Speeches: Literary and Social

BIRMINGHAM, JANUARY 6, 1870

[On the evening of the above date, Mr. Dickens, as President of the
Birmingham and Midland Institute, distributed the prizes and
certificates awarded to the most successful students in the first
year. The proceedings took place in the Town Hall: Mr. Dickens
entered at eight o'clock, accompanied by the officers of the
Institute, and was received with loud applause. After the lapse of
a minute or two, he rose and said:-]

Ladies and gentlemen,--When I last had the honour to preside over a
meeting of the Institution which again brings us together, I took
occasion to remark upon a certain superabundance of public speaking
which seems to me to distinguish the present time. It will require
very little self-denial on my part to practise now what I preached
then; firstly, because I said my little say that night; and
secondly, because we have definite and highly interesting action
before us to-night. We have now to bestow the rewards which have
been brilliantly won by the most successful competitors in the
society's lists. I say the most successful, because to-night we
should particularly observe, I think, that there is success in all
honest endeavour, and that there is some victory gained in every
gallant struggle that is made. To strive at all involves a victory
achieved over sloth, inertness, and indifference; and competition
for these prizes involves, besides, in the vast majority of cases,
competition with and mastery asserted over circumstances adverse to
the effort made. Therefore, every losing competitor among my
hearers may be certain that he has still won much--very much--and
that he can well afford to swell the triumph of his rivals who have
passed him in the race.

I have applied the word "rewards" to these prizes, and I do so, not
because they represent any great intrinsic worth in silver or gold,
but precisely because they do not. They represent what is above
all price--what can be stated in no arithmetical figures, and what
is one of the great needs of the human soul--encouraging sympathy.
They are an assurance to every student present or to come in your
institution, that he does not work either neglected or unfriended,
and that he is watched, felt for, stimulated, and appreciated.
Such an assurance, conveyed in the presence of this large assembly,
and striking to the breasts of the recipients that thrill which is
inseparable from any great united utterance of feeling, is a
reward, to my thinking, as purely worthy of the labour as the
labour itself is worthy of the reward; and by a sensitive spirit
can never be forgotten.

[One of the prize-takers was a Miss Winkle, a name suggestive of
"Pickwick," which was received with laugher. Mr. Dickens made some
remarks to the lady in an undertone; and then observed to the
audience, "I have recommended Miss Winkle to change her name." The
prizes having been distributed, Mr. Dickens made a second brief
speech. He said:-]

The prizes are now all distributed, and I have discharged myself of
the delightful task you have entrusted to me; and if the recipients
of these prizes and certificates who have come upon this platform
have had the genuine pleasure in receiving their acknowledgments
from my hands that I have had in placing them in theirs, they are
in a true Christian temper to-night. I have the painful sense upon
me, that it is reserved for some one else to enjoy this great
satisfaction of mind next time. It would be useless for the few
short moments longer to disguise the fact that I happen to have
drawn King this Twelfth Night, but that another Sovereign will very
soon sit upon my inconstant throne. To-night I abdicate, or, what
is much the same thing in the modern annals of Royalty--I am
politely dethroned. This melancholy reflection, ladies and
gentlemen, brings me to a very small point, personal to myself,
upon which I will beg your permission to say a closing word.

When I was here last autumn I made, in reference to some remarks of
your respected member, Mr. Dixon, a short confession of my
political faith--or perhaps I should better say want of faith. It
imported that I have very little confidence in the people who
govern us--please to observe "people" there will be with a small
"p,"--but that I have great confidence in the People whom they
govern; please to observe "people" there with a large "P." This
was shortly and elliptically stated, and was with no evil
intention, I am absolutely sure, in some quarters inversely
explained. Perhaps as the inventor of a certain extravagant
fiction, but one which I do see rather frequently quoted as if
there were grains of truth at the bottom of it--a fiction called
the "Circumlocution Office,"--and perhaps also as the writer of an
idle book or two, whose public opinions are not obscurely stated--
perhaps in these respects I do not sufficiently bear in mind
Hamlet's caution to speak by the card lest equivocation should undo
me.

Now I complain of nobody; but simply in order that there may be no
mistake as to what I did mean, and as to what I do mean, I will re-
state my meaning, and I will do so in the words of a great thinker,
a great writer, and a great scholar, {19} whose death,
unfortunately for mankind, cut short his "History of Civilization
in England:"--"They may talk as they will about reforms which
Government has introduced and improvements to be expected from
legislation, but whoever will take a wider and more commanding view
of human affairs, will soon discover that such hopes are
chimerical. They will learn that lawgivers are nearly always the
obstructors of society instead of its helpers, and that in the
extremely few cases where their measures have turned out well their
success has been owing to the fact that, contrary to their usual
custom, they have implicitly obeyed the spirit of their time, and
have been--as they always should be--the mere servants of the
people, to whose wishes they are bound to give a public and legal
sanction."