Bygones Worth Remembering, Vol. 1 (of 2)

and defamed them with that bitterness and contempt he had for partisans who lacked the sense of submission to the dictates of those superior persons who knew what was best for everybody, o

upon the line in the great gallery of literature. So brilliant is the work of Kingsley that it has imposed on so accomplished a connoisseur as

Thomas Hughes, and J. M. Ludlow. They became Christian Socialists not so much because they cared for Socialism, as Maurice owned his "object was not to Socialise society, but to Christianise Socialism." Startled by the dislike and even resentment against Christianity expressed by men of poverty and intelligence at being asked to adopt a belief which brought them no relief, Maurice, Kingsley, and their associates concluded that privation was the cause of alienation from the Church. In like manner Dissenters thought that it was the bad condition of industrial life which kept working people from chapel. None realised that alienation from

a Church Chartist-not one of the Chartists of real life whom I knew, who were current in Kingsley's days, who signed the famous document which Place drew and Roebuck revised. They had principles. They did not seek paternal government of friendly Churchmen, nor of Positivists, nor that nobly organised kind of passive comp

rom wilful misunderstanding, or from the "evil heart at enmity with God"-a mad doctrine beneath the notice of the average lunatic. Natural variety of intellect, the infinite hosts of personal views, and the infinitude of individual experience-which silently create new convictions-are not taken into acc

e worst." There was no reason why Kingsley should be a Chartist, since he had all he wanted secured, and had contempt in his heart for Chartist tenets. He wrote: "The Bible gives the dawn of the glorious future, such as no universal suffrage, free trade, communism, organisation of labour, or any other

issed at the introduction of the Queen's name. Mr. Hughes, then a young athlete, turned upon the old Six Points politician and said: "Any one who hissed at the Queen's name would have to reckon with him"-meaning that he would knock him down, or put him out of the meeting. If, at a Chartist meeting, one athletic leader had similarly threatened an old grey-

been at the Bolton Co-operative Congress at the time, I should have been at the same grave. When the news came of Maurice's death, it did not occur to his friend, Mr. Neale, that the Congress would pass a resolution in honour of Maurice. I suggested it to him, and he said to me, "You had better draw up the resolution," which I did, and moved it. It was unanimously and gratefully passed. T

it should have comprised social, instead of political reform, which was what all who were opposed to political freedom said. This only meant that he wanted Chartists to take up social, and drop political reform. This appears in the passage in which he said, "The Charter disappointed me bitterly when I

eral politics. Alton Locke himself was like his creator. Kingsley's acts were the acts of a friend, his arguments the arguments of an enemy; and Alton Locke, despite the nob

emoir, by T.

ere be any backbone of political emancipation in him, or whether his vertebra is of jell

"Felix Holt, the Radical." But when she comes to delineate the Radical, he tu

liot drew the Positivist Radical. Neither drew the sele

ith political causes. Anyhow, the Radical was always supposed to know what he was, and why he was what he was. Felix Holt was not built that way. George Eliot had greater power of penetrating into character than Kingsley, but she made the same mistake in Felix Holt that Kingsley made in Alton Locke. Felix Holt is a revolutionist from indignation. His social insurgency is based on resentment at injustice. Very noble is that form of dissatisfaction, but politic

l question was how to give every man a man's share in life. But I

benevolent but beguiling Tory. It was part of the Carlylean contempt of a ten-thousandth part of a voice in the "national palava." This meant distrust, not only o

l come. Hampered and incomplete as the suffrage is, it has put the workers on the way to obtain

ectations about men's characters, we are very much like the idiot who thinks he can carry milk in a can without a bottom. In my opinion the notions about what mere voting will do,

, the Radical," v

edition of

Cranborne, but without the bitterness and contempt by which we knew the genuine Salisbury mind. The Eliot spirit is better-the argument mo

elf at will an effectual obstacle to progress, and as a rule does so. The policy of seeking the best political condition in which social progress can be made, is Radicalism. The policy of contentment with things as they are, seeking social condition apart from politics, is Socialism, as it has been understood in England. "Felix Holt," like "Alton Locke," abounds in noble sentiments, exalts the character of working men, vindicates their social claims with eloquence. But Felix Holt was no more a Radical than Alton Lo

hapter, Mr. J. M. Ludl

s Cooper (Life, vol. i. p. 182), he expressly says: 'I would shed the last drop of my blood for the social and political emancipation of the people.' [The italics are mine.] Again, you misquote General Maurice's (not Mr. Maurice's) words, when you say that 'Maurice owned that his obje

(vol. ii. p. 13), but as I do not recollect being present (nor, I believe, were you) on the occasion, I cannot say which is right.

reform, and thought its pursuit unnecessary, as their social remedy would do everything for the people. I always dissented from this doctrine and resented it, as the politician, if you do not watch him, will come some day and throw the savings of a century into a sea of imperial blood. Mr. Ludlow quotes a letter from Kingsley to Thomas Cooper, in which he says he "would shed the last drop of his blood for the social and political emancipation of the people." What! for the "smoke of the pit"? as he described the agitation for the Charter. What! "shed his blood" for a "Morrison pill measure"-shed the last drop