preach in one of the churches in your diocese. Your firm and spontaneous refusal to permit Dr. Colenso to preach will be thankfully accepted by all consistent members of our Church as a protest much needed in these times against the teaching of one who has grievously offended many consciences, and has attempted as far as in him lay to injure the faith which was delivered to the saints.' a That your Lordship may long be spared to defend the truth, is the prayer of your Lordship's obedient and attached clergy.” (a I append a specimen of the conduct of the Saints to whom our English clergymen have delivered the Faith.) 19. (III.) "Something startling in the way of wickedness is needed to astonish men who, like our Judges, see and hear the periodical crop of crime gathered in at Assizes; yet in two great cities of England, on Tuesday, expressions of amazement, shame, and disgust fell from the seat of Justice. At York, Mr. Justice Denman was driven to utter a burst of just indignation at the conduct of certain people in his court, who grinned and tittered while a witness in a disgraceful case was reluctantly repeating some indelicate language. 'Good God!' exclaimed his Lordship, is this a Christian country? Let us at least have decency in courts of justice. One does not come to be amused by filth which one is obliged to extract in cases that defame the land.' At Liverpool a sterner declaration of judicial anger was made, with even stronger cause. Two cases of revolting barbarism were tried by Mr. Justice Mellor-one of savage violence towards a man, ending in murder; the other of outrage upon a woman, so unspeakably shameful and horrible that the difficulty is how to convey the facts without offending public decency. In the first,1 a gang of men at Liverpool set upon a porter named Richard Morgan, who was in the company of his wife and brother, and because he did not instantly give them sixpence to buy beer they kicked him completely across the street, a distance of thirty feet, with such ferocity, in spite of all the efforts made to save him by the wife and brother, that the poor man was dead when he was taken up. And during this cruel and cowardly scene the crowd of bystanders not only did not attempt to rescue the victim, but hounded on his murderers, and actually held back the agonized wife and the brave brother from pursuing the homicidal wretches. Three of them were placed at the bar on trial for their lives, and convicted; nor would we intervene with one word in their favour, though that word might save their vile necks. This case might appear bad enough to call forth the utmost wrath of Justice; but the second, heard at the same time and place, was yet more hideous. A tramp-woman, drunk, and wet to the skin with rain, was going along a road near Burnley, in company with a navvy, who by-and-by left her helpless at a gate. Two out of a party of young colliers coming from work found her lying there, and they led her into a field. They then sent a boy named Slater to fetch the remaining eight of their band, and, having thus gathered many spectators, two of them certainly, and others of the number in all probability, outraged the hapless creature, leaving her after this infernal treatment in such plight that next day she was found lying dead in the field. The two in question-Durham, aged twenty, and Shepherd, aged sixteen-were arraigned for murder; but that charge was found difficult to make good, and the minor indictment for rape was alone pressed against them. - Of the facts there was little or no doubt; and it may well be thought that in stating them we have accomplished the saddest portion of our duty to the public. "But no! to those who have learned how to measure human nature, we think what followed will appear the more horrible portion of the trial—if more horrible could be. With a strange want of insight, the advocate for these young men called up the companions of their atrocity to swear-what does the public expect?—to 1 [John M'Crave, alias Quinn, Michael Mullen, and Peter Campbell were all sentenced to death for the murder of Richard Morgan.] swear that they did not think the tramp-woman was ill-used, nor that what was done was wrong. Witness after witness, present at the time, calmly deposed to his personal view of the transaction in words like those of William Bracewell, a collier, aged nineteen. Between this precious specimen of our young British working man and the Bench, the following interchange of questions and answers passed. You did not think there was anything wrong in it?' 'No.' 'Do you mean to tell me you did not think there was anything wrong in outraging a drunken woman?'— She never said nothing.' 'You repeat you think there was nothing wrong--that there was no harm in a lot of fellows outraging a drunken woman: is that your view of the thing?'-'Yes.' And, in reply to further questions by Mr. Cottingham, this fellow Bracewell said he only thought the matter a bit of fun. None of them interfered to protect the woman.' Then the boy Slater, who was sent to bring up the laggards, was asked what he thought of his errand. Like the others, he hadn't seen anything very wrong in it. At this point the Judge broke forth, in accents which may well ring through England. His Lordship indignantly exclaimed: 'I want to know how it is possible in a Christian country like this that there should be such a state of feeling, even among boys of thirteen, sixteen, and eighteen years of age. It is outrageous. If there are missionaries wanted to the heathen, there are heathens in England who require teaching a great deal more than those abroad.' (Murmurs of Hear, hear,' from the jury box, and applause in court.) His Lordship continued: Silence! It is quite shocking to hear boys of this age come up and say these things.' How, indeed, is it possible? that is the question which staggers one. Murder there will be-manslaughter, rape, burglary, theft, are all unfortunately recurring and common crimes in every community. Nothing in the supposed nature of Englishmen' can be expected to make our assizes maiden, and our gaol deliveries blank. But there was thought to be something in the blood of the race which would somehow serve to keep us from seeing a Liverpool crowd side with a horde of murderers against their victim, or a gang of Lancashire lads making a ring to see a woman outraged to death. A hundred cases nowadays tell us to discard that idle belief; if it ever was true, it is true no longer. The most brutal, the most cowardly, the most pitiless, the most barbarous deeds done in the world, are being perpetrated by the lower classes of the English people-once held to be by their birth, however lowly, generous, brave, merciful, and civilized. In all the pages of Dr. Livingstone's experience among the negroes of Africa, there is no single instance approaching this Liverpool story, in savagery of mind and body, in bestiality of heart and act. Nay, we wrong the lower animals by using that last word: the foulest among the beasts which perish is clean, the most ferocious gentle, matched with these Lancashire pitmen, who make sport of the shame and slaying of a woman, and blaspheme nature in their deeds, without even any plea whatever to excuse their cruelty."1 20. The clergy may vainly exclaim against being made responsible for this state of things. They, and chiefly their Bishops, are wholly responsible for it; nay, are efficiently the causes of it, preaching a false gospel for hire. But, putting all questions of false or true gospels aside, suppose that they only obeyed St. Paul's plain order in 1st Corinthians v. 11. Let them determine as distinctly what covetousness and extortion are in the rich, as what drunkenness is, in the poor. Let them refuse, themselves, and order their clergy to refuse, to go out to dine with such persons, 1 [Leading article in the Daily Telegraph, December 17, 1874.] 2 [For a criticism of this statement, and Ruskin's reply, see Letter 51, § 20 (below, p. 287); see also Letter 55, §§ 1-3 (pp. 363-366).] 3 ["But now I have written unto you not to keep company, if any man that is called a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner; with such an one no not to eat."] and still more positively to allow such persons to sup at God's table. And they would soon know what fighting wolves meant;1 and something more of their own pastoral duty than they learned in that Consecration Service, where they proceeded to follow the example of the Apostles in Prayer, but carefully left out the Fasting.2 21. The following Subscriptions have come in since I made out the list in the December number; but that list is still incomplete, as I cannot be sure of some of the numbers till I have seen my Brantwood note-book : 31. "In Memoriam " 32. (The tenth of a tenth) 33. Gift. 34. An Old Member of the Working Men's College. Gift £ s. d. 500 1 1 0 20 0 0 5 0 0 9 00 5 0 0 500 5 00 £55 1 0 1 [See above, § 10.] 2 [See in the Form of Consecrating a Bishop the call to prayer following the oath of obedience, which, after referring to Acts xiv. 23 ("And when they had ordained them elders in every church, and had prayed with fasting, they commended them to the Lord"), proceeds "Let us first fall to prayer," but omits the words "with fasting."] 3 [See Letter 48, § 23 (p. 223).] LETTER 50 AGNES BOOK 1. A FRIEND, in whose judgment I greatly trust, remonstrated sorrowfully with me, the other day, on the desultory character of Fors;1 and pleaded with me for the writing of an arranged book instead. But he might as well plead with a birch-tree growing out of a crag, to arrange its boughs beforehand. The winds and floods will arrange them according to their wild liking; all that the tree has to do, or can do, is to grow gaily, if it may be; sadly, if gaiety be impossible; and let the black jags and scars rend the rose-white of its trunk where Fors shall choose. But I can well conceive how irritating it must be to any one chancing to take special interest in any one part of my subject the life of Scott for instance, to find me, or lose me, wandering away from it for a year or two; and sending roots into new ground in every direction: or (for my friend taxed me with this graver error also) needlessly re-rooting myself in the old. 2 2. And, all the while, some kindly expectant people are waiting for details of my plan." In the presentment of which, this main difficulty still lets me; that, if I told them, or tried to help them definitely to conceive, the ultimate things I aim at, they would at once throw the book down as hopelessly Utopian; but if I tell them the immediate things I aim at, they will refuse to do those 1 [Probably Professor Norton, in his letters to whom Ruskin is constantly on the defensive with regard to Fors: see (in a later volume) the letters of April 9 and August 15, 1874.] 2 [See above, p. 235.] instantly possible things, because inconsistent with the present vile general system. For instance-I take (see Letter 5) Wordsworth's single line, "We live by admiration, hope, and love," 1 for my literal guide, in all education. My final object, with every child born on St. George's estate, will be to teach it what to admire, what to hope for, and what to love: but how far do you suppose the steps necessary to such an ultimate aim are immediately consistent with what Messrs. Huxley and Co. call "Secular education"? Or with what either the Bishop of Oxford, or Mr. Spurgeon, would call “Religious education"? 3. What to admire, or wonder at! Do you expect a child to wonder at-being taught that two and two make four-(though if only its masters had the sense to teach that, honestly, it would be something)—or at the number of copies of nasty novels and false news a steam-engine can print for its reading? What to hope? Yes, my secular friends-What? That it shall be the richest shopman in the street; and be buried with black feathers enough over its coffin? 3 What to love-Yes, my ecclesiastical friends, and who is its neighbour, think you? Will you meet these three demands of mine with your three Rs, or your catechism? And how would I meet them myself? Simply by never, so far as I could help it, letting a child read what is not worth reading, or see what is not worth seeing; and by making it live a life which, whether it will or no, shall enforce honourable hope of continuing long in the land—— whether of men or God. 1 [Excursion, Book IV. See Vol. XXVII. p. 90 and n.] 2 [Huxley is often, as here by Ruskin, spoken of as the leader of the Secularist party. It should, however, be remembered that as a member of the first London School Board, he separated from the extreme "Secularists" by advocating the reading of the Bible in schools: see Leonard Huxley's Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley, 1903, vol. ii. pp. 28, 32.] 3 [For Ruskin's dislike of mourning, see Vol. XVI. p. 62.] [See Exodus xx. 12.] |