"You have the Rochdale store as yet,
Where has the Rochdale workshop gone?
Of two such lessons why forget
The nobler and the manlier one?"
Saying this cost me their cordiality and their gratitude; but I cared for the principle and for the future, and was consoled.
In every party, the men who made it great die, and leave no immediate successors. But in time their example recreates them. But at the Jubilee of 1892, they had not re-appeared, and those who had memories and gratitude were dead. I spoke over the grave of Cooper, of Smithies, of Thomas Livesey—John Bright's schoolfellow—the great friend of the dead Pioneers saying:—
"They are gone, the holy ones,
Who trod with me this lovely vale;
My old star-bright companions
Are silent, low and pale."*
The question arises, does this kind of experience justify a person in deserting his party?
The last incident and others preceding it are given as instances of outrage or neglect, which in public life explain ignominious desertion of principle. I have known men change sides in Parliament because the Premier, who had defect of sight, passed them by in the lobby without recognition. I have seen others desert a party, which they had brilliantly served, because their personal ambition had not been recognised. Because of this I have seen a man turn heels over head in the presence of Parliament, and land himself in the laps of adversaries who had been kicking him all his life.
If I did not do so, it was because I remembered that parties are like persons, who at one time do mean things, but at other times generous things.
* "History of Rochdale Pioneers, 1844-1892" (Sonnenschein).
Besides, a democratic party is continually changing in its component members, and many come to act in the name of the movement who are ignorant of its earlier history and of the obligation it may be under to those who have served it in its struggling days. But whether affronts are consciously given or not, they do not count where allegiance to a cause is concerned. Ingratitude does not invalidate a true principle. When contrary winds blow, a fair-weather partisan tacks about, and will even sail into a different sea where the breezes are more complacent. I remained the friend of the cause alike in summer and winter, not because I was insensible to vicissitudes, but because it was a simple duty to remain true to a principle whose integrity was not and could not be affected by the caprice, the meanness, the obliviousness, or the malignity of its followers.
Such are some of the incidents—of which others of more public interest may be given—of the nature of bygones which have instruction in them. They are not peculiar to any party. They occur continually in Parliament and in the Church. I have seen persons who had rendered costly service of long duration who, by some act of ingratitude on the part of the few, have turned against the whole class, which shows that, consciously or unconsciously, it was self-recognition they sought, or most cared for, rather than the service of the principle they had espoused.