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Glances at Inner England 
 
By the same Author. 
 
 GINX'S BABY: his Birth and other Misfortunes. 
 Thirtieth Edition. Crown 8vo. price zs. 
 
 LORD BANTAM. Seventh Edition. Crown 8vo. 
 price 5s. 
 A Cheaper Edition is also published, price 2s. 6d. 
 
 LITTLE HODGE. Illustrated. Crown 8vo. 
 price 55-. 
 
 A Cheap Edition, sewed, price is. 
 
 LUCHMEE and DILLOO ; a Story of West Indian 
 Life. Illustrated. 2 vols, demy 8vo. [Preparing. 
 
 Henry S. King & Co. 
 
 65 Cornhill and 12 Paternoster Row, London. 
 
Glances at Inner England 
 
 A LECTURE 
 
 DELIVERED IN 
 
 THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA 
 
 EDWARD JENKINS, M.P. 
 
 Henry S. King & Co. 
 
 65 Cornhill & 12 Paternoster Row, London 
 . 1874 
 

 {All rights reserved) 
 
The Essay which constitutes this volume 
 was, under the title of ' The England of To- 
 day/ read last Autumn and Winter by the 
 author in various parts of the United States 
 and Canada to audiences ranging in number 
 of attendants from five hundred to twenty- 
 five hundred persons. The author's reasons 
 for so frankly reviewing among foreigners the 
 less favourable conditions of English society 
 are fairly stated in the lecture. He selected 
 such topics as he thought would reflect some 
 lessons upon questions of vital interest to 
 Americans or colonists. 
 
 The author deems it unnecessary, in an 
 age which is conspicuous for the study of 
 
VI 
 
 comparative politics, to offer any explanation 
 to his countrymen of the candour with which 
 he has treated among foreigners of national 
 evils and weaknesses which he has never 
 hesitated to expose at home. Some petty 
 growls in one or two small provincial com- 
 munities, from people who, for want of any 
 definite idea in politics, consider a vague 
 ultra-loyalty to be equivalent to a whole 
 scheme of economy and general political 
 Apostle's-creed, were too insignificant to 
 deserve notice at the hands of anyone who 
 mixed in Imperial politics, and were too 
 much involved with narrow and mean local 
 prejudices to be taken as an indication of the 
 opinion of any intelligent British society. 
 
 But, though he has nothing to apologise 
 for, it is just that the author's statements 
 should be reviewed by the British public, and 
 if false, be corrected — if improperly applied, 
 be confuted. Hence the lecture is published 
 precisely as it was given in one or other of 
 the great cities of America. The whole, as 
 
Vll 
 
 here presented, was obviously too long for 
 any single evening, and therefore different 
 passages were selected to be delivered in 
 different cities ; but they were read as here 
 produced, and the lecture in the aggregate 
 is correctly reported. 
 
 The author has another object in publish- 
 ing this lecture just now to the English 
 public. It was prepared by an Englishman 
 familiar with American life and institutions, 
 to be read to Americans, and he was perforce 
 obliged to look at the condition of England 
 rather from the point of view of an outsider 
 than of an Englishman. Hence he believes 
 that, at this particular juncture, the lecture 
 will be valuable as a fresh, simple, and com- 
 prehensive review of the difficulties in the 
 way of the Reform party in England. 
 
 In its present situation, the more fre- 
 quently and variously that party may be 
 reminded of the work before it, the better 
 heart may it pluck up to endeavour to redeem 
 itself from its defeat. 
 
Vlll 
 
 It should be explained, to account for 
 several errors of the press, that this edition 
 was in print before the author's return to 
 England, and has not been revised by him. 
 The reader will also observe that in speaking 
 of Parliament the author refers to the period 
 of Mr. Gladstone's Ministry k 
 
 Temple, March 12th, 1874. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. Outer England i 
 
 II. Definition of Subject .... 7 
 
 III. Importance of International Criticism] 7 
 
 IV. Grounds of International Amity . 9 
 V. Vested Interests 11 
 
 VI. Influence of Vested Interests . . 13 
 
 VII. A Great Vested Interest — The Church 
 
 of England 15 
 
 VIII. Its Allies 16 
 
 IX. Its Power and Characteristics . .17 
 
 X. Whittier's Poem 20 
 
 a 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE- 
 XL State and Free Religions Contrasted 22 
 
 XII. Privilege in England . . . .23 
 
 XIII. Instance of Power of Privilege— The 
 
 Birmingham Sewage Bill ... 25, 
 
 XIV. Another Instance of Combined In- 
 
 fluence of Vested Interests and 
 Privilege — The Education Act, 1870 27 
 
 XV. A Third Instance : Trades-Union Legis- 
 lation, The Criminal Law Amendment 
 Act 31 
 
 XVI. A Fourth Instance : The Working-Men 
 
 and Parliamentary Representation . 33 
 
 XVII. Effect of the Policy of Repression 35 
 
 XVI 1 1. Republicanism in England . . .36 
 
 XIX. System of Local Government . . 38- 
 
 XX. The Parish Beadle 39> 
 
 XXL Illustration of Confusion of Local 
 
 Government 42 
 
 XXII. System supported by the Strength of 
 
 Vested Interest 43, 
 
CONTENTS xi 
 
 PAGE 
 
 XXIII. Tendency of Knaves and Fools to 
 
 Municipal Government ... 45 
 
 XXIV. The Fatal Results of Negligence 
 
 of the Duties of Citizenship . . 46 
 
 XXV. Patriotic Duty 49 
 
 XXVI. Appeal 50 
 
 XXVII. The English Poor . . . . 51 
 
 XXVIII. The City and Town Population . . 53 
 
 XXIX. The Agricultural Labourers . . 58 
 
 XXX. Story of a Farm Labourer at Ludlow 60 
 
 XXXI. The Poor Laws and Pauperism . 61 
 
 XXXII. The Four Principal Perils of 
 
 English Society 68 
 
 XXXIII. First Danger : The Relation of the 
 
 Working Man to Politics and 
 Capital 69 
 
 XXXIV. The Trades Unions . . . .71 
 
 XXXV. The Battle between Capital and 
 
 Labour 72 
 
xii CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 XXXVI. Drink and Pauperism . . . .79 
 
 XXXVII. The Fourth Danger : Deficiency 
 
 of Incitements to Thrift . . 80 
 
 XXXVIII. The Inherent Greatness and 
 Strength of England indicated 
 by the Steadiness of her Pro- 
 gress in Reform . . . .86 
 
 XXXIX. Reform in England is slow and 
 
 STEADY 90 
 
Glances at Inner England. 
 
 OUTER ENGLAND. 
 
 Oy the crowds of Americans who land at 0uter 
 Liverpool, and overrun the little island they 
 threaten some day to annex, few can claim 
 to have seen what I am going to disclose to 
 you of the England of to-day. 
 
 They of course remark a good deal that 
 is curious, a good deal that is odd, a good 
 deal that is splendid, a good deal that is 
 squalid ; they will form no mean ideas of the 
 strength, the wealth, the glory of Britain. 
 
 Glancing from car or carriage window 
 over a landscape which seems to eyes 
 accustomed to the grand proportions of New 
 World scenery to be exquisitely dwarfed, 
 
2 , GLANCES AT INNER ENGLAND. 
 
 bright with strangely-vivid green, ranged in 
 mosaics of variously coloured earth and crops 
 parcelled out in charming diversities of shape 
 into what appear to be little garden fields — its 
 trees and plantations studded over hill and dale 
 with a natural skill or by a most artistic 
 chance, the traveller regards the picturesque 
 and romantic aspects of England. Here a 
 ruin, that mayhap of Rievaulx Abbey, lying 
 in some verdant vale, embosomed in richly- 
 wooded hills, with its unroofed aisles and 
 nave and choir, its crumbling towers, the long 
 ranges of its clustered columns and bended 
 arches, the straggling remnants of its once 
 elaborate cloisters, while over all, here and 
 there, the solemn, slow-sprent ivy crowns with 
 eternalising chaplets the worn-out glory of 
 monasticism : there a castle, like that of 
 Ludlow, the ancient stronghold of the Lords 
 of the Marches, towering over delicious vales — 
 typical together of manly strength and feminine 
 beauty — recalling a tyranny and a chivalry to- 
 gether and for ever gone : the mind, as one 
 stands there reviewing the long historic, literary, 
 and political memories of those grey stones, fall- 
 
OUTER ENGLAND. 
 
 ing into a sweet confusion of romantic visions, 
 and revelling amid the combined influences 
 of nature and of fancy. Or, there again, some 
 noble Hall — like Castle Howard, or Chats- 
 worth, or Trentham — homes for princes, the 
 product of an intermediate era of classical 
 taste, with broad grand wings and rich facade, 
 its porches and colonnades flashing to view 
 amid scenes of sylvan loveliness so fair, so 
 Eden-like, as to transport the soul with an 
 unwicked envy of those who can command 
 and enjoy such beauties this side heaven, 
 and with wonder at the wealth of a nation so 
 many of whose nobles can dwell in royal 
 palaces. Or here, once more, is a village, the 
 first foundations of whose humble homes were 
 laid a thousand years ago, dozing in some 
 bowery hollow, with weather-tinted cottages, 
 all thatched and gabled and dormered in quaint 
 angles and slopes, its dilapidated windmill, its 
 yew-decked churchyard, and the Gothic tower 
 or spire that peeps above the ancient trees. 
 In these and a thousand other such scenes 
 may you look upon merry England and yet 
 
 *B 2 
 
4 GLANCES AT INNER ENGLAND. 
 
 not see what I would have you see of the 
 
 England of to-day. 
 
 Or here, presto, with a sudden whirl — the 
 
 scene changes — 
 
 Tower'd cities please us then, 
 And the busy hum of men. 
 
 Here are great towns, composite of old 
 and new, with their huge factory barracks of 
 brick and stone, their tall chimneys vomiting 
 the smoke which overshadows the life beneath, 
 with dingy, crowded homes, where every 
 dweller and every room suggests a new 
 problem of society : with roaring furnaces at 
 which smudgy men perform feats Enceladan 
 with iron and flame, and humanity wrapped 
 in primitive dirt asserts its mastery over 
 matter. And here again, vast docks and 
 rivers, ringing with the clang of iron and 
 steel, or forested for miles with masts, and 
 huge warehouses storing up the riches of a 
 hundred lands. Here indeed is there an 
 England vast, strange, unequalled, displaying 
 in old age an energy of development that 
 rivals that of the New World ; but not here 
 would I have you study with me the England 
 
OUTER ENGLAND. 
 
 of to-day. Or the traveller may review the 
 religious and philanthropic institutions of 
 England. He finds the tokens of a re- 
 ligious zeal and of a benevolent activity or- 
 ganised, unceasing, universal. In confusing 
 successions of vast assemblies at Exeter 
 Hall or elsewhere he may do more than 
 mark the absurdities of religion and the 
 follies of religious bigotry ; he may learn 
 much not only of earnest work, but of the 
 circumstances which call these institutions 
 into action. Moreover, he may con the 
 newspapers, listen to parliamentary debates, 
 frequent the clubs, mingle in the brilliant 
 society of. Belgravia or Mayfair, pass weeks 
 in enjoying the aristocratic pleasures of 
 country mansions, and thus see English eccle- 
 siasticism, politics, and society in their most 
 striking aspects. 
 
 Yet, with all this, you may and in most 
 instances do, return without an inkling, at 
 best with only hints, of that wonderful 
 cosmos, with its underlying principles of life 
 and action, its secret springs of policy, its 
 
 social conditions and relations, its problems 
 *b 3 
 
6 GLANCES AT INNER ENGLAND. 
 
 of government and society, its prospects, 
 contingencies, and perils, which indeed con- 
 stitute my topic this evening. 
 
 Not that all is hidden. The traveller 
 least curious gets glimpses of deeper things. 
 He often observes, for instance, in the midst 
 of rural districts, groups of handsome build- 
 ings ; or, walking in London some winter 
 evening, passes a great institution, at the door 
 of which lingers a line of shivering men and 
 women, ay ! and God help us ! children. 
 And he is told that these are the palaces of 
 the poor ; the poor-houses of a wealthy and 
 too wide-spread national bounty. His mind 
 takes in some ideas of one of the gravest 
 questions ever given to a people to solve, 
 and he shakes his head ruefully at this 
 sudden revelation of a society where one in 
 twenty of the population receives gratuitous 
 relief at the expense of the remainder. But 
 as we shall see directly, little can be appre- 
 hended of all that is mixed up with that 
 serious question, or conceive how its roots 
 run out and into almost every other social 
 and political condition. 
 
DEFINITION OF SUBJECT. 7 
 
 II. 
 
 DEFINITION OF SUBJECT. 
 
 You will already then have divined that Definition 
 
 of subject. 
 
 in speaking of the England of to-day I refer 
 to it, not in its picturesque or its romantic 
 aspects, not in its commercial or statistical 
 phases, not in relation to its power, its wealth, 
 its amazing energy and progress — these are 
 obvious to every one of my audience, — but of 
 things which in any nation lend to all those 
 aspects their real importance, things of its 
 inner life and polity and social condition. 
 
 III. 
 
 IMPORTANCE OF INTERNATIONAL CRITICISM] 
 
 I have not come here simply to amuse import- 
 
 T 1 1 1 . - ance of in- 
 
 you. 1 could not nave come to you without temationai 
 
 criticism. 
 
 a certain mission. What I am most anxious 
 to do is, as far as may be in a brief evening, 
 to give to Americans a better notion of the 
 hidden meaning of some of those phases of 
 
8 GLANCES AT INNER ENGLAND. 
 
 English politics and society of which they 
 read the superficial history in telegrams, and 
 newspaper items, or magazine articles. 
 
 How important is it, nay, let me say 
 how imperative, that in these inner matters 
 of national life, England should be known 
 to Americans, America be understood 
 of Englishmen ! The world is becoming 
 daily more international. The problems of 
 humanity reassert themselves in all states, in 
 every relation, and the secret motives of a 
 nation's life are among the most precious of 
 the curiosities which it can expose to the gaze 
 of a curious world. 
 
 But I say, by all means let these things 
 be honestly and profoundly elicited. For 
 such matters your brilliant criticasters are 
 but the crackling of thorns under a pot. 
 Take your English novelist, satirist, publicist, 
 who scurries from New York to New 
 Orleans. He takes up his graphic pen and 
 sketches the surface of a great republic. See 
 him examine people and scenery with the 
 same eye-glass and with the same brains. He 
 jots down its. most obvious characteristics and 
 
INTERNATIONAL CRITICISM 
 
 chronicles its petty details of life with an air 
 of profound insight ; pokes a finger into its 
 deepest social abysses, and measures its poli- 
 tical strata by his umbrella. Can he describe 
 for you the America of to-day ? Like a 
 child at a panorama he may have looked 
 upon the illuminated screen where the 
 hidden painting and light and lens have 
 thrown their shadows and reflections, but 
 of the causes of the scene he looks upon 
 or of the philosophy of its action, heat best 
 only guesses. How much you Americans 
 have suffered in this way at the hands of my 
 roving countrymen I blush to confess, but it 
 is some relief to know that it has not always 
 been without compensating injuries. 
 
 IV. 
 
 GROUNDS OF INTERNATIONAL AMITY. 
 
 In compliment to your common sense I Grounds 
 avoid the hackneyed sentiments about the national 
 eternal ties which bind England and America. 
 England and America are two human nations, 
 
IO GLANCES AT INNER ENGLAND. 
 
 and would go to war with as much zest, and 
 perhaps ferocity, as any two nations in the 
 world. That sort of sentiment has been 
 overdone ; and when one of my countrymen 
 vapours to you about our common race, 
 common language, common Shakespeare, 
 Milton, Byron, W. Field, and Holloway's 
 pills, you may be sure he either has nothing 
 to say, or is over here collecting for some 
 church or charity. Ladies and gentlemen, 
 our international brotherhood is to be evinced 
 by better things than these : by a candid 
 study of each others social errors or improve- 
 ments : by a candid interchange of thought : 
 by a candid, sincere, bold, and reciprocal criti- 
 cism of each others societies, literature, poli- 
 tics, religion : by the suppression of jealousies 
 and heartburnings : by a more intimate 
 knowledge on either part of all those count- 
 less varieties of circumstance which tend to 
 prove, not that our language but our in- 
 terests are one. It is in this spirit that I 
 have come among you, not to expose or con- 
 demn my own country, but frankly to speak 
 of such things in my own country as may be 
 of consequence to you, or may enable you 
 
INTERNATIONAL AMITY. II 
 
 the better to understand its difficulties as well 
 as its greatness. 
 
 V. 
 
 VESTED INTERESTS. 
 
 Where is one to begin upon a subject of so vested 
 
 interests 
 
 vast a range ? Here you have many prob- 
 lems—there there are hundreds. Politics 
 here have their knotty points, there they 
 are tangled in innumerable skeins. The 
 diversities of sects, the antipathies of reli- 
 gions, the incongruities of class interests, are 
 here grave and embarrassing — there they 
 are numberless, extreme, irritable, irreconcil- 
 able. Sociology is here beginning to be a well 
 of profound depth — there it is a bottomless 
 whirlpool. The evils and wrongs of society 
 are here enough to make men anxious — there 
 they force themselves upon every intelligence, 
 and what is to some people more important, 
 carry their interest home to every breeches 
 pocket — wJtere there is one. Institutions here 
 are many, and their relations vast — there 
 they have multiplied through centuries, con- 
 sist of the accretions of ages, and are built 
 
12 GLANCES AT INNER ENGLAND. 
 
 into the very framework of society. Interests 
 like these you touch at your peril. They 
 have arms and suckers as numerous and 
 powerful as a devil-fish. They cling to the 
 rock of their rights like limpets. When you 
 tear them away you must break off large 
 sections of their base with them. 
 
 Here, then, is suggested our first topic. 
 A prominent thing which stands out in the > 
 condition of the England of to-day is the 
 number and power of vested interests. 
 The Crown has vested interests — the 
 aristocracy have vested interests — the 
 Church has vested interests — the clergy 
 — the liquor-sellers — the army and navy — 
 the bench and the bar — officials of the court, 
 of law — every endowed charity — the schools, 
 and many schoolmasters, railways, turnpikes, 
 municipal corporations, lords of manors, 
 dukes and chancellors of duchies, markets, 
 fairs, constitute a vast and mighty array of 
 vested interests. You can scarcely drive the 
 chariot of legislation in any direction without 
 jarring against one of these obstructive in- 
 terests. 
 
INFLUENCE OF VESTED INTERESTS. 1 3 
 
 VI. 
 
 INFLUENCE OF VESTED INTERESTS. 
 
 Hence Reform in England, and among influence 
 
 of vested. 
 
 yourselves, however similar it may be in interests. 
 principles, is in development a different thing. 
 In new communities anomalies in laws, in cus- 
 toms, in polity, vanish before reformers like 
 clouds before the wind. In old societies they 
 can only be removed under the threat of 
 danger, as you blow up houses to stay a great 
 conflagration, or by the slow incessant wear- 
 ing of advancing and receding tides of public 
 opinion. 
 
 Aye ! great is the potency of vested 
 interest ! It is a solid body concreted into 
 the wall of society, and you can only remove 
 it by breaking down that on which it is stayed. 
 It cannot be abated without noise, and labour, 
 and money ; a solvent people are least and 
 last willing to apply to it. Its impudence is 
 astounding, its claims exorbitant, its obstinacy 
 selfish and intractable. 
 
 In proportion to the number of vested 
 
14 GLANCES AT INNER ENGLAND. 
 
 interests existing in a country, with all their 
 permanent establishments, connections, rights, 
 privileges, and immunities, is that country- 
 fettered and locked up from freedom of action, 
 is the majority of its people restrained by the 
 privileges of a minority, is the liberty of that 
 country, its advancement, the healthiness and 
 purity of its political life, imperilled. 
 
 A vested interest is a millstone hanged 
 about the neck of society. Like Sinbad's old 
 man, it clings round the shoulders of a nation 
 with an ever- tightening grasp. It does not 
 much matter whether its legs are clerical, or 
 aristocratic, or plebeian— whether they wear 
 the livery of the monarch, or the boots of the 
 dragoon, or the silk-stockings of a bishop, or 
 the fleshes of an alderman, or the naturals of 
 a sans-culotte — their grip is none the less 
 strong and deadly — it impedes both breath 
 and motion. 
 
 Such interests must to some extent exist 
 wherever there are human societies, but the 
 aim of wise statesmen and a wise people will 
 be to keep or reduce them to the smallest 
 number and lowest power. Laws which en- 
 
THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. I 5 
 
 •courage their creation are impolitic, laws which 
 exaggerate their power are criminal. 
 
 VII. 
 
 A GREAT VESTED INTEREST— THE CHURCH 
 OF ENGLAND. 
 
 Most prominent at this moment of all these a great 
 
 vested in- 
 great interests in England is the Established terest— 
 
 the Church 
 
 Church ; endowed with 90,000,000/. of pro- of Eng- 
 land. 
 perty ; its bishops sitting in the House of 
 
 Peers ; its clergy of every grade scattered over 
 the country, prescribing in rural districts, with 
 few exceptions, the religion of the people, 
 preponderating also in the towns ; its minis- 
 ters — and only its ministers — tx officio regis- 
 trars of marriages, and managers of endowed 
 schools ; its burial-grounds (those of the parish 
 and therefore of the parish people) closed to 
 all services but those of its rubric ; its schools 
 the principal media of education in England. 
 This is a church not only wealthy and politi- 
 cally powerful, but socially preeminent, not to 
 belong to which is a disability. 
 
1 6 GLANCES AT INNER ENGLAND. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 ITS ALLIES. 
 
 its allies. This mighty institution, holding in its 
 
 hands the keys of heaven and hell, wields in 
 England to-day a power rivalled only by that 
 of its strange ally, the Licensed Victuallers' 
 Association. For in this crisis of their fates > 
 the clergy and the publicans no longer stand 
 afar off from each other. They have joined 
 hands ; and four elections out of five are won 
 by the unholy combination. It is character- 
 istic of such an institution to have no con- 
 science about its allies. It was more than 
 two centuries ago the aider and abettor of a 
 tyrannical monarchy. From it were cruelly 
 driven the noblest elements it contained, and 
 some of its cast-off members laid the founda- 
 tions of one of the greatest nations in the 
 world. Through its whole history it has been 
 on the side of privilege against equality — of 
 patronage against liberty — of power against 
 right — of caste and priesthood against libera- 
 tion. 
 
THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. I 7 
 
 IX. 
 
 ITS POWER AND CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 I ts patent incongruity with the ideas of its power 
 this age and its inherent defects had shaken its character 
 
 istics. 
 
 foundations. But as a last effort, and true to 
 its instincts, it has by taking advantage of a 
 combination of circumstances, succeeded in 
 procuring legislation in England which vir- 
 tually throws into its hands the education of 
 a majority of English children, with additional 
 endowments. 
 
 The pretensions and privileges of this 
 vast organisation complicate almost every 
 social problem — obstruct almost every social 
 reform. Its influence is divisive of Chris- 
 tianity, through the arrogance of its claims 
 and the assumption of its clerics. So long as 
 its supremacy lasts religious equality is im- 
 possible and religious bigotry is a national 
 characteristic. It is a conglomerate of irre- 
 concilables. Within are fightings, without 
 are fears. The representatives of free thought, 
 of Calvinism, of Ritualism, alike find nests 
 
1 8 GLANCES AT INNER ENGLAND. 
 
 under the eaves of its churches and cathe- 
 drals. 
 
 The neologian, the disciple of the reli- 
 gion of culture if it has any disciple, the 
 Evangelical, the Ritualist, may alike feed 
 within its fold. Its livings are bought and 
 sold by Simoniacal contracts. The Ritualists 
 have lately been rejoicing because they suc- 
 ceeded in purchasing the oversight of a piece 
 of Christ's fold in Liverpool, of rather larger 
 size and with sheep of somewhat better breed 
 than usual. Who ever expected to see 
 Christ's kingdom cut up into lots and disposed 
 of to the highest-bidding adventurers of 
 religious joint-stock companies with limited 
 liability ? 
 
 But this is not all. In many places the 
 rector or vicar is also a magistrate, and (as 
 clerics love power) an active magistrate ; so 
 that he who preaches in Christ's name on the 
 Sabbath, and is to soothe the pillow of dying 
 parishioners, administers on week days the 
 criminal law, sends poachers to be tried at 
 the assizes, and convicts agricultural unionists, 
 be they men or women, under Acts passed in 
 
THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. IQ 
 
 the interest of employers of labour. Hence 
 the poor labourers who hear at church that 
 all men are equal before God, must, at the 
 bench of magistrates, learn from the same 
 lips that the laws of England have introduced 
 important amendments to the Sermon on the 
 Mount in favour of land and money. 
 
 But you will say, ' Such a body as that 
 must be on the eve of dissolution!' No. 
 One bond unites the incongruous elements ; 
 vested interest — more irreverently designated 
 loaves and fishes. 
 
 How great is the religious discord pro- 
 moted by this gigantic anomaly, who can 
 describe ? It must be seen and endured to 
 be understood in all its bearings. An 
 Established Church minister will not enter a 
 nonconformist pulpit — a nonconformist minis- 
 ter must not enter a church desk. In the 
 country parishes the church clergyman and 
 his flock look with disdain on the dissenting 
 minister and his congregation. It needs 
 indeed some strength of mind to be a dis- 
 senter in the rural districts, because it implies 
 ostracism from the best society. The rich 
 
 c 2 
 
20 GLANCES AT INNER ENGLAND. 
 
 man's child, the poor mans child, will alike 
 suffer from a Christianity which is vindictive 
 or a charity which is sectarian. 
 
 Why do I mention these things ? — to amuse 
 yotCy or to derogate from your admiration of 
 episcopacy, or to discount my native land ? 
 I should scorn to minister anything to sec- 
 tarian rancour, or to vilify my own country 
 to strangers. I am speaking to you of a 
 political institution, of a Church in the meshes 
 of the State. I refer to these things only 
 that you may have an idea of the influence 
 exerted in English politics and society by a 
 gigantic vested interest which from end to 
 end of England prompts and fosters un- 
 christian enmity, bigotry, and strife. 
 
 X. 
 
 WHITTIER'S POEM. 
 
 Whittled Your poet Whittier has prophesied in 
 
 noble numbers against the hierarchs of such 
 an institution. 
 
WHITTIEKS POEM. 21 
 
 Now too oft the priesthood wait 
 At the threshold of the state ; 
 Waiting for the beck and nod 
 Of its power as law and God. 
 
 Not on them the poor rely, 
 
 Not to them looks liberty, 
 
 Who, with fawning falsehood, cower 
 
 To the wrong when clothed with power. 
 
 Oh ! to see them meanly cling 
 Round the master, round the king, 
 Sported with, and sold and bought, 
 Pitifuller sight is not ! 
 
 Tell me not that this must be, 
 God's true priest is always free ! 
 Free the needed truth to speak, 
 Right the wronged and raise the weak. 
 
 Not to fawn on wealth and state, 
 Leaving Lazarus at the gate. 
 Not to peddle creeds like wares, 
 Not to mutter hireling prayers. 
 
 Not to print the new life's bliss 
 On the sable ground of this, 
 Golden streets for idle knave, 
 Sabbath rest for weary slave ! 
 
 Not for words and works like these, 
 Priest of God, thy mission is, 
 But to make earth's desert glad, 
 In its Eden greenness clad. 
 
2 2 GLANCES AT INNER ENGLAND. 
 
 And to level manhood bring 
 Lord and peasant, serf and king; 
 And the Christ of God to find 
 In the humblest of thy kind. 
 
 XI. 
 
 STATE AND FREE RELIGIONS CONTRASTED. 
 
 state and Yet in the face of these things there are 
 
 Free re- . 
 
 ligions men, and able men, who argue in favour of a 
 
 contrasted. 
 
 state religion. The Bismarckian principle 
 has been ably propounded in England, and 
 the right of the state to control the faiths 
 taught in it has been supported by arguments 
 that would have justified the Inquisition. 
 Even among yourselves have arisen people 
 to assert that the legislature ought to enact 
 the existence of a God. I have often thought 
 that the God whose name is not mentioned 
 in the American constitution is more revered 
 by the American people than is in England 
 the God who shares with her Majesty the 
 Queen the headship of the Church. I may 
 be wrong, but my own observation is that 
 religion is here more earnest, more vivid* 
 
STATE AND FREE RELIGIONS. 2$ 
 
 more energetic and sacrificing and less sec- 
 tarian, than in any other Anglo-Saxon com- 
 munity, and I attribute it to the perfect level 
 of religious status and to the absence of what 
 is termed the patronage of government. 
 
 XII. 
 
 PRIVILEGE IN ENGLAND. 
 
 Such then is the nature of vested interests, privilege 
 I have said enough to warn you to be jealous land. & 
 of their establishment and growth among 
 you. They are silent and secret in their 
 increase. 
 
 Crescit occulta, velut arbor sevo. 
 
 Strong I say, in an old country, is vested 
 interest ; great also is the power of privilege. 
 Privilege in Germany controls governments, 
 rules society, commands the army, suppresses 
 the people ; and in that very Germany now 
 so preeminent, privilege, waxing unendurable, 
 will yet be dethroned by a liberal revolution. 
 
 * But,' you say, ' what of privilege in 
 
24 GLANCES AT INNER ENGLAND. 
 
 England ? Have not Reform Bills done 
 much to diminish its power ? ' Something ; 
 but still not enough. The present House of 
 Commons, elected five years ago, is nearly as 
 much the representative of land, capital, and 
 aristocracy as the last. Privilege tells at 
 every point — often I believe unconsciously. 
 For in one thing is England supereminent — 
 in one thing to be envied by all other nations ; 
 I mean in the general ability and purity of 
 her statesmen. No one ever dreams of im- 
 puting to an English statesman of eminence 
 any corruption, anything worse than party 
 or class prejudice. Therein you look for 
 their weaknesses ; and I have never heard it 
 gravely suggested in my time that there was 
 a member of the House of Commons to be 
 bought with money. How vast and blessed an 
 influence on English society is exerted by the 
 high personal character of her great statesmen, 
 you cannot overestimate. Yet, as I said, privi- 
 lege is mighty. No ministry can be formed 
 without a preponderating representation of the 
 aristocratic party. Sons of peers or Whig 
 land-owners have, in a Liberal government, the 
 
chances oi undci secretai j ships [n the 
 army 01 na> \. admirabl} as the} ha> e 
 
 nu\l. pi u ilege still wins appointments 
 
 and promot Prh ilege reforms, 
 
 , cial benefits, influences Parliament 
 
 magisterial benches in the country, 
 
 maintains unjust laws, discourages the un 
 
 MIL 
 
 i 
 
 ! et nic :> i\ e j ou an instance Bij ming fnatonec 
 
 >' 1 !' ,,u ■ ' 
 
 ham some tune a^o was sullenng in a gnastlj oi Prwi 
 waj From bad drainage rhe to^ n count il ile uii 
 
 mtngh nu 
 
 coded in car rvinir throucfh the ( lommittee 
 
 Bill 
 ol the i ords and ( Commons r Bewage bill, at 
 
 i oi rhis bill proposed to 
 
 the sewage oi the town on land 
 
 lying near the property ol Sii Charles 
 
 Adderlej and Sii Robert Peel. But tin 
 
 itlemen, though one ol them professed u» 
 
 be a sanitai \ i efoi mer, would ha\ e no sev aj 
 
26 GLANCES AT INNER ENGLAND. 
 
 between the wind and their nobility, and 
 though it had been proved to the satisfaction 
 of the two Committees that the proposed 
 scheme would create no nuisance near their 
 property, they collected enough friends and 
 landowners to throw the bill out of the House 
 of Commons on the third reading. The 
 people of Birmingham lost their 20,000/. r 
 and its enormous population went on gene- 
 rating disease. The case was aggravated by 
 this fact : the minority in the division in the 
 House of Commons on the Birmingham 
 Sewage Bill represented more voters than 
 the majority. 
 
 We still retain those relics of a barbarous 
 era of statesmanship, unequal constituencies, 
 and ten of the smallest towns in Great Britain 
 may outvote ten of the largest. This is one 
 of the incidents of privilege, as it also gives 
 it additional power. 
 
THE EDUCATION ACT, 1870. 27 
 
 XIV. 
 
 ANOTHER INSTANCE OF COMBINED IN- 
 FLUENCE OF VESTED INTERESTS AND 
 PRIVILEGE— THE EDUCATION ACT, 1870. 
 
 Again, the National education originated Another 
 
 instance of 
 
 by Lord John Russell and his coadjutors combined 
 
 y influence 
 
 slowly pushed its way for thirty years through p fvested 
 
 J r J J J & interests 
 
 all the difficulties created by the indifference f nd P ri ™" 
 
 J lege : the 
 
 of the people, by sectarian animosity, by the Aero? 10 " 1 
 assumption of the Established Church, by l87 °* 
 the arrogance of Roman Catholic pretensions, 
 as to the education of citizens who belong 
 first to the state and then to their churches — 
 pretensions, let me add, which, as we in 
 England have learned to our cost, no people 
 can listen to without peril, or concede without 
 derogating from its liberties. Government 
 endeavoured for years to secure a national 
 education by voluntary effort aided by the 
 state. Thus there grew up a great group of 
 vested interests — the denominational schools, 
 most of them belonging to the Church or to 
 the Romanists. They failed, however, to 
 
2% GLANCES AT INNER ENGLAND. 
 
 penetrate the dense mass of ignorance ; and 
 under the pressure of terrible facts we resolved 
 to take a step forward. The Education Act 
 of 1870 recognised the duty of the state to 
 see that no child should grow up without the 
 opportunity of a good education. It post- 
 poned the recognition of the complementary 
 principle that every child should be compelled 
 to take advantage of that opportunity. The 
 Act also enacted that no part of England 
 and Wales should be deficient in school 
 accommodation ; it did not, by making the 
 education everywhere rate-supported and 
 free, make it a right purchased by the whole 
 community, common to every child in the 
 community, and therefore to be enjoyed 
 without stint or reproach. One step more 
 was required to make the system perfect. 
 
 The education given by the state should 
 be given under state inspection — it should be 
 secular only — its expenses should be subject 
 to the control of a body elected by the rate- 
 payers. The moment you omit any modi- 
 fication of these principles, you let loose in 
 the community the dogs of religious war, 
 
THE EDUCATION ACT, 1870. 29 
 
 and have given away the guarantees of an 
 efficient and economical education. In Eng- 
 land the blunder was committed. The 
 Churches of England and Rome, the aristo- 
 cratic and landed interests, proved too strong 
 for those who were in favour of religious 
 equality. Denominational schools, belonging 
 chiefly to those two bodies, were perpetuated 
 under a state system. Six months was 
 given, with the bribe of additional aid from 
 the state, to increase the number of deno- 
 minational schools in the parishes, until the 
 accommodation should be sufficient for all 
 the children in the parish, and thus secure 
 exclusive ascendancy to one sect. School 
 boards elected by ratepayers, and empowered 
 to levy local rates for education, were only to 
 be formed where there were not enough 
 denominational schools to accommodate all 
 the children. The denominational schools 
 were to receive for the children they taught 
 a certain grant from the imperial govern- 
 ment ; and school boards, where there were 
 any, were empowered to pay, at denomina- 
 tional schools which the parents might 
 
30 GLANCES AT INNER ENGLAND. 
 
 designate, the fees of the children of paupers 
 who had religious prejudices — that is to say, 
 I may be forced to pay a rate which goes to 
 support a school in which are taught doctrines 
 I abhor. 
 
 In consequence of these wicked and 
 pernicious blunders, while hundreds of 
 thousands of children are waiting to be 
 educated, England is a battle-field of religious 
 bigotry. In elections for school boards, the 
 question is not how many men of experience 
 in educational matters shall be elected, but 
 how many representatives of each sort shall 
 sit upon the board and give it a secular or a 
 denominational leaning. 
 
 Those natural allies of Liberalism, the 
 Nonconformists, seeing in this policy an 
 unfair advantage conferred on the Estab- 
 lishment and on Romanism, are either hostile 
 or cold to a government which has been 
 false to its principles. In that old country, 
 with its overpowering State Church, compro- 
 mises, which here are possible, are impracti- 
 cable ; the power of the ^compromising is 
 great indeed ; religious bigotry, exasperated 
 
THE EDUCATION ACT, 1870. 
 
 by ever-obtrusive social and political inequal- 
 ities, will neither be generous nor tolerant, 
 and the only smooth platform of state action 
 is absolute equality. 
 
 XV. 
 
 A THIRD INSTANCE: TRADES-UNION LEGIS- 
 LATION, THE CRIMINAL LAW AMEND- 
 MENT ACT. 
 
 Let me cite a third instance. These con- a third in- 
 
 •i • • stance : 
 
 crete exhibits of the truth I am stating are Trades- 
 Union 
 far more instructive than any arguments. legislation; 
 
 J & the Crimi- 
 
 Some time ago the trades-unions applied nal Law 
 
 fe rr Amend- 
 
 tO Parliament for relief from the abominable ment Act - 
 
 laws which rendered their associations illegal, 
 
 and which deprived them of any remedy in a 
 
 court of law for the defalcations of their 
 
 officers. Parliament passed a milk-and-water 
 
 permissive measure, because just then the 
 
 working-men were important to the Liberal 
 
 party : but at the same time privilege stepped 
 
 in and demanded its securities. The Act 
 
 was supplemented by an Act called the 
 
 1 Criminal Law Amendment Act,' and which 
 
32 GLANCES AT INNER ENGLAND. 
 
 defined special misdemeanours supposed 
 to be peculiar to trades-unionists, with 
 special penalties for the commission of them. 
 This was a case of class-legislation. The 
 ordinary criminal law, which protects all the 
 rest of the community, so far as it is possible 
 to protect it, from infringements of personal 
 liberty of thought or action, but which cannot 
 possibly protect every individual from the 
 thousand moral influences which his fellows 
 may bring to bear on him, provides penalties 
 for threatening or molesting people ; and, 
 moreover, it is as unfair as it is impolitic to 
 define crimes as class crimes and to punish 
 them as class offences. True, the Criminal 
 Law Amendment Act was separated from 
 the Trades- Union Act, and thus in name 
 appears as a simple amendment of the 
 general criminal law, but both its origin 
 and its terms stand forth to brand it as a 
 gross instance of special legislation, aimed at 
 and affecting in almost all its particulars only 
 one portion of the community. Ever since 
 that time the Act has been working with 
 increasing hardships. It is purposely indefi- 
 
CRIMINAL LAW AMENDMENT ACT. 33 
 
 nite — no one can tell whether some word or 
 act may not bring him within the clutches of 
 some prejudiced Tory magistrate or judge. 
 You will remember that two clerical justices 
 in Oxfordshire sent nineteen women to prison 
 under this Act, some of them with infants at 
 their breasts, for frightening a couple of men. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 A FOURTH INSTANCE: THE WORKING-MEN 
 AND PARLIAMENTARY REPRESENTA- 
 TION. 
 
 Once more : since the Reform Act, the a fourth 
 
 . . , , A instance: 
 
 working-men have been attempting to secure the work- 
 
 1 i • n 1 * n S men 
 
 for themselves that influence in legislation, and Par- 
 
 . . liamenlaiy 
 
 and that opportunity of expressing their Represen- 
 tation, 
 opinions in Parliament, which the measure 
 
 was designed to afford them. 
 
 The principle of class representation is 
 
 not a sound one — it is obviously prone to 
 
 exaggerate class-prejudices and to create 
 
 representatives less useful to the community 
 
 than diligent in promoting class interests at 
 
 D 
 
34 GLANCES AT INNER ENGLAND. 
 
 the expense of the common good. But in 
 England no honest observer can conceal from 
 himself that there is class legislation promoted 
 for the classes in power, and sometimes 
 adversely to the working-men. In that situa- 
 tion the only method of adjusting the balance 
 and preparing the way for equal, proper and 
 unprejudiced representation is to place in the 
 House men who can speak, and speak 
 authoritatively, the wishes of the working- 
 class. But here privilege stands out once 
 more. The present Liberal party, with Mr. 
 Gladstone at its head, was practically placed 
 in power by the votes of working-men, but 
 even a Liberal government shrinks from 
 meeting in the House of Commons the repre- 
 sentatives of labour. 
 
 In most of the constituencies the privi- 
 leged classes, however liberal in their profes- 
 sions, would scarcely look at, still less assist 
 a labour candidate ; and in those where the 
 preponderance of voters has been on the side 
 of the working-men, the Liberal whip has 
 jockeyed their candidates out of the seat with 
 admirable and invariable cleverness. In fact 
 
WORKING-MEN IN PARLIAMENT. 35 
 
 I suppose the ministry dared not express any 
 sympathy for the claims of their most 
 numerous supporters. The reaction among 
 the upper classes in England after the Hyde 
 Park riot was very strong ; the effect on the 
 English middle classes of the horrible days of 
 the Paris Commune was naturally extreme ; 
 the working-men are cleverly and persistently 
 associated by the Whig and Tory press with 
 the acts or expressions of a handful of Inter- 
 nationalists in London and of a few Repub- 
 lican agitators. On every question affecting 
 the working-men, the present Government 
 and House of Commons have leaned to the 
 side of privilege and capital. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 EFFECT OF THE POLICY OF REPRESSION. 
 
 You will always find that where men seek Effect of 
 
 . the poliey 
 
 to repress powers that ought to be recognised, of repres- 
 sion, 
 they exasperate those powers to dangerous 
 
 development. 
 
 This has been the effect of the arrogance 
 
 D 2 
 
-\6 GLANCES AT INNER ENGLAND. 
 
 o 
 
 cf privilege in England. You get glimpses 
 of the revolt in the almost universal oppo- 
 sition of the working-men to royal dowries — 
 in their doubtful attitude towards the Queen 
 —in their angry criticism of every act like 
 the reduction of the number of artisans em- 
 ployed in the naval dockyards, while the 
 sinecures, and offices nearly equivalent to 
 sinecures, are left untouched — in their wide- 
 spread suspicion of Mr. Gladstones ministry 
 and in the significant though not alarming 
 progress of republicanism. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 REPUBLICANISM IN ENGLAND. 
 Repubii- The republican movement in England and 
 
 canism in ~ , , . . r 
 
 Engknd. Scotland is important, but not at present for- 
 midable. Yet I think it may be made so by 
 the obstinate folly of Tory and Whig ob- 
 structives, and at any crisis of the national 
 affairs. Mr. Bradlaugh, its principal leader, 
 is an able man and has a large following. 
 In one or two towns, I am informed, the 
 
REPUBLICANISM IN ENGLAND. 37 
 
 Republicans are strong enough to control the 
 elections. There are about 100 Republican 
 clubs, 1 but they are not, as I understand, 
 combined in one league. As a rule they 
 associate their aims with the principles of the 
 ' International ' and the atheism of Mr. Brad- 
 laugh. These clubs appear to me to be here 
 and there ingeniously mixed up with the 
 socialist schemes of single-eyed agitators, 
 and naturally take their stand alongside the 
 workman in the paramount cause of labour 
 against capital. I know a good deal of the 
 working-classes in the great towns, and I 
 cannot conceal from myself or you, that they 
 are in a temper to accept what I deem the 
 fatal seeds of propagandism which threatens 
 alike religion and government. To anyone 
 who attentively considers the position of 
 England with a desire for her welfare, this 
 movement can have only the aspect of mis- 
 chief and folly. Republicanism here is yet 
 on its trial : Republicanism in many of its 
 
 1 Mr. Bradlaugh, in his speeches in the United 
 States, claimed more, and he probably knows best, but I 
 had the above number from an authority scarcely second 
 to Mr. Bradlaugh. 
 
o 
 
 8 GLANCES AT INNER ENGLAND. 
 
 best features already exists in England. The 
 Queen is less powerful than your President ; 
 our ministry is more amenable to public 
 opinion than yours. In face of the vast evils 
 that yet remain to be redressed, and with 
 ample machinery provided for their safe, 
 steady, and certain removal, it seems almost 
 criminal to divert men from practical to 
 theoretical agitation, to upset their views of 
 a form of government which, with all its 
 faults, is the best in the world ; especially at 
 a time when there are better things for the 
 noblest reformers to do. 
 
 But this movement proves how the per- 
 versity and blindness of wealth and privilege 
 may push to extremities and combine into 
 formidable resistance, forces which a higher 
 wisdom would charm into utility. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 SYSTEM OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT". 
 
 System of Next to our vested interests and all-pervad- 
 
 Local 
 
 Govern- ing privilege, the most noteworthy thing to a 
 
 merit. 
 
LOCAL GOVERNMENT. 39 
 
 foreigner in England would be our system of 
 local government. Cromwell called the laws 
 of England ' an ungodly jungle ; ' this system 
 is not to be so easily epitomised. A coat of 
 many colours, of patchwork, of darning, 
 botching and mending — good heavens, 'tis 
 the very motley of Bumbledom ! 
 
 There are vestries and boards of guard- 
 ians in some places ; mayors and corpora- 
 tions in others ; in others local government 
 boards ; in others boards of health ; county 
 magistrates do some things — parish beadles 
 do others, and the spirit of the parish beadle 
 is the spirit of local government. 
 
 XX. 
 
 THE PARISH BEADLE. 
 
 Great is the parish beadle. His dignity is The 
 
 parish 
 
 a paltry one — it is the mere dignity of a beadle. 
 livery — yet he loveth to display it with the 
 air of one in a prince's clothing. He (ad- 
 ministering only a parish) nevertheless deem- 
 eth himself capable of any office. To him 
 
40 GLANCES AT INNER ENGLAND. 
 
 the beadle's gown is the chief qualification, 
 the outward and visible sign of the inward 
 and spiritual grace of government. 
 
 ' I should become an earldom rarely,' said 
 Sancho, ' for I was once beadle to a brother- 
 hood, and the beadle's gown did so become 
 me that everyone said I had the presence of 
 a warden. Then how do you think I shall 
 look with a duke's robes on my back, all 
 bedaubed with gold or pearl like any foreign 
 count ? I believe we shall have folks come 
 a hundred leagues to see me ! ' 
 
 So the beadle worshippeth office — 
 wrappeth himself round with office and its 
 badges — accounteth that his office was made 
 for him and he for his office. To him his 
 parish is the world. The beadle loveth to 
 show his power ; before him little boys 
 tremble, and old women bow down them- 
 selves. The weak look in vain to him for 
 help or mercy ; to the strong he showeth 
 respect. He fawneth upon the great, and by 
 humility he winneth many favours — and 
 many kicks. He is willing to sacrifice any- 
 thing for his office and himself; even his 
 
THE PARISH BEADLE. 41 
 
 wife, his family, his wife's relations, his 
 honour, his honesty — all these things are to 
 him as nought weighed in the balances 
 against the ennobling garb of office. Office 
 makes him. Without office he is John Smith 
 or Ezekiel Jones, of anywhere — in office he 
 is the Beadle of Bellyfillin. He will take 
 any oath of allegiance you please, an it will 
 procure him an office ; he will break any oath 
 you like, if it will preserve him the dignity 
 and the emoluments. Moreover he conflneth 
 himself not to one place. He goeth about, 
 seeking where and what he may devour, He 
 getteth into Parliaments, or Senates, or State- 
 legislatures, he riseth to be cabinet minister, 
 he may even become Prime Minister or First 
 President, or Governor, but everywhere and 
 always he carrieth with him the spirit of the 
 beadle. Like Sancho, you may swear of him 
 that his gown may improve with every change, 
 but yet the two-legged beast within, and the 
 spirit within the two-legged beast, will be 
 still and always that of the parish beadle. 
 
42 
 
 GLAACES AT INNER ENGLAND. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 Illustra- 
 tion of 
 confusion 
 of local 
 govern- 
 ment. 
 
 ILLUSTRATION OF CONFUSION OF LOCAL 
 GOVERNMENT. 
 
 To return to the confusion of our local 
 government. If you will pardon the 
 Hibernicism, the same places have different 
 boundaries. The municipal boundary, the 
 parliamentary boundary, the parish bound- 
 aries, the sanitary boundary, of the same 
 town are often not identical. What illustra- 
 tion could do justice to such disorder ? 
 
 Let me give a prescription. 
 
 Take half-a-dozen dissected maps, each 
 sawn in a different pattern ; distribute the 
 pieces and mix them well together. Form a 
 square of the size of one of them, and within 
 that square casually arrange such pieces as 
 come to hand first. If any spaces remain, 
 fill them up as near as may be with smaller 
 sections. Proceed to cover up its crevices 
 with larger pieces, and if you don't, like the 
 result go on piling one piece on another all 
 over the map, in such a manner as to give 
 
CONFUSION OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT. 43 
 
 the greatest possible varieties of disorder 
 arranged in the least convenient way : fix the 
 whole by pouring hot glue — which you may 
 call prescription — over it, and you have a 
 type of the manner in which England is laid 
 out for purposes of local government. 
 
 An astute and learned lawyer would be 
 puzzled to discriminate between the multitude 
 of Acts concerning local management of towns, 
 of sanitary matters, of water supply, of roads, 
 streets, and bridges, of building and draining, 
 and to advise specifically what authority 
 might or ought to do any particular thing. 
 The judges sometimes give it up as hopeless. 
 
 XXII. 
 
 SYSTEM SUPPORTED BY THE STRENGTH 
 OF VESTED INTEREST. 
 
 But how comes it that a system so intoler- system 
 able can hold its own in a community not abso- by P the ° 
 lutely idiotic ? I reply it is because of the vested 1 
 power of vested interests. The multitude of 
 these bodies, with their ancient rights and 
 
44 GLANCES AT INNER ENGLAND. 
 
 privileges, are together too powerful for any 
 government to attack except in detail or by a 
 sidewind. Not long since, you will remember, 
 Mr. Gladstone threw out a much-needed warn- 
 ing to the Corporation of London. The whole 
 bevy of Bumbledom went into hysterics. The 
 Tory party sounded the trumpet. An ancient 
 and honourable corporation was in danger. 
 On the sacred persons of Gog and Magog 
 impious hands might be laid. The Lord 
 Mayor of London asked all the mayors in 
 England to dinner. The chaplain said grace. 
 Over turtle-soup and venison, chassded with 
 champagne, they soothed their outraged 
 spirits, they encouraged each other to believe 
 that institutions so antique, so essential to the 
 existence of the commonwealth, should never 
 die : they pledged themselves to a new 
 solemn League and Covenant in their defence. 
 The oath was, or is, to be confirmed by a 
 second dinner to be given by all the other 
 mayors to the Lord Mayor of London. Even 
 Mr. Gladstone, facing such a phalanx of 
 embodied beef and dignity, equally intent 
 on vindicating their corporate rights and cor- 
 
STRENGTH OF VESTED INTEREST. 45 
 
 poral privileges, flinched before them at the 
 Mansion House, and generalised upon the 
 dignity of local independence. 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 TENDENCY OF KNAVES AND FOOLS TO 
 MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT 
 
 I do not profess to know what your experi- Tendency 
 
 of knaves 
 
 ence is in America, but in England we find and fools 
 
 to muni- 
 
 that stupidity and knavery have a perilous ci P al 
 
 x J J x govevn- 
 
 tendency to aggregate and crystallise about ment - 
 municipal institutions. It would seem as if 
 an ingenuous public recognised town-corpora- 
 tions and local boards as a substitute for re- 
 spectable gaols and idiot asylums. Nay, 
 what asylum could take them all in ? Paro- 
 chus is deaf, Parochus is blind, Parochus is 
 stupid, Parochus is perverse : Parochus is 
 niggardly when he ought to be generous, and 
 free when he ought to be close : Parochus 
 sometimes pockets the people's money, uses 
 the people's workmen, takes commissions 
 from the people's tradesmen, forgets the 
 
46 GLANCES AT INNER ENGLAND. 
 
 people's health, neglects the people's business. 
 If the cur is caught in the act of stealing a 
 leg of mutton, he yelps when he is kicked 
 for it, but he goes on eating the meat. 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 THE FATAL RESULTS OF NEGLIGENCE OF 
 THE DUTIES OF CITIZENSHIP. 
 
 The fatal To a new community one cannot point a 
 
 results of 
 
 negligence better moral than from the state of municipal 
 
 of the r 
 
 duties of administration in England. There are few 
 
 •citizenship. & 
 
 evils so injurious to the body politic as ad- 
 ministrative corruption existing through the 
 negligence of citizens to perform their duties, 
 whether of selection or representation. It 
 is indeed one of the clearest evidences of 
 rottenness in a people's condition. For it is 
 with a nation as with a man ; sacrifice is the 
 secret of greatness. He who would win a 
 name, a position, an estate, builds these up 
 on self-denial. From blood and tears comes 
 triumph : the cross wins the crown. Away 
 then I say, from among a free people, with 
 
DUTIES OF CITIZENSHIP. 47 
 
 the craven to whom political and municipal 
 affairs are things of mere curiosity, or the 
 avaricious knave who while he accepts a 
 nation's protection declines to repay it with a 
 citizen's devoir. 
 
 It is the inaction of the best citizens 
 which disturbs in all free countries the play 
 of free government. Government can only 
 afford to be free, and a people can only 
 deserve to be free, when citizens generally 
 assume the common burden of working for 
 its good. People cry out against the tyranny 
 of majorities. High-stepping Tories cry out 
 against it in the state, schismatics cry out 
 against it in every free church. I dare say 
 the man who suffers from the tyranny of 
 majorities — that is, the man whose interests 
 are not coincident with those of the public, 
 finds it quite as hard to give way to a 
 majority as it would be to yield to a pope 
 or a kaiser. But after all (it is a mere truism 
 to say it !) is it not a different thing to be 
 one of a community, and have a voice either 
 for or against what the majority desires, and 
 to be one of a community every member of 
 
48 GLANCES AT INNER ENGLAND. 
 
 which is bound to submit silently to the 
 dictation of one person ? Really, when we 
 come to sift this outcry about the tyranny of 
 majorities, we find it simply comes to this : 
 
 Absti- The abstinence of influential minorities. 
 
 nence of 11 i • • 1 
 
 influential In a free state, were all the citizens to be 
 
 minorities. 
 
 equally patriotic in their interest, labour, and 
 sacrifice for the political purity and perfection 
 of government, the tyranny of majorities 
 would scarcely be a bugbear. But as a 
 matter of course, if half the people are indif- 
 ferent, the other half will take advantage of 
 it : if the best decline the work, the worst 
 will accept it. And I have often noticed 
 that the men who most decry the tyranny of 
 majorities are those who keep themselves free 
 of the sacrifices, toils, and responsibilities of 
 political and municipal affairs. 
 
 You know too well, as we in England 
 have learned to our cost, the effects of this 
 indifference. It is the common peril of 
 democracies. Government, local or national, 
 is apt to become the prey of state harpies. 
 You find at length that, not the fittest man 
 
ABSTINENCE OF MINORITIES. 49 
 
 but the most cunning demagogue or even 
 the most egregious scoundrel, is the one who, 
 taking the people by the ears, acquires the 
 right to govern them. Instead of principle 
 we get fraud ; instead of patriotism, selfish- 
 ness ; instead of sacrifice, actual stealing ; 
 instead of statesmanship, quackery ; and you 
 remember Carlyle says that quack . and dupe 
 are the upper and under sides of the same 
 leather. 
 
 XXV. 
 
 PATRIOTIC DUTY. 
 
 The sentiment of patriotic duty is one of Patriotic 
 the things wherein we are nowadays most 
 deficient. In the Greek Republics patriotic 
 sacrifice was one of the virtues. Has Chris- 
 tianity diminished the obligation ? Do we, 
 and ought we not faithfully to teach our 
 children that next to the love of God comes 
 the spirit of devotion to the people's service ? 
 The mere sentiment of Fourth of July loyalty ; 
 the sprinkling and starring of heaven with fire- 
 
50 GLANCES AT INNER ENGLAND. 
 
 works, tremendous roaring and rattling of 
 cannonades and fusillades, the assertion of 
 American citizenship in divers curious ways, 
 in places as different as London hotels, 
 French cafes, Rhine steamers, the Roman 
 Corso, or the top of the Pyramids ; eloquent 
 and intensely national orations on the Decla- 
 ration of Independence and the Pilgrim 
 Fathers ; that any of these, or all of them 
 together, do but imperfectly comply with the 
 responsibilities of patriotism we must all 
 confess. Not seldom are they the brayings 
 of the well-stalled jackass, who prefers 
 speaking through his nose to being harnessed 
 in the yoke and taking his share in dragging 
 along the great state chariot. 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 APPEAL. 
 
 Appeal O ye mothers and fathers, with your 
 
 noble, clever, capable children growing up 
 around you — your circle of beauty and pride, 
 
APPEAL. 5 1 
 
 if you would make of this free people a really 
 great nation, supreme in its liberty, its wealth, 
 and its might, instil into your offspring the 
 true holy pride of a patriotism which regards 
 no sacrifice as too extreme, no gift too rich, 
 no energy or zeal too extravagant in the 
 country's daily work. For here are laid the 
 foundation of a nation's greatness, here grow 
 the roots of its success, herein lie the seeds of 
 its honour, its well-being, its super-eminence, 
 its after-blessedness in the sacred consecra- 
 tion to its service of all its sons and daughters ! 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 THE ENGLISH POOP. 
 
 I have spoken of vested interests, of privi- The 
 
 English 
 
 lege, of local administration, of the citizen's poor. 
 duty. Let us change the scene. 
 
 The amazing vitality and wealth of Eng- 
 land transfixes the foreigner with astonish- 
 ment. Nothing more impressed the Shah of 
 Persia than the tokens which he saw on every 
 
52 GLANCES AT INNER ENGLAND. 
 
 hand of boundless riches. The streets and 
 squares of noble mansions in Belgravia, 
 Mayfair, or Brompton, the innumerable halls 
 and castles, with their splendid domains 
 sprinkled over the face of the country, the 
 magnificence of the merchants, the incessant 
 vigour of manufactures, the crowded ship- 
 ping on rivers like the Thames, the Mersey, 
 the H umber, the Clyde, and the Tyne, as- 
 tound the spectator with the idea of fabulous 
 wealth, amidst which it would seem impossi- 
 ble that poverty should have a place. Yet, 
 with all this energy and all these riches, there 
 exists in melancholy contrast a poverty and 
 degradation so terrible that it is a greater 
 marvel than the splendour under which it 
 burrows. Up from the depths comes a cry 
 sonorous and awful, a warning to the daz- 
 zling glory above. 
 
CITY AND TOWN POPULATION. 53 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 THE CITY AND TOWN POPULATION. 
 
 Let me try then, — let me try faithfully and The city 
 
 and town 
 
 without exaggeration, to give you an insight popuia- 
 into some of that dense, dreadful life which 
 underlies the crust of English society. 
 
 I stood, not many weeks ago, gazing at a The 
 
 , . Midland 
 
 magnificent pile of buildings at St. Pancras in Railway 
 
 Station at 
 
 London, erected on the plans of England's St. Pan- 
 eras : the 
 greatest architect, — one of those colossal antec&- 
 
 dents and 
 
 hotels which are now attached to our chief conse - 
 
 quences. 
 
 railway termini, with all its adjacent station, — 
 a triumph of engineering, its vast roof, if I 
 am not mistaken, spanning in one arch more 
 than an acre of ground. Where all this now 
 stands, and on the space cleared for its ap- 
 proaches, I used eight years ago to visit, 
 week after week, a population of the artisan 
 and unskilled labouring class. Here were 
 narrow streets and alleys, with grim, rotting 
 tenements, every hole and corner, from cellar 
 to attic, occupied by families — one family to 
 a room, with sometimes a boarder besides — 
 
54 GLANCES AT INNER ENGLAND. 
 
 the population so dense that we counted in 
 one square 4,500 people, — on each corner a 
 ginshop doing a thriving trade, which all our 
 schools and entertainments, meetings, Bible 
 classes, and sermons scarcely seemed to 
 diminish. 
 Futility of Of what use is it to preach temperance 
 
 preaching 
 
 temper- and morality where the conditions are such as 
 
 ance and 
 
 virtue almost to make them not merely self-denials 
 
 amidst 
 
 such DlI t martyrdoms ? Well, into this neighbour- 
 
 circum- • 
 
 stances. hood there 'walk the engineer and railway 
 contractor, backed by the strong arm of 
 government, and forthwith they shovel out 
 the population, square by square, thousands 
 of them, with their goods and chattels, into 
 the streets, to seek elsewhere something they 
 may call a home! Where are they to go ? 
 They must live near their work. They can- 
 not all seek out cottages at Barking, or Putney, 
 or Hackney. They surge out of Somers- 
 town and in upon the already over-crowded 
 alleys and streets of St. Pancras — a mighty 
 wave of hearthless and forlorn humanity. The 
 single ones may get quartered on families and 
 share a corner of one small room and an 
 
CITY AND TOWN POPULATION. 55 
 
 eighth or ninth of the family bed — that 
 is to say, the floor. The families get into 
 cellars, or encroach on the narrow space of 
 other families, until, at higher rents, they 
 have, in some mysterious way, found holes, 
 like rabbits, where it would seem that every 
 inch of the warren was already overstocked. 
 Intolerable are the conditions of life, horrible 
 the perils, moral and physical, dismal indeed 
 the experiences of a population packed like 
 that. Health there, is merely a name for 
 modified disease, decency is fastidiousness, 
 ordinary morality is a shining virtue, drunken- 
 ness is almost venial. All they care for is a 
 nights lodging! Most of them, men, women, 
 or children, live in the streets all day. You 
 think it no wonder, if you have examined 
 their pens, that the bar of the gin-palace is 
 crowded by pallid, dirty-faced wretches 
 gloomily drinking their gin or beer ; and 
 you look at some huge animal cruelly striking 
 the thin creature who strives to guide him 
 ' homewards,' or at half-conscious mothers 
 soothing their shrivelled infants with the 
 poison that has dried up both nourishment 
 
56 GLANCES AT INNER ENGLAND. 
 
 and heart within their own breasts — or at 
 boys of nine and ten with old, hard, fixed 
 features and cunning eyes, taking their brandy 
 and cigar. And, while you look and curse 
 the agent of such degradation, you who have 
 seen where these people herd and pen will 
 say, ' If drink brings men to this, that also 
 must bring them to drink.' God save us ! 
 If that be all their wages can procure them of 
 joy or comfort, what is left to them but to 
 seek ' respite and nepenthe ' in suicide or 
 intoxication ? 
 is the pic- g U |; scmie one ma y say — as men have said 
 
 ture exag- ** J 
 
 gerated? to m6 before, who lived within a stones 
 throw of these scenes — ' This picture which 
 you give us is the painting of an excited, 
 hysterical philanthropist. It may be correct 
 of one or two places, but in the main it is 
 exaggerated.' I reply, It is true of almost 
 every district in London where the poor con- 
 gregate. It is equally true of Manchester, of 
 Liverpool, of Glasgow, of other great towns ; 
 it is true, not merely of thousands, but of 
 hundreds of thousands. Dr. French, the 
 medical officer of Liverpool, reported that 
 
CITY AND TOWN POPULATION. 57 
 
 26,000 houses in Liverpool were occupied by 
 families in single rooms. Lord Derby's calcu- 
 lation from this statement, that at least one- 
 third of the population of Liverpool, 1 50,000 
 persons, were living in these conditions, cannot 
 be exaggerated. In St. George's, Hanover 
 Square, the richest and most aristocratic 
 district in the world, 450 persons were found, 
 a short time ago, living in 12 houses. In 
 St. Giles and Holborn 11,000 families live in 
 single rooms. And what are these rooms 
 like ? In one room visited, which was 12ft. 
 by 13 and 7ft. 6in. high, lived 8 persons, 
 paying a rent of four shillings a week. Is it 
 possible to intensify the interest of these 
 facts ? Yes ! you may even find some rooms 
 occupied by relays of human animals. Per- 
 sons engaged at or attending theatres at 
 night, sublet their beds to market people, and 
 when the market people turn out, the theatre 
 people turn into the same beds. Here, in 
 these awful depths, humanity asserts its 
 brotherhood in misery, and the sacred com- 
 munity of beasts is proved by their being tied 
 up together in one sheet. 
 
58 GLANCES AT INNER ENGLAND, 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 THE AGRICULTURAL LABOURERS. 
 
 SirST" ^ et us turn our t> ac k on towns and manu- 
 
 a omers. f actureS) an( ^ s } c k at heart with the awful 
 
 problems these sights suggest, hasten to 
 breathe the pure air of the country. There, 
 amid clipped hedges and shady lanes, by the 
 gloriously green meads and mantling fields of 
 wheat, by grove-crowned hills stretching their 
 velvet-slippered feet down to the tiny rivers 
 that purl and curl along the vales below, 
 where all seems like Eden, and the meanest 
 dwellings are picturesque with thatch and 
 creeping rose or running vine, there at all 
 events, say you, shall we find healthy and 
 happy homes ! You reach village after vil- 
 lage, and farm after farm, in some of the 
 most populous southern counties, and con- 
 verse with the old bent men who still ply the 
 spade, or with the women who are toiling in 
 the fields. 
 
 They will take you to the cottage, with its 
 
THE AGRICULTURAL LABOURERS. 59 
 
 little attic, where they and their seven, eight, 
 or nine children have slept together for fifteen 
 or twenty years. If you are a novelist of the 
 modern school in search of new and horrible 
 crimes, you may get some stories from the 
 old women about their sons and daughters, 
 which, if your soul does not shrink from see- 
 ing human nature dissected and exposed in 
 such ghastly shape, will enable you to outvie 
 the most sensational authors in their peculiar 
 line. I dare not hint to you American ladies 
 and gentlemen of those things which benevo- 
 lent Samaritans are obliged to sound of the 
 depths of sorrow and wickedness in those 
 fair country districts. Earning ten or eleven 
 shillings a week ; on that expected to bring 
 up their families ; regularly falling back in 
 winter on the poor-rates ; always resorting to 
 the parish dispensary and doctor in times of 
 sickness ; ignorant, famine-fed, with a distress 
 which has no outlet and little reprieve, such 
 is the lot in many a district of merry England 
 of those who till the soil. 
 
6o GLANCES AT INNER ENGLAND. 
 
 XXX. 
 
 STORY OF A FARM LABOURER AT LUDLOW. 
 
 story of a I heard a man at Ludlow, before a 
 
 farm 
 
 labourer at crowded meeting of employes and labourers 
 
 Ludlow. ^ , 
 
 who had known him from his youth, tell the 
 simple story of his experiences in life. 
 
 ' I was the son of a farm labourer. He 
 earnt 8s. a week. I began as a boy to scare 
 the crows, and went on till I could plough 
 and drive a team, and reap and do amost 
 anything. When I married, wages were nine 
 shillin a week. We had five children, and 
 then my wife fell ill. She were ill for two 
 year off and on, lying in her bed, and slowly 
 dying the whole time. The doctor said she 
 wanted better food. We had nothing more 
 to eat but bread, and a drop o' cabbage soup, 
 and a bit o' bacon now and then. The 
 doctor said the best thing for her was milk. 
 I went to missis, (theer warn't no milk to be 
 bought in the neighbourhood), and told her 
 what the doctor said, and asked her fur to 
 

 STORY OF A FARM LABOURER. 6 1 
 
 sell me a little milk every day for my wife. 
 She said, " Do 'ee spoase I can sell 'ee any 
 milk when I want it to fatten the pigs ? " My 
 wife didn't have no milk, and she died. I 
 asked maister to increase my wages. He 
 says, " No, Robert, I can't do that without 
 the rest do it. If I was to rise wages 'thout 
 they agreed, I daresent show my face to 
 market. I can't afoord to pay no more 
 wages." ' 
 
 When you consider that these are not 
 isolated and anomalous facts, but that they 
 suggest the realities ofmundreds of thousands 
 of lives, you will begin dimly to apprehend 
 the extent and gravity of the problems which 
 the English reformer has to face. 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 THE POOR LAWS AND PAUPERISM. 
 
 But the picture is not yet complete. Before The Poov . 
 I outline its redeeming features — and thank pauperism. 
 God, there is sunshine too ! — there are yet 
 shadows to be added. When Dante was 
 
62 GLANCES AT INNER ENGLAND. 
 
 investigating the infernal regions he was 
 always coming on some place or incident 
 worse than the last. So I have yet to intro- 
 duce you, and I do it with a practical pur- 
 pose as you will see, to that fearful closet 
 of our great English house — the Poor-law 
 System. 
 
 Pauperism in England — that is, as a sys- 
 tem of systematised poverty — is the growth 
 of three hundred years. Taking its spring 
 from the days of Henry VIII., it was esta- 
 blished by an Act passed in the forty-third 
 year of Queen Elizabeth. The principle of 
 that Act is communistic. It is that everyone 
 in England who cannot find or undertake 
 employment is entitled to relief from the 
 state : * perhaps/ says Professor Fawcett, 
 ' the most perilous responsibility ever assumed 
 by a nation.' At first this relief was restricted, 
 being given only to the impotent poor, and 
 in the workhouse ; the able-bodied poor were 
 compelled to work for it. 
 
 In about a hundred and fifty years, 
 whether it were owing to an increase of 
 population in excess of the field of employ- 
 
THE POOR-LAWS AND PAUPERISM. 6$ 
 
 ment, or from whatever circumstance, the 
 number of claimants increased, unions of 
 parishes were formed, and that practice of 
 assisting able-bodied persons either wholly or 
 in part without obliging them to enter a 
 workhouse, now called ' outdoor relief,' was 
 by degrees introduced. Men received grants See 
 of money in aid of wages. Women received on^Pau- 
 
 assistance in their homes. The greater the etc. 
 number of children a man had the more he 
 obtained from the guardians of the poor. So 
 burdensome were the incidents of this system 
 that Lazvs of Settlement were enacted to im- 
 pose the responsibility of keeping these 
 people on the parishes in which they were 
 born or wherein they had lived for a certain 
 length of time. The rates became enormous. 
 The labouring classes, too well provided for, 
 and sure of a maintenance, were thoroughly 
 demoralised. In one case three generations 
 of the same family were found to be receiving 
 relief and drawing from the rates ioo/. a 
 year. In one parish in Berkshire, the whole 
 land was offered to the assembled paupers, 
 but they refused it, preferring the ease of 
 recipience to the troubles of ownership. 
 
 pensm, 
 
64 GLANCES AT INNER ENGLAND. 
 Modifica- The intolerable is an active, if displeasing 
 
 tion of the 
 
 Poor-Law. promoter of improvement. A new poor-law 
 was one of the earliest products of the Re- 
 form Parliament ; restraints were placed on 
 the profligate system of outdoor relief, and 
 matters improved under the influence of in- 
 creasing prosperity ; but notwithstanding the 
 marvellous development of English manu- 
 factures and commerce, spite of free corn and 
 free-trade, spite of reform legislation, better 
 social conditions, zealous religion, active 
 philanthropy, and lavish charities — spite of 
 colonial emigration and an enormous exodus 
 to the United States, there still lies upon the 
 breast of England that ceaseless incubus of 
 indolence and imbecility. In London one in 
 every seven of the population receives relief 
 in some shape or other from the poor-law 
 authorities during the year. 
 
 In i860 the population was 2,770,000, 
 with 86,000 paupers. 
 
 In 1863 the population was 2,904,000, 
 with 94,000 paupers. 
 
 In 1869 the population was 3,082,000, 
 with 126,000 paupers. 
 
THE POOR-LAWS AND PAUPERISM. 65 
 
 Costing 1,175,000/. stg., or $5,875,000 
 per annum. 
 
 In 1870 the population was 3,215,000, 
 with 141,000 paupers. 
 
 Costing 1,466,000/. stg., or $7,330,000 
 per annum. 
 
 In England one in every twenty is a 
 pauper. What would you think in New 
 York if every seventh man you met in the 
 street were living on rates taken from vour 
 pocket ? Or if in journeying over the union 
 you knew every twentieth person to be in 
 effect a beggar ? 
 
 Through the whole country the paupers, 
 exclusive of vagrants and casual poor, had 
 increased in 1870 to 1,079,391. Happily, for 
 the last two years the numbers have been 
 materially less, but they are still at a standard 
 you would deem to be fearful. In 1872 there 
 were 977,664, of whom 153,000 were able- 
 bodied adults. 
 
 In some of the United States, where a 
 system of poor relief analogous to that of 
 England has been adopted, there are already 
 symptoms of similar results. In various large 
 
 F 
 
66 GLANCES AT INNER ENGLAND. 
 
 cities during this crisis the working men have 
 advanced the dangerous demand for state 
 works or state support. I warn you to be 
 careful ! Mr. Fawcett points out that in 
 Philadelphia, out of 120,000 poor persons 
 receiving assistance, 110,000 received out- 
 door relief. Such a statement is incredible — 
 its verity is portentous for your future. Once 
 encourage this vicious system — once admit in 
 a country where no able-bodied man need 
 starve, that he may rely for assistance on 
 state or private charity without the condi- 
 tion of entering a workhouse or engaging in 
 labour for it, and a process of demoralisation 
 will have begun, the end whereof none of you 
 can forecast. You will have adopted a cub 
 that may grow up to swallow its master. 
 
 The results of this vicious system are 
 illustrated in a startling way by Professor 
 Fawcett. In England, where outdoor relief 
 is given, the proportion of outdoor to indoor 
 paupers is eight to one. In Ireland, land of 
 misery and turmoil, with restrictions on out- 
 door relief, the proportion is reversed, viz. 
 five indoor to one outdoor, and the whole 
 
THE POOR-LAWS AND PAUPERISM. 6 J 
 
 number of Irish paupers in a country of 
 five and a half millions of people is one-half 
 that of London alone. In the Highlands of 
 Scotland, where the system of outdoor relief 
 has been adopted, there is twelve times as 
 much pauperism as in Ulster and Connaught. 
 In England one in every twenty is a pauper ; 
 in Scotland, one in every twenty-three ; in 
 Ireland only one in every seventy-four. 
 
 These facts are more eloquent than any Principles 
 
 of chari- 
 
 warning I could utter. The only principles table relief. 
 on which charity, public or private, can be 
 safely administered, are, that no man should 
 be helped who can help himself, and that 
 charity, public and private, should be or- 
 ganised and concurrently administered. It 
 is very hard to be obliged to say that private 
 charity is often blind, stupid, profligate, and 
 wanton in its management, but it is a truth 
 we have learned in England. Remember 
 that every act of relief to an able-bodied 
 man or woman to whom any means of inde- 
 pendent subsistence is both a duty and possi- 
 bility, is a demoralisation of the recipient 
 and an injury to society. 
 
 F 2 . 
 
The four 
 principal 
 
 perils of 
 English 
 society. 
 
 68 GLANCES AT INNER ENGLAND. 
 
 But I am not giving you a social-science 
 lecture. I had only to point out to you what 
 a monster we entertain in English society. 
 There are in the West Indies minute para- 
 sites that eat their way into the skin, and by 
 and by lay their bag of eggs and encroach 
 more upon the flesh until they produce a 
 painful ulcer a thousand times larger than 
 themselves, and which may even become 
 fatal. Such a parasite is indolent and volun- 
 tary poverty, encouraged or unregarded — a 
 pest you should soon and vigorously eradicate. 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 THE FOUR PRINCIPAL PERILS OF ENGLISH 
 SOCIETY. 
 
 I think you will now be able to under- 
 stand me when I state that the principal 
 perils of English society are four in number. 
 They arise ; 
 
 i. From the efforts made by the upper 
 and wealthy classes to retard the advancing 
 power and resist the just claims of the 
 working man. 
 
PERILS OF ENGLISH SOCIETY. 69 
 
 2. From that mass of pauperism which I 
 have described, which lives on the rates and 
 seems to have such a horrible mystery of 
 propagation. 
 
 3. From the terrible, unparalleled power 
 of degradation which, with increasing tyranny, 
 is wielded by strong drink. And, 
 
 4. From the deficiency of incitements, 
 moral and material, to thrift and ambition 
 among the working classes. 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 FIRST DANGER: THE RELATION OF THE 
 WORKING MAN TO POLITICS AND CAPITAL. 
 
 The first danger, you will observe, is both First 
 
 danger — 
 
 political and social. Of this I might say the rela- 
 tion of the 
 
 enough to occupy a whole lecture. It has working- 
 man to 
 
 many branches. There is, for instance, the politics 
 
 and 
 
 agricultural labourer question. The resurrec- capital. 
 tion of hinds — living half on the rates and 
 half on a pittance the bare mention of which 
 stirs your compassion, the slaves without 
 being the property of their masters, ought 
 
70 GLANCES A T INNER ENGLAND. 
 
 now to be a familiar story to you. I have 
 never seen anything that has so moved me 
 as I have been moved when I have stood by 
 and watched these hopeless sons of toil,, 
 long blinded to their rights and possibilities 
 of improvement, opening their eyes to the 
 blessed dawn of a better day under the 
 stirring eloquence of Joseph Arch. When 
 they began to gather from him the en- 
 couraging assurance that there were privileges 
 of manhood which they might assert, and 
 opportunities to win a better future for their 
 children, it was infinitely pitiful, yet, O how 
 gladdening ! — to hear them blurting out their 
 awakening ideas and half-timid yet invincible 
 resolves. 
 Effects of This movement must lead to important 
 
 the agri- ._,'., . T 
 
 cuitm-ai changes in English agriculture. It will alter 
 
 labourers' 
 
 resunec- the system of tenancy — it may cause the 
 conversion of a great deal of arable land 
 into pasturage ; it will quicken emigration. 
 Above all, it is a Radical movement when the 
 agricultural labourer gets the franchise, and 
 must give impetus to the political and social 
 changes impending in Great Britain. 
 
THE TRADES UNIONS. 7 1 
 
 XXXIV. 
 
 THE TRADES UNIONS. 
 
 Hand-in-glove with the Agricultural The 
 Unions are the great Trades Unions in Unions. 
 the towns, numbering hundreds of thousands 
 of members, with incomes of many thousands 
 of pounds. In their contest with capital 
 these Unions are very powerful — in their 
 political combination they have been, as yet, 
 weak and unsuccessful. They have wanted 
 clear political aims — sound political judgment 
 — trust in their leaders — and too often leaders 
 whom they could trust. Hence they have 
 readily exposed themselves to the gibes of 
 the satirical journals of the privileged classes, 
 or to the wanton and savage needle-thrusts of 
 social cynics like Mr. W, R. Greg. But they 
 are gradually emerging from the valley of 
 shadows, they can already discern the anti- 
 quated giants of privilege, trembling and 
 biting their nails with futile anger ; and they 
 will go on, prepared by experience and en- 
 lightened by education, to victorious contests 
 and a better life. 
 
 *F 4 
 
72 GLANCES AT INNER ENGLAND. 
 
 XXXV. 
 
 THE BATTLE BETWEEN CAPITAL AND 
 LABOUR. 
 
 The battle Capitalist and Unionist are cutting each 
 capital and other's throats in England, as they are the 
 
 labour. 
 
 world over. The former has not yet learned 
 that the conditions of contract are changed 
 for ever, and that slavery at a low price can 
 no longer be had for love or money. The 
 Unionist, pressing for his rights, and too often 
 ignorant of the real limits of those rights, 
 asks too much or grasps it too eagerly, and 
 threatens to kill the goose that lays the 
 golden egg. Every allowance must be made 
 for men who after centuries of injustice and 
 of ignorance are made suddenly alive to 
 their opportunities, but I, who sympathise 
 with them and work with them, warn them 
 not to go too fast and too far. So surely as 
 they do, the reaction will come, with fatal retri- 
 bution. Those who, from other classes, take 
 part with them in this great struggle, spite of 
 
CAPITAL AND LABOUR. >]$ 
 
 their occasional wrong-doing, their blindness, 
 and their suspicions, are truer conservatives 
 than the men who with sharp, cruel, and 
 bitter words make light of their complaints, 
 laugh at their claims, abuse their ignorance, 
 and attempt to vindicate the arrogant and un- 
 tenable claims of privilege and money. 
 
 On both sides we need firmness and 
 moderation. The old conditions, the old 
 relations of capital and labour, are to be 
 changed, are now changing. Some better 
 methods of apportioning their respective 
 profits must inevitably be devised. 
 
 Large establishments are now successfully Co-opera- 
 
 tion and 
 
 conducted in England on the principle of co- industna 
 
 partner- 
 operation or of Industrial Partnerships. I ships. 
 
 understand that the great steel works in 
 course of erection at Glasgow, under the 
 supervision of Mr. Michael Scott, who has 
 given to this subject considerable attention, 
 and has also tested it in practice, are to be 
 managed on the Industrial Partnership prin- 
 ciple. 
 
 Every capitalist at this crisis — nay, I The 
 
 crisis. 
 
 would say every friend of humanity, — should 
 
74 GLANCES AT INNER ENGLAND, 
 
 give himself to study the relations of capital 
 and labour, and bend all his intellect, energy, 
 and influence to smooth the change from the 
 old to the new regime. However unpalatable 
 the statement, that change is inevitable. It is 
 attended with lamentable incidents. I have 
 to own as to English workmen, as you will 
 own as to those of America, how much of 
 tyranny, of ingratitude, of absolute wrong- 
 doing, of degraded use of improved circum- 
 stances, has come under my own notice. 
 But then conceive what a class must be 
 growing up in such conditions as I have 
 described to you. The effects are truly de- 
 plorable. In one case I heard of a large 
 ironmaster who had treated his men with 
 unwonted liberality, and yet again and again 
 found himself forced in the middle of some 
 critical contract to raise their wages. Last 
 year, as he was leaving for the continent, and 
 giving directions to his manager, he said : 
 1 At the end of the year you will not give 
 the usual Christmas treat. Call the men 
 together and discharge the whole of them. 
 I'll have nothing more to do with working- 
 men again.' 
 
CAPITAL AND LABOUR. 75 
 
 A printer in London, who employs a large 
 number of men, said to me : ' My men came 
 last week and asked me if we were going to 
 have the annual summer picnic I have been 
 in the habit of giving them, and I turned 
 them out of the office. They have been 
 striking every six weeks, and they may pay 
 for their own treats. They'll get no treats 
 out of me.' 
 
 This gentleman is a man not only of 
 benevolence but of benevolent energy, but 
 you see his sympathies are warped by his 
 sense of injury. To me these are gravely 
 significant facts. They could be indefinitely 
 multiplied. They indicate a state of things 
 which must be either appeased or give place 
 to open war. Capitalists, who in existing 
 circumstances insist on the old regime, or 
 threaten to withdraw their capital from manu- 
 factures — a silly and impracticable proceeding, 
 as every economist knows — are assuming a 
 terrible responsibility. They will then be 
 left to face the question, ' What are these 
 men to do without work ? ' And when lately 
 in Wales a clique of capitalists were with- 
 
 
j6 GLANCES. AT INNER ENGLAND. 
 
 standing 40,000 miners and ironworkers, the 
 increased police, the prepared soldiery, and 
 the fear of all England, showed what that 
 may involve. 1 
 
 1 These passages, written some months before the event, 
 acquire increased significance from the recent movement of 
 capitalists to establish a federation of capital. That the Eng- 
 lish upper and wealthy classes were living in a fool's paradise, 
 that they walked the upper ground unconscious of the peril- 
 ous forces that were gathering beneath them, I have long 
 maintained, but I could scarcely have conceived that they 
 were so infatuated as these men seem to be. The gods must be 
 in conspiracy against them. Mr. Bradlaugh and Mr. Odger 
 could not have devised or desired a move better calculated to 
 give a momentum to their projects. The antagonism of 
 capital and labour was already defined with sufficient sharp- 
 ness, and the difficulties of approximation were already too 
 glaring. The capitalists were already combined by facts, 
 and interests, and superiority of position, of ability, of politi- 
 cal power, of privileges. It was all this, involving absolute 
 supremacy, which necessitated on the part of the workmen 
 organised combination for the purpose of asserting their 
 simple rights and securing the position to treat on equal 
 terms. But what shall we think of an association deliber- 
 ately framed with the hostile object of fighting the unions 
 with their own weapons ? 
 
 I hope the workmen of Great Britain will observe the full 
 significance of this proceeding. It was not enough to have 
 had nearly the whole political power, to have for long years 
 legislated chiefly for their own benefit, to have legislated 
 directly against trades' combinations, to have governed by a 
 House of Commons in which there is not a single working 
 man. The capitalists now proclaim a crusade against labour ; 
 they throw down the gage of war where everything, the 
 happiness and prosperity of Great Britain, the Conservation 
 ot her institutions, nay, of society itself, was calling out in the 
 
CAPITAL AND LABOUR. "J J 
 
 This portentous question is beginning to 
 shake the very pillars of society in almost 
 every part of the civilised world. The Coolie, 
 the Negro, the immigrants into western lands, 
 
 most solemn tones for compromise and peace ! Hitherto 
 the working-classes have been disorganised and fitful in 
 their political and social action. Can there be any doubt 
 that fronting this new power they will close together and be 
 as one man ? 
 
 There is one word, however, which in the interests of 
 peace I must utter. At the end of Little Hodge I en- 
 deavoured to illustrate a theory of pacification which has 
 for some time appeared to me to be the most hopeful one. 
 It was that a more complete organisation of the opposing 
 forces might be the necessary precedent of their federation. 
 In matters of this kind, where hostilities have to be compro- 
 mised, there can be nothing better than two responsible 
 bodies in a position to treat with each other. While there- 
 fore it is clear that the working-men must now prepare to 
 meet in fair combat the body which so directly challenges 
 them, it would be criminal to overlook the fact that this 
 body may probably before long become a means of compro- 
 mising the most threatening issues. The worst feature of the 
 new association is its expressed aim to promote the 'freedom 
 of labour/ that is, as the Spectator properly says, to dis- 
 courage combination. The other objects of the association 
 are in themselves legitimate and harmless. If they can get 
 working-men to read their arguments, and adopt them and 
 endorse them at the polls, well and good. But I point out to 
 them, as I point out to the workmen, that if they will throw 
 aside the foolish and insane attack upon combination, it 
 is possible that the more thorough the organisation on both 
 sides the more satisfactory may be the settlement. Neither 
 side can hope to suppress the unions of the other, but they 
 can expect to meet them on equal terms, and to come to 
 arrangements of universal application and benefit. 
 
tion ? 
 
 7 8 . GLANCES AT INNER ENGLAND. 
 
 the English artisan and peasant, the French 
 and German workman, all alike are conspir- 
 ing together to demand for labour a larger 
 reward, a better coparcenary with capital. 
 what is Is there to be no end to this unholy war ? 
 
 the solu- 
 
 Can humanity or Christianity invent no 
 means of reconciling the irreconcilable, or is 
 the frightful aphorism of Hobbes to be veri- 
 fied and the natural state of man be perpetuated 
 and aggravated in a condition of civilisation ? 
 In God's name let every man, be he on one 
 side or the other, lend a hand to stay the 
 fratricidal strife ! Failing this, to neither side 
 is there anything but ruin or dismay. I say 
 to the capitalist solemnly and urgently : 
 \ Recognise the inevitable as you would when 
 you saw the hurricane sweeping along over 
 the main ; take in sail, bout ship if need be, 
 and sail before the wind. Make friends with 
 forces that may be either friendly or hostile, 
 as you will.' 
 
 I say to the labourer : * Stay your hand. 
 You have the numbers, and your victory is 
 sure. Beware that it be not a contest over a 
 stripped and barren land. Use your organi- 
 
CAPITAL AND LABOUR. 79 
 
 sations not as a means of oppression but 
 justice. You might succeed too well — in 
 losing all.' 
 
 XXXVI. 
 
 DRINK AND PAUPERISM. 
 
 As to drink, with an increasing consump- Drink and 
 
 pauperism. 
 
 tion every quarter swelling the revenue, the in- 
 crease chiefly extracted from the better wages 
 of the labouring class, I must leave you to 
 imagine how terrible a subject that is. Drink 
 is now an organised political power, returning 
 brewers and distillers to Parliament, aiding 
 Anglican and Papal divinity, degrading the 
 constituencies, nay, demoralising the very 
 government, which is obliged to make terms 
 with the disastrous tyrant. Against this, and 
 against the third peril, that of pauperism, 
 temperance and social reformers are striving 
 with noble energy, and not without hope. 
 
8o GLANCES AT INNER ENGLAND. 
 
 XXXVII. 
 
 THE FOURTH DANGER: DEFICIENCY OF 
 INCITEMENTS TO THRIFT 
 
 The fourth The fourth danger, namely, that of the ab- 
 
 danger— . . 
 
 deficiency sence of incitements, moral and material, to 
 
 of incite- 
 ments to thrift among the working classes, is more 
 
 complicated and raises deeper issues. 
 
 The effect of that poor-law which I have 
 described, has been to sap the independent 
 spirit of the labourers. In England it is but 
 little a man can save, and that little di- 
 minishes his prospects of help from the guar- 
 dians of the poor. The poor-law reverses 
 the maxim of Christ, ' To him that hath shall 
 be given.' It is the careless, thriftless man 
 or woman who, in old age, can retire to the 
 poor-house or obtain the benefits of outdoor 
 relief. Do you wonder that men are impro- 
 vident under such a system ? Do you won- 
 der that such a system has not confuted itself 
 to the densest English intellect after two 
 hundred years and more of trial ? 
 
DEFICIENT INCITEMENTS TO THRIFT. 8 1 
 
 But ' besides the poor-law,' I am quoting Professor 
 
 r . Fawcett. 
 
 Professor Fawcett, ' another circumstance Discour- 
 agement to 
 which discourages prudential habits among saving. 
 
 the working classes is the feeling that no 
 
 amount of saving which it is possible for 
 
 them to make will give them any reasonable 
 
 prospect of rising in life.' There is little 
 
 hope, or scope either, in business. The 
 
 amount a working man can save is too small 
 
 to enable any number to compete with larger 
 
 capitalists and more accustomed tradesmen. 
 
 Nor will their savings generally enable them 
 
 to buy land. A monopoly in the hands of The land 
 
 monopoly. 
 
 the wealthy, subject to the disabilities created 
 by primogeniture, which locks up large tracts 
 of it in one family from generation to gene- 
 ration ; held in masses by great corporations ; 
 settled in the hands of trustees ; land, the 
 most valuable heritage of society, is in Eng- 
 land and Scotland the property of a few. 
 Vast districts are destitute, and have been 
 deliberately emptied of population to make 
 room for sheep, grouse, or red-deer. Class 
 laws, protecting game for the amusement of 
 aristocrats and rich commoners, give the 
 
 *g 
 
Our colo- 
 nies and 
 our states- 
 men. 
 
 82 GLANCES AT INNER ENGLAND. 
 
 land not only the nature of a luxury but also 
 a factitious value for purposes foreign to the 
 public good. The same laws operate to the 
 discouragement of agriculture. The expenses 
 of land transfer under a complicated land 
 system are so great that a man who pur- 
 chased a freehold property under 500/. in 
 value would probably pay from 60/. to 100/. 
 in law expenses. Thus the best field of 
 ambition for a working man, the hope of 
 acquiring a piece of land to till and dwell on, 
 is denied to the English million. 
 
 Is there any other outlet for the seething 
 population ? Yes. There are our colonies 
 and the United States, rich, free, crying out 
 for the strong arms that at home dig and 
 delve with hopeless energy for a daily skinful 
 of meat and drink, to come and win an 
 estate for themselves and their children. 
 This opening we have for years urged the 
 Government to facilitate. But the economist, 
 bound to his fatal laws of supply and de- 
 mand, has refused to listen ; the statesman, 
 at once aristocrats and capitalist's friend, has 
 declined to promote a reduction in the num- 
 
OUR COLONIES AND OUR STATESMEN. 83 
 
 ber of British labourers, whatever the conse- 
 quences ; both economist and statesman, in- 
 different to anything but present material 
 prosperity, have stigmatised the colonies as a 
 useless burden and emigration as a blunder ; 
 and the result is that they who might have 
 made a whole empire strong and prosperous, 
 who might have relieved the perilous plethora 
 at home, facilitated the solution of some of our 
 gravest problems, and developed in our pos- 
 sessions a wealth that would have re-esta- 
 blished English supremacy in the world, are 
 left to meet those fearful conditions which I 
 have depicted, while they have imperilled 
 the very integrity of an empire whose splen- 
 dour and extent were eulogised by Daniel 
 Webster in words that can never die. 
 
 In speaking to you of the England of to- Threat- 
 ened decay- 
 day, there is no confession I have to make of the 
 
 imperial 
 
 more mortifying than that of the threatened sentiment. 
 decay of the imperial sentiment — that in- 
 variable preliminary of national degradation. 
 I say threatened, but happily, I trust, averted. 
 It is in high quarters that we have seen these 
 symptoms of degradation ; but only among a 
 g 2 
 
84 GLANCES AT INNER ENGLAND. 
 
 select circle of economists or politicians. It 
 is said that one of our greatest statesmen, 
 not long since conversing with a gentleman, 
 who in speaking of the British Empire 
 argued that were it denuded of its colonies 
 it would dwindle to the position of Holland, 
 replied — 
 
 1 And what of that ? Is not a Hollander 
 as happy as an Englishman ? ' 
 
 There is no more significant symptom 
 of national decadence than the dying out 
 of the imperial sentiment. It is perilous 
 enough when a people coddled in luxury 
 and surfeited with riches begin to be in- 
 different to the national safety, but it is fatal 
 when they count with parsimonious thrift the 
 cost of maintaining their integrity, and would 
 purchase ease and peace with the loss of 
 .some of the national soil. Had a temper so 
 ignoble begun to canker this great common- 
 wealth, and had the disease entered so deep 
 that not even the sharp knife of war could 
 excise it, who would not have said, as he 
 looked upon the inglorious though mighty 
 fragments of a nation so soon disjointed, 
 
DECAY OF THE IMPERIAL SENTIMENT. 85 
 
 that its people had been miscreants, un- 
 deserving of their freedom and unworthy of 
 their greatness ? 
 
 In England, against this spirit of cold, 
 unnatural economy, there have fortunately 
 been men found to protest. When, some 
 time ago, ministers gave vent to significant 
 expressions of indifference to the loyalty of 
 the colonies, withdrew British soldiers from 
 Canada and New Zealand, when Mr. Glad- 
 stone suggested that the most a British states- 
 man could do was to prepare the way for 
 colonial independence, there was an outburst 
 of feeling in England which showed that the 
 British lion was not yet dead. He would 
 be a reckless minister who would now stand 
 up in the House of Commons to propose the 
 separation of the colonies from Great Britain ; 
 and that would be a daring nation, which, 
 relying on the British love of peace, should 
 Venture to violate one foot of our vast terri- 
 tories, or to attempt to seduce any colony 
 from its allegiance. 
 
86 GLANCES AT INNER ENGLAND. 
 
 XXXVIII. 
 
 THE INHERENT GREATNESS AND STRENGTH 
 OF ENGLAND INDICA TED B Y THE STEADI- 
 NESS OF HER PROGRESS IN REFORM. 
 
 The in- Were I speaking of any other country you 
 
 herent 
 
 greatness might well say that I had been depicting a 
 
 and 
 
 strength of condition of things which was hopeless. But 
 
 England & r 
 
 indicated we are speaking of England — a land accus- 
 
 steadiness tomed to disconcert probabilities and pro- 
 of her pro- 
 
 by the 
 steadin 
 of her ] 
 
 RefV n phecies. For our wonderful nation carries 
 these evils stoutly, and with every promise of 
 redress. What marvels have not our re- 
 formers already achieved without bloodshed 
 or rebellion ! 
 
 No period of history is more fruitful and 
 extraordinary than that of Great Britain since 
 the beginning of this century. Recall the 
 names of our reformers — of Wilberforce, of 
 Brougham, of Peel, of Russell, of Cobden 
 and Bright, of Gladstone, what a history of 
 judicious and ever-progressive statesmanship 
 do they suggest ! 
 
REVIEW OF REFORMS. 8 J 
 
 Slavery was abolished at a cost of Review of 
 
 Reforms. 
 
 20,000,000/. sterling. Before the year 1828 
 no dissenter could hold a corporate office 
 without taking the communion in the Church 
 of England ; and in that year Lord John 
 Russell — a man greater and more fortunate 
 in his home than his foreign policy — had the 
 Test and Corporation Acts repealed. That 
 was the beginning of a struggle for the 
 liberation of religion in England which is 
 •not yet ended. Next the reformers proceeded 
 to remove the political and civil disabilities 
 which at that time debarred Roman Catholics 
 from enjoying the full rights of citizenship. 
 The first Reform Bill, enlarging the con- 
 stituencies and abolishing the worst of those 
 pocket-boroughs which gave to their aristo- 
 cratic owners the privilege of returning mem- 
 bers to Parliament, came next. 
 
 The Reform of the Constituencies was 
 followed by the Reform of Municipal Cor- 
 porations and of the Poor Law, and by that 
 measure which with its collateral develop- 
 ments of Free Trade has made England the 
 wealthiest of nations, I mean the Repeal of 
 
88 GLANCES AT INNER ENGLAND. 
 
 the Corn Laws. Next followed to perdition 
 the old navigation laws. Later on we have 
 had another Reform Bill presented to us by 
 Mr. Disraeli, giving household suffrage in 
 the towns, though not yet in the counties. 
 We have disestablished the Irish Church ; 
 we have reformed the Irish land laws ; we 
 have abolished the compulsory payment of 
 rates to the Established Church by Dissen- 
 ters ; we have admitted Jews to Parliament ; 
 we have framed, though not yet perfected, a 
 great national system of education ; we have 
 begun to reform the laws relating to Public 
 Health ; we have reorganised that strong- 
 hold of privilege the Army, and have im- 
 proved our system of Judicature ; we now 
 protect voters in municipal and parliamen- 
 tary elections by the Ballot. Such a list of 
 reforms accomplished in the lifetime of one 
 man, like Earl Russell, who has taken more 
 or less part in all these measures, while it 
 recalls to you the intolerable conditions of 
 English society and politics at the beginning 
 of this century, also indicates the inherent 
 greatness and vitality of a nation which, en- 
 
REVIEW OF REFORMS. 89 
 
 gaged in battling with evils so prodigious, 
 has nevertheless gone on developing in popu- 
 lation, and wealth, and commerce and manu- 
 factures, in religion and philanthropy, at a 
 rate, taking all these things together, hardly 
 surpassed by any other nation. Striking in- 
 deed would be the history, had I time to 
 review it, of the social changes wrought in 
 England, of its material development, of the 
 improved condition of its artisans, of the 
 magnificence of its charities. Still I have 
 shown you how much there remains for the 
 reformer to do ; what dangers evil laws, bad 
 statesmanship, centuries of wrong, class privi- 
 lege, wicked wars, and vices permitted to 
 grow into the body politic, have left us. I 
 pray you be careful, as men who hold in your 
 hands the destinies of the future, that you 
 leave not to your posterity the dreadful legacy 
 of such problems as these. There are ever 
 sprouting in the body politic the beginnings 
 of parasitical growths that may, like tropical 
 vines, embrace and kill the tree on which 
 they climb. 
 
90 GLANCES AT INNER ENGLAND. 
 
 XXXIX. 
 
 REFORM IN ENGLAND IS SLOW AND STEADY. 
 
 Reform in Fortunately for England, her people are 
 
 slow and slow and steady in their methods of reform. 
 
 steady. . 
 
 In other nations the evils long endured 
 among us would have been swept away by 
 torrents of blood. With us they have dis- 
 appeared in more dignified and benignant 
 courses. The deeply imprinted love of order, 
 of constitution, of law, is the real safety of 
 England amidst dangers that blanch the 
 cheek of a thinking man. Reforms with us 
 win their successes not only over the wills 
 but over the wits of the people. And the 
 truest, healthiest reforms must ever work 
 thus. I love ever to hear the voice of reform 
 coming not in the mighty rushing wind but 
 in the still small voice that penetrates to 
 and moves the minds and the hearts of the 
 people. It comes best not as the hurricane, 
 or the deluge, or the earthquake, but as the 
 majestic swelling of the mighty tide, rising 
 
REFORM SLOW AND STEADY. 91 
 
 with slow but omnipotent force, kissing its 
 way from pebble to pebble, moving so gently 
 that the frailest shallop floats unharmed upon 
 its smiling bosom ; and by and by it reaches 
 some ancient rock of privilege, some hardened 
 relic of vested wrong, and circling around it 
 with heightening waters at length overtops 
 and hides it from view ; and now and then it 
 reaches some bark of reform, stranded or 
 never launched, and with gradual but resist- 
 less power raises it inch by inch and foot by 
 foot, until at length, as it floats free upon the 
 smiling surface, the mariners within can hoist 
 their sails and bear away, freighted with 
 blessings for all mankind. 
 
 LONDON ! PRINTED BY 
 
 SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE 
 
 AND PARLIAMENT STREET 
 
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