Chapter IV: Part I: The National Outlook (4)

Mr. Vernon Harcourt, in some of his late speeches, has placed
himself in striking contrast with most of the other leading
politicians, both Liberal and Conservative, by speaking the truth.
For example, at the Druids' Dinner the other day, in discussing the
impost by which the incomes of a part of the people are taxed to
pay the expenses of the whole, instead of attempting to defend
confiscation with sophistry, and to stifle complaint with sneers,
he condemned the false and dishonest apology, alleged by financial
swindlers' advocates on behalf of the Income-tax, that it weighs
only on the rich who are well able to pay it, and he maintained
that, on the contrary, it falls "with the greatest severity on the
poorest of all the classes of the community--that which, upon
limited means and small profits, has to keep up a state of
respectability." The lie which Mr. Vernon Harcourt refuted is one
of those lies which Statesmen are very apt to tell in talking to
simpletons; lies coupled with truths, from which the generality of
people at public meetings have not sense enough to disentangle
them. It is quite true that the rich are well able to pay the
Income-tax; but to say that the Income-tax weighs only on them is
telling a falsehood which transcends common lying. The rich, as a
rule, can afford to live up to their incomes, and it matters
nothing to wealthy people whether their incomes are taxed, or
duties are imposed upon the luxuries on which they expend them. The
class rightly described by Mr. Harcourt as the poorest of the
country consists of persons under the necessity of living as much
within their incomes as possible. They need to make all the
provision that ever they can against ruin constantly staring them
in the face. The Income-tax, substituted for indirect taxation,
wrings from them the savings they ought to put by, and, by way of
compensation, offers them the advantage of buying cheapened
superfluities, which, how cheap soever, are too dear for them at
any price. Thus are their slender incomes in large measure
confiscated by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and amends are made
them with facilities to squander the rest.

MY LADY: "I'm afraid I must give up the pine-apple, Mr. Green! Eight shillings is _really_ too much!"

SUCCESSFUL COLLIER: "Just put 'un up for _me_, then, Master. 'Ere's 'arf a sovereign; and look 'ere--yer may keep the change if yer'll _only tell us 'ow to cook 'un_!"]

[Sidenote: _Colliers and Cormorants_]

References to the champagne-habit among the miners abound throughout this year. A picture shows a miner buying a pine-apple which a lady could not afford. Their practice of travelling first-class is also reprobated. But the bitterest explosion of _Punch's_ wrath against the pampered aristocrats of industry was provoked by a speech in which John Bright complacently dwelt on "the growth of material prosperity and comfort in every class." To this _Punch_ vehemently demurred:--

Clerks of all kinds, Civil servants, fund-holders and annuitants
with fixed incomes, landowners, doctors, lawyers, and professional
men in general, is that so? Do you find it so?

When Mr. Bright said "every class," did he not mean to say, or, at
least, should he not have said "certain classes"? It is quite true
that the shoddy class, and the class of great speculators, have
prospered exceedingly, to as great an increase of their material
comfort as increasing wealth could procure them. A proportionate
growth of material comfort and prosperity has obviously been
experienced by the operatives and mechanics, otherwise called the
Working Classes--although there are classes who may be said to do
some little work, other than manual labour, to be sure. Do not
coal-miners for a fair day's work obtain at least a full two days'
wages; do they not drink champagne; and have not they and the rest
of our flesh-and-blood amongst them, drunk us out of the Alabama
difficulty? They have grown in content too--the Striking Classes.
They and the other classes that grasp with one hand and squander
with the other, and go on grasping and squandering, and thereby
raising prices higher and higher every day, they, all of them,
indeed are without doubt increasingly prosperous and comfortable,
but they are not everybody. There are a very great many other
people besides, who constitute everybody else, and these, so far
from being more prosperous and comfortable than they once were, can
now no longer afford the luxuries, or even the necessaries, they
then could, but have to go without.

The ugly phrase about the Alabama claims was not _Punch's_ own coinage, but he was not in a mood to mince his words where the miners were concerned. The charges against overpaid workmen and profiteers have a strangely familiar ring. And so has the reference, though not under the now familiar name, to the practice of "Ca' Canny," which, however, had been in occasional use for many years before _Punch_ suggested, in 1874, that it might be met by reprisals:--

COLLIERS AND CORMORANTS

The _Sheffield Daily Telegraph_ informs consumers, already
subjected by producers to excessive extortion, that at
Motherwell:--

"At a mass meeting of Scotch miners on Thursday, 3,000 colliers
resolved to work only four days per week, and only eight hours per
day, in order to reduce the output, and to keep up prices."

But suppose the butchers and poulterers combined against them, as
they combine against the public, what then? And could not
the vintners agree to raise "these rapacious colliers' Champagne to
some four or five pounds a bottle? Perhaps they will try.

Already Lord Shaftesbury had spoken plainly on the results of that "enormous increase of wages which had lately taken place in nearly every class of working men," even going to the length of endorsing the view that high wages, when unaccompanied by self-control, were the curse of the working classes:--

Of course, where economy and prudence were practised the condition
of the Working Man should be improved by higher wages; but there
was recklessness and improvidence. The sudden increase of money had
been productive of the greatest possible mischief, and so long as
these habits continued he could not but think that an increase of
wages was a positive infliction to the Working Man, his wife, and
his children.

This bold statement prompted _Punch_ to reduce the argument to an absurdity, or something near it, by suggesting that the true way of planting the spirit of self-control in the minds of the people would be simply to lower their wages to the requisite standard. Simultaneously he vindicates the character of the working classes for thrift and sobriety in the following ironical eulogium:--

The Working Classes, it is surely not too much to say, spend every
little increase of wages they obtain by their harmless strikes
chiefly in the education of their children, and in the purchase of
the appliances needful to make home happy. If they are at all
extravagant is it not in books, and in the dress which some of them
are a little too apt to lavish on their wives? For the vast
improvement evident in their habits we have to thank not only the
Licensing Act, but also the Trades' Unions Act; and moreover the
Conservative Reform Bill, which has rendered them, as Mr. Lowe
said, our masters--if not their own.

FIRST RUFFIAN: "Wot was I hup for, and wot 'ave I got? Well, I floor'd a woman and took 'er watch, and I've got two years and a floggin'."

SECOND RUFFIAN: "Ha! _I_ flung a woman out o' the top floor winder; an' I've on'y got three months!"

FIRST RUFFIAN: "Ah, but then _she was yer wife_!"]

[Sidenote: _Punch and Capital Punishment_]

The reference to working men's wives is especially ironical, for _Punch_ was at this time engaged in a vigorous campaign of protest against the very lenient sentences passed on men for brutal assaults on their wives. References to this subject abound in these years in prose and verse and cartoons, culminating in the year 1874. He strongly supported resort to flogging in such cases. We have already noticed the modification, indeed the practical abandonment, of his old hostility to capital punishment. The cause of this conversion is curious. It is hardly too much to say that it was largely the result of a remarkable speech made by John Stuart Mill--a true humanitarian if ever there was one--on the measure introduced in April, 1868, to make executions private. _Punch_, though he often differed from Mill, had the greatest respect for his fearless independence and integrity, and was evidently profoundly impressed by Mill's speech[5] in reply to Mr. Charles Gilpin (the Member for Northampton), who had argued in favour of the abolition of capital punishment, and we find the following admirable summary of it in his "Essence of Parliament":--

The speech of the night was that of Mr. Mill, who approved of many
of the labours of the "philanthropists," but said that they ought
to know when to stop. To deprive a criminal of the life of which he
had proved himself unworthy--solemnly to blot him out from the
fellowship of mankind, and from the catalogue of the living--was
the most appropriate and the most impressive mode in which society
could deal with so great a crime as murder. Imprisonment would be
far more cruel, and less efficacious. None could say that this
punishment had failed, for none could say who had been deterred,
and how many would not have been murderers but for the awful idea
of the gallows. Do not bring about an enervation, an effeminacy in
the mind of the nation; for it is that to be more shocked by taking
a man's life than by taking all that makes life valuable. Is death
the greatest of all earthly ills? A manly education teaches us the
contrary; if an evil at all, it is one not high in the list of
evils. Respect the capacity of suffering, not of merely existing.
It is not human life only, not human life as such, but human
feelings, that should be held sacred. Moreover, taking life for
murder no more implies want of respect for life than fining a
criminal shows want of respect for property. In countries where
execution is morbidly disliked there is no abhorrence of the
assassin. Mr. Mill added that we had been in danger of reducing all
our punishments to nothing; and, though that disposition had
stopped, our penalties[6] for brutal crimes (for which he earnestly
recommended the Scourge) were ridiculously light, and ought to be
strengthened.

[Footnote 5: It is strange that in the full account of Mill's Parliamentary activities given by Sir Leslie Stephen in his article on Mill in the D.N.B. no mention is made of this speech. Nor can I find any reference to it in Bain's _Reminiscences_.]

[Footnote 6: Mill's actual words were "flogging--a most objectionable punishment in ordinary cases, but a particularly appropriate one for crimes of brutality, especially crimes against women." (Hansard, 3rd series, Vol. cxci., p. 1,054.)]

[Sidenote: _The Organ Grinder Nuisance._]

It will be noted that Mill here met the argument which _Punch_ had advanced in earlier years as to the relative severity of long imprisonment and capital punishment, and answered it on the humanitarian ground that the former was more cruel as well as less efficacious. Mill, as we notice elsewhere, had more than anyone else shaken _Punch's_ hostility to woman suffrage, but the effect of his speech on capital punishment was even greater. It must not be forgotten, however, that Mill had been in the forefront of the movement for securing the prosecution of General Eyre for his drastic suppression of the riots in Jamaica. _Punch_ supported General Eyre throughout, and it may well have been that on the question of capital punishment he was influenced by the principle _fas est et ab hoste doceri_, even though the opponent was undermining his own position. On more general grounds one can well understand that _Punch_, as an independent observer and thinker, would admire and be impressed by the candour and detachment from party ties which marked Mill's political career.

The change in _Punch's_ views on the claims of Labour, especially organized labour, has already been sufficiently illustrated. But it did not prevent his espousing the cause of workers where the conditions were bad, the hours long and the pay inadequate. _Punch's_ protracted campaign against the organ grinders was no doubt to a considerable extent due to Leech's sensitive nerves, and to sympathy with brain-workers such as Babbage, the mathematician, who declared that "one quarter of his entire working power had been destroyed by audible nuisances," but his support of Mr. Bass's Bill in 1864 was largely based on the fact that the business was conducted by undesirable aliens, and that the Italian _padrone_ was an employer of sweated labour. In 1871 there is a cartoon satirizing the strong measures taken by the police against a demonstration of child match-makers at a time when adult agitators were allowed to preach Revolution and Communism in Hyde Park, and in the same year and month, when a post-mistress was convicted of theft and forgery, the evil is traced to the temptation to which underpaid officials were subjected. _Punch_ had already predicted that in any national emergency the patriotism of the mercantile marine could be implicitly relied on, a prophecy splendidly realized in the Great War, and in 1873 he lent a vigorous helping hand to Samuel Plimsoll in his campaign against the "Coffin-Ships":--

Let horrified shipowners never so oft
His charges, indignant, fling back,
I call him the cherub who sits up aloft
To keep watch for the life of Poor Jack!

POLLY: "Oh, dear Jack! I can't help crying, but I'm so happy to think you're not going in one of those _dreadful ships_!"

JACK: "What, Davy Jones's decoy ducks! No, no, lass--never more. Thanks to our friend Master Plimsoll, God bless him!"]

Simultaneously _Punch_ printed a cartoon assuming that "Jack" would never again be sent to sea in one of "Davy Jones's decoy ducks." This was rather premature, as Plimsoll's campaign to secure the compulsory load-line which began in 1870, and in which he showed more zeal than discretion, did not lead to legislation until 1876. But with all his faults Plimsoll earned his title of "The Sailor's Friend" and justified _Punch's_ salutation.

THE CHURCHES

The annals of Church and State history were rich in events of prime importance during the years 1857-1874. When one reflects that this short period witnessed the removal of Jewish disabilities, the publication of _Essays and Reviews_, the much-canvassed appointments of Temple and Stanley, the resounding controversies which arose over Colenso and Jowett, the Mackonochie and Purchas trials, and the Disestablishment of the Irish Church, it will be seen that _Punch_, in view of the keen interest he had taken from the very first in the relations of Church and State and Society, found an almost embarrassing wealth of material for comment and criticism. On all these subjects he had a good deal to say, and he said it with very much the same mixture of intolerance and common sense, of rationalism and reverence which marked his utterances in earlier years. He professed to represent the majority of English Protestants: he was avowedly Erastian in his maintenance of the supremacy of the Law Courts in all cases; he was the unrelenting enemy of Extreme Ritual, the Confessional, and any attempts to revive monasticism; and on occasion he was ready to bang the "No Popery" drum as loudly as ever.

When Béranger died in 1857, his burial prompted a tribute in verse which begins with the lines:--

Ah Béranger, you brave old singer,
Of all the things you hated worst,
That felt your lash's lustiest stinger
Tyrant and Jesuit were first.

In _Punch's_ view there was nothing to choose between the two. But his hostility was not confined to one Order: it embraced Vaticanism in the widest sense, and there were many moments when he anticipated, and acted on, Gambetta's phrase, "Le cléricalisme, c'est l'ennemi." Thus, to take one instance, the demonstration of Irish Roman Catholics at Blackheath at the close of 1862 moved him to fury. It was the time of the French occupation of Rome, and the spectacle of these "Irish Yahoos" hurrooing for the Pope and groaning for Garibaldi was altogether too much for _Punch_. He would have quenched their zeal for the "temporal absolutism" of the Pope with water from a fire-engine, and he described the demonstrators as "prepared to shed the last drop of their blood if the perpetual enslavement of the Romans should require that precious sacrifice." The French, by their intervention, were only "propping by force the rule of superstition." This was just after Garibaldi had been wounded at Aspromonte, and when the bullet was removed _Punch_ said that this, at any rate, was a true relic. Rome--Papal Rome--was to him the Scarlet Lady, a red rag to John Bull.

As a set-off to this special hostility to the Roman Communion, it is only fair to admit that other Churches and Sectarianism generally came in for a great deal of shrewd and, at times, bitter criticism. _Punch_ was by no means an orthodox Churchman. Kingsley and Maurice and Stanley were his heroes. He stood for comprehension and toleration, and fair play for the "Higher Criticism." He had far more sympathy with underpaid curates than opulent bishops--indeed, he had little respect for the episcopal bench, if we except Temple and Tait.

The Sabbatarianism of Evangelicals, Presbyterians, and Nonconformists generally, continued to excite him to indignation or derision--as when in 1858 Sunday walking was tabooed by some Scots fanatics, who also sought to stop all Sunday sailings, or when early in 1861 a controversy arose in Scotland as to whether the sale of milk was permissible on that day.[7]

[Footnote 7: Within our own times the milking of cows on Sunday was objected to by Scottish Sabbatarians.]

In 1868 the Lord's Day Observance Society addressed a memorial to the Brighton Railway Company against Sunday trains, which ended as follows:--

"Lastly, as recognizing the Christian principle of a particular
Providence, we cannot conceal from ourselves the conviction of the
signal instances of the Divine displeasure in two accidents on the
Sabbath Day, one of which in the Clayton Tunnel ended in the
hurrying of several lives in a moment of time into eternity and
which, in a financial point of view, resulted in a loss to the
proprietary of not less than £50,000."

_Punch_ acidly comments on the authors of this "pretty specimen of snuffle," that they evidently know no more about the Grand Prix than they do about the Tower of Siloam.

The notion that Sunday should be a day of gloom and that religion should be divorced from cheerfulness found no support in _Punch_. A few years later, that is in 1871, he records with amazement the utterance of a Scottish minister who, at a children's _soirée_ held at Kincardine, forbade them to applaud, and told them "there would be nothing of that kind, and no laughter in Heaven." In the same year, under the heading of "Sabbatarian Progress," we read:--

The Sunday Closing Bill's referred
To a select committee,
We view concession to absurd
Fanaticism with pity.

It was the same year that _Punch_ got into hot water over a picture of Keene's. In it an old lady remarks to a guest: "They're all alike, my dear. There's our Susan (it's true she's a Dissenter), but I've allowed her to go to Chapel three times every Sunday since she has lived with me, and I assure you she doesn't cook a bit better than she did the first day!!" The Young Men's Christian Association at Dover, in consequence of this flippancy, decided that they would not take in _Punch_ as being a paper hostile to religion. _Punch_ displayed a ribald impenitence, making great play with the speeches delivered by the Mayor, Mr. Knocker, and a Mr. Mowll, and the hostile decree was rescinded shortly afterwards.

[Sidenote: _Glaring Contrasts in the Church_]

When the scandal of the sale by public auction of pews in fashionable churches came up in 1858 it was used as a stick with which to beat Puseyism. But when the Bishop of Exeter, on April 23, made an eloquent appeal in connexion with the want of church accommodation for the people, denounced the pew system as illegal, and declared that to seat only fifty-eight per cent. of the inhabitants of London 670,000 sittings would be required, _Punch_, forgetting his ancient feud with "Henry of Exeter," congratulated him on these gleams of real liberality. But what chiefly concerned _Punch_ as a Church Reformer were the glaring contrasts which existed in the "richest and poorest Church in the world." He was disgusted at the "snobbery" of the archbishops in kindly sanctioning a Registry for Curates, like a Registry for Servants:--

... It would appear from these figures [quoted from _The Times_],
that Curates are expected to perform the cure of souls about as
cheaply as the salters work the cure of herrings. Well, _Floreat
Ecclesia_! and Heaven bless the Bishops! Of course, it's all just
as it should be, or the Registry of Church Servants would never
have been sanctioned. The Bishops have full knowledge of the
present scale of wages at which Curates may be hired, and by
sanctioning the registry they, of course, approve the scale. So,
_Floreat Ecclesia_! and Heaven bless the Bishops! The Curates are
the men-of-all-work in the Church, and receive as recompense a
maid-of-all-work's wages. Proportionally, their pay is really not
much more: for they have to live like gentlemen, which kitchen
servants have not.

"Ah, Bishop, what a heavenly sermon that was of yours last Sunday, about worldliness and the vanities of the flesh!--it nearly made me cry! And I say, Bishop, _how hard it hit you and me_!!!"]

When the question of revising and shortening Church Services was discussed in the same year, _Punch_ suggested as an alternative the discontinuance of all sermons except on special occasions. But the most pointed of his criticisms throughout this period are directed against Ritualism and in particular the use of the Confessional. High Anglican Ritualism was to him the Chambermaid of the Vatican. As for the Confessional, it was "a dangerous and disgusting practice."

[Sidenote: Father Ignatius]

In the autumn of 1858 _Punch_ printed a cartoon on "Soapy Sam's" dangerous flirtation with the Scarlet Lady, accompanied by a letter advocating more drastic treatment of those who practised the Confessional, and later on in the year Tait, then Bishop of London, is applauded for his intention to deal faithfully with Ritualists and credited with saying: "You must not bring your toys to Church." _Punch's_ attacks on the Ritualists exhibit a steady crescendo in freedom and even brutality through the 'sixties, and, admitting the sincerity of his dislike, little excuse can be found for the publication of such tasteless pictures as that, for example, of the sentimental young lady who observes to her sister, _à propos_ of a sandalled curate, that "it is no use working slippers for him, and mother says he doesn't wear braces." Throughout the years 1864 and 1865 the vagaries of Brother, or Father Ignatius (the Rev. Joseph Leycester Lyne) are held up to unqualified contempt. But this "Histrio Anglicanus," as _Punch_ called him, invited ridicule by his extravagances and those of his troop of mimic monks. The point of _Punch's_ attack was that they were not real members of a monastic order, but mountebanks who played at being Romanists and occasionally imposed on Roman Catholics by their "profane tomfoolery." Father Ignatius, moreover, was doubly obnoxious to _Punch_, for he was not only a mock monk, but an extreme obscurantist who fulminated against the Higher Criticism and all liberal theologians. No quarter was therefore given to him in verse or prose. He is treated in "Spoiling the Game" as a dangerous lunatic:--

Brother Ignatius wears a monk's gown
(A strait waistcoat were suitable wear),
Brother Ignatius shaveth his crown--
'Twould be well were his whole head shaved bare.

ARDENT RITUALIST: "Oh, Athanasius, it's charmingly becoming!"]

At this time Father Ignatius was established in Norwich; it was in after years that he moved to Llanthony Abbey in the Black Mountains, a most appropriate choice of residence; and the campaign of contempt reached a ribald climax in the issue of July 15, 1865, which contained "A Modern Gregorian Tone: a Chaunt pointed according to the Use of Norwich." This Chaunt, which was founded on an actual dissension amongst the brotherhood, gives an extremely diverting account of the mutiny provoked by the rigorous dietary imposed by the Superior--with dispensations in his own favour. It is "funny without being vulgar." But the prose article on the next page, "Ignatius and his Monkeys," deviates into scurrility at the outset:--

It is not true that Brother Ignatius and the monks, his associates,
have removed from their monastery at Norwich to the Zoological
Gardens, Regent's Park, and there taken up their abode in the
Monkey House.

Where _Punch_ showed a want of justice as well as of perspective was in treating all or nearly all Ritualists as if they were on the same level with Father Ignatius. In 1869, when Mr. Mackonochie maintained the claim of "Church Courts for Church Causes," _Punch_ was not content with declaring that parsons were unfit to do legal justice; he challenged them to declare whether they were prepared to emulate the example and martyrdom of Becket; he bade them get their heads shaved or betake themselves to Rome. The "Pastoral to Mr. Mackonochie and Co." shows a slightly more conciliatory spirit, and admits that they were gentlemen and scholars, and did a great deal of practical good and hard work among the poor. None the less _Punch_ charges them with playing a game--"a game dangerous to your own morality and that of your party-spirited followers, who almost believe in your infallibility." Hence _Punch's_ final advice: "If you cannot become wholly Roman or wholly Greek, _set up for yourselves_, but do not remain the ecclesiastical mermen you are at present."

The Purchas case was treated lightly at first in the lines on "The Dean and the Parson":--

DEAN OF RIPON TO PARSON PURCHAS

DEAN (Sings)--

The Judges have spoken. Now don't be irascible:
Off with your Tunicle, Stole, Alb and Chasuble.

PARSON P. (Sings)--

That's true, Mr. Dean, but they also declare
That a cope in Cathedrals all clergy must wear
On high days and Sundays--

DEAN (Sings _fortissimo_)--

What me wear a cope!
On Sunday or Anyday
Go to the ---- Pope. (Exeunt in opposite directions.)

[Sidenote: _A Ritualist A B C_]

But _Punch_ was seriously annoyed by the report of a meeting of Ritualists at which it was unanimously resolved to disobey the judgment of the Privy Council; and made no secret of his satisfaction when the Archbishop of Canterbury "turned down" the protest of 5,000 Anglicans headed by Pusey. A little earlier he had published an A B C for youthful Anglicans, showing a considerable knowledge of, but absolutely no respect for vestments. It may suffice to quote two entries:--

T is the Thurible, whose very smell
Incenses the people and makes them rebel.

* * * * *

Y is the Yeoman who now never enters
His old Parish Church, and has joined the Dissenters.

These jocularities, though not delicate, may pass. The worst examples of _Punch's_ controversial zeal were prompted by the Confessional; and the worst of all is the set of verses headed, "A good sound Confession," describing how a priest was soundly horsewhipped and kicked downstairs by an irate husband who returned home to find his wife on her knees before her Confessor. The priest, be it added, unctuously professes to have enjoyed his flagellation as an exquisite mortification.

It is pleasant to turn from these exhibitions of virulent if honest antipathy to the treatment of those controversies in which freedom of thought was involved. _Punch's_ earlier verses on _Essays and Reviews_, published in 1861, are more distinguished for their wisdom than their elegance of versification:--

A WORD OF ADVICE TO THE BISHOPS

Denounce Essayists and Reviewers,
Hang, quarter, gag them or shoot them--
Excellent plans--provided that
You first of all refute them.

By all means let the Hangman burn
Their awful book to ashes,
But don't expect to settle thus
Their heterodox hashes.

Some heresies are so ingrained
E'en burning won't remove them,
A shorter and an easier way,
You'll find it--to disprove them.

Be this, right reverends, your revenge,
For souls the best of cures,
Essay Essayists to upset
And to review Reviewers.

The long and ignoble campaign, as a result of which Jowett was for ten years deprived of the emoluments of his office as Regius Professor of Greek at Oxford, roused _Punch_ in 1863 to a satiric and imaginary account of the proceedings in the "Small Debts and Heresies Court at Oxford."

Jowett, it need hardly be explained, was doubly obnoxious to the heresy-hunters. He had long been suspect for the liberality of his religious opinions; he had also contributed to _Essays and Reviews_:--

DE HAERETICO COMBURENDO

A little book[8] Professor Jowett made,
And argued not as one of truth afraid;
But Oxford Dons alike fear truth and Jowett,
And their proceedings not a little show it.

_Punch_ goes on to give utterance to the wishes of the obscurantists:--

Oh for a holocaust of heretics
With Jowett in one common van to mix,
For leave to burn, hang, quarter, disembowel,
Maurice and Williams, Temple, Wilson, Powell!

To teach admiring minds those Acts who follow
That Oxford toleration's wide of swallow,
As wide as from Geneva to Maynooth,
But one thing it won't tolerate--the truth!

[Footnote 8: This probably refers to his work on the Epistles of St. Paul (1855).]

[Sidenote: _Jowett and Colenso_]

_Punch_ returned to the charge just a year later, at the time of the vote in Convocation on the question of Jowett's salary:--

IN RE JOWETT

Heresy's seed is rank! Shall Jowett sow it?
Tell me not, sciolists, Greek's not theology:
As if there's not a heterodox philology
That can be wrapped up cunningly in articles,
Impregnate accents, propositions, particles,
Poisoning texts as strychnine poisons wheat.
The silly crows, no doubt, scoff at alarming;
"What's toxicology to do with farming?"
And peck, and peck and drop dead as they eat.
E'en so Greek roots poisoned may be by Jowett,
And who's to know it.

When the proposed statute to give Jowett a decent remuneration for his services was rejected, _Punch_ suggested that the Crown might make suitable amends for their persecution of the Regius Professor by making him a Bishop (March 26, 1864). The question of the salary was satisfactorily settled in 1865. The suggestion of the Bishopric was well meant rather than wise: a far more suitable sphere of activity and influence awaited him as Master of Balliol (1879-1893).

The famous case of Bishop Colenso, which synchronized with the Oxford heresy-hunt of Jowett and other contributors to _Essays and Reviews_, is dealt with very much in the same spirit. By way of introducing the subject to a generation who do not know Colenso as an arithmetician and take for granted the method of applying scientific criticism to scripture history, which he was the first English Bishop to adopt, it may be as well to state that while Bishop of Natal he had incurred the displeasure of his metropolitan, Dr. Gray, the Bishop of Cape Town, by the publication of his critical studies of the Pentateuch. Dr. Gray claimed the right to try and depose Colenso for heresy, and did so. Colenso protested against Gray's jurisdiction and appealed to the Crown, with the result that the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council pronounced the whole of the proceedings null and void. The episode created a stir by the side of which the Kikuyu controversy is reduced to insignificance. Colenso's searching historical criticisms did not merely alarm orthodox theologians; they estranged his friend, the broad-minded F. D. Maurice. _Punch_ was with Colenso in his refusal to acquiesce in Dr. Gray's claim to override the secular courts; he respected Colenso's fearless courage and honesty; but for the rest he declined to enter into the theological issues involved and hovered on the outskirts of the dispute:--

COLENSO AND CONVOCATION

Truth is great; must prevail;
Reason, Parsons, don't rail;
You will hinder, not help, her defence so.
But confute the man's sums;
You may then snap your thumbs
And make faces at Bishop Colenso.

Much neater and better, however, is the summary of the correspondence between the Bishop and the Archbishop of Canterbury given three weeks later:--

THE NATAL CORRESPONDENCE

I

My dear Colenso,
With regret,
We hierarchs, in conclave met,
Beg you, you most disturbing writer,
To take off your colonial mitre.
This course we press upon you strongly:
Believe me,
Yours most truly,
LONGLEY.
Lambeth.

II

My dear Archbishop,
To resign
That Zulu diocese of mine,
And own myself a heathen dark
Because I've doubts of Noah's Ark,
And feel it right to tell all men so,
Is _not_ the course for
Yours,
COLENSO.

Kensington.

[Sidenote: _Dean Stanley and Père Hyacinthe_]

Stanley was appointed to the Deanery of Westminster in 1863, and the lamentations of the _Record_, the organ of ultra-orthodox Evangelicalism, gave _Punch_ his opportunity:--

That the wisdom and justice of the appointment of Canon Stanley to
the Deanery of Westminster might be clear to everybody, the
_Record_ gives its certificate that such appointment is "a
melancholy fact." Disapprobation by the _Record_ having been thus
signified, of course every sensible person must now be convinced
that the Dean is the right man in the right place.

Comments of this sort add to the liveliness of newspaper controversy, but they do not conduce to the popularity of those who indulge in them. But at any rate they are an improvement on _Punch's_ references to the "viperine expectorations" of the editor of the _Tablet_ in earlier years.

The welcome extended to Père Hyacinthe in 1869 showed that _Punch_ was not restricted in his sympathies to Protestant heretics only. But we fear that his welcome was not entirely disinterested. In his verses on "Hyacinthus Redivivus," _Punch_ attacks Pius IX for favouring Père Hyacinthe as long as he was a winning card, and then rending him as a heretic. The lines are friendly, but reading between them one can detect a warning to M. Loyson to shun the dangers that beset the fashionable preacher in New York, whither he was then bound. We cannot resist the feeling that _Punch_ was more pleased by the Pope's embarrassment in dealing with this modernist than anxious to see Romanism reformed from within.

In the high affairs of Church and State the year 1868 was a great landmark. After a long debate Gladstone's Resolutions on Irish Disestablishment were carried against the Government on April 5. The discussions were followed closely in _Punch's_ "Essence of Parliament," and two interesting points are brought out. Disraeli maintained that the House had no mandate, as we now say, to deal with the Irish Church. They ought not to be asked at eight days' notice to repeal the Union. On the other hand, Gladstone argued that it would be ultra-democratic, if not anarchic, to say that Parliament could not act without appeal to the constituencies. The Government were beaten by 328 votes to 272, but remained in office till the autumn, when they appealed to the country. By the return of a Liberal majority Gladstone was left free to introduce the first instalment of his scheme for pacifying Ireland. This view is clearly set forth in _Punch's_ doggerel stanzas headed, "Out and In":--

Gone is Dizzy,
From the busy
Cares of State repose he can.
In comes Gladdy
Who of Paddy
Means to make a loyal man.

_Punch_ acquiesced in the measure, but showed some anxiety lest it should be interpreted as a concession to Fenian intimidation. His cartoon, which bore the inscription "Justice to Ireland," shows the figure of Justice blindfolded, with sword and scales, enthroned in the background. In front and at her feet Gladstone, laying the Irish Church on a flaming altar, says: "This is a sacrifice to Justice, not to Papists or Assassins. And if they----" Turning their backs on him are a sulky-looking priest and a Fenian desperado levelling a gun. The Bill for Disestablishing and Disendowing the Irish Church was introduced by Gladstone on March 1, 1869. A month later _Punch_ published another cartoon entitled, "Disendowment and Disarmament." Here a Fenian says to a priest: "Be jabers, your Riv'rence, it's spoilin' our thrade they are entirely"; and his Riv'rence replies: "Thrue for you, me boy." During the course of the debates the "Essence of Parliament" contains an entry with an unpleasantly familiar ring:--

_Thursday_ (_April 29_). Another and another Irish murder. The
desire of Members to know that the Government is doing something
cannot be blamed. The Irish Secretary stated that the Executive
would proceed with the utmost vigour, but deprecated the entering
into details. There is a Ruffian called the Mayor of Cork, who has
presided at a dinner to two of the released Fenian convicts, and
who eulogized O'Farrell, who wounded the Duke of Edinburgh. Mr.
Gladstone said that the fellow's language could not be too severely
condemned.

GHOST OF QUEEN ELIZABETH: "Agreed, have they? Ods boddikins! Gads my life, and marry come up, sweetheart! In _my_ time I'd have knocked all their addlepates together till they _had_ agreed!"]

John Bright, who had joined the administration as President of the Board of Trade, donned a court uniform and (if _Punch_ is to be believed) actually danced a quadrille at a Court Ball with the Princess of Wales as partner, is applauded for his eloquence in the House and rebuked for his unbridled vehemence outside it. Ministers mustn't bully, but think of their colleagues. They must, in short, wear a muzzle, and if Bright could not bear to wear one, he certainly had no right, _Punch_ argued, to be where he was. The debates in the Commons were fiery and protracted, and those who regarded the measure as one of confiscation secured important concessions, but the battle was really joined in the Upper House. Lord Derby maintained a _non possumus_ attitude, but the eloquence of Magee (then Bishop of Peterborough) and the arguments of Cairns did not avail to prevent thirty-six Conservative Peers from voting with the Government. But, even so, the Lords' amendments threatened a constitutional crisis, only averted by the compromise arrived at by Granville and Cairns in July, 1869. The Bill became law and was put into operation on January 1, 1871. That _Punch_ entertained misgivings as to its effect in encouraging intimidation may be gathered from his cartoon, "How not to do it," in which "Pat" threatens Britannia with unspeakable things if she does not release those noble patriots, the Fenian prisoners.

[Sidenote: "_Mr. Disraeli's Religion_"]

The prevalence of religious cant and snobbery and sensationalism is frequently chastised in the 'sixties and 'seventies. In the spring of 1866 _Punch_ copies an advertisement in which a young man wished "to find a home with a pious family, where his Christian example would be considered sufficient remuneration for his board and lodging." And in January, 1870, he pilloried an even more glaring example of complacent and well-connected religiosity: "A Gentleman, born and bred, kinsman of an Earl ... will preach Christ." The infection of the pulpit by sensation is deplored in 1867 _à propos_ of an announcement in the _Islington Gazette_:--

"Caledonian Road Chapel.--Next Sunday Sermons will be preached,
afternoon, by Mr. Geo. B. Clarke, a Black Brother, from Jamaica,
Son-in-law of the late excellent Paul Bogle. Evening, by Mr. Henry
Varley the Butcher, from Notting Hill, whose 'words sink, like
flame-tipped darts, into the souls of his hearers.'"

It is easy to make too much of isolated instances of self-conscious and self-advertising rectitude. There is far greater justification for the animated protest which _Punch_ registered against the attempts made to discredit Disraeli at the time of his first Premiership on the score of his religion or irreligion. Disraeli had to some extent anticipated this criticism when in his first speech as Premier, on March 5, 1868, he said that he knew that in his position there were personal and peculiar reasons which would aggravate the burden and augment the difficulties. On this _Punch_ made the following comment:--

People can interpret these words as they please. Those who give
them a significance connected with birth, and who have intelligence
enough to take a large view of pedigree, may note that they were
uttered by a man descended from one of the Hebrew families expelled
from Spain by the Inquisition, and who settled in Venice as
merchants.

The campaign of curiosity met with no encouragement from _Punch_, who returned to the subject a few weeks later under the heading, "The Modern Inquisition":--

Perhaps the Premier, who has now got to make a Bishop of Hereford,
will write one more letter and satisfy the British Booby on the
subject of "Mr. Disraeli's Religion," which appears to afflict
divers. Scarcely a day passes but some new conjectural
impertinence, or some particularly unnecessary information is
tossed out. Mr. Disraeli knows that _Punch_ has not refrained from
a great lot of good-natured allusions to the nationality of which
the former is so justly proud; and it is possible that we may have
many another cartoon of which he will be the smiling or scowling
hero. But we protest--and we are as good a Protestant as Mr.
Hardy--against sneaking into a gentleman's study, and taking notes
as to whether Prayer Book, Missal, Watts's Hymns, Koran, or
Shaster, be most thumbed, and publishing inferences. We do not see
whose business it was to announce that Mr. Disraeli had no
particular religion until he was five, and that he was then taken
by Samuel Rogers to Hackney Church, especially as we believe the
latter statement to be false, Mr. Rogers and his father having been
regular attendants at the Unitarian Chapel at Hackney, of which the
celebrated Dr. Price was, in older days, Minister. Nor do we see
why the pastor of Hughenden should gratify vulgar curiosity by
proclaiming that the Premier has been a regular Church-goer for
seventeen years, and was a Communicant at Easter. Is this England
or America? We do not habitually admire French legislation, but the
late edict against ransacking Private Life is not without its
merits. Somebody will be asking about our religion next, and will
need all his own to bear the consequences.

In earlier years _Punch_, as we know, had overlooked Lord Shaftesbury's great services as a practical philanthropist in view of his Sabbatarianism. But he had learned to dissociate Lord Shaftesbury from the "snuffling sect" of Puritan killjoys, and in 1868 indulges in a eulogy of his Protestant zeal against Popery and Ritualism. The ballad on the insurrection in Spain, in the early winter of that year, shows no abatement of _Punch's_ distrust of Romanism. The end of the Temporal Power in 1870 was welcomed as the logical, inevitable, and desirable consummation of Italian unity: it made Italy, not the Vatican, mistress of Rome, and it was in keeping with the consistent policy of the paper that the Pope's pretensions as a peace-maker in 1871 should be roughly disputed. England, it is claimed, was the true pacificator of Europe, and Professor (afterwards Sir John) Seeley's observations in "How to keep the Peace" suggest the possibility of a League of Nations.

The end of this period was marked by the passing of a great divine, a famous bishop and the greatest of missionaries. In the memorial verses printed on April 13, 1872, _Punch_ recognized the true saintliness, the love of truth, the nobly righteous indignation of F. D. Maurice:--

The life of love he lived, the truth he spoke,
The seeds of good he sowed on earth remain.
In many brave hearts, eased from Evil's yoke,
The fruitful soul of Maurice lives again.

Incidentally it is noted that Maurice never received any preferment, bishopric, canonry, or deanery.

[Sidenote: _Wilberforce and Livingstone_]

The lines given below on Wilberforce, who is coupled with Lord Westbury, are largely inspired by the _de mortuis_ note. The writer begins by recording the worst that had been said of both--the slyness of the sleek priest, the sneers and scorn and mincing tones of the bitter lawyer. But now we know better, and recognize that the dove was blended with the serpent in both:--

And so, Life's judgment set to right by Death's,
Lay busy Bishop and keen Judge to rest;
And, by their coffins, think with bated breaths,
How good the worst of us, how bad the best.

CHORUS OF OLD WASHERWOMEN: "There! Take'em away--we can't be worrited with them things."

"If the seventy-five members of the Pan-Anglican Synod have not a single word to say upon any of the great questions, theoretical or practical, which concern the very existence of the Church of England, their impotent caution and misplaced decency will do more to endanger it than any external attack with which it is at present threatened."--_Pall Mall Gazette._]

Writing of Livingstone, always one of his heroes, _Punch_ does not agree with the view that his was a wasted life, or that a greater work of reclamation was to be done at home, and applauds the unselfishness, fearlessness, and vision of one who died in sight of evening rest and honours fairly won:--

By their own scale great souls gauge things and men;
Their ways and weights are not our weights and ways;
Only their vision goes beyond our ken,
Reaching to larger lights--diviner days.

It was in this larger vision that _Punch_ found the Church of England wanting, and when the first Pan-Anglican Synod met in 1867, he took as the text of his cartoon the acid comment of the _Pall Mall Gazette_ just quoted.

The question of Public Worship Regulation was already in the air, though it did not lead to legislation until the return of the Conservatives to power. On July 12, 1873, _Punch_ published a cartoon _à propos_ of the protest against Ritualism and the Confessional. Mr. Miall, M.P., a leader of the Liberation Society, is shown with two archbishops expressing his delight to find them so earnestly co-operating with him for the destruction of the State Church. A fortnight later _Punch_ complained that Dr. Thomson (the Archbishop of York) had misread the cartoon. What _Punch_ really meant was to suggest that by neglecting the representations of real Churchmen, and by tolerating the antics of Ritualism, the hierarchy were playing into the hands of the Church's enemies. But he still hoped that the Archbishops would stiffen their backs and carry out the spirit of Tait's threat against those who brought their toys to church. So when Archdeacon Denison, who supported the Confessional, denounced certain Bishops for their ultra-Protestantism, _Punch_ suggested that Denison's friends should present him with a triple cap (with bells).

EDUCATION

The worst of education, as Peacock remarks, is that there is no beginning and no end to it. But the subject is set about with other pitfalls and difficulties. It is one of the most important things in life; its annals have been adorned by great and even heroic names; yet the calling has never been free from gibes at the dominie and the gerund-grinder. And again, by the irony of fate it has been responsible for an unconscionable amount of dull and pedantic and cranky literature. There is no greater benefactor than a good schoolmaster; there is no greater bore than the "Educationist." _Punch_, though a comic journal, has not escaped the infection in dealing with the subject, but it is to his credit that on the whole he has resisted the temptation to indulge in untimely facetiousness, and has not been afraid to be serious when the occasion demanded.

Contending zealots, assisted by Parliamentary apathy, had effectually barred the progress of national education throughout the period treated in the previous volume. But the awakening had begun in 1858, though more than twenty years were to pass before Forster's Act was placed on the Statute Book. The debate on the Paper Duty in June, 1858, showed, at any rate, that all parties were at one in condemning this tax. Disraeli, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, could not afford to remit it, but _Punch_ read the signs of the times aright in his comment: "The House voted £563,435 for Educational purposes in order to qualify the people to read the books which the removal of the paper duty will place in their hands." It was reserved for Mr. Gladstone to make good this forecast. His famous series of Free Trade Budgets between 1859 and 1865 were quite as much the effect as the cause of national prosperity, but in 1865 "no one ventured to doubt Gladstone's financial omniscience. Everyone who paid less for his pound of tea or his newspaper could look upon him as a personal benefactor."[9]

[Footnote 9: Oman's _England in the Nineteenth Century_, p. 155.]

The judicious use of opportunity rather than genius may have been the secret of Gladstonian finance; but no such reserves are called for in appraising the merits of the series of Acts dealing with national education passed during his first Premiership. If one needs a practical illustration of the immense advance made in education in ten years, one need only compare the provisions of the Act of 1870 with the account of what _Punch_ calls an "anti-educational demonstration" in the Commons in July, 1860, when Palmerston was Prime Minister:--

There was a Bill for making it compulsory on the employers of the
labour of children under twelve years old, to have a certificate
that the child was learning to read and write, and had twenty hours
of teaching per month-nothing like an hour a day. But so monstrous
an Innovation frightened the House. Mr. Henley was pious, and said
that people were not to eat unless they worked, but were not
commanded to read and write; Mr. Buxton was humane, and said there
were thousands of children too idle, wicked or stupid to learn, and
their vested rights were not to be interfered with; Mr. Hardy took
the old Tory view, and said that the children of the poor were
taught quite enough to enable them to do the duties they were
intended for; and Mr. Baynes, as a Dissenter, declared the Bill to
be needless, and that the work of education was going on admirably.
Yielding to these irresistible arguments, the Bill was thrown out,
a majority of 122 to 51 deciding that the children of the English
poor want no assistance in the battle with the World, the Flesh and
the First Whig.

It was this debate, by the way, that prompted _Punch_ to recall the derivation of Parliament by a French etymologist from the two verbs _parler_ and _mentir_.

[Sidenote: _Education Act of 1870_]

A good beginning had been made with the Act providing efficient inspection of endowed and Grammar Schools in 1869, but the Elementary Education Act of 1870 was a measure of first-rate importance, which has affected our national life more vitally than any other passed in the last fifty years, unless we except the People's Representation Act of 1918. From the moment of its introduction _Punch_ realized its far-reaching influence. On March 26, 1870, he published the cartoon, "The Three R's, or Better Late than Never." Here we see Forster addressing a group of small school children, town and country types: "Well, my little people, we have been gravely and earnestly considering whether you may learn to read. I am happy to say that, subject to a variety of restrictions, conscience clauses, and the consent of your vestries--you may!" The conflict that led to the final compromise is indicated by two groups in the background: one amicably gathered round John Bull; the other including a bishop, a coronetted peer, a sour-visaged minister of the Chadband type, and an austere female.

CLERICAL EXAMINER: "What is your name?"

INCORRIGIBLE: "Biler, sir."

CLERICAL EXAMINER: "Who gave you that name?"

INCORRIGIBLE: "The _boys in our Court_, sir."]

The issues involved are set forth in a "long and grave letter" addressed by _Punch_ to "Master Gutterblood" in town, and "Master Chawbacon" in the country. Writing as their friend and well-wisher, sincerely anxious to see them properly taught, he deplores the obstacles hitherto put in their way by the "black-coats"--Parson, Priest and Nonconformist Minister. He applauds Forster's plan, and specially condemns the action of the secularizing party who would exclude all religion from schools, since the bulk of English people were in favour of some simple religious teaching:--

Those who are _now_ barring your road to school are not the
Churches, but those who insist that no Church at all shall have a
hand in your teaching when you have got there. I have been
accustomed to think that it was the Established Church's jealousy
of the Dissenters that kept you ignorant, now it looks as if you
were to be kept in the dark by the Dissenters' jealousy of the
Established Church, working with those who distrust and dislike
equally Church and Dissent, and all forms of religious Creed.

MR. PUNCH (to Bull A.1): "Yes, it's all very well to say 'Go to school!' How are they to go to school with those people quarrelling in the doorway? Why don't you make 'em 'move on'?"]