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MANCHESTER, DECEMBER 3, 1858
[The following speech was delivered at the annual meeting of the
Institutional Association of Lancashire and Cheshire, held in the
Free-trade Hall on the evening of the above day, at which Mr.
Dickens presided.]
It has of late years become noticeable in England that the autumn
season produces an immense amount of public speaking. I notice
that no sooner do the leaves begin to fall from the trees, than
pearls of great price begin to fall from the lips of the wise men
of the east, and north, and west, and south; and anybody may have
them by the bushel, for the picking up. Now, whether the comet has
this year had a quickening influence on this crop, as it is by some
supposed to have had upon the corn-harvest and the vintage, I do
not know; but I do know that I have never observed the columns of
the newspapers to groan so heavily under a pressure of orations,
each vying with the other in the two qualities of having little or
nothing to do with the matter in hand, and of being always
addressed to any audience in the wide world rather than the
audience to which it was delivered.
The autumn having gone, and the winter come, I am so sanguine as to
hope that we in our proceedings may break through this enchanted
circle and deviate from this precedent; the rather as we have
something real to do, and are come together, I am sure, in all
plain fellowship and straightforwardness, to do it. We have no
little straws of our own to throw up to show us which way any wind
blows, and we have no oblique biddings of our own to make for
anything outside this hall.
At the top of the public announcement of this meeting are the
words, "Institutional Association of Lancashire and Cheshire."
Will you allow me, in reference to the meaning of those words, to
present myself before you as the embodied spirit of ignorance
recently enlightened, and to put myself through a short, voluntary
examination as to the results of my studies. To begin with: the
title did not suggest to me anything in the least like the truth.
I have been for some years pretty familiar with the terms,
"Mechanics' Institutions," and "Literary Societies," but they have,
unfortunately, become too often associated in my mind with a body
of great pretensions, lame as to some important member or other,
which generally inhabits a new house much too large for it, which
is seldom paid for, and which takes the name of the mechanics most
grievously in vain, for I have usually seen a mechanic and a dodo
in that place together.
I, therefore, began my education, in respect of the meaning of this
title, very coldly indeed, saying to myself, "Here's the old
story." But the perusal of a very few lines of my book soon gave
me to understand that it was not by any means the old story; in
short, that this association is expressly designed to correct the
old story, and to prevent its defects from becoming perpetuated. I
learnt that this Institutional Association is the union, in one
central head, of one hundred and fourteen local Mechanics'
Institutions and Mutual Improvement Societies, at an expense of no
more than five shillings to each society; suggesting to all how
they can best communicate with and profit by the fountain-head and
one another; keeping their best aims steadily before them; advising
them how those aims can be best attained; giving a direct end and
object to what might otherwise easily become waste forces; and
sending among them not only oral teachers, but, better still, boxes
of excellent books, called "Free Itinerating Libraries." I learned
that these books are constantly making the circuit of hundreds upon
hundreds of miles, and are constantly being read with inexpressible
relish by thousands upon thousands of toiling people, but that they
are never damaged or defaced by one rude hand. These and other
like facts lead me to consider the immense importance of the fact,
that no little cluster of working men's cottages can arise in any
Lancashire or Cheshire valley, at the foot of any running stream
which enterprise hunts out for water-power, but it has its
educational friend and companion ready for it, willing for it,
acquainted with its thoughts and ways and turns of speech even
before it has come into existence.
Now, ladies and gentlemen, this is the main consideration that has
brought me here. No central association at a distance could
possibly do for those working men what this local association does.
No central association at a distance could possibly understand them
as this local association does. No central association at a
distance could possibly put them in that familiar and easy
communication one with another, as that I, man or boy, eager for
knowledge, in that valley seven miles off, should know of you, man
or boy, eager for knowledge, in that valley twelve miles off, and
should occasionally trudge to meet you, that you may impart your
learning in one branch of acquisition to me, whilst I impart mine
in another to you. Yet this is distinctly a feature, and a most
important feature, of this society.
On the other hand, it is not to be supposed that these honest men,
however zealous, could, as a rule, succeed in establishing and
maintaining their own institutions of themselves. It is obvious
that combination must materially diminish their cost, which is in
time a vital consideration; and it is equally obvious that
experience, essential to the success of all combination, is
especially so when its object is to diffuse the results of
experience and of reflection.
Well, ladies and gentlemen, the student of the present profitable
history of this society does not stop here in his learning; when he
has got so far, he finds with interest and pleasure that the parent
society at certain stated periods invites the more eager and
enterprising members of the local society to submit themselves to
voluntary examination in various branches of useful knowledge, of
which examination it takes the charge and arranges the details, and
invites the successful candidates to come to Manchester to receive
the prizes and certificates of merit which it impartially awards.
The most successful of the competitors in the list of these
examinations are now among us, and these little marks of
recognition and encouragement I shall have the honour presently of
giving them, as they come before you, one by one, for that purpose.
I have looked over a few of those examination papers, which have
comprised history, geography, grammar, arithmetic, book-keeping,
decimal coinage, mensuration, mathematics, social economy, the
French language--in fact, they comprise all the keys that open all
the locks of knowledge. I felt most devoutly gratified, as to many
of them, that they had not been submitted to me to answer, for I am
perfectly sure that if they had been, I should have had mighty
little to bestow upon myself to-night. And yet it is always to be
observed and seriously remembered that these examinations are
undergone by people whose lives have been passed in a continual
fight for bread, and whose whole existence, has been a constant
wrestle with
"Those twin gaolers of the daring heart -
Low birth and iron fortune." {13}
I could not but consider, with extraordinary admiration, that these
questions have been replied to, not by men like myself, the
business of whose life is with writing and with books, but by men,
the business of whose life is with tools and with machinery.
Let me endeavour to recall, as well as my memory will serve me,
from among the most interesting cases of prize-holders and
certificate-gainers who will appear before you, some two or three
of the most conspicuous examples. There are two poor brothers from
near Chorley, who work from morning to night in a coal-pit, and
who, in all weathers, have walked eight miles a-night, three nights
a-week, to attend the classes in which they have gained
distinction. There are two poor boys from Bollington, who begin
life as piecers at one shilling or eighteen-pence a-week, and the
father of one of whom was cut to pieces by the machinery at which
he worked, but not before he had himself founded the institution in
which this son has since come to be taught. These two poor boys
will appear before you to-night, to take the second-class prize in
chemistry. There is a plasterer from Bury, sixteen years of age,
who took a third-class certificate last year at the hands of Lord
Brougham; he is this year again successful in a competition three
times as severe. There is a wagon-maker from the same place, who
knew little or absolutely nothing until he was a grown man, and who
has learned all he knows, which is a great deal, in the local
institution. There is a chain-maker, in very humble circumstances,
and working hard all day, who walks six miles a-night, three nights
a-week, to attend the classes in which he has won so famous a
place. There is a moulder in an iron foundry, who, whilst he was
working twelve hours a day before the furnace, got up at four
o'clock in the morning to learn drawing. "The thought of my lads,"
he writes in his modest account of himself, "in their peaceful
slumbers above me, gave me fresh courage, and I used to think that
if I should never receive any personal benefit, I might instruct
them when they came to be of an age to understand the mighty
machines and engines which have made our country, England, pre-
eminent in the world's history." There is a piecer at mule-frames,
who could not read at eighteen, who is now a man of little more
than thirty, who is the sole support of an aged mother, who is
arithmetical teacher in the institution in which he himself was
taught, who writes of himself that he made the resolution never to
take up a subject without keeping to it, and who has kept to it
with such an astonishing will, that he is now well versed in Euclid
and Algebra, and is the best French scholar in Stockport. The
drawing-classes in that same Stockport are taught by a working
blacksmith; and the pupils of that working blacksmith will receive
the highest honours of to-night. Well may it be said of that good
blacksmith, as it was written of another of his trade, by the
American poet:
"Toiling, rejoicing, sorrowing,
Onward through life he goes;
Each morning sees some task begun,
Each evening sees its clause.
Something attempted, something done,
Has earn'd a night's repose."
To pass from the successful candidates to the delegates from local
societies now before me, and to content myself with one instance
from amongst them. There is among their number a most remarkable
man, whose history I have read with feelings that I could not
adequately express under any circumstances, and least of all when I
know he hears me, who worked when he was a mere baby at hand-loom
weaving until he dropped from fatigue: who began to teach himself
as soon as he could earn five shillings a-week: who is now a
botanist, acquainted with every production of the Lancashire
valley: who is a naturalist, and has made and preserved a
collection of the eggs of British birds, and stuffed the birds:
who is now a conchologist, with a very curious, and in some
respects an original collection of fresh-water shells, and has also
preserved and collected the mosses of fresh water and of the sea:
who is worthily the president of his own local Literary
Institution, and who was at his work this time last night as
foreman in a mill.
So stimulating has been the influence of these bright examples, and
many more, that I notice among the applications from Blackburn for
preliminary test examination papers, one from an applicant who
gravely fills up the printed form by describing himself as ten
years of age, and who, with equal gravity, describes his occupation
as "nursing a little child." Nor are these things confined to the
men. The women employed in factories, milliners' work, and
domestic service, have begun to show, as it is fitting they should,
a most decided determination not to be outdone by the men; and the
women of Preston in particular, have so honourably distinguished
themselves, and shown in their examination papers such an admirable
knowledge of the science of household management and household
economy, that if I were a working bachelor of Lancashire or
Cheshire, and if I had not cast my eye or set my heart upon any
lass in particular, I should positively get up at four o'clock in
the morning with the determination of the iron-moulder himself, and
should go to Preston in search of a wife.
Now, ladies and gentlemen, these instances, and many more, daily
occurring, always accumulating, are surely better testimony to the
working of this Association, than any number of speakers could
possibly present to you. Surely the presence among us of these
indefatigable people is the Association's best and most effective
triumph in the present and the past, and is its noblest stimulus to
effort in the future. As its temporary mouth-piece, I would beg to
say to that portion of the company who attend to receive the
prizes, that the institution can never hold itself apart from
them;--can never set itself above them; that their distinction and
success must be its distinction and success; and that there can be
but one heart beating between them and it. In particular, I would
most especially entreat them to observe that nothing will ever be
further from this Association's mind than the impertinence of
patronage. The prizes that it gives, and the certificates that it
gives, are mere admiring assurances of sympathy with so many
striving brothers and sisters, and are only valuable for the spirit
in which they are given, and in which they are received. The
prizes are money prizes, simply because the Institution does not
presume to doubt that persons who have so well governed themselves,
know best how to make a little money serviceable--because it would
be a shame to treat them like grown-up babies by laying it out for
them, and because it knows it is given, and knows it is taken, in
perfect clearness of purpose, perfect trustfulness, and, above all,
perfect independence.
Ladies and Gentlemen, reverting once more to the whole collective
audience before me, I will, in another two minutes, release the
hold which your favour has given me on your attention. Of the
advantages of knowledge I have said, and I shall say, nothing. Of
the certainty with which the man who grasps it under difficulties
rises in his own respect and in usefulness to the community, I have
said, and I shall say, nothing. In the city of Manchester, in the
county of Lancaster, both of them remarkable for self-taught men,
that were superfluous indeed. For the same reason I rigidly
abstain from putting together any of the shattered fragments of
that poor clay image of a parrot, which was once always saying,
without knowing why, or what it meant, that knowledge was a
dangerous thing. I should as soon think of piecing together the
mutilated remains of any wretched Hindoo who has been blown from an
English gun. Both, creatures of the past, have been--as my friend
Mr. Carlyle vigorously has it--"blasted into space;" and there, as
to this world, is an end of them.
So I desire, in conclusion, only to sound two strings. In the
first place, let me congratulate you upon the progress which real
mutual improvement societies are making at this time in your
neighbourhood, through the noble agency of individual employers and
their families, whom you can never too much delight to honour.
Elsewhere, through the agency of the great railway companies, some
of which are bestirring themselves in this matter with a gallantry
and generosity deserving of all praise. Secondly and lastly, let
me say one word out of my own personal heart, which is always very
near to it in this connexion. Do not let us, in the midst of the
visible objects of nature, whose workings we can tell of in
figures, surrounded by machines that can be made to the thousandth
part of an inch, acquiring every day knowledge which can be proved
upon a slate or demonstrated by a microscope--do not let us, in the
laudable pursuit of the facts that surround us, neglect the fancy
and the imagination which equally surround us as a part of the
great scheme. Let the child have its fables; let the man or woman
into which it changes, always remember those fables tenderly. Let
numerous graces and ornaments that cannot be weighed and measured,
and that seem at first sight idle enough, continue to have their
places about us, be we never so wise. The hardest head may co-
exist with the softest heart. The union and just balance of those
two is always a blessing to the possessor, and always a blessing to
mankind. The Divine Teacher was as gentle and considerate as He
was powerful and wise. You all know how He could still the raging
of the sea, and could hush a little child. As the utmost results
of the wisdom of men can only be at last to help to raise this
earth to that condition to which His doctrine, untainted by the
blindnesses and passions of men, would have exalted it long ago; so
let us always remember that He set us the example of blending the
understanding and the imagination, and that, following it
ourselves, we tread in His steps, and help our race on to its
better and best days. Knowledge, as all followers of it must know,
has a very limited power indeed, when it informs the head alone;
but when it informs the head and the heart too, it has a power over
life and death, the body and the soul, and dominates the universe.
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