Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman Part 23

"The new voters, at the last election, had not had time to learn a thousand things. After such a transformation of the const.i.tuencies, I not only _expect_--I _desire_--the break-up of the Liberal Party. Little by little they have adopted the Tory idea of 'follow your leader': never think for yourself. In the Parliament, in the Newspapers, in Arguments of Foreign War, at the Hustings, they treat it as 'Treason to the Party' not to do whatever the Premier says they _must_ do, or he will resign and wreck the party.... I see only one sunbeam through the clouds ever since the fatal Egyptian war; and that is the recent Peace-Union of _Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy_. I look on it as the inauguration of the future European Confederacy which is to forbid European wars, and become a forcible mediator. Under its shelter Roumania, Servia, and Bulgaria seem likely to consolidate a union of defence; and as soon as all the Powers understand that the Triple Alliance is based on permanent interests, the Alliance will not need to keep their armaments on foot; to _train_ them, as the generations grow up, will suffice. The royalties everywhere will struggle for actual armies: the burdened peoples will murmur.

"Meanwhile we need long patience, I suppose, while Irish rent wastes to smaller and smaller worth; and one new election will suddenly precipitate the struggle. _I_ do not fear that any Irish success will make Irishmen desire the burden of undertaking their own military and naval defence.

"Affectionately yours,

"F. W. Newman."

As regards Newman's opinions on one of the national questions which so closely concern us to-day--the Drink Traffic--they are very clearly and definitely stated in an article he wrote in the year 1877, and which appeared in _Fraser's Magazine, in re_ Sir Wilfrid Lawson's Bill.

Here again decentralization was the key-note, as he firmly believed, of the remedy.

"The palace-like jails which now disgrace our civilization, and cause expenses so vast, are chiefly the fruit of this pernicious trade.... What shadow of reason is there for doubting that such sales as are necessary...

will be far more sagaciously managed by a Local Board which the ratepayers elect _for this sole purpose_, than either by magistrates... or by an _irresponsible_ and _mult.i.tudinous_ Committee of Parliament? Finally, a Board elected for this one duty is immeasurably better than the Town Councils, who are distracted by an immensity of other business....

"Such a Board should have full power to frame its own restrictions, so as to prevent the fraud of wine merchants or chemists degenerating into spirit shops....

"To secure sufficient responsibility, no Board should be numerous: _five_ or _seven_ persons may be a full maximum, and no Board should have a vast const.i.tuency. Therefore our greatest towns ought to be divided into areas with suitable numbers, and have Boards separately independent. With a few such precautions, the system of elective Licensing Boards, which can impose despotically their own conditions on the licences, but without power to bind their successors in the next year, appears to be a complete solution of the problem...."

He adds, that to Sir Wilfrid Lawson "is due more largely than to any other public man the arousing of the nation" in the matter of the Drink Traffic, "To him our thanks and our honour will be equally paid, though the name of another mover be on the victorious Bill"--whatever it may be.

"n.o.ble efforts for a good cause are never thrown away, are never ineffectual, even when the success does not come in the exact form for which its champion was contending. It may hereafter be said: 'Other men sowed--we reap the fruit of their labours.'"

I quote now from the letter to Anna Swanwick, in which he refers to this question in 1887:--

"Unless at a very early day the causes of Un-Employ be removed, we must calculate on frightful disorder. Evidently two measures are indispensable.

"1. To stop our land from going out of cultivation.

"2. To stop the demoralizing waste of 135 millions per annum on pernicious drink.

"Only a most stringent change of law, perhaps very difficult to pa.s.s, can effect the _former_ and when pa.s.sed, the good effect cannot be instantaneous. The _second_ topic has been before the nation for thirty- four years; could be pa.s.sed, if there were a _will_ in _either_ ministry, in a single fortnight, and when pa.s.sed, the benefit would be sensible in a single year. Yet these topics are indefinitely postponed. The Tories do not even talk of them. _Some_ 'Liberals' round Mr. Gladstone are eager for the stopping of Drink Bars, but the eloquent leader _talks_ (in general) rightly, but never _acts_.

"Alas! He showed his heart in bringing a Bill to enact that every Railway Train should have (at least?) one travelling carriage with a Drink Bar.

When it is told, people will not believe it."

The final letter from Francis Newman to Anna Swanwick, from the collection so kindly lent me by Miss Bruce, is dated 17th April, 1897, "15 Arundel Crescent, Weston-super-Mare."

It is not written by himself. By that time he was too feeble to be able to write, and of course it was only a few months before his death. This letter was written in response to one from Anna Swanwick. To me, I must frankly own, it breathes of the past tragedy, of those doubts and fears by which Newman's religious life had been beset. Even now, notwithstanding his statements to his two lifelong friends, Martineau and Anna Swanwick, that he wished it to be known that he died in the Christian faith, the uncertainty by which, according to the following letter, he was very evidently governed as regards the question of immortality, suggests a submissive mind indeed, but one devoid of the splendid force of conviction as regards his faith in "the life of the world to come."

Anna Swanwick always declared, we are told, that his was a "deeply religious nature," yet throughout the greater part of his life he was unable to take hold of the dogmas of Holy Scriptures. He was always trying to make a "new" religion, compounded of all the best parts of the faiths professed in various parts of the world. Yet even were this done it might interest, but could never become, like the Christian Religion, once for all delivered--a faith to be _sure_ of, a faith Divinely inspired, not man-made.

"My dear Friend,

"I have read your letter this morning with deep interest and thanks. I do not intend to oppose it at all, but to add what it now seems to need.

First, that I have always dreaded to involve another mind in my own doubts and uncertainties; only when I saw death not far off I thought it cowardly towards one who has shown me so much love to leave you ignorant of my last creed. For this reason alone did I send you my inability to maintain popular immortality.

"Next, it is not amiss to let you know the talk which pa.s.sed between me and the Rev. James Taylor--Martineau's co-partner. He asked me my own belief concerning known immortality, and I replied that the Most High never asked my consent for bringing me into this world, yet I thanked Him for it, and tried to glorify Him. In like manner He never asked my leave to put me after my death in this world into any new world, and if He thought fit to do it I am not likely to murmur at His will. But not knowing His will, nor what power of resistance He allows me, I do not attempt to foresee the future. I seem to remember J. J. Taylor's remark, that he thought I went as far as anyone could be expected to go. And now, my dear Anna, I still wait to know how far I am straying from the man whom you and I are expecting something from--Dr. Martineau.

"Accept this kind remark, and be sure that I can use, and do use, concerning you, what a certain Psalmist says of the Most High: 'I will praise Him as long as I have any power to praise in my soul.'

"Yours while I exist "(You will not ask more of my weakness),

"F. W. Newman."

One wonders--but that wonder remains unsatisfied--what "that something"

was which he and Anna Swanwick were then "expecting" from Martineau.

Probably it was some statement as regards religion which Newman longed for from the man who had been permitted to help him now in his old age (when he distrusted more and more his own old judgments and former convictions) once more on to the old paths, led by that "kindly Light amid the encircling gloom," which now was fast closing in upon him.

CHAPTER XI

THE STORY OF TWO PATRIOTS

England possesses, as a rule, a memory of decidedly insular proportions and proclivities. On the tablets of our country's memory are chalked up many names which have figured in the history of her own concerns, or at any rate in concerns with which she has some connection. Perhaps it will be said that this is inevitable. Perhaps it will be said that this way Patriotism lies. Perhaps it will be said that our interests as English citizens and citizenesses are bound to be local, or we could not impress the seal of our empire upon other nations' memories.

And if it _is_ said, it is no doubt in great measure true. It is inevitable that we remember, in sharp unblurred outlines, the names and deeds of our own great men. It is this way that the soil of Patriotism is kept well manured for fresh crops of doughty deeds. We _are_ bound to impress our individuality, as a nation, upon other countries; for if we did not, we could never exist for any length of time as an empire at all.

But when all this is owned up to, there still remains another great necessity which can never with safety be disregarded. And this is the cultivation of our--so to speak--_foreign_ memory. We cannot afford to pamper our insularity. It is true it must exist, but it is equally true that English interests can never be--at least, _ought_ never to be--the sum total of our mental investments. Patriotism is a fine thing. It is an eminently inspiring thing. But it is also a thing that needs to take walks abroad to keep itself in good mental health. There is a certain sort of cosmopolitanism without which no nation's life can be complete--nay, without which it cannot go on at all.

It is the cosmopolitanism of recognizing greatness outside our own borders. The cosmopolitanism of owning that there are as good fish in foreign seas as ever there were in the English Channel. The cosmopolitanism of a human brotherhood, whether it hails from the Sandwich Islands, from France, from Finland, or from Hungary; which recognizes as a salient truth, big with vital issues, that, after all is said and done, it is not the soil which matters, but the man whose feet are upon it now, at this present day, though by birth he may own natal allegiance to a far distant sh.o.r.e.

There are two names to-day which are practically forgotten by modern England. Yet it is only half a century ago that the men who owned them were making a gallant stir for patriotism's sake.

How many Englishmen to-day remember the story of Kossuth and Pulszky? Yet fifty years ago their names sounded loudly enough in the political arena.

Fifty years ago they had struck the drum of fame with a boom which reverberated through many a European country.

Yet here is a curious instance of the uncertainty which attends a nation's memory in regard to foreign heroes. Some quite unaccountable factor seems to rule their choice of whose achievements shall be nailed to the door of their memories, like British trophies of old, and which shall be completely forgotten. Garibaldi and Kossuth were patriots of the same decade--one of Italy, the other of Hungary. Yet to-day in England the "red shirt" of the Italian patriot still casts a flaming glow on the English memory, while the struggle of Kossuth for his country is almost dead to us, as far as our remembrance of it is concerned.

Nevertheless in the history of his country, what Kossuth achieved for her of independence and freedom was in no way less fine than Garibaldi's exploits.

In Francis Newman's _Reminiscences of Two Wars and Two Exiles_, the story of the Hungarian reformer and _patriot_ stands out clearly before us. He gives as his reason for writing it that when, in 1851, Kossuth and Pulszky, his brother agitator, came to England, he himself became their close friend. He says: "When ... Kossuth and Pulszky quitted England in 1860, Pulszky told me they were glad to leave behind in _me_ one Englishman who knew all their secrets and could be trusted to expound them." He goes on, however, to say that he was never able to be of so much service to them as Mr. Toulmin Smith, "a const.i.tutional lawyer ... and a zealot for Hungary."

1848 was the year when the affairs of Hungary were at their most crucial point. For long the situation had been growing more and more strained between Austria and Hungary. Austria had been trying her hardest to force Hungary into entire subservience to herself--to force her to give up her separate individuality as a nation and become fused into the Austrian empire. But Hungary made a gallant stand against all these attempts which aimed at destroying her independence. She had always been a const.i.tutional monarchy, with power of electing her own kings. Austria had always practically been considered to be a "foreigner" as far as Hungarian laws and offices were concerned.

The London Hungarian Committee in 1849 quoted Article X, by Leopold II, of the House of Hapsburg, in 1790, which definitely stated that "Hungary with her appanages is a free kingdom, and in regard to her whole legal form of government (including all the tribunals) independent; that is, entangled with no other kingdom or people, but having her own peculiar consistence and const.i.tution; accordingly to be governed by her legitimately crowned king after her peculiar laws and customs."

This statute, however, was no sooner made than fresh attempts were made to nullify it. Hungary's needs, as a country, were many. Her taxation required alteration; her peasants had still feudal burdens to bear, instead of being freehold proprietors of land. Religious toleration was not enforced, and free trade was an unknown quant.i.ty, for Austria insisted on the produce of Hungary being sent only to her market. Fresh roads and bridges and agricultural improvements were imperatively necessary, but the need was pa.s.sed by, by Austria.

To every nation, as to every individual, when the hour of worst need strikes, the hand of the man or woman who brings rescue is upon the latch of the door. In the present instance Kossuth was in readiness to redeem his country from the yoke of Austria.

In March, 1848, the Opposition in the Hungarian Diet, with Kossuth at their head, carried a vote "that the Const.i.tution of Hungary could never be free from the machinations of the Austrian Cabinet until Const.i.tutional Government was established in the foreign possessions of the Crown, so as to restore the legal status of the period at which the Diet freely conferred the royalty on the House of Hapsburg." This vote paralysed the Austrian authorities.... The Hungarian Diet immediately claimed for itself also a responsible ministry.