Crying for the Light: or, Fifty Years Ago. Volume 2 of 3
‘I am quite ready to give a widow, or any woman housekeeper, or any woman in business, a vote. As a Liberal I don’t know whether I ought to say as much. The women will be sure to give a Tory vote. They are sure to vote as their favourite parson or priest wishes.’
‘Not the emancipated female of the future.’
‘Alas!’ said Wentworth, ‘I don’t know her. I can only talk of woman as she is – charming, lovely, worthy of all honour, in her own peculiar sphere.’
‘Thank you,’ said the lady haughtily; ‘we want something more;’ and she went out of the room to report to her committee that on Women’s Rights the candidate gave a very uncertain sound.
‘Will you,’ said one other fair enthusiast a little later on, ‘vote for the repeal of the Vaccination Acts?’
‘Certainly not,’ said Mr. Wentworth. ‘Why should I?’
‘Because it is an interference with the freedom of the subject.’
In vain he argued all government, more or less, was that, and that small-pox was an awful malady, against which it behoved the nation to take every precaution. He spoke in vain. The anti-vaccinators did not go so far as to say, as the old opponents did, that vaccination made children as hairy as bullocks, or that it led them to bellow like bulls. In our day they have shifted their grounds, but their opposition remains the same.
The Sabbatarians came next. They were Liberals mostly, with a sprinkling of Tory Evangelicals, yet rather than see any mitigation in the severity of the Jewish Sabbath, any attempt made to divert the working man from the public-house on a Sunday, they declared themselves dead against Mr. Wentworth. The loafers, of course, were against him. He refused to treat them to beer. He kept no public-houses open. He did not even offer to stand glasses round when they called. If he was above obliging them, why should they put themselves out of their way to oblige him? He was for purity and independence. Little they cared for either the one or the other. Every hour it seemed to him that his chance grew less. What was the good of talking about an improved foreign policy, about the advancement of the people in political power, about the reduction of taxation, or free trade in land, or land reform, to such men? According to one class, an election was simply an excuse for bribery and corruption. It meant money and beer. A candidate was to be bled to the uttermost farthing, and he was to repay himself how he could, and as best he could, when he got into Parliament. According to another class, a General Election was simply an opportunity for fighting on side issues, and the ventilation of all sorts of fads.
Musing on these things, the waiter came to him to announce another visitor. Mr. Wentworth groaned.
‘Not a lady, sir.’
‘Thank God for that!’ he replied.
‘A gentleman this time.’
‘Show him in.’
‘Ah, Mr. Wentworth,’ said the new visitor, ‘I thought I would just run in and see you.’
‘Happy to see you – take a seat.’
‘I have read your programme, and am delighted with it.’
‘Sir, you flatter me.’
‘Not a bit of it. It is just what I like. I don’t think I could have done it better myself. You’re the coming man – all Sloville will rally round you.’
‘It does not seem like it at present,’ said Wentworth gloomily.
‘My dear sir, you astonish me; I should have thought a man of your talent would have carried everything before him. But I see I am come in the nick of time – quite providential, as it were. I can promise you entire success.’
‘Upon what terms?’
‘Well, if you put it in that light, I, of course, expect to be paid. As a fellow literary man, I would, of course, prefer to work for you for nothing; but you see, sir, one must live, and the fact is, I have a duty to discharge to my wife and family. A man who neglects them, you know, is worse than an infidel. I believe I have Scriptural authority for that statement?’
‘I believe you have, sir.’
‘Ah, yes, my dear sir, I thought a man of your knowledge and good sense would admit as much. You know me – my name is Roberts.’
‘I can’t say that I do.’
‘Well, that is a good one! Did you never read my poem on the death of Prince Albert?’
‘I can’t say that I have.’
‘Don’t you remember my celebrated speech at Little Pedlington in favour of the Society for the Equal Diffusion of Capital?’
‘I can’t say that I ever heard of it.’
‘Well, you do surprise me! How true it is that the world knows nothing of its greatest men! Surely you must have heard of my celebrated discussion with the great O’Toole in the Town Hall of Mudford on the rights of man, of which the Mudford Observer remarked that I demolished my unfortunate antagonist with the brilliancy of Macaulay, with the philosophy of a Burke, with the wit of a Sheridan, and with a native originality indicative of the rarest genius. Why, it was the talk of the whole town for weeks. Do you really mean to tell me, Mr. Wentworth, that you never heard of that?’
‘Never,’ said Wentworth dryly.
‘Well, that’s a good one! I thought you gentlemen of London kept your eye on everybody and everything. But you know the Temple Forum?’
‘Oh, certainly I do.’
‘Ah! I am glad to hear that, because I am one of the leading lights of that select assembly.’
‘Well, I am very unfortunate. I cannot remember to have heard you even there; but I must own I seldom went near the place.’
‘Ah, if you had you would have known me well. Many is the speech I have made there. But perhaps you will kindly glance at this?’ taking out of his hat a dilapidated and somewhat greasy paper.
Reluctantly Mr. Wentworth took it.
‘It is an account of one of my lectures before the Minerva Institute at Bullock Smithy.’
‘Bullock Smithy – never heard of that.’
‘Come, Mr. Wentworth, you are a bit of a wag, I see.’
‘Not a bit of it. Never heard of Bullock Smithy in my life.’
‘Why, it is a rising watering-place in Blankshire, and I had the public hall to lecture in, with the head notable in the chair, and all the élite of the place present; and I assure you, as the Bullock Smithy Observer remarks, it was quite a treat I gave ’em. “Feast of reason, flow of soul,” they call it. I am to give ’em another lecture next summer.’
‘I am delighted to hear it.’
‘Yes, I knew you would be. We men of genius always recognise each other. And now I’ll tell you why I am here. I’ve come to offer you my services as a public speaker. I was at your meeting the other night, and I saw what was wanted immediately. “Clever fellow,” said I to myself; “but too modest and retiring – not enough bounce and brag to fetch the general public.” Says I to myself: “I will do it for him; I am the boy for that kind of work; I am used to it.” Many a man has got into Parliament through me. Indeed, I have never known anyone fail who has secured my services, and you shall have ’em cheap. Five pounds for the week and board and lodging, and I make a speech for you every night. That’s what I call a fair offer. You hesitate. Well, suppose we say two pounds ten. I never made so low an offer before, but you are a man and a brother, and I would do for you what I would not do for anyone else.’
‘I am afraid, Mr. Roberts,’ said Wentworth – ‘I fear I must dispense with your services.’
‘No, don’t say that; don’t stand in your own light, man. You don’t know what you’re refusing. I can almost guarantee your election. Let me begin to-night. Send the crier round to say that Mr. Roberts, the celebrated orator of the Temple Forum, will speak at your meeting. If I don’t astonish ’em I’ll eat my hat.’ A very battered one, by-the-bye, which it would have required rather a strong stomach to digest.
‘The fact is, Mr. Roberts,’ continued Wentworth, ‘I consider an election is purely a matter between a candidate and his constituents, and no one else has a right to interfere. I should be glad of all the local strength I could get. That would show the electors we’re in earnest in the matter; but as to getting strangers down from town to dazzle the people with rhetorical fireworks, I really don’t care about it. I really should not care to gain my election by such means. I think it great presumption even for a London committee, whether sitting at the Carlton or the Liberal Club, to seek to control the electors. It is something very serious to me, the freedom of election and the independence of the voters.’
‘Sir, you take matters too seriously. We all know electioneering is humbug, and the biggest humbug wins.’
‘I fear you and I could not agree, Mr. Roberts, and perhaps you had better take your talents to another quarter.’
‘And you mean to say, then, that you have no occasion for my services?’ said the collapsing Roberts, who seemed to become smaller every minute.
‘I do, indeed.’
‘Then, sir, I am sorry for you,’ said the indignant orator. ‘I came out of friendship; but I am a professional man, and I shall be under the unpleasant necessity of going to some other party. I believe Sir Watkin Strahan will be only too glad of my assistance.’
‘By all means try him,’ said Wentworth.
And the itinerant orator retreated, having first secured a trilling loan on the plea that his journey down to Sloville had quite cleaned him out, and that he had been disappointed of a remittance.
No sooner had the orator departed than another arrival was announced.
‘A gentleman from London.’
The Hon. Algernon Smithson, a fellow-member with Wentworth of the Mausoleum Club, was his name. In he rushed, protesting that he had called at the club, that he had gone to Clifford’s Inn, that he had come on to Sloville, just to see how his friend was getting on.
‘And is that all?’ asked Wentworth.
‘Well, now you mention it, I don’t mind telling you,’ was the reply, ‘that our party are rather uncomfortable about the state of things here, and Twiss, of the Treasury, asked me if I could not have five minutes’ chat with you, and so, you see,’ said the Honourable, with a jolly laugh, or, rather, an attempt at it, ‘like the good-natured donkey that I am, I’ve let the cat out of the bag. Perhaps that is bad policy; but, then, you and I, Wentworth, are men of the world, and I like to be straightforward.’
In most quarters it was considered that the Hon. Smithson was rather a cunning old fox.
‘The fact is, you Government people don’t want an independent candidate. Is not that so?’ asked Wentworth.
‘Why, you see, my dear friend, the circumstances of the case are somewhat peculiar. We are rather hard pushed, as you know, in the House; parties are evenly balanced. Now, Sir Watkin has a good chance here, and his connections are very numerous in this part of the world. He is of an old Whig family.’
‘Yes, I understand; he is to win the borough, and then to be repaid by a Government appointment. And if I throw him out?’
‘Why, then we lose a safe man. You are a very good fellow, Wentworth, but, then, you are only to be depended on when the Government is right. You would desert us to-morrow if we went wrong.’
‘I believe I should.’
‘And if you go to the poll you let in a Tory. Think of that. Our party will never forgive you. There will be a mark against your name as long as you live.’
‘I have an idea that there is something more important than the triumph of a party.’
‘What is that?’
‘The triumph of principle.’
‘Ah, that is so like you, Wentworth!’ said the Hon. Smithson, laughing. ‘Men like you are always in the clouds. We wire-pullers are the only practical men.’
‘And a pretty mess you’ve made of it. Now you’ve a Liberal Government on its last legs that four years ago had nearly a majority of a hundred.’
‘I own it – and I own it with sorrow. But I am here on business. I have a proposition to make.’
‘What is that?’
‘That you arbitrate.’
‘I am quite willing; but the question is, how to arbitrate, and that is rather a difficult one.’
‘Not at all; it is the easiest thing in the world. Get a public meeting, admit an equal number of the supporters of each candidate, and abide by the result.’
‘Which, if there has been fair play – if one party has not taken a mean advantage of the other – will leave matters just as they are.’
‘Well, then, let the meeting be an open one, and let the best man win.’
‘That won’t do. The richer man will be sure to pack it with his supporters.’
‘Well, then, refer it to a London committee.’
‘A committee of wealthy men, who are sure to favour the wealthiest candidate, with whom, possibly, they may be on friendly terms; and a rich man, with the deceitful returns of his paid canvassing, can always make out a more plausible case than a poor man. I have a plan,’ continued the speaker, ‘which might solve the difficulty.’
‘What is it?’
‘Let as many candidates go to the poll as like. Let them be ranged as Liberal or Conservative – for we have in reality no Tories now – let the votes all together be cast up, and let the man who has the highest number of votes on the winning side be the elected candidate. One advantage of such a system would be that it would create more interest in an election. The difficulty is at present to get people to take an intelligent interest in politics at all.’
‘Very good; but that is a question for the future.’
‘In the meanwhile,’ said Wentworth, ‘arbitration is a farce.’
Just before the visitor could ransack his brain for a fitting reply, the waiter (he was an Irishman and a comic genius in his way), in a tone of awe and eagerness, interrupted the tête-à-tête by announcing the arrival of Father O’Bourke.
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE IRISH PRASTE
There are three distinct classes of Roman Catholic priests – the ascetic and spiritual, the jolly and intellectual, the brutal and Bœotian. Of the first Cardinal Manning is the type. The second was presented to us in the person of Cardinal Wiseman, who made the Romanist priest as famous in his day as Cardinal Manning in ours. Of the third class you may see specimens every day in every Belgian town, and in many parts of England and Ireland. Father O’Bourke was a combination of the two latter types – a man of humour, a plausible speaker, a tremendous orator, and a man whose great art was to be conciliatory to all. He could be very rollicking over a glass of whisky-and-water, but his power was more physical than spiritual. He had something of a domineering tone, the result chiefly of his mixing with the low Irish who emigrate to England, where, like the Gibeonites of old, they become chiefly hewers of stone and drawers of water.
Mr. Wentworth received the priest with all due politeness, as he explained that he had come for a friendly chat.
‘I am delighted to hear it,’ said Wentworth. ‘I have been much in Ireland.’
‘And you learnt there, sir,’ said the priest, ‘that England is a very cruel country.’
‘I don’t see that, exactly,’ said Mr. Wentworth; ‘for fifty years we English have been trying to do all the good we can for Ireland.’
‘Ah, so you think, but I assure you, sir, that it is quite otherwise; yet all that we ask from England is justice. England is rich and powerful, and uses her riches and her power to oppress poor Ireland.’
‘How so?’
‘Sir, allow me to refer you to the history of my unfortunate country. There was a time when Ireland had a flourishing linen trade, but England, in her jealousy of Ireland, destroyed it.’
‘Well,’ said Wentworth, ‘I have been in Belfast, and was struck with the prosperity of the place, the respectability of its shops, the size of its warehouses, the extent of its harbours. I saw a large population all seemingly well employed, well dressed, and well fed, with no end of public institutions and newspapers, and all in consequence of that linen trade which you tell me the English have destroyed.’
‘Oh, sir,’ said the priest, ‘one swallow does not make a summer. If one town is fairly well off, that is no reply to the charge of poverty produced by the English. You’ve seen our harbour in Galway?’
‘I have been there, and, undoubtedly, it is a fine harbour.’
‘Indeed, sir, it is,’ replied the priest; ‘and, as you are probably aware, at one time it was intended to be the seat for a great Transatlantic trade.’
‘Yes, we all know that. We have, unfortunately, all heard of the collapse of the Galway Line. It is a sad sight to see the great warehouse standing there empty. I believe a good deal of money was lost by too confiding shareholders?’
‘Indeed, sir, you’re right; but what was the reason?’
‘Well, I really don’t recollect at this particular moment.’
‘Sir, the reason was the jealousy of the Liverpool shipowners. What do you think they did?’
‘I really can’t say.’
‘Well, as soon as the Liverpool shipowners saw the line was going to be a success, they came over to Galway and bribed the pilot to run the ship on the only rock there was in the harbour, and there was the end of the Galway Transatlantic Line.’
‘Of course, Father O’Bourke, I am not going to contradict you,’ replied Wentworth. ‘I am not a Liverpool shipowner, and know little about them; but I was not long ago in Galway, in the very harbour to which you refer, and while I was there a man said to me that Allan’s steamers used to call in there for emigrants, and I asked why they did not then. “Oh,” said he, “the fact was, that while they charged in Londonderry a penny a ton, and in Queenstown a halfpenny, in Galway the charges were sixpence a ton, and so the steamers were driven away.” Thus, you see, it was not the Liverpool shipowners, but the Galway people themselves, that drove the trade away. What do you say to that?’
‘Well,’ said the priest, rather confusedly, ‘the fact is, there are wheels within wheels; we do not want the people to emigrate.’
‘No, you fear you will lose your power over them if they do; but, for the sake of abusing England, you tell me that England ruined the Galway Steam Packet Company. I am inclined to believe it did nothing of the kind.’
‘But the landlords, what do you think of them?’
‘So far as I have seen them, they are a mixed lot, like all the rest of us – some good, some bad. I blame people who bid against each other in their madness to get a bit of land on which it is impossible for anyone to live. I blame the priests and the patriots and the landlords who for ages have winked at this, and allowed the people to sink into a state of degradation such as you see nowhere else. For miles and miles, as you know, Father O’Bourke, in many parts of Galway, you see fields covered with stones, and these fields are let off as farms. If the landlord resides on the estate the stones are cleared off, the soil is drained, and the tenant manages to make a living – not such as he could get in America, or Canada, or Australia, if he had pluck enough to leave the old country and emigrate, but a living of some kind. If he is under a bad landlord – a poor Irish squire, for instance – of course it is different. If the landlord does not reside upon the estate – unless he be a great English landlord, like the Duke of Devonshire – the tenant and the land have alike a bad time of it. But as the stars in their courses fought against Sisera, so the heavens are unpropitious to the small farmer. If he rises early and sits up late, and eats the bread of carefulness, all is in vain. In Liverpool there are five or six miles of docks filled with American corn and cheese and bacon. How can the small farmer, either in England, or Ireland, or Scotland, compete with that? “It is my belief,” said a Liverpool gentleman to me – who in the famine year went on a mission of mercy, and as a messenger of relief exposed himself to all the horrors of a Connemara winter – “that the small farmer could not get a living even if, instead of paying rent, rent were given him on condition of his taking the farm.”
‘I fear, Mr. Wentworth,’ said the priest, ‘you have looked at Ireland with prejudiced eyes.’
‘Not a bit of it. No one has been more friendly to the Irish than the Liberal Party, of which I am a member, and yet we are called infamous, and bloodthirsty, and base, and brutal. You know yourself here in England you live in perfect peace and security; you are allowed to go in and out amongst the people to make converts if you are so disposed. In Ireland, if I attempted to do anything of the kind, I should stand a good chance of a broken head.’
‘Well, sir, we are a warm-hearted, impulsive people, attached very strongly to the old religion – the religion of our forefathers.’
‘There is no doubt of that, sir,’ continued Wentworth; ‘wherever you go in Ireland, in the midst of all its dirt, and starvation, and wretchedness, and poverty, you see one man well dressed and well fed.’
‘And who may he be, sir?’
‘The parish priest.’
‘And why should he not be? Is not he the guide and shepherd of his flock? I suppose you will blame him next,’ said Father O’Bourke, reddening.
‘Yes, I do.’
‘What for?’
‘For his desertion of the people.’
‘Really, Mr. Wentworth, you are amusing. You make me laugh,’ said the reverend father, looking uncommonly angry. ‘Should the priest not take the part of the people?’
‘Certainly. But he does nothing of the kind. Is he not the partisan of the popular agitator? Does he not place himself by the side of men whose language is utterly false? Who stimulates the passions of the people to fever heat? who teach the poor Irish – ignorant as they are, assassins as I fear a few of them are, cowards as they are when human life is to be saved – that they have every virtue under heaven?’
‘Indeed, Mr. Wentworth,’ said the priest indignantly, ‘I know nothing of the kind. Ireland has been trampled under foot by the murdering English, and now we are within measurable distance of Home Rule.’
‘And what will be the good of that?’
‘That the Irish will have their rights at last; that we shall be free of English tyranny and English injustice.’
‘Yes, you will change King Stork for King Log. Irishmen are bound to quarrel. I was at Queenstown last summer, and taking up the Cork paper, I read an account of the meeting of the Harbour Commissioners. In the course of the meeting, one member denounced another as a humbug and miscreant of the vilest character, and said, old as he was, he was prepared to fight him with the weapons God had given him, and thereupon asked him to step into the next room and have it out. When I mentioned the matter to a priest, he said sarcastically, “Of course there are no rows in the British House of Commons.” I replied that the questions discussed there were more likely to lead to heated debate than the trifling matters a set of Harbour Commissioners would have to deal with. Furthermore, I added that when we did have a row, it was often begun by Irishmen, and generally connected with Irish affairs.’
‘Ireland must be governed by Irish ideas; that is all we want.’
‘Let us look at Scotland. England and Scotland were joined together, and the union was as much hated by the Scotch as the Irish union is hated by your people now. Look at England and Scotland now. Are they not one people – equally great, equally flourishing, equally happy under what was, at one time, a detested union? Why should not England and Ireland get on just as well? Had we given way to Scotch ideas, we should now be at loggerheads.’
‘Unfortunately, you see, in Ireland,’ said the priest, ‘public opinion is the other way.’
‘Public opinion! What public opinion have you, where boycotting and the bullet of the midnight assassin, who, coward-like, waits for his unsuspecting victim in a ditch or behind a stone wall, have created a reign of terror under which all freedom of thought and action is suppressed? Public opinion does not exist in Ireland. The Irish are down-trodden indeed. No Russian serfs are worse off.’
‘Nevertheless, in the heart of every Irishman there is a passionate desire for freedom which has taught her sons to lead heroic lives and to die heroic deaths. Think of Emmet, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, and many others, whose names will live in immortal song.’
‘By all means. They had much to complain of – though they sought a remedy the wrong way, and suffered in consequence. The Ireland of their day was bad enough; but the Ireland of to-day is different.’
‘Different indeed,’ said the priest proudly. ‘Now we are a united people; we have the great American nation on our side.’
‘Shall I tell you what an American lady said to me the other day, as I saw her off in a Cunarder for New York?’ asked Mr. Wentworth.
