Зображення сторінки
PDF
ePub

THE POLITICAL SITUATION.

Lord Randolph as a "Tory Democrat " has taken the only course which allows him to retain the last part of his title. It is clear that the other members of the Cabinet are representatives of fossilised Toryism, and with those he could not retain any connection, without falsifying all his expressions of Radical opinions.

The step which he has taken changes the whole aspect of politics. It deprives the Radical members of the Unionist party of all expectations of useful measures from the present Government, and will make it imperative on them to withdraw their support. If Hartington or Goschen join the mutilated Cabinet it will show such a tendency to Toryism that they will cease to be part of and to hamper the Liberal party.

Mr. Chamberlain, who seems to have been aware of what was coming, has been the first to speak, and his sentences were wholly conciliatory, and for the most part judicious.

We regret to see that he appears to sanction the idea of land purchase. There is nothing so justly unpopular in the country as the bribery of men who have been the real cause of Ire land's sufferings-men who have been pampered for generations on the misery of the people. There is no possible method of making land purchase just. The application of public funds to the purchase of land gives an artificial stimulus to landlord exactions. As there is no natural price for land, which cannot be manufactured or extended, so there is no limit to the expectations of the landlord, who will exact the utmost farthing that the people can pay. Thus it is that charitable subscriptions and enforced contributions enable the landlord to increase his demands.

A valued correspondent, who has supplied an article to this number of the DEMOCRAT on Cobden and Land, shows that Mr. Cobden pointed out the fact that land formerly paid all the taxation of the country, and that it now pays but a small fraction of that taxation.

The common-sense of the matter is that taxation on land must be re-imposed, and it is nothing short of a fraud on the people to propose to purchase under existing circumstances. It is a double fraud to propose to pledge British credit for the purchase of Irish land. Irish landlords, previously willing to sell, doubled their terms the moment that the proposal was made.

There can be no effective union of Liberals unless the objectionable features of the Irish proposals are abandoned. The Tories have thrown Radicalism overboard, let the Liberal Party do the same with Toryism. It will be useless for leaders to agree on a policy if that policy involves the reversal of sound Liberal principles. The last election showed that men cannot be tempted or driven to the poll to support propositions which are inconsistent with true Liberalism.

Mr. Chamberlain is wrong in supposing that Home Rule can be delayed. It is true that we have other matters to consider, but these can be discussed simultaneously. It is essential that the House of Commons should be divided into Grand Committees and do its work.

If Home Rule is considered on the sound and simple lines of federation its settlement will include the arrangement of many other questions which are difficult to solve on any other basis.

Whether we have a Tory or a Liberal Government our leaders must learn that the people will no longer be contented with the past rate of progress in legislation. The suffering, the inequality, the injustice which is involved in a system of government and administration which has been arranged by the privileged classes for their own benefit will not be endured by a community which no longer remains in ignorance, and will not suffer in silence.

The "settlement" of the land question will not be made by shovelling the people's hardearned money into pockets of idle landlords.

The adjustment of taxation means something more than tinkering the Income Tax.

Free Education, yes; and Free Dinners will have to be provided for a population which in the future cannot be deluded and robbed, and will not consent to be starved, in the midst of the plenty which they produce.

For fifty years we have patiently pleaded for political power, and we will now make use of it. The late Liberal Government was willing to make "great sacrifices to conciliate powerful interests." Let our future leaders be equally willing to conciliate interests which are now powerful, and to sacrifice ill-gotten gains on the shrine of humanity, truth, and justice. In so doing they will be supported by a happy, prosperous, and united people.

[blocks in formation]

The deadlock in Ireland is the natural result of the determination of the Government to extract blood from flints.

To enforce rents without regard to justice or humanity is the policy which Lord Salisbury announced at the opening of Parliament. Rents must be paid, he said, even if the land had not produced them.

To respect justice and humanity, even if law has to be held in abeyance, is the policy adopted by Mr. Dillon and his supporters.

If justice and common sense prevailed, Lord Salisbury would now be on his defence, and Dillon and Davitt would be at Downing

street.

To administer the law without regard to circumstances is to show that, in the words of Mr. Weller, "the law is a hass," and nothing can more clearly prove this than the attempt to extract rents which cultivators have been unable to earn. Mr. Dillon has clearly shown that the reductions of rent demanded by Irish tenants have been less than the reductions awarded by the courts in cases which have recently been under review.

During the last forty years many thousands of Irish families have paid rents in November and died of starvation in the following year. Much of the rent demanded could never be claimed but for the unrequited labour of industrious tenants.

CAMPAIGN.

Why should the people of Skye voluntarily pay a rent tenfold greater than that exacted from their ancestors? Why should the small working farmer in England pay three times the rent that is paid by the gentleman farmer?

Mr. Justice Johnson contended that Mr. Dillon's offence was aggravated by the fact that he was speaking to starving people. But was not the fact that the people are starving Mr. Dillon's justification. Are we to see them driven from their wretched homes and thus sentenced to death because they do not meet claims to which it is admitted on all hands they should not be subjected?

Mr. Justice O'Brien has made it clear that the Plan of Campaign would be perfectly legal if the same law applied to landlord and tenants as exists in reference to employers and workmen. He says:

A very eminent authority-Lord Fitzgerald, than whom no member of the judicial body had a greater range of experience in the criminal law. In delivering his charge to the jury he states-If, for tion of the right of his landlord to receive it, but it instance, a tenant withholds his rent,that is a violawould not be a criminal act of the tenant, though a violation of right. If two or more incited the tenant to do that act it is by the law of the land an offence. That is a statement of the law by which we are absolutely bound. In another case, the Queen v. Dunne, where men were indicted for conspiracy on the ground that they left their emaccount of the dismissal of a workman-upon the ployment without notice and without leave on facts I have stated these workmen were held to be guilty of a conspiracy at common law, but not under statute. The case was decided in the year 1872, and in order to alter the law so far as they were concerned in the relations of employer and employed, the statute of 38 and 39 Victoria contained an express provision which I shall read:—

The Government greatly mistake the temper of the times if they suppose that it is possible to continue the use of British power for the purpose of exactions, the nature of which the British people are beginning to understand. They are equally mistaken if they suppose that law and order can be founded on these exactions. If they have to be submitted to, life is not worth living; liberty to slave for a landlord and witness the slow starvation of wife and child is not worth having. The triumph of such a policy would be the peace of solitude; but landlords need not flatter themselves that they can attain this object. The people are now beginning to understand their power, and they will soon see that it is both a folly and a crime to sub-ment." mit to injustice and tamely yield to fatal exactions.

Distress in Scotland and England is similar, if not so acute, to that in Ireland, and requires the same remedies. When the people determine to suffer before they hand over money to landlords instead of suffering afterwards, the time of their deliverance will be near.

"An agreement or combination by two or more persons to do, or procure to be done, any act in contemplation or pursuance of a trade dispute between employers and workmen, shall not be indictable as a conspiracy if such an act committed by one person shall not be punishable as a crime." It further says—

"Nothing in this section shall exempt from punishment any person guilty of a conspiracy for which punishment is provided by Act of Parlia

There is thus an expressed declaration by statute -by the Legislature-that in extending the law or in was concerned, it was intended to preserve that same modifying the law, so far as one particular relation law with regard to other relations and offences outside the single instance of workmen's combinations of the kind

Thus it is clear that our judicious landlord legislators, while admitting the justice of

allowing employers to combine, expressly provided that tenants should not be allowed to do so. In other words, they applied justice to the employer, as between himself and his workmen, and expressly continued to refuse it as between landlords and tenants.

It is for this unjustifiable proceeding on the part of our landlord legislators that Mr. Dillon's action is declared to be illegal. The very argument used to show that it is illegal proves it to be just.

Parliament, admitting the right of combination denies the application of that right against landlords.

What, then, is the position of the matter? If tenants had the benefit of laws admitted to be just, and such as working men have exacted for themselves, the Plan of Campaign would be lawful.

If Irish landlords exercised reasonable con

sideration towards starving tenants, the Plan of Campaign would be unnecessary.

:0:

Under these circumstances, the cause of Irish tenants is the cause of working farmers in Scotland, Wales, and England.

Nay, more, it is the cause of working people throughout the United Kingdom. The action of the Government in reference to Ireland is aimed at the principle of combination, the right to which it is essential to maintain.

Landlords possess the right and power of combination. In England they agree over their dinner tables to charge working farmers three times as much rent as they charge to gentlemen farmers, and they do it because they say it is necessary "to keep down wages."

Are they to have this power for a tyrannous and unjust purpose, and is it to be denied to industrious tenants to save them and their families from starvation?

[blocks in formation]

"One thing thou lackest; go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor."-Mark x., 21.

The passage at the head of this article is one of a number in which Our Lord enjoins upon His wealthy disciples the duty of devoting their wealth to the service of their fellows. Space will not permit me to refer to many of these, but it will, perhaps, be sufficient to mention the commandment which, in its double form, Christ declared to contain the whole duty of man to man: "Do unto others as ye would they should do unto you," and, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." It is impossible to believe that the rich do unto the poor as they would wish to be done unto. The man who spends great sums in luxurious living and useless display, whilst those who have furnished it, or their comrades, are starving in millions before his eyes, can hardly be said to love his neighbour at all, much less "as himself." No; as St. John further explaining these principles, says: "Whoso hath this world's goods, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?" (that is a love similar to that of God, such as Christ enjoins.) "My little children, let us not love in word nor in tangue; but in deed and in truth."

The New Testament, and, for that matter, the Old Testament also, is full of denunciations of the idle and indifferent rich. "Woe unto you that are rich! for ye have received your consolation. Woe unto you that are full! for

ye shall hunger. Woe unto ye that laugh now, for ye shall mourn and weep! Woe unto you when all men shall speak well of you, for so did your fathers to the false prophets." Until the Church preaches sermons on these and similar texts, and lets it be known in no uncertain manner that they have a definite meaning and application for the present day, she does not imitate the Master she professes to adore.

When Christ commanded the rich ruler who wished to become His disciple to devote all his wealth and all his energies to the service of the poor, there is no doubt that He meant it, and meant it to apply to all wealthy would-be disciples. To serve God by serving man is the essence of His religion, and no half measures are tolerated. "Ye cannot serve God and Mammon." He came to preach glad tidings to the poor, the freeing of the oppressed, and to let the captive go free. The one rite, worship, or ceremony He imperatively demanded of His followers was the Service of Humanity" to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, tend the sick, care for the prisoner and the stranger, and all that are in danger of oppression," and He solemnly declares that unless this be done all else is vain. It will be useless to plead, "We have called Thee, Lord! Lord! We have preached in Thy name! We have built churches in Thy name! and in Thy name have we done many wonderful works."

"For then will I profess with them, I never knew you. Inasmuch as ye did it not to the least of these (to the gutter children that swarm on your church steps, to the wretches that die of starvation within sound of your melodious bells and your carriage-wheels!), ye did it not to Me."

How the teachings of Christ on the Social Question were understood by those who had heard them from His own lips is perfectly plain. For we read of the social system of the first disciples, "that they had all things in common; and not one of them said that aught of the things which he possessed was his own; neither was there any that lacked; and distribution was made unto each according as any had need." This attempt of the early Christians to carry out the teachings of their Master is, however, scouted by their modern successors, who ignore or explain away commands which it is our duty to discover the right means of carrying into effect.

In a

recent speech Lord Salisbury said,

satirically, of course, "Reform in England. means taking something from the rich and giving it to the poor." His Lordship has a faculty for giving cynical utterance to bitter truths, but he never said a truer thing than this. Reform in any country where there is such monstrous inequality as amongst ourselves must ultimately mean taking from the rich. The pagan philosopher Aristotle declared that no state can be stable or prosperous in which great inequality is permitted to exist. The Christian Apostle, Paul, recognises the same fact when he admonishes the wealthy Church of Corinth to give assistance to the poorer brethren "that there may be equality." The founder of the Christian religion relegates Dives to Gehenna; and denounces those that feast with careless or cynical indifference in the midst of misery; hence his command to every rich man who would enter the Kingdom of Heaven (that is the true social order), "Sell all that thou hast, and give to the poor."

:0:

W. H. H.

[blocks in formation]
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

"Cry against it, for their wickedness has come up before me.
Nineveh shall be overthrown."-The Book of Jonah.

Softly comes the light through tinted, silken curtains, and past exotic, perfumed plants, softly it falls upon dainty couches that gently yield to every pressure. Art has decorated the walls with the subdued colours of some lovely dream. Not the moss in glens, hidden aw ay from the mid-day heat, is more soft to the foot. The fabled luxuries of the wondrous East are poor and mean compared with the luxury of this London drawing-room. Women are seated there, shapely and lovely, and Art vies with Nature in their adornment. Hardly less beautiful than the angels, the conversation of these women would send listening angels scared and blushing away. They use no foul and startling terms like the girls of the street; but they smile, they hint, they glance whole devils' volumes. They love Zola, George Sand is their bible, the noble seducer whose name is the theme of all honest scorn is their hero, and the woman who is never found out is their heroine. These, Britain, are thy cherished daughters, to provide whose jewels and cosmetics and stains and shams the poor man's daughters live in toil or shame. Woe unto Nineveh, when such are thy favoured women, the mothers of thy favoured children.

[ocr errors][merged small]

The fashionable club begins to fill. Well-dressed men appear, listless and haggard and silent. They will not be themselves until wine or stronger, subtler essences have given them artificial vigour. Then their tongues unloosen, and whose pen would dare record a tithe of what they speak? A new actress has appeared; she must be educated until she becomes a bold-eyed daughter of sin; with devilish glee it is noted that a virtuous wife is on the downward path, or that the mother of six children has yielded to some veteran in the army of vice. Listen to that youth, boy almost, as he tells, let us hope falsely, how he robbed a sweet, plebeian girl of her virtue. Harken to those who sneer at the two things most hated in such places Evangelical religion and democratic politics; or, perhaps, there is only trifling, weak, foolish, twaddling, idiotic talk of matters beneath human intelligence. Woe unto New Nineveh when such are thy rich and great.

Of late the Divorce Court has revealed a state of things in aristocratic Britain that makes men tremble for a country in which aristocracy possesses a power so great. Like a frightful mud volcano, the Divorce Court has bespattered all this fair

country with its filth. The prudence that veiled the pruriency has been broken, and we are face to face with the foul and dread reality. The effect has been twofold—for good and harm. For good -it has been a great sermon to the Democracy to be up and be their own scavengers, and clear the filthy people from the land; for harm-it has been a prompting to vice in all who are viciously inclined. Honest people tremble for their sons and daughters when they see the papers filled with such records of lusts and lies as were displayed in the case of Dilke. Only eternity will tell what enormous harm was done to feeble minds by the crimes of a man and woman placed so high that all the up-looking earth could behold them. Where the germs fall there the disease will spread; where these aristocratic scandals are read and boldly discussed among girls and boys too young to understand the dreadful evilness of evil, there harm is likely to ensue.

The Campbell case is only the latest link of the foul chain that goes down through the dishonoured names of Mordaunt, Aylesford, Crawford, and De Worms. Sincerely do we congratulate Lord and Lady Colin Campbell that a jury has pronounced them innocent of that actual guilt which would be sufficient to break the marriage bond. But this fact makes the circumstances of the case even more appalling. It shows that our aristocracy live in an atmosphere so vile that lies grow out of it as naturally as the dread miasma grows from a tropical swamp. Deceits, perjuries, foul imaginations, evil thinking, diabolical plotting and counterplotting, lying and spying, seem as natural in this impure atmosphere as the sound of holy bells to honest folk. Had the sin been done it were foul enough and vast enough to shock the least sensitive. But if the sin were simply imagined, if it were built up in impure minds, if all its loathsome details were carefully concocted as the novelist concocts his story, then the sin is doubled; nay, it is many times multiplied. The first would have been a case of breaking one commandment; this is a case of shivering the whole Decalogue into pieces. Poor Ananias; poor Saphira! The statistics to which Ananias swore were a trifle inaccurate, and he was carried out dead. Saphira, like a dutiful wife, backed up her husband, and shared his fate. But now Lord Ananias and Lady Saphira go into Court and swear lies enough to cover the fair blue

heavens with the primal darkness, and then proceed to dine with a smiling bishop. If the curse of Ananias were to fall upon our days three-fourths of the great houses of western London would be "To Let or For Sale," and every fashionable undertaker would be at once a millionaire.

We did not read this case as it appeared day by day, but preserving all the reports, took half a-day to go through them. That half day would have been more wholesomely spent picking rags on a dung-heap. The picture of social London that was revealed makes feeble the greatest efforts of the greatest filth-compilers in modern French literature. A gushing counsel in the exercise of his trade draws the picture of a young and pure and lovely woman, Yet the mother of this young etcetera woman thinks Lord Blandford a proper and fit associate for her daughter. Well, she probably knew her own daughter best? But to say that Blandford is the fit associate for any young girl is an atrocious libel on our sweet English girlhood. Bah! the foul presence of that man-who, by-thebye, with amusing impudence, is always writing in the magazines that Democracy is dragging Britain to the dogs-would make the home of innocence smell of the brothel. Why that man beat his wife, struck her, thrashed her, when she was in that condition when even the women of the street are looked upon with awe and sympathy, when she was about to become a mother? That he did not get six months' hard labour for the same atrocity is a Blandford fit disgrace to our English justice. society for a decent girl! Then we are told, probably falsely, since the whole case seems to have been one huge lying match, that a titled lady with a taste for prayer-books advised her male friend to commit adultery; let his wife get a divorce, and then marry again some comfortable little body who would not care if he has every disease that a life of vice can impart. That reads like one of the stories men sell you in the street, first looking round to see that there is no policeman about.

The whole story reeks with shame. A young man and a young woman, after knowing each other for three days, plight their troth. What kind of love was that? Or rather can we elevate such hasty animal passion by calling it love at all? They marry, and the young man communicates to the young woman a foul disease, the result of vice. Naturally this young pair hated one another. Their

« НазадПродовжити »