Self Help

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England has no parallel instances to show, of promotions from the
ranks of the army to the highest military offices; which have been
so common in France since the first Revolution. "La carriere
ouverte aux talents" has there received many striking
illustrations, which would doubtless be matched among ourselves
were the road to promotion as open. Hoche, Humbert, and Pichegru,
began their respective careers as private soldiers. Hoche, while
in the King's army, was accustomed to embroider waistcoats to
enable him to earn money wherewith to purchase books on military
science. Humbert was a scapegrace when a youth; at sixteen he ran
away from home, and was by turns servant to a tradesman at Nancy, a
workman at Lyons, and a hawker of rabbit skins. In 1792, he
enlisted as a volunteer; and in a year he was general of brigade.
Kleber, Lefevre, Suchet, Victor, Lannes, Soult, Massena, St. Cyr,
D'Erlon, Murat, Augereau, Bessieres, and Ney, all rose from the
ranks. In some cases promotion was rapid, in others it was slow.
Saint Cyr, the son of a tanner of Toul, began life as an actor,
after which he enlisted in the Chasseurs, and was promoted to a
captaincy within a year. Victor, Duc de Belluno, enlisted in the
Artillery in 1781: during the events preceding the Revolution he
was discharged; but immediately on the outbreak of war he re-
enlisted, and in the course of a few months his intrepidity and
ability secured his promotion as Adjutant-Major and chief of
battalion. Murat, "le beau sabreur," was the son of a village
innkeeper in Perigord, where he looked after the horses. He first
enlisted in a regiment of Chasseurs, from which he was dismissed
for insubordination: but again enlisting, he shortly rose to the
rank of Colonel. Ney enlisted at eighteen in a hussar regiment,
and gradually advanced step by step: Kleber soon discovered his
merits, surnaming him "The Indefatigable," and promoted him to be
Adjutant-General when only twenty-five. On the other hand, Soult
{2} was six years from the date of his enlistment before he reached
the rank of sergeant. But Soult's advancement was rapid compared
with that of Massena, who served for fourteen years before he was
made sergeant; and though he afterwards rose successively, step by
step, to the grades of Colonel, General of Division, and Marshal,
he declared that the post of sergeant was the step which of all
others had cost him the most labour to win. Similar promotions
from the ranks, in the French army, have continued down to our own
day. Changarnier entered the King's bodyguard as a private in
1815. Marshal Bugeaud served four years in the ranks, after which
he was made an officer. Marshal Randon, the present French
Minister of War, began his military career as a drummer boy; and in
the portrait of him in the gallery at Versailles, his hand rests
upon a drum-head, the picture being thus painted at his own
request. Instances such as these inspire French soldiers with
enthusiasm for their service, as each private feels that he may
possibly carry the baton of a marshal in his knapsack.

The instances of men, in this and other countries, who, by dint of
persevering application and energy, have raised themselves from the
humblest ranks of industry to eminent positions of usefulness and
influence in society, are indeed so numerous that they have long
ceased to be regarded as exceptional. Looking at some of the more
remarkable, it might almost be said that early encounter with
difficulty and adverse circumstances was the necessary and
indispensable condition of success. The British House of Commons
has always contained a considerable number of such self-raised men-
-fitting representatives of the industrial character of the people;
and it is to the credit of our Legislature that they have been
welcomed and honoured there. When the late Joseph Brotherton,
member for Salford, in the course of the discussion on the Ten
Hours Bill, detailed with true pathos the hardships and fatigues to
which he had been subjected when working as a factory boy in a
cotton mill, and described the resolution which he had then formed,
that if ever it was in his power he would endeavour to ameliorate
the condition of that class, Sir James Graham rose immediately
after him, and declared, amidst the cheers of the House, that he
did not before know that Mr. Brotherton's origin had been so
humble, but that it rendered him more proud than he had ever before
been of the House of Commons, to think that a person risen from
that condition should be able to sit side by side, on equal terms,
with the hereditary gentry of the land.

The late Mr. Fox, member for Oldham, was accustomed to introduce
his recollections of past times with the words, "when I was working
as a weaver boy at Norwich;" and there are other members of
parliament, still living, whose origin has been equally humble.
Mr. Lindsay, the well-known ship owner, until recently member for
Sunderland, once told the simple story of his life to the electors
of Weymouth, in answer to an attack made upon him by his political
opponents. He had been left an orphan at fourteen, and when he
left Glasgow for Liverpool to push his way in the world, not being
able to pay the usual fare, the captain of the steamer agreed to
take his labour in exchange, and the boy worked his passage by
trimming the coals in the coal hole. At Liverpool he remained for
seven weeks before he could obtain employment, during which time he
lived in sheds and fared hardly; until at last he found shelter on
board a West Indiaman. He entered as a boy, and before he was
nineteen, by steady good conduct he had risen to the command of a
ship. At twenty-three he retired from the sea, and settled on
shore, after which his progress was rapid "he had prospered," he
said, "by steady industry, by constant work, and by ever keeping in
view the great principle of doing to others as you would be done
by."

The career of Mr. William Jackson, of Birkenhead, the present
member for North Derbyshire, bears considerable resemblance to that
of Mr. Lindsay. His father, a surgeon at Lancaster, died, leaving
a family of eleven children, of whom William Jackson was the
seventh son. The elder boys had been well educated while the
father lived, but at his death the younger members had to shift for
themselves. William, when under twelve years old, was taken from
school, and put to hard work at a ship's side from six in the
morning till nine at night. His master falling ill, the boy was
taken into the counting-house, where he had more leisure. This
gave him an opportunity of reading, and having obtained access to a
set of the 'Encyclopaedia Britannica,' he read the volumes through
from A to Z, partly by day, but chiefly at night. He afterwards
put himself to a trade, was diligent, and succeeded in it. Now he
has ships sailing on almost every sea, and holds commercial
relations with nearly every country on the globe.

Among like men of the same class may be ranked the late Richard
Cobden, whose start in life was equally humble. The son of a small
farmer at Midhurst in Sussex, he was sent at an early age to London
and employed as a boy in a warehouse in the City. He was diligent,
well conducted, and eager for information. His master, a man of
the old school, warned him against too much reading; but the boy
went on in his own course, storing his mind with the wealth found
in books. He was promoted from one position of trust to another--
became a traveller for his house--secured a large connection, and
eventually started in business as a calico printer at Manchester.
Taking an interest in public questions, more especially in popular
education, his attention was gradually drawn to the subject of the
Corn Laws, to the repeal of which he may be said to have devoted
his fortune and his life. It may be mentioned as a curious fact
that the first speech he delivered in public was a total failure.
But he had great perseverance, application, and energy; and with
persistency and practice, he became at length one of the most
persuasive and effective of public speakers, extorting the
disinterested eulogy of even Sir Robert Peel himself. M. Drouyn de
Lhuys, the French Ambassador, has eloquently said of Mr. Cobden,
that he was "a living proof of what merit, perseverance, and labour
can accomplish; one of the most complete examples of those men who,
sprung from the humblest ranks of society, raise themselves to the
highest rank in public estimation by the effect of their own worth
and of their personal services; finally, one of the rarest examples
of the solid qualities inherent in the English character."

In all these cases, strenuous individual application was the price
paid for distinction; excellence of any sort being invariably
placed beyond the reach of indolence. It is the diligent hand and
head alone that maketh rich--in self-culture, growth in wisdom, and
in business. Even when men are born to wealth and high social
position, any solid reputation which they may individually achieve
can only be attained by energetic application; for though an
inheritance of acres may be bequeathed, an inheritance of knowledge
and wisdom cannot. The wealthy man may pay others for doing his
work for him, but it is impossible to get his thinking done for him
by another, or to purchase any kind of self-culture. Indeed, the
doctrine that excellence in any pursuit is only to be achieved by
laborious application, holds as true in the case of the man of
wealth as in that of Drew and Gifford, whose only school was a
cobbler's stall, or Hugh Miller, whose only college was a Cromarty
stone quarry.

Riches and ease, it is perfectly clear, are not necessary for man's
highest culture, else had not the world been so largely indebted in
all times to those who have sprung from the humbler ranks. An easy
and luxurious existence does not train men to effort or encounter
with difficulty; nor does it awaken that consciousness of power
which is so necessary for energetic and effective action in life.
Indeed, so far from poverty being a misfortune, it may, by vigorous
self-help, be converted even into a blessing; rousing a man to that
struggle with the world in which, though some may purchase ease by
degradation, the right-minded and true-hearted find strength,
confidence, and triumph. Bacon says, "Men seem neither to
understand their riches nor their strength: of the former they
believe greater things than they should; of the latter much less.
Self-reliance and self-denial will teach a man to drink out of his
own cistern, and eat his own sweet bread, and to learn and labour
truly to get his living, and carefully to expend the good things
committed to his trust."

Riches are so great a temptation to ease and self-indulgence, to
which men are by nature prone, that the glory is all the greater of
those who, born to ample fortunes, nevertheless take an active part
in the work of their generation--who "scorn delights and live
laborious days." It is to the honour of the wealthier ranks in
this country that they are not idlers; for they do their fair share
of the work of the state, and usually take more than their fair
share of its dangers. It was a fine thing said of a subaltern
officer in the Peninsular campaigns, observed trudging alone
through mud and mire by the side of his regiment, "There goes
15,000l. a year!" and in our own day, the bleak slopes of
Sebastopol and the burning soil of India have borne witness to the
like noble self-denial and devotion on the part of our gentler
classes; many a gallant and noble fellow, of rank and estate,
having risked his life, or lost it, in one or other of those fields
of action, in the service of his country.

Nor have the wealthier classes been undistinguished in the more
peaceful pursuits of philosophy and science. Take, for instance,
the great names of Bacon, the father of modern philosophy, and of
Worcester, Boyle, Cavendish, Talbot, and Rosse, in science. The
last named may be regarded as the great mechanic of the peerage; a
man who, if he had not been born a peer, would probably have taken
the highest rank as an inventor. So thorough is his knowledge of
smith-work that he is said to have been pressed on one occasion to
accept the foremanship of a large workshop, by a manufacturer to
whom his rank was unknown. The great Rosse telescope, of his own
fabrication, is certainly the most extraordinary instrument of the
kind that has yet been constructed.

But it is principally in the departments of politics and literature
that we find the most energetic labourers amongst our higher
classes. Success in these lines of action, as in all others, can
only be achieved through industry, practice, and study; and the
great Minister, or parliamentary leader, must necessarily be
amongst the very hardest of workers. Such was Palmerston; and such
are Derby and Russell, Disraeli and Gladstone. These men have had
the benefit of no Ten Hours Bill, but have often, during the busy
season of Parliament, worked "double shift," almost day and night.
One of the most illustrious of such workers in modern times was
unquestionably the late Sir Robert Peel. He possessed in an
extraordinary degree the power of continuous intellectual labour,
nor did he spare himself. His career, indeed, presented a
remarkable example of how much a man of comparatively moderate
powers can accomplish by means of assiduous application and
indefatigable industry. During the forty years that he held a seat
in Parliament, his labours were prodigious. He was a most
conscientious man, and whatever he undertook to do, he did
thoroughly. All his speeches bear evidence of his careful study of
everything that had been spoken or written on the subject under
consideration. He was elaborate almost to excess; and spared no
pains to adapt himself to the various capacities of his audience.
Withal, he possessed much practical sagacity, great strength of
purpose, and power to direct the issues of action with steady hand
and eye. In one respect he surpassed most men: his principles
broadened and enlarged with time; and age, instead of contracting,
only served to mellow and ripen his nature. To the last he
continued open to the reception of new views, and, though many
thought him cautious to excess, he did not allow himself to fall
into that indiscriminating admiration of the past, which is the
palsy of many minds similarly educated, and renders the old age of
many nothing but a pity.

The indefatigable industry of Lord Brougham has become almost
proverbial. His public labours have extended over a period of
upwards of sixty years, during which he has ranged over many
fields--of law, literature, politics, and science,--and achieved
distinction in them all. How he contrived it, has been to many a
mystery. Once, when Sir Samuel Romilly was requested to undertake
some new work, he excused himself by saying that he had no time;
"but," he added, "go with it to that fellow Brougham, he seems to
have time for everything." The secret of it was, that he never
left a minute unemployed; withal he possessed a constitution of
iron. When arrived at an age at which most men would have retired
from the world to enjoy their hard-earned leisure, perhaps to doze
away their time in an easy chair, Lord Brougham commenced and
prosecuted a series of elaborate investigations as to the laws of
Light, and he submitted the results to the most scientific
audiences that Paris and London could muster. About the same time,
he was passing through the press his admirable sketches of the 'Men
of Science and Literature of the Reign of George III.,' and taking
his full share of the law business and the political discussions in
the House of Lords. Sydney Smith once recommended him to confine
himself to only the transaction of so much business as three strong
men could get through. But such was Brougham's love of work--long
become a habit--that no amount of application seems to have been
too great for him; and such was his love of excellence, that it has
been said of him that if his station in life had been only that of
a shoe-black, he would never have rested satisfied until he had
become the best shoe-black in England.

Another hard-working man of the same class is Sir E. Bulwer Lytton.
Few writers have done more, or achieved higher distinction in
various walks--as a novelist, poet, dramatist, historian, essayist,
orator, and politician. He has worked his way step by step,
disdainful of ease, and animated throughout by the ardent desire to
excel. On the score of mere industry, there are few living English
writers who have written so much, and none that have produced so
much of high quality. The industry of Bulwer is entitled to all
the greater praise that it has been entirely self-imposed. To
hunt, and shoot, and live at ease,--to frequent the clubs and enjoy
the opera, with the variety of London visiting and sight-seeing
during the "season," and then off to the country mansion, with its
well-stocked preserves, and its thousand delightful out-door
pleasures,--to travel abroad, to Paris, Vienna, or Rome,--all this
is excessively attractive to a lover of pleasure and a man of
fortune, and by no means calculated to make him voluntarily
undertake continuous labour of any kind. Yet these pleasures, all
within his reach, Bulwer must, as compared with men born to similar
estate, have denied himself in assuming the position and pursuing
the career of a literary man. Like Byron, his first effort was
poetical ('Weeds and Wild Flowers'), and a failure. His second was
a novel ('Falkland'), and it proved a failure too. A man of weaker
nerve would have dropped authorship; but Bulwer had pluck and
perseverance; and he worked on, determined to succeed. He was
incessantly industrious, read extensively, and from failure went
courageously onwards to success. 'Pelham' followed 'Falkland'
within a year, and the remainder of Bulwer's literary life, now
extending over a period of thirty years, has been a succession of
triumphs.

Mr. Disraeli affords a similar instance of the power of industry
and application in working out an eminent public career. His first
achievements were, like Bulwer's, in literature; and he reached
success only through a succession of failures. His 'Wondrous Tale
of Alroy' and 'Revolutionary Epic' were laughed at, and regarded as
indications of literary lunacy. But he worked on in other
directions, and his 'Coningsby,' 'Sybil,' and 'Tancred,' proved the
sterling stuff of which he was made. As an orator too, his first
appearance in the House of Commons was a failure. It was spoken of
as "more screaming than an Adelphi farce." Though composed in a
grand and ambitious strain, every sentence was hailed with "loud
laughter." 'Hamlet' played as a comedy were nothing to it. But he
concluded with a sentence which embodied a prophecy. Writhing
under the laughter with which his studied eloquence had been
received, he exclaimed, "I have begun several times many things,
and have succeeded in them at last. I shall sit down now, but the
time will come when you will hear me." The time did come; and how
Disraeli succeeded in at length commanding the attention of the
first assembly of gentlemen in the world, affords a striking
illustration of what energy and determination will do; for Disraeli
earned his position by dint of patient industry. He did not, as
many young men do, having once failed, retire dejected, to mope and
whine in a corner, but diligently set himself to work. He
carefully unlearnt his faults, studied the character of his
audience, practised sedulously the art of speech, and industriously
filled his mind with the elements of parliamentary knowledge. He
worked patiently for success; and it came, but slowly: then the
House laughed with him, instead of at him. The recollection of his
early failure was effaced, and by general consent he was at length
admitted to be one of the most finished and effective of
parliamentary speakers.

Although much may be accomplished by means of individual industry
and energy, as these and other instances set forth in the following
pages serve to illustrate, it must at the same time be acknowledged
that the help which we derive from others in the journey of life is
of very great importance. The poet Wordsworth has well said that
"these two things, contradictory though they may seem, must go
together--manly dependence and manly independence, manly reliance
and manly self-reliance." From infancy to old age, all are more or
less indebted to others for nurture and culture; and the best and
strongest are usually found the readiest to acknowledge such help.
Take, for example, the career of the late Alexis de Tocqueville, a
man doubly well-born, for his father was a distinguished peer of
France, and his mother a grand-daughter of Malesherbes. Through
powerful family influence, he was appointed Judge Auditor at
Versailles when only twenty-one; but probably feeling that he had
not fairly won the position by merit, he determined to give it up
and owe his future advancement in life to himself alone. "A
foolish resolution," some will say; but De Tocqueville bravely
acted it out. He resigned his appointment, and made arrangements
to leave France for the purpose of travelling through the United
States, the results of which were published in his great book on
'Democracy in America.' His friend and travelling companion,
Gustave de Beaumont, has described his indefatigable industry
during this journey. "His nature," he says, "was wholly averse to
idleness, and whether he was travelling or resting, his mind was
always at work. . . . With Alexis, the most agreeable conversation
was that which was the most useful. The worst day was the lost
day, or the day ill spent; the least loss of time annoyed him."
Tocqueville himself wrote to a friend--"There is no time of life at
which one can wholly cease from action, for effort without one's
self, and still more effort within, is equally necessary, if not
more so, when we grow old, as it is in youth. I compare man in
this world to a traveller journeying without ceasing towards a
colder and colder region; the higher he goes, the faster he ought
to walk. The great malady of the soul is cold. And in resisting
this formidable evil, one needs not only to be sustained by the
action of a mind employed, but also by contact with one's fellows
in the business of life." {3}

Notwithstanding de Tocqueville's decided views as to the necessity
of exercising individual energy and self-dependence, no one could
be more ready than he was to recognise the value of that help and
support for which all men are indebted to others in a greater or
less degree. Thus, he often acknowledged, with gratitude, his
obligations to his friends De Kergorlay and Stofells,--to the
former for intellectual assistance, and to the latter for moral
support and sympathy. To De Kergorlay he wrote--"Thine is the only
soul in which I have confidence, and whose influence exercises a
genuine effect upon my own. Many others have influence upon the
details of my actions, but no one has so much influence as thou on
the origination of fundamental ideas, and of those principles which
are the rule of conduct." De Tocqueville was not less ready to
confess the great obligations which he owed to his wife, Marie, for
the preservation of that temper and frame of mind which enabled him
to prosecute his studies with success. He believed that a noble-
minded woman insensibly elevated the character of her husband,
while one of a grovelling nature as certainly tended to degrade it.
{4}

In fine, human character is moulded by a thousand subtle
influences; by example and precept; by life and literature; by
friends and neighbours; by the world we live in as well as by the
spirits of our forefathers, whose legacy of good words and deeds we
inherit. But great, unquestionably, though these influences are
acknowledged to be, it is nevertheless equally clear that men must
necessarily be the active agents of their own well-being and well-
doing; and that, however much the wise and the good may owe to
others, they themselves must in the very nature of things be their
own best helpers.

CHAPTER II--LEADERS OF INDUSTRY--INVENTORS AND PRODUCERS

"Le travail et la Science sont desormais les maitres du monde."--De
Salvandy.

"Deduct all that men of the humbler classes have done for England
in the way of inventions only, and see where she would have been
but for them."--Arthur Helps.

One of the most strongly-marked features of the English people is
their spirit of industry, standing out prominent and distinct in
their past history, and as strikingly characteristic of them now as
at any former period. It is this spirit, displayed by the commons
of England, which has laid the foundations and built up the
industrial greatness of the empire. This vigorous growth of the
nation has been mainly the result of the free energy of
individuals, and it has been contingent upon the number of hands
and minds from time to time actively employed within it, whether as
cultivators of the soil, producers of articles of utility,
contrivers of tools and machines, writers of books, or creators of
works of art. And while this spirit of active industry has been
the vital principle of the nation, it has also been its saving and
remedial one, counteracting from time to time the effects of errors
in our laws and imperfections in our constitution.

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