APOPHTHEGMATIZATIONS.

NZ Truth, Issue 93, 30 March 1907, Page 1

APOPHTHEGMATIZATIONS.

(By JOHN NORTON.)

Gladstone : Prophet and Politician.

BRITONS WORSHIP GRAVEN

• ■ ■IMAGES. •• I Although: it' is much the mob fashSon of Britons to bow down before brazen images set up by modern Nebuohadtiezzfirs, praising prominent people. will not made Demi-gods of them any more than the puffing of politicians will xbafce parfcriots of them. As a politician, the proper, place has already been : assigned to Gladstone : a place neither so prominent nor popular as "that prophesied for him by party prophets. His position among statesmen is already a matter of some dubiety, and it is not certain that the lapse of 'time will diminish ;ifche. doubt. As a prophet, . /'^iadstpae made a miserable .^niull "(of matters, und has reputation as" a seer rests upon even a shaMer Foundation- than his reputation as a statesman.' G-ladstone as a political prophet, m atVleast one most memorable matter, tyrned out to be a monstrous and mpnumentel miscarriage. lie' 1 - iii only" < ' ptopjhesied before he L Mew, but he prophesied as his personal interests and party prejudices prompted, and, consequently, he Came a ;catastrophical, "cropper." •■•_■■•■ \•■ • • • GLADSTONE FAVORS SECESSION AND SLAVERY. It is now nearly fifty years since the outbreak of the Secession or Slavery war between the Northern, and Southern States of the American Republic. Gladstone was then a prominent poiaitieiaayof promise, m the prime of ljfe. He took to prophesying- oh the- issue Nof that great struggle— the greatest and most costly, whether, measured by expenditure of blood and treasure, or by its influence on! the destinies of mankind, that the #orld ever saw— greater, probably,' than any struggle that the world will ever see. He not only expected, corisideri'hjEt his family's slayefortuhe .and his -. own personal proslavery predilections ; he, sympathised . with the Confederate Cause m ths Southern States; which -was that of Slavery. M 18-63 Gladstone declared that . Jefferson! -Davis h&d made, an army, arid more/than; npde ; a nation. . Those who wish to' stu<%; the ci'roum J :/ stances under- which Gladstone thus glorified, Slaverv'-. and ! a' wretched wastrel • like- Jeff-^Davisv can do so by ■reference to vdliime 11^ of Justin McCarthy's "History ;pf Our Own Times."*: ; : ■■• ■•■ ' - '*■.. ■■■■ . ' ->»■ ; * GLADSTONE STANDS FOR SLAVERY. It is no palliation of Gladstone's perversity and failure as a propjhet to point ; out that he prophesied falsely m very ,. good.. company. As <a matter of plain,.. . positive. fa"ct, he prophesied m very bad company ; he was m the company of .the old mercenary mercantile Whigs, who wanted Slavery to., win . so that they could have cheap rplave-growii cotton to keep the .mills . of Lancashire and Yorkshire going on starvation wages to the factory hands ■, whose lot w^s worse than that of negro, slaves. He was, furthermore, with tlie ignorant and brutal beer-rsoaked mob of England, who believed and „ .bellowed v then, pretty, much, as they believe and bellow how, as the broadsheets of boodle bade .them— and so they "bawled iot slavery and Jefi Davis, and damned ./President Lincoln, and applauded his bloody, brutal assassin, Wilkes Booth, as -a hero. Gladstone was,- further more, m accord With the traditions of his family and fortune. The Gladstones had #rown rich and respectable on the damnable- business of black slavery, and he was hot only studying his own personal and pecuniary prejudices and interests, but was cunningly, contriving to make his political opinions coincide wi%, arid conform to, the opinions of those of the' great plutocratic "push" of merchants 'and manufacturers, tfhq, even more then than now, were, by means of their money, the managing manipulators of the political affairs ofc England. ■ '•* '♦ ' * GLADSTONE PROPHESIES THE SUCCESS OF SLAVERY. Besides, Gladstone, always knew on w*ich . ; side his political btead was buifctefed, wished to stana well with the Whigs, wlio comprised the great ian4-&r*bMl^ bowse? of

1 the Protestant' Reformation', which I had rot&ed the people, and left them, and kept them poor,. Besides these Whig landlords, there were the Whig, professional politicians, Who worked the Parliamentary machine for the benefit of the Whigs and their relations, prominent am Orig these being Lord Joihn Russell, Lord 1 Palmerston; Sir James Graham, Sir G. Cornewall Lewis, Sir Robert Peel, and a whple -host of lesser lights, who preyed upon the people by permission of the.Wh'iigs. under the guise of pat-rir otic politicians. ,It was with this particular political ''push" that Gladstone idewtMied himself after :<he had ratted from the Tories, who had, first put him into Parliament as a nominee' for one of their rotten boroughs. In prophesying the success of Slavery, Gladstone did not stand alone, .'but m publicly' sympathising with it, as ' he did, he enjoyed an, unenviable and solitary pre-eminence of infamy. Sir George Cornewall Lewis, one- of- the old ■gung of "pffibial Whigs, whose sympathies Were! said tp have been with the North against the South, had declared two years frefpre Gladstone made his plutocratic prophecy, i.e., m 1&&1, that, "their (the North's) true policy was to negotiate with the South, and re-, cognise the Secession . ' ' There sgoke ' a false, but nevertheless, a sincere prophet, who spoke as he felt, and not as -his personal predictions and political ambitions prompted. • '< *■■■■■-,•.-■ i:gladstone with t&e mob and the Monopolists. , \As Professor Pearson points out m reference to these old Whig prophecies of the success of Slavery : We now know, that the North was certain from the first to win, /if it was only ixm to itself-; and ihat though. Wtr.lJavis created an army he was powerless to do more. These mistaken' forecasts by'emi■rienti statesmen were, habitually m accord with public opinion ; and the general estimate of what is about to happen is as likely as not to be curiously unwise. The English press, with very few exceptions, was as wrong 'in its judgment of the American war as Mr, Gladstone. Just so ; but Professor Pearson fails to point out how it was that there was such an identity of opinion be- . tween the press' and the politician. This identity was the result of a. similarity of interests and predilections. As already stated, the Gladstones had grown rich and respectable on the profits of slave-grown sugar, and the pliitish press ; of the day had been started or subsidised by the great cotton kings of Lancashire and Yorkshire; Who were. with Gladstone and the Whigs m whooping for the 1 South and' Jeff Davis" during the war of . Secession simply because it ■' brought them cheap cotton for their factories, jijst as they whooped later for Gladstone's form of fiscalism, miscalled Freetrade, simply becuse they thought Freetrade meant cheap food; for their underpaid halfstarved factoryv "hands," whose lot was worse than that of the American or West Indian plantation slaves. '** . * GLADSTONE A CRAFTY OPPORTUNIST, Besides, Gladstone never was the original propounder of a great re r form, nor the pioneer of a good cause. He, was ' always m the reactionary rear until he saw the time had come to rush to the front, cheer m the van, and, jackal-like,' claim a share of the spoils after the pyey had been stalked and pulled down. This was Gladstone's game all through his life. Fiscal and electoral reforms had to be pioneered by Colonel Thompson, Villiers, Ebenezer Elliot, and Peel, and by Russelland Grey, before Gladstone could be got to look at' them. In like manner, the abolition of the Newspaper Duty and Stamp Acts, and the reform and economy m public expenditure, had to be proposed and pioneered by such men as Joseph Hume, Huskisson, and other Radicals and advanced Whigs of the day, just as the Abolition of Slavery m Britain possessions had to be advocated and effected by such men as Clarkson and Wilberforce against the ccld, callous contempt, if -not active opposition, of suohi slave-sugar-coated gold-bugs as the Gladstones. The great, the good A the glorious Glad-

NO. XT.

stone . had nothing.; -to do : with £<aw^* ,and. Prison Reforrh; and the ihi#g# i '*~ tiotr of the monstrous,, murderous. Criminal Code .0? Englftird'^. : T^ese 1 '■] great : reforms were effected by. Howard, Elizabeth Fry, and Sir Samuel \ Rbmilly. . !R©milly, as a law,. reform-, j ci, was a.^jgreat arid good man. '< -Neyer.thelessawjfe..- went, mad, and. repentantly his brains- out, through decejffc: remorse at the disgraceful part" he played m the dastardly conspiracy concocted against j Lord Byron by his black-hearted, bad-breathed, bluestocking of Ma i wife without a smile' I—or1 — or anything., else sweet about her— With a lot of - ; looting lawyers, of whom Romilly \ made one, to ruin and drive mad .the ( brightest man of genius of his day and' generation. ' . CHRISTIAN CHAMPIONS OF WHITE SLAVERY. ,; Such was Gladstpne's attitude to- : wards these sweeping reform's, which ' relieved millions of Englishmen from ' oppressive taxation and .outrageous restrictions. What Gladstone was pri such vital questions as Fiscal Reform,, he was- on the still more vital, questions of industrial reform. When the workers of England found the grip of the land nwmopolising Lords loosening, and that of the .;laborsweating manufacturing monopolists tightened upon them, they realised that, m pass-ing from the oppression of the aristocrats to tliat of the plutocrats, they were jumping out of the frying-pan into the lire. The mouthpieces Of * these white-slaye-sweatihg manufacturing monopolists were Cobden, Bright, and Gladstone,' three of the, most truculent and treacherous political pimps of plutocracy against democracy that the monstrous regimen •■ of the Old Whigs ever evolved m: England. ■ It was Cobden and Bright, the two fanatical Freetraders, and Gladstone, the son arid heir of a rich sugarslave driver; .who, were the ringleaders! m. Parliament and: on-, the. platform against all reforms intended to ameliorate the social condition, and mitigate the hardships of the industrial position, Of the White Slayes of England-. Freedom and- justice were good things for Black : Men and Women and Children abroad engaged m the comparatively healthy open air business of sugar-growing, amd fairly well fed and housed like their masters' valuable horses and dogs ; but Freedom and Justice were not good for White Men, Women and Children employed under the most horribly insanitary conditions m the vitiated, mephitic atmosphere of pent-up, di-sease-breeding, death-dealing factories and workshops, foundries, and mines, working fourteen and sixteen hours a. day, and housed m hovels worse than pig-styes, and ; fed on muck; miscalled food, that would have turned s the stomach of a well-bred, 'decently-fed liog. It was m * their resistance to social and industrial, reform such as these that Cobden, Bright, and Gladstone headed the opposition to the really great and good Lord. Shaftesbury, when he sought to. ameliorate the condition of, The White Slaves of England. . ' . -.*■'.-.• "■ .*■ .»'• .-, ■ SHAFTESBURY'S SCHEME - OF < SOCIAL REFORM. Now what was there -m . Lprd f Shaftesbury'.s scheme of Social Reform that should \ have made •it the object of ,:the biitterest ' opposition on the part of such social Saviours as Richard Cobden and John Bright, and of such a gallant reformer : as' William Ewart Gladstone? Was :it ; revolutionary ? Yes. Was it Social- '. istic ? Yes. Was it Christian?) Yes. In the sense o!f seeking to sue- i cour and save weak women and de- ■ fenceless children from v the damnable i despotism of such mercenary and ( murderous manufacturing monopolists as Cobden and Bright, and from the slave-condoning casuistry and political ' perfidity pf a . slave-sugar-ooated "statesman " like Gladstone, the reforms proposed by Shaftesbury, ' and ultimately carried by him and his coadjutors, were Revolutionary, ' Socialistic, and Christian. Yet sanctimonious " snifflebuslering " ] saints like Cobden and Bright and J champions of Church and ■ State like Gladstone, bitterly opposed them be- ; cause they interfered with " the liberty of the . subject," i:e., they interfered with the right of Cobden '' and Bright 's commercial and manufacturing friends, and of Gladstone's plutocratic and political pals, to ov- ' erwork, underpay and underfeed . White Men and Women and Child- J ren m Christian England m a man- ' ncr to which no" nigger-driving," ] plantation slave-owner would, for reasons of mere pocket-prudence, permit himself to treat his slaves. ( The fact of the matter is that ] Cobden and Bright were the ■ champions of the newly-born manu- 1 facturing monopolies brought about ( by steam and labor 'saving appliances, and which were making miflionaries { of a few men, while making paupers j of millions of their fellow countrymen. Gladstone, who was on the side ! of big man and boodle as a- ' painst small men and poverty (so ' long as it suited him) was, by his J interested sympathy with Black , 1 Slavery, instinctively on the side of ( Cobden and Bright and White Slavery. and m opposition with them tp some of tfie more sane and salutary social reforms of the Earl of Shaftesbury.

'l\' r ' ' 'm*t.^sss^w*v •- v ■-•,■.■■ ;) Sobial; ; a^^^#^^/^nglaM ho^'ieep feafe. : Wlih political "progress: aii3, ' as 1 h^- bfeen p^ifited'rout, "Social Equalisation was;' riot synonymous" with' Social 'Amelibration." The curtailment pf aristocratic privilege, and the spread -off , fa'aterial luxurr. did not bring.; the; millennium any neafet " to • thtf.'hiasses, who, from the mild despotism of the peer; passed to the terriifjle tyranny of the plutocrat. Describing- :t|.e,:/sOcial conditions • which^ ; suryivted i-unto Lord Shaftesbuty's,, • .timfe^i^-and against which he was struggiinl;, ;the anonymous author of "Collections ,and Re- i collections".' observes j The pubUc/'cptisc^ revolted against Jviolfence^aiid 'brutality. Tho prize^ting', ■ pktrpnised .by Royalty, Was'at itV:.ifenithi\ ; Humanitariiins and philanthropists .were as yet: ah -obscure and . ridiculpd* setet; . '■ 'Tj&e .'slave - trade^ though mfenac'edi was .'stiil /undisturbed-. - , Under a system<^cai\;e!^; distinguishabJe •from slavery, ■ pa,i[ip'e,t,bhildren were bound .; pyer to the owners of ; faotories,. and subjected■'.. to . tlie^ , utniost rigci.\ of: , enforced labor; Tbe; ti'ealincnt; of," the iii£ane was darkened by. inc^ed,ibie. Barbarities. As . late as 1828 j< ; Lord i jSnaftesbury found that the lunatics were chained to their straw -bedsj aud loft-; psQ' Saturday to Mondi-y, .witHbUt' 'c^t^dance',;and with only bread aiid,w(iter''wit]Wn;ffieir ; reach, while the 'ke^iis;, w^jco^ei joying themselves. Discipiina ;• M^e^'-Naval and Military Service, in VWorßibuses, and 1 m schools, was ■of tUe: 'most rbrutai type. Our. prisons Unr^efdr'nied> .; vOur, penal code was 'incpnc^i^WyTw.gMinary. and savage. In^^TO^e&^re,,l6o capital • offences on the-St : |ttitb Bo^k, and, by the beginning of thi&centitry tjie. number hadgreatly increase^..; To steal 5s worth- of goods from a;slio]> was' punishable by death. A girj^^ was il^anged'^.for receiving a piece of wooUen-Jstuff frprji.tlie.inaah who had stolen it. .... .-.j. . v r ■ ' : *\-:'.., ;,..,., In 1789 a wpmanfwasttburnt at the stakelfor coiping. People still 'lining have 'fjeen the skeletons of-, pirates and . higljwavraen hanging, in I.'1 .' chains. I have hoard . that t the clxjldxen, : .pt -the J3luecoat School ■atr;Heffi^&:#6^'^wl^s B l^in ' to the ; exqeutions .ihere'. ;"and, as late.as 1820 the 'dead .Wies: of the Qato-^rjeet 1 consrjirators were decapitated m front of . Newgate ;" and 'the '.^Veßtrninister schoolboys . had a Specijii; holiday to enable them to see the sigKt, which was tlien described by an' eye-witness, the late Lord de Ros. "The executioner" and his assistant cut? down one of -the corpses' from the gallows, and placed it m the; coffin, but with the head hanging jover on the block. The man with the lenife immediately severed the head from the body, and the executioner, receiving it m his hands, held it' up, saying m a loud voice, "This is the head ; of a traitor." Ho then dropped it into the coffin j which, was. being removed, another was brougtit forward, /and they prbqeededto.butrdbwn the next body, and go thzougb. the' same ghastly operation. It was observed that tire mob, whioh was very lai-gej gazed m silence at the hang-, ing of the conspirators;' and showed" not the least sympathy ; but' when . each head wais cut .off and hold up, a loud and deep groan of .horror burst . irom all sides,- which was not soon forgotten by 1 those who heard; it., a ;. . ; , , ■"Dueiling was the recognised, mode .'of settling" ■ all personal' disputes, . and no. attempt was made to ; enforce the law . which/ theoretically, treated , the . killing,' . of a . man m a r ducl as wilfuif murder ; . but, on the other' hand,, debt - was punished with what/, was .often-imprisonment for life.- A: woman died m the County Gaol at Exeter,' after a 43 years' incarce-;. ration for a debt of £19. .- , Such wks the sooial state of England, which thattcue Christian and philanthropic ' peer, > Lord ShasftesbUry... sought , to- : sweep, away "■; m which great a'nd '•" good l'" work of social- salvation he was oppressed ' by" Cobden, Brightj arid Gladstone. ' ' ; , Truth to tell,. not o&e of this trinity, pf plutish politicians cared a twopenny damn -.about; the salvatipn of either the bodies or. souls of the Wage-earners of EnglaHd. What Coibden and Bright cared about was the privilege of importing cheap raw material for their: manufactures, and cheap food -fpr the factory hands. They advocated Free Trade as ; .an auxiliary to their -system of sweating the White , Slaves ■ Who piled up the plethoric Wealth of the millionaire manufacturers .who sweated and' starved them to death . Gladstone was also oh the -side -of the plutocrat against the proletarian, simply because, he. wanted political^ power, .iust as later •on he was sometimes for a short ;time, and for similar reasons, en the side of the proletarian against the, plutocrat. . Cobden, Bright, and Gladstone, especially Cobden and Brigjht— Bright being; the most blatant and -bitter, of .the bunch —were against the. amendment of the Factories Act m the direction of limiting -the hours of labor to ten hours a dayr'and^placing 'sane and sanitary restrictions pn the emplpyment of women ; and children. The caharcter of the opposition oE this truculent trio is graphically described,' together j -^ith. Lord Shaftesbury's opinion r of . the ; looting lot, m the' following : further ouotatioa from the "Collections- and Re--collections" already cited: Lord Shaftesbury's devotion to' the cause- of Labor- led biin to make 'the Factories ; Act: a touchstone of character. To the end of Ms days hii i views of public men were largely governed by the part

--■■which they played m . that greafriCpntrp-, ..yersy.' , '" Ciladstpnci,: yofed ls^m^.m&^h was lips. ''Bright was tHe most malignant : opponent the Factory ' Bill : ever ' had." • ." Qobden, thpugk > bitterly hostile, .'was befcter'than BrigHt." ' Even menwhom,: on general grounds, he disliked and despised—such as Lord Beaconsfield and Bishop Wilbcrforce — - found a saving clause m his judgment if he could truthfully say, "He helped me with the-.chimney-sweeps," or "He felt for the wretjched operatives." ( I hope* that this will hayel. exploded once and for -all' the' f^lse :'ahd vfallacious impression bred m the minds of so many by the pimpisli ''pimp press that Cobden, Bright and Gladstone were political philanthjrbpists.