A letter from Bernard Shaw advising him to get up certain details asks the question of whether the workman at Port Sunlight would forfeit his benefits and savings should he leave. "If this is so," wrote Shaw, "then, though Lever may treat him as well as Pickwick would no doubt have treated old Weller, if he had consented to take charge of his savings, Lever is master of his employee's fate, and captain of his employee's soul, which is slavery." He went on to offer financial help in fighting the case. The "Christian Commonweal" had reported Chesterton's speech and was also threatened with the law. To the editor G. K. wrote:
Only a hasty line to elongate the telephone. I am sorry about this business for one reason only; and that is that you should be even indirectly mixed up in it. Lever can sue me till he bursts: I'm not afraid of him. But it does seem a shame when I've often attacked you (always in good faith and what was meant for good humour), and when you've heaped coals of fire by printing my most provocative words, that your chivalry should get you even bothered about it. I am truly sorry and ask pardon—of you, but not of old Sun and Soapsuds, I can tell you.
Another very hasty line about the way I shall, if necessary, answer; about which I feel pretty confident. I should say it is absurd to have libel actions about Controversies, instead of about quarrels. It would mean every Capitalist being prosecuted for saying that Socialism is robbery and every Socialist for saying property is theft. By great luck, the example lies at the threshold of the passage quoted. The worst I said of Port Sunlight was that it was a slave-compound. Why, that was the very phrase about which half the governing class argued with the other half a few years ago! Are all who called the Chinese slaves to be sued by all who didn't? Am I prosecuted for a terminology . . . enough, you know the rest. Go on with the passage and you will see the luck continues. Abrupt, brief, and perhaps abbreviated as my platform answer was, it really does contain all the safeguards against imputing cruelty or human crime to poor Lever. It defines slavery as the imposition of the master's private morality; as in the matter of the pubs. It expressly suggests it does not imply cruelty: for it goes out of its way to say that such slaves may be better off under such slavery. So they were, physically, both in Athens and Carolina. It then says that a merely mystical thing, which I think is Christianity, makes me think this slavery damnable, even if it is comfortable. I would defend all this, as a lawful sociological comment, in any Court in civilisation.
I tell you my line of defence, to use discreetly and at your discretion. If the other side are bent on fighting, I should reserve the defence. If they seem open to reason, I should point out that it is on our side.
His old schoolfellow Salter was also his solicitor and a letter to
Wells shows in part the advice Salter gave.
DEAR WELLS,
I am asked to make a suggestion to you that looks like, and indeed is, infernal impudence: but which a further examination will rob of most of its terrors. Let not these terrors be redoubled when I say that the request comes from my solicitor. It is a great lark; I am writing for him when he ought to be writing for me.
In the forthcoming case of Lever v. Chesterton & Another, the Defendant Chesterton will conduct his own case; as his heart is not, like that of the lady in the song, Another's. He wants to fight it purely as a point of the liberty of letters and public speech; and to show that the phrase "slavery" (wherein I am brought in question) is current in the educated controversy about the tendency of Capitalism today. The solicitor, rather to my surprise, approves this general sociological line of defence; and says that I may be allowed one or two witnesses of weight and sociological standing—not (of course) to say my words are defensible, still less that my view is right—but simply to say that the Servile State, and Servile terms in connection with it, are known to them as parts of a current and quite unmalicious controversy. He has suggested your name: and when I have written this I have done my duty to him. You could not, by the laws of evidence, be asked to mix yourself up with my remarks on Lever: you could only be asked, if at all, whether there was or was not a disinterested school of sociology holding that Capitalism is close to Slavery—quite apart from anybody. Do you care to come and see the fun?
Yours always,