The Nonconformist conscience a persecuting force

Front matter

THE

Nonconformist Conscience a Persecuting Force.

BY

Contents

Introduction — Scope of Work 5

The Anti-brewer Agitation over the QueBtion of the Manchester Mayoralty considered as an object-lesson in Nonconformist

Intolerance 6

Introduction

9 N the following pages the anti-brewer agitation which raged in Manchester during the autumn of 1907 is taken as the starting-point of the discussion. That movement is treated as an object-lesson in intolerance, and the association of the leaders with other persecuting influences is pointed out. Passive resistance in particular is examined, and a persecuting element is shown to be present, both in its fundamental principle and in the tone and spirit of leading passive registers themselves. As the Free Church Council is one of the principal organs of the Nonconformist conscience, the composition and action of that body naturally come under review. Parties and persons are frequently dealt with, but rather as the embodiment and exemplification of principles than in their narrower aspects.

This little work is of the nature of a protest and a challenge. It is put forth in the interests of fairness and moderation, by one who can at least claim the credit of being perfectly disinterested in the matter — for the writer has received no impulse or help of any kind in the production of these pages. Such as it is, the work is his own. Fundamentally, it is the appeal of an individual conscience addressed to the public conscience as a protest against the standards of the Nonconformist conscience The attempt has been made throughout to bring everything to the test of civic justice and civic utility.

Chapter I. The Principles Involved

THE MAYORALTY DISPUTE IN MANCHESTER.

Outlinb op Facts.

In August, 1907, the Manchester City Council gave some indication of its wish that Alderman Edward Holt should be appointed Lord Mayor in the following November. That gentleman had rendered good service in the Council for seventeen years. Five times he had been re-elected councillor without opposition, and the vote by which he was advanced to the Aldermanio bench was unanimous. But the proposal to confer on him the Mayoralty of the City was the signal for opposition of a somewhat strenuous character on the part of men who claimed to be the leaders of religion and philanthropy in Manchester and the neighbourhood. Their consciences, they said, were hurt by the proposal to confer the highest civic dignity on a brewer and owner of tied houses.

The November elections proved disastrous to the protesting party. Some of their friends were defeated at the polls, and supporters of Mr. Holt won certain seats; with the result that the objecting minority within the Council was reduced from about one-fourth of the total membership to less than one-eighth. Nothing daunted, however, by this repulse. Canon Hicks and Councillor Johnston declare that it is only the first battle in the campaign which has been lost. The struggle, we are told, has not ended, but only just begun.

As the battle is to be fought over again in the near future, it seems worth while to study the question in a more dispassionate spirit than was possible in the heat and excitement of the recent struggle. Such study will not be entirely wasted, for few local movements in recent times have presented to the observer so many varied features of interest.

A Preliminabt Glance.

Let us, before advancing to the main argument, pass briefly in review some of the more important aspects of the question.

1. — Viewed in relation to the liberty of the subject, the agitators aim at setting up a new trade disability. They propose to narrow the bounds of civic freedom, and rob a class of a part of the rights its members now enjoy. We are plainly told that the present proposal is only a beginning, and that, if successful in this their first effort, other classes will be subjected by them to the like inquisition and condemnation. Hence the matter interests all thoughtful citizens. If the new principle of persecution is to be accepted, let it only be accepted after full consideration, and with a just appreciation of its scope and import. It is a matter of vital interest to all classes that no one class should be subjected to persecution. As we are all members of one great society, the proposal to depress and degrade any portion of the social organism is essentially anti-social in its tendency.

2. — Another novel feature is that the end of persecution is not sought to be attained by the direct means of express legal enactment, but by the indirect method of social ostracism, based on appeals to class prejudice. And these methods, so alien to the genius of Christianity, are advocated by Christian leaders in the name of the religion whose principles they contravene.

3. — The- movement involves a distinct usurpation of the City Council's proper constitutional powers. That a number of private citizens should attempt to veto the will of the majority of the town's elected representatives implies a certain impeachment of the representative system of government. Their action is in this sense anti-civio.

4. — The kinship of the agitation with the passive resistance movement, obvious from the first, was noted by several correspondents of the Manchester Guardian. In both movements there exists the common element of an attack on the constituted order in the name of conscience. His Honour Judge Parry, in an address to the Labour Party at Urmston, drew attention to the anarchic tendency of both agitations, and condemned those who participated in either of them as " bad citizens." Never before in the history of Manchester did an able and respected judge affix so undesirable a badge on many hundreds of men who claim to be the leaders of religion and philanthropy in the city.

5. — This brings us to a most interesting and important feature in the discussion — the lines along which it divided public opinion. What are plain men to say when they find the Bishop of Manchester, Canon Richardson, and Judge Parry on one side in the controversy, and Dr. MacLaren, Canon Hicks, and Dr. J. H. Moulton on the other? This clash of justly honoured names should challenge us ordinary citizens to independent thought on the question. Let us look past great names to great principles; for the main elements of civio life hang together in organic connection, and our particular conclusions are never safely grounded except when based on general truths.

6. — Leaving individuals, and coming to the Churches, we find, broadly speaking, that the Anglican and Roman Catholic Churches were opposed to the agitation, whilst the Free Churches were in its favour. " Quartus," writing in the Manchester Guardian, tells us plainly that in this matter the Free Churches are, as usual, in the right, and that the verdict of the future will be on their side.' But those who, unlike "Quartus," are not sustained by the comfortable assurance of personal infallibility, will take leave to not© the essential character of the agitation. To such observers it seems a vital distinction that in their past struggle for liberty the Free Churches were striving to win freedom for themselves, whereas in this instance they are attempting, not to widen the bounds of freedom, but to narrow them. Having rid themselves of religious disabilities, they seek to erect a new trade disability against a class they dislike. Ceasing to be persecuted, they would fain become persecutors. Surely this is a vital difference, and suffices in itself to reverse the strictures of " Quartus."

7. — It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that Wesleyan Methodism has officially intervened in this apparently local question. The President of the Conference (Rev. J S. Simon, of Didsbury), the President-Designate (Rev. J Scott Lidgett, M.A.), and Dr. J. H. Moulton, of Didsbury, have pronounced a decided opinion against the election of Mr. Holt ; and both the Wesleyan London weeklies, the Methodist Recorder- and the Methodist Times, took the same side. Mr. Simon, in a speech delivered in Manchester, disclaimed partisanship, and stated that ''Wesleyans were not party politicians." We shall examine this claim later on, and will at this point merely note the fact that a Wesleyan brewer was elected Mayor of Stockport in November, 1906, and re-elected in November, 1907, without a word of protest from Mr. Simon and his Didsbury colleague, Dr. J. H. Moulton. Yet Didsbury is as near to Stockport as it is to Manchester. Most of my readers will feel, 1 think, that some explanation is needed, and will scarcely envy those who have to make it, especially as Dr Moulton, in speaking of his opposition to Mr. Holt, expressly wrote: "Had I known him to belong to my own party or my own Church I should have opposed him with equal or greater conviction."

8. — The entry of the Free Church Council into the controversy is also a noticeable fact. The Rev S. E. Keeble, speaking in the Free Trade Hall, said that he spoke for four thousand members of the Free Church Federation in this district in his opposition to Mr. Holt's election. This body is coming to the front, and has not so far received the critical attention it deserves. What is its composition? What are its credentials? For whom has it the right to speak? On what lines is it developing? What is its sphere of action? What its methods? Some attempt will be made to answer these questions at a later stage.

9. — Another interesting feature is the fact that the agitators failed from the first to carry with them the bulk of the Liberal party on the Council. " That party," they said, "had sold them in the matter." Does the Liberal party in Manchester detect the essentially illiberal character of the agitation, and is it beginning to suspect that the kindred movement of passive resistance is equally a travesty of Liberal principles? Certainly the persecuting action of the West Riding County Council, some of the Welsh Councils, and the late London County Council hasi done much to open the eyes of the public to the true inwardness of the passive resistance movement, and the growing disillusion has been hastened by the overbearing tone of such men as Dr. Clifford, Dr. Massie, and the Rev. J. Hirst Hollowell.

10. — fi the Liberal party on the City Council declined to budge one step to please the agitators, the Manchester Guardian could only bring itself to go half-way with them. Beginning by mildly deprecating the controversy, that paper soon opened its columns wide to the tide of agitation, which raged and tore along in a flood that seemed all but irresistible. Correspondents of the baser sort instinctively gave prominence to the personal aspect of the question. In their hands the legend of Mr. Holt's iniquity grew visibly. Innuendo passed into direct suggestion, suggestion hardened into evidence, evidence stiffened into proof. Mr. Holt's dignified reticence under the storm of calumny was held to be the silence of conscious guilt. He, unlike some of his opponents, never forgot what was due from and to an English gentleman. When, at the proper time, Mr. Holt gave his vindication to the Council, to whom alone he owed it, the reply was crushing in its completeness. Then the Guardian, remembering, if somewhat late in the day, the part a great paper should play in the amenities of civio life, choked off its clamorous correspondents. From that time began that collapse of the movement which became visible to all in the November polls. Three points emerge which concern the Manchester public. Firstly, the enormous power of the Guardian to make or mar an agitation. Secondly, the pitch to which an agitation may attain in the columns of that paper without a corresponding movement of public opinion outside. Thirdly, how extreme is the position assumed by Canon Hicks and his friends when the Guardian deserts them in the middle of the fight.

11. — One lamentable feature in the quarrel has been the extraordinary license of language and temper which the party of piety and philanthropy allowed itself. At this stage I will only name one instance. A private citizen who had been accorded the highest possible mark of the Council's esteem — the honorary freedom of the city — described Alderman Holt's occupation as the '' devil's trade." His words were, " This devil's trade (is) too wicked for any civic sanction or any private justification." It argues scant respect for the Council which voted this gentleman the highest honour at its disposal that he should thus flout the Council's choice in the matter of the Mayoralty. This is the first time that an honorary freeman of the city has hurled so insulting an expression at a citizen as upright and worthy as himself. Let us hope, for the sake of public decency, that it will be the last. There is no reason why the controversial utterances of religious men should be marked by an absence of the restraints usually imposed by the feelings and habits of gentlemen.

12. — An absolutely unique feature in the agitation was the presentation of a petition purporting to be signed by 2,430 citizens, and supported by 432 consentient bodies, " representing the conviction of nearly 148,000 persons." One gasps at such stupendous figures. With Dominie Sampson, we exclaim "prodigious," and are lost in wonder. Speaking for myself, my first wonder is that those who supported the manifesto should exceed those who signed it in th^ proportion of sixty to one. My second wonder is as to what proportion of the 148,000 were juveniles, incapable of pronouncing a rational opinion on the question. My third wonder is as to whether any of the adults included were counted more than once in their different capacities as members of various organisations. Sir T. P. Whittaker recently spoke of an extreme and impracticable element who were very noisy and " much in evidence in letters to the papers and resolutions from the same handful of people meeting over and over again in various capacities." My fourth wonder is that of the 2,430 citizens who signed the manifesto only a mere handful partly filled the platform at the Free Trade Hall demonstration. My fifth wonder is that out of the 148,000 sympathisers so few attended the demonstration that the building was never quite full. My sixth wonder is what the 148,000 were doing on the day of the poll. My seventh and last wonder is that in all their demonstrations against Mr. Holt's election the protesting party did not hit upon the idea of holding a public review of these 148,000' stalwarts. The serried host* of warlike saints would have struck terror into the hearts of the majority on the City Council, and paved the way for that domination of the many by the few which becomes the true theory of representative government when our friends happen to be in the minority.

Presumptive Evidench.

Coming to our main argument, we begin by noting the fact that the proposal to exclude a brewer from the Mayoralty implies the setting up of a new disability. This in itself constitutes a strong presumption against the proposal. Disability spells persecution, and persecution is alien to the spirit of the times. Society, now fully convinced of the iniquity and futility of religious persecution, is little likely to enter on the path of trade persecution. The whole trend of modern thought and practice is to widen, not narrow, the bounds of civic freedom, and very strong arguments indeed will be needed to convince thoughtful men that it is either wise or just to reverse this beneficent process.

Test by Probable Effect.

Let us for a moment suppose the agitation successful; what would be its practical result? The badge of a public stigma would be affixed to the brewer and publican classes. There would not, as a result, be fewer brewers and publicans, but worse ones. To treat men like pariahs tends to make them act like pariahs. Public reprobation of a section means its moral deterioration. The influence of a degraded class is, in its turn, degrading. Hence the effeot of the agitation, if successful, would be to drive the best men out of the trade and leave it in the hands of those less likely to work their business in the interests of moderation and sobriety. Thus a movement springing from a horror of drunkenness would lessen the check on that vice by lowering the social and moral standard of those whose trade placed them between the drink and the drinker

Burke has told us that it is foolish to indict a nation. Might we not say that it is both foolish and unjust to condemn wholesale any class which the recognised needs of society call into existence? Nowadays there is too much whitewashing of one section and blackening of another. The truth is that men cannot, in this simple and easy fashion, be divided into the two categories of angels and devils. We are mixed creatures. There is some evil in the best of us and some good in the worst. We have to live together in society and make the best of one another. The path of progress does not lie along the line of class-stigma and degradation, but in the direction of mutual toleration and kindly feeling. The public will get most out of any section by appealing to the best in them, not the worst. When good men forget this elementary fact, and flourish a brand-new branding- iron, with which they seek to mark a class not fortunate enough to be included within the range of their Christian charity, they must be told that what they wish u

to effect would not merely degrade the class at which their action is aimed, but also those very drunkards whom they sincerely wish to elevate. To make a necessary class into a helot class is poor policy, for the section so degraded requites society for the gratuitous injustice by infecting with its own debasement those brought within the sphere of its influence.

Who is to Blame for Drunkenness?

The root question of the whole matter is — at whose door does the blame for drunkenness justly lie? Common sense suggests that he who performs an act is the one responsible for that act. On this theory we judge one another every day of our lives. We blame the murderer for his murder, the thief for his theft, the libeller for his libel. The law of the land, which registers and gives effect to the general opinion of society, holds that wrongdoers must answer for wrong-doing. The Christian religion, too, teaches that the sinner is accountable before God for his sin. , When Wesley wrote hymns for " mourners convinced of sin," he was not thinking of penitents convinced of the sins of other people, but of their own. But our teetotal friends hold that the brewer and publican are responsible not only for their own sins, but for those of the drunkard too. That these two classes should be made a scapegoat to bear the sins of the drunkard into the wilderness of ostracism is grossly unjust, and impossible to be reconciled with any system of ethics, whether pagan or Christian. The correct view has been clearly stated by a prominent member of the " Citizens' Committee." The Rev. S. E. Keeble, in his work, "Industrial Day-dreams," says (p. 310) : "After all, working men are moral agents, and responsible for their actions." In these words Mr. Keeble surrenders the key of the position. If, as Mr. Keeble truly says, working men are moral agents, and as such responsible for their actions, the answer to our leading question is plain. Who is to blame for drunkenness? Obviously, first and foremost, the drunkard.

The Craving for Drink — Historical Sketch,

But, our opponents might reply, even if we admit that, speaking generally, it is the drunkard who is responsible for his own exoess, yet he has to contend with an internal craving for drink faced with the external opportunity for its gratification, and it is this disastrous conjunction with which, as a matter of fact, we have to-day to deal. Let us then consider for a moment the origin of this craving for drink. On such a question short views can scarcely escape being false views. The drinking habits of the people are not a thing of yesterday, Mr. Keeble assigns as one predisposing condition our keen Northern climate, which was certainly not invented by wicked brewers or publicans. His words are (p. 306) : " There is no doubt that the nipping, eager, wrathful cold of this Northern climate has predisposed the Anglo-Saxon race to the use of fiery stimulants ; but this predisposition has been largely fostered by the social and industrial condition of the masses of the people for centuries. Time was when beer, with its permanent possibilities of excess, was the staple drink at the meals at which now universally tea and coffee are drunk. The insufficient food, the exhausting labour, and the degrading surroundings and habits of past industrial generations have also handed down to present times hereditary alcoholic cravings." These are wise words from the pen of Mr. Keeble. the author ; but they accord very ill with the attempt of Mr. Keeble. the agitator, to lav the blame of the drink craving on the shoulders of the brewer and publican.

The truth is that no one can study the social history of England without being painfully struck with the drunken habits of the people. The rich and titled were as bad as the poor, or worse. What a record of hard drinking on the part of the nobility is condensed into the discreditable phrase, " as drunk as a lord!" The "three-bottle man," in the time of the Georges, gloried in his achievement. One of them, when asked if he had really drunk three bottles of port over dinner on a certain occasion without assistance, replied, "Well, I had the assistance of n bottle of Madeira to help i^down." At the banquets of the great it was at one time not unusual, in order to prevent cases of suffocation, to place a little boy under the table, whose duty it was to loosen the neckcloths of the guests as they fell senseless to the floor. It is recorded of one Lord Chancellor that, wishing to get away from a banquet earlier than the other guests, he achieved his purpose by slipping down to the floor as if dead drunk. Crawling the length of the table along the floor he escaped from the room without arousing the attention of his boon companions, who were themselves already too far gone in drink to observe movements a few yards away.

As might be expected, the poorer classes imitated the richer so far as their opportunities allowed. At Haddon Hall the visitor is shown an iron ring into which was fitted the wrist of the retainer who had failed to drink the whole of his quantum of beer. As he stood with his arm raised and securely fastened, the liquor he had declined was poured down his open sleeve. This was in the old baronial days, and the hard-drinking habit persisted to comparatively recent times. Readers of Dickens do not need to be reminded of the large amount of drinking depicted in his pages. Men drank on any and every occasion — at births, christenings, marriages, and funerals. They drank at work and at play, on week-days and Sundays. Feast days were often scenes of riotous drunkenness. Even the completion of a bargain or the casual meeting of friends was held to justify a friendly glass. All classes were implicated. The clerical predecessors of Canon Hicks and his Free Church associates and the legal predecessors of Mr. R. D. Darbishire were not backward as consumers of drink. The medical predecessors of Dr. Vipont Brown prescribed intoxicants, and in that case, at least, freely took their own medicine. Law-makers are also partly to blame, as in the notable example of Mr. Gladstone's Grocers' Licenses Bill, which, though good in intention, in practice promoted drinking among women. It is unnecessary to pursue the point further Enough has been said to show that the craving for drink, as it exists to-day, is due to the alcoholic habit of many lr

generations of Englishmen. For that hereditary tendency, and the unfavourable social conditions which fostered its development, the nation is responsible as a nation. If blame is to be allocated in the matter, let it be impartially assigned to all classes, not unjustly accumulated upon one. If only the class that is without sin is allowed to throw the first stone, no stones will be thrown.

Who Creates the Opportunity for Drinking?

But, say our opponents, it is the presence of the public-house which spreads before frail human nature a " temptation " which, by reason of the alcoholic habit, it is often unable to resist. Who, then, is responsible for the drinking facilities which exist? Did the English people sanction the opening of public-houses in order to enrich brewers and gratify publicans? The idea is absurd. The vast majority of Englishmen call for the local supply by the publican of the article produced by the brewer, and it is to meet this huge demand that brewers brew and publicans vend the article asked for. Parliament, voicing the will of the nation, sanctions the traffic, regulates it, and draws many millions of revenue annually from the business. It is obvious, therefore, that public-houses exist primarily for the convenience of the public, as indeed their name suggests. Like any other article offered for sale, drink must be vended somewhere if it is vended at all, and to meet the wants of prospective customers houses licensed for the sale of intoxicants have been opened under certain conditions in town and country. Hence the public-house, with its opportunity of reasonable use and of possible abuse, stands open, for it is impossible to supply the needs of moderate and reasonable drinkers — the great majority — without at the same time offering opportunities for over-indulgence to immoderate drinkers. ^ It is quite clear, then, that the temptation involved in the challenge of the open public-house to the man possessed with the drink craving owes its occurrence to the national demand for drink facilities, and not to the brewer or publican as such.

What the Publican.mat justly be held Responsible

for.

Our argument, if admitted to be valid, suffices to clear from blame the brewer who is a simple brewer. A brewer is not a prophet that he should say, " The beer in these vats will be consumed by moderate drinkers and the beer in that vat by immoderate ones, so I will send out these and keep back the other." Removed as he is from the scene of detailed consumption, he is no more answerable for excessive drinking, which incidentally increases his business turnover, than a wholesale flour merchant or miller is responsible for the gluttony which has a similar effect on his trade returns. But the publican, brought face to face with customers of every class, finds his real responsibility beginning at this point. While it is grossly unjust to blame him for the existence of public-houses, with their temptation to moral weaklings, or for the drink craving, which, like the public-house, traces its origin back many centuries before he was born, the publican may fairly be called upon to conduct his business in the direction of n^pderation and sobriety. All excessive drinkijig on licensed premises should be discouraged. Not on account of the wickedness of the publican, but on account of the drunkard's folly, the law of the land has hedged round the trade with numerous restrictions. These restrictions should be loyally observed by the publican, both in the letter and in the spirit. The majority of publicans do act in this manner. They are respectable men, who conduct their houses in a reputable manner. The class of hotel-keepers, in particular, are, in most cases', gentlemen in the best sense of the word ; were they not so, they could scarcely fill the positions they occupy. Of course, publicans have some black sheep in their ranks ; but in this matter they are not alone. An objection that can be urged against every class loses its edge as against any one class.

Clearly, then, it is the misfortune, rather than the fault of the publican, that the moral self-oontrol of certain of his customers is apt to break down over the consumption of the articles he vends. But so long as the publican honestly discourages excessive drinking the odium attaching to excess cannot fairly be laid upon him. As the reasonable drinker takes the credit of his own moderation, so the drunkard must acoept the blame of his own drunkenness.

It is on this principle that people act in all other departments of trade. The sale of poisons by druggists is hedged round with restrictions, but these ordinances are not held to reflect discredit on the druggist who is subject to them. Everyone recognises that the regulations are aimed at preventing abuse by possible customers. No one blames chemists if in a few cases men poison themselves despite all precautions. Notwithstanding the great mischief wrought by grocers' licenses, we hear no wholesale denunciation of the grocers holding those licenses. So, too, tobacconists are quite leniently judged in view of the harm resulting from juvenile smoking. When we contrast the consideration with which these classes are treated with the harsh condemnation meted out to publicans, we realise how void of justification is the outcry against the latter class. The moral indignation of our agitators is under such strict class-control that it is hard to attribute its censorious attitude to publicans to any other cause than prejudice. Their antipathy to the brewer and publican causes them to labour under an acquired inability to do justice to those classes.