Alton Locke, Tailor and Poet: An Autobiography — John Locke — John Shaqi
Alton Locke, Tailor and Poet: An Autobiography
John Locke · en
"_Second_, I believe that a man might be as a tailor or a costermonger,
every inch of him a saint, a scholar, and a gentleman, for I have seen some
few such already. I believe hundreds of thousands more would be so, if
their businesses were put on a Christian footing, and themselves given by
education, sanitary reforms, &c., the means of developing their own latent
capabilities--I think the cry, 'Rise in Life,' has been excited by the very
increasing impossibility of being anything but brutes while they struggle
below. I know well all that is doing in the way of education, &c., but
I do assert that the disease of degradation has been for the last forty
years increasing faster than the remedy. And I believe, from experience,
that when you put workmen into human dwellings, and give them a Christian
education, so far from wishing discontentedly to rise out of their class,
or to level others to it, exactly the opposite takes place. They become
sensible of the dignity of work, and they begin to see their labour as a
true calling in God's Church, now that it is cleared from the accidentia
which made it look, in their eyes, only a soulless drudgery in a devil's
workshop of a _World_.
"_Third_, From the advertisement of an 'English Republic' you send, I can
guess who will be the writers in it, &c., &c., being behind the scenes.
It will come to nought. Everything of this kind is coming to nought now.
The workmen are tired of idols, ready and yearning for the Church and the
Gospel, and such men as your friend may laugh at Julian Harney, Feargus
O'Connor, and the rest of that smoke of the pit. Only we live in a great
crisis, and the Lord requires great things of us. The fields are white to
harvest. Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that He may send forth
labourers into His harvest.
"_Fourth_, As to the capacities of working-men, I am afraid that your
excellent friend will find that he has only the refuse of working
intellects to form his induction on. The devil has got the best long ago.
By the neglect of the Church, by her dealing (like the Popish Church and
all weak churches) only with women, children, and beggars, the cream
and pith of working intellect is almost exclusively self-educated, and,
therefore, alas! infidel. If he goes on as he is doing, lecturing on
history, poetry, science, and all the things which the workmen crave for,
and can only get from such men as H----, Thomas Cooper, &c., mixed up with
Straussism and infidelity, he will find that he will draw back to his
Lord's fold, and to his lecture room, slowly, but surely, men, whose powers
will astonish him, as they have astonished me.