narrow-minded frivolity and ambitious self-seeking of the great body of the clergy of that day, who had no understanding for the great social questions of the day, and clung tenaciously to the old order of things which was fast passing away, and so lost the chance of capessere republicam, to use Huber's expression, at a critical moment of transition to the new.

The

To illustrate this, Huber mentions a conversation with some artisans in the library of the Coventry Cooperative Society. He had inquired as to the attitude of the Church towards the co-operative movement. answer he received was this, "Well, sir, I suppose the Church does not care anything about us poor people, and so we come not to care much for her either-the more's the pity!"

One of the Rochdale Pioneers, speaking on the same topic, remarked, by way of contrasting the efforts of the Church of Rome in this direction with the lethargy and rigid indifference of the Church of England, "This (the Romish Church) is the poor man's church after all, if there is such a thing for him and he wants it." *

During a visit to York, he was told of the madman. Martin, who had set fire to the Minster in 1829, and when charged with the crime declared that he had "a mission from on high to destroy this monument of worldly grandeur in the Church and her ministers, and as a warning against her carnal self-seeking, self-confidence, and indolence, especially her neglect of the poor, and her lenient indulgence towards the faults of the wealthy, with whom she makes common cause.'

* "Genossenschaftliche Briefe," vol. ii. pp. 244, 245, cf. p. 258. He quotes the words of the Rev. Rector Campbell, of Liverpool, in an address to the Liverpool Working-men's Church Association, delivered in January, 1813:-"I know it is the boast of the Church of England to be the poor man's Church, but I am afraid it is only our boast."

Huber looks on this act as significant as to the state of public and private feeling regarding the Establishment at that time, and adds significantly that such a warning was as necessary as it was wholesome.

If Huber found little to encourage him in his efforts of reforming society from above by a coalition of gentry and clergy, and can only point to a few isolated instances of patronizing endeavour on the part of employers to improve the condition of the working people, he sees much to inspire him with hope in the conscientious efforts at self-improvement from below among the people themselves, and is never tired of pointing to the marvellous advances of the co-operative movement among them in this country.

He is not blind, indeed, to the weaknesses and imperfections of co-operation, as he saw it then, in the earlier stages of its development. Thus, in a lecture on the subject delivered before the Central Society for the Welfare of the Working Classes in Germany, in 1852, he cannot help pointing out that one of their inherent deficiencies is the retention of the purely egotistic ways of doing business in the management of "stores" which is inconsistent with the true principles of co-operation. He shows that in thus continuing the system of "the trades" co-operation has no right to assume the title of Christian Socialism, which makes self-sacrifice and not self-advantage the life-principle of human transactions. To identify their co-operative undertakings with Christian Socialism, he says, either rests on a confusion of ideas, or on a conscious attempt at gaining popularity on false pretences. At the same time he fully recognizes the superior qualities of mind and heart required in cooperators of even an imperfect type, and speaks of the evident power of co-operation in its lower stages to form

character and to serve as a training institution to inculcate the lessons of thrift and foresight, and as a disciplinary power to organize vast bodies of men in a

common cause.

But its chief value, he thinks, lies in the tendency of co-operation to remove class differences, in bringing rich and poor nearer to each other, and transforming a number of impoverished labourers into comfortable proprietors.. In thus diminishing the causes of discontent and envious strife, it consolidates the foundations of social order and peace, it becomes the vis naturae medicatrix, the selfhealing power of society. In one of his letters from London he confesses that even in its ultimate development co-operation may be only one stage in the process of social self-rectification and self-purification, but even as such he expects from it great social changes, and regards its rapid progress in accumulating capital and gaining credit as a mere indication of its future success.

Here we pause, having thus given an imperfect and far from exhaustive sketch of the life and labours of a very remarkable man. We have not dwelt, for want of space, on Huber's schemes of co-operative agriculture, nor his reasons for some of the failures of the movement. We have not thought it necessary to allude to his vindication of the principle which allows labour to participate in the profits of capital. But enough has been said to give a fair view of the social theories of a man who from first to last devoted his time and his talents to the cause of improving the condition of the least prosperous classes on Christian principle. The work of pioneers is never fully appreciated at the time; it must be so in the nature of things. Huber was one of the pioneers of social progress, and died a disappointed man. But he has secured for himself an honoured place in the history

of Christian Socialism, and will ever rank high among those who disinterestedly have devoted their lives to benefit mankind.

"In many ways he may have erred," says his biographer, "but his character was so pure, his life so exemplary, his aims so purely noble, that he may rightly be counted among the choice spirits of our nation. He has not been remarkable for any great act of statesmanship, nor will his name be recorded in the annals of political revolutions, but in the far more important history of the social movement of the people he will ever occupy a prominent place."

CHAPTER VII.

THE STATE SOCIALISTS, OR CHRISTIAN SOCIAL PARTY, IN GERMANY.

THIS title is somewhat misleading, since those to whom it is applied, and who cheerfully accept the appellation, are so far from being Socialists, in the ordinary sense of the word, that the name "Defenders of Society on Church and State Principles" would convey a more correct idea of their aims and purposes to English readers. Properly speaking, they are Conservative would-be saviours of society, who see no other means of escape from the present social dilemma but in a firm alliance between Crown and Altar for the purpose of regenerating society. Huber, described in the previous chapter, the Privy Councillor Wagener, and Rudolf Meyer, the well-known historian of the "fourth estate" (by which he means the working classes), had formed at one time the triumvirate of religious Conservatives, who thus tried to "save the Republic." The Court-Chaplain Stöcker and Pastor Todt may be regarded as the clerical representatives of the same party at a later stage of its formation.

In 1878, Wagener published a pamphlet, not under his own name, on the solution of the social question "from the practical standpoint of an experienced statesman." It contains the fundamental doctrines of the party, and a few extracts from it will be all the more