But it is now time to undertake a more particular criticism of "Darkest England." At the outset of my examination of that work, I was startled to find that Mr. Booth had put forward his scheme with an almost incredibly imperfect knowledge of what had been done and is doing in the same direction. A simple reader might well imagine that the author of "Darkest England" posed as the Columbus, or at any rate the Cortez, of that region. "Go to Mudie's," he tells us, and you will be surprised to see how few books there are upon the social problem. That may or may not be correct; but if Mr. Booth had gone to a certain reading-room not far from Mudie's, I undertake to say that the well-informed and obliging staff of the national library in Bloomsbury would have provided him with more books on this topic, in almost all European languages, than he would
read in three months. Has socialism no literature? And what is socialism but an incarnation of the social question? Moreover, I am persuaded that even "Mudie's" resources could have furnished Mr. Booth with the "Life of Lord Shaftesbury" and Carlyle's works. Mr. Booth seems to have undertaken to instruct the world without having heard of "Past and Present" or of "Latter-Day Pamphlets"; though, somewhat late in the day, a judicious friend calls his attention to them. To those of my contemporaries on whom, as on myself, Carlyle's writings on this topic made an ineffaceable impression forty years ago, who know that, for all that time, hundreds of able and devoted men, both clerical and lay, have worked heart and soul for the permanent amendment of the condition of the poor, Mr. Booth's "Go to Mudie's" affords an apt measure of the depth of his preliminary studies. However, I am bound to admit that these earlier labourers in the field laboured in such a different fashion, that the originality of the plan started by Mr. Booth remains largely unaffected. For them no drums have beat, no trombones brayed; no sanctified buffoonery, after the model of the oration of the Friar in Wallenstein's camp dear to the readers of Schiller, has tickled the ears of the groundlings on their behalf. Sadly behind the great age of rowdy self-advertisement in which their lot has fallen, they seem not to have advanced one whit
beyond John the Baptist and the Apostles, 1800 years ago, in their notions of the way in which the metanoia, the change of mind of the ill-doer, is to be brought about. Yet the new model was there, ready for the imitation of those ancient savers of souls. The ranting and roaring mystagogues of some of the most venerable of Greek and Syrian cults also had their processions and banners, their fifes and cymbals and holy chants, their hierarchy of officers to whom the art of making collections was not wholly unknown; and who, as freely as their modern imitators, promised an Elysian future to contributory converts. The success of these antique Salvation armies was enormous. Simon Magus was quite as notorious a personage, and probably had as strong a following as Mr. Booth. Yet the Apostles, with their old-fashioned ways, would not accept such a success as a satisfactory sign of the Divine sanction, nor depart from their own methods of leading the way to the higher life.
I deem it unessential to verify Mr. Booth's statistics. The exact strength of the population of the realm of misery, be it one, two, or three millions, has nothing to do with the efficacy of any means proposed for the highly desirable end of reducing it to a minimum. The sole question for consideration at present is whether the scheme, keeping specially in view the spirit in which it is to be worked, is likely to do more good than harm.
Mr. Booth tells us, with commendable frankness, that "it is primarily and mainly for the sake of saving the soul that I seek the salvation of the body" (p. 45), which language, being interpreted, means that the propagation of the special Salvationist creed comes first, and the promotion of the physical, intellectual, and purely moral welfare of mankind second in his estimation. Men are to be made sober and industrious, mainly, that, as washed, shorn, and docile sheep, they may be driven into the narrow theological fold which Mr. Booth patronizes. If they refuse to enter, for all their moral cleanliness, they will have to take their place among the goats as sinners, only less dirty than the rest.
I have been in the habit of thinking (and I believe the opinion is largely shared by reasonable men) that self-respect and thrift are the rungs of the ladder by which men may most surely climb out of the slough of despond of want; and I have regarded them as perhaps the most eminent of the practical virtues. That is not Mr. Booth's opinion. For him they are mere varnished sins—nothing better than "Pride re-baptised" (p. 46). Shutting his eyes to the necessary consequences of the struggle for life, the existence of which he accepts as fully as any Darwinian,* Mr. Booth tells men, whose evil case is one of those consequences, that envy is a corner-stone of our