Book: Alice, or The Mysteries, Book II
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Edward Bulwer Lytton >> Alice, or The Mysteries, Book II
Maltravers next occupied himself in all the affairs that a mismanaged
estate brought upon him. He got rid of some tenants, he made new
arrangements with others; he called labour into requisition by a variety
of improvements; he paid minute attention to the poor, not in the
weakness of careless and indiscriminate charity, by which popularity is
so cheaply purchased, and independence so easily degraded,--no, his main
care was to stimulate industry and raise hope. The ambition and
emulation that he so vainly denied in himself, he found his most useful
levers in the humble labourers whose characters he had studied, whose
condition he sought to make themselves desire to elevate. Unconsciously
his whole practice began to refute his theories. The abuses of the old
Poor Laws were rife in his neighbourhood; his quick penetration, and
perhaps his imperious habits of decision, suggested to him many of the
best provisions of the law now called into operation; but he was too wise
to be the Philosopher Square of a system. He did not attempt too much;
and he recognized one principle, which, as yet, the administrators of the
new Poor-Laws have not sufficiently discovered. One main object of the
new code was, by curbing public charity, to task the activity of
individual benevolence. If the proprietor or the clergyman find under
his own eye isolated instances of severity, oppression, or hardship in a
general and salutary law, instead of railing against the law, he ought to
attend to the individual instances; and private benevolence ought to keep
the balance of the scales even, and be the makeweight wherever there is a
just deficiency of national charity.* It was this which, in the modified
and discreet regulations that he sought to establish on his estates,
Maltravers especially and pointedly attended to. Age, infirmity,
temporary distress, unmerited destitution, found him a steady, watchful,
indefatigable friend. In these labours, commenced with extraordinary
promptitude, and the energy of a single purpose and stern mind,
Maltravers was necessarily brought into contact with the neighbouring
magistrates and gentry. He was combating evils and advancing objects in
which all were interested; and his vigorous sense, and his past
parliamentary reputation, joined with the respect which in provinces
always attaches to ancient birth, won unexpected and general favour to
his views. At the rectory they heard of him constantly, not only through
occasional visitors, but through Mr. Merton, who was ever thrown in his
way; but he continued to keep himself aloof from the house. Every one
(Mr. Merton excepted) missed him,--even Caroline, whose able though
worldly mind could appreciate his conversation; the children mourned for
their playmate, who was so much more affable than their own
stiff-neckclothed brothers; and Evelyn was at least more serious and
thoughtful than she had ever been before, and the talk of others seemed
to her wearisome, trite, and dull.
* The object of parochial reform is not that of economy alone;
not merely to reduce poor-rates. The ratepayer ought to remember
that the more he wrests from the grip of the sturdy mendicant,
the more he ought to bestow on undeserved distress. Without the
mitigations of private virtue, every law that benevolists could
make would be harsh.
Was Maltravers happy in his new pursuits? His state of mind at that time
it is not easy to read. His masculine spirit and haughty temper were
wrestling hard against a feeling that had been fast ripening into
passion; but at night, in his solitary and cheerless home, a vision, too
exquisite to indulge, would force itself upon him, till he started from
the revery, and said to his rebellious heart: "A few more years, and thou
wilt be still. What in this brief life is a pang more or less? Better
to have nothing to care for, so wilt thou defraud Fate, thy deceitful
foe! Be contented that thou art alone!" Fortunate was it, then, for
Maltravers, that he was in his native land, not in climes where
excitement is in the pursuit of pleasure rather than in the exercise of
duties. In the hardy air of the liberal England, he was already, though
unknown to himself, bracing and ennobling his dispositions and desires.
It is the boast of this island that the slave whose foot touches the soil
is free. The boast may be enlarged. Where so much is left to the
people, where the life of civilization, not locked up in the tyranny of
Central Despotism, spreads, vivifying, restless, ardent, through every
vein of the healthful body, the most distant province, the obscurest
village, has claims on our exertions, our duties, and forces us into
energy and citizenship. The spirit of liberty, that strikes the chain
from the slave, binds the freeman to his brother. This is the Religion
of Freedom. And hence it is that the stormy struggles of free States
have been blessed with results of Virtue, of Wisdom, and of Genius by Him
who bade us love one another,--not only that love in itself is excellent,
but that from love, which in its widest sense is but the spiritual term
for liberty, whatever is worthiest of our solemn nature has its birth.