SIR JOHN LUBBOCK AT MAIDSTONE.
IR JOHN LUBBOCK is known to the general public,—as
1. distinguished from the Maidstone public,—chiefly as the representative of the Stone Age and of Prehistoric Man. His constituents at Maidstone probably have a different conception of their Member. He told them last week, evidently with the most hearty sincerity, that " a contested election is about the best bit of fun out ;" so that in all probability Sir John under- goes no uncomfortable- reminders of the flint implements of the Stone Age in going through an election for Maidstone: The observation, however, was very characteristic of the almost boyish glee with which the learned chronicler of 4 Prehistoric Times' regards a regular stand-up political fight ; indeed, he appears to recall the slow discussions of tedious details in Parliament with very much less favour than the heavy hitting of a contested election. " I have sat for many weary hours in the House of Commons," he says, " when we were discussing a point over and over again, and thought whether it was really worth while thus to spend time ; but I have felt that coming down here on occasions like the present, and receiving such a cordial greeting as you have always been good enough to give me, was a very good reward for those weary hours of waiting." We mention this rather slight point only because it is very characteristic of Sir John Lubbock, that he takes up what look like very dry subjects with a cheerful popular conviction not at all usual with professors of those subjects. He is not only a great antiquarian and very earnest about Dolmens, but a great London banker and very earnest about National Debt, and most remarkable of all, a great educationist and very earnest about teaching, and yet almost boyish in his animation,—witness his'preference for a popular contest to the slow droning of debates in Committee. On all these subjects, as it is hardly necessary to observe, the data, however insufficient in some cases, are very tangible, and that is evidently what determines Sir John Lubbock's interest in them. He clings to tangible evidence, preferring the sort of evidence afforded by the real external world even to the purely literary evidence of books, and wishes very justly to reform primary education in the direction of inspiring in the children of the working-classes a genuine interest in the external objects of the universe, whether natural or the product of civilization, rather than to leave them with the —perhaps uncared for—key of knowledge in their hands, the mere command of the three R's, reading, writing, and arith- metic. Marked by this strong intellectual tendency to build cautiously on tangible evidence, and with the temperament which prefers the downright tussle of an electoral contest to the often verbal disputes of Parliamentary debate, Sir John Lubbock imports a very useful and to a very considerable extent an original influence into politics, of which his last week's very able Maidstone speech is full of interesting illustrations.
We may be sure that with this preference for tangible as distinguished from merely ideal subject-matters of thought, Sir John Lubbock is a Liberal of a moderate and sober type, —not by any means a Conservative-Liberal, but a Liberal who has a very strong preference for- birds in the hand over birds in the bush. And this his speech proves him to be. He begins by deprecating disunion on the part of the Liberals, and making much of the birds in the hand secured last Session. He insists on Mr. Cardwell's applying the competitive-examination system at once to the distribution of Commissions in the Army, instead of interposing two years between the end of the Purchase system and the commence- ment of the Competitive system. He objects to exempting University candidates from the examination, remarking that it almost looks as if Mr. Cardwell were poking fun at the Universities and intimating that those who had had the dis- advantage of a University education deserved compassionate consideration, as being evidently unable to stand the test of a competition. Characteristically enough, Sir John Lubbock, in supporting the Ballot, goes in strongly for the ball-ballot, as devised by Messrs. Cruttenden and Wells, as a very much safer and also (as we suspect Sir John Lubbock of feeling), a very much more tangible, graphic, and interesting mode of securing secrecy, than the comparatively dull method of voting- papers. We conjecture that Sir John Lubbock rather covets for the electors the lesson in mechanical contrivance which familiarity with this very ingenious ball-ballot would give them. On the land question he is clear and strong for doing away with charges on the land itself, and settling land as you settle personal securities, by throwing the responsibility on the trustees, while leaving the land itself " as saleable as a watch." He desires to see the land held in mortmain by ecclesiastical and other bodies, sold, and the pro- ceeds invested in personal securities in the names of trustees, and expects that this would throw into the market land to the value of some eighty or ninety millions sterling of money, and tend to its being cultivated in a manner far more profit- able to the country. Besides this, Sir John Lubbock argues that the great demand for Consols which such a transfer would cause would enable the Government to lower the rate of interest to 21 per cent., which would of course save us some four millions a year at once. We can see but one even super- ficial objection to this otherwise really statesmanlike pro- posal. No doubt the land held in mortmain is very imperfectly managed, and would usually be managed very much better, and made to yield much more in owners' hands. But while the public trusts of the country are held in land, they are at least under some public control. It is possible to reform them as we are now reforming the Endowed Schools' Trusts. But once let the Trust funds be invested in personal securities and the State may lose its hold over them, for you can only proceed against the persons of the trustees, who may have invested their trust money in foreign stocks or other un-get-at-able securities. The answer to this objection is, however, that, so far as it applies at all, it applies also to the much more general proposal, on which English statesmen and financiers are beginning to agree more and more, to take the charges off the land and put them on the landowners, and then make the land itself " as saleable as a watch." If you do this for any purpose, you very much diminish the hold of the State over these trust funds. But it would be hardly sufficient to object to so great a reform in the land laws, that it would interfere with the hold of the State over public trust funds,—a consideration of relatively small importance.
On Education Sir John Lubbock was characteristically moderate. He did not go in for the scheme of the Noncon- formist Conference, but did say he was for national as dis- tinguished from denominational education, and intimated his preference for the inculcation of religious sentiment rather than dogmatic lessons. But will Sir John explain how reli- gious sentiments are to be justified without an object, how, unless we believe that God is we can have feelings about Him, and how the -very simple but immeasurably important lesson that God is at all,—and much more, that He has mani- fested Himself in Christ,—is to be regarded as anything but a dogmatic lesson ? Sir John expresses a strong preference for the Sermon on the Mount as compared with theological teach- ing ;—will he tell us how the summary of the whole drift of that Sermon, " Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect," is to be inculcated without theological teaching I On the practical issue, however, he sticks
to' his bird-in-the-hand policy. He does not wish the grant to be withdrawn from denominational schools, but he does wish those schools to have a less grant than the National or State schools, in order that they may be relatively discouraged. Surely Sir John will admit that they are already relatively discouraged, by having only 50 per cent. of their expenses at most from any public sources, while the Board or State schools have from either rates or taxes the whole of their revenues except the school pence,—i.e., are not dependent on private effort and benevol- ence at all. But perhaps the most characteristic passage in Sir John Lubbock's speech is the very cautious and prudent one in which he argues against the disestablishment of the State Church, not because he is not opposed to all endow- ments of particular opinions,—for he holds that the doctrines that fire is one of the four " elements" and that the sun goes round the earth would be still widely held, if £10,000 a year were devoted to the inculcation of these doctrines,—but be- cause he is afraid of the power and wealth of the Church after disestablishment and what., according to the Irish pre- cedent, would have to be called disendowment. Apply the Irish provisions, and you would have a re-establishment and re- endowment, with the restraining and controlling influence of the State destroyed
"Our cathedrals, our parish churches, which have always hitherto been under the control of the nation, to say nothing about the vicarages and glebe lands, would be handed over once for all. For the lifetime of the present generation the Church of England would indeed retain the whole of its endowments. Moreover, considering the great wealth of the members of the Church of England, their liberality, and their zeal, as shown, for instance, in the number of their schools, we can hardly doubt that the Church would very shortly be endowed again, as richly
as, perhaps even more richly than, before. Again, I very much fear that the tendency of such a Church assembly as that, which would be constituted under such an Act would be to render the Church of Eng- land narrower and more exclusive than at present. And how about the lay patrons? In the Church of Ireland the lay patronage was com- paratively small ; in this country it is immense. There are altogether 13,300 benefices in the Church of England, and their annual value is in round numbers £4,000,000 a year. Now, Mr. Tucker, the eminent actuary, has been so good as to ascertain for me how much of this is in the gift of private patrons; and it appears that (not including the universities or public schools) this is the case with no less than 6,745 livings, representing an annual income of £2,040,000. The average value of each living is £302 Os., and allowing £102 Os. for clerical duty in each living, according to the principle which will probably be adopted in Ireland, there will remain a clear annual amount of £1,349,000. Tho present value of this depends of course on the average age of the present incumbents. If wo take it at 50 the present value of these advowsons is £8,750,000 ; if at 55 they are worth .C11,000,000 ; if at 60 no less than £13,500,000 I think we should see our way clearly before we voluntarily surrender into pri- vate hands such vast sums of what I cannot but regard as public and national property. At present, again, the heads of the English Church are appointed by the Prime Minister, and the Prime Minister represents the majority of the 'louse of Commons. It is no doubt an anomalous thing that the bishoprics of a Church should be in the gift of a layman who need not oven be a member of that Church. But the result is that the selections have given general satisfaction, and the best men have been appointed irrespective of party. On the contrary, if the elec- tion is left to Convocation, it seems to me too probable that in- stead of the best men of all parties, we shall have the extreme men of one."
Evidently, Sir John Lubbock is not inclined to lose his bird in the hand,—Parliamentary and Ministerial control over the Church,—for the sake of the two in the bush which Mr. Miall promises us,—an unworldly Church and a secularized State. At the close of his speech, in spite of his strong opposition to the emancipation of the Church of England from Government control, Sir John Lubbock put in an epigrammatic protest against the enormous influence exercised by Ministerial opinion on public affairs, the tendency to leave things too much in the hands of the administrative government ;—" For my own part," he said, " I believe that it is impossible in any country to have what is called a paternal government without having a childish people." We, on the contrary, should be disposed to say that no administrative department whose opinion fails to exert a very great intellectual weight with the people, is a good governing department at all. The truth is that the maxim, Cuique in sad arse crecloulant has an especial application to all Government departments, which necessarily know a great deal more of the principal difficulties and chief features of the particular work they have to do than any general public can master. Doubtless critics who apply themselves heartily to these subjects may be able to point out grave mistakes, and we think Sir John Lubbock points out one mistake in the Education Department,—a too exclusive care for giving children the mastery of the keys of knowledge, to the neglect of the still more important duty of creating the thirst for knowledge. But the 'childishness of the people' would usually be far better tested by the character of the prejudices which dominate them than by the amount of their very justi- fiable respect for departmental opinion, in itself rather a sign of political intelligence. For example, is not that curious pre- judice, which even Sir John Lubbock seems to share, that the country has " no reasonable grounds of complaint against the House of Lords" as at present constituted, a test of poli- tical childishness ? Why, as Sir John well knows, the House of Lords as at present constituted, has not for forty years back corrected and prevented one single blunder of any magnitude in the principle of legislation of which the people have subse- quently repented ; but it has arrested for dozens of years wholesome reforms over which no one has ultimately rejoiced more than Sir John Lubbock, where the effect of the undue delay has been solely to foment discontent and stimulate violence. In their capacity of consulting counsel on ques- tions of form the Peers may be well enough ; but as an independent legislative authority, can a single instance be quoted since the Reform Act, when their veto has been used for any purpose which has not turned out to be perniciously procrastinating,—and ultimately a weight in the scale, not of wise conservatism, but of popular discontent ? If, for ex- ample, the Dissenters are now bitter in their hostility to the State Church, who is so responsible for that bitterness as the House of Lords, which delayed for ten years, or more, the common justice of the University Tests' Abolition Act ? Sir John Lubbock is an able, prudent, thoughtful, and enlightened reformer ; but he might find fifty better illustrations of the childishness of the popular mind, than its too great deference for the weight of official opinion.
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