第46章 SOCIAL PROBLEMS(16)

But the fact that they listened shows how widely the same sensibility to evil was already diffused.In fact,as I think,the humane spirit of the eighteenth century,due to the vast variety of causes which we call social progress or evolution not to the teaching of any individual --was permeating the whole civilised world,and showed itself in the philosophic movement as well as in the teaching of the religious leaders,who took the philosophers to be their enemies.I have briefly noticed the various philanthropic movements which were characteristic of the period.Some of them may indicate the growth of new evils;others,that evils which had once been regarded with indifference were now attracting attention and exciting indignation.But even the growth of new evils does not show general indifference so much as the incapacity of the existing system to deal with new conditions.It may,I think,be safely said that a growing philanthropy was characteristic of the whole period,and in particular animated the Utilitarian movement,as I shall have to show in detail.Modern writers have often spoken of the Wesleyan propaganda and the contemporary 'evangelical revival'as the most important movements of the time.They are apt to speak,in conformity with the view just described,as though Wesley or some of his contemporaries had originated or created the better spirit.Without asking what was good or bad in some aspects of these movements,I fully believe that Wesley was essentially a moral reformer,and that he deserves corresponding respect.But instead of holding that his contemporaries were bad people,awakened by a stimulus from without,I hold that the movement,so far as really indicating moral improvement,must be set down to the credit of the century itself.It was one manifestation of a general progress,of which Bentham was another outcome.Though Bentham might have thought Wesley a fanatic or perhaps a hypocrite,and Wesley would certainly have considered that Bentham's heart was much in need of a change,they were really allies as much as antagonists,and both mark a great and beneficial change.

NOTES:

1.See Dictionary of National Biography.

2.Works,i,255.

3.See Sir G.Nicholl's History of the Poor-law,1854.A new edition with life by H.G.Willink,appeared in 1898.

4.History,i,175.

5.M'Culloch's note to Wealth of Nations,p.65.M'Culloch in his appendix makes some sensible remarks upon the absence of any properly constituted parochial 'tribunal'.

6.Wealth of Nations,bk,i,ch.x.

7.See passage quoted in Eden's History,i,347.

8.Thomas Firmin (1632-1677),a philanthropist,whose Socianianism did not exclude him from the friendship of such liberal bishops as Tillotson and Fowler,started a workhouse in 1676.

9.Nicholls (1898),ii,14.

10.Ibid.(1898),ii,123.

11.Report,p.67.

12.William Hay,for example,carried resolutions in the House of Commons in 1735,but failed to carry a bill which had this object.See Eden's History,i,396.Cooper in 1763proposed tomake the hundred the unit.--Nicholls's History,i,58.Fielding proposes a similar change in London.Dean Tucker,speaks of the evil of the limited area in this Manifold Courses of the Increase of the Poor (1760).

13.Nicholls,ii,88.

14.Parl.Hist.xxxii,710.

15.A full abstract is given in Eden's History,iii,ccclxiii,etc.

16.Bentham observes (Works,viii,448)that the cow will require the three acres to keep it.

17.Cobbett's Political Works,vi,64.

18.I need only note here that the first edition of Malthus's Essay appeared in 1798,the year after Eden's publication.

19.Eden's History,i,583.

20.Ibid.i,587.

21.Maseres,an excellent Whig,a good mathematician,and a respected lawyer,is perhaps best know at present from his portrait in Charles Lamb's Old Benchers.

22.It may be noticed as an anticipation of modern schemes that in 1792Paine proposed a system of 'old age pensions',for which the necessary funds were to be easily obtained when universal peace had abolished all military charges.See State Trials,xxv.175.

23.Aitkin's Country Round Manchester.

24.Bounce's History of the Corporation of Birmingham (1878).

25.History of Birmingham (2nd edition),p.327.

26.The first edition,1795,the sixth,from which I quote,in 1800.In Bentham's Works,x,330,it is said that in 1798,7500copies of this book had been sold.

27.In 1814Colquohoun published an elaborate account of the Resources of the British Empire,showing similar quaities.

28.Police,p.310.

29.Police,p.105.

30.Ibid.p.13.

31.Ibid.p.211.

32.Ibid.p.136.

33.Police,p.523.

34.Ibid.p.397.

35.Police,p.60.

36.Ibid.p.481.

37.Ibid.p.7.

38.Ibid.p.298.

39.Police,p.99.

40.Bentham's Works,x,329seq.

41.Ibid.v.335.

42.Bentham's Works,iv,3,121.

43.Cobbet's State Trials,xvii,297-626.

44.Police,p.340.

45.Wilberforce started on this plan a 'society for enforcing the king's proclamation'in 1786,which was supplemented by the society for 'the Suppresion of Vice'in 1802.I don't suppose that vice was much suppressed.Sydney Smith ridiculed its performance in the Edinburgh for 1809.The article is in his works.A more interesting society was that for 'bettering the condition of the poor,'started by Sir Thomas Bernard and Wilberforce in 1796.

46.Biographia Literaria (1847),ii.327.

47.History of the Rise,Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the Slave-trade by the British Parliament (1808).Second enlarged edition 1839.The chart was one cause of the offence taken by Wilberforce's sons.

48.Cf.Sir J.Stephen's Ecclesiastical Biography (The Evanglical Succession).

49.See passages collected in Birkbeck Hill's Boswell,ii,478-80,and cf.iii,200-204.Boswell was attracted by Clarkson,but finally made up his mind that the abolition of the slave-trade would 'shut the gates of mercy on mankind.'

50.See the account of G.Sharp in Sir J.Stephen's Ecclesiastical Biography (Chapham Sect).

51.Cobbett's State Trials,xx,1-82.

52.The Society determined in 1760'to disown'any Friend concerned in the slave-trade.

53.Mr Conway,in his Life of Paine,attributes,I think,a little more to his hero than is consistent with due regard to his predecessors;but,in any case,he took an early part in the movement.

54.See upon this subject Mr Jephson's interesting book on The Platform.

55.France,p.206(20th July 1789).

56.See the Life of Horne Tooke,by Alexander Stephens (2vols.8vo.1813).

John Horne added the name Tooke in 1782.

57.Parl.Hist.xxi.751

58.The history of these societies may be found in the trials reported in the twenty-third,twenty-fourth,and twenty-fifth volumes of Cobbett's State Trials,and in the reports of the secret committees in the thirty-first and thirty-fourth volumes of the Parl.History.There are materials in Place's papers in the British Museum which have been used in E.Smith's English Jacobins.

59.Parl.Hist.xxix,130001341.

60.Parl.Hist.xxiv,574-655.

61.Mr Wallas's Life of Place,p.25n.

62.State Trials,xxiv,575.

63.Ibid.xxv.330.

64.Ibid.xxv.390.

65.Paul's Godwin,i,147.

66.Stephen,li,48,477.

67.Ibid.ii,34-41,323,478-481.

68.Ibid.ii.483.

69.Bentham's Works,x,404.

70.He was member for Old Sarum,180102;but his career ended by a declaratory act disqualifying for a seat men who had received holy orders.

71.Bentham's Works,x.404;Live of Mackintosh,i,52;Paul's Godwin,i,71;Coleridge's Table Talk,8th May 1830and 16th August 1833.

72.Stephens,ii,316,334,438.