The crown of wild olive [four lectures on work, traffic, war and the future of England

Front matter

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

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Introduction

sequences from that unbelief, — they immediately hold you for an accursed person, and shake off the dust from their feet at you.

And the more I thought over what I had got to say, the less I found I could say it, without some reference to this intangible or intractable question. It made all the difference, in asserting any principle of war, whether one assumed that a discharge of artillery would merely knead down a certain quantity of once living clay into a level line, as in a brick-field ; or whether, out of every separately Christian-named portion of the ruinous heap, there went out, into the smoke and deadfallen air of battle, some astonished condition of soul, unwillingly released. It made all the difference, in speaking of the possible range of commerce, whether one assumed that all bargains related only to visible property — or whether property, for the present invisible, but nevertheless real, was elsewhere purchasable on other terms. It made all the difference, in addressing a body of men subject to considerable hardship, and having to find some way out of it — whether one could confidently say to them, '* My friends, — you have only to die, and all will be right ;" or whether one had any secret misgiving that such advice was more blessed to him that gave, than to him that took it.

And therefore the deliberate reader will find, throughout these lectures, a hesitation in driving points home, and a pausing short of conclusions which he will feel I would fain have come to ; — hesitation which arises wholly from this uncertainty of my hearers' temper. For I do not speak, nor have I ever spoken, since the time of first forward youth, in any proselyting temper, as desiring to persuade any one to believe anything ; but whomsoever I venture to address, I take for the time his creed as I find it, and endeavor to push it into such vital fruit as it seems capable of. Thus, it is a creed with a great part of the existing English people, that they are in possession of a book which tells them, straight from the lips of God, all they ought to do, and need to know. I have read that book, with as much care as most of them, for some forty years ; and am thankful that, on those who trust it, I can press its pleadings. My endeavor has been uniformly to make them trust it more deeply than they do ; trust it, not in their own favorite verses only, but in the sum of all ; trust it not as a fetish or talisman, which they are to be saved by daily repetitions of; but as a Captain's order, to be heard and obeyed at their peril. I was always encouraged by supposing my hearers to hold such belief. To these, if to any, I once had hope of addressing, with acceptance, words which insisted on the guilt of pride, and the futility of avarice ; from these, if from any, I once expected ratification of a political economy, which asserted that the life was more than the meat, and the body than raiment ; and these, it once seemed to me, I might ask, without being accused of fanaticism, not merely in doctrine of the lips, but in the bestowal of their heart's treasure, to separate themselves from the crowd of whom it is

INTRODUCTION.

written, "After all these things do the Gentiles seek."

It cannot, however, be assumed, with any semblance of reason, that a general audience is now wholly, or even in majority, composed of these religious persons. A large portion must always consist of men who admit no such creed ; or who, at least, are inaccessible to appeals founded on it. And as, with the so-called Christian, I desired to plead for honest declaration and fulfilment of his belief in life, — with the so-called Infidel, I desired to plead for an honest declaration and fulfilment of his belief in death. The dilemma is inevitable. Men must either hereafter live, or hereafter die ; fate may be bravely met, and conduct wisely ordered, on either expectation ; but never in hesitation between ungrasped hope, and unconfronted fear. We usually believe in immortality, so far as to avoid preparation for death ; and in mortality, so far as to avoid preparation for anything after death. Whereas, a wise man will at least hold himself ready for one or other of two events, of which one or other is inevitable; and will have all things ended in order for his sleep, or left in order for his awakening.

Nor have we any right to call it an ignoble judgment, if he determine to end them in order, as for sleep. A brave belief in life is indeed an enviable state of mind, but, as far as I can discern, an unusual one. I know few Christians so convinced of the splendor of the rooms in their Father's house, as to be happier when their friends are called to those mansions, than they would

INTRODUCTION.

have been if the Queen had sent for them to live at court : nor has the Church's most ardent " desire to depart, and be with Christ," ever cured it of the singular habit of putting on mourning for every person summoned to such departure. On the contrary, a brave belief in death has been assuredly held by many not ignoble persons, and it is a sign of the last depravity in the Church itself, when it assumes that such a belief is inconsistent with either purity of character, or energy of hand. The shortness of life is not, to any rational person, a conclusive reason for wasting the space of it which may be granted him ; nor does the anticipation of death to-morrow suggest, to any one but a drunkard, the expediency of drunkenness to-day. To teach that there is na device in the grave, may indeed make the deviceless person more contented in his dulness ; but it will make the deviser only more earnest in devising; nor is human conduct likely, in every case, to be purer, under the conviction that all its evil may in a moment be pardoned, and all its wrong-doing in a moment redeemed ; and that the sigh of repentance, which purges the guilt of the past, will waft the soul into a felicity which forgets its pain, — than it may be under the sterner, and to many not unwise minds, more probable, apprehension, that " what a man sowcth that shall he also reap" — or others reap, — when he, the living seed of pestilence, walketh no more in darkness, but lies down therein.

But to men for whom feebleness of sight, or bitterness of soul, or the offence given by the conduct of those who claim higher hope, may have rendered this painful creed the only possible one, there is an appeal to be made, more secure than any which can be addressed to happier persons. Might not a preacher, in comfortless but faithful zeal — from the poor height of a grave-hillock for his Hill of Mars, and with the Cave of the Eumenides at his side — say to them : Hear me, you dying men, who will soon be deaf forever. For these others, at your right hand and your left, who look forward to a state of infinite existence, in which all their errors will be overruled, and all their faults forgiven ; — for these, who, stained and blackened in the battle smoke of mortality, have but to dip themselves for an instant in the font of death, and to rise renewed of plumage, as a dove that is covered with silver, and her feathers like gold : — for these, indeed, it may be permissible to waste their numbered moments, through faith in a future of innumerable hours ; to these, in their weakness, it may be conceded that they should tamper with sin which can only bring forth fruit of righteousness, and profit by the iniquity which, one day, will be remembered no more. In them, it may be no sign of hardness of heart to neglect the poor, over whom they know their Master is watching ; and to leave those to perish temporarily, who cannot perish eternally. But, iox you, there is no such hope, and therefore no such excuse. This fate, which you ordain for the wretched, you believe to be all their inheritance ; you .may crush them, before the moth, and they will never rise to rebuke you ; — their breath, which fails for lack of

INTRODUCTION. ly

food, once expiring, will never be recalled to whisper against you a word of accusing ; — they and you, as you think, shall lie down together in the dust, and the worms cover you ; and for them there shall be no consolation, and on you no vengeance, — only the question murmured above your grave : " Who shall repay him what he hath done ? " Is it therefore easier for you in your heart to inflict the sorrow for which there is no remedy ? Will you take, wantonly, this little all of his life from your poor brother, and make his brief hours long to him with pain ? Will you be more prompt to the injustice which can never be redressed ; and more niggardly of the mercy which you can bestow but once, and which, refusing, you refuse forever ?

I think better of you, even of the most selfish, than that you would do this, well understanding your act. And for yourselves, it seems to me, the question becomes not less grave when brought into these curt limits. If your life were but a fever fit, — the madness of a night, whose follies were all to be forgotten in the dawn, it might matter little how you fretted away the sickly hours, — what toys you snatched at, or let fall, — what visions you followed wistfully with the deceived eyes of sleepless frenzy. Is the earth only an hospital ? are health and heaven to come ? Then play, if you care to play, on the floor of the hospital dens. Knit its straw into what crowns please you ; gather the dust of it for treasure, and die rich in that, though clutching at the black motes in the air with your dying hands ; — and yet, it may be well with you. But if this life be 710 dream, and the world no hospital, but your Palace-inheritance ; — if all the peace and power and joy you can ever win, must be won now, and all fruit of victory gathered here, or never; — will you still, throughout the puny totality of your life, weary yourselves in the fire for vanity? If there is no rest which remaineth for you, is there none you might presently take ? Was this grass of the earth made green for your shroud only, not for your bed ? and can you never lie down upon it, but only under it ? The heathen, in their saddest hours, thought not so. They knew that life brought its contest, but they expected from it also the crown of all contest : No proud one ! no jewelled circlet flaming through Heaven above the height of the unmerited throne ; only some few leaves of wild olive, cool to the tired brow, through a few years of peace. It should have been of gold, they thought ; but Jupiter was poor ; this was the best the god could give them. Seeking a better than this, they had known it a mockery. Not in war, not in wealth, not in tyranny, was there any happiness to be found for them — only in kindly peace, fruitful and free. The wreath was to be of wild olive, mark you : — the tree that grows carelessly, tufting the rocks with no vivid bloom, no verdure of branch ; only with soft snow of blossom, and scarcely fulfilled fruit, mixed with gray leaf and thornset stem ; no fastening of diadem for you but with such sharp embroidery ! But this, such as it is, you may win while yet you live ; type of gray honor and sweet rest,* Free-heartedness, and graciousness, and undisturbed trust, and requited love, and the sight of the peace of others, and the ministry to their pain ; — these, and the blue sky above you, and the sweet waters and flowers of the earth beneath ; and mysteries and presences, innumerable, of living things, — may yet be here your riches ; untormenting and divine : serviceable for the life that now is ; nor, it may be, without promise of that which is to come.

* lizXtrbzaca^ aedluv / evEKev.

CONTENTS,

LECTURE I.

PAGE

Work 23

LECTURE IL Traffic 6i

LECTURE in.

War 95

LECTURE IV.

The Future of England 139

WORK

WORK. 25

WORK.

My Friends, — I have not come among you to-night to endeavor to give you an entertaining lecture ; but to tell you a few plain facts, and ask you a few plain questions. I have seen and known too much of the struggle for life among our laboring population, to feel at ease, under any circumstances, in inviting them to dwell on the trivialities of my own studies; but, much more, as I meet to-night, for the first time, the members of a working Institute established in the district in which I have passed the greater part of my life, I am desirous that we should at once understand each other, on graver matters. I would fain tell you, with what feelings, and with what hope, I regard this Institute, as one of many such, now happily established throughout England, as well as in other countries ; and preparing the way for a great change in all the circumstances of industrial life ; but of which the success must wholly depend upon our clearly understanding the conditions, and above all, the necessary limits of this change. No teacher can truly promote the cause of education, until he knows the mode of life for which that education is to prepare his pupil. And the fact that he is called upon to address you, nominally, as a *' Working Class," must compel him, if he is in any wise earnest or thoughtful, to inquire in the outset, on what you yourselves suppose this class distinction has been founded in the past, and must be founded in the future. The manner of the amusement, and the manner of the teaching, which any of us can offer you, must depend wholly on our first understanding from you, whether you think the distinction heretofore drawn between working men and others is truly or falsely founded. Do you accept it as it stands ? do you wish it to be modified ? or do you think the object of education is to efface it, and make us forget it forever?

Let me make myself more distinctly understood. We call this — you and I— a " Working Men's" Institute, and our college in London, a '* Working Men's" College. Now, how do you consider that these several institutes differ, or ought to differ, from " idle men's " institutes and '* idle men's " colleges? Or by what other word than ''idle" shall I distinguish those whom the happiest and wisest of working men do not object to call the ''Upper Classes"? Are there necessarily upper classes ? necessarily lower ? How much should those always be elevated, how much these always depressed? And I pray those among my audience who chance to occupy, at present, the higher position, to forgive me what offence there may be in what I am going to say. It is not /who wish to say it. Bitter voices say it ; voices of battle and of famine through all the world, which must be heard some day, whoever keeps silence. Neither, as you well know, is it to yotc specially that I say it. I am sure that most

WORK.

now present know their duties of kindness, and fulfil them, better perhaps than I do mine. But I speak to you as representing your whole class, which errs, I know, chiefly by thoughtlessness, but not therefore the less terribly. Wilful error is limited by the will, but what limit is there to that of which we are unconscious ?

Bear with me, therefore, while I turn to these workmen, and ask them what they think the *' upper classes " are, and ought to be, in relation to them. Answer, you workmen who are here, as you would among yourselves, frankly ; and tell me how you would have me call your employers. Am I to call them — would you think me right in calling them — the idle classes ? I think you would feel somewhat uneasy, and as if I were not treating my subject honestly, or speaking from my heart, if I proceeded in my lecture under the supposition that all rich people were idle. You would be both unjust and unwise if you allowed me to say that ; — not less unjust than the rich people who say that all the poor are idle, and will never work if they can help it, or more than they can help.

For indeed the fact is, that there are idle poor and idle rich ; and there are busy poor and busy rich. Many a beggar is as lazy as if he had ten thousand a year ; and many a man of large fortune is busier than his errand-boy, and never would think of stopping in the street to play marbles. So that, in a large view, the distinction between workers and idlers, as between knaves and honest men, runs through the very heart and innermost nature of men of all ranks and in all positions. There is a working class — strong and happy, — among both rich and poor ; there is an idle class — weak, wicked, and miserable, — among both rich and poor. And the worst of the misunderstandings arising between the two orders come of the unlucky fact that the wise of one class [how little wise in this !] habitually contemplate the foolish of the other. If the busy rich people watched and rebuked the idle rich people, all would be right among them : and if the busy poor people watched and rebuked the idle poor people, all would be right among them. But each looks for the faults of the other. A hardworking man of property is particularly offended by an idle beggar ; and an orderly, but poor, workman is naturally intolerant of the licentious luxury of the rich. And what is severe judgment in the minds of the just men of either class, becomes fierce enmity in the unjust — but among the unjust only. None but the dissolute among the poor look upon the rich as their natural enemies, or desire to pillage their houses and divide their property. None but the dissolute among the rich speak in opprobious terms of the vices and follies of the poor.*

There is, then, no worldly distinction between idle and industrious people ; and I am going to-night to speak only of the industrious. The idle people we will put out of our thoughts at once — -

* Note this paragraph. I cannot enough wonder at the want of common charity which blinds so many people to the quite simple truth to which it refers.

WORK. 29

they are mere nuisances — what ought to be done with them, we'll talk of at another time. But there are class distinctions among the industrious themselves; — tremendous distinctions, which rise and fall to every degree in the infinite thermometer of human pain and of human power, — distinctions of high and low, of lost and won, to the whole reach of man's soul and body.

These separations we will study, and the laws of them, among energetic men only, who, whether they work or whether they play, put their strength into the work, and their strength into the game ; being in the full sense of the word *Mndustrious," one way or another, — with purpose, or without. And these distinctions are mainly four : —

I. Between those who work, and those who play.

II. Between those who produce the means of life, and those who consume them.

III. Between those who work with the head, and those who work with the hand.

IV. Between those who work wisely, and those who work foolishly.

For easier memory, let us say we are going to oppose, in our examination, — I. Work to play ; II. Production to consumption ;

III. Head to hand ; and,

IV. Sense to nonsense.

I. First, then, of the distinction between the classes who work and the classes who play. Of course we must agree upon a definition of these terms, — work and play, — before going farther. Now, roughly, not with vain subtlety of definition, but for plain use of the words, "play" is an exertion of body or mind, made to please ourselves, and with no determined end ; and work is a thing done because it ought to be done, and with a determined end. You play, as you call it, at cricket, for instance. That is as hard work as anything else ; but it amuses you, and it has no result but the amusement. If it were done as an ordered form of exercise, for health's sake, it would become work directly. So, in like manner, whatever we do to please ourselves, and only for the sake of the pleasure, not for an ultimate object, is *'play," the *' pleasing thing," not the useful thing. Play may be useful in a secondary sense (nothing is indeed more useful or necessary) ; but the use of it depends on its being spontaneous.

Let us, then, inquire together what sort of games the playing class in England spend their lives in playing at.

The first of all English games is making money. That is an all-absorbing game ; and we knock each other down oftener in playing at that than at football, or any other roughest sport ; and it is absolutely without purpose ; no one who engages heartily in that game ever knows why. Ask a great money-maker what he wants to do with his money — he never knows. He doesn't make it to do anything with it. He gets it only that he may get it. " What will yon make of what you have got?" you ask. "Well, I'll get more," he says.

WORK,

Just as, at cricket, you get more runs. There's no use in the runs, but to get more of them than other people is the game. And there's no use in the money, but to have more of it than other people is the game. So all that great foul city of London there, — rattling, growling, smoking, stinking,— a ghastly heap of fermenting brickwork, pouring out poison at every pore, — you fancy it is a city of work ? Not a street of it ! It is a great city of play ; very nasty play, and very hard play, but still play. It is only Lord's cricket ground without the turf, — a huge billiard table without the cloth, and with pockets as deep as the bottomless pit ; but mainly a billiard table, after all.

Well, the first great English game is this playing at counters. It differs from the rest in that it appears always to be producing money, while every other game is expensive. But it does not always produce money. There's a great difference between ** winning " money and " making " it ; a great difference between getting it out of another man's pocket into ours, or filling both.

Our next great English games, however, hunting and shooting, are costly altogether ; and how much we are fined for them annually in land, horses, gamekeepers, and game laws, and the resultant demoralization of ourselves, our children, and our retainers, and all else that accompanies that beautiful and special English game, I will not endeavor to count now : but note only that, except for exercise, this is not merely a useless game, but a deadly one, to all connected with it. For through horse-racing, you get every form of what the higher classes everywhere call '' Play," in distinction from all other plays ; that is, gambling ; and through game-preserving, you get also some curious laying out of ground ; that beautiful arrangement of dwelling-house for man and beast, by which we have grouse and black-cock — so many brace to the acre, and men and women — so many brace to the garret. I often wonder what the angelic builders and surveyors — the angelic builders who build the " many mansions" up above there; and the angelic surveyors, who measured that four-square city with their measuring reeds — I wonder what they think, or are supposed to think, of the laying out of ground by this nation.*

Then, next to the gentlemen's game of hunting, we must put the ladies' game of dressing. It is not the cheapest of games. And I wish I could tell you what this ''play" costs, altogether, in England, France, and Russia annually. But it is a pretty game, and on certain terms I like it ; nay, I don't see it played quite as much as I would fain have it. You ladies like to lead the fashion : — by all means lead it — lead it thoroughly, — lead it far enough. Dress yourselves nicely, and dress everybody else nicely. Lead the fashiofis for the poor {ix^X \ make /7^^;// look well, and you yourselves will look, in ways of which you have now no conception, all the better. The fashions

* The subject is pursued at some length in Fors Clavigera for March, 1873; but I have not yet properly stated the opposite side of the question nor insisted on tlie value of uncultivated land to the national health of body and mind.

WORK. ^^

you have set for some time among your peasantry are not pretty ones ; their doublets are too irregularly slashed, or as Chaucer calls it '' all toslittered," though not for "queintise," and the wind blows too frankly through them.

Then there are other games, wild enough, as I could show you if I had time.

There's playing at literature, and playing at art ; — very different, both, from working at literature, or working at art, but I've no time to speak of these. I pass to the greatest of all — the play of plays, the great gentlemen's game, which ladies like them best to play at, — the game of War. It is entrancingly pleasant to the imagination ; we dress for it, however, more finely than for any other sport ', and go out to it, not merely in scarlet, as to hunt, but in scarlet and gold, and all manner of fine colors ; of course we could fight better in gray, and without feathers ; but all nations have agreed that it is good to be well dressed at this play. Then the bats and balls are very costly ; our English and French bats, with the balls and wickets, even those which we don't make any use of, costing, I suppose, now, about fifteen millions of money annually to each nation ; all which you know is paid for by hard laborer's work in the furrow and furnace. A costly game ! — not to speak of its consequences ; I will say at present nothing of these. The mere immediate cost of all these plays is what I want you to consider; they are all paid for in deadly work somewhere, as many of us know too well. The jewelcutter, whose sight fails over the diamonds ] the weaver, whose arm fails over the web ; the ironforger, whose breath fails before the furnace — they know what work is — they, who have all the work, and none of the play, except a kind they have named for themselves down in the black north country, where '^play" means being laid up by sickness. It is a pretty example for philologists, of varying dialect, this change in the sense of the word, as used in the black country of Birmingham, and the red and black country of Baden Baden. Yes, gentlemen, and gentlewomen, of England, who think ** one moment unamused a misery, not made for feeble man," this is what you have brought the word ''play" to mean, in the heart of merry England ! You may have your fluting and piping ; but there are sad children sitting in the market-place, who indeed cannot say to you, *' We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced : " but eternally shall say to you, "We have mourned unto you, and ye have not lamented."

This, then, is the first distinction between the ''upper and lower" classes. And this is one which is by no means necessary ; which indeed must, in process of good time, be by all honest men's consent abolished. Men will be taught that an existence of play, sustained by the blood of other creatures, is a good existence for gnats and jelly-fish ; but not for men : that neither days, nor lives, can be made holy or noble by doing nothing in them : that the best prayer at the beginning of a day is that we may not lose its moments ; and the best grace before meat, the consciousness that