Anthony Trollope - Autobiography of Anthony Trollope

sin very often, but often enough to feel that I was a coward. "My

dear friend, my dear friend, this is trash!" It is so hard to speak

thus--but so necessary for an editor! We all remember the thorn

in his pillow of which Thackeray complained. Occasionally I know

that I did give way on behalf of some literary aspirant whose work

did not represent itself to me as being good; and as often as I did

so, I broke my trust to those who employed me. Now, I think that

such editors as Thackeray and myself,--if I may, for the moment, be

allowed to couple men so unequal,--will always be liable to commit

such faults, but that the natures of publishers and proprietors

will be less soft.

Nor do I know why the pages of a magazine should be considered to

be open to any aspirant who thinks that he can write an article,

or why the manager of a magazine should be doomed to read all that

may be sent to him. The object of the proprietor is to produce

a periodical that shall satisfy the public, which he may probably

best do by securing the services of writers of acknowledged ability.

Very early in life, very soon after I had become a clerk in St.

Martin's le Grand, when I was utterly impecunious and beginning

to fall grievously into debt, I was asked by an uncle of mine, who

was himself a clerk in the War Office, what destination I should

like best for my future life. He probably meant to inquire whether

I wished to live married or single, whether to remain in the Post

Office or to leave it, whether I should prefer the town or the

country. I replied that I should like to be a Member of Parliament.

My uncle, who was given to sarcasm, rejoined that, as far a he knew,

few clerks in the Post Office did become Members of Parliament. I

think it was the remembrance of this jeer which stirred me up to

look for a seat as soon as I had made myself capable of holding one

by leaving the public service. My uncle was dead, but if I could

get a seat, the knowledge that I had done so might travel to that

bourne from whence he was not likely to return, and he might there

feel that he had done me wrong.

Independently of this, I have always thought that to sit in the

British Parliament should be the highest object of ambition to

every educated Englishman. I do not by this mean to suggest that

every educated Englishman should set before himself a seat in

Parliament as a probable or even a possible career; but that the man

in Parliament has reached a higher position than the man out,--that

to serve one's country without pay is the grandest work that a man

can do,--that of all studies the study of politics is the one in

which a man may make himself most useful to his fellow-creatures,--and

that of all lives, public political lives are capable of the highest

efforts. So thinking,--though I was aware that fifty-three was too

late an age at which to commence a new career,--I resolved with

much hesitation that I would make the attempt. Writing now at an

age beyond sixty, I can say that my political feelings and convictions

have never undergone any change. They are now what they became when

I first began to have political feelings and convictions. Nor do I

find in myself any tendency to modify them as I have found generally

in men as they grow old. I consider myself to be an advanced, but

still a Conservative-Liberal, which I regard not only as a possible,

but as a rational and consistent phase of political existence.

I can, I believe, in a very few words, make known my political

theory; and, as I am anxious that any who know aught of me should

know that, I will endeavour to do so.

It must, I think, be painful to all men to feel inferiority. It should,

I think, be a matter of some pain to all men to feel superiority,

unless when it has been won by their own efforts. We do not

understand the operations of Almighty wisdom, and are, therefore,

unable to tell the causes of the terrible inequalities that

we see--why some, why so many, should have so little to make life

enjoyable, so much to make it painful, while a few others, not

through their own merit, have had gifts poured out to them from

a full hand. We acknowledge the hand of God and His wisdom, but

still we are struck with awe and horror at the misery of many of

our brethren. We who have been born to the superior condition,--for,

in this matter, I consider myself to be standing on a platform with

dukes and princes, and all others to whom plenty and education and

liberty have been given,--cannot, I think, look upon the inane,

unintellectual, and tossed-bound life of those who cannot even

feed themselves sufficiently by their sweat, without some feeling

of injustice, some feeling of pain.

This consciousness of wrong has induced in many enthusiastic but

unbalanced minds a desire to set all things right by a proclaimed

equality. In their efforts such men have shown how powerless they

are in opposing the ordinances of the Creator. For the mind of the

thinker and the student is driven to admit, though it be awestruck

by apparent injustice, that this inequality is the work of God.

Make all men equal to-day, and God has so created them that they

shall be all unequal to-morrow. The so-called Conservative, the

conscientious, philanthropic Conservative, seeing this, and being

surely convinced that such inequalities are of divine origin, tells

himself that it is his duty to preserve them. He thinks that the

preservation of the welfare of the world depends on the maintenance

of those distances between the prince and the peasant by which he

finds himself to be surrounded; and, perhaps, I may add, that the

duty is not unpleasant, as he feels himself to be one of the princes.

But this man, though he sees something, and sees that very clearly,

sees only a little. The divine inequality is apparent to him, but

not the equally divine diminution of that inequality. That such

diminution is taking place on all sides is apparent enough; but it

is apparent to him as an evil, the consummation of which it is his

duty to retard. He cannot prevent it; and, therefore, the society

to which he belongs is, in his eyes, retrograding. He will even,

at times, assist it; and will do so conscientiously, feeling that,

under the gentle pressure supplied by him, and with the drags and

holdfasts which he may add, the movement would be slower than it

would become if subjected to his proclaimed and absolute opponents.

Such, I think, are Conservatives; and I speak of men who, with the

fear of God before their eyes and the love of their neighbours warm

in their hearts, endeavour to do their duty to the best of their

ability.

Using the term which is now common, and which will be best understood,

I will endeavour to explain how the equally conscientious Liberal

is opposed to the Conservative. He is equally aware that these

distances are of divine origin, equally averse to any sudden

disruption of society in quest of some Utopian blessedness; but he

is alive to the fact that these distances are day by day becoming

less, and he regards this continual diminution as a series of

steps towards that human millennium of which he dreams. He is even

willing to help the many to ascend the ladder a little, though he

knows, as they come up towards him, he must go down to meet them.

What is really in his mind is,--I will not say equality, for the