Chapter XVII: Loyalty and Cynicism 200 (6)

It is worth while to stroll over the ship about midnight, when everyone has settled down for the night. The season is not yet advanced and hot enough to oblige everyone to sleep on deck, but on the after-deck under the awning are perhaps twenty men-passengers asleep—some on mattresses brought up from their cabins, others on the benches or on cane lounging-chairs. Forward, near the funnel and galley and on the forecastle, the bright moonlight shines upon bodies lying as thick and as motionless as on a battle-field after a battle—some wrapped head and all in their garments of white linen or coarse cloth, some in their natural bare black to the waist, some huddled together, head to feet, in groups, and some alone, and all without the slightest regard to whether they are in the gangway or not. In the saloon, on the tables, or on the narrow benches, with one leg on the table to keep them from rolling off, lie white-shirted and white-trousered stewards; and on the floor at their mistresses’ cabin-doors are prostrate ayahs, so exactly in the way that in the half-light one almost has to feel for them to avoid treading on them in passing. On the lockers in the stern are a few children and an ayah or two; but the head-quarters of the children are down below on the lower-deck, where they are laid out by dozens on the table, on cushions, shawls, and anything that comes to hand, while over them the punkah, its strings connected with the engines, fans the air steadily the whole night through. And all seem to sleep peacefully and even comfortably each after his fashion, for the north-east monsoon is just dying away, there is not a wave to stir the ship, and every port and scuttle to within two or three feet of the-water-line is open to admit the air.

We carry on the monsoon till Cape Guardafui is in sight; then comes a strong south-east breeze heavy with moisture blowing up the gulf, and on the morning but one after, the rising sun lights up brilliantly the red and yellow mountains which stretch across the little peninsula of Aden, rising up behind it in high peaks and ridges abrupt and sharp and serrated like the Dolomite mountains of the Tyrol. And in an hour or two the _Tarus_ drops her anchor within a quarter of a mile of the shore, among steamers and ships of war and transports on their way to Annesley Bay to feed the Abyssinian Expedition, now near its goal at Magdala.

Like King George’s Sound, Aden is an isolated corner of a continent, cut off by deserts from land-communication with the outer world of civilization, and important only as a refuge or coaling-station for shipping. Wild tribes of Bedouins are the only inhabitants of the deserts which bound the peninsula, and for some years after our occupation of it they made repeated attacks upon us; and strong fortifications, garrisoned chiefly by Bombay sepoy regiments, now guard the small space where it is possible to penetrate the strong natural defence of the mountains.

And the impression of strange wild primeval desolation is increased as we land. Moist as is the air in the gulf, the atmosphere of Aden itself is as dry as can be conceived, and tempts one, protected by a green veil and an umbrella, to ride or walk, or even run, in spite of the fierce sun which blazes out of the unclouded sky. Scarcely a morsel of vegetation, not a blade of grass is to be seen, only at rare intervals in the sand a leafless shrub. For at Aden not a drop of rain falls often for years in succession, though the mountain-peak not four miles from the harbour is capped with cloud. Water is supplied chiefly by distillation from the sea, and also from huge tanks. We drive to see them, passing strings of camels, and tall, dirty, melancholy, scowling Arabs, and a wretched Arab village of huts of mud and straw like a warren of ill-instructed rabbits, and turn up a hill through fortifications and covered ways hewn in the rock, where white-coated sepoy sentinels stand on guard, and down on the other side to the cantonments and to the Arab town of Aden itself, for where we landed is not Aden proper but the Bunder or port. They are a strange memorial of the past, those tanks. They are hewn out of the solid rock one above another in a steep gulley of the cloud-capt mountain, from whence at long intervals torrents of water pour down and fill them. Tradition assigns them an origin anterior to the time of Abraham, but there is no fragment of sculpture to help to give them a date; they are only huge irregular basins in the rock, capable of holding from a quarter to two or three millions of gallons each, and for centuries were almost choked with rubbish, till within the last few years our Government has cleared them out and made them available again.

Early the same afternoon we are steaming away again for Suez, and at midnight pass through the Straits of Babel-mandeb. The little island of Perim divides the straits into two. We pass through the eastern and narrower passage, which is not much more than a mile wide, and by the bright moonlight both the island and the Arabian coast are clearly visible. A few years ago, when the importance of the position of the island first became apparent, and while consuls and envoys were busy discussing to whom it belonged—for it was then uninhabited—the English quietly took possession of it, and are now admitted to have thereby acquired a good title to it. An officer or two and about half a company of troops from Aden are located on it as garrison, and considering that it is perfectly bare, without an inhabitant or a tree, or a blade of grass, or a hill, or water, or, I believe, any animal except rats, and in a climate like a furnace, it must be about as unpleasant a prison to be confined in as well could be found anywhere.

And now we are in the much-dreaded and famous Red Sea. Dreaded it justly is on account of the terrible heat there during the summer months. A captain now on another station told me that when on this line he sometimes lost passengers (most of them invalids, probably) at the rate of one or two every day. Why the heat is so intolerable is not very clear, as the actual temperature by the thermometer is never remarkably high—nothing like so high as in many other places where heat is not much complained of. Fortunately, we are too early in the season to suffer from it, and it is scarcely so hot as before reaching Aden. The strong north-westerly breeze too, which almost always blows down the sea, meets us and refreshes us. How the navigation was ever performed before the days of steam is a marvel. One of the steamers once fell in with a sailing-ship bound from Aden to Suez, and _seventy-five days out_ from the former place, all the crew ill or dead with heat, and only the master and one boy available for duty.

The narrowness of the sea and the dangerous coral reefs which lie on either side, and on which so many fine steamers have been stranded, make all vessels keep to one uniform course straight up the centre of it, out of sight of land on either side. Every day some huge steamer—more often there are two or three—passes with its living freight. For the first time we fully realise what a mighty highway of the world it is. Year by year the long sea-passage by the Cape to India, is less and less followed. Even troops now often take the overland route, and if ever the Suez canal is opened to vessels of large tonnage, the change will be greater still. After centuries of disuse, the old, old road from Europe to India is open again with a hundred times the traffic and importance that it ever had before.

Once only does our vessel pause. A suffering invalid, hoping in vain to reach home alive, has died during the night. In the morning the burial-service is read over the coffin wrapped in a Union-jack, and from a large port on the saloon-deck forward it is lowered gently into the sea; and after scarce five minutes’ interval, the engines throb again, and the screw revolves, and the resting-place, unknown and unmarked, is left behind.

On the sixth day from Aden we are in the gulf of Suez. To the east is a flat coast, and beyond is the range of Sinai, scarcely visible. On the west are sandstone cliffs of brilliant red and yellow contrasting exquisitely with the bright blue sky, and lighting up at sunset with the warmest and most gorgeous colours. But we are in Egypt now, and English painters as well as writers have already made the rest of our journey familiar ground, and in their presence it is becoming to be silent. Not that the sights and interests and pleasures of the homeward journey are by any means exhausted yet, or that what is still to be seen loses by comparison with what we have passed. Those who are not pressed for time may stay a week at Cairo, and taking the Southampton instead of the Marseilles route, may also stay at Malta, and during the few hours spent at Gibraltar, walk over the rock and town; and from the vessel’s deck as she proceeds see the pretty Spanish and Portuguese coasts for much of the way from thence to Cape St. Vincent.

Melbourne, King George’s Sound, Galle, Aden, Suez, the Pyramids, Alexandria, Malta, Gibraltar, Southampton Water. What a list for nine weeks’ luxurious travelling! A fresh country about once a week, a fresh continent, almost, once a fortnight!

Truly a P. & O. steamer is a wonderful institution, worthy to take a high place among the unquestionable successes of the last thirty years. Once, in Tasmania, in a remote little bay of D’Entrecasteaux’ channel, I came across a man getting his living laboriously by hewing timber in the bush. He told me he had worked in the gang which turned the first sod (or nearly the first) of the new docks in which the first P. & O. ships were cradled. One man sows and toils that another may reap. Few reap so richly, so abundantly, in these days, as those whose time and means enable them to travel on freshly made tracks to see the glory of a new world.

XV.

CHANGE OF AIR.

As travelling becomes easier all over the world, an increasing number of people who suffer from English winters are tempted to migrate annually in pursuit of sunshine and a more genial climate. Formerly fewer pleasant places were accessible, and there was comparatively little choice; and as to keep a consumptive person warm through the winter was supposed to be the one thing needful, little attention was paid to other peculiarities of climate. It is only of late years that doctors have become fully alive to the very different effects produced on invalids by much the same temperature in different places. Experience has shown that warmth is by no means the only point to be considered. People who coughed all day and all night at Nice have altogether ceased to cough when they went to Pau, where it was quite as cold. On the other hand, it was found that some people got ill at Pau who were ill nowhere else. Madeira, where it is _never_ cold, is going out of repute as a place for consumptive patients; and to the utter astonishment of everybody, it was found that consumptive people who spent a winter in Canada not only did not die immediately but got better. Climates came to be divided into moist-relaxing, as Madeira, Pisa, and Torquay; dry-relaxing (_sedative_, I believe, is the correct word), as Pau; exciting, as Cannes and Nice; and so on. Doctors became more discriminating in different cases, as far as their geographical knowledge enabled them. But they have something better to do than to go about sniffing the air and observing thermometers and anemometers and hygrometers in half a dozen South-European or Devonshire watering-places. They are obliged for the most part to judge of them from the reports of the local doctors at each place, each of whom is likely to be a believer in his own particular place, and directly interested in making it popular.

And if doctors are compelled to speak with diffidence in distinguishing between European climates, what must their perplexity be when they recommend to their patients, as they often do now, and as I hope they will do more and more, a voyage to Australia? If Cannes has been confounded with Caen, is it surprising if Tasmania should be dimly believed to be one of the West India Islands? What they do know, because they can see that for themselves, is that in cases of threatening consumption, or weakness following an illness, a marvellous change for the better, and often complete cure, is the effect of a voyage round the world. How much of that is due to the sea-air and sea-life, and how much to the land-air and land-life of the Antipodes, they have seldom any means of judging; and still less can they know of the differences in climate between different places in Australasia. An invalid fellow-passenger of ours was furnished with two medical books on the climate of Melbourne, one all praises and encouragement, the other all depreciation and warning. He used to read them alternately in such proportions as to keep his mind in a just balance between hope and fear. Poor fellow! the laudatory book had to come out by itself for a long time, though I think the other appeared now and then when we had been some time in the tropics.

As for the voyage, three months in circumstances inducing the most complete inanition of body and mind of course may, or may not, be desirable. For those who are very weak, either from disease or from overwork of body or brain, I suppose nothing could be more beneficial. Such do not feel the want of bodily exercise and mental occupation which to a more vigorous man is so depressing. It is pleasant to see them, their thin, pinched features gradually relaxing, welcome each day which takes them farther south, discard wrap after wrap, and note down each degree of northern latitude sailed through, till the tropics are reached; where in a temperature seldom varying by day or night beyond a range of from 81° to 85° they breathe the open air throughout the twenty-four hours, with no more exertion than mounting the companion-steps from the berth by the open port in their cabin, to the easy lounging chair under the awning on deck. True, it is a damp heat, and at night it is sometimes soaking wet. Toothache and neuralgia attack you now, if ever they do, and you probably feel limp and lazy and head-achy, and disgusted with everything in the ship except your bath; but the damp does not give cold at sea in the same way as it would on shore, unless anyone is so foolish as to sleep on deck. Nothing can be better for the invalids for the first six or seven weeks of the voyage, and till the tropics are left to the north. But not long after that comes the inevitable and often sudden change. As you get to about 35° or 40° south, the strong westerly winds begin to blow. The ship’s course generally touches 45° south, and runs nearly in that latitude for two or three weeks. Doctors and other people at home do not know how much colder 45° south is than 45° north. If, as is pretty sure to happen sooner or later, the wind blows a little from the southward, it may bring sleet and snow with it, and the air may be at 40° or lower for days together, with half a gale of wind blowing all the time to prevent any mistake about how cold it is. It needs no description to give an idea of how dangerous or even fatal this may be to a sick man fresh from his boiling in the tropics, with no fire (probably) in the ship at which he may warm himself, yet for ventilation’s sake forced to open window or door from time to time, and to be hustled everywhere, except in bed, by a tempest of draughts. Nor is it possible to escape the cold by timing your departure from England so as to do this part of the voyage in summer. It is more or less cold here all the year round. All things considered, August, September, or October are perhaps the best months to begin the voyage. The English summer is over then, and the coming winter may be cheated.

But much more benefit, I believe, is to be got by invalids from the air of Australia than from the life on board ship. The authorities are now pretty well agreed that, at any rate for consumptive patients, a dry air is the first essential. The statistics, if they are worth anything, go to prove that in England consumption is prevalent or rare in proportion as the soil and situation are light, dry, and high, or, on the other hand, heavy, damp, and low, and that temperature is of secondary importance. Now the Australian air is peculiarly dry—drier than anyone who has never been out of England can well imagine. A new comer from Europe cannot fail to be struck by its exciting, invigorating effect. Considering how great the heat sometimes is, it is astonishing how little it is felt, and how little enervating it is. In the hottest weather the perspiration is absorbed by the air almost immediately, so that the skin is always almost dry. Those who ride about in the heat all day feel it less than those who stay at home. The sun has power even in winter: it is seldom clouded except when rain is actually falling; on the hottest days there is generally a breeze, and indeed the greatest heat comes with the strong hot winds. I never felt any air like it except perhaps that of the Egyptian Desert.

Still it cannot be denied that there are few, if any, places on the mainland where the climate is pleasant all the year round. The way to enjoy the country luxuriously is to migrate with the seasons. Some people indeed like great heat and are all the better for it, and these may do very well in the interior of Victoria or New South Wales all the year round. But except at a few places in Gipp’s Land, and elsewhere at a great elevation above the sea, the summer is too hot to be pleasant. The burnt-up grass and vegetation are dismal to look at. The dust is abominable, and the flies sometimes almost amount to a plague. There is no place which is not more or less liable to hot winds, which blow violently from the interior for a day, or two days, at a time, laden with dust, and producing a temperature in the shade often over 100°. These hot winds are not so bad as might be supposed from the degree of heat, but still they are not pleasant; and they cease very suddenly, so that the fall of temperature, especially near the coast, is very great in a short time. I have heard of a fall of 44°, from 106° to 62°, in two hours at Sydney. Near the sea-coast, especially the eastern coast, the air is often cooled by the sea-breezes. At Sydney, for instance, it is not nearly so hot as in the interior. But, strange to say, the cool sea-breeze, instead of being invigorating, is in the long run enervating; and though a stranger at first rejoices in it, it is dreaded by the inhabitants in general, and is the principal cause of the situation of Sydney being less healthy and less bracing than that of most other places in the comparatively temperate parts of Australia. Sydney is, on the whole, to be avoided by those who are fastidious as to climate, except in winter—that is, in June, July, and August, when it is delightful.

Nor is Melbourne a very pleasant or healthy place in which to spend either winter or summer. It is more agreeable in either spring or autumn. The hot winds of summer and the cold winds of winter are alike disagreeable there. And if, by any chance, there is a day without wind, fog and smoke will sometimes hang over Flinders Street and the low plain stretching towards the bay, making _longo intervallo_ an imitation of a London fog. The hospital was crowded with consumptive patients while I was there; but it would not be fair to lay too much of this to the charge of climate. Ill built houses account for much. The comparatively small number of days on which rain falls and the rapidity with which the ground dries make people careless about making their houses waterproof, or draining them properly. Kitchens and servants’ rooms are sometimes separated by an open roofless space from the rest of the house, and on rainy days constant wet feet and damp clothes are the consequence. Much illness, too, must be attributed to the bad drainage of Melbourne. A new-comer is at first delighted with the clear running water which is always flowing down the gutters of the principal streets, like Hobson’s Conduit at Cambridge. But if he passes by at night his nose informs him that the once limpid stream is neither more nor less than the common sewer of the houses on each side. There are no underground sewers. The rush of water in the hilly streets after heavy rain is so great and sudden that it has been hitherto found impracticable to construct any sewer which would stand against it without bursting. I believe projects are on foot for an effective system of drainage; the Victorians are never sparing of money for public works. But as yet Melbourne is as ill-drained as almost any city I ever saw inhabited by Englishmen, and if cholera or any other bad epidemic ever reached Australia the consequences might be fearful. Even the abundant supply of water, which is such an inestimable advantage in all other respects, makes the evil worse. For before it was obtained, the dry air and especially the hot winds acted as effectual deodorizers by drying up all that was disagreeable, and preventing any effluvium from it. Now there is too much dilution for this to happen, and in parts of the town are to be seen green pools of liquid, poisoning the surrounding air.

Of the climates of Adelaide and of Queensland I cannot speak by experience. From all accounts Adelaide is charming in winter, but in summer even hotter and more burnt up than either Sydney or Melbourne. Brisbane is very hot indeed, almost tropical. But the Darling Downs, high rolling sheep country a couple of hundred miles inland from Brisbane, are said to be in winter charming beyond description; and judging by the experience of a delightful fortnight spent in winter near Scone, two or three hundred miles to the south of them, I can well believe that the winter there affords a type of all that is most charming in Australian air. You have a hot unclouded sun warming you through and through, and raising even the shade temperature to perhaps 70° or 80°; the air never stagnant with the mournful stillness of an English autumn day, but stimulating to exercise, and fresh and bracing beyond what can be conceived in England; boundless open grass country over which you may ride all day on horses that never tire; at night stillness, and perhaps a slight frost, which makes the Squatter’s blazing wood-fire grateful; and after a day of perfect bodily enjoyment, you totter off with winking eyes to sleep not the restless sleep of the sickly and feeble, but the sound sleep of the tired and strong.

Of the general attractions of Tasmania I have already spoken, and incidentally of those of its climate. It may be described as midway between the English and the (mainland) Australian, and consequently far pleasanter than either. There are the hot sun, dry air, almost constant breeze, cool nights, sudden changes, and comparative rareness of frost and snow, of Australia; but hot winds are almost unknown there, the sky is more often clouded, and the spring and autumn months are sometimes tempestuous and comparatively cold. The extent of deeply indented sea-coast, and the differences of level in different parts of the country, produce a considerable variety of climate within a small compass. At Hobart Town invalids sometimes suffer from the sea-breeze, which after a hot morning in summer generally blows somewhat keenly in the afternoon, coming up with remarkable regularity at about one o’clock. But a few miles inland its keenness is no longer felt. In summer Tasmania is a delightful refuge from the heat of the continent. The winter there, though colder than that of Victoria, is far warmer, drier, and, above all, lighter and sunnier, than that of any place in England.

I do not wish to disparage European refuges from English winters. But my belief, founded on my own experience, is that in most cases infinitely more benefit is to be obtained by invalids from the Australian than from any European climate. And climate is not the only thing to be considered. What is more depressing, more humiliating to one who seeks to be free, as far as poor humanity may, from the trammels of enfeebled flesh, than the daily routine of a _poitrinaire_ at a winter watering-place;—the club room, the tittle-tattle of politics in which he is never likely to take an active part, the still more insipid gossip about other peoples’ affairs, the whist by daylight, the weekly weighing to see if flesh is being made or lost? Compare the net result, mental and physical, of a continuance of this sort of life with the rich harvest of memories gathered in from a sight, however limited, of the new southern world. Six months’ absence from a profession and from ordinary occupations is in many cases fatal to an immediate resumption of them, and little would really be lost by extending it to a year and a half, which would give ample time for a visit to Australia. The time might be distributed thus: Leaving England by sailing-ship in August or September, and arriving in Melbourne in November or December, a traveller might spend the summer in Tasmania, the autumn in Victoria, and the winter and spring in Queensland and New South Wales, returning to Melbourne some time in the second summer, and sailing thence so as to get home again before the English summer begins. In this way both cold weather and also extreme heat will have been avoided, and two English winters missed. If the whole of the second summer can be spared for going to New Zealand so much the better, or if the mail-steamer’s route by way of Galle be taken, a short stay in India during the cool season may be made. Whichever way home is chosen, a much pleasanter voyage may be anticipated if it is begun during the summer months—that is, between the beginning of November and the end of March; for by Cape Horn the cold, by the Red Sea the heat, and round Cape Leuwin and the Cape of Good Hope the adverse winds, become worse as the year advances.

For the reasons already given country life is almost as preferable in regard to health in Australia as it is in England. Those who are not strong enough to travel about much will generally do best to take up their quarters in the country wherever they may have friends or acquaintance. A very slight introduction will procure a very warm welcome everywhere in Australia to any traveller from home. Home has only one meaning there, and long may it keep that meaning. There is no hospitality more readily and kindly proffered and more delightful to accept than that of the Bush. Its simplicity is a pleasant change after the sometimes excessive luxury of English country life. Bed, board, and a horse are at your service; and for sitting-room there is the ample verandah with its wooden or cane lounging-chairs, where air, and light, and sun, will put new strength and vitality into you, if anything will.

Light and sunshine—that is what a weakly man gets in Australia far better than anywhere that I know of in Europe. Perhaps he does not think much about it at the time; but after he is home again, and is groping or shivering through his first English winter, he begins to realize the blessings he has been enjoying.

XVI.

A PLEA FOR AUSTRALIAN LOYALTY.

[The _Spectator_ of May 23, 1868, contained a letter signed ‘An
Australian Cynic,’ and also an article founded on it, commenting on
the extraordinary outburst of excitement and indignation at Sydney
occasioned by the attempted assassination of the Duke of Edinburgh,
as manifested in the passing of the Treason-Felony Act and in other
ways. These manifestations, and the attitude of the Australians
generally on the occasion were attributed to a ‘starved appetite for
rank,’ and censured accordingly.

The following Letter was written to endeavour to show that this
view of the case was a mistaken and impossible one. The succeeding
Letter was an answer to the reply of the _Spectator_ that the view
of loyalty implied in my first Letter was itself impregnated with
‘veiled cynicism.’]

Your last number contains a letter from ‘An Australian Cynic’ commenting upon the exhibition of feeling shown in Australia after the attempt to assassinate the Duke of Edinburgh. It also contains an article on the same subject, the writer of which would hardly, I should think, object to being called an English cynic. It seldom happens that English newspapers find space to notice Australia, or that English people care to make themselves acquainted with Australian affairs; and it is unfortunate that when notice is taken of them, the occasion should call for severe not to say contemptuous, censure. Still, let censure fall where censure is due, even though it come under the questionable guise of cynicism. Better too much blame than too little.

But I must confess that to me the spirit which has been shown on this occasion, so far from seeming contemptible, has appeared, on the whole, in the highest degree creditable. I have little hope of being able to bring over you or any of your readers to my way of thinking. Nevertheless, as Australia cannot answer for itself in less than three months, I will endeavour to put the case in the light in which it strikes me.

We Englishmen at home are of all men most devoid of imagination. We spend our lives on soil teeming with tradition, where the very shape or colour of every brick and stone tells its story of the past, and may be a silent but ever-present reminder of some especially honoured friend or hero, some favourite struggle lost or won. But we do not know how much these associations are bound up with us; we cannot tell, till we try, how ill we can dispense with them. I do not believe we have the least idea of the fidelity with which Australians preserve old memories; how tenaciously they cling to their right of inheritance in the history of the past. At first it may be that an emigrant is altogether engrossed with the occupations of the moment. He must get his bread; he must strike his roots into the new soil; he has no time to sit down and think. But as he grows older, when he finally makes up his mind to make the new country his home, old memories and old attachments return with immense force. An old weather-beaten settler, who after a life spent in hardships at last sees his children growing up about him in prosperity and comfort, will look at them proudly, yet half sadly, knowing that he has within him an inheritance which he can transmit to them only in part, doubting whether after all a dinner of herbs amongst the old scenes and the old traditions, sustaining (so he fancies) the old beliefs, is not better than a stalled ox without them. No one who has not experienced Australian hospitality can imagine the jealous care which they take of a chance visitor from England, how distressed and almost angry a settler will be if a visitor, although an utter stranger, puts up at an inn instead of going to his house. And as you talk to him, the chances are he will speak sadly, even bitterly, of the carelessness, the indifference of people at home to their Australian Colonies. They do not know even by name one colony from another. Melbourne and Sydney are set down as places where a revolver is as necessary as an umbrella in London; their populations as composed mainly of convicts, runaways from Europe, dishonest demagogues, or merchants who care to remain only till they have made their fortunes. But what he will complain of most bitterly is that a school has grown up in England which says, ‘Let the Colonies go. All we want of them is wool and gold. All they want of us is a market. What we both want is wealth. We can get this as well separate as together, perhaps better. Traditions, loyalty to the throne, willingness to share danger as well as security, war as well as peace, with the old country—all this is sentimental rubbish. We have almost got rid of this sort of thing at home, they must have quite got rid of it at the Antipodes.’

This, I believe, is false slander. As such, I believe it has been felt, and felt keenly, by the vast majority of Australians. Can you, then, wonder that when the news came that the Queen was sending out one of the Princes, not selfishly, for his own benefit or for that of the Crown, still less to confer any mere _material_ benefit on the Australians, it came to them like a chance offered to a maligned man to clear himself from a false charge—like light thrown on a dark place? And so, when the Duke, after weeks and months of expectation, at last arrived, it did not matter whether they did or did not find him all that they thought an English Prince would be and ought to be; it did not matter if he disliked politics, was bored by balls and ‘functions,’ was indifferent to the beauty of the country. They refused to look a gift horse in the mouth. He was the Queen’s son; that was enough. They would do him all possible honour, and so prove that they were loyal Englishmen, and cared for Queen and country as well as gold and wool.

And when the news came that the Duke had been shot at and wounded on their own shores, every one in a strange way seemed to take it to heart, to be struck with shame and dismay, as though he himself were in part guilty of the crime. The terror of having to bear, as a body, the guilt of one wretched man excited them almost beyond belief. At Hobart Town—distant as Tasmania is from the scene of the occurrence (I quote from a hurriedly written letter just received)—

‘A meeting was convened within an hour of the arrival of the news by
telegraph; it was attended by every class and sect in the community.
The large town hall could not contain the assemblage; they therefore
gathered outside. The first proceeding, before any resolution, was to
call for the substitution of the Union flag for the municipal one.
Then, regardless of order, but with the order inspired by a common
sentiment, the vast crowd struck up the National Anthem. The effect
drew tears from many eyes—the _effect_ in part, the _earnestness_
with which, under the circumstances, the Anthem was given forth by
those who joined in it, melted them into weakness. And a second
time in the course of the proceedings the same _irregularity_ was
indulged in, without its being possible for any one to say that
anything irregular was done—the ordinary and decorous modes of
expressing popular feeling were insufficient to give utterance to
that by which all were _possessed_. We burned with loyalty to the
Crown and country, intensified by shame and indignation that the
act of one bad man had made it necessary that we should wipe away
reproach or suspicion from us. I am not guilty of exaggeration when
I tell you that the news of what had been done by O’Farrell made
many persons _ill_ amongst us.... I dwell upon this subject, for to
this moment it, more than any other public one, agitates the minds
of the people—but having done so for this simple reason, let me ask
you, as a recent visitant, to do something in our vindication. We are
English—that is, national—in our sentiments, and not as the result
of calculation, but simply because we have not ceased to be and to
feel as Englishmen. Our Tasmanianism is an accident of no more
qualifying influence upon our feelings in what relates to the honour
and integrity of the mother country, than the circumstance might have
of being Kentish men.’

Strange words these, to come, as they do, not from a hot-headed boy, but from a cool, experienced politician, a reader of solid books, a grave paterfamilias, a hater of public meetings, who, when the Duke was in Hobart Town, was ready to escape into the country, rather than face the fuss and bustle and (to him) annoyance of festivities and ‘functions.’ And column after column of the Australian papers tell the same story. I do not believe, since the news of Waterloo came to England, that any body of Englishmen have been heated to so intense and so unanimous a pitch of enthusiasm. Nor would it be possible to name any such manifestation more unmixed with selfishness. For ostentatious loyalty there are no rewards or honours in Australia, whatever there may be for ostentatious democracy. I am no believer in the _Vox populi vox Dei_ doctrine. But surely such an outburst as this is a phenomenon at least worthy of patient examination. What is to be said of the discernment or of the charity of a writer who can dismiss it with a passing sneer as ‘the starved appetite for rank’?

How ‘An Australian Cynic’ can say that there is ‘not a tittle of evidence that a single colonist of New South Wales, native or immigrant, has ever harboured a thought of treason’ I am at a loss to conceive. I know little or nothing of what has been going on lately in New South Wales. But it is not a year since a Roman Catholic chaplain of one of the convict establishments had to be dismissed for preaching Fenianism to the prisoners; to say nothing of the original statement made by O’Farrell himself, which it is as difficult to disprove as to prove. I doubt if the absurdities and extravagances of the Treason-Felony Act are worth the pains ‘An Australian Cynic’ has taken to criticize them. The Judges are not likely to allow the Act to be enforced in an improper manner. Its intention is obvious enough, and the blunders will probably prove to be harmless surplusage. Nobody expects much legislative wisdom from a House constituted as the Lower House of New South Wales is. Nor is the Upper House likely to be much better, since it consists, not of members chosen by a superior constituency, like the Victorian Upper House, but of nominees ostensibly of the Governor, but in reality of successive administrations. Nor ought we at home to be too ready to ridicule their legislation, when we recollect that it is we who are responsible for their Constitution. It was we who at a time of transition and excitement in Australia allowed our Parliament and Ministers to pitchfork out to New South Wales a rash, ill-considered scheme, from which, in the opinion of many, the colony has been suffering ever since.

‘An Australian Cynic’ complains of the newspapers and the public at Sydney for not being more interested about a murder of five people which has been committed in the interior. Does he mean to imply that the police are supine in the matter, and need stimulus, or that the existing law is inadequate to meet the case? If not, why ought such a topic to be enlarged upon? Ought all bloodshed to provoke an amount of discussion exactly in proportion to the number of lives lost? Murder, unfortunately, is too old and too common a crime not to have been provided against as far as it is possible to do so. Fenianism, when it assumes the form of a conspiracy for the wholesale assassination of the most prominent persons in the State, is a new crime and requires new precautions. I suppose there must be a sense (since so many hold to the dogma) in which all men may be said to be equal, though I must confess I never could discover any—never yet having seen such a phenomenon as even two men who could in any sense of the word be called equal. But the common sense of all communities acknowledges that the lives of some persons are (to take the lowest ground) infinitely more valuable to the State than those of others, and when for this reason exposed to special danger they require to be specially protected.

Political assassination is a new crime in England in our days. But if we go back to the days of Queen Elizabeth, we may be reminded of conspiracies not unlike the worst manifestations of Fenianism, which were met by our ancestors in a spirit not altogether unlike that which has just been shown by their descendants in Australia.

XVII.

LOYALTY AND CYNICISM.

* * * * *

Personally I do plead guilty to holding the belief or doctrine to hold which you call ‘veiled cynicism.’ But I beg you will not suppose that I am asserting that the late demonstration of the Australians necessarily implied that _they_ hold it, or that their loyalty as a people was not wider and more comprehensive than any particular phase of it which may specially present itself to me or to any one person. In the following remarks I shall speak only in my own defence, and try to lift my ‘veil,’ so that it may be seen whether what is behind is, or is not, cynicism.

I accept the definition of cynicism which you give in your first paragraph. But I will add another, and a strictly etymological one. A cynic is a man who treats a deep-seated reasonable belief, or a fair argument, in a dog-like manner, as if it were a mere dog’s howl; one who vouchsafes only a kick or an imprecation to what he ought to listen to with patience, and answer (if he disagrees) with argument. A sham belief and an utterly worthless argument _ought_ to get only kicks and imprecations; to treat them otherwise would be priggishness. It is a critic’s business and difficulty to discover the right path between these two pitfalls. With all respect to the _Spectator_, I venture to express my opinion that not only in its recent article on the New South Wales Treason-Felony Act, but again and again in speaking of matters pertaining to the Crown and its relation to the people, it has fallen into the pitfall of cynicism, and (unwittingly, of course) written what has jarred painfully on the convictions of not a few amongst its readers.

To define these convictions adequately in general terms is almost impossible. I do not know how to do so without entering upon theological questions too deep for me, and which I would rather have avoided. I do not know how better to express my own conviction than by saying that I do in a very real sense believe in the ‘divine right of kings;’ not of course in the sense of the High Church party of the seventeenth century; more nearly, perhaps, in that of the eminently national and protestant party, which in the latter part of the sixteenth century relied upon the doctrine as the truest and strongest bulwark against Rome and Spain. I believe in the institution of hereditary monarchy as a divine idea, imparted to mankind, and answering to true and healthy instincts implanted in them—like in kind, if differing in degree, to the institution of a priesthood or clergy. Nations may reject it if they please. In so doing they are simply rejecting a proffered blessing, just as all of us are rejecting blessings every day. The non-juring Bishops and their followers brought discredit on the doctrine by their unphilosophical perversion of it. They forgot that a dynasty, like an individual Church, may become so degraded by the unworthiness of its members as to receive its condemnation, as did the dynasties of Saul and of Ahab.

The history of Europe from the middle ages to the present time teems with instances of intense attachment to hereditary, or quasi-hereditary, monarchy, often breaking out in the strangest and most unaccountable way, and in the teeth of the bitterest tyranny. For instance, it would be hard, even in the thirteenth century, to find a monarch who had inflicted more suffering and bloodshed on his subjects than Frederick Barbarossa inflicted on the Lombards. He was of a different race, too, and spoke a different language. Yet when his power had been broken under the walls of Alessandria, and he found himself face to face with a mass of enemies from whom escape was impossible, and whom to attack was certain defeat, he could calmly pitch his camp in the presence of their armed hosts, in the confidence (which the event justified) that in spite of all they would still acknowledge him as their Sovereign, and that his life and liberty were safe in their hands.[17]

What is more remarkable in the death scenes of all the religious and political martyrs or sufferers, from Sir Thomas More to Sir Walter Raleigh, staunch as they were to the end each to his religious creed, than the eagerness with which they repelled as an insult every imputation of disloyalty to the Throne? And yet at least two out of the five Sovereigns who reigned were as despicable as a Sovereign can be. How incredible to us seems the picture of the House of Commons, in the succeeding reign, with many of its members _in tears_ of shame, that the Throne, and they with it, should be so degraded by its occupant!

One hears of speeches so absorbing or exciting that men hold their breath to listen. I used to think this was only a figure of speech; but it happened to me once, and once only, to find it a literal fact. The Bishop of New Zealand was preaching at St. Mary’s (Cambridge), which was crammed with undergraduates. The subject was the Queen’s supremacy. He described shortly and tersely the ‘shaking of the nations,’ the abject condition, danger, or dethronement of the Sovereigns of Europe in 1848. But when he came to our own Queen, and her tranquil security in the midst of the storm, he used no words of his own; he simply quoted the text, ‘He took a little child, and set her in the midst.’ It was then that for, perhaps, ten seconds every hearer held his breath. The silence was, from its intensity, more startling, less capable of being forgotten, than any sound I ever heard.

Now, I do not mean to say that the Lombards, on the occasion referred to, acted like patterns of magnanimous loyalty. I am not quite sure that they were not, considering all the circumstances, rather fools for their pains. Nor do I mean to say that the extraordinary effect of the Bishop’s words was due _solely_ to the intrinsic truth and value of the idea suggested, or to the eagerness with which his hearers’ instincts went out to meet it, and not in part to the perfect rhetoric in which it was clothed. But I say that there is a vein of gold in the substratum of all these incidents, and of hundreds of similar ones, which refuses to float away upon any such superficial explanation—a metal the taking away of which would leave poor humanity sadly impoverished.

Doubtless an hereditary Sovereign is not the only possible object of loyalty. There may be loyalty to a President, to a ‘House,’ even, I suppose, to a shadowy, ever-changing idea such as a Constitution. Mr. Carlyle has taught us, to a greater extent than we can well estimate, how to choose our heroes. But does he not fall short of entirely satisfying us, because his conception of a hero is indissolubly bound up with mere force of will and power of mind? Like Mr. Carlyle’s heroes, the Presidents of Republics and the leaders of great parties are of necessity men of iron will, muscular intellect, and, it may safely be added, invincible digestions. Why should we narrow our field of choice and contract our storehouse of types of rulers within this small class? Why should we honour a man for his natural ability any more than we honoured Tom Sayers or Lola Montez for their strength and beauty? Does not the Bishop’s quotation suggest a deliverance from this perplexity? May not our heroes be sometimes chosen for us? In the long lists of the Sovereigns of past times have we not a St. Louis as well as a Francis I., an Edward VI. as well as a Henry V., a Margaret of Navarre as well as a Maria Theresa, an Elizabeth of Hungary as well as an Elizabeth of England? Can even these few types be found amongst Presidents of Republics, or could they be selected and enthroned by any form of suffrage, universal or other?

Therefore it is (as it seems to me) that hereditary sovereignty naturally commends itself to men’s truest and deepest instincts as supplying and enlisting more true types of humanity, as more readily suggesting the idea of perfect humanity and a perfect ruler, as more symbolic of human-divine government, than any other kind of rule. The remembrance of sovereigns at once bad and feeble soon slips out of history. The memory of the good, were they strong or feeble, remains a rich ever-accumulating treasure to humanity, adding type to type, building up in all reverent minds an ever loftier ideal of government, which is not the less precious for being so imperfectly realized.

A mere leader, however great, whether priest, poet, or politician, represents his own type, his own class, or his own party. Homage to him can seldom, if ever, be unanimous; it is ever on the brink of degenerating into party-spirit and sectarianism. A Sovereign represents the strong and the weak, the great and the insignificant, the man with one talent and the man with seven, the traditions of the past and the ideas of the present. A Sovereign is the only possible representative of the _whole_ nation. I may be wrong, but I think that the Australians, consciously or unconsciously, found this to be true.

LONDON: PRINTED BY
SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
AND PARLIAMENT STREET

FOOTNOTES

[1] Carlyle’s _Frederick the Great_.

[2] This excludes 7 members returned without a contest, and makes a total of 56 Ministerialists and 21 Opposition members, the 78th being (I presume) the Speaker and reckoned neutral. The figures are from the Melbourne _Argus_, February 1868.

[3] See _Prophets and Kings_, p. 11. By the Rev. F. D. Maurice.

[4] See a remarkable pamphlet called _The Mercantile Commander, his Difficulties and Grievances_. Philip and Son, 32 Fleet Street.

[5] _Our Daily Food._ By James Caird.

[6] As an instance of this it may be mentioned that cheese, which in March 1868 was selling at fourteenpence a pound, was in December of the same year selling at fivepence halfpenny.

[7] _Colonial Policy of Lord J. Russell_, vol. ii. p. 4.