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PRICE ONE PENNY.
JL F L H .A
FOR
S O CIA LISM:
BY
J . L. MAHON.
Delivered in
the course
AMONGST
THE
of a
MINERS
Socialist Campaign
ON
STRIKE
IN
Northumberland, 1877.
“ AS LONG AS OUB CIVILIZATION IS BASED UPON PROPERTY OUR BICHES
WILL LEAVE US SICK, THEBE WILL BE BITTERNESS IN OUB LAUGHTER AND
OUB WINE WILL BURN IN OUB MOUTH.
ONLY THAT GOOD PROFITS WHICH
WE CAN TASTE WITH ALL DOORS OPEN AND WHICH SERVES ALL MEN.”—
Emerson
Published at the “ Commonweal” Office :
13, Farringdon Road, London, E.C
J. Beall, Printer, Stationer, &c., St. Andrew’s Street.
1887.
�“ I ask you to think with me that the worst which can
happen to us is to endure tamely the evils which we see, that
no trouble or turmoil is so bad as that; that the necessary
destruction which reconstruction bears with it must be taken
calmly ; that everywhere—in State, in Church, in the house
hold—we must be resolute to endure no tyranny, accept no
lie, quail before no fear, although they may come before us
disguised as piety, duty, or affection, as useful opportunity and
good nature, as prudence or kindness.”—William Morris.
“ The ivorld in a commercial society belongs to the
capitalists, the share of oiunership which each man pos
sesses being his capital.
In order that wealth may be
produced .... toorkmen and horses must till the
land; the sun must shine and the rain must fall upon the
field, when the seed will sprout and grow; bees must per
form the operation necessary to the fertilization of the
flower, when the fruit will form and swell; birds must
join in the work by destroying the noxious insects which
would otherwise destroy the harvest; and so on. When all
is done some of the agents claim a share of the product;
the men and cattle must be fed; the birds make good their
right to share the wealth which their labour, as much as
that of the men and horses, has produced; and even the
earth demands a part as seed for the next crop. After
all the deductions are made, which the harshness of nature
renders necessary, the balance belongs to the capitalist.
To him it is a matter of indifference what natural agents
are instrumental in the production of his wealth, and the
labour of men does not, in his estimation, differ generically
from that of birds or horses, and is more important only
because the men are the phenomena over xohich he has most
control........................... He groups together all the agents
(including the workmen) that have co-operated in the pro
duction of his wealth as elements of the efficiency of his
capital, and measures the result of all their energies by the
rate of profit he obtains.’'—Communal and Commercial
Economy.—JOHN CARRUTHERS.
�A PLEA FOR SOCIALISM
Fellow- Workmen,
I am sure that an appeal to you for a fair hearing is
unnecessary. Socialism no longer meets with the jeers and
abuse that assailed it, from workmen as well as others, only
a few years ago. Discontent is just now so deep and general
amongst the working-class, and the exponents of Socialism
have worked so hard and enthusiastically in their cause that
a respectful and sympathetic hearing is given them by people
of all kinds all over the country. But, having cast off your
prejudice see also that you put away all misunderstandings.
Socialists are often accused of holding opinions which they
are constantly preaching against, of wishing to bring about
things which they are even now trying to abolish. It is said
they wish to make an equal division of all wealth, bring all
men to one dull level, put every man’s affairs at the mercy of
State officials, make the sober support the drunken and the
industrious work for the thriftless, stamp out individuality,
abolish all incentive to invention, and to bring about these
things by hanging every man with a decent coat on his back.
Everything that malignity, jealousy, and sheer stupidity
could string together has been said against the Socialists.
Well, we don’t grumble. We know the way all great reform
ers since the time of Christ have been received ; kicks and
cuffs, and good chances of crucifiction or hanging in the end.
But we take it all as a compliment to the goodness and
usefulness of our principles.
Ike need for Socialism. The chief cause of the great spread
of Socialism of late is the dissatisfaction felt by all classes
with things as they are and the evident uselessness of all other
proposed remedies. England yearly grows richer, yet her
working-men and women are practically as bad off as ever
''
�A Plea
for
Socialism.
they were. Our power of making goods gets greater every
year, but we have not yet found a way of supplying the wants
of those who make them. Food, clothes, houses and all the
needs of life and happiness are here at our hand in abundance,
at our hand also is the means of making ten times more than
we have, and yet the workers who make these things are living
in wretchedness, squalor, and semi-starvation. Many boast
of the power, fame, and grandeur of the British Empire, but
few notice that in the lowest depths of social life, in the shims
and the back streets, is an ever growing mass of people with
out hope in life, for life to them means a fierce scramble ever
getting fiercer; a miserable subsistence ever getting more
miserable. These people have no respect for Society, for
Society has no respect for them. “ Law and order’' is to them
only a fancy name for the power that keeps them in the mire.
They hate the law and they hate society, and their hatred is
just. They are too many to be ignored, too strong to be
despised, too much wronged to bear good will to those in
power. Their ranks are recruited from the working-class
every year : and some prolonged depression of trade may see
them powerful enough to put Law at defiance ; as indeed they
were during the early months of 1886. Civilization ! Pro
gress ! National Greatness !—mockery and humbug while
those who make the wealth are ever in want and in fear of
want, and those who neither toil nor spin live in luxury.
People feel the evil of all this and they see nothing in the
ordinary proposals to undo it. The Socialists have, as is
generally admitted, brought forward the most consistent and
satisfactory criticism of the present system of society, and
from the same line of thought the real remedy must likewise
come.
Toryism, Liberalism, and Radicalism. Out of all our party
fighting we don’t seem to get much benefit. The working
class are gradually losing faith in the political parties of all
shades. Toryism is a dead horse—not even worth a kiok.
Tliberalism has always meant, and Liberals have always worked
for, the interests of trade and commerce, under the idea, no
doubt, that the welfare of the people could best be served in
that way. But every day makes it plainer that the whole
object of modern commerce is to enslave and cheat the
people. That trade is carried on solely for the profit of the
�Political Parties.
5
capitalists, whose chief aim is to increase profits by decreasing
wages. The Liberals have posed as the friends of the people
on questions of merely political importance. But on any
question affecting the “ rights” of property—such as the
factory acts, or adulteration acts—-some of the best Liberals
were the workmen’s worst enemies. It is now plain to most
workmen that there is nothing to choose between Liberals and
Tories, but that the bitter opposition of both may be expected.
Then what of the Radical party ? But where is it I Wander
ing about after a dozen leaders, chasing fifty fads, but having
no policy to give to the people which will excite their
enthusiasm or better their condition. A more hazy, indefinite,
muddled-up party never existed than the latter day Radicals.
Their chief function has been to blacken the boots of the
Whigs, and except that now and then we hear a little murmur
ing, their function has been well fulfilled. The days of
popularity for the Liberal party are now over. They are on
the high road to perdition ; in going there they will kick the
Tories in front of them, and drag most of the Radicals, as
usual, at their coat tails.
The Socialists spend a good
deal of energy in trying to win over the Radical workmen,
and this energy is well spent. In the Liberal agitations hither
to the Whig Dukes and cotton Lords have given the money
while the Radical workmen have furnished the enthusiasm.
The Socialist cause will gain by detaching these enthusiasts
from the false friends of the people and using their powers
for a better purpose. The reason why I attack Liberalism
and Radicalism more than Toryism is because many people
believe in them, while no one believes in Toryism at all.
The official Tories believe least of all in their own principles,
for when in office they masquerade in Liberal garments—
which shows at once their duplicity and their depraved taste.
In my opinion both political parties are humbugs, and the
only difference between the Liberals and the Tories is that
the Liberals are the most ingenious humbugs of the two.
Labour Representation. Great things were expected if we
got workmen into Parliament but very little has been realized.
There are plenty of rich men in the House of Commons who
are far more outspoken and independent than the Labour
members. We, as workmen, ought to be thoroughly ashamed
of the way we are represented. A few limpid lisping weak-
�6
A Plea
for
Socialism.
lings, who always truckle to the party chiefs, who never yet
distinguished themselves by standing out sturdily for the
interests of labour—who indeed have either forgotten or never
knew what the interests of labour mean. A poor spiritless
lot are they ! The best of them seem to have mistaken their
business. They are grubbing away at “ Employers’ Liability
Acts” as if legislation of that kind would by itself achieve
much for the workers. In the Parliament of 1886 we had
twelve Labour M.P.’s
Our twelve apostles ! At that time
the unemployed were rioting, so keen and widespread was
their distress, all over the country. But our apostles did not
like to disturb the arrangements of the Liberal Government.
Labour was in bad straits : but, for a whole session its
apostles sat sucking their thumbs and said never a word. In
Northumberland during the strike, which began in February,
1887, the suffering and distress was very keen. The men
were trying to resist an attempt to reduce wages which were
already at starvation point. Surely the Labour M.P.’s might
have used their position as members of Parliament to draw
attention to the state of their constituents : had Northumber
land been a county in Ireland, the House of Commons would
have been ringing with the tale of the miners’ wrongs. No
better illustration of the miserable incompetency of the
labour M.P.’s could be brought forward. Had they possessed
the least spark of vigour and sturdiness, the country would
not have been in darkness as to the condition of their con
stituents.
•
■
'
If Labourers are to be sent to
Parliament why make them middle-class men by paying them
from T6 to £10 per week ? A workman in Parliament ought
to get the wages of a London artisan and be enabled to live
in the same standard of comfort. He should go there to work
and not be ashamed of the object of his mission. Instead of
that his first move is to ape the costume and manners of the
cultured drones amongst whom he sits. The whole spirit and
object of mere “Labour representation” is mistaken. The no
tion that having “ labourers” in Parliament will do much good
is a very silly and artificial one. Working-men are no better
than other men, and middle-class men are no worse. It is
some definate principle or ideal that must be taken up by the
working-class before it can achieve anything. The Labour
Representation movement has nothing definate in it. It
�The root
of the difficulty.
7
simply wants to get workmen into Parliament—not to do any
thing in particular, just to loaf about, and look dignified, and
turn lick-spittles to the Liberal party when occasion demands.
This vague, hazy, scatter-brained policy will never do any
service or any credit to the working-class. Representatives
of this kind will be only half supported by workmen and de
spised by upper class politicians. Let us resolve on a definate purpose and push that forward. Use Parliament as a
platform if you will, but educate the people tp a clear under
standing of what your aim and their aim should be. When
you have cleared away some of the ignorance of the people—
and that is the real obstacle to their progress—then a strong
fighting party can be organized and there will be every chance
of winning : at present with no particular object and no en
deavour to find one, with nothing but a muddled-up notion of
doing something, sometime, somehow; failure and ignominy
are certain.
The root of the difficulty. Now, in my opinion the error
of the various political parties I have referred to is that they
skim over the surface of these great problems. They are
afraid or unable to go to the root of the matter and point
out the cause of poverty. It is a paltry superficial kind of
reasoning which tells us that the industrious are well-to-do,
and the idle and thriftless poverty-stricken. I have no wish
to gloss over the failings of working people, or to excuse their
sins on the plea that the rich sin also and more heavily. But
I think there is something mean and hypocritical about those
who continually denounce the faults of the poor while they
leave the rich man’s crimes unassailed. Let us denounce
intemperance, idleness, thriftlessness wherever we may find
*
it; but let us be unsparingly impartial: let neither fame nor
rank save the wrong-doer from the reprobation of his fellows.
The faults of the rich do not excuse the faults of the poor,
but they are often the cause of them. It is luxury that makes
penury necessary. It is waste on one hand that entails
scrimping and starving on the other. It is the legalised lazi
ness amongst the rich that sets the example of loafing and
* It is strange to see how this term, thrift, is misused. Thrift means
making the best use of what you have. It does not mean selfish grabbing of
all you can get, nor a crazy hoarding of things you can never use. Still less
does it mean (as some sentimental moralists would have us believe) cowardly
contentment with less than you are entitled to.
�8
A Plea
for
Socialism.
flunkeyism to the poor. It is because the rich man shirks his
share of the world’s work that the poor man is overworked.
And what is the cause of nine-tenths of the vice and callous
ness of the working-men ? The long, dreary, and depressing
toil they have to endure when in employment; the feverish
anxiety about to-morrow’s food, and the future of their child
ren when in the ranks of the unemployed. To most workmen
life is an uninteresting past, a joyless present, and a hopeless
future. The root of the great social question is that modern
society treats the workmen as machines and the capitalists as
lords of civilization. In a civilized society the capitalist
is master of the land and minerals which no man made ;
of the machinery which includes within it the toil and
skill of countless generations; of the vast stores of wealth
which all (except the capitalists) have helped to accumu
late ; in short all the resources of civilization—which,
without exception, are the produce of work—belong to
one class. The only thing the capitalist, as such, does
is to keep a firm grip of these things and never spend
five shillings without a reasonable certainty of getting
ten, fifteen, or twenty in return. Civilization is a huge
arrangement for heaping up profit, and whatsoever will not
bring profit to the holder of capital is prohibited by the laws
of trade and commerce ; it is stigmatized as a thing that
“won’t pay” (no matter how much good it may do) and
banished from the business of life, and the world is thought
lucky if some philanthropist or faddiBt take it up instead.
Are we Slaves ? The pet delusion of the British working
man is that he is free. How he came by this delusion, and
why he sticks to it, I don’t know. It is interesting to notice
that the British workman’s “patriotism” and fondness for
proclaiming his independence varies with the rate of his
wages and the security of his employment. At £2 per week
he is sure that he is not a slave, and “never, never” will
be ; at £1 he is doubtful about the reality of his freedom ; at
12s. he curses the British Empire and says, wisely, though
not elegantly, that his freedom is a fraud. Now, what is a
slave ? One who is compelled to work for somebody
else.
In this, the real sense, the working-class of every
civilised country are slaves. They work and all the result
goes to the capitalist and upper class ; they get back a few
�The old slavery
and the new.
9
shillings to keep them alive, for that is all their wages
amount to. They are forced to work for the upper class,
while the upper class does nothing for them, and therefore
they are slaves. If the miner produces coal for the money
lord, and the money-lord does nothing for the miner, then
surely the miner is a slave. Every man who lives without
doing useful work is enslaving some other people. It is
work that keeps society going. Every man who eats bread,
lives in a house, or burns coal is using the fruits of labour.
Unless he renders some useful service to the baker, the
builder, or the miner he is stealing from them and making
them his slaves. A civilised society includes two main
classes:—Workers and idlers, producers and thieves, slaves
and slave-owners. The workers do everything for themselves,
and support the other class besides. The upper class do
nothing for themselves, and nothing for any-body else, so they
are thieves and slave drivers. Not that they are individually
conscious of stealing or oppressing, or should be individually
punished for it. But the harm done is the same whether
they are conscious or not. Besides, every sensible man
ought to think of where his dinner comes from, and to reflect
that somebody must have earned it; and that if he did not
earn it he must have stolen it.
The old slavery and the new. It is true that one man
cannot call another his property as he would a horse or a
dog, but does this make any essential difference ? The
reason why men were once owned like cattle was simply
that their labour might be used for their master’s benefit.
Well, if their labour is still taken from them, even without
the institution of private property in human flesh and blood,
the result is the same. The capitalist does not to-day own
the workman, but he owns the means by which only the
workman can live ; and he says to him, “ You cannot labour
without using the land and the capital; these things are
under my control, and I shall only allow you to use them on
condition that you take a bare living out of the produce of
your own labour, and that you hand over to me all the
balance over and above that.” The capitalist manages to
■enforce these terms. Nine-tenths of the modern workmen
are mere slaves, getting enough each pay-day to keep them
in bread till the next. In one respect they are worse off
�10
A Plea
for
Socialism.
than the olden slaves. When the employer has no further
need for their services, he turns them adrift in the streets
to find a crust as best they can; in olden times the slave
owner, out of self-interest, always took care to feed and
clothe his human property. In spite of all our boasting
of freedom the position of the civilised workman may be
summed up thus : He is allowed to earn his own living
only when his labour will also yield a profit to supply the
middle and upper classes with a living for nothing ; he gets
only a small part of what he earns ; he is dependent upon
others for the chance of working at all; and when he cannot
be made an instrument of profit-grinding he is cast amongst
the unemployed, and from thence too often he drifts to the
gaol, the workhouse, or the lunatic asylum.
The Slave Market and the Labour Market.
A closer
examination of the old and the new slavery will show still
stronger points of resemblance. In olden times there was a
slave market, to which men were driven in gangs, goaded on
by the lash of the slave driver. When they got there, they
were sold at auction, like cattle, to the highest bidder. Now
there is a labour market, at which human labour is bought
and sold like other goods. The people have no alternative
but to go and sell their labour, and they go obediently and
docilely, and as long as the system lasts they must do so.
Brute force is discarded, but the force of circumstances work
to the capitalists’ interests instead. The slave driver’s whip
is only to be found in the museum, but the whip of hunger
does the same work, and it bites as cruelly. But what is the
difference when they get to the market ? In olden times
they were put up to auction and knocked down to the highest
bidder ; now they are compelled to compete against each
other and are knocked down to the lowest bidder. From
this competition for employment a strange and horrid light
is thrown on the working of the capitalist system. The
master takes advantage of the men’s misfortunes, and uses
the unemployed to force down the wages of those in work.
In short, slavery is still the basis of our social organisation.
Our chains ud to be ugly black iron ; we saw them and
e
*
abhorred them. Now they are finely polished and painted,
and we think them ornaments and hug them ; but they are
as strong as ever, and when the times of distress come we
�Conquer
the cupboard.
11
feel them gnawing and chafing us. We cannot be free
while able, useful, and willing workmen starve in a land
made wealthy by their own labour. Our freedom is an
elaborate and ingenious hypocrisy while thousands are
denied the chance to earn their bread in their own country;
and while the whole working-class is only allowed to labour
on condition that it will hand over the largest part of the
result to the idle, useless, and vicious upper class.
Conquer the Cupboard. The powei’ lies in the hands of
the moneyed class, because they have the land and the
capital completely in their control. The workers dare not
till the soil of their own country, although thousands of acres
of it are lying waste, unless they can produce a heavy rent
for the landlord as well as a living for themselves. The
factories also are closed and the machinery stopped in many
districts. Here comes the narrow selfishness of the present
system. The men who own the land and capital do not wish
to use it themselves, and indeed could not. They simply
have the power to prevent others from using these things,
and they use that power to extort enormous profits from the
workers. Let us compare society to an ordinary household.
Imagine a family in which the father and several sons were
the bread-winners, and the mother and several daughters
housekeepers. Suppose they have a cupboard in which the
food and other means of life are stored. This cupboard
should be under the care of the housewife. But let us
imagine that a stranger, who has done nothing to help in the
work of the household, forces his way in, fixes a patent
lock to the cupboard, and says to the household, “ In future
this part of the house shall be under my charge. I shall
always be ready to open it when you have anything to
put in, but when you want any supplies I shall dole out
just as much as I think is good for you. While you are
filling the cupboard you shall get enough to keep you, and
enable you to go on working, but no more. When the cup
board is full you must stop working, and eating too, and you
will be known as ‘ tramps ’ and the ‘ unemployed.’ ” Now,
this family might fancy itself free ; it might meet in the
back-parlour and sing paeans in praise of the grand system it
lived under; it might also pass Bills and give each of its
members a vote, or a dozen votes ; but as long as the
�12
A Plea
fok
Socialism.
stranger held the key of that cupboard he would be master
of the situation, and the inmates one and all would be mere
slaves of his. This is a fair simile of what England and
every other civilised land is to-day. The workmen are filling
the cupboard of the country, but the key is held by men who
do none of the labour. While filling it they get a subsistence
wage—seldom more—and when it is filled to overflowing
there is a glut (a trade depression), and the men who filled
the cupboard must go hungry and homeless because it is too
full. Yes, this is why we starve in the midst of abundance,
and the first duty of the working-class is to make good its
claim to the fruits of its labour : it must conquer the cup
board.
The Socialist proposal is to take the land and capital
from the private individuals who now unrighteously own
them, and put them under the control of the community,
and use them for the benefit of the workers. Capital must
be the handmaid of labour, not its master. The resources
of civilization must be used to benefit the people, not to
grind profit out of them, as now. The aim of society must
be to so dispose of the labour and resources of the com
munity as to secure a fair living to all who labour for it.
Socialism is based on the principle that as all society is
maintained by labour, all should do a fair share of it. The
bread we eat, the houses we live in, and the coals we burn
are all produced by labour. If we use these things, we
ought to produce them, or do some useful service to those
who do. If we use these things, and live in idleness, we
are stealing them. All we eat and drink and wear is made
by labour, and if we eat without labouring we are stealing
from some one else who has laboured. We should all do
our fair share of the world’s work ! No man is too good
to toil for his living; no man is so bad that he should be
cheated out of his living when he has toiled for it.
The Defence of Property.
Whenever this doctrine of
Socialism is stated a certain class of people cry out “ Confis
cation !” “ You want to take men’s savings from them !”
“You want the drunken and thrtftless kept at the expense of
the industrious and careful I” All these parrot cries totally
ignore the fact that to-day the thriftless are living on the
�Property
and
Co-operation.
18
industrious, and that the whole string of evils they charge us
with trying to bring about are here already, and we are
trying to abolish them. When we attack the capitalists our
opponents never defend the proper culprit: they bring up
the workman with £100 saved, and try to turn prejudice
against us by alledging that this would be confiscated. But
the difference between a large capitalist and a workman with
a savings bank account is very great and quite clear. The
workman has earned his small capital; the other has not.
Of course the taking of interest is wrong, no matter to what
extent it may be carried. It must, also, be borne in mind
that in dispossessing the landlord and capitalist we are not
taking from them anything that they wish to use. We simply
deprive them of the power of making others work for them.
It is curious to notice how strong the blind greed for property
is in the minds of those who have only a little. It is not the
Baring or the Rothschild who is most bitter against Socialism.
The kind of man who is fiercest in defence of the rights of
property is the small shopkeeper who, perhaps, is £100 in
debt. The silly scramble of modern days has frightfully
narrowed mens’ notions of the real aim and pleasures of life.
If the rich were to-morrow deprived of all the property they
wrongfully hold, and set to work under decent circumstances
for their living, it would be the best thing that ever happened
to them. The true nobility a man can attain is by making
himself useful to his fellows, and this distinction would be
placed within reach of everybody by Socialism.
The Co-operative Movement. 'The easiest line of thought
towards Socialism is by considering what the Co-operative
movement has done. Had anyone suggested thirty years
ago that this movement would accomplish the revolution that
it has in such a space of time, and by such humble agents,
he would have been laughed at as a fool, or jeered at as an
Utopian—just as Socialists are laughed and jeered at now.
But by steady patient work a great change has been brought
about, the petty shopkeeping class has been greatly lessened,
an enormous amount of labour saved, and the process of
distribution greatly simplified. But still the biggest part of
the work has been left untouched. Distributive co-operation
shows the workman the best and wisest way to spend his
wages—once he has got them. Important as this is, the
�14
A Plea
for
Socialism.
question of how to get a just wage, or any wage at all, is still
more important ; but co-operation at present cannot touch
this question. Here Socialism steps in to finish what Co
operation began. Indeed Socialism is but the full and
genuine development of co-operation. We have introdoced
Co-operation to the shop and the store ; now we must extend
it to the mine, the factory, and the farm.
Is it practicable ? Great difficulties lie in the way of
Socialism, and much hard earnest work will be needed to
bring it about. These difficulties are not due to Socialism
being very Utopian, or very incomprehensible. Socialism is
merely the application of common sense and justice to social
order, but justice and common sense are strange and un
known in these days, when veiled fraud and oppression reign
supreme. Socialism would be simpler and easier to work, so
far as the mere industrial arrangements are concerned, than
the present system. Indeed we should try to make
society as simple in its mechanism and our own lives as
unpretentious as may be. The greatest curse of the present
system is its unnecessary complexity of organisation, and the
conflicting interests which Economists pretend are in har
mony. The first step towards Socialism is to make
Socialists ; to get together a great organisation of all who
accept the principle. Different schools of Socialists may
suggest different ways of realising the new society, but
their differing in that respect is a hopeful sign, as it
shows diversity and even some originality of thought. All
Socialists agree that the principles of competition and
monopoly now holding sway should be done away with, and
superseded by a general and thorough-going co-operation.
In fact we want a nation in which there are neither
masters nor servants, but where all are fellow-workers. A
solid combination of the Socialist movement could bring
a tremendous power to bear on the politics of this country.
That power should be used, not so much in bringing to pass
petty measures, as in forcing the hand of the upper class.
The futility of compromise. There is a class of wellintentioned reformers who are puzzling themselves to find
a way of benefiting the poor without interfering with the
rich. It is self-evident that this is a fruitless endeavour.
�The
future of
Socialism.
15
The robbery of the poor by the rich is the first aim of
capitalist production.It may be wrong
for the poor to
rob the rich ; it maynearly be as wrong for the rich to
rob each other; but for the rich to rob the poor is the
most abominable of all systems. There can be no peace
between the two classes. The poor must cast off the
leeches which are draining the life’s blood from them.
The rich are really parasites on the workers. The dis
tinctions of class must be abolished, for they only mean
the right of the rich to rob and the duty of the poor to
submit. But, although no peace can be between them, a
peaceable settlement might be effected. The rich should
be told by the toilers, “ Now, you have lived a long time
at our expense, and we find that it is bad for both of
us—it wearies you with elegant and enforced idleness, and
it burdens us with overwork. We don’t want to hurt you
for your past misdeeds, because for the most part you
were unconscious of the evil you were doing, but you
must do different in future. Those of you who are
entirely useless, and most of you are, so we fear, we will
keep in moderate comfort. We will give work to those
of you who are able and willing to do it (and that is
more than you gave us') ; a training to those who are
willing and not able ; and the gaol or the lunatic asylum
to those who are able and not willing.” These are the
only terms on which this antagonism can be settled. It
is nearly 2,000 years since St. Paul said, “ He that will
not work, neither shall he eatand surely it is time we
put the principle into operation.
The future of the Socialist party. Everything points to the
rapid growth of the Socialist party in this country. It lays
definite principles before the people, and though these, as
they require some independent thought and enthusiasm, may
take some time to win acceptance, they make a deep and
lasting impression where they do take hold. As time goes on
and the difficulty and hardships which the present system im
poses on the workers are more keenly felt, they will find out
how shallow and ineffective is the hand-to-mouth policy of the
ordinary politician. Times are coming when plain honest
words and upright action will be needed to save the country
from the horrors of a revolt of miserable and desperate people.
�16
A Plea
for
Socialism.
That revolution will come upon us, there can be no doubt.
Its shadow is already cast over us. Socialists do not wish to
make or to carrse a revolution: they only wish to point out
that revolution, bred of the misery and inherent injustice of
the present system, is inevitable. If the people are left un
organised and ignorant, revolution may well seem a terror to
all men. But we look to the coming change. We are pre
paring to. meet it with a combined and intelligent people, a
people wise enough to know their rights, strong enough to
enforce them, and disciplined enough to guard them. We
are carrying a message of hope to the poor, of comfort to the
outcast, of joy to the desolate. We bid them lay aside
despair, to take courage, and gather strength, for the time is
at hand when, with enlightenment and determination, they
may end for ever the folly, and crime, and misery in which
their lives are now spent, and realise a noble, fraternal, social
life, with labour, leisure, and liberty for all; a life in which
we shall have
“ Man without a master, and earth without a strife,
And every soul rejoicing in the sweet and bitter of life.”
Single copies of this
address on receipt
sale or distribution
50 copies 3/-; one
THE
pamphlet will be sent to any
of threehalf-pence. Parcels for
at cheaper rates : ioo copies, 5/-;
dozen copies post free 1/-
“COMMONWEAL, ”
Official Journal of the Socialist League.
A thorough-going weekly labour paper : contains a re
view of the labour struggle and Socialist movement
throughout the world; criticism on current political
events; revolutionary poetry; review of books on the
labour question ; and articles on science, art, history,
and political economy in their bearing on labour
questions.
ONE PENNY WEEKLY.
�
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A plea for socialism : delivered in the course of a socialist campaign amongst the miners on strike in Northumberland, 1877
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Mahon, J. L.
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 16 p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: Advertisement for the "Commonweal", the Official Journal of the Socialist League, on end page. Printed by J. Beale, St. Andrew's Street, Newcastle-upon-Tyne.
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1887
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T467
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Socialism
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Addresses
Miners
Northumberland
Socialism
Speeches
-
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Text
PRIGE TWOPENCE.
SOCIALISM
anU IJrarticr
BEING
A LECTURE DELIVERED TO A WORK
ING CLASS AUDIENCE.
KARL PEARSON.
SECOKD
EDITION
LONDON:
W. REEVES, 185, FLEET STREET, LONDON, E.C,
�Note to Second Edition.
This lecture delivered early in 1884, and afterwards
printed as a pamphlet, seems somewhat out of place
in 1887. Things have been rapidly changing in the
last three years. The discontent of the hand
workers has become greater and more manifest; if
I read the times aright, we are still only at the
threshold of the social crisis. The socialist of the
market-place has accomplished many things, of
which one only seems to me of real value. The
“ Church Parade ” is a brilliant inspiration and will
do much good if it brings home to our shepherds how
completely they have been neglecting the herd in
order to pipe to the dancing of their mistresses,
Wealth and Power. On the other hand the need
for a scientific exposition of evolutionary Socialism
is as pressing and as unsupplied as ever. It is only
after repeated request from the publisher that I
have consented to a reprint in its present form of a
pamphlet which has no claim to be a scientific
treatment of a very difficult and urgent problem.
Inner Temple,
K.P.
March 6th, 1887,
�To E.
C.
This lecture has been printed just as it was delivered
You would have wished it carefully revised. Other
labour has hindered my touching it, and it now seems
better to let its simple language stand. It was addressed
to simple folk ; had it been intended for a middle-class
audience it would have adopted a more logical, but un
doubtedly harsher tone. The selfishness of the ‘ upper ’
classes arises to a great extent from ignorance, but these
are times in which such ignorance itself is criminal. The
object of this pamphlet will be fulfilled should it bring
home even to one or two that truth, which I have learnt
from you, namely—that the higher socialism of our time
does not strive for a mere political reorganization, it is
labouring for a renascence of morality.
K. P
Inner Temple, Christmas Eve, 1884.
�SOCIALISM:
IN THEORY AND PRACTICE.
-------- 0--------
During the past year there was a great deal of
discussion in the newspapers—and out of them_
concerning the dwellings of the so-called poor.
Numerous philanthropical people wrote letters and
articles describing the extreme misery and unhealthy
condition of many of our London courts and alleys.
The Prince of Wales got up in the House of Lords
and remarked that he had visited several of the most
■deplorable slums in the Holborn district, and found
them “ very deplorable indeed 1” The whole sub
ject seemed an excellent one out of which to make
political capital. The leader of the Conservatives
wrote an article in a Tory magazine on the dwellings
of the poor. He told us that things are much
better in the country than they are in the towns,
that the great landlords look after the housing of
the agricultural labourers. It is the employers of
labour, the capitalists, who are at fault. They
■ought to provide proper dwellings for their work
people. This was the opinion of Lord Salisbury, a
great owner of land. But the Conservatives having
come forward as the friends of the working-men, it
seemed impossible, with a view to future elections,
to let the matter rest there. Accordingly, Mr.
Joseph Chamberlain, a Radical leader and capital
ist, wrote another article in a Liberal magazine, to
�SOCIALISM : IN THEORY AND PRACTICE.
5
show that it is no business whatever of the employers
of labour to look after the housing of their work
people. It is the duty of the owner of the land to
see that decent houses are built upon it. In other
words, the only men, who under our present social
regime could make vast improvements, threw the
responsibility off their own shoulders. “ Very
deplorable, indeed,” said Lord Salisbury, “ but of
course not the landlord’s fault; why does not that
greedy fellow, the capitalist, look after his work
people ?” “ Nothing could be more wretched; I
am sure it will lead to a revolution,” ejaculated Mr.
Chamberlain, “ but, of course, it has nothing to do
with the capitalist; why does not that idle person,
that absolutely useless landlord, build more decent
houses ?” Then the landlord and capitalist for once
agreed and thought it would be well to appoint a
Royal Commission, which meant, that after a certain
amount of philanthropic twaddle and a vast ocean
of political froth the whole matter would end in
nothing or an absolutely fruitless Act of Parliament.
*
Any change would have to be made at the cost of
either the landlord or capitalist, or of both, and
whether we like it or not, it is these two who practcally govern this country. They are not likely to
empty their pockets for our benefit. It is generally
known how strong the interest of the land
lords is in both Houses of Parliament, but this is
comparatively small when we measure the
interests of the capitalists. You will be surprised,
if you investigate the matter, to find the large
proportion of the House of Commons which re
presents the interests of capital. The number of
members of that House who are themselves
* Three years afterwards we see it has ended in
nothing—-not even an Act
�6
SOCIALISM :
employers of labour, who are connected with grea
commercial interests, who are chairmen or directors
of large capitalistic companies, or in some other way
are representatives of capital (as well as of their
constituents) is quite astounding. It is said that
one large railway company alone can muster forty
votes on a division; while the railway interests, if
combined, might form a coalition which, in con
ceivable cases, would be of extreme danger to the
State. I have merely touched upon this matter to
remind you how thoroughly we are governed in this
country by a class. The government of this country
is not in the hands of the people. It is mere self
deception for us to suppose that all classes have a
voice in the management of our affairs. The
educative class (the class which labours with its
head) and the productive class (the class which
labours with its hands) have little or no real
influence in the House of Commons. The govern
ing class is the class of wealth, in both of its
branches—owners of land and owners of capital.
This class naturally governs in its own interests,
and the interests of wealth are what we must seek
for would we understand the motive for any
particular form of foreign or domestic policy on the
part of either great State party.
It may strike you that I have wandered very far
from the topic with which I started, namely, the
dwellings of the poor, but I wanted to point out to
you, by a practical example, how very unlikely it is
that a reform, urgently needed by one class of the
community, will be carried out efficiently by another
governing class, when that reform must be paid for
out of the latter’s pockets. Confirmation of this
view may be drawn from the fact that the govern
ing class pretend to have discovered in 1884 only
�IN THEORY AND PRACTICE,
7
that the poor are badly housed. There is
something almost laughable in all the pother lately
raised about the housing of the poor. So far as my
own experience goes—and I would ask if that is not
a fact ?—the poor are not worse housed in 1884 than
they were in 1874. The evil is one of very old
standing. It was crying out for reform ten years
ago, twenty years ago, forty years ago. More than
forty years ago—in 1842—there was a report issued
by a “Commission on the sanitary condition of
the labouring population of Great Britain.” The
descriptions given in that report are of a precisely
similar character to what was put before the public
in a little tract entitled the “ Bitter Cry of Outcast
London.” In that report we hear of 40,000 people
in Liverpool alone living in cellars underground.
We are told that the annual number of deaths from
fever, generated by uncleanliness and overcrowding
in the dwellings of the poor, was then in England
and Wales double the number of persons killed in
the battle of Waterloo. We hear of streets without
drainage, of workshops without ventilation, and of
ten to twenty people sleeping in the same room,
often five in a bed, rarely with any regard to sex.
The whole essence of this report was to show that
owing to the great capitalistic industries, the
working classes, if they had not become poorer, had
become more demoralized. They had been forced
to crowd together and occupy unhealthy and often
ruinous dwellings. The governing class and the
public authorities scarcely troubled themselves
about the matter, but treated the working classes as
machines rather than as men. We see, then, that
precisely the same evil was crying loudly for remedy
in 1842 as it cries now in 1884. We ask why has
there been no remedy applied during all these
�8
SOCIALISM :
years ? There can only be two answers to that
question; either no remedy is possible, or else thosem whose power the remedy lies refuse to apply it.
We must consider these two points.
Is no remedy possible ? Not long ago a thinking
Conservative (if such be not a contradiction in terms !)
stated that although he recognised the deplorable
misery of the poorer members of the working classes,
he still held no remedy was possible. The misery
might become so intense that an outbreak would
intervene ; still, when the outbreak was over, matters
would sink back into their old course. There must
be poor, and the poor would be miserable. No
*
violent revolution, no peaceful reform, could per
manently benefit the poorer class of toilers. It was,
so to speak, a law of nature (if not of God) that
society should have a basis of misery. History
proved this to be always the case.
It is to this latter phrase I want to call your
attention—History proved this to be always the case.
Our Conservative friend was distinctly right in his
method when he appealed to history. That is peculi
arly the method which ought to be made use of for
the solution of all social and political problems. It
is of the utmost importance to induce the working
classes to study social and political problems from
the historical standpoint. Do not listen to mere
theory, or to the mere talk of rival political agitators.
Endeavour, if possible, to see how like problems
have been treated by different peoples in different
ages, and with what measure of success. The study
of history is, I am aware, extremely difficult, because
the popular history books tell us only of wars and of
kings, and very little of the real life of the people—
* This seems to be the doctrine recently expounded
to “ Church paraders,” March, 1887.
�IN THEORY AND PRACTICE.
9
how they worked, how they were fed, and how they
were housed. But the real mission of history is to
tell us how the great mass of the people toiled and
lived; to tell us of their pleasure and of their
misery. That is the only history that can help us
in social problems. Does, then, history tell us that
there always has been, and therefore always must
be, a large amount of misery at the basis of society ?
The question is one really of statistics, and extremely
difficult to answer; but, after careful investigation, I
must state that I have come to a conclusion totally
different from that of our Conservative friend. I
admit, in the words of the man who worked for the
poor in Galilee, that at all times and places “ the poor
are always with you ” ; but the amount of poverty as
well as the degree of misery attending it has varied
immensely. I have made special investigation of
the condition of the artisan class in Germany some
three to four hundred years ago, and do not hesitate
to assert that anything like the condition of the
.courts and dwellings of poorer London was then
totally unknown. If this be true, the argument from
history is false. The artisan class has occupied a
firmer and more substantial position in times gone
by than it at present occupies. If it has sunk in the
scale of comfort, it can certainly rise. In other
words, a remedy for the present state of things does
seem to me possible. Should any of you want to
know why the working classes were better off four
hundred years ago than they are at present, I must
state it as my own opinion, that it was due to a
better social system. The social system, so far as
the workman was concerned, was based upon the
guild, and the political system of those old towns
was based as a rule upon the guilds. Thus the
union which directed the workman in his work, and
�IO
socialism.
:
brought his class together for social purposes,
was practically the same as that which directed the
municipal government of his city. If you would
exactly understand what that means, you must
suppose the trades unions of to-day to take a large
share in the government of London. If they did so,
how long do you think the dwellings of the poor
would remain what they are ? Do you believe the
evil would remain another forty years ? or that in
1920 it would be necessary to shuffle out of im
mediate action by another Royal Commission ?
As I have said, the guilds of working men had
originally a large share in municipal government.
The city guilds, as you know, are still very wealthy
bodies, and have great authority in the city. This
is all that remains in London of the old system of
working men’s guilds taking a part in the manage
ment of the city’s affairs.
In old days, then, the labouring classes were
united in guilds and these guilds had a considerable
share in local government. The social and political
system was thus, to some extent, based upon labour.
Such an organization of society, we call socialistic.
The workmen of four hundred years ago were better
off than are the workmen of to-day, because the old
institutions were more socialistic—in other words,
society was organized rather on the basis of labour
than the basis of wealth. A society based upon
wealth, since it grants power and place to the
owners of something which is in the hands of
a few individuals, may be termed individual
istic. To-day we live in an individualistic state. I
believe the workman of four hundred years ago was
better off than his brother now, because he formed
part of a socialistic rather than an individualistic
system. I believe a remedy possible for the present
�IN THEORY AND PRACTICE.
II
state of affairs, because history seems to teach us that
the artisan has a firmer and happier position under a
socialism than under an individualism. It also
teaches us that some forms of socialism have existed
in the past, and may therefore be possible in the
present or future. I hold, and I would ask you to
believe with me, that a remedy is possible. If it is, we
are thrown back on the alternative that the govern
ing class has refused or neglected to apply it. We
have seen that the evil did not arise or did not
accumulate to such an extent where society was
partly based upon labour; we are, therefore, forced
to the probable conclusion, that the evil has arisen
and continues to subsist, because our social and
political system is based upon wealth rather than
upon labour—because we live under an individualism
rather than under a socialism. It is the fault of our
present social system, and not a law of history, that
the toilers should be condemned to extreme misery
and poverty.
We have now to consider the following questions:—
What do we mean by labour and a social system based
upon labour ? By what means can we attempt to
convert a system based upon wealth to one based
upon labour; in other words, how shall we proceed
to convert our present individualism into a socialism ?
In the latter question it will be necessary to include
the consideration of the attitude which the artisan
class should itself take with regard to organizations
for socialistic change, and h@w it should endeavour
to take political action especially with regard to the
two great capitalistic parties.
Let me first endeavour to explain what I under
stand by labour. You may imagine, perhaps at
first, that I refer only to labour of the hand—such
abour as is required to make a pair of boots or turn
�12
SOCIALISM :
a lathe. But I conceive labour to be something or
far wider extent than this. I conceive it to include
all work, whether work of the head or of the hand,
which is needful or. profitable to the community at
large. The man who puts cargo into a ship is no
more or less a labourer than the captain who
directs her course across the ocean; nor is either
more of a labourer than the mathematician or astro
nomer whose calculations and observations enable the
captain to know which direction he shall take when
he is many hundred miles from land. The shoe
maker or the postman are no more labourers than
the clerk who sits in a merchant’s office or the judge
who sits on the bench. The schoolmaster, thewriter and the actor are all true labourers. Insome cases they may be overpaid; in many
they are underpaid. Men of wealth have been
known to pay the governess who teaches their
children less than they pay their cook, and treat her
with infinitely less respect. I have laid stress on
the importance of labour of the head, because I
have met working men—although few—who believed
nothing but labour of the hand could have any value’;
all but labourers with the hand were idlers. You
have doubtless heard of the victory gained last year
by English troops in Egypt. Now, how do you sup
pose that victory was gained ? Were the English
soldiers a bit braver than the Arabs ? Were they
stronger ? Not in the least. They won the victory
because they were better disciplined, because they
had better weapons—shortly, because what we may
term their organisation was better. That organiza
tion was due to labour of the head. Now, what
happened in Egypt is going on in the world at large
every day. It is not always the stronger, but the
better organized, the better educated man who goes
�IN THEORY AND PRACTICE.
I J.
ahead. What is true of individual men is true of
nations. The better organised, the better educated
nation is victorious in the battle of life. We English
have been so successful because we were well
organized, because we were better educated than
Hindoos, Zulus, and all the races we have con
quered. You must never forget how much of that
organization, that education, is due to labourers with
the head. Some of you may be indifferent to the
great empire of England, to this superiority
of Englishmen, but let me assure you that, small asin some cases is the comfort of the English working
classes, it is on the average large compared with
that of an inferior race—compared, say, with the
abject misery of the Egyptian peasant. I want, if
possible, to point out to you the need for sympathy
between labour of all kinds—that labourers with the
hand and labourers with the head are mutually
dependent. They are both true labourers as
opposed to the idlers—the drones, , who, by some
chance having a monopoly of wealth, live on thelabour of others. I would say to every man—
“ Friend, what is your calling, what are you doing
for society at large ? Are you making its shoes, are
you teaching its children, are you helping to main
tain order and forward its business ? If you are
doing none of this, are you relieving its work hours
by administering to its play ? Do you bring plea
sure to the people as an actor, a- writer, or a
painter ? If you are doing none of this, if you are
simply a possessor of wealth, struggling to amuse
yourself, and pass through life for your own pleasure,
then—why, then, you are not wanted here, and the
sooner you clear out, bag and baggage, the better
for us—and perhaps for yourself.” Do you grasp
now the significance of a society based upon labour ?
�14
SOCIALISM
The possessor of wealth, simp y because he ha
wealth, would have no place in such a society. The
workers would remove him even as the worker bees
eject the drones from their hive. ,
Society ought to be one vast guild of labourers—
workers with the head and workers with the hand—
and so organised there would be no place in it for
those who merely live on the work of others. In a
political or social system based upon labour it would
be the mere possessor of wealth who would have no
power ; how far we are at present from such a social
ism maybe best observed by noting that wealth now
has almost all political and social power—labour little
or none.
We have now reached what I conceive to be the
fundamental axiom of Socialism. Society must be
■organised on the basis of labour, and, therefore, political
power, the power of organising, must be in the
hands of labour.
That labour, as I have
endeavoured to impress upon you, is of two kinds.
There is labour of the hand, which provides
necessaries for all society: there is the labour of
the head, which produces all that we term progress,
and enables any individual society to maintain its
place in the battle of life—the labour which
educates and organises. I have come across a
tendency in some workers with the hand to suppose
all folk beside themselves to be idlers—social
drones, supported by their work. I admit that the
great mass of idlers are in what are termed the
‘upper and middle classes of society.’ But this
arises from the fact that society, being graduated
solely according to wealth, the people with the most
money, and who are most idle, of course take their
place in these viciously named ‘upper classes.’ In
a labour scale they would naturally appear at the
�IN THEORY AND PRACTICE.
15
very bottom, and form ‘ the dregs of population.’
It is true the labourer with the head is, as a rule,
better clothed, housed, and fed than the labourer
with the hand, but this often arises from the fact
that he is also a capitalist. Still, if the labourer
with the head, whose labour is.his sole source of liveli
hood, is better clothed, housed, and fed than the
artisan, it does no show that in all cases he is earn
ing more than his due; on the contrary, it may
denote that the artisan is earning far less than his
due. The difference, in fact, often represents the
work which goes to support the drones of our pre
sent social system.
At this point I reach what I conceive to be the
second great axiom of true Socialism. All forms of
labour are equally honourable. No form of labour
which is necessary for society can disgrace the
man who practises it or place him in a lower social
grade than any other form of labour. Let us look
at this point somewhat more closely, for it is of the
first importance. So long as the worker looks upon
his work as merely work for himself—considers it
only as a means to his own subsistence, and values
it only as it satisfies his own wants, so long one form
of work will be more degrading than another. To
shovel mud into a cart will be a lower form of work
than to make a pair of shoes, and to make shoes
will not be such high-class labour as to direct a
factory. But there is another way of regarding
work, in which all forms of real labour appear of
equal value—viz., when the labourer looks at
his work not with regard to himself, but with
regard to society at large. Let him con
sider his work as something necessary tor
society, as a condition of its existence, and then
all gradations vanish. It is just as necessary for
�i6
SOCIALISM :
society that its mud should be cleared from the
streets, as that it should have shoes, or again, as
that its factories should be directed. Once let the
workman recognise that his labour is needful for
society, and whatever its character, it becomes
honourable at once. In other words, from the
social standpoint all labour is equally honourable.
We might even go so far as to assert that the
lowest forms of labour are the more honourable,
because they involve the greater personal sacrifice
for the need of society. Once let this second axiom
of true Socialism be recognised—the equality of
every form of labour—and all the vicious distinc
tions of caste—the false lines which society has
drawn between one class of workers and another—
must disappear. The degradation of labour must
cease. Once admit that labour, though differing in
kind, as the shoemaker’s from the blacksmith’s, is
equal in degree, and all class barriers are broken
down. In other words, in a socialistic state, or in
a society based upon labour, there can be no
difference of class. All labourers, whether of the
hand or the head, must meet on equal terms ; they
are alike needful to society; their value will depend
only on the fashion and the energy with which they
perform their particular duties.
Before leaving this subject of labour, there is one
point, however, which must be noticed. I have
said that all forms of labour are equally honourable,
because'we may regard them as equally necessary
for society. But still the effects of various kinds of
labour on the individual will be different. The man
who spends his whole day in shovelling up mud
will hardly be as intelligent as the shoemaker or
engineer. His labour does not call for the same
exercise of intelligence, nor draw out his ingenuity to
�IN THEORY AND PRACTICE.
17
the same extent. Thus, although his labour is
equally honourable, it has not such a good influence
on the man himself. Hence the hours of labour, in
such occupations, ought to be as short as possible ;
sufficient leisure ought to be given to those engaged
in the more mechanical and disagreeable forms of
toil to elevate and improve themselves apart from
their work. When we admit that all labour is
•equally honourable, and therefore deserving of
equal wage, then to educate the labourer will not
lead him to despise his work. It will only lead him
to appreciate and enjoy more fully his leisure.
This question of leisure is a matter of the utmost
importance. We hear much of the demand for
shorter hours of labour; but how is the increased
spare time to be employed ? Many a toiler looks
with envy upon the extravagant luxury of the
wealthy, and cries, not unnaturally, “ What right
have you to enjoy all this, while I can hardly
procure the necessaries of life ? ” But there is a
matter in which I could wish the working classes
would envy the wealthy even more than they might
reasonably do their physical luxury—namely, their
education. There is to me something unanswerable
in the cry which the workman might raise against
the wealthy—“ What right have you to be educated,
while I am ignorant ? ” Far more unanswerable
than the cry—“What right have you to be rich
while I am poor ? ” I could wish a cry for educa
tion might arise from the toilers as the cry for bread
went up in the forties. It is the one thing which
would render an increase of leisure really valuable
to the workers—which would enable them to guide
themselves, and assist society through the dangerous
storms which seem surely gathering in the near
future. Leisure employed in education, in self
�18
SOCIALISM :
improvement, seems to me the only means by which
the difference in character between various forms of
labour can be equalised. This appears a point on
which the labourers with the head can practically
assist those with the hand. Let the two again
unite for that mutual assistance which is so
necessary, if between them they are to reorganise
society into one vast guild of labour.
If we pass for a moment from the possibilities of
the present to those of a distant future, we might
conceive the labourers with the hand to attain such
a degree of education that workers of both kinds
might be fused together. The same man might
labour with his pen in the morning and with his
shovel after mid-day. That, I think, would be the
ideal existence in which society, as an entire body,
would progress at the greatest possible rate. I have
endeavoured, then, to lay before you what I under
stand by labour; how all true labour is equally
honourable and deserving of an equal wage. If
many of the anomalies, much of the misery of our
present state of society would disappear, were it
organized on a socialistic or labour basis, it then
becomes necessary to consider in what manner the
labour basis differs from, and is opposed to, the
present basis of wealth.
In order to illustrate what the present basis of
wealth means, let me put to you a hypothetical case.
Let us suppose three men on an island separated
from the rest of the world. We may also suppose
there to be a sufficient supply of seed and ploughs,
and generally of agricultural necessaries. If now,
one of the three men were to assert that the
island, the seed, and the ploughs belonged to him,
and his two comrades for some reason— or want of
reason—accepted his assertion, let us trace what
�IN THEORY AND PRACTICE.
19
would follow. Obviously, he would have an entire
monopoly of all the means of sustaining life on the
island. He could part with them at whatever rate
he pleased, and could insist upon the produce ot
all the labour, which it would be possible to
extract from the two men, in return for supplying
them with the barest necessities of existence. He
would naturally do nothing; they would till the
ground with his implements, and sow his seed and
store it in his barn. After this he might employ them
in work tending to increase his luxuries, in providing
him with as fine a house and as gorgeous furniture
as they were capable of producing. He would
probably allow them to build themselves shanties as
protection from the weather, and grant them
sufficient food to sustain life. All their time, after
providing these necessaries for themselves, would
be devoted to his service. He would be landlord and
capitalist, having a complete monopoly of wealth^
He could practically treat the other two men as
slaves. Let us somewhat extend our example, and
suppose this relation to hold between the one
man and a considerable number of men on the
island. Then it might be really advantageous
for all the people on the island if the one man
directed their labour. We may suppose him to be a
practical farmer, who thoroughly understood his
business, so, by his directing the others, the greatest
amount possible would be produced from the land.
As such a director of farming operations, he would
be a labourer with the head, and worthy as any man
under him to receive his hire. He would have as great
a claim as any one he directed to the necessaries
of life produced by the labourers with the hand. In
a socialistic scheme he would still remain director ;
he would still receive his share of the produce, and
�20
SOCIALISM :
the result of the labour of the community would be
divided according to the labour of its members. On
the other hand, if our farm-director were owner ot
all things on the island, he might demand not only
the share due to him for his labour of the head, but
also that all the labour of the other inhabitants
should be directed to improving his condition rather
than their own. After providing for themselves the
bare necessities of life, the other islanders might be
called upon to spend all the rest of their time in
ministering to his luxury. He could demand this
because he would have a monopoly of all the land
and all the wealth of the island; such a state of
affairs on the island would be an individualism or a
society based upon wealth. I think this example
will show clearly the difference between a society
based upon labour and one based upon wealth.
Commonplace as the illustration may seem, it is
one which can be extended, and yet rarely is
extended to the state of affairs we find in our own
country. We have but to replace our island-land
owner and capitalist by a number of landowners and
capitalists. These will have a monopoly of land and
of wealth. They can virtually force the labouring
classes, who have neither land nor capital, to
administer to their luxury in return for the more
needful supports of life. The limit of comfort to
which they can reduce the labouring classes depends
on the following considerations, which, of course,
vary from time to time:—First, their own self
interest in keeping at least a sufficient supply of
labour in such decent health and strength that it
can satisfy their wants; secondly, their fear that too
great pinching may lead to a forcible revolution;
and, thirdly, a sort of feeling—arising partly per
haps from religion, partly perhaps from purely
�IN THEORY AND PRACTICE.
21
mechanical sympathy—of dislike at the sight of
suffering.
The greater demand there is for luxury on the part
of the wealthy, the smaller is the time that the
labouring classes can devote to the improvement of
their own condition, the increase of their own com
fort. Let us take a possible case, which may not
be the absolute truth, but which will exemplify the
law we have stated. Suppose that the labouring
classes work eight hours a day. Now, these eight
hours are not only spent in producing the absolute
necessities of existence, and the degree of comfort
in which our toilers live, but in producing also all
the luxuries enjoyed by the rich. Let us suppose,
for example, that five hours suffice to sow and to
till, and to weave and to carry and fetch—shortly,
to produce the food-supply of the country, and the
average comfort which the labourer enjoys as to
house and raiment. What, then, becomes of the
other three hours’ work ? It is consumed in making
luxuries of all kinds for the wealthy, fine houses,
rich furniture, dainty food, and so forth. These
three hours are spent, not in improving the condition
of the labourer’s own class, not in building themselves
better dwellings or weaving themselves better
clothes, nor, on the other hand, are they spent in
public works for the benefit of the whole comm unity
but solely in supplying luxuries for wealthy indi
viduals. The wealthy can demand these luxuries
because they possess a monopoly of land and of
capital, shortly, of the means of subsistence. This
monopoly of the means of subsistence makes them
in fact, if not in name, slave-owners. Such is the
result of the individualistic as opposed to the
socialistic system. We see now why the houses of
the poor . are deplorable—namely, because that
�22
SOCIALISM :
labour which should be devoted to improving them
is consumed in supplying the luxuries of the rich.
We may state it then, as a general law of a society
based upon wealth—that the misery of the labouring
classes is directly proportional to the luxury of the
wealthy. This law is a very old one indeed; the
only strange thing is, that it is every day forgotten.
Having noted, then, wherein the evil of the social
system based upon wealth lies, we have lastly to
consider how far, and by what means, it is possible
to remedy it.
The only true method of investigating a question
of this kind is, I feel sure, the historical one. Let
us ask ourselves how in past ages one state of society
has been replaced by another, and then, if possible,
apply the general law to the present time.
Now, there are a considerable number of socialistic
teachers—I will not call them false Socialists—who
are never weary of crying out that our present state
in society is extremely unjust, and that it must be
destroyed. They are perpetually telling the labour
ing classes that the rich unjustly tyrannize over
them, and that this tyranny must be thrown off.
According to these teachers, it would seem as if the
rich had absolutely entered into a conspiracy to
defraud the poor. Now, although I call myself a
Socialist, I must tell you plainly that I consider such
teaching not only very foolish, but extremely harm
ful. It can arise only from men who are ignorant,
or from men who seek to win popularity from the
working-classes by appealing to their baser passions.
So far from aiding true Socialism, it stirs up class
hatred, and instead of bringing classes together, it
raises a barrier of bitterness and hostility between
them. It is idle to talk of a conspiracy of the rich
against the poor, of one class against another. A
�IN THEORY AND PRACTICE.
23
man is born into his class, and into the traditions of
his class. He is not responsible for his birth,
whether it be to wealth or to labour. He is born to
certain luxuries, and he is never taught to consider
them as other than his natural due; he does as his
class does, and as his fathers have done before him.
His fault is not one of malice, but of ignorance.
He does not know how his luxuries directly increase
the misery of the poor, because no one has ever
brought it home to him. Although a slave-owner
he is an unconscious slave-owner. Shortly, he wants
educating ; not educating quite in the same sense as
the labouring classes want educating, he probably
has book-learning enough. He wants teaching that
there is a higher social morality than the morality
of a society based upon wealth. Namely, he must
be taught that mere ownership has no social value
at all—that the sole thing of social value is labour,
labour of head or labour of hand : and that in
dividual ownership of wealth has arisen in the
past out of a very crude and insufficient method
of representing such labour. The education of
the so-called upper or wealth-owning classes is
thus an imperative necessity.
They must be
taught a new morality. Here, again, is a point
on which we see the need of a union between
the educative and hand-working classes. The
labourers with the head must come to the assist
ance of the labourers with the hand by educating the
wealthy. Do not think this is a visionary project;
two great Englishmen at least, John Ruskin and
William Morris, are labouring at this task; they are
endeavouring to teach the capitalistic classes that
the morality of a society based upon wealth is a
mere immorality.
But you will tell me that education is a very long
�24
SOCIALISM:
process, and that meantime the poor are suffering,
and must continue to suffer. Are not the labouring
classes unjustly treated, and have they not a right
to something better ? Shortly, ought they not to
enforce that right ? Pardon me, if I tell you plainly
that I do not understand what such abstract
‘justice ’ or ‘right’ means. I understand that the
comfort of the labouring classes is far below what
it would be if society were constituted on the
basis of labour. I believe that on such a basis
there would be less misery in the world, and there
fore it is a result to be aimed at. But because this
is a result which all men should strive for, it does
not follow that we gain anything by calling it a
‘right.’ A ‘right’ suggests something which a
man may take by force, if he cannot obtain it other
wise. It suggests that the labouring classes should
revolt against the capitalistic classes and seize what
is their ‘ right.’
Let us consider for a moment what is the mean
ing of such a revolt. I shall again take history as
our teacher. History shows us that whenever the
misery of the labouring classes reaches a certain
limit they always do break into open rebellion. It
is the origin, more or less, of all revolutions
throughout the course of time. But history teaches
us just as surely that such revolutions are accom
panied by intense misery both for the labouring and
wealthy classes. If this infliction of misery had
ever resulted in the reconstruction of society we
might even hope for good from a revolution, but we
invariably find that something like the old system
springs again out of the chaos, and the same old
distinction of classes, the same old degra
dation of labour is sure to reappear. That is
precisely the teaching of the Paris Commune or
�IN THEORY AND PRACTICE.
2$
again of the Anabaptist Kingdom of God in
Munster. Apart from this the labourers with the
hand will never be permanently successful in a
revolution, unless they have the labourers with
the head with them; they will want organiza
tion, they will want discipline, and this must fail
unless education stands by them. Now, the
labourers with the head have usually deserted the
labourers with the hand when the latter rise in
revolt, because they are students of history and
they know too well from history that revolution has
rarely permanently benefited the revolting classes.
You may accept it as a primary law of history, that
no great change ever occurs with a leap, no great social
reconstruction, which will permanently benefit any
class of the community, is ever brought about by a
revolution. It is the result of a gradual growth, a
progressive change, what we term an evolution. This
is as much a law of history as of nature. Try as
you will, you cannot make a man out of a child in a
day, you must wait and let him grow, and gradually
educate him and replace his childish ideas by the
thoughts of a man. Precisely so you must treat
society; you must gradually change it, educate it,
if you want a permanent imprbvement in its nature.
Feeling, as I do, the extreme misery which is brought
about by the present state of society based upon
wealth, I should say to the working-classes, ‘ Revolt,’
if history did not teach me only too surely, that
revolution would fail of its object. All progress
towards a better state of things must be gradual.
Progress proceeds by evolution, not by revolution.
For this reason I would warn you against socialistic
teachers who talk loudly of ‘ right ’ and ‘justice
who seek to stir up class against class. Such teach
ing merely tends towards revolution ; and revolution
�26
SOCIALISM :
js not justifiable, because it is never successful. It
never achieves its object. Such teachers are not
true socialists, because they have not studied history; because their teaching really impedes our
progress towards socialism. We might even take
an example from our island with its landlord
capitalist tyrannizing over the other inhabitants.
We have supposed him to be a practical farmer
capable of directing the labours of the others. Now,
suppose the inhabitants were to rise in revolt and
throw him into the sea, what would happen ? Why,
the very next year they would not know what to sow
or how to sow it; their agricultural operations would
fail, and there would very soon be a famine on the
island, which would be far worse than the old tyranny.
Something very similar would occur in this country
if the labouring classes were to throw all our
capitalists into the sea. There would be no one
capable of directing the factories or the complex
operations of trade and commerce; these would all
collapse, and there would very soon be a famine in
this island also. You must bring your capitalist to
see that he is only a labourer, a labourer with the
head, and deserves wage accordingly. You can
only do this by two methods. The first is to educate
him to a higher morality, the second is to restrict
him by the law of the land. Now, the law of the
land is nothing more or less than the morality of
the ruling class, and so long as political power is in
the hands of the capitalists, and these are ‘ uneduc
ated,’they are unlikely to restrict their own profits
If, then, my view that we can only approach
socialism by a gradual change is correct, we have
before us two obvious lines of conduct which we
may pursue at the same time. The first, and I am
inclined to think the more important, is the educa-
�.
IN THEORY AND PRACTICE.
27
tion of the wealthy classes; they must be taught
from childhood up that the only moral form of
society is a society based upon labour, they must be
taught always to bear in mind the great law—that
the misery of the poor is ever directly proportional
to the luxury of the rich. This first object ought to
be essentially the duty of the labourers with the
head. Let the labourer with the hand ever regard
himself as working in concert with the labourer with
the head—the two are in truth but members of one
large guild, the guild of labour, upon which basis
society has to be reconstructed. The second line of
conduct, which is practically open to all true
Socialists, is the attainment of political power;
wealth must cease to be the governing power in
this country, it must be replaced by labour. The
educative classes and the handworkers must rule
the country; only so will it be possible to replace
the wealth basis by the labour basis. The first step
in this direction must necessarily be the granting
of the franchise to all hand-workers. This is a very
practical and definite aim to work for. Now, I have
already hinted that I consider both great political
parties really to represent wealth. Hence I do not
believe that any true Socialist is either Liberal or
Conservative, but at present it would be idle to think
of returning socialistic members to Parliament
*
Socialists will best forward their aims at present by
supporting that party which is likely to increase the
franchise. So that to be a true Socialist at present
means, I think, to support the ‘ Liberal ’ Govern
ment. This support is not given because we are
* This was written in 188L The extension of the
franchise, incomplete as it is, has since considerably in
creased the possibility of returning socialistic members
for at least one or two towns.
�28
SOCIALISM :
‘ Liberals,’ but because, by it, we can best aid the
cause of Socialism. But with regard to the fran
chise, there is a point which I cannot too strongly
insist upon. If the complete enfranchisement of
the hand-worker is to forward the socialistic cause
he must be educated so as to use it for that purpose,
Now, we have laid it down as a canon of Socialism
that all labour is equally honourable; in a society
based upon labour there can be no distinction of
class. Thus, the true Socialist must be superior
to class-interests. He must look beyond his own
class to the wants and habits of society at large.
Hence, if the franchise is to be really profitable, the
hand-worker must be educated to see beyond the
narrow bounds of his own class. He must be
taught to look upon society as a whole, and respect
the labour of all its varied branches. He must
endeavour to grasp the wants and habits of other
forms of labour than his own, whether it be labour of
the head or of the hand. He must recognize to the
full that all labour is equally honourable, and has
equal claims on society at large. The shoemaker
does not despise the labour of the blacksmith, but he
must be quite sure that the labour of the school
master, of the astronomer, and of the man who
works with his brains, is equally valuable to the com
munity. Here, again, we see how the labourer with
the head can come to the assistance of the labourer
with the hand. In order that the franchise may be
practically of value to the artisan, he must grasp how
to use it for broader purposes than mere class aims.
To do this he requires to educate himself. I repeat
that I should like to hear a cry go up from the
hand-workers for education and leisure for education,
even as it went up forty years ago for bread. For
the mind is of equal importance with the stomach
�IN THEORY AND PRACTICE.
29
and needs its bread also. Apart from the franchise,
there is another direction in which, I think, practi
cal steps might be taken, namely, to obtain for
trades-unions, or rather, as I should prefer to call
them, labour-guilds—a share or influence in munici
pal government. Let there be a labour-guild
influence in every parish, and on every vestry. As
I have said before, I cannot conceive that the
housing of the poor would be what it is if the trades
unions had been represented in the government of
London. Such a representation would be the first
approach to a communal organization based upon
labour, and ultimately to a society on the same basis.
You can hardly support your trades-unions too
energetically, and you have in this respect taught
the labourers with the head a lesson. These
labourers with the head are just beginning to form
their labour-guilds too—guilds of teachers and guilds
of writers—and it is to these labour guilds, and to
your trades-unions that we must look for much use
ful work in the future.
These surely are practical aims enough for the
’ present, but I may perhaps be allowed to point out
to you what direction I think legislative action
should take, supposing the franchise granted to all
hand-workers. As I have endeavoured to show,
any sudden change would be extremely dangerous ;
it would upset our old social arrangements, and
would not give us any stable new institutions. It
would embitter class against class, and not destroy
class altogether. We must endeavour to pass
gradually from the old to the new state; from the
state in which wealth is the social basis to one in
which labour is the sole element by which we judge
men. Now, in order that wealth should cease
to be mistress, her monopoly of the means of sub
�30
SOCIALISM :
sistence must be destroyed. In other words, land
and capital must cease to be in the hands of in
dividuals.
We must have nationalization of
the land and nationalization of capital. Every
Socialist is a land-nationalizer and a capital-nationalizer.
It will be sufficient now to consider the first
problem, the nationalization of the land. Mr.
George says, take the land and give no compensation.
That |is what I term a revolutionary measure; it
attempts to destroy and reconstruct in a moment.
If history teaches us anything, it tells us that all
such revolutionary measures fail; they bring more
misery than they accomplish good.
Hence,
although I am a land-nationalizer—as every Social
ist must be—I do not believe in Mr. George’s cry of
‘ No compensation.’ Then we have another set ot
land-nationalizers, who would buy the landlords
out. Let us see what this means. The landlords
would be given, in return for their lands, a large
sum of money, which would have to be borrowed by
the nation, and the interests on which would
increase for ever the taxes of the country. In other
words, we should be perpetuating the wealth of the
landlords and their claims to be permanently
supported by the classes that labour. That is not a
socialistic remedy. It would seem, at first sight as
if there were no alternative—either compensation
or no compensation. Yet I think there is a third
course, if we would only try to legislate for the
future as well as for the present. Suppose a bill were
passed to convert all freehold in land into a lease
hold, say, of 8oto ioo years, from the nation.' Here
there would be no question of compensation, and
little real injury to the present landowner, because
the difference between freehold and a hundred
�IN THEORY AND PRACTICE.
31
years’ leasehold (at least in towns) is comparatively
small. At the end of a hundred years the nation
would be in possession of all land without having
paid a penny for it, and without violently breaking
up the present social arrangements. In less than
100 years with the land slipping from their fingers
the children of our present landowners would have
learnt that, if they want to live, they must labour.
That would be a great step to true socialism. Pre
cisely as I propose to treat the land I would treat
most forms of capital. With the land, of course,
mines and factories would necessarily pass into the
hands of the nation. Railways would have to be
dealt with in the same fashion. The present com
panies would have a hundred years’ lease instead of
a perpetuity of their property.
These are merely suggestions of how it might be
possible to pass to a stable form of society based
upon labour—to a true socialism. The change
would be stable because it would be gradual; the
state would be socialistic because it would be based
upon labour; while wealth, in its two important
forms—land and capital—would belong alone to the
nation.
Some of you may cry out in astonishment, “ But
what is the use of working for such a socialism, we
shall never live to see it, we shall never enjoy its
happiness.” Quite true, I reply, but there is a
nobler calling than working for ourselves, there is a
higher happiness than self-enjoyment—namely, the
feeling that our labour will have rendered posterity,
will have rendered our children free from the misery
through which we ourselves have had to struggle;
the feeling that our work in life has left the world a
more joyous dwelling-place for mankind than we
found it. The little streak of improvement which
�32
SOCIALISM ; IN THEORY AND IN PRACTICE
each man may leave behind him—the only im
mortality ot which mankind can be sure—is a far
nobler result of labour, whether of hand or of head,
than three-score years of unlimited personal happi
ness.
�
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Socialism in theory and practice : a lecture delivered to a working class audience
Description
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Edition: 2nd ed.
Place of publication: London
Collation: 32 p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: Note to Second Edition dated March 6th 1887. Lecture first delivered early 1884.
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Pearson, Karl
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W. Reeves
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[1887?]
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T468
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Socialism
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English
Addresses
Socialism
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Text
INAUGURAL ADDRESS
AT EDINBURGH, APRIL 2nd, 1866 ;
BY
THOMAS CARLYLE,
ON BEING INSTALLED AS RECTOR OF THE
UNIVERSITY THERE.
[AUTHORIZED REPORT]
EDINBURGH: EDMONSTON AND DOUGLAS.
LONDON : CHAPMAN AND HALL.
.1 8 6 6.
�ADDRESS.
Gentlemen,—I have accepted the office you have elected
me to, and it is now my duty to return thanks for the
great honour done me. Your enthusiasm towards me, I
must admit, is in itself very beautiful, however undeserved
it may be in regard to the object of it. It is a feeling hon
ourable to all men, and one well known to myself when I
was of an age like yours, nor is it yet quite gone. I
can only hope that, with you too, it may endure to the
end,—this noble desire to honour those whom you think
worthy of honour; and that you will come to be more
and more select and discriminate in the choice of the
object of it:—for I can well understand that you will
modify your opinions of me and of many things else,
as you go on. {Laughter and cheers?) It is now fifty-six
years, gone last November, since I first entered your City,
a boy of not quite fourteen; to ‘attend the classes’ here,
and gain knowledge of all kinds, I could little guess
what, my poor mind full of wonder and awe-struck ex
pectation ; and now, after a long course, this is what we
have come to. (Cheers?) There is something touching
�6
INAUGURAL ADDRESS.
and tragic, and yet at the same time beautiful, to see, as
it were, the third generation of my dear old native land,
rising up and saying, “ Well, you are not altogether an
unworthy labourer in the vineyard; you have' toiled through
a great variety of fortunes, and have had many judges:
this is our judgment of you I” As the old proverb says,
‘ He that builds by the wayside has many masters.’ We
must expect a variety of judges; but the voice of young
Scotland, through you, is really of some value to me; and
I return you many thanks for it,—though I cannot go
into describing my emotions to you, and perhaps they
will be much more perfectly conceivable if expressed in
silence. (Cheers.)
When this office was first proposed to me, some of you
know I was not very ambitious to accept it, but had my
doubts rather. I was taught to believe that there were
certain more or less important duties which would lie
in my power. This, I confess, was my chief motive in
going into it, and overcoming the objections I felt to
such things: if I could do anything to serve my dear
old Alma Mater and you, why should not I ? (Loud
cheers.) Well, but on practically looking into the matter
when the office actually came into my hands, I find it
grows more and more uncertain and abstruse to me whether
there is much real duty that I can do at all. I live four
hundred miles away from you, in an entirely different
scene of things; and my weak health, with the burden
of the many years now accumulating on me, and my total
unacquaintance with such subjects as concern your affairs
here,—all this fills me with apprehension that there is
�EXTEMPORE.
7
really nothing worth the least consideration that I can do
on that score. You may depend on it, however, that if
any such duty does arise in any form, I will use my most
faithful endeavour to do in it whatever is right and proper,
according to the best of my judgment. (Cheers.)
Meanwhile, the duty I at present have,—which might
be very pleasant, but which is not quite so, for reasons you
may fancy,—is to address some words to you, if possible
not quite useless, nor incongruous to the occasion, and on
subjects more or less cognate to the pursuits you are
engaged in. Accordingly, I mean to offer you some loose
observations, loose in point of order, but the truest I have,
in such form as they may present themselves; certain
of the thoughts that are in me about the business you
are here engaged in, what kind of race it is that you
young gentlemen have started on, and what sort of arena
you are likely to find in this world. I ought, I believe,
according to custom, to have written all that down on
paper, and had it read out. That would have been much
handier for me at the present moment—(A laugh);—
but, on attempting the thing, I found I was not used
to write speeches, and that I didn’t get on very well.
So I flung that aside; and could only resolve to trust, in
all superficial respects, to the suggestion of the moment, as
you now see. You will therefore have to accept what is
readiest; what comes direct from the heart; and you must
just take that in compensation for any good order or
arrangement there might have been in it. I will endea
vour to say nothing that is not true, so far as I can
manage; and that is pretty much all I can engage for.
(A laugh.)
�8
INAUGURAL ADDRESS.
Advices, I believe, to young men, as to all men, are
very seldom much valued. There is a great deal of ad
vising, and very little faithful performing ; and talk that
does not end in any kind of action is better suppressed
altogether. I would not, therefore, go much into advising;
but there is one advice I must give you. In fact, it is the
summary of all advices, and doubtless you have heard it a
thousand times; but I must nevertheless let you hear it
the thousand-and-first time, for it is most intensely true,
whether you will believe it at present or not:—namely,
That above all things the interest of your whole life depends
on your being diligent, now while it is called to-day, in this
place where you have come to get education ! Diligent:
that includes in it all virtues that a student can have: I
mean it to include all those qualities of conduct that lead
on to the acquirement of real instruction and improve
ment in such a place. If you will believe me, you who
are young, yours is the golden season of life. As you have
heard it called, so it verily is, the seed-time of life; in
which, if you do not sow, or if you sow tares instead of
wheat, you cannot expect to reap well afterwards, and you
will arrive at little. And in the course of years, when you
come to look back, if you have not done what you have
heard from your advisers,—and among many counsellors
there is wisdom,—you will bitterly repent when it is too
late. The habits of study acquired at Universities are of
the highest importance in after-life. At the season when
you are young in years, the whole mind is, as it were,
fluid, and is capable of forming itself into any shape
that the owner of the mind pleases to allow it, or con
�HONESTY OF MIND.
9
strain it, to form itself into. The mind is then in a
plastic or fluid state ; but it hardens gradually, to the
consistency of rock or of iron, and you cannot alter the
habits of an old man: he, as he has begun, so he will
proceed and go on to the last.
By diligence I mean among other things, and very
chiefly too,—honesty, in all your inquiries, and in all you
are about. Pursue your studies in the way your conscience
can name honest. More and more endeavour to do that.
Keep, I should say for one thing, an accurate separation
between what you have really come to know in your minds
and what is still unknown. Leave all that latter on the
hypothetical side of the barrier, as things afterwards to be
acquired, if acquired at all; and be careful not to admit a
thing as known when you do not yet know it. Count a thing
known only when it is imprinted clearly on your mind, and
has become transparent to you, so that you may survey it
on all sides with intelligence. There is such a thing as a
man endeavouring to persuade himself, and endeavouring
to persuade others, that he knows things, when he does
not know more than the outside skin of them; and yet
he goes flourishing about with’ them. (Hear, hear, and
a laugh?) There is also a process called cramming, in some
Universities (A laugh),—that is, getting up such points of
things as the examiner is likely to put questions about.
Avoid all that, as entirely unworthy of an honourable
mind. Be modest, and humble, and assiduous in your
attention to what your teachers tell you, who are pro
foundly interested in trying to bring you forward in the
right way, so far as they have been able to understand it.
�10
e
INAUGURAL ADDRESS.
Try all things they set before you, in order, if possible, to
understand them, and to follow and adopt them in propor
tion to their fitness for you. Gradually see what kind of
work you individually can do; it is the first of all pro
blems for a man to find out what kind of work he is to
do in this universe. In short, morality as regards study
is, as in all other things, the primary consideration, and
overrules all others. A dishonest man cannot do anything
real; he never will study with real fruit; and perhaps it
would be greatly better if he were tied up from trying
it. He does nothing but darken counsel by the words
he utters. That is a very old doctrine, but a very true
one; and you will find it confirmed by all the thinking
men that have ever lived in this long series of generations
of which we are the latest.
I daresay you know, very many of you, that it is now
some seven hundred years since Universities were first set
up in this world of ours. Abelard and other thinkers had
arisen with doctrines in them which people wished to hear
of, and students flocked towards them from all parts of the
world. There was no getting the thing recorded in books,
as you now may. You had to hear the man speaking to
you vocally, or else you could not learn at all what it
was that he wanted to say. And so they gathered to
gether, these speaking ones,—the various people who had
anything to teach;—and formed themselves gradually,
under the patronage of kings and other potentates who
were anxious about the culture of their populations, and
nobly studious of their best benefit; and became a body
�UNIVERSITIES.
11
corporate, with high privileges, high dignities, and really
high aims, under the title of a University.
Possibly too you may have heard it said that the course
of centuries has changed all this ; and that ‘ the true Uni
versity of our days is a Collection of Books.’ And beyond
doubt, all this is greatly altered by the invention of Print
ing, which took place about midway between us and the
origin of Universities. Men have not now to go in person
to where a Professor is actually speaking; because in
most cases you can* get his doctrine out of him through a
book; and can then read it, and read it again and again,
and study it. That is an immense change, that one fact
of Printed Books. And I am not sure that I know of any
University in which the whole of that fact has yet been
completely taken in, and the studies moulded in complete
conformity with it. Nevertheless, Universities have, and
will continue to have, an indispensable value in society;
—I think, a very high, and it might be, almost the highest
value. They began, as is well known, with their grand
aim directed on Theology,—their eye turned earnestly on
Heaven. And perhaps, in a sense, it may be still said, the
very highest interests of man are virtually intrusted to them.
In regard to theology, as you are aware, it has been, and
especially was then, the study of the deepest heads that
have come into the world,—what is the nature of this stupen
dous universe, and what are our relations to it, and to all
things knowable by man, or known only to the great Author
of man and it. Theology was once the name for all this;
all this is still alive for man, however dead the name
may grow! In fact, the members of the Church keeping
�12
INAUGURAL ADDRESS.
theology in a lively condition—(Laughter)—for the benefit
of the whole population, theology was the great object of
the Universities. I consider it is the same intrinsically
now, though very much forgotten, from many causes, and
not so successful—(A laugh)—as might be wished, by any
manner of means I
It remains, however, practically a most important truth,
what I alluded to above, that the main use of Universities
in the present age is that, after you have done with all
your classes, the next thing is a collection of books, a
great i library of good books, which you proceed to study
and to read. What the Universities can mainly do for
you,—what I have found the University did for me, is, That
it taught me to read, in various languages, in various
sciences ; so that I could go into the books which treated of
these things, and gradually penetrate into any department
I wanted to make myself master of, as I found it suit me.
Well, gentlemen, whatever you may think of these
historical points, the clearest and most imperative duty
lies on every one of you to be assiduous in your reading.
Learn to be good readers,—which is, perhaps, a more
difficult thing than you imagine. Learn to be di scrim in ative in your reading; to read faithfully, and with your best
attention, all kinds of things which you have a real in
terest in, a real not an imaginary, and which you find to be
really fit for what you are engaged in. Of course, at the
present time, in a great deal of the reading incumbent on
you, you must be guided by the books recommended
by your Professors for assistance towards the effect of their
�READING.
13
prelections. And then, when you leave the University, and
go into studies of your own, you will find it very important
that you have chosen a field, some province specially suited
to you, in which you can study and work. The most unhappy
of all men is the man who cannot tell what he is going to
do, who has got no work cut out for him in the world,
and does not go into it. For work is the grand cure of
all the maladies and miseries that ever beset mankind,—
honest work, which you intend getting done.
If, in any vacant vague time, you are in a strait as to
choice of reading,-^-a very good indication for you, perhaps
the best you could get, is towards some book you have
a great curiosity about. You are then in the readiest
and best of all possible conditions to improve by that
book. It is analogous to what doctors tell us about the
physical health and appetites of the patient. You must
learn, however, to distinguish between false appetite and
true. There is such a thing as a false appetite, which will
lead a man into vagaries with regard to diet; will tempt
him to eat spicy things, which he should not eat at all,
nor would, but that the things are toothsome, and that
he is under a momentary baseness of mind. A man ought
to examine and find out what he really and truly has an
appetite for, what suits his constitution and condition;
and that, doctors tell him, is in general the very thing he
ought to have. And so with books.
As applicable to all of you, I will say that it is highly
expedient to go into history; to inquire into what has
passed before you on this Earth, and in the Family of Man.
�14
INAUGURAL ADDRESS.
The history of the Romans and Greeks will first of all
concern you; and you will find that the classical know
ledge you have got will he extremely applicable to eluci
date that. There you have two of the most remarkable
races of men in the world set before you, calculated to
open innumerable reflections and considerations; a mighty
advantage, if you can achieve it;—to say nothing of what
their two languages will yield you, which your Professors
can better explain; model languages, which are universally
admitted to be the most perfect forms of speech we have
yet found to exist among men. And you will find, if you
read well, a pair of extremely remarkable nations, shining
in the records left by themselves, as a kind of beacon, or
solitary mass of illumination, to light up some noble
forms of human life for us, in the otherwise utter darkness
of the past ages; and it will be well worth your while if
you can get into the understanding of what these people
were, and what they did. You will find a great deal of
hearsay, of empty rumour and tradition, which does not
touch on the matter; but perhaps some of you will get
to see the old Roman and the old Greek face to face; you
will know in some measure how they contrived to exist,
and to perform their feats in the world.
I believe, also, you will find one important thing not
much noted, That there was a very great deal of deep reli
gion in both nations. This is pointed out by the wiser kind
of historians, and particularly by Ferguson, who is particu
larly well worth reading on Roman history,—and who, I
believe, was an alumnus of our own University. His book
is a very creditable work. He points out the profoundly
�ROMANS AND GREEKS.
15
religious nature of the Roman people, notwithstanding their
ruggedly positive, defiant, and fierce ways. They believed
that Jupiter Optimus Maximus was lord of the universe, and
that he had appointed the Romans to become the chief of
nations, provided they followed his commands,—to brave
all danger, all difficulty, and stand up with an invin
cible front, and be ready to do and die; and also to have
the same sacred regard to truth of promise, to thorough
veracity, thorough integrity, and all the virtues that ac
company that noblest quality of man, valour,—to which
latter the Romans gave the name of ‘ virtue’ proper (yirtus,
manhood), as the crown and summary of all that is en
nobling for a man. In the literary ages of Rome, this re
ligious feeling had very much decayed away; but it still
retained its place among the lower classes of the Roman
people. Of the deeply religious nature of the Greeks,
along with their beautiful and sunny effulgences of art,
you have striking proof, if you look for it. In the tragedies
of Sophocles, there is a most deep-toned recognition of
the eternal justice of Heaven, and the unfailing punish
ment of crime against the laws of God. I believe you
will find in all histories of nations, that this has been at
the origin and foundation of them all; and that no nation
which did not contemplate this wonderful universe with
an awestricken and reverential belief that there was a great
unknown, omnipotent, and all-wise and all-just Being,
superintending all men in it, and all interests in it,—no
nation ever came to very much, nor did any man either,
who forgot that. If a man did forget that, he forgot the
most important part of his mission in this world.
�16
INAUGURAL ADDRESS.
Our own history of England, which you will naturally
take a great deal of pains to make yourselves acquainted
with, you will find beyond all others worthy of your study.
For indeed I believe that the British nation,—including
in that the Scottish nation,—produced a finer set of men
than any you will find it possible to get anywhere else in
the world. (Applause?) I don’t know, in any history
of Greece or Rome, where you will get so fine a man as
Oliver Cromwell, for example. (Applause?) And we, too,
have had men worthy of memory, in our little corner of
the Island here, as well as others; and our history has had
its heroic features all along; and did become great at last
in being connected with world-history:—for if you examine
well, you will find that John Knox was the author, as it
were, of Oliver Cromwell; that the Puritan revolution
never would have taken place in England at all, had it
not been for that Scotchman. (Applause.) That is an
authentic fact, and is not prompted by national vanity
on my part, but will stand examining. (Laughter and
applause^)
In fact, if you look at the struggle that was then going
on in England, as I have had to do in my time, you will
see that people were overawed by the immense impedi
ments lying in the way. A small minority of God-fearing
men in that country were flying away, with any ship they
could get, to New England, rather than take the lion by
the beard. They durst not confront the powers with their
most just complaints, and demands to be delivered from
idolatry. They wanted to make the nation altogether con
formable to the Hebrew Bible, which they, and all men,
�ENGLISH AND SCOTTISH HISTORY.
17
understood to be the exact transcript of the Will of God ;
—and could there be, for man, a more legitimate aim ?
Nevertheless, it would have been impossible in their
circumstances, and not to be attempted at all, had not
Knox succeeded in it here, some fifty years before, by
the firmness and nobleness of his mind. For he also is of
the select of the earth to me,—John Knox. (Applause?)
What he has suffered from the ungrateful generations that
have followed him should really make us humble ourselves
to the dust, to think that the most excellent man our country
has produced, to whom we owe everything that distin
guishes us among the nations, should have been so sneered
at, misknown, and abused. (Applause?) Knox was heard by
Scotland; the people heard him, believed him to the marrow
of their bones : they took up his doctrine, and they defied
principalities and powers to move them from it. “We
must have it,” they said; “ we will and must!” It was in
this state of things that the Puritan struggle arose in
England; and you know well how the Scottish earls and
nobility, with their tenantry, marched away to Dunse Hill
in 1639, and sat down there: just at the crisis of that
struggle, when it was either to be suppressed or brought
into greater vitality, they encamped on Dunse Hill,—thirty
thousand armed men, drawn out for that occasion, each
regiment round its landlord, its earl, or whatever he might
be called, and zealous all of them ‘ For Christ’s Crown and
Covenant.’ That was the signal for all England’s rising up
into unappeasable determination to have the Gospel there
also ; and you know it went on, and came to be a contest
whether the Parliament or the King should rule; whether it
B
�18
INAUGURAL ADDRESS.
should he old formalities and use and wont, or something
that had been of new conceived in the Souls of men, namely,
a divine determination to walk according to the laws of
God here, as the sum of all prosperity; which, of these
should have the mastery: and after a long, long agony of
struggle, it was decided—the way we know.
I should say also of that Protectorate of Oliver Crom
well’s, notwithstanding the censures it has encountered,
and the denial of everybody that it could continue in the
world, and so on, it appears to me to have been, on the
whole, the most salutary thing in the modern history of
England. If Oliver Cromwell had continued it out, I
don’t know what it would have come to. It would have
got corrupted probably in other hands, and could not have
gone on; but it was pure and true, to the last fibre, in
his mind; there was perfect truth in it while he ruled
over it. Machiavelli has remarked, in speaking of the
Romans, that Democracy cannot long exist anywhere in
the world; that as a' mode of government, of national
management or administration, it involves an impossibility,
and after a little while must end in wreck. And he goes
on proving that, in his own way. I do not ask you all to
follow him in that conviction—(hear),—but it is to him
a clear truth; he considers it a solecism and impossibility
that the universal mass of men should ever govern them
selves. He has to admit of the Romans, that they con
tinued a long time; but believes, it was purely in virtue
of this item in their constitution, namely, of their all
having the conviction in their minds that it was solemnly
�THE PROTECTOR.
19
necessary, at times, to appoint a Dictator; a man who had
the power of life and death over everything, who degraded
men out of their places, ordered them to execution, and
did whatever seemed to him good in the name of God above
him. He was commanded to take care that the republic
suffer no detriment. And Machiavelli calculates that this
was the thing which purified the social system, from time
to time, and enabled it to continue as it did. Probable
enough, if you consider it. And an extremely proper
function surely, this of a Dictator, if the republic was
composed of little other than bad and tumultuous men,
triumphing in general over the better, and all going the
bad road, in fact. Well, Oliver Cromwell’s Protectorate,
or Dictatorate if you will let me name it so, lasted for
about ten years, and you will find that nothing which was
contrary to the laws of heaven was allowed to live by
Oliver. (Applaus'e.)
For example, it was found by his Parliament of Notables,
what they call the ‘Barebones Parliament,’—the most
zealous of all Parliaments probably (laughter),—that the
Court of Chancery in England was in a state which was
really capable of no apology; no man could get up and
say that that was a right court. There were, I think,
fifteen thousand, or fifteen hundred (Laughter),—I really
don’t remember which, but we will call it by the last num
ber, to be safe (Renewed laughter);—-there were fifteen
hundred cases lying in it undecided; and one of them,
I remember, for a large amount of money, was eightythree years old, and it was going on still; wigs were
wagging over it, and lawyers were taking their fees, and
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INAUGURAL ADDRESS.
there was no end of it. Upon view of all which, the
Barebones people, after deliberation about it, thought it
was expedient, and commanded by the Author of Man and
Fountain of Justice, and in the name of what was true and
right, to abolish said court. Really, I don’t know who could
have dissented from that opinion. At the same time, it was
thought by those who were wiser in their generation, and
had more experience of the world, that this was a very dan
gerous thing, and wouldn’t suit at all. The lawyers began to
make an immense noise about it. (Laughter?) All the public,
the great mass of solid and well-disposed people who had got
no deep insight into such matters, were very adverse to it:
and the Speaker of the Parliament, old Sir Francis Rous,—
who translated the Psalms for us, those that we sing here
every Sunday in the Church yet; a very good man, and a
wise and learned, Provost of Eton College afterwards,—
he got a great number of the Parliament to go to Oliver
the Dictator, and lay down their functions altogether, and
declare officially, with their signature, on Monday morning,
that the Parliament was dissolved. The act of abolition
had been passed on Saturday night; and on Monday
morning, Rous came and said, “We cannot carry on the
affair any longer, and we remit it into the hands of your
Highness.” Oliver in that way became Protector a second
time. I give you this as an instance that Oliver was
faithfully doing a Dictator’s function, and of his prudence
in it, as well.
Oliver felt that the Parliament, now
dismissed, had been perfectly right with regard to Chan
cery, and that there was no doubt of the propriety of
abolishing Chancery, or else reforming it in some kind
�sources of history.
21
of way.. He considered the matter, and this is what he
did. He assembled sixty of the wisest lawyers to be found
in England. Happily, there were men great in the law;
men who valued the laws of England as much as anybody
ever did; and who knew withal that there was something
still more sacred than any of these. (A laugh,^ Oliver
said to them, “ Go and examine this thing, and in the name
of God inform me what is necessary to be done with it.
You will see how we may clean out the foul things in that Chancery Court, which render it poison to everybody.”
Well, they sat down accordingly, and in the course of six
weeks,(there was no public speaking then, no reporting
of speeches, and no babble of any kind, there was just
the business in hand,)—they got sixty propositions fixed
in their minds as the summary of the things that re
quired to be done. And upon these sixty propositions,
Chancery was reconstituted and remodelled; and so it got
a new lease of life, and has lasted to our time. It had
become a nuisance, and could not have continued much
longer. That is an instance of the manner of things that
were done when a Dictatorship prevailed in the country,
and that was how the Dictator did them. I reckon, all
England, Parliamentary England, got a new lease of life
from that Dictatorship of Oliver’s; and, on the whole, that
the good fruits of it will never die while England exists as
a nation.
In general, I hardly think that out of common history
books you will ever get into the real history of this
country, or ascertain anything which can specially illu
�■
INAUGURAL ADDRESS.
minate it for you, and which it would most of all behove
you to know. You may read very ingenious and very
clever books, by men whom it would be the height of in
solence in me to do other than express my respect for.
But their position is essentially sceptical. God and the
Godlike, as our fathers would have said, has fallen asleep for
them; and plays no part in their histories. A most sad and
fatal condition of matters; who shall say how fatal to us all'
A man unhappily in that condition will make but a tem
porary explanation of anything:—in short, you will not be
able, I believe, by aid of these men, to understand how this
Island came to be what it is. You will not find it re
corded in books. You will find recorded in books a
jumble of tumults, disastrous ineptitudes,, and all that
kind of thing. But to get what you want, you will have
to look into side sources, and inquire in all directions.
I remember getting Collins’s Peerage to read,—a very poor
performance as a work of genius, but an excellent book
for diligence and fidelity. I was writing on Oliver Crom
well at the time. (Applause?) I could get no biographical
dictionary available; and I thought the Peerage Book,
since most of my men were peers or sons of peers, would
help me, at least would tell me whether people were old
or young, where they lived, and the like particulars, better
than absolute nescience and darkness. And accordingly
I found amply all I had expected in poor Collins, and got
a great deal of help out of him. He was a diligent dull
London bookseller, of about a hundred years ago, who
compiled out of all kinds of parchments, charter-chests,
archives, books that were authentic, and gathered far and
�COLLINS’S PEERAGE.
23
wide wherever he could get it the information wanted.
He was a very meritorious man.
I not only found the solution of everything I had ex
pected there, but I began gradually to perceive this im
mense fact, which I really advise every one of you who
read history to look out for, if you have not already found
it. It was that the Kings of England, all the way from
the Norman Conquest down to the times of Charles I.,
had actually, in a good degree, so far as they knew, been
in the habit of appointing as Peers those who deserved
to be appointed. In general, I perceived, those Peers of
theirs were all royal men of a sort, with minds full of justice,
valour, and humanity, and all kinds of qualities that men
ought to have who rule over others. And then their genea
logy, the kind of sons and descendants they had, this also
was remarkable:—for there is a great deal more in genea
logy than is generally believed at present. I never heard
tell of any clever man that came of entirely stupid people.
(Laughter^) If you look around, among the families of your
acquaintance, you will see such cases in all directions;—
I know that my own experience is steadily that way; I
can trace the father, and the son, and the grandson, and
the family stamp is quite distinctly legible upon each of
them. So that it goes for a great deal, the hereditary prin
ciple,—in Government as in other things; and it must be
recognised so soon as there is any fixity in things. You
will remark, too, in your Collins, that, if at any time the
genealogy of a peerage goes awry, if the man that actu
ally holds the peerage is a fool,—in those earnest practical
times, the man soon gets into mischief, gets into treason
�24
INAUGURAL ADDRESS.
probably,—soon gets himself and his peerage extinguished
altogether, in short. (Laughter?)
From those old documents of Collins, you learn and
ascertain that a peer conducts himself in a pious, highminded, grave, dignified, and manly kind of way, in his
course through life, and when he takes leave of life:—his
last will is often a remarkable piece, which one lingers
over. And then you perceive that there was kindness in
him as well as rigour, pity for the poor; that he has fine
hospitalities, generosities,—in fine, that he is throughout
much of a noble, good and valiant man. And that in general
the King, with a beautiful approximation to accuracy, had
nominated this kind of man; saying, “ Come you to me,
sir. Come out of the common level of the people, where
you are liable to be trampled upon, jostled about, and can
do in a manner nothing with your fine gift; come here and
take a district of country, and make it into your own image
more or less; be a king under me, and understand that
that is your function.” I say this is the most divine
thing that a human being can do to other human beings,
and no kind of thing whatever has so much of the
character of God Almighty’s Divine Government as that
thing, which, we see, went on all over England for about
six hundred years. That is the grand soul of England’s
history. (Cheers?) It is historically true that, down to
the time of James, or even Charles I., it was not under
stood that any man was made a Peer without having
merit in him to constitute him a proper subject for a
peerage. In Charles i.’s time, it grew to be known or
said that, if a man was born a gentleman, and cared to
�BOOKS.
25
lay out £10,000 judiciously up and down among courtiers,
lie could be made a Peer. Under Charles H. it went on
still faster, and has been going on w7ith ever-increasing
velocity, until we see the perfectly breakneck pace at
which they are going now (A laugh?), so that now a
peerage is a paltry kind of thing to what it was in those
old times. I could go into a great many more details
about things of that sort, but I must turn to another
branch of the subject.
First, however, one remark more about your reading.
I do not know whether it has been sufficiently brought
home to you that there are two kinds of books. When a
man is reading on any kind of subject, in most depart
ments of books,—in all books, if you take it in a wide
sense,—he will find that there is a division into good
books and bad books. Everywhere a good kind of book
and a bad kind of book. I am not to assume that you
are unacquainted, or ill acquainted with this plain fact;
but I may remind you that it is becoming a very im
portant Consideration in our day. And we have to cast
aside altogether the idea people have, that, if they are.
reading any book, that if an ignorant man is reading any
book, he is doing rather better than nothing at all. I must
entirely call that in question; I even venture to deny it.
(Laughter and cheers?) It would be much safer and better
for many a reader, that he had no concern with books at
all. There is a number, a frightfully increasing number,
of books that are decidedly, to the readers of them, not
useful. (?H?ear?) But an ingenuous reader will learn, also,
that a certain number of books were written by a su
�26
INAUGURAL ADDRESS.
premely noble kind of people,—not a very great number
of books, but still a number fit to occupy all your reading
industry, do adhere more or less to that side of things.
In short, as I have written it down somewhere else, I
conceive that books are like men’s souls; divided into
sheep and goats. (Laughter and cheers.) Some few are
going up, and carrying us up, heavenward; calculated,
I mean, to be of priceless advantage in teaching,—in
forwarding the teaching of all generations. Others, a
frightful multitude, are going down, down; doing ever
the more and the wider and the wilder mischief. Keep
a strict eye on that latter class of books, my young
friends!—
And for the rest, in regard to all your studies and read
ings here, and to whatever you may learn, you are to
remember that the object is not particular knowledges,—
not that of getting higher and higher in technical perfec
tions, and all that sort of thing. There is a higher aim
lying at the rear of all that, especially among those who
are intended for literary or speaking pursuits, or the sacred
profession. You are ever to bear in mind that there lies
behind that the acquisition of what may be called wisdom;
—namely, sound appreciation and just decision as to all
the objects that come round you, and the habit of behaving
with justice, candour, clear insight, and loyal adherence to
fact. Great is wisdom; infinite is the value of wisdom.
It cannot be exaggerated ; it is the highest achievement
of man: ‘ Blessed is he that getteth understanding.’ And
that, I believe, on occasion, may be missed very easily;
never more easily than now, I sometimes think. If that
�ENDOWMENTS.
27
is a failure, all is failure!—However, I will not touch
further upon that matter.
But I should have said, in regard to hook-reading, if it
he so very important, how very useful would an excellent
library be in every University! I hope, that will not be
neglected by the gentlemen who have charge of you; and,
indeed, I am happy to hea.r that your library is very much
improved since the time I knew it, and I hope it will go
on improving more and more. Nay, I have sometimes
thought, why should not there be a library in every county
town, for benefit of those that could read well, and might
if permitted? True, you require money to accomplish
that;—and withal, what perhaps is still less attainable at
present, you require judgment in the selectors of books;
real insight into what is for the advantage of human souls,
the exclusion of all kinds of clap-trap books which merely
excite the astonishment of foolish people (Laughter), and
the choice of wise books, as much as possible of good books.
Let us hope the future will be kind to us in this respect.
In this University, as I learn from many sides, there
is considerable stir about endowments; an assiduous and
praiseworthy industry for getting new funds collected to
encourage the ingenuous youth of Universities, especially of
this our chief University. (Hear, hear?) Well, I entirely
participate in everybody’s approval of the movement. It
is very desirable. It should be responded to, and one
surely expects it will. At least, if it is not, it will be
shameful to the country of Scotland, which never was so
rich in money as at the present moment, and never stood
�28
INAUGURAL ADDRESS.
so much iu need of getting noble Universities, and insti
tutions to counteract many influences that are springing
up alongside of money. It should not be slack in coming
forward in the way of endowments (A laugh) ; at any rate,
to the extent of rivalling our rude old barbarous ancestors,
as we have been pleased to call them. Such munificence as
theirs is beyond all praise; and to them, I am sorry to say,
we are not yet by any manner of means equal, or ap
proaching equality. (Laughter?) There is an abundance
and over-abundance of money. Sometimes I cannot help
thinking that probably never has there been, at any other
time, in Scotland, the hundredth part of the money that
now is, or even the thousandth part. For wherever I go
there is that same gold-nuggeting (A laugh?),—-that ‘ unex;
ampled prosperity,’ and men counting their balances by
the million sterling. Money was never so abundant, and
nothing that is good to be done with it. (Hear, hear, and
a laugh?) No man knows,—or very few men know,—what
benefit to get out of his money. In fact, it too often is
secretly a curse to him. Much better for him never to
have had any. But I do not expect that generally to
be believed. (Laughter?) Nevertheless, I should think it
would be a beneficent relief to many a rich man who has an
honest purpose struggling in him, to bequeath some house
of refuge, so to speak, for the gifted poor man who may'
hereafter be born into the world, to enable him to get on
his way a little. To do, in fact, as those old Norman
kings whom I have been describing; to raise some noble
poor man out of the dirt and mud where he is getting
trampled on unworthily, by the unworthy, into some kind
�A DEEPER WANT.
29
of position where he might acquire the power to do a little
good in his generation! I hope that as much as possible
will be achieved in this direction; and that efforts will
not be relaxed till the thing is in a satisfactory state. In
regard to the classical department, above all, it surely is
to be desired by us that it were properly supported,—that
we could allow the fit people to have their scholarships and
subventions, and devote more leisure to the cultivation of
particular departments. We might have more of this from
Scotch Universities than we have; and I hope we shall.
I am bound, however, to say that it does not appear as if,
of late times, endowment were the real soul of the matter.
The English, for example, are the richest people in the
world for endowments in their Universities; and it is
an evident fact that, since the time of Bentley, you
cannot name anybody that has gained a European name
in scholarship, or constituted a point of revolution in the
pursuits of men in that way. The man who does so is
a man worthy of being remembered; and he is poor,
and not an Englishman.
One man that actually did
constitute a revolution was the son of a poor weaver in
Saxony; who edited his Tibullus, in Dresden, in a poor
comrade’s garret, with the floor for his bed, and two folios
for pillow; and who, while editing his Tibullus, had to
gather peasecod shells on the streets and boil them for his
dinner. That was his endowment. (Laughter?) But he
was recognised soon to have done a great thing. His
name was Heyne. (Cheers?) I can remember, it was
quite a revolution in my mind when I got hold of that
�30
INAUGURAL address.
man’s edition of Virgil. I found that, for the first time,
I understood Virgil; that Heyne had introduced me, for
the first time, into an insight of Roman life and ways of
thought; had pointed out the circumstances in which
these works were written, and given me their interpreta
tion. And the process has gone on in all manner of
developments, and has spread out into other countries.
On the whole, there is one reason why endowments are
not given now as they were in old days, when men founded
abbeys, colleges, and all kinds of things of that description,
with such success as we know. All that has now changed;
a vast decay of zeal in that direction. And truly the reason
may in part be, that people have become doubtful whether
colleges are now the real sources of what I called wisdom;
whether they are anything more, anything much more, than
a cultivating of man in the specific arts. In fact, there has
been in the world a suspicion of that kind for a long time.
(A laugh.') There goes a proverb of old date, ‘ An ounce
of mother-wit is worth a pound of clergy.’ {Laughter^)
There is a suspicion that a man is perhaps not nearly so
wise as he looks, or because he has poured out speech
so copiously. {Laughter.) When ‘the seven free arts ’
which the old Universities were based on, came to be
modified a little, in order to be convenient for the wants of
modern society,—though perhaps some of them are obsolete
enough even yet for some of us,—there arose a feeling that
mere vocality, mere culture of speech, if that is what comes
out of a man, is not the synonym of wisdom by any
means ! That a man may be a ‘ great speaker,’ as eloquent
as you like, and but little real substance in him,—espe
�FINE SPEECH.
31
cially, if that is what was required and aimed at by the
man himself, and by the community that set him upon
becoming a learned man. Maid-servants, I hear people
complaining, are getting instructed in the ‘ologies,’ and
are apparently becoming more and more ignorant of brew
ing, boiling, and baking (Laughter); and above all, are
not taught what is necessary to be known, from the highest
of us to the lowest,—faithful obedience, modesty, humility,
and correct moral conduct.
Oh, it is a dismal chapter all that if one went into it,—
what has been done by rushing after fine speech! I have
written down some very fierce things about that, perhaps
considerably more emphatic than I could now wish them to
be; but they were and are deeply my conviction. (Hear,
hear?) There is very great necessity indeed of getting a
little more silent than we are. It seems to me as if the
finest nations of the world,—the English and the Ameri
can, in chief,—were going all off into wind and tongue.
(Applause and laughter?) But it will appear sufficiently
tragical by-and-by, long after I am away out of it. There
is a time to speak, and a time to be silent. Silence withal
is the eternal duty of a man. He won’t get to any real
understanding of what is complex, and what is more than
aught else pertinent to his interests, without keeping
silence too. ‘Watch the tongue,’ is a very old precept,
and a most true one.
I don’t want to discourage any of you from your
Demosthenes, and your studies of the niceties of language,
and all that. Believe me, I value that as much as any
�32
INAUGURAL ADDRESS.
one of you. I consider it a very graceful thing, and a
most proper, for every human creature to know what the
implement which he uses in communicating his thoughts
is, and how to make the very utmost of it. I want you
to study Demosthenes, and to know all his excellences.
At the same time, I must say that speech, in the case
even of Demosthenes, does not seem, on the whole, to
have turned to almost any good account. He advised
next to nothing that proved practicable; much of the re
verse. Why tell me that a man is a fine speaker, if it is
not the truth that he is speaking ? Phocion, who mostly
did not speak at all, was a great deal nearer hitting the
mark than Demosthenes. (Laughter?) He used to tell
the Athenians, “You can’t fight Philip. Better if you
don’t provoke him, as Demosthenes is always urging
to you to do. You have not the slightest chance with
Philip. He is a man who holds his tongue ; he has
great disciplined armies; a full treasury; can bribe any
body you like in your cities here; he is going on steadily
with an unvarying aim towards his object; while you, with
your idle clamourings, with your Cleon the Tanner spout
ing to you what you take for Wisdom— ! Philip will in
fallibly beat any set of men such as you, going on raging
from shore to shore with all that rampant nonsense.”
Demosthenes said to him once, “ Phocion, you will drive
the Athenians mad some day, and they will kill you.”
“ Yes,” Phocion answered, “ me, when they go mad; and
as soon as they get sane again, you I ” (Laughter and
applause?) It is also told of him how he went once to
Messene, on some deputation which the Athenians wanted
�FINE SPEECH.
33
him to head, on some kind of matter of an intricate and
contentious nature: Phocion went accordingly; and had,
as usual, a clear story to have told for himself and his
case. He was a man of few words, but all of them true
and to the point. And so he had gone on telling his
story for a while, wheii there arose some interruption.
One man, interrupting with something, he tried to answer;
then another, the like ; till finally, too many went in, and
all began arguing and bawling in endless debate. Where
upon Phocion struck down his staff; drew back altogether,
and would speak no other word to any man. It appears
to me there is a kind of eloquence in that rap of Phocion’s
staff which is equal to anything Demosthenes ever said:
“ Take your own way, then; I go out of it altogether.”
(Applause?)
Such considerations, and manifold more connected with
them,—innumerable considerations, resulting from obser
vation of the world at this epoch,—have led various
people to doubt of the salutary effect of vocal education
altogether. I do not mean to say it should be entirely
excluded; but I look to something that will take hold of
the matter much more closely, and not allow it to slip out
of our fingers, and remain worse than it was. For, if a
‘good speaker,’ never so eloquent, does not see into the
fact, and is not speaking the truth of that, but the untruth
and the mistake of that,—is there a more horrid kind of
object in creation ? (Loud cheers?) Of such speech I hear
all manner of people say, “ How excellent!” Well, really
it is not the speech, but the thing spoken, that I am
anxious about! I really care very little how the man
I
�34
INAUGURAL ADDRESS.
said it, provided I understand him, and it be true. Ex
cellent speaker ? But what if he is telling me things that
are contrary to the fact; what if he has formed a wrong
judgment about the fact,—if he has in his mind (like
Phocion’s friend, Cleon the Tanner) no power to form a
right judgment in regard to the matter? An excellent
speaker of that kind is, as it were, saying, “ Ho, every
one that wants to be persuaded of the thing that is not
true; here is the man for you!” (Great laughter and
applause?) I recommend you to be very chary of that
kind of excellent speech. (?Renewed laughter?)
Well, all that sad stuff being the too well-known product
of our method of vocal education,—the teacher merely
operating on the tongue of the pupil, and teaching him to
wag it in a particular way (Laughter),—it has made various
thinking men entertain a distrust of this not very salu
tary way of procedure; and they have longed for some less
theoretic, and more practical and concrete way of working
out the problem of education;-—in effect, for an educa
tion not vocal at all, but mute except where speaking was
strictly needful. There would be room for a great deal of
description about this, if I went into it; but I must con
tent myself with saying that the most remarkable piece
of writing on it is in a book of Goethe’s,—the whole of
which you may be recommended to take up, and try if you
can study it with understanding. It is one of his last
books; written when he was an old man above seventy
years of age: I think, one of the most beautiful he ever
wrote; full of meek wisdom, of intellect and piety; which
�THE EDUCATION OF THE FUTURE.
35
is found to be strangely illuminative, and very touching,
by those who have eyes to discern and hearts to feel it.
This about education is one of the pieces in Wilhelm,
Meister’s Travels; or rather, in a fitful way, it forms
the whole gist of the book. I first read it many years
agoand, of course, I had to read into the very heart of
it while I was translating it (Applause); and it has ever
since dwelt in my mind as perhaps the most remark
able bit of writing which I have known to be executed in
these late centuries. I have often said that there are some
ten pageS of that, which, if ambition had been my only rule,
I would rather have written, been able to write, than have
written all the books that have appeared since I came into
the world. (Cheers?) Beep, deep is the meaning of what
is said there. Those pages turn on the Christian religion,
and the religious phenomena of the modern and the
ancient world: altogether sketched out in the most aerial,
graceful, delicately wise kind of way, so as to keep him
self out of the common controversies of the street and
of the forum, yet to indicate what was the result of things
he had been long meditating upon.
Among others, he introduces in an airy, sketchy kind
of way, with here and there a touch,—the sum-total of
which grows into a beautiful picture,—a scheme of entirely
mute education, at least with no more speech than is ab
solutely necessary for what the pupils have to do. Three
of the wisest men discoverable in the world have been
got together, to consider, to manage and supervise, the
function which transcends all others in importance; that
of building up the young generation so as to keep it
�36
INAUGURAL ADDRESS.
free from that perilous stuff that has been weighing
us down, and clogging every step;—which function, in
deed, is the only thing we can hope to go on with, 'c we
would leave the world a little better, and not the worse,
of our having been in it, for those who are to follow.
The Chief, who is the Eldest of the 'three, says to Wil
helm : “ Healthy well-formed children bring into the
world with them many precious gifts; and very frequently
these are best of all developed by Nature herself, with
but slight assistance, where assistance is seen to be wise
and profitable, and with forbearance very often on the
part of the overseer of the process. But there is one
thing which no child brings into the world with him,
and without which all other things are of no use.”
Wilhelm, who is there beside him, asks, “And what is
that?” “All want it,” says the Eldest; “perhaps you
yourself.” Wilhelm says, “Well, but tell me what it is?”
“ It is,” answers the other, “ Reverence (EhrfurcM); Re
verence! Honour done to those who are greater and
better than ourselves; honour distinct from fear. Ehrfurcht; the soul of all religion that has ever been among
men, or ever will be.”
And then he goes into details about the religions of the
modern and the ancient world. He practically distinguishes
the kinds of religion that are, or have been, in the world ;
and says that for men there are three reverences. The
boys are all trained to go through certain gesticulations;
to lay their hands on their breast and look up to heaven,
in sign of the first reverence; other forms for the other
two: so they give their three reverences. The first and
�THE EDUCATION OF THE FUTURE.
37
simplest is that of reverence for what is above us. It is
the soul of all the Pagan religions; there is nothing better
in th# antique man than that. Then there is reverence
for what is around us,—reverence for our equals, to which
he attributes an immense power in the culture of man.
The third is reverence for what is beneath us; to learn to
recognise in pain, in sorrow and contradiction, even in thoee
things, odious to flesh and blood, what divine meanings
are in them; to learn that there lies in these also, and
more than in any of the preceding, a priceless blessing.
And he defines that as being the soul of the Christian
religion,—the highest of all religions; ‘ a height,’ as Goethe
says (and that is very true, even to the letter, as I con
sider), ‘ a height to which mankind was fated and enabled
to attain; and from which, having once attained it, they
can never retrograde.’ Man cannot quite lose that (Goethe
thinks), or permanently descend below it again; but
always, even in the most degraded, sunken, and unbe
lieving times, he calculates there will be found some few
souls who will recognise what this highest of the religions
meant; and that, the world having once received it, there
is no fear of its ever wholly disappearing.
The Eldest then goes on to explain by what methods
they seek to educate and train their boys; in the trades,
in the arts, in the sciences, in whatever pursuit the boy is
found best fitted for. Beyond all, they are anxious to dis
cover the boy’s aptitudes; and they try him and watch him
continually, in many wise ways, till by degrees they can
discover this. Wilhelm had left his own boy there, per
haps expecting they would make him a Master of Arts,
X
�38
INAUGURAL ADDRESS.
or something of the kind; and on coming back for him,
he sees a thunder-cloud of dust rushing over the plain,
of which he can make nothing. It turns out to be a
tempest of wild horses, managed by young lads who had
a turn for horsemanship, for hunting, and being grooms.
His own son is among them || and 'he finds that the
breaking of colts has been the thing he was most suited
for. (Laughter?)
The highest outcome, and most precious of all the fruits
that are to spring from this ideal mode of educating, is
what Goethe calls Art:—of which I could at present give
no definition that would make it clear to you, unless it
were clearer already than is likely. (A laugh?) Goethe
calls it music, painting, poetry: but it is in quite a higher
sense than the common one ; and a sense in which, I am
afraid, most of our painters, poets, and music men, would
not pass muster. (A laugh?) He considers this as the
highest pitch to which human culture can go; infinitely
valuable and ennobling; and he watches with great in
dustry how it is to be brought about, in the men who have
a turn for it. Very wise and beautiful his notion of the
matter is. It gives one an idea that something far better
and higher, something as high as ever, and indubitably
true too, is still possible for man in this world.—And that
is all I can say to you of Goethe’s fine theorem of mute
education.
I confess it seems to me there is in it a shadow of what will
one day be; will and must, unless the world is to come to a
conclusion that is altogether frightful: some kind of scheme
of education analogous to that; presided over by the
�THE EDUCATION OF THE FUTURE.
39
wisest and most sacred men that can be got in the world,
and watching from a distance: a training in practicality
at every turn; no speech in it except speech that is to be
followed by action, for that ought to be the rule as nearly
as possible among men. Not very often or much, rarely
rather, should a man speak at all, unless it is for the sake
of something that is to be done; this spoken, let him go
and do his part in it, and say no more about it.
I will only add that it is possible,—all this fine theorem
of Goethe’s, or something similar ! Consider what we have
already ; and what ‘ difficulties ’ we have overcome. I
should say there is nothing in the world you can conceive
so difficult, prima facie, as that of getting a set of men
gathered together as soldiers. Rough, rude, ignorant, dis
obedient people; you gather them together, promise them
a shilling a day; rank them up, give them very severe
and sharp drill; and by bullying and drilling and com
pelling (the word drilling, if you go to the original,
means ‘beating,’ ‘steadily tormenting’ to the due pitch),
they do learn what it is necessary to learn; and there is
your man in red coat, a trained soldier; piece of an ani
mated machine incomparably the most potent in this
world; a wonder of wonders to look qt. He will go
where bidden; obeys one man, will walk into the can
non’s mouth for him; does punctually whatever is com
manded by his general officer. And, I believe, all
manner of things of this kind could be accomplished,
if there were the same attention bestowed. Very many
things could be regimented, organized into this mute
system;—and perhaps in some of the mechanical, com
�40
INAUGURAL ADDRESS.
mercial, and manufacturing departments, some faint in
cipiences may be attempted before very long. For the
saving of human labour, and the avoidance of human
misery, the effects would be incalculable, were it set about
and begun even in part.
Alas, it is painful to think how very far away it all is,
any real fulfilment of such things! For I need not hide
from you, young gentlemen,—and it is one of the last
things I am going to tell you,—that you have got into a
very troublous epoch of the world; and I don’t think you
will find your path in it to be smoother than ours has been,
though you have many advantages which we had not.
You have careers open to you, by public examinations and
so on, which is a thing much to be approved of, and which
we hope to see perfected more and more. All that was
entirely unknown in my time, and you have many things
to recognise as advantages. But you will find the ways
of the world, I think, more anarchical than ever. Look
where one will, revolution has come upon us. We have
got into the age of revolutions. All kinds of things are
coming to be subjected to fire, as it were: hotter and hotter
blows the element round everything. Curious to see how,
in Oxford and other places that used to seem as lying at
anchor in the stream of time, regardless of all changes,
they are getting into the highest humour of mutation, and
all sorts of new ideas are afloat. It is evident that what
ever is not inconsumable, made of asbestos, will have to
be burnt, in this world. Nothing other will stand the
heat it is getting exposed to.
And in saying that, I am but saying in other words that
�AN AGE OF REVOLUTIONS.
41
we are in an epoch of anarchy. Anarchy plus a constable!
(Laughter?) There is nobody that picks one’s pocket
without some policeman being ready to take him up.
(?Renewed laughter?) But in every other point, man is
becoming more and more the son, not of Cosmos, but
of Chaos. He is a disobedient, discontented, reckless,
and altogether waste kind of object (the commonplace
man is, in these epochs); and the wiser kind of man,
—the select few, of whom I hope you will be part,—has
more and more to see to this, to look vigilantly forward ;
and will require to move with double, wisdom. Will
find, in short, that the crooked things he has got to pull
straight in his own life all round him, wherever he may
go, are manifold, and will task all his strength, however
great it be.
But why should I complain of that either ? For that is
the thing a man is born to, in all epochs. He is born to
expend every particle of strength that God Almighty has
given him, in doing the work he finds he is fit for; to
stand up to it to the last breath of life, and do his best.
We are called upon to do that; and the reward we all get,
—which we are perfectly sure of if we have merited it,—is
that we have got the work done, or at least that we have
tried to do the work. For that is a great blessing in itself;
and I should say, there is not very much more reward than
that going in this world. If the man gets meat and
clothes, what matters it whether he buy those neces
saries with seven thousand a year, or with seven million,
could that be, or with seventy pounds a year? He can
get meat and clothes for that; and he will find intrinsi
�42
INAUGURAL ADDRESS.
cally, if he is a wise man, wonderfully little real differ
ence. (Laughter?)
On the whole, avoid what is called ambition; that is
not a fine principle to go upon,—and it has in it all de
grees of vulgarity, if that is a consideration. ‘ Seekest
thou great things, seek them notI warmly second that
advice of the wisest of men. Don’t be ambitious; don’t
too much need success; be loyal and modest. Cut down
the proud towering thoughts that get into you, or see that
they be pure as well as high. There is a nobler ambition
than the gaining of all California would be, or the getting
of all the suffrages that are on the Planet just now. (Loud
and prolonged cheers?)
Finally, gentlemen, I have one advice to give you, which
is practically of very great importance, though a very
humble one. In the midst of your zeal and ardour,—
for such, I foresee, will rise high enough, in spite of all the
counsels to moderate it that I can give you,—remember
the care of health. I have no doubt you have among you
young souls ardently bent to consider life cheap, for the
purpose of getting forward in what they are aiming at of
high; but you are to consider throughout, much more than
is done at present, and what it would have been a very
great thing for me if I had been able to consider, that
health is a thing to be attended to continually; that you
are to regard that as the very highest of all temporal things
for you. (Applause?) There is no kind of achievement you
could make in the world that is equal to perfect health.
What to it are nuggets and millions ? The French financier
�HEALTH.
43
said, “ Why, is there no sleep to be sold !” Sleep was not
in the market at any quotation. {Laughter and applause?)
It is a curious thing, which I remarked long ago, and have
often turned in my head, that the old word for ‘holy’
in the Teutonic languages, heilig, also means ‘healthy.’
Thus Heilbronn means indifferently ‘holy-well,’ or ‘health
well.’ We have, in the Scotch too, ‘ hale,’ and its deriva
tives; and, I suppose, our English word ‘whole’ (with a
‘w’), all of one piece, without any hole in it, is the same
word. I find that you could not get any better defini
tion of what ‘holy’ really is than ‘healthy.’ Completely
healthy; mens sana in corpore sano. {Applause.) A
man all lucid, and in equilibrium. His intellect a clear
mirror geometrically plane, brilliantly sensitive to all
objects and impressions made on it, and imaging all
things in their correct proportions; not twisted up into
convex or concave, and distorting everything, so that he
cannot see the truth of the matter-without endless groping
and manipulation: healthy, clear, and free, and discerning
truly all round him. We never can attain that at all. In
fact, the operations we have got into are destructive of it.
You cannot, if you are going to do any decisive intellectual
operation that will last a long while; if, for instance, you
are going to write a book,—you cannot manage it (at
least, I never could) without getting decidedly made ill
by it: and really one nevertheless must; if it is your
business, you are obliged to follow out what you are at,
and to do it, if even at the expense of health. Only
remember, at all times, to get back as fast as possible out
of it into health; and regard that as the real equilibrium
�44
INAUGURAL ADDRESS.
and centre of things. You should always look at the
heilig, which means 1 holy’ as well as ‘healtny.’l I
And that old etymology,—what a lesson it is against
certain gloomy, austere, ascetic people, who have gone
about as if this world were all a dismal prison-house. It
has indeed got all the ugly things in it which I have been
alluding to ; but there is an eternal sky over it; and the
blessed sunshine, the green of prophetic spring, and rich
harvests coming,—all this is in it, too. Piety does not
mean that a man should make a sour face about things,
and refuse to enjoy wisely what his Maker has given.
Neither do you find it to have been so with the best sort,
—with old Knox, in particular. No; if you look into
Knox you will find a beautiful Scotch humour in him, as
well as the grimmest and sternest truth when necessary,
and a great deal of laughter. We find really some of
the sunniest glimpses of things come out of Knox that I
have seen in any man; for instance, in his History of
the Reformation,—which is a book I hope every one of
you will read (Applause), a glorious old book.
On the whole, I would bid you stand up to your work,
whatever it may be, and not be afraid of it; not in sor
rows or contradictions to yield, but to push on towards the
goal. And don’t suppose that people are hostile to you or
have you at ill-will, in the world. In general, you will rarely
find anybody designedly doing you ill. You may feel often
as if the whole world were obstructing you, setting itself
against you: but you will find that to mean only, that
the world is travelling in a different way from you, and,
rushing on in its own path, heedlessly treads on you.
�A LAST WORD.
45
That is mostly all: to you no specific ill-will;—only each
has an extremely good-will to himself, which he has a right
to have, and is rushing on towards his object. Keep out
of literature, I should say also, as a general rule (Laughter),
—though that is by-the-by. If you find many people
who are hard and indifferent to you, in a world which you
consider to be inhospitable and cruel, as often indeed
happens to a tender-hearted, striving young creature, you
will also find there are noble hearts who will look kindly
on you; and their help will be precious to you beyond
price. You will get good and evil as you go on, and
have the success that has been appointed you.
I will wind up with a small bit of verse which is from
Goethe also, and has often gone through my mind. To me,
it has something of a modern psalm in it, in some mea
sure. It is deep as the foundations, deep and high, and it
is true and clear :—no clearer man, or nobler and grander
intellect has lived in the world, I believe, since Shakspeare left it. This is what the poet sings;—a kind of
road-melody or marching-music of mankind :
‘ The Future hides in it
Gladness and sorrow;
We press still thorow,
Nought that abides in it
Daunting us,—onward.
And solemn before us,
Veiled, the dark Portal;
Goal of all mortal:—
Stars silent rest o’er us,
Graves under us silent.
�46
INAUGURAL ADDRESS.
While earnest thou gazest,
Comes boding of terror,
Comes phantasm and error;
Perplexes the bravest
With doubt and misgiving.
But heard are the Voices,
Heard are the Sages,
The Worlds and the Ages
“ Choose well, your choice is
Brief, and yet endless.
Here eyes do regard you,
In Eternity’s stillness;
Here is all fulness,
Ye brave, to reward you ;
Work, and despair not.” ’
Work, and despair not: Wir heissen euch hoffcn, We bid
you be of hope!’—let that be my last word. Gentlemen,
I thank you for your great patience in hearing me ;
and, with many most kind wishes, say Adieu for this
time.
EDINBURGH I THOMAS CONSTABLE,
PRINTER TO THE QUEEN, AND TO THE UNIVERSITY.
�
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Inaugural address at Edinburgh, April 2nd, 1866; by Thomas Carlyle, at being installed as Rector of the university there
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Carlyle, Thomas [1795-1881.]
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Place of publication: Edinburgh; London
Collation: 46 p. ; 20 cm.
Notes: 'Authorised Report' [title page]. Later published under the title 'On the Choice of Books'. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway.
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Edmonston and Douglas; Chapman and Hall
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1866
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G5189
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Education
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Inaugural address at Edinburgh, April 2nd, 1866; by Thomas Carlyle, at being installed as Rector of the university there), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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English
Addresses
Education
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Speeches
Thomas Carlyle
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Text
NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
Spoken on Memorable
©ccaoíono W
JOHN HEYWOOD,
RIDGEFIELD & DEANSGATE, MANCHESTER
ii Paternoster Buildings, London.
Price Twopence.
�The Destroyer of Weeds, Thistles, and Thorns is a
Benefactor, 'whether he soweth grain or not.
Interpolations are the foundation Stones of every
orthodox church.
let the Ghosts go. We will worship them no more.
Let them cover their eyeless sockets with theirfleshlcss
hands, andfade forever from the imaginations of men.
Liberty sustains the same relation to Mind that Space
does to Matter.
To Plough is to Pray, to Plant is to Prophesy, and
the Harvest answers andfulfils.
�Zbc Ipaet rises before me like
a Dream,
EXTRACT FROM A SPEECH DELIVERED AT TIIE
SOLDIERS’ REUNION AT INDIANAPOLIS, 1876,
HE past rises before me like a dream. Again we
•L are in the great struggle for national life. We
hear the sounds of preparation—the music of boisterous
drums—the silver voices of heroic bugles. We see
thousands of assemblages, and hear the appeals of
orators ; we see the pale cheeks of women, and the
flushed faces of men ; and in those assemblages we see
all the dead whose dust we have covered with flowers.
We lose sight of them no more. We are with them
when they enlist in the great army of freedom. We
see them part with those they love. Some are walk
ing for the last time in quiet, woody places, with the
maidens they adore. We hear the whisperings and
the sweet vows of eternal love as they lingeringly part
forever. Others are bending over cradles, kissing
babes that are asleep. Some are receiving the bless
ings of old men. Some are parting with mothers who
hold them and press them to their hearts again and
again, and say nothing. Kisses and tears, tears and
kisses—divine mingling of agony and love ! And
�(4)
some are talking with wives, and endeavoring with
brave words, spoken in the old tones, to drive from
their hearts the awful fear. We see them part. We
ee the wife standing in the door with the babe in her
arms—standing in the sunlight sobbing—at the turn of
the road a hand waves—she answers by holding high
in her loving arms the child. He is gone, and forever.
We see them all as they march away under the
flaunting flags, keeping time to the grand, wild music
of war—marching down the streets of the great cities—
through the towns and across the prairies—down to
the fields of glory, to do and to die for the eternal right.
We go with them, one and all. We are by their
side on all the gory fields—in all the hospitals of pain
—on all the weary marches. We stand guard with
them in the wild storm and under the quiet stars. We
are with them in ravines running with blood—in the
furrows of old fields. We are with them between
contending hosts, unable to move, wild with thirst,
the life ebbing slowly away among the withered leaves.
We see them pierced by balls and torn with shells, in
the trenches, by forts, and in the whirlwind of the
charge, where men become iron, with nerves of steel.
We are with them in the prisons of hatred and
famine; but human speech can never tell us what
they endured.
We are at home when the news comes that they are
dead. We see the maiden in the shadow of her first
sorrow.
We see the silvered head of the old man
bowed with the last grief.
The past rises before us, and we see four millions of
human beings governed by the lash—we see them
bound hand and foot—we hear the strokes of cruel
whips—we see the hounds tracking women through
�(5)
tangled swamps. We see babes sold from the breasts
of mothers. Cruelty unspeakable ! Outrage infinite !
Four million bodies in chains—four million souls in
fetters. All the sacred relations of wife, mother,
father and child are trampled beneath the brutal feet
of might. And all this was done under our own
beautiful banner of the free.
The past rises before us. We hear the roar and
shriek of the bursting shell. The broken fetters fall.
These heroes died. We look. Instead of slaves we
see men and women and children. The wand of
progress touches the auction-block, the slave-pen,
the whipping-post, and we see homes and firesides and
school-houses and books, and where all was want and
crime and cruelty and fear we see the faces of the free.
These heroes are dead. They died for liberty—
they died for us. They are at rest. They sleep in
the land they made free, under the flag they made
stainless, under the solemn pines, the sad hemlocks, the
tearful willows, and the embracing vines. They sleep
beneath the shadows of the clouds, careless alike of
sunshine or of storm, each in the windowless palace of
Rest. Earth may run red with other wars—they are
at peace. In the midst of battle, in the roar of con
flict, they found the serenity of death. I have one
sentiment for soldiers living and dead : Cheers for the
living ; tears for the dead.
�Ube Volunteer Soldiers of tbe
Union Hrmp;
“ I ¡’hose Valour and Patriotism gave to the world
a Government of the people, by the people, for
the people. ”
RESPONSE TO THE TOAST AT THE GRAND BANQUET
OE THE RE-UNION OF THE ARMY OF THE TENNESSEE,
CHICAGO, NOV, I3TH, 1878.
HEN the savagery of the lash, the barbarism
of the chain, and the insanity of secession con
fronted the civilisation of our century, the question,
“ Will the great Republic defend itself?” trembled on
tlie lips of every lover of mankind. The North, filled
with intelligence and wealth, products of liberty, mar
shalled her hosts and asked only for a leader.
From civil life a man, silent, thoughtful, poised, and
calm, stepped forth, and with the lips of victory voiced
the nation’s first and last demand : “ Unconditional
and immediate surrender. ” From that moment the end
was known. That utterance was the real declaration
of real war, and in accordance with the dramatic unities
of mighty events, the great soldier who made it received
the final sword of the rebellion. The soldiers of therepublic were not seekers after vulgar glory ; they were
W
�(7)
not animated by the hope of plunder or the love of
conquest. They fought to preserve the homestead of
liberty, and that their children might have peace. They
were the defenders of humanity, the destroyers of pre
judice, the breakers of chains, and in the name of the
future they saluted the monsters of their time. They
finished what the soldiers of the Revolution commenced.
They relighted the torch that fell from their august
hands, and filled the world again with light. They
blotted from the statute-books the laws that had been
passed by hypocrites at the instigation of robbers, and
tore with indignant hands from the Constitution that
infamous clause that made men the catchers of their
fellow-men. They made it possible for judges to be
just and statesmen to be human. They broke the
shackles from the limbs of slaves, from the souls of
masters, and from the Northern brain. They kept our
country on the map of the world and our flag in heaven.
They rolled the stone from the sepulchre of progress,
and found therein two angels clad in shining gar
ments—nationality and liberty.
The soldiers were the saviours of the nation. They
were the liberators of man. In writing the proclama
tion of emancipation, Lincoln, greatest of our mighty
dead, whose memory is as gentle as the summer air
when reapers sing ’mid gathered sheaves, copied with
the pen what Grant and his brave comrades wrote with
swords.
Grander than the Greek, nobler than the Roman,
the soldiers of the Republic, with patriotism as shore
less as the air, battled for the rights of others, for the
nobility of labour; fought that mothers might own
their babes, that arrogant idleness should not scar the
back of patient toil, that our country should not be a
�(8)
many-headed monster, made of warring States, but a
nation—sovereign, great and free.
Blood was water, money was leaves, and life was
only common air, until one flag floated over the Repub
lic without a master and without a slave. Then was
asked the question: Will a free people tax themselves
to pay the nation’s debt ? The soldiers went home to
their waiting wives, to their glad children, and to the
girls they loved. They went back to the fields, the
shops, and mines. They had not been demoralized.
They had been ennobled. They were as honest in
peace as they were brave in war. Mocking at poverty,
laughing at reverses, they made a friend of toil. They
said, “We saved the nation’s life, and what is life with
out honour ? ” They worked and wrought with all of
labour’s royal sons that every pledge the nation gave
might be redeemed. And their great leader, having
put a shining band of friendship, a girdle of clasped
and happy hands around the globe, comes home and
finds that every promise made in war has now the ring
and gleam of gold.
And now let us drink to the volunteers. To those
who sleep in unknown, sunken graves ; whose names
are only in the hearts of those they loved and left, of
those who often hear in happy dreams the footsteps of
return. Let us drink to those who died while lipless
famine mocked. One to all the maimed whose scars
give modesty a tongue, and all who dared and gave to
chance the care, the keeping of their lives ; to all the
dead ; to Sherman, to Sheridan, and to Grant, the
foremost soldier of the world ; and last, to Lincoln,
whose loving life, like a bow of peace, spans and
arches all the clouds of war.
�1776.
^Declaration of Jnbepenbence.
ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO OUR FATHERS RETIRED
THE GODS FROM POLITICS.
T has been a favourite idea with me that our fore
fathers were educated by Nature; that they grew
grand as the continent upon which they landed ; that
the great rivers—the wide plains—the splendid lakes
—the lonely forests—the sublime mountains—that all
these things stole into and became a part of their be
ing, and they grew great as the country in which they
lived. - They began to hate the narrow, contracted
views of Europe. They were educated by their sur
roundings, and every little colony had to be, to a cer
tain extent, a republic. The kings of the old world
endeavoured to parcel out this land to their favourites.
But there were too many Indians. There was too
much courage required for them to take and keep it,
and so men had to come here who were dissatisfied
with the old country—who were dissatisfied with Eng
land, dissatisfied with France, with Germany, with
Ireland, and Holland. The king’s favourites stayed at
home. Men came here for liberty, and on account of
certain principles they entertained and held dearer than
life. And they were willing to work, willing to fell the
forests, to fight the savages, willing to go through all
I
�10)
the hardships, perils and dangers of a new country, of
a new land; and the consequence was that our country
was settled by brave and adventurous spirits, by men
who had opinions of their own and were willing to live
in the wild forests for the sake of expressing those
opinions, even if they expressed them only to trees,
rocks, and savage men. The best blood of the old
world came to the new.
These grand men were enthusiasts ; and the world
has only been raised by enthusiasts. In every country
there have been a few who have given a national aspir
ation to the people. The enthusiasts of 1776 were the
builders and framers of this great and splendid govern
ment ; and they were the men who saw, although
others did not, the golden fringe of the mantle of glory
that will finally cover this world. They knew, they
felt, they believed that they would give a new constel
lation to the political heavens—that they would make
the Americans a grand people—grand as the continent
on which they lived. .
Only a few days ago I stood in Independence Hall
—in that little room where was signed the immortal
paper, A little room, like any other; and it did not
seem possible that from that room went forth ideas,
like cherubim and seraphim, spreading their wings
over a continent, and touching as with holy fire, the
hearts of men.
In a few minutes I was in the park, where are gath
ered the accomplishments of a century. Our fathers
never dreamed of the things I saw. There were hun
dreds of locomotives, with their nerves of steel and
breath of flame—every kind of machine, with whirling
wheels and curious cogs and cranks, and the myriad
thoughts of men that have been wrought in iron, brass
�(11)
and steel. And going out from- one little building
were wires in the air, stretching to every civilized na
tion, and they could send a shining messenger in a
moment to any part of the world, and it would go
sweeping under the waves of the sea with thoughts
and words within its glowing heart. I saw all that
had been achieved by this nation, and I wished that
the signers of the Declaration—the soldiers of the
revolution—could see what a century of freedom has
produced. I wished they could see the fields we culti
vate—the rivers we navigate—the railroads running
over the Alleghanies, far into what was then the un
known forest—on over the broad prairies—on over
the vast plains—away over the mountains of the W est,
to the Golden Gate of the Pacific.
What has made this country- ? I say again, liberty
and labour. What would we be without labour ? I
want every farmer, when ploughing the rustling corn
of June—while mowing in the perfumed fields—to feel
that he is adding to the wealth and glory of the United
States. I want every mechanic—every man of toil, to
know and feel that he is keeping the cars running, the
telegraph wires in the air; that he is making the statues
and painting the pictures; that he is writing and print
ing the books ; that he is helping to fill the world with
honour, with happiness, with love and law.
Our country is founded upon the dignity of labour—
upon the equality of man. Ours is the first real repub
lic in the history of the world. Beneath our flag the
people are free. We have retired the gods from po
litics. We have found that man is the only source of
political power, and that the governed should govern.
We have disfranchised the aristocrats of the air, and
have given one country to mankind.
�Ht a brother's (Brave»
HON. EBON C. INGERSOLL, DIED AT WASHINGTON,
JUNE 2ND, 1879.
Y FRIENDS : I am going to do that which
the dead often promised he would do for me.
The loved and loving brother, husband, father, friend,
died where manhood’s morning almost touches noon,
and while the shadows still were falling toward the
West. He had not passed on life’s highway the stone
that marks the highest point, but being weary for a
moment he laid down by the wayside, and, using his
burden for a pillow, fell into that dreamless sleep that
kisses down his eyelids still. While yet in love with
life and raptured with the world, he passed to silence
and pathetic dust. Yet, after all, it may be best; just
in the happiest, sunniest hour of all the voyage, while
eager winds are kissing every sail, to dash against the
unseen rock, and in an instant hear the billows roar—
a sunken ship. For, whether in mid-sea or among
the breakers of the farther shore, a wreck must mark
at last the end of each and all. And every life, no
matter if its every hour is rich with love, and every
moment jewelled with a joy, will, at its close, become
a tragedy, as sad, and deep, and dark as can be woven
of the warp and woof of mystery and death. This
brave and tender man in every storm of life was oak
and rock, but in the sunshine he was vine and flower.
M
�(13)
He was the friend of all heroic souls. He climbed
the heights and left all superstitions far below, while
on his forehead fell the golden dawning of a grander
day. He loved the beautiful, and was with colour,
form and music touched to tears. He sided with the
weak, and with a willing hand gave alms ; with loyal
heart and with the purest mind he faithfully discharged
all public trusts. He was a worshipper of liberty and
a friend of the oppressed. A thousand times I have
heard him quote the words : “ For justice all place a
temple, and all season summer.” He believed that
happiness was the only good, reason the only torch,
justice the only worshipper, humanity the only religion,
and love the priest.
He added to the sum of human joy; and were every
one for whom he did some loving service to bring a
blossom to his grave, he would sleep to-night beneath
a wilderness of flowers. Life is a narrow vale between
the cold and barren peaks of two eternities. We
strive in vain to look beyond the heights. We cry
aloud, and the only answer is the echo of our wailing
cry. From the voiceless lips of the unreplying dead
there comes no word ; but in the night of death hope
sees a star, and listening love hears the rustle of a wing.
He who sleeps here, when dying, mistaking the ap
proach of death for the return of health, whispered’with
his latest breath, “ I am better now.” Let us believe,
in spite of doubts and dogmas and fears and tears, that
these dear words are true of all the countless dead.
And now, to you, who have been chosen from among
the many men he loved to do the last sad office for the
dead, we give his sacred dust. Speech cannot contain
our love. There was—there is—no gentler, stronger,
manlier man.
�Whence and Whither,
SPOKEN AT THE GRAVE OF A CHILD.
JAN. 1882.
/T Y FRIENDS : I know how vain it is to gild a
' X grief with words, and yet I wish to take from
every grave its fear. Here, in this world, where life
and death' are equal kings, all should be brave enough
to meet what all the dead have met. The future has
been filled with fear, stained and polluted by the heart
less past. From the wondrous tree of life the buds
fall with ripened fruit, and in the common bed of earth
the patriarchs and babes sleep side by side. Why
should we fear that which will come to all that is ? We
cannot tell; we do not know which is the greater bless
ing—life or death. We cannot say that death is not a
good. We do not know whether the grave is the end
of this life or the door of another, or whether the night
here is not somewhere else a dawn. Neither can we
tell which is the more fortunate—the child dying in its
mother’s arms, before its lips have learned to form a
word, or he who journeys all the length of life’s uneven
road, painfully taking the last slow steps with staff and
crutch.
Every cradle asks us, “ Whence ? ” and every coffin,
“ Whither ? ” The poor barbarian, weeping above his
dead, can answer these questions as intelligently and
K
�(15)
satisfactorily as the robed priest of the most authentic
creed. The tearful ignorance of the one is just as con
soling as the learned and unmeaning words of the
other. No man, standing where the horizon of life
has touched a grave, has any right to prophesy a future
filled with pain and tears. It may be that death gives
all there is of worth to life. If those we press and
strain against our hearts could never die, perhaps that
love would wither from the earth. May be this com
mon fate treads from out the paths between our hearts
the weeds of selfishness and hate, and I had rather live
and love where death is king than have eternal life
where love is not. Another life is naught unless we
know and love again the ones who love us here.
They who’stand here with breaking hearts around
this little grave need have no fear. The larger and
nobler faith in all that is and is to be, tells us that
death, even at its worst, is only perfect rest. We
know that through the common wants of life—the
needs and duties of each hour—their grief will lessen
day by day, until this grave will be to them a place of
rest and peace—almost of joy. There is for them this
consolation: the dead do not suffer. If they live again,
their lives will surely be as good as ours.
We have no fear. We are all children of the same
mother, and the same fate awaits us all. We, too,
have our religion, and it is this: Help for the living—
Hope for the dead.
�Ube ZJlbost IRematbable discourses
ot tbe da&.
BY COL. ROBERT G. INGERSOLL,
America's Greatest Orator.
MISTAKES OF MOSES....................................... 3^
GODS; PAST AND PRESENT........................... id
GREAT INFIDELS..................................................id
SALVATION; HERE AND HEREAFTER....id
SPIRIT OF THE AGE, or, modern thinkers...id
COL. INGERSOLL AT HOME........................... id
REPLY TO TALMAGE......................................... 2d
PROSE POEMS......................................................... 2d
HELL........................................................................... 2d
------------------ —COO----------------—
Also a limited number of Copies, Handsome
Edition, 64 pages, Price Sixpence.
Ube (Sboets,
FUwo studies in ^Biblical Rumour,
BY
D. M. BENNETT,
Editor of the New-York “ Truthseeker.”
THE GREAT WRESTLING MATCH.............. id
DIVINE PYROTECHNY...................................... id
'•
fo.
TRADE SUPPLIED BY
JOHN KEYWOOD,
Ridgefield & Deansgate, Manchester.
11 Paternoster Buildpngs, London.
�
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Prose poems : spoken on memorable occasions
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Ingersoll, Robert Green [1833-1899]
Description
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Place of publication: Manchester; London
Collation: 15 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: This ed. not listed by Stein, but cf his Item 314. Contents: The past rises before me like a dream (extract from a speech delivered at the Soldiers' Reunion at Indianapolis, 1876) -- The Volunteer soldiers of the Union army (response to the toast at the grand banquet of the re-union of the Army of the Tennessee, Chicago, Nov. 13th, 1878) -- 1776 Declaration of Independence --At a brother's grave (Hon. Eron C. Ingersoll. Died at Washington, June 2nd, 1879) -- Whence and whither (spoken at the grave of a child. Jan. 1882). Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
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John Heywood, Ridgefield & Deansgate
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[n.d.]
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N386
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Poetry
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Poetry
Speeches
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PRICE SIXPENCE.
THE
WORKING MAN’S
PROGRAMME,
(ARBEITER-PROGRAMM)
An
Address
BY
FERDINAND LASSALLE.
Translated (with an Introduction) by
EDWARD PETERS.
THE
13
and
MODERN
PRESS,
14, PATERNOSTER ROW,
1884.
LONDON,
E.C.
��iii.
NOTE.
.Ferdinand Lassalle was born in the year 1825 at Breslau in
Silesia, where his father carried on the business of a merchant, and
intended that his son should follow the same occupation. But
young Lassalle having early given proof of unusual ability, and
a *“ certain passionate energy of character, ” preferred a more am
bitious career, and having passed with distinction through the
Universities of Breslau and Berlin, devoted himself to the task of
raising the condition of the people. Young, handsome, highly
gifted, and thoroughly trained in the intellectual school of the
highest German thought, he found a ready entrance to the best
society of Berlin, and in Mendelssohn’s house in particular gained
the friendship of Humboldt and other eminent men. The poet
Heine thus writes of him to Varnhagen von Euse—“ My friend
Lassalle, who is the bearer of this letter, is a young man of extra
ordinary ability. To the most thorough scholarship, the widest
knowledge, the greatest penetration I have ever met with, and the
greatest power of expression, he unites an energy of will, and a
prudence in action, which fairly astonish me." He hints at one
defect, however, .with characteristic irony—“He is thoroughly
stamped with the impress of these later times, which ignore the self
denial and modesty about which we of the older generation used,
with more or less hypocrisy, perpetually to prate."
In 1848 Lassalle took a leading part in organising armed resist
ance to the reactionary Government, and when brought to trial, he
undertook his own defence, and admitting the fact, maintained that
he had done no more than his duty, and was acquitted by the jury.
He now devoted himself anew to philosophy and literature. The
first book that he published was entitled “The Philosophy of
Heraclitus the Mystic of Ephesus,” which was considered to be
both, a brilliant and a learned work. His tragedy “Franz von
Sickingen ” contains many passages of brilliant oratory, but was not
found suitable for the stage. His brochure on “ The Italian war
* Wurzbach, Zeitgenossen, to which I am mainly indebted for this sketch of
Lassalle s life.—E.P
�and the task of Prussia," met with a better reception, and soon
reached a second edition. This was followed by 11 Fichte’s Political
Testament,” and a work on Lessing. His “ System of Inherited
Rights ” in two large volumes is said to be a work of great learning
and power, but is not consistent with his later socialistic writings.
Of the latter by far the most important is the treatise on “ Capital
and Labour.” In this he states his object to be, to make the profits
now absorbed by capital, available for the lower class of working
men. The means to this end are to be national workshops, like
those which failed in France, only the part which the State is to
play is to be that of a sleeping partner, namely to provide the
capital, to watch the conduct of the business, and to have the right
of inspecting the books. He held this to be the only way to make
the working class their own employers, and to evade the iron law
which limits the working man’s wages. At the same time he de
clared that ‘ ‘ no social improvement would be worth the trouble of
obtaining it if the working men (which happily is objectively im
possible) were to remain after it what they are now.” Education,
and again education, is the constant refrain of his teaching.
In 1862 he delivered a series of addresses in Berlin which pro
duced a stirring effect on the people, amongst them the Arbeiter
Program™ for which, strange as it may appear to the readers of this
translation, he was punished by a short term of imprisonment. In
the following year the “General Union of the working men of
Germany ” was formed at his instance, of which he was made
President, and thus became the acknowledged leader of the
“ People’s Party.” Bismarck had three interviews with him, and
tried to obtain the help of this party in his struggle with the socalled Party of Progress—but in vain. Equally in vain Lassalle
urged the Chancellor to try the weapon of universal and equal
suffrage against the common enemy the bourgeoisie. Bismarck, it
appeared, had carefully studied Lassalle’s writings, and there can be
little doubt that what are called the Socialistic schemes of the
Chancellor owe their origin, in part at least, to this source. Nor
can we doubt the great influence of Lassalle on German thought in
general. This is the work he had to do in the world, and it may
yet bear fruit in a not very distant future. His further career was
cut off by his untimely death in a duel in 1864.
E. Peters.
�.THE WORKING MAN’S PROGRAMME.
'Gentlemen,
Having been asked to give you a lecture, I thought
that I should best meet your wishes by choosing a theme
which from its very nature must be deeply interesting
to you, and by treating it in the most thoroughly scien
tific manner. I will therefore speak on the special con
nexion that exists between the character of the present
period of history in which we are living and the idea of
the working class. I have said that my treatment of
the subject should be purely scientific.
But scientific treatment consists in nothing else than
complete clearness, and therefore a complete absence of
presuppositions, that is to say, of reasoning founded on
unwarranted assumptions.
On account of this entire absence of presuppositions
with which we have to approach our subject, it will be
necessary at starting to have a clear understanding of
what we mean by a working man, or by the working
class. For on this point we dare not allow ourselves
the benefit of a presupposition, as if this were something
perfectly well known. This is far from being the case.
The language of common life, on the contrary, frequently
attaches different meanings at different times to the
�6
words working man and working class, and we must
therefore at the proper time get a clear understanding
as to the sense in which we intend to use these words.
This however is not the right time. We must on the
contrary begin this lecture with another question.
Namely with the following question. The working
class is only one of the many classes of which the com
munity of citizens consists. Moreover working men
have existed at all times. How is it then possible, and
what meaning can be attached to the statement, that a
special connexion exists between the idea of this speci
fied single class, and the principle of the particular period
of history in which we live ?
In order to understand this, it is requisite, gentlemen,
to throw a glance, at history, at the past, which rightly
Understood, here as always, explains the present and
foreshows the outline of the future. We must make this
retrospect as brief, gentlemen, as possible, for we shall
otherwise run a risk of not reaching at all in the short
time allotted to us the real subject which we have met
to consider. But even in the face of this danger, we must
take some such retrospective view of the past, however
cursory and confined to the most general features, inorder
to understand the meaning of our question and of our
theme.
If then we go back to the Middle Ages, we find that
even at that time the same grades and classes of the
population were in existence, though certainly far less
developed than those of which the community of
citizens consists at the present day. But we find further
that one grade and one element was at that time the
dominating one—namely the landed interest.
�7
It is the landed interest, gentlemen, which in aU
respects bore sway in the Middle Ages, which im
pressed its own specific stamp on all the arrangements
and on the whole life of that time; it is that which must
be proclaimed as the ruling principle of that period.
The reason of this, namely that the landed interest was
the ruling principle of that age, is a very simple one. It
lies—at least this reason may for the present fully satisfy
us—in the domestic and economic constitution of the
Middle Ages ; in the conditions of production at that
period. Trade was at that time very slightly developed,
and industry still less so. The staple of the wealth of
the community consisted to an immensely prepon
derating degree in the produce of agriculture.
Movable possessions were at that time but little
thought of in comparison with possession of the land
and the soil, and you may plainly see to what an extent
this was the case by the law of property, which always
throws a clear light on the economic condition of the
periods in which it was instituted. Thus for instance
the law of property of the Middle Ages, with the object
of preserving family property from generation to gene
ration, and protecting it against dissipation, declares
family property or “ Estate” to be inalienable without
the consent of the heirs. But by this family property
or “ Estate ” is understood by express limitation only
landed property. Chattels (fahrniss), on the contrary, as
movable property was then called, were alienable with
out the consent of the heirs. And, in general, all
personal or movable property was treated by the old
German laws, not as an independent reproductive pro
�8
perty, or in short as capital, but only as the/raZww of the
land and the soil, like the crops which are annually
gathered from it, and it was put on a par with these.
Landed property alone was regularly treated, at that time,
as independent productive property. It was therefore
only in complete accordance with this state of things, and
a simple consequence of it, that the landed interest and
those who had it almost exclusively in their hands, that
is, as you are aware, the nobles and the clergy, formed
the ruling factor of that society in all respects.
To whatever institutions of the middle ages we turn
our eyes, this phenomenon is everywhere apparent in
them.
We will content ourselves with a hasty glance at
some of the most important of those arrangements,
in which the land interest comes forth as the ruling
principle.
First then let us look at the organisation of the public
forces, or the feudal system. You know, gentlemen,
that this was so constituted that the king, princes, and
lords ceded to other lords and knights certain lands for
their use, in consideration of which the recipients were
obliged solemnly to undertake the obligation of service
in the field, that is to say, of supporting their feudal
lords in their wars or quarrels, both in person and with
their dependents.
Let us next look at the organisation of the public
Rights, or the constitution of the realm. In the assembly
of the German States the princely class and the great
landed interest were represented by the Counts of the
Empire and the clergy. The towns only enjoyed a
�9
seat and a vote in that assembly if they had acquired
the privileges of a free town of the Empire.
To proceed, thirdly, to the exemption of tfie great
landed proprietors from taxation.
Now it is a
characteristic and an ever recurring phenomenon,
gentlemen, that every ruling privileged class invariably
seeks to throw the burden of maintaining the existence of
the State on the oppressed classes which have no
property; and they do this openly or covertly, either
directly or indirectly. When Richelieu in the year
1641 demanded six millions of francs from the clergy,
as an extraordinary tax to help the necessities of the
State, the clergy, through the mouth of the Archbishop
of Sens, gave this characteristic answer—“ The ancient
usage of the Church during its vigour was that the
people contributed its goods, the nobility its blood, the
clergy its prayers to the necessities of the State.”
Fourthly, we may mention the contempt with
which every other kind of labour than that which
was occupied with the land was socially regarded. To
engage in industrial undertakings, to gain money
by a trade or profession, was considered disgraceful,
and dishonouring to the two privileged ruling classes,
the nobles and the clergy, for whom it was only deemed
honourable to derive their income from the possession
of land.
These four great and important facts, which determine
the fundamental character of any epoch, are amply
sufficient for our purpose, and show how it was that the
possession of land everywhere fixed its impress on the
period of which we are treating, and formed its ruling
principle.
�IO
So much was this the case that even the movement
of the Peasants War which broke out in Germany in
I524> and spread all over Swabia, Franconia, Alsace,
Westphalia, and other parts of Germany, and was in
appearance thoroughly revolutionary, nevertheless was
essentially dependent on this same principle, was in fact
therefore a reactionary movement, in spite of its revo
lutionary mode of action. You are aware, gentlemen,
that the peasants at that time burnt down the castles
of the nobles, put the nobles themselves to death, made
them run the gauntlet through their spears, which was
the cruel practice in vogue at that time. And not
withstanding, in spite of this external revolutionary
varnish, the movement was essentially and throughout
reactionary.
For the new birth of the relations of the State, the
German freedom, which the peasants wished to establish,
was to consist according to them in this, that the pe
culiar and privileged intermediate position which the
princes had assumed between the Emperor and the
States should be done away with, and that nothing
should be represented in the German Diet, excepting
the free and independent possession of the land,
especially of the land held by the peasant class and by
the knights—neither of which had been hitherto repre
sented—as well as that of the nobles of every degree,
namely of the Knights, Counts and then existing
Princes, without regard to the difference that had for
merly been made between them. The representation
therefore was to be confined to the landed possessions
of the nobles on the one side and those of the peasants
on the other.
�XI
You see at once then, gentlemen, that this plan
ultimately proceeds simply on a perfectly consistent
and more regular carrying out of this principle, which
the epoch just then drawing near its close had taken as
its foundation—I say on a logically consistent, more
complete and regular carrying out of the principle
that the possession of land should be the ruling element,
which alone should entitle any one to a participation
in the management of the State. That any one could
demand such participation on the ground that he was a
man, that he was a reasonable being, without the possession
of any land,—of' that the peasants had not the most
distant idea ! The times were not yet ripe for this, the
thoughts of men not yet become sufficiently revolu
tionary.
Thus, then, this movement of the peasantry, which
proceeded with such revolutionary determination, was
in its essence thoroughly reactionary: that is to say,
instead of resting on a new revolutionary piinciple, if
rested unconsciously on the old established principle of
the period which was at that very time dying out: and it
was precisely for this reason, because it was in fact
reactionary, while it believed itself to be revolutionary,
that the peasant movement was unsuccessful.
In opposition both to the rising of the peasants and
that of the nobles (under Franz von Sickingen), both
of which had in common the principle that participation
in the management of the State should depend, even
more strictly than had hitherto been the case, on the
possession of the land, the sovereign authority of the
Princes, founded on the idea of a State sovereignty
�12.
1I
•
independent of landed possessions, which was making
head at that time, was a relatively justifiable and
revolutionary force. This it was which gave it the
power which led to its victorious development, and to
the suppression both of the movement of the peasants
and that of the nobles.
I have dwelt with some emphasis on this point,,
gentlemen,—first, in order to prove to you the reasona
bleness and the progress of freedom, in the development
of history, and that by an example from which it is by
no means obvious on a superficial survey; secondly,
because historians are far from having recognised this
reactionary character of the rising of the peasants, and
the true cause of its failure which was solely dependent
upon that character, but on the contrary, deceived by
external appearances, hold the peasant war to
have been a truly revolutionary movement.
Thirdly, I have dwelt upon it because this spectacle
is constantly repeating itself in all ages, that men who
do not think clearly—and to this class,, gentlemen,
those who are apparently most learned, and even pro
fessors may belong, and, as the Church of St. Paul
with its sad memorials has shewn us, do extremely often
belong—fall into the extraordinary illusion of holding
that which is only a more consistent and complete
expression of a period of history and an organisation
of society even then passing away, to be a new revolutionary
principle.
Against such men and such courses, which are
revolutionary only in the imagination of these men—for
there will be plenty of them in the future as there
�z3
have been in the past—permit me, gentlemen, to
put you on your guard.
We may be allowed to feel confident on these grounds
that the numerous movements which have been imme
diately, or within a short time, after momentary suc
cesses, suppressed, which we find in history, and which
may fill many well meaning friends of the people who
take a superficial view of things with sad misgivings,
have ever been revolutionary movements only in the
imagination of their promoters.
A truly revolutionary movement, one which is founded
on a really new principle of thought, has never failed, at
least in the long run, as any one who thinks deeply
may, to his comfort, prove to himself from history.
I now resume the thread of my argument.
As the Peasants’ War was revolutionary only in their
imagination, so on the other hand the progress of in
dustry, the productive energy of the towns, the con
stantly developing division of labour, and the wealth of
capital, which came into existence by these means, and
which accumulated exclusively in the hands of the
bourgeoisie (because they were the only class which
engaged in production, and appropriated its advantages
to themselves)—these were the really and truly revolu
tionary forces of that time.
The close of the Middle Ages, and the commence
ment of modern history, is usually dated from the
Reformation, i.e. from the year 1517.
And in fact this is correct, in the sense that in the
two centuries which immediately followed the Reforma
tion, a change was slowly, gradually, and imperceptibly
�taking place, which completely transformed the aspect
of society, and brought about in the heart of it a re
volution, which was only proclaimed, but not really
created by what is called the French Revolution in the
year 1789.
Do you ask in what this revolution consisted ?
Nothing had been changed in the legal position of the
nobles. By law the nobles and the clergy were the two
ruling classes, the Bourgeoisie remained everywhere the
neglected and oppressed class. But if nothing had
been changed de jure, yet de facto the change that had
actually taken place in the relations of these classes
was all the more extraordinary.
Through the creation and accumulation of capital,
that is to say of moveable in opposition to landed
property, in the hands of the Bourgeoisie, the nobles had
sunk into complete insignificance ; nay, often into real
dependence on this Bourgeoisie which had become rich.
Already they were obliged, if they wished to be some
what on a par with them, to abandon all the principles
•of their class, and to begin to make use of the same
means of obtaining money through industry, to which
the Bourgeoisie owed their wealth and therefore their
-actual power.
The Comedies of Moliere, who lived in the time of
Louis XIV., show us as early as that date a highly
interesting phenomenon, the noble of that day despising
the rich citizen, and at the same time playing the para
site at his table.
We see Louis XIV. himself, that proudest of kings,
doffing his hat, and humbling himself in his palace of
�i5
Versailles before the Jew Samuel Bernard, the Roths
child of that day, in order to induce him to grant a
loan.
When Law, the famous Scotch financier, had formed
the trading company or joint-stock enterprise which
had combined for the commercial exploration of the banks
of the Mississippi, Louisiana, the East Indies, &c., the
Regent of France himself was one of the Directors—
a member of a company of merchants! Yes, the
Regent found himself compelled in August 1717, to
issue an edict, in which it was ordained that the
nobles might enter the naval and military service of
this trading company without any degradation to their
dignity! To that pass, then, had the proud and war
like feudal nobility of France arrived, that they could
become the armed commissaries of the industrial com
mercial undertakings of the Bourgeoisie who were
carrying on their trade in every part of the world at
once.
In connexion with this change of opinion, a kind of
materialism had at that time already developed itself, and
a voracious and greedy struggling for money and
property, to which all moral ideas, nay what unhappily
appeals in general still more strongly to the privileged
classes, all class privileges, were prostituted. Under
the same Regent of France, Count Horn, one of the
most distinguished nobles connected with the first
families of France, nay with the Regent himself, was
broken on the wheel as a common highway robber ; and
the Duchess of Orleans, a German Princess, writes in
a letter of the 29th November 1719, that six of the
�i6
most distinguished of the Court ladies had one day
waylaid the aforesaid Law (who at that time was the
most courted and also the busiest man in France, and
whom consequently it was very difficult to lay hold of}
in the court of some building, in order to induce him to
give them some shares in a company he had estab
lished, after which all France was running at that time,
and whose value on the Exchange was six or eight
times as high as the nominal price at which they had
been issued by Law.
The pressure exercised by
these ladies with this object proceeded to a degree
which a regard to decency will not allow me to par
ticularise.
If you ask me again what causes had rendered
possible this development of industry, and of the wealth
of the Bourgeoisie thereby called into existence, I could
not give a complete answer to the question without
largely overstepping the limits of the time allotted
to me. I will therefore only briefly enumerate the most
essential of these causes; namely, the discovery of
America and the enormous impulse thereby exercised
on production ; the discovery of the sea route to the
East Indies by doubling the Cape of Good Hope,
whereas formerly all trade with India and the East was
forced to take the overland route by Suez ; the dis
covery of the magnetic needle and the compass, and
the greater security thus given to all trade by sea, as
well as greater speed and diminution of the cost of
insurance ; the canals and paved roads constructed in
the interior of countries, which, by diminishing the cost
of transport, first made it possible to sell at a distance
�*7
numerous commodities which formerly were not worth
the expense of carriage ; the greater security of the
property of the citizens ; the regular course of justice ;
the invention of gunpowder, and the breaking up of the
feudal power of the nobles by the kings in consequence
of this invention ; the dismissal of the spearmen and
men at arms of the nobles, in consequence of the
destruction of their castles and of their independent
military power, nothing being now left for these de
pendents but to seek admission to the workshops of
that time—all these events helped to drag on the tri
umphal car of the Bourgeoisie!
All these events and many others which could be
enumerated are comprised however in one consequence
—the opening of great outlets, that is of extensive
regions where goods can be sold, and the accompanying
diminution of the cost of production and transport leads
to production in vast quantities, production for the
market of the world, and this in turn creates the
necessity of eheap production, which again can only
be satisfied by an ever-advancing division of labour,
that is by a separation of employment into its simplest
mechanical operations, ever carried further and further,
and thus again calls forth a production on an ever in
creasing scale.
We have thus arrived, gentlemen, at the domain of
reciprocal cause and effect. Each of these facts calls
the other into existence, and the latter again reacts upon
the former, and widens and enlarges its area.
Accordingly you will clearly perceive that, the pro
duction of an article in enormous quantities, its pro-
�i8
Ruction for the market of the world, is, speaking gene
rally, easily accomplished only on the condition that the
cost of the production of this article shall be moderate,
and also the transport of it cheap enough not to raise its
price exorbitantly. For production in vast quantities
requires an enormous sale ; and the extensive sale of
any kind of produce is only rendered possible by its
cheapness, which makes it accessible to a large number
of purchasers. Cheapness of production and transport
therefore cause the production of wares of any kind to
take place on a large scale. But conversely, you will
at once see that it is the production of an article in large
quantities which causes and increases cheapness. A
manufacturer for instance who sells two hundred thou
sand pieces of cotton in the year, is enabled by pur
chasing his raw materials cheaper on so large a scale,,
and also because the profits on his capital and the
expense of his plant and machinery are divided between
so large a number of pieces, he is enabled, I say, within
certain limits, to sell each piece much cheaper than a
manufacturer who only produces five thousand such
pieces every year. The greater cheapness of produc
tion leads therefore to production in larger quantities,
and this leads again to still greater cheapness, which
calls forth again a still larger production, which once
more causes further cheapness, and so on.
Precisely the same thing happens with regard to
the division of labour, which on its side again is the ne
cessary condition of extensive production and of cheap
*
ness, for without it neither cheapness nor production on
an extensive scale would be possible.
�19
The division of labour which separates the process of
production into a great number of very simple and often
purely mechanical operations requiring no exercise of
reason, and which causes separate workmen to be em
ployed for each one of these divided operations, would
be quite impossible without an extensive production of
the articles in question; and is therefore only called into
existence and developed by such extensive demand.
Conversely this separation of labour into such simple
operations and manipulations, leads further (i) to an
ever increasing cheapness, (2) consequently to produc
tion on a greater and more gigantic scale, ever spreading
beyond this and that market till it reaches the whole
market of the world, and (3) by this means, and through
the new divisions which this extension renders possible
in the single operations of labour, to an ever increasing
advance in the division of labour itself.
Through this series of reciprocal operations of cause
and effect, an entire change took place in the work of
the community, and consequently in all the relations of
life of the community itself.
A brief view of the nature of this revolution may be
obtained by reducing it to the following contrasts.
In the earlier part of the Middle Ages, as only a very
small number of costly products could bear the enhanced
price which would have been caused by their transport,
articles were only produced to supply the needs of the
locality in which the producers lived. This implied a
very limited market comprising only their immediate
neighbourhood, the requirements of which were for this
very reason well known, fixed, and uniform. The re
�20
quirements or the demand preceded the offer of the goods,
and formed the well known guide to the amount of goods
offered for sale. Or in other words—the production of
the community was carried on mainly by handicrafts.
For this is the character of business carried on in a
small way or by handicrafts, as distinguished from that
which is carried on in factories or on a large scale, that
either the demand is waited for, before the article is pro
duced ; as for instance the tailor waits for my order be
fore he makes me a coat, the locksmith before he makes
me a lock ; or that at least if many articles are manu
factured beforehand, this production in advance is limited
to the minimum of the requirements of the locality and
its immediate neighbourhood, which are accurately
known by experience. For instance, a tinman makes a
certain number of lamps in advance, which he knows
will be soon absorbed by the requirements of the town.
The characteristic quality, gentlemen, of a community
which produces mainly in this manner, is poverty, or at
least only a moderate degree of prosperity, and on the
other hand a certain stability and fixedness of all re
lations.
But now, through the incessant reciprocal action
which I have described to you, the work of the com
munity, and consequently all the relations of life gra
dually assumed a totally opposite character. This was
in germ the same character which distinguishes the work
of the community to-day, through truly in a very different,
in fact in an immensely- developed degree. In the
'gigantic development which has now been attained this
character may be thus indicated in opposition to the
�earlier one which has been described: whereas formerly
the demand preceded the offer of the merchandise, and
the production of it, and drew this latter in its train, and
determined it, formed its guide and its well known mea
sure, now on the contrary the production, the offer of the
goods precedes the demand, and seeks to force it into
existence. Goods are no longer produced for the locality,
for the ascertained needs of neighbouring markets, but
for the markets of the world. They are produced on
the largest scale and for every part of the world in gene
ral, to supply a need entirely unknown and not to be
measured, and the produce is able to force the demand
for it into being, provided that a single weapon is given
to it, namely cheapness. Cheapness is the weapon of
production, with which on the one hand it conquers the
purchaser, and on the other hand drives all other goods
of the same kind out of the market, which may be like
wise pressed upon the purchaser, so that in fact under
the system offree competition, every producer may hope,
however great the quantity of goods he produces, to
find a market for all these if he is only able by the better
arming of his wares with cheapness to make the wares
of his competitors unable to maintain the contest.
The prevailing character of such a community is vast,
immeasurable wealth, on the other hand a great mobility
of all relations, an almost constant, anxious insecurity
in the position of individuals and a very unequal appor
tionment of the proceeds of production amongst those
who work together to secure them.
You see then, gentlemen, how vast was the change
which the quiet, revolutionary, and undermining activity
�22
of industry, had imperceptibly wrought in the structure
of the community before the end of that century.
Although the actors in the Peasants War had not yet
ventured so much as to take up any other idea, than that
of founding the State on the possession of land, although
they had not been able even in thought to free them
selves from the view that the possession of land was
necessarily the element that involved dominion over
the State, and a participation in this possession the
condition of a participation in this dominion, yet
before the end of this century, the quiet, unnoticed, re
volutionary advance of industry had brought it to pass,
that the possession of land had been completely
stripped of its former importance, and in presence of
the development of the new means of production, of the
wealth which this development fostered and daily in
creased, and of the immense influence which it exercised
thereby on the whole population, and on its relations,
as well as upon the nobility itself, which had to a great
extent become poor, had sunk to a subordinate position.
The revolution had therefore already entered into the
vitals of the community, into their actual relations, long
before it broke out in France, and it was only requisite
to bring the change thus wrought to external recognition,
in order to give it a moral sanction.
This, gentlemen, is always the case in all revolutions.
A revolution can never be made; all that can ever be
done is to add external moral recognition to a revolution
which has already entered into the actual relations of a
•community, aud to carry it out accordingly.
To set about to make a revolution is the folly of im
�23
mature minds which have no notion of the laws of
history.
And it is for this reason equally foolish and childish
to attempt to repress a revolution which has once de
veloped itself in the womb of a community, and to
oppose its moral recognition, or to utter against such a
community, or the individuals who assist at its birth,
the reproach that they are revolutionary. If the revolu
tion has already found its way into the community, into
its actual relations, then there is no help for it, it must
come out and take its place in the constitution of the
community.
How this comes about, and how far it had already
happened in the period of which I am speaking, you
will best see by one fact which I will relate to you.
I have already spoken to you of the division of
labour, the development of which consists in separating
all the processes of production, into a series of very
simple and mechanical operations, requiring no exer
cise of reason.
Now as this division is ever advancing further and
further, it is at last discovered that these single opera
tions, as they are so simple and require no exercise of
reason, can be just as well and even better performed by
unreasoning agents ; and accordingly in the year 1775,
that is fourteen years before the French Revolution,
Arkwright invented in England, the first machine, his
famous spinning jenny.
I am not going to say that this machine produced the
French Revolution. The invention preceded it by far
too short a time for this, and besides had not yet been
�24
introduced into France ; but it may truly be said that
it represented in itself, in a material form, the revolution
which had already actually entered into the community,
and was already developed there. This was itself, so
to speak, the revolution which had become a living
force.
The reason of this is very simple. You will have
heard of the formation of the Guilds, through which
production was carried on in the Middle Ages.
I cannot here go into the history of the Guilds of the
Middle Ages, nor trace that of the free competition
which at the time of the French Revolution had every
where taken the place of the Guilds. I can only state
the fact in the form of an asseveration, that the system
of Guilds of the Middle Ages was inseparable from the
other social arrangements of that period. But if time
does not allow me to lay before you clearly the reasons
of this inseparable connection, yet the fact itself admits
of an easy historical proof. The Guilds lasted through
the whole of the Middle Ages, and until the French Revo
lution. Asj-early as the year 1672 their abrogation was
discussed in a German Diet—but in vain, nay, in the year
1614 the Bourgeoisie demanded of the Estates General.,
that is to say the French Parliament, the abolition of
the Guilds which already cramped them in all their
manufactures. This was likewise in vain. Nay further,
thirteen years before the Revolution, in the year 1776,
a reforming minister in France, the famous Turgot, did
abolish Guilds. But the feudal privileged world of the
Middle Ages regarded itself, and it was perfectly right,
in danger of death, if privilege, its principle of life,
�ceased to penetrate every class of society : and so the
king was prevailed upon, six months after the abolition
of the Guilds, to withdraw his edict, and restore them.
In due time came the Revolution, and destroyed in one
day by the storming of the Bastille that for which Ger
many had striven in vain since 1672, and France since
1614, that is for near two centuries,{.0 do away with by legal
means.
You will perceive from this, gentlemen, that how
ever great are the advantages which attend reforms
conducted by legal methods, yet they have on all the
most important occasions, the one great drawback of
an impotence lasting for entire centuries, and on the
other hand, that the revolutionary method, terrible as are
the drawbacks with which it also is accompanied, has in
spite of them the one advantage of attaining speedilv
and energetically a practical result.
Now fix your eyes, gentlemen, with me for a moment
on the fact that the Guilds were inseparably connected
with the whole of the social arrangements of the
Middle Ages, and you will see at once how the first
machine, the spinning jenny which Arkwright invented,
contained already in itself a complete revolutionising
of those social conditions.
For how could production by means of machinery be
possible under the system of Guilds, by which the
number of men and apprentices which a master might
keep was fixed by law in every locality ? Again under
this system of Guilds, the different branches of industry
were marked off from one another in the most exact
manner by law, and each master was only allowed to
�26
undertake one of them, so that for example, for hundreds
of years the tailors who made clothes were engaged
in lawsuits with the tailors who mended them,
the makers of nails, with the locksmiths, in order to fix
the limits which separated their trades. Now under
such a system of Guilds how could production be carried
on by machinery for which it was necessary that
different kinds of labour should be combined in the
hand of one and the same capitalist ?
A stage had thus been reached, at which production
itself, by its steadily advancing development, had
brought into existence instruments of production which
were destined to shatter the whole existing system of
society; instruments of production and methods of
production, which could find no place or room for
development in that system.
In this sense I say that the first machine was already
in itself a Revolution, for it bore in its cogs and wheels,
little as this could be seen from its outward appearance,
the germ of the whole of the new conditions of society,
founded upon free competition, which were to be deve
loped with the vigour and necessity of a living
force.
And in the same way it is possible, gentlemen, unless
I am greatly mistaken, that many phenomena which
are to be seen at the present day, contain in themselves
a new condition of things, which they must of necessity
develope. This is entirely overlooked in judging of
these phenomena from the outside only, so that even
the Goverment passes over them without suspicion,
while prosecuting insignificant agitators, nay even con-
�27
siders them as necessary accompaniments of our culture,
greets them as the flower and outcome of it, and occasion
ally makes speeches recognising and approving them.
After all this discussion, gentlemen, you will now
clearly comprehend the true significance of the famous
pamphlet which was published in 1788 the year before
the French Revolution by the Abbe Sieyes, and which
is summed up in these words, “ What is the third Estate?
Nothing ! What ought it to be ? Everything !”
The Bourgeoisie was called the third Estate in France,
because they formed the third class, in contra-distinction
to the two privileged classes, the nobility and the clergy,
and thus included the whole of the nonprivileged popu
lation.
Sieyes then thus formulated these two questions and
answers. But their true significance, as follows from
what I have already said, might be expressed more
strikingly and correctly as follows—
“ What is the third Estate actually and in fact £
Everything!
But what is it legally or constitutionally? Nothing !
The point is, therefore, to make the legal position of the
third class, identical with its actual position; to obtain
legal sanction and recognition for its actual and existing,
significance,—and this is precisely the work and the sig
nificance of the victorious Revolution which broke out
in France in 1789, and of the transforming influence
which it exercised over the other countries of Europe.
I am not going, gentlemen, to enter upon the history
of the French Revolution. We can now only glance, and
that in the most brief and cursory manner, which is all
�28
that our time will allow, at the most important and
decisive points in the transition from one stage of
society to another.
’ It is necessary here then to ask the question, who
constituted this thirM class, or the Bourgeoisie, who by
means of the French Revolution conquered the privi
leged classes, and obtained the government of the State?
As this class stood over against the legally privileged
classes of the community, so it understood itself at that
time, at the first moment, to be identified with the whole
people, and its interests to be identical with the interests
of the whole of humanity. To this was owing the elevating
and mighty enthusiasm which prevailed at that period.
The rights of man were proclaimed, and it appeared as if
with the freedom and the rule of the third Estate, all
legal privileges had disappeared from the community,
and all differences founded upon them had been
swallowed up and absorbed in the one idea of the
freedom of man.
In the very beginning of the movement, in April 1789,
on the occasion of the elections to the chambers which
were convened by the king on the understanding that
the third class should this time send as many represen
tatives as the nobles and the clergy together, we find a
journal by no means revolutionary in character, writing
as follows—“Who can say whether the despotism of the
Bourgeoisie will not succeed to the pretended aristocracy
of the nobles ?”
But cries of this kind were at that time drowned in
the general enthusiasm.
Nevertheless we must return to that question ; we
�must put the question distinctly.— Were the interest
of the third class truly the interests of the whole
of humanity, or did this third class, the Bourgeoisie,
carry in its bosom yet another, a. fourth class, from which
it desired to separate itself by law, fend so to subject it
to its dominion ?
It is now time, gentlemen, that in order to avoid the
danger of being exposed to gross misinterpretation,
I should explain clearly the meaning of the word Bour
geoisie or upper Bourgeoisie, as the designation of a
political party, and the sense in which I use the word
Bourgeoisie.
In the German language the word Bourgeoisie is
usually translated by the burgher or citizen class. But I
do not use it in this sense; we are all citizens, the working
man, the poor citizen [Kleinburger] the rich citizen
[Grossbiirger] and so forth. The word Bourgeoisie
has on the contrary in the course of history acquired
a very special political significance which I will now imme
diately explain to you.
, The whole burgher or not noble class, when the French
Revolution occurred, divided itself, and still remains
divided, speaking generally, into two subdivisions,
namely in the first place, the class whose members either
entirely or mainly derive their income from their labour,
and who have either no capital, or a very modest one to
assist them in exercising a productive industry for
the support of themselves and their families.
To
this class belong therefore the working men, the lower
grade of citizens, handicraftsmen, and generally speaking
the peasants. The second class consists of those who
�30
dispose of large private property, of a large capital, and by
reason of such a basis of capital, engage in production,
or draw an income in the shape of rents. These may
be called the rich citizens. But a rich citizen, gentlemen,
is for that reason essentially no Bourgeois at all.
If a nobleman seated in his room, finds pleasure in the
contemplation ofhis ancestors, and of his landed property,
no citizen has any thing to say against it. But if this
nobleman desires to make his ancestry or his landed
property the condition of a special rank and privilege in
the State, the condition of the power of directing the
will of the State,—then the indignation of the citizen
is roused against the noble, and he calls him a feudalist.
The same thing exactly takes place with regard to
the difference of property within the citizen class.
That the rich citizen seated in his chamber should
find pleasure in contemplating the great convenience
and advantage which a large private property brings
to its possessor, nothing is more simple, nothing more
natural and legitimate than this.
The working man, and the poor citizen, in a word,
the whole of that class which is without capital,
is fully justified in demanding from the State that
it should direct its aim and all its endeavours towards
the improvement of the sorrowful and needy condition
of the working classes, and to the discovery of the means
by which it may help to raise those by whose hands
all the riches with which our civilization delights to
adorn itself have been produced. To the same hands all
those products owe their existence, without which the
whole community would perish in a single day ; it is.
�31
therefore the duty of the State to help these to a more
ample and assured wage, and so again to the possibility
of a rational education, and through this to an existence
truly worthy of man. Fully as the working classes are
justified in demanding this from the State, and in point
ing out this as its true aim, so on the other hand, the
working man must and will never forget that the right
to all property once lawfully earned is thoroughly
legitimate and unassailable.
But if the rich citizen, not contented with the actual
advantages of large possessions, desires to make the
property of the citizen, or his capital, the condition of
power over the State, and of participating in the
direction of the will of the State and the determination
of its aims, then the rich citizen becomes a bourgeois,
then he makes the fact of possession a legal condition of
political power, then he characterises himself as belong
ing to a new privileged class of the people, which now
desires to impress the overruling stamp of its privilege
on all the arrangements of society, just as the noble did
in the Middle Ages, as we have seen, with the privilege
of the possession of land.
The question then which we have to raise with re
gard to the French Revolution, and the period of his
tory inaugurated by it, is this,—Has the third class
which came into power through the French Revolution,
regarded itself as a Bourgeoisie in this sense, and at
tempted successfully to subject the people to its privi
leged political domination ?
The answer must be sought in the great facts of
history, and this answer is distinctly in the affirmative.
�32
We can only cast a rapid glance at the most import
ant of these facts, which, however, are amply sufficient to
decide the question.
In the very first decree issued in consequence of the
French Revolution, namely, that of the 3rd of Septem
ber 179I (Chapter I. sections 1 and 2), the difference
between active and passive citizens is set forth.
Only
the active citizens are entitled to the franchise, and an
active citizen, according to this decree, is only one who
pays dived taxes to a certain amount, which is afterwards
more precisely stated.
The amount of this taxation was fixed with consider
able moderation ; it was to be only the value of three
days’ work, or if we estimate a days’ work at the value
of 10 silver groschen it would amount to a thaler (three
shillings). But what was far more important was this,
that all who served for wages were declared to be not
active citizens, by which definition the working class
was expressly excluded from the right of election. But
' after all in such questions as these it is not the amount
which is of importance but the principle.
A census was introduced, that is to say a specified
amount of private property was, by means of the franchise—
this first and most important of all political rights—
, made the condition of participation in the direction
of the will of the State, and the determination of its
object.
All those who paid no direct taxes at all, or a less
amount than the above, or who worked for wages, were
excluded from exercising power over the State, and
reduced to an inferior subject class. Private property
�33
or the possession of capital had become the condition of
sovereignty over the State, as nobility or landed property
had been in the Middle Ages.
This principle of the census remains the leading
principle of all the constitutions which resulted from the
French Revolution. The only exception was a short
period during which the French Republic of 1793 lasted,
which perished on account of its own want of definite
ness, and of the entire condition of society at that
time, and on which I cannot enter here more particularly.
Yes, following the rule which is common to all
principles, it was a necessary consequence that the
amount first fixed should soon develope itself into a much
larger one.
In the decree of 1814, 300 francs or 80 thalers, instead
of the former amount of three days labour, was fixed as
the qualification of the franchise by the charter granted
by Louis XVIII. The Revolution of 1830 broke out,
and nevertheless, the law of the 19th of April 1831
enacts that a payment of direct taxes to the amount of
200 francs or about 53 thalers, shall be the qualification
of the franchise.
That which was called, under Louis Phillipe and
Guizot, the “ pays legal,” the country recognised by law,
consisted of 200,000 men. There were no more than ,
200,000 electors in France qualified by the amount of
their private property, and these bore rule over a country
of thirty millions of inhabitants.
We must here observe that it is obviously a matter
of indifference, whether the principle of the census,
the exclusion of those who have no property from the
�34
franchise, is applied by the law in a direct and open, or
in some covert manner. The effect is always the same.
Thus the second French Republic in the year 1850
could not possibly recall openly the universal and direct
right to the suffrage which had been once declared, and
which we shall consider presently in its operation. But
they partially effected their object by excluding from the
franchise, by the law of 31st May, 1850, all citizens who
had not been domiciled for at least three years without
intermission in the same place. For, as workmen in
France are often forced by their circumstances to change
their abode, and to seek for employment in another
commune, they hoped, and with good reason, to exclude
from the suffrage a very considerable number of work
ing men, who would be unable to prove a continuous
residence of three years in the same place.
We have here, then, a Census in a disguised
form.
Much worse, however, do we fare in Prussia since
the passing of the electoral law, which divided electors
into three classes. By this law, according to the cir
cumstances of different localities, three, ten, or thirty
or more electors of the third class who have no property,
exercise only the same voting power as a single large
. capitalist, a rich burgher who belongs to the first
electoral class. Consequently, in point of fact, if the
proportional numbers were on an average, for instance,
as one to ten, nine men in every ten of those who in the
year 1848 possessed the franchise, have lost it through
this electoral law which formed part of the charter of
the year 1849, and now exercise it only in appearance.
�35
But in order to show you how this law now actually
works on an average, it is only necessary to exhibit to
you some figures which are drawn from the official lists
published by the Government.
In the year 1848 we had in consequence of the right
of universal suffrage then introduced, 3,661,993 original
electors.
By the electoral law of 30th May, 1849, with its three
classes, the number of electors was in the first place
reduced to 3,255,703 by depriving of the suffrage all
who had no fixed abode, or who received public alms.
Thus 406,000 men were at once deprived of the fran
chise. This however was the smallest part of the evil.
The remaining 3,255,000 electors were now to be
divided, according to the electoral laws, into three
classes, and according to the official lists prepared by
the direction of the chartered electoral law of
1849—
153,808 men belonged to the 1st class
409,945
,,
,,
2nd class
2,691,950
,,
)t
3rd class
Now let us leave the second class out of view, and
compare only the first and the third, the rich burghers
and those who possessed no property, with one another,
and we find that 153,800 rich men exercised the same
voting power as 2,691,950 who belonged to the class of
workmen, small citizens, and peasants; that is to say,
one rich man exercised the same right of voting as
seventeen who had no property. And now if we take
as our basis the fact, that in the year 1848 universal
suffrage was decreed by the law of the 8th April, so that
�36
at that time 153,800 working men or small citizens were
of equal weight at the elections with 153,800 rich men,
and consequently one man without property was of
equal weight with one rich man, it is clear that now,
when it takes seventeen poor men to counterbalance the
vote of one rich man, sixteen working men and small
citizens out of seventeen have had their legal right of
voting wrested from them.
But even this, gentlemen, bad as it is, is only the
average effect. In practice the matter assumes, in con
sequence of the varying circumstances of different
localities , a very different and far more unfavourable
aspect ; and most unfavourable of all where the ine
qualities of property are the greatest.
Thus the
district of Dusseldorf has 6356 electors of the first
class and 166,300 of the third class ; twenty-six electors
of the third class therefore exercise in that place the
same voting power as one rich man.
To return from this digression to our main line of
argument. We have shown, and have yet to adduce
further proofs, that since the Bourgeoisie attained to
power through the French Revolution, it has made its
own element, private property, the ruling principle of all
the arrangements of society ; that the ■ Bourgeoisie,
behaving precisely as the nobles did in the middle ages
with regard to landed property, now affix the pre
dominant and exclusive impress edits peculiar principle,
private property or capital, the impress of its privilege,
upon all the arrangements of society. The parallel
between the nobility and the Bourgeoisie is in this
respect complete.
�37
In relation to the most important and fundamental
point, the composition of the State, we have already
seen this. As, in the middle ages, the possession of
land was the ruling principle of the representation in
the German Parliament, so now by means of the direct
or the disguised census, the payment of taxes, and
consequently, as this is conditioned by the capital
which a man possesses, the possession of capital, is
ultimately that which determines the right of election
to the Chambers, and consequently the participation in
power over the State.
And so with regard to all the other arrangements in
which I have proved to you that the landed interest
was the ruling principle in the Middle Ages.
I have drawn your attention to the freedom from
taxation of the nobles who then possessed the land ; and
I told you that every dominant privileged class en
deavours to shift the burden of supporting the expenses
tof the State on the oppressed classes who have no
property.
The Bourgeoisie have done precisely the same. It is
true they cannot openly declare that they intend to be
free of taxation. The principle that they express is on
the contrary that every one should pay taxes according
to his income. But they attain to the same result in a
disguised form, at least as far as it goes, by the distinction
between direct and indirect taxes.
Direct taxes, gentlemen, are those which like the
classified income tax, or the class taxes, are raised from
income, and are therefore fixed according to the amount
of the income and capital. Indirect taxes, on the other
D
�38
hand, are those which are imposed on needs of some
kind, for instance on salt, corn, beer, meat, fuel, or on
the need of the protection provided by law, on the cost
of litigation, stamps, &c. These are in most instances
paid by the individual in the price of the article, without
his knowing or observing that he is paying any tax
when he pays for it, or that it is the tax which enhances
the price he pays for the article.
Now you are aware, gentlemen, that one man who is
twenty, fifty, or a hundred times as rich as another, by
no means requires on that account, twenty, fifty, or a
hundred times as much salt, bread or meat, nor drinks
fifty or a hundred times as much beer or wine, nor
requires fifty or a hundred times as much warmth, and
therefore fuel, as a workman or poor citizen.
Hence it follows that all indirect taxes, instead of being
adapted to individuals according to the proportion of
their capital and income, are paid, in far the greater
part, by the poorest and most destitute classes of the
nation. It is true that the Bourgeoisie did not actually
invent indirect taxation; it existed before. But the
Bourgeoisie were the first to develop it in an unprece
dented degree into a system, and laid upon it almost the
whole burden of supplying the necessities of the
State.
In order to show you this, I will glance by way of
example at the revenue of Prussia for the year 1855.
The total amount received by the State in that year
was in round numbers 108,930,000 thalers. From this
-we have to deduct 11,967,000 thalers the proceeds of
the domains and forests, that is to say, income derived
�39
from State property which we need not reckon here.
There remain, therefore, about 97 millions of revenue
from other sources. Of this revenue, according to the
budget, about 26 millions were raised by direct taxation.
But this is not true, and is only made to appear so
because our budget is not constructed on scientific
principles, but is only regulated by the manner in which
the taxes are apparently collected.
Out of these 26
millions, 10 millions of land tax ought to be deducted ;
for though they are certainly taken directly from the
possessor of the land, yet they are again added by him
to the price he demands for his corn; they are there
fore actually paid by the consumer of the corn, and are
really an indirect tax. For the same reason the tax on
trades amounting to 2,900,000 thalers must be de
ducted.
There only remains as revenue really derived from
direct taxation—
2,928,000 thalers from classified income-tax.
7,884,000 ,,
from class taxes.
2,036,000 ,,
from surtax.
Total 12,848,000 thalers.
Thus only 12,800,000 thalers, gentlemen, out of a
revenue of 97 millions really proceed from direct tax
ation. All that is collected beyond this 12,800,000
thalers (for we must not follow the unscientific classifi
cation of the budget which does not reckon the proceeds
of the salt monopoly, amounting to 8,300,000 thalers,
nor 8,849,000 thalers received as a tax on litigation, as
�40
indirect taxes), all this balance I say, with the exception
of a few unimportant items of a special character, is
altogether raised from sources of revenue which are of
the nature of indirect taxes, that is to say they are raised
by indirect taxation.
Indirect taxation is therefore, gentlemen, the institu
tion by which the Bourgeoisie creates the privilege of
freedom from taxation for great capitalists, and lays the
'cost of maintaining the existence of the State on the
poorer classes of the community.
At the same time I beg you to observe, gentlemen,
the remarkable contradiction, and strange justice in
volved in this proceeding of laying the whole burden of
the expenses of the State on the indirect taxes, and so
on the poor people, but making the direct taxes the
criterion and condition of the right to the suffrage, that
is to say of the right to political power; while these
direct taxes contribute only the absurdly small pro
portion of 12 millions to the whole revenue of 108
millions !
Moreover, I told you, gentlemen, while speaking of
the nobles of the Middle Ages, that they held in social
contempt all the activity and industry of the burgher
class.
Precisely the same thing occurs to day. It is true
that every kind of labour is now held in high honour,
and if a rag picker or a nightman became a millionaire,
he might be certain of being received with high honour
into society.
But with what social contempt are they greeted, no
matter in what way or how hard they work, who have
�no private property to back them. This is a fact which
you have no need to learn from my lecture, but which,
unhappily, you can verify often enough by your own
daily experience.
Nay, in many respects the Bourgeoisie carries out
more thoroughly and logically the dominion of its own
peculiar element and privileges, than did the noble in
the Middle Ages with respect to the landed interest.
The education of the people—I speak here of the
education of adults—was in the Middle Ages left in the
hands of the clergy. Since then the newspapers have
undertaken this office. But owing to the caution money
which the journals must deposit, and still more to the
stamp duty which is imposed on the newspapers here,
in France, and in other countries, to start a daily paper
is a very expensive business- that can only be under
taken with the help of a large amount of capital ; so
that by this means the possibility of appealing to the
thought of the people, of enlightening and leading them,
has become a privilege of the possessors of capital.
If this were not the case, gentlemen, you would
possess very different, and much better journals I
It is interesting to see, gentlemen, at what an early
period this attempt of the richer Bourgeoise to make
the press one of the privileges of capital, showed itself,
and in what a naive undisguised form. On the 24th
July, 1789, a few days after the storming of the Bastille,
and therefore soon after the Bourgeoisie had seized upon
political power, the representatives of the Commune of
Paris -issued a decree by which the printers were de
clared to be responsible for the publication of pamphlets
�42
or leaflets written by authors “ sans existence connue."
The freedom of the press which was thus seized upon,
was to be allowed therefore only to writers of known
means of subsistence. Property appears therefore as the
the condition of the freedom of the press, nay in fact of
the morality of a writer I This naivete of the first days
of the rule of the Bourgeois, only expresses in an artless
and open way, what has been attained by the ingenious
contrivance of caution money and stamp duty in our
day.
We must be satisfied gentlemen, with these great and
characteristic facts, which corroborate the view we
have taken of the Middle Ages.
We have now seen, gentlemen, two periods of the
world, each of which is dominated by the ruling idea of
a particular class of the community which impresses its
own principle on all the social arrangements of its
time.
First the idea of nobility, or of the possession of land
which forms the ruling principle of the Middle Ages,
-and permeates all its institutions.
This period closed with the French Revolution,
although you will understand that, especially in Ger
many, where the change was not brought about by the
people, but by very gradual and incomplete reforms
introduced by the Government, numerous and import
ant extensions of that first period of history have
occurred, which even at the present day greatly hamper
the progress of the Bourgeoisie.
We saw in the next place the period of history which
begins at the eighteenth century with the French Revo
�43
lution, which has for its principle large private property,
or capital, and makes this into the privilege which per
vades all the arrangements of society, and is the con
dition of participation in directing the will of the State
and determining its aims.
This period also, little as outward appearances seem
to show it, is virtually already closed.
On the 24th February 1848, the dawn of a new
period of history appeared.
For on that day in France (that country in whose
great struggles the victory or the defeat of freedom
means victory or defeat for the whole human race) a
revolution broke out which called a working man into
the provisional Government, declared that the object of
the State was the improvement of the lot of the working
classes, and proclaimed the universal and direct right
to the suffrage, by which every citizen who had attained
his twenty-first year, without any reference to the
amount of his property, received an equal share in
the government of the State in the direction of its will
and the determination of its aims.
You see, gentlemen, that if the Revolution of 1789
was the Revolution of the Tiers etat, the Third class, it
is now the Fourth class, which in 1789 was still enfolded
within the third class and appeared to be identical with
it, which will now raise its principle to be the domi
nating principle of the community, and cause all its
arrangements to be permeated by it.
But here, in the domination of the fourth class comes
to light this immense difference, that the fourth class
is the last and the outside of all, the disinterested class
�44
of the community, which sets up and can set up no
further exclusive condition, either legal or actual,
neither nobility nor landed possessions nor the posses
sion of capital, which it could make into a new privilege
and force upon the arrangements of society.
We are all working men in so far as we have even
the will to make ourselves useful in any way to the
community.
This Fourth class in whose heart therefore no germ
of a new privilege is contained, is for this very reason
synonomous with the whole human race. Its interest is
in truth the interest of the whole of humanity, its freedom
is the freedom of humanity itself, and its domination is
the domination of all.
Whoever therefore invokes the idea of the working
class as the ruling principle of society, in the sense in
which I have explained it to you, does not put forth a
cry that divides and separates the classes of society.
On the contrary, he utters a cry of reconciliation, & cry
which embraces the whole of the community, a cry for
doing away with all the contradictions in every circle
of society ; a cry of union in which all should join who
do not wish for privileges, and the oppression of the
people by privileged classes ; a cry of love which
having once gone up from the heart of the people, will
for ever remain the true cry of the people, and whose meaning
will make it still a cry of love, even when it sounds
the war cry of the people.
We will now consider the principle of the working
class as the ruling principle of the community only in
three of its relations :—
�45
(1) In re1ation to the formal means of its realisation.
(2) In relation to its moral significance.
(3) In relation to the political conception of the
object of the State, which is inherent in that principle.
We cannot on this occasion enter upon its other
aspects, and even those to which we have referred can
be only very cursorily examined in the short time that
remains to us.
The formal means of carrying out this principle is the
universal and direct suffrage which we have already
discussed. I say universal andtf/m^ suffrage, gentlemen,
not that mere universal suffrage which we had in the
year 1848. The introduction of two degrees in the
electoral act, namely, original electors and electors
simply, is nothing but an ingenious method purposely
introduced with the object of falsifying as far as pos
sible the will of the people by means of the electoral
act.
It is true that even universal and direct suffrage is no
magic wand, gentlemen, which is able to protect you
from temporary mistakes.
We have seen in France two bad elections following
one another, in 1848 and 1849. But universal and
direct suffrage is the only means which in the long run
of itself corrects the mistakes to which its momentary
wrong use may lead. It is that spear which heals the
wounds itself has made. It is impossible in the long
run with universal and direct suffrage that the elected
body should be any other than the exact and true
likeness of the people which has elected it.
The people must therefore at all times regard uni
�46
versal and direct suffrage as its indispensable political
weapon, as the most fundamental and important of its
demands.
I will now glance at the moral significance of the
principle of society which we are considering.
It is possible that the idea of converting the principle
of the lower classes of society into the ruling principle of
the State and the community may appear to be ex
tremely dangerous and immoral, and to threaten the
destruction of morality and education by a “ modern
barbarism.”
And it is no wonder that this idea should be so
regarded at the present day since even public opinion,
gentlemen—I have already indicated by what means,
namely, the newspapers—receives its impressions from
the mint of capital, and from the hands of the privileged
wealthy Bourgeoisie.
Nevertheless this fear is only a prejudice, and it can
be proved on the contrary, that the idea would exhibit
the greatest advance and triumph of morality that the
history of the world has ever recorded.
That view is a prejudice I repeat, and it is simply the
prejudice of the present time which is dominated by
privilege.
At another time, namely, that of the first French
Republic of the year 1793 (of which I have already told
you that I cannot enter into further particulars on this
occasion, but that it was destined to perish by its own
want of definite aims) the opposite prejudice prevailed.
It was then a current dogma that all the upper classes
were immoral and corrupt, and that only the lower
�47
classes were good and moral. In the new declara
tion of the rights of man issued by the French
convention, that powerful constituent assembly of
France, this was actually laid down by a special article,
namely, article nineteen, which runs as follows, “ Toute
institution qui ne suppose le peuple bon, et lemagistrat
corruptible, est vicieuse.” “ Every institution which
does not assume that the people are good and the
magistracy contemptible is vicious.” You see that this
is exactly the opposite to the happy faith now required,
according to which there is no greater sin than to doubt
of the goodwill and the virtue of the Government,
while it is taken for granted that the people are a sort of
tiger and a sink of corruption.
At the time of which we are speaking the opposite
dogma had advanced so far, that almost every one who
had a whole coat on his back was thought to be a bad
man, or at least an object of suspicion ; and virtue,
purity, and patriotic morality were thought to be pos
sessed only by those who had no decent clothes. It was
the period of sansculottism.
This view, gentlemen, is in fact founded on a truth,
but it presents itself in an untrue and perverted form.
Now there is nothing more dangerous than a truth
which presents itself in an untrue perverted form. For
in whatever way we deal with it, we are certain to go
wrong. If we adopt such a truth in its untrue perverted
form, it will lead at certain times to most pernicious
destruction, as was the case with sansculottism. But
if we regard the whole statement as untrue on account
■of its untrue perverted form, then we are much worse.
�For we have rejected a truth, and, in the case before us,
a truth without the recognition of which not a single
sound step in our political life can be taken.
The only course that remains open to us, therefore,,
is to set aside the untrue and perverted form of the
statement, and to bring its true essence into distinct
relief.
The public opinion of the present day is inclined,
as I have said, to declare the whole statement to be
utterly untrue, and mere declamation on the part of
Rousseau and the French Revolution. But even if it
were possible to adopt the course of rejection in the
case of Rousseau and the French Revolution, it is quite
impossible to do so in the case of one of the greatest of
German philosophers, the centenary of whose birth-day
will be celebrated in this town next month : I allude to
the philosopher Fichte, one of the greatest thinkers of
all nations and times.
Even Fichte declares expressly in so many words,
that the higher the rank the greater the moral deteriora
tion, that—these are his very words — “Wickedness in
creases in proportion to the elevation of rank.”
But Fichte did not develope the ultimate ground of
this statement. He adduces, as the ground of this cor
ruption, the selfishness and egoism of the upper classes.
But then the question must immediately arise, whether
selfishness does not also prevail in the lower classes, or
why it should prevail less in these. Nay it must at first
sight appear to be an extraordinary paradox to assert
that less selfishness should prevail in" the lower classes
than in the higher who have a considerable advantage
�49
over them in education and training which are recog
nised as moralising elements.
The following is the true ground of what as I said
appears at first sight to be extraordinary paradox.
In a long period in the past, as we have seen, the
development of the people, which is the life-breath of
history, proceeds by an ever advancing abolition of
the privileges which guarantee to the higher classes their
position as higher and ruling classes. The desire to
maintain this, in other words their personal interest,
brings therefore every member of the higher classes who
has not once for all by a high range of vision elevated
himself above his purely personal existence—and you will
understand, gentlemen, that this can never be more than
a very small number of exceptional characters—into a
position thoroughly hostile in principle to the develop
ment of the people, to the progress of education and
science, to tne advance of culture, to all tne life-oreatn
and victory of historic life.
It is this opposition of the personal interest of the higher
classes to the development of the nation in culture
which evokes the great and necessary immorality of the
higher classes. It is a life, whose daily conditions you
need only represent to yourselves, in order to perceive the
deep inward deterioration to which it must lead. To
be compelled daily to oppose all that is great and good,
to be obliged to grieve at its successes, to rejoice at its
failures, to restrain its further progress, to be obliged
to undo or to execrate the advantages it has already
attained. It is to lead their life as in the country of an
enemy—and this enemy is the moral community of their
�own people, amongst whom they live, and for whom to
strive constitutes all true morality. It is to lead their
lives, I say, as in the country of an enemy; this enemy
is their own people, and the fact that it is regarded and
treated as their enemy must generally at all events be
cunningly concealed, and this hostility must more orless
artfully be covered with a veil.
And to this we must add that either they must do all
this against the voice of their own conscience and intelli
gence, or they must have stifled the voice by habit so
as not to be oppressed by it, or lastly they must have
never known this voice, never known anything different
and better than the religion of their own advantage !
This life, gentlemen, leads therefore necessarily to a
thorough depreciation and contempt of all striving to
realise an ideal, to a compassionate smile at the bare
mention of the great name of the Idea, to a deeply seated
want of sympathy and even antipathy to all that is
beautiful and great, to a complete swallowing up of
every moral element in us, by the one passion of selfish
seeking for our own advantage, and of immoderate desire
for pleasure.
It is this opposition, gentlemen, between personal
interest and the development of the nation in culture,
which the lower classes, happily for them, are
without.
It is unfortunately true that there is always enough
of selfishness in the lower classes, much more than
there should be, but this selfishness of theirs, wherever
it is found, is the fault of single persons, of individuals r
and not the inevitable fault of the class.
�5^
A very reasonable instinct warns the members of the
lower classes, that so long as each of them relates him
self only to himself, and each one thinks only of himself,
he can hope for no important improvement in his.
position.
But the more earnestly and deeply the lower classes
of society strive after the improvement of their condition
as a class, the improvement of the lot of their class, the
more does this personal interest, instead of opposing
the movement of history and thereby being condemned
to that immorality of which we have spoken, assume a
direction which thoroughly accords with the development
of the whole people, with the victory of the idea, with the
advance of culture, with the living principle of history
itself, which is no other than the development of freedom.
Or in other words, as we have already seen, its interest
is the interest of the entire human race.
You are therefore in this happy position, gentlemen,
that instead of its being possible for you to be dead to
the idea, you are on the contrary urged to the deepest
sympathy for it by your own personal interests. You
are in the happy position that the idea which constitutes
your true personal interest, is one with the throbbing
pulse of history, and with the living principle of moral
development. You are able therefore to devote your
selves with personal passion to this historical development,
and to be certain that the more strongly this passion
grows and burns within you in the true sense in which
I have explained it to you, the higher is the moral
position you have attained.
These are the reasons, gentlemen, why the dominion
�52
of the fourth class in the State must produce such an
efflorescence of morality, culture, and science, as has
not yet been witnessed in history.
But there is yet another reason for this, one which is
most intimately connected with all the views I have
explained to you, and forms their keystone.
The fourth estate not only has a different formal
political principle from that of the Bourgeoisie, namelv,
the universal direct franchise, instead of the census of
the Bourgeoisie, and not only has through its position
in life a different relation to moral forces than the higher
classes, but has also—and partly in consequence of these
—quite another and a different conception of the moral
object of the State from that of the Bourgeoisie.
According to the Bourgeoisie, the moral idea of the
State is exclusively this, that the unhindered exercise
by himself of his own faculties should be guaranteed to
each individual.
If we were all equally strong, equally clever, equally
educated, and equally rich, this might be regarded as
a sufficient and a moral idea.
But since we neither are nor can be thus equal, this
idea is not satisfactory, and therefore necessarily leads
in its consequences to deep immorality, for it leads
to this, that the stronger, the cleverer, and the richer
fleece the weaker and pick their pockets.
The moral idea of the State according to the working
class on the contrary is this, that the unhindered and
free activity of individual powers exercised by the indi
vidual is not sufficient, but that something must be added
to this in a morally ordered community—namely,
�53
solidarity of interests, community and reciprocity in
development.
In accordance with this difference, the Bourgeoisie
conceive the moral object of the State to consist
solely and exclusively in the protection of the personal
freedom and the property of the individual.
This is a policeman’s idea, gentlemen, a policeman’s
idea for this reason, because it represents to itself the
State from a point of view of a policeman, whose whole
function consists in preventing robbery and burglary.
Unfortunately this policeman’s idea is not only familiar
to genuine liberals, but is even to be met with not unfrequently among so-called democrats, owing to their
defective imagination. If the Bourgeoisie would express
the logical inference from their idea, they must maintain
that according to it if there were no such thing as
robbers and thieves, the State itself would be entirely
*
superfluous.
Very differently, gentlemen, does the fourth estate
regard the object of the State, for it apprehends it in its
true nature.
History, gentlemen, is a struggle with nature; with
* This idea of the State, which in fact does away with the State,
and changes it into a mere union of egoistic interests, is the idea
of the State as regarded by liberalism, and historically was
produced by it. It forms by the power which it has necessarily
obtained and which stands in direct relation to its superficiality,
the true danger of spiritual and moral decay, the true danger,
which threatens us at this day, of a “modern barbarism.” In
Germany happily it is strongly opposed by the ancient learning
which has once for all become the indestructible foundation of
German thought. From this proceeds the view “that it is neces
sary to enlarge the notion of the State to the fullest extent to which
in my opinion it is possible to enlarge it, that the State should be the
organisation, in which the whole virtue of man should realise itself.”
(Augustus Booth’s address to his University of the 22nd March, 1862.)
�54
the misery, the ignorance, the poverty, the weakness,
and consequent slavery in which we were involved
when the human race came upon the scene in the
beginning of history. The progressive victory over this
weakness—this is the development of freedom which
history displays to us.
In this struggle we should never have made one step
forward, nor shall we ever advance one step more by
acting on the principle of each one for himself, each one
alone.
It is the State whose function it is to carry on this
development of freedom, this development of the human
race until its freedom is attained.
The State is this unity of individuals into a moral
whole, a unity which increases a million-fold the
strength of all the individuals who are comprehended in
it, and multiplies a million times the power which
would be at the disposal of them all as individuals.
The object of the State, therefore, is not only to
protect the personal freedom and property of the indi
vidual with which he is supposed according to the idea
of the Bourgeoisie to have entered the State. On the
contrary, the object of the State is precisely this, to
place the individuals through this union in a position to
attain to such objects, and reach such a stage of existence as
they never could have reached as individuals ; to make
them capable of acquiring an amount of education, power,
and freedom which would have been wholly unattainable
by them as individuals.
Accordingly the object of the State is to bring man
to positive expansion, and progressive development, in
�55
other words, to bring the destiny of man—that is the
culture of which the human race is capable-—into actual
existence ; it is the training and development of the human
race to freedom.
This is the true moral nature of the State, gentlemen,
its true and high mission. So much is this the case,
that from the beginning of time through the very force
of events it has more or less been carried out by the
State without the exercise of will, and unconsciously
even against the will of its leaders.
But the working class, gentlemen, the lower classes
of the community in general, through the helpless con
dition in which its members find themselves placed as
individuals, have always acquired the deep instinct,
that this is and must be the duty of the State, to help
the individual by means of the union of all to such a
development as he would be incapable of attaining as an
individual.
A State therefore which was ruled by the idea of the
working class, would no longer be driven, as all States
have hitherto been, unconsciously and against their
will by the nature of things, and the force of circum
stances, but it would make this moral nature of the
State its mission, with perfect clearness of vision and
complete consciousness. It would complete with un
checked desire and perfect consistency, that which hitherto
has only been wrung in scanty and imperfect frag
ments from wills that were opposed to it, and for this
very reason—though time does, not permit me to explain
in any detail this necessary connection of cause and
effect—it would produce a soaring flight of the human
�56
spirit, a development of an amount of happiness, cul
ture, well-being, and freedom without example in the
history of the world, and in comparison with which, the
most favourable conditions that have existed in former
times would appear but dim shadows of the reality.
This it is, gentlemen, which must be called the work
ing man’s idea of the State, his conception of the
object of the State, which, as you see is just as different
from the bourgeois conception of the object of the
State, as the principle of the working class, of the
claim of all to direct the will of the State, or uni
versal suffrage, is different from the principle held by
the Bourgeoisie, the census.
The series of ideas which I have [explained to you
must be regarded as the idea of the working class. It is
this that I had in view when I spoke to you, at the com
mencement of my lecture, of the connection of the
particular period of history in which we live with the
idea of the working class. It is this period of history
beginning with February, 1848, to which has been
allotted the task of bringing this idea of the State into
actual existence. We may congratulate ourselves,
gentlemen, that we have been born at a time which is
destined to witness this the most glorious work of
history, and that we are permitted to take a part in
accomplishing it.
But on all who belong to the working class the duty
of taking up an entirely new attitude is imposed, if there
is any truth in what I have said.
Nothing is more calculated to impress upon a class
a worthy and moral character, than the consciousness
�57
that it is destined to become a ruling class, that it is
called upon to raise the principle of its class to the
principle of the entire age, to convert its idea into the
leading idea of the whole of society and thus to form
this society by impressing upon it its own char
acter.
The high and world-wide honour of this destiny must
occupy all your thoughts. Neither the load of the
oppressed, nor the idle dissipation of the thoughtless,
nor even the harmless frivolity of the insignificant, are
henceforth becoming to you. You are the rock on which
the Church of the present is to be built.
It is the lofty moral earnestness of this thought which
must with devouring exclusiveness possess your spirits,
fill your minds, and shape |your whole lives, so as to
make them worthy of it, conformable to it, and always
related to it. It is the moral earnestness of this thought
which must never leave you, but must be present to
your heart in your workshops during the hours of labour,
in your leisure hours, during your walks, at your meet
ings, and even when you stretch your limbs to rest
upon your hard couches, it is this thought which must
fill and occupy your minds till they lose themselves in
dreams. The more exclusively you immerse yourselves
in the moral earnestness of this thought, the more
undividedly you give yourselves up to its glowing
fervour, by so much the more, be assured, will you
hasten the time within which our present period of history
will have to fulfil its task, so much the sooner will you
bring about the accomplishment of this task.
If there be only two or three of you, gentlemen, who
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by Matthew Arnold ; Eternal Perdition and Universalism from a Roman Catholic
�15
Point of View Religion of Positivism, by Mark Pattison, etc., etc. April contains
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stone; A Psychological Parallel, by Matthew Arnold, etc., etc. The above
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Eastern Question, by Edward A. Freeman; Henrietta Maria; The Roman
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Language, by E. A. Freeman ; Spinoza : the man and the philosopher, by Arthur
Bolles Lee ; Prussia in the Nineteenth Century, by Prof. J. S. Blackie; Reason
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Upheaval m Scotland, by William Wallace; Drifting Light Waves, by R. A.
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1878. January contains •
Dog Poison m Man, by Dr. Acland; J. S. Mill’s Philosophy Tested, by Professor
Jevons; Disestablishment, by the Duke of Argyll; The Little Health of Ladies
by Frances Power Cobbe; China, England, and Opium, by Justice Fry etc etc’
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Facts of Indian Progress, by Monier Williams; Determinism and Moral
Freedom, by Paul Janet; Scottish Influence on English Theological Thought by
J- Vaughan; Are the Working Classes Improvident? by George HowellFuture Punishment Eternal Hope, by F. W. Farrar, etc., etc. July contains?
The Position and Influence of Women in Ancient Greece, by Dr. DonaldsonRoman Metempsychosis: a sequel to the discussion on future punishment bv
Francis Peek; Future of Judaism, by Rev. W. H. Fremantle; A curious article
«l,.a
„rl!S punday Evening, etc., etc. August contains: Max Muller on
Juhus Mold ; Critical Movement m the Scotch Free Church, by T. M. Lindsayrhe Early Roman Baptismal Creed, by George Salmon; Parochial Charities of the
�16
City, by Walter H. James; Evolution and. Pantheism, by R. St. J. Tyrwhitt, ;
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Dublin Core
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Title
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Victorian Blogging
Description
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
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2018
Publisher
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
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Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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The working man's programme (arbeiter-programm)
Creator
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Lassalle, Ferdinand
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 59, [1] p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references. Stamp on p. 59: South Place Chapel Finsbury, Lending Library.
Publisher
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The Modern Press
Date
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1884
Identifier
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T470
Contributor
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Peters, Edward (tr)
Subject
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Socialism
Rights
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<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (The working man's programme (arbeiter-programm)), identified by </span><span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a></span><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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English
Addresses
Political Manifesto
Socialism
Speeches
Working Classes