A Thousand Years Hence/Chapter 7
If our leading classes would still lead, they must not grudge the disturbance of progress.—Author, chap. i.
My retrospect, as I have repeatedly had occasion to say, opens towards the close of this nineteenth century. But although something short of a score of years only remained of that century, we were able to show some work of progress, for even so brief an interval. There was, indeed, a fairly creditable advance, for that far-back day, alike scientific and general. But as regards scientific progress, which is doubtless the great feature of my theme, my intention is to review it by itself, after we have passed through the first half of the thousand years' retrospect, in its other or ordinary progress. After the first five centuries, as I have already said, the world had emerged from its old limitations of the international divisions of mankind, and had entered upon the advanced position of one homogeneous society, speaking everywhere one and the same language. Meanwhile, until we reach that era, we shall take the social and material progress century by century, selecting, as we pass along, such instances of change and progress as may form our best illustration. Our opening case is a slight, but by no means an unillustrative incident. It relates—
The late mitigation in court dress was not at all to my wife's mind.—Author, chap. i.
There could be no doubt that court dress was not originally intended to be laughed at. That is a consideration always to be kept in view. From the sublime to the ridiculous is said to be only a step. But with court dress it might have happened that, by a wrong turn or the wrong door, the interval of a step might have been reduced even to an inch of protecting deal. The thing, in fact, did happen, and not without consequences; for when the Right Honourable the Lord Vicomte Vrayshaum-Peenyong (the family came over with the Conqueror) had somehow got adrift during a grand reception, and instead of reaching the gracious presence of bis sovereign, had emerged upon a hilarious crowd behind, and been taken for a merry-andrew, and dealt with accordingly, there came at last a change to court dress. But still it was not without protracted opposition, sustained, as was urged for it, on the ground of principle, that an understanding was finally reached, that court dress should always be something in good taste.
My next illustration is of wider and more edifying import. It concerned a result by no means unexpected about this time; but the particular way in which it came about was, perhaps, just at the moment, as unlooked for as it was creditable to the position and character of those who took part in it. The increasingly abnormal character of the ecclesiastical element that still lingered in our Parliament had become already sufficiently obvious; but between that stage and the semi-revolation of any forcible expulsion, there might have been still no small interval, had it not been for a timely effort of disinterested magnanimity. There had been a fairly maintained secret in the business; so that when the venerable and large-minded primate of that day rose in his place in the House of Lords, surrounded, as pre-arranged, by the full episcopal bench, and claimed attention to a most important statement, neither the House within nor the public without quite exactly anticipated the edifying and most memorable incident that followed.
The distinguished primate opened his brief but emphatic address by the remark that the spirit of the times had changed in a manner and in a direction which the Church could not but be bound to notice, and duly to consider, as to how it affected her usefulness for her own proper and great mission. Would that usefulness be greatest in resisting the modern spirit with its many claims, or in frankly acknowledging and yielding to it? The heads of the Church had well considered their problem, and the solution to which it had brought them. The Church, as it now stood, was helped—or, as he might alternatively put it, was encumbered—by three orders of special privilege, namely, the pecuniary, the ecclesiastical, and the political. The two first he would remit to the consideration of his successors; but certainly the time had come for the Church to be rid of the last. The primate then went on to intimate that both himself and the other Church dignitaries present would now quit the august assemblage before them never to re-enter it. And then and there, in the silence of the profoundest sensation, he made good his words by himself retiring from the House, followed by the whole episcopal bench.
By this bold and high-minded, but also politic course, our beloved Church enormously advanced her interests, and her influence with the whole people—so much so, indeed, as to materially help her, further on, to enter successfully upon another and still greater step in her history, to which I shall have occasion presently to allude. I must not, however, omit the concluding incident of the memorable event above described. In an after address to the Church, the primate most heartily congratulated her on her now spiritually freed and improved condition. She could now at last, and, as he warmly added, only now, with a perfectly clear conscience, continue to rebuke that corrupt old Church from which, centuries ago, they had been compelled wholly to disassociate themselves, for her selfish longings after her lost temporal power—longings which happily still continued as vain and unattainable as they were selfish and profane.
Yellowly would express surprise that the State had hitherto done so little to turn this sure recuperative principle to the public good. During any thirty years of this century the complete sanitary reconstruction of London might have been accomplished free of ultimate cost.—Author, chap. i.
When one looks back upon smoky, dingy, old London, as it existed prior to the grand resanitation, or, more properly, the sanitary reconstruction, so successfully entered upon before the close of this century, and realizes once more not only its extirpated fever dens, and its ejected gas and sewage-poisoned soil, but all the obstruction of its narrow, tortuous, and dark ways, in the very busiest parts of the city, it does seem a marvel how our ancestors bore with it all so long. Habit is indeed a wonderful reconciler; but none the less could the citizens appreciate the paradise into which they emerged, through the radically reconstructive changes I am about to record. Nor were we one moment too early in the field, when we began our great work; for the spirit of progress and improvement of the time was already seriously expending itself upon the old and utterly unsuitable lines of the original city. Every year of such work only increased, of course, the difficulties of a general undoing; for an undoing, root and branch, was finally decided upon as entirely indispensable.
No doubt the great Paris reconstruction, which had been continuously at work for more than a generation before we began in earnest with London, had stimulated us by its example. In the emulative race that afterwards arose between these two greatest cities of the world, it seemed at first generally supposed that London, being so much later in the reconstructive field, could hardly hope to overtake her great rival, and would thus remain permanently second in this resanitation and reconstruction race. But this surmise proved altogether erroneous. We began, indeed, comparatively late, but under enormous comparative advantages, arising out of a wider experience, and more accurate idea of all the wants of the case, as well as a more comprehensive and systematic plan, and greater pecuniary resource, and a more advanced art and science, to give effect to the whole project. Our course was thus marked, not only by greater regularity and rapidity, but by far more variety and excellence of adaptation to the needs alike of the present and of the impending far greater future. In nothing were our later superiorities more obvious than, for instance, in the superseding, to a large extent, of the huge cumbrous masonry of stone and bricks and mortar—a style of the past for which we had no longer either room or patience, in the busy and crowded conditions into which our national life was entering. And in other ways, as we shall now see, we went radically to work, keeping always steadily in view, as I have said, the larger wants of our expanding future.
When the minister of the day first announced his grand project, it was curious to mark the earlier effects upon his audience, alike within and without Parliament. After seeming to be momentarily stunned by the unprecedented boldness and magnitude of the scheme, Parliament and the country gave an unmistakable response in its support. The obviously resolute purpose of the Government had the very best effect. They had declared emphatically, that all the patchings of past years, whether by Boards of Works or various private enterprises, were but child's play with the large evils that confronted them, and that only increased year by year, and day by day. In the highest interests of society, and even in the purely economic interests of the case, and as a question of mere commercial profit and loss, they must go forward to a radical and comprehensive cure.
The opposition, although happily in a decided minority, was not the less determined. It was led, in the Commons, by Sir Peter Periwig, one of the City members, and head of the old respected and wealthy City house of Peter Periwig & Co. Sir Peter himself, now well up in years, was one of the "Old Whigs." But although he still gloried in what those, in their day, had done for the country, he would have no hand in the further and upsetting schemes, as he described them, of radicals and revolutionaries. The country, he would say, needed rest and quiet. The modern pace was altogether too fast; and now it was proposed that the Government themselves should, in effect, turn builders and speculators; and thus open up a further and endless scene of dust and noise and national disturbance. He would forbid, deny, arrest all that sort of thing upon principle. Principle, sacred principle, he would say, should always and everywhere prevail, no matter at what cost, negative or positive. Some years later, as the venerable City member drew near his end, not without self-satisfaction at having done his duty, particularly in his unremitting efforts to stem the noxious disturbance of so-called modern progress, a friend brought him word of the great apparent success, in spite of all his forebodings, of the grand London Sanitation Scheme. But Sir Peter could only turn his head to the wall, and groan out, with his expiring breath, "Nothing but principle!"
In giving some particulars of this great work, let me first touch upon its financial method. Of course the main supporting pillar of the whole project was the expectation that time only was needed to recoup all cost, through the natural advance of value in the city's real estate—"the unearned increment of value," as it used to be called. The Government and the country had at length satisfied themselves of the solid reality of this prospect, and the final result did not at all belie their full expectation. A competent Commission, or Trust, having been appointed with full powers to act wherever and whenever required, and with due exhortation to lose no more valuable time, the business was at once entered upon.
One of the earliest incidents of the case, after the public announcement, and one that was hardly expected by those who looked mostly to costs and difficulties, was an immediate general advance, amounting to about ten per cent., in the value of all metropolitan property. This was caused, so far as regarded those outside areas which were inferred to lie beyond range of the proposed sanitary reconstruction, by the improved prospects gratuitously falling to their lot through the renovation of the more central areas. But so far as regarded those doomed areas themselves, the said advance in value was caused by the confident feeling that all parties would be dealt with in a liberal spirit, in whatever way the trust decided to proceed. The trust decided to recognize, and support as a basis, this ten per cent. advance. The value, just prior to announcement of the project, was taken as accurately as might be, and ten per cent. was added to it, in consideration of any possible discount at first in the market value of the trust-stock issues, and also on the general consideration of disturbance.
The trust, then, paid its way by the issue of stock as required. This stock was always readily floated at the moderate interest of three per cent. The national consols were, by this time, as we have said, a two-and-a-half-per-cent. stock, so that this trust stock, although occasionally at a slight discount at first upon any great pressure of sales, rose eventually to a substantial premium. All proprietors were exhorted rather to hold to their properties than sell them to the trust. They would thus co-operate with the trust in the resanitation, and would be liberally assisted in so doing by pecuniary advance, as required, in the form of stock from the trust. In those other cases where the parties preferred to sell, or where they were swallowed up in the grand new alignments, the trust bought them out upon the terms above stated. All such purchases, with the various reconstructions raised upon them, were held by the trust, until the price obtainable repaid all costs. They were usually leased meanwhile for long terms, with option of purchase to lessee at the required amount—a mode which mostly led, comparatively early, to a final settlement in the way intended.
We halt a moment to glance at a rather striking episode of the business. The original estimate that about one-third of a century would accomplish all this reimbursement seemed in fair way of proving correct, had it not been that an additional object had come into view on the road, so as to protract further the final settlement. This was no less than the proposed concurrent extinction of the large city debt, contracted mainly by the preceding Board of Works. Indeed, the municipal corporation—now a large and important body, having jurisdiction over the entire metropolis—impressed, through the approaching evident success of the trust, with the magical effect of mere lapse of time, had early put in a word for itself and its many expenses. The hope of being grafted on, in some permanent way, to even some small fragment of the trust, was enough, for the moment, to arouse visions of boundless and yet costless hospitalities. The Government, however, answering for the trust in this particular contingency, firmly, and even sternly, repelled all wooing of favour in that direction. But the other consideration appeared more worthy and more reasonable; and thus it came about, that the great resanitation project not only cleared its own cost, but by a further protraction of the trust, which carried it far into the twentieth century, it extinguished also the considerable antecedent debt of the city.
Leaving now the modes of finance, let us turn to the other modes of our great work. The trust encouraged originality of idea, and both invited and rewarded new suggestion on every hand, as was only fitting, in an era of quite new conditions, which it was itself busily opening. Amongst the very first questions encountered was that of the new foundation; and happily it was here decided to eject entirely the old and fetid soil, and reconstruct the city over a clear and roomy subterranean, where all the advancing art or science of the future, in lighting, sewerage, water-supply, and applied energy in general, might be accommodated with full and undisturbed, as well as undisturbing, play. Getting thus healthfully rid of the whole poisoned old subsoil was further convenient in placing the central city of the future upon one level. The lofty and spacious subterranean, which was quite a feature of the new plans, and became a chief advantage and facility of after city life and business, was due to a practical consideration that, however cramped we might be for side room, there was unlimited space at disposal both beneath towards the earth's centre and above towards the heavens.
All this great mass of ejected soil proved a convenient supply for another great work of that time, namely, the completing southern embankment and continuation to the lower Thames, a project which was also transformed into a like self-defraying trust. I may here further mention, that the latter trust developed, later on, into that far grander embankment and reclamation of the Thames' mouth, by which, as I have already said, through protraction of the trust into the succeeding century, hundreds of square miles were successfully added to the national territory. Not the least useful or enjoyable consequence of this great project was the bold and happy idea, so successfully realized, of diverting the river, by short direct cut, to Blackwall, instead of its old roundabout by Greenwich. The emptied river-bed, over the great space thus acquired, supplied a valley of health, recreation, and beauty to succeeding generations, and secured a blessing from millions of nursemaids and hundreds of millions of happy juveniles for centuries after.
Some of the more important features of our resanitated London may be here referred to. If the changes seemed, in some instances, extreme at the time, they were always afterwards justified by the expanding wants of the future. We reversed, of course, that old order of things, by which our streets became narrower and more twisted as we approached the central and more crowded parts of the city. The streets there became, indeed, of quite unprecedented width. But there was no great loss in that way after all, owing to the unusual height we could now give to the buildings, whose loftiest accommodations were easily and promptly reached by perpetually acting lifts, and whose smokeless roofs were eventually walks and gardens, which added a great resource of health and attraction to future metropolitan life.
Of course, too, in these days of science progress, we were done with the smoke nuisance. Lighting by electricity, and heating by various other than the old coal-smoking ways, had already made such progress, at the time we are now dealing with, as to warrant the trust to altogether proscribe smoke and smoke chimneys to the renovated city. Consequently new London arose entirely smokeless.
The light terrace structure, which surmounted a lofty ground floor of warehouses, factories, or shops by a walk for foot passengers, led eventually to much novel change and improvement. The streets were bridged over at intervals, in order to make these upper footways continuous and universal; and by this resource for pedestrians, street accidents, previously of alarming frequency, became wholly things of the past. The city, in fact, had now settled itself into three tiers of business life; first, the subterranean, where, as we saw, the great battle of the wants, conveniences, and necessities of the society overhead went on, and where also various merchandise reposed in such spaces as could be spared from the pressure of other and prior demands; second, the ground floor, where the productive and the wholesale, together with all the vehicular traffic went on; and, lastly, the upper level of the first floor, devoted to foot passengers, and to all the retail shopping and general locomotive life of the pedestrian public.
Again, the locomotive system for passengers must needs follow its customers from the underground to the upper ground, to which, as regarded railway conveyance, they mostly now confined themselves. This was so far foreseen from the first, in the arrangements made for an elevation-railway system, which crept in very quietly behind the grand fronts, and within the huge blocks of the new city. Here countless trains, running over noiseless rails, long provided for our locomotive wants, until, in after centuries, crowded off the surface into the roomier areas of the atmosphere above, to which our travelling has since been restricted.
No feature of reconstructed London was more of a surprise upon the old stereotyped building idea than that of the rapidity of the reconstruction. Our ideas, in regard to the art of building, under the new opportunities and circumstances now presented, had completely changed, alike as to the space allowed, and the time sacrificed, to building. The old leisurely ways, over huge masses of damp stone or other masonry, had been to a large extent exchanged for light but strong and, indeed, practically everlasting structures of steel and tiles and glass, which were put together with unprecedented cheapness, precision, and despatch. One of the new streets, in the earlier years of the reconstruction, had become famous for the unprecedented fact of its having been commenced and completed all within a single week. This was the triumph of a supreme effort of its time. But even this wonder of its day was destined to be easily surpassed by more practised skill, and still more precisely adapted masonry, farther on. Indeed the art or science of dwelling-house, warehouse, or factory structure had quickly passed out of all its old dilatory, and other variously backward and costly ways. That once insoluble old question of healthily and comfortably housing "the poorer classes"—if indeed we could so continue to speak of the well-off masses of the people of the twentieth century—was thenceforward a thing to be accomplished almost at once, as we may presently have occasion to see, and that not by mere thousands of dwellings at a time, but by millions, as required under the improving dispensations of those days.
Another striking feature of change and improvement, which afterwards left its mark largely alike over town and country, was that of the light glass roof, thrown over our streets, by way of protection from the chill air and weeping skies of our Old England climate. This great step in the direction of business convenience, as well as social comfort and resource, was assisted by other concurrent circumstances. For example, we had already begun to dispense with the cumbrous and costly live quadruped to help our locomotion, and to substitute for it the more cleanly and manageable life-electric. Consequently, unlike Paddy and his pig of old, in common occupation of the home, we had no quadrupedal company even beneath the ampler area of our new glassy sky, and the feature of stables, as well as street manure, had alike vanished. The rapid substitution of electricity for steam, in our locomotive and other uses, was further in the same acceptably cleanly direction; and not less marked in the same way was our chemical progress, which was already dealing, promptly and innoxiously, with slops, sewage, and refuse generally, as now amongst even the profit-making, as well as the scientific and respectable, vocations of an advanced society. But all this cosy, comfort-making system did not distract attention from adequate ventilation everywhere. The trust commission had made a point of stimulating to the utmost all novelty, ingenuity, and originality of adaptation; but none the less was a vigilant general supervision exercised, in view of the fact, that the great aim and end of the trust was sanitation.
There are still some interesting points, in looking back upon this great work—great, at least, for its day, even although we, from the grand modern platform, may think to look down upon it as amongst the smaller matters. A lofty and magnificent arcade arose in our city centre, within whose ample area all the chief branches of public and ordinary business, the public offices, the banks, the exchange, and the stock exchange, and the railways, could conveniently enter an appearance. When most of these were afterwards crowded out, they took refuge in more roomy quarters, as we shall see in our succeeding section, in treating of the feature of the concentration of the public offices. In these and other conveniences of progress, we were not, as I have already hinted, a day too soon in the vigorous rivalry of the international race. Our great rival, Paris, in particular, was ever upon our heels, and never closer than in the leaps and bounds into extension and wealth which followed upon her great ocean-canal construction, direct through the capital, from the Northern Channel to the Mediterranean. We were indeed later, but with quite equal effect, with our own great ocean cut, which, quitting the embanked and deepened Thames at lower London, passed off southwards direct to the open sea, thus leaving the Calais-Dover narrows, and their vicinities to north and south, to the reclamation projects of those times, which eventually restored that terra firma between us and continental Europe, which geologists before assured us had been filched from us and our neighbours by our once restless and invading but now subdued old enemy, the sea.
In exact reversal of the old practice of the greatest possible scattering of the public offices and institutions.—Author, chap. i.
Many considerations were conjoined in demanding the concentration of the public offices in some one suitable situation, and their removal from the denser parts of city life. Not the least of these considerations was the possibility thereby, through swift and incessant railway connection, of bringing every citizen practically nearer to each and all the offices, than was possible under the old scattering system, by which every public office seemed, as though by natural electric repulsion, to keep as inconveniently far from its fellows as possible. But there would have been no chance whatever for so novel and disturbing an idea to dislodge us from the habitual old groove, had it not been for the arousing effects of the unavoidable demolition of most of our public offices, in common with the countless other structures which collapsed under the great resanitation procedure. When the affirmative decision as to this concentration system was finally taken, there was happily space sufficient still available in the convenient vicinity of London. There, then, in due time, arose the grandest and most multifarious edifice of its day, and perhaps of any time preceding; for in this particular case, as in that of reconstructed London in general, care was taken that the measure of the wants in office accommodations should be rather that of the expanding future than of the limited present. The ground floor embraced postal and telegraph, customs and taxes, police and justice, and those general governmental departments to which the public have daily to resort. The floors above were reserved for the departments of thought, study, and general work. There, accordingly, was all the afterwork of the offices below; there also sat our Parliament, revelling in the roomy fresh-aired suitabilities of the new quarters; and there, too, was collected and ingeniously arranged the contents of our comprehensive British Museum, presented upon one spacious floor level, and magnificently surmounted and lighted by the grandest dome in the world.
This novel structure was also the successful result of a special trust, created after that way of those times, by which so many great works, not perhaps otherwise to be attempted, were promptly and easily accomplished. The costs, in this particular case, were recouped chiefly from fines, fees, and rents levied on the various interests and parties supplied or benefited, as well as from the realizations from the superseded old sites. But it was still possible to spare not a few of these latter as spaces permanently open for the public. On finally winding up this remarkable trust the State was able to reserve the vast centre of the ground floor, which eventually became, as was foreseen and intended, the active focus of the commerce and finance, alike of capital and provinces, and indeed of the whole commercial world; and whose rentals, estimated by the square inch of such almost priceless space, yielded a magnificent and ever-increasing endowment for science.
Reed thought that the State might intervene to rescue and maintain the drama.—Author, chap. i.
A general feeling prevailed about this time that the drama had not had due justice amongst us, and that in some way of public support something effective should be done in order to give it the high and prominent place which it should hold as being really by far the most effective agent, alike for the instruction, the indispensable recreation, and the mere pastime amusement of the people. The State, therefore, decided to intervene, and to do all that seemed necessary for the cause by means and pecuniary aid of a special trust. Nothing was spared towards having everything of the best and most suitable, from the noble material edifice which duly arose in the new cause, to all those social and moral considerations and arrangements which were to insure the desired respectability of the entire dramatic connection. Towards this important step of dramatic progress there had been some previous successful effort, chiefly in the establishment of schools for dramatic education, and thus great numbers of both sexes had taken an interest in dramatic training, as the best means of modulating voice and action into their most effective display. This commencing intervention was to be limited to one great experiment for the metropolis, in the expectation that private enterprise would follow the example elsewhere.
All this dramatic enterprise was not immediately, although it was eventually, successful; and thus this trust, by itself, might have pecuniarily failed, but for the averaging system which was applied to such lesser or more precarious trusts. Either several such trusts, of varying financial prospects, were bound financially together, so as to afford an improved chance for the eventual solvency of the whole, or, in the last resort, any lingering case might be tacked on, as a second charge, to some other of surer prospects, as was so successfully done with the old London municipality debt.
Theatrical exhibitions never inconsistent with good taste, and a theatrical troupe every individual of which was a respectable member of society, and everywhere acknowledged and received as such—no less than all this was the aim and object of this novel trial of a trust. The scale of things in all the appointments of this national recreative department was commensurate alike with a due sense of the importance of the object, and of the possible magnitude of the audiences to be afterwards dealt with. We owed much of subsequent dramatic progress to the excellent influences thus brought to bear upon dramatic life. Acting became even a favourite recreation of the young of both sexes, and indeed more or less of a disciplinary educational training. The timidity and diffidence of the beginner was helped in a curious and amusing way by the scientific perfecting of the compound-reflector principle. A lifelike reflection of the actor was thus projected upon the stage, while he himself, in all the seclusion his modesty demanded, and with the prompter conveniently at his ear, executed his dramatic part.
This dramatic trust had selected for its grand edifice a site adjacent to that of the great offices concentration just alluded to. As other institutions followed this example, including, in particular, the chief scientific societies, this now classic area became by degrees the vast and ever-expanding centre of a comprehensive public life. The theatrical accommodations were of necessity extended at intervals in subsequent times, to meet the increasing audiences; and accoustic and microphonic science maintained a fair concurrent pace in this everlasting advance from the smaller to the greater. But with great areas to be dealt with, there was a tendency rather towards scenic and pantomimic representation. This was entirely to the taste of the juvenile world, who, as ever, the chief audience, had their own rights in the case, and doubtless got them attended to.
In the free universality of dramatic range the stage could take an educational and scientific direction. Thus countless school-youth were fascinated by the vivid drama of the earth's geological development, or of the genesis of our solar system, presented in accordance with the latest scientific inferences and discoveries. As the stately solemnity of the panoramic march progressed, accompanied usually by suitable strains of music, the great clock of time was ever an essential part of the scene, his seconds thousands, or his minutes millions of years. In the astronomic development, the vast nebular mass was dealt with, and its transformations followed into a central luminary with all his planetary surrounding. The most interesting and exciting drama was wont to be the geologico-biologic progress of the earth, culminating in the appearance of man upon the scene. The audience were wont to be artistically wound up to the highest pitch of expectation as the climax approached when the noble or ignoble savage, but yet unmistakably a man, first leaps upon the stage from his tree, his cave, or his wigwam. But the edge of romance was afterwards sadly turned when the "missing links," one after the other, were restored: and when at length, a beetle-browed, prognathous, long-armed, dubiously footed, and black and hairy ancestor scowled antipathy and defiance at his hardly recognizable descendants. The true, says science, is happily often, but not always, the beautiful.
To secure twice the comfort at half the cost of previous opportunities and experiences.—Author, chap. i.
Ere the nineteenth century had closed, it witnessed the successful inauguration of a cheap, convenient, and promptly ready mode of living, suited to the narrow circumstances and small means of great numbers of the people, and not less promotive of social enjoyments. This was the hotel system of living, and particularly in the extension of its adaptation to the mass of the population. This system previously had been much more developed in America and elsewhere than with ourselves; but we eventually carried it out with a comprehensive application surpassing all precedent, and we thus solved, more effectually than anywhere else, the previously hard and protracted problem of the sufficient and healthful housing of our poorer population, at expenses still completely within even their limited means. Our special trust system was not needed in this business, extensive and national as it was, because the profits of the enterprise were sufficiently obvious and attractive. After some experience in this right direction, it was soon seen that there was more economy of management, and readier adaptation to wants, than could have been expected in such an application of the trust system.
One point chiefly to be noticed in this system was the custom, which eventually became general, of the hotel occupants purchasing respectively the small but separate houses they occupied in the common edifice, and effecting this object by means of regular small payments spread conveniently over a few years. The additional sum required weekly of the tenant for the ultimate redemption of his house was even more than saved by the economies of the system. Ere very long the tenants found themselves transformed into owners, and such great hotels—edifices of unsurpassed grandeur they became—entirely their own property.
These great and convenient combinations of houses took the name of Mechanics' Hotels; and the mechanics' hotels of the twentieth century, like the mechanics' institutes of the century before, took their high status as well as their important social position. With the aids of experience and good taste, they became as elegant as they were comfortable. Each hotel had usually one or more great halls of common association; and these, comfortably warmed and brightly lighted, were the cheerful resource of all the company, and usually the scene of much rivalry of varied programme for the evening's recreation. We have already noticed the fact of the old public-house, under its coarse and ungainly aspect of the nineteenth century, having virtually disappeared from our social life in the course of the twentieth. This was chiefly due to the universal rise of these mechanics' hotels, whose bright and home-surrounded halls proved far the more attractive resort for the tired, and rest and recreation-seeking worker.
When some experience and success had smoothed the general way, and more especially the financial way, with this co-operative houses' system, the intending tenants were able, with much comparative advantage, to deal directly with the builder or the capitalist. Indeed, it became no uncommon thing for some hundreds or even thousands of families, after agreeing amongst themselves for a co-operation of this kind, to make terms direct with the builder, and, in those prompt times, to be comfortably housed in their completed edifice, all within a few weeks of the first step in the cause. Thus, under the economies of this system, amounts of daily or weekly earning, previously quite inadequate to support healthful life, were now even more than sufficient; and society was thus permanently secured against the difficulties and distress proverbially inseparable from its masses. Society had now, indeed, at last, begun effectively its march towards that enviable stage, afterwards substantially attained, where every component individual was well educated and well mannered, well dressed and well off.
The nineteenth century, which had begun so badly with us for Ireland, did not promise, just at the opening of my retrospect, to close very much better. But it did close very much better, indeed, ere the century ended, and I am now about to tell how. As the first facility in the way, all parties were at length cordially agreed to regard Ireland as an entirely exceptional case. The abstract must be freely sacrificed, if we could thus but secure the concrete. There were two duties before us; first, to put down the rampant crime to which extensive and protracted social unsettlement had given opportunity; and second, to settle to the utmost possible, the resident Irish people as proprietors upon the Irish soil. A resolute hand being brought to bear, both of these objects were at last and concurrently accomplished.
To eradicate the criminal elements, after a long reign, which was latterly of almost complete impunity, was no easy task. But it was at last undertaken in earnest, after repeated appalling outrages had aroused the entire country, and exposed more clearly the enemies to be dealt with. A thoroughly detective system, aiming directly at criminals, was the chief want, rather than extraneously coercive general measures, bearing grievously as they did upon the whole people. Accordingly, for a time a detective police covered Ireland, alike to defend and encourage the good as to restrain and ferret out the bad. The law descended when necessary to the level of the lawless, in order to fight secrecy and secret societies with the like weapons. As the law had a comparative infinity of resource in the sinews of war, it must needs prevail, if it would but put forth all the needed strength. It did so, and, as was fit, it prevailed. If it had to fight at times in mean and inglorious ways, that was because its enemies were no otherwise to be met. But the one fought to preserve, the other to destroy, society. In the end, Ireland became as much a part of us as Cornwall or Northumberland, Wales or Scotland. The fine Irish character was quite restored, the ill-temper, as the souring of centuries of injustice, all dispelled, and the social and economic circumstances, if not entirely, at least very largely, changed for a better future.
We had happily agreed in Ireland's exceptional case, as I have said, to allow ordinary modes and principles to be slapped in the face at discretion. When neither land laws, nor land commissions of the past would or could adequately attain the object, we attained it by further and stronger means. When the object must be attained, the means must be such as would attain it. When the way had been cleared by a final settlement of the arrears of rent question, the bold course of limiting by law the territorial holding to such value or area as might alike do most justice to the land, and place the greatest possible number of Irish families as proprietors upon Irish soil, soon brought about, by graduated process of self-action, all the intended change and intended condition. Reasonable and necessary exceptions to the general rule were provided for.
Although the special trust system, which finally and so effectually resolved this great Irish problem, was not applied at the very outset, it soon approved its suitability in a field of such noble dimensions, and converted the hobbling pace of the earlier efforts into express speed. The sweeping measure of limited landholding, of course, settled promptly and impartially the fate of the old proprietary, who, however, were by this time, in the very great majority of instances, by no means averse, under all the circumstances of their case, to join in the general surrender. They were met by the trust in a generous spirit, on the equitable principle, that "compensation for disturbance" should have universal and not mere class application.
At the outset of this great trust operation, the Government were called upon to make a most important declaration. It had been suggested, on behalf of the intending investors in the trust-stock issues, that, from their vast mass, the future debtors to the trust might eventually combine to ignore their obligations, and thus affect the solvency of the trust, and the ultimate security of the stockholder. But when the Government had tendered a solemn assurance, to the effect that the whole force of the law would certainly, to the very end, hold the land to its full obligations, the stock, thus duly accredited, was taken on such favourable terms by the general public, as to reduce materially the cost of the lands to their respective purchasers. And further, by considerably extending the term of years, the yearly rent and redemption payment made together actually a smaller amount than the current marketable rental.
One of the happiest features concluding the case, and a result not entirely unexpected, although the reality probably exceeded all expectation, was the substantial advance in landed value all over Ireland, as this great territorial resettlement approached its completion. The effect of this advance was to diffuse at once financial ease and comparative plenty, together with all the contentment of such a condition, throughout the whole country. In after years Ireland's exceptional land limitation measure, when no longer required, was repealed; and with this the last lingering difference between the two sides of the Channel was finally abolished.