Volume I Part 6 (2/2)

Christians, from the Vatican to the Primitive Methodist conventicle, are all so persuaded of the infallibility of their interpretation of the Scriptures, and are so convinced of the perfect sufficiency of their tenets for the needs of all the world, that they regard difference of opinion as springing from wilful misunderstanding, or from the ”evil heart at enmity with G.o.d”--a mad doctrine beneath the notice of the average lunatic. Natural variety of intellect, the infinite hosts of personal views, and the infinitude of individual experience--which silently create new convictions--are not taken into account, and conscientious dissent seems to the antediluvian theologian an impossibility. Even the most liberal of eminent Unitarians in England, W. J. Fox, regarded, what we now know as the Agnostic--hesitation to declare as true that which the declarer does not know to be so--as a species of mental disease.

That Kingsley lived in a refracting medium, in which the straightest facts appeared bent when placed in it, was evident when he wrote: ”Heaven defend us from the Manchester School, for of all narrow, conceited, hypocritical, and atheistic schemes of the universe the Cobden and Bright one is exactly the worst.” There was no reason why Kingsley should be a Chartist, since he had all he wanted secured, and had contempt in his heart for Chartist tenets. He wrote: ”The Bible gives the dawn of the glorious future, such as no universal suffrage, free trade, communism, organisation of labour, or any other Morrison pill measure can give.” He exulted in the existence of the forces which made against the people. He exclaimed: ”As long as the Throne, the House of Lords, and the Press are what I thank G.o.d they are!” he was grateful.

The state of things which existed, it was the object of Chartism to change.

These rampant ideas of Kingsley were far from being Chartist sentiments.

At a meeting in Castle Street, London, the Rev. Charles Kingsley and Mr.

Thomas Hughes were present, working men comprising the audience, an old grey-headed Chartist, of a Republican way of thinking, whose experience of monarchy was limited to his share of taxation for its support, hissed at the introduction of the Queen's name. Mr. Hughes, then a young athlete, turned upon the old Six Points politician and said: ”Any one who hissed at the Queen's name would have to reckon with him”--meaning that he would knock him down, or put him out of the meeting. If, at a Chartist meeting, one athletic leader had similarly threatened an old grey-headed Royalist who hissed some Republican name, it would have been described, in all respectable papers, as ”a ruffianly proceeding.” The Hughes incident showed Christian Socialist sympathy with Chartism was not of an enthusiastic character. At other times Mr. Hughes had n.o.bler moods, but he, like Kingsley, had few qualifications for delineating Chartists.

Judge Hughes, like Canon Kingsley and his Christian Socialist colleagues, saw everything in the light of Theology. He saw nothing else by itself. He relates ”the appearance of a little grey, shrivelled man at the grave of Mr. Maurice at the cemetery at Hampstead, one of the staff of the leading Chartist newspaper,” as a proof of his conversion.

This was grat.i.tude, not conversion. Had I not been at the Bolton Co-operative Congress at the time, I should have been at the same grave.

When the news came of Maurice's death, it did not occur to his friend, Mr. Neale, that the Congress would pa.s.s a resolution in honour of Maurice. I suggested it to him, and he said to me, ”You had better draw up the resolution,” which I did, and moved it. It was unanimously and gratefully pa.s.sed. Though I was foremost to express the respect of working men, and the sense of obligation they were under, for Maurice's great services to Co-operation, and his establishment of the Working Men's College, it did not imply that I had come to accept the Thirty-nine Articles. Relevant appreciation, real grat.i.tude, and admiration, do not imply coincidence of opinion on other and alien questions.

How little the creator of Alton Locke was a Chartist, or a sympathiser with Chartism, was seen when he described ”Mr. Julian Harney and Feargus O'Connor and the rest of the smoke of the pit.” Kingsley said ”his only quarrel with the Charter was that it did not go far enough.” All his meaning was that it should have comprised social, instead of political reform, which was what all who were opposed to political freedom said.

This only meant that he wanted Chartists to take up social, and drop political reform. This appears in the pa.s.sage in which he said, ”The Charter disappointed me bitterly when I read it. It seemed a harmless cry enough, but a poor, bald, const.i.tution-mongering cry as ever I heard. The French cry of organisation of labour is worth a thousand of it.”* Organisation of labour is a great thing, but it is not political equality or liberty. Kingsley's Chartist had no political soul.

There is n.o.ble sympathy with labour, and there are pa.s.sages which should always be read with honour in ”Alton Locke.” But the book is written in derision of Chartism and Liberal politics. Alton Locke himself was like his creator. Kingsley's acts were the acts of a friend, his arguments the arguments of an enemy; and Alton Locke, despite the n.o.ble personal qualities with which he is endowed, was a confused political traitor, who bartered the Kingdom of Man for the Kingdom of Heaven, when he might have stood by both.

* Prefatory Memoir, by T. Hughes, p. 16.

So much for the Church Chartist. Now turn to the Positivist Chartist, and see whether there be any backbone of political emanc.i.p.ation in him, or whether his vertebra is of jelly, like Alton Locke's. To the Positivist Chartist is given the stronger name of ”Radical.”

One of the remarkable volumes George Eliot gave to the world bears the name of ”Felix Holt, the Radical.” But when she comes to delineate the Radical, he turns out to be a Positivist--of good quality of his kind, but still not a Radical.

As Canon Kingsley drew the Church Chartist, so George Eliot drew the Positivist Radical. Neither drew the selected hero as he was, but as each thought he ought to be.

A Radical is one who goes to the root of things. He deals with evils having a political origin, which he intends to remove by political means. Radicals were far older than the Chartists. Radicalism was a force in reform before Chartism began. The Radical more or less evolves his creed by observation of the condition of things surrounding him; the Chartist had his creed ready made for him. The Chartist may be said to begin with political effects, the Radical with political causes. Anyhow, the Radical was always supposed to know what he was, and why he was what he was. Felix Holt was not built that way. George Eliot had greater power of penetrating into character than Kingsley, but she made the same mistake in Felix Holt that Kingsley made in Alton Locke. Felix Holt is a revolutionist from indignation. His social insurgency is based on resentment at injustice. Very n.o.ble is that form of dissatisfaction, but political independence is not his inspiration. Freedom, equality of public rights, are not in his mind. His disquiet is not owing to the political inability of his fellows to control their own fortunes.

Content comes to Felix when the compa.s.sion of others ameliorates or extinguishes the social evils from which his fellows suffer. He is the Chartist of Positivism without a throb of indignation at political subjection. That may be Positivism, but it is not Radicalism.

Felix Holt discloses his character in his remark that ”the Radical question was how to give every man a man's share in life. But I think that is to expect voting to do more towards it than I do.”

”A man's share in life” was the Baboeuf doctrine of Communism, which English Radicals never had. Holt's depreciation of the power of voting was the argument of the benevolent but beguiling Tory. It was part of the Carlylean contempt of a ten-thousandth part of a voice in the ”national palava.” This meant distrust, not only of the suffrage, but of Parliament itself. When both are gone, despotism becomes supreme. When Felix Holt talked so, he had ceased to be a Radical--if he ever was one.

The power of voting has changed the status and dignity of working men--not much yet, but more will come. Hampered and incomplete as the suffrage is, it has put the workers on the way to obtain what they want, though they are a little puzzled which turning to take now they are on the road.

Felix Holt continues: ”I want the working men to have power.... and I can see plainly enough that our all having power will do little towards it at present.... If we have false expectations about men's characters, we are very much like the idiot who thinks he can carry milk in a can without a bottom. In my opinion the notions about what mere voting will do, are very much that sort” Felix declares that all the ”scheme about voting and districts and annual parliaments [all points of the Charter]

will not give working men what they want.”*

* See ”Felix Holt, the Radical,” vol i. pp. 265-266, Blackwood's edition of George Eliot

Felix has much more to say in disparagement of political aspiration which is like reading one of Lord Salisbury's speeches when he was Lord Cranborne, but without the bitterness and contempt by which we knew the genuine Salisbury mind. The Eliot spirit is better--the argument more sympathetic, but the purport is the same. It means: ”Leave politics alone. You will find all the redress that is good for you elsewhere.”

This, if true, is not Radicalism which sought to help itself, and not rise by compa.s.sion. Radicals may have expected too much from political reform--they may have thought political power to be an end instead of a means whereby better public conditions can be obtained, by which social effort could better be compa.s.sed, and its projects carried out. It is true that social condition can be improved by men of purpose and character under despotism, but this does not prove that despotism is desirable, since it can make itself at will an effectual obstacle to progress, and as a rule does so. The policy of seeking the best political condition in which social progress can be made, is Radicalism.

The policy of contentment with things as they are, seeking social condition apart from politics, is Socialism, as it has been understood in England. ”Felix Holt,” like ”Alton Locke,” abounds in n.o.ble sentiments, exalts the character of working men, vindicates their social claims with eloquence. But Felix Holt was no more a Radical than Alton Locke was a Chartist. Alton Locke is against Chartism. Felix Holt is against Radicalism. Sir Leslie Stephen has written the most fascinating estimate of the writings and genius of George Eliot that has been produced. He has interesting things to say of Felix Holt, but it does not occur to him to say what he was so well able to say, whether he was a Radical or not--or if one, of what species. Therefore it has been necessary to place before the reader the evidence which will enable him to decide the question for himself.

In reference to this chapter, Mr. J. M. Ludlow wrote to me, saying:

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