I feel from day to day how thoroughly I could have enjoyed a sojourn in this country if I had come here without any line of duty laid down for myself. Could I have swum with the stream and have said yes or no as yes or no were expected, I might have revelled in generous hospitality. Nothing can be pleasanter than the houses here if you will only be as idle as the owners of them. But when once you show them that you have an object, they become afraid of you. And industry—in such houses as I now speak of—is a crime. You are there to glide through the day luxuriously in the house—or to rush through it impetuously on horseback or with a gun if you be a sportsman. Sometimes, when I have asked questions about the most material institutions of the country, I have felt that I was looked upon with absolute loathing. This is disagreeable.
And yet I find it more easy in this country to sympathise with the rich than with the poor. I do not here describe my own actual sympathies, but only the easiness with which they might be evoked. The rich are at any rate pleasant. The poor are very much the reverse. There is no backbone of mutiny in them against the oppression to which they are subjected; but only the whining of a dog that knows itself to be a slave and pleads with his soft paw for tenderness from his master;—or the futile growlings of the caged tiger who paces up and down before his bars and has long ago forgotten to attempt to break them. They are a long-suffering race, who only now and then feel themselves stirred up to contest a point against their masters on the basis of starvation. “We won’t work but on such and such terms, and, if we cannot get them, we will lie down and die.” That I take it is the real argument of a strike. But they never do lie down and die. If one in every parish, one in every county, would do so, then the agricultural labourers of the country might live almost as well as the farmers’ pigs.
I was present the other day at the opening of Parliament. It was a very grand ceremony—though the Queen did not find herself well enough to do her duty in person. But the grandeur was everything. A royal programme was read from the foot of the throne, of which even I knew all the details beforehand, having read them in the newspapers. Two opening speeches were then made by two young lords—not after all so very young—which sounded like lessons recited by schoolboys. There was no touch of eloquence—no approach to it. It was clear that either of them would have been afraid to attempt the idiosyncrasy of passionate expression. But they were exquisitely dressed and had learned their lessons to a marvel. The flutter of the ladies’ dresses, and the presence of the peers, and the historic ornamentation of the house were all very pleasant;—but they reminded me of a last year’s nut, of which the outside appearance has been mellowed and improved by time—but the fruit inside has withered away and become tasteless.
Since that I have been much interested with an attempt—a further morsel of cobbling—which is being done to improve the representation of the people. Though it be but cobbling, if it be in the right direction one is glad of it. I do not know how far you may have studied the theories and system of the British House of Commons, but, for myself, I must own that it was not till the other day that I was aware that, though it acts together as one whole, it is formed of two distinct parts. The one part is sent thither from the towns by household suffrage; and, this, which may be said to be the healthier of the two as coming more directly from the people, is nevertheless disfigured by a multitude of anomalies. Population hardly bears upon the question. A town with 15,000 inhabitants has two members—whereas another with 400,000 has only three, and another with 50,000 has one. But there is worse disorder than this. In the happy little village of Portarlington 200 constituents choose a member among them, or have one chosen for them by their careful lord;—whereas in the great city of London something like 25,000 registered electors only send four to Parliament. With this the country is presumed to be satisfied. But in the counties, which by a different system send up the other part of the House, there exists still a heavy property qualification for voting. There is, apparent to all, a necessity for change here;—but the change proposed is simply a reduction of the qualification, so that the rural labourer—whose class is probably the largest, as it is the poorest, in the country—is still disfranchised, and will remain so, unless it be his chance to live within the arbitrary line of some so-called borough. For these boroughs, you must know, are sometimes strictly confined to the aggregations of houses which constitute the town, but sometimes stretch out their arms so as to include rural districts. The divisions I am assured were made to suit the aspirations of political magnates when the first Reform Bill was passed! What is to be expected of a country in which such absurdities are loved and sheltered?
I am still determined to express my views on these matters before I leave England, and am with great labour preparing a lecture on the subject. I am assured that I shall not be debarred from my utterances because that which I say is unpopular. I am told that as long as I
