippers were few and far between. Once there had been life there, but that was a long time ago; and now his hearers were chiefly old, gray-headed men and women, whose fathers and mothers had taken them there in early childhood, and whose talk, when they did talk, which was but rarely, was of Drs. Price and Priestley, and Mr. Belsham, and of Mrs. Barbauld and other ornaments of their expiring creed. It was hard work to preach to such; nevertheless the little parson was a happy man, as he thought of the God of love, of whom once a week he loved to speak. No one interfered with him. To no religious gathering in the town was he ever invited. Churchmen and Dissenters alike gave him the cold shoulder. But he upheld the standard of a Church with no creeds; was content to receive such as could not subscribe to other dogmas, and to believe in a Christian charity which was to cover a multitude of sins. He damned nobody, he frightened nobody, he was nobody’s enemy. His was a voice crying in the wilderness. Once a year he went to the assembly of his denomination in Essex Street Chapel, London, and heard how the cause with which he was connected was advancing, and the day-dawn of a national Christianity was at hand, and then he came back to Sloville to vegetate for another year, while sensational preachers filled the other chapels.
He had his garden, and that was a constant source of happiness, and as he was a vegetarian and his garden supplied all his needs, it mattered little that his salary was a scanty pittance, such as a respectable working mechanic would turn up his nose at. His wife was a lady who did not hesitate to do all the household work herself. Modern life in its rush and roar has left such people far behind. But one loves to remember them, and their peaceful ways, their cheerful solitude, their plain living and high thinking.
CHAPTER XVII.
QUIET TALKS.
On the day of the public meeting, just as Wentworth had retired to his head-quarters at the Red Lion, one of the few old-fashioned public-houses which survive to tell us how truly Shenstone wrote when he told us that the warmest welcome he found was at an inn—and how wise were men of the Johnson era in recognising that fact—he heard a tap at the door, after he had taken off his boots and had lit his cigar.
‘Come in,’ he cried.
The new visitor availed himself of the invitation. He was a tremendous fellow to look at, with something of an animal expression, with a loud voice, and a little bloated about the face, as if he took rather more beer than was good for him. His hands were rather grimy, his clothes were the worse for wear, and he had a short pipe in his mouth, which he was about to put out, but did not, as he saw Wentworth was smoking himself.
‘Your name, sir?’ said Wentworth.
‘My name—you know me well enough. My name is Johnson—I was at your meeting to-night, and you and I have met before.’
‘Yes, you were there, as you say—one of my noisiest opponents, I believe—and now I think of it, when I was at Sloville, you were one of the Chartists who tried to put me down.’
‘You’re right, Mr. Wentworth.’
‘Happy to renew the acquaintance. To what am I indebted for the honour of this visit?’
‘Well, you see, we are in now for an election, and I flatter myself the winning candidate will be the man for whom I vote.’
‘Is that so?’
‘Well, you did not seem very favourable to-night.’
‘No, and that’s why I am here. My party won’t think much of me unless I act an independent part, and there’s a good many of us; we wish to have a bit of a literary man. It is my belief, as I tells ’em, that there is nothing like eddication and the gift of the gab.’
‘Upon my word, you’re right, Mr. Johnson, though when one looks at Ireland and England, too, one is inclined to feel that we may have too much of a good thing, and that we should be all the better if we had a little less talk and a little more work.’
‘Capital! that’s the very thing for Sloville, only you must pitch it a little stronger, and fire away at the lazy parsons and the ’aughty haristocracy, and say something about the blood-sucking manufacturers who leave us—who make all their wealth—to starve and die. We’re agin ’em all, me and my pals.’
‘Well, we will talk of that presently. If I get into Parliament, how am I to live?’
‘Well, we must have paid members of Parliament; you’ll be all right then.’
‘Are you fond of professional parsons, Mr. Johnson?’
‘No, I hate ’em like p’ison.’
‘And yet you would have professional politicians. They are as odious to me as professional parsons. A man may mean well when he first sets out, but directly his political career becomes to him his bread-and-butter, he will cease to be an honest man. If he is paid by the people, he will be their slave, and not their representative. If he is paid by the State, he will so shape his conduct that he may secure his re-election. He cannot act honestly. By the necessity of his position he is bound to keep his place, because he needs his salary. It is as bad and infamous for a man to make politics his livelihood as religion. In America they have a class of men known as professional politicians, and what is the result? that respectable Americans rarely enter public life.’
‘Well, you do surprise me!’ said Johnson, smoking his pipe uneasily. ‘I knew you were a little crotchety when you came to our Chartist meeting, but I thought you went the whole hog.’
‘Well, we’ve secured a good deal more for the people than you or I expected at that time.’
‘Maybe,’ said Johnson doggedly.
‘But what do you want?’
Johnson’s face brightened as he said:
‘That’s coming to the point—we do not want any more Whigs or Tories.’
‘But if a Tory comes to Sloville and offers to give the people land—we can’t say restore it, for we Anglo-Saxons never had an inch of the soil of England. If, further, he tell them that they have not had their fair share of the profits of capital—if he says he will get every one a fair day’s wages for a fair day’s work—that the working men shall have decent homes built for them by Government—that every one shall have his three acres and a cow—that the parent shall be relieved of all responsibility as regards his children—that, in short, he will bring the millennium—don’t you think he will get returned whether he calls himself Whig or Tory?’
‘I believe you,’ said Johnson excitedly, giving the table an emphatic thump. ‘Leastways, I knows many as will vote for him, and this I knows, that no one opposed to him would have much chance. There’s none on ’em dare turn me out of a meetin’, and there’s none of ’em can drown my voice.’
‘Yes, I had a good proof of that to-night. But don’t you know that any man coming with such a programme is an impostor?’
‘No, hang me if I do! I say he is the man for me and the United Buffaloes, of which I am the president, and who will vote as I do. I repeat, he is the man for Sloville.’
‘Of course,’ said Wentworth sarcastically, ‘he is, and he is quite safe, because he knows he promises what he can never perform.’
‘Let us take the question of the working man not getting his fair share of the profits. You know Lancashire?’
‘Well, I should think I do.’
‘Well, so do I, and it seems to me that the workmen are pretty well employed, and pretty well off. They get their weekly wages.’
‘Yes, in course they do.’
‘But is it not a fact that not a brass farthing of profit is being made in the cotton trades, and that consequently at this time the workman has quite his fair share of the capital? Look at our great companies, our railways, our ships, most of them earning no dividends or but small ones, but who employ millions of men at fair wages. You call the capitalist a bloodsucker, a vampire.’
‘And so he is.’
‘Well, get rid of his tyranny.’
‘How?’
‘Become a capitalist yourself. As a rule the capitalist is a working man who has lifted himself out of his class by superior self-denial, or tact, or skill, or perseverance. Last night when I went to the Town Hall I saw the name of Brown over a grand shop. When I knew Sloville, Brown’s father was one of the poorest men in the place, and there was no boy worse off than poor Brown. I went in and said to him: “I am glad to see you so flourishing.” “Yes,” said he, “I’ve much to be thankful for.” “How is it you’ve got on so?” I said. “By minding my own business, and by not going to the public-house,” he replied.’
‘Yes,’ said Johnson, ‘Brown was allus a pushing boy.’
‘So have all of us to be nowadays. You don’t think we are to sit still, and open our mouths and shut our eyes, and see what Heaven will give us; do you?’
‘Yes, but—’
‘But what? It is in ourselves that lies the secret of success. Look at Ireland: for ages the people have come to the English Government for aid to fish, to farm, to manufacture, and what is the result? That now there are no people so badly off.’
‘Ireland, sir,’ said Johnson angrily, ‘is ruined by the injustice of England.’
‘Not quite so much as you think. Though Ireland has been shamefully treated, as much by Irishmen as Englishmen, however, I admit. But to return to the question of capital, why cannot a workman become an employer? You can run a cotton-mill if you like to co-operate and put by your savings. There is no need to ask Parliament to interfere. You want the landlords abolished. Take to farming yourselves. Land is cheap enough, and farms are to be had almost for the asking. Don’t ask Government to take the land and employ all who live in the country on it, whether they are worth their salt or not. This is a free country, and any men who have sufficient confidence in each other, and self-reliance, can become their own employers, as farmers or manufacturers, if they will join their savings for that purpose. There are no better workmen than the English, and I want to see them better off.’
‘I am glad to hear that,’ said Johnson; ‘it seemed to me that you were rather against the working man.’
‘I am against some of his ways,’ said Wentworth. ‘I am against improvident marriages. In the middle circles of society we can’t marry till we have a chance of keeping a wife. But almost directly poor lads or girls—especially in our great cities—are of age, and often before, they are married, and have families that they can’t keep, and then the taxpayer, often little better off than themselves, has to pay for their support. Is that fair?’
‘Well, it do seem rather hard.’
‘As long as that is the case wages must be low, for the supply will be in excess of the demand. Suppose you get Parliament to come to the aid of such. The result is you will have more improvident marriages. Then you tax still more heavily the middle and the upper classes, and the middle classes become paupers themselves. I see a remedy for this. We shall have the children of the working classes better educated, and then they will not think of marrying till they can live in a decent manner. They will shrink from inflicting hardships on innocent children, as they do now.’
‘Well, they have to wait a long time.’
‘I fear so. But how is trade at Sloville?’
‘Why, just now very bad.’
‘Shall I tell you one reason?’
‘Just as you please; only, whatever you say I shall report to the United Buffaloes.’
‘Well, I don’t want to go out of my way to offend them, especially since they all vote together. But you had a strike here last summer, had you not?’
‘Yes, and a pretty time of it we had.’
‘It is over now, and what is the result?’
‘Why, that we are going on pretty much as usual.’
‘Not exactly. That strike cost a lot of money.’
‘I believe you.’
‘And that is all thrown away, and to that extent the working men are so much the poorer. Is not that a fact?’
‘Well, it is no use denying of it; but the masters have suffered as well, though you get no benefit by their suffering.’
‘And whose fault is that?’
‘The Unions’, I suppose. ‘They were beaten, at any rate.’
‘The Unions. I am glad you mention them, because there is another thing I have to say. I fear that you can never get good work as long as men are all paid alike, whether they are good workmen or not.’
‘But that is what we insist on more than anything else.’
‘I am sorry for it. Such a condition is fatal to individual excellence. Let me illustrate my remarks: I knew a man employed at a printing-office in connection with printing steel-plates. He was an intelligent, careful workman, and he did more work and better than the others, and earned more money. The other men conspired against him, and he found in his absence his work was spoilt, and his press injured, and he was driven away. Now, such cases are of constant occurrence. Let me give you another case: A man was taken into an office at a lesser rate than the others, and they gave up their work and had to come on the Union. Again, how often is a good man worried out of his place unless he joins the Union and works as slowly, and makes a job last as long, as the others! You complain of the great competition from foreign workmen—how is it that they are in this country?’
‘Ah! that’s the question.’
‘A question easily answered. Most of them are brought over on the occasion of a strike, and when they come here they stop here, and add to the overstocked market. Your regulations for the support of your members are excellent, and deserve all praise; your Unions also are most desirable when protection is required against hard and unjust masters, though the number of them is not so large as you endeavour to make it. But when you set up to dictate to masters as to whom they shall employ, you do injustice to respectable men willing to work, whom you compel to starve, and in the long-run you help to create that depression of trade of which we all complain.’
‘Have you anything more agin the Unions?’ asked Johnson angrily.
‘Yes; I maintain that when they thus endeavour to control the labour market they often drive away trade. Why are our shops filled with American manufactures? For this simple reason: In America the men are always looking out to improve the processes of manufacture. A workman who can strike out a new and improved method is rewarded by his masters and applauded by his fellows. Here masters and men are against him. The workmen are too conservative. You are not offended, I hope, by my plain speaking?’
‘Not at all,’ replied the visitor in a sulky tone.
‘Well, I will add that, so far as I can see, they often drive trade away as well. I will just give you one instance: I was spending an evening with an eminent judge a little while ago.’
‘Why, the lawyers are the greatest trades unionists going,’ said Johnson passionately.
‘It may be. I am not a lawyer, and have not much to say on their behalf. The judge of whom I speak had just been at one of our great Midland towns, where an order had come for a large supply for a foreign Government. “But,” said the English firm, “we must have a strike clause inserted in the agreement, as our men will strike directly they hear we’ve got the order.” The agent of the foreign Government declined to agree to such a proposal, and the order was taken to Belgium and executed there.’
‘Ah, that was an isolated case.’
‘Not a bit of it,’ said Mr. Wentworth. ‘I can give plenty of other cases that show how often the British workmen unwittingly drive away trade, and make us all suffer in consequence.’
‘Well, this is a free country, and the workmen have a right to act as they think best,’ said Johnson.
‘Undoubtedly; I do not dispute that for an instant. All I say is, don’t throw all the blame of poverty on the rich; a good deal of it is due to the poor themselves. Parliament can do little more than it has done. No Act of Parliament can give permanent employment and good wages to a man who drinks, or neglects his duty, or who will not work properly and efficiently.’
‘Ah, there are people who think otherwise.’
‘I fear there are.’
‘According to your way of talk, Mr. Wentworth, Parliament ain’t of much use.’
‘I fear not. I only defend representative government as the only possible mode of political life in the absence of a benevolent despotism, controlled by a free press. The ideal government is that which interferes least with the people.’
‘Then, what do you recommend?’
‘Moral reform. Do you know,’ continued Wentworth, ‘that Trade Unionism seems to me essentially one-sided.’
‘That is rather too rich,’ said the visitor. ‘All we seek is justice to ourselves.’
‘But is not that unjust to the masters? A firm commences a business or works a mine. It is put to great expense; sinks an enormous amount of capital, and then because it chooses to employ individuals who have a right to be employed, who have as much right to earn their own living as other men, the Union withdraws their men, and the works have to be stopped, and many a firm has given up business in consequence, and thus the area of the unemployed and the amount of national poverty and distress is increased. No man can serve two masters. There must be a head somewhere, and a firm naturally may claim to be at the head of a business, and should be left to regulate its own affairs. What would become of a ship if the crew were to deprive the captain of his command, and to navigate it themselves?’
‘What would you do, then?’
‘Why, just act according to Christian principles.’
‘Christian principles—what are they?’
‘That man and master should do to each other as to themselves.’
Johnson blackened in his face and whispered something about nonsense.
‘But that is not all.’
‘No, I should think not,’ said Johnson.
‘My next demands are moral reform, and the power of the people.’
‘Ah, now, that’s coming to the point.’
‘But I mean by the power of the people, not a vote at the dictation of a caucus, but the action of an educated independent people.’
Again Johnson frowned.
‘Well, let me hear what you recommend. The future belongs to you, Mr. Johnson.’
‘Why, we want State aid against the selfishness of the rich, and State employment for the poor.’
‘Well, that is rather a reversal of the system which has made England great by reason of the energy and freedom of her people. The State works clumsily and ineffectively. Look at the memoirs of officials, or Government reports, or the revelations of our great establishments, and you will see for yourself that the State works in a way which, if a private firm followed, it would soon be in the Bankruptcy Court. In America things in this respect are as bad as here. The abuses of the Civil Service there are greater than at home. A distinguished American writes: “The spoil system, introduced by President Jackson, which is now stigmatized as ‘the American system,’ imperils not only the purity, economy, and efficiency of the Government, but it destroys confidence in the method of popular government by party. It creates a mercenary political class, an oligarchy of stipendiaries, a bureaucracy of the worst kind, which controls parties with relentless despotism.” How do you like that, friend?’
‘Not at all,’ said Johnson.
‘No; we must continue fighting on the old lines. Like Burke, I believe at this period of the world’s history there is nothing new in politics or morals. Society has got into the groove which was the only one possible. It must ever go on the old lines. Upset it, turn it topsey-turvy, as they did in France, or as the Socialists would do, and a little while again you will find it on the old lines. Share the wealth of the country, if you like, between you all; it won’t make much difference to me, but the next generation will be as badly off as ever—worse off—for you will have taken from the labourer all motive for exertion.’
‘And is this what I am to tell the United Buffaloes?’
‘If you like.’
‘If I do, not one of us will vote for you.’
‘Then, perhaps the sooner I give up the contest the better.’
‘That is what I think,’ said Johnson, as he took up his hat and departed, leaving Wentworth to fear that his mission to Sloville was at an end.
Why, even, as he confessed to himself, the Tory programme was more attractive than his own. Toryism is never particular on the score of money. Its generosity at the expense of other people is prodigious. Naturally, we all like a lavish expenditure. There is no one so popular as a spendthrift, as long as his money lasts, no one so hated as a screw.
When rosy-fingered morning next day dawned on Sloville, there was quite a crowd of visitors at the hotel patronized by Mr. Wentworth. Everybody is supernaturally and unusually wise when an election takes place, and, feeling how uncertain is human life, seems apparently determined to make the most of it. It is the harvest, if not of the busy bee, at any rate of the busybody. Before Mr. Wentworth had finished his coffee and bacon and eggs, while the dry toast in the rack was yet untouched, the aged and beery waiter announced as how there was a lady outside waitin’ to speak to him.
‘Show her in,’ said the candidate, and in she walked with that boldness and self-possession, unpleasant in woman, which marks the advanced female.
‘I hear, Mr. Wentworth, you are a candidate for our borough. May I ask what are your views on the subject of Women’s Rights?—a question of vast importance to our sex. You know our abject and degraded state; how we are trodden under foot by our lord and master, man.’
The lady was a spinster, or she would not have talked in that style, but at length she had said all that she wanted, and paused for a reply.
‘I fear,’ said Wentworth, ‘that you and I can never agree. I don’t believe that man and woman are the same. Nature has made them different. A woman treads the earth with a lighter step, talks in a feebler voice. If she succeeds on the platform or in public life, it is because of her exceptional performance in that character; and owing to her more excitable temperament and physical peculiarities, and to the duties devolving on her as wife and mother, I argue that she is unfitted for public life. Her duty is at home. It is there she reigns a queen, and where, I ask, can she desire a nobler field? Our men are what their mothers make them. I say it is to the home that we have to look for the purification and elevation of our public life; it is to the mothers of to-day that we look for the great men of the morrow.’
‘And is this all you’ve got to say?’ said the lady, with a somewhat chap-fallen countenance. ‘I did hope, as a journalist, I might have heard something more satisfactory. There are many of us in Sloville. We are affiliated to a society whose headquarters are in London, and we are determined to vote for no man.’
‘Excuse me, I understood ladies had no votes.’
‘I mean we are determined that no man shall vote for anyone who is not sound on the question of Women’s Rights.’
‘I am quite ready to give a widow, or any woman housekeeper, or any woman in business, a vote. As a Liberal I don’t know whether I ought to say as much. The women will be sure to give a Tory vote. They are sure to vote as their favourite parson or priest wishes.’
‘Not the emancipated female of the future.’
‘Alas!’ said Wentworth, ‘I don’t know her. I can only talk of woman as she is—charming, lovely, worthy of all honour, in her own peculiar sphere.’
‘Thank you,’ said the lady haughtily; ‘we want something more;’ and she went out of the room to report to her committee that on Women’s Rights the candidate gave a very uncertain sound.
‘Will you,’ said one other fair enthusiast a little later on, ‘vote for the repeal of the Vaccination Acts?’
‘Certainly not,’ said Mr. Wentworth. ‘Why should I?’
‘Because it is an interference with the freedom of the subject.’
In vain he argued all government, more or less, was that, and that small-pox was an awful malady, against which it behoved the nation to take every precaution. He spoke in vain. The anti-vaccinators did not go so far as to say, as the old opponents did, that vaccination made children as hairy as bullocks, or that it led them to bellow like bulls. In our day they have shifted their grounds, but their opposition remains the same.
The Sabbatarians came next. They were Liberals mostly, with a sprinkling of Tory Evangelicals, yet rather than see any mitigation in the severity of the Jewish Sabbath, any attempt made to divert the working man from the public-house on a Sunday, they declared themselves dead against Mr. Wentworth. The loafers, of course, were against him. He refused to treat them to beer. He kept no public-houses open. He did not even offer to stand glasses round when they called. If he was above obliging them, why should they put themselves out of their way to oblige him? He was for purity and independence. Little they cared for either the one or the other. Every hour it seemed to him that his chance grew less. What was the good of talking about an improved foreign policy, about the advancement of the people in political power, about the reduction of taxation, or free trade in land, or land reform, to such men? According to one class, an election was simply an excuse for bribery and corruption. It meant money and beer. A candidate was to be bled to the uttermost farthing, and he was to repay himself how he could, and as best he could, when he got into Parliament. According to another class, a General Election was simply an opportunity for fighting on side issues, and the ventilation of all sorts of fads.
Musing on these things, the waiter came to him to announce another visitor. Mr. Wentworth groaned.
‘Not a lady, sir.’
‘Thank God for that!’ he replied.
‘A gentleman this time.’
‘Show him in.’
‘Ah, Mr. Wentworth,’ said the new visitor, ‘I thought I would just run in and see you.’
‘Happy to see you—take a seat.’
‘I have read your programme, and am delighted with it.’
‘Sir, you flatter me.’
‘Not a bit of it. It is just what I like. I don’t think I could have done it better myself. You’re the coming man—all Sloville will rally round you.’
‘It does not seem like it at present,’ said Wentworth gloomily.
‘My dear sir, you astonish me; I should have thought a man of your talent would have carried everything before him. But I see I am come in the nick of time—quite providential, as it were. I can promise you entire success.’
‘Upon what terms?’
‘Well, if you put it in that light, I, of course, expect to be paid. As a fellow literary man, I would, of course, prefer to work for you for nothing; but you see, sir, one must live, and the fact is, I have a duty to discharge to my wife and family. A man who neglects them, you know, is worse than an infidel. I believe I have Scriptural authority for that statement?’
‘I believe you have, sir.’
‘Ah, yes, my dear sir, I thought a man of your knowledge and good sense would admit as much. You know me—my name is Roberts.’
‘I can’t say that I do.’
‘Well, that is a good one! Did you never read my poem on the death of Prince Albert?’
‘I can’t say that I have.’
‘Don’t you remember my celebrated speech at Little Pedlington in favour of the Society for the Equal Diffusion of Capital?’
‘I can’t say that I ever heard of it.’
‘Well, you do surprise me! How true it is that the world knows nothing of its greatest men! Surely you must have heard of my celebrated discussion with the great O’Toole in the Town Hall of Mudford on the rights of man, of which the Mudford Observer remarked that I demolished my unfortunate antagonist with the brilliancy of Macaulay, with the philosophy of a Burke, with the wit of a Sheridan, and with a native originality indicative of the rarest genius. Why, it was the talk of the whole town for weeks. Do you really mean to tell me, Mr. Wentworth, that you never heard of that?’
‘Never,’ said Wentworth dryly.
‘Well, that’s a good one! I thought you gentlemen of London kept your eye on everybody and everything. But you know the Temple Forum?’
‘Oh, certainly I do.’
‘Ah! I am glad to hear that, because I am one of the leading lights of that select assembly.’
‘Well, I am very unfortunate. I cannot remember to have heard you even there; but I must own I seldom went near the place.’
‘Ah, if you had you would have known me well. Many is the speech I have made there. But perhaps you will kindly glance at this?’ taking out of his hat a dilapidated and somewhat greasy paper.
Reluctantly Mr. Wentworth took it.
‘It is an account of one of my lectures before the Minerva Institute at Bullock Smithy.’
‘Bullock Smithy—never heard of that.’
‘Come, Mr. Wentworth, you are a bit of a wag, I see.’
‘Not a bit of it. Never heard of Bullock Smithy in my life.’
‘Why, it is a rising watering-place in Blankshire, and I had the public hall to lecture in, with the head notable in the chair, and all the élite of the place present; and I assure you, as the Bullock Smithy Observer remarks, it was quite a treat I gave ’em. “Feast of reason, flow of soul,” they call it. I am to give ’em another lecture next summer.’
‘I am delighted to hear it.’
‘Yes, I knew you would be. We men of genius always recognise each other. And now I’ll tell you why I am here. I’ve come to offer you my services as a public speaker. I was at your meeting the other night, and I saw what was wanted immediately. “Clever fellow,” said I to myself; “but too modest and retiring—not enough bounce and brag to fetch the general public.” Says I to myself: “I will do it for him; I am the boy for that kind of work; I am used to it.” Many a man has got into Parliament through me. Indeed, I have never known anyone fail who has secured my services, and you shall have ’em cheap. Five pounds for the week and board and lodging, and I make a speech for you every night. That’s what I call a fair offer. You hesitate. Well, suppose we say two pounds ten. I never made so low an offer before, but you are a man and a brother, and I would do for you what I would not do for anyone else.’
‘I am afraid, Mr. Roberts,’ said Wentworth—‘I fear I must dispense with your services.’
‘No, don’t say that; don’t stand in your own light, man. You don’t know what you’re refusing. I can almost guarantee your election. Let me begin to-night. Send the crier round to say that Mr. Roberts, the celebrated orator of the Temple Forum, will speak at your meeting. If I don’t astonish ’em I’ll eat my hat.’ A very battered one, by-the-bye, which it would have required rather a strong stomach to digest.
‘The fact is, Mr. Roberts,’ continued Wentworth, ‘I consider an election is purely a matter between a candidate and his constituents, and no one else has a right to interfere. I should be glad of all the local strength I could get. That would show the electors we’re in earnest in the matter; but as to getting strangers down from town to dazzle the people with rhetorical fireworks, I really don’t care about it. I really should not care to gain my election by such means. I think it great presumption even for a London committee, whether sitting at the Carlton or the Liberal Club, to seek to control the electors. It is something very serious to me, the freedom of election and the independence of the voters.’
‘Sir, you take matters too seriously. We all know electioneering is humbug, and the biggest humbug wins.’
‘I fear you and I could not agree, Mr. Roberts, and perhaps you had better take your talents to another quarter.’
‘And you mean to say, then, that you have no occasion for my services?’ said the collapsing Roberts, who seemed to become smaller every minute.
‘I do, indeed.’
‘Then, sir, I am sorry for you,’ said the indignant orator. ‘I came out of friendship; but I am a professional man, and I shall be under the unpleasant necessity of going to some other party. I believe Sir Watkin Strahan will be only too glad of my assistance.’
‘By all means try him,’ said Wentworth.
And the itinerant orator retreated, having first secured a trilling loan on the plea that his journey down to Sloville had quite cleaned him out, and that he had been disappointed of a remittance.
No sooner had the orator departed than another arrival was announced.
The Hon. Algernon Smithson, a fellow-member with Wentworth of the Mausoleum Club, was his name. In he rushed, protesting that he had called at the club, that he had gone to Clifford’s Inn, that he had come on to Sloville, just to see how his friend was getting on.
‘And is that all?’ asked Wentworth.
‘Well, now you mention it, I don’t mind telling you,’ was the reply, ‘that our party are rather uncomfortable about the state of things here, and Twiss, of the Treasury, asked me if I could not have five minutes’ chat with you, and so, you see,’ said the Honourable, with a jolly laugh, or, rather, an attempt at it, ‘like the good-natured donkey that I am, I’ve let the cat out of the bag. Perhaps that is bad policy; but, then, you and I, Wentworth, are men of the world, and I like to be straightforward.’
In most quarters it was considered that the Hon. Smithson was rather a cunning old fox.
‘The fact is, you Government people don’t want an independent candidate. Is not that so?’ asked Wentworth.
‘Why, you see, my dear friend, the circumstances of the case are somewhat peculiar. We are rather hard pushed, as you know, in the House; parties are evenly balanced. Now, Sir Watkin has a good chance here, and his connections are very numerous in this part of the world. He is of an old Whig family.’
‘Yes, I understand; he is to win the borough, and then to be repaid by a Government appointment. And if I throw him out?’
‘Why, then we lose a safe man. You are a very good fellow, Wentworth, but, then, you are only to be depended on when the Government is right. You would desert us to-morrow if we went wrong.’
‘I believe I should.’
‘And if you go to the poll you let in a Tory. Think of that. Our party will never forgive you. There will be a mark against your name as long as you live.’
‘I have an idea that there is something more important than the triumph of a party.’
‘What is that?’
‘The triumph of principle.’
‘Ah, that is so like you, Wentworth!’ said the Hon. Smithson, laughing. ‘Men like you are always in the clouds. We wire-pullers are the only practical men.’
‘And a pretty mess you’ve made of it. Now you’ve a Liberal Government on its last legs that four years ago had nearly a majority of a hundred.’
‘I own it—and I own it with sorrow. But I am here on business. I have a proposition to make.’
‘What is that?’
‘That you arbitrate.’
‘I am quite willing; but the question is, how to arbitrate, and that is rather a difficult one.’
‘Not at all; it is the easiest thing in the world. Get a public meeting, admit an equal number of the supporters of each candidate, and abide by the result.’
‘Which, if there has been fair play—if one party has not taken a mean advantage of the other—will leave matters just as they are.’
‘Well, then, let the meeting be an open one, and let the best man win.’
‘That won’t do. The richer man will be sure to pack it with his supporters.’
‘Well, then, refer it to a London committee.’
‘A committee of wealthy men, who are sure to favour the wealthiest candidate, with whom, possibly, they may be on friendly terms; and a rich man, with the deceitful returns of his paid canvassing, can always make out a more plausible case than a poor man. I have a plan,’ continued the speaker, ‘which might solve the difficulty.’
‘What is it?’
‘Let as many candidates go to the poll as like. Let them be ranged as Liberal or Conservative—for we have in reality no Tories now—let the votes all together be cast up, and let the man who has the highest number of votes on the winning side be the elected candidate. One advantage of such a system would be that it would create more interest in an election. The difficulty is at present to get people to take an intelligent interest in politics at all.’
‘Very good; but that is a question for the future.’
‘In the meanwhile,’ said Wentworth, ‘arbitration is a farce.’
Just before the visitor could ransack his brain for a fitting reply, the waiter (he was an Irishman and a comic genius in his way), in a tone of awe and eagerness, interrupted the tête-à-tête by announcing the arrival of Father O’Bourke.
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE IRISH PRASTE.
There are three distinct classes of Roman Catholic priests—the ascetic and spiritual, the jolly and intellectual, the brutal and Bœotian. Of the first Cardinal Manning is the type. The second was presented to us in the person of Cardinal Wiseman, who made the Romanist priest as famous in his day as Cardinal Manning in ours. Of the third class you may see specimens every day in every Belgian town, and in many parts of England and Ireland. Father O’Bourke was a combination of the two latter types—a man of humour, a plausible speaker, a tremendous orator, and a man whose great art was to be conciliatory to all. He could be very rollicking over a glass of whisky-and-water, but his power was more physical than spiritual. He had something of a domineering tone, the result chiefly of his mixing with the low Irish who emigrate to England, where, like the Gibeonites of old, they become chiefly hewers of stone and drawers of water.
Mr. Wentworth received the priest with all due politeness, as he explained that he had come for a friendly chat.
‘I am delighted to hear it,’ said Wentworth. ‘I have been much in Ireland.’
‘And you learnt there, sir,’ said the priest, ‘that England is a very cruel country.’
‘I don’t see that, exactly,’ said Mr. Wentworth; ‘for fifty years we English have been trying to do all the good we can for Ireland.’
‘Ah, so you think, but I assure you, sir, that it is quite otherwise; yet all that we ask from England is justice. England is rich and powerful, and uses her riches and her power to oppress poor Ireland.’
‘How so?’
‘Sir, allow me to refer you to the history of my unfortunate country. There was a time when Ireland had a flourishing linen trade, but England, in her jealousy of Ireland, destroyed it.’
‘Well,’ said Wentworth, ‘I have been in Belfast, and was struck with the prosperity of the place, the respectability of its shops, the size of its warehouses, the extent of its harbours. I saw a large population all seemingly well employed, well dressed, and well fed, with no end of public institutions and newspapers, and all in consequence of that linen trade which you tell me the English have destroyed.’
‘Oh, sir,’ said the priest, ‘one swallow does not make a summer. If one town is fairly well off, that is no reply to the charge of poverty produced by the English. You’ve seen our harbour in Galway?’
‘I have been there, and, undoubtedly, it is a fine harbour.’
‘Indeed, sir, it is,’ replied the priest; ‘and, as you are probably aware, at one time it was intended to be the seat for a great Transatlantic trade.’
‘Yes, we all know that. We have, unfortunately, all heard of the collapse of the Galway Line. It is a sad sight to see the great warehouse standing there empty. I believe a good deal of money was lost by too confiding shareholders?’
‘Indeed, sir, you’re right; but what was the reason?’
‘Well, I really don’t recollect at this particular moment.’
‘Sir, the reason was the jealousy of the Liverpool shipowners. What do you think they did?’
‘I really can’t say.’
‘Well, as soon as the Liverpool shipowners saw the line was going to be a success, they came over to Galway and bribed the pilot to run the ship on the only rock there was in the harbour, and there was the end of the Galway Transatlantic Line.’
‘Of course, Father O’Bourke, I am not going to contradict you,’ replied Wentworth. ‘I am not a Liverpool shipowner, and know little about them; but I was not long ago in Galway, in the very harbour to which you refer, and while I was there a man said to me that Allan’s steamers used to call in there for emigrants, and I asked why they did not then. “Oh,” said he, “the fact was, that while they charged in Londonderry a penny a ton, and in Queenstown a halfpenny, in Galway the charges were sixpence a ton, and so the steamers were driven away.” Thus, you see, it was not the Liverpool shipowners, but the Galway people themselves, that drove the trade away. What do you say to that?’
‘Well,’ said the priest, rather confusedly, ‘the fact is, there are wheels within wheels; we do not want the people to emigrate.’
‘No, you fear you will lose your power over them if they do; but, for the sake of abusing England, you tell me that England ruined the Galway Steam Packet Company. I am inclined to believe it did nothing of the kind.’
‘But the landlords, what do you think of them?’
‘So far as I have seen them, they are a mixed lot, like all the rest of us—some good, some bad. I blame people who bid against each other in their madness to get a bit of land on which it is impossible for anyone to live. I blame the priests and the patriots and the landlords who for ages have winked at this, and allowed the people to sink into a state of degradation such as you see nowhere else. For miles and miles, as you know, Father O’Bourke, in many parts of Galway, you see fields covered with stones, and these fields are let off as farms. If the landlord resides on the estate the stones are cleared off, the soil is drained, and the tenant manages to make a living—not such as he could get in America, or Canada, or Australia, if he had pluck enough to leave the old country and emigrate, but a living of some kind. If he is under a bad landlord—a poor Irish squire, for instance—of course it is different. If the landlord does not reside upon the estate—unless he be a great English landlord, like the Duke of Devonshire—the tenant and the land have alike a bad time of it. But as the stars in their courses fought against Sisera, so the heavens are unpropitious to the small farmer. If he rises early and sits up late, and eats the bread of carefulness, all is in vain. In Liverpool there are five or six miles of docks filled with American corn and cheese and bacon. How can the small farmer, either in England, or Ireland, or Scotland, compete with that? “It is my belief,” said a Liverpool gentleman to me—who in the famine year went on a mission of mercy, and as a messenger of relief exposed himself to all the horrors of a Connemara winter—“that the small farmer could not get a living even if, instead of paying rent, rent were given him on condition of his taking the farm.”
‘I fear, Mr. Wentworth,’ said the priest, ‘you have looked at Ireland with prejudiced eyes.’
‘Not a bit of it. No one has been more friendly to the Irish than the Liberal Party, of which I am a member, and yet we are called infamous, and bloodthirsty, and base, and brutal. You know yourself here in England you live in perfect peace and security; you are allowed to go in and out amongst the people to make converts if you are so disposed. In Ireland, if I attempted to do anything of the kind, I should stand a good chance of a broken head.’
‘Well, sir, we are a warm-hearted, impulsive people, attached very strongly to the old religion—the religion of our forefathers.’
‘There is no doubt of that, sir,’ continued Wentworth; ‘wherever you go in Ireland, in the midst of all its dirt, and starvation, and wretchedness, and poverty, you see one man well dressed and well fed.’
‘And who may he be, sir?’
‘The parish priest.’
‘And why should he not be? Is not he the guide and shepherd of his flock? I suppose you will blame him next,’ said Father O’Bourke, reddening.
‘Yes, I do.’
‘What for?’
‘For his desertion of the people.’
‘Really, Mr. Wentworth, you are amusing. You make me laugh,’ said the reverend father, looking uncommonly angry. ‘Should the priest not take the part of the people?’
‘Certainly. But he does nothing of the kind. Is he not the partisan of the popular agitator? Does he not place himself by the side of men whose language is utterly false? Who stimulates the passions of the people to fever heat? who teach the poor Irish—ignorant as they are, assassins as I fear a few of them are, cowards as they are when human life is to be saved—that they have every virtue under heaven?’
‘Indeed, Mr. Wentworth,’ said the priest indignantly, ‘I know nothing of the kind. Ireland has been trampled under foot by the murdering English, and now we are within measurable distance of Home Rule.’
‘And what will be the good of that?’
‘That the Irish will have their rights at last; that we shall be free of English tyranny and English injustice.’
‘Yes, you will change King Stork for King Log. Irishmen are bound to quarrel. I was at Queenstown last summer, and taking up the Cork paper, I read an account of the meeting of the Harbour Commissioners. In the course of the meeting, one member denounced another as a humbug and miscreant of the vilest character, and said, old as he was, he was prepared to fight him with the weapons God had given him, and thereupon asked him to step into the next room and have it out. When I mentioned the matter to a priest, he said sarcastically, “Of course there are no rows in the British House of Commons.” I replied that the questions discussed there were more likely to lead to heated debate than the trifling matters a set of Harbour Commissioners would have to deal with. Furthermore, I added that when we did have a row, it was often begun by Irishmen, and generally connected with Irish affairs.’
‘Ireland must be governed by Irish ideas; that is all we want.’
‘Let us look at Scotland. England and Scotland were joined together, and the union was as much hated by the Scotch as the Irish union is hated by your people now. Look at England and Scotland now. Are they not one people—equally great, equally flourishing, equally happy under what was, at one time, a detested union? Why should not England and Ireland get on just as well? Had we given way to Scotch ideas, we should now be at loggerheads.’
‘Unfortunately, you see, in Ireland,’ said the priest, ‘public opinion is the other way.’
‘Public opinion! What public opinion have you, where boycotting and the bullet of the midnight assassin, who, coward-like, waits for his unsuspecting victim in a ditch or behind a stone wall, have created a reign of terror under which all freedom of thought and action is suppressed? Public opinion does not exist in Ireland. The Irish are down-trodden indeed. No Russian serfs are worse off.’
‘Nevertheless, in the heart of every Irishman there is a passionate desire for freedom which has taught her sons to lead heroic lives and to die heroic deaths. Think of Emmet, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, and many others, whose names will live in immortal song.’
‘By all means. They had much to complain of—though they sought a remedy the wrong way, and suffered in consequence. The Ireland of their day was bad enough; but the Ireland of to-day is different.’
‘Different indeed,’ said the priest proudly. ‘Now we are a united people; we have the great American nation on our side.’
‘Shall I tell you what an American lady said to me the other day, as I saw her off in a Cunarder for New York?’ asked Mr. Wentworth.
‘If you like, sir.’
‘“Pray, Mr. Wentworth,” she said, leaning over the ship’s side, as I was getting into the tug—“pray don’t send us any more Irish.”’
‘That may be, sir. We all know ladies have their whims and aversions as well as other people. But you don’t seem fond of the Irish.’
‘On the contrary, I admire them much. I envy them their ingenuity, their humour, their enthusiasm, their power of oratory, their pluck and spirit. I only wish them better led. A real union of English and Irish would, I believe, make us the first nation in the world.’
‘Then, you don’t think much of our leaders?’
‘Oh yes I do. They are clever men—far cleverer than our average M.P.’s—but they have put the people on the wrong scent. It is not justice Ireland wants. England and Scotland are quite ready to accord her that. The people of England have been the warmest friends of Ireland from the first. Indeed, she has had more justice done to her than England and Scotland. Her farmers have rights denied to ours; her representatives occupy almost entirely the attention of Parliament. Your leaders only play with the people, and make the wrongs of Ireland a stepping-stone for themselves to place and power. What Ireland wants now is a little peace. The people are dying of political delirium tremens. Said an Irish hotel-keeper to me one day, “What Ireland wants is more industry. Farmers’ sons won’t work. They prefer instead to go to fairs and races and public meetings. Irishmen won’t invest in any Irish enterprise, and if they do it is always a job they make of it.” I myself have known when Englishmen have gone to Ireland to establish manufactures to keep the people employed, that the foremen have been shot and the manufactories closed. You must have known something of the same kind, Father O’Bourke.’
‘It may be that there are difficulties between Irishmen and Saxon masters, and that these difficulties may have occasionally led to bloodshed and loss of life. We are a hot-headed people. We have besides the wrongs of many long centuries to remember. You recollect Sir Walter Raleigh, Mr. Wentworth?’
‘Blessings on his sacred head, I do! Did he not teach us to grow potatoes and smoke tobacco? I’d forgive a man a good deal in consideration of such lasting benefits.’
‘Please recollect he was one of the English who accompanied Lord Grey to the South of Ireland, and took part in the attack on a great castle there. All the inmates were slaughtered. A few women, some of them pregnant, were hanged. A servant of Saunders, an Irish gentleman, and a priest were hanged, also. The bodies, six hundred in all, were stripped and laid out upon the sands—“as gallant, goodly personages,” said Grey, “as were ever beheld.” Was not that murderous work?’
‘It was indeed,’ said Wentworth sadly. ‘But why treasure up such deeds of blood done ages ago? It is not Christian. The Bible tells us to forgive our enemies.’
‘But it is human nature. We Irishmen have long memories. Such things can never be forgotten or forgiven.’
‘There I think you’re wrong. Besides, in the case you refer to the victims were chiefly foreigners, who had no business there, who had come merely for the sake of fighting. What was done in barbarous times would not be permitted now. Let us strive to be better friends. You Irishmen come to England and we welcome you at the bar, on the press, in trade, in the army or navy, or the public service. I will go further still. It is a shame that when a bridge is to be built over the Shannon you have to come to London. You ought to manage your own local affairs. But England is an empire, and high-spirited, intelligent Irishmen would rather take part in Imperial politics than shine in a local Parliament. Home Rule will not satisfy the natural aspirations of an Irishman of talent. I met an old Dutch naval captain at Flushing who complained to me one day bitterly of the hardship of his lot. When he was born Holland was a part of France; now Holland was independent, and he was a citizen of a little principality rather than of a great empire. It will be so with the Irishman of the future—or an Irishman in search of a career.’
‘But, sir, is not a desire for Ireland’s nationality a reasonable one?’
‘Undoubtedly; but Ireland never was a nation. It was always torn with dissension; with leaders and lords ready to kill each other, only kept from doing so by England. No one would rejoice to see Ireland a nation more than I, but that is a dream of which I despair.’
‘But Home Rule will make Ireland a nation.’
‘How can you say that, sir?’ said Wentworth indignantly. ‘It is in the Protestant north that the strength of Ireland lies; it is there you meet intelligence and industry and wealth; it is there you see what Ireland might become. In all other parts of Ireland, what do you see but wretchedness and poverty? There is a permanent line of separation which not even Home Rule can obliterate.’
‘You are very outspoken, Mr. Wentworth—more so than is politic, I fear,’ said the reverend Father, with a bitter smile. ‘We have many Irish voters in this borough, and I fear they will be unable to give you their support; and Irish support is a matter of some consequence. In many borough elections they can turn the scale.’
‘Alas! I am quite aware of that; but I hold my opinion, nevertheless. The demand for an Irish Parliament independent of an Imperial one will come to the front, the Liberal Party will find themselves compelled to support it—’
‘And then we shall have peace.’
‘No a bit of it! Then we shall have civil war. It was only a week or two since I was talking to a porter at the Limerick Station. He said to me: “The people want Home Rule. Let ’em have it, and there won’t be many of ’em left.” And I fear the porter was right.’
‘Why, who will there be to fight?’
‘The men of the North. I have no sympathy with Orangemen: they are hard and bigoted, and have done immense mischief in Ireland; but they will never be content with a Home Rule measure which will hand them over to their foes. Things are bad enough now, with England keeping both parties, to a certain extent, from flying at each other. What Ireland will be under Home Rule such as will be accepted by the Nationalists I shudder to contemplate.’
‘You are easily alarmed,’ said the priest, as he took his leave. ‘We shall have Home Rule, and for once Ireland will be at peace.’
‘I hope so, I am sure,’ said Mr. Wentworth, as the reverend gentleman left him alone.