She remains a social reformer, and is disposed to agree with Bishop Gore
that the present system is so iniquitous that it cannot be
Christianised. She thinks it must be destroyed, but admits the peril of
destructive work till a new system is ready to take its place.
Yet I feel fairly certain that she would admit, if pressed with the
question, that the working of any better system can depend for its
success only upon a much better humanity. For she is one of those who is
bewildered by the selfishness of men and women, a brutal, arrogant,
challenging, and wholly unashamed selfishness, which publicly seeks its
own pleasures, publicly displays the offending symbols of its offensive
wealth, publicly indulges itself in most shameful and infuriating
luxuries, even at a time when children are dying like flies of
starvation and pestilence, and while the men of their own household, who
fought to save civilisation from the despotism of the Prussian theory,
tramp the streets, hungry and bitter-hearted, looking for work.
On her mind, moving about England at all times of the year, the reality
of these things is for ever pressing; the unthinkable selfishness of so
many, and the awful depression of the multitude. She says that a system
which produces, or permits, such a state of things must be bad, and
radically bad.
There are moments, when she speaks of these things, which reveal to one
a certain anger of her soul, a disposition, if I may say so with great
respect, towards vehemence, a temper of impatience and indignation which
would surely have carried her into the camp of anarchy but for the
restraining power of her religious experience.
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