264 



The Review of Reviews. 



March SO, 1906. 



ter. He simply does not feel cold, nor heat; such 

 sensations are luxuries sternly denied to his physical 

 frame. 



Not that John Burns is an ascetic. But he 

 keeps his body under, believing that it is a good 

 servant, but a mighty bad master. He is a strict 

 temperance man, and he abjures tobacco as vigor- 

 ously as alcohol. He married young a charming 

 girl whom he fell in love with when only seventeen, 

 and the breath of scandal has never attached itself 

 to his name. Not having sown any wild oats, he 

 is now harvesting a much more profitable kind of 

 crop. Although not orthodox, he is a great preacher 

 of righteousness. No prophet of Israel blazed out 

 with more consuming indignation against the vices 

 which are the cancers of Society. His philippics 

 against drunkenness and gambling' and general slack- 

 ness might have been preached from a puritan pul- 

 pit. It is rather curious that the two men in the 

 Cabinet who most resemble puritan pulpiteers in 

 their zeal for righteousness and their stern enforce- 

 ment of the moral law — John Morlev and John 

 Burns — are both Freethinkers. 



Charles Kingsley, in one of his linest essavs ad- 

 dressed himself to the demolition of the popular 

 notion that a Puritan of the time of the Common- 

 wealth was a crabbed, unsociable, uncultured crea- 

 ture. His use of John Milton and Colonel Hutchin- 

 son as typical Puritans was exceedingly effective. 

 We might make a similar use of John Burns. Here 

 is an austere moralist who neither drinks nor 

 smokes, nor bets nor swears, and who constantly 

 urges by precept and practice the avoidance of afl 

 the pleasant vices out of which the gods make whips 

 to scourge us. But so far from being a goody-goody 

 sanctimonious prig preaching a cloistered virtue, 

 John Burns is probably the best illustration that could 

 be found of the joy of life — for him there is no 

 phase of life which is not full of interest and of 

 entertainment. He is a first-class boxer, a respect- 

 able oarsman, a keen cricketer, and he is at home in 

 the football field and on the lawn tennis ground. 

 He does not ride either quadrupeds or bicycles, but 

 he is a famous walker. He has a keen ear for 

 music, is a capital singer, and ver>- clever amateur 

 actor. He has been observed in the first flight of 

 English orators. As an administrator he takes the 

 keenest interest in the beauty of the public parks, 

 the splendour of our public edifices. Like Milton, he 

 made the grand tour in his youth, and, like the 

 great Puritan poet, he is full of patriotic pride and 

 of devotion to his country. No one can be sterner 

 than he is in condemning the orientalised Imperial- 

 ism which bears the ripe rotten fruit in the bouth 

 African war. 



Burns has always been a trades unionist, but 

 therein he but resembled many other working-class 

 leaders. His distinction lies in having seen more 

 clearly and expressed more strongly than any other 

 man the duty of trades unions to go into municipal 



and national politics. To quote his own words, 

 which, by-the-bye, he addressed to an American 

 audience at the Cooper Union twelve years ago: — 



It is the duty of wage workers, in the first place, to 

 form and maintain trades unions. That being: accom- 

 plished, it is then their duty to combine and act together 

 for civic and political ends. They are trom their poverty 

 alone compelled to endure the greater part of the evils of 

 municipal misrule, with all its vice, tilth, overcrowding, 

 police oppression and other horrors. They must then, as 

 a class force, be always ready to compel, through agita- 

 tion and their votes, the changes which the lives of their 

 children and the decency of their homes so imperatively 

 demand. 



This is the doctrine which he preached first of ail 

 in Battersea — Battersea is one of the boroughs inld 

 which London is divid<-d for municipal purposes; 

 it has a population of 180,000, and lies to the south 

 of the Thames opposite Chelsea — and afterwards 

 in London, and in the nation at large. Tha Bat- 

 tersea Labour League was his creation. He founded 

 it ior the purpose of securing the direct representa- 

 tion of Labour in Parliament, in the County Coun- 

 cil, the School Board, the Board of Guardians, the 

 Borough Council and other administrative bodies. 

 In five years' time the League had secured the elec- 

 tion of working men to every one of these bodies, and 

 on the vestry, now supervised by the Borough Coun- 

 cil, labour returned 66 out of 120 members. John 

 Burns was the first working man elected to the 

 London Council when that Parliament with five mil- 

 lion subjects was created in 1889. Both in Batter- 

 sea and in London at large the inlluence of organ- 

 ised labour has been most beneficial. The Borough 

 and the City have been rendered more habitable, 

 cleaner, more healthy. Not even the most bigoted 

 of the old Tories, who defend vested interests and 

 obstruct all progress, will deny that the influence of 

 John Burns, and the school which he created, has 

 been a wonderful agency in reviving civic en- 

 thusiasm and in quickening public interest in muni- 

 cipal work. Life is better worth living in London 

 to-day for the poorest of the poor as well as for 

 the wealthiest of the rich because of the pas- 

 sionate enthusiasm with which Burns flung himself 

 mto the cause of civic progress. Nor can his most 

 strenuous opponent deny that the standard of civic 

 morality has been raised to a very high pitch under 

 the reign of the Progressive party, of whom John 

 Burns is the most con.spicuous leader. 



It would be impossible to describe here, the num- 

 berless ways in which the London Countv Council 

 has re\'ived the faith of a Democracy in the 

 effectiveness of municipal administration as an in- 

 strument of Social reform. It has given a great 

 impetus which has been felt all over the world to 

 the Municipalisation of the public services. The 

 L.C.C., as it it is called, has bought up the tram- 

 ways, built and operates the river steamers, estab- 

 lished a Works Department, which, notwithstanding 

 a tornado of denunciation, has proved that the 

 greatest municipality in the world is capable of 



