Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman Part 25

"The French army is very formidable; but I cannot pretend that in it I have such superiority to Austria that I may expect easy or certain success. My only clear superiority is on the sea. As Louis Philippe before, so have I from the first carefully nursed my fleet. Hereby I override Austria in the Adriatic--a most critical advantage.... I cannot be sure but that without declaring war, or giving warning, he (Lord Derby) may all at once strike a blow which will annihilate my fleet, and then what could compensate me? If you can find any way of moving discontent against this ministry, I want you to cripple or eject him."

Newman adds that Kossuth did not tell him what reply he himself gave to all this.

Everyone knows the sequel to this. After Lord Derby had resigned in March, Lord Palmerston took office. In May the Austrians were defeated; and this defeat was followed by more disaster for them, and the end of the whole matter resolved itself into a peace between Francis Joseph and Louis Napoleon.

Then it was that the latter proclaimed freedom from Austrian supremacy to all Italy; and _now_ came the end for which Kossuth had struggled, and longed, and waited. Napoleon despatched a messenger to him asking what demands Kossuth wished now to make. His prompt answer was delivered thus to the envoy:--

"Sir, I have two demands on your master: _First_, he must extract from the Emperor Francis Joseph an amnesty for every Hungarian or Croatian soldier who has taken military service under the King of Sardinia. _Secondly_, no man thus amnestied shall ever be pressed into the Austrian army."

A fortnight went by, and Kossuth heard nothing from the Emperor. Then, when at last the news came, it was almost too good to be true. Francis Joseph had agreed to both stipulations.

In August, 1860, Francis Newman, writing from Keswick, touches on the progress in success made by the Italian patriot, Garibaldi.

"I do not think you can be dissatisfied with Garibaldi's progress. Louis N. _could_ have stopt [sic] him, and ruined his hopes for ever, by one word to Austria as soon as Garibaldi landed in Sicily. On the contrary, he has sternly forbidden Austria to meddle at all in Italy, and has allowed Cavour to proclaim in Parliament that L. N.'s greatest merit to Italy is _not_ the great battle of Solferino, _but_ his having avowed in his letter to the Pope _that priests shall no longer rule in Italy_.... When Hungary is free, all views will change, and perhaps France also."

Kossuth and Pulszky, who had visited England constantly between the years 1851 and 1860, finally left our sh.o.r.es for good in the latter year, Kossuth for Italy, for he took no further share in politics, and Pulszky for Hungary, where he became Finance Minister to Francis Joseph's new const.i.tutional monarchy.

Before finally leaving England, Kossuth gave to Newman his own "reading"

of the real character of Louis Napoleon. He said: "Louis Napoleon is a man at whom, on account of his _coup d'etat_, [Footnote: Louis Napoleon's raid on the French citizens, in violation of his promises, in order to make himself supreme.] I shudder, and it may seem a duty to hate him. Yet I am bound to say, not only has he been wholly faithful to us, but every time I have been closeted with him I have come away with a higher opinion, not only of his talents and sagacity, _but also of his morals_." The italics are mine. It seems difficult for the outsider to-day quite to sign to this point of view, when one remembers Louis Napoleon's deception and his broken honour and cruelty. There is a very enlightening and suggestive pa.s.sage in one of Robert Louis Stevenson's books, "To travel happily is better than to arrive." In Kossuth's case the reverse was true. He travelled towards his goal unhappily, but he "arrived," and that was a reward which is not given to every patriot who gives his life to win his country's freedom.

In _Hungary in 1851_, by Charles Loring Brace, there are many keenly interesting details about Kossuth. Mr. Brace made a tour in Europe, chiefly on foot, during the spring of 1851, and met Kossuth in Pesth; his mother was then living there. "To say that Kossuth is beloved here seems hardly necessary after what I have seen. He is idolized. Every word and trait of his character is remembered with an indescribable affection ..."; but they all acknowledged, he added, that he did not possess the necessary gifts for a revolutionary leader. Still, he moved his countrymen in so stirring a manner that they would have followed him anywhere. "He 'agitated' the whole land, and there is not a Bauer in the villages or a Csikos (wild cattle driver) on the prairies, they say, who does not remember as the day of days the time when he listened to those thrilling tones ... as they spoke ... of the wrongs of their beloved Fatherland."

This is a short account by a journalist who knew him personally, and was present at the time, of the manner in which Kossuth was received in Scotland during his visit to Britain:--

"In travelling from Edinburgh to Perth, Kossuth was received at every station by vast crowds of people, including many ladies, with vociferous cheers and waving of hats and handkerchiefs. This was particularly the case at Stirling, where hundreds crowded up to the carriage in which he sat to grasp his hand."

One day it was suggested that Kossuth, Colonel Ibaz his aide-de-camp, and the journalist should go for a drive up Kinnoul Hill, near Perth. "We soon got into a rough country road winding among the farms. At one place the carriage came to a stand while a gate had to be opened to allow it to pa.s.s through. At this gate stood a tall, venerable-looking farmer, with long white hair and beard ... who might have served as a painter's model for an old Scottish Covenanter. He stood ready to open the gate.... He had, of course, heard of Kossuth's invitation to lecture in Perth, and at once divined that the carriage might contain his hero, as all visitors to Perth ascend the Hill of Kinnoul.... In a very deep and solemn voice he said ...

'I reckon that Loois Koshoot is in this carriage. Am I richt? Whuch is him?' Kossuth leaned forward and said in a very gracious manner, 'Yes, he is, good man. I am Louis Kossuth.' Whereupon the venerable man reverently took off his bonnet, came close up, grasped Kossuth's hand in both his own, and said, 'G.o.d bless you, sir, an' may He prosper you in your great waurk to free yer kintra frae the rod o' the oppressor. May He strengthen ye and croon ye wi' victory....'

"Colonel Ihaz was a bronzed, stern-looking officer, perhaps ten years older than his chief; yet with all his military stiffness and sternness he was quite capable of relaxing into ordinary human feelings and becoming quite a facetious old fellow under favourable conditions. He could speak very little English. He enjoyed the humour of some Scottish stories and anecdotes I told, and which Kossuth translated for him. He was greatly pleased and amused when I initiated him into the art and mystery of concocting a tumbler of whisky toddy as a proper and orthodox finish to the evening.... He thoroughly appreciated the beverage, smacking his lips ... and exclaiming with gusto, 'Toddo is goot. Toddo _very_ goot.'" He mentions that Kossuth was keenly interested in Scottish ballads and stories, etc., and he actually learnt _one_ ballad by heart, "which for thrilling pa.s.sion, and power, and sweetness ... were never equalled by human voice. His appeals ... were addressed exceedingly often to the religious feelings of his hearers. In fact, this tendency of his is perhaps one great secret of his power over the people of Hungary--for the peasantry of that land, beyond that of almost any other, are remarkable for a simple, reverent piety."

When, after the deliverance of Hungary from the yoke of Austria, Kossuth was made Governor, Brace says that he considers he belonged, by reason of his talent for organization and finance, to the highest rank of statesmen.

He had not "the unrelenting, tremendous force of a Cromwell or Napoleon, or the iron will of a Jackson...." But he has shown that a man "could be a military Dictator without staining his hands either in the blood of his rivals or of his friends."

"One of the privates in an Austrian regiment stationed in Vienna, himself a Hungarian, was overheard by his officer to say 'Eljen Kossuth!' He was ordered 'five-and-twenty' at once. It appears when a man is flogged in the Austrian army he is obliged by law to thank the officer. This the Hungarian refused to do. Another 'five-and-twenty' were given him. Still he refused. Again another flogging; and the Hungarian, as he rose, muttered his thanks with the words, 'My back belongs to the Emperor, but my heart to Kossuth.'"

In regard to Kossuth's manner of delivery in his great public speeches, Mr. Brace says: "His opening words, they say, were like Hungarian national airs, always low and plaintive in the utterance.... But gradually his face lighted up, his voice deepened and swelled with his feeling," and there came forth tones which thrilled his hearers with a strange rousing power.

CHAPTER XII

FOUR BARBARISMS OF CIVILIZATION

In every civilization there will always be found, sheltering under its wall, evil things not yet brought to book--not yet revealed in their true nature, but still dragging back the wheel of true progress and the betterment of humanity. Yet though they come "in such a questionable shape," it is often not until someone ahead of his or her age, pulls them into the open glare of another point of view, and thus shows up all their hidden moral leprosy, that the arrow of condemnation is driven full-tilt at them from the stretched bow of a Higher Criticism.

In Francis Newman's _Miscellanies_, Vol. III, four of these evil things are dragged by him into the open daylight of a mind far ahead of its age, and these four are: Cruelty to Animals; Degradation of Man, as brought about by the drink traffic; War, as the great throw-back to Civilization; Punishment as understood in England, and our own methods of reform as regards the treatment of misdemeanants.

To take the first of these--Cruelty to Animals. Of course there are three kinds: Legalized cruelty, cruelty caused by thoughtlessness, and cruelty caused in order to give pleasure to men and women. Of the first--well, of course this has to do with vivisection, said to be carried on for the advancement of science and for the sake of alleviating the sufferings of humanity.

As regards the first reason, men who know what they are talking about are pretty generally agreed that science has _not_ largely benefited by vivisection. As regards the second, it is by no means sure that anything can be proved of direct use to mankind from discoveries made by doctors and scientists after operating on animals. "What sort of tenderness for man can we expect from surgeons who can thus teach by torture, or from students who can endure to listen?" Here Francis Newman puts his finger on a very significant factor in the case--that of the barbarizing, the deteriorating of the mind that cannot touch the black pitch of torture and not be defiled.

Everyone will remember the words of Lord Shaftesbury, one of the greatest men of his day: "I would rather be, before G.o.d, the poor victim in the torture-trough than the vivisector beside him." And it is this point also which is of importance in the vivisection question--not the point of view alone of the animal tortured, but as well the inevitable effect on the vivisector. For there are some things undeniably which, when done, do not leave the man who does them where he was before in the moral scale.

As Archdeacon Wilberforce says: "If all that is claimed by vivisectors were true--and I absolutely disbelieve it--the n.o.blest att.i.tude would be to refuse physical benefit obtained at the cost of secrets stolen from other lives by hideous torture." These words exactly express the att.i.tude of all thoughtful men and women who feel the impossibility of accepting help at the cost of such torture to the lower creation by what the Archdeacon very aptly calls the "barbarities of science."

Well may Francis Newman say: "When we ask by what _right_ a man tortures these innocent creatures, the only reply that can be given is, because we are more intelligent. If in the eye of G.o.d this is justifiable, then a just G.o.d might permit a devil to torture us in the cause of diabolic science.... To cut up a living horse day after day in order to practise students in dissection is a crime and abomination hardly less monstrous from his not having an immortal soul. An inevitable logic would in a couple of generations unteach all tenderness towards human suffering if such horrors are endured, and carry us back into greater heartlessness than that of the worst barbarians." The bill in 1876, of which the chief aim was to amend the law, to regulate better the doings of vivisectors, insisted on the fact that a licence from the Home Secretary was to be a _sine qua non_ in the case of all who practised these experiments upon animals. But experience of the way in which this law works shows quite clearly that very inadequate inspection takes place, because in so many cases inspectors and vivisectors play into each other's hands.

Of the other kinds of cruelty, those caused by thoughtlessness and in order to minister to the pleasure of men and women are very many and very present to us. I use the word "thoughtlessness," but perhaps it would be nearer the truth to say lack of power to realize, for thoughtlessness can no longer be pleaded by those women who persist in wearing aigrettes, and other plumage of birds. The barbarous method has been too often described to them by which these aigrettes are procured: how the plumes are torn from the males of the small white heron; how, this appalling cruelty perpetrated, the birds are left to die on the sh.o.r.e. Women of fas.h.i.+on cannot but be aware how wholesale this savage slaughter of the innocents is; that each bird only contributes one-sixth of an ounce of aigrette plumes; that we are told that thousands of ounces of plumes are sold by one firm during the course of one season alone. It is not too much to say that each woman's bonnet in which these plumes (so barbarously procured) figure, is a veritable juggernaut car. It is not alone for fas.h.i.+on's sake that we perpetrate these barbarisms, however, for what can be said in defence of cruelties practised upon animals for the sake of man's stomach?

Of the method in vogue now of stuffing capons by means of an instrument which forces food down their throats relentlessly in order to make them of great size and of tender flesh? or of calves being slowly bled to death that their flesh may be white? What of the horrors which precede the making of _pate de foie gras_? The name of these atrocities is legion, however, and it is useless to enumerate them here. Fas.h.i.+on loves to have it so, and the ordinary diner does not trouble his head about the terrible ordeal of the animal which has preceded the delicacy for himself. But, putting his dinner aside, the Englishman's sport is often not far removed from barbaric.

Look at coursing! What can be the nature that can take _pleasure_ in seeing an absolutely defenceles animal let out in a confined s.p.a.ce, with no chance of escape, no fair play at all, nothing in front of it but certain death whichever way it turns? What can be the nature which can _enjoy_ the death-scream of the agonized hare as the dogs' fangs dig into the quivering flesh? Coursing is nothing more nor less than an absolutely degrading sport to the beholders.

There is no _sport_, in the right acceptation of the word, in it at all.

At any rate, there is far more of the element of real sport in fox-hunting or in stag-hunting, especially in those districts where one is told that the stag practically enters into the spirit of the game, when, after a good run, it pauses, and is helped into the cart which is to take it into "home cover" again! Be that as it may, at least there is some fair play to the quarry. In coursing that is an unknown quant.i.ty.

"The accomplished Englishman shoots for sport. Sport, being a mental impulse or appet.i.te, is insatiable, and therefore far more deadly than hunger.... A boast is made that ninety millions of rabbits are reared for the consumption of our nation. Ninety million rabbits sent out at large to nibble the young shoots of the growing crops--each of whom destroys and wastes ten times what a tame rabbit would eat in a hutch--are boasted of as an increase of our supplies! If twenty million of these reach the town markets, it is much; how many beside are cruelly ma.s.sacred with no profit to man! and how many beside, with unhappy hares, foxes, rats, stoats, and weasels, are held for days and nights in lingering torture by horrible steel traps? All this goes on in the midst of refinement, without prohibition from men or remonstrance from women. It is a fruit of the modern English system of game preserving;... and the artificial love of sport which cruel Norman tradition has fostered in the stolid Anglo-Saxon race." [Footnote: "On Cruelty" (_Miscellanies_, III, by Francis W.

Newman).] It is an una.s.sailable truth that if you look for the last remains of barbarity in a civilized nation you will find them in their sports. But I confess that to me it is difficult to justify a _woman's_ love of sport when it is combined--before her very eyes--with the suffering of an animal. Yet I heard only the other day of a woman who boasted that she had been among the few "in at the death" one day in fox- hunting, and that when the brush was given to her, her face was _spattered with the blood of the fox_.

To turn to another "barbarism of civilization"--the subject of the Drink Traffic.

Newman's words about this come with startling appositeness to-day, when we are all eager as regards the pros and cons of the new Licensing Act, and when all the publicans in the country are watching anxiously in fear of the ruin it may spell for themselves. Thirty years ago Francis Newman flung these words broadcast into the country:--

"Parliament ignominiously sits on the beer barrel. The thirty-three millions a year" (which was the revenue in 1877 derived from "complicity with distillers and brewers"), "are to every Ministry like the proverbial wolf which the woodsman holds by the ears. To keep him is difficult, to let him go is dangerous. Their position is becoming worse than embarra.s.sing when the best _men_ of every cla.s.s, and _all the women_ who see the public miseries, condemn the deadly policy of bartering national morality for payments to the exchequer.... The mode in which those in power fight to retain the public immoralities proclaims the quality of their motives. As one example out of several, see with what tenacity the Sunday sale of intoxicating drink in Ireland is kept up, after it is visible that Ireland disapproves, and after the English Parliament has voted with Ireland. _Trickery_ is here the only right word; but _trickery_ cannot in the long run support any cause. In this matter, as in several others, national indignation is ripening. Many old ways will have to be reversed, among which the treatment of the drink traffic has quite a leading place."

He then goes on to treat in detail of the pros and cons of Sir Wilfrid Lawson's Bill, and its principle of Popular Local Control; also of those of Mr. Joseph Cowen's Bill on the same subject, both belonging to the year in which he wrote his article on "Local Control of the Drink Traffic." And he proceeds to consider the two alternatives: the Permissive Popular Veto, and the Popular Control by an unfettered Licensing Board.

Later on Newman propounds his own opinion as to where the true remedy lies for the shocking state of public morality in connection with the drink traffic. Almost invariably his remedies for social evils are based on specialization. In this case he advises Licensing Boards in large towns.

He urges that each Board should have full power to frame its own restrictions, that "no Board should be numerous: _five_ or _seven_ persons may be a full maximum"; that each Board should be elective, "without power to bind their successors in the next year." "What shadow of reason," he asks, "is there for doubting that such sales as are necessary and inevitable will be far more sagaciously managed by a Local Board, which the ratepayers elect _for this sole purpose_, than either by magistrates who are irresponsible and do not suffer sensibly from the public vice, or by an _irresponsible_ or _mult.i.tudinous_ Committee of Parliament? Finally, a Board elected for this one duty is immeasurably better than the Town Councils, who are distracted by an immensity of other business."

It is not difficult to see that his suggestion for a local Licensing Board has a great deal that might be said for it. His idea as regards a Ward- Mote to settle difficulties in local self-government in the same way would deal first hand with difficulties. In both cases these local boards would obviate the necessity for the despatching of endless little Private Bills to a Parliament which really has not time to deal effectually with them.

Francis Newman certainly taught a truth which only gets more insistent as year succeeds year, that specialization is indeed the word of all others which holds within its letters in great measure "the healing of the nations," the simplifying of their puzzles.

As regards the rights and wrongs of making war, Newman asks, "Why does one murder make a villain, but the murder of thousands a hero?" And again, "Why do princes and statesmen, who would scorn to steal a s.h.i.+lling, make no difficulty in stealing a kingdom?"

Before calling this, as many an Englishman would not hesitate to do, a topsy-turvy morality, let us realize that sayings such as these really give us the true values of things as nothing else could. For there are more sins "in heaven and earth than are dreamt of" in a nation's cla.s.sified immoralities. Stealing a s.h.i.+lling is a recognized immorality, and as such the law of the land punishes the thief. Stealing a kingdom, however, is one of those national achievements which men justify to themselves as a patriotic feat, or, it may be, a necessity of empire, and it is not cla.s.sified among punishable offences at all. And then it is necessary to remember that many things that are indefensible when only a few do them, seem to become, by an extraordinary method of reasoning, regarded as allowable when so many people do them that a spurious public opinion and a decadent fas.h.i.+on is born, which shelters them and prevents the light of an unbia.s.sed judgment from showing up their shortcomings in morality. One has only to read up old records of the eighteenth century to see how slavery flourished in England among otherwise honourable men, and how public opinion condoned, nay, justified it to realize that public opinion regarded as _vox populi_, is often many spiritual leagues away from being _vox Dei_.

Newman's point of view regarding war and extension of territory was not the popular one:--

"There are many who believe that the time will come when no weapons of war shall be forged, and universal peace shall reign.... We also believe that a time will come when men will look back in wonder and pity on our present barbarism; a time at which to begin a war--unless previously justified by the verdict of an impartial tribunal, bound in honour to overlook what is partially expedient to their own nation or party--will be esteemed a high and dreadful crime.

"The 'Governments' will never initiate such inst.i.tutions until compelled by public opinion and by the inevitable pressure of circ.u.mstances, nor is any nation in the world yet ripe to put forth such pressure; otherwise it would not be difficult to devise a supreme court, or rather jury, which would put a totally new moral aspect on war." [Footnote: _Ethics of War_, Francis W. Newman.]

He goes on to say that a great many wars might have been avoided by us if we had been willing, which we are not, to submit to arbitration; and he urges that war should be "declared _in the Capital... with the formal a.s.sent of Lords and Commons_."

Under the present system, as he points out, when war is declared against any country, it is not a necessity, as it was in the fourteenth century, that Parliament should be applied to for consent and approval when the King of England wished to make war. Later, Henry V asked Parliament what it would advise in "matters of foreign embroilment"; and when the King of France wanted to make peace with him, he would do nothing in the matter until his _Parliament_ had told him "what will be most profitable and honourable to do in the matter."