ROBERT WILLIAMS BUCHANAN (1841 - 1901)

LETTERS TO THE PRESS (13)

Beneficent Murder - continued

The Daily Telegraph (21 August, 1890 - p.3)

“BENEFICENT MURDER.”

TO THE EDITOR OF “THE DAILY TELEGRAPH.”

     SIR—If I dreamed for one moment that public opinion would instantly endorse my personal judgments, I should see no necessity for expressing these judgments in a newspaper. The letters published in your columns to-day merely prove how deep rooted is the common prejudice in favour of existing institutions, how eagerly the average Englishman accepts the bondage of his own creation, the elected Legislator. With those who can recall with equanimity, even with approval, the hideous outrage on humanity recently perpetrated in New York, I have no disposition to argue; they are the citizens who accept a national Christianity symbolised by the gallows, by prostitution, and by war. Mr. Salter’s sensible protest is another matter, for his letter is honest and to the point. He admits that he cannot understand my argument, because it is obscurely phrased and employs certain abstruse terms. I will therefore, in as few words as possible, explain further what I mean. To do so clearly, I must ask your readers to take a brief historical retrospect, glancing at the origins of that religion which is still accepted as the basis of our English morality.
     Christianity, like nearly all religions, began in simplicity, in a terminology which may be summed up in the words “Live thine own life, but love thy neighbour as thyself.” Founded on the clairvoyant evidence of a few obscure individuals, it answered the innermost cravings of all poor souls who sought a solution of the mysterious sinews of existence. Practical when most visionary, scientific when most unverifiable, it lingered on through the first century of doubt and persecution, until, as the promised Coming became more and more delayed, and as the power of the human legislator became more and more terrible, it threatened to die out altogether as a living faith. It was then that Gnosticism in many forms, using all the resources of old philosophy, from the mysteries of the Jewish Cabala to the subtleties of Greek Platonism, turned simplicity into mystic symbolism, for the man Jesus substituted the æon Christos, and enabled the democracy of the new faith to be dominated by an aristocracy of Gnostics, “those who know.” Thence issued the priesthood, who conjured in the name of Divine mysteries, created formulas, instituted Christian trades unions, arbitrated all questions moral and religious, and with inconceivable rapidity formed legislative centres, admirably organised, all over the world. It is impossible in this brief letter to traverse the long record of the growth of the Christian Churches. It is sufficient to point out that from the moment Christianity became a legislative religion it contradicted the very first principles of its founder, and belied its very name.
     And now, in the nineteenth century after Christ, simple men, desirous of knowing what the creed of Jesus was, find themselves compelled to put all intervening historical documents aside, and go back to the first century. Abandoning for the time being all questions of supernaturalism, they find at the end of their search a Character whose precepts are in strict accord with all their modern conceptions of what is right and just and beautiful: a Soul who loved freedom and sunlight, abhorred intellectual pretension, affected the society of doubtfully moral persons, despised Puritanism and Sabbatarianism, when smitten on one cheek turned the other, respected the Law and the Prophets, but only up to that point where they conflicted with the tender instincts of human nature. In the meantime, the new religion, that of Science, has arisen, and has been hailed, justly, as a potent source of light and comfort. Against true Science—i.e., the attempt of man to know and verify whatever is to be known and verified—no sane being can have a word to say. But signs are not wanting, nay, signs are abundant, that Science, like Christianity, is transcending its functions, assuming the old phases of Gnosticism, and attempting to legislate in the name of an intellectual aristocracy, to limit human freedom under the influence of “those who know.” Much of its jargon is already as absurd as that of the Cabbala, and already in one of its schools, that of Positivism, it merely substitutes for the æon Christie that still more inconceivable æon, humanity. If, as seems possible, Science is about to lose itself, as early Christianity lost itself, in a mist of false pretensions and of beneficent legislation, the world may yet find itself looking back on another 1,800 wasted years.
     Both true Science and true Christianity are based upon the laws of nature, and exhale a democratic human sentiment. Each says in its own phraseology: “Goodness is best, the world is beautiful, pride of intellect is as mean as pride of birth, and each man should be free to live his own life, so long as his freedom does not conflict with that of other members of society.” Both are tender and humane, not cruel and tyrannical; and the function of one is the function of the other—to enlarge the area of physical and moral evolution. But when science, grown Gnostic, sanctions cowardly experiments, first on helpless animals, then on helpless men, when it approves of or, at least, tolerates abominable or unjust institutions, when it spies into every dwelling and imposes its regulations on every heart, when it is pitiless to the criminal and callous to the suffering, when it suggests that men may be made better and wiser by legislation from above, when it dictates to the author what he should write and to the artist what he should paint, when it exchanges for the shibboleth of a sham religion the still baser shibboleth of a sham Morality, it is marching, as Christianity marched long ago, towards a reign of priestcraft, of terror, and of the Inquisition, and it is doomed to become, as Christianity became, a dead and not a living thing.
     One of your correspondents, while echoing my disapproval of Count Tolstoi’s latest work, cordially approves of its suppression and of the suppression of “immoral” books generally. It is one thing, however, to disagree with the teaching of a literary work and another to desire its destruction. But in this doubtful matter of a book’s morality, who is to be the judge? The priest, the legislator, the private citizen, or the public hangman? Let your correspondent glance over the list of masterpieces placed by the Roman Catholic priesthood in their index, and he may possibly revise his opinion. I myself, personally, would like to destroy many books, and thousands of newspapers. I would like to suppress the journals which live on carrion, the multifarious foul newspapers which at present make England hideous and render private peace impossible. But what would it avail? Since these things exist and flourish, they must answer some need of the community; and so, if all were trampled out to-morrow, other rank weeds would rise to take their place. We cannot, in a word, make men better or wiser by measures of repression. The improvement must come from within, not from without; from the taste of the reader, not from the suppression of the scribbler. The law provides a remedy when indecency and mendacity pass a certain point. Up to that point it is right and just that literature, like humanity, should save or lose itself in its own way.—I am, Sir, your obedient servant,

                                                                                                                           ROBERT BUCHANAN.
     25, Maresfield-gardens, S. Hampstead, Aug. 20.

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TO THE EDITOR OF “THE DAILY TELEGRAPH.”

     SIR—I have not the time, nor do I suppose you have the space at your disposal to permit me to answer Mr. Buchanan’s letter of to-day in extenso; but to one remark of his I should like to take exception. Mr. Buchanan says (à propos of the execution of Kemmler): “The reverence for human life, for the human body, has departed with the reverence for the soul, for freedom, for individual hope and aspiration,” &c. Now, Sir, I can conceive of no statement—as a reflection on the spirit of our age—more erroneous than this. Surely never in the history of the world were mankind more disposed to hold human life sacred than at the present time; so much so, that the prejudice against taking human life, under any circumstance whatever, is carried to an extreme of almost morbid sensibility, as witness the state of public feeling in the case of Mrs. Maybrick and that of the two boy murderers of Crewe. This charge, in fact, is so outrageously incorrect that I do not think any further demonstration of its absurdity is required. But the writer’s further assertion, that our reverence for freedom has also departed, is equally wide of the mark. Is not this an age of the universal promulgation of “The Rights of Man”? Is not this the era of freedom of contract, of an advanced Radicalism, of an enfranchised press, of freethinkers, of the revolt of labour against the so-called tyranny of capital; an era, in fact, of almost dangerous licence as regards the liberty of action of the individual? And yet here we have Mr. Buchanan, amid a host of other problematical statements, bewailing our loss of reverence for human life and the sacred instincts of freedom.—I am, Sir, your obedient servant,

                                                                                                                               JACIEM.
     Amhurst-road, Hackney, London, Aug. 19.

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The Daily Telegraph (22 August, 1890 - p.3)

“BENEFICENT MURDER.”

TO THE EDITOR OF “THE DAILY TELEGRAPH.”

     SIR—Truth needs no defence. It would, therefore, be an impertinence for one on the threshold of her sanctuary to attempt to defend Mr. Robert Buchanan’s noble and fearless contribution to your issue of the 19th, under the heading of “Beneficent Murder.” But the effusion of “A. E. S.,” in this morning’s paper, demands a different treatment, although it glances harmlessly aside from the pure and lofty work of a poet and a humanitarian. To neither of these noble names can “A. E. S.,” so far as I am able to perceive, lay claim. He sees fit to characterise as “nonsense” the terms which Mr. Buchanan rightly applies to the execution of Kemmler—the red name of Murder. I am one with the novelist here. And I go further. I unhesitatingly assert that all capital punishment is murder. Where, in the code of morality on which we profess to base our laws do we find the justification of the iniquitous notion that one human being has the right to dispose of another’s life? The body of man is as little the property of his fellow-man as his soul. Both are divine—not to be controlled by any finite, imperfect, human law, but by the hand which created and will receive. How dare we talk of “merciful” modes of death? Who are we that we should deal out death to a fellow-being? What right have we who cower before the awful mystery of death to hurl another into its dread darkness? We prate from our study and our pulpit about the brotherhood of man, the immortality of the soul, the regeneration of the human race, the morality of the Bible; and we turn from these to the contemplation of a human creature tortured to death under the most revolting conditions, applauding the law which could devise so fiendish an outrage. Sir, I found nothing but tears wherewith to bedew the pages sullied by that ghastly recital. They are the proudest memory of my awakened thought. I see in them no hysterical outburst of maudlin emotion, but a genuine horror at the sight of God’s creation deliberately done to death to gratify the morbid craze for experimentalising of a brutal science. And I see in my tears more than this. They are the pledge and promise that when men, awakened to the sense of their high responsibilities, revolt against this horrible legalised crime, their cause will be mine; and I am sworn to lend them a helping hand. It has been suggested by a recent novelist, in an apparently sane moment, that the destruction of every drunkard, every lunatic, every incurable, every hereditary pauper, would result in the inauguration of that age of gold for which the whole creation yearns—that new religion which is already throbbing at the heart of the people. Man, I doubt not, would work by such methods. God does not. As for the suppression of the “Kreutzer Sonata,” it points to one of two facts. Either we are henceforth to legislate for that vague bugbear, “the young person,” or the reaction against realism has set in, and the dawn is at hand of that idealism which is to paint men not as they are, but as they may be. The letter of your correspondent, “E. Salter,” which he modestly styles “the simple thoughts of a working man,” pleases me infinitely more than the bigoted emanation from the pen of “A. E. S.,” although the former has also much still to learn. He has yet to see, behind the grim horrors which shock the eyes and hurt the hearts of the readers of our daily press, the guiding hand, the ultimate triumph of good. He has yet to know that the great army, “toiling upward in the night,” the army of which he is, I doubt not, a valiant soldier, is one, its source one, its goal one. He pines for truth. Let him be true to what is in him. Let him come out of the narrow ways of public opinion into the free, fresh air of that noble idealism which “sees the world in God.” Let him no longer be dandled on the knees of the timid times in which his lot has been cast. Let him refuse to be clothed, and fed, and legislated for as if he were a mummy, and not a human being. We happen to live in timid times—times when we slink apologetically through life, afraid of the world’s scorn, afraid of our own shadows, afraid of the signs of the times! Up, and wrestle with them. It is our bounden duty to help forward, no matter how weak the effort, the seeking after the purpose of life which I believe to be the development within and about us of that ideal of good which is God in us. I am, Sir, your obedient servant,

                                                                                                                                 WALDO.
     London, Aug. 20.

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TO THE EDITOR OF “THE DAILY TELEGRAPH.”

     SIR—There have appeared in your paper at intervals recently letters from Mr. Robert Buchanan, the result of which, so far as I am concerned (and I find I am not the only person), is that I am quite at a loss to know what views Mr. Buchanan really holds upon the subjects treated of in his letters.
     In his first letter he appeared as a champion of Socialism, with Professor Huxley as his opponent.
     In his second letter he commenced by calling attention to the unnecessary outcry made by a society against the “Zæo” posters, and then (although a Socialist) condemned the agitation in favour of an “Eight Hours Bill,” and any such legislation which interferes with the individual for the protection of the community.
     Now, in one of the clearest expositions of the aims of modern Socialists—“The Fabian Essays in Socialism”—it is well pointed out that such aims can only be furthered by legislation which will interfere to prevent the individual from enriching himself at the expense of the community; and also, that we have already had much legislation that is purely Socialistic—e.g., the Factory Acts. Does Mr. Buchanan—a professed Socialist—object to these Acts?
     In his letter in your issue of to-day, under the heading of “Beneficent Murder,” Mr. Buchanan takes exception to the execution carried out by electricity by the American Government; but it is not at all clear whether he objects to capital punishment (in which case I agree with him), or only to the manner of that particular execution; and, if the latter, which of the various forms of execution does he favour?
     Mr. Buchanan concludes his letter by exhorting all who have a “message” for the world to deliver it. I trust that he will favour us by making his own “message” more intelligible. I am, Sir, your obedient servant,

                                                                                                                                   E. F. P.
     Tonbridge, Aug. 19.  

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TO THE EDITOR OF “THE DAILY TELEGRAPH.”

     SIR—Of all the encroachments on human liberty it is generally observed that of Government is the most irresistible. It enters upon society unheeding, and interferes unmolested with its freedom. When contradicted or withstood, it grows vehement and passionate; when submitted, it subdues itself after revenge.
     It is incumbent, where such uncontrollable power is deposited, that there justice tinctured with humanity should prevail. Rigid justice without equity, and humanity without justice are both equally pernicious. Therefore it is of paramount importance, by the fundamental principle of reciprocal justice, to act with considerable circumspection where a matter of life and death is concerned. It is impossible to forbear remarking, as a circumstance least explicable, that a Government of Jonathan’s civilisation should have sanctioned an execution so inhuman and almost treacherous.
     When we are certain to behold only for the last time one of our brethren, and while the responsibility of despatching his life is entrusted in our hands, we are bound by the bindings of mutual benevolence to see that he experiences the least pain at his death. When we determine to despatch what we can never recall, we must despatch it in such a manner that our action may admit explanation, and that it may not induce the people around to look with disdain upon the guardians of the nation as the tyrants that oppress it.—I am, Sir, your obedient servant,

                                                                                                                               CHELBA.
     7, Torrington-square, Aug. 20. 

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TO THE EDITOR OF “THE DAILY TELEGRAPH.”

     SIR—It seems to me that the only answer to be offered to Mr. Buchanan would be whether the human skull can, as a collective whole, expand at a given moment to the size of the more brilliant specimens of humanity. Our dogmatic faiths have been much shaken by the growth of one human faculty—i.e., intelligence—that is, the faculty of pure reason. Possibly this tendency is a natural reaction from the extravagant mysticism of the middle ages.
     But man even mentally is a compound being. There are many nerves on the brain that have various duties to perform, and science itself teaches us that if any of these are neglected a one-sided character is formed. In one case the eyesight is weakened by the over-expansion of some other faculty, or the memory is weakened to the advantage of pure logic, &c.
     Undoubtedly the ideal would be to bring the whole of mankind forward without developing one faculty beyond another; but, unfortunately, man only acts when forced, and the result is that his actions are somewhat the outcome of surrounding circumstances. Hence the excessive thirst for the positive in our day, which I look upon as a mere protest against the enforced mysticism of past centuries. I do not attempt to refute the arguments in “Beneficent Murder,” but merely try to offer reasons that account for events which Mr. Buchanan deplores.
     As an artist, I am quite convinced that art and all it entails find quite as strong a hold in the human brain as science, and Calvin’s attack on art sealed the fate of his movement, which was itself a just protest against extravagance. Science, when haughty, is just as arrogant as religion in its most dogmatic form, and none but dupes are led astray by either. We all know that generous impulses are often truer than superficial scientific results or religious dogmatic assertions. Let all men, therefore, think and feel for themselves bravely, even if it leads to “Pecca fortiter.”—I am, Sir, your obedient servant,

                                                                                                                                       F. M.
     London, Aug. 20.

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TO THE EDITOR OF “THE DAILY TELEGRAPH.”

     SIR—I would, with your permission, add a few words to the letters that have already appeared in your two latest issues relating to “Beneficent Murder.”
     As usual, the prophet is without honour; and belittled mankind, flaunting its ignorance under the mask of the new god, the working man, asks with surprising simplicity that Mr. Buchanan shall write in a style such as is taught in the lower standards of our Board schools; and herein lies, as I read it, the explanation of the phenomenon that has called forth the original article on the subject. Board schools are by no means an unmixed benefit; for, at present, the man who has passed Standard VI. is very likely, in his ill-veiled conceit over the possession of a little knowledge, fondly to imagine that he has reached the ultimate goal of all development—the abode of truth. Immediately everything is criticised through his newly-donned glasses, and judgments are cast hither and thither which, if not sternly resisted, will bring forth fruits the evil of which the wildest imagination can hardly conceive.
     A little science—oh, save the mask!—an [?] confidence, and then we have it declared that as for the God of the Christians he is but an idol, and that henceforth men shall only be saved through a [?], unquestioning adoration of the latest [?] in the mad world of [?] idolatry.
     By no means, however, do I look upon this tendency as permanent. It is rather, I ween, the natural reaction after a long period of enforced ignorance. Knowledge will, it is earnestly to be hoped, soon find again its true level, and the inquiry after and search for truth be conducted in the only method that can command success—with a patient, persevering humility.
     To give an instance of the depths to which modern progressive morality will descend, may I be allowed to mention that at our Free Public Library here the committee has decided that the diary of Mdlle. Marie Bashkirtseff shall not be added because it might be read by youths just turned fourteen? Scarcely a reviewer has denied that the writer possessed real genius, and has enriched autobiography with as bright a specimen of personal description as has been brought to the light since the days of Rousseau, yet our modern scientific moralists put their foot down, and with a most holy horror exclaim that really they cannot place this improper book in the reach of youths “just turned fourteen.”
     We, whose aim is to stem this destructive flood of vaunting materialism, are often laughed at; we are told that we have no shadow of reason on our side; and now, when one of us opens his mouth and speaks in unmistakable terms the interpretation of the newest writing on the wall, he, forsooth, is commanded to use shorter words, and practically to clad his thoughts in the vile garbage of the “democratic” or “new” journalism.
     Well might Mr. Buchanan ask, “What need we any further witnesses?”
     The scientific law and order party stand condemned, and (oh, tell it not in Gath!) out of the mouth of their pet working man.—I am, sir, your obedient servant,

                                                                                                                 GEO. C. CARLEY.
     Croydon, Aug. 20.

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TO THE EDITOR OF “THE DAILY TELEGRAPH.”

     SIR—I read Mr. Buchanan’s article upon “Beneficent Murder” straight through, then from the end to the beginning, and finally tried beginning in the middle and reading up first to the initial “Sir” and then downward to the final “Robert Buchanan,” with no other result than bewilderment. What does it all mean? What is wrong? And why cannot Mr. Buchanan use his mother-tongue plainly enough for plain people to understand? Is it the “catarrhine ape” that troubles him? Well, to be descended from an ape is not nice, and to have an ape with a cold in his head for an ancestor is downright nasty; but whose fault is that? I have never heard any one boast of such an ancestor if Mr. Buchanan has. He is wrong, too, to be worried because the Americans cannot read the “Kreutzer Sonata”; it would only bore them dreadfully if they could—judging by the dull extracts published in the English papers. It is very sad to think that humanity is all going wrong, and cannot be set right, because we cannot understand what Mr. Buchanan would have us do. Dictionaries are useless. I have hunted for that “catarrhine ape” and the “sanitary prig” up and down Johnson and Walker, and found them not. They are not there. Perhaps they are looking under the “cloak of empirical knowledge” at “morality and science shaking hands.” It may be so. Anyway, I can neither understand the drift of the article “Beneficent Murder” nor the language under which that drift is hidden; nor can I find any one else who does.—I am, Sir, your obedient servant,

                                                                                                                           B. A. STILL.
     Woolwich, Aug. 20.

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TO THE EDITOR OF “THE DAILY TELEGRAPH.”

     SIR—Pray allow me, as another very “simple workman,” to notice your two sets of correspondence in to-day’[s issue. That under the heading “Beneficent Murder” (with the distinct exception of Mr. Buchanan’s lead off) bores me, whereas the letter from our German friend re “Matrimonial Agencies” is decidedly rosy, rich, and entertaining. As a skilled artisan, having some ideal of existence, I deliberately assert that I regard my daily mechanical drudgery and bond servitude, my usual surroundings—the people with whom I am compelled to mix—as a condition little, if anything, better than penal servitude in the hulks. Every instinct of my being hourly rises in rebellion against my appallingly monotonous, mean, and commonplace environment. I lack everything that makes life worth living—gentle, true, and educated society, a certain measure of independence, a vocation of noble employment, the love of a true an d refined woman.—I am, Sir, your obedient servant,

                                                                                                                       F. A. MOORE.
     Clapham, Aug. 20.

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The Daily Telegraph (23 August, 1890 - p.3)

“BENEFICENT MURDER.”

TO THE EDITOR OF “THE DAILY TELEGRAPH.”

     SIR—Please correct two very awkward misprints in my letter of to-day: for the “sinews” of existence read its “sorrows,” and for “Christie” read “Christos.” May I seize the occasion to point out the accidental corroboration of some of my fears, in your leading article on the proposed Trades Union of Critics? Such a trades union, however, is no new thing. We had it in the days of the beneficent literary murderers, Gifford and Jeffrey, and we have had it during the present generation. As for boycotting, I myself was “boycotted” for twenty years, and, writing up to date, I still find myself the scapegoat of the cliques. What we really do want is a co-operative society of critics to “put down” boycotting, lying, and defamation among their own members. As matters stand, only certain newspapers—and notably the great dailies—conduct their criticism with dignity, and without personality. Day and night are made hideous by journalistic birds of prey, by rapacious and mendacious things that live on carrion. Let the honest and intelligent critic begin near home, and “boycott” the slanderer and the blackmailer. In any case, Criticism is merely the written opinion of an individual who may be right or wrong; but the members of such a society as I have suggested should take care that their club was not a common lodging-house for the tramps and scamps who haunt the back alleys of journalism.—I am, Sir, your obedient servant,

                                                                                                                           ROBERT BUCHANAN.
     25, Maresfield-gardens, South Hampstead, N. W., Aug. 21.

[Note:
The editorial item about the critics’ club is available here (column 2).]

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TO THE EDITOR OF “THE DAILY TELEGRAPH.”

     SIR—Mr. Robert Buchanan has a keen scent for any apparent abuse that trenches upon the inviolable rights of individualism. In that school he is an extreme disciple of his master-philosopher, Mr,. Herbert Spencer. For a novelist so thorough as Mr. Buchanan—so delightful at time, and so clear—the absence of lucidity in his letter is somewhat disappointing. The bungling experiment in the electrical execution of Kemmler, and the suppression of Tolstoi’s “Kreutzer Sonata,” have stimulated a rhetorical fever which expends its heat in an attack upon social legislation. True, much is done in the name of science and morality to speed on the evolution of humanity. By vivisection medical science presumes to cure terrible forms of disease; by the suppression of indecent books—whatever may be deemed to come under that category, and cultivated opinions vary on this—literary purity is aimed at in the interests of morality. Where to draw the line is the Supreme problem. An indiscriminate tirade against the stock phrase of grandmotherly legislation shows a grave defect in knowledge of the world. School-board education has spread the ability to read. What to read, therefore, amid the torrent of printed matter, is a question not so easily answered. But there can be but one opinion, surely, in publishing books at prices within reach of all, the main effect of which is to stimulate licentiousness. Realism in literature is, or may be, a true revelation of the inner impurity of life; but why such delineations should be permitted—for surely no practical moral influence is apparent—is a matter demanding legislative notice. We drain our towns compulsorily to eliminate filth from the body, why not purge our literature of filth for the mind? In saying that “Both the conduct of life and its duration are regulated, for the time being, by the pragmatic sanction of the Legislature,” Mr. Buchanan implies that without that sanction things would work smoothly enough. The moral gain, if any, would be eclipsed by the cost. It is not pretended that civil law can make men voluntarily honest, just, and non-oppressive. Without law there would be no liberty. The primary function of law is protection—of life and property. Would healthy surroundings exist if dependent upon individual effort? Hardly. Would individualism—especially in the modern form of elbowing each other to the wall—give the masses better homes to live in? Quite the reverse. The “conduct of life” is regulated by coercive law against the unscrupulous; the “duration” of life, by co-operative sanitary restrictions, is prolonged. Collectively the State, as representing the individual, can do more for him than he can for himself within rational limits. We may be over-legislated for in certain spheres of human activity, but the truth remains that, but for the restrictions of law, the innocent would suffer by fraud and oppression, the just would suffer from the unjust (much as injustice now prevails), and the greedy, all-absorbing capitalists would, by the aid of that benevolent law of supply and demand, exploit labour, powerless without union to defend its rights. Equal freedom for each, limited by mutual restraints on each other’s freedom, is a beautiful ideal—the supreme proposition, and a true one, proclaimed by individualists. But the fact remains—and Socialism is a doctrinal protest against it—that the moral imperfection of humanity creates the indispensable existence of restraining law. And, if at times—and unquestionably it does—it shows a tendency to invade the privileges of free action there is a consoling compensation in the grand total of good achieved by the general operation of law. The truth lies between extremes—Socialism on the one hand, Individualism on the other. What is the co-operative action of municipalities in the provision of public parks, free libraries, museums, people’s palaces, &c., but a form of socialism? To what does society owe its great charitable benefactions bequeathed by men of wealth but to the force of individualism, or the self-denial and wonderful skill and energy displayed in their business career? Such appears to me to be the better mode of facing the social problem than in the white heat of a mind impatient with the existing constitution of things.—I am, Sir, your obedient servant,

                                                                                                   WILLIAM ARMSTRONG.
     East-street, Chichester, Aug. 20.

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TO THE EDITOR OF “THE DAILY TELEGRAPH.”

     SIR—Great is the power of style and the delusion of a fluent utterance. I have been waiting with some interest to see how far some of your correspondents have detected the fact that beneath the magnificent verbiage of Mr. Buchanan there remains of solid fact little or nothing. There has been, it is clear, an uneasy feeling that Mr. Buchanan’s lucubrations come to very little, but no one has been at the pains to show that he adopts a position which is not only inconsistent in itself, but in antagonism with the developments of modern thought. “Im Ganzen, Guten, Schönen resolut zu leben,” said Goethe. Mr. Buchanan may approve of the “good” and “the beautiful,” but forgets “the whole.” In his first letter he attempts to connect two such dissimilar incidents as the execution of Kemmler and the suppression of the “Kreutzer Sonata.” If we take the execution of Kemmler, nothing is clearer than the fact that though it was done is a bungling manner, the idea, so far as it went, was the perfectly true and valuable one of using science to lessen cruelty. Surely, science could be put to no more beneficent purpose than this, and it is the height of absurdity to say that because the imperfection of the means and the ignorance of the agents made the result unsatisfactory, therefore it is impossible to do anything to procure a capital punishment which shall be devoid of the hideous cruelty of death by hanging.
     Now, Sir, I come to the main point in connection with this discussion. Mr. Buchanan says that the only safeguard for society is the adoption of the principles of individualism. He himself is good enough to define what he understands by individualism. It is “Live your own Life”—or, in other words, pursue that careful line of selfishness which shall preserve you as a single dissociated atom, without a regard for the whole, of which you are a part. If Mr. Buchanan will kindly look at the course of that philosophy, the technical terms of which he strews with so liberal a hand, he will find that the modern tendency is exactly in the opposite direction to that which he recommends. It is, throughout, the subordination of the individual, the recognition on the part of the individual that he is only a fraction of the whole, and that he must not pursue his own interests or live his own life, but be ready for sacrifice, if the end of such sacrifice be the welfare of the whole.
     From this point of view, Sir, I ask why any one who may have vulgar tastes, and like reading “Kreutzer Sonatas,” should say to society at large, “You have no right to prohibit my reading.” Society has an absolute right because it represents the collective wisdom. It is impertinent to say that an individual knows better what makes for morality than the collective voice. I say nothing about that travesty of the Christian faith which Mr. Buchanan has presented in his last letter. I am not aware that the Founder of our religion ever told us to live our own life. So far as I understand the holy religion which He taught, the burden of all His discourse was self-sacrifice. The disintegrating force of such a religion as Mr. Buchanan recommends has been throughout history the ruin of States, and the moral degradation of individuals.—

                                                                                                           WALTER LENNARD.
     The Limes, Old Kent-road, S. E., Aug. 22.

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TO THE EDITOR OF “THE DAILY TELEGRAPH.”

     SIR—The correspondence you have admitted under this head leads to considerations vastly more important than the particular occasion of it—that is to say, whether first, the progress we so much vaunt may not really be that of communities at the expense of their units; and, secondly, whether the socialistic legislation we are most of us advocating is not, after all, immoral.
     We sing, “Britons never shall be slaves.” Well, what is a slave? Surely, one who is compelled by force to act for the advantage of others. Thus the slavery is not disproved because the advantage to the slave-drivers is considerable or sure. Neither is it because the slave himself helps to enforce the system—a prætorian or a janissary did as much. Temperance, chastity, food, clothes, education, are all excellent things, but a prisoner in the Bastille had them all, or at least the first four, and if we accept them as bribes for the sacrifice of our personal freedom, we have certainly no more right to the above proud refrain than a subject of Solyman or Nero. We know the story of Wat Tyler, how he took a very man-like and not unjustifiable revenge for an insult to is daughter in the supposed interests of the State. There was a similar case a few years back. Had the aggrieved father then shown something of the old English spirit it would have taught a better lesson to pseudo-philanthropic meddlers and tyrants than hundreds of letters and speeches. I had myself occasion once to suddenly open the back parlour of a waterside London tavern rather late in the evening. How the decently dressed occupants started from their seats, flung their cards under the table, and looked round aghast, was truly a degrading spectacle. I said to myself, ‘If this be progress, would God things were as they were!’ What is material prosperity compared with individual character? What is meat to the life? An atoll will dam out an ocean, yet it is seared by worms. Wiser were it to contemplate the appalling powers with which science is endowing communities—powers of omniscience, of omnipresence for transcending the long arms of kings, and resolve that this great enginery shall never, under the most plausible pretext, be permitted to crush the love of liberty in man.
     And then there is the question whether this legislation is itself lawful as judged by that equity which is above parliaments and constituencies and the fashions of an age. Laws are passed nowadays revolting to my own sense of justice. Here, indeed, we touch a matter too large for discussion, viz., What is Right? That every organism has the right to defend and perpetuate itself is a universal axiom throughout organic nature, no more to be explained or defended than that two straight lines cannot enclose a space. It is the basis of the whole theory of evolution. Plants act upon it, and animals and men and nations. By it we ourselves live and move, and so are estopped from denying it to others. So long, then, as State action confines itself to State preservation it is justifiable. Every command reaching beyond this, however “high” the motive, is, to my thinking, an unrighteous abuse of strength.—I am, Sir, your obedient servant,

                                                                                                                     C. T. QUESTEL.
     Earl’s-court, Aug. 21.

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TO THE EDITOR OF “THE DAILY TELEGRAPH.”

     SIR—In his letter, under the above heading, Mr. Buchanan says: “Christianity, like nearly all religions, began in simplicity, in a terminology which may be summed up in the words, ‘Live thine own life, but love thy neighbour as thyself.’” Now, Sir, I would venture to submit that Mr. Buchanan may be an authority on “Beneficent Murder,” but he is not one on Christianity. In the first place, “Live thine own life, &c.,” is not a text of Scripture, although we might be led to suppose that it was from the manner in which it is put. perhaps I may be pardoned for saying that a command to live our own lives would be superfluous. I am not aware that any of us is living the life of another person. The text upon which, I apprehend, Mr. Buchanan has improved, reads: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and thy neighbour as thyself.” The first duty, then, is Godward, the second manward, the second duty being a result of the performance of the first. The Christianity of Jesus Christ, which Mr. Buchanan appears to confound in such an eloquent way with Roman Catholicism, also teaches that we cannot of ourselves do this, but that we need a new life within us—in fact, a change of heart, which is what we call conversion. “Ye must be born again.” If any man be in Christ Jesus he is a new creation. Here, then, we get the secret of loving our neighbours as ourselves, a duty which, probably, we do not all of us follow out to the full extent. —I am, Sir, your obedient servant,

                                                                                                                                       E. F.
     London, Aug. 22. 

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The Daily Telegraph (25 August, 1890 - p.2)

“BENEFICENT MURDER.”

TO THE EDITOR OF “THE DAILY TELEGRAPH.”

     SIR—I feel disposed, in the intervals of enjoying a really beautiful part of England, to write a page or two about Mr. Robert Buchanan’s letter in your issue of this day. As I read it, I gathered that the writer was angry about something, and felt sorry that he, too, had not taken that pleasant walk to the old church, and filled up the morning with Plato and Evelyn, those genial observers, lying idle on the cliff, and then said his say. As I proceeded, I found a working hypothesis that the writer was one of those who find the vague belief of their associations opposed by arguments they will not meet, preferring the easier course of vague denunciation and the familiar accusation of parrot repetitions. Then I read the superscription, and gave up my hypothesis; I was bound to admit that Mr. Robert Buchanan might attach to his phrase “impious verification” some meaning which my poor studies in philosophy did not enable me to fathom, and that he really had some substantial grievance against the society he adorns.
     The grievances appear to be many, and a little indistinct; but Kemmler’s execution, science in general, and interference with his liberty are the chief. Not being as yet in the murdering line myself, I am inclined to rejoice at any fresh deterrent to it in the interests of society, although I should prefer it to be the result of enlightened deliberation, and not, as I am given to understand, of trade competition. Admitting, however, that Mr. Buchanan’s indignation in this matter does him credit, let us take one or two of his other accusations against “science.” Some of us think, as a result of self-analysing, that “love” rests generally on a purely physical foundation. From this Count Tolstoi has drawn the absurd corollary that it ought to be “sat upon.” Yet this is made matter of reproach against science, so far as I could gather, rather than the real culprit, Count Tolstoi. Again, I have understood that men of science look upon Mr. Edison’s invention (they generally deny its claim to that title) as simply an ingenious toy. Yet Mr. Buchanan, with sarcastic hyperbole, says that “to talk into the phonograph is to penetrate the mysteries of nature.” Not “bolts of Zeus and kindred gods” are to be expected, surely, as a punishment; rather Olympus-shaking laughter.
     With the last selection of grievances I have more sympathy. No doubt some of us find certain prohibitions, legal or customary, a bore. But he is hardly happy in his instances. Literature prohibited at present in England is surely no great loss; Mr. Buchanan’s dramatic genius seems to have had tolerably free scope; and indiscriminate charity is not desirable. Happy or not, what have his instances, save the last, which belongs to sociology, to do with “science” and “the pride of empirical discovery”? (These phrases sound so boldly that one would wish them all as pregnant as “a mere register of average human prejudices”—Mr. George Moore might have pulverised his conscience with such a synonym). And who has prevented my untrammeled career of reasoned rusticity? Not vestries or Parliaments, but Mr. Robert Buchanan. Is there not—I put my concluding conundrum—in this truculent denunciation of intellectual activity something a little inconsistent with his complaint that “the right of private judgement is becoming a farce?” I “thank with brief thanksgiving whatever gods there be” that he has not an inquisition at his back. And I thank you, Sir, if you have followed me so far.

—several abstractions written as proper names, but I have promised to do the better thing and go on fishing.—I am, Sir, your obedient servant,

                                                                                                                   QUID ÆTERNIS.
     A Village by the Sea, Aug. 19. 

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TO THE EDITOR OF “THE DAILY TELEGRAPH.”

     SIR—I see in your publication of the 19th that Mr. Buchanan has again contributed one of his virulent letters, containing an attack upon a system which he terms “Providence made easy,” and that the object against which he has directed the full measure of his wrath is the American Government, because it has suppressed Count Tolstoi’s book entitled “The Kreutzer Sonata,” whilst it countenances the Kemmler system of execution, and allowed a full detailed account of it to appear in the daily papers.
     This appears to me most extraordinary, considering that some time ago Mr. Buchanan posed as a champion of Socialism, the very essence of which is that the State should have complete control over all matters affecting the interests of the community. I think that the American Government has exercised its power wisely in suppressing a book which would undoubtedly produce an unhealthy effect upon young and inexperienced minds. As to the account of Kemmler’s “judicial torture,” though I am strongly opposed to capital punishment under any condition, yet I can see that no feelings but those of horror and disgust can result from the recital of those details, however revolting; and to place these effects in the same category with those produced upon partially developed and uneducated persons by the perusal of a book which has for its subject the feelings of jealousy and dislike between man and wife, fully and graphically described, until they result in murder, is a blunder I should have thought  that Mr. Buchanan would not have made.
     The writer says further on in his letter that he has no sympathy with the diseased view of human passion taken by Count Tolstoi, and he goes on to add that “Morality has made the author raving mad.” Why, then, should the writings of a raving madman be circulated? On Mr. Buchanan’s own showing, nothing is to be said for the principles enunciated therein, and the literary and artistic value of the work tells against it rather than for it.
     Mr. Buchanan must know, of what every one else is aware, of the power of suggestion for good or evil upon youthful minds, and even upon more experienced ones. How can every man lead “free and natural lives” (as Mr. Buchanan desires) if evil suggestions and unnatural ideas are allowed to circulate among the community, by the sale of works, which have nothing to recommend them but a certain amount of literary worth, or because they are “the works of a daring thinker?”
     I cannot understand what Mr. Buchanan means by “the scientific jerry-builder who constructs his lordly pleasure-house out of the stones of dead creeds.” The only possible idea I can gather from his words is that he is inveighing against the ethical side of religion, which is coming to the front so much at the present day, and which finds expression in the theory pur forward that conduct is three-fourths of life, while the dogmatic side is allowed quietly to drop.
     As Mr. Buchanan desires the welfare of his fellow-beings, one would think he would rejoice at this phase instead of bewailing it, when he remembers the sad results which accrued from the quarrels of different sects upon dogmatic religion in former times; and surely Mr. Buchanan would be the last to regret that the main principles of the religion which he seems to hold so strongly, are being brought to bear upon as many social questions as possible, even should they encroach upon the prerogatives of a portion of the community to subsist upon the labours of the rest.
     In his fierce denunciation of modern knowledge Mr. Buchanan does not let Science escape from a charge of empiricism. Though the maiden may gain little from having the power to analyse the causes of her first blush, the youth those of his first love, and the lover the formation of the moon, is no doubt a fact; but I should imagine Mr. Buchanan will hardly deny that there are benefits accruing to the human race from the laborious researches of the scientific men of our day, which can hardly be said to rest upon empirical bases. —Apologising for the length of my letter, I am, Sir, your obedient servant,

                                                                                                                                   C. R. P.
     87, Queen’s-road, Brownswood Park, N., Aug. 20.

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TO THE EDITOR OF “THE DAILY TELEGRAPH.”

     SIR—Your correspondent “E. F. P.,” under the above heading, makes some remarks on Socialism in your to-day’s issue, and as the word is now being so commonly used in very misleading fashions, I should be glad to be allowed to place the position of Socialist thinkers more clearly before your readers. Your correspondent is wrong in supposing that the “Fabian Essays” is the text-book of the Socialists generally. On the contrary, it represents the views of a narrow section, frequently called “State Socialists,” or by themselves “Social-Democrats.” These deny that man has any individual rights. The only right they acknowledge is the right of the majority. Hence they approve of Factory Acts, legal eight-hour days, and the whole machinery of State compulsion; and, in fact, they hope to arrive at the freedom of the human race through the means of legal tyranny of the grossest kind.
     The Revolutionary, Anarchist, or Individualist Socialists are entirely opposed to such teaching. They believe that all human laws that allow us to compel one another to acts of virtue are wrong, and they do not believe that actions which would be wrong in the individual become right when performed by a collection of individuals, calling themselves the State. Hence they would agree with Mr. Buchanan (whose views I do not know, but assume him to be an Individualist) in calling all State executions murder, and in ridiculing the idea that we can become moral by legislation, either on the subject of literary and artistic productions, or on any other matters.
     Anarchist Socialists go further than Individualists on the same lines, and hold that all human laws are wrong, and that the duty of each individual is to seek for and follow Divine or natural (the terms are with them convertible) law. They believe in the commandment, “Thou shalt do no murder,” whether it is one man who kills a hundred, or a hundred who kill one. They also believe most fully in the commandment, “Thou shalt not steal,” holding that it applies equally to the individual who robs the community and the community that robs the individual. They also reverence the command, “Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven image,” which they apply equally to all forms of idolatry, whether the golden image of King Nebuchadnezzar, the golden calf of the Israelites, or the stocks, shares, banking accounts, and “good investments” of modern worship. They condemn the present social laws, which teach that truth, justice, kindness, love, and mercy are virtues only to be practised within limited family circles, composed of fathers, mothers, and uterine brothers and sisters, and that outside those charmed circles man may greedily prey on his fellow man and rejoice in his downfall if it brings to himself advantage; and they regard the present system of laws, or any laws by which men in their arrogant tyranny may attempt to impose their own frailties on their fellow-creatures, as, in the words of Germany’s greatest poet,

               “Schall und Rauch
Umnebelend Himmelsgluth.”

I am, Sir, your obedient servant,

                                                                                                                       A SOCIALIST.
     Selhurst-road, London, S.E., Aug. 22.

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TO THE EDITOR OF “THE DAILY TELEGRAPH.”

     SIR—However much one may be disposed to sympathise with Mr. Buchanan’s diatribe against Count Tolstoi’s latest work, and with his denunciation of the horrors which are perpetrated in the name of science, it is none the less difficult to read with patience his so-called “historical retrospect” over the beginnings of Christianity.
     It is to be feared that Mr. Buchanan’s love of fiction has led him very far astray; at any rate, he may congratulate himself on this fact, that no one who reads his letter, and who is conversant with the alphabet of early Christian history, will feel inclined to place his name in the category of “Gnostics,” or “those who know,” a position which, notwithstanding the dogmatic “knowingness” of his last epistle, he seems so greatly to scorn.
     Mr. Buchanan is one of those who believe that the bottom of the world is falling out because he has discerned a leakage or two in his own tin-kettle; but, if his conclusions are always based on such travestied history as he has presented to us in his letter in your issue of to-day, it will be strange if he can find many supporters.
     Let me say a few words on his “historical retrospect” of Christianity. It is true that in the second century Christianity cam into conflict and connection for the first time with heathen philosophy, in the form in which it was chiefly current—viz., Gnosticism. Up to that time it had seemed, but only seemed, to be more ethical than intellectual. It based its teaching on facts which were indisputable to the minds of its first teachers. There was no need as yet to defend its first principles. But in the shock caused by the meeting between advancing Christianity and heathen philosophy, the Christian thinkers were thrown back upon the fundamentals of their religion, and the next few centuries were spent, not “in substituting the æon Christos for the man Jesus,” nor in enunciating new truths, but simply in accurately defining when it was not consistent with Christian faith and tradition to hold. So far from allying itself with Gnosticism, Christianity stoutly and successfully defended its bulwarks against the attacks of Gnosticism, in the form of Arianism. So far from permitting any such idea as that of the Gnostic æons, it fought, as almost every one knows, against it with all its strength, and handed down to its successors a doctrine which was the direct antithesis to that of the Gnostic æons. So far from “contradicting the first principles of the Founder the moment it became a legislative religion,” it spent the next three centuries in making these principles sure. That for the moment there was a slight falling-away from the early Christian ideal after Constantine’s establishment of Christianity as a State religion, is naturally to be accounted for by the contrast between a hounded and persecuted community and an honoured and victorious Church. It lasted for a moment, and was only partial. The names and deeds of the next few centuries abundantly prove this fact. So far from “belying its name” and its original commission, it carried Christianity to the uttermost bounds of the Roman Empire and beyond them.
     Such is the historical retrospect of the first days of Christianity. How different it is from that of Mr. Buchanan’s it is not difficult to see.
     Christianity is certainly based upon laws of nature, as Mr. Buchanan says, e.g., the fact of sin. But it is idle to argue as if a law of nature rested in its own completeness—and that no conclusions or lines of conduct are to be deduced or suggested by it. It is easy to say that modern dogmatic Christianity is alien from the spirit and intention of its Founder, but it is not so easy to prove it. The sanctions of true morality to-day are, whether avowedly or not, based on Christianity, and this is due to the fact that, so far from contradicting its first principles, it has for eighteen centuries sturdily refused to allow any of its beliefs to be whittle away at the beck of idealists and hypocritics, who talk much of goodness, but are so afraid of “dogma” that they hardly dare to define what goodness is, and certainly afford us no help towards the attainment of it.—I am, Sir, your obedient servant,

                                                                                                                                   FIDES.
     The Grange, Littlemore, Oxon, Aug. 21.

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The Daily Telegraph (26 August, 1890 - p.3)

“BENEFICENT MURDER.”

TO THE EDITOR OF “THE DAILY TELEGRAPH.”

     SIR—In view of the reproaches of some of your correspondents, who contend that they do not quite know what I mean or what I am complaining about, I find it necessary to add a few further words of explanation. I never posed as a Gnostic, as “one who knows,” and if I show scant respect for authoritative opinions, I feel quite as little respect for any opinions of my own. I invariably try, however, to make these opinions clear. Since I appear to have failed in the first instance, let me try again.
     I am not, to begin with, a Socialist in the ordinary sense of the word, and I distinguish in both the moral and the political world, between sympathetic co-operation and arbitrary trades unionism. I will combine with no man, with no body of men, to dictate absolutely to others how they are to think and act. True Socialism, I believe, contra the Fabian Essays quoted by one of your correspondents, to be the organisation of minorities against the despotism of majorities, the self-protection of individuals against the tyranny of mob-elected legislators, against encroachments on the part of the State, of the Church, of capital, of the working as well as of the governing classes, and of Society. False Socialism I believe to be the combination of organised classes and communities to limit the free action of the individual, and to force unnatural evolution all along the line. A true Socialist accepts patiently the inevitable limitations put by the community on his personal activity. He is perfectly well aware that government is necessary, and that, if his fellow-men are to be comfortable, he cannot do just as he pleases. If he protests against taxes, it is only when he considers them iniquitous—id est, taxes for foolish wars, for the support of discredited institutions, of unnecessary offices, of sinecures. He cheerfully contributes to the lighting and draining of cities, to the wages of a necessary police, to the support of the helpless and deserving poor, to the necessary institutions of the State. But there he pauses. Having done his duty as a citizen, he retires on his rights as a man. He complains if he has to support a Church in which he has ceased to believe, and contends that if his neighbours require the services of a clergyman they should not ask him to pay for them. If he seeks entertainment he elects to choose it for himself, without legislative supervision. If he likes statues and pictures of the nude (as I do), he contends that he has a right to enjoy them, despite the fact that they create nasty sensations in ”moral” people. So with books and with the drama. He claims a free choice in their selection, no matter how many “young persons” may be peeping round the corner. Despite the priests in absolution of the new journalism, he protests against combinations which rnake life hideous—e.g., the inquisitorial Newspaper. But even here he does not interfere; he only smiles, and prays that God may send poor Humanity a better religion and better literature. And so on, and so on, to the end of the chapter.
     I hope this is very simple. Well, in the present condition of affairs, how does the true Socialist—or in other words, the rational, peace-loving citizen—find himself treated?
     He finds, in the first place, that false Socialism, using the shibboleth of the “greatest happiness for the greatest  number,” is, both here and in Germany, bolstering up the tyrannies of an all-present officialism. He finds that powerful organisations of men are trying to legalise, in our cities, what is in his sight the abomination of abominations. He finds that the finest course of action a Government can adopt to repress crimes of murder and of violence is to imitate them, or even, as lately in America, to excel their horrors. He finds that, by our marriage laws, men and women are chained like beasts together, and that their very despairing effort to escape from each other is called “collusion.” He finds that, everywhere in society, wherever the Puritanical bias prevails, the simplest and purest natural functions are looked upon as unclean; that Morality despises the body now, as Religion despised it long ago. He is told of the spread of education; he finds that he is being told merely of a spread of half-instructed ignorance. He finds our leading scientists justifying war and appropriation, as our leading spiritualists and Churchmen used to justify them. He finds it dangerous, or at least incompatible, to express his real opinion of any existing institution, particularly if that institution is either “moral” or “religious.” He is not led to the stake, but he is “boycotted,” he is a discredited and suspected person. He finds, in one word, that at every point of his individual advance he is confronted by the mass of organised cruelty and unintelligence.
     All this, of course, is no new thing. As a child, I saw Robert Owen stoned for saying that marriages were not always made in heaven! But at no period of history, except that period when false Christianity was most dominant, have individuals been so much at the mercy of a false morality. In literature especially the extent of completed ignorance is something scarcely credible: ignorance not only of the uneducated, but of the cultivated and the superfine. To illustrate it, I need go no further than the last number of the “Quarterly Review,” where conventional Morality speaks out loudly as a trumpet on the subject of the French nation and of French fiction. Even the School Board, it appears, has not killed the insular prejudice that every Frenchman is a sensualist and every French book an outrage on decency. But what is to be said of a writer (the mouthpiece of a large class, or we should not find him in the “Quarterly”), who lumps Balzac, Flaubert, and Zola together as writers of the same calibre, and actually affirms that “Balzac was a materialist, who did not believe in God.” Poor Balzac! who swore by Godhead and the Monarchy, and was so mercilessly roasted for his leaning to these aristocracies. “His (Balzac’s) only faith was faith in money; he is the supreme artist who excels in consummating the type of the ignoble, even of the cadaverous. His characters are always intrinsically vicious, and he anticipated the worst things of Zola.” And this of the writer who gave us “Eugénie Graudet,” and “Cousine Pons,” and “La Cousin Bette,” and a hundred other imperishable types of human beauty and goodness. Is it any wonder that the wretched poor flock to hear the tumult of the Salvation Army, when the rich and cultured combine to support such dismal howling as I have quoted, such utter ignorance of the subject, such spasmodic stumbling, as of the blind leading the blind?
     For myself, I still find in France the centre of the world’s free thought. The mad political craze, the whirl from one system to another, is nothing; the bold and fearless freedom of the great French writers, from Diderot downwards, is everything. No matter if they have now torn open the sewers, as long ago they tore down the superstructures of society. They have taught men to think and feel. Even Zola among the shambles is better than Chadband among the churches, better than the easy English novelist who cloaks up the ulcers of society, better than Mr. Chaos-come-again and his army of howling teetotalers and Sabbatarians.
     But I find I am wandering away into criticism. What I wanted to point out was, that it is not the freedom of individuals we have to fear, but the combinations of classes—the trades unions of well-intentioned political moralists, culminating in the tyrannies of the legislature. England under the new Radicalism is growing as terrible as Sheffield under Broadhurst! We have too much legislation and too little individual responsibility. Men who used to fight for their own hands now cling tremulously to the skirts of officialism, and cry, “Help us; instruct us. We are too weak to help and instruct ourselves.” Small wonder that, in their extremity, they turn from the conscience implanted in them by God to the legerdemain of Providence made Easy. If we want to know whither a large portion of the community is drifting let us glance for a moment at General Booth’s view of the Millennium, given in a publication called “All the World.” “First, we should have Hyde Park roofed in, with towers climbing to the stars, as the world’s great, grand, central temple! . . . And then, what demonstrations, what processions, what mighty assemblies, what grand reviews, what crowded streets, impassable with the joyful multitudes marching to and fro! . . . Five million hearts would turn to God with voices of thanksgiving, and with shouts of praise!”
     Far be it from me to underrate the good work General Booth is doing in some directions; but take his work en bloc,  it is an attempt to turn Humanity into a huge barrel-organ, with an accompaniment of “shouting” performers. And herein, as we are aware, lies the secret of his triumph. Knowing how little is done to amuse the masses, seeing their utter wretchedness and dulness, he shows them how to exercise their bodies and use their lungs by organising for one universal Shout. Out of this hideous tumult, to which the “tom-tom” of the poor savage is music, peace and salvation are to come. Looming in the near future is the Golden Age, when any individual who refuses to join in the general noise will be regarded as anti-social, as an unsympathetic member of the community. In the face of this and kindred horrors, we are asked to believe that beneficent and philanthropic organisation is everything, and that individual peace and personal freedom are of little or no consequence.—I am, Sir, your obedient servant,

                                                                                                                           ROBERT BUCHANAN.
     25, Maresfield-gardens, South Hampstead, N. W., Aug. 22.

[Note:
Changes in The Coming Terror:
‘True Socialism, I believe, contra the Fabian Essays quoted by one of your correspondents, to be the organisation of minorities against the despotism of majorities,’ - replaced with ‘True Socialism, I believe to be the self- protection of minorities against the despotism of majorities,’
‘Despite the priests in absolution of the new journalism, he protests against combinations which rnake life hideous—e.g., the Salvation Army.’ - ‘the Salvation Army’ replaced with ‘the inquisitorial Newspaper.’
‘he only smiles, and prays that God may send poor Humanity a better religion and better music.’ - ‘music’ replaced with  ‘literature’
‘the last number of the “Quarterly Review,”’ - ‘the last’ replaced with ‘a recent’
‘And this of the writer who gave us “Eugénie Graudet,” and “Cousine Pons,” and “La Cousin Bette,” and a hundred other imperishable types of human beauty and goodness.’ -  replaced with ‘And this of the writer who gave us ‘Eugénie Grandet,’ and ‘Cousin Pons,’ and ‘Modeste Mignon,’ and a hundred other imperishable types of human beauty and goodness.’
‘Sheffield under Broadhurst!’ - replaced with ‘Sheffield under Broadhead!’
‘but take his work en bloc, it is an attempt’ - replaced with ‘but take such a proclamation as this, and it is an attempt’
‘Out of this hideous tumult,’ - ‘hideous’ omitted ]

_____

TO THE EDITOR OF “THE DAILY TELEGRAPH.”

     SIR—Mr. Robert Buchanan’s account of the rise and progress of Christianity, in your issue of to-day, is a curious exemplification of history evolved out of a man’s inner consciousness, like the German’s camel. He describes himself as “compelled to put all intervening historical documents aside;” and he certainly does so with a vengeance, seeing that all existing historical testimony unanimously asserts, in direct opposition to his own account—first, that Christianity, instead of “threatening to die out altogether as a living faith” at the end of the first century, was daily increasing with wonderful rapidity; and secondly, that gnosticism, instead of being hailed as a reviving influence, was strenuously opposed by the great mass of orthodox believers from the very beginning.
     Perhaps what this mercurial writer says on such a subject may be thought hardly worth serious consideration; but, unfortunately, there are many uneducated, or half-educated, persons who are led away into regarding speculations of this kind as established facts; while in reality they are only theories based on little else than the crude ideas of those who manufacture them.—I am, Sir, your obedient servant,

                                                                                                                       SCRUTATOR.
     Paddington, W., Aug. 21.

_____

TO THE EDITOR OF “THE DAILY TELEGRAPH.”

     SIR—I have been amazed and have looked with wonder at the entanglement of this discussion. But few pens have been taken up by the “horny hands of toil,” and why? Mr. Buchanan, with the pen of a ready writer, and with the power of a strong and educated mind, has directed his shafts to the classes and not the masses, and now where is “John Ploughman”?
     Education of late years has made rapid strides, and the children of this generation boast they are wiser than their fathers. Educationally admitted, but where are those principles which were the backbone of our Old England? Socialism, Agnosticism, Individualism, had not then had their day. “Capital Punishment,” and not “Beneficent Murder,” was the order of the day. Free thought was nurtured only in the bosom and not on the public platform. Christian Socialism was unknown to the world at large, but a curtain has been drawn. England of to-day in no way finds itself on a par with that of yesterday; but have these changes worked for our advantage, bodily and for the soul? Count Tolstoi’s “Kreutzer Sonata” and “Ouida’s” novels are allowed a place in our public libraries, heedless of the evil and the deadly evil such literature may produce in the minds of the youths of this progressive age. Will this serve to maintain an untarnished name? But, why go further?
     Our Board Schools, it is true, seek to train the young to aspire to any calling, and even train them with heretofore unheard-of recklessness, alike in regard to their submissiveness to elders and in regard to the common-sense view of the natural order of things. But, Sir, are we to allow ourselves to be heard no more? Are we to accept with good faith the opinion of these educated men as definite, and decline to argue with their overstocked technical encyclopædia? No, Sir; the beardless youth must give way to the hoary head (if he will), and while we let younger men, by the medium of the press, give vent to their expressions by the use of grotesque statements, it debars men of another generation entering the lists.
     Does Mr. Buchanan seek to reform the world and the flesh? Then why not say so, and let a few less-educated reap the benefit of a developed mind, and not hide himself under a mask of no doubt smart language. Execution by electricity, if properly managed, may be “Beneficent Punishment,” but where is its connection with “Beneficent Murder”?
     Trusting I have not trespassed too largely on your space, and that the opinion of an “old fogie” may find a place in your columns, I am, Sir, your obedient servant,

                                                                                                                       EDWIN LEAG.
     1, Surbiton-terrace, Surbiton, Aug. 24.

___

The Daily Telegraph (27 August, 1890 - p.2)

“BENEFICENT MURDER.”

TO THE EDITOR OF “THE DAILY TELEGRAPH.”

     SIR—I am utterly at a loss to understand Mr. Buchanan’s object in treating the world to such an eruption of tempestuous verbiage as proceeded from his pen on the 18th inst. Is it impossible for him to clothe his ideas in less bombastic phrases, and to write as if he were a philosopher? The froth obscures the drink; the exuberance of expression but confuses the argument.
     What is the cause that has indirectly enriched English literature by the addition of such a phenomenal composition? The cause is apparently the condition of mind into which Mr. Buchanan has been thrown by reflecting upon two almost coincident events—the execution of Kemmler and the suppression of the “Kreutzer Sonata” in America. These events have acted as a sort of ferment in his mind, leading to the liberation of a large quantity of gas of a somewhat explosive character. These events he unsparingly condemns, and uses as texts for a denunciatory tirade against modern science and civilisation. When, however, a man of mark, as Mr. Buchanan is generally admitted to be, condemns and anathematises, he should be careful to condemn and anathematise justly. He speaks of the execution of Kemmler as done “in the interest of science”; but this is obviously incorrect. It appears to me to be a huge libel to make such a statement, when the object of the alteration in the method of carrying out the capital sentence was to substitute a more merciful for a less merciful death. Death by lightning is the most painless of deaths, as the electric fluid, travelling so much faster than sensation, destroys the nerves before they can convey pain. It was, therefore, thought that artificial lightning would destroy as rapidly and as painlessly, and it certainly would do so if used in sufficient quantity and tension. Experts present have given their opinion that the unfortunate culprit was unconscious from the moment that contact was made, and most of those cognisant of electrical phenomena would probably agree with them. Criminals who are executed by hanging have their features hidden from view, and the convulsive action of the body is only revealed by the vibrations of the rope. It is notorious, also, that awful incidents have occurred when the death penalty has been exacted by this method. The execution of Kemmler was an experiment, made not in the interests of science, but in the interests of humanity and mercy. It was an honest attempt to lessen suffering, not to increase it; to mitigate the horrors of judicial manslaughter, not to aggravate them. From this misleading text, however, the poet preaches his crusade against science, taking poet’s licence with a vengeance; so much so that one not accustomed to the necessity of discounting hyperbolic extravagances of language might well suppose that he was indulging his readers with a ponderous joke after the manner of “Vice Versá.” “The reverence for human life, for the human body, has departed”! Might I humbly ask this acute observer, at what period of the world’s history was reverence for human life, for the human body greater? When was greater help afforded the human body in sickness and in injury than at present? Has the human body nothing to thank science for? Was Chloroform not her gift? Have Jenner, Lister, Pasteur, Spencer Wells, Thompson, and their numerous distinguished fellow-workers in one branch of science alone done nothing for humanity? This science: “a survival of the old Calvinism,” “cruel as the grave.” “Let me feel the gentleman’s bumps. I must feel the gentleman’s bumps,” said Sydney Smith years ago. Surely there must be something to interest science in Mr. Buchanan’s phrenological development.
     This development from a microscopic ovum, who despises the “creature” that vaunts his descent from the “catarrhine ape,” asks, “How much further will the appetite for carnal knowledge, the lust for verification, carry this ‘creature’”? But why speak of knowledge as “carnal?” The word is equivocal. Does Mr. Buchanan seriously decry the appetite for knowledge? Does he prefer stagnation in error, to effort for its elimination? Does he, in this connection, practise what he preaches? Again, what does the poet mean by the “ethics of the dissecting room?” Having dissected myself, I must confess that I have not observed anything in the domain of ethics peculiar to the scene of the study of that most wonderful of all machines, the human body, by students, upon whose care and skill the human body will have to rely for assistance when deranged by disease or damaged by injury.
     Mr. Buchanan’s letter is, however, so replete with statements against which common sense revolts, that the attempt to deal with but a fraction of them would swell out a letter to inordinate dimensions. Science will not heed the wordy railer at her triumphs, nor the tide of truth recede before the poet’s vigorous flourish of the Partingtonian broom.
     Mr. Buchanan says that he “was not born ‘moral’”; and he implies that he refuses to measure himself by the common standard which regulates social conduct. Society will probably overlook the poet’s eccentricity in this respect, as long as he keeps it within due bounds. He complains of persecution. He “cannot procure certain books without police supervision”—this, I presume, means when prose is substituted for imagination; that it is illegal to publish obscene or offensively blasphemous literature. “I cannot see a play or write one without being guided for my good by a legal supervisor.” This, I take it, is a reference to the censorship of plays, by which indecency and offence are guarded against. He cannot be charitable for fear of the lunacy commissioners. There is almost a morbid sensitiveness displayed here to the opinions of those gentlemen. He cannot place himself at the mercy of his publishers without being advised to unite with other authors for their mutual protection! The community in which Mr. Buchanan’s lot has been cast has obviously not made the gratification of individuals of his particular type its special study. Men who are neither “moral” by birth, nor “measure themselves by the common standard which regulates social conduct” would, perhaps, like Tennyson’s hero, find more congenial surroundings were they—

“To burst all links of habit—there to wander far away,
On from island unto island at the gateways of the day.
There methinks would be enjoyment more than in this march of mind,
In the steamship, in the railway, in the thoughts that shake mankind;
There the passions cramped no longer, shall have scope and breathing-space.”

There he would find none of his detested science; no impious lust of verification; no appetite for carnal knowledge. There he would find absolute freedom, without the light of science or the aid of civilisation to engage single-handed in the struggle for existence. But here, in spite of his denunciations, research and verification will proceed—

“That which they have done but earnest of the things that they shall do.”

New conquests over ignorance will be won. New power will result from new knowledge, new safeguards obtained against disease; and may it not be hoped and anticipated that, instead of opening the legal floodgates and permitting questionable literature to taint the minds and undermine the principles of our youth, the common sense of the people will discover new methods of preventing the vice and drunkenness that people our prisons and poorhouses with the social wrecks of those who “refuse to measure themselves by the common standard which regulates social conduct.”—I am, Sir, your obedient servant,

                                                                                                                             MEDICUS.
     Dorchester, Aug. 23.

_____

TO THE EDITOR OF “THE DAILY TELEGRAPH.”

     SIR—An age which has raised sentimentalism to a fine art, and has nominated poets, painters, and occasional correspondents as the high priests of this same art, can of course hardly be expected to recognise so inopportune a principle as that of utility, or so fettering a bond as that of the social contract. In every community there is an implied contract, in which every person yields up a portion of individual liberty to preserve intact the remainder of that liberty; this contract is, or should be, so arranged that the greatest amount of happiness should result therefrom, with the minimum of evil. It is the effort of legislators to continually adapt this social contract according to this principle of utility. Where such a state of things exists there can be no question whatsoever as to the right to punish; punishment and its range is a pure matter of expediency, varying according to the various forms of the social contract, and sentiment ought to be no more a matter of consideration than it is in any clause at all of any other contract.
     It is useless to speak of the right to punish; there is no such inherent right in nature. It is a purely contractual right which has developed from the Law of Retaliation during the gradual softening of human intercourse. The word punishment is a misnomer, except as exercised by some superior being. Justice has the sole duty of preventing future wrong and wrong-doing by means of the application of various deterrents to wrong-doers, applied in such a way as to become well known to the community, and thereby to act as a warning.
     Now, Sir, I submit that the whole question of capital punishment resolves itself into one of expediency: is it expedient to employ the death penalty as a deterrent or not? The question of the sin of taking the life of one who has not hesitated to take the life of another is no way in point. It may be a sin or it may not. If it be one, and expediency demands its committal, then let the sin be committed in the name of all that is reasonable. No one need hold up their hands at such a statement; necessity (casuistry aside) may render such a sin even praiseworthy. In time of war deserters are shot, spies are shot, the opposing sides shoot and bayonet down each other without hesitation; these, if sins, are always condoned, indeed praised, by pale-faced Necessity. If then, in the case of war (which is presumably always for the salvation, more or less modified, of a nation) necessity condones the sin of life-taking, how much more shall necessity condone that act when the nation’s wisest men have held it most expedient as a deterrent to uphold the moral salvation of the nation!
     Sentimentalism would be better applied than here if it drove hard against that bitter, vile sin of life-taking as continuously exhibited by the cruelties of sweating and the congested life of lower London.
     The whole question, then, is one of expediency, and the unknown quantity called sin must be eliminated from the problem. From the point of view of expediency one is quite unable to refrain from reprobating the whole system of capital punishment, whether it be mercifully expedited, as in England, or spun out in spider-webs of agony, as recently in America. The punishment has been separated from all the many crimes it attended, save four: it has been recognised that pain shall, if possible, form no part of the punishment; the popular feeling that the punishment should be abolished has been growing for many years, growing steadily, one might say, since Beccaria advocated its disuse.
     It is true death prevents the repetition of an assassin’s crime; but, as Bentham points out, if that were the sole argument relied on for the penalty, it would have to be applied “to destroy the frantic and mad, from whom society has everything to fear.”
     Finally, to quote Bentham, “it is said that death is the only punishment which can outweigh certain temptations to commit homicide. These temptations can only arise from hostility or cupidity; and do not these passions, from their very nature, dread humiliation, want, and captivity more than death?”—I am, Sir, your obedient servant,

                                                                             J. E. GEOFFREY DE MONTMORENCY.
     London, Aug.23.

_____

TO THE EDITOR OF “THE DAILY TELEGRAPH.”

     SIR—If you do not put a stop to Mr. Robert Buchanan one of two things will happen. Either there will be something “beneficent” done in the North of London, or else we shall all be buying up the “Kreutzer Sonata.” Which would you prefer?—I am, Sir, your obedient servant,

                                                                                                                         BOB SHARP.
     Brixton, Aug. 23.

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The Yorkshire Post (27 August, 1890 - p.4)

     Mr. Robert Buchanan at length explains in the columns of the Daily Telegraph what he means by “Beneficent Murder;” although we doubt very much whether anybody will be much the wiser for the explanation. Mr. Buchanan is not a gnostic, he says; he is not a Socialist—that is, he is neither a know-all nor a share-all, which is what we would have been quite willing to believe without any specific assurance on the point. He cheerfully contributes to the poor, police, and sanitary rates, but objects to paying towards a church or a clergyman he does not believe in. Will Mr. Buchanan say who wants him to? Then he likes pictures of the nude, and does not care to be interfered with when admiring them. The Salvation Army he would not have at any price—its religion being vulgar and its music a mere hubbub. For French literature Mr. Buchanan has a great admiration, holding the Quarterly Reviewer to be a ninny who has just written in a condemnatory strain on the subject. Even “Zola among the shambles,” according to Mr. Buchanan, “is better than Chadband among the churches, better than the easy English novelist who cloaks up the ulcers of society, better than Mr. Chaos-come-again and his army of howling teetotalers and Sabbatarians.” It is a very bad world, no doubt, and one which, if Mr. Buchanan had had the making of it, would have been very much better. The mischief, however, is that even in a world of Mr. Buchanan’s creation there would be grumbling, and someone else would be wanting to try his hand afresh on a world in which there would be no Robert Buchanans, and consequently no first-rate hand at starting a subject for the silly season.

___

The Daily Telegraph (28 August, 1890 - p.2)

“BENEFICENT MURDER.”

TO THE EDITOR OF “THE DAILY TELEGRAPH.”

     SIR—Oblige me by correcting the following clerical errors in the printing of my last letter: For “Cousine Pons” read, of course, “Le Cousin Pons;” for “La Cousin Bette” read “La Cousine Bette,” and for “Sheffield under Broadhurst” read “Sheffield under Broadhead.” The first two blunders are obvious misprints, but the third compromises rather absurdly the name of a prominent politician. Permit me at the same time to say that, so far as I am concerned, the discussion is closed. The public correspondence elicited by my letters has completely justified, to my mind, both my theories and my fears. On the other hand, the large private correspondence which I have received, and the almost numberless expressions of sympathy, convince me that I have not written altogether in vain—I am, Sir, your obedient servant,

                                                                                                                           ROBERT BUCHANAN.
     London, Aug. 27. 

_____

TO THE EDITOR OF “THE DAILY TELEGRAPH.”

     SIR—In your Saturday’s issue there appeared two letters in which the legislative suppression of the class of “impure literature” is advocated, and in one of them the “Kreutzer Sonata” of Tolstoi is placed in this class.
     The word “impure,” when used in a moral sense, is a variable quantity, and admits of widely different interpretations, even from a human standpoint. My conception of the term, for instance, is widely at variance with that of your correspondent, when he considers it applicable to the work in question. This may be that his judgment is the more matured, since I am only a young man; but it seems to me that if we are to classify all literature into that which is pure and that which is impure, the task is a well-night insurmountable one—for the division is far too broad and arbitrary.
     The class “impure” will admit of at least two subdivisions. Firstly, those in which the author has simply held a mirror up to nature tarnished with just a little pessimism, perhaps, in which, though portraying the vile part of our natures, he keeps to what most of us know to be facts—where he does not wound our sense of decency by the mode in which he expresses himself, and in which the perusal awakes a consciousness of the immorality in and around us, and a desire to combat it. Such works are moral. Secondly, those which have had their origin in the morbid sensualism and indecency of the author, and from no other source, and which only cater and appeal to the most morally-depraved among us—these excite the passions, condemn no evils, and are as wicked as they are morally corrupt.
     In the first subdivision I should place the “Kreutzer Sonata” of Tolstoi, for I only see in it a work which, by exposing our immoral blemishes—not discovering them—lets a little fact and materialism into the atmosphere of impossible idealism and sentimental debility in which we fain would live, and move, and have our being. Those of us who are not too nervous or too blind to admit it, will agree that he teaches us nothing, and that it is the simple truth in such matters as he refers to which is always so unwelcome; and will not this account for the injured wail of disapprobation which the appearance of the book in this country evoked? In it we are simply shown that it is the selfishness and sensuality in men, which nip in the bud and blight the happiness which marriage should bring, and the women are generally the victims. In it we are shown the feelings which all too often prompt the desire to possess a certain woman, and how effervescent and selfish such love(?) is, and with what result it must be attended. There is a mighty moral to the book, and on e which comes home forcibly and indelibly to the minds of all those who read aright; and it is, that marriage should be entered into with a view to the companionship which affinity in intellect and disposition assures, and that, in choosing a wife, we should subordinate our animalism to such considerations. Satiety, disgust, contempt, mistrust, and jealousy will then cease to mar our happiness, and we should be united in the marriage contract by a bond of sympathy and affection which would withstand all time and tend to elevate us. Woman’s position and sphere would then be all she could demand, as a helpmate and a companion; she would cease to be, as is generally the case, only a housekeeper, a plaything, or a mother.
     How difficult a matter it is to realise this high ideal of selection in marriage, and to eradicate all other promptings is not for the older generation to gauge, unless they have good memories. But our [?] will admit of a partial consummation of this desideratum. How, then, can this be effected? Assuredly only by exposing, and not be cloaking and ignoring, the evils and fallacies which beset us, and by showing their dire consequences, as Tolstoi has done. To effect this there is no more mighty weapon than the pen—that weapon which has already done more to expose, ameliorate, or extinguish vice and corruption, and to elevate the masses morally and intellectually, than all the other mundane powers together.
     I have no sympathy with those who will smack their lips and beam in benevolent approval on the writings of the visionary of ideal excellence in man, and of exaggerated optimism, and who gloat over the morally impossible productions of this school, while they show their teeth and stop their ears at all which is not “nice,” though the truth be self-evident that it is real and existent.
     I repeat, it is not by closing our own eyes, and shutting the light from others, that any evil is rectified; for it must first be seen and acknowledged. Such a doctrine I hole to be a wicked and pernicious obstruction to enlightened progress. Tolstoi’s work exposes the evil elements in our natures, and shows us to what they may lead us. It sounds a warning blast to us young men. It left in me, after its perusal, feelings and determinations of a most intensely moral nature, as many a similar book has done, and I find that its perusal by many of my friends has called forth from them the expression of higher and purer sentiments on marriage. And yet, I suppose, the popular vote would suppress the book. When shall we improve and reform?
     It is the same “unco’ guid” school which teaches similar weak-kneed and maundering ethics on the Sunday question, and whose rigid Sabbatarianism is opposed to the opening of museums on Sundays. They either do not or they will not see that it is the majority which does not attend church; they will not inquire the reason, neither will they endeavour to find out how else the Sunday is spent by these; and their mulish pertinacity to the doctrine of not looking facts in the face prompts them to oppose every obstacle to the ascent of paths of intellectual and moral culture, and not to offer a counter-attraction to those which are morally declivitous.
     Such of us are all too apt to judge from our own acquired moral and religious standpoints. Selfishness is the endowment which nature places on individualism, and individualism is not the spirit in which such great questions should be approached. —I am, Sir, your obedient servant,

                                                                                                                                           K.
     Hastings, Aug. 24.

_____

TO THE EDITOR OF “THE DAILY TELEGRAPH.”

     SIR—I cannot call this a reply to Mr. Buchanan, he having wandered away from the subject considerably in his last letter. A great deal of mock sentimentality has been shown regarding Kemmler’s execution. His death sufferings will remain a mystery; but we do know what he must have suffered during twelve months of terrible suspense. Nothing at all is said about that. We will charitably suppose they meant well; it was an experiment, but the delay was barbarous cruelty unworthy of a civilised country. It is very doubtful whether capital punishment has the desired effect, and in no case should it take place on circumstantial evidence. Far better for any number of murderers to escape the gallows, than that one innocent man should become a victim.—I am, Sir, your obedient servant,

                                                                                                                         HUMANITY.
     Oxford-street, Aug. 25.

_____

TO THE EDITOR OF “THE DAILY TELEGRAPH.”

     SIR—Having read with interest the correspondence criticising Mr. Buchanan’s able letters, allow me to say that in my view the two great evils of modern life are Materialism and the constantly fresh encroachments upon personal liberty. The bigotry of Scientists is fast crystallising into a Materialistic creed which is crushing out the dying hopes of humanity in anything beyond this life; and the constant encroachments upon our liberties made by all political parties at the instigation of the working man on the one side and our would-be Puritans on the other will soon give an answer in the negative to the celebrated question, Is life worth living? The meddling policy of our county councillors in their efforts to regulate even the amusements of the people, in the interests of peudo morality, is altogether mistaken. The puritanical societies (so dear to the clerics), not content with playing the spy in private life, have even attempted to regulate advertisements (witness their attack on the harmless Zæo, which, I am thankful to say, has collapsed); and their efforts can be felt even in our free libraries. Though they wish much to dip their hands in the ratepayer’s pockets, they yet begin to regulate what he shall read and even boycott some of our English classics lest they should demoralise the youthful mind. All this shows the way we are tending, and that the advent of what Mr. Herbert Spencer calls the “coming slavery” is nigh. It is time that all lovers of freedom should unite their efforts against this intermeddling. True, religion and natural morality thrive most in the congenial soil of personal liberty. Their growth cannot be forced as a sickly exotic. And scientists who dogmatise about Materialism must remember that they know nothing but the succession of phenomena, and that the reality behind must be reached by a totally different class of studies.—I am, Sir, your obedient servant,

                                                                                                                     A. F. TINDALL.
     London, Aug. 25.

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TO THE EDITOR OF “THE DAILY TELEGRAPH.”

     SIR—Apparently the whole cause of the storm of pseudo righteous indignation raised by the “Kreutzer Sonata” is that therein man is described as he really exists. The discovery in time (i.e., before marriage) by virtuous women of the revolting details of men’s lives would save thousands from the miserable wedded existence so ably described by Tolstoi. Therefore, it appears to me that instead of condemnation this book with a mission deserves nothing but praise, and should be widely circulated. “Truth wounds.” The stronger sex (so-called) do not wish that their evil deeds should see the light, and in this land of cant they seize the handiest means of suppressing truth, viz., by raising the bugbear of “immoral literature,” forsooth! It is curious to remark, however, that no refutation of the charges has been attempted by the would-be moralists.—I am, Sir, your obedient servant,

                                                                                                                 ANTI-HUMBUG.
     London, N., Aug. 25.

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Echo Portrait Gallery

[Robert Buchanan was featured in the ‘Portrait Gallery’ of The Echo on 20th October, 1890. The article is available here, and this is Buchanan’s response.]

The Echo (22 October, 1890 - p.1)

“MR. ROBERT BUCHANAN.”
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TO THE EDITOR OF THE ECHO.

     SIR,—I have only one fault to find with the very good-natured picture of myself in your Portrait Gallery (Monday last, Oct. 20), and the fault is that your contributor makes me far too virtuous. Unconsciously, and I am sure unwillingly, he echoes the clamour of a clique heard loudly ever since I criticised adversely the English followers of Gautier and Baudelaire, and branding me as a severe moralist (save the mark!) he leaves me in the society of Mr. Collette and the Vigilance Committee. I know how useless it is to protest—to point out that, so far from placing French writers “in the pillory of my detestation,” I have been among the first to welcome the strong men among them; that I have defended Zola against the diatribes of Mr. Howells and the damning apologies of Mr. Stevenson; that I have expressed my sympathy for all full-blooded writers from Chaucer to Byron, from Rabelais down to Paul de Koch; that I have upheld and defended both the “Kreutzer Sonata” on the bookstalls and the posters of Zæo on the hoardings; that I have, in a word, always disapproved of the public or private censorship of literature and literary morals. All is in vain. To have expressed my objection to certain emasculated forms of Art and Poetry is to be a Puritan, and unless I do something very desperate, I shall be classed as a Puritan all my life!
     May I confess also that I fail to understand some of your contributor’s allusions? I fail to remember when and where I have “reproved” Walt Whitman for “unchastity of expression”; where I reverence and where I sympathise I do not presume to “reprove.” Your description of a coming sensational law case is also a little beyond me. It is quite true that I am prosecuting an obscene publication (a task which the virtuous Vigilance Committee, so eager to see wickedness in an innocent poster, have left to a private citizen); but I cannot see how that concerns any “big journalistic critic.”
     But these, I admit, are venial errors, seeing how grateful I am to your contributor for his tender allusion to the friend of my boyhood, David Gray, and for his kindly praise of some of my own work in literature. Pardon me, therefore, for troubling you with these lines, provoked merely by the imputation of Virtue, which is likely to do my character serious injury.—I am, &c.,
                             ROBERT BUCHANAN.
     25, Maresfield-gardens, South Hampstead, N.W.,    Oct. 21

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The Echo (27 October, 1890 - p.2)

ROBERT BUCHANAN AND WALT WHITMAN.

     Mr. Robert Buchanan can be charming on occasion, and adds to his heavy “slogging” powers a playful wit rare among his compatriots—witness his recent sparkling comment on our portrait of himself. He inverts Polonius’s advice, and denies a virtue though he has it. But we think he somewhat abuses the word Puritan. It certainly conveys no reproach, but is rather a title in which to rejoice; and not even akin to prude and prurient with which he surely confounds it. He pleads not guilty to having “reproved” Walt Whitman for “unchastity of expression.” His essay on the “clear forerunner of the great American poets, long yearned   for,” is certainly nobly sympathetic; but in it he permits himself to talk of Whitman’s “needless bestialities,” and speak of some of the trans-Atlantic bard’s passages as “very coarse and silly,” “unfit for Art,” and “rank nonsense.” Surely such expressions cover ours. As Mr. Dick allowed King Charles’s head to greatly impede the progress of his memorial, so Mr. Buchanan permits the fancied influence of those who are cheaply grouped as the “Modern French Sapphic poets” to frequently thwart his critical judgment. There are people who think the robust Mr. Buchanan—and it may be greatly to his credit—to be so utterly out of sympathy with this school, from Alfred de Musset down to Catulle Mendes, as to be incapable of rightly understanding them. It is unwise to prophesy at any time, particularly with regard to a libel action not yet even sub judice. If Mr. Buchanan never gets a “light” as to our riddle, it may, perhaps, be well for him—or for others.
                                                                                                       THE WRITER OF THE ARTICLE.

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