But let it be said, and said boldly, that these men’s conduct in the matter of Sanitary Reform seems at least to show that they value virtue, not for itself, but for its future rewards. To the great majority of these men (with some heroic exceptions, whose names may be written in no subscription list, but are surely written in the book of life) the great truth has never been revealed, that good is the one thing to be done, at all risks, for its own sake; that good is absolutely and infinitely better than evil, whether it pay or not to all eternity. Ask one of them: “Is it better to do right and go to hell, or do wrong and go to heaven?”—they will look at you puzzled, half angry, suspecting you of some secret blasphemy, and, if hard pressed, put off the new and startling question by saying, that it is absurd to talk of an impossible hypothesis. The human portion of their virtue is not mercenary, for they are mostly worthy men; the religious part thereof, that which they keep for Sundays and for charitable institutions, is too often mercenary, though they know it not. Their religion is too often one of “Loss and Gain,” as much as Father Newman’s own; and their actions, whether they shall call them “good works” or “fruits of faith,” are so much spiritual capital, to be repaid with interest at the last day.
Therefore, like all religionists, they are most anxious for those schemes of good which seem most profitable to themselves and to the denomination to which they belong; and the best of all such works is, of course, as with all religionists, the making of proselytes. They really care for the bodies, but still they care more for the souls, of those whom they assist—and not wrongly either, were it not that to care for a man’s soul usually means, in the religious world, to make him think with you; at least to lay him under such obligations as to give you spiritual power over him. Therefore it is that all religious charities in England are more and more conducted, just as much as those of Jesuits and Oratorians, with an ulterior view of proselytism; therefore it is that the religious world, though it has invented, perhaps, no new method of doing good; though it has been indebted for educational movements, prison visitations, infant schools, ragged schools, and so forth, to Quakers, cobblers, even in some cases to men whom they call infidels, have gladly adopted each and every one of them, as fresh means of enlarging the influence or the numbers of their own denominations, and of baiting for the body in order to catch the soul. A fair sample of too much of their labour may be seen anywhere, in those tracts in which the prettiest stories, with the prettiest binding and pictures, on the most secular—even, sometimes, scientific—of subjects, end by a few words of pious exhortation, inserted by a different hand from that which indites the “carnal” mass of the book. They did not invent the science, or the art of story-telling, or the woodcutting, or the plan of getting books up prettily—or, indeed, the notion of instructing the masses at all; but finding these things in the hands of “the world,” they have “spoiled the Egyptians,” and fancy themselves beating Satan with his own weapons.
If, indeed, these men claimed boldly all printing, all woodcutting, all story-telling, all human arts and sciences, as gifts from God Himself; and said, as the book which they quote so often says: “The Spirit of God gives man understanding, these, too, are His gifts, sacred, miraculous, to be accounted for to Him,” then they would be consistent; and then, too, they would have learnt, perhaps, to claim Sanitary Science for a gift divine as any other: but nothing, alas! is as yet further from their creed. And therefore it is that Sanitary Reform finds so little favour in their eyes. You have so little in it to show for your work. You may think you have saved the lives of hundreds; but you cannot put your finger on one of them: and they know you not; know not even their own danger, much less your beneficence. Therefore, you have no lien on them, not even that of gratitude; you cannot say to a man: “I have prevented you having typhus, therefore you must attend my chapel.” No! Sanitary Reform makes no proselytes. It cannot be used as a religious engine. It is too simply human, too little a respecter of persons, too like to the works of Him who causes His sun to shine on the evil and the good, and His rain to fall on the just and on the unjust, and is good to the unthankful and to the evil, to find much favour in the eyes of a generation which will compass sea and land to make one proselyte.
Yes. Too like the works of our Father in heaven, as indeed all truly natural and human science needs must be. True, to those who believe that there is a Father in heaven, this would, one supposes, be the highest recommendation. But how many of this generation believe that? Is not their doctrine, the doctrine to testify for which the religious world exists, the doctrine which if you deny, you are met with one universal frown and snarl—that man has no Father in heaven: but that if he becomes a member of the religious world, by processes varying with each denomination, he may—strange paradox—create a Father for himself?
But so it is. The religious world has lost the belief which even the elder Greeks and Romans had, of a “Zeus, Father of gods and men.” Even that it has lost. Therefore have man and the simple human needs of man, no sacredness in their eyes; therefore is Nature to them no longer “the will of God exprest in facts,” and to break a law of nature no longer to sin against Him who “looked on all that He had made, and behold, it was very good.” And yet they read their Bibles, and believe that they believe in Him who stood by the lake-side in Galilee, and told men that not a sparrow fell to the ground without their Father’s knowledge—and that they were of more value than many sparrows. Do those words now seem to some so self-evident as to be needless? They will never seem so to the Sanitary Reformer, who has called on the “British Public” to exert themselves in saving the lives of thousands yearly; and has received practical answers which will furnish many a bitter jest for the Voltaire of the next so-called “age of unbelief,” or fill a sad, but an instructive chapter in some future enlarged edition of Adelung’s “History of Human Folly.”
All but despairing, Sanitary Reformers have turned again and again to her Majesty’s Government. Alas for them! The Government was ready and willing enough to help. The wicked world said: “Of course. It will create a new department. It will give them more places to bestow.” But the real reason of the willingness of Government seems to be that those who compose it are thoroughly awake to the importance of the subject.
But what can a poor Government do, whose strength consists (as that of all English Governments must) in not seeming too strong; which is allowed to do anything, only on condition of doing the minimum? Of course, a Government is morally bound to keep itself in existence; for is it not bound to believe that it can govern the country better than any other knot of men? But its only chance of self-preservation is to know, with Hesiod’s wise man, “how much better the half is than the whole,” and to throw over many a measure which it would like to carry, for the sake of saving the few which it can carry.
An English Government, nowadays, is simply at the mercy of the forty or fifty members of the House of Commons who are crotchety enough or dishonest enough to put it unexpectedly in a minority; and they, with the vast majority of the House, are becoming more and more the delegates of that very class which is most opposed to Sanitary Reform. The honourable member goes to Parliament not to express his opinions, (for he has stated most distinctly at the last election that he has no opinions whatsoever), but to protect the local interests of his constituents. And the great majority of those constituents are small houseowners—the poorer portion of the middle class. Were he to support Government in anything like a sweeping measure of Sanitary Reform, woe to his seat at the next election; and he knows it; and therefore, even if he allow the Government to have its Central Board of Health, he will take good care, for his own sake, that the said Board shall not do too much, and that it shall not compel his constituents to do anything at all.
No wonder, that while the attitude of the House of Commons is such toward a matter which involves the lives of thousands yearly, some educated men should be crying that Representative institutions are on their trial, and should sigh for a strong despotism.
There is an answer, nevertheless, to such sentimentalists, and one hopes that people will see the answer for themselves, and that the infection of Imperialism, which seems spreading somewhat rapidly, will be stopped by common sense and honest observation of facts.