THE WORLD OF BOOKS.

Press, Volume LX, Issue 18141, 2 August 1924, Page 13

THE WORLD OF BOOKS.

HALF-HOURS IN A LIBRARY. (SPICIAIXT WBITTE* FOR '"THS PSSBS. )

By A. H. Gbtn-lixs.

LXXTL—ON GEOBGE FOX AND THE QUAKEES. It is curious how one thing leads to another. Engaged in an investigation of the history of the Garnetts, I took from its shelf a copy of Dr. Richard Garnett-s book on Edward Gibbon Wakefield and the colonisation of South Australia and New Zealand, in the "Builders of Great Britain" series, and turning its pages, my eye caught the sentence that the branch of the family of Wakefield established near Kendal, in Westmoreland, "embraced Quakerism soon after its promulgation in the middle of the seventeenth century." And Bichard Garnett went on to say:— The profession and consistent maintenance of unpopular opinions, when not absolutely perverse or fanatical, is usually a token of moral strength, evincing independence of mind in the first instance, and tenacity of conviction in the second. Hence the influence of srhall nonconfor ming sects surviving through several generations, a choice remnant sifted out by a slow, selective process from age to age, is out of all proportion to their numbers; and much of this power and worth continue even with the families which have eventually relapsed into the general current, as has been the rase with the majority of the Westmoreland Wakefields.

This Bet me pondering as to how far the subsequent development of the Dominion of New Zealand was due to the Quaker ancestry of Edward Gibbon ■Wakefield. This ancestry Dr. Garnett carefully traces back to a Roger Wakefield who lived at Challon Hall in the village of Preston-Patrick, six miles south of Kendall, in 1592. This Eoger Wakefield was in the habit of going and returning a twenty-four miles' journey to "a possibly silent meeting," but 16 the mere fact of his Quakerism in those days of intolerance reveals him as a man of resolute conviction. Koger Wakefield died in 1724, and his son Roger also lived and died at Pres-ton-Piitrick. The second Eoger's second son, Edward, went to London, and become a prosperous merchant, marrying Isabella Gibbon, a distant relative of the historian, f The pair were father and mother to another Edward Wakefield, who, inheriting a fortune, failed in business, and had as son another Edward, born in 1774. "The Wakefield family," says Dr. Garnett, "possessed a fine irregular genius for marriage, and one characteristic of their unions was precocity. The first and Becond Edwards had each married at 21; the third broke the record by espousing Susannah Crash, daughter of a farmer at Felsted, Essex, at 17, the marriage taking place on October 3rd, 1791." Of this marriage was born Edward Gibbon Wakefield, eldest son and second child of a family of nine, in London on March 20th, 1796.

Dr. Garnett quotes Lord Norton as saying: "To Wakefield is due the chief merit in restoring our colonial policy—to let colonies be extensions of England, with the same constitution as at home—only not represented in the House of Commons, because of the thousands of miles of sea to cross —with tlieir own Parliaments on the spot, and Governments responsible to them under the Queen's viceroys, who connect them with the supremacy. It is a fair deduction that the work of Wakefield's forcible pen and ever-ready tongue, the two weapons which he mainly used in his battles for British Empire colonisation, was the outcome of the strong conviction and indomitable perseverance born in him by his Quaker ancestry. As showing Wakefield's wonderful foresight, nearly a hundred years ngo he delivered an eloquent speech on suitable fields, for emigration, in tlie course of which he said:—

Very near to Australia there is 3 country which all testimony concurs in describing as the fittest country in the world for colonisation; se the most beautiful country, with the finest climate and the productive soil, I mean New Zealand. It will be said that New Zealand does not belong to the British Crown, and that is true, but Englishmen arc beginning to coloniso New Zealand. New Zealand js coming under the dominion of the British Crown. Adventurers go from Naw South Wales and Van Diemens Land and make a treaty with a Native chief, a tri-partite treaty, the poor chief not understanding a single word about it; but they make a contract upon parchment, with, a great seal; for a lew trinkets and a little gunpowder they obtain land. After a time, after some persons have ' settled, the Government begins to receive hints that there is a regular settlement of English people formed in such a place; and then the Government at home generally has been actuated by a wish to appoint a governor ana says, "This spot belongs to England we will send out a governor. . The act of sending out a governor, according to British constitution, or law, or practice, constitutes the place to which a governor is sent a British province. \Ve are, i think, going to colonise New Zealand though we be doing so in a most and scrambling and disgraceful mann-r.

From Ricliartl Gamett's life of Edward Gibbon Wakefield, I went instinctively to George Fox's Journal, moved thereto by the renrcrftrance that was born in 3624, and that the tercentenary celebrations of that event were due. "in his recently published volume on "English Diaries," Mr Arthur Ponsonby says: "A diary differs from autobiography, as in the one we get the fresh relation of events at the moment, and in the other the events are moulded and trimmed into a uniform whole, more often than not with a view to publication, such, for instance, as George Fox's Journal, which is not a daily record, but an autobiographical survey." He who desires to understand the real history of the English people during the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, says a •commentator, should read most earefujly three books: George Fox s "Journal," Jolm Wesley's "Journal, ■ and John Henry Newman's "Apologia pro Vita Sua-" The reason for the comment, so far as George Fox s Journal is concerned, has been made plain by l)r. Selbie in his little book on "Nonconformity: Its Origin and Progress.' 3 Dr. Selbie says:

The Civil War in England resulted in large measure from the religious t-nligbt-enmont that had been slowly spreading amon=- the people. ±o use the familiar phrase of J. R, Green, the English people had become thj peopleof a toos, and that book the Bible. They had learnt from it to attach a new importance to the individual, and to revolt against claim of either Church or ruler to supreme authority over the soul of man. But they had learnt also to judge and measure things almo3t too exclusively from the standpoint of religion. Ids result was not merely a great leiigious awakening, but a jwUUcal and social.

revolution in which religion played a very conspicuous part. All over the country men oi Puritan temper were to bo fonnd who deplored and resented what they believed to be the departure from the pure doctrine o' the Word on tho part of many of their leaders . . . W-j read of Seekors, Ranters, Anabaptists, Rfth Monarch? men, and the like, all of whom were openly discontented with the average religious expression of their time, arid nil of whom were more oi less inclined to fanaticism. They gave way to tho greatest extravagances, and most of tbern never reached any other position than that of rather barren protest. The revolt which they represented, however. was a real thing, and found for itself some lasting forms of expression. It was just at the time that Puritanisw was becoming official and more formal that Quakerism began to be.

Fox's "Journal" has had its critics as well as its admirers. Macaulay in his history of the times under Charles 11. writes: "George Fox had raised a tempest of derision bv proclaiming that, it was a violation of Christian sincerity to designate a single person by a plural pronoun, and that it was an idolatrous homage to Janus and Woden to talk about January and Wednesday. His doctrine, a few years later, was embraced by some eminent men, and rose greatly in the public estimation. But at the time of the Eestoration, the Quakers were popularly regarded as the most despicable of fanatics. By the Puritans, they were treated with severity here, and were persecuted to the death in New England. Nevertheless the public, which seldom makes nice distinctions, often confounded the Puritan with the Quaker. Both were schismatics. Both hated episcopacy and the Liturgy. Both had what seemed extravagant whimsies about dress, diversions, and postures. Widely as the two differed in opinion, they were popularly classed together as canting schismatics; and whatever was ridiculous or odious in either increased the scorn or aversion which the multitude felt for both." In referring to the Journal, Macaulay adds: —

Fox's "Journal" before it "was published was revised by men of more sense and knowledge than himself, and therefore, absurd as it is, gives no notion of his genuine style. . . Nor can tho moat corrupt passage in Hebrew bo more unintelligible to the unlearned than his English often is to tho most acuto and attentive reader. Although Macaulay exhibited a marked antipathy to Fox, yet, when recording the great Quaker's death, he is compelled to admit that "an event had taken place which a historian, whose object it is to record the real life of a nation, ought not to pass unnoticed." And if so with his death, how much more.so with his birth. Fox writes in his "Journal": "I was born in the month called July, 1624, at Drayton-in-the-Clay in Leie.estcrstiire". but subsequent research throws doubt on tho date, not only of the month, but of the year. William Penn, one of Fox's oldest and l most intimate friends, wrote: "George Fox was born in Leicestershire about the year 1624," and in appreciation he added:— He had . an extraordinary gift in opening the Scriptures. Ho would go to the marrow of things. But above all he excelled in prayer. The inwardness and weight of his spirit, the reverence and solemnity bf his address and behaviour, and the fewness and fullness of his words, have often struck even strangers with almiration, as they used to reach other® with consolation. The most awful, living, reverent frame I ever felt or beheEl, I must say, was his in prayer. He was of an .innocent life, no busybody nor self-seeker, neither touchy nor critical; what fell from him ww ve.ry inoffensive, ■if not very edifying. So meek, contented, modest, easy, flteady, tender, it was a pleasure to be in his oompany. Ho exercised no authority but over evil, and that everywhere and m all; but with love, compassion, and long suffering. A most merciful man, ass ready to ftmrive, as unapt to take or give an offence. He was an incessant labourer. A3 he was unwearied, so he was undaunted in his cervices for God. ancl his people; ho was no more to be moved to fear than to wrath.

Has Quakerism, a message for todav? The continual output of books from the Swart-hmore Press wcuJd seem to indicate that the followers of George Fox in the twentieth century are anxious to help solve the world's problems. During the Great the Society of Friends expended over £1,000,000 in relief work, besides giving their services unstintedly m ainbuInnce and other non-combatant duties. "Wie name of Friend," • says, Mr H. G. Wood, "is held in respect throughout Europe on account of the: Society s work for the relief of war victims in every stricken land.: And it must be increasingly recognised, one would suppose, that there is little hope of reconstruction in Europe except in the spirit in which Friends try to live, llie eulogy pronounced by Thomas Car]yle—it will be found in "Sartor Resarfrus" may well make conclusion ot the whole matter:—

Let some living Apgelo or Roea, with seeing eye and understanding heart, picture George Fox on that morning when he spreads out his cutting board for the last time, and cuts cowhideß by unwonted patterns, and stitches tliem together into one continuous all-inciudmg Case, the farewell service of his awl! Stitch away, thou noble Fox; every prick of that little instrument is pricking into the heart of slnverv, and Wor'd-worsliin. and the Mammon-God. Thy elbows jerk a* in strong swimmer strokes, and eveiy stroke is bearing thee acrpss the Prisonditch, within which Vanity holds her Workhouse and Bag-fair, into lands of true Liberty, were the work deme there is in broad Europe one Free Man, and thou art he! •

"This book;" declares Blasco Ibanez in the preface' to "In .the .Land of Art," ''has a history." In 1896 the author, then in his twenty-eighth year, collided dangerously with the Spanish authorities over the question of the treatment of Cuba; and, as the reward for his ardour in the cause of the colonists, he found himself not only menaced with a prison teim but actualJy in peril of his life. After concealing himself for some weeks on the coast near Valencia, while the. police were zealously hunting him, he embarked in disguise on a vessel for Genoa, a heavy sack slung over his shoulders, Ins costume that of a sailor his face and hands blackened with coal. Some time later, with no other clothes than those lie wore and with an <ilmost negligible sum of money, he alighted m Italy ana began a vagaV>nd tour of the peninsula, living almost from naiid to .mouth, sometimes apparently _ without the means for continuing his travels, ana vet somehow managing to procure tne resources for proceeding"on Ins journey. During the course of his wandering he occasionally found time to note down his impressions of the places he visited ■ and it is these impressions, coordinated and reproduced m a litewiry style, that have given us this latest volume.

Mrs Carlyle bids fair to rival her great husband aa a subject of biography, and as a victim of the spondence hunter, says Filson Young. \ nev,- crop of her letters has just been published by John Murray, edited by Di Leonard Huxley, rhey consist oi letters written to her own family between the years 1839 and 1863, and the iirst glance at them shows that they are rich in the sprightly, and in i/hose days original, qualities of candour and daxingness in which Jeaniiiei Weteh was an adept. Although they hardlv deserve her husband's verdict that "as to talent, epistolary, and other, these 'letters, 1 perceive, equal and surpass whatever of best I know to exist, in that kind," yet they are certain to repay closer study, and I hope to be able to return to them iwitea I frave had time jboi read tiaea.