In the earlier meetings of the Family Council, rules were sometimes laid down for their own guidance. Some of the brothers took too little heed to what they said before outsiders; and, when politics or religion was the subject of talk, forgot that they were schoolmasters, and spoke out with the freedom of men. The Council accordingly passed the following resolution: “It is our opinion that when anyone, by announcing an opinion, or by a mode of expression, has startled his hearers, that circumstance is a strong presumptive proof that he has done an injury to himself.” This is worthy of La Rochefoucauld himself, and yet it was but little acted on, it would seem, by some of the members. Rowland Hill, writing to one of his brothers about the time when this resolution was passed, says: “In making your own conduct conform to that which we all agree to be right, you exercise a degree of self-control which no other member of the family has ever evinced.” It was to this rule, I have no doubt, that he was referring. At another meeting of the Council, I find it recorded: “It is desirable to settle how far perfection of speculative opinion should be sacrificed to practical effect.” The question, I fear, remains unsettled to the present day.
[FAC-SIMILE OF LETTER.]
[FAC-SIMILE OF LETTER.]
This curious league of the brothers was due to many causes. From childhood they had been steadily trained up in it by their parents. They had long lived all together under the same roof. The eldest son, who left home at an earlier age than any of the rest, did not finally quit it till he was six-and-twenty. Each had a thorough knowledge of the character of all the rest, and this knowledge resulted in thorough trust. They had all come to have a remarkable agreement on most points—not only of principle, but also of practice. The habits of one, with but few exceptions, were the habits of all. He who had ascertained what one brother thought on any question would not have been likely to go wrong, had he acted on the supposition that he knew what was thought by all. They were all full of high aims—all bent on “the accomplishment of things permanently great and good.” There was no room in their minds for the petty thoughts of jealous spirits. Each had that breadth of view which enables a man to rise above all selfish considerations. Each had been brought up to consider the good of his family rather than his own peculiar good, and to look upon the good of mankind as still higher than the good of his family. Each was deeply convinced of the great truth which Priestley had discovered, and Bentham had advocated—that the object of all government, and of all social institutions, should be the greatest happiness of the greatest number for the greatest length of time. In their youth their aims were often visionary; but they were always high and noble. If they were daring enough to attempt to improve mankind, they were, at all events, wise enough to begin their task by setting about to improve themselves. One of the brothers had by nature a hot temper. He was, as a boy, “jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel.” He was the first of them “deliberately and seriously to adopt the maxim which treats all anger as folly.... Having arrived at a principle, and that while yet a youth, he strove earnestly, and with great success, to reduce it to practice.” Certainly his latter years were all placidity. Another brother had convinced himself “that men become what they are, not of themselves, but by birth, education, fellowship, and other such influences; and, therefore, he regarded the slightest approach to vindictive feeling as both wrong and foolish.” Whatever wrongs he has suffered through life—and he has had his share—he has never suffered the pure benevolence of his soul to be for one moment clouded over by resentment. In truth, they all, at all times, with set purpose, aimed at placing themselves under the guidance of reason.
They had all been trained by their father from their earliest years to reason, and to reason not for victory but for truth. As the family day by day gathered for its meals—meals of the most frugal kind, where, for many years, nothing stronger than water was drunk—there was often held a debate on—
“Labour and the changing mart,
And all the framework of the land.”
In this debate all, parents and children alike, were on an equality. Age was never put forward as a substitute for argument. There had been little timidity in any of them in their early days, and little fear of pushing any principle to its extreme consequences. “Keble,” writes Dr. Newman,[67] “was a man who guided himself and formed his judgments, not by processes of reason, by inquiry, or by argument, but, to use the word in a broad sense, by authority.” Rowland Hill, and the other members of his family, were the exact opposite of Keble. They cared nothing for authority in the sense in which Dr. Newman uses the word. On reason, inquiry, and argument, and on them alone, were their judgments formed.