77Y.72

LIFE AND LETTERS

OF

GEORGE JACOB HOLYOAKE

GEORGE JACOB HOLYOAKE.

(1862.)

db*--

LIFE AND LETTERS

OF

GEORGE JACOB HOLYOAKE

BY

JOSEPH McCABE

HI

AUTHOR OF " PETER ABELARD," " TALLEYRAND," ETC.

VOL. II

[ISSUED FOR THE RATIONALIST PRESS ASSOCIATION, LTD.]

LONDON :

WATTS & CO.,

17, JOHNSON'S COURT, FLEET STREET, B.C.

1908

DA

52 <r>

17
lo-

CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGE

XVI. NEARING WESTMINSTER ..... I

XVII. THE IDEALIST IN POLITICS .... 22

XVIII. FROM THE STRANGERS' GALLERY ... 44

XIX. SOCIAL AND EDUCATIONAL WORK ... 69

XX. THE ORGANISATION OF CO-OPERATION . . 89

XXI. VISITS TO AMERICA ...... 109

XXII. THE PRESENT DAY . . . . . 135

XXIII. CORRESPONDENCE WITH GLADSTONE AND CHAM-

BERLAIN l6l

XXIV. AMONGST THE CO-OPERATORS ABROAD . .184
XXV. EASTERN LODGE ...... 206

XXVI. LABOUR CO-PARTNERSHIP . . . . 2 29

XXVII. THE RATIONALIST PRESS ASSOCIATION . .251
XXVIII. HOLYOAKE AS A WRITER . . . . .271

XXIX. A CHEERFUL OCTOGENARIAN .... 287
XXX. THE MAN AND HIS WORK . . . -313

BIBLIOGRAPHY 329

INDEX 345

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PHOTOGRAVURE PORTRAIT OF G. J. HOLYOAKE TAKEN IN
1862 (Frontispiece).

PORTRAIT OF MR. HOLYOAKE TAKEN IN 1 888.
PORTRAIT OF MR. HOLYOAKE TAKEN IN IQOI.

EASTERN LODGE, BRIGHTON (MR. HOLYOAKfi'S RESIDENCE FROM
1886 TO 1906).

THE MEMORIAL ON MR. HOLYOAKE'S GRAVE IN HIGHGATE
CEMETERY.

LIFE AND LETTERS OF
GEORGE JACOB HOLYOAKE

CHAPTER XVI

NEARING WESTMINSTER

THE first half of Holyoake's public life was, like the first
half of the nation's life in the nineteenth century, neces-
sarily tentative in many important respects. He was
an articulate part of the new national spirit. His
boyish eyes had opened upon a world that had not fully
emerged from the chrysalis-stage of feudalism, but was
stirred with the deep, vague instinct of advancing to a
brighter and freer existence. It was still swathed in a
hundred bonds, and its bursting vitality angrily strained
against them. But intellectual instinct, or instinct
touched with intelligence, has not the sure march of
the animal's unconscious impulse. Vision sees many
possible paths where the blind have no choice. The
aspiring mind of the worker, which Holyoake expressed,
broke along many courses that led only to failure and
disappointment. The vast energies and rude heroisms
that the first vision of reform had inspired passed into
forms that the historian must dismiss as futile.

Holyoake, peculiarly sensitive to the larger move-
ments of his class and age, followed or accompanied
the erratic pioneers, but was young enough to find him-
self the wiser and stronger at each failure. It is always

VOL. II. B

NEARING WESTMINSTER

something to learn for certain that a particular road is
the wrong road. The name of " thinker " has been too
jealously reserved for men who are successful in leaving
the earth and mounting the ether toward the empyrean.
It is a high quality of thought to discern the path amid
social and political confusion. We saw that Holyoake
had much of this quality. Cast amongst embittered rebels
from the start, he nevertheless pleaded for cool judgment
and sober action, and avoided the excesses of most of
his colleagues in public agitation. His fiftieth year
found him, not only in a position of distinction and
influence, not only with a record of service that every
social historian now commends, but in active leadership
of two movements that he would never have to regret.
One of these movements aimed at the rectification of
speculative errors, the other at an improvement of
industrial conditions. But he had always held that, for
all purposes of the social pathologist, the heart of the
nation beat at Westminster, and in his mature years his
thoughts turned more and more to politics.

He has said somewhere, against those who urged an
exclusive attention to social reform, that the true reformer
must be ever alert to the chance of a politician arising
any day who may lose a century's savings in a sea of
imperial blood. That is a narrow expression of his
feeling for political action, taking colour from passing
events. In reality he had an extremely broad and high
ideal of political life. As a Co-operator, he would, of
course, keep industrial life apart from politics, except for
a humane supervision. He shrank from the "State-
Socialism " which was then being introduced into Eng-
land from Germany, and remained always very hostile to
it ; though he did not follow its later modifications very
closely. But he was as little in favour of Mill's ideal,
competition, as the Socialists were, and would merely set

HEARING WESTMINSTER

up a separate scheme of corporate or collective action
pure Co-operation for industry and commerce. For
all other reforms he looked to political life ; and, apart
from considerations of utility, he urged upon the workers
a sense of the manly dignity of sharing political power,
and laboured for the discriminate extension of the fran-
chise and the freeing of the political organism from its
incrustation of medieval growths and parasites. We
have traced the steps which brought him to this position.
He discarded the futile terrors of the Chartists to try
the opposite venture of wooing the enfranchised middle
class in the interest of the workers. His own experience
of them was encouraging. He met scores of professional
and business men who felt keenly that the stunted and
squalid life of the workers was a blot on the nation's
honour.

The other interest that brought him within the parlia-
mentary sphere helped him to realise that Parliament
was not a mere " talking shop " was his sympathy with
continental insurgents. To return for a moment to
the fifties, we may recall how the attempt to blow up
Napoleon in 1858 with bombs manufactured in England
led to warm remonstrance on the part of the French
Government. Lord Palmerston listened complacently
to its appeal, and brought in a Conspiracy-to-Murder
Bill. On the first reading it had 299 votes against 91.
Just as it seemed in principle, the measure was dreaded
by the foreign refugees and their friends. If the Bill
passed, foreign rebels might at any time be officially
described as "suspect" and driven from their one sure
refuge in Europe.

Holyoake, Stansfeld, Ashurst, Shaen, and others, met
in the Political Exchange at 147 Fleet Street " the new
Cato Street," some called it from whose windows so
many defiant flags had waved, and formed an Anti-

NEAR1NG WESTMINSTER

Conspiracy Bill Committee. The little group of prac-
tised agitators had less than a week for the task of
destroying Palmerston's huge majority, and they suc-
ceeded brilliantly ! Holyoake was treasurer, and he
made a vigorous appeal for funds. I find a letter to him
from the distinguished Nonconformist, Samuel Morley,
enclosing five pounds, but asking for the suppression
of his name. With the funds he collected a few meet-
ings were held, and London was quickly covered with a
garment of striking placards, giving, especially, strong
quotations from the aged Lord Russell. But it was
probably enough to point out to London that the Govern-
ment was " truckling to the foreigner," one of the seven
deadly sins of English political ethics.

Before the end of the week all London was discussing
the " French Colonels' Bill," as it was cleverly nicknamed.
The work was the most triumphant piece of agitation in
which Holyoake was ever engaged. Their first meeting
was held on Monday, February i6th,and the vote on the
second reading of the Bill was taken on the following
Friday. Holyoake followed the debate from the Re-
porters' Gallery. Milner Gibson moved the rejection of
the Bill, and it was soon seen that the angry waves that
beat against the House from London and the country
were felt appreciably within it. Gladstone and Peel
made impassioned protests, and deadly jets of hostility
continued to fall on Palmerston until two o'clock on the
Saturday morning. On the division being taken at that
hour, his majority of 208 had vanished, and the Bill was
rejected by 234 votes to 215 ! The Government resigned
the same day, but the agitation the Committee had raised
was too powerful for them to control. They had an-
nounced a demonstration in the Park for the following
Sunday, and, though they issued placards counter-
manding it, and the police opposed it, some 200,000

people burst into the Park and boisterously expressed
their delight at the fall of Palmerston.

Holyoake has written a fine estimate of the statesman
whom he had learned to hate in his youth, when he
joined a secret society that whispered of assassination.
He says he had for Palmerston " respect without sym-
pathy." Palmerston had great personal generosity, and
had shown a " diplomatic sympathy " with the aims of
the continental reformers. His action in regard to the
Garibaldi Legion will be remembered. He was a great
foreign minister " if pricked he would have bled dis-
patches " and it could at least be said for him that
foreign tyrants hated him. But in home affairs he was
as Punch drew him the man with a straw in his mouth.
He expressed no hostility to reform, but he " had learned
from Lord Melbourne the art of doing nothing," and
" in his turn he impressed Disraeli with the advantage
of gaiety in politics." He "did not know the world
below his carriage steps," as Thornton Hunt, who knew
him well, told Holyoake. In 1854 he visited Bradford,
and Holyoake, whose English Leader was much read there,
helped to defeat the attempt to force a welcome. Yet
when Holyoake begged him to put Feargus O'Connor's
sister on the Civil List, he regretted that there was no
vacancy, and offered her ^100 out of his own pocket ;
and when Hunt asked him to find a seat for Holyoake,
he promised to do so "he knew Mr. Holyoake would
often vote against him," he said, " but at the same time
he would find in him a fair adversary." But possibly
Holyoake's respect for him was more closely connected
with his telling the Glasgow authorities that they would
do more to arrest the cholera by cleaning their city than
by recommending a public fast.

The Orsini attempt had other sequels that interest us.
The ethic of tyrannicide became a common topic of

NEARING WESTMINSTER

discussion, and a Mr. Adams asked Holyoake to publish
for him a pamphlet in defence of it. Holyoake refused,
and it was published by Truelove. It was afterwards
suggested that Holyoake shrank with some cowardice
from the publication, and alleged that he was negotiating
with Mazzini for a similar work. This is mere calumny.
His real reasons were that the original title was objec-
tionable, and that the author refused to put his name to the
pamphlet. It was altered in both these respects before
Truelove published it. On the other hand Holyoake
exceeds a little in his references to Mazzini (Bygones, I,
226). He says that " only enemies of Mazzini sought to
connect him with Orsini's plot." I have quoted letters
in which T. Allsop speaks of Mazzini's approval of it ;
and I find a letter of Mazzini's in which he begs Holy-
oake to publish a translation of a pamphlet entitled
Tyrannic et Tyrannicide, though the letter has no date.

Most of Holyoake's political friends held liberal views
about tyrannicide in the days of Napoleon III. Culti-
vated men so dissimilar as T. Allsop, W. Savage Landor,
and Percy Greg advocated it. Holyoake himself made
a very plain defence of it even thirty years afterwards
(Sixty Years, ch. Ixvii). 1 It is summed up in the brief
sentence : " In a free country tyrannicide is a worn-out
theory." He points out that it is generally kings who
have been the regicides of history. At the time, he
published a series of " Tyrannicide Literature," which is
quite enough to answer the charge of cowardice. Some
of the pamphlets were old Royalist fragments. One of
them was written by the revolutionary, Felix Pyat, and
had already brought trouble on a previous publisher.
A Pole, Stanislaus Tschorzewski, had published it in the

1 Though Mr. Knowles was a warm friend of Holyoake's, and pressed
him for contributions, he declined to publish this chapter, as an essay, in
the Nineteenth Century. Even the Newcastle Chronicle declined it.

HEARING WESTMINSTER

original French, and, though the sale must have been
very meagre in this form, Napoleon's agents secured
his arrest. One of the French spies sat beside the
London magistrate during the trial. Holyoake was in
Sheffield, and was very indignant when he read of the
proceedings. He telegraphed to his brother to issue at
once an English translation of the pamphlet, which
Francis Newman described as "judicial." Holyoake
sent the first copy to Lord Derby, who had just succeeded
Palmerston, and politely invited him to prosecute, if
he dared. Derby remembered too well the fate of his
predecessor. No action was taken against Holyoake,
and that made it necessary to abandon the prosecution of
Tschorzewski. Meantime Truelove had been arrested
for publishing Adams's pamphlet. As the list of
subscribers to his defence included Francis Newman,
J. S. Mill, W. Coningham, and other distinguished
writers or public men, and a vigorous agitation was
afoot, that prosecution also had to be abandoned.

In this circuitous way Holyoake was realising more
truly the importance of Westminster. Co-operation in
schemes of violence seemed to be the only remedy for
social and political disorder abroad. In his own country
there were constitutional paths to the goal of social
reform ; and he had not merely to dissent from Chartist
dreams of violence, but to lead his many followers into
those paths. This is the task on which we find him
chiefly engaged in the second half of his active career.
The picture has less colour and romance than the
earlier one. It is set in the sober and familiar frame
of our parliamentary history ; nor can we now expect
him to play the commanding part he has done in the
smaller worlds of rebellious action. But what we have
already seen of his character will prepare the reader to
expect situations of interest, as Holyoake's flexible and

NEAR1NG WESTMINSTER

discriminating sense encounters the rigid divisions of
party politics.

The great political problem of the sixties was a revival
of that which had agitated England when Holyoake first
learned the meaning of politics. The generation that
had won the great Reform Bill of 1832 had almost
passed away, and a new generation was knocking at the
doors of Parliament. A fresh extension of the franchise
was inevitable, and the national question was, whether
peace could be bought by the small and complicated
extension proposed by the Tories and the older Whigs,
or the larger and simpler extension proposed by the
new Liberals ; or whether the Radicals and surviving
Chartists could at last secure manhood suffrage. At
once Holyoake faced the problem from a point of view
that was peculiarly his own. He saw a lack of principle
in Tory and Liberal proposals, and a lack of judgment
in those of the extremists. For him the question was :
How shall we adjust the abstract right of every adult to
the vote with the patent incompetence of large numbers
of them to exercise it with safety or profit to the country?
His solution was characteristic, and was much discussed
at the time. He first proposed it in a letter to the Daily
News in 1858, which he then published as an open letter
to Lord Russell, with the title The Workman and t/ie
Suffrage. Universal suffrage he felt to be " in the remote
future," but he resented any form of " income-franchise."
What was wanted, he said, was an " intelligence
franchise." Applicants for the vote ought to submit to
an examination in their fitness to exercise it properly.
" Franchise Examiners " were to be sent to every town
and large village twice a year, hold public examin-
ations, that would be open to all adults (male and
female), and give certificates entitling the successful
candidate to a vote. For the subjects of study he

NEARING WESTMINSTER

suggests " Political Economy and English Constitutional
History."

The plan was singularly impracticable for so practical
a man, but its ideal justice will not be questioned, and it
was warmly approved by many thoughtful writers and
politicians. The editor of the Athenaum^ for instance,
wrote to Holyoake :

"DEAR SIR,

" I have to thank you for the courteous manner
in which you have introduced my name into an important
letter written by you and inserted in the Daily News,
on 'The workman and the suffrage.' The suggested
character-franchise you judge would be objected to as the
certificates would be issued by employers and 'betters.'
I am aware how difficult it is to remove prejudice from
the mind of a working man. I should, however, hope
that if the option is presented to him thus easily to
obtain what is so much desired, on reflection and
working men do reflect the reluctance would be over-
come, and thus many thousands who should be voters
would possess the privilege. I like much your proposed
educational examination. ..."

Dr. Bird wrote to remind him that the Society of Arts
already held periodical examinations of working men,
and might, with some extension, serve his purpose. In
March (1859) a much wider publicity was given to the
scheme, when it was discussed by Lord Stanley (later
Lord Derby) in the House. The passage, in what is
described as " the finest speech he ever made " (during
the debate on Disraeli's Reform Bill), runs :

" There are many members of this House, and many
more of the working classes, who are familiar with the
name of Mr. Holyoake. (Murmurs and ( Hear, hear.')
He is chiefly known in connexion with philosophical
speculations of an unpopular character, and also as
warmly and earnestly sympathising with the cause of

to BEARING WESTMINSTER

democratic institutions in Europe. No one is a more
fitting representative in that respect of the feelings of
that section of the working class which interests itself
most strongly in politics. (Cries of ' Oh, oh ! ') Mr.
Holyoake may fairly be taken to represent the feelings
of persons of extreme political opinions, and it is with
his political opinions alone that I have to do. Well,
what is it that Mr. Holyoake says in a pamphlet
published within the last few weeks? ... I agree with
him in the general tenour of his remarks, and he fairly
expresses the principle that I have endeavoured to
establish admission of the working classes by selection
and not by mass." l

Lord Stanley concluded tamely that the educational
test was new and difficult, and passed on to other points.
But his generous and courteous reference gave Holyoake
great pleasure. He thought he owed the reference to
J. S. Mill, but Mill replied : " I have had no opportunity
of conversing with him on the subject. His mention of
you, which I was glad on every account to see, is to
be ascribed only to his honest and straightforward
character." In reply to Holyoake's letters, however,
Lord Stanley dwelt on the difficulties of the scheme :

"The difficulty of an absolutely uniform test of
knowledge is considerable : the pressure upon examiners
to alter or lower the standard, and the suspicion to which
they would be exposed of acting from political motives
in fixing it at the precise level selected, are serious
objections : nor is the feeling of the House of Commons
friendly to a simply intellectual test."

Stansfeld offered to introduce it into the House " if
no better man can be found " but insisted that it should
be made more practical. He felt sure the House " would
not stand a system of examinations and certificates."
He urged Holyoake to consult with Mr. Ellis.

1 Times, March 22nd, 1859.

NEAR1NG WESTMINSTER \\

That Holyoake's limitation of the franchise, even in an
idealist form, should embitter some of his old associates
is not a matter of wonder. He was angrily reminded
that he had dropped one of the main points of the
Charter manhood suffrage. It was not an entirely fair
charge. He looked forward to the granting of a national
system of education that should in time qualify every
man and woman to face a moderate test. However, a
Reform Bill was the topic of the hour, and the Radicals
pressed for the immediate grant of manhood suffrage.
His first conflict with them occurred in May 1860. On
the 1 7th there was a large meeting of workers in the old
St. Martin's Hall, in Long Acre, " to protest against the
recent Parliamentary insults to the unrepresented," and
Holyoake was included in the list of speakers. Lord
Elcho was one of the delinquents ; but he came to the
meeting to protest that he was not an outright opponent,
and seriously to face their criticism. Holyoake knew
that Lord Elcho supported his own intelligence-franchise,
and admired his action in coming. Hence when Lord
Elcho appealed to him to correct the misrepresentation
of his words, he did so. He says in his diary : " Lord
Elcho asked me to speak as to his political character,
which I did." Since Lord Elcho supported what Holy-
oake regarded as the fairest scheme of suffrage, he could
speak in his defence without inconsistency ; but the bulk
of the meeting only saw the spectacle of Holyoake
defending a wealthy landowner and anti-democrat.

The incident led later to a friendship with Lord Elcho,
as we shall see, but for the time being the question of
electoral reform was shelved. By this time Holyoake
was doing a good deal of political journalism. He wrote
leaders in the Star and political letters in the Daily News
(over the signature of "Disque"). In December 1859
Cowen writes to him : " Hurrah ! ' Disque ' improves

12 NEARING WESTMINSTER

every letter . . . send me 2.\ dozen Daily News of
yesterday." Holyoake also worked on several com-
mittees Constitutional Defence, Garibaldi, and Press
Committees and represented the Northern Reform
Union at London. In one way or other he was
becoming a familiar figure in the environs of the
House. When Palmerston resumed office (June 1859)
with a powerful coalition ministry, he was anxious to
include Cobden or Bright in the Cabinet. Cobden
refused, and Palmerston told Thornton Hunt who
visited him frequently, and often had Holyoake in his
carriage to ask Holyoake to find out Bright's disposi-
tion. Holyoake approached Bright indirectly, but he
refused office. Cobden and Bright had little hope of
substantial profit to the country from Palmerston's lead,
and preferred the position of free and vigilant critics.
Holyoake was not sure that they might not seriously
influence the Cabinet, and so did not hesitate to convey
Palmerston's hint to Bright. Cobden was still friendly,
as I find a brief note he sent to Holyoake a little later.
" I will do my best to promote your objects," he says.

His connection with the Northern Reform Union also
brought Holyoake into touch with parliamentary life.
The Newcastle Radicals discovered that a good deal of
corruption was practised at Berwick in the 1859 election,
and in their interest the secretary of the Union, Mr.
Reed, took action for bribery. His opponents astutely
laid a plea before Baron Bramwell that the complainant
should find security for the heavy costs of the case.
Reed was quite unable personally to do such a thing
though it was understood that the Union would find the
money, if the case were lost and Baron Bramwell put
him out of court with contemptuous observations on his
"puritan society." "To commence actions against
people for penalties when the plaintiff cannot pay the

NEAR1NG WESTMINSTER 13

costs is," he said, " a cheap way of becoming a patriot
cheap, I think, and nasty ; " and he made light of the
bribery that was alleged. The Union drew up two
petitions to Parliament, and Holyoake had them
presented in the House. From Cowen's letter it appears
that Lord Chelmsford (the late Lord Chancellor) strongly
approved their petition for a censure of Baron Bram-
well, and Disraeli promised to support both petitions.
Holyoake had considerable difficulty in inducing any
member to take charge of the petitions, but it was done
eventually, and a Commission was appointed.

This was in the early part of 1860, and we saw that
the second half of that year was occupied with the
business of the Garibaldi Legion. The four succeeding
years had no stirring political episodes. The two events
that stand out in their dull chronicle are the signing of
a commercial treaty with France and the sensational
budgets of Mr. Gladstone, who had become Chancellor
of the Exchequer. It is rather curious to find Holy-
oake active in connection with both to a slight extent.
During the debate on the French Treaty he received
a letter from Sir J. Stansfeld putting to him what the
writer felt to be insoluble difficulties in regard to certain
clauses. I have not Holyoake's reply, but Stansfeld
evidently expects a solution from him a singular
tribute from a future President of the Local Government
Board !

On the other hand, it will be remembered that Holy-
oake was one of the active workers for that repeal of the
paper-duty which Mr. Gladstone carried in 1861. In
the following year the Chancellor of the Exchequer
visited Newcastle, and the Cowens determined to give
him a princely reception. Holyoake was engaged to
write a series of articles on Gladstone and his work
in the Newcastle Chronicle. Largely owing to these

I 4 NEARING WESTMINSTER

articles the population gave Gladstone a remarkable
welcome. He sailed down the Tyne for eleven miles,
and both banks were black with masses of enthusiastic
workers. Numbers of them swam after the vessel in
the river, and thousands of miners pressed to touch his
hand. Holyoake was there as representative of the
Dally News, and as Cowen's guest. He went with the
party to see the foundries at Middlesborough, and he
earned Mrs. Gladstone's gratitude by warning her of
danger from the molten metal where she stood. He
afterwards wrote to tell her privately that Mr. J. Cowen,
junior, who had been hardly visible during the whole
of the trip, was really responsible for the wonderful
warmth of their reception.

During these years of political slackness Holyoake
was chiefly occupied with Secularist and Co-operative
work, as we saw, and with routine journalism. In 1863
he reported for the Newcastle Chronicle a famous prize-
fight between Heenan and Tom King. The curious
in such matters will find a very ample account of his
experiences in his Sixty Years (ch. Ixxvii). At mid-
night, in the depth of winter, he set out from London,
with the editor of the Sporting Life and a pugilist
" nurse," who would protect him from injury for a guinea.
There can be few more striking indications of the
advance in public opinion during the last fifty years
than in this expedition of a journalist and moralist of
Holyoake's refined temper upon a mission that he
might have avoided, and his writing thirty years after-
wards that he looked back on it "with satisfaction."
Holyoake certainly shrank from the barbaric features of
the fight, yet such a thing could not happen to-day.
Public feeling was so different at that time that Holy-
oake's account of the fight was telegraphed to the Prince
of Wales at Windsor Castle before it went to Newcastle.

NEARING WESTMINSTER 15

Palmerston had, shortly before, headed a subscription
that was made for Sayers in the House of Commons. 1

Holyoake had sporting instincts from his earlier
years, and association with Dr. Shorthouse and Mr. J.
Cowen revived them. He often reported cricket matches
and rowing races for the Chronicle. In 1864 he reported
a public execution at London, and helped to kindle a
tardy feeling of protest against such things. The
spectacle of thousands of debased men and women,
largely sodden with drink, assembling to enjoy not to
shudder at, as the theory implied such an event gave
fire to his pen. He reprinted his article in the pamphlet,
Public Lessons of the Hangman, which had much to do
with the subsequent agitation. Another pamphlet that
he published about the same time was his Suppressed
Lecture at Cheltenham. He had advertised a lecture with
the foreboding title, " The changes of religious opinion
in England since 1841," and the authorities were not
minded to have the story of his trial repeated at Chelten-
ham. The Lord of the Manor sent men to cut off the
gas at the Corn Exchange, where it was to be delivered,
and the police intimidated the owners of the other halls.
The " changes " were not quite so great as he had in-
tended to say. In the end he gave his lecture at 'an
inn. He noticed three detectives amongst his audience.

Besides writing in the Northern S far and the Newcastle
Chronicle, and occasionally in other dailies, he ".was still
editing his own monthly, the Secular World,~a.nd. writing
at times in the new monthly magazines. The' 'National
Review began in 1860, the Whitehall Review (one of his

1 I may recall that the preceding winter^ had been one of the most
ghastly and audacious criminality. Garrotting, was so-common, even
in Oxford Street and Piccadilly, that people went about by night with
sword-sticks, revolvers, or bull-dogs. The risksTmen ran led to some
renewal of the popularity of the art of boxing. Thirty years later the
Chronicle, under the younger Cowen, declined to print a_similar article
of Holyoake's.

1 6 NEARING WESTMINSTER

numerous god-children he suggested the name to
Major Bell), and the Fortnightly (to which he was intro-
duced by George Henry Lewes) in 1865. In June 1864
he founded a new weekly of his own, the English Leader.
It was a political and general organ of liberal views,
giving special attention to Co-operative matters. Holy-
oake edited it and wrote most of the leaders. Francis
Newman, Mazzini, and Dr. Shorthouse were conspicuous
contributors. J. S. Mill sent him .20 toward the
" publicity fund " of it, saying : " I think your projected
paper has a chance of being very useful ; " but in a
month or two he wrote to say he " did not like it," and
asked Holyoake to regard the money as given " towards
preventing you from being out of pocket by your
experiment." A distinction he noticed somewhere in
it between " ladies " and " women of the humbler
class" irritated him. Holyoake replied that his friends
and he wrote only part of the paper, and the rest
was " supplied," for reasons of economy. Other corre-
spondents spoke highly of it. " I wish you success
heartily with your paper, and will recommend it wher-
ever I get a chance," Mr. Thomas Hughes (author of
Tom Browns Schooldays), his earlier Christian Socialist
opponent, wrote to him. Mr. Henry Campkin wel-
comed it on the political side. " For want of other
information," he says, " I regard you as the ' Leader.' "
It ran for twenty weeks (until October i5th, 1864), and
then failed from lack of funds. But Holyoake spoke of
it as a " pleasant experience " and very fair success. 1

1 He revived the English Leader on January 6th, 1866, and again edited
it until July i-jth, when he gave it to a Mr. Gooding. After that date Holy-
oake wrote little in it, and came to dislike it for change of principles.
It ended finally in December. The numbering of the copies is perplexing,
as the new series began with a fresh number, and reverted to the original
succession in March. In other words, the first ten issues in 1866 were
;z'.r-numbered i to 10, instead of 21 to 30.

N EARING WESTMINSTER 17

In 1865 the political world awakened to fresh activity.
Lord Palmerston's period of office was approaching its
term, and it was apparent to all that the statesman's
career was itself drawing to a close. Liberals and
Radicals began to prepare for the electoral struggle,
and the stir runs through Holyoake's correspondence
and diaries. From the preceding summer Thornton
Hunt, now a journalist of great influence, in the confi-
dence of Palmerston, had been urging Holyoake to
expend his gifts of agitation on the approaching contest.
His repeated entreaties to Holyoake to come and talk
over the situation show the great esteem he continued
to have for him. He writes, for instance :

"... But I want especially to see you. I am confi-
dent there is good work to be done, although many are
wavering, slow, irresolute, supine, sceptical, dead, mis-
trustful, stagnant, cold, contradictory, indifferent, de-
sponding, dogmatically dead, and prone to let old and
exploded assumptions block out the opportunity they
might make, or rather accelerate. / am bent on trying
to bring about the reunion and reawakening of the
Liberal party. It is just now very fainthearted there-
fore, the burnt feathers for its recovery. The leaders
know its state of debility as well as possible, but have
not the nerve, or zeal, to arouse its energies they all
want doses of bark. ... I am convinced that you
could afford material aid in preparing for the next
session."

The elections came on in July 1865, and it is clear
that Holyoake gave the " material aid " that Hunt had
anticipated. He not only spoke constantly as a repre-
sentative of the Reform League, but gave personal
assistance to several candidates, and wrote a useful
pamphlet on The Liberal Situation. J. S. Mill wrote of
the pamphlet :

VOL. II. C

i8 NEARING WESTMINSTER

" I think it is one of the best of your writings, and
well calculated to stir up the thinking minds among the
working classes to larger views of political questions.
So far as I am myself concerned, I cannot but be pleased
to find you in sympathy with some of the most generally
unpopular of my political notions."

Mr. (afterwards Sir) C. Buxton also wrote of it: "Mr.
Gregory quoted you largely last night. Could I per-
suade you to come to breakfast on Friday? I have
asked Mr. Gregory and Mr. Forster."

As the elections approached, Holyoake flung himself
into the more practical work. Prof. H. Fawcett thanks
him in a letter for his " kind interest; " though it appears
that one of Fawcett's supporters " scrupulously took care
to suppress " a telegram from Holyoake, and " entirely
destroyed the influence which he [the suppressor] once
possessed with his fellow working-men." Mr. P. A.
Taylor, a constant correspondent, has his assistance in
framing an election address. " You unconscionable and
altogether ungrateful and depraved party ! " he exclaims,
at some new demand of Holyoake's ; " such conduct from
you almost persuadeth me to be a Christian." More
important was the service he gave to his old opponent,
Mr. Thomas Hughes. He recommended Hughes to
the Lambeth electors, drew up his election address and
several posters for him, and did much to further his
candidature. He knew that Hughes would oppose in
Parliament several measures which he himself wished
to see passed, but he recommended him on general
grounds. A letter of Hughes to him in May suggests
the extent of the assistance he gave him :

" DEAR MR. HOLYOAKE,

" I am writing in some anxiety for news from
you. When shall I go on the stump? or shall I meet

NEARING WESTMINSTER 19

any persons, whom, and where? ... I am game for
anything except going in for the public-house and cab
line. I shall tell the electors this plainly from the first,
and then they can take me, or let me alone, as they
like. ... If the whole thing has collapsed, never mind.
I shall find the right place some day, and if not the
world will slide all the same.

" Yours ever,

"THOMAS HUGHES."

The letter seems to show appreciation and indebted-
ness, but Holyoake complains that, when Hughes was
returned, he treated his " infidel " auxiliary with coldness,
and did not invite him to the festive commemoration of
his success. 1

Just before the fray opened Holyoake left London for
Newcastle, where he was to work for Cowen's election.
Since the previous autumn there had been some ques-
tion of Holyoake being appointed secretary to Mr.
Cowen, senior, and he clearly welcomed the prospect.
He had long been at home amongst the sturdy
Northumbrians, and was proud of his association with
their typical spokesmen, the Cowens. Here again,
however, his heterodoxy proved costly. Before the
end of 1864 the younger Cowen wrote that he did not
think his father would want a private secretary, if he
were returned at the general election. He added in
a postscript: "Your letter to the London papers has
been made the text of some unpleasant comments by
our opponents." At the beginning of July, nevertheless,
Holyoake was invited to Blaydon, and he took a very
active part in the work. Mr. Cowen was returned, but

1 Bygones, II, no. He generously attributes the defect to Hughes' s
"ecclesiastical, not his real, self." Holyoake's daughter, Mrs. Praill,
who had helped in the Lambeth contest, repeated the service for Hughes
afterwards at Marylebone. One or two notes from F. D. Maurice to
Holyoake at this period display only a cold politeness.

20 NEARING WESTMINSTER

Holyoake wrote in his diary a few days afterwards :
" I judge J. C. is alarmed at the attacks on me in the
newspapers," and a letter of J. S. Mill's says : " I con-
gratulate you on the triumphant return of Mr. Cowen
for Newcastle, and I regret that the attacks on you
should have prevented the realisation of your hopes in
regard to the secretaryship."

The nature of the attacks will be seen in the following
extract from one of the opposing journals at a later date :

" Newcastle, it appears, was represented at the great
Hyde Park riot on Monday evening, and by no less a
personage than the secularist editor, and lecturer-on-
things-in-general, Mr. George Jacob Holyoake. From
Radical Mr. Joseph Cowen, M.P., to secularist Mr.
George Jacob Holyoake may not be a very great descent,
but to the intelligence and good sense of Newcastle the
spectacle is a painful one. When Newcastle selected
Mr. Cowen, as a silent member, people cognisant of
the means adopted, and of the amiable weakness of the
aspiring representative, might have experienced some
little regret, but no disappointment. Few, however, con-
ceived that Mr. George Jacob Holyoake, who has for
years been conspicuous for his attacks upon Christianity
and the Bible, should be knit to the coat-tails of Mr.
Joseph Cowen. Who appointed Mr. Holyoake to make
Newcastle the equivalent of law-breaking democracy?
Mr. Holyoake, it has been hinted, contributes the
thunder to a Radical contemporary distinguished for
sensationalism and horseflesh proclivities. . . . What
next? Did we not know our fellow townsmen, we should
answer ' The Deluge.' '

Dickens had no need to make laborious research when
the chief organs of large towns were publishing leading
articles of this type. The extract shows, however, that
Cowen had mastered his scruples and appointed Holy-
oake his secretary. The diaries indicate, indeed, that

NEARING WESTMINSTER 21

he spent a large proportion of his time in the House,
when the new Parliament started work in February 1866.
It was an inspiring period in the life of Westminster.
Palmerston was dead, and Gladstone was opening his
historic career as leader of the Commons, with the
brilliant opposition of Disraeli. Cobden and W. J.
Fox were dead, but Bright was still voicing, in his
majestic oratory, the stimulating protests of the " Man-
chester School." Sir John Trelawny was there no
longer; but John Stuart Mill was one of the 128 new
members that sat on the benches. The Queen's Speech
had put the question of electoral reform in the forefront
of legislation, and one needed little discernment to see
behind it the rising Liberal ideals of school-reform,
Church-reform, and workshop-reform. Once get the
intelligent mass of the workers fairly represented in
that House, and legislation would march triumphantly
along the path of serious social reform. Here was a
sphere of usefulness of far greater moment than those
in which he had hitherto moved.

With that feeling Holyoake looked down on the
grave, thoughtful face of the Queen, as she faced the
brilliant House. It seemed not without significance
that she had discarded the heavy old gilded coach of
the Georges and driven to Westminster in a light
modern carriage. The Georgean atmosphere was gone
from the House, and the breezes of the new Liberalism
seemed to give it increasing vigour. But it did not
take Holyoake many weeks to discover that his new
sphere very closely resembled the old ones in its recep-
tion of his peculiar temper. He soon found himself,
as he had often done, standing in the ranks of the
more advanced, where his convictions placed him, yet
somehow having more sympathetic relations with their
opponents.

CHAPTER XVII

THE IDEALIST IN POLITICS

HOLYOAKE has said somewhere that Robert Owen's
friends must have regarded him, in the days when he
sought political influence without the least regard to
party-divisions, as "a political lunatic." He had hoped
to secure the co-operation of Tories and Radicals in his
socio-political scheme: to have Lord Liverpool fraternal
with Francis Place. It is curious that almost at the time
when Holyoake, " the most practical man in England,"
was lightly condemning this frailty of his great master,
he was betraying it himself in no slight degree. It was
the creditable frailty of importing idealism into politics,
and ignoring laws or conventions of the party-system
that seemed to lay restriction on generous feeling.
Whether the frailty be really in the idealism or in the
political system I need not stop to consider, but the
attempt to unite the two brought many an unflattering
epithet on Holyoake in the sixties and seventies. His
very sense of justice, exceptionally detached from con-
siderations of expediency, was dragging him into the
same difficulties that it had done in the Chartist,
Secularist, and Co-operative movements, and that had
been encountered by Robert Owen before him.

His own position was one of unwavering Liberalism,
but he maintained that this was consistent with express-
ing a warm approval of his party's enemies whenever
they did something that was clearly creditable and

THE IDEALIST IN POLITICS 23

advantageous. He insisted on thinking that even bishops
and peers were capable of generous movements. The
difficulty was that his far-reaching ideas of social reform
put him inevitably in the extreme left wing of the Liberal
party, where such sentiments were rare and incurred
suspicion. His place was in the Reform League, of
which he was made a Vice-president in 1865. But
the bulk of the Leaguers demanded manhood-suffrage,
and heartily disliked his scheme of an intelligence-
franchise, especially when they saw it adopted by men
like Lord Stanley and Lord Elcho; nor is it idle to
note that Mr. C. Bradlaugh was an active member of
the executive of the League. On the other hand,
Holyoake felt that there was much hollow rhetoric in
their resonant claims that all the workers were entitled
to the vote, and he resented their virtual exclusion of
women from the franchise. His was the flexibility
of principle: theirs the inflexibility of phrase. They,
very naturally, used different qualifications.

The trouble began in April 1866. Gladstone, repre-
senting Earl Russell in the House, had brought forward
an elaborate measure of reform which would have the
effect of adding some 400,000 to the list of voters. He
was at once subjected to a cross-fire. Radicals attacked
him for the insufficiency of his Bill : Tories for its excess.
Then there occurred the political movement that Bright
has made famous with a phrase the withdrawal of a
number of Gladstone's supporters into their "Cave of
Adullam." The group of old Palmerstonian Whigs
joined in the Tory protests against the Bill, and their
secession weakened the ministry to such an extent that
the Tories were able to defeat it. Faced with the
prospect of a Tory administration and the loss of even
Gladstone's measure of reform, the Radicals now assailed
the Adullamites with all the force of that political

24 THE IDEALIST IN POLITICS

vocabulary which experience of such situations has
created. Yet Holyoake's idiosyncratic view of the issue
led him to support the Adullamites, to some extent.
Their leader was the Right Hon. Robert Lowe (Lord
Sherbrooke), who justified his attack on the Bill with
strong and fairly obvious reflections on the political
incompetence of so many of the workers. Holyoake's
Radical friends had retorted with that indiscriminate
defence of the workers which he felt to be untrue, and
so we cannot be surprised when we find him writing
to Mr. Lowe :

"Sm,

"The friends of the working classes are com-
porting themselves as women, who claim equal rights
and resent equal criticism. It is rather our part to hear
dispassionately whatever may be said of us and answer
it not abusing the saver thereof. The Daily News has
joined in censuring you. I think it only fair to call your
attention to what it has said much more serious as
regards working-class character, as I remarked publicly
at the time, than anything you have said."

Holyoake's attitude is clear and consistent enough ;
but it is just as easy to see that his friends would resent
it, and during the whole of these years of reform-
agitation the difficulty was bound to continue. It
recurred in a more serious form in the following month,
when he again made a public defence of Lord Elcho.
He had spoken some time before at an Exeter Hall
meeting, with the Duke of Argyll in the chair, and Lord
Lyttleton on the platform, and had written to Lord Elcho
that

" the time he gave, the patient attention he paid, the
unaffected interest which he took, in an inquiry into the
industrial claims of working men, and the manly respect

THE IDEALIST IN POLITICS 25

which the men felt and expressed towards his Grace and
to Lord Lyttleton, were proofs that there is at the bottom
but one class and one feeling in the country."

Lord Elcho had begged to make his acquaintance,
and friendly relations were maintained between them for
some years. The charge of "toadying" came glibly
enough ; though I find that, in one of his earliest letters
to Lord Elcho, Holyoake says he is for the measure
" that carries the people of this country soonest and
farthest on the road of self-government for which I
believe and know them to be as well fitted as the Middle
Class who now govern." There was no concealment of
differences on either side. However, in 1866 Holyoake's
feeling was made public in a way that greatly irritated
his colleagues.

On April nth the Reform League held a meeting in
St. Martin's Hall, the president, Mr. Beales, taking the
chair. The object of the meeting was to support
Gladstone's Bill, and so large a crowd came that a
number of overflow-meetings had to be held. Before
this dense and fiery gathering of workers Lord Elcho
once more came to justify or extenuate his criticism of
them. The chairman announced that Lord Elcho desired
to say a few words, but, the reporters say, he was
" greeted with a storm of indignation " and long refused
a hearing. On the appeal of Mr. T. Hughes the
audience at length became silent, and Lord Elcho
addressed them. He entirely denied the more offensive
phrases attributed to him, and claimed that he was as
desirous as any for justice to every class. Before the
end of his short speech the murmurs had almost wholly
ceased, and he was very generally applauded at the close.
Holyoake had not a difficult task in following and making
some defence of Lord Elcho, and he afterwards wrote
letters to the Times and other dailies to the same effect.

26 THE IDEALIST IN POLITICS

Both in his speech and the letters he said that he differed
from Lord Elcho politically, but could testify to his
sincere desire for social reform.

When Lord Elcho opened his Times on April i3th
he at once wrote to express to Holyoake his " surprise "
and "gratitude for this uncalled-for act of friendliness."
Mr. James Clay, who was pressing a Franchise Bill in
the House, wrote that he was " greatly gratified " to see
the letter. But it may be imagined that others read it
with different feelings. "God bless my soul!" Mr.
P. A. Taylor wrote : " so G. J. H. stands sponsor for
Lord Elcho's honest desire to do political justice to the
people the man who said in the House of Commons
with a sneer that there seemed ' a large dilution of beer
in the cream of the working classes." Lord Elcho's
letters, which are very cordial to Holyoake, show no
disposition to sneer, but merely a matter-of-fact con-
viction that the bulk of the workers could not profitably
exercise the suffrage.

At last Holyoake brought to a head the annoyance of
the Leaguers. A Tory ministry had in July succeeded
that of Earl Russell and Mr. Gladstone, and there was
every prospect of the popular demand being cheated
with some intricate and unsubstantial measure of reform.
The League went to work more vigorously than ever,
and before long London was stirred with a rare political
excitement. It was announced that a demonstration
would be held in Hyde Park on Monday, July 23rd, and
every one expected a violent eruption of the spirit of the
metropolis. For some time the workers had gathered
in dark mood to rail at the driving gentry in Rotten
Row. Not, of course, that there was any approach to
the revolutionary spirit of 1832. The pace at which
England had travelled during Holyoake's life may be
judged from the difference in the weapons used in the

THE IDEALIST IN POLITICS 27

earlier and the later reform-agitations. In 1866 a hand-
bill was distributed through the east end of London with
the text :

" WANTED, 10,000 costermongers on their donkeys to
parade Rotten Row, to test the question as to whether
this or any other portion of Hyde Park belongs to a class
or to the entire people."

Pikes were as obsolete, and seemed as remote, as
cross-bows. But the Home Secretary had unwisely
forbidden the meeting, and directed the police to close
the Park at five o'clock.

There was some anxiety when, an hour later, the
contingents of the League began to pour down Edgware
Road and Oxford Street with their bands and banners.
A strong force of police was drawn up before the gates
at the Marble Arch, and they found themselves facing a
vast and menacing crowd, with the customary leaven of
ruffians. The executive of the League, however, acted
with judgment. The little band of officers, which in-
cluded Holyoake, marched up to the gate, were refused
admission, and at once gave the order for a peaceful
march to Trafalgar Square. The crowd was dis-
appointed, and began to close on the police. Holyoake
had to fight his way through a thick mass. At one
moment a man thrust a watch into his hand, and hurried
away. He recognised his own watch, restored by a
detective.

How the crowd bore down the railings after the
League had gone, and rushed through the Park in
riotous and destructive tumult, and went on to storm
Belgravian windows, is well known. For our purpose
the chief interest lies in an episode that began a few
days before the struggle. When the police posted their
prohibition of the meeting, Mr. Beales, Holyoake, and

28 THE IDEALIST IN POLITICS

a few other officers of the League called upon the Home
Secretary. Walpole, a sensitive and cultured gentleman
rather than a firm administrator, could give no decided
answer to these representatives of the tumultuous energies
of the metropolis. He spoke so waveringly that he gave
Mr. Beales the impression that they might hold the
meeting. Rumour even had it that he shed tears of
perplexity at the interview, and the London hawkers
sold thousands of bottles of " Walpole's tears " in the
days that followed. A bottle was preserved in Holyoake's
museum of social antiquities, with the Chartist pike, and
the Garibaldi flag, and many another reminder of his
stirring career. But Holyoake distinctly understood
that Mr. Walpole reserved his decision, and he was
surprised to hear Mr. Beales announce afterwards that
the meeting was authorised. By a curious mischance
though it was represented by his enemies in the League
as a deliberate act his view of the matter came to
Walpole's ears, and was warmly welcomed. He had
received a notice to attend a second deputation to the
Home Office, and went there. The deputation had in
the meantime been cancelled, but the notice had not
reached him, and he found himself alone at the Home
Office. His inquiries led to a conversation with Walpole's
secretary, and this turned on the question of the Home
Secretary's words.

The whole thing was accidental. Unfortunately,
ministers represented in the House that Holyoake had
gone expressly to the Home Office to repudiate Mr.
Beales's construction. Again Holyoake found himself
regarded with anger by many of his natural associates :
an anger that was not mitigated when the Tory Standard
described him as "a man of high honour and probity,
whose opinions, however offensive to the general feeling
of society, had not prevented him from commanding the

THE IDEALIST IN POLITICS 29

respect of all who knew his reverence for truth and his
thorough loyalty in all dealings with friend or foe " ! It
was something to have elicited this covert estimate of
him from his opponents, but the price was heavy on the
Radical side. Holyoake felt that his action was morally
correct, and he ignored the anger of the Leaguers. In
a letter to the Times he made a plain statement of his
impression of Walpole's words, and was warmly thanked
by the Home Secretary, who wrote him :

"SIR,

" I beg to thank you very sincerely for your kind
and generous letter, as well as for your kind and generous
conduct with reference to what passed at the Reform
League deputation.

" These are severe trials which public men must bear
with patience, but the testimony of yourself, and of others
like yourself, is the best alleviation of them.

" I have the honour to be, Sir, with renewed thanks,
" Your obedient and humble servant,

"S. H. WALPOLE."

The Home Secretary was being violently assailed from
all quarters of the House, and would almost certainly
have been compelled to resign if it had not been for
Holyoake's firm support. There were those who said
openly that he kept the Tory Government in office. For
himself it was a matter of simple truth and justice, and
if the requirements of a party demanded any deviation
from these he could not be a party-man. 1

The verdict of the Leaguers on his conduct might be
expected at the great meeting that was to be held at the

1 Lord Elcho sent his warm approval, it need not be said. But it is
amusing to read in his letter :

" I attribute my broken windows and all the broken heads, not to
Bright and the Reform League, but to the tone, conduct, and flesh and
blood arguments and appeals of the late Leader of the House [Gladstone] !
His silence during these disgraceful riots was disgraceful to him."

30 THE IDEALIST IN POLITICS

Agricultural Hall in a few days. Holyoake decided to
attend it as an officer of the League. By this time the
country was quickened with an enthusiasm similar to
that of the early thirties, and far greater than any that it
has since displayed. Again the provincial towns held
those vast meetings of 100,000 and 200,000 workers, of
which we read with envy to-day, and even lethargic
London was deeply stirred. Some 20,000 people
crushed into the Agricultural Hall, and many thousands
more hung about the entrance. When Holyoake forced
his way through the crowd on the platform, and sat
down in the front row, he gazed on a rare spectacle for
the metropolis. Thick masses of heated workers covered
the galleries, and flooded the body of the Hall. Men
even climbed the pillars, and sat astride the beams and
girders in the roof. It was a solid and demonstrative
mass of Radicalism, and hardly one in the 20,000 was
ignorant that the quiet, refined-looking man sitting in
the front row on the platform had come between them
and the detested Home Secretary.

But Holyoake had well-remembered claims to respect,
and he was in good company. Beside him sat John
Stuart Mill, who had walked with him from Westminster
to Islington, and pushed with him to the front of the
platform. Few voices reached far into the crowded
Hall that night, and Mill's had little chance of carrying
far. But when the stentorian voice of G. J. Mantle
announced that Mill was to speak, a comparative stillness
was secured, and all watched with subdued respect the
frail but commanding figure of the great social teacher.
Under his tutelage Holyoake was safe from hostile
demonstration ; though I doubt if it was necessary so
transparently honest, to the unprejudiced, must Holy-
oake's action have seemed, and so great were his services.
It was at all events clear I gather from a letter from the

THE IDEALIST IN POLITICS 31

Co-operator, Jaggers that there were those on the
platform who showed disappointment when he walked
away unassailed with Mill.

That the bulk of the workers would follow his actions
without prejudice is clear from a number of incidents of
the time. I find a letter to him, toward the close of
1866, from the workers of the " Perseverance Boiler-
making Company," of Deptford, asking him to act as
arbitrator for them, in conjunction with Mr. Thomas
Hughes. At the beginning of 1867 he asked Lord
Elcho and Mr. Mill to get him a seat on the Royal
Commission that Lord Derby had appointed to examine
into the conduct of the Trades Unions. A number of
serious attacks had been made upon non-Unionist
workers in the north, and they were imputed to the
Unions. A worker at Sheffield was shot with an air-
gun, and the murderer declared that he had received
20 from the secretary of the Union for doing it. At
Manchester thousands of needles were put into the clay
of non-Unionist brick-makers. Outrages on watchmen
and property were reported daily. Though the Union
officials denied that any of these outrages had their
sanction, and themselves demanded an inquiry, there
was a very strong feeling against them in Westminster,
and Unionism seemed to have encountered a new peril.
Holyoake pressed for a seat on the Commission in order
to watch the play of prejudice and guard the interest of
justice, but the list of members was finally drawn up
before his friends spoke. Walpole assured Mill that if
he had not already had occasion to tear up one list after
it had been signed by the Queen, he would have taken
that step to find a place for Holyoake.

About the same time he had a short correspondence
with Lord Brougham, who still kept a vigilant eye on
the progress of the people and seems to have noted

32 THE IDEALIST IN POLITICS

Holyoake's position with great satisfaction. Towards
the close of 1866 Holyoake sent Lord Brougham copies
of his Self Help and Life of Robert Owen, and asked
permission to dedicate a fresh edition to him. Brougham
replied that he " had read with interest all Mr. Holyoake's
statements which had been printed," and only hesitated
about the dedication because, " great as he esteems that
honour to be, he has refused leave to so many to dedi-
cate that he was afraid they might take objections."
" However," he concluded, " it is for Mr. Holyoake to
take what course he pleases, and he may be assured of
Lord Brougham considering the dedication an honour."
The aged statesman, who had been a warm supporter of
Owen, and had shown life-long regard for the welfare of
the workers, evidently felt that Owen's spirit had largely
passed on to Holyoake.

Another experience of the same year shows that he
was regarded as having much influence with London
workers. In January Mr. Teign mouth Shore (of Messrs.
Cassell's) wrote him that they were anxious to find a
" very graphic writer and one personally acquainted with
the working classes." The correspondence ended shortly
in Holyoake being invited to edit their Working Man, a
twopenny weekly that aimed at conveying an impression
of the life of the workers. Holyoake was to contribute
six columns a week, and to " avoid writing on industrial
and social topics elsewhere." The engagement began
in February 1866 (with the seventh issue of the paper),
and I gather that he was a general writer for the firm
during the year. But it will readily be understood that
the " Belle Sauvage " was a somewhat curious home for
a Vice-president of the Reform League and leader of
English Secularism. He did indeed assume his
innocent pen-name of " Landor Praed," but by the
autumn his connection with the Working Man was over.

THE IDEALIST IN POLITICS 33

He continued to write a column of " Town Talk " in
various papers of Messrs. Cassell's, until (in February
1867) the general editor reported that the firm's agents
complained of "an evident leaning on the liberal side
of politics " in his contributions. He was requested
to "leave out politics altogether." "You could,"
Mr. Hayley wrote, " dwell more upon improvements
in and about the City, domestic matters, etc., more
especially taking up anecdotes of great men, when they
die, marry, or do anything which brings them into
prominent notice." That was hardly Holyoake's con-
ception of his function, and the connection did not last
much longer. 1

It is, perhaps, more curious to find him writing in the
Peoples Magazine a Church of England journal ! At
the request of the Rev. Stopford Brooke he wrote an
article on temperance, with more than usual discretion,
for it. His relations to Stopford Brooke were interesting,
as the following letter (July 3Oth, 1869) indicates :

" MY DEAR MR. HOLYOAKE,

" Thank you very much for your letter and for
the opportunity you have afforded me of giving some
pleasure to another. I have sent the book to Miss A.
White.

" I have as much chance of the Deanery of Durham
as I have of finding myself Prime Minister. I do not
say I should not like it. I should. But, after all, it is

1 He was at the same time (1865 to 1870, I believe) writing for the
Glasgow Morning Journal, and sending weekly letters to the Saturday Post
(under the same Radical editor, Robert Somers). I find leaders by him
in the Darlington Mercury, and he contributed much to the New York
Tribune, with the London editor of which, Mr. George Smalley, he was
intimate for many years. Mr. Milnes Edge sought his aid in the
establishment of the Democrat, in which Huxley and Frederic Harrison
were to write. In 1869 he began to write in the Echo. There are also
many letters from Captain Frederic A. Maxse, who seems to have
procured space for him on the Examiner, Later he wrote on the London
Figaro.

VOL. II. D

34 THE IDEALIST IN POLITICS

better, at least when one is still growing, to be freed from
the trammels of a * position,' and to be one of the
1 unattached ' clergymen. If I were made a Dean now
who knows ? human nature is weak I might harden
into a Conservative in twenty years, and I should like to
die a Radical in politics as well as in theology. When
I say Radical, I mean that ' they ' call me Radical a
lover of Democracy.

" I am,

" Yours very sincerely,

" STOPFORD A. BROOKE."

In the meantime the discussion of electoral reform
continued to seethe in the metropolis, and our idealist
found himself repeatedly in positions that could fall to
few others. The Tory ministry were forced to take
up the subject, if they were to remain in office, and the
years 1867 and 1868 were occupied with a masterly duel
between Disraeli and Gladstone, who had now attained
the leadership of the two great parties. Disraeli saw
that the impulse from the country was irresistible, and
he trimmed the sails of his party with " consummate
ability," to use the words of a Liberal historian. He
first drew up a series of imposing resolutions ; but the
House declined to proceed by resolutions, and the Reform
Leaguers retorted with a demand for manhood suffrage,
which was carried clamorously at its crowded meetings.
Then, after a feint with a moderate measure, Disraeli
introduced a Bill of such a range that three of the more
distinguished ministers the Earl of Carnarvon, Viscount
Cranborne (Lord Salisbury), and General Peel left the
Cabinet. The Bill was introduced on March i8th (1867),
and passed the House of Lords early in August. As
Disraeli originally framed it, nearly a quarter of a million
voters would be added to the register. It was based on
a calculation that, by its provisions, the voting power

THE IDEALIST IN POLITICS 35

would be in the hands of the middle class to the extent
of one half, while the aristocracy and the workers would
equally divide the remaining half. Household franchise
was granted in boroughs, and a >\Q franchise in
counties. But the Bill underwent the most remarkable
modifications in its progress through committee. Most
extensive enlargements were adopted by Disraeli, and
his " balance of power " amongst the three social classes
completely disappeared. Almost every change pro-
posed by Gladstone was incorporated in the Bill. The
county franchise was lowered, a lodger franchise was
admitted, and great concessions were made in the
redistribution of seats.

There is no doubt that the concessions, though they
fell far short of manhood suffrage, were much greater
than the Leaguers had expected to see. The new
Toryism baffled them almost as much as it did the
Liberals. Every party in the House was rent by differ-
ences of opinion, and differences of sentiment in
regard to Disraeli's position. Roebuck and some other
stalwart Radicals openly supported Disraeli. The
League sent a deputation to interview him, and his
genial reception gave many of them a new idea of a
Tory statesman. Further, the League had in May
gained a victory over the Home Secretary as to the use
of the Park. Mr. Bradlaugh was strongly of opinion
that the Government had no power to close the Park
against them, and it was largely through his influence
that the question was tested. The Government had to
yield, and the demonstration was successfully held.
Holyoake writes in his diary :

" May 6th. End of the British Constitution. Hyde
Park Meeting.
" May yth. Constitution survived. Found alive this

36 THE IDEALIST IN POLITICS

morning lying among the flowers of the Park. Both
quite fresh."

Under the eyes of large bodies of police and military
the workers had held their meeting, while Government
posters still lingered pitifully on the walls forbidding the
demonstration. Seeing the happy progress of events,
Holyoake was moved once more to write one of those
amiable letters to an enemy of his party that we find so
frequently at this part of his career. This time it was
to Disraeli himself that he sent his support. His letter
runs :

" SIR,

" As one of those Radicals who have opposed
you, permit me to personally thank you for the thought
of the People shown in the progress of the Reform Bill.
Should there be an ' ugly rush,' as some have predicted,
the party whose Bill is the occasion of it will not be
likely to suffer in it a flood, if it occurred, would be
sure to float him even a storm could be commanded
by the intrepid minister who, like Prospero, raised it.
But there will be no rush, nor flood, nor storm, whatever
the figure of the foreboding may be. The English
people have the sense both of order and of gratitude.
They know that the Whigs would have kept the door
of the Constitution but just ajar for ever : and they will
honour the minister who has opened it wide to them.
My reasons for seeking the great enfranchisement you
and Lord Derby have accorded were expressed in the
petition Mr. Mill lately presented for me, and which is
enclosed. It is for these reasons I offer my acknowledg-
ments.

" I have, Sir, the honour to be

" Yours faithfully,

" G. J. HOLYOAKE."

Neither Whigs nor Radicals could admire Holyoake's
action in writing such letters as this to Conservative

THE IDEALIST IN POLITICS 37

ministers we shall see that he wrote also to Lord
Derby and so his progress in the political world was
not rapid. On the other hand, he continued to press for
Radical measures which only the more advanced gener-
ally sought. As large a measure of enfranchisement
as was possible at that time had been secured, but voting
was still open, and Holyoake now began to agitate for
the adoption of the ballot.

The question of voting by ballot had been discussed
in political circles for half a century. Indeed, it was
under discussion in the House itself as early as 1708, but
it was not until the great electoral struggle of 1832 that
it became a prominent question. Mr. Grote, the his-
torian, proposed a Bill for its adoption in 1833, and,
when he left the House, the reform was continuously
pressed by Mr. H. F. Berkeley. Holyoake had adopted
it years before, as it was one of the six points of the
Charter, and with the larger franchise of 1868 he began
to press for it once more. Simple as the reform seems
in our eyes to-day, there were many democratic politicians
at that time who opposed it. Mr. J. S. Mill was a
notable instance, and Mr. Gladstone was opposed to it
until 1869. Quite apart from the corrupt fears of those
who felt that the ballot would destroy their influence
over tenants, employees, or other dependents, who had
a vote, there were many who felt, with Mr. Thomas
Hughes, that to cast one's vote openly was more
manly and bracing for the electors. Mill's feeling was
akin to this when he depreciated the ballot as " secret
voting," and urged reformers to erase it from their pro-
grammes. Those who wished to cast a discreditable
vote could, Mill said, " escape shame or responsibility "
by means of the ballot.

It seems that by 1868 these authoritative condemnations
were checking the demand that had been growing for a

38 THE IDEALIST IN POLITICS

generation amongst reformers. Holyoake addressed a
meeting of the Reform League on the subject at St.
James's Hall in January 1868, and combated Mill's
objections. His plea for the ballot was thought so
fresh and forcible that the League printed his address
in an enlarged form. 1 Bright described it as " the
only original argument he had yet seen," and Mr.
Berkeley wrote: "A greater than I has arisen." The
argument was certainly stronger than Mill's, and it
cannot be doubted that the pamphlet, followed up by
letters in the press from Holyoake, had great influence ;
though, with characteristic candour, Holyoake declared
that the first result of the adoption of the ballot would
be a short span of Tory rule.

He sent a copy to Mr. Gladstone, and received the
following acknowledgment :

" DEAR SIR,

" I thank you very much for your pamphlet. I
will not say that you efface from my mind the arguments
of Sydney Smith and John Mill, but the Ballot, or its
friends, have to thank you for an able and manful
defence.

" I remain

" Your very faithful and obedient

" W. E. GLADSTONE."

Gladstone's writing is, unfortunately, not clear, and the
word "manful" reads like "successful." The point
was important, as Gladstone's conversion to the ballot
was earnestly desired by the Radicals. Holyoake sub-
mitted the letter to a notary, who pronounced in favour
of " successful," and he then repeated it in semi-con-
fidence to parliamentary acquaintances. One of these,
Mr. Holden, publicly referred to it, and the press soon

1 A New Defence of the Ballot, 8 pp., price 3d.

THE IDEALIST IN POLITICS 39

announced that Gladstone was prepared to reconsider
the question of the ballot. There was some excitement,
and Gladstone was naturally annoyed, but Holyoake got
a correction inserted in the papers, and wrote to explain
the accident to Gladstone. However, the evidence as
to corruption at the 1868 elections, which was elicited
by a Committee of the House, had great weight with
Gladstone and other previous opponents of the ballot.
In 1871 he introduced a Bill for its adoption, and this
was passed in the following year.

The general election of 1868 to which I have just
alluded interests us, as it was the occasion of Holyoake's
second appeal for a place in Parliament. We saw that
he withdrew from the candidature he had meditated in the
Tower Hamlets in 1857. In 1868 the Tory Government,
which had held office for some time in face of a Liberal
majority, fell before Gladstone's strategy. Disraeli had
astutely avoided the introduction of any measure
which the various Liberal sections would unite in op-
posing, and so retained power. Whem Lord Derby
resigned (February 1868) he succeeded to the Premier-
ship. But his triumph was brief. Apropos of Disraeli's
Irish Reform Bill, Gladstone moved a resolution in
favour of the disestablishment of the Irish Church, and
secured a majority against the Government. Disraeli
clung to office for a time, but yielded in the summer, and
the elections were fixed for November. Intense curiosity
was felt as to the result of the recent extension of the
franchise, which would now take effect for the first time.
It was naturally expected that the newly enfranchised
working men would swell the Radical representation,
and a number of their own spokesmen presented them-
selves for election. Holyoake decided to appeal to the
electors of Birmingham. Bradlaugh was nominated for
Northampton, and Odger, E. O. Greening, Ernest

40 THE IDEALIST IN POLITICS

Jones, and others, sought election. Holyoake (and Odger)
did not proceed to an actual contest, and there can be
little doubt of their wisdom. All the working-men
representatives, as well as prominent Radicals like Mill
and Roebuck, were defeated. The Liberals were re-
turned with so unmistakable a majority that Disraeli
hastily made place for Gladstone, and one of the most
brilliant periods of Liberal administration began. But
all calculations that there would be a specifically demo-
cratic outcome of the extension of the franchise were
completely upset. The new House was the wealthiest
that had ever been returned to Westminster.

Holyoake's candidature was another of those idealist
moves that give an apparently eccentric complexion to
his political progress in the sixties. In reality, it was
only eccentric in the sense that each step was taken in
simple truth to the feeling of the moment, and without
regard to conventional political considerations. We
saw that he stood out from the Chartists with an ex-
plicit trust in the middle class as representatives of
the workers. His friends were mainly of the middle
class, and their real sympathy with the workers im-
pressed him. In the course of the sixties he went on
to include wealthy Tories like Lord Elcho in the group,
and declared there was only " one class " in the country
at the bottom. He seemed to be drifting farther away
from the Radical side of Liberalism. Suddenly, in
1868, we find him posing as an "independent labour
candidate," in the literal meaning of the term. At
Birmingham he sets out to oppose Liberals as well
as Tories, and makes a powerful plea for the repre-
sentation of the workers by men of their own class.
In his address he gives prominence to familiar Liberal
issues like Irish Disestablishment and national educa-
tion, but he distinctly dissociates himself from the

THE IDEALIST IN POLITICS 41

Liberal party. The Liberals are the "master class,"
and cannot legislate from the worker's point of view.
" A Democracy," he says, " is a great trouble. The
Conservative is enraged to have this necessity put upon
him ; the Whigs never meant it to come to this ; and
I am not sure that many of the Radicals like it."

A pioneer in so many things, he is fairly entitled to
that name in regard to Labour Representation. On
that express ground he had opened a candidature in
the Tower Hamlets in 1857. That was, I believe, the
first case on record. Now, though other workers pre-
sented themselves, his was the most explicit plea for
the representation of the workers by workers. For
many reasons he did not go beyond issuing an address.
He could not have taken the oath if he had been re-
turned, but there was no chance of his being returned.
He retired so early that one hardly finds a reference to
him in the Birmingham press, but from his letters of
the following years I gather that those workers of Bir-
mingham who wanted a " labour " candidate wanted a
man fresh from the workshop. Holyoake's real hold
in Birmingham was, as we shall see, amongst thought-
ful Liberal manufacturers like J. Collings, J. Chamber-
lain, and S. Timmins. In those circumstances it was
futile to think of engaging in a contest against Bright
and his Liberal colleagues, who were eventually elected.
However, his action gave a great impulse to the demand
for a Labour Party. His manifesto was circulated as a
pamphlet ( Working-class Representation) , and was widely
discussed. He urged the workers to organise and create
an election-fund : to cease looking about, as they did,
for "a rich Radical," and not to allow their candidates
to be pushed to the bottom of the poll by " inane people
with money bags about them." The scheme seemed
very quixotic forty years ago, like many other sketchy

42 THE IDEALIST IN POLITICS

projects of his, but we have seen it realised. Indeed,
a Labour Representation League was formed at once,
and Holyoake was an active member of its Council for
a number of years ; until it fell into some of those
injudicious ways that are inevitable in an adolescent
political body.

I do not think that this apparent volta face needs any
lengthy justification. He had always held that the first
duty of the enfranchised middle class was to secure the
judicious enfranchisement of the workers. During the
struggles of 1866-68 large numbers of them showed
that they were far from admitting such a duty ; and
since Disraeli's Bill had enfranchised as large a pro-
portion of the workers as Holyoake's pet scheme would
have done, it was time to test their powers. He desired
perfect amity with the Liberals the " Liberal-Labour "
member was his ideal for the rest of his life but the
agitation over the alleged misdeeds of the Trades
Unions had shown that on certain issues the Liberal
had a bias for capital and property against labour.
Many Liberals and some Conservatives honestly agreed
with him. Mr. Somerset Beaumont sent him fifty
pounds to help to pay his election-expenses. " If you
succeed," he said, " it will give me genuine pleasure
to have contributed, however humbly, towards the work-
ing classes being represented by a man of so much
talent, integrity, and independence as you possess."
Stopford Brooke (Beaumont's brother-in-law) wrote that
he had read Holyoake's address " with great admiration
and interest," and some Liberal members were equally
complimentary. The Westminster Review (January 1869)
took his address as the text of its reflections on the
elections, and spoke of it and its author in the highest
terms. 1

1 See quotation in Vol. I, p. 356.

THE IDEALIST IN POLITICS 43

The failure of 1868 puts a term to his political activity
in the sixties, and throws him back upon the broader
social work for which he was unquestionably better
equipped, with his obtrusive conscience and his simple
sympathies. We shall find him making another attempt
sixteen years afterwards, but he was fated to watch the
great play in the House of Commons only from the
Press Gallery, the Speaker's Gallery, or the Strangers'
Gallery. He, of course, continued his work as a politi-
cal journalist and on the executive of several organisa-
tions. In 1869 we find him on the Council of the
Reform League, the Labour Representation League,
the Education League, the Financial Reform Union,
and the Land Tenure Reform Association. But, on
the whole, interest returns to his social and educational
work. The wide development and organisation of the
Co-operative Movement at this period threw a great deal
of work on him, the course of events in the Secularist
world brought him into prominence again, and he was
an active member of the Sunday League, the British
Association, the Dialectical Society, and other bodies.
Reserving for more connected study his work in the
Co-operative Movement, we may indulge, for a chapter,
in the pleasanter task of following his varied and
interesting activity year by year during the next
decade.

CHAPTER XVIII

FROM THE STRANGERS' GALLERY

HOLYOAKE had left his villa at Regent's Park in 1867,
the year in which his mother died at Birmingham. The
house was large, and his children were dispersing.
When, at the end of 1866, the painter Merritt ceased
to live with them I find Holyoake and him dining
together later at Woolner's he took a smaller house
at Sudbury for his wife and chambers for himself in
Cockspur Street. Mrs. Holyoake loved flowers, and it
was a bright relief for her husband to fly to the hills
occasionally from the dust and din of his London work.
To his journalistic and literary work, his lecturing,
and his active assistance of half a dozen committees,
was now added the parliamentary secretaryship for
Cowen. The secret of longevity which he used to im-
part to younger men in the nineties, when they found
him surviving so vigorously in a stricken field, was
"moderation in all things, work included." That may
have been his rule for preserving longevity, but it had
little to do with his attaining it. A journalist who knew
him in the seventies tells me that after a good morning's
work at journalism or research for Cowen, he would go
to the House, to help Cowen through the ever-changing
debates or continue his work in the rooms of Hale
White. In the early morning Cowen and he would
return to Cowen's house (where Holyoake had a bed-
room for a time), and fling themselves on the cold

44

FROM THE STRANGERS' GALLERY 45

turkey that awaited them. Holyoake, who was careless
of meals during the day, would make a formidable attack
on the bird, and then retire to his room ; and he would
be up at eight in the morning for his journalistic work.

An interesting outcome of his attendance at the House
was the placing of the limelight (now electric light) in
the clock-tower. He probably had much trouble in
keeping Cowen informed as to whether the House was
sitting or no at a particular hour, and he noticed that
other members and reporters had the same incon-
venience. One had to go as far as the gates of the
House and see whether certain of the gas-jets in the
yard were still burning. The oxy-hydrogen light was
then coming into use, and it occurred to him that if
one were put in the top of the tower, and lit while
the House was sitting, it would prove a great ad-
vantage. He suggested this to Lord John Manners,
then President of the Board of Works, but his letter
was merely acknowledged and filed. When Mr.
Ayrton came to the office he found the letter, and
carried out the suggestion.

A more valuable idea occurred to him at the House
in 1869, and was accepted by the Government. The
Foreign Office was in the habit of receiving " Reports
on the state of manufactures and commerce abroad"
from the embassies and legations, and it seemed to
Holyoake that, while capital enjoyed this advantage,
labour should have the corresponding service of re-
ports on the labour-market and industrial conditions
abroad. He asked Bright to speak to Lord Clarendon,
then Foreign Minister, on the subject, and was invited
to send in an explicit document. Bright reported that
Lord Clarendon found the suggestion " admirable," and
had sent instructions to the legations to comply with it.
Some of the questions that Holyoake proposed such

46 FROM THE STRANGERS' GALLERY

as : " What is the standard of skill among native artisans
with whom the Englishman would have to compete?
Do they put their character into their work, or are they
without artisan pride ? " were too characteristic for the
ordinary official, but the " People's Blue Books " that
were produced after 1869 were very useful and inform-
ing. Large numbers of Holyoake's impetuous friends
of the forties had spread over the globe, when the
reaction came, and he knew their struggles.

When the practice was welcomed by the press, another
journalist claimed credit for the scheme, but Lord
Clarendon, at least, made it clear that he was acting
on Holyoake's letter. His instruction to the legations
began : "Mr. Holyoake has made a valuable suggestion
as to the steps to be taken to ascertain the facts as regards
the position of the artisan and industrial classes in foreign
States," and he submitted his instruction to Holyoake
before he sent it. He added that he " would be happy
to consider any suggestions that Mr. Holyoake might
have to offer as to any other matters connected with
foreign countries in which the industrial classes in this
country take an interest." Some years later Holyoake
received a grant from Government to conduct inquiries
himself in America.

In the same year, 1869, Holyoake saw a Bill brought
into the House in which he took a peculiar interest.
This was the " Evidence Amendment Bill," proposing
to substitute an affirmation for an oath in the case of
conscientious objectors. I have already indicated the
serious injustice that non-Christians incurred when their
consciences forbade them to repeat the Christian formula.
Many a criminal escaped conviction, 1 and many a sensitive

1 It is related in Francis's History of the Bank of England that a man
who robbed it of ^10,000 escaped because the essential witness
against him could not take the oath.

FROM THE STRANGERS' GALLERY 47

man remained a virtual outlaw, through the retention
of the oath long after large numbers of men had ceased
to believe in it. Freethinkers were divided on the sub-
ject of taking it, as we saw. Holyoake had throughout
his whole life set his face sternly against any insincere
repetition of the formula. It has been said by one of
his critics that his strict opposition to it only began when
Mr. Bradlaugh was found to take the oath in court with-
out hesitation. This statement is wholly wrong. His
public career opened with a vehement protest against
the making of a Christian declaration by Owenite
colleagues, and the grave sacrifices he then accepted,
by rebelling against the direction of his chiefs, were
repeated many times. When he came to London after
his imprisonment he wished to work his way into the
legal profession through a clerkship. Mr. Ashurst was
more than willing to find room for him, but he had to
point out that Holyoake's refusal to take an oath closed
that career against him. Several times he forfeited
money for the same cause. On one occasion, when he
was called up for jury-service, he offered to repeat the
formula if the court would take note that he was not
affirming a belief in God. There would assuredly be
no insincerity in that, but it was a virtual refusal to take
the oath and serve, and he had to pay a fine of ten
pounds. Once and once only his brother Austin
took the oath in the interest of their business ; but
Austin was a man of obscure and very independent (if
not theistic) views at that time, and the circumstances
were extremely irritating, as we saw. Usually Holyoake
had some Christian man in his employment who could
give legal testimony with perfect sincerity. 1

1 Some of his more determined critics have actually censured this !
It need hardly be said that he did not regard the taking- of an oath
as an evil in itself, but only when taken by an atheist.

4 8

Partly from his knowledge of the injustice suffered
he collected an astounding bundle of cases from the
press and partly from a sense of shame at seeing Free-
thinkers take the oath, he worked assiduously for the
amendment of the law. We have seen him drawing
up petitions and collecting subscriptions, securing the
support of men like Colenso, and working with men like
Sir John Trelawny. Sir John told him that his pamph-
lets on the subject (The Outlaws of Free thought, etc.)
had made a great impression in the House. He induced
the Radical leader, Mr. Roebuck, to work for it ; and
the other chief worker in Parliament, Mr. Conyngham,
was a friend of his. When, in August 1869, an
" Evidence Amendment Bill " was quietly introduced,
it passed both Houses in a comparatively short time.
" You may justly take to yourself a good share of the
credit of having brought things up to that pass," J. S.
Mill wrote to Holyoake. It was easy for Mr. Bradlaugh
in the following year to secure a " Further Evidence
Amendment Act," making the earlier one clearer and
extending it to other cases.

That Holyoake was moved by an honest feeling for
sincerity, not by that mysterious " hatred " of Christian
forms with which a critic is so often charged, is clear
from many instances we have seen. An experience of
this period is not without interest in many ways. One
of his friendly correspondents was the young Lord
Amberley, who had asked Mr. Clay to introduce him
to Holyoake at the House. Mill had spoken with
great praise of Lord Amberley, and he was one of the
men on whom Holyoake relied. Early in 1870 Holy-
oake invited him, at the request of the Cowens, to
contest Newcastle in the Liberal interest at the next
election. Lord Amberley seems to have consented,
but he expressed scruples to Holyoake when Cowen

FROM THE STRANGERS' GALLERY 49

invited him to lay the foundation of a Nonconformist
school at Newcastle. Holyoake's reply was lightly
phrased, but illustrates his attitude on such matters :

" MY DEAR LORD AMBERLEY,

" I can well understand that a gentleman may
entertain an esoteric objection to the peculiar ceremony
proposed for your performance in the north ; but it
never occurred to me that an exoteric one might exist.
It has seemed to me that, as genius is without sex,
nobility is without creed. It recognises without sharing
the convictions of the importunate. I have understood
that, in order to equalise human destiny, one conspicuous
penalty was imposed upon patrician dignity that of
being subject to Church and Chapel Sunday-School
Committees ; and that, while we humbler sinners atoned
for our faults in sack-cloth and ashes, loftier offenders
expiated theirs in laying foundation stones. ..."

So far from entertaining an unreasonable prejudice,
Holyoake very frequently attended a church or chapel,
when he was in a fresh town or near the home of some
distinguished preacher. In one respect, indeed, he was
probably unique amongst militant Freethinkers in the
number of cordial friendships he had with clergymen
and the terms in which they spoke of him. The
education-controversy, which became acute in 1869
and 1870, brought him into frequent contact with the
clergy. Holyoake, it need hardly be said, was for
universal, free, and secular education, but his positive
and social concern for education was as earnest as his
wish to see it secularised. He was himself essentially
a teacher, and his addresses at educational congresses
were always heard with respect. After he had spoken
at Birmingham in 1869, the Rev. Septimus Hansard
publicly thanked him for his " religious speech," and
a Unitarian clergyman supported the phrase. In the

VOL. II. E

50 FROM THE STRANGERS' GALLERY

same town, in the previous year, Archdeacon Sandford
the newspaper-report says "candidly admitted that
he had learnt political science from Mr. Holyoake,
and only wished that, in return, Mr. Holyoake would
allow him to give him some lessons in theology." 1

Of the education-struggle itself it is not necessary to
say much here. We have, in fact, now reached a point
where the more stirring scenes in which Holyoake
moved are within the memory of our generation, and we
may refrain from giving the ampler account that earlier
movements demanded. The year 1870 is sometimes
described as the date of the third great wave of pro-
gressive feeling in Europe. It was certainly a year in
whose calendar many events were written in letters of
gold by men like Holyoake. The Empire of Napoleon
III fell with a crash, and France set up its third and
final Republic. The withdrawal of the French troops
from Rome left the papacy defenceless, and the Italian
troops marched exultantly into the city. Thus two of
Holyoake's causes were brought to a successful close.
But England had made such advance since 1848 that the
echo of continental revolution failed to stir it in 1870.
Republicans were active, it is true. A handbill of the
year calls on working men to attend "the Republican
Demonstration in Trafalgar Square " in their thousands
(on Sept. igth) and "raise the Cry of Long Live the
Republic." They met on the Monday evening, after
work, in dramatic panoply. The " Men of Finsbury "
joined the " Friends from the East-End " on Clerkenwell
Green, "with Military Bands and Banners." They
picked up the " Italian Republicans " at Hatton Garden,
and marched with the " French Republicans " and

1 About this time Holyoake was approached by the " Society for the
Liberation of Religion from State Patronage," and asked to write for
them a pamphlet on the question : "What good does the Church do to
the State ? "

FROM THE STRANGERS' GALLERY 51

" South London Friends " into the Square, and made
nervous folks' blood run cold with Gallic phrases. But
there was no Wellington to take them seriously. The
Georges had long disappeared, and Queen Victoria had
gently disarmed Republicanism. Holyoake still and
always considered a republic the just form of govern-
ment, but there was no longer an acute need of the
reform.

Two great ideals now seemed to him to call for the
devotion of thoughtful men. Political power had been
won. With the last extension of the franchise the
people had obtained the means of making their will
effective. The broad reforms that were now needed
were, firstly, such alleviation of industrial conditions
that something like real cultivation of the general mind
and character would be possible ; and, secondly, the
efficient imparting of this cultivation. For the first
change he looked to Co-operation, for the second to the
framing of a national system of elementary schools and
such diffusion of knowledge amongst adult workers as
could be achieved. New groups of men who, from one
cause or other, promised great aid in the work, had
now come into public life. The Christian Socialists
had had a very salutary influence on the clergy. The
new statesmen, of the type of Gladstone and Bright,
were more or less sensitive to the stigma of there being
so large a proportion of ignorance and debasement in
the land. Scientific men the newest group of all
were eager to kindle thought in the mass of the workers.
The situation is reflected in a handbill of a meeting that
took place in January 1869, to promote a Workmen's
International Exhibition in 1870. On that bill Holy-
oake's name is found in association with those of
Gladstone, Bright, Mundella, Huxley, Norman Lockyer,
Tyndall, the Duke of Rutland, the Duke of Argyll, and

52 FROM THE STRANGERS' GALLERY

many others. There seemed to be a golden prospect
of the mental improvement of the masses, and with that
much would be gained.

But the pressing reform was the construction of a
national system of education, and all social students
were looking anxiously to Mr. Forster and the Liberal
Government. Holyoake still belonged to the Birming-
ham Education League, and throughout 1870 he
addressed large audiences in the interest of free, com-
pulsory, and secular education. 1 At Norwich, in January,
he had 1,200 hearers. Sixty-five years after the first
great agitation for elementary schools there were still
vast numbers of children without teachers. At Liverpool
only 30,000 children out of 90,000 attended school : at
Manchester only 25,000 out of 60,000. Two-fifths of
the nation's children, between the ages of six and ten,
had no education whatever. Thoughtful people were
now agreed that a complete scheme of schools was
needed, but the eternal religious difficulty confronted
statesmen. The situation was so closely parallel to that
of 1906, and is still so well remembered, that I need not
enlarge on it. Holyoake confirms the view that the
Nonconformists were more ready to accept secular
education in 1870 than in 1906. He relates that a
deputation of 300 Nonconformist clergymen waited upon
Mr. Forster at Downing Street. Forster seemed to his
friends to be favouring the Church unduly against the

1 Mr. Jesse Collings was secretary of the League, and wrote him late
in 1869: "We regard your advocacy as of so much importance that
your proposition is assented to with much pleasure." The chief difficulty
was that, though the Birmingham League was for "unsectarian educa-
tion," it could not agree to oppose Bible-lessons. "There are many
here," Mr. Collings wrote, "who would prefer a sweeping secular
measure, but, knowing that such is not the scheme of the League, they
recognise in our movement a great advance." Mr. Chamberlain was,
we shall see, for the "sweeping secular measure" for, as he put it,
"wresting education out of the hands of priests of all shades."

FROM THE STRANGERS' GALLERY 53

Dissenters, and, when they pressed their claims, he
asked the clergymen confidently expecting a denial
if they were prepared to have education without the
Bible. Holyoake says there was "an immediate and
general response 'without."

How Forster ignored the indication, and adopted the
compromise of Bible-lessons in the Board Schools, is
well known. Holyoake knew Forster had been enter-
tained by him several times and his opinion of Forster's
much-discussed attitude at that time is of interest.
Forster had gravely offended him in 1864, but they were
afterwards reconciled, and Forster made noble amends
in connection with Holyoake's annuity. Holyoake
maintains that ambition is the chief key to his actions.

" Ambition was stronger in him than any other
sentiment. Humanity and liberal principles were, to the
end of his days, characteristic of him, and he preferred
advancing his personal ascendancy by these means ; but
they had not the personal dominion over him that
ambition had." l

His " ambition to serve the ends of the Church " was
increased, Holyoake thought, by his marriage with Dr.
Arnold's daughter. But he adds a further consideration
that is, perhaps, more instructive. Forster sometimes
attended the meetings at which Holyoake spoke, and was
impressed with the number of people in sympathy with
Secularism. " He was then quite resolved, should he
attain power, that the authority of the State Church
should be the agent of national religious instruction."
He expressed his feeling to Holyoake before 1864, but
Holyoake hints that he was less frank with the Radicals
of Bradford, and the secular educationists generally, and
so brought trouble upon himself. Recommending that

1 Sixty Years, II, 126.

54 FROM THE'STRANGERS* GALLERY

no reporters should be present, he spoke to a small group
of his chief supporters on education before he entered the
Cabinet. They all believed that he intended to work for
secular education, and, when they afterwards found him
doing the reverse, they put an unpleasant interpretation
on his objection to there being a written record of his
words. Holyoake merely observes that Forster was " a
man of truth," but strongly censures his methods. One
seems to discern that Holyoake's interesting chapter on
him is affected by the affront of 1864 on the one hand and
the generous action of 1875 on the other. Equilibrium
has not been quite attained.

The education-question, on its religious side, was
settled by a compromise that for all its newness of name
had been tried and had failed many times previously.
But it was something that a national system of element-
ary education had at last been decreed, and Holyoake
counted it a great step in social progress. Few other
political episodes appear in his calendar in the seventies.
Toward the close of 1871 he obtained a knighthood for
the elder Mr. Cowen. Through Stansfeld and Bright
he had representations made to Gladstone, and the Prime
Minister consented. Stansfeld asked in astonishment
whether the Republican Cowen would accept the dis-
tinction. It was a confusion between the younger and
older Cowen. The son was a strong Republican at
that time, and refused a title that was afterwards offered
to him ; but the father was a royalist, and appreciated
the honour. On account of the state of his health he
asked Holyoake to have the knighthood gazetted, without
his appearing at Court, and again Holyoake succeeded.
I find many applications to him at the time that assume
he has influence. One curious letter from a solicitor
begs him to see the Attorney General, and ask if a
remorseful client, who has cheated the Revenue, will be

FROM THE STRANGERS' GALLERY 55

undisturbed if he pays the money. Holyoake got the
desired assurance.

A more interesting event of 1871 was the exposure of
what he calls "the Scott-Russell Plot." Mr. Scott-
Russell, the constructor of the Great Eastern, put out
a remarkable social scheme almost Socialistic in its
generosity and invited a number of working-men
representatives to take it up. Social schemes were
common enough, but Mr. Scott-Russell told them that
his programme had the effective support of Lord Derby,
Lord Salisbury, Mr. Disraeli, and a number of peers and
Conservative politicians. Those he invited met for
discussion in a comfortable tavern, over comfortable
dinners, and planned the new homes, schools, markets,
etc., that were to be provided by the State, the reduction
of hours, the nationalisation of the railways, and so on.
The millennium was coming in too quickly for Holyoake
and his friend Mr. R. Applegarth (one of the invited
workers), and the injunction to keep the list of peers
secret was disquieting. They confided the new scheme
to the press, and it quickly vanished. All the peers and
politicians whose names had been given repudiated Mr.
Scott-Russell, and he passed into obscurity as a social
reformer except for the fame that Holyoake's amusing
chapter gives to the occurrence.

But after 1870 interest in Holyoake's career passes
once more from politics to Co-operative and Secularist
affairs, and we may glance first at the latter. We left
the subject at a point when Mr. Bradlaugh was dividing
the leadership of the organisation that Holyoake had
created. Whatever may be thought of Mr. Bradlaugh's
ambition, it must be said that his rise to power in the
Secularist body was inevitable. His great; gifts his
commanding voice, impassioned oratory, and powerful
frame destined him for leadership in any small field of

56 FROM THE STRANGERS' GALLERY

popular agitation that he entered. Holyoake had greater
qualities of character and intelligence, but his influence
and attraction lay rather with a more cultivated class.
Further, as I have said previously, Bradlaugh's concep-
tion of their work was more convincing to the majority of
the Secularists. In point of fact, attack upon theological
beliefs was their chief and distinctive concern ; and they
felt that Holyoake's idea of Secularism, as a broad and
positive concern for the things of this world, was too
broad to take practicable shape and too common to be
distinctive. Whether Mr. Bradlaugh was right in
clinging to the name Secularist is another matter.

By 1870 the movement was prosperous, and attracted
much attention. A hostile article on " The New Secu-
lar Crusade " in the Liverpool Porcupine takes Holyoake
as its chief representative, and calls him " one of the
ablest, most uncompromising, least personally offensive,
and most sincere of Secularist lecturers and writers."
About the same date the New York World had a very
lengthy article on Secularism, entirely identifying it
with Holyoake. " Never have I met," says its London
correspondent, " a more interesting man, or one more
full of varied knowledge, or with a more pleasant way of
communicating it. Although I differ from him widely
as the poles on some of the questions which he has
devoted a lifetime to solve, I listened to his lucid, candid,
and logical explanations and arguments with ever-
increasing delight, and parted from him each day with
a higher opinion of the sweetness of his character and
the strength of his mind." This estimate of Holyoake,
and the identification of Secularism with him, were now
common in the press. Yet there can be little doubt that
Bradlaugh's influence was far greater than his in the
Secularist body. Bradlaugh had founded the National
Secular Society, and was its President (with the exception

FROM THE STRANGERS* GALLERY 57

of one year) to the end. Some writers have represented
that this was the first organisation of Freethinkers, but
we saw how erroneous this is. Ten years before
Bradlaugh founded it there were twenty or thirty Secular
Societies in the country, meeting in annual Conferences,
and contributing to the maintenance of a common
Institute at London.

In 1870 several efforts were made to bring about more
satisfactory relations between the two leaders. In view
of the complete diversity of their gifts and characters and
associations, and their honest difference of opinion as
to work and procedure, these attempts were bound to
miscarry. The first effort seems to have been peculiarly
unwise. They were induced to hold a public debate in
the London Hall of Science (in Old Street) in March. On
the first night Holyoake was to defend the thesis that
" The principles of Secularism do not include Atheism,"
and on the second night that " Secular criticism does not
involve Scepticism." A debate on definitions was bound
to be inconclusive, and the thin nervous voice and finer
argumentation of Holyoake must have seemed, to such
an audience, at a disadvantage beside the masterful
rhetoric of Bradlaugh. The debate has been published,
with the title Secularism, Scepticism, and Atheism. It is
not of good quality, nor, on the whole, is it pleasant
reading. Both disputants are enfeebled by an inevitable
nervousness. They are polite to each other, however :
though in the end Holyoake reminds Bradlaugh that
he came into the vineyard at the eleventh hour, and
Bradlaugh makes much of the work done since his
arrival.

The experience must have made clear to Holyoake
the fundamental nature of their difference, so that when
Mr. Charles Watts, who had now joined the body, wrote
a little later to offer him a Vice-Presidentship of the

58 FROM THE STRANGERS' GALLERY

National Secular Society he curtly declined. In itself
the proposal that he should play second fiddle so
palpably in the movement he had created was not
alluring. " Since," Holyoake replied, " the Secular
Society upon whose behalf you write inculcates that
Atheism is identical with Secularism, I could not take
the office of Vice-President in it without confusing the
public mind (so far as it may notice the matter) as to the
essential difference between Secularism and Atheism
which I deem it so important to keep clear." Some
years later he accepted the offer, under pressure from
his friends ; though he had quickly to resign it again.
The wiser course for him in the circumstances was to
remain outside the National Secular Society.

In the course of the year, however, he learned that there
was a great deal of discontent in the Secular Society,
and the question of having a second organisation was
forced on him. In the winter he visited Scotland, where
he had made so many pleasant tours. To his great
mortification he now found many halls closed against
him. The City Hall was withheld at Perth, although
250 reputable townsmen, including several clergymen,
petitioned the Lord Provost to let him have it. At
Dundee the Unitarians refused the usual hire of their
school-room. At Glasgow the City Hall was closed
against him. 1 The Scotch Secularists told him that this
was the result of Mr. Bradlaugh's lectures, and they
wrote him again later to complain that Mr. Bradlaugh

1 While he was at Glasgow Holyoake received a challenge to a
debate from an obscure champion, who promised "satisfactory testi-
monials" as to his "ability and respectability," and thought it absurd
for a Republican to ask more. Holyoake answered :

" SIR,

" Your letter must be addressed to me in mistake. It is a
challenge, and I am neither a prize-fighter nor a gladiator. I was told in
Glasgow that if you sent your letter to Mr. Kelly, secretary of a branch
of the National Secular Society, and furnish him with your size and
weight, you would hear something to your advantage."

FROM THE \STRANGERS' GALLERY 59

refused to insert in the National Reformer their account
of Holyoake's visit. From Leicester, where there was
a strong and admirable group under the lead of Mr.
Josiah Gimson and Mr. Michael Wright, he heard fresh
complaints and further promises of support to himself;
Finally a group of Secularists in Lancashire and
Yorkshire wrote to him to suggest the resuscitation of
the Rcasoner, as the organ of those who preferred his
broader conception of the Secularist ideal. After some
correspondence they formed a financial committee to
protect him against any possible loss in connection
with it.

It is these events that led to the revival of the
Reasoner in January 1871, as the monthly organ of his
followers. It was printed by the Manchester Co-
operative Printing Society, and half the paper was
devoted to Co-operation. Naturally, it fell between the
two stools ; especially as the Co-operators had their new
and able organ, the Co-operative News, by September
1871. Captain (later Admiral) Maxse wrote of it as an
" excellent publication." " I hope you will allow me," he
said, " as a very small and inadequate expression of my
sympathy with the movement as well as of my admira-
tion for the untiring energy, industry, and talent you
devote to the cause of Freethought and Progress to
make good by the enclosed cheque" some deficit that
was announced. Mr. Allsop, Mr. Coningham, and
others, were not less complimentary ; but the circula-
tion was small, and it ceased with the July number
(1872). The chief effect of the venture was to foster the
ill-repressed irritation in the movement, which we shall
find coming to a head in a few years. Before that time,
however, a number of incidents occurred that illustrate
Holyoake's position in one way or other.

One of the contrasts between Bradlaugh and Holyoake

60 FROM THE STRANGERS' GALLERY

is curiously illustrated in their relations with the clergy.
We have already seen many instances of Holyoake's
friendly relations with them, and many more occur
during the seventies. On one occasion (in 1874) ne
dined with Archbishop Manning at the invitation of
Mr. Knowles, editor (at that time) of the Contemporary.
On another occasion he cheerfully accepted an invitation
to meet " General Booth " at dinner, though the
" General " failed to come. In 1874 he sent a memorial
to Dean Stanley with a request for his signature. " I
do not often sign petitions," the Dean answered, " but
this seems to be so worthy that even although solicited
I gladly sign it ; and not the less gladly because it
comes to me from yourself."

Occasionally he had correspondence with bishops of
the Established Church, and, though one can look for no
cordiality in this, one often finds respect. The Bishop
of Gloucester was very amiable in acknowledging a
paper that Holyoake sent him in 1870. In 1872 he
heard the Bishop of Peterborough (Dr. Magee) attack
Secularism in Norwich Cathedral, and wrote to ask the
bishop to use his influence in the letting of a hall at
Norwich for a reply. Dr. Magee's chivalry did not go
so far as that, and Holyoake was disappointed at his
courteous evasions. A Dissenter of the town had
offered to let him have a hall " if he knew it would not
displease the Bishop." I find, however, a pleasanter
letter to him from Dr. Magee at an earlier date (April
1870), which he seems to have overlooked. " I desire,"
the bishop says, " to do the fullest justice to the motives
of opponents like yourself, and am glad to think that
you can do the like justice to mine." In 1872, also, he
had some correspondence with the Bishop of Oxford.
Dr. Wilberforce had attacked the Oddfellows in the
House of Lords in 1852 for having lectures written by

FROM THE STRANGERS* GALLERY 61

an atheist. The Grand Master of the Order asked him
to read them (which he confessed he had not done), and,
when he found their perfect neutrality as to theology
and their excellent quality, he withdrew his charges. In
1872 Holyoake brought to the notice of the Bishop a
grievance of the poor villagers against their Vicar in
some part of his diocese (Gawcott). He wrote with
little confidence, but Dr. Wilberforce had the matter
investigated and justly arranged.

In the same year Holyoake had an adventure at
Brighton of which he has given an amusing account in
his Sixty Years (ch. xcvii reprinted from the Newcastle
Chronicle of the time). Holyoake was, as usual, attending
the meeting of the British Association. Amongst the
scientific men who came over from France to attend it
was Holyoake's friend, W. de Fonvielle, whose brother
Ulric had been shot by Prince Pierre Napoleon. As
they stood on the platform the ex-Emperor entered, and
was received with great deference, much to the disgust
of the French. Napoleon knew De Fonvielle's feeling
towards him, and watched his movements anxiously.
In the middle of the President's address there was some
whispering between De Fonvielle and a neighbour, and
the Frenchman hurried from the room. He returned
presently, in great agitation, with a small oval parcel
" about the size of an Orsini bomb " which he showed
to his neighbour, and then stuck in his own pocket.
The dumb-show probably had a suspicion of tragedy for
the ex-Emperor, but it was really a small comedy. The
clergyman who sat near De Fonvielle took him to be
an attendant, and asked him to go to the address of a
" Mr. Glaisher " with a note. Glaisher happened to be
the name of a former colleague whom De Fonvielle had
long sought, and he went with alacrity. To his great
indignation he found that he had been sent to a chemist's

62 FROM THE STRANGERS' GALLERY

shop for a box of throat-lozenges, in the very middle of
the presidential speech ! The explanation never reached
Napoleon, who may have dwelt on the strange passage
when the ex-Empress pressed him to leave at once and he
did so. In any case Holyoake's friend had hastened his
departure. He found Napoleon described in the list of
foreign visitors as " Emperor of the French " (two years
after Sedan), and he and others made stormy protests.
The aged Allsop wrote gaily to ask Holyoake why he
had missed shooting Napoleon. What he really did was
to protect Napoleon from offence, urging on De Fonvielle
and others that he was " the guest of the nation." He
wrote also to Stanley the explorer, who spoke at the
meeting, to thank him for avoiding some obvious
opportunity to give offence to Napoleon. He seems
to have been acquainted with Stanley, as Hallett of
Brighton, and S. Timmins of Birmingham, write to ask
him to induce Stanley to lecture for them.

The following year (1873) was marked chiefly by the
death of John Stuart Mill. The reader has learned
enough from the letters I have quoted about the relations
of Mill and Holyoake, nor is this an occasion for dilating
on Mill's character and powers. There is, however, an
episode that occurred after Mill's death that calls for
some notice. Mr. A. Hay ward, Q.C., wrote in the
Times an article on Mill that contained unpleasant
reflections on his character in earlier years. The Rev.
Stopford Brooke commented severely on the article in
the course of his sermon on the following Sunday,
and received a letter from Hayward that purported to
support his reflections. The letter was also sent to
the Times, but that journal refused to insert it, and
Hayward then had it printed, and copies sent to a
large number of people. Amongst others Gladstone
received a copy, and he was so moved by it that he

FROM THE STRANGERS* GALLERY 63

refused to subscribe to the fund for raising a memorial
to Mill.

Most of Mill's friends decided to treat the matter with
silent contempt. Holyoake, however, was one of those
who felt that reticence in the presence of imputations
is generally unwise. The problem is a delicate one,
especially where there is a large amount of fact in the
imputation, and one has to weigh the chances of recom-
mending a favourable or mitigating aspect of them
against the certainty of giving a much wider publicity
to the facts themselves. Holyoake wrote a pamphlet
in Mill's defence (John Stuart Mill, as the Working
Classes Knew Him} chiefly, he says somewhere, in the
hope of altering Gladstone's feeling. But the pamphlet
does not embody all the material he had ; and as he
has noticed the subject at some length in his last work
(Bygones Worth Remembering), and other recent writers
have dealt with it, with less discrimination, it is advisable
to reopen it here.

Hayward's charges were, in substance, that Mill was,
in his youth, an ardent advocate of free love and of the
use of preventives of conception. Mill, he said, had
got into trouble with the police for distributing copies
of a free-love pamphlet, and for casting directions on
the use of restrictives into servants' areas. Mr. Christie,
in the pamphlet he wrote at the time, strongly denies that
Mill himself came into collision with the police. Mill was,
he says, one of a group of youths some of whom were
distributing this literature when the police interfered. On
the other hand, Stopford Brooke wrote to Holyoake :

" The letters in the ' Examiner ' [quoted by Hayward]
do not exist at all, but I believe Mill was, when a boy
of 18 [in 1824], taken up by the police at Wimbledon,
I think for being one of a few young men who were
dispensing some instructions for cohabitation without

64 FROM THE STRANGERS* GALLERY

results. From what I hear, this is true. It is one of
the foolish things enthusiastic boys do. ..."

It seems to me quite immaterial to settle whether Mill
was aiding in the distribution of the pamphlet or no. 1
Indeed, the whole question of the opinions he held in
his immature days seems hardly worth discussing, and
Gladstone, who from his own knowledge of him in
mature years called him "the saint of Rationalism,"
pushed moral delicacy to strange lengths in allowing
these stories to influence him. The more interesting
question is, whether Mill retained these ideas to any
extent in his later years.

When the trouble arose in 1873 Holyoake wrote that
he had, at a much earlier date, received a letter from
Mill emphatically repudiating the opinions of his youth.
Mr. Christie at once begged him for a copy of this all-
important letter, and Holyoake replied that he had
returned it at the time. He must certainly have received
some kind of retractation from Mill.

The curious point is that, though I know he returned
a number of letters to Mill, these letters were regarded
by him as compromising, rather than exculpating, Mill.
In a manuscript note, dated Nov. 22nd, 1848, he writes :

" Returned several letters to Mill, being liable to
apprehension they might fall into the hands of the
authorities, thinking Mr. Mill would not like his corre-
spondence to be read by them. Of course, I could have
destroyed the letters, but I returned them to him that he
might be sure they were not liable to get into alien hands."

1 As the story grew, it came to be stated that Mill was the author
of a book on the subject entitled What is Love? That is a patent
absurdity. Mr. Christie and Professor Bain attribute it to Richard
Carlile, and Bain adds that he heard on good authority that Francis
Place "assisted in its composition." Bain admired his pamphlet, but
held that Mill was actually taking part in the distribution of the Malthu-
sian literature when he was apprehended by the police, and that he
never abandoned his inner conviction on that point.

FROM THE STRANGERS' GALLERY 65

He refers to these letters in his pamphlet on Mill (p. 26).
Letters that needed to be kept away from the " author-
ities " were in some way very heterodox ; though I can
imagine that Holyoake was hypersensitive at the time.
Their character seems to be shown in a letter of 1848,
and half a letter of 1847, that Holyoake preserved. The
1848 letter I have already quoted (Vol. I, p. 339). The
torn half of the 1847 letter runs :

" Of practical conclusions there are also several
from which I should decidedly differ, particularly
Communism.

" The use made of the word ' morality ' is likely to
give an idea of much greater agreement with the ordinary
moral notions, emanating from and grounded on religion,
than I should suppose you intend. Most people do not
understand by morality a subject as open to discussion
as any other, and on which persons have different
opinions, but think it a name for the set of opinions
they have been accustomed to."

In the letter of 1848, the reader will remember, Mill
speaks of "the present constitution of the family and
the whole of the priestly morality founded on it" as
"intolerant, slavish, and selfish." He is not speaking
of its economic aspect, because he assumes that he
"differs fundamentally" from Holyoake. And at the
close of the letter he adds : " It was quite unnecessary
to return my notes, as it is a matter of complete
indifference to me whom they are seen by."

These interesting fragments suggest that Mill was
still ethically heterodox in his forty-second year. It is
true that in his Autobiography (p. 167) he speaks again
of the institution of the family as needing " more funda-
mental alterations than remain to be made in any other
great social institution," but here it may well be held
that he refers to its social or economic aspects. He

VOL. II. F

66 FROM THE STRANGERS' GALLERY

is praising the St. Simonians and their declaration of
"the perfect equality of man and woman." They were
agreed as to the economic change, but differed radically
as to moral relaxation. However, that is a subject
for students of Mill. I am concerned only with those
letters of his to Holyoake which throw some light on
his ethical development. I give them without hesita-
tion, as Mill's character was by that time, if not always,
one of recognised solidity. How long he retained those
opinions on theoretic morality I have not to determine.
He certainly always retained his view of the morality of
restricting families, in which Holyoake fully concurred.
But in his later years, at least, Mill did no more than
advise that the date of marriage should be postponed.
In his pamphlet on Mill Holyoake says (p. 15) : "Mr.
Mill always confined himself to advising deferred mar-
riages, and so strongly did he hold this view that he
fiercely assailed any who by accident or ignorance
imputed to him complicity with any other suggestion."
Mr. Stopford Brooke and Professor Bain are likely to
have been better informed, and they hold that in his early
years Mill advocated the deliberate restriction of families
by artificial means. But he only wrote one short and
not very clear paragraph on the subject. To this para-
graph Holyoake adduced a parallel from the Rev. Dr.
Jowett's introduction to the Republic : and the paragraph
was supplied to Holyoake (I gather from his letter) by
the Rev. Stopford Brooke ! It must, in face of Mill's
explicit and insistent assurance, be admitted that he
never wished to advocate the use of artificial restrictions
in any passage of his works. The letters I have quoted
are mainly of interest on the broader question of conjugal
relations. On this question he clearly retained unpopular
views.

In concluding I give a letter or two on Holyoake's

FROM THE STRANGERS' GALLERY 67

pamphlet. There is no acknowledgment from Glad-
stone, for whom it was chiefly intended, but Lord Derby
and Lord Salisbury acknowledged it with great friendli-
ness, and Salisbury entered the list of subscriptions for
the Mill memorial with a cheque for ^50. Mr. Arthur
Arnold found it " most interesting," but not quite
accurate and not convincing on the chief and most
delicate point. He thought Mr. Christie's pamphlet
"most deplorable." Dean Stanley wrote a fine letter:

" DEAR SIR,

"On my return from a few weeks on the
continent on Monday I got your tract on Mr. Mill,
with its kind superscription. You must allow me to
express my sense of the courtesy which directed your
words, and also the great interest with which I have
read the tract itself. It is needless to speak of the
differences which, I presume, exist between us, but I
cannot help entertaining the hope, inspired by such
expressions as both now and on other occasions I have
heard or read in relation to yourself, that the day may
come, perhaps is now come, when the different classes
or institutions of the country will be brought into closer
understanding with each other, and when party spirit
will cease to express the estranging and destructive in-
fluence that has so often embittered both our sympathies
and antipathies.

" Believe me to be

" Yours very faithfully,

" A. P. STANLEY."

Lastly, I quote Mr. J. Morley, who was then editing
the Fortnightly. The manuscript of the pamphlet was
first sent to him for insertion, and he replied :

"July 14, 1873.
" DEAR MR. HOLYOAKE,

" I have read your paper with the most genuine
interest and admiration. But on the whole I think it

68 FROM THE STRANGERS' GALLERY

comes too late for the ' Fortnightly ' because the readers
of that have already had a funeral oration on our illus-
trious friend. Yours is admirable for its precision of
phrase and it is interesting for the new side of Mill
which it presents to us younger friends of his. But,
once more, it is too late for us. Wherever it appears,
it must rank among the three or four eloges of Mill
which are truly worthy of the theme. . . .

" I wish you could be induced to write for me an
autobiographical chapter or two in the history of British
bigotry. Why should you not?

" Yours very truly,

"JOHN MORLEY."

Mr. Morley's estimate of the pamphlet will probably
be accepted, but so, probably, will that of Mr. Arthur
Arnold. On the point that especially inspired the
writing of it, it is not wholly convincing. One wonders
to-day whether it would not have been better to have
taken a bolder line. Mr. Gladstone did not think less
of St. Augustine for the deeds of his adolescence. It
is remarkable that so balanced a judge should allow the
discovery of early laxity on Mill's part a laxity purely
theoretical in its nature, and repudiated in mature years
to weigh against the sterling character he knew. Cer-
tainly, the essential difference between wilful rebellion
against a recognised law and honest challenge of the
ground or utility of that law was not sufficiently pressed
by Mill's friends. Ethical intolerance of opinions is
not much less regrettable than theological.

CHAPTER XIX

SOCIAL AND EDUCATIONAL WORK

To understand much of Holyoake's work in the Co-
operative and Secularist and other movements in the
seventies it is imperative to bear in mind the social
position he had reached. By his sixtieth birthday he
found himself moving in a circle that lay far beyond the
most soaring dreams of the young worker of forty years
before. Little more than thirty years had passed since
he left his native town, penniless and almost unknown,
and wrote in his diary that " if he starved in a London
garret he would not be without illustrious precedents."
Now, in spite of his sturdy persistence in outspoken
heresy and his insistence on the cause of the workers,
he was welcomed in some of the most brilliant groups
in London. He breakfasted occasionally with Glad-
stone, dined often with Chamberlain, Morley, Dilke,
Woolner, Knowles, and Tennyson, and corresponded
with everybody. I reserve the more interesting letters
he has preserved for a future chapter, and will merely
give a general idea of his position and work.

A ceremonious card, bearing a date close to his sixtieth
birthday, has the inscription : " The Mayor of Birming-
ham [Mr. Chamberlain] requests the honour of the
company of Mr. G. J. Holyoake at dinner at the
Queen's Hotel to meet the Right Honorable W. E.
Gladstone, M.P." It is a comprehensive indication of
the recognition he had won, prophet as he was, in his

69

70 SOCIAL AND EDUCATIONAL WORK

own country. Mr. Jesse Collings was a warm friend
of his ; Mr. Chamberlain a frequent and flattering
correspondent. Prominent Birminghamians sou