CHAPTERXV

CHAPTERXVPHARISEES AND PUBLICANSOh Lord! Thou kens what zeal I bear,When drinkers drink, and swearers swear,And singing there, and dancing here,Wi’ great and sma’;For I am keepit by thy fear,Free frae them a’.Burns: “Holy Willie’s Prayer.”When I was a small boy I liked above all things the stories about Pharisees and Publicans. Pharisees, I think, were connoted in my mind with schoolmasters. Publicans, on the other hand, were a mysterious, jovial people given to gluttony and wine-bibbing. The latter I knew nothing about, but the gluttony I forgave. I remember a pang of disappointment when I discovered in older years that Publicans were connected with the Inland Revenue.In China I believe nearly all morals are imparted by means of fables, and it is the story-telling department of our early teaching that leaves us with something tangible which we can use in after life as a bobbin whereon to wind the weft of our own thoughts. And this distinction of Pharisee and Publican remains with me so far a reality as to stand for something which the words themselves of course do not mean. They are convenient symbols for the class who want mankind to walk along thepath of mechanical obedience, and the class who are out to realise the best the world can give; the class who condemn themselves and their fellow-creatures as miserable sinners, and the class who not only love to be merry and wise, but are ready to sink a certain amount of wisdom in the interests of merriment. William Fisher, of Mauchline, was a typical Pharisee, and Robert Burns, who immortalised him, was the greatest of the Publicans.And though I agree that there is no historical fitness in my use of the term Publican, I think the Pharisee is a continuing social type and probably as eternal as the hills themselves. That is to say, it will require some new geological period to shake him off the earth, and he will not depart until he can no longer be of service to the world. For my more recent reading about the Pharisee has led me to modify my childish imaginings. To-day I have a great respect for the Pharisee. I have learned that with all his faults he was a very respectable, classy Israelite. He knew that he was set apart from the common herd, and he was proud to be an abstainer and ascetic, as if these things were good in themselves. His ideal of life was to have a lot of meddling, fussy laws of outward conduct, and not only to obey them scrupulously himself, but to persecute others who did not. Not an amiable character, perhaps, but at least sincere and honest. Moreover, he knew no better. Whether there was the same excuse for the Pharisee of Manchester in the year of our Lord eighteen hundred and ninety is a doubtful point.Not that I would like to see—​or am likely to see—​a city bereft of Pharisees. A few to sanctify and give general tone and outward respectability are as necessary to Manchester as lace curtains to a suburban villa. My grumble is that in Manchester there are too many Pharisees to the square yard. They capture and run organisations that were made for better things. They make it impossible for the average wicked citizen to take part in their good works, they bring disrepute upon the city by their vagaries on the house-tops, and they rouse up a great deal of hatred, malice, and uncharitableness in fighting with great ability and vehemence against the right of the harmless, necessary citizen to amuse himself in his harmless, necessary way.Many will remember an historic quarrel between two old friends who were engaged in very doubtful municipal transactions, and how they made it up in a Wesleyan chapel, and one put £50 in the plate as a token of regret for having uttered naughty words about the other. By the more respectable class of Manchester that action was regarded as being a natural and right expression of apology. If it was earnest and sincere it had a folk-lore resemblance, I suppose, to the sacrifice, or burnt offering. By the elect it was quoted as a very beautiful act of retribution. To one like myself, outside the circle, it was not perhaps actual evidence of conspiracy to commit fraud, but it was at least a beacon light warning of a dangerous shore. I remember prosecuting an embezzler at Lancaster who always prayedwith his victims before he took their money. Whalley, the famous Blackburn solicitor, who swindled his hundreds, was a famous prayer-monger, and in all those doubtful societies and associations which are so popular in Lancashire, and through which the savings of the working class are transferred to the pockets of their elders and betters, there is generally a halo of holiness surrounding prominent members of the board. And as long as popular opinion is in favour of the Pharisee, and will invest in his business concerns because he is a Pharisee, so long Manchester, with its simple, saving working class, is bound to have more than her fair share of the race.It has been a very interesting occupation with me during the last twenty-five years to watch the constant dispute between the Pharisee and the average citizen, and though the contest is by no means over yet, I am glad to be able to chronicle that up to now the Pharisee is several down. And that phrase reminds me of his attitude towards Sunday golf. The Pharisee, of course, did not want to play golf on Sunday, but a large majority of golfing citizens did, therefore it was an evil thing to do, and they must be protected against themselves. At one club where a meeting was held and feeling ran rather high, a humorist moved as an amendment “That Sunday golf be not compulsory.” The leading Pharisee—​the sect have no sense of humour—​protested eloquently that no body of men could compel him to play golf. The humorist drily pointed out to him that a careful reading of the proposed rule wouldshow that they did not intend to compel him. Then, amidst laughter and cheers, it became a rule of the club, and, as far as I know, it is a rule to this day.What an excellent, sane rule it is. Your Pharisee is always compelling you not to do this and not to do the other. What a calm, dignified way of meeting him—​to place on record the common law of the land that Sunday golf is not compulsory. Of course, Sunday golf won all along the line, one reason being that golf is a rich man’s amusement, and that young Master Pharisee, when he was down from Oxford, would have a round with his friends on Sunday afternoon, and that made the governor’s position peculiarly ridiculous. But wait until the working classes demand their outdoor amusements on the Sabbath, and you will see a gathering of the sect worthy of Manchester in the palmiest days of Pharisaism.The fight over the Sunday papers had been fought and won before I came to Manchester, but I remember a little skirmish started by Canon Nunn in the form of a protest made against the boys shouting papers on Sunday. Now, town noises are most people’s aversion, and if this had been a real attack on unnecessary noise it would have been reasonable enough. But it did not seek to stop Church bells or boys shouting papers on Monday or Tuesday, and was really only an effort to inconvenience those who preferred to read the sermons of Hubert by their own fireside rather than to listen to the parsons in an uncomfortable church. The Sundaypaper is not, perhaps, the highest ideal of journalism, but it is to many the only newspaper of their week. It is to the discredit of the Pharisee that he has put every obstacle in the way of the Sunday paper to prevent it from developing into a bigger and more useful institution than it already is.But one’s heart bleeds for the poor Pharisee when the theatre is mentioned. I remember some Bolton Guardians passionately endeavouring to hinder the little workhouse children from seeing a Christmas pantomime. One asserted that theatres “brought ruin to thousands,” and another that “he could not ask God’s blessing on a child whom he took to the theatre.” Fortunately, there was a majority of sinners among the Guardians, the holy men were defeated and the little children were suffered to see the pantomime.One of the wildest outbursts of fanaticism that I have ever witnessed arose over the licensing of the Palace of Varieties. To anyone who had lived in a healthier and more normal civilisation the affair seemed impossible. For what was the situation? Manchester had a few old-fashioned, out-of-date music-halls and a very large number of singing-halls attached to public-houses—​not the most desirable places of entertainment. The directors of the Palace of Varieties proposed to erect a large modern music-hall and give the best entertainment of that kind that could be given. It was a London company, and, from a business point ofview, it made a mistake in not interesting Manchester men in the company in a business sense. But there was no doubt that such a hall was badly wanted by the general body of citizens, and that the men who were going to run the show would never allow any performance that the average Manchester citizen would not like to see, just as his average London brother did. You would have thought that any citizen of foresight would have welcomed such a change. For years the magistrates and rulers of the city had provided this class of entertainment in most undesirable places, and the complacent Pharisee passed by on the other side; it did not come between the wind and his nobility. But this “centre of vice,” as a prominent Pharisee called it, was to be in the Oxford Road. It was to be open and honest, and that was its offence. The Pharisee knew that the Manchester citizens were evil people, that the music-hall was going to be an evil thing, and, therefore, certain to be popular among evil people, and so he opposed it with a vitality of strenuous abuse that was the admiration of all who take pleasure in such manifestations.The earnestness of the crusade was beyond dispute, and the bed-rock principle of it seemed to be a firm belief in original sin. The youth of Manchester, as I gathered from letters of the protectors of morals, is naturally evil and very prone to vice and immorality. Once it strays from a Sunday school into a music-hall it directly takes to excessive drinking and other immoralities and crime. Theregime of the Sunday school in no way renders the patient immune from these results.In the interests of this hopeful class of youth, said the Pharisee, the music-hall must be shut. The fact that there are a large number of normal, healthy, young citizens who take no harm in music-halls was overlooked. For weeks before the licence was applied for the correspondence rolled on. Letters in favour of the Palace were generally unsigned, as employees whose employers or directors were of the ruling sect had to be cautious.Nearly every church and chapel organisation went against the improvement of music-hall performances. I remember one notable exception. The Rev. W. S. Caiger, rector of St. Mark’s, had the pluck to stand up against the overwhelming torrent of holiness that poured through the newspapers. “Mr. Price-Hughes,” he wrote, “talked of the wickedness of men who make a gain out of the exhibition of ballet girls. A ballet girl who is fairly proficient in her profession is in a far safer moral position than the young girls I watched the other day making flannel shirts at tenpence the dozen.” That was a cap that would have fitted more than one leading Pharisee, but the wearing of it might have obscured his halo.The legal history of the licence is not worth reporting. Licensing by magistrates is not a very exact branch of scientific law. There was the usual canvassing and peaceful picketing by the Pharisees and their opponents. In the first round the formerwon, and one of their leaders called for a “great meeting of united prayer and thanks to God for His divine favour to our city.” I do not think this was held. There was then a larger session. Gully applied, Sir John Harwood was in the chair, and the licence was gained by 33 to 27. Thus on Whit-Monday, 1891, Manchester possessed a first-rate music-hall. Since then others have been built and opened to the general benefit of weary citizens who are fond of innocent amusement. And nowadays the Pharisees sometimes patronise them, and so “all’s well that ends well.”And the whole attitude of mind of the English Pharisee towards the inn and the tavern is the most incomprehensible affair to the average citizen. One would have thought that an endeavour would be made to have the inn a place of cleanliness, beauty, and good repute, where relaxation and bright amusement and music might be a God-send to hard-working people. But generations of magistrates have decreed that the workers are to have their drink surrounded by every discomfort. Magnificent hotels and restaurants with music and dancing are only for the rich. All this is, of course, done in the great cause of temperance, and as Mr. Balfour said, “love of temperance is the polite name for hatred of the publican.” In the upper and middle classes the altered manners of the day in relation to strong drink are not due to shutting down public-houses and degrading those that are left open. Legislation is never likely to achieve any great moralreform, nor are the licensing magistrates, as a rule, administrators of much sweetness or great light.Had they been so I think they would have noticed that in records of English habits and English character the inn stands for nearly as much as the church in the social life of the people. Those of us who have plenty of house room do not quite recognise how an inn may be the one possible meeting-place for friends in hours of recreation. How shortsighted, then, to forbid its expansion, to make it uncomfortable and degrading. In the literature of our country the inn is very rarely spoken of with disrespect. It were easy to quote passage after passage, from the holiest literature to the lightest, of the high place that the inn and what it represents occupies in the minds of the best Englishmen. Licensing magistrates should overhaul their Bibles for the right references, and “when found, turn the leaf down.” Doctor Johnson puts it in a phrase when he says: “No, sir; there is nothing which has yet been contrived by man by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern or inn.” He then repeated with great emotion Shenstone’s lines. The last verse is well remembered:Whoe’er has travelled life’s dull round,Where’er his stages may have been,May sigh to think he still has foundThe warmest welcome at an inn.The spirit of freedom and social comfort that runs through all the English writing about inns is a good thing to foster in itself. And in whose interestis it suppressed? Not in the present-day interests of the working man, but at the behest of the Pharisees, who have added a commandment of their own, “Thou shalt not permit alcohol,” and who believe that they can by associating drink with degradation and discomfort put an end to its use. It was Charles Kingsley who solemnly warned the teetotalers that they were “simply doing the devil’s work.” As he said with much foresight and wisdom, “I dread the spirit of teetotalism, because it will beget that subtlest of sins, spiritual pride and Pharisaism. Its founders, like the first founders of every ascetism may be, and as far as I have conversed with them are, pure, humble, and self-denying men. So were the Fakeers, the first Mohammedan ascetics, the first monks, the first Quakers … but after a few generations the self-avenging Nemesis comes, the evil spirit drops his mask and appears as Pharisaism.”But if he could have lived to see the work of the licensing benches of to-day, how they make it daily more impossible to run an inn or tavern on right lines, bright, respectable, large, airy, and clean, with all reasonable recreations for its patrons, Kingsley would have been able to give the Evil One his due for the work of his adherents. Probably the boldest and best solution of our difficulties would be Free Trade, a high rateable value of premises and reasonable police supervision. There could not, one would think, be a better field for practising Free Trade principles—​if you really believe in them—​than in the trade of our national beverage.It seems little less than a scandal that new licences for experimental purposes are practically unobtainable, and that the working classes are shut out of a fair enjoyment of comfort and decency in tavern accommodation, whilst the supply of luxuriously appointed hotels and restaurants for the upper classes knows no bounds.And there is another new sin that the Pharisee regards with peculiar horror when it manifests itself among the working classes in any of its popular forms—​the sin of gambling. I remember when Bernard Vaughan preached a sermon in Manchester to show that betting was not in itself sinful, the whites of many Nonconformist eyes were turned appealingly to heaven. Heaven gave no sign in the matter, and we may take it the appeal was dismissed. For what can be sounder than the Publican view of this and other matters, namely, that eating, drinking and wagering are not in themselves sinful, but that the sin comes in with the excess. Gluttony, drunkenness and gambling—​if we use the last word only in its expression of excess—​those are the sins; and even a Pharisee would not be too strict about eating, for something like gluttony has ever been attendant upon the profession of piety.For my part, so far from forbidding children to bet, I should teach them how to do it prettily. A round game, say Pope Joan, played for fish—​the engraved mother-of-pearl variety for choice—​at which children learn to lose or win in a sweetly mannered and unselfish way would alwaysmake, I think, a charming moral lesson. I remember my father had strong views about the importance of everyone being taught to bet—​or gamble, if you prefer the word—​in youth. My brother and I had always to play whist against our parents for farthing points—​twopence a bumper—​which had to be paid when we lost out of our own pocket-money, and our fellow-gamblers exacted their winnings to the uttermost farthing.My father himself admitted that this was, for us, excessive gambling, but then there were not in those days many serious financial calls upon our means. I should not care to-day to risk so large a proportion of my weekly income on the hazard of the card. But the point is that if you learn to gamble for definite sums at definite games you can easily content the wagering spirit that is within you without rushing into excess. And think how well it would be if the schools and Universities turned out lads capable of leading their fourth best. Surely a man is a better citizen whose powers of observation have been sufficiently developed to enable him to see a call for trumps, and is not the eleven rule as near to the business of life as the rule in Shelley’s case? At the University a good professor of whist might make his chair self-supporting by playing with his pupils for very moderate points. How few professors do that in classics, theology, or even the sciences. The more the matter is gravely considered the clearer it is that gambling requires educational stimulus rather than legislative restraint.It wants the Publican’s treatment rather than the Pharisee’s.What a far better world it will be for the English workman when he is invited to play his rubber in a neat restaurant after the manner of the Belgian who orders his beer and hisjeu-de-bac, and rattles the dice with noisy merriment on the marble tables. Why should not the municipality set up a sixpenny, or, if you will, a penny totalizer on the racecourse, and abolish the yelling crowd of bookmakers, who by some Pharisaical interpretation of the law are encouraged to carry on their trade upon a racecourse because it is not a place within the meaning of the Act?What moves the Pharisee to roll in the dust and groan about gambling is difficult to understand. For in every business transaction in life there is an element of gambling. When the Chancellor of the Exchequer promotes a great scheme of health insurance he invites his customers, in the phrase of the ring, “to buy money,” and calls out the odds as nine to four on the field. He knows the gambling instinct in mankind, and very properly appeals to it. And, indeed, the gamble is everywhere. Even in the County Court when you pay your hearing fee there is the uncertainty of the law, and the betting is generally against the defendant’s solvency, and you may never get even your original stake out of the pool. What are the odds when the workman buys his grocery or drapery on credit that he will get his money’s worth?I fear there is an element of jealousy in these sermonsagainst gambling. The preachers do not want the working man to gamble with the bookmaker, but to put his money in some insurance or investing society with prominent Pharisees on the board, calling out tempting odds in specious advertisements which the Publican would be too honest to offer. And if there is to be a statute against gambling, let us so draft it and work it as not to kill trivial amusement, but to warn off the course pious directors of fraudulent companies who in prayerful tones commend their wild-cat gambles to the working man.No, the truth is that gambling is to most of us an element of our life, and, like all the other elements, should be used thankfully and wisely, and not in excess. By all means follow Michael’s advice and… well observeThe rule of—​Not too much: by temperance taught,In what thou eat’st and drink’st;and, indeed, in all actions of life. But remember that the rule of “Not too much” can never be exercised by a mere refusal to look the facts of life in the face and run the risks of temptation.I have preached that doctrine to many in Manchester, but I am bound to say, without making many converts. I remember an amusing jest played upon me at the Llandudno Golf Club. I had been laying down the true rule about gambling, and no doubt preaching about it in a somewhat Pharisaical tone, when a member of the committee asked me if I would play a certain ex-mayor of a Midland borough who wasmaking matches of a very gambling and extravagant character with several of the younger visitors.“He will take it from you, Judge. You tell him firmly you are going to have a ball on and nothing more; you can give him your views on gambling, and don’t let him start off on the first tee with a sovereign a hole, or anything of that sort.”“Certainly not,” I said, “I’ll keep him within bounds.”“You just talk to him like you’ve been talking to us,” said my friend. “It will do him good. I’ll tell him you will play him at 10.30 to-morrow.”The Pharisee within me was rampant, and I prepared to dress down the ex-mayor and make him play his best for only half-a-crown.At 10.30 he was on the tee, and I walked out to meet him. He looked a short, thick-set, commonplace citizen with nothing of the gambler about him. But appearances are often deceitful. After a few words of greeting, I thought I would get to work, and said with some emphasis, “I will play you for half-a-crown, sir, and not a penny more.”He looked up astounded, and gasped out, “I beg your pardon, sir.”“Half-a-crown,” I repeated, and to ease his disappointment I added, “I don’t mind a shilling on the bye.”“Sir!” he said, drawing himself up to what height he could and speaking with scornful dignity, “This is a very unseemly joke. I have never made a bet in my life, and I have a poor opinion, sir, ofanyone who wishes to make so fine a game as golf the subject of betting. I am president of our Anti-Gambling League.”With that he drove off a fine drive, and I topped the ball feebly into the rough. From the club-house came the congratulatory laughter of many Publicans at the discomfiture of the Pharisee.It would be wrong indeed if I were to picture Manchester as a city where the most eminent citizens were kill-joys, and where the men wore broad phylacteries in their buttonholes when they went on ‘Change. On the contrary, I speak of the Pharisees as merely a small but powerful element in the community. For in no city were there more men of the world who loved to do good with a merry heart and enjoy the give and take of hospitality with their comrades and brother sinners. Manchester men know how to work hard and play hard. They are early risers, early closers, and early diners. If you were a stranger wandering through the streets after 8 o’clock in the evening, you would think you were in a deserted city; but put your head into the Free Trade Hall, and it will be packed for a concert; ask for a seat in one of the popular music-halls or a cinematograph show, and you may not get one; you will even find people at the theatre—​quite a throng if it is a musical comedy—​such a varied taste has Manchester in entertainment.But if you want a really delightful evening go and dine with one of the societies or clubs whose annual dinner is being held at one of Manchester’s best inns.It may be the Statistical Society or the Playgoers Club or the Edinburgh Academicals, but it will not really matter. For whether it be statistics or drama or scholarship, I can promise you both fun and good fellowship. And I say this with honest certainty, that there never was a more hospitable place than Manchester, and there never were public dinners with less dulness and boredom about them. I don’t know that the after-dinner speaking was any better than it is in other places, but there was a jollity and abandon about it difficult to convey in writing, though pleasant enough to remember.Sir John William Maclure was always a great figure at a banquet, both literally and physically as well as socially, and ready enough he was either to take a jest at his own expense in good part or to pink his adversary with an epigram. I remember one excellent score he made off myself. Maclure was the acknowledged impresario of the Tory party, and was rather proud of the fact. He used to deny with mock-modest emphasis that every appointment of recent years was made through his influence. “But very nearly so!” he added. It was at a grand jury dinner, where I sat next Sir Joseph Leese, the Recorder of Manchester, and in proposing Sir William Maclure’s health I taunted him with the discomfort he must feel on seeing Leese and myself present, and knowing that we were the only two jobs in Lancashire with which he had had nothing to do.“Ah!” said the genial baronet as he finished his reply, “it is correct, and it is a sad truth, no doubt greatly regretted in Lancashire, that I had nothing to do with the appointment of the present Recorder or the present County Court Judge. I have the greatest respect for those two gentlemen, but I must correct his Honour in one particular. He referred, no doubt in jest, to the two appointments as two jobs. May I put him right? Sir Joseph Leese’s appointment was not a job.”In his more expansive humour, Sir John William was quite Falstaffian in his addresses. I remember at a dinner given by a Society of Accountants to which he had come from London, he expatiated on the difficulties he had had in coming down at all. “I must tell you, gentlemen, that Mr. Balfour said to me, ‘Sir John, it is impossible to carry on the House if you leave us.’ ‘But, sir,’ I said, ‘I have to dine with the Manchester accountants.’ ‘Ah,’ said Mr. Balfour, ‘then I won’t keep you; but tell that excellent body from me how much I admire them.’ (Great cheering.) But that is not all, gentlemen. In Westminster Hall I met Lord Salisbury, and I had the greatest difficulty to get away from him. He wanted me to come down to Hatfield with him. I said, ‘What, my lord, and break my word to the Manchester accountants?’ ‘No,’ said Lord Salisbury, ‘of course you mustn’t, but I tell you what you must do; you must tell them from me that without accountancy the nation would be ruined.’ (More cheering.) But, gentlemen,it did not end there, for at the railway station I found there was a special train just going to Sandringham. I was sent for, and the Prince of Wales was gracious enough to request me to come down and spend Sunday with him. ‘Sir,’ I said, ‘such a kind request is a command, but I have promised to be with the Manchester accountants to-night.’ ‘Not another word, Maclure,’ said the Prince. ‘Keep your appointment, and tell the Manchester accountants that in my view they are the backbone of the nation.’” (Long and continued cheering.)Later in the evening a speaker of no particular account, who spoke in a diffident, somewhat halting way, said he did not move in the select circles that Sir John William Maclure did, “but,” he continued, “I happen to know on the highest authority the regard in which he is held by the greatest in the land. I was strolling in the gardens in Windsor the other day, and a Scots servant in a kilt came up and asked me if I came from Manchester. I said I did. ‘And do you know Sir John William Maclure?’ ‘Very well,’ I replied. ‘Come with me then,’ he said, and he led me into a beautiful drawing-room in the Palace, in which I found I was in the presence of Royalty itself. After a courteous greeting I was asked what I knew about Sir John William Maclure. I drew a noble picture of all the virtues and attainments which endear him to Manchester men. When I had finished, the gracious lady said, with a sigh of relief: ‘You have taken a great loadoff my mind, for I was not at all sure that he was a good companion for Albert Edward.’”Fair play for Maclure, he enjoyed the chaff as much as anyone. And that was one of the happy traits of after-dinner in Manchester—​everyone was there, like a schoolboy, to make fun or take fun in good part. And, perhaps, the most admirable feature of the whole thing was that even if there were reporters present, they were always clever enough to pick out the sense of the speeches, and leave the wilder flights of humour to the pleasures of memory.Alas, John William’s jovial face smiles at us no longer, and too many of the good fellows who were guests at the board are shadows of memory. But fond as I was of the older days, and loyal as I am to the memory of the older men, I am not going to praise yesterday at the expense of to-day. I think the same right spirit of enjoyment still holds good, and I hope it will always be true to say that no one will find himself in touch with Manchester who cannot thoroughly enter into that “joyous folly that unbends the mind,” which is Manchester’s habit after dinner.

Oh Lord! Thou kens what zeal I bear,When drinkers drink, and swearers swear,And singing there, and dancing here,Wi’ great and sma’;For I am keepit by thy fear,Free frae them a’.Burns: “Holy Willie’s Prayer.”

Oh Lord! Thou kens what zeal I bear,When drinkers drink, and swearers swear,And singing there, and dancing here,Wi’ great and sma’;For I am keepit by thy fear,Free frae them a’.Burns: “Holy Willie’s Prayer.”

Oh Lord! Thou kens what zeal I bear,

When drinkers drink, and swearers swear,

And singing there, and dancing here,

Wi’ great and sma’;

For I am keepit by thy fear,

Free frae them a’.

Burns: “Holy Willie’s Prayer.”

When I was a small boy I liked above all things the stories about Pharisees and Publicans. Pharisees, I think, were connoted in my mind with schoolmasters. Publicans, on the other hand, were a mysterious, jovial people given to gluttony and wine-bibbing. The latter I knew nothing about, but the gluttony I forgave. I remember a pang of disappointment when I discovered in older years that Publicans were connected with the Inland Revenue.

In China I believe nearly all morals are imparted by means of fables, and it is the story-telling department of our early teaching that leaves us with something tangible which we can use in after life as a bobbin whereon to wind the weft of our own thoughts. And this distinction of Pharisee and Publican remains with me so far a reality as to stand for something which the words themselves of course do not mean. They are convenient symbols for the class who want mankind to walk along thepath of mechanical obedience, and the class who are out to realise the best the world can give; the class who condemn themselves and their fellow-creatures as miserable sinners, and the class who not only love to be merry and wise, but are ready to sink a certain amount of wisdom in the interests of merriment. William Fisher, of Mauchline, was a typical Pharisee, and Robert Burns, who immortalised him, was the greatest of the Publicans.

And though I agree that there is no historical fitness in my use of the term Publican, I think the Pharisee is a continuing social type and probably as eternal as the hills themselves. That is to say, it will require some new geological period to shake him off the earth, and he will not depart until he can no longer be of service to the world. For my more recent reading about the Pharisee has led me to modify my childish imaginings. To-day I have a great respect for the Pharisee. I have learned that with all his faults he was a very respectable, classy Israelite. He knew that he was set apart from the common herd, and he was proud to be an abstainer and ascetic, as if these things were good in themselves. His ideal of life was to have a lot of meddling, fussy laws of outward conduct, and not only to obey them scrupulously himself, but to persecute others who did not. Not an amiable character, perhaps, but at least sincere and honest. Moreover, he knew no better. Whether there was the same excuse for the Pharisee of Manchester in the year of our Lord eighteen hundred and ninety is a doubtful point.

Not that I would like to see—​or am likely to see—​a city bereft of Pharisees. A few to sanctify and give general tone and outward respectability are as necessary to Manchester as lace curtains to a suburban villa. My grumble is that in Manchester there are too many Pharisees to the square yard. They capture and run organisations that were made for better things. They make it impossible for the average wicked citizen to take part in their good works, they bring disrepute upon the city by their vagaries on the house-tops, and they rouse up a great deal of hatred, malice, and uncharitableness in fighting with great ability and vehemence against the right of the harmless, necessary citizen to amuse himself in his harmless, necessary way.

Many will remember an historic quarrel between two old friends who were engaged in very doubtful municipal transactions, and how they made it up in a Wesleyan chapel, and one put £50 in the plate as a token of regret for having uttered naughty words about the other. By the more respectable class of Manchester that action was regarded as being a natural and right expression of apology. If it was earnest and sincere it had a folk-lore resemblance, I suppose, to the sacrifice, or burnt offering. By the elect it was quoted as a very beautiful act of retribution. To one like myself, outside the circle, it was not perhaps actual evidence of conspiracy to commit fraud, but it was at least a beacon light warning of a dangerous shore. I remember prosecuting an embezzler at Lancaster who always prayedwith his victims before he took their money. Whalley, the famous Blackburn solicitor, who swindled his hundreds, was a famous prayer-monger, and in all those doubtful societies and associations which are so popular in Lancashire, and through which the savings of the working class are transferred to the pockets of their elders and betters, there is generally a halo of holiness surrounding prominent members of the board. And as long as popular opinion is in favour of the Pharisee, and will invest in his business concerns because he is a Pharisee, so long Manchester, with its simple, saving working class, is bound to have more than her fair share of the race.

It has been a very interesting occupation with me during the last twenty-five years to watch the constant dispute between the Pharisee and the average citizen, and though the contest is by no means over yet, I am glad to be able to chronicle that up to now the Pharisee is several down. And that phrase reminds me of his attitude towards Sunday golf. The Pharisee, of course, did not want to play golf on Sunday, but a large majority of golfing citizens did, therefore it was an evil thing to do, and they must be protected against themselves. At one club where a meeting was held and feeling ran rather high, a humorist moved as an amendment “That Sunday golf be not compulsory.” The leading Pharisee—​the sect have no sense of humour—​protested eloquently that no body of men could compel him to play golf. The humorist drily pointed out to him that a careful reading of the proposed rule wouldshow that they did not intend to compel him. Then, amidst laughter and cheers, it became a rule of the club, and, as far as I know, it is a rule to this day.

What an excellent, sane rule it is. Your Pharisee is always compelling you not to do this and not to do the other. What a calm, dignified way of meeting him—​to place on record the common law of the land that Sunday golf is not compulsory. Of course, Sunday golf won all along the line, one reason being that golf is a rich man’s amusement, and that young Master Pharisee, when he was down from Oxford, would have a round with his friends on Sunday afternoon, and that made the governor’s position peculiarly ridiculous. But wait until the working classes demand their outdoor amusements on the Sabbath, and you will see a gathering of the sect worthy of Manchester in the palmiest days of Pharisaism.

The fight over the Sunday papers had been fought and won before I came to Manchester, but I remember a little skirmish started by Canon Nunn in the form of a protest made against the boys shouting papers on Sunday. Now, town noises are most people’s aversion, and if this had been a real attack on unnecessary noise it would have been reasonable enough. But it did not seek to stop Church bells or boys shouting papers on Monday or Tuesday, and was really only an effort to inconvenience those who preferred to read the sermons of Hubert by their own fireside rather than to listen to the parsons in an uncomfortable church. The Sundaypaper is not, perhaps, the highest ideal of journalism, but it is to many the only newspaper of their week. It is to the discredit of the Pharisee that he has put every obstacle in the way of the Sunday paper to prevent it from developing into a bigger and more useful institution than it already is.

But one’s heart bleeds for the poor Pharisee when the theatre is mentioned. I remember some Bolton Guardians passionately endeavouring to hinder the little workhouse children from seeing a Christmas pantomime. One asserted that theatres “brought ruin to thousands,” and another that “he could not ask God’s blessing on a child whom he took to the theatre.” Fortunately, there was a majority of sinners among the Guardians, the holy men were defeated and the little children were suffered to see the pantomime.

One of the wildest outbursts of fanaticism that I have ever witnessed arose over the licensing of the Palace of Varieties. To anyone who had lived in a healthier and more normal civilisation the affair seemed impossible. For what was the situation? Manchester had a few old-fashioned, out-of-date music-halls and a very large number of singing-halls attached to public-houses—​not the most desirable places of entertainment. The directors of the Palace of Varieties proposed to erect a large modern music-hall and give the best entertainment of that kind that could be given. It was a London company, and, from a business point ofview, it made a mistake in not interesting Manchester men in the company in a business sense. But there was no doubt that such a hall was badly wanted by the general body of citizens, and that the men who were going to run the show would never allow any performance that the average Manchester citizen would not like to see, just as his average London brother did. You would have thought that any citizen of foresight would have welcomed such a change. For years the magistrates and rulers of the city had provided this class of entertainment in most undesirable places, and the complacent Pharisee passed by on the other side; it did not come between the wind and his nobility. But this “centre of vice,” as a prominent Pharisee called it, was to be in the Oxford Road. It was to be open and honest, and that was its offence. The Pharisee knew that the Manchester citizens were evil people, that the music-hall was going to be an evil thing, and, therefore, certain to be popular among evil people, and so he opposed it with a vitality of strenuous abuse that was the admiration of all who take pleasure in such manifestations.

The earnestness of the crusade was beyond dispute, and the bed-rock principle of it seemed to be a firm belief in original sin. The youth of Manchester, as I gathered from letters of the protectors of morals, is naturally evil and very prone to vice and immorality. Once it strays from a Sunday school into a music-hall it directly takes to excessive drinking and other immoralities and crime. Theregime of the Sunday school in no way renders the patient immune from these results.

In the interests of this hopeful class of youth, said the Pharisee, the music-hall must be shut. The fact that there are a large number of normal, healthy, young citizens who take no harm in music-halls was overlooked. For weeks before the licence was applied for the correspondence rolled on. Letters in favour of the Palace were generally unsigned, as employees whose employers or directors were of the ruling sect had to be cautious.

Nearly every church and chapel organisation went against the improvement of music-hall performances. I remember one notable exception. The Rev. W. S. Caiger, rector of St. Mark’s, had the pluck to stand up against the overwhelming torrent of holiness that poured through the newspapers. “Mr. Price-Hughes,” he wrote, “talked of the wickedness of men who make a gain out of the exhibition of ballet girls. A ballet girl who is fairly proficient in her profession is in a far safer moral position than the young girls I watched the other day making flannel shirts at tenpence the dozen.” That was a cap that would have fitted more than one leading Pharisee, but the wearing of it might have obscured his halo.

The legal history of the licence is not worth reporting. Licensing by magistrates is not a very exact branch of scientific law. There was the usual canvassing and peaceful picketing by the Pharisees and their opponents. In the first round the formerwon, and one of their leaders called for a “great meeting of united prayer and thanks to God for His divine favour to our city.” I do not think this was held. There was then a larger session. Gully applied, Sir John Harwood was in the chair, and the licence was gained by 33 to 27. Thus on Whit-Monday, 1891, Manchester possessed a first-rate music-hall. Since then others have been built and opened to the general benefit of weary citizens who are fond of innocent amusement. And nowadays the Pharisees sometimes patronise them, and so “all’s well that ends well.”

And the whole attitude of mind of the English Pharisee towards the inn and the tavern is the most incomprehensible affair to the average citizen. One would have thought that an endeavour would be made to have the inn a place of cleanliness, beauty, and good repute, where relaxation and bright amusement and music might be a God-send to hard-working people. But generations of magistrates have decreed that the workers are to have their drink surrounded by every discomfort. Magnificent hotels and restaurants with music and dancing are only for the rich. All this is, of course, done in the great cause of temperance, and as Mr. Balfour said, “love of temperance is the polite name for hatred of the publican.” In the upper and middle classes the altered manners of the day in relation to strong drink are not due to shutting down public-houses and degrading those that are left open. Legislation is never likely to achieve any great moralreform, nor are the licensing magistrates, as a rule, administrators of much sweetness or great light.

Had they been so I think they would have noticed that in records of English habits and English character the inn stands for nearly as much as the church in the social life of the people. Those of us who have plenty of house room do not quite recognise how an inn may be the one possible meeting-place for friends in hours of recreation. How shortsighted, then, to forbid its expansion, to make it uncomfortable and degrading. In the literature of our country the inn is very rarely spoken of with disrespect. It were easy to quote passage after passage, from the holiest literature to the lightest, of the high place that the inn and what it represents occupies in the minds of the best Englishmen. Licensing magistrates should overhaul their Bibles for the right references, and “when found, turn the leaf down.” Doctor Johnson puts it in a phrase when he says: “No, sir; there is nothing which has yet been contrived by man by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern or inn.” He then repeated with great emotion Shenstone’s lines. The last verse is well remembered:

Whoe’er has travelled life’s dull round,Where’er his stages may have been,May sigh to think he still has foundThe warmest welcome at an inn.

Whoe’er has travelled life’s dull round,Where’er his stages may have been,May sigh to think he still has foundThe warmest welcome at an inn.

Whoe’er has travelled life’s dull round,

Where’er his stages may have been,

May sigh to think he still has found

The warmest welcome at an inn.

The spirit of freedom and social comfort that runs through all the English writing about inns is a good thing to foster in itself. And in whose interestis it suppressed? Not in the present-day interests of the working man, but at the behest of the Pharisees, who have added a commandment of their own, “Thou shalt not permit alcohol,” and who believe that they can by associating drink with degradation and discomfort put an end to its use. It was Charles Kingsley who solemnly warned the teetotalers that they were “simply doing the devil’s work.” As he said with much foresight and wisdom, “I dread the spirit of teetotalism, because it will beget that subtlest of sins, spiritual pride and Pharisaism. Its founders, like the first founders of every ascetism may be, and as far as I have conversed with them are, pure, humble, and self-denying men. So were the Fakeers, the first Mohammedan ascetics, the first monks, the first Quakers … but after a few generations the self-avenging Nemesis comes, the evil spirit drops his mask and appears as Pharisaism.”

But if he could have lived to see the work of the licensing benches of to-day, how they make it daily more impossible to run an inn or tavern on right lines, bright, respectable, large, airy, and clean, with all reasonable recreations for its patrons, Kingsley would have been able to give the Evil One his due for the work of his adherents. Probably the boldest and best solution of our difficulties would be Free Trade, a high rateable value of premises and reasonable police supervision. There could not, one would think, be a better field for practising Free Trade principles—​if you really believe in them—​than in the trade of our national beverage.It seems little less than a scandal that new licences for experimental purposes are practically unobtainable, and that the working classes are shut out of a fair enjoyment of comfort and decency in tavern accommodation, whilst the supply of luxuriously appointed hotels and restaurants for the upper classes knows no bounds.

And there is another new sin that the Pharisee regards with peculiar horror when it manifests itself among the working classes in any of its popular forms—​the sin of gambling. I remember when Bernard Vaughan preached a sermon in Manchester to show that betting was not in itself sinful, the whites of many Nonconformist eyes were turned appealingly to heaven. Heaven gave no sign in the matter, and we may take it the appeal was dismissed. For what can be sounder than the Publican view of this and other matters, namely, that eating, drinking and wagering are not in themselves sinful, but that the sin comes in with the excess. Gluttony, drunkenness and gambling—​if we use the last word only in its expression of excess—​those are the sins; and even a Pharisee would not be too strict about eating, for something like gluttony has ever been attendant upon the profession of piety.

For my part, so far from forbidding children to bet, I should teach them how to do it prettily. A round game, say Pope Joan, played for fish—​the engraved mother-of-pearl variety for choice—​at which children learn to lose or win in a sweetly mannered and unselfish way would alwaysmake, I think, a charming moral lesson. I remember my father had strong views about the importance of everyone being taught to bet—​or gamble, if you prefer the word—​in youth. My brother and I had always to play whist against our parents for farthing points—​twopence a bumper—​which had to be paid when we lost out of our own pocket-money, and our fellow-gamblers exacted their winnings to the uttermost farthing.

My father himself admitted that this was, for us, excessive gambling, but then there were not in those days many serious financial calls upon our means. I should not care to-day to risk so large a proportion of my weekly income on the hazard of the card. But the point is that if you learn to gamble for definite sums at definite games you can easily content the wagering spirit that is within you without rushing into excess. And think how well it would be if the schools and Universities turned out lads capable of leading their fourth best. Surely a man is a better citizen whose powers of observation have been sufficiently developed to enable him to see a call for trumps, and is not the eleven rule as near to the business of life as the rule in Shelley’s case? At the University a good professor of whist might make his chair self-supporting by playing with his pupils for very moderate points. How few professors do that in classics, theology, or even the sciences. The more the matter is gravely considered the clearer it is that gambling requires educational stimulus rather than legislative restraint.It wants the Publican’s treatment rather than the Pharisee’s.

What a far better world it will be for the English workman when he is invited to play his rubber in a neat restaurant after the manner of the Belgian who orders his beer and hisjeu-de-bac, and rattles the dice with noisy merriment on the marble tables. Why should not the municipality set up a sixpenny, or, if you will, a penny totalizer on the racecourse, and abolish the yelling crowd of bookmakers, who by some Pharisaical interpretation of the law are encouraged to carry on their trade upon a racecourse because it is not a place within the meaning of the Act?

What moves the Pharisee to roll in the dust and groan about gambling is difficult to understand. For in every business transaction in life there is an element of gambling. When the Chancellor of the Exchequer promotes a great scheme of health insurance he invites his customers, in the phrase of the ring, “to buy money,” and calls out the odds as nine to four on the field. He knows the gambling instinct in mankind, and very properly appeals to it. And, indeed, the gamble is everywhere. Even in the County Court when you pay your hearing fee there is the uncertainty of the law, and the betting is generally against the defendant’s solvency, and you may never get even your original stake out of the pool. What are the odds when the workman buys his grocery or drapery on credit that he will get his money’s worth?

I fear there is an element of jealousy in these sermonsagainst gambling. The preachers do not want the working man to gamble with the bookmaker, but to put his money in some insurance or investing society with prominent Pharisees on the board, calling out tempting odds in specious advertisements which the Publican would be too honest to offer. And if there is to be a statute against gambling, let us so draft it and work it as not to kill trivial amusement, but to warn off the course pious directors of fraudulent companies who in prayerful tones commend their wild-cat gambles to the working man.

No, the truth is that gambling is to most of us an element of our life, and, like all the other elements, should be used thankfully and wisely, and not in excess. By all means follow Michael’s advice and

… well observeThe rule of—​Not too much: by temperance taught,In what thou eat’st and drink’st;

… well observeThe rule of—​Not too much: by temperance taught,In what thou eat’st and drink’st;

… well observe

The rule of—​Not too much: by temperance taught,

In what thou eat’st and drink’st;

and, indeed, in all actions of life. But remember that the rule of “Not too much” can never be exercised by a mere refusal to look the facts of life in the face and run the risks of temptation.

I have preached that doctrine to many in Manchester, but I am bound to say, without making many converts. I remember an amusing jest played upon me at the Llandudno Golf Club. I had been laying down the true rule about gambling, and no doubt preaching about it in a somewhat Pharisaical tone, when a member of the committee asked me if I would play a certain ex-mayor of a Midland borough who wasmaking matches of a very gambling and extravagant character with several of the younger visitors.

“He will take it from you, Judge. You tell him firmly you are going to have a ball on and nothing more; you can give him your views on gambling, and don’t let him start off on the first tee with a sovereign a hole, or anything of that sort.”

“Certainly not,” I said, “I’ll keep him within bounds.”

“You just talk to him like you’ve been talking to us,” said my friend. “It will do him good. I’ll tell him you will play him at 10.30 to-morrow.”

The Pharisee within me was rampant, and I prepared to dress down the ex-mayor and make him play his best for only half-a-crown.

At 10.30 he was on the tee, and I walked out to meet him. He looked a short, thick-set, commonplace citizen with nothing of the gambler about him. But appearances are often deceitful. After a few words of greeting, I thought I would get to work, and said with some emphasis, “I will play you for half-a-crown, sir, and not a penny more.”

He looked up astounded, and gasped out, “I beg your pardon, sir.”

“Half-a-crown,” I repeated, and to ease his disappointment I added, “I don’t mind a shilling on the bye.”

“Sir!” he said, drawing himself up to what height he could and speaking with scornful dignity, “This is a very unseemly joke. I have never made a bet in my life, and I have a poor opinion, sir, ofanyone who wishes to make so fine a game as golf the subject of betting. I am president of our Anti-Gambling League.”

With that he drove off a fine drive, and I topped the ball feebly into the rough. From the club-house came the congratulatory laughter of many Publicans at the discomfiture of the Pharisee.

It would be wrong indeed if I were to picture Manchester as a city where the most eminent citizens were kill-joys, and where the men wore broad phylacteries in their buttonholes when they went on ‘Change. On the contrary, I speak of the Pharisees as merely a small but powerful element in the community. For in no city were there more men of the world who loved to do good with a merry heart and enjoy the give and take of hospitality with their comrades and brother sinners. Manchester men know how to work hard and play hard. They are early risers, early closers, and early diners. If you were a stranger wandering through the streets after 8 o’clock in the evening, you would think you were in a deserted city; but put your head into the Free Trade Hall, and it will be packed for a concert; ask for a seat in one of the popular music-halls or a cinematograph show, and you may not get one; you will even find people at the theatre—​quite a throng if it is a musical comedy—​such a varied taste has Manchester in entertainment.

But if you want a really delightful evening go and dine with one of the societies or clubs whose annual dinner is being held at one of Manchester’s best inns.It may be the Statistical Society or the Playgoers Club or the Edinburgh Academicals, but it will not really matter. For whether it be statistics or drama or scholarship, I can promise you both fun and good fellowship. And I say this with honest certainty, that there never was a more hospitable place than Manchester, and there never were public dinners with less dulness and boredom about them. I don’t know that the after-dinner speaking was any better than it is in other places, but there was a jollity and abandon about it difficult to convey in writing, though pleasant enough to remember.

Sir John William Maclure was always a great figure at a banquet, both literally and physically as well as socially, and ready enough he was either to take a jest at his own expense in good part or to pink his adversary with an epigram. I remember one excellent score he made off myself. Maclure was the acknowledged impresario of the Tory party, and was rather proud of the fact. He used to deny with mock-modest emphasis that every appointment of recent years was made through his influence. “But very nearly so!” he added. It was at a grand jury dinner, where I sat next Sir Joseph Leese, the Recorder of Manchester, and in proposing Sir William Maclure’s health I taunted him with the discomfort he must feel on seeing Leese and myself present, and knowing that we were the only two jobs in Lancashire with which he had had nothing to do.

“Ah!” said the genial baronet as he finished his reply, “it is correct, and it is a sad truth, no doubt greatly regretted in Lancashire, that I had nothing to do with the appointment of the present Recorder or the present County Court Judge. I have the greatest respect for those two gentlemen, but I must correct his Honour in one particular. He referred, no doubt in jest, to the two appointments as two jobs. May I put him right? Sir Joseph Leese’s appointment was not a job.”

In his more expansive humour, Sir John William was quite Falstaffian in his addresses. I remember at a dinner given by a Society of Accountants to which he had come from London, he expatiated on the difficulties he had had in coming down at all. “I must tell you, gentlemen, that Mr. Balfour said to me, ‘Sir John, it is impossible to carry on the House if you leave us.’ ‘But, sir,’ I said, ‘I have to dine with the Manchester accountants.’ ‘Ah,’ said Mr. Balfour, ‘then I won’t keep you; but tell that excellent body from me how much I admire them.’ (Great cheering.) But that is not all, gentlemen. In Westminster Hall I met Lord Salisbury, and I had the greatest difficulty to get away from him. He wanted me to come down to Hatfield with him. I said, ‘What, my lord, and break my word to the Manchester accountants?’ ‘No,’ said Lord Salisbury, ‘of course you mustn’t, but I tell you what you must do; you must tell them from me that without accountancy the nation would be ruined.’ (More cheering.) But, gentlemen,it did not end there, for at the railway station I found there was a special train just going to Sandringham. I was sent for, and the Prince of Wales was gracious enough to request me to come down and spend Sunday with him. ‘Sir,’ I said, ‘such a kind request is a command, but I have promised to be with the Manchester accountants to-night.’ ‘Not another word, Maclure,’ said the Prince. ‘Keep your appointment, and tell the Manchester accountants that in my view they are the backbone of the nation.’” (Long and continued cheering.)

Later in the evening a speaker of no particular account, who spoke in a diffident, somewhat halting way, said he did not move in the select circles that Sir John William Maclure did, “but,” he continued, “I happen to know on the highest authority the regard in which he is held by the greatest in the land. I was strolling in the gardens in Windsor the other day, and a Scots servant in a kilt came up and asked me if I came from Manchester. I said I did. ‘And do you know Sir John William Maclure?’ ‘Very well,’ I replied. ‘Come with me then,’ he said, and he led me into a beautiful drawing-room in the Palace, in which I found I was in the presence of Royalty itself. After a courteous greeting I was asked what I knew about Sir John William Maclure. I drew a noble picture of all the virtues and attainments which endear him to Manchester men. When I had finished, the gracious lady said, with a sigh of relief: ‘You have taken a great loadoff my mind, for I was not at all sure that he was a good companion for Albert Edward.’”

Fair play for Maclure, he enjoyed the chaff as much as anyone. And that was one of the happy traits of after-dinner in Manchester—​everyone was there, like a schoolboy, to make fun or take fun in good part. And, perhaps, the most admirable feature of the whole thing was that even if there were reporters present, they were always clever enough to pick out the sense of the speeches, and leave the wilder flights of humour to the pleasures of memory.

Alas, John William’s jovial face smiles at us no longer, and too many of the good fellows who were guests at the board are shadows of memory. But fond as I was of the older days, and loyal as I am to the memory of the older men, I am not going to praise yesterday at the expense of to-day. I think the same right spirit of enjoyment still holds good, and I hope it will always be true to say that no one will find himself in touch with Manchester who cannot thoroughly enter into that “joyous folly that unbends the mind,” which is Manchester’s habit after dinner.

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