Newman attributes this present method of deciding war or peace by means of the Cabinet, rather than the voice of the people as expressed by their representatives in assembled Parliament, to the "anomaly of the East Indian Empire." Then, when the Board of Control was formed in 1784, "the orders to make, or not to make war, went out direct from the Board of Control; that is, really, from the ministry in Downing Street. Two, or even one, resolute man had power to make war without check." The fatal war with Afghanistan in the eighteen-thirties which cost us so dear in the matter of men and fame, was settled in England by "secret orders of two or three executive officers of the Queen, without previous debate in Parliament." It is necessary to remember, when thinking of the barbarisms which war brought in its train, not a hundred years ago, that what Newman calls, very justly, "the atrocious system" of paying our soldiers and sailors head-money for the numbers killed by them, was only done away with about sixty years ago.

But it is impossible even to touch here upon the unthinkable miseries which are inevitably suffered by thousands of innocent men, women, and children whenever that Barbarism of Civilization, War, marches through a land. Apart from all the devastation that marks its advent, no one can know how indescribably far the real moral and industrial progress of civilization is retarded by even what we consider a small war. As Newman says: "No one can wonder at the rise and progress of an opinion that war is essentially an immoral state."

In connection with Punishments as understood in England, and Penal Reformation, [Footnote: Corporal Punishments and Penal Reformation, Francis Newman, 1865.] he owns that "it has hitherto been most difficult to discover what due punishment of felony will not demoralize the felon." And of course, undoubtedly, that is the crux of the whole matter. But there is no one in England to-day but will agree that some change in our prison system is imperatively needed. Only the other day a woman, thoroughly qualified to judge, declared that the inevitable effect of prison life on women was to make them lose their self-respect. It was a degradation and nothing else. Now a punishment practically loses its whole point if it is simply a lowering, without any building up; while apart from any other considerations, to herd, without due specialization, a number of criminals and misdemeanants (for that last is the true description of very many who are punished by this system of incarceration) tends, in many instances, to increase, by "evil communications," the numbers of those who are in for a first offence only, and would not, but for the enforced bad influence of others in prison, offend again. Newman's conclusion of the whole matter as regards prisons is irrefragable: "In order to prevent crime, the institutions which generate crime must be remodelled." He urges upon the nation's consideration that for a great many cases which now fill our prisons (thereby adding enormously to the national expenses) there is a very simple punishment, which has been condemned from many modern points of view as being degrading to the sufferers and brutalizing to the inflictors.

"The infliction of flogging," he argues, undeniably answers in these cases, both as a sharp and effectual punishment, and also as a deterrent from future misdoing. "To us it appears an obvious certainty, that whatever punishment is believed to be righteous—whether the whipping of a child, the shooting of a soldier, the constraint of the treadmill, or whatever else—is wholly free from the least tendency to brutalize the officers who inflict it." As to the wisdom of this statement, one would think, there could be no question. He quotes our old laws as regards the practising of public floggings, and adds, "We cannot hesitate to believe that all outrages on women ought to be punished by the severest whippings.... Dastardly offences against the weak and the weaker sex eminently call for this punishment; and in such offences may be included the seduction of a woman." That offences against the body should be visited by punishment on the body is beyond all doubt just. Had we been in the past, or were we at the present moment, as eager as we ought to be for defence, for justice, to be given to the citizeness as equally as to the citizen, there would not be so many wrongs done to the weaker sex as now is the case in England. Newman strongly condemns long sentences and transportation, not so much on account of the prisoner, (though for him the long term of "doing time" with other criminals exercises in most cases a distinct low moral tone upon himself) as on account of his wife and family, if he is married. These people are left without news of him, and without their legal means of subsistence during his absence. His wife often indeed, practically becomes a pauper.

"It is vain to talk of the evil of 'degrading' a criminal by flogging him, if we degrade him by penal labour, subjecting him to a very ignominious and tedious slavery. It is vain to say that whipping demoralizes, until we have a system of effective and severe punishment, clearly free from this danger.... A felon destined to long penal servitude cannot fulfil a father's duties, and no one is so weak as to imagine that his commands concerning his children deserve respect.

* * * * *

Legislation must deliberately study this problem, not wink at it." [Footnote: Corporal Punishments and Penal Reformation.]

Perhaps when it does, something more stringent will be determined on concerning our regulations as regards the marriage of criminals: those with insanity or inherited disease strongly marked on their family records; and those who have shown the tendency to the latter in their own persons.



CHAPTER XIII

SOME LEGISLATIVE REFORMS SUGGESTED BY LECTURE AND ARTICLE

Fifty years ago Newman was cutting and polishing his diamond scheme of legislative decentralization till its facets flashed to the lighted intellects of the world a thousand messages—a thousand clear-cut suggestions for the welfare of his country and the betterment of its legislation, as he firmly believed. He was never tired of urging it on the notice of his fellow men, never tired of pleading for it as a solution of many social difficulties, as a setting of many dislocations of our local systems. Perhaps there was no more earnest apostle of decentralization than was Francis Newman. But at the same time, to be fair to him, it should be said that, first, he threw light upon the old paths, and, secondly, showed where modern obstructions lay which seemed to him to hinder true progress. At all costs the fact must be kept well in view, he believed, that the paths were made for the men, not the men for the paths —a fact which is not always so well remembered as it should be to-day. Fifty years ago he published an article in Fraser's Magazine on "Functions of an Upper House of Parliament." Eight years later he gave a brilliant lecture [Footnote: In the Athenaeum, Manchester.] on "Reorganizations of English Institutions." In this last he touched only briefly upon the former subject because of a notice by the metaphysical railings of his lecture that he was "to keep to the path," and not speak trenchantly on the question of the Upper House, because it would not have found an appreciative audience there!

To begin, however, first upon the article which came out in 1867. He affirmed that the House of Lords does, by its veto, exercise a very powerful, though unseen, influence over the administration of the country. He insisted on the urgent need of its becoming "a real, supreme, judicial court for maintaining the rights of the princes of India, and an authoritative expounder of the treaties which have passed between us and them." It will be seen why this step is called for when we recall the fact that in 1833 the Home Government signed a treaty in which it was definitely agreed that the professions in India should be open to the natives—a promise which has never been kept.

Newman goes on to say, "Until India can have its own Parliament, it needs to find in England such protection as only our own Upper House can give it." He places before us the possibility of economizing the time—to-day so terribly overcrowded—of the House of Commons by letting domestic legislation, "which is in no immediate relation to executive necessities," proceed from the Upper House. That in that House it could be so adapted and so regulated, that when it came back finally to the House of Commons no otherwise inevitable delay need occur. Thus "the Commons would have for their chief business Bills connected with immediate administrative exigencies, and private Bills would be cast upon local legislatures" (a measure for which he was, as we know, constantly pleading). He reminds us that the Roman executive was successful and prompt in the methods at which they aimed, because "the Senate guided and controlled it, prescribed the policy and required the execution."

In his "Reorganization of English Institutions" he insists very strongly on the great need of such a scheme of decentralization as the formation of Provincial Chambers—in other words, the dividing the country into local government centres which should send delegates, chosen delegates of tried men, "virtually its ambassadors to Parliament, with instructions and a proper salary, for a three years' term; but reserving the power to recall any delegate earlier by a two-thirds vote, and to replace him, like an ambassador, by a successor." Now, here comes in Newman's proposed drastic change—a change which, in the opinion of those of us who have seen at close focus the evils of our present system of canvassing for votes, could not be condemned as a change for the worse.

For each delegate sent up to Parliament "would be elected without candidacy and without expense ... confusion and intrigue would be lessened.... There would be no convulsive interruptions of public business." Many questions very naturally rise in our minds when we fairly face this plan. Newman feels so confident, besides, that it would "settle our harassing Irish difficulties."

The "old institutions of the shires are known only to students of ancient law," says Mr. Toulmin Smith, one of the greatest authorities of his country's old records, documents, etc. "They have been overridden by justices of the peace, county lieutenants, and other functionaries.... From this general decay of local institutions centralization has grown up."

From this "decay of local institutions," Newman points to what he designates as the "Trades' Union"—the Cabinet (the "Secret Diplomacy"), which has, he declares, superseded the old Privy Council.

"Since William III became king, parliaments of Scotland and Ireland have been annihilated, and no subsidiary organs have replaced them.... Our population is four times as great as William III knew it; yet the people are more than ever divorced from the soil and cramped into town...." Now, "Parliament is too busy for domestic local reforms; it has to control the action of the whole Executive Government, Central and Local.... It has sole right to direct public taxation.... It has to control the action of the ministry towards foreign Powers.... It has a similar function towards colonies ... and the Army and the Navy.... It is responsible for all India" (population then two hundred and forty millions).... "It is the only court of appeal to Indian princes who believe themselves wronged" (by the king's representatives).... "No other authority can repeal bad laws, or enact new laws for the general public." But were we to return to the "legislative courts of our shires," Newman protests, which existed before our present systems of Parliament, all the inevitable delays and congestions which now occur to prevent the dealing with and passing of imperatively necessary reforms would be done away with in toto.

Long ago Lord Russell said that for any great measure a ministry needs "a popular gale to carry the ship of State over the bar." "Hence all our reforms, working against a stiff current, sail over the bar fifty or one hundred years too late."

This, then, briefly stated, was Francis Newman's plan of dealing with the accumulation of business, etc., which beset the House of Commons as matters stand at present.

The whole of Great Britain, he urged, should be divided in provincial chambers for local legislation. He proposed ten for England, four for Ireland, two for Scotland, and one for Wales.

These local powers "must be to the central like planets round a sun.... All unforeseen business would fall to the central power, which in all cases would undertake: public defence, communications with foreign Powers, principal highways, shores and harbours, Crown lands, national money and weights, and national taxes.... Our impending Church and State question will be solved in this island, with least convulsion, if local variety of sentiment be allowed free play." [Footnote: Perhaps then we should be rid of the anomaly which allows a Prime Minister, of whatever religious denomination, to choose Bishops for the Anglican Church.] Newman proceeds thus to describe further his suggestions with regard to the working of the provincial courts: "Each electoral district to send one member to the Provincial Chamber; household franchise, of course, would be the rule, and I trust women householders would not be arbitrarily excluded." They would deal directly, and on the spot, with local pauperism in the provincial courts. That, in itself, would be one great gain. For pauperism cannot effectively be dealt with except by local legislation. Some system such as Ruskin's, with powerful local legislation, could not fail to end the trouble which is at the present moment making a tremendous drain on the pockets of the law-abiding citizen of this country, in that system of workhouses, which besides being subversive of the very idea of home-life amongst our poor, degrades the non-worker, and rankles as a lasting shame in the hearts of those whom misfortune alone has driven to that last resource of the unfortunate. Were one able to follow the example set us, among cities, by Leipsic (where the word pauperism is absolutely non- existent), we should have effectually turned the corner out of the ill- kept vagrant road into which Henry VIII first led us, when "pauperism" began to be a sore in the midst of England's healthy body of citizens. Now, it is a self-evident fact that "pauperism," which is a living drag on our social wheel, can not be dealt with other than by rigorous local government. Cases could then be dealt with personally; the whole area would not be too gigantic for this; but, of course, it is a moral impossibility to generalize in dealing with this subject.

After all, this is not, as Francis Newman insists, a new departure in any way. He points to other countries to show that as a fact, centralization has been gradually establishing itself in England, though in other times decentralization was a very potent force in our midst, and a success.

In 1875, Newman quotes the following countries as regards their local legislatures: "Look ... at Switzerland. Environed by ambitious neighbours far superior in power, her institutions have well stood the severe trial of time. She has her Central Diet and Ministry, vigorous enough; but also in her several cantons she has local legislatures, each with well-trained soldiers, simply because every man is bound to learn the use of arms, as Englishmen used to be; therefore they need no standing army.... Italy also has local legislatures which belonged to independent States—Sicily, Naples, Piedmont, Tuscany, and so on—besides her National Parliament.... In Hungary notoriously the national spirit has been maintained for three centuries and a half ... solely by the independent energy of the local institutions.... The seven united provinces of Holland similarly prove the vitality of freedom and good order when free local power is combined with a strong centre.... And on a far greater scale we have... an illustrious example in the United States—a mighty monarchy and a mighty republic.... The American Union started in that advanced stage. It is a cluster of some thirty-seven States, each with its own legislature, for all which, and for the outlying territories, the Federal Parliament also legislates. Contrast their condition with ours. Only of late has their population outrun ours. They have thirty-eight legislative systems: we have one only. Surely our system is a barbarous simplicity. France ... goes beyond us. Nay, our Indian centralization is worse still. No virtue, no wisdom in rulers can make up when the defect of organs lays on them enormous duties."

Finally, Newman urges for provincial chambers that they should be on the "scale of petty kingdoms," and not of mere town populations. "All parts and ranks of the local community are then forced to take interest in local concerns. Each province becomes a normal school for Parliament, and a ladder by which all high talent of poor men may rise."

SHOULD NOT THE CONSENT OF THE NATION BE OBTAINED BEFORE MAKING WAR?

This was a question constantly in Newman's mind. That, and the answer.

Everyone is doubtless aware that he wrote a very great deal upon the subject, and spoke a great deal also. In the third volume of the Miscellanies he has four or five articles on this great question. The first was printed in 1859, the second in 1860, the third 1871, and the fourth 1877. Then in "Europe of the Near Future" (1871) he treats it at greater scope, chiefly in regard to the Franco-German War. In "Deliberations before War" (1859) Newman takes the two points of view from which the question of war is as a rule regarded—the Moral and the International. The first considers if a war is a just one or no, and considers the prosecutor of an unjust war as neither more nor less than a robber. The International (or second) "looks only to the ostensible marks which make a war 'lawful'—that is to say, 'regular.'" As Newman very rightly says, however, there is a third point of view, which he calls the "National." I shall quote his words regarding this third view. "Inasmuch as the whole nation is implicated in a war, when once it is undertaken— inasmuch as we all have the same national disgrace if it is unjust, the same suffering if it is tedious, the same loss if it is expensive—it is an obvious principle of justice ... that every side of the nation should be heard to plead against it by its legitimate representatives."

I cannot forbear saying that at the present moment of writing this last is impossible, for those who often suffer most from a war—at any rate longest—are the women, and there is no legitimate representation for this large body of the community. Thus, even if the men of the nation could "plead against" a war, the women would have no voice.

Newman urges that there are many among us who firmly believe that a time is coming when no destructive weapons will be made, and "universal peace shall reign." He believes himself, he says, that "a time will come when men will look back in wonder and pity on our present barbarism, a time at which to begin a war—unless previously justified by the verdict of an impartial tribunal, bound in honour to overlook what is partially expedient to their own nation or party—will be esteemed a high and dreadful crime." These are strong words, but they are not too strong, for, looked at by any thoughtful man or woman, war is an anomaly. It proves nothing by reason; it simply acts by brute force, and by sheer superior strength the victor, at the sword's point, drives defeat down the throat of the defeated. But the arbitrary destruction of thousands of men on each side who slay each other at the word of command (often for no reason that concerns their own welfare, but only on account of some political quarrel), is, from the point of view of civilization, of morality, of humanity, without reasonable defence. It throws civilization, land development, education back incalculably. Indeed, when one regards the matter au fond, one sees that nothing could hinder the true civilization, the true humanity, more than does war. It is barbaric; there is no other word for it. It is the great flaw that runs throughout the whole garment of humanity.

Newman reminds us that it is only within very recent years "that the atrocious system of paying head money to soldiers and sailors for the numbers they kill, was abolished by us."

John Stuart Mill very rightly said "that our force ought to be as strong as possible for defence and as weak as might be for offence," only that it is so very difficult sometimes to tell which is which.

In the Ethics of War, Newman argues that "there is nothing more fundamental to civilized warfare than that no war shall be commenced without a previous statement of grievances, and demand of redress—a demand made to the Sovereign himself; and that only after he has refused redress, and when in consequence war has been solemnly declared, with its motives and aim, shall hostilities be begun. In dealing with great Powers we anxiously observe these forms.... But it is our Asiatic wars which have brought out the formidable fact that the Cabinets claim to discard the authority of Parliament altogether.... There is no more fundamental principle of freedom ... than that no nation shall be dragged into a war by its executive, against its will and judgment.... Nay, if even a majority of every class in the nation desired war, yet they have no right to enter into it without first hearing what the minority has to say on the other side. This is the essential meaning of deliberative institutions."

Mr. Toulmin Smith, whose weighty words bring to bear on the subject the witness of an England of medieval days, says that in the fourteenth century it was a positive rule that "consent of the Great Council, and afterwards of the Parliament, was necessary to a war or to a treaty." In his Parliamentary Remembrances he gives many precedents, both from the histories of England and Scotland, showing that no peace was made, no war was made, without Parliament being summoned. Henry V, he says, would not enter "matters of foreign embroilment" (war with France, for instance) without the consent of Parliament; and when the French king wished for peace, Henry replied that peace needed to "be allowed, accepted, and approved by the three Estates of each kingdom." The same process was gone through with regard to the French king and his Estates of France. Newman quotes Rome, whose citizens went through a long formality before making any war, the King and Senate "consulting the College of Heralds for erudite instructions as to minute ceremonies. For perhaps four centuries the discipline of the army was admirable; its decline began from the day when a general (Gen. Manlius) first took upon himself to make war at his own judgment, trusting to obtain a bill of indemnity."

Livy tries to force on us the belief that the Romans were never aggressive; that they only conquered the world in self-defence. And it is true that here would come in difficulties in the way of carrying out John Stuart Mill's obiter dictum as regards wars of defence and of offence, for many plausible reasons have been constantly brought forward for aggressive wars: to take one only, it is not always easy to say what is "defence" and what "offence." One may see some other country assuming a warlike attitude towards ourselves, and it might very possibly be allowed to come within the bounds of the word "defence" if we were prepared to strike the initial blow before our enemy—to all intents and purposes, save for the actual throwing of the glove—were fully prepared as to armaments, etc. It is well known how earnestly Richard Cobden, the Manchester Apostle of Free Trade, was one of the most prominent champions of peace; he who, for championing the cause of the Abolition of corn duties for the sake of his poorer countrymen, when he and others pushed forward the "Anti-Corn Law League" (which was passed in 1846), lost all his own private funds, and his business was ruined, simply because his time was all given not to his own affairs, but to the service of his country. Mr. Cobden, as Newman reminds us, "was entirely convinced that European wars could be stopped by a general agreement to abide by arbitration." Indeed, he prevailed on the Ministers of his day so far that, when the Russian War ended in 1856, "Lord Clarendon, in the name of England, initiated some important clauses, of which one avowed that the Powers who signed the treaty would never thenceforward undertake war without first attempting to stay and supersede it by arbitration. England, France, Russia, Sardinia, and Turkey all signed this treaty, yet in a very few years the solemn promise proved itself to be mere wind." He goes on say, "When passions are at work, superior might, not unarmed arbitration, is needed to control them."

Cobden always declared that no one need fear Russia's strength because of her climate, her vast wildernesses, her frozen seas, her great unwieldiness. It is seen, therefore, that the sort of arbitration planned out by Cobden did not work. It must, according to Newman, be an armed one. It is clear that it is not possible to agree in toto with the Quaker method of opposing war, and the most thoughtful Quakers will hardly urge it perhaps to-day. War, for defence of one's country, is a present necessity. What, then, are Francis Newman's proposed remedies? For in the beginning of this chapter I stated that he, very definitely, had his answer to the great question as regards the nation: its veto or agreement, whenever war is proposed. First of all, before giving these however, let us look for a moment at the plan pursued in such case in modern England. This plan he always set himself against with all the force of personal conviction: "It is the singular disgrace of modern England to have allowed the solemn responsibility of war to be tampered with by the arbitrary judgment of executive officers: ... this same nation permits war to be made; lives by the twenty thousand or fifty thousand to be sacrificed ... at the secret advice of a Cabinet, all of one party, acting collectively for party objects, no one outside knowing how each has voted.... The orders to make or not to make war went out direct from the Board of Control—that is, really from the Ministry in Downing Street. Two, or even one resolute man had power to make war without check.... If Earl Grey is right, and a Cabinet must be a party, this is a decisive, irrefragable reason why a Cabinet must never exercise the function of deciding on Peace or War. The recent [Footnote: He is writing in 1859.] overthrow of the East India Company has swept away all the shams which have hidden from England that the Ministry in Downing Street worked the Indian puppet.... Parliament should claim that public debate shall precede all voluntary hostilities, small or great ... to protest in the most solemn way that henceforth no blow in war shall be struck until the voice of Parliament has permitted and commanded it."

Then, in Newman's article "On the War Power," he goes on to say: "In regard to the difficulties as regards arbitration, and also as regards the voice of the people being made a sine qua non, whenever a proposal for war emanates from the powers that be: When an evil is undeniable, serious, unjust in principle ... (referring to secret diplomacy), a remedy must exist. Where there is a will there is a way: nay, many ways."

Then he declares that these (following) measures have commended themselves to him. The full discussion in Parliament by representatives of the people; the determination that nothing shall be settled by secret diplomacy as regards war until the whole matter has been thoroughly threshed out. In more than a few ways, Vox populi, vox Dei is still true.

Next he puts before us the advisability of an armed arbitration.

"If we look to a great central European Power as having for one of its functions to repress wars and enforce arbitration, it is evident that a large increase of force is necessary beyond all that is at present in prospect. If wars voluntarily taken up for noble objects must be sustained out of spare energy, much more does the place of that Power which is to forbid wars require a great superfluity of energy. To be able to do this within the limits of a great federation is in itself a mighty achievement." [Footnote: Europe in the Near Future, F. W. Newman.] And again: "Apparently the only way in which European wars can be suppressed is by the successive agglomeration of free men, living under and retaining their separate institutions, into powers which have no interest in war, but much interest in peace; until unions reach such a magnitude as to be able to forbid wars of cupidity, and offer a high tribunal for the redress of international grievances.... If all parts of a mighty union have their proportionate weight in questions of war and peace, no partial and vicious expediency can actuate them in common. Justice alone is the universal good which can unite their desires and efforts, or make them collectively willing to undergo sacrifice.... The wider the federation, the more benign its aspect on the whole world without, especially if the populations absorbed into it are heterogeneous in character, in pursuit, and in cultivation.... A federation resting on strict justice, conceding local freedom, but suppressing local wars and uniting its military force for national defence, is economic of military expenditure in time of peace in proportion to the magnitude of the populations federated."



CHAPTER XIV

DECENTRALIZATION AND LAND REFORM

"If law be centralized, it always lingers far behind men's needs." This obiter dictum of Francis Newman's, spoken nearly sixty years ago, strikes one as more true to-day even than when he originally gave voice to it. For if there is one thing truer than another, it is that half the wrongs to which we are heir to-day, are due to centralization. This may be due in part, no doubt, to the enormous increase of population; but certainly one overwhelming reason is that class with class has lost in very great measure all sense of cooperation, all sense of sympathy, all sense of their real intimate connection and relationship with each other. Instead of provincial legislature, we have our one parliamentary centre, instead of treating our own local matters ourselves, we hale them up before a central bureaucracy—a bureaucracy already so overcrowded with business that it is absolutely and practically unable to deal with all the questions which come up for settlement. So that instead of imperative local matters being dealt with first hand, private bill after private bill swarms through the doors of Parliament, and it becomes a veritable impossibility to go into detail with respect to the pros and cons which they bear upon their pages, much less grasp the whole drift of the question with justice in its entirety.

Far wiser was the old system of provincial legislature, in which the people were really represented, a system in which personality counted for much and men were brought into familiar and friendly relations with each other, not kept apart by the rubicon of red-tapeism, and liable to have the door of the Closure slammed in their faces at some critical juncture of discussion, and the subject shelved. It is true that since Francis Newman's day we may have made some effort after local councils, but it is also true that these local councils do not really bring class and class together. Each class is by no means adequately represented in them, nor is it the council's object that this should be the case. To compare the England of to-day—the agricultural England, at any rate—with the England of the past, brings all true thinkers to the same conclusion, that class demarcations are as insistent, as absolute as ever they were, even in the culminating early Victorian days. [Footnote: "We must mainly refer our practical evils to the demoralization of the State which the restoration of the Stuarts caused.... Then began the estrangement of the Commonalty from the Church of the aristocracy."—Francis Newman.] One has but to go abroad to be convinced how "classy" we are as a nation, for class prejudices and insularity are produced by provincial England, and indigenous to the soil, and alas! this crop never fails. There are, unfortunately, no lean years. There are, it is true, plenty of organizations in which the more fortunate class tries to ameliorate the lot of the less fortunate one, plenty of organizations in which the more cultured class tries—often devotes its whole life to this trying—to make better conditions for the less cultured one, and all honour and praise is due to self-denying work of the kind, but it is not enough. The truest, purest Christian socialism [Footnote: I use the word in its truest ancient sense.] requires that helper and helped meet on absolutely equal ground; that there is banished that indescribable stalking figure which follows close in the wake of most meetings between rich and poor in England, the Gentleman-hood (or Lady-hood, for I have seen that often quite as insistently in evidence) of the class which, so to speak, "stoops to conquer," the limitations of the less fortunate classes, in its work for the people.

I remember coming across the word "gentleman" interpreted in a far different sense in an old fifteenth-century book. Many words change their meaning with time, but this word has changed from its fifteenth-century interpretation more than any. The sentence ran thus: "Jesus Christ was the first Gentleman." Anything further from the original conception of its meaning as set forward in this sentence than our English idea of what is meant to-day by "gentleman" it would be difficult to find. For He went among the people as one of themselves, was born among them, and was educated as they were. There was no hint of patronage, no suggestion of any social demarcation. He Who was the world's Redeemer was yet a Socialist [Footnote: I cannot but add here that, in my opinion, the much- abused word "Socialist" has changed in character in the same way as the word "gentleman," and the modern interpretation is very far from being the true, admirable, original thing signified.] in the highest and best sense of the term.

We have come far since those days, but we have not come beyond the need to deprive birth and riches of some of that arbitrary power by which they have assumed more authority than is their due in the matter of legislation, influence, disposal of land, and economic local conditions in the provinces.

As regards decentralized government and the "immense importance of local liberties," I cannot do better than quote first from the preface written by Francis Newman to his lectures on Political Economy, when he issued them in a printed form in 1851:—

"Of the immense importance of local liberties, and their actual deficiencies among us, I became fully convinced during six years' residence in Manchester; but it is only from Mr. Toulmin Smith's works (the most important political work, as to me appears, which the nineteenth century has produced in England) that I have learnt the immense resources of the Common Law of England, and that nothing but the arbitrary encroachments of Parliament at this moment hinders a vigorous local legislation and local government under the fullest local freedom which can be desired."

The lectures themselves, notably the twelfth, are in my opinion a counsel of perfection which we should do well to follow to-day in very many respects. For instance, he urges very strongly that "every town in England, and every county, ought to have the feelings of a little State, as in fact it once had" [the italics are my own]. "Our own history for many centuries shows that this is quite consistent with the existence of a central power—a Crown Parliament—for all purposes truly national; and if the action of the central power were strictly limited to such things, the provinces would, now more than ever, have abundant room for high ambition." He shows how all organization has been lost in large provincial towns, even though meetings are held from time to time, and men seem to come together for counsel and combination of ideas; the only really fixed "moral union" being that narrow tie of family life which does but make a number of separate entities in the big whole of citizenship. There is no corporate union which makes each citizen the charge, to all intents and purposes, of his neighbour. Each family holds together. It rises and falls by itself. It holds to its heart no innate real sense of responsibility of a wider citizenship. That is lost—undeniably lost.



The question arises naturally: When was this splendid link of "Each for All" broken and mislaid? For nothing is more imperatively necessary among the ranks of workers to-day.

Mr. Toulmin Smith tells us: "The link which has been broken and mislaid was the "English Guild" (or "gild," as seems the more correct spelling). He tells us—and it is generally conceded that he is our great authority on this subject—that as a system of practical and universal institutions, a English Guilds are older than any kings of England." [Footnote: "They were associations of those living in the same neighbourhood, who remembered that they had, as neighbours, common obligations."] And as another authority on medieval life—Dom Gasquet—says: "The oldest of our ancient laws—those, for example, of Alfred, of Athelstan, and Ina—assume the existence of guilds to some one of which, as a matter of course, everyone was supposed to belong."

There were of course trade (or handicraft) associations and social guilds. Dom Gasquet describes thus their object: "Broadly speaking, they were the benefit societies and the provident associations of the Middle Ages. They undertook towards their members the duties now frequently performed by burial clubs, by hospitals, by almshouses, and by guardians of the poor." [Footnote: "Poor laws had no existence in medieval England, yet the peasants did not fear and die of starvation in old age. The Romans had no poor laws ... until the destruction of small freehold."—Francis Newman.] "Not infrequently they are found acting for the public good of the community in the mending of roads and in the repair of bridges.... The very reason of their existence was to afford mutual aid." [Footnote: Parish Life of Medieval England.] They were in very deed, as Mr. Toulmin Smith describes them, institutions of "local self-help." And everyone who knows anything of the subject is aware that they "obviated pauperism, assisted in steadying the price of labour, and formed a permanent centre." Also it has been proved that they acted as the lever which effectually made citizenship more together as a whole, bound together by common need and common responsibilities.

This sense of oneness of interest of "Each for All," then, we have unfortunately as a nation lost. And with the loss have gone many of the people's rights and privileges both with regard to local self-government, local liberties, and co-operation.

Now the question arises how are we to recover what was so necessary to the public well-being? And Francis Newman is ready with an answer.

"To recognize little states in our towns and countries would be the first step of organization; I believe it would be an easy one.... If each town had full power to tax itself for public purposes, a thousand civilizing ameliorations would be introduced.... If local institutions had been kept up in energy, the unhealthy buildings which now exist could never have arisen; there is at present an Augean stable to cleanse.... Look at the sellers in the street, look at the cab-drivers and their horses on a rainy day; what can be more barbarous than their exposure?... Nothing surely is more obvious than that in a city where thirty or forty thousand persons live all day under the sky, having no power to shelter themselves, there ought to be numerous covered piazzas, market-places, and sheds for cabriolets. By such means, to save the poor from rheumatism and inflammations, would be cheaper than to raise their wages, if that were possible, and would confer far more direct benefit on them than the removing of taxes."

Here is indeed the mind of a modern Hercules in its strong, rational suggestions as to how this particular "stable" must be swept out. It is a striking illustration of how far we have come since the days of the medieval guilds, this lack of grasp on our part of the particular needs of particular sections of the community. For were our local self-government in working order and thoroughly representative, it is not to be thought of for a moment that such a lack of shelters and proper appliances for the labouring man and woman would be in such evidence amongst us as now is the case. For look at England as she is, in respect of unsettled, rainy and stormy weather: her spells of wintry weather, her spring changes: one day warm, and the next, constant spells of snow, sleet, and bitter driving gusts of wind. Where do the loafers of our streets go? Where do the unemployed, hanging about at the street corner in search of a job, go during some pelting shower which drenches whoever remains to face it in less than three minutes? The centre of the street, and the streaming pavements clear almost at once, but where does the "man in the street"— the woman—the child go? Certainly they do not go into a shelter put up by Government for their protection, as a rule. There are, in provincial towns, no shelters sufficiently large to accommodate them.

I have often talked to the inspectors—to take a case in point—of provincial trams. These men have to wait, to stand about at corners of streets or cross roads great part of the day. Many of them suffer in no small degree from this constant standing about in all weathers.

Then again, there is no provision made for the drivers of the trams. It would be quite possible to provide seats for them, as is often done in motor buses, but the same reason holds good for this not having been thought of, as is in evidence with regard to the lack of street shelters.

There is not sufficient co-operation in the local government. When the guilds died out, no local arrangements took their place. In other words, the local government, of whatever nature it is, is not sufficiently representative. The men who work upon the road, day in day out, have not sufficient opportunity of saying, in open meeting of their fellow citizens, where their particular trade shoe pinches. It is, as old Sir Thomas More said very truly, the matter of the rich legislating for the poor, which is at fault.

Here, then, is the remedy suggested by Francis Newman: "The stated meeting of a number of people in a Ward-mote would make their faces familiar to one another, and give to the richer orders a distinct acquaintance with a definite portion of the vast community. Out of this ... meeting for discussion of practical business in a Ward-mote ... would rise numerous other relations."

Here men would meet—men drawn from every class—and could voice their complaints, their difficulties, their desire for improved conditions of work. Only in this way could local government become really a help to its neighbourhood. Only in this way could men consult on the best way of improving economic conditions, frame their own amelioration of existing laws, and send them up to the Imperial Parliament for consent or veto.

Then it would probably follow that some measure of land reform would be the natural result of such local government. Perhaps it is over the land that the Plough of Reform needs most urgently to be driven. More than eight centuries ago the first idea of parks began in this country. Then it was that in the selfish desire for private property the dwellings of the people were swept away to make room for those of game for royal sport. Later this method was adopted by Henry VIII's baronial retainers, who ejected the tenants from their estates for the sake of trade profit— profit to be gained by exporting wool from the large sheep farms into which they made their private estates.

But the system of large tracts of land in a small country, such as our own, being bought up for private property, and made into parks or game preserves, is of course at the root of very many economic evils which have largely helped to cause pauperism and unhealthy conditions of life for the agricultural labourer. If rich men may add, without the law stepping in to limit amount, land to land as their pocket makes it possible, it follows, as a matter of course, that more of the rustic population must move into the towns: and that more and more crowding and over-competition are the result later on.

Newman—the man who was always boldest where there was a cause that needed fighting for, or fellow citizens who were powerless to right their own wrongs, and who required someone to voice them—spoke out his views on this subject, unhesitatingly. "That a man should be able to buy up large tracts of land, and make himself the owner of them—to keep them in or out of culture as he pleases—to close or open roads, and dictate where houses should be built ... this is no natural right, but is an artificial creation of arbitrary law; law made by legislation for personal convenience ... certainly not for the benefit of the nation.... I find it stated that in 1845 the Royal Commission estimated that, since 1710, above seven millions of acres had been appropriated by Private Acts of Parliament." (This was because of the enormous extension of claims made by lords of the manors.) "It is certain that wild land was not imagined to be a property in old days. The moors and bogs, and hillsides and seacoast imposed on the baron the duty of maintaining the King's peace against marauders, but yielded to him no revenue.... Supplies open to all ought never to have been made private property.... Vast private estates are pernicious in every country which permits them. It was notorious to the Romans under the early emperors how ruinous they had been to Italy.... There they wrought out, among other evils, emptiness of population, and extinction of agriculture." He represents that it was really due to the break-up of the feudal system in the Tudor times which was responsible for the "chronic pauperism" and multitude of "sturdy beggars" of later centuries. And the reason is a very patent one. If more and more land is swamped in private enterprise, private revenue, it is a sine qua non that peasant proprietorship must get less and less. There is not, in effect, enough land to go round. Newman points out that, as regards land cultivation, we are behind France, Spain, Italy, Germany, and Hungary; that a hundred years ago there were far more small freeholds in England than is now the case; that England is a "marked exception in Europe in the land tenure." "We know not whither beside England to look for a nation of peasants living by wages, and divorced from all rights in the crops which they raise."

As Henry Fawcett said long ago, these wages of English labourers will not allow of the least provision to be made either for the sickness or the feebleness of old age. They have, at the close of a life of hard toil, nothing but the workhouse to live in, the road to beg in or sell in that out-at-elbow, trade, the modern "chapman's."

Look at the average labourer of our own day. He has, as Newman clearly points out, "more than enough to do in rearing a family, and has no better prospect in his declining years than rheumatism and the poorhouse, perhaps with separation from his wife, or at least a miserable dole of out-door relief." [Footnote: We have gone some way since these words were written in our Old Age Pensions.] Here he puts his finger on the very spot where one thoughtless cruelty of bureaucratic legislation is most shown. For many faithful servants of the State come in their last extremity to this destiny. This irony of legislation shone out lately in its true colours when it was discovered that, of over a thousand survivors of the Indian Mutiny, a large proportion, who were invited to the demi-centenary celebration dinner, came out of workhouses where they, who had served their country so well in the days of their youth, had been forced to spend their old age.

There is no doubt that Francis Newman's remedy for the economic evils of the people is the right one. To develop rural industry, to come back to the land, is the hope for England's future. "It is essential to the public welfare to multiply to the utmost the proportion of actual cultivators or farmers who have a firm tenure of the soil by paying a quit-rent to the State.... The soil of England ought to be the very best investment for rich and poor, pouring out wealth to incessant industry, and securing to every labourer the fruit of his own toils."

And in this way, he urges, can this suggestion be carried to its definite conclusion. The revival of small freeholds, the re-institution of peasant proprietorships, are the ways out of the block at the end of the way where there is at present a deadlock in regard to the peasants' individual advancement. It is well known how admirably this system has worked in France, where millions of peasants have profited by the law in favour of small freeholds, and its regulation that such land shall always be divided equally among the children of the landholder. It is well known how largely Indian revenue was drawn from the rent paid by small cultivators in the Dekkan. It may be taken as an invariable consequence that the measure which really profits the citizen profits the State too.

I remember seeing among some old papers dating back to the early quarter of the nineteenth century, an account showing that tobacco planting was really started somewhere in the Midlands by two or three Englishmen, and it was found that the soil was thoroughly adapted to the culture of tobacco. Indeed, the venture proved a complete success. Then the Government of that day, fearing later consequences to the import trade, promptly intervened and put a stop to the home cultivation. But the fact remains that it had been proved, by a definite experience, that there was an opening for this industry in England.

It was suggested to me only the other day how many more cider-growing districts, for instance, might be with advantage started in the provinces. For the truth of the matter, when we look at it fairly and squarely, is that the home country can give rural work to many more of her inhabitants than she is allowed to do at present; that, as Newman was always suggesting in his lectures, the labourer should be given an interest in the land; that he should be encouraged in trying to make a crop as good as possible by adopting some modification of the Metayer Culture; that he should have rights in the land; be associated in the profit accruing to his overlord; that if the wages of a farm labourer were small, yet that he should be given, perhaps, one-twentieth of the produce; and that he should be encouraged to invest what saving might be possible to him in the farm or trade. Newman was not in favour of the Savings Bank, as we understand it in this country. He thought that associated profit and investment of savings in the employer's land or trade would work far better in the long run, and lead to keener fellowship between labourer and master.

To-day his plan, as it seems to many, stands very good chance of success, if given a fair trial among the right sort of Englishmen. I am aware that these last four words sound vague, but I have a very clear idea of what they mean myself! Newman thought that if a co-operative society began by buying a moderate-sized farm, and divided it into "portions of six to ten acres, they might find either among their own members or among other tradesmen known and trusted among them, persons rich enough to provide seed and stock, and thus to live through the first year on such holdings, and willing (later) to occupy them for themselves or for their sons. The beginning is the great difficulty.... The first thing of all is to show, on however small a scale, that such a cultivation can succeed.... If once peasants see peasant proprietors they will have new motive for saving."



CHAPTER XV

VEGETARIANISM

The London Vegetarian Society was founded in 1847. When Newman joined it, therefore, it was, so to speak, in its childhood. It will easily be understood, therefore, that much amazement was excited (as is shown by the following letters), by his fellow guests at some large dinner parties at which he was present, when Newman withstood valiantly the long siege of savoury dishes at his elbow; and it seemed as if, though present in body, he was absent in appetite. This amazement was scarcely lessened when, after passing seventeen dishes, at length he threw the gates of his personal fortress open before some small omelet (prepared specially for him by the cook), and that, practically, formed his entire dinner!

To Newman's mind the theory of Vegetarianism was proved. He published some Essays on Diet; and was always an exponent of its rational claims on mankind.

Since the days when he wrote up the subject, many people have come over to his way of thinking, and the way is made easy for those who wish to follow its obiter dicta for health.

But it is quite as keenly a subject for debate now as formerly among a large proportion of men, though perhaps few among anti-vegetarians would dispute the point that there are, and must be, certain conditions involved by anti-vegetarianism which can hardly be evaded, or defended. One of these conditions, of course, is that it is not always possible to detect some diseases in flesh sold for food: and that these diseases are communicable to man; another, the degrading spectacle of the slaughter- house; another, the presence in our midst of the butcher's shop, with all its revolting display: [Footnote: I have not forgotten that M. Zola contended that the atmosphere of a butcher's shop conduced to the best and most healthy complexions of those who served in it!] another, as Mr. Josiah Oldfield points out to us, that "horticulture ... would employ an enormously greater amount of labour than does stock-raising, and so tend to afford a counter current to the present downward drift, and to congested labour centres." Mr. Oldfield urges also that "all elements for perfect nutrition in assimilable forms are found in a proper vegetarian dietary."

I have not opportunity for finding out in what years Newman took up this practical dietary of vegetarianism for himself, but I think it must have been towards the latter end of his life. Mention will be found in the Reminiscences contributed by Mrs. Bainsmith, the sculptor, relating to his bringing across occasionally, when she and her father and mother lived just opposite the Professor's house at Weston-super-Mare, some particularly delicious vegetarian dish (concocted by his own cook), which he had thought his friends could not fail to appreciate.

The following letters have been kindly sent me for reproduction by Mr. F. P. Doremus in connection with Newman's views on Vegetarianism:—

To Mr. F. P. Doremus from Professor Newman.

"21st Sept., 1883.

"Dear Sir,

* * * * *

"I deliberately prefer the rule of our Society and by preference adhere to it. But I have never interpreted it as severely as I find some to do. On some occasions, in early years, when I could get no proper vegetarian food, I have eaten some small bit of ham fat (as I remember on one occasion) to aid dry potato from sticking in my throat. I do not interpret our rule as forbidding exceptional action under stress of difficulty. But when I found what a fuss was made about this, and saw that many people took the opportunity of inferring that a simple act implied a habit, I saw that it was unwise to give anyone a handle of attack....

"I can only say that I interpret our rules conscientiously, and obey them according to my interpretation faithfully. I do not see in our profession any vow or engagement comparable to that about never tasting intoxicating drink. If my wife, who is not a professed vegetarian (though in practice she is all but one), asks me to taste a bit of flesh and see... whether it is good, I find nothing in our rules to forbid my gratifying her curiosity. In that case I do not take it as diet to nourish me nor to gratify me. My words of adhesion simply declared that I had abstained from such food for half a year, and I intended to abstain in the future. Of course this forbids my habit or any intention to the contrary; but I deprecate interpreting this as a vow or as a trap and a superstition. One who feels and believes as I do the vast superiority of our vegetarian food, never can desire, unless perhaps in some abnormal state of illness, the inferior food....

"Faithfully yours,

"F. W. Newman."

"1st Oct., 1883.

"Dear Sir,

"... On reading yours anew after some ten days or less, I think I ought to notice what you say of an unknown publisher.

"I cannot remember that for twenty years I have ever eaten in the company of any well-known publisher (anyone known to me as a publisher) except Mr. Nicolas Trubner before I joined the Vegetarians, and one other more recently. The latter was in the house of a lady friend who always anxiously humoured me by providing a special dish for me.

"Her cook was not skilful in our cookery, but did her best. I remember distinctly who was present on this occasion with this respected publisher. It was a luncheon with meats. I ate at the same table, and it may very easily have escaped his notice that a different dish was handed to me.

* * * * *

"I have several times sat at this friend's table with a large number of guests. I remember once counting that seventeen dishes were handed to me. I dined on my own food to the great marvel of those near me....

"I have always maintained that the main reason for proclaiming any rule of diet is, that the outsiders may be afforded facts to aid their own judgment; and that our engagement has no other element of obligation than that we shall not vitiate the materials of such judgment.

"Therefore also I have advocated several grades—for instance, an engagement allowing of fish as food (which many will take who will not go our length), and another in which absence from home (where one cannot arrange the cookery) is an exemption. I rejoice also in the Daniclete rule. Provided that it is KNOWN what is the diet, we give valuable information."

"14th Oct., 1883.

* * * * *

"I knew that the publisher to whom you referred could only be Mr. Kegan Paul, who met me some few years back at luncheon in the house of my friends the Miss Swanwicks: that until you told me his name, I thought it better not to write to him. But thereupon I wrote and explained to him that my friend Miss Anna Swanwick knew perfectly that I could not accept their hospitality (as I have habitually done for a week or more at a time) if they expected me to partake of any food inconsistent with the rules of our Society. I long ago furnished her with some of our recipes, and she showed her cook always to make a special dish for me. At one of their dinner parties I remember the amazement of guests at my passing all the dishes, as at first it seemed, until my own little dish came. I told Mr. Kegan Paul that he must have mistaken what was in my plate (perhaps crumb omelette browned over—which I remember the cook was apt to give me) for some fish of which he and others were partaking. I have no doubt that this was the whole matter....

"I am sincerely yours,

"F. W. Newman."

The closing letter in this series is evidently an answer to some questions from Mr. Doremus as regards Newman's portrait, and as regards the incidents of his life.

"My life has been eminently uneventful." When one remembers in how many questions of social reform, of theology, of written matter, Newman had been concerned, this short sentence strikes one's eyes strangely enough. For what is an "event"? Surely it does not mean only something which is a carnal happening: a material outbreak in some form or other which occurs before our eyes? Surely there are far greater spiritual "events" than physical ones? And of this kind of event Newman's life had been full. Originality of thought, of conception, of aim, is the Event which takes precedence of all other. And these events were strewn like Millet's "Sower" from side to side of his path: to take the true Latin significance of the word, they came out from him.

"31st July, 1884.

"Dear Sir,

"Your letter has been forwarded to me from home to this place [Keswick].... Messrs. Elliot and Fry (Baker Street, Portman Square), recently by pressure induced me to let them take my photograph. In fact they took four, in different positions, all judged excellent, all of cabinet size. Each, I believe, costs 2/-. I have none at my disposal. With or without my leave, anyone can publish them in any magazine. Now, as to my biography—my life has been eminently uneventful. There is nothing to tell but my studies, my successive posts as a teacher, and the list of books, etc., from my pen, unless one add the effects of study on my CREED, which more than one among you might desire not to make prominent in the Food Reformer.

* * * * *

"Can I assent to the request that I will myself write something? Others might wish to know in how many Antis I have been and am engaged!! Certainly more than you will care to make known will go into two pages of your magazine.

"I am, sincerely yours,

"F. W. Newman."

Two letters to Dr. Nicholson from Newman I think may be given here: one in April, 1875, and one in June, 1881, as both bear strongly on the vegetarian question:—

"25 April, 1875.

"My dear Nicholson,

"How time flies! Bearded men, active in moral and political questions, tell me they know nothing of the Austro-Hungarian events, because they happened when they were children.

"One of them asked me to give a lecture on Austria and Hungary of the Past, as he was curious and totally ignorant.... We are overrun with every kind of meeting, and the public are sated....

* * * * *

"Happily every day is too short for me, and I cannot have time on my hands.... I do not know whether you have attended the movement against vivisection, which is becoming lively. It has long been a dire horror to me. I rejoice to see that Sir W. Thomson, [Footnote: Sir William Thomson, born 1843, was late President of the Royal College of Surgeons, Ireland; Exam. in Surgery, Queen's University and Royal College of Surgeons, Ireland.] and other scientific men, desire a severe restriction to be put on it. I agree heartily with those who say we have no more RIGHT to torture a dog than to torture a man; but I fear that to move at present with Mr. Jesse for the total prohibition will only give to the worst practices a longer lease of life.

"Our vegetarianism is becoming more active with the pressure from the high price of butcher's meat. Not that we make many entire conversions, but plentiful well-wishers and half-converts, and a great increase in the belief that too much flesh meat is eaten, and that the doctors are much to blame for having pressed it as they press wine and ale, calling it 'generous' food. At the same time it is remarkable that the argument against slaughter-houses and for tenderness to tame animals plays a more decisive part, especially with women, than economic and sanitary arguments.... I am ever in experiment on something. At present it is on cacao butter and vegetable oils. We esteem the cacao butter for savoury dishes very highly. Messrs. Cadbury sell it 'to me and my friends' for 1s. a lb. In pastry and sweets the chocolate smell offends most people; but my wife likes it. It is too hard to spread on cold meat.

* * * * *

"The gardens are becoming sprightly. I have not had success with new vegetables, viz. German peas, celery, turnips, Belgian red dwarf beans. The drought last summer was bad. No warm rain in spring last year.

"Ever yours heartily,

"F. W. Newman."

The following is quoted from the second letter I mentioned:—

"I send to you a Penny Vegetarian Cookery Book herewith. Surely I was a Vegetarian when I last was with you? I began the practice in 1867. But let me recite: (1) At breakfast and the third meal I need nothing but what all fleshmeaters provide. (2) At dinner the utmost that I need is one Vegetarian dish, which may be a soup. (3) If it so happen that you have any really solid sweet puddings that alone will suffice. (4) For the one Vegetarian dish good brown bread and butter is an acceptable substitute, or rather fulfilment. But I confess I am desirous of propagating everywhere a knowledge of our peculiar dishes, which teach how to turn to best account the manifold and abundant store of leaves, roots, and grains, besides pulse.

"My wife is fully able to impart practical knowledge: to please me, and see that others please me, she has given great attention to Vegetarian cookery for many years back...."



CHAPTER XVI

NATIVE REPRESENTATION IN INDIAN GOVERNMENT

It is rare indeed that an Englishman looks at India as Francis Newman looked at it. Fifty years ago—probably longer—he put his finger on exactly the spot which to-day is the crux which most puzzles and baffles politicians. In social and intellectual questions his were the clear- sighted, far-focussed eyes that reached beyond the measures of most men's minds. He saw clearly, fifty years ago, that India was drawing ever closer and closer to an inevitable terminus. That she was beginning to recognize —every year more definitely—her ultimate destination: was beginning to realize, too, that her foreign rulers were aware also of that terminus, but were not very anxious that she should reach it. Nay, were practically rather jogging her elbow to prevent her becoming so conscious of the direction in which the tide of affairs was drifting.

Nevertheless it is becoming more and more patent to everyone who really studies the question impartially that things are not what they were fifty or sixty years ago; that a critical juncture is drawing ever nearer and nearer—a juncture which inevitably will mean great changes for the governed and the governors.

Even the slow-moving East does move appreciably in half a century, when centres of education are doing their best to train Indians in European ideas of civilization, in European ideas of government, and of the authority which learning gives. We cannot expect to educate and yet leave those we educate exactly where we find them; for with education comes invariably, inevitably, the growth of ideas planted by it—their growth, and no less invariable fruition. To show someone all that is to be gained by reaching forward, and then to expect him not to reach, but to remain quiescent, is the act of a fool.

We have, as a nation, so taken it for granted that India is our own to do as we like with, that it is perhaps not a pleasant reminder which faces us as we cast our thoughts back to the initial steps taken by ourselves in the days which preceded the formation of the Honourable East India Company. It bids us realize that at first, as Francis Newman says in his Dangerous Glory of India, "neither king, statesmen, nor people ever deliberately planned from the beginning or desired such an empire. It began as a set of mercantile establishments which took up private arms for mere self-defence.... The Honourable East India Company was glad to legitimate its position by accepting from the Grand Mogul the subordinate position of a rent-collector; indeed, from the beginning to the end of its political career it was animated by a consistent and unswerving disapproval of aggression and fresh conquest."

Since that time, however, the English dominion spread rapidly. Since that time we became more and more aware of what a splendid field lay ready for occupation by our surplus population. Since that time we have moved forward through a vast country that formerly, through lack of European ways of civilization and co-operation, practically lay at our feet. It is true that we have done much—very much for India. It is impossible for anyone to deny that. We have brought to her doors European civilization; modern points of view; the miracles of new discoveries in science; inventions for making the wheels of life move easier; opportunities for cultivating and selling her land's produce, and for its quick transport. We have lifted her up—yes, but here is where the mental shoe pinches—we have insisted on preventing her from reaching her full stature. We have trained her sons to be able to work side by side with ourselves in various official duties; and then when they are desirous—as is indeed only the inevitable consequence of their education—of entering the lists side by side with Englishmen, they find there is no crossing the rubicon which officially divides the two nations.

It is true that many Anglo-Indians stand aghast at this idea that they should cross it, but it is only those who are unaware that, as a general rule, education and environment combined come out as top dog over heredity in most instances in which it plays a part. It is only those who, when they go out to India, take, as it were, England with them, and fail to recognize how far Indian points of view and power of dealing with things have progressed. It is only those who have forgotten—if indeed they ever truly realized it—that it is a point of honour that such a proceeding should be carried out, if we, as Englishmen, remember all that the notable charter of 1833 bound us to do.

For the charter of 1833 [Footnote: During Lord Grey's ministry.] definitely promised that native Indian subjects of the English Government were to be admitted on equal terms with English subjects to every office of State, except that of governor-general or commander-in-chief. Not only that, but the solemn proclamation of the late Queen was issued in 1858, pledging the word of Sovereign and Parliament that the "sole aim of British rule in India was the welfare of the Indian people, and that no distinction would be made between Indians and Europeans in the government of the country, on the grounds of race, or creed, or colour."

As Francis Newman says very clearly, it is a "task which we have voluntarily assumed-to rule India, which means" (the italics are his) "to defend it from itself in infancy, to train it into manhood.... It presupposes that the people gradually get more and more power until, like a son who comes of age, the parental control is discontinued.... We cannot take the last steps first, nor can we abruptly and recklessly resign our post...."

The Hon. M. G. K. Gokhale, in a keenly interesting paper read before the East India Association in the summer of 1906, states very definitely the point of view of educated Indians as regards our unfulfilled pledges of nearly eighty years since. He says: "Until a few years ago, whatever might have been thought of the pace at which we were going, there was no general disposition to doubt the intention of the rulers to redeem their plighted word. To-day, however, the position is no longer the same.... There is no doubt that the old faith of the people in the character and ideals of British rule has been more than shaken.... Half a century of Western education, and a century of common laws, common administration, common grievances, common disabilities, have not failed to produce their natural effect even in India.... Whatever a certain school of officials in India may say, the bulk of educated Indians have never in the past desired a severance of the British connection.... "But, he adds: "It is a critical juncture in the relations between England and India.... The educated classes in India ... want their country to be a prosperous, self- governing, integral part of the Empire, like the colonies, and not a mere poverty-stricken bureaucratically-held possession of that Empire."

Fifty years ago Francis Newman was urging with all the force in his power —and no one in his day was more farsighted in detecting just that social reform which would make more and more insistent demand for a hearing, as decade followed decade—that it was to our own interest as a nation, as well as the only honourable course open to us, to open up public offices in India to the educated native. It need not, he showed, be done otherwise than with caution, and gradually "many variations" were "imaginable; many different ways might succeed, if only the right end in view" was "steadily held up, namely, to introduce, fully and frankly, into true equality with ourselves" [Footnote: To "exclude natives from all high office," Sir Charles Napier said once emphatically, "is what debases a nation."] (again the italics are his) "as quickly as possible, and as many as possible, of the native Indians whose loyalty could be counted on.... Lord Grey and his coadjutors, in renewing the charter of 1833, understood most clearly that nothing but an abundance of black faces in the highest judicature, and intelligent Indians of good station in the high police, could administer India uprightly.... Every year that we delay evils become more inveterate and hatred accumulates. To train India into governing herself, until English advice is superfluous, would be to both countries a lasting benefit, to us a lasting glory."

Now, what are the "evils" which "every year become more inveterate" in our method of government in India? Perhaps one of the most palpable is the strongly centralized bureaucracy. Another, is the constant change of men in chief office every five years. Another, is that all competitive examinations are held in London. Mr. Gokhale very rightly urges that it is a great deal to require of an Indian that he should have to come all the way to England for these examinations on the chance of passing, and suggests their being held simultaneously in India and in England. Another, is that the field of law is the only officialdom open to the Indian, yet that there he is found capable of rising to the highest post. Another, that we have not pushed forward the education of the masses as far as we reasonably might if we had worked hand in hand with the educated classes. Mr. Gokhale tells us that to-day seven children out of eight are growing up in ignorance, and four villages out of five are as yet without a school-house.

There are other drawbacks to this system of foreign bureaucracy, which can only be briefly touched on here, but certainly Newman was right when he condemned that mistaken, high-handed measure of the autocratic East India Company—their destruction of all the local treasuries, and the manner in which these funds were diverted into the central treasury. Thus, as he pointed out very clearly, no moneys were left for the repair of roads, bridges, and tanks, etc. As he remarks, "In comparison with this monster evil, all other delinquencies seem to fade away."

As everyone probably is aware, Newman lost no opportunity in pressing home on the minds of his countrymen that it is decentralization that is so urgently needed; and that not alone in India, but in our own country as well. Repeatedly he urged that if Government is administered from one central bureaucracy, it follows inevitably that the business to be dealt with bulks so enormously that it is literally impossible to deal, in detail and with complete understanding, with the rights and wrongs of citizens at a distance in the provinces and remote parts of a big empire. Consequently, he was always trying to show how far more successfully local self-government—a local ward-mote, for instance—would deal with provincial matters in England. That every town should be, as it were, a little State, with all classes represented in it, and matters dealt with locally should only come up to the Central Parliament for veto or for sanction. In the same way he recommended strongly that in India every facility should be given to "voluntary (limited liability) companies to execute roads, works of irrigation, etc...." That country districts should be given local treasuries, as well as towns.

In "English institutions and their most necessary reforms," Newman declares and reiterates that this lack of local treasuries is a "hideous blunder," and adds, "every coin in every province is liable to be spent in some war." He urges other changes, which have come to pass in some measure, such as a Viceroy, a "prince of the blood royal," sent out to "receive their occasional homage." But there again lack of cooperation with the natives, lack of real understanding between us and them, have, as everyone is aware, worked havoc when a man [Footnote: It is impossible to forget in this connection what the Tribune called our "Curzonian statescraft" in the recent past.] without the necessary insight and sympathy into the people's points of view and ways of thought has been sent to posts of supreme authority.

There have been men of splendid capabilities for understanding and sympathizing with these points of view, men such as Sir James Outram, the Bayard of India; Sir John Malcolm, Lord Elphinstone, Sir George Russell Clerk, Lord Lawrence, Ovans, and many others, who helped forward the better understanding between England and India very greatly; and of these, Outram suffered grievous misrepresentations at the hands of his Government, Clerk was put aside, and Ovans had to stand his trial in England for an absolutely unjustifiable charge.

Whenever the question of co-operation and sympathy comes up, as from time to time it does, between Englishmen and Indians, whether it is fifty or sixty years ago, in Newman's day or now in the year of grace 1909, with a few honourable exceptions, the answer is identically the same. It is practically an unknown quantity. The East and West have not really met. Still the ranks of the service are absorbed by Englishmen; still, as all educated Indians protest, the "true centre of gravity for India is in London"; still India is unrepresented in the Viceroy's Executive Councils, and in Customs, Post, Survey, Telegraph, Excise, etc., and also in the Commissioned ranks of the Army; still, because district administration is to all intents and purposes not in existence, there is no compulsory education for boys and girls, though most educated Indians are very strongly in favour of it.

It is not, it cannot be, because our eyes, as a nation, have been shut to the fact of what the faults of our own administration have been in years gone by. If no one else had trumpeted them abroad, at least one man spoke out the whole truth and nothing but the truth about it in the last century: Francis, the great Social Reformer—Francis Newman, who was no time-server, no prophesier of smooth things; but, as much as in him lay, desired more than anything else to lay the whole unvarnished truth before his fellow men, things that concerned the weaker members of the community. In lecture after lecture he turned things to the "rightabout-face" which had hitherto been done sub rosa in India. He did in effect pull down the very rose tree which had acted as such an efficient shelter. His bull's- eye lantern always cast an uncompromising glare upon those sometimes very "shady" doings of our countrymen which characterized their treatment of natives in the early Victorian era, and—occasionally perhaps, even since.

No one has forgotten, for instance, the words of Mr. Halliday, Lieutenant- Governor of Bengal, when he described our police as a curse to India in 1854.

Newman reminded his countrymen that in 1852 a petition had been sent to the House of Commons from Lower Bengal, "among other grievous complaints," which "stated that by reason of the hardships inflicted on witnesses, the population" were averse from testifying to the ill-doings and tyranny of these police.

Again, as regarded the courts of law in India, Newman reminded us of the revelations contained in that volume by the Hon. Mr. Shore concerning our Government (the book which was withdrawn 1844).

It was there stated definitely that, until the days of Lord William Bentinck, Persian was the only language used in these courts. Consequently, as neither judge, nor clerk, nor litigating party, nor person accused, nor his witnesses understood it, it constantly happened that the case was a veritable reductio ad absurdum. No one knew what was happening until at last the man—if it was a case of murder—was shown that the case had gone against him by being shown the gallows!

It is true nous avons change tout cela, in these days, and the vernacular tongue is used instead, but now it is the judge who doesn't always know accurately what is going on, for he cannot always understand what the witnesses are saying! As Newman says very shrewdly: "If self- confident, he trusts his own impressions; if timid, he leans on the judgment of his native clerk; if formal and pedantic, he believes all clear and coherent statements. His weaknesses are watched, and it is soon understood whether he is to be better managed by fees to the clerk, or by the forging of critical evidence, in cases for which it is worth while. Very scandalous accounts have been printed in great detail ... and one thing is clear, that those Englishmen who have looked keenly into the matter and dare to speak freely, believe justice to have a far worse chance in such tribunals than before native judges."

Francis Newman tells us that his own eyes were opened to the prevailing state of things in those days, by "a very intelligent, and widely informed indigo-planter." He told him that when he first began indigo-planting, his partner had given this emphatic rule of conduct: "Never enter the Company's Courts!" And to his own amazed question as to what course of action was to be pursued when a difficulty arose, he clearly and openly explained. "If a native failed to pay us our dues, we never sued him, but simply publicly seized some of his goods, sold them by auction, deducted our claim from the proceeds, and handed over to him the balance." There is something almost humorous in this travesty of an amende honorable for so highhanded a measure!

One may in very deed be thankful that since the day of all these happenings, Indians have, as Mr. Gokhale tells us, "climbed in the field of law, to the very top of the tree," and can now deal out first-hand justice to their fellow countrymen.

I think I cannot give a fitter close to this chapter than by quoting Newman's suggestions as to measures of urgent importance with regard to our Indian Empire, which were made a little over forty years ago.

"The establishment of an Imperial Court in India to judge all causes.... The mark of a 'tyrant' (according to the Old Greeks) was his defence by a foreign body-guard: we bear that mark of illegitimate sway at present.

"To make India loyal, to save the yearly sacrifice of health or life to 10,000 young men, now the miserable victims of our army system, is so urgent an interest, that I put this topic foremost. Too much importance can hardly be given to it. Each soldier is said to cost us L100; hence the pecuniary expense also is vast. But until we restrain ourselves from aggression, all attempts permanently to improve our millions at home must be fruitless.... Our task is to rear India into political manhood, train it to English institutions, and rejoice when it can govern itself without our aid."



CHAPTER XVII

VOTES FOR WOMEN

There is always a large percentage of people who range themselves on the side of the majority in regard to any question of the day. They range themselves there not because of any principle involved, but simply and solely because they consider this mode of action expedient. And they feel far safer, far happier, taking the flabby, muscleless arm of Expediency than in venturing into unknown difficulties behind the uncompromisingly stiff figure of Principle. But there are others-thank God for them!—who hate the shifty, cunning eye of Expediency far too much to have anything to do with him. These others would far rather be in the minority in championing some good cause than with the "expedient" majority.

These others are the pioneers of civilization. Sometimes—to-day we have many cases in point as regards the social crusade of brave women against taxation without representation—they are martyrs as well as pioneers. But the splendid spirit of knight-errantry, which shone so vividly with the fire of enthusiasm in medieval days, is still abroad in our midst to-day. A few militant personalities fight for a great cause, a great principle— the raising of a better moral tone amongst us, the betterment of the lives of their fellows. Newman was one of these. His sword was always in the thickest of the fight when it was a fight against some social injustice to his fellow citizens. Forty years ago and more he spoke out in championship of woman's rights. So long ago as 1867 he led the movement which tilted at social wrongs, social injustices dealt out to the sex. It is a movement which has taken, as I said, more than half a century to make its way to the position it holds to-day. It has been opposed bitterly almost every inch of the way by men who love expediency, and turn their backs on the principle of the thing; which is fair play for women. Nevertheless, England is a country which prides herself on her keen sense of justice and freedom.

If Newman had done nothing else, his work for this movement would be unforgettable; his words were so outspoken, his way of dealing with the subject so broad-minded. In one of his articles he urged the following on his fellow men:—"Readers of History, and Lawyers, are aware that women's wrongs are an ancient and terribly persistent fact.... Why has our law been so unjust to women?—Because women never had a voice in the making of it, and men as a class have not realized the oppression of women as a class" (the italics are my own). "Men have deep in their hearts the idea that women ought to be their legal inferiors; that neither the persons of women nor their property ought to remain their own; that marriage is not a free union on equal terms; and that the law ought to favour the stronger sex against the weaker. It is remarkable that our law is more unjust to women than that of the great historically despotic nations, and in some important respects less favourable than that of the Turks. All these things point out that equality of the sexes in respect to the Parliamentary Franchise is essential to justice. The conscience of men is opening to the truth...." "Readers of newspapers cannot be ignorant of the miseries endured by wives from brutal husbands. In ordinary decorous families, sons at lavish expense are trained to self-support. The daughters in one class have nothing spent on their education; in another, are educated as elegant ornaments of a drawing-room, where they live in luxury for a parent's delight; yet when he dies, and their youth is spent, they are often turned adrift into comparative poverty, incompetent for self-help. When complaint is made of this, the ascendant sex graciously tells them, 'they ought to marry,' and this in a country where women are counted by the hundred thousand more numerous than men; where also men do not universally accept the state of marriage. Meanwhile, the law is made as if to dissuade the woman from such a remedy. If she dare to adopt it, it instantly strips her of all her property, great or little; [Footnote: Since then some amendment of the wrong has been done by the "Married Women's Property Act."] and if she earn anything, authorizes her husband to seize it by force. In the Marriage Service, the husband, as if in mockery, says, 'With all my worldly goods I thee endow': while the law allows him to gamble away her whole fortune the day after the marriage, or to live in riotous indulgence on her money, and give to her the barest necessaries of life.... He may maliciously refuse her the sight of her own children.... And if to gain one sight of them she return to his house for two days, the law holds her to have 'condoned' all his offences however flagrant."

Mr. Haweis many years ago said a very significant thing. He said that the best—if the rarest—men had always a good share of the woman nature in themselves. Francis Newman was one of these men. He understood the woman's point of view without any telling. He knew instinctively, intuitively, the mental cramp, the moral inability to rise to her full stature, which is induced by man's perpetual effort to fit her into a measured mould prepared by himself. He knew that if "a man's reach must exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?" what a hell faced the woman who could not even reach forward to fulfil all the many aims which she was conscious were stirring within her, longing for attainment. He had seen women, his countrywomen, shake the bars behind which they faced their world for the very passion of revolt against these man-set limits, which kept them in on every side. He knew that, of all hard fates, perhaps few are more bitter than to feel the power and ability within you to do some work as well as another does it, and yet to have no freedom to use that power. To be forced, by man-made laws, to wrap up your talent in the napkin of legal red-tapeism, when everything within you, perhaps, urges you to turn it to good account.

Let us look for one moment at some of the legal disabilities of women to- day. Perhaps some of us are hardly aware to what an almost incredible distance they reach.

Mr. Henry Schloesser, barrister-at-law of the Inner Temple, [Footnote: In his pamphlet published by the Women's Social and Political Union.] very explicitly explains how they affect women. "At Common Law the father is entitled against the mother to the custody of the children, and this right he could only forfeit by gross misconduct; so also he was entitled to prescribe their mode of education.... He remains prima facie the guardian of his children, to the exclusion of the mother" [the italics are my own]. "Alone of the learned professions, the medical is open to women...." (She constantly proves her aptitude to take the same honours as man as regards the others, but he still growls over his share and keeps her out.) "A husband is not bound at Common Law to cohabit with or maintain his wife."

These facts show luridly against the sky of woman's world, but perhaps few men know what purgatorial fires they light in many a woman's heart to-day. They show that man's injustice to her does not only concern her in public life, but even in the home life (to which he would fain limit her energies); she has practically no legal status at all. She has not even a right to her own children in the eye of the law. Quite recently a judge decided that "a woman is not a parent in the eye of the law," and therefore powerless in things relating to her children. She is excluded from the guardianship of them. Yet so curiously irrational is this same English law that, should any woman wronged by a man become mother to an illegitimate child, upon her falls the whole onus of its maintenance until it is sixteen years old. The man gets off scot-free; for the world which condones an offence (which is shared by both) in the case of the man, condemns it in the woman.

Thus, as Mr. Thomas Johnston [Footnote: The Case for Woman's Suffrage, by Thomas Johnston. Published by the Women's Social and Political Union.] very clearly puts it: "Where there is any stigma or blame, the woman bears it alone.... Under the law of England to-day a man can secure divorce by simply proving the unfaithfulness of his wife. But the wife, in order to obtain a divorce from her husband for the same unfaithfulness, must, in addition, prove cruelty or desertion." This in itself is very one-sided law, and certainly indefensible.

Francis Newman describes this law in no measured terms. He declares in his article on "Marriage Laws" (1867) that what undeniably needs reform in our country's government is "the extravagant power given by our law to a husband.... The exclusive right attributed to him over the children is unjust and pernicious. His rights over his wife's person [Footnote: According to English law, as evidenced in a recent case, the wife is not "a person" at all; presumably, therefore, she is simply his chattel!] are extreme and monstrous.... We need a single short, sweeping enactment that, notwithstanding anything to the contrary in past statutes, no woman henceforth shall by marriage change her legal status or lose any part of her rights over property....

* * * * *

"We implore all true and genuine Conservatives not to delay and use half- measures, but to do justice to the sex in good time. He who tries to uphold injustice is the true and efficient revolutionist, while he thinks he is Conservative."

He goes on to touch thus on what is perhaps the most cruel injustice of all—that the law permits a man to deprive his wife of the children, who, before God, are as equally hers as his:—

"Not only with regard to property, also in regard to children, the law is unjust to women. The mother has to undergo much in bringing a child to maturity—the agony of childbirth... the countless cares of tending and watching by night and day. The child becomes the darling of her heart, the image of her dreams, the great centre of her thoughts and hopes; and after all her toils, the law permits a husband to take the child permanently out of her sight, and (if he choose) to put it under the charge of an enemy ... who will fill its mind with falsehoods and teach it to hate and despise its mother. Such things are not possibilities merely and dreams; they are stern realities, and the law gives her no redress."

When one thinks of all that these words mean, one is face to face with the almost unthinkable fact that the case of the woman in England is unjust beyond description, and for this reason, that, as Newman says, "Men, who alone make the laws, make them with but little account of woman." At home with her children she is defenceless. She has no power over them, and her husband is not bound to "maintain" her, notwithstanding the sentence, which English law has made absolutely meaningless, of his marriage vow to her: "With all my worldly goods I thee endow."

In the world, if she have no husband or be unmarried, she is not a "person" in a legal sense; and during election time her house is described, in canvassing for votes, as having "no occupier"! In the world, too, she is unable to obtain a fair wage for her work. She may do the work as well as man, but nevertheless, in most cases, her pay is less. Mr. Johnston tells us that the average male worker's wage has been calculated to be about 18s., but the average woman worker's wage is only about 7s. And when women find out these many injustices suffered at home and in the world by their sex, as Miss Christabel Pankhurst says, they are absolutely unable to right these wrongs, for "women have no political power."

Here is the pivot round which the wrongs of women revolve—her lack of legal status, her voicelessness as regards the laws of her country, the country which is so openly irrational as to count her a "person" when it wants to get a tax out of her, but refuses to do so at any other time when she has something to ask of it in return!

Once the parliamentary vote is given to women, the same results would follow in England as have followed elsewhere. Wages and hours of labour are made just for women, as in many respects they have been now made for men. The laws of divorce are the same. Mothers are made joint guardians of their children with their fathers. The age of protection for girls is raised to 18. [Footnote: At the present moment, by the English law, a girl can contract a valid marriage at twelve years of age; a boy at fourteen. (See Legal Status of Women, by H. H. Schloesser.)] In New South Wales, after the women were given the vote, Dr. Mackellar brought in a bill to deal with the protection of illegitimate children, which has answered admirably; while in New Zealand and Australia the Wages Board, which the women's vote helped to pass, has raised in both countries the wages of women from 5s. to l6s. per week for the same amount of work done. And in other respects it has abolished sweating—that crucial question of crucial questions in England to-day.