Volume Ii Part 15 (2/2)

Pope, himself a Catholic, warned us that--

”For virtue's self may too much zeal be had.

The worst of madness is a saint run mad.”

Fanatics forget (they would not be fanatics if they remembered) that in public affairs, true thoroughness is limited by the rights of others.

There is no permanent progress without this consideration. The best of eggs will harden if boiled too much. The mariner who takes no account of the rocks, wrecks his s.h.i.+p--which it is not profitable to forget.

It is natural that those who crave practical knowledge of the unseen world should look about the universe for some c.h.i.n.k, through which they can see what goes on there, and believe they have met with truants who have made disclosures to them. I have no commerce of that kind to relate. It is hard to think that when Jupiter is silent--when the Head of the G.o.ds speaketh not--that He allows angels with traitor tongues to betray to men the mysteries of the world He has Himself concealed.

Can it be that He permits wayward ghosts to creep over the boundary of another world and babble His secrets at will? This would imply great lack of discipline at the outposts of paradise. There is great fascination in clandestine communication with the kingdom of the dead.

I own that noises of the night, not heard in the day, seem supernatural.

The wind sounds like the rush of the disembodied--hinges creak with human emotion--winds moan against window panes like persons in pain.

Creatures of the air and earth flit or leap in pursuit of prey, like the shadows of ghosts or the furtive steps of murdered souls. Are they more than

”The sounds sent down at night By birds of pa.s.sage in their flight”?

For believing less where others believe more, for expressing decision of opinion which the reader may resent, I do but follow in the footsteps of Confucius, who, as stated by Allen Upward, ”declared that a principle of belief or even a rule of morality binding on himself need not bind a disciple whose own conscience did not enjoin it on him.” Confucius, says his expositor, thus ”reached a height to which mankind have hardly yet lifted their eyes, and announced a freedom compared with which ours is an empty name.”

CHAPTER XLVII. LOOKING BACKWARDS

It seems to me that I cannot more appropriately conclude these chapters of bygone events within my own experience, than by a summary of those of the past condition of industry which suggest a tone of manly cheerfulness and confidence in the future, not yet common among the people. Changes of condition are not estimated as they pa.s.s, and when they have pa.s.sed, many never look back to calculate their magnificence or insignificance. This chapter is an attempt to show the change of the environment of a great cla.s.s of a character to decrease apprehension and augment hope. The question answered herein is: ”Did things go better before our time?”

When this question is put to me I answer ”No.” Things did not go better before my time--nor that of the working cla.s.s who were contemporaries of my earlier years. My answer is given from the working cla.s.s point of view, founded on a personal experience extending as far back as 1824, when I first became familiar with workshops. Many are still under the impression that things are as bad as they well can be, whereas they have been much worse than they are now. When I first took an interest in public affairs, agitators among the people were as despondent as frogs who were supposed to croak because they were neglected.

They spoke in weeping tones. There were tears even in the songs of Ebenezer Elliot, the Corn-Law Rhymer,* and not without cause, for the angels would have been pessimists, had they been in the condition of the people in those days. I myself worked among men who had Unitarian masters--who were above the average of employers--even they were as sheep-dogs who kept the wolf away, but bit the sheep if they turned aside. But Trades Unions have changed this now, and sometimes bite their masters (employers they are called now), which is not more commendable.

Still, mult.i.tudes of working people, who ought to be in the front ranks as claimants for redress still needed, yet hang back with handkerchief to their eyes, oppressed with a feeling of hopelessness, because they are unaware of what has been won for them, of what has been conceded to them, and what the trend of progress is bringing nearer to them.

* Thomas Cooper--himself a Chartist poet--published (1841) in Elliot's days a hymn by William Jones--a Leicester poet-- of which the first verse began thus:

”Come my fellow-slaves of Britain.

Rest, awhile, the weary limb; Pour your plaints, ye bosom-smitten, In a sad and solemn hymn.”

Of course if there has been no betterment in the condition of the people, despair is excusable--but if there has, despair is as unseemly as unnecessary. Every age has its needs and its improvements to make, but a knowledge of what has been accomplished should take despair out of workmen's minds. To this end I write of changes which have taken place in my time.

I was born in tinder-box days. I remember having to strike a light in my grandfather's garden for his early pipe, when we arrived there at five o'clock in the morning. At times my fingers bled as I missed the steel with the jagged flint. Then the timber proved damp where the futile spark fell, and when ignition came a brimstone match filled the air with satanic fumes. He would have been thought as much a visionary as Joanna Southcott, who said the time would come when small, quick-lighting lucifers would be as plentiful and as cheap as blades of gra.s.s. How tardy was change in olden time! Flint and steel had been in use four hundred years. Philip the Good put it into the collar of the Golden Fleece (1429). It was not till 1833 that phosphorus matches were introduced. The safety match of the present day did not appear until 1845. The consumption of matches is now about eight per day for each person. To produce eight lights, by a tinder-box, would take a quarter of an hour With the lucifer match eight lights can be had in two minutes, occupying only twelve hours a year, while the tinder box process consumes ninety hours. Thus the lucifer saves nearly eighty hours annually, which, to the workman, would mean an addition of nearly eight working days to the year.

In tinder-box days the nimble night burglar heard the flint and steel going, and had time to pack up his booty and reach the next parish, before the owner descended the stairs with his flickering candle. Does any one now fully appreciate the morality of light? Extinguish the gas in the streets of London and a thousand extra policemen would do less to prevent outrage and robbery than the ever-burning, order-keeping street light. Light is a police force--neither ghosts nor burglars like it.

Thieves flee before it as errors flee the mind when the light of truth bursts on the understanding of the ignorant.

Seventy years ago the evenings were wasted in a million houses of the poor. After sundown the household lived in gloom. Children who could read, read, as I did, by the flickering light of the fire, which often limited for life the power of seeing. Now the pauper reads by a better light than the squire did in days when squires were county G.o.ds. Now old men see years after the period when their forefathers were blind.

Then a social tyranny prevailed, unpleasant to the rich and costly to the poor, which regarded the beard as an outrage. I remember when only four men in Birmingham had courage to wear beards. They were followers of Joanna Southcott. They did it in imitation of the apostles, and were jeered at in the streets by ignorant Christians. George Frederick Muntz, one of the two first members elected in Birmingham, was the first member who ventured to wear a beard in the House of Commons; and he would have been insulted had not he been a powerful man and carried a heavy Malacca cane, which he was known to apply to any one who offered him a personal affront. Only military officers were allowed to wear a moustache; among them--no one, not even Wellington, was hero enough to wear a beard. The Rev. Edmund R. Larken, of Burton Rectory, near Lincoln, was the first clergyman (that was as late as 1852) who appeared in the pulpit with a beard, but he shaved the upper lip as an apology for the audacity of his chin; George Dawson was the first Nonconformist preacher who delivered a sermon in a full-blown moustache and beard, which was taken in both cases as an unmistakable sign of lat.i.tudinarianism in doctrine. In the bank clerk or the workman it was worse. It was flat insubordination not to shave. The penalty was prompt dismissal. As though there were not fetters about hard to bear, people made fetters for themselves. Such was the daintiness of ignorance that a man could not eat, dress, nor even think as he pleased. He was even compelled to shave by public opinion.

When Mr. Joseph Cowen was first a candidate for Parliament, he wore, as was his custom, a felt hat (then called a ”wide-awake”). He was believed to be an Italian conspirator, and suspected of holding opinions lacking in orthodox requirements. Yet all his reputed heresies of acts and tenets put together did not cost him so many votes as the form and texture of his hat. He was elected--but his headgear would have ruined utterly a less brilliant candidate than he This social intolerance now shows its silly and shameless head no more. A wise Tolerance is the Angel, which stands at the portal of Progress, and opens the door of the Temple.

Dr. Church, of Birmingham, was the first person who, in my youth, contrived a bicycle, and rode upon it in the town, which excited more consternation than a Southcottean with his beard. He was an able physician, but his harmless innovation cost him his practice. Patients refused to be cured by a doctor who rode a horse which had no head, and ate no oats. Now a parson may ride to church on a bicycle and people think none the worse of his sermon; and, scandal of scandals, women are permitted to cycle, although it involves a new convenience of dress formerly sharply resented.

In these days of public wash-houses, public laundries, and water supply, few know the discomfort of a was.h.i.+ng day in a workman's home, or of the feuds of a party pump. One pump in a yard had to serve several families.

Quarrels arose as to who should first have the use of it. Sir Edwin Chadwick told me that more dissensions arose over party pumps in a day than a dozen preachers could reconcile in a week. Now the poorest house has a water tap, which might be called moral, seeing the ill-feeling it prevents. So long as was.h.i.+ng had to be done at home, it took place in the kitchen, which was also the dining-room of a poor family. When the husband came home to his meals, damp clothes were hanging on lines over his head, and dripping on to his plate. The children were in the way, and sometimes the wrong child had its ears boxed because, in the steam, the mother could not see which was which. This would give rise to further expressions which kept the Recording Angel, of whom Sterne tells us, very busy, whom the public wash-houses set free for other, though scarcely less repugnant duty.

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