England: her people, polity, and pursuits;

Front matter

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Contents

CHAP. TAGE

I. Introductory 1

II. The English Village 8

CHAPTER I Ir-cSt*

INTRODUCTORY.

The Scope and Purpose of the Present Work — New Forces introduced into the National Life during the Present Century — Social, Political, Moral, and Intellectual Problems of the Day — What are the Duties of the State? — What the Imperial Mission of England ? — The Age not only one of Transition but of Organization — Economy of Forces of all kinds — General Contents of this Work, and Treatment adopted.

A WORK honestly attempting a comprehensive and faithful picture of the social and political condition of modern England requires small apology. The nineteenth century, in this country as elsewhere, has not only been marked by changes and improvements vast and sweeping in degree, but by achievements wholly new in kind. Methods and institutions long existing among us have been brought nearer to perfection; forces previously unfelt or unknown have been introduced. On the one hand, there may be witnessed the realized result of the complete operations of centuries; on the other, there is visible the as yet unfinished product of agencies still at work. At the beginning of the present century, though we had perfected the stage-coach, no new principle had been applied to locomotion since the Romans conquered this island, or, to go back j to a date still more remote, since Cyrus introduced the system of posting into the empire which he conquered upwards of three thousand years ago. Steam, at the same time that it changed the conditions of traveling, effected a social revolution throughout the world. Co-operating with the electric telegraph, and equalizing the relations of space and time, as gunpowder equalized the various degrees of physical strength, it brought the country to the doors of the town, and bridged over the gulf between England and the countries of the Continent. Co-operating with free trade, it raised us to a perilous height of commercial prosperity, and added dignity and influence to the principle of wealth.

Analogous alterations have been -wrought in the political and the intellectual world. A system of genuinely popular government has been established, and in the political Reform Bills of 1832 and 1867 we have had two measures entirely different in scope and principle from any previously passed by an English Parliament. For the first tune in our history the attempt has been made with earnestness and success to introduce an effective scheme of popular education; and for the first time also there has been witnessed the universal dissemination of a popular literature, fettered by no political or religious constraints.

As we have seen the enlightenment, so we have seen the upheaval and the fusion of classes. Old lines of social demarkation have been obliterated, ancient landmarks of thought and belief removed, new standards of expediency and right created. The same process has been unceasingly active in the domain of politics, philosophy, literature, and art. It may be, here and there, revival rather than revolution; a return to the old rather than a departure to the new; but, in many cases, the idols which we reverenced but a little time ago have been destroyed. We have made for ourselves strange gods, and we live in a state of transition to a yet unknown order. The precise functions of the new philosophy, science, theology, and art, are as loosely defined as the exact provinces of the three estates of the realm, or the future relations of the different component parts of society. We hold enlarged conceptions of our place in the scale of the peoples of the earth, but what England's mission really is we have not quite decided. We are in process of making up our minds what respect or attention, in fixing the destinies of a great nation, is due to the popular will, what obeisance to the Sovereign, what confidence to the Sovereign's advisers. We are in perplexity as to the course we should steer between the democratic and the monarchical principles. It is a moot point whether the governed or the governors should be the judges of the plan of government that is adopted. It is an open question whether we should accept measures because of the man, or base our estimate of the man upon his measures. The respective rights of employer and employed, capital and industry, are an unsolved problem. A clear and generally accepted notion of the duties of the State has still to be formed. Politicians and sociologists debate on platforms, and in magazines — five-andtwenty years ago it would have been in pamphlets — as to the amount of legislation with which it is necessary to protect the interests of a class and the well-being of the individual. If it falls within the sphere of Government to provide the machinery of education and

INTRODUCTORY. 3

health for the community, up to what point is it the duty of Government to insist upon its use ? How far are men to be protected against their own vices, or the consequences of those vices? Arc

the masses to be taught sobriety by Act of Parliament? Is the drunkard to be condemned, or to be suffered to condemn himself, to close confinement for his drunkenness? Is incontinence of all Icinds to carry with it its own probable punishment ?

At every turn some vital issue presents itself in a guise more or less easily to be recognized. Upwards of fifty years ago, the Municipal Corporation Act, which conferred upon ratepayers the right of electing their municipal authorities, the Town Councilors, and thus established the principle of local and representative self-government, was hailed with enthusiasm as the charter of the provincial liberties of England. The necessity of the existence of a central authority in the capital was admitted, but it was half believed that its controlling influence woidd seldom or never be felt. If, in the interval that has elapsed since 1835, free play has been given in many respects to the principle of local independence, a certain later tendency towards its abridgment cannot be ignored. The great provincial towns and cities of England have acquired fresh power and importance. The self-government of villages has almost entirely disappeared. Even as regards the great towns and entire urban or raral districts, the central Government practically claims an authority which is by no means unresistingly admitted. Manchester, Liverpool, and Birmingham have grown in greatness and in influence; but London has become increasingly the metropolis of the empire, and a minute and far-reaching system of bureaucratic authority is exercised from Whitehall, within a radius equal in extent to the length and breadth of the United Kingdom.

Modern legislation has created new departments of State. We have entire armies of State inspectors of all kinds. We accumulate annual libraries of local reports. Applications to the executive in London or to Parliament at Westminster are imperatively enforced, upon a multitude of novel and miscellaneous pleas. The government of our prisons has been vested in a body of commissioners nominated by the Crown. On the other hand, it is a question which perplexes the Government, and of which no satisfactory solution has yet been proposed, whether the administration of counties should be transferred from the hands of the country gentlemen to the nominees and representatives of the ratepayers. These are not the only matters in which the supremacy and responsibility of the State are closely canvassed. Is the State, in addition to its duties as the champion of the different communities which live under it, to fulfill the function of an accommodating money-lender, on easy terms, for the carrying out of local improvements ? THiat is the exact point at which the State is under an obligation to relieve local rates out of imperial taxation, and when and why does that obligation cease ?

Nor is it only the position and the attributes of the English Government at home which are the subjects of controversy and uncertainty. Tlie duties of the English Government abroad, the place which England should fill in the hierarchy of the sovereign nations cf the earth, the extent to which and the channels by which her authority and influence should make themselves felt, are points on which there is much dispute, much enthusiasm, but no immediate prospect of permanent agreement. It is thought by some that we have already witnessed an emphatic and an abiding protest against the political doctrines which are conmionly associated with the name I of Cobden. The English nation, it is asserted, have loudly test: I to then desire that England should be something more than the emporium of Europe, a place of merchandise and barter for the nations of the world. The popular veto upon an unqualified acceptance of the doctrine of non-intervention is said to have gone forth. AVe are, if this view be correct, thirsting for the responsibilities of empire, and panting for the fresh and invigorating atmosphere which the periodical enlargement of our imperial boundaries brings with it. Strong voices of grave warning have been raised against these ambitions. It lias been hinted that we should prepare ourselves for a reduction rather than an increase of our imperial cares, and that we should witness with satisfaction, since it is approaching with the certainty of fate, a contraction of the foreign dominions of England within narrower limits. If, it is urged by these monitors, we rush forward to the great enterprises which we are heedlessly encouraged to undertake, we shall reap our future reward in bitter mortification, in angry discontent, and, it may be, in domestic revolution.

Between these two schools of counselors England seems to halt. It is not necessary here to forecast the selection which she may finally make, or the national consequences which that selection will involve. Upon one or two historical facts, and some of our more prominent social conditions, it may be desirable in connection with these matters very briefly to dwell. If the Englishman wants some more definite and tangible guarantee of foreign empire than a vague boast that the sun never sets upon the British flag; if, instead of a personal devotion to fatherland, the old-fashioned

INTRODUCTORY. £

belief that England, and England alone, was abundantly sufficient for all bis wants, be would fain bestride the world like ;i Colossus, it is to be remembered that there is much in the infectious spirit of the age to explain such a sentiment, Is not the present I epoch of immense transactions and colossal speculations? Ti we not imported the idea of vastness from the other side of the Atlantic? and are we not attempting its realization here? Everywhere small establishments have been swallowed up in large. The private farm is absorbed in the limited liability company; the private bank in the joint-stock. The tradesman no sooner finds himself doing well than he is seized with a desire to extend his premises; and, if matters prosper, he will presently buy up the section of a street. Above all things, it is the era of material triumphs. The miraculous feats of our engineers, the immense development of machinery, the mastery which on every hand man seems acquiring over nature, have brought with them to Englishmen a sense of boundless power — a conviction that they hare the command of resource, and the fertility of invention, which mark them out as all creation's heirs. Amid the ceaseless clang of hammers and the everlasting roar of human industry, the Englishman unconsciously apprehends some echo of the far-off infinite. Caiiyle is welcomed as a great teacher, because he appeals to this inarticulate feeling, and, without his readers being precisely aware of it, shapes it into ruggedly eloquent utterance. Is it an idle fancy to see in the vague popular desire for an indefinite extension of the dominions and the responsibilities of England an enlarged reflection of the insatiate pas-

I sion that is generated by the social conditions under which we live ?

But the new spirit of boundless empire means more than this.

If it is a reaction against a real or imaginary neglect of the imperial

/interests of England in the past few years by England's governors, it is in a great degree the significant product of two separate forces — the one practical, the other sentimental. England is a country whose population is perpetually overflowing her narrow geographi-

' cal limits. She wants careers for her sons; she wants safe opportunities of investment for her capital. "With an enormously developed middle class such as we now have, it is felt that there would be no adequate number of avenues of employment if our foreign possessions were reduced. India and the colonies afford occupation for tens of thousands of young men born to decent station. Even thus, more occupation, and that of a dignified or gentleman-like kind, is wanted.

Nor is the sentimental force one whose influence can be neglected. The immense influence of wealth with the middle classes has resulted in a larger demand for professions that commend themselves to the polite world. Such a profession is the profession of arms. The soldier has been always a social favorite. The abolition of purchase in the army has resulted in the establishment of a professional army, and, by giving them a kind of family interest in the calhng of arms, has created a wider and more intensely military Bpirit among the middle classes than once seemed possible. The volunteer movement has operated in precisely the same direction. An imperial policy not only means abundance of civilian, but regularity of military employment. At the same time that it commends itself to the English mind as a policy worthy of a race which has made its greatness by the sword, it is recognized also as stamped with the more or less avowed approval of the upper classes of English society.

It is not the only characteristic of our age that it is transitional. It may further be described as one distinguished by the economy and organization of forces of all kinds. "While science teaches us i how to prevent the waste of motive power, philanthropy encourages us to prevent the wholesale waste of humanity. Thus it is that we are constantly endeavoring to amend our educational system, to provide more effective machinery for the promotion of thrift, for the distribution of charity, and for the cultivation of other social and political virtues. Household suffrage not only exists, but in a variety of ways there is visible the organized effort to insure that its active exercise shall be increasingly productive of substantial results. The working classes are acquiring more and more political power; at the same time they are being taught how that they can make power more directly and definitely felt. "Whatever virtues, capacities, energies, may reside in any part of our population, these are now in process of being drawn forth, and pressed into practical service. •Sides are being formed, specific parts taken, schools of thought multiply, societies for action increase. "What was simple becomes complex, what was always complex becomes more complex still.

It will be the chief pari of our duty in the following pages to analyze and explain the constituents of the artificial civilization, and of the minutely elaborated institutions of the time. Such an attempt, it is believed, will at least have the merit of novelty. The laws and polity under which we live have received much of learned comment; their history and principles are written in encyclopedias and in text-books. But they have, for the most part, been treated in the spirit of the constitutional anatomist; they have been examined, not so

INTR OD UC TOR Y. 7

much in their practical working and mutual relations while working, as in the theory of their mechanism while at rest. They have been studied more as abstractions than as concrete realities. Hence it is that Englishmen and Englishwomen generally lack a vividly complete idea of the institutions under which they live, and have no clear and comprehensive notion of the particular forces at work in the atmosphere around them. Every one knows that we have in England local self-government; few know how in practice it Is ministered. In the same way, it is universally recognized that we enjoy immense commercial prosperity, but it is only those personally concerned who have an accurate acquaintance with the details of management on which that prosperity depends. The same remarks are applicable to all departments of our national life. The names are familiar to each one of us; the realities are familiar only to the comparatively limited number whom they specially affect.

What in this work will be done for institutions will be done in the same manner for classes and for occupations, for professions and pursuits; for the refining influences of culture, as well as for the organization of commerce : for our social not less than our municipal and political system; for the amusements and recreations of the age, as Avell as for its literature, philosophy, art, religion, and law. Necessarily the space that can be devoted to each of these themes is comparatively small, but into that space materials, it is hoped, may be collected which will present the reader with a comprehensive view of the influences, the tendencies, and the general economy of English life. "We shall pass from the simpler elements of our civilization and government as they may be beheld in rural England to the busier and more highly organized customs and administration of our great centers of trade and industry. We shall make the acquaintance of typical members of our laboring community in town and country, and of the changes in the conditions of their life, whether actually accomplished or in progress. Having thus seen, in concrete shape, the personnel of the English nation at large, then temper, tastes, toils, and pastimes, it will remain to examine the social organization of the polite world, and the institutions and principles established among us for the administration of the empire. At each step we shall be conscious of a gradual ascent. We shall be working constantly upwards, and arriving at the general from the particular. If this method seems to involve the inversion of the natural order of importance, it may not be unattended by some advantages, and the whole will be perhaps, the better understood when it has been seen what are the parts and influences of which it consists.

Chapter II. The English Village

An English Village a Microcosm of the English Constitution — Eelations of Squire, Clergyman, and General Body of Parishioners — Sketch of the Country Parson : his Day ; his multifarious Duties, Eeligious and Secular — Sketches of Country Parsons who do not conform to this Type — A Disorganized Parish — Hostile Estimates of the Country Clergyman of the English Church — His Eelations to the Fanners and Dissenters of his Parish.

AN English village may Toe described as a microcosm not only of the English nation, but of the English Constitution. Roughly speaking, there is to be seen in every English parish the miniature pattern and reflection of the three estates of the realm — the lords spiritual, the lords temporal, the commons. The representative of the lords spiritual is the clergyman; of the lords temporal, the squire; of the commons, the tenant and villager; while squire and clergyman between them, like the two Houses of Parliament, practically exercise not a few of those functions which in their essence pertain to the Sovereign only. The normal or ideal state of things in a country parish is one under which there is absolute unanimity between the action and the will of the representatives of the spiritual and temporal powers — that is, between the parson and the squire — and where the inhabitants acquiesce in the decision and policy of these as in the dispensation of a beneficent wisdom. Nor is the theory of English village life, or the analogy that has been suggested between the State and the parish, destroyed by the fact that deviations fi-om the ideal standard are not unknown. For the most part, the elements to which village life may be reduced combine with tolerable harmony in practice; and when there is discord, it is not the system, but clumsiness or error in its administration, which is to blame.

Recent legislation, as will be presently seen, has in some respects materially affected the relations between those in whom are vested the secular and religious jurisdiction of English country districts.

THE ENGLISH VILLAGE.

But the main principles of the system are now what they alw; have been, and completely to eradicate them would entail a social

revolution. Just as the squire — the word is used for convenience'

: sake, whether the local great man be peer, baronet, small country gentleman, or that combination of minister of the Church of England and territorial potentate which Sydney Smith has caUed Squarson— necessarily has a moral iniluence added to his secular condition, so the clergyman has attributes distinctly secular in addition to his ecclesiastical prerogatives. The Church of England lies at

» the root of the parochial system of England. The subdivisions of the country are ecclesiastical. The local dispensary, the poor-rate, the way-rate, the vestry, arc parochial institutions in the administration of which the clergyman has, in virtue of his position as clergyman, a legal voice. Not merely the village parson, rector, or vicar has definite legal duties and authority, but the clergyman's churchwarden, the parish clerk, the sexton. The unity between Church and State is typified in the administration of an English village at every tu*rn. The squire is a magistrate: not improbably the rector is a magistrate too. The clergyman and the congregation have each their churchwarden. The parish clerk, beadle, and sexton have all of them a legal and civil status, and in a great number of cases share, with the clergyman, whose nominees they probably are, responsibility for the order of the parish.

The position and responsibility of the clergyman vary according to circumstances. The growing tendency on the part of the squire is to be elsewhere than at his country home during the greater part of the year. His parliamentary duties demand his presence in London; his social obligations compel him to make a round of visits; regard for his health and that of his family renders it necessary that he should travel annually for a few weeks. He is, in effect, for nine months out of every twelve, an absentee landlord; but he has, he remarks, the satisfaction of knowing that in his absence every thing is looked after admirably. He has an agenjt in whom he reposes the utmost confidence, and who has carte-blanche to do what is fair and reasonable in the interest of his tenants. He has a clergyman

I whom he pronounces a blessing to the entire neighborhood. Thus, one of two things happens: either all local authority, secular as well as ecclesiastical, becomes concentrated in the hands of the clergyman, or a struggle develops itself between the clergyman and the

I representative of the squire — his agent. It depends in each case on the character of the clergyman and the squire which of the two alternatives is realized. In the majority of instances the two authorities pull well together. But perhaps the best way of forming an idea of the working of the system in English life will be to take a concrete illustration.

/ We are, let the reader suppose, engaged in visiting an agricultural Tillage, whose population is some five or six hundred souls, situated half a dozen miles froni the nearest railway station. It is the month of June; every feature in the peaceful landscape is in the perfection of its beauty; the fresh deep green of the English foliage — the freshest and deepest in all the world — has as yet lost nothing of its depth or freshness; there is an odor of newly-made hay in the air; the music of the whetstone sharpening the mower's scythe may be heard in the morning, and all day long the lark carols high overhead. The whole village, in fact, is busily occupied with the hay harvest, and the farmers are intent upon getting it in before there comes the break in the weather threatened by certain ugly barometrical signs. The village is a purely agrictdtural one; it contains a general store shop, a shoemaker's, a small tailor's, a small inn, and one or two beer shops. The lord of the manor is also the representative of the county in Parliament, and, as is incumbent upon an elective legislator, is, in these da}rs of leafy June, busily engaged in his senatorial duties at Westminster. A better scpiire no parson, as the parson himself admits, could wish. Indeed, the two have been friends together from boyhood. They were companions at school, played in the school eleven at Lord's, went to the university in the same October term. The squire/ is not a very great landlord, for his property in that neighborhood barely produces £3,000 a year, but he has possessions elsewhere, and he is not without judicious and profitable investments. He) is liberal, sees that the dwellings of his laborers are kept hi proper condition, gives largely to all local funds, and has just built some very handsome schools. But he has never been guilty of the indiscriminate bounty which is the parent of pauperism. He has been fortunate in securing as his bailiff and agent a respectable gentleman, who has no social ambition of an aggressive character, and no wish to assert his authority in opposition to that of the rector.

And the rector himself — what of him ? That is the rectory, two or three hundred yards this side of the church. A substantial building, set in a pleasant garden, girt with a hedge of fuchsias, myrtle, and laurels. The glebe attached to the living is extensive, and from it indeed comes the larger portion of the rectorial revenue. A few fields the parish priest keeps in his own hands, and he too, like his farmers, has been busy hay-making and hay-carrying in this glorious June weather. It is now the afternoon, and tln^ee or four hoxirs in every afternoon — the interval, that is, between lunch and dinner — it is his habit to devote to walking, driving, riding, or, more commonly, pedestrian tours of parochial inspection, and visits to his parishioners. At the present moment he is strolling through one of Farmer A.'s fields, and — he is an authority on these matters — is taking up and smelling, in the approved fashion of the connoisseur, some of the grass which has just fallen ridgeways before the mower's scythe. He has a well-made, upright figure; a clear, open expression of countenance; he is rather over fifty years of age, and his dress is of black cloth, distinguishable in hue but scarcely in cut from that which, were he at home instead of at Westminster, the squire himself would wear. He chats occasionally with the men who are busily employed in filling the carts, or in any of the duties of the field, but you may notice that he is very careful to avoid the appearance of inflicting his company on any one of them.

Let us see how he is occupied at other hours of the day. Family prayers are over by half-past eight, for the rector likes to have finished his breakfast and to get to his study by nine. This morning he is particularly busy; there are letters to answer, a sermon to prepare, diocesan documents to be read and signed, and there, is a great deal of reading which he is anxious to do. He has scarcely sat down to his tea and toast, with yesterday's Tirm s, just arrived, at his side, when a knock comes at the door. It is Martha Hodge, who wants to know when her baby can be christened; or John Giles, who is anxious to fix the day and hour for his Reverence to tie the knot between himself and Sarah Stokes; or it may be that one of the fanners' wives has called round to speak to the rector's lady on the subject of the tunes and hymns which were sung last, or will be sung next Sunday; or it is a laborer's wife, who has a tale of sorrow and want to impart, who seeks relief from great destitution, and who is striving up to the last to keep out of the jurisdiction of "the House." At last he has disposed of some half-dozen of these interruptions, and is secure in his library, deep in papers and in thought. But his seclusion is not to remain long unbroken. The inevitable knock at the door comes, and one of the parochial functionaries is announced as waiting to see him. It is his churchwarden, whose duty it is to inform him that one of his congregation — a farmer of a controversial turn, or a farmer's wife or daughter, with a nice eye for ritual propriety, has taken exception to something that was said, sung, or done in church last Sunday; protests that he or she distinctly saw the pastor make, or fail to make, some specific genuflexion at a certain point of the service; complains that in his or her opinion the language of such-and-such a hymn smacks too much of Popery or Calvinism; declares that between the tune to which the organist (who happens to be the rector's eldest daughter) played it, and a music-hall ditty, the ah of which was recently ground out by a nomad Italian organ-boy who chanced to be passing through the village, there was a suspiciously strong resemblance.

The object for which the interview is sought may be of a less frivolous character. The parish is disturbed by some crime, agitated by some scandal, or is threatened by some nuisance, big with the seeds of death and disease to the inhabitants. The question, therefore, submitted to the parish clergyman by churchwarden, parish clerk, or beaclle, is whether immediate application should not be made to the head of the local constabulary, or to the local sanitary inspector, or to whatever other official has cognizance of the special cause of danger or offence. Nor do the secular responsibilities of the country clergyman end here. If the village post-office is also a savings-bank, those of his parishioners who are of thrifty habits will be able to transact then* own small financial business without his intervention. But it ofteu happens that no such encouragement to thrift as a savings bank in connection with the post-office exists, and in this case the rector will frequently find himself / doing duty as village banker. Occasionally, too, he discharges in minor maladies the functions of the village doctor. The local iEsculapius, or the Hippocrates employed by the guardians, lives at some little distance, and has, it may be, besides, an objection to attending gratuitous patients. There are medicines to be prescribed, soothing drinks and nutritious diet to be sent to the sick-room. No squire who for eight or nine months out of the twelve is an absentee, however well-disposed, and however comprehensive the instructions which he may have left to his servants, can entirely relieve the clergyman as a dispenser of material comforts and relief. Then, as the rector or vicar is something of a banker and a doctor, so too is he something of a lawyer and general agent as well. He is often invoked to arbitrate in family differences; he is expected to procure occupation for lads and maidens who wish to go out into the world. He is, in fact, looked upon as an oracle whose inspiration is never to fail, and as a source of charity which is never to run dry. Of the ten or fifteen thousand beneficed clergymen of the Church of England, it is the exception to find one who does not, to the best of his ability and means, discharge most of these duties, and not these only, but many more.