There is another point, too, amongst many others, in which the vote helped the national life in Australia in the giving of old age pensions. Perhaps had women the vote here in England, the shameful system in which old men and women are separated in the last years of their life, as the workhouses ordain, would be altered. And this is a question which demands immediate attention—immediate attention; for more than L26,000,000 are paid by taxpayers each year to be spent in great part on our wretched system of poor laws.

Francis Newman was strongly against poor laws administered as they are in England to-day, as, indeed, is every thoughtful man. He was also strongly of opinion that there should be women on juries in some cases. And indeed it is a fact that women magistrates, as well as women jurors, are most certainly a sine qua non in those cases where, at the present moment, owing to juries being composed of men only, common justice for the unrepresented Englishwoman in relation with the other sex is not, in a great proportion of cases, rendered her. But even were women made eligible for these offices, it would be no new thing, for in Mary Tudor's reign there were two women appointed justices of the peace; and, of course, always there has been a provision in law for "a jury of matrons" in certain cases.

Indeed, when one goes far enough back in research into most questions, the invariable lesson, is taught us, which we are always so reluctant, in our cocksureness of the "antiquity" of our present-day conditions of life, to learn, and we find that our arrangements very often are not "as it was in the beginning," but only mushroom growths of a decade or two. As Mrs. Wolstenholme Elmy very justly says in her recent pamphlet on "Woman's Franchise," women possessed voting rights from time immemorial, and the year 1832 was the year when they were dispossessed of many ancient rights by the Reform Act passed in that year.

As regards other disabilities of women, Francis Newman wrote very fully and very strongly upon them, and it is impossible to leave them unmentioned here. In 1869 he wrote: "There is one important matter which young men need specially to be taught, viz. that at no time of life is any man ... exempt from the essential duty of curbing animal impulses.... Nothing so paralyzes his force of Will as to be told that some men have from God the gift of continence, and others have it not. This doctrine is disastrously prominent in the Anglican marriage service, and is borrowed from St. Paul. But that great and deep-hearted apostle was unmarried and without personal experience. He writes, not as one revealing supernatural communications, but as imparting his best wisdom.... A general and just inference is, that a firm self-restraint is necessary and salutary for every man."

It is impossible to write more strongly and clearly of the wickedness of women's ancestral personal rights being swept away than does Newman in articles published in the fourth volume of his Miscellanies. He does not disguise the shameful state of the law as it affects woman to-day, and as it is carried out by Government—that law which makes wrongdoing so easy and unpunishable for man, and so hard and unjust to woman. The unjustifiableness of certain laws was shown up with no uncertain pen by him. He was himself convinced of their iniquity; and once convinced, he stood forward as a modern John the Baptist, spared no one, and passionately accused his countrymen of the injustice, immorality, and cruelty of their making one law for men and another for women. He inveighed against the world's point of view of this subject: and this not once, nor twice, but constantly; and urged with all his might that these wrongs to his countrywomen should be righted. Nevertheless his articles, many of them, are forgotten. The dust of neglect is lying thick upon them on many an unused shelf to-day. His voice has long been silent; and no doubt it has been said of him (as it was by a Church dignitary of Father Dolling at his death): "We shan't be worried any more by him now about the righting of social abuses." Laws against which Newman declaimed are not altered yet, and we are a long way from those far-reaching reforms he advocated. But the words he wrote are not dead. They are in our midst to- day, and they stir depths to-day in the hearts of his countrymen in suggestions towards social reformation; towards the righting of wrongs just as glaring to-day as they were a century ago. Questions which can never be put superficially aside, by men who, like Newman, cannot endure to leave a social wrong unredressed, if they can by any searching find the remedy.



CHAPTER XVIII

FRANCIS NEWMAN AND HIS RELIGION

More than one person has said to me in connection with this memoir: "If the whole of Frank Newman's heterodox religious opinions be not given, the book will lose half its point."

To my mind there are quite two, if not more, sides to this question. My strongest argument, however, in favour of only dealing briefly with them is this: It is quite true that Agnosticism more or less held its sway over him during the years between 1834 and 1879. I am quite aware of how tremendous a slice that is of a man's life. But it is not an overwhelming testimony when one comes to look at it not from the worldly point of view.

There are periods in which Time—as Time—seems almost beside the mark. "A thousand years in Thy sight are but as yesterday." When the Israelites had once achieved their journey through the wilderness—nay, even through the earlier time of tyranny amongst the Egyptians-I suppose the actual years seemed as a dream when one awaketh.

I myself have known forty years pass, for someone afflicted with a terrible mental disability, as a watch in the night, once light pierced through the clouds of the long-darkened mental vision. Time, as sex, is purely temporary. In this present world we cannot do without either, but when Time itself passes for good, the old implements which were necessary to make the clock go round will pass likewise.

So, in Newman's case, when that tremendous slice in a man's life—forty- five years—was overpast, he sloughed off the old garments of Agnosticism, and came back to the Christian faith professed by him in early childhood so conscientiously—and, indeed, up to the year after his missionary journey, 1834.

This fact influences me largely in the matter of dealing only briefly with the time-as regards his religious professions—which lies between these two dates, and for these reasons, which I hope to prove, carry considerable weight.

The first is that people are mistaken in considering that it was his religious opinions which made Newman great. The real valour of his life was shown in the splendid aspects of Social Reform which he showed to the world; the way of the New Citizenship, of the New Patriotism, which he was for ever preaching and writing about. He was the Perseus of To-day whose wholehearted efforts were spent in freeing the Andromedas from their antiquated bonds and fetters; whose good sword was ever pointed at the throats of the dragons which lift their ugly heads against freedom— against reforms of all sorts; the dragons who take so long in dying.

But there are many who will regret bitterly that a man who served his generation so splendidly as he did in these matters should ever have written a book such as the Phases of Faith; for though it is undeniably clever, yet it is not convincing; and very much of it is very painful reading for those who do not care to wander out of the way in the wilderness of religious speculation and doubt.

Newman declares in this book that he did not give up Christianity; yet he gave up all that made Christianity Christianity. He said in it that he was looking for a "religion which shall combine the tenderness, humility, and disinterestedness that are the glories of the purest Christianity, with that activity of intellect and untiring pursuit of truth." [Footnote: He said once he wished for a religion which should combine the best out of all religions in the world.]

When he mentions that, in his time, "of young men at Oxford not one in five seemed to have any convictions at all," he seems to imply that it was on account of the desire for a new religion; whereas it was far more traceable to the after-effects of Calvinism and Puritanism, which have stuck, as spiritual limpets, to England's religious rocks ever since they first reached them. They are certainly looser in their hold than was the case formerly, but they are there still.

Phases of Faith was published in 1850. But the year before a book of far more religious suggestiveness had come out, though that too was a book of opposition to the accepted forms of religion, The Soul: its Sorrows and Aspirations.

Regarded as a work postulating a new spiritual point of view, it was vague and unsatisfying. It was without form and void. It desired that most unsatisfying thing, a religion with no dogmas:—those stakes which preserve the ground on which grow the flowers of religious truth, from those who come but to spoil and destroy.

Yet, with all its lack of convincing power, and those parts of it which are, like Phases of Faith, painful reading and profitless—to Christians—there are here and again striking passages such as this, whose beauty cannot fail to appeal to us: "None can enter the kingdom of Heaven without becoming a little child. But behind and after this there is a mystery revealed to but few; namely, if the Soul is to go on into higher spiritual blessedness, it must become a woman. Yes, however manly thou be among men, it must learn to love being dependent; must lean on God, not solely from distress and alarm, but because it does not like independence or loneliness.... God is not a stern Judge; exacting every tittle of some law from us.... He does not act towards us (spiritually) by generalities ... but His perfection consists in dealing with each case by itself as if there were no other...." And again: "The Bible is a blessed book if we do not stifle the Holy Spirit within us."

The second reason why I touch on these religious opinions (before mentioned) but briefly, is because of my own strong impression since I have been writing this memoir, that in that next chapter of existence upon which Newman has now entered, he may not impossibly be nearer the Light, the religious truth, which here he so earnestly sought, but mistakenly; and in his regret for his own phases of religious unfaith, now cast aside, may not wish them to be recapitulated anew. There is a certain pathetic sentence of his, in a letter in later life, which seems to give a certain amount of confirmation to this idea: "It is a sad thing to have printed erroneous fact. I have three or four times contradicted and renounced the passage ... but I cannot reach those whom I have misled."

I have mentioned before that Francis Newman returned to his earlier faith in Christianity a few years before his death.

It remains, therefore, to give the proofs which have been put into my hands regarding this fact.

Two of his very greatest friends, Anna Swanwick and Dr. Martineau, received from his own hands the knowledge that he wished it to be known that he died a Christian. I shall give a quotation from one of Newman's last letters to the former, from Miss Bruce's Memoir of Recollections of Anna Swanwick. In almost illegible writing, he says:—

"If I live through this year, I hope to effect, by aid of a friend's eyes, a third ... edition of my Paul of Tarsus, with grateful acknowledgment that, in spite of a few details, I more and more come round to the substance of the views of my honoured friend, James Martineau. Also I close by my now sufficient definition of a Christian—'one, who in heart, and steadily, is a disciple of Jesus in upholding the prayer called the Lord's Prayer as the highest and purest in any known national religion.' I think J. M. will approve this."

I should also like to add Miss Bruce's own words in this connection:—

"He" (Newman) "was drawn back at the end of his long life by the sweet reasonableness and loving sympathy of his friend Anna Swanwick, and the teaching of Dr. Martineau."

Also these words from a letter written by Anna Swanwick: "It is delightful to me to think how, when the veil shall have fallen from the eyes of our friend" (F. W. Newman), "he will love and venerate Him in Whose footsteps he is unconsciously treading." Yet I must add here that in a letter from Newman to Anna Swanwick (to which I had access) in 1897, there is no definite statement of his belief in Immortality. "If God gives me immortality, I am content. If it pleases Him to annihilate me, it is well. Let Him do with me as seemeth to Him good."

As regards Dr. Martineau's statement, I quote now from a letter received by me from Mr. William Tallack, who gave me particulars of a letter written in 1903, by Mr. W. Garrett Horder, on a meeting he had with Dr. Martineau:—

"Not more than three or four years before his death I was sitting in an omnibus at Oxford Circus, when Dr. Martineau, accompanied by his daughter, got in and took seats by my side. After I had confessed my pleasure at seeing him, he said, 'I think you ought to know that the other day I had a letter from Frank Newman saying that, when he died, he wished it to be known that he died in the Christian faith.'"

To my mind these strong assertions that Newman wished it known that he "died a Christian," which he wrote to two of his closest friends, speak for themselves.

There was also another, Rev. J. Temperley Grey, who visited Newman constantly in his last illness, and who said of his final conversion these words, in the "In Memoriam" address he gave at Newman's funeral:—

"Of late his" (Newman's) "attitude towards Christ had undergone a great change. He confessed to me only very recently that for years he had held on to Christianity by the skirts of S. Paul; 'but now,' he said, 'Paul is less and less, and Christ is more and more.' He made this statement with an emphasis and an emotion which conveyed the impression that he wished it to be regarded as a final testimony."

To those of us who are Christians these are strong words, showing clearly where, in his last illness and failing strength, he had turned for final help.

Some have called Francis Newman an atheist. But he was no atheist. A theist for many years he was: but it was because he was unable to reconcile certain historical difficulties, or to get rid of certain earlier Calvinistic tendencies, or to accept certain dogmas which seemed to him impossible of acceptation, and in this last respect he is certainly not alone.

Mr. Temperley Grey's testimony to Newman as a fellow townsman, during his last days at Weston-super-Mare (he died 6th Oct., 1897), shows him to us as a man who acted to his fellow men, and women, as a Christian should, although he did not, till near the end, believe as one.

"Without depreciating in the least his illustrious brother, it may truly be said that while the one was a saint in the cloister, the other was a saint in the very thick of life's battle. [Footnote: "Henry Newman... stood for a spiritual Tory; while Francis Newman was a spiritual Radical" (Morning Leader, October, 1897).] ... I would speak of him rather as the neighbour and townsman who moved to and fro among us ... and whom, distrusting at first, we ultimately reverenced and loved for his nobility of character, his simplicity of life, his tenderness of conscience, his devoutness of spirit, and his generosity of heart.

"Theologically we were far apart, but we were entirely with him in his enthusiasm for righteousness, his sympathy with downtrodden and oppressed peoples.... We were with him also in his untiring efforts to secure for women their rightful place in the shaping of our national life, and in his splendid protests against the tortures inflicted in the name of science on the poor, helpless animals, our dumb brothers. To hear the old man eloquently discourse upon these themes was to be morally uplifted.... Those of us who were admitted into the inner circle of his friends were profoundly impressed by his devoutness. He lived as in the Presence of God, and his prayers in the home, so simple, so trustful, so reverential, were always a means of grace, a real refreshment.

* * * * *

"He was a true philanthropist. He championed the cause of the oppressed everywhere.... A room in his house was set apart as a guest-chamber for persons needing a change to the seaside, but whose circumstances barred the way; and not a few were fresh equipped for the work and battle of life, as a result of his thoughtful hospitality.... Francis Newman stood by himself in his greatness, his goodness, his simplicity, and we shall not find his like again.... Above all, our friend was a truth seeker. This was the ruling passion of his life."

Mrs. Temperley Grey tells me that it was always Newman's first wife's great hope that her husband should be the means, through his ministrations during the last part of Newman's life, of leading him back to his original faith. Mrs. Newman used deeply to regret Newman's lack of definite belief, but always said when the subject was raised, "Cannot they understand that my husband is under a cloud—a mist, as it were?" Both the brothers, the Cardinal and Francis Newman, through the greater part of their lives had been restlessly searching for truth—for certainty—in their faith. Calvinism had been the black cloud under which they had both been brought up. If the obiter dictum of a celebrated Cardinal in the Roman Church be correct: "Give me the child till he is seven years old, and he will be a Jesuit all his life," then indeed it shows the tremendous power of habit, for it was only through much tribulation, through passionate inward wrestlings with those terrible tenets, and through many searchings of heart, that either brother made his way out of its toils at length. The Cardinal sought above all things Truth, through authority; no one will forget those soul-stirring words of his in his Apologia pro Vita Sua in which he speaks of the great peace that at last quieted his doubts and fears when he was received into the Roman Church. To many of us Authority is the life-buoy which supports us "o'er crag and torrent till the night is gone"; but Francis Newman could not believe in it. "Authority is the bane," he would say, "of religion." He must see with his intellectual eyes, to be saved. He must see and touch Truth for himself; his intellectual self must be convinced, or he must stand outside the creeds he knew—a questioner still.

But he was honest and open in his aloofness. Did it mean loss of a distinguished brilliant worldly career (as it did at Oxford in 1830)? Well, then the career must be lost, for he could not bring himself to sign to doctrines which he did not believe. Did it mean unpopularity, that he held certain views on Social Reform? Well, rather than compromise, rather than temporize, he would stand out alone rather than yield an iota of what he held to be the true Progressive Aims for People and Land. Only—and this was a flaw, and no small one either—he often wrote his religious opinions so openly as to pain his readers. In many of his letters which I have read there are expressions relating to the religious dogmas held by his correspondents which are bluntly, unrestrainedly, bitterly used. It is true that often, at the close of a letter, there follows a hope that he had not hurt his friends' feelings; but that he must, at all costs, be open as to his own beliefs. But that apology only came as an after-thought, as it were as an attempt to dress the wound which he himself had made, and is quite unable to do away with the impression produced by the written word. Litera scripta manet.

In writing on "The National Church" thirty-three years after he had refused to sign the Thirty-nine Articles, he said, with emphasis, "Truthfulness of the individual man is essential to moral worth; but for this very reason the system of the Church must be lax in order to allow truthfulness to individuals." This is curious reasoning, and subversive of the idea of Unity. Still, as no one can deny that as Life implies Progression, so as regards the Churches, the inspired words that they should be "led into all truth" surely allow for progression also into higher regions of knowledge and methods of teaching. To allow for this spirit of progression Newman held that a State Church should not be tied down to fixed conditions. "No general Church system will go so far as the foremost minds.... All the moderate and wisest historians of the Anglican Church have extolled its foundations. They have judged that, take it as a whole, the Reformation went as far as the collective nation was then able to go." That it "was necessary to reform it in the sixteenth century in order to harmonize it with the higher intelligence of the best minds, so far as could be done without making it useless to the inferior minds." All this has a certain truth, but when all is said, the fact forces itself upon one that after all it is a matter for debate whether the Reformation was a "progressive" movement at all: whether it did not in reality delay progression. For it is well known to-day that it was really managed by the machinations of one of the most selfish and unprincipled of kings [Footnote: Whose conduct at this time largely hinged on the refusal of the Pope to grant him his wished-for divorce from Katherine.]—who was only progressive in the matter of wives—and by his ministers, who were, many of them, men of vile characters and greed. As to motive, it is very patent to-day what that was. It was that of the man who covets his neighbour's goods, i.e. the lands and moneys of the monasteries and churches, and who whitewashes his sin when his desire is satisfied. There is besides sufficient proof to-day that the great bulk of the unrepresented nation did not regard this act of wholesale robbery as "lawful and necessary," nor that it "harmonized" the Church "with the higher intelligence of the best minds."

To the end of his life (from his Oxford days to his death), of course, Newman was never greatly in sympathy with the Anglican Church. He did not, even at the end, own himself bound by her dogmas or obedient to her conditions. To go further into the question is, I think, not desirable here. It is enough to say that though he was outside the visible Church, yet he was, in life and spirit, "not far off". As was said of Stanley, "he believed more than he knew." His "life was in the right," though his doubts and rationalism led him into unbeliefs, which only at the close of his long life he renounced. And he had a far deeper longing for religious truth than have many conventional Churchmen.



CHAPTER XIX

LAST YEARS, CHARACTERISTICS, AND SOME LETTERS RELATING TO THE EARLY LIFE OF THE CARDINAL

It will be remembered that Francis Newman retired from his official duties at University College in 1863, with the title Emeritus Professor. As most of us are aware, this word "Emeritus" was originally given to Roman soldiers who had served out their term and been discharged, on the understanding of being given a settled sum of money which was practically the equivalent of our English half-pay. The term is now used to designate a professor who has been "honourably relieved" of his office, either because of physical disability or on account of a term of long service fulfilled. It is, in effect, a retiring pension.

As will have been seen by letters from Newman which precede this chapter, he retired from the office of Professor, but in no sense from his work of writing, studying, and lecturing. The enormous number of books published will testify to this. His five volumes of Miscellanies, his Reminiscences of Two Exiles, Europe of the Near Future, translation of the Odes of Horace, [Footnote: Which did not meet with the approval of Matthew Arnold.] Handbook and Dictionary of Modern Arabic, Kabail Vocabulary, Libyan Vocabulary, Text of the Iguvine Inscriptions, Christian Commonwealth, History of the Hebrew Monarchy, Hebrew Theism, Early Life of Cardinal Newman, Anglo-Saxon Abolition of Negro Slavery, not to mention many others, alone show how writing largely filled his days and occupied his mind.

Besides all this work, however, he was for ever interesting himself in any cause or society which applied to him for help, or seemed in any way to need a champion. Indeed, as Mr. Hornblower Gill says of him, "Scholar, translator, mathematician, historian, political economist, political philosopher, moralist, theologian, philanthropist, he was the most copious and various writer of his time."

For a great many years before he died Newman lived at Weston-super-Mare. But two years before his death, in October, 1897, when he was ninety-two years of age, he found himself, partly owing to senile decay and partly owing to a bad fall he had had in the spring of the year, and also to loss of eyesight, unable to take part in public affairs any longer, nor yet to write as he had been used to do.

The unpublished article on "Land Nationalization" (which is printed in this volume) came into the hands of Mr. William Jameson (to whose kindness I am indebted for it) in 1886, at which time he was Hon. Secretary of the Land Nationalization Society, and Francis Newman, Vice-President.

Mr. Jameson, at the time of sending me the article, wrote me a letter from which I shall here quote those parts relating to his friendship with Newman. He says, speaking of their first meeting: "There was an instant fellowship that endears his memory to me. I was then about thirty-five, and he past eighty. There was a quiet dignity in his manner, but no suggestion of old age."

One little anecdote may be of interest.

"We left a rather stormy committee meeting together, over which Professor Newman had presided. The storm was due to one member who had a grievance against some others. Speaking of the pity of this, Professor Newman said to me, 'You know how very strongly my brother and myself differ in opinion; yet this has never created the slightest personal discord....'"

Several years later. Professor Newman wrote Mr. Jameson a letter (on finding out that he was suffering from overwork and the fear of subsequent breakdown), saying these strong words of sympathy: "I charge you to give it up. Save yourself for the years to come." He went on to say that a friend of his own had kept working on for some cherished cause at the cost of much mental pressure, and had ended his days in a lunatic asylum. Mr. Jameson adds that Newman's words of counsel have often and often rung in his ears since they were first said to him, and he attributes to the fact that he obeyed them, his having been saved from a physical breakdown.

"Save yourself for the years to come" is a counsel which we, who are workers, are so often in danger of forgetting. Except in extreme youth, most men and women live far more in the present and in the past than they do in the future which lies before them, so largely to be carved into shape by their Present.

In April, 1887, Sir Samuel Walker Griffith, G.C.M.G., Chief Justice of Queensland since 1893, Secretary for Public Instruction, Attorney-General from 1874-8, 1890-3, Premier of Queensland from 1883-8, and 1890-3, was over in England, and Francis Newman was to have been introduced by Mrs. Bucknall (mother of Mrs. Bainsmith, the distinguished sculptor [Footnote: Mrs. Georgina Bainsmith, F.N.B.A., member of the Royal Society of Arts, and of the Honorary Council of the North British Academy.] to whom I am indebted for the photo in this book of her bust of Francis Newman, which now stands in University College, London) to Sir Samuel, at the latter's own special desire. Unfortunately, Newman was unable to go with Mrs. Bucknall to Sir Samuel Griffith's house, and this is his letter (kindly lent me, with Sir Samuel Griffith's reply, by Mrs. Bucknall).

"Dear Mrs. Bucknall,

"Since you tell me that time presses, I have no way but to give up to you my private copy of (my) Christian Commonwealth, which I now send you. Very sorry I am that I could not accompany you on Sunday to Sir Samuel Griffith's, but learning from you how graciously such a visitor from the Antipodes expressed his desire to meet me, I am really sorry that I was not able in person to attest my deep reverence and admiration as well as affection for Mrs. Butler, and my conviction that only moral and spiritual influences can quell the demon of impurity, while the despair which tries to keep it within limits by moderation and indulging it, is a folly and an infatuation, especially when coupled with police licenses and police espionage. Our ladies since 1869 have learned to detest the despotic police and the despotic doctor with an intensity which time ever increases.

"They must conquer at last: the sole question is,—after how much more moral damage to young men and women, and how much mental agony to our Christian martyrs.

"Our young men happily are joining this crusade. Alas, for those who mean to be Christian, and do not know the elements of Christian sentiment. [Footnote: See "Marriage Laws" (1867), "State Provision for Vice" (1869), and "Remedies for the Great Social Evil" (1869), in Vol. III of F. W. Newman's Miscellanies.]

"I look to you to apologize for me to Sir S. G, for offering to him a book written by me... one which my pen has defaced....

"Most truly yours,

"F. W. Newman. "Weston-s.-M., 19th April, 1887."

This is Sir Samuel Griffith's answer:—

"Brown's Hotel, "Dover Street, W., "21st April, 1887.

"Dear Mrs. Bucknall,

"Accept my best thanks for Professor Newman's writings on the Christian Commonwealth and the New Crusade. I really feel ashamed to deprive you of the latter, and Professor Newman of the former, but it would be most ungracious of me to refuse to accept them.

"Pray assure him that the value of the copy of the Christian Commonwealth is to be much enhanced by the fact that it bears his autograph notes, and that I feel deeply honoured by the terms in which he has been good enough to express himself in his note to you, which I have read with great interest and which I enclose. I shall always regret that I had not the honour and pleasure of meeting him at Weston, but my time was too short....

"Believe me, "Yours very faithfully,

"S. W. Griffith."

Mr. and Mrs. Frederick Pennington were great friends of Newman's, and he often stayed with them from time to time. By the kindness of Mrs. Pennington I am able to quote from some letters written by him in 1881-90, and one much earlier, in 1875, in which he laments the death of Mrs. Blackburn. Mrs. Blackburn was a sister of Mr. Pennington's, and one of the most munificent of contributors to the United Kingdom Alliance in its early days, who (I am told by Mrs. Pennington) often denied herself many luxuries in order to be able to make her contributions larger. She describes her as one of the best women she had ever known.

Newman, in his letter to Mr. Pennington in 1875, says of Mrs. Blackburn:—

"I have known her ever since Michaelmas 1869, when the revelation was first made to us of the Contagious Diseases Act; and at the Congress of Social Science at Bristol she was pleased to receive my hospitality. My esteem for her was great and ever increasing...."

He goes on to say that his dread of cold and chills makes him fear a long journey, "though it is mortifying to me not to meet you and Mrs. Pennington, and many other earnest friends of this very important cause."

In 1881 Gladstone was Prime Minister, and stayed in office for five years. For almost the whole of this time the country was hardly ever at peace. The Transvaal rebellion was started in 1880 and later our own troops were defeated by the insurrectionists; whereupon the Government promptly surrendered the Transvaal.

About this time Newman writes to Mrs. Pennington:

"_I am not a member of Cambridge University, nor indeed of Oxford University since 1830. If I had kept my name on the book, I should have paid L6 a year, if I remember; that is, L300 in these fifty years; and as I never took my M.A. degree (because of the 39 Articles), I should even then have no vote.

"I now act on the fixed rule not to take any long journey in the winter months, except from real duty. Experience guides me, and I refuse even pressure from very friendly quarters.... I am melancholy about this Cabinet and Mr. Gladstone, and ashamed to be an Englishman. All comes to me like a domestic calamity. And Parliament is so overworked that English misrule cannot be corrected. I look on Ministers in the House as nearly our worst nuisance. But I must not begin on our defective and evil institutions...."

Then in 1890 the letters begin more and more to show a change in his handwriting. He no longer wrote in his original firm, clear style, but in a crabbed, cramped manner. His words now were often difficult to decipher, and the letters of the words very shaky and undecided, bearing witness very plainly of the trembling hand of Age. After mentioning the immense number of letters which he had to answer, and how the trouble of replying was almost beyond his strength, he says, "The sister-like affection of my honoured friend Anna Swanwick has ... again and again won me to London;... but the place seems never to agree with me. Partly the whirl by night and day, I suppose, is my bane; still more, the endless meeting of fresh and fresh small talk, with the fatigue of listening, and the impression on my brain of miscellaneous memories when I ought to sleep. In Oxford, from like causes, I became as it were 'daft,' and from forgetfulness of the right words could not complete an English sentence. A like affection came on me in London last summer, and I had to break away suddenly, to the disappointment of friends, because my own sense of idiotcy was unbearable. Rest and sleep sufficed to restore me when I reached home. The inability to get out the right word, if (for instance) suddenly asked 'to what station I am going,' is enough to make me seem insane or half asleep.... I am increasingly aware that my brain is my weakest part.... On the whole I am healthy, and agile in all movement as are few men of my age (two doctors fancy that all men of eighty-five have pulses as disorderly as mine!)...."



As regards the work on the Early Life of the Cardinal, which was published at this time, he says:—

"I am (under a sense of duty) writing concerning the late Cardinal quite a different side of his character from that which for fifty years the public have heard. I knew him as eminently generous as to money, but so fanatical as to embarrass judgment of his character. Another weakness I confess and lament. I can write large. I begin everything with resolution so to write. But as soon as I think only of the substance, and forget the manner, my writing so dwindles that I can hardly read it myself. I suppose that weakness of the fingers is the cause. I see how deficient they are of flesh."

In September, 1890, he wrote the following letters to Rev. J. K. Tucker, Rector of Pettaugh, Suffolk, who was an old friend of Newman's, and to Mr. John Henry Tucker, [Footnote: Which have been kindly lent me by Mr. John Warren.] from which I make quotations:—

"Ever since my brother's death (Cardinal J. H. N.) I am overwhelmed with letters, and now am writing more and longer every day than my fingers can well manage, for publishers eager for my MS."

And again in October of the same year:—

"I am about to send to my publishers my painful contribution to the life of the late Cardinal, my brother. I am conscientiously bound to write it, because in his fifty years' absence from the sight of the public a new generation has grown up ignorant of the facts, and the attempt is already begun to puff them off for their beauty of style..,. My age being eighty- five, I know the truths, and must tell them. I shall be howled at as unbrotherly. My immediate business now is to write to numbers of correspondents of whom you are one, whom I have necessarily neglected while engaged in the most anxious work I have ever undertaken...."

As regards this book to which he alludes, his Early Life of Cardinal Newman, everyone feels that in some sense it belittles the writer. For there was no real need of any sort that he should have written it. From one brother to another, such an "early history" was, from some points of view, a disloyalty—and a disloyalty not altogether free from embittered personal feeling.

Was there no personal feeling roused in the lives of the two men? For the younger was practically overshadowed by the elder. It was the elder one to whom the world kotow-ed. It was the elder who—-though the younger was so strikingly intellectual, and so strong a social reformer in many ways— carried the world's laurels, and who was finally given the "splendid funeral" to which Francis Newman takes exception. And there was another reason too, which I believe exercised a strong sway over his feelings to his brother in early youth, and brought into play, though perhaps unrecognized by himself, the quality of emulation, followed by keen disappointment, when failure, as regarded that incident, fell to his share. Be that as it may, it is impossible to justify Francis Newman's writing thus of his brother, in the "early history" to which I refer. Not even his keen desire for truth, which some declare to have been his motive power in the matter, accounted for it.

"I should vastly have preferred entire oblivion of him" (of the Cardinal), "and his writings of the first forty years, but that is impossible. In the cause of Protestants and Protestantism, I feel bound to write, however painful to myself, as simply as if my topic were an old Greek or Latin one." Later on he says, "I have tried to cherish for him a sort of filial sentiment," but "we seemed never to have an interest nor a wish in common." [Footnote: J. H. Newman once in speaking of his brother, said, "Much as we love each other, neither would like to be mistaken for the other." A sentence which seems to contain more meanings than one!] Perhaps no words could more absolutely convey the lack of sympathy between the brothers, than do these. "I have tried to cherish for him a sort of filial sentiment!" showing as it does, only too evidently, that there was no spontaneity of affection between them. The only voice that called each to each was that of old childish association and duty. Francis Newman could not be accused of seeking personal distinction or fame for itself; witness his giving up a very promising career at home in order to go on his missionary journey to Syria. Witness also his open denunciation of many existing State abuses. Witness his unceasing crusades against the stronger party (whatever it might be), which, in his opinion, oppressed and wronged the weaker section of the community, unable of themselves to obtain justice and a hearing at the court of English public opinion.

All the more, then, is it difficult to explain away sentences such as these, which seem to proceed from such an absolutely different personality than was Frank Newman's; and yet the man who reads his memoirs of his brother finds them almost on every page, and cannot understand their presence there.

"The existing generation has seen him" (he is alluding to the Cardinal), "through a mist; and if my simple statement anywhere clears away that mist, they may almost resent my truth-speaking as an impiety." As indeed they did—and do. Some of his own friends, indeed, urged him not to publish the book, but he was obdurate.

"In my rising manhood I received inestimable benefits from this (my eldest) brother.... He supported me, not out of his abundance, but when he knew not whence weekly and daily funds were to come.... Yet a most painful breach ... broke in on me in my nineteenth year and was unhealable." This was, of course, when Francis had been at college two years, for in those days men very often went at the age of sixteen, as he did.

But the entries of 1822 and 1823, which last would be for Francis his "nineteenth year," give no clue to the "painful breach" which "was unhealable"

Yet the fact that religious differences did begin between the two brothers very early in life has been proved beyond all question. Proved also is it that religious discussions were of constant occurrence between them, and that while J. H. Newman had always a strange leaning to Churchmanship, Frank Newman's religious tendencies drew him strongly towards dissent and Unitarianism.

I think the latter mentions in his Phases of Faith that when he first came to college he found his brother had hung up a picture of Our Lady in his younger brother's room, which he at once removed, and refused to have on the walls.

The following letter is to Rev. J. K. Tucker; in it he describes himself as a "Conscious Christian" "at the age of fourteen." But he has often described himself as holding Christianity without Christ:—

"I hold firmly in memory, that in Easter of 1836 I wished to conduct my bride to Oxford, and introduce her there to my mother and two sisters— in those Coaching days we came from Bristol and Cheltenham en route to Oxford. I did not plan the thought of staying a night at your father's house, in which I suppose you and your wife were living. No doubt the scheme was planned by my wife to meet her friend. The winter of our marriage had been one of wild snow; and the following Easter was alike untimely. I just remember the fact of your kind hospitality fifty-four and a half years ago, and the snow around us. In that visit to my mother (the last time I saw her), my young wife caught inflammation of the lungs, which I did not perceive or understand—she was so cruelly bled and cupped, that I think she never recovered it.

"It is very kind of you to keep alive in your heart the friendship of the two ladies. I perhaps ought to state that about two and a half years after the death of that wife in 1876 I married her ... friend.... Else I must have given up housekeeping, and know not into what family I could have gone. My second wife is nineteen years my junior, yet in walking, not at all my equal, but in affectionate care of me inestimable."

In June, 1892, he writes to J. H. Tucker, Esq.:—"I have not heard whether your father, like me, is favoured by life continued, but I venture to send a copy of my hymns.... To-day I have received a letter and book in Bengali from a believer in Theosophy, supposing me to be one of them! Hence, I was not too early in telling my friends that since at the age of fourteen I became a Conscious Christian, no unbelief has made my hymns less precious, mutato saltem nomine.... My change more than fifty years ago was on Historical arguments mainly."

To return to the subject of Newman's last years at Weston-super-Mare. Perhaps the most graphic descriptions of him as an old man are those contributed as "Reminiscences" by Mrs. Kingsley-Tarpey and Mrs. Bainsmith. We know him there as a man who, though hardly ever free from some discomfort or pain in those days, yet never failed in that old-world courtesy of which, alas! there is so poor a supply in the world at the present day.

We know him as a man who was always eager to help those who came to him in trouble or in any difficulty; nay, perhaps almost too ready to believe a cock-and-bull story of those who did not mind, for their own ends, practising on his credulity.

A lady, a relation of the Newmans', said that once on coming to stay with him and Mrs. Newman, she found a secretary in his study smelling strongly of brandy. When the secretary went out of the room, Frank Newman drew their guest aside and said, "Ah, yes, it's a sad case, poor fellow! He's getting away from the temptation of the public-houses."

But when later the secretary's rooms were searched, there were found numbers of brandy bottles hidden away, to prove that he evidently had not "escaped from temptation"! This lady said also that when Newman was old people not infrequently deceived him thus, and traded on his temperance views, and that he had had two secretaries who obtained their post on false pretences.

To conclude this chapter I should like to give one striking instance of his tender sympathy and respect for the poor and lonely. A poor charwoman had died at Weston-super-Mare who had, I believe, often worked in Newman's house. He found that she had no friends to follow her body to the grave, and so he himself, his wife and servants, walked to the funeral as mourners to show her a last respect. It is the Idea represented by his act which makes it serve as an unforgettable and very uncommon illustration of a championship of those unlucky ones who have few or none to champion them.

Could any act speak clearer of the unfailing respect and reverence for women which distinguished Francis Newman through life? Though all others should see the lonely funeral, there should be but the one Good Samaritan who crossed over the road of ordinary, usual, Conventionalities to show by his act that he recognized that class and position count for nothing before the fact of the Universal Brotherhood of Humanity and Religion.



CHAPTER XX

TOULMIN SMITH: AUTHOR, ANTIQUARIAN STUDENT, AND POLITICAL REFORMER

Among the names of those who have done most, by untiring, laborious search among old parish registers, etc., and dusty old records, to bring to light interesting social ordinances, details of ancient parish government, and gems of Norse literature and archaeological research, there have been none in the last century who have by patient work attained more knowledge of their country's inner history than Mr. Toulmin Smith.

His name is indeed familiar to everyone as the greatest living authority on "English Gilds." That book alone, by itself, is an invaluable gift to the nation. By that alone has he done so signal a service to his countrymen that no gratitude could repay it.

It is true that, owing to ill-health, Mr. Toulmin Smith unavoidably left it unfinished at his death, but there is sufficient fulness of information in it as it is, to make it worth more than an infinity of other finished books of to-day.

As Father Gasquet says in his Parish Life in Medieval England, of the universality of these "gilds" in this country: "Every account of a medieval parish must necessarily include some description of the work of fraternities and guilds.... Their existence dates from the earliest times." Mr. Toulmin Smith, indeed, says, "English Guilds are older than any kings of England.... They were associations of those living in the same neighbourhood, who remembered that they had, as neighbours, common obligations." But it was not only because of his English Gilds that he is remembered. In 1854, when he was thirty-eight years of age, he published another very important volume, The Parish: its Obligations and Powers, its Officers and their Duties. This was also a book towards the making of which had gone many long years of the most incessant, careful research in old documents. It was one of those rare literary buildings, each stone of which was laid with infinite exactitude and care. There is too much "jerry-building" to-day, both in houses and books.

To Mr. Toulmin Smith some of the shallow books of to-day would represent literary "pariahs." He would bar the very superficial method in which they were put together.

In The Parish and in many a pamphlet he set his face steadily against centralization. "The ruling passion, the guide of his life, the dream of his youth, the glory of his manhood and his later years, was the intelligent freedom of the people, based on 'the ancient ways.'" [Footnote: Toulmin Smith, 1816 to 1869, by the late Samuel Timmins, Esq., of Birmingham. From this pamphlet I have gained much information of his life.]

It is not difficult to understand how the friendship between Toulmin Smith and Frank Newman began. For the decentralization of the nation, better forms of local self-government, were also, each of them, a dream of the latter's, which he longed eagerly to see realized. There was another keen common interest between them. Both ardently desired the freedom of Hungary. Both wrote strongly in favour of it. Both warmly welcomed the exiled patriot, Louis Kossuth, when he came to England to collect funds for the revolutionary movement of his country. But long before Englishmen had made themselves au fait with the subject of the Hungarian revolt, Toulmin Smith had, in his literary studies, understood the why and wherefore of the quarrel, and had, by his words, roused his country to the true recognition of how urgent was the whole question between Austria and Hungary. It must not be forgotten, too, that all his labours amongst the tangled undergrowths of the literary land were undertaken in the leisure time he could spare from his profession. For he was barrister-at-law of Lincoln's Inn, and he was also a landowner in Birmingham (his native city), of property which had belonged to his ancestors in succession for five hundred years. He had made himself a proficient in the Icelandic, Danish, Norse languages, and was learned in the ancient history and politics of Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Iceland, and Scandinavia. [Footnote: I quote from the pamphlet on Toulmin Smith, referred to before.]

Mr. Timmins tells us that "while he maintained his own convictions with energy and power, he had a kindly regard for all who differed from him, a large appreciation of genuine humour, and he was in private life one of the most courteous, kindly, and genial of men. While he honoured the past and the memory of his fathers, he was no blind adherent of a falling cause, no obstinate opponent of the needful changes of the age.... Amid all the worry of a London lawyer's life, when far away in the United States and stricken down by 'grievous illness,' almost his last written words, 'I long to return to Birmingham,' express the passion of his life."

The friendship between Toulmin Smith and Newman probably began in 1849, in connection with the formation of the Hungarian Committee. This I am told by Miss Toulmin Smith, to whose kindness I am indebted for permission to use the following letters.

She believes that her father was introduced to Newman by Mr. John Edward Taylor (of Norwich). She says she has a keen memory of Francis Newman coming to her father's house at Highgate at that time, with Pulszky and other Hungarians, all eager in the "efforts for reform and constitutional freedom and local government." But later on, she adds, many difficulties arose, and "about 1852 something connected with Louis Kossuth" (and the Hungarian movement) "caused a coolness" between the friends, and their correspondence seems to have come to an end after September in that year. Newman, owing to his University College engagements probably, I think retired from his position on the Committee in October, 1849.

Francis Newman to Toulmin Smith.

"University College, Gower Street, "8th Jan., 1850.

"My dear Sir,

"I rejoice in your ward-mote exertions, and I beg you will not think that I am indifferent to them."

[This refers to "a series of meetings during the winter of 1849-50 in one of the Wards of the City of London; part of a movement endeavouring to rouse the citizens to a sense of civic local duties."] [Footnote: I am quoting from notes re these letters, kindly supplied by Miss Toulmin Smith.]

"On Wednesday I have to attend a meeting of our Professors here which will interfere with the Wardmote.... I exceedingly want presence of mind, if there is any tumult, so as to remember quickly enough what is to be said. Against a mob I could act with firmness, but I could not speak with promptitude. Moreover, I suffer physically from the air of a crowded room, and never go to hear a speech when there is a chance of my being able to read it."

The next letter I quote from is dated from Church Street, Old Eastbourne, August, 1850. It begins with questions of canvassing at University College, and goes on to touch on the subject about which he and his correspondent were at one: local land reform:—

"I have been here less than a week, but was at first unsettled, and my servant did not know whither to send my letters. It is fine air, rather bleak downs" (this is an unappreciative criticism of those exquisitely rounded outlines), "but with sunny days very pleasant and healthy.

"I am glad to hear of your Bristol excursion. If one could convert some sheriff of a county, I should like to see the thing tested in some practical form, i.e. to assemble every month a Parliament of County Freeholders to do some real work—as, if roads, or public lands, or docks, etc., were to be dealt with; or to protest against a Private Bill in Parliament, and claim to have the settling of it.

"I wish you knew Tom Taylor. He is an able man, desiring Reform, and is on the Public Health Board in some legal capacity. He heartily wishes to develop the local powers, and will not admit that they are practically undermining them. He fully assented to all I said in theory, but thought I misconceived what they were actually doing.

"Believe me, sincerely yours,

"F. W. Newman."

Tom Taylor, journalist and playwriter, was born 1817 in Sunderland. For two years he was Professor of the English language and literature at University College. He was called to the Bar of Inner Temple in 1845. He acted as Secretary to the Board of Health and Local Government Act Office. After the year 1846 he devoted himself chiefly to playwriting, and in 1874 was editing Punch.

The following letter is dated September, 1850:—

* * * * *

"It is not Tom Taylor only who honestly believes the Sanitary Board to be engaged in teaching Central and Local Powers to co-operate, and to be anxious to leave bona fide power of the most important kind to the localities. Only a few days ago a friend of mine (a physician) was proving to me this very point in them. We who are not lawyers do not understand points rapidly enough (or cannot remember them) to see where a great principle is violated.

"I do not care about the Sanitary Board per se ... but what I think you are most wanted to do is to show that, however much the Parliamentary franchise needs reform, yet a greater need is that of limiting the functions of Parliament, and giving them to County Assemblies or Town Motes.

"That word Mote is almost obsolete! May not the fact itself be a text to you? The modern substitute, 'meeting,' has no taxing powers, no legal officers, no constitutional power any more than a mob.... The sands of the Whigs run fast out, and it is high time for the Radicals to have a creed. Do you find any Chartists listen to you? If you cannot convert a Sheriff, I should be as well pleased with a hundred Chartists, for they learn from one another by contagion."

In this year there was put forward a project for a society to make more local government possible. This was later carried out under the name of the "Anti-Centralization Union."

In November, 1850, decentralization was again to the fore in the minds of Newman and Toulmin Smith, as is shown here; and what the former says he puts very trenchantly, forcibly:—

"7 Park Village East, "R.P., Oct. 16th, 1850.

"My dear Smith,

* * * * *

"I can speak with much freedom and energy (but no wit) on a subject on which I have information and feel interested: but I cannot make an after- dinner speech of compliment, nor talk on a subject which I do not feel I have very maturely considered.... In regard to local government, I think you would disarm the fears or scruples of many excellent and wise persons if you made prominent that you do not wish to return to the Middle Ages, or disown that progress of society which has knit England into a single State. I think it high time to make an outcry against a system of infinite legislation, in which we are subjected to laws too numerous for anyone to be acquainted with; yet I doubt whether we shall get a hearing with the most influential minds unless we make it clear that we fully understand that the progress of society forbids our returning to the simplicity of law which the good Saxons had under Alfred and his successors. The gap is vast, and there is no danger whatever of our becoming too simple; yet this fanatical aim will be so surely imputed to us (in days when such men as Lord John Manners in Politics and the Puseyites in Church are afloat) that it is not needless to disown it even to candid and strong-headed hearers.

"I am asking Froude to dine with me on Tuesday, the 29th instant, at 6 o'clock, to meet you and some other friends whom I want to bring together: as I believe he will then be in London....

"Thursday, 6 o'clock.—I have just got Froude's reply, Yes: so please to say Yes, too.

"In haste, sincerely yours,

"F. W. Newman."

As to the real meaning of the word "Democracy" Newman deals with it thus:—

"What is Democracy?... Show that if one town governs itself by universal suffrage, that is Democracy, so long as the people really exercise interest in their public concerns; but that if a whole country, as France, elects an Assembly, that is not Democracy, but Empire delegated to an Oligarchy, because the people at large cannot understand, follow, and control public measures.

"I do not mean to dictate this, or any one mode; but I feel strongly that you must put a sharp curb on all invective until you have fully developed the difference between the common Radicalism and your own views. Pulszky says he is satisfied you were not understood at the Radley Hotel dinner. Radicals are almost as slow as Tories to admit a new thought.

"I should also like to have the question brought out: 'What has been, historically, the Service performed by Monarchy and Centralization?' The answer is: 'It has formed nations into larger masses, and lessened or destroyed border war.' The inference is, that the great and peculiar function of the Central Government is, in fact, what the American Congress does, viz. to maintain peace at home between the several States, and make the country One in resisting hostile attack. To do more than this, should be rather exceptive, and confined to subordinate matters, else Centralization becomes mischievous...."

And again, later in the year, in answer to a letter from Mr. Toulmin Smith:—

"What I said of 'Democracy' was meant as argumentum ad hominem to that side, not as intending to identify myself with it, but I see the danger you speak of. Query: Would 'popular government' do? Even Conservatives wish for a Commonwealth and for Constitutional Government. No doubt Unity is the true word, not Centralization; but I think this Unity without Centralization would never have been coveted by kings, so that in fact we have bought the advantage of Unity at the expense of submitting to (more or less of) Centralization."

Twelve years later, John Ruskin put forth a method which cannot fail to commend itself to every reasonable mind; a method which, if treated from the decentralization point of view, seems to offer good solution to the crux of English pauperism, at any rate, if dealt with under the aegis of _Local_ government. That "_bona fide power of the most important kind to the localities" as Newman said, should be conceded; that the "Government schools" of which Ruskin speaks should, in each place, be directly under Local Control.

The passage to which I am alluding is from Unto this Last:—

"Any man, or woman, or boy, or girl out of employment should be at once received at the nearest Government School" (training schools, at which trades, etc., should be taught) "and set to such work as it appeared, on trial, they were fit for, at a fixed rate of wages determinable every year; that being found incapable of work through ignorance, they should be taught; or being found incapable of work through sickness, should be tended; but that being found objecting to work, they should be set, under compulsion of the strictest nature, to the more painful and degrading (?) forms of necessary toil; especially to that in mines, and other places of danger (such danger being, however, diminished to the utmost by careful regulation and discipline), and the due wages of such work retained, cost of compulsion first abstracted, to be at the workman's command so soon as he has come to sounder mind respecting the laws of employment."

LETTERS TO MRS. KINGSLEY

"Weston-super-Mare, "4th Nov., 1877.

"Dear Mrs. Kingsley,

"I hurried home from Manchester to meet an expected widow friend here, who has just left me. Somehow or other she and her little girl engrossed me much, and made me neglect my intended warm thanks for your very kind letters, and for your phrases even of affection, to which, be assured, I am not inattentive or apathetic, though I imperfectly know how to respond to that which I do not seem to have duly earned.

"Your children were as kind and attentive to me as you could have been yourself; but I much regret not to have met you and Mr. Kingsley, to whom I beg you to give my kind regards, and believe that it is always a pleasure to meet you, and that I am necessarily proud of having made so fruitful a convert ... though our severe ones will remind me that you do not wholly abstain from fish!

"Believe me, yours heartily,

"Francis W. Newman.

"I am bringing out a dreadful pamphlet!"

"28 Cumberland Terrace, "Regent's Park, London, "25th May, 1878.

"Dear Mrs. Kingsley,

"Concerning the controversy about increase of population, I forgot to add what I think has moral weight, that the theory which makes men bewail every increase on the ground that at length the earth will be overfilled would be in argument just as powerful if the size of the earth were increased to that of Jupiter, or to that of the sun. It simply deduces from the axiom / fact that any finite area whatsoever will at length be overfilled by a constant unchecked increase—a reason why we should actively check the increase NOW and HERE—a deduction wholly void of good sense.

"Again, I did not mention what reduces John Mill's school to something worse than negative error, the certainty that their doctrine will not be obeyed by any but those whom we would desire to have the peopling of the earth, viz. the people of most intellect. If the highly intelligent and conscientious obey John Mill, we evidently must look forward to the peopling of every land by the most backward and least intelligent part of the nation.... Malthus was shocked by the system of encouraging very early marriage and large families for the mere sake of getting men as food for gunpowder: but if people marry (say young men at 27 or 28, not at 17 or 18) he denounces as unnatural and unimaginable that society or law should frown upon a family as being too numerous. In every moral aspect of the case, John Mill is opposed to Malthus, and his followers have no right to call themselves Malthusians. I feel confident that human population would waste if every man adopted the doctrine either of John Mill or of certain American theorists....

"With best regards to all yours, "I am, yours most sincerely,

"F. W. Newman."

"15 Arundel Crescent, "Weston-super-Mare, "12th Feb., 1880.

"Dear Mrs. Kingsley,

"Your kind letter, yesterday received, gives me great concern. I never wept through simple grief, but once in my life through grief at ingratitude; and I think I never felt so painful a pang in my heart. I can well imagine that a sense of another's ingratitude may terribly overthrow anyone's health. I believe my dear sister, whose death you so kindly mention, suffered in part from excess of anxiety through being made executrix to her husband's will, involving great perplexity, but also from the fraud of an old and trusted clerk. Her husband had several small strokes of paralysis, and for two and a half years before his death probably had not his mind always perfect. He delegated many confidential writings and documents to the clerk, who with his wife was much respected by the whole family. After his death his accounts were inexplicable. Three of his sons worked hard at them for weeks together, and at last discovered frauds, by which the clerk had not only embezzled money-how much they know not, but counted above the thousand-and had depreciated the property in selling it by representing it as having been for years a declining business: this was to hide his pilferings. When charged with it, the man became raving mad. Lawyers knew not how to recover property from a maniac who could not defend himself: and my sister was in such grief for the man's wife, that she knew not whether to wish to recover a farthing. How the matter stood she either did not know or did not like to tell me-to the last; but the mysterious disease which ate away her strength, I in my private mind ascribe to anxiety from this affair and her sudden and strange responsibility as trustee for ladies.

"This dear sister was the fondest object of my boyish affections; and through life she was the self-sacrificing, devoted character which from earliest years she displayed. Five sons, one daughter, and two daughters- in-law were present at her death, all fervent in love and duty. Her husband was one of ten children, and all that family were singularly united. Her only daughter will now live with two of her aunts, who have been almost at her side since birth. My sister was so long in a very precarious state that I did not expect her to survive the winter of 1878- 9, and at last death came as a relief and release.

"It has always troubled me that I have so little power to promote the industrial interests of friends. When I was a professor in London I used to be entreated to find pupils for tutors (when I had not half as many pupils as I desired for myself) and to recommend others to publishers and editors, when I could neither get a publisher to risk a shilling on what I wrote, nor more than one editor to accept an article from me. Now, I would most gladly recommend —— ——; but it is well to say frankly that no one ever asks me, nor do I at all know who wants anything, nor can I guess in what direction to inquire. But be sure I shall not forget, if the occasion opens.

"I yesterday heard awful tidings of widespread murrain in the sheep of these parts (Somerset and Monmouth and all between) ascribed to last summer's wet. One farmer (as a specimen) has lost 1000 sheep; the hotel- keepers are bidden to beware of mutton. This I have from an associate of our society.

"Indoors I am happy; but I am so gloomy for the prospects of the country that I do not like to talk about them. Kind regards to Mr. Kingsley.

"I am, most truly yours,

"F. W. Newman."

"Weston-s.-M., 19th Oct., 1880.

"Dear Mrs. Kingsley,

"Behold me (in imagination, as I really am) still at home on our great vegetarian day.

"I warmly thank you for your kind letter, and was purposing to write, but in heaps of letters could not find yours with the new address, which I have now entered in my book.

"I have finally resolved not to bustle about so late in the year, and have resigned my place as President in consequence. But it is reported to me that the Executive will prefer to exempt me from attendance in this month....

"Public affairs make me very melancholy. Mr. Gladstone is not to blame for the state of Ireland; but both in Afghanistan with India and in South Africa, I think he has allowed his colleagues to neutralize his public professions, and has made compromises most calamitous.

"The ministry seems to me not worthy of the Parliament. I do not doubt that the plutocracy in the next ten or even five years will have a heavy and deserved fall, but with how much convulsion and suffering in Ireland, in India, and in South Africa, all inflicting miseries on us—you will live to see: I fear it cannot be small, and that our institutions, called Fundamental, will be very gravely shaken.

"I honour your Piscarian position, and with our society would recognize it; but the discovery that you all eat fish forbids me to glory that I have converted a family to our Rules! With kind regards to Mr. Kingsley and the rest, I am,

"Your sincere friend,

"F. W. Newman."

"Weston, "26th April, 1883.

"Dear Mrs. Kingsley,

"... I am apparently assuming the position of one who (like the Pope) makes an ALLOCUTION to all who will listen. Each of us may imitate him. I have given away eighty copies to make my allocution known. I suppose I ought to have sent one to you, but circulation is hard work. Alas, it costs a shilling! Can you get it put into any Manchester Library? (Trubner my publisher.) It is called A Christian Commonwealth and is as much against our unjust wars as a Quaker could desire.

"In haste, ever yours,

"F. W. Newman." "Kind regards to all yours."

"Weston-super-Mare, 9th April, 1884.

"My dear Friend,

"... My dismay and disgust at the proceedings of a ministry, of which Mr. Gladstone must bear the full responsibility—which indeed he accepts by defending all its atrocious proceedings—have disinclined me to write, more than I must, on any but private or literary topics....

"A new struggle is made by this unscrupulous ministry to retain the execrable C.D. Acts.

"I am sorry that the Bishops have again turned the scale in the unrighteous retention of the law against a man's marriage to his deceased wife's sister. When do the Bishops rally against sanguinary injustice and dire oppression? "I have just had two hundred and fifty copies struck off of the enclosed leaflet, which aims to suggest to the haters of unjust war, especially Quakers, in what direction they ought to work, viz. to lay the foundation of an entirely new political party. No candidate for a vote could complain that he was humiliated by being required to profess himself a VOTARY OF JUSTICE.

"I throw these leaflets in this and that direction as feelers. Of course more can be printed when wanted....

"With best regards, "I am, yours,

"F. W. Newman."

"15 Arundel Crescent, Weston-super-Mare, "3rd Jan. , 1887.

"Dear Friend,

"You need not think me dead yet; but you easily might, so estranged am I to Manchester.

"Yet I at least have life enough to be able to wish all welfare and blessing to you and yours in this New Year. The accumulation of letters has always thwarted me when I have tried to find your last letter.... I seem to remember that you then told me of the marriage of your eldest daughter and of the literary efforts of another. Since then we have had the overthrow in the W.K. of the Safe-Harlot-Providing Law, and indeed it must have been as early as 1885; and the episode of Mr. Stead and his prosecution was later! A great moral change has been wrought (for the better, I say) in our ladies by that wickedness of our ruling classes with the aid of wicked medical theories provoking indignant protest. To drag printed matter into daylight is no doubt very offensive; but without sweeping it away no sound health is to be expected. The ladies, I fancy, will now, more perseveringly than men, keep in activity the Purity Society. And if some of them seem a little too active—I ask, how can this odious system of sin, crime, and cruelty be crushed without hot enthusiasm? And where was enthusiasm hot without partial error? Fire burns!

"This reminds me of my sending you (at your request) a load of anti- vaccination literature, and I am wondering whether you were able to turn it to service. THAT monstrous iniquity must come down; but the medical schools and your Irishmen block out our movement.

"I wonder how you and Mr. Kingsley look on Mr. Gladstone. I never condemned his measure, though I have always (for years back) declined to aid a Parliament for all Ireland and still more the expulsion of Irish deputies from the English Parliament.... But I did not intend here to enter Irish politics further than to indicate that while I am anti- Gladstonian, I cry 'Ireland for the Irish,' 'India for the Indians,' 'Egypt for the Egyptians,"—come what may to the English 'Empire'! [But I have never read in history of any empire being ruined or harmed by Justice, Mercy, or Purity.]

"I suppose I must say, 'Alas!' that the older I become [81 last June] the more painfully my creed outgrows the limits of that which the mass of my nation, and those whose co-operation I most covet, account sacred. I dare not (unasked) send to friends what I print, yet I uphold the sacred moralities of Jew and Christian [Hindoo and Moslem] with all my heart. Two mottos, or say three, suffice me:—

"The Lord reigneth.

"The righteous Lord loveth righteousness.

"The Lord requireth Justice, Mercy, and Sobriety of thought, not ceremony or creed.

"Accept for all of you my warm wishes. "Your Vegetarian friend of old,

"F. W. Newman."

[No date. Probably 1st March, 1888.]

"My dear Friend,

"What a violent winter it has been in very many places! Nor is it all over. After the awful 'blizzard' in New York, and its minor horrors elsewhere, and the many fatal avalanches, I see this morning fresh inundations in Hungary from sudden melting of snow. The sudden chill which smote your husband was but a mild type, it seems, of the death fatal to so many. Other deaths from cold, reported to us, have reminded us of your great and sudden loss; yet what had I to say to you? I have thought that the echo from your son in Calcutta may have made your grief break out afresh.... I trust that time, which has not yet at all had softening powers, has not added any fresh bitterness on a fuller realization....

"Affectionately yours,

"F. W. Newman."

"Alas! my dear friend, that your generous son Leonard had not more experience how vain is a man's swimming power against the current of an ordinary river. I have known this in the Tigris, in the Nile, and even in the Thames, though the bathing men in several places called me a first- rate swimmer. Longfellow in 'Hiawatha' has touching and powerful lines on disasters never coming singly, but as vultures accumulating round a huge carcass.

"Wisdom comes too late for the individual; yet it is not useless for others to inquire after causes. Did your husband pride himself on not wearing a specially thick coat in winter and roughing it as do some vegetarians?... I rather believe that man is a tropical animal, hairless, made for a climate warmer than ours, and needing much aid from clothing.

"Ever yours,

"F. W. Newman. "Herewith I return your interesting scraps. "21st March, 1888."

Extract from a letter, 7th Jan., 1889.

"More and more I believe, that as our clearest DUTY is in this world, it is wholesome that our most eager interest (if unselfish) should be in this world and not (with Count Tolstoi) so full of eagerness for immortality, that it is an effort with him to refrain from suicide! I accept with grateful submission whatever of after-life the Supreme Lord gives—or does not give. My desire cannot affect His actions, and in fact I never have been able to work myself into any desire for a future so undefined and unimaginable. This will show how ill I deserve a little of (shall I say) praise or compliment in your last.

"With kind salutes to your daughters, "I am, your sincere friend,

"F. W. Newman."

"The Firs, West Cliff Gardens, "Bournemouth, "17th Aug., 1889.

"My dear Friend,

"How extraordinary you must have thought my silence, after your kind letter from this place. Perhaps you imputed it to illness. That is not true. Yet it may be called half true: for illness of my wife is one topic, and increased weakness makes me slower in the smallest matters—such as handling a book, or duly buttoning a shirt or coat: while I have been dealing with proof-sheets from always two printers, sometimes four. My day is cut short at each end—for in the colder months I cannot sit at my desk until my fire is lighted, and my eyes are wearied before evening candlelight. Meanwhile my unwilling correspondence has rather increased than lessened....

"I am achieving a long hoped for work, in which of course I have to pay the printers—i.e. to leave in some connective available form whatever miscellaneous important printing I have ever published, ethico-political, theological, economical, historical, aesthetic, critical, mathematical: indeed, the mathematical is all new, not reprint.

"I take as vivid an interest in all that concerns public welfare, of England, Ireland, and foreign countries, and hope I ever shall. More than ever I see that our best work for God is to work for God's creatures, not excluding gentle brutes.

"Is it possible that you are even now here? That would be very good news.

"Your lazy friend, with much apology,

"F. W. Newman."

"Northam, near Bideford, "19th May, 1890.

"My dear Friend,

"Your two letters were indeed doubly welcome, and brought me virtual pardon for two neglects, of which the worst was, the keeping locked up (and still in prison!) the letters which you bade me to return...

"The chief want of Cornwall, I was told by an old resident, is soil; the rock is too near the surface. Herein art will do much in a few generations. Attica and Palestine—stony soils—bore plentiful pine fruit. Our Channel Islands utter the same thing. In England the landlord is the effectual starver of the soil. Bishop Stubbs, a first-rate authority on agriculture, explains the immense excess of crops raised acre by acre under peasant culture, 'because the farmers' land is labour-starved.'"

* * * * *

"15th July, 1891.

"... The state of Ireland under existing factions would much have discomposed your patriotic husband. As for me, who cannot pretend Irish patriotism, things now look better.... But the aspect on the whole is to me far more encouraging than alarming. The reign of false aristocracy is fast declining; the rising powers everywhere ask for justice between orders and (as never before) between the two sexes, and the power of women is about to signalize itself in most valuable directions—for the benefit of both sexes, and for the first time to claim nationally that moral and Christian Right shall be the aim of Law.

"But I confess if we wish to attract ancient nations to Christianity, we have first to reconsider our creed fundamentally, a terrible summons to Protestants as well as Catholics....

"I have not with me your last, and I hope I do not evade any question.

"With best wishes to you and all yours, "I am, your earnest friend,

"F. W. Newman."

"27th Nov., 1891.

"My dear Mrs. Kingsley,

"So many of my juniors die, that my friends when they do not hear of me may well fancy that I am decrepit and declining. That is not true; only my muscular strength is less. I cannot walk so far nor work so much, but no vital organ seems to fail; nor can I write so much or so long....

"The longer I live, the more hopeful and more interesting I find the whole world. In spite of crime, folly, and misery, the massive nations seem to improve. The good—i.e. our sounder party—become wiser and stronger, as well as in proportion more numerous. Our worst misrule has been in Ireland and in India. The crisis in Ireland seems to me turned for the better. Misrule in India is met not by insurrection, but by constitutional and loyal, widely demanded Reform, such as, I feel convinced, the enlarged franchise in England will support too warmly for the old routine to resist. All the churches are seeking moral reform.... Reforms lately too great to think of, we now calmly contemplate as certainties of a near future. Lord Herschell, an ex-Chancellor, pronounces that the legislative power of the House of Lords is an evil unbearable. Scotland and Wales are ready to demand abolition of the State Church. The English party called Liberal (I think miscalled) desire the same, and within the last ten years I come to think, rightly. Other reforms, too numerous to detail, cannot be trifled with or the nation be blinded. While I wonder at all this, I see that Scandinavia and Germany, even Belgium and France, are moving for moral objects, and also against war.

"Is there not plenty in all this to draw forth hope, joy, and thankfulness, and in every conviction, that amidst all our tumult the Lord reigneth? I rejoice that I have lived to see this day, and expect to rejoice more while I live.

"How you have fared this year I seem not to know, but believe that you have my earnest good wishes for you and yours.

"I am, yours most truly,

"F. W. Newman."

"Bournemouth (undated).

"My dear Friend,

"Your letter of July 12th from Margate has reached me here, to which place I came because my wife five years ago gained such health here, and all the year and past autumn she has never felt sure of health at home. I cannot think she manages herself rightly, yet she believes, with no small reason, that I am not a safe traveller without her; yet of the two I seem the stronger. She is better here, perhaps, because she is more in the outer air. I must add, I too have recovered from my fall, and am fairly well, though I do not pretend to be strong yet (as the French would say), Que voulez vous? when I am past 88.... I am glad to learn about your children. I have good hope concerning the coming future, though the foes of progress call us faddists because we think national morality paramount to vicious routine. May but the Good prevail!

"... I now argue for Fish-food as not to be forbidden or frowned on, but do not lessen my esteem of our Manchester V. E. M. Society, nor lessen my contribution to it, though they can only receive me as an outsider.

"I turn a vegetarian argument against them on the Fish question, but I have no time now for it.

"I am bringing out another volume on Paul of Tarsus, which, when complete, I hope to send you.

"With warm salutes, I am yours,

"Francis Wm. Newman. "My wife desires her kind thought to be named."

"1st Nov., 1892.

"My dear Madam,

"I have not time nor strength to search out your last kind letter, which perhaps informed me when your two sons from India were expected and when they were to leave you....

"I do fairly well, if I potter on in my old solid routine. My 88th year makes pretension to strength; but when so many moans are heard about neuralgia, not to say influenza, I feel myself much favoured by the total absence of pain, except merely what is incidental to a thin body with some sharp bones. In rising from bed I am aware of small discomforts, which I shake off on standing upright, and similarly after sitting in one posture. I have not enough suffering to claim pity. I can wish the same to all my friends, especially to my wife.

"To my judgment the world ... is in an entirely novel state, which forebodes a wholly new future, and requires new thoughts, new policy in our rulers, with much higher MORALITY if grave overthrow is to be averted.

"The United States of America ought to be our leader in chief, but mainly through ... the dreadful colour war that is year by year waxing worse. The only thing clear to me is, that their home calamity must for a long while hinder their giving aid to the world. The policy in Russia is so fatal, and its result presages an overturn of the scale of the France of 1793. This makes all foresight impossible, except that every State is safest which least violates the laws of universal morality. That England can avoid great retribution seems to me scarcely probable. But as soon as morality is allowed to speak loud in high places, I believe our main dangers will quickly disappear. The prospect cannot be defined, but is to me of intense interest. Britain seems to me immensely superior to its own ruling classes in goodness, and the good is sure at length to prevail, to the benefit also of your Ireland.

"With kindest best wishes, I am, "Most truly yours,

"F. W. Newman."



CHAPTER XXI

LANDOWNERS AND WAGE RECEIVERS BY FRANCIS W. NEWMAN CONTRIBUTED BY MR. WILLIAM JAMIESON

[Presumably written in 1886, when Newman was Vice-President of the "Land Nationalization Society." It was kindly sent me by Mr. William Jamieson, who was Hon. Sec. to the above Society at the time. I wish to express here my sense of gratitude to him for much help and information regarding his own work with Newman in 1886.]

The tendency of English industry for a long time back has been to exalt the landlord, or chief man in any locality, into land owner (a phrase implying that no one but he has legal right in the land), and to convert a larger and larger fraction of the nation into wage receivers, liable to be cast out of work either at the simple will, or by the imprudence or misfortune of their paymaster. In order to analyse the natural results of this juncture, we must follow the method received in Political Economy, of taking an imaginary case, far simpler than any which is actually met in human life, so as to make all the conditions of the problem known to us by hypotheses. Let us suppose an island, secluded commercially from the rest of the world, and peopled by a vast working lower class under three small ruling castes. The island is physically divisible into three parts: first, marshy coast land, abounding with shrubs, canes, rushes of many kinds, from which human garments of various sorts can be made; secondly rolling land, eminently suitable for the cultivation of grain, and of certain fruit trees and roots on which the whole population live; thirdly, the mountain land, on which are timber trees and copses affording firewood; also quarries of stone, gravel pits, lime rocks, and mines of copper and iron. Of the marshy coast land, the second lordly caste is acknowledged to be absolute owner; the first or highest caste owns the rolling land, which is the arable and cultivated portion; and the third caste owns the mountain land and its products. From the first comes the food of the native, from the second comes the clothing, from the third the houses. It is possible that gravel, lime, and stone can be found in rolling land, and that fruit trees either exist or if planted would bear fruit in the marsh land, some even in the mountains; but the ruling castes follow ancient custom, and the working caste has no right to innovate. They work under and for their masters, and receive wages in kind—that is, as an equivalent for their work, a definite but liberal supply of the three necessary articles—food, clothes, and house accommodation. Money does not exist, nor tame animals in our island. To add sharpness to our imaginary case, and to make argument intelligible, we must assign definite numbers to the working population; but from whatever numbers we start, the argument and the practical result will be the same. Let us suppose the first caste to employ ten thousand cultivators; the second caste to employ three thousand knitters and plaiters; the third caste one thousand masons, miners, and carpenters. Each of these castes furnishes to the workman such rude tools as are necessary, but these remain the property of the masters, not of the workmen.