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"Herbert Spencer."

Busied as he was with the recondite application of great principles, he had practical discernment of the possibilities of Co-operation, unthought of by those of us engaged in promoting co-partnership in the workshop. Trades unions were mostly against piecework as giving more active workers an advantage over the others. Mr. Spencer pointed out that in a co-partnership workshop the fruitfulness of piece work was an advantage to all. The piece-workers increase the output and profits of the society. The profits, being equally divided upon wages, the least bright and active members receive benefit from the piece-workers' industry.

The first work of Mr. Spencer's which attracted public attention was "Social Statics." Like Mr. Lewes' "Biography of Philosophy," it had a pristine charm which fascinated young thinkers. Both authors restated their works, but left behind their charm. Mr. Gladstone's first address to the electors of Newark contains the germs of his whole and entire career. "Social Statics" contains the element of that philosophy which gave Spencer the first place among thinkers of all times. Bishop Colenso found the book in the library of the builder of his Mission Houses in South Africa. Mr. Ryder, of Bradford, Yorkshire, procured it through me and took it out with him. It was a book of inspiration to him.

Ten years before "Social Statics" appeared I was concerned with others in publishing, in the "Oracle of Reason," a theory of Regular Gradation. Our motto, from Boitard, was an explicit statement of Evolution. Five out of seven of us were soon in prison, which shows that we did not succeed in making Evolution attractive. Intellectual photography was then in an infantine state. Our negatives lacked definition and our best impressions were indistinct. It was not until Darwin and Spencer arose that the art of developing the Evolutionary plates came to be understood.

Before the days of Spencer the world of scientific thought was mostly without form and void. The orthodox voyagers who set out to sea steered by a compass which always veered to a Jewish pole, and none who sailed with them knew where they were. Rival theologians constructed dogmatic charts, increasing the confusion and peril. Guided by the pole star of Evolution, Spencer sailed out alone on the ocean of Speculation and discovered a new empire of Law--founded without blood, or the suppression of liberty, or the waste of wealth--where any man may dwell without fear or shame.

The fascination of Mr. Spencer's pages to the pulpit-wearied inquirer was, that they took him straight to Nature. Mr. Spencer seemed to write with a magnifying pen which revealed objects unnoticed by other observers. His vision, like a telescope, descried sails at sea invisible to those on shore. His pages, if not poems, gleamed with the poetry of facts. His facts were the handmaids always at hand which explained his principle. His repetitions do not tire, but are fresh assurances to the reader that he is following a continuous argument. A pedestrian passing down a long street is glad to meet the recurrence of its name, that he may know he is still upon the same road. In Spencer's reasonings there are no byways left open, down which the sojourner may wander and lose himself. When cross-roads come in sight, fingerposts are set up telling him where they lead to, and directing him which to take. Mr. Spencer pursues a new thought, never loses sight of it, and takes care the reader does not. No statement goes before without the proof following closely after.

When the reception was given to me at South Place Institute, London, in April, 1903, on my eighty-sixth birthday, he had been confined to his house from the previous August, yet he took trouble to write some words of personal regard to myself beyond all my expectation. To the end of his days--save when the weather was inclement--I used to walk up the hill to his door to inquire as to his health, and when I could not do so, Mr. Troughton would write me word. Mr. Spencer's last letter to me was in answer to one I had sent him on his birthday. It was so characteristic as to deserve quoting:

"Thanks for your congratulations; but I should have liked better your condolences on my longevity."

He wanted no twilight in his life. Like the sun in America, his wish was to disappear at once below the horizon--having amply given his share of light in his day.

Like Huxley, Mr. Spencer would not have slept well in Westminster Abbey. He needed no consolation in death; and if he had, there was no one who knew enough to give it to him. His conscience was his consolation. His one choice was that his friend Mr. John Morley--than whom none were fitter--should speak at his death the last words over him. Mr. Morley being in Sicily, this could not be. The next in friendship and power of estimate--the Right Hon. Leonard Courtney--spoke in his stead, at the Hampstead Crematorium. Mr. Spencer had a radium mind which gave forth, of its own spontaneity, light and heat. None who have died could more appropriately repeat the proud lines of Sir Edward Dyer:--

"My mind to me a kingdom is; Such perfect joy therein I find As far exceeds all earthly bliss That God or Nature hath assign'd."

I prefer the picturesque name of Disraeli which he contrived out of the tribal designation of "D'Israeli." Had it been possible he would have transmuted Benjamin into a Gentile name. Disraeli is far preferable to the sickly title of Beaconsfield, by which association he sought to be taken as the Burke of the Tories, for which his genius was too thin.

Disraeli is a fossilised bygone to this generation; though in the political arena he was the most glittering performer of his day. Men admired him as the Blondin of Parliament, who could keep his feet on a tight-rope at any elevation. Others looked upon him as a music-hall Sandow who could snap into two a thicker bar of bovine ignorance than any other athlete of the "country party." He was capable of serving any party, but preferred the party who could best serve him. He was an example how a man, conscious of power and unhampered by scruples, could advance himself by strenuous devices of making himself necessary to those he served.

The showy waistcoat and dazzling jewellery in which he first presented himself to the House of Commons, betrayed the primitive taste of a Jew of the Minories, and foreshadowed that trinket statesmanship which captivated his party, who thought sober, honest principles dull and unentertaining.

Germany and England contemporaneously produced the two greatest adventurers of the century--Ferdinand Lassalle and Benjamin Disraeli. Both were Jews. Both had dark locks and faith in jewellery. Both were Sybarites in their pleasures; and personal ambition was the master passion of each. Both were consummate speakers. Both sought distinction in literature as a prelude to influence. Both professed devotion to the interests of the people by promulgating doctrines which would consolidate the power of the governing classes. Lassalle counselled war against Liberalism, Disraeli against the Whigs. Lassalle adjusted his views to Bismarck, as Disraeli did to Lord Derby. Both owed their fortunes to rich ladies of maturity. Both challenged adversaries to a duel, but Disraeli had the prudence to challenge Daniel O'Connell, who, he knew, was under a vow not to fight one, while Lassalle challenged Count Racowitza, and was killed.

It was a triumph without parallel to bring to pass that the proud aristocracy of England should accept a Jew for its master. Not approaching erect, like a human thing, Disraeli stealthily crept, lizard-like, through the crevices of Parliament, to the front of the nation, and with the sting that nature had given him he kept his enemies at bay. No estimate of him can explain him, which does not take into account his race. An alien in the nation, he believed himself to belong to the sole race that God has recognised. The Jew has an industrial daintiness which is an affront to mankind. He, as a rule, stands by while the Gentile puts his hand to labour. Isolated by Christian ostracism, the Jew tills no ground; he follows no handicraft--a Spinoza here and there excepted. The Jew, as a rule, lives by wit and thrift. He is of every nation, but of no nationality, save his own. He takes no perilous initiation; he leads no forlorn hope; he neither conspires for freedom, nor fights for it. He profits by it, and acquiesces in it; but generally gives you the impression that he will aid either despotism or liberty, as a matter of business--as many do who are not Jews. There are, nevertheless, men of noble qualities among them, and as a class they are as good or better than Christians would be had they been treated for nineteen centuries as badly as Jews have been.

Derision and persecution inspire a strong spirit with retaliation, and absolve him from scrupulous methods of compassing it. Two things the Jew pursues with an unappeasable passion--distinction and authority among believers, before whom his race has been compelled to cringe. An ancient people which subsists by subtlety and courage, has the heroic sense of high tradition, still looks forward to efface, not the indignity of days, but of centuries--which imparts to the Jew a lofty implacableness of aim, which never pauses in its purpose. How else came Mr. Disraeli by that form of assegai sentences, of which one thrust needed no repetition, and by that art which enabled him to climb on phrases to power?

A critic, who had taken pains to inform himself, brought charges against D'Israeli the Elder to the effect that he had taken passages of mark from the books of Continental sceptics and had incorporated them as his own. At the same time he denounced the authors, so as to disincline the reader to look into their pages for the D'Israelian plagiaries. In the novels of D'Israeli the Younger I have come upon passages which I have met with elsewhere in another form. As the reader knows, Disraeli delivered in Parliament, as his own, a fine passage from Thiers. So that when Daniel O'Connell described Disraeli as "the heir-at-law of the impenitent thief who died on the cross," he was nearer the truth than he knew, for there was petty larceny in the Disraelian family.

In Easter, 1872, I was in Manchester when Disraeli had the greatest pantomime day of his life--when he played the Oriental Potentate in the Pomona Gardens. All the real and imaginary Tory societies that could be got together from surrounding counties were paraded in procession before him. To each he made audacious little speeches, which astonished them and, when made known, caused jubilancy in the city.

The deputation from Chorley reminded him of Mr. Charley, member for Salford. He exclaimed, "Chorley and Charley are good names!" When a Tory sick and burial society came up he said "he hoped they were doing a good business, and that their future would be prosperous!" When the night came for his speech, the Free Trade Hall was crowded. It was said that 2,000 persons paid a guinea each for their seats.

Mr. Callander, his host, had taken, at Mr. Disraeli's request, some brandy to the meeting. It was he who poured some into a glass of water. Mr. Disraeli, on tasting it, turned to him and said in an undertone, "There's nothing in it." This wounded the pride of his host, who took it as an imputation of stinginess on his part, and he filled the next glass plentifully. This was the beginning of the orator's trouble. For the first fifteen minutes he spoke in his customary resonant voice. Then husky, sibilant and explosive sentences were unmistakable. Apprehensive reporters, sitting below him, moved aside lest the orator should fall upon them. Suspicious gestures set in. An umbrella was laid near the edge of the platform, that the speaker might keep within the umbrella range. For this there was a good reason, as the speaker's habit of raising himself on his toes endangered his balance. All the meeting understood the case. The orator soon lost all sense of time. He, who knew so well how to suit performance to occasion, was incapable of stopping himself. The audience had come from distant parts. At nine o'clock they could hear the railway bell, calling some to the trains. Ten o'clock came, when a larger portion of the audience was again perturbed by railway warnings. Disraeli was still speaking. Eleven o'clock came; the audience had further decreased then, but Disraeli was still declaiming hoarse sentences. It was a quarter-past eleven before his peroration came to an end; and many, who wished to have their guinea's worth of Parliamentary oratory, had to sleep in Manchester that night Everybody knew the speaker would have ceased two hours earlier if he could. His host in the chair was much disquieted. His house was some distance from the city, and he had invited a large party of gentlemen to meet the great Conservative leader at supper, which had long been ready. Besides, he was afraid his guest would be unable to appear at it. Arriving at the house Disraeli asked his host to give him champagne--"a bottle of fizz" was the phrase he used--which he drank with zest, when, to the astonishment of his host, he joined the party and was at his best. He delighted every one with his sallies and his satire.

Only in two instances has Mr. Disraeli been publicly charged with errors of vintage. In his time I heard members manifestly inebriated, address the House of Commons. On a memorable night Mr. Gladstone said Disraeli had access to sources of inspiration not open to Her Majesty's Ministers.

Connoisseurs in art who went to the sale of his effects at Disraelis Mayfair house were astonished at the Houndsditch quality of what they found there. Not a ray of taste was to be seen, not an article worth buying. The glamour of the Oriental had lain in phrases, not in art.

It was the Liberals who were the champions of the Jews, and who were the cause of their admission to Parliament. Mr. Disraeli must have had some generous memory of this. Mr. Bright would cross the floor of the House sometimes to confer with Disraeli. There must have been elements in his character in which Mr. Bright had confidence. It was believed to be owing to his respect for Mr. Blight's judgment that he took no part against America, when his party did all they could to destroy the cause of the Union in the great Anti-Slavery War. It ought to be remembered to Disraeli's credit, that he made what John Stuart Mill called a "splendid concession" of household suffrage, although he took it back the next night, by the pernicious creation of the "compound householder." Still, Liberals owe it to him that household suffrage came to prevail when it did.

Disraeli's attacks upon Peel were dictated by the policy of self-advancement. He was capable of admiring Peel, but he admired himself more. Standing outside English questions and interests, he was able to treat them with an airiness which was a political relief. Yet he could see that our Colonies might become "millstones round the neck of the Empire" if we gave them too much of Downing Street, or maybe of Highbury.

To say Disraeli had no conscience would be to say more than any man has knowledge enough to say of another; but he certainly never gave the public the impression that he had one. He devised the scheme of giving the Queen the title of "Empress." Mr. Gladstone opposed it as dangerous to the dynasty, lowering its dignity to the level of Continental Emperorship, and taking from the Crown the master jewel of law, which has been more or less its security and glory for a thousand years.

Disraeli seemed to care for the Queen's favour--nothing for the integrity of the Crown. He declared himself a Christian, and said in the presence of the Bishop of Oxford, with Voltairean mockery, that he was "on the side of the angels," and elsewhere described Judas as an accessory to the crucifixion before the act, and to that ignoble treachery all Christians were indebted for their salvation--an idea which could never have entered a Gentile mind. This was pure Voltairean scorn.

In his last illness he was reported to have had three different kinds of physicians--allopath, hydropath, homoeopath; and had he chosen the spiritual ministration of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Chief Rabbi, and Mr. Spurgeon, no one would have been surprised at his sardonic prudence.

I had admiration, though not respect, for his career. Yet I was for justice being done to him. When it was thought the Tories would prevent his accession to the Premiership, which was his right by service, I was one of those who cheered him in the lobby of the House of Commons, to show that adversaries of his politics were against his being defrauded of the dignity he had won.

At a Lord Mayor's banquet Mr. Disraeli gave an insulting and defamatory account of the Russian Royal Family and Government, and boasted, like an inebriate Jingo, of England's capacity to sustain three campaigns against that Power. As the Queen had a daughter-in-law a member of the Royal House of Russia, this wanton act of international offensiveness must have produced a sensation of shame and pain in the English Royal Family. I well remember the consternation and disapproval with which both speeches were regarded by the people. Whatever even Republicans may think of the theory of the Crown, they are against any personal outrage upon it. Yet Mr. Gladstone, who was always forward to sustain, by graceful and discerning praise, the interest of the Royal Family, and procure them national grants, to which Mr. Disraeli could never have reconciled the nation, was simply endured by Her Majesty, while to Mr. Disraeli ostentatious preference was shown. It was said in explanation that Mr. Gladstone had no "small talk" with which Mr. Disraeli entertained his eminent hostess. It was not "small talk," it was Tory talk, which the Queen rewarded.

I am of Lord Actons opinion, that Mr. Disraeli was morally insupportable, though otherwise astonishing. The pitiless resentment of "Vivian Grey" towards whoever stood in his way was the prevailing characteristic of the triumphant Jew. Like other men of professional ambition, he had the charm of engaging amity to those who were for the time being no longer impediment to him. When showing distress at a few drops of rain falling, news was brought Her Majesty that Mr. Gladstone had returned from a voyage and addressed a crowd on the beach. Disraeli exclaimed with pleasant gaiety, "What a wonderful man that Gladstone is. Had I returned from a voyage I should be glad to go to bed. Mr. Gladstone leaps on shore and makes a speech."

The moral of this singular career worth remembering, is that genius and versatility, animated by ambition without scruple, may attain distinction without principle. It can win national admiration, but not public affection. All it can accomplish is to leave behind a name of sinister renown. If we knew all, no doubt Lord Beaconsfield had, apart from the exigencies of ambition, personal qualities commanding esteem.

Political readers will long remember the name of Joseph Cowen, who won in a single night the reputation of a national orator. All at once he achieved that distinction in an assembly where few attain it. After a time he retired to his tent and never more emerged from it. The occasion of his first speech in Parliament was the introduction of the Bill for converting the Queen into an Empress. Queen was a wholesome monarchical name, which implied in England supremacy under the law; while Empress, alien to the genius of the political constitution, is a military title of sinister reputation, and implies a rank outside and above the law. Like Imperialism, it connotes military government, which, in the opinion of the free and prudent, is the most odious, dangerous, and costly of all governments.

Mr. Cowen entertained a strong repugnance to the word "Empress," which might become a prelude to Imperialism--as it has done.

Mr. Cowen's father, who preceded him in the House of Commons, was scrupulous in apparel, never affecting fashion, but keeping within its pale. His son was not only careless of fashion--he despised it. He employed local tailors, from neighbourliness, and was quite content with their craftsmanship. He never wore what is called a "top" hat, but a felt one, a better shape than what is known now as a "clerical" hat It was thought he would abandon it when he entered Parliament, but he did not He commonly left it in the cloak-room. He had no wish to be singular. His attire was as natural to him as his skin is to an Ethiopian. His headgear imperilled his candidature, when that came about.

He had been two years in Parliament before he addressed it. When he rose many members were standing impatient for division and crying "Divide! Divide!!" Mr. Cowen, being a small man, was not at once perceived, but his melodious, honest, and eager voice arrested attention, though his Northumbrian accent was unfamiliar to the House. It was as difficult to see the new orator as to see Curran in an Irish Court, or Thiers in the French Chamber. Disraeli glanced at him through his eyeglass, as though Mr. Cowen was one of Dean Swift's Lilliputians, and of one near him he asked contemptuously, as a Northern burr broke upon his ear, "What language is the fellow talking?"

For years, as I well knew, Mr. Cowen spent more money for the advancement and vindication of Liberalism than any other English gentleman. He was the most generous friend of "forlorn hopes" England has known. How many combatants has he aided; how many has he succoured; how many has he saved! If the other world be human like this, what crowds of grateful spirits of divers climes must have rushed to the threshold of heaven to welcome him as he entered.

Riding home with him one night, after a stormy meeting in Newcastle, when we were near to Stella House the horse suddenly stopped. Mr. Cowen got out to see what the obstruction was, and he found it was one of his own workmen lying drunk across the road. His master roused him and said: "Tom, what a fool thou art! Had not the horse been the more sensible beast, thou hadst been killed." He would use these Scriptural pronouns in speaking to his men. The man could not stand, and Mr. Cowen and the coachman carried him to the door of another workman, called him up, and bade him let Tom lie in his house till morning. Then we drove on.

Another time a workman came to Mr. Cowen for an advance of thirty shillings. Being asked what he wanted the money for, the man answered: "To get drunk, sir; I have not been drunk for six weeks." "Thou knowest," said Mr. Cowen, "I never take any drink, because I think the example good for thee. Thou will go to Gateshead Fair, get locked up, and I shall have to bail thee out. There is the money; but take my advice, get drunk at home, and thy wife will take care of thee." How many employers possess workmen having that confidence in them to put such a question as this workman did, without fear of losing their situation? No workman lied, or had need to lie, to Mr. Cowen. He had the tolerance and tenderness of a god.

When I was ill in his house in Essex Street, Strand, he would come up at night and tell me of his affairs, as he did in his youth. He had for some time been giving his support to the Conservative side. I said to him, "Disraeli is dead. Do you not see that you may take his place if you will? It is open. His party has no successor among them. He had race, religion, and want of fortune against him. You have none of these disadvantages against you. You are rich, and you can speak as Disraeli never could. He had neither the tone nor the fire of conscience--you have both. You have the ear of the House, and the personal confidence of the country, as he never had. In his place you would fill the ear of the world." He thought for a time on what I said to him; then his answer was: "There is one difficulty--I am not a Tory."

I saw he was leaving the side of Liberalism and that he would inevitably do Conservative work, and I was wishful that he should have the credit of it. He was under a master passion which carried him he knew not whither.

It was my knowledge of Mr. Cowen, long before that night, that made me oft say that a Tyneside man had more humility and more pride than God had vouchsafed to any other people of the English race. Until middle life Mr. Cowen was as his father, immovable in principle; afterwards he was as his mother in implacableness. That is the explanation of his career.

The "passion" referred to--never avowed and never obtruded, but which "neither slumbered nor slept"--was ambition. It might be called Paramountcy--that dangerous war-engendering word of Imperialism--which only the arrogant pronounce, and only the subjugated submit to.

The Cowen family had no past but that of industry, and in Mr. Cowen's youth the "slings and arrows of outrageous" Toryism, shafts of arrogance, insolence, and contempt, flew about him. He inherited from his mother a proud and indomitable spirit, and resolved to create a Liberal force which should withstand all that--and he did. Then, when he came to be, as he thought, flouted by those whom he had served , he at length resented and turned against himself. He had reached the heights where he had been awarded an imperishable place, and then descended in resentment to mingle and be lost in the ignominious faction whom he had defeated and despised. Those who had enraged him were not, as we shall see, worth his resentment

It was not for "a handful of silver" he left us--for he had plenty--nor for "a ribbon to stick in his coat," for he would not wear one if offered a basketful. It was just indignation, stronger than self-respect.

Some time elapsed before the bent of his mind became apparent. Possibly it was not known to himself.

When a young man, he promoted and maintained two or three journals, in which he also wrote himself, without suggesting to others the passion for journalism by which he was possessed. Some years later, when proofs of one of his speeches which a reporter had taken down, and Mr. Cowen had himself corrected, passed through my hands, I was struck with the dexterity with which he put a word of fire into a tame sentence, infused colour into a pale-faced expression, and established a pulse in an anaemic one. It was clear that he had the genius of speech in him and was ambitious of distinction in it.

How fearless Mr. Cowen was, was shown in his conduct when a dangerous outbreak of cholera occurred in Newcastle. People were dying in every street and lane, but he went out from Blaydon every morning at the usual time, and walked through the infected streets and passages into Newcastle, to his offices on the quay, being met on his way by persons in distress, from death in their houses, who knew they were sure of sympathy and assistance from him. The courage of his unfailing appearance in his ordinary way saved many from depression which might have proved fatal to them. When a wandering guest fell ill at his home, Stella House, Blaydon, he was sure of continued hospitality until his recovery. Mr. Cowen's voice of sympathy and condolence was the tenderest I ever heard from human lips.

A poor man, who lived a good deal upon the moors, was charged with shooting a doctor, and would have been hanged but for Mr. Cowen defending him by legal aid. He thought the police had apprehended him because he was the most likely, in their opinion, to be guilty. He was poor, friendless, and often houseless. The man did not seem quite right in his mind. After his acquittal, Mr. Cowen took him into his employ, and made him his gardener. The garden was remote and solitary. I often passed my mornings in it, not without some personal misgiving. Mr. Cowen eventually enabled the man to emigrate to America, where a little eccentricity of demeanour does not count.

In the political estrangements of Mr. Cowen, it must be owned he had provocations. A party of social propagandists came to Newcastle, whom he entertained, as they had never been entertained before, at a cost of hundreds of pounds, and was at great expense to give publicity to their objects. They left him to defray some bills they had the means of paying. Years later, when they came again into the district, he did no more for them in the former way. He had conceived a distrust of them. Another time he was asked by persons whom he was willing to aid, to buy some premises for them, as they would be prejudiced at the auction if they appeared in person. Mr. Cowen bought the property for ?5,000. They changed their minds when it was bought, and left Mr. Cowen, who did not want it, with it upon his hands. He did not resent it, as he might have done, but it was an act of meanness which would have revolted the heart of an archangel of human susceptibility.

In the days of the great Italian struggle, little shoals of exiles found their way to England. Learning where the great friend of Garibaldi dwelt, they found their way to Newcastle, and many were directed there from different parts of England. Many times he was sent for to the railway station, where a number of destitute exiles had arrived. He relieved their immediate wants and had them provided for at various lodgings, until they were able to get some situation elsewhere. I think Mr. Cowen began to tire of this, as he thought exiles were sometimes sent to him by persons who ought to have taken part of the responsibility themselves, but who seemed to consider that his was the purse of the Continent.

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