H. Sidgwick, E. Lushington, Bishop Ellicott, Mark Pattison, duke
of Argyll, Ruskin, Robert Lowe, Grant Duff, Greg, A. C. Fraser,
Henry Acland, Maurice, Archbishop Thomson, Mozley, Dean Church,
Bishop Magee, Croom Robertson, FitzJames Stephen, Sylvester,
J. C. Bucknill, Andrew Clark, W. K. Clifford, St George Mivart,
M. Boulton, Lord Selborne, John Morley, Leslie Stephen, F. Pollock,
Gasquet, C. B. Upton, William Gull, Robert Clarke, A. J. Balfour,
James Sully and A. Barratt.
Papers were read and discussed at the various meetings on such subjects as the ultimate grounds of belief in the objective and moral sciences, the immortality of the soul, &c. An interesting description of one of the meetings was given by Magee (then bishop of Peterborough) in a letter of 13th of February 1873:—
“Archbishop Manning in the chair was flanked by two Protestant bishops right and left; on my right was Hutton, editor of the Spectator, an Arian; then came Father Dalgairns, a very able Roman Catholic priest; opposite him Lord A. Russell, a Deist; then two Scotch metaphysical writers, Freethinkers; then Knowles, the very broad editor of the Contemporary; then, dressed as a layman and looking like a country squire, was Ward, formerly Rev. Ward, and earliest of the perverts to Rome; then Greg, author of The Creed of Christendom, a Deist; then Froude, the historian, once a deacon in our Church, now a Deist; then Roden Noel, an actual Atheist and red republican, and looking very like one! Lastly Ruskin, who read a paper on miracles, which we discussed for an hour and a half! Nothing could be calmer, fairer, or even, on the whole, more reverent then the discussion. In my opinion, we, the Christians, had much the best of it. Dalgairns, the priest, was very masterly; Manning, clever and precise and weighty; Froude, very acute, and so was Greg. We only wanted a Jew and a Mahommedan to make our Religious Museum complete” (Life, i. 284).
The last meeting of the society was held on 16th May 1880. Huxley said that it died “of too much love”; Tennyson, “because after ten years of strenuous effort no one had succeeded in even defining metaphysics.” According to Dean Stanley, “We all meant the same thing if we only knew it.” The society formed the nucleus of the distinguished list of contributors who supported Knowles in his capacity as an editor. In 1870 he became editor of the Contemporary Review, but left it in 1877 and founded the Nineteenth Century (to the title of which, in 1901, were added the words And After). Both periodicals became very influential under him, and formed the type of the new sort of monthly review which came to occupy the place formerly held by the quarterlies. In 1904 he received the honour of knighthood. He died at Brighton on the 13th of February 1908.
KNOWLES, JAMES SHERIDAN (1784–1862), Irish dramatist
and actor, was born in Cork, on the 12th of May 1784. His father
was the lexicographer, James Knowles (1759–1840), cousin-german
of Richard Brinsley Sheridan. The family removed to
London in 1793, and at the age of fourteen Knowles published
a ballad entitled The Welsh Harper, which, set to music, was very
popular. The boy’s talents secured him the friendship of
Hazlitt, who introduced him to Lamb and Coleridge. He served
for some time in the Wiltshire and afterwards in the Tower
Hamlets militia, leaving the service to become pupil of Dr
Robert Willan (1757–1812). He obtained the degree of M.D., and
was appointed vaccinator to the Jennerian Society. Although,
however, Dr Willan generously offered him a share in his
practice, he resolved to forsake medicine for the stage, making
his first appearance probably at Bath, and playing Hamlet at the
Crow Theatre, Dublin. At Wexford he married, in October 1809,
Maria Charteris, an actress from the Edinburgh Theatre. In
1810 he wrote Leo, in which Edmund Kean acted with great
success; another play, Brian Boroihme, written for the Belfast
Theatre in the next year, also drew crowded houses, but his
earnings were so small that he was obliged to become assistant
to his father at the Belfast Academical Institution. In 1817 he
removed from Belfast to Glasgow, where, besides conducting a
flourishing school, he continued to write for the stage. His
first important success was Caius Gracchus, produced at Belfast
in 1815; and his Virginius, written for Edmund Kean, was first
performed in 1820 at Covent Garden. In William Tell (1825)
Macready found one of his favourite parts. His best-known
play, The Hunchback, was produced at Covent Garden in 1832;
The Wife was brought out at the same theatre in 1833; and The
Love Chase in 1837. In his later years he forsook the stage for
the pulpit, and as a Baptist preacher attracted large audiences
at Exeter Hall and elsewhere. He published two polemical
works—the Rock of Rome and the Idol Demolished by its own
Priests—in both of which he combated the special doctrines of
the Roman Catholic Church. Knowles was for some years in the
receipt of an annual pension of £200, bestowed by Sir Robert
Peel. He died at Torquay on the 30th of November 1862.
A full list of the works of Knowles and of the various notices of him will be found in the Life (1872), privately printed by his son, Richard Brinsley Knowles (1820–1882), who was well known as a journalist.
KNOW NOTHING (or American) PARTY, in United States
history, a political party of great importance in the decade
before 1860. Its principle was political proscription of naturalized
citizens and of Roman Catholics. Distrust of alien immigrants,
because of presumptive attachment to European institutions,
has always been more or less widely diffused, and race
antagonisms have been recurrently of political moment; while
anti-Catholic sentiment went back to colonial sectarianism.
These were the elements of the political “nativism”—i.e.
hostility to foreign influence in politics—of 1830–1860. In
these years Irish immigration became increasingly preponderant;
and that of Catholics was even more so. The geographical
segregation and the clannishness of foreign voters in the cities
gave them a power that Whigs and Democrats alike (the latter
more successfully) strove to control, to the great aggravation
of naturalization and election frauds. “No one can deny that
ignorant foreign suffrage had grown to be an evil of immense
proportions” (J. F. Rhodes). In labour disputes, political
feuds and social clannishness, the alien elements—especially
the Irish and German—displayed their power, and at times gave
offence by their hostile criticism of American institutions.[1] In
immigration centres like Boston, Philadelphia and New York,
the Catholic Church, very largely foreign in membership and
proclaiming a foreign allegiance of disputed extent, was really
“the symbol and strength of foreign influence” (Scisco); many
regarded it as a transplanted foreign institution, un-American
in organization and ideas.[2] Thus it became involved in politics.
The decade 1830–1840 was marked by anti-Catholic (anti-Irish)
riots in various cities and by party organization of nativists in
many places in local elections. Thus arose the American-Republican
(later the Native-American) Party, whose national
career begun practically in 1845, and which in Louisiana in 1841
first received a state organization. New York City in 1844 and
Boston in 1845 were carried by the nativists, but their success
was due to Whig support, which was not continued,[3] and the
national organization was by 1847—in which year it endorsed
the Whig nominee for the presidency—practically dead. Though
some Whig leaders had strong nativist leanings, and though the
party secured a few representatives in Congress, it accomplished
little at this time in national politics. In the early ’fifties nativism
was revivified by an unparalleled inflow of aliens. Catholics,
moreover, had combated the Native-Americans defiantly. In
1852 both Whigs and Democrats were forced to defend their
presidential nominees against charges of anti-Catholic sentiment.
In 1853–1854 there was a wide-spread “anti-popery” propaganda
and riots against Catholics in various cities. Meanwhile
the Know Nothing Party had sprung from nativist secret societies,
whose relations remain obscure.[4] Its organization was secret;
and hence its name—for a member, when interrogated, always
- ↑ E.g. for some extraordinary “reform” programmes among German immigrants see Schmeckebier (as below), pp. 48–50.
- ↑ “The actual offence of the Catholic Church was its non-conformity to American methods of church administration and popular education” (Scisco).
- ↑ The Whigs bargained aid in New York city for “American” support in the state, and charged that the latter was not given. Millard Fillmore attributed the Whig loss of the state (see Liberty Party) to the disaffection of Catholic Whigs angered by the alliance with the nativists.
- ↑ The Order of United Americans and the Order of the Star Spangled Banner, established in New York respectively in 1845 and 1850, were the most important sources of its membership.
