A DREAM OF ENGLAND (continued 3)

Performing our own jobs of mending, we have released a whole army of small hand-to-mouth trades. This is economical; indeed, at the price “little labour” demanded it was imperative, and since it has become a habit nobody grumbles. Home exercises of prudence and economy fill up moments which grow to be hours otherwise wasted. An effect this has had is remarkable; it has been the cause of greater, not less independence of self-reliance which tells upon character. We are very wary of men of law like Napoleon; we mistrust them as we mistrust all sophists. We do not care for them as members of our Councils; we use them as referees, not as helmsmen. The man of law goes round and round in a circle in equal distance from the centre, he avoids the centre. We like the guilty punished, but we do not like that he gets off on a point of law when the man who got him off knows perfectly well he is guilty, this is playing with Justice, not administering it.

§ 59

“We admit that a reasonable profit is justifiable on the sale of all goods, but the Great War taught us that tradesmen profited enormously upon our evil times. We might grow hungry, but they must profit by it; and it was men of our own class who did this mercilessly. This has made us beware of tradesmen, so we have put spokes in their wheels which they do not like, and finding they can ‘rook’ us no longer, they have gone to work on the land, which is better for their health and morals and for the country at large.” So spoke a workman—mind, a workman, not a capitalist!!

Another said, “Directly we saw straight, and viewed the horizon clearly, we knew we had power, and we set ourselves to use it rightly, and chose leaders who would help us. We do not intend to go back, we mean to go forward, and show the country that it may have confidence in us. We are learning to rule ourselves, hence we may claim a place among legislators. We know that a bad servant cannot make a good master. The old Trades Union masters could not become statesmen because they taught that “bad work is good for Trade,” than which nothing can be a greater fallacy.”

§ 60

A nation progresses, even survives, only on good work. It is ruined by bad! Since we are rid of bad leaders, the outlook on life is extended fourfold. The new Lay Order, being composed of a great variety of minds, some passive (as scholars and teachers must be, in a measure) active and alert, physically and mentally, leaves no subject of education, high as well as simple, untouched. Among this disinterested community there exists no struggle for precedence. Each man regards himself as an item of the nation’s wants, and strives to advance them in due order and without prejudice. Hence we have the men of letters, the Artist (inclusive) and Scientist working under the banner of Justice, hand-in-hand with the ploughman. The order is coming to be the root of all education.

§ 61

It is referred to by Village as well as City “Teachers.” It has become a kind of university, a source from which spring many small streams irrigating deserts that were unproductive. When started, the scheme was considered Utopian; a mere fad, and the men who framed its first principles were “Dreamers”—Poets, if you like, but unpractical. In a short time it became evident that far from being unpractical they were the reverse. They, seeing chaos, sought to achieve Kosmos. Success, hitherto gained, has been due to the touch created with an almost infinite variety of occupations and interests, which, while being local, are also national. They came at exactly the right moment, when a great upheaval threatened the very existence of England. By personal influence, direct and circumspect, they are doing for the country what the politician can never do, or statesman achieve, even if they are gifted with “Imagination.”

§ 62

Theories were abundant, practice now prevails. So sure is the growth of practical education that those who thought in grooves, now think broadly; hence they are not easily misled. The effort of each Commune is not to make new laws, but to enforce a few already made which, protecting every class, are not limited to one pre-eminently. It is said, “We got tired of Government which, to save their seats, listened to the last popular clamour, and toyed with transient public needs and opinions; which listened to the discontented and tried to appease them by promises which they knew they could not fulfil. We see through that paradox! We were tired to death of ‘The Plain Man,’ the obstinate ignorant utilitarian. We don’t want the kind of man who prevailed, who, to lay a B line of tramways, would, if he could, pull down the sacred trusts left to us by creative master minds. We do not want the kind of man who, for the sake of ‘Rents,’ would build factories or cheap houses on every open space, the ‘lungs of our Cities.’ We do not want the man who looks upon every fair garden to destroy it and erect ‘Flats’; who would float a company with promises of 10 per cent. when the capital is mostly on paper.”

§ 63

Once upon a time an ex-Lord Mayor was surprised to hear an expression of disgust at a proposal to convert Westminster Abbey into a railway terminus. “We don’t want that kind of Mayor or ex-Mayor; we regard him as a savage.” Excellent John Bright! Your study of the style of the Bible and Milton made you an orator, but not a wise man when you expressed a hope that Industrialism would so prevail that smoky chimneys should be everywhere as a sign of Wealth! You saw as a sectarian, narrowly and ill! The beauty of our English lake scenery would no longer exist if “The Plain Man” had had his way. The banks of the Thames near to Chiswick, that precious bit of rural Suburban London, was saved from destruction, but only just saved.

The promoters of the scheme held out plausible hopes to “The People,” but were outwitted, thank Heaven, and the King’s Meadows were saved. Had it succeeded Chiswick would have been under a smoke cloud, and we should have said good-bye to the health and beauty of what is still the most charming suburb of our grim, chaotic, dirty Metropolis. How to treat London as a whole, is under consideration. It will probably be broken up into self-governing sections. Much of it will have to be pulled down and rearranged. Open spaces will be increased. Public opinion will not, in these days of its greater enlightenment, be the slave of Jerry-builders or Companies that, for the sake of high interest, erected Pig-styes and called them dwellings. It is proposed to break London up, to equalise the number of the population in every district, and not to permit their extension in the future. One scheme I heard in my dream is to divide Central London from its suburbs by a zone, entirely free of buildings, which shall be one vast productive garden. It is thought to be a practicable scheme, in point of fact, the simplest yet suggested. The total abolition of the Smoke Fiend and the consequent clean and healthy air now enjoyed, and the quantity of sunlight being doubled, experts say there is no reason to doubt the healthy growth of fruit and vegetables in the proposed rural zone. Within Central London only such factories will be permitted which are entirely free from nuisance, disorder, bad smells or smoke of any kind whatever. A plan is being thought out to heat Central London by electricity upon the same system so successfully applied to the New City.

§ 64

It is determined already that from London Bridge to Richmond Bridge no factories will be permitted on the banks of our splendid river. Imagination will supply a vision of what our river might be then. Clear water, heaps of good fish, even salmon and trout, a place for pageants, a healthy playground for the people and as beautiful a river as any in Europe.

Centralization has received its death blow. Home rule, including all responsibilities, has taken the place of a gigantic mistake. Each County now rules itself. Only the best and most reliable men are in a position of power. Class legislation is at an end. The rich have no more power than the poor. The great or main effort of New England is to level up. That desirable object, indeed more than desirable, indispensable object, can only be attained by extending enlightenment, and to do so the whole nation is now of one voice. To sharpen our wits, as well as our tools, to enlarge the boundaries of our outlook, and to maintain simplicity. Not to be time-servers, but to recognise the debt we owe to aftercomers, and never to forget that we are trustees, not only of the moment, but for the future. To put big things before small. To realise, and profoundly, that every poor as well as rich man is a responsible agent; that responsibility is equal if different; the rich to use their money well, the poor to earn honourable wages for honourable toil. Never to forget that all labour is honourable, if well and honestly executed; and that idleness and living upon the savings of our neighbours is a crime against Society. Above all, to bear in mind that the Soul of a Nation must not be forgotten. Upon the purity of its conduct, the elevation of its Ideals, carried into effect by constant and the highest efforts, a nation keeps itself on the high road to dignity and prosperity. To do this we must choose our guides, not from platforms on Clapham Common, but from every class which, having learnt the lesson of “Self-Rule,” is in a position to lead others to attain it, and so to proceed with the delicate task of ruling others.

The foregoing statements are becoming truisms, so universal are they becoming. And hence a Democracy is a possibility, even a probability, as it is certainly the most consistent form of Government. To attain it discord must cease! The discord which followed the Great War was more dangerous to Britain than its great enemy, Germany. But, if that discord is resolved into a concord, deplorable as it seemed to be, it will have worked for good. The motto of the New England is an ancient Benedictine proverb:⁠—

“Laborare est Orare.”

And so ends my Dream, which, when I woke, I thought might some day grow to be a Reality.

§ 65

I can find no nobler words in all literature with which to end than the prayer of Socrates, spoken at the end of the “Phædrus”:⁠—

“Beloved Pan, and all ye other gods who haunt this place, give me beauty in the inward soul; and may the outward and inward man be one. May I reckon the Wise to be the Wealthy, and may I have such a quantity of gold as none but the temperate can bear and carry. Anything more? That prayer, I think, is enough for me. Let us go.” (From Jowett’s Translation.)

THE END.