What the Judge Saw: Being Twenty-Five Years in Manchester by One Who Has Done It

by Sir Edward Abbott Parry

In China I believe nearly all morals are imparted by means of fables, and it is the story-telling department of our early teaching that leaves us with something tangible which we can use in after life as a bobbin whereon to wind the weft of our own thoughts. And this distinction of Pharisee and Publican remains with me so far a reality as to stand for something which the words themselves of course do not mean. They are convenient symbols for the class who want mankind to walk along the

path of mechanical obedience, and the class who are out to realise the best the world can give; the class who condemn themselves and their fellow-creatures as miserable sinners, and the class who not only love to be merry and wise, but are ready to sink a certain amount of wisdom in the interests of merriment. William Fisher, of Mauchline, was a typical Pharisee, and Robert Burns, who immortalised him, was the greatest of the Publicans.

And though I agree that there is no historical fitness in my use of the term Publican, I think the Pharisee is a continuing social type and probably as eternal as the hills themselves. That is to say, it will require some new geological period to shake him off the earth, and he will not depart until he can no longer be of service to the world. For my more recent reading about the Pharisee has led me to modify my childish imaginings. To-day I have a great respect for the Pharisee. I have learned that with all his faults he was a very respectable, classy Israelite. He knew that he was set apart from the common herd, and he was proud to be an abstainer and ascetic, as if these things were good in themselves. His ideal of life was to have a lot of meddling, fussy laws of outward conduct, and not only to obey them scrupulously himself, but to persecute others who did not. Not an amiable character, perhaps, but at least sincere and honest. Moreover, he knew no better. Whether there was the same excuse for the Pharisee of Manchester in the year of our Lord eighteen hundred and ninety is a doubtful point.

Not that I would like to see—​or am likely to see—​a city bereft of Pharisees. A few to sanctify and give general tone and outward respectability are as necessary to Manchester as lace curtains to a suburban villa. My grumble is that in Manchester there are too many Pharisees to the square yard. They capture and run organisations that were made for better things. They make it impossible for the average wicked citizen to take part in their good works, they bring disrepute upon the city by their vagaries on the house-tops, and they rouse up a great deal of hatred, malice, and uncharitableness in fighting with great ability and vehemence against the right of the harmless, necessary citizen to amuse himself in his harmless, necessary way.

Many will remember an historic quarrel between two old friends who were engaged in very doubtful municipal transactions, and how they made it up in a Wesleyan chapel, and one put £50 in the plate as a token of regret for having uttered naughty words about the other. By the more respectable class of Manchester that action was regarded as being a natural and right expression of apology. If it was earnest and sincere it had a folk-lore resemblance, I suppose, to the sacrifice, or burnt offering. By the elect it was quoted as a very beautiful act of retribution. To one like myself, outside the circle, it was not perhaps actual evidence of conspiracy to commit fraud, but it was at least a beacon light warning of a dangerous shore. I remember prosecuting an embezzler at Lancaster who always prayed

with his victims before he took their money. Whalley, the famous Blackburn solicitor, who swindled his hundreds, was a famous prayer-monger, and in all those doubtful societies and associations which are so popular in Lancashire, and through which the savings of the working class are transferred to the pockets of their elders and betters, there is generally a halo of holiness surrounding prominent members of the board. And as long as popular opinion is in favour of the Pharisee, and will invest in his business concerns because he is a Pharisee, so long Manchester, with its simple, saving working class, is bound to have more than her fair share of the race.

It has been a very interesting occupation with me during the last twenty-five years to watch the constant dispute between the Pharisee and the average citizen, and though the contest is by no means over yet, I am glad to be able to chronicle that up to now the Pharisee is several down. And that phrase reminds me of his attitude towards Sunday golf. The Pharisee, of course, did not want to play golf on Sunday, but a large majority of golfing citizens did, therefore it was an evil thing to do, and they must be protected against themselves. At one club where a meeting was held and feeling ran rather high, a humorist moved as an amendment “That Sunday golf be not compulsory.” The leading Pharisee—​the sect have no sense of humour—​protested eloquently that no body of men could compel him to play golf. The humorist drily pointed out to him that a careful reading of the proposed rule would

show that they did not intend to compel him. Then, amidst laughter and cheers, it became a rule of the club, and, as far as I know, it is a rule to this day.

What an excellent, sane rule it is. Your Pharisee is always compelling you not to do this and not to do the other. What a calm, dignified way of meeting him—​to place on record the common law of the land that Sunday golf is not compulsory. Of course, Sunday golf won all along the line, one reason being that golf is a rich man’s amusement, and that young Master Pharisee, when he was down from Oxford, would have a round with his friends on Sunday afternoon, and that made the governor’s position peculiarly ridiculous. But wait until the working classes demand their outdoor amusements on the Sabbath, and you will see a gathering of the sect worthy of Manchester in the palmiest days of Pharisaism.

The fight over the Sunday papers had been fought and won before I came to Manchester, but I remember a little skirmish started by Canon Nunn in the form of a protest made against the boys shouting papers on Sunday. Now, town noises are most people’s aversion, and if this had been a real attack on unnecessary noise it would have been reasonable enough. But it did not seek to stop Church bells or boys shouting papers on Monday or Tuesday, and was really only an effort to inconvenience those who preferred to read the sermons of Hubert by their own fireside rather than to listen to the parsons in an uncomfortable church. The Sunday