All projects of increased speed in locomotion denounced when first proposed. Sir Henry Herbert, M.P., in seventeenth century, on journeys between Edinburgh and London in a fortnight. Parliament on railways. Lord Clanricarde, Colonel Sibthorp, etc. George Hudson, the railway King. Charles Guernsey, the original of Thackeray’s ‘de la Pluche.’ Progress and sequel of the railway fever of 1846. The Queen’s first railway journey. Hudson and his fall. Comparison between mines and railways as sources of national wealth. Mr W. H. Mallock’s demonstration that the working classes of the United Kingdom have increased in wealth more noticeably even than the upper classes.
All projects of increased speed in locomotion denounced when first proposed. Sir Henry Herbert, M.P., in seventeenth century, on journeys between Edinburgh and London in a fortnight. Parliament on railways. Lord Clanricarde, Colonel Sibthorp, etc. George Hudson, the railway King. Charles Guernsey, the original of Thackeray’s ‘de la Pluche.’ Progress and sequel of the railway fever of 1846. The Queen’s first railway journey. Hudson and his fall. Comparison between mines and railways as sources of national wealth. Mr W. H. Mallock’s demonstration that the working classes of the United Kingdom have increased in wealth more noticeably even than the upper classes.
The truth of Mr Disraeli’s humorous description, in his Edinburgh speech of 1868, of boots at the Blue Boar agreeing with the chambermaid at the rival Red Lion about the folly and iniquity of railways, appears to be rooted in the constitution of human nature. All readers are familiar with the picture of the English traveller, drawn by Mr Apperley in his famousQuarterlyarticle,The Road. This imaginary passenger had gone to sleep in the days when public conveyances could not be counted on to perform more than some half dozen miles an hour. He awakes in the era of the lightning coaches and quicksilver mails timed to perform twice that distance within the sixty minutes. If, as archæologists say,a certain Ericthonius of Athens[7]invented some fifteen centuriesB.C.the first chariot of which authentic record exists, he, too, was perhaps regarded as an enemy rather than as a benefactor by some among his amazed contemporaries. More than 3,000 years after the Attic revolutionary an English Member of Parliament, Sir Henry Herbert, said that a man who proposed to travel to and fro between Scotland and England within seven days each way would be voted fit for Bedlam.
By 1843, thirteen years, that is, after the historic steam locomotive between Manchester and Liverpool which caused the death of Mr Huskisson, the great railway systems of England existed in a form more or less complete. Eighteen hundred miles in all were open for traffic. Parliament had authorized the expenditure on them of seventy million pounds. Sixty million pounds had been so spent already. An average of three hundred thousand passengers was carried weekly. Neither by the opinion of parliament nor of the public were railways regarded with unequivocal favour, or even at all times with toleration. Colonel Sibthorp could say in the House of Commons that he considered all railways as public frauds and private robberies. Lord Fitzwilliam, Lord Lansdowne, the Duke of Wellington, Lord Clanricarde, all spoke of George Stephenson’s invention in the same contemptuous tones. TheMorning Postin February 1842 dwelt with satisfaction on the fact that ‘the Queen never travels by railway;’ while Prince Albert who did sometimes patronize the train between Windsor and London was obliged only too often to protest:‘Not quite so fast, Mr Conductor, if you please!’ Within four months of theMorning Post’sannouncement, theRailway Timeswas able to record that Her Majesty made her first trip on the Great Western. A few months later the Royal passenger accomplished the distance between Southampton and Vauxhall in less than two hours without a hitch. Five years subsequently the Queen and Prince Consort journeyed to Cambridge for the installation of His Royal Highness as Chancellor in a train driven, as Her Majesty records, by George Hudson, the railway King. Between 1836 and 1846 the English mind was fairly reconciled to the new method of transit. The day had finally gone by when, as they had done a little previously, a firm of London solicitors could refuse the business of the Brighton line on the plea that coaches would drive off the trains in a month. From 1836 and onward the Liverpool and Manchester, the London and Birmingham, and the North Midland lines were all paying ten per cent. During 1846, the year of the railway mania, 440 railway Bills passed authorizing the construction of 8,470 miles and the raising of £180,138,901.
This was the zenith of the shortlived splendour of George Hudson, the railway King. He has been seen already in these pages, amid the Hyde Park crowd in the early forties, resting his large heavy person in his wife’s chariot. The man himself had first become known on the City Board of Health in York. Afterwards he was elected Mayor of his native town. In that capacity he made the acquaintance of GeorgeStephenson. In 1845 the son of the York linendraper, now a power in the railway world was returned to the House of Commons as Member for Sunderland. His parliamentary career is alone, if at all, remembered to-day by the frequent encounters on the floor of the House between himself and Mr Bernal Osborne. Diverting memories of these were often recalled for the benefit of his friends by Hudson’s antagonist, with the generous admission of the raconteur that he had, in the ex-King, usually found his match, if not in humorous retort and thrust, yet in substantial argument. Two years after the ‘King’ drove the engine which took the Queen and her Consort to Cambridge, suspicions of Hudson’s motive and conduct took (April 19, 1849) a definite shape. The shareholders of the Midland demanded a Committee of Inquiry. The incriminated Chairman resigned his post, and quietly accepted his permanent eclipse. It was noticed to his credit at the time, and has not since been denied, that he made no efforts at self exculpation, disclosed no names or confidential transactions, and thus refused, as unquestionably it was in his power to do, to associate persons of the highest consideration with himself in his fall. Hudson was only the type of a class whose members were invested by the railway passion of the period with brief splendour and unsubstantial prosperity. In the Upper House, Lord Clanricarde mentioned how Charles Guernsey, a broker’s clerk, had subscribed fifty-two thousand pounds for shares in the London and York line. This was the undoubted original of Thackeray’s ‘de la Pluche.’ The total of hisgains appears to have amounted to thirty thousand pounds. The essential facts of the sequel with very little of fictitious amplification are given by the novelist.
A reaction, as has been seen, followed the morbid enterprise of 1846. Its results, however, have endured to the present hour. In 1845 the United Kingdom possessed only two thousand four hundred miles of iron way. The capital invested upon these was only eighty-eight millions. Before 1850, the capital had increased to two hundred and thirty millions. To-day the aggregate miles of the railways of the United Kingdom are little, if at all short, of twenty thousand. The expenditure has been six hundred and thirty millions. The gross annual income is sixty millions. In order to appreciate with approximate accuracy the part played by the steam locomotive in the creation of nineteenth century wealth in England, or to define with practical distinctness that familiar term ‘the railway interest;’ it is necessary to examine this matter more in detail. In 1855 the total of capital represented by the United Kingdom railways was £297,584,709. In 1894, the latest date to which the Board of Trade returns are published, the total was £985,387,855. After forty years, therefore, the railway investments of these Islands had increased by £687,803,146.
Another chief source of national wealth and industrial employment during this reign has been provided by mining enterprise. In respect of the money value of each, what are the relations which the yield of subterranean labour has borne to theenterprises of steam upon the surface of the earth? In 1855 the value of all the minerals brought to the light of day is expressed by the figures £29,579,001. The figures referring to railways for the same year were, it will be remembered, seen to be £21,507,599. This comparison between the two shows therefore that in 1855 the mines exceeded the railways in value in round numbers, by eight million pounds. The exact figures of the excess were £8,071,402. Forty years later this balance is more than redressed. In 1894 the total of mineral wealth was £80,900,453. The entire railway receipts were £84,310,831. In other words, the surface opulence of the United Kingdom had not only made good its inferiority to the subterranean wealth, but had advanced beyond that rival, in round numbers, by three and a half million pounds. The exact figures were £3,410,378.
The interesting analysis of the resources of the different orders of the community contained in Mr W. H. Mallock’s ‘Classes and Masses’ supplies tolerably conclusive evidence that the results of mining and railway enterprise have been distributed not very unequally between the rich and the poor, or, as Mr Mallock rather puts it, between income tax payers on £1,000 or upwards a year and those who, earning less than £150 a year, pay no income tax at all. His estimate is that the population of England contains seven hundred thousand families, equal to a total of three million souls, ‘with means of subsistence, insufficient, barely sufficient, or precarious.’ Although these figures represent the entire population at theNorman conquest, Mr Mallock is able to show that relatively to all inhabiting this realm the necessitous class has decreased, not increased. In the seventeenth century, one-third of the dwellers in Sheffield, then (1615) as to-day a great manufacturing centre, were dependent on charity. Thirteen years after the Queen’s accession (i.e.1850), out of every two hundred of our population nine were paupers. In 1882 the proportion of pauperism was only five. Between 1850 and 1897 the population has increased from twenty-eight millions to thirty-eight millions. The income-tax payers have increased from one million and a half to nearly eight millions.[8]Incomes between £150 and £1,000 have increased from three hundred thousand to nine hundred and ninety thousand. Incomes above £1,000 have increased from twenty-four thousand to sixty thousand; or, as this authority finds it more convenient to put it, the middle class has grown by six hundred and ninety thousand. The rich have been re-inforced by only thirty-six thousand. On the other hand Mr Mallock is able to dispose of the fallacy that during the present reign the very richest class have grown richer still. In 1850 the incomes of fifty thousand pounds and upwards were seventy-two thousand; in 1897 they are nearer a hundred thousand; thus while the fairly well-to-do middle classes have increased by hundreds of thousands, the professional plutocrats measure their increase only by a few simple thousands. Briefly summarized, the arithmetical argument of Mr Mallockis as follows. In 1800 the whole wealth of the country was two hundred and forty million pounds. Of that amount the workers took one hundred and eleven million pounds, leaving for the middle classes and the rich one hundred and thirty million pounds. Three quarters of a century later, or more exactly in 1881, Mr Mallock’s latest date, making his argument still more applicable to 1897, the total of national wealth was one thousand three hundred millions. Of this the workers had six hundred and sixty millions. The working classes had thus, from being twenty millions behind the rich at the opening of the century, advanced twenty millions beyond the rich towards its close. From these figures, the inference is fair, and indeed irresistible, that railways like other inventions have contributed to the material prosperity of all classes equally, and have not enriched the capitalists alone.
Notwithstanding George Hudson, who has become merely a memory, or Charles Guernsey, the stockbroker’s clerk who was his lowly imitator, the railway plutocracy would seem to be a phrase more full of sound than of practical meaning. If to this remark the name of Vanderbilt be objected, the true facts of the case rather confirm than disprove the present remark. ‘Commodore’ Vanderbilt was a rich man before he ever owned a railway share. He sold a fleet of steamers to purchase control of the New York Central Railway. Had he invested the capital realized by this preliminary transaction in any of the industries of his nation, such as the tinning of beef from a cattle ranche in California, or the curing of bacon at Chicago, he might have made thesame or an even larger fortune. Railway diplomacy was only the accidental employment of Mr Vanderbilt’s extraordinary genius for creative finance. The same talents exercised upon any other material, or expended in any other career could scarcely fail to have commanded same results. In another department of the industry afforded to intellect by the steam locomotive, Charles Austin made two fortunes out of railway Bills. His abilities as an advocate were probably unequalled among the generation to which he belonged. Since Austin’s day lawyers of the same, or something like the same capacity have amassed wealth not inferior to Austin’s out of electric patents practice, or in other branches of law which have been specially in request at the moment. While the railway fever of the forties was at its height, a little man with an intellectual head covered by a proverbially shabby hat might often of an afternoon have been seen walking down Parliament Street. He never failed to bestow a copper upon the crossing sweeper at the point where the Home Office stands to-day. Formerly the contractor usually lavished on the man a four-penny bit. But times were bad. The vail was reduced to a quarter of that amount. The donor humorously anticipated the day when he might be glad of a reversionary interest to the broom and shovel employed outside the Horse Guards. That calamity, which of course never seriously threatened, was averted. The little gentleman with the ostentatiously neglected head-gear, Thomas Brassey, was a millionaire long before he built his last railway. But his contemporary, Thomas Cubitt, made the same fortuneout of building Belgravia. Railways have also often enriched the landowners through whose estates the lines have run. So high an authority as Mr Samuel Laing holds that the owners of the soil have been over compensated by the companies generally for the acquisition of their land. To this, however, the country gentlemen would reply that in countless instances they have received no more than the agricultural value for their acres.[9]Certainly the profits of this class from railways have not exceeded the gains which have accrued from the selling or leasing of other property for building purposes. The railway interest, then, as a phrase scarcely points to the existence of railway shareholders as a caste or even a separate class. Railway shares, as the statistics above quoted show, are distributed in fairly equal proportions through all classes of the community. The learned professions, especially the Church, are represented as well as the State or capital in these proprietorial bodies. In the great majority of instances, the separate sums held are small. Thus, ten years ago, the London and North Western Railway with its ninety millions of capital had about thirty thousand debenture and stock holders. Three thousand pounds scarcely represent what could be regarded as a plutocratic investment. As for the men who were the early captains of railway industry, they none of them secured more than modest competences. Vignoles, Stephenson, Brunel, Hackworth, Allport, Cawkwell, Grierson; none of these founded, none of their descendants are likely to found,territorial families. Sir Daniel Gooch, so long the chairman of the Great Western, left six hundred thousand pounds to his posterity. The greater portion of this sum was made, not in railways, but in coal and in telegraphs. Sir Edward Watkin, who is still with us, and to whose enterprise neither the mountain precipice nor the realm of air is inaccessible, has perhaps been not less prospered. It would not however be easy to multiply instances of railway opulence like these.
On the other hand Arkwright of the spinning jenny has founded two rich county families. His rival, Hargreaves, established another. The true conclusion on this subject seems to be that the wealth invested in our railways is only one, if the most conspicuous manifestation of the wealth of the community. No better summary of the facts could be found than the shrewd phrase into which George Stephenson condensed the whole subject. ‘The country made the railways, and in return the railways made the country.’ The prosperity of the manufacturing classes which has coincided with the Victorian era provided the money that built the railways. In return the early development of our railway system enabled us to get so far in advance of Continental nations as merchants and manufacturers that our rivals have not yet caught us up, and perhaps never will.
The future development of the English railway system may be a tempting and instructive topic for speculative experts, but is not for a general survey, such as the present. The issues between traders and framers of railway rates for the carriage of merchandise are periodicallyexpressed in the demand for the acquisition of the iron roads, like the telegraphic wires, by the State. The mighty sections of the Anglo-Saxon race on either side of the Atlantic present the two great exceptions to the State proprietorship or State control of the public locomotives. Seeing that half the railway mileage and capital of the world belongs to the United Kingdom and to the United States, these exceptions are themselves of considerable importance. The incorporation of the railway systems of the United Kingdom into the national service would, it has been calculated, involve the doubling of the annual Budget, and an addition to the permanent Civil Service of five per cent, of our male population. If this estimate be correct, it seems likely that a Minister of the Crown will think even more than thrice before he seriously proposes the assumption of such a responsibility by himself and his colleagues.
Apart from his general obligations to the work on Railways (2 vols. Cassell & Company, 1894, by Mr John Pendleton), the writer expresses his grateful acknowledgment for valuable help in this portion of his work privately received from Mr Acworth, the great authority on modern railways throughout the world, and from Mr A. J. Wilson, the eminent writer on financial and commercial topics.
Apart from his general obligations to the work on Railways (2 vols. Cassell & Company, 1894, by Mr John Pendleton), the writer expresses his grateful acknowledgment for valuable help in this portion of his work privately received from Mr Acworth, the great authority on modern railways throughout the world, and from Mr A. J. Wilson, the eminent writer on financial and commercial topics.
THE ARISTOCRACY OF WEALTH AND ITS MANIFESTATIONS
Contrast between the London of the forties and the London of to-day. Gas and steam chiefly mark the century. City traders still living at Islington. The theatre not yet an institution. The parks still uncared for. Thames pollutions still recall Dickens’ description of Quilp’s home. The future South Kensington cabbage beds or waste ground. Absence of enormous fortunes outside commercial millionaires. Evidence of increasing national prosperity afforded by statistics of picture sales. The growth of these sales from Charles I. till to-day. The Beckford, the Horace Walpole and other sales. Gradual rise in value of great masters. Memorable sales and personages at Christie’s. Gainsborough’s Duchess of Devonshire episode.
Contrast between the London of the forties and the London of to-day. Gas and steam chiefly mark the century. City traders still living at Islington. The theatre not yet an institution. The parks still uncared for. Thames pollutions still recall Dickens’ description of Quilp’s home. The future South Kensington cabbage beds or waste ground. Absence of enormous fortunes outside commercial millionaires. Evidence of increasing national prosperity afforded by statistics of picture sales. The growth of these sales from Charles I. till to-day. The Beckford, the Horace Walpole and other sales. Gradual rise in value of great masters. Memorable sales and personages at Christie’s. Gainsborough’s Duchess of Devonshire episode.
The chief resemblance between the London which Queen Victoria first knew, and the capital as it was seen by her subjects on her jubilee anniversary in 1887, is the appearance of the steam locomotive at the railway termini and upon the waters of the Thames. Passing to more permanent characteristics, only the great national buildings would enable those present at Her Majesty’s coronation to identify the pre-Exhibition Metropolis with the capital of to-day. Even Hyde Park, that, as has been seen, was then, as now, the recreation ground of polite London, presented an aspect very different from its appearance on the approach of the sixtieth commemoration of thecommencement of the reign. Like all the other Royal enclosures, the Hyde Park of the forties or fifties was decorated by no flower beds and was in other respects habitually ill-kept. General sanitation had yet to reach its infancy. The Thames remained almost as unwholesome and repulsive a stream as at an earlier epoch the Fleet Ditch had been. Dickens’ description inThe Old Curiosity Shopof ‘Quilp’s’ haunts was a sketch from life equally graphic and accurate of the condition of the river’s shore between London Bridge and the Strand. The site of the river embankments of to-day swarmed at low water with mudlarks gathering fragments of coal and other refuse which had dropped from the wharves that lined the banks on both sides of the river. If the ladies who to-day take tea on the Terrace of the House of Commons had exposed themselves so persistently on the spot where that structure now stands, instead of catching a catarrh, they might have feared a pestilence. Even in the course of the short suburban drives made by the coaches of the Four-in-Hand Club after their meet at the Magazine, the ladies who to-day occupy the box seat would have run the risk of being shocked by the sight of corpses hanging on the gallows. Lord Grey’s Reform Act had been added to the Statute Book before this relic of barbarism disappeared. The midlands were busy with preparations for the first appeal to genuine constituencies when certain electoral canvassers, merrily pursuing their work outside Leicester were horror-stricken amidst their fun by the sight of a lifeless form fashionably dressed in blue coat and gilt buttons swingingto and fro on a gallows tree by the roadway. The body was that of a young master printer, who had been hung for a particularly abominable murder. More decent times happily were near. This, which many men now living can remember, was the last gibbet that ever disgraced the Queen’s highway. The city workers when they did not dwell above their offices, lived for the most part at Islington, still a country suburb, or took the bus or coach to and fro between the more rural Tottenham or Highgate and their counting room or shop. The ground which is to-day covered by the mansions, the hotels, and the flower beds of South Kensington was then either used as cabbage gardens, nursery grounds, and riding schools, or was given up to the loafers and ruffians of the streets, who chose the forenoon of Sunday as the time for settling their differences with their fists.
As a popular institution the theatre was practically unknown to the early Victorian era. The old patent houses were supported precariously. Their rivals of more recent date were on the chronic verge of bankruptcy. Night after night popular actors and actresses performed to empty benches. Pleasure seekers from the West were more likely to make up a party to see a man hanged than to make up a party for the play.
The new millionaires came in with the new gold. At this earlier date, the men who had realized great fortunes in business, who did not belong on the one hand to the wealthy territorial noblesse, or to the financial plutocracy on the other might be counted on the fingers of a single hand. The Rothschilds had been settled among us for a century. Their opulence hadpassed into a proverb. Other names belonging to the millionaire category were Arkwright, Strutt, Jones Lloyd, better known to the present generation as Lord Overstone, and Hope. The forerunners of that aristocracy of wealth which sways society to-day, of the Guests, the Crawshays in the iron trade, had not yet appeared. Half a century had passed since the second Pitt had declared that ‘every man with forty thousand a year had a right to a peerage.’ The Listers, the Holdens, and others were already prosperous manufacturers in the Bradford district. The brewing interest already knew its Basses and its Guinnesses. The peerages and the baronetcies with which these families have since been decorated were reserved for a much later stage of the reign. Even the uncrowned kings of the Australian or Californian gold mines had no subjects in London till the World’s Show of 1851 had passed into history. The gradual advancement of the great retail traders typified by the name Peter Robinson, or Maple, to a corresponding dignity on a different level did not take place till our own decade. The social polish and refinement which are the attributes of the new wealth to-day, had not half a century since become dreams of fancy. Rude plenty and coarse splendour characterized the entertainments and the dwellings of the early Victorian plutocracy, as they had marked the hospitality of our Saxon or Norman ancestors. It is a commonplace of conversation to say that none can foretell where the movement which during the last half century has set in with all classes is to stop. Not only the wages of the working classes,but the payments of professional and every kind of skilled industry have increased at a rate predicted to be impossible; but every shilling buys from thirty to fifty per cent. more than formerly of the necessaries and comforts of life. The Prince Consort, as has been already said, did more than any other individual of his day to quicken English workmanship with the artistic sense. The task that waits for accomplishment now is seemingly to develop intelligence and thrift in the masses. If this work be carried to the point which may be expected from the progress made during the last half century, the conditions of the national life in England cannot fail to improve more rapidly than anywhere else in the world.
The new municipal buildings which have risen in all the great towns of the kingdom during the last four or five decades; the warehouses, offices, and shops that, if seen in Venice, would be admired for the artistic splendour of their exteriors, but which pass unnoticed on the Thames, the Mersey, and the Irwell; these are some among the outward and visible signs of the progressive prosperity of all classes of the community, since the treasures of Australia and California first were poured into England, and since the Serbonian bog of Chat Moss was turned into a safe and solid track for the steam engine. Other indications, not less conclusive and perhaps more picturesque, of the same truth are the decoration of the outskirts of every town with private villas set in landscape gardens which half a century ago would have seemed worthy of Chatsworth, and with public parks not less cared for than Royal pleasuregrounds, the acquisitions of corporate enterprise, or the gifts of individual munificence. The hard facts and figures which have accumulated since in 1846 the British ports were opened to the merchandise of all nations explain in detail the transformation that has been witnessed. During the quarter of a century before the repeal of the Corn Laws, the total value of English exports, of products, of manufactures was one thousand and eighty-five millions. During the twenty-five years that followed the repeal, the value was three thousand and thirty-one millions; in other words, an increase of nearly two hundred per cent. The second quarter of a century since Free Trade, that is from 1871-1896 has raised the total value of our exports to six thousand two hundred and ninety-nine millions; and this in the face of the great and continuous fall of prices during recent years. Our import trade has expanded even in greater proportion. The total value of imports of merchandise during the years between 1871-1895 was nine thousand seven hundred and sixty-three millions. These figures do not exhaust the national profits of Free Trade. Our increased business with the great markets of the world abroad has meant a vast extension of employment among the masses at home. There is not only more work to be done. It is paid for at a higher rate than was ever known. Articles of necessity, not more than of luxury never before known in industrial households, are to-day common beneath the workman’s roof. With comfort, sobriety, and thrift, which are indeed the parents of comfort, have increased too. The Chancellor of the Exchequer in his last Budget stated that within tenyears the deposits of the savings banks have more than doubled. The evidence furnished by statistics of pauperism is not less significant. In the spring of 1896 poor relief was given to 739,021 as compared with 897,370 in 1857. And this although the population had grown in forty years from nineteen millions to over thirty millions. In 1857 the ratio of paupers to inhabitants was more than 47 in 1,000. In 1896 the ratio is 24 in 1,000.
The proof of national prosperity afforded by the income-tax returns was given at length in the preceding chapter. Entirely to exhaust the statistical evidence available for the propositions now advanced there may be cited the figures connected with the National Debt. This is being paid off out of the successive surpluses of annual revenue over expenditure. In 1856 after the Crimean War, the Debt stood at eight hundred and twenty-nine millions, or about £29, 12s. per head of the population. In 1895 it had been reduced to six hundred and sixty millions, or about £17, 6s. per head of the population. The amount of the Debt in March 1896 was six hundred and fifty-two millions. Thus, in the last thirteen years, the money responsibilities of the nation have been reduced by one hundred millions. Enthusiasts for Richard Cobden’s memory have therefore some reason for declaring that since the measure which the genius of himself and John Bright conceived, and the statesmanlike energy of Mr Villiers promoted, was written on the Statute Book, a new England has been created. Nor has anyone seriously denied the connection during the régime of Protection between wheat at from 53s. to 112s. a quarter and the intolerabledistress of the working classes in town and country expressed in ricks blazing and Riot Acts read. With the first relaxation in the Protective Tariff, some improvement began. It continued very gradually but certainly till at last the new prosperity as shown by the figures and facts already cited was fairly established.
The prices commanded by famous pictures at the great art sales of the present and preceding periods have not uniformly attested the correctness of the popular criticism. They have, however, at all times afforded a practical criterion of the growing wealth of the country, and above all of the standard of expenditure current among the educated classes; seen in this light, the figures are not irrelevant to the present purpose. Picture sales have been a feature in the social and artistic life of England during more than two centuries. In 1649, by order of the Parliament, the collection of Charles I., the most discriminating and perhaps the greatest of Royal patrons of art, was offered to public competition. It realized a trifle less than fifty thousand pounds, probably not half of what it cost its original owner, who is said to have paid for the ‘Mantua’ pictures alone eighty thousand pounds. At a later sale, however, many of these paintings found purchasers at from £500 to £800 apiece. Thus, even in these early days, was the coming rise in artistic values faintly foreshadowed. But no continuous increase was yet noticeable. Not quite a century after this, Harley, Lord Oxford’s celebrated collection was dispersed. The polite education of the well-to-do classes had then made considerable advances. The first of the Indian Nabobshad returned home with the spoils of the Pagoda Tree in his pocket to end his days in the coffee houses of St James’s. The commercial classes were generally prosperous. Many Sir Vistos, complying with the whisper of the familiar demon ‘had a taste.’ The conditions of the time were therefore not unfavourable for prices conspicuously higher than had been given for the Stuart collection. Nevertheless, the interest aroused by the Oxford sale was so languid, art fanciers were so little enterprising, that the highest price recorded on this occasion was eighty-nine pounds, five shillings for the ‘Jacob and Laban’ of Sebastian Bourdon. The Italian masters commanded on an average only five guineas apiece. A superb specimen of Claude Lorraine encouraged no bidder beyond twenty-seven pounds, six shillings. Holbein’s since famous portrait of the Duchess of Suffolk went for fifteen pounds, four shillings and sixpence. Rembrandts scarcely found purchasers at twelve guineas or even six. Pictures then supposed to be by Michael Angelo could be had for a few pounds. The highest price paid at the Oxford sale, the only one running into three figures was one hundred and seventy-five pounds, five shillings, for Van Dyck’s ‘Sir Kenelm Digby and family.’ On the other hand, a second Van Dyck of unrecorded title went for five pounds, fifteen shillings. This was the period in which Hogarth’s masterpieces were bought for prices ranging between a maximum of eighty-eight pounds and a minimum of twenty-seven pounds. This depreciation did not continue long. Soon after the Oxford sale of 1741, the paintings by which Hogarth is best knownwere readily purchased at a thousand pounds apiece. Even, however, after the nineteenth century had opened, no sudden rise in art values took place. In 1823, at Beckford’s Fonthill sale, the principal treasures only realized an average of thirty-one pounds each, the whole collection of pictures, four hundred and twenty-four in number, produced thirteen thousand two hundred and forty-nine pounds, fifteen shillings. In the year before the great Exhibition at the King of Holland’s sale, a ‘Holy Family’ attributed to Raphael found no bidder beyond two hundred and fifty pounds.[10]A European sensation was created by the agent of the Russian Emperor giving on this occasion, three thousand, three hundred and thirty-three pounds for a chef d’œuvre of Leonardo da Vinci. But the ‘Trinity’ by Rubens was not considered specially cheap at six hundred and fifty-eight pounds. Famous portraits by Dutch masters at three hundred and thirty pounds each were looked upon as extravagant. The characteristic profusion of the famous Marquis of Hertford in paying fourteen thousand pounds for some ten or twenty pictures furnished during some weeks the talk to the town. In another quarter of a century, in 1876, at the Bredel sale, the ‘Enamoured Cavalier’ by an artist not of the highest distinction, realized a price almost unprecedented then, but often repeated and increased since, of four thousand, three hundred pounds. That the upward movement of prices, to culminate some time later as will presently be seen in a memorable transaction of the saleroom, had fairly started twentyyears ago, is evident from the details of the present retrospect. That the new development was at that date in its infancy may be inferred from the fact that at the Albert Levy sale in 1876 a landscape by Gainsborough which has since changed hands for thousands secured only a few shillings over three hundred and sixty-seven pounds. Eight years later at the Quilter sale of 1884, the enhanced value of foreign masters formed a much more conspicuous testimony to the growing affluence of the classes which supply the virtuosi of these later days. On that occasion the ‘Heidelberg’ of Turner was after a keen competition knocked down for not much less than two thousand pounds. The same artist’s ‘Zurich’ in the same year went for twelve hundred and sixty pounds, nearly twice as much as it had secured only a decade earlier. Incidentally for those to whom such facts and figures are interesting on artistic, and not social, grounds, the conclusion from such an analysis as has now been attempted seems to be that since the Strawberry Hill sale and later the Bernal sale, the best works have continuously and conspicuously increased in value, but that, especially in the case of later Italian painters, Guido, etc., pictures of moderate merit have become a drug in the market. If Sir Robert Walpole was the first of modern parliamentarians, his son was equally the eighteenth century founder of the existing race of art connoisseurs. During the April and May of 1842, the collection of the toy villa whose Gothic pinnacles overlook the Thames yielded in round numbers thirty thousand pounds. After an interval of fourteen years the treasures of Ralph Bernal, whose death deprived the House ofCommons of a Chairman of Committees as that of his son was afterwards to eclipse its gaiety, formed the event of the season of 1856. In the course of a thirty-one days’ sale the total realized was twice that of the Walpole sale, in other words more than sixty thousand pounds.
These figures seem insignificant when contrasted with the heroic prices of our own epoch. Of these only a few and not the highest have yet been glanced at. Compare with the modest totals just mentioned the competition and the sums of money, both without precedent, expended in Christie’s salerooms during the seventies and eighties of the century. The rostrum mounted by the auctioneer may be, as is said, identical with that used in the earliest days of the house a century ago. It is the only visible link with the past still remaining. The quality of the crowd of buyers is not more changed than the prices which they are prepared to give; or the national opulence which these prices indicate. In those earlier days the salerooms were in Pall Mall instead of King Street, St James’s. These premises were only vacated, as many now living can remember to clear the way for the still youthful Royal Academy before it had, on its journey to Burlington House, reached the stage of Trafalgar Square. The keen Celtic face of Doyle, director of the Irish National Gallery; the strikingly handsome and Venetian profile of Sir Frederick Leighton; the delicately chiselled and thoughtful features of Woolner, more than creditable as a sculptor, far more than merely graceful as a poet; these among the company of possible buyers represented theprofessionally expert element. The late Sir William Gregory with his fine brow and leonine head, whose many-sided culture suggests the complete man of the Herbert of Cherbury type whom our ancestors worshipped; another Irishman on whom a picture acts as a magnet on steel, Lord Powerscourt; among Scots Lord Rosebery; the Duke of St Albans whose physiognomy in those days recalled his Stuart ancestry; the interested and intelligent presence of a representative of that exotic wealth which has encouraged English industry and art so much, Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild; these are among the best known members of the general circle. Nor should there be omitted the form of a tradesman whose position next to the auctioneer, and whose telegram and account book in hand proclaim his occupation. This is Mr Agnew, pre-eminently a creation of the new wealth of the Victorian epoch, as well as the promoter of not a few artists’ prosperity. To-day the enterprising trader is to prove himself the idol of the saleroom by paying the largest sum ever known to have been given for a single painting. And that in opposition to the peer of the longest purse of the day, the late Lord Dudley. That noble connoisseur by his bid of ten thousand guineas seems at first to have secured for Park Lane Gainsborough’s portrait of the Duchess of Devonshire, who won by her kiss the Westminster election for Charles Fox. Just as the hammer of fate is about to descend, the dealer intimates an advance. Amid applause, such as salutes the Derby winner on Epsom Downs, Mr Agnew[11]isdeclared the possessor of the incomparable canvas for the price, as yet unheard in any saleroom, of ten thousand one hundred guineas. Three years before this, in 1873, ‘The Sisters,’ also by Gainsborough, had brought six thousand, six hundred and fifteen pounds. Fourteen years after its first sale, in 1887, the same painting realized nine thousand, nine hundred and seventy-five pounds. Recent changes in the law of entail have undoubtedly tended to promote these unprecedented prices. The chief cause, however, is the general augmentation of wealth and the more lavish scale and ideas of expenditure that have penetrated all classes of the community.[12]
THE RICH MEN FROM THE EAST
Specific instances of the fusion with native elements of the owners of foreign wealth, especially in the case of the Jews. Growth in England from early days of Hebrew plutocracy. Different views as to number of Jew families, the names of these as preserved by Jewish writers. Westminster Abbey under Richard III. and Henry VII. completed with Jew money. Later settlements of Jews in England date from Charles II. Under George III. the prosperity of the Goldsmids foreshadows the future power of the Rothschilds. Early beginnings of the Rothschilds, on the Continent and in England. Rothschild and Waterloo; Rothschild and the Bank of England. Services of the family to the English State. Their method of using their wealth under Baron Lionel and his successors. Their example to others of their race and their work amongst their own people.
Specific instances of the fusion with native elements of the owners of foreign wealth, especially in the case of the Jews. Growth in England from early days of Hebrew plutocracy. Different views as to number of Jew families, the names of these as preserved by Jewish writers. Westminster Abbey under Richard III. and Henry VII. completed with Jew money. Later settlements of Jews in England date from Charles II. Under George III. the prosperity of the Goldsmids foreshadows the future power of the Rothschilds. Early beginnings of the Rothschilds, on the Continent and in England. Rothschild and Waterloo; Rothschild and the Bank of England. Services of the family to the English State. Their method of using their wealth under Baron Lionel and his successors. Their example to others of their race and their work amongst their own people.
The close assimilation of the newer elements of English life to the older; the gradual but unchecked identification in pursuits, habits, culture and tastes of the aristocracy of wealth with that of birth have been already mentioned. More detailed illustration of these distinctive movements of the Victorian era are necessary to enable us to form an adequate idea of the personal and enduring influence exercised upon the society of England by those who since their national dispersion, have in all countries illustrated in themselves the chief developments and agencies of wealth. From the popular expressions sometimes employed about the Jews in England to-day, one might suppose they hadbecome considerable among us only during the Victorian epoch. Few people, as they look at Westminster Abbey, remember that this monument of the national Christianity which the piety of Edward the Confessor began was completed under Richard III. and Henry VII. with money levied from the Jews.[13]Under Henry III. the sufferings of the chosen race in England had been severe. Thereafter, a gradual but progressive improvement in their position took place. But so late as 1633, according to a Hebrew authority named Haham, quoted in theAnglia Judaica, astounding though the statement sounds, there were only twelve Jewish families in this country. The distinction of re-establishing the race on British soil has been claimed for the protectorate of Cromwell. It really belongs to Charles II., and actually occurred during the first few years after the Restoration. One of the comparatively few Anglo-Jewish conversions to Christianity took place about this time. Close to the Abbey, which his ancestors’ wealth had completed, in the church of St Margaret’s, Westminster, an Israelite physician, Speranza Collins, abjured the faith of his fathers, and was formally received into the Anglican Communion by Dr Warmester, Dean of Westminster. By the time that the house of Brunswick was established on the throne, the fabric of Anglo-Jewish plutocracy had well nigh built itself up. The great natural philosopher Emmanuel Da Costa, whom the Italian Jews of the eighteenth century furnished to England, compiled a list by name of all his countrymen living under thesovereignty of George III. In this list there are no Rothschilds. The patronymics of most frequent occurrence are Rodrigues, and Goldsmid. This latter seems to have been the Semitic family which, under the third George, occupied the position most closely analogous to that filled by the house of Rothschild under Queen Victoria. The country houses in the Sheen and Richmond district with their deer parks and vineries owned by Abraham and Jacob Goldsmid, foreshadowed distinctly the later beauties in the same region of Gunnersbury, if not of the more distant Mentmore.
At the close of the eighteenth century, the Frankfort Rothschilds, the friends and bankers of the Prince of Hesse-Cassell, were a power in Germany only second to that of the Empire. The capital on the Main had from the days of Charlemagne been a trading centre. During the sixteenth century, its fairs caused the place to be the market of the world, and three hundred years later may have given to the Prince Consort[14]the first idea of the great Exhibition in Hyde Park. Long before Mayer Amschel Rothschild, the founder of the firm died, the prices of Frankfort were being studied as closely as those of Antwerp or Rotterdam. The third brother of Anselm Mayer, who controlled till 1855 the Frankfort branch, was evidently the first great financial genius of his family. His enterprise and judgment made him the Crœsus of Europe. Theyalso at a critical point in his career prompted him to save from ruin more than one Paris bank reeling under the effects of North American insolvencies. At the close of the last century, the English business of the Rothschilds was transacted by the firm of Van Notten. A dispute with a Lancashire manufacturer on whom Germany and Austria depended for their cotton goods, sent Nathan Mayer Rothschild from Frankfort to England. In this way the English house came into existence, and the necessity for foreign agents outside the family ceased. The Napoleonic wars, as is well known, largely contributed in their successive incidents to the earlier fortunes of the family. Already the first Rothschild had speculated largely in the bills on the English Government given by the Duke of Wellington for the support of the British troops. Settled in London he provided the channels for the regular transmission of funds to the forces in the Peninsula. Early in 1800, he was the first man on the London Stock Exchange. His agents followed in the train of every regiment. His couriers in their specially chartered ships were on every sea. Rothschild himself, unseen by others, watched the Battle of Waterloo. He crossed the Channel in a fishing boat, and arrived in London, to find it full of rumours of the English defeat. Casually appearing on the Stock Exchange, he received the condolences of the City on his ruin. Only he himself knew what his investments were. Instead of being ruined, he had added a million to the family wealth. Such at least is the conventional account. The foregoing details arein substance taken from an entertaining volume by John Reeves onThe Rothschilds, published by Messrs Sampson Low.
The present writer has, however, some reason to question the accuracy of the tradition of a Rothschild secretly watching the great battle. The account that Baron Lionel’s friends generally gave is as follows. During the great Corsican’s usurpation of the First Magistrateship in the French State, the lawful possessor of the Throne, Louis XVIII. was living in retirement in Belgium.[15]The Rothschilds, on the early morrow of the decisive battle, sent a courier to the King’s villa near Ghent, to gather from the reception of the news by His Majesty how the fortune of the day had gone. The King’s sitting room was on the ground floor with windows looking on the garden. In that enclosure the Rothschild emissary took up his station, so that, himself unseen, he could observe what passed on the other side of the windows. Presently a rider, fresh from his horse, still booted, spurred, and mud splashed, entered the chamber, made a low obeisance to its dethroned occupant, who, on his part, graciously extended his fingers which the messenger gently touched with his lips. Hence the outside spectator inferred Napoleon’s defeat, and proceeded at once to his principals in London. As an English financier this is the Rothschild who popularized foreign stocks and loans in this country by causing the interest and dividends to be paid in London, instead of, as heretofore,abroad. Four years after Waterloo, he first identified himself closely with the English Government by undertaking a loan of twelve millions. His profit on the transaction was one hundred and fifty thousand pounds. With this sum he bought Gunnersbury, formerly the home of Amelia, aunt of George III., which had since passed into the hands of a private citizen named Copland. The Rothschilds naturally and honourably took their place among the lords of the soil in their adopted country. He who is now spoken of encountered, perhaps provoked, much opposition from rival financiers, and more than once measured swords with the Bank of England which had hesitated about technicalities of discount. Shortly after this the New Court potentate called at the Bank bringing with him a sum of twenty-one thousand pounds in £5 notes,[16]each deposited in a separate bag. Seven hours were occupied in changing this paper into gold. For the time the general business of the establishment was arrested. The strategy succeeded completely. The next day it was announced that in future the Rothschild bills would be taken as the Banks’.
In the July of 1836 a pigeon fluttered in through the open window of the New Court counting house. The bird had travelled from Frankfort; it brought the news of the death in his native town of the great head of the firm. Many religious ceremonies of the Hebrew racehave, during these last few years, been converted into great functions of modish society. The ceremonial series began when the body of the first great Rothschild known to England, in the presence of the whole Corps Diplomatique attached to the Court of St James’s, was committed to the earth in the East End cemetery of his race. With that event the latter day history of the Rothschilds begins. Henceforward the business was to be conducted by Nathaniel Mayer Rothschild’s four sons in England, together with their uncles abroad. Of these sons Nathaniel settled in France, Lionel, Nathan Mayer and Anthony managed the English firm. Under the régime of Baron Lionel Rothschild whom many now living remember well, the first great act of association with the English Government was in 1847 the Irish Famine Loan, supplemented as it was by munificent subscriptions for the relief of the distress which the failure of the potato crop had caused. Seven years later Baron Lionel carried out the sixteen millions loan for the English Government. The transaction for which the Lionel administration is best remembered by the present generation is the advance for the purchase of the Suez Canal shares in 1876. The announcement of that negotiation by the Prime Minister of the day in conjunction with his compatriots in the City, came as a surprise to the English people at large. It has, however, on the highest authority since transpired that when in 1874 Mr Disraeli took office, he had already decided upon acquiring for England a preponderating interest in the international waterway. Nor is it impertinent to assume that during the Sunday visits which thestatesman, as Mr Disraeli and as Lord Beaconsfield, paid to the suburban home of Baron Lionel, this scheme may sometimes have been discussed. Four millions was the sum advanced by New Court, one hundred thousand pounds represented the total of the Rothschild 2½ per cent. profit.
By this time Baron Lionel had been in possession of a seat in the House of Commons some ten years, won though that seat had been only after a prolonged struggle. At the beginning of the century no Jew magistrate or sheriff existed. In 1837, Sir David Salomons became sheriff of London and Middlesex, but the true faith of a Christian test prevented him from serving. Eventually, to oblige the City, Lord Chancellor Campbell introduced a Bill removing this disability. Parliament, however, was still closed against the Jew. Ten years later Lionel Rothschild, with Lord John Russell, was elected M.P. for London. The Jewish Parliamentary Relief Bill, supported by Mr Disraeli as well as Mr Gladstone, passed the House of Commons, to be thrown out in the Lords. In 1850 another measure shared the same fate. The sixth decade of this century had come before the first Rothschild took his place on the green leather benches. Mr Disraeli’s last novel,Endymion, as rich as any of its predecessors in personal portraits, contains in the character of Mr Neuchatel, the banker, the most graphic pen and ink sketch of the financier now mentioned. In the grounds of Gunnersbury, statesmen of both parties, diplomatists from every Court, foreigners of every grade of distinction met each other. Here Mr Disraeli chatted amicably with Lord Palmerston, the turbulence of whose foreign policy he was fresh fromdenouncing in the House of Commons. Hither Louis Napoleon, when an exile in London, drove in his friend Count Alfred D’Orsay’s cabriolet. Here the veteran Lord Lyndhurst instructed in habits of English thought his aptest pupil, then a showy but still obscure politician soon to become the pillar of the Tory party. It was by Baron Lionel that the Rothschild hospitalities were begun on the scale on which they have since continued. First came the marriage of Baron Lionel’s eldest daughter, Leonora, to her relative, Alphonse Rothschild. Persigny, then French Ambassador in London, made a speech which the Paris Academy recognized as classical in its perfection. Mr Disraeli, always pre-eminently happy on these occasions, delighted host, hostess, and guests by a coruscation of glittering antitheses, and flashing epigrams in affectionate honour of the bride and bridegroom. The ex-Lord Chancellor, Lord Lyndhurst himself, in whose honour the Baroness Mayer had given a fête a few days earlier at Mentmore, said a few words so happy in their arrangement, so dignified in their cadence that they were subsequently set to candidates for the Newcastle medal at Eton to translate into Attic prose.
Not twenty years have passed since, on Baron Lionel’s death in 1879, the fortunes of the house have been controlled by the Lord Rothschild of to-day with his brothers Alfred and Leopold as his partners. The loans for the Hungarian, Brazilian, and Chilian Governments are only a portion of the New Court enterprises since 1879. In the eyes of England and of Europe, their most important undertaking has been in relation with Egypt. In 1885, at the moment that the Westernpowers were at diplomatic feud with each other about the land of the Pharoahs, Egypt itself drew more and more near to complete bankruptcy. The calamity was only averted by monthly advances from the Messrs Rothschild upon no legal security, but on the strength of a private note from the late Foreign Secretary, Lord Granville. This is the testimony of Sir Michael Hicks-Beach speaking as Chancellor of the Exchequer after he had succeeded Mr Gladstone in 1885. The nine millions loan issued in that year was, of course, highly successful for its negotiators. But this good fortune had been preceded by an anxious season of protracted risk encountered with unfailing public spirit.
The Semitic capitalists of the century have been compared to a foreign garrison quartered in every European country, never completely fused with the native population, always separated from the national life, and potentially hostile to the domestic interests of the land which it occupies. In the case of the financial family whose connection with Victorian England has now been summarized this description is not borne out by the facts. Their activity as financiers and generosity as citizens during calamitous seasons like the Irish famine, are only specimens of the services rendered by the Rothschilds to their adopted country. No exceptional distress comes upon any portion of the United Kingdom without eliciting a letter of womanly sympathy from the Queen, and the opening of a subscription list in the City. At the head of this list the name of the New Court firm is tolerably sure to be seen. Members of a race whose history is likethat of the Jews one of razzias, confiscations, disqualifications, patiently borne and slowly overcome, can scarcely be expected to betray no consciousness of these antecedents in their habit and speech. The bearing of the Jew, whatever pinnacle of greatness he may have climbed, is traditionally the bearing of a man on the defensive, prepared, if he sees an opening, to anticipate the necessity of resentment by showing his ability to repel offence. Those who, whether by individual experience or by ethnic tradition, have been schooled in experiences like these, are not likely to show morbid delicacy in their deportment towards others. The mart and the bourse to which the Jews have been driven are defective schools of social culture. Asiatic plutocrats are sure, therefore, wherever they may be settled, to provoke enemies in the very act of creating clients and dependents. The English Rothschilds of every generation have found opportunities of performing private not less than public kindnesses. In spite of, or rather perhaps because of this, they have wounded many susceptibilities, for there may be an insolence of neediness not less than of wealth. Fairness, however, requires the admission that the successive representatives of the great Semitic house in respect of the performance of the duties of citizenship as well as in the wise, not less than the beneficent use of wealth, have set an example to the fellow countrymen of their adoption in general, and to their financial rivals in particular. The employment of great wealth in accordance with the principles of magnificence and of taste was esteemed so highly by the cultivatedGreeks of old as to receive from Aristotle a concrete illustration in his category of virtuous characters. The same tradition was preserved and exemplified in those republics of mediæval Italy that wore the closest resemblances to the older democracies of Hellas which history records. It was not unknown in England at that period when London was to the Englishman what Florence had been to the Florentine under the Medici, or, at an earlier age, what the City of the Violet Crown had been to the contemporary of Pericles. A similar sense of the public usefulness and patriotic obligations of great wealth animated the citizens of London under our own Edwards, and had previously found many modes of effective expression under Elizabeth. Those were ‘the gorgeous days’ in which the trader of one of the great chartered companies in the Indies or across the Atlantic, having made some exceptionally successful venture, on returning safely to his native land, and to the township which had been his cradle, was wont to testify his gratitude to Providence by embellishing the place of his birth with buildings or gardens, with galleries or terraces, many of which, as in the case of the gifts of Sir Thomas Gresham, the first of the great loan negotiators, endure to this day, not only in the college which bears his name, but in the Royal Exchange. By no family, not of English birth; by few Englishmen themselves, either under Queen Victoria or her predecessors, have the public and national responsibilities imposed by financial success, or by hereditary millions, on their possessors been recognized so frankly, or beenillustrated with so happy and impressive a blend of splendour and propriety, as by the descendents of the bankers of the Princes of Hesse-Cassel who in the first days of this century issuing from their natal judengasse at Frankfort established themselves in England, and at the same time, or shortly thereafter, fixed their emporia in the great Continental capitals as well.
Whatever their natural pride in the creative power of their wealth, no one can lay it to the charge of the Rothschilds that in the use of this instrument they have lost sight of their duties to the land of their adoption. In any faithfully written chronicle of English art or sport since both were organized among us on their present plan, the name of this family must fill no small space. Their services to the breed of horses may be surmised from the popularity of Baron Lionel Rothschild’s success in the race for the Derby with Favonius in 1871, as well as from the popularity which his son has since won in the same pastime. Their private houses are museums of art which have encouraged English not less than Continental talent, and which are open to every visitor who is interested in their contents. Since the Rothschilds were settled in Piccadilly and Mayfair, many others of their race have made a position in the polite life of the capital and of the country. That each of these, to mention only Murrietas, Oppenheims, Bischoffsheims, have fixed the ends and regulated the scale of their expenditure with a regard for refinement as well as pomp, and that the more prominent members of a no longerdespised race have been incorporated thoroughly into the ranks of the native gentry, is due largely to the personal initiative and influence of the New Court dynasty. Nor is it merely their wealth and the influence which money has brought that have placed the Rothschilds at the head of Semitic settlers in England. Their loyalty to their nation has never been eclipsed by other interests. They have not only endowed hospitals and built synagogues. They have always exerted a pacific and unifying influence upon the various and sometimes mutually conflicting Hebraic factions; at one time they have reconciled to each other different schools of Teutonic Judaism. At another they have performed the same good office for Israelite communities outside their own Teutonic pale.
SOCIAL CITIZENSHIP AS A MORAL GROWTH OF VICTORIAN ENGLAND