The book of public speaking

Presented to the

LIBRARY of the

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO

by

THE ESTATE OF THE LATE
MARY SINGLAIR

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THE BOOK OF PUBLIC SPEAKING

THE RIGHT HON. ARTHUR J. BALFOUR,
P.C, F.R.S., D.L.

THE BOOK OF

PUBLIC SPEAKING

EDITED BY

ARTHUR CHARLES FOX-DAVIES

OF Lincoln's inn, barrister-at-law

VOLUME II

LONDON

CAXTON PUBLISHING COMPANY, LIMITED

CLUN HOUSE, SURREY STREET, W.C

1913

pA/

6(2/

^6

/ s

CONTENTS OF VOL. II

PAOB

BouRCHiER, Arthur

How to Prepare and Deliver a Speech

Crew, Albert

The Conduct of and Procedure at Public Meetings-
Part II

PoiNCARE, Raymond

King Edward VII

Lincoln, Abraham

Government of the People, by the People, for the
People .....

Rosebery, Earl of

Pop

George, Rt. Hon. David Lloyd
The " Limehouse " Speech

CuRZON OF Kedleston, Earl

Veterans of the Indian Mutiny

Butler, Very Rev. Henry Montagu

Literature .....

O'Connell, Daniel

Henry Grattan ....

NORTHCLIFFE, LORD

Aviation

10

26

30
31
38
50
55
59
63

VI

CONTENTS

Emperor William II of Germany

The Mailed Fist ....

Laurier, Sir Wilfrid

Canada, England, and the United States

Balfour, Rt. Hon. Arthur J.

On Golf

Dickens, Charles

Commercial Travellers

Churchill, Rt. Hon. Winston S.
The Press

Holland, Hon. Sydney

Begging

Gambetta, Leon

Address to the Delegates from Alsace

AsQUiTH, Rt. Hon. H. H.
The Bar .

MiLNER, Viscount

Sweated Industries .

Cecil, Lord Robert

The Fiscal Controversy

Bryan, William Jennings
America's Mission

Chqate, Joseph Hodges
The Pilgrim Mothers

CowEN, Joseph

The British Empire .

Ripon, Bishop of
The Guests

Beecher, Henry Ward

Religious Freedom .

66

n
80

83

86

94
100
104
no
119
124
127

137
140

CONTENTS

Zola, Emile

Appeal for Dreyfus .

Doyle, Sir A. Conan
Literature

Ingersoll, Robert Green
Funeral Oration

Farrar, Archdeacon
General Grant

BOTTOMLEY, HORATIO

Breaking away from Party

Manning, Cardinal

Persecution of the Jews

" Mark Twain '*

Mistaken Identity

*' Ian Maclaren "

Scottish Traits

Clarke, Sir Edward

The Baccarat Case .

PiGOTT, MOSTYN

The Ladies

HuLTiN, Dr. Thekla
Woman Suffrage

Talmage, Rev. Doctor
Big Blunders

Roberts, Earl

Home Defence

Hole, Dean

With Brains, Sir ! .

Grey, Rt. Hon. Sir Edward
Industry

vu

PAOB

• 154

. 156

. 163

. 181

. 184

. 198

. 215

. 218

. 220

. 238

. 242

• 245

VUl CONTENTS

Emmet, Robert

Protest against Sentence as a Traitor

PAOB
. 255

Reid, Hon. Whitelaw

The Business of Diplomats

. 262

Beveridge, Albert J.

The RepubHc that never Retreats

. 265

Grantham, Mr. Justice

The Impartiahty of the Judges .

. 268

Moore, Charles W.

The Universal Fraternity of Masonry

. 275

Emerson, Ralph Waldo .

The Memory of Burns ...

. 281

CuRZON OF Kedleston, Earl

Women's Work ....

. 284

Washington, George

Inaugural Address ....

. 288

Bonaparte, Napoleon

Addresses to his Army

. 292

Baden-Powell, Lieut.-Gen. Sir R. A.
The Boy Scout Movement

. 299

Washington, Booker T.

Abraham Lincoln ....

. 307

Parker, Sir Gilbert

Speech Day ....

. 314

Lowell, James Russell

The Stage

. 320

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS TO VOL. II

RT. HON. A. J. BALFOUR .

ARTHUR BOURCHIER . . .

RT. HON. D. LLOYD GEORGE

LORD NORTHCLIFFE .

RT. HON. WINSTON S. CHURCHILL

THE VISCOUNT MILNER

LORD ROBERT CECIL .

THE REV. JOHN WATSON (" IAN MACLAREN '

RT. HON. SIR EDWARD CLARKE, K.C. .

FIELD MARSHAL EARL ROBERTS .

RT. HON. SIR EDWARD GREY

HON. WHITELAW REID

EARL CURZON OF KEDLESTON

Vtot

ogravure Frontispiece

FACING PAGE

•

I

•

. . . 38

.

. 62

•

. 82

•

. 104

.

. IIO

,ARi

:n") . . 184

•

. 198

•

. 238

•

. 244

•

. 262

•

• 284

INTRODUCTION

ORATORY AND ELOQUENCE

SELECTIONS FROM VARIOUS AUTHORS

Style. — Style may be defined as proper words in proper
places.

Swift,

A Pure Style. — A pure style in writing results from the
rejection of everything superfluous.

Mme. Necker.

Suitableness in Style. — ^There is nothing in words and
styles but suitableness that makes them acceptable and effective.

Granville.

Necessity of Style. — Style is the dress of thoughts ; and let
them be ever so just, if your style is homely, coarse, and
vulgar, they will appear to as much disadvantage, and be as
ill received as your person, though ever so well-proportioned,
would be, if dressed in rags, dirt, and tatters.

Chesterfield.

Matter First. — Attention to style, to composition, and all
the arts of speech, can only assist an orator in setting off to
advantage the stock of materials which he possesses ; but the
stock, the materials themselves, must be brought from other
quarters than from rhetoric.

H. Blair.

The Groundwork of the Orator's Art. — Extemporaneous
speaking is the groundwork of the orator's art ; preparation

xi

XU INTRODUCTION

is the last finish and the most difficult of all his accomplish-
ments ; to learn by heart as a schoolboy, or to prepare as an
orator, are two things not only essentially different, but
essentially antagonistic to each other.

Bulwer.

Different Kinds of Orators. — There have been grandilo-
quent orators, impressive and sonorous in their language,
vehement, versatile, and copious ; well trained and prepared
to excite and turn the minds of their audience ; while the
same effect has been produced by others by a rude, rough,
unpolished mode of address, without finish or delicacy ; others
again have effected the same by smooth, well-turned periods.

Cicero.

Oratory Must Suit the Occasion. — Oratory admits of many
different forms ; and nothing can be more foolish than to
inquire by which of them an orator is to regulate his com-
position, since every form which is in itself just has its own
place and use ; the orator, according as circumstances require,
will employ them all, suiting them not only to the cause or
subject of which he treats, but to the different parts of that
subject.

Quintilian.

Dignity of Oratory. — ^There are two arts which raise men
to the highest places of preferment : one is that of the great
soldier, the other that of the accomplished orator ; for by
the former the glories of peace are preserved, by the latter
the perils of war are driven away.

Cicero.

Excellence of Oratory. — So great is the dignity and excel-
lence of oratory that it transcends all eulogy ; so great is its
splendour that it not only Hghts up, but dazzles the eyes of
men. Therefore it has been justly compared to the rainbow
Iris, because it overwhelms the souls of mortals with wonder.
For what is more wonderful than eloquence ? What is more
wonderful than the power of holding an assembly of men, of
controlling the minds of nations, and dominating the will
even of kings and prmces ? Of leading them forth whither
the speaker wishes, and winning them back from their own
ways ? Do you desire to move the pity of the hearer ? Elo-
quence can move it. Do you desire to inflame him with
anger ? Eloquence can move his wrath. Do you desire
that he should pine with envy, be consumed with grief, dance

INTRODUCTION XIU

with joy ? AH these emotions of the mind can be excited
by an oration adorned with fitting sentiments, expressed in
powerful diction.

D'Assigny.

What is more excellent than eloquence, in the admiration
of the hearers, or in the expectation of those in need of its
assistance, or in the gratitude of those who have been defended
by the orator ?

Cicero.

Good Taste. — Good taste belongs to that style which is at
once full of feeling and clearly descriptive, while the words
employed are in proper keeping with the subject-matter.
To attain this, the language must be neither tinged with levity
on matters of importance, nor lofty on matters that are
mean ; for if a mean thing is decorated with lofty epithets
the result is burlesque.

Aristotle.

Eloquence is Power. — Eloquence in this empire is power.
Give a man nerve, a presence, sway over language, and,
above all, enthusiasm, or the skill to simulate it ; start him
in the public arena with these requisites, and ere many years,
perhaps many months, have passed, you will either see him
in high station, or in a fair way of rising to it. Unless you
have the art of clothing your ideas in clear and captivating
diction, of identifying yourself with the feelings of your
hearers, and uttering them in language more forcible, or
terse, or brilliant, than they can themselves command ; or
unless you have the power — still more rare — of originating,
of commanding their intellects, their hearts, of drawing them
in your train by the irresistible magic of sympathy — of making
their thoughts your thoughts, or your thoughts theirs — never
hope to rule your fellow men in these modern days.

G. H. Francis.

Requisites in an Orator. — ^To be a great orator does not
require the highest faculties of the human mind, but it re-
quires the highest exertion of the common faculties of our
nature. He has no occasion to dive into the depths of science,
or to soar aloft on angels' wings. He keeps upon the surface,
he stands firm upon the ground, but his form is majestic,
and his eye sees far and near ; he moves among his fellows,
but he moves among them as a giant among common men.
He has no need to read the heavens, to unfold the system of

XIV INTRODUCTION

the universe, or create new worlds for the delighted fancy to
dwell in ; it is enough that he sees things as they are ; that
he knows and feels and remembers the common circum-
stances and daily transactions that are passing in the world
around him. He is not raised above others by being superior
to the common interests, prejudices, and passions of man-
kind, but by feeling them in a more intense degree than they
do.

William Hazlitt.

The Excellence of Oratory lies in its Application. — The
greatest masters of the art have concurred, and upon the
greatest occasion of its display, in pronouncing that its esti-
mation depends on the virtuous and rational use made of it.
Let their sentiments be engraved on your memory in their
own pure and appropriate diction. '* It is well," says ^Eschines,
** that the intellect should choose the best objects, and that
the education and eloquence of the orator should obtain the
assent of his hearers ; but if not, that sound judgment should
be preferred to mere speech.** ** It is not,** says his illustrious
antagonist, *' the language of the orator or the modulation
of his voice that deserves your praise, but his seeking the
same interests and objects with the body of the people."

Brougham.

Written Speeches. — The most splendid effort of the most
mature orator will be always finer for being previously elabor-
ated with much care. There is, no doubt, a charm in extem-
poraneous elocution, derived from the appearance of artless,
unpremeditated effusion, called forth by the occasion, and so
adapting itself to its exigencies, which may compensate the
manifold defects incident to this kind of composition : that
which is inspired by the unforeseen circmnstances of the moment
will be of necessity suited to those circumstances in the choice
of the topics, and pitched in the tone of the execution, to the
feelings upon which it is to operate. These are great virtues.
It is another to avoid the besetting vice of modern oratory
— the overdoing everything — the exhaustive method — which
an off-hand speaker has no time to fall into, and he accordingly
will take only the grand and effective view. Nevertheless in
oratorical merit, such effusions must needs be very inferior ;
much of the pleasure they produce depends upon the hearer's
surprise that in such circum.stances anything can be delivered
at all, rather than upon his dehberate judgment that he has

INTRODUCTION XV

heard anything very excellent in itself. We may rest assured
that the highest reaches of the art, and without any necessary
sacrifice of natural effect, can only be attained by him who
well considers, and maturely prepares, and oftentimes sedu-
lously corrects and refines his oration.

Brougham.

The Pre-eminence of Greek Models. — Addison may have
been pure and elegant, Dryden airy and nervous, Taylor
witty and fanciful. Hooker weighty and various ; but none
of them united force with beauty — the perfection of matter
with the most refined and chastened style ; and to one charge
all, even the most faultless, are exposed — the offence unknown
in ancient times, but the besetting sin of later days : they
always overdid, never knowing or feeUng when they had
done enough. In nothing, not even in beauty of collocation
and harmony of rhythm, is the vast superiority of the chaste,
vigorous, manly style of the Greek orators and writers more
conspicuous than in the abstinent use of their prodigious
faculties of expression. A single phrase — sometimes a word —
and the work is done ; the desired impression is made, as it
were, with one stroke, there being nothing superfluous inter-
posed to weaken the blow or break its fall.

Brougham.

Laborious Study Required in Oratory. — To me it seems far
more natural that a man engaged in composing political
discourses, imperishable memorials of his power, should
neglect not even the smallest details, than that the generation
of painters and sculptors, who are darkly showing forth their
manual tact and toil in a corruptible material, should exhaust
the refinements of their art on the veins, on the feathers,
on the down of the Hp, and the Hke niceties.

Dionysius of H alicarnassus.

Bad Oratory.— Effrontery and hardness of heart are the
characteristics of every great speaker I can mention, excepting
Phocion ; and if he is exempt from them, it is because elo-
quence— in which no one ever excelled or ever will excel
him — is secondary to philosophy in this man, and philosophy
to generosity of spirit.

Walter Savage Landor.

Oratory a Potent Factor in Modern Life. — The vocation of
the speaker has not only lost nothing, but has enormously
gained in public consequence with the gradual diffusion of

XVI INTRODUCTION

knowledge in printed form. There never was a time, in mo-
dern history at least, when it constituted so potent a factor
in the national life as in our own day. There never was a
time when the gift of oratory or the talent for debate brought
so much influence, social, poHtical, ecclesiastical, or when
he who was endowed with it found the power of ready utter-
ance so much in demand.

John Caird.

A Speech Cannot be Repeated. — A song may be sung again
by the same or other voice, but the speech can never be
re-spoken even by the voice that uttered it ; and that not
merely because, under the inspiration of a great occasion,
it may have reached the climax of its powers, but because
the moving panorama of history never repeats itself, never
revives again the circumstances that gave it its power to
affect us. And when the eloquent voice has itself been silenced,
unlike the song, no other voice can reproduce its music. On
the lips of iEschines it may seem still instinct with power,
but all his art cannot make us feel as we should have done
had we heard Demosthenes.

John Caird.

Learning the Fuel of Oratory. — The mine, or genius, has
been compared to a spark of fire which is smothered by a
heap of fuel, and prevented from blazing into a flame. This
simile, which is made use of by the younger Pliny, may be
easily mistaken for argument or proof. But there is no danger
of the mind's being overburdened with knowledge or the
genius extinguished by any addition of images ; on the con-
trary, these acquisitions may as well, perhaps better, be com-
pared, if comparisons signified anything in reasoning, to the
supply of living embers, which will contribute to strengthen
the spark, that without the association of more fuel would
have died away. The truth is, he whose feebleness is such
as to make other men's thoughts an encumbrance to him
can have no very great strength of mind or genius of his own
to be destroyed ; so that not much harm will be done at
worst. We may oppose to Pliny the greater authority of
Cicero, who is continually enforcing the necessity of this
method of study. In his dialogue on Oratory, he makes
Crassus say that one of the first and most important pre-
cepts is to choose a proper model for our imitation. Hoc sit
primum in prcBceptis meis, ut demonstremus quern imitemur.

INTRODUCTION XVll

(I must place first among my precepts the rule as to whom
you should imitate as your model.)

Sir Joshua Reynolds.

Demosthenes the Model Orator. — All men in modern times
famous for their eloquence have recognized Demosthenes
as their model. Many speakers in our own country have
literally translated passages from his orations and produced
electrical effects upon sober English audiences by thoughts
first uttered to passionate Athenian crowds. Why is this ?
Not from the style — the style vanishes in translation. It is
because thoughts make the noblest appeal to emotions, the
most masculine and popular. You see in Demosthenes the
man accustomed to deal with the practical business of men,
to generaUze details, to render compHcated affairs clear to the
ordinary understanding, and, at the same time, to connect
the material interests of life with the sentiments that warm
the breast and exalt the soul. It is the brain of an accom-
pUshed statesman in unison with a generous heart, thoroughly
in earnest, beating loud and high with the passionate desire
to convince breathless thousands how to balBe a danger and
to save their country.

Bulwer.

Difference between Oratory and Poetry. — With as deep a
reverence for the true as ever inspired the bosom of man, I
would, nevertheless, limit in some measure its modes of incul-
cation. I would Hmit to enforce them. I would not enfeeble
them by dissipation. The demands of truth are severe ; she
has no S5mipathy with the myrtles. All that which is so
indispensable in song is precisely all that with which she has
nothing whatever to do. It is but making her a flaunting
paradox to wreathe her in gems and flowers. In enforcing a
truth we need severity rather than cfllorescence of language.
We must be simple, precise, terse. We must be cool, calm,
unimpassioned. In a word, we must be in that mood which,
as nearly as possible, is the exact converse of the poetical.
He must be blind, indeed, who does not perceive the radical
and chasmal differences between the truthful and poetical
modes of inculcation. He must be theory-mad beyond
redemption who, in spite of these differences, shall still per-
sist in attempting to reconcile the obstinate oils and waters
of poetry and truth.

Poe.

XVlll INTRODUCTION

The Perfect Orator. — In the orator a wide range of know-
ledge is indispensable, for without knowledge mere fluency
is empty and ridiculous, and the oration must be highly
wrought, not only by means of well-selected words, but by
their harmonious arrangement. The orator must possess,
moreover, a profound acquaintance with all the passions and
emotions natural to mankind, for the whole resources and
persuasive power of oratory are to be expended in either
exciting or soothing the minds of the auditors. To these
quahties must be added a spice of sprightliness and wit, such
learning as is worthy of a free man, as well as quickness and
conciseness both in retort and attack, with which are to be
blended refined beauty of language and deliberate courtesy
of manner.

Cicero,

Artuitu B(>uuciiii:r

As Father O'l.cary in " The Greatest Wish."

THE BOOK OF PUBLIC
SPEAKING

HOW TO PREPARE AND DELIVER
A SPEECH

By ARTHUR BOURCHIER, M.A.

THE WELL-KNOWN ACTOR-MANAGER

Given one's subject, the first thing to consider in the com-
position of a speech is the composition of one's audience ;
the subject may be the same, but the selection of words needs
must vary with circumstances. The flowing periods and
well-turned sentences, for instance, which might delight an
audience at the Royal Institution, would, to use a common
phrase, be " over the heads " of the members of a working
men's club, and when a speech is over the heads of an audience,
one may be quite sure that those who have come to hear, will
either go to sleep, or depart in scornful wrath, before the
orator or lecturer has reached his peroration. The speaker
should use no phrases, no words, which cannot be easily
understood. I often wonder how much ordinary audiences can
grasp of certain speeches and addresses which I read in the
newspapers, so involved are their sentences, so hidden away
in a mass of superfluous detail is the single shining truth
which they are intended to place before those who hear them.
Not that I favour the idea of speaking down to one's audience ;
the man who thinks that the intelligence of his hearers is
vastly inferior to his own, is usually a very unintelligent

II— I I

2 ARTHUR BOURCHIER

person himself. There is plenty of intelligence in every
audience, but very often the language in which it is addressed
might be Greek. Clearness of style is as essential in the
preparation of a speech as clearness of utterance in its delivery.
In Matthew Arnold's words, *' Have something to say, and
say it as clearly as you can. That is the only secret of style.*'

In political life it is an axiom that what is known as " the
platform manner '* is as unsuited to the House of Commons,
as the style favoured by that assembly, when it allows speeches
to be made, is unsuited to the feverish times of a General
Election.

It is in everyday life that you must lay the foundations
of success in the art of speaking. Set your ideas, your
impressions, your feehngs in order. Think of certain facts
and weave them into a story. Imagine situations and think
how they can be told to an audience. Mental work is not
enough. You must speak aloud when you are alone, in your
house or in your garden. You must forge a mass of phrases
for yourself, rehearse them, keep some, discard others, and
always go on manufacturing new ones. Speak aloud, think
aloud — those are two golden rules !

In ordinary everyday conversation many people, and
they are by no means unintelligent or badly educated, neglect
the way to express their thoughts. Their vocabulary is
hmited to a certain number of words which they utter a number
of times, varied by a certain number of stock phrases. The
would-be orator must extend his vocabulary, and this can only
be done by reading the works of the masters of Uterature.

To get accustomed to the sound of your own voice — that
somewhat alarming thing to beginners — it is a good plan to
read aloud say twenty lines at a time of some familiar author,
very carefully and very slowly, giving every syllable in every
word its due value and correct pronunciation. Nervousness
is a disease which tortures those afflicted by it. Many men
whose intelligence and zeal have destined them for the most
brilliant careers, remain obscure, solely because they are
unable to give expression to their thoughts before their
fellow-men. But it is a disease which can be cured by perse-
verance. Rehearse your speech aloud, to yourself first of
all ; then call in some good friend to hear you ; thus you
will get accustomed to the sound of your own voice. When
you go on the platform, look at your audience before your
turn comes to speak — you will seldom be the first — and

HOW TO PREPARE AND DELIVER A SPEECH 3

mentally fix upon some individual, whom you plainly see,
as your special friend in the audience, even if you do not know
him. If it be possible, put a little joke in the opening sentences
of your discourse, and fire that joke at his head. If he
responds, he will quickly have the people round him in good
humour, and he will be eager to punctuate your points with
bursts of applause.

Most great orators — John Bright amongst them — have
suffered from nervousness at the outset of a speech, but the
feeling quickly wears off, and, of course, in oratory, as in every-
thing else, practice helps towards some degree of perfection.

Speak slowly, punctuating your remarks rather freely.
Everything has its importance in your opening sentences ;
the more your audience understands them, the more it will
be interested in what follows.

The gentle art of speaking distinctly is vital to success
in every walk of life, and it cannot be cultivated at too early
a period of one's education.

Good diction is a sine qua non to those who desire to
speak in public. With real orators, who are rare indeed,
certain qualities of the first rank may compensate for their
defects, but the more these qualities are lacking, the more
it is necessary to learn everything that can be learnt in the
art of speaking, and even those orators who are the most
richly endowed by nature cannot apply themselves too
assiduously to perfect themselves in their art. Study diction
in order to speak well. Speaking is one of the functions which
we use most often. Why should we neglect it, even if we have
only one person to listen to us ? Admitting that we have
no moral or material interest in winning his S3mipathy or in
convincing him of the truth of what we are telling him, it
is surely only polite that he should be saved the trouble of
stretching his ears or straining his attention to hear what we
are saying.

Let us again study diction in order to read well. Reading
aloud is an excellent way of passing an hour of the evening
in our family circle. Thus are introduced, as friends of the
house, poets, philosophers, historians, novelists. Some may
prefer the musicians to these magic-workers, and we can
admit the preference but at the same time agree that many
years of study are necessary before the violin or the piano
are tolerable before even the most indulgent home-critics,
while good diction is comparatively easy, or at least sufficiently

4 ARTHUR BOURCHIER

good to read clearly and enable us thereby to communicate
to our friends some of the beauties which we ourselves are
enjoying.

Distinctness of utterance can only be acquired by culti-
vation, by taking pains. The learner should be advised not
to be afraid of opening his mouth ; the voice need not be
loud, so long as the words are enunciated clearly. Clipping
of consonants and slovenly slurring over of syllables should
be avoided ; the suppression of the final " g" is surely as
reprehensible, as great a crime, as the dropping of the aspirate.
To speak with distinction is given to few of us, but to speak
distinctly is an accomplishment as easily acquired by the
dullard as the genius. Surely it is not utterly outside the
range of possibility that the art of speaking distinctly may
beget the art of speaking with distinction. 1 istinction is
latent in some of us, but distinct utterance is patent. It is
interesting to take Shakespeare's lines on the " Seven Ages
of Man/' and to see how well they can be appUed to the fore-
going remarks on the necessity of clear enunciation.

First the Infant. — When our children cry, we may grumble,
but we have at least the satisfaction of knowing that their
lungs are sound, and good lungs give promise of ripe soil
whereon to grow the power of fine oratory in the future.

Then the whining Schoolboy. — The boy who answers clearly
and readily is invariably preferred to the one who does not.
Many a punishment is escaped by the boy who dashes boldly
at some horribly intricate piece of viva voce work, while he
who mumbles and hesitates is lost !

Then the Lover. — Surely the man who woos can only win
by speaking up, while he who stammers out the tale of his
love remains a bachelor to the end !

Then the Soldier. — ^To him, indeed, distinctness in giving
words of command, or in issuing verbal instructions to subor-
dinates, must be of the very first importance. SkobelefE
used to say that unless an officer could speak to his men
they would never follow him. Many a battle has been lost
by the misunderstanding of verbal instructions, the result
of faulty diction.

Then the Justice. — The judge who puts the case to the jury
with clearness of diction and distinct enunciation is always
an honour to the Bench, even if he be a Uttle shaky in his
law ; but he who mumbles and mouths his charge tries the
jury as well as the prisoner.

HOW TO PREPARE AND DELIVER A SPEECH 5

The Sixth Age. — You will always find that, however shrill
the piping treble of the old man, it will be clear as a bell,
if he were taught to speak distinctly in his youth, and early
attention to the elementary rules of distinct utterance will
maintain resonance of tones in the voice of one who is playing
his part in " the last scene of all, that ends this strange eventful
history."

Cultivation of the art of speaking distinctly is the very
first principle of all oratory. Without it, " winged words '*
are of no avail, and the periods over which we have spent
so many hours of study are best left undelivered — save,
perhaps, in the form of MS. for the reporters !

It is not necessary to shout — your slightest whisper will
be heard if you articulate properly, and if you remember
that in every audience there is probably one old lady who
is slightly deaf of one ear.

You will not be able to read well or speak well unless
you breathe properly. The secret of breathing properly is
to keep the lungs well filled with air, not expending more
breath at any given moment than is absolutely necessary,
and refilling them at every possible opportunity.

After distinct articulation and correct pronunciation comes
expression, without which all reading or speaking must be
unintelligent. Expression depends largely upon proper atten-
tion to modulation of the voice, to emphasis on the right word
or phrase, and to pause.

By modulation of voice I mean the passing from one key
to another, showing changes of sentiment, changes of thought.
To acquire modulation, it is a good thing to practise reading
dialogue and dramatic scenes, when you will easily see that
the voice must be modulated to suit the different characters.

Emphasis means the marking by the voice of such words
or phrases or sentences as you consider the most important.
This you can do in various ways : by an increase of stress
upon a particular word or sentence, by variation of tone,
or by varying the time of the enunciation of the words. Cor-
rectness of emphasis must, of course, depend upon the intelli-
gence of the speaker, for, if he understands his subject right
through, he cannot fail to note the right words to emphasize.
Incorrect emphasis will make a sentence ludicrous. For
example, every one probably knows the story of the nervous
curate, who, on reading the words, *' And he said unto his
son, Saddle me the ass, and he saddled him," read it thus,

6 ARTHUR BOURCHIER

" Saddle me the ass." Being reproved by his rector, who
pointed out that the word ass was the one on which emphasis
should be placed, the curate, to be on the safe side, added yet
another emphasis, and an amused congregation heard the
passage read thus : " Saddle me the ass, so they saddled
him ! "

The value of pause is threefold. It enables you to get
breath, and, as I said before, to keep the lungs well filled
with air ; it gives your audience time to consider the full
meaning of what you have been saying ; and it serves for
extra emphasis. In this connection I will quote the words
of Froude, in illustrating Cardinal Newman's power as a
preacher.

Froude relates that on one occasion Newman, who was
at that time vicar of St. Mary's, Oxford, had been describing
some of the incidents of Our Lord's Passion. ** At this
point," he says, " he paused. For a few moments there was
a breathless silence. Then, in a low, clear voice, of which
the faintest vibration was heard in the farthest corner of
St. Mary's, came the words, * Now, I bid you to recollect that
He to whom these things were done was Almighty God.' It
was as if an electric stroke had gone through the church, as
if every person present understood for the first time the
meaning of what he had all his life been saying. I suppose
it was an epoch in the mental history of more than one of
my Oxford contemporaries."

Among actors of our time, none understood the value of
pause more than the late Henry Irving, who never failed to
give it extraordinary significance. It was said of his delivery
of certain speeches that the very pauses had eloquence.

Next to distinctness, and almost equal in importance, is
the art of speaking fluently and with conviction.

Cicero says, " There are three things to be aimed at in
speaking — to instruct, to please, and to affect powerfully."
And again, " To be worthy of the proud title of orator, requires
an ability to put into words any question that may arise,
with good sense and a proper arrangement of the subject ;
further, your speech, which must be spoken from memory,
should be ornate in style, and accompanied by dignified action
befitting the topic."

Let us turn once more to Shakespeare, and we shall find
in Hamlet's advice to the players many wise hints, invaluable
not only to the actor, but to the pohtician, to the barrister,

HOW TO PREPARE AND DELIVER A SPEECH 7

to the business man, and to all who take part in pubUc, or,
for that matter, private discussions.

Fluency, the use of suitable gestures, proper emphasis —
all these are touched upon in this wonderful address, and all
can be acquired by assiduous practice. The question of
gesture, though perhaps a side-issue, is very important. In
acting, the hand plays as vital a part as the brain. A clever,
well-considered performance is often marred because the actor
is too restless of hand or foot — perhaps of both ! This, in a
lesser degree, is often the case with public speakers.

Verify your references and quotations. A false reference
in a speech has often as tragic consequences as a false refer-
ence to a butler, and to a man of taste — there is always at
least one in every audience — a garbled quotation is as horrible
a thing as the individual who wears brown boots with a dress
suit. Your ideas may be wrong — none of us are infallible,
not even the youngest of us — and much may be forgiven to
the man with any fresh ideas, but carelessness in the prepara-
tion of a speech is unforgivable.

And now let me insist, with all the force that in me lies,
that in speaking, or in preaching, or in acting, the only real
bond which joins man to man is sympathy, and without sin-
cerity and conviction that bond of sympathy cannot exist.

" Cor ad cor loquitur " — heart speaks to heart. However
lost a cause may seem, it is never wholly lost as long as it is
defended with sincerity and conviction.

" Si vis me flere, dolendum est
Primum ipsi tibi." *

The barrister pleading for his client's life, the statesman
defending an unpopular cause in a hostile House, the City
man addressing a stormy meeting of shareholders, the actor
playing an unusually bad part before an exasperatingly critical
audience, all these can triumph, if they but show that they
believe what they are saying, and, even if they fail, we can
say of them that they were Faithful Failures.

Having mastered his subject, the question of the best
method to become acquainted with all the points of his speech
must be left to the individual. Some speakers, and they
among the greatest, learn their speeches by heart ; others
make a bare outline of what they want to say within their

I •• Those TV ho would make us feci must feel themselves."

8 ARTHUR BOURCHIER

minds, and only give their thoughts concrete form before their
audience ; others, again, improvize as they go along. Perhaps
the first system is the safest, at any rate for beginners — write
out your speech and then learn it by heart. But it has its
disadvantages. What often happens is this : a man knows
every word of his speech by heart to his own satisfaction, but
in the presence of an audience something goes wrong ; he
may forget his opening sentence, which is the ke3niote to what
is to follow — and again I must repeat, the opening is every-
thing— then he stammers, and seeks another phrase, but too
often the thread of his argument is lost, and it is a long time
before he gets on terms with himself. Thus it does not do to
trust too much to one's memory. A few notes consulted from
time to time will save a speaker much tribulation, but the less
often he has to consult them the better, for, in the reading,
his gestures, his play of features are lost upon the audience,
and the less he has to do with a bundle of papers the better.
The Roman Catholic Church, for instance, teaches its priests to
dispense with notes in the delivery of their sermons, and the
Scottish Church, the parish ministers of which are elected
by popular vote, does not encourage them. " But he reads ! *'
has sometimes been the indignant comment on the merits
of a sermon by a young candidate, from whom, however,
many a mumbling curate might take a lesson in clearness of
utterance.

Every speech, like every dog, should have a head, a
middle, and a tail, and the advice of the late Provost of Eton,
Dr. Hornby, should be remembered by every orator, however
practised in his art : " Above all, spend special pains on your
peroration — you never know how soon you will require it."

Be careful, too, to suit your wit to your audience ; an
ill-considered jest, harmless enough in itself, has cost its per-
petrator very dear before now. There is the warning instance
of the London barrister, who, in his courtship of a Scottish
constituency, made a jesting allusion to the haggis. It was
held that an insult to the national delicacy showed want of
taste in more ways than one, and a vote of no confidence in
the candidate was promptly passed.

In conclusion, I would offer this advice to the young orator :
When you are on your legs you must banish from your
mind all the thousand and one details of the art of speaking.
You must speak sufficiently loud to be heard, sufiiciently
Qlearly to be understood, and sufficiently naturally not to give

HOW TO PREPARE AND DELIVER A SPEECH Q

an impression of finnicky superiority. But you must forget
all such details as I have laid stress upon in the foregoing
pages — emphasis, pause, punctuation, gesture — these must
come naturally, or your discourse will seem stilted and arti-
ficial and devoid of inspiration.

Do not exaggerate the importance of your own defects.
The more you develop your good qualities the less will these
defects displease . What your audience wants is to be interested,
to be moved. But do not stop at merely pleasing it ; try to
give it something to think about and talk about long after the
next day's newspaper is a back number. If you wish to be a
real artist in words or in letters, you must never weary of
study. The more you learn, the more you will wish to learn.
In Leonardo da Vinci's phrase — " The more we know, the
more we love." Finally, in the words of President Lincoln,
" make your speech with malice towards none, with charity
for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the
right," and always bear in mind those noble words of St.
Paul : " Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are
just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are
amiable, whatsoever things are of good report, if there be any
virtue, and if there be any praise, have these in your mind,
let your thoughts run upon these."

THE CONDUCT OF AND PRO-
CEDURE AT PUBLIC MEETINGS

{Continued from Vol. I., p. 8.)

By albert crew

of Grays Inn and the South Eastern Circuity Barrister-at-Law ,

Lee Prizeman 1908 ; Author of "The Conduct of and

Procedure at Public and Company Meetings."

PART II

IV. Procedure at Meetings
Constitution of a Meeting

A MEETING is properly constituted when the rightful person
is in the chair, and when there is a quorum of members
present, i.e. there must be a chairman (who may often be a
woman) and a minimum number of members present — as
fixed by the rules governing the meeting — whose attend-
ance is necessary for the proper and valid transaction of
business.

The objects of meetings are many and various. There
are the public meetings which are held to promote political,
social, religious, or propaganda work and progress — meetings
the reports of whose proceedings fill so large a space in the
newspapers ; others whose members are composed of an
elected or selected class. These latter may be those of
statutory authorities, e.g. county, borough, district, and
parish councils, or Hmited companies, and societies for the
promotion of sport, social intercourse, educational, or other
purposes. The powers of a meeting vary considerably. A

10

PROCEDURE AT PUBLIC MEETINGS II

statutory authority is governed by Acts of Parliament and
its standing orders; a limited company by the Companies
(Consolidation) Act of 1908 or other special Act, and its
memorandum and articles of association ; a society or organi-
zation by its rules and regulations.

The Committee System

It is obvious that where there fs a large membership and
much work to be done, the principle of division of labour
may be properly and usefully apphed. Hence meetings may
be separated into committees, i.e. persons to whom powers
are committed which would otherwise be exercised by the
parent body. A committee may consist of the whole body
on a motion " That the Board resolve itself into com-
mittee." This is usually done when the main body wishes
to discuss a matter in camera, during which time the press
is excluded.

Usually, but not necessarily, these powers are of a sub-
ordinate and hmited character, confined to the administration
of some special work, e.g. finance, education, law and par-
liamentary ; on the other hand they may be and often are
merely those of investigation, consideration, and recommen-
dation. A committee then derives its existence, authority,
and powers from its appointing meeting (which may be a
Council or Board) . The recommendations of such a committee
are invariably, but not necessarily, adopted by its executive
authority. Again, a committee may appoint sub-committees
which, in turn, are entirely subject and subordinate to
their appointing committee.

The committee system has the advantages of utilizing
the services of men who have special knowledge or information,
and of providing facilities for detailed and exhaustive in-
vestigation and inquiry. In appointing committees, great
care is needed to define explicitly their powers and duties.
As to the composition of committees, the members should be
few in number, men capable and useful for the particular
work they have to do. Work, assiduity, judgment, knowledge,
and business capacity are the essential qualities for appoint-
ment on a committee — in fact practically all the real, vital
work is done in committee, the subsequent endorsement of
its recommendations by its appointing authority being often
nothing more than a mere matter of form.

13 THE CONDUCT OF AND

The Chairman

The primary duties and functions of a chairman are to
preserve order, to take care that the proceedings are con-
ducted in a proper manner, and that the sense of the meeting
is properly ascertained with regard to any question which
is properly before the meeting.

The characteristics of a good chairman are ability to rule
men, knowledge of the conduct and procedure of meetings,
and, in particular, the rules governing the meeting over which
he presides. He should possess a judicial mind, equable temper,
and a genial temperament. He must be firm and have com-
plete but quiet confidence in himself.

A chairman should be a man of few words, impartial
and courteous to all, considerate to the minority or opposition,
and should remember that tact, good humour, and an im-
perturbable temper will carry him through most difficulties.
When he speaks it should be confined to explanation, intro-
duction, congratulation, and occasionally mild reproof. Save
at avowedly political or similar public meetings, his attitude
should be strictly non-political and non-partisan. The ideal
chairman will, as far as possible, emulate the example of
the Speaker of the House of Commons.

The Social Chairman.

The obligations and duties of a social chairman are not
so onerous as those at other gatherings, but they require
much tact, wide knowledge of men, and that discrimination
and charity which characterize the experienced man of the
world who has been mellowed rather than hardened by
contact with its many vicissitudes. He should wear a cheer-
ful countenance, neither effusive nor obtrusive, nor cold or
forbidding ; but endeavour to put his guests at ease with
one another. He will find that his chairmanship will be a
pleasant experience if he remembers that it is more blessed
to hear than to speak, and that a patient and interested
listener is always more popular than one who has an abundance
of opinions and views to air.

A chairman should always be absolutely punctual. His
real duties begin before the commencement of the dinner
or other function. He should make ample opportunities
for knowing the correct names of those present, their places
at the table, and if he can, by disareet inquiries oi other

PROCEDURE AT PUBLIC MEETINGS I3

subtle means, obtain any knowledge of their peculiarities
or idiosyncrasies, so much the better. Mr. Obadiah
Willoughby Robinson will probably be gratified to hear
himself addressed as Mr. Willoughby- Robinson. The love
of approbation and approval, nay even flattery, is very
dominant in all, and the chairman who ladles it out with
judicious care and at the right moment has in a great
measure learnt one of the minor arts in the attainment of
popularity. Tact will carry a chairman through nearly all
his difficulties. He should be quite in harmony with the spirit
of the gathering, and a previous conversation with the secre-
tary or other official will give him the cue as to what topics
should or should not be discussed. It may be remarked that
the chairman who listens, instead of speaking, is following
the safest line. Silence is golden in cases of doubt. After
grace, which should be unaccompanied either during its
delivery or subsequently by flippant remarks, the chairman
must be left to his own devices. His immediate friends will
claim his attention, and his social quahties, tact, and experience
will alone guide him.

It is customary to avoid topics dealing with politics and
religion, and it has been suggested that golf be added to
the list.

It is a mistake for a chairman to obtrude his personal
opinions. He should cultivate the art of listening, and, what
is still more difficult, of appearing to enjoy it, so that it may
be accounted unto him for righteousness. The question of
toasts should be carefully prearranged as to order and
speakers. These generally require to be interspersed with
musical or variety items. Any speeches by the chairman
should be the fewest possible in number and marked with
brevity, wit, and humour.

The Committee Chairman

A committee may generally appoint its own chairman,
unless the appointing authority has previously selected him.

The chairman of a committee has usually great influence
in forming and making the opinion of its members, provided
he has full and detailed knowledge of the principles or subject
under consideration. The conduct and procedure at commit-
tees are not so formal as at meetings with executive authority,
e.g. members generally remain seated while speaking.

14 THE CONDUCT OF AND

The main purpose of a committee is to come to a common
understanding as to the matter delegated to it for consideration
and report. The chairman is generally responsible for the
report of the committee, which he either writes himself or
edits, and in due course presents and supports it when laid
before the authority which brought the committee into
being.

The election of a chairman should, if possible, be
absolutely unanimous, since his position will be greatly
strengthened if he possess the respect and support of the
meeting. It is as well, then, that the other side (if the
matter is controversial) should be consulted as to nominations
for the chair, and better still for a member of the majority
to propose, and a member of the minority to second, the
nomination for chairman. If this course be not possible or
practicable, a temporary chairman should be elected, prefer-
ably the late chairman (if not a candidate for the new
chair), and the various candidates should then be proposed,
seconded, and voted for in the usual way.

Chairman of Public Meetings

Election by the meeting is the normal method of getting
a chairman ; but when meetings are held for special purposes
at irregular intervals the conveners frequently select a chair-
man themselves. If the meeting is a public one, and in the
nature of a demonstration and Ukely to attract much public
attention, it is incumbent on the promoters to choose not
only one who will be impartial and command general respect,
but one who is able to control a large meeting and keep it
well in hand.

Powers and Duties of a Chairman

The powers and duties of a chairman are governed and
controlled by the rules and regulations of the body or society
over which he presides, which he should interpret in a broad,
liberal spirit, and using them as a means to an end, that
end being the transaction of the business required in a proper,
harmonious, and expeditious manner.

The chairman should rarely vote, and except perhaps in
committee or pubhc meetings never take a partisan view of
the proceedings.

Unless statute, standing orders, the regulations or articles

PROCEDURE AT PUBLIC MEETINGS I5

so provide, he has no second and casting vote, and save in
exceptional circumstances should exercise it only to preserve
the status quo, as is done in the House of Lords. Without
the consent or authority of a meeting he cannot adjourn it,
except in case of grave or persistent disorder.

Provided his own appointment is in order, the chairman
should never commence the business of the meeting without
a quorum of members being present. A time limit should
be fixed, preferably by regulation, within which the quorum
of a meeting must assemble for the transaction of business ;
no business should be transacted at any time at a meeting
during which a quorum is not present. It is essential that,
provided there is a quorum of members present, the meeting
should commence at the stipulated time, which makes it
necessary for the chairman to be prompt and punctual in
all his attendances.

The chairman must have due regard to the rules and
regulations of the society or body over which he presides,
take the business in order of the agenda paper, unless other-
wise arranged by the meeting before its commencement,
keep discussion relevant to the subject of debate, give equal
opportunities for speaking on both sides, calling on speakers
by name, and firmly resist two or more members speaking
at once, making running commentary, or giving vent to
personalities and abuse. All motions and relevant amend-
ments should be put from the chair and voted thereon, either
by show of hands, division, or subsequent poll. All points
of order should be dealt with promptly, and when the
chairman has once ruled he should adhere to his decision
— even when he is wrong. Vacillation and loquacity in a
chairman are fatal to the success of a meeting. The chairman
should remember that his authority is derived from the meet-
ing. He collects, as it were, his authority from the meeting,
and he will keep order and the respect of its members if he
is fair, just, and impartial to all.

Apart from the rules and regulations of the body which
govern his duties and powers, the chairman has to conduct
the proceedings in a proper manner, maintain order, give
adequate opportunities for debate and discussion, keep the
speakers to the point, decide points of order, order the removal
of disorderly persons, and take the sense of the meeting by
putting the motions and amendments to the vote in proper
form. He has, in fine, the general conduct of the meeting,

l6 THE CONDUCT OF AND

and his endeavour should be so to direct and guide it that its
opinion expressed by vote is obtained fairly, expeditiously,
harmoniously, and in a business-like manner.

How to Conduct Meetings

The conduct of a public meeting involves much preliminary
arrangement, foresight, organization, and tact.

The hall or room has to be hired — this requires much
strategy and discretion at election times and on special oc-
casions— the chairman and speakers have to be selected, and,
what is most important, a convenient day and time fixed for
those for whom the meeting is intended. Given a working,
not a talking committee, and an indefatigable and experienced
secretary, all will be well. The chairman should never be
late, and, if unavoidably absent, notice should be sent to the
secretary and committee as early as possible, in order that a
substitute may be found.

If it is a poHtical or similar demonstration, some popular
music will placate the weary, fan the enthusiasm of the stal-
warts, and help to harmonize its many constituents into a
united gathering — even the gregarious instinct of a crowd
requires some encouragement and support.

The chairman, with commendable brevity, opens the
proceedings, introduces the chief speakers in turn, and resumes
his seat.

The set speakers will harangue and orate, and inci-
dentally declare their principles and policy, subsequently
embod3dng them in resolutions to be sent to some authority
or persons.

The chief speaker and chairman should have the customary
vote of thanks in as few words as possible.

Admission of the Press

As regards meetings, the question sometimes arises as
to the desirability of admitting the press. Where the widest
publicity is required, or where the public have a right to
know what is being done, and such knowledge is not contrary
to the pubHc weal, the press should undoubtedly be invited
to attend. Due and proper notice, accompanied by agenda
paper, and reports (if any) should be sent. Proper accommo-
dation should be provided, as near as possible to the chair-
man or platform, and every faciUty should be given to the

PROCEDURE AT PUBLIC MEETINGS VJ

representatives of the press in performing their onerous
and often difficult work. A responsible official — preferably
a press secretary — should be available for obtaining full and
accurate information and the names (with correct spelling)
of those of the more prominent people present. Occasionally
the press is relegated to some part of the room where it can
only gather a very imperfect account of what is being done
and said, to the detriment of the subsequent report in the
newspaper. Conveners and speakers of public meetings
should remember the greater public is only reached through
the media of the press, and should therefore afford its
representatives courteous attention, correct and full informa-
tion, and adequate facilities for the proper and efficient dis-
charge of its duties.

The Local Authorities (which include, inter alia, a council
of a county, county borough, metropoKtan and other boroughs,
urban and rural district and parish councils) [Admission of
the Press to Meetings] Act of 1908 provides that represen-
tatives of the press shall be admitted to the meetings of
every local authority. A local authority may temporarily
exclude such representatives from a meeting as often as may
be desirable at any meeting when, in the opinion of a
majority of the members of the local authority present at
such meeting, expressed by resolution, in view of the special
nature of the business then being dealt with or about to be
dealt with, such exclusion is advisable in the public interest.

As regards other meetings, e.g. those of committees, it is
a matter for careful consideration for the members attending
thereat, but as a rule the press is not invited to such meetings,
though it must be admitted to meetings of education com-
mittees by section 2 of the statute above quoted. It is
generally desirable to get unanimity of opinion if the press is
to be excluded, otherwise it may happen that the dissentients
may act as unofficial, inaccurate, and biassed reporters.

It is obvious that matters requiring full and impartial
criticism of a confidential or delicate nature should generally
be discussed in camera.

Sections 3 and 4 of the Local Authorities [Admission of
the Press to Meetings] Act (1908) provide that the Act shall
not extend to any meeting of a committee of a local authority,
unless the committee is itself the authority ; but that the
committee is not prohibited from admitting representatives
of the press to its meetings.

II— 2

l8 THE CONDUCT OF AND

Meetings of Local or Statutory Authorities

There are, however, other meetings at which the members
thereof do not demonstrate, or declare their intention of
dying in the last ditch, or express through the speakers their
defiance of the law, or protest against some suggested
legislative enactment. These other meetings, which are
accompanied by less noise and characterised by more use-
fulness than those previously dealt with, are meetings of
local authorities, Hmited Hability companies, and similar
bodies, whose object, by means of discussion and debate, is
the transaction of business and the determination of opinion
of such meetings by putting the matter to the vote of its
members. The proceedings of these bodies must necessarily
be cast in a more regular and rigid form than that of the
public meeting. Such meetings are governed entirely by
their standing orders, articles, or regulations. Although there
are many general rules applicable and common to all meetings,
it should be distinctly understood that they are subject to
and limited by whatever rules or regulations the particular
body elects to make and agree upon.

Such meetings, which meet with more or less regularity,
require written notice to be given to every person entitled
to attend. Due and adequate notice must be given, properly
authorized and sent by the proper person, since a want of
notice or an improper notice may nullify the acts done at
a meeting and render the meeting invalid. The notice should
be clear and expUcit as to day, time, and object of meeting.
It is usual and desirable to state the day, date, and time,
e.g. Saturday, 2nd day of March, 1912, at eleven o'clock in
the forenoon. In Lane v. Norman it was stated "What
was done was wrong, first because there was no proper
notice given to a person who ought to have had notice, and
secondly because another gentleman was present who ought
not to have been." The items of business for consideration
at a meeting are called the agenda. With the notice, and
often forming part of it, is sent the agenda paper, i.e. the
paper on which are arranged the items of business in a regular
order (commonly, though erroneously, called the agenda),
which should contain full and detailed information of the
business to be transacted and also the order in which that
business is to be taken. The usual order, in outline, is the
election of chairman (where necessary), the confirmation

PROCEDURE AT PUBLIC MEETINGS IQ

of minutes, consideration of correspondence, reports of com-
mittees and / or officers, finance, motions for debate, and
general or other business. A careful and exact record,
called the " Minutes " of the proceedings of every meeting,
should be kept. The minutes merely consist of an account
of what was done at the meeting, e.g. its decisions and
resolutions. A report of the speeches comes within the scope
of a newspaper, though it is not unusual, when a company
has a good year, and on special occasions, to publish this report
of the speeches made at the annual meeting to its members,
but always as a document separate and distinct from the
minutes. Since minutes of a meeting, when signed by the
chairman, are prima facie evidence of the proceedings of a
meeting, it is of the highest importance that they should be
an accurate and complete record, and free from ambiguity. The
names of members present, but not those of the officers, should
be included in the minutes in order to fix responsibility for
any acts done at any particular meeting. For convenience
of reference, minutes should always be carefully indexed.
After the proper person is in the chair, the minutes of the
previous meetings are read, or, more usually, taken as read.
If copies have been circulated beforehand, these copies are
most usually sent with the notice of the meeting and agenda
paper. The chairman signs the minutes if in the opinion of
the meeting they are a true and accurate record of the pro-
ceedings of the previous meeting. As a rule the minutes are
confirmed or verified at the meeting following that of which
they purport to be a record.

It may be here remarked that only those who are present
at the meeting at which the resolutions were agreed to are
responsible for them, and that those who are only present
when the minutes of that meeting are confirmed, even though
they may be parties to their confirmation, are in no way
responsible for what was done at such previous meeting.
The chairman merely signs the minutes on the authority
of the meeting. He is in no way responsible for any acts
authorized therein, if he was absent at the meeting of which
proceedings they are a record. No discussion should be
allowed on the minutes, save in the event of their accuracy
being challenged. If a dispute arises thereon, it should be
settled by being put to the meeting by vote. Obviously
those who were not present at the previous meeting should
take no part in this discussion. After the correspondence

20 THE CONDUCT OF AND

has been read, and instructions thereon, when required, have
been given, the meeting will then deal with the main business
for which it is called, under the guidance and direction of
the chairman, in the order as arranged on the agenda paper.
One general rule which should always be observed is that
members should never be allowed to " beat the air " ; that
is, there must be some motion before the meeting, a peg on
which the speaker may, as it were, hang his remarks. Another
rule, unfortunately more often honoured in the breach than
in the observance, should be insisted upon by the chairman,
viz. that two persons cannot with justice to themselves
speak at one and the same time. A breach of this rule
generally leads to personalities, which should at all times
be sternly suppressed by the chairman. Except in the case
of formal motions, e.g. that the report be adopted or that
the debate be adjourned, motions are generally required to
be in writing, and notice thereof is not unusual. One member
having moved and made a speech on the subject of his
motion, another member usually seconds the motion ; then
the motion is open to the meeting for general debate and
discussion, and such motion is thereafter entirely in the
charge and control of the meeting. Motions need not be
seconded in parliamentary committees.

Motions and Amendments

In speaking to a motion, members should avoid repeating
themselves, wandering from the point, and, especially in a
public meeting, study the prejudices and feelings of their
audience. The gift of lucid and explicit exposition is the
possession of the few, but all can endeavour to make their
speeches short. Unfortunately so many people speak when
they have nothing worth saying, and refuse to sit down when
they have said it. In such circumstances the chairman
may discreetly intervene — more effectual is the repeated
and insistent ** voice," whose monotonous though welcome
song is " Sit down," perhaps with a variation to louder cries
of " Time ! "

Motions, when agreed to, are usually called resolutions,
though the two words are often synonymously used.

A member should not be allowed a second speech upon
one motion, though explanations to a limited extent may,
in special circumstances, be permitted. When a member

PROCEDURE AT PUBLIC MEETINGS 21

wishes to withdraw his motion from the meeting, it is usually
necessary to get the sanction of his seconder, and always
essential to obtain the permission of the meeting, as it is
in its custody and control.

Other members may be in sympathy with the motion,
but wish to modify its terms. In such case they would move
amendments which may consist of the omission, the insertion,
or the addition of certain other words. Unless the rules so
provide, amendments need not be seconded. It is better
to consider one amendment at the time, and put each to the
vote separately, after a reasonable amount of discussion has
been allowed. If the amendments are not agreed to, the
original motion is put to the meeting and voted on.

Should an amendment be carried, it must be put to the
meeting a second time, as a substantive motion, the original
motion being dropped. Before being put to the meeting
amendments can be moved to the substantive motion as
in the case of the original motion. Amendments must not
be merely negative, they must be relevant to the motion,
intelHgible, and be so framed as to form a consistent sentence
with the motion it purports to amend. Other formal motions
may be moved during the meeting, e.g. that the chairman
do leave the chair, to move the previous question, to proceed
to the next business, to move the closure, to adjourn the
debate or meeting, to refer a matter back to a committee.
Amendments to these motions are not permissible, except
perhaps as to time of adjournment. All these motions have
one common object in view, viz. to suppress or postpone the
discussion or debate of the subject or business for which the
meeting has been called. These motions, of course, must be
put to the meeting and voted upon.

Minority Rights

The views of the minority are entitled to be heard with
consideration and respect, but after a reasonable oppor-
tunity has been given for discussion, especially if the chairman
is supported by a majority, he should put a termination to
the speeches of those who are desirous of further addressing
the meeting. A meeting is held not merely for discussion,
but for coming to a decision on one or more questions, and
after a reasonable time has been granted for speaking, the
matter should be put to the meeting and voted upon. This

22 THE CONDUCT OF AND

is generally done by means of a motion, " That the question
be now put," called the " closure " by its supporters and
friends and the " gag " by its opponents. It is as well to
give the chairman some discretionary power as to this motion,
in order that a majority may not be able to t5Tannize and
override a minority. The previous question is generally a
motion put in the form " That the question be not now put,"
and its purpose is to ascertain whether a vote shall be taken
on the subject under discussion. If agreed to, this subject
becomes a dropped motion and cannot be brought up again
— at least for that meeting. If rejected, the motion under
discussion is put to the vote and dealt with then and there.
The previous question is a device to get rid of an inconvenient
motion, or in the alternative to end the discussion thereon.

Voting

Voting may be given by voice. The chairman first asks
" As many as are of that opinion say, * Aye,' " and then
waits for an affirmative response. Afterwards he says, " As
many as are of the contrary opinion say ' No,' " and a negative
response follows.

The chairman by the number or loudness of voices has
to decide whether the " Ayes " or the " Noes " have it, i.e,
which are in the majority. This often puts him in a diffi-
culty, since he is apt to confuse noise with numbers, and
there is no doubt that minorities do not lack vigour or courage
in this respect. Voting is more usually done by show of
hands. Sometimes a division is challenged, i.e. a proper
count of the members for and against the motion is taken.
This is generally done by the members going into separate
rooms, '* Ayes " to the right, '* Noes '* to the left, the counting
being done by members called " tellers." In certain cases,
especially in limited liability companies, a formal poll is
taken, i.e. an appeal is made to the whole body of members,
few of whom were probably present at the meeting. Thus
each voter by his personal act, either orally, or more generally
in writing, delivers his vote to the appointed official.

A demand for a poll must be made immediately after the
show of hands is over, and is a demand which must usually
be acceded to. It is generally and wrongly supposed that a
chairman, as such, has a second or casting vote in case there
is an equality of votes.

PROCEDURE AT PUBLIC MEETINGS 23

The Chairman

Unless the meeting, by its standing order, articles, or
regulations specifically gives him a casting vote, he has only
the same vote as an ordinary member, which he should
rarely exercise. It is also wrongly and commonly assumed
that the chairman can stop a meeting at his own will and
pleasure. If the chairman is given authority to adjourn
a meeting, either by its rules or consent, he may do so,
but not otherwise, save when there is such grave or per-
sistent disorder that the proper transaction of business is
utterly impossible and impracticable. Should a chairman so
forget or violate his duty, by adjourning a meeting without
authority, the meeting could go on with the business for which
it has been convened, by appointing a chairman to conduct
the business, which the other chairman has tried to stop,
because perhaps the proceedings have taken a turn which
he himself does not like.

One of the most difficult tasks of a chairman, at a public
meeting where any and everybody can obtain admission, is
to maintain order. If the meeting is in general sympathy
with the speakers — and organizers generally take care that
they are — the chairman's difficulty vanishes. The aid of
the police should be resorted to as a last resource. The aim
of the chairman, in such circumstances, should not only be
to maintain order but to prevent disorder. If he has tact,
discretion, patience, and good temper he may succeed. A
hostile, even a noisy meeting, may be kept in hand by an
experienced chairman. He will be punctual in commencing
the meeting, apparently deaf and blind on occasions, and will
act as if the presence of an opposition was quite in accordance
with the fitness of things — in fact he must make a virtue
of necessity.

The average opposition will play the game and will be
considerate towards the chairman who is fair and impartial
and who will insist that the speakers should respect the
meeting, including the opposition. Within certain Umitations,
the chairman may conciliate the boisterous opposition by
promising that it shall have an opportunity of laying its
views before the meeting and by taking care that he fulfils
such promise in a broad, generous spirit. He also may allow
questions, keeping these as far as possible until the con-
clusion of the principal speech. It is not always advisable

24 THE CONDUCT OF AND

to check running commentary or a question interjected
during a speech, since it sometimes gives the speaker an
opportunity of making an apt retort, to the discomfiture of
the " voice " and the delight of his supporters. At the same
time it is not necessary to insult an opposition, which may
for the moment be in a minority, or belittle its intelligence.
It should be remembered that most new movements are at
first faced with cold neglect and indifference, then lukewarm
notice, followed by ridicule or abuse, succeeded by fierce
opposition, and finally by warm support or perfect toleration.

Above all a chairman should not take himself too seriously.
A little genuine humour should be part of the equipment of
every chairman. His dignity will look after itself if he
carries out his duties with discrimination and with proper
care. A chairman should always try to conceal his irritation,
even when unduly provoked ; if he loses his temper, his
position is hopeless. Virtuous and righteous indignation
are all very well, but usually the less shown the better.
Ejection from a meeting of very disorderly persons should
be prompt and effective, and carried out with great expe-
dition. The stewards should remember that their duty is
to remove and not to assault. The mere presence of stewards
who are " sons of Anak *' is often sufficient to quell potential
disturbances of the meeting.

The author has with some temerity suggested in his
Conduct of and Procedure at Public Meetings (Jordans) some
methods of deaUng with those whom Kipling describes as
" being more deadly than the male." It is sufficient to state
that these disturbers tax the ingenuity and patience of
organizers and stewards to the utmost. A person who knows
he is incompetent to take the chair, either by reason of his
ignorance of procedure at meetings, or lack of those quaUties
requisite for a chairman, is merely courting disaster at the
hands of his opponents, and will assuredly merit the con-
tempt— not always silent — of those whom he deems to be
his friends.

The Speakers.

There is no doubt that the speakers themselves are
responsible for occasional disorder. Dull, prosy speeches of
interminable length, uttered in a more or less inaudible voice,
are trying, even to the enthusiastic and loyal supporter

PROCEDURE AT PUBLIC MEETINGS 25

of the " cause " — but to an opponent they are gall and
wormwood.

A speaker should treat his audience with respect, study
its feelings and prejudices, and if he wishes to carry it with
him, he must be sincere, honest in the expression of his
opinions, considerate to his supporters, courteous to his
opponents, and fair to all. He should do his best to interest
his hearers by endeavouring to cultivate the art of lucid
exposition.

RAYMOND POINCARE

(PRESIDENT OF THE FRENCH REPUBLIC)

KING EDWARD VII

[Speech delivered by Monsieur Raymond Poincar6 (now Presi-
dent of the French Republic) at Cannes on April 13, 1912,
the occasion being the unveiling of a monument to King
Edward VII.]

Gentlemen: — In the smart-looking, stalwart yachtsman,
whom M. Denys Puech has placed so proudly at the top of this
pedestal, you all recognize the magnificent prince who, beneath
the sky of Cannes, lavished so much kindliness, wit, and charm.

Among all the lands visited by this indefatigable traveller,
athirst for every kind of knowledge, none more delighted him
or arrested his steps for longer periods than the coast of the
Mediterranean. Every one of you can remember the noble
ease, the keen, shrewd sense, the humorous geniality, the
instinctive diplomatic tact, the supreme art of adaptation,
which were the peculiar characteristics of his genius.

Quite naturally, without the least effort, he was in all
circumstances true to himself and equal to the occasion.

Familiar with all forms of sport, he took a wide and in-
telligent interest in literature, science, and art. No human
concern was outside his ken. He rose or descended without
strain to the level of great or small questions ; he was as much
at home at Cannes and in Paris as he was in London ; he was
equally at home in palaces and the most humble dwellings.

While theatrical display and free-and-easy familiarity
were equally alien to his nature, he adapted himself without
difiiculty to the variable conditions of a Hfe which of necessity
made him conversant with all the pleasures, sorrows, and
honours that earth can give.

For more than half a century he performed with admirable
tact the part of heir-apparent, and this long preparation

26

KING EDWARD VII 27

for kingship was an incomparable schooling in shrewdness
and discretion. Although, before being crowned, he had, as
Prince of Wales, never taken part in any essential act
of the public life of England, he had not confined himself
to exercising with untiring activity the representative
functions which had devolved upon him. Presiding at
public ceremonies had not taken up the best part of his
time ; he had found leisure to devote to social and philanthropic
works, and been one of the most generous and zealous
promoters of those most original and fruitful English founda-
tions, of those settlements which have spread so efficaciously
among our neighbours ideas of beneficence and solidarity ;
before being a king he made it his business to be a man.

In all the countries in which he travelled — in Canada,
the United States, Egypt, India — he tried to collect infor-
mation, and wherever he passed, he left a profound im-
pression. Every time he came to France he made a more
thorough study of our society, of our manners and institutions ;
he associated with our writers, artists, and statesmen, and
practised on them that science of pleasing in which he was
a past-master, a match for Gambetta himself.

When, at the age of sixty, he ascended the throne, all these
accumulated resources of prudence, wisdom, and skill shone
forth in brilliant political qualities. After a long initiation
to the mysteries of Chancelleries and the ways of Courts, he
knew better than any one in England or out of it the char-
acters of individual men, the mental attitude of the rulers, and
the feelings of the governed ; he knew what was strong or
weak in all men and all things, what was semblance and what
reality ; well acquainted with the financial, military, and naval
resources of every European nation, he was determined, come
what might, to place his information, experience, and native
wit at the service of a very firm and loyal policy of peace
and balance of power.

He was careful not to break off abruptly with the past ;
gradually and gently he made England emerge from that
splendid isolation within which she had confined herself;
methodically and circumspectly he prepared the necessary
evolution ; with a careful and gentle touch he pressed upon
the tiller to give the ship of State a new direction. Moreover,
in the exercise of this influence, he never over -stepped the
bounds imposed on him by his position as a constitutional
monarch.

28 RAYMOND POINCAR^

As Sir E. Grey observed in March 1909, the King's activity
in foreign politics could only be exerted through the normal
medium of the Foreign Office ; but Sir E. Grey wisely added
that the King's visits to foreign Courts and nations had been
of high value to Great Britain, because, as the eminent states-
man said, the King had in him a special gift, which was never
possessed in a higher degree, of inspiring Governments and
nations with a well-grounded confidence in the goodwill of the
British people and of the British Government. Of such a
nature was the confidence with which Edward VII at once
inspired France, when he returned, as King, to the country
which he had so loved to frequent as Prince of Wales. And
now nearly nine years have passed since that memorable visit
which so happily put an end to long misunderstandings, and
brought together so closely two nations by nature intended
to understand and esteem each other.

Of the numerous colonial questions which had once divided
France and England, none seemed then to present insuperable
difficulties ; a conciliatory effort on both sides might suc-
ceed in winding up the past and disentangling the future.
Edward VII measured at one rapid glance the work to be
accomplished. He immediately perceived as being possible
and desirable a combination which, without breaking up
any of the existing European ententes and alliances, without
having a provocative or ofiensive character for any one, would
associate in a common aim of peace and industry two nations
in the forefront of Europe by their economic and financial
resources, their glorious history, and the freedom of their
political institutions. At the same time his great practical sense
suggested to him that this accord might well be established
without being the object of a solenm compact drawn up on
parchment, and that, to safeguard the solidity and duration
of the entente, it was enough to accustom the two peoples to
know and appreciate each other, while creating permanent causes
of mutual sympathy, and establishing between the two Govern-
ments relations of cordial frankness and scrupulous loyalty.

The speeches spoken by the King on the ist and 2nd of
May 1902, before the English Chamber of Commerce of Paris,
and at the Hotel de Ville, fully explained his long-cherished
and matured intentions ; and their demonstration in concrete
form followed in the journey to London of President Loubet
and my friend M. Delcasse, the visit of the English sailors
to Brest, and that of the French sailors to Portsmouth ; and

KING EDWAi^D Vll 2$

the Convention of April 8, 1904, drawn up in a spirit of friendly
compromise, was their first diplomatic result.

If the blessing of peace is precious to all nations, it is especi-
ally necessary for a republican democracy, patiently seeking,
in labour, orderliness, and productive activity, an increase
of welfare, prosperity, and social justice.

France, intent upon the task she has set herself within
her borders, has no thought of attacking or provoking any
of her neighbours; but she is fully conscious of the fact that,
if she wishes to be neither attacked nor provoked herself,
she must needs maintain on land and sea forces capable of
ensuring respect for her honour and protection for her interests.
When, having thus drawn nearer to France, England some years
later held out her hand to Russia, the equihbrium of Euro-
pean forces was less unstable, and peace itself less precarious.
The fact is, Edward VII was pacific no less from temperament
and predilection than by the force of logic, and, if he was
pleased to call France England's best friend, he assuredly
gave this friendship no significance which could give other
Powers just cause for complaint, anxiety, or offence. And
in no other spirit has France herself carried out this policy
of friendly understanding, to which even after Edward VII's
death she has remained resolutely faithful. It is on her own
resources in men and money, on her own naval and military
power, that she must primarily depend for the safeguarding
of her rights and dignity. But the authority she derives
from her own strength is greatly enhanced by the support
given her day by day in diplomatic action by her friends and
allies. And we can never forget that Edward VII was the
first to favour, inaugurate, and pursue this friendly collabora-
tion of France and the United Kingdom. At the outset of
his too short reign that great King said to his Privy Council,
" So long as I have a breath of life in me I shall labour for the
good of my people." While labouring for the good of his
people, he laboured for the peace of the world, for civilization,
and the progress of mankind. And when, at the point of
death, he murmured : ** I have tried to do m}^ duty," he was
unduly modest and diffident in suggesting that, sure as he
was of having made the attempt, he was not so sure of having
reached the goal. He tried to do his duty, and he fully
achieved his purpose. Gentlemen, happy are they, be they
heads of States or citizens, whose lives these simple words
can appraise.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

»' GOVERNMENT OF THE PEOPLE, BY THE
PEOPLE, FOR THE PEOPLE '*

[Address delivered at the Dedication of the Cemetery at
Gettysburg, November 19, 1863.]

Fellow-Countrymen : — Four score and seven years ago our
fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, con-
ceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all
men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether
that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can
long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war.
We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final
resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that
nation might Hve. It is altogether fit and proper that we
should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate — we cannot
consecrate — we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men,
living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far
above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little
note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never
forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather,
to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who
fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for
us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us
— that from these honoured dead we take increased devotion
to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of
devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not
have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a
new birth of freedom — and that government of the people,
by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

30

EARL OF ROSEBERY

" POP "

[Pop is a Society at Eton founded in 1811 by Charles Fox
Townshend — its first meetings being held in a room above a
confectioner's shop, kept by a Mrs. Hatton, and accordingly
taking its name from the Latin word "popina" — a cook-shop.
The following speech was deUvered at Eton, July 14, 191 1,
at a banquet to celebrate the Centenary of the Society. Lord
Rosebery presided.]

Mr. Provost, My Lords, and Gentlemen : — ^This is a very
jolly, a very remarkable, and a very memorable occasion. It
is a very jolly occasion, because we Old Etonians meet one
another, and it is especially jolly because we meet under the
halo of two great crowds at Lord's and at Henley, which give
an especial zest to our entertainment to-night. I am so
afraid of the exhilaration of the occasion that I would like to
utter two words of warning. The first is that we must confine
our reminiscences to the Eton Society, and not to Eton at
large, because if we begin with our reminiscences of Eton at
large I, at any rate, shall not be able to catch the train which
I wish to catch to-night. [Laughter.] My other point is this
— do not let the splendour of the occasion lead us away into
too great an exuberance of pride. When four hundred Etonians,
and of the elect, the cream, of Eton, meet together to celebrate
such an occasion as this, there must necessarily be a blowing
of the trumpet, a swelling of the voice, a natural exaltation of
the mortal man, such as may cause, not unnaturally, some
little reaction and jealousy in less fortunate foundations than
our own. [Laughter.] I myself am connected with many
educational establishments, from universities downwards, and
though I know in the course of nature I must inevitably say
things which prove to them that Eton, to my mind, is the
supreme scholastic educational establishment in the whole
world [cheers], yet I hereby enter a caveat against all feeHng

31

3^ HARL OF ROSEBERY

that I may excite amongst them, and beg them to remember
the extraordinary exhilaration of such an occasion as this.

How am I to begin with the Eton Society ? Of course,
I begin with Henry VI. [Laughter.] I observe an unmeaning
titter among my colleagues which I cannot well explain,
because if they have been logically trained they must be aware
that if Henry VI. had not founded Eton, the Eton Society
could not possibly have existed. [Cheers.] He founded
Eton, the mother of the Eton Society, and I think we must
consider Henry VI. as our founder. I have always thought
it very pleasant and very suggestive that Henry VI. had his
young Eton lads around him at Windsor Castle, and used to
give them good advice, and do what was infinitely more impor-
tant— ** tip " them. [Laughter.] And I think that derelict
and unfortunate king, in all the vicissitudes of his troubled
reign, must have found his only consolation in the fact of the
company of those boys, and possibly the foreknowledge that
what he was founding was going to grow into what it is.

The next date is one more abstruse. It was the date of
1705. You may well ask me why I take that date. It is for
this reason, that I saw quite by accident a newspaper of that
date, with an advertisement of the first gathering probably of
this kind in connexion with Eton. " The annual feast," it
said, ** for the gentlemen educated at Eton will be held to-
morrow, at Mercers' Hall, in Cheapside. Tickets may be
had at Childs' Coffee House, St. Paul's Churchyard ; the
Rainbow Coffee House, in Fleet-Street ; Wills's Coffee House,
Covent Garden ; Walls's Coffee House, Scotland Gate ; St.
James's Coffee House, near St. James's Gate." [Laughter.]
See how they had to advertise their dinners then. [Laughter.]
We sit down to a chaste and quiet meal [laughter] — provided
by Barnes or Webber, I forget which [laughter] — and only
deficient in the two components of every Eton dinner, duck
and green peas and strawberry mess [laughter] — the most
melancholy omission that I have ever observed on any festive
occasion [laughter] — I say we sit down to our quiet and in-
tellectual banquet without advertising in what coffee-houses
tickets are sold. [Laughter.]

My next point is 1811, the date of the foundation of the
Eton Society by Charles Fox Townshend. [Cheers.] I am
glad to hear that cheer, because in the days when I was a
member of the society the contemplation of his somewhat
muddy-coloured bust, which, I suspect, has in no degree been

" POP '' 33

renovated [laughter], was not in the least exhilarating.
[Laughter.] I have studied the subject with a view to this
dinner, and I have ascertained that Townshend was not un-
worthy to be the founder of the Eton Society. He was always
" staying out." [Laughter.] I hear laughter. It is not an
Eton question. It is an Imperial question. [Laughter.]
I understand it is the principal obstacle and stumbling-block
in the way of the Insurance Bill which is now being promoted
by the Government. [Laughter.] And, though I believe the
friendly societies have had a good deal to say about " stay-
ing out," I suspect that the masters and tutors of Eton
could tell them a good deal that they do not know about
it. [Laughter.] At any rate, my recollections of " stay-
ing out" are of the most fruitful and reposeful nature.
[Laughter.] Townshend was " staying out," and Dr. Keate
was at that time head master, a man utterly devoid, though
he had many great qualities, of those sensibilities towards the
boy who was " staying out " which, I trust, are still extant
at Eton. [Laughter and cheers.] In those days he used to
charge the boy who was " staying out " with the duty of
writing out and translating the lessons of the day, to which
summons Townshend returned an unhesitating negative.
[Laughter.] He said he would do nothing of the kind, and
he was summoned to the awful presence of Keate. Keate
said to him in tones which made four generations of Etonians
tremble, " What do you mean by this ? " " Do not speak so
loud. Dr. Keate," said our immortal founder, " or you will
make my head ache. [Laughter.] If I had felt fit to write
out and translate the lessons I should have gone into the school,
but I did not feel well enough, so I stayed out." [Laughter.]
The story goes on to say that Keate for the only time in his
life was humbled and defeated by our immortal founder, and
I think I need say no more to recommend his memory to your
attention.

But, in spite of Townshend, we find that five years after
he left the society was at the point of death, and it was only
owing to his instigation, and possibly to the gift of the muddy-
coloured bust, that he was able in any way to stimulate it into
continued existence. It survives, and now that it has over-
come its teething troubles it will no doubt renew a long existence.
[Cheers.]

What is the next epoch in the life of the society ? It is
the advent of Mr. Gladstone. [Cheers.] Mr. Gladstone, what-

n— 3

34 EARL OF ROSEBERY

ever you may think of his politics, and I rather think they would
excite more enthusiasm now than they did in his lifetime, was
undoubtedly, I think, the greatest member that the " Pop " has
ever possessed. [Cheers.] And I have an anecdote on that
point. When I succeeded Mr. Gladstone in office I received
a letter from him with reference to this society. He had wan-
dered into these rooms when there was nobody there, and he
was greatly distressed at what he saw. On the chimney-piece
he saw the picture of a recent Derby winner [laughter and
cheers] — a circumstance which, for personal reasons, did not
cause me so much disquietude, and he was greatly distressed,
and he wrote to me to say that he thought I ought to address
the authorities of Eton on the subject, because he could not
think that the invaluable records of the Eton Society were safe
in the custody of a generation which had such depraved taste.
[Laughter.] I think he was perfectly right in one thing, which
was that the volumes of the Eton Society records require more
care than they probably receive. I think he was also right,
because I believe — I never read them — that his very best
speeches are contained in the volumes of the Eton Society.
[Cheers.] And I would humbly suggest to this great company,
full of literary ability and genius, that they might employ their
genius and ability very well in writing the history of the Eton
Society, with extracts from the leading speeches of the time.
[Hear, hear.]

From that time I come to the only other time I know any-
thing about, and the only time that any of us know anything
about, which is the time when I myself was a member of the
illustrious society. Election was by ballot. It had one
peculiarity — that at the end of every ballot the candidates
were able to see, if they ever became members afterwards, the
exact number of blackballs on the occasion that they were
rejected. [Laughter.] Now, next to being a member of
" Pop," the most illustrious thing that could happen to one
was to be rejected by " Pop." I remember one unfortunate
friend of mine, who is not with us to-night, because he never
became a member, about whom feeling was so strong that two
or three members — I cannot remember whether I was one or
not — seized handfuls of balls and thrust them into the negative
partition, without any regard to the number of the quorum or
the necessary proportion of the ballot. [Laughter.] That, of
course, was an exception. I pass to the only other reminiscences
I can give of my time. They are only two. One was my own

" POP " 35

maiden speech, which ought to have been a conspicuous success.
Perhaps I was inadequately prepared ; but in any case I re-
member it came to an untimely end, and that I then sat down
on my own hat, which had been considerately placed below
me by the friend who was supposed to help me through my
speech. [Laughter.] I was fined five shillings for not making
the speech, and five shillings for causing a disturbance by
sitting on my hat. [Laughter.] By those who know that a
considerable hole is made in one's clothes allowance by the
purchase of a new hat, it will be realized that my first experience
of " Pop " was a financial disaster. [Laughter.]

The other recollection is one which shows the inherent
immorality of Etonians. We had a friend — he is here to-night,
I am glad to say, and I almost promised him before we came
in that I would not tell the story — I lay great stress upon the
word " almost " [laughter] — who was a very shy speaker
indeed. In those days two questions used to be propounded,
with signatories, and the one that got the most signatures was
the one that was to be debated, and all who signed were
obliged to speak. Our friend was exceedingly cunning. He
waited until most of the signatures were obtained, and then
signed the question which had a minority. [Laughter.]
But at last we coaxed him into putting a question down. We
said it was a discredit that he should not be associated with any
great debate in our society, and we got him to put down a
question of a very abstruse nature : " Should Arctic explora-
tions be encouraged or not ? " I, for one, though it happened
forty-five years ago, have not made up my mind yet [laughter]
— nor do I believe he has. [Laughter.] But we got him to
put it down only by swearing by all the gods that we would
not sign it. But with the natural perversity of Eton boys,
the moment his signature was attached, we one and all signed it.
[Laughter.] I do not know if he has ever since penetrated the
Arctic regions, but if he was in the same state of heat that he
was when he rose to speak, I am sure it would suffice for the
North Pole when he got there. [Laughter.] There have been
questions of caste, costume, colour discussed which were un-
known to us. I believe you can now recognize a member of
" Pop " in the street if you wish to. [Laughter.] We had
none of these habits. Our mission was to attend football
matches and sit at Keate's corner on an iron rail. [Laughter.]
Our privileges were extremely limited. I believe they are now
more extensive.

36 EARL OF ROSEBERY

But what is strange for our generation is that some of us
left the Eton Society in order to become members of Parliament
— not members of the House of Commons, but, by succession,
members of an ancient and hereditary Legislature, and now
towards the close of the evening we find ourselves much where
we began — in a debating society [laughter] — conducted not
under the auspices of the head master or the professors, but
of his Majesty's Government, and wholly unprotected by the
ballot. [Laughter.] That, perhaps, is a melancholy con-
sideration to some of us, but we have at any rate the privilege
of thinking that we need not attend it unless we like. [Laughter.]

Now I have to explain to the world what " Pop " is.
Gentlemen of the Press are here, or that would not be neces-
sary. I can only say v/hat it was in my time, because genera-
tions have passed through Eton as quickly as ripples on the sea.
In my time it was not much of a debating society. Member-
ship was not entirely accorded to merit. Let me here remind
you that there are some very glaring omissions from your list
of members, and I want to make a practical suggestion. Why
should you not elect as hon. members old Etonians who have
attained high eminence ? There are three men who at once
occur to me, the last two of whom were at Eton with me, and
the other is one of the most distinguished Etonians, and they
are not members of the society. Why don't you elect them
hon. members ? I will name them — ^Field-Marshal Earl
Roberts [cheers] — Lord Lansdowne [cheers] — and Mr.
Arthur Balfour. [Cheers.] A list of the chosen of Eton from
which these names are excluded seems to me very much like the
play of " Hamlet " without the Prince of Denmark. [Cheers.]

What was " Pop " when I was at Eton ? It was a position
to which any boy could aspire. It was democratic in that way.
In fact, so far as I can find a parallel to it it was the Garter of
Eton, a noble companionship, with illustrious traditions to
which anybody might be proud to belong. Do you remember
the lines of Tennyson in ** Morte d' Arthur " ? :

"The sequel of to-day unsolders all
The goodliest fellowship of famous knights
Whereof this world holds record."

I do not apply those words to-night, but I ask you to alter
them to suit the occasion :

" The sequel of to-day shall solder all
The noblest fellowship of gallant lads
Whereof the world bears record."

*( ^^-rx *y

POP 37

[Cheers.] Let us resolve that this dinner of the Eton Society
shall not be, as some centenaries are, the close of the beginning
of an epoch. Let us believe, as I believe, that when this society
shall celebrate another centenary — when all here are in the dust
— in this hall, the members will be not unworthy of the high
traditions that they inherit, and let us hope that they may feel that
we in our day tried to serve Eton in our humble way by serving
the Empire as well. [Cheers.] That is the tradition of Eton.
That is the tradition of the Eton Society. We who believe,
as all Etonians do believe, that Eton is the heart of the Empire
[cheers] — and even, if we look at the Eton lists, we might
think by the foreign names that it is the heart almost of the
universe — we should also believe that the Eton Society is the
innermost core of that heart. We found our hopes not merely
on our recollections, but on our faith in the future of this society.
[Cheers.] It is with that feeling that I ask you to drink the
health of the Eton Society, coupled with the names of Mr. C. W.
Tufnell and Sir F. A. Bosanquet. [Cheers.]

RT. HON. D. LLOYD GEORGE

THE "LIMEHOUSE" SPEECH

[Speech delivered under the auspices of the Budget League in
the Edinburgh Castle, Limehouse, on July 30, 1909. The
building was crowded with an audience which numbered about
4,000. Mr, Sydney Buxton, M.P. (then Postmaster-General),
presided.]

A FEW months ago a meeting was held not far from this
hall, in the heart of the City of London, demanding that
the Government should launch out and run into enormous
expenditure on the Navy. That meeting ended up with a
resolution promising that those who passed that resolution
would give financial support to the Government in their
undertaking. There have been two or three meetings held
in the City of London since [laughter and cheers], attended
by the same class of people, but not ending up with a resolution
promising to pay. [Laughter.] On the contrary, we are
spending the money, but they won't pay. [Laughter.] What
has happened since to alter their tone ? Simply that we have
sent in the bill. [Laughter and cheers.] We started our four
Dreadnoughts. They cost eight millions of money. We pro-
mised them four more ; they cost another eight milhons.
Somebody has got to pay, and these gentlemen say, " Perfectly
true ; somebody has got to pay, but we would rather that
somebody were somebody else." [Laughter.]

We started building; we wanted money to pay for the
building; so we sent the hat round. [Laughter.] We sent
it round amongst the workmen [hear, hear], and the miners
of Derbyshire [loud cheers] and Yorkshire, the weavers of
High Peak [cheers], and the Scotchmen of Dumfries [cheers],
who, like all their countrymen, know the value of money.
[Laughter.] They all brought in their coppers. We went
round Belgravia, but there has been such a howl ever since
that it has completely deafened us.

38

Rt. Hon. I>. Lloyd Georob

Driving home an argument.

<' T T-»»T^TT/-VTTr^T- »>

THE LIMEHOUSE " SPEECH 39

But they say, "It is not so much the Dreadnoughts we
object to, it is the pensions." [Hear, hear.] If they object
to pensions, why did they promise them ? [Cheers.] They
won elections on the strength of their promises. It is true
they never carried them out. [Laughter.] Deception is
always a pretty contemptible vice, but to deceive the poor is
the meanest of all crimes. [Cheers.] But they say, " When
we promised pensions we meant pensions at the expense of the
people for whom they were provided. We simply meant to
bring in a Bill to compel workmen to contribute to their own
pensions." [Laughter.] If that is what they meant, why
did they not say so ? [Cheers.]

The Budget, as your chairman has already so well re-
minded you, is introduced not merely for the purpose of
raising barren taxes, but taxes that are fertile taxes, taxes
that will bring forth fruit — the security of the country which
is paramount in the minds of all— the provision for the
aged and deserving poor — it is time it were done. [Cheers.]
It is rather a shame for a rich country like ours — prob-
ably the richest country in the world, if not the richest
the world has ever seen — that it should allow those who
have toiled all their days to end in penury and possibly
starvation. [Hear, hear.] It is rather hard that an old
workman should have to find his way to the gates of the tomb,
bleeding and footsore, through the brambles and thorns of
poverty. [Cheers.] We cut a new path through it [cheers],
an easier one, a pleasanter one, through fields of waving corn.
We are raising money to pay for the new road [cheers], aye,
and to widen it so that 200,000 paupers shall be able to join
in the march. [Cheers.]

There are many in the country blessed by Providence
with great wealth, and if there are amongst them men who
grudge out of their riches a fair contribution towards the less
fortunate of their fellow-countrymen, they are shabby rich
men. [Cheers.] We propose to do more by means of the
Budget. We are raising money to provide against the evils
and the sufferings that follow from unemployment. [Cheers.]
We are raising money for the purpose of assisting our great
friendly societies to provide for the sick and the widows and
orphans. We are providing money to enable us to develop
the resources of our own land. [Cheers.] I do not beHeve any
fair-minded man would challenge the justice and the fairness
of the objects which we have in view in raising this money.

40 RT. HON. D. LLOYD GEORGE

But there are some of them who say that the taxes them-
selves are unjust, unfair, unequal, oppressive — notably so the
land taxes. [Laughter.] They are engaged, not merely in
the House of Commons, but outside the House of Commons, in
assaiHng these taxes with a concentrated and a sustained
ferocity which will not allow even a comma to escape with
its life. ['* Good " and laughter.] How are they really so
wicked ? Let us examine them, because it is perfectly clear
that the one part of the Budget that attracts all this hostility
and animosity is that part which deals with the taxation of
land. Now let us examine it. I do not want you to
consider merely abstract principles. I want to invite your
attention to a number of concrete cases and fair samples to
show you how these concrete illustrations — how our Budget
proposals — work. Now let us take them. Let us take first
of all the tax on undeveloped land and on increment.

Not far from here not so many years ago, between the
Lea and the Thames, you had hundreds of acres of land which
was not very useful even for agricultural purposes. In the
main it was a sodden marsh. The commerce and the trade
of London increased under free trade [loud cheers], the ton-
nage of your shipping went up by hundreds of thousands of
tons and by millions, labour was attracted from all parts of
the country to help with all this trade and business done here.
What happened ? There was no housing accommodation.
This part of London became overcrowded and the population
overflowed. That was the opportunity of the owners of the
marsh. All that land became valuable building land, and
land which used to be rented at £2 or £3 an acre has been
selUng within the last few years at £2,000 an acre, £3,000 an
acre, £6,000 an acre, £8,000 an acre. Who created that
increment ? [Cheers.] Who made that golden swamp ?
[More cheers.] Was it the landlord ? [Cries of " No."] Was
it his energy ? Was it his brains [laughter and cheers], his
forethought ? It was purely the combined efforts of all the
people engaged in the trade and commerce of that part of
London — the trader, the merchant, the shipowner, the dock
labourer, the workman — everybody except the landlord.
[Cheers.] Now you follow that transaction. The land worth
£2 or £3 an acre ran up to thousands. During the time it was
ripening the landlord was paying his rates and his taxes not
on £2 or £3 an acre. It was agricultural land, and because it
yras agricultural land a munificent Tory Government [laughter]

(( -r -rmir-r^-rr^T-r^f^ »>

THE LIMEHOUSE ' SPEECH 4I

voted a sum of two millions to pay half the rates of those poor
distressed landlords. [Laughter, and cries of " Shame."]
You and I had to pay taxes in order to enable those land-
lords to pay half their rates on agricultural land, while it was
going up every year by hundreds of pounds from your efforts
and the efforts of your neighbours. Well, now that is coming
to an end. [Loud and long-continued cheering.]

On the walls of Mr. Balfour's meeting last Friday were the
words, " We protest against fraud and folly." [Laughter.]
So do L [Great cheering.] These things I am going to tell
you of have only been possible up to the present through the
fraud of the few and the folly of the million. [Cheers.] In
future those landlords will have to contribute to the taxation of
the country on the basis of the real value [more cheers] only
one-half- penny in the pound ! [Laughter.] And that is what
all the howling is about. But there is another little tax called
the increment tax. For the future what will happen ? We
mean to value all the land in the kingdom. [Cheers.] And
here you can draw no distinction between agricultural land and
other land, for the simple reason that East and West Ham
was agricultural land a few years ago. And if land goes up
in the future by hundreds and thousands an acre through the
efforts of the community the community will get 20 per cent,
of that increment. [Cheers.] What a misfortune it is that
there was not a Chancellor of the Exchequer who did this
thirty years ago. [Cheers and cries of " Better late than
never."] Only thirty years ago and we should now have an
abundant revenue from this source. [Cheers.]

Now I have given you West Ham. Let me give you a
few more cases. Take a case like Golder's Green and other
cases of a similar kind where the value of land has gone up in
the course, perhaps, of a couple of years through a new tram-
way or a new railway being opened. Golder's Green is a
case in point. A few years ago there was a plot of land there
which was sold at £160. Last year I went and opened a tube
railway there. What was the result ? That very piece of
land has been sold at £2,100 [Shame] ; £160 before the
railway was opened — before I went there [laughter] ; £2,100
now. So I am entitled to 20 per cent, on that. [Laughter.]
Now there are many cases where landlords take advantage of
the exigencies of commerce and of industry — take advantage
of the needs of municipalities and even of national needs, and
of the monopoly which they have got in land in a particular

42 RT. HON. D. LLOYD GEORGE

neighbourhood, in order to demand extortionate prices. Take
the very well known case of the Duke of Northumberland
[hear, hear], when a County Council wanted to buy a small
plot of land as a site for a school to train the children who in
due course would become the men labouring on his property.
The rent was quite an insignificant thing ; his contribution
to the rates — I forget — I think on the basis of 30s. an acre.
What did he demand for it for a school ? £900 an acre,
f" Hear, hear," and " Shame."] Well, all we say is this —
Mr. Buxton and I say — if it is worth £900, let him pay taxes on
£900. [Cheers.]

Now there are several of these cases that I want to give
to you. Take the town of Bootle, a town created very much
in the same way as these towns in the east of London — purely
by the commerce of Bootle. In 1879 the rates of Bootle were
£9,000 a year — the ground-rents were £10,000 — so that the
landlord was receiving more from the industry of the com-
munity than all the rates derived by the municipality for
the benefit of the town. In 1900 the rates were £94,000 a year
— for improving the place, constructing roads, laying out
parks, and extending lighting and so on. But the ground-
landlord was receiving in ground- rents £100,000. It is time
that he should pay for all this value. [Cheers.]

A case was given me from Richmond which is very interest-
ing. The Town Council of Richmond recently built some
workmen's cottages under a housing scheme. The land ap-
peared on the rate-book as of the value of £4, and being
agricultural [laughter] the landlord only paid half the rates,
and you and I paid the rest for him. [Laughter.] It is situ-
ated on the extreme edge of the borough, therefore it is not
very accessible, and the town council thought they would get
it cheap. [Laughter.] But they did not know their landlord.
They had to pay £2,000 an acre for it. [Shame.] The result
is that instead of having a good housing scheme with plenty of
gardens, of open space, plenty of breathing space, plenty of
room for the workmen at the end of their days, forty cottages
had to be crowded on the two acres. Now if the land had
been valued at its true value that landlord would have been
at any rate contributing his fair share of the public revenue,
and it is just conceivable that he might have been driven to
sell at a more reasonable price.

Now, I do not want to weary you with these cases. [Cries
of " Go on ! "] I could give you many. I am a member of a

THE LIMEHOUSE SPEECH 43

Welsh County Council, and landlords even in Wales are not
more reasonable. [Laughter.] The police committee the
other day wanted a site for a police station. Well, you might
have imagined that if a landlord sold land cheaply for any-
thing it would have been for a police station. [Laughter.]
The housing of the working classes — that is a different matter.
[Laughter.] But a police station means security to property.
[Laughter and cheers.] Not at all. The total population of
Carnarvonshire is not as much — I am not sure it is as much —
as the population of Limehouse alone. It is a scattered area,
with no great crowded population. And yet they demanded
for a piece of land which was contributing 2s. a year to the rates
£2,500 an acre ! All we say is, " If the land is as valuable as
all that, let it have the same value on the assessment book
[cheers] as it seems to possess in the auction room." [Cheers.]
There are no end of cases such as these.

There was a case at Greenock the other day. The Ad-
miralty wanted a torpedo-range. Here was an opportunity
for patriotism ! [Laughter.] These are the men who want
an efficient Navy to protect our shores, and the Admiralty
state that one element in efficiency is straight shooting,
and say, "We want a range for practice for torpedoes on
the west of Scotland." There was a piece of land there.
It was rated at something like £11 2s. a year. They went
to the landlord, and it was sold to the nation for £27,225.
And these are the gentlemen who accuse us of robbery and
spoliation ! [Cheers.] Now, all we say is this — " In future
you must pay one halfpenny in the pound on the real value of
your land. In addition to that, if the value goes up, not owing
to your efforts — though if you spend money on improving it
we will give you credit for it — but if it goes up owing to the
industry and the energy of the people living in that locality,
one-fifth of that increment shall in future be taken as a toll by
the State." [Cheers.]

They say, " Why should you tax this increment on land-
lords and not on other classes of the community ? " They
say, *' You are taxing the landlord because the value of
his property is going up through the growth of population
with the increased prosperity of the community. Does not
the value of a doctor's business go up in the same way ? "
Ha ! Fancy comparing themselves for a moment ! What
is the landlord's increment ? Who is the landlord ? The
landlord is a gentleman — I have not a word to say about

44 RT. HON. D. LLOYD GEORGE

him in his personal capacity — who does not earn his wealth.
He does not even take the trouble to receive his wealth.
[Laughter.] He has a host of agents and clerks that receive for
him. He does not even take the trouble to spend his wealth.
He has a host of people around him to do the actual spending
for him. He never sees it until he comes to enjoy it. His sole
function, his chief pride is stately consumption of wealth pro-
duced by others. [Cheers.] What about the doctor's in-
come ? How does the doctor earn his income ? The doctor
is a man who visits our homes when they are darkened with
the shadow of death ; his skill, his trained courage, his genius
bring hope out of the grip of despair, vnn life out of the fangs
of the Great Destroyer. [Cheers.] All blessings upon him
and his divine art of healing that mends bruised bodies and
anxious hearts ! [Cheers.] To compare the reward which he
gets for that labour with the wealth which pours into the
pockets of the landlord purely owing to the possession of his
monopoly is a piece of insolence which no intelligent community
will tolerate. [Cheers.] So much for the halfpenny tax and
the unearned increment.

Now I come to the reversion tax. What is the reversion
tax ? You have got a system in this country which is not
tolerated in any other country in the world, except, I believe,
Turkey [laughter] — the system whereby landlords take ad-
vantage of the fact that they have got complete control over
the land, to let it for a term of years, spend money upon it in
building, in developing. You improve the building, and year
by year the value passes into the pockets of the landlords,
and at the end of sixty, seventy, eighty, or ninety years the
whole of it passes away to the pockets of that man, who never
spent a penny upon it.

In Scotland they have a system of 999 years' lease.
The Scotsmen have a very shrewd idea that at the end
of 999 years there will probably be a better land system
in existence [laughter and cheers], and they are prepared
to take their chance of the millennium coming round by
that time. But in this country we have sixty years' leases.
I know districts in Wales where a little bit of barren rock
where you could not feed a goat, where the landlord could not
get a shining an acre of agricultural rent, is let to quarrymen
for the purposes of building houses, where 30s. or £2 a house
is charged for ground-rent. The quarryman builds his house.
He goes to a building society to borrow money. He pays out

i( X Tll#T^TT^TT^T^ >>

THE LIMEHOUSE " SPEECH 45

of his hard-earned weekly wage to the building society for ten,
twenty, or thirty years. By the time he becomes an old man
he has cleared off the mortgage, and more than half the value
of the house has passed into the pockets of the landlord.
You have got cases in London here. [A voice — "Not half,"
and laughter.] There is the famous Gorringe case. In that case
advantage was taken of the fact that a man had built up a
great business, and they said, " Here you are, you have built up
a great business here ; you cannot take it away ; you cannot
move to other premises because your trade and goodwill are
here ; your lease is coming to an end, and we decline to renew
it except on the most oppressive terms." The Gorringe case
is a very familiar case. It was the case of the Duke of West-
minster. ["Oh, oh," laughter, and hisses.] Oh! these
dukes [loud laughter], how they harass us ! [More laughter.]
Mr. Gorringe had got a lease of the premises at a few hundred
pounds a year ground-rent. He built up a great business there.
He was a very able business man, and when the end of the
lease came he went to the Duke of Westminster and he said,
" Will you renew my lease ? I want to carry on my business
here." He said, " Oh, yes, I will, but I will do it on condition
that the few hundreds a year you pay for ground-rent shall in
the future be £4,000 a year." [Groans.] In addition to that
he had to pay a fine — a fine, mind you ! — of £50,000, and he
had to build up huge premises at enormous expense according
to plans submitted to the Duke of Westminster. [Oh, oh.]
All I can say is this — if it is confiscation and robbery for us
to say to that duke that, being in need of money for public
purposes, we will take 10 per cent., what would you call
his taking nine- tenths ? [Cheers.] These are the cases we
have got to deal with. Look at all this leasehold system.
A case like that is not business; it is blackmail. [Loud
cheers.]

No doubt some of you have taken the trouble to peruse
some of those leases. They are all really worth reading, and
I will guarantee that if you circulate copies of some of these
building and mining leases at tariff-reform meetings [hisses],
and if you can get the workmen at these meetings and the
business men to read them, they will come away sadder
and wiser men. [Cheers.] What are they? Ground-rent
is a part of it — fines, fees ; you are to make no alteration
without somebody's consent. Who is that somebody ? It
is the agent of the landlord. A fee to whom ? You must

46 Rt. HON. D. LLOYD GEORGE

submit the plans to the landlord's architect and get his
consent. There is a fee to him. There is a fee to the
surveyor, and then, of course, you cannot keep the lawyer
out. [Laughter.] (Set a lawyer to catch a lawyer, Mr. Lloyd
George continued, pointing to one of his audience amidst
laughter.) And a fee to him. Well, that is the system, and
the landlords come to us in the House of Commons and
they say, "If you go on taxing reversions we will grant no
more leases." Is not that horrible? [Loud laughter.] No
more leases, no more kindly landlords. [Laughter.] With
all their rich and good fare, with all their retinue of good
fairies ready always to receive [laughter] — ground-rents, fees,
premiums, fines, reversions — no more, never again. [Laughter.]
They will not do it. You cannot persuade them. [Laughter.]
They won't have it. [Renewed laughter.] The landlord has
threatened us that if we proceed with the Budget he will take
his sack [loud laughter] clean away from the cupboard, and the
grain which we all are grinding to our best to fill his sack
will go into our own. Oh ! I cannot believe it. There is a
limit even to the wrath of an outraged landlord. We must
really appease them ; we must offer some sacrifice to them.
Supposing we offer the House of Lords to them. [Loud and
prolonged cheers.] Well now, you seem rather to agree with
that. I will make the suggestion.

Now unless I am wearying you [loud cries of " No, no,"],
I have got just one other land tax, and that is a tax on royalties.
The landlords are receiving eight millions a year by way of
royalties. What for ? They never deposited the coal there.
[Laughter.] It was not they who planted these great granite
rocks in Wales, who laid the foundations of the mountains.
Was it the landlord ? [Laughter.] And yet he, by some
divine right, demands — for merely the right for men to risk their
lives in hewing these rocks — eight millions a year !

Take any coalfield. I went down to a coalfield the other
day [cheers], and they pointed out to me many collieries there.
They said : ** You see that colliery there. The first man who
went there spent a quarter of a million in sinking shafts, in driv-
ing mains and levels. He never got coal. The second man who
came spent £100,000 — and he failed. The third man came
along, and he got the coal." But what was the landlord doing
in the meantime ? The first man failed ; but the landlord got
his royalties, the landlord got his dead- rents. The second man
failed, but the landlord got his royalties. These capitaUsts

tt T T-.#T^TT^TTOT- >>

THE •• LIMEHOUSE SPEECH 47

put their money in. When the scheme failed, what did the
landlord put in ? He simply put in the bailiffs. [Loud
laughter.] The capitalist risks at any rate the whole of his
money ; the engineer puts his brains in, the miner risks his
life. [Hear, hear.] Have you been down a coal-mine ?
Cries of " Yes."] Then you know. I was telling you I went
down the other day. We sank down into a pit half a mile
deep. We then walked underneath the mountain, and we did
about three-quarters of a mile with rock and shale above us.
The earth seemed to be straining — around us and above us — to
crush us in. You could see the pit-props bent and twisted and
sundered until you saw their fibres split. Sometimes they give
way, and then there is mutilation and death. Often a spark
ignites, the whole pit is deluged in fire, and the breath of life
is scorched out of hundreds of breasts by the consuming fire.

In the very next colliery to the one I descended, just
three years ago, three hundred people lost their lives in that
way ; and yet when the Prime Minister and I knock at the door
of these great landlords and say to them, ** Here, you know
these poor fellows who have been digging up royalties at the
risk of their lives, some of them are old, they have survived
the perils of their trade, they are broken, they can earn no
more. Won't you give something towards keeping them out
of the workhouse ? " they scowl at you. And we say, " Only a
ha'penny, just a copper 1 " They say, ** You thieves ! " And
they turn their dogs on to us, and every day you can hear
their bark. [Loud laughter and cheers.] li this is an indica-
tion of the view taken by these great landlords of their responsi-
bility to the people who, at the risk of life, create their wealth,
then I say their day of reckoning is at hand. [Loud cheers.]

The other day, at the great Tory meeting held at the
Cannon Street Hotel, they had blazoned on the walls, *' We
protest against the Budget in the name of democracy [loud
laughter], liberty, and justice." Where does the democracy
come in in this landed system ? Where is the justice in all
these transactions? We claim that the tax we impose on
land is fair, just, and moderate. [Cheers.] They go on
threatening that if we proceed they will cut down their bene-
factions and discharge labour. What kind of labour ?
[A voice, ** Hard labour," and laughter.] What is the labour
they are going to choose for dismissal ? Are they going to
threaten to devastate rural England while feeding themselves
and dressing themselves ? Are they going to reduce their

48 RT. HON. D. LLOYD GEORGE

gamekeepers ? That would be sad ! [Laughter.] The agri-
cultural labourer and the farmer might then have some part
of the game which they fatten with their labour. But what
would happen to you in the season ? No week-end shooting
with the Duke of Norfolk for any of us ! [Laughter.] But
that is not the kind of labour that they are going to cut down.
They are going to cut down productive labour — builders and
gardeners — and they are going to ruin their property so that
it shall not be taxed. All I can say is this — the ownership of
land is not merely an enjoyment, it is a stewardship. [Cheers.]
It has been reckoned as such in the past, and if they cease to
discharge their functions, the security and defence of the
country, looking after the broken in their villages and neigh-
bourhoods— then those functions which are part of the tradi-
tional duties attached to the ownership of land and which have
given to it its title — if they cease to discharge those functions,
the time will come to reconsider the conditions under which
land is held in this country. [Loud cheers.]

No country, however rich, can permanently afford to have
quartered upon its revenue a class which declines to do the duty
which it was called upon to perform. [Hear, hear.] And, there-
fore, it is one of the prime duties of statesmanship to investi-
gate those conditions. But I do not believe it. They have
threatened and menaced like that before. They have seen it is
not to their interest to carry out these futile menaces. They
are now protesting against paying their fair share of the taxes
of the land, and they are doing so by saying, "You are
burdening the community ; you are putting burdens upon the
people which they cannot bear." Ah ! they are not thinking of
themselves. [Laughter.] Noble souls ! [Laughter.] It is not
the great dukes they are feeling for, it is the market-gardener
[laughter], it is the builder, and it was, until recently, the small-
holder. [Hear, hear.]

In every debate in the House of Commons they said,
" We are not worrying for ourselves. We can afford it, with
our broad acres ; but just think of the little man who has
only got a few acres " ; and we were so very impressed with
this tearful appeal that at last we said, " We will leave him
out." [Cheers.] And I almost expected to see Mr. Prety-
man jump over the table and say — '*Fall on my neck
and embrace me." [Loud laughter.] Instead of that,
he stiffened up, his face wreathed with anger, and he said,
" The Budget is more unjust than ever." [Laughter and

THE "LIMEHOUSE*' SPEECH 49

cheers.] Oh ! no. We are placing the burdens on the broad
shoulders. [Cheers.] Why should I put burdens on the
people ? I am one of the children of the people. [Loud and
prolonged cheering, and a voice, " Bravo, David ! stand by
the people and they will stand by you."] I was brought up
amongst them. I know their trials ; and God forbid that I
should add one grain of trouble to the anxiety which they bear
with such patience and fortitude. [Cheers.] When the Prime
Minister did me the honour of inviting me to take charge of the
National Exchequer [A voice, ** He knew what he was about,"
and laughter] at a time of great difficulty, I made up my
mind, in framing the Budget which was in front of me, that at
any rate no cupboard should be barer [loud cheers], no lot
should be harder. [Cheers.] By that test, I challenge them
to judge the Budget. [Loud and long-continued cheers,
during which the right hon. gentleman resumed his seat.]

n--4

EARL CURZON OF KEDLESTON

VETERANS OF THE INDIAN MUTINY

[Speech in proposing the Toast of the Survivors of the Indian
Mutiny at the Commemorative Dinner in the Royal Albert Hall,
London, December 23, 1907.]

Lord Roberts and Veterans of the Indian Mutiny: —
The ceremony in which we are taking part to-day — for it is
a ceremony much more than it is a festival — is the natural
complement of an incident that occurred at the Delhi Durbar
close upon five years ago. There we were commemorating the
Coronation of our King, whose gracious message has just been
read. In a great amphitheatre, built within sight of the
famous Ridge, were assembled the Princes of India, the civil
and military officers, and the representatives of all the peoples
and races of the mightiest Empire that East or West has ever
seen. Suddenly there walked into the arena, unexpected by
the audience and unannounced, a small and tottering band of
veterans, some of them in civil dress, others in old and frayed
uniforms, but all of them bearing the medals and the ribands
on their breasts that told a glorious tale. A whisper went
round that they were the Indian survivors of the Mutiny, who
had been bidden to that famous scene of their heroism and
their bravery nearly fifty years before. As soon as this fact
was known, a roar of acclamation burst from that vast assem-
blage, and amid shouting and tears — for even strong men broke
down and wept — the veterans, the heroes of the great rebellion,
passed to their appointed seats. What India did for its Indian
veterans on that occasion, England, by the liberality of a
great newspaper and its proprietors, is doing for the English
survivors to-day.

Those of us in this great hall who are privileged to be
present are gazing for the last time upon one of the supreme

50

VETERANS OF THE INDIAN MUTINY 5I

pages of history before it is turned back for ever and stored
away on the dusty shelves of time. We in the crowd are here
to render our last tribute of gratitude and respect to those
who wrote their names upon that page in letters that will
never die. And they are here to answer the last roll-call that
they will hear together upon earth, in the presence of their
old comrades and before their old commanders.

I suppose that to the bulk of Englishmen present to-day
the Indian Mutiny of 1857 is already a tradition, rather than
a memory. It happened before many of us were born. Al-
ready it is receding into the dim corridors of the past, and is
surrounded with an almost mystic halo as one of the great
national epics of our race. But to all of us, young or old, it is
one of the combined tragedies and glories of the British nation
— a tragedy, because there were concentrated into those
terrible months the agony and the suffering almost of centuries ;
a glory, because great names leaped to light, high and en-
nobUng deeds were done, and best of all, the most enduring of
all, there sprang from all that havoc and disaster the majestic
fabric of an India united under a single Crown, governed as we
have tried to govern it, and are still trying to govern it,
by the principles of justice, and truth, and righteousness — a
spectacle which, if the entire Empire were to shrivel up to-
morrow like a scroll in the fire, would still be a supreme vindica-
tion of its existence and its accomplishments in the history
of mankind.

What a thought it is that we have here to-day in this great
hall the actual survivors of that immortal drama, the men, and
I daresay also the women — may I not say the heroes and
heroines ? — ^who fought together in those fire-swept trenches and
behind those shot-riddled barricades, and to whose deathless
valour and endurance it was that " ever upon the topmost
roof the banner of England blew." Let us count it the proudest
moment of our lives that we are here to meet them to-day —
the first of duties to pay them an honour, perhaps too long
delayed — the most precious of memories to have assisted in this
commemoration. And most of all do we congratulate them,
and will they congratulate themselves, that here in the chair
is the foremost of all those survivors, the veteran Field-Marshal,
Lord Roberts. We see in him the hero of a score of campaigns,
the proven champion of our national honour, and the trusted
servant of the nation. Perhaps they will recognize in him
rather the Lieutenant Roberts of 1857, who trained his gun at

52 EARL CURZON OF KEDLESTON

Delhi upon the breach in the wall, who met the dying Nicholson
in his litter inside the Kashmir Gate, who three times raised
aloft the regimental colour on the turret of the mess-house at
Lucknow, and who won his Victoria Cross along with the
recaptured standards on the battlefield near Futtehgur. But
may we not also feel that along with him and the heroes who
sit at this table, for all we know the spirits of the mighty dead
may be looking down upon this banquet this afternoon ?
The gentle and fervent soul of Henry Lawrence, part soldier,
part statesman, and wholly saint ; John Lawrence, that
rugged tower of strength, four-square to all the winds that blow ;
Nicholson, the heroic Paladin of the frontier ; Outram, that
generous and gallant spirit, the mirror of chivalry ; the grave
and high-souled Havelock ; Colin Campbell, the cautious and
indomitable veteran ; Hugh Rose, that prince among fighting
men !

And there are many others whose names I see here on the
walls around me — Neill, Hodson, Inglis, Peel, Chamberlain,
all of whom there is not time to describe. Neither let us forget
the Viceroy, Canning, calm amid the tumult, silent in the face
of obloquy, resolute through all upon the great and crowning
lesson of mercy. And together with these let us not forget all
the hundreds more of unknown and inconspicuous dead, who
were not the less heroes because their names are not engraved
on costly tablets, or because their bodies rest in unmarked
Indian graves. Equally with their comrades they were the
martyrs and the saviours of their country. Equally with them
their monument is an Empire rescued from the brink of destruc-
tion, and their epitaph is written on the hearts of their country-
men. The Ridge at Delhi, which they held against such over-
whelming odds ; the Residency at Lucknow, which they alter-
nately defended and stormed ; the blood-soaked sands at Cawn-
pore, — all these are by their act the sacred places of the British
race. For their sake we guard them with reverence, we
dedicate them with humble and holy pride, for they were
the altar upon which the British nation offered its best and
bravest in the hour of its supreme trial.

But, Lord Roberts and gentlemen, I think that there are
other memories than those of woe and anguish which the
Mutiny may suggest. Often as I have wandered in those
beautiful gardens at Lucknow, which those of you who are
before me would not recognize now, where all the scars of
siege and suffering have been obliterated by the kindly hand

I

VETERANS OF THE INDIAN MUTINY 53

of Nature, and where a solemn peace now seems to brood over
the scene, I have been led by those conditions to discern a
deeper truth, and a more splendid consolation. Primarily, they
remind us of the dauntless bravery and resolution of the British
soldier — ^never seen to greater advantage than during that
awful summer when the scorching heat of the Indian sky
alternated with the drenching rains of the monsoon, and when
cholera and pestilence and every attendant horror stalked
abroad amidst the camps. But they also remind us of the
equal gallantry and constancy of the Indian troops who fought
side by side with their British comrades in the trenches and
died in the same ditch ; and also of those hundreds of Indian
attendants, faithful unto death, who clung to their English
masters and mistresses with an unsurpassed devotion.

And perhaps most of all we are reminded, and we rejoice
that when all those dreadful passions were slaked, the spirit of
forbearance breathed in high places, and there sprang from all
that chaos and suffering a new sense of peace and harmony,
bearing fruit in a high and purifying resolve. Never let it be
forgotten that the result of the Mutiny was not merely an Eng-
land victorious, but an India pacified, united, and started
once more upon a wondrous career of advance and expansion.
The bitterness has gone out of their minds as it has out of ours,
and the bloodstains have been wiped out in the hearts of both,
just as in that beautiful garden at Lucknow they are covered
up with the brightness of verdure and the blossoming of
flowers.

And so we are brought to our duty of this afternoon.
First and foremost it is to render praise and thanksgiving
to Almighty God, who wrought that great deliverance, whose
accents were heard even in the shriek and roar of Delhi and
Lucknow, and who spoke again, and spoke last, as He did of
old, in the ** still small voice " of mercy and forgiveness and
reconciliation. Then honour let it be to the living and honour
to the dead ; honour to the European and honour to the
Indian, whom neither distinction of race nor of religion could
keep apart in that pit of suffering and death. Honour to the
officer and honour to the private who served side by side with-
out distinction of rank ; honour to the men and honour to
the women who faced those perils with equal fortitude and
devotion ; honour to the sailors who served the naval guns ;
honour to the surgeons who attended the stricken and wounded ;
honour to the chaplains who administered the last rites to

54 EARL CURZON OF KEDLESTON

the dying and the dead ; and finally, praise and glory let it
be to the dwindling band of war-scarred heroes whom we see
before us this afternoon, and who, by their presence here, have
reminded us of their immortal services, and have been reminded,
as I hope, of the undying gratitude of their country. I give
you the health of the surviving veterans of the Indian Mutiny,
and I associate that toast with the name of the hero of 1857, who
is still our hero in 1907, endeared to the nation by half a century
of service and sacrifice, not one whit less glorious than that
of his youth. Ladies and gentlemen — ^Lord Roberts.

VERY REV, HENRY MONTAGU
BUTLER, D.D.

(MASTER OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE)

r LITERATURE "

[Speech delivered at the Royal Academy Banquet, May 5, 1900.]

Mr. President, My Lords, and Gentlemen: — It is a
heavy responsibility which has been thrown upon me to offer
a few words in return for such a toast as this, and when I
first received your mandate, sir, I felt disposed instinctively
to appeal to the muse of literature, and to say in the well-
known words of Lord Byron's " Isles of Greece " : —

" And must thy lyre, so long divine.
Degenerate into hands like mine ? "

But I know that obedience is the bond of rule in every pro-
fession ; that, I take it, is the lesson of to-day, the lesson of
these months, the lesson of these weeks, the lesson of these
solemn hours. It is so in all professions, whether the profession
of the soldier or the profession of the lawyer, or even the
profession of the clergyman [laughter] ; and I venture to
think that the lesson of profound obedience to authority is
necessary not more in South Africa than it is in the north of
England.

How am I to fulfil my duties, sir ? There are those who
might, perhaps, have spoken, and I might speak to-day, on the
magnificent force of didactic literature as addressed directly
to the masters of art. Many of us who are not artists, and
who could not pronounce one word of respectable criticism
upon any one of these works of art that we see before us, still
have enjoyed in our time the splendid lectures of your first
predecessor, Sir Joshua Reynolds, or, again, have heard

55

56 VERY REV. HENRY MONTAGU BUTLER, D.D.

those noble lectures, to which we looked forward year after
year, of the late Lord Leighton.

Again, if I may be permitted on this day to refer to one
voice that is for ever stilled, who is there among the older
men here present who does not remember the time when the
views of John Ruskin first came as a sort of interpreter between
literature and art ? He gave lessons certainly to literature
[cheers] ; and I believe, gentlemen, you would be willing to
add, gave lessons to artists also. [Hear, hear.] I can re-
member when he published his great work, at the age of twenty-
four, in which, speaking of a great member of your body.
Turner, he said, with an enthusiasm pardonable surely in so
young a man, if now it may seem to any older and colder man
to be a little over-magnified : "In all that he says we trust, in
all that he lays down we believe ; he stands upon an eminence
from which he looks back upon the imiverse of God and for-
ward to the history of man." That was language addressed
to your great profession nearly sixty years ago by one who
was but twenty-four years of age, and who even then, they
tell us, had spent some six years in preparing the great work
which, with literary men at least, was to produce hardly less
than a revolution in their relations to art.

But it is not for me to pretend to preach from a pulpit
such as that ; only you will pardon me if for one brief moment,
on this great festival day, I have recalled your minds to him
who sleeps among the mountains of Coniston, and express
the wish :

" O ! for the touch of a vanish' d hand
And the sound of a voice that is still ! "

As for myself, speaking to-day for " Literature," before this
august audience, I will dare to make reference only to one
portion of it, and that is that which refers to history. I will,
sir, with your permission, take this very day as a kind of text
on which to say a very few fleeting words. This fifth day of
May ; how much does it mean in history to the artist as well
as to the historian ! Carry your minds back iii years ;
it was on this day that the States General met at Versailles. I
do not ask what that great event which they then inaugurated
means to men, and to nations, and to philosophy, I ask what
it means to art. I ask you to reflect, even if it be but for a
moment, on the magnitude of the great events — great in
politics, great in suffering, great in emotion — which your noble
art owes to that time, when the passions of men were let loose

" LITERATURE '* 57

Upon the earth. I ask you also to look on for a few years to
another 5th of May in 1821. Of what was then passing let the
great poet B^ranger remind us. In his beautiful poem, *' The
Fifth of May," he brings before us the poor French soldier
returning from the Cape of Good Hope in his ship on his way
to the rock of St. Helena ; his mind is full of great and glorious
memories of his adored chief, and as he nears the island, and
believes that his adored chief is soon to appear again uncon-
querable, he sees there the black flag, he knows what it means,
he knows that all is over. It was on that 5th of May, just
thirty- two years after Mirabeau confronted Louis XVI., in
the halls of Versailles, that the child of the Revolution, that
wonderful conqueror, passed away, muttering, they tell us,
the words Tete d'armee. There is something there that litera-
ture has given to art.

Will you bear with me if I refer to yet one more 5th of May,
which seems to me to convey a lesson to the members of your
noble profession ? I carry my thoughts from St. Helena to a
very different place — I mean Khartoum. We have heard but
lately an appeal made to us in the name of that remarkable
man (Lord Kitchener of Khartoum) whose portrait stands
there in the corner of this room to bid England to be of good
cheer. He has called upon us to erect a fitting memorial to
the hero of Khartoum, and I am old enough to remember, and
many here are old enough to remember, when a solemn appeal
was made to our countrymen by an ornament of society, a
poet, an orator, and a friend of men of genius — I mean the late
Lord Houghton, then Monckton Milnes — ^when he called upon
his countrymen, and particularly on the representatives of art,
to erect a fitting memorial on the heights of Scutari. He then
wrote, addressing the sculptors of the day : —

*' Masters of form, if such be now.

Of sense, and powers of art, intent.
To match yon mount of sorrow's brow.

Devise your seemUest monument ;
One that will symbolize the cause

For which this might of manhood fell,^
Obedience to their country's laws

And duty to God's truth as well."

Then the appeal was made by a master of letters, as it is
now made by a man of art. I believe that the country will
claim the assistance of the sculptor in order to do justice to
that great man ; and that somewhere in Khartoum a statue
will be erected, it may be on some high column, looking far

58 VERY REV. HENRY MONTAGU BUTLER, D.D.

over the sands of the desert, and looking down upon the city,
the doomed city which he so nearly saved, so that there will be
a fitting memorial to a man of such great nobleness of character.
[Cheers.]

"There, while the races of mankind endure.
Still let his great example stand
Colossal, seen in every land.
To keep the soldier firm, the statesman pure."

I have trespassed on your time far too long. [Cries of
" No."] I crave your pardon. It arises out of my deep, my
profound reverence for your illustrious brotherhood and for
the high mission which you fulfil. We all know that life and
literature and art are bound together by one link, never to be
severed. But more — I believe that if the life be poor, the
literature and the art will be poor also. The best thing that
any one here can desire for your great society as well as for
the nation is that the lives of your countrymen may be noble,
simple, gracious, reverent, and that the literature which ex-
presses it and records it may be of the same noble type ; so
that that literature may continue to furnish noble models for
the exercise of those magnificent traditions of which you, sir,
and your illustrious brotherhood are the accredited and highly
honoured, and — I will add, as you would wish me to add —
the deeply responsible inheritors. [Cheers.]

DANIEL O'CONNELL

HENRY GRATTAN

[Speech at the Royal Exchange Meeting, Dublin, June 13, 1820,
on the occasion of the Parliamentary Election for Dublin, one
of the candidates being the son of Henry Grattan, the Irish
patriot and orator, whose seat was rendered vacant by his
death in London on the 4th of the same month.]

Fellow-Co UNTRYMEN, — ^We are met on this melancholy oc-
casion to celebrate the obsequies of the greatest man Ireland
ever knew. The widowed land of his birth, in mourning
over his remains, feels it is a nation's sorrow, and turns with
the anxiety of a parent to alleviate the grief of the orphan
he has left. The virtues of that great patriot shone brilliant,
pure, unsullied, ardent, unremitting, glowing. Oh ! I should
exhaust the dictionary three times told, ere I could enumerate
the virtues of Grattan.

In 1778, when Ireland was shackled, he reared the standard
of independence ; and in 1782 he stood forward as the champion
of his country, achieving gloriously her independence !
Earnestly, unremittingly, did he labour for her — ^bitterly did he
deplore her wrongs — and if man could have prevented her
ruin — if man could have saved her Grattan would have done it !

After the disastrous Act of Union, which met his most
resolute and most determined opposition, he did not suffer
despair to creep over his heart, and induce him to abandon her,
as was the case with too many others. No ; he remained firm
to his duty in the darkest adversity — he continued his un-
wearying advocacy of his country's rights. Of him it may be
truly said in his own words — " He watched by the cradle of
his country's freedom — he followed her hearse ! "

His life, to the very period of his latest breath, has been
spent in her service — and he died, I may even say, a martyr
in her cause.

Who shall now prate to me of religious animosity ? To any

59

6o DANIEL O'CONNELL

such I will answer by pointing to the honoured tomb of
Grattan, and I will say — '* There sleeps a man, a member of
the Protestant community, who died in the cause of his Catholic
fellow-countrymen ! "

I have been told that they would even rob us of his remains
— that the bones of Grattan are to rest in a foreign soil ! ^
Rest ? No ! the bones of Grattan would not rest anywhere
but in their kindred earth. Gentlemen, I trust that we shall
yet meet to interchange our sentiments of mixed affliction and
admhation over a monument of brass and marble erected
to the memory of the man whose epitaph is written in the
hearts of his coimtrymen !

Gentlemen, I do not come here with a womanly feeling,
merely to weep over our misfortune — though Heaven is my
witness that my heart is heavy. To do justice to the name of
Grattan would require an eloquence equal to his own ; but I
ask myself, I ask you, how we can best atone and compensate
our country for the loss she has sustained ? It is by uniting
as brothers and as Irishmen, in returning a representative for
our city, not unworthy of filling the place of him who raised
the standard of universal charity and Christian benevolence.
Yet, in this hallowed moment of sorrow, ere yet his sacred
remains have been consigned to earth, the spirit of discord
would light the torch of fanaticism, and set up the wild halloo
of bigotry and persecution. *' May God in heaven forgive
them, they know not what they do."

Gentlemen, will they call this religion — will they profane
the sacred name of religion — the religion of Grattan — by such
a presumptuous assertion, such an invidious distinction ?
They will not, they cannot.

No, gentlemen, I trust, for the sake of human nature, that
filthy lucre is their object — personal pelf their motive.

Mr. Chairman, we have a duty to perform ; two candidates
offer themselves to our consideration. Of one, perhaps, it is
sufficient to say that he is the son of Grattan. Of the other
— who is he ? His name is Thomas Ellis !

Well, gentlemen, where are the credentials of this man,
who would presumptuously fill the greatest niche ever left
vacant in the history of our country ? Of course, he is a man
of eloquence, talent, and knowledge, and has unremittingly
attended to the wants and wishes of Ireland. He has, I
believe, practised at the Bar, but we have never seen a volume
* Grattan was buried in Westminster Abbey.

HENRY GRATTAN 6 1

of his speeches, like the eloquent Phillips, nor have we ever
heard of his talents, and I suppose it was in his room, two-
pair of stairs backwards, in the Four Courts, that he has
studied the prosperity of Ireland !

Well, gentlemen, has he knowledge ? Alas ! here we
fold him equally deficient. Oh ! but we require too much.
If, then, he has neither eloquence, talent, patriotism, nor
knowledge, perhaps he has leisure ? No ! the duties of his
situation, for which he gave ten thousand pounds, require his
constant and unremitting attention, and really it is but fair
that he should receive some interest for his money. But,
gentlemen, what does he say for himself ? I shall read his own
words for you. [Here O'Connell read a part of Mr. Ellis's
address from a newspaper.] So, gentlemen, he tells you him-
self that " professions are always suspicious, and in general
insincere ; *' and he proceeds in the next sentence to make
professions ! He first tells you that they are suspicious and
insincere, and he then offers them to you ! Gentlemen,
Caesar's wife should not only be pure, but she should be above
suspicion. Is Ireland so fallen that this man, thrust forward
by a faction, is to be forced upon a people. Can so savage
a faction be found that at the shrine of Grattan would seek
to foment the bloody strife of Christian animosity ?

Gentlemen, I have seen my country a nation, with her peers
in the land, and her senators about us ; we have lived to see
her a province. Our petitions are forwarded through the
Post Office, and even now bigotry and persecution would bow
before their filthy idol. Yet, in speaking of the present state
of my country, perhaps I may be permitted to pay the humble
tribute of my praise to Earl Talbot, and the Chief Secretary,
Mr. Charles Grant, for their impartial conduct as connected
with its government. I speak not this as seeking any place
for my cousin, or any other relative — I leave that to those
police officers who had better adhere to their stations than
interfere in the election of a candidate to represent this city.
I would not see the representation of this city made the pro-
perty of a stationer or paper manufacturer, to give to whom
he pleases.

Gentlemen, young Mr. Grattan has always acted an open,
upright, honest, candid Irish part ; he bears a name that can
never be forgotten or neglected in Ireland ; he is the only
legacy his father has left to his country, and where is the Irish-
man who will refuse to act as executor ?

62 DANIEL O^CONNELL

Gentlemen, it may be asked, Why is not young Mr. Grattan
here ! Oh ! let no man reproach him that he is not here.
Alas ! he is paying the last sad duties to his lamented father.

An anonymous letter has just been put into my hands,
gentlemen, convening a meeting of the friends of Mr. Ellis and
calling upon them to support him as the most loyal and con-
stitutional candidate. I ask you who is the most loyal man ?
Is it not he who would support the dignity and strengthen
the security of the Throne by encircling it with the affections
of the people ? I ask you now who is the least loyal man ? Is
it not he who would weaken the resources of the Constitution
by shutting out a great portion of the subjects of the realm
from a just and equal enjoyment of its advantages ?

But, gentlemen, this letter concludes by requesting the
friends of Mr. Ellis to wear Orange ribbons in their breasts. I
conjure my coimtrymen to wear no party emblems, but let
the name of Ireland be engraven on their hearts.

I ask all those around me, Do they love their country ? Let
every man that hears me carry my question home with him.
I entreat you all, by one great effort, to save your country
even now, whilst the children of her manufacturers are starv-
ing, whilst her shop-keepers are without business, her mer-
chants shuddering, and her banks breaking. Still, still she
is worth saving. Worth ! Oh 1 what is she not worth, pos-
sessing the greenest land, the finest harbours, and the richest
verdure ? Celebrated even in song for the beauty of her vales,
possessing a people brave, generous, and hospitable, is she not
worth saving ? Gentlemen, we have a duty to perform, let
no man shrink from it — it is not mine alone, but yours [looking
round to different gentlemen], and yours, and yours, and yours.
Let us unite to put down bigotry — it is the cause of our country
that is at stake ; let us rally round that cause, and let our
motto be " Grattan and Ireland I '*

Lord NoiiTiici.iFFE

LORD NORTHCLIFFE

{Controller of " The Times;' " The Daily Mail," " The

Evening News," and many other newspapers and

periodicals. Born 1865.)

AVIATION

[Extract from a speech delivered at the Savoy Hotel, July 26,
1909, at a luncheon to M. Bleriot after the first landing in Eng-
land by a man in a flying machine, an event so common to-day as
to attract no attention.]

Ladies and Gentlemen : — ^We are assembled on an historic
occasion to do some little and somewhat hurried honour —
hurried by reason of the quickness of the man — to one who
the whole world to-day knows most truly represents the blood
of old Gaul. M. Bleriot, after the manner of his people,
with very little fuss and with very little apparent preparation,
came to our shores yesterday morning — a very rough morn-
ing, as many of us can remember — and thus created a record,
thus made an event which will rank for all time with the best
of the deeds of the best Frenchmen [cheers], with the first
flight by Montgolfier, with the first photograph taken by a
Frenchman — Niepce — ^with the first colour-photograph taken
by Lumiere, with the discovery of radium by M. and Mme.
Curie, with the invention of iron-plated ships — indeed, one
tires in naming all the ideas which have come out of France.
Those of us — I do not think there are many present — ^who
sometimes think that we who call ourselves Anglo-Saxons are
always in the van of progress, must reflect sometimes that
ideas very calmly assimilated and assumed to be our own
have almost invariably, like M. Bleriot, come out of France.
[Laughter and cheers.] I am of those who hold that every
man has two countries — his own and France [cheers] — who

63

64 LORD NORTHCLIFFE

greatly rejoice in the good feeling existing between the two
countries, and who believe and know that the peace of the
world largely depends on the relations of those two countries.
We all admire the splendid French elan which led M. Bleriot
yesterday morning to come to us in those few minutes. I think
that that deed is one of the bravest and most audacious things
of our time. [Cheers.]

We have happily in the room with us two very typical
examples of the Frenchman and EngHshman. We have M.
Bleriot, the genius of invention ; I suppose there are many
present who have travelled thousands of miles at night by his
lamps. I have seen him practising with his little early
machines at Issy, near Paris — I have seen the patience of
the Frenchman developing that wonderful instrument, and
we have seen it attaining perfection long before the slower-
thinking races of the world imagined that the aeroplane was
a practical thing. And added to that is the pecuHar dash,
the elan for which France is famous. We have here also a
type different, but one which I know the French people think
equally admirable, in Sir Ernest Shackleton. [Cheers.] The
two men are sitting beside me, and I do not think that if we
searched the two countries over we could find a more typical
Frenchman and a more typical EngHshman. In Shackleton
you have careful preparation, immense determination, the
hardihood amid sufferings, the patience, the plodding, the
never- turning-back determination that enabled him to do a
deed of which EngHshmen are as proud to-day as the French
are of M. Bleriot.

It is a most happy circumstance, I think, that we have
here contrasted — and in most interesting contrast — the genius
of the two peoples, the two best peoples, the two peoples who
have done more for civiUzation in the world than any other
two peoples. I feel proud that my newspaper is in a most
humble and unexpected way associated with M. Bleriot. I
feel proud to think that we have among us so essentially
modest a man. Because M. Bleriot especially desires that
credit should be given where he thinks credit is due, I am to
mention that the organization of the flight — and it was a splendid
organization — was due to his friend, M. Le Blanc, and that
the motor which never missed fire once during that dramatic
passage of the Channel was by his friend M. Anzani.

Addressing M. Bleriot, the French Ambassador, and the
many French guests present, Lord Northchffe continued :

AVIATION 65

Je tiens ^ dire en Fran^ais, dans la langue de M. Bleriot, k
quel point nous nous rejouissons tons de voir que I'initiative de
la belle France — qui nous a deja donne tant d'inventions — le
ballon, la photographie, la bicyclette — i qui nous devons
aussi les vaisseaux cuirasses, le developpement de I'automobile,
la photographie en couleurs, et la merveilleuse decouverte du
radyum — est continuee par I'ceuvre admirable de notre hote
d'aujourd'hui, Bleriot. Et je desire aussi, par Tintermediaire
de son excellence M. Cambon, Ambassadeur de France, fdiciter
ce noble pays de poss^der un fils aussi doue et aussi brave.
[Cheers.]

II— 5

EMPEROR WILLIAM II. OF
GERMANY

THE MAILED FIST

[William II,, German Emperor and King of Prussia, was bom in
1859. He was brought into the world by a village doctor, who
accidentally maimed the arm of the new-born babe. The
religious influences under which he grew up profoundly influenced
his character, as is evidenced by his speeches. In 1888 he
ascended the throne. Considered in the light of his oratory,
William is a remarkable man. The tone of every one of his
speeches is that of assurance. " My policy is good, and I am
in the hands of God as His great instrument." Such is the
message he seems eager to convey to the world in the set
speeches he has delivered since his reign began. The following
sermon, showing the Emperor's figurative style of oratory, was
addressed to his men on board the royal yacht, in August 1900.]

It is a most impressive picture that our text to-day brings
before our souls. Israel wanders through the desert from
the Red Sea to Mount Sinai. But suddenly the heathen
Amalekites stop them and want to prevent their advance,
and a battle ensues. Joshua leads the young men of Israel
to the fight, the swords clash together, and a hot and bloody
struggle begins in the valley of Rephidim. But, see ! whilst
the fight is going on, the pious men of God, Moses, Aaron,
and Hur, go to the top of the hill. They Uft up their hands
to heaven ; they pray. Down in the valley the fighting hosts ;
at the top of the mountain the praying men. This is the
holy battle-picture of our text. Who does not understand
to-day what it tells us ? Again, a heathenish Amalekite
has stirred in distant Asia with great power and much cimning.
By burning and murder it is sought to prevent the entrance
of European trade and European genius, the triumphal
march of Christian morals and Christian faith. Again the
command of God has been issued : *' Choose us out men, and

66

THE MAILED FIST 67

go out, fight with Amalek." A hot and bloody struggle
has begun. Many of our brothers already stand under fire,
many are on their way to the enemy's coasts, and you have
seen them, the thousands who at the call, " Volunteers to
the fore ! Who will be the guardian of the empire ? " now
assembled, to enter the fight with flying colours. But you,
who remain behind at home, who are bound by other sacred
duties, say, do you not hear God's call, which He makes
to you, and which says to you, "Go up on the mountain ;
raise up thy hands to the heavens " ? The prayer of the
just can do much if it be earnest.

Thus let it be. Yonder, far away, the hosts of fighters ;
here at home, the hosts of praying men. May this be the
holy battle-picture of our days. May this peaceful morning
hour remind us — may it remind us of the sacred duty of
intercession, of the sacred power of intercession. The sacred
duty of intercession ! Certainly it is an enthusiastic moment
when a ship with young men on board weighs anchor. Did
you not see the warriors' eyes flash ? Did you not hear
their manj^-voiced hurrahs ! But when the native shores
vanish, when one enters the glowing heat of the Red Sea
or the heavy waters of the ocean, how easily brightness and
enthusiasm grow weary ! Certainly it is a subUme moment
when, after a long voyage, in the distance the straight lines
of the German forts can be seen, and the black, red, and
white flags of the German colony become visible, and comrades
in arms stand on the shore waiting to give a hearty reception.
But the long marches in the burning sun, the long nights of
bivouac in the rain ! How easily gaiety and strength vanish !
Certainly it is a longed-for moment when at last the drums beat
to the charge and the bugles are blown to advance when
a command is given : *' Forward ! At the enemy ! " But
then, when amid the roar of the guns and the flashing of the
shells comrades fall to the right and left, and hostile batteries
still refuse to yield — how easily at such a moment the bravest
hearts begin to tremble !

Christian, in order that our brothers over yonder may
remain gay even in the greatest distress, faithful in the most
painful duty, courageous in the greatest danger, they want
something more than ammunition and sharp weapons — more
even than youthful courage and fiery enthusiasm. They
want a blessing from above, vital power from above ; other-
wise, they cannot win and remain victorious. And the

68 EMPEROR WILLIAM II. OF GERMANY

heavenly world opens only to prayer. Prayer is the golden
key to the treasury of our God. But he who has it has also
the promise that to him who asks shall be given. Or shall
we remain idle ? Woe to us if we are idle whilst they are
carrying on a hard and bloody piece of work ; woe to us
if we only look on curiously at the great struggle ! This
would be Cain's spirit with the cruel words, " Am I my brother's
keeper ? " This would be unfaithfulness toward our brave
brothers who are staking their Uves. Never ! We will
mobilize not only battaUons of warriors, but also a holy
force of praying men. Yes. How much there is to ask for
our brothers going into the field ! They are to be the strong
arm which punishes assassins. They are to be the mailed
fist which strikes in among them. They are to stand up,
with the sword in their hands, for our most sacred possessions.
So we shall accompany them with our prayers, out on to the
heaving waves, on their marches, into the roar of the battle,
and into the peacefulness of the hospitals ; shall pray to Gk)d
that they may stand at their posts hke men, that they may
fight their battles courageously and heroically, that they may
bear their wounds bravely and calmly, that God may give
those who die under fire a blessed end and the reward of
faithfulness — in short, that He may make the warriors heroes,
and the heroes victors, and then bring them home to the
land of their fathers with the laurels round their puggarees
and the medals on their breasts.

Or do we, perhaps, not believe in the sacred power of
intercession ? Well, then, what does our text say ? " And
it came to pass, when Moses held up his hand, that Israel
prevailed." The earnest prayers of a Moses made the swords
of the enemy blunt. They pushed themselves Uke a wedge
between the enemy's hnes, made them waver, and brought
victory to the fi3dng banners of Israel. Should not our
prayers be able to do what the prayers of Moses did ? God
has not taken back one syllable of His promise ; heartfelt
prayer can still to-day cast down the dragon banner into
the dust and plant the banner of the cross on the walls. And
Moses does not stand alone with his intercession. Look
yonder. There on the heights of Sodom stands Abraham,
interceding before his God, and with his prayers he prays
Lot out of the burning city. And should not our prayers
succeed in praying our fighting comrades out of the fire of
the battles ? Look yonder. There in Jerusalem lies the

THE MAILED FIST 69

young Christian community on its knees. Their leader, their
father, lies imprisoned in a dungeon, and, see, with their
prayers they summon the angel of God into the prison, and
he leads forth Peter unharmed. And our prayers — should
not they have the power even to-day to burst the doors of
the oppressed prisoners and the persecuted, and to place
an angel at their side ? Yes, the God of old lives still, the
great Ally rules still, the Holy God, who cannot let sin and
acts of violence triumph, but will carry on His holy cause
against an unholy people ; the Almighty God, who can shatter
the strongest walls as if they were spiders' webs, and who
can disperse the greatest crowds Hke heaps of sand ; the
merciful, faithful God, whose fatherly heart looks after the
well-being of His children, who hears every sigh, and who
sympathizes with every distress. Pious prayers open His
fatherly hands, and they are filled with blessing. Earnest
prayer opens His fatherly heart, and it is full of love. Yes,
true, continuous prayer fetches the living God down from
heaven and places Him among us. And if God is for us, who
shall be against us ?

Up in the Tavern there hang strange bells on the heights.

No man's hand rings them. Still and dumb they hang in
the sunshine. But when the storm- winds blow, they begin
to swing, and commence to ring, and deep down in the valley
their song is heard. God the Lord has hung the prayer bell
in every man's heart. In sunshine and happiness how often
it hangs still and dumb ! But when the stormy winds of
distress break forth, then it begins to ring. How many a
comrade who has forgotten how to pray will, out yonder, in
the fight for Hfe or death, fold his hands again I Distress
teaches us to pray, and so shall it also be at home. Let the
serious days which have come upon us, let the war-storm
which has come on, set the bells ringing again. Let us pray
for our fighting brothers. Not only now and then, in a solemn
hour. No, no ; let us be true in prayer. As our fathers
once in war-times rang the bells every evening and bared
their heads at the sound and prayed, so also let us not forget
intercession for a day. Moses held up his hands until the
going down of the sun, and Joshua discomfited Amalek and
his people with the edge of the sword. Our fight is not
brought to an end in a day. But do not let the hands
become tired or idle until the victory has been gained. Let
our prayers be a fiery wall around the camp of our brothers.

70 EMPEROR WILLIAM II. OF GERMANY

How the thought will strengthen them, make them enthusi-
astic, and excite them, that thousands, nay, millions, at
home bear them in their praying hearts ! The King of all
kings calls volunteers to the fore. Who will be the praying
one for the empire ? Oh, if one could only say here, " The
King called, and all — all came ! " Not one of us must be
wanting. History will one day describe the fights of these
days. But man sees only what he has before him ; he can
say only what the wisdom of the leaders, the courage of the
troops, the sharpness of the weapons, have done. But eternity
will some time reveal still more — it \\ill show how the secret
prayers of the believers were a great power in these fights,
how the old promise is again fulfilled. ** Then they cry
unto the Lord in their trouble, and He saveth them out of
their distress.'' And thus, keep to prayer. Amen.

Almighty God, dear Heavenly Father, Thou Lord of
Hosts and Ruler of Battles, we raise, prajdng, our hands to
Thee. On Thy heart we lay the thousands of brothers-in-
arms, whom Thou Thyself hast called to battle. Protect
with Thy almighty protection the breasts of our sons. Lead
our men to victory. On Thy heart we lay the wounded
and sick. Be Thou their comfort and their strength, and
heal their wounds which they receive for king and fatherland.
On Thy heart we lay all those whom Thou hast ordained to
die on the field of battle. Stand by them in the last struggle,
and give them everlasting peace. On Thy heart we lay our
people. Preserve, sanctify, increase the enthusiasm with
which we are now all imbued. Lord our God, we trust in
Thee. Lead Thou us in battle. We boast. Lord, that Thou
wilt help us, and in Thy name we unroll the banner. Lord,
we will not leave Thee ; then wilt Thou bless us. Amen.

SIR WILFRID LAURIER

CANADA, ENGLAND, AND THE UNITED STATES

[Speech made in response to a toast to Canada, at a banquet
in Chicago, October 9, 1899, the anniversary of the great fire of
1 87 1 in that city.]

Mr. President and Gentlemen : — I very fully and very
cordially appreciate the very kind feelings which have just
now been uttered by the toast-master in terms so eloquent,
and which you, gentlemen, have accepted and received in
so sympathetic a manner. Let me say at once, in the name
of my fellow-Canadians who are here with me, and also, I
may say, in the name of the Canadian people, that these
feelings we will at all times reciprocate — reciprocate not only
in words evanescent, but in actual living deeds.

I take it to be an evidence of the good relation which, in
your estimation, gentlemen, ought to prevail between two
such countries as the United States and Canada, that you
have notified us, your next-door neighbours, in this day of
rejoicing, to take our share with you of your joy. We shall
take back to our own country the most pleasant remembrance
of the day.

We have seen many things here to-day very much to be
admired — the imposing ceremonies of the morning, the fine
pageant, the grand procession, the orderly and good-natured
crowds — all these are things to be admired and, to some
extent, to be wondered at. But the one thing of all most to
be admired, most to be remembered, is the very inspiration
of this festival.

It is quite characteristic of the city of Chicago. As a
rule, nations and cities celebrate the day of their foundation
or some great victory or some national triumph ; in all cases,
some event which, when it occurred, was a cause of universal
joy and rejoicing. Not so, however, of the city of Chicago.

71

72 SIR WILFRID LAURIER

In this, as in everything else, she does not tread in beaten
paths. The day which she celebrates is not the day of her
foundation, when hunters and fur-traders unconsciously laid
down the beginnings of what were to develop into a gigantic
city ; neither does she celebrate some great action in which
American history abounds ; neither does she commemorate
a deed selected from the Ufe of some of the great men whom
the state has given to the nation, though Illinois can claim
the proud privilege of having given to the nation one as great
as Washington himself.

The day which she celebrates is the day of her direst
calamity, the day in which she was swept out of existence by
fire. This, I say, is very characteristic of Chicago, because,
if history recalls her destruction, it also recalls her resurrec-
tion. It recalls the energy, the courage, the faith, and the
enthusiasm with which her citizens met and faced and con-
quered an appalling calamity.

For my part, well do I remember the awful day, for, as
you well know, its horrors were reverberated far beyond the
limits of your country ; but of all the things which — I was
then a young man — I most remember, of all the acts of courage
and heroism which were brought forward by the occasion,
the one thing which at the same time struck me most was
the appeal issued by the business men of Chicago on the smok-
ing ruins of their city. They appealed to their fellow-citizens,
especially to those who had business connections in Chicago
and whose enterprise and energy had conferred honour on
the American name, to sustain them in that horn: of their
trial.

Mark the language. The only thing they asked was to
be sustained in their business, and if sustained in their business
they were ready to face and meet the awful calamity which
had befallen their city. Well, sir, in my estimation, in my
judgment, at least, that was courage of the very highest
order. Whenever you meet coiirage you are sure to meet
justice and generosity. Courage, justice, and generosity
alw^ays go together, and therefore it is with some degree of
satisfaction that I approach the toast to which I have been
called to respond.

Because I must say that I feel that though the relations
between Canada and the United States are good, though they
are brotherly, though they are satisfactory, in my judgment
they are not as good, as brotherly, as satisfactory as they

CANADA, ENGLAND, AND THE UNITED STATES 73

ought to be. We are of the same stock. We spring from
the same races on one side of the Une as on the other. We
speak the same language. We have the same Uterature, and
for more than a thousand years we have had a common
history.

Let me recall to you the lines which, in the darkest days
of the Civil War, the Puritan poet of America issued to
England : —

" O Englishmen ! O Englishmen I
In hope and creed,
In blood and tongue, are brothers.
We all are heirs of Runnymede."

Brothers we are, in the language of your own poet. May
I not say that, while our relations are not always as brotherly
as they ought to have been ? May I not ask, Mr. President,
on the part of Canada and on the part of the United States,
if we are sometimes too prone to stand by the full conceptions
of our rights, and exact all our rights to the last pound of
flesh ? May I not ask if there have not been too often be-
tween us petty quarrels, which happily do not wound the
heart of the nation ?

Sir, I am proud to say, in the presence of the Chief Ex-
ecutive of the United States, that it is the belief of the Canadian
government that we should make the government of President
McKinley and the present government of Canada, with the
assent of Great Britain, so to work together to remove all
causes of dissension between us. And whether the com-
mission which sat first in the old city of Quebec and sat next
in the city of Washington — but whether sitting in Quebec
or sitting in Washington, I am sorry to say the result has
not been commensurate with our expectations.

Shall I speak my mind ? [Cries of " Yes ! "] We met a
stumbling-block in the question of the Alaskan frontier.
Well, let me say here and now the commission would not
settle that question, and referred it to their particular govern-
ments, and they are now dealing with it. May I be permitted
to say here and now that we do not desire one inch of your
land?

But if I state, however, that we want to hold our own
land, will not that be an American sentiment, I want to know ?
However, though that would be a British sentiment or Cana-
dian, I am here to say, above all, my fellow countrymen,
that we do not want to stand upon the extreme limits of our

74 SIR WILFRID LAURIER

rights. We are ready to give and to take. We can afford
to be just ; we can afford to be generous, because we are
strong. We have a population of seventy-seven millions —
I beg pardon, I am mistaken, it is the reverse of that. But
pardon my mistake, although it is the reverse, I am sure the
sentiment is the same.

But though we may have many little bickerings of that
kind, I speak my whole mind, and I believe I speak the mind
of all you gentlemen when I say that, after all, when we go
down to the bottom of our hearts we will find that there is
between us a true, genuine affection. There are no two
nations to-day on the face of the globe so united as Great
Britain and the United States of America.

The Secretary of State told us some few months ago that
there was no treaty of alliance between Great Britain and the
United States of America. It is very true there is between
the United States of America and Great Britain to-day no
treaty of alliance which the pen can write and which the pen
can unmake, but there is between Great Britain and the
United States of America a unity of blood which is thicker
than water, and I appeal to recent history when I say that
whenever one nation has to face an emergency — a greater
emergency than usual — forthwith the sympathies of the
other nation go to her sister.

When last year you were suddenly engaged in a war with
Spain, though Spain was the weaker party, and though it is
natural that men should side with the weaker party, our
sympathies went to you for no other reason than that of
blood. And I am sure you will agree with me, that though
our relations have not reached the degree of perfection to
which I would aspire, from that day a new page has been
turned in the history of our country. It was no unusual
occurrence, before the month* of May 1898, to read in the
British press of American arrogance ; neither was it an un-
usual occurrence to read in the American press of British
brutality.

Since the month of May 1898 these expressions have
disappeared from the vocabulary. You do not hear to-day
of American arrogance ; neither do you hear of British bru-
tality : but the only expressions which you find in the press
of either country now are words of mutual respect and mutual
affection.

Sir, an incident took place in the month of June last

CANADA, ENGLAND, AND THE UNITED STATES 75

which showed, to me at all events conclusively, that there is
between us a very deep and sincere affection. I may be
pardoned if I recall that instance, because I have to speak
of myself.

In the month of June last I spoke on the floor of the
House of Commons of Canada on the question of Alaska,
and I enunciated the very obvious truism that international
problems can be settled in one of two ways only : either by
arbitration or war. And although I proceeded to say imme-
diately that war between Great Britain and the United States
would be criminal and would not be thought of for a moment,
still the very word " war " created quite an excitement in
this country. With that causeless excitement, though I
was indirectly the cause of it, I do not at this moment find
any fault, because it convinced me, to an absolute certainty,
that between your country and my country the relations have
reached such a degree of dignity and respect and affection
that even the word ** war " is never to be mentioned in a
British assembly or in an American assembly. The word
is not to be pronounced, not even to be predicated. It is
not to be pronounced at all. The very idea is abhorrent
to us.

I repeat what I then stated, that war between Great
Britain and the United States would be criminal in my estima-
tion and judgment, just as criminal as the Civil War which
desolated your country some thirty years ago. Whatever
may have been the mistaken views of the civilized world
at the time, the civilized world has come to the unanimous
conclusion that the War of the Rebellion was a crime. The
civilized world has come to the conclusion that it was a benefit
to mankind that this rebellion did not succeed and that the
government of the people, by the people, and for the people
did not perish from the earth.

Your country was desolated for long years by the awful
scourge of the Civil War. If there is anything of the many
things which are to be admired in this great country of yours,
the one thing, for my part, which I most admire is the absolute
success with which you have re-established the Union and
erased all traces of the Civil War. You have done it. What
is the reason ? I may say, as has been uttered by the President
of the United States — I took down his words : "No responsi-
bility which has ever resulted from the war is tainted with
dishonour. We have succeeded in establishing the cause of

76 SIR WILFRID LAURIER

the Union, because no blood was shed to re-establish the
Union except the blood which was shed by the sword ; not
one drop of blood was ever shed except by the power of the
law, and what were the consequences ? *'

You had the consequences, in the war with Spain, when
the men of the Blue and the men of the Grey, the men who
had fought for the Confederacy and the men who had fought
for the Union, at the call of their country, came back to fight
the battles of their own country under a united flag. That
was the reason.

My friend Mr. Cullom said a moment ago that he might
beUeve me almost an American. I am a British subject, but
to this extent, I may say, that as every American is a lover
of liberty, a believer in democratic institutions, I rejoiced
as any of you did at the spectacle which was represented at
Santiago, El Caney, and elsewhere during that war.

Sir, there was another civil war. There was a civil war
in the last century. There was a civil war between England
and her American colonies, and their relations were severed —
American citizens, as you know they were, through no fault
of your fathers, the fault was altogether the fault of the British
government of that day. If the British government of that
day had treated the American colonies as the British govern-
ment for the last forty or fifty years has treated its colonies ;
if Great Britain had given you then the same degree of liberty
which it gives to Canada, my country ; if it had given you,
as it has given us, legislative independence absolute, the
result would have been different — the course of victory, the
course of history, would have been different.

But what has been done cannot be undone. You cannot
expect that the union which has been severed shall ever be
restored ; but can we not expect — can we not hope that the
banners of England and the banners of the United States
shall never, never, never again meet in conflict, except in
those conflicts provided by the arts of peace such as we see
to-day in the harbour of New York, in the contest between
the " Shamrock " and the " Columbia *' for the supremacy of
naval architecture and naval prowess ? Can we not hope
that if ever the banners of England and the banners of the
United States are again to meet on the battlefield, they shall
meet entwined together in defence of the oppressed, for the
enfranchisement of the down-trodden, and for the advancement
of liberty, progress, and civilization ?

RT. HON. ARTHUR J. BALFOUR

ON GOLF

[Speech delivered November 9, 1900, at the opening of the City
Golf Club House at Bradford, Yorks.]

Ladies and Gentlemen : — It is perhaps known to the num-
ber of guests here assembled that the interesting ceremony
this afternoon was arranged to take place long before any-
body could have foreseen, with any certitude of prophecy,
that the General Election would take place in September.
I feel sure that between the period on which this engagement
of mine was entered into and the period at which it has fallen
to be fulfilled events have happened in this great city, as well
as in many other great cities, which may have diverted men's
minds from the more important matters connected with golf
[laughter] to trifles connected with politics. [Renewed
laughter.]

I am glad to think that my appearance here this evening
is wholly unconnected with anything which can divide the
opinion of my countrymen. I am well aware I am speaking
to an assembly of mixed opinions — mixed, that is, upon
politics — but it is, at all events, absolutely at one, wholly
united, without difference and without flaw, upon the merits
of the great game which we all, in various degrees of success,
pursue to the best of our abilities. My friend, Mr. Wanklyn,
in terms of extreme kindness, in proposing the toast to which
you have enthusiastically and cordially responded, has re-
minded me of some historic events which I confess had escaped
my memory, although now I am reminded of them I am
ready to bear witness to his accuracy.

I had quite forgotten that in his case our acquaintance
commenced in golf and ended in politics, and that one of the
collateral consequences is that he is member for Bradford

17

78 RT. HON. ARTHUR J. BALFOUR

and another is my coming here upon the occasion of a cere-
mony so interesting to every golfer in Bradford. He has
dilated in terms which were not excessive upon the harmony
and good feeling which is naturally engendered by persons
differing in politics or any other opinion meeting together
upon the common ground of a golf-course and fighting out
their differences by other weapons than the tongue. [Hear,
hear.] But I am not sure that in the very stress of political
controversy, when party feeling runs to its highest, I should
have selected what he selected, the niblick as the club [laughter]
with which I was to meet and deal with my adversary.
[Laughter.] In the first place I use the niblick as little as I
can [laughter], and even though I am occasionally obliged to
use the nibUck in. a bunker, I hope never to apply it to the
head of a political opponent. [Laughter.]

I do not wish to dwell any further upon the political aspect
of golf, which was gracefully and incidentally introduced by
the proposer of this toast, but I should Uke to put it to him,
and to any other candidate for Parliamentary honours who
may be in this room, whether he would be a member of Parlia-
ment or a scratch player at golf. [Laughter.] It is a very
interesting problem. I have my own answer. I know what
I should wish, but I am not going to say [renewed laughter],
and I leave it to every man to conjectiure to himself accord-
ingly as his tastes incline more to politics or to golf. Mine
incline more to golf. [Laughter.] Mr. Wanklyn mentioned
among many unquestionable merits of golf that it taught
men how to win a game and how to lose it. I am glad it
taught me how to lose a game, because I have not moral
discipline. This afternoon I have taken it philosophically, as
I think has my partner.

The truth is I do not quite agree with Mr. Wanklyn in this
matter. I differ from him on very few subjects, but on this
I do. I do not think there is this serious moral discipline
connected with the losing of a game of golf. My experience
is that the next pleasure to winning a game of golf is the
losing of one. I would rather lose a game than not play one,
and under those circumstances where is the serious education
and moral influence that he found in it ? He told us he went
into training for the Parliamentary handicap, and gave up
smoking and champagne, and he did admirably — he came in
second. I am not sure, however, that if he had not given up
champagne he would not have been first. [Laughter and

ON GOLF 79

cheers.] I know so far as I am concerned that I have twice
won it, and I have never given up champagne. [Laughter.]

On the other hand, I notice with some pardonable jealousy
that when he was explaining the results of his triumphs on
that occasion he stated that he divided stakes with the suc-
cessful competitor, and his share of the loot [laughter] came
to £37 los. Now I have won it twice, and I kept the whole
of the stakes myself, and the whole never amounted to that
sum. [Laughter.] I do not know what the explanation is,
and I do not suppose that this is the time to go into accounts,
but the fact is, as I have stated, that is the inequality of
destiny.

Now, gentlemen, leaving personal topics, I must express
the great pleasure which the game this afternoon and the
dinner this evening have given me, and the extreme gratifica-
tion which I have derived from this introduction to golf at
Bradford. I believe myself that the game of golf is destined
to play a great part in the social life of this country. I think
all of us have experienced the immense benefits which it has
given, the immense pleasure it has conferred, the rest which
it has given to the overworked brain, and the exercise which
it has given to otherwise unexercised muscles. I see no
reason why those immense benefits should not be very largely
extended. I remember when I first began golf, some sixteen
or seventeen years ago, long before the golfing boom began,
your golfer prided himself upon coast links and looked down
upon what he contemptuously described as inland links. It
is, of course, preferable to have such links on the shores,
but if the game is to be a universal game, as it deserves to
be, that great end can only be attained by sedulous attendance
at these inland links. [Hear, hear.] But there is another
point which I am never tired of insisting upon so far as I can.
The game of golf, by the very character of it, is intended to
be a game for every class. In Scotland it has been the
national game so long that in those parts where it is played
on the sea coast, where there are suitable links, all classes play
equally in skill, and I am perfectly certain that a similar result
can be attained in England. [Cheers.]

CHARLES DICKENS

COMMERCIAL TRAVELLERS

[Speech by Charles Dickens at the Anniversary Dinner in com-
memoration of the foundation of the Commercial Travellers'
Schools, at the London Tavern, London, December 30, 1854.]

Ladies and Gentlemen : — I think it may be assumed that
most of us here present know something about travelling. I
do not mean in distant regions or foreign countries, although I
dare say some of us have had experience in that way, but at
home, and within the limits of the United Kingdom. I dare say
most of us have had experience of the extinct " fast coaches,"
the " Wonders," " Taglionis," and " Tallyhos," of other days.
I dare say most of us remember certain modest postchaises,
dragging us down interminable roads, through slush and mud,
to little coimtry towns with no visible population, except half-
a-dozen men in smock-frocks, half-a-dozen women with um-
brellas and pattens, and a washed-out dog or so shivering imder
the gables, to complete the desolate picture. We can all dis-
course, I dare say, if so minded, about our recollections of the
'* Talbot," the " Queen's Head," or the " Lion " of those days.
We have all been to that room on the ground floor on one side
of the old inn yard, not quite free from a certain fragrant smell
of tobacco, where the cruets on the sideboard were usually
absorbed by the skirts of the box-coats that hung from the
wall ; where awkward servants waylaid us at every turn, like
so many human man- traps ; where county members, framed
and glazed, were eternally presenting that petition which, some-
how or other, had made their glory in the county, although
nothing else had ever come of it; where the books in the
windows always wanted the first, last, and middle leaves,
and where the one man was always arriving at some unusual
hour in the night, and requiring his breakfast at a similarly

80

COMMERCIAL TRAVELLERS 8l

singular period of the day. I have no doubt we could all
be very eloquent on the comforts of our favourite hotel,
wherever it was — its beds, its stables, its vast amount of
posting, its excellent cheese, its head waiter, its capital dishes,
its pigeon-pies, or its 1820 port. Or possibly we could re-
call our chaste and innocent admiration of its landlady, or
our fraternal regard for its handsome chambermaid. A cele-
brated domestic critic once writing of a famous actress, re-
nowned for her virtue and beauty, gave her the character of
being an " eminently gatherable-to-one's-arms sort of person."
Perhaps some one amongst us has borne a somewhat similar
tribute to the mental charms of the fair deities who presided
at our hotels.

With the travelling characteristics of later times, we are
all, no doubt, equally familiar. We know all about that
station to which we must take our ticket, although we never
get there ; and the other one at which we arrive after dark,
certain to find it half a mile from the town, where the old
road is sure to have been abolished, and the new road is going
to be made — where the old neighbourhood has been tumbled
down, and the new one is not half built up. We know all
about that party on the platform who, with the best inten-
tions, can do nothing for our luggage except pitch it into all
sorts of unattainable places. We know all about that short
omnibus, in which one is to be doubled up, to the imminent
danger of the crown of one's hat ; and about that fly, whose
leading peculiarity is never to be there when it is wanted.
We know, too, how instantaneously the lights of the station
disappear when the train starts, and about that grope to the
new Railway Hotel, which will be an excellent house when
the customers come, but which at present has nothing to offer
but a liberal allowance of damp mortar and new lime.

I record these little incidents of home travel mainly with
the object of increasing your interest in the purpose of this
night's assemblage. Every traveller has a home of his own,
and he learns to appreciate it the more from his wandering.
If he has no home, he learns the same lesson unselfishly by
turning to the homes of other men. He may have his ex-
periences of cheerful and exciting pleasures abroad ; but
home is the best, after all, and its pleasures are the most
heartily and enduringly prized. Therefore, ladies and gen-
tlemen, every one must be prepared to learn that commercial
travellers, as a body, know how to prize those domestic rela-

II— 6

82 CHARLES DICKENS

tions from which their pursuits so frequently sever them ; for
no one could possibly invent a more delightful or more con-
vincing testimony to the fact than they themselves have
offered in founding and maintaining a school for the children
of deceased or unfortunate members of their own body — those
children who now appeal to you in mute but eloquent terms
from the gallery.

It is to support that school, fomided with such high and
friendly objects, so very honourable to your calling, and so
useful in its solid and practical results, that we are here to-
night. It is to roof that building which is to shelter the chil-
dren of your deceased friends with one crowning ornament,
the best that any building can have, namely, a receipt stamp
for the full amount of the cost. It is for this that your active
sympathy is appealed to, for the completion of your own
good work. You know how to put your hands to the plough
in earnest as well as any men in existence, for this little book
informs me that you raised last year no less a sum than
£8,000, and while fully half of that sum consisted of new
donations to the building fund, I find that the regular revenue
of the charity has only suffered to the extent of £^o. After
this, I most earnestly and sincerely say that were we all authors
together, I might boast, if in my profession were exhibited
the same unity and steadfastness I find in yours.

I will not urge on you the casualties of a life of travel, or
the vicissitudes of business, or the claims fostered by that
bond of brotherhood which ought always to exist amongst
men who are imited in a common pursuit. You have already
recognized those claims so nobly, that I will not presume to
lay them before you in any further detail. Suffice it to say
that I do not think it is in your nature to do things by halves.
I do not think you could do so if you tried, and I have a
moral certainty that you never will try. To those gentlemen
present who are not members of the travellers' body, I will
say in the words of the French proverb, " Heaven helps
those who help themselves." The Commercial Travellers
having helped themselves so gallantly, it is clear that the
visitors who come as a sort of celestial representatives ought
to bring that aid in their pockets which the precept teaches
us to expect from them. With these few remarks, I beg to
give you as a toast, " Success to the Commercial Travellers'
Schools."

Rt. Hox. Winston S. Churchill

speaking during an election campaign.

RT. HON. WINSTON S. CHURCHILL

THE PRESS

[Speech delivered at the Press Conference, June lo, 1909.]

Mr. President and Gentlemen: — I congratulate the Con-
ference upon their courage. Very grave situations have
been unfolded to you, and after a week of discussion upon
some of the most appalling prospects which could possibly
be opened up before the most heated imagination of men,
in the hush which precedes great catastrophes, on the eve
of Armageddon, so to speak, we find ourselves peacefully
gathered together engaged upon a mild discussion of the
relation of literature to journalism and the relative positions
occupied by both. The power of the Press generally is a fertile
theme, and we cannot doubt that it has greatly increased and
is greatly increasing with every improvement of science, with
every expansion in wealth and civilization.

But has the power of the Pressman increased with the power
of its machine ? I think that is a question which must be
answered in the negative, because we see that, whereas in
former times individual writers had it in their power to shape
Governments and to shape policies, now even the most
powerful organs fail in all circumstances to affect trends or
even to gauge the trend of pubHc opinion. We cannot fail
to observe that in this walk of life, as in so many others at
the present time, the human element runs in great danger of
being crushed beneath the weight and the power of the
machinery which it has itself created.

When Mr. Birrell was drawing attention the other day to
the spirit of partisanship which sometimes animates newspaper
comment, he thought there was an explanation to be found
in the fact that the newspapers had changed the constituency
which they represented — as years had passed by they had

83

84 RT. HON. WINSTON S. CHURCHILL

come less to represent the opinions of the writers than the
opinions of their readers, and that was a tendency which I
think is being corrected gradually at the present time. This
Conference, which tends to increase the power and the
influence and the strength of the man behind the pen — and
after all the man behind the pen was not less important than the
man behind the gun — this Conference, which marks in a
very distinct way the authority, the recognition, and revival
of the authority of the individuals who are charged with the
great function of the conduct of newspapers, is an important
landmark in the re-assertion of the power of the individual
writer. [Cheers.]

Lord Morley has spoken to you of the power of the English
language. Let us not forget that the British Press, the Press
of the British Empire, is the trustee of the English language.
The old process of growth by which local customs, local usages
were gradually selected by great writers and men of Hterary
pre-eminence has passed away, and a much more thorough-
going wholesale mechanical process has taken its place. What
I want to ask is whether we are doing enough for the conscious
guidance and direction of the great medium, the great English
language, of which we are the humble exponents. We are
menaced by all sorts of barbarous attacks, phonetic spelling
and unsatisfactory and slipshod methods of expression ; and
although no one would wish to prison our language in harsh or
arbitrary rules, or deUver it over to the judgment of any parti-
cular body of men, I am bound to say I think there are many
powerful arguments which might be urged in support of some
authority or some academy which, without restricting the
growth from year to year, the necessary growth, of the language,
would, at any rate, place upon each phrase and each expression
and each new word which came necessarily into currency the
imprimatur of authority and literary distinction. [Cheers.]

The way in which the British Press and British writers can
best serve the large and general interests of the British Empire
is to write good, wise, true words, to write words which pro-
claim the solidarity of Christendom and the interdependence
of nations, to write words which assert the truth, the practical
truth, before us to-day in spite of the friction and of the fretful-
ness and of the mischief -making which exist in every nation.
Let them be words which assert that confidence breeds con-
fidence between nations just in the same way as hatred and
suspicion breed the very dangers out of which they originated,

THE PRESS 85

and let them be words which proclaim that the Great Powers
of the world are not a gang of rascally cut-throats and assassins
scrambling for a sinister and infernal spoil, but, on the other
hand, that they are all of them comrades and our brothers,
marching with us along a road which is always stony and some-
times painful, but which leads continually onwards and up-
wards towards an ever-brighter and more glorious destiny.
[Cheers.]

HON. SYDNEY HOLLAND

BEGGING

[Speech by the Hon. Sydney Holland, Chairman of the London
Hospital, before the members of the Sphinx Club, London,
February 2, 19 10.]

Mr. Chairman, My Lord, and Gentlemen : — I do really feel
very diffident to-night in addressing a lot of business men
who know their business upon that business. I have no goods
to sell ; I am not a Pressman, and I am not connected with
the Press. I am what we call in domestic circles a " Tweenie " ;
and I remember with pain the story of a noble lord who, when
coming downstairs one day, met a little girl coming up. He
asked : " Who are you ? " She said : " 1 am between the
cook and the housemaid.'* " Then God help you," he replied.
[Laughter.] That is rather my feeling to-night, and my
prayer.

I was rather encouraged, however, by reading an article in
The Times the other day on advertising, in which it said that
a meeting of advertisers in America was just like a religious
service. And I thought that is just the place for me. [Laughter.]
And I also read in the same article that every meeting of
advertisers was also a bread-and-butter affair. Though I
can hardly call the hospitable entertainment that you have
given us to-night quite a simple bread-and-butter affair, I
had no hesitation in accepting an invitation to have a meal
with you, because in these difficult times it is always so much
better to get a dinner for nothing than to face the alternative
of having nothing for dinner. [Laughter.] But, Mr. Chair-
man, you must really be merciful towards me. I am perfectly
certain that I can tell you nothing that you do not know. You
must please be like the prisoner in the dock who, when the

86

BEGGING 87

judge asked him whether he had anything to say before sentence
was passed upon him, said : " Nothing, my lord, except that
very Httle pleases me." [Laughter.] I hope, gentlemen, that
you will be content with very little.

I can only deal in truisms, truisms that you all know, and
to speak truisms is not to be in fashion during this election
time. Probably, too, with regard to all my truisms you have
already considered them and probably pronounced judgment
on them. I always remember the time when I was a young
barrister many years ago reading in A. L. Smith's chambers
(afterwards Lord Justice Smith), and we had a man there
who, when some confiding solicitor gave him his first brief
in a contract case, would not, despite much pressure, tell
us what his answer to the overwhelming case of the plaintiff
was, so we all went to Court to hear the case tried. The
plaintiff opened his case, and it was so unanswerable that the
judge turned to my friend, Mr. Henderson, and said : " Mr.
Henderson, what defence have you got ? " Henderson stood
up, and in a majestic voice proclaimed : " My lord, my defence
rests on the decision in the case of Henrick and Jones." Where-
upon the judge said : '* That has been overruled." " My
God ! " said Henderson, and sat down. [Laughter.] So I am
afraid that on everything I say to-night judgment will already
have been passed, and all will have been overruled.

But if I am asked whether advertisement helps a hospital, I
am bound candidly to say to you that it does not help a hospital
a bit. I am speaking of pure advertisement, and of the money
results that come in from advertisement. You may be sur-
prised to hear that, as a professional beggar, I know from
whence, and why, every penny comes to the London and Poplar
Hospitals, and I can trace every penny that is given to us,
not the legacies, but every donation and every subscription ;
and I say that none of these, not a halfpenny, comes from
any direct advertisement at so much a line.

When I say that advertisements do not help, I mean, of
course, the ordinary advertisement. You see hospitals adver-
tising every week, " Funds urgently needed." Perfectly use-
less. How sick one is of the word " urgently " ! You see
advertisements, " We owe our bankers £20,000, and we want
to pay it off." Absolutely useless. " Beds will be closed."
Everybody knows they won't be. " A friend will give a million
if five others will give a million." Absolutely useless. Cheap
notoriety for the friend. You all know this, because I have

88 HON. SYDNEY HOLLAND

never yet found any man who comes to me to tout for an
advertisement who will accept payment by results. [Laughter.]
My second truism is that if you want an advertisement to
be of any use you must make that advertisement original. I
remember, when a young man, the advertisement ** Who's
Griffiths ? " all over London. That was perhaps the first
original advertisement that I remember, and we all waited to
know who Griffiths was. Then there came *' Use Harrod's
Toothbrushes," which was made original by the reply, " I
shan't. How would Harrod like to use mine ? " [Laughter.]
That was a very useful advertisement. And then there was an
original advertisement. " Why live uncomfortably when you
can be bmried comfortably for £5 by a certain undertaker ? "
So I tried, in advertising my hospitals, to introduce a certain
amount of originality. And, if I may boast, I was rather
pleased at scoring over Truth — I hope there is not a representa-
tive of that paper here to-day — I offered — and they fell into the
trap — I offered a guinea prize to any one who would give me the
best words to put up in a space I had opposite the Poplar
Hospital measuring 6 feet square. They did not charge any-
thing for the advertisement, but I got five weeks of it for the
guinea prize, because I took five weeks to make up my mind
between all the competitors. So for five weeks there was an
advertisement in Truth : " The Chairman of the Poplar Hos-
pital for Accidents is still considering the best words for this
square." I do not know whether it paid, but it seemed a well-
spent guinea. Then I used to get Lloyd's paper to advertise
every Sunday the accidents that we had taken into the Poplar
Hospital during the week, but I found that the result of this
was that speculative solicitors called at the hospital on the Mon-
day morning to see the patients who had had those accidents,
with offers to take up the case free of all charge, and so I had
to stop that. Then I tried a new line of advertisement. I used
to acknowledge money in the agony column. You can always
get into the agony column of a paper if you acknowledge a sub-
scription ; so every day I used to acknowledge a subscription
— I cannot say I had always received it the day before, that
did not matter. I used to acknowledge a subscription, and I
used to put at the bottom of the acknowledgment " Six acci-
dents every hour." That, you see, got in the advertisement of
the hospital, as well as the acknowledgment, every day into
a very prominent place in the paper. Then I struck out a
quite new line. Instead of advertising, as every hospital did,

BEGGING 89

that they were in debt, I advertised largely the fact that my
hospitals were not in debt, and never intended to be. That is
the only advertisement I know of that has really paid me.
Lots of people have written to say : ** We will help you because
you are not in debt." The reason people like to help a hospital
that is not in debt is because Englishmen, more than any
nation, always worship success, and knowing that, or thinking
that, I ventured upon this rather risky experiment of adver-
tising the fact that we never were in debt.

There is always one golden rule in every hospital which is
observed very loyally by all of them : that in advertising your
hospital's work you must never disparage the work of any
other. You never ought to say that you are the best hospital,
or that you do your work in any way better than any other.
You may advertise that you are larger, or that you are further
east, or the only hospital for this or that, and so on. Those
are facts. But you must be very careful to play the game
and never hurt any other hospital by your advertisements or
begging.

Still, as I have said, none of those advertisements have
actually brought in money, that I am sure of. But they have
done this, they have been like John the Baptist, they have
" prepared the way." They have prepared the way for the
scientific begging letter which has followed on. Do you know,
gentlemen, that it takes me fifty miles of writing to raise a
hundred pounds? The effect of the advertisement is that
when people get the scientifically written begging letter, they
are apt to say : " Oh, yes, I know all about that hospital ;
that is the hospital that treats a hundred miles of patients
standing side by side every year ; that is the hospital that
uses i8i miles of catgut in sewing up arteries ; that is the
hospital where all the Pressmen go when they are suffering
from cirrhosis of the liver." [Laughter.] And so in that way
advertisements, though they do not actually briag in money,
act the part of John the Baptist and prepare the way for the
begging letter. You may say to me that this dinner is to
discuss advertisements and not to discuss begging. But my
reply to you is the reply the man asking for help made to the
agent of the Charity Organization Society when told to go
about his business. " Begging is my business," said he.
Begging is my business, say I, and I have tried to reduce
begging to a science. The secret of begging is that you must
work, and work hard. You ail probably know the story of

90 HON. SYDNEY HOLLAND

the negro who was seen eating a turkey by his master, who
said to him : " Sambo, how did you get that turkey ? **
Sambo said : " I prayed for it.'* The master went away and
came back the next day and said : " Sambo, you told me a
lie ; I have prayed, but I have not got a turkey." And
Sambo said : " Massa, you pray the wrong way. If I pray,
' O God, send me a turkey,' I do not get a turkey ; but if I
pray, * O God, send Sambo to get a turkey,' I always get one."
[Laughter.] And so, bearing that in mind, I have never been
content to sit still and say : " O God, send me a turkey ; "
I have always tried to go out and get it myself.

Of course, publicity is of enormous importance, and the
business of every chairman of a hospital is to get the public
really soaked with the needs of his hospital. But pure adver-
tising at so much a line will never do that. You have to appeal
to the public, to appeal to their emotional side, and you have to
appeal to their humorous side. It is difficult to do this simply
by pure advertising, quite impossible. It is very useful, of
course, if you can occasionally get a brittle man, or an elephant
man, now and again. The papers tumble over each other to
advertise a freak. [Laughter.] But the best way of all to
help a hospital is by a letter to a paper, only that letter must be
written exactly at the right moment, and it must end either
with a sob or with a smile. It is perfectly useless to send a
letter to the papers signed by three lords, a bishop, and a
society lady ; such a letter is not worth £25. But there is
another sort of letter which is useful, or perhaps I may give
you an example from my own experience. Once the Poplar
Hospital got into great trouble. Scarlet fever broke out in the
hospital. The Metropolitan Asylums Board hospitals were
full. I wrote a letter to all the papers saying that we were
in this great dilemma, that having no isolation block, we had
either to close the hospital to every one, no matter how severely
injured or seriously ill, or we had to turn the six patients
who had scarlet fever back into their homes, where they
would spread the fever. What were we to do ? That letter
brought me £35 an hour for six days, day and night, £7,000
in six days. It did so, because it happened to hit the emotional
side of the public ; and that is what you must do if you wish
to succeed. Of course, such a letter is an advertisement ;
there is no question about that.

Then, again, another truism. It is a curious fact how
often the public care for a personality connected with a work

BEGGING 91

more than for the work itself. That is why it is very unfair
to blame the secretary of a hospital — the paid official — if he
cannot raise money for a hospital. A paid official never can
do as much as a chairman of a hospital, provided only — and
this is of the greatest importance — that the public believe that
the chairman is in earnest, and if he is not in earnest he is no
good at all ; and provided only that they believe that he is
single-minded in his work, and not seeking for or aiming at
any glory or reward for himself. Those two things are abso-
lutely essential in any chairman. But if a chairman is that,
and if the public will believe that he is that, then he will
find his task comparatively easy. I often wish that my name,
instead of Sydney, was John. Then the public would believe
in me, because a man whose name is John is always " honest
John " — honest John Morley, honest John Burns. They
may be the worst fellows in the world, but give them the name
of John they are always thought to be honest. I have always
wished therefore that my name was John. But how the
public have followed names ! Think of Agnes Weston ;
people give her money who often do not know of her work,
but they believe in her. Think of Dr. Barnardo, a name to
conjure with. Think of General Booth. Think of Carlile,
of the Church Army. Think of Benjamin Waugh, of the
Society for the Protection of Children. Then, again, if I am
not wearying you, I do not think the public mind being hum-
bugged very much, especially if they are Americans [laughter],
though I should never attempt to do this. I had an
amusing and instructive experience once. I was going down
on a 'bus to the Poplar Hospital at the very far east of London,
and I saw two Americans on the 'bus who had a guide-book,
and were going to visit the Tower, and I said to them : *' Where
are you going ? " And they said : *' Well, we are going to
visit the Tower." I said : ** Haven't you seen the Poplar
Hospital ? " They said no, they had not. " Well," I said,
*' you must really." So they said : *' Very well." I said :
" I am going there now," and they came with me. It is
not a very large hospital, and they had soon been all over it
with me. Then as they went out I showed them the money-
box, and each of them put a sovereign in. One of them looked
at me as he did so, and then with a smile said : " Sir, you have
got all the instincts of a swindler ! " [Loud laughter.] You
see how pretty that is, because he did not say I was a swindler,
only that I had the instincts of one — the greatest compliment

92 HON. SYDNEY HOLLAND

I have ever had paid to me in a long life of unappreciated
virtue. The other man said : " Sir, you would get on very
well out West if you didn't get shot in the first week ! "

Well, now, gentlemen, I have done. [No, no.] Thank
you, people always say that. I have made my confessions to
you ; I have said things that I certainly have never said before.
I am rather like the old man who got into a railway carriage
with a lot of young fellows who were narrating all the wicked
and shocking things they had done in their lives, and at last
one of them said to him : '* Have you never done anything
of that sort ? " He said : '* Yes, but I have never been in
any company where I could say so before." [Laughter.]
And so I do not know that I have ever been in any company
where I could make these confessions before.

I do really and seriously thank the members of the Press
for the great help they have always given me in work which
is always hard and often very despairing. I remember a
touching letter I had once from a member of the Press in
answer to one of my begging letters. He wrote back to me,
and he said : "I feel perfectly miserable in not being able to
help you. I am only a poor man who writes for so much a line.
I felt I had nothing to send you, but turning round I saw a
syphon on my sideboard, and I got a shilling on that, and that
I send you." I wrote to him, and said if he felt so very miser-
able at only sending a shilling, he must still remember there
was the sideboard left. [Laughter.]

A big hospital ought really to advertise itself for the work
it does for the community. Think of the debt that we all
owe to a hospital. If we get ill and want a doctor, where can
the doctor have been trained except at one of our big hospitals ?
If we want a nurse, where can the nurse have been trained
except at our hospitals ? Where is all progress in medicine
made ? Where is all progress in surgery made except at our
big hospitals ? Where is the finest research done, except at
our big hospitals ? And, apart from all this, and apart from
the immense amount of healing work that the hospitals are
doing, are they not doing a magnificent and a blessed work
in bringing the sympathy of the rich in touch with the poor
at the very moment when they need it most ? At hospitals
we are able to show sympathy to people, a sympathy they
never dreamed of in all their lives. There we are able to hold
out a helping hand to a poor fellow when ruin stares him in
the face, a ruin that you and I know nothing of, a disaster

BEGGING 93

which means loss of work, loss of home, the starvation of wife
and children. We are able to help him, and we have at the
London Hospital a fund to help also the wives and children.
There at a hospital we are able to restore a mother to her
family, and child to mother at a time when she thought she
had lost it. And though there is, and must always be, a great
difference between rich and poor, the poor people have just
the same love for father, for mother, for child, for husband
that we have ; and, believe me, I know it, I have seen it.
They have the same quickened heart-beat for every act of
sympathy shown to them. And there at the London Hospital,
and at all hospitals, we have been able to show these people,
not to-day, not yesterday, but for the 140 years that the
London Hospital has been existing, we have been able to
show and prove to these people that there is —

"No one so accursed by Fate,
No one so utterly desolate
But that some heart till then unknown
Can beat in sympathy with his own."

LEON GAMBETTA

ADDRESS TO THE DELEGATES FROM ALSACE

[Speech delivered in 1873, on receiving a bronze statuette from
his admirers in Alsace.]

My Countrymen : — On leceiving from your hands this testi-
monial of the indissoluble bonds of solidarity which unite to
each other the various members of the great French family —
for the moment, alas ! separated as you say — I know not
which feeling touches me more poignantly, the sentiment
of gratitude or that of grief.

It is truly terrible to think that it is on the day on which
we are negotiating, for a golden price — hard and necessary
results of our defeats the evacuation of our departments — to
think that this lesson, this last exhortation, are given us by
you. I feel all the grief which you experience in being obliged
to coimt, to weigh, to postpone your hopes. I realize that
you have need, as we have, to tell yourselves that you will
not give way to it. I well know that you are right in repeating
to yourselves that constancy is one of the qualities of yom:
race. Ah ! it is from that very circumstance that our dear
Alsace was particularly necessary to French unity. She
represented among us, by the side of that mobility and light-
ness, which, unfortunately, at certain moments mar our
national character, she represented, I say, an invincible
energy. And on this great pathway of invasion , she was
always found the first and the last to defend the fatherland !

It is for that reason that, as long as she returns not to the
family, we may justly say there is neither a France nor a
Europe.

But the hour is serious and full of difficulties, and it is
greatly to be feared that if we give ear only to things which
excite our patriotism and to bitter remembrances which recall

94

ADDRESS TO THE DELEGATES FROM ALSACE 95

US to impossible struggles, to the sentiment of our isolation
in the world, to the memory of the weaknesses which have
overwhelmed us — we shall go to some extreme, and compromise
a cause which we might better serve.

Yes, in our present meeting, what ought to be reported
and repeated to the constituents who have chosen me — who
have saluted in me the last one to protest, and to defend
their rights and their honour — is by no means a word of ex-
citement or enthusiasm, but rather a message of resignation,
albeit of active resignation.

We must take account of the state of France, we must
look it squarely in the face. At the present hour the Republic,
which you associate and always have associated not only
with the defence of the fatherland, but also with her up-
raising and regeneration — the RepubHc, I say, claims the
allegiance of some from necessity, of others from interest,
and, of the generality of sensible people, from sentiments of
patriotism.

People in France are beginning to understand that all
4bat has happened is the result of successive monarchies,
and that it would be wrong to hold the latest of the despotisms
through which we have passed responsible for everything.
The evil dates far backward, and from the first day when
the Republic succumbed to the sabre of a soldier. Other
regimes have followed, which have done nothing to purify
and uplift the national heart and keep it on a level with
events.

It is on this account, gentlemen, that we can truly say
that the republican sentiment is a veritably national one,
because it testifies that all the monarchy has done in this
country, even in a liberal sense, all its tentative remedies, all
its half-measures, were equivocal and weakened the national
sentiment, in that they were done for the benefit of a class,
leaving others outside ; and were not addressed to the whole
country. Thus they blighted in the bud all patriotism. So
when it became necessary for all to be patriots, sad to say,
many failed in their duty.

To-day, under the stress of events and the great struggles
of which we have been the victims, France has learned — so,
at least, we may believe from recent and decisive manifes-
tations— that the Republic is henceforward to be regarded
as the common pledge of the rebirth of our nation's material
and moral forces.

g6 LEON GAMBETTA

This great result could only have been obtained by means
of reserve and prudence. The Republic could gain intel-
lectual assent, conciliate interests, make progress in the
general conscience, only by means of moderation among re-
publicans, by proving to the majority of the indifferent that
only in this way is the spirit of order, of civil peace, and of
progress peacefully and rationally to be obtained.

This demonstration is now merely commencing. We
must follow it up, continue it. Especially must tardy con-
victions be made absolute. These have assisted us for some
time, but in their turn may confirm the convictions of others,
on which we have not counted, and which, gradually, under
the influence of a continuous republican agitation, are trans-
formed and enlarged, and become the general convictions
of aU.

We are favoured by the circumstances of the hour. I do
not mean that we ought to count on this to do everything,
but we must take account of the fact and use it to solicit
from all the spirit of concord, the spirit of union, and above
all, the spirit of resignation and sacrifice. Ah ! it is indeed
cruel to ask of these brothers, harshly abandoned, the spirit
of sacrifice and resignation, and yet it is of these that we
make the supreme demand that they will not harass the
country in her travail of reconstruction. And just as yours
has been the section in which the greatest numbers have
taken arms for the national defence, just as you have given
your children and your gold, just as you have borne for the
longest period bullets, fire, bombs, and the exactions of the
enemy, so during this unhappy peace you must give to France
the example of a population able to preserve its sentiments
without rushing to extremes, without provoking an inter-
vention.

You owe to the mother-country the supreme consolation
of learning that, however impotent you may be to aid her,
your heart is unconquerably attached to her. And I know
you will exhibit towards your fatherland this consolation,
this resignation ; because, whatever may be the ardour of
your sentiments, you have never made anything but a French
cause out of your Alsatian cause. And it is in this very way
that you have given a true proof of patriotism, putting aside
in the greatest measure your personal interests for the cause
of France. France ought to make requital to you for these
great and noble sentiments. If she were so forgetful and

ADDRESS TO THE DELEGATES FROM ALSACE 97

impious as not to have constantly before her eyes the picture

of your Alsace, bleeding and mutilated, oh, then you would
be right to despair ! But have no fear, so long as there is
in France a National Party. And be sure that this National
Party is now being formed anew and reconstituted. The true
spirit of France seized and delivered over to the enemy by
the Second Empire is to-day enlightened. From all sides
publications let us know the rdle which our populations have
played, and it is manifest that France has been much more
disheartened than beaten, much more surprised than con-
quered. And the very moment the real state of events is
made clear, the conscience of the country is reborn. You
see the beginning of a great work, legitimate although melan-
choly, the work of ensuring and stigmatizing those who have
deserved it. I hope that you will aid in the infliction of
necessary penalties.

At the same time with the country all the parties reunite
in demanding the punishment of the crime of " contempt of
France " beneath the walls of Metz, and you see coming into
our ranks true patriots, men who without hesitating, without
discussing, have done their duty and have been true heroes
of the army of the Loire.

Ah ! how strongly those who struggled felt that there
was no other resource, and no other honour for France, than
to make the flag of the Republic the flag of the nation. There
was something in this spectacle to urge us to retire within
ourselves and to seek by starting fresh, by yielding to a new
impulse, to impress the French mind, whatever the true means
of restoring our moral and scientific greatness, financial pro-
bity, and military strength. And when we have in all the
work-yards of construction rebuilt France piece by piece,
do you believe that this will be ignored by Europe, and that
nations will fail to think twice before approving and ratifying
the outrageous gospel of force ? Do you believe that that
barbarous and Gothic axiom that might makes right will
remain inscribed in the annals of international law ? No !
No!

If an ill-omened silence has greeted such a theory, it is
because France was cast down. But there is not another
country in Europe that does not think France should renew
herself. They are not thinking of assisting her — they have
not arrived at that — to that position our best wishers and
those who sympathize with us the most desire for her. We
II— 7

gS LEON GAMBETTA

have not received, and we shall not for a long time receive,
either aid or co-operation, but the sentiment of the neighbour-
ing nations is plainly seen. They feel that the storm may
not have spent all its strength on us, and that it may visit
other countries and strike other peoples. The sentiment of
general self-preservation is springing up. They are looking
from France, and they see the occidental world empty.

Let us show our strength to those who are examining
our morality, our internal power, and avoid displa5dng, as
we have till now too often done, the spectacle of dynastic
quarrels or dissension about chimeras.

Let us give this pledge to Europe, that we have no other
aim than to take all the time necessary to arrive at that moral
and material position where there is no need of drawing the
sword, where people yield to right all that is her due, because
they feel that there is force behind.

But let us neither be unduly elated, nor depressed by
discouragement.

Let us take to the letter — and this is a reflection that you
will permit me to make in the presence of this bronze group
which you have been so good as to offer me — let us take
to the letter the thought which has animated the artist and
the patriot. As this mother, who, extending her hand over
the body of her fallen son, and feeling her bosom pressed by
her babe, as yet too feeble to bear arms, counts only on the
future, let us take the only course worthy of people truly
animated by a wise and steadfast purpose. Let us not talk
of revenge or speak rash words. Let us collect ourselves.
Let us ever work to acquire that quality which we lack, that
quality of which you have so admirably spoken — patience
that nothing discourages, tenacity which wears out even time
itself.

Then, gentlemen, when we have undergone this necessary
renovation, time enough will have passed to bring about
changes in the world around us. For this world which sur-
rounds us is not, even now, in a very enviable situation. The
din of arms, because it has ceased in France, has not ceased
elsewhere.

One need not travel very far among his neighbomrs to
perceive that on all sides preparations are being made, that
the match is lighted. The only activity that prevails amid
the operations of governments is military activity.

I do not say that from this we should draw deluave

ADDRESS TO THE DELEGATES FROM ALSACE 99

inferences. We should simply understand that the true
programme for every good Frenchman is, above all, to dis-
cipline himself at home, to devote himself to making of each
citizen a soldier, and, if it be possible, an educated man, and
leaving the rest to come to us in the process of our national
growth.

Our enemies have given us examples on this point, which
you know better than we do. For you, dwelling just on the
frontiers, between them and us, have derived from inter-
course with them a greater intellectual culture, have learnt
the application of scientific ideas to promote the interests of
practical Ufe, at the same time that you still possess that fire,
that energy, that vigour, which are characteristic of the
French race.

It is with you and like you that we wish to labour, without
letting ourselves be turned from our end by monarchical
conspiracies. You can repeat to your brothers of Alsace
that there is nothing to be feared from that quarter. That
fear would be of a nature singularly alarming to your patriotic
hopes. And again I say, gentlemen, now that sophists on
all sides are declaring that if we remain a Republic we shall
lack alliances outside and that we shall find no co-operation
nor aid in the governments of Europe, again I say that if
there be a regime, a system of government which has above
all a horror of the spirit of conquest and annexation, it is
the Republican. Any other political combination than the
Republic would lead to civil war and foreign occupation.
And we should have but one passion, one aim — to get rid
of that. We ought to repeat the cry of Italy, " Out with
the foreigners ! "

Be persuaded, be sure, that under a government which is
resolved to follow a truly national policy you can wait and
need never despair.

As for me, you know the sentiments I have avowed to
you ; you know how completely I am yours. I have no
other ambition than to remain faithful to the charge you have
given me, and which I shall consider as the law and honour
of my life.

Let those among you, gentlemen, who have the sorrowful
honour of rejoining your compatriots of Alsace, say that
aftef I had seen you I could not find in my heart a single word
which would express, as I would have it do, the profound
gratitude that I feel toward you.

RT. HON. H. H. ASQUITH

THE BAR

[Speech at a dinner given by the Bar of England to celebrate his
appointment as Prime Minister on July lo, 1908.]

Mr. Attorney-General and Gentlemen of the Bar: —
You do not need to be assured that no compliment could
be more grateful to me or to any man who, like myself, has
been for more than thirty years a member of the English
Bar, than such a welcome as has been given to me to-night
by the members of the great profession, among whom the
laborious days of my Ufe have been so largely spent. It
enhances to me the value of that compliment that you should
have selected as your mouthpiece my learned friend. Sir
Edward Clarke. [Cheers.] It has been my misfortune both
in political and in professional life to be more often against
than with Sir Edward Clarke ; but whether with him or against
him I have always felt — and which of us has not ? — that there
is no one among our contemporaries whom I should more
heartily advise a young man entering the professional arena
to look to as model, whether of temper, of method, of style,
or of the whole art of advocacy. [Cheers.] Courage which,
though always undaunted, never blusters ; persuasiveness
which seems rather to win than to capture assent ; eloquence
which never sacrifices light to heat — those are qualities of
which no man at the Bar in my time has been a more perfect
and consummate exponent. [Cheers.]

Mr. Attorney, this is a gathering of the Bar, and of the
Bar alone [hear, hear] ; and not for the first time — but it does
not happen frequently in our lives — we are able to talk without
turning our eyes or directing our attention either to the Bench
above or to the well below. [Laughter.] To me I must
confess that to speak anywhere in the region of the Temple
without a tribunal, without a client, without a brief, and, I

leo

THE BAR lOI

must add, without a fee [laughter], is an unfamiliar and in
some ways a nerve-shaking experience. I can only wish that
I were imbued for the moment with some portion of the mag-
nificent sangfroid of that accomplished advocate Sir Richard
Bethell, who is said — I dare say some of you know the legend —
in the midst of a super-subtle argument, when harassed by the
interlocutory irrelevance of a Chancery Judge [laughter], to
have turned round to his unhappy junior and to have ex-
claimed in an audible aside, " The damned fool has taken your
point." [Laughter.]

Well, gentlemen, as I am among old friends and brethren,
I may, perhaps, be allowed for a moment — and only for a
moment — to be egotistic and autobiographical. Let me, then,
seize the opportunity — and I am glad to have it — of recalling
the names and memories of two illustrious lawyers to whom
I feel myself always under special obligation. The first is my
old master, Charles Bowen [cheers], afterwards one of the
brightest ornaments of our Bench, in whose chambers not far
from here, in Brick Court, I served my pupilage. I learnt, I
hope, many things there, and amongst other lessons I learnt
was one which every man who aspires to practise with success
at the Bar in these days has to learn sooner or later, and that
was the dangers, the multiform and manifold dangers, of an
encounter with Danckwerts. [Laughter.] Later on, after
some pretty lean years, in which one used to welcome as an
unexpected and grateful phenomenon a County Court brief,
marked one guinea, and coming from a client whose time and
method of payment were both nebulous and problematical
[laughter], I had the great good fortune of securing the favour
and help of a great man, my dear and revered friend Lord
James of Hereford. [Cheers.] I owe to him a debt which he
has never thought of exacting, and which I can never repay.
May I add to those a third name — the name of one whom I
think all the older men among us at any rate will agree with
me in thinking in the very first and highest rank of the advo-
cates, either of our own or of any other time, Charles Russell.
[Cheers.] I was privileged, as Sir Edward Clarke has reminded
me, to be associated with him as his junior in the greatest
State trial of the Victorian era, and we had as colleagues my
noble friend the present Lord Chancellor, and a man of infinite
humour and of unique lovableness, whose untimely death was
to me and to all his friends an irreparable loss — the late Frank
Lockwood. [Cheers.]

102 RT. HON. H. H. ASQUITH

Mr. Attorney and gentlemen, those are memories which
time can never efface. Sir Edward Clarke has referred to the
fact that it is just about one hundred years since a practising
member of the Bar was last Prime Minister of England. He
was kind enough not to remind me that that predecessor came
to a sudden and untimely end. [Laughter.] AbsU omen!
[Hear, hear.] But every age has its own peculiar dangers.
It has been suggested to me by what Sir Edward Clarke has
said that in our school-days we all read of a certain legendary
character who seems to have tried to deal with a feminist
movement somewhere in Thrace by euphonious generalities,
and he, as a result, was torn to pieces by wild women.
[Laughter.] History, happily, does not always or even often
repeat itself.

It is natural, perhaps, that on an occasion Hke this one
should be tempted to reflect upon the relations in our history
between politics and the law. The " gentlemen of the long
robe," of the " nisi prius mind," have provided from time
to time ample material for the cheap sarcasms of superficial
and uninstructed politicians. [Hear, hear.] Once, at any
rate, and I think only once, in our history they were able to
put these prejudices into practice, and the disastrous experi-
ment was tried of a House of Commons from which all lawyers
were excluded. What was the result ? That notorious body,
pilloried in our history as the Parliamentum indoctum of which
Lord Coke, not perhaps an altogether impartial judge [a
laugh], declares that the whole of its legislation was not worth
twopence. Gentlemen, I absolutely make this claim, that
there is no class or profession in our community which has
done more — I will go further ; I will say that there is none
which has done as much — to define, to develop, and to defend
the Hberties of England. [Cheers.] Sir Thomas More, Lord
Coke himself, Selden, Somers, Camden, Romilly — those are
but a few of the names selected almost at random from a long
and illustrious roll ; and they were all bred in the common
law of England — and I venture to add, the common law of
England is not a compendium of mechanical rules written
in fixed and indelible characters, but a living organism, which
has grown and moved in response to the larger and fuller
development of the nation. The common law of England has
been, still is, and will continue to be, both here and wherever
English communities are found, at once the organ and the
safeguard of English justice and English freedom. [Cheers.]

THE BAR 103

There is another aspect of our meeting to-night — a domestic
rather than a public aspect — upon which you will allow me
for a moment, and, in conclusion, to deal. This is, as Sir
Edward Clarke said, in many respects a unique gathering ;
and while I am more touched and grateful than I can find any
words to express, for your fraternal hospitality, I am not vain
enough to interpret it merely as a personal tribute to myself.
I think it has a much wider significance. As the Attorney-
General said, our life by the very necessities of our profession
is spent in constant and unceasing conflict. We breathe every
day an atmosphere of eager, strenuous, unsparing controversy.
Now your gathering to-night is surely characteristic of the
temper and of the traditions of the English Bar. Here we
are sitting round these tables in friendship and in brotherhood,
united in doing an honour to a member of our common pro-
fession to whom fortune has been kind. Why is that ? The
reason, to those of us who know the real spirit of the Bar, is
plain ; and it is this. The arduous struggle, the blows given
and received, the exultation of victory, the sting of defeat,
which are our daily experience, far from breeding division
and ill-will, only bind us more closely together by the ties of a
comradeship for which you would look in vain to any other
arena of the ambitions and the rivalries of men. [Cheers.]
Gentlemen, I thank you with all my heart for one of the greatest
honours of my life. [Loud cheers.]

VISCOUNT MILNER

SWEATED INDUSTRIES

[Speech at the Opening of the Sweated Industries Exhibition
at Oxford, Dec. 6, 1907,]

Ladies and Gentlemen : — ^This exhibition is one of a series
which are being held in different parts of the country with the
object of directing attention, or rather of keeping it directed, to
the conditions under which a number of articles, many of them
articles of primary necessity, are at present being produced,
and with the object also of improving the lot of the people
engaged in the production of those articles. Now this matter
is one of great national importance, because the sweated
workers are numbered by hundreds of thousands, and because
their poverty and the resulting evils affect many beside them-
selves, and exercise a depressing influence on large classes of
the community.

What do we mean by sweating ? I will give you a defini-
tion laid down by a Parliamentary Committee which made a
most exhaustive inquiry into the subject : " Unduly low
rates of wages, excessive hours of work, and insanitary con-
ditions of the workplaces." You may say that this is a state
of things against which our instincts of humanity and charity
revolt. And that is perfectly true, but I do not propose to
approach the question from that point of view to-day. I want
to approach it from the economic and political standpoint. But
when I say political, I do not mean it in any party sense.
This is not a party question ; may it never become one.
[Applause.] The organizers of this exhibition have done what
lay in their power to prevent the blighting and corrosive in-
fluence of party from being extended to it. The fact that the
position which I occupy at this moment will be occupied to-
morrow by the wife of a distinguished member of the present

104

The Viscoi^nt Mii.ner, P.C.

SWEATED INDUSTRIES I05

Government (Mrs. Herbert Gladstone), and on Saturday by a
leading member of the Labour Party (Mr. G. N. Barnes, M.P.),
shows that this is a cause in which people of all parties can
co-operate. The more we deal with sweating on these lines,
the more we deal with it on its merits or demerits without
ulterior motive, the more likely we shall be to make a begin-
ning in the removal of those evils against which our crusade
is directed.

My view is, that the sweating system impoverishes and
weakens the whole community, because it saps the stamina
and diminishes the productive power of thousands of workers,
and these in their turn drag others down with them. " Unduly
low rates of wages, excessive hours of labour, insanitary con-
dition of workplaces," — ^what does all that mean ? It means
an industry essentially rotten and unsound. To say that
the labourer is worthy of his hire is not only the expression of
a natural instinct of justice, but it embodies an economic truth.
One does not need to be a Socialist — ^not, at least, a Socialist
in the sense in which the word is ordinarily used, as designating
a man who desires that all instruments of production should
become common property — one does not need to be a Socialist
in that sense, in order to realize that an industry which does
not provide those engaged in it with sufficient to keep them in
health is essentially unsound. Used-up capital must be
replaced, and of all forms of capital the most fundamental and
indispensable is the human energy necessarily consumed in
the work of production. A sweated industry does not provide
for the replacing of that kind of capital. It squanders its
human material. It consumes more energy in the work it
exacts than the remuneration it gives is capable of replacing.
The workers in sweated industries are not able to live on their
wages. As it is, they live miserably, grow old too soon, and
bring up sickly children. But they would not live at all, were
it not for the fact that their inadequate wages are supplemented,
directly, in many cases, by out-relief, and indirectly by numer-
ous forms of charity. In one way or another the community
has to make good the inefficiency that sweating produces.
In one way or another the community ultimately pays, and it is
my firm belief that it pays far more in the long run under the
present system than if all workers were self-supporting. [Hear,
hear.] If a true account could be kept, it would be foimd that
anything which the community gains by the cheapness of
articles produced under the sweating system is more than out-

I06 VISCOUNT MILKER

weighed by the indirect loss involved in the inevitable sub-
sidizing of a sweated industry. That would be found to be the
result, even if no account were taken of the greatest loss of all,
the loss arising from the inefficiency of the sweated workers
and of their children, for sweating is calculated to perpetuate
inefficiency and degeneration.

The question is : Can anything be done ? Of the three
related evils — unduly low rates of wages, excessive hours of
labour, and insanitary condition of work-places — it is evident
that the first applies equally to sweated workers in factories
and at home, but the two others are to some extent guarded
against, in factories, by existing legislation. This is the reason
why some people would like to see all work done for wages
transferred to factories. Broadly speaking, I sympathize with
that view. But if it were imiversally carried out at the present
moment, it would inflict an enormous amount of suffering and
injustice on those who add to their incomes by home work.
Hence the problem is twofold. First, can we extend to workers
in their own homes that degree of protection, in respect of hours
and sanitary conditions, which the law already gives to workers
in factories ? And secondly, can we do anything to obtain for
sweated workers, whether in homes or factories, rates of re-
muneration less palpably inadequate ? Now it certainly seems
impossible to limit the hours of workers, especially adult workers,
in their own homes. More can be done to ensure sanitary con-
ditions of work. Much has been done already, so far as the
structural condition of dwellings is concerned. But I am
afraid that the measures necessary to introduce what may be
called the factory standard of sanitariness into every room,
where work is being done for wages, would involve an amount
of inspection and interference with the domestic lives of
hundreds of thousands of people which might create such un-
popularity as to defeat its own object. I do not say that
nothing more should be attempted in that direction ; quite
the reverse. But I say that nothing which can be attempted
in that direction really goes to the root of the evil, which is the
inefficiency of the wage. How can you possibly make it
healthy for a woman, living in a single room, perhaps with
children, but even without, to work twelve or fourteen hours
a day for seven or eight shillings a week, and at the same time
to do her own cooking, washing, and so on ? How much food
is she likely to have ? How much time will be hers to keep
the place clean and tidy ? An increase of wages would not

SWEATED INDUSTRIES IO7

make sanitary regulations unnecessary, but it would make
their observance more possible.

An increase of wages, then, is the primary condition of
any real improvement in the lives of the sweated workers.
So the point is this, Can we do anything by law to screw up
the remuneration of the worst-paid workers to the minimum
necessary for tolerable human existence ? I know that many
people think it impossible, but my answer is that the fixing
of a limit below which wages shall not fall is already not the
exception but the rule in this country. That may seem a rather
startling statement, but I believe I can prove it. Take the case
of the State, the greatest of all employers. The State does
not allow the rates of pay, even of its humblest employees, to be
decided by the scramble for employment. The State cannot
afford, nor can any great municipaUty afford, to pay wages on
which it is obviously impossible to live. There would be an
immediate outcry. Here then you have a case of vast extent
in which a downward limit of wages is already fixed by public
opinion. [Cheers.]

Take, again, any of the great staple industries of the country
— the cotton industry, the iron and steel industry, and many
others. In the case of these industries, rates of remuneration
are fixed, in innumerable instances, by agreement between the
whole body of employers in a particular trade and district on
the one hand, and the whole body of employees on the other.
The result is to exclude unregulated competition and to secure
the same wages for the same work. No doubt there is an ele-
ment— and this is a point of great importance — which enters
into the determination of wages in these organized trades, but
which does not enter in the same degree into the determination
of the salaries paid by the State. That element is the con-
sideration of what the employers can afford to pay. This
question is constantly being threshed out between them and the
workpeople, with resulting agreements. The number of such
agreements is very large, and the provisions contained in them
often regulate the rate of remimeration for various classes of
workers with the greatest minuteness. But the great object,
and the principal effect of all these agreements, is this : it is to
ensure uniformity of remuneration, the same wage for the
same work, and to protect the most necessitous and most
helpless workers from being forced to take less than the em-
ployers can afford to pay. Broadly speaking, the rate of pay
in these highly organized industries is determined by the value

I08 VISCOUNT MILNER

of the work and not by the need of the worker. [Applause.]
That makes an enormous difference.

But in sweated industries, this is not the case. Sweated
industries are the unorganized industries, those in which there
is no possibiUty of organization among the workers. Here the
individual worker, without resources and without backing, is
left, in the struggle of unregulated competition, to take what-
ever he can get, regardless of what others may be getting for
the same work and of the value of the work itself. Hence the
extraordinary inequality of payment for the same kind of work
and the generally low average of payment, which are the dis-
tinguishing features of all sweated industries.

Now, if you have followed this rather dry argument, I shall
probably have your concurrence when I say that the proposal
that the State should intervene to secure, not an all-round
minimum wage, but the same wages for the same work, and
nothing less than the standard rate of his particular work for
every worker, is not a proposition that the State should do
something new, or exceptional, or impracticable. It is a pro-
posal that the State should do for the weakest and most help-
less trades what the strongly organized trades already do for
themselves. I cannot see that there is anything unreasonable,
much less revolutionary or subversive, in that suggestion.
[Cheers.]

Many people look askance, and justly look askance, at the
interference of the State in anything so complicated and
technical as a schedule of wages for any particular industry.
But the point to bear in mind is this, that the wages, which
under this proposal would be f orceable by law, would be wages
that had been fixed for a particular industry in a particular
district by persons intimately cognisant with all the circum-
stances ; and, more than that, by persons having the deepest
common interest to avoid anything which could injure the
industry. The rates of remuneration so arrived at would be
based on the consideration of what the employers could afford
to pay and yet retain such a reasonable rate of profit as would
lead to their remaining in the industry. Such a regulation of
wages would be as great a protection to the best employers
against the cut-throat competition of unscrupulous rivals as it
would be to the workers against being compelled to sell their
labour for less than its value. There is plenty of evidence that
the regulation of wages would be welcomed by many employers.
And as for the fear sometimes expressed, that it would injure

SWEATED INDUSTRIES lOQ

the weakest and least efficient workers, because, with increased
wages, it would no longer be profitable to employ them, it must
be borne in mind that people of that class are mainly home
workers, and as remuneration for home work must be based on
the piece, there would be no reason why they should not
continue to be employed. No doubt they would not benefit
as much as more efficient workers from increased rates, but
pro tanto they would still benefit, and that is a consideration
of great importance. But even if this were not the case, I
would still contend that it was unjustifiable to allow thousands
of people to remain in a preventable state of misery and
degradation all their lives, merely in order to keep a tenth of
their number out of the workhouse a few years longer.

I have only one word more to say. I come back to the
supreme interest of the community in the efficiency and welfare
of all its members, to say nothing of the removal of the stain
upon its honour and conscience which continued tolerance of
this evil involves. That to my mind is the greatest considera-
tion of all. That is the true reason, as it would be the sufficient
justification, for the intervention of the State. And, for my
own part, I feel no doubt that, whether by the adoption of such
a measure as we have been considering, or by some other enact-
ment, steps will before long be taken for the removal of this
national disgrace. [Applause.]

LORD ROBERT CECIL

THE FISCAL CONTROVERSY

[Speech delivered in the House of Commons on an Amend-
ment to the Address, February 19, 1909.]

Mr. Speaker : — The speech to which we have just listened was
an exceedingly interesting defence of the doctrine of free trade,
and the only criticism I am going to make of it this evening
is that it does not appear to me to have had any great relation
to the amendment before the House. On this question I stand
in a somewhat difficult position, because my opinions are of
that particular shade which excite enthusiasm from no quarter
of the House. But before I try to lay them before the House,
may I say a word or two upon what has fallen from the leader
of the Irish party in reference to the relations between Union-
ism and tariff reform ?

It is quite true that there is a very small section of tariff
reformers — no one who has followed the course of tariff-reform
literature can doubt it — who are ready to make some arrange-
ment with the Irish party, if they can, which would end in
the establishment of some form of Home Rule in return for
their support of tariff reform. I desire to say that I believe
that any such charge is absolutely unfounded if it is directed
against any hon. or right hon. friend of mine in this House.
[Cheers.]

Though I think the doctrines of tariff reform are in no way
necessarily connected with Home Rule, I do think that the
doctrine of tariff reform as expounded by the member for
Durham has a certain relation to the doctrines of Socialism.
If I understand his economic theory rightly, it is that it is
part of the function of the State to direct the channels into
which the industry of the country shall flow, and speaking for
myself, I cannot believe, quite apart from any other objec-
tion, that a country governed by the constitution we enjoy can

no

LoKI> K.UBEUT CKCIL.

Lapses into hmttour.

THE FISCAL CONTROVERSY III

safely undertake any duty of that description [Ministerial
cheers.]

Let me turn to the amendment itself. It has two very
distinct parts, and they received very distinct treatment by
my right hon. friend the member for East Worcestershire. In
the first place it begins with a condemnation of the Govern-
ment. Well, if it had stopped there I should have had no
difficulty in voting for it. [Laughter.] But it goes on to
propose a certain remedy or group of remedies for unemploy-
ment, and I confess, after giving the matter the best and most
impartial consideration I can, it is really impossible for me to
support those propositions. [Hear, hear.]

Broadly speaking this amendment means, and has been
put before the House as meaning, that fiscal reform is not
perhaps a complete remedy for unemployment — indeed, it is
not that — but that it is a palliative for that disease, a serious
and important palliative ; for I am sure that none of my right
hon. and hon. friends would put before the House and country
any proposal they did not think was going to lead to a real,
sensible diminution of unemplo3anent when they are dealing
with that terrible subject. [Hear, hear.] They would, if
they did, expose themselves to the criticisms which have been
made with characteristic vigour by the President of the Board
of Trade and others, that they are using the miseries of the
people for party advantage.

But I venture to submit to my right hon. and hon. friends
that the claim they are making is a very serious one to make
on behalf of their policy. My right hon. friend the member
for East Worcestershire described it as the basis on which
to erect the superstructure which will deal as fully as possible
with social difficulties — referring, no doubt, to unemploy-
ment. Do my right hon. and hon. friends mean to go to
the country saying — We have got an important remedy for
unemployment, which we pledge ourselves to carry out as the
first constructive work of our programme, and which will not,
perhaps, give you all work, but will give you more work at
fair wages ? [Cheers.] Is that really what they are going
to say to the country ? [Renewed Opposition and Minis-
terial cheers.]

I confess that seems to me a most hazardous and danger-
ous course for the Conservative party to take. And let me
observe, how is it to be translated when it is put before the
electors of the country by the casual speaker ? [Ministerial

112 LORD ROBERT CECIL

cheers.] I am afraid it is only too certain that it is trans-
lated as a doctrine that fiscal reform means work for all — the
crude form in which the doctrine was put when those cele-
brated vans started from the Central Conservative Organiza-
tion. [Ministerial laughter.] I do appeal to my right hon.
and hon. friends that this kind of thing is not only disastrous
from a party point of view, and not only leads — just as
promises made by hon. gentlemen opposite have led — to
disaster when you come into office, but that it is really not
a proper, dignified, and high-principled way to treat the
starving multitudes of this country. [Cheers.]

I do not wish to be dogmatic on the subject, because it
is conceivable that I may be wrong, and that the policy
recommended by my right hon. friend the member for East
Worcestershire would really prove a benefit to the country.
I do not agree with the arguments which have been put forward
this evening on the subject, but I admit that it is possible I
may be wrong. But even if you think you are going to do
something of this kind, is not this a case in which you ought
to understate rather than overstate what you are able to do ?
I do earnestly ask my right hon. and hon. friends, in regard
to the course in which they have set out, whether it is too late
to call a halt on the march. What are the actual proposals
made or suggested in this amendment ? We have nothing
to do with the question of the amount of revenue you would
raise. Except in a very indirect way it does not come within
the purview of this amendment. If I understand rightly
the earher part of this amendment, it recommends a policy
of retaliation.

Now, I am not prepared to say that in no circumstances
and under no conditions would I support a proper measure
of pressure — if necessary, of fiscal pressure — upon a foreign
country as part of a means of negotiation to induce them to
give us better terms in their markets. That is a policy
which seems to me in principle to be unobjectionable and
even desirable if it is successful, and I think it is rash, in
the presence of the opinions of so many and such sober-
minded foreign Ministers as have adopted that opinion, to
say that certainly and without doubt it is an impossible
policy to carry out.

A word with regard to what is called dumping. The word
" dumping " is used, as most terms in this fiscal controversy
are used, in different senses. Sometimes it simply means the

THE FISCAL CONTROVERSY II3

importation into this country of goods sold cheaper than we
can produce them ourselves. That is not the way I am using
it. It has been suggested, and it is possible, that you might
be face to face with a conspiracy of foreign producers whose
object would be to capture the British market. You might
have — I do not think those who have studied the developments
of modern industry, particularly in the United States and
Germany, will doubt that it is at any rate theoretically pos-
sible to have — a great conspiracy of one particular trade, who
would undersell the trade of England, destroy it, capture
the market, and establish here the monopoly which they
have already established in their own country.

I say boldly there is no Government in the world, not
the present Government even, who, being faced with such an
attempt as that, would be content to sit quiet and do nothing.
I am convinced that on an occasion of that kind any Govern-
ment would take whatever steps were open to it, even resort-
ing, if necessary, to absolute prohibition of the introduction
of the foreign imports, to prevent a grave disaster of that
kind. But I am bound to add that so far as I have been able
to study the evidence, no such attempt has ever yet taken
place. Those are the two points on which I am able to take
somewhat the same view as my hon. and right hon. friends.
When it comes to the rest, where I am afraid I do differ from
them, I think it is only right that I should say so.

Take, for instance, the question of preference. I cannot
myself — I have done my best to do it — see how that policy
is practically going to be carried out. I am not dealing so much
with the economic side ; I do not pretend to be a profound econo-
mist ; I prefer to look at the matter as far as I can from the
point of view of the ordinary man in the street ; and I cannot
see how you could carry out that policy without grave danger
of Imperial friction. I understand there is to be a kind of
bargain, for instance, between us and Canada by which we
are to give a preference on certain things coming from Canada,
and they are to give a preference on other goods coming from
this country. The moment you get yourself into that kind
of bargaining atmosphere you must have rivals who will
bargain also. The United States would immediately enter
the field of commercial rivalry.

From the point of view of commercial intercourse I do not
think it will be disputed that the United States have even now
more advantage than we can hope to have, in view of the

II— 8

114 LORD ROBERT CECIL

relative geographical positions. Therefore should we not be
driven to say to Canada : You must not make your bargain
with the United States. We agree that it is rather more ad-
vantageous to you, but we ask you not to do it, because you
are members of the Empire, and we appeal to Imperial senti-
ment and ask you to refrain. In other words, we shall say
to Canada : We offer you certain advantages, weighted always
by the Imperial sentiment ; and we ask you to reject on that
ground greater advantages offered by the United States. It
seems to me that any attempt at bargaining of that kind would
lead inevitably to the view in Canada that we were trying
to take an unfair advantage of their Imperial sentiment and
feeling.

I do not dwell further on that ; I do not underrate the
importance of our trade with our Colonies ; but from the point
of view of unemployment I do not think that is the main point
that has been pressed by my right hon. friend or those who
have spoken for him.

I come to the other prop6sals, and I will ask what exactly
is meant by the other proposals ? They are said to be pro-
posals which promote the growth and stability of our trade.
I must ask quite plainly, Does that or does that not mean
protection ? [Ministerial cheers.] What is meant actually
by promoting the growth and stability of our industries by
means of a tariff ? What does it mean if it does not mean
protection ? I think the House will have noticed, not for
the first time, the references made by the member for East
Worcestershire to the case of Germany. There can be no
doubt that Germany enjoys a system of protection, and what
is the use of making references to Germany unless you mean
to recommend Germany as a model ? His argument was that
it would give confidence to manufacturers, that it would give
them security. What does that mean unless you are going
to secure, more or less, the home market to the manufac-
turer by means of a tariff ; and if that does not mean
protection, what does ? [Ministerial cheers.] I was glad to
see he attached such great importance to the element of
security, because I have seen certain wild calculations put
forward in the public Press that a Unionist Government,
enjoying a very small majority in some future Parliament,
and many of that majority not being wholehearted sup-
porters of the policy of fiscal reform, would nevertheless be
justified in carrying such a policy into execution. I think,

THE FISCAL CONTROVERSY II5

after the emphasis laid by my right hon. friend on the
element of security, he would be the last person in the
world to support any such poUcy. [Laughter.] There is the
reference to the sacrifice of agriculture.

What does it mean if you say to agriculturists throughout
the country, speaking in this House, " Agriculture has been
sacrificed to free trade," unless it means that you are going
to do something by the imposition of tariffs to rescue agricul-
ture from that unfortunate position ? I ask this question
because it really is essential, particularly in view of certain
recent events, that I should know what poUcy it is that I am
asked to subscribe to. [Ministerial cheers.] A good deal has
been said in criticism of the leader of the Opposition with
regard to what is called the vagueness of his policy. I have
never joined in that criticism, and I never will. I think it
is perfectly right and legitimate and proper, if he will not
think me impertinent for saying so, that a statesman who
may be called upon to be responsible for the finances of this
country at any minute should not tie himself in Opposition
by a specific statement of exactly what he is going to do when
he comes back into power. To ask him to lay down his future
proposals in specific terms, so much per cent, or whatever it
may be on each particular kind of goods, would be to ask
him to do what is unreasonable and very unwise. At the
same time, that does not relieve me, holding the somewhat
old-fashioned and unpopular view that a member of Parlia-
ment is bound to make up his own mind on public questions,
from the necessity of making some estimate of what poUcy
is likely to be pursued when a Unionist Government is returned
to power.

I do not doubt that there are many of my right hon. friends
who are opposed to what is called a Protectionist poHcy. But
we must remember that a Ministry in this country is not a
despotic body. I do not know whether the Prime Minister
of the present Government always does exactly what he wishes.
I am not quite sure that the policy of the present Government
is always exactly that which approves itself to the Prime
Minister. The fact is, he has to make some kind of compro-
mise between his view and the views which are held by the
great body of his supporters. Of course in matters of principle
of first-rate importance he would rather resign than carry out
the views which his supporters desire him to carry out. But,
broadly speaking, when you are trying to estimate what poHcy

Il6 LORD ROBERT CECIL

will be pursued, you must take account very largely, not only
of the opinions of the actual leader or even leaders of a party,
but also of what will be the probable complexion of the party
which may be returned to support them. I do not think
there can be any doubt in the mind of any one who has been
brought in contact with the tariff-reform movement, as it is
understood in the country, that it is very largely, I would say
overwhelmingly protectionist in its character. I am not going
to attempt an elaborate discussion of the economic evils
of protection. I Ustened with the greatest possible interest
to the defence of it put forward by the member for Durham,
and undoubtedly, as a mere matter of academic defence,
there is much to be said for a pure protectionist policy. On
the whole, however, I am opposed to it even on economic
grounds.

But really that kind of academic discussion does not
appear to me to be of any real value in forming an estimate of
the value of protection as a policy. You are not going to have
an impartial, despotic, almost omniscient chief, who will
be able to say : There is a struggling industry — an industry
which, if given a chance, would have an opportunity of estab-
Ushing itself in this country — we will put on a duty to help
that particular industry, and take it off later to help another
industry. That is not the way practically in which things can
be done by any Government, least of all by a democratic Govern-
ment. The people who will get assistance under a Protectionist
system are the people who command the largest number of
votes. [Ministerial cheers.] We have seen how it operates
in other departments of the Government. It was not the
sweated industries which got protection last Session, it was the
miners, and the miners got protection because they had a large
number of votes. I do not make any attack on anybody in
connection with that. It is one of the evils of democracy that you
are more or less at the mercy of any organized band of voters
who may imperil the Ministry of the day. Therefore, with
all respect to my hon. friend, I put aside his defence of pro-
tection as not really in the realm of practical politics. I must
say that when I conceive of protection as it is, and must be
in every democratic country, it seems to me to lead to a
degradation of political life which it is not easy or pleasant
to contemplate. [Ministerial cheers.] I do not think that
recent history has done anything to reassure me in that respect.

My hon. friend, with great courage and great honesty.

THE FISCAL CONTROVERSY II7

said that he was a Confederate. I respect him for that state-
ment, and if all the members of that strange body had a like
courage and candour, I do not know that we should have any-
thing seriously to object to in their existence, although some
of their methods seem a little farcical. [Laughter.] I do
not desire to exaggerate the importance of the existence of
the Confederates ; I do not think that body has the kind of
spirit which is bred when you get to this kind of tariff-reform
or protectionist policy. I am sure my horn friend will not
mind my saying that they are not, so far as I know at least,
a very important body. [Ministerial laughter.] I am sure
my hon. friend will acquit me of any disrespect — and I pro-
foundly regret to differ from him on any point, indeed it makes
me distrust my own opinion when I find it differs from his —
but speaking generally, and as far as one knows from any
report, I do not think they are of anything like the same
importance as my hon. friend supposes.

But what is important, and what I desire seriously to
direct the attention of the House to, is this, that this move-
ment has been absolutely unrebuked, not indeed by every
right hon. gentleman on the front bench, but by a very large
number of those who hold important positions ; and undoubt-
edly when the movement was at its very height speeches were
delivered which, if they did not condone the action of the
Confederates, were taken in that direction and were so under-
stood by those who sympathize with their policy. [Ministerial
cheers.]

Now, what is the object of this movement, condoned to
some extent by some of my right hon. friends ? The object
is to compel every member of Parliament standing on the
Unionist side to accept a pledge. I make no complaint of
that in itself, but what it really means is this. It means that
any one who wishes to stand as a Unionist candidate shall
pledge himself to accept any policy, whatever it may be, which
is produced by the then leader of the party. I say that is an
absolutely novel departure in English public life. [Cheers.]
Nothing in the least like it has ever really taken place before,
and, for my part, I will never give any such pledge as that.
[Ministerial cheers.] I confess that the movement fills me with
great uneasiness in connection with this tariff-reform policy.
I have alluded to the trust movement which exists not only
in America and Germany, but in this country also — the move-
ment towards the great aggregation of capital, enormous

Il8 LORD ROBERT CECIL

industries co-ordinated and aligned which will exercise, and do
exercise in America and in Germany at this minute, gigantic
powers of every kind, social and political. Are we or are
we not faced by portents of what may happen under a dif-
ferent condition of affairs ? Is this attempt on the ancient
and traditional independence of members of Parliament
merely to become a commonplace of political life, if that
trust movement establishes itself in this country ? I do not
say that trusts are entirely due to tariffs — I do not say that
for a moment — but I do say that they are assisted by tariffs,
and that tariffs will make them, and very speedily make them,
powerful in this country.

I do say very earnestly to my hon. and right hon.
friends. By all means go on with your pohcy if you think it
right and proper to do so in the interests of the country, but
in Heaven's name keep it clear of these excrescences and
additions which are already making it the instrument of
fearful innovations in English political life. [Loud Ministerial
cheers.]

WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN

AMERICA'S MISSION

[Speech delivered at the Washington Day banquet given by
the Virginia Democratic Association at Washington, D.C.,
February 22, 1899.]

Mr. Chairman : — ^When the advocates of imperialism find
it impossible to reconcile a colonial policy with the principles
of our government or with the canons of morality ; when
they are unable to defend it upon the ground of religious
duty or pecuniary profit, they fall back in helpless despair
upon the assertion that it is destiny. " Suppose it does
violate the constitution," they say ; " suppose it does break
all the commandments ; suppose it does entail upon the
nation an incalculable expenditure of blood and money : it
is destiny and we must submit."

The people have not voted for imperialism ; no national
convention has declared for it ; no Congress has passed upon
it. To whom, then, has the future been revealed ? Whence
this voice of authority ? We can all prophesy, but our pro-
phecies are merely guesses, coloured by our hopes and our
surroundings. Man's opinion of what is to be is half wish
and half environment. Avarice paints destiny with a dollar
mark before it, militarism equips it with a sword.

He is the best prophet who, recognizing the omnipotence
of truth, comprehends most clearly the great forces which
are working out the progress, not of one party, not of one
nation, but of the human race.

History is replete with predictions which once wore the
hue of destiny, but which failed of fulfilment because those
who uttered them saw too small an arc of the circle of events.
When Pharaoh pursued the fleeing Israelites to the edge
of the Red Sea he was confident that their bondage would be

119

120 WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN

renewed, and that they would again make bricks without straw,
but destiny was not revealed until Moses and his followers
reached the farther shore dry-shod and the waves rolled over
the horses and chariots of the Egyptians. When Belshazzar,
on the last night of his reign, led his thousand lords into the
Babylonian banquet-hall and sat down to a table glittering
with vessels of silver and gold, he felt sure of his kingdom for
many years to come, but destiny was not revealed until the
hand wrote upon the wall those awe-inspiring words, " Mene,
Mene, Tekel Upharsin." When Abderrahman swept north-
ward with his conquering host, his imagination saw the Crescent
triumphant throughout the world, but destiny was not revealed
until Charles M artel raised the Cross above the battle-field
of Tours and saved Europe from the sword of Mohamme-
danism. When Napoleon emerged victorious from Marengo,
from Ulm, and from Austerlitz, he thought himself the child of
destiny, but destiny was not revealed until Bliicher's forces
joined the army of Wellington and the vanquished Corsican
began his melancholy march toward St. Helena. When the
redcoats of George the Third routed the New Englanders at
Lexington and Bunker Hill there arose before the British
sovereign visions of colonies taxed without representation
and drained of their wealth by foreign-made laws, but destiny
was not revealed until the surrender of Cornwallis completed
the work begun at Independence Hall and ushered into exist-
ence a government deriving its just powers from the consent
of the governed.

We have reached another crisis. The ancient doctrine of
imperialism, banished from our land more than a century
ago, has recrossed the Atlantic and challenged democracy
to mortal combat upon American soil.

Whether the Spanish war shall be known in history as a
war for liberty or as a war of conquest ; whether the prin-
ciples of self-government shall be strengthened or aban-
doned ; whether this nation shall remain a homogeneous re-
public or become a heterogeneous empire — these questions
must be answered by the American people : when they speak,
and not until then, will destiny be revealed.

Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice ;
it is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.

No one can see the end from the beginning, but every one
can make his course an honourable one from beginning to
end, by adhering to the right under all circumstances. Whether

AMERICANS MISSION 121

a man steals much or little may depend upon his opportunities,
but whether he steals at all depends upon his own volition.

So with our nation. If we embark upon a career of con-
quest no one can tell how many islands we may be able to
seize or how many races we may be able to subjugate ; neither
can any one estimate the cost, immediate and remote, to the
nation's purse and to the nation's character : but whether we
shall enter upon such a career is a question which the people
have a right to decide for themselves.

Unexpected events may retard or advance the nation's
growth, but the nation's purpose determines its destiny.

What is the nation's purpose ?

The main purpose of the founders of our government was
to secure for themselves and for posterity the blessings of
liberty, and that purpose has been faithfully followed up
to this time. Our statesmen have opposed each other upon
economic questions, but they have agreed in defending self-
government as the controlling national idea. They have
quarrelled among themselves over tariff and finance, but they
have been united in their opposition to an entangling aUiance
with any European power.

Under this policy our nation has grown in numbers and
in strength. Under this policy its beneficent influence has
encircled the globe. Under this policy the taxpayers have
been spared the burden and the menace of a large military
establishment and the young men have been taught the arts
of peace rather than the science of war. On each returning
Fourth of July our people have met to celebrate the signing
of the Declaration of Independence ; their hearts have re-
newed their vows to free institutions and their voices have
praised the forefathers whose wisdom and courage and
patriotism made it possible for each succeeding generation
to repeat the words : —

"My country, 'tis of thee.
Sweet land of Liberty,
Of thee I sing."

This sentiment was well-nigh universal until a year ago.
It was to this sentiment that the Cuban insurgents appealed ;
it was this sentiment that impelled our people to enter into
the war with Spain. Have the people so changed within a
few short months that they are now willing to apologize for
the War of the Revolution and force upon the Filipinos the

122 WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN

same system of government against which the colonists pro-
tested with fire and sword ?

The hour of temptation has come, but temptations do not
destroy, they merely test the strength of individuals and
nations ; they are stumbling-blocks or stepping-stones ; they
lead to infamy or fame, according to the use made of
them.

Benedict Arnold and Ethan Allen served together in the
Continental army, and both were offered British gold. Arnold
yielded to the temptation and made his name a synonym
for treason ; Allen resisted and lives in the affections of his
countrymen.

Our nation is tempted to depart from its " standard of
morality " and adopt a policy of " criminal aggression."
But will it yield ?

If I mistake not the sentiment of the American people
they will spurn the bribe of imperialism, and, by resisting
temptation, win such a victory as has not been won since
the battle of Yorktown. Let it be written of the United
States : Behold a republic that took up arms to aid a neigh-
bouring people, struggling to be free ; a republic that, in
the progress of the war, helped distant races whose wrongs
were not in contemplation when hostilities began ; a republic
that, when peace was restored, turned a deaf ear to the clamorous
voice of greed and to those borne down by the weight of a foreign
yoke spoke the welcome words, Stand up ; be free — let this
be the record made on history's page, and the silent example
of this republic, true to its principles in the hour of trial, will
do more to extend the area of self-government and civilization
than could be done by all the wars of conquest that we could
wage in a generation.

The forcible annexation of the Philippine Islands is not
necessary to make the United States a world-power. For
over ten decades our nation has been a world-power. Dur-
ing its brief existence it has exerted upon the human race
an influence more potent for good than all the other nations
of the earth combined, and it has exerted that influence
without the use of sword or Gatling gun. Mexico and the
republics of Central and South America testify to the benign
influence of our institutions, while Europe and Asia give
evidence of the working of the leaven of self-government.
In the growth of democracy we observe the triumphant
march of an idea— an idea that would be weighted down

AMERICA'S MISSION I23

rather than aided by the armour and weapons proffered by
imperialism.

Much has been said of late about Anglo-Saxon civiliza-
tion. Far be it from me to detract from the service rendered
to the world by the sturdy race whose language we speak.
The union of the Angle and the Saxon formed a new and
valuable type, but the process of race evolution was not
completed when the Angle and the Saxon met. A still later
type has appeared, which is superior to any which has existed
heretofore ; and with this new type will come a higher civiliza-
tion than any which has preceded it. Great has been the
Greek, the Latin, the Slav, the Celt, the Teuton, and the Anglo-
Saxon, but greater than any of these is the American, in whom
are blended the virtues of them all.

Civil and religious liberty, imiversal education, and the
right to participate, directly or through representatives
chosen by himself, in all the affairs of government — these
give to the American citizen an opportunity and an inspira-
tion which can be found nowhere else.

Standing upon the vantage-ground already gained, the
American people can aspire to a grander destiny than has
opened before any other race.

Anglo-Saxon civilization has taught the individual to
protect his own rights ; American civilization will teach him
to respect the rights of others.

Anglo-Saxon civilization has taught the individual to take
care of himself ; American civilization, proclaiming the
equality of all before the law, will teach him that his own
highest good requires the observance of the commandment :
" Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself."

Anglo-Saxon civilization has, by force of arms, applied
the art of -government to other races for the benefit of Anglo-
Saxons ; American civilization will, by the influence of ex-
ample, excite in other races a desire for self-government and a
determination to secure it.

Anglo-Saxon civilization has carried its flag to every clime
and defended it with forts and garrisons : American civiliza-
tion will imprint its flag upon the hearts of all who long for
freedom.

To American civilization, all hail !

"Time's noblest offspring is the last.'*

JOSEPH HODGES CHOATE

THE PILGRIM MOTHERS

[Speech delivered at the Anniversary Banquet of the New
England Society, December 22, 1880.]

Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen : —

" As unto the bow the cord is,
So unto the man is woman :
Though she bends him, she obeys him ;
Though she draws him, yet she follows ;
Useless each without the other."

I have no doubt, Mr. President, that it is in obedience to this
most truthful sentiment of our New England poet that to-night
your committee of arrangements have added the cord to the
bow, so that, for the first time in the history of the society,
there might be a complete celebration of the landing of the
Pilgrims. [Cheers.] I am not surprised, Mr. President, that you
deem this subject so delicate a one for your rude hands to
touch, or for your inexperienced lips to salute [laughter],
that you have left it to one who claims to be by nature and
experience more gifted with knowledge of the subject.
[Laughter.] And yet even I tremble at the task which you
have assigned me. To speak for so many women at once is
a rare and a difficult opportunity. It is given to most of the
sons of the Pilgrims once only in a lifetime to speak for one
woman. [Laughter.] Sometimes, in rare cases of felicity,
they are allowed to do so a second time ; and if, by the gift
of divine providence, it reaches to a third and a fourth, it is
what very few of us can hope for. [Laughter and cheers.] And
yet, sir, they will point out to you in one village of Connecticut
a graveyard wherein repose the bones of a true son of the
Pilgrims, surrounded by five wives who in succession had
shared his lot, and he rests in the centre, in serene felicity,
with the epitaph upon the marble headstone that entombs
him inscribed, " Our Husband." [Laughter.] Now, whose

124

THE PILGRIM MOTHERS I25

husband, sir, shall he be in the world to come, if it shall then
turn out that Joseph Smith was not a true prophet ? [Laughter.]

I really don't know, at this late hour, Mr. Chairman, how
you expect me to treat this difficult and tender subject. I
suppose, to begin with, I may take it up historically. There
is no part of the sacred writings that has so much impressed
me as the history of the first creation of woman. I believe
that no invasion of science has shaken the truth of that re-
markable record — how Adam slept, and his best rib was
taken from his side and transformed into the first woman.
Thus, sir, she became the " side-bone " of man ! — the sweetest
morsel in his whole organism ! [Laughter.] Why, sir, there
is nothing within the pages of sacred writ that is dearer to
me than that story. I believe in it as firmly as I do in that
of Daniel in the den of lions, or Jonah in the whale's belly,
or any other of those remarkable tales. [Laughter.] There
is something in our very organism, sir, that confirms its truth ;
for if any one of you will lay his hand upon his heart, where
the space between the ribs is widest, you feel there a vacuum,
which nature abhors, and which nothing can ever replace
until the dear creature that was taken from that spot is re-
stored to it. [Cheers and laughter.] Now, Mr. Chairman,
you, as a bachelor, may doubt the truth of that ; but I ask
you, just once, here and now, to try it. [Laughter.] Follow
my example, sir, and place your hand just there, and see if
you do not feel a sense of " gone-ness " which nothing that
you have ever yet experienced has been able to satisfy. [Cheers
and laughter.]

I might next take up the subject etymologically, and try
and explain how woman ever acquired that remarkable name.
But that has been done before me by a poet with whose stanzas
you are not familiar, but whom you will recognize as deeply
versed in this subject, for he says : —

"When Eve brought woe to all mankind,
Old Adam called her woe-man,
But when she woo'd vnth. love so kind.
He then pronounced her woman.

*' But now, with folly and with pride,
Their husbands' pockets trimming,
The ladies are so full of wliims
That people call them w(h)imen."

[Laughter and cheers.]

Mr. Chairman, I believe you said I should say something
about the Pilgrim mothers. Well, sir, it is rather late in

126 JOSEPH HODGES CHOATE

the evening to venture upon that historic subject. But, for
one, I pity them. The occupants of the galleries will bear
me witness that even these modern Pilgrims — these Pilgrims
with all the modern improvements — ^how hard it is to put
up with their weaknesses, their follies, their tyrannies, their
oppressions, their desire of dominion and rule. [Laughter.]
But when you go back to the stern horrors of the Pilgrim
rule, when you contemplate the rugged character of the
Pilgrim fathers, why, you give credence to what a witty
woman of Boston said — she had heard enough of the glories
and virtues and sufferings of the Pilgrim fathers ; for her
part, she had a world of sympathy for the Pilgrim mothers,
because they not only endured aU that the Pilgrim fathers
had done, but they also had to endure the Pilgrim fathers
to boot. [Laughter.] Well, sir, they were afraid of wo-
man. They thought she was almost too refined a luxury
for them to indulge in. Miles Standish spoke for them all,
and I am sure that General Sherman, who so much resembles
Miles Standish, not only in his military renown but in his
rugged exterior and in his warm and tender heart, will echo
his words when he says : —

" I can march up to a fortress, and summon the place to surrender.
But march up to a woman with such a proposal, I dare not.
I am not afraid of bullets, nor shot from the mouth of a cannon.
But of a thundering ' No ! ' point-blank from the mouth of a woman.
That I confess I'm afraid of, nor am I ashamed to confess it."

Mr. President, did you ever see a more self-satisfied or
contented set of men than these that are gathered at these
tables this evening ? I never come to the Pilgrim dinner
and see these men, who have achieved in the various depart-
ments of life such definite and satisfactory success, but that
I look back twenty or thirty or forty years, and see the lantern-
jawed boy who started out from the banks of the Connecticut,
or some more remote river of New England, with five dollars
in his pocket, and his father's blessing on his head, and his
mother's Bible in his carpet-bag, to seek those fortunes which
now they have so gloriously made. And there is one woman
whom each of these, through all his progress and to the last
expiring hour of his life, bears in tender remembrance. It is
the mother who sent him forth with her blessing. A mother
is a mother still — the holiest thing alive ; and if I could dis-
miss you with a benediction to-night it would be by invoking
upon the heads of you all the blessing of the mothers that we
left behind us. [Prolonged cheers.]

JOSEPH COWEN

THE BRITISH EMPIRE

[Speech delivered at the Mayoral Banquet, in the Assembly
Rooms, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, June 26, 1897 (Diamond Jubilee
Celebrations). This was the last time Joseph Cowen spoke in
pubUc]

Mr. Mayor and Gentlemen : — I have to ask you to drink to
the prosperity of the British Empire. There have been em-
pires which have covered a larger area, and some which have
possessed a greater population, but there have been none at
once so dissimilar and yet so correlative, so scattered and yet
so cohesive. There have been races who have rivalled us in
refinement, but none in practical ability. Greece, where the
human intellect flowered with exceptional luxuriance, excelled
us in the arts of an elegant imagination. But she was more
ingenious than profound, more brilliant than solid. Rome
was great in war, in government, and in law. She intersected
Europe with public works, and her eagled legions extorted
universal obedience. But her wealth was the plunder of the
world ; ours is the product of industry. The city states of
ancient, and the free towns of mediaeval times aimed more at
commerce than conquest. Wherever a ship could sail or a
colony be planted their adventurous citizens penetrated, but
they sought trade more than territory. Phoenicia turned all
the lines of current traffic towards herself. But she preferred
the pleasant abodes of Lebanon and the sunlit quays of Tyre
to organizing an empire. Arms had no part in her growth,
and war no share in her greatness. Carthage, which, for a
time, counterbalanced Rome, robbed the ocean of half its
mysteries, and more than half its terrors, but she did little
to melt down racial antipathies. Venice in the zenith of her
strength gathered a halo round her name which the rolling
ages cannot dissipate. Holland, by her alliance of com-

127

128 JOSEPH COWEN

merce and liberty, sailed from obscurity into the world's
regard. Spain and Portugal drew untold treasure within
their coffers, but its possession did not conduce to national
virtue. None of these States, with their diverse qualities
and defects, had imperial aspirations, except Spain. Most
of them were only magnified municipalities. But the volume
and value of their trade, although large for the time, was
meagre when compared with ours. British wealth is un-
paralleled in commercial history. Add Carthage to Tyre,
or Amsterdam to Venice, and you would not make another
London. All things precious and useful, amusing and in-
toxicating, are sucked into its markets.

But mercantile success, although it implies the possession
of self-reliance and self-control, of caution and daring, of
discipline and enterprise, if unaccompanied by more elevated
impulses, will not sustain a State. Wealth is essential. It must
not, however, be wealth simply, but wealth plus patriotism.
It is by the mingling of the material with the ideal, the aspiring
with the utilitarian, that the British people have secured their
influence and elasticity. These qualities have enabled them to
dot the surface of the globe with their possessions, to rule with
success old nations of every race and creed, and civilize new
lands of every kind and clime. We owe much to our geo-
graphical position, which is well placed for both traffic and
defence ; something to our soil, which is fertile without being
feculent ; something to our climate, which is bracing, and
yet not rigorous ; something to our minerals and to the dex-
terous requisitioning of scientific and mechanical discoveries ;
and much to impregnating our traditional prudence with the
spirit of advance, but most to our lineage and training. These
have secured us freedom without turbulence, enabled us to
escape from revolutionary disorders and reactionary repressions,
and prompted us to extend to fresh populations the benefits of
ancient order. It was the boast of the Athenians that they
sprang from the earth they inhabited, and had never been
contaminated by the admixture of ignoble blood. We cannot
claim such Attic purity. The British are a composite and
roving race. They derive their origin from distinctive nation-
alities. Movement is one of the factors of their progress, and
they cannot be tied down to any territorial allocation. The
Teutons, with their muscular activity and strenuous industry,
supplied the basis of the national character, and fostered in
us habits of local independence and self-government. The

THE BRITISH EMPIRE 129

Norsemen, who came here as freebooters, and remained as
settlers, are the core and sinew of our maritime population
and the progenitors of our Blakes and Nelsons. The Celts,
with their lively imaginations and their sympathetic natures,
have imparted a strain of geniality to our hereditary gravity.
This felicitous combination of contrarieties has endowed the
British race with that subtle transmitting power which is
essential to the grounding of an empire out of competitive
elements. It has given us an interpenetrating force of great
range, of many modes, of myriad personalities, which wear well,
and fit us alike for law and liberty, trade and empire.

There are paradoxical patriots who tell us that the best
way to manage an empire is to start from the principle that
we have no interest in keeping it. They contend that modern
territorial and military changes have altered our relative
attitude to other powers, and modified our ancient status ;
that there is neither good to be got nor glory to be gained
by our busying ourselves about the balance of power, or by
taking a supererogatory part in continental disputes. They
would have us to cease to be members of the European Areo-
pagus, and become as insular in our sympathies as in our
situation. Such selfish exclusiveness would be inconsistent
with our immemorial polity. Once we stood forth as libera-
tors, and always threw our influence, and often our sword,
into the scale of people struggling to be free. We encouraged
and subsidized neighbouring nations during their periods of
despondency and destitution. But we have retired from this
gratuitous protectorship, and abandoned the pretension to
restrain all the wicked, to defend all the weak, and guide all
the foolish. Our later function has been educational. By
example and advice, we have laboured to multiply the number
of constitutionally-governed countries. Partly owing to our
aid, and partly to our progress of political enhghtenment,
civilized peoples generally have, in ways which best suit them-
selves, taken their affairs into their own hands. Intervention
in the internal concerns of other States being recognized as
undesirable, and our mission as parliamentary propagandists
being fulfilled, ought we not, it is asked, to rest and be thank-
ful? Coveting no territory, and shrinking from all aggression,
can we not enjoy our leisure and let the world drift? We
cannot, unless we are prepared to sink into the silence and
inertia of a fifth-rate power and die of ennui like the bees in
Mandeville's fable. Multiplied experience proves that mercan-
11-9

130 JOSEPH COWEN

tile States are unable to compete with great continental com-
munities unless they have a broad territory, a free population,
an imperial ideal, and adequate naval and military power.
The maintenance of our commerce is involved in the mainten-
ance of our dominion. Political isolation and commercial
intercourse are incompatible. National sentiment as well as
trade follows the flag. If one goes, both go. Our Empire
is not the work of a single conqueror, but is the product of
personal, prolonged, and spontaneous effort. We have held
it through ages of adverse possession. It has plunged us
into many wars, it has often strained our resources, and it
requires forecasting and potential statesmanship to guard it
against dangers and preserve its integrity. But it is worth the
effort. We get ample material return for the service. Official
statistics prove this. Figures, however, cannot take in every-
thing. These islands could not sustain so large a population,
or find employment for so vast a capital if they stood alone.
Even if they could it would be craven to abandon the obliga-
tions of our position. There is a moral responsibility attaching
to such an inheritance, although some of it may have come as
the spoil of marauding, or the prize of profligacy. We have
it, and must hold it, not for the satisfaction of being formidable,
but for the necessity of being free. We can only do this
by continuing to display the puissant patriotism that has
won it. If a nation admits itself impotent, or announces
that under no circumstances will it resist attack or repel
insult, it will first be despised, and then trodden on by envious
rivals. The spirit of a people cannot languish without dim-
ming the lustre of its genius, and losing the force of its char-
acter. We desire peace, but are prepared for any danger
which honour and duty compel us to risk. Great work re-
quires great effort, and great effort is the essence of life. Milo
began his athletic training with carrying a calf just weaned.
By doing so every day he imperceptibly acquired sufficient
strength to carry a full-grown ox. As with a man so with a
nation. The greater the tax upon its powers, the more the
powers develop and the more easy becomes the pressure.
Remove the strain, relax the endeavour, and loss of strength
follows the collapse of exertion.

In our Colonies we have all the conditions required for
strength and greatness, and all the seeds of a gigantic destiny.
They supply us with markets for our merchandise, outlets for
our surplus population, a healthy incentive for enterprise, and

THE BRITISH EMPIRE 13I

immeasurably over- pay the cost and peril of their defence.
They enjoy all the privileges, and are liable to none of the bur-
dens of British citizenship. We help them liberally, and con-
trol them inappreciably — acting towards them like a guardian
who bears much, exacts little, and bleeds freely. We respect
them as children more than we prize them as customers. They
have a confident faith in their own future and a deep affection
for the mother country and the institutions that symbolize
and strengthen the connexion with her. We cannot abandon
them with cynical indifference to their security and welfare.
If we do, we will replace loyal subjects by indignant foes.
But the most remarkable monument of the ruling power of the
British people is in India. We did not covet its conquest.
Part of it fell to our lot ; other parts were forced upon us by
the irresistible sequence of events. We have there a field of
absolute duty and prospective usefulness that will task the
grandest energies and satisfy the loftiest ambition. We are
lords paramount over a number of mutually hostile races, who,
but for us, would be ceaselessly at war. They have always
had alien masters, and we are incomparably the best they
have ever had. They are wayward and bigoted, with invete-
rate and incurable peculiarities. We have to control without
offending them. We have to imbue torpid Orientals with
Western energy ; and, as the Bishop has just told us, by a
judicious mingling of sympathy and firmness, we are doing
so. British public spirit is apparent in every improvement
and foremost in every enterprise — Whelping directly in some
things, indirectly in others, and creating healthy emulation
everywhere. There is no record in history of political supre-
macy and intellectual pre-eminence being exercised with such
ubiquitous beneficence, such administrative adaptability. In
the treble capacity of lawgivers, teachers, and allies, we are
blending inherently different civilizations and promoting the
progressive prosperity of both. Censorious critics contend
that the reflex influence of India upon the Empire is detri-
mental— ^that the injuries of the conquered are being avenged
by the moral effect they produce upon the conquerors. But
our position there is not that of a foreign oppressor. By all
the laws of international ethics we have a right to be where
we are and to be as we are. We are expiating wrongs by
benefits. We have put order in the place of anarchy, we have
given protection by law instead of oppression by the sword,
and we have enabled the people to dwell in freedom and safety,

132 JOSEPH COWEN

where of old each man was beaten down beneath whoever was
stronger than himself.

Another school of political advisers exclaim against our
converting subordinate races into rivals in trade and equals
in power. As we cannot arrest their expansion, and as we are
guided in our policy by the statistics of opinion, we must —
so it is argued — in order to bring our action into harmony
with our professions, concede to impulsive and irrational
people what they ask for and not what they need, thus imperil-
ling our own authority and circumscribing European industry.
There is a substratum of truth in this premonition. Physical
qualities count for much, for the welfare of humanity is involved
in the production of permanence of the best. And higher
races have sometimes been submerged by the greater spawning
force of inferiors. But British individuality has heretofore
been proof against such deterioration. We assimilate, but are
not assimilated ; we are easily acclimatized, but difficult to
naturalize. We can, too, differentiate, and do not attempt
to wind up all our clocks with a single key, nor set those at
the Antipodes by the minute hand of St. IPaul's. We have
great mobility and retrieving power, and administer with
facility the codes and creeds of every fraternity. By the
rough training of necessity, and the rapture of struggle and
victory, the national character has been strengthened, and
the Empire kept from the fatal dechvity down which others
have faUen. Will it endure ? Ah ! there's the rub !

The empires of antiquity, great as were their achieve-
ments, and splendid as were their promises, have vanished
like passing pageants. The renowned seats of Ass5n:ian and
Babylonian magnificence have crumbled away. Thebes, with
its towering obelisks, colossal sphinxes, and granite-hewn
gods — old Homer's wonders — is a wonder still, but it is a
wonder of desolation. The Parthenon, in ruined majesty,
still looks down from its monumental hill to the classic harbour
where Themistocles' little fleet anchored before it broke the
proud power of Persia. But the glory that was Greece, and
the grandeur that was Rome have gone, glimmering through
the dream of things that were. They are little more now
than faded verbal memories. The owl screams at night amid
the mouldering columns of the Temple of Minerva — may not,
to utilize Shelley's figure, the bittern some day boom amid
the swamps that surround the shapeless towers of West-
minster Abbey ? History seems to postulate such a presenti-

THE BRITISH EMPIRE I33

ment. Civilization has always oscillated, pendulum-like,
between progress and retrogression. Nations, like individuals,
have their youth, manhood, maturity, and decline. But if we
were to dwell too long on our national culmination we might
be tempted to fold our arms, and set sail, as Sertorius thought
of doing, in quest of the Fortunate Isles where life is nothing
more than lotus-eating. As a counterpoise to such ener-
vating forebodings it is consolatory to remember that they
have often been needlessly sombre. What Gibbon describes
as the happiest days of humanity were days when the wisest
of Roman Emperors lamented that faith, reverence, and
justice were dead, and that there was nothing left but to wait
resignedly for the crash of a dissolving world. During the
Augustinian Era of romance and chivalry, England was
covered with religious foundations, because their founders
believed the country was hurrying to perdition. There have
been optimistic periods, when paeans were set to a higher
key. When printing had conquered back a lost territory
for the mind ; when Columbus presented a new world to
Christendom ; and when French Republicans were issuing
cosmopolitan manifestoes and planting trees of liberty,
society was exultant and sanguine. But neither the elation
nor the despondency was justified by the results. To man-
fully do the work that lies nearest to us and abide the issue
is a better moral training than meditating lugubriously over
joys bygone and hopes decayed.

Ancient civilization largely consisted in art, in the frivolous
work of polished idleness, and in speculative subtleness.
Modern civilization consists in physical conquests. It has
enabled man to wield the elements at will, and armed him
with the force of all their legions. Machinery has multiplied
human power, accelerated motion, and annihilated distance.
We are girt round with a zodiac of sciences that have lengthened
life and have lessened pain. Chemistry has descended from
its atomic altitudes and afiinities, and now dyes, scours, brews,
bakes, cooks, compounds drugs, and manufactures manure,
with the unassuming reality of nature. *' Electricity leaves
her thvmderbolts in the sky, and, like Mercury, when dis-
missed from Olympus, acts as letter-carrier and message-
boy." Magnetism, which was once " believed to be a living
principle, quivering in the compass needle," has been divested
of its mystery and set to the everyday labour of lighting
streets and propelling engines. But these stupendous dis-

134 JOSEPH COWEN

coveries in the phenomenal universe are valuable chiefly
because they lead to moral amendment and mental elevation.
Progress implies something more than the ability to make
money from these inventions to spend on ourselves. Material
prosperity alone does not satisfy the moral, intellectual, and
aesthetic needs of our being. Comfort is not, as it has been
well said, the summum bonum of men or nations. No people
can be highly civilized amongst whom delectation takes the
place of duty and vapid amusement of virile activity. Happi-
ness may be our being's end and aim, but we find happiness
rather in the struggle than in the enjoyment, rather in pursuing
the dangling apple than in grasping it when it turns to dust.
Society has higher purposes to serve than merely supplying
the day's wants or amusing the day's vacuity. Emerson told
his countrymen, when they were boasting of their increase
of population, that the true test of civilization was not to be
found in the census papers. Nor, it might be added, in Board
of Trade returns, or Budget statements, in the railways made,
steamers launched, or markets opened, but in the kind of
men it turns out. The Highland laird, in A Legend of Mont-
rose, who, on seeing six silver candlesticks in Sir Miles Mus-
grove's house at Edenhall, swore that he had " mair candle-
sticks and better candlesticks in his ain hame in the Gram-
pians than were ever lichted in. a Cumberland ha'," and backed
his oath with a wager, was held to have won the bet when he
illuminated his dining-room with blazing torches of bog-pine,
held in the hands of stalwart clansmen. " Would you dare
to compare to them in value the richest ore that was ever dug
out of a mine ? " asked the chieftain triumphantly. He
measured his wealth, not by the length of his rent-roll, but
by the number of his men. The sentiment intended to be
expressed by the incident is as old as history. The Greek
poet struck the same note when he warned the Mytilenes
that it was not in high-raised battlements or laboured moimds,
in thick walls, or moated gates, but in high-spirited men that
they would find their safety. Bacon re-echoed it when he
told his contemporaries that well-stored arsenals and armouries
were but sheep in lions' skins unless the disposition of the
people who had to use the arms were stout and brave. The
refrain of Burns's immortal song, " The man's the gowd for
a' that," is a homely version of the same idea. Man was made
for healthful effort. Life is a battle and a march, and neither
men nor nations can be successful in either if they make too

THE BRITISH EMPIRE 135

much of physical comfort or doze away their days in lazy
luxury. The corruption of prosperity is more to be dreaded
than the responsibility of authority. There is not, as our
gallant friend near me (Colonel Upcher) has said, any evidence
of degeneracy in the British race. There is the old courage
in war, sinew in labour, and skill in workmanship. There
is the same passion for adventure and love of athletics. There
is no decline either in judgment or alertness, in adaptability
and constancy. The British Empire is not in solstice. The
imperial ideal tempers the original iron of the British character
into steel and whets its resistless edge. Its spirit and resources
are equal to meeting all inevitable dangers and all honourable
obligations.

But it is indispensable that we should recognize the fact
that, though mighty, we are not omnipotent. Our coffers are
well filled and easily replenished, but our means are not inex-
haustible. Modern inventions are open to other nations
as imreservedly as to ourselves. They have utilized them,
and now tread closely on our heels. But this is not altogether
a disadvantage. We must fight against material obstacles
in order to win the means of exercising mental influence. The
ancients believed that it was the interest of the country that
its neighbours should be poor and weak. The modems have
discovered that it is for the welfare of a country that its con-
temporaries should be strong and prosperous. The successful
exertion of one stimulates the other, and all share in the com-
mon well-being. Our most abiding possession is practical
knowledge. It is imperishable. Literature may dwindle to
a fribble, art may degenerate into a bric-a-brac, but mankind
can never forget how to make steam engines and electric tele-
graphs, telescopes and compasses, printing presses and firearms.
While they exist, barbarism from without cannot overwhelm
civilized powers. But the barbarism from within may lay
our splendour low. We need fear neither enemies nor rivals.
The apprehension for the future comes from amongst our-
selves. The secret of British success has been by combining
a comprehensive attention to general interests with a scrupu-
lous care for individual liberty. Without wrench or rupture
we have transformed our institutions. Slavery, with its
horrors, is at an end. Transportation, with its torments, is
abandoned ; and impressment, with its harshness, is discarded.
We obtain our defensive forces voluntarily, by absorbing the
unemployed, and not by draining our industry. Invidious

136 JOSEPH COWEN

privileges, unmerited disabilities, and mortifying distinctions,
political, civil, and ecclesiastical, which appeared necessary
only through the mists of error, or which were magnified into
importance only through the medium of prejudice, have been
swept away. We have striven to inspire the humble with dig-
nity, the desponding with faith, the oppressed with hope, and
the British Empire has become a model of popular Hberty and
personal prosperity as firm as the earth and as wide as the sea.

But, by an imaccoun table infatuation, we are reforging
the very restraints, the removal of which brought us such
social happiness and civic success. National character is the
outcome of personal character. The strength of a State
can be no more than the sum of the strength of the persons
who compose it. But this obvious fact is strangely overlooked.
Man, too, it should be remembered, is not clay to be moulded
or marble to be cut. He grows under the hand. The outline
of to-day becomes the fetter of to-morrow. A statute which
this year embodies a fact, next year may prescribe a bondage.
Wherever there is life there is movement. As Mr. Spencer
has shown, we can no more elude the laws of human develop-
ment than we can elude the law of gravitation. Society is a
living organism, and if walled in by rigid mechanical apparatus,
it cannot fail to be dwarfed and impeded in its growth. Yet
under some well-meant but purblind perversity we are doing
this. We are suppressing emulation, legislating all the initia-
tive out of the people, and enervating them by perpetual state
aid. Government is being substituted for the individual,
and everything is being reduced to its inception. All we want
is to be let alone. Let us have fewer laws and less officialism
— ^but let us strengthen the principle of law and the spirit of
justice by education, and aim at making men, not machines.
Then all will be well. Then our harassed industrial Titans will
recover their pristine vigour and rouse themselves to higher
efforts, warmer motion, keener strife. The noble ideal of plain
living and high thinking, of adolescent and social energy, has
been impaired by the prevailing materialism, while the disposi-
tion to throw responsibility upon events, and to drift helplessly
from currents of popular caprice, is an ignoble feature of our
politics. But there are still lurking in the British people sparks
of the patriotic fire which burned in the hearts of the heroes
who bled for our freedom and left us their fame. The spirit
will mount with the occasion. Its aim is progress and its
lyiotive duty.

THE BISHOP OF RIPON

(RT. REV. WILLIAM BOYD CARPENTER, D.D.)

THE GUESTS

[Speech delivered at the Royal Academy Banquet, April 29, 1905,
in response to the toast of The Guests, proposed by Sir Edward
Poynter, P.R.A.]

Mr. President: — I think myself honoured m being called
upon to respond for the guests. But my task is difficult ;
in every word I say I shall be haunted by the thoughts of
my fellow-guests, for I realize how hard it is to be the
mouthpiece of so many who hold high and worthy places in
the walks of science, literature, and public affairs. But I
console myself by remembering that, if from one standpoint
it is difficult to reply to this toast, from another standpoint
it is easy. For I am sure that among all those who
are here to-night there is one common feeling. We are all
animated by common emotions, and if I may describe what
those emotions are, I should say they are a curious blending of
gratitude and shame — ^gratitude because we feel honoured to
be allowed to join the board of this fraternity of men devoted
to the cultivation of art, but shame because we represent the
great and varied callings of the world outside your Academy,
and we are keenly alive to the fact that we represent the
majority of a nation which, though possessed of vast wealth
and wide dominions, does so little for literature, for the drama,
or for art. [Hear, hear.]

I know I shall carry you with me when I say I think it
will be a bad day for any nation when the patronage of the
State is governed by that narrow utilitarian spirit which gives
an almost exclusive attention to what we may call merely pro-
ductive values. There are not wanting, I am sorry to say,
some who frankly declare that the State has no concern with

^37

138 THE BISHOP OF RIPON

non-marketable commodities, such as the cultivation of the
imagination, wholesome sentiment, and high reverence, which
tend to build up the character of our citizens by ennobling their
thoughts and inspiring their motives. Where these men would
have the State do less, I would have it do more. It is because
I realize how little has been done that I recognize the value
of your Royal Academy, not because you owe much to grants
from the State, but because, recognized by charter and holding
an honoured and imique position in the country, you save us
from the shame and redeem us from the accusation of being
entirely heedless of the labours of that band of devoted workers
who in various ways, and often in want and obscurity, do their
best by chisel and brain and brush to diffuse among our people
the love of what is worthy and beautiful. [Cheers.]

Mr. President, I am aware also that the Royal Academy
has been exposed at times to criticism. [Laughter.] In that,
after all, you are only participating in the common lot of man,
for no Prime Minister, no Chancellor of the Exchequer, nor
even Bishops are wholly immime from criticism. [Laughter.]
But I think it is a consolation, and I hand it on to you as
representing a criticized body, that, at any rate, we can recog-
nize that even criticism is deserved, and that it is directed
rather against us who make mistakes than against the institu-
tions or the offices which we represent. [Cheers.]

There is some consolation in remembering that although
the Prime Minister may be criticized as pusillanimous, the
Chancellor of the Exchequer as parsimonious, and Bishops as
I know not what [laughter], yet I do not think there is any
idea in the minds of the critics either of abolishing the post
of the Prime Minister or getting rid of the office of the Chan-
cellor of the Exchequer because the income-tax is is. in the
pound [laughter], nor do I believe that you will find them ready
to destroy representative government although majorities
are sometimes inconvenient, or to withdraw the charter from
the Academy because the hanging committee may have over-
looked some genius. [Laughter.]

I take it to be a fact that we all recognize that these offices
and corporations stand for something in public life ; and as
long as these affairs are conducted, as those of the Royal Aca-
demy are, with singlemindedness and sincerity, we realize that
they have a real part to play in our national life, and that
they exercise an influence upon those ideals of duty and of
responsibility, of taste, of success, and of unselfish achievement

"THE GUESTS*' I39

which are of such inestimable value in the formation of man-
hood. [Cheers.] This being so, I feel certain I shall carry you
with me when I ask you to drink to the health of our President
to-night, to him who guides the destinies of this august body,
and who has presided with such kindliness over our gathering
to-night. [Cheers.] He has delighted us with his pictures
from year to year ; he has carried us to scenes which live in our
memory. We can recall how he has set before us the winsome
beauty of nature, making us feel the cool freshness of some
quiet pool haunted by fair nymphs ; how he has placed before
us the awesomeness of some sea cavern or of some strange mid-
night scene, or has shown us the lonely courage of some Roman
soldier, who, called upon to face death, is loyal to the last. If
I were to follow his brush I should have to take you to en-
chantedrealms, to green swards where Nausicaa and her maidens
are at play, or where Atalanta, bewitched by the golden apple,
stoops to win the apple and to lose the race — so often has he
put the cup of Tantalus to our lips. [Cheers.]

I do not refer to these merely for the sake of asking you to
recall pictures which have delighted us and won our affection
and admiration, but rather to ask you to remember that the
President of the Royal Academy has consistently brought us
near to those great lands from which we have drawn our in-
spiration and noble thoughts and noble ideas.

It is true that he has shown us these lands, and made the
subjects which he has chosen speak to us of the lofty thoughts
which can lift the characters of men. And precisely because
a nation lives in proportion to the nobility of the ideas that
animate its mind and character, I take it that any one who
draws us nearer to those lands of uplifting thought and in-
spiring motive is contributing worthily to the well-being of his
contemporaries. [Cheers.] Therefore, to one who has not
merely enchanted us by his pictures and enshrined noble
thoughts in noble and worthy forms, but has thus made us
familiar with those noble ideas and has reminded us of their
perennial influence, I ask you to drink to his health in pro-
posing to you the toast of the President of the Royal Academy,
Sir Edward Poynter, our hospitable host to-night. [Cheers.]

HENRY WARD BEECHER

RELIGIOUS FREEDOM

[Speech of Henry Ward Beecher at the sixty-eighth anniversary
banquet of the New England Society in the City of New York,
December 22, 1873.]

Mr. President and Gentlemen : — I have attended many
New England dinners [laughter], I have eaten very few.
PLaughter.] I think I have never attended one in which there
has been such good speaking as to-night, and so much of it
[laughter] ; and as I bear in memory a sentence from the
Book with which I am supposed to be familiar [laughter], that
*' a full soul loatheth a feast/' I do not propose to stuff you
at this late period with a long speech [laughter], for I have
been myself a sufferer under hke circumstances. [Laughter.]
It does seem a pity, and would to you if you had ever been
speech-makers, to cut out an elaborate speech with weeks of
toil in order that it may be extemporized admirably [laughter],
and then to find yourself drifted so late into the evening that
everybody is tired of speeches. What must a man under
such circumstances do ? As he abhors novelty, he cannot
make a new one, and he goes on to make his old speech, and
it falls still-born upon the ears of the Hsteners. I do not
propose, therefore, to give you the benefit of all that eloquence
that I have stored up for you to-night. [Laughter.] I merely
say that if you had only heard the speech that I was going
to deliver, you would pity me for the speech that I am now
delivering. [Laughter.] One of the most precious elements
of religious Hberty is the right of a sensible man not to speak
[laughter], or even to make a poor speech.

To go back to the New England days and to our fathers
who have been — well, I have no doubt of the communion of
the saints, and, therefore, I have no doubt that the blessed
spirits that have got rid of this world pay good attention in

140

RELIGIOUS FREEDOM I4I

the other land to what is going on here, and are interested
in all the compliments they receive [laughter] ; and though
I suppose heaven to be a very busy place, and the Pilgrim
Fathers to be exceedingly busy all the year round, yet, on
the twenty-second of December, earthly reckoning, they must
have the hardest day of the whole period which we call year.
[Laughter.] I can imagine them going around with fragments
of these speeches on their heads as extemporized crowns
[laughter] ; and far be it from me who, I believe, have some
ancestors there — I hope it is there [laughter] — far be it from
me to impose any additional burden of sympathy upon them.
[Laughter.] The old New England divines were good fellows
in their day, jovial men — not on public occasions [laughter] —
men given to the cup and to the pipe in due measure, and to
good stories as well as to good conduct, but always with dis-
cretion— always at home after the door was shut, because the
example to the flock must be reverend — the flock must be led
by sobriety ; but really, as I recollect the days in my father's
parlour, when I used to be sent for the tobacco and for the
rum, when the ministers came around, in old Connecticut,
before the temperance days, when the parlour was blue with
smoke and uproarious with laughter, I am sure that I have
never been in any assembly anywhere, where there was so
much good-fellowship, nor anywhere else — except here — where
I thought there was so much wit as there used to be in old
New England [laughter] ; and much of that which has been
witty to-night I attribute to the proximity of the generals,
statesmen, and lawyers to the clergy. [Laughter.]

In regard to the subject-matter of the toast which I was
to speak to, I wish to say this : that those who have oppressed
men by religion have only done by that instrument wliat
everybody else has been trying to do by every other instrument.
[Laughter and applause.] Everybody that has any gumption
is a pope, or would be glad to be. That spirit of self, with a
consciousness of power, with an intense sense of right and of
truth, and a disposition to project it upon others, is of necessity
a domineering spirit, and it is that that attempts to make
men bend to your sense of what is true and what is right. I
do not, therefore, wonder that there is a spirit of despotism.
I do not wonder at it any more than I wonder that mankind
love to govern and be governed ; for there are two sides.
It is not the fault of the dry pole that is put into the ground
that the morning-glory twines round about it, and won't

142 HENRY WARD BEECHER

stand up itself. I would like to be a dry stick myself, and
have a convolvulus twining around me with its ineffable beauty.
[Applause.] It is not the fault of the minister that the true
and comely and excellent ones lean on him and insist upon
being led by him, and thought for by him. It is not strange
that clergymen think they hear angel voices, even among their
own parishioners, under such circumstances. If you take a
man out from the common people and tell him he is something
wonderful, tell him that he is a man of — his mother ? — no,
but a man of God, and therefore so far different from his
neighbours, that he stands in the electric chain, and gets his
inspiration fresh from the apostolic age, as then it was had
fresh from heaven ; that he is, by reason of having this extra
dose of good sense and infallibility, something more than other
men — only tell him so long enough, put your hand on his head
so as to rub it into him, make him feel it in his heart, bring
round about it his conscience, and you have made a despot*
It may be a despot that turns the ecclesiastical machinery
of the Church, so that everybody has to keep step to the
music exactly. It is not his fault ; his parishioners make
him do it. He may turn that despotism into dogma ; it is
not his fault. He himself became first the subject, and then
the master, and then the despot. If there were not men who
wanted to be governed, there would not be so many men who
wanted to govern them ; and if men in the Church, administer-
ing the Church as an institution, administering its ordinances
or its doctrines, are imperious, if they are arrogant, you make
them so. They did not set out to be so. It is inherent in the
fundamental falsity of this idea, that any body of men on
earth are commissioned to govern any other body of men by
reason, or by their conscience, on the supposition that they are
nearer to God than others. [Applause.] It is not the New
Testament idea, which says, " Ye are all brethren." There
is democracy for you ! Brotherhood never harmed anybody,
because brotherhood proceeds ever with justice for its instru-
ment, in the spirit of benevolence and love, and works by
sympathy, works by the heart more than by the head. Now,
the moment that any man stand among his fellowmen and
says, " I own God, and I own all God's decrees, and I am
empowered to enforce them upon you, and I bring down all
that is terrible in the world to lay it upon the imagination and
upon the fear and upon the conscience and upon the conduct
and the life of men " — the moment that any man has taken

RELIGIOUS FREEDOM I43

possession of that vast and populous invisible realm, that very
moment, of necessity, he becomes an enemy to liberty, a leader
toward captivity, and men are bound by him to be servants.

So, then, if men are oppressed by the Church, it is only
because, through weakness, they invited it ; it is because,
through indifference, they permitted it. Who are the makers
of ecclesiastical despots ? Weak men. Power is not easily
oppressed ! It is weakness that is oppressed. Strong, robust,
round, and all-sided men are not often oppressed as citizens ;
they always escape. It is the poor, the ignorant, those that
do not know how to defend themselves, that in civil things
or in intellectual realms are oppressed, and in moral realms
as well ; and the remedy for ecclesiastical oppression is, make
the common people stronger and wiser. [Applause.] Give
them intelligence, and make them understand that indift erence
to religion is invitation to despotism [applause] ; that those
men who have faith in God and have faith that God is Father,
beHeve also in manhood and men. Give to men earnestness,
consciousness of their own affairs, self-respect and knowledge,
and then insist upon it that they shall use them ; give to men
this spirit, and there shall be found no priest and no bishop
that shall govern them except as the air governs the flowers,
except as the sun governs the seasons, for the sun wears no
sceptre, but with sweet kisses covers the ground with fragrance
and with beauty. One soul has a right to govern another if
it loves it ; but by authority and machinery and systematic
creeds or dogma, no man has a right to govern another, nor can
he, if those other men are not weak, effeminate, indifferent,
infidel.

So, then, our New England fathers, although failing here
and there in some points in the administration of religious
liberty, were pre-eminent for the time in which they lived,
and, at the bottom, they were really the workmen that brought
in the doctrine of religious freedom, because they imdertook
to make intelligent men, they educated men, they tried to
make them larger, to make them more knowledgeable, to
make them able to stand on their own feet without being
held up by priests or by any other preacher ; and so, working
to make larger manhood and larger liberty in manhood, they
tended to set men free from spiritual just as much as from
civil domination. I regard all men who are working toward
the enlargement of their fellowmen as being truly guides
toward emancipation from spiritual despotism. He that is

144 HENRY WARD BEECHER

gone, Agassiz, was also a priest of God — not in the church which
men's hands have built, but in that great circle which Divine
Providence marks out, where men find out the footsteps and
the handiwork of God, and take that which they find to make
men larger and richer and truer and better. He, too, is a
priest of God ; and that glorious company of men who are
saying to the rock and to the sky and to the realms of nature,
" What secret hath God told you ? Tell it to us," they too
are making men free, and are emancipating the human mind.
And every artist who works upon his canvas or upon the stone,
or rears up stately fabrics, expressing something nobler to
men, giving some form to their ideals and aspirations — every
such man also is working for the largeness and so for the hberty
of men. And every mother who sits by the cradle, singing to
her babe the song which the angels sing all the way up to the
very throne, she too is God's priestess, and is working for
the largeness of men, and so for their Hberty. Whoever
teaches men to be truthful, to be virtuous, to be enterprising ;
in short, whoever teaches Manhood, emancipates men ; for
liberty means not Ucence, but such largeness and balance of
manhood that men go right, not because they are told to, but
because they love that which is right. [Prolonged applause.]

EMILE ZOLA

APPEAL FOR DREYFUS

[Address by Emile Zola, delivered to the jury at his trial for
libel in connection with the Dreyfus case, Paris, February 21,
1898.]

Gentlemen of the Jury : — In the Chamber at the sitting of
January 22, M. Meline, the Prime Minister, declared, amid
the frantic applause of his complaisant majority, that he
had confidence in the twelve citizens to whose hands he
entrusted the defence of the army. It was of you, gentle-
men, that he spoke. And just as General Billot dictated its
decision to the court-martial entrusted with the acquittal of
Major Esterhazy, by appealing from the tribune for respect
for the chose jugee, so likewise M. Meline wished to give you
the order to condemn me out of respect for the army which
he accuses me of having insulted !

I denounce to the conscience of honest men this pressure
brought to bear by the constituted authorities upon the justice
of the country. These are abominable political manoeuvres,
which dishonour a free nation. We shall see, gentlemen,
whether you will obey.

But it is not true that I am here in your presence by the
will of M. MeHne. He yielded to the necessity of prosecuting
me only in great trouble, in terror of the new step which the
advancing truth was about to take. This everybody knew.
If I am before you, it is because I wished it. I alone decided
that this obscure, this abominable affair, should be brought
before your jurisdiction, and it is I alone of my free will who
chose you — you, the loftiest, the most direct emanation of
French justice — in order that France might at last know all,
and give her opinion. My act had no other object and my
person is of no account. I have sacrificed it in order to place
in your hands not only the honour of the army, but the
imperilled honour of the nation.

II — 10 145

146 EMILE ZOLA

It appears that I was cherishing a dream in wishing to
offer you all the proofs : considering you to be the sole worthy,
the sole competent judge. They have begun by depriving you
with the left hand of what they seemed to give you with the
right. They pretended, indeed, to accept your jurisdiction,
but if they had confidence in you to avenge the members of
the court-martial, there were still other officers who remained
superior even to your jurisdiction. Let who can understand.
It is absurdity doubled with hypocrisy, and it is abundantly
clear that they dreaded your good sense — that they dared
not run the risk of letting us tell all and of letting you judge
the whole matter. They pretend that they wished to Hmit
the scandal. What do you think of this scandal ? — of my
act, which consisted in bringing the matter before you —
i 1 wishing the people, incarnate in you, to be the judge ?
They pretend also that they could not accept a revision in
disguise, thus confessing that in reality they have but one
dread, that of your sovereign control. The law has in you
its entire representation, and it is this law of the people elect
that I have wished for — this law which, as a good citizen,
I hold in profound respect, and not to suspicious procedure
whereby they hoped to make you a derision.

I am thus excused, gentlemen, for having brought you
here from your private affairs without being able to imm-
date you with the full flood of fight of which I dreamed. The
fight, the whole light — this was my sole, my passionate
desire ! And this trial has just proved it. We have had to
fight — step by step — against an extraordinarily obstinate
desire for darkness. A battle has been necessary to obtain
every atom of truth. Everj^hing has been refused us. Our
witnesses have been terrorized in the hope of preventing us
from proving our point. And it is on your behalf alone that
we have fought, that this proof might be put before you in its
entiret}^ so that you might give your opinion without remorse
in your consciences. I am certain, therefore, that you wiU
give us credit for our efforts, and that, moreover, sufficient
light has been thrown upon the affair.

You have heard the witnesses ; you are about to hear
my counsel, who will teU you the true story : the story that
maddens everybody and which no one knows. I am, there-
fore, at my ease. You have the truth at last, and it will do
its work. M. Meline thought to dictate your decision by
entrusting to you the honour of the army. And it is in the

APPEAL FOR DREYFUS I47

name of the honour of the army that I too appeal to your
justice.

I give M. Meline the most direct contradiction. Never
have I insulted the army. I spoke, on the contrary, of my sym-
pathy, my respect for the nation in arms, for our dear soldiers
of France, who would rise at the first menace to defend the
soil of France. And it is just as false that I attacked
the chiefs, the generals who would lead them to victory.
If certain persons at the War Office have compromised the
army itself by their acts, is it to insult the whole army to say
so ? Is it not rather to act as a good citizen to separate it
from all that compromises it, to give the alarm, so that the
blunders which alone have been the cause of our defeat shall
not occur again, and shall not lead us to fresh disaster.

I am not defending myself, moreover. I leave history
to judge my act, which was a necessary one ; but I affirm
that the army is dishonoured when gendarmes are allowed
to embrace Major Esterhazy after the abominable letter
written by him. I aifirm that that valiant army is insulted
daily by the bandits who, on the plea of defending it, sully
it by their degrading championship — who trail in the mud
all that France still honours as good and great. I affirm
that those who dishonour that great national army are ^those
who mingle cries of *' Vive Tarm^e ! " with those of ** A bas
les juifs ! " and " Vive Esterhazy ! " Grand Dieu ! the people
of St. Louis, of Bayard, of Conde, and of Hoche : the people
which counts a hundred great victories, the people of the great
wars of the Republic and the Empire, the people whose power,
grace, and generosity have dazzled the world, crying " Vive
Esterhazy ! '* It is a shame the stain of which our efforts
on behalf of truth and justice can alone wash off !

You know the legend which has grown up : Dreyfus was
condemned justly and legally by seven infallible officers, whom
it is impossible even to suspect of a blunder without insulting
the whole army. Dreyfus expiates in merited torments his
abominable crime. And, as he is a Jew, a Jewish syndicate
is formed, an international sans patrie syndicate, disposing
of hundreds of millions, the object of which is to save the
traitor at any price, even by the most shameless intrigues.
And thereupon this syndicate began to heap crime on crime :
buying consciences, casting France into a disastrous agitation,
resolved on selling her to the enemy, wilHng even to drive all
Europe into a general war rather than renounce its terrible plan.

148 ^MiLE 20LA

It is very simple, nay childish, if not imbecile. But it is
with this poisoned bread that the unclean Press has been
nourishing our poor people now for some months. And
it is not surprising if we are witnessing a dangerous crisis ;
for when folly and lies are thus sown broadcast, you necessarily
reap insanity.

Gentlemen, I would not insult you by supposing that
you have yourselves been duped by this nursery tale. I
know you ; I know who you are. You are the heart and
the reason of Paris, of my great Paris : where I was born,
which I love with an infinite tenderness, which I have been
studying and writing of now for forty years. And I know
likewise what is now passing in your brains ; for, before
coming to sit here as defendant, I sat there on the bench where
you are now. You represent there the average opinion ; you
try to illustrate prudence and justice in the mass. Soon I
shall be in thought with you in the room where you deliberate,
and I am convinced that your effort will be to safeguard your
interests as citizens, which are, indeed, the interests of the
whole nation. You may make a mistake, but you will do so
in the thought that while securing your own weal you are
securing the weal of all.

I see you at your homes at evening under the lamp ; I
hear you talk with your friends ; I accompany you into
your factories and shops. You are all workers — some trades-
men, others manufacturers, some exercising Uberal professions.
And your very legitimate anxiety is the deplorable state into
which business has fallen. Everywhere the present crisis
threatens to become a disaster. The receipts fall off ; trans-
actions become more and more difficult. So that the idea
which you have brought here, the thought which I read in
your countenances, is that there has been enough of this, and
that it must be ended. You have not gone the length of saying,
like many, " What matters it that an innocent man is at the
lie du Diable ? Is the interest of a single man worth thus
disturbing a great country ? " But you say, nevertheless,
that the agitation which we are raising — we who hunger for
truth and justice — costs too dear ! And if you condemn me,
gentlemen, it is that thought which will be at the bottom of
your verdict. You desire tranquillity for your homes, you
wish for the revival of business, and you may think that by
punishing me you will stop a campaign which is injurious to
the interests of France.

APPEAL FOR DREYFUS I49

Well, gentlemen, if that is your idea, you are entirely
mistaken. Do me the honour of believing that I am not
defending my Hberty. JBy punishing me you would only
magnify me. Whoever suffers for truth and justice becomes
august and sacred. Look at me. Have I the look of a hire-
ling, of a liar, and a traitor ? Why should I be playing a part ?
I have behind me neither pohtical ambition nor sectarian
passion. I am a free writer, who has given his life to labour ;
who to-morrow will re-enter the ranks and resume his suspended
task. And how stupid are those who call me an Italian ! — me,
born of a French mother, brought up by grandparents in the
Beauce, peasants of that vigorous soil ; me, who lost my father
at seven years of age, who did not go to Italy till I was fifty-
four. And yet I am proud that my father was from Venice —
the resplendent city whose ancient glory sings in all memories.
And even if I were not French, would not the forty volumes
in the French language, which I have sent by millions of copies
throughout the world, suffice to make me a Frenchman ?

So I do not defend myself. But what a blunder would
be yours if you were convinced that by striking me you would
re-establish order in our unfortunate country ! Do you
not understand now that what the nation is dying of is the
obscurity in which there is such an obstinate determination to
leave it ? The blunders of those in authority are being heaped
upon those of others ; one he necessitates another, so that
the mass is becoming formidable. A judicial blunder was
committed, and then to hide it a fresh crime against good sense
and equity has had daily to be committed ! The condem-
nation of an innocent man has involved the acquittal of a
guilty man, and now to-day you are asked in turn to condemn
me because I gave utterance to my pain on beholding our
country embarked on this terrible course. Condemn me, then !
But it will be one more fault added to the others — a fault the
burden of which you will bear in history. And my condemna-
tion, instead of restoring the peace for which you long, and
which we all of us desire, will be only a fresh seed of passion and
disorder. The cup, I tell you, is full ; do not make it run over !

Why do you not exactly estimate the terrible crisis through
which our country is passing ? They say that we are the
authors of the scandal, that it is lovers of truth and justice
who are leading the nation astray, and urging it to riot. Really
this is a mockery ! To speak only of General Billot — was
he not warned eighteen months ago ? Did not Colonel Pic-

150 EMILE ZOLA

quart insist that he should take in hand the matter of revision,
if he did not wish the storm to burst and overturn everything ?
Did not M. Scheurer-Kestner, with tears in his eyes, beg him
to think of France, and save her from such a catastrophe ?
No 1 our desire has been to facilitate everything, to allay
everything ; and if the country is now in trouble, the respon-
sibility lies with the power, which, to cover the guilty, and in
the furtherance of political interests, has denied everything,
hoping to be strong enough to prevent the truth from being
shed. It has manoeuvred in behalf of darkness, and it alone is
responsible for the present distraction of conscience !

The Dreyfus case ! ah, gentlemen, that has now become
a very small affair. It is lost and far away in view of the
terrifying questions to which it has given rise. There is
no longer any Dreyfus case. The question now is whether
France is still the France of the rights of man, the France
that gave freedom to the world, and that ought to give it
justice. Are we still the most noble, the most fraternal, the
most generous nation ? Shall we preserve our reputation
in Europe for equity and humanit}/ ? Are not all the victories
that we have won called in question ? Open your eyes and
understand that, to be in such confusion, the French soul
must have been stirred to its depths in face of a terrible danger.
A nation cannot be thus upset without imperilling its moral
existence. This is an exceptionally serious hour ; the safety
of the nation is at stake.

And when you shall have understood that, gentlemen,
you will feel that but one remedy is possible — to tell the
truth, to do justice. Anything that keeps back the light,
anything that adds darkness to darkness, will only prolong
and aggravate the crisis. The roU of good citizens, of those
who feel it to be imperatively necessary to put an end to this
matter, is to demand broad daylight. There are already many
who think so. The men of literature, philosophy, and science
are rising on every hand in the name of intelligence and reason.
And I do not speak of the foreigner, of the shudder that has
run through all Europe. Yet the foreigner is not necessarily
the enemy. Let us not speak of the nations that may be our
adversaries to-morrow. Great Russia, our ally; little and
generous Holland ; all the sympathetic peoples of the north ;
those lands of the French tongue, Switzerland and Belgium —
why are men's hearts so full, so overflowing with fraternal
suffering ? Do you dream, then, of a France isolated in the

APPEAL FOR DREYFUS 151

world ? When you cross the frontier, do you wish them to
forget your traditional renown for equity and humanity ?

Alas ! gentlemen, Hke so many others, you expect the
thunderbolt to descend from heaven in proof of the innocence
of Dreyfus. Truth does not come thus. It requires research
and knowledge. We know well where the truth is, or where
it might be found. But we dream of that only in the recesses
of our souls, and we feel patriotic anguish lest we expose our-
selves to the danger of having this proof some day cast in our
face after having involved the honour of the army in a false-
hood. I wish also to declare positively that, though, in the
official notice of our Ust of witnesses, we included certain
ambassadors, we had decided in advance not to call them.
Our boldness has provoked smiles. But I do not think that
there was any real smiling in our Foreign Office, for there they
must have understood ! We intended to say to those who
know the whole truth that we also know it. This truth is
gossiped about at the embassies : to-morrow it will be known
to all ; and, if it is now impossible for us to seek it where it
is concealed by official red tape, the Government which is
not ignorant — the Government which is convinced, as we
are, of the innocence of Dreyfus — will be able, whenever it
likes and without risk, to find witnesses who will demonstrate
everything.

Dreyfus is innocent. I swear it ! I stake my Ufe on it
— my honour ! At this solemn moment, in the presence of
this tribunal, which is the representative of human justice :
before you, gentlemen, who are the very incarnation of the
country, before the whole of France, before the whole world,
I swear that Dreyfus is innocent. By my forty years of work,
by the authority that this toil may have given me, I swear
that Dreyfus is innocent. By the name I have made for myself,
by my works which have helped for the expansion of French
literature, I swear that Dreyfus is innocent. May all that
melt away, may my works perish, if Dreyfus be not innocent !
He is innocent. All seems against me — the two Chambers,
the civil authority, the most widely-circulated journals, the
public opinion which they have poisoned. And I have for me
only the ideal — an ideal of truth and justice. But I am quite
calm ; I shall conquer. I was determined that my country
should not remain the victim of lies and injustice. I may be
condemned here. The day will come when France will thank
me for having helped to save her honour.

SIR A. CONAN DOYLE

LITERATURE

[Speech delivered May 3, 1 910, at a complimentary luncheon
to Commander Peary. Sir A. Conan Doyle responded to the
toast " Literature."]

Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen : — I saw the poster of some
enterprising firm as I was making my way to this luncheon
party, which indicated how to squeeze an ox into a teacup.
[Laughter.] That is a small feat compared with squeezing
*' Literature " into an after-luncheon speech. It is difficult,
but my motto in fife has been that the best way to over-
come a difficulty is to avoid it [laughter] — a motto which will
not commend itself to our guest. The subject of literature
is perhaps hardly to be treated on such an occasion as this,
and I certainly do not feel that I am the man to do it
justice. There are one or two small cognate matters, how-
ever, to which I might make reference.

The writers of romance have always a certain amount of
grievance against explorers. It is the grievance that explorers
are continually encroaching on the domain of the romance-
writer. [Laughter and cheers.] There has been a time
when the world was full of blank spaces, in which a man of
imagination might be able to give free scope to his fancy.
[Laughter.] But owing to the ill-directed energy of our guest
and other gentlemen of similar tendencies, these spaces are
rapidly being filled up ; and the question is where the
romance-writer is to turn when he wants to draw any vague
and not too clearly-defined region. [Laughter.] Romance-
writers are a class of people who very much dislike being
hampered by facts. [Laughter.] They like places where they
can splash about freely, and where no one is in a position
to contradict them. There used to be in my younger days

LITERATURE I53

a place known as Tibet. [Laughter.] When we wanted
a place in which to put a mysterious old gentleman who could
foretell the future, Tibet was a useful spot. [Laughter.] In
the last few years, however, a commonplace British army has
passed through Tibet, and they have not found any Mahatmas.
[Laughter.] One would as soon think now of placing an
occult gentleman there as of placing him in Piccadilly Circus.
[Laughter.]

Then there is Central Africa, which my friend Mr. Rider
Haggard as a young man found to be a splendid hunting-
ground. There at least was a place where the romance-writer
could do what he liked ; but since those days we have the
railway and the telegraph, and the question is when they come
down to dinner whether they are to wear a tail-coat or whether
a smoking-jacket will do. [Laughter and cheers.] I thought
also that the Poles would last my time, but here is Commander
Peary opening up the one and Captain Scott is going to open
up the other. Really I do not know where romance-writers
will be able to send their characters in order that they may
come back chastened and better men. [Laughter.] There
are now no vast regions of the world unknown to us, and
romance-writers will have to be more precise in their writings.
When I was young I remember that I began a story by saying
that there was a charming homestead at Nelson, seventy
miles north-west of New Zealand. A wretched geographer
wrote to me to say that seventy miles north-west of New
Zealand was out at sea. [Laughter and cheers.] Even now
I cannot write about the open Polar Sea without Commander
Peary's writing and contradicting me. [Laughter and cheers.]
There are other minor grievances of the romance-writer. I
saw a picture the other day of a melancholy-looking chicken
which said : "Ah well, what does anything matter ? We
begin as an e^g and we end as a feather duster.'* [Laughter.]
I think that the whole philosophy of the world is comprised
in the aphorism of that chicken. [Laughter.] But all the
same, I wish to add my feeble word as to our natural pride
not only that an American, but an American who had an
old British, Anglo-Saxon stock name, has been the man who
has won this honour. [Cheers.]

ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL

FUNERAL ORATION

[Delivered by Robert Green IngersoU at Washington, D.C.,
June 3, 1879, at the funeral of his brother. Ebon C. IngersoU.]

My Friends : — I am going to do that which the dead oft
promised he would do for me.

The loved and loving brother, husband, father, friend died
where manhood's morning almost touches noon, and while
the shadows still were falling toward the west.

He had not passed on Ufe's highway the stone that marks
the highest point, but, being weary for a moment, he lay
down by the wayside, and, using his burden for a pillow, fell
into that dreamless sleep that kisses down his eyelids still.
While yet in love with life and raptured with the world he
passed to silence and pathetic dust.

Yet, after all, it may be best, just in the happiest, sunniest
hour of all the voyage, while eager winds are kissing every
sail, to dash against the unseen rock, and in an instant hear
the billows roar above a sunken ship. For, whether in mid-
sea or 'mong the breakers of the farther shore, a wreck at
last must mark the end of each and all. And every Ufe, no
matter if its every hour is rich with love and every moment
jewelled with a joy, will, at its close, become a tragedy as sad
and deep and dark as can be woven of the warp and woof of
mystery and death.

This brave and tender man in every storm of life was oak
and rock, but in the sunshine he was vine and flower. He
was the friend of all heroic souls. He climbed the heights
and left all superstitions far below, while on his forehead fell
the golden dawning of the grander day.

He loved the beautiful, and was with colour, form, and
music touched to tears. He sided with the weak, and with

154

FUNERAL ORATION I55

a willing hand gave alms ; with loyal heart and with purest
hands he faithfully discharged all public trusts.

He was a worshipper of liberty, a friend of the oppressed. A
thousand times I have heard him quote these words : *' For
justice all place a temple, and all seasons, summer." He
believed that happiness was the only good, reason the only
torch, justice the only worship, humanity the only religion,
and love the only priest. He added to the sum of human
joy ; and were every one to whom he did some loving service
to bring a blossom to his grave, he would sleep to-night
beneath a wilderness of flowers.

Life is a narrow vale between the cold and barren peaks
of two eternities. We strive in vain to look beyond the
heights. We cry aloud, and the only answer is the echo of
our wailing cry. From the voiceless Ups of the unreplying
dead there comes no word ; but in the night of death hope
sees a star and listening love can hear the rustle of a wing.

He who sleeps here, when dying, mistaking the approach
of death for the return of health, whispered with the latest
breath : "I am better now." Let us believe, in spite of
doubts and dogmas, and tears and fears, that these dear
words are true of all the countless dead.

And now, to you who have been chosen from among the
many men he loved, to do the last sad office for the dead, we
give his sacred dust. Speech cannot contain our love. There
was, there is, no greater, stronger, manlier man.

ARCHDEACON FARRAR

GENERAL GRANT

[Sermon delivered in Westminster Abbey, August 4, 1885, on the
death of General Grant.]

Eight years have not passed since the Dean of Westminster,
whom Americans so much loved and honoured, was walking
round this abbey with General Grant and explaining to him
its wealth of great memorials. Neither of them had attained
the allotted span of human Ufe, and for both we might have
hoped that many years would elapse before they went down
to the grave full of years and honours. But this is already the
fourth summer since the dean " fell on sleep," and to-day we
are assembled for the obsequies of the great soldier whose
sun has set while it yet was day, and at whose funeral service
in America tens of thousands are assembled at this moment
to mourn with his weeping family and friends. Life at the
best is but as vapour that passeth away.

" The glories of our birth and state
Are shadows, not substantial things."

When death comes, what nobler epitaph can any man
have than this — that " having served his generation, by the
will of God he fell on sleep " ? Little can the Uving do for
the dead. The voices of praise cannot delight the closed
ear, nor the violence of censure vex it. I would desire to
speak simply and directly, and, if with generous appreciation,
yet with no idle flattery, of him whose death has made a
nation mourn. His private life, the faults and failings of
his character, whatever they may have been, belong in no
sense to the world. We touch only on his public actions
and services — the record of his strength, his magnanimity,
his self-control, his generous deeds.

156

GENERAL GRANT I57

His life falls into four marked divisions, of which each
has its own lesson for us. He touched on them himself in
part when he said, *' Bury me either at West Point, where I
was trained as a youth ; or in Illinois, which gave me my
first commission ; or at New York, which sympathized with
me in my misfortunes."

His wish has been respected, and on the bluff overlooking
the Hudson his monument will stand to recall to the memory
of future generations those dark pages of a nation's history
which he did so much to close. First came the long early
years of growth and training, of poverty and obscurity, of
struggle and self-denial. Poor and humbly born, he had to
make his own way in the world. God's unseen providence,
which men nickname chance, directed his boyhood. A
cadetship was given him at the military academy at West
Point, and after a brief period of service in the Mexican War,
in which he was three times mentioned in despatches, seeing
no opening for a soldier in what seemed likely to be days of
unbroken peace, he settled down to humble trades in provincial
districts. Citizens of St. Louis still remember the rough
backwoodsman who sold cord wood from door to door. He
afterward entered the leather trade in the obscure town of
Galena.

Men who knew him in those days have said that if any one
had predicted that the silent, unprosperous, unambitious man,
whose chief aim was to get a plank road from his shop to the
railway depot, would become twice President of the United
States and one of the foremost men of his day, the prophecy
would have seemed extravagantly ridiculous.

But such careers are the glory of the American Continent.
They show that the people have a sovereign insight into
intrinsic force. If Rome told with pride how her dictators
came from the plough-tail, America, too, may record the
answer of the President, who, on being asked what would be
his coat-of-arms, answered proudly, mindful of his early
struggles, " A pair of shirt-sleeves."

The answer showed a noble sense of the dignity of labour,
a noble superiority to the vanities of feudaUsm, a strong
conviction that men are to be honoured simply as men, not
for the prizes of accident and birth. You have of late years had
two martyr Presidents. Both were sons of the people. One
was the homely man who at the age of seven was a farm lad,
at nineteen a rail-splitter, at twenty a boatman on the Mis-

158 ARCHDEACON FARRAR

sissippi, and who in manhood proved to be one of the strongest,
most honest, and most God-fearing of modern rulers. The
other grew up from a shoeless child in a log hut on the prairies,
round which the wolves howled in the winter snow, to be a
humble teacher in Hiram Institute. With these Presidents
America need not blush to name also the leather-seller of
Galena.

Every true man derives his patent of nobleness direct
from God. Did not God choose David from the sheepfolds
to make him ruler of his people Israel ? Was not the " Lord
of life and all the worlds " for thirty years a carpenter at
Nazareth ? Do not such careers illustrate the prophecy of
Solomon, " Seest thou the man diligent in his business ? he
shall stand before kings." When Abraham Lincoln sat, book
in hand, day after day, under the tree, moving round it as
the shadow moved, absorbed in mastering his task ; when
James Garfield rang the bell at Hiram Institute day after day,
on the very stroke of the hour, and swept the schoolroom
as faithfully as he mastered the Greek lesson ; when Ulysses
Grant, sent with his team to meet some men who were to
load the cart with logs, and finding no men there, loaded the
cart with his own boy strength — they showed in conscientious
duty and thoroughness the qualities which were to raise them
to rule the destinies of men.

But the youth was not destined to die in that deep valley
of obscurity and toil in which it is the lot — perhaps the happy
lot — of many of us to spend our Uttle lives. The hour came ;
the man was needed.

In 1861 there broke out the most terrible war of modern
days. Grant received a commission as colonel of volunteers,
and in four years the struggling toiler had risen to the chief
command of a vaster army than has ever been handled by
any mortal man. Who could have imagined that four years
could make that stupendous difference ? But it is often so.
The great men needed for some tremendous crisis have often
stepped, as it were, through a door in the wall which no one
had noticed, and unannounced, unheralded, without prestige,
have made their way silently and single-handed to the front.

And there was no luck in it. He rose, it has been said,
by the upward gravitation of natural fitness. It was the work
of inflexible faithfulness, of indomitable resolution, of sleepless
energy, of iron purpose, of persistent tenacity. In battle
after battle, in siege after siege, whatever Grant had to do

GENERAL GRANT I 59

he did it with his might. lie undertook, as General Sherman
said, what no one else would have adventured, till his very
soldiers began to reflect some of his own indomitable deter-
mination. With a patience which nothing could tire, with a
firmness which no obstacle could daunt, with a military genius
which embraced the vastest plans yet attended to the smallest
minutiae, he defeated one after another every great general
of the Confederates except General Stonewall Jackson.

Grant had not only to defeat armies, but to " annihilate
resources " — to leave no choice but destruction or submission.
He saw that the brief ravage of the hurricane is infinitely less
ruinous than the interminable malignity of the pestilence,
and that in that colossal struggle victory — swift, decisive,
overwhelming, at all costs — was the truest mercy. In
silence, in determination, in clearness of insight, he was your
Washington and our Wellington. He was hke them also in
this, that the word *' can't " did not exist in his soldier's
dictionary, and that all that he achieved was accomphshed
without bluster and without parade.

After the surrender at Appomattox, the war of the seces-
sion was over. It was a mighty work, and Grant had done
it mightily. Surely the hght of God, which manifests all
things in the slow history of their ripening, has shown that
for the future destinies of a mighty nation it was a necessary
and a blest work. The Church hurls her most indignant
anathema at unrighteous war, but she has never refused to
honour the faithful soldier who fights in the cause of his country
and his God. The gentlest and most Christian of poets has
used the tremendous words that —

" God's most dreaded instrument.
In working out a pure intent.
Is man — arrayed for mutual slaughter ;
Yea, carnage is His daughter."

We shudder even as we quote the words ; but yet the
cause for which Grant wrought — the unity of a great people,
the freedom of a whole race of mankind — was as great and noble
as that when at Lexington the embattled farmers fired the
shot which was heard round the world. The South has
accepted that desperate and bloody arbitrament. Two of
the Southern generals will bear General Grant's funeral pall.
The rancour and the fury of the past are buried in oblivion.
True friends have been made out of brave foemen, and the
pure glory and virtue of Lee and Stonewall Jackson will be

i6o archd£ac6n farraS

part of the common national heritage with the fame of Garfield
and of Grant.

As Wellington became Prime Minister of England, and
was hooted in the streets of London, so Grant, more than
half against his will, became President, and for a time lost
much of his popularity. He foresaw it all ; but it is for a man
not to choose, rather to accept his destiny. What verdict
history will pronounce on him as a politician I know not ;
but here and now the voice of censure, deserved and undeserved,
is silent. When the great Duke of Marlborough died, and one
began to speak of his avarice, "He was so great a man," said
Bolingbroke, " that I had forgotten he had that fault."

It was a fine and delicate rebuke ; and ours, at any rate,
need not be the " feeble hands iniquitously just " which
rake up a man's faults and errors. Let us write his virtues
" on brass for man's example ; let his faults, whatever they
may have been, be written in water." The satirist has said
how well it would have been for Marius if he had died as he
stepped from the chariot of his Cimbric victory ; for Pompeius,
if he had died after his Mithridatic war. And some may
think how much happier it would have been for General Grant
had he died in 1865, when steeples clashed and cities were
illuminated and congregations rose in his honour. Many and
dark clouds overshadowed the evening of his days — the blow
of financial ruin, the dread of a tarnished reputation, the
terrible agony of an incurable disease.

To bear that sudden ruin and that speechless agony required
a courage nobler and greater than that of the battle-field, and
human courage rose to the height of human calamity. In ruin,
in sorrow, on the Ungering death-bed. Grant showed himself
every inch a hero, bearing his agonies and trials without a
murmur, with rugged stoicism and unflinching fortitude,
and we believe with a Christian prayer and peace. Which
of us can tell whether those hours of torture and misery may
not have been blessings in disguise ?

We are gathered here to do honour to his memory.
Could we be gathered in a more fitting place ? We do not
lack here memorials to recall the history of your country.
There is the grave of Andre ; there is the monument raised
by grateful Massachusetts to the gallant Howe ; there is
the temporary resting-place of George Peabody; there is the
bust of Longfellow ; over the dean's grave there is the faint
semblance of Boston Harbour.

GENERAL GRANT l6l

We add another memory to-day. Whatever there be
between the two nations to forget and to forgive, it is forgotten
and it is forgiven. " I will not speak of them as two peoples,"
said General Grant in 1877, " because, in fact, we are one
people with a common destiny, and that destiny will be
brilliant in proportion to the friendship and co-operation of
the brethren dwelling on each side of the Atlantic."

If the two peoples which are one people be true to
their duty, true to their God, who can doubt that in their
hands are the destinies of the world ? Can anything short of
utter dementation ever thwart a destiny so manifest ? Your
founders were our sons. It was from our past that your
present grew. The monument of Sir Walter Raleigh is not
that nameless grave in St. Margaret's ; it is the State of Virginia.
Yours alike and ours are the memories of Captain John Smith
and Pocahontas, of the Pilgrim Fathers, of General Ogle-
thorpe's strong benevolence of soul, of the mission labours
of Eliot and Brainerd, of the apostolic holiness of Berkeley,
and the burning zeal of Wesley and Whitefield. Yours aUke
and ours are the plays of Shakespeare and the poems of Milton ;
ours alike and yours all that you have accompUshed in litera-
ture or in history — the wisdom of Franklin and Adams, the
eloquence of Webster, the song of Longfellow and Bryant,
the genius of Hawthorne and Irving, the fame of Washington,
Lee, and Grant.

But great memories imply great responsibilities. It was
not for nothing that God has made England what she is ;
not for nothing that the " free individuahsm of a busy multi-
tude, the humble traders of a fugitive people," snatched the
New World from feudalism and from bigotry — from Philip
II. and Louis XIV. ; from Menendez and Montcalm ; from
the Jesuit and the Inquisition ; from Torquemada and from
Richelieu — to make it the land of the Reformation and the
Republic, of prosperity and of peace. " Let us auspicate all
our proceedings on America," said Edmund Burke, "with
the old Church cry, sursum corda." It is for America to live
up to the spirit of such words. We have heard of

" New times, new climes, new lands, new men ; but still
The same old tears, old crimes, and oldest ill."

It is for America to falsify the C5niical foreboding. Let
her take her place side by side with England in the very van
of freedom and of progress. United by a common language,

II— II

l62 ARCHDEACON FARRAR

by common blood, by common memories, by a common
history, by common interests, by common hopes, united by
the common glory of great men, of which this temple of silence
and reconciliation is the richest shrine, be it the steadfast
purpose of the two peoples who are the people to show to all
the world not only the magnificent spectacle of human happi-
ness, but the still more magnificent spectacle of two peoples
who are one people loving righteousness and hating iniquity,
inflexibly faithful to the principles of eternal justice, which
are the unchanging law of God.

HORATIO BOTTOMLEY

BREAKING AWAY FROM PARTY

[Speech delivered June lo, 191 1, at the Hackney Empire, London.]

Ladies and Gentlemen : — It has been my custom to hold a
meeting of my constituents every January, but last year and
the year before a General Election intervened. In ordinary
circumstances, therefore, I should have waited till next
January — unless another election comes along — but certain
recent events and other circumstances have rendered it desir-
able that I should place my position fully and frankly before
you, and thus remove any misunderstanding, if any there be,
between the constituency and myself. I cannot hope to
satisfy everybody by my statement, but I will promise this —
whatever may be lacking in conviction shall be made up in
candour.

Let me just remind you of what my connection with this
division has been. I descended upon it in the year 1898. At
that time your representative in Parliament was an estimable
gentleman, who, if he did not actually shed lustre upon his
constituency, at any rate endowed it with an atmosphere of
severe respectability. I came down under the auspices of the
South Hackney Liberal and Radical Association, the body
which in earlier years had stood sponsors for Charles Russell
and Fletcher Moulton [cheers], and you may guess the hope-
lessness of the outlook at the time from the fact that its
choice fell upon me. [Laughter.] The more timid members
of the party predicted that by this act the Association had
made the sitting member a present of the freehold of the seat.
It therefore came as a surprise to many when, at the first
contest, in 1900, with all the prejudice of the South African
War fever to contend with, and whilst Liberal seats were
falling everywhere like ninepins, I was, in sporting phrase-

163

164 HORATIO BOTTOMLEY

ology, "just beaten by a short head." Well, I didn't cry, or
run away, I just put in five years' more work, throwing myself
heartily into the life of the constituency, and, I am happy
to say, making friends and gaining the confidence of the
electors. So that when, in January 1906, " time " was
called for the second round — to slightly change the simile —
I stepped into the ring full of confidence — and you know the
rest. I became member for South Hackney [cheers] — and
then the trouble began ! [Loud laughter.]

I could do no more than endeavour to make it clear at
the outset that if elected I could be no party hack. Here
is what I said at the inaugural meeting of my election cam-
paign, at the Morley Hall, in January 1906, with Councillor
Chapman in the chair :

" I want to go to the House of Commons, not just to put
M.P. to my name, not to please any ambitious relative, not to
have a comfortable club to sit in in the winter months, or in
other portion of the year to take my lady friends to tea on the
terrace. I want to go there, ladies and gentlemen, to do
some of my country's work — that is my ambition. I said —
and I mean it — that I am no hide-bound party hack ; but I
am a Democrat, and so far as those principles characterize
any proposed legislation, it will find no more loyal supporter
than myself. On the other hand, in so far as to my mind
any proposals contravene those principles, or do not fully
recognize those principles, then, at the risk of being a bit of
a free-lance — and South Hackney is not much afraid of that —
I shall have to say, as a Democrat, I want no spurious legis-
lation." [Cheers.]

My idea of the function of a member of Parliament is that
of Parliamentary Counsel for not only the whole of his con-
stituents, but for the whole of the nation. This is practically
impossible under the present party system, and it will be
more impossible still now that we are to have paid Members.
[Hear, hear.] The only party I know is the Bread-and-B utter
Party — after all, Bread-and-Butter politics are the thing;
and when the licensed victuallers say that their trade is their
politics, they are unconsciously giving utterance to a funda-
mental political truth. No, ladies and gentlemen, I cannot
go to the House of Commons as a delegate. [Hear, hear.]
I will tell you what name, what role — and the only one — I
will accept — Government Critic — whatever Government may
be in power. [Cheers.] That was the original character of

BREAKING AWAY FROM PARTY 165

the member of Parliament, and I will do my best to revive
it. [Cheers.] I read in a leading article in the Star a few
weeks ago these words : '* We fully admit that there is
need for a constant pressure on the part of the electorate
upon its representatives, and for a constant pressure on the
part of the members upon the Cabinet. All Governments need
fierce criticism. And here is an extract from the April number
of the Quarterly Review : "If the local organizations all over
the country could be induced to imitate the examples of
those in Birmingham and Hackney, there might be still some
hope for the independence, and consequently the vitality,
of the House of Commons."

Well, ladies and gentlemen, from to-day I sit in the House
as Government Critic — viewing all proposed legislation from
the point of view I will in a moment explain. I release the
South Hackney Liberal and Radical Association from any
obligation towards me, and myself from any obligation
towards it — except that I will pledge myself never, in any
circumstances, to desert the cause of true democracy.

I mentioned just now the Licensed Trade. What a lot of
trouble I got myself into with some of my friends over the
publicans ! And yet I did no more in their case than I have
done in others. Only the other day I convened a meeting
of the medical men of my constituency to discuss certain
proposed legislation — calculated, as I think, to seriously and
unjustly affect them — and I shall plead their cause if the
necessity arises. A Uttle while ago, I met the shopkeepers
and costermongers, and in their interest I opposed the Shops
Bill, which, in my view — I am not discussing it — while
injuring them, gave no real benefit to the shop-assistants.
And whenever a Bill is introduced to tax teetotallers, they
will find me ready to plead for fair play for them. And
here let me observe to what an extent party disappears when
you get a business gathering of men to consider the interests
of their own trade or calling. They are no longer Liberals
and Tories, Free Traders and Tariff Reformers ; they are
just Bread-and-Butter politicians, looking at matters on their
intrinsic merits as they affect them, and not bothering their
heads about what are called First Principles. Theories are
thrown to the winds, and practical politics take their place.
Like the historical SociaUst, they may be in favour of a
general dividing up of all property, except pigs — because he
had two pigs. Bread-and-Butter poUtics 1

l66 HORATIO BOTTOMLEY

And that, ladies and gentlemen, brings me to the question,
what do I propose to do in my capacity of Independent, unat-
tached Government Critic ? How do I hope to satisfy you,
when the next General Election comes round, that you will be
acting wisely to send me back to the House of Gammons ?
How can I hope to induce you to throw off the fetters of party,
and make South Hackney the pioneer of a new order of things
in the government of our country ? It is a big — an ambitious
— ^task ; but I have decided to attempt it. Its very magnitude
and novelty appeal to me ; I have an instinctive predilection
for " taking the odds."

And now hsten, please, whilst I tell you what I propose to
do. I stand for a Democratic Business Government for a
Democratic Business People. By Democracy I do not mean
the mob law of the noisy demagogue, nor the smug claim of
the poHtical snob to fraternize on terms of equality with his
superiors. You observe, in passing, that I recognize that, as
with horses and dogs and our other fellow-creatures, complete
equality — except of opportunity — is out of the question. A
Derby horse is a superior animal to a selling-plater ; a prize
Rodney Stone bull-dog is a nobler animal than a yelping mon-
grel ; and King George is a nobler creature than the King of
the Cannibal Islands. The black, sensual, and barbaric Ethio-
pian may be a potential brother — but, with all my love for my
fellow-man, I am not at present prepared to regard him in a
closer relationship than that of hrotheT -in-law. [Laughter.]
That by the way.

By Democracy I mean the right of the people, irrespective
of wealth or station, to say how and by whom they will be
governed. Remember that, in the ultimate appeal, might
is right. Governments, Armies, Navies, Law Courts, PoUce,
Local Authorities — all exist merely by consent of the people.
[Hear, hear.] Once withdraw their sanction and the whole
fabric of " Civilization " crumbles to the ground. There-
fore sound statesmanship demands first that the basis of govern-
ment shall be the popular will, and, secondly, that legislation
shall never proceed in advance of popular sentiment. This
involves the claim that every law-abiding citizen should possess
an equal voice in the government of the country, and, further,
that, subject to his not infringing the equal right of his neigh-
bour, he should be left alone to follow his avocations and his
pleasures according to his own free will. What cant it is for
us to talk about the House of Commons being the reflex of the

BREAKING AWAY FROM PARTY 167

people's will ! — when it is elected by five million out of nearly
fifteen million adult males — to say nothing of the ladies. [Hear,
hear.] I want to see every man, at least, armed with a Cer-
tificate of Citizenship, entitling him to vote at every election
and proclaiming him in face of all the world a free-born citizen.
The British flag should be printed at its head, and I would
punish any man or nation who insulted that emblem of our
nationality. [Cheers.] I would make such arrangements as
would enable the citizen to exercise his franchise, wherever he
might be, and I would substitute a system of scientific electoral
divisions for the present barbaric arrangement under which one
member represents 50,000 electors and another 1,500. [Cheers.]
A small committee of business men could do this in a day.
[Hear, hear.] And I would leave every member, once elected,
free till the next election came round to exercise his unfettered
judgment for the benefit of his constituents. [Cheers,] And
as to legislation, I would abandon all idea of altering the habits
of the people by Act of Parliament. [Hear, hear.]

I remember that when Mr. Herbert Gladstone introduced
one of the early editions of the Shops Bill, he said its object
was to " effect a change in the habits of the people." I told
him it could not be done. [Hear, hear.] The same remark
applies to the Licensing Bill, the Betting Bill, and a variety of
other paternal measures which the Government has sought to
impose upon the people with the idea of altering their habits
or counteracting their natural instincts. It is an old saying
that you cannot make people good by Act of Parliament, but
you can make them hypocrites by Act of Parliament.

And what do I mean by ** Business " Government ? Simply
this — that every department of the State should be under the
control of somebody who, by training and experience, is capable
not only of understanding, but also of directing its affairs. I
do not think that all the departments of the State should be in
the hands of the lawyers, or of family parties. I do not think
that any one man is capable, without any previous training, of
fulfilling in the course of a few years the duties of, say, Financial
Secretary to the Treasury, Minister of Education, and First
Lord of the Admiralty ; or, say, of a Colonial Secretary, Pre-
sident of the Board of Trade, and Secretary of State for the
Home Department. [Hear, hear.] I do not believe in a
Board of Trade which never meets, and which comprises the
Archbishop of Canterbury and the Speaker of the Irish ParUa-
ment. [Laughter and cheers.] I do not believe in the auto-

l68 HORATIO BOTTOMLEY

matic voting away of 50 millions of money every year without
the examination or discussion of a single item. [Cheers.] I
do not believe in making the exigencies of our trade and com-
merce the pawns in a game of party chess. These are not the
ways to fight our foreign rivals. [Cheers.] Just let me read
you an extract from a book you should all read. It is called
The Party System, and is by my friend, Hilaire Belloc.

** We see Lord Selborne, the son-in-law of a famous Prime
Minister, Lord SaHsbury, governing South Africa at a moment
when his first cousin, Mr. Arthur Balfour, is the Prime Minister
of the day (being retained there subsequently by Mr. Balfour's
' opponents '), while that Prime Minister's brother, Mr. Gerald
Balfour, not only enjoys long years of office through his family
connection, but a considerable pubUc pension into the bargain
when office is no longer open to him. That Lord Gladstone
should inherit from his father may seem normal enough, though
his name does swell this extended category. But to find Lord
Portsmouth Under-Secretary'f or War, while a cousin of his wife's.
Sir John Pease, has yet another post under the present Govern-
ment, and his cousin again, Mr. Pike Pease, the reversion of a
* Conservative ' post ; and to have to add to this that the
Liberal Whip, Sir John Fuller, is actually the brother-in-law
of the Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury, Mr. Hobhouse,
both being grandchildren by blood or marriage of a Conser-
vative Chancellor, Lord St. Aldwyn (Sir Michael Hicks-Beach),
touches upon the comic when we remember how large a pro-
portion of the paid offices available this list represents. Nor do
the names here jotted down almost at random present more
than a very small sample of the whole system.

" It must be noted that these family ties are not confined
to the separate sides of the House. They unite the Ministerial
with the Opposition Front Bench as closely as they unite Minis-
ters and ex-Ministers to each other.

" For instance, to quote again chance connections that occur
to one, the present talented and versatile (' Liberal ') Under-
Secretary for Home Affairs, Mr. Masterman, is the nephew by
marriage of the late (* Conservative ') Colonial Secretary, Mr.
Lyttelton ; who, in his turn, is closely connected with Mr.
Asquith, for they married sisters. The present (* Liberal ')
President of the Council, Lord Beauchamp, is brother-in-law
of a former Conservative Governor of Madras, Lord Ampthill ;
a * Liberal ' and a * Unionist ' Whip, the two Peases, are
cousins (the latter of Ministerial rank, though not, of course,

BREAKING AWAY FROM PARTY 169

yet in enjoyment of office) ; and as all the world knows, Mr.
Winston Churchill is not only the cousin of a former Conservative
Minister, the Duke of Marlborough, but directly succeeded the
head of his own family as Under-Secretary for the Colonies.'*

Ladies and gentlemen, I want to see the House of Commons
the Business Committee of the nation. I want real Boards and
real Presidents, with expert committees of the House to examine
and revise Estimates, to check public expenditure, and to con-
trol the Executive, and I want to see a properly constituted
Senate for the revision and improvement of proposed legis-
lation— a Senate comprising all the best material available
outside membership of the House of Commons.

Now let me just for a few moments apply these principles
to some of the topics of current political controversy — what the
philosophers call the argumenUim ad hominem.

The Budget ! I confess, ladies and gentlemen, that I
always find it difficult to sit still whilst the Chancellor of the
Exchequer is making his annual statement. What humdrum
convention it all is ! Except for the new Land Taxes (which
will produce little nett revenue in our time), there has not
been a spark of originality or inspiration in any Budget of recent
years. The same old copy-book claptrap ; the same old dread
of innovation. " The National Debt must be reduced '* ; the
cost of the mad naval race with Germany must be paid for out
of revenue (as though it were to become a normal feature of our
expenditure) ; and no new sources of revenue are to be tapped.
Why, for instance, should the realized surplus of a good year
go into the Old Sinking Fund for the benefit of posterity ? We
already set aside nearly 25 millions a year for the service of the
National Debt, which, after paying interest, leaves an ever-
increasing sum, which last year amounted to 7 milhons, to go
in reduction of capital. Isn't that enough ? Take last year.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer found himself in actual posses-
sion of a realized surplus of over 5 J millions. And he didn't
know what to do with it ! I wish I could have got him down
to some of the streets in Hackney Wick and Homerton and
London Fields ! [Cheers.] So what did he do ? He made a
good start by taking a million and a half for sanatoria. And
good luck to him ! [Cheers.] Then he took a million and a
half towards the Benevolent Fund. [Hear, hear.] You must
know that, after spending millions of money and thousands of
Uves in developing foreign countries, it has recently dawned
upon us that we might begin to develop our own. [Hear, hear.]

170 HORATIO BOTTOMLEY

Well, he took one and a half million for that. And again good
luck to him ! [Cheers.] Then he began to break down ! He
had still two and a half millions left. Happy thought I A
quarter of a million for Uganda — a long way from Hackney
Wick — and then he collapsed, and put the balance, over
£2,300,000, to the Old Sinking Fund. What about the old
sinking people ? [Cheers.] And why shouldn't some of the
abnormal naval expenditure of recent years be carried forward
to posterity, for whose benefit it was mainly incurred ? [Hear,
hear.] And what about those unclaimed millions in the banks ?

And what about a tax on advertisements and high-
priced theatre tickets and Stock Exchange gambling trans-
actions, and a dozen other things, which would bring in big
revenue without hurting any one ? These are better sources
of revenue, ladies and gentlemen, than tampering and tinkering
with everybody's business, prying into their affairs and up-
setting the trade and investments of the people. [Cheers.]

Take National Insurance — an excellent idea ; but what
a muddle we are making of it ! [Hear, hear.] Why not a
simple tax of zd. in the £ upon all wages ? — a penny to be paid
by the employer and a penny by the employee, collected by
means of a 2d. stamp to be handed out with your wages ? That
would give you about 8 millions a year, and the amount could
be apportioned amongst the various Distress Committees for
the relief of sickness and unemployment, without in any way
interfering with the work of voluntary societies. [Cheers.]

Then the House of Lords. How would a Business Govern-
ment deal with this matter ? It would say. Let us put both
Houses of Parliament in order, making the one a real repre-
sentative and the other a real revising Chamber, abolish the
hereditary ascendency in both Houses. [Hear, hear.] I am
not sure in which it is the more pronounced. [Laughter.] You
will remember the quotation from Mr. Belloc's book. And so
far as the present crisis is concerned, pass that part of the Veto
Bill which gives the Commons supreme control over finance —
at the same time giving members of ParUament a voice in it
— and then have a joint Conference of the two Houses over the
rest of the Bill, and agree upon a scheme of fair and sound
reform. [Cheers.]

Then this fiscal controversy. What on earth has it to do
with party ? With a real Board of Trade, comprising repre-
sentatives of both capital and labour, and presided over by a
business man, every trade would be considered in the hght of

BREAKING AWAY FROM PARTY 17I

its own circumstances. [Hear, hear.] There would be no
books of Adam Smith, or Ricardo, or John Stuart Mill, or Cob-
den, or of any of our modern professors in the room — just plain,
commonplace, unromantic facts and figures ; and if in the
opinion of the president, after hearing the views of the delegates
— some fiscal antidote or tonic, temporary or permanent, were
called for, in the interests of any industry — well, he would
make short work of what the gentleman with the blue spectacles
and the long hair had to say. [Cheers.] There can be no
doubt that from many points of view the freedom of our ports
is a good thing for the country, but there can be equally no
doubt that that freedom may at times be abused ; and the man
who says that in all circumstances we should submit uncom-
plainingly to such abuse — well, he may be a sound political
economist, but he is a very bad man of business. [Cheers.]
To say that you ought never to put an import tax on anything
is as stupid as saying that you ought to tax everjrthing.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, I have given you a rough outline
of my position and my intention. I have endeavoured to use
language which everybody can understand. I know that in
striking out for myself the course I have indicated I am entering
upon a path which has usually led to poHtical oblivion. But
I shall risk it. No man ever appreciated more than I do the
honour of a seat in the Imperial Parliament — and no man ever
struggled harder for it. In the darkest days of a stormy Ufe,
when everything around looked black and hopeless, I was
always borne up by a burning faith that some day it would
be my privilege to take an active, and perhaps even an
honourable, part in the public hfe of my country. [Cheers.]
As a boy, returning home from work, I would linger on
Westminster Bridge and dream of the day, far off, when I
might claim entrance to the wonderful building in which, with
all its anomahes and unrealities, are welded, for good or evil,
the immediate destinies of the British race.

No words or pen could depict the thousand conflicting
emotions which fought within me on that February afternoon
in 1906 when for the first time I found the day-dreams of my
youth a living fact. Up to the present I have had Uttle scope.
Coming to Parliament in a cloud of prejudice and suspicion
— colliding from the outset with perhaps the strongest vested
interest in the world — the party system — harassed with a
thousand personal anxieties, the heritage of a once busy City
career, I have yet succeeded in winning the ear, and I believe

172 HORATIO BOTTOMLEY

I may say the goodwill, of the House of Commons, and the
personal friendship of many of its most distinguished members ;
and I have at least given South Hackney a Parliamentary
individuality which for many years it had lost. [Cheers.]
It may be that in the course I am now taking I am jeopar-
dizing any further personal advancement. [No, no.] On the
other hand, it may be that with an unsuspected political
sagacity I am anticipating a general readjustment of our Parlia-
mentary machinery, to be brought about by an approaching
deadlock in the party system. [Hear, hear.] Who shall say ?
But I give those of you who hear me, and who may think that
your old party names and divisions will endure for ever, this
word of warning — be prepared for a rude surprise. [Hear,
hear.] Be prepared ere long to see the wisest and most patriotic
of your public men join forces against a common foe. [Cheers.]
And when that time comes, perhaps the man who now stands
before you may at least find his party — in the ranks of those
who, with the scales of fanaticism fallen from their eyes,
will at length see how, whilst they have been disputing and
wrangling over mythical differences, others — and not all
foreigners — have taken advantage of the opportunity to invade
and undermine our national greatness, and who, ere it is too
late, will cry with one voice, *' Hands off our Constitution !
Hands off that which is ours — ours by right, whether by
inheritance, or purchase, or labour ! Hands off our markets !
Hands off our ports ! Hands off our Empire — out of the way
of our ships, or, by Heaven, they shall sink you to the bottom
of the sea ! " [Loud and long-continued cheers.]

But for the moment I must stand alone, leaving myself in
your hands. I have considered anxiously what I ought to do.
My first inclination, I confess, was to afford the constituency an
opportunity of expressing its judgment upon my action. But
several considerations deterred me. We are in the dog days ;
we are on the eve of the Coronation ; and we may not be very
far off another General Election. Then, to be candid, I have
not yet quite finished the adjustment of my own affairs. I
have a pugnacious objection to paying money I do not owe,
and to gratif3dng the expectation that, rather than have mud
thrown at me in public, I will submit to unjust claims. [Cheers.]

So that, taking everything into consideration, I am afraid
you must put up with me a little longer. [Loud cheers.] It
will give you an opportunity, if you desire it, to look out for
two or three properly hall-marked party candidates, warranted

BREAKING AWAY FROM PARTY I73

sound in wind, at any rate, and with political consciences
guaranteed to be made of the best elastic. [Laughter.] They
will give you figures of Exports and Imports, actuarial tables of
poverty, sickness, and mortality ; they will talk about sending
the town unemployed back to the land they were never on ;
about small holdings and allotments ; about Free Trade and
Tariff Reform ; about the noble House of Commons and the
wicked House of Lords ; and they will prove to demonstration,
by copious extracts from Blue Books and Government Returns,
that, though you may be out of work, and your stomach empty,
and your children wan and pale, you are really doing wonder-
fully well if you only knew it. [Laughter.] And if you elect
one of them he will smile graciously upon you, thank you for the
honour you have done him, and then send a proud wire to his
mother and his aunt, informing them that he is a full-fledged
M.P. [Laughter.]

As for the defeated candidates, they will slink back to
their party headquarters, receive a pat on the back from their
Whip, replenish their carpet-bags with a new set of pamphlets,
and set out for fields and pastures new. [Laughter.] And
all the time the professional poUticians will be smilingly looking
on, drawing their salaries and thanking Heaven for the gulU-
bility of the British public. [Cheers.] But, ladies and gentle-
men, when that day comes you shall at last hear another
voice. To-day it is the voice as of one crying in the wilder-
ness. But that day, believe me, it shall ring out loud and
clear — bidding you to stop this foolery ; warning you to take
your eyes off the horizon and take heed of the storm-clouds
gathering over your heads ; telling you of a new era of govern-
ment which shall find work for willing hands to do — food and
clothing and decent homes for honest folk — work for the strong,
succour for the weak, help for the sick ; children growing in the
morning sun, old and weary resting in the golden glory of its
setting rays. [Hear, hear.] I tell you that these things are
well within your grasp, if you will only shake off the sloth of
party stupor, abandon the cant of commonplace, and substitute
a robust self-reliance for a helpless faith in a mythical and
unresponsive State ; and if you will make your Parliament,
not a museum of puppets and marionettes, but a great national
committee, attending to the affairs of the nation as they would
to their own — leaving the morals and religious and social habits
of the people to the people themselves, giving them just and
equal laws, with free scope for their enterprise and their energy.

174 HORATIO BOTTOMLEY

without molestation or inquisitorial interference in either their
work or their play [cheers] — guarding their trade and pro-
tecting their liberties, and leaving all else to the silent and
mysterious working of the immutable law of human evolution,
which neither Governments, nor kings, nor people can divert,
or hasten, or retard in its eternal course. Ladies and gentlemen,
that is the message that, though all unworthy for such a mission,
I shall bring you. You will listen — and you will answer.
[Loud and continued applause.]

CARDINAL MANNING

PERSECUTION OF THE JEWS

[Address by Cardinal Manning, delivered February i, 1882,
in the Egyptian Hall of the Mansion House, London, at a meeting
convened by the Lord Mayor to give expression to the feeling
excited in England by the then recently perpetrated atrocities
upon the Jews in Russia.]

My Lord Mayor, Ladies and Gentlemen : — It has often
fallen to my lot to move a resolution in meetings such as this,
but never in my memory have I moved one with more perfect
conviction of my reason or more entire concurrence of my
heart.

I need not disclaim, for I accept the eloquent disclaimer
of the noble lord, that we are not met here for a pohtical
purpose. If there were a suspicion of any party politics, I
should not be standing here. It is because I believe that
we are highly above all the tumults of party politics, that we
are in the serene region of human sympathy and human
justice, that I am here to-day. I can also declare that nothing
can be further from my intention, as I am confident nothing
can be further from yours, than to do that which would be
a violation of the laws of mutual peace and order, and the
respect which binds nations together, or to attempt to interfere
or dictate in the domestic legislation of Russia. I am also
bound to say that I share heartily in the words of veneration
used by the noble earl [the Earl of Shaftesbury, who moved
the first resolution : " That, in the opinion of this meeting,
the persecution and the outrages which the Jews in many
parts of the Russian dominion have for several months past
suffered, are an offence to civilization to be deeply deplored *']
towards his Imperial Majesty of Russia. No man can have
watched the last year of the Imperial family, no man can
know the condition in which the Emperor stands now, without

175

176 CARDINAL MANNING

a profound sympathy which would at once quell every dis-
position to use a single expression which would convey a wound
to the mind of the Czar. Therefore, I disclaim absolutely and
altogether that anything that passes from my lips — and I
beheve I can speak for all — should assume a character incon-
sistent with veneration for a person charged with a responsi-
bihty so great. Further, I may say that while we do not
pretend to touch upon any question in the internal legislation
of Russia, there are laws larger than any Russian legislation —
the laws of humanity and of God, which are the foundation of
all other laws, and if in any legislation they be violated, all
the nations of Christian Europe, the whole commonwealth of
civilized and Christian men, would instantly acquire a right
to speak out aloud.

And now I must touch upon one point, which I acknowledge
has been ver}^ painful to me. We have all watched for the last
twelve months the anti-Semitic movement in Germany. I
look upon it with a twofold feeling — in the first place with
horror as tending to disintegrate the foundations of social
life, and, secondly, with great fear lest it may light up an
animosity, which has already taken flame in Russia and may
spread elsewhere. I have read with great regret an elaborate
article, full, no doubt, of minute observations, written from
Prussia and published in The Nineteenth Century, giving
a description of the class animosities, jealousies, and rivalries
which are at present so rife in that country. When I read
that article, my first feeling was one of infinite sorrow that
the power and energy of the Old Testament should be so
much greater in Brandenburg than those of the New. I am
sorry to see that a society penetrated with rationalism has
not so much Christian knowledge. Christian power, Christian
character, and Christian virtue as to render it impossible that,
cultivated, refined, industrious, and energetic as they are,
they should endanger the Christian society of that great
kingdom. I have also read with pain accounts of the con-
dition of the Russian Jews, bringing against them accusations
which, if I touch upon them, I must ask my Jewish friends
near me to believe I reject with incredulity and horror. Never-
theless, I have read that the cause of what has happened in
Russia is that the Jews have been pliers of infamous trades —
usurers, immoral, demoralizing, and I know not what. When
I read these accusations, I ask. Will they be cured by crime,
murder, outrage, abominations of every sort ? Are they not

PERSECUTION OF THE JEWS I77

learning the lesson from those who ought to teach a
higher ?

Again, if it be true, which I do not believe, that they are
in the condition described, are they not under penal laws ?
Is there anything that can degrade men more than to close
against intelligence, energy, and industry all the honourable
careers of public Ufe ? Is there anything that can debase and
irritate the soul of man more than to be told, " You must not
pass beyond that boundary ; you must not go within eighteen
miles of that frontier ; you must not dwell in that town ;
you must Uve only in that province " ? I do not know how
any one can believe that the whole population can fail to be
affected in its inmost soul by such laws ; and if it be possible
to make it worse, this is the mode and the discipline to
make it so.

They bring these accusations against the Russian Jews ;
why do they not bring them against the Jews of Germany ?
By the acknowledgment of the anti-Semitic movement, the
Jews in Germany rise head and shoulders above their fellows.
Why do they not bring these accusations against the Jews of
France ? Is there any career of public utility, any path of
honour, civil or military, in which the Jews have not stood
side by side with their countrymen ? If the charge is brought
against the Jews of Russia, who will bring it against the Jews
of England ? For uprightness, for refinement, for generosity,
for charity, for all the graces and virtues that adorn humanity,
where will be found examples brighter or more true of human
excellence than in this Hebrew race ? And when we are told
that the accounts of those atrocities are not to be trusted,
I ask if there were to appear in the newspapers long and
minute narratives of murder, rapine, and other atrocities
round about the Egyptian Hall, in Old Jewry, in Houndsditch,
in Shoreditch, if it were alleged that the Lord Mayor was
looking on, that the metropoHtan police did nothing, that
the Guards at the Tower were seen mingled with the mob, I
believe you would thank any man who gave you an opportunity
of exposing and contradicting the statement.

Well, then, I say we are rendering a public service to the
public departments and Ministry of Russia by what we are
doing now, and I believe it will carry consolation to the heart
of the great prince who reigns over that vast empire. But
let me suppose for a moment that these things are true — and
I do not found my belief in their truth from what has appeaired

II — 12

178 CARDINAL MANNING

either in the Times newspaper or in the Pall Mall Gazette,
which has confirmed the statements. I hold the proofs in
my own hand. And from whom do they come ? From official
documents, from the Minister of the Interior, General Ignatieff .
The resolution speaks of the laws of Russia as regards its
Jewish subjects. I do not assume to be an old jurist in EngUsh
law, much less to say what the laws of Russia are in this
respect. I should not know what to say on the resolution if
I did not hold in my hand a rescript of much importance. I
hope I shall not be told that, hke the ukase, it is a forgery.
These horrible atrocities had continued throughout May, June,
and July, and in the month of August this document was
issued. The first point in it is that it laments and deplores —
what ? The atrocities on the Jewish subjects of the Czar ?
By no means, but the sad condition of the Christian inhabitants
of the southern provinces. The next point is that the main
cause of these " movements and riots," as they are called,
to which the Russian nation had been a stranger, is but a
commercial one. The third point is that this conduct of the
Jews has called forth '* protests *' on the part of the people,
as manifested by acts — of what do you think ? Of violence
and robbery. Fourthly, we are told by the Minister of the
Interior that the country is subject to malpractices, which
were, it is known, the cause of the agitation.

My Lord Mayor, if the logic of this document be calm, the
rhetoric and insinuation of it are most inflammatory, and I
can hardly conceive how, with that rescript in their hands,
the Russian population could not have felt that they were
encouraged to go on. The document then goes on to say,
" We have appointed a Commission to inquire " — into what ?
" First, what are the trades of the Jews which are injurious
to the inhabitants of the place ; and, secondly, what makes
it impracticable to put into force the already existing laws
limiting the rights of the Jews in the matter of buying and
farming land and trading in intoxicants and usury. Thirdly,
how shall these laws be altered so that the Jews can no longer
evade them, and what new laws may be passed to prevent their
evasion."

Besides answering the foregoing questions, the following
additional information was sought— first, on usury ; secondly,
on the number of pubHc-houses ; thirdly, on the number of
persons in the service of the Jews ; fourthly, on the extent
and acreage of the land ; and, lastly, on the number of Jewish

PERSECUTION OF THE JEWS I79

agriculturists. We have in our hands the Russian laws affect-
ing the Jewish subjects of the Empire. I would ask what is
the remedy for a population in this state ? Is it more penal
laws ? Is it to disqualify them from holding land ? Is it
to forbid them to send their children to higher places of educa-
tion ? No, my Lord Mayor ; I believe that the remedy for
this state of things is twofold — first, the vital supremacy of
Christian law in all its amplitude. It was not by laws like
these that the Christians won the world and won the Imperial
power to execute justice among men. It will not be by laws
other than these that the great Imperial power of Russia will
blend with the population of the Empire their Jewish subjects.

The other remedy I believe to be this : a stern and merciful
execution of justice upon evil-doers, coupled with a stern and
rigorous concession of all that is right in the law of nature
and of God to every man. All that is necessary for the pro-
tection of life and Hmb, and liberty and property — all that
constitutes human freedom — this, and nothing less than this,
will be the remedy for the evil of which the Minister of the
Interior complains.

I look very hopefully to what may be the effect of this
meeting. Do not let us overrate it. If we believe that this
meeting will have done the work, and that we may cease to
speak, its effect will not be what we desire. Let us not under-
rate it either. I believe that all through the United Kingdom
there will be a response to this meeting. Manchester and
Birmingham have begun ; and wheresoever the English tongue
is spoken throughout the world, that which your Lordship
has said so eloquently and so powerfully will be known. I
believe at the very moment we are assembled here, a meeting
of the same kind is assembled in New York ; and what passes
here will be translated into every language of Europe, and will
pass even the frontiers of Russia. Like the Hght and the air,
it cannot be excluded, and wheresoever there is human sym-
pathy, the declarations that are made here and elsewhere
will meet with a response that will tend to put an end to these
horrible atrocities.

There is a Book, my lord, which is common to the race of
Israel and to us Christians. That Book is a bond between
us, and in that Book I read that the people of Israel are the
oldest people upon the earth. Russia, and Austria, and
England are of yesterday compared with the imperishable
people which, with an inextinguishable life and immutable

l80 CARDINAL MANNING

traditions, and faith in God and in the laws of God, scattered
as it is all over the world, passing through the fires unscathed,
trampled into the dust, and yet never combining with the
dust into which it is trampled, lives still a witness and a
warning to us. We are in the bonds of brotherhood with it.
The New Testament rests upon the Old. They believe in
half of that for which we would give our lives. Let us then
acknowledge that we unite in a common sjnnpathy. I read
in that Book these words : " I am angry with a great anger
with the wealthy nations that are at ease, because I was a
little angry with Israel, and they helped forward the affliction."
That is, My people were scattered ; they suffered unknown
and unimaginable sufferings, and the nations of the world
that dwelt at ease and were wealthy, and had power in their
hands, helped forward a very weighty affliction which was upon
them all.

My lord, I only hope this — that not one man in England
who calls himself a ci^dlized or Christian man will have it in
his heart to add by a single word to that which this great and
ancient and noble people suffer ; but that we shall do all we
can by labour, by speech, and by prayer to lessen if it be
possible, or at least to keep ourselves from sharing in sympathy
with these atrocious deeds.

MARK TWAIN

"MISTAKEN IDENTITY"

[Speech of Samuel Langhome Clemens (Mark Twain) at the
"Ladies' Night" banquet of the Papyrus Club, Boston, Feb-
ruary 24, 1 88 1.]

Ladies and Gentlemen : — I am perfectly astounded at the
way in which history repeats itself. I find myself situated,
at this moment, exactly and precisely as I was once before,
years ago, to a jot, to a tittle, to a very hair. There isn't a
shade of difference. It is the most astonishing coincidence
that ever — but wait, I will tell you the former instance, and
then you will see it yourselves.

Years ago I arrived one day at Salamanca, Pa., eastward
bound; must change cars there, and take the sleeper-train.
There were crowds of people there, and they were swarming
into the long sleeper-train and packing it full, and it was a
perfect purgatory of rush and confusion and gritting of teeth,
and soft, sweet, and low profanity. I asked the young man
in the ticket office if I could have a sleeping-section, and he
answered, **No !" with a snarl that shrivelled me up like
burned leather. I went off smarting under this insult to my
dignity and asked another local official, supplicatingly, if I
couldn't have some poor little corner somewhere in a sleeper
car, and he cut me short with a venomous ** No, you can't ;
every corner's full — now don't bother me any more." And
he turned his back and walked off. My dignity was in a
state now which cannot be described. I was so ruffled that
— well, I said to my companion : "If these people knew who

I am they " But my companion cut me short there

and said : " Don't talk such folly ! If they did know who
you are, do you suppose it would help your high mightiness

z8i

l82 MARK TWAIN

to a vacancy in a train which has no vacancies in it ? Ah, me I
if you could only get rid of 148 pounds of your self-conceit,
I would value the other pound of you above the national
debt."

This did not improve my condition any to speak of. But
just then I observed that the coloured porter of a sleeping-
car had his eye on me ; I saw his dark countenance hght up ;
he whispered to the uniformed conductor, punctuating with
nods and jerks toward me, and straightway this conductor
came forward, oozing politeness from every pore, and said :
" Can I be of any service ? Will you have a place in the
sleeper ? '* " Yes," I said, " and much obliged too ; give
me anything — anything will answer." He said, " We have
nothing left but the big family stateroom, with two berths
and a couple of armchairs in it ; but it is entirely at your
disposal, and we shall not charge you any more than we
should for a couple of ordinary berths. Here, Tom, take
these satchels aboard." He touched his hat, and we and
the coloured Tom moved along. I was bursting to drop
just one little remark to my companion, but I held in and
waited.

Tom made us comfortable in that sumptuous great apart-
ment, and then said, with many bows and a perfect affluence
of smile : " Now, is dey anything you want, sah ? — 'case you
kin have jes' anything you wants, don't make no difference
what it is." I said, ** Can I have some hot water and
a tumbler at nine to-night — blazing hot, you know — about
the right temperature for a hot Scotch punch ? " " Yes,
sah, dat you kin ; you can 'pen' on it ; I'll get it myse'f."
" Good ; now that lamp is hung too high ; can I have a big
coach candle fixed up just at the head of my bed, so that I can
read comfortably ? " " Yes, sah, you kin ; I'll fix her up
myse'f, an' I'll fix her so she'll burn all night, an' I'll see
dat she does, too, 'case I'll keep my eye on her troo de do ';
yes, sah, an' you kin jes' call for anything you wants — it
don't make no difference what it is — an' dis yer whole rail-
road'll be turned wrong end up an' inside out for to git it for
you — dat's ! " And he disappeared.

Well, I tilted my head back, hooked my thumbs in my
armholes, smiled a smile on my companion, and said gently :
"Well, what do you say now? " My companion was not in
a humour to respond — and didn't. The next moment that
smiling black face was thrust in at the crack of the door, and

" MISTAKEN IDENTITY 183

this speech followed. "Law bless you, sah, I knowed you
the minute I set eyes on you/' " Is that so, my boy ? " (hand-
ing him a quadruple fee). "Well, who am I?" "General
McClellan ! " (great merriment) — and he disappeared. My com-
panion said, vinegarishly, "Well, what do you say now? "

Right there comes in a marvellous coincidence I mentioned
a week ago, viz. I was speechless. And that is my condition
now. Perceive it ? [Laughter and applause.]

«IAN MACLAREN

SCOTTISH TRAITS

[Lecture by the Rev. John Watson (Ian Maclaren) delivered in
various places during his tour of the United States in 1896-97.]

Ladies and Gentlemen: — I shall have the pleasure of
speaking to you about certain traits of character of the people
of my nation. One of the first traits I shall illustrate is
their humour. We are, I hope, a Christian people, but I
am certain that our Christianity has been tested a good many
times by that often-repeated proverb of Sidney Smith's that
it takes a surgical operation to get a joke into a Scotchman's
head. [Laughter.]

A recent writer, whom I cannot identify, and whose
name I do not want to know, denies that there is anything
in our humour that is light in touch, delicate and graceful.
He asserts instead that there is much that is austere and
awkward, tiresome, and unpleasant. Now each nation takes
its own humour in its own way, some joyously, some seriously,
but none more conscientiously than the Scotch.

When an Englishman sees a joke in the distance, he im-
mediately capitulates and laughs right out. He takes it
home for the enjoyment of the family, and perhaps the
neighbours hear it through the doors. Then for days after-
wards the man who captured it shares it with his fellow-
passengers in conveyances, possibly impressing it forcibly
upon them. In the Scotch mind, when a jest presents itself,
the question arises, "Is it a jest at all ? " and it is given a
careful and analytical examination, and if, after twenty-four
hours, it continues to appear to be a jest, it is accepted and
done much honour. Even then it may not cause a laugh.

184

Thk Rev. John >V^tsc)n

' Ian Maci.aiikn "

SCOTTISH TRAITS 185

As some grief is too deep for tears, so some humour is appre-
ciated without demonstration, and, again, as all soils are not
productive of the same fruit, so each country has its own
particular humour. Understand the humour of a nation and
you have understood its character and its traditions, and even
had some sort of an insight into its grief.

If you want the, most beautiful flower of humour, wit,
you must go to France for it. There is no wit so subtle, so
finished, so complete as the French wit, especially the wit
of the Parisian. There you will find what might be termed
the aristocracy of wit.

What I mean by wit is this : Two men were riding together
one day through Paris. One was exceedingly bright and
clever, while the other was correspondingly dull. As is
usually the case, the latter monopolized the conversation.
The talk of the dullard had become almost unendurable,
when his companion saw a man on the street far ahead yawn-
ing. " Look," he exclaimed, " we are overheard ! "

That story divides the sheep from the goats. I was tell-
ing it once to a Scotch lady, who remarked : " How could they
have been overheard at that distance ? " " Madam," I replied,
" that never occurred to me before." [Renewed laughter.]

The Scotch have no wit. Life to them has been too intense
and too bitter a struggle for the production of humour of
the French kind. Neither have they drollery, which is the
result of standing the intellect upon its head, so that it sees
things bottom upwards. This is the possession of the Irish ;
not the North Irish, who are only Scotch people who went
over to Ireland to be born ; but the South Irishman, the
Milesian, who sees things upside down habitually. It is
because of drollery that these lovable, kind-hearted people
are so irresistible.

An Irishman was once sent to deliver a live hare, which
escaped and started to run for its liberty. The Irishman
made no attempt at pursuit. Not he. He simply shook
his sides with laughter, while he exclaimed : "Ye may run,
ye may run and kape on running, but small good it'll do yez.
Ye haven't got the address 1 " [Laughter and applause.]

We Scotch have not the most democratic form of humour,
which is called '* fun." Fun seems to be the possession of
the English race. Fun is John Bull's idea of humour, and
there is no intellectual judgment in fun. Everybody imder-
stands it because it is practical. More than that, it unites

l86 *' IAN MACLAREN

yt

all classes and sweetens even political life. To study the ele-
mental form of English humour, you must look to the school-
boy. It begins with the practical joke, and unless there is
something of this nature about it, it is never humour to an
Englishman. In an English household, fun is going all the
time. The entire house resounds with it. The father comes
home and the whole family contribute to the amusement ;
puns, humorous uses of words, httle things that are mean-
ingless nonsense, if you like, fly round, and every one enjoys
them thoroughly for just what they are. The Scotch are
devoid of this trait, and the Americans seem to be, too.

If I had the power to give humour to the nations I would
not give them drollery, for that is impractical ; I would not
give them wit, for that is aristocratic, and many minds can-
not grasp it ; but I would be contented to deal out fun, which
has no intellectual element, no subtlety, belongs to old and
young, educated and uneducated alike, and is the natural
form of the humour of the Englishman.

Let me tell you why the Englishman speaks only one
language. He believes with the strongest conviction that
his own tongue is the one that all people ought to speak
and will come in time to speak, so what is the use of learning
any other ? He believes, too, that he is appointed by Pro-
vidence to be a governor of all the rest of the human race.
From our Scottish standpoint we can never see an English-
man without thinking that there is oozing from every pore
of his body the conviction that he belongs to a governing
race. It has not been his desire that large portions of the
world should be under his care, but as they have been thrust
upon him in the proceedings of a wise Providence, he must
discharge his duty. This theory hasn't endeared him to
others of his kind, but that isn't a matter that concerns him.
He doesn't learn any other language because he knows that
he could speak it only so imperfectly that other people would
laugh at him, and it would never do that a person of his im-
portance in the scheme of the universe should be made the
object of ridicule.

An Englishman and a German were once speaking of
this subject, and the latter asked the former why it was
that Englishmen did not speak as good French as the Germans,
to which the Englishman replied : "I'll tell you why. If
Napoleon Bonaparte had come twice to our nation to teach
us his language, we would speak it as well as you do."

SCOTTISH TRAITS 187

Here is another sample of the English jest. The Duke
of Wellington was once introduced by King Louis Philippe
to a marshal whose troops the Duke had whipped in the
Peninsula. The marshal gruffly refused the Duke's hand,
turned and walked away, while the Duke said : '* Excuse him,
your Majesty; I taught him that lesson." [Applause.]

But English humour consists of fair fighting, hitting above
the belt. It is healthy fun, that has made family life happy,
taken precociousness out of boys, and enabled the English-
man to give his neighbour a slap when he needed a slap, and
no hard feelings.

If I may venture to say anything of American humour,
I would say that it has two conspicuous qualities. The
one is its largeness. It is humour on a great scale, which
I presume is due to the three thousand miles between San
Francisco and New York. We live in a small, poor country,
and our humour is thrifty ; your country is large and rich,
and your humour is extravagant. The other quality of your
humour is its omissions, which perhaps is due to the fact
that, having so huge a coimtry, you cannot travel through
it in daylight. So in your humour you give the first and
last chapters of a jest, which is like a railroad journey across
this big country, much of the time spent in sleep, but with
frequent sudden awakenings. [Applause.] But did it ever
occur to you that you Americans are a terribly serious people ?
Your comic papers, for example, contain almost no genuine
fun. They leave a bitter taste. The fun is there for a
purpose ; it is bitter, well-nigh malignant. The items hit,
as well as raise a laugh, and they never lack an ulterior motive.
You are too busy ; you put out too much nervous energy ;
your Ufe is too tense to make pure fun for the pleasure of it ;
such, for example, as is found in our Punch.

There is one department still left, perhaps the most
severely intellectual of all. It is irony. In irony there is a
sense of the paradox of things, the unexpectedness of things,
the conjunction of joy and sorrow, the sense of the unseen.
The Scotch literature and life are exceedingly rich in irony.
It has come from the bitter indignation of a people who have
seen some amazing absurdity or wrong. Hence, the sair laugh
of the Scotchman is a bitter laugh, not on the outside, but on
the inside, and deep down. Irony is the most profound form
of humour, and in that department of humour the Scotch
are unexcelled. The Scotchman has to plough ground that

1 88 " IAN MACLAREN '*

is more stones than earth, he has to harvest his crops
out of the teeth of the snow-storm, three centuries of the
sternest Calvinism are behind him, his life has been a continual
struggle and surprise; and all these things have taught him
the irony of life.

Let an Englishman and a Scotchman come together for
a bit of banter. The Englishman asks the Scot why so many
of his people go abroad and never return to their native land.
The Scotchman tells the Englishman that it is for the good
of the world. Then he retorts by telling the Englishman
that just across the border is a city in Scotland composed of
30,000 Englishmen. The EngHshman is incredulous until
the Scotchman tells him that the name of the town is Bannock-
burn, that the same Englishmen have been inhabiting it for
several centuries, and that they are among the most peaceful
and law-abiding citizens of Scotland. Then the Scotchman
wants to be alone for a couple of minutes to enjoy the taste
of that in his mouth.

A Scot's humour is always grim because he is always in
contact with the tragedy of life. A Scotchman goes out to
play golf. He is annoyed by a slow player who is ahead of
him on the Unks, and tells his caddie to gather up the sticks
and go back to the club, as he does not want to follow a funeral
procession all day. The caddie replies, after thought : "Ah
noo ! Dinna be hasty. He might drop deid afore he has
gone three holes." Is there any nation like this, sensible
always of the divinities hanging over them ? [Applause.]

Scotch humour is always dry and never sweet ; always
biting and never consoling. There was a Scotch woman
whose husband was sick. Although she attended the church
of the Rev. Norman McLeod, she sent for another minister
to administer spiritual advice to her husband. The minister
came and discovered that the man was suffering from typhus
fever. In speaking to the wife he asked her what church
she attended. She replied that she went to Norman's church.

** Then why did you not have him come ? " was the query.

" Why," answered the woman, *' do you think we would
risk Normie with the typhus fever ? *' [Laughter and ap-
plause.]

The grimmest example of Scotch humour that I ever heard
is this story that was told me of a criminal who was con-
demned to death. Just before the execution his counsel
went to see him for the purpose of cheering him up. He

SCOTTISH TRAITS 189

told the Scot that sentence had been pronounced, it was
perfectly just, and he must hope for no mercy, but he asked
if there were anything he could do for him. The condemned
man thanked him, said he was most kind, and there was one
request he would make.

" What is that ? " asked his visitor.

" I would ask you to go to my chest and fetch my Sabbath
blacks ? ''

** And what do you want with your Sabbath blacks ? "

" I wish to wear them as a mark of respect for the de-
ceased," said the condemned man. [Applause.]

I will pass on and claim for the Scotchman what no one
has ever denied him, although rarely understood, and that
is that he is cautious. I will put the phrase in its commonest
form, and say that he is canny. We say, not a cautious Scot,
but a " canny " Scot. What is canny ? you ask. Well, I
will leave that answer to any man who has ever done business
with a Scotchman. A Scotchman in business is not a creature
of impulses ; he makes sound bargains. He is perfectly
honourable, and will not go back on a bargain once made ; but
I do not think he is accustomed to be bested in a bargain.
It is said that it takes two Jews to outwit a Greek, and two
Greeks to outwit an Armenian, and yet an Armenian went
to the town of Aberdeen in Scotland and in two weeks had
not a dollar. [Laughter.] Canniness is merely the attitude
of a man's mind who has to watch hard to get a harvest.
The Scotchman has acquired the quality from being plundered
by the Highlandmen above, the English below, while the
French, overseas, were trying to annex his country, and so
he has learned to stand with his back to the wall to prevent
anybody from getting behind him. This has made him
watchful and self-controlled. That is " canny." So this has
come to be the intellectual attitude also of the Scotch people,
and it makes them watchful, careful, and self-controlled.

I should like to emphasize the fact that there are really
two nations in Scotland : there is the Lowland Scot and there
is the Celtic Scot — the man of Midlothian and Edinburgh,
and the man in the district beyond Inverness. It is the
northern Scot that wears the kilt, plays the bagpipes, and
speaks in Gaelic. Now, every single virtue which the Low-
land Scot has in abundance, the Celtic Scot largely wants,
and every little frailty which the Lowland Scot has — if he
has any — is wanting in the character of the Celts. I have

190 "lAN MACLAREN'*

already spoken to you of Scottish cautiousness, but the High-
landers are rash and impulsive. The Lowlander is a good
man of business, the Highlander a good man of war. The
Highlander is a good sportsman and a good soldier. The
humour of the Highlander, again, is entirely different from that
of the Lowlander.

Another characteristic of the Scotchman is that he will
admit nothing. He is so careful in picking out his words
that never is there room to get back of one of his statements
and push it from its citadel. It is cruel to try to get an
admission or an agreement to any statement from a Scot.
Be satisfied if, when you say to Sandy, " You have a splendid
crop," he replies, " It might have been waur." I have tried
to get definite answers from Scotchmen, and I know whereof
I speak. I have striven for weeks to get a Scotchman to
admit something — on the weather, on the crops, on anything
— but he never would make an admission.

An Englishman meets a Scotchman in a pouring rain
and remarks that it is a regular deluge. The Scotchman
does not say that it is a deluge, in the first place because
there will never be another. The most that you are likely
to get him to admit is that " if it were gaun to keep on as
it's doing, it might be wet afore evening." And he can
retreat from that ! [Laughter and applause.]

The vice of the adjective has never been the vice of a
Scotch mind, which lacks the effusiveness of more southern
nations. The reason why a Scotchman has so much trouble
in speaking is because he makes the fitting of a noun with
an adjective a matter of conscience. An Englishman puts
his hand in a bag and takes out half-a-dozen adjectives and
uses them all. The Scotchman knows every one of the words,
but does not use them, because he would have to go over the
entire list before persuaded which one to use, and this requires
too much time.

Conversation in Scotland is a game at chess, and a game
played cautiously, move by move, in prospect of an intellectual
checkmate. The idea of conversation in Scotland is argu-
ment over subjects political or theological, preferably the
latter, because there is such a chance to dispute — and to
get hold with your teeth. There is none of the rattling
small talk in which some other nations indulge. A Scotch-
man will carry on an argument even unto death. He can
make religious distinctions that no one else can see. He has

SCOTTISH TRAITS I9I

sharpness, for his sword has been whetted for centuries with
argument. The very power of brain which he has acquired
by use in this way serves him well in the business world.

To illustrate the extraordinary argumentativeness of
the Scots there is a story of a Scotchman who lay dying in
a London hospital. A woman visitor wanted to sing him
some hymns, but he told her that he had all his life fought
against using hymn times in the service of God, but he was
willing to argue the question with her as long as his senses
remained. I say that when a man in the face of death is
willing to stand for the truth as it has been taught to him,
it is out of such stuff that heroes are made. [Applause.]

Controversy is Scotland's great national game. Some
people say that golf is our national sport. We play golf,
but we play it and say nothing about it. Other nations
play it a little and talk about it a great deal. [Laughter.]
But our real sport, our great national pastime, is heresy
hunting — and we hunt a heretic according to a huntsman's
rules. A heresy case is meat and drink to a Scot. We even
keep a choice selection of heretics on hand to use in times
of scarcity. [Applause.] Every one reads the newspaper
accounts of a heresy case, and no one bears the least ill-will to
the heretic. I have heard of a kirk where, when a moderator
was to be elected, although there had been dissensions
without bitterness during the year, *' the whole congregation
felt bound to this man by the ties of rebellion." The Scotch
nation, to a greater degree than any other, is ecclesiastical or
theological, for all Scots are either pillars in the Church or
buttresses outside. Yes, and for various reasons. One is that
the Scotchman regards the fear of God as the deepest thing
in human knowledge, and that a man cannot have a reUgion
that has got no reason in it and no principle. Again, the
Scotchman takes to theology like a duck to water, because
it affords him the best opportunity he can get for discussion
and argument. Intellect is like a razor, and it matters not
what the grindstone is. But there is no better grindstone
for the intellect than the Shorter Catechism. Our whole
nation, in fact, rejoices in theology. It is the national enjoy-
ment of the Scottish people.

I have heard of a Scottish farmer who kept up a discus-
sion on the topic of " faith or work " during a ten-mile railway
journey, dismounted at the end of it, and as the train was
moving off called out to his antagonist : "I dinna deny what

192 "lAN MACLAREN"

ye brocht forward from the Romans, but I take my stand
here and now (he was holding on to a railway post) on the
Epistle of James." [Applause.] Now, if working farmers
can conduct a discussion of that kind, and conduct it well,
after dinner, what cannot such a nation in its serious moments
do before dinner ?

The reason a Scotchman takes to theology is because
he is determined to reason things out. Theology affords
the strongest grip for his teeth, and he can get the biggest
mouthful. Leave a Scot to the freedom of his own will, and
he makes for theology at once. Other things he is obliged
to talk about. Theology he loves to talk about. Whenever
or wherever Scotchmen meet, and there is no particular
business on hand, they go as naturally into theology as a cow
into clover, and if there are not enough of the heterodox kind
present, some will take that side just to keep things a-going.

Another tendency of the Scotch is to go to law. For
centm"ies, when there was no other amusement or diversion
for a Scotchman, he could engage in a lawsuit.

The Scottish people have long been noted for their austerity
and for the respect shown to the Sabbath. I will leave it
to my audience to say whether it has been the weakest or the
strongest nations of the earth which have kept the Sabbath.
Did not the American forefathers themselves consecrate
Sunday as a day of rest and keep it with the utmost strictness ?

Another Scottish trait is ** dourness," defined in the dic-
tionary as " obstinacy." This is hardly adequate to express
the truth. I had rather deal with a dozen obstinate men
than with one dour Scotchman. Dourness is obstinacy
raised to the eighth power. It is one hundred obstinate people
rolled into one. It fills me with despair to try to explain it.
If I could present the picture of a Highland cow, with her
calf by her side, watching the approach of a tourist whom
she thinks is coming too near — could I depict the expression
of her face, that, I would say, would fairly represent what is
meant by " dour." Not that the cow would take the aggres-
sive, but, if interfered with, I'll warrant she would not be
the one permanently injured. Led by this trait, a certain
Scotchman always stood up during prayers when others
were kneeling, and sat down when others stood to sing,
because, as he expressed it, the ordinary method was the
only one used by the English, and he wasn't going to do as
they did.

SCOTTISH TRAITS I93

Let the Scotch alone, and there are no more civil people
in the world, but let some one come bringing them a new
faith, or let the tyrant try to oppress, and they resist to the
end. There were Scotch martyrs, but they nearly always
designed it so that when they went to their death some one
who brought it about went along with them. But if you
take a Scotchman on the right side, flatter him, and tell him
that you want to be his friend, he is too soft, you can do
anything with him, and herein is the inconsistency of his
nature. You trust us, and you may use us as you please ; but
take us on the wrong side, try to make us do what we do not
want to do, and we would not yield an inch if you proposed
the most reasonable thing in the universe. But unless a
nation has a backbone, it deserves no honour. [Applause.]

It would not be well if I did not make a plea for the bright
intelligence of the common people of Scotland. It is owing
to their intelligence, together with other hardy virtues, that
our people have had some measure of success. It is because
of his intelligence that the Scotchman may be said to have
three yards start over his competitors in the race. There is
no other nation where the country people and the labouring
classes of the city have such general educational facilities.
The result of this education is that when a Scot leaves his
country he goes by law of Divine Providence to improve other
countries. You will not find him a scavenger or day labourer,
but a skilled artisan ; not a cheap clerk, but rising in the
firm, with an eye on a junior partnership.

One man, John Knox, is responsible for this Scotch system
of education. Your nation had its leader, whom you rever-
ence as the " Father of His Country.'* Israel had its Moses ;
Germany her Martin Luther ; and Scotland stands to-day
an eternal monument to the foresight and determination of a
single man — John Knox. It was he who, in his capacity as
a political and social reformer, laid down the same principle
in Scotland which you have recognized here — that if a nation
is to succeed, it must be educated. It was he who, in the
sixteenth century, devised a system of education in which
every parish should have its school and every boy should attend
that school. Successful there, he was to have been sent by
the State to a higher school, and thence to a university. The
system failed because three-fifths of the money appropriated
for it went to the Scottish noblemen. Although I cannot
prove it, I feel certain that Knox's scheme must have been

II— -13

<t -r A>T »* A/ST A-r»T-VT >>

194 " IAN MACLAREN

known to the founders of the American system of public
schools and must have had some influence upon the creation
of the American school system. To the influence of John
Knox on the Scottish people is due the fact that they are an
intellectual race to-day. John Knox took the educational
ladder and put its lowest rung at the door-sill of the shep-
herd's cottage and the highest at the door to the university.
[Applause.]

The Scotchman regards only two things with absolute
reverence. Money is not one of them. His religion is one,
learning is the other. If one had pointed out a millionaire
in Drumtochty, nobody would have turned his head, but
Jamie Souter would have run up a hill to see the back of a
scholar disappearing in the distance. [Applause.]

Come with me where the heather rolls in purple billows.
Come with me to a district which some of you know or of
which you have heard, any Highland glen you can think
of or of which you have read. Here is a shepherd's cottage,
on top of which the mosses grow. Stooping, we enter the
doorway and are shown into the best room, where, in striking
contrast to the rest of the poor furniture, is a shelf of calf-
bound books. The shepherd's wife is in reality most anxious
to have you examine these books and ask about them, though
Scotch manners prevent her from calling them to your atten-
tion. It would be a vain display and boasting to speak first of
them. But when you have broken the ice, she will take you
into the kitchen and explain that these were the university
books of her son for whom the whole family has toiled and
saved that he might have an education.

To have a scholar in the family is one of the greatest
ambitions of the people who live in Drumtochty. To prepare
a son for college after he has been duly declared by the
minister and other authorities as having in him the maldng
of a scholar, no sacrifice is too great, or labour too hard, or
planning too arduous. It is worth all it costs to be able to
say once in three generations, at least, that there is a scholar
in the family. It would be well if between the cottages
and the university an open road were kept, and upon that
road the grass were never allowed to grow. For professors the
Scotchman in the glen has immense reverence. To him the
professor is the incarnation of learning, a heavenly body
charged with Greek and Latin. No students have suffered so
much to secure an education as those in Scotch universities.

SCOTTISH TRAITS I95

Among all our qualities, the deepest-rooted, apart from
the fear of God, is sentiment. And yet we do not receive
credit for it, because we have not sentimentalism, which is
the caricature and ghost of sentiment. The sentiment of
the Scotch is of the heart and not of the lips. If I saw a
couple of Scotchmen kissing each other good-bye, I wouldn't
lend five shillings to either of them. It is not an uncommon
thing to see such an exhibition among Italians. I do not
blame them. They are as God made them, and so they must
be. People doubt whether we have any sentiment at all.
Some think we are hard-hearted and cold-blooded. Our
manner is less than genial, and not effusive. Our misfortune
is not to be able to express our feelings. This inability is
allied to our strength ; strong people conceal their feelings.
The Scot is endowed with an excess of caution ; unnecessary
reserve. Recently a train in Scotland came to a junction,
where the porter shouted inside each carriage : ** Change
carriages for Duan, Callendar, and the Trossachs." After
he had gone an old Scotchman said : " I'm for Duan misel',
but I would not let on to that man." [Laughter.] This
story shows the national reserve carried too far ; it would
perhaps be a good thing if the Scotch people "let on '' more
than they do.

But notwithstanding the irony that imderlies the Scot's
nature, and his apparent stolidness, there does lie within
his bosom, unseen, a store of sentiment ; for where do you
find ballads touching home life so beautifully as do those
of Scotland — such as " Robin Adair," " Will Ye No Come
Back Again ? " " Auld Lang Syne " ? And if you want to
know that which no Scotchman can talk to you about, read
the poetry written by one of his own type, Robert Bums.
[Applause.] If a Scotchman is forced to leave his home,
the roots of his life are being torn up ; he is outraged
in feeling and ready to become an anarchist. There is no
greater sin than to dispossess a Scotsman of his home. If
you wish a real nice friend to come and have afternoon tea
with you, and tell you how sweet your children are, and that
she can't live without seeing them, do not send for Elspeth
McFadyen, unless she has been living a long time away
from Drumtochty ; but if one of your children is ill with a con-
tagious disease, she will be the first to proffer care and service.
[Applause.]

Forgive us that we have no outward manners. Believe

196 "lAN MACLAREN"

us that we have a warm heart. If you want manners, go
to another nation. If you want a warm heart, go to a Scotch
woman or man. The songs of Robert Burns are indicative
of the character of the Scotch people. Reading them you can
hear the beating of the Scotch heart. It is true we do not
wear our heart on our sleeve, but where do you find a warmer,
truer heart than that which beats beneath the Scots plaid ?
History has no more generous, impulsive rebellion than the
Rebellion of '45, when men sent their sons, maidens their
sweethearts, to the field in behalf of Prince Charlie. They
had nothing to win, they had everything to lose, and they
gave their blood freely for a sentimental cause. [Applause.]

But we are told that we are a thrifty people, as if that were
a reproach. But does not Scottish thrift mean some of
the best and most useful qualities — foresight, self-denial, the
conscientious use of money ? Does it not mean independence ?
When I contrast this quality with the recklessness and
improvidence of the man who gets thereby a reputation for
being " generous," I declare before this audience that I am
not ashamed of the thrift of our people by which they have
maintained their self-respect, have been enabled to help one
another, and to keep their poor from becoming a burden
in the great cities [applause] ; and I trust in no city are they
a burden to the pohce. It is the nations, Hke the individuals,
that know how to deny themselves, who make their mark
in the world.

It follows as a natural consequence for the inhabitants
of a country so poor as Scotland to emigrate when there
are so many rich lands to go to. But everywhere the Scots-
man goes he retains his characteristics. Never revolutionary,
he is for culture and everything that is for the welfare of his
adopted nation. The problem with Scotsmen going to other
countries is : How did they get along until we got here ?
[Laughter and applause.]

" Lord gi'e us a gude conceit o' oursel's," may be called
the national prayer, and there is perhaps no prayer that has
been so remarkably answered. Once a Scotsman, cornered
with Shakespeare, said : " Shakespeare micht a been an
Englishman — we hae nae evidence to the contrary — but he
was able enough tae hae been a Scotsman.*' [Laughter.]

The Scotch have one illusion, too. It is that nobody
notices their accent. If a Scotchman is asked what part of
Scotland he came from, his first remark after answering

SCOTTISH TRAITS 197

the question is apt to be : " Now that is curious. How did
ye ken I came from Scotland at all ? "

There exists between all natives of Scotland a bond of
S3niipathy. Where do you find persons who love their country
as do the Scotch ? Let three Scotchmen meet in a foreign
city, and they form a St. Andrew's Society to assist their
countrymen.

Scotland has been a stern mother to her children, never
overfeeding them, and using the stick when it was neces-
sary ; and when they have departed from their native country,
they always look back and bless her. Ours is a little country,
and that is perhaps one reason that we love it so well. Yours
is a great and good country, and I wish it peace and prosperity ;
but there is advantage in a little country — you can carry it
more easily in your heart. [Loud applause.]

SIR EDWARD CLARKE

THE BACCARAT CASE

[Speech by Sir Edward Clarke, admittedly the finest ever
delivered before the Bar, and one by which Sir Edward has
said he would wish to be remembered.]

Gentlemen of the Jury : — A week ago I spoke of the re-
sponsibility that rests on me in this case. As the case has
gone on, my sense of that responsibility has deepened. But
I now ask your sustained attention while I — discarding all
'* topics of prejudice " and confining myself to the evidence
— put the case of my client, the plaintiff, before you.
Gentlemen, I am called in this Court by an official designation
— by the title of the office which it has been the greatest
honour of my life to hold. But in this case I am not the
Solicitor-General, I am an English barrister appearing for a
private client, bound by a sacred obligation to the robe I
wear to disregard all private friendships, all poHtical associa-
tions, all personal interests in the discharge of my duty
towards my client.

Gentlemen, there can be no duty more painful than to
have to cross-examine and comment upon the conduct of
one of the witnesses, for whom I have always entertained,
and still do entertain, the greatest respect and regard. But
these comments must be made, on my responsibility, and
freely ; and here, in the Courts where justice is administered
by Judges of the Queen, I shall speak freely even of the most
illustrious of my fellow-subjects. Gentlemen, it is not I who
have sought the conflict in this case. My learned friend Sir
Charles Russell has again and again commented upon the
different tone that has come to me in conducting this case
from that which I adopted in opening the case last Monday.
Gentlemen, I confess it. I am not sorry for it, and I think

198

Rt. Hon. Sir Kdwaud Ci.arkk. K.C,

THE BACCARAT CASE 1 99

any one who will read with care what I then said will acknow-
ledge that at that time I was justified in being as moderate
as I was in my observations upon those who were parties
to the case.

I was mistaken in my estimate of the Wilson family. I
thought that when that Scottish gentleman and soldier Sir
William Gordon-Gumming had in the witness-box, on his
oath, denied the charges against him, they would have with-
drawn these foul charges. It was not alone Sir William
Gordon-Gumming who gave evidence of his innocence. Twenty-
three years he has held the Queen's commission, and has
enjoyed the friendship of men of honour, and every one of
those years was a witness in his favour. Conscious of this,
I had hoped that his accusers would have accepted his denial,
and so had abstained from a word which might cause the
Wilson family pain or annoyance. Having had the hope
which I then entertained, this was, I felt, the proper course
to pursue. I said, however, that comments might be made
upon the conduct of those who had been called before the
jury, and those comments I shall not shrink from making
now. Such comments have been provoked by the attacks
made upon my client, who, it is said, has " tried to slip out of
the Army on half -pay, and has found it impossible to do so."

The question is whether it has been established to the
satisfaction of the jury that Sir William Gordon-Cumming,
on the nights of the 8th and 9th of September, 1890, cheated
at cards. That is the question which has to be tried. I
might, if I had taken a mere tactical course, have deferred
calling my cUent, the plaintiff, until the defendants had been
called and examined, so that it might be known beforehand
what they were able to testify. But that is not the course
I thought it right to take in a case of this kind. When
character is at stake, no doubt the proper place of the plaintiff
is in the witness-box, where, therefore, he has been, and
subjected to a cross-examination which must have wrung
any man's heart to endure, when he was taunted with having
admitted his guilt when he signed the paper which two false
friends had induced him to put his name to. The points
put against the plaintiff were, first, the evidence against
him, and then the belief of his old friends, General Williams
and Lord Coventry, that he was guilty, and, lastly, the paper
he had signed.

I have suggested that General WilHams could not hav^

200 SIR EDWARD CLARKE

believed that Sir W. Gordon-Cumming was guilty. The
question, however, is whether the defendants have satisfied
you of the guilt of the plaintiff; and, if not, then they are
liable in damages, and that would be for you to consider with
reference to all the circumstances of the case. Gentlemen, it
was said that his Royal Highness and Lord Coventry and
General Williams believed that the plaintiff was guilty. As
to his Royal Highness, I shall deal with that when I come
to another part of the case. I had, I confess, to give up the
notion that General Williams and Lord Coventry did not
believe in the guilt of Sir William Gordon-Cumming, for they
have stated that they did believe in it. What consequences
may follow from that on their part I do not know — conse-
quences outside this Court.

Gentlemen, the comments I made were as to the im-
possibility of men of honour, who beheved an officer to have
been guilty of cheating at cards, allowing him to continue
in the service of the Crown, and to remain a member of clubs
to which they both belonged, and where they were daily
meeting their friends, and joining in the ordinary fellowship
of social life, and where they remain, although Lord Coventry
and General Williams have said they believed him guilty of
these charges. It is impossible to say that the suggestion of
setthng the case by his signature of that document came
from his Royal Highness. It came from two men older than
himself — his trusted friends and counsellors — who brought it
to him for his acceptance — a suggestion which he so unwisely
accepted. But, gentlemen. Sir Charles Russell said some-
thing of which I must here take notice ; he has referred to
the signing of the document as being in itself, apart from the
question of the guilt or innocence of Sir W. Gordon-Cumming,
an offence against military law which *' could not be over-
looked.'* I do not quite understand if that means that, even
supposing your verdict to be in his favour, the military
authorities will continue the inquiry which was suspended
because of this action, and go on to punish him by removing
his name from the Army List. That is the only meaning I
can attach to my learned friend's words : but I am bound
to add this — that, the suggestion having been made, if you
find that Sir W. Gordon-Cumming was not guilty of that
which is charged against him, and if, as I trust, he will go
from this Court justified by your verdict, I am bound to say
that I think it is impossible^ and I hope these words of mine

THE BACCARAT CASE 201

will help to make it so, that Sir William Gordon-Gumming 's
name should be removed from the Army List and the names
of Field-Marshal the Prince of Wales and of General Owen
Williams should be allowed to remain in it.

Now, gentlemen, I desire to deal separately with these
matters— the evidence of the charges, the inference to be
drawn from the belief of Lord Coventry and General Owen
Williams that they were true, and the conduct of Sir W.
Gordon-Cumming himself. But I would first make an ob-
servation as to the character and value of the evidence before
you in the case. You are investigating occurrences on the
evenings of the 8th, 9th, and loth of September, 1890, and
you are asked to deal with them on the evidence, it is said,
of eight witnesses, five of whom made no minute or record
whatever of what took place until nearly the end of January,
when an action against them was contemplated — about to
be brought. Let me ask you to consider this. If the jury
were to inquire into circumstances which occurred eight months
ago, would not the first question be whether any of the parties
had put down the events which had occurred, and, if they
had, would not that be accepted as authentic ? Sir Charles
Russell has dealt indeed with this as irrelevant, and has
observed that witnesses had proved inaccuracies in the
statement. So vindictive were the defendants towards Sir
W. Gordon-Cumming as to suggest that the parties who drew
up the narrative had forgotten in a few days some of the
incidents which occurred. His learned friend seemed to think
that the counsel for the plaintiff must suggest to the Wilson
family wilful perjury. But I make no such suggestion. No
doubt, on the 8th and 9th of September they believed they
had seen Sir William Gordon-Cumming commit acts of cheat-
ing. But their evidence was not cumulative as to these acts.
No two of them spoke to the same acts ; and the things they
spoke of, quite incredible as they were, had been spoken
to by persons who went with preconceived notions and
expecting to see such things.

I have alluded to the profuse hospitalities of Tranby
Croft, not with any idea of suggesting drunkenness, but as
indicating that the guests might not be in a state for accurate
observation, and that, while drinking and smoking were
going on at the table where baccarat was being played, it
was not likely that their observation would be very keen
or their recollection very accurate. And especially was this

202 SIR EDWARD CLARKE

remark material when the statements in the narrative were
compared with the statements of the witnesses. The three
gentlemen who signed the narrative would probably be less
excited and more cool and reliable in their statements than
the young people who were witnesses at this trial.

And here came the cardinal fact of the case, that these
three gentlemen, the Prince, Lord Coventry, and General
Owen Williams, had made this record of the facts. General
Williams drew it up, his Royal Highness read it and found it
agree with his own recollection, and he then sent it to Lord
Coventry, and all three signed it. The Prince had been far
more careful than Lord Coventry, for his Royal Highness
had sent the paper sealed up to be taken care of, whereas
Lord Coventry had written his account of it, names and all,
in his diary, which he used every day. General Williams
said the statement was correct, and Lord Coventry also said
it was so with one or two exceptions. " The above," it was
written, " is an accurate record of the facts in the case," and
that was signed by these three eminent persons. Yet the five
witnesses examined here stated that there were six mistakes
in this narrative of the case. And it was upon their evidence,
given many months later, that Sir William Gordon-Cumming
was to be condemned. No doubt one or two of these mis-
takes were not material. The precis or narrative was in
these terms :

" Statement of facts as drawn up by General Owen Williams
and signed by him and Lord Coventry.

** In re Sir William Gordon-Cumming, Bart.

'*For the Doncaster Race Meeting of 1890 the following
party were the guests of Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Wilson at
Tranby Croft : His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales,
Hon. H. Tyrwhitt Wilson, the Earl and Countess of Coventry,
the Earl of Craven, Lord Edward Somerset, Lady Brougham
and Vaux, Count Henry Liitzow, Captain the Hon. A. Somer-
set, Sir William Gordon-Cumming, Lieutenant-General and
Mrs. Owen Williams, Mr. and Mrs. Lycett Green, Mr. Christo-
pher Sykes, Miss Naylor, Mr. Berkeley Levett, Mr. R. Sassoon,
and Mr. J. Wilson (the son of the house). On the evenings
of the 8th and 9th of September the party played at baccarat.
After returning from the races on the loth inst. Mr. Lycett
Green (having previously taken counsel with his fa her on
the matter) made a statement to Lord Coventry to the effect

THE BACCARAT CASE 203

that his brother-in-law, Mr. J. Wilson, had told him on the
evening of the 8th that Sir William Gordon-Cumming sys-
tematically placed a larger stake on the table after the card
had been declared in his favour than he had originally laid
down, and when the cards were against him he frequently
withdrew a portion of his stake, by these means defrauding
the bank. This conduct had also been noticed by Mrs.
Arthur Wilson, who informed her husband of what she had
seen, Mrs. Lycett Green and Mr. Levett having been also
made acquainted with the facts. It was agreed that they
should all carefully watch the play on the following night,
when Sir William Gordon-Cumming was again observed most
distinctly to repeat the same practices.

" Lord Coventry, on hearing this, consulted General Owen
Williams as to what steps should be taken in the matter.
Mr. Lycett Green repeated his statement to both of them in
the presence of Lord Edward Somerset, Captain Arthur
Somerset, and Mr. J. Wilson, and added that those who had
watched were quite prepared to swear to the accuracy of the
report. The matter having thus been placed more or less
in the hands of Lord Coventry and General Owen Williams,
they decided that it was imperative upon them to inform the
Prince of Wales immediately of what had occurred, and after
mature deliberation they agreed to suggest to his Royal
Highness that for the sake of all concerned and for society
at large it was most desirable that the circumstances should
not be allowed to transpire outside the immediate circle of
those abready acquainted with the facts. But as a condition
of silence Sir William Gk)rdon-Cumming must be made to sign
an undertaking never again to play cards for the rest of his Hfe.

** His Royal Highness having been placed in possession of
all the details of the case, and this suggestion being made to
him, agreed that such a solution was possible. Lord Coventry
and General Williams then went to Sir William Gordon-
Cumming and informed him that he was accused of cheating
at baccarat. This charge he denied emphatically and begged
to be allowed to see the Prince of Wales, who consented to
see him, provided Lord Coventry and General Owen Williams
were present. The interview took place. Sir William again
denied the truth of the accusation, but was told it was utterly
useless to attempt a denial in the face of the distinct evidence
of so many totally unprejudiced persons, whose interest it
was that no scandal should have happened in the house.

204 SIR EDWARD CLARKE

The Prince of Wales afterwards saw Mr. Lycett Green, Mr.
A. Wilson, Mr. Levett, Mr. J. Wilson, Lord Edward Somerset,
Captain Arthur Somerset, and Mr. Sassoon, all of whom were
acquainted with the circumstances of the case, and listened
to their verification of the account which had been already
given him. It was pointed out to these gentlemen that an
expose would mean a horrible public scandal, and as it was
most expedient that this should, if possible, be avoided, they
were asked whether they would be willing to keep silence
with regard to what had taken place, on condition that Sir
William Gordon-Cumming signed an undertaking never again
to play cards for the rest of his life.

" To this they all agreed, and declared that they would do
their utmost to prevent the matter from transpiring. Lord
Coventry and General Williams then saw Sir William Gordon-
Cumming and explained that the only possible condition on
which silence could be maintained would be that he should
sign the undertaking before mentioned. At the same time
they clearly pointed out that his signature to this would be
a distinct admission of his guilt. Quite understanding, he
signed the document, which was afterwards signed also by
the gentlemen who were cognizant of the facts, and then
given to the safe keeping of his Royal Highness the Prince
of Wales. Sir William Gordon-Cumming left Tranby Croft
early the following morning. These circumstances were not
known to Lady Coventry, Lady Brougham, Mrs. Owen
WiUiams, Miss Naylor, Lord Craven, Count Henry Liitzow,
nor Mr. Christopher Sykes, all of whom were staying in the
house at the time. The above is an accurate statement of
all the facts of the case.

■ *' Coventry.

" Owen Williams."

Now Mr. Lycett Green said that as to one of these statements
he never made it, but the written document must overrule
any oral recollection. The written statement is that Sir
William systematically cheated by putting down larger sums
when the game was favourable and by withdrawing sums
when unfavourable, and that then they agreed to watch.

That was the accusation, according to the evidence, made
by Mr. Lycett Green, who denied that he made it in those
terms. Which will you beHeve ? Would you not rather
believe the written record made at the time than the sub-

THE BACCARAT CASE 205

sequent oral recollection ? There were other parts of the
written statement which are said to be inaccurate, so that
Sir William Gordon-Cumming is to be condemned on the
evidence of five witnesses whose evidence is contradicted
on several material points by the written record made at
the time. It appears from the statement in writing that
there was an agreement to watch Sir William. Yet this is
denied, and it appears that Mr. Wilson, the head of the family,
was kept in ignorance of the plot and contrivance to entrap
and detect one of his guests. I have called as my witnesses
the Prince of Wales, who acted as banker, and General Owen
Williams, who acted as croupier, neither of whom observed
any cheating on any occasion. Then the witnesses have
denied any charge as to the withdrawal of the stakes. The
written statement is far more rehable than mere recollection.
Lord Coventry doubted the statement as to withdrawal of
stakes, but he said some one had said something as to with-
drawal of stakes, and so he thought General WilHams's state-
ment might be more correct. Now this is most important,
that some one had said something as to withdrawal of stakes,
for there is no such charge made now. That, therefore,
is a point of supreme importance, for everything else is
reconcilable with the explanation arising out of Sir William's
method of play. No such explanation can avail as to the
withdrawal of stakes. And the answers of the defendants
to the interrogatories did not disclose what the real nature
of the charge was. Hence the enormous importance of the
repudiation of this charge of withdrawal of stakes. I ask
you, gentlemen, to believe that the charge was made.

And then comes a very serious point indeed. Did they,
the members of the family, agree to watch Sir William Gordon-
Cumming, and go to play with him with that purpose ? They
now deny it ; but they well knew the scorn it would excite
of the hospitalities of Tranby Croft. They had all denied it
on their oaths ; but it was plain that they had so agreed to
watch, and so they have all denied what they knew to be
the fact. In the written statement drawn up by General
Williams, and signed by him and Lord Coventry and the
Prince, it is expressly stated that it was agreed they should
all carefully watch the play the next night. Now, what did
those three distinguished persons say about it ? His Royal
Highness was not asked about it.

As to the other two gentlemen they both gave evidence

206 SIR EDWARD CLARKE

on the matter. General Owen Williams supported his state-
ment and said " that they did watch there is no doubt, but
my impression was that they had agreed to watch." Then
Lord Coventry also in his evidence maintained the statement,
and said something was said as to watching the play, and
that it was determined that if they saw any act of cheating
it should be denounced. And again in Lord Coventry's
pocket-book " it was communicated to Mr. Lycett Green,
who resolved to watch him next night." Such was the
evidence on this most important point, on which the evidence
of the five witnesses was at variance with the written state-
ment and the evidence of Lord Coventry and General Owen
WiUiams. I ask you, gentlemen, to beheve the latter against
the former, and, if you do so, it must shake your confidence
in the other statements of those five witnesses.

Sir Charles Russell pressed that the Prince of Wales,
General Williams, and Lord Coventry were adverse to Sir
William Gordon-Cumming. But they came to that con-
clusion on the statements made to them by Mr. Lycett Green
in the presence of the others and of Lord Coventry and General
Williams, which the latter had recorded in their statement.
That story had been already heard by General Williams once
and by Lord Coventry twice, and then a third time before
the Prince ; and surely it must have been riveted in their
recollection, when they recorded it in their statement or
pricis of what had been again and again said in their presence
— a document written about a week after the matter had
occurred. That statement represented what had been told
to the Prince, Lord Coventry, and General Williams when
they declared the " evidence was overwhelming." That is,
they accepted statements against him which the accusers
now declare they never made. It is suggested that the two
great points he had to deal with were, first, the direct evidence
of the defendants, and, next, the belief of General Williams
and Lord Coventry. When I opened the case I had no idea
of the charges to be made against my client except from
the answers to interrogatories. These answers are somewhat
remarkable. All the defendants stated the charge to be that
the plaintiff had added counters when the cards were declared
in favour of his side, either by the banker or by the player
holding the cards.

Now, there were points in the game which a player
inexperienced or prejudiced might mistake for cheating, and

THE BACCARAT CASE 207

Sir William Gordon-Cumming had given evidence as to his
system or mode of playing. The only way was to " follow
the luck," and so, if he staked £5, he would, when he received
it from the croupier, add £5 from his own stock for the next
coup, and so make £15. And it will be found on the evidence
that in every case £5 was the amount originally staked and
£15 was the amount paid. Now on the first evening only one
person — young Mr. Wilson — saw any act of cheating, except
a person who expected to see it. You all know the story of
the humorist who stopped in the street and said he saw the
lion that used to stand on Northumberland House wag its
tail. In two minutes a crowd had collected and half of them
declared they also saw the tail wag. [Laughter.] The eye
saw what it expected or sought to see. It is thus that conjurers
deceive people. Apply that maxim here, and there is only
one witness who saw Sir Wilham Gordon-Cumming cheat
without expecting it — young Mr. Wilson. The others were
all told there had been cheating, and expected to see it. On
the first evening something was said about Sir William Gordon-
Cumming's stakes, and he said he put them on the paper
before him. And you are asked to beUeve that then, in the
very first coup, he committed an act of cheating. Mr. Wilson,
jun., said he first saw one £5 counter before Sir William Gordon-
Cumming, and then saw three, and that he was paid £15.
Apparently that was imputed as an act of cheating, but
the witness denied it ; yet it was certainly stated. Yet Sir
Charles Russell has to-day stated that by the Ught of the
other evidence given it may fairly be inferred that an act of
cheating had then been committed.

That incident, carefully watched, would be found to be
the key to the whole matter. Mr. Berkeley Levett saw that
and that alone. Sir William Gordon-Cumming having staked
£5 and won, he would add £5, according to his system,
for the next coup, and that would make £15. Why, if Sir
Wilham Gk)rdon-Cumming had intended to cheat his friend
the Prince of Wales or his other friends, would he have tried
with a red £5 counter upon a white paper on the first night
at the first coup ? It would be the most conspicuous thing
possible. Imagine a player intending to cheat, in the face of
some of the keenest players in Europe, playing in that way,
with a red counter on a white piece of paper. At baccarat
only three persons are handhng the cards, and the others have
nothing to do but to look round and observe the stakes. There

208 SIR EDWARD CLARKE

are two persons also keenly interested — the banker and the
croupier. The banker is interested in the stakes, the croupier
has nothing to do but to observe them. And it is necessary
to see that the amount of the stakes does not exceed the
amount in the bank, for no more need be paid than the amount
in the bank. The croupier has to look at the stakes to see
what he will have to pay ; the banker and croupier to see that
they do not exceed the amount in the bank. And you are
asked to beHeve that Sir William Gordon-Cumming cheated
by putting red counters upon white paper, and that neither
the banker nor the croupier ever observed it. I have called
the Prince and General Williams, and neither of them ob-
served it. It has been said that the evidence of persons who
had not observed something was no answer to the evidence
of persons who had seen it ; and in a sense this was true.
But where what had taken place, has taken place at a small
table, in the sight of experienced players who have not seen
it, whereas less experienced players said they had seen it —
can it be doubted which set of witnesses were most credible ?
On one occasion it was said that Sir William Gordon-Cumming
had added to his stakes to the amount of £20. That would
have been quite a phenomenal amount when the play was
so low, and must have attracted observation. It rested,
however, only on the evidence of Mr. A. Wilson, who was the
only witness who spoke to acts of cheating without anything
being said beforehand to lead him to expect them.

As to the incident described by Mr. Berkeley Levett, it
was the same as that already described by Mr. A. S. Wilson,
who now says he does not impute that it was an act of cheating,
and what Mr. Levett said was that he looked and saw a £5
counter, and then looked again after the coup had been
declared and saw three. Just so ; the coup having been
declared. Sir William Gordon-Cumming had staked more for
the next coup, exactly what Sir William had described as his
mode of playing. And Mr. Levett says he had been told
that Sir William had been cheating. No doubt he had been
told so, and that had prejudiced his mind, and led to the
mistake. No doubt Mr. Berkeley Levett saw what he said
he saw — first one £5 counter, and then three. It was pre-
cisely what Sir William Gordon-Cumming would have done
according to his mode of playing the coup de trois. There
was no doubt one incident this would not explain — Sir William's
pushing a £10 counter forward — but Mr. Levett had not

THE BACCARAT CASE 20^

observed it, and it would have attracted attention. Until
Sir William Gordon-Cumming sat down to that table he was
utterly unimpeached in his honour. Not a whisper against
him. He was in the habit of playing before the keenest
players of the highest character. And yet on that night he
is supposed to have suddenly condescended to the despicable
level of the cardsharper.

So much for the first night's play. He did not suggest
that these two young men did not believe they had seen it.
But what had they done ? Next night what had taken
place ? They had talked of the matter to everybody except
the persons most entitled to know of it — Mr. Wilson, the
head of the house, and Sir William Gordon-Cumming himself.
Mr. Lycett Green went to consult his father, who has nothing
to do with the case. He is a member of Parliament, it is
true, but there are members of Parhament whose advice one
would not be wise to take. Mr. and Mrs. Lycett Green and
Mrs. Wilson were told, and they all sat down to see if Sir
WiUiam Gordon-Cumming would cheat at cards. And yet,
according to Mr. Stanley Wilson, they had a new table,
which would render cheating impossible. Moreover, Sir
William was sitting at a table only three feet wide, among the
members of the family, next to Mrs. Lycett Green, opposite
Mr. Berkeley Levett, and it is supposed that he cheated again
and again under those circumstances. Mr. Lycett Green
had said he was going to watch, and if they found him cheating
he would denounce him. Quite right ; it was only at the
card table that an accusation of cheating ought to be made.
It was not an accusation which ought to be " saved up "
and reserved to a future time.

Then came the incident as to Sir William Gordon-Cumming's
asking for £io more. This was the only incident spoken to
by more than one witness. The statement is that Sir William
said, " There is £io more here, sir," on which the Prince
said to General Williams, " Give him £10 more, Owen," and
it was paid, and then Mr. Lycett Green assumed he had seen
an act of cheating. He was filled with indignation ; he went
out of the room and wrote to his mother-in-law. [Laughter.]
Was it upon evidence such as this that a reputation was to
be wrecked and a character destroyed ? Mr. Lycett Green
had called Sir William " a scoundrel " in his letter to his
mother-in-law, and then came back and sat down again with
him and continued to play. After Mrs. Wilson had received

II— -14

I

210 SIR EDWARD CLARKE

the note she at once fancied she saw Sir William Gordon-
Cumming cheat, and yet she was further off than the others.
She said she saw £io pushed so openly over the line that she
wondered others did not see it. And that although they were
looking for it !

I have now gone through the evidence as to those two
evenings, and I have shown that, so far from there being the
cumulative evidence of five witnesses, there was only the
evidence of one witness as to each act alleged, except where
a person had been told beforehand what he expected to see.
It has been said that Sir William Gordon-Cumming only denied
the charges made. But what else could he do ? If, as I
hope you will, you give a verdict in his favour, it shall not
be said it was got by appeals to your sympathy and pity,
and I desire it to be observed that I do not make any such
appeals, but apply my mind to show that there is no evidence
on which a gentleman can be convicted of cheating. I now
come to the point that Lord Coventry and General Williams
have said they believe Sir William to be guilty. As to the
Prince of Wales, when asked the question by one of the jury,
he answered, " They seemed so strongly, unanimously
supported by those who spoke to them that I felt that no
other course was open to me but to believe what I was told."
No doubt, his Royal Highness believed that he had the unani-
mous testimony of the five witnesses. But it was in truth
only the statement of Mr. Lycett Green and Mr. A. S. Wilson,
with the additional statement of Mr. Berkeley Levett. " You
also," said the Prince, ** saw it ? " To which Mr. Levett
replied that he had. That was all. Then as to Lord Coventry
and General Williams, who were Sir William Gordon-Cum-
ming's old friends, they at once gave full credit to the accusation
before they had spoken to Sir William Gordon-Cumming
himself upon it, and actually suggested and drew up a paper
to be signed by him, which amounted to a confession of guilt.

Sir Charles Russell has asked if a man of honour could
have signed such a document ? Was it possible that two
men of honour could have advised an old friend to sign such
a document ? I cannot imagine the reason for such advice,
unless it was to save the Prince of Wales. I suggested this
in my opening speech — the scandal to the Prince — and Sir
Charles Russell cross-examined Sir William Gordon-Cumming
about it, suggesting that there was no harm in playing baccarat
— and that the real reason was that these gentlemen believed

THE BACCARAT CASE 211

in Sir William Gordon-Cumming's guilt, and that it has nothing
to do with scandal to the Prince of Wales. Some people may
think there is no scandal in playing baccarat. But the masses
of the people may fancy that when houses at which baccarat
is played are hable to be visited by the police, it is to
be lamented that the game should be played under such
circumstances, because it is at variance with the conscientious
feelings of the people, and Lord Coventry and General
Williams were thinking of this possible scandal, and this
probably actuated them in the course they took.

Gentlemen, there is a strange and subtle influence in
Royalty, which has adorned our history with chivalrous
deeds, done by men of character and honour, perhaps at
the peril of their lives, to protect a Prince ; and that was
what was in the minds of Lord Coventry and General Owen
Williams. It is a generous and honourable feeling, but it
has seemed to me during this trial that here it has led to
cruel injustice. We know what was felt about it ; there
is no room for controversy ; it is here recorded in Lord
Coventry's diary, written next day : *' We were induced
to recommend this course because we desired, if possible,
to avoid the scandal which would naturally attach to the
circumstances, and to keep the Prince of Wales out of it,
and also out of consideration for our host and hostess."

Gentlemen, that closes all controversy on that point. But
if we are to look with approval or even with leniency on the
conduct of Lord Coventry and General Williams in allowing
an old friend to take a course which he is now denounced for
taking as dishonouring, is there not something to be said for
the same sentiment of loyalty in the breast of Sir William
Gordon-Cumming ? He knew as well as Lord Coventry
that the scandal would be an unfortunate one, and that
it would give pain to the Prince, whose friendship he had
enjoyed for so many years. He owed much to the Prince
of Wales. It is easy for Princes to obtain friends, and, as
one passes away, his place can be supplied by another. It
is felt to be an honour to a man to be admitted to his in-
timacy. Sir William Gordon-Cumming has enjoyed it, and
was grateful for it and loyal to the Prince who had been so
kind to him. And if General Owen Williams and Lord
Coventry are to be approved or excused when they advised
him to sign a paper which doomed him to a life of suspicion
and dishonour, because of their devotion to the Prince, whom

212 SIR EDWARD CLARKE

they desired to serve, let Sir William Gordon-Cumming at
least have this credit — that, protesting he was not guilty,
and asking that the case should be sent to the Commander-
in-Chief for investigation, when the paper was brought to
him, and he was told that unless he signed it he would next
day be denounced as a cheat, he still refused to sign it, and
would not put his hand to it. Turning to his old friends
Lord Coventry and General Williams, he asked them, " What
do you advise me to do ? " and they advised him to sign it,
and he did so. Was there no loyalty to an old friend in
signing it under those circumstances for the sake of a Prince,
the recollection of whose friendship he must always prize ?

Gentlemen, Sir William Gordon-Cumming has been taunted
with it and told that his signing that paper must condemn
him, and you have been asked whether, after signing that
" dishonouring document," there is any room for controversy
as to his guilt. Gentlemen, just think of the mind they must
have been in who suggested the signing of that document !
My learned friend, to my amazement, when I had spoken
of the "disturbing hospitalities'* of Tranby Croft, asked if
I suggested that Sir William was drunk on the occasion.
Gentlemen, the *' brief insanity of drink '' would be perhaps
an easy explanation. But I offer no such explanation. The
Prince of Wales, General Owen Williams, and Lord Coventry
were all parties with him to the signing of the document and
the terms embodied in it, and what did they think of it ?
Did they think it was going to be kept secret, as they say they
did ? If they did so believe, then you must accept their
veracity at the expense of their good sense. Who could ever
have imagined that it would be kept secret ? Next day on
Doncaster race-course the party from Tranby Croft would
be seen without Sir William Gordon-Cumming, and it would
be asked at once, " Where is he ? '* " Oh,'' it would be said,
" he went off to town early this morning." This would be
said to men with whom he had probably made arrangements
of business or pleasure at the races. Then there would be
the ambiguous suggestions or hints conve5dng so much while
saying so little.

Then we know he was not to go to Mar, the seat of the
Duke of Fife, whose friendship he had enjoyed and whom he
had an engagement to visit, and he has to send some excuse ;
and then the next time he dines at mess — as a man of honour,
with the consent and concurrence of the Prince of Wales

THE BACCARAT CASE 213

and Lord Coventry — and after mess he is asked to play whist
— he has to say he is not going to play and has to make some
excuse. Gentlemen, that Lord Coventry, of all men in English
society, who might have been appealed to as a man of sense
and honour — that he should say he never thought it would
come out does astonish me. Why, gentlemen, of course that
happened which anybody might have foreseen must happen —
it became known to the world. Gentlemen, is it true that
then Sir William Gordon-Cumming " tried to slip out of
the Army on half -pay without investigation '* ? Gentlemen,
it is not true ; it has been disproved. The plaintiff himself
suggested at first to refer the matter to the Commander-in-
Chief ; he suggested it in the presence of the Prince of Wales,
who said nothing in answer to it. Afterwards, when refusing
to sign the document, he said he would prefer to put the
case before the Commander-in-Chief, at which General Owen
Williams said he was " nettled," and positively resented the
suggestion. And so this unhappy and ill-advised officer
went his way, hoping against hope that nothing more would
be heard of it, Hving in the misery of knowing that, while
scandal to the Prince of Wales had been by his silence avoided,
he had left in the hands of others a paper which no one would
ever hear of without believing that he acknowledged himself
guilty. During these months of misery he tried to live his
usual life, and then, when he found it was beginning to become
known, it was he who put it before General Stracey. " SUp
out of the Army on half -pay ! " Why, if he sent in his papers
and said no more — and he probably could have done so — he
might have secured an honourable retirement. But when he
had once told General Stracey what had taken place he
made it impossible for him to retire on half-pay without an
investigation. General Stracey, he at once said, would not
allow of it. He himself had gone to General Stracey, and,
instead of " trying to slip out of the Army " and appl5dng
to retire before General Stracey had heard of it, he went to
General Stracey and told him what would render an inquiry
inevitable. He did not at that time know what had been
said against him : he got from Lord Coventry a copy of the
precis ; he asked his and General Williams's advice. They
had no advice to give. Their view had been bounded and
closed up by the idea that it would never come out at all.
They had continued to treat him as a friend after he had signed
a " dishonouring document," writing to him as " Dear Bill,"

214 SIR EDWARD CLARKE

meeting him at clubs, etc. ; and then, when the matter had
come out and he asked their advice, their capacity for advice
was gone, and they had no advice to give, and they left him
to take his own course, and it is for you, gentlemen, to vindicate
it by the verdict you give. He determined on a public
examination of the facts, and applied, and so brought this
action, and has gone into the witness-box and faced cross-
examination — so terrible to a man who has shameful secrets
to conceal, or a disgraceful past to reveal, but which has no
terror for a man conscious of innocence.

So he has given his evidence, and it is for you, gentlemen,
to decide upon it. I ask you to clear him of this charge. It
is true that it is too late to undo some of the mischief already
done, and which could not but arise. It is too late to remedy
some of the consequences which have resulted. But it is
not too late to prevent the completion of the sacrifice of an
officer of character to the desire to keep a painful scandal
quiet. The motto of his family is " Without fear," and he
came without fear into the witness-box, having nothing to
conceal. He has no fear, for he believes, as I believe, that
honesty is safe in the hands of a British jury, and that he
has good reason to hope that a result will happen which I
believe will not be unwelcome to some of those upon whose
conduct I have been obliged to make sharp comments, and
that the result will assure the Prince of Wales and Lord
Coventry that they made an honest but sad mistake, and that
the man they had known and honoured was worthy of their
friendship and their esteem — a result which will remove a
stain from a noble service and a gallant regiment, which will
send him back with a renewed title to the public service and
to private friendship, your verdict having cleared him from
these terrible imputations.

MR. MOSTYN PIGOTT

THE LADIES

[Speech by Mr. Mostyn Pigott at the Sphinx Club on June 8,
191 1, in proposing the toast "The Ladies."]

Mr. President and Gentlemen : — Of course one accepts
an invitation to propose a toast of this sort with a certain
amount of avidity, and it is only when one rises to one's feet
and gazes round upon those faces looking at one that one
realizes the actual difficulty. Of course, the expression on the
faces of the men does not really matter [laughter] — because,
first of all, there is the class who think they can do the job far
better than you can ; and then, secondly, there are the people
who are thanking their lucky stars they have not to do it. But
the expression which is particularly noticeable is the expression
upon the faces of the ladies ; there is a passivity and imper-
turbability in their faces that is positively painful. They
know perfectly well all the nice things that are going to be
said about them ; they incidentally know that the unfortimate
person who is put up to perform the task dare not on his
very life say one word against them. [Laughter.] The un-
fortunate person who is in that position may be for aught I
know labouring under all sorts of grievances. He may have
had his ear lacerated with the assegai with which the modern
woman thinks fit to impale her hat [laughter] — or his very
soul may be lacerated by a still more unruly member which
woman possesses. [Laughter.] He may have all these risks
upon his soul, but still he has to perform the task. Being a
bachelor, as the Chairman delicately mentioned [laughter],
bis task becomes all the more difficult, because, supposing he

2l6 MR. MOSTYN PIGOTT

shows complete ignorance of his subject, he is looked upon as
a lunatic ; supposing he shows the slightest knowledge, he is
at once regarded as a Lothario. [Renewed laughter.] But
at the same time, ladies and gentlemen, it is a distinct honour
and a great privilege to be allowed to represent the men on
an occasion such as this. You may think, ladies, that it is
rather extraordinary that we do not ask you here always,
but the real reason we do not is that we wish to spare your
feelings. If you had the faintest conception of what the ordinary
meetings are without you, you would realize at once how
kind and thoughtful and satisfactory it is that we do not
ask you here more often. When you come, there is a feast of
reason and a flow of soul ; when you do not come, there is —
well, I do not know what to call it — o. feast of unreason and a
flow of bowl. [Laughter.] We sit here and stand here and we
discuss the most ridiculous subjects in a manner we do not
attempt when your chastening presence is with us, and we go
home none the better, none the wiser for having been here.
But there are occasions, I think twice a year, on which we try
to civilize ourselves. This is one of those occasions ; cind,
speaking for the rest of the men present, I may say we do most
thoroughly greet you and welcome you into our midst. We
are no worse than other men, but we are pretty bad [laughter]
— and it is just as well that occasions should arise when the
softening influence, which only the presence of women can
afford, should be felt. We are going to adjourn for a period of
a few months, and during that vacation we no doubt shall
endeavour to forget the asperity of our festivities, the harshness
of our jollifications, and the general ridiculousness of our
proceedings ; and in order that we may do so your presence is
requested. Your presence will have the desired eflect. I do
not think I ever realized the actual hideousness of my position
until Mr. Wetherald, of Boston, issued an invitation to all the
members of the Club who had wives. [Cheers.] This was an
invidious distinction which I dare say may be prevalent in
Boston, but it does not, to my mind, add anything particularly
to the vigour of his invitation. But at the same time I am
perfectly certain that wherever we are, whatever condition we
may be in, we do all appreciate most thoroughly the privilege
of being able to welcome ladies at our meetings, and I ask you
to drink their health, and with them drink the health of the
entire sex, making mental reservations if you like in favour of
one particular lady. [Laughter.] I would ask your permission

THE LADIES 2I7

to couple with this toast the name of a lady who I won't go so
far as to say has come all the way from the beautiful southern
part of America for this especial purpose, but being here
has kindly consented to respond to this toast. The lady is
Miss Kitty Cheatham [applause], who has it in her power to
hold audiences for an unlimited period without any assistance,
drawing tears at one moment and laughter at the next. I ask
you to drink the health of the ladies who have been good enough
to come amongst us this evening, and I ask leave to couple with
the toast the name of Miss Kitty Cheatham. [Applause.]

DR. THEKLA HULTIN

(LADY MEMBER OF THE FINNISH PARLIAMENT)

WOMAN SUFFRAGE

[Speech delivered in Queen's Hall, London, January 8, 1909,
at a meeting of the Women's Freedom League.
It is worthy of note that this speech was made in excellent
EngUsh and that the speaker learnt the language for the pur-
pose of deUvering it.]

Women of England : — I have come here to assure you that
experience in Finland has shown that there is nothing to fear
from woman suffrage, while much is to be won in the sphere of
social development. When in 1907 the Finnish women were
privileged to take part for the first time in the elections, we
were anxious as to whether the generality of them would use
their right of voting. It would hardly have been surprising
had they not done so, for the majority of them were unedu-
cated women of the lower class who had taken little interest
in political matters. For this reason we addressed ourselves
especially to the women at the meetings and urged that the
right of voting was one of the greatest and most precious
privileges of citizenship, and that great privileges always in-
volved great obligations. We told them that if they did not
now use the right they had obtained it would be said both
in Finland and in other countries that the women of Finland
did not understand the value of what they had received.
The Finnish women did their duty as unanimously as the
men. [Cheers.]

The question as to how they vote cannot be based on
statistical reports, for the ballot is secret; but I can say
that they vote on the whole on exactly the same principles

2l8

WOMAN SUFFRAGE 219

as the men. That is to say, they are influenced by the same
ideas, hopes, and prejudices as men. How could it be other-
wise ? Men and women are human beings first of all and are
impressed by the ideas of their generation. Woman suffrage
there has been attacked on practical grounds by some, the
fear being that women would join their opponents. Conserva-
tives believed that they would lean towards Socialism, while
in Liberal and Radical camps it was thought that because of
her greater religious feeUngs a woman would be led to vote
Conservative. These fears have not been realized. Women
have joined the organizations in the same proportion as the
men. It has been said that the Socialistic success in Finland
is due to the women, but that is not really the case ; the
Socialistic success was chiefly due to universal suffrage being
extended to the poorer classes. The granting of woman
suffrage has caused no change in the strength of the respective
political parties. Every citizen in Finland who is entitled
to vote is also eligible for membership of the Diet. There has
been no rivalry between the men and women candidates ;
they recognize that both are there for common ends.

The women members of the Diet have followed their
parties on party questions, but have joined on women's ques-
tions for humanitarian ends. We have presented petitions
for the raising of the marriageable age from fifteen to seven-
teen, the exemption of women from their husbands' guardian-
ship, the reception of Government employment on the same
grounds as men, and on the subject of the prevention of
cruelty to children and animals. These have all been accepted
by the Diet. The enfranchisement of the Finnish women
was no Imperial act of grace, but was part of the fundamental
law of Finland ; that a wave of public opinion brought it
about did not detract from that position. If the law should
be altered and enfranchisement taken away from women the
world should know that one of the fundamental laws had been
violated. Our autonomy is threatened by Russia, but we
cherish a hope that we shall have the sympathy of the whole
civilized world. We take the keenest interest in the move-
ment in England, and, while I can pass no opinion on your
methods, I believe that my sisters here will soon gain their
end. [Cheers.]

REV. DOCTOR TALMAGE

"BIG BLUNDERS"

[Address delivered in many lyceum courses during Dr. Talmage's
long career as a lecturer in America. This was the most popular
of his various platform discourses.]

Ladies and Gentlemen : — The man who never made a
blunder has not yet been born. If he had been he would
have died right away. The first blunder was bom in Paradise,
and it has had a large family of children. Agricultural
blunders, commercial blunders, literary blunders, mechanical
blunders, artistic blunders, ecclesiastical blimders, moral blun-
ders, and blunders of all sorts ; but an ordinary blunder
will not attract my attention. It must be large at the girth
and great in stature. In other words, it must be a big
blunder.

Blunder the first : Multiplicity of occupations. I have
a friend who is a very good painter, and a very good poet,
and a very good speaker, and he can do half-a-dozen things
well, but he is the exception. The general rule is that a man
can do only one thing well. Perhaps there are two things
to do. First, find your sphere ; secondly, keep it. The general
rule is. Masons, stick to your trowel ; carpenters, stick to
your plane ; lawyers, stick to your brief ; ministers, stick
to your pulpit, and don't go off lecturing. [Laughter.] Fire-
man, if you please, one locomotive at a time ; navigator, one
ship ; professor, one department. The mighty men of all
professions were men of one occupation. Thorwaldsen at
sculpture, Irving at literature, Rothschild at banking, Forrest
at acting, Brunei at engineering, Ross at navigation, Punch
at joking.

220

" BIG BLUNDERS " 221

Sometimes a man is prepared by Providence through a
variety of occupations for some great mission. Hugh Miller
must climb up to his high work through the quarries of
Cromarty. And sometimes a man gets prepared for his work
through sheer trouble. He goes from misfortune to misfor-
tune, and from disaster to disaster, and from persecution to
persecution, until he is ready to graduate from the University
of Hard Knocks. I know the old poets used to say that a
man got inspiration by sleeping on Mount Parnassus. That
is absurd. That is not the way men get inspiration. It is
not the man on the mountain, but the mountain on the man,
and the effort to throw it off, that brings men to the position
for which God intended them. But the general rule is that
by the time thirty years of age is reached the occupation is
thoroughly decided, and there will be success in that direction
if it be thoroughly followed. It does not make much difference
what you do, so far as the mere item of success is concerned,
if you only do it. Brandreth can make a fortune at pills,
Adams by expressage. Cooper by manufacturing glue, Genin
by selling hats, contractors by manufacturing shoddy, mer-
chants by putting sand in sugar, beet juice in vinegar, chicory
in coffee, and lard in butter. One of the costliest dwellings
in Philadelphia was built out of eggs. Palaces have been
built out of spools, out of toothache drops, out of hides, out
of pigs' feet, out of pickles, out of tooth-brushes, out of hose —
h-o-s-e and h-o-e-s — out of fine-tooth combs, out of water,
out of birds, out of bones, out of shells, out of steam, out of
thunder and lightning.

The difference between conditions in life is not so much
a difference in the fruitfulness of occupations as it is a difference
in the endowment of men with that great and magnificent
attribute of stick-to-itiveness. Mr. Plod-on was doing a
flourishing business at selling banties, but he wanted to do
all kinds of huckstering, and his nice little property took wing
of ducks and turkeys and shanghais and flew away. Mr.
Loomdriver had an excellent factory on the Merrimac, and
made beautiful carpets, but he concluded to put up another
kind of factory for the making of shawls, and one day there
was a nice little quarrel between the two factories, and the
carpets ate up the shawls, and the shawls ate up the carpets,
and having succeeded so well in swallowing each other, they
turned around and gulped down Mr. Loomdriver.

Blackstone Large-Practice was the best lawyer in town.

222 DR. TALMAGE

He could make the most plausible argument and had the
largest retainers, and some of the young men of the profession
were proud to wear their hair as he did, and to have just as
big a shirt-collar. But he concluded to go into politics. He
entered that paradise which men call a caucus. He was voted
up and he was voted down. He got on the Chicago platform,
but a plank broke and he slipped through. He got on the
St. Louis platform, but it rocked like an earthquake, and a
plank broke and he slipped through. Then, as a circus rider
with one foot on each horse whirls round the ring, he put
one foot on the Chicago platform and another foot on the
St. Louis platform, and he slipped between, and landing in
a ditch of political obloquy, he concluded he had enough of
pohtics. And he came back to his law office, and as he entered,
covered with the mire, all the briefs from the pigeon-hole
rustled with gladness, and Kent's Commentaries and Living-
stone's Law Register broke forth in the exclamation : " Wel-
come home. Honourable Blackstone Large-Practice ; Jack-of-
all-trades is master of none." [Applause.]

Dr. Bone -Setter was a master in the healing profession.
No man was more welcome in anybody's house than this
same Dr. Bone-Setter, and the people loved to see him pass
and thought there was in his old gig a kind of religious rattle.
When he entered the drug store all the medicines knew him,
and the pills would toss about Hke a rattle box, and the
quinine would shake as though it had the chills, and the great
strengthening plasters unroll, and the soda fountain fizz, as
much as to say : ** Will you take vanilla or strawberry ? "
Riding along in his gig one day he fell into a thoughtful mood,
and concluded to enter the ministry. He mounted the pulpit
and the pulpit mounted him, and it was a long while before
it was known who was of the most importance. The young
people said the preaching was dry, and the merchant could
not keep from making financial calculations in the back part
of the psalm-book, and the church thinned out and everything
went wrong. Well, one Monday morning Messrs. Plod-on,
Loomdriver, Blackstone Large-Practice, and Dr. Bone-Setter,
met at one corner of the street, and all felt so low-spirited
that one of them proposed to sing a song for the purpose of
getting their spirits up. I have forgotten all but the chorus,
but you would have been amused to hear how, at the end
of all the verses, the voices came in, " Jack-of-all-trades is
master of none." [Applause.]

<<_,_- T^T TT^TTNT-T>« >»

BIG BLUNDERS" 223

A man from the country districts came to be President
of the United States, and some one asked a farmer from that
region what sort of a President Mr. So-and-So would make.
The reply was : " He's a good deal of a man in our httle
town, but I think if you spread him out over all the United
States he will be mighty thin." So there are men admirable
in one occupation or profession, but spread out their energies
over a dozen things to do and they are dead failures. Young
man, concentrate all your energies in one direction. Be not
afraid to be called a man of one idea. Better have one great
idea than five hundred little bits of ones. Are you merchants ?
You will find abundant sweep for your intellect in a business
which absorbed the energy of a Lenox, a Stewart, and a
Grinnell. Are you lawyers ? You will in your grand pro-
fession find heights and depths of attainment which tasked a
Marshall, and a MacLean, and a Story, and a Kent. Are you
physicians ? You can afford to waste but little time outside
of a profession which was the pride of a Rush, a Hervey, a
Cooper, and a Sydenham.

Every man is made to fit into some occupation or pro-
fession, just as a tune is made to fit a metre. Make up your
mind what you ought to be. Get your call straight from
the throne of God. We talk about ministers getting a call
to preach. So they must. But every man gets a call straight
from the throne of God to do some one thing — that call
written in his physical or mental or spiritual constitution —
the call sa5ang : " You be a merchant, you be a manufacturer,
you be a mechanic, you be an artist, you be a reformer, you
be this, you be that, you be the other thing." And all our
success and happiness depend upon our being that which
God commands us to be. Remember there is no other person
in the world that can do your work. Out of the sixteen
hundred millions of the race, not one can do your work. You
do your work, and it is done for ever. You neglect your
work, and it is neglected for ever. The man who has the
smallest mission has a magnificent mission. God sends no
man on a fool's errand. Getting your call straight from the
throne of God, and making up your mind what you ought to do,
gather together all your opportunities (and you will be sur-
prised how many there are of them), gather them into com-
panies, into regiments, into brigades, a whole army of them,
and then ride along the line and give the word of command,
'* Forward, march ! " and no power on earth or in hell can

224 I>R- TALMAGE

stand before you. I care not what your education is, elab-
orate or nothing, what your mental calibre is, great or small,
that man who concentrates all his energies of body, mind, and
soul in one direction is a tremendous man. [Applause.]

Blunder the next : Indulgence in bad temper. Good
humour will sell the most goods, plead the best argument,
effect the best cure, preach the best sermon, build the best
wall, weave the best carpet. [Applause.] The poorest busi-
ness firm in town is " Growl, Spitfire & Brothers." They blow
their clerks. They insult their customers. They quarrel
with the draymen. They write impudent duns. They kick
the beggars. The children shy off as they pass the street,
and the dogs with wild yelp clear the path as they come.
Acrid, waspish, fretful, explosive, saturnine, suddenly the
money market will be astounded with the defalcation of Growl,
Spitfire & Brothers. Merryman & Warmgrasp were poor
boys when they came from the country. They brought all
their possessions in one httle pack slung over their shoulders.
Two socks, two collars, one jack-knife, a paper of pins, and a
hunk of gingerbread which their mother gave them when
she kissed them good-bye, and told them to be good boys
and mind the boss. They smiled and laughed and bowed and
worked themselves up higher and higher in the estimation of
their employers. They soon had a store on the corner. They
were obliging men, and people from the country left their
carpet-bags in that store when they came to town. Hence-
forth when the farmers wanted hardware or clothing or books
they went to buy it at the place where their carpet-bags had
been treated so kindly. The firm had a way of holding up a
yard of cloth and " shining on " it so that plain cashmere
would look almost as well as French broadcloth, and an
earthen pitcher would glisten like porcelain. Not by the
force of capital, but by having money drawer and counting
desk and counter and shelves all full of good temper, they
rose in society until to-day Merryman & Warmgrasp have one
of the largest stores and the most elegant show windows and
the finest carriages and the prettiest wives in all the town
of Shuttleford.

A melancholy musician may compose a " Dead March,"
and make harp weep and organ wail ; but he will not master
a battle march, or with that grand instrument, the organ,
storm the castles of the soul as with the flying artillery of fight
and love and joy until the organ pipes seem filled with a

"big blunders*' 225

thousand clapping hosannas. A melancholy poet may write
a Dante's Inferno until out of his hot brain there come
steaming up barking Cerberus and wan sprite, but not the
chime of Moore's melodies or the roll of Pope's Dunciad,
or the trumpet-call of Scott's Don Roderick, or the arch-
angelic blast of Milton's Paradise Lost. A melancholy
painter may with Salvator sketch death and gloom and mon-
strosity. But he cannot reach the tremor of silvery leaf,
or the shining of sun through mountain pine, or the light of
morning struck through a foam wreath, or the rising sun
leaping on the sapphire battlements with banners of flame, or
the gorgeous " Heart of the Andes," as though all the bright
colours of earth and heaven had fought a great battle and
left their blood on the leaves. [Applause.]

Blunder the next : Excessive amusement. I say nothing
against amusement. Persons of your temperament and mine
could hardly live without it. I have noticed that a child
who has no vivacity of spirit in after life produces no fruit-
fulness of moral character. A tree that has no blossoms in
the spring will have no apples in the fall. A good game at
ball is great sport. The sky is clear. The ground is just right
for fast running. The club put off their coats and put on
their caps. The ball is round and hard and stuffed with
illimitable bounce. Get ready the bats and take your positions.
Now, give us the ball. Too low. Don't strike. Too high.
Don't strike. There it comes like lightning. Strike ! Away
it soars, higher, higher. Run ! Another base. Faster.
Faster. Good ! All around at one stroke. [Applause.]
All hail to the man or the big boy who invented ball-playing.
After tea, open the checker-board. Now, look out, or your
boy Bob will beat you. With what masterly skill he moves
up his men. Look out now, or he will jump you. Sure enough,
two of your men gone from the board and a king for Bob.
With what cruel pleasure he sweeps the board. What !
Only two more men left ? Be careful now. Only one more
move possible. Cornered sure as fate ! and Bob bends over,
and looks you in the face with a most provoking banter, and
says, " Pop, why don't you move ? " [Applause.]

Call up the dogs. Tray, Blanchard, and Sweetheart. A
good day for hunting. Get down, Tray, with your dirty feet !
Put on powder-flask and shoulder the gun. Over the hill
and through the wood. Boys, don't make such a racket,
you'll scare the game. There's a rabbit. Squat. Take good

Ii~i5

226 DR. TALMAGE

aim. Bang ! Missed him. Yonder he goes. Sic'em, sic*em !
See the fur fly. Got him at last. Here, Tray ; here, Tray !

John, get up the bays. All ready. See how the buckles
glisten, and how the horses prance, and the spokes flash in
the sun. Now, open the gate. Away we go. Let the gravel
fly, and the tyres rattle over the pavement, and the horses*
hoofs clatter and ring. Good roads, and let them fly. Crack
the whip. G'long ! Nimble horses with smooth roads, in
a pleasant day, and no toll-gates — clatter, clatter, clatter.
[Applause.]

I never see a man go out with a fishing-rod to sport but
I silently say : " May you have a good time, and the right
kind of bait, and a basketful of catfish and flounders." I never
see a party taking a pleasant ride but I wish them a joyous
round, and say, " May the horse not cast a shoe, nor the
trace break, and may the horse's thirst not compel them to
stop at too many taverns.'* In a world where God lets His
lambs frisk, and His trees toss, and His brooks leap, and His
stars twinkle, and His flowers make love to each other, I
know He intended men at times to laugh and sing and sport.
The whole world is full of music if we only had ears acute
enough to hear it. Silence itself is only music asleep. Out
upon the fashion that lets a man smile, but pronounces him
vulgar if he makes great demonstration of hilarity. Out upon
a style of Christianity that would make a man's face the
counter upon which to measure religion by the yard. " All
work and no play makes Jack a dull boy " is as true as preach-
ing, and more true than some preaching. " Better wear out
than rust out " is a poor maxim. They are both sins. You
have no more right to do the one than the other. Recreation
is re-creation. But while all this is so, every thinking man
and woman will acknowledge that too much devotion to
amusement is ruinous. Many of the clergy of the last century
lost their theology in a fox chase. Many a splendid business
has had its brains kicked out by fast horses. Many a man
has smoked up his prospects in Havanas of the best brand.
There are battles in life that cannot be fought with sports-
man's gim. There are things to be caught that you cannot
draw up with a fishing tackle. Even Christopher North,
that magnificent Scotchman, dropped a great deal of useful-
ness out of his sporting jacket. Through excessive amuse-
ment many clergymen, farmers, lawyers, physicians, mechanics,
and artists have committed the big blunder of their lives.

" BIG BLUNDERS " 227

I offer this as a principle ; Those amusements are harmless
which do not interfere with home duties and enjoyments.
Those are ruinous which give one distaste for domestic pleasure
and recreation.

When a man likes any place on earth better than his own
home, look out ! Yet how many men seem to have no
appreciation of what a good home is. It is only a few years
ago that the twain stood at the marriage altar and promised
fidelity till death did them part. Now, at midnight, he is
staggering on his way to the home, and as the door opens I
see on the face inside the door the shadow of sorrows that
are passed, and the shadow of sorrows that are to come.
Or, I see her going along the road at midnight to the place
where he was ruined, and opening the door and swinging out
from under a faded shawl a shrivelled arm, crying out in
almost supernatural eloquence : " Give him back to me, him of
the noble brow and the great heart. Give him back to me ! "
And the miserable wretches seated around the table of the
restaurant — one of them will come forward, and with bloated
hand wiping the intoxicant from the lip, will say, " Put her
out ! " Then I see her going out on the abutment of the
bridge, and looking off upon the river, glassy in the moon-
light, and wondering if somewhere under the glassy sur-
face of that river there is not a place of rest for a broken
heart. Woe to the man that despoils his home ! Better
that he had never been born. I offer home as a preven-
tive, as an inspiration, as a restraint. Floating off from that,
beware !

Home ! Upon that word there drop the sunshine of
boyhood and the shadow of tender sorrows and the reflection
of ten thousand fond memories. Home ! When I see it
in book or newspaper, that word seems to rise and sparkle
and leap and thrill and whisper and chant and pray and
weep. It glitters Uke a shield. It springs up like a foun-
tain. It thrills like a song. It twinkles hke a star. It leaps
like a flame. It glows like a sunset. It sings like an angel.
And if some lexicographer, urged on by a spirit from beneath,
should seek to cast forth that word from the language, the
children would come forth and hide it under garlands of wild
flowers, and the wealthy would come forth to cover it up with
their diamonds and pearls ; and kings would hide it under their
crowns, and after Herod had hunted its life from Bethlehem
to Egypt, and utterly given up the search, some bright, warm

228 DR. TALMAGE

day it would flash from among the gems, and breathe from
among the coronets, and the world would read it bright and
fair and beautiful and resonant as before, — Home ! Home !
Home !

Blunder the next : The formation of unwise domestic
relation. And now I must be very careful. It is so with
both sexes. Some of the loveliest women have been married
to the meanest men. What is not poetry, that is prose. The
queerest man in the Bible was Nabal, but he was the husband
of beautiful Abigail. We are prodigal with our compassion
when a noble woman is joined to a husband of besotted
habits, but in thousands of the homes of our country, belonging
to men too stingy to be dissipated, you may find female excel-
lencies which have no opportunity for development. If a
man be cross and grudgeful and unobliging and censorious
in his household, he is more of a pest than if he were dead
drunk, for then he could be managed. [Applause.] It is a
sober fact which every one has noticed that thousands of men
of good business capabilities have been entirely defeated in
life because their domestic relations were not of the right
kind. This thought has its most practical bearing on the
young who yet have the world before them and where to
choose. There is probably no one in this house who has been
unfortunate in the forming of the relation I have mentioned ;
but if you should happen to meet with any married man in
such an unfortunate predicament as I have mentioned, tell
him I have no advice to give him except to tell him to keep
his courage up, and whistle most of the time, and put into
practice what the old lady said. She said she had had a great
deal of trouble in her time, but she had always been consoled
by that beautiful passage of Scripture, the thirteenth verse
of the fourteenth chapter of the book of Nicodemus : " Grin
and bear it." [Laughter and applause.]

Socrates had remarkable philosophy in bearing the ills of
an unfortunate alliance. Xantippe, having scolded him with-
out any evident effect, threw upon him a pail of water. All
he did was to exclaim : *' I thought that after so much
thunder we would be apt to have some rain." [Laughter.]
It is hardly possible that a business man should be thriftless
if he have a companion always ready to encourage and assist
him — ready to make sacrifices until his affairs may allow more
opportunity for luxuries. If during the day a man has been
harassed and disappointed, hard chased by notes and defrauded,

t< -r^*/-. •»-.▼ TTVY-r^-r^-rsr^ >>

BIG BLUNDERS ' 229

and he find in his home that evening a cheerful sympathy, he
will go back next day to his place of business with his courage
up, fearless of protests, and able from ten to three o'clock
to look any bank full in the face. During the financial panic
of 1857 there was many a man who went through unabashed
because, while down in the business marts, he knew that,
although all around him they were thinking only of themselves,
there was one sympathetic heart thinking of him all day
long, and willing, if the worst should come, to go with him
to a humble home on an unfashionable street, without mur-
muring, on a sewing-machine to play " The Song of the Shirt."
[Applause.] Hundreds of fortunes that have been ascribed
to the industry of men bear upon them the mark of a wife's
hand. Bergham, the artist, was as lazy as he was talented.
His studio was over the room where his wife sat. Every few
minutes, all day long, to keep her husband from idleness, Mrs.
Bergham would take a stick and thump up against the ceiling,
and her husband would answer by stamping on the floor, the
signal that he was wide awake and busy. One-half of the
industry and punctuality that you witness every day in places
of business is merely the result of Mrs. Bergham's stick
thumping against the ceiling. But woe to the man who has
an experience anything Uke the afflicted man who said that
he had during his life three wives — the first was very rich,
the second very handsome, and the third an outrageous temper.
"So," says he, " I have had ' the world, the flesh, and the
devil.' " [Laughter.]

Want of domestic economy has ruined many a fine business.
I have known a delicate woman strong enough to carry off
her husband's store on her back and not half try. I have
known men running the gauntlet between angry creditors
while the wife was declaring large and unprecedented dividends
among milliners' and confectioners' shops. I have known
men, as the phrase goes, " with their nose to the grindstone,"
and the wife most vigorously turning the crank. Solomon
says : *' A good wife is from the Lord," but took it for granted
that we might easily guess where the other kind comes from.
[Laughter.] There is no excuse for a man's picking up a
rough flint like that and placing it so near his heart, when the
world is so full of polished jewels. And let me say, there
never was a time since the world stood when there were so
many good and noble women as there are now. And I have
come to estimate a man's character somewhat by his appre-

230 DR. TALMAGE

ciation of womanly character. If a man have a depressed
idea of womanly character he is a bad man, and there is no
exception to the rule. But there have been men who at
the marriage aHar thought they were annexing something
more valuable than Cuba, who have found out that after all
they have got only an album, a fashion plate, and a medicine
chest. [Laughter and applause.]

Many a man reeling under the blow of misfortune has
been held up by a wife's arm, a wife's prayer, a wife's decision,
and has blessed God that one was sent from heaven thus to
strengthen him ; while many a man in comfortable circum-
stances has had his life pestered out of him by a shrew, who
met him at the door at night, with biscuit that the servant
let fall in the fire, and dragging out the children to whom
she had promised a flogging as soon as the " old man " came
home, to the scene of domestic felicity. And what a case
that was, where a husband and wife sat at the opposite ends
of the tea-table, and a bitter controversy came up between
them, and the wife picked up a teacup and hurled it at her
husband's head, and it glanced past and broke all to pieces
a beautiful motto on the wall entitled " God bless our happy
home ! " [Applause.]

There are thousands of women who are the joy and the
adornment of our American homes, combining with elegant
tastes in the arts and every accomplishment which our best
seminaries and the highest style of Uterature can bestow
upon them, an industry and practicality which always insure
domestic happiness and prosperity. Mark you, I do not
say they will insure a large number of dollars. A large
number of dollars are not necessary for happiness. I have
seen a house with thirty rooms in it, and they were the vestibule
of perdition ; and I have seen a home with two rooms in it,
and they were the vestibule of heaven. You cannot tell by
the size of a man's house the size of his happiness. As Alex-
ander the Great with pride showed the Persian princesses
garments made by his own mother, so the women of whom I
have been speaking can show you the triumphs of their adroit,
womanly fingers. They are as expert in the kitchen as they
are graceful in the parlour ; if need be they go there. And
let me say that this is my idea of a lady, one who will accom-
modate herself to any circumstances in which she may be
placed. If the wheel of fortune turn in the right direction,
then she will be prepared for that position. If the wheel of

«« -OT^ t»-r TT«,T^-r.<»,. )>

BIG BLUNDERS " 231

fortune turn in the wrong direction (as it is almost sure to
do at least once in every man's life), then she is just as happy,
and though all the hired help should that morning make a
strike for higher wages, they will have a good dinner, any-
how. They know without asking the housekeeper the differ-
ence between a wash-tub and a filter. They never sew on to
a coat a liquorice-drop for a black button. [Laughter.] They
never mistake a bread-tray for a cradle . They never administer
Kellinger's horse Hniment for the baby's croup. Their accom-
plishments are not, hke honeysuckle at your door, himg on
to a light frame easily swayed in the wind, but like unto the
flowers planted in the solid earth, which have rock under them.
These are the women who make happy homes and compel
a husband into thriftiness.

Boarding-schools are necessities of society. In very
small villages and in regions entirely rural it is sometimes
impossible to afford seminaries for the higher branches of
learning. Hence, in our larger places we must have these
institutions, and they are turning out upon the world tens of
thousands of young women splendidly qualified for their
positions. But there are, I am sorry to say, exceptional
seminaries for young ladies which, instead of sending their
students back to their homes with good sense as well as
diplomas, despatch them with manners and behaviour far
from civilized. With the promptness of a police officer they
arraign their old-fashioned grandfather for murdering the
King's English. Staggering down late to breakfast they
excuse themselves in French phrase. The young men who
were the girl's friends when she left the farm-house for the
city school, come to welcome her home, and they shock her
with a hard hand that has been on the plough-handle, or with
a broad EngHsh which does not properly sound the " r " or
mince the " s."

" Things are so awkward, folks so impolite.
They're elegantly pained from morn 'til night."

Once she could run at her father's heel in the cool furrow
on the summer day, or with bronzed cheek chase through the
meadows gathering the wild flowers which fell at the stroke
of the harvesters, while the strong men, with their sleeves
rolled up, looked down at her, not knowing which most to
admire, the daisies in her hair or the roses in her cheeks,
and saying : " Bless me ! Isn't that Ruth gleaning after

232 DR. TALMAGE

the reapers ? " Coming home with health gone, her father
paid the tuition bill, but Madame Nature sent in her account
something like this : —

Miss Ophelia Angelina, to Madame Nature, Dr.
To one year's neglect of exercise . . . . .15 chills

To twenty nights of late retiring . .75 twitches of the nerves

To several months of improper diet . . A Ufetime of dyspepsia

Added up, making in all an exhausted system, chronic
neuralgia, and a couple of fits. [Applause.] Call in Dr.
Pillsbury and uncork the camphor bottle ; but it is too late.
What an adornment such a one will be to the house of some
young merchant, or lawyer, or mechanic, or farmer. That
man will be a drudge while he lives, and he will be a drudge
when he dies.

Blunder the next : Attempting life without a spirit of
enthusiasm and enterprise. Over-caution on one side and
reckless speculation on the other side must be avoided ; but
a determined and enthusiastic progress must always charac-
terize the man of thrift. I think there is no such man in
all the world as he who is descended from a New England
Yankee on the one side and a New York Dutchman on the
other. That is royal blood, and will almost invariably give
a man prosperity, the Yankee in his nature saying : "Go
ahead,'* and the Dutch in his blood saying : "Be prudent
while you do go ahead." The main characteristics of the
Yankee are invention and enterprise. The main character-
istics of the Dutchman are prudence and firmness, for when
he says " Yah " he means " Yah," and you cannot change
him. It is sometimes said that Americans are short-hved
and they run themselves to pieces. We deny this. An
American Hves a great deal in a Uttle while — twenty-four
hours in ten minutes. [Applause.]

In the Revolutionary War American enterprise was dis-
covered by somebody who, describing the capture of Lord
Cornwallis, put in his mouth these words :

" I thought five thousand men or less
Through all these States might safely pass.
My error now I see too late.
Here I'm confined within this State,
Yes, in this httle spot of ground,
Enclosed by Yankees all around.
In Europe ne'er let it be known.
Nor publish it in Askelon,
Lest the uncircumcised rejoice.
And distant nations join their voice.

" BIG BLUNDERS " 233

What would my friends in Britain say ?

I wrote them I had gained the day.

Some things now strike me with surprise.

First, I beUcve the Tory lies.

What also brought me to this plight

I thought the Yankees would not fight.

My error now I see too late,

Here I'm confined within this State.

Yes, in this Uttle spot of ground.

Enclosed by Yankees all around,

Where I'm so cramped and hemmed about.

The devil himself could not get out."

From that time American enterprise has continued devel-
oping, sometimes toward the right and sometimes toward the
wrong. Men walk faster, think faster, drive faster, lie faster,
and swear faster. New sciences have sprung up and carried
off the hearts of the people. Phrenology, a science which I
believe will yet be developed to a thorough consistency, in
its incomplete stage puts its hand on your head, as a musician
on a piano, and plays out the entire tune of your character,
whether it be a grand march or a jig ; sometimes by mistake
announcing that there are in the head benevolence, music,
and sublimity, when there is about the same amount of intellect
under the hair of the subject *s head as in an ordinary hair
trunk ; sometimes forgetting that wickedness and crime are
chargeable, not so much to bumps on the head as to bumps
on the heart. [Applause.] Mesmerism, an old science, has
been revived in our day. This system was started from the
fact that in ancient times the devotees of iEsculapius were put
to sleep in his temple, a mesmeric feat sometimes performed
on modern worshippers. Incurable diseases are said to slink
away before the dawn of this science like ghosts at cock-
crowing, and a man under its influence may have a tooth
extracted or his head amputated without discovering the
important fact until he comes to his senses. The operator
wiU compel a sick person in clairvoyant state to tell whether
his own liver or heart is diseased, when if his subject were
awake he would not be wise enough to know a heart from a
liver. If you have had property stolen, on the payment of
one dollar — mind that — they will tell you where it is, and
who stole it, and even if they do not make the matter per-
fectly plain, they have bettered it ; it does not all remain a
mystery ; you know where the dollar went.

There are aged men and women here who have lived
through marvellous changes. The world is a very different
place from what it was when you were boys and girls. The

234 DR. TALMAGE

world's enterprise has accomplished wonders in your age.
The broad-brimmed hat of olden times was an illustration
of the broad-bottomed character of the father, and the modern
hat, rising high up as the pipe of a steam engine, illustrates
the locomotive in modern character. In those days of powdered
hair and silver shoe-buckles, the coat extended over an
immense area and would have been unpardonably long had
it not been for the fact that when the old gentleman doffed
the garment it furnished the whole family of boys with a
Sunday wardrobe. [Laughter.] Grandfather on rainy days
shelled corn or broke flax in the barn, and in the evening with
grandmother went round to visit a neighbour where the men
sat smoking their pipes by the jambs of the broad fireplace,
telling of a fox-chase, or feats at mowing without once getting
bushed, and gazing upon the flames as they sissed and sim-
mered around the great back-log, and leaped up through the
light wood to lick off the moss, and shrugging their shoulders
satisfactorily as the wild night wind screamed round the gable,
and clattered the shutters, and clicked the icicles from the
eaves ; and Tom brought in a blue-edged dish of great " Fall
pippins,*' and '* Dair-claushes," and " Henry Sweets," and
" Grannywinkles,'* and the nuts all lost their hearts sooner
than if the squirrels were there ; and the grandmothers
talking and knitting, talking and knitting, until John in
tow pants, or Mary in linsey-woolsey, by shaking the old
lady's arm for just one more " Granny winkle," made her
most provokingly drop a stitch, and forthwith the youngsters
were despatched to bed by the starlight that dripped through
the thatched garret chinks. [Applause.]

Where is now the old-fashioned fire-place where the
andirons in a trilling duet sang " Home, Sweet Home,"
while the hook and trammels beat time ? In our country
houses great solemn stoves have taken their place, where dim
fires, like pale ghosts, look out of the isinglass, and from which
comes the gassy breath of coal, instead of the breath of
mountain oak and sassafras. One icicle frozen to each chair
and sofa is called a sociable, and the milk of human kindness
is congealed into society — that modern freezer warranted
to do it in five minutes.

You have also witnessed a change in matters of religion.
I think there is more religion now in the world than there
ever was, but people sometimes have a queer way of showing
it. For instance, in the matter of church music. The

" BIG BLUNDERS " 235

musical octave was once an eight-rung ladder, on which our
old fathers could climb up to heaven from their church pew.
Now, the minstrels are robbed every Sunday.

But, oh, what progress in the right direction. There
goes the old stage-coach hung on leather suspenders. Swing
and bounce. Swing and bounce. Old grey balky, and sorrel
lame. Wheel fast in the rut. " All together, yo heave ! "
On the morning air you heard the stroke of the reaper's rifle
on the scythe getting ready to fight its way through the
swaths of thick-set meadow-grass. Now we do nearly all
these things by machinery. A man went all the way from
New York to Buffalo on an express train, and went so rapidly
that he said in all the distance he saw but two objects : Two
haystacks, and they were going the other way. The small
particles of iron are taken from their bed and melted into
liquid, and run out into bars, and spread into sheets, and
turned into screws, and the boiler begins to groan, and the
valves to open, and the shafts to fly, and the steam-boat
going " Tschoo ! Tschoo ! Tschoo ! " shoots across the
Atlantic, making it a ferry, and all the world one neighbour-
hood. In olden times they put out a fire by buckets of water,
or rather did not put it out. Now, in nearly all our cities
we put out a fire by steam. But where they haven't come to
this, there still has been great improvement. Hark ! There
is a cry in the street : " Fire ! Fire ! " The firemen are coming,
and they front the building, and they hoist the ladders, and
they run up with the hose, and the orders are given and the
engines begin to work, and beat down the flames that smote
the heavens. And the hook-and-ladder company ^vith long
arms of wood and fingers of iron begin to feel on the top
of the hot wall and begin to pull. She moves ! She rocks !
Stand from under ! She falls ! flat as the walls of Jericho
at the blast of the rams' horns, and the excited populace
clap their hands, and wave their caps, shouting " Hurrah,
hurrah ! " [Applause.]

Now, in an age like this, what will become of a man if
in every nerve and muscle and bone he does not have the
spirit of enthusiasm and enterprise ? Why, he will drop
down and be forgotten, as he ought to be. He who cannot
swim in this current will drown. Young man, make up your
mind what you ought to be, and then start out.

And let me say, there has never been so good a time to
start as just now. I care not which way you look, the world

236 DR. TALMAGE

seems brightening. Open the map of the world, close your
eyes, swing your finger over the map of the world, let your
finger drop accidentally, and I am almost sure it will drop on
a part of the world that is brightening. You open the map
of the world, close your eyes, swing your finger over the
map, it drops accidentally. Spain ! Quitting her cruelties
and coming to a better form of government. What is
that hght breaking over the top of the Pyrenees ? '* The
morning cometh ! " You open the map of the world again,
close your eyes, and swing your finger over the map, it drops
accidentally. Italy ! The truth going on from conquest
to conquest. What is that Ught breaking over the top of
the Alps ? " The morning cometh ! " You open the map
of the world again, you close your eyes, and swing your finger
over the map, and your finger drops accidentally. India !
Juggernauts of cruelty broken to pieces by the chariot of
the Gospel. What is that light breaking over the tops
of the Himalayas? "The morning cometh!" The army of
Civilization and Christianity is made up of two wings — the
English wing and the American wing. The American wing
of the army of Civilization and Christianity will march across
this continent. On, over the Rocky Mountains, on over the
Sierra Nevada, on to the beach of the Pacific, and then right
through, dry-shod, to the Asiatic shore. And on across Asia,
and on, and on, until it comes to the Holy Land and halts.
The English wing of the army of Civilization and Christianity
will move across Europe, and on, until it comes to the Holy
Land and halts. And when these two wings of the army
of Civilization and Christianity shall confront each other,
having encircled the world, there will go up a shout as the world
heard never : " Hallelujah, for the Lord God Omnipotent
reigneth ! " [Applause.]

People who have not seen the tides rise at the beach
do not understand them. Some man who has never before
visited the seashore comes down as the tide is rising. The
wave comes to a certain point and then retreats, and he says :
" The tide is going out, the sea is going down." No, the tide
is rising, for the next wave comes to a higher point, and then
recoils. He says : " Certainly, the tide is going out and the sea
is going down." No, the tide is rising, for the next wave comes
to a higher point and then recoils, and to a higher and higher
and higher point until it is full tide. So with the advance
of Civilization and Christianity in the world. In one decade

9f

" BIG BLUNDERS " 237

the wave comes to a certain point and then recoils for ten
or fifteen years, and people say the world is getting worse,
and the tides of Civilization and Christianity are going down.
No, the tide is rising, for the next time the wave reaches to
a still higher point and recoils, and to a still higher point and
recoils, and to a higher and a higher and a higher point until
it shall be full tide, and the " earth shall be full of the know-
ledge of God as the waters fill the sea.'* At such a time you
start out. There is some special work for you to do.

I was very much thrilled, as I suppose you were, with
the story of the old engineer on his locomotive crossing the
Western prairie day after day and month after month. A
little child would come out in front of her father's cabin and
wave to the old engineer, and he would wave back again.
It became one of the joys of the old engineer's Hfe, this Uttle
child coming out and waving to him and he waving back.
But one day the train was belated, and night came on, and by
the flash of the headlight of the locomotive the old engineer
saw the child on the track. When the engineer saw the
child on the track a great horror froze his soul, and he reversed
the engine and leaped over on the cowcatcher, and though the
train was slowing up, and slowing up, it seemed to the old
engineer as if it were gaining in velocity. But, standing there
on the cowcatcher, he waited for his opportunity, and with
almost supernatural clutch he seized her and fell back upon the
cowcatcher. The train halted, the passengers came around
to see what was the matter, and there lay the old engineer
on the cowcatcher, fainted dead away, the httle child in his
arms all unhurt.

He saved her. Grand thing, you say, for the old engineer
to do. Yes, just as grand a thing for you to do. There are
long trains of disaster coming on toward that soul. Yonder
are long trains of disaster coming on toward another soul.
You go out in the strength of the Eternal God and with super-
natural clutch save some one, some man, some woman, some
child. You can do it.

" Courage, brother, do not stumble.
Though thy path be dark as night ;
There's a star to guide the humble ;
Trust in God and do the right.

"Some will love thee, some will hate thee.
Some will flatter, some will shght ;
Cease from man, and look above thee ;
, ' . Trust in God and do the right."

FIELD-MARSHAL EARL ROBERTS

HOME DEFENCE

[Speech delivered in the House of Lords on November 23, 190S.]

My Lords : — During the last two years I have endeavoured
from time to time to induce your Lordships to take into your
serious consideration the vitally important question of Home
Defence, but for some reason, unaccountable to me, my efforts
have hitherto been in vain. I can understand the general
public turning a deaf ear to warnings that are distasteful to
them. They are for the most part so fully occupied with their
own affairs and their individual struggles for existence that
they do not trouble themselves much as to what is going on in
the outside world, but are content to trust the safety of their
country to those whose duty it is to watch over it, and to
take all possible measures for its protection. That duty is
yours, my Lords, as it is the duty of those elected by the people
to look after their interests. It is a sacred duty, and I am
deeply concerned that it should be neglected and that the
warnings of men who, like myself, have earnestly studied the
subject, against a danger which appears to us to be all too
obvious, should have fallen hitherto on utterly stony ground.
For, my Lords, if you, who know from history the fate that
overtook all former great and flourishing maritime and com-
mercial States which refused to undergo the personal sacrifices
that alone could ensure the safety of their possessions — if you,
who have the best means of ascertaining what is taking place
in other countries, and who ought to be able to realize that
our naval supremacy is being disputed, can rest satisfied to

»3«

speaks on National Sen>ke.

HOME DEFENCE 239

leave matters as they are, and, ignoring the great responsibility
that rests upon you, neglect to do all in your power to get this
country placed in such a state of defence as would make even
the most powerful foreign nation hesitate to attack it, I cannot
help feeling that a terrible awakening may be in store for us
at no very distant period.

It is impressed upon the British public, my Lords, by a
certain number of politicians, whose sole object apparently is
to reduce military expenditure, without any thought of the
proportionate risk to the country, that an invasion is an
impossibility, a mere delusion of a few alarmists, who regard
the maritime advancement made by our Continental neigh-
bours in the interest of peace and commerce as a preparation
for attack on these Islands.

By still another school the people are told that, as long as
we have command of the sea, there is nothing to dread, for
no foreign troops could ever land on British soil.

And, my Lords, they are entreated by a third party to
believe that a second line of 315,000 citizen soldiers, officered
by men but slightly acquainted with the rudiments of soldiering,
and with only the veneer of training which is to be given to
such of them as choose to receive it, will be able to withstand
and repulse the highly trained troops of a first-rate military
Power.

If, my Lords, the general public are led astray in this way
by those to whom they look for guidance, how is it possible
for them to come to any other conclusion than that we are very
well as we are, and that there is no need to trouble ourselves
about invasion, or to undergo the smallest personal sacrifice
for our country ? But you, my Lords, have the means of
judging for yourselves whether the politicians, in their anxiety
to obtain funds, for, no doubt, most laudable objects, may
not reduce the Navy and Army to such an extent as would
render them incapable of performing the duties for which
they are maintained. You should be able also, my Lords, to
satisfy yourselves whether the Navy alone, under aU eventuali-
ties, could ensure your slumbers never being disturbed. But
whatever conclusions you may arrive at on these two points,
let me beg of you not to believe for one moment that an in-
experienced, inadequately trained second line of citizen soldiers
could cope successfully with the thoroughly organized, highly
trained troops that would assuredly be selected for an attack
on this country.

240 FIELD-MARSHAL EARL ROBERTS

Do not, my Lords, allow yourselves to be led away by
specious argument, which is all the more dangerous from the
fact that it accords with what we all would wish to believe. It
really would appear that all classes, in their anxiety to give
Mr. Haldane fair play and help him in the arduous task he
has undertaken, have become somewhat hypnotized. Soldiers,
apparently forgetting their well-founded and strongly ex-
pressed convictions of only a few years ago, seem now prepared
to trust the same stamp of soldier, whose unfitness for service
in the field they then pointed out in no measured terms. And
this encourages civilians, who have not had the same oppor-
tunities for forming a correct opinion on the subject, to think
that military preparation and adequate training are quite
unnecessary, and that all that is required to ensure our country's
safety is to have on paper a certain number of men, guns, and
horses, to be turned into a fighting force if the enemy will give
us six months' notice of his intention to attack.

I implore you, my Lords, to study this question for your-
selves and to satisfy yourselves whether the Territorial Army,
as at present constituted, will be sufficient in numbers and
efficient in quality for what it is required. G^nsider whether
a week's or a fortnight's training for two or three years will
suffice to make a lad, who has never been drilled or has never
fired a rifle, into a useful soldier. And as regards the much-
needed six months' training, supposing, for argument's sake,
that we could calculate on being given six months' warning,
can we feel absolutely certain that the few patriotic employers
who have allowed their men to join the Territorial Army, and
are good enough to spare them for a week or fortnight's training
yearly, would or could consent to their being taken away for
six months, during which time their business would go to
pieces, while their competitors in trade, who have refused to
allow their men to serve their country, would be reaping great
benefit from their selfishness and want of patriotism ?

My Lords, a Home Defence Army is either required or it
is not required. If you come to the conclusion that it is not
required and that the Navy can do all that is needed, I would
ask you what can be the object of spending vast sums of money
on Mr. Haldane 's Territorial Army scheme ? But if a Home
Defence Army is required — and the only purpose for which it
can be required is to resist invasion, and that possibly without
any previous notice — then surely common sense tells us that
it must be on a scale and so organized as to ensure its being

HOME DEFENCE 24I

able to deal successfully with any troops to which it is likely
to be opposed.

The main preventive of invasion is a numerous and effi-
cient Home Army, and the main temptation to invasion is
the want of such an army — the knowledge, in fact, that
the country to be invaded is dependent for its defence upon
an uncertain number of inadequately trained citizen soldiers.
Even if our Navy were double as strong as it is relatively to
that of other Powers, the necessity for maintaining a sufficient
and efficient Citizen Army for Home Defence would still be
an essential condition of peace and security, as well as of
public confidence.

II— -16

DEAN HOLE

WITH BRAINS, SIR I

[Speech of Samuel Reynolds Hole, Dean of Rochester Cathedral,
at a banquet given in his honour by the Lotos Club, New York
City, October 27, 1894. Frank R. Lawrence, the President of
the Club, in introducing Dean Hole recalled the fact that the
Club had had the honour of receiving Dean Stanley and Charles
Kingsley.]

Gentlemen : — I can assure you that when I received your
invitation, having heard so much of the literary, artistic, and
social amenities of your famous Club, I resembled in feelings,
not in feature, the beautiful bride of Burleigh, when —

"A trouble weighed upon her.

And perplexed her, night and morn,
With the burthen of an honour
Unto which she was not born."

I could have quoted the words of the mate in Hood's
" Up the Rhine," when during a storm at sea a titled lady
sent for him, and asked him if he could swim. " Yes, my
lady," says he, " like a duck." " That being the case," says
she, " I shall condescend to lay hold of your arm all night."
" Too great an honour for the likes of me," says the mate.
[Laughter.]

Even when I came into this building — though I am not a
shy man, having been educated at Brazenose College, and
preposterously flattered throughout my life, most probably
on account of my size — I had not lost this sense of un worthi-
ness ; but your gracious reception has not only reassured me,
but has induced the delicious hallucination that at some

242

WITH BRAINS, SIR ! 243

period forgotten, in some unconscious condition, I have
said something or done something, or written something,
which really deserved your approbation. [Applause.] To
be serious, I am, of course, aware why this great privilege has
been conferred upon me. It is because you have associated
me with those great men with whom I was in happy inter-
course, that you have made my heart glad to-night.

It has ever been my ambition to blend my life, as the great
painter does his colours, " with brains, sir ; " and I venture to
think that such a yearning is a magnificent proof that we are
not wholly destitute of this article, as when the poor wounded
soldier exclaimed, on hearing the doctor say that he could
see his brains : " Oh, please write home and tell father, for
he has always said I never had any." [Laughter.] Be that
as it may, my appreciation of my superiors has evoked from
them a marvellous sympathy, has led to the formation of
very precious friendships, and has been my elevator unto the
higher abodes of brightness and freshness, as it is to-night.

Yes, my brothers, it is delightful to dwell " with brains,
sir," condensed in books in that glorious world, a library — a
world which we can traverse without being sick at sea or
footsore on land ; in which we can reach heights of science
without leaving our easy-chair, hear the nightingales, the
poets, with no risk of catarrh, survey the great battle-fields
of the world unscathed ; a world in which we are surrounded
by those who, whatever their temporal rank may have been,
are its true kings and real nobility, and which places within
our reach a wealth more precious than rubies, " for all things
thou canst desire are not to be compared with it." In this
happy world I met Washington Irving, Fenimore Cooper,
Hawthorne, Willis, Longfellow, Whittier, and all your great
American authors, historical, poetical, pathetic, humorous ;
and ever since I have rejoiced to hold converse with them.
Nevertheless, it is with our living companions, with our
fellow-men who love books as we do, that this fruition is
complete, and so it comes to pass, in the words of one whose
name I speak with a full heart, Oliver Wendell Holmes, that
" a dinner- table made up of such material as this is the last
triumph of civilization over barbarism." [Applause.]

We feel as our witty Bishop (afterward Archbishop)
Magee described himself, when he said : ** I am just now in
such a sweet, genial disposition, that even a curate might
play with me." [Great laughter.] We are bold to state

244 DEAN HOLE

with Artemus Ward, of his regiment composed exclusively
of major-generals, that " we will rest muskets with anybody.'*

"Linger, I cried, O radiant Time, thy pow'r
Hath nothing else to give ; life is complete.
Let but the happy present, hour by hour.
Itself remember and itself repeat."

And yet one more quotation we are glad to make, where-
with to make some amends for the stupidity of him who
quotes lines most appropriate, by Tennyson, from the " Lotos-
Eaters," and repeated by one who has just crossed the Atlantic :

" We have had enough of action, and of motion we.
Rolled to starboard, rolled to larboard, when the surge was seething free
Where the wallowing monster spouted his foam-fountains in the sea.
Let us swear an oath, and keep it with an equal mind.
In the hollow Lotos-land to Uve and He rechned
On the hills, Uke gods together, careless of mankind."

Now, gentlemen, let me give, *' Evermore thanks, the
exchequer of the poor." [Long applause.]

Rt. Hon. Sir Edward Grky

RT. HON. SIR EDWARD GREY

INDUSTRY "

[Sir David Dale memorial lecture delivered in Assembly Hall,
Darlington, October 28, 1910. This was the inaugural lecture of
a series on the relation of the employers and employed, to per-
petuate the memory of Sir David Dale in the North of England.]

Ladies and Gentlemen : — Sir David Dale has left a name
which will be remembered and honoured to the end of life by
all who were his contemporaries, who, though young to be
his contemporaries, were old enough to know and appreciate
his work. He was a great man of business, but his life was
much more than that of a great man of business. He had a
peculiar wideness of interest and understanding which made
him not only a captain of industry, but a healer of troubles.
[Cheers.] In 1898 I became a colleague of Sir David Dale,
and what first struck me in committee work on that board was
the way in which Sir David Dale addressed his mind to the
business before him. He would concentrate his mind upon
the particular point and its merits, isolating it, so to speak,
and focusing his attention upon it by order and concentration,
thus ensuring economy both of attention and time.

In the next place. Sir David Dale was eminently a man of
compromise ; not because compromise was easy, but because on
occasions of strife and difficulty he thought it right . Com-
promise— I use the word in the sense of the avoidance of ex-
tremes— is an essentially British characteristic. It has made
our Empire and our trade ; it is hated equally by the Jingo
and the extreme Socialist. But the common-sense moderation
of the British character has hitherto preferred compromise and
rejected extremes. The enemies of compromise are dogmas — I

245

246 RT. HON. SIR EDWARD GREY

do not mean religious tenets, but dogmas in the sense of theories.
The British mind, though it may have been interested in
theories and incUned towards them, has not usually been satis-
fied with them, and the history of theories in this country has
not been very fortunate. Charles I. lost his head because
he was possessed by a theory of what was due to his position
as a king and would not compromise. We lost our American
colonies because we were possessed by the theory of what was
due to the mother country, or perhaps I should rather say, of
what was not due to the Colonies, and would not compromise.
The greatest and most daring minds originated great plans
and tried to bend circumstances to them. They took great
risks. Sometimes they succeeded, but often they failed.
Small minds who attempted that always failed. In our
history, I think, great things have been done rather by men
who made the most of the occasion than by men who made
great plans. Great things have been done by insight rather
than by foresight, by a faculty for deciding how much was
possible and by attempting that, and not something else.
That, I think, is the positive of what we called judgment —
the faculty of setting before oneself something which is
possible as the object which one wovild attain. The negative
side of judgment is to avoid mistakes in attaining the object
a man had set before him.

Sir David Dale was no pessimist, because he was con-
vinced that the British people were fimdamentally reasonable.
He was sympathetic. He had a sympathy, not so much of
emotion as of understanding. He liked to imderstand, and
the surest way to get on with men was to make them feel
sure that they were understood. Men constantly realized
in their own mind the expectations which were formed of
them. Sir David Dale tried to understand others, and that
was one of the ways in which he was first so often a healer of
troubles. I do not think Sir David would have liked the life
of a politician as compared with that of a man of business.
There are advantages and disadvantages on both sides.
Men of business have the great advantage of privacy. They
are not obliged to think in public ; but, on the other hand,
they have not the stimulus of having to perform in public, and
there are men whose minds would be comparatively sterile
were it not for the pressure of public life and the stimulus of
publicity. What the politician gives to the public — it is not
his fault ; it is the misfortune of his circumstances — is often

ti -r^TX^TTr.^T%-.r >*

INDUSTRY 247

necessarily immature. He can choose neither his time nor
his subject. His thought must often be incomplete and some-
times inchoate, and the form he gives to it must be crude and
often ragged. Sir David liked what he gave to the public,
or what he gave to any one, to be mature in thought and
finished in form. [Cheers.] He was by nature a worker and
a thinker, and pressure of circumstances was not needed to
make him one or the other. When I say he was a thinker, I
would ask you to bear in mind that mental activity is not
necessarily thinking.

Some of the most tiresome people in the world are those
whose minds are almost always active, but who do not think ;
they have no continuity of the mind. [Laughter.] Sir David
Dale was a man who always thought with a purpose and cau-
tiously. I should like very much to know what Sir David Dale
would have thought with regard to the modern conditions of
life. It seems that the tendency of modern inventions is to
give people less time to think ; one has to do much more than
before, because of modern inventions. Owing to the motor-
car the last election was incomparably the most strenuous I
have ever taken part in. It meant three meetings per night,
whereas before the days of the motor-car it was not possible
to have more than one. How that tendency of modem in-
vention is to be counteracted we have yet to find out. In
spite of telegraphs, telephones, and motor-cars, how are we,
to-day, to do our work without being out of breath, and how
are we to secure leisure which is necessary for fertile thought ?
Sir David Dale would have thought that we must take in-
creasing care in what we were attempting to do if we were to
keep any order in our minds. The tendency of modern life
is to create disorder and confusion in our minds. The assimila-
tion of the news in newspapers would be enough to destroy
any mind, and I think we must be increasingly careful to
remain ignorant of much about which we might easily know
something. [Cheers.] Concentration is the essential force.
Formerly many people began life by having to overcome the
difficulty of finding something to do. In modern life the
greatest difficulty is in attempting to do too much. [Cheers.]

I will now pass to a subject which is so important in the
industrial world that I cannot well pass it by on an occasion of
this kind — that is, industrial problems, which are so critical
at the present moment. We are confronted by an outbreak of
strikes of an unprecedented, widespread character. When I

248 RT. HON. SIR EDWARD GREY

say that I do not mean in this country or district alone. They
are becoming world-wide. They are most frequent in those
countries where industrial and social conditions are most
advanced. In dealing with large subjects of this kind I always
remember that large questions do not admit of small and
defined answers. I am not going to attempt to deal with
this big subject in any sort of a complete fashion. What I
want to do is not to try and answer the questions which arise
in our minds so much as to stimulate thought about them.

It is easy enough, or it may be easy enough, to examine the
cause of each particular strike and to speak of its merits. We
hear that so many men have gone on strike for such and such
a matter, and it is easy to say that in one case the men are
hopelessly wrong and unreasonably so, and that in the other
the employers or their officials have provoked the men and
have been obstinate, but underlying this whole phenomenon
there must be some general cause or tendency, quite apart
from particular cases, that operates on the thoughts and dis-
positions of the men, thus predisposing them to strike. It
is not easy to say what that underlying reason may be. Men
in the mass may be swayed by a train of thought of which
each as an individual may be unconscious. Each man may
be able to tell you that he has gone on strike and why he has
done so, but what can he tell you of the cause which lies in
the background ? He can tell you, perhaps, that he has come
out on strike because of some incident which appears to the
outside world comparatively trivial ; what he cannot tell you
is why to-day he has come out because of the particular inci-
dent, whereas three, four, or ten years ago he would not have
come out because of that incident. The reason why we
cannot be told these things is probably because the people
themselves do not know them or are only half conscious of
them. But there cannot be widespread strikes and unrest
without widespread discontent. That takes us no further —
the discontent is a consequence and not a cause. What is
causing the discontent ? Is it exceptional, abnormal, and
increasing hardship which is causing discontent ? Well,
plenty of hardship there, no doubt, is in the world, but less
hardship on the whole than fifty years ago, far less than one
hundred years ago. [Cheers.] I do not think that can be a
satisfactory account of the cause, because the strikes are not
strikes on the part of men driven to despair by unemployment
and suffering, but by men in full employment at the moment,

" INDUSTRY " 249

and the conditions under which work is carried on and the
remuneration of labour, however much room there is still for
improvement, have undeniably improved during the last
fifty years, and will in all probability continue to improve.

I think the underlying cause is not that the conditions of
labour are worse, that suffering is greater, but that the hopes
and expectations of men are greater than they were. [Cheers.]
I would say rather that it is disappointment which has in-
creased until it has raised the temperature of the industrial
world, and that disappointment has increased not because
hardships are more, but because expectations and hopes are
greater. Let me attempt to analyse this a little further.
The prosperity of this country, its total wealth, has been in-
creasing and so has that of other countries — Germany and the
United States and so forth — who have the same problems as
we have and the same labour troubles. There are vast millions
of wealth. I am not sure that the connexion between wealth
and happiness is as close as is generally supposed. [Cheers.]
The countenances of the rich are not in my experience more
happy or less worried than those of people who are not rich,
but who are wage-earners ; but as long as it is the case that
everybody desires wealth and that nobody who possesses
wealth is willing to part with it [laughter] inequality in this
respect is bound to be some cause of comment. The wage-
earning classes are sure increasingly to ask, as wealth grows
and prosperity increases, are they getting their share ? [Cheers.]
Well, I think that the desire for greater equality, or rather, I
should say, a plea that greater equality ought somehow to be
possible, has gained ground and has been followed by great
expectations as to the pace at which the conditions of life
should improve ; and, if you come to think of it, I think you
will see it is inevitable from the history of politics that that
should be so. During the last fifty years in the leading coun-
tries of the world the theory of political equality has been
accepted for men and has been applied consciously or uncon-
sciously. I think that was bound to create an expectation
of greater economic equality and to stimulate a demand for it.

I think part of the restlessness and impatience which is
imsettling the industrial world in all great industrial countries
is due to great hopes and expectations on the part of the wage-
earning classes, combined with consciousness of power, with
dissatisfaction at the results hitherto obtained, and to deter-
mination to find more effective means of using that power.

250 RT. HON. SIR EDWARD GREY

This has led to a situation which is very disquieting. I am
not concerned to-night to argue whether the hopes and ex-
pectations are beyond the Hmits of what can be obtained and
are therefore excessive. This would lead me into a discussion
of economic and political questions which would cover too much
ground. Rather would I urge that the important thing for
the wage-earning classes is to choose methods of using their
powers for realizing their hopes which, even if they fail to
achieve all that is hoped for, will yet make sure of attaining
something which is possible, which will not by wrecking
and destruction make improvement impossible. Order and
organization are essential to such methods. Without order
there is chaos, and those who seek relief in chaos are in effect
committing suicide in the hope of thereby obtaining something
better. They are not facing the problems of life ; they are
running away from them. They are following the lead, not
of courage, but of despair. I can understand the choice of such
a course by men who are driven by the misery of poverty,
distress, and unemployment.

There must be order and organization not only in a trade
union, but also in a business. It is essential that the power of
a union should be used so as not to disorganize the business.
Without the prosperity of a business there can be no progress,
and it is as essential to the prosperity of a business that the men,
having made a bargain voluntarily, of their own free will and
independence, with the employers, should carry out the bargain,
as it is for the employers who conduct a great business to carry
out their contracts with other firms. [Cheers.] It is essential
to progress that the methods by which it is sought should be
sound, and that is the point on which I wish to lay stress. I
do not mind whether the expectations are greater than can
be realized or not, so long as the methods by which it is sought
to realize them are sound methods. It is essential for masses
of men who have power that they should not throw away
that power by want of discipline. Without order, discipline,
subordination, and trust in leaders a trade union, like a nation
or like any mass of men, becomes a mob, and like every mob
such a trade union has the power to wreck and destroy and
not to build up or to conquer.

Now, disorderly methods are fatal to progress. Nothing
provokes men more than the belief that their point of view is
not understood. So long as they think that no argument
affects them and they are not open to reason. Convince them

<< ■r1^T■r-^TTr>'«^n<<r >>

INDUSTRY " 251

they are understood and then they are ready to understand.
This, I believe, is what happens when employers and employed
meet round a table. Material understanding of each other's
difficulties leads to compromise and a reasonable settlement.
The difficulty is to make the settlement seem reasonable to those
in trade who have not been through the process of mutual
discussion and understanding [cheers], to convince men that
their delegates or shareholders have come out of a conference not
weaker, but wiser than when they went in. [Cheers.]

There, I believe, we come to one of the great difficulties
of modern industrial life — the awful separation there is between
the shareholder paying for his share and expecting his dividend
and the workman employed by the limited liability company
and upon whose work that dividend and profit must depend.
How far it is possible to bridge over that gulf I cannot say, but
I am sure it is both for the employers and employed to do all
that they can in their respective organizations to make the
touch of human nature felt between those who receive the
dividends and those whose work is essential to the earning of
the profits. [Cheers.] That is one reason why I believe that
the best and most intelligent firms of employers have welcomed
having to deal with trade unions, because by that means,
through the representatives of the men, they get into touch
with the whole body of men, understand their thoughts and
difficulties, and so forth. But to maintain that, it is essential
that the men themselves should stand by their unions and
their organizations. [Cheers.]

We talk of public spirit as if it only meant the sparing
of some effort, the rich from their leisure and the poor from
their work, to give some service to the State. It means that,
but it also means doing our own ordinary work well, building
up an industry, not only to get a livelihood, but also to enrich
the State. The greatness and strength of this country depend
upon the prosperity of our industries. Without that it cannot
have the resources to be either great or strong. Every one who
works in an industry is engaged in public services as well as
earning his own livelihood. He must make and maintain a
home, that being the first duty of citizenship. [Cheers.]

Yet I know that altruistic motives are apt to be, like the
tides, a great potential force which is always with us, but which
it is difficult to apply to daily work ; and the higher motives
for industry tend to be obscured by the fact that an industry
to be prosperous "must have profits, and the division of profits

252 RT. HON. SIR EDWARD GREY

amongst those who are engaged in an industry is the subject
of frequent contention. Interesting experiments were tried
in co-partnery by which an automatic arrangement should
give an increasing share of all improvement in industry to the
wage-earning classes. It is easy to dilate on the difficulties
of these things ; they have great difficulties which can only
be solved by those who are actively engaged in business. But
I do feel that anything which would mean in a great industry
that a reduction of the working expenses, upon which they look
with so much suspicion, shall not only go to increase the profits,
but, simultaneously with an increase of dividends, shall give
or lead to increased wages, would be one of the greatest allevia-
tions of the view of modern work under which it is brought
about. But, as a matter of fact, the union of the wage-earning
classes is now so strong that they do share in increased profits.
No doubt you see greatly increased wealth in the hands of
individuals, but much of the profits that do not go to the
wage-earners is used for increasing the business and providing
more employment. But the excessive wealth of a few indi-
viduals, who are constantly investing their money in new pro-
duction which gives opportunities for more employment, is a
small matter compared with the growing means of employment,
the rise in wages, improved conditions of life from education
in childhood, to pensions in old age, the cost of which is in-
creasingly thrown upon direct taxation — that is, taxation
which falls in the first instance on the rich and, so far as it is
possible to limit the incidence of taxation, falls upon them
alone. One other thing I would throw out is that anything
which can be done to give people a greater feeling of security —
because people who are in employment may often feel that life
is insecure if they are only assured of an employment tem-
porarily and may be thrown out by sickness or misfortune —
and make men feel they can have some insurance against the
risks of life, that again would be an alleviation of industrial
conditions. [Cheers.]

There is no doubt that the present situation has many dis-
quieting features. The indomitable Plugson of Undershot, by
which name Carlyle had to address the employers, has got his
back against the wall. He sees the conduct of his business
threatened, which is a much more serious thing than the mere
question of wages. Wage-earners are clamouring to put their
hands in their pockets. The industry which cannot live with-
out the efforts of both is in danger. The usual methods of

" INDUSTRY " 253

conciliation which have served so often, said Undershot, and
so well in many cases, have broken down. No doubt that is a
situation which is disquieting and may be dangerous. That
is precisely what makes me hopeful. It is danger which brings
common sense and reasonableness to the top when they are
present in men's natures at all, and I believe they still are pre-
sent in undiminished degree in the majority of the British people.
You will always have some prigs and pedants amongst em-
ployers, some wild theorists among the wage-earners, and some
pig-headed people among both. When things are serious these
men go under or are pushed aside, being felt to be the obstacles
to progress which they really are.

Whatever disturbances or catastrophes there may be in
foreign politics, the greatest movements and developments
of this century will be internal — industrial, economical, and
social. [Cheers.] The statesmanship of politicians will have
to play its part in solving those problems soon, but it will be
powerless unless there be also, amongst the leaders of em-
ployers and employed, qualities which are akin to statesman-
ship. Amongst employers Sir David Dale was a man who
had these qualities. Men of his temperament, impartiality,
and broad views, are now needed more than ever, and I am
sure we shall not lack them in our need. Nor are these quali-
ties lacking in the ranks of the employed and the wage-earners.
I will quote some words spoken recently by a man belonging
to the wage-earning classes. These are the words of Mr.
Thomas Burt : " Whatever the method of improving hu-
manity and of raising men to a higher position than they occupy
to-day may be, and whenever and however the millennium
may be reached, it is not to be reached by declaring in favour
of class consciousness and class antagonism, hatred between
one class and another. It will have to be brought about by
other methods than these. Authority, discipline, the mainten-
ance of order — these are necessary and must be acted upon if we
are to keep society together. The problem we have to solve
is an educational and moral problem. No political constitu-
tion can enfranchise a people, no privileges can assist them, no
possessions can enrich them, no rank or title can ennoble them
unless they have solid manly character, wholesome honesty as
the granite rock upon which they are built. As with the poor
man so it is with the rich man and his possessions. Let us all,
through self-help and mutual help, strive to build up a great
industrial commonwealth in which we shall not only claim our

254 RT. HON. SIR EDWARD GREY

rights, but perform our duties ; a commonwealth in which
the worker shall not be regarded as a mere beast of burden,
in which he shall not be merely a hand, but a heart, a soul, an
intellect.'* [Cheers.] Those are the words of a man who had
attained to those heights of thought, feeling, and knowledge
where all class distinction disappears. [Cheers.] It is essential
that there should be amongst employers, as well as amongst
employed, men who can reach those heights where alone
they can rise above class prejudices and limitations of feeling
and thought which class prejudice imposes. [Cheers.] It has
hitherto been the salvation of this country in all times of
trouble that it has found such men when it needed them and
that the great masses of our countrymen have been so reason-
able— I would go further and say so wise — as to listen to those
men and be led by them in time of difficulty. In all classes
such men are still to be found, and though there are some men,
given prominent positions in the public life of the country, in
whom those qualities of statesmanship, great thoughts, and
noble feelings, are conspicuously lacking, there are others in
whom they are just as conspicuous and who are to be found.
It is essential to workers that they should be possessed of
such men in all classes, and, possessing them, that they should
seek for them, find them, honour them, trust them, and follow
them. [Loud cheers.]

ROBERT EMMET

PROTEST AGAINST SENTENCE AS A TRAITOR

[Robert Emmet was born in Dublin in 1778. From his boy-
hood he attracted notice by his oratorical powers, and he was
also deeply attached to the Irish revolutionary cause. He had
grown up in an atmosphere of hatred to England. He went
abroad and had interviews with French statesmen who were
supposed to feel interest in an Irish uprising. He returned to
Dubhn and secretly raised a small force which he armed as well
as he could. Then he issued proclamations and prepared to
seize Dublin Castle. He lingered in Ireland, however, to bid
farewell to Sarah Curran, to whom he was engaged to be
married, and was captured and executed in 1803. The pathetic
and eloquent speech that follows was made in DubUn, 1803,
after his trial.]

I AM asked what have I to say why sentence of death should
not be pronounced on me, according to law. I have nothing
to say that can alter your predetermination, nor that it will
become me to say, with any view to the mitigation of that
sentence which you are to pronounce, and I must abide by.
But I have that to say which interests me more than Hfe, and
which you have laboured to destroy. I have much to say
why my reputation should be rescued from the load of false
accusation and calumny which has been cast upon it. I do
not imagine that, seated where you are, your mind can be so
free from prejudice as to receive the least impression from
what I am going to utter. I have no hopes that I can
anchor my character in the breast of a court constituted and
trammelled as this is. I only wish — and that is the utmost
that I expect — that your lordships may suffer it to float down
your memories untainted by the foul breath of prejudice,
until it finds some more hospitable harbour to shelter it from

255

256 ROBERT EMMET

the storms by which it is buffeted. Were I only to suffer
death, after being adjudged guilty by your tribunal, I should
bow in silence, and meet the fate that awaits me without a
murmur ; but the sentence of the law which delivers my
body to the executioner will, through the ministry of the law,
labour in its own vindication to consign my character to
obloquy ; for there must be guilt somewhere ; whether in
the sentence of the court, or in the catastrophe, time must
determine. A man in my situation has not only to encoun-
ter the difficulties of fortune, and the force of power over
minds which it has corrupted or subjugated, but the difficulties
of established prejudice. The man dies, but his memory lives.
That mine may not perish, that it may live in the respect of
my countrymen, I seize upon this opportunity to vindicate
myself from some of the charges alleged against me. When
my spirit shall be wafted to a more friendly port — when my
shade shall have joined the bands of those martyred heroes
who have shed their blood on the scaffold and in the field, in
the defence of their country and of virtue, this is my hope :
I wish that my memory and my name may animate those
who survive me, while I look down with complacency on the
destruction of that perfidious government which upholds its
domination by blasphemy of the Most High ; which displays
its power over man as over the beasts of the forest ; which
sets man upon his brother, and lifts his hand, in the name of
God, against the throat of his fellow who believes or doubts
a little more or a Uttle less than the government standard —
a government which is steeled to barbarity by the cries of
the orphans and the tears of the widows it has made.

I appeal to the immaculate God — I swear by the throne
of Heaven, before which I must shortly appear — by the blood
of the murdered patriots who have gone before me — that
my conduct has been, through all this peril, and through all
my purposes, governed only by the conviction which I have
uttered, and by no other view than that of the emancipation
of my country from the super-inhuman oppression under
which she has so long and too patiently travailed ; and I
confidently hope that, wild and chimerical as it may appear,
there is still union and strength in Ireland to accomplish this
noblest of enterprises. Of this I speak with the confidence
of intimate knowledge, and with the consolation that apper-
tains to that confidence. Think not, my lords, I say this
for the petty gratification of giving you a transitory uneasi-

PROTEST AGAINST SENTENClE AS A TRAITOR 257

ness. A man who never yet raised his voice to assert a lie
will not hazard his character with posterity by asserting a
falsehood on a subject so important to his country, and on
an occasion like this. Yes, my lords, a man who does not
wish to have his epitaph written until his country is liberated
will not leave a weapon in the power of envy, or a pretence
to impeach the probity which he means to preserve, even in
the grave to which tyranny consigns him.

Again I say, that what I have spoken was not intended
for your lordship, whose situation I commiserate rather than
envy — my expressions were for my countrymen. If there is
a true Irishman present, let my last words cheer him in the
hour of his affliction.

I have always understood it to be the duty of a judge,
when a prisoner has been convicted, to pronounce the sen-
tence of the law. I have also understood that judges some-
times think it their duty to hear with patience and to speak
with humanity ; to exhort the victim of the laws, and to offer,
with tender benignity, their opinions of the motives by which
he was actuated in the crime of which he was adjudged
guilty. That a judge has thought it his duty so to have done,
I have no doubt ; but where is the boasted freedom of your
institutions — where is the vaunted impartiality, clemency,
and mildness of your courts of justice, if an unfortunate
prisoner, whom your polic)^, and not justice, is about to
deliver into the hands of the executioner, is not suffered to
explain his motives sincerely and truly, and to vindicate the
principles by which he was actuated ? My lords, it may be
a part of the system of angry justice to bow a man's mind
by humiliation to the purposed ignominy of the scaffold ;
but worse to me than the purposed shame or the scaffold's
terrors would be the shame of such foul and unfounded impu-
tations as have been laid against me in this court. You,
my lord, are a judge ; I am the supposed culprit. I am a
man ; you are a man also. By a revolution of power we
might change places, though we never could change characters.
If I stand at the bar of this court and dare not vindicate
my character, what a farce is your justice ! If I stand at
this bar and dare not vindicate my character, how dare you
calumniate it ? Does the sentence of death, which your
unhallowed policy inflicts on my body, condemn my tongue
to silence and my reputation to reproach ? Your executioner
may abridge the period of my existence ; but while I exist,

U— 17

258 ROBERt £MMiET

I shall not forbear to vindicate my character and motives
from your aspersions ; and, as a man, to whom fame is dearer
than life, I will make the last use of that life in doing justice
to that reputation which is to live after me, and which is the
only legacy I can leave to those I honovir and love, and for
whom I am proud to perish. As men, my lords, we must
appear on the great day at one common tribunal ; and it
will then remain for the Searcher of All Hearts to show a
collective universe who was engaged in the most virtuous
actions, or swayed by the purest motive — my country's
oppressors, or

Why did your lordships insult me ? Or rather, why insult
justice, in demanding of me why sentence of death should not
be pronounced against me ? I know, my lords, that form
prescribes that you should ask the question. The form also
presents the right of answering. This, no doubt, may be dis-
pensed with, and so might the whole ceremony of the trial,
since sentence was already pronounced at the Castle before the
jury were empanelled. Your lordships are but the priests of
the oracle, and I insist on the whole of the forms.

I am charged with being an emissary of France. An
emissary of France ! and for what end ? It is alleged that
I wish to sell the independence of my country ; and for what
end ? Was this the object of my ambition ? And is this the
mode by which a tribunal of justice reconciles contradiction ?
No ; I am no emissary ; and my ambition was to hold a
place among the deliverers of my country, not in power nor
in profit, but in the glory of the achievement. Sell my
country's independence to France ! and for what ? Was it a
change of masters ? No, but for ambition. O my country I
was it personal ambition that could influence me ? Had it
been the soul of my actions, could I not by my education
and fortune, by the rank and consideration of my family, have
placed myself amongst the proudest of your oppressors ?
My country was my idol ! To it I sacrificed every selfish,
every endearing sentiment ; and for it I now offer up myself,
O God ! No, my lords ; I acted as an Irishman, determined
on delivering my country from the yoke of a foreign and
unrelenting tyranny, and the more galling yoke of a domestic
faction, which is its joint partner and perpetrator in the
patricide, from the ignominy existing with an exterior of
splendour and a conscious depravity. It was the wdsh of
my heart to extricate my country from this doubly riveted

PROTEST AGAINST SENTENCE AS A TRAITOR 259

despotism — I Avished to place her independence beyond the
reach of any power on earth. I wished to exalt her to that
proud station in the world. Connection with France was,
indeed, intended, but only as far as mutual interest would
sanction or require. Were the French to assume any authority
inconsistent with the purest independence, it would be the
signal for their destruction. We sought their aid — and we
sought it as we had assurance we should obtain it — as aux-
iliaries in war, and allies in peace. Were the French to come
as invaders or enemies, uninvited by the wishes of the people,
I should oppose them to the utmost of my strength. Yes I
my countr5mien, I should advise you to meet them upon the
beach with a sword in one hand and a torch in the other. I
would meet them with all the destructive fury of war. I
would animate my countrymen to immolate them in their
boats, before they had contaminated the soil of my country.
If they succeeded in landing, and if forced to retire before
superior discipline, I would dispute every inch of ground,
burn every blade of grass, and the last entrenchment of liberty
should be my grave. What I could not do myself, if I should
fall, I should leave as a last charge to my countrymen to
accomplish ; because I should feel conscious that Ufe, any
more than death, is unprofitable when a foreign nation holds
my country in subjection. But it was not as an enemy that
the succours of France were to land. I looked, indeed, for
the assistance of France ; but I wished to prove to France
and to the world that Irishmen deserved to be assisted ; that
they were indignant at slavery, and ready to assert the inde-
pendence and liberty of their country. I wished to procure
for my country the guarantee which Washington procured
for America ; to procure an aid which, by its example, would
be as important as its valour ; disciplined, gallant, pregnant
with science and experience ; that of a people who would
perceive the good, and polish the rough points of our char-
acter. They would come to us as strangers, and leave us as
friends, after sharing in our perils and elevating our destiny.
These were my objects : not to receive new taskmasters, but
to expel old tyrants. It was for these ends I sought aid
from France ; because France, even as an enemy, could not
be more implacable than the enemy already in the bosom of
my country.

I have been charged with that importance in the emanci-
pation of my country as to be considered the keystone of

26o ROBERT EMMET

the combination of Irishmen ; or as your lordship expressed
it, " the life and blood of the conspiracy." You do me honour
overmuch ; you have given to the subaltern all the credit of a
superior. There are men engaged in this conspiracy who are
not only superior to me, but even to your own conceptions of
yourself, my lord — men before the splendour of whose genius
and virtues I should bow with respectful deference, and who
would think themselves disgraced by shaking your blood-
stained hand.

What, my lord, shall you tell me, on the passage to the
scaffold, which that tyranny (of which you are only the inter-
mediary executioner) has erected for my murder, that I am
accountable for all the blood that has been and will be shed
in this struggle of the oppressed against the oppressor — shall
you tell me this, and must I be so very a slave as not to repel
it ? I do not fear to approach the Omnipotent Judge to
answer for the conduct of my whole Hfe ; and am I to be
appalled and falsified by a mere remnant of mortality here ?
By you, too, although, if it were possible to collect all the
innocent blood that you have shed in your unhallowed minis-
try in one great reservoir, your lordship might swim in it.

Let no man dare, when I am dead, to charge me with
dishonour ; let no man attaint my memory, by believing that
I could have engaged in any cause but that of my country's
hberty and independence ; or that I could have become the
pliant minion of power, in the oppression and misery of my
country. The proclamation of the provisional government
speaks for our views ; no inference can be tortured from it to
countenance barbarity or debasement at home, or subjection,
humiliation, or treachery from abroad. I would not have
submitted to a foreign oppressor, for the same reason that I
would resist the foreign and domestic oppressor. In the
dignity of freedom, I would have fought upon the threshold
of my country, and its enemy should enter only by passing
over my lifeless corpse. And am I, who lived but for my
country, and who have subjected myself to the dangers of
the jealous and watchful oppressor, and the bondage of the
grave, only to give my countrymen their rights, and my
country her independence — am I to be loaded with calumny,
and not suffered to resent it ? No ; God forbid !

If the spirits of the illustrious dead participate in the
concerns and cares of those who were dear to them in this
transitory life, 0, ever dear and venerated shade of my de-

PROTEST AGAINST SENTENCE AS A TRAITOR 261

parted father ! look down with scrutiny upon the conduct of
your suffering son, and see if I have, even for a moment,
deviated from those principles of morality and patriotism
which it was your care to instil into my youthful mind, and
for which I am now about to offer up my life. My lords, you
are impatient for the sacrifice. The blood which you seek is
not congealed by the artificial terrors which surround your
victim — it circulates warmly and unruffled through the
channels which God created for noble purposes, but which you
are now bent to destroy for purposes so grievous that they
cry to heaven. Be yet patient I I have but a few more words
to say — I am going to my cold and silent grave — my lamp of
life is nearly extinguished — my race is run — the grave opens
to receive me, and I sink into its bosom. 1 have but one re-
quest to ask at my departure from this world ; it is — the
charity of its silence. Let no man write my epitaph ; for, as
no man who knows my motives dares now vindicate them, let
not prejudice or ignorance asperse them. Let them and me
rest in obscurity and peace, and my tomb remain uninscribed,
and my memory in oblivion, until other times and other men
can do justice to my character. When my country takes
her place among the nations of the earth, then, and not till
then, let my epitaph be written. I have done.

HON. WHITELAW REID

THE BUSINESS OF DIPLOMATS

[Speech delivered by the American Ambassador at the Guild-
hail, London, November 9. 1905, in response to the toast of
*' Their Excellencies the Foreign Ministers."]

My Lord Mayor, your Excellencies, my Lords, Ladies,
AND Gentlemen : — It is a mistake to suppose that an American
is always ready at a moment's notice, and on the most stately
and ceremonious occasion, to make an after-dinner speech.
My Lord Mayor, you did not believe this five minutes ago
when I made my last appeal to you to omit this toast. You
will believe it five minutes hence [a laugh]. My qualification,
I presume, for responding to the toast of their Excellencies
the Foreign Ministers is that I am the most recent comer
among them.

You have forgotten, my Lord Mayor, that even on this
point I am disqualified. Coming events have not only cast
their shadows before them, as his Majesty's Minister for
Foreign Affairs on my right would testify, but they have
placed in our presence the coming event in the person of
the new Ambassador from Japan. [Cheers.] He is eloquent,
as some of us have heard, in his Asiatic tongue, and eloquent,
as we all know, in our own EngHsh tongue. [Hear, hear.]
He should be the one to speak on this important occasion for
their Excellencies the Foreign Ministers. If I may venture
for the last time to take precedence of him in this particular,
if I may venture at all to say anything in response to this
toast, it will be just one thing, and that is one thing in which
I am sure he will concur with me. It is the business of dip-

363

Hon. WiiiTKi.^v^v Ri:ii:>

speaks 071 the lusiness o; diplomats.

THE BUSINESS OF DIPLOMATS 263

lomatists not to make difficulties, but to compose them, not
to prolong strife, but to bring it to an end. [Hear, hear.]
It is the business of diplomatists to seek for peace, to make
peace, to keep the peace, even when they fmd the task a
difficult one and apparently a hopeless one. It should not
be their first impulse, or their second, to let diplomacy and
diplomats give way to the army and the soldier. Rather,
it is the business of the diplomatist, when he finds his own
exertions unavailing, to seek then for the intervention of
that institution to which the Prime Minister has so eloquently
alluded, and ask, not for the soldier, but for the international
Court of Arbitration. [Cheers.]

The Prime Minister has claimed precedence in this matter
for Great Britain. I will not either concede or dispute the
claim. [Laughter.] I will only venture to say that Great
Britain and the United States have set the example of sub-
mitting to arbitration some of the most burning questions
that have ever divided them. [Cheers.] I have not heard
that either country is dissatisfied with the result of these
arbitrations. Sometimes they have been in our favour ;
sometimes they have been in your favour; but, whatever
they have been, they stand ; and the two countries, as the
result of them, are to-day more cordial, more friendly, more
brotherly in their relations than at any time for a himdred
years. [Cheers.] I venture to say that there never was a
moment when there has been less friction between us than at
this moment. If you hear somebody tell you that at this par-
ticular time there is a possibility of difficulty about fisheries,
or something of that sort, do not believe it. Simply consider
it a case of violently inflamed misinformation. There is no
difficulty on that question or on any question between Great
Britain and the United States which in the safe hands of
Lord Lansdowne and Elihu Root is not sure of being peace-
fully and speedily adjusted. [Cheers.] And I venture to
say that, while their great chiefs — his Majesty the King and
my honoured chief the President of the United States — remain
in their places, there is sure to be a continuance of those
relations, and not only during their time and under their
auspices, but for long periods in the future.

And this reminds me, my Lord Mayor, that this is a
period of birthdays. We were celebrating a birthday ourselves
only a short time ago — on October 27, to be exact. I am
almost afraid to remind you how we celebrated it, I think

264 HON. WHITELAW REID

the fact is that the President of the United States was violently
hurled through his stateroom window — by impact of a British
vessel, was it not ? — by an unexpected and thoroughly un-
desired collision. He came out the better for it [laughter],
and I think the whole accident may have been designed by a
wiser Power than us for the purpose of proving that nothing
in the world could harm him. [Cheers.] ,

The last time I had occasion before any large audience to
speak of the President I ventured to say that he was then
engaged in an effort to compose a great international difficulty,
and that, whether successful or not, the world would at least
recognize that he was making a manly, an honest, a wise,
and a courageous effort for peace. I am sure you will all
agree with me now in the belief that wisdom and courage were
justified in the results of his action [cheers], results happy
in bringing peace with honour to two great nations and con-
tentment to the whole civilized world. [Cheers.]

You are celebrating to-day with all honour the birthday
of his Majesty the King. I ought not, perhaps, to deal with
a subject which has already been properly and gracefully
treated, and yet I may venture to say that he too is known
in my country and throughout the world as the earnest
advocate of peace, a man whose courage, whose wisdom,
whose moderation, whose tact have endeared him, although a
monarch, as much to republicans as to monarchists, and have
made the civilized world his debtor. [Cheers.]

ALBERT J. BEVERIDGE

THE REPUBLIC THAT NEVER RETREATS

[Speech delivered at a banquet of the Union League Club,
Philadelphia, Penn., February 15, 1899.]

Mr. President and Gentlemen : — The Republic never
retreats. Why should it retreat ? The Republic is the
highest form of civilization, and civilization must advance.
The Republic's young men are the most virile and un wasted
in the world, and they pant for enterprise worthy of their
power. The Republic's preparation has been the self-discipline
of a century, and that preparedness has found its task. The
Republic's opportunity is as noble as its strength, and that
opportunity is here. The Republic's duty is as sacred as its
opportunity is real, and Americans never desert their duty.

The Republic could not retreat if it would. Whatever its
destiny it must proceed. For the American Republic is a
part of the movement of a race — the most masterful race of
history — and race movements are not to be stayed by the
hand of man. They are mighty answers to divine commands.

What is England's glory ? England's immortal glory is
not Agincourt or Waterloo. It is not her merchandise or
commerce. It is Australia, New Zealand, and Africa re-
claimed. It is India redeemed. It is Egypt, mummy of the
nations, touched into modern life.

England's imperishable renown is in English science throt-
tling the plague in Calcutta, English law administering order
in Bombay, English energy planting an industrial civilization
from Cairo to the Cape, and English discipline creating sol-
diers, men, and finally citizens, perhaps, even out of the

266 ALBERT J. BEVERIDGE

fellaheen of the dead land of the Pharaohs. And yet the
liberties of Englishmen were never so secure as now. And
that which is England's undying fame has also been her infinite
profit, so sure is duty golden in the end.

The dominant notes in American history have thus far
been self-government and internal improvements. But these
were not ends ; they were means. They were modes of
preparation. The dominant notes in American life hence-
forth will be, not only self-government and internal develop-
ment, but also administration and world-improvement.

The future of Cuba is to be worked out by the wisdom of
events. Ultimately annexation is as certain as that island's
existence. Even if Cubans are capable of self-government,
every interest points to union. We and they may blunder
forward and timidly try devices of doubt. But in the end
Jefferson's desire will be fulfilled, and Cuba will be a part of
the great republic.

The Philippines are ours for ever. Let faint hearts anoint
their fears with the thought that some day American adminis-
tration and American duty there may end. But they never
will end. England's occupation of Egypt was to be tem-
porary ; but events, which are the commands of God, are
making it permanent. And now God has given us this Pacific
empire for civilized administration. The first office of the
administration is order. Order must be established through-
out the archipelago.

Rebellion against the authority of the flag must be crushed
without delay, for hesitation encourages revolt, and without
anger, for the turbulent children know not what they do.
And then civilization must be organized, administered,' and
maintained. Law and justice must rule where savages,
tyranny, and caprice have rioted. The people must be taught
the art of orderly and continuous industry.

The frail of faith declare that those peoples are not fitted
for citizenship. It is not proposed to make them citizens.
Those who see disaster in every forward step of the republic
prophesy that cheap labour from the Philippines will overrun
our country and starve our working men. But the Javanese
have not so overnm Holland. New Zealand's Malays, Aus-
tralia's bushmen, Africa's Kaffirs, Zulus, and Hottentots, and
India's millions of surplus labour have not so overrun England.

Those who measure duty by dollars cry out at the expense.
When did America ever count the cost of righteousness ?

THE KEPUELIC THAT NEVER RETREATS 267

And, besides, this Republic must have a mighty navy in any
event. And new markets secured, new enterprises opened,
new resources in timber, mines, and products of the tropics
acquired, and the vitaUzation of all our industries which will
follow, will pay back a thousandfold all the Government
spends in discharging the highest duty to which the Republic
may be called.

The blood already shed is but a drop to that which would
flow if America should desert its post in the Pacific. And
the blood already spilled was poured out upon the altar of
the world's regeneration. Manila is as noble as Omdurman,
and both are holier than Jericho. Retreat from the Philip-
pines on any pretext would be the master-cowardice of his-
tory. It would be the betrayal of a trust as sacred as hu-
manity. It would be a crime against Christian civilization,
and would mark the beginning of the decadence of our race.
And so, thank God, the Republic never retreats.

Imperialism is not the word for our vast work. Imperi-
alism, as used by the opposers of national greatness, means
oppression, and we oppress not. Imperialism, as used by
the opposers of national destiny, means monarchy, and the
days of monarchy are spent. Imperialism, as used by the
opposers of national progress, is a word to frighten the faint
of heart, and so is powerless with the fearless American people.

The Republic never retreats. Its flag is the only flag that
has never known defeat. Where that flag leads we follow,
for we know that the hand that bears it onward is the un-
seen hand of God. We follow the flag and independence is
ours. ^ We follow the flag and nationality is ours. We follow
the flag and oceans are ruled. We follow the flag, and in
Occident and Orient tyranny falls and barbarism is subdued.

We followed the flag at Trenton and Valley Forge, at
Saratoga and upon the crimson seas, at Buena Vista and
Chapultepec, at Gettysburg and Mission Ridge, at Santiago
and Manila, and everywhere and always it means larger
liberty, nobler opportunity, and greater human happiness ;
for everywhere and always it means the blessings of the greater
Republic. And so God leads, we follow the flag, and the
Republic never retreats.

MR. JUSTICE GRANTHAM

THE IMPARTIALITY OF THE JUDGES

[Speech delivered at the conclusion of his charge to the grand
jury at Liverpool Assizes, February 7, 191 1, in reply to a
series of allegations which had been preferred against him of
political partisanship.]

As I am anxious to speak to you on a personal matter in which
the Bar naturally takes a great interest, and in which the con-
duct of a member of the Bar is the centre around which the
political storm raged furiously against me four years ago, and
occasionally still boils over, I have asked them to be present
to hear told the birth, parentage, and life of the lies that then
were uttered in the House of Commons. As the continued
bitter way in which my conduct is still misrepresented dates
mainly from the charges brought against me in the House of
Commons after the Yarmouth election petition, and scarcely
a week passes but I get some threatening and insulting letter
based on the charges — even to-day I received one here — I think
the time has now come for me to expose the falsehoods on
which that charge was based by Mr. Swift MacNeill. Fortun-
ately it does not depend on my statements at all, but the false-
hood 33 patent the moment it is pointed out.

To accoimt for the false charge being made it is necessary
I should just remind you of what had happened. My brother
Channell and I had differed in our judgments, on a very small
point really, but I am not going to refer to that beyond saying
this, that I respect his judgment so much that the very fact
of his differing from me made me hesitate in relying on my own
judgment, and I realized to the full the truth of the old adage

20?

THE IMPARTIALITY OF THE JUDGES 269

that it requires much more courage to do justice to a friend
than to gain applause by being apparently magnanimous to an
enemy. I knew the political storm that my judgment would
bring down upon me, but I knew what the public did not
know, and what my learned brother did not know — namely,
how ill he was, and I thought he had not been able properly
to appreciate the real effect of the evidence in the petition
or conduct of counsel in the case, and I could not sacrifice the
respondent in the petition to save myself from being misrepre-
sented by agreeing with a judgment of which I did not approve.

Mr. Swift MacNeill and the whole of the Liberal Party at
once jumped to the conclusion that I must have been actuated
by political partisanship, and no language was too strong to
hurl at me for days and weeks, and Mr. Swift MacNeill readily
got 345 — I think it was — Liberal members of the House to
sign for an inquiry into my conduct. I courted the fullest
inquiry at once, feeling so certain that not a word had ever
escaped me that showed the slightest sign of partisanship,
and that my judgment would meet with approval the moment
people could study the facts carefully and dispassionately and
the Liberal Party had got over the disappointment they had
suffered from the failure of their petition. If the charge had
been true I quite admit I should have been guilty of the most
improper conduct a Judge could be guilty of. The Government,
as I was informed, wanted to avoid the inquiry. I, on the
other hand, demanded that the inquiry should be held.

Before the day arrived for the discussion in the House of
Commons there was not a Liberal lawyer whom I knew, from
the present Attorney-General downwards, who had not written
to me or told me that my judgment was quite right, that it
was practically unanimously approved of, and that they would
support me in the House of Commons, and I anticipated the
greatest triumph of my life. Imagine my astonishment on
receiving in Newcastle, where I was then on circuit, a long
telegram from the House after the debate telling me of the
abuse that had been heaped on me for my conduct during the
petition. Not a single charge they made had ever been
whispered before, and I felt as one stabbed in the back by a
treacherous assassin just as his enemies were fleeing before him.
I w^as dumbfounded, and had it not been for the support of
my brother Pickford and the extraordinary way in which
the men of Newcastle of all politics behaved to me — and it was
worth a good deal of abuse to receive such an expression of

270 MR. JUSTICE GRANTHAM

confidence as I did from them, but that is too long a story
to tell — I don't know what would have happened.

I will read now from the report in The Times what the
charge was, so that you may appreciate the position : "Mr.
Swift MacNeill said he had used the judicial seat as a bulwark
from which to attack the House of Commons and the Govern-
ment of the day and to provoke angry political passions. If
there was one thing more than another absolutely essential
in a Judge, it was that he should convey no impression that he
was a political partisan. Mr. Gill, the counsel for the petitioner
(i.e. the Liberal), in the course of his address, handed to the
judge a pamphlet — and a pamphlet of a very atrocious char-
acter— issued by the Conservatives, which advised the voters
to take money from both sides and to lie to both. Mr. Justice
Grantham, on examining it, laughingly observed he thought it
might have been a Birrell Bill in support of secular education."

Now, gentlemen, that was worse than a lie ; it was a per-
version. Mr. Gill was not counsel for the petitioner, the
Liberal candidate, at all, but was counsel for the Conservative
respondent in the petition. He did bring forward the bill,
which was of an atrocious kind, but which he said was issued
by the Liberals, and attacked them bitterly upon it. As I
was determined to do the most ample justice to them, and as
I thought there was a doubt whether the Liberal candidate
or some irresponsible follower had issued it, I tried to get Mr.
Gill to give up his attack on them about it, but having a
difficulty in doing so I used a chaffing expression that was then
rife in legal circles in consequence of Mr. Birrell's amusing
speeches, and I said, *' Oh ! treat it as a Birrell Bill and let's
get on to something else.** Now, gentlemen, what do you
think of such a false charge being fabricated by a member of
Parliament against any one behind his back, much more
against a Judge who could not answer for himself ? It is
almost incredible that Mr. Swift MacNeill did not know it
was false, as he represented all along that he had studied the
case from the first, and must have known on which side Mr.
Gill was ; but it is so base a lie that I cannot believe he did
know it, and I think his bitter partisanship and desire to in-
jure me had blinded his better judgment and made him forget
the facts of the case.

But let us read on and see what is his next charge. " During
the trial the Judges were entertained at dinner by the Mayor.
In the course of a speech at the dinner, according to the affidavit

THE IMiPAKTlALlTY OF THE JUDGES 27I

of Edward Homer Jones, Congregational minister, who was
present, Mr. Justice Grantham said: 'I do not know whether
my friend will not hold that such a spread as this comes under
the heading of corrupt treating, and I am afraid I may be con-
victed myself.' " Now the whole of that story is equally false.
What happened was this. The Mayor — the leader, I think,
of the Liberal Party, and a leading Nonconformist — invited
my brother Judge and me to dine with him to meet the barristers
and solicitors engaged on both sides. We declined, but on
great pressure from him, and a promise that it w^ould be a
private dinner only and no speeches and no report of anything
that might be said, we agreed to go and to show wuth what
confidence we could laugh and talk and spend a pleasant
evening together. The Mayor said, " I will send you the names
of everybody who will be there." I have that list now, and
you will be surprised to hear that the Rev. Edward Horner
Jones, who made the affidavit, was never there at all ; at any
rate, if he was, he was invited unexpectedly by the Mayor after
he had sent me his list, and was guilty of a breach of hos-
pitality quite apart from his false statement.

The Mayor gave us a magnificent banquet. We spent a
pleasant evening together, and just before parting I thought
we could not do so without thanking him for his splendid
hospitality, and so, as senior Judge, I did so, naturally making
my remarks as amusing as I could, and I chaffed him by saying
that if any one ought to be proceeded against for corrupt
treating it was the Mayor, for I was sure everybody in the
room would only be too anxious to have another election
petition to be treated again as he had treated us that night.
Why, I should have been fit for a lunatic asylum if I had insulted
those responsible for the petition when they were all present.
The other parts of his speech that had any bearing on the
question are equally untrue, but I must not weary you by
referring to them. But see what happened in consequence of
these statements.

I must now read what the Prime Minister said, because he
joined in the attack upon me. ** If these charges are true,"
he said, " I think it was a deplorable mistake on the part of the
Judge not to have avoided, as he could have done, as others
have avoided who were conscious of having partisan feelings,
being selected from the rota for the trial of these petitions."
He entirely mistook the character for which I was brought up.
I was brought up to fear nothing and to do my duly hrespective

272 MR. JUSTICE GRANTHAM

of consequence. The rota chose me, and I was not going to be
afraid of doing my duty, because I had no consciousness of
any partisan feeling having in the slightest degree been shown
in that petition. I did not believe that any other Judge had
refused to take it for that reason.

Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman went on to say, " Another
thing he forgot was " — this was the extraordinary part
of it, remarked his Lordship — ** that in those observations of
the Judge, whether in the course of that trial or at the dinner "
— there were no speeches and no reporters present, said his
Lordship — " where everything he might say would be reported
all over the place the next morning, he did something to distort
and pervert the course of justice in the Court over which he
presided." Can you imagine the Prime Minister making a
statement like that ? It was weeks after the dinner. Nothing
had ever appeared in any newspaper at all, and nobody had
the slightest idea that a charge was going to be brought forward
like that ; yet here was the Prime Minister saying that it would
be published in all the papers the next day. Just imagine the
Prime Minister being so taken in by Mr. Swift MacNeill as to
suppose my speech ridiculing the petition had been reported
far and wide the next morning in all the papers of England,
as it would have been had I made it, and yet no one had heard
of it until that moment ! That ought to have shown him the
story was untrue. But he had to buy off Mr. Swift MacNeill, and
my character was the price he apparently agreed to pay for it.

Now came the surprising part. One, and one only, of the
eminent Liberal lawyers raised his voice on my behalf, and
he an eminent Chancery barrister whom I did not know, and
had never seen or heard from. He spoke very early in the
debate, and to his surprise, as he told me afterwards, no one
followed him to defend me. How was it ? Why, as the
Attorney-General told me afterwards, and so I suppose it was
true, they were so afraid Mr. Swift MacNeill would beat them
on a division, as he had got all their party pledged to support
him long before they knew the real rights of the case, that they
accepted his promise to withdraw the motion after there had
been a general attack made upon me, and that they had there-
fore sent round word to both sides of the House not to go into
the matter or fight the question at all, as they wished to avoid
a division. That at any rate was the only explanation given
me when I complained, and bitterly complained, of the way I
had been treated.

THE lMl>ARtIALltY OF ME JUDGl^S 273

You may say — Why did I not contradict these false charges
at the time ? Well, there is a tradition that Judges do not
contradict charges made against them. But considering that
these charges affected my honour and fitness for the office I
hold I was anxious to contradict them ; but political passion
was so strong at the time that I was advised by higher judicial
authority than my own, after long consideration, that it was
better to trust to time to calm down the rancorous party spirit
then shown, and to the good sense of the people to see how
they had misjudged me. Among people with an open mind
probably time has had that effect, but the stigma remains, and
the fact that these charges were made is constantly brought
up against me at the present.

But apart from that, I always felt it was a duty I owed to
my family as well as my own honour some day to expose the
falsity of the charge. I intended to wait till I had retired
from the Judicial Bench, but as life is uncertain and I have
now been twenty-five years on the Bench, I hope you will for-
give me for making use of this occasion, on the twenty-fifth
anniversary of my coming here when I was made Judge, to
expose those false charges which were made behind my back
without the slightest warning or the smallest chance of any
one contradicting them, as no one knew what was going to be
said, and on the spur of the moment people did not realize
the falsity of the charge. Another reason I have for doing it
now is that Mr. Swift MacNeill is still alive, though the Prime
Minister and the then Attorney-General, who both spoke on
the assumption that his statements were true, are dead, and I
do not want it to be said that I waited till the founder of this
charge was dead also.

From the day I was first appointed a Judge to the present
day I have never wittingly, by word or deed, done or said
anything to give a partisan or political complexion to my
judicial work, but have invariably meted out severer and
stricter justice, if anything, to those agreeing with me in
political feeling than to those differing from me. The possi-
bility that some of those whom I had fought before I was a
Judge would attack me when on the Bench made me scrupu-
lously careful to say nothing in my judicial capacity that had
in any way a partisan character about it. I was brought up to
take a deep interest in the welfare of my country, and as that
country is dependent for its welfare on political principles I
should have been unworthy to be called an Englishman if

11—18

274 MR. JUSTICE GRANTHAM

the moment I had been made a Judge and obtained the coveted
goal of professional life I ceased to take any interest in that
welfare or to hold any views as to the political life on which
that welfare depends.

Gentlemen, I have spoken to you not as to a body of men
of all political principles, but as to men of honour, whatever
your principles may be, and I am sure none of you, however
strongly you may differ from the views I used to advocate, will
begrudge me this opportunity of clearing my character from
these false charges. I have been amongst you off and on
twenty-five years, doing my judicial work to the best of
the ability that God has given me, and I was anxious to make
this statement before those who would know something, at
any rate, of what my judicial work has been.

CHARLES W. MOORE

THE UNIVERSAL FRATERNITY OF MASONRY

[Address by Charles Whitlock Moore, then R. W. Grand Secretary
of the M. W. Grand Lodge of Massachusetts, delivered in Boston
on December 29, 1856, at the celebration of the centennial
anniversary of the Lodge of St. Andrew.]

Worshipful Master : — I suppose it to be entirely true, in
view of the great accessions that have been made to its members
within the last two or three years, that there are many persons
present who entertain, at best, but a very general and in-
definite idea of the antiquity, extent, and magnitude of our
Institution. And it is equally true that many even of our
most intelligent and active young Brethren, not having their
attention drawn to the subject, overlook its history and the
extent of its influence, and naturally come to regard it in
much the same light that they do the ordinary associations of
the day ; and this as naturally leads to indifference. Masonry,
like every other science, whether moral or physical, to be
rightly estimated, must be understood in all its relations and
conditions. The intelligent mason values it in the exact ratio
that he has investigated its history and studied its philosophy.

But my immediate purpose is not to discuss the importance
of the study of masonry as a science, but to show its universality
as a fraternity. This will necessarily involve to some extent
the history of its rise and progress.

In the beginning of the fifteenth century, Henry VI. asked
of our brethren of that day — " Where did Masonry begin ? "
And being told that it began in the East, his next inquiry
was — " Who did bring it westerly ? " — and he received for

27s

276 CHARLES W. MOORE

answer, that it was brought westerly by " the Phoenicians."
These answers were predicated, not on archaeological investiga-
tions, for the archaeology of Masonry had not then been opened,
but on the traditions of the Order, as they had been trans-
mitted from generation to generation, and from a period
running so far back along the stream of time that it had
been lost in the mists and obscurity of the mythological ages.
Recent investigations, guided by more certain lights and more
extensive and clearer developments of historical truth, have
shown that these Brethren were not misled by their traditions,
and that their answers indicated, with remarkable precision,
what the most learned of our Brethren, in this country and
in Europe, at the present time believe to be the true origin
of their Institution.

Freemasonry was originally a fraternity of practical
builders — architects and artificers. This is conceded by
all who are to any extent acquainted with its history or its
traditions. The Phoenicians, whose capital cities were Tyre
and Sidon, were the early patrons of that semi-religious mystic
fraternity or society of builders, known in history as the
" Dionysian Architects." That this fraternity were employed
by the Tyrians and Sidon ians in the erection of costly temples
to unknown Deities, in the building of rich and gorgeous
palaces, and in strengthening and beautifying their cities, is
universally admitted. That they were the " cunning work-
men " sent by Hiram, King of Tyre, to aid King Solomon in
the erection of the Temple on Mount Moriah, is scarcely less
certain. Their presence in that city at the time of the building
of the Temple is the evidence of history ; and Hiram, the widow's
son, to whom Solomon entrusted the superintendence of the
workmen, as an inhabitant of Tyre, and as a skilled architect
and cunning and curious workman, was doubtless one of their
number. Hence, we are scarcely claiming too much for our
Order, when we suppose that the Dionysians were sent by
Hiram, King of Tyre, to assist King Solomon in the construc-
tion of the house he was about to dedicate to Jehovah, and
that they communicated to their Jewish fellow- labourers a
knowledge of the advantages of their fraternity, and invited
them to a participation in its mysteries and privileges. The
Jews were neither architects nor artificers. By Solomon's own
admission, they were not even skilled enough in the art of
building to cut and prepare the timber in the forests of Le-
banon ; and hence he was compelled to employ the Sidonians

THE UNIVERSAL FRATERNITY OF MASONRY 277

to do that work for him. *' The Tyrians," says a learned
foreign Brother, " were celebrated artists ; Solomon, therefore,
unable to find builders of superior skill, for the execution of
his plans, in his dominions, engaged Tyrians, who, with the
assistance of the zealous Jews, who contented themselves in
performing the inferior labour, finished that stupendous edifice."
And we are told on the authority of Josephus that " the
Temple at Jerusalem was built on the same plan, in the same
style, and by the same architects, as the temples of Hercules
and Astarte at Tyre." They were doubtless all three built by
one of the companies of " Dionysian Architects," who at
that time were numerous throughout Asia Minor, where
they possessed the exclusive privilege of erecting temples,
theatres, and other public buildings.

Dionysius arrived in Greece from Egypt about one thousand
five hundred years before Christ, and there instituted, or
introduced, the Dionysian mysteries. The Ionic migration
occurred about three hundred years afterwards, or one thousand
two hundred years B.C. — the immigrants carrying with them
from Greece to Asia Minor the mysteries of Dionysius, before
they had been corrupted by the Athenians. " In a short time,"
says Mr. Lawrie, " the Asiatic colonies surpassed the mother-
country in prosperity and science. Sculpture in marble, and
the Doric and Ionic Orders were the result of their ingenuity."
"We know," says a learned encyclopaedist, " that the Dionysiacs
of Ionia " (which place has, according to Herodotus, always
been celebrated for the genius of its inhabitants), " were a great
corporation of architects and engineers, who undertook, and
even monopolized, the building of temples, stadiums, and
theatres, precisely as the fraternity of Masons are known to
have, in the Middle Ages, monopolized the building of cathedrals
and conventual churches. Indeed, the Dionysiacs resembled
the mystical fraternity, now called Freemasons, in many im-
portant particulars. They allowed no strangers to inter-
fere in their employment ; recognized each other by signs
and tokens ; they professed certain mysterious doctrines,
under the tuition and tutelage of Bacchus ; and they called
all other men profane because not admitted to these mysteries."

The testimony of history is, that they supplied Ionia
and the surrounding country, as far as the Hellespont, with
theatrical apparatus, by contract. They also practised their
art in Syria, Persia, and India ; and about three hundred
years before the birth of Christ, a considerable number of them

278 CHARLES W. MOORE

were incorporated by command of the King of Pergamus, who
assigned to them Teos as a settlement. It was this fraternity,
whether called Greeks, Tyrians, or Phoenicians, who built the
Temple at Jerusalem. That stupendous work, imder God,
was the result of their genius and scientific skill. And this
being true, from them are we, as a fraternity, lineally descended,
or our antiquity is a myth, and our traditions a fable. Hence
the answer of our English Brethren of the fifteenth century,
to the inquiry of Henry VI., that Masonry was brought
westerly by the Phoenicians, indicated with great accuracy
the probable origin of the Institution.

They might indeed have said to him that long anterior
to the advent of Christianity the mountains of Judaea and
the plains of Syria, the deserts of India and the valley of
the Nile, were cheered by its presence and enlivened by its
song ; that more than a thousand years before the coming
of the ** Son of Man," a little company of " cunning workmen,"
from the neighbouring city of Tyre, were assembled on the
pleasant Mount of Moriah, at the call of the wise King of Israel,
and there erected out of their great skill a mighty edifice,
whose splendid and unrivalled perfection, and whose grandeur
and sublimity have been the admiration and theme of all
succeeding ages. They might have said to him that this was
the craft- work of a fraternity to whose genius and discoveries,
and to whose matchless skill and ability, the wisest of men in
all ages have bowed with respect. They might have said to
him that, having finished that great work, and fiUed all Judsea
with temples and palaces and walled cities, havmg enriched
and beautified Azor, Gozarra, and Palmyra, with the results of
their genius, these " cunning workmen " in after-times, passing
through the Essenian associations, and finally issuing out of the
mystic halls of the " Collegia Artificium " of Rome, burst upon
the " dark ages " of the world like a bright star peering through
a black cloud, and, under the patronage of the Church, pro-
duced those splendid monuments of genius which set at defiance
the highest attainments of modern art. And if, in addition
to all this, they had said to him, that in the year a.d. 926,
one of his predecessors on the throne of England had in-
vited them from all parts of the Continent, to meet him in
general assembly at his royal city of York, the answer to his
inquiry — " Who did bring it westerly ? "—-would have been
complete.

Henceforward, for eight centuries. Masonry continued

THE UNIVERSAL FRATERNITY OF MASONRY 279

an operative fraternity ; producing both in England and
on the Continent those grand and unapproachable specimens
of art which are the pride of Central Europe and the admiration
of the traveller. But it is no longer an operative association.
We of this day, as Masons, set up no pretensions to extraordinary
skill in the physical sciences. Very few of us — accomplished
Masons as we may be — would willingly undertake to erect
another Temple on Mount Moriah ! Very certain we are that
our own honoured M. W. Grand Master — primus inter pares,
as all his Brethren acknowledge him to be, would hesitate a
long time before consenting to assume the duties of architect
for another Westminster Abbey, or a new St. Paul's. No.
At the reorganization of the Craft and the establishment of
the present Grand Lodge of England in 171 7, we laid aside
our operative character, and with it all pretensions to extra-
ordinary skill in architectural science. We then became a
purely moral and benevolent association, whose great aim was
the development and cultivation of the moral sentiment, the
social principle, and the benevolent affections, a higher rever-
ence for God, and a warmer love for man. New laws and regula-
tions, adapted to the changed condition of the Institution,
were then made, — an entire revolution in its governmental
policy took place, order and system obtained where neither
had previously existed, and England became the great central
point of Masonry for the whole world.

From this source have Lodges, Grand and Subordinate,
at various times, been established, and still exist and flourish
— in France and Switzerland ; in all the German States,
save Austria (and there at different times, and for short sea-
sons) ; all up and down the classic shores of the Rhine ; in
Prussia, Holland, Belgium, Saxony, Hanover, Sweden, Den-
mark, Russia, and even in fallen Poland ; in Italy and Spain
(under the cover of secrecy) ; in various parts of Asia ; in
Turkey ; in Syria (as at Aleppo, where an English Lodge was
established more than a century ago) ; in all the East India
settlements, in Bengal, Bombay, Madras (in all of which
lodges are numerous) ; in China, where there are a Provincial
Grand Master and several Lodges ; in various parts of Africa,
as at the Cape of Good Hope and at Sierra Leone, on the
Gambia and on the Nile ; in all the larger islands of the Pacific
andlndian Oceans, as at Ceylon, Sumatra, St. Helena, Mauritius,
Madagascar ; the Sandwich Group ; in all the principal settle-
ments of Australia, as at Adelaide, Melbourne, Parramatta,

280 CHARLES W. MOORE

Sidney, New Zealand ; in Greece, where there is a Grand
Lodge ; in Algeria, in Tunis, in the Empire of Morocco — and
wherever else in the Old World the genius of civilization
has obtained a standpoint, or Christianity has erected the
Banner of the Cross.

In all the West India Islands, and in various parts of
South America, as in Peru, Venezuela, New Granada, Guiana,
Brazil, Chili, etc.. Masonry is prospering as never before.
In the latter Republic, the Grand Lodge of this Commonwealth
has a flourishing subordinate, and the Grand Master has just
authorized the establishment of another Lodge there.

On the American Continent the Order was never more widely
diffused, or in a more healthy condition. In Mexico, even,
respectable Lodges are maintained, in despite of the opposition
of a bigoted Priesthood ; and in all British America, from
Newfoundland, through Nova Scotia and the Canadas to the
icy regions of the North, Masonic Lodges and Masonic Brethren
may be found, " to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and bind
up the wounds of the afflicted."

Masonry is indeed a universal Institution. History does
not furnish its parallel. It exists where Christianity has not
gone ; and its claims will be respected even where the superior
claims of religion would fail. It is never obscured by the dark-
ness of night. The eye of day is always upon it. Its footprints
are to be traced in the most distant regions and in the remotest
ages of the earth. Among all civilized people, and in all
Christianized lands, its existence is recognized. Unaffected by
the tempests of war, the storms of persecution, or the denuncia-
tions of fanaticism, it still stands proudly erect in the sunshine
and clear light of heaven, with not a marble fractured, not a
pillar fallen. It still stands, like some patriarchal monarch of
the forest, with its vigorous roots riveted to the soil, and
its broad limbs spread in bold outline against the sky ; and in
generations yet to come, as in ages past, the sunlight of honour
and renown will delight to linger and play amid its venerable
branches. And if ever in the Providence of God, lashed by
the storm and riven by the lightning, it shall totter to its fall,
around its trunk will the ivy of filial affection, that has so long
clasped it, still cling, and mantle with greenness and verdure
its ruin and decay.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON

THE MEMORY OF BURNS

[Speech delivered at the festival of the Boston Bums Club, at
the Parker House, Boston, Mass., January 25, 1859, commemora-
ting the hundredth anniversary of the birth of the Scottish bard.]

Mr. President and Gentlemen : — I do not know by what
untoward accident it has chanced — and I forbear to inquire
— that, in this accomplished circle, it should fall to me, the
worst Scotsman of all, to receive your commands, and at the
latest hour, too, to respond to the sentiment just offered, and
which, indeed, makes the occasion. But I am told there is no
appeal, and I must trust to the inspiration of the theme to
make a fitness which does not otherwise exist.

Yet, sir, I heartily feel the singular claims of the occasion.
At the first announcement, from I know not whence, that
the twenty-fifth of January was the hundredth anniversary
of the birth of Robert Burns, a sudden consent warned the
great British race, in all its kingdoms, colonies, and states,
all over the world, to keep the festival. We are here to hold
our parliament with love and poesy, as men were wont to
do in the Middle Ages. Those famous parliaments might or
might not have had more statehness and better singers than
we — though that is yet to be known — but they could not
have better reason.

I can only explain this singular unanimity in a race which
rarely acts together — but rather after their watchword, each
for himself — by the fact that Robert Burns, the poet of the
middle class, represents in the mind of men to-day that great
uprising of the middle class against the armed and privileged
minorities — that uprising which worked politically in the

281

282 RALPH WALDO EMERSON

American and French Revolutions, and which, not in govern-
ments so much as in education and in social order, has changed
the face of the world. In order for this destiny, his birth,
breeding, and fortune were low. His organic sentiment was
absolute independence, and resting, as it should, on a Hfe of
labour. No man existed who could look down on him. They
that looked into his eyes saw that they might look down the
sky as easily. His muse and teaching was common sense,
joyful, aggressive, irresistible. Not Latimer, nor Luther,
struck more telling blows against false theology than did this
brave singer. The " Confession of Augsburg," the " Declara-
tion of Independence, *' the French *' Rights of Man,'' and the
*' Marseillaise," are not more weighty documents in the history
of freedom than the songs of Burns. His satire has lost none
of its edge. His musical arrows yet sing through the air.
He is so substantially a reformer, that I find his grand, plain
sense in close chain with the greatest masters — Rabelais,
Shakespeare in comedy, Cervantes, Butler, and Burns. If
I should add another name, I find it only in a hving country-
man of Burns. He is an exceptional genius. The people
who care nothing for Uterature and poetry care for Burns. It
was indifferent — they thought who saw him — whether he
wrote verse or not ; he could have done anything else as well.

Yet how true a poet is he ! And the poet, too, of poor
men, of hodden-gray, and the Guernsey-coat, and the blouse.
He has given voice to all the experiences of common life ;
he has endeared the farmhouse and cottage, patches and
poverty, beans and barley ; ale, the poor man's wine ; hard-
ship, the fear of debt, the dear society of weans and wife,
of brothers and sisters, proud of each other, knowing so few,
and finding amends for want and obscurity in books and
thought. What a love of nature ! and — shall I say it ? —
of middle-class nature. Not great, Hke Goethe, in the stars;
or like Byron, on the ocean ; or Moore, in the luxurious East :
but in the homely landscape which the poor see around them
— bleak leagues of pasture and stubble, ice, and sleet, and rain,
and snow-choked brooks ; birds, hares, field-mice, thistles,
and heather, which he daily knew. How many " Bonny
Doons," and " John Anderson my Joes," and " Auld Lang
Synes," all around the earth, have his verses been applied to !
And his love-songs still woo and melt the youths and maids ;
the farm work, the country holiday, the fishing cobble, are
still his debtors to-day.

THE MEMORY OF BURNS 283

And, as he was thus the poet of the poor, anxious, cheer-
ful, working humanity, so had he the language of low life.
He grew up in a rural district, speaking a patois unintelli-
gible to all but natives, and he has made that Lowland Scotch
a Doric dialect of fame. It is the only example in history of
a language made classic by the genius of a single man. But
more than this. He had that secret of genius to draw from
the bottom of society the strength of its speech, and astonish
the ears of the poUte with these artless words, better than art,
and filtered of all offence through his beauty. It seemed
odious to Luther that the devil should have all the best tunes ;
he would bring them into the churches ; and Burns knew how
to take from fairs and gypsies, blacksmiths and drovers, the
speech of the market and street, and clothe it with melody.

But I am detaining you too long. The memory of Burns —
I am afraid heaven and earth have taken too good care of
it to leave us anything to say. The west winds are mur-
muring it. Open the windows behind you, and hearken for
the incoming tide, what the waves say of it. The doves,
perching always on the eaves of the Stone Chapel [King's
Chapel] opposite, may know something about it. Every
home in broad Scotland keeps his fame bright. The memory
of Burns — every man's, and boy's, and girl's head carries
snatches of his songs, and can say them by heart, and, what
is strangest of all, never learned them from a book, but from
mouth to mouth. The wind whispers them, the birds whistle
them, the corn, barley, and bulrushes hoarsely rustle them ;
nay, the music -boxes at Geneva are framed and toothed to
play them ; the hand-organs of the Savoyards in all cities
repeat them, and the chimes of bells ring them in the spires.
They are the property and the solace of mankind. [Cheers.]

EARL CURZON OF KEDLESTON

WOMEN'S WORK

[Speech delivered October 22, 1910, at the opening of the new
buildings at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, by the Chancellor of
the University (Lord Curron).]

Ladies and Gentlemen : — I believe as Chancellor I do not
enjoy the privilege of any official connection with any of the
ladies' colleges, but, recognizing that they form a definite and
valuable part in the academic and educational system of
Oxford, I think, as Chancellor, I am thoroughly entitled not
only to feel but to exhibit the warmest possible interest in this
institution. The history of this Hall synchronizes with the
movement for women's education in Oxford. It was Lady
Margaret Hall and Somerville College that started in Oxford in
1879. I remember that very well because I was an under-
graduate at the time, and I can recall the somewhat cautious
and tepid reception that was given to the ladies when they first
appeared in Oxford. [Laughter.] Not, of course, from any
lack of gallantry on our part, but from extreme reluctance
to see our ancient conservatism impinged upon and broken
down in the future. In those days, I believe, no single
lecture was open to ladies ; I doubt whether any examination
had been open to them, and they had to start from small
beginnings. The strides that you have made in the inter-
vening thirty years have been enormous. Now, every school
and every examination is open to you. The University
has, by cautious but by definite and increasing steps, extended
to you its patronage, and there are few doors that are still
banged and barred in your faces.

284

Eari. Cijrzox of Kkhi.kstox, P.C

speaks on women's work.

Women's work 285

I believe in a few days' time the latest step of the University
is hkely to be consummated in the statute that is coming
before the University to constitute the Delegacy which is
the final proof of the University's desire to extend its sanction
and its authority to your organization and your arrangements.
I wish a successful passage to that statute. [Cheers.] Then
it is just possible that at a later date — I cannot say when —
proposals may be put forward which, it is conceivable, if
they are carried, may crown the ambitions of some, at any
rate, among your number. I hope that you will observe
that, Uke Agag, I have been walking very delicately ; otherwise
I am afraid I may meet with Agag's fate. During those
thirty years of which I have been speaking you have had one
inestimable advantage in this place, and that is the presence,
the presidency, the constant control of a noble female character
and powerful female mind. [Cheers.] I suppose that Miss
Wordsworth has had as much influence on female education
as any woman of her time, not merely creating and sustaining
the reputation of this institution, but setting an ideal which
has been of advantage to the University as a whole. [Cheers.]
And now her place is taken by the bearer of another honoured
name [Miss H. Jex-Blake], who has started her work under
the most favourable auspices, and must feel a great satisfaction
that in the first year of her reign there should be opened these
beautiful buildings. [Cheers.] The result of these thirty
years of your work in Oxford has been that neither party has
the least cause to repent of the association. I know of no
particular in which Oxford has lost, but I know of many direc-
tions in which it has gained, by the presence of women, and
as for the ladies themselves, they have accepted the dis-
cipline, absorbed the inner spirit, and shown, I think, the
fullest intention to profit by the educational opportunities
of the place. Therefore the union between the two has been
blessed, and I hope it is a blessing that may continue. [Cheers.]
This women's educational movement in Oxford is only
a branch of a much larger movement that has been going
on throughout the world during the last fifty years of what
is commonly called — I do not myself like the phrase — the
emancipation of women. It is undoubtedly the case that the
movement has been far more rapid among the different branches
of the English-speaking races in this country, in America,
and in our Colonies, than among the branches of the Latin
race. I sometimes wonder what is the cause of that. I

286 £ARL CURZON OF KEDLESTOM

think that it is due to four reasons — in the first place, to the
traditional and accepted impulse towards freedom of the
Anglo-Saxon people ; and, secondly, to the peculiar economic
conditions of English society, particularly in relation to factory
labour, which have enabled women engaged in industrial
life in this country to claim and to receive their independence
much earlier than in foreign lands. The third reason is that
your cause has had the inestimable advantage of being cham-
pioned in this country by an able succession of writers, both
men and women. I suppose that if in any foreign country
there had been a galaxy of writers of the intellectual eminence
of John Stuart Mill, the Brontes, Elizabeth Barrett Browning,
Tennyson, George Eliot, George Meredith, all illustrating or
expatiating on different branches of the subject, their progress
would have been much more rapid than it has been. Finally
your cause here has had the advantage of being represented
by women of first-rate abiUty themselves. [Cheers.]

What is going to be the future ? That is a more complex
and difiicult question, which I cannot hope to answer. We
have in this country a surplus of a million women over men.
The figures show, if we take the total female population
of the country, that more than 80 per cent, are engaged in
earning a livelihood, for the most part in industrial occupations,
and of course the number of those who are doing so is steadily
increasing from year to year. That means, in the first place,
that women are steadily extruding men from the spheres of
activity which they have hitherto monopoUzed or occupied.
But that does not end the matter. The chances are that
women will presently be extruding each other, and that
opens up a serious speculation. The danger is that, if there
are too many women clamouring for the large number of posts
available to them, a certain number of them will drift into
unsuitable employment, or, perhaps — what is worse — will
relapse into respectable but unoccupied indigence. If that
is the chance of the future, is it not a fact that it is the duty
of every friend and sympathizer vdth this women's move-
ment, as far as possible, now, while there is still time, to
sketch out a plan of action for the future and to select those
spheres of occupation and activity which are likely to be
suitable to women and in which they will not find themselves
in unseemly, unprofitable, or uneconomic competition either
with men or with each other ? Your latest annual report tells
me the sort of occupations that ladies passing from that

Women's work 287

place turned to when they left the University. I find time
after time the words ** assistant mistress," " head-mistress,"
"senior mistress," every variety of mistress apparently,
and now and then popped in, as a sort of agreeable con-
trast, ** private secretary." Now I ask you a question in
complete ignorance, and, therefore, you must receive it with
compassion : Are you not just possibly confining yourselves
to rather a narrow and stereotyped channel ?

It seems to me that there is really an immense field for
the activities of educated and cultivated women in this
country in the near future in directions which do not at
present, at any rate to any considerable extent, appear to
have been tapped by them. I suggest that they might take
up the profession of journalism ; or that of librarians or
organists ; the whole field of Hterature is open to them ;
the artistic decoration of houses is another opening, as also
is that of the professional designing and laying out of gardens.
Besides these there is an enormous opening in the Colonies, as
heads of institutions, as managers of households, as secretaries,
and so on. Then in India, although it is slowly awakening
from the torpor of centuries, there is a movement towards
the emancipation of the native women, even inside the walls
of the zenana. As these ladies free themselves from the
shackles of their old traditions and customs they will want
English teachers and English ladies to preside over their house-
holds and teach their children. I have known several ladies
who have rendered most valuable help in that direction, and
I commend India to you as worthy of your attention. I feel
about Oxford that I should Hke its sound to go out into all
lands and its voice to the uttermost ends of the world, and I
do not see why women as well as men should not bear the
message. I hope the ladies will never forget, while they
pursue their vocations, or in their attainment to academic
success, in their possible triumph in respect of degrees, in
their search for vocations which they are going to fulfil in
after life — they will never forget the sublime truth that
the highest ideal and conception of womanhood is after all
to be found in the hume. [Cheers.]

GEORGE WASHINGTON

INAUGURAL ADDRESS

[Speech delivered by George Washington, in New York, on
April 30, 1789.]

Fellow-countrymen : — Among the vicissitudes incident to
life, no event could have filled me with greater anxieties than
that of which the modification was transmitted by your order,
and received on the fourth day of the present month. On
the one hand, I was summoned by my country, whose voice
I can never hear but with veneration and love, from a re-
treat which I had chosen with the fondest predilection, and,
in my flattering hopes, with an immutable decision as the
asylum of my declining years ; a retreat which was rendered
every day more necessary as well as more dear to me, by the
addition of habit to inclination, and of frequent interruptions
in my health to the gradual waste committed on it by time ;
on the other hand, the magnitude and difficulty of the trust to
which the voice of my country called me, being sufficient to
awaken, in the wisest and most experienced of her citizens, a
distrustful scrutiny into his qualifications, and not but over-
whelm with despondence one who, inheriting inferior endow-
ments from nature, and unpractised in the duties of civil
administration, ought to be pecuHarly conscious of his own
deficiencies.

In this conflict of emotions, all I dare aver is that it has
been my faithful study to collect my duty from a just appre-
ciation of every circumstance by which it might be affected.
All I dare hope is, that if, in executing this task, I have been
too much swayed by a grateful remembrance of former

288

INAUGURAL ADDRESS 289

instances, or by an affectionate sensibility to this transcendent
proof of the confidence of my fellow-citizens, and have thence
too little consulted my incapacity as well as distinction for
the weighty and untried cares before me, my error will be
palliated by the motives which misled me, and its conse-
quences be judged by my country, with some share of the
partiality in which they originated.

Such being the impression under which I have, in obedience
to the public summons, repaired to the present station, it would
be peculiarly improper to omit, in this first official act, my
fervent suppHcations to that Almighty Being who rules over
the universe, who presides in the councils of nations, and
whose providential aid can supply every human defect, that
His benediction may consecrate to the liberties and happiness
of the people of the United States a government instituted by
themselves for these essential purposes, and may enable every
instrument employed in its administration to execute, with
success, the functions allotted to his charge. In tendering
this homage to the great Author of every public and private
good, I assure myself that it expresses your sentiments not less
than my own ; nor those of my fellow-citizens at large less
than either. No people can be bound to acknowledge and
adore the invisible Hand which conducts the affairs of men
more than the people of the United States. Every step by
which they have advanced to the character of an independent
nation seems to have been distinguished by some token of
providential agency. And, in the important revolution just
accomplished, in the system of their united government, the
tranquil deliberations and voluntary consent of so many
distinct communities, from which the event has resulted, can-
not be compared with the means by which most governments
have been established without some return of pious gratitude,
along with the humble anticipation of the future blessings
which the past seems to presage. These reflections, arising
out of the present crisis, have forced themselves too strongly
on my mind to be suppressed. You will join with me, I trust,
in thinking that there are none under the influence of which
the proceedings of a new and free government can more
auspiciously commence.

By the article establishing the executive department, it
is made the duty of the President " to recommend to your
consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and
expedient." The circumstances under which I now meet

II— 19

290 GEORGE WASHINGTON

you will acquit me from entering into that subject further
than to refer you to the great constitutional charter under
which we are assembled ; and which, in defining your powers,
designates the objects to which your attention is to be given.
It will be more consistent with those circumstances and far
more congenial with the feelings which actuate me, to substi-
tute, in place of a recommendation of particular measures,
the tribute that is due to the talents, the rectitude, and the
patriotism which adorn the characters selected to devise and
adopt them. In these honourable qualifications, I behold the
surest pledges, that as, on one side, no local prejudices or
attachments, no separate views nor party animosities, will
misdirect the comprehensive and equal eye which ought to
watch over this great assemblage of communities and interests
— so, on another, that the foundations of our national policy
will be laid in the pure and immutable principles of private
morality ; and the pre-eminence of a free government be
exempHfied by all the attributes which can win the affections
of its citizens and command the respect of the world.

I dwell on this prospect with every satisfaction which an
ardent love for my country can inspire ; since there is no
truth more thoroughly estabhshed than that there exists, in
the economy and course of nature, an indissoluble union
between virtue and happiness — between duty and advantage
— between the genuine maxims of an honest and magnani-
mous poUcy and the solid rewards of public prosperity and
felicity — since we ought to be no less persuaded that the
propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation
that disregards the eternal rules of order and right which
Heaven itself has ordained — and since the preservation of
the sacred fire of Uberty, and the destiny of the republican
model of government, are justly considered as deeply, perhaps
as finally, staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands
of the American people.

Besides the ordinary objects submitted to your care, it
will remain with your judgment to decide how far an exercise
of the occasional power delegated by the fifth article of the
Constitution is rendered expedient, at the present juncture,
by the nature of objections which have been urged against the
system, or by the degree of inquietude which has given birth
to them. Instead of undertaking particular recommendations
on this subject, in which I could be guided by no lights derived
from official opportunities, I shall again give way to my entire

INAUGURAL ADDRESS 29I

confidence in your discernment and pursuit of the public
good. For I assure myself that, while you carefully avoided
every alteration which might endanger the benefits of a united
and effective government, or which ought to await the future
lessons of experience, a reverence for the characteristic rights
of freemen and a regard for the public harmony will suffi-
ciently influence your deliberations on the question how far
the former can be more impregnably fortified, or the latter
be safely and more advantageously promoted.

To the preceding observations I have one to add, which
will be most properly addressed to the House of Representatives.
It concerns myself, and will therefore be as brief as possible.

When I was first honoured with a call into the service of
my country, then on the eve of an arduous struggle for its
liberties, the light in which I contemplated my duty required
that I should renounce every pecuniary compensation. From
this resolution I have in no instance departed. And being
still under the impression which produced it, I must decUne,
as inapplicable to myself, any share in the personal emolu-
ments which may be indispensably included in a permanent
provision for the executive department ; and must accordingly
pray that the pecuniary estimates for the station in which I
am placed may, during my continuation in it, be limited to
such actual expenditures as the public good may be thought
to require.

Having thus imparted to you my sentiments, as they
have been awakened by the occasion which brings us together,
I shall take my present leave, but not without resorting once
more to the benign Parent of the human race, in humble
application, that, since He has been pleased to favour the
American people with opportunities for deHberating in perfect
tranquillity, and dispositions for deciding with unparalleled
unanimity, on a form of government for the security of their
union and the advancement of their happiness, so His divine
blessing may be equally conspicuous in the enlarged views,
the temperate consultations, and the wise measures on which
the success of this government must depend.

NAPOLEON BONAPARTE

ADDRESSES TO HIS ARMY

[Napoleon Bonaparte was born at Ajaccio, 1769. He entered
the military school at Brienne on April 23, 1779, leaving that
institution in 1784, for a military academy in Paris. In
1793 he was placed in command of a battalion of artillery, and
for his success at Toulon was made general of brigade. Under
Barras, in command of the garrison of Paris, he swept the city
with grape-shot, overwhelming the Terrorists and bringing
to an end the French Revolution, October 5, 1794. In 1796
he married Josephine de Beauharnais, n6e Tasher, having been
appointed on the same day to the command of the army in
Italy. The coup d'etat, November 9, 1799, placed Napoleon
in power as First Consul. During the consulate he made many
reforms. He stopped the persecution of the priests, opened
the churches, changed the system of internal government,
framed the code, aided education, re-established the ecclesiastical
hierarchy, instituted the Legion of Honour, and arranged the
financial system of the country on a proper basis. War was
renewed over Malta. Obliged to give up the invasion of England,
he attacked the Austrians, and on December 2, 1805, the
Austro- Russian army was defeated at Austerlitz. At Trafalgar
Nelson annihilated Napoleon's still-cherished plan of invading
England. The Peninsular war resulted disastrously, and the
French were driven across the Pyrenees in 18 14. After divorce
from Josephine his marriage with Marie Louise took place, and
the King of Rome was bom, March 20, 181 1. The Russian
invasion and defeat exhausted the army by the loss of half-a-
million men, and prepared the way for Elba and Waterloo.
The battle of Leipsic was the beginning of the end, and the few
following victories did not prevent the allies from marching on
Paris and taking possession of it. The emperor was forced to
abdicate, April 4, 1814, and was banished to Elba. After an
interval of ten months, during which he laid crafty plots, he
escaped from the island of Elba, in 181 5, and appealed again to
France. He succeeded in driving out Louis XVIII., and again
took the field against the allies. Waterloo was lost, June 18,
181 5, and Napoleon was held as a prisoner at St. Helena by the
British until his death. May 5, 1821. His body was removed
to Paris in 1840.]

292

ADDRESSES TO HIS ARMY 293

ADDRESS TO HIS ARMY AT BEGINNING OF ITALIAN

CAMPAIGN

Soldiers : You are naked and ill-fed I Government owes
you much and can give you nothing. The patience and
courage you have shown in the midst of this rocky wilderness
are admirable ; but they gain you no renown ; no glory
results to you from your endurance. It is my design to lead
you into the most fertile plains of the world. Rich provinces
and great cities will be in your power ; there you will find
honour, glory, and wealth. Soldiers of Italy, will you be
wanting in courage or perseverance ?

PROCLAMATION TO HIS ARMY

Soldiers : You have in fifteen days gained six victories,
taken twenty-one stand of colours, fifty-five pieces of cannon,
and several fortresses, and overrun the richest part of Pied-
mont ; you have made 15,000 prisoners and killed or wounded
upward of 10,000 men.

Hitherto you have been fighting for barren rocks, made
memorable by your valour, though useless to your country ;
but your exploits now equal those of the armies of Holland
and the Rhine. You were utterly destitute, and you have
supplied all your wants. You have gained battles without
cannon, passed rivers without bridges, performed forced
marches without shoes, and bivouacked without strong
liquors, and often without bread.

None but republican phalanxes, the soldiers of liberty,
could have endured what you have done ; thanks to you,
soldiers, for your perseverance ! Your grateful country
owes its safety to you ; and if the taking of Toulon was an
earnest of the immortal campaign of 1794, your present
victories foretell one more glorious.

The two armies which lately attacked you in full con-
fidence now flee before you in consternation ; the perverse
men who laughed at your distress and inwardly rejoiced at
the triumph of your enemies are now confounded and trembling.

But, soldiers, you have as yet done nothing, for there
still remains much to do. Neither Turin nor Milan is yours,
the ashes of the conquerors of Tonquin are still trodden under
foot by the assassins of Basse ville. It is said that there are

294 NAPOLEON BONAPARTE

some among you whose courage is shaken, and who would
prefer returning to the summits of the Alps and Apennines.
No, I cannot believe it. The victors of Montenotte, Millesimo,
Dego, and Mondovi are eager to extend the glory of the French
name !

TO SOLDIERS ON ENTERING MILAN

Soldiers : You have rushed like a torrent from the top
of the Apennines ; you have overthrown and scattered all
that opposed your march. Piedmont, delivered from Aus-
trian tyranny, indulges her natural sentiments of peace and
friendship toward France. Milan is yours, and the republican
flag waves throughout Lombardy. The Dukes of Parma
and Modena owe their political existence to your generosity
alone.

The army which so proudly threatened you can find no
barrier to protect it against your courage ; neither the Po,
the Ticino, nor the Adda could stop you for a single day.
These vaunted bulwarks of Italy opposed you in vain ; you
passed them as rapidly as the Apennines.

These great successes have filled the heart of your country
with joy. Your representatives have ordered a festival
to commemorate your victories, which has been held in every
district of the republic. There your fathers, your mothers,
your wives, sisters, and mistresses rejoiced in your good
fortune and proudly boasted of belonging to you.

Yes, soldiers, you have done much — but remains there
nothing more to do ? Shall it be said of us that we knew
how to conquer, but not how to make use of victory ? Shall
posterity reproach us with having found Capua in Lombardy ?

But I see you already hasten to arms. An effeminate
repose is tedious to you ; the days which are lost to glory
are lost to your happiness. Well, then, let us set forth !
We have still forced marches to make, enemies to subdue,
laurels to gather, injuries to revenge. Let those who have
sharpened the daggers of civil war in France, who have basely
murdered our ministers and burnt our ships at Toulon,
tremble !

The hour of vengeance has struck ; but let the people of
all countries be free from apprehension ; we are the friends
of the people everywhere, and those great men whom we

ADDRESSES TO HIS ARMY 295

have taken for our models. To restore the Capitol, to replace
the statues of the heroes who rendered it illustrious, to rouse
the Roman people, stupefied by several ages of slavery —
such will be the fruit of our victories ; they will form an
era for posterity ; you will have the immortal glory of changing
the face of the finest part of Europe. The French people,
free and respected by the whole world, will give to Europe
a glorious peace, which will indemnify them for the sacrifices
of every kind which for the last six years they have been
making. You will then return to your homes and your
country. Men will say, as they point you out, " He belonged
to the army of Italy.*'

ADDRESS TO TROOPS ON CONCLUSION OF FIRST ITALIAN

CAMPAIGN

Soldiers : The campaign just ended has given you im-
perishable renown. You have been victorious in fourteen
pitched battles and seventy actions. You have taken more
than a hundred thousand prisoners, five hundred field-pieces,
two thousand heavy guns, and four pontoon trains. You
have maintained the army during the whole campaign. In
addition to this you have sent six millions of dollars to the
public treasury, and have enriched the National Museum
with three hundred masterpieces of the arts of ancient and
modern Italy, which it has required thirty centuries to pro-
duce. You have conquered the finest countries in Europe.

The French flag waves for the first time upon the Adriatic
opposite to Macedon, the native country of Alexander. Still
higher destinies await you. I know that you will not prove
unworthy of them. Of all the foes that conspired to stifle
the republic in its birth, the Austrian emperor alone remains
before you. To obtain peace we must seek it in the heart of
his hereditary state. You will find there a brave people,
whose religion and customs you will respect, and whose
prosperity you will hold sacred. Remember that it is liberty
you carry to the great Hungarian nation.

ADDRESS TO SOLDIERS DURING SIEGE OF MANTUA

Soldiers : I am not satisfied with you ; you have shown
Ijeither bravery, discipline, nor perseverance ; no positioi^

296 NAPOLEON BONAPARTE

could rally you ; you abandoned yourselves to a panic terror ;
you suffered yourselves to be driven from situations where
a handful of brave men might have stopped an army. Soldiers
of the Thirty-ninth and Eighty-fifth, you are not French
soldiers. Quartermaster-General, let it be inscribed on their
colours, " They no longer form part of the army of Italy."

ADDRESS TO TROOPS AFTER WAR OF THIRD COALITION

Soldiers of the Grand Army: In a fortnight we have
finished the entire campaign. What we proposed to do has
been done. We have driven the Austrian troops from Bavaria
and restored our ally to the sovereignty of his dominions.

That army which with equal presumption and impru-
dence marched upon our frontiers is annihilated.

But what does this signify to England ? She has gained
her object. We are no longer at Boulogne, and her subsidy
will be neither more nor less.

Of a hundred thousand men who composed that army
sixty thousand are prisoners. They will replace our con-
scripts in the labours of agriculture.

Two hundred pieces of cannon, the whole park of artil-
lery, ninety flags, and all their generals are in our power.
Fifteen thousand men only have escaped.

Soldiers : I announced to you the result of a great battle ;
but, thanks to the ill-advised schemes of the enemy, I was
enabled to secure the wished-for result without incurring
any danger, and, what is unexampled in the history of nations,
that result has been gained at the sacrifice of scarcely fifteen
hundred men killed and wounded.

Soldiers : This success is due to your unlimited con-
fidence in your emperor, to your patience in enduring fatigues
and privations of every kind, and to your singular courage
and intrepidity.

But we will not stop here. You are impatient to com-
mence another campaign.

The Russian army, which English gold has brought from
the extremities of the universe, shall experience the same
fate as that which we have just defeated.

In the conflict in which we are about to engage, the honour
of the French infantry is especially concerned. We shall
pow see another decisiop of the question which has already

ADDRESSES TO HIS ARMY 297

been determined in Switzerland and Holland, namely, whether
the French infantry is the first or the second in Europe.

Among the Russians there are no generals in contending
against whom I can acquire any glory. All I wish is to obtain
the victory with the least possible bloodshed. My soldiers
are my children.

ADDRESS TO TROOPS ON BEGINNING THE RUSSIAN

CAMPAIGN

Soldiers : The second war of Poland has begun. The
first war terminated at Friedland and Tilsit. At Tilsit Russia
swore eternal alliance with France and war with England.
She has openly violated her oath, and refuses to offer any
explanation of her strange conduct till the French eagle
shall have passed the Rhine, and consequently shall have
left her allies at her discretion. Russia is impelled onward
by fatality. Her destiny is about to be accomplished. Does
she believe that we have degenerated — that we are no longer
the soldiers of Austerlitz ? She has placed us between dis-
honour and war. The choice cannot for an instant be doubtful.

Let us march forward, then, and, crossing the Niemen,
carry the war into her territories. The second war of Poland
will be to the French army as glorious as the first. But our
next peace must carry with it its own guarantee and put
an end to that arrogant influence which for the last fifty
years Russia has exercised over the affairs of Europe.

FAREWELL TO THE OLD GUARD

Soldiers of my Old Guard : I bid you farewell. For
twenty years I have constantly accompanied you on the
road to honour and glory. In these latter times, as in the
days of our prosperity, you have invariably been models of
courage and fidelity. With men such as you, our cause
could not be lost ; but the war would have been interminable ;
it would have been civil war, and that would have entailed
deeper misfortunes on France.

I have sacrificed all my interests to those of the country.

I go, but you, my friends, will continue to serve France.
Her happiness was my only thought. It will still be the object
of my wishes. Do not regret my fate : if I have consented

298 NAPOLEON BONAPARTE

to survive, it is to serve your glory. I intend to write the
history of the great achievements we have performed together.
Adieu, my friends. Would I could press you all to my heart.

[Napoleon then ordered the eagles to be brought, and,
having embraced them, he added :]

I embrace you all in the person of your general. Adieu,
soldiers ! Be always gallant and good.

LIEUT.-GEN. SIR R. S. BADEN-
POWELL

THE BOY SCOUT MOVEMENT

[Speech delivered at a luncheon of the Canadian Club, Van-
couver, on Monday, August 15, 1910.]

Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen : — It is difficult for me to
rise and thank you as I should like to do for the very warm
and generous reception you have given to me. I am afraid
I come here at the tail of a very long run of illustrious speakers
and you will not want to hear me talk, especially as I can
only attempt to talk upon a subject which interests me, my
own fad which perhaps does not interest anybody else. Still
you have that excellent law that a man may not speak for
more than half an hour, and therefore you will get an end of
me before very long. In the meantime I should hke, if you
will allow me, to explain in a very few words what the boy
scouts are, what is our aim, how we carry it out, what results
we have obtained, and how we think it may be of use to you
in your community here.

Now the boy scouts, those urchins you see going around
with poles, shirts, and cowboy hats, look like boys playing
a game. So they are from their point of view at first, but
there is a great deal under Ijdng that game. We don't try to
make soldiers of them. People seem to think it a cadet
corps, which is altogether apart from our main point. Our
main object is to make good citizens. That, you will admit,
is a larger object than making soldiers, because it makes them
patriots in the first place, and soldiering and sailoring vdW
come in after that. We try to do that by a method which

»99

300 LIEUT.-GEN. SIR R. S. BADEN-POWELL

appeals to the boys themselves rather than by drilling it into
them. In the old country, there is a great need of some sort
of manly education for the boys, especially those who come
from the slums of the big cities. As you know, we have a
vast army of unemployed now daily growing up in the country,
which threatens to be something more than a nuisance, to
be a danger and a canker in the middle of our nation. But
you have none of that in this country ; therefore you have
no great need such as we feel for education for the boys in
character and manliness outside their school walls. You
cannot teach these things between the school walls, you can-
not mould the man as you would Hke there. Outside there
are already a large number of organizations at it.

I don't claim that the boy scout movement has any
originality in that way, but we make it attractive to the boys.
We make it so that boys will like to take it up. We do not
force it upon them. The need is not so great in this country,
and perhaps you think it futile to mention it at all. But I
think there is some need even here, if only to put discipUne
into them. The boys are manly enough, are independent
enough, and have fine examples of manliness before them
in their forefathers ; but a country building itself into a great
nation such as you are doing must take examples from others,
seeing where they failed and where they succeeded. Your
next-door neighbours are a new nation who have arrived.
They have their great and their weak points, and I take it
that among their weak points — they acknowledge it them-
selves— is the need for instilling discipline into the rising
generation. They are taking up means outside the school
walls for training their boys, for, as it is well said, it is not the
boys who are well up in the three " Rs " who are the big suc-
cesses in Ufe. The self-made men in Ufe are the men with
character rather than education.

One great essential in character is discipline, the discipline
which brings about self-sacrifice and the will to obey orders,
to carry out the spirit of a great movement rather than seek-
ing individual ends.

It seems a large object to connect with these ragamuffins,
but they can be connected, and I think it is surprising to see
how the movement influences them from the higher and moral
side, as well as teaches them how to become handy men. In
the word " scout " we do not mean merely the military scout.
We include those men on the frontiers, and you know them

THE BOY SCOUT MOVEMENT 3OI

well in this country, who are treking in the wild, carrying on
their job because it is their duty ; the men who have to rely
on their own endurance, their own courage, and their own
knowledge to come out of their difficulty carefully. They
are men strong to help each other in times of emergency and
stress. They have a strong feeling of comradeship and they
have a strong feeling of patriotism. But when they come from
the wilds, they are as tender as children and they are chivalrous
to a degree. They are the best type of men in our Empire.
You cannot get them in the cities ; there they are luxuriated
out of it. We hold up to the boys these men as scouts of
the nation. We tell the boys a scout does this and that,
and he knows we mean a frontiersman, the manliest type
of his race. We teach these boys to be backwoodsmen
rather than soldiers. We teach them how to build a fire, to
pitch a tent, to swim a stream, to hack down a tree, and all
those details that delight a boy, and he feels that he belongs
to that great fraternity of scouts.

We discountenance military drill because that makes the
boy part of a machine, whereas we want to develop the in-
dividuality. They have to obey orders quickly and smartly,
but each boy has his own job to do and is using his individual
wits and hands. We teach him ambulance work and sailing,
anything but military drill, which destroys the individual.
Soldiering is objected to conscientiously by a great many
parents because they think it introduces the boy unnecessarily
early in life to the idea of fighting his fellowman and blood-
thirstiness. Therefore we have to consider that point of view
and we meet it half-way by not developing it. That comes
later on : when he has learned the meaning of it, and when he
has come to years of discretion, he can still take up soldiering.
The scout movement does teach him all the essentials : self-
reliance, looking after himself on a campaign, how to scout,
to hide himself, to get information, to move about at night,
to read maps, make them, and to report. That gives all the
essentials of soldiering without the dry bones of " right and
left " and tactics.

It has taken a long time organizing the movement because
there was such a rush of boys, and there was the difficulty
of getting them under control. The movement has grown of
itself, r merely suggested it to the boys of the cadet corps,
who first applied it to their own organization, and then a
great number of them took it up outside. The cadet corps

302 LIEUT.-GEN. SIR R. S. BADEN-POWELL

have feared that we stand in the way of their recruitment.
It has not been found so in practice, but, even if it were, it
has to be considered whether they are doing all that was ex-
pected of them. They are doing great work undoubtedly in
teaching discipline and patriotism, but at home the actual
results are that not lo per cent, of the boys who are trained
as cadets go into the army. They have lost the glamour of
the uniform, are bored with the drill, and do not want to take
it up again. There is no harm in inviting the boys to be boy
scouts, seeing that it can be run in connection with the
cadet corps, by making boy scouts from ten to thirteen and
then making them cadets. At the same time there is a large
percentage from the scouts who do pass out to take up soldier-
ing— about 80 per cent, up to the present time. The scouts
might also be of great use to your future navy, because we
teach them to be seamen.

We sound the call of the sea and teach seamanship, all by
games and competitions. That is, we teach them to be pirates
or smugglers and revenue men in turn, and we have whale-
hunting. Whale-hunting is a great excitement indeed, al-
though the whale is only a log. But in the end it does train
them in becoming good boatmen and good seamen, and your
country affords unlimited opportunity for carrying out that
form of training. You can establish vessels in your different
harbours, lakes, and rivers which would serve as admirable
clubhouses for the boys, moored in position. Some of those
old sealing schooners would make excellent club ships, and
the boys could live there week-ends and have the call of the
sea sounded in their ears in a most easy manner by a gentle-
man fond of the sea.

I have every hope the scout movement will live along-
side the other associations and will help them in every way
possible, joining in a great combine to deal with this difficulty
of manly education of our rising generation in citizenship.
We propose to make it a little more open than the other
organizations in the matter of religion, because we don't
undertake to teach the boys any special form of religion. We
leave that to their own parents and pastors. What we insist
upon is that the boy should profess some form of religion or
another and observe it, and carry into practice one point com-
mon to all rehgions, and that is to do a good turn to his fellow
man every day of his life.

It is one of the points which the boys have taken up with

THE BOY SCOUT MOVEMENT 303

the best spirit. They do carry out that idea of doing a good
turn, whether to a person or an animal, and it does not matter
how small the good turn is — it helps to build character. They
have been sacrificing their amusements to do it and they
have been risking their lives.

We have had an immense amount of life-saving during
these past two years of our existence, to a proportion which
I had never dreamt of. We have had to award 130 medals
to boys who had actually risked their lives in saving others,
and, apart from the medals, we have distributed hundreds of
certificates in cases of minor good which they have done
without risk to themselves. The only difficulty is to find out
when they have done these good turns, because we don't
allow them to go bragging about it. They have to be re-
ported by somebody else. We don't want the boys to make
heroes of themselves, we leave that to others.

They learn ambulance work, saving from drowning, and
they learn firemen's work, which is the finest kind of training ;
those points that come in useful directly an accident has
occurred. I could go on all the afternoon with the different
things we try to instil into them, but another important feature
is that we try to teach them handicrafts useful to them when
they grow up and become men. In England we suffer most
fearfully from that disease of blind-alley occupations, such
as being newsboys and vanboys, occupations which boys take
up because they bring in a wage for the time being and there-
fore satisfy the poorer kind of parents who do not look ahead.
They follow these occupations to a certain age and then are
thrown upon the world without having learned a trade or
without learning to be energetic, and they sink into the ranks
of the unemployed and unemployable. That is to a large
extent a condition which has to be faced, and the army is
increasing.

It is to try and prevent that that we are teaching these
boys hobbies in connection with handicrafts that they may
grow to take up. Perhaps it is making them jacks of all
trades and masters of none, but it gives them ideas, and among
the hobbies they may find one which suits them better than
another. They can go on and develop that until it becomes
their profession for Hfe. It is a very simple thing to get the
boys to take up hobbies. After a hobby has been adopted,
the boy chooses to pass an examination we give him. We
don't actually teach the hobby, but we offer a badge for pro-

304 LIEUT.-GEN. SIR R. S. BADEN-POWELL

ficiency in one. If the boy wants to learn something of
carpentry, he goes to a carpenter and gets him to teach him
what is required to pass our test. Then he presents himself
for examination. The examination is conducted by two
scoutmasters and a carpenter, and if the boy succeed in pass-
ing, he is rewarded with a badge. After he gets six badges,
he is allowed to wear an aiglet, which makes him an awful
swell. We have got thirty-three different trades for which
we give badges, and after a boy has passed the tests in half a
dozen of these he goes out with his half-dozen and his aiglet.
Then after that if he wants to qualify for four more badges,
he goes on and becomes a King Scout and wears a crown
above his other decorations. If he goes still further on and
earns twenty-five badges, he gets the order of the Silver Wolf,
a little silver wolf to hang upon his neck.

It sounds very nonsensical, but it appeals to the boys im-
mensely, and they try to get these badges. I wish I could
have brought with me here the troop of sixteen boys who
were selected to come out to Canada on this trip after an ex-
amination in knowledge of Canada for which three hundred
boys entered. I wish you could see them, because among them
four have got the order of the Silver Wolf, having passed in
twenty-five handicrafts, and twelve of them have become King
Scouts. But they will meet many thousands of their brother
boy scouts of Canada in Toronto at the end of this month,
and there they can show their badges, and I hope they will
have a very large following here of boys learning handicrafts.

That shows you they are not playing games in an in-
discriminate way. They are learning not only handicrafts
but they are learning to be chivalrous and thrifty. Every
boy before he can get a badge at all has got to have a bank
balance. It is not large. He has only to have a shilling, but
his bank book has to be produced, and it shows that he has
broken the ice and has taken the first step towards becoming
a thrifty man.

I am not going to detain you much longer, but I should
like to point out how we are doing things locally, and if we
could have your support and your sympathy it would be a
very great help towards making these young fellows good men
in the future. The movement means a good deal to you in
the development of your city, of your province, and of your
country, and I hope you will help us if only by criticism.

A general principle of the organization is to have a council

THE BOV SCOUT MOVEMENt 365

for each province. You know that at the head of the whole
movement our late King was most sympathetic and helpful,
and he has been followed by the present King as the head of
the movement. In this country Lord Grey is an enthusiastic
supporter and the president for Canada. In this province
the Lieutenant-Governor is president, and he is supported by
a council which is now about to be formed and which the
Bishop of Columbia, the Premier of the province, and the
Minister of Education have promised to join. No doubt many
other prominent gentlemen will come forward to the council,
whose function is to advise the associations in the different
districts. We want to raise associations in all the chief centres
of industry, so that we get local administration and local con-
trol of the movement. These local associations are made up
of gentlemen generally interested in the boys, and they elect
officers from among the younger men — I include all those
between eighteen and eighty years. Each gentleman takes
charge of a troop of thirty to forty boys, which is divided into
patrols of eight boys, each with its own leader. That is an
important point in our movement — responsibility is put upon
the shoulders of the boy from the earliest age. The patrol
leader is the commander of his little party of eight, and so you
get down almost to the individual being properly trained.
The patrol leader has charge of the training of his patrol
under the scoutmaster, and with that responsibility upon him
we find the boy rising to the occasion. So that, if any of you
have any young hooligan, just make him a patrol leader, and
it will be the making of him. The hooHgan is just the one I
like to begin with, because he has character and makes the
very best fellow in the end.

We deprecate the boys going around, begging for things,
a practice which is becoming all too common. In England
every cricket or football club formed by boys goes around
with the hat. They learn the habit, and when they want to
go to a technical school or buy tools or buy furniture to get
married they go around saying, " Give us something." Our
boys are taught that when they want to get their hats or their
poles they must work for them. In some places the equip-
ment is first bought for them and they pay it back gradually,
but I prefer to encourage them to buy at the beginning for
themselves, starting with their hat or with their pole. The
greatest help you can give them is to offer them a job, and
then they see that they must work in order to get the money.

11—20

3o6 LIEUT.-GEN. glR ± S. BADEN-t>OWELt

We are also trying lately to improve the boys' status by
forming organizations for their employment in Great Britain.
The Board of Trade have been most helpful in this and are
going to accept our badges of efficiency. In the same way we
hope to make successful men of a number of them. We train
them in points of farming and award badges for their know-
ledge. We have been presented with a farm in the old
covmtry where we propose to teach the elements of farming,
and later on I hope we shall get farms over the seas to which
we can send boys for six months or so to become acquainted
with local conditions.

We are trying to develop such things as messenger agencies
which will enable the boys to actually earn money and keep
the machinery of their troops working without having to draw
upon people for funds, thus making it a self-supporting
organization. I believe that in this city we are organizing a
messenger agency, and I hope you gentlemen in business
houses will support the movement by sending to headquarters
for messengers.

I will not detain you longer. I am most grateful for
your generous hearing and your sympathy, which I see written
all around me. Our only difficulty — I don't know whether
it exists here, but it does at home — is to find the young fellows
who will take up the work of scoutmasters. I should like to
point out it is not very hard work. So many fellows have
come to me and said, ** It is all very well for you to talk
about serving my country, but I have not the time and not the
money." But once they get into it, they find there is a won-
derful fascination in the work, a fascination which they never
expected. Training a dog or any kind of animal is fascinat-
ing, but when it comes to training a young human being, it
is indeed a fascination. I find that when once a young man
has nibbled at the bait, he is quickly hooked. It does not
require much money or much time. It is not work, but a
pleasing and fascinating occupation, and I heartily recom-
mend it to every man who wants to do some good for his
country and his kind. If the movement gets support, I am
sure it will do great good to your rising and promising city
and to the great country which is growing up around you.

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

[An address delivered before the Republican Club of New
York City, February 12, 1909.]

Gentlemen : — You ask that which he found a piece of pro-
perty and turned into a free American citizen to speak to
you to-night on Abraham Lincohi. I am not fitted by an-
cestry or training to be your teacher to-night, for, as I have
stated, I was born a slave.

My first knowledge of Abraham Lincoln came in this
way : I was awakened early one morning before the dawn
of day, as I lay wrapped in a bundle of rags on the dirt floor
of our slave cabin, by the prayers of my mother, just before
leaving for her day's work, as she was kneeling over my body
earnestly praying that Abraham Lincoln might succeed, and
that one day she and her boy might be free. You give me
the opportunity here this evening to celebrate with you and
the nation the answer to that prayer.

Says the Great Book somewhere, " Though a man die,
yet shall he live." If this is true of the ordinary man, how
much more true is it of the hero of the hour and the hero of
the century — Abraham Lincoln ! One hundred years of the
life and influence of Lincoln is the story of the struggles, the
trials, ambitions, and triumphs of the people of our complex
American civilization. Interwoven into the warp and woof
of this human complexity is the moving story of men and
women of nearly every race and colour in their progress from
slavery to freedom, from poverty to wealth, from weakness
to power, from ignorance to intelligence. Knit into the life

307

308 BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

of Abraham Lincoln is the story and success of the nation in
the blending of all tongues, religions, colours, races, into one
composite nation, leaving each group and race free to live
its own separate social life, and yet all a part of the great
whole.

If a man die, shall he live ? Answering this question as
applied to our martyred President, perhaps you expect me
to confine my words of appreciation to the great boon which,
through him, was conferred upon my race. My undying
gratitude and that of ten millions of my race for this, and yet
more ! To have been the instrument used by Providence
through which four millions of slaves, now grown into ten
millions of free citizens, were made free, would bring eternal
fame within itself, but this is not the only claim that Lincoln
has upon our sense of gratitude and appreciation.

By the side of Armstrong and Garrison, Lincoln lives
to-day. In the very highest sense he lives in the present
more potently than fifty years ago ; for that which is seen is
temporal, that which is unseen is eternal. He lives in the
32,000 young men and women of the Negro race learning
trades and useful occupations ; in the 200,000 farms acquired
by those he freed ; in the more than 400,000 homes built ; in
the forty-six banks established and 10,000 stores owned ; in
the $550,000,000 worth of taxable property in hand ; in the
28,000 public schools existing, with 30,000 teachers ; in the
170 industrial schools and colleges ; in the 23,000 ministers
and 26,000 churches. But, above all this, he lives in the
steady and unalterable determination of ten millions of black
citizens to continue to climb year by year the ladder of the
highest usefulness and to perfect themselves in strong, robust
character. For making all this possible Lincoln lives.

But, again, for a higher reason he lives to-night in every
comer of the Republic. To set the physical man free is much.
To set the spiritual man free is more. So often the keeper is
on the inside of the prison bars and the prisoner on the outside.

As an individual, grateful as I am to Lincoln for freedom
of body, my gratitude is still greater for freedom of soul —
the liberty which permits one to live up in that atmosphere
where he refuses to permit sectional or racial hatred to drag
down, to warp and narrow his soul.

The signing of the Emancipation Proclamation was a
great event, and yet it was but the symbol of another, still
greater and more momentous. We who celebrate this anni-

ABRAHAM LINCOLN 309

versary should not forget that the same pen that gave free-
dom to four millions of African slaves, at the same time
struck the shackles from the souls of twenty-seven millions
of Americans of another colour.

In any country, regardless of what its laws say, wherever
people act upon the idea that the disadvantage of one man
is the good of another, there slavery exists. Wherever in any
country the whole people feel that the happiness of all is
dependent upon the happiness of the weakest, there freedom
exists.

In abolishing slavery, Lincoln proclaimed the principle
that, even in the case of the humblest and weakest of man-
kind, the welfare of each is still the good of all. In re-
establishing in this country the principle that, at bottom, the
interests of humanity and of the individual are one, he freed
men's souls from spiritual bondage ; he freed them to mutual
helpfulness. Henceforth no man of any race, either in the
North or in the South, need feel constrained to fear or hate
his brother.

By the same token that Lincoln made America free, he
pushed back the boundaries of freedom everywhere, gave the
spirit of liberty a wider influence throughout the world, and
re-established the dignity of man as man.

By the same act that freed my race, he said to the civilized
and imcivilized world that man everywhere must be free, and
that man everywhere must be enlightened, and the Lincoln
spirit of freedom and fair play will never cease to spread and
grow in power till throughout the world all men shall know
the truth, and the truth shall make them free.

Lincoln in his day was wise enough to recognize that
which is true in the present and for all time : that in a state
of slavery and ignorance man renders the lowest and most
costly form of service to his fellows. In a state of freedom
and enlightenment he renders the highest and most helpful
form of service.

The world is fast learning that of all forms of slavery there
is none that is so hurtful and degrading as that form of slavery
which tempts one human being to hate another by reason
of his race or colour. One man cannot hold another man
down in the ditch without remaining down in the ditch with
him. One who goes through life with his eyes closed against
all that is good in another race is weakened and circum-
scribed, as one who fights in a battle with one hand tied

3lO BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

behind him. Lincoln was in the truest sense great because
he unfettered himself. He climbed up out of the valley
where his vision was narrowed and weakened by the fog and
miasma, on to the mountain-top where in a pure and un-
clouded atmosphere he could see the truth which enabled
him to rate all men at their true worth. Growing out of this
anniversary season and atmosphere, may there crystallize a
resolve throughout the nation that on such a mountain the
American people will strive to live.

We owe, then, to Lincoln, physical freedom, moral free-
dom, and yet this is not all. There is a debt of gratitude
which we, as individuals, no matter of what race or nation,
must recognize as due to Abraham Lincoln — not for what he
did as Chief Executive of the Nation, but for what he did as
a man. In his rise from the most abject poverty and ignor-
ance to a position of high usefulness and power, he taught
the world one of the greatest of all lessons. In fighting his
own battle up from obscurity and squalor, he fought the
battle of every other individual and race that is down, and so
helped to pull up every other human who was down. People
so often forget that by every inch that the lowest man crawls
up he makes it easier for every other man to get up. To-day,
throughout the world, because Lincoln lived, struggled, and
triumphed, every boy who is ignorant, is in poverty, is de-
spised or discouraged, holds his head a little higher. His heart
beats a little faster, his ambition to do something and be
something is a little stronger, because Lincoln blazed the way.

To my race, the life of Abraham Lincoln has its special
lesson at this point in our career. In so far as his life empha-
sizes patience, long-suffering, sincerity, naturalness, dogged
determination, and courage — courage to avoid the superficial,
courage to persistently seek the substance instead of the
shadow — it points the road for my people to travel.

As a race we are learning, I believe, in an increasing degree,
that the best way for us to honour the memory of our
Emancipator is by seeking to imitate him. Like Lincoln,
the Negro race should seek to be simple, without bigotry and
without ostentation. There is a great power in simplicity.
We, as a race, should, like Lincoln, have moral courage to be
what we are, and not pretend to be what we are not. We
should keep in mind that no one can degrade us except our-
selves ; that if we are worthy, no influence can defeat us.
Like other races, the Negro will often meet obstacles, often

ABRAHAM LINCOLN 31I

be sorely tried and tempted ; but we must keep in mind that
freedom, in the broadest and highest sense, has never been
a bequest ; it has been a conquest.

In the final test, the success of our race will be in propor-
tion to the service that it renders to the world. In the long
run, the badge of service is the badge of sovereignty.

With all his other elements of strength, Abraham Lincoln
possessed in the highest degree patience and, as I have said,
courage. The highest form of courage is not always that
exhibited on the battle-field in the midst of the blare of
trumpets and the waving of banners. The highest courage
is of the Lincoln kind. It is the same kind of courage, made
possible by the new life and the new possibilities furnished
by Lincoln's Proclamation, displayed by thousands of men
and women of my race every year who are going out from
Tuskegee and other Negro institutions in the South to lift up
their fellows. When they go, often into lonely and secluded
districts, with little thought of salary, with little thought of
personal welfare, no drums beat, no banners fly, no friends
stand by to cheer them on ; but these brave young souls
who are erecting school-houses, creating school systems, pro-
longing school terms, teaching the people to buy homes,
build houses, and live decent lives, are fighting the battles of
this country just as truly and bravely as any persons who
go forth to fight battles against a foreign foe.

In paying my tribute of respect to the Great Emancipator
of my race, I desire to say a word here and now in behalf of
an element of brave and true white men of the South who,
though they saw in Lincohi's policy the ruin of all they be-
lieved in and hoped for, have loyaUy accepted the results of
the Civil War, and are to-day working with a courage few
people in the North can understand to uplift the Negro in the
South and complete the emancipation that Lincoln began.
I am tempted to say that it certainly required as high a degree
of courage for men of the type of Robert E. Lee and John B.
Gordon to accept the results of the war in the manner and
spirit which they did, as that which Grant and Sherman dis-
played in fighting the physical battles that saved the Union.

Lincoln, also, was a Southern man by birth, but he was
one of those white men, of whom there is a large and growing
class, who resented the idea that in order to assert and main-
tain the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon race it was necessary
that another group of humanity should be kept in ignorance.

312 BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Lincoln was not afraid or ashamed to come into contact
with the lowly of all races. His reputation and social posi-
tion were not of such a transitory and transparent kind that
he was afraid that he would lose them by being just and
kind, even to a man of dark skin. I always pity from the
bottom of my heart any man who feels that somebody else
must be kept down or in ignorance in order that he may
appear great by comparison. It requires no courage for a
strong man to kick a weak one down.

Lincoln lives to-day because he had the courage which
made him refuse to hate the man at the South or the man at
the North when they did not agree with him. He had the
courage as well as the patience and foresight to suffer in
silence, to be misunderstood, to be abused, to refuse to revile
when reviled. For he knew that, if he was right, the
ridicule of to-day would be the applause of to-morrow. He
knew, too, that at some time in the distant future our nation
would repent of the folly of cursing our public servants while
they live, and blessing them only when they die. In this con-
nection I cannot refrain from suggesting the question to the
millions of voices raised to-day in his praise : *' Why did you
not say it yesterday ? " Yesterday, when one word of ap-
proval and gratitude would have meant so much to him iti
strengthening his hand and heart.

As we recall to-night his deeds and words, we can do so
with grateful hearts and strong faith in the future for the
spread of righteousness. The civilization of the world is
going forward, not backward. Here and there for a little
season the progress of mankind may seem to halt or tarry
by the wayside, or even appear to slide backward, but the
trend is ever onward and upward, and will be until some
one can invent and enforce a law to stop the progress of
civilization. In goodness and liberality, the world moves
forward. It goes forward beneficently, but it moves forward
relentlessly. In the last analysis, the forces of nature are
behind the moral progress of the world, and these forces will
crush into powder any group of humanity that resists this
progress.

As we gather here, brothers all, in common joy and thanks-
giving for the life of Lincoln, may I not ask that you, the
worthy representatives of seventy millions of white Americans,
join heart and hand with the ten millions of black Americans
— these ten millions who speak your tongue, profess your

ABRAHAM LINCOLN 313

religion — who have never lifted their voices or hands except
in defence of their country's honour and their country's flag
— and swear eternal fealty to the memory and the traditions of
the sainted Lincoln ? I repeat, may we not join with your
race, and let all of us here highly resolve that justice, good-
will, and peace shall be the motto of our lives ? If this be
true, in the highest sense Lincoln shall not have lived and
died in vain.

And, finally, gathering inspiration and encouragement from
this hour and Lincoln's life, I pledge to you and to the nation
that my race, in so far as I can speak for it, which in the
past, whether in ignorance or intelligence, whether in slavery
or in freedom, has always been true to the Stars and Stripes
and to the highest and best interests of this country, will
strive so to deport itself that it shall reflect nothing but the
highest credit upon the whole people in the North and in the
South.

SIR GILBERT PARKER

SPEECH DAY"

[At the annual prize-giving of the University College School,
held in the Great Hall of the School on Friday, July 22, 1910.
The prizes were distributed by Sir Gilbert Parker. M.P.]

Mr. Principal : — I have been coming to Hampstead at inter-
vals for the last twenty years, somewhat in the spirit of those
who frequented the Vale of Health and paced Well Walk a
hundred years ago. And I came to drink of the Well, too, until,
as years passed, I was warned that the water was not pure.
But I still came, and only last year, for weeks at a time, I
rested here, stealing away from Westminster with all its turgid,
wearying controversies — lightened, however, always by flashes
of human nature — to be in touch with a spirit more congenial
to me than is to be found in any other part of London, save,
perhaps, some square in the East End, such as that where the
Royal Mint stands, or one or two of the purlieus of Kensington —
a real old-world spirit with a modern vitality.

There is no place in London where the unaffected sense of
culture, education, and a gracious piety steals into one's senses
as at Hampstead, where the glimpses of a scholar's life catch
the observant eye. Pleasure-seeking Harry and Harriet,
shouting on its borders and devouring the health, only emphasize
the refined air of educated seclusion which dignifies Hampstead.

And it is a joy to see growing up beyond the borders of this
happy suburb garden cities, conceived in a spirit of art and
beauty and homeliness which will help to preserve its character.
Try to get lodgings in Hampstead, and you will see what I
mean. I have tried — over twenty years — and they are scarce

3H

"speech day'* 315

as half -holidays in academic halls. It is a suburb of homes.
Without being arrogant, Hampstead looks down on London —
in one sense only. It stands above it in one sense truly —
in the territorial sense. From its heights London looks like
some Titan labouring to rise from the dead weight of ages.
Standing on yonder long ridges, one might easily feel one-
self transformed into Mirza on his high hill of Bagdad, watching
humanity fulfil its destiny.

To such a gracious and inspiring scene has come University
College School, whose classes have fitted for the battle of life
men of rare and high distinction, like Joseph Chamberlain,
John Morley, William Court Gully, Frederick Leighton, Ciark-
son Stansfield ; and whose catholicity, as the Headmaster
has said, is represented by an Anglican Bishop, a Catholic
Bishop, a Jewish Chief Rabbi, and a Japanese Samurai. What
this great school has done in the past, it will still do, and in
a large and even more fruitful sense, or human observation
and instinct and the logic of results are of no account.

The tale of work done is represented by a record of honours
of which any College School might be envious, and I notice in
this year of 1909-10 two former pupils have won great dis-
tinction in the departments of science and law at Cambridge.
I should not like a single word I say to be merely compli-
mentary, and I do not wish to be led into the temptation of
cracking up the institution, because, for the moment, I am its
grateful guest. It is not necessary. History has done what
my tongue would certainly fail to do, whatever your confidence
in me. Your school speaks for itself. But its character and
unique labours must naturally suggest varying impressions to
different minds, according to their own bent, habit of thought,
and training. I am sure of one thing, that this college school
has a vital character and force which no impressionable mind
can escape. Its original and inborn individualism remains to
influence rather than to dominate, and is woven into the fibre
of the corporate life — the whole school, not the one self-centred
and ambitious unit.

And there is no such thing as the separation of these two
forces of educational life without making a man a bit too
clever on the one hand, or a bit too lifeless on the other, run-
ning the danger of being a prig, or what Plato called " a sting-
less drone." Room to kick and the skill to kick — that is
what the individualist in education demands ; but he must
kick with the team, and feel its corporate sympathy and will,

3l6 SIR GILBERT PARKER

or he becomes an outsider. Here, in this place, the corporate
life, the House life, the life altogether, shaU I say ? has, as its
background, home life — touch with the world, the widest give-
and-take of the world, and no alienation from influences which
impregnate knowledge with reality, with daily human existence.
The greatest, most severely logical minds — like those of Mill
or Huxley — drew their inspiration from the well of social
feeling and human emotion. All thought had its origin in
sensation, and all thought must conform to the instincts of
rationalized human emotion, or it is of no effect in the end.
School life should be saturated with home life and in touch with
the world's life, and home life must be stirred and made eager
by the daily progress and aspiration of school life, or it falls
short of the best.

I believe that this school does not aim at that form of
individualism which presses forward the study of one subject
with a view to scholarships and a high standard on one narrow
plane ; but that it tries to lay the foundations of a good general
education, broad, strong, and deep. It leaves specialization
for the period that follows on matriculation. The principle
is sound, and it has done what we expected of it.

The world is now a battlefield of intellects. Men of science,
invention, industry, art, commerce, and finance, develop their
powers and skill to secure the supremacy of their native
lands ; and they must specialize, but they do that best by
a system which lays broad foundations first, and prevents
lopsidedness or staring disproportion. A man may, by Sandow
exercises, develop the muscles of his arms till they seem like
the club of Hercules, while his neglected legs look like spindles.
There is, however, a very necessary specialization. As a boy
gets older, and as a man's years increase, he should learn to do
the things that matter, and leave undone the purposeless things.
The social scheme makes very heavy demands ; therefore, he
should pick and choose the things that matter, the people
who matter — the stone-mason or the marquis, the book that
fructifies, the picture that has its ministry of beauty, the street
that stimulates him, the bit of countryside that feeds him with
interest. Society should be his servant ; he should not be
its slave.

Whatever his occupation, he must hang on to his childhood,
his simplicity, his imagination, his boyish idealism, for most
boys are idealists of some kind. Childhood is always touched
by imagination in some degree. Cecil Rhodes once said to a

a ^_,T,T^>^T* -r^Atrf*

SPEECH DAY 317

friend of mine that all he had ever done he had a glimpse of
when he was twelve. As he looked at his geography then,
the map ran all red from Cape to Cairo. Every man who
ever succeeded in any department of life had imagination and
idealism.

Take them at random from the highest to the lowest in any
department — ^Watt, Stephenson, Humboldt, Darwin, Freeman,
Roscoe, Kelvin, Maxim, Edison, and a thousand others !
Once a famous actress, looking at a photograph of Herschel
the astronomer, by Mrs. Cameron, one of the most astonishing
photographs I have ever seen, said, '* The stars startled him."
There was just that look in the great wondering imaginative
eyes. Here is where ideaUsm and imagination begin — here in
the school-room. Is it only the bare lesson, the thing which
must be done, that interests you ? Then you have not far to
go. That is only duty — only the day's work. Well, both are
the basis of all true life. Duty puts you to your labour ; the
day's work is the measured wave of your toil, fitted to your
natural strength, the exercise of your set task ; but imagina-
tion and vision and the look forward makes it all worth while.

The saddest thing this century has seen is the decline of
enthusiasms. One of the noblest periods in English life was
that which begot Newman, Darwin, Huxley, Tindal, Carlyle,
Froude and Green, Ruskin and Arnold, Tennyson and Brown-
ing and Swinburne, Millais and Leighton and that host of
others. And schoolboys and college men were not ashamed
to have their heroes then, nor afraid to wear their hearts
frankly — not on their sleeves, but in the right place. There
has grown up an attitude of late years, which is either a vanity
that pretends modesty, or a materialism which deadens the
finer feelings and destroys all passion in the intelligence.
Without passion, the mind can do little except accumulate
information, and information is only of value as you can use
it in your daily life — as part of that life. No man ever did
anything that did not do it passionately — not with agitation
and excitement, but with a fire in his soul. There must be
the sting of the explorer, whatever the work of life — for that
is what true life is : a long exploration over much hard coimtry,
a country always new. We must discover it for ourselves,
not be possessed of the apathy and obscure conformity of
Plato's " stingless drone."

The boy who has no enthusiasms, no hobbies, will get cold
feet, morally and intellectually, and that is a very trying thing.

3l8 ^IR GiLBEM PARKER

He is likely to become a cynic — the cheapest kind of manu-
factured humanity that the world is willing to sell. Such a
fellow goes to his bed of thorns with hot-water bottles, a coddled
misanthrope. I am in a busy place called Parliament, and
it takes some watchfulness to keep enthusiasm there. Yet
Parliament is not a place of business alone, it is a place of ideas,
the power-house of those forces which shall move the world
on a little further into the light ; not the charnel-house of all
that makes legislation or anything else worth while — the
progress of the human mind and the greatening of the soul.

We have developed our view or vision of the Creator over
the centuries ; we must not choke by a mere material progress
that which gives vision and understanding. And the begin-
ning of that which keeps things right is, or should be, found in
such a school as this. Be logical, be well informed, be expert
in due course ; but keep your properly-controlled emotions as
the source of all real advance ; for from them is born the ser-
vant— the incredibly skilful servant of the human mind and
universal world, Imagination. It is not dangerous. The human
hand may be thrust into white heat and not be burned ; so in
the whitest heat of the imagination, the sternest logic, the
most profound knowledge, and the most expert skill may be
thrust and suffer no harm. Do not be afraid to keep warm
intellectually. Keep in action mind and body. Reflect, then
move. Be as still as you can be while the mind gets its poise
and its purpose, then be Rooseveltian — in moderation. Get
rid of affectation of intellect, its vanity and its exclusiveness.
Every person's experience is worth your while, and you can
be broad, tolerant, and receptive, and run straight to your
goal, too.

I don't want to go to school again, but if I did, I should
do as I did before — I should keep the rules, pass my examina-
tions, and play up with the team ; but go decently large, too,
and follow my own bent in taste, in reading, in interests of all
kinds.

Pass all the examinations that are set for you, then be
able to pass in examination that they never set — your own,
like your own commandments ; for every man must have his
own commandments, besides those that come from Sinai,
which are strictly limited.

You will go from here to work in these islands, with their
complicated and perplexing questions of social reform and
social progress ; or else to fare forth to new lands within our

*'^PEECli DAY** ^T^

Empire, to take part in pioneer labour, to learn how to build a
nation's life as you construct your own fortunes and create
your own responsibilities, through the opportunities which
will cry out to you to make them yours. For life at home or
abroad, it is hourly more necessary to be practical, to be men
of the world in the best sense ; and being men of the world,
you may still carry with you a soul that widens with every
experience of life, and that turns to the morning. You all
remember Browning's grammarian : —

"Their low life was the level and the night's —
He's for the morning.
Well, who's for the morning ? "

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

THE STAGE"

[Speech delivered at a breakfast given to American actors at
the Savage Club, London, August 1880.]

Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen : — In listening to the kind
words and still more in hearing the name of the gentleman
who was kind enough to propose the toast to which I am
replying, I cannot help recalling the words of one of your
English poets —

" Oh, for the touch of a vanished hand.
And the sound of a voice that is still 1 "

I was honoured with the acquaintance, in some sort, I may
say, with the friendship of the father [Charles Dickens] of
the gentleman who proposed my name, and before sa^dng
anything further you will allow me to remark that my country-
men are always ready to recognize the hereditary claims when
based upon hereditary merit. [Hear, hear.]

Gentlemen, it is a great pleasure to me to be here, but in
some sense I regard it also as kind of duty to be present
on any occasion when the star-spangled banner and the red
cross of England hang opposite each other, in friendly con-
verse. May they never hang opposite each other in any
other spirit. [Cheers.] I say so because I think it is the
duty of any man who in any sense represents one of the
English-speaking races, to be present on an occasion which
indicates, as this does, that we are one in all those great
principles which lie at the basis of civilized society — never
mind what the form of government may be.

As I sat here, gentlemen, endeavouring to collect my
thoughts and finding it, I may say, as difficult as to make a

320

((

THE STAGE 32I

collection for any other charitable occasion Paughter], I
could not help thinking that the Anglo-Saxon race — if you
will allow me to use an expression which is sometimes criti-
cized— that the Anglo-Saxon race has misinterpreted a familiar
text of Scripture and reads it : " Out of the fulness of the
mouth the heart speaketh." I confess that if Alexander,
who once offered a reward for a new pleasure, were to come
again upon earth, I should become one of the competitors
for the prize, and I should offer for his consideration a festival
at which there were no speeches. [Laughter.] The gentlemen
of your profession have in one sense a great advantage over
the rest of us. Your speeches are prepared for you by the
cleverest men of your time or by the great geniuses for all
time. You can be witty or wise at much less expense than
those of us who are obliged to fall back upon our own resources.
Now I admit that there is a great deal in the spur of the
moment, but that depends very much upon the flank of the
animal into which you dig it. There is also a great deal in
that self-possessed extemporaneousness which a man carries
in his pocket on a sheet of paper. It reminds one of the
compliment which the Irishman paid to his own weapon,
the shillalah, when he said : ** It's a weapon which never
misses fire." But then it may be said that it applies itself
more directly to the head than to the heart. I think I have
a very capital theory of what an after-dinner speech should
be ; we have had some examples this afternoon, and I have
made a great many excellent ones myself ; but they were
always on the way home, and after I had made a very poor
one when I was on my legs. [Laughter.] My cabman has
been the confidant of an amount of humour and apt quo-
tations and clever sayings which you will never know, and
which you will never guess.

But something in what has been said by one of my country-
men recalls to my mind a matter of graver character. As a
man who has lived all his life in the country, to my shame
be it said I have not been an habitual theatre-goer. I came
too late for the elder Kean, My theatrical experience began
with Fanny Kemble — I forget how many years ago, but more
than I care to remember — and I recollect the impression made
upon me by her and by her father. I was too young to be
critical ; I was young enough to enjoy ; but I remember
that what remained with me and what remains with me still
of what I heard and saw, and especially with regard to Charles

II — 21

322 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

Kemble, was the perfection of his art. It was not his individual
characteristics — though of course I remember those — it was
the perfection of his art. My countryman has alluded to
the fact that at one time it was difficult for an actor to get
a breakfast, much more to have one offered to him ; and that
recalls to my mind the touching words of the great master
of your art, Shakespeare, who in one of his sonnets said :

" O for my sake do you with Fortune chide.

The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds.
That did not better for my life provide

Than public means, which public manners breeds :
Thence comes it that my name receives a brand ;

And almost thence my nature is subdu'd
To what it works in, like the dyer's hand."

Certainly the consideration in which the theatrical pro-
fession is held has risen greatly even within my own recollection.
It has risen greatly since the time when Adrienne Lecouvreur
was denied burial in that consecrated ground where rakes
and demireps could complete the corruption they had begun
on earth ; and this is due to the fact that it is now looked
upon not only by the public in general but by the members
of your profession as a fine art. It is perfectly true that the
stage has often lent itself, I will not say to the demoralization
of the public, but to things which I think none of us would
altogether approve. This, however, I think has been due
more to the fact that it not only holds up the mirror to nature,
but that the stage is a mirror in which the public itself is
reflected. And the public itself is to blame if the stage is
ever degraded. [Cheers.]

It has been to men of my profession, perhaps, that the
degradation has been due, more than to those who represent
their plays. They have interpreted, perhaps in too literal
a sense, the famous saying of Dryden that

" He who lives to write, must write to Uve."

But I began wdth the Irishman's weapon, and I shall not
forget that among its other virtues is its brevity, and as in
the list of toasts which are to follow I caught the name of
a son of him who was certainly the greatest poet, though
he wrote in prose, and who perhaps possessed the most
original mind that America has given to the world, I shall,
I am sure, with your entire approbation make way for the
next speaker. [Applause.]

Printed by Haxell, Watson & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury.

PN

Fox-Davies, Arthur Charles

6121

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