Christians, from the Vatican to the Primitive Methodist conventicle, are all so persuaded of the infallibility of their interpretation of the Scriptures, and are so convinced of the perfect sufficiency of their tenets for the needs of all the world, that they regard difference of opinion as springing from wilful misunderstanding, or from the "evil heart at enmity with God"—a mad doctrine beneath the notice of the average lunatic. Natural variety of intellect, the infinite hosts of personal views, and the infinitude of individual experience—which silently create new convictions—are not taken into account, and conscientious dissent seems to the antediluvian theologian an impossibility. Even the most liberal of eminent Unitarians in England, W. J. Fox, regarded, what we now know as the Agnostic—hesitation to declare as true that which the declarer does not know to be so—as a species of mental disease.
That Kingsley lived in a refracting medium, in which the straightest facts appeared bent when placed in it, was evident when he wrote: "Heaven defend us from the Manchester School, for of all narrow, conceited, hypocritical, and atheistic schemes of the universe the Cobden and Bright one is exactly the worst." There was no reason why Kingsley should be a Chartist, since he had all he wanted secured, and had contempt in his heart for Chartist tenets. He wrote: "The Bible gives the dawn of the glorious future, such as no universal suffrage, free trade, communism, organisation of labour, or any other Morrison pill measure can give." He exulted in the existence of the forces which made against the people. He exclaimed: "As long as the Throne, the House of Lords, and the Press are what I thank God they are!" he was grateful. The state of things which existed, it was the object of Chartism to change.
These rampant ideas of Kingsley were far from being Chartist sentiments. At a meeting in Castle Street, London, the Rev. Charles Kingsley and Mr. Thomas Hughes were present, working men comprising the audience, an old grey-headed Chartist, of a Republican way of thinking, whose experience of monarchy was limited to his share of taxation for its support, hissed at the introduction of the Queen's name. Mr. Hughes, then a young athlete, turned upon the old Six Points politician and said: "Any one who hissed at the Queen's name would have to reckon with him"—meaning that he would knock him down, or put him out of the meeting. If, at a Chartist meeting, one athletic leader had similarly threatened an old grey-headed Royalist who hissed some Republican name, it would have been described, in all respectable papers, as "a ruffianly proceeding." The Hughes incident showed Christian Socialist sympathy with Chartism was not of an enthusiastic character. At other times Mr. Hughes had nobler moods, but he, like Kingsley, had few qualifications for delineating Chartists.
Judge Hughes, like Canon Kingsley and his Christian Socialist colleagues, saw everything in the light of Theology. He saw nothing else by itself. He relates "the appearance of a little grey, shrivelled man at the grave of Mr. Maurice at the cemetery at Hampstead, one of the staff of the leading Chartist newspaper," as a proof of his conversion. This was gratitude, not conversion. Had I not been at the Bolton Co-operative Congress at the time, I should have been at the same grave. When the news came of Maurice's death, it did not occur to his friend, Mr. Neale, that the Congress would pass a resolution in honour of Maurice. I suggested it to him, and he said to me, "You had better draw up the resolution," which I did, and moved it. It was unanimously and gratefully passed. Though I was foremost to express the respect of working men, and the sense of obligation they were under, for Maurice's great services to Co-operation, and his establishment of the Working Men's College, it did not imply that I had come to accept the Thirty-nine Articles. Relevant appreciation, real gratitude, and admiration, do not imply coincidence of opinion on other and alien questions.
How little the creator of Alton Locke was a Chartist, or a sympathiser with Chartism, was seen when he described "Mr. Julian Harney and Feargus O'Connor and the rest of the smoke of the pit." Kingsley said "his only quarrel with the Charter was that it did not go far enough." All his meaning was that it should have comprised social, instead of political reform, which was what all who were opposed to political freedom said. This only meant that he wanted Chartists to take up social, and drop political reform. This appears in the passage in which he said, "The Charter disappointed me bitterly when I read it. It seemed a harmless cry enough, but a poor, bald, constitution-mongering cry as ever I heard. The French cry of organisation of labour is worth a thousand of it."* Organisation of labour is a great thing, but it is not political equality or liberty. Kingsley's Chartist had no political soul.
There is noble sympathy with labour, and there are passages which should always be read with honour in "Alton Locke." But the book is written in derision of Chartism and Liberal politics. Alton Locke himself was like his creator. Kingsley's acts were the acts of a friend, his arguments the arguments of an enemy; and Alton Locke, despite the noble personal qualities with which he is endowed, was a confused political traitor, who bartered the Kingdom of Man for the Kingdom of Heaven, when he might have stood by both.
* Prefatory Memoir, by T. Hughes, p. 16.
So much for the Church Chartist. Now turn to the Positivist Chartist, and see whether there be any backbone of political emancipation in him, or whether his vertebra is of jelly, like Alton Locke's. To the Positivist Chartist is given the stronger name of "Radical."
One of the remarkable volumes George Eliot gave to the world bears the name of "Felix Holt, the Radical." But when she comes to delineate the Radical, he turns out to be a Positivist—of good quality of his kind, but still not a Radical.
As Canon Kingsley drew the Church Chartist, so George Eliot drew the Positivist Radical. Neither drew the selected hero as he was, but as each thought he ought to be.