IV.—Very Broad Views.
SIR CHARLES STERLING, Mr. Joshua Hale,
and others continued the conversation interrupted
by the minister's exit. What was to
be done with Ginx's Baby? In the great
dissected map of society what niches were cut
out for him and all like him to fill? Most of
the politicians were for leaving that to himself
to find out. The term "law of supply and
demand'' was freely bandied between them,
as it is in many journals nowadays, with little
object save to shut up avenues of discussion
by a high-sounding phrase.
Then of these "statesmen,'' most clung, if
not to self-interest, to personal crotchets.
What is more darling to a man than the child
of his intellect or fancy? How the poor
poetaster hugs his tawdry verses as if they
were the imperial ornaments of genius! Just
in the same way does the politician love the
policies himself hath devised, pressing them
forward at all hazards, while he is blind to the
utility of others. This is the basis of that
aspect of selfishness which often mars in the
approbation of a country a really honest
statesmanship—an egotistic tenacity of one's
own creature as the best, which yet is not
the criminal selfishness of ambition. Still
that egotism is not seldom disastrous to the
people's interests. While these statesmen
nursed their own bantlings and held them up
to national notice, they were apt to avoid or
too lightly regard the views of men as able
as themselves. For instance, Joshua Hale—
who is far above these remarks generally—
had put forth a scheme for the solution of the
St. Helena property question—very likely a
good one, albeit revolutionary, and nothing
would convince him that any other could
succeed. He wished every man in St. Helena
—a turbulent adjunct of the British Empire—
to be a landowner, and I do think, neither
desired nor hoped that any man in that island
should be happy until he was one. Yet there
were other men ready to offer simpler remedies,
and to prove that if every man in St.
Helena became a landowner it would become
a very hell upon earth, and more unmanageable
than it was before. If these gentlemen do
not sacrifice their pet fancies for the sake of a
settlement, what will become of St. Helena?
Just now they were discussing Ginx's Baby.
One thought that repeal of the Poor-Laws and
a new system of relief would reach his case
another saw the root of the Baby's sorrow
in Trades' Unions; a third propounded coöperative
manufactures; a fourth suggested
that a vast source of income lay untouched in
the seas about the kingdom, which swarmed
with porpoises, and showed how certain parts
of these animals were available for food,
others for leather, others for a delicious oil
that would be sweeter and more pleasant
than butter; a fifth desired a law to repress
the tendency of Scotch peers to evict tenants
and convert arable lands into sheep-walks
and deer-forests; a sixth maintained that
there were waste lands in the kingdom of
capacity to support hungry millions. In fact
earth, heaven, and seas were to be regenerated
by Act of Parliament for the benefit
of Ginx's Baby and the people of England.
Sir Charles listened impatiently, and at last
burst forth again.
He said: "When you consider it, what
we are all trying to do nowadays is—vulgarly—
to improve the breed; but we go to
work in a round-about way. At the outset
we are met by the depreciated state of part
of the existing generation; and one problem
is to prevent these depreciated people
from increasing, or to get them to increase
healthily. No one seems to have gone
directly to such a problem as that. The
difficulties to be faced are tremendous. Your
dirtiest British youngster is hedged round
with principles of an inviolable liberty and
rights of Habeas Corpus. You let his father
and mother, or any one who will save you
the trouble of looking after him, mould him
in his years of tenderness as they please.
If they happen to leave him a walking invalid,
you take him into the poorhouse; if
they bring him up a thief, you whip him
and keep him at high cost at Millbank or
Dartmoor; if his passions, never controlled,
break out into murder and rape, you may
hang him, unless his crime has been so
atrocious as to attract the benevolent interest
of the Home Secretary; if he commit
suicide, you hold a coroner's inquest, which
also costs money; and however he dies you
give him a deal coffin and bury him. Yet
I may prove to you that this being, whom
you treat like a dog at a fair, never had
a day's—no, nor an hour's—contact with
goodness, purity, truth, or even human
kindness; never had an opportunity of
learning anything better. What right have
you then to hunt him like a wild beast,
and kick him and whip him, and fetter
him and hang him by expensive complicated
machinery, when you have done
nothing to teach him any of the duties of
a citizen?''
"Stop, stop, Sir Charles! you are too
virulent. There are endless means of improving
your lad—charities without number—''
"Yes, that will never reach him.''
"Never mind, they may, you know. Industrial
schools, reformatories, asylums, hospitals,
Peabody-buildings, poor-laws. Everybody
is working to improve the condition of
the poor man. Sanitary administration goes
to his house and makes it habitable.''
"Very,'' interjected Sir Charles Sterling,
dryly.
"Factory laws protect and educate factory
children—''
"They don't educate in one case out of
ten. They don't feed them, clothe them,
give them amusement and cultivation, do
they?''
"Certainly not—that would be ridiculous.''
"Why, the question is whether that would
be ridiculous!'' replied Sir Charles. "I do
not say it can be done, but in order to transform
the next generation, what we should
aim at is to provide substitutes for bad
homes, evil training, unhealthy air, food and
dulness, and terrible ignorance, in happier
scenes, better teaching, proper conditions
of physical life, sane amusements, and a
higher cultivation. I dare say you would
think me a lunatic if I proposed that Government
should establish music-halls and gymnasia
all over the country; but you, Mr.
Fissure, voted for the Baths and Washhouses.''
"Who's to pay for all this?'' asked Mr.
Fissure, pertinently.
"The State, which means society, the
whole of which is directly interested. I tell
you a million of children are crying to us
to set them free from the despotism of a
crime and ignorance protected by law.''
"That is striking; but you are treading
on delicate ground. The liberty of the
subject—''
"Exactly what I expected you to say.
These words can be used in defence of
almost any injustice and tyranny. Such
terms as `political economy,' `communism,'
`socialism,' are bandied about in the same
way. Yet propositions coming fairly within
these terms are often mentioned with approval
by the very persons who cast them
at you. In a report of a recent Royal Commission
I find that one of the Commissioners
is quite as revolutionary as I am. He says
it is right by law to secure that no
child shall be cruelly treated or mentally
neglected, over-worked or under-educated.
Some people would call that communism, I
fancy. But I think him to be correct as a
political economist in that broad proposition.
Why? Because a child's relation to the State
is wider, more permanent, and more important
than his relation to his parents. If he is
in danger of being depreciated and damned
for good citizenship, the State must rescue
him.''
"A paternal and maternal government
together!'' cries Lord Namby—"a government
of nurses. You know I should like to
stop the production of children among the
lower orders. Your propositions are far in
advance of my radicalism. The State must
sometimes interfere between parent and child;
for instance, in education or protection from
cruelty. But, if I understand you, you actually
contemplate a general refining and
elevation of the working class by legislative
means.''
"Assuredly: I should aim to cultivate their
morals, refine their tastes, manners, habits.
I wish to lift from them that ever-depressing
sense of hopelessness which keeps them in the
dust.''
"So do most men; but you must do that
by personal and private influences, not by
State enactments. How would you do it?''
"How? I think I could draw up a programme.
For instance: Expatriate a million
to reduce the competition that keeps poor
devils on half-rations or sends them to the
poorhouse; Take all the sick, maimed, old, and
incapable poor into workhouses managed by
humane men and not by ghouls; Forbid such
people to marry and propagate weakness;
Legislate for compulsory improvements of
workmen's dwellings, and, if needful, lend
the money to execute it; Extend and enforce
the health laws; Open free libraries and places
of rational amusement with an imperial
bounty through the country; Instead of
spending thousands on
dilettanti sycophants
at one end of the metropolis, distribute your
art and amusement to the kingdom at large;
The rich have their museums, libraries, and
clubs, provide them for the poor; Establish
temporary homes for lying-in women; Multiply
your baths and washhouses till there is
no excuse for a dirty person; Educate; Provide
day schools for every proper child, and
industrial or reformatory schools for every
improper one; Open advanced High Schools
for the best pupils, and found Scholarships
to the Universities; Erect other
schools for technical training; Offer to teach
trades and agriculture to all comers for nothing—
you would soon neutralize your bugbear
of trades-unionism; Teach morals, teach
science, teach art, teach them to amuse themselves
like men and not like brutes. In a
land so wealthy the programme is not
impracticable, though severe. As the end to be
attained is the welfare of future generations,
no good reason could be urged why they
should not contribute towards the cost of it
—a better debt to leave to posterity than the
incubus of an irrational war.''
Will any sane political practitioner wonder
to be told that at the end of this harangue
the smoking-room party broke up, and that
some, as they laughed good-humoredly over
Sterling's
egregia, recalled the number of
glasses of inspirited seltzer swallowed by the
orator? He was so far in advance of the most
radical reformer that there was no hope of
overtaking him for an era or two: so they
determined to fancy they had left him behind.
