Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman Part 7

"On the subject of masters and servants, he says, 'Masters should be considered "_infamous_" who hired servants by the day or week, and not by the year; or who dismissed old servants without any other reason than to lower wages; but such a thing, to be possible and effective, must be _mutual_. The servant must have no power to leave a good master in order to _raise_ his wages. But at present, while the servant is under no bonds to the master, and _does not like to bind himself_, it seems to me quite impossible to treat the masters as having any moral responsibility for the servants more than for foreigners. When we buy tea, we cannot ask whether the Chinese get a comfortable livelihood by selling it at that price.'

That is an extreme and clear case to which we approach in every commercial transaction in proportion as the other party claims that the relation shall be one of mere marketing....

"Ever yours affectionately,

"Francis W. Newman."

The next letter, which is dated September, 1851, and which was written just after Newman's return from his Swiss tour, goes on with the same subject as the last, and also touches on the evils of _suddenly_ introducing machinery; while it shows clearly that, in the long run, better wages are gained for the worker by its means--"Machinery is in every light the friend of the poor." He says very truly, "The first great want of the workmen is better morality and more thriftiness, _not_ better masters or higher wages." Putting quite aside the question of whether "higher wages" are not needed by the workman, nothing can be truer at the present time than this fact, brought thus before us by Newman. It _is_, beyond all question, these faults which run through the bulk of the labouring cla.s.ses (as we term them)--lack of the true spirit of morality and thriftiness.

It is difficult altogether to account for the reason why the lack of these characteristics is so much to the fore to-day, or to think of the remedy which shall reach and cure them. But that it is a presence in our midst is a self-evident fact. No one who has travelled much in France (to name only one other country), but is aware how vast is the gulf which divides the ways of living of our own labouring cla.s.ses and of those which obtain across the water. There, thriftiness is the rule. They use a far simpler diet, and one which the land supplies them with, and are content. There is a far more healthy tone about them, even if it be a rough one, than there is among our own poor. I am constantly in France myself (it is the country of my own ancestors), and I have never failed to be struck by the absence there, in the country, of the vice which disfigures so often the home life of our villagers. You do not see there the sights that make the streets on Sat.u.r.day evening in England a degrading scene. When the French villager is happy, he can be it without the aid of drunkenness. And as far as the cultivation of the land is concerned--well, we need only look at home in our "French Farming" schemes to-day and we shall find that when we want to come "back to the land," to find out how much care and industry will bring out of it, we have to send for a Frenchman to show us his country's secrets of manuring the land, so that the soil becomes precious and will yield, even from so small a s.p.a.ce as a quarter of an acre, incalculable riches in the way of marketable goods.

As regards what Newman says about the work_women_ of England, it is impossible to agree with him. It is most a.s.suredly not the case in thousands of instances that "there are _no_ good workwomen out of work, or earning low wages," nor that "those who cannot get good wages are women who have _spent their prime in idleness_ ... and sew badly."

One has but to refer to the statistics with which the Christian Social Union supplies us, as well as other societies, to have this idea quickly negatived. Mrs. Carlyle's experiences and Mrs. Newman's were evidently involuntarily misleading.

There was a certain impulsiveness in discussing many subjects to which Newman seems to have been peculiarly subject. He was sometimes so led away by it as to dogmatize inaccurately or over-forcibly.

_Dr. Martineau from Francis Newman._

"My dear Martineau,

"... In a day or two I am meditating a visit to Froude, who is in Wales, and too much in solitude." [Froude was then preparing or writing his _History of England_. It will be remembered that Cardinal Newman's influence over him at college decided him later on taking Holy Orders, but he never went beyond the diaconate.] "Gladstone's letters just now are a powerful stimulus to public opinion.... Not the Socialists only, but numbers of workmen besides treat it as _an abstract wickedness_ in a master to offer lower wages than are at any particular time existing. They have never any objection to a _rise_ of wages; so I cannot say they treat the existing rate as a divinely appointed amount; but they do not see that if they are unwilling to bind themselves not to strike for a rise, they ought to concede in the master a moral right to lower.... What is to be done with those who will go on enunciating and propagating dangerous general maxims as abstract axiomatic truth?... _Your_ method of making the masters determine how many _shall enter_ a trade will succeed; but I do not see that it will succeed in ejecting. In the years of railroad excitement the London newspapers were enormously overworked, and a great increase no doubt took place in the numbers of printers (perhaps also in their wages); now the printers for some time have been in comparative depression.... I do not contend that _all_ lowering of wages by masters is merciful and just, but that _some_ may be; whereas the Socialists and Co.

instantly declaim against _all_ or _any_ lowering, without entering into any details as to present or past history of the trade. When I said that machinery is in every light the friend of the poor, I do not think I overlooked the occasional mischief caused by its _sudden_ introduction....

The effect of machinery is in the long run a steady rise of wages as well as a cheap supply of goods: the advantage to the poor is universal and permanent, the evil is partial and transitory. Moreover, the evil is immensely aggravated by their perverseness. Three generations of hand-loom weavers have been propagated in spite of the notorious misery it must cause. Machinery does _not_ raise the rate of profits or interest; it _does_ raise the rate of wages: compare Manchester and Buckingham in proof.... I do not think I am _at all_ carried into reaction by unjust attacks on capitalists, but I am very strongly by the [right or wrong]

belief that the first great want of the workmen is better morality and more thriftiness, _not_ better masters or higher wages. I have not dared to print half of what are my convictions on this head.... The sufferings of the poor from bad air and bad water are quite a separate chapter. High wages do little to cure this. Indeed, in Manchester the workmen habitually prefer to save a shilling a week in house rent and spend it in beefsteaks, when the shilling would have got them a healthy instead of an unhealthy lodging. Bricklayers' wages are at present high in London; what is the consequence? I have at present a bit of a dwarf wall building in my garden. The men leave their work; I complain; the builder replies: 'Men will not come to work on a Monday without much trouble.' I fear this _means_ that they drink on Sunday and are very 'seedy' on Monday morning.

The very men who are excited by high wages to drinking and idleness will make a violent outcry when a fall of wages takes place, and _moreover_ will get the ear and sympathies of Maurice and Co. for their outcry."

"Maurice and Co." of course refers to Frederick Denison Maurice, who was the princ.i.p.al mover in the Christian Socialism of the day, as he was in all social reforms. He had met with much abuse and opposition, but still there were very many who called him "Master." Amongst these last was Charles Kingsley, who had been one of his pupils, and who had been very greatly influenced by his opinion in religion and social matters.

[Footnote: Kingsley (see memoir) said to Maurice, when opposition was fiercest against him: "Your cause is mine. We swim in the same boat, and stand or fall thenceforth together."] Neither man could bear the narrowness of "parties" in religion. They always demanded more toleration, broader views, and refused to be bound by narrow creeds. It was owing chiefly to Coleridge that Maurice took Holy Orders. He was born in that year of great men, 1805, and by 1851 his socialistic ideas were well known to the world.

"As to the milliners and tailors, my wife has the same experience as Mrs.

Carlyle, that there are _no_ good workwomen out of work, or earning low wages. Mrs. Wedgwood tells me that the Ladies' Committee could not get women to make the shirts.... Those who cannot get good wages are women who have _spent their prime in idleness_, and cannot work well enough to satisfy ladies. They sew badly, and get a poor pittance from the shops. As to tailors, I give more for a coat by four or five shillings than I did twenty-five years ago.... Until our national morality is much improved, and our moral organization repaired, there must be a large body of persons without any trade, art, or connection who will throw themselves into what seems to be the easiest art, and by their numbers will swamp it....

"Ever your affectionate

"Francis W. Newman."

It should be mentioned here that in 1853 Manchester New College was moved to London, but that it was not until 1857, that Dr. Martineau went to live in town, in order to devote his time chiefly to the important work which devolved upon him in connection with it. This he continued to do until 1885. Newman had been appointed in 1846 to the chair of Latin in University College, a post he held until 1863.

The next letter of this period, addressed to Martineau, gives one an insight as to the effect of beauty of scenery upon Newman. He was far removed from the ordinary point of the rapid traveller of to-day, who only seems to want to cover great distances at rapid speed, and can therefore have no conception at all of what we might call the "atmospheric environment" of a place, which can only be felt by quiet moving, as Newman expresses it, "from point to point," to "see how aspects and proportions change."

_Dr. Martineau from Francis Newman._ "Grisedale Bridge, "Patterdale, near Penrith, "_31st July_ 1854.

"My dear Martineau,

"I have been faithless in not writing to you before now....

"We are more delighted than ever with Patterdale. Probably enough you know the beauties of _your_ neighbourhood so well, and esteem them so highly, that you turn as deaf an ear as I do to all praises of other parts. I have so strong a sense of the inexhaustibility of beauty, that it aids me to repress the restlessness which is kindled by other persons' praises of what is unknown to me....

"Unless I had _my own_ carriage I get little pleasure from touring. What I want is to stop at the beautiful places, and go from point to point and see how aspects and proportions change; this in fact you seldom do well except on foot and at leisure. The walks here are inexhaustible, for persons who can carry with them their book or other occupation, and stay out four or five hours; but you want reasonably dry weather, else indeed the swampiness of the mountains greatly lessens the number of feasible or pleasant walks, besides impairing the beauty.

"I only get a newspaper once a week, and in such a crisis feel hungry for news as the week goes on." [The "crisis," of course, was the near approach at this time of the beginning of those hostilities which were to end in the Crimean war.] "Lest the Eastern question should flag in interest by lingering, lo! the Spanish insurrection breaks on us. I do not yet dare to hope European benefits from Spain: should such be the ultimate result, it will be a striking ill.u.s.tration how incalculable is the _course_ of events, while the general end is not very obscure.

"Mr. Charles Loring Brace, of America (who, you may know, was imprisoned in Hungary), sent to me an introduction from Theodore Parker. It is highly probable he had one to you....

"The post summons.

"Ever yours, "F. W. N."

Harriet Martineau, sister of Dr. Martineau, was fifty-three years of age when Newman wrote to her brother about her illness. Practically for the whole of her life she had been more or less of an invalid. Even as a girl she suffered so much from deafness and wretched health, that she was hardly ever free from anxiety and depression. Nevertheless she did not let her ill-health prevent her from earning her livelihood by writing. Before she made her name by the publication of her stories on political economy, she experienced endless difficulties in her efforts to get publishers for her books. But no sooner had these stories appeared than her fame was a.s.sured, and money came in, so to speak, by handfuls, so that all financial troubles were altogether at an end.

From 1839 till 1844 she was so terribly out of health that no treatment produced any effect, until someone suggested that mesmerism should be tried, and this succeeded so well that she recovered a certain amount of strength and was able to go on with her writing. Nevertheless, that it did not wholly restore her health is evident from the fact that in 1855, when Newman was writing to her brother, he mentions her "formidable fainting fits" and daily pains in the head. "Her letter tells me," he says, "how very bad she is, that every day she feels shot in the head"; but he goes on to say that he does not despair of her better health because (as indeed her numerous books testify), her "body is so subject to her mind." It is, I think, necessary to remember that in 1844, when Miss Martineau tried mesmerism as a cure for her continued ill-health, mesmerism was practically taking its first steps in the English medical world. This science of healing, which began to be recognized in England about the middle of the eighteenth century, through the medium of the afterwards discredited Mesmer, has "in its day played many parts" and had more names than one. In the first instance it was called mesmerism, then animal magnetism, while to-day, when it has forced its way through incredulity, distrust, and opposition of all sorts, and come to the front in very truth, it faces us as a power which bids fair to be more and more with us as time goes on under the name of Hypnotism.

Perhaps few people remember the name of the man who really brought animal magnetism into prominence in the middle of the last century. Yet James Braid, the Scotch surgeon, who then lived at Manchester, and pursued with untiring thoroughness and perseverance his studies in the then little- known science, was really the shoulder that pushed hypnotism into our midst. It was Braid, indeed, who caused the name of "hypnotism" to eject that of "mesmerism" in England. He was never properly appreciated during his lifetime. But if he was not, he was only one of numerous examples which are always being brought up before our eyes (among those of our countrymen who have rendered their country signal services), who ill.u.s.trate the famous English quotation, "Thus angels walked the earth unknown, and _when they flew were recognized_"

Braid, however, proved effectually that the mesmeric phenomena depend altogether on the physiological condition of the person operated on, and not on the power of the operator.

_Dr. Martineau from Newman._

"7 P.V.E., "_17th Feb._, 1855.

"My dear Martineau,

"You will believe that the state of your sister's health gives me much concern. She has kindly written twice to me. The second letter tells of formidable fainting fits, which I cannot explain away; yet, as I told her in my reply to her first, her symptoms _in general_ are so similar to my own that I cannot but hope her physician views them too seriously, and _does her harm by it_. I, on the whole, believe that my own heart is unsound organically (distended), but my experience certainly is that the less I attend to it _in detail_ the better, though I must in prudence avoid impure air and other evils. Her second letter tells me as a decisive proof how very bad she is, that every day she feels _shot_ in the head.

"Now this is exactly the symptom I have for nine months been struggling to subdue, and as my wife knows, I am, week by week, balancing whether to put myself under a doctor for it.... The spasm which distresses me comes at the crisis when I ought to go to sleep, and so wakes me up. I could not get rid of it even in the summer, on days on which I had least mental effort, and was in all other respects conscious of great vigour....

"I went to a physician to complain of _sleeplessness_ and got the reply that it was my _heart_ that was diseased.... Your sister's body is so subject to her mind that I do not despair that, either through mesmerism restoring sleep or in some other way, she may rally far beyond her present expectation. I know a lady who was dying of brain fever, and could get no sleep until the physician called in a mesmerist; this gained sleep for her, and by that alone she recovered without medicine."

Dr. Martineau was one of the founders of the _National Review_ in 1855, and frequently contributed articles to it. This next letter treats mainly of the proposed lines on which the magazine was to be run--its politics, points of view, etc.

_Dr. Martineau from Newman._

"_14th June_, 1855.

"My dear Martineau,

"I have seen with interest that your scheme of the National Review is resumed, and I am told that you and Walter Bagehot are the political editors. Supposing that your politics are not essentially different from those of the _Westminster_ the _Review_ is of _practical_ interest to me, in spite of my unfortunate collision last year, for which I hope you have forgiven me. I wrote in the last _Westminster_ the last article on the "Administrative Example of the United States," and in the forthcoming number I have written the second article on "International Immorality." I wrote them freely, and indeed could not comfortably take money from Chapman in his present circ.u.mstances, but I would much rather write for the _National Review_ if I am admissible.... I value _forms_ of government in proportion as they develop moral results in individual man; and if I _now_ am democratic for Europe, it is not from any abstract and exclusive zeal for democracy, all the weaknesses of which I keenly feel, but because the dynasties, having first corrupted or destroyed the aristocracies, and next become hateful, hated, and incurable themselves, have left no government possible which shall have stability and morality except the democratic. In England my desire is to ward off this result, to which, I think, our aristocracy are driving fast by uniting their cause with the perfidious immoralities of the Continent.