"If law be centralized, it always lingers far behind men's needs." Thisobiter dictumof Francis Newman's, spoken nearly sixty years ago, strikes one as more true to-day even than when he originally gave voice to it. For if there is one thing truer than another, it is that half the wrongs to which we are heir to-day, are due to centralization. This may be due in part, no doubt, to the enormous increase of population; but certainly one overwhelming reason is that class with class has lost in very great measure all sense of cooperation, all sense of sympathy, all sense of their real intimate connection and relationship with each other. Instead of provincial legislature, we have our one parliamentary centre, instead of treating our own local matters ourselves, we hale them up before a central bureaucracy—a bureaucracy already so overcrowded with business that it is absolutely and practically unable to deal with all the questions which come up for settlement. So that instead of imperative local matters being dealt with first hand, private bill after private bill swarms through the doors of Parliament, and it becomes a veritable impossibility to go into detail with respect to the pros and cons which they bear upon their pages, much less grasp the whole drift of the question with justice in its entirety.
Far wiser was the old system of provincial legislature, in which the people were really represented, a system in which personality counted for much and men were brought into familiar and friendly relations with each other, not kept apart by the rubicon of red-tapeism, and liable to have the door of the Closure slammed in their faces at some critical juncture of discussion, and the subject shelved. It is true that since Francis Newman's day we may have made some effort after local councils, but it is also true that these local councils do not really bring class and class together. Each class is by no means adequately represented in them, nor is it the council's object that this should be the case. To compare the England of to-day—the agricultural England, at any rate—with the England of the past, brings all true thinkers to the same conclusion, that class demarcations are as insistent, as absolute as ever they were, even in the culminating early Victorian days. [Footnote: "We must mainly refer our practical evils to thedemoralizationof the State which the restoration of the Stuarts caused…. Then began the estrangement of the Commonalty from the Church of the aristocracy."—Francis Newman.] One has but to go abroad to be convinced how "classy" we are as a nation, for class prejudices and insularity are produced by provincial England, and indigenous to the soil, and alas! this crop never fails. There are, unfortunately, no lean years. There are, it is true, plenty of organizations in which the more fortunate class tries to ameliorate the lot of the less fortunate one, plenty of organizations in which the more cultured class tries—often devotes its whole life to this trying—to make better conditions for the less cultured one, and all honour and praise is due to self-denying work of the kind, but it is not enough. The truest, purest Christian socialism [Footnote: I use the word in its truest ancient sense.] requires that helper and helped meet on absolutely equal ground; that there is banished that indescribable stalking figure which follows close in the wake of most meetings between rich and poor in England, the Gentleman-hood (or Lady-hood, for I have seen that often quite as insistently in evidence) of the class which, so to speak, "stoopsto conquer," the limitations of the less fortunate classes, in its work for the people.
I remember coming across the word "gentleman" interpreted in a far different sense in an old fifteenth-century book. Many words change their meaning with time, but this word has changed from its fifteenth-century interpretation more than any. The sentence ran thus: "Jesus Christ was the first Gentleman." Anything further from the original conception of its meaning as set forward in this sentence than our English idea of what is meant to-day by "gentleman" it would be difficult to find. For He went among the people as one of themselves, was born among them, and was educated as they were. There was no hint of patronage, no suggestion of any social demarcation. He Who was the world's Redeemer was yet a Socialist [Footnote: I cannot but add here that, in my opinion, the much- abused word "Socialist" has changed in character in the same way as the word "gentleman," and the modern interpretation is very far from being the true, admirable, original thing signified.] in the highest and best sense of the term.
We have come far since those days, but we have not come beyond the need to deprive birth and riches of some of that arbitrary power by which they have assumed more authority than is their due in the matter of legislation, influence, disposal of land, and economic local conditions in the provinces.
As regards decentralized government and the "immense importance of local liberties," I cannot do better than quote first from the preface written by Francis Newman to his lectures onPolitical Economy, when he issued them in a printed form in 1851:—
"Of the immense importance of local liberties, and their actual deficiencies among us, I became fully convinced during six years' residence in Manchester; but it is only from Mr. Toulmin Smith's works (the most important political work, as to me appears, which the nineteenth century has produced in England) that I have learnt the immense resources of the Common Law of England, and that nothing but the arbitrary encroachments of Parliament at this moment hinders a vigorous local legislation and local government under the fullest local freedom which can be desired."
The lectures themselves, notably the twelfth, are in my opinion a counsel of perfection which we should do well to follow to-day in very many respects. For instance, he urges very strongly that "every town in England, and every county, ought to have the feelings of a little State,as in fact it once had" [the italics are my own]. "Our own history for many centuries shows that this is quite consistent with the existence of a central power—a Crown Parliament—for all purposes truly national; and if the action of the central power were strictly limited to such things, the provinces would, now more than ever, have abundant room for high ambition." He shows how all organization has been lost in large provincial towns, even though meetings are held from time to time, and menseemto come together for counsel and combination of ideas; the only really fixed "moral union" being that narrow tie of family life which does but make a number of separate entities in the big whole of citizenship. There is no corporate union which makes each citizen the charge, to all intents and purposes, of his neighbour. Each family holds together. It rises and falls by itself. It holds to its heart no innate real sense of responsibility of a wider citizenship. That is lost—undeniably lost.
[Illustration: TOULMIN SMITHENLARGEMENT FROM A PHOTO. BY KIND PERMISSION OF MISS TOULMIN SMITH]
The question arises naturally: When was this splendid link of "Each for All" broken and mislaid? For nothing is more imperatively necessary among the ranks of workers to-day.
Mr. Toulmin Smith tells us: "The link which has been broken and mislaid was the "English Guild" (or "gild," as seems the more correct spelling). He tells us—and it is generally conceded that he is our great authority on this subject—that as a system of practical and universal institutions, a English Guilds are older than any kings of England." [Footnote: "They were associations of those living in the same neighbourhood, who remembered that they had, as neighbours, common obligations."] And as another authority on medieval life—Dom Gasquet—says: "The oldest of our ancient laws—those, for example, of Alfred, of Athelstan, and Ina—assume the existence of guilds to some one of which, as a matter of course, everyone was supposed to belong."
There were of course trade (or handicraft) associations and social guilds. Dom Gasquet describes thus their object: "Broadly speaking, they were the benefit societies and the provident associations of the Middle Ages. They undertook towards their members the duties now frequently performed by burial clubs, by hospitals, by almshouses, and by guardians of the poor." [Footnote: "Poor laws had no existence in medieval England, yet the peasants did not fear and die of starvation in old age. The Romans had no poor laws … until the destruction of small freehold."—Francis Newman.] "Not infrequently they are found acting for the public good of the community in the mending of roads and in the repair of bridges…. The very reason of their existence was to afford mutual aid." [Footnote: Parish Life of Medieval England.] They were in very deed, as Mr. Toulmin Smith describes them, institutions of "local self-help." And everyone who knows anything of the subject is aware that they "obviated pauperism, assisted in steadying the price of labour, and formed a permanent centre." Also it has been proved that they acted as the lever which effectually made citizenship more together as a whole, bound together by common need and common responsibilities.
This sense of oneness of interest of "Each for All," then, we have unfortunately as a nation lost. And with the loss have gone many of the people's rights and privileges both with regard to local self-government, local liberties, and co-operation.
Now the question arises how are we to recover what was so necessary to the public well-being? And Francis Newman is ready with an answer.
"To recognize little states in our towns and countries would be the first step of organization; I believe it would be an easy one…. If each town had full power to tax itself for public purposes, a thousand civilizing ameliorations would be introduced…. If local institutions had been kept up in energy, the unhealthy buildings which now exist could never have arisen; there is at present an Augean stable to cleanse…. Look at the sellers in the street, look at the cab-drivers and their horses on a rainy day; what can be more barbarous than their exposure?… Nothing surely is more obvious than that in a city where thirty or forty thousand persons live all day under the sky, having no power to shelter themselves, there ought to be numerous covered piazzas, market-places, and sheds for cabriolets. By such means, to save the poor from rheumatism and inflammations, would be cheaper than to raise their wages, if that were possible, and would confer far more direct benefit on them than the removing of taxes."
Here is indeed the mind of a modern Hercules in its strong, rational suggestions as to how this particular "stable" must be swept out. It is a striking illustration of how far we have come since the days of the medieval guilds, this lack of grasp on our part of the particular needs of particular sections of the community. For were our local self-government in working order and thoroughly representative, it is not to be thought of for a moment that such a lack of shelters and proper appliances for the labouring man and woman would be in such evidence amongst us as now is the case. For look at England as she is, in respect of unsettled, rainy and stormy weather: her spells of wintry weather, her spring changes: one day warm, and the next, constant spells of snow, sleet, and bitter driving gusts of wind. Where do the loafers of our streets go? Where do the unemployed, hanging about at the street corner in search of a job, go during some pelting shower which drenches whoever remains to face it in less than three minutes? The centre of the street, and the streaming pavements clear almost at once, but where does the "man in the street"— the woman—the child go? Certainly they do not go into a shelter put up by Government for their protection, as a rule. There are, in provincial towns, no shelters sufficiently large to accommodate them.
I have often talked to the inspectors—to take a case in point—of provincial trams. These men have to wait, to stand about at corners of streets or cross roads great part of the day. Many of them suffer in no small degree from this constant standing about in all weathers.
Then again, there is no provision made for the drivers of the trams. It would be quite possible to provide seats for them, as is often done in motor buses, but the same reason holds good for this not having been thought of, as is in evidence with regard to the lack of street shelters.
There is not sufficient co-operation in the local government. When the guilds died out, no local arrangements took their place. In other words, the local government, of whatever nature it is, is not sufficiently representative. The men who work upon the road, day in day out, have not sufficient opportunity of saying, in open meeting of their fellow citizens, where their particular trade shoe pinches. It is, as old Sir Thomas More said very truly, the matter of the rich legislating for the poor, which is at fault.
Here, then, is the remedy suggested by Francis Newman: "The stated meeting of a number of people in aWard-motewould make their faces familiar to one another, and give to the richer orders a distinct acquaintance with a definite portion of the vast community. Out of this … meeting for discussion of practical business in aWard-mote… would rise numerous other relations."
Here men would meet—men drawn from every class—and could voice their complaints, their difficulties, their desire for improved conditions of work. Only in this way could local government become really a help to its neighbourhood. Only in this way could men consult on the best way of improving economic conditions, frame their own amelioration of existing laws, and send them up to the Imperial Parliament for consent or veto.
Then it would probably follow that some measure of land reform would be the natural result of such local government. Perhaps it is over the land that the Plough of Reform needs most urgently to be driven. More than eight centuries ago the first idea of parks began in this country. Then it was that in the selfish desire for private property the dwellings of the people were swept away to make room for those of game for royal sport. Later this method was adopted by Henry VIII's baronial retainers, who ejected the tenants from their estates for the sake of trade profit— profit to be gained by exporting wool from the large sheep farms into which they made their private estates.
But the system of large tracts of land in a small country, such as our own, being bought up for private property, and made into parks or game preserves, is of course at the root of very many economic evils which have largely helped to cause pauperism and unhealthy conditions of life for the agricultural labourer. If rich men may add, without the law stepping in to limit amount, land to land as their pocket makes it possible, it follows, as a matter of course, that more of the rustic population must move into the towns: and that more and more crowding and over-competition are the result later on.
Newman—the man who was always boldest where there was a cause that needed fighting for, or fellow citizens who were powerless to right their own wrongs, and who required someone to voice them—spoke out his views on this subject, unhesitatingly. "That a man should be able to buy up large tracts of land, and make himself the owner of them—to keep them in or out of culture as he pleases—to close or open roads, and dictate where houses should be built … this is no natural right, but is an artificial creation of arbitrary law; law made by legislation for personal convenience … certainly not for the benefit of the nation…. I find it stated that in 1845 the Royal Commission estimated that, since 1710, above seven millions of acres had been appropriated by Private Acts of Parliament." (This was because of the enormous extension of claims made by lords of the manors.) "It is certain that wild land was not imagined to be a property in old days. The moors and bogs, and hillsides and seacoast imposed on the baron the duty of maintaining the King's peace against marauders, but yielded to him no revenue…. Supplies open to all ought never to have been made private property…. Vast private estates are pernicious in every country which permits them. It was notorious to the Romans under the early emperors how ruinous they had been to Italy…. There they wrought out, among other evils, emptiness of population, and extinction of agriculture." He represents that it was really due to the break-up of the feudal system in the Tudor times which was responsible for the "chronic pauperism" and multitude of "sturdy beggars" of later centuries. And the reason is a very patent one. If more and more land is swamped in private enterprise, private revenue, it is asine quâ nonthat peasant proprietorship must get less and less. There is not, in effect, enough land to go round. Newman points out that, as regards land cultivation, we are behind France, Spain, Italy, Germany, and Hungary; that a hundred years ago there were far more small freeholds in England than is now the case; that England is a "marked exception in Europe in the land tenure." "We know not whither beside England to look for a nation of peasants living by wages, and divorced from all rights in the crops which they raise."
As Henry Fawcett said long ago, these wages of English labourers will not allow of the least provision to be made either for the sickness or the feebleness of old age. They have, at the close of a life of hard toil, nothing but the workhouse to live in, the road to beg in or sell in that out-at-elbow, trade, the modern "chapman's."
Look at the average labourer of our own day. He has, as Newman clearly points out, "more than enough to do in rearing a family, and has no better prospect in his declining years than rheumatism and the poorhouse, perhaps with separation from his wife, or at least a miserable dole of out-door relief." [Footnote: We have gone some way since these words were written in our Old Age Pensions.] Here he puts his finger on the very spot where one thoughtless cruelty of bureaucratic legislation is most shown. For many faithful servants of the State come in their last extremity to this destiny. This irony of legislation shone out lately in its true colours when it was discovered that, of over a thousand survivors of the Indian Mutiny, a large proportion, who were invited to the demi-centenary celebration dinner, came out of workhouses where they, who had served their country so well in the days of their youth, had been forced to spend their old age.
There is no doubt that Francis Newman's remedy for the economic evils of the people is the right one. To develop rural industry, to come back to the land, is the hope for England's future. "It is essential to the public welfare to multiply to the utmost the proportion of actual cultivators or farmers who have a firm tenure of the soil by paying a quit-rent to the State…. The soil of England ought to be the very best investment for rich and poor, pouring out wealth to incessant industry, and securing to every labourer the fruit of his own toils."
And in this way, he urges, can this suggestion be carried to its definite conclusion. The revival of small freeholds, the re-institution of peasant proprietorships, are the ways out of the block at the end of the way where there is at present a deadlock in regard to the peasants' individual advancement. It is well known how admirably this system has worked in France, where millions of peasants have profited by the law in favour of small freeholds, and its regulation that such land shall always be divided equally among the children of the landholder. It is well known how largely Indian revenue was drawn from the rent paid by small cultivators in the Dekkan. It may be taken as an invariable consequence that the measure which really profits the citizen profits the State too.
I remember seeing among some old papers dating back to the early quarter of the nineteenth century, an account showing that tobacco planting was really started somewhere in the Midlands by two or three Englishmen, and it was found that the soil was thoroughly adapted to the culture of tobacco. Indeed, the venture proved a complete success. Then the Government of that day, fearing later consequences to the import trade, promptly intervened and put a stop to the home cultivation. But the fact remains that it had been proved, by a definite experience, that therewasan opening for this industry in England.
It was suggested to me only the other day how many more cider-growing districts, for instance, might be with advantage started in the provinces. For the truth of the matter, when we look at it fairly and squarely, is that the home country can give rural work to many more of her inhabitants than she is allowed to do at present; that, as Newman was always suggesting in his lectures, the labourer should be given an interest in the land; that he should be encouraged in trying to make a crop as good as possible by adopting some modification of the Métayer Culture; that he should haverightsin the land; be associated in the profit accruing to his overlord; that if the wages of a farm labourer were small, yet that he should be given, perhaps, one-twentieth of the produce; and that he should be encouraged to invest what saving might be possible to him in the farm or trade. Newman was not in favour of the Savings Bank, as we understand it in this country. He thought that associated profit and investment of savings in the employer's land or trade would work far better in the long run, and lead to keener fellowship between labourer and master.
To-day his plan, as it seems to many, stands very good chance of success, if given a fair trial among the right sort of Englishmen. I am aware that these last four words sound vague, but I have a very clear idea of what they mean myself! Newman thought that if a co-operative society began by buying a moderate-sized farm, and divided it into "portions of six to ten acres, they might find either among their own members or among other tradesmen known and trusted among them, persons rich enough to provide seed and stock, and thus to live through the first year on such holdings, and willing (later) to occupy them for themselves or for their sons. The beginning is the great difficulty…. The first thing of all is to show, on however small a scale, that such a cultivation can succeed…. If once peasants see peasant proprietors they will have new motive for saving."
The London Vegetarian Society was founded in 1847. When Newman joined it, therefore, it was, so to speak, in its childhood. It will easily be understood, therefore, that much amazement was excited (as is shown by the following letters), by his fellow guests at some large dinner parties at which he was present, when Newman withstood valiantly the long siege of savoury dishes at his elbow; and it seemed as if, though present in body, he was absent in appetite. This amazement was scarcely lessened when, after passing seventeen dishes, at length he threw the gates of his personal fortress open before some small omelet (prepared specially for him by the cook), and that, practically, formed his entire dinner!
To Newman's mind the theory of Vegetarianism was proved. He published someEssays on Diet; and was always an exponent of its rational claims on mankind.
Since the days when he wrote up the subject, many people have come over to his way of thinking, and the way is made easy for those who wish to follow itsobiter dictafor health.
But it is quite as keenly a subject for debate now as formerly among a large proportion of men, though perhaps few among anti-vegetarians would dispute the point that there are, and must be, certain conditions involved by anti-vegetarianism which can hardly be evaded, or defended. One of these conditions, of course, is that it is not always possible to detect some diseases in flesh sold for food: and that these diseases are communicable to man; another, the degrading spectacle of the slaughter- house; another, the presence in our midst of the butcher's shop, with all its revolting display: [Footnote: I have not forgotten that M. Zola contended that the atmosphere of a butcher's shop conduced to the best and most healthy complexions of those who served in it!] another, as Mr. Josiah Oldfield points out to us, that "horticulture … would employ an enormously greater amount of labour than does stock-raising, and so tend to afford a counter current to the present downward drift, and to congested labour centres." Mr. Oldfield urges also that "all elements for perfect nutrition in assimilable forms are found in a proper vegetarian dietary."
I have not opportunity for finding out in what years Newman took up this practical dietary of vegetarianism for himself, but I think it must have been towards the latter end of his life. Mention will be found in the Reminiscences contributed by Mrs. Bainsmith, the sculptor, relating to his bringing across occasionally, when she and her father and mother lived just opposite the Professor's house at Weston-super-Mare, some particularly delicious vegetarian dish (concocted by his own cook), which he had thought his friends could not fail to appreciate.
The following letters have been kindly sent me for reproduction by Mr. F.P. Doremus in connection with Newman's views on Vegetarianism:—
To Mr. F. P. Doremus from Professor Newman.
"21st Sept., 1883.
"Dear Sir,
* * * * *
"Ideliberately preferthe rule of our Society and by preference adhere to it. But I have never interpreted it as severely as I find some to do. On some occasions, in early years, when I could get no proper vegetarian food, I have eaten some small bit of ham fat (as I remember ononeoccasion) to aid dry potato from sticking in my throat. I do not interpret our rule as forbiddingexceptionalactionunder stress of difficulty. But when I found what a fuss was made about this, and saw that many people took the opportunity ofinferringthat a simple act implied a habit, I saw that it was unwise to give anyone a handle of attack….
"I can only say that I interpret our rules conscientiously, and obey them according to my interpretation faithfully. I do not see in our profession any vow or engagement comparable to that aboutnever tastingintoxicating drink. If my wife, who is not a professed vegetarian (though in practice she is all but one), asks me to taste a bit of flesh and see… whether it is good, I find nothing in our rules to forbid my gratifying hercuriosity. In that case I do not take itas dietto nourish me nor to gratify me. My words of adhesion simply declared that I had abstained from suchfoodfor half a year, andI intended to abstain in the future. Of course this forbids myhabitor anyintentionto the contrary; but I deprecate interpreting this as a vow or as a trap and a superstition. One who feels and believes as I do the vast superiority of our vegetarian food, never can desire, unless perhaps in some abnormal state of illness, the inferior food….
"Faithfully yours,
"F. W. Newman."
"1st Oct., 1883.
"Dear Sir,
"… On reading yours anew after some ten days or less, I think I ought to notice what you say of an unknown publisher.
"I cannot remember that for twenty years I have ever eaten in the company of any well-known publisher (anyone known tomeas a publisher) except Mr. Nicolas TrübnerbeforeI joined the Vegetarians, andone othermore recently. The latter was in the house of a lady friend who always anxiously humoured me by providing aspecial dishfor me.
"Her cook was not skilful inourcookery, but did her best. I remember distinctly who was present on this occasion with this respected publisher. It was a luncheon with meats. I ate at the same table, and it may very easily have escaped his notice that a different dish was handed to me.
* * * * *
"I have several times sat at this friend's table with a large number of guests. I remember once counting that seventeen dishes were handed to me. I dined on my own food to the great marvel of those near me….
"I have always maintained that the main reason for proclaiming anyruleof diet is, that the outsiders may be afforded facts to aid their own judgment; and that our engagement has no other element of obligation than that we shall not vitiate the materials of such judgment.
"Therefore also I have advocated several grades—for instance, an engagement allowing offishas food (which many will take who will not go our length), and another in which absence from home (where one cannot arrange the cookery) is an exemption. I rejoice also in the Daniclete rule. Provided that it is KNOWN what is the diet, we give valuable information."
"14th Oct., 1883.
* * * * *
"I knew that the publisher to whom you referred could only be Mr. Kegan Paul, who met me some few years back at luncheon in the house of my friends the Miss Swanwicks: that untilyou toldme his name, I thought it better not to write to him. But thereupon I wrote and explained to him that my friend Miss Anna Swanwick knew perfectly that I could not accept their hospitality (as I have habitually done for a week or more at a time) if they expected me to partake of any food inconsistent with the rules of our Society. I long ago furnished her with some of our recipes, and sheshowed her cookalways to make aspecialdish for me. At one of their dinner parties I remember the amazement of guests at my passingallthe dishes, as at first it seemed, until my own little dish came. I told Mr. Kegan Paul thathe must have mistakenwhat was in my plate (perhaps crumb omelettebrowned over—which I remember the cook was apt to give me) for some fish of which he and others were partaking. I have no doubt that this was the whole matter….
"I am sincerely yours,
"F. W. Newman."
The closing letter in this series is evidently an answer to some questions from Mr. Doremus as regards Newman's portrait, and as regards the incidents of his life.
"My life has been eminently uneventful." When one remembers in how many questions of social reform, of theology, of written matter, Newman had been concerned, this short sentence strikes one's eyes strangely enough. For what is an "event"? Surely it does not mean only something which is a carnal happening: a material outbreak in some form or other which occurs before our eyes? Surely there are far greater spiritual "events" than physical ones? And ofthiskind of event Newman's life had been full. Originality of thought, of conception, of aim, is the Event which takes precedence of all other. And these events were strewn like Millet's "Sower" from side to side of his path: to take the true Latin significance of the word, theycame outfrom him.
"31st July, 1884.
"Dear Sir,
"Your letter has been forwarded to me from home to this place [Keswick]…. Messrs. Elliot and Fry (Baker Street, Portman Square), recently by pressure induced me to let them take my photograph. In fact they took four, in different positions, all judged excellent, all of cabinet size. Each, I believe, costs 2/-. I have none at my disposal. With or without my leave, anyone can publish them in any magazine. Now, as to my biography—my life has been eminently uneventful. There is nothing to tell but my studies, my successive posts as a teacher, and the list of books, etc., from my pen,unless one addthe effects of study on my CREED, which more than one among you might desirenotto make prominent in theFood Reformer.
* * * * *
"Can I assent to the request that I will myself write something? Others might wish to know in how manyAntisI have been and am engaged!! Certainly more than you will care to make known will go into two pages of your magazine.
"I am, sincerely yours,
"F. W. Newman."
Two letters to Dr. Nicholson from Newman I think may be given here: one in April, 1875, and one in June, 1881, as both bear strongly on the vegetarian question:—
"25April, 1875.
"My dear Nicholson,
"How time flies! Bearded men, active in moral and political questions, tell me they know nothing of the Austro-Hungarian events, because they happened when they were children.
"One of them asked me to give a lecture on Austria and Hungary of the Past, as he was curious and totally ignorant…. We are overrun with every kind of meeting, and the public are sated….
* * * * *
"Happily every day is too short for me, and I cannot have time on my hands…. I do not know whether you have attended the movement against vivisection, which is becoming lively. It has long been a dire horror to me. I rejoice to see that Sir W. Thomson, [Footnote: Sir William Thomson, born 1843, was late President of the Royal College of Surgeons, Ireland; Exam. in Surgery, Queen's University and Royal College of Surgeons, Ireland.] and other scientific men, desire a severe restriction to be put on it. I agree heartily with those who say we have no more RIGHT to torture a dog than to torture a man; but I fear that to move at present with Mr. Jesse for the total prohibition will only give to the worst practices a longer lease of life.
"Our vegetarianism is becoming more active with the pressure from the high price of butcher's meat. Not that we make many entire conversions, but plentiful well-wishers and half-converts, and a great increase in the belief thattoo muchflesh meat is eaten, and that the doctors are much to blame for having pressed it as they press wine and ale, calling it 'generous' food. At the same time it is remarkable that the argument against slaughter-houses and for tenderness to tame animals plays a more decisive part, especially with women, than economic and sanitary arguments…. I am ever in experiment on something. At present it is on cacao butter and vegetable oils. We esteem the cacao butter forsavoury dishesvery highly. Messrs. Cadbury sell it 'to me and my friends' for 1s. a lb. In pastry and sweets the chocolate smell offends most people; but my wife likes it. It is too hard to spread on cold meat.
* * * * *
"The gardens are becoming sprightly. I have not had success with new vegetables, viz. German peas, celery, turnips, Belgian red dwarf beans. The drought last summer was bad. Nowarm rainin spring last year.
"Ever yours heartily,
"F. W. Newman."
The following is quoted from the second letter I mentioned:—
"I send to you a Penny Vegetarian Cookery Book herewith. Surely I was a Vegetarian when I last was with you? I began the practice in 1867. But let me recite: (1) At breakfast and the third meal I need nothing but what all fleshmeaters provide. (2) At dinner the utmost that I need isoneVegetarian dish, which may be a soup. (3) If it so happen that you have anyreally solidsweet puddings that alone will suffice. (4) For theoneVegetarian dish goodbrownbread and butter is an acceptable substitute, or rather fulfilment. But I confess I am desirous of propagating everywhere a knowledge of our peculiar dishes, which teach how to turn to best account the manifold and abundant store of leaves, roots, and grains, besides pulse.
"My wife is fully able to impart practical knowledge: to please me, and see that others please me, she has given great attention to Vegetarian cookery for many years back…."
It is rare indeed that an Englishman looks at India as Francis Newman looked at it. Fifty years ago—probably longer—he put his finger on exactly the spot which to-day is the crux which most puzzles and baffles politicians. In social and intellectual questions his were the clear- sighted, far-focussed eyes that reached beyond the measures of most men's minds. He saw clearly, fifty years ago, that India was drawing ever closer and closer to an inevitable terminus. That she was beginning to recognize —every year more definitely—her ultimate destination: was beginning to realize, too, that her foreign rulers were aware also of that terminus, but were not very anxious that she should reach it. Nay, were practically rather jogging her elbow to prevent her becoming so conscious of the direction in which the tide of affairs was drifting.
Nevertheless it is becoming more and more patent to everyone who really studies the question impartially that things are not what they were fifty or sixty years ago; that a critical juncture is drawing ever nearer and nearer—a juncture which inevitably will mean great changes for the governed and the governors.
Even the slow-moving East does move appreciably in half a century, when centres of education are doing their best to train Indians in European ideas of civilization, in European ideas of government, and of the authority which learning gives. We cannot expect to educate and yet leave those we educate exactly where we find them; for with education comes invariably, inevitably, the growth of ideas planted by it—their growth, and no less invariable fruition. To show someone all that is to be gained by reaching forward, and then to expect him not to reach, but to remain quiescent, is the act of a fool.
We have, as a nation, so taken it for granted that India is our own to do as we like with, that it is perhaps not a pleasant reminder which faces us as we cast our thoughts back to the initial steps taken by ourselves in the days which preceded the formation of the Honourable East India Company. It bids us realize that at first, as Francis Newman says in hisDangerous Glory of India, "neither king, statesmen, nor people ever deliberately planned from the beginning or desired such an empire. It began as a set of mercantile establishments which took up private arms for mere self-defence…. The Honourable East India Company was glad to legitimate its position by accepting from the Grand Mogul the subordinate position of a rent-collector; indeed, from the beginning to the end of its political career it was animated by a consistent and unswerving disapproval of aggression and fresh conquest."
Since that time, however, the English dominion spread rapidly. Since that time we became more and more aware of what a splendid field lay ready for occupation by our surplus population. Since that time we have moved forward through a vast country that formerly, through lack of European ways of civilization and co-operation, practically lay at our feet. It is true that we have done much—very much for India. It is impossible for anyone to deny that. We have brought to her doors European civilization; modern points of view; the miracles of new discoveries in science; inventions for making the wheels of life move easier; opportunities for cultivating and selling her land's produce, and for its quick transport. We have lifted her up—yes, but here is where the mental shoe pinches—we have insisted on preventing her from reaching her full stature. We have trained her sons to be able to work side by side with ourselves in various official duties; and then when they are desirous—as is indeed only the inevitable consequence of their education—of entering the lists side by side with Englishmen, they find there is no crossing the rubicon which officially divides the two nations.
It is true that many Anglo-Indians stand aghast at this idea that they should cross it, but it is only those who are unaware that, as a general rule, education and environment combined come out as top dog over heredity in most instances in which it plays a part. It is only those who, when they go out to India, take, as it were, England with them, and fail to recognize how far Indian points of view and power of dealing with things have progressed. It is only those who have forgotten—if indeed they ever truly realized it—that it is a point of honour that such a proceeding should be carried out, if we, as Englishmen, remember all that the notable charter of 1833 bound us to do.
For the charter of 1833 [Footnote: During Lord Grey's ministry.] definitely promised that native Indian subjects of the English Government were to be admitted on equal terms with English subjectsto every office of State, except that of governor-general or commander-in-chief. Not only that, but the solemn proclamation of the late Queen was issued in 1858, pledging the word of Sovereign and Parliament that the "sole aim of British rule in India was the welfare of the Indian people, and that no distinction would be made between Indians and Europeans in the government of the country, on the grounds of race, or creed, or colour."
As Francis Newman says very clearly, it is a "task which we have voluntarily assumed-to rule India, which means" (the italics are his) "to defend it from itself in infancy, to train it into manhood…. It presupposes that the people gradually get more and more power until, like a son who comes of age, the parental control is discontinued…. We cannot take the last steps first, nor can we abruptly and recklessly resign our post…."
The Hon. M. G. K. Gokhale, in a keenly interesting paper read before the East India Association in the summer of 1906, states very definitely the point of view of educated Indians as regards our unfulfilled pledges of nearly eighty years since. He says: "Until a few years ago, whatever might have been thought of the pace at which we were going, there was no general disposition to doubt the intention of the rulers to redeem their plighted word. To-day, however, the position is no longer the same…. There is no doubt that the old faith of the people in the character and ideals of British rule has been more than shaken…. Half a century of Western education, and a century of common laws, common administration, common grievances, common disabilities, have not failed to produce their natural effect even in India…. Whatever a certain school of officials in India may say, the bulk of educated Indians have never in the past desired a severance of the British connection…. "But, he adds: "It is a critical juncture in the relations between England and India…. The educated classes in India … want their country to be a prosperous, self- governing, integral part of the Empire, like the colonies, and not a mere poverty-stricken bureaucratically-held possession of that Empire."
Fifty years ago Francis Newman was urging with all the force in his power —and no one in his day was more farsighted in detecting just that social reform which would make more and more insistent demand for a hearing, as decade followed decade—that it was to our own interest as a nation, as well as the only honourable course open to us, to open up public offices in India to the educated native. It need not, he showed, be done otherwise than with caution, and gradually "many variations" were "imaginable; many different ways might succeed, if only theright end in view" was "steadily held up, namely, to introduce, fully and frankly,into true equality with ourselves" [Footnote: To "exclude natives from all high office," Sir Charles Napier said once emphatically, "is what debases a nation."] (again the italics are his) "as quickly as possible, and as many as possible, of the native Indians whose loyalty could be counted on…. Lord Grey and his coadjutors, in renewing the charter of 1833, understood most clearly that nothing but an abundance of black faces in the highest judicature, and intelligent Indians of good station in the high police, could administer India uprightly…. Every year that we delay evils become more inveterate and hatred accumulates. To train India into governing herself, until English advice is superfluous, would be to both countries a lasting benefit, to us a lasting glory."
Now, what are the "evils" which "every year become more inveterate" in our method of government in India? Perhaps one of the most palpable is the strongly centralized bureaucracy. Another, is the constant change of men in chief office every five years. Another, is that all competitive examinations are held in London. Mr. Gokhale very rightly urges that it is a great deal to require of an Indian that he should have to come all the way to England for these examinationson the chanceof passing, and suggests their being held simultaneously in India and in England. Another, is that the field of law is the only officialdom open to the Indian, yet that there he is found capable of rising to the highest post. Another, that we have not pushed forward the education of the masses as far as we reasonably might if we had worked hand in hand with the educated classes. Mr. Gokhale tells us that to-day seven children out of eight are growing up in ignorance, and four villages out of five are as yet without a school-house.
There are other drawbacks to this system of foreign bureaucracy, which can only be briefly touched on here, but certainly Newman was right when he condemned that mistaken, high-handed measure of the autocratic East India Company—their destruction of all the local treasuries, and the manner in which these funds were diverted into the central treasury. Thus, as he pointed out very clearly, no moneys were left for the repair of roads, bridges, and tanks, etc. As he remarks, "In comparison with this monster evil, all other delinquencies seem to fade away."
As everyone probably is aware, Newman lost no opportunity in pressing home on the minds of his countrymen that it is decentralization that is so urgently needed; and that not alone in India, but in our own country as well. Repeatedly he urged that if Government is administered from one central bureaucracy, it follows inevitably that the business to be dealt with bulks so enormously that it is literally impossible to deal, in detail and with complete understanding, with the rights and wrongs of citizens at a distance in the provinces and remote parts of a big empire. Consequently, he was always trying to show how far more successfully local self-government—a local ward-mote, for instance—would deal with provincial matters in England. That every town should be, as it were, a little State, with all classes represented in it, and matters dealt with locally should only come up to the Central Parliament for veto or for sanction. In the same way he recommended strongly that in India every facility should be given to "voluntary (limited liability) companies to execute roads, works of irrigation, etc…." That country districts should be given local treasuries, as well as towns.
In "English institutions and their most necessary reforms," Newman declares and reiterates that this lack of local treasuries is a "hideous blunder," and adds, "every coin in every province is liable to be spent in some war." He urges other changes, which have come to pass in some measure, such as a Viceroy, a "prince of the blood royal," sent out to "receive their occasional homage." But there again lack of cooperation with the natives, lack of real understanding between us and them, have, as everyone is aware, worked havoc when a man [Footnote: It is impossible to forget in this connection what theTribunecalled our "Curzonian statescraft" in the recent past.] without the necessary insight and sympathy into the people's points of view and ways of thought has been sent to posts of supreme authority.
There have been men of splendid capabilities for understanding andsympathizing with these points of view, men such as Sir James Outram, theBayard of India; Sir John Malcolm, Lord Elphinstone, Sir George RussellClerk, Lord Lawrence, Ovans, and many others, who helped forward thebetter understanding between England and India very greatly; and of these,Outram suffered grievous misrepresentations at the hands of hisGovernment, Clerk was put aside, and Ovans had to stand his trial inEngland for an absolutely unjustifiable charge.
Whenever the question of co-operation and sympathy comes up, as from time to time it does, between Englishmen and Indians, whether it is fifty or sixty years ago, in Newman's day or now in the year of grace 1909, with a few honourable exceptions, the answer is identically the same. It is practically an unknown quantity. The East and West have not really met. Still the ranks of the service are absorbed by Englishmen; still, as all educated Indians protest, the "true centre of gravity for India is in London"; still India is unrepresented in the Viceroy's Executive Councils, and in Customs, Post, Survey, Telegraph, Excise, etc., and also in the Commissioned ranks of the Army; still, because district administration is to all intents and purposes not in existence, there is no compulsory education for boysandgirls, though most educated Indians are very strongly in favour of it.
It is not, it cannot be, because our eyes, as a nation, have been shut to the fact of what the faults of our own administration have been in years gone by. If no one else had trumpeted them abroad, at least one man spoke out the whole truth and nothing but the truth about it in the last century: Francis, the great Social Reformer—Francis Newman, who was no time-server, no prophesier of smooth things; but, as much as in him lay, desired more than anything else to lay the whole unvarnished truth before his fellow men, things that concerned the weaker members of the community. In lecture after lecture he turned things to the "rightabout-face" which had hitherto been donesub rosâin India. He did in effect pull down the very rose tree which had acted as such an efficient shelter. His bull's- eye lantern always cast an uncompromising glare upon those sometimes very "shady" doings of our countrymen which characterized their treatment of natives in the early Victorian era, and—occasionally perhaps, even since.
No one has forgotten, for instance, the words of Mr. Halliday, Lieutenant- Governor of Bengal, when he described our police as a curse to India in 1854.
Newman reminded his countrymen that in 1852 a petition had been sent to the House of Commons from Lower Bengal, "among other grievous complaints," which "stated that by reason of the hardships inflicted on witnesses, the population" were averse from testifying to the ill-doings and tyranny of these police.
Again, as regarded the courts of law in India, Newman reminded us of the revelations contained in that volume by the Hon. Mr. Shore concerning our Government (the book which was withdrawn 1844).
It was there stated definitely that, until the days of Lord William Bentinck, Persian was the only language used in these courts. Consequently, as neither judge, nor clerk, nor litigating party, nor person accused, nor his witnesses understood it, it constantly happened that the case was a veritablereductio ad absurdum. No one knew what was happening until at last the man—if it was a case of murder—was shown that the case had gone against him by being shown the gallows!
It is truenous avons changé tout cela, in these days, and the vernacular tongue is used instead, but now it is the judge who doesn't always know accurately what is going on, for he cannot always understand what the witnesses are saying! As Newman says very shrewdly: "If self- confident, he trusts his own impressions; if timid, he leans on the judgment of his native clerk; if formal and pedantic, he believes all clear and coherent statements. His weaknesses are watched, and it is soon understood whether he is to be better managed by fees to the clerk, or by the forging of critical evidence, in cases for which it is worth while. Very scandalous accounts have been printed in great detail … and one thing is clear, that those Englishmen who have looked keenly into the matter and dare to speak freely, believe justice to have a far worse chance in such tribunals than before native judges."
Francis Newman tells us that his own eyes were opened to the prevailing state of things in those days, by "a very intelligent, and widely informed indigo-planter." He told him that when he first began indigo-planting, his partner had given this emphatic rule of conduct: "Never enter the Company's Courts!" And to his own amazed question as to what course of action was to be pursued when a difficulty arose, he clearly and openly explained. "If a native failed to pay us our dues, we never sued him, but simply publicly seized some of his goods, sold them by auction, deducted our claim from the proceeds, and handed over to him the balance." There is something almost humorous in this travesty of anamende honorablefor so highhanded a measure!
One may in very deed be thankful that since the day of all these happenings, Indianshave, as Mr. Gokhale tells us, "climbed in the field of law, to the very top of the tree," and can now deal out first-hand justice to their fellow countrymen.
I think I cannot give a fitter close to this chapter than by quoting Newman's suggestions as to measures of urgent importance with regard to our Indian Empire, which were made a little over forty years ago.
"The establishment of an Imperial Court in India to judge all causes…. The mark of a 'tyrant' (according to the Old Greeks) was his defence by a foreign body-guard:webear that mark of illegitimate sway at present.
"To make India loyal, to save the yearly sacrifice of health or life to 10,000 young men, now the miserable victims of our army system, is so urgent an interest, that I put this topic foremost. Too much importance can hardly be given to it. Each soldier is said to cost us £100; hence the pecuniary expense also is vast. But until we restrain ourselves from aggression, all attempts permanently to improve our millions at home must be fruitless…. Our task is to rear India into political manhood, train it to English institutions, and rejoice when it can govern itself without our aid."
There is always a large percentage of people who range themselves on the side of the majority in regard to any question of the day. They range themselves there not because of any principle involved, but simply and solely because they consider this mode of action expedient. And they feel far safer, far happier, taking the flabby, muscleless arm of Expediency than in venturing into unknown difficulties behind the uncompromisingly stiff figure of Principle. But there are others-thank God for them!—who hate the shifty, cunning eye of Expediency far too much to have anything to do with him. These others would far rather be in the minority in championing some good cause than with the "expedient" majority.
These others are the pioneers of civilization. Sometimes—to-day we have many cases in point as regards the social crusade of brave women against taxation without representation—they are martyrs as well as pioneers. But the splendid spirit of knight-errantry, which shone so vividly with the fire of enthusiasm in medieval days, is still abroad in our midst to-day. A few militant personalities fight for a great cause, a great principle— the raising of a better moral tone amongst us, the betterment of the lives of their fellows. Newman was one of these. His sword was always in the thickest of the fight when it was a fight against some social injustice to his fellow citizens. Forty years ago and more he spoke out in championship of woman's rights. So long ago as 1867 he led the movement which tilted at social wrongs, social injustices dealt out to the sex. It is a movement which has taken, as I said, more than half a century to make its way to the position it holds to-day. It has been opposed bitterly almost every inch of the way by men who love expediency, and turn their backs on the principle of the thing; which is fair play for women. Nevertheless, England is a country which prides herself on her keen sense of justice and freedom.
If Newman had done nothing else, his work for this movement would be unforgettable; his words were so outspoken, his way of dealing with the subject so broad-minded. In one of his articles he urged the following on his fellow men:—"Readers of History, and Lawyers, are aware that women's wrongs are an ancient and terribly persistent fact…. Why has our law been so unjust to women?—Because women never had a voice in the making of it, and men as a classhave not realized the oppression of women as a class" (the italics are my own). "Men have deep in their hearts the idea that womenoughtto be their legal inferiors; that neither the persons of women nor their property ought to remain their own; that marriage is not a free union on equal terms; and that the law ought to favour the stronger sex against the weaker. It is remarkable that our law is more unjust to women than that of the great historically despotic nations, and in some important respects less favourable than that of the Turks. All these things point out thatequality of the sexes in respect to the Parliamentary Franchiseis essential to justice. The conscience of men is opening to the truth…." "Readers of newspapers cannot be ignorant of the miseries endured by wives from brutal husbands. In ordinary decorous families, sons at lavish expense are trained to self-support. Thedaughtersin one class have nothing spent on their education; in another, are educated as elegant ornaments of a drawing-room, where they live in luxury for a parent's delight; yet when he dies, and their youth is spent, they are often turned adrift into comparative poverty, incompetent for self-help. When complaint is made of this, the ascendant sex graciously tells them, 'they ought to marry,' and this in a country where women are counted by the hundred thousand more numerous than men; where also men do not universally accept the state of marriage. Meanwhile, the law is made as if to dissuade the woman from such a remedy. If she dare to adopt it, it instantly strips her of all her property, great or little; [Footnote: Since then some amendment of the wrong has been done by the "Married Women's Property Act."] and if she earn anything, authorizes her husband to seize it by force. In the Marriage Service, the husband, as if in mockery, says, 'With all my worldly goods I thee endow': while the law allows him to gamble away her whole fortune the day after the marriage, or to live in riotous indulgence onhermoney, and give to her the barest necessaries of life…. He may maliciously refuse her the sight of her own children…. And if to gain one sight of them she return to his house for two days, the law holds her to have 'condoned' all his offences however flagrant."
Mr. Haweis many years ago said a very significant thing. He said that the best—if the rarest—men had always a good share of the woman nature in themselves. Francis Newman was one of these men. He understood the woman's point of view without any telling. He knew instinctively, intuitively, the mental cramp, the moral inability to rise to her full stature, which is induced by man's perpetual effort to fit her into a measured mould prepared by himself. He knew that if "a man's reach must exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?" what a hell faced the woman who could not evenreachforward to fulfil all the many aims which she was conscious were stirring within her, longing for attainment. He had seen women, his countrywomen, shake the bars behind which they faced their world for the very passion of revolt against these man-set limits, which kept them in on every side. He knew that, of all hard fates, perhaps few are more bitter than to feel the power and ability within you to do some work as well as another does it, and yet to have no freedom to use that power. To be forced, by man-made laws, to wrap up your talent in the napkin of legal red-tapeism, when everything within you, perhaps, urges you to turn it to good account.
Let us look for one moment at some of the legal disabilities of women to- day. Perhaps some of us are hardly aware to what an almost incredible distance they reach.
Mr. Henry Schloesser, barrister-at-law of the Inner Temple, [Footnote: In his pamphlet published by the Women's Social and Political Union.] very explicitly explains how they affect women. "At Common Law the father is entitled against the mother to the custody of the children, and this right he could only forfeit by gross misconduct; so also he was entitled to prescribe their mode of education…. He remainsprima faciethe guardian of his children,to the exclusion of the mother" [the italics are my own]. "Alone of the learned professions, the medical is open to women…." (She constantly proves her aptitude to take the same honours as man as regards the others, but he still growls over his share and keepsherout.) "A husband is not bound at Common Law to cohabit with or maintain his wife."
These facts show luridly against the sky of woman's world, but perhaps few men know what purgatorial fires they light in many a woman's heart to-day. They show that man's injustice to her does not only concern her in public life, but even in the home life (to which he would fain limit her energies); she has practically no legal status at all. She has not even a right to her own children in the eye of the law. Quite recently a judge decided that "a woman is not a parent in the eye of the law," and therefore powerless in things relating to her children. She is excluded from the guardianship of them. Yet so curiously irrational is this same English law that, should any woman wronged by a man become mother to an illegitimate child, upon her falls the whole onus of its maintenance until it is sixteen years old. The man gets off scot-free; for the world which condones an offence (which is shared by both) in the case of the man, condemns it in thewoman.
Thus, as Mr. Thomas Johnston [Footnote:The Case for Woman's Suffrage, by Thomas Johnston. Published by the Women's Social and Political Union.] very clearly puts it: "Where there is any stigma or blame, the woman bears it alone…. Under the law of England to-day a man can secure divorce by simply proving the unfaithfulness of his wife. But the wife, in order to obtain a divorce from her husband for the same unfaithfulness, must, in addition, prove cruelty or desertion." This in itself is very one-sided law, and certainly indefensible.
Francis Newman describes this law in no measured terms. He declares in his article on "Marriage Laws" (1867) that what undeniably needs reform in our country's government is "the extravagant power given by our law to a husband…. The exclusive right attributed to him over the children is unjust and pernicious. His rights over his wife's person [Footnote: According to English law, as evidenced in a recent case, the wife isnot"a person" at all; presumably, therefore, she is simply his chattel!] are extreme and monstrous…. We need a single short, sweeping enactment that,notwithstanding anything to the contrary in past statutes, no woman henceforth shall by marriage change her legal status or lose any part of her rights over property….
* * * * *
"We implore all true and genuine Conservatives not to delay and use half- measures, but to do justice to the sex in good time. He who tries to uphold injustice is the true and efficient revolutionist, while he thinks he is Conservative."
He goes on to touch thus on what is perhaps the most cruel injustice of all—that the law permits a man to deprive his wife of the children, who, before God, are as equally hers as his:—
"Not only with regard toproperty, also in regard tochildren, the law is unjust to women. The mother has to undergo much in bringing a child to maturity—the agony of childbirth… the countless cares of tending and watching by night and day. The child becomes the darling of her heart, the image of her dreams, the great centre of her thoughts and hopes; and after all her toils, the law permits a husband to take the child permanently out of her sight, and (if he choose) to put it under the charge of an enemy … who will fill its mind with falsehoods and teach it to hate and despise its mother. Such things are not possibilities merely and dreams; they are stern realities, and the law gives her no redress."
When one thinks of all that these words mean, one is face to face with the almost unthinkable fact that the case of the woman in England is unjust beyond description, and for this reason, that, as Newman says, "Men, who alone make the laws, make them with but little account of woman." At home with her children she is defenceless. She has no power over them, and her husband is not bound to "maintain" her, notwithstanding the sentence, which English law has made absolutely meaningless, of his marriage vow to her: "With all my worldly goods I thee endow."
In the world, if she have no husband or be unmarried, she is not a "person" in a legal sense; and during election time her house is described, in canvassing for votes, as having "no occupier"! In the world, too, she is unable to obtain a fair wage for her work. She may do the work as well as man, but nevertheless, in most cases, her pay is less. Mr. Johnston tells us that the average male worker's wage has been calculated to be about 18s., but the average woman worker's wage is only about 7s. And when women find out these many injustices suffered at home and in the world by their sex, as Miss Christabel Pankhurst says, they are absolutely unable to right these wrongs, for "women have no political power."
Here is the pivot round which the wrongs of women revolve—her lack of legal status, her voicelessness as regards the laws of her country, the country which is so openly irrational as to count her a "person" when it wants to get a tax out of her, but refuses to do so at any other time when she has something to ask of it in return!
Once the parliamentary vote is given to women, the same results would follow in England as have followed elsewhere. Wages and hours of labour are made just for women, as in many respects they have been now made for men. The laws of divorce are the same. Mothers are made joint guardians of their children with their fathers. The age of protection for girls is raised to 18. [Footnote: At the present moment, by the English law, a girl can contract a valid marriage at twelve years of age; a boy at fourteen. (SeeLegal Status of Women, by H. H. Schloesser.)] In New South Wales, after the women were given the vote, Dr. Mackellar brought in a bill to deal with the protection of illegitimate children, which has answered admirably; while in New Zealand and Australia the Wages Board, which the women's vote helped to pass, has raised in both countries the wages of women from 5s. to l6s. per week for the same amount of work done. And in other respects it has abolished sweating—that crucial question of crucial questions in England to-day.
There is another point, too, amongst many others, in which the vote helped the national life in Australia in the giving of old age pensions. Perhaps had women the vote here in England, the shameful system in which old men and women are separated in the last years of their life, as the workhouses ordain, would be altered. And this is a question which demands immediate attention—immediateattention; for more than £26,000,000 are paid by taxpayers each year to be spent in great part on our wretched system of poor laws.
Francis Newman was strongly against poor laws administered as they are in England to-day, as, indeed, is every thoughtful man. He was also strongly of opinion that there should be women on juries in some cases. And indeed it is a fact that women magistrates, as well as women jurors, are most certainly asine quâ nonin those cases where, at the present moment, owing to juries being composed of men only, common justice for the unrepresented Englishwoman in relation with the other sex is not, in a great proportion of cases, rendered her. But even were women made eligible for these offices, it would be no new thing, for in Mary Tudor's reign there were two women appointed justices of the peace; and, of course, always there has been a provision in law for "a jury of matrons" in certain cases.
Indeed, when one goes far enough back in research into most questions, the invariable lesson, is taught us, which we are always so reluctant, in our cocksureness of the "antiquity" of our present-day conditions of life, to learn, and we find that our arrangements very often arenot"as it was in the beginning," but only mushroom growths of a decade or two. As Mrs. Wolstenholme Elmy very justly says in her recent pamphlet on "Woman's Franchise," women possessed voting rights from time immemorial, and the year 1832 was the year when they were dispossessed of many ancient rights by the Reform Act passed in that year.
As regards other disabilities of women, Francis Newman wrote very fully and very strongly upon them, and it is impossible to leave them unmentioned here. In 1869 he wrote: "There is one important matter which young men need specially to be taught, viz. that at no time of life is any man … exempt from the essential duty of curbing animal impulses…. Nothing so paralyzes his force of Will as to be told that some men have from God the gift of continence, andothers have it not. This doctrine is disastrously prominent in the Anglican marriage service, and is borrowed from St. Paul. But that great and deep-hearted apostle was unmarried and without personal experience. He writes, not as one revealing supernatural communications,but as imparting his best wisdom…. A general and just inference is, that a firm self-restraint is necessary and salutary for every man."
It is impossible to write more strongly and clearly of the wickedness of women's ancestral personal rights being swept away than does Newman in articles published in the fourth volume of hisMiscellanies. He does not disguise the shameful state of the law as it affects woman to-day, and as it is carried out by Government—that law which makes wrongdoing so easy and unpunishable for man, and so hard and unjust to woman. The unjustifiableness of certain laws was shown up with no uncertain pen by him. He was himself convinced of their iniquity; and once convinced, he stood forward as a modern John the Baptist, spared no one, and passionately accused his countrymen of the injustice, immorality, and cruelty of their making one law for men and another for women. He inveighed against the world's point of view of this subject: and this not once, nor twice, but constantly; and urged with all his might that these wrongs to his countrywomen should be righted. Nevertheless his articles, many of them, are forgotten. The dust of neglect is lying thick upon them on many an unused shelf to-day. His voice has long been silent; and no doubt it has been said of him (as it was by a Church dignitary of Father Dolling at his death): "We shan't be worried any more byhimnow about the righting of social abuses." Laws against which Newman declaimed are not altered yet, and we are a long way from those far-reaching reforms he advocated. But the words he wrote are not dead. They are in our midst to- day, and they stir depths to-day in the hearts of his countrymen in suggestions towards social reformation; towards the righting of wrongs just as glaring to-day as they were a century ago. Questions which can never be put superficially aside, by men who, like Newman, cannot endure to leave a social wrong unredressed, if they can by any searching find the remedy.