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THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES X^ecr /^/^ LIFE AND LETTERS OF GEORGE JACOB HOLYOAKE GEORGE JACOB HOLYOAKE. (1882.) LIFE AND LETTERS OF George Jacob Holyoake BY JOSEPH McCABE " AUTHOR OF "peter ABELARD," TALLEYRAND," ETC. VOL. II [issued for the rationalist press association, ltd. J London : WATTS & CO., 17, JOHNSON'S COURT, FLEET STREET, E.C. 1908 IDA CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE XVI. NEARING WESTMINSTER . I XVII. THE IDEALIST IN POLITICS 22 XVIII. FROM THE strangers' GALLERY 44 XIX. SOCIAL AND EDUCATIONAL WORK 69 XX. THE ORGANISATION OF CO-OPERATION 89 XXI. VISITS TO AMERICA .... 109 XXII. THE PRESENT DAY . 135 XXIII. CORRESPONDENCE WITH GLADSTONE AND CHAM- BERLAIN ..... 161 XXIV. AMONGST THE CO-OPERATORS ABROAD 184 XXV. EASTERN LODGE .... 206 XXVI. LABOUR CO-PARTNERSHIP . 229 XXVII. THE RATIONALIST PRESS ASSOCIATION 251 XXVIII. HOLVOAKE AS A WRITER . 271 XXIX. A CHEERFUL OCTOGENARIAN 287 XXX. THE MAN AND HIS WORK 313 BIBLIOGRAPHY ..... 329 INDEX ...... 345 879038 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PHOTOGRAVURE PORTRAIT OF G. J. HOLYOAKE TAKEN IN 1862 {^Frontispiece). PORTRAIT OF MR. HOLYOAKE TAKEN IN 1 888. PORTRAIT OF MR. HOLYOAKE TAKEN IN 19OI. EASTERN LODGE, BRIGHTON (mR. HOLYOAKE'S RESIDENCE FROM 1886 TO 1906). THE MEMORIAL ON MR. HOLYOAKE'S GRAVE IN HIGHGATE CEMETERY. LIFE AND LETTERS OF GEORGE JACOB HOLYOAKE CHAPTER XVI NEARING WP:STMINSTER The first half of Holyoake's public life was, like the first half of the nation's life in the nineteenth century, neces- sarily tentative in many important respects. He was an articulate part of the new national spirit. His boyish eyes had opened upon a world that had not fully emerged from the chrysalis-stage of feudalism, but was stirred with the deep, vague instinct of advancing to a brighter and freer existence. It was still swathed in a hundred bonds, and its bursting vitality angrily strained against them. But intellectual instinct, or instinct touched with intelligence, has not the sure march of the animal's unconscious impulse. Vision sees many possible paths where the blind have no choice. The aspiring mind of the worker, which Holyoake expressed, broke along many courses that led only to failure and disappointment. The vast energies and rude heroisms that the first vision of reform had inspired passed into forms that the historian must dismiss as futile. Holyoake, peculiarly sensitive to the larger move- ments of his class and age, followed or accompanied the erratic pioneers, but was young enough to find him- self the wiser and stronger at each failure. It is always VOL. II. B NEARING WESTMINSTER something to learn for certain that a particular road is " " the wrong road. The name of thinker has been too jealously reserved for men who are successful in leaving the earth and mounting the ether toward the empyrean. It is a high quality of thought to discern the path amid social and political confusion. We saw that Holyoake had much of this quality. Cast amongst embittered rebels from the start, he nevertheless pleaded for cool judgment and sober action, and avoided the excesses of most of his colleagues in public agitation. His fiftieth year found him, not only in a position of distinction and influence, not only with a record of service that every social historian now commends, but in active leadership of two movements that he would never have to regret. One of these movements aimed at the rectification of speculative errors, the other at an improvement of industrial conditions. But he had always held that, for all purposes of the social pathologist, the heart of the nation beat at Westminster, and in his mature years his thoughts turned more and more to politics. He has said somewhere, against those who urged an exclusive attention to social reform, that the true reformer must be ever alert to the chance of a politician arising any day who may lose a century's savings in a sea of imperial blood. That is a narrow expression of his feeling for political action, taking colour from passing events. In reality he had an extremely broad and high ideal of political life. As a Co-operator, he would, of course, keep industrial life apart from politics, except for " a humane supervision. He shrank from the State- Socialism" which was then being introduced into Eng- land from Germany, and remained always very hostile to it did not follow its later modifications ; though he very closely. But he was as little in favour of Mill's ideal, competition, as the vSocialists were, and would merely set NEARING WESTMINSTER up a separate scheme of corporate or collective action— pure Co-operation—for industry and commerce. For he looked to life all other reforms political ; and, apart from considerations of utility, he urged upon the workers a sense of the manly dignity of sharing political power, and laboured for the discriminate extension of the fran- chise and the freeing of the political organism from its incrustation of medieval growths and parasites. We have traced the steps which brought him to this position. He discarded the futile terrors of the Chartists to try the opposite venture of wooing the enfranchised middle class in the interest of the workers. His own experience of them was encouraging. He met scores of professional and business men who felt keenly that the stunted and squalid life of the workers was a blot on the nation's honour. The other interest that brought him within the parlia- mentary sphere—helped him to realise that Parliament " " was not a mere talking shop —was his sympathy with continental insurgents. To return for a moment to the fifties, we may recall how the attempt to blow up Napoleon in 1858 with bombs manufactured in England led to warm remonstrance on the part of the French Government. Lord Palmerston listened complacently to its appeal, and brought in a Conspiracy-to-Murder Bill. On the first reading it had 299 votes against 91. Just as it seemed in principle, the measure was dreaded by the foreign refugees and their friends. If the Bill rebels at passed, foreign might any time be officially " " described as suspect and driven from their one sure refuge in Europe. Holyoake, Stansfeld, Ashurst, Shaen, and others, met in the Political Exchange at 147 Fleet Street—"the new Cato Street," some called it—from whose windows so many defiant flags had waved, and formed an Anti- NEARING WESTMINSTER Conspiracy Bill Committee. The little group of prac- tised agitators had less than a week for the task of destroying Palmerston's huge majority, and they suc- ceeded brilliantly ! Holyoake was treasurer, and he made a vigorous appeal for funds. I find a letter to him from the distinguished Nonconformist, Samuel Morley, enclosing five pounds, but asking for the suppression of his name. With the funds he collected a few meet- ings were held, and London was quickly covered with a garment of striking placards, giving, especially, strong quotations from the aged Lord Russell. But it was probably enough to point out to London that the Govern- " ment was truckling to the foreigner," one of the seven deadly sins of English political ethics. Before the end of the week all London was discussing *' the French Colonels' Bill," as it was cleverly nicknamed. The work was the most triumphant piece of agitation in which Holyoake was ever engaged. Their first meeting was held on Monday, February i6th,and the vote on the second reading of the Bill was taken on the following Friday. Holyoake followed the debate from the Re- porters' Gallery. Milner Gibson moved the rejection of the Bill, and it was soon seen that the angry waves that beat against the House from London and the country were felt appreciably within it. Gladstone and Peel made impassioned protests, and deadly jets of hostility continued to fall on Palmerston until two o'clock on the Saturday morning. On the division being taken at that hour, his majority of 208 had vanished, and the Bill was rejected by 234 votes to 215 ! The Government resigned the same day, but the agitation the Committee had raised was too powerful for them to control. They had an- nounced a demonstration in the Park for the following Sunday, and, though they issued placards counter- manding it, and the police opposed it, some 200,000 NEARING WESTMINSTER people burst into the Park and boisterously expressed their delight at the fall of Palmerston. Holyoake has written a fine estimate of the statesman whom he had learned to hate in his youth, when he joined a secret society that whispered of assassination. " He says he had for Palmerston respect without sym- pathy." Palmerston had great personal generosity, and had shown a "diplomatic sympathy" with the aims of the continental reformers. His action in regard to the Garibaldi Legion will be remembered. He was a great " foreign minister— if pricked he would have bled dis- " patches —and it could at least be said for him that foreign tyrants hated him. But in home affairs he was as Punch drew him—the man with a straw in his mouth. " He expressed no hostility to reform, but he had learned from Lord Melbourne the art of doing notiiing," and " in his turn he impressed Disraeli with the advantage of gaiety in politics." He "did not know the world below his carriage steps," as Thornton Hunt, who knew him well, told Holyoake. In 1854 he visited Bradford, and Holyoake, whose English Leader wd^s much read there, helped to defeat the attempt to force a welcome. Yet when Holyoake begged him to put Feargus O'Connor's sister on the Civil List, he regretted that there was no and offered her out of his vacancy, ^100 own pocket ; and when Hunt asked him to find a seat for Holyoake, " he promised to do so— he knew Mr.

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