Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman Part 34

The pa.s.sage 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 a.s.sured, 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 c.u.mberland 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 ingrat.i.tude; and I think I never felt so painful a pang in my heart. I can well imagine that a sense of another's ingrat.i.tude 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 doc.u.ments 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 a.s.sociate 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 inst.i.tutions, 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 a.s.suming 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.