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

by Sir Edward Abbott Parry

Bret Harte:

“Further Language from Truthful James.”

There are some who think that in Manchester the Caucasian is very much played out, but I am not of their number. I look back on the past history of the city and compare it with the present, and am still of opinion with Richard Cobden that Manchester is the place for all men of bargain and business. The gambling trade in bills no doubt belongs to London, but the real trade of making, collecting, and selling belongs to Manchester. For Manchester is the place where people do things.

It is good to talk about doing things, but better still to do them. As a great teacher used to say to his art students: “Don’t talk about what you are going to do—​do it.” That is the Manchester habit. And in the past through the manifestation of this quality the word Manchester became a synonym

for energy and freedom, and the right to do and to think without shackles.

And as I say, there are some who think that the days of freedom and energy are gone, and that Manchester is “left as a cottage in a vineyard, as a lodge in a garden of cucumbers,” but I refuse to be of their party. For as I have read of the past, so I look round and see here to-day the old eternal fight going on, the contest between those who think anything is good enough for Manchester and those who think nothing is too good for Manchester. For these contending spirits are the Genii fighting over the soul and the body of the Master of the Event.

And anon you find the good spirit in the ascendant, and a citizen raises an Owens College or a Whitworth Gallery or a Rylands Library that the name of Manchester may be magnified, and again the Evil Genie has gained the day and hardened the hearts of the rulers of the city, and they can only sit and talk and talk about necessary libraries and art galleries, having altogether lost the Manchester habit of doing them. And to those who are in despair about the hopelessness of the fight, let me recall that delightful American parable dear to my childhood, the Story of the two Frogs. There were, as I remember, two frogs who visited a dairy. One was an optimist and the other a pessimist. And the latter fell into a milk-can and swam about, gazing despondently at the shiny sides up which he could not crawl, and at last feebly ceased to struggle and sank to the bottom and was drowned. Now the optimist frog also fell

into a milk-can, and he too looked up at the shiny sides of the can, but he kept a good heart, and all through the night swam and kicked and struggled, until in the early dawn he found himself at the bottom of the can sitting on a pat of butter.

That kind of spirit is not only to be found in frogdom. Richard Cobden had it, and calls it Bonapartian, “a feeling that spurs me on with the conviction that all the obstacles to fortune with which I am impeded will (nay shall) yield if assailed with energy.” That is the true Manchester spirit, and it is not dead to-day.

And to my thinking, if you want to realise fully the wonderments that trade and commerce could produce if they would, turn into the real Manchester Cathedral—​not the parish church which belongs to the past—​but the Cathedral of to-day in Deansgate, the Rylands Library. Around you, seated in their stalls, are the great prophets and preachers of the world, clothed in glorious but perfectly legal vestments, not thrusting their messages uncivilly toward you, but waiting in dumb dignity until you feel worthy to approach and learn. And for my own part to reach one of those side niches, those pleasant pastures of study, harbours of letters in quiet creeks away from the main stream of the library, is to arrive at the haven where I would be. I do not grudge another his ritual and his music, and the sing-song of his priest. I only know that I feel better without them. For in this building I find an odour of sanctity not always to be found in churches.