True Manliness. Hughes Thomas
become case-hardened, and finding no particular ill effects from my previous escapades, I gave in in a weak moment to a tempting offer of Macmillan’s, and wrote ‘Tom Brown at Oxford,’ for his magazine. Moreover, I had now made a plunge into public life, and was one of the leaders of a semi-political party. This is how it came about: There had been roused in me lively sympathies with the Abolitionists, and I had followed eagerly the progress of events through the Fugitive Slave, and Free Soil agitations. There was no warmer sympathizer with Garrison and John Brown and Levi Coffin, in England; so when the Lincoln election came, and South Carolina led off the seceding states with jubilant applause of society in England, I went at once fiercely into the other camp. You may judge of the difficulty of getting our public men of note to take active sides with the North (tho’ many of them didn’t conceal their sympathy, and were ready to speak in Parliament, and write,) by the fact that I was about the most prominent speaker at the first great public meeting, which was held in London. This proved to be such an extraordinary success, that there was no further effort on the part of the jingoes (that name hadn’t yet been invented, but it was precisely the same party,) to demonstrate publicly in the metropolis. In other centres there was need of such work, and I went to Birmingham and Liverpool to speak and deliver lectures on the war and its causes and issues. It was supposed that there was to be a row at the latter place, which was the stronghold of the Rebels; but all went off quietly.
“It was mainly in consequence of these doings that I was asked by the working folk in South London to stand for Lambeth in 1865. I did so, and was brought in triumphantly at the head of the Poll, and almost all the expense paid by subscription. From that time I gradually gave up legal business, and in 1868 took silk, as it is called, i. e., became a Queen’s Counsel. In 1869 I wrote ‘Alfred the Great’ for Macmillan’s Sunday Series. I now made it my chief business to attend to Social-Political questions in Parliament; sat on two Trades Unions Commissions; got amendments to the Industrial and Friendly Societies Acts through the House, but never took to party politics.
“In 1870, as I hope you remember, I paid my delightful visit to America.
“In 1872 I lost my dear eldest brother, and soon after wrote the memoir of him for my family. Maurice also died, and I became Principal of the Workingmen’s College.
“Before the next election (1874) the Co-operative question had come to the front. The success of the Upper Class London Supply Societies [copies of our working-class Associations in their main principle and features] had roused the tradesmen throughout the country. I was a candidate for Marylebone, and was fiercely opposed by the tradesmen, and supported by the professional and working classes. There were three Liberal candidates for only two seats, so it was agreed to refer it to the Attorney General to say who should retire, and he decided that I had the worst chance of winning the seat (on one-sided and insufficient evidence, as my supporters maintained, and I think rightly). I therefore retired, and got no chance of entering that Parliament. For by this time the Trades Protection Society had been organized, to fight against neither small nor great, but only against those accursed revolutionists who had supported the Co-operative movement, and refused to flinch from it.
“So it happened that I was again thrown out at the election this year. I had consented, on the unanimous and unsolicited request of the Liberal party in Salisbury, to stand there, and all went well till just before the election, when the Trades Protective people permitted the party organization to throw me over. I doubt if I shall ever return to the House, as my views on the Church question make me an almost hopeless candidate in the North of England, and my support of Co-operation a perfectly hopeless one at present in the South. I care, however, very little about it, having plenty to do outside in keeping irons hot, especially that most interesting of all my irons, the Tennessee settlement, which I hope to keep very hot indeed, and look upon as about the most hopeful of the many New Jerusalems which have attracted me during my pilgrimage. I am off to open Chapter II. of that Romance [Chapter I., the getting the titles clear, buying the land, &c., having taken some two years.] on the 12th of next month, and I can’t tell you how much my heart is in it.
“And so end my confessions. The only other points of interest, omitted above, are the publication of the ‘Old Church,’ in 1877, when the disestablishment movement began to get serious, and ‘The Manliness of Christ,’ this Spring, (1880), which latter has been already republished on your side in four different forms; and lastly, my share in the Volunteer movement, which I joined at its start in 1859. The Workingmen’s College raised a corps of two companies at once, of which, after serving for a few weeks as private, I was made Captain. It soon swelled into a regiment, the 19th Middlesex, of which I became Colonel, and served in it twelve years.”
I
THE conscience of every man recognizes courage as the foundation of true manliness, and manliness as the perfection of human character, and if Christianity runs counter to conscience in this matter, or indeed in any other, Christianity will go to the wall.
But does it? On the contrary, is not perfection of character – “Be ye perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect,” perfection to be reached by moral effort in the faithful following of our Lord’s life on earth – the final aim which the Christian religion sets before individual men, and constant contact and conflict with evil of all kinds the necessary condition of that moral effort, and the means adopted by our Master in the world in which we live, and for which he died? In that strife, then, the first requisite is courage or manfulness, gained through conflict with evil – for without such conflict there can be no perfection of character, the end for which Christ says we were sent into this world.
II
“Manliness and manfulness” are synonymous, but they embrace more than we ordinarily mean by the word “courage;” for instance, tenderness and thoughtfulness for others. They include that courage which lies at the root of all manliness, but is, in fact, only its lowest or rudest form. Indeed, we must admit that it is not exclusively a human quality at all, but one which we share with other animals, and which some of them – for instance the bulldog and weasel – exhibit with a certainty and a thoroughness, which is very rare amongst mankind.
In what, then, does courage, in this ordinary sense of the word, consist? First, in persistency, or the determination to have one’s own way, coupled with contempt for safety and ease, and readiness to risk pain or death in getting one’s own way. This is, let us readily admit, a valuable, even a noble quality, but an animal quality rather than a human or manly one. Proficiency in athletic games is not necessarily a test even of animal courage, but only of muscular power and physical training. Even in those games which, to some extent, do afford a test of the persistency, and contempt for discomfort or pain, which constitute animal courage – such as rowing, boxing, and wrestling – it is of necessity a most unsatisfactory one. For instance, Nelson – as courageous an Englishman as ever lived, who attacked a Polar bear with a handspike when he was a boy of fourteen, and told his captain, when he was scolded for it, that he did not know Mr. Fear – with his slight frame and weak constitution, could never have won a boat-race, and in a match would have been hopelessly astern of any one of the crew of his own barge; and the highest courage which ever animated a human body would not enable the owner of it, if he were himself untrained, to stand for five minutes against a trained wrestler or boxer.
Athleticism is a good thing if kept in its place, but it has come to be very much over-praised and over-valued amongst us.
True manliness is as likely to be found in a weak as in a strong body. Other things being equal, we may perhaps admit (though I should hesitate to do so) that a man with a highly-trained and developed body will be more courageous than a weak man. But we must take this caution with us, that a great athlete may be a brute or a coward, while a truly manly man can be neither.
III
Let us take a few well-known instances of courageous deeds and examine them; because, if we can find out any common quality in them we shall have lighted on something which is of the essence of, or inseparable from, that manliness which includes courage – that manliness of which we are in search.
I will take two or three at hazard from a book in which they abound, and which was a great favorite some years ago, as I hope it is still, I mean Napier’s Peninsular