True Manliness: From the Writings of Thomas HughesHughes, Thomas
Religion
True Manliness: From the Writings of Thomas Hughes
Hughes, Thomas
Conduct of life
“Before the next election (1874) the Co-operative question had come
to the front. The success of the Upper Class London Supply Societies
[copies of our working-class Associations in their main principle and
features] had roused the tradesmen throughout the country. I was a
candidate for Marylebone, and was fiercely opposed by the tradesmen,
and supported by the professional and working classes. There were three
Liberal candidates for only two seats, so it was agreed to refer it to
the Attorney General to say who should retire, and he decided that I
had the worst chance of winning the seat (on one-sided and insufficient
evidence, as my supporters maintained, and I think rightly). I
therefore retired, and got no chance of entering that Parliament. For
by this time the Trades Protection Society had been organized, to
fight against neither small nor great, but only against those accursed
revolutionists who had supported the Co-operative movement, and refused
to flinch from it.
“So it happened that I was again thrown out at the election this
year. I had consented, on the unanimous and unsolicited request of
the Liberal party in Salisbury, to stand there, and all went well
till just before the election, when the Trades Protective people
permitted the party organization to throw me over. I doubt if I shall
ever return to the House, as my views on the Church question make me
an almost hopeless candidate in the North of England, and my support
of Co-operation a perfectly hopeless one at present in the South. I
care, however, very little about it, having plenty to do outside in
keeping irons hot, especially that most interesting of all my irons,
the Tennessee settlement, which I hope to keep very hot indeed, and
look upon as about the most hopeful of the many New Jerusalems which
have attracted me during my pilgrimage. I am off to open Chapter II.
of that Romance [Chapter I., the getting the titles clear, buying the
land, &c., having taken some two years.] on the 12th of next month, and
I can’t tell you how much my heart is in it.
“And so end my confessions. The only other points of interest, omitted
above, are the publication of the ‘Old Church,’ in 1877, when the
disestablishment movement began to get serious, and ‘The Manliness
of Christ,’ this Spring, (1880), which latter has been already
republished on your side in four different forms; and lastly, my share
in the Volunteer movement, which I joined at its start in 1859. The
Workingmen’s College raised a corps of two companies at once, of
which, after serving for a few weeks as private, I was made Captain.
It soon swelled into a regiment, the 19th Middlesex, of which I became
Colonel, and served in it twelve years.”
TRUE MANLINESS.
I.
THE conscience of every man recognizes courage as the foundation of
true manliness, and manliness as the perfection of human character, and
if Christianity runs counter to conscience in this matter, or indeed in
any other, Christianity will go to the wall.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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