Historical and Political EssaysLecky, William Edward Hartpole
History
Historical and Political Essays
Lecky, William Edward Hartpole
History; Political science
believed that its true root lay in overcrowding, ignorance, insanitary
conditions of life, the want of innocent means of enjoyment, excessive
hours of labour. 'When you have to deal with men in masses,' he said,
'the connection between vice and disease is very close. With a low
average of popular health you will have a low average of national
morality and probably also of national intellect. Drunkenness and
vice of other kinds will flourish on such a soil, and you cannot get
healthy brains to grow on unhealthy bodies. Cleanliness and
self-respect grow together, and it is no paradox to affirm that you
tend to purify men's thoughts and feelings when you purify the air
they breathe.' He supported liberally the movement for establishing
coffee-houses, and he looked with great hope to the co-operative
movement as averting or mitigating industrial conflicts. 'The subject
of co-operation,' he said, 'is in my judgment more important as
regards the future of England than nine-tenths of those which are
discussed in Parliament, and around which political controversies
gather.' As the possessor of one of the largest properties in England
he was excellently informed on all agricultural questions, and he
exercised a great influence upon them. Among other services he
dispelled many misrepresentations by obtaining an accurate return of
the numbers of owners of land in the United Kingdom, and of the
quantity of land which they owned.
With the single exception of Lord Shaftesbury, I believe no
conspicuous English public man devoted so much time and labour as Lord
Derby to the class of questions I have described. He brought to their
discussion an almost unrivalled fulness of knowledge. His purse was
liberally opened in such causes, and the speeches in which he examined
what Government can do and what it cannot do for the material
well-being of the poor, are in my judgment among the most valuable
contributions to political thought that have been furnished by any
English statesman during the present century.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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