Evolution and Ethics, and Other Essays Part 19

I can no longer be useful, and I return to more congenial occupations.

I am, Sir, your obedient servant, T. H. Huxley.

The following letter appeared in the "Times" of January 2nd, 1891:--

"Dear Mr. Tillett,--I have not had patience to read Professor Huxley's letters. The existence of hunger, nakedness, misery, 'death from insufficient food,' even of starvation, is certain, and no agency as yet reaches it. How can any man hinder or discourage the giving of food or help? Why is the house called a workhouse? Because it is for those who cannot work? No, because it was the house to give work or bread. The very name is an argument. I am very sure what Our Lord and His Apostles would do if they were in London. Let us be thankful even to have a will to do the same.

"Yours faithfully, Henry E. Card. Manning."

[293]

X.

The "Times," January 3rd, 1891

SIR,--In my old favourite, "The Arabian Nights," the motive of the whole series of delightful narratives is that the sultan, who refuses to attend to reason, can be got to listen to a story. May I try whether Cardinal Manning is to be reached in the same way? When I was attending the meeting of the British a.s.sociation in Belfast nearly forty years ago, I had promised to breakfast with the eminent scholar Dr. Hincks. Having been up very late the previous night, I was behind time; so, hailing an outside car, I said to the driver as I jumped on, "Now drive fast, I am in a hurry." Whereupon he whipped up his horse and set off at a hand-gallop. Nearly jerked off my seat, I shouted, "My good friend, do you know where I want to go?" "No, yer honner,"

said the driver, "but, any way, I am driving fast." I have never forgotten this object-lesson in the dangers of ill-regulated enthusiasm. We are all invited to jump on to the Salvation Army car, which Mr. Booth is undoubtedly driving very fast. Some of us have a firm conviction, not only that he is taking a very different direction from that in which we wish to go, but that, before long, car and driver will come to grief. Are we to accept [294] the invitation, even at the bidding of the eminent person who appears to think himself ent.i.tled to pledge the credit of "Our Lord and His Apostles" in favour of Boothism?

I am, Sir, your obedient servant, T. H. Huxley.

XI.

The "Times," January 13th, 1891

SIR,--A letter from Mr. Booth-Clibborn, dated January 3rd, appeared in the "Times" of yesterday. This elaborate doc.u.ment occupies three columns of small print--s.p.a.ce enough, a.s.suredly, for an effectual reply to the seven letters of mine to which the writer refers, if any such were forthcoming. Mr. Booth-Clibborn signs himself "Commissioner of the Salvation Army for France and Switzerland," but he says that he accepts my "challenge" without the knowledge of his chiefs.

Considering the self-damaging character of his letter, it was, perhaps, hardly necessary to make that statement.

Mr. "Commissioner" Booth-Clibborn speaks of my "challenge." I presume that he refers to my request for information about the authors.h.i.+p and fate of "The New Papacy," in the letter [295] published in the "Times"

on December 27th, 1890. The "Commissioner" deals with this matter in paragraph No. 4 of his letter; and I observe, with no little satisfaction, that he does not venture to controvert any one of the statements of my witnesses. He tacitly admits that the author of "The New Papacy" was a person "greatly esteemed in Toronto," and that he held "a high position in the army"; further, that the Canadian "Commissioner" thought it worth while to pay the printer's bill, in order that the copies already printed off might be destroyed and the pamphlet effectually suppressed. Thus the essential facts of the case are admitted and established beyond question.

How does Mr. Booth-Clibborn try to explain them away?

"Mr. Sumner, who wrote the little book in a hot fit, soon regretted it (as any man would do whose conscience showed him in a calmer moment when his 'respectability' returned with his repentance, that he had grossly misrepresented), and just before it appeared offered to order its suppression if the army would pay the costs already incurred, and which he was unable to bear."

"The New Papacy" fills sixty closely printed duodecimo pages. It is carefully written, and for the most part in studiously moderate language; moreover, it contains many precise details and [296]

figures, the ascertainment of which must have taken much time and trouble. Yet, forsooth, it was written in "a hot fit."

I sincerely hope, for the sake of his own credit, that Mr.

"Commissioner" Booth-Clibborn does not know as much about this melancholy business as I do. My hands are unfortunately tied, and I am not at liberty to use all the information in my possession. I must content myself with quoting the following pa.s.sage from the preface to "The New Papacy":--

"It has not been without considerable thought and a good deal of urging that the following pages have been given to the public. But though we would have shrunk from a labour so distasteful, and have gladly avoided a notoriety anything but pleasant to the feelings, or conducive to our material welfare, we have felt that in the interests of the benevolent public, in the interests of religion, in the interests of a band of devoted men and women whose personal ends are being defeated, and the fruit of whose labour is being destroyed, and, above all, in the interests of that future which lies before the Salvation Army itself, if purged and purified in its executive and returned to its original position in the ranks of Canadian Christian effort, it is no more than our duty to throw such light as we are able upon its true inwardness, and with that object and for the [297]

furtherance of those ends we offer our pages to the public view."

The preface is dated April 1889. According to the statement in the "Toronto Telegram" which Mr. "Commissioner" Booth-Clibborn does not dare to dispute, his Canadian fellow-"Commissioner" bought and destroyed the whole edition of "The New Papacy" about the end of the third week in April. It is clear that the writer of the paragraph quoted from the preface was well out of a "hot fit," if he had ever been in one, while he had not entered on the stage of repentance within three weeks of that time. Mr. "Commissioner" Booth-Clibborn's scandalous insinuations that Mr. Sumner was bribed by "a few sovereigns," and that he was "bought off," in the face of his own admission that Mr. Sumner "offered to order its suppression if the army would pay the costs already incurred, and which he was unable to bear" is a crucial example of that Jesuitry with which the officials of the army have been so frequently charged.

Mr. "Commissioner" Booth-Clibborn says that when "London headquarters heard of the affair, it disapproved of the action of the Commissioner." That circ.u.mstance indicates that headquarters is not wholly devoid of intelligence; but it has nothing to do with the value of Mr. Sumner's evidence, which is all I am concerned about. Very likely London headquarters will disapprove of its French [298]

"Commissioner's" present action. But what then? The upshot of all this is that Mr. Booth-Clibborn has made as great a blunder as simple Mr.

Trotter did. The pair of Balaams greatly desired to curse, but have been compelled to bless. They have, between them, completely justified my reliance on Mr. Sumner as a perfectly trustworthy witness; and neither of them has dared to challenge the accuracy of one solitary statement made by that worthy gentleman, whose full story I hope some day or other to see set before the public. Then the true causes of his action will be made known.

Paragraph 2 of the "Commissioner's" letter says many things, but not much about Mr. Hodges. The columns of the "Times" recently showed that Mr. Hodges was able to compel an apology from Mr. Trotter. I leave it to him to deal with the "Commissioner."

As to the "Eagle" case, treated of in paragraph No. 3, a gentleman well versed in the law, who was in court during the hearing of the appeal, has a.s.sured me that the argument was purely technical; that the facts were very slightly gone into; and that, so far as he knows, no dissenting comment was made on the strictures of the Judge before whom the case first came. Moreover, in the judgment of the Master of the Rolls, fully recorded in the "Times" of February 14th, 1884, the following pa.s.sages occur:--

[299] "The case had been heard by a learned Judge, who had exercised his discretion upon it, and the Court would not interfere with his discretion unless they could see that he was wrong. The learned Judge had taken a strong view of the conduct of the defendant, but nevertheless had said that he would have given relief if he could have seen how far protection and compensation could be given. And if this Court differed from him in that view, and could give relief without forfeiture, they would be acting on his own principle in doing so.

Certain suggestions had been made with that view, and the Court had to consider the case under all the circ.u.mstances.... He himself (the Master of the Rolls) considered that it was probable the defendant, with his principles, had intended to destroy the property as a public-house, and that it was not right thus to take property under a covenant to keep it up as a public-house, intending to destroy it as such. He did not, however, think this was enough to deprive him of all relief. The defendant could only expect severe terms."

Yet, Sir, Mr. "Commissioner" Booth-Clibborn, this high official of the Salvation Army, has the audacity to tell the public that if I had made inquiries I should have found that "in the Court of Appeal the Judge reversed the decision of his predecessor as regards seven eighths of the property, and the General was declared to have acted [300] all along with straight forwardness and good faith."

But the nature of Mr. "Commissioner" Booth-Clibborn's conceptions of straightforwardness and good faith is so marvellously ill.u.s.trated by the portions of his letter with which I have dealt that I doubt not his statements are quite up to the level of the "Army" Regulations and Instructions in regard to those cardinal virtues. As I pointed out must be the case, the slave is subdued to that he works in.

For myself, I must confess that the process of wading through Mr.

"Commissioner's" verbose and clumsy pleadings has given me a "hot fit," which, I undertake to say, will be followed by not so much as a pa.s.sing s.h.i.+ver of repentance. And it is under the influence of the genial warmth diffused through the frame, on one of those rare occasions when one may be "angry and sin not," that I infringe my resolution to trouble you with no more letters. On reflection, I am convinced that it is undesirable that the public should be misled, for even a few days, by misrepresentations so serious.

I am copiously abused for speaking of the Jesuitical methods of the superior officials of the Salvation Army. But the following facts have not been, and, I believe, cannot be, denied:--

1. Mr. Booth's conduct in the "Eagle" case has been censured by two of the Judges.

[301] 2. Mr. Bramwell Booth admitted before Mr. Justice Lopes that he had made an untrue statement because of a promise he had made to Mr.

Stead.*

* This statement has been disputed, but not yet publicly. (See p. 305.)

And I have just proved that Mr. "Commissioner" Booth-Clibborn a.s.serts the exact contrary of that which your report of the judgment of the Master of the Rolls tells us that distinguished judge said.

Under these circ.u.mstances, I think that my politeness in applying no harder adjective than "Jesuitical" to these proceedings is not properly appreciated.

I am, Sir, your obedient servant, T. H. Huxley.

XII.

The "Times," January 22nd, 1891

SIR,--I think that your readers will be interested in the accompanying opinion, written in consultation with an eminent Chancery Queen's Counsel, with which I have been favoured. It will be observed that this important legal deliverance [302] justifies much stronger language than any which I have applied to the only security (?) for the proper administration of the funds in Mr. Booth's hands which appears to be in existence.

I am, Sir, your obedient servant, T. H. Huxley.

1, Dr. Johnson's Buildings, Temple, E.C., January 14, 1891.

MR. BOOTH'S DECLARATION OF TRUST DEED, 1878.

"I am of opinion, subject to the question whether there may be any provision in the Charitable Trusts Acts which can be made available for enforcing some scheme for the appropriation of the property, and with regard to the real and leasehold properties whether the conveyances and leases are not altogether void, as frauds on the Mortmain Acts, that nothing can be done to control or to interfere with Booth in the disposition or application of the properties or moneys purported to be affected by the deed.

"As to the properties vested in Booth himself, it appears to me that such are placed absolutely under his power and control both as to the disposal and application thereof, and that there are no trusts for any specific purposes declared which [303] could be enforced, and that there are no defined persons nor cla.s.ses of persons who can claim to be ent.i.tled to the benefits of them, or at whose instance they could be enforced by any legal process.