LIFE AND LETTERS

OF

GEORGE JACOB HOLYOAKE

(1903.)

H

LIFE AND LETTERS

OF

GEORGE JACOB HOLYOAKE

BY

JOSEPH McCABE

M

AUTHOR OF "PBTBR ABKLARD," "TALLEYRAND," ETC.

WITH TWO PHOTOGRAVURE PORTRAITS AND EIGHT
OTHER PORTRAITS AND ILLUSTRATIONS

VOL. I

[ISSUED FOR THE RATIONALIST PRESS ASSOCIATION, LTD.]

LONDON :

WATTS & CO.,
17, JOHNSON'S COURT, FLEET STREET, E.C.

1908

DA

We*

v.\

INTRODUCTION

THE invitation to write an Introduction to Mr.
McCabe's Life of George Jacob Holyoake I accept with
the greater readiness because I have been privileged
to see some of the proofs of the work, and I recognise
that in this biography the author confers upon us all
a notable service. He sets his hero in a true historical
environment, full of interest and enlightening. Here
we see how that wonderful character was formed and
developed which excited, in those of us who knew
Holyoake well, constant wonder and admiration.

My own knowledge of Holyoake goes farther back
than the date he has recorded in his diary as the time
when our acquaintance commenced, and which soon
ripened into a life-long friendship. It was in the early
fifties, when Holyoake was seeking to establish Secular-
ism by lectures, followed by open discussions, that
I first met him. I was then a youth of fifteen or six-
teen twenty years younger than Holyoake. Living
in Manchester, where the ardent political and social
movements of the mid-century had found their utmost
development, I was full of burning interest in public
questions. My early upbringing as a Unitarian had
given me freedom from prejudice against free and open
discussion of the questions upon which Holyoake came
to Manchester to lecture. But my education among the
Quakers had impressed me strongly with a spiritual view

INTRODUCTION

of things, religious and philosophical. I regularly attended
the lectures of Holyoake, Charles Bradlaugh(" Iconoclast"
as he was then announced), and other Secularist speakers.
I was attracted only by Holyoake. The others seemed
to me to strive for mastery in debate at any cost. Holy-
oake always appeared to seek first the victory of truth.
He held his own opinions strongly and tenaciously no
one more so ; but he always was anxious that there
should be fair consideration of all that could be said on
both sides of a question. He left upon his hearers an
impression of judicial impartiality. Such, at all events,
was that which he made upon me ; and the favourable
feeling comes back always as I think of our first meet-
ings. Mr. Holyoake would not of course remember,
but I naturally do so, that I timidly took my turn in the
open discussions which always followed the Secularist's
lectures. This gave me a second impression not less
favourable than the first. Holyoake treated all his
opponents in debate with such sweet courtesy and con-
sideration as are not easy to describe. The qualities
which Christians are proud to associate with the character
of a Christian gentleman were all embodied and illus-
trated in Holyoake's manner to those who discussed with
him. Some of his critics, I regret to add, displayed such
striking contrast of behaviour that it was quite common
to hear the remark in the audience that the lecturer
against Christianity seemed the truer Christian.

When I came afterwards to be closely associated with
Holyoake, in the Union and Emancipation movement,
the struggle for the political enfranchisement of the
masses, and, above all, in the great Co-operative move-
ment, I soon found that his devotion to truth was linked
to another high quality which I believe was the central
feature in his character. He was mentally brave to the
extent of absolute fearlessness. This was the more

INTRODUCTION vii

remarkable because the physical man looked sadly frail.
Slight of frame, refined of feature, weak of voice, Holy-
oake lacked all the physical advantages possessed by
such men as John Bright, Daniel O'Connell, Charles
Bradlaugh, Feargus O'Connor, and other leaders of men
I have known. Yet he would face hostile crowds and
speak out his message to them with unflinching serenity.
He would converse with bishops and distinguished
theologians with perfect respect and appreciation, but
also with perfect openness and candour in the expression
of his own views. It was this absolute fearlessness and
sincerity which eventually won for him the regard and
esteem of all thoughtful men of all schools in religion
and politics.

His career was one long conquest of self, in remark-
able ways. He was not an ascetic by nature. He had
strong social instincts. He longed for affectionate
regard, for consideration and friendship. Yet he took
up unpopular causes from first to last, and persisted in
their advocacy in spite of averted faces or angry looks
all around him. He loved comfort, ease, and innocent
recreations, and he fully appreciated the pleasures of the
table. But during three-fourths of his life he deliberately
sacrificed all chance of enjoyments of the kind. In the
pages which follow this Introduction, Mr. McCabe draws
a true and graphic picture of the sad existence which
Holyoake condemned himself to lead until long past
middle life. The marvel was to note how the struggles,
the pitiful pinches, the sad home losses, the desertions
of friends, the ingratitudes all seemed to temper and
sweeten the man. He never lost his sense of humour,
his keen enjoyment of wit, his happy appreciation of
men and things. His wife engaged a Salvation lass for
a domestic servant. The girl told Mr. Holyoake, with
a natural smack of self-appreciation, that she had " got

viii INTRODUCTION

religion." " Very good," he replied, " but do you sweep
clean under the mats ? "

In British movements we seem to reproduce naturally
our two-party system. It has been so in all the many
causes with which I was associated with Holyoake for
over forty years. It was noticeable in every case how
Holyoake naturally seemed to become the champion of
the section which was likely to suffer oppression or want
of just consideration. Probably this instinctive spirit
of knight-errantry was the key to a good deal in his
career. He who sets out to fight all along the line for
the weak will naturally encounter rough times. Holy-
oake did not escape. Even in the Co-operative movement
he found himself often on the unpopular side, but he
faced the music whether it played high or low, sweet or
menacing.

I have mentioned his physical frailty. He twice
practically lost his power of eyesight. He was often
hurt in the streets by drivers who did not recognise his
defect of vision. Yet his vitality was phenomenal.
It remained with him to an age far beyond the usual
years of men. To the last he was happy, cheerful, clear
in mind, industrious to a degree, precise in work and
method, scrupulously exact in fulfilling engagements
and discharging obligations. He seemed to have
acquired the entire control of himself, and so achieved
the highest victory man can win.

EDWD. OWEN GREENING.
January z, 1908.

CONTENTS

CHAP. PAG.-:

I. EARLY YEARS I

II. GROWTH IN POLITICAL CONSCIOUSNESS . . 1 8

III. THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ROBERT OWEN . . 37

IV. TRIAL AND IMPRISONMENT . . . . . 62
V. THE END OF OWENISM 88

VI. INTO A WIDER SPHERE 113

VII. FROM CHARTISM TO LIBERALISM . . . . 133

VIII. THE LEADER AND THE NEW ENVIRONMENT . .153

IX. EARLY CO-OPERATION AND CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM . 177

X. THE FOUNDING OF SECULARISM . . . . 199

XI. RELATIONS WITH MAZZINI AND OTHER REFUGEES . 228

XII. THE FIGHT FOR A CHEAP PRESS .... 257

XIII. POLITICAL AND SOCIAL ACTIVITY (1850-1860) . 279

XIV. THE GARIBALDI LEGION 307

XV. SECULARIST VICISSITUDES AND CO-OPERATIVE

PROGRESS 334

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PHOTOGRAVURE PORTRAIT OF G. J. HOLYOAKE TAKEN
IN 1903 (Frontispiece}.

PORTRAIT OF MR. HOLYOAKE TAKEN IN 1847.
PORTRAIT OF MR. HOLYOAKE TAKEN IN 1876.
PORTRAIT OF MR. HOLYOAKE TAKEN IN 1882.
THE ROCHDALE PIONEERS.

LIFE AND LETTERS OF

GEORGE JACOB HOLYOAKE

CHAPTER I

EARLY YEARS

GEORGE JACOB HOLYOAKE was born on April i3th,
1817, and died on January 22nd, 1906. Between those
two dates lies one of the most adventurous and profitable
stretches of social development that the world has ever
traversed, and its story is in many respects the story of
Holyoake. He became an "agitator," and his figure is
discovered at all times somewhere in the van of nearly
every progressist movement, to use his phrase, of his
stirring age.

He has himself described a few of the more patent
symptoms of social agitation that alarmed England in
the very year of his birth, but he does not seem to have
observed that he was brought into a world so fretful in
its misery that its rulers had withdrawn its most sacred
civic right. The Habeas Corpus Act had been sus-
pended a few weeks before his birth. For nearly a
generation the bond of patriotic feeling had held rich
and poor together in a common hatred of the French.
When that bond was undone, by the fall of Napoleon,
they fell wide apart. In the north, troops of famished
workers, their haggard faces lit by a desperate anger,
walked the streets and lanes with a laconic " Bread or

VOL. I. B

EARLY YEARS

Blood " on their rough banners. In the south, noble-
men and statesmen recalled over their wine the stories
that had been told them by fugitives from France in
1789. At a very early age Holyoake came to accept,
and he never abandoned, the Owenite principle that
"a man's character is made for him, not by him."
There was much to be said for it as a theory of his own
character of agitator.

Looking back from the heights of our comparative
peace and prosperity to-day, we can easily understand
the melancholy situation into which England had fallen
at that time. Hardly had men hauled down the gay
bunting, that had covered the land like a holiday-coat
after Waterloo, when the industrial rebound set in ; and
on the suffering ranks of the workers was thrown a
further army of disbanded soldiers and sailors and
makers of war-material. Men had time and cause
enough to think of England, and brood over the changes
that had for some time been undoing the old order of
industry. The enclosure of the commons more than
six million acres were enclosed during the reign of
George III and the concentration of agrarian capital
had unseated the cheerful yeoman, and turned him into
a sullen peasant. The home-industries, by which the
mother and daughter had so long eked out the scanty
wage of the father, were unable to compete with the
diabolical engines of the mills. Indeed, these same
engines were invading the country, and the use of agri-
cultural machinery was making strong arms idle and
strong hearts bitter. Wheat ran up (in 1816) from
52^. 6d. to I03J. In their bare, overcrowded cottages
they were dragging out a joyless existence on a thin diet
of the coarsest bread and turnips and potatoes.

When they set out in hope for the new manufacturing
centres, they found pale and infuriated groups of workers

EARLY YEARS

cursing the new conditions of industry. Philosophers
were talking with enthusiasm of their beneficent yoking
of the great wild forces of nature in the service of
humanity. It had brought strange fortune to most of
them. Employers had noticed that a child could, with
sufficiently vigilant supervision, control the tamed ener-
gies of the machine ; and children were plentiful. A
crude system of poor-relief had encouraged the multipli-
cation of infants, in wedlock and out of it. Poor-law
guardians had large numbers of orphans, or reputed
orphans, on their hands, and soon the tumbrils rolled
northward in all haste with their loads of timid, wide-
eyed children for the mills. Stunted, worn, ill-fed boys
and girls of eight years often enough of seven, and
sometimes six were handed over to the manager. By
working them fourteen hours a day (in most cases),
herding them like sheep, and feeding them like pigs
but less abundantly, as their fat was not marketable
ojie could make much money. The natives were com-
pelled to offer their own children. Their wage was one
penny a day, and they brought down the parent's wage
to a shilling. A family could live, and meet its patriotic
share in the new national debt of ^860,000,000, on less
than ten shillings a week. In cellars without windows
for windows were taxed and without drains, where
doctor must pick his way warily to the bed of the fever-
patient, two or three families could keep each other
warm of a winter's night

So England was lit up at night by burning ricks, and
gangs of black-faced men broke into the mills and
wrecked the machinery and scattered the cloth along the
lanes, and troops of dragoons coursed in every direction.
The town-jails were full of Luddites : the country-jails
with men who had tried to snare a rabbit for their starv-
ing families, A grim, lean, cadaverous-tinted people

EARLY YEARS

looked with wild glare on the stately mansions of the old
gentry and the flashing palaces of the new rich. Sons
of cotton-spinners and squires met on the moors in broad
daylight for exercise in cavalry manoeuvres and swinging
of sabres. It was rumoured that their place was taken
at night by ghostly bands with pikes and scythes.
Land-owners sat uneasily in the London clubs, and
looked out for the latest coaches from the north. From
Manchester came, a month before Holyoake's birth, the
thrilling story of the March of the Blanketeers. Three
hundred half-starved men had set out to march on
London, with blankets rolled up on their backs and
" long knives" long enough to cut their barley-bread
with hidden about their ragged persons: twenty of
them had pushed through the screen of cavalry as far as
Leek. l ' The March of the Marseillais, " nobles feverishly
whispered. From the Midlands came the news of "the
Derbyshire Insurrection " : which was happily stamped
out by eighteen dragoons. Other insurrections were
reported from other parts : generally by Government-
agents, who found them profitable.

The Government concluded that at least there was
ground enough for a revolution in the state of the
country. In March (1817) the Habeas Corpus Act was
suspended, and His Majesty's officers were empowered
to imprison any subject they thought fit, without a trial.
The village-orators of the Hampden clubs restrained
their sparkling flow. Even sturdy Cobbett fled to
America, and for a time one missed the sight of the
farm or factory-workers gathering in the barn or the
public-house by candle-light round some literate youth
who read out to them the sonorous appeals of the
Weekly Register, which they had pooled their farthings to
purchase. All cowered before "a tyranny not ex-
ceeded by any of the monarchs of the Holy Alliance."

EARLY YEARS 5

The dull-felt simmering and the occasional bubble alone
told the temper of the nation.

Into this seething world was Holyoake born, two
years after Waterloo and two years before Peterloo. He
has written so fully, and with such charm, about the
scene of his early years that there is little more to
be told, and certainly no pleasanter way of telling it. 1
His parents lived above the too common level of priva-
tion, but close enough to it indeed they soon sank
quite to it to make him feel very early the need of
agitators. His earliest recollections were of a quiet,
well-ordered, and happy home. It was the first house in
an almost rural little street (Inge St.) that is now in the
heart of the dark blot on the map that stands for modern
Birmingham. St. Martin's spire rose above the trees
close by, and the green fields of Warwickshire spread
almost to the door. In a few years he would hear the
place ring with the roar of heated crowds and the dread
clatter of cavalry, but as yet it had the drowsy stillness
of an old-time village. A few doors away lived a wart-
witch, a keen-eyed old lady, who peeped out between
green-silk curtains, thriving in the interregnum between
persecution and science. His maternal grandfather was
the parish-beadle, and wore a long blue coat with brass
buttons, during official hours and when he was reading
his Bible, and carried an imposing japanned staff.
George often proudly made the round of the graves with
him, and went with him to his garden up the Bristol
Road at five in the morning, and lit his pipe for him
with laborious flint and steel, and brimstone-match of
" satanic fumes." His paternal grandfather he never

1 The account will be found most conveniently in the earlier chapters
of his Sixty Years of an Agitators Lift, though I have generally drawn on
earlier documents. He was the second child and eldest son in a family
of thirteen.

EARLY YEARS

saw. Losses of business he had had a position of some
small value unsettled him and drove him to the north.

The boy saw little of his father in the early years.
Men often worked in those days from five in the
morning until nine at night, with no half-day on
Saturdays, and his father was a valued worker and
foreman in a large foundry. His children saw him on
Sundays, when he would don his drab breeches and
long boots with white tops. He was a grave, kindly,
thoughtful man : quite unlettered, but with intelligence,
a feeling of dignity, a strong silent will, and more than
ordinary skill at his work. He was never addressed by
his fellow- workers in the familiar terms they used to
each other, and he quietly neglected the customary
ritual of homage to the masters. He had "a pagan
mind," complying without a word in religious usages,
but apparently thinking that Providence was so very
exacting in the duties of this world that, if one attended
soberly and well to these, one could not be far astray.

The mother was more actively religious in feeling.
She was equally strong in character, and had a good
share of practical capacity. Before her marriage she
had one of the home-workshops that then abounded in
Birmingham, and she kept it for some years after George
Jacob's birth. With so many children to rear, she still
controlled the business of making horn-buttons in the
adjacent shed, until the larger methods of industry
destroyed it. She was one of the last in Birmingham to
surrender.

The joint industries and sober habits of his parents
brought comfort to the home in his childhood. The
year of his birth was a black one in the annals of
Birmingham. The cessation of the demand for war-
material had caused distress in the iron-trade, and at
the same time the quartern loaf went up to is. $\d., and

EARLY

potatoes to is. zd. per peck. Even the skilled artisan,
whose wage was two or three times that of the factory-
hand, had little luxury beyond his large family in those
days. However, the children could help in the button-
making, as George Jacob very quickly learned to do,
and they lived well. He retained to the end a boyish
recollection of stealing down one night to contemplate a
sucking-pig, flanked by toothsome auxiliaries, in pre-
paration for a festive supper. It was not until his
twelfth year that their circumstances were straitened.
But he was a delicate boy. His death was periodically
shifted a few years ahead by the elderly prophets of the
place : though few of their grand-children can have lived
to hear of it. It is clear that he was thoughtful beyond
his years and full of nervous energy.

Of his early education there is little to be said. Most
of the children of his class still educated themselves and
each other on the streets until their eighth or ninth year,
when they became workers. But the school-question
was taking shape. Sydney Smith said that " there was
no other Protestant country in the world where educa-
tion was so grossly and infamously neglected as in
England," and philosophers and statesmen were trying
to work out the problem, how far it was possible to
reduce the criminality and coarseness of the people by
schooling without giving them ideas " beyond their
station in life." The Quaker Lancaster had founded
the British and Foreign School Society in 1814 ; and
its menace to the Church, with its undenominational
teaching, was met by Dr. Bell's " National Society for
promoting the education of the poor in the principles of
the Established Church." Robert Owen and his fol-
lowers had initiated experiments in secular education.
Vast numbers of Sunday Schools gave instruction
though of that, Mr. Kay says, " it will be most charitable

EARLY YEARS

to say little " and many widows and other dames, who
could read a little, and sometimes even write, earned a
slender living by joining in the work.

The historian of Birmingham boasts of the schools of
his town. About 1820 it had one blue-coat school, one
National and one Lancastrian school representing what
the wags called " the fight of Bel and the Dragon " a
few dame-schools and many Sunday Schools, to a popu-
lation of 100,000 souls. Young Holyoake attended a
dame's school for a time, as he states in a fragment of
an early diary. The mistresses of these institutions were
often unable to write their names. They gathered their
dozen pupils in a ring about them in their cottages, and,
with the interruption of domestic duties or attending to
the shop, taught them to read the printed pages in the
dialect of the district. The strain was not great, and at
the age of seven or eight the boy began to earn his
living in the evenings after school, by soldering the
handles on lanterns. That he " often burned his
fingers " we can well believe ; but, when we remember
the miserable pay of unskilled workers at the time, it is
curious to hear that he came to earn $s. 6d. a week at the
work. For a time he controlled some new steam-
machinery for making buttons that his father had
bought. His neck-kerchief was caught in this one day,
and he was only saved from losing his head prematurely
by a neighbour rushing in at his cries. He must have
been in his eighth or ninth year at the time, as I find a
letter of Smith and Hawkes, the owners of the Eagle
Foundry, telling in 1849 that he has been in their
employment for thirteen years. In his ninth year he
began to accompany his father to the foundry at six in
the morning.

For a few years the quick, nervous boy had no other
education but the founding and forging of metal and the

EARLY YEARS

day-long clangour of the shop. He very soon showed
that he had his father's love of and skill in fine metal-
work. But we may trace first the more direct influences
in the formation of his mind and character. In his
eleventh year he began to attend the Carr's Lane
(Wesleyan) Sunday School. It seems to have been a
little more advanced than many, as it had a sand-class
a class in which half a dozen children were taught the
rudiments of writing by scrawls in a layer of fine sand.
To this select circle Holyoake did not attain, though he
attended the school for five years. He did no more than
the customary reading of the Bible and Watts's hymns.
The lessons were not made attractive. With one eye on
the sluggish fingers of the clock and another on the sun
struggling through the dull ground-glass windows he
used to envy the boys who had not the privilege of a
Sunday School.

His religious interest was quicker, and probably
helped him more than the slight secular training. His
mother attended at Carr's Lane, where the Rev. Angel 1
James whom he quite expected to have wings under
his black coat taught sturdy doctrines. The mother
sent a thrill round the supper table one Sunday night
by bringing home the assurance that there were children
in hell not a span long. The boy shuddered at such
doctrines, but his mother presently took him to a Baptist
chapel nearer home, where the Rev. Mr. Cheadle
expressed comforting doubts whether there was any hell
at all. The discrepancies stimulated him, and he became
an assiduous chapel-goer. Visiting ministers spoke of
him as an "angel-child." 1 In his twelfth year, however,
his piety was seriously chilled. It was a year of com-
mercial panic and great distress, and the means of the

1 Many of these details are from Miss S. D. Collet's sketch of his life,
of which we shall see more later.

io EARLY YEARS

family suffered heavily. The rector of St. Martin's sent
in his charge of fourpence for church-rate ; but coppers
were scarce, and were all needed to save a younger sister
from death. The next week the charge came again,
with a half-crown added for costs. Fearing that the bed
might be taken from under the child, as a neighbour had
experienced, the mother hurried to the office to pay.
She was kept waiting for five hours, and found her
child dead when she returned. George himself con-
tracted rheumatic fever at her grave, and was very ill for
six months.

The incident probably lay like a charge of powder in
the magazine of his memory, rather than had any ex-
plosive effect at the time, but we must remember that he
was precocious. In his twelfth year he made with his
own hands an elaborate model in steel of a fire-grate,
which shone proudly on his mothers shelf. However,
he continued his young pilgrimage among the chapels.
By his fifteenth year he had advanced so far as to set
foot in a Unitarian chapel ; though he remained near the
door, and kept an eye on the ceiling, so as to be able to
escape if the roof fell on their terrible doctrines. On
Sundays he prayed all day long at one place or other ; and
then there were mothers' meetings, at which the boy was
asked to " engage in prayer," and Friday-night meetings,
and endless others. The deacons of his original chapel
warned him that a rolling stone gathers no moss, which
was probably an encouragement to wander. In Inge
Street was a small Paedo-Baptist Chapel though
"what that meant not a single worshipper knew"
and he was appointed teacher in its Sunday School.
He had read Boston's Fourfold State and similar monu-
mental works from his mother's shelf. At another time,
when still a small boy, he used to go out to Harborne
with John Collins (later Chartist lecturer and prisoner)

EARLY YEARS II

to teach in a Congregationalist Sunday School. 1 With a
cold mutton-chop, thoughtfully provided by his mother,
in his pocket, he used to take the hand of his big friend
during the eight-mile walk through the snow. After his
lesson and Collins's sermon were over, they went to the
deacon's cottage to eat their dinner and contemplate "an
almost invisible fire in a spacious grate." As each
lesson, like each service, was opened by prayer, and
included prayer, and closed with prayer, there was much
to his credit. He said long afterwards that his mind
ached to think of it. He trusted that the Atonement
covered "the sin of prayer."

But the vague wandering of his mental tendrils soon
came to an end. One of his last religious experiences in
the old order of ideas was to listen to a new and fiery
preacher, whose pale thin face in its frame of long black
hair gave him a prophetic value. He preached the all-
sufficiency of faith. The youth tested it by going to
chapel without his coat in bad weather, and caught cold.
Then he startled the prophet by coming to his home and
demanding an explanation, which proved ambiguous.
He turned to profane instructors. While educational
theorists wrangled over methods, and the clergy fought
for their theological interests in the schools, and the
wealthy tried to determine what amount of schooling was
compatible with the submissiveness of the worker, a band
of reformers, headed by Dr. Birkbeck, founded the first
Mechanics' Institution, at London in 1823. Lord (then
Mr.) Brougham sent Dr. Coates to found one in Bir-
mingham in 1825, and Holyoake found his way to this
in his seventeenth year. It included a library, reading-
room, and museum of mechanical models and scientific

1 He elsewhere calls it Paedobaptist. But there are several small in-
accuracies in his autobiographical volumes, and I have been at pains to
trace the correct record. He also wrote verses in a religious magazine
about this time.

12 EARLY YEARS.

specimens. Lectures were delivered weekly, and classes
were held nightly in mathematics, elementary science,
drawing, Latin and French, and a few other subjects.
Junior pupils paid is. 6d. a quarter, and adults three
shillings.

In this admirable school Holyoake made rapid pro-
gress, under teachers who were as competent and anxious
to form character as to inform the mind. One of the
most 'energetic workers was William Pare, a follower of
Robert Owen and afterwards Governor of Queenwood.
His influence on Holyoake was indirect but decisive.
More direct and valuable was the tuition of two Uni-
tarians, Daniel Wright and Hawkes Smith ; though
Smith was also a defender of Owen's social theories.
Wright was a capable teacher, a vigorous political
worker, and a man of culture and character. Young
Holyoake used to walk home with him across the badly-
lit town at night, and won his regard. The Unitarians
were not admitted to be a religious body in Birmingham,
and they certainly had a secular tinge in comparison with
their neighbours. Their Sunday School offered lessons
in logic and mathematics, and they were well represented
on the staff of the Institution. But they never pressed
their critical views, and Holyoake passed almost un-
consciously through a Unitarian stage before he became
an Owenite. They were content to train the minds of
the young men under their charge in habits of precise
and fearless thinking, and they had a sufficient trust in
the nature of things to feel that this would lead them into
paths of truth.

Another movement of the time that helped to quicken
the minds of the workers was the " Society for Promoting
the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge." It was set afoot
by Lord Russell, Mr. Brougham, William Allen, and a
few others, who do not seem to have noticed how much

EARLY YEARS 13

the name might be conceived to reflect on the "Society
for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge," which they
copied. While even Cobbett looked with little favour
on the education of the workers, they were convinced
that a more intelligent people would tend to be less
vicious. Their Penny Magazine soon reached a circula-
tion of 200,000 copies a week, and they published also a
Penny Cyclopcedia, an Atlas , Journal of Education, Gallery
of Portraits, and other useful works at a low price. Their
publications were convenient for the pupils of the
Mechanics' Institutions, as the books used in the
National and British schools were childish and ludi-
crous. In the course of time, however, the Society fell
into disrepute with the workers. It would not fulfil its
promise of educating them in social as well as physical
science. Frederic the Great had said that he would not
have a throne based on the ignorance of his subjects.
The French Revolution had obliterated whatever traces
of that feeling remained in the minds of rulers. The
Emperor of Austria was bluntly declaring that he wanted
"good subjects," not learned ones. The Papacy ex-
tinguished for another thirty years every spark of interest
in the dangerous science of political economy. In
England a few, like Brougham and Russell, were
compromising. Mental and natural science they were
prepared to encourage, but they dare not promote
social studies. Yet they were teaching young men to
demand them.

Holyoake made rapid progress in grammar, logic,
mathematics, astronomy, and mechanics. His geometri-
cal exercise-book, which is preserved, is a model of
neatness, finish, and accuracy. Instruments were dear,
and he made himself an elaborate and ingenious pair of
compasses of sheet-iron. They were shown to Mr. Isaac
Pitman in 1836, when he distributed the prizes, and he

I4 EARLY YEARS

gave the youth a set of instruments, with the remark that
"it was a pity a master-mind should be so crippled."
He may have been amused when the slender youth of
nineteen replied that he hoped to show his gratitude " by
renewed exertions in the cause of science." How he
kept his promise, and proudly reported on the November
meteors to the Birmingham Philosophical Institution in
the following year, we shall see later. But we have said
enough of the formation of his mind up to his twentieth
year. He was happy in his tutors and, for the age, in
his opportunities. He was not wholly a self-made man.
The clearness, precision, conscientiousness, and almost
unfailing refinement of his later work have their germs
in his character, but they were skilfully tended in their
early growth.

In the meantime his education in the broader sense
was proceeding even more rapidly than his schooling.
Before he reaches his thirtieth year we shall find men
of distinction in the metropolis taking counsel with him.
No excellence of training would have brought the young
white-smith to that position in the space of twelve years
from his learning to write. There was something in the
atmosphere of his life that forced his spirit more actively.
Religious inquiry must have aided, though he never
appreciated this ; but it was chiefly the characters of
industrial and political life at the time that quickened
his observation.

The first feature of the life about him to fall with
irritating effect on his mind was the condition of the
workman. He had been working in the Eagle Foundry,
with his father, since his ninth year, and had become a
very promising mechanic. His little grate and his
compasses showed skill and originality. He also in-
vented a power-drill, the first that was known in the
large iron-works, Friends had his name entered in

EARLY YEARS

George Stephenson's note-book, and one is tempted to
think that an engineer of distinction was lost in him,
whatever was gained. The work was thoroughly pleas-
ant to him, but the conditions of work soon disgusted
him. His father was respected in the foundry, but the
treatment other men received gave him an impression of
tyranny and injustice. A shop-mate of good character
was transported for ten years because he attempted to
take away a file valued at a few coppers. Strong men
hit their knuckles with their hammers from nervousness
when the master was about. The more sober had to
conceal any money they saved, and to dress badly, lest
their wages should be reduced.

The Eagle Foundry, under Unitarian masters, was not
an especially bad works ; and the earlier law forbidding
combinations of workers had been repealed in 1824, and
a more moderate Act passed in 1825. Francis Place had
been devising in his famous room at Charing Cross for
ten years how to secure the right of combination, and
he had triumphed just before Holyoake became a boy-
whitesmith. Unfortunately the years that followed were
very lean ones in the calendar of trade and industry, and
the new Trades' Societies brought little improvement.
The strikes they initiated generally failed, and the dis-
tress became greater than ever. Iron was replacing
wood in a thousand ways, and the new demand for iron
rails (for trains) was of interest to Birmingham ; yet, with
the exception of 1823 and 1824, the fifteen years after the
Peace were years of short work and great distress.

The precocious boy would quickly learn that he had
entered a rebellious order. In the year that he became
a worker there were large and bloody riots, especially in
Lancashire. A thousand power-looms were broken up
in broad daylight at Bury, and the waves spread to the
eastern counties, to Scotland, and to Ireland. In the

16 EARLY YEARS

summer there was a terrible drought, and harrowing

stories were read in the papers of people standing all

night by the springs and fighting over the trickling

streams. The jails were overcrowded, and were stinking

hotbeds of fever. Men and youths were hanged in batches

for crimes of a quite secondary order of social injury.

Men sold their bodies to the surgeons, to get part of the

price (about sixteen guineas) down ; while body-snatching

and the " finding" of dead bodies became a skilled

industry. The ricks flamed nightly over the country.

By 1830 the unchanging misery and gray prospect

had engendered a feeling of revolution in the stronger

workers, and almost obliterated the trace of humanity

from the weaker. Trade Unionism had failed, men

said. The weavers of Lancashire and Cheshire were

earning from four to six shillings a week. Their

children of seven and eight worked by their side for

twelve hours a day. They had started in the early

morning with a breakfast of rough bread and tea

(generally an infusion of mint-leaves, often merely hot

water coloured with burnt crusts), and at night, after a

supper of potatoes, they flung their tired bodies undressed

on the straw. Their parents knew only one relief when

money was available drink and, Ludlow and Jones say,

" general unchastity." l They left the public-houses late

on Saturday night, and returned on Sunday morning.

4 ' When the hour for church approached, the church-
wardens, with long staves tipped with silver, sallied

1 Progress of the Working Classes, p. 17. Lloyd Jones was a Manchester
working-man at the time. He tells how he and his neighbours had their
pikes ready for the event of the Reform Bill not being passed in 1832.
The helplessness and degradation of the bulk of the workers are amus-
ingly shown in a story he tells. A Reform-Bill lecturer went out from
Manchester to lecture in one of the large villages. As he drew near he
saw streams of men pouring toward the village. At last he observed to
one of them that there was likely to be a good meeting. " Nay, mon,
it's nobbut a dog-feight," was the reply.

EARLY YEARS 17

forth, and seized all the drunken and unkempt men
they could lay their hands on ; and these being carefully
lodged, and a pew provided for them, were left to enjoy
the sermon, whilst their captors usually adjourned to
some tavern near at hand."

The peasantry were equally impoverished and debased.
The reports supplied to the Government by magistrates
related that the labourer's wage had fallen to 2\d. a day
in many places, whereas they could not keep felons
on less than six shillings a week. The better-placed
peasants earned about nine shillings a week (for the
work of the whole family), and bread was lod. a
quartern loaf. Artisans had much better pay, but work
was scarce.

In these circumstances of the nation agitation was the
moral duty of every thoughtful man, and young Holyoake
learned his first lessons in that form of activity. There
was a considerable body of men who had profited by the
new education, and these, in increasing numbers, now
joined in the demand for political reform. The suffrage
was the magic wand that would turn the blighted land
into an earthly paradise. They must root out corrup-
tion, and capture the field of politics. There were
plenty of able leaders. Large towns like Birmingham
and Manchester were not represented in Parliament,
and their merchants chafed as much as their workmen.
There had been a meeting of 60,000 people at Birming-
ham eleven years before to protest against its disability
and propose a violent remedy. In 1830 the agitation
for the Reform Bill surged through the land, and a
sharp lad of thirteen received a first and impressive
lesson in politics.

VOL. I,

CHAPTER II

GROWTH IN POLITICAL CONSCIOUSNESS

ON October nth, 1830, all Birmingham was assist-
ing in spirit at a remarkable dinner that was taking
place in Mr. Beardsley's furniture-repository, not far
from Inge Street. The Birmingham Political Union
was applauding the second French Revolution, the
success of which they had just learned. The Union
had been formed in 1830, and, electoral reform being
the panacea of the hour in the workshops, its blue
rosette quickly fluttered on thousands of breasts. Att-
wood, the Royalist-Radical banker, took the chair.
Holyoake hints that Attwood's real interest in electoral
reform was due to a notion that a reformed House might
pass his novel financial scheme, but history shows that
there was more depth and sincerity in his feeling. He
was a sonorous orator and heroic political worker. It
was computed that during a single election he kissed
8,000 women and a proportionate army of children. He
now presided over the 3,700 diners, and when they were
well warmed with band and chorus and ale a pint of beer
each to dinner and a quart afterwards he courageously
toasted the revolution which had " burst asunder the
shackles that fifteen years of fraud, tyranny, and guilt
had forged for the nations of Europe." The oratorical
explosion rang through the county. Merchants, shop-
keepers, and workmen poured into the ranks of the
Union, until at length it numbered 200,000 members.

18

GROWTH IN POLITICAL CONSCIOUSNESS 19

For the next eighteen months its bands, banners, and
blue ribbons enlivened every corner of Birmingham, and
Holyoake retained throughout life a vivid recollection
of the wonderful meetings that were held. No city-
state of ancient Greece ever throbbed with a more
intense political life. Bramber, with a population of
97 sodden souls, returned two members to Parliament :
Birmingham, with an alert population of 100,000, was
refused representation. Peasants flocked in from the
villages about, to listen to the endless oratory of the
beer-houses and fire the county with bucolic enthusi-
asm ; and other Unions sprang up over the country.
They adopted an ominous military form, and drilled
and marched and countermarched with flags flying.
But the military air was neatly explained. They were
going, Attwood said, to supply the new king with an
army twice as large and brave as that of Wellington,
with which he could crush the borough-mongers who
hampered his benevolent designs.

With the spring of 1831 began a year of agitation at
Birmingham that is almost without parallel. In March
eager crowds gather day and night at the stopping-
places of the London coaches. Lord Russell's Bill is
in the Commons. He is defeated, and appeals to the
country, and the spires of Birmingham ring out their
peals men snatch the keys from the hands of reluctant
clergymen and the rainbow-garment of flags flutters
gaily over the town. In September there is another
outburst. The Bill has passed the Commons. What
will the Lords do? There must be no vagueness about
the people's mandate. The Union issues an invitation,
and in a few days more than 100,000 men and women
surge through the streets of the town, and up to the
waste-ground on Newhall Hill, where there is a
vast natural amphitheatre for their gatherings. "I

20 GROWTH IN POLITICAL CONSCIOUSNESS

have been told," Attwood roars over the arena, "that
with all my immense power I shall not be able to
control the oligarchs, but I answer, we will get
200,000 strings : we will place each of these strings
in the hands of a strong and brave man : and we will
twist those strings into a thousand ropes, and twist those
ropes into one immense cable, and by means of that
cable will put a hook into the nose of the leviathan,
and guide and govern him at pleasure."

Already the Bill is in the Lords, and, as the five days
wear on, men gather in crowds about the newspaper-
offices and coach stations. " My days were passed
within a few yards of the Union offices," Holyoake
says. On October 8th the rumour flies that the coaches
have brought no London papers, and the streets are full
of grim debaters. At last the news comes that the Lords
have rejected the Bill : the Bishops have turned the scale
against it. There is no rioting at Birmingham ; as there
is at Canterbury, where the mob spits on the archbishop,
or at Bristol, where they talk of converting the cathedral
into a cavalry barracks. But the sextons of the town
toll a funeral knell, and black flags fly at every spire
and pinnacle.

In April the Lords pass the Bill, and propose to
mutilate it in committee. That week thousands of
copies of a pamphlet giving instruction in the use
of fire-arms are sold in Birmingham, and iron-workers
employ their leisure in shaping rods that look like pikes.
The safety-valve must be opened again. All day long
on Sunday, May 6th, blue-ribboned regiments of workers
march along the roads to Birmingham from everywhere
within forty miles. There are no railways yet in the Mid-
lands. Dusty and tired, but with indomitable fire, they
sing their war-songs, and find rough quarters for the
night. At nine in the morning, like a great gray flood

GROWTH IN POLITICAL CONSCIOUSNESS 21

they sweep into the town 150,000 of them, with 200
bands and 700 banners and swirl through the narrow
streets, and spread over the familiar waste-ground, until
every foot is hidden, and the line of houses round it
is black with tiny heads. "Will you not rather die
than be the slaves of the borough-mongers ? " Attwood
roars, and the echoing roar spreads over Birmingham.
"If we are to have Polignac," says another orator, "it
shall be with Polignac's fate." His fate is fresh in
everybody's memory in 1832. With mighty volume,
and 200 bands, the great crowd raises the favourite
hymn :

" Lo, we answer ! See, we come !
Quick at Freedoms holy call."

Mr. Salt appeals to them to vow their purpose "in the
face of Heaven and the God of justice and mercy." The
word passes round. All hats are doffed, and 150,000
voices tumultuously repeat the fervent phrases: "With
unbroken faith, through every peril and privation, we
here devote ourselves and our children to our country's
cause."

There is little work done in Birmingham that week.
Men line the routes of the mail-coaches on the Tuesday,
and passengers shout down to them that the Government
has been defeated. All work is abandoned, and pale,
eager crowds throng the streets. An express-rider
gallops in in the middle of the night. The King has
accepted the resignation of the Cabinet, and sent for
Wellington. Down in the mud, under heel, go the
medals of the Union: they have "God Save the
King" on them. Tory and Royal names of streets
are torn down. The "King's Head" over the public-
houses is swathed in crape : the " Queen's Head "
ominously disappears. The bells are muffled this time.
Five hundred of the most wealthy inhabitants, who

22 GROWTH IN POLITICAL CONSCIOUSNESS

have hitherto held aloof, now walk in procession to
the Union rooms in Great Charles Street. " Newhall
Hill at three" is the shrewd order, and " Come like
brothers, arm in arm, wearing a noble aspect as men
going to an assured victory." Like brothers they come,
arm in arm, ten to fifteen abreast, to the familiar agora.
Then they melt again into little groups, and any child
in Birmingham can hear them telling of past days in
England when there was civil war and men beheaded
obstinate kings. They crowd round the barracks, where
the Scots Greys, the hope of Wellington, are booted and
saddled day and night, and supplied with ball-cartridge.
Many of the soldiers belong to the Union, and they have
dropped anonymous letters on the streets, saying that
they will lift no arm against peaceful demonstrators. So
they will be free to march on London. They will join
other Unions, and camp on Hampstead Heath, and show
the king what they mean.

On the Sunday morning (May i3th) thousands of them
go to the barracks, where they have always been admitted
in their holiday clothes. The gates are closed now, and
through the bars they see the troopers rough-sharpening
their swords a thing not done since Waterloo. The
march on London for that night is countermanded, or
replaced by a gathering of 200,000 on Newhall Hill.
But their leaders are in London, with Francis Place.
And on the Friday morning at six the town is awakened
by the deafening, exultant clang of all its bells. Well-
ington is defeated: Grey is recalled: the King has
yielded. Once more the streets are alive, and they
march out to meet heroic Attwood, and then on to the
Hill, where the banker-orator solemnly gives thanks to
God for his country's escape "from a most tremendous
revolution."

So our fathers won the suffrage ; so Holyoake learned

GROWTH IN POLITICAL CONSCIOUSNESS 23

his first lesson in politics, and it sank deep. He was
now turned fifteen, and an exceptionally thoughtful and
impressionable lad. Such lessons, however, must have
been largely subconscious in effect in 1832. As his
mind developed, the vivid memories would find their
logical place. And we have seen that the next five
years were assiduously employed in training. He
happily resisted the fascination of the language-classes
at the Institution, and pursued studies of disciplinary
value. Economic study would have been even more
useful, but it was in almost as bad odour in England
as in the Papal States. He says that during twenty
years of his own recollection one needed as much
courage to mention "social science" as to quote
Darwin or Lyell. People seemed to have a remark-
ably definite conviction that a young man could not
study the social order of England at that time without
sinking into revolutionary sentiments. The Owenites
would presently introduce him to that dark science ;
meantime he was learning precision of method and
expression under good teachers.

It was from the industrial side that the next great
educative impulse came to him. The workers returned
to the bench in 1832 with unbounded trust in the Re-
formed Parliament, but as the months passed their note
of confidence died away. It is not the place here to
appraise the work or the failure of the new House. I
need only observe that it was soon greeted with dis-
content. The Westminster Review called it "a do-
nothing Parliament, wavering between impotence and
mischief." The workmen discovered that the "Worship-
ful Company of Ten-pound Householders " had no idea
of extending the suffrage to themselves. Trade Union-
ism was restored to honour as the social panacea. A
combination-fever spread through the industrial world,

24 GROWTH IN POLITICAL CONSCIOUSNESS

and young men were impressed by a ritual of initiation
and thrilling pretence of secrecy that fitly represented
the new magical power. One was taken blindfold into
an inner room, giving mystic passwords, and then found
oneself facing a skeleton or a large crude painting of
death, while elderly brothers in surplices administered
dire oaths, and others stood by with tin-foil battle-axes
or real naked swords. Holyoake went through the
performance.

Birmingham had, in fact, once more become the centre
of the popular movement. The new Unionism had
fallen under the lead of Robert Owen, who seemed at
last to be within reach of his noble ambition. He had
persuaded the powerful Builders' Union to erect a grand
institution at Birmingham, and at the end of 1833 they
walked in gorgeous procession and laid its first stone.
The frail, ineloquent cotton-spinner had become the idol
of the workers. He had appealed in vain to masters and
rulers to realise his national ideal, and now, after the
failure of electoral reform, which he had slighted, he
spread it amongst the people as a vast scheme of self-
help. The Pioneer, a penny unstamped paper that the
Owenites published at Birmingham, was read in every
workshop. " At a very early period," it announced,
"we shall find the idle possessor compelled to ask you
to release him from his worthless holding." What the
grand plan was, and how Holyoake enlisted in its advo-
cacy, we shall see later ; but the Owenite-Unionist
scheme of 1833 was wrecked in a few months. Owen
bubbled on from plan to plan. In January, 1834, he
founded a "Grand Consolidated Trades Union," and in
a few weeks it had half a million members, but their oaths
and ceremonies undid them. Two of their delegates, who
fell into the hands of the police at Exeter, were found to
be in possession of cutlasses, masks, white robes, and

GROWTH IN POLITICAL CONSCIOUSNESS 25

figures of death. A village- worker, who had ordered a
six-foot picture of death for initiating purposes, was, with
others, transported for seven years ; and the Unions
hastily dropped their theatrical properties, and fell into
weakness.

It was in this atmosphere of sullen rebellion and this
world of dramatic effort to evade or displace an oppres-
sive burden that the youth's mind opened. He was at
first repelled from extreme doctrines by their taint of
Owenite heresy, and he held the more patient attitude of
the church-goer. Before he was out of his teens this
repugnance was worn away. It was not so much intel-
lectual criticism that affected him as the apparent indiffer-
ence of the Churches of his time to the poverty, suffering,
and coarseness of the workers. The bitter experience of
the death of his sister had he afterwards stated during
his trial led him to consider what place the 1 clergy
occupied in relation to the national cry for social better-
ment. They seemed to be wholly silent. " Our pastors
and masters," he says somewhere, " held then the ex-
clusive patent for improving the people, and, though
they made poor use of it, they took good care that no-
body infringed it." The Bishops had turned the scale
against the Reform Bill, and they were equally opposed
to all schemes of national education. Nor were the Non-
conformist clergy more prominent or practical in their
sympathy. They remained within the narrow field of
ecclesiastical work, and gave little heed to the struggling
movements for education, the freedom of the press, better
conditions of labour, the reform of the jails and the penal
code, the saving of the children, and the removal of
municipal and political corruption. From Mr. Angell
James, Holyoake heard that " young men must be con-
tent in the station and with the lot which Providence had
assigned them." It was, therefore, natural that, as his

26 GROWTH IN POLITICAL CONSCIOUSNESS

interest in human affairs deepened, his attachment to the
Churches insensibly diminished. They chose to move
in a sphere apart. But he retained his general religious
belief until his twenty-fourth year. There was grave
shaking of heads over his association with the Unitarians ;
but his tutors never sought to alter his creed, and he
thought that " three Gods were not too many to attend
to the affairs of this vast universe." It was reserved for
a second great wave of feeling to wash away the last
traces of his belief.

Thus his mind grew toward its maturity in a world of
large intellectual incitements. Everybody felt that the key
to the golden age was on the eve of being discovered, and
there were yearly announcements of the discovery. Strict
Owenites found it in the secular formation of character :
followers of Mr. Ashley put their hope in the passing of
the Factory Acts : Cobbett had faith in electoral reform :
Russell and Brougham in education : Trade Unionists
in combination. Others advocated reform of diet : one
reformer going about with pockets bulging with grey
peas, which were his panacea. One poor enthusiast
went about bravely in a white robe, telling people they
were already in heaven, and death and suffering were an
illusion. Co-operative Societies were known in many
places, and Labour Exchanges, and Halls of Science.
Richard Carlile had a too drastic remedy in his scheme
of " Somatopsychonoologia." A Co-operative Magazine
(London) pleaded that the trepidations of courtship were
the radical evil, and proposed to start the new world by
marrying a hundred handsome tailors by ballot to a
hundred handsome young ladies. Another Owenite
invented a " Satanic mitrailleuse," which was to make
an end of war and heal the world.

The first of all these philanthropic schemes to engage
Holyoake's attention, and lead him to a definite vein of

GROWTH IN POLITICAL CONSCIOUSNESS 27

thought, was phrenology. Gall and Spurzheim had
visited England, and by this time there were thirty
societies in the country, with several journals. Arch-
bishop Whateley embraced it, so that the current charge
of materialism could be met. Spurzheim had initiated
George Combe to the mysteries, and in 1838 that apostle
visited Birmingham. He had married a wife on phreno-
logical principles, and the happy issue confirmed his
belief; though critics reminded each other that the lady
had ;8oo a year. Holyoake had read his work, The
Constitution of Man, and eagerly accepted the position of
assistant during his course of fourteen lectures. He
bared his head courageously to the expert for proof of
his suitability to hold up the casts to the audience during
demonstrations. The material recompense of his work
was slight. Combe gave him a cheap edition of his
Elements of Phrenology and a nose-less bust that would
not go into his box on leaving. When others hinted
that he ought to have a fraction of Combe's large
receipts, and wrote Combe to that effect, the phreno-
logist shook his admiration by replying that there was
no contract, and that the young man "had imperfectly
held up the casts." The imputation was felt to be
severe, and Holyoake for eight years afterwards carried
about with him a polite letter to Mr. Combe, whom he
at last met and forced to retract (but not pay) in Scotland
in I846. 1

1 The letter, dated August 1838, lies before me probably the most
widely travelled of all epistles. The young man complains that he was
engaged for only one hour each evening and occupied for three. " It
appears," he says, " you deem it unbecoming in me to form an Expecta-
tion, and presumptuous to make a Claim ; but were I to do the latter
Custom would sanction it and Gentlemanly feeling would give it
immediate attention." As to the imperfect holding of the casts,
"without any strong manifestation of. No. 10 I believe myself perfectly
capable of holding up a lump of Plaster to the gaze of any assembly
that ever met to hear your lecture." When he ran Combe to earth in
1846 that gentleman haughtily replied that he was " the only assistant

28 GROWTH IN POLITICAL CONSCIOUSNESS

When Combe's friend and bust-maker, Bally, after-
wards treated him with worse meanness, Holyoake's
enthusiasm was damped, yet the experience was import-
ant. Combe was a liberal thinker ; not at all atheistic,
but without belief in the creeds, and a strong advocate of
the material basis of mind and character. His didactic
and apparently scientific manner impressed the young
man, and prepared him for the great Owenite dogma
that " man's character is made for him and not by
him." The train of thought suggested though much
attacked in the New Moral World was followed keenly
by Holyoake and his fellow-pupils, who had abandoned
their classes at the Mechanics' Institute to follow the
lectures. They got skulls of animals and puzzled over
marks of cerebrum and cerebellum. A Churchman,
Dr. Brindley, attacked phrenology, and the reply from
Holyoake's Unitarian tutor was so decisive that the
young man moved slowly nearer to Owenism, which
Mr. Hawkes Smith equally defended.

From his twentieth year (1837) we trace his growth
with some ease, as the innumerable letters and papers
he has left behind go back to that date. He is on the
Committee of the Mechanics' Institute, and evidently
known in Birmingham. In November he watches the
shower of meteors on behalf of the Philosophical Insti-
tution. After working all day in the foundry, he
remains on its roof all night, for three consecutive
nights, mapping the shooting-stars. The cold he
caught and the need to purchase medicine for himself
and colleague were quite on the lines of scientific
research, as one read in biographies, and a letter of

who ever hinted that he expected a pecuniary remuneration or who
would not have felt affronted at my offering- to pay them. They seem
to have met on equal ground about 1850, and Holyoake writes of Combe
with respect.

GROWTH IN POLITICAL CONSCIOUSNESS 29

thanks from a Philosophical Institution was recompense
enough; though the philosophers awarded him a guinea
also for the same work in 1838 and 1839. It is clear,
too, that he was already well known amongst the
Owenites ; but his connection with this school is so
important a link between the old reform-ideas and his
later views that I reserve it for continuous treatment.

His health began to fail under the strain of study,
work, and investigation. Down to the summer of 1838
he worked as iron-workers did in those days. Since
1834 he had in addition devoted the whole evening to
study. After a hurried tea every night he retired to the
attic and bent over his books from seven until midnight,
often until two or three in the morning. After a time
he went so far as to spend a whole night studying by
candle-light once a week. He copied out two or three
mathematical works with all their diagrams and a lavish
embroidery of fancy penmanship, and evolved an elabo-
rate system of memory-training that proved remarkably
effective. On Sundays he added teaching-work, and
gave lessons in logic and grammar at the Unitarian
school. In later years, when he was asked the secret of
his longevity, he explained, quite seriously, that he had
always " avoided excess in food, in pleasure, in work,
and in expectation." The truth was that he nearly
killed himself in his youth. His health began to suffer
after the phrenological evenings, and an unpleasant
experience with the phrenologist's friend proved the
last straw. This M. Bally, an " evasive Swiss," in-
duced Holyoake to bring him customers, and promised
to make a plaster-cast of his own head in reward.

" At last the auspicious morning arrived when I was
to be immortalised in plaster. My hair was combed in
appropriate order. I had put on our best family face, for
my ancestors had pride of race. At last the factory-bell

30 GROWTH IN POLITICAL CONSCIOUSNESS

rang nine. Between that and ten breakfast had to be
eaten, Bally to be visited, and the cast to be taken.
But breakfast that morning took little time. I soon left
the Old Wharf wall (above which the Foundry stood),
vaulted along Paradise Street (I still speak of Birming-
ham), and by a quarter past nine I was in Upper Temple
Street at M. Bally 's door. A ring of the bell brought
the maid down, who informed me that M. Bally had
gone to Manchester the day before." 1

It was not long before his nerves broke down, and, as
the doctor recommended a walking-tour, he decided to
go to Manchester on foot in search of the Swiss. He
started, with five pounds in his pocket, on September
3rd, 1838. He lodged in cottages, dispensed with break-
fast, expended twopence on a mid-day meal, and had
a basin of milk for supper. His experiences were
pleasant, as country-people welcomed the talk of "a
pale-faced young traveller of unforbidding aspect, and
his head full of town-ideas." Derbyshire showed him
hills and glens for the first time. At last he reached
Manchester, and at once sought the Social Institute in
Salford. He explains that his name would be known to
the Owenites through their journal, the New Moral
World, though I do not find his name in it until 1840.
That night he tossed in fever at a Socialist friend's
house, but it was only a matter of fatigue, and he
found M. Bally the next morning. The encounter was
characteristic. With the fine restraint and quaint moral
dignity that distinguished him throughout life on such
occasions he delivered a brief and quiet ethical address
on the door-step to the confused absconder, and politely
wished him good-morning. In his diary he relates that
he saw Robert Owen at Manchester.

The rest of his tour must be read in his own lively

1 Sixty Years of an Agitator's Life, I, 67.

GROWTH IN POLITICAL CONSCIOUSNESS 31

narrative. He went in a canal-boat to Liverpool, spent
1 'enchanted days" amongst the docks, and at last
boarded a small steamer for the Isle of Man. As he
awaited the sailing, he was hailed from the quay, and
found the Liverpool Social Missionary (Owenite) looking
for him. It is clear that he was somehow well known
amongst them. At Douglas he made a second venture
in journalism. He wrote a letter to Mona's Herald (not
the Manx Herald, as he states) on Mechanics' Institu-
tions, and received a roast chicken and a bottle of port
for payment. As the letter (dated September 24th,
1838) is very brief and meagre, the pay was princely, as
such things go ; but he seems to have impressed them
as a distinguished visitor in Mona. How he wandered
on foot through Wales, taking a boat from Douglas to
Bangor, and fell in with a group of Coventry tailors
doing the same grand tour, and cheerfully clubbed with
them, and at last reached Birmingham, after five
weeks' absence, with a few shillings left out of his five
pounds all this he has told in his own sparkling way,
and I may not repeat it. It is one of the most piquant
narratives of the Wander-Jahre of young philosophers. 1

He returned to the foundry for the winter, but his
health was not completely restored, and, though the
swing of the hammer ever remained a pleasure to him,
his mind had outgrown the narrow world of the work-
shop. For some time, indeed, he dreamed of emigration,
either to India or to Australia. In the following spring
he married the lady who was to share his hardships so
bravely and his honours so modestly in the ensuing
years. He had had an experience of courtship a few
years before that brings him nearer to us, perhaps, in
his youth than anything else he has recorded. A pretty

1 Sixty Years, Vol. I, chs. xiv and xv. I have made some corrections
on the authority of his early diary.

32 GROWTH IN POLITICAL CONSCIOUSNESS

girl came into the foundry one day in his eighteenth
year, and he fell in love with her at sight for her " gipsy
beauty." He courted her for two years, but failed to
obtain a single solitary walk with her. Then he deter-
mined to seek philosophic solace in his books, and wrote
to tell her so. He was called to the door a few days
afterwards, and found the blushing "Zingara" standing
there. She dropped his opened letter nervously on the
door-step, and turned away. He walked in silence by
her side to her home, but their natures were veiled in
too tremulous a sensitiveness for them to see and act in
the natural way. He did not see her again until he was
summoned to her death-bed.

His second love-story began and proceeded on lines
on which a young book-worm could move more easily.
It engaged his scholastic interest. At the Unitarian
book-store kept by Mr. Belcher he found a young lady
in service whom he grew to regard as a likely " partner
in propagandist!!." She read Chambers' Journal, and
had ideas and self-possession. I find a letter in which
Mr. Belcher speaks of her with warm praise, after five
years' service in his establishment. A young lady who
wrote letters like this could come nearer to such a young
man than the poor " Zingara " :

"As to the famine, on account of which a fast is
ordered, I am disposed to think that by the time it
reaches her Majesty there will be other means resorted
to for its removal than praying, and more honest and
manly means might be resorted to on the present occasion.
I question whether the famine much affects the land-
owners. Why not allow the land to be cultivated for
the support of poor wretches who are suffering, instead
of idly praying? It does not say much for the humanity
of the Being the people are directed to call upon if the
sight of their misery does not elicit His attention without
a formal prayer."

GROWTH IN POLITICAL CONSCIOUSNESS 33

This is the kind of language for which Holyoake
would go to jail in a couple of years. They were
married in the registry-office, a bold and ominous inno-
vation in their families. One of the Owenite leaders,
William Pare, had been appointed registrar ; for which
Birmingham was roundly denounced in the House of
Lords, and brought to repentance, by the Bishop of
Exeter. The marriage was a most happy one, and the
partnership in feeling, suffering, and action was com-
plete. "I can fancy,'* an Owenite friend wrote him
from Coventry, " that I see you seated beside your
intellectual companion working out a problem in mathe-
matics, or giving or receiving other general instruction.
Oh ! what a delightful contemplation. The imagination
may dwell upon it for hours, and the knowledge that
such cases are very rare should make the prize more
valuable." The spectacle was imaginary, but Holyoake
ever esteemed the " prize" he had chosen, in Owenite
fashion, with his " moral and intellectual faculties."
Mrs. Holyoake never entirely shared his agnosticism,
but she urged him to be honest and fearless. "Do
what you think right, and never mind me."

The marriage took place on March loth, 1839. Holy-
oake had warned the young lady that he contemplated a
career of some adventure and risk, and she very quickly
had cause to appreciate it. Early in July we find him
applying to the Birmingham Botanical Garden for the
position of lodge-keeper. His employers, Mr. Belcher,
the Unitarians, the Mechanics' Institute, and the Philo-
sophical Institution, warmly supported his candidature,
but it does not seem to have succeeded. However, he
left the iron-works, and for two years his position was
very precarious. In August or September he was
employed as guide at an exhibition of machinery that
was held at Birmingham. His father (so his sister

VOL. I. D

34 GROWTH IN POLITICAL CONSCIOUSNESS

states) was one of the founders of the Exhibition, and
his little steel grate was amongst the exhibits. He there
made the acquaintance of Lieut. Lecount (R.N.), who
startled Birmingham clergymen with " naval oaths of
rotund quality and explosive as shells." Lecount was
the author of A Hunt after the Devil, and afterwards
contributed at times to Holyoake's paper. Before the
exhibition was over his tutor, Mr. Wright, died
suddenly, and Holyoake was appointed to succeed him
at the Mechanics' Institute. The pupils of the senior
classes themselves petitioned for the appointment. " In
our opinion," they write, " there is no individual so
well qualified as Mr. G. J. Holyoake to succeed our
revered and much-lamented tutor. ... Mr. Wright
was evidently attached to him, and always recommended
his conduct to our imitation. . . . We think that he is
the only person competent to fill the place."

The work was thus begun under happy auspices, but
Holyoake's views, now openly expressed to the Owenites
at their meetings, seem to have disturbed zealots. In
December (1839) n * s friend Hollick, now an Owenite
missionary at Sheffield, addresses him in his sprightly
way as " High and Mighty Secretary of the Mech.
Inst., Professor of Mathematics, Chirography, etc., etc.,
etc." A month later he writes: "I am exceedingly
sorry to hear of your leaving the Ex. Com. [Examin-
ation Committee of the Institute], both on account of
the treatment you have received and the loss they must
have experienced. You must, like all public characters,
make up your mind to immolation on the altar of that
Demon of Discord party-spirit." Holyoake had ex-
pressed disgust with the whole Institute, and even asked
Hollick to take him as an amanuensis ; for his lively
friend had written an imposing account of his activity
in the north, and his being currently described as

GROWTH IN POLITICAL CONSCIOUSNESS 35

" Anti-christ." There is no situation to be had in
Sheffield, Hollick replies, except in the police-force,
where everybody is busy " breaking houses open,
discovering pikes and infernal machines, capturing
Chartists, etc." But he urges Holyoake to apply for the
office of Social Missionary in the Owenite movement.

There was evidently serious friction at the Institute,
and Holyoake left it in January 1840. For three months
he gave lessons in a private school in the town. A letter
from the owner, Mr. Tolly, on April 4th thanks him
very warmly for his assistance, and the writer feels sure
he will never find a " better " assistant. Meantime, in
March, he had taken an engagement as book-keeper to
a Venetian-blind maker, Pemberton. The salary was
only eight shillings a week, but the work was light.
The younger brother of his employer was the gifted
actor and lecturer, Charles Reece Pemberton, who was
much attached to Holyoake. His health failed, and
Sergeant Talfourd, Mr. W. J. Fox, and other friends
assisted him, but he died in March. Holyoake was one
of the few friends he loved to have with him at the last,
and the first publication of Holyoake was a short memoir
of Pemberton. 1 He also attempted to raise funds for a
memorial to the actor ; but Mr. Fox and others were
unfavourable, thinking it unworthy that the many who
had done so little for Pemberton in life should put
marble over his grave. There were other bits of
employment. He wrote advertisements, at seven and
sixpence each, for a firm whom he persuaded "that to
tell the truth about their wares would be the greatest
novelty out." The occupation did not last long. He
gave literary assistance to uncultivated mechanics who
were engaged to write technical treatises. He also

1 A Sketch of the Life and a few of the Beauties of Pemberton. Leeds,
1842.

36 GROWTH IN POLITICAL CONSCIOUSNESS

advertised private lessons in mathematics at his own
home, but the experiment was darkened by "a drab
knave," his first pupil, who came to him for a number
of lessons, in attire that made bargaining as to terms
seem superfluous, and declined to pay in the end
because there was no formal contract.

But 1840 was a lean year for the young married
couple. In their little cottage on the edge of the town
(12, Sandpits) they just contrived to keep out of debt,
and had a useful schooling in economy. " Eleanor " had
the happy thought to grow a bed of mustard and cress
to give taste to the monotonous bread and butter.
Neighbours saw through the thin show of bravery, and
one would come along with her mug of porter and tact-
fully force the young mother their daughter Madeline
was born in May to take a neighbourly pull at it. The
life of an apostle could not very well be harder. Holy-
oake leaned to Hollick's suggestion, and made his
fateful entry into the ranks of the Owenites.

CHAPTER III

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ROBERT OWEN

BIRMINGHAM had, we saw, become one of the chief
centres of Owenism in 1833, and some of the best teachers
at the Mechanics* Institution were staunch Owenites.
The boy must have been well aware of their activity, at
least from his sixteenth year. But they were " infidels,"
and, much as he varied his bold exploration among the
chapels, he avoided the Owenite meeting-house in Well
Lane. As the fence of his Baptist beliefs grew thinner,
he began to peep timidly at his much-maligned neigh-
bours, and to discern features less repellent than he had
been led to expect. At last an amusing accident took
him amongst them. He heard his mates telling that
Robert Hall was to speak on a certain date, and went
with eagerness to hear the great Nonconformist preacher.
To his horror he found that he had imperfectly caught
the name, and he was listening to the suave heresies of
Robert Owen.

They seemed less damnable than he had supposed,
and he began to resent the injustice of his comrades'
strictures on them and to associate more with Owenite
fellow-students like Hollick. To do them justice in
workshop-debates he attended their meetings, where he
learned their real doctrines. As, about the same time he
sold a pretty edition of the Bible that he had rumour
quickly changed the story into " burned his Bible"
fingers were pointed at him. His early diary puts his

37

38 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ROBERT OWEN

first hearing of Robert Owen in June 1836, and notes
that in the following January he " spoke for the
Owenites." His intimate friend Hollick had just become
a young apostle of the movement, and in February he
writes to Holyoake from London, where he had gone
with Robert Owen. The young reformers of the world
were not puritanic in speech, one gathers :

" You ask if London is really 'the mart of genius.'
It may be of genius, but I'll be damned if I think it is
of geniuses. 'Does it swarm with sterling talent?'
It may, but, like sparks in a flint, it is latent, and
requires to be struck devilish hard to fetch it out. . . .
When I first came here, they told me it was a pity I had
come before a London audience. I might have done if
I had continued in the country. London audiences were
so very intellectual, etc. . . . This was the first Sunday
I was there, before I lectured. At the conclusion of my
lecture I received two rounds of applause, a thing they
had heard traditions about, as having been heard of in
remote times, but not belonging to their own age."

He hinted that Holyoake would shine even more
brightly in the metropolitan firmament, and urged him
to apply for the position of Social Missionary. It was
early as yet to seek that distinction, and Holyoake
continued to attend the services. He taught in the
Socialist Sunday School, and sometimes read the lessons
at the hall. I find a letter of Robert Owen's preserved
by him, dated April 1838, praising the " excellent
arrangements " made for his Birmingham lectures ;
though it is not clear that it was addressed to Holyoake.
We saw that he was known at that time to Owenites in
the north. A nervous and sensitive youth, with mind
early expanded to large ideas of reform by the distress he
saw about him and the constant agitation of his political
atmosphere, he could not fail to be arrested by the new

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ROBERT OWEN 39

ideas of co-operation in industry and the effect of
surroundings on character, which were the two clear
notes of Owen's teaching.

Robert Owen, whom even Sir Leslie Stephen calls
"one of the most important figures in the social history
of his time," was then in the last phase of his develop-
ment. His ample plan of salvation was to distribute the
nations into model industrial communities a kind of
combination of garden-city, farm-colony, and Bohemian
club where the products of labour should be clubbed,
and the mind and character diligently cultivated. Rey-
baud describes his system as a mixture of the practices
of Abraham with the ideas of Baboeuf. His first task
was to prove by an experiment at New Lanark that his
educational ideal his partners in the business prevented
him from making it industrially co-operative could
achieve splendid results. The New Lanark community
became the social wonder of Europe between 1800 and
1830 ; though other communities, like Orbiston (which
he did not control), failed. But, while kings and states-
men admired, they declined to break up their kingdoms
into Owen's pretty co-operative cubes, and, the clergy
being alienated by Owen's outspoken heresy, the idealist
appealed to the people. Francis Place and other
practical reformers listened to him with infinite weari-
ness, but the mass of the workers heard him with
enthusiasm.

The right of combination, that Place had secured for
them, seemed to have proved futile, and at the precise
time when Holyoake began to think the thoughts of
men there had been some reversion of the feverish
workers to political action. The Birmingham Political
Union was revived in 1837, and Holyoake joined it ; he
wrongly speaks of it as a gun hung up on the wall to rust
in 1832, and never taken down. He also entered a secret

40 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ROBERT OWEN

political society, of the character that has a fascination
for young men of all ages.

"The object of the society I found to be to cut off
Lord Palmerston's head. Things were bad amongst
workmen in those days, and I had no doubt somebody's
head ought to be cut off, and I hoped they had hit upon
the right one. The secretary was a Chartist leader
named Warden, who ended by cutting his own head off
instead, which showed confusion of ideas by which Lord
Palmerston profited." 1

This was in 1838, the year of the publication of the
People's Charter, and the society probably merged in
the new Chartist Union, as Holyoake was an early
Chartist. His relations to that body will call for ampler
treatment a little later, and in fact he never joined whole-
heartedly in their work ; but our narrative will not be
quite intelligible unless we insert a few words on it.

Chartism was born of the discontent of the workers
and the Radicals with the measures passed by the
Reformed Parliament. Radicals like Roebuck, Moles-
worth, Colonel Thompson, Crawford, Hume, Daniel
O'Connell, etc., joined with working-class leaders. A
committee was appointed, and they issued the famous
Charter with its six points manhood suffrage, annual
parliaments, the ballot, abolition of property-qualifi-
cations, payment of members, and equality of electoral
districts. How the red-hot oratory of the popular leaders
gave a revolutionary glow to this sober programme,
alienated the Radicals, and gave the Whigs some
ground for their savage repression of the movement,
we shall understand when Holyoake comes into contact
with men like Feargus O'Connor and Ernest Jones.
Suffice it to say here that trade was very bad and distress

* Sixty Years, II, 77.

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ROBERT OWEN 41

acute between 1837 and 1842, and Chartism set the
country aflame as easily as the sun fires a parched moor.
The great Reform-meetings were dwarfed by the huge
gatherings of from one to four hundred thousand men
that were held over the country, from London to Glas-
gow, in 1838 and 1839. Sleepy Bath, that would not
to-day furnish forty of its daughters to welcome the
most fascinating of heretics, then saw 4,000 of its
women assemble to greet Henry Vincent, the red
revolutionary. In the north great streams of men
poured out on the moors at night, their countless torches
grimly lighting up rough banners that bore skulls and
red caps of liberty, or such mottoes as " More pigs and
less parsons " ; in the large towns Radical orators like
Attwood stood side by side with the O'Connors of the
people. At Birmingham in August they met to the
number of 200,000. Attwood swore that 100,000 men
would march to release him if the Whigs dared to arrest
him ; and the herculean, handsome, fiery O'Connor
who had deserted O'Connell and Ireland, Gammage says,
on the maxim that it was " better to reign in hell than
serve in heaven " urged them in a voice of thunder
to " go flesh every sword to the hilt." Holyoake says
that, at all events, many of his mates had pikes and files
stuck in wooden handles.

The Government issued stern orders, and in a few
months hundreds of the leaders were in jail. At Bir-
mingham Holyoake watched eagerly, but took no part
in, the riots that ensued. His friend George White, a
reckless young Irishman, who was, Gammage says,
" quite at home in battering the head of a policeman,"
and who impudently forced the magistrate to supply him
with sherry and sandwiches during his defence, was im-
prisoned ; so were Collins, and Lovett, and Harney, and
others he knew. The authorities of Birmingham had

42 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ROBERT OWEN

borrowed a force of the new police from London. The
workers, who saw in the establishment of the police a
new device of Whig despotism, scorned the "blue
bottles" and " raw lobsters," routed them when the
mayor brought them out, and were in turn chased and
cut down by the cavalry. They had turned off the gas,
and the maddened troopers chased them about Holyoake's
quarter by the light of burning houses. His wife and
he were nearly cut down, as they went out to inquire
about a friend. Opposite him in the little street off the
Bull Ring, the centre of the riot, he had for a neighbour
during the riot-week Harney himself a dark, moody
little man with the pen of a Marat.

Attwood and others presented a protest to the House
containing 1,280,000 signatures, threatened a general
strike for a month, and counselled a run on the banks
and abstinence from excisable articles ; but the Govern-
ment triumphed. Chartism was, for some years, "ex-
hausted by the disasters of 1839," and we may leave it
until its revival in 1848, when Holyoake becomes active
in it. In the intervening years he is merely on good
terms with its branches, wherever we find him. His
hope is centred in Owenite education, rather than in
political agitation, and to this we must return.

Robert Owen had been introduced to the Birmingham
Political Union in 1832, and he had lectured on his
system to an audience of 8,000 people in Beardsley's
Repository. 1 It reminds us at once of Leslie Stephen's
description of Owen as "one of those intolerable bores
who are the salt of the earth," and of Holyoake's state-
ment that when Owen called a meeting you could never
be sure when it would terminate, to find that the meeting

1 I have said that Pare and Hawkes Smith and others of influence
over Holyoake were Owenites. We find a Birmingham Co-operative
Herald as early as 1828.

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ROBERT OWEN 43

lasted from 11 a.m. until 4 p.m. But Owen depre-
ciated political action, and politicians distrusted Utopias.
The Socialists as the Owenites were commonly called,
though they differed fundamentally from modern Social-
ists 1 remained a small but vigorous body. They
opened a Labour Exchange in Bull Street, where the
workers directly exchanged the products of their industry
without the mediation of money (or by the use of tickets
indicating the pure labour- value of the goods). Owen
himself slighted these crude Co-operative experiments
(which soon failed), and insisted on the adoption of his
comprehensive scheme of a new world. His organ, the
New Moral World, announced that "the reign of truth
had now commenced on earth, and would prevail for
evermore." Of this new world he was styled the "Pre-
liminary Father," or, at a later date, the " Social and
Right Reverend Father." In 1838, when Holyoake met
him, he was in his sixty-seventh year. Genial and amiable
to all, of tireless energy and tireless patience, with great
dignity of bearing, admirable voice, and graceful gesture,
he still exercised a remarkable sway over thoughtful
men, and had more than a hundred thousand avowed
followers. Holyoake would see him again in 1839,
when the Congress was held at Birmingham, and the
two previous associations he had founded were merged
in "The Universal Community Society of Rational
Religionists." The Central Board of the Society was
located at Birmingham, and the New Moral World issued
there.

It can not be questioned that Holyoake largely regarded
the post of Social Missionary as a means of livelihood and
of escape from his disagreeable position. At the same

1 They did not advocate State-action at this time, but voluntary asso-
ciation in communities ; nor could any one at that stage of municipal
development dream of " municipal trading."

44 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ROBERT OWEN

time the pay was far smaller than he could have earned
as a mechanic, and his heart was wholly in the work.
The Manchester Congress in 1838 had appointed six
Social Missionaries (Lloyd Jones, Rigby, Green, Bu-
chanan father of the novelist, Campbell, and Hollick),
and stationed them at London, Birmingham, Leeds,
Manchester, Liverpool, and Glasgow. The whole king-
dom was majestically divided into six dioceses for them,
and an episcopal salary of 8o-ioo a year was guaran-
teed. When four more missionaries were appointed in

1839, the optimism of the Owenites was only equalled
by the terror of their opponents. A petition was
solemnly presented in Parliament, from the clergy,
traders, and magistrates of Birmingham, praying for
attention to the movement. The Bishop of Exeter took
up the " holy war " in the House of Lords, and vainly
endeavoured to make the peers' flesh creep by a tragic
account of their partition of the kingdom into Socialist
dioceses, and a stern denunciation of " the horrid blas-
phemies and immoralities " of the New Moral World. 1

It will appear presently how these strictures had an
unforeseen effect on the band of adventurous spirits into
which young Holyoake now sought admission. Early in

1840, when the trouble at the Mechanics' Institute be-
came serious, Hollick urged him to apply to the Central
Board. From some cause or other he long hesitated,

1 The blasphemies were not serious. The " immoralities " were prob-
ably found in Owen's "Lectures on the marriages of [= by] the priest-
hood," which; Mr. Podmore describes as "a high-pitched and indis-
criminate condemnation of the whole institution of marriage." He has,
perhaps, not taken sufficient account of Holyoake's assurance (History of
Co-operation^ I, 139, and elsewhere) that, Owen being careless as to
misinterpretation, the lectures were not published as he delivered them,
but " made up of abrupt notes made by a hearer." Elsewhere (Reasoner>
May 23, 1849) Holyoake declares of the lectures that " Mr. Owen has
repudiated them." As has happened to many marriage-reformers,
Owen's stress on the spiritual link threw the legal or ecclesiastical
contract into comparative shade.

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ROBERT OWEN 45

but at the Congress that was held at Leeds in May
Hollick submitted his name. All present spoke highly
of him, his friend wrote, though many regretted he
"had not a more powerful bellows." Holyoake says
somewhere that "others concluded that, in a party
widely credited with subversive and dangerous purposes,
an unaggressive voice like mine might confuse prejudice,
if it did not disarm it." It was probable that the next
vacancy would fall to him, and not improbable that
Mr. Mackintosh would soon retire from Birmingham,
and leave that honourable position to him. In June the
Birmingham group purchased a chapel (in Lawrence
Street) for holding their meetings, and there is a letter
expressing their great indebtedness to Holyoake for col-
lecting funds and attending to the legal business. He
also sent up to the central officers a suggestion that he
should write books for use in their schools, and was
vaguely encouraged. We shall find them amongst
his later publications.

In September he gave a series of lectures to the Wor-
cester Owenites, and they pressed him to come to them
as station-lecturer. " They have in Worcester," he wrote
to the London executive, "an apology for a Mechanics'
Institution. They want a real one. ; which I think I could
soon supply to them." The Birmingham Board reported
that " his morals were unimpeachable, while of his mental
acquirements much, very much, might be said, without
doing adequate justice to him." The Central Board ap-
proved his acceptance of the post, but regretted that they
were not in a position to grant him a salary. However,
the Worcester people had promised to raise a small
salary for him, and at the beginning of October he set
out for his mission, leaving his wife and child at Bir-
mingham. He had at last his share of the world to
conquer.

46 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ROBERT OWEN

His letters at this important period of his career
suggest a shrewd, business-like, self-possessed, and
industrious young man, his adolescent zeal well salted
with discretion. The letters written to him, or about
him, especially from the Socialist branches, plainly show
that he had charm of character and an impressive address.
He was in his twenty-third year, much (though imper-
fectly) cultivated the Birmingham Board speaks of his
command of ."all philosophies, ancient and modern,"
and more judicial correspondents respect him refined
in bearing and speech, and, though weak in voice, well
trained in delivery, witty, and sententious. I knew
him only in his last eight years, when his ceaseless
humour, his refined and dignified bearing, his neatness
and felicity of phrase, and his obvious solidity of char-
acter, won all who met him, and inspired younger men.
It was something to learn, as the research for this bio-
graphy went back into dark days, that he had never been
otherwise : that at a time when his mind was immature,
and his life cast in the hardest circumstances, the best
traits of his character were never obscured. His grave,
well-cut features, framed in dark long hair, did much to
disarm those who came to hear him retail the "horrid
blasphemies " of the Rational Religion.

But the auditors were few, and his first theatre of public
action not likely unduly to elevate him. Their Hall of
Science (in Garden Street) was a small workshop hastily
turned into a temple of humanity, and their fragment of
" the new moral world " was a very tiny patch of Wor-
cester. They met twice on Sundays for service in it. A
few naturalist or humanist hymns (poems by Shelley,
Elliott, etc.), and a reading from some edifying work,
preceded the lecture. These hymns were often preten-
tious and pedantic, but Mr. Podmore's strictures on them
in his life of Owen are hardly justified. He says that

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ROBERT OWEN 47

justice does not seem to have been included amongst the
virtues they sang, and that the omission "will help to
explain the indifference of the Socialists to all the great
democratic movements of the time." 1 Owen's whole
scheme was based on a demand for industrial justice ;
and although the " Father" himself depreciated the
Radical political reforms he called them " small ware"
in comparison with his own more vast and more radical
scheme most of his followers were not at all indifferent
to them. They fraternised with the Chartists everywhere,
and often worked in the Anti-Corn Law movement

Owen himself did not fail to point out the partial
reforms that were involved in his broad principles the
industrial principle of co-operation and the moral principle
of the effect of good or bad surroundings and of culture
on character. No reformer of the nineteenth century
had less limitation in the application of his principles,
though his methods were impracticable, and his system
had to die to disclose its fertility. Nearly a century ago
he advocated infant-schools of a kinder-garten type (the
first London infant-school was founded by his disciple,
Wilderspin, in 1820) and the legal suppression of child-
labour : an eight-hour day for the adult worker : co-
operation in production and distribution : the general
diffusion of the elements of science and art: the cor-
rective treatment of the criminal and the reform of jails :
the substitution of arbitration for warfare : greater free-
dom and a wider life for woman : the emendation
of the divorce-laws, the poor law, and the licensing
law : the suppression of the national lottery : the

1 Robert Owen, I, 475. The reader must recollect that it was an age
of poor hymns. Even the Unitarian hymn-book had such verses as :

" On Cherub and on Cherubim

Full royally he rode ;
And on the wings of mighty wind
Came flying all abroad."

48 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ROBERT OWEN

collective ownership of the land : and the admission of
Jews, etc., to Parliament. All these ideas were urged
in his journal and by his missionaries, and from him
Holyoake inherited them. No doubt he was wrong in
fancying that reforms are brought about in a wholesale
fashion ; but experience has shown that, when men do
take them up with the single intensity of purpose that
is requisite for attaining them, the old limitations return,
and the sectional reformers are apt to be contemptuous
or hostile to each other. The breadth of Owenism had
advantages.

Most of Owen's missionaries were not men of a type
to impress England as their leader did. Their work was
a failure, and they were disbanded in four years. Holy-
oake himself had a large ideal of his mission, and brought
energy and character to it. The "Hall of Science*'
in some places their structures were known as "Social
Institutions " was understood to mean a centre for the
cultivation of social science, a thing then dreaded by the
wealthy and frowned upon by the religious. Holyoake
went further, and taught mathematics and physics ;
though his flock became cautious when he introduced
"laughing gas," and to his astonishment sent the sub-
ject, a heavy carpenter, in a series of somersaults along
the room and down the stairs into the street. The pay
was apostolic. Out of his sixteen shillings a week he
had to maintain himself at Worcester and his wife and
child at Birmingham, where the mustard and cress must
still have flourished. After a time he increased his
income by teaching mathematics at a girls' school in the
town, under the decent disguise of "Mr. Jacobs." He
then, in December, brought Eleanor and the child to
Worcester, and could spare himself the occasional 26-
miles walk to go and see them. He never had the faculty
of pressing for money, as some of his colleagues had.

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ROBERT OWEN 49

One of them had a trick of admitting an audience free,
and then locking the door and refusing to open it until
they had subscribed the price of a sheep or a cow for
the Queenwood community. Lectures at other centres
brought little profit. He gives an amusing account in
his Last Trial for Atheism of a lecturing adventure at
Cheltenham, where he had to squeeze the food out of his
host, and in the end pay the travelling expenses for
himself and his wife.

The apostolate was dreary and dispiriting, and he
soon appealed for a regular diocese. He was proposed
at Birmingham as a delegate to Congress, but Charles
Southwell was appointed. A friend sends him a dark
account of the manoeuvres of Southwell's friends, but
the letter is chiefly interesting because it shows that
Socialism is already dying at Birmingham. There were
only 34 members at the meeting (though 43 votes were
recorded !), and the society is deep in debt. The new
moral world was curiously like the old bad one, when
one got fairly inside it. However, both he and South-
well were appointed missionaries, and at the end of May
he left for Sheffield. The Worcester officers testified
that " his general demeanour as a private individual had
been most open, free, and unaffected, which with an
urbanity of manner and kindness of disposition has
gained him the respect and admiration of all with whom
he has had to do." I fancy the lively, if not flippant,
paragraphs he had sent weekly to the journal of the
movement had a good deal more weight with the
Sheffield people.

In May he set out with enthusiasm for his larger
sphere, little dreaming that in another year he would be
in a Midland jail. The Central Board had a big way of
doing things on paper that accorded with their theory.
It drew up a formidable charter of the new diocese
VOL. i. E

So THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ROBERT OWEN

created for Holyoake. The territory he was to evan-
gelise comprised "the town of Sheffield and generally
that part of the county of York not included in the
Leeds district : the towns of Derby and Nottingham, and
generally the county of Nottingham and that part of the
county of Derby north of a line drawn immediately
south of the town of Derby, etc.'* In brief, it included
33 large towns and villages innumerable.

In point of fact the work at Sheffield proved more
inspiring. The hall was a substantial building in
Rockingham Street, there was a day-school in which he
had full scope for his ideas, and he attracted friends of
distinction. His pedagogical work showed genius for
teaching. He taught writing in such a way that
children would easily scrawl their own and their
mothers' names in a week, and in a few weeks could
write well. 1 His " Pestalozzian school," with fifty pupils,
won him regard. Sheffield seems to have known him
before many months. In the winter the pantomime of
the town was " Jack the Giant-killer," and the hero was
an open impersonation of the young missionary. The
actor, Mr. Young, was friendly to him. George Julian
Harney, the Chartist, came to Sheffield, and lived for
some time with him. Ebenezer Elliott, the democratic
poet, was attracted by a pamphlet that Holyoake wrote
on "The advantages and disadvantages of Trades'
Unions." A letter from the poet to him runs :

"DEAR BROTHER,

"Not having seen the paragraph you allude to,
I cannot answer your letter. But if ever I offend you,
pray come to my breakfast table, and let us settle it

1 The system may conveniently be read in Bygones, I, 33. He first
teaches the child to make a " straight stroke" and "a round O." The
other letters of the alphabet are then shown to be combinations of these.
He proceeded largely on the sensible principles lately popularised by
Mrs, Boole,

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ROBERT OWEN 51

over a cup of coffee. I am not aware of having written
or said a word that ought to offend you or any of
you and I am myself a Socialist, if I understand
myself remaining

"Your brother,

"EBENEZER ELLIOTT."

Holyoake appropriated one of Elliott's poems for
the Rational Religion, but substituted the word "Co-
operation," in defiance of metre, in the second line of:

" Behold ! behold ! the second ark
The Land ! The Land ! "

Elliott laughingly suggested another cup of coffee, but
he was really not an admirer of Owenism. He urged
the workers "not to be deluded by your Owens,
Oastlers, etc." ; and on one occasion, when Holyoake
and others lunched with him, he gave them his
lines :

"What is a Communist? One who hath yearnings
For equal division of unequal earnings ;
Idler or bungler, or both, he is willing
To fork out his penny, and pocket your shilling."

It was, of course, mere parody of Holyoake's teach-
ing "the best definition in our language of what
Communism is not" he says but Elliott was a forgiv-
able man, and his friendship a distinction. Other men
of familiar name entered his circle. There is a letter to
him from Mr. Samuel Smiles (then editing the Leeds
Times, to which Holyoake contributed) which shows
appreciation. He describes one of Holyoake's articles
as "cleverly and brilliantly written." Holyoake
suggests that Smiles borrowed the phrase "Self-
help " from himself.

Distinction was on its way, but money tarried. In
offering him thirty shillings a week, the president of the

52 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ROBERT OWEN

society had pleaded that they were " deuced poor."
Their collections on Sundays came to about twelve
shillings, and they had fallen from three orations to one,
as the receipts for the other two did not pay for gas.
For this Holyoake had to teach for five hours a day,
lecture on Sundays, and visit his diocese. When the
work proved too much, he paid a curate (Paterson) out
of his own salary. Meagre additions were made to it by
a little journalism (the New Moral World, Sheffield Iris,
and Leeds Times), a little literary revision, and a little
private teaching. Money was so scarce that when the
Huddersfield society invited him to deliver their anni-
versary lectures, and could offer only ten shillings for
expenses, he walked there and back thirty miles each
way to save the money. The unpleasantness increased
when he knew that the raising of his salary was a
perpetual theme of discussion in his own society.
" Weary of my engagement," he notes in his diary in
the summer.

His relations with the central authorities of the
Rational Religion did not long remain, if they ever
were, cordial. Owen himself was not the kind of
leader to detect and encourage talent. He was full
of his vision, and he regarded the missionaries only as
indifferently helpful transmitters of it. The younger
man saw that the vision was too broad, and the move-
ment in need of specific aims. He sent up the manu-
script of a mathematical work (probably his Mathematics
no Mystery), and urged attention to education, which
was then much discussed. Owen, a born educationist,
looked at the manuscript and discouraged publication.
The general secretary begged Holyoake to work rather
at the presentment of their general principles than
at small educational measures. "The day has now
arrived," Galpin wrote to him, in July, "when, with

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ROBERT OWEN 53

unity of action, our society may carry the world before
it." Holyoake knew well that the society was in a state
of decay, and his suggestions of definite reforms were
good. But Owen's eyes were blurred with his besetting
vision, and the decaying frame of his movement was
now torn by a storm that hastened its end, and swept
Holyoake into more adventurous fields.

The attack made on the Socialists in the House of
Lords had drawn hostile eyes on them. It was discovered
that they took money at the doors of their Halls of
Science, and that this practice was illegal under 39
George III, c. 79. Small-minded zealots at once urged
the authorities to move against them. They replied that
they were assembled for " religious worship," and that
they were a " congregation of Protestants called Rational
Religionists." The enemy at once claimed that mission-
aries who made this plea for their institutions should be
called upon to make a public profession, on oath, of the
Protestant faith, and many of them were summoned to
do so. The editor of the New Moral World, Mr.
Fleming, urged them to take the oath, and this seems to
have been the general feeling of the officials. Lloyd
Jones took the oath at once : Robert Buchanan hesi-
tated a few weeks, but at length " swore himself into the
position of the Rev. R. Buchanan." They were
supported by the officials, and the Central Board became
very anxious to restrain all its lecturers from referring to
religion.

This procedure on the part of a movement that stood
for truth and sincerity above all things was repugnant
to Holyoake, nor was his disgust lessened when he
heard the editor of the New Moral World say at Sheffield :
"If you offend people's prejudices, the capitalists will
never lend us money." Money was, in fact, urgently
needed for the communal experiment they had started in

54 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ROBERT OWEN

Hampshire, but Holyoake and a few of the more ardent
and unaccommodating spirits rebelled. They at once
opened a crusade for the outspoken criticism of theology.
John Watts (of Manchester) wrote to the Central Board
that they seemed to be developing "the souls of stock-
jobbers." Jeffery (of Edinburgh) wrote to Holyoake :
"All the bright anticipations which we had associated
with the social body are doomed to disappointment if it
become nothing more than a Joint Stock connection of
men whose only principle in the movement is the principal
they may advance for the sake of profit." Holyoake,
with characteristic openness, wrote and circulated a
pamphlet charging the Central Board with sacrificing
principle to expediency the war-cry of the dissenters.
Within a week or two he received a circular letter from
the general secretary, which gave three months' notice
of dismissal to all the missionaries, unless they were
individually reappointed at the Congress in May. A
later letter assured him of the Board's sense of "the
value of free discussion and the course adopted by Mr.
Southwell, Mr. Hollick, and yourself," but the Congress
disbanded the missionaries from lack of funds, and after-
wards reappointed "the Rev. Lloyd Jones" and one or
two others. When Holyoake, a few weeks later, fell into
the hands of the police, Mr. Galpin wrote : " I have always
admired the bold and honest conduct of yourself and
party " ; but he wrote to a Cheltenham Socialist that the
proceedings "did not surprise the Board," and they
would not stir in the matter.

This was the beginning of organised anti-Christian
activity in England, and it is interesting to see how it
was directly due to a petty and unjust manoeuvre on the
part of some of the faithful. For our purpose the
interpretation of Holyoake's character and career it is a
cardinal point. He was still a Theist (as Owen always was)

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ROBERT OWEN 55

at the end of 1841, and his interests were almost entirely
social. He had been content so far to let the Churches
go their different way, as well as they might. His mind
now swung round to a more critical consideration of the
Churches and their doctrines, and the events that rapidly
followed moved him from indifference to hostility.

His colleague at Bristol, Charles Southwell, began to
publish an atheistical journal, the Oracle of Reason, and
he had the support of William Chilton, a Bristol printer,
and Malthus Ryall, a London engraver. Southwell
had been a soldier and an actor, and his rhetoric was
resonant and melodramatic. Though he was the
youngest of thirty-three children (not thirty-six, as Holy-
oake says) by the same father, he was a man of fire and
energy. Bristol knew him as a vigorous and naughty
lecturer in some obscure " Hall of Science," but when
he began to issue a weekly penny paper, having a sale
(at first) of 6,000 copies, he could not be overlooked.
He wrote of the clergy : " They pour their poison of lies
into the ear of cradled infancy nay, they debauch reason
in the very womb, and only in the grave can their multi-
tudinous dupes find repose for their terrified and
exhausted sensibilities." The clergy and their " multi-
tudinous dupes " demurred to having this bellowed by
a strenuous actor from the shades of Bristol arches, or
circulated in the workshops, and they raised the cry of
blasphemy. Ryall egged him on. "Throw away the
foil, sabre, or single-stick," he wrote to Southwell, "and
come to bloody noses and black eyes." But after the
issue of No. 4 of the Oracle Southwell passed from the
editorial chair to the dock, and was sentenced to one
year's imprisonment and a fine of 100.

Holyoake had joined "the defiant syndicate of four,"
because the only alternative seemed to be the company
of hypocrites. He did not know the men, or he knew

56 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ROBERT OWEN

only Southwell, and that slightly. Indeed, if their
language is at times trying, we may remember the
irritation caused them by their colleagues, the tactics
pursued by their religious opponents, and the coarse
character of much of the religious life about them. They
quote in the Oracle such passages as this from Dissenting
literature of the time: "O Lord! dung us with Jesus
Christ, that we may bring forth much fruit meet for
thee. . . . Souse us, O Lord, in the powdering tub of
thy grace, that we may become tripes fit for thy heavenly
table." On the other hand, men of their own way of
thinking were being treated daily in the courts much as
the Jews had been in the Middle Ages. There were
many cases in which men escaped charges of assault by
proving that their victims were atheists, and therefore
ought not to take the oath. One instance will illustrate
the incredible and exasperating situation that existed so
late as the forties. A respectable London bookseller
appeared before a Clerkenwell magistrate to prosecute a
man for stealing a book. " Stand down, sir, I will not
hear you," said Mr. Combe on learning that he was not
a theist. But as other witnesses were available the
thief was committed, and the magistrate bound over the
bookseller to prosecute. "I think" he began, asking
leave to withdraw the charge in the circumstances.
"Oh, we don't care what you think: we don't want
your thinkings here," said the clerk. " No, certainly
not," added the magistrate, " we don't want the thoughts
of such a man here." But we shall see enough of this
presently. Atheists were outlaws, and it is hardly
surprising that some of them used the language of
outlaws.

Holyoake had still a vague belief in God at the end of
1841, but the prosecution of Southwell at Bristol let loose
a flood of feeling in which the last lines of his creed

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ROBERT OWEN 57

were obliterated. For some years afterwards he freely
described himself as an " atheist." He did not mean
very few atheists do mean (Holyoake says Chilton was
the only dogmatic one he ever met) that he could
disprove the existence of Deity. That is not the meaning
of the word. His view was, he wrote at the time, the
view of Pythagoras : " I know nothing of Gods." It is
the attitude he afterwards made popular under the name
of Secularism and Huxley called Agnosticism. He found
human problems so absorbing and pressing that he
desired to keep aloof from theological ones. This had
been so entirely his attitude up to 1842 that he had not
noticed the collapse of his belief. But he was now
naturally drawn for a time into an aggressive mood.

On January gth he announced a lecture on "The
spirit of Bonner in the disciples of Jesus : or the cruelty
and intolerance of Christianity." The police noticed the
flagrant placard, and sent a few officers to the meeting.
No action was taken, but it was hardly for lack of
material. His "curate," Paterson, read the lesson,
which was the very article in the Oracle, on " The Jew
Book," for which Southwell had been imprisoned ; and
in the warmth of his feeling Holyoake fully defended it
and its author. " Christianity had once more produced
the iron evidences of her divinity," he said, and he must
examine them. The lecture was published, and forms
the third of his pamphlets. It reads strongly, of course.
Respectable Socialism is described as "shivering for
two years with the wet blanket of orthodoxy about its
shoulders." The rigorous treatment of Southwell has
proved "the cradle of my doubts and grave of my
religion." The truth more probably is that it led him to
tear away a veil of which he had been half conscious, and
discover his real lack of faith. He had known Southwell
at Birmingham, but his pathetic and sincere references

58 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ROBERT OWEN

to the " martyr" are undone by the papers before me.
Friends were subscribing a pound a week for the prisoner.
In the caterer's manuscript-list of " necessaries " supplied
I find about four shillings' worth of cigars a month,
much bear's grease, some silk handkerchiefs, and a
generous supply of bottled stout.

" Prepare yourself for a separation," Chilton wrote
to Holyoake. Mr. Fleming at once went to Sheffield
to stamp out the spreading fire. Holyoake was got
away,[on some pretext, to Bradford, and Lloyd Jones took
his place. He would not spare the young man who had
fastened on him the name of the " Rev. Swear-at-once "
(Buchanan was the " Rev. Swear-at-last "). Holyoake
found great dissension on his return (Movement No. 51),
and friendly members told him he would be wise to look
out for a fresh place. He accepted Chilton's invitation
to undertake the editing of the Oracle. Chilton depre-
cated " coarseness and vulgarity," and himself con-
tributed a long and remarkable series of articles on
"The Theory of Regular Gradation," which presented
the doctrine of evolution with learning and acuteness,
seventeen years before The Origin of Species was
published.

Holyoake began to edit the journal with its eighth
issue (February i2th). "The Great Lama never dies,"
were his introductory words ; but the Great Lama altered
his tone. In his first article, claiming continuity, there
is only one phrase that the most sensitive person could
object to. The article so clearly displays his character-
istic qualities of style in fair development that a passage
will be read with interest :

" Because the tortoise once beat the hare by its
perseverance, laggards in reasoning have fallen in love
with laziness ; and, with sagacity in perfect keeping
with the subject, can conceive of nothing so effective for

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ROBERT OWEN 59

the establishment of truth as sleepy error. The bounding
fleetness of the hare was its virtue ; its reliability to relax
its efforts its vice ; but wiseacres have extolled and
imitated its failing and totally neglected its good quality.
. . . Error is ancient and full-grown ; truth infantine,
and by over-careful nursing a rather weakly child.
Unloose its swaddling clothes give it exercise, and fear
not but that its fair proportions will soon be developed
that it will soon grasp the club of Hercules and dash out
the brains of ignorance."

The mind is obviously immature, but the expression
is curiously developed. The epigrammatic force, the
apt and facile imagery, and the precision of phrase that
distinguish Holyoake's later works made an early
appearance. Another passage (February 26th) will show
that he was reading :

" In the days of Aristotle, when men were so full of
theory that practice was of little repute, hidden meanings
were useful, peradventure. To the schoolmen, who love
jargon because it seems learned, and write unintelligibly
of necessity, having no distinct and natural view of
things ; to such worthies mystery is like darkness to
lovers of evil deeds, a perpetual letter of recommendation.
But no one can deny that the spirit of modern times is
most anti-supernatural, so completely so as the very
genius of practicability could desire."

One can gather a large crop of fair epigrams from
these articles of his twenty-fourth year. " Forbearance,
like eating, is capital in moderation ; in excess it
leads to disease." " The age wants, not footmen for
falsehood, but warriors for truth." " It falls," he says
of a new and intellectual religion, " like the moonbeams,
not to warm but to freeze. Its rays are colder than the
shade." When the New Moral World speaks of the
" young atheists," he coolly retorts : " Many a common-
wealth has owed more to the warmth of youth than to

60 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ROBERT OWEN

the cold prudence of greybeards." Some phrases are
clearly due to the fact that so many friends whom he
knows to be sincere men Chartists, etc. are in jail
with felons. " Civilisation, instead of being a fertilising
stream, freshening and invigorating the verdure of mind,
lies like stagnant pools on the face of society, causing
sad malarias to attack the advocates of freedom." The
wonder is that he wrote so little that one cannot read with
ease to-day. It was left to Ryall to " come to bloody
noses " ; and Holyoake did not, as a fact, control the
copy editorially at all. He was always far away.
However, Chilton, the other chief writer, was refined
and scholarly, and the paper read well and suffered
proportionately in circulation.

Southwell himself was impressed with Holyoake's
effective method of hitting hard without violence.
Writing to him from Bristol Gaol, he requests Holyoake
to alter freely any expressions he disapproves of in the
articles the prisoner smuggles to him.

" There is," he says, " no man I ever met with whom I
would sooner live or sooner die. . . . You will say old
Southwell is running strangely, not aware perhaps that
I have been long considering how we may hereafter
enjoy, in generous freedom, each other's society. I am
not without hope that the authorities w r ill soon see the
folly of meddling with the press, but you will do well
to prepare for the worst. I would much rather, very
much rather, some one else of stiffer constitution and of
less value in other respects should pass the ordeal, but
though hell gape, mind ye, my determination is to swim
or drown with ye."

We know that there were no prison-rigours softening
the temper of Southwell. The truth is that Holyoake
won the respect, and often the enthusiasm, of nearly all
who came to know him in those days. If to his sterling

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ROBERT OWEN 61

character, clear judgment, and ready command of phrase
there had been added a sonorous voice and powerful
frame, the story of Owenism might have run differently.
For two or three months he edited the paper, nominally,
from his house at Sheffield (179, Broomhall Street). In
the spring he went down to Birmingham. He may have
had some idea of setting up at Bristol, as the situation
at Sheffield was unpleasant. From Birmingham he
started on foot for Bristol a ninety-miles journey as
he could not afford the coach-fare. It proved a much
more adventurous journey than he expected, for he "fell
among thieves by the way."

CHAPTER IV

TRIAL AND IMPRISONMENT

HOLYOAKE left his wife and family at Birmingham on
May 22nd, 1842, and set out on foot for Worcester.
In those days even the open trucks of the third-class
passenger were a luxury beyond his purse. On May 24th
he moved on to Cheltenham, where he was to lecture.
I have recounted how he visited Cheltenham i-n the pre-
ceding year, and drew a sermon from the Rev. Francis
(afterwards Dean) Close. To that cleric's indignation, he
was now announced by sundry placards to give a lecture
on " Home Colonisation, as a means of superseding
Poor-laws and Emigration," on May 24th. The title
and the intention were innocent enough, but the echoes
of the Bishop of Exeter's fulmination were still rumbling
in sleepy places like Cheltenham, and the vicar made
preparations for his reception. He sent three men to
detect heresy in the lecture.

Socialism did not seriously menace the position of
the Church in Cheltenham. I have stated how Holyoake
had found the little group of Socialists there so poor
in 1841 that he had to " dispute every inch of hospitality
with his host." A group of about a hundred Chartists
and Socialists mostly men and youths, but with a sparse
sprinkling of adventurous ladies now gathered in the
Mechanics' Institution to hear the lecture. Mr. Close's
spies were disappointed, for Holyoake adhered strictly
to his subject, and made no reference to religion. But

Owenite lecturers always invited questions from the

62

TRIAL AND IMPRISONMENT 63

audience, and one of the envoys, a local preacher of a
darkly zealous order, seized the opportunity. He asked
why there had been no mention of chapels in Holyoake's
description of the home-colonies he advocated. The
lecturer had, he said, "told them a good deal about
their duty to man : what about their duty to God ? "

The question was stupid and irrelevant, if not malicious,
and in ordinary circumstances might have been dis-
regarded. But the Owenite world was bubbling with
excitement over this very question of concealing one's
opinions about religion, and Holyoake was full of indig-
nation that one of his colleagues should be in jail for
expressing his views. Owen's original instruction to
the missionaries in such circumstances was: "Should
you be challenged to discuss the dogmas of the Chris-
tians, state that you have not time for such discussions,
which tend to increase the general insanity of the world
upon these mysterious and endless imaginations of the
human brain." But Owen had himself acted otherwise.
At the beginning of his public career (at the London
Tavern, in 1817) he had been challenged in much the
same way as Holyoake now was, and he gave a defiant
answer. The recent dishonour of their body through
the temporising policy of some of its leaders made it
impossible for Holyoake to hesitate. He knew, further,
that there was a local charge of cowardice. A Cheltenham
teacher, named Sperry, had published Socialistic senti-
ments, and had retracted under pressure of a threat of
dismissal ; though he was dismissed all the same. Few
will question that it was, in the circumstances, more
manly to meet the question. It was indiscreet ; but it
is well for the world that there have been indiscreet men
in it at times.

Holyoake's fatal reply has been quoted in so many
forms even Mr, Podmore gives it in the inaccurate

64 TRIAL AND IMPRISONMENT

words of the hostile witnesses at the trial that I will
give it in full :

" As you, sir, have introduced religion into this
meeting, which I have carefully avoided in my lecture,
I will answer your question frankly and sincerely ; and
as you say we cannot have morality without religion, I
will answer that too. Home colonisation is an economic
scheme, and as we can ill bear the burden of a God
[ = a system of worship] here, he may lie rather heavy
on their hands there. Our national debt and our national
taxes hang like millstones round the neck of the poor
man's prosperity, saying nothing of the enormous
gatherings of capitalists in addition to all this ; and in
the face of our misery and want we are charged twenty
millions more for the worship of God. This is utili-
tarianism versus divinity, and I appeal to your heads
and your pockets if we are not too poor to have a God ?
If poor men cost the State so much, they would be put
like officers on half-pay. I think that while our distress
lasts it would be wise to do the same thing with the
Deity. Thus far goes the political economy of my
objection to build chapels in community. Again, I
never like to propose to others what I shrink from
myself. I am not religious my creed is to have no
creed. But what do I hear? That morality cannot
exist without religion ? Preposterous ! Religion in
my opinion has ever poisoned the fountain-springs of
morality. Connect them together ! Hark ye ! Morality
alone is lovely has a sweet, balmy, and healthful
reputation, and sheds honest influences over mankind.
Who that has felt its power would degrade it by con-
necting it with religion ? Read the mental degradation
and oppression of your race, and there you read the
history of religion : look at its bloody instruments of
torture and its fell subjection of honesty, when men
would shun the revolting homage it demands : and
there we read its character ! Why, its fierce and
inhuman myrmidons have immured, within these three

GEORGE JACOB HOLYOAKE

(1847)

TRIAL AND IMPRISONMENT 65

months, Charles Southwell in Bristol jail ; and while
the friend of my bosom lies there I wish not to hear
the name of God, I shudder at the thought of religion,
I flee the Bible as a viper, and revolt at the touch of
a Christian for their tender mercies may fall next on
my head. This, sir, is no reason why the people in
communities may not introduce religion there, but it is
the reason why I do not introduce it into my lectures,
and I trust you will take it as my apology for not
recommending god-worship in home-colonies." 1

The words created no disturbance. They were ac-
companied with general laughter and followed by
general applause, and Holyoake cheerfully resumed his
pilgrimage to Bristol jail. In a day or two, however,
he received a copy of Mr. Close's paper, the Cheltenham
Chronicle^ in which he read the following paragraph :

" ATHEISM AND BLASPHEMY.

" On Tuesday evening last a person named Holyoake
from Manchester delivered a lecture on socialism (or, as
it has been more appropriately named, devilism) at the
Mechanics' Institution. ... He impiously remarked that
if there was [a God] he would have the deity served the
same as the Government treated subalterns by placing
him upon half-pay. With many similar blasphemous
and awful remarks, which we cannot sully our columns
by repeating, the poor misguided wretch continued to
address the audience. To their lasting shame be it
spoken that a considerable portion of the company
applauded the miscreant during the time he was giving
utterance to these profane opinions.

[ u We have three persons in our employ who are
ready to verify on oath to the correctness of the above
statements. We therefore hope those in authority will

1 I take the account from the Oracle (June 4th), the earliest and most
authentic version. There was much discussion later as to whether he
said : " I do not believe there is such a thing as a God." There is no
such phrase in this contemporary report.

VOL. I. F

66 TklAL AND IMPRISONMENT

hot suffer the matter to rest here, but that some steps will
immediately be taken to prevent any further publicity to
such diabolical sentiments. ED. C. C."]

Whatever one might think of Holyoake's impulsive
and unpremeditated remarks, there is no difference of
opinion on the conduct of his opponents. Close at once
admits that the witnesses are in his own employment,
and "to prevent further publicity" transfers the " blas-
phemies " from the little audience of 100 to his own
audience of several thousands, and then to general
notice. But this is only the temperate beginning of
the drama. The next issue of the Cheltenham Chronicle
contained a further paragraph :

" HOLYOAKE, THE BLASPHEMOUS SOCIALIST
LECTURER.

" In reference to a paragraph which appeared in the
last Chronicle regarding this monster, the magistrates
read the article alluded to, and expressed their opinion
that it was a clear case of blasphemy. In order to
check the further progress of his pernicious doctrines,
the superintendent of police was ordered to make every
exertion to bring him to justice."

It must be remembered that a charge of blasphemy at
that time did not mean a charge of hurting the feelings
of one's neighbours and so possibly provoking disorder.
That civil gloss on an ecclesiastical law came later. The
offence was, in essence, purely theologi