Sanitary and Social Lectures, etc Part 10

How and why he did so is a question for philosophy in the highest sense of that word. The fact of his having done so is matter of history.

Shall I solve my own riddle?

Then, have we not heard of the early Christian martyrs? Is there a doubt that they, unlettered men, slaves, weak women, even children, did exhibit, under an infinite sense of duty, issuing in infinite self-sacrifice, a heroism such as the world had never seen before; did raise the ideal of human n.o.bleness a whole stage-rather say, a whole heaven-higher than before; and that wherever the tale of their great deeds spread, men accepted, even if they did not copy, those martyrs as ideal specimens of the human race, till they were actually worshipped by succeeding generations, wrongly, it may be, but pardonably, as a choir of lesser deities?

But is there, on the other hand, a doubt that the age in which they were heroic was the most unheroic of all ages; that they were bred, lived, and died, under the most debasing of materialist tyrannies, with art, literature, philosophy, family and national life dying, or dead around them, and in cities the corruption of which cannot be told for very shame-cities, compared with which Paris is the abode of Arcadian simplicity and innocence? When I read Petronius and Juvenal, and recollect that they were the contemporaries of the Apostles; when-to give an instance which scholars, and perhaps, happily, only scholars, can appreciate-I glance once more at Trimalchio's feast, and remember that within a mile of that feast St. Paul may have been preaching to a Christian congregation, some of whom-for St. Paul makes no secret of that strange fact-may have been, ere their conversion, partakers in just such vulgar and b.e.s.t.i.a.l orgies as those which were going on in the rich freedman's halls; after that, I say, I can put no limit to the possibility of man's becoming heroic, even though he be surrounded by a h.e.l.l on earth; no limit to the capacities of any human being to form for himself or herself a high and pure ideal of human character; and, without "playing fantastic tricks before high heaven," to carry out that ideal in every-day life; and in the most commonplace circ.u.mstances, and the most menial occupations, to live worthy of-as I conceive-our heavenly birthright, and to imitate the heroes, who were the kinsmen of the G.o.ds.

THE Ma.s.sACRE OF THE INNOCENTS.

Speech in behalf of Ladies' Sanitary a.s.sociation. {257}

LET me begin by asking the ladies who are interesting themselves in this good work, whether they have really considered what they are about to do in carrying out their own plans? Are they aware that if their Society really succeeds, they will produce a very serious, some would think a very dangerous, change in the state of this nation? Are they aware that they would probably save the lives of some thirty or forty per cent. of the children who are born in England, and that therefore they would cause the subjects of Queen Victoria to increase at a very far more rapid rate than they do now? And are they aware that some very wise men inform us that England is already over-peopled, and that it is an exceedingly puzzling question where we shall soon be able to find work or food for our ma.s.ses, so rapidly do they increase already, in spite of the thirty or forty per cent. which kind Nature carries off yearly before they are five years old? Have they considered what they are to do with all those children whom they are going to save alive? That has to be thought of; and if they really do believe, with some political economists, that over-population is a possibility to a country which has the greatest colonial empire that the world has ever seen; then I think they had better stop in their course, and let the children die, as they have been in the habit of dying.

But if, on the other hand, it seems to them, as I confess it does to me, that the most precious thing in the world is a human being; that the lowest, and poorest, and the most degraded of human beings is better than all the dumb animals in the world; that there is an infinite, priceless capability in that creature, fallen as it may be; a capability of virtue, and of social and industrial use, which, if it is taken in time, may be developed up to a pitch, of which at first sight the child gives no hint whatsoever; if they believe again, that of all races upon earth now, the English race is probably the finest, and that it gives not the slightest sign whatever of exhaustion; that it seems to be on the whole a young race, and to have very great capabilities in it which have not yet been developed, and above all, the most marvellous capability of adapting itself to every sort of climate and every form of life, which any race, except the old Roman, ever has had in the world; if they consider with me that it is worth the while of political economists and social philosophers to look at the map, and see that about four-fifths of the globe cannot be said as yet to be in anywise inhabited or cultivated, or in the state into which men could put it by a fair supply of population, and industry, and human intellect: then, perhaps, they may think with me that it is a duty, one of the n.o.blest of duties, to help the increase of the English race as much as possible, and to see that every child that is born into this great nation of England be developed to the highest pitch to which we can develop him in physical strength and in beauty, as well as in intellect and in virtue. And then, in that light, it does seem to me, that this Inst.i.tution-small now, but I do hope some day to become great and to become the mother inst.i.tution of many and valuable children-is one of the n.o.blest, most right-minded, straightforward, and practical conceptions that I have come across for some years.

We all know the difficulties of sanitary legislation. One looks at them at times almost with despair. I have my own reasons, with which I will not trouble this meeting, for looking on them with more despair than ever: not on account of the government of the time, or any possible government that could come to England, but on account of the peculiar cla.s.s of persons in whom the ownership of the small houses has become more and more vested, and who are becoming more and more, I had almost said, the arbiters of the popular opinion, and of every election of parliament. However, that is no business of ours here; that must be settled somewhere else; and a fearfully long time, it seems to me, it will be before it is settled. But, in the meantime, what legislation cannot do, I believe private help, and, above all, woman's help, can do even better. It can do this; it can improve the condition of the working man: and not only of him; I must speak also of the middle cla.s.ses, of the men who own the house in which the working man lives. I must speak, too, of the wealthy tradesman; I must speak-it is a sad thing to have to say it-of our own cla.s.s as well as of others. Sanitary reform, as it is called, or, in plain English, the art of health, is so very recent a discovery, as all true physical science is, that we ourselves and our own cla.s.s know very little about it, and practise it very little. And this society, I do hope, will bear in mind that it is not simply to seek the working man, not only to go into the foul alley: but it is to go to the door of the farmer, to the door of the shopkeeper, aye, to the door of ladies and gentlemen of the same rank as ourselves. Women can do in that work what men cannot do. The private correspondence, private conversation, private example, of ladies, above all of married women, of mothers of families, may do what no legislation can do. I am struck more and more with the amount of disease and death I see around me in all cla.s.ses, which no sanitary legislation whatsoever could touch, unless you had a complete house-to-house visitation by some government officer, with powers to enter every dwelling, to drain it, and ventilate it; and not only that, but to regulate the clothes and the diet of every inhabitant, and that among all ranks. I can conceive of nothing short of that, which would be absurd and impossible, and would also be most harmful morally, which would stop the present amount of disease and death which I see around me, without some such private exertion on the part of women, above all of mothers, as I do hope will spring from this inst.i.tution more and more.

I see this, that three persons out of every four are utterly unaware of the general causes of their own ill-health, and of the ill-health of their children. They talk of their "afflictions," and their "misfortunes;" and, if they be pious people, they talk of "the will of G.o.d," and of "the visitation of G.o.d." I do not like to trench upon those matters here; but when I read in my book and in your book, "that it is not the will of our Father in Heaven that one of these little ones should perish," it has come to my mind sometimes with very great strength that that may have a physical application as well as a spiritual one; and that the Father in Heaven who does not wish the child's soul to die, may possibly have created that child's body for the purpose of its not dying except in a good old age. For not only in the lower cla.s.s, but in the middle and upper cla.s.ses, when one sees an unhealthy family, then in three cases out of four, if one will take time, trouble, and care enough, one can, with the help of the doctor, who has been attending them, run the evil home to a very different cause than the will of G.o.d; and that is, to stupid neglect, stupid ignorance, or what is just as bad, stupid indulgence.

Now, I do believe that if those tracts which you are publishing, which I have read and of which I cannot speak too highly, are spread over the length and breadth of the land, and if women-clergymen's wives, the wives of manufacturers and of great employers, district visitors and schoolmistresses, have these books put into their hands, and are persuaded to spread them, and to enforce them, by their own example and by their own counsel-that then, in the course of a few years, this system being thoroughly carried out, you would see a sensible and large increase in the rate of population. When you have saved your children alive, then you must settle what to do with them. But a living dog is better than a dead lion; I would rather have the living child, and let it take its chance, than let it return to G.o.d-wasted. O! it is a distressing thing to see children die. G.o.d gives the most beautiful and precious thing that earth can have, and we just take it and cast it away; we toss our pearls upon the dunghill and leave them. A dying child is to me one of the most dreadful sights in the world. A dying man, a man dying on the field of battle-that is a small sight; he has taken his chance; he is doing his duty; he has had his excitement; he has had his glory, if that will be any consolation to him; if he is a wise man, he has the feeling that he is dying for his country and his queen: and that is, and ought to be, enough for him. I am not horrified or shocked at the sight of the man who dies on the field of battle; let him die so. It does not horrify or shock me, again, to see a man dying in a good old age, even though the last struggle be painful, as it too often is. But it does shock me, it does make me feel that the world is indeed out of joint, to see a child die. I believe it to be a priceless boon to the child to have lived for a week, or a day: but oh, what has G.o.d given to this thankless earth, and what has the earth thrown away; and in nine cases out of ten, from its own neglect and carelessness! What that boy might have been, what he might have done as an Englishman, if he could have lived and grown up healthy and strong! And I entreat you to bear this in mind, that it is not as if our lower or our middle cla.s.ses were not worth saving: bear in mind that the physical beauty, strength, intellectual power of the middle cla.s.ses-the shopkeeping cla.s.s, the farming cla.s.s, down to the lowest working cla.s.s-whenever you give them a fair chance, whenever you give them fair food and air, and physical education of any kind, prove them to be the finest race in Europe. Not merely the aristocracy, splendid race as they are, but down and down and down to the lowest labouring man, to the navigator-why, there is not such a body of men in Europe as our navigators; and no body of men perhaps have had a worse chance of growing to be what they are; and yet see what they have done! See the magnificent men they become, in spite of all that is against them, dragging them down, tending to give them rickets and consumption, and all the miserable diseases which children contract; see what men they are, and then conceive what they might be! It has been said, again and again, that there are no more beautiful race of women in Europe than the wives and daughters of our London shopkeepers; and yet there are few races of people who lead a life more in opposition to all rules of hygiene. But, in spite of all that, so wonderful is the vitality of the English race, they are what they are; and therefore we have the finest material to work upon that people ever had. And, therefore, again, we have the less excuse if we do allow English people to grow up puny, stunted, and diseased.

Let me refer again to that word that I used; death-the amount of death.

I really believe there are hundreds of good and kind people who would take up this subject with their whole heart and soul if they were aware of the magnitude of the evil. Lord Shaftesbury told you just now that there were one hundred thousand preventable deaths in England every year.

So it is. We talk of the loss of human life in war. We are the fools of smoke and noise; because there are cannon-b.a.l.l.s, forsooth, and swords and red coats; and because it costs a great deal of money, and makes a great deal of talk in the papers, we think: What so terrible as war? I will tell you what is ten times, and ten thousand times, more terrible than war, and that is outraged Nature. War, we are discovering now, is the clumsiest and most expensive of all games; we are finding that if you wish to commit an act of cruelty and folly, the most costly one that you can commit is to contrive to shoot your fellow-men in war. So it is; and thank G.o.d that so it is; but Nature, insidious, inexpensive, silent, sends no roar of cannon, no glitter of arms to do her work; she gives no warning note of preparation; she has no protocols, nor any diplomatic advances, whereby she warns her enemy that war is coming. Silently, I say, and insidiously she goes forth; no! she does not even go forth; she does not step out of her path; but quietly, by the very same means by which she makes alive, she puts to death; and so avenges herself of those who have rebelled against her. By the very same laws by which every blade of gra.s.s grows, and every insect springs to life in the sunbeam, she kills, and kills, and kills, and is never tired of killing; till she has taught man the terrible lesson he is so slow to learn, that, Nature is only conquered by obeying her.

And bear in mind one thing more. Man has his courtesies of war, and his chivalries of war; he does not strike the unarmed man; he spares the woman and the child. But Nature is as fierce when she is offended, as she is bounteous and kind when she is obeyed. She spares neither woman nor child. She has no pity; for some awful, but most good reason, she is not allowed to have any pity. Silently she strikes the sleeping babe, with as little remorse as she would strike the strong man, with the spade or the musket in his hand. Ah! would to G.o.d that some man had the pictorial eloquence to put before the mothers of England the ma.s.s of preventable suffering, the ma.s.s of preventable agony of mind and body, which exists in England year after year; and would that some man had the logical eloquence to make them understand that it is in their power, in the power of the mothers and wives of the higher cla.s.s, I will not say to stop it all-G.o.d only knows that-but to stop, as I believe, three-fourths of it.

It is in the power, I believe, of any woman in this room to save three or four lives-human lives-during the next six months. It is in your power, ladies; and it is so easy. You might save several lives apiece, if you choose, without, I believe, interfering with your daily business, or with your daily pleasure; or, if you choose, with your daily frivolities, in any way whatsoever. Let me ask, then, those who are here, and who have not yet laid these things to heart: Will you let this meeting to-day be a mere pa.s.sing matter of two or three hours' interest, which you may go away and forget for the next book or the next amus.e.m.e.nt? Or will you be in earnest? Will you learn-I say it openly-from the n.o.ble chairman, how easy it is to be in earnest in life; how every one of you, amid all the artificial complications of English society in the nineteenth century, can find a work to do, a n.o.ble work to do, a chivalrous work to do-just as chivalrous as if you lived in any old magic land, such as Spenser talked of in his "Faerie Queene;" how you can be as true a knight-errant or lady-errant in the present century, as if you had lived far away in the dark ages of violence and rapine? Will you, I ask, learn this? Will you learn to be in earnest; and to use the position, and the station, and the talent that G.o.d has given you to save alive those who should live?

And will you remember that it is not the will of your Father that is in Heaven that one little one that plays in the kennel outside should perish, either in body or in soul?

"A MAD WORLD, MY MASTERS." {271}

THE cholera, as was to be expected, has reappeared in England again; and England, as was to be expected, has taken no sufficient steps towards meeting it; so that if, as seems but too probable, the plague should spread next summer, we may count with tolerable certainty upon a loss of some ten thousand lives.

That ten thousand, or one thousand, innocent people should die, of whom most, if not all, might be saved alive, would seem at first sight a matter serious enough for the attention of "philanthropists." Those who abhor the practice of hanging one man would, one fancies, abhor equally that of poisoning many; and would protest as earnestly against the painful capital punishment of diarrhoea as against the painless one of hempen rope. Those who demand mercy for the Sepoy, and immunity for the Coolie women of Delhi, uns.e.xed by their own brutal and shameless cruelty, would, one fancies, demand mercy also for the British workman, and immunity for his wife and family. One is therefore somewhat startled at finding that the British nation reserves to itself, though it forbids to its armies, the right of putting to death unarmed and unoffending men, women, and children.

After further consideration, however, one finds that there are, as usual, two sides to the question. One is bound, indeed, to believe, even before proof, that there are two sides. It cannot be without good and sufficient reason that the British public remains all but indifferent to sanitary reform; that though the science of epidemics, as a science, has been before the world for more than twenty years, n.o.body believes in it enough to act upon it, save some few dozen of fanatics, some of whom have (it cannot be denied) a direct pecuniary interest in disturbing what they choose to term the poison-manufactories of free and independent Britons.

Yes; we should surely respect the expressed will and conviction of the most practical of nations, arrived at after the experience of three choleras, stretching over a whole generation. Public opinion has declared against the necessity of sanitary reform: and is not public opinion known to be, in these last days, the Ithuriel's spear which is to unmask and destroy all the follies, superst.i.tions, and cruelties of the universe? The immense majority of the British nation will neither cleanse themselves nor let others cleanse them: and are we not governed by majorities? Are not majorities, confessedly, always in the right, even when smallest, and a show of hands a surer test of truth than any amount of wisdom, learning, or virtue? How much more, then, when a whole free people is arrayed, in the calm magnificence of self-confident conservatism, against a few innovating and perhaps sceptical philosophasters? Then surely, if ever, vox populi is vox coeli.

And, in fact, when we come to examine the first and commonest objection against sanitary reformers, we find it perfectly correct. They are said to be theorists, dreamers of the study, who are ignorant of human nature; and who in their materialist optimism, have forgotten the existence of moral evil till they almost fancy at times that they can set the world right simply by righting its lowest material arrangements. The complaint is perfectly true. They have been ignorant of human nature; they have forgotten the existence of moral evil; and if any religious periodical should complain of their denying original sin, they can only answer that they did in past years fall into that folly, but that subsequent experience has utterly convinced them of the truth of the doctrine.

For, misled by this ignorance of human nature, they expected help, from time to time, from various cla.s.ses of the community, from whom no help (as they ought to have known at first) is to be gotten. Some, as a fact, expected the a.s.sistance of the clergy, and especially of the preachers of those denominations who believe that every human being, by the mere fact of his birth into this world, is destined to endless torture after death, unless the preacher can find an opportunity to deliver him therefrom before he dies. They supposed that to such preachers the mortal lives of men would be inexpressibly precious; that any science which held out a prospect of r.e.t.a.r.ding death in the case of "lost millions" would be hailed as a heavenly boon, and would be carried out with the fervour of men who felt that for the soul's sake no exertion was too great in behalf of the body.

A little more reflection would have quashed their vain hope. They would have recollected that each of these preachers was already connected with a congregation; that he had already a hold on them, and they on him; that he was bound to provide for their spiritual wants before going forth to seek for fresh objects of his ministry. They would have recollected that on the old principle (and a very sound one) of a bird in the hand being worth two in the bush, the minister of a congregation would feel it his duty, as well as his interest, not to defraud his flock of his labours by spending valuable time on a secular subject like sanitary reform, in the hope of possibly preserving a few human beings, whose souls he might hereafter (and that again would be merely a possibility) benefit.

They would have recollected, again, that these congregations are almost exclusively composed of those cla.s.ses who have little or nothing to fear from epidemics, and (what is even more important) who would have to bear the expenses of sanitary improvements. But so sanguine, so reckless of human conditions had their theories made them, that they actually expected that parish rectors, already burdened with over-work and vestry quarrels-nay, even that preachers who got their bread by pew-rents, and whose life-long struggle was, therefore, to keep those pews filled, and those renters in good humour-should astound the respectable house-owners and ratepayers who sat beneath them by the appalling words: "You, and not the 'Visitation of G.o.d,' are the cause of epidemics; and of you, now that you are once fairly warned of your responsibility, will your brothers'

blood be required." Conceive Sanitary Reformers expecting this of "ministers," let their denomination be what it might-many of the poor men, too, with a wife and seven children! Truly has it been said, that nothing is so cruel as the unreasonableness of a fanatic.

They forgot, too, that sanitary science, like geology, must be at first sight "suspect" in the eyes of the priests of all denominations, at least till they shall have arrived at a much higher degree of culture than they now possess.

Like geology, it interferes with that Deus e machina theory of human affairs which has been in all ages the stronghold of priestcraft. That the Deity is normally absent, and not present; that he works on the world by interference, and not by continuous laws; that it is the privilege of the priesthood to a.s.sign causes for these "judgments" and "visitations"

of the Almighty, and to tell mankind why He is angry with them, and has broken the laws of nature to punish them-this, in every age, has seemed to the majority of priests a doctrine to be defended at all hazards; for without it, so they hold, their occupation were gone at once. {276} No wonder, then, if they view with jealousy a set of laymen attributing these "judgments" to purely chemical laws, and to misdoings and ignorance which have as yet no place in the ecclesiastical catalogue of sins.

True, it may be that the Sanitary Reformers are right; but they had rather not think so. And it is very easy not to think so. They only have to ignore, to avoid examining, the facts. Their canon of utility is a peculiar one; and with facts which do not come under that canon they have no concern. It may be true, for instance, that the eighteenth century, which to the clergy is a period of scepticism, darkness, and spiritual death, is the very century which saw more done for science, for civilisation, for agriculture, for manufacture, for the prolongation and support of human life than any preceding one for a thousand years and more. What matter? That is a "secular" question, of which they need know nothing. And sanitary reform (if true) is just such another; a matter (as slavery has been seen to be by the preachers of the United States) for the legislator, and not for those whose kingdom is "not of this world."

Others again expected, with equal wisdom, the a.s.sistance of the political economist. The fact is undeniable, but at the same time inexplicable.

What they could have found in the doctrines of most modern political economists which should lead them to suppose that human life would be precious in their eyes, is unknown to the writer of these pages. Those whose bugbear has been over-population, whose motto has been an euphuistic version of

The more the merrier; but the fewer the better fare-

cannot be expected to lend their aid in increasing the population by saving the lives of two-thirds of the children who now die prematurely in our great cities; and so still further overcrowding this unhappy land with those helpless and expensive sources of national poverty-rational human beings, in strength and health.

Moreover-and this point is worthy of serious attention-that school of political economy, which has now reached its full development, has taken all along a view of man's relation to Nature diametrically opposite to that taken by the Sanitary Reformer, or indeed by any other men of science. The Sanitary Reformer holds, in common with the chemist or the engineer, that Nature is to be obeyed only in order to conquer her; that man is to discover the laws of her existing phenomena, in order that he may employ them to create new phenomena himself; to turn the laws which he discovers to his own use; if need be, to counteract one by another.

In this power, it has seemed to them, lay his dignity as a rational being. It was this, the power of invention, which made him a progressive animal, not bound as the bird and the bee are, to build exactly as his forefathers built five thousand years ago.

By political economy alone has this faculty been denied to man. In it alone he is not to conquer nature, but simply to obey her. Let her starve him, make him a slave, a bankrupt, or what not, he must submit, as the savage does to the hail and the lightning. "Laissez-faire," says the "Science du neant," the "Science de la misere," as it has truly and bitterly been called; "Laissez-faire." a.n.a.lyse economic questions if you will: but beyond a.n.a.lysis you shall not step. Any attempt to raise political economy to its synthetic stage is to break the laws of nature, to fight against facts-as if facts were not made to be fought against and conquered, and put out of the way, whensoever they interfere in the least with the welfare of any human being. The drowning man is not to strike out for his life lest by keeping his head above water he interfere with the laws of gravitation. Not that the political economist, or any man, can be true to his own fallacy. He must needs try his hand at the synthetic method though he forbids it to the rest of the world: but the only deductive hint which he has as yet given to mankind is, quaintly enough, the most unnatural "eidolon specus" which ever entered the head of a dehumanised pedant-namely, that once famous "Preventive Check,"

which, if a nation did ever apply it-as it never will-could issue, as every doctor knows, in nothing less than the questionable habits of abortion, child-murder, and unnatural crime.

The only explanation of such conduct (though one which the men themselves will hardly accept) is this-that they secretly share somewhat in the doubt which many educated men have of the correctness of their inductions; that these same laws of political economy (where they leave the plain and safe subject-matter of trade) have been arrived at somewhat too hastily; that they are, in plain English, not quite sound enough yet to build upon; and that we must wait for a few more facts before we begin any theories. Be it so. At least, these men, in their present temper of mind, are not likely to be very useful to the Sanitary Reformer.

Would that these men, or the clergy, had been the only bruised reed in which the Sanitary Reformers put their trust. They found another reed, however, and that was Public Opinion; but they forgot that (whatever the stump-orators may say about this being the age of electric thought, when truth flashes triumphant from pole to pole, etc.) we have no proof whatsoever that the proportion of fools is less in this generation than in those before it, or that truth, when unpalatable (as it almost always is), travels any faster than it did five hundred years ago. They forgot that every social improvement, and most mechanical ones, have had to make their way against laziness, ignorance, envy, vested wrongs, vested superst.i.tions, and the whole vis inertiae of the world, the flesh, and the devil. They were guilty indeed, in this case, not merely of ignorance of human nature, but of forgetfulness of fact. Did they not know that the excellent New Poor-law was greeted with the curses of those very farmers and squires who now not only carry it out lovingly and willingly to the very letter, but are often too ready to resist any improvement or relaxation in it which may be proposed by that very Poor-law Board from which it emanated? Did they not know that Agricultural Science, though of sixty years' steady growth, has not yet penetrated into a third of the farms of England; and that hundreds of farmers still dawdle on after the fashion of their forefathers, when by looking over the next hedge into their neighbour's field they might double their produce and their profits? Did they not know that the adaptation of steam to machinery would have progressed just as slowly, had it not been a fact patent to babies that an engine is stronger than a horse; and that if cotton, like wheat and beef, had taken twelve months to manufacture, instead of five minutes, Manchester foresight would probably have been as short and as purblind as that of the British farmer? What right had they to expect a better reception for the facts of Sanitary Science?-facts which ought to, and ultimately will, disturb the vested interests of thousands, will put them to inconvenience, possibly at first to great expense; and yet facts which you can neither see nor handle, but must accept and pay hundreds of thousands of pounds for, on the mere word of a doctor or inspector who gets his living thereby. Poor John Bull! To expect that you would accept such a gospel cheerfully was indeed to expect too much!

But yet, though the public opinion of the ma.s.s could not be depended on, there was a body left, distinct from the ma.s.s, and priding itself so much on that distinctness that it was ready to say at times-of course in more courteous-at least in what it considered more Scriptural language: "This people which knoweth not the law is accursed." To it therefore-to the religious world-some over-sanguine Sanitary Reformers turned their eyes.

They saw in it ready organised (so it professed) for all good works, a body such as the world had never seen before. Where the religions public of Byzantium, Alexandria, or Rome numbered hundreds, that of England numbered its thousands. It was divided, indeed, on minor points, but it was surely united by the one aim of saving every man his own soul, and of professing the deepest reverence for that Divine Book which tells men that the way to attain that aim is, to be good and to do good; and which contains among other commandments this one-"Thou shaft not kill." Its wealth was enormous. It possessed so much political power, that it would have been able to command elections, to compel ministers, to encourage the weak hearts of willing but fearful clergymen by fair hopes of deaneries and bishoprics. Its members were no clique of unpractical fanatics-no men less. Though it might number among them a few martinet ex-post-captains, and n.o.blemen of questionable sanity, capable of no more practical study than that of unfulfilled prophecy, the vast majority of them were landowners, merchants, bankers, commercial men of all ranks, full of worldly experience, and of the science of organisation, skilled all their lives in finding and in employing men and money. What might not be hoped from such a body, to whom that commercial imperium in imperio of the French Protestants which the edict of Nantes destroyed was poor and weak? Add to this that these men's charities were boundless; that they were spending yearly, and on the whole spending wisely and well, ten times as much as ever was spent before in the world, on educational schemes, missionary schemes, church building, reformatories, ragged schools, needlewomen's charities-what not? No object of distress, it seemed, could be discovered, no fresh means of doing good devised, but these men's money poured bountifully and at once into that fresh channel, and an organisation sprang up for the employment of that money, as thrifty and as handy as was to be expected from the money-holding cla.s.ses of this great commercial nation.

What could not these men do? What were they not bound by their own principles to do? No wonder that some weak men's hearts beat high at the thought. What if the religious world should take up the cause of Sanitary Reform? What if they should hail with joy a cause in which all, whatever their theological differences, might join in one sacred crusade against dirt, degradation, disease, and death? What if they should rise at the hustings to inquire of every candidate: "Will you or will you not, pledge yourself to carry out Sanitary Reform in the place for which you are elected, and let the health and the lives of the local poor be that 'local interest' which you are bound by your election to defend? Do you confess your ignorance of the subject? Then know, sir, that you are unfit, at this point of the nineteenth century, to be a member of the British Senate. You go thither to make laws 'for the preservation of life and property.' You confess yourself ignorant of those physical laws, stronger and wider than any which you can make, upon which all human life depends, by infringing which the whole property of a district is depreciated." Again, what might not the "religious world," and the public opinion of "professing Christians," have done in the last twenty-ay, in the last three years?

What it has done, is too patent to need comment here.

The reasons of so strange an anomaly are to be approached with caution.

It is a serious thing to impute motives to a vast body of men, of whom the majority are really respectable, kind-hearted, and useful; and if in giving one's deliberate opinion one seems to blame them, let it be recollected that the blame lies not so much on them as on their teachers: on those who, for some reasons best known to themselves, have truckled to, and even justified, the self-satisfied ignorance of a comfortable moneyed cla.s.s.

But let it be said, and said boldly, that these men's conduct in the matter of Sanitary Reform seems at least to show that they value virtue, not for itself, but for its future rewards. To the great majority of these men (with some heroic exceptions, whose names may be written in no subscription list, but are surely written in the book of life) the great truth has never been revealed, that good is the one thing to be done, at all risks, for its own sake; that good is absolutely and infinitely better than evil, whether it pay or not to all eternity. Ask one of them: "Is it better to do right and go to h.e.l.l, or do wrong and go to heaven?"-they will look at you puzzled, half angry, suspecting you of some secret blasphemy, and, if hard pressed, put off the new and startling question by saying, that it is absurd to talk of an impossible hypothesis. The human portion of their virtue is not mercenary, for they are mostly worthy men; the religious part thereof, that which they keep for Sundays and for charitable inst.i.tutions, is too often mercenary, though they know it not. Their religion is too often one of "Loss and Gain," as much as Father Newman's own; and their actions, whether they shall call them "good works" or "fruits of faith," are so much spiritual capital, to be repaid with interest at the last day.

Therefore, like all religionists, they are most anxious for those schemes of good which seem most profitable to themselves and to the denomination to which they belong; and the best of all such works is, of course, as with all religionists, the making of proselytes. They really care for the bodies, but still they care more for the souls, of those whom they a.s.sist-and not wrongly either, were it not that to care for a man's soul usually means, in the religious world, to make him think with you; at least to lay him under such obligations as to give you spiritual power over him. Therefore it is that all religious charities in England are more and more conducted, just as much as those of Jesuits and Oratorians, with an ulterior view of proselytism; therefore it is that the religious world, though it has invented, perhaps, no new method of doing good; though it has been indebted for educational movements, prison visitations, infant schools, ragged schools, and so forth, to Quakers, cobblers, even in some cases to men whom they call infidels, have gladly adopted each and every one of them, as fresh means of enlarging the influence or the numbers of their own denominations, and of baiting for the body in order to catch the soul. A fair sample of too much of their labour may be seen anywhere, in those tracts in which the prettiest stories, with the prettiest binding and pictures, on the most secular-even, sometimes, scientific-of subjects, end by a few words of pious exhortation, inserted by a different hand from that which indites the "carnal" ma.s.s of the book. They did not invent the science, or the art of story-telling, or the woodcutting, or the plan of getting books up prettily-or, indeed, the notion of instructing the ma.s.ses at all; but finding these things in the hands of "the world," they have "spoiled the Egyptians," and fancy themselves beating Satan with his own weapons.

If, indeed, these men claimed boldly all printing, all woodcutting, all story-telling, all human arts and sciences, as gifts from G.o.d Himself; and said, as the book which they quote so often says: "The Spirit of G.o.d gives man understanding, these, too, are His gifts, sacred, miraculous, to be accounted for to Him," then they would be consistent; and then, too, they would have learnt, perhaps, to claim Sanitary Science for a gift divine as any other: but nothing, alas! is as yet further from their creed. And therefore it is that Sanitary Reform finds so little favour in their eyes. You have so little in it to show for your work. You may think you have saved the lives of hundreds; but you cannot put your finger on one of them: and they know you not; know not even their own danger, much less your beneficence. Therefore, you have no lien on them, not even that of grat.i.tude; you cannot say to a man: "I have prevented you having typhus, therefore you must attend my chapel." No! Sanitary Reform makes no proselytes. It cannot be used as a religious engine. It is too simply human, too little a respecter of persons, too like to the works of Him who causes His sun to shine on the evil and the good, and His rain to fall on the just and on the unjust, and is good to the unthankful and to the evil, to find much favour in the eyes of a generation which will compa.s.s sea and land to make one proselyte.

Yes. Too like the works of our Father in heaven, as indeed all truly natural and human science needs must be. True, to those who believe that there is a Father in heaven, this would, one supposes, be the highest recommendation. But how many of this generation believe that? Is not their doctrine, the doctrine to testify for which the religious world exists, the doctrine which if you deny, you are met with one universal frown and snarl-that man has no Father in heaven: but that if he becomes a member of the religious world, by processes varying with each denomination, he may-strange paradox-create a Father for himself?

But so it is. The religious world has lost the belief which even the elder Greeks and Romans had, of a "Zeus, Father of G.o.ds and men." Even that it has lost. Therefore have man and the simple human needs of man, no sacredness in their eyes; therefore is Nature to them no longer "the will of G.o.d exprest in facts," and to break a law of nature no longer to sin against Him who "looked on all that He had made, and behold, it was very good." And yet they read their Bibles, and believe that they believe in Him who stood by the lake-side in Galilee, and told men that not a sparrow fell to the ground without their Father's knowledge-and that they were of more value than many sparrows. Do those words now seem to some so self-evident as to be needless? They will never seem so to the Sanitary Reformer, who has called on the "British Public" to exert themselves in saving the lives of thousands yearly; and has received practical answers which will furnish many a bitter jest for the Voltaire of the next so-called "age of unbelief," or fill a sad, but an instructive chapter in some future enlarged edition of Adelung's "History of Human Folly."