TOPICS OF THE DAY
THE FAST.
TEE "public fast and humiliation" was proclaimed for Wednes- day last : by proclamation Queen Victoria did "strictly charge and command, that the said public fast and humiliation be re- verently and devoutly observed by all our loving subjects." The day was observed as a strict holyday: no Parliament sat, no work was done in public offices ; shops were closed universally ; the churches were open, and special sermons were preached. Of all the discourses, the one which was addressed to the widest au- dience was unquestionably the lay sermon in the Times news- paper of the same morning, which " improved the occasion " very unpressively.
The particular visitation which these islands will this day deplore, while it is so far the work of Heaven that it is the entire destruction of an ordinary crop sufficient for the subsistence of the people, is also as evidently the work of man, in that to the improvidence, mismanagement, and misgovernment of man, we owe an obstinate and fatal dependence on a mean and precarious food. Heaven usu- ally prospers industry and forethought, and -usually punishes the reverse of
these qualities. * The wide-spread dependence on that plant in the face of so many warnings was a national sin. " This consideration may serve to is point to the confessions and humilia- tions of the day. The whole empire s compromised in the shameful oppression or neglect which allowed several millions to share the food, the habitations, and the manners of swine. If those millions themselves were not less guilty for their own part in the causes of their state, and if they consequently are the more im- mediate objects of the visitation, a very little thought and modesty will suffice to show that the rest of the people connived at the continuance of that evil. This wealthy and powerful nation, which possesses a constitutional government, and has acquired the most populous dominion in the world—which boasts the power of self-government, the habit of reform, and so many noble works of humanity and religion—did yet permit, within five hours of its shores, within its own bosom, so to say, a mass of poverty, disaffection, and degradation, without a pa- rallel in the world."
But the view of the so solemn and sacred character of the day was by no means universal. We took no exception to the fast when it was announced, because we saw in it nothing at variance with the established tenets and usages of the National Church. The " Church of England," not yet repudiated by the great ma- jority in England, is the Church of the Government ; and when the Government consented to ordain a public fast, it did not pro- mise more than what appeared, under the circumstances, to be a matter of routine—a decorous compliance with custom and opin- ion. But when Sir George Grey asserts, roundly and without qualification, that "the observance of a general fast is in perfect accordance with the general feeling," he speaks too strongly. The fast was, no doubt, officially observed ; many people went to church ; the most serious, in some instances, we know, did ac- tually and literally fast : but as to its being generally a day of "fast and humiliation," it would be mere hypocrisy or " green- ness " to suppose it. Many, we dare say, were deterred from having so peculiarly luxurious a dinner as they would have on most holydays; numbers were content with salt fish at dinner, which, not being a very frequent dish with us, is regarded as a dainty rather than otherwise. But except in the matter of that particular meal, the day was kept not as a fast, but as a feast— not as a holy day, but as a holyday in the secular sense. What- ever might be done by the devout or sanctimonious, or by those in "high life," who, having plenty of leisure, are not at the mercy of vulgar holydays, to the bulk of the people the day was like Christmas Day or Good Friday—a more complete festival than an ordinary Sabbath. The streets, the Parks, the suburban roads, were thronged by crowds, with all the usual traits of holyday- makers : families—father, mother, and children—sauntering out to take a peep at " nature "; sweethearts in couples, very abun- dant; numerous groups of frolicsome journeymen, already showing a foretaste of hilarity as inspired by the grosser Bacchus of England—the "squalida cervogia "; groups of idle blackguard boys ; miscellaneous groups of all sizes, ages, and conditions, in their "Sunday-going bettermost"; parties of the upper middle classes dressed with all needful care and expense, and going out "to tea"—not without an eye to the supper. How many suppers were eaten that night with relish unparalleled—a Sunday supper not preceded by a Sunday dinner ! And we ask any observer of this Metropolitan region, what traces of fasting he observed in all this concourse ; except always among the poor, where, no doubt, there were the usual traces of chronic short-commons, though less painfully visible than on a day of fatigue. And did any one show any signs whatever of "humiliation "? On the contrary, through- out all this peripatetic multitude was universally displayed the usual holyday smirk—the irrepressible sense of satisfaction.
Dissent from the fast (in the ascetic sense) was not limited
to neglect of it : there were positive objectors. Mr. Bright, in Parliament, gave open voice to a very widely spread contempt of the observance, as pharisaical and hypocritical, or barbarous and superstitious. That feeling was tolerably " general "; it created a demand for literary ridicule, which was supplied in more than one quarter, and, as we have been informed, with ample success of the commercial kind. The traditional antagonist of the Times in the daily press, the Morning Chronicle, anticipated the con- forming lay sermon of Wednesday by a no less earnest discourse on the opposite side on Tuesday.
"Tomorrow has been appointed for what is called a public fast and humilia-
tion ' in consideration of ' the heavy judgments with which Almighty God is pleased to visit the iniquities of this laud, by a grievous scarcity and dearth of divers articles of sustenance and necessaries of life.' The extraordinary docu- ment in which this observance is enjoined—copied, we suppose, from some similar notification in the reign of Henry the Eighth or Elizabeth, with the omission only
of the strength of expression which in that time was given by sincerity— assumes such familiarity with the Divine councils as to threaten all who contemn and neglect the performance of so religions and necessary a duty,' with the wrath
and indignation of God. Whoever has any knowledge of the opinions of the educated classes of the community, is quite aware of the real state of the case. The authors of the proclamation just as much believe that the po- tato failure is a judgment on our national sins, or that fasting will be any help towards averting the Divine anger, as they believe that punishment may be in- flicted on all such as contemn and neglect the performance of the farce. "No persons with any pretensions to instruction now see a special interposition of Providence in a blight, any more than in a thunder-storm. The only differ- ence is, that we now know something about the physical causes of the one, and do not yet know those of the other. That it has physical causes, is just as cer- tain as that thunder, a century ago, was as much a mystery as the potato disease is now. We do not imagine that there is one person in the Court or Cabinet, or fifty in the House of Commons, who in private would affect to believe that the potato failure is a miracle; or who does not look upon this so-called religious ob- servance as a piece of empty mummery, and upon the notion of propitiating Hea- ven by ascetic practices on the occasion of a public calamity as belonging to an entirely gone-by order of religious ideas."
This view is as true as the other, except that hypocrisy is not to be presumed of all who advocate a religious observance, the occasion of which may not be justified by a strictly logical or physiological account. It is evidently true also, that there would have been no fast had not Mr. Piumptre threatened to propose one. Perhaps he might have carried his motion, and the Church- of-England Cabinet would have incurred an implied censure for neglecting an ecclesiastical duty. Nor was the motion one to be discussed and opposed ; though the Chroniclers indignant at the official concession. " The Government probably thought that the nodus was not dignus vindice, and that it was better to reserve their strength for more practical matters. We think this wrong ; for there are few things more practically mischievous than giving the countenance of authority to the religious notions characteris- tic of a rude age." No dignity of the nodus would have enabled Government to resist. Such a motion could not be resisted, be-. cause such subjects are never discussed in freedom. The reason of the thraldom is twofold,—the bigoted intolerance of those who have necessarily preceded the„sew thinkers in obtaining posses- sion of authority and usage ; and the want of courage in the op-. posite party, who clip their words, "soften down" their objec- tions, half conform to what they resist, and couch arguments of oppugnancy in terms of conformity. It is the national spirit of moral servility, displayed even by the indignant innovators, which renders a degree of hypocritical conformity almost an official duty.
Meanwhile, it is on such occasions as ceremonials which typify obsolescent ideas that this conflict of opinion becomes most pain- fully evident and least profitable. The fast may, and we doubt not had, its wholesome influences: but it had other less worthy effects,—mutual bitternesses of spiritual or intellectual pride, hy- pocrisy, a general desecration of things and sentiments usually held sacred; a set mourning for the appalling calamity in Ireland, degenerating before night into a common, idle, laughing holy- day. Experience would suggest the decorum of as sparing a use of these decaying observances as established routine will permit.
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