“A savage Horde, among the civilized,
A SERVILE BAND among the LORDLY FREE.”
is a perilous experiment. If you do not look after them, rely on it they will look after you, and when it is “too late,” you will deeply regret your ruinous economy, and short-sightedness, in not doing what you could to soften their manners, and make them less brutal, and also to qualify them for the Suffrage by wisely proffering these young Mohawks and Ojibbeways of Lisson Grove especially, INTELLECTUAL IMPLEMENTS AND TOOLS.
In 1858 the rental of the Parish of St. Marylebone, assessed to the poor rate, was valued at £911,570; this sum at one halfpenny in the pound, produces £1,899 2s. 1d. To speak of an education-rate like this as an infliction, to describe such an impost as a heavy tax, is mere rant, and to talk about the thin end of the wedge, or the “last feather,” &c., is a mischievous abuse of language. The inestimable good of Public News Rooms and Lending Libraries, will, despite heavy platitudes and dreary sophistries, win their way. Take honest pride in being able to say: I helped by my vote to secure to St. Marylebone this incalculable benefit, which would be confined to no one class exclusively, but which would be every man’s possession and every man’s right. That will be a Waterloo day in the social annals of St. Marylebone, when guided by this magnificent idea, you wisely determine to establish so excellent an Institution. To such societies as the Workman’s Institute, 209, Euston Road, and the All Souls’ Mutual Improvement, Great Portland Street, and to the “Patrons” of Sir Benjamin Hall’s Pet, rickety bantling, in Gloucester Place, now happily defunct, to which I refer, on account of the confusion it caused as a sham of the first class, To friends of Progress, like Lord Shaftesbury, [13a] Lord Overstone, Mr. Robert Hanbury, and Mr. J. Payne, it is fit a few words of remonstrance should be addressed. Why, year after year repudiate,—why perversely ignore the Public Libraries Act? Why disquiet yourselves in vain? Why set up your puny wisdom against that of Parliament? Why seek to bolster up ill managed, cliquish, moribund Institutes? Why this morbid, excessive anxiety to Patronize? That Patron system so fatal to self-respect, produces sycophants, not men.
The Rector of All Souls candidly admitted his Institution was in articulo mortis, and that the higher classes took no interest in this weak, sickly infant. No doubt the object is good, but how far wiser for the District Rectors to take up the amended Act, which applies “to Parishes.” Take it up NOT in a carping, criticising, fault finding spirit, but rather SUPPLEMENT it, by Concerts, Readings, and Lectures. G. Montague Davis, Esq., whose recitations exhibit so much cleverness, informs me, London Lecturers, of no mean talent, would gladly deliver a course at the St. Marylebone Public Library. [13b] Supplement it with Recreation and Refreshment Rooms. Never forget the scope and design of the Act is to ATTRACT, NOT to repel, to AMUSE, as well as to instruct, the people. I will assume that you have carried the Act:—that is a good work, but I warn you it is not sufficient. The Legislature tells you to do the best you can with this enabling Act. Supplement it then by all means, and make the avenues and approaches to your News Rooms pleasant and entertaining. You will never attract the men of fustian jackets, and horny hands, unless you can combine amusement with instruction. I grant that newspaper reading, as the most effective instrument of public instruction, should be encouraged as much as possible, but it is no easy matter to go from ten and twelve hours work in search of useful knowledge. You must provide good and cheap Recreation. I entertain serious misgivings that additional Church Accommodation is NOT the most pressing question of the day. There is a taste to be formed, and a mind to be humanized by enjoyment, before Church or Chapel services can be relished. No doubt books and papers are attractive, but I am pleading for the man wearied and exhausted by a day of toil. In a café, in the Rue de la Roquette, near the Place de la Bastille, Paris, I observed fifty ouvriers in blouses playing at billiards. All appeared to be innocently enjoying themselves; why not? There is no necessary connexion between billiards and gambling, and the question arises if the Club, or Billiard room is beneficial or allowable to the Gentleman, why not also to the Working Man?
To successfully combat the allurements of cabarets and gin palaces, you must “compel” men to visit your News Rooms by the force of superior attraction.
There is “REST” enough, too much, already. Nothing breaks the low and grovelling monotony of “the Pious Public House.” No healthier pursuit interferes with the recreation supplied by the tap-room, or the sanded parlour. You must tempt people into churches—the arguments of fear have not succeeded in making them frequented. The excitements you employ are not sufficient to attract the poor to your benches—try the effect of supplementing the Act, as I have briefly indicated—take it up in this wise temper, and you will have no dismal failures to lament.
Gentlemen, it is related of the Emperor Augustus—it was the glory of his reign—that he found Rome brick, and that he left it marble. Let it be your higher aim, your nobler distinction, that you found the people ignorant, and that you left them INSTRUCTED—that you found them wholly untaught in political and social science, [15] and that you left them INTELLIGENT—that you found the gates of the temple of knowledge closed to the toiling classes, and that you OPENED THEM TO ALL!
Gentlemen, I belong to no Party, but I will yield to none in my earnest desire to thoroughly RESTORE and REPAIR the venerable Fabric of the Constitution, and to put the Representation of the People on a firm basis, and to have a House of Commons for the common people. I am for a more comprehensive franchise than the symbolical one of lath and plaster. I would give a vote to every man certified as competent to READ and WRITE. I prefer a representation of INTELLIGENT MEN to any Franchise that can be devised. What claim has an illiterate hind to the Elective franchise? Not the slightest. You put a dangerous weapon into his hand of the use of which he is ignorant. The Suffrage is a TRUST, and a man wholly uninstructed is unqualified to exercise it. Philosophers laugh at manhood suffrage de se, and ask why should not such a franchise include women?
I am of opinion that a Reading and Writing qualification is fairer and more equitable, and affords as good a security for an honest vote, as any £ s. d. franchise whatever. With an untaxed Press, with Knowledge set free, with cheap and good Literature, such a suffrage could not fail to stimulate the popular education. I have no faith in a £6 or a £5 franchise, unless it is annexed with a reading certificate, and to make no provision for a £10 or £12 Lodger Franchise, as Mr. James proposes, seems mean popularity-hunting, and like a determination on the part of Lord John Russell to ignore the claims of a very large and respectable class in St. Marylebone, and other Metropolitan Parishes, because they are quiet and not demonstrative. But such palpable injustice cannot be endured for ever. That “ugly rush,” predicted by Mr. Henley, may yet come; for there is always danger of convulsion when large bodies of men are insulted, and deprived of their just political rights, in order to please the rampant, degenerate Earl Grey, the rank Tory Dictator, alias Renegade Whig, Earl Derby, or such a loud, noisy Declaimer, as Sir E. Bully Lytton, M.P.
This Hertfordshire Baronet has taken so prominent a part in the play of Reform, in the character of “THE RENEGADE—an English Liberal,” that it becomes a duty to briefly criticize the performance. If there is one spectacle more humiliating, or one sight sadder than another, it is that of beholding a man of letters, and of unquestionable ability, laboriously using his talents as a cloak of maliciousness, and ungratefully reviling that democracy which gave him bread, and raised him to power. “Et tu, Brute!” Why, a more grossly insulting, unpatriotic speech never issued from the lips of the most rabid Tory! Can it be possible that “England and the English” was written by the “Poverty and Passion” Orator? Quantum mutatus! “How is the gold become dim! How is the most fine gold changed!” How unlike that Bulwer who discoursed so eloquently of the rights of man—of man as a greater name than President, or King!