THE WARDEN..
KEEN observation of public affairs, a pungent closeness of style, and great cleverness in the author, are the distinguishing features of The Warden. Its subject is the misappropriation of chari- table fluids by particular clergymen or clerical bodies, of which the • The Warden. By Anthony Trollope. Published by Longmans and Co.
Hospital of St. Cross and the foundation school of Rochester fur- nish examples. The object of the writer is not clear, nor would it seem that he has reached any definite conclusion himself. Logic- ally, no doubt, he condemns the abuse that gives 8001. a year to Mr. Harding the Warden of the Almshouses—kind, simpleminded, and sensitively conscientious as he is ; but the whole tenour of the feeling and conduct of the narrative is the other way. The bedes- men are better off than John Hiram's will contemplated ; in feet, they want for nothing which their condition requires. The attempt to take away from the Warden the income arising from the in- creased value of the property, and to apply it in the direction con- templated by the founder, only causes some fibbing and other dirty doings on the part of the reformers ; develops cupidity, ingrati- tude, falsehood, ignorant selfishness, and other evil passions, in the bedesmen; causes ill-will, heartburning, or disunion, among the parties chiefly concerned. Finally, it does not benefit the charity, but actually causes a loss to the bedesmen, when the Warden, not satisfied in his mind with his right to hold the office of which he cannot legally be deprived, resigns the warden- ship ; for the old men lose the additional allowance Mr. Harding gave them. The manner in which the love between Eleanor Harding and John Bold the reformer of Barchester is crossed by the dis- turbance, is only a necessity of the novelist. Resolved into its merest elements, the story of 771e TVarden is a lawsuit, begun—against the wrong persons, as it happens—to give effect to the will of John Hiram ; and the incidents as well as the persons mostly revolve round these legal proceedings. Besides the Warden, Bold, Eleanor Harding, and the bedesmen, there are the Bishop—an amiable old man, a friend of Mr. Harding ; Dr. Grantley, the Bishop's son and Archdeacon—a portly man, of great physical powers, strong nerve, and High Church opinions, respect- able, honourable, yet of the world worldly, and looking at the case like a man of the world and a champion of the Church. He is also the son-in-law of Mr. Harding; and by dint of his activity and firm- ness, manages both father and father-in-law. Then the lawsuit brings several legal men into the story, including the great Sir Abraham Haphazard, and enables the author to give some sharp blows at the principles of legal advocacy. The lawsuit also carries Mr. Bold to town ; where he falls in with an old friend of his stu- dent days, then a briefless barrister, now Tom Towers, who contri- butes thunder to" the Jupiter." Then there is Dr. Anti-Cant, (Thomas Carlyle,) who attacks among others the Barchester abuse, but over-writes the matter ; and Mr. Popular Sentiment, a gentle- man who reforms society by means of novels published in numbers, and who brings out the first part of "The Almshouses," glaringly coloured up to the taste of the million. These and similar things furnish opportunity for the discharge of many sharply-pointed arrows at existing abuses or humbugs. There are also some pleasant sketches of clerical family life, and of society in a cathe- dral town, mixed up with the more humorous pictures. The precise persons against whom Mr. Bold and his friends should proceed was a difficult point in the case : there was ng doubt that in proceeding against the Warden and the Steward, mere servants of the authorities, whoever they might be, they were on the wrong scent. Such was the opinion of the Attorney- General ; and this is Mr. Trollope's opinion on the legal opinion.
"The Archdeacon had again recourse to his drawer, and twice read through the essence of Sir Abraham Haphazard's law-enlightened and law- bewildered brains. It was very clear that to Sir Abraham, the justice of the old men's claim or the justice of Mr. Harding's defence were ideas that had never presented themselves. A legal victory over an opposing party was the service for which Sir Abraham was, as he imagined, to be paid ; and that he, according to his lights, had diligently laboured to achieve, and with pro- bable hope of success. Of the intense desire which Mr. Harding felt to be assured on fit authority that he was wronging no man—that he was entitled in true equity to his income—that he might sleep at night without pangs of conscience—that he was no robber, no spoiler of the poor—that he and all the world might be openly convinced that he was not the man which the Jupiter had described him to be—of such longings on the part of Mr. Hard- ing Sir Abraham was entirely ignorant ; nor, indeed, could it be looked on as part of his business to gratify such desires. Such was not the system on which his battles were fought and victories gained. Success was Ins object, and he was generally successful. He conquered his enemies by their weak- ness rather than by his own strength, and it had been found almost impos- sible to make up a case in which Sir Abraham as an antagonist would not find a flaw."
Here is the greatly successful lawyer himself.
"Sir Abraham was a tall thin man, with hair prematurely grey, but bear- ing no other sign of age ; be had a slight stoop, in his neck rather than his back, acquired by his constant habit of leaning forward as he addressed his various audiences. He might be fifty years old, and would have looked young for his age, had not constant work hardened his features, and given him the appearance of a machine with a mind. His face was fullof intellect, but devoid of natural expression. You would say he was a man to use and then have done with ; a man to be sought for on great emergencies, but ill adapted for ordinary services ; a man whdm you would ask to defend your property, but to whom you would be sorry to confide your love. He was bright as a diamond, and as cutting, and also as unimpressionable. He knew every one whom to know was an honour, but he was without afriend ;
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he wanted none, however, and knew not the meaning of the word n other than its Parliamentary sense. A friend ! had he not always been sufficient to himself; and now, at fifty, was it likely that he should trust another? He was married, indeed, and had children ; but what time had he for the soft idle- ness of conjugal felicity ? His working days or term-times were occupied from his time of rising to the late hour at which he went to rest, and even his vacations were more full of labour than the busiest days of other men. He never quarrelled with his wife ; but he never talked to her—he never had time to talk, he was so taken up with speaking. She, poor lady, was not unhappy : she had all that money could give her, she would probably live to be a peeress, and she really thought Sir Abraham the best of husbands. "Sir Abraham was a man of wit, and sparkled among the brightest at the dinner-tables of political grandees : indeed, he always sparkled ; whether in society, in the House of Commons, or the courts of law, coruscations flew from him ; glittering sparkles, as from hot steel, but no heat : no cold heart was ever cheered by warmth from him, no unhappy soul ever dropped a por- tion of its burden at his door.
"With him success alone was praiseworthy, and he knew none so success- ful as himself. No one had thrust him forward ; no powerful friends had pushed him along on his road to power. No; he was Attorney-General, and would in all human probability be Lord Chancellor, by sheer dint of his own industry and his own talent. Who else in all the world rose so high with BO little help ? A premier, indeed ! who had ever been premier without mighty friends ? An archbishop!—yes, the son or grandson of a great noble, or else, probably, his tutor. But he, Sir Abraham, had had no mighty lord at his back ; his father had been a country apothecary, his mo- ther a farmer's daughter. Why should he respect any but himself? And so he glitters along through the world, the brightest among the bright ; and when Iiis glitter is gone, and he is gathered to his fathers, no eye will be dim with a tear, no heart will mourn for its lost friend."
Tom Towers, though with some individual traits, is a sort of myth. Yet he introduces Bold to public meetings, and helps the cause by partial notices in "the Jupiter." It requires no inscrip- tion to recognize this.
"It is a fact amazing to ordinary mortals that the Jupiter is never wrong. With what endless care, with what unsparing labour, do we not strive to get together for our great national council the men most fitting to compose
it. And how we fail ! Parliament is always wrong : look at the Jupiter, and see how futile are their meetings, how vain their council, how needless all their trouble! With what pride do we regard our Chief ministers, the great servants of state, the oligarchs of the nation on whose wisdom we lean, to whom we look for guidance in our difficulties ! But what are they to the writers of the Jupiter? They hold council together and with anxious thought painfully elaborate their country's good ; but when all is done, the Jupiter declares that all is nought. Why should we look to Lord John Russell— why should we regard Palmerston and Gladstone, when Tom Towers with- out a struggle can put us right ? Look at our generals, what faults they make ; at our admirals, how inactive they are. What money, honesty, and science can do, is done ; and yet how badly are our troops brought together, fed, conveyed, clothed, armed, and managed. The most excellent of our good men do their best to man our ships, with the assistance of all possible ex- ternal appliances ; but in vain. All, all is wrong—alas ! alas ! Tom Towers, and he alone, knows all about it. Why, oh why, ye earthly ministers, why have ye not followed more closely this heaven-sent messenger that is among us ? "Were it not well for us in our ignorance that we confided all things to the Jupiter ? Would it not be wise in us to abandon useless talking, idle thinking, and profitless labour. Away with majorities in the House of Com- mons, with verdicts from judicial bench given after much delay, with doubt- ful laws, and the fallible attempts of humanity ! Does not the Jupiter, coming forth daily with fifty thousand impressions full of unerring decision on every mortal subject, set all matters sufficiently at rest ? Is not Tom Towers here, able to guide us and willing? "Yes indeed,—able and willing to guide all men in all things, so long as he is obeyed as autocrat should be obeyed, with undoubting submission : only let not ungrateful ministers seek other colleagues than those whom Tom Towers may approve ; let church and state, law and physic, commerce and agriculture, the arts of war and the arts of peace, all listen and obey,
and all will be made perfect. Has not Tom Towers an all-seeing eye ? From the diggings of Australia to those of California, right round the habit- able globe, does he not know, watch, and chronicle the doings of every_one ? From a bishopric in New Zealand to an unfortunate director of a North- west passage, is he not the only fit judge of capability.? From the sewers of London to the Central Railway of India, from the palaces of St. Petersburg to the cabins of Connaught, nothing can escape him. Britons have but to read, to obey, and be blessed. None but the fools doubt the wisdom of the Jupiter; none but the mad dispute its facts.
"No established religion has ever been without its unbelievers, even in the country where it is the most firmly fixed : no creed has been without scoffers ; no church has so prospered as to free itself entirely from dissent.There are those who doubt the Jupiter ! they live and breathe the upper air, walking here unscathed, though scorned—men, born of British mothers and nursed on English milk, who scruple not to say that Mount Olympus has its price, that Tom Towers can be bought for gold!"
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