Bygones Worth Remembering Volume Ii Part 6

Neale, Abraham Greenwood and Mr. Crabtree it would not have ended as it did. But the committee were workmen without knowledge of literary matters. So I made no complaint, and worked with them and for their paper all the same. It was a mistake to discontinue the _Social Economist_, which had some powerful friends. Co-operation was soon narrowed in Manchester. Co-operative workshops were excluded from partic.i.p.ation in profit. We should have kept Co-operation on a higher level in London.

The Rochdale Jubilee is the last instance I shall cite. In 1892 was celebrated the jubilee of the Rochdale Society. I received no invitation and no official notice. The handbook published by the society, in commemoration of its fifty years' success, made no reference to me nor to the services I had rendered the society. I had written its history, which had been printed in America, and translated into the chief languages of Europe--in Spain, in Hungary, several times in France and Italy. I had put the name of the Pioneers into the mouth of the world, yet my name was never mentioned by any one. Speaking on the part of the Rochdale Co-operators, the President of Jubilee Congress, who knew the facts of my devotion to the reputation of Rochdale, was silent.

Archdeacon Wilson was the only one who showed me public regard. The local press said some gracious things, but they were not Co-operators.

I had spoken at the graves of the men who had made the fortunes of the store, and had written words of honour of all the political leaders of the town, and of those best remembered in connection with the famous society, which I had vindicated, without ceasing, during half a century.

In the earlier struggles of the Pioneers I had looked forward to the day of their jubilee, when I should stand in their regard as I had done in their day of need. Of course, this gave me a little concern to find myself treated as one unknown to them. But in truth they had not forgotten me, though they ignored me. The new generation of Co-operators had abandoned, to Mr. Bright's regret, partic.i.p.ation of profit with Labour, the n.o.blest aspiration of the Pioneers. I had addressed them in remonstrance, in the language of Lord Byron, who was Lord of the Manor of Rochdale:--

"You have the Rochdale store as yet, Where has the Rochdale workshop gone?

Of two such lessons why forget The n.o.bler and the manlier one?"

Saying this cost me their cordiality and their grat.i.tude; but I cared for the principle and for the future, and was consoled.

In every party, the men who made it great die, and leave no immediate successors. But in time their example recreates them. But at the Jubilee of 1892, they had not re-appeared, and those who had memories and grat.i.tude were dead. I spoke over the grave of Cooper, of Smithies, of Thomas Livesey--John Bright's schoolfellow--the great friend of the dead Pioneers saying:--

"They are gone, the holy ones, Who trod with me this lovely vale; My old star-bright companions Are silent, low and pale."*

The question arises, does this kind of experience justify a person in deserting his party?

The last incident and others preceding it are given as instances of outrage or neglect, which in public life explain ignominious desertion of principle. I have known men change sides in Parliament because the Premier, who had defect of sight, pa.s.sed them by in the lobby without recognition. I have seen others desert a party, which they had brilliantly served, because their personal ambition had not been recognised. Because of this I have seen a man turn heels over head in the presence of Parliament, and land himself in the laps of adversaries who had been kicking him all his life.

If I did not do so, it was because I remembered that parties are like persons, who at one time do mean things, but at other times generous things.

* "History of Rochdale Pioneers, 1844-1892" (Sonnenschein).

Besides, a democratic party is continually changing in its component members, and many come to act in the name of the movement who are ignorant of its earlier history and of the obligation it may be under to those who have served it in its struggling days. But whether affronts are consciously given or not, they do not count where allegiance to a cause is concerned. Ingrat.i.tude does not invalidate a true principle.

When contrary winds blow, a fair-weather partisan tacks about, and will even sail into a different sea where the breezes are more complacent. I remained the friend of the cause alike in summer and winter, not because I was insensible to vicissitudes, but because it was a simple duty to remain true to a principle whose integrity was not and could not be affected by the caprice, the meanness, the obliviousness, or the malignity of its followers.

Such are some of the incidents--of which others of more public interest may be given--of the nature of bygones which have instruction in them.

They are not peculiar to any party. They occur continually in Parliament and in the Church. I have seen persons who had rendered costly service of long duration who, by some act of ingrat.i.tude on the part of the few, have turned against the whole cla.s.s, which shows that, consciously or unconsciously, it was self-recognition they sought, or most cared for, rather than the service of the principle they had espoused.

There is no security for the permanence of public effort, save in the clear conviction of its intrinsic rightfulness and conduciveness to the public good. The rest must be left to time and posterity. True, the debt is sometimes paid after the creditor is dead. But if reparation never comes to the living, unknown persons whose condition needs betterment receive it, and that is the proud and consoling thought of those who--unrequited--effected it. The wholesome policy of persistence is expressed in the n.o.ble maxim of Helvetius to which John Morley has given new currency: "Love men, but do not expect too much from them."

Fewer persons would fall into despair if their antic.i.p.ations were, like a commercial company, "limited." Many men expect in others perfection, who make no conspicuous contribution themselves to the sum of that excellent attribute.

"Giving too little and asking too much Is not alone a fault of the Dutch."

I do not disguise that standing by Rightness is an onerous duty. It is as much a merit as it is a distinction to have been, at any time, in the employ of Truth. But Truth, though an ill.u.s.trious, is an exacting mistress, and that is why so many people who enter her service soon give notice to leave.

[With respect to this chapter, Mr. Ludlow wrote supplying some particulars regarding the Christian Socialists, to which it is due to him that equal publicity be given. He states "that the first Council of Promoters included two members, neither of whom professed to be a Christian; that the first secretary of the Society for Promoting Working Men's a.s.sociations was not one, during the whole of his faithful service (he became one twenty years later), and that his successors were, at the time we took them on, one an Agnostic, the other a strong Congregationalist." This is the first time these facts have been made known. But none of the persons thus described had anything to do with the production of the Handbook referred to and discussed at the Leeds Congress of 1881. Quite apart from the theological tendencies of the "Christian Socialists," the Co-operative movement has been indebted to them for organisation and invaluable counsel, as I have never ceased to say. They were all for the partic.i.p.ation of profits in workshops, which is the essential part of higher Co-operation. There was always light in their speeches, and it was the light of principle.

In this respect Mr. Ludlow was the first, as he is the last to display it, as he alone survives that distinguished band.

Of Mr. Edward Vansittart Neale I have unmeasured admiration and regard. To use the fine saying of Abd-el-Kader, "Benefits conferred are golden fetters which bind men of n.o.ble mind to the giver." This is the lasting sentiment of the most experienced Co-operators towards the Christian Socialists.]

CHAPTER x.x.xII. STORY OF THE LAMBETH PALACE GROUNDS

Seed sown upon the waters, we are told, may bring forth fruit after many days. This chapter tells the story of seed sown on very stony soil, which brought forth fruit twenty-five years later.

In 1878, Mr. George Anderson, an eminent consulting gas engineer, in whom business had not abated human sympathy, pa.s.sed every morning on his way to his chambers in Westminster, by the Lambeth Palace grounds. He was struck by the contrast of the s.p.a.cious and idle acres adjoining the Palace and the narrow, dismal streets where poor children peered in corners and alleys. The sheep in the Palace grounds were fat and florid, and the children in the street were lean and pallid. The smoke from works around dyed dark the fleece of the sheep.

Mr. Anderson thought how much happier a sight it would be to see the children take the place of the sheep, and asked me if something could not be done.

The difficulty of rescuing or of alienating nine acres of land from the Church, so skilled in holding, did not seem a hopeful undertaking, while the resentment of good vicars and expectant curates might surely be counted upon. Nevertheless the attempt was worth making.

Before long I spent portions of some days in exploring the Palace grounds, and interviewing persons who had evidence to give, or interest to use, on behalf of a change which seemed so desirable.

Eventually I brought the matter before a meeting I knew to be interested in ethical improvement, and read to them the draft of a memorial that I thought ought to be sent to the Archbishop at Lambeth Palace. Persons in stations low and high alike, often suffer wrong to exist which they might arrest, because they have not seen it to be wrong or have not been told that it is so. Blame of any one could not be justly expressed who had not personal knowledge of an evil complained of. Therefore I urged that we should give the Archbishop information which we thought justified his action, and I was authorised to send to him the memorial I had read.

I wrote myself to his Grace, stating that I could testify as to the social facts detailed in the memorial I enclosed, which was as follows:--

"May it please your Grace,--We, the evening congregation a.s.sembled in South Place Chapel, Finsbury--some a.s.senting and some dissenting from the tenets represented by your Grace--represented as worthily as by any one who has occupied your high station, and with greater fairness to those who stand outside the Church than is shown by many prelates--we pray your Grace to give heed to a secular plea on behalf of certain little neighbours of yours whom, amid the pressure of spiritual duties, your Grace may have overlooked.

"Crouching under the very walls of Lambeth Palace, where your Grace has the pleasant responsibility of ill.u.s.trating the opulence and paternal sympathy of the legal Church of the land, lie streets as dismal, cheerless, and discreditable as any that G.o.d in His wrath ever permitted to remain unconsumed. In the houses are polluted air, squalor, dirt and pale-faced children. The only green thing upon which their feverish eyes could look is enclosed in your Grace's Palace Park, and shut out from their sight by dead walls. What we pray is that your Grace, in mercy and humanity, will subst.i.tute for those penal walls some pervious palisades through which children may behold the refreshing paradise of Nature, though they may never enter therein. In this ever-crowding metropolis, where field and tree belong to the extinct sights of a happier age, children are born and die without ever knowing their soothing charm, and hunger and thirst for a green thing to look upon--as sojourners in a desert do for the sight of shrub or water. No prayer your Grace could offer to heaven would be so welcome in its kindly courts, as the prayer of gladness and grat.i.tude which would go up with the screams of change and joy from the pallid little ones, breathing the fresh air from the green meadows, which only a few more fortunate sheep now enjoy.

"Might we pray that the gates should be open, and that the children themselves should be free to enter the meadows? Even the Temple Gardens of the City are open to little friendless people. They who give this gracious permission are hard-souled lawyers, usually regarded as representing the rigid, exacting, and unsympathetic side of human life--yet they show such n.o.ble tenderness to the little miserables who crawl round the Temple pavement, that they grant entrance to their splendid gardens; and half-clad cellar urchins from the purlieus of Drury Lane and Clare Market romp with their ragged sisters on the glorious gra.s.s, in the sight and scent of beauteous flowers. If lawyers do this, may we not ask it of one who is appointed to represent what we are told is the kindliness and tenderness of Christianity, and whose Master said, 'Suffer little children to come unto Me, and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven'? We ask not that they should personally approach your Grace, but that the children of your desolate neighbourhood should be allowed to disport in the vacant meadows of the Palace--that their souls may acquire some scent of Nature which their lives may never know.

"Let your Grace take a walk down 'Royal Street,' which flanks your Palace grounds, and see whether houses so pestilential ever stood in a street of so dainty a name? Go into the houses (as the writer of this memorial has) and see how a blank wall has been kept up so that no occupant of the rooms may look on gra.s.s or tree, and the window which admits light and air has been turned, by order of a former archbishop, the opposite way upon an outlook as wretched as the lot of the inhabitants. For forty years many inmates have lived and slept by the side of your Grace's park, without ever being allowed a glimpse of it.

You may have no power to cancel such social outrage--but your Grace may.

condone it by kindly and considerately according the use of the meadows to the poor children--doomed to burrow in these close, unwholesome tenements at your doors.

"No one accuses your Grace of being wanting in personal kindliness. It must be that no one has called your attention to the unregarded misery under the shadow of your Palace. Should your Grace visit the forlorn streets and sickly homes around you, and hear the despairing words of the mothers when asked 'whether they would not be grateful could their children have a daily run in the great Archbishop's meadows?' there would not be wanting a plea from the gentle heart of the Lady of the Palace on behalf of these hapless children of these poor mothers.

"Disregard not our appeal, we pray, because ours are unlicensed voices.

Humanity is of every creed, and it will not detract from the glory of the Church that grat.i.tude and praise should proceed from unaccustomed tongues.

"Signed on behalf of the a.s.sembly, with deference and respect.

"George Jacob Holyoake.

"Newcastle Chambers, Temple Bar,

"November 21, 1878."

Within two days I had the pleasure to receive a reply from the Archbishop.

"Philpstoun House,

"November 23, 1878.

"Sir,--You may feel confident that the subject of the memorial which you have forwarded to me with your letter of the 21st will receive my attentive consideration. The condition of the inhabitants of the poor streets in Lambeth has often given me anxiety. My daughters and Mrs.

Tait are well acquainted with many of the houses which you describe, and, so far as my other duties have allowed, I have taken opportunities of visiting some of the inmates of such houses personally. I should esteem it a great privilege if I were able to a.s.sist in maturing any scheme for improving the dwellings of the poor families to which your memorial alludes. Respecting the use of the open ground which surrounds Lambeth Palace, I have, in common with my predecessors, had the subject often under consideration. The plan which has been adopted and which has appeared on the whole the best for the interests of the neighbourhood, has been that now pursued for many years. The ground is freely given for cricket and football to as many schools and clubs as it is capable of containing, and, on application, liberty of entrance is accorded to children and others. Many school treats are also held in the grounds, and they are from time to time used for volunteer corps to exercise in.

We have always been afraid that a more public opening of the grounds would interfere with the useful purposes to which they are at present turned for the benefit of the neighbourhood, and that, considering the somewhat limited extent of the s.p.a.ce, no advantage could be secured by throwing it entirely open, which would at all compensate for the loss of the advantages at present enjoyed. I shall give the matter serious consideration, consulting with those best qualified from local experience to judge what is best for the neighbourhood, but my present impression is that more good is, on the whole, done by the arrangements now adopted, than by any other which I could devise.

"I have the honour to be, Sir,

"Your obedient humble servant,