IT is an obvious truth—in vain demonstrated seventeen centuries since by the best moral teachers of non-Christian antiquity—that abolition of the slaughter-house, with all the cruel barbarism directly or indirectly associated with it, by a necessary and logical corollary, involves abolition of every form of injustice and cruelty. Of this truth the subject of the present article is a conspicuous witness. During his long and active career, in social and political as well as in literary life, Sir Richard Phillips was a consistent philanthropist; and few, in his position of influence, have surpassed him in real beneficence. In the face of rancorous obloquy and opposition from that too numerous proportion of communities which systematically resist all “innovation” and deviation from the “ancient paths,” he fearlessly maintained the cause of the oppressed; and, as a prison reformer, he claims a place second only to that of Howard.

Of his life we have fuller record than we have of some others of the prophets of dietetic reformation. Yet there is uncertainty as to his birthplace. One account represents him to have been born in London, and to have been the son of a brewer. Another statement, which appears to be more authentic, reports his place of birth to have been in the neighbourhood of Leicester, and his father to have been a farmer. What is of more permanent interest is the account preserved of the reason of his first revolt from the practice of kreophagy. Disliking the business of farming, it seems, while yet quite young, not without the acquiescence of his parents, he had adventurously sought his living, on his own account, in the metropolis. What, if any, plans had been formed by him is not known; but it is certain that he soon found himself in imminent danger of starvation, and, after brief trial, he gladly re-sought his home. Upon his return to the farm, he found awaiting him the welcome of the “Prodigal Son”—although, happily, he had no just claim to the title of that well-known character. A “fatted calf” was killed, and the boy shared in the dish with the rest of the family. It was not until after the feast that he learned that the slaughtered calf had been his especial favourite and playmate. So revolting to his keener sensibility was the consciousness of this fact, that he registered a vow never again to live upon the products of slaughter. To this determination he adhered during the remainder of his long life.[248]

His next venture, and first choice of a profession, while he was still quite young, led him to engage in teaching. As an advertisement he placed a flag at the door of a house in which he rented a room, where he gave elementary instruction to such children as were entrusted to his tuition by the townspeople of Leicester. The experiment proved not very successful, and at the end of a twelvemonth he tried his fortune elsewhere. He next turned to commerce—at first in a humble fashion. His business prospered, and his next important undertaking was the establishment of a newspaper—the Leicester Herald. This journal was what is now called a “Liberal” paper. Yet by those who affected to identify the welfare of England with the continued existence of rotten boroughs and other corruptions, it was held up to opprobrium as revolutionary and “incendiary.” Phillips himself had the reputation of an able political writer; but the chief support of the journal was the celebrated Dr. Priestley, whose name and contributions gave it a reputation it otherwise might not have gained. The responsible editor did not escape the perils that then environed the denouncers of legal or social iniquity, and Phillips, convicted of a “misdemeanour,” was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment in the Leicester jail. During his imprisonment he displayed the beneficence of his disposition in relieving the miseries of some of his more wretched companions. Upon his release, he sold his interest in the Leicester Herald, and for some time confined himself altogether to his business.

Leaving Leicester he migrated to London and set up a hosiery establishment, which, however, he soon converted into the more congenial bookshop. It was the success of the Leicester Herald that, probably, led him to think of starting a new periodical. Upon consultation with Priestley and other friends he was encouraged to proceed, and the Monthly Magazine was the result. It commenced in July 1795 and proved to be a most decided success. At first conducted by Priestley, it was afterwards partly under the editorship of Dr. Aikin, author of the Country Around Manchester. The proprietors shared in the management of the magazine, but to what extent it is difficult to ascertain. Amongst the contributors was “Peter Pindar,” so well known as the author, amongst other satirical rhymes, of the verses upon George III., perplexed by the celebrated “apple dumpling.” The monthly receipts from the sale amounted to £1,500. A quarrel with Aikin was followed by the resignation of the editor. Increase of business soon led to a removal of the publishing-house from St. Paul’s Churchyard to a much larger establishment in Blackfriars. His home was at Hampstead where, in a beautiful neighbourhood and in an elegant villa, the opulent publisher enjoyed the refined pleasures which his humaneness of living, as well as beneficent industry, had justly deserved. At this time he began a correspondence with C. J. Fox, on the subject of the History of James II., upon which the famous Whig statesman was then engaged. Four letters addressed to him by Fox have been printed, but they have no special importance. He was already married, and the story of his courtship has more than the mere gossiping interest of ordinary biography. Upon his first arrival in London, he had taken lodgings in the house of a milliner. One of her assistants was a Miss Griffiths, a beautiful young Welsh girl, who, learning the unconquerable aversion of their guest from the common culinary barbarism, had amiably volunteered to prepare his dishes on strictly anti-kreophagist principles. This incident induced a sympathy and friendship which speedily resulted in a proposal of marriage. They were a handsome pair; and a somewhat precipitate matrimonial alliance was followed by many years of unmixed happiness for both.

In 1807 the “Livery” of London elected him to the office of High Sheriff of the City and County of Middlesex for the ensuing year. This responsible post put to the proof the sincerity of his professions as a reformer. Nor did he fail in the trial. During his term of power he effected many improvements in the treatment of the real or pretended criminals who, as occupants of the jails, came under his jurisdiction. No one who has read Howard’s State of the Prisons, published thirty years before Phillips’ entrance upon his office, or even general accounts of them, needs to be told that they were the very nurseries of disease, vice, misery, and crime of all kinds—one of the many everlasting disgraces of the governments and civilisation of the day. Nor had they been appreciably improved during the interval of thirty years.

The new Sheriff daily visited Newgate and the Fleet prisons and, by personal inquiry, made himself acquainted with the actual state of the occupants, and in many ways was able to ameliorate their condition. By his direction several collecting boxes were conspicuously displayed, and the alms collected were applied to the relief of the families of destitute debtors. He further insisted that persons, whose indictments had been ignored by the grand jury, should not be detained in the foul and pestilential atmosphere, as was then the case, but should be immediately released.

In his admirable Letter to the Livery of London, he begins with an appeal to the common sentiments of humanity which ought to have some influence with those in authority. He reminds his readers that:—

In a note to this passage he adds:—

After this preliminary exhortation, he presents to their contemplation an appalling revelation of the stupid cruelties of the criminal law and its administration. He gives a graphic account of the jail of Newgate—both of the felons’ and the debtors’ division. The dimensions of the entire building were 105 yards by 40 yards, of which only one-fourth part was used by the prisoners. Into this space were crowded sometimes seven or eight hundred, never less than four or five hundred, human beings of both sexes and of all ages. “Felons” and debtors seem to have fared pretty much the same, and filth, fever, and starvation prevailed in all parts of the jail alike. The women prisoners he describes as pressed together so closely as, upon lying down, to leave no atom of space between their bodies. As for the results of this neglect on the part of the State, he finds it impossible to draw an adequate picture of them, and is at a loss to imagine how the whole city is not carried off by a plague. By persevering energy he obtained some reformation, although he failed in his proposal for a new building.

As to the individual occupants of these pest-houses, he found a large number whose offences were comparatively of an innocent kind, but who were herded with the most savage criminals. He espoused the cause of several of these prisoners—especially of the women—who, after some years of incarceration, were frequently drifted off to Botany Bay, which, besides its other terrors, was for almost all of them a perpetual separation from their homes, their husbands, and families. Twice he vainly addressed a memorial to the Secretary of State (Lord Hawkesbury) on their behalf. The traditions and routine of office were too powerful even for his persistent energy.

Romilly had lately introduced his measure for amendment of the barbarous and bloody penal code of this country. Sir Richard Phillips addressed to him also a thoughtful letter, in which were pointed out some of the more glaring abuses in the administration of the laws, with which his official experience as High Sheriff had made him familiar. When Mansfield was Lord Chief Justice, and Thurlow Lord Chancellor, the hangings were so numerous that, as he informs us, on one “hanging holiday” he saw nineteen persons on the gallows, the eldest of whom was not twenty-two years of age. The larger number, probably, had been sentenced to this barbarous death for theft of various kinds. Three hundred years had passed away since the animadversions of More (before his accession to office) in the Utopia, and some half-century since Beccaria and Voltaire had protested against this monstrous iniquity of criminal legislation, without effect, in England, at least. As far as their contemporaries and their successors for long afterwards were concerned these philanthropists had written wholly in vain.

In the letter to Romilly Phillips insists particularly upon the following reforms: (1) No prisoner to be placed in irons before trial. (2) None to be denied free access of friends or legal advisers. (3) None to be deprived of adequate means of subsistence—14 ounces of bread then being the maximum of allowance of food. (4) Every prisoner to be discharged as soon as the grand jury shall have thrown out the bill of indictment. (5) Abolition of payment to jailors by exactions forced from the most destitute prisoners, and of various other exorbitant or illegal fines and extortions. (6) Separation of lunatic from other occupants of the jails. (7) That counsel be provided for those too poor to pay for themselves.

In 1811 Phillips published his Treatise on the Powers and Duties of Juries, and on the Criminal Laws of England. Three years later Golden Rules for Jurymen, which he afterwards expanded into a book entitled Golden Rules of Social Philosophy (1826), in which he lays down rules of conduct for the ordinary business of life—lawyers, clergymen, schoolmasters, and others being the objects of his admonitions. It is in this work that the civic dignitary—so “splendidly false” to the habits of his class—sets forth at length the principles upon which his unalterable faith in the truth of humanitarian dietetics was founded. The reasons of this “true confession” are fully and perspicuously specified, and the first forms the key-note of the rest:—[249]

Perhaps his most entertaining book is his Morning Walk from London to Kew (1817). In it he avails himself of the various objects on his road for instructive moralising—as, for example, when he meets with a mutilated soldier, on the frightful waste and cruelty of war; or with a horse struggling up a precipitous hill in agony of suffering from the torture of the bearing-rein, on the common forms of selfish cruelty; or again, when he deplores the incalculable waste of food resources, by the careless indifferentism of owners of land and of the State in allowing the country to remain encumbered with useless, or comparatively useless, timber, in place of planting it with valuable fruit trees of various sorts according to the nature of the soil.

His next publication of importance was his Million of Facts and Correct Data and Elementary Constants in the entire Circle of the Sciences, and on all Subjects of Speculation and Practice (1832) 8vo. It is this work by which, perhaps, Phillips is now most known—an immense collection and, although many of the “Constants” may be open to criticism or have already become obsolete, it may still be examined with interest. The plan of the work is that of a classified collection of scraps of information on all the arts and sciences. It was so popular that five large editions were published in seven years. His preface to the stereotyped edition is dated 1839. He remarks that “his pretensions for such a task are a prolonged and uninterrupted intercourse with books and men of letters. He has, for forty-nine years, been occupied as the literary conductor of various public journals of reputation; he has superintended the press in the printing of many hundred books in every branch of human pursuit, and he has been intimately associated with men celebrated for their attainments in each of them.” In the facts concerning anatomy and physiology will be found references to scientific and other authorities upon the subject of flesh-eating.

Occasionally we meet with biographical facts of special interest. Thus, he says that, early in 1825, he suggested the first idea of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge to Dr. Birkbeck and then, by his advice, to Lord Brougham. His idea was the establishment of a fund for selling or giving away books and tracts, after the manner of the Religious Tract Society. As regards his astronomic paradoxes, his theory, in opposition to the Newtonian, that the phenomena attributed to gravitation are, in reality, the “proximate effects of the orbicular and rotatory motions of the earth” (for which he was severely criticised by Professor De Morgan), exhibits at least the various activity, if not the invariable infallibility, of his mental powers.

A work of equal interest with a Million of Facts is his next compilation—A Dictionary of the Arts of Life and Civilisation (1833). Under the article Diet he well remarks:—

Under the article “Farming,” he observes that “a man who eats 1lb. of flesh eats the exact equivalent of 6lbs. of wheat, and 128lbs. of potatoes.” That is, that he, in such proportion, wastes the national resources of a country.

The High Sheriff, on the occasion of some petition to the King, had been knighted, (to the affected scandal of his political enemies, who, apparently, wished to reserve all titular or other recognition for their own party), and the conspicuous beneficence of his career, while in office, had gained for him an honourable popularity. But fortune, so long favourable, now for a time showed itself adverse. In 1809 his affairs became embarrassed, and recourse to the bankruptcy court inevitable. Happily his friends aided him in saving from the general wreck the copyright of the Monthly Magazine. Its management was a chief occupation of his remaining years; and his own contributions, under the signature of “Common Sense,” attracted marked attention. In his publishing career, the most curious incident was the refusal of the MSS. of Waverley. The author’s demands seem to have been in excess of the value placed upon the novel by the publisher. It had been advertised in the first instance (he tells us) as the production of Mr. W. Scott. The name was then withdrawn, and the famous novel came before the world anonymously.

Besides the writings already noticed, Phillips compiled or edited a large number of school books. He tells us that all the elementary books, published under the names of Goldsmith, Blair and others, were his own productions—between the years 1798 and 1815. Nor was his mental activity confined to literary work; mechanical and scientific inventions largely occupied his attention. To prevent the enormous expenses of railway viaducts, embankments, and removals of streets, he proposed suspension roads, ten feet above the housetops, with inclined planes of 20° or 30°, and stationary engines to assist the rise and fall at each end. Cities, he maintained, might be traversed in this way on right lines, with intermediate points for ascent and descent. This bold and ingenious idea seems to be very like an anticipation of the elevated railways of New York, although even these have not yet reached the height Phillips thought to be desirable.

He interested himself, also, in steam navigation. When Fulton was in England he was in frequent communication with his English friend, to whom he despatched a triumphant letter on the evening of his first voyage on the Hudson. This letter, having been shown to Earl Stanhope and some eminent engineers, was treated by them with derision as describing an impossibility. Sir R. Phillips then advertised for a company, to repeat on the Thames what had become an accomplished fact on the American rivers. After expenditure of a large sum of money in advertising he obtained only two ten-pound conditional subscribers. He then printed, with commendation, Fulton’s letters in the Monthly Magazine, and his credulity was almost universally reprobated. It is worth recording that, in the first steam voyage from the Clyde to the Thames, Phillips, three of his family, and five or six others, were the only passengers who had the courage to test the experiment. To allay the public alarms he published a letter in the newspapers, and before the end of that summer he saw the same packet set out on its voyage with 350 passengers.[252]

In 1840, the year following the final edition of his most popular book, he died at Brighton in the seventy-third year of his age. During his busy life if, by his reforming energy, he had raised up some bitter enemies and detractors, he had made, on the other hand, some valuable friendships. Amongst these—not the least noteworthy—is his intimate friendship with that most humane-minded lawyer, Lord Erskine, one of those who have best adorned the legal profession in this country.