Chapter XXII: , and Last (2)

We cannot test thee so well by old age, for the old men now standing in this generation are not wholly of thy begetting; but, judging by the law of consequences, we can foretell that material youth and material manhood must lead to a material old age; that souls long steeped in reekings from the presses of Profit, and bound for years in the chains of Utilitarianism, cannot readily escape from their pollution and bondage; and we can see also, even now, the dark shadow of the present passing over the spirits of men who began their career in a past. Old age is not, as of yore, a privileged period. Men no longer recognise and value it as a distinction, nor aspire to it as to an order having certain dignities, privileges, and immunities, like the old men at Rome, who were granted exemption from the heavy burden of state duty, and served her by their home patriotism and counsel. Men love not now to be considered or to become old; they fight against this stage of life by devices and subterfuges, and strive to stave off or disguise its approaches. Nor are they so much to blame. The relations of age are changed; it holds not the same consideration or position as in former days, receives not reverence and deference as its due homage, nor is accorded by common consent an exemption from attack, a freedom of warning and counsel. The practical workers of to-day would as soon think of bowing to the hoary head or wise heart of a man past his labours, as to the remains of a decayed steam-engine or broken-down spinning-jenny. The diseased faculties of old age are to them as the _disjecta membra_ of worn-out mechanism. It is this non-estimation, this non-appreciation, which drives men to ignore and repudiate the signs and masks of a period which brings only disability and disqualification, and makes them cling by every falsehood, outward and inward, to the semblance of youth—very martyrs to sham and pretence.

It was not always thus. Within our own experience, men at a certain time of life assumed a change of dress, habits, and bearing—not relinquishing their vocations and amusements, but withdrawing quietly from the _mêleé_, and becoming quiet actors or spectators; thus signifying that they were no longer challengers or combatants, but rather judges and umpires in the great tussle of life. We remember with what respect we used to regard these as men set apart—a sort of lay priesthood—an everyday social house of peers—a higher court of council and appeal. How deeply we felt their rebukes and praises; with what reverence we received their oracles, whether as old sportsmen, old soldiers, old scholars, or old pastors. These men are becoming few, for such feeling in regard to them is dying out or extinct. Your young utilitarian would show no more mercy to a grey-haired veteran, than the barbarians did to the senatorial band of Rome, but would indifferently hurl Cocker at his head, or joust at him with his statics.

How many classes of these old men, familiar to this generation, are disappearing! We will not touch on the old gentleman, the old yeoman, and others; their portraits have been drawn most truly already, and are impressed on most of our memories; but we must mourn over them with a filial sorrow, believing, O Age! that the high honour, dignity, worth, courage, and integrity by which they tempered society, were of more use to it than the artificial refinement, multiplied conveniences, rabid production, and forced knowledge which thou callest civilisation—that the moral virtues which they represented were more precious to a people, and more glorious to a nation, than the products and wonders of thy mechanism! If thou has bereft us of these, it will be hard to strike the balance!

One class we miss entirely—the old clergymen. Taunt us not, O Age! with the fox-hunting, hard-drinking, hard-riding parsons of the last generation. We knew them too, and knew many whose burden of delinquencies in regard to horse, hound, gun, and wine-cup, leavened as they often were by kindly charities and loving sympathies, will perhaps sit as lightly as that of many a well-oiled, smooth-going machine of capital, who sets the moral tone for our time. We speak not of these, but of the mild evangelists—the gentle brothers whose benevolent faces still beam on our memory; whose gentle words, unmixed with the gall of controversy or the fearfulness of commination, fell often sweetly on our hearts. These lived ere this age discovered that the gospel of Christ required a new development, and the religion of God a new adaptation to the purposes and destinies of man. In many of the quiet sequestered villages of England, pastors who were content to preach and live as their Master had preached and lived, delivering His promises and commands gently and lovingly, and following faithfully His behest in visiting the sick, and comforting the afflicted—many such it was our lot to see and hear. A servant of our household often took us, in our childhood, as the companion of her Sunday holiday. This woman was most erratic in her devotions, and wandered indiscriminately from fold to fold—now sitting under the Established Church, now under Wesleyan, Brionite, or Ranter. Many a field-preaching and conventicle meeting have we attended in consequence, much to the scandal of an orthodox aunt. As she loved, however, to mingle creature-comforts with her religious exercises, we more often visited some friendly yeoman, and went with him and his family to the village church. Pleasant is the memory of many of these Sabbaths; the walk through a quiet lane, or by a shady wood-path; the entry through the sequestered churchyard, with its grass-green graves, ‘neath which the forefathers of the hamlet slept; the church, simple and unadorned, where

“The golden sun
Poured in a dusty beam,
Like the celestial ladder seen
By Jacob in his dream.
And ever and anon the wind,
Sweet-scented with the hay,
Turned o’er the hymn-book’s fluttering leaves
That in the window lay;”

—the minister, reverend and benignant, earnest in entreaty, meek in rebuke—all these are pleasant memories. We knew these pastors better afterward, but this was often our first acquaintance. Oft have we asked for them since. Their places now know them no more. In their pulpits and by their altars, stand men who would impose religion on their fellows as a ceremonial, or inflict it as a penance.

Where, too, are the companions, the fellow-workers of these old pastors, the old-fashioned sisters of charity; those dear old ladies who, with hearts warmed and opened by the affections of their own social life, went forth from their hearths to the homes of the poor, dropping here a word of comfort, here of admonition, here an alms, here a book, and leaving ever behind them a sense of true sympathy and kindly interest? They knew not—so dark was their age—that a regular organisation, discipline, and uniform, a prescribed drill and manuals, were necessary to the perfection of their mission. Their charity was a natural feeling, not an instituted effort; their admonition a friendly appeal, not a systematised summons to reform and penitence; their kindness, an intuition unset to rule; their books, the selection of their own reading, not the licensed and revised issue of repositories and societies. They were the ducts by which many an unseen stream of benevolence flowed into poor houses. Strange to say, too, though unaided by tea-drinkings, public meetings, bazaars, societies, public lists of subscribers, and all the recognised mechanism of modern charity, they had always the wherewithal to give; and almsgiving, as they gave, brought no pain or mortification, injured no sense of self-dependence, and left no moral degradation. They did good in their time—a time when individual endeavour did the work of institutions and corporations, but have passed away now, and are superseded by a very different caste. Their successors march upon us, a stern, zealous, resolute, and to us rather a grim sisterhood—the trained-bands of morality and charity. They are an order having outward and inward forms. The outward sign seems to be sad-coloured raiment; and when we see a young lady dismiss the bows from her bonnet, and adopt a grey shawl, we know that she is about to rush on her vocation as a district visitor. They have rules and codes, an appointed task, and appointed order; and, when duly organised and drilled, advance on some benighted town or village, each cohort attacking a quarter with the stern determination to trample down and drive out poverty, vice, and uncleanliness wherever they may be found. They are a moral police, detective and repressive, each on a separate beat, rushing down courts and through alleys in pursuit of want and immorality. They may fulfil their work, these sisters, and we wish them good speed; but we believe that they must first clothe their charity with more love, and learn especially, what their predecessors knew so well, how to speak to the poor.

We loved those good old sisters and their work. One, whom we remember well—thanks be to God—still walks this earth, doing her beautiful mission of love and charity. How or when she began this mission we know not. It was no sudden adoption, no result of sudden conviction or disappointed hope. We never remember her except as engaged in this genial task. It grew with her growth, as the natural ripening of early sympathies and early feelings. Bred, as gentles often were in those barbarous times, to regard the poor as their lowly friends, and to keep up a kindly intercourse with them, she had come to know their characters and their little histories, to understand their peculiar ways, and to learn to address them in the language by which alone the poor are moved,—the language of the heart. Thus, as time went on, the kindly greetings and kindly interest expanded easily into the higher offices of comfort, instruction, and relief. The transition was natural, and the people wondered not to see one whom they had known, loved, and revered so long, moving among them as a ministering angel of good, chasing darkness from the hours of the bedridden by her pleasant converse, uplifting the soul of some stricken sufferer by her cheering presence, bringing relief to the indigent, or dropping on the ears of some blind or aged Christian the precious words of Gospel writ. Great, too, was she in the nursery and by fireside, as we knew full well, and as another generation is now experiencing. What rhymes she knew, and what stories she told, and how she told them! and how have her love and pleasantness followed us from infancy up to manhood! By the by, what story-tellers there were in those days! The art seems lost at present. People compose their talk now, and the faculty of easy telling a natural narrative is getting rare indeed. Patient and gentle, thus for many years she pursued her loving mission, without the parade of circumstances or ostentation of duty, and without a murmur; though, in later years, she became the channel of all indiscriminate benevolence, and the director of all general charities. No outward humility of garb or look distinguished this our sister. She went forth even on her errands—lady as she was—apparelled after the fashion of her order. Nay, it must be confessed that she rather loved a handsome cloak or bonnet, nor thought them unbeseeming her mission; for she could not understand, nor can we, why acts of charity should be done, like deeds of penitence, in serge and sackcloth. One of her functions was a great mystery to us. Ever and anon mention was made of a certain bag, in connection with certain women. We used to wonder, in our small way, what this could mean; and discovered at last that she was manager of a Lying-in Society, which distributed bags containing all the requisites for ladies expecting that interesting event, and that the bag in the gift of our house was in yearly requisition for a matron, whose habit it was regularly to increase an already swarming brood of white-headed, freckle-faced urchins, who, as soon as they could crawl, seized on gutter and dunghill as their natural heritage.

Her labours were not, however, confined to the homes of the poor, but extended to a field from which most would have shrunk—the prison. Even there, amid the reprobate and the vile, she carried her teachings and her charity, and strove, by earnestness and tenderness, to reclaim and raise her fallen sisters. Many was the rebuff she met with—many the scoff from profligate lips; but still she was neither daunted nor deterred. Vice had for her no pollution, no repulsion; still she persevered; and though her words were often spoken in pain, yet may they often have brought comfort to some sin-laden heart, or awoke contrition in some first sinner. As instances of her failures and disappointments, she used often to tell, with a playful humour, slightly dashed by sorrow, how a woman, who had frequently been a tenant of the jail, and had always left in a feigned state of repentance, on her coming, for the sixteenth time, greeted her with, “Well, ma’am, I must surely be converted this time.” Perhaps the mild teachings and sweet truths, so often told, may, after many days, have been as bread cast on the waters, even to this hardened heart.

Gentle sister! loving heart! thou didst thy mission in love. There be those coming after thee who will employ threat, rebuke, and discipline, where thou wert wont to use persuasion, and strive to force or torture mankind into goodness by forms and penitential processes. They may succeed; but we believe, as thou didst, that God’s work is to be done by gentle influences; that God’s messages should fall on the heart softly as evening dew; that God’s truths should shine on the understanding like the summer sunshine; that God’s promises should be wafted on the soul with the gentleness and fragrance of a south wind. Sweetly does the memory of thy good deeds rest on many a heart, and sweetly, doubtless, has their incense risen to Heaven.

There were other old ladies, too, who had no mission save that of their gentle degree, whom we regard as goodly relics of a past—the old gentlewomen who sat and moved in a certain state and stateliness, and surrounded themselves with a dignity which won deference from those who approached them. We associate these with high-backed chairs, in wainscoted parlours, hung with dark portraits, with old folio picture-bibles; with pleasaunces and laurelled walks—with avenues and parterres—with peacocks and Blenheim spaniels—with gold-headed canes, ebony cabinets, and wondrous coiffures. We defend not those headdresses; they stand in evidence against us, in back numbers of the _Ladies’ Magazine_. But we remember sitting with great pride at our first play, between two turbans—one yellow, one pink—and recollect regarding the large gold-faced watches which hung pendent from the girdles of our patronesses, as an almost Aladdin realisation of wealth and splendour. Lovely were these gentlewomen often, in the richness and mellowness of their decline, illustrating, by their serenity and peaceful repose, the beauty and holiness of grey hairs—not mocking old age in a caricature of youth, nor scaring young hearts by the skeleton image of their own life.

There were old women, too, whom we regret—old servants, old nurses—garrulous, chattering, snuffy old gossips! O Age! they were pleasant old women withal; told pleasant stories; had an unprofitable habit, when their functions ceased, of regarding those whom their care had brought into the world with a sort of foster affection, and had a pleasant way of bringing back, by story and anecdote, the image of our infancy. These reminiscences were not, however, always gratifying to stripling pride. We remember once, when standing six feet without our boots, and arrayed in our first London suit, being rather humbled at hearing of a period when we hadn’t a shirt to our backs, and might have been squeezed into a quart pot.

We have done with the old age of the past; let it sleep its sleep.

We could instance much more fully, O Age! the levelling tendencies of thy materialism. But if it be true—and surely there must be proof before us—that thy doctrines are shading the brightness of youth, and mumming the majesty of old age, then do we know enough to be certified that those are not all gain! Ring out the table of thy exports, exult over the lists of thy shipping, the number of thy markets, the increase of population, the multiplication of comforts and conveniences, the rapidity of thy communications, the spread of thy education! Yet still would we say, Woe to the land whose youth is not as a vision of gladness! woe to the land where old age is not reverend or revered! Such a land may know a material prosperity, a commercial greatness which shall dazzle the world—may produce men, able in counting-house and on bourse—men ready in speech and debate; but it will not, we think, possess the elements which produce the great qualities—the Heroic—the Poetic—the Moral—the Truthful—on which hitherto have been built the grand structures of the world’s glory. Nor do we think that it would retain virtue enough to continue a line of merchant princes, such as England has ever rejoiced to number among her great men.

PUBLIC LECTURES—MR WARREN ON LABOUR.[1]

A social phenomenon of much interest has recently arisen in Great Britain, and it is one which as yet has no counterpart in other countries. We allude to the practice, now become systematic, of the delivery of public addresses and lectures by the leading men of the nation. We do not refer to the ordinary lectures contracted for by literary institutions, through which the grown-up public supply themselves with important knowledge not obtainable by them in youth at our universities, and for the study of which indeed the brief curriculum of youth has no spare time. The phenomenon to which we allude is something beyond this; it is not stipendiary in character and regular in appearance, but gratis and desultory. It is a spontaneous step taken by men of standing in the world of politics or literature, with the view of adding to the knowledge, improving the social condition, or influencing the political sentiments of their fellow-countrymen. A century ago the only medium of publishing facts and propagating opinions, was the excellent but limited one of books; the last half-century has seen the mighty engine of the Press attain to full power, diffusing views and statements with less accuracy and impartiality than books, but with infinitely greater speed and wider range. As newspapers are commercial adventures, they naturally seek, as their first object, to enunciate views acceptable to the class to whom they address themselves; and hence, whenever any party in the country happens to attain a great preponderance over its rivals, that preponderance is followed by an increase of newspapers in that interest, which in turn tends to augment the preponderance, it may be, even into a tyranny. And accordingly, at times when party-spirit runs high, the side which chances to possess a virtual monopoly of the newspaper press has it in its power, by bold assertion and frequent iteration, to make any misrepresentation or false charges against an antagonist pass generally current as truth, and at the same time keep from view the real principles by which the opposite party are animated. We cannot but regard the recent great development which the practice of making public addresses has obtained amongst us as in some degree a reaction against this natural one-sidedness of the newspaper press, and, on the whole, as the happiest remedy for it that can be devised. For by this means, without the aid of the restricted arena of Parliament, public men of all ranks and parties become the defenders of their own actions, the exponents of their own policy; and, moreover, to a great extent, can thus make the newspapers record at least all sides of the question.

On the whole, we regard the rise of this social phenomenon with much satisfaction. It is the best safeguard, and an ever-living protest, against that worst of all tyrannies, the tyranny of Public Opinion. As yet even America, where it is most needed, has hardly begun to develop the practice; and this not from want of toleration (though the tyranny of the majority be more pressing there than here), but rather from a want of the class from which the chief public speakers of England proceed. American society is not old enough, or rich enough, to have yet given birth to the two classes of public men and literary men, which give such bloom and power to the British commonwealth, and which, mutually aiding and correcting one another, together form a vast and distinguished caste, whose services go directly to instruct, elevate, and guide the general community. In America, the development of Mind as a separate profession, has as yet made but little progress, because the general community is still not rich enough to support a separate literary class of much extent; and their public men, though many of them distinguished by elevated talents, belong in the aggregate to a class entirely dependent for support upon industrial pursuits, the personal direction of which they cannot afford to abandon without pecuniary compensation, and to which they immediately return as soon as released from their legislatorial duties. In Great Britain, on the other hand, our public men are men of substance, who can afford to devote their time wholly to the service of the country, and who in very many cases are trained from their youth to statesmanship as a profession. Such men are proud of their noble profession; to them, their character as legislators and administrators is all in all; and they lose no opportunity of righting themselves with, and impressing their individual views upon the country at large. Hence the frequent public addresses delivered by our leading statesmen during the Parliamentary recess; and even when Parliament is sitting, not seldom do our public men seek a congenial audience out of doors, to which they may make a profession of sentiments which perhaps would be very coldly received from their place in the House. Of late it has been the Peelites and Cobdenites who have stood most in need of this appeal against public opinion; and the studious efforts which some of the leaders of these parties have made to prevent themselves being forgotten, and as protests against the sweeping censure which their indignant country has passed upon them, have not been entirely free of the ludicrous. But this makes no difference. We are proud of a country where opinion is thus free, and where men have the manliness to speak their opinions even when unpopular. It is a noble privilege to our public men, a corrective to the press, a benefit to the community. While it exists, no social or political disease is incurable, and by such aids and renovating influences, we trust, Great Britain is yet destined to flourish and progress for ages to come. The tyranny of the multitude is as odious to England as the oppression of a Czar; and as long as this is the case, the noble inheritance of British freedom is secure; for we shall never react into an autocracy until we have first suffered from the still worse tyranny of the multitude.

But politics furnish hardly a half of that public oratory which nowadays is ever welling forth, like springs of thought, over the length and breadth of the land. The other half belongs in nearly equal proportions to Literature and to practical and patriotic Philanthropy. It is most gratifying to see, as we so often do, the nobility of Britain stepping from their baronial halls to the rural meeting or the provincial athenæum, there to advocate the cause of moral and intellectual improvement,—in words, it may sometimes be, not overcharged with eloquence, but still influential and productive of much good from the position and personal character of the speakers. The place becomes hallowed where good and kindly words have been spoken; and these public addresses have unquestionably contributed with other causes to give a higher tone to many convivial meetings and social gatherings, formerly remarkable for little else than deep drinking and empty laughter. The people still look up to our nobles as their natural leaders, and they may well do so,—for the great body of the aristocracy comport themselves in a manner worthy of their exalted station; and we doubt not the recent eulogium and prophecy of Count Montalembert will prove well-founded, that the nobles of England, ever improving themselves, and still keeping in the van, will continue to rivet to themselves the respect and regards of the British nation.

It must be confessed, however, that our nobles and statesmen appear to greater advantage when advocating the cause of social elevation and moral or sanitary reform, than in addresses of a purely literary character. A good man engaged in a good work disarms criticism and attracts esteem; but when the work essayed is purely literary, the case is otherwise; and in not a few instances addresses of this kind, volunteered by men of position in the country, have fallen far short of the reputation or public position of the speakers. For example, it seems to us that the dignity of statesmanship must suffer an eclipse in public estimation, when one who has played so important a part in imperial politics as Lord John Russell delivers himself of a lecture so altogether trashy as that which he lately pronounced in Exeter Hall. It was a voluntary performance made by his lordship to keep himself before the public eye; but he merely pilloried himself. He has so long regarded himself as the great champion of civil and religious liberty in this country, and has been so flattered by his followers, that he has arrived at a condition in which he is manifestly incapable of measuring his own powers. In the course of the last twelvemonth his lordship has been in the Cabinet and out of it—he has gone to negotiate at Vienna and to lecture at Exeter Hall—he tries everything, and fails in all. In those stirring times, when public questions of the most pressing moment must be answered, and problems of the most complicated kind require to be solved, it was natural to expect that a statesman of Lord John Russell’s standing, if he did court a public appearance, would at least grapple with a question of the day; instead of which, he treated his audience to a piece of “antiquated imbecility,”—as shallow in thought as it was worthless in style,—wherein the “old saws” were schoolboy commonplaces, and the “modern instances” came no nearer to us than the days of Galileo! As a contemporary journal remarked,—“for any sympathy of his readers, or for any practical effect upon their wills, he might as well have discoursed to them of the patience of Job or the justice of Aristides.”

Such exceptions, however, ought not to affect an estimate of the general system or practice, which we regard as fraught with much good. It is observable that men of mark who have special relations to any place, to any town or district, frequently seek to make their literary or oratorical powers a graceful means of cementing the connection which subsists between them and the place in question. It is to a kindly desire of this kind that we owe the lecture or address whose title we have made a text for the preceding remarks, and which we desire to commend to the notice of all address-givers as in many respects a model of this class of compositions. It is well considered,—a tribute of respect to which every assembly is entitled; the rare but fascinating charm of style is felt throughout; and its spirit is not more genial and sympathetic, than its counsels are calculated to be of deep practical influence in the affairs of life.

In choosing Labour for his theme, Mr Warren addressed himself to a subject which he knew must interest every unit in the crowded audience around him. The establishment of the rights of labour is the first-fruit of freedom, and the maintenance of these rights is the first necessity of a commonwealth. “Labour,” says Adam Smith, “was the first price, the original purchase-money that was paid for all things. It was not by gold or by silver, but _by labour_, that all the wealth of the world was originally purchased.” And, as that clear-sighted writer adds, “the property which every man has in his own labour, as it is the original foundation of all other property, so it is the most sacred and inviolable. The patrimony of a poor man lies in the strength and dexterity of his hands; and to hinder him from employing his strength and dexterity in what manner he thinks proper, without injury to his neighbour, is a plain violation of this most sacred property. It is a manifest encroachment upon the just liberty of both the workman, and those who might be disposed to employ him. As it hinders the one from working at what he thinks proper, so it hinders the others from employing whom they think proper.” “Labour,” almost simultaneously remarked the great and good Turgot, “is the _poor man’s property_: no property is more sacred; and no time nor authority can sanction the violation of his right freely to dispose of this, his only resource.” Words these, as Mr Warren remarks, worthy to be recorded in letters of gold. In Britain, Labour, like Opinion, is FREE. And so profoundly cherished by our nation is the principle of freedom in labour, that even in our colonies we have struck the fetters of bondage from the Negroes, by an act, we will not say prudent in the manner of its accomplishment, but noble in the highest degree from the spirit which dictated it.

But things were not always so in England. In the early stages of society everywhere, the only law is the law of the strongest, and might makes right. Even in the classic States of Greece and Rome, where civilisation of a certain kind reached great eminence, the proportion of free men to slaves was infinitesimal only; and in Russia at the present day, the vast majority of the nation are still kept in a state of serfdom. England too had a period—now happily past by six or seven centuries—when a similar state of things prevailed. The working-classes of England then groaned in the state of slavery called villeinage,—a _villein_ being as absolutely the property of his feudal lord as a dog or a hog; unable to acquire any property for himself, whatever he earned belonging to his lord,—held to belong to the land and sold with it,—torn at will from his family,—his children slaves like himself; and if a male and female slave of different masters married, their masters claimed any children that might be born, who were divided between them! The thirteenth century had ended before any considerable proportion of these villeins had risen into the condition of hired labourers. And the first time we hear of these on a grand scale is in the year 1348; on which occasion, the great plague having terribly reduced their numbers, the legislature sternly interposed, “to deny the poor,” in the indignant language of Mr Hallam, “that transient amelioration of their lot which the progress of population, or other analogous circumstances, would, without any interference, very rapidly take away.” “These poor creatures,” says Mr Warren, “were naturally anxious to be better paid for their labour, when it had become so greatly increased in value; and the legislature, in the time of Edward III., passed acts peremptorily fixing, with great precision, the rates at which artisans should be obliged to work, on pain of punishment by fine and imprisonment. This was the famous Statute of Labourers, passed just five centuries ago (1352), and which applied exclusively to those whose means of living was by the labour of their hands—by the sweat of their brow.”

How different the case in England now! What an advance have the virtues of justice, mercy, and wisdom made amongst us during these last five centuries! Freedom, whether personal or political, is no longer an empty boast,—a privilege reserved for a wealthy or high-born minority. Its only limits are where the liberty of the individual trenches upon the liberty of his fellows, or the good of the commonwealth. As regards the rights of labour, of which Mr Warren so ably treats, a British labourer may work to any master, for any number of hours a-day he pleases, and may even contract to work for a particular master for his whole lifetime.[2] But as regards women and children the case is different, and, acting not in accordance with mere theory, but the dictates of experience and philanthropy, the British Legislature have found it necessary to put restrictions upon female and juvenile labour,—these portions of the community being in certain cases too weak and dependent to look after their own interests. In factory-works this is especially the case. The mighty machinery in these establishments requires simply to be tended, so that a considerable portion of the work can be done by mere children. And hence it happens that premature and improvident marriages are frequent among the mill-workers, who, instead of thinking of supporting their children, look forward to children as a means of supporting themselves! A most cruel and unnatural state of things, fatal to the children, and pernicious to the community, which thus witnesses within its own bosom the growth of a class utterly degenerate in body and totally uneducated in mind. Acting upon these considerations, the British Legislature in 1833 passed the first Factory Act, which bore in its preamble “that it was necessary that the hours of labour, of children and young persons, employed in mills and factories, should be regulated, inasmuch as there are great numbers of children and young persons now employed in them, and their hours of labour are longer than is desirable, due regard being had to their health and means of education.” By that statute many excellent regulations were made to mitigate the evil. And again, in the years 1844, 1847, 1850, and 1853, other acts were passed, says Mr Warren, “further restricting the hours of labour of women, young persons, and children, in print-works, mills, and factories; carefully providing for their education, fixing the time for beginning and ending work, so as to prevent their toiling unnecessarily and at unseasonable hours; securing their holidays and periods for recreation, fixing their meal-times; providing for the cleanliness and ventilation of the scenes of their toil; guarding them as far as possible against exposure to danger from machinery; and subjecting mills and factories to constant and systematic inspection and regulation by medical men and government officers, whose business it is to see that the benevolent care of the Legislature is not defeated, or in any way evaded. Again, no woman or girl, of any age, and no boy under the age of ten years, is now allowed to work on any pretence whatever in any mine or colliery; and no boy can be apprenticed to such work under that age, nor for more than eight years. No young person under twenty-one years of age is allowed to enter any flue or chimney, either to sweep it or extinguish fire; and no boy under sixteen can be apprenticed to a chimney sweeper; and even if he be, the moment he wishes it, a magistrate will discharge him from his articles.” Such legislation, undeniably, requires to be very prudently proceeded with; for, while taking care of the employed, we must at the same time respect the freedom of the employer, otherwise manufacturing capital will flee our shores, and the state of the working-classes will be rendered worse than before.

The question, indeed, at issue between Labour and Capital is one of exceeding difficulty, yet it is one which every year is pressing itself more urgently upon the consideration of the country. The present laws relating to this matter are unquestionably a great improvement upon what they were thirty years ago. Down to the year 1824, two or three working-men could not meet together, though never so quietly, to settle what wages they would work for, and during what hours, without committing an offence in the eye of the law, and being punished for it; while the masters, at the same time, were at full liberty to meet, and agree to give their men no more than a particular sum! That was neither freedom nor justice; and the late Mr Hume only spoke the truth when, stigmatising the principle, he said,—“The law prevented the labouring classes of the community from combining together against their employers, who, though few in number, were powerful in wealth, and might combine against _them_, and determine not to give them more than a certain sum for their labour. The workmen could not, however, consult together about the rate they ought to fix on that labour, without rendering themselves liable to fine and imprisonment, and a thousand other inconveniences which the law had reserved for them.” This legal inequality has been removed, but how much remains to be done need be told only to such as shut their eyes to the ever-recurring strikes and misery which desolate our manufacturing districts. Labour is free,—and each man wants to get as much for it as he can; but unfortunately another man as naturally wants to get it for as little as he can. There is no love, no sympathy, not even a common understanding of each other’s affairs; each party forms a league against the other,—and so the heartless suicidal strife goes on. Masters and men—it is hard to say which party is the more to blame. If improvidence on the part of the work-people often tempt them into, and aggravate their position in strikes, by leaving them no little surplus wherewith to meet “hard times,”—turn to our last month’s article on the Lancashire strikes, and see if there be not also an improvidence and gambling spirit on the part of the master-manufacturers, by which the wages and employment of their men are needlessly placed in jeopardy.

Masters and men combine against each other—that is the barbarous order of the day. Men who fancy that war with foreign nations can be wholly abolished by means of arbitration, yet wage an internecine contest with their own brother-countrymen,—a war which, so far from even acknowledging the principle of arbitration, is regularly carried on until one or other of the parties sinks exhausted in the combat! It is not long ago since the combinations of the workmen on strike were of the most savage and atrocious character.[3] Of late they have become less envenomed in spirit; but still the tyranny which trades-unions exercise over individual members of the trade is as glaring as could be practised by Governments even the most despotic. The law attempts to remedy this, but, alas! with little effect. “If,” says the late Chief-Justice Tindal, expounding the existing statutes upon this point, “there be one right, which beyond all others the labourer ought to be able to call his own, it is the right of the exertion of his own personal strength and skill, in the full enjoyment of his own free will, altogether unshackled by the control or dictates of his fellow-workmen; yet strange to say, this very right which the discontented workman claims for himself to its fullest extent, he does, by a blind perversity and unaccountable selfishness, entirely refuse to his fellows who differ in opinion from himself! It is unnecessary to say that a course of proceeding so utterly unreasonable in itself, so injurious to society, so detrimental to the interests of trade, and so oppressive against the rights of the poor man, must be a gross and flagrant violation of the law, and when the guilt is established, must be visited by a proper measure of punishment.” But the masters also may now be made to feel the restraining power of the law; and at this moment one of our highest tribunals, a Court of Error, is occupied with a question of no small importance and difficulty, arising from an attempt of eighteen Lancashire mill-owners to enter into a counter-combination. Their men having combined to support each other in forcing their masters to yield to their terms, the masters entered into a bond to each other not to open their mills for twelve months, except on terms agreed to by a majority; and the question was brought before the Court of Queen’s Bench, whether such an agreement was or was not one in restraint of trade, and consequently consistent or inconsistent with the public good. “The Court differed,” says Mr Warren; “but the majority held that the agreement was illegal, as unduly restraining the freedom of trade, holding ‘that if particular masters might thus combine, so might all the masters in the kingdom:’ and, on the other hand, all the men in the kingdom might combine themselves into a sort of Labour Parliament.” The case, it is understood, will not be held settled on either side until it has been taken to the House of Lords, and decided by the Court of last appeal in the kingdom.

The principle or object kept in view by the Legislature in framing the present statutes seems to have been, as Chief-Justice Tindal once observed, “that if the workmen, on the one hand, refused to work, or the master, on the other, refused to employ, as such a state of things could not continue long, it might fairly be expected that the party must ultimately give way whose pretensions were not founded on reason or justice—the masters if they offered too little, the workmen if they demanded too much.” But, says Mr Warren, “this leaves each party to decide on the reason and justice of its pretensions, and the unreasonableness and injustice of those of its opponent. And it is more likely that the Legislature said to itself,—‘It will always be a question of time; the weakest will go to the wall first, though not till after it has greatly hurt the stronger.’” They just left each side to do its worst, and worry or be worried to death by its opponent, without the State interfering so long as this work of social murder went on _peaceably_!

Truly, this is sad work! And yet legislation, we fear, though it may in some degree curb, will never reach the root of the evil. The only cure, we feel persuaded, will be found in social, not legislative reform. Better information on the part of the working-classes will do something to the attainment of this most desirable end; and Mr Warren, while paying a just tribute to the “keen mother-wit and right honest heart” of the English working-classes, says,—

“If many years’ observation and reflection entitle me to make a
recommendation, it would be, that the working-classes would find it of
the highest value to acquire, in a general way, as they could with a
little effort,—as by plain and good lectures in this very place,—some
knowledge of the circumstances which determine the rate of wages. That
is a question, in its higher and remoter branches, of extreme
difficulty; but its elementary principles are pretty well agreed upon
now, and directly touch the only capital of the poor man—his labour,
and teach him how to set a true and not a chimerical and exaggerated
value on it, at times when the keenest dispute has arisen on that very
subject. Oh, what incalculable benefits might arise from a knowledge,
by the acute working-classes, of the leading principles agreed upon by
great thinkers, statesmen, and economists of every hue of opinion, as
those regulating the relation between employers and employed, and
establishing, not a conflict of interest, but an absolute identity!”

Yet it is not Ignorance, but Selfishness—that passion the most abiding of our nature—that is the prime mover in these dire contests between the employers and employed; and along with every effort for the education of our working-classes, we should strive also still more assiduously to cultivate their moral nature and make mutual charity and forbearance more prevalent both among high and low. Very beautifully, and no less wisely and earnestly, does Mr Warren speak on this subject. Inculcating forbearance between master and man in hard-times, he says:—

“Each ought honestly to place himself, for a moment, in the other’s
situation—when each might see causes in operation which he might not
otherwise have seen—trials and difficulties of which he had not
dreamed. Let the master look steadily at the position of the working
man, especially in hard times, pressed down to the earth with
exhausting labour, anxiety, and galling privations endured by himself
and his family, often almost maddening him, as he feels that it _is in
vain for him to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of
sorrow_: in moments of despondency and despair, he feels as though the
appalling language of the prophet were sounding in his ears—_Son of
man, eat thy bread with quaking, and drink thy water with trembling
and with carefulness!_ He cannot keep himself and those towards whom
his harassed heart yearns so tenderly from the jaws of starvation,
with all his patience, economy, and sobriety; and yet he sees out of
the fruit of his labours, his employers _apparently_ rolling in
riches, and revelling in luxury and splendour! But let that workman,
on the other hand, do as he would be done by: let his master deal with
his capital, which happens to be money, as the workman with his, which
happens to be labour—‘freely.’ Let him reflect on the anxieties and
dangers to which his employer is often exposed, but dare not explain,
or make them public, lest it should injure or ruin his credit: his
capital may be locked up in machinery, or he may be otherwise unable
to realise it, however desperate his emergency, without a destructive
sacrifice: great but perfectly legitimate speculation may have failed
from causes he could not foresee or control—from accident, from fraud,
or misfortune of others—from a capricious change in public taste: he
may have been running desperately, but with an honest spirit, along
the black line of bankruptcy for many months, without his workmen
dreaming of it, and yet has punctually paid their weekly wages to
perhaps several or many hundreds of them, often borrowing at heavy
interest to do so, while these workmen supposed him always the master
of untold thousands! Now I say, let each party try to think of all
these things, and pause before he commits himself to a rash and
ruinous line of hostility. A strike too often partakes of the nature
of a social suicide. Capital—that is, labour and money—at war with
itself, may be compared to the madman who, in a sudden phrenzy, dashes
each of his fists against the other, till both are bleeding and
disabled—perhaps for ever.... Let each party sincerely try to respect
the other; to find out and dwell on those qualities really, and to so
large an extent, entitling each to the other’s respect and sympathy.
Let the master reflect on the patience, ay the truly heroic patience,
self-denial, fortitude, and energy with which the workman endures
severe trials and privations; and let the workman reflect on the
fairness and moderation, often under circumstances of serious
difficulty,—on the generosity and munificence of his master, as could
be testified by tens of thousands of grateful workmen, in seasons of
sickness, suffering, and bereavement.”

Towards the close of his elaborate lecture, Mr Warren discourses nobly and cheerfully on the Dignity and Consolations of labour, and glances at the monster evils of Improvidence and Intemperance by which the daily life of the working-classes is robbed alike of its honour and its comfort. In this part occurs a passage so striking and so eloquent that we cannot but transfer it to our pages, and we trust the warning and appeal which it conveys will animate all who have the privilege of influencing the working-classes, with an enduring desire to banish the debasing and all-abstracting passion of intemperance from their ranks.

“I hope and believe that I _must_ go out of this hall, to find a
victim of _Intemperance_! Such a man, or rather wreck of a man, is not
to be found _here_! I know, however, where to find him; there is
another hall in which I took my seat this morning, have sate all day,
and shall be at my gloomy post again in the morning, to
see,—possibly,—standing trembling, or sullen and desperate at the bar
of justice, one whom the untiring and remorseless fiend Intemperance
has dragged thither, and stands grim but unseen beside his victim. He
had been a man, might we say, well to do in the world, and getting
respected by all his neighbours, till _he took to drink_, and then it
was all up with him—and there he stands! disgraced, and in despair. I
need not draw on my imagination for illustrations, especially before
an audience which numbers so many men whose painful duty as jurymen it
is to sit every sessions, with myself, engaged in the administration
of justice. You have seen how often, in a moment of voluntary madness
occasioned by drink, a life’s character has been sacrificed, the brand
of felon impressed on the brow, and free labour exchanged for that
which is profitless, compulsory, and ignominious to the workman,
within the walls of your prison! It would be unjust, however, not to
say that exhausting labour, and the companionship of those who are
together so exhausted, supply but too many temptations to seek the
refreshment and exhilaration afforded by liquor, and which soon
degenerates, from an occasional enjoyment, into an accursed habit.
Home soon ceases to be home, to him who returns to it under the guilty
delirium of intoxication: there, weeping and starving wife and
children appear like dismal spectres flitting before his bloodshot eye
and reeling brain. As the husband frequents the dramshop, so he drives
his wretched wife the oftener to the pawn-shop, and her and his
children at length to the workhouse; or perhaps in her desperation—but
I dare not proceed! The coroner can tell the rest.

“Look at yonder desolate little room, at the end of a dreary court; a
funeral goes out from it in the morning! Enter this evening. All is
silent, and a single candle on the mantel-piece sheds a dull
flickering light on a coffin, not yet screwed down. Beside it sits
morally a murderer; his bloated face is hid in his shaking hands; he
has not yet ventured to move aside the coffin lid, but at length he
dares to look at his poor victim—his broken-hearted wife! Poor, poor
soul! thou art gone at last! Gone, _where the wicked cease from
troubling, and the weary are at rest_! ’Tis a happy release, say the
friendly neighbours, who have contributed their little means to lay
her decently in her coffin. Ay, besotted husband! let your bloodshot
eyes look on that white face, that wreck of a face so sweet and pretty
when you married her! Never fear! the eyes are closed, and will weep
and look mournfully at you no more! Touch, if you dare, those limbs,
which the woman who laid them out said, with a sigh, were _mere skin
and bone_! Dare you take hold of her cold hand and look at her
wedding-ring? Do you see how her finger is worn with the needle?
During the day, during the night, this poor creature was your willing
slave, mending your linen, and that of your wronged children, and what
was left of her own, and which are nearly rags. Do you hear those
children sobbing in the next room? Do you see the scar on that cheek?
Look and tremble. Have you forgotten the blow that caused it, given by
your hand of drunken and ruffian violence? Yet she never reproached
you! And when at length, worn away with misery, starvation, and
ill-usage, she was forced to give up the struggle for life, her
last—her very last act was gently and in silence to squeeze your
unworthy hand! Perhaps remorse is now shaking your heart, and you
inwardly groan—

‘Oh, if she would but come again,
I think I’d grieve her so no more!’

She will come no more on earth, but you will have to meet her again!
So, man, close the coffin lid! Go to bed, and sleep if you can! The
funeral is in the morning, and you must follow the poor emaciated body
close past your favourite dramshop!”

As befitted the audience, it is manual or mechanical labour that Mr Warren in his essay chiefly concerns himself with. But so eminent an author cannot be insensible to the still nobler labour of the Mind, or to the grand and touching lives of so many of its votaries. Manual labour may appear harder than some kinds of intellectual pursuits, but it cannot be carried to the same excess. It is less fatal, because less alluring. The labour of the hands does not kill like the labour of the head. It is not the lower classes alone that work. Mr Warren well says:—