TOPICS OF THE DAY.
HUDSONISMS.
WE must be on our way to a new age of chivalry, since we have just reached, possibly passed, the very opposite of that which sur- vives only in the myths of the- middle ages. "The outcry at Mr. Hudson's last-disclosed—what hall we call kg—process of at- taining wealth, is accompanied by many a sigh that a cognate spirit prevails generally, even among the sterner censors of the trespasser—prevails more extensively perhaps than the censorious wot.
In the first place, it is evident that the Hudson is only a triton among the minnows, the gigantic type of a class, greater in scale but not different in spirit : the Hudson has its Waddiugtons and its other consenting subordinates, until the spirit of acquiescence in the Hudsonian processes of attaining wealth pervades every class, from the chairman who returns the shareholder his own capital as dividend—" dividend," the modern refined name for spoil—down to the station-clerk who reissues the tickets; only the clerk is sent to prison for it. Mr. Hudson, with the assent however re- luctant of Mr. Waddington, and with the authority however blindly bestowed of the directors, has induced the public to sub- scribe more money to the Eastern Counties Railway, by repre- senting the enterprise to be a great deal more successful than it was; and that, we say, was done by returning to the sub- scribers their own money as profit. Obtained under false pre- tences, the money was misappropriated, and the misappropria- tion was disguised by a systematic tampering with the accounts for a period of years. To other incidental irregularities we need not further allude : the main trick, for trick it was, induced large numbers to trust Mr. Hudson and his colleagues with money on the faith of an income derivable from honestly-divided profits : for some years, Mr. Hudson and his colleagues have not been honestly dividing the profits, but eking them out with the capital advanced ; and now, for a time at least, those shareholders must go without any income at all. This conduct cannot claim the title either of honest or honourable ; it is dishonest and dishon- ourable.
Unless Lord Brougham grossly libels a large section of the community, the spirit of such conduct is not confined to Mr. Hudson or his coadjutors, but is traceable in the transactions of other companies hitherto regarded as " the aristocracy" of the Railway world : he mentions particular instances of gross con- nivance at default in the officers of companies, and similar laxities. It is not therefore only the gambling in shares which has been the vice of the railway mania—not only the depravities of Capel Court and the stratagems of the "stags," but the genuine pro- prietors and regular officials have been infected. The true value and profit of every railway must depend upon the actual relation of outlay and traffic : in one way or other, systematic attempts have been made on all sides to misrepresent the state of that re- lation. And the worst symptom is, that these attempts were evi- dently thought usual, and not improper or degrading. Lord Brougham hints that a great number of Members of the House of Commons have been corruptly cognisant of irregularities, at which they have connived. Now, as almost every class of society, except the poorer, is represented either in the Railway world or in the House of Commons, the complicity or connivance at fraud is charged against every class except the poorer classes ; those furnish the dishonest clerks, pilfering policemen, and "sneaks " of the railway. Dishonour and dishonesty, then, are accepted as usual conditions of railway success. At one time success on such conditions would have been declined by highminded gentlemen ; and to this day, we doubt whether any nobleman would be found to sacrifice hereditary traditions for the profits of systematic dis- honour and dishonesty practised on the unwary, the ignorant, and the helpless. Yet there are ugly signs, even among the immaculate. Rail- way frauds are not the only deviations from generous impulses. Lord Brougham was deservedly severe on the House whose Mem- bers connive at mercenary frauds, deservedly severe on those who Lad not the heart to help Sir John Pakington in his attempt to prevent bribery at elections ; but when Lord Beaumont describes the atrocities committed by the Neapolitan soldiers at Messina and Catania, Lord Brougham is struck doubtful, incredulous ; he extenuates, and believes that nothing " unusual " was perpetrated. Lord Brougham is an advocate of peace; be can vie with Voltaire in disparaging the glories of war ; but when it comes to the lowest outrages of war, then he finds room for charitable constructions. Ere the cheers for Lord Brougham's charitable scepticisms
touching rapes and rapines had died -away, Peers were immersed in a philanthropic discussion on "cruelty to animals "—arduously debating the practicability of defending softfooted quadrupeds Irons the labours of cart-drawing, pondering the wrongs of race- horses, and the inequitable adjustment of weights at a Noble Lords appeared to be desperately at a loss to know what WaS "cruelty ; as if they had lost the test of natural feeling. The infliction of pain, or even of death, is not the essential ele- ment of cruelty : pain and death must be freely met in this mor- tal world ; the fear of either, too great nicety in accepting either, to receive or to give, does not accompany the bold and generous Spirit which_ makes the happiest man or the man most capable of Imparting happiness. To inflict pain for a wicked pleasure in wit- nessing agony, to trade in suffering for a profit, to aggravate it for some fantastical gratification—these are base and cowardly
feelin,s which constitute cruelty. But the spirit of hunting is an impulse natural to a carnivorous creature; the wild life of game ending under the hand of the sportsman is not worse than that of the tame sheep bred for the butcher. It is the feeling that prevails which makes the great distinction : the huntsman who risks his own neck, who shares the effort to which he urges his horse, will cherish the brute in the hour of repose; there is a sympathy of physical exertion and enjoyment between the two, a triumph over danger or difficulty, which adds a zest to material life ; and the human animal has done more to foster the enjoy- ments of his fourfooted companion than the philanthropist who sits in his closet and writes against steeple-chases. What did he ever do to make the blood of horse run merrily with well-fed ri- gour? Give a "bill" to prevent London streets from illustrating Hogarth's " Four Stages of Cruelty," but take care how a cold- blooded effeminacy checks that vigour and enjoyment of life, in man or brute, which cannot be had apart from danger and mortal exertion.
These wandering discussions and erratic incidents of social life form a strange commentary on our moral condition. "The school- master has been abroad," and truly we appear to be falling into a pedagogue condition of morals not of the highest order. The phmnomena of the day are extraordinary and instructive,—com- mercial respectability detected in defrauding the virtues of good faith ; "useful knowledge" extenuating the basest incidents of war; the patrician senate painfully debating what is cruelty ! It is eminently an age of commerce, which demands for its "basis" "punctuality and integrity "; political economy teaches that a wise self-interest will suffice for the conduct of life; "bills" to enforce every cardinal virtue multiply each session ; common sense rules supreme, and sneers at anything "out of the way, as Mr. Reynolds sneers at Mr. Bateson's mustachios—Mr. Reynolds cannot abide an aspect more natural and manly than is usual in po- lite society, and sarcastically calls the gentleman who retains the Anglo-Saxon badge "gallant." Philanthropy cuts up decent society into innumerable charitable associations, which are to per- form the charities of life by paid deputy. Church-extension ad- vances. Set laws, which should be aimed only at the vicious and exceptional, are devised to prop the virtue of every class, includ- ing the lawmakers themselves. But somehow, all this while, there is a stunting of the natural impulses and feelings. It is a losing game. If vitiated feeling once seizes upon the bulk of society, lam cannot follow it into its endless forms and the count- less crannies where it harbours. The sole safeguard for society is a sound robust development of the natural constitution : that repels what is base, enlarges what is generous; that combats cruelty, makes corruption ashamed of itself, and scouts Hudsonism of every kind. But that is not trained in select committees, is not bred in the board-rooms of charitable associations with their paid machinery, not discovered by means of hair-splitting dis- cussions on "cruelty," to be decreed by" bills," stimulated by the sneers of common sense at the natural livery of manhood, nor effectively created by the didactic training of the intellectual faculties. The mere schoolmaster cannot do everything, nor the clergyman, nor the lawyer : you must have good hearty men for them to work upon—men whose affection throbs in their veins; who have a larger sympathy than self-interest, whose idea of success is not limited to the commercial form, nor even to the Parliamentary or official. A notion seems to have gained ground, that you may make men to pattern, as a sort of outfitter Frank- enstein might do : but after all, we see that the well-informed, shrewd, white-neckclothed, charity-subscribing, cautious-spoken monster, thus created, saps the whole political system with corrup- tion, is detected in making wealth by something like swindling, and discovers that he can't remember what cruelty means ; so he wants to pass a law to prevent it—unless it means " dividends."
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