A BIOGRAPHICAL DISSERTATION

by Benjamin Ward Richardson

in

The Health of Nations.

A Review of the Works of Edwin Chadwick

with a Biographical Dissertation. 

in Two Volumes, Volume 1, 

Longmans, Green and Co., London, 1887

Introduction

O relate in a plain and simple form the more important details of the life of Mr. Edwin Chadwick, the author of the works included in these two volumes, is the object of the present dissertation. He whose career is to be recorded wishes for nothing so much as. that the record should be brief, clear and homely. He has placed before me the facts which he recalls from his earliest days, leaving me free to select from them. I shall treat these acts honestly according to his desire and their own excellent deserts, so that those who may, in the future, desire to comment on him, and the numerous, which he has added to the nineteenth century, may be sure that in these few pages they are in the possession of the truth from its original sources. To the facts, directly derived, I shall add some few impressions, derived from my own personal and, for a long time, intimate knowledge of friend during an unbroken and increasing friendship, which, commencing in the early day of the Epidemiological Society, about the year 1853-4, has continued until this hour, – a period of over thirty-three years.

In the first days of our friendship sanitarians were struggling to make their labors known, and as the great work on the "Sanitary Condition of the Laboring Classes," written by my friend not many years before, was the standard work in sanitary science, we younger men looked towards him with much admiration, to which, moreover was added considerable respect; for he was an authority who was determined to hold his own, and one whose criticism, though little incline to be technical, was keenly pointed and correctly leveled.

It was one of the features of his method in those now far off days, that he treated all professions with equal freedom when any subject connected with his own pursuits was under discussion, so that they who listened often wondered, when they were not intimate with him, what his own profession might be. One night in 1862, after coming from a meeting which he and I had taken part in debate, I wrote for the Social Science Review -- October 18th, 1862 -- an essay upon him which, as it was well received at the time, I may present again here as an introduction to him when he was in zenith of his power, premising that I composed the article with the idea before me that in a distant day some writer on his works might find it useful. I am not so sorry to be myself be that writer. The essay ran as follows:

EDWIN CHADWICK AS A SOCIAL REFORMER.

"Whenever the social history of this period shall be written by an impartial observer, freed from the jealousies and parties by which we are surrounded, such observer will find amongst the noted men of the time no one more difficult to appreciate, to define, to paint, than Mr. Edwin Chadwick. However long the time may be, however far back the historian may have to look, he will feel, we doubt not, that in this man some peculiar interest was embodied; that the man did some work or works which exerted a striking influence over his time, and caused great changes in its social system: and yet there will be a haze about him which will be scarcely penetrable. The man did and did not. He made laws? Yes. Was he then a Legislator? No, not even a member out of office in the Lower House. He did something for sanitary improvements? Yes. Was he then a doctor? No; on the contrary, he had not much faith in doctors, looked on them as necessary evils, and as not very likely to last. He had a hand in teaching, or rather in introducing different systems of education? Yes. Was he then a schoolmaster? No; on the contrary, he was not liked by schoolmasters, and therefore very probably did not like them.  Clearly too he was neither a practicing lawyer nor a clergyman? No. Then what was he? There is but one thing remaining: he must have been a great writer? Wrong again.  The British Museum Library and others are ransacked, there has been no fire, no destruction of catalogue, and his 'opera omnia' do not altogether suggest so much work for a long lifetime, as some men's do for the space of a few years. The question remains as it opened, and is likely to remain.

"The future biographer has our best sympathies; and if his eye should fall on these pages, he will see that he has been prematurely taken to our heart of hearts and buried there. The worst of it is that we cannot help him over his difficulties, we know something of the man truly, but we fail in power to describe the reason of his power; it is a thing to be accepted like an ultimate fact.

"Let us then not stay to speculate as to the prime cause of the influence which Mr. Chadwick possesses, but let us, if we must have a reason, take the unsatisfactory idea that his success primitively is based on accident. We may then look carefully at the character and tendencies of his labors and acts, and measure his power by them.

"In forming an estimate on this rule of inquiry, we may clear some ground by taking up one or two negative points.  First, we know that Mr. Chadwick is not an orator. When he first gets up to speak without book he looks an orator, but a few moments dispel the illusion; he bends forward, he speaks in a low voice, he disputes some points logically, then falls into confusion, then recovers his strain, goes hack, and in fact if he speaks long, as he is wont, wearies the listener, and takes sometimes the points out of his own argument. As a writer again he is not great: he is plain and yet difficult: diffuse here, concentrate there: and although he never writes without communicating some new thought or practical lesson, we doubt whether his writings as literary efforts have ever directly touched the mind of the nation. Further, both speaking and writing, he is often led by a bias which has been implanted by men much inferior to himself: still his intentions are obviously sound, and his mind, when both sides of a question are fairly laid before him, is as just and as logical as that of any man in the realm.

"On the affirmative side of his character we discover that there is one pre-eminent quality, and perhaps after all, it is the secret of his success; he has the faculty of seeing in any reform that he is contemplating what, under existing conditions, may be at once judiciously and effectually removed, and what may be judiciously and safely left as the basis on which to lay a structure entirely new. His poor-law labors all admit of this reading, and the reading explains much that would otherwise be very obscure. In plain words, he is radical reformer, minus every apparent trace of the radical tendency. His political art conceals his art, and that which from another would appear downright heresy comes from his hand as harmless as though it meant nothing under the sun. In this he resembles the late Count Cavour, and we believe that had he been placed in a position as great as that eminent statesman, he would have performed his task with equal skill. 

"The result is, that statesmen who wish to be guided feel in him a safe counselor.  The problems he proposes may seem difficult, bold, doubtful, but there is that in them, that they come out quietly and stand out well. Or, as we once heard a politician remark, when a great question about drainage was the topic of the day: -- 'Wait a few months, and depend upon it Chadwick will have the case on his side, he always falls on his feet.'

"As President of the Section of Economics and Statistics at Cambridge, Mr. Chadwick has given us the latest glimpse of his peculiar faculties. His opening address was not merely a wonderful review of the progress of social science, but most cleverly and pointedly suggestive of a variety of things that had to be undone, and of other things that had to be done.  He is treating of sanitary economics, and he is speaking at Cambridge; therefore he selects the spot on which he is standing for his argument. The townspeople are told in one emphatic sentence that they waste 20,000 pounds a year without the slightest reason. This is the great negative part of the argument, and this leads to a description of what they are to do to remove the burthen. The affirmative effect produced is determinately, though almost unconsciously rendered, and we have only to wait to see it practically carried out. On another occasion he takes up the question of capital and labor, and, indicating what the laborer is not, shows what he might be 'if properly invested,' and so he goes on through many other social subjects, putting forward the evils of existing conditions, and prompting their removal and their replacement, in a manner so slow and yet so convincing, that there is nothing for it but to accept it all in all as 'dismal science,' but so true that its very gloom invites attention, and its inertia action. In his paper on competitive examinations the same current reasoning prevails. Each point as to the requirement of a public servant is put forth in the most simple and yet the most telling method. We must prepare a public servant as we would prepare him if we required him for private service.  This is the preliminary argument. That supplied, the different qualifications are discussed: -- what may be excluded safely, what must be retained.

"He takes up history. A man ought, it is said, to know the history of his own country. Yes, but not in such a way as to make a range of the events and characters of some thousand years of the past, with too much of the bad, the subject of competition, at the expense of proficiency in one or other of the sciences, purer and better. History as a topic is one great field of cram, of reliance on memory, and of development; so history may be omitted. Then there are the literatures of different countries. Ought not a gentleman to be versed in polite literature?  Certainly; but it is not needful that it should be the subject of competition, at the expense- of proficiency in other and indisputably better and more needed subject matters of training. Literature is another great field of cram and dodging examinations, giving opportunities of trick, yielding chances to the idle who have read for amusement, over the diligent who have labored for the serious business of life. The literatures may be left for cultivation to social influences, and to their own attractions and advantages as recreations. As tests, they are of an inferior order. These two heads being dismissed as subjects of competition, there remain those which are admitted as means of mental training and superior tests of aptitudes. First in appointed order are the mathematics. It is submitted, taking them as a main test that whilst the basis of examination is made narrowest, should be made deeper or rather longer, and that double the time should be given to it. This would have the advantage of giving the slow but sure a fairer chance against the quick and the superficial, and would render the examinations less painful to the nervous. Next, the experimental sciences are considered.  There is an opinion, increasing in strength, that greater prominence should be given to the experimental sciences, and that, indeed, for the scientific corps of the army they should be made the chief topic for competition, and of course for preparatory education. The grounds of this opinion are, that mental exercises in the supplemental sciences include exercises of the faculties in induction as well as in deduction; that eminence in the pure mathematics has not been in this country nor in France accompanied by equal eminence in the public service that the experimental scientist is not practical; and, that if I were put to a chief of engineers, or to a mechanical or eminent civil engineer in this country, which of two competitors he would choose as an assistant, the one who was eminent in mathematics, or the one who was eminent in the experimental sciences, the latter would, from experience, be the one chosen.  In support of this argument, he advances a strong preference for the experimental sciences, from what he knows of the failure of the French engineers, who are pre-eminent in pure mathematic, and from what he knows of the failures of pure mathematics at home.

"And thus throughout his address, he carries out the same discriminating policy. His object is to abolish all the artificial or as he calls it 'cram,' and, without insulting any man's prejudices,  to institute in place of the artificial the actual: to make the State study how to collect servants who use their hands as well as their heads, and who know only how to use their heads in directing their hands. We have, we believe, but to wait and watch and we shall see all these reforms affected. 

"It is urged by those who oppose Mr. Chadwick that, making the best of him, he does no more than think the same thoughts the other men think, and that in fact he is not 'an original man.'  Admitted. But then he has the faculty of putting things forward in an original way, which after all is the soul of originality. 

"And in this faculty, we assume, lies at least one great element of all skill and all his success. If we were to ask him, as some one once asked the great Duke: 'By what faculty did you win your victories?' we suspect that he would give the same answer, -- 'By common-sense.' "

Recalling Mr. Chadwick to memory as he was in 1862, I might add to the view above presented a remark on his great personal strength of body as well as mind, which indeed has been continued until now in a manner quite phenomenal.  He was of firm-set massive build, with a countenance open, healthy, and of resolute expression; eyes dark, hair dark brown, nose aquiline, and forehead broad and massive; the altogether large, and to the phrenologist finely developed and balanced. At this day when he is in his eighty-eighth year these characteristics are still retained, and sight continues so good that small print is easily mastered without artificial aid.  The portrait which forms the frontispiece of the present work illustrates better than my pen his resistance to time; but twenty-five years ago, according to the fashion of the day, the beard was absent.