Charles Kingsley, Christian socialist and social reformer

Front matter

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Preface

Tuts Preface, like the dog Cerberus, has three heads, but only briefly to guard against three misconceptions at the entrance of this volume. 1. It is a monograph, not a biography, of Charles Kingsley, its object being simply to present one aspect of his life, as a social and sanitary reformer, and this in the setting and framework of the thought, feelings, and condition of his time, with the light of our own thrown upon the picture to present a distinct view of his social aims, and to show how far what he aspired after has been attained, and what remains of achievements yet to be accomplished in the future. 2. As it is a tolerably well-known fact that the late Mrs. Kingsley strongly objected to any biography of her husband, it should be mentioned that the present work was undertaken before her death, and with the full knowledge and cordial consent of the family. 3. Nothing contained in this volume has appeared in print before. Two independent articles in reviews, afterwards incorporated in the author's work on Christian Socialism, were published, indeed, as fragments of the subject before the reader here, but except for the fact that they are founded on the same materials, they are not otherwise connected with it. To these prefatory remarks may be added the hope that this condensed view of Kingsley’s words and works on social subjects may help in stimulating and directing enthusiasms and efforts in our own generation among that numerous class of readers who take an interest in social questions.

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Contents

INTRODUCTION ee S00 oes sie ae

EARLY LIFE, EDUCATION, AND SURROUNDINGS— PREPARATION FOR THE WORK sels srohe

KINGSLEY AS COUNTRY PARSON—-EVERSLEY HOME- LIFE AND PAROCHIAL LABOURS

Introduction

To understand the man and his social mission we must have before our mind a clear picture of the times in which he lived, and the condition of the people which called forth his generous sympathy and chivalric efforts in the cause of social reform. Of this, therefore, we will give a brief sketch before entering upon the main subject. The year 1848 marks an important epoch in the history of labour; it threatened to prove a critical year in the history of modern European society. The signal of a great rising had been given by the outbreak of the Revolution in Paris. The significance of that event was the self-assertion of the Proletariat, as such, dictating to the State what should be done on its behalf. It was the starting-point of a movement which has increased in force and momentum ever since; Social Democracy had become a self-conscious force.

State socialism was accepted as a principle in the B

French Chamber by the establishment of national workshops, and thus gave a powerful impulse to the creation of co-operative associations outside it. The Revolution itself was a social revolution, the result of social distress producing discontent among the masses; it amounted to a declaration of war between the lower and the middle classes. Since 1830 a differentiation had been going on between capital and labour. The friction became more and more irksome as it became more and more evident that the power of capital had immensely increased with the use of machinery, whilst the dependence of labour on the rich capitalists was rendered more galling since the vast increase of wealth did not raise the toilers into a better position. Plutocracy had become the new tyrant, and factory labour its slave. In this new industrial society the gulf between rich and poor was becoming wider every day. The Bourgeoisie had displaced the privileged orders in the seat of power, money had become the master of the situation, but the era of steam and speculation, so far from promoting the interest of the manual labourer, had tended to lower wages, and to increase the prices of the necessaries of life and other commodities in the enlarged demand for greater self-indulgence among all classes. Labour was chained to the triumphal chariot of “industrial progress.” It was the era of “free labour,” but the labourers who had helped to procure liberty, fighting on the side of the middle class against the aristocracy, now had learned that the ery of liberty was an empty phrase, that in the very fact of free contract lay the

INTRODUCTION. 3 secret of greater inequality. They were angry beyond measure with the industrial despots, who dictated terms which it was impossible to refuse. True they were at liberty to refuse to labour at the terms offered. But in that case their families would starve. Capital had become omnipotent, the labourer was at its mercy, when at last, driven to despair by distress and famine, the populace revolted, and from Paris the spirit of revolt spread to Berlin and Vienna, and even to London. In Prussia and Austria the tricolour was unfurled as the emblem of German unity, and the symbol of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity. In England the “People’s Charter ” was the formula which captivated the imagination of the populace. People had not learned even yet how to dissociate the social from the political elements of revolution, though the dim notion prevailed that in the Legislature, if anywhere, the battle must be fought between the men and their new masters. Thus it happened that in the same eventful month of March, in 1848, when barricades were raised by workmen and students in Vienna, and the King of Prussia was compelled at the dictation of the mob to do honour bareheaded to the remains of those who had fallen fighting behind the barricades of Berlin, the Duke of Wellington made preparations on a large scale in view of the ereat Chartist demonstration on the 10th of April in London, and the troops were kept in readiness for possible eventualities. The bridges were barricaded, the bank and state offices and public buildings were carefully provisioned—everything in short was done to prevent a repetition on a larger scale of those riots in London, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Liverpool, and other large towns during the month of March. London was in a state of panic. The demands of the Proletariat were much the same all over Western Europe. Thus, in Germany one of the clauses of the programme submitted to the Frankfort Parliament contained suggestions for a settlement of the differences between labour and capital by a “special ministry of labour,’ which “should check usury, protect workmen, and secure them a share in the profits of work.”

In this country the Charter was to bring about pretty much the same effects by means of a larger and more direct representation in Parliament of the people’s interests. There was nothing revolutionary in these demands, but the animus which inspired them, and the popular commotion aroused by the agitation, spread terror among the well-to-do classes.

On the Continent the “rule of Bureau and Bayonet” had added intensity to the virulence of social discontents. Here, too, popular complaints had not been wanting ever since 1832, when, after the agitation of the Reform Bill, it was said that instead of promoting the interests of the people it had practically disenfranchised labour, and rendered the moneyed class more powerful than it had been before the passing of that Bill. There were loud complaints, too, raised against the working of the new Poor Law, but the chief causes of discontent were in the first instance the “ horrors of the factory system,” and the temporary effects of the intro-

INTRODUCTION. | 5 duction of steam in displacing manual labour, intensified later on by over-production, with stagnation in trade and the reduction of wages for its consequences. It led to many acts of violence, such as smashing of machinery, and setting fire to mills, and burning of hay-ricks in country districts. Scarcity of work, low wages, food at high prices, long-protracted hours of labour, even in mining districts, including female and child labour (in spite of legislation for their protection since 1833, mainly through the exertion of Lord Shaftesbury), failure of the crops, commercial reaction after excessive speculation—all these produced misery and privation, suffering and distress, which eventually brought in their train serious disturbances encouraged or organized by Chartist agitators. Military force had to be called in to quell insurrection in the coal districts, in the Potteries, and in Manchester. Other manufacturing towns in the north were kept in terror by bands of excited workmen off and on since 1842. The potato famine in Ireland in 1846 glutted the labour market in England, and produced a further depression of wages. Things went on from bad to worse in 1848. The time had come, so it seemed to many, which Lord Ashley had foretold in one of his speeches in Parliament in 1843, when he had said—

“The danger is wider, deeper, fiercer, and no one who has heard these statements, and believes them, can hope that twenty years more will pass without some convulsion, some displacement of the whole system of society,’”— a saying which the author of Perils of the Nation, which appeared in the same year, fully endorsed, adding that, “if some stop be not put to the existing mischief (the growth of capital, with the growth pari passu of misery and distress), a few years more must land us im a bloody revolution !” Nor was it hard for the social agitators to convince excited mobs that “the panacea for all grievances is to be found in revolution.” In short there was a general alarm.

Socialism and Chartism were rampant, and to meet the danger of the hour, F. D. Maurice and his followers, guided by his genius and moderated by his wisdom, struck out a new line so as to bring the Church home to the people’s heart and to plead the people’s cause before their masters, taking their stand on the broad platform of ecclesiastical and social reform. What they pleaded for was a resolute return to the principles of Christianity freed from later accretions of ossified officialism and dogmatic harshness, and the repellent self-assertion of class pride among the clergy and religious laity. In their opinion it had become necessary to remind the religious world that modern society rests on a Christian basis; that, accordingly, all social arrangements must be brought to the test of New Testament morality, that the organization of labour by means of association or co-operation implies the cultivation of those Christian virtues of mutual trust and forbearance, readiness for self-sacrifice and subordination, without which these social bonds would prove ineffectual. They affirmed, and among them more distinctly and emphatically than the rest, Charles Kingsley, that selfishness and the

INTRODUCTION. 7 quest of self-interest is the main cause of our present social difficulties, for is it not the selfish pursuit of each individual and class without regard to the claims of society as a whole which lies at the root of social antagonism and social war? The war of free competition being accepted as a law of nature and lauded as the prime motive force of industrial progress, and the principle “ every one for himself” being consecrated into a moral precept which, if obeyed by each individual or section of society representing a given class interest, would ‘promote the happiness of all according to the pre-established laws of economic harmony, what follows from such principles but an internecine warfare of one against all, ending in the loosening and ultimate destruction of all social bonds? Hence the importance of a unifying force and a process of re-union by Christianity as a principle, and the Christian Church embodying it. “If the priests of the Lord are wanting to the cause now, woe to us!” cries Kingsley in a letter to Ludlow in 1850. The words confirm the earnest anxiety and apprehension which filled the hearts of the Christian socialists, and made them stand out from among the body of the clergy and religious laity as God-sent apostles of a new social era.

Maurice speaks of Kingsley as the “Thalaba with a commission to slay magicians and put the Eblis band which possesses our land to rout. I am jealous of anything which is likely to turn him out of his predestined course and may make him waste the God-given strength.” It will be the object of this book to show how far Charles Kingsley corresponds to this description, and to what extent he succeeded in verifying this glowing prediction of his revered friend and master.