Volume Ii Part 5 (1/2)

So strange did this precaution in speech seem in my time, that it was believed that reticence was not honest precaution, but prudent concealment of actual conviction, intended to evade orthodox anger.

On problems relating to infinite existence and an unknown future, it requires infinite knowledge to give an affirmative answer. No one said he had infinite information, but everybody declaimed as though he had.

It appeared not to have occurred to many that there was a state of the understanding in which lack of conviction was owing to lack of evidence.

Where the desire to believe is hereditary, it is difficult to realise that there are questions upon which certainty may, to many minds, be unattainable, and that an honest man who felt this was bound to say so.

An American journal, which needed forbearance from its readers for its own heresy, published the opinion that Huxley was a ”dodger” in philosophy. Whereas Huxley was for integrity in thought and speech. He was for scientific accuracy as far as attainable. His own outspokenness was the glory of philosophy and science in his day. He never denied his convictions; he never apologised for them; he never explained them away.

Is it over his n.o.ble tomb that we are to write, ”Here lies a Dodger,”

because he invented an honest term to denote the measured knowledge of honest thinkers? Dogmatism is not demonstration, but when I was young n.o.body seemed to suspect it. It used to be said that ”Darwin, Huxley, and Spencer were not really in a state of unknowingness concerning the great problem of the universe”--which meant that these eminent thinkers, upon whose lives no shadow of unveracity ever rested, described themselves as Limitationists when they were not so. They were not to be believed upon their word. The term was a mask. Such are the social penalties for taking sides with veracity.

The public has begun to discover that veracity of speech is not a mask, but a duty. None can calculate the calamities which arise in society from the perpetual misdirections disseminated by those who make a.s.sertions resting merely upon their inherited belief or prepossessions, with no personal knowledge upon which they are founded. This is the sin of pretension, which recedes before the integrity of science and reason, just as wild beasts recede before the march of civilisation.

Few would be prepared to believe that, in my polemical days, the desire to avoid committing the sin of pretension was supposed to indicate desperation of character, of which suicide would be the natural end.

This was a favourite argument, for a heterodox principle was held to be for ever confuted, if he who held it hanged himself. The best proclaimed champion of orthodox tenets, whom I met on many platforms, went about declaring that I intended suicide, and it was generally believed that I had committed it. The certainty of it, sooner or later, was little doubted, whereas it was not at all in my way.

The suicide of Eugene Aram, to escape the ignominy of an inevitable execution, is intelligible. If Blanco White, whose dying and hopeless sufferings excited the sympathy even of Cardinal Newman, had done the same thing, it would have been condonable. Suicide proceeding from disease of the mind is always pitiable. When Italian prisoners were given belladonna by their Austrian gaolers, to cause them to betray, unconsciously, their comrades, some committed suicide to prevent this, which was honourable though deplorable. When a murderer, knowing his desert, becomes his own executioner, he is not censurable though still infamous, since it saves society the expense of terminating his dangerous career. But in other cases, self-slaughter, to avoid trouble or the performance of inconvenient duty, is cowardly and detestable.

In my controversial days (which I hope are not yet ended) the clergy did not hesitate to say that if a man began to think for himself, he would end by killing himself.

When I thought the doctrine had died out, an instance recurred which led me to address the following letter to the Rev. R. P. Downes, LLD. (May 18, 1899), who thought the doctrine valid:--

”Dear Dr. Downes,--It has been reported to me that in Wesley Place Chapel, Tunstall (March 20, 1899), you, when preaching on the 'Roots of Unbelief,' ill.u.s.trated that troublesome subject by saying that 'when Mr.

Holyoake was imprisoned at Birmingham, he attempted suicide.' This is not true, nor was it in Birmingham, but in Gloucester where the imprisonment occurred. I never attempted suicide--it was never in my mind to do it. I had no motive that way. I experienced no moment of despair. Better men than I had been imprisoned before, for being so imprudent as to protest against intolerance and error. Besides, I never liked suicide. I was always against it Blowing out your brains makes an ill-conditioned splatter. Cutting your throat is a detestable want of consideration for those who have to efface the stains. Drowning is disagreeable, as the water is cold and not clean. Hanging is mean and ignominious, and I have always heard unpleasant The French charcoal plan makes you sick. Indeed, every form of suicide shows want of taste; and worse than that, it is a cowardly thing to flee from evils you ought to combat, and leave others, whom you may be bound to cherish and protect, to struggle unaided. So you see what you allege against me is not only irrelevant--it implies defect of taste, which is serious in the eyes of society, which will condone crime more readily than vulgarity.

”I am against your discourse because of its bad taste. Suicide is no argument against the truth of belief. Christians are continually committing it, and clergymen also. The Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge used to bring this argument from suicide forward in their tracts against heresy. But being educated gentlemen they abandoned it long ago, and it is now only used by the lower cla.s.s of preachers. I do not mean to suggest that you belong to that cla.s.s--only that you have condescended to use an argument peculiar to uncultivated reasoners.

”Personally, I have great respect for several eminent preachers of Wesleyan persuasion, but they think it necessary to inquire into the truth of an accusation before they make it You must have borrowed yours from the Rev. Brewin Grant, with whom in his last illness I had friendly communications, and he had long ceased to repeat what he said in days when it was not thought necessary to be exact in imputations against adversaries.

”I do not remember to have written before in refutation of the statement you made. No one who knows me would believe it for a moment; but as you are a responsible, and I understand a well-regarded, preacher, I inform you of the error, especially as it gives me the opportunity of putting on record not only my disinclination, but my dislike and contempt for suicide, and for those who, not being hopelessly diseased or insane, commit it.”

Dr. Downes sent me a gentlemanly and candid letter, owning that the Rev. Brewin Grant, B.A., was the authority on which he spoke, whose representations he would not repeat, and I have reason to believe he has not.

Such are the vicissitudes of taking sides. He has to pay who takes the right, but he has honour in the end. But he pays more who takes the wrong side consciously, and with it comes infamy.

CHAPTER x.x.xI. THINGS WHICH WENT AS THEY WOULD

I commence with Judge Hughes' first candidature. There are cases in which grat.i.tude is submerged by prejudice, even among the cultivated cla.s.ses. There was Thomas Hughes, whose statue has been deservedly erected in Rugby. Three years before he became a member of Parliament I told him he might enter the House were he so minded. And when opportunity arose I was able to confirm my a.s.surance.

One Friday afternoon in 1865 some Lambeth politicians of the middle and working cla.s.ses, whom Bernal Osborne had disappointed of being their candidate (a vacancy having attracted him elsewhere), came to me at the House of Commons to inquire if I could suggest one to them. I named Mr. Hughes as a good fighting candidate, who had sympathy with working people, and who, being honest, could be trusted in what he promised, and being an athlete, could, like Feargus O'Connor, be depended upon on a turbulent platform. I was to see Mr. Hughes at once, which I did, and after much argument satisfied him that if he took the ”occasion by the hand” he might succeed. He said, ”he must first consult Sally”--meaning Mrs. Hughes. I had heard him sing ”Sally in our Alley,” and took his remark as a playful allusion to his wife as the heroine of the song.

That he might be under no illusion, I suggested that he should not enter upon the contest unless he was prepared to lose 1,000.

The next morning he consented. I took him to my friends of the Electoral Committee, by whom he was accepted. When he entered the vestibule of the hall of meeting I left him, lest my known opinions on other subjects should compromise him in the minds of some electors. This was on the Sat.u.r.day afternoon. I saw that by issuing an address in the Monday morning papers he would be first in the field. On Sunday morning, therefore, I waited for him at the Vere Street Church door, where the Rev. F. D. Maurice preached, to ask him to write at once his address to the electors. He thought more of his soul than of his success, and reluctantly complied with my request. His candidature might prevent a Tory member being elected, and the labours of the Liberal electors for years being rendered futile, education put back, the Liberal a.s.sociation discouraged, taxation of the people increased, and the moral and political deterioration of the borough ensue. To avert all such evils the candidate was loath to peril his salvation for an hour. Yet would it not have been a work of human holiness to do it, which would make his soul better worth saving? That day I had lunch at his table in Park Lane, while he thought the matter over. That was the first and last time I was asked to his house. That afternoon he brought the address to my home, then known as Dymoke Lodge, Oval Road, Regent's Park, and had tea with my family. I had collected several persons in another room ready to make copies of the address.

I wrote letters to various editors, took a cab, and left a copy of the address myself, before ten o'clock, at the offices of all the chief newspapers published on Monday morning. The editor of the _Daily News_ and one or two others I saw personally. All printed the address as news, free of expense. Next morning the Liberal electors were amazed to see their candidate ”first in the field” before any other had time to appear. All the while I knew Mr. Hughes would vote against three things which I valued, and in favour of which I had written and spoken. He would vote against the ballot, against opening picture galleries and museums on Sunday, and against the separation of the Church from the State. But on the whole he was calculated to promote the interests of the country, and therefore I did what I could to promote his election.

I wrote for the election two or three bills. The following is one:--

HUGHES FOR LAMBETH.

Vote for ”Tom Brown.”