The more we look into the question, the more weight, I think, we shall attach to individual exertion. Take it in all its branches. Consider the most remarkable impulse ever given to the energies of Europe—the Crusades. It was an aggregate of individual impulses. Every strong and enterprising man felt that it was a matter which concerned his own soul. It was not only that he was to cause something to be done for the great object, but, if possible, he was to do it himself. A Crusade against Misery is called
for now; and it will only be carried on successfully by there being many persons who are ready to throw their own life and energy into the enterprise. Mere mercenary aid alone will never do it.
Look, moreover, at what one man can do. A Chatham springs into power, and we are told that down to the lowest depths of office a pulsation is felt which shows that there is a heart once more at the summit of affairs. The distant sentinel walks with a firmer tread on the banks of the Ebro, having heard that the Duke has arrived at head quarters. So, throughout. Every where you find individual energy the sustaining power. See, in public offices, how it is the two or three efficient men who carry on the business. It is when some individuals subscribe largely in time, thought, and energy, to any benevolent association that it is most like to prosper—for then it most resembles one powerful devoted man. The adding up of many men’s indolence will not do. You think, perhaps, listless man of rank or wealth, that your order
sustains you. Short time would it do so, but for the worthy individuals who belong to it, and who, at the full length of the lever, are able to sustain a weight which would throw the worthless, weightless men into air in a minute.
In the above cases it has been one man wielding much power; but in the efforts that are wanted to arrest the evils which we have been considering, the humblest amongst us has a large sphere of action. A provident labouring man, for example, is a blessing to his family and to his neighbours; and is thus doing what he best can, to relieve even national distress.
It is a total mistake to bring, as it were, all the misery and misfortune together, and say, now find me a remedy large as the evil, to meet it. Resolve the evil into its original component parts. Imagine that there had been no such thing as the squandering, drinking, absentee Irish landlords we read of in the last generation—do you suppose that we should have as many inhabitants
in St. Giles’s, and the Liverpool cellars, to look after now? So, with the English landlords and manufacturers of that time, see what a subtraction from the general mass of difficult material there would have been, if those men had done their duty. But you will say we are still talking of bodies. Imagine, then, that during the last generation there had been the energetic efforts of individuals in these bodies, that there are now, directed to the welfare of the people under them. It would, no doubt, have been a great easement of the present difficulty. Any body who does his duty to his dependents keeps a certain number out of the vortex; and his example is nearly sure to be followed, if he acts in an inoffensive, modest fashion. Dr. Arnott has shown what great things may be done in the way of ventilation by individual employers. See what benefit would arise if only some few builders, taking to heart the present miserable accommodation for the poor, which few know better than they do, would, in their building enterprises, speculate also in houses of the
smaller kind, and take a pride in doing the utmost for them.
One might easily multiply instances where individual exertion would come in; but each man must in some measure find out the fit sphere of action for him. “The Statesman” tells us that the real wealth of a state is the number of “serviceable” minds in it. The object of a good citizen should be to make himself part of this wealth. Let him aid where he can in benevolent associations, if well assured of their utility, and at the same time mindful of the duty of private endeavour; but do not let him think that he is to wait for the State’s interference, or for co-operation of any kind. I do not say that such aids are to be despised, but that they are not to be waited for, and that the means of social improvement are in every body’s hands. For warfare, men are formed in masses, and scientific arrangement is the soul of their proceedings. But industrial conquests and, especially, the conquests of benevolence, are often made, here somewhat
and there somewhat, individual effort struggling up in a thousand free ways.