Chapter IV: Sources of Benevolence

There is a common phrase which is likely to become a most powerful antagonist to any arguments that have been put forward in the foregoing pages: and I think it would be good policy for me to commence the attack, and endeavour to expose its weakness in the first instance. If you propose any experiment for remedying an evil, it is nearly sure to be observed that your plan is well enough in theory, but that it is not practical. Under that insidious word "practical" lurk many meanings. People are apt to think that a thing is not practical, unless it _has_ been tried, is immediate in its operation, or has some selfish end in view. Many who do not include, either avowedly, or really, the two latter meanings, incline, almost unconsciously perhaps, to adopt the former, and think that a plan, of which the effects are not foreknown, cannot be practical. Every new thing, from Christianity downwards, has been suspected, and slighted, by such minds. All that is greatest in science, art, or song, has met with a chilling reception from them. When this apprehensive timidity of theirs is joined to a cold or selfish spirit, you can at best expect an Epicurean deportment from them. Warming themselves in the sun of their own prosperity, they soothe their consciences by saying how little can be done for the unfed, shivering, multitude around them. Such men may think that it is practical wisdom to make life as palatable as it can be, taking no responsibility that can be avoided, and shutting out assiduously the consideration of other men's troubles from their minds. Such, however, is not the wisdom inculcated in that religion which, as Goethe well says, is grounded on "Reverence for what is under us," and which teaches us "to recognize humility and poverty, mockery and despite, disgrace and wretchedness, suffering and death, as things divine."

There is a class of men utterly different from those above alluded to, who, far from entertaining any Epicurean sentiments, are prone to view with fear the good things of this world. And, indeed, seeing the multiform suffering which is intertwined with every variety of human life, a man in present ease and well-being may naturally feel as if he had not his share of what is hard to be endured. The fanatic may seek a refuge from prosperity, or strive to elevate his own nature, by self-inflicted tortures; but one, who adds wisdom to sensibility, finds in his own well-being an additional motive for benevolent exertions. It is surely bad management when a man does not make a large part of his self-sacrifices subservient to the welfare of his fellow-men. In active life nothing avails more than self-denial; and there its trials are varying and multifarious: but ascetics, by placing their favourite virtue in retirement, made it dwindle down into one form only of self-restraint.

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I suppose there are few readers of history who have not occasionally turned from its pages with disgust, confusion, a craving for any grounds of disbelief, and a melancholy darkness of soul. It can hardly be otherwise, when you read, for instance, of the colossal brutalities of the Roman Emperors, many of whom indulged in a sportive cruelty to their fellow men, which reminds one of children with insects. When you find, again, some mighty Master of the World, renowned for valour, and for prudence, one of those emphatically called the "Good" Emperors, kindly presenting hundreds of men to kill each other for the amusement of the Roman multitude--when you are told that that multitude contained, what may have been for that age, good men, and gentle women--when, passing lower down the turbid stream of the recorded past, you read of Popes and Cardinals, Inquisitors and Bishops, men who must have heard from time to time some portions of the holy words of mercy and of love, when you find them, I say, counselling and plotting and executing, the foulest deeds of blood--when, descending lower still, you approach those days when law became the tyrant's favourite scourge, and you find the legal slave telling his master how he has interrogated some poor wretch "in torture, before torture, after torture, and between torture"--when you have some insight into what that thing torture was, by contrasting the hand-writing of the distracted sufferer before and after his examination--when, to your surprise, you read that these very victims of persecution, were themselves restless and dissatisfied, unless they could direct the arm of power against another persecuted race--and when, coming to your own day, you find that men, separated from you by distance, though not by time, can show the utmost recklessness of human life, if differently coloured from their own. Pondering over these things, your heart may well seek comfort in the thought that these tyrants were, or are, rude men, of iron frame, ready to inflict, ready themselves to suffer. It is not so. A Nero clings to his own life with abject solicitude. A Louis the Eleventh, who could keep other men in cages, wearies Heaven with prayers, and Earth with strange devices, to preserve his own grotesque existence. A James the First, who can sanction at the least, if not direct, the torture to be applied to a poor, old, clergyman, was yet in the main a soft-hearted man, can feel most tenderly for a broken limb of any favourite, have an anxious affection for "Steenie and Baby Charles," and an undoubted, and provident, regard for his own "sacred" person. What shall we say, too, of that Chancellor of his, a man, like his master, of a soft heart, full of the widest humanity, and yet, as far as we know, unconscious of the horror of those ill doings transacted in his own great presence? Why is it that I recall these things? Why do I bring forward what many of us, forgetting the iron weight with which the sentiments of his age press down even upon the mightiest genius, might look upon as a humiliating circumstance far greater than it is, in the life of a man we ought all to love so much? Is history a thing done away with, or is not the past for ever in the present? And is it not but too probable that we ourselves are occasionally guilty of things which, for our lights, are as sad aberrations as those which, in reading of the past, we have dwelt upon with the profoundest pity, and turned away from in overwhelming amazement? Are we quite sure that none of the vices of tyranny rest with us; and that we individually, or nationally, have not to answer for any carelessness of human life or for any indifference to human suffering?

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What is it that has put a stop to many of the obvious atrocities I allude to as disgracing the page of history? The introduction of some great idea, the recognition, probably, in some distinct form of the command "to do unto others as you would they should do unto you." And this is what is wanted with regard to the relation of the employer and employed. Once let the minds even of a few men be imbued with an ampler view of this relation, and it is scarcely possible to estimate the good that may follow. Around that just idea what civilization may not grow up! You gaze at the lofty cathedral in the midst of narrow streets and squalid buildings, but all welcome to your sight as the places where miserable men first found sanctuary; you pass on and look with pleasure at the rich shops and comfortable dwellings; and then you find yourself amongst ample streets, stately squares, and the palaces of the great, with their columns and their statues: and if then you turn your thoughts to the complex varieties of modern life, and the progress of civilization and humanity, may you not see the same thing there; how all that is good, and merciful, and holy, is to be traced up to some cathedral truths, at first little understood, just restraining rude men from bloody deeds, and then gradually extending into daily life, being woven into our familiar thoughts, and shedding light, and security, and sanctity, around us? And, as the traveller's first impulse, when he rises in the morning after his journey, is to catch a glimpse of that famous building which must ever be the thing most worthy of note in the city; so, in your travels, would you not look first for these cathedral truths, and delight to recognize their beneficent influence wherever you may meet with anything that is good in man?

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And now, reader, I have come to the close of this Essay. I do not assert that I have brought forward any specific, or even any new remedy of a partial nature, for the evils I have enumerated. Indeed I have not feared to reiterate hacknied truths. But you may be sure, that if you do not find yourself recurring again and again to the most ordinary maxims, you do not draw your observations from real life. Oh, if we could but begin by believing and acting upon some of the veriest common places! But it is with pain and grief that we come to understand our first copy-book sentences. As to the facts, too, on which I have grounded my reasonings, they are mostly well known, or might be so; for I have been content to follow other men's steps, and so assist in wearing a pathway for the public mind. I am well aware that I have left untouched many matters bearing closely on the subject, more closely, perhaps, some of my readers will think, than the topics I have taken. In the fields, however, of politics, and political economy, there are many reapers: and the part of the subject which I have chosen seemed to me of sufficient importance to be considered by itself. I know that in much of what I have said, I have touched with an unpractised hand, upon matters which some of those who are great employers of labour will have examined and mastered thoroughly. Still, let them remember, that it is one thing to criticise, and another to act. Their very familiarity with the subject may render them dull to the means of doing good which their position affords them. We pass much of our time in thinking what we might do if we were somewhat different from what we are; and the duties appropriate to our present position invite our attention in vain.

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To others I may say, there is nothing in these pages, perhaps, that will exactly point out the path most fitting for you to take; still I cannot but think that so many have been indicated, that you will have no difficulty in finding some one that may lead to the main object if your heart is set upon it. If you throw but a mite into the treasury of good will which ought to exist between the employers and the employed, you do something towards relieving one of the great burdens of this age, possibly of all ages; you aid in cementing together the various orders of the state; you are one of those who anticipate revolutions by doing some little part of their duty towards the men of their own time; and, if you want any reward to allure you on, you will find it in the increased affection towards your fellows which you will always have, when you have endeavoured to be just to them.

But I would wish to put more solemn considerations before you. Ask yourself, if making all allowance for the difference of times and countries, you think that the payment of poor rates, of itself, fulfils the command to visit the sick, clothe the naked, and feed the hungry. Depend upon it, our duties, however they may be varied by the different circumstances of different periods, cannot be satisfied by any thing that the state demands of us, or can do for us. We have each, from the highest to the lowest, a circle of dependents. We say that Kings are God's Vicegerents upon earth: but almost every human being has at one time or other of his life, a portion of the happiness of those around him in his power, which might make him tremble, if he did but see it in all its fullness. But at any rate, the relation of master and man is a matter of manifest and large importance. It pervades all societies, and affects the growth and security of states in the most remarkable and pregnant manner; it requires the nicest care; gives exercise to the highest moral qualities; has a large part in civil life; a larger part in domestic life; and our conduct in it will surely be no mean portion of the account which we shall have to render in the life that is to come.