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Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays

C >> Charles Kingsley >> Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays




There is another answer, too, to "Imperialists" who talk of
Representative institutions being on their trial, and let it be
made boldly just now.

It will be time to talk of Representative institutions being good
or bad, when the people of England are properly represented.

In the first place, it does seem only fair that the class who
suffer most from epidemics should have some little share in the
appointment of the men on whose votes extermination of epidemics
now mainly depends. But that is too large a question to argue
here. Let the Government see to it in the coming session.

Yet how much soever, or how little soever, the suffrage be
extended in the direction of the working man, let it be extended,
at least in some equal degree, in the direction of the educated
man. Few bodies in England now express the opinions of educated
men less than does the present House of Commons. It is not chosen
by educated men, any more than it is by proletaires. It is not,
on an average, composed of educated men; and the many educated men
who are in it have, for the most part, to keep their knowledge
very much to themselves, for fear of hurting the feelings of "ten-
pound Jack," or of the local attorney who looks after Jack's vote.
And therefore the House of Commons does not represent public
opinion.

For, to enounce with fitting clearness a great but much-forgotten
truth, To have an opinion, you must have an opinion.

Strange: but true, and pregnant too. For, from it may be deduced
this corollary, that nine-tenths of what is called Public Opinion
is no opinion at all; for, on the matters which come under the
cognizance of the House of Commons (save where superstition, as in
the case of the Sabbath, or the Jew Bill, sets folks thinking--
generally on the wrong side), nine people out of ten have no
opinion at all; know nothing about the matter, and care less;
wherefore, having no opinions to be represented, it is not
important whether that nothing be represented or not.

The true public opinion of England is composed of the opinions of
the shrewd, honest, practical men in her, whether educated or not;
and of such, thank God, there are millions: but it consists also
of the opinions of the educated men in her; men who have had
leisure and opportunity for study; who have some chance of knowing
the future, because they have examined the past; who can compare
England with other nations; English creeds, laws, customs, with
those of the rest of mankind; who know somewhat of humanity, human
progress, human existence; who have been practised in the
processes of thought; and who, from study, have formed definite
opinions, differing doubtless in infinite variety, but still all
founded upon facts, by something like fair and scientific
induction.

Till we have this class of men fairly represented in the House of
Commons, there is little hope for Sanitary Reform: when it is so
represented, we shall have no reason to talk of Representative
institutions being on their trial.

And it is one of the few hopeful features of the present time,
that an attempt is at last being made to secure for educated men
of all professions a fair territorial representation. A memorial
to the Government has been presented, appended to which, in very
great numbers, are the names of men of note, of all ranks, all
shades in politics and religion, all professions--legal, clerical,
military, medical, and literary. A list of names representing so
much intellect, so much learning, so much acknowledged moderation,
so much good work already done and acknowledged by the country,
has never, perhaps, been collected for any political purpose; and
if their scheme (the details of which are not yet made public)
should in anywise succeed, it will do more for the prospects of
Sanitary Reform than any forward movement of the quarter of a
century.

For if Sanitary Reform, or perhaps any really progressive measure,
is to be carried out henceforth, we must go back to something like
the old principle of the English constitution, by which intellect,
as such, had its proper share in the public councils. During
those middle ages when all the intellect and learning was
practically possessed by the clergy, they constituted a separate
estate of the realm. This was the old plan--the best which could
be then devised. After learning became common to the laity, the
educated classes were represented more and more only by such
clever young men as could be thrust into Parliament by the private
patronage of the aristocracy. Since the last Reform Bill, even
that supply of talent has been cut off; and the consequence has
been, the steady deterioration of our House of Commons toward such
a level of mediocrity as shall satisfy the ignorance of the
practically electing majority, namely, the tail of the middle
class; men who are apt to possess all the failings with few of the
virtues of those above them and below them; who have no more
intellectual training than the simple working man, and far less
than the average shopman, and who yet lose, under the influence of
a small competence, that practical training which gives to the
working man, made strong by wholesome necessity, chivalry,
endurance, courage, and self-restraint; whose business morality is
made up of the lowest and narrowest maxims of the commercial
world, unbalanced by that public spirit, that political knowledge,
that practical energy, that respect for the good opinion of his
fellows, which elevate the large employer. On the hustings, of
course, this description of the average free and independent
elector would be called a calumny; and yet, where is the member of
Parliament who will not, in his study, assent to its truth, and
confess, that of all men whom he meets, those who least command
his respect are those among his constituents to secure whom he
takes most trouble; unless, indeed, it be the pettifoggers who
manage his election for him?

Whether this is the class to whose public opinion the health and
lives of the masses are to be entrusted, is a question which
should be settled as soon as possible.

Meanwhile let every man who would awake to the importance of
Sanitary questions, do his best to teach and preach, in season and
out of season, and to instruct, as far as he can, that public
opinion which is as yet but public ignorance. Let him throw, for
instance, what weight he has into the "National Association for
the Advancement of Social Science." In it he will learn, as well
as teach, not only on Sanitary Reforms, but upon those cognate
questions which must be considered with it, if it is ever to be
carried out.

Indeed, this new "National Association" seems the most hopeful and
practical move yet made by the sanitarists. It may be laughed at
somewhat at first, as the British Association was; but the world
will find after a while that, like the British Association, it can
do great things towards moulding public opinion, and compel men to
consider certain subjects, simply by accustoming people to hear
them mentioned. The Association will not have existed in vain, if
it only removes that dull fear and suspicion with which Englishmen
are apt to regard a new subject, simply because it is new. But
the Association will do far more than that. It has wisely not
confined itself to any one branch of Social Science, but taken the
subject in all its complexity. To do otherwise would have been to
cripple itself. It would have shut out many subjects--Law Reform,
for instance--which are necessary adjuncts to any Sanitary scheme;
while it would have shut out that very large class of benevolent
people who have as yet been devoting their energies to prisons,
workhouses, and schools. Such will now have an opportunity of
learning that they have been treating the symptoms of social
disease rather than the disease itself. They will see that vice
is rather the effect than the cause of physical misery, and that
the surest mode of attacking it is to improve the physical
conditions of the lower classes; to abolish foul air, fouled
water, foul lodging, and overcrowded dwellings, in which morality
is difficult, and common decency impossible. They will not give
up--Heaven forbid that they should give up!--their special good
works; but they will surely throw the weight of their names, their
talents, their earnestness, into the great central object of
preserving human life, as soon as they shall have recognised that
prevention is better than cure; and that the simple and one method
of prevention is, to give the working man his rights. Water, air,
light. A right to these three at least he has. In demanding
them, he demands no more than God gives freely to the wild beast
of the forest. Till society has given him them, it does him an
injustice in demanding of him that he should be a useful member of
society. If he is expected to be a man, let him at least be put
on a level with the brutes. When the benevolent of the land (and
they may be numbered by tens of thousands) shall once have learnt
this plain and yet awful truth, a vast upward step will have been
gained. Because this new Association will teach it them, during
the next ten or twenty years, may God's blessing be on it, and, on
the noble old man who presides over it. Often already has he
deserved well of his country; but never better than now, when he
has lent his great name and great genius to the object of
preserving human life from wholesale destruction by unnecessary
poison.

And meanwhile let the Sanitary Reformer work and wait. "Go not
after the world," said a wise man, "for if thou stand still long
enough the world will come round to thee." And to Sanitary Reform
the world will come round at last. Grumbling, scoffing, cursing
its benefactors; boasting at last, as usual, that it discovered
for itself the very truths which it tried to silence, it will
come; and will be glad at last to accept the one sibylline leaf,
at the same price at which it might have had the whole. The
Sanitary Reformer must make up his mind to see no fruit of his
labours, much less thanks or reward. He must die in faith, as St.
Paul says all true men die, "not having received the promises;"
worn out, perhaps, by ill-paid and unappreciated labour, as that
truest-hearted and most unselfish of men, Charles Robert Walsh,
died but two years ago. But his works will follow him--not, as
the preachers tell us, to heaven--for of what use would they be
there, to him or to mankind?--but here, on earth, where he set
them, that they might go on in his path, after his example, and
prosper and triumph long years after he is dead, when his memory
shall be blessed by generations not merely "yet unborn," but who
never would have been born at all, had he not inculcated into
their unwilling fathers the simplest laws of physical health,
decency, life--laws which the wild cat of the wood, burying its
own excrement apart from its lair, has learnt by the light of
nature; but which neither nature nor God Himself can as yet teach
to a selfish, perverse, and hypocritical generation.



Footnotes:

{1} This lecture was one of a series of "Lectures to Ladies,"
given in London in 1855, at the Needlewoman's Institution.

{2} The substance of this Essay was a lecture on Physical
Education, given at the Midland Institute, Birmingham, in 1872.

{3} 9, Adam Street, Adelphi, London.

{4} A Lecture delivered at Winchester, May 31, 1869.

{5} Lecture delivered at Winchester, March 17, 1869.

{6} I quote from the translation of the late lamented Philip
Stanhope Worsley, of Corpus Christi College, Oxford.

{7} Odyssey, book vi. 127-315; vol. i. pp. 143-150 of Mr.
Worsley's translation.

{8} Since this essay was written, I have been sincerely delighted
to find that my wishes had been anticipated at Girton College,
near Cambridge, and previously at Hitchin, whence the college was
removed: and that the wise ladies who superintend that
establishment propose also that most excellent institution--a
swimming-bath. A paper, moreover, read before the London
Association of School-mistresses in 1866, on "Physical Exercises
and Recreation for Girls," deserves all attention. May those who
promote such things prosper as they deserve.

{9} Lecture delivered at Bristol, October 5, 1857.

{10} This was spoken during the Indian Mutiny.

{11} Speech in behalf of Ladies' Sanitary Association. Delivered
at St. James's Hall, London, 1859.

{12} Fraser's Magazine, No. CCCXXXVII. 1858.

{13} We find a most honourable exception to this rule in a sermon
by the Rev. C. Richson, of Manchester, on the Sanitary Laws of the
Old Testament, with notes by Dr. Sutherland.

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