THE CHURCH CONGRESS AND THE LABOUR QUESTION.
IT is both natural and right that a Church Congress sitting in a country like this and a year like the present, should devote much thought and many speeches to the great Labour Question. To say that a Church should not interfere in a matter so purely secular, is worse than futile. It is not purely secular. The question involves the gravest problems in morals, the honesty of whole populations, the conduct of entire castes, the closest relations of all men to each other, the whole subject of what that Christian fraternity which it is one object of Christianity to establish, really means. To say that such problems are outside the purview of Churches, is to say that the moral life of the nations they teach does not concern them ; that they have no business with the consciences of men, but only with their beliefs ; that they are irresponsible for their disciples' actions so long as their professions are in conformity with their creed. All that kind of protest proceeds from a secret dislike of the intrusion of a higher law into business affairs, and the representatives of Churches who thrust it aside, or disregard it, are only doing their plain duty. They might as well hesitate to denounce cruelty, or theft, or murder, as to refrain from condemning the extortion of crushing labour out of men's necessities— the exact equivalent of the old sin of " usury " in its true sense—or breach of contract, or violent interference with free labour. Nor have we any sympathy whatever with those who say that great ecclesiastics should never be arbitrators in trade disputes ; that a Bishop is " out of place " when he settles wages ; or that a successful preacher " wastes his influence " when he consents to preside on a Board of Conciliation. What are priests for, if they are not to be peacemakers, especially in a quarrel as wide as mankind, which may yet become a civil war, and which even now rouses as much bitterness and causes as much malignity as the older and less sordid quarrels over creeds ? There is no guarantee in a cassock against stupidity, and in- competent priests make as bad arbitrators as incompetent laymen ; but that is no argument against " arbitration," which ought to mean, and usually does mean, peacemaking, either by a Church or by its officers. The objection is of a piece with the old nonsense that a clergyman should give no opinion on politics, as if all politics were party fights, or as if politics did not constantly involve decisions which are in the strictest sense decisions on morality. Is a man to be set apart to teach Christianity, and then to have no opinion on the right-doing or wrong-doing of the elector who votes for a war, or an annexation, or a law which con- fiscates, or even a tax of questionable justice ? Churches have no right whatever to go dumb in such crises, and we welcome heartily the determination of the English Church to maintain on all social questions its rightful freedom of speech.
The danger of the Church, or rather of a section of the Church, in treating of the labour question, is of a different kind. A great proportion of her ministers sympathise profoundly with the poor, are eager to raise their moral status, and knowing from daily experience how often that i status is affected by their poverty, grow impatient of the present distribution of wealth. Another portion feel keenly that passion of pity which of late years, in consequence of the decay of violence and the great reduction in physical suffering, has concentrated itself upon want of means with such intentness, that poverty, which was once held to be a grace and an influence liberating man from much temptation, bids fair to be considered not only the greatest cause of suffering, but the origin of all moral evil too. Harlotry, for example, is as exclusively ascribed to it by some writers as if Messalina, had not been an Empress, or as if there were a pin to choose between a profligate Peer and a profligate ploughman. It really seems some- times as if the benevolent missed their old Devil so much that they were determined to make a new one out of society at large. And all Churchmen are so eager, so wisely and justifiably eager, to attract the most numerous class of the people, that the temptation to stand well with them, to agree with their distinctive opinions, to further their distinctive interests, becomes almost overwhelming. All would be well if the poor were won, and therefore, say many clergymen, " we are on the side of the poor." The result of these converging im- pulses is that there is danger of the hard side of Christianity being forgotten ; of the Church approving Unionism even when it oppresses free labour ; of its sympathising with workmen even when they break con- tract ; of its condemning low prices even when they are just prices ; above all, of its anathematising wealth, instead of the wrong employment of wealth. It might as well curse water because water may drown the world, and does drown individuals every day. There grows up a tendency, sometimes more than a tendency, a desire, to require " fraternity " from the rich but not from the poor ; to declare a " lock-out," for example, a criminal oppression, but to be more than lenient to that gigantic and never-ending " lock-out," the refusal by Trade-Unions to allow " blacklegs " to do any work. It is held monstrous—it was so held by a speaker iu this Congress—for a lady to pay too few pennies for the sewing of her silk dress, but not monstrous for the work- man to pay farthings for the sewing of his shirt. The haughtiness of the rich is declared, quite justly, to be evil ; but no one says a word of that haughtiness of the poor which induces their mouthpieces to treat capitalists as a kind of vermin, to be refused even the dreadful courtesy of the monkish " erring brother, part in peace." We notice amid much that is excellent in the proceedings of this Congress, a tendency to this one- sidedness, which came out even in the otherwise admirable speech of the Acting President, the Bishop of Durham, who doubted if "the social question were not the religious question," an exaggeration which, interpreted as it will be by workmen, is the root of the evil against which we are trying to give warning. As well say that the question of food is the religious question in a ship without provisions. " For the most part," said the Bishop, " a man's work is not the preparation for life ; it is his life." But surely it ought not to be. "If," continued Dr. Westcott, " there are, as is alleged, owing to the industrial revo- lution through which we have passed, many whose whole energies are exhausted in providing for others the means of rest and culture, if there are many whose long hours of labour forbid them to see their children except when they are asleep, if there are many whose earnings do not provide adequate support for those who are naturally dependent upon them, if in some occupations current wages have to be supplemented by doles, the Christian, as a Christian, must bend his energies to face the evil, and to endeavour to remedy it." Indubitably ; but that is not the whole duty of a Christian, or his highest duty either, as the Bishop will be misinterpreted to mean. To teach honesty is at least as imperative as to reduce overwork, the love of justice is as Christian as care for one's family, and there are nobler ends to be attained than the extinction of any necessity for doles. Doubtless the Bishop recognises that far more completely than we do ; but he concedes too much to the tone of the day, which is not only making of altruism a religion, but exempting the masses even from the new code of morals. 'hey rule now, and their obligation to be benevolent in the eller- cise of their power is as stringent as the similar obligation once was in the case of Kings. We want to see the Church as benevolent as the Bishop, or even as Mr. Stubbs, who was so hard on the rich for paying too little ; but we want it to avoid a one-sidedness sure to produce a grave reaction, not only against too much altruism, which would not matter, but against the claim of the Church—the just claim, as we maintain—to apply its doctrines to ordinary affairs. We do not want to see the English Church con- demned as one that serves tables,—or, in more modern language, as one that thinks the end of Christianity accomplished when all men have become comfortable. We could conceive of an exceedingly comfortable world, a world without poverty, or pain, or inequalities—they had it once very nearly in the South Seas—about which the only desire of a Christian would be that poverty, pain, and stinging discipline should wake up its people to the truth -which labour agitators are so successfully ignoring, that society cannot live by bread alone, any more than man. The obligation of charity is taught by Christianity, but not more strongly than the obligation to keep a contract even to one's own hurt.
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