Volume I Part 11 (2/2)
It is what sharp business Americans might be supposed to do. But it did not impose on the popular traveller, whom many naturally strove to see.
The chief of the company was candid to him* Mr. Morley has made clear that what did influence Cobden was the prospect of advancing the welfare of emigrants abroad.
At the Great Exhibition of 1851 a belief arose that international commerce would increase. A friend of mine, Mr. Allsop, like Cobden, lost a large fortune by premature enthusiasm. Mr. Cobden's was a like error, but a generous one.
On the night of Cobden's last speech in Rochdale, I was one of the audience in the great Mill Room in which he spoke. He sent to me a note from the platform. It was the last I received from him. I was that night more conscious than ever before of his wonderful self-possession in speaking. He held up as it were, in the air, a chief sentence as he spoke it, and supplied, before he left it, the qualification he saw it needed, or the amplification he saw it required, so that malignity could not pervert it, nor ignorance misunderstand it. After making the longest speech of his life to the largest audience he had ever met in one room, he was taken to the house of a friend, where he was kept standing on the cold marble hearth in a fireless room, while his friends greeted him until late that November night. To a man of Cobden's temperament standing is painful after mental exhaustion. A cold followed the fireless reception. I knew in Birmingham a speaker of great promise, Mr. J. H. Chamberlain (unrelated to Mr. Joseph Chamberlain) who was surrounded by his friends after a long and brilliant lecture, and when at last he sat down, he died.
I was in Lavington Churchyard when Cobden was buried. On our walk from the station there, Mr. Gladstone, who was before me, turned round to shake hands with a friend. I saw at once that he was a Lancas.h.i.+re man, which had never struck me before. He shook hands from the shoulder, which I had observed Lancas.h.i.+re men did. In the churchyard I lingered behind, and stood within a clump of trees overlooking the grave. When Mr. Bright, who had left the other mourners, came there himself, I moved noiselessly away. He remained alone, looking down on the last resting-place of his star-bright colleague in counsel and in fight.
Cobden excelled among politicians of the people in enthusiasm of the intellect. He regarded strong, lucid argument as the omnipotent force of progress. When one morning the news came, ”_Cobden is dead_” it was felt in every workshop in the land that a great power for peace and industry was lost to the nation. His disciples have grown with succeeding years, and if he be regarded as the founder of a school, no n.o.bler one exists among politicians. He laid the foundations of Free Trade, not only for Manchester, but for the world. As Mr. Morley tells us in his great ”Life,” Mr. Gladstone ”ranked the introduction of cheap postage for letters, doc.u.ments, patterns, and printed matter, and the abolition of all taxes on printed matter as in the catalogue of Free Trade legislation.” ”These great measures,” says Mr. Morley, ”may well take their place beside the abolition of prohibitions and protective duties, the simplifying of revenue laws, and the repeal of the Navigation Act”
These were all Cobden's ideals. Most of them he called into being, and he was the princ.i.p.al enchanter who gave them a local habitation and a name.
As with the ”Manchester School,” so with the term ”Manchester men,” it is used with a geographical indefiniteness; as when we speak of any one belonging to a s.h.i.+re instead of a town. Hence Cobden, who was a Midhurst man, and Bright, who was a Rochdale man, are taken as typical ”Manchester men.” As few readers have any definite idea of what a ”Manchester man” of the n.o.bler sort individually is, I give a brief biography of one of the most influential of them, who might be regarded as the founder of the Cobden School.
Thomas Thoma.s.son [1808-1876], manufacturer and political economist, born at Turton, near Bolton, December 6, 1808, came of a Quaker family settled in Westmoreland (1672). His grandfather came from Edgeworth, near Bolton, about the middle of the seventeenth century, where he owned a small landed estate, and built a house known as ”Thoma.s.son's Fold.”
He gave the site for the Friends' Meeting House and burial ground at Edgeworth. Mr. Thoma.s.son's father, John, was born in 1776. He was manager of the Old Mill, Eagley Bridge, Bolton, having also a share in the business, and subsequently became a cotton spinner on his own account. His son, Thomas Thoma.s.son, the subject of this notice, erected No. 1 Mill in Bolton in 1841, at a time of great depression in trade, and great distress in the town--a fact which was mentioned by the Prime Minister (Sir R. Peel) in the House of Commons as evidence that persons did not hesitate to employ their capital in the further extension of the cotton trade, notwithstanding its condition. Thomas Thoma.s.son married a daughter of John Pennington, of Hindley, a Liverpool merchant. Though brought up a member of the Society of Friends, Thoma.s.son attended the Bolton Parish Church, his wife being a Churchwoman. But in 1855 he heard the clergyman preach on the propriety of the Crimean War, which he thought so un-Christian that he never went to church again. By his vigorous speeches he gave the impression that he knew more of the political economy of trade and commerce than any other manufacturer of his time. Mr. Bright and Mr. Cobden may be said to have learned from him. When Mr. Bright went out to deliver his first speech at a public meeting, he went to Mr. Thoma.s.son on his way to take his opinion upon what he had in his mind to say. At Thoma.s.son's decease Mr. Bright bore testimony to his remarkable capacity as a man of business, saying, ”He will be greatly missed by many who have been accustomed to apply to him for advice and help.” He was not merely an eminent manufacturer, he was distinguished for his interest in public affairs. He a.s.sisted by money, counsel, and personal exertions in securing the incorporation of Bolton.
He consented to join the first Council and was at the head of the poll, considering it his duty to take part in promoting the improvements he had advocated. He remained a member of the Council over eighteen years.
Under the old government it was usual to call out armed police, or the military, for comparatively trifling disturbances, which greatly excited Thoma.s.son's indignation. He was a vigorous advocate for the town being supplied with cheap gas and cheap water, which involved watchfulness and advocacy extending over several years. He was foremost in insisting on the sanitary improvements of the town, and that the inspector should proceed against those who suffered nuisances on their premises. He gave the instance of ”a family living in a cellar, outside of which there was a cesspool, the contents of which oozed through the walls and collected under the bed.” 300 being left towards the formation of an industrial school, Thoma.s.son gave 200 more that it might be put into operation. On one occasion, when he was much opposed to the views of the Council, he resigned rather than frustrate a compromise in which he could not concur, but which others thought beneficial. He promoted pet.i.tions in favour of Decimal Coinage, and refused to join in a pet.i.tion against the Income Tax, deeming direct taxation the best. For some time he was a member of the Board of Guardians, but resigned because he ”could not sit and see men slaughtered by a stroke of the pen,” alluding to what he considered the illiberal manner in which relief was dispensed.
He promoted the establishment of a library and museum, and gave 100 towards establis.h.i.+ng a school on the plan of the British and Foreign Bible Society. When new premises were required for a Mechanics'
Inst.i.tution, he gave 500 towards that project. He subscribed fifty guineas towards a memorial statue of Crompton, the inventor, and proposed that something should be given to his descendants, saying: ”If Crompton had been a great general and had killed thousands of people, the Government would have provided him with a small county, and given him a peerage; but as he had given livelihood to thousands of mule spinners, it was left to the people to provide for his distressed descendants.” The town would have given Thoma.s.son any office in its power, but he would neither be Alderman, Mayor, nor Member of Parliament. He declined testimonials or statue. He sought no distinction for himself and accepted none; he cared alone for the welfare of the nation and the town, and the working people in it.
At a time when the votes of workpeople were generally regarded as the property of employers, Thoma.s.son said: ”If the men in his employ were Tories and voted so”--which meant voting for the Corn Laws, to which he was most opposed--” they would remain perfectly undisturbed by him--their public opinion and conduct were free.” He was distinguished beyond any Quaker of his day for political sympathy and tolerance. His principle was ”to extend to every man, rich or poor, whatever privilege, political or mental, he claimed for himself.”
At a memorable occasion in the Bolton Theatre, when the Corn Law question was contested, he may be said to have called Mr. Paulton into public life, by sending him on to the platform to defend the cause of repeal. Mr. Paulton became the first effective platform advocate of that movement Thoma.s.son was the chief promoter of the Anti-Corn Law agitation, and the greatest subscriber to its funds. When the great subscription was raised in 1845, he was the first to put down 1,000.
When it was proposed to make some national gift to Mr. Cobden, Thoma.s.son gave 5,000. He subsequently gave,5,000 to the second Cobden subscription. This is not all that he did. Mr. John Morley relates, in his ”Life of Cobden,” that Thoma.s.son, learning that Cobden was embarra.s.sed by outstanding loans, raised to pay for his Illinois shares, amounting to several thousand pounds, Thoma.s.son released the shares, and sent them to Cobden, with a request that ”he would do him the favour to accept that freedom at his hands in acknowledgment of his vast services to his country and mankind.” On a later occasion, when aid was needed, Mr. Thoma.s.son went down to Midhurst and insisted that Cobden should accept a still larger sum, refusing a formal acknowledgment and handing it over in such a form that the transaction was not known to any one but Cobden and himself. After Mr. Thoma.s.son's death there was found among his private papers a little memorandum of these advances containing the magnanimous words: ”I lament that the greatest benefactor of mankind since the invention of printing was placed in a position where his public usefulness was com-promised and impeded by sordid personal cares, but I have done something as my share of what is due to him from his countrymen to set him free for further efforts in the cause of human progress.”
In the repeal of the Corn Laws he always had in mind the welfare of his own townsmen, who, he said, ”were paying in 1841 150,000 more for food than they did in 1835,” and every town in the country in a similar proportion. He constantly sought opportunities of generosity which could never be requited, nor even acknowledged, as he left no clue to the giver. When in London, he would, two or three years in succession, call in Fleet Street at my publis.h.i.+ng house--then aiding in the repeal of the taxes on knowledge and defending the freedom of reasoned opinion--and leave 10, bearing the simple inscription, ”From T.T.” Several years elapsed before it was known whose name the initials represented. All this was so unlike the popular conception of a political economist, that such incidents deserve to be recorded. Workmen whose views he did not share would invite lecturers to the town, whom he would sometimes entertain, and judging that their remuneration would be scant, he would add 5 on their departure to cover their expenses. Thinking that Huxley might need rest which his means might not allow, Thoma.s.son offered to defray the cost of six months' travel abroad with his family. It was not convenient to the Professor to act upon the offer. At Thoma.s.son's death a note was found among his papers, saying, ”Send Huxley 1,000,” which his son, afterwards member for Bolton, did in his father's name.
Thoma.s.son was not one of those who strongly _wish_ improvement, but feebly _will_ it. He willed what he wished, and gave his voice and fortune to advance it. He was not a foolish philanthropist, with emotion without wisdom; his aid was never aimless, but given discerningly to reward or aid others who rendered public service. His merit was like circ.u.mstantial evidence--if special acts did not exceed those of some other men, the acc.u.mulated instances made a record which few have excelled.
That was the character of a real ”Manchester man”--on whom Charles Kingsley poured out the vitriolic vials of his holy wrath. Yet Kingsley had n.o.ble qualities--far above those with which the country clergyman is usually credited. It requires discrimination to speak of men of the ”Manchester School” as persons--
”Who have only to close their eyes, Be selfish, cold, and wise, And they never need to know How the workers' children grow, And live out only half their time.”
Thoma.s.son did know this--wished to know this--took trouble to know it--and gave both thought and fortune to make their lot better. Thomas Bayley Potter was of that cla.s.s, which includes Manchester careers worth remembering.
CHAPTER XIV. HARRIET MARTINEAU, THE DEAF GIRL OF NORWICH
[Ill.u.s.tration: Martineau]
There is a romance in the t.i.tle of this chapter, should some one arise to write it It was Lord Brougham who first spoke of Harriet Martineau as the ”deaf girl of Norwich,” which does more than any other words written about her to suggest a great disadvantage under which she accomplished more than any other woman ever attempted. The phrase quoted occurs in one of those letters which show that kindly feeling and genuine interest in progress was natural to Lord Brougham, though obscured by the turbulence of his later life. He first brought Miss Martineau into notice. He wrote: ”There is at Norwich a deaf girl, who is doing more good than any man in the country. Last year she (Harriet Martineau) called upon me several times, and I was struck with such marks of energy and resolution in her, which I thought must command success in some line or other of life.”
If the reader can realise what deafness means, he will know how great was her disablement Asking questions is the surest way of acquiring knowledge, or verifying it. Harriet Martineau was discouraged in asking questions, because she could not hear the answers, unless given through a speaking-tube, which imposed efforts on her friends she was loath to subject them to. She could hear no great singer, actor, or orator. These n.o.ble sources of pleasure and ideas were denied to her. She could take no part in public meetings or conferences, save those of which the business was foreknown to her. Then she was dependent upon some friend who indicated to her the time when she might intervene. Not hearing conversation, she could only learn indirectly what had gone before. Nor was it always possible to hear accurately, or interpret what was told to her. How, under these disadvantages, she acquired her large knowledge, her wonderful judgment of character, her unrivalled mastery of political questions of the day--which made her the greatest political woman in English history--proves the possibility of seemingly impossible things.
She wrote some twenty small volumes of ”Tales of Political Economy,”
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