Moncure D. Conway; addresses and reprints, 1850-1907

Contents

Introduction vii

I. Point of Perspective II. In Chancery .....

III. In Common Law ....

Introduction

MONCUKE D. CONWAY was born in Stafford County, Virginia, March 17, 1832, of an old settled Virginia family, owners of some land and some slaves, and at that time much bound up in Methodism.

He died in Paris, November 15, 1907, being then almost the only survior of the leading abolitionists in America and of the Free JReligious movement in England.

In the course of this pilgrimage (as he called it) Mr. Conway passed through many phases of thought, and lived in many places abroad and in America. There has seldom, if ever, lived a man who had such affectionate personal friendships, in so many parts of the world, among cultivated men and women of every religion and of every rank.

In addition, he was well acquainted with most of the eminent men and women of his time. Many of these were his friends; others he met for literary or scientific purposes — for interviewing, if you like, — during the exciting and historic period in which he played a part. Some memorials of his literature will therefore not be without interest to the casual reader.

To his friends and followers this was a great man, one who exercised great influence on their lives, and some volume has been desired to partially embody their memories. It is judged that such a volume's most acceptable form will be to republish some of Mr. Conway's work, now out of print, and also some of his later discussions and addresses, never published for general circulation.

viii INTRODUCTION

Mr. Conway's life may be roughly divided into four periods.

First. His apprenticeship, when he was writing for local newspapers in Virginia (especially the " Richmond Examiner ") and for the " Literary Messenger" ; at this time he was a Methodist circuit rider.

A pamphlet of his printed in 1850, advocating free schools for the whites in Virginia, was his first separate publication. It is reprinted here. It created considerable stir, locally, and when it was ascertained that Mr. Conway, then a lad of eighteen, was the author, it got him into some trouble.

Second. Mr. Conway's religious and slavery views having changed, he went North to Harvard Divinity School, and after graduating in 1853 became the Unitarian minister at Washington, D. C, and an anti-slavery speaker and worker.

At this time the period of the martyrdom of the earliest abolitionists was about over. Though much social obloquy and personal disadvantage accompanied the public expression of such views, the thinking men in the North were beginning at least to appreciate that there was a moral issue involved.

In 1860 Lincoln was elected President, and it was from that time, perhaps, that the Republican party more and more absorbed those of anti-slavery belief. As the politics of the cause appeared and prospered, political success and, later, military fame, were to be found in that party. Little has been written of this intervening period, say from 1851 to 1862, when many enthusiastic and brilliant men, serving under the old leaders, spent their lives in arousing the conscience and the heart of the North against slavery, without hope of any reward, social, pecuniary, or political.

INTRODUCTION ix

Among these none worked with greater devotion, nor with greater effect, than Mr. Conway.

We remember the pioneers and martyrs of the early period and the successful soldiers and statesmen of the later times, but have largely forgotten the abolitionists of this middle period.

Of the very popular sermons and books published by Mr. Conway at this time, " The Golden Hour " is reprinted. It is a product of moral and religious enthusiasm and fervor, that had its effect on its readers from President to soldiers in the ranks, and cannot be read without interest, whether as documentary evidence of the conditions of that period or as recalling early memories to old friends and personal characteristics to younger ones.

Except in his crusade against slavery, Mr. Conway cared little about the political issues of the day ; perhaps even sympathized somewhat with the Southern people.

The most appreciative and affectionate, yet keen and discerning, tribute to Mr. Conway, by Edward Emerson, refers to his outlander feeling in the North at that time :

But this loyal man, in spite of hospitalities, had the feelings of an exile. The scorn felt by his new friends for those who were making him so — though he never posed as a martyr — could not but have a bitter taste. He loved his people, knew their goodness and the wretchedness of their inheritance of slavery and its attendant ills, and, as for his family, knew that the separation was to them a sacred duty, — the very sacrifice of Isaac. . . . The old "Virginia Valour" was in Mr. Conway and ruled his life. He followed where it led, risking, without hesitation but with perfect frankness and good temper, the places of usefulness which he was happily filling, and often losing, though later his lost flocks often came to his position.

X INTRODUCTION

But lie wore his Southern valour " with a difference," for all war, public or private, was to him abhorrent, and this feeling he held to and bravely presented, even when the war-spirit was strongest. Yet his personal courage and utter disregard of exposure and of danger of violence in the looking up his father's scattered slaves and carryiug them, spite of indifference and malignity, through army lines and border cities to Ohio homes, is a gallant tale.

Indeed, Virginia was the only territory that he really loved. He loved London and Paris and New York, because of the life he found there or of his friends who lived there. But his affection for the rivers and fields of Virginia, the "sacred soil" and its fruits, alone prevented him from being a true cosmopolitan.

Third. Mr. Conway was sent to England in 1862 by the Abolition Society to aid in arousing public sentiment there on the side of the North. In 1863 he became the pastor of South Place Chapel, Finsbury, in London, a Unitarian chapel somewhat out of the fold by reason of the advanced doctrines of W. J. Fox, M. P., its then just retired minister. Here Mr. Conway entered on the third stage of his career.

At this time Lord John Eussell and Mr. Gladstone were in office, to be succeeded next year by Lord Derby and Mr. Disraeli. Carlyle and Tennyson were the literary stars. Herbert Spencer had just issued the prospectus of his " Principles of Sociology." Darwin and Huxley had published purely scientific works. Matthew Arnold and Swinburne were new sensations in London drawing-rooms.

It is to be doubted if, at that time, any of the men of science, poets, authors, or artists in England cared or thought about the opinions or beliefs of the great middle class of England ; much less of the low.

On the other hand, the radicals of those days were a

INTRODUCTION xi

militant body, fighting established privilege both in Church and State ; although mostly dissenters, there were among them many unbelievers.

Their disbeliefs were, however, largely political, and based on the controversial writings of Paine, Hume, Bentham, and others. There was almost enmity to all the arts and graces, the poetry and romance of life, as there had been among the early Puritans in their struggles.

Professor Huxley in the prologue to the reprint of some of his later controversial writings, says : —

Of polemical writing, as of other kinds of warfare, I think it may be said, that it is often useful, sometimes necessary, and always more or less an evil. ... It is an evil, in so far as controversy always tends to degenerate into quarrelling, to swerve from the great issue of what is right and what is wrong to the very small question of who is right and who is wrong.

It was to men and women brought up in the radical and polemical schools, strong, fine characters, full of controversial zeal and ardor for reforms, that there entered the young Southerner ; a student, not only of the English literature of that age, but of much curious and to them unknown learning, both from the far East and the far West ; as full of enthusiasm for reforms as they, but with a hatred for polemics as for warfare. He assumed as a matter of course that his audiences were anxious to be taught the romances and legends of the past, and to hear of the great truths underlying the teachings of their own established church, of the Roman Catholic Church, and of every other church. From the science, art, poetry, and the drama, of the past and of the day, he drew his lessons.

He in no way concealed his radical, and, as the English term was, rationalist, religious views and his hatred of xii INTRODUCTION

theological systems ; on the contrary, none was braver in taking his post by the side of any attacked as agnostics or atheists, or by any other name, for their religious or other opinions.

But, on the other hand, he from the first recognized and felt the love of the human heart for old myths and superstitions and their underlying meanings, — the need he felt for himself and others of appealing to the emotions as well as to the brain.

He had the instinct of an artist for this work : ardent and enthusiastic in his study and belief in the new scientific and sociological discoveries, it was his province as a preacher and writer to transmute these into, not statements nor descriptions, but lessons and sermons appealing to the moral and religious senses of his public, just as he did with a great picture or a great drama; and he believed in bringing these direct to the people and not limiting them to the salon of the wealthy or the hall of the learned man of science, as had been the English habit.

Matthew Arnold writes, somewhere, what almost seems to describe Mr Conway's work : —

The great men of culture are those who have had a passion for diffusing, for making prevail, for carrying from one end of society to the other, the best knowledge, the best ideas of their time ; who have laboured to divest knowledge of all that was harsh, uncouth, difficult, abstract, professional, exclusive ; to humanize it, to make it efficient outside the clique of the cultivated and learned.

In this work lay Mr. Conway's great ability, if not genius. All that was needed by every one in the world, according to his view, was absolute liberty (within the bounds of justice to others) to enjoy the beautiful things of life.

The value of liberty was being taught by Mill and others,

INTRODUCTION xiii

but the teaching how to enjoy the pleasures of knowledge and life in a scientific and religious way was something new to the average British citizen.

In the course of twenty years note the change : Herbert Spencer issuing popular editions; Huxley engaging in almost a propaganda of agnosticism in newspapers and magazines ; Darwin's later works so direct and forceful in their application to popular notions of theology as to arouse a tempest; Tyndall, Clifford, and many other scientific men engaged in popular expositions of their beliefs ; art galleries, settlements, and institutes for general culture springing up everywhere. What is referred to as the "New Reformation" was well on its way.

Without claiming that this was due to Mr. Conway's work, it is to be said that much more of the credit is due to him for these results than he has yet received. His work was appreciated in England at the time ; his London congregation became very large and influential; the effects of his work were felt far and wide. In this country the letters and papers of the " American Minister in London " had a wide following of readers. There is reprinted of his writings during this period the vital part of his " Earthward Pilgrimage," a book that had a very large sale, and represented his attitude towards the problems of life at that time. Some of the chapters devoted to local and more transient subjects are omitted for want of space.

Fourth. In 1897 Mrs. Ellen Dana Conway, his wife, died. The tribute Mr. Conway sent to their friends is included in this volume, though with some hesitation. It makes a record of the fact that it was largely owing to her influence and capacity and devotion that the enthusiasm and imagination of her husband were rendered effective and practical.

xiv INTRODUCTION

At the commencement of her fatal illness Mr. Conway retired from all active labors and returned to a permanent residence in New York, only varied by visits to England and the Continent, especially to Paris. During this period of dignified age he was constantly occupied with historical studies, always fascinating to him, especially when engaged in rendering historical justice to some public man unjustly treated. His lives of Thomas Paine and Edmund Randolph are models of vindicatory biography, and he was engaged in studies for a life of John Calvin at the time of his death.

During this period he gave several addresses, and kept up an interest in public affairs. The judicious writer of a memorial in the " Springfield Republican " draws attention to the beauty of the literary style he had acquired. As representing this period we reprint two addresses at Dickinson College on William Penn and on Public Service ; also an address at a Peace Conference at Paris, and an address on Dogma and Science given at Rome.

A gentle philosopher who would be amazed to know of his own great fame with posterity writes : —

Whoever will consider, with just measure and proportion, of what kind of man, and of what sort of action the glory maintains itself in the memory of books, will find that there are very few actions and very few persons of our times, who can there pretend any right. . . . The sages propose to themselves a nobler and more just end in so important an enterprise : " The reward of a thing well done is to have done it : the fruit of a good office is the office itself."

Posterity commends thee : happy thou ! But will thy manes such a gift bestow As to make violets from thy ashes grow.

INTRODUCTION xv

In his last public speech, at a gathering of his old congregation and their children in London, in September, 1907, Mr. Conway's closing words are —

Let us give ourselves up to this fine ideal of our thought, and seek to spread happiness. To make beautiful homes and a beautiful life is more difficult than to paint a beautiful picture. To give happiness to a single heart now is better than all that can be done for unborn generations in unknowable ages beyond.

In memory of one who certainly fulfilled his offices according to these tests, this collection is made from the enormous mass of his writings, in order, as before suggested, to combine some interest for the reader in famous men and doings of the last generation, with the preservation to his friends of some of his work in suitable form.

A PLEA OF EDUCATION, VIRTUE, AND THRIFT vs. IGNO- RANCE, VICE, AND POVERTY

Let there be Light. — [The Bible] By MONCURE DANIEL CONWAY

RECORDER PRINT

FREDEKICKSBUKG, VIRGINIA

October, 1850

TO THE STATE CONVENTION OF 1850 Gentlemen : Trustful that you will " hear me for my

CAUSE," WHICH IS THAT OF OUR StATE AND OF HUMANITY, AC- CORDING TO MY EARNEST CONVICTION, I DEDICATE THESE PAGES TO YOU "WITH WHOM IS ALL OUR HOPE."

THE WRITER.

Warrenton, Va., October, 1850.

I. THE GENERAL PRINCIPLE DISCUSSED

THE highest and most forceful Law is where duty and policy unite to confirm what has been taught by nature. In all the relations of life men recognize none more obligatory. This, then, will indicate our plan in the consideration of a subject which, we are profoundly convinced, is more intimately connected with our happiness and prosperity as a community than any other.

1. Education is the injunction of Nature, — We doubt if in the noon of the Nineteenth Century this will be anywhere questioned. Man is born in a state of normal ignorance and with a normal tendency to knowledge and repulsion to the first condition. The plant which is left in a dark room, save for a small orifice admitting a beam of light, has a propension only for that ; and if there be no gleam of light, will die. The bird that wings its way solely under the shades of night has an eye so constructed as to appropriate every possible ray that may be lurking in the absence of the source of light. The Phenomena with these lower orders of intelligences sufficiently indicate the central principle of mental structure. But these are not so much as a thousandth proportion of nature's analogies, which teach us that man's attribute is intellectual culture. Everything with nature has susceptibility for improvement, and this can only be effected by cultivation. The Peach, so useful and pleasant a fruit with us, was once a small almond, noted only for an exceedingly bitter kernel which contained some mild portion of poison. The Melon was formerly a long, pithy, and tasteless sort of gourd, running to waste in the regions of Capricorn ; it is now thought a healthy and delicious addition to our luxuries. Cultivation^ simply, has wrought these changes in these vegetables, as in many others, and is daily effecting what, if rightly noted and compared, would seem miracles.

Man would never have been endowed with such capacity for improvement as we find in him, nor with such aspirations, had he not been created for such designs. The Greeks had the right idea of him, when they called him Anthropos. He alone lifts his eye and aspires to the fullest tension of his nature. Probably the sole distinction of his from the brute is that man has the means of gratifying this principle, which is inherent with all life.

Nature acts by mediators. The parent must minister to the physical comfort of the child; and its moral and intellectual nurture is given in charge to no other. As with individuals, so the wave widens to communities. One generation makes the path for another ; and the fashions, the laws, and the social contracts of the next century, are partially moulding in the mind of to-day. We are appointed, then, mediators to those who come after us. When Hector was parting with Andromache, taking in his arms his infant boy Astyanax, he prayed to the Gods that all should cry out, "But this one is much greater than his father Hector ! " May we not offer that prayer and strive in so far as is given us to bring it about.

Very few will deny this statement if it is made in respect of the physical cares of children ; and the principle that the mind is also as well committed to us as the bodily health is more acted on than admitted. We are ready to admit that it is ours to say what Railroads, what Canals our posterity shall have ; but when it is declared that we are now forming the condition of morals, enlightenment, and religious opinions which shall give tone to Virginia in A. D. 2000, why, many will shake their heads distrustfully. Yet, let one of these Didymuses have his word called in question by his son of tender years, and ten to one he will punish him severely; and it will be on this very principle.

This, then, is the relation which has been determined by Nature^ between the penultimate and last layers of the generations of men.

2. This law of nature is a Duty, — With a greater proportion the fact that it is a Law of Nature would imply its being a moral obligation. But there are some who reason differently, although, it may be happily said, there are very few such in this age. They tell us that nature teaches us to live by means of the cruel destruction of life, and such like twaddle, which needs no notice here. But there are very many who will assail the position that it is a demand of nature, by questioning the happiness which it brings, or if it brings any. However incredible it may seem, there have arisen men, even in these last days, who have maintained that ignorance alone is bliss. Such have been the words of some who, by these sentiments, have proven themselves apostates to the highest gift of Heaven to earth. Such men as Wordsworth have joined with Jesuits, albeit from far different motives, in the advocacy of them ; and, we blush as Americans at the fact, our own brightest star, Emerson, has artfully taught the same inhuman, undignified, and contemptible heresy. It may be, seemingly, poetical enough to talk of savage health and simplicity, etc., but it is but half of the truth; and with them it is wilful suppression. To instance : let us read the subjoined extract from Ralph Waldo Emerson's wonderful Essays, which speaks succinctly the ideas of all who think with him.

All men plume themselves on the improvement of society, and no man improves. Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. It undergoes continual changes ; it is barbarous, it is civilized, it is christianized, it is rich, it is scientific; but this is not amelioration. For everything that is given, something is taken. Society acquires new arts and loses old impulses. What a contrast between the well-clad, reading, writing, thinking American, with a watch, a pencil, and a bill of exchange in his pocket, and the naked New Zealander, whose property is a club, a spear, a mat, and an undivided twentieth of a shed to sleep under. But compare the health of the two men, and you shall see that his aboriginal strength the white man has lost. If the traveller tells us truly, strike the savage with a broad axe, and in a day or two the flesh shall unite and heal as if you struck the blow into soft pitch, and the same blow shall send the white to his grave. The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet. He is supported on crutches, but loses so much support of muscle. He has got a fine Geneva watch, but he has lost the skill to tell the hour by the sun. A Greenwich nautical almanac he has, and so being sure of the information when he wants it, the man in the street does not know a star in the sky. The solstice he does not observe; the equinox he knows as little, and the whole bright calendar of the year is without a dial in his mind. His note-books impair his memory; his libraries overload his wit ; the insurance office increases the number of accidents; it may be a question whether machinery does not encumber ; — whether we have not lost by refinement some energy, by a Christianity (intrenched in establishment and forms) some vigor of wild virtue. For every stoic was a stoic; hut in Christendom where is the christian?

Now all this is eloquent and even nobly expressed ; yet it is ignoble, for it is a suppressio veri. Take it, however, with all faith and with its own extent, and it proves merely that by gaining what is the noblest and the divinest, man loses that which pertains to the lower part of his structure, — health of body. And this last must be preferred to the former ! This is a narrow creed, and one which the philanthropist with his three-score years does not hold; we doubt if Emerson does. No, let us know the largest and most spiritual life, even though we live but a brief while ; there is some truth in the apothegm of the ancient writer, that " whom the gods love die young ! " It is a great antithetical truth where that life has been soon yielded by reason of their service.

We gladly turn from such narrow sentiments as those we have cited above — for narrow we must call them, however much we admire the writer of them — to those which follow. They are from a pen as vigorous as the spirit which prompts them is noble.

Why was it that men learned the courses of the stars, and the revolution of the planets, before they found out how to make a good wagon-wheel ? Why did they construct the Roman aqueducts before they constructed a sawmill? Or why did they achieve the noblest models in poetry, in eloquence and in the drama, before they invented movable types? I think we can unriddle this enigma. The labor of the world has been performed by ignorant men !

To move a block of granite weighing 1080 pounds, along the rough floor of the quarry, requires a force equal to 748 pounds, or the strength of several men. To draw it over planks requires 652 pounds. Place the block on a platform of wood, and you can draw it with 606 pounds. Soap the two surfaces of the wood, and 182 pounds would suffice. Use rollers three inches in diameter and 34 pounds would draw it over a stone floor, and 28 over a wooden, whilst on a wooden platform only 22 pounds would be required, which lastly would be reduced to three or four pounds with a railroad. And thus the amount of force necessary to accomplish the purpose is reduced about 200 times, intelligence being necessary at each step to apply^ and much more to invent^ the next successive facility.

If a savage will learn to swim, he can transport a dozen pounds on his back across a narrow body of water. If he will invent an axe, he can use a tree as a float and one of its limbs as a paddle, and can thus transport many times the former weight, many times the former distance. Hollowing out his log, he will increase its capacity still farther. Fastening several trees together, he makes a raft. Turning up the ends of small poles, and grooving them together, or filling the interstices between so as to make them watertight, he brings his rude craft, literally, somewhat into shipshape. Improving upon hull below and rigging above, he makes a proud ship to be wafted by the winds from continent to continent. But even this does not content our adventurous naval architect. He frames iron arms for his ship ; and, for oars, affixes iron wheels capable of swift motion, and stronger than the strong sea. Into iron-walled cavities in her bosom he puts iron organs of massive structure and strength, and of cohesion insoluble by fire. Within these he kindles a small volcano ; and then, like a sentient and rational existence, this wonderful creation of his hands cleaves oceans, breasts tides, defies tempests, and bears its living freight triumphant round the globe. Now, take away intelligence from the shipbuilder, and the steamship — that miracle of human art — falls back into a floating log; — the log itself is lost; and the savage swimmer, bearing his dozen pounds on his back, alone remains.

On the recognized principle, then, that we should feel ourselves morally concerned to prepare our children for the happiest and most useful sphere of action, to thoroughly educate them is our Duty.

3. It is a community'' s best Policy. — Society is a bundle of relations: whatsoever, whether remotely or otherwise, affects one atom of the system, disturbs the whole mass. I put my hand in this lamp beside me, and it is not only my hand that suffers; every nerve of the system is shocked.

Why does society |)unish the criminal ? It is because the security of every other individual is concerned in the crime that has been committed. Society thus in reprobation, acknowledging the existence of these relations in its contract, must recognize them in whatever is promotive of its welfare. The grand proposition here comes up that has been so often reiterated by human lips from the inculcations of God : That it is the interest of every member of a Community that every other member thereof should be educated I

Amongst the very many things wherewith history will delight to honor Massachusetts by the mention of, there will be none greater than the noble, beautiful regard of this in her Constitution. In Chapter Y, Sec. I, Art. I, of that instrument, this paragraph is found : " And whereas the encouragement of arts and sciences, and all good literature, tends to the honor of God, the advantage of the Christian religion, (j|^^) and the great benefit of this and the other United States of America^ it is declared^'' etc., etc. There is no public paper containing any sublimer passage than that on earth. The farthest that any other of the State Constitutions go is to say that the diffusion of enlightenment amongst its citizens should be encouraged, etc., because of its benefit to their State ; very few go even this far ; but old Massachusetts comes forth and puts herself in the position of an individual of a society numbering thirty or more. And when it is recollected that the representatives of the people of Massachusetts Bay adopted their Constitution, containing this sentiment, even so far back as 1780, who wonders that she has gained the title of the "Model State" over the world?