Prose remains of Arthur Hugh Clough, with a selection from his letters and a memoir

by Arthur Hugh Clough

A CONSIDERATION OF OBJECTIONS AGAINST THE RETRENCHMENT ASSOCIATION AT OXFORD DURING THE IRISH FAMINE IN 1847.

The first obvious, and, if sound, obviously fatal, objection to this Association, is directed not against the intention, but against the means employed. Why associate? Cannot we be temperate without joining a temperance society? cannot we give alms without printing our names?

To those who think and speak thus, may it not be said, If you think thus, and speak thus, then do thus? It is by no means the object to form a great joint-stock charity-doing monopoly: the more numerous and the more active those are whose names do not appear, the better satisfied, I am sure, will be those whose names do appear. If you do not like charity by association, see that private charity is energetic; and those you complain of will not complain of you.

But I think they will flatter themselves that at the same time your private efforts will be powerfully seconded by the organisation you dislike. Will it not be easier for you to retrench now that retrenchment is not likely to be mistaken? Breakfast parties, and wine parties, &c., &c., are as it were the currency of hospitality: you cannot alter this ‘coin of the realm’ of entertainments without coming to some common understanding. And to come to that common understanding some degree of undesirable publicity may surely be endured.

A second objection, of a different kind, rests upon the statement that a great number of undergraduates receive no fixed allowance from home: what they do not spend, they do not receive. Of course in those cases, where all that can be saved is welcome at home, nothing further can be said: no retrenchment can be urged, because it is presumed no retrenchment can be made. In all others may it not be asked, Is it true that you have not, in point of fact, what comes to the same thing as an allowance? a sum of money which you are expected to call for, beyond which you are expected not to go, and up to which you would think yourself justified in spending for your own gratification? The sum which last year the paternal purse would have freely given for ices, will it this year refuse for almsgiving? What with a safe conscience you would have asked for then, will not your conscience suffer you to petition for now? But be this as it may—for economy is a duty towards friends and parents sadly enough neglected in Oxford—one thing may and must be said. Do not, in the name of common sense, first refuse to give, because the money is not yours, and then go and spend on yourself, because it is your father’s.

You are not called upon, you think, to be your father’s almoner: he is his own almoner: let it be so. But may it not be at this season permitted you to strengthen his hands in this capacity? Will not the money which your economy here will leave at his disposal, find its way, think you, into the hands and mouths and hungry stomachs, if not of Irish, yet of English labourers? We shall find, I think, soon, some reason to believe that for the sake of all it is at this present time most incumbent on all, if not to give, at any rate not to consume. Why are operatives out of work in Yorkshire and Lancashire? Why are farm labourers receiving in these midland and southern counties wages at all times small, at this time and with these prices of corn, barely enough to keep soul and body together? why is not work, more and more than enough, provided, as was expected, by railways? Pendent opera interrupta. Why—why is it, or how? Not because there is no useful work to be done; no orders from abroad for cotton goods; no agricultural improvements possible; no lines of railway worth the making. No. Why indeed, or how, but because there is not money to pay the expenses of the working; to buy cotton for the operatives to turn into calicoes; to buy tiles for draining; or iron and bricks and mortar for railways. God, by a sudden visitation, has withdrawn from the income He yearly sends us in the fruits of His earth, sixteen millions sterling. Withdrawn it, and from whom? On whom falls the loss? Not on the rich and luxurious, but on those whose labour makes the rich man rich and gives the luxurious his luxury. Shall not we then, the affluent and indulgent, spare somewhat of our affluence, curtail somewhat of our indulgence, that these (for our wealth too and our indulgence in the end) may have food while they work, and have work to gain them food? He who at this moment saves money (I say not to send to Skibbereen, but) to lay out in some profitable investment, to lend to master manufacturers for buying cotton, or landlords for draining, or railway companies for excavating—yes, he who but buys into the funds, does more a great deal—yea, more, as something is more than nothing, as plus is more than minus, than he who spends, albeit for the benefit of the trade, in wines, and ices, and waistcoats.

So is it, as a general rule, and must be; he who eats his cake cannot have it; he who saves it may change it for bread, and that bread may maintain men at work. So is it as a general rule: yet there are surely modifications. And here we come to the great objection, ‘the tradesman’s’ objection I may call it, which is the most important by far of all that have been urged against this system of retrenchment. You are taking the bread out of the mouths not of ‘wealthy tradesmen’ only, but ‘wealthy tradesmen’s’ far-from-wealthy work-people. Do you think all that tailoring, and man-millinery making, that cooking, and that horse-tending, that serving and waiting was done by nobody? Will nobody stand idle and hungry, because you have changed your mind? Had you not, as it were, rung your bell for them, and now when they wait your commands have you nothing to say? Had you not, in point of fact, engaged their service, and now do you, without warning, dismiss them? If they suffer by it, are you not in the wrong? If they starve, is not yours the guilt? Doubtless, indeed, if in this country any man in any place starve, a verdict of guilt, less or greater, must I fear be brought, not, as in Irish juries, against Lord John Russell, but against the wealthy and luxurious of this wealthy and luxurious land. ‘We are verily guilty concerning our brother, in that we saw the anguish of his soul when he besought us and we would not hear.’ Their suffering is on our heads. But the question is, Who had best suffer? those who are working to bring things right, or those whom we could not save from suffering without crippling our means for all? Which must be put on shortest allowance, the able soldier or the camp-follower? Which must be dismissed, in this household that must be reduced, the farm labourers or the valets and lady’s-maids?

Surely Irish newspapers long ere this should have made us see how reproductive labour differs from unreproductive. Most true it is that the indulgences of Members of this University are the means of providing a livelihood for a large staff of shopkeepers and shopkeepers’ work-people, tailors and confectioners, ostlers and waiters. Most true it is. Yet except for the mere enjoyment so received by us, the customers, our money is a mere waste. We are employing for our enjoyments men who might, by devoting their skill and their strength to the farm, the factory, the ship, and the railway, increase our stock of food, and our facilities for obtaining and transmitting it. Or, ultimately, if useful employment fail here, we should have money in our hands for removing superfluous labourers to a field where not labourers but land is superfluous.

At no time whatever, I believe, can our large expenditure upon objects of luxury be justified: at a time like this, when we know that wages paid to those who work in the farm and the factory will bring us corn, while wages paid to Oxford tradesmen will only increase our own useless consumption, I see not how any doubt can be felt.

The ship is stranded and short of provisions, but a port full of supplies is at hand; and they who control the matter will not victual the boat’s crew that should go to obtain them, because forsooth it would straiten the allowance of their cabin boys, and cooks, and waiters. And that these forsooth may earn their food, and their masters have an excuse for feeding them, these masters bid them continue their functions—consume precious flour in pies and pasties—precious meats in wasteful made dishes—for their own over-eating. Alas, that mutato nomine de nobis fabula narratur.