Fifty Years Ago

by Walter Besant

The civil service of the country is no longer in the patronage of the Government. There are few spoils left to the victors; there are no sinecures left; except in the Crown Colonies, there are few places to be given away. It is, however, very instructive to remark that, wherever there is a place to be given away, it is invariably, just as of old, and without the least difference of party, whether Conservatives or Liberals are in power, filled up by jobbery, favouritism, and private interest.

You have been told how they have introduced vast reforms in Law. Prisons for debt have been abolished; yet men are still imprisoned for debt. Happily I know little about the administration of Law. Some time ago, however, I was indirectly interested in an action in the High Court of Justice, the conduct and result of which gave me much food for reflection. It was an action for quite a small sum of money. Yet a year and a half elapsed between the commencement of the action and its hearing. The verdict carried costs. The costs amounted to three times the sum awarded to the plaintiff. That seems to be a delightful condition of things when you cannot get justice to listen to you for a year and a half, and when it may cost a defendant three times the amount disputed in order to defend what he knows—though his counsel may fail to make a jury understand the case—to be just and right. I humbly submit, as the next reform in Law, that Justice shall have no holidays, so as to expedite actions, and that the verdict shall in no case carry costs, so as to cheapen them.

As for our recreations, we no longer bawl comic songs at taverns, and there is no Vauxhall. On the other hand, the music-hall is certainly no improvement on the tavern; the ‘Colonies’ was perhaps a more respectable Vauxhall; the comic opera may be better than the old extravaganza, but I am not certain that it is; there are the Crystal Palace, the Aquarium, and the Albert Hall also in place of Vauxhall; and there are outdoor amusements unknown fifty years ago—lawn tennis, cycling, rowing, and athletics of all kinds.

There has been a great upward movement of the professional class. New professions have come into existence, and the old professions are more esteemed. It was formerly a poor and beggarly thing to belong to any other than the three learned professions; a barrister would not shake hands with a solicitor, a Nonconformist minister was not met in any society. Artists, writers, journalists, were considered Bohemians. The teaching of anything was held in contempt; to become a teacher was a confession of the direst poverty—there were thousands of poor girls eating out their hearts because they had to ‘go out’ as governesses. There were no High Schools for girls; there were no colleges for them.

Slavery has gone. There are now no slaves in Christendom, save in the island of Cuba. Fifty years ago an American went mad if you threw in his teeth the ‘Institution;’ either he defended it with zeal, or else he charged England with having introduced it into the country: in the Southern States it was as much as a man’s life was worth to say a word against it; travellers went South on purpose that they might see slaves put up to auction, mothers parted from their children, and all the stock horrors. Then they came home and wrote about it, and held up their hands and cried, ‘Oh, isn’t it dreadful?’ The negro slavery is gone, and now there is only left the slavery of the women who work. When will that go too? And how can it be swept away?

Public executions gone: pillory gone—the last man pilloried was in the year 1830: no more flogging in the army: the Factory Acts passed: all these are great gains. A greater is the growth of sympathy with all those who suffer, whether wrongfully or by misfortune, or through their own misdoings. This growth of sympathy is due especially to the works of certain novelists belonging to the Victorian age. It is producing all kinds of good works—the unselfish devotion of men and women to work among the poor: teaching of every description: philanthropy which does not stop short with the cheque: charity which is organized: measures for prevention: support of hospitals and convalescent homes: the introduction of Art and Music to the working classes.

All these changes seem to be gains. Have there been no losses?

In the nature of things there could not fail to be losses. Some of the old politeness has been lost, though there are still men with the fine manners of our grandfathers: the example of the women who speak, who write, who belong to professions, and are, generally, aggressive, threatens to change the manners of all women: they have already become more assured, more self-reliant, less deferent to men’s opinion—the old deference of men to women was, of course, merely conventional. They no longer dread the necessity of working for themselves; they plunge boldly into the arena prepared to meet with no consideration on the score of sex. If a woman writes a bad book, for instance, no critic hesitates to pronounce it bad because a woman has written it. Whatever work man does woman tries to do. They boldly deny any inferiority of intellect, though no woman has ever produced any work which puts her anywhere near the highest intellectual level. They claim a complete equality which they have hitherto failed to prove. Some of them even secretly whisper of natural superiority. They demand their vote. Perhaps, before long, they will be in both Houses, and then man will be speedily relegated to his proper place, which will be that of the executive servant. Oh! happy, happy time!

It is said that we have lost the old leisure of life. As for that, and the supposed drive and hurry of modern life, I do not believe in it. That is to say, the competition is fierce and the struggle hard. But these are no new things. It is a commonplace to talk of the leisure and calm of the eighteenth century—it cannot be too often repeated that in 1837 we were still in that century—I declare that in all my reading about social life in the eighteenth century I have failed to discover that leisure. From Queen Anne to Queen Victoria I have searched for it, and I cannot find it. The leisure of the eighteenth century exists, in fact, only in the brain of painter and poet. Life was hard; labour was incessant, and lasted the whole day long; the shopmen lived in the shop—they even slept in it; the mill people worked all day long and far into the night. If I look about the country, I see in town and village the poor man oppressed and driven by his employer: I see the labourer in a blind revenge setting fire to the ricks; I see the factory hand destroying the machinery; I see everywhere discontent, poverty, privilege, patronage, and profligacy; I hear the shrieks of the wretches flogged at the cart tail, the screams of the women flogged at Bridewell. I see the white faces of the poor creatures brought out to be hung up in rows for stealing bread; I see the fighting of the press-gang; I see the soldiers and sailors flogged into sullen obedience; I see hatred of the Church, hatred of the governing class, hatred of the rich, hatred of employers—where, with all these things, is there room for leisure? Leisure means peace, contentment, plenty, wealth, and ease. What peace, what contentment was there in those days?

The decay of the great agricultural interest is a calamity which has been coming upon us slowly, though with a continually accelerated movement. This is the reason, I suppose, why the country regards it with so strange an apathy. It is not only that the landlords are rapidly encountering ruin, that the farmers are losing all their capital, and that labourers are daily turned out of work and driven away to the great towns; the very existence of the country towns is threatened; the investments which depend on rent and estates are threatened; colleges and charities are losing their endowments; worst of all, the rustic, the backbone and support of the country, who has always supplied all our armies with all our soldiers, is fast disappearing from the land. I confess that, if something does not happen to stay the ruin of agriculture in these Islands, I think the end of their greatness will not be far off. Perhaps I think and speak as a fool; but it seems to me that a cheap loaf is dearly bought if, among other blessings, it deprives the countryside of its village folk, strong and healthy, and the empire of its stalwart soldiers. As for the House of Lords and the English aristocracy, they cannot survive the day when the farms cannot even support the hands that till the soil, and are left untilled and uncultivated.