Part 22 (2/2)
There Amelius paused, and took his first drink of water.
Reserved seats at public performances seem, by some curious affinity, to be occupied by reserved persons. The select public, seated nearest to the orator, preserved discreet silence. But the hearty applause from the sixpenny places made ample amends. There was enough of the lecturer's own vehemence and impetuosity in this opening attack--sustained as it undeniably was by a sound foundation of truth--to appeal strongly to the majority of his audience. Mrs. Sowler began to think that her sixpence had been well laid out, after all; and Mrs. Farnaby pointed the direct application to her husband of all the hardest hits at commerce, by nodding her head at him as they were delivered.
Amelius went on.
”The next thing we have to discover is this: Will our present system of government supply us with peaceable means for the reform of the abuses which I have already noticed? not forgetting that other enormous abuse, represented by our intolerable national expenditure, increasing with every year. Unless you insist on it, I do not propose to waste our precious time by saying anything about the House of Lords, for three good reasons. In the first place, that a.s.sembly is not elected by the people, and it has therefore no right of existence in a really free country. In the second place, out of its four hundred and eighty-five members, no less than one hundred and eighty-four directly profit by the expenditure of the public money; being in the annual receipt, under one pretence or another, of more than half a million sterling. In the third place, if the a.s.sembly of the Commons has in it the will, as well as the capacity, to lead the way in the needful reforms, the a.s.sembly of the Lords has no alternative but to follow, or to raise the revolution which it only escaped, by a hair's-breadth, some forty years since. What do you say? Shall we waste our time in speaking of the House of Lords?”
Loud cries from the sixpenny benches answered No; the ostler and the fiery-faced woman being the most vociferous of all. Here and there, certain dissentient individuals raised a little hiss--led by Jervy, in the interests of ”the Altar and the Throne.”
Amelius resumed.
”Well, will the House of Commons help us to get purer Christianity, and cheaper government, by lawful and sufficient process of reform? Let me again remind you that this a.s.sembly has the power--if it has the will.
Is it so const.i.tuted at present as to have the will? There is the question! The number of members is a little over six hundred and fifty.
Out of this muster, one fifth only represent (or pretend to represent) the trading interests of the country. As for the members charged with the interests of the working cla.s.s, they are more easily counted still--they are two in number! Then, in heaven's name (you will ask), what interest does the majority of members in this a.s.sembly represent?
There is but one answer--the military and aristocratic interest. In these days of the decay of representative inst.i.tutions, the House of Commons has become a complete misnomer. The Commons are not represented; modern members belong to cla.s.ses of the community which have really no interest in providing for popular needs and lightening popular burdens.
In one word, there is no sort of hope for us in the House of Commons.
And whose fault is this? I own it with shame and sorrow--it is emphatically the fault of the people. Yes, I say to you plainly, it is the disgrace and the peril of England that the people themselves have elected the representative a.s.sembly which ignores the people's wants!
You voters, in town and county alike, have had every conceivable freedom and encouragement secured to you in the exercise of your sacred trust--and there is the modern House of Commons to prove that you are thoroughly unworthy of it!”
These bold words produced an outbreak of disapprobation from the audience, which, for the moment, completely overpowered the speaker's voice. They were prepared to listen with inexhaustible patience to the enumeration of their virtues and their wrongs--but they had not paid sixpence each to be informed of the vicious and contemptible part which they play in modern politics. They yelled and groaned and hissed--and felt that their handsome young lecturer had insulted them!
Amelius waited quietly until the disturbance had worn itself out.
”I am sorry I have made you angry with me,” he said, smiling. ”The blame for this little disturbance really rests with the public speakers who are afraid of you and who flatter you--especially if you belong to the working cla.s.ses. You are not accustomed to have the truth told you to your faces. Why, my good friends, the people in this country, who are unworthy of the great trust which the wise and generous English const.i.tution places in their hands, are so numerous that they can be divided into distinct cla.s.ses! There is the highly-educated cla.s.s which despairs, and holds aloof. There is the cla.s.s beneath--without self-respect, and therefore without public spirit--which can be bribed indirectly, by the gift of a place, by the concession of a lease, even by an invitation to a party at a great house which includes the wives and the daughters. And there is the lower cla.s.s still--mercenary, corrupt, shameless to the marrow of its bones--which sells itself and its liberties for money and drink. When I began this discourse, and adverted to great changes that are to come, I spoke of them as revolutionary changes. Am I an alarmist? Do I unjustly ignore the capacity for peaceable reformation which has preserved modern England from revolutions, thus far? G.o.d forbid that I should deny the truth, or that I should alarm you without need! But history tells me, if I look no farther back than to the first French Revolution, that there are social and political corruptions, which strike their roots in a nation so widely and so deeply, that no force short of the force of a revolutionary convulsion can tear them up and cast them away. And I do personally fear (and older and wiser men than I agree with me), that the corruptions at which I have only been able to hint, in this brief address, are fast extending themselves--in England, as well as in Europe generally--beyond the reach of that lawful and bloodless reform which has served us so well in past years. Whether I am mistaken in this view (and I hope with all my heart it may be so), or whether events yet in the future will prove that I am right, the remedy in either case, the one sure foundation on which a permanent, complete, and worthy reformation can be built--whether it prevents a convulsion or whether it follows a convulsion--is only to be found within the covers of this book. Do not, I entreat you, suffer yourselves to be persuaded by those purblind philosophers who a.s.sert that the divine virtue of Christianity is a virtue which is wearing out with the lapse of time. It is the abuse and corruption of Christianity that is wearing out--as all falsities and all impostures must and do wear out. Never, since Christ and his apostles first showed men the way to be better and happier, have the nations stood in sorer need of a return to that teaching, in its pristine purity and simplicity, than now! Never, more certainly than at this critical time, was it the interest as well as the duty of mankind to turn a deaf ear to the turmoil of false teachers, and to trust in that all-wise and all-merciful Voice which only ceased to exalt, console, and purify humanity, when it expired in darkness under the torture of the cross! Are these the wild words of an enthusiast? Is this the dream of an earthly Paradise in which it is sheer folly to believe?
I can tell you of one existing community (one among others) which numbers some hundreds of persons; and which has found prosperity and happiness, by reducing the whole art and mystery of government to the simple solution set forth in the New Testament--fear G.o.d, and love thy neighbour as thyself.”
By these gradations Amelius arrived at the second of the two parts into which he had divided his address.
He now repeated, at greater length and with a more careful choice of language, the statement of the religious and social principles of the Community at Tadmor, which he had already addressed to his two fellow-travellers on the voyage to England. While he confined himself to plain narrative, describing a mode of life which was entirely new to his hearers, he held the attention of the audience. But when he began to argue the question of applying Christian Socialism to the government of large populations as well as small--when he inquired logically whether what he had proved to be good for some hundreds of persons was not also good for some thousands, and, conceding that, for some hundreds of thousands, and so on until he had arrived, by dint of sheer argument, at the conclusion that what had succeeded at Tadmor must necessarily succeed on a fair trial in London--then the public interest began to flag. People remembered their coughs and colds, and talked in whispers, and looked about them with a vague feeling of relief in staring at each other. Mrs. Sowler, hitherto content with furtively glancing at Mr.
Farnaby from time to time, now began to look at him more boldly, as he stood in his corner with his eyes fixed sternly on the platform at the other end of the hall. He too began to feel that the lecture was changing its tone. It was no longer the daring outbreak which he had come to hear, as his sufficient justification (if necessary) for forbidding Amelius to enter his house. ”I have had enough of it,” he said, suddenly turning to his wife, ”let us go.”
If Mrs. Farnaby could have been forewarned that she was standing in that a.s.sembly of strangers, not as one of themselves, but as a woman with a formidable danger hanging over her head--or if she had only happened to look towards Phoebe, and had felt a pa.s.sing reluctance to submit herself to the possibly insolent notice of a discharged servant--she might have gone out with her husband, and might have so escaped the peril that had been lying in wait for her, from the fatal moment when she first entered the hall. As it was she refused to move. ”You forget the public discussion,” she said. ”Wait and see what sort of fight Amelius makes of it when the lecture is over.”
She spoke loud enough to be heard by some of the people seated nearest to her. Phoebe, critically examining the dresses of the few ladies in the reserved seats, twisted round on the bench, and noticed for the first time the presence of Mr. and Mrs. Farnaby in their dim corner.
”Look!” she whispered to Jervy, ”there's the wretch who turned me out of her house without a character, and her husband with her.”
Jervy looked round, in his turn, a little doubtful of the accuracy of his sweetheart's information. ”Surely they wouldn't come to the sixpenny places,” he said. ”Are you certain it's Mr. and Mrs. Farnaby?”
He spoke in cautiously-lowered tones; but Mrs. Sowler had seen him look back at the lady and gentleman in the corner, and was listening attentively to catch the first words that fell from his lips.
”Which is Mr. Farnaby?” she asked.
”The man in the corner there, with the white silk wrapper over his mouth, and his hat down to his eyebrows.”
Mrs. Sowler looked round for a moment--to make sure that Jervy's man and her man were one and the same.
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