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    The Member and the Radical
    The Member and the Radical
    The Member and the Radical
    Ebook334 pages6 hours

    The Member and the Radical

    By John Galt and Paul H. Scott

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    Two novels by the 18th-century Scottish author that “focus on the foibles and fumbles, the humor and waste of people . . . of political ambition” (The National).
     
    Galt’s two great political novels date from around the passing of the Reform Act of 1832. The Member has claims to be the first political novel in the English language and is a tour de force of wit, observation, and a devastating critique of political self-seekings. Its hero is a Scot, newly returned from India, who purchases a seat in a rotten borough. As a study of the corruption of the pre-reform parliament it is unsurpassed.
     
    The Radical is a study of narrow-minded, humor-less fanaticism. Galt’s aim is to demonstrate the fragility of the existing order and the closeness of anarchy to the surface of society. This is the first republication of The Radical since its original edition.
     
    “Galt has dropped from popular currency even more than Walter Scott, but he is an important novelist and warrants reappraisal and new reading.”—The National
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateJul 1, 2010
    ISBN9781847675231
    The Member and the Radical
    Author

    John Galt

    John Galt; (2 May 1779 – 11 April 1839) was a Scottish novelist, entrepreneur, and political and social commentator. Because he was the first novelist to deal with issues of the Industrial Revolution, he has been called the first political novelist in the English language. (Wikipedia)

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      Book preview

      The Member and the Radical - John Galt

      JOHN GALT

      THE MEMBER:

      An Autobiography

      AND

      THE RADICAL:

      An Autobiography

      Introduced by

      PAUL H. SCOTT

      Contents

      Acknowledgements

      Introduction

      THE MEMBER: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY

      Notes by Ian A. Gordon

      THE RADICAL: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY

      Notes by Paul H. Scott

      Glossary

      Introduction

      One of the first reviewers of The Member, when it was published in 1832, said that he wished that ‘Mr. Galt would do nothing but write imaginary autobiographies’. He was thinking not only of The Member itself, described on its title page as ‘An Autobiography’, but also of Galt’s earlier works, Annals of the Parish (1821) and The Provost (1822). As a novelist Galt was innovative and diverse in subject matter and technique and this particular kind of fictional autobiography was one of his happiest inventions.

      There was, of course, nothing new in novels which told the life story, or part of it, of an imaginary character in the first person. Daniel Defoe did that in Robinson Crusoe and Tobias Smollett in Roderick Random and there are innumerable other examples. Galt’s originality lay in some special characteristics of his own, apart from his concentration and brevity. One of these qualities was noticed by Samuel Coleridge in The Provost, but it applies to the others as well. He called it an ‘irony of self-delusion’. The imaginary autobiographer gives away his weaknesses at every turn, evidently without the slightest suspicion that he is doing so. He continues, Coleridge says, in ‘a happy state of self-applause’. Galt gives each of his subjects a personality entirely appropriate to his circumstances, with a style and habit of speech to match, sustained throughout without a single false note.

      Another of Galt’s strengths is the smeddum and force of the Scots of Irvine and Greenock where he spent the first twenty-five years and the last five of his life. In a prefatory note to one of his last short stories Galt spoke of ‘the fortunate circumstances of the Scotch possessing the whole range of the English language, as well as their own, by which they enjoy an unusually rich vocabulary’. This richness is less apparent in The Member than in the earlier novels, but again this is appropriate. The imaginary writer, Archibald Jobbry, has spent most of his life in India and can be expected to have lost much of his Scots.

      In his Autobiography Galt said that he was convinced ‘that not in character only, but in all things, an author should have natural models before him’. The Member was no exception. Galt says of it:

      The gentleman I had in view as the model, was immediately discovered in the House of Commons, and I suspect he is possessed of too much shrewd humour to be offended with the liberty I have taken. I have represented him as neither saying or doing aught, that, I think, as the world wags, he may not unblushingly have done, nor which, in my heart, I do not approve.

      Parliament and Whitehall were familiar territory to Galt. He had acted for years as a lobbyist on behalf of the Union Canal between Edinburgh and Glasgow. In 1820 he was appointed to act as the agent for a group of claimants who had suffered loss when the United States invaded Canada in 1812. This involved him both in taking charge of the settlement of part of Ontario and in protracted negotiations with the government.

      Galt insisted that his books like the Annals were not novels, but something quite different. They had no plot, and, he wrote, ‘the only link of cohesion, which joins the incidents together, is the mere remembrance of the supposed author. It is, in consequence, as widely different from a novel, as a novel can be from any other species of narration’. He used various phrases to describe them: ‘a kind of treatise on the history of society’, ‘theoretical histories’, or ‘philosophical sketches’. He even went so far as to deny that he hoped to entertain the reader:

      I only desire it to be remembered by my readers that, I had an object in view beyond what was apparent. I considered the novel as a vehicle of instruction, or philosophy teaching by examples, parables, in which the moral was more valuable than the incidents were impressive. Indeed it is not in this age that a man of ordinary common sense would enter into competition in recreative stories, with a great genius who possessed the attention of all. I mean Sir Walter Scott.

      In his irony, humour and richness of character Galt is one of the most entertaining of novelists. His denial that he had any such intention is therefore curious. Perhaps he was betraying a twinge of Presbyterian conscience over the frivolity of writing novels intended only to entertain. His sympathies with Presbyterianism, indeed with the spirit of the Covenanters, are clear from his great historical novel, Ringan Gilhaize.

      At all events. The Member and The Radical are the most obviously ‘philosophical’, or at least political, of his novels. They were both published in 1832 shortly before the passage of the Reform Act which began the process of extending the right to vote in British parliamentary elections to a larger part of the population. Controversy over this measure, which was promoted by the Whigs and opposed by the Tories, was then at its height. The two novels were clearly intended as contributions to the debate. This was another of Galt’s innovations. The Provost was a novel of political satire on the local level. Sir Andrew Wylie (1822) had introduced episodes of political intrigue. The Member and The Radical were the first novels in our literature centered on parliamentary politics.

      Archibald Jobbry, the narrator of The Member, is that familiar figure in nineteenth-century literature, the Scot who has made a fortune in India and returns to buy an estate in his own country. He finds that the peaceful enjoyment of his retirement is disturbed by the demands of his kith and kin, ‘all gaping like voracious larks for a pick’. His solution is to buy himself a seat in Parliament, under the old corrupt system before the Reform Act, to get his hands on some government patronage to satisfy them. Having twice survived what he calls ironically his ‘popular election’, he settles down to draw what advantage he can from his support of the government. He finds this easy for ‘a conscientious man’, because he sees little distinction between Whig and Tory. He begins to take a ‘sort of attachment to the House’ (still a not unusual phenomenon) and develops some quite enlightened ideas. Mr Jobbry is no die-hard Tory, but he is inevitably opposed to parliamentary reform, or in his words, ‘giving the unenlightened many, an increase of dominion over the enlightened few’. He sees that his day is over as the Reform Act looms and his seat loses all marketable value. So he retires to his Scottish estate.

      The obvious reading of The Member is that it is a satire aimed at the corruption of the pre-Reform parliament, a contribution to the case for reform, and therefore support for the Whigs and an attack on the Tories. If we can believe what he says himself in his Autobiography, this was not Galt’s intention:

      In the Member, I tried to embody all that could, in my opinion, be urged against the tories of my own way of thinking, and I was not aware that it could be deemed very bad, till I saw my friend, Dr. Bowring’s account of it, in the Westminster Review, in which he considered it as a reluctant concession to the spirit of the times. I am sure, however, that Mr. Jobbry is not made to make any acknowledgement unbecoming an honest man of the world, nor such as a fair partizan may not avow. [Then follows the passage, which I quoted above, about the ‘model’ for the character.]

      Galt, as here, often describes himself as a Tory, but this is difficult to reconcile with the attitudes which appear throughout his writings. He is no respecter of inherited privilege from the monarch downwards and he is particularly contemptuous of landowners. His sympathies lie with the poor and oppressed and it is not only in The Member that he describes the Tories as corrupt. In the Last of the Lairds, for example, a character says of ducks in the rain that they are ‘as garrulous with enjoyment, as Tories in the pools of corruption’. A man of Galt’s sharp intelligence was unlikely to be unaware of this paradox; but I do not know of any attempt that he made to explain it.

      The William Holmes MP, to whom the book was dedicated, was a real person, described in the Dictionary of National Biography as ‘the adroit and dexterous whip of the tory party … a most skilful dispenser of patronage’. Galt tells us that the dedication was written by J.G. Lockhart, the son-in-law and biographer of Sir Walter Scott, who, like Galt, was associated with the Edinburgh publisher, William Blackwood. Galt says of the dedication that it was a clever jeu d’esprit, and so admirably in keeping with the character of Jobbry that he was proud to have it ascribed to him.

      The Member was described on the title page as ‘By the author of The Ayrshire Legatees etc. etc.’. Even without this, it is clearly from the same pen as the best of Galt, shrewd, ironic, humane and enriched by Scots vocabulary and turn of phrase. This time, the irony is directed more against the institution than the individual. The Radical, in contrast, is so different in atmosphere and style that it would be impossible on internal evidence to conclude that it had been written by the same man. Once again the style is appropriate to the narrator; but, unlike any of the others, it is dry and abstract with a strong flavour of self-obsessed fanaticism. This time Galt presumably had no model, for the book is not in his usual style of social realism. It is not so much a novel with satirical overtones as a satire disguised as a novel. It is entirely in English, although a schoolmaster is given the name Mr Skelper.

      The narrator, Nathan Butt (which has a significance to an ear tuned to Scots) is more of an anarchist than a radical. From his schooldays onwards he is opposed to all authority. His goal is ‘nothing less than [naethin but] the emancipation of the human race from the trammels and bondage of the social law’. He wants to abolish property, religion, law, marriage and all ‘coercive expedients in the management of mankind’; but he still marries and expects absolute obedience from his wife. Like Mr Jobbry, he is no democrat because ‘the wise are few, and the foolish numerous’. He is prepared to pose as a Whig and support parliamentary reform as a means to his own ‘high and great purposes’. Although elected as a Whig, his election is declared invalid. He will not be in the House to vote for the Reform Bill, which was in fact passed in June 1832, only a few weeks after the publication of the book.

      Although the approach of these two books to parliamentary reform is apparently so different, there is perhaps a common idea behind them, which may also be a clue to Galt’s idiosyncratic Toryism. It was a commonplace of Scottish Enlightenment thought, expressed for instance by Adam Ferguson, that society was so complex a mechanism that any attempt to change it was liable to have unforeseen and possibly disastrous consequences. Change should therefore be undertaken only when clearly necessary and after very careful consideration. Galt in his youth had steeped himself in the Greenock Subscription Library in the works of Robertson, Hume, Smith, Ferguson and the rest. Like Walter Scott, he accepted the doctrine of the need for political caution. What he is probably saying in The Member is: ‘All right. The House of Commons is unrepresentative and corrupt, but it does not do much harm. It is probably better to leave it alone.’ The Radical makes the point that an apparently moderate and desirable reform may open the way to extremists bent on the destruction of all law and social order.

      In his Autobiography Galt said that The Radical was more philosophical in its satire than The Member. His object was ‘to show that many of these institutes, which are regarded as essentials in society, owe their origin to the sacrifice required to be made by man, to partake of its securities’. He did not think that he had failed in writing it, but he had to admit that it had not sold well. He thought that this might be because it had dealt in truths that were unpalatable at the time. In his Literary Life Galt said that the sales of both books had been unsatisfactory; ‘although on the Continent, they have attracted more attention than any other product of my pen, they have almost been still-born here’.

      The Member was published in January 1832 and The Radical in May. The unsold sheets of both were issued as a single volume, The Reform, in November. While Blackwood’s held the copyright of Galt’s best-known novels and kept most of them almost continuously in print for more than 100 years, they were not involved with the two political novels. The Member was not reprinted until Ian A. Gordon edited an edition for the Scottish Academic Press in 1973, which was reissued as a paperback in 1985. This text of The Member and its notes is used with the kind permission of Professor Gordon. The Radical is reprinted here for the first time since its original appearance.

      Paul H. Scott

      JOHN GALT

      THE MEMBER:

      An Autobiography

      EDITED WITH NOTES BY

      IAN A . GORDON 

      DEDICATION

      To

      WILLIAM HOLMES, Esq. M.P.

      The Girlands, Jan. 1, 1832.

      MY DEAR SIR,

      I beg leave to inscribe to you this brief Memoir of my parliamentary services, and I do so on the same principle that our acquaintance, Colonel Napier, refers to as his motive in dedicating that interesting work, the History of the Peninsular War, to the Duke of Wellington. It was chiefly under your kind superintendence that I had the satisfaction of exerting myself as an independent member, really and cordially devoted to the public good, during many anxious campaigns; and now, retired for ever from the busy scene, it is natural that I should feel a certain satisfaction in associating your respected name with this humble record.

      If the Reform Bill passes, which an offended Providence seems, I fear, but too likely to permit, your own far more brilliant and distinguished career as a patriotic senator is, probably, also drawing to a conclusion; and withdrawn, like me, to a rural retreat, in the calm repose of an evening hour, no longer liable to sudden interruption, it may serve to amuse your leisure to cast an eye over the unpretending narrative of scenes and events so intimately connected in my mind with the recollection of your talents, zeal, and genius, in what, though not generally so considered by the unthinking mass, I have long esteemed nearly the most important situation which any British subject can fill; but which, alas! is perhaps destined to pass away and be forgotten, amidst this general convulsion so fatal to the established institutions of a once happy and contented country. If, indeed, my dear and worthy friend, the present horrid measure be carried into full effect, it is but too plain that the axe will have been laid to the root of the British Oak. The upsetting, short-sighted conceit of new-fangled theorems will not long endure either the aristocratic or the monarchic branches; and your old office, so useful and necessary even, under a well-regulated social system, will fall with the rest; for the sharp, dogged persons likely to be returned under the schedules, will need no remembrancer to call them to their congenial daily and nightly task of retrenchment and demolition.

      A melancholy vista discloses itself to all rational understandings; – a church in tatters; a peerage humbled and degraded – no doubt, soon to be entirely got rid of; that poor, deluded man, the well-meaning William IV, probably packed off to Hanover; the three per cents down to two, at the very best of it; a graduated property tax sapping the vitals of order in all quarters; and, no question, parliamentary grants and pensions of every description no longer held sacred!

      May you be strengthened to endure with firmness the evil day; and if the neighbourhood of London should become so disturbed as to render Fulham no more that sweet snug retirement I always considered it, sure am I, that by making my little sequestered place here your temporary abode during the raging of the storm, you would confer much real pleasure and honour on myself and family. We have capital fishing, both trout and salmon, close at hand; and the moors are well enough all about us, – what with blackcock, grouse, ptarmigan, and occasionally roes, of which the duke’s woods near harbour many. Here we might watch afar off the rolling of the popular billows, and the howlings of the wind of change and perturbation, and bide our time.

      Once more, dear Mr. Holmes, accept the sincere tribute of esteem and regard from your old friend and pupil, and humble servant at command,

      ARCHIBALD JOBBRY

      P.S. Herewith you will receive 4 brace moorfowl, 2 ditto B. cocks, item 3 hares, one side of a roe, and one gallon whisky (véritable antique); which liberty please pardon.

      Jan. 2. – I am credibly informed that the weavers of Guttershiels, over their cups on hogmanae and yesterday, were openly discussing the division of landed properties in this district! What have not these demented ministers to answer for?

      CHAPTER ONE

      When a man comes home from India with a decent competency, he is obliged to endure many afflictions, not the least of which are nestsful of cousins’ children, in every corner of the kingdom, all gaping like voracious larks for a pick. This it behoves him to consider; for his bit gathering would be short in the outcoming, were he to help them from that fund: he is therefore under the necessity of reflecting how a modicum of his means can be laid out to the best advantage, not only for the benefit of his relations, but to spare a residue to himself, and to procure for him a suitable station in the world – the end of all creditable industry.

      For a time, after I set my foot on my native land, I was troubled in mind with these considerations; for when I left Bengal, it was with an intent to buy a moderate estate, and to live at my ease, having every thing comfortable about me.

      Of course, I had no insurmountable difficulty in meeting with a commodious purchase, though maybe I paid the price; for I had to bid against both a paper-money banker and a purse-proud fozy cotton manufacturer. I did not, however, grudge it; for I had the wherewithal, and I had seen enough of the world, in the intelligent circles of Calcutta, to convince me that rural felicity had, like many other things, risen in value.

      But no sooner was I enfeoft in my property, than my kith and kin began to bestir themselves, and to plague me for my patronage; pleading, in a very wearisome manner, that blood was thicker than water. Partly to get quit of their importunities, and to get also the means to help them, I began to take shares in divers public concerns, and to busy myself in the management thereof, slipping in a young friend now and then as a clerk. I will not, however, say, that in this I was altogether actuated by affection; for public spirit had quite as much to say with me as a regard for my kindred: indeed, it is a thing expected of every man, when he retires from business, that he will do his endeavour to serve his country, and make himself a name in the community.

      These doings, however, I soon saw were not enough to satisfy the demands upon me; finding, therefore, as I read the newspapers, that I had made myself very passably acquainted, while in India, with the politics of Europe, and especially with the arcana of government and the principles of legislation in England, I began to clok on the idea of getting myself made a Member of Parliament. At first I cannot say that I was strongly thereunto inclined – it was only a hankering; but the more I reflected anent the same, I grew the more courageous, especially when I read the speeches of those that had but speech-making to recommend them. To be sure, there were in my neighbourhood several old lairds, that counted their descent from Adam’s elder brother, who, when they heard that I was minded to go into Parliament, snorted east and west, and thought it a most upsetting audacity. But I had not been risking my health for five-and-twenty years in the climate of Bengal to pleasure them; so when I heard how they looked, and what they said concerning me, I became the more obstinate in my intention. But it was not so easily accomplished as thought; for as we in Scotland are not so clever in the way of getting into Parliament, without family connexions, as they are in England, I considered with myself that it would be expedient to take a run up to London when Parliament was sitting, and have some conversation there with a few of my old Indian cronies who were already members.

      I could not, however, just go off at once, without giving some reason; for it was then only a five-year old Parliament, and it would not have been prudent to have been thought guilty of looking so long before me as two years, unless there was some prospect of a change in the administration. But it happened that, from the first time I looked at my estate, I saw that the mansion-house stood in need of divers repairs; and accordingly I, in a quiet way, set about getting plans and estimates of the alterations. When I had procured and considered of the same, I instructed a carpenter thereon; and I took the opportunity, when the house was in the cholera morbus of reparation, to set out for London, giving it out that I had old Indian affairs to wind up, and heavy accounts to settle.

      It may be thought that I was a little overly artificial in this matter; but I had learned in my experience that no business of this world is without its craft, more especially undertakings of a political nature.

      Thus it came to pass that I arrived in the dead of winter in London, and was not long of making my arrival known among my acquaintance, and particularly those who had gotten themselves seats. I likewise peutered, in a far-off manner, among the Indian directors, and those that make speeches at their public meetings when the fault-finders give them trouble; still keeping my eye on the main chance.

      CHAPTER TWO

      The first of my old acquaintance whom I fell in with was Mr. Curry. He had been home from India three years before me, and was in all things a most orderly man. We were right glad, as you may well think, to see one another; and yet there was between us a cool distinction. His business in Calcutta was not just of such a genteel order as mine, but it was a shade more profitable; and hence, though he was a year behind me in the outgoing, he was full three years before me in the home-coming, which shews the difference that was between our respective ways of business; for, in comparing one thing with another, I found that our fortunes were counted just about equal, – which is a proof of the correctness of what I say.

      He had heard of my coming home, and likewise how I had made myself a public, patriotic character, which he never thought could happen; and, from less to more, I said to him that I was glad of an employment, for the time hung heavy upon my hands, and ‘that if I did not take a share in projects for the good of the nation, I would be indeed a waif hand.’

      He remarked to me, that what I said was very true, and consistent with his own experience; ‘But I would advise you,’ said he, ‘to do as I have done; get yourself elected into Parliament – it will not cost you a deadly sum; and then you’ll have full occupation.’

      ‘Mr. Curry,’ quo’ I, ‘it’s not every one, like you, that has a talent; for although I would not grudge to pay for the admission-ticket, between ourselves, I really don’t know how to set about applying for one; for you know that in our county in Scotland, the pedigree-family bear the bell in all electioneerings; for my Lord Entail, their cousin, has made as many freeholders on the list as the valuation of his estate allows, and three of the district-boroughs are under his thumb; so by that means they have all the rule and power of the shire. But, Mr. Curry, if you could tell me of a sober, canny way of creeping into the House of Commons unobserved, I’ll no say that just for a diversion I would not like to sit there for a session or two; by that time I

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