A.D. 1869.]

DISTRUST OF DOLES.

95

the person claiming it, without value given or a sense of gratitude in return.

A thoughtful, wise observation this, founded on wide, practical experience of philanthropic work, yet one which, in however many minds it may win assent, finds too rare expression in these days, when so much is heard of schemes for the endowment by the State of pauperism and old age. Throughout his life this was the keynote of Smith's code of charity: a liberal giver when the need for gifts was clear to him, he always showed an alert distrust of doles, and never subscribed to any fund, or gave to any beggar, without satisfying himself, often by protracted inquiry, into the merits of each case. A very large part-wellnigh a halfof so much of his correspondence as has been preserved (other than that on political affairs) consists of letters asking for help and answers to inquiries about the applicants. Many years after this debate on pauperism, his friend, Sir Henry Acland of Oxford, happened to mention to Smith that he was about to part with a yacht which he had owned for some years and took great delight in. Smith dissuaded him from doing so, because it was so good for Sir Henry's health and such an amusement for his children.

'Well, but I have come to think it selfish to spend so much on yachting,” replied Sir Henry; "my children are all married, it is chiefly for my own gratification that I keep the yacht, and I feel that the money she costs ought, in part at least, to be devoted to charity."

"Charity!" exclaimed Smith, firing up in a way very unusual to him,-"how much mischief has been done in the name of charity! Don't you see that so long as you keep your yacht, you employ Matthews, your captain, and the crew, who would, if you discharged them, lose, not only their employment, but the enjoyment of good clothes, recreation, music, and other means of culture which you pro

vide for them? In a national sense, if you withdraw this fund from wages and give it in charity, I firmly believe you will by so much be doing harm instead of good. Charity is often most mischievous."

He spoke very earnestly, and Sir Henry had rarely heard him open out so much on any subject. Touching this matter of almsgiving, it may be noted here how many and various were the applications which flowed in upon Smith as his wealth increased and his name became better known. Sometimes the appeals were for thousands of pounds, at other times for a few shillings; both were treated alike, careful inquiry was made into the circumstances, and the reply depended-not on the amount asked for, but the grounds on which it was asked. Thus Miss Giberne, a constant and valued correspondent of Smith's, once wrote to him about a hawker who drove "the dearest little donkey you ever saw," but wanted to sell it and his cart on the plea of necessity. Probably the man saw in the kindhearted lady who petted and fed his donkey the prospect of disposing of his live and rolling stock to good advantage; nor was he far out in his calculations, for Miss Giberne suggested that Smith should buy the equipage. But both had left out of account Smith's inflexible observance of principle in the smallest things, and this was his goodnatured answer :

Dec. 16, 1876.

Why should I buy a donkey and a cart-yet? I do not propose to start as a costermonger-yet, but I may come to it, and then I will try to take care of the donkey.

At the present moment there are two horses and one pony retired from work on the premises; one or two must be shot presently, to save them from the miseries consequent on inability to work or having no work to do. There are three other ponies of the past generation, their carts and one chaise, with little more than healthy work for one, and there is a very fat and heavy boy to attend to them. What place is there for the donkey?

There would be nothing for it but to put him to death-out of kindness lest he should be ill-treated-stuff him and place him and

A.D. 1869.]

THE IRISH CHURCH.

97

his cart on the lawn under a canopy, with an inscription commemorating your sympathy and affection for animals, and my weakness in yielding to it.-Ever yours afftly.,

W. H. SMITH, The Hard Man.

There is no record of how Smith dealt with another claimant on his bounty who bore these credentials:

The bearer of this is an earnest Christian young man. He is at present employed in a wine-cellar, an occupation altogether unsuited to his tastes now that he has become a new man in Christ Jesus.

And there must have been some conflict between benevolence and prudence in dealing with the following application:

Sir i wish to know weither you are in want of a lad as i am in want of a Situation. yesterday i see there was an advertisment in the times for two youths to write a good hand i wish to know sir weither my hand writing will suit you sir i have been used to the newspaper office for 3 years but has never leant Writeing the covers sir i think with a little improvement i should suit you.

Smith avoided falling into the error of speaking too often in the House. He spoke on one other occasion only during his first session—the debate on the bill enabling the Postmaster-General to acquire the whole of the telegraphs in the country. He had been for some years a director of an electric telegraph company, and supported the bill, though he showed that the terms on which these concerns were to be ceded to the Government were by no means so overliberal as the opponents of the measure tried to prove.1

Every minor question was overshadowed during the session of 1869 by the discussions on the bill to disestablish and disendow the Irish Church. This was moved by Mr Gladstone on March 1. Public interest was intensified to a degree beyond what even so radical a measure might have

1 One of the arguments used by Mr Torrens against the proposed transaction was founded on what he considered Mr Scudamore's extravagance in estimating the number of telegrams to be dealt with by the General Post Office in the course of a year at 11,200,000. In 1892 they amounted to 69,685,480.

G

evoked, by the enormous wealth of the corporation which was the subject of attack, and by speculation as to the disposal of the spoil. The property of the Church was estimated at sixteen millions, of which the bill disposed of £8,650,000 by providing for vested interests, lay compensation, private endowments, commutation of the Maynooth Grant and Regium Donum, &c., the free surplus remaining being between seven and eight millions. Mr Gladstone's speech explaining the proposals of the Government occupied three hours in delivery, and, as has always been the case in the perorations of his most destructive orations, he brought his arguments to a close by introducing some metaphor of great force and elegance, and the expression of confidence that the greatest advantage would accrue to the object of his attack.

Disraeli, who rose immediately after him, bore willing tribute to the eloquence to which the House had been listening. The second reading was carried by a majority of 118, the motion for going into Committee by 126, and the third reading by 114. These crushing majorities enabled the Government to send the bill up to the House of Lords in much the same state as when it was first laid on the table of the Commons.

The interest which gathered round the debates on this measure in the House of Commons was transferred to those in the Upper Chamber after Whitsuntide. Would the Lords throw out the bill, as they had in the previous year thrown out Mr Gladstone's Suspensory Bill, or would they recognise in this juncture one of "those rare and great occasions on which the national will has fully declared itself," when, as the Marquis of Salisbury had laid down, it was the duty of the House of Lords to yield to the opinion of the country?

Lord Granville moved the second reading of the Irish Church Bill on June 14, and the debate which ensued was

A.D. 1869.]

BISHOP MAGEE'S SPEECH.

99

chiefly remarkable for the speech delivered by the Bishop of Peterborough (Dr Magee) against it, which has since remained in the memory of those who heard it as one of the most impressive orations in modern times.1 He concluded his resistance to the proposal for disendowment in the following memorable and profound sentences:

You will always observe in history that corporate property is always the first to be attacked in all great democratic revolutions. Especially is this so in the case of ecclesiastical corporate property, because ecclesiastical corporations for the most part are very wealthy, and at the same time are very weak. . . . Revolutions commence with sacrilege, and they go on to communism; or to put it in the more gentle and euphemistic language of the day, revolutions begin with the Church and go on to the land.

...

The course of the speech was marked by outbursts of applause in the Strangers' Gallery, a breach of parliamentary decorum which, unusual in the highest degree in either Chamber, is peculiarly at variance with the staid and impassive atmosphere of the House of Lords. Lord Derby, in opposing the second reading, took up those weapons which the Bishop of Peterborough had flung aside, and took his stand on the Treaty of Union and the Coronation Oath; whereas the Marquis of Salisbury condemned such arguments as "involving the inexpressible absurdity that an oath taken in the days of Adam may have lasted to this time, binding the whole human race under circumstances absolutely different from those of the Paradisiacal period, and that the duties of mankind may have been settled for ever by the act of one single individual at that time, and we might never be able to escape from them."

1 A certain well-known Scottish baronet, a Liberal, then in Parliament, noted rather for the force than for the length of his contributions to conversation, rode into the Park after listening to Bishop Magee's speech. A friend inquired if it had been a success, and what line of argument had been pursued. "Oh," said Sir Robert Anstruther, "it was the finest thing you ever heard. He said that Gladstone had appealed to them in the name of the Almighty to vote for the bill, but that for his part he would be d d if he did so."