22 SEPTEMBER 1894, Page 6

THE NEW TYPE OF RADICAL. T HOSE who have followed at

close quarters the later developments of the New Radicalism, the rise of Socialism among a certain section of the Trade-Unionists, and the growth of the Independent Labour party, cannot have failed to notice that the prevailing characteristic, the ruling passion, of the Extremists is entirely unlike any- thing to which we have hitherto been accustomed. The new type of Radical is essentially different from the old, and approaches far nearer to the Continental model. The old Radical spirit was hard, earnest, unyielding, and based deep in a traditional Puritanism. As often as not the old Radicals were men of strong religious conviction and deep piety. Even when they did not belong to some form of Nonconformity, and took Tom Paine for their gospel, they were essentially serious-minded men. Their secularism was a religion pursued in a religious spirit, and they kept always a certain austerity and sternness. This attitude may have been superficially unpleasant and even bitter, but it made them strong in purpose, and gave them that invincible quality which belonged to the sectaries of the Cromwellian epoch,—a quality shared by all true and spiritualised idealists. No doubt there were plenty of exceptions to this way of looking at the world, and plenty of the old Radicals could no doubt be far better described as rowdy windbags than as serious, earnest- minded men. Still, if the prevailing note of the old Radicalism is considered, it will be found to have been Puritanism in the fullest sense of the word. And by Puritanism we mean a certain high, unbending, and always non-materialistic way of looking at life and approaching great questions. The true Puritan is he who does not think the world can be made into a feather-bed, and does not want to make it one, but looks rather to the ends and purposes of things than to the pleasures of the moment, "who makes his moral being his prime care" rather than the procuring of joyousness and of an abundant supply of cakes and ale. No doubt the old Radical also consciously and persistently aimed at the maximum of material prosperity for the worker, but he aimed at it not in order to enjoy bright evenings at the theatre and the music-hall, or to be able to sit in the shade drinking beer and listening to a brass band, but in order to accumulate greater opportunities for self- improvement.

Very different is the type of Radicalism now in the ascendant. The new Radical is as essentially unpuri- tanical as his prototype was puritanical. He is all for cakes and ale and enjoyment. He is as hungry for pleasure and a lightening of the burden of life as the other was to improve his moral and intellectual status. The new English Radical, like his brother on the Con- tinent, wants a bright, joyous, happy life, full of material enjoyment and pleasurable sensation. He wants a good time in the most natural sense, plenty of beer and tobacco and a pleasant life of the kind which a great city provides in its public-houses, theatres, and other places of amusement. The old Radical used to be sneered at as a person " incapable of luxury," and there- fore unable to sympathise with half the world in its desire for amusement. The new Radical knows no such incapacity. He is distinctly capable of luxury, and means to have it. Deeper still is the contrast on the religious side. " What separates us from the middle- class," said, the other day, one of the new Radicals to a writer in the Westminster Gazette, "is the question of religion." He might have added, " and from the old Radicalism." It is not so lunch that the new Radical is irreligious as that he is non-religious. Religion, either in the way of attack or defence, does not attract him or interest Mm. He either leaves it on one side, as some- thing outside the range of the pressing practical questions that interest him, or else he looks on it as an entirely extinct volcano, something for gentle laughter and good- tempered contempt. In any case, he is not going to bother his head about it. This lack of the Puritan paste in his composition makes the new Radical enthusiastic rather than earnest. He will grow sentimental over the subjects that interest him, but he does not exhibit that power of taking hold of an idea and "freezing to it" which so strongly characterised the old Radical. The singleness of aim is gone, and one feels that the longing for an easy-chair, a smoke, a pot of beer, and a good time, is always a, little distracting the attention even of the men who are apparently taking long views, and advocating great social and political changes. In any case, the religious element has gone, and with it the temper of the idealist—the temper which overcomes all obstacles and never knows defeat, because its kingdom is not of this world. If any one wants to realise the temper and texture of the old. Radicalism, let him read Mr. Holyoake's " Sixty Years of an Agitator's Life." Mr. Holyoake was not a religious man, but he was a Puritan through and through.

We note that the Puritan spirit has gone out of the new Radicalism and left it devoted to materialistic aims, not to disparage it, but merely in order to remind the public of a very important and far-reaching fact. It would, of course, be grossly unfair to attack the new Radicals on this ground, or to speak as if it were something peculiar in them to take the " cakes-and-ale " view of life. This hunger after material comfort has invaded every class, and is quite as rife among the rich and the fairly well-to-do as among the poor. It is to be regretted, but it is none the less true, that England as a whole has lost the old Puritan severity and earnestness of feeling, and has turned towards the delights of bodily comfort,—towards an amusing and joyous life, rather than one full of intel- lectual or moral interests. The people may not be in the least more criminal or more immoral, less kindly, less charitable, or less anxious to do right, but unquestionably their minds are far more set upon having a good time materially, than they were. The old sayings that life is and must be a battle and a strife, and that at best human existence is a vale of sorrow, are all passing out of remem- brance. People are beginning to ask indignantly whether it need be a vale of sorrow, and to suggest that it can be made a very pleasant place indeed, if people will only be cheerful and think more about making themselves and others happy. The working men, newly stirred to political and social action, have taken up this notion with tre- mendous enthusiasm, and have allowed it to colour all their ideas and to inspire their policy. The Radicalism which is popular and alive is the Radicalism which is entirely and markedly anti-Puritan in word and deed. It remains to be asked whether the new Radicalism will achieve as much as the old. We should greatly doubt it. And for this reason. What will ruin the new Radicalism is its absence of religious feeling. Though at present the English people are anxious above everything to get more material comfort, and have in this sense gone against the Puritan spirit, they are still at bottom deeply religious, and will remain so. No movement, then, which entirely ignores religion and the religious needs of the nation, will in the long-run prevail. For a time it may appear to catch on, but in the end the want of the religious element will be felt, and will bring it to ruin. In England, all movements which ignore the religious spirit are in the end sure to be struck with sterility. They may do very well for a time, but the vitality which the religious spirit alone supplies is soon found lacking, and they collapse. The new Radicalism may be very proud of the fact that it is entirely unconnected with religion, but in the end it will find that fact not a strength but a weakness. The ordinary London Radical will not vote even against a i strict Sunday because, as one such man expressed it, " God must have his chance."