Part 2

The Rector of All Souls candidly admitted his Institution was _in articulo mortis_, and that the higher classes took no interest in this weak, sickly infant. No doubt the object is good, but how far wiser for the District Rectors to take up the amended Act, which applies “to Parishes.” Take it up NOT in a carping, criticising, fault finding spirit, but rather SUPPLEMENT it, by Concerts, Readings, and Lectures. G. MONTAGUE DAVIS, ESQ., whose recitations exhibit so much cleverness, informs me, London Lecturers, of no mean talent, would gladly deliver a course at the St. Marylebone Public Library. {13b} Supplement it with RECREATION and REFRESHMENT Rooms. Never forget the scope and design of the Act is to ATTRACT, NOT to repel, to AMUSE, as well as to instruct, the people. I will assume that you have carried the Act:—that is a good work, but I warn you it is not sufficient. The Legislature tells you to do the best you can with this enabling Act. SUPPLEMENT it then by all means, and make the avenues and approaches to your News Rooms pleasant and entertaining. You will never attract the men of fustian jackets, and horny hands, unless you can combine amusement with instruction. I grant that newspaper reading, as the most effective instrument of public instruction, should be encouraged as much as possible, but it is no easy matter to go from ten and twelve hours work in search of useful knowledge. You must provide good and cheap RECREATION. I entertain serious misgivings that additional Church Accommodation is NOT the most pressing question of the day. There is a taste to be formed, and a mind to be humanized by enjoyment, before Church or Chapel services can be relished. No doubt books and papers _are_ attractive, but I am pleading for the man wearied and exhausted by a day of toil. In a _café_, in the Rue de la Roquette, near the Place de la Bastille, Paris, I observed fifty _ouvriers_ in blouses playing at billiards. All appeared to be innocently enjoying themselves; why not? There is no necessary connexion between billiards and gambling, and the question arises if the Club, or Billiard room is beneficial or allowable to the Gentleman, why not also to the Working Man?

To successfully combat the allurements of cabarets and gin palaces, you must “compel” men to visit your News Rooms by the force of superior attraction.

There is “REST” enough, too much, already. Nothing breaks the low and grovelling monotony of “the Pious Public House.” No healthier pursuit interferes with the recreation supplied by the tap-room, or the sanded parlour. You must _tempt_ people into churches—the arguments of fear have not succeeded in making them frequented. The excitements you employ are not sufficient to attract the poor to your benches—try the effect of supplementing the Act, as I have briefly indicated—take it up in this wise temper, and you will have no dismal failures to lament.

Gentlemen, it is related of the Emperor AUGUSTUS—it was the glory of his reign—that he found Rome brick, and that he left it marble. Let it be your higher aim, your nobler distinction, that you found the people ignorant, and that you left them INSTRUCTED—that you found them wholly untaught in _political and social science_, {15} and that you left them INTELLIGENT—that you found the gates of the temple of knowledge closed to the toiling classes, and that you OPENED THEM TO ALL!

Gentlemen, I belong to no Party, but I will yield to none in my earnest desire to thoroughly RESTORE and REPAIR the venerable Fabric of the Constitution, and to put the Representation of the People on a firm basis, and to have a House of Commons for the common people. I am for a more comprehensive franchise than the symbolical one of lath and plaster. I would give a vote to every man certified as competent to READ and WRITE. I prefer a representation of INTELLIGENT MEN to any Franchise that can be devised. What claim has an illiterate hind to the Elective franchise? Not the slightest. You put a dangerous weapon into his hand of the use of which he is ignorant. The Suffrage is a TRUST, and a man wholly uninstructed is unqualified to exercise it. Philosophers laugh at _manhood_ suffrage _de se_, and ask why should not such a franchise include women?

I am of opinion that a Reading and Writing qualification is fairer and more equitable, and affords as good a security for an honest vote, as any £ s. d. franchise whatever. With an untaxed Press, with Knowledge set free, with cheap and good Literature, such a suffrage could not fail to stimulate the popular education. I have no faith in a £6 or a £5 franchise, unless it is annexed with a reading certificate, and to make no provision for a £10 or £12 LODGER FRANCHISE, as Mr. James proposes, seems mean popularity-hunting, and like a determination on the part of Lord John Russell to ignore the claims of a very large and respectable class in St. Marylebone, and other Metropolitan Parishes, because they are quiet and not demonstrative. But such palpable injustice cannot be endured for ever. That “ugly rush,” predicted by Mr. Henley, may yet come; for there is always danger of convulsion when large bodies of men are insulted, and deprived of their just political rights, in order to please the rampant, degenerate Earl GREY, the rank Tory DICTATOR, alias Renegade Whig, Earl DERBY, or such a loud, noisy Declaimer, as Sir E. Bully Lytton, M.P.

This Hertfordshire Baronet has taken so prominent a part in the play of REFORM, in the character of “THE RENEGADE—an ENGLISH LIBERAL,” that it becomes a duty to briefly criticize the performance. If there is one spectacle more humiliating, or one sight sadder than another, it is that of beholding a man of letters, and of unquestionable ability, laboriously using his talents as a cloak of maliciousness, and ungratefully reviling that democracy which gave him bread, and raised him to power. “_Et tu_, _Brute_!” Why, a more grossly insulting, unpatriotic speech never issued from the lips of the most rabid Tory! Can it be possible that “ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH” was written by the “Poverty and Passion” Orator? QUANTUM MUTATUS! “How is the gold become dim! How is the most fine gold changed!” How unlike that Bulwer who discoursed so eloquently of the rights of man—of man as a greater name than President, or King!

From my youth up, Bulwer was my _beau ideal_; he is now my realization of perfidy and tergiversation, and before such an elaborate sham, even the star of Disraeli must pale.

Like your confrère novelist, Disraeli, you have turned your back upon yourself, and brought a slur on the literary calling. You, who began your political career by associating your name with the freedom of the newspaper from all fiscal restrictions, end it by doing what you can to hamper and enchain it. On the night of the third reading of the PAPER DUTY REPEAL BILL, May 8, you absent yourself from the Division, when EVERY VOTE was of the utmost importance to the Finance Minister, though I am bound to add you were not alone in turning your back upon yourself, and your speeches about giving the people education and intelligence. Lord STANLEY, with an inconsistency equally glaring, votes for £300,000 for the Promotion of Education, and then evades the Repeal Bill Division by flight! I prefer DISRAELI’S, and ADDERLEY’S, and PAKINGTON’S adverse vote to such mean, pusillanimous Absentees, and Patrons of Educational Institutes, as Lord STANLEY, the Member for King’s Lynn, Sir Robert PEEL, the Member for Geneva, and the immaculate JOHN ARTHUR ROEBUCK, {17} the stern guardian of Political Purity. STROUD will rid itself of HORSMAN, and the Metropolitan constituencies of FINSBURY, ST. MARYLEBONE, SOUTHWARK, and WESTMINSTER, will have something not very complimentary to whisper to Mr. DUNCOMBE, Mr. JAMES, and Sir De LACY EVANS, who absented themselves from the Division, and to Sir CHARLES NAPIER, who voted with the Noes. If LISKEARD favours the absence of Mr. OSBORNE from a Reform Bill, compared with which a £6 franchise is as nothing in the scale of moral value, it is time this Cornish borough was disfranchised. The honourable member for OLDHAM, I regret to notice, has a legitimate excuse for his absence, but what can be said of his colleague, the son of COBBETT, voting against Free Trade in Intelligence and Ingenuity, voting for imposing an oppressive and restrictive tax of upwards of a million, on an article which is just as essential to the circulation of knowledge, as iron rails are to the progress of a locomotive.

In glancing over the Division list, Ayes, 219, Noes, 210, I was glad to notice BIRMINGHAM’S indefatigable and respected Representative, WILLIAM SCHOLEFIELD, ESQ., among the Ayes; but where was the staid and “eminent” member, John Bright, on this particular night? What! THE TRIBUNE of the People to slope away on a field night like this! Not even to pair! Why ASSUME there would be no fight on the _third_ reading? Had the vote been as decisive as on the second reading, Lord Derby, with all his ill-concealed jealousy of the rising influence of Mr. GLADSTONE, and his antipathy to a cheap Press, would not have ventured on so desperate a game as the backer of the Limerick game cock. The Rupert of Debate was far too wily a tactician to overlook this narrow Party victory, this dwindling of the Ayes from 53 (245 against 192) to 9, this narrow squeak, this, in effect, desertion to the enemy. There is not the shadow of a doubt the wretched NINE encouraged the wily strategist in his dangerous game of USURPING the privileges of the Commons, and reviving the ominous cry of 1832, “WHAT USE IS THE HOUSE OF LORDS?”

Observe, far be it from me to comment with severity on the sayings and doings of the brilliant Quaker. Far be it from me to notice affronts which I set down to exuberance of arrogance, often seen in men who have raised themselves from an obscure position to a front rank. I would much rather dwell on Mr. Bright’s eminent services in the People’s cause. Who was the chief Orator at the great League Meetings, 1843–45? Who so captivated by his earnest style? Fifteen years have elapsed, and again I have listened to Mr. Bright’s persuasive words. His speech at St. Martin’s Hall, May 15th, 1860, was a master-piece, and, despite a cold, a most animated, yet almost solemn appeal. I will quote a sentence, which, who that loves his country will gainsay?

“You boast of your love of freedom, your newspapers fill columns every day with the details of what men are doing in other parts of the world—some in overthrowing, some in building up noble fabrics of human liberty. Let me beseech you that, whilst you are observing what is being done ABROAD with an intense and increasing interest, never for a single moment forget what is being done, and what it is your duty to do, AT HOME.”

Mr. Bright’s reception by the great meeting of some three thousand persons was indeed an ovation, not “a roomfull of London mob,” (as the _Times_ insolently says), but of an indignant people. As in the days of KEAN, “the pit rose at him,” at the close of an inciting yet moderate speech, of one hour’s duration.

“I exhort the people of England—you who are here present to-night—all who shall read my words to-morrow, I exhort them to make this a great question. Your fathers would have made it a great question: they would have maintained, and did maintain their rights; and you are recreant and unworthy children of theirs if you surrender them in your generation.”

What cares Earl Derby, with his fifty proxies, whether he throws the country into inextricable confusion? {19} What cares a haughty aristocrat for Mr. Gladstone? His great superiority of intellect—his undaunted courage—his noble conscientiousness, are so many thorns in his side, and it is clear that certain members of both Houses, and envious EX-Chancellors, (as Disraeli, or that renegade sinecurist, Spring Rice, Lord Monteagle—a servant of the Crown, yet working against the Crown—with an office of £2,000 as Comptroller of the Exchequer, money wrung from a heavily taxed Public) dislike our honest Finance Minister. Need I remind you the genius MR. GLADSTONE has displayed as a Financier is a crime in their eyes. To drive the STATE Coach at all hazards, what cares LORD DERBY if the wheels of his chariot knock down the great Commoner? What does such a titled usurper care for offering gross insults to the CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER? To OBSTRUCT, to offer every impediment to the spread of knowledge by means of the Penny NEWSPAPER—that great political Intelligence—is the delight of this chieftain and his retainers. You then turn round and most insolently taunt the Poor with their want of knowledge and improvidence, with their hazy and uncertain political ideas. You tempt the poor man with bribes, and complain of his dependence in his exercise of the Franchise, and contemptuously enquire “what will he do with it?”

I know of no dishonour, no meanness to be compared with this. You are astute enough in diverting attention from the REFORM Bill by unfriendly criticisms on NAPOLEON, and by the distraction of Foreign Affairs.

You are not Members for Nice or Savoy. To annoy our ALLY and impede his policy, the rights and liberties of ENGLISHMEN are to be shelved. Why this excessive anxiety about our Foreign neighbours to the neglect of HOME? I can only glance at the curious tone of this cynical speech. No doubt the delivery of this harangue was striking enough, but a roar is certainly not a melodious sound. The effect of the oration though clothed in glittering phraseology was entirely lost by the jerking mode of its delivery. Such a _dog_matical outcry I never heard. It resembled the noise of some furious mastiff, and no wonder the loud barking drove despairing Members into the lobby. And this wretched declamation Lord B. Manners calls a brilliant and magnificent oration. There was a time when _Mr. Bulwer_ could see no evil in a large increase of the constituency, nor any danger in the ignorance, credulity, and excitableness of the working classes. There was a time when he wished to conciliate the “English” with fulsome adulation in order to elevate himself, _now_ he labours to damage and damnify; and who are his associates in adopting the not very elegant or polite terms of “scum,” “boor.” &c. A _Mr. Adam Black_, M.P. for Edinburgh, the son of a journeyman mason, _Sidney Smith_, a briefless Edinburgh barrister, _Robert Longfield_, an Irish barrister, a Q.C. and Member for Mallow, and next a brace of Lords, Robert Cecil, and Robert Montagu. In coarse and vulgar slanders of the Poor who is such an adept as the man who is a traitor to his order—the man who has himself worked for his bread? None are so bitter and malignant as those who have risen from the ranks. Let me tell this scion of the House of Rutland that the presence of _Lords_ in the House of _Commons_ is not desirable, and that the days of a rapacious OLIGARCHY as the real ruling Power in England are numbered. Why add Insult to Injury? It is a defence full of peril, to say in effect that your order requires the people to be deprived of their just Rights.

Let me tell that political incendiary Lord DERBY that if his Order can only be upheld by depriving us of the Elective Franchise, that if his Order really requires this great sacrifice, this keeping the people year after year in dense ignorance, that if his Order can only be preserved by USURPING the privileges of the House of Commons, in order to perpetuate an odious and miserable Tax on Intelligence, I for one exclaim, Perish this Order.

And here let me contrast the coarse, censorious, anti-Reform Speeches of Lord R. Cecil, Lord B. Manners, Mr. Bentinck, and another Aristocrat whose “House” is quite as potential for evil, though not so ancient as some noble Lords. I allude to John Walter of Bear Wood, and Printing House Square, Member for Berkshire, and the chief Proprietor of the “Times.”

Reading their libellous and defamatory speeches, I thought of the dreaded advent of that day when plough boys should read and write, I mused on the countryman’s cry, “WAIT TILL US CHAPS HAS VOTES.”

Compare the “Oration” of Sir E. Lytton, with the well reasoned, logical speech of MR. GLADSTONE.

“But when he speaks, what elocution flows, Soft as the fleeces of descending snows.”

First of orators, and master of the arts of Rhetoric, MR. GLADSTONE condescends to dress his arguments in no robe of tinsel finery, no specious, no glittering phrases are to be found, but a plain, common sense English speech that could not fail to make a deep impression on the House. How the Phantoms alarmists had conjured up were routed! How he scattered to the winds the hobgoblins the Terrorists had raised!

Sprung from the People, with them and of them, the CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER is too noble minded and just to satirize the Poor because they are poor. I will quote his words:

“Sir.—I don’t admit that the working man, regarded as an individual, is less worthy of the suffrage than any other class. I don’t admit the charges of corruption from the Report of a Committee of the House of Lords. I don’t believe that the working men of this country are possessed of a disposition to tax their neighbours and exempt themselves, nor do I acknowledge for a moment that schemes of socialism, of communism, of republicanism, or any other ideas at variance with the laws and constitution of the Realm are prevalent and popular among them.” (Hear, hear.)

But I forget. The Field day is drawing near, and you will soon be in the thick of the Battle! {22}

“Yet once more let me look upon the scene;”

Let me call to mind my first to the Field of Waterloo, wrapt in a crimson flood of light, on a beautiful summer’s evening in 1859. Standing upon this celebrated Plain,

“this place of skulls, The grave of France, the deadly Waterloo!”

who can forget the heroic deeds of that never to be forgotten Field?

Traversing that Plain where united Nations drew the sword, and where our Countrymen especially triumphed, who cannot sympathize with the dying English King, who on being told that it was the 18th of June, exclaimed “That was a glorious day for England!” But PEACE has her victories not less renowned than War.

And I hasten to review some specialities in a Home contest on which so much is at stake; in my notes on St. Marylebone nothing has struck me more than the high degree of speciality which attaches to this Crown Living. LANCING in SUSSEX, my native village, of which my Father was for many years VICAR, in Ecclesiastical language is termed a “PECULIAR,” and certainly St. Marylebone might take the same title. The CLERGY in this, as in every other Parish, stand on a vantage ground, and, if I might venture to speak a few words, I would counsel them to vote for this Act, and advocate such NURSERIES of Intelligence and virtue as Public News and Recreation Rooms, and to recommend the rate paying part of their congregations to do the same.

It would be very unwise to separate yourselves from the only feasible plan for the innocent recreation and instruction of the People, and what have the _working_ clergy to fear from Books or Newspapers?

Is it wise in the 19th century of the Christian era to proclaim openly that you dare not encounter the rivalship of places set apart for intellectual gratification and amusement? Is it not well occasionally to ask yourselves whether the common people hear you gladly? and if your words contain the food, or the medicine which meets the great necessities of toiling hearts. You have vainly preached prohibitions and restrictions,—you have hurled spiritual thunderbolts with little or no effect. Stand upon the steps of the Churches, and see who comes out. Is the working man there? There are clearly faults on both sides. He loves not the Church. The Church has not done its duty. You must constrain, tempt, “compel” him to enter. You must manage to _attract_ and draw him, and above all you must learn to preach Freedom of Thought, UNITY and CHRISTIAN EQUALITY. Believe me it would be politic on your part to review the past, and _do what you can_, to ameliorate the condition of the masses by gladly availing yourselves of this Act. That is a sad day for the Gospel and the Church when a Plan for the Improvement of the People is called “secular,” and not sufficiently religious to be urged from the Pulpit: the Bishop of SIERRA LEONE in his Sermon at St. Marylebone Church drew an appalling picture of “1,300 millions of Idolaters,” and spoke of the duty of teaching the Nations, by spreading abroad the light of the Gospel. That obligation cannot be questioned, but who can say there are not IDOLS of SECTARIANISM and CASTE in our own country? Who can say there are not unhappy DIVISIONS, and a want of CHRISTIAN UNIFORMITY? And who can deny the Idol worship of LISSON GROVE?

Talk of the _dark places of the earth_, where can more devoted worshippers of BACCHUS or of Mammon be found than in this collection of Towns, called LONDON? HERE are Idols as real, sacrifices as hideous and mischievous as any in a heathen land.

I can understand the opposition of the Romanists to this gracious Act. The Romish system cannot bear the light of intelligence: Priests of that faith don’t want their people to know too much, or to get as high as the generalities of history, or the speculations of philosophy, but YOU, the Clergy of the Church of England, that Church which will stand or fall, as it meets the requirements of this progressive age, have no interest whatever in keeping the Key of Knowledge to yourselves. Recollect St. Marylebone has a disgrace to retrieve, a character to redeem. Believe me it is a discredit to your large Parish to be without a Public Library. Vote for the adoption of this Act, and you reduce the Poor rate, you reduce crime, and simplify the policeman’s duty, and above all you bridge over the gulf that separates classes. Your cordial sympathy cannot be withheld from a Proposal of this description.

“How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth glad tidings, that publisheth PEACE!” You who promulgate “PEACE on earth, GOOD WILL TOWARDS MEN,” cannot carelessly regard this beneficent project. You cannot be more usefully engaged than in promoting a scheme that enlarges the means of instruction, and widens the field of economical and sanitary science. Your senses cannot be quite dazzled by the pomps and vanities of exclusive Rifle Corps, trained to fire at imaginary foes. You cannot allow this fair land to be invaded by an enemy so real and fatal as IGNORANCE. You will not forget what it is that makes one man wiser, or more virtuous than another, and what it is that constitutes the difference between one man and another? You well know what it is that makes them what they are, good or evil, useful or not. You well know that it is EDUCATION which makes the great difference in mankind. {24} You are too sagacious to slight, or separate yourselves from the only feasible, enduring plan for the innocent RECREATION and instruction of the people. You are aware that all work and no innocent AMUSEMENT, has been productive of the worst results. You are aware that Music is a powerful agent in the promotion of refinement and civilization, and that after a long day of toil, a man has need of relaxations other than books. Knowing this, you will, I hope, gladly respond to the appeal, and strengthen the hands of St. Margaret and St. John.

“The bells of time are ringing changes fast! Grant, LORD! that each fresh peal may usher in An Era of advancement!”