THE COMMON ENEMY 81 80 THE CLASS STRUGGLE The same basic ideas hatred toward unbridled and irresponsible individualism; faith in the God given or natural leaders of the people, the order loving and responsible nobility; and consequent repugnance to parliamentarism and purely polita ical activities on the part of the working class permeate the work and writings of Charles Kingsley, Christian Socialist and novelist of the Chartist movement. The real hero of Alton Locke, Kingsley great novel of the Chartist movement, is not the workingman poet after whom it is entitled, but a member of England ancient nobility that nobility which refused to bow to capitalism either in theory or practice. And the whole book is an appeal to the conscience of the English people to do away with the horrible present of English capitalism and return to the peaceful and contented past of English medievalism, Mammon, Competition, is the common enemy of the working class and of the ancient orders the nobility and the priesthood.
These orders have degenerated under the baneful influence of Mammonism, but they are beginning to show signs of an awakening conscience, of a willingness to return to the past and of doing the work for which they were appointed by the mysterious power which shapes the destinies of mankind.
So it is up to the representatives of these ancient orders who are alive to the situation to take up the cause of labor; and it is up to the working class to join hands with them in a common fight upon the common enemy. The proper relation of the working class to the monarchy is thus stated by Kingsley. The nobles had gained their charter from John, the middle classes from William of Orange was not the time at hand when from a queen, more gentle, charitable, upright, spotless, than had ever sat on the throne of England, the working masses in their turn should gain their Charter. The king in this case the queen could do no wrong, but only good. If the Charter was granted willingly thanks were due to her. But if it was not given willingly and the workers had to fight for it the fault was not hers, but of those who had taken away from her the power to do good.
If it was given the gift was hers; if it was demanded to the uttermost the demand would be made, not upon her, but on those into whose hands her power had passed, the avowed representatives neither of the Crown nor of the people, but of the very commercial class which was devouring us.
It was this class really and not the nobility the divine right of money making more than the divine right of Kings that kept the English governing power from interfering on behalf of liberty in the revolutionary struggles of the European continent. If there had been one word of sympathy, says Kingsley. with the deep wrongs of France, Germany, Italy, Hungary, one attempt to discriminate the righteous and God inspired desire of freedom, from man furious and self willed perversion of it, we would have listened to them. But, instead, what was the first, last, cardinal, crowning argument The cost of sedition. Revolutions interfered with trade. and therefore they were damnable. Interfere with the food and labor of millions. The millions would take the responsibility of that upon themselves.
If the party of order cares so much for the millions why have they left them what they are? No: it was with the profits of the few that revolutionists interfered; with the Divine right, not so much of Kings, but of money making. They hampered Mammon, the very fiend who is devouring the masses. The one end and aim of existence was the maintenance of orderof peace and room to make money in. And therefore Louis spies might make France one great inquisition hell; German princelets might sell their country piecemeal to French and Russian! The Hungarian constitution, almost the counterpart of our own, might be sacrificed at the will of an idiot or villain; Papal misgovernment might continue to render Rome a worse den of thieves than even Papal superstition could have made it without the addition of tyranny. But Order must be maintained, for else how could the few make money out of the labor of the many?
But the nobility and the priesthood which is closely allied with it are waking up. They will no longer permit these com