A hundred years hence a newspaper of our own day will be unearthed to tell future generations of a City Council refusing supplies for continuing the great work that these city fathers started with their own monies. Could we to-day from a far richer Manchester and far wealthier citizens obtain hereditary subscribers at forty guineas apiece for a new theatre or opera house or art gallery, if such were required in Manchester? It is at least doubtful.
Two other announcements that cannot rightly be evidence of human progress, but which may make us worthily envious of the good old days that are gone:—at the Theatre Royal, Mr. Matthews is playing in “The Road to Ruin” and the musical farce of “The Bee Hive,” and on Wednesday he will have a benefit with three musical farces including “The Review.” It would be worth owning one of Mr. Wells’s time machines to take the chance of dropping into Manchester in 1824, if only to go to the Royal and see the show. And here is another echo of glad tidings. “We have been informed that the author of Waverley has contracted with his bookseller to furnish him with three novels a year for three years, and that he is to have ten thousand pounds a year for the supply, and that four novels have actually been delivered as per contract.”
When one reads an announcement such as that, and thinks of the joy of unpacking the parcel of books when it arrives, and cutting and reading three new masterpieces a year hot from the press, the novel reader of to-day may be excused if he sighs over a golden age that will never return. Nevertheless, man cannot live by Waverley novels alone; and what is this we read a little lower down the column? “Average price of corn from the returns received in the week ending January 10:
Wheat, 57s. 4d.”
Of a truth in essential things the tide has flowed steadily in the right direction since this year of 1824, and is not on the turn—as yet.
KISSING THE BOOK.[4]
“The evidence you shall give to the Court touching the matter in question shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth—So help you God.”
The Oath.
When the clerk in an English Court of Justice administers the usual oath, he finishes with the words “Kiss the Book,” spoken in an imperative mood, and if the witness shows any hesitation in carrying out the unsavoury ceremony, he does his best to compel performance. The imperative mood of the clerk has not, to my thinking, any legal sanction. Kissing the Book is not, and never has been, as far as I can learn, a necessary legal incident of the oath of a Christian witness or juror. Why, then, does the twentieth-century Englishman kiss the Book by way of assuring his fellow-citizens that he is not going to lie if he can help it? The answer is probably akin to the answer given to the question: “Why does a dog walk round and round in a circle before he flings himself upon the hearth-rug?” Naturalists tell us that it is because the wild dog of prehistoric days made his bed in the contemporary grass of the forest after that fashion. Both man and dog are victims of hereditary habit. Probably the majority of men and dogs never consider for a moment how they came by the habit. But when, as in the case of kissing the Book, the habit is so insanitary, superstitious and objectionable, it is worth a few moments to consider its history, origin, and practical purpose, and then to further consider whether mankind is not old enough to give it up, and whether we should not make an effort at reform in the healthy spirit that a growing schoolboy approaches the manly problem of ceasing to bite his nails.