Thomas Hobhouse

“ Hobhouse has made some very valuable and accurate notes of considerable length, and you may be sure that I willPg 63 do for the text all that I can to finish with decency. I look upon Childe Harold as my best; and as I begun, I think of concluding with it. But I make no resolutions on that head, as I broke my former intention with regard to 'The Corsair.' However, I fear that I shall never do better; and yet, not being thirty years of age, for some moons to come, one ought to be progressive as far as intellect goes for many a good year. ”

“ Hobhouse's wish is, if possible, to force me back to England [25] : he will not succeed; and if he did, I would not stay. I hate the country, and like this; and all foolish opPg 124position, of course, merely adds to the feeling. Your silence makes me doubt the success of Canto fourth. ”

“ How should I know? What encouragement do you give me, all of you, with your nonsensical prudery? publish the two Cantos, and then you will see. I desired Mr. Kinnaird to speak to you on a little matter of business; either he has not spoken, or you have not answered. You are a pretty pair, but I will be even with you both. I perceive that Mr. Hobhouse has been challenged by Major Cartwright—Is the Major 'so cunning of fence?'—why did not they fight?—they ought.
"Yours," &c.
LETTER 334. TO MR. HOPPNER.
"Ravenna, July 2. ”

“ Though 'somewhat,' as Dugald Dalgetty says, 'too wild and salvage' (like 'Ronald of the Mist') , 'tis a wonderful man, and my friends Hobhouse and Rose both swear by him; and they are good judges of men and of Italian humanity.
"Here are in all two worthy voices gain'd:
Gifford says it is good 'sterling genuine English,' and Foscolo says that the characters are right Venetian. ”

“ Thus, the great quads of Trinity, the many courts of John's, Milton's mulberry tree at Christ's, the Pepysian Library of Magdalen, and a hundred other things must be sought elsewhere. Turn we, then, to further talk of Thomas Hobson, the carrier and livery-stable keeper of "Hobson's Choice," who lies in an unmarked resting-place in the chancel of St. Benedict's Church, hard by the Market Hill. Born in 1544, he was not a native of Cambridge, but seems to have first seen the light at Buntingford, his father's native place. ”

“ HOBSON. Aye, a publican. As honest a man as God Almighty ever set behind a bar, my ladies. My friend, Sam Minns, asked me who you were. And well he might. You were going down Chapel Street with a hump added to nature behind you.
VICKEY (scandalized) . Father!
HOBSON. The hump was wagging, and you put your feet on pavement as if you'd got chilblains—aye, stiff neck above and weak knees below. It's immodest!
ALICE. It is not immodest, father. It's the fashion to wear bustles.
HOBSON. Then to hell with the fashion.
MAGGIE. Father, you are not in the "Moonraker's" now. ”

“ He had flourished amazingly since he succeeded to his father's business in the university city, and attained that position of independence which enabled him to force the rule that each horse in his stable was to be hired only in its proper turn, thus originating the proverb, "Hobson's choice," that is, "this or none." Despite his ever growing wealth and advanced years, Hobson continued his regular journeys to London until the outbreak of the plague caused the authorities to suspend the carrier service for a time. ”

“ HOBSON. Yes, you are. You're pretty, but you're bumptious, and I hate bumptiousness like I hate a lawyer.
ALICE. If we take trouble to feed you it's not bumptious to ask you not to be late for your food.
VICKEY. Give and take, father.
HOBSON. I give and you take, and it's going to end.
MAGGIE. How much a week do you give us?
HOBSON. That's neither here nor there. (Rises and moves to doors L.) At moment I'm on uppishness, and I'm warning you your conduct towards your parent's got to change. (Turns to the counter.) But that's not all. ”

“ Thomas Hobson, (Hobson’s Choice,) the benevolent old carrier, is the sign of two public-houses in Cambridge,—the one called Old Hobson, the other Hobson’s House. His own inn in London was the Bull Inn in Bishopsgate Street, where he was represented in fresco, having a £100 bag under his arm, with the words, “The fruitful mother of an hundred more.” There is an engraving of him by John Payne, his contemporary, which also represents him holding a bag of money. Under it are these lines:—
“Laugh not to see so plaine a man in print ”

“ You cannot conceive Hobson "carrying on" like the typical "jolly waggoner." Look at the portrait of him, taken from a fresco painted on a wall of his old house of call, the Bull, in Bishopsgate Street. A very grave and staid old man it shows us; looking out upon the world with cold and calculating eyes, deep-set beneath knitted brows, and with a long and money-loving, yet cautious, nose. His hand is unwillingly extracting a guinea from a well-filled money-bag, and you may clearly see from his expression of countenance how much rather he would be putting one in. ”

“ It is not right to let crime alone or to let error alone, but it is imperative to treat the criminal or the mistaken or the ignorant as beings capable of right and truth, and to lead them on instead of merely beating them down. The rule of liberty is just the application of rational method. It is the opening of the door to the appeal of reason, of imagination, of social feeling; and except through the response to this appeal there is no assured progress of society. ”

“ Without such restraint some men may be free but others will be unfree. One man may be able to do all his will, but the rest will have no will except that which he sees fit to allow them. To put the same point from another side, the first condition of free government is government not by the arbitrary determination of the ruler, but by fixed rules of law, to which the ruler himself is subject. We draw the important inference that there is no essential antithesis between liberty and law. On the contrary, law is essential to liberty. Law, of course, restrains the individual ”

“ Religious liberty is incomplete as long as any belief is penalized, as, for example, by carrying with it exclusion from office or from educational advantages. On this side, again, full liberty implies full equality. Turning to the internal side, the spirit of religious liberty rests on the conception that a man's religion ranks with his own innermost thought and feelings. It is the most concrete expression of his personal attitude to life, to his [Pg 30] kind, to the world, to his own origin and destiny. There is no real religion that is not thus drenched in personality ”

“ No one spoke, though young Gamba stirred restlessly. Dallas was peering into his recovered snuff-box, and Blaquiere sat movelessly watching.
As Gordon looked out into the dimming dusk and the sky’s blue garden blossoming with pale stars, the new self that had been developing in conscience gained its ascendancy. What should it matter to him, why or how the opportunity came? To Hobhouse, at least, it had been an act of faith and friendship. As a body, the committee had considered only its object, political advantage to England—the success of the Greek revolutionary arms. ”

“ No year had passed since the appearance of Leviathan without some indignant protest against the influence which its trenchant doctrine was calculated to produce upon minds longing above everything for civil repose; but after the Restoration “Hobbism” became a fashionable creed, which it was the duty of every lover of true morality and religion to denounce. Two or three days after Charles’s arrival in London, Hobbes drew in the street the notice of his former pupil, and was at once received into favour. ”

“ For those who understand that all social liberty rests upon restraint, that restraint of one man in one respect is the condition of the freedom of other men in that respect, the taunt has no meaning whatever. The liberty which is good is not the liberty of one gained at the expense of others, but the liberty which can be enjoyed by all who dwell together, and this liberty depends on and is measured by the completeness with which by law, custom, or their own feelings they are restrained from mutual injury. ”

“ When the first storm of opposition from smaller men had begun to die down, thinkers of real weight, beginning with Cumberland and Cudworth, were moved by their aversion to his analysis of the moral nature of man to probe anew the question of the natural springs and the rational grounds of human action; and thus it may be said that Hobbes gave the first impulse to the whole of that movement of ethical speculation that, in modern times, has been carried on with such remarkable continuity in England. ”

“ From the smallest social unit we pass to the largest. A great part of the liberating movement is occupied with the struggle of entire nations against alien rule, with the revolt of Europe against Napoleon, with the struggle of Italy for freedom, with the fate of the Christian subjects of Turkey, with the emancipation of the negro, with the national movement in Ireland and in India. Many of these struggles present the problem of liberty in its simplest form. It has been and is too often a question of securing the most elementary rights for the weaker party ”

“ HOBSON. "Moonraker's?" Who said—? (Turning.)
VICKEY. If your dinner's ruined, it'll be your own fault.
HOBSON. Well, I'll be eternally—
ALICE. Don't swear, father.
HOBSON (putting hat on counter) . No. I'll sit down instead. (He moves to R. C. and sits in arm-chair R. C. facing them.) Listen to me, you three. I've come to conclusions about you. And I won't have it. Do you hear that? Interfering with my goings out and comings in. The idea! I've a mind to take measures with the lot of you.
MAGGIE. I expect Mr. Heeler's waiting for you in "Moonraker's," father. ”

“ In our own time, to maintain the right of the Commons against the Lords is, on the face of it, to adhere to old constitutional right, but to do so under the new circumstances which have made the Commons representative of the nation as a whole is, in reality, to establish democracy for the first time on a firm footing, and this, again, is to accomplish a revolution.
Now, those who effect a revolution ought to know whither they are leading the world. They have need of a social theory—and in point of fact the more thorough-going apostles of movement always have such a theory ”

“ It was even confidently asserted that a motion was to be introduced in Parliament to suspend him from his privileges as a peer.
Lady Jersey, stately in black velvet and creamy lace, met John Hobhouse on the stair.
“Have you seen him?” she asked anxiously.
“No, but I have called every day. It was courageous of you to send him the invitation for to-night. No other patroness would have dared.”
“I only wish he would come!” she flashed imperiously. “One would think we were a lot of New England witch-hunters! There is nothing more ridiculous than society in one of its seven-year fits of morality. ”

“ In any human society evolving into such an organism, the whole value of free personality would be lost.
Though Hobhouse, of course, fully admitted the effects of social institutions and intercourse in helping to mould the character of a person, nobody in close acquaintance with him could fail to perceive that his will-power for self-determination in all affairs down to the smallest home detail was unusually strong, and that while freely expending his energy for his own conception of the good of others, he did not easily yield to the efforts of others to influence his line of conduct. ”

“ MAGGIE. Don't be vicious, father.
HOBSON. Will Mossop, I'm sorry for you. (Over banisters.) Take you for all in all, you're the best of the bunch. You're a backward lad, but you know your trade and it's an honest one.
(HOBSON is going up the stairs.)
ALICE. So does my Albert know his trade. (Goes R. C.)
HOBSON (half-way up-stairs) . I'll grant you that. He knows his trade. He's good at robbery. (ALICE shows great indignation.) And I've to have it on my conscience that my daughter's wed a lawyer and an employer of lawyers. ”

“ Thus in the organic conception of society each of the leading ideas of historic Liberalism has its part to play. The ideal society is conceived as a whole which lives and flourishes by the harmonious growth of its parts, each of which in developing on its own lines and in accordance with its own nature tends on the whole to further the development of others. There is some elementary trace of such harmony in every form of social life that can maintain itself, for if the conflicting impulses predominated society would break up, and when they do predominate society does break up. ”

“ In such a community some of the problems that vex us most presented themselves in a very simple form. In particular the relation of the individual to the community was close, direct, and natural. Their interests were obviously bound up together. Unless each man did his duty the State might easily be destroyed and the population enslaved. ”

“ Educated at Eton and Balliol, he was called to the bar at Lincoln’s Inn in 1845, and rapidly acquired a large practice as a conveyancer and equity draftsman; he became Q.C. in 1862, and practised in the Rolls Court, retiring in 1866. He was an active member of the charity commission and urged the appropriation of pious bequests to educational and other purposes. ”

“ Hence we could treat a very large part of the modern development of social control as motived by the desire for a more effective liberty. The case is not so clear when we find the will of the individual in conflict with the will of the community as a whole. When such conflict occurs, it would seem that we must be prepared for one of two things. Either we must admit the legitimacy of coercion, avowedly not in the interests of freedom but in furtherance, without regard to freedom, of other ends which the community deems good. ”