490 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



to them. None of them could defend their prac- 

 tice with any satisfactory reason, but the tradition 

 of the Church from the primitive times, and their 

 main buckler of federal holiness, which Tombs 

 and Denne had excellently overthrown. He and 

 his wife then, professing themselves unsatisfied, 

 desired their opinions." With the opinions I 

 will not trouble you, but hasten to the result — 

 " Whereupon that infant was not baptized." 



No doubt, to a large division of English soci- 

 ety at this very day, that sort of dinner and dis- 

 cussion, and, indeed, the whole manner of life and 

 conversation here suggested by Mrs. Hutchinson's 

 narrative, will seem both natural and amiable, 

 and such as to meet the needs of man both as 

 a religious and as a social creature. You know 

 the conversation which reigns in thousands of 

 • middle-class families at this hour about nunne- 

 ries, teetotalism, the confessional, eternal punish- 

 ment, ritualism, disestablishment. It goes wher- 

 ever the class goes which is moulded on the Puri- 

 tan type of life. In the long winter evenings of 

 Toronto, Mr. Goldwin Smith has had, probably, 

 abundant experience of it. What is its enemy ? 

 The instinct of self-preservation in humanity. 

 Men. make, crude types and try to impose them, 

 but to no purpose. " Hhomme tfagite, JDieii le 

 mene" says Bossuet. " There are many devices 

 in a man's heart ; nevertheless, the counsel of 

 the Eternal, that shall stand." Those who offer 

 us the Puritan type of life, offer us a religion not 

 true, the claims of intellect and knowledge not 

 satisfied, the claim of beauty not satisfied, the 

 claim of manners not satisfied. In its strong 

 sense for conduct that life touches truth ; but its 

 other imperfections hinder it from employing 

 even this sense aright. The type mastered our 

 nation for a time. Then came the reaction. The 

 nation said : " This type, at any rate, is amiss ; 

 we are not going to be all like that." The type 

 retired into our middle class, and fortified itself 

 there. It seeks to endure, to emerge, to deny its 

 own imperfections, to impose itself again ; im- 

 possible ! If we continue to live we mvist out- 

 grow it. The very class in which it is rooted, 

 our middle class, will have to acknowledge the 

 type's inadequacy ; will have to acknowledge the 

 hideousness, the immense ennui of the life which 

 this type has created ; will have to transform it- 

 self thoroughly. It will have to admit the large 

 part of truth which there is in the criticisms of 

 our Frenchman, whom we have too long forgotten. 



After our middle class, he turns his attention 

 to our lower class. And of the lower and larger 

 portion of this — the portion not bordering on 



the middle class and sharing its faults — he says : 

 " I consider this multitude to be absolutely de- 

 void, not only of political principles, but even of 

 the most simple notions of good and evil. Cer- 

 tainly, it does not appeal, this mob, to the prin- 

 ciples of '89, which you English make game of; 

 it does not insist on the rights of man ; what it 

 wants is beer, gin, and fun." 1 



That is a description of what Mr. Bright 

 would call the residuum, only our author seems 

 to think the residuum a very large body. And 

 its condition strikes him with amazement and 

 horror. And surely well it may. Let us recall 

 Mr. Hamerton's account of the most illiterate 

 class in France ; what an amount of civilization 

 they have, notwithstanding '. And this is always 

 to be understood, in hearing or reading a French- 

 man's praise of England. He envies our liberty, 

 our public spirit, our trade, our stability. But 

 there is always reserve in his mind. He never 

 means for a moment that he would like to change 

 with us. Life seems to him so much better a 

 thing in France for so many more people, that, 

 in spite of the fearful troubles of France, it is far 

 best to be a Frenchman. A Frenchman might 

 agree with Mr. Cobden, that life is good in Eng- 

 land for those people who have at least £5,000 a 

 year. But the civilization of that immense ma- 

 jority who have not £5,000 a year, or £500, or 

 even £100, of our middle and lower class, seems 

 to him too deplorable. 



And now, what has this condition of our mid- 

 dle and lower class to tell us about equality ? 

 How is it, must we not ask, how is it that, being 

 without fearful troubles, having, as a nation, a 

 deep sense for conduct, having signal energy and 

 honesty, having a splendid aristocracy, having an 

 exceptionally large class of gentlemen, we are 

 yet so little civilized ? How is it that our middle 

 and lower class, in spite of the individuals among 

 them who are raised by happy gifts of Nature to 

 a more humane life, in spite of the seriousness of 

 the middle class, in spite of the general honesty 

 and power of true work, verus labor, which pre- 

 vail throughout the lower, do yet present, as a 

 whole, the characters which we have seen ? 



And, really, it seems as if the current of our 

 discourse carried us of itself to but one conclu- 

 sion. It seems as if we could not avoid conclud- 

 ing that, just as France owes her fearful troubles 

 to other things and her civilizedness to equality, 

 so we owe our immunity from fearful troubles to 

 other things, and our uncivilizedness to inequal- 

 ity. " Knowledge is easy," says the wise man, 

 1 So in the orijrinal. 



