Volume I Part 8 (2/2)

says I. ”Why not?” says he. ”Because,” says I, ”the Church has nothing to do with the world. We are to be separate from sinners.” He said he did ”not take that view of the case.” I said he ”ought to,” and left him.'

The deacons were rather hard on the young parson, a.s.suredly, and yet they were very good Christians in their way-ready to pay for an improvement in the chapel, for books for the Sunday-school, or to subscribe money to circulate the Bible or to send forth the missionary. What they lacked was the rarest of Christian virtues-charity; that charity which 'suffereth long, and is kind; which envieth not; which vaunteth not itself; which is not puffed up; which beareth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.' As our young friend set people thinking, refused to repeat old sentences and phrases like a parrot, and avoided religious clap-trap, he was regarded by the deacons with alarm and suspicion.

Just then the shop-bell rang, and the senior deacon left the company of his brother deacons to look after business. In a few minutes he returned, looking a little annoyed.

'What's the matter, brother?' said they all.

'Who do you think,' said he, 'was in the shop just now?'

'We can't guess. Pray tell us. The new parson?'

'Oh no! Rose Wilc.o.x-that poor silly girl the young men here make a fuss about.'

'What, the girl that used to teach in the Sunday-school, and would have upset us all, had she not taken herself off? A girl who'll come to no good end,' said the chemist and druggist, shaking his head.

Perhaps the deacon is right. It is a terrible world, this of ours, for a girl in lowly life who has more than her fair share of feminine beauty.

A thousand dangers lurk on every side of her-from the enmity of woman, from the selfish cruelty of man. It is rarely that she does come to a good end.

'What do you think she said?' continued the senior deacon. 'Why, that she came to hear Mr. Wentworth, and that she hopes we are going to have him for the new parson.'

Poor Rose had unwittingly filled up the measure of the new preacher's guilt. She was the prettiest girl in the town, and, consequently, was supposed to be far, very far from the kingdom. If Mr. Wentworth had preached so as to gain the attention and excite the admiration of a young giddy girl like that, he was not the man for Bethesda; and it must be owned, I frankly admit, that he was not. He lacked what the deacons called unction in the pulpit.

To be popular, to be attractive, to retain a hold on the light and careless and the worldly, was the surest way to alarm the deacons, who guarded jealously the sanct.i.ty of the pulpit-a sanct.i.ty which had repelled from the chapel the very people whom, now-a-days, the religious world wish to get there. They were not of the world. That was their boast and privilege. They were a chosen people-a peculiar generation.

Outside were the wicked, for whom there was no mercy-nothing but a fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation of the wrath of G.o.d. They looked for empty benches in chapel, for it was only the few that could be saved. If a young person wanted to join the church, the deacons were alarmed and surprised. It was almost a breach of conventional etiquette. Hence the unattractive character of their church life, the bitterness of their profession, the unloveliness of their spirit, the feebleness and failure of their efforts. It was a sin in their eyes to make religion palatable to the worldly. Rarely did the sons of these good men follow in their fathers' steps, too many of them fell into evil courses, and those of them who did become church members were by no means the salt of the earth. Wentworth, as was to be expected, with his open, manly nature, disliked not a little the spirit of the people-their petty quarrels, their miserable ignorance, their attachment to the letter, their forgetfulness of the spirit of the Gospel.

At Bethesda, as the meeting-house was called, there had been a venerable and G.o.dly man in the pulpit for nearly fifty years. Never had the grace of Christian humility been more strikingly displayed than by him. He had ever been thankful for small mercies-for the leg of pork, the ton of coals, the load of wood, the old clothes for his children, the new hat for himself-the casual gifts of sundry of his flock who were not quite so stingy as the rest. The wear and tear of a long life had taken all the fight out of him. Even the parson of the parish held him to be a harmless man, and was sorry to note how the race of such G.o.dly men was gradually becoming extinct, as Dissent claimed not kindly patronage, not condescending toleration, but civil and religious equality. A wonderful art had that old man for making things pleasant all round. He was truly all things to all men. The young people rather looked down on him, but he did not mind that. To his deacons he was always respectful, and never did he offend in any way their wives. Indeed, they had been known to take his part when some stray guest, some pert young miss from London town, had endeavoured to make fun of his old battered hat, his rusty black clothes, his patched-up shoes, his grotesque figure, his ancient air, his monotonous delivery, his high doctrine. But the fact was, few young persons did go to meeting, and, as the old people died off, the display of empty benches and empty pews was a sorry spectacle.

CHAPTER VII.

THE CHARTISTS.

After the war with France, which culminated in Waterloo, England enjoyed a period of rest and repose; and she needed it, after her long struggle, which had robbed her of thousands and thousands of valuable lives, and heaped upon her a national debt under the burden of which she still groans. Then came a serious problem. The war over, what was to be done with the residuum, who, in the good old times, had been marched off to the tune of 'The Roast Beef of Old England,' or 'Rule, Britannia,' or 'G.o.d save the King,' to be food for powder, and to whiten with their bones half the battle-fields of Europe?

At Sloville the difficulty was much felt, till one or two capitalists selected it as the site for manufactories. It was in one of the midland counties, where collieries abounded, and where ca.n.a.ls offer a cheap means of transit for manufactures. The place grew like Jonah's gourd. In the twinkling of an eye it became a town. All at once the sky was darkened with black clouds of smoke, vomited forth by the mills, whilst long rows of red-brick cottages, utterly barren of interest and comfort, spread themselves over all the adjacent fields. For a time all was _couleur de rose_. The neighbouring landlords kept up their rents, and the farmers made a lot of money by supplying the town; the tradesmen found business increase with no efforts of their own. Everyone was making money, and if the poor were badly off, it was chiefly their own fault, as what wages they earned were too frequently squandered in the public-house.

But prosperity in this world is seldom of long duration. The markets were glutted, because the foreigner, who had only corn to send us to pay for our wares, was prevented by the Corn Laws from sending us his corn.

At the same time we had a succession of bad harvests, and bread was almost as dear as in time of war. It is hard to be happy when you are hungry. Discontent is the natural result of starvation, and democratic newspapers and writers, who had never shown their faces in the place before, were in great demand. It was an awful sight to see the people sulking in the streets, starving in their wretched homes, cursing-in some of the lowest of the public-houses-all who were better off than themselves. 'They were,' they were told, 'a down-trodden people, the victims of a haughty aristocracy, or of a b.a.s.t.a.r.d plutocracy, that had fattened on the blood and sinew of the white slaves.' 'Down with the capitalist!' was the universal cry; and so the mills were burnt, as if by the destruction of workshops there would be demand for work. Soldiers were quartered everywhere. On every side was a rich cla.s.s, face to face with a hungry people, rendered desperate by poverty, and want, and wrong.

Undoubtedly there had been bad times in Sloville before. The farmers, according to all accounts, never had been able to make both ends meet, and the poor had to live on the rates, a fact which rather increased than diminished the evil, as the people who had the most children got more than their fair share, and a pauper had a poor chance of decent wages, unless he at once got married, and begot as many sons and daughters as the rest. But now there was a real crisis, as the mills had stopped, and the manufacturers and capitalists went about with as long faces as the farmers. Unfortunately, just at this time, the leading banker in the place failed, or rather took himself off with his family to the Continent, leaving his creditors to suffer greatly for their misplaced confidence, many poor tradesmen and windows losing their all. A good many of the chapel people took it as a dispensation of Providence, and in many a place the event was improved in that way. The Lord was angry with them on account of the general wickedness of the town. A new leaf was to be turned over. There was to be less trust in man-less pride in human intellect-less confidence in the spread of intelligence-a better observance of the Sabbath-a more frequent attendance at the means of grace. A good many of Hannah More's good-meaning tracts were reprinted and distributed gratis. Alas! the times were out of joint, and some of the people refused the tracts. They said they should prefer something to eat, and all pious Sloville turned from them in horror and despair. It was actually whispered that there were people in the place who had been seen reading Tom Paine, and were not ashamed to talk of the Rights of Man. It is not much to be wondered at that such was the case. In the old unreformed times, it was seldom that politicians, whether Whigs or Tories, took much notice of the state of the people. There was no law then to stand between the mercenary millowner and his white victim. The rich made the laws, and all that the people had to do was to obey.

Labourers were even punished for combining to get decent wages if possible. Wentworth, as a young man, was especially touched with a sense of the hards.h.i.+ps inflicted on the factory children and women. The Church-I mean by it the religious of all sects-stood by the masters. It was natural, but awful nevertheless.

'Give these poor people,' said Wentworth, 'more food and more justice, and we shall have a better chance of making them Christians.'

The deacons did not see it in that light at all. They were shopkeepers, and did not want to offend their best customers.

Out of this burning and undying sense of wrong on the part of the poor naturally arose the Chartist agitation. Men were taught to believe that all the ills of life would vanish-that every man, however idle and indifferent in character, would have a fair day's wages for a fair day's work, if they did but have annual parliaments, vote by ballot, the payment of members, equal electoral districts, and the abolition of the property qualification for members of Parliament. Orators laid hold of the people's hearts as they waved and shouted for the Charter.

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