however, to Calais and its neighbourhood, and in the same year his
mother died, and, by an arrangement with his eldest brother, 'this
patch of landed property,' as Young calls Bradfield, descended upon
him. His first famous journey in France was made between May and
November, 1787, and cost the marvellously small sum of L118 15s. 2d.
His second and third French journeys were made in July, 1788, and in
June, 1789. The third was the longest, and extended into 1790. Three
years later Young was appointed, by Pitt, Secretary of the then Board
of Agriculture. A melancholy account is given by Young of a visit he
paid Burke at Gregory's in 1796. Young drove there in the chariot of
his fussy chief, Sir John Sinclair, to discover what Burke's
intentions might be as to an intended publication of his relating to
the price of labour. The account, which occupies four pages, is too
long for quotation. It concludes thus:

'I am glad once more to have seen and conversed with the man who I
hold to possess the greatest and most brilliant gifts of any penman
of the age in which he lived. Whose conversation has often
fascinated me, whose eloquence has charmed; whose writings have
delighted and instructed the world; whose name will without
question descend to the latest posterity. But to behold so great a
genius, so deepened with melancholy, stooping with infirmity of
body, feeling the anguish of a lacerated mind, and sinking to the
grave under accumulated misery--to see all this in a character I
venerate, and apparently without resource or comfort, wounded
every feeling of my soul, and I left him the next day almost as
low-spirited as himself.'

But Young himself was soon to pass into the same Valley of the Shadow,
not so much of Death as of Joyless Life. His beloved and idolized
Bobbin died on July 14, 1797. She seems to have been a wise little
maiden, to whom her father wrote most affectionate letters, full of
rather unsuitable details, political and financial and otherwise, and
not scrupling to speak of the child's mother in a disagreeable manner.
Bobbin replies with delightful composure to these worrying letters:

'I have just got six of the most beautiful little rabbits you ever
saw; they skip about so prettily you can't think, and I shall have
some more in a few weeks. Having had so much physic, I am right
down tired of it. I take it still twice a day--my appetite is
better. What can you mind politics so for? I don't think about
them.--Well, good-bye, and believe me, dear papa, your dutiful
Daughter.'

After poor little Bobbin's death, it happened to Arthur Young even as
his mother foretold. Carrots and crops and farming tours hastily
retreat, and we find the eminent agriculturist busying himself, with
the same seriousness and good faith he had devoted to the rotation of
the crops, with the sermons and treatises of Clarke and Jortin and
Secker and Tillotson, etc., and all to discover what had become of his
dear little Bobbin. His outlook upon the world was changed--the great
parties at Petworth, at Euston, at Woburn struck him differently; the
huge irreligion of the world filled him as for the first time with
amazement and horror:

'How few years are passed since I should have pushed on eagerly to
Woburn! This time twelve months I dined with the Duke on
Sunday--the party not very numerous, but chiefly of rank--the
entertainment more splendid than usual there. He expects me to-day,
but I have more pleasure in resting, going twice to church, and
eating a morsel of cold lamb at a very humble inn, than partaking
of gaiety and dissipation at a great table which might as well be
spread for a company of heathens as English lords and men of
fashion.'

It is all mighty fine calling this religious hypochondria and
depression of spirits. It is one of the facts of life. Young stuck to
his post, and did his work, and quarrelled with his wife to the end,
or nearly so. He cannot have been so lively and agreeable a companion
as of old, for we find him in November, 1806, at Euston, endeavouring
to impress on the Duke of Grafton that by his tenets he had placed
himself entirely under the covenant of works, and that he must be
tried for them, and that 'I would not be in such a situation for ten
thousand worlds. He was mild and more patient than I expected.'
Perhaps, after all, Carlyle was not so far wrong when he praised our
aristocracy for their 'politeness.' In 1808 Young became blind. In
1815 his wife died. In 1820 he died himself, leaving behind him seven
packets of manuscript and twelve folio volumes of correspondence.

Young's great work, _Travels during the Years 1787, 1788, and 1789,
undertaken more particularly with a View of Ascertaining the
Cultivation, Wealth, Resources, and National Prosperity of the Kingdom
of France_, published in 1792, is one of those books which will always
be a great favourite with somebody. It will outlive eloquence and
outstay philosophy. It contains some famous passages.




THOMAS PAINE


Proverbs are said to be but half-truths, but 'give a dog a bad name
and hang him' is a saying almost as veracious as it is felicitous; and
to no one can it possibly be applied with greater force than to Thomas
Paine, the rebellious staymaker, the bankrupt tobacconist, the amazing
author of _Common-sense_, _The Rights of Man_, and _The Age of Reason_.

Until quite recently Tom Paine lay without the pale of toleration. No
circle of liberality was constructed wide enough to include him. Even
the scouted Unitarian scouted Thomas. He was 'the infamous Paine,'
'the vulgar atheist.' Whenever mentioned in pious discourse it was but
to be waved on one side as thus: 'No one of my hearers is likely to be
led astray by the scurrilous blasphemies of Paine.'

I can well remember when an asserted intimacy with the writings of
Paine marked a man from his fellows and invested him in children's
minds with a horrid fascination. The writings themselves were only to
be seen in bookshops of evil reputation, and, when hastily turned over
with furtive glances, proved to be printed in small type and on
villainous paper. For a boy to have bought them and taken them inside
a decent home would have been to run the risk of fierce wrath in this
life and the threat of it in the next. If ever there was a hung dog,
his name was Tom Paine.

But History is, as we know, for ever revising her records. None of her
judgments are final. A life of Thomas Paine, in two portly and
well-printed volumes, with gilt tops, wide margins, spare leaves at
the end, and all the other signs and tokens of literary
respectability, has lately appeared. No President, no Prime
Minister--nay, no Bishop or Moderator--need hope to have his memoirs
printed in better style than are these of Thomas Paine, by Mr. Moncure
D. Conway. Were any additional proof required of the complete
resuscitation of Paine's reputation, it might be found in the fact
that his life _is_ in two volumes, though it would have been far
better told in one.

Mr. Conway believes implicitly in Paine--not merely in his virtue and
intelligence, but that he was a truly great man, who played a great
part in human affairs. He will no more admit that Paine was a
busybody, inflated with conceit and with a strong dash of insolence,
than he will that Thomas was a drunkard. That Paine's speech was
undoubtedly plain and his nose undeniably red is as far as Mr. Conway
will go. If we are to follow the biographer the whole way, we must not
only unhang the dog, but give him sepulture amongst the sceptred
Sovereigns who rule us from their urns.

Thomas Paine was born at Thetford, in Norfolk, in January, 1737, and
sailed for America in 1774, then being thirty-seven years of age. Up
to this date he was a rank failure. His trade was staymaking, but he
had tried his hand at many things. He was twice an Excise officer, but
was twice dismissed the service, the first time for falsely
pretending to have made certain inspections which, in fact, he had not
made, and the second time for carrying on business in an excisable
article--tobacco, to wit--without the leave of the Board. Paine had
married the tobacconist's business, but neither the marriage nor the
business prospered; the second was sold by auction, and the first
terminated by mutual consent.

Mr. Conway labours over these early days of his hero very much, but he
can make nothing of them. Paine was an Excise officer at Lewes, where,
so Mr. Conway reminds us, 'seven centuries before Paine opened his
office in Lewes, came Harold's son, possibly to take charge of the
Excise as established by Edward the Confessor, just deceased.' This
device of biographers is a little stale. The Confessor was guiltless
of the Excise.

Paine's going to America was due to Benjamin Franklin, who made
Paine's acquaintance in London, and, having the wit to see his
ability, recommended him 'as a clerk or assistant-tutor in a school or
assistant-surveyor.' Thus armed, Paine made his appearance in
Philadelphia, where he at once obtained employment as editor of an
intended periodical called the _Pennsylvanian Magazine or American
Museum_, the first number of which appeared in January, 1775. Never
was anything luckier. Paine was, without knowing it, a born
journalist. His capacity for writing on the spur of the moment was
endless, and his delight in doing so boundless. He had no difficulty
for 'copy', though in those days contributors were few. He needed no
contributors. He was 'Atlanticus'; he was 'Vox Populi'; he was
'Aesop.' The unsigned articles were also mostly his. Having at last,
after many adventures and false starts, found his vocation, Paine
stuck to it. He spent the rest of his days with a pen in his hand,
scribbling his advice and obtruding his counsel on men and nations.
Both were usually of excellent quality.

Paine was also happy in the moment of his arrival in America. The War
of Independence was imminent, and in April, 1775, occurred 'the
massacre of Lexington.' The Colonists were angry, but puzzled. They
hardly knew what they wanted. They lacked a definite opinion to
entertain and a cry to asseverate. Paine had no doubts. He hated
British institutions with all the hatred of a civil servant who has
had 'the sack.'

In January, 1776, he published his pamphlet _Common-sense_, which must
be ranked with the most famous pamphlets ever written. It is difficult
to wade through now, but even _The Conduct of the Allies_ is not easy
reading, and yet between Paine and Swift there is a great gulf fixed.
The keynote of _Common-sense_ was separation once and for ever, and
the establishment of a great Republic of the West. It hit between wind
and water, had a great sale, and made its author a personage and, in
his own opinion, a divinity.

Paine now became the penman of the rebels. His series of manifestoes,
entitled _The Crisis_, were widely read and carried healing on their
wings, and in 1777 he was elected Secretary to the Committee of
Foreign Affairs. Charles Lamb once declared that Rousseau was a good
enough Jesus Christ for the French, and he was capable of declaring
Tom Paine a good enough Milton for the Yankees. However that may be,
Paine was an indefatigable and useful public servant. He was a bad
gauger for King George, but he was an admirable scribe for a
revolution conducted on constitutional principles.

To follow his history through the war would be tedious. What
Washington and Jefferson really thought of him we shall never know.
He was never mercenary, but his pride was wounded that so little
recognition of his astounding services was forthcoming. The
ingratitude of Kings was a commonplace; the ingratitude of peoples an
unpleasing novelty. But Washington bestirred himself at last, and
Paine was voted an estate of 277 acres, more or less, and a sum of
money. This was in 1784.

Three years afterwards Thomas visited England, where he kept good
company and was very usefully employed engineering, for which
excellent pursuit he would appear to have had great natural aptitude.
Blackfriars Bridge had just tumbled down, and it was Paine's laudable
ambition to build its successor in iron. But the Bastille fell down as
well as Blackfriars Bridge, and was too much for Paine. As Mr. Conway
beautifully puts it: 'But again the Cause arose before him; he must
part from all--patent interests, literary leisure, fine society--and
take the hand of Liberty undowered, but as yet unstained. He must beat
his bridge-iron into a key that shall unlock the British Bastille,
whose walls he sees steadily closing around the people.' 'Miching
mallecho--this means mischief;' and so it proved.

Burke is responsible for the _Rights of Man_. This splendid
sentimentalist published his _Reflections on the Revolution in France_
in November, 1790. Paine immediately sat down in the Angel, Islington,
and began his reply. He was not unqualified to answer Burke; he had
fought a good fight between the years 1775 and 1784. Mr. Conway has
some ground for his epigram, 'where Burke had dabbled, Paine had
dived.' There is nothing in the _Rights of Man_ which would now
frighten, though some of its expressions might still shock, a
lady-in-waiting; but to profess Republicanism in 1791 was no joke, and
the book was proclaimed and Paine prosecuted. Acting upon the advice
of William Blake (the truly sublime), Paine escaped to France, where
he was elected by three departments to a seat in the Convention, and
in that Convention he sat from September, 1792, to December, 1793,
when he was found quarters in the Luxembourg Prison.

This invitation to foreigners to take part in the conduct of the
French Revolution was surely one of the oddest things that ever
happened, but Paine thought it natural enough so far, at least, as he
was concerned. He could not speak a word of French, and all his
harangues had to be translated and read to the Convention by a
secretary, whilst Thomas stood smirking in the Tribune. His behaviour
throughout was most creditable to him. He acted with the Girondists,
and strongly opposed and voted against the murder of the King. His
notion of a revolution was one by pamphlet, and he shrank from deeds
of blood. His whole position was false and ridiculous. He really
counted for nothing. The members of the Convention grew tired of his
doctrinaire harangues, which, in fact, bored them not a little; but
they respected his enthusiasm and the part he had played in America,
whither they would gladly he had returned. Who put him in prison is a
mystery. Mr. Conway thinks it was the American Minister in Paris,
Gouverneur Morris. He escaped the guillotine, and was set free after
ten months' confinement.

All this time Washington had not moved a finger in behalf of the
author of _Common-sense_ and _The Crisis_. Amongst Paine's papers this
epigram was found:

'ADVICE TO THE STATUARY WHO IS TO EXECUTE THE
STATUE OF WASHINGTON.

Take from the mine the coldest, hardest stone;
It needs no fashion--it is Washington.
But if you chisel, let the stroke be rude,
And on his heart engrave--"Ingratitude."'

This is hard hitting.

So far we have only had the Republican Paine, the outlaw Paine; the
atheist Paine has not appeared. He did so in the _Age of Reason_,
first published in 1794-1795. The object of this book was religious.
Paine was a vehement believer in God and in the Divine government of
the world, but he was not, to put it mildly, a Bible Christian. Nobody
now is ever likely to read the _Age of Reason_ for instruction or
amusement. Who now reads even Mr. Greg's _Creed of Christendom_, which
is in effect, though not in substance, the same kind of book? Paine
was a coarse writer, without refinement of nature, and he used brutal
expressions and hurled his vulgar words about in a manner certain to
displease. Still, despite it all, the _Age of Reason_ is a religious
book, though a singularly unattractive one.

Paine remained in France advocating all kinds of things, including a
descent on England, the abduction of the Royal Family, and a Free
Constitution. Napoleon sought him out, and assured him that he
(Napoleon) slept with the _Rights of Man_ under his pillow. Paine
believed him.

In 1802 Paine returned to America, after fifteen years' absence.

'Thou stricken friend of man,' exclaims Mr. Conway in a fine passage,
'who hast appealed from the God of Wrath to the God of Humanity, see
in the distance that Maryland coast which early voyagers called
Avalon, and sing again your song when first stepping on that shore
twenty-seven years ago.'

The rest of Paine's life was spent in America without distinction or
much happiness. He continued writing to the last, and died bravely on
the morning of June 8, 1809.

The Americans did not appreciate Paine's theology, and in 1819 allowed
Cobbett to carry the bones of the author of _Common-sense_ to England,
where--'as rare things will,' so, at least, Mr. Browning sings--they
vanished. Nobody knows what has become of them.

As a writer Paine has no merits of a lasting character, but he had a
marvellous journalistic knack for inventing names and headings. He is
believed to have concocted the two phrases 'The United States of
America' and 'The Religion of Humanity.' Considering how little he had
read, his discourses on the theory of government are wonderful, and
his views generally were almost invariably liberal, sensible, and
humane. What ruined him was an intolerable self-conceit, which led him
to believe that his own productions superseded those of other men. He
knew off by heart, and was fond of repeating, his own _Common-sense_
and the _Rights of Man_. He was destitute of the spirit of research,
and was wholly without one shred of humility. He was an oddity, a
character, but he never took the first step towards becoming a great
man.




CHARLES BRADLAUGH[A]


[Footnote A: _Charles Bradlaugh: A Record of His Life and Work_. By
his daughter, Hypatia Bradlaugh Bonner. Two vols. London: T. Fisher
Unwin, 1894.]

Mr. Bradlaugh was a noticeable man, and his life, even though it
appears in the unwelcome but familiar shape of two octavo volumes, is
a noticeable book. It is useless to argue with biographers; they, at
all events, are neither utilitarians nor opportunists, but idealists
pure and simple. What is the good of reminding them, being so
majestical, of Guizot's pertinent remark, 'that if a book is
unreadable it will not be read,' or of the older saying, 'A great book
is a great evil'? for all such observations they simply put on one
side as being, perhaps, true for others, but not for them. Had _Mr.
Bradlaugh's Life_ been just half the size it would have had, at least,
twice as many readers.

The pity is all the greater because Mrs. Bonner has really performed a
difficult task after a noble fashion and in a truly pious spirit. Her
father's life was a melancholy one, and it became her duty as his
biographer to break a silence on painful subjects about which he had
preferred to say nothing. His reticence was a manly reticence; though
a highly sensitive mortal, he preferred to put up with calumny rather
than lay bare family sorrows and shame. His daughter, though compelled
to break this silence, has done so in a manner full of dignity and
feeling. The ruffians who in times past slandered the moral character
of Bradlaugh will not probably read his life, nor, if they did, would
they repent of their baseness. The willingness to believe everything
evil of an adversary is incurable, springing as it does from a habit
of mind. It was well said by Mr. Mill: 'I have learned from experience
that many false opinions may be exchanged for true ones, without in
the least altering the habits of mind of which false opinions are the
result.' Now that Mr. Bradlaugh is dead, no purpose is served by
repeating false accusations as to his treatment of his wife, or of his
pious brother, or as to his disregard of family ties; but the next
atheist who crops up must not expect any more generous treatment than
Bradlaugh received from that particularly odious class of persons of
whom it has been wittily said that so great is their zeal for
religion, they have never time to say their prayers.

Mr. Bradlaugh will, I suppose, be hereafter described in the
dictionaries of biography as 'Freethinker and Politician.' Of the
politician there is here no need to speak. He was a Radical of the
old-fashioned type. When he first stood for Northampton in 1868, his
election address was made up of tempting dishes, which afterwards
composed Mr. Chamberlain's famous but unauthorized programme of 1885,
with minority representation thrown in. Unpopular thinkers who have
been pelted with stones by Christians, slightly the worse for liquor,
are apt to think well of minorities. Mr. Bradlaugh's Radicalism had
an individualistic flavour. He thought well of thrift, thereby
incurring censure. Mr. Bradlaugh's politics are familiar enough. What
about his freethinking? English freethinkers may be divided into two
classes--those who have been educated and those who have had to
educate themselves. The former class might apply to their own case the
language once employed by Dr. Newman to describe himself and his
brethren of the Oratory:

'We have been nourished for the greater part of our lives in the
bosom of the great schools and universities of Protestant England;
we have been the foster foster-sons of the Edwards and Henries, the
Wykehams and Wolseys, of whom Englishmen are wont to make so much;
we have grown up amid hundreds of contemporaries, scattered at
present all over the country in those special ranks of society
which are the very walk of a member of the legislature.'

These first-class free-thinkers have an excellent time of it, and, to
use a fashionable phrase, 'do themselves very well indeed.' They move
freely in society; their books lie on every table; they hob-a-nob with
Bishops; and when they come to die, their orthodox relations gather
round them, and lay them in the earth 'in the sure and certain
hope'--so, at least, priestly lips are found willing to assert--'of
the resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ.' And
yet there was not a dogma of the Christian faith in which they were in
a position to profess their belief.

The free-thinkers of the second class, poor fellows! have hitherto led
very different lives. Their foster-parents have been poverty and
hardship; their school education has usually terminated at eleven; all
their lives they have been desperately poor; alone, unaided, they
have been left to fight the battle of a Free Press.

Richard Carlile, as honourable a man as most, and between whose
religious opinions and (let us say) Lord Palmerston's there was
probably no difference worth mentioning, spent nine out of the
fifty-two years of his life in prison. Attorney-Generals, and, indeed,
every degree of prosecuting counsel have abused this kind of
free-thinker, not merely with professional impunity, but amidst
popular applause. Judges, speaking with emotion, have exhibited the
utmost horror of atheistical opinions, and have railed in good set
terms at the wretch who has been dragged before them, and have then,
at the rising of the court, proceeded to their club and played cards
till dinner-time with a first-class free-thinker for partner.

This is natural and easily accounted for, but we need not be surprised
if, in the biographies of second-class freethinkers, bitterness is
occasionally exhibited towards the well-to-do brethren who decline
what Dr. Bentley, in his Boyle Lectures, called 'the public odium and
resentment of the magistrate.'

Mr. Bradlaugh was a freethinker of the second class. His father was a
solicitor's clerk on a salary which never exceeded L2 2s. a week; his
mother had been a nursery-maid; and he himself was born in 1833 in
Bacchus Walk, Hoxton. At seven he went to a national school, but at
eleven his school education ended, and he became an office-boy. At
fourteen he was a wharf-clerk and cashier to a coal-merchant. His
parents were not much addicted to church-going, but Charles was from
the first a serious boy, and became at a somewhat early age a
Sunday-school teacher at St. Peter's, Hackney Road. The incumbent, in
order to prepare him for Confirmation, set him to work to extract the
Thirty-nine Articles out of the four Gospels. Unhappy task, worthy to
be described by the pen of the biographer of John Sterling. The
youthful wharfinger could not find the Articles in the Gospels, and
informed the Rev. J.G. Packer of the fact. His letter conveying this
intelligence is not forthcoming, and probably enough contained
offensive matter, for Mr. Packer seems at once to have denounced young
Bradlaugh as one engaged in atheistical inquiries, to have suspended
him from the Sunday-school, to have made it very disagreeable for him
at home and with his employer, and to have wound up by giving him
three days to change his views or to lose his place.

Mr. Packer has been well abused, but it has never been the fashion to
treat youthful atheists with much respect. When Coleridge confided to
the Rev. James Boyer that he (S.T. Coleridge) was inclined to atheism,
the reverend gentleman had him stripped and flogged. Mr. Packer,
however, does seem to have been too hasty, for Bradlaugh did not
formally abandon his beliefs until some months after his suspension.
He retired for a short season, and studied Hebrew under Mr. James
Savage, of Circus Street, Marylebone. He emerged an unbeliever, aged
sixteen. Expelled from his wharf, he sold coal on commission, but his
principal, if not his only customer, the wife of a baker, discovering
that he was an infidel, gave him no more orders, being afraid, so she
said, that her bread would smell of brimstone.

In 1850 Bradlaugh published his first pamphlet, _A Few Words on the
Christian Creed_, and dedicated it to the unhappy Mr. Packer. But
starvation stared him in the face, and in the same year he enlisted in
the 7th Dragoon Guards, and spent the next three years in Ireland,
where he earned a good character, and on more occasions than one
showed that adroitness for which he was afterwards remarkable.

In October, 1853, his mother and sister with great difficulty raised
the L30 necessary to buy his discharge, and Bradlaugh returned to
London, not only full grown, but well fed. Had he not taken the
Queen's shilling he never would have lived to fight the battle he did.

He became a solicitor's clerk on a miserably small pay, and took to
lecturing as 'Iconoclast.' In 1855 he was married at St. Philip's
Church, Stepney. His lectures and discussions began to assume great
proportions, and covered more than twenty years of his life. Terribly
hard work they were. Profits there were none, or next to none. Few men
have endured greater hardships.

In 1860 the _National Reformer_ was started, and his warfare in the
courts began. In 1868 he first stood for Northampton, which he
unsuccessfully contested three times. In April, 1880, he was returned
to Parliament, and then began the famous struggle with which the
constitutional historian will have to deal. After this date the facts
are well known. Bradlaugh died on January 30, 1891.

His life was a hard one from beginning to end. He had no advantages.
Nobody really helped him or influenced him or mollified him. He had
never either money or repose; he had no time to travel, except as a
propagandist, no time to acquire knowledge for its own sake; he was
often abused but seldom criticised. In a single sentence, he was never
taught the extent of his own ignorance.

His attitude towards the Christian religion and the Bible was a
perfectly fair one, and ought not to have brought down upon him any
abuse whatever. There are more ways than one of dealing with religion.
It may be approached as a mystery or as a series of events supported
by testimony. If the evidence is trustworthy, if the witnesses are
irreproachable, if they submit successfully to examination and
cross-examination, then, however remarkable or out of the way may be
the facts to which they depose, they are entitled to be believed. This
is a mode of treatment with which we are all familiar, whether as
applied to the Bible or to the authority of the Church. Nobody is
expected to believe in the authority of the Church until satisfied
by the exercise of his reason that the Church in question possesses
'the notes' of a true Church. This was the aspect of the question
which engaged Bradlaugh's attention. He was critical, legal. He
took objections, insisted on discrepancies, cross-examined as to
credibility, and came to the conclusion that the case for the
supernatural was not made out. And this he did not after the
first-class fashion in the study or in octavo volumes, but in the
street. His audiences were not Mr. Mudie's subscribers, but men and
women earning weekly wages. The coarseness of his language, the
offensiveness of his imagery, have been greatly exaggerated. It is now
a good many years since I heard him lecture in a northern town on the
Bible to an audience almost wholly composed of artisans. He was bitter
and aggressive, but the treatment he was then experiencing accounted
for this. As an avowed atheist he received no quarter, and he might
fairly say with Wilfred Osbaldistone, 'It's hard I should get raps
over the costard, and only pay you back in make-believes.'

It was not what Bradlaugh said, but the people he said it to, that
drew down upon him the censure of the magistrate, and (unkindest cut
of all) the condemnation of the House of Commons.

Of all the evils from which the lovers of religion do well to pray
that their faith may be delivered, the worst is that it should ever
come to be discussed across the floor of the House of Commons. The
self-elected champions of the Christian faith who then ride into the
lists are of a kind well calculated to make Piety hide her head for
very shame. Rowdy noblemen, intemperate country gentlemen, sterile
lawyers, cynical but wealthy sceptics who maintain religion as another
fence round their property, hereditary Nonconformists whose God is
respectability and whose goal a baronetcy, contrive, with a score or
two of bigots thrown in, to make a carnival of folly, a veritable
devil's dance of blasphemy. The debates on Bradlaugh's oath-taking
extended over four years, and will make melancholy reading for
posterity. Two figures, and two figures only, stand out in solitary
grandeur, those of a Quaker and an Anglican--Bright and Gladstone.

The conclusion which an attentive reading of Mr. Bradlaugh's biography
forces upon me is that in all probability he was the last freethinker
who will be exposed, for many a long day (it would be more than
usually rash to write 'ever'), to pains and penalties for uttering his
unbelief. It is true the Blasphemy Laws are not yet repealed; it may
be true for all I know that Christianity is still part and parcel
of the common law; it is possibly an indictable offence to lend
_Literature and Dogma_ and _God and the Bible_ to a friend; but,
however these things may be, Mr. Bradlaugh's stock-in-trade is now
free of the market-place, where just at present, at all events, its
price is low. It has become pretty plain that neither the Fortress of
Holy Scripture nor the Rock of Church Authority is likely to be taken
by storm. The Mystery of Creation, the unsolvable problem of matter,
continue to press upon us more heavily than ever. Neither by Paleys
nor by Bradlaughs will religion be either bolstered up or pulled down.
Sceptics and Sacramentarians must be content to put up with one
another's vagaries for some time to come. Indeed, the new socialists,
though at present but poor theologians (one hasty reading of _Lux
Mundi_ does not make a theologian), are casting favourable eyes
upon Sacramentarianism, deeming it to have a distinct flavour of
Collectivism. Calvinism, on the other hand, is considered repulsively
individualistic, being based upon the notion that it is the duty of
each man to secure his own salvation.

But whether Bradlaugh was the last of his race or not, he was a
brave man whose life well deserves an honourable place amongst the
biographies of those Radicals who have suffered in the cause of
Free-thought, and into the fruits of whose labours others have
entered.




DISRAELI _EX RELATIONE_ SIR WILLIAM FRASER


The late Sir William Fraser was not, I have been told, a popular
person in that society about which he thought so much, and his book,
_Disraeli and His Day_, did not succeed in attracting much of the
notice of the general reader, and failed, so I, at least, have been
made to understand, to win a verdict of approval from the really well
informed.

I consider the book a very good one, in the sense of being valuable.
Whatever your mood may be, that of the moralist, cynic, satirist,
humourist, whether you love, pity, or despise your fellow-man, here is
grist for your mill. It feeds the mind.

Although in form the book is but a stringing together of stories,
incidents, and aphorisms, still the whole produces a distinct effect.
To state what that effect is would be, I suppose, the higher
criticism. It is not altogether disagreeable; it is decidedly amusing;
it is clever and somewhat contemptible. Sir William Fraser was a
baronet who thought well of his order. He desiderated a tribunal to
determine the right to the title, and he opined that the courtesy
prefix of 'Honourable,' which once, it appears, belonged to baronets,
should be restored to them. Apart from these opinions, ridiculous and
peculiar, Sir William Fraser stands revealed in this volume as cast in
a familiar mould. The words 'gentleman,' 'White's,' 'Society,' often
flow from his pen, and we may be sure were engraven on his heart. He
had seen a world wrecked. When he was young, so he tells his readers,
the world consisted of at least three, and certainly not more than
five, hundred persons who were accustomed night after night during the
season to make their appearance at a certain number of houses, which
are affectionately enumerated. A new face at any one of these
gatherings immediately attracted attention, as, indeed, it is easy to
believe it would. 'Anything for a change,' as somebody observes in
_Pickwick_.

This is the atmosphere of the book, and Sir William breathes in it
very pleasantly. Endowed by Nature with a retentive memory and a
literary taste, active if singular, he may be discovered in his own
pages moving up and down, in and out of society, supplying and
correcting quotations, and gratifying the vanity of distinguished
authors by remembering their own writings better than they did
themselves. The book makes one clearly comprehend what a monstrous
clever fellow the rank and file of the Tory party must have felt Sir
William Fraser to be. This, however, is only background. In the front
of the picture we have the mysterious outlines, the strange
personality, struggling between the bizarre and the romantic, of 'the
Jew,' as big George Bentinck was ever accustomed to denominate his
leader. Sir William Fraser's Disraeli is a very different figure from
Sir Stafford Northcote's. The myth about the pocket Sophocles is
rudely exploded. Sir William is certain that Disraeli could not have
construed a chapter of the Greek Testament. He found such mythology
as he required where many an honest fellow has found it before him--in
Lempriere's Dictionary. His French accent, as Sir William records it,
was most satisfactory, and a conclusive proof of his _bona-fides_.
Disraeli, it is clear, cared as little for literature as he did for
art. He admired Gray, as every man with a sense for epithet must; he
studied Junius, whose style, so Sir William Fraser believes, he
surpassed in his 'Runnymede' letters. Sir William Fraser kindly
explains the etymology of this strange word 'Runnymede,' as he also
does that of 'Parliament,' which he says is '_Parliamo mente_' (Let us
speak our minds). Sir William clearly possessed the learning denied to
his chief.

Beyond apparently imposing upon Sir Stafford Northcote, Disraeli
himself never made any vain pretensions to be devoted to pursuits for
which he did not care a rap. He once dreamt of an epic poem, and his
early ambition urged him a step or two in that direction, but his
critical faculty, which, despite all his monstrosities of taste, was
vital, restrained him from making a fool of himself, and he forswore
the muse, puffed the prostitute away, and carried his very saleable
wares to another market, where his efforts were crowned with
prodigious success. Sir William Fraser introduces his great man to us
as observing, in reply to a question, that revenge was the passion
which gives pleasure the latest. A man, he continued, will enjoy that
when even avarice has ceased to please. As a matter of fact, Disraeli
himself was neither avaricious nor revengeful, and, as far as one can
judge, was never tempted to be either. This is the fatal defect of
almost all Disraeli's aphorisms: they are dead words, whilst the
words of a true aphorism have veins filled with the life of their
utterer. Nothing of this sort ever escaped the lips of our modern
Sphinx. If he had any faiths, any deep convictions, any rooted
principles, he held his tongue about them. He was, Sir William tells
us, an indolent man. It is doubtful whether he ever did, apart from
the preparation and delivery of his speeches, what would be called by
a professional man a hard day's work in his life. He had courage, wit,
insight, instinct, prevision, and a thorough persuasion that he
perfectly understood the materials he had to work upon and the tools
within his reach. Perhaps no man ever gauged more accurately or more
profoundly despised that 'world' Sir William Fraser so pathetically
laments. For folly, egotism, vanity, conceit, and stupidity, he had an
amazing eye. He could not, owing to his short sight, read men's faces
across the floor of the House, but he did not require the aid of any
optic nerve to see the petty secrets of their souls. His best sayings
have men's weaknesses for their text. Sir William's book gives many
excellent examples. One laughs throughout.

Sir William would have us believe that in later life Disraeli clung
affectionately to dulness--to gentle dulness. He did not want to be
surrounded by wits. He had been one himself in his youth, and he
questioned their sincerity. It would almost appear from passages in
the book that Disraeli found even Sir William Fraser too pungent for
him. Once, we are told, the impenetrable Prime Minister quailed before
Sir William's reproachful oratory. The story is not of a cock and a
bull, but of a question put in the House of Commons by Sir William,
who was snubbed by the Home Secretary, who was cheered by Disraeli.
This was intolerable, and accordingly next day, being, as good luck
would have it, a Friday, when, as all men and members know, 'it is in
the power of any member to bring forward any topic he may choose,' Sir
William naturally chose the topic nearest to his heart, and 'said a
few words on my wrongs.'

'During my performance I watched Disraeli narrowly. I could not see
his face, but I noticed that whenever I became in any way
disagreeable--in short, whenever my words really bit--they were
invariably followed by one movement. Sitting as he always did with
his right knee over his left, whenever the words touched him he
moved the pendant leg twice or three times, then curved his foot
upwards. I could observe no other sign of emotion, but this was
distinct. Some years afterwards, on a somewhat more important
occasion at the Conference at Berlin, a great German philosopher,
Herr ----, went to Berlin on purpose to study Disraeli's character.
He said afterwards that he was most struck by the more than Indian
stoicism which Disraeli showed. To this there was one exception.
"Like all men of his race, he has one sign of emotion which never
fails to show itself--the movement of the leg that is crossed over
the other, and of the foot!" The person who told me this had never
heard me hint, nor had anyone, that I had observed this peculiar
symptom on the earlier occasion to which I have referred.'

Statesmen of Jewish descent, with a reputation for stoicism to
preserve, would do well to learn from this story not to swing their
crossed leg when tired. The great want about Mr. Disraeli is something
to hang the countless anecdotes about him upon. Most remarkable men
have some predominant feature of character round which you can build
your general conception of them, or, at all events, there has been
some great incident in their lives for ever connected with their
names, and your imagination mixes the man and the event together. Who
can think of Peel without remembering the Corn Laws and the
reverberating sentence: 'I shall leave a name execrated by every
monopolist who, for less honourable motives, clamours for Protection
because it conduces to his own individual benefit; but it may be that
I shall leave a name sometimes remembered with expressions of
good-will in the abode of those whose lot it is to labour and to earn
their daily bread with the sweat of their brow, when they shall
recruit their exhausted strength with abundant and untaxed food, the
sweeter because it is no longer leavened with a sense of injustice.'
But round what are our memories of Disraeli to cluster? Sir William
Fraser speaks rapturously of his wondrous mind and of his intellect,
but where is posterity to look for evidences of either? Certainly not
in Sir William's book, which shows us a wearied wit and nothing more.