Practical Politics; or, the Liberalism of To-day
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Title: Practical Politics; or, the Liberalism of To-day
Author: Alfred Farthing Robbins
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Language: English
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PRACTICAL POLITICS
or the
LIBERALISM OF TO-DAY
BY
ALFRED F. ROBBINS
AUTHOR OF
_"Five Years of Tory Rule;" "William Edward Forster, the Man and
his Policy;" "The Marquis of Salisbury, a Personal and
Political Sketch," &c._
_REPRINTED FROM THE "HALFPENNY WEEKLY"_
London
T. FISHER UNWIN
26 PATERNOSTER SQUARE
1888
TO
My Father,
WHOSE DEVOTION TO LIBERAL PRINCIPLES
HAS FOR SIXTY YEARS
NEVER WAVERED,
THIS WORK,
THE OUTCOME OF HIS EXCELLENT TEACHING AND
CONSISTENT EXAMPLE,
IS
AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED.
PREFACE.
The Articles here republished are from the columns of the _Halfpenny
Weekly_, to the Proprietors of which the Author is indebted for much
courtesy and consideration. They were written originally in the form of
letters to a friend, but, though they stand substantially as first
printed, various alterations have been made consequent upon the
necessities of a permanent rather than a serial form. The Author does
not profess to have exhaustively discussed every political question
which is of practical importance to-day--for that, within the limits
assigned, would have been impossible; but he has attempted to furnish a
body of information regarding the principles and aims of present-day
Liberalism, not easily accessible elsewhere, which may be useful to
those whose ideas upon public affairs are yet unformed, and helpful to
the political cause he holds dear.
_May, 1888._
CONTENTS
PAGE
I. WHAT IS THE USE OF A VOTE? 11
II. IS THERE ANYTHING PRACTICAL IN POLITICS? 16
III. WHY NOT LET THINGS ALONE? 21
IV. OUGHT ONE TO BE A PARTISAN? 25
V. WHY NOT HAVE A "NATIONAL" PARTY? 31
VI. IS ONE PARTY BETTER THAN THE OTHER? 35
VII. WHAT ARE LIBERAL PRINCIPLES? 41
VIII. ARE LIBERALS AND RADICALS AGREED? 47
IX. WHAT ARE THE LIBERALS DOING? 52
X. SHOULD HOME RULE BE GRANTED TO IRELAND? 58
XI. WHAT SHOULD BE DONE WITH THE LORDS? 66
XII. IS THE HOUSE OF COMMONS PERFECT? 71
XIII. IS OUR ELECTORAL SYSTEM COMPLETE? 77
XIV. SHOULD THE CHURCH REMAIN ESTABLISHED? 83
XV. WOULD DISENDOWMENT BE JUST? 89
XVI. OUGHT EDUCATION TO BE FREE? 97
XVII. DO THE LAND LAWS NEED REFORM? 102
XVIII. SHOULD WASTE LANDS BE TILLED AND THE GAME LAWS ABOLISHED? 107
XIX. OUGHT LEASEHOLDS TO BE ENFRANCHISED? 112
XX. WHOSE SHOULD BE THE UNEARNED INCREMENT? 117
XXI. HOW SHOULD LOCAL SELF-GOVERNMENT BE EXTENDED? 122
XXII. HOW IS LOCAL OPTION TO BE EFFECTED? 127
XXIII. WHY AND HOW ARE WE TAXED? 132
XXIV. HOW OUGHT WE TO BE TAXED? 137
XXV. HOW IS TAXATION TO BE REDUCED? 144
XXVI. IS FREE TRADE TO BE PERMANENT? 149
XXVII. IS FOREIGN LABOUR TO BE EXCLUDED? 155
XXVIII. HOW SHOULD WE GUIDE OUR FOREIGN POLICY? 160
XXIX. IS A PEACE POLICY PRACTICABLE? 165
XXX. HOW SHOULD WE DEAL WITH THE COLONIES? 171
XXXI. SHOULD THE STATE SOLVE SOCIAL PROBLEMS? 177
XXXII. HOW FAR SHOULD THE STATE INTERFERE? 182
XXXIII. SHOULD THE STATE REGULATE LABOUR OR WAGES? 188
XXXIV. SHOULD THE STATE INTERFERE WITH PROPERTY? 194
XXXV. OUGHT THE STATE TO FIND FOOD AND WORK FOR ALL? 197
XXXVI. HOW OUGHT WE TO DEAL WITH SOCIALISM? 200
XXXVII. WHAT SHOULD BE THE LIBERAL PROGRAMME? 205
XXXVIII. HOW IS THE LIBERAL PROGRAMME TO BE ATTAINED? 211
XXXIX. IS PERFECTION IN POLITICS POSSIBLE? 216
XL. WHERE SHALL WE STOP? 220
PRACTICAL POLITICS.
I.--WHAT IS THE USE OF A VOTE?
There are many persons, who, though possessing the suffrage, often put
the question, "What is the use of a vote?" Giving small heed to
political affairs, the issue of elections has as little interest for
them as the debates in Parliament; and they imagine that the process of
governing the country is mainly a self-acting one, upon which their
individual effort could have the least possible effect.
This idea is wrong at the root, and the cause of much mischief in
politics. We are governed by majorities, and every vote counts. Even the
heaviest polls are sometimes decided by a majority of a single figure.
In the history of English elections, many instances could be found
wherein a member was returned by the narrowest majority of all--the
majority of one; and when a member so elected has been taunted with its
slenderness, he has had a right to reply, as some have replied, in
well-known words: "'Tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church
door; but 'tis enough, 'twill serve." And not only in the
constituencies, but in Parliament itself, decisions have been arrived at
by a solitary vote. The great principle animating the first Reform Bill
was thus adopted by the House of Commons; and the measure shortly
afterwards was taken to the country with the advantage thus given it.
As, therefore, everything of importance in England is decided first in
the constituencies, and then in Parliament, by single votes, it is
obvious that in each possessor of the franchise is vested a power which,
however apparently small when compared with the enormous number of
similar possessors elsewhere, may have a direct bearing in turning an
election, the result of which may affect the fate of some important
bill.
So far most will doubtless agree without demur; but, in their
indifference to political questions, may think that it is only those
interested in them who have any real concern with elections. This is
another mistake, for political questions are so intimately bound up with
the comfort, the fortune, and even the fate of every citizen of a free
country, that, although he may shut his eyes to them, they press upon
him at every turn. It would be a very good world if each could do as he
liked and none be the worse; but the world is not so constituted, and it
is politics that lessen the consequent friction. For the whole system of
government is covered by the term; and there is not an hour of the day
in which one is free from the influence of government.
It is not necessary for one to be conscious of this in order to be
certain that it is so. When he is in perfect health he is not conscious
that every part of his body is in active exercise, but, if he stumble
over a chair, he is made painfully aware of the possession of shins. And
so with the actions of government. As long as things work smoothly the
majority of people give them little heed, but, if an additional tax be
levied, they are immediately interested in politics. And although taxes
are not the least unpleasant evidence that there is such a thing as a
government, it is far from the most unpleasant that could be afforded.
The issues of peace and war lie in the hands of Parliament, although
nominally resting with the Executive, for Parliament can speedily end a
war by stopping the supplies; and it is not necessary to show how the
progress and result of an armed struggle might affect each one of us.
The State has a right to call upon every citizen for help in time of
need, and that time of need might come very quickly at the heels of a
disastrous campaign. It is easy enough in times of peace to imagine that
such a call upon every grown man will never be made; but it is a
possible call, and one to be taken into account when the value of a vote
is considered.
Those who are sent to Parliament have thus the power of embarking in
enterprises which may diminish one's revenue by increased taxation and
imperil his life by enforced service. And in matters of less importance,
but of considerable effect upon both pocket and comfort, they wield
extensive powers. They can extend or they can lessen our liberties; they
can interfere largely with our social concerns; their powers are nowhere
strictly defined, and are so wide as to be almost illimitable. And for
the manner in which they exercise those powers, each man who possesses a
vote is in his degree responsible.
There are persons who affect, from the height of a serene indifference,
to look down upon all political struggles as the mere diversions of a
lower mental order. That kind of being, or any approach to its attitude
of mind, should be avoided by all who wish well to the government of the
country. To sit on the fence, and rail at the ploughman, because his
boots are muddy and his hands unwashed, is at once useless and
impertinent; and to stand outside the political field, and endeavour to
hinder those who are doing their best within, deserves the same
epithets. When it is said that hypocrites, and humbugs, and self-seekers
abound in politics, and that there is no place there for honest men,
does not the indictment appear too sweeping? Has not the same argument
been used against religion; and is it not one of the poorest in the
whole armoury of controversy? If there are hypocrites, and humbugs, and
self-seekers in politics--and no candid person would deny it, any more
than that there are such in religion, in business, in science, and in
art--is it not the more necessary that every honest man should try and
root them out? If every honest man abstained from politics, with what
right could he complain that all politicians were rogues? But no sober
person believes that all politicians are rogues, and those superior
beings who talk as if they are deserve condemnation for doing nothing to
purify the political atmosphere.
Some who would not go so far as those who are thus condemned, still
labour under the idea that politics are more or less a game, to the
issue of which they can afford to be indifferent. This, it may be
feared, is the notion of many, and it is one to be earnestly combatted.
Every man owes the duty to the State to assist, as far as he can, those
whom he considers the best and wisest of its would-be governors. There
is nobility in the idea that every elector can do something for the
national welfare by thoughtfully and straightforwardly exercising the
franchise, and aiding the cause he deems best. Young men especially
should entertain this feeling, for youth is the time for burning
thoughts, and it is not until a man is old that he can afford to
smoulder. The future is in the hands of the young of to-day; and if
these are indifferent to the great issues of State, and are prepared to
let things drift, a rude awakening awaits them.
The details of political work need not here be entered upon. All that is
now wanted is to show that that work is of very real importance to every
one; and that, unless taken in hand by the honest and capable, it will
fall to the dishonest and incapable for accomplishment. And as the vote
is a right to which every free Englishman is entitled, and a trust each
possessor of which should be called upon to exercise, there ought not to
remain men on the registers who persistently decline to use it. Absentee
landlords have been the curse of Ireland, and they will have to be got
rid of. Abstentionist voters might, in easily conceivable circumstances,
be the curse of England, and they would have to be got rid of likewise.
The value of a vote may be judged from the fact that it saves the
country from a periodical necessity for revolution. Everything in our
Constitution that wants altering can be altered at the ballot-box; and
whereas the vote-less man has no direct influence upon those affairs of
State which affect him as they affect every other citizen, the possessor
of the franchise can make his power directly felt. We are within sight
of manhood, it may be of adult, suffrage; and if the vote were of no
value it would be folly--almost criminal folly--to extend its use. Those
who deem it folly are of a practically extinct school in English
politics. For better or worse, the few are now governed by the many,
and the many will never again be governed by the few.
Those who are of the many may be tempted to urge that that very fact
lessens the worth of the vote in that every elector has the same value
at the polling booth, and that, however intelligent may be the interest
he takes in politics, his ignorant neighbour's vote counts the same as
his own. But that is to forget what every one who mixes with his
fellow-men must soon learn--that the intelligent have a weight of
legitimate influence upon their less-informed fellows which is
exceedingly great. Our vote counts for no more than that of the man who
has sold his suffrage for beer; but our influence may have brought
twenty waverers to the poll, while that of our beer-drinking
acquaintance has brought none.
A cynic has observed that "politics are a salad, in which office is the
oil, opposition the vinegar, and the people the thing to be devoured."
But to approach public affairs from that point, and to judge them solely
on that principle, is as reasonable as to use green spectacles and
complain of the colour of the sky. Politics should be looked at without
prejudice, but with the recollection that in them are concerned many of
our best and wisest men. If that be done, and the mind kept open for the
reception of facts, there is little doubt of the admission that there is
a deep reality in politics, and a reality in which every one is
concerned.
II.--IS THERE ANYTHING PRACTICAL IN POLITICS?
All will possibly admit that, in conceivable circumstances, a vote may
be useful, but many will not be prepared to allow that politics are an
important factor in our daily life. War, they would urge, is a remote
contingency, and a conscription is, of all unlikely things, the most
unlikely; our liberties have been won, and there is no chance of a
despot sitting on the throne; and, even if taxes are high, what can any
one member of Parliament, much less any one elector, do to bring them
down? From which questions, and from the answers they think must be made
to them, they would draw the conclusion that, whatever might have been
the case formerly, there is nothing practical in the politics of to-day.
It would not be hard to show that a conscription is by no means an
impossibility; that our liberties demand constant vigilance; and that
individual effort may greatly affect taxation. But even if the answer
desired were given to each question, the points raised, except the last,
are admittedly remote from daily life; and, if politics are to be
considered practical, they must concern affairs nearer to us. This they
do; and if they affected only the greater issues of State, they would
not be practical in the sense they now are. It is the small troubles,
whether public or private, which worry us most. The dust in one's eye
may be only a speck, but, measured by misery, it is colossal.
The law touches us upon every side, and the law is the outcome of
politics in having been enacted by Parliament. From the smallest things
to the greatest, the Legislature interferes. A man cannot go into a
public-house after a certain hour because of one Act of Parliament; he
cannot deal with a bank upon specified days because of another. One Act
of Parliament orders him, if a householder, to clean his pavement;
another prohibits him from building a house above a given height in
streets of a certain width. And while the law takes care of one's
neighbour by affixing a well-known penalty to murder, it is so regardful
of oneself that it absolutely prohibits suicide. We are surrounded, in
fact, by a network of regulations provided by Parliament. We are no
sooner born than the law insists upon our being registered; we cannot
marry without the interference of the same august power; and when we
die, those who are left behind must comply with the formalities the law
demands.
It may be answered that this does not sound like politics; that there is
nothing of Liberal or Tory in all this; but there is. Liberals, for
instance, have been mainly identified with the demand for the better
regulation of public-houses; it is to the Liberals that we owe a
long-called-for reform in the burial laws; and it is due to the Liberals
that a change in the marriage regulations, particularly affecting
Nonconformists, is on the eve of being adopted. Social questions are not
necessarily divorced from party concerns, and the moment Parliament
touches them they become political. If one looks down a list of the
measures presented to the House of Commons he will see that from the
purity of beer to the protection of trade-marks, from the enactment of a
close-time for hares to the provision of harbours of refuge, from a
declaration of the size of saleable crabs to the disestablishment of a
Church--every subject which concerns a man's external affairs,
political, social, or religious, is dealt with by Parliament.
Even if only those political matters are regarded which have a
distinctly partisan aspect, there is more that is practical in them than
would at first be perceived. "What," it may be asked, "is local option,
or county councils, or 'three acres and a cow' to me? I have no
particular liking for drink; I have not the least ambition to become a
combination of guardian and town councillor; and I am in no way
interested in agricultural concerns. When you require me to take an
active part in promoting the measures here indicated, how, I want to
know, am I concerned in any one of them?"
The answer is that any and all of them should concern the questioner a
great deal. He imagines he is not directly interested because of the
reasons put forward. Is he certain those reasons cover the whole case?
He has "no particular liking for drink," and, therefore, would not
trouble himself to obtain local option. But has he not been a
sufficiently frequent witness of the crime and misery caused by drink to
be persuaded that it is the duty of every good citizen to do all that in
him lies to lessen the evil effects? And as such good results have
flowed from the stricter regulation of the sale of intoxicating liquors,
ought it not to be his endeavour to place a further power of regulation
in the hands of those most interested--the people themselves?
Establishing county councils may not touch the individual citizen so
nearly, though it is in that direction that a solution of the local
option problem is being attempted to be found; and the supposed
questioner has "not the least ambition to become a combination of
guardian and town councillor." Perhaps not; other people have, and it is
a legitimate ambition that does them honour. The work performed by town
councillors, and guardians, and members of school boards is excellent
service, not only to the locality but the State. The freedom which
England enjoys to-day is largely owing to the habits of self-government
fostered by local institutions, the origin of which is as old as our
civilization, and the roots of which have sunk deeply into the soil. And
seeing how our towns have thriven since their government was taken from
a privileged few and given to the whole body of their inhabitants, is
there not fair reason to hope that the county districts will similarly
be benefitted by institutions equally representative and equally free?
And, as the improvement of a part has good effect upon the whole, even
those who may never have a direct connection with the suggested county
councils, will profit by their establishment.
With equal certainty it may be asserted that the condition of the
labourer is of practical importance to every citizen. "I am in no way
interested in agricultural concerns," it is said; and if by that is
simply meant that the objector does not work upon a farm, has no direct
dealings with agricultural produce, and no money invested in land, he,
of course, would be right. But even these conditions do not exhaust the
possibilities of connection with agriculture, which is the greatest
single commercial interest this country possesses; and, so
inter-dependent are the various interests, if the largest of all is not
in a satisfactory state the others are bound to suffer. It is those
others in which most of us may be specially concerned, but we are
generally concerned in agriculture; and as the latter cannot be at its
best as long as the labourers are in their present condition, is it not
obvious that all are interested in every honest endeavour to get that
condition improved? This is not the moment to argue the details of any
plan; but the principle is plain--the condition of the agricultural
labourer has passed into the region of practical politics.
There is a school among us, and perhaps a growing one, which, affecting
to despise such matters as these, wishes to make the State a huge
wage-settling and food-providing machine. If one talks to its members of
public affairs, they reply that the only practical politics is to give
bread-and-cheese to the working classes. But fact is wanted instead of
theory, demonstration rather than declamation, and, in place of a
platitude, a plan. For it is easy to talk of a State, in which there
shall be no misery, no poverty, and no crime; but the practical
politician will want to know how this is to be secured; and while
waiting for a plain answer, will decline to be drawn from the questions
of the immediate present.
No one need sigh for other political worlds to conquer while even such
problems as have just been noted ask for settlement; and there are
further departments of public affairs which demand attention, and which
are pressing to the front. Most would admit that a vote may be useful
sometimes. I say it is useful always. All would own that the greater
matters of law and liberty may fairly be called practical politics. I
add that the lesser matters with which Parliament has to deal, and which
affect us daily, are equally worthy the name. Let one look around and
say if "everything is for the best in this best of all possible worlds."
If he cannot, he ought to strive for the reform of that which is not for
the best. And as long as he has to strive for that reform, so long will
there be something practical in politics.
III.--WHY NOT LET THINGS ALONE?
"Why can't you let things alone?" is a question which has often been put
by those who either care little for politics or who wish to stave off
reform. It was the favourite exclamation of a Whig Prime Minister, Lord
Melbourne, and it is still used by many worthy persons as if it were
really applicable to matters of government. "Things"--that is public
affairs--can no more be let alone than one can let himself alone, or his
machinery alone, or his business alone. The secret of perpetual motion
has not been discovered in the State any more than in science. If one is
a workman and leaves things alone, he will be dismissed; if a tradesman
or manufacturer, he will become bankrupt; if a property-owner, ruin will
equally follow. A man would not leave his face alone because it had been
washed yesterday; he would not argue that as a face it was a very good
face, and that one thorough cleansing should last it a lifetime. And the
Constitution needs as careful looking after as one's business or his
body.
A sound Radical of a couple of centuries ago--and though the name
Radical had not then been invented, the man Radical was frequently to
the fore--put this point in plain words. "All governments and societies
of men," said Andrew Marvell, "do, in process of time, gather an
irregularity and wear away. And, therefore, the true wisdom of all ages
hath been to review at fit periods those errors, defects, or excesses
that have crept into the public administration; to brush the dust off
the wheels and oil them again, or, if it be found necessary, to choose a
set of new ones." And if Marvell be objected to as an authority, one can
be given which should satisfy even the staunchest Conservative. "There
was never anything by the wit of man so well devised or so sure
established which in the continuance of time hath not been corrupted."
That expression of opinion is not taken from any Whig, Liberal, or
Radical source, but from the preface to the Book of Common Prayer.
There is an older authority still, and that is the proverb which says "A
stitch in time saves nine." One can scarcely read a page of English
constitutional history without seeing the advances made in the comfort,
prosperity, and liberty of the people by timely reform; and no man would
seriously urge our going back to the old standpoints. Yet every reform,
though we may now all agree that it was for the greatest good of the
greatest number, was opposed by hosts of people, who talked about "the
wisdom of our ancestors," and asked, "Why can't you let things alone?"
It may be said that the grievances under which men labour to-day are
nothing like as great as those against which our fathers fought.
Happily--and thanks to the enthusiasts of old--that is so; but if they
are grievances, whether small or large, they ought to be removed. There
are some who think that a man with a grievance is a man to be
pitied--and put on one side. But, even if those so afflicted are apt to
prove bores, such complaints as are well founded should be attended to.
It is a fact beyond question that there is no finality in politics, and,
to take two examples from the present century--the Reform Act of 1832,
which was thought by its authors to be a "final" measure, and at the Act
of Union with Ireland, which the first Salisbury Administration
described in their Queen's Speech as "a fundamental law"--it will be
seen that the dream of finality in each case has been and is being
roughly dispelled. What man has done, man can do--and can undo.
The instances mentioned deserve a closer examination, because they so
perfectly show the impossibility of standing still in political affairs.
If ever there was a measure which statesmen of both parties held to be
final, the Reform Act was that one. During the discussions upon it, the
word "finality" was more than once used; Sir Robert Peel two years later
declared that he considered it "a final and irrevocable settlement of a
great constitutional question;" and in 1837, as in 1832, its author,
Lord John Russell, spoke of it as "a final measure." Final it was in the
sense that England would never go back to the days of borough-mongering,
but there the finality ended. As early as the year after it passed, a
Liberal member declared in his place in the House that "he for one had
never conceded the monstrous principle that any legislative measure was
to be final; still less had he ever conceded the yet more monstrous
principle that the members of that House were entitled by any sort of
compromise to barter away the rights and privileges of the people." The
views thus plainly laid down have been put in practice by men of both
parties; the ten-pound franchise of 1832 gave place in 1867 to household
suffrage for the boroughs, and this in 1884 was extended to the
counties. So much for the "finality" of the one great Act of this
century to which the word has been applied.
The so-called "fundamental law" of the Union with Ireland is threatened
with alteration and amendment in the same fashion as the "final" Reform
Act. Already, by the disestablishment of the Irish Church, a large hole
has been made in it; and a larger will be made when Home Rule is gained.
There is in England no law of so "fundamental" a nature that it cannot
be mended or ended just as the people wish. No generation has power to
bind its successors; and if the Parliament of 1800 was able to make the
Legislative Union, the Parliament of to-day is able to unmake it. Upon
this point--and it affects not only the general question now being
argued, but a particular question yet to be discussed--one of the most
distinguished "Liberal Unionists" may be quoted. Mr. Bright, speaking at
Liverpool in the summer of 1868, observed--"I have never said that
Irishmen are not at liberty to ask for and, if they could accomplish it,
to obtain the repeal of the Union. I say that we have no right whatever
to insist upon a union between Ireland and Great Britain upon our terms
only.... I am one of those who admit--as every sensible man must
admit--that an Act which the Parliament of the United Kingdom has
passed, the Parliament of the United Kingdom can repeal. And further, I
am willing to admit what everybody in England allows with regard to
every foreign country, that any nation, believing it to be its
interest, has a right both to ask for and to strive for national
independence." If, then, even a "fundamental law" can be got rid of, if
occasion demands and the people wish, what hope can the most lukewarm
have that things will be let alone?
Politics, in fact, may fairly be called a sort of see-saw: we are
constantly going up and down, and can never be still. As long as a
public grievance remains unremedied, so long will there be a call for
reform; and one may be sure that, though he may come to a ripe old age,
he will not live enough years to see every wrong made right. Some may
hide behind the question put and answered eighteen centuries ago; may
ask, as was then asked, "Who is my neighbour?" and may seek to avoid
doing as they would be done by. But, as citizens of a free State, they
have no right to shirk their duty to those around them. No man who looks
at society with open eyes can doubt that much can be done by the
Legislature to better the conditions of daily life. We do wrong if we
allow others to suffer when efforts of ours can remove at least some of
their pain.
Therefore, things cannot be let alone in politics any more than in daily
life; and even if they could, it would not be right to let them. It does
not need that one should give all his leisure moments to politics, and
all the energies he can spare from business to public life. But it does
need that he should pay some heed to that which concerns his fellow-man
and the society in which he lives; and all should be politicians in
their degree, not for love of place, or power, or excitement, but
because politics really mean much to the happiness and welfare of the
State.
IV.--OUGHT ONE TO BE A PARTISAN?
When we come from "first principles" to the more immediate topics of the
day, party considerations at once enter in; and to the question, "Ought
one to be a partisan?" I answer "Certainly." On the political barometer
a man ought distinctly to indicate the side he takes--not stand in the
middle and point to "change."
There is a great deal talked of the beauty of non-partisanship, of the
necessity for looking at public matters in a clear white light, and of
the exceeding glory of those who put country before party. Such of this
as is not commonplace is cant, and in politics Johnson's advice to
"clear your mind of cant" is especially to be taken. When a public man
talks of putting his country before his party, he surely implies that he
has been in the habit of putting his party before his country, and that
man's record should be carefully scanned. For it will very often be
found that those who boast of placing country before party place
themselves before either.
"Party is a body of men united for promoting by their joint endeavours
the national interest upon some particular in which they are all
agreed." That is Burke's definition, and it holds good to-day. Superfine
folk speak as if there were something derogatory in the fact of
belonging to a party, some lessening of liberty of judgment, some
forfeiting of conscience. That need not be. There must be give-and-take
among members of the same party, just as there must be among those of
the same household, of the same religious connection, and often of the
same business concern. The necessity to bear and to forbear is as
obvious in politics as in other matters of daily life, which is only
saying in a different fashion that in politics, as in everything, a
man's angles have to be rubbed off if he is to work in company with
anybody else. But he gives up a portion of his opinions only to retain
or strengthen those he considers essential. A Churchman is still a
Churchman whether he is labelled High, Low, or Broad; he may believe
with Canon Knox-Little, with Bishop Ryle, or with Archdeacon Farrar, and
continue a member of the Established Church; and it is only when
conscience compels him to differ from them all upon some essential point
of doctrine or practice that he becomes a Protestant Dissenter, a
Unitarian, a Roman Catholic, or, it may be, an Atheist.
As with religion, so with politics. A Conservative is still a
Conservative, whether he be called a Constitutionalist, a Tory Democrat,
a Tory, or, as Mr. William Henry Smith was accustomed to describe
himself, an Independent-Liberal-Conservative. He may be of the school of
the late Mr. Newdegate, of Lord Salisbury, or of Lord Randolph
Churchill, and the party bond is elastic enough to embrace him. And when
it is remembered that the name "Liberal" covers all sorts and conditions
of friends of progress, from Lord Hartington to Mr. Labouchere, it will
be seen that a man must be querulous indeed who cannot find rest for the
sole of his foot in one or other of the great parties of the State.
No doubt it is easy to quote opinions from some eminent persons in
condemnation of the party system. There is a saying of Dr. Arnold that a
Liberal is "one who gets up every morning in the full belief that
everything is an open question;" and with this may be coupled a chance
expression of Carlyle, that "an English Whig politician means generally
a man of altogether mechanical intellect, looking to Elegance,
Excitement, and a certain refined Utility as the Highest; a man halting
between two Opinions, and calling it Tolerance;" while there may be
added the quotation, better known than either, "Conservatism discards
Prescription, shrinks from Principle, disavows Progress; having rejected
all respect for Antiquity, it offers no redress for the Present, and
makes no preparation for the Future." It was the author of these last
words who uttered also the caustic remark, "It seems to me a barren
thing, this Conservatism, an unhappy cross-breed; the mule of politics,
that engenders nothing." And that author was Benjamin Disraeli,
afterwards Earl of Beaconsfield.
Of course, this merely shows that hard things have been and can be said
of all parties, but if they have been as bad as thus represented, is it
not strange that England has done so well under their rule? It may be
replied that, whatever has been the case, the fact now is that the old
parties are dead, and the idea may be echoed of those who wish to keep
the Tories in power, that only "Unionists" and "Separatists" are left;
but, setting aside the circumstance that the Liberals emphatically
disclaim the latter title, the facts are against the original
assumption.
The history of our Constitution will show that parties bring the best
men to the front, groups the worst--the most pushing, pertinacious, and
impudent of those among them. And when men talk, as some are talking
to-day, of new combinations--combinations of persons rather than of
principles--to take the place of the old parties, they should be watched
carefully to see whether they do not degenerate, as other men in similar
circumstances have done, into mere hungry scramblers for place.
Much of the flabby feeling which pervades some minds in antagonism to
partisanship has been nourished by the cry of "measures, not men." "To
attack vices in the abstract, without touching persons, may be safe
fighting indeed, but it is fighting with shadows." These words of Pope
were taken by Junius to enforce his opinion that "'measures and not men'
is the common cant of affected moderation--a base counterfeit language,
fabricated by knaves and made current among fools." "What does it
avail," he asked, "to expose the absurd contrivance or pernicious
tendency of measures if the man who advises or executes shall be
suffered not only to escape with impunity, but even to preserve his
power?" If this opinion be put aside as being only that of a clever but
venomous pamphleteer, an equally strong condemnation of the old
cuckoo-cry can be quoted from the greatest philosopher who ever
practically dealt with English politics. "It is an advantage," said
Burke, "to all narrow wisdom and narrow morals, that their maxims have a
plausible air, and, on a cursory view, appear equal to first principles.
They are light and portable. They are as current as copper coin, and
about as valuable. They serve equally the first capacities and the
lowest; and they are at least as useful to the worst men as the best. Of
this stamp is the cant of 'not men, but measures'; a sort of charm by
which many people get loose from every honourable engagement." And, if
we go to the gaiety of Goldsmith from the gravity of Burke, it is
significant that the author of "The Good-Natured Man" puts in the mouth
of a bragging political liar and cheat the expression, "Measures, not
men, have always been my mark."
But, it is sometimes said, the very fact of not being a partisan argues
freedom from prejudice. Does it not equally argue freedom from
principle? If a man holds a principle strongly, he can hardly avoid
being what the unthinking call prejudiced. It is surely better to be
fast anchored to a principle, even at the risk of being called
prejudiced, than to be swayed hither and thither by every passing
breeze, like the "independent" politician--defined by the late Lord
Derby as "a politician not to be depended upon"--with the liability of
being wrecked by some more than usually stirring gust.
We have only to look at the political history of the past half-century
to find that it is the "prejudiced" men who have done good work, and the
"independent" politicians who have made shipwreck of their public lives.
The former held their principles firmly; they lost no opportunity of
pushing them to the front; and success attended their efforts. As for
the politicians who were too proud, or too unstable, or too quarrelsome
to work in harness with their fellows, the shores of our public life
have been strewn with their wrecks. The glorious opportunities for good
that were missed by Lord Brougham, the wasted career of the once popular
Roebuck are matters of history. And in our own day we can point to Earl
Grey and Mr. Cowen--and the narrow escape from a similar fate of Mr.
Goschen--as striking instances of the fact that no good thing in
politics can be done by men who cannot or will not join with a great
party to secure the ends for which they strive. The independent
politician, in fact, must of necessity appear an incomplete sort of
man--always leading up to something and never getting it; everlastingly
striking the quarters, but never quite reaching the finished hour.
It is not only, however, the crotchety man, or the quarrelsome man, or
the tactless man, who, because he cannot work with anybody else, poses
as "independent." There are also "men of no decided character, without
judgment to choose, and without courage to profess any principle
whatever--such men can serve no cause for this plain reason, they have
no cause at heart." Burke here clearly describes a large section of
"armchair politicians," who turn many an election without a distinct
idea of what will be the ultimate result of their action. They are of
the kind even more forcibly characterized by Dryden a century before--
Damn'd neuters, in their middle way of steering,
Are neither fish, nor flesh, nor good red herring;
Nor Whigs, nor Tories they; nor this, nor that;
Nor birds, nor beasts; but just a kind of bat;
A twilight animal; true to neither cause,
With Tory wings, but Whiggish teeth and claws.
Trimmers of this type live and flourish to-day as they lived and
flourished in the age of Dryden and of Burke, and the airs they give
themselves of superiority over the ordinary run of politicians deserve
all the ridicule men of more practical tendencies can pour upon them.
One would fancy that it must sometimes occur even to them that, as in
warfare the efforts of two opposing mobs, led by generals who
perpetually differed among themselves, would cause more rapine and
confusion, and ensure an even less satisfactory result, than those of
two armies captained by men accustomed to discipline, and striking blows
only where blows could be effective; so in the constant movement of
public affairs a multitude of wrangling counsellors would bring ruin
upon the State, where a struggle between two opposing parties,
representing distinct principles, would clear a path in which it could
safely tread.
No one, therefore, should be frightened out of taking part in politics
by the idea that there is anything wrong in being a partisan. A working
man joins a trade union, in order that by strengthening his fellows he
may strengthen himself; a religious man becomes a member of a Christian
church, so as to assist in spreading the truth he cherishes; and any one
who dearly holds a political principle ought to attach himself to a
party, that he may secure for that principle the success which, if it is
worth believing in, is worth striving for.
V.--WHY NOT HAVE A "NATIONAL" PARTY?
It is sometimes asked, even by those who would agree generally that
partisanship is not unworthy, whether all the old distinctions of
Liberal and Conservative, Tory and Radical, are not out of date, and
whether it is not possible to form a "National" party. The idea of such
a formation has been "in the air" for a long time, and has been put
forward with more frequency since the breach in the Liberal ranks upon
the Irish question. But although politicians as eminent as Mr.
Chamberlain and Lord Randolph Churchill have given countenance to the
idea, it has as yet resulted in nothing of practical value.
Mr. Chamberlain has argued that "our old party names have lost their
force and meaning," but, even if they had, the suggested appellation
must be held to be a misnomer. It is a contradiction in terms. If the
whole nation be agreed upon a certain course, it is not a national
"party" which advocates it; if it be not agreed, no section, no
half-plus-one, has the right to arrogate to itself the adjective. The
last time any faction did so was at the general election of 1880, when
the supporters of Lord Beaconsfield attempted to claim the title even
when they were being swept out of their seats wholesale by the flowing
tide of national indignation. All honest politicians work for what they
consider the benefit of the nation, and no portion of them has a title
to assume that it alone is righteous.
The inappropriateness of the name, moreover, is not only general but
particular. The proposed combination, according to the statesman already
quoted, is to "exclude only the extreme sections of the party of
reaction on the one hand, and the party of anarchy on the other." But
who is to define how far a reactionary may go without being considered
"extreme," and who in the English Parliament is "an anarchist"?
Further, a "national party" must be presumed to represent the
nation--that is the whole of the United Kingdom. But the projected body,
if it opposed Home Rule, would ignore the wishes of 85 out of the 101
popularly elected representatives of Ireland; 44 out of the 70 popularly
elected representatives of Scotland; and 26 out of the 30 popularly
elected representatives of Wales; as well as the whole body of the
Gladstonian Liberals in England. At the last general election, 1,423,765
persons in this kingdom cast their votes on the "Unionist," and
1,341,131 on the Liberal side; and the latter number could scarcely be
ignored when a "national" party is being formed.
In accordance with the words of the immortal Mr. Taper--"A sound
Conservative Government, I understand; Tory men and Whig measures"--the
Tories have promised to bring in Liberal Bills; but the process will be
regarded by many with the same feelings as those of Mr. Disraeli when he
charged Sir Robert Peel with the petty larceny of Whig ideas, as did
Lord Cranborne (now Lord Salisbury) when he denounced Mr. Disraeli's
political legerdemain in perpetrating a similar offence, and as did
another prominent politician when he said, "The consistency of our
public life, the honour of political controversy, the patriotism of
statesmen, which should be set above all party considerations--these are
things which have been profaned, desecrated, and trampled in the mire by
this crowd of hungry office-seekers who are now doing Radical work in
the uniform of Tory Ministers.... I will say frankly that I do not like
to win with such instruments as these. A democratic revolution is not to
be accomplished by aristocratic perverts; and I believe that what the
people desire will be best carried into effect by those who can do so
conscientiously and honestly, and not by those who yield their assent
from purely personal or party motives." These words were spoken in 1885;
and the speaker was Mr. Chamberlain.
The new party to exist must have organization, and as by its very
constitution all Liberal and Radical associations would have to be
excluded, the Primrose League alone would be ready to hand. But he who
pays the piper calls the tune, and what that tune would be can easily be
guessed. Liberals and Radicals would necessarily be kept out of the
combination, for men who consider themselves entitled to twenty
shillings in the pound, and who might be content to accept ten as an
instalment, would not take ten as payment in full of some of their
bills, and a "first and final dividend" of nothing on others they hold
of value. And the Radicals and other Gladstonian Liberals being left
out, the remaining party must be overwhelmingly Conservative, and the
fighting opinion of a party is that of its majority.
It is thus not an enticing prospect for any thoroughgoing lover of
progress. What hope is there of a sound reform of the House of Lords
from a party closely wedded to the aristocracy? Of disestablishment in
Scotland and Wales, to say nothing of England, from a party relying for
much of its power upon the clergy? Of a drastic change in the land or
the game laws from a party propped up by landlords and game preservers?
Of an improved magistracy from a party deriving great influence from the
country squires? Of a popular veto upon licensing from a party to which
belong nine-tenths of the publicans? Of a progressive income tax or the
more equitable arrangement of the death duties from a party which has
become increasingly attractive to the large capitalists? Of, in fact,
any great reform whatsoever from a party which places "vested interests"
in the forefront to the frequent exclusion of justice?
A party formed in the fashion thus projected would be simply a house of
cards, carefully built, as such houses usually are, by those who have
nothing better to do--pretty to look at, but turned over by the first
breeze. Lobby combinations such as this are hothouse plants; brought
into the open they die. In Carlyle's "French Revolution," much ridicule
is poured upon the wondrous paper constitutions of the Abbe Sieyes,
which somehow would not "march." Within the last few years the Duc de
Broglie was famous throughout Europe for the clockwork arrangements he
made for France, and the constant failure that awaited them. The
"national party" recalls the works of both duke and abbe, and, like
them, would resemble nothing so much as a flying machine, constructed
upon the most approved principles by really skilled workmen, and
scientifically certain to succeed, but having, when tested, only one
defect--it will not fly.
VI.--IS ONE PARTY BETTER THAN THE OTHER?
It is perfectly natural to be asked, after trying to prove that
partisanship is praiseworthy, and that a "national" party is out of the
question, whether one party is so much better than the other that it
deserves strenuous and continued support. For the purposes of the
argument, it is necessary to consider only the two great parties in the
State--the Liberal and the Tory. These represent the main tendencies
which actuate mankind in public affairs--the go-ahead and the
stand-still. Differences in the expression of these tendencies there are
bound to be, according as circumstances vary; but, generally speaking,
the Tory is the party of those who, being satisfied with things as they
are, are content to stand still, while the Liberal is the party of those
who, thinking there is ample room for improvement, desire to go ahead.
The recent history of our country is all in favour of the Liberal
contention. If two men ride on a horse one must ride behind, and if two
parties take opposite views of the same measure one must be wrong. The
best testimony to the fact that, as a whole, the Liberal policy pursued
by this country for more than half a century has been right, is,
therefore, that even when the Tories have been in the majority they have
not attempted to reverse it. Every great question that has been agitated
for by the Liberals as a body, except Home Rule, which has yet to be
settled, has been settled in the way they wished; and has more than once
been carried to the last point of success by the Tories themselves. Not
even the staunchest Conservative would urge a return to the system of
rotten boroughs, would repeal the Education Act, re-establish the Irish
Church, or renew open voting; and the Tories who would re-enact the Corn
Laws continue few.
Lord Salisbury has contended that, even if the Liberals have always been
right and the Tories wrong, it should make no difference to the
present-day voter; and, speaking at Reading in the autumn of 1883, he
asked--"Would any of you go to an apothecary's shop because the previous
tenant was a very good man at curing rheumatism? You would say, 'It
matters little to me whether the former tenant was a skilful man or not;
all that concerns me is the skill of the present tenant of the
establishment.'" But supposing, to carry on Lord Salisbury's
illustration, this new tenant could say, "I have in my possession a
recipe of my predecessor which proved itself an infallible cure for
rheumatism; I prepare it in the same fashion; it will have the same
result." Would one not reply, "I will rather trust the recipe which has
always done good, even though in the course of nature it has changed
owners, than put myself in the hands of the opposition chemist, who,
though exceedingly old and eminently respectable, never effects a cure,
but whenever he is called in leaves the patient worse than he finds
him?"
And when Lord Salisbury strove to make his point more clear, he did not
mend matters much. "It is only the existing party, whether Liberal or
Conservative," he said, "that really concerns you; success, wisdom, and
justice do not stick to organizations or buildings--they are the
attributes of men. It is by their present acts and their present
principles that the two parties must be judged." Even if this be
allowed--and, carried to its logical extent, it would justify every
piece of "political legerdemain" (the phrase applied by Lord Salisbury
himself to Mr. Disraeli's Reform Bill) the Tory party has ever
perpetrated, or may ever attempt--Liberals need not shrink from the
test. For the Tories, as they have ever done, are now shrinkingly and
fearsomely following in the paths the Liberals years ago laid down, with
just sufficient deviation to prove that the old Adam of reaction is not
dead. Whether it be free trade, or parliamentary reform, or the
closure, they initiate nothing; but when the Liberals have cleared the
way, they are eager to adopt all that they have previously denounced,
and to claim as their own principles they have throughout professed to
abhor. Seeing that the Liberals borrow nothing from the Tories, while
the Tories borrow a very great deal from the Liberals, we can judge the
two parties, as Lord Salisbury wished, by their present acts and their
present principles, and show that the Liberal is the more worthy of
popular support.
It is, of course, not to be wondered at that such a desire to ignore the
past should be expressed by a politician who, from his maiden speech to
his most recent efforts, has denounced Liberal ideas; who, at various
stages of his parliamentary career, has opposed the spread of popular
education, the extension of the suffrage, the creation of the ballot,
the emancipation of the Jews, the extinction of Church rates, the full
admission of Dissenters to the Universities, the abolition of purchase
in the army, the repeal of the taxes on knowledge, the throwing open of
the Civil Service to the people, the right of Nonconformists to be
buried in their parish churchyard, the remission of long-standing and
obviously unpayable Irish arrears, and the destruction of the property
qualification for members of Parliament; whose sympathy for his fellows
may be gathered from his insinuated comparison of the Irish to
Hottentots, and his declaration that it is "just" that the children of
those who have contracted marriage with their deceased wife's sister
should be bastardized; whose taste for diplomacy was shown by his
direction to a Viceroy to "create" a pretext for forcing a quarrel upon
Afghanistan; whose regard for the strictness of truth was displayed in
his denial of the authenticity of a well-remembered secret memorandum;
whose love for liberty was evidenced by the lukewarmness with which he
watched the struggles for freedom in Italy and Bulgaria, and the hearty
and continuous support he gave to the slave-holding faction in America;
and whose affection for the people may be judged from the fact that,
throughout his political life, his name has never been identified with a
single piece of constructive legislation for their welfare. "By their
fruits shall ye know them" is applicable to politics, therefore; as
Lord Salisbury, by so strenuously endeavouring to ignore the maxim,
practically admits; and at the risk of putting aside the canon of
criticism adopted by the noble marquis, let me show some of the fruits
of modern Liberal policy.
I rise in the morning and go to my breakfast; my tea, my coffee, my
sugar, and my ham are all of easy price because of the reductions in
import duties made by Liberal Governments. I take up my newspaper, and I
have it so cheaply because Mr. Gladstone, despite the utmost efforts of
the Conservatives, secured the repeal of the paper duty. I go to
business, and, as I write my letter or my postcard, I cannot but reflect
that a Liberal Ministry in 1840 allowed me to send the one for a penny,
and a Liberal Ministry in 1870 to send the other for half that sum. I
proceed to dinner, and find that bread, cheese, and much of my dessert
are the more available because of Liberal remissions. And as in the
evening I visit the theatre, the very opera glasses I hold in my hand
are the cheaper because, in one of his Budgets, Mr. Gladstone included
these among the hundreds of other articles from which he removed a small
but galling tax.
These are some, and only some, of the material benefits resulting from
the Liberal policy. What of the political, what of the social, what of
the moral benefits? If I am an Englishman, I am proud of the fact that
no longer is the national flag allowed to float over a slave; if I am a
Scotchman, I rejoice that my country has been freed from the
extraordinary system of mis-representation which weighed upon it like a
nightmare before 1832; if I am an Irishman, I am not forced at the point
of the bayonet to pay tithes to an alien Church, to liquidate arrears
for rack-rents owing from the time of the famine, or to give an
exorbitant rent for the result of my own improvements; if I am a
Churchman, my Church has been strengthened by the repeal of enactments
which provoked opposition, while providing no good for the Establishment
they professed to serve; if I am a Nonconformist, I am no longer liable
to have my goods seized in support of a Church in which I do not
believe, I have the right to be married in my own place of worship, and
to be buried by my own minister by the side of my fathers; if I am a
Catholic, I have been liberated from certain restrictions upon my
religion, which I resented as an insult and a wrong; if I am a Jew, I
can sit with the peers, in the Commons, or on the judicial bench; if I
belong to the army, and am an officer, my rise is made easy--if I am a
private, my rise is made possible, by the abolition of purchase; if I am
either soldier or sailor, I owe it mainly to Liberal exertions that
discipline is no longer maintained by the lash; if I am a merchant
seaman, my life is the better protected because of the efforts of a
Liberal member of Parliament; if I am in the Civil Service, I have the
greater chance of success because of the destruction of that system of
nomination, which, however advantageous to the aristocracy, was fatal to
modest merit; if I am a student, I can go to a University with the
certainty that not now shall I be deprived of the reward of my exertions
because my conscience prevents me from subscribing the Thirty-nine
Articles; if I am a tradesman, my goods are freed from many a customs
duty which formerly restricted their sale; if I am a farmer, I can vote
without fear of my landlord, my lands have been to some extent saved
from the depredations of hares and rabbits, and my tenure has been
rendered more certain than ever before; if I am an artisan, the fruits
of combination have been secured to me, my employer has been made liable
for accidents arising from either his carelessness or his greed, my vote
has been obtained, and by the ballot has been protected; if I am the
child of the poorest, a school has been opened for me where a sound
education can be procured at a small cost; in fact, in whatever station
I may chance to be placed, I cannot but feel in my every-day life the
beneficent influences of the policy advocated by leaders of advanced
thought, and adopted by Liberal Ministries during the past fifty years.
If, then, I am asked to justify the Liberal party by showing what it has
done, I answer that, by timely reform, it has saved England from the
continental curse of frequent revolution; that, in striving for the
greatest happiness of the greatest number, it has in especial elevated
and educated the masses, for whom it has provided cheap food for both
body and mind; and that it has struggled, and in the main successfully
struggled, to secure civil and religious equality for all. And in the
future as in the past, with perfect liberty as its fixed ideal, and with
peace, retrenchment, and reform as the methods by which it wishes that
ideal to be obtained, it will press onward and upward, and ever onward
and upward, until England, now regarded as the mother of free nations,
shall be but one of a gigantic brotherhood of freedom, embracing every
civilized people that may then inhabit the globe.
VII.--WHAT ARE LIBERAL PRINCIPLES?
After this recital of Liberal deeds, it may fairly be asked, "What are
Liberal principles?" and these it is not easy to define off-hand. There
are certain general truths which are the commonplaces of both parties,
and no serious attempt has yet been made to lay down a system of
principles with which none except Liberals can agree. But there are
differences that underlie the action of the two parties which are
unmistakable, and are worth finding out.
If one were to ask the first half-dozen Liberals he met for a definition
of their principles, varying and perhaps vague replies would be
received. For in politics, as in other matters that combine speculation
with practical action, it is only the few who speculate, while the many
are content to act. And even most of those who tried to answer would be
apt to reply that Liberal principles could be summed up in the old party
watch-word--"Peace, Retrenchment, and Reform," thus confounding Liberal
principles with Liberal aims.
That these aims are well worth striving for has long been an accepted
doctrine of the party; but, in trying to gain them, we have to adapt
them to circumstances, and are not called upon in every single emergency
to push them to their logical extent. Logic, after all, is only a pair
of spectacles, not eyesight itself; and attempts to arrange human
affairs upon too precise a basis frequently end, as France so often has
shown, in failure. We long for peace, but not for peace at any price; we
ask for retrenchment, but not an indiscriminate paring down of
expenditure for the sake of showing a saving; and we struggle for
reform, but not to cut all the branches off the trees on the chance of
improving their appearance.
Before, in fact, we have been able to struggle at all for these or any
other points in politics, certain principles have had to be acted upon
by generations of progressive thinkers, which have developed and
strengthened our liberties. It is, perhaps, presumptuous to attempt to
lay down in a few words a basis of Liberal principle, but I would submit
that that basis may be found in the contention that
_All men should be equal before the law_;
that, as a consequence,
_All should have freedom of thought, freedom of speech, and freedom of
action_;
and that, in order to secure and retain these liberties,
_The people should govern themselves_.
With regard to the first point, I do not contend that all men are, or
ever can be, equal. Differences of mental and physical strength, of
energy and temperament, and of will to work, there must always be; and
in the struggle for existence, which is likely to grow even keener as
the world becomes more filled, the fittest must continue to come to the
top, as they have done and deserve to do. A law-made equality would not
last a week, but much law-made inequality has lasted for centuries, and
it is against this that Liberals as Liberals must protest. We object to
all law-made privilege, and we ask that men gifted with equal capacities
shall have equal chances. We do not claim any new privilege for the
poor, but we demand the abolition of the old privileges, express and
un-express, of the rich. Something was done in the latter direction when
the system of nomination in most departments of the civil service and
that of purchase in the army were got rid of. But as long as in the
higher departments of public affairs a man has a place in the
legislature merely because he is the son of his father; as long as in
the humbler branches no one unpossessed of a property qualification can
sit on certain local boards; and as long as in daily life the facilities
for frequent appeal, devised by lawyers within the House for the benefit
of lawyers without, provide a power for wealth that is often used to
defeat the ends of justice, so long, to take these alone out of many
instances, shall we lack that equality of opportunity which we demand
not as a favour but a right.
But if every man is to be equal before the law, he must have the right
to think as his reason directs; to discuss as freely as he thinks; and
to act as he pleases, so long as his neighbour is not injured in the
honest discharge of his duties, or the common weal put in jeopardy.
"Give me," said Milton, "the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue
according to conscience, above all liberties"--for it is certain that
with freedom of thought and discussion all other liberties will follow.
John Mill carried this principle to the fullest extent when he argued
that "if all mankind, minus one, were of one opinion, and only one
person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified
in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be
justified in silencing mankind." To all such sweeping generalizations
there are, however, possible exceptions. No man would be much inclined
to blame Cromwell for suppressing the pamphlet "Killing no Murder,"
which directly advocated his own assassination; even the strongest lover
of free discussion would not be prepared to allow the systematic
circulation of exhortations to blow up our public buildings, and
directions as to the best way of doing it; and instances may conceivably
arise--and an invasion one of them--where absolute freedom of
publication and debate would form a national danger. Our liberties,
therefore, would be sufficiently protected if we recognized the right of
every man to speak and to act as he pleases, "so long as his neighbour
is not injured in the honest discharge of his duties, or the common weal
put in jeopardy."
In order, however, that men may be able to think, speak, and do as they
deem right, it is necessary that the people shall rule, and that the
majority, when it has made up its mind, shall have the power to carry
out its decree. Even the Tories of these days will not dispute this
principle, and, therefore, Liberals cannot claim it as at this moment
their own; and yet, broadly speaking, the root idea of the Tory party is
the aristocratic theory that the few ought to govern the many, while
that of the Liberal party is the democratic, that the many ought to
govern the few.
In the days before the mass of the people were a real power in the
affairs of the State, this difference was very clearly marked, for the
Tories then were under no necessity to conceal their belief that the
"common herd" were not to be trusted in political concerns. And it is
useful, as showing what the high Tory doctrine on this point really was,
to recall the fact that a judge on the bench, less than a century ago,
in summing up at a political trial, laid it down as a doctrine not to be
questioned that "a government in every country should be just like a
corporation; and in this country it is made up of the landed interest,
which alone has a right to be represented. As for rabble, who have
nothing but personal property, what hold has the nation of them? What
security for the payment of their taxes? They may pack up all their
property on their backs, and leave the country in the twinkle of an eye;
but landed property cannot be removed." And another judge at a political
trial within the present century went even further in denying to the
people not merely the right of interference with public affairs, but
even of comment upon them. "It is said," he observed, "that we have a
right to discuss the acts of our legislature. This would be a large
permission indeed. Is there to be a power in the people to counteract
the acts of the Parliament; and is the libeller to come and make the
people dissatisfied with the Government under which he lives? This is
not to be permitted to any man,--it is unconstitutional and seditious."
We have outgrown such doctrines as these; and, thanks to the efforts of
generations of Liberals who have passed to their rest, the right of the
"rabble who have nothing but personal property"--or, for the matter of
that, no property at all--to take part in settling the affairs of the
State, whether by criticism or active interference, is solidly
established.
It may be argued that as the Tories of to-day have accepted democracy,
the Liberals have no right to claim the principles here laid down as if
they were without exception their own. But this Tory acceptance of
democratic ideas is only partial, and a party which mainly depends upon
the aristocracy for support can never adopt them with consistency and
enthusiasm. The very existence of an hereditary legislature violates the
principle that all men should be equal before the law; the theory upon
which a State-established Church rests is equally a violation of the
right of every one to think, speak, and act as he chooses; and the
continuous efforts of the Tories to limit the franchise, and to erect
barriers against the majority having their will, are utterly opposed to
the view that the people should govern, and harmonize with the old idea
that the people should be governed.
It must not be imagined that these differences between the parties mean
nothing, or that we are beyond all danger of losing the advance we have
made. The ease with which we might slip back into despotism is shown by
the manner in which the Tories resort to coercion--or, as they prefer to
term it, "exceptional legislation"--when a majority of the Irish people
has to be cowed. The suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, the abolition
of trial by jury, the extinction of liberty of the press, and the denial
of the right of public meeting have been frequently enacted against the
majority of the people of Ireland, because their views on the political
situation have not accorded with those of the majority of the people of
England. And though they have all failed, and repeatedly failed, a
variation of the same old plan is put in operation to-day as if it were
a newly-discovered and infallible remedy for every popular ill.
Easy-going folk are apt to reply that, as these things concern only
Ireland, it is of no special moment to ourselves, and that England is
safe from any revival of a despotic system. Even if this were true it
would be false morality, and false morality makes bad politics. But it
is not true. Despotism is a disease which spreads, and any development
of it applied to one part of the body politic might, in conceivable
circumstances, be used as a precedent to apply it to the whole. And if
it be said that in these happy days the men of England have the
undisputed right to think as they like and talk as they will, it can be
answered that not one of the shackles upon freedom of thought and
freedom of action has been voluntarily struck off by the Tories, and
that it is only lately that they prevented a member of Parliament for
years from taking the seat to which he had been four times elected,
because he avowed what he believed upon theological questions.
The difference between the two parties, even in the present general
acceptance of a democratic system, may be put in words once used by Mr.
Chamberlain--"It is the essential condition, the cardinal principle of
Liberalism, that we should recognize rights, and not merely confer
favours." With us, the suffrage is the right of every free citizen; with
the Tories, it is a favour conferred upon the working by the moneyed
classes. We demand religious equality; the Tories are willing to give
toleration. But favours we do not ask, and toleration we will not have.
Liberals, in fact, are prepared substantially to subscribe to the
principles laid down more than a century since in the American
Declaration of Independence--a document which sounded the knell of
despotism on its own side of the Atlantic, and awoke echoes which shook
down another despotism on ours. "We hold," said that document, "these
truths to be self-evident--that all men are created equal; that they are
endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among
these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure
these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just
powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of
government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the
people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government,
laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in
such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and
happiness."
These, broadly speaking, are Liberal principles; and when one has
absorbed them thoroughly, there comes to him that Liberal sentiment,
that enthusiasm for his fellows, which feels a blow struck at any man's
freedom, in any part of the whole world, as keenly as if it were struck
at his own.
VIII.--ARE LIBERALS AND RADICALS AGREED?
It may be thought that by dealing only with "the fundamental principles
of the Liberal party," the Radicals were put aside as if they had no
separate existence; and to a large extent this is true, for Radicals are
simply advanced Liberals. The principles just asserted are common to all
members of the progressive party. There are differences as to the time
at which certain measures directly flowing from them shall become a
portion of the party's platform; and that is all.
A great deal of the prejudice which used to exist against those called
"Radicals" has died away, but traces of it linger still; and it will be
well to see what Radicalism, as a phase of Liberalism, really is. It may
sound strange to be told that the Whigs were the Radicals of an earlier
day, and that they sometimes carried their Radicalism to the point of
revolution. In these times it is becoming increasingly doubtful whether
those who call themselves by what was once the honourable title of
"Whig" have any claim to be considered members of the Liberal party; and
there are many who consider that they are now more truly conservative
than the Conservatives themselves. The Whigs tell us that they are only
acting as the drag on the wheel; but this implies that we are always
going down hill. That we do not believe. We hold that we are
progressing; and a drag which would act upon the coach as it climbs the
hill is a product neither of prudence nor common sense.
The bulk of the party of progress in these days may be said to combine
Liberal traditions with Radical instincts. The two can mingle with the
utmost ease, and, though they may run side by side for some time before
they join, the steady stream of the one and the rapid rush of the other
always unite at last in one broad river of liberalizing sentiment, which
fertilizes as it flows.
From the time when Bolingbroke wrote of some measure that "such a remedy
might have wrought a _radical cure_ of the evil that threatens our
constitution" to the date, a century later, when those who wished to
introduce a "radical reform" into our representative system were called
by the name, there were many Whigs who talked Radicalism without being
aware of it; but when the title had been given to a section of the
Liberal party, it became for a long period a term of reproach. Mr.
Gladstone, once speaking at Birmingham, quoted a definition of the early
Radicals which described them as men "whose temper had been soured
against the laws and institutions of their country;" and he admitted
that there was much justification for their having been so. But one can
quite understand that men of a soured temper were not likely to be
popular with the placid politician who stayed at home, or the
place-hunter who went to the House of Commons; and the bad meaning, once
attached to the name, remained affixed to it for a very long time.
Mr. Gladstone, in the speech referred to, was the first great English
statesman to try and remove the reproach; and this he did by defining a
Radical as "a man who is in earnest." This was flattering, but as a
definition lacked precision, for Tories are often in desperate earnest.
Many Radicals would assert that the very name--coming, as it of course
does, from the Latin word for "root"--tells everything; that it
signifies that they go to the root of all matters with which they deal,
and that, where reform is needed, it is a root and branch reform they
advocate.
To this it may be replied that to go to the root of everything is not
always practicable and is not necessarily judicious. If a tree be
thoroughly rotten, if it be liable to be shaken to the ground by the
first blast, and thereby to injure all its surroundings, it should
certainly be cut down, and as soon as it conveniently can be. But if the
tree has only two or three rotten branches, there is no necessity to go
to its root. If one does, it will very probably kill a good tree which,
with only the decayed portions removed, might bear valuable fruit. As
with trees, so with institutions; and what seems to be forgotten by many
who call themselves Radical is that, in a highly-complex civilization
such as ours, we have to bear with some things that are far from ideal,
simply because of that force of do-nothingness which, powerful in
mechanics, is as great in political life.
A friend who has long worked in the Liberal cause once observed: "The
misfortune is that it is difficult to tell what a man's ideas of public
policy are from the mere fact of his calling himself a Radical. If by
Radical is meant Advanced Liberal--a Liberal determined to push forward
with all practicable speed, a Liberal who is in earnest--then I can
understand it, and I will readily take the name. But if by Radical is
meant a somewhat hysterical creature, who is ready to fight for every
fad that tickles his fancy, as he seems to be in some cases, or a
cantankerous being whose crotchets compel him to sever himself from all
other workers, as he is in others; if he is of the extreme Spencerian
school, and demurs to most legislation on the ground that it is
over-legislation, or of the extreme Socialist school, and demands that
Government shall do everything, and individual effort be practically
strangled by force of law, I am not a Radical, and hope never to be
called one."
But the practical Radicalism which is one of the greatest factors in
Liberal policy at the present day, is far removed from the schools just
depicted. The reasonable Radical is not a believer in any of the
schemes--as old as the hills and yet unblushingly preached
to-day--which, by some legislative hocus-pocus, some supreme stroke of
statecraft, will "put a pot on every fire and a fowl in every pot;" will
endow each widow and give a portion to all unmarried girls; will feed
the poor without burdening the community; and will make all the crooked
paths straight without undue trouble to ourselves. He holds that
Diseases desperate grown
By desperate remedies are removed,
Or not at all;
but he does not consider all diseases to be of the character described;
he does not refuse the half-loaf because for the moment the whole one is
impossible of attainment; and he does not repudiate other honest workers
in the cause of progress because their pace is not quite so swift, and
their point of view somewhat different.
In the constant striving after a high ideal, there is in the Radical's
heart a resolute desire to emerge from any rut into which politics may
have degenerated. For the very reason of his existence is that, if there
be an abuse in Church or State which agitation and argument can remove,
all honest endeavours must be made to remove it. He cannot forget that
many abuses have been got rid of by these means, and he profits by the
lesson to attack those which remain. It is their extinction at which he
aims. Earnestness, enthusiasm, and devotion to principle are his
weapons, and these he will not waste in fruitless longings after a
perfect State, but will use them to make the State we possess as perfect
as is possible. In all things he will aim at the practical; he will
remember that compromise is not necessarily cowardly, and that it is
possible for those who disagree with him to be as honest in their views
and as pure in their aims as himself. And in striving for the greatest
happiness of the greatest number, he will never forget that the greatest
number is all.
The answer may be made that this is an ideal Radical, and that the real
article is very different. So many have been taught to think, but they
are wrong. There are some rough diamonds in the Radical party, it is
true; but, so long as they be diamonds, we can afford to wait a little
for the polish. They are bigoted it may be said, and bigotry is hateful.
But bigots are just as useful to a reform as backwoodsmen to a new
community; they clear away obstacles from which gentler men would
shrink; rough and occasionally awkward to deal with, they make the
pathways along which others can move.
But, it is sometimes asked, where are the old philosophical
Radicals--men of the stamp of Bentham, and Grote, and James Mill? Dead,
all of them, having done their life's work faithfully and well; and
their successors have to look at politics from the standpoint of
to-day, and not of half a century ago. And when the Tories say that
these were especially admirable men, it must not be forgotten that their
ideas were as strongly opposed and their persons as bitterly assailed by
the Tories of their own day as are the ideas and the persons of the
unphilosophical Radicals--if they are to be called so--of this present
year of grace.
The Radicals of to-day have their faults, and there shall be no attempt
to conceal them. Many who call themselves by the name discredit it by
impatience of opposition, readiness to attribute interested motives to
those differing from them, and intolerance towards those who exercise in
another direction what they emphatically claim for themselves--absolute
freedom of thought, speech, and action. Some among them also are prone
to be led aside by a catching phrase, without troubling to ask what it
really means; and, in order to strengthen their forces, allow themselves
to be connected with any movement that may for the moment be popular.
And even more, but these of a much higher stamp, are carried away by the
dangerous delusion that in any political system can be found perfect
happiness.
No honest Radical will deny the existence of these faults or be offended
that they should be pointed out. But the essential purity of aim and
depth of honest fervour possessed by the Radicals of this country
deserves all recognition. At heavy sacrifice to themselves they have led
the van in every great political movement, and their instinct has been
proved to be right. They have held aloft the lamp of liberty in times of
depression when Liberals of feebler soul would have hidden it beneath a
bushel in the hope of brighter days. And, even were their failings more
far-reaching than any that can be urged against them, their services as
pioneers of freedom would entitle them to the heartiest thanks of all
who have entered into their heritage because of the efforts the Radicals
have made.
Radicals and Liberals, then, are agreed as to principle though they
differ in methods, for the Liberal is a very good lantern, but a lantern
which requires lighting; and it is the Radical who strikes the match.
IX.--WHAT ARE THE LIBERALS DOING?
There has now been told a great deal about the principles which the
Liberals entertain, and a list has been given of the many glorious
things the Liberals have done; but the question of greatest immediate
interest is what the Liberals are doing, for we cannot live upon the
exploits of the past, but upon the performances of the present and the
promises of the future.
Although the Liberals at this moment are concentrating their main
attention upon the question of self-government for Ireland, there are
other important matters affecting the remainder of the United Kingdom
which occupy a place in their thoughts, and which will form their future
party "cry."
It has, of course, often been remarked that men when in Opposition call
out for a great deal which they fail to accomplish when in office; but
discredit does not of necessity ensue. It certainly shows that in
certain instances men do not come up to their ideal, but does that prove
the ideal to be wrong? Does it not rather prove that those who adopted
it, like mortal men everywhere and in all ages, were fallible? Despite
every drawback and every backsliding--and such drawbacks and
backslidings are admittedly many--it is better to have a high ideal and
fail frequently to attain it, than to have no definiteness of purpose
and take the chance of blundering into the right.
None should think lightly of the power of a popular cry. It was with the
shout of the leading tenet of their new creed that the Arabs fought
their way from Mecca to Madrid; it was with the exclamation "Jerusalem
is lost!" that the Crusaders marched across Europe to battle with the
Saracen; it was with the device "For God and the Protestant Religion"
that William of Orange swept the Stuarts out of Britain; and it was with
the burning words of the "Marseillaise" that the raw levies of France
defied and defeated the trained armies of Europe. For the popular cry
voices the popular emotion, and when the popular emotion is at its
height its force is irresistible.
To touch the heart of the people must, therefore, be one aim of any
democratic party; and that is why the politician who makes no allowance
for human passion, prejudice, or prepossession is a mere dreamer, who
deserves and is bound to fail. The fashion of the German philosopher
who, on being asked to describe a camel, evolved the animal from his
inner consciousness, is that in which some of our political guides
create their ideas of the world around them. They sit in the same
armchair as of old, and do not perceive how the conditions have changed.
They continue to imagine that the clique of some club-house controls
public events, and that the whisper of the party whip is all-powerful
with the constituencies. They do not recognize that voters are not now
an appanage of the Reform or the Carlton, because the groove they have
hollowed out for themselves is too deep to allow them to look over the
edge. But in nothing more than in politics is it true that the proper
study of mankind is man.
And, if one moves among the masses of his fellows, he will find a
growing desire to put to practical use the tools the State has given
them. Household suffrage and the ballot were not an end but a means, and
the question which politicians should ask themselves in this day of
comparative quiet is to what end these means shall be put. Those who
talk with working men know that there is a vague discontent with things
as they are, which, if not directed into proper channels, may become
dangerous, for in many quarters the old ignorant impatience of taxation
is giving place to an ignorant impatience of the rich. No good will come
of shutting our eyes to the existence of this feeling; the question is
how in the fairest and fittest manner it can be eradicated.
It must not be forgotten that the working classes have only recently
obtained direct political power, and that there is still much
uncertainty among them as to the best uses to which it can be put. There
would be nothing immoral in their using that power to better their own
interests. Men, after all, are but mortal; and, just as the upper
classes before 1832 used the power of Parliament to further their own
ends, and just as later the middle classes, when they were uppermost,
attended carefully to themselves, so the working classes will do when
they recognize their strength. And this is only saying that men being as
they are, "Number One" will be the most prominent figure in their
political calculations, whether that number represents a peer of the
realm or a labourer on the roads.
This is not the place to enter into the question of how far the State
ought to interfere with social problems. The fact to be emphasized is
that there is an increasing body of opinion, especially among the
working classes, that certain social problems will have to be attended
to. Any politician who attempts to forecast the future--more especially
any Liberal who wishes to draw up a party programme--must recognize
this, and act according to his convictions after fully considering it.
The politics of the future will, therefore, have a distinctly social
tinge, but they must include also many questions which are regarded
to-day, and will continue to be regarded, as of a partisan character. It
is requisite, then, to the right understanding of Liberal policy that a
broad view should be taken of the matters which are likely within no
distant date to become planks of the party platform. Calm discussion now
may save misapprehension then, and if we can see exactly whither we are
going, we shall be able with the more certainty to pursue our journey.
And if, in the course of the discussion, what at the first blush appears
an extreme view is taken, remember always the old truth that half a loaf
is better than no bread--that is, if the half-loaf be good bread and
honestly earned, and not to be accepted as an equivalent for the whole,
if that be wished for and attainable.
Subject to this condition, the Liberal party can do no better than
consider what is likely to come within the scope of its future
exertions; and although it is right to take up one thing at a time in
order that that one thing may be done well, good will be effected by at
once endeavouring to answer the main questions now before us. Upon the
spirit in which these are discussed, and the manner in which they are
replied to, much of the future of popular government in England will
depend. The scientific naturalist of to-day tells us that it is an idle
fable which states that the ostrich hides its head in the sand with the
idea of escaping observation; but really so many of our leading
politicians execute a variation of this manoeuvre in regard to the
questions of the future, that the ostrich need not be ashamed to be
stupid in such eminent company.
A preliminary to the discussion in detail of questions which go to the
root of many of the most important matters in politics is a resolution
not to be led aside from any course one may think right by the fear of
being called hard names, or by the use of certain venerable but
weather-worn phrases. It is so easy to endeavour to damage political
opponents by applying to them such names as Separatists or Socialists,
Atheists or Revolutionaries, that one cannot wonder that the practice is
frequently adopted by the Tory party. But hard words break no bones, and
the politician who is frightened by a nickname may be a very estimable
person, but he is no good in a fight.
Similarly we can afford to despise certain of the phrases which with
some politicians do duty for argument. No one should be turned back from
doing what he thought to be right in the circumstances of to-day by
being reminded of that mysterious entity "the wisdom of our ancestors."
What sane man would conduct a shop as it was conducted 500 years since?
And where would science be if we still swore by the skill of the
alchemists? Accumulated experience in the varied transactions of life is
held to improve man's judgment and capacity; why should it not be
similarly held to improve the judgment and capacity of States? Let any
one who sighs after the wisdom of our ancestors apply in imagination the
political maxims in vogue even a hundred years ago to the affairs of
this present, and then let him say honestly whether he would wish by
them to be governed.
Another fine-crusted example of a worn-out phrase is that in praise of
"the good old times." We are invited to believe that in some unnamed
age, England was better and brighter, and her people happier and richer,
than to-day, and mainly because rulers were obeyed in all things and no
questions asked. But particulars are lacking; and these sketches of the
glories of "the good old times" are like nothing so much as Chinese
pictures, displaying an abundance of colour but no perspective, an
amazing imagination but an absence of exact likeness to anything ever
seen by mortal man.
"Dangerous innovations" also is a phrase at which no one should be
alarmed. No great good has ever been accomplished without many excellent
persons considering it a "dangerous innovation." The Scribes and the
Pharisees, and, after them, the Roman Empire, denounced and persecuted
the Christian religion upon this ground; the most powerful Church in
Christendom, with similar belief and similar lack of success, used every
engine at its command to suppress the Reformation. As in religious so in
political affairs. King John would doubtless have described Magna Charta
in just such terms; the partisans of Charles the First certainly held
that opinion concerning the demand of Parliament to control the Church,
the army, and the monarchy itself; the opponents of every measure of
reform--political, social, or religious--have used the phrase. From the
greatest to the smallest reform it has been the same. In the early years
of this century a Parochial Schools Bill, because it did not give all
power to the clergy, was opposed by the then Archbishop of Canterbury
with the words, "Their lordships' prudence would, and must, guard
against innovations that might shake the foundations of religion." When,
in later times, gas was introduced, the aristocratic dwellers in western
London protested with equal force against such an innovation as the new
illuminant; and Lord Beaconsfield, in the opening chapters of the last
of his novels, sketched with ironic pen the attempts of high-born ladies
to prevent the spread of light. Thus, in things sublime and in things
ridiculous, the cry of "dangerous innovation" has been raised until it
has been rendered contemptible.
Equally futile is the fear that the Liberals are about to propose "the
impossible." There is nothing in politics to which that word can be
applied, as even the most cursory study of our history will show. When
men say that certain measures can "never" be carried, they are more
likely to be wrong than right. In 1687 it would have been deemed
impossible to place the Crown upon a strictly parliamentary basis; in
1689 this was accomplished. In 1830 the most sanguine reformer scarcely
dared hope that borough-mongering would in his lifetime be destroyed,
and the first popularly elected Parliament was chosen in 1832. In 1865,
none could have dreamed that household suffrage in the boroughs was
near; in 1867 it was adopted by a Tory Government. In 1867 he would have
been a hardy prophet who would have foretold the speedy downfall of the
Irish Episcopal Establishment; and the Act of Disestablishment was
placed upon the statute book in 1869. Such instances should of a surety
teach men to be modest in their forecasts of what is possible in
politics.
In, therefore, pursuing our search into the why and the wherefore of the
politics of the future, we must put aside phrases and come to facts. The
phrases will die, but the facts will remain; and the more closely we
grasp these latter the more certain will those Liberal principles which
have done so much for the past, do even more for the future.
And, when we come to the facts, we must not forget that a political
question is not necessarily unpractical because it cannot be immediately
dealt with; for good is accomplished by the calm discussion of points
which are bound some time to be raised, and which, if undebated now, may
be settled in a gust of popular passion. As Mr. John Morley has well
observed--"The fact that leading statesmen are of necessity so absorbed
in the tasks of the hour furnishes all the better reason why as many
other people as possible should busy themselves in helping to prepare
opinion for the practical application of unfamiliar but weighty and
promising suggestions, by constant and ready discussion of them upon
their merits."
X.--SHOULD HOME RULE BE GRANTED TO IRELAND?
The question of Irish self-government is for the present the greatest
that concerns the Liberal party, and in current politics, as Mr.
Gladstone has truly and tersely put it, Ireland blocks the way. This, of
course, is not so simply because Mr. Gladstone said it, and even less is
it so because he wished it. The question stands in the path of all other
great measures of legislative reform, for the sufficient reason that, at
the first opportunity after the franchise was enjoyed by every
householder, Ireland declared emphatically, and by a majority
unparalleled in modern political history, in favour of freedom to manage
her own domestic affairs.
It must be obvious that, when all the popularly-elected members for
three out of four provinces into which one of the countries which form
this kingdom is divided, pronounce against the existing system of
government, and when a majority of those for the other province side
with them, that that system cannot continue to exist with the good will
of those whom it most intimately affects, and can only be maintained by
force. Such as have followed Mr. Gladstone in this matter do not believe
in the maintenance of a government against the constitutionally declared
will of the governed, and are agreed that the Irish demand for the
management of purely domestic affairs ought to be granted on the grounds
of justice, expediency, and sound Liberal principles.
They hold that to grant the demand would be just, because under the
present system the vast majority of Irishmen have no practical control
over those by whom they are governed; that it would be expedient,
because the kingdom is weakened by the continual disaffection of one of
its component parts; and that it would accord with sound Liberal
principles, in that the overwhelming majority of the Irish electorate
have asked for Home Rule through the constitutional medium of the
ballot-box.
"The liberty of a people," says Cowley, "consists in being governed by
laws which they have made themselves, under whatever form it be of
government." This definition, which applies strictly to England, applies
not at all to Ireland. The English system of government has broken down
there so completely that all parties profess to be agreed that something
must be devised in its place. Liberals have always held that a people or
a class knows better what is good for it than any other people or any
other class, however enlightened or well-meaning. That has been one of
the main reasons for giving the suffrage to the poor, the ignorant, and
the helpless, because the experience of ages has taught that the rich,
the educated, and the powerful, while well able to take care of
themselves, are either too careless or have too little knowledge to take
the same care of others. And as with the suffrage, so with
self-government. Any extension must be granted upon broad principles:
small concessions grudgingly given are always accepted without
gratitude, and used to extort greater.
"Well," it may be said, "I am willing to give Ireland a large measure of
self-government, but I won't yield to agitators." This is one of the
oldest of all replies to demands for reform. How could anything be
gained in politics without agitation? The Tories swear they will yield
nothing until agitation has ceased; and if it ceases, if only for a
moment, they declare it is evident there is no popular wish for reform.
"Proceed, my lords," said Lord Mansfield, when the American colonies
revolted--"proceed, my lords, with spirit and firmness; and when you
shall have established your authority, it will then be time to show
lenity." And their lordships proceeded; but the "time to show lenity"
never came, for it was such counsels which lost the American colonies to
the British Crown.
"But," it will be added, "this is not an ordinary agitation; it is a
revolutionary one." In some of its phases that is true, and it is all
the more reason why its cause should be closely examined. It is the
English themselves who have taught the Irish that ordinary
constitutional agitation gains them nothing. If it had not been for the
organization of the Volunteers, Grattan's Parliament of 1782 would never
have been granted; the Duke of Wellington in 1829 admitted that he
yielded Catholic Emancipation to the threat of civil war; it needed the
terrible crimes of the early "thirties" to arouse England to the
necessity for abolishing an iniquitous system of levying tithe; the
Fenian outbreaks, the attack on a prison van at Manchester, and the
blowing up of a gaol in London, opened the eyes of the English to the
need for disestablishing the Irish Church and clipping the claws of the
Irish landlords; the fearful winter of 1880 led to the granting of still
further protection to the tenants; and to the "plan of campaign" of the
winter of 1886 was it owing that a Tory Government felt compelled to
still further encroach upon the property and privileges of the landlords
of Ireland. As long as Ireland has held to constitutional agitation--as
witness that for Catholic Emancipation from 1801 to 1825, and that for
tenant right from 1850 to 1868--so long has England refused to grant a
single just demand; and this is exactly what the Tories are doing now.
Is it any wonder that Irish agitation should have become revolutionary
when that is the only kind we have rewarded? In the relations between
the governing classes and popular movements there has all through been
this difference--in England, revolution has been staved off by reform;
in Ireland, reform has been staved off till there was revolution.
"But," it may be continued, "it is not so much that the agitation is
revolutionary as that it is criminal which makes me object." But a
movement ought not to be called criminal because of the excesses of a
few of its extreme partisans. No great popular agitation has ever been
free from lewd fellows of the baser sort, who have given occasion to the
enemy to blaspheme. But did English Liberals hesitate to support Mazzini
because he was accused of favouring assassination; to sympathize with
the French Republicans because Orsini prepared bombs for the destruction
of Napoleon III.; or to-day to wish well to those Russians who conspire
for liberty because the wilder spirits among them have assassinated one
Czar and attempted to assassinate another? In our own history, are the
Covenanters to be condemned because some of them murdered Archbishop
Sharpe; the early Radicals because Thistlewood and his fellows plotted
to kill King and Cabinet; the Reformers of 1831 because of the Bristol
riots and the destruction of Nottingham Castle; or those of 1866 because
the Hyde Park railings were thrown down? When it is remembered that even
such a man as Peel could, in the midst of a heated controversy, accuse
such another as Cobden of conniving at assassination, we should be
careful how we accept the testimony of any partisan concerning the
criminality of an agitation to which he is opposed.
These objections touch, after all, only the fringe of the matter, and
another which is frequently urged--that the Irish agitation is a
"foreign conspiracy" because it receives aid from the United
States--does not go much closer to the root. But this, like the others,
may be disposed of by English examples. Did not Englishmen aid, both by
men and money, in liberating Greece and uniting Italy? Did they not help
by subscriptions the insurrections in Hungary and Poland, and, when the
former failed, did not many of them take the refugees into their homes?
Did they not even raise a fund to assist the slave-holding States when
in rebellion? And in all these cases, except in a remote degree the
last, they had no tie in blood, but only one in sympathy, with those
concerned. That the Nationalist movement has been largely aided from the
United States is undoubted; but that aid has mainly come from those of
Irish birth or parentage who have been driven across the Atlantic to
seek a home. And when it is said that, because of this help, a
self-governed Ireland would rely upon the United States to the detriment
of England, may we not ask why it is that Italy does not rely upon
France, though it was France that struck the first effective blow for
Italian unity; or Bulgaria upon Russia, though without the
blood-sacrifice of Russia that principality would never have occupied a
place on the European map? However much it may be to be regretted,
gratitude does not play any large part in international affairs.
When the more serious objections to the granting Home Rule are urged
they are no more difficult to meet. "Ireland is not a nation," it is
said; "its people are of different races." The argument has been used
before by the Tories, and the value of it may be judged by an example.
The late Lord Derby, as leader of the Tory party, addressed the House of
Lords in 1860 in savage denunciation of the efforts then being made to
secure the unity of Italy; and to the contention that all the
inhabitants of that peninsula were Italians, he answered, in the words
of _Macbeth_ to his hired murderers,
Aye, in the catalogue ye go for men;
As hounds and greyhounds, mongrels, spaniels, curs,
Shoughs, water-rugs, and demi-wolves are cleped
All by the name of dogs.
And those who remember the unbridgeable differences which then appeared
to exist between the Sardinian and the Sicilian, the Florentine and the
Neapolitan, the dweller in Venice and the resident in Rome, will know
that the perfect unity between them which now makes Italy one of the
Great Powers would have been considered as unlikely as any between a
Belfast man and an inhabitant of Cork to-day.
"The Irish are not fit for self-government," is the next contention. If
this be so, the shame is ours in not having given them the opportunity
for being trained. We did not refuse to liberate the slaves until they
were proved to be fit for freedom; we did not decline to give the
labourers the suffrage until they were proved to be capable of rightly
using it; for we knew in each case that no such proof could be afforded
until the opportunity was offered. No proof that the Irish are not able
to manage a Parliament is given by the corruption of the
semi-independent body which they enjoyed from 1782 to 1799; for that
consisted entirely of Protestants, mainly chosen by a band of
borough-mongers, whom Pitt had to buy out at a high price. The same
thing exactly was said by the Tories--sneers about the pigs and all--of
the Bulgarians in 1876; and they have had good reason since to change
their minds. What reason is there to believe that the Irish would be
less able to manage their own affairs than the people of Bulgaria?
"But they are naturally lawless." Where is the proof? It is true that in
certain mountainous districts of Kerry and Clare there have been
outbursts of moonlighting, but these have been as nothing compared with
the prevalence of brigandage in Greece before the Greeks were allowed to
rule themselves, or in Italy before the Italians founded their united
kingdom. Where there is little popular respect for the law, there
lawlessness flourishes; where the people make their own laws, there
lawlessness is put down with a strong hand.
"If they had the power they would persecute the Protestants." This is a
prophecy, and a prophet has the advantage of being able to soar above
proofs. But the fact that every prominent defender of national rights in
Ireland for the last century and a half, except O'Connell, from Dean
Swift down to Mr. Parnell, has been a Protestant, should count for
something. The fact that Protestants have again and again been returned
to the Corporations of the most Catholic cities should count for much.
And the fact that, when for years not a single one of the 450 English
members was a Roman Catholic, several of the 103 Irish members, even
from the most Catholic districts, were Protestants, should count for
more. Such religious persecution as exists in Ireland is certainly more
at Belfast than at Cork.
"Giving them a Parliament would break up the empire." Why should the
empire be broken up because there was extended to Ireland the principle
we have granted to Australia and Canada, New Zealand and the Cape? How
is it that the German Empire continues united, though the Reichstag, its
Imperial Parliament, is one body, and the Prussian Parliament, the Saxon
Parliament, the Wuertemberg Parliament, and the Bavarian Parliament are
quite others? Is there no union between Austria and Hungary, or between
Sweden and Norway, though each has its Parliament, and are the United
States disintegrated because every one of the States has its own Senate
and House of Representatives? If one were asked to name two of the
strongest nations outside our own, Germany and the United States would
be the reply; and in each there is a system of Home Rule for the
separate portions.
"But did not the United States crush the Confederates when secession
was demanded?" Of course they did; the United States fought against the
South separating from the North, as we should against Ireland separating
from England. But every State which joined the Confederacy possessed as
ample a measure of Home Rule as the Liberals now propose for Ireland;
and, to the lasting honour of the Northern States, that measure was
restored soon after the war. Home Rule the South had, and has still;
separation the South asked for, and did not receive.
"The Irish are ungrateful people; whatever you give them they ask for
more." Would it not be well to first ask what the Irish have had to be
grateful for? Granting that we yielded Catholic Emancipation, reformed
the tithe system, disestablished the Church, and legalized tenant right;
why, after all these things, should we expect gratitude? The old phrase
that "gratitude is a lively sense of favours to come" may be unduly
cynical; but is it not absurd to ask that recompense for the doing of
acts of simple justice? Former generations of Englishmen deprived the
Irish of their rights. To what thanks are later generations entitled for
simply restoring to the Irish the rights of which they had been robbed?
"Be just and fear not," was said of ancient time: "Be just and expect
not gratitude," should be added to-day. And when it is stated that "the
Irish ought to accept what we choose to give them," it must be replied
that this is the purely despotic argument which has already done England
sufficient injury by losing her the United States.
It is only in this, the briefest, fashion that an answer has been
sketched to the various arguments and assumptions against Home Rule. In
determining to grant it, the Liberals are acting strictly according to
their old policy of favouring struggling nationalities. The support
given by Burke to the cause of America; by Fox to Ireland; by Canning
(in this, as in some other matters, truly Liberal) to Greece; by
Palmerston to Italy; and by Mr. Gladstone to Bulgaria, indicates with
sufficient clearness the traditional Liberal position. For a century we
have been telling the whole world the advantages of autonomy; are we
now to decline to adopt, in similar circumstances, the remedy for
discontent we have all along preached to, and sometimes forced upon,
others?
The Liberals say with Landor, "Let us try rather to remove the evils of
Ireland than to persuade those who undergo them that there are none."
They are utterly opposed to the idea that it is right to give a people
free representation and then deliberately to ignore all that that
representation asks. They are, it is true, in a minority at this moment,
but they do not forget that all great causes have three stages--first to
be laughed at, next to be looked at, and last to be loved. Home Rule has
certainly reached the second stage; it will soon reach the third. The
Liberals have been beaten before, but they have always won in the end.
And it is well to be beaten sometimes. If life were all sunshine we
should find it oppressive; an occasional cloud serves to temper the
heat. To the Liberals, as to nature itself, a misty morning is often the
prelude to the brightest day.
XI.--WHAT SHOULD BE DONE WITH THE LORDS?
In dealing with the other questions which the Liberals will have to
consider, it will be well to take them in what may be called their
constitutional order, and a beginning, therefore, may be made with the
reform of the House of Lords. The theory upon which that House is upheld
is that it is an assembly of our most notable men, called to rule either
by descent from the great ones of the past, or by the proved capacity of
themselves in the present, who discuss every question laid before them
with impartiality, and who act as a check upon the hasty and
ill-considered legislation of the House of Commons.
So much for the theory: what of the fact? Those peers who are not
creations of to-day mainly spring either from Pitt's plutocrats or from
those who have been granted their patents because of having lavishly
spent their money in electoral support of some party; those who can
claim their peerage by direct descent from the great ones of the past
can be numbered by tens, while the whole body is numbered by hundreds;
and just as a sprinkling of successful lawyers, soldiers, and brewers
adds nothing to its historical character, it in no sense brings the
peerage into clear and close contact with the people. As to the
impartiality displayed by the House of Lords, it is notorious that in
these days it is little other than an appanage of the Carlton Club, and
that, whatever the Tory whips desire it to do, it accomplishes without
demur. And its power as a check upon hasty and ill-considered
legislation may be judged from the fact that it never dares reject a
measure which public opinion strongly demands and upon which the Commons
insist.
When the history of the House of Lords is studied, it will be found
that during the past century it has initiated no great measure for the
public good, and a hundred times has wantonly mutilated or impotently
opposed the reforms the people asked. The mischief it has done touches
every department of public life. Whether it was to throw out a bill
abolishing the penalty of death for stealing in a shop to the value of
five shillings, on the ground stated by one of the bishops in the
majority that it was "too speculative to be safe;" to again and again
vote down every proposal to relieve Roman Catholics and Jews from civil
disabilities; to pander to the will of George IV. in the prolonged
persecution of his wife; or to defeat measures calculated to place the
electoral power in the hands of the people--the House of Lords has
always been one of the main forces in the army of darkness and
oppression. Remember that every one of the reforms the Liberals have
secured within the last 50 years has been distasteful to the House of
Lords, and calculate the worth or wisdom of that institution.
It does not add to the estimation of either the worth or the wisdom that
the Lords have ultimately accepted what they have bitterly opposed, for
if they have consistently been a stumbling-block in the path of every
reform which the people now cherish their tardy repentance is of little
avail as long as they pursue the same obstructive course. And it is not
merely measures which they throw out, but measures which they mutilate,
that render them a power for harm. For the Lords are like rabbits; it is
not so much what they swallow as what they spoil which makes them so
destructive.
Those who defend the institution as it exists should, therefore, be
called upon to point to some one definite case in recent history in
which it can be said, "Here has the House of Lords done good." Mere talk
about the admirable administrators and the dexterous debaters it
contains is no argument; for if the legislative functions of the peers
were abolished to-morrow, those among them who were worthy a seat in the
House of Commons would have no difficulty in securing it. What Liberals
object to is the being subjected to the caprices, the passions, and the
prejudices of some five hundred men, the majority of whom are not
merely unskilled in legislative faculty and unqualified in
administrative experience, but are drawn from a single class out of
touch and sympathy with the mass of the people.
It is not the least of the evils of the present system that the
attendance at the sittings of the Lords is of so perfunctory a nature.
Even during the discussion of important measures not more than sixty or
seventy peers, out of over five hundred, are commonly present, while ten
or twelve is not an unusual number to deal with Bills. As Erskine May
has pointed out, "Three peers may wield all the authority of the House.
Nay, even less than that number are competent to pass or reject a law,
if their unanimity should avert a division, on notice of their imperfect
constitution." And he furnishes an instance where an Irish Land Bill,
"which had occupied weeks of discussion in the Commons, was nearly lost
by a disagreement between the two Houses, the numbers, on a division,
being seven and six."
Adding to their number does not improve the average attendance, and yet
the pace at which that number is growing is a scandal. In 1885, the
first time since 1832, the total membership of the House of Commons was
enlarged, not without trepidation and despite the fact that every member
would be directly responsible to a constituency. The increase was only
twelve, and a Premier often creates within a year as many legislators on
his own account, who, with their successors, are responsible to no one
for their public conduct. Is it not an absurdity to speak of ourselves
as freely governed and ruled only by our own consent when a Prime
Minister can make as many legislators as he chooses, and there be none
to gainsay him?
If it were only that under the present system the drunken and the
dissolute, the blackleg and the debauchee are allowed to sit in the
Lords and make laws for us and our children, we should have a right to
demand that the institution should be "mended or ended." The former
process has now distinctly been adopted as a plank in the Liberal
platform, and the question of reform can, therefore, no longer be put on
one side.
There are many Radicals who say that as the House of Lords, if it agrees
with the Commons, is useless, and if it disagrees is dangerous, its
abolition as a legislative body should at once be made a plank in the
party programme. They argue further, that to reform will be to
strengthen it, and that, by the reasoning just given, this is
undesirable. But the main point is to secure the best legislative
machine we can, and there is much to be said for the improvement of the
House of Lords into a Senate which shall be in fact what the present
institution is in theory--a body of sage statesmen, experienced in
affairs, and elected for a specified term, so as to be directly amenable
to the people, and not removed from obedience to public opinion.
As a first step to any reform, the creation of hereditary peerages,
conferring a power to legislate, ought to be stopped. "The tenth
transmitter of a foolish face" ought no longer to be able to transmit
with the foolishness a power over the lives and liberties of his
fellow-men. If there is any one who continues honestly to believe that
because a man has secured a peerage by his brains (and the proportion of
creations upon that ground is exceeding small) his successors are likely
to prove good legislators, he would do well to procure a list of those
peers who are descended from "law lords;" and he would find that while
not one of them is distinguished for great political or administrative
skill, there are various notorious instances, which will occur to every
reader of the daily newspaper, of those distinguished for exactly the
reverse.
One minor reform in the constitution of the House of Lords ought to be
pressed at once, and that is the removal of the bishops from their
present place within it. Not only has no one section of religious
persons the right to a State-created ascendency over others, but all
parties are agreed in the most practical form that bishops as bishops
have no inherent right to legislative power. In 1847, when the bishopric
of Manchester was created, it was provided that the junior member of the
episcopal bench for the time being should not have a seat in the Lords,
and thirty years later, when the Government of Lord Beaconsfield made
further new bishoprics, it similarly did not venture to add to the
number of spiritual peers; there are consequently always four or five
waiting outside the gilded chamber until the death of their seniors
shall let them in.
What Liberals, therefore, demand is that the House of Lords shall be
thoroughly reformed. The bishops must be excluded, no more hereditary
legislators created, and a system devised by which the House shall
become a Senate so chosen as to be directly responsible to the people,
whose interests it is assumed to serve. A sprinkling of life peers would
aggravate instead of lessen the difficulty. An hereditary legislator
may, for the sake of his successors, be careful not too grievously to
offend the people; an elected legislator, for his own sake, will be the
same; but a legislator who was neither one nor the other would have no
such check, and all experience has shown that corporations elected for
life become cliquish or even corrupt, for want of the frequent and
wholesome breeze of public opinion.
XII.--IS THE HOUSE OF COMMONS PERFECT?
There was a time, and that not far distant, when the question "Is the
House of Commons perfect?" would have been considered by many
well-intentioned and easy-going persons to be impertinent, even if not
actually irreverent. But we live in days when every institution has to
submit to the test of free discussion, and its usefulness and efficiency
have to be proved, if it is to retain its place in the political system.
And as there can be little doubt that, for many reasons, a feeling has
been widely growing within the past few years that the House of Commons
is neither as useful nor as efficient as it ought to be, the popular
reverence for that great assembly has somewhat diminished; and it
behoves all who wish to preserve parliamentary government in its fullest
and freest form to examine the causes of apparent decay and to suggest
methods of amelioration.
The preservation intact of the powers and privileges of the House of
Commons must be the desire of every lover of freedom; but the conduct of
its business must be brought into harmony with modern methods, and the
mechanical side of the assembly made as perfect as possible. Not from me
will fall one word derogatory to the venerable "mother of free
parliaments." The House of Commons has done too much for England, its
example has done too much for liberty the wide world through, to allow
any but the ribald and the unthinking to speak lightly of its history or
scornfully of its achievements. For the People's Chamber is not merely
the most powerful portion of the High Court of Parliament; it is not
alone the central force of the British Constitution, to which kings and
nobles have had, and may again have, to bow; it is the directly elected
body before whose gaze every wrong can be displayed, and to whose power
even the humblest can look for redress. It deals forth justice to the
myriad millions of India as to a solitary injured Englishman; it is a
sounding board which echoes the claims of a single peasant or an entire
people; and it practically commands the issues of peace and war,
involving the fate of thousands, and of life and death, involving that
of only one. No policy is vast beyond its conception, no person
insignificant beyond its sight. It is a mighty engine of freedom,
responsive to the heart-throbs and aspirations of a whole people, which
has baffled tyrants, liberated slaves, and raised England to that
position among the nations which our children and our children's
children should be proud to maintain.
Such is the assembly which needs reform. Often enough and with much
success has there been raised a cry for "parliamentary reform," but this
has meant an amendment of the method of electing members, not of the
manner of conducting business; and it is this latter which now is
urgently required. The stately ship which has sailed the ocean of public
affairs for six centuries has naturally attracted weeds and barnacles
which cling to its hull and retard its progress. These must be swept
away if the vessel is to pursue a safe and speedy course; and as little
irreverence is involved in the process as in cleaning and repairing the
old _Victory_ herself.
The cardinal defect of the existing system is that it strives to do
modern work by ancient modes, an attempt which is as certain to fail in
public concerns as it would be if any one were sufficiently ill-advised
to try it in private. And when there is contemplated on the one side the
vast and growing mass of affairs cast upon the consideration of
Parliament, and on the other the rusty and creaking machinery employed
to cope with it, little wonder can be felt that much needful work is
left undone, and a deal of that which is accomplished is done badly.
By granting to Ireland the right to manage her domestic affairs, and by
providing some system by which England, Scotland, and Wales can in local
assemblies each deal for herself with her own concerns, much will be
accomplished in the way of real parliamentary reform. But even then more
will remain to be done. The multiplied stages of each measure laid
before the House of Commons must be lessened. It is possible to-day to
have a debate and a division upon the motion for leave to introduce a
bill, upon the first reading, the second reading, the proposal to go
into committee, the report stage, the third reading, and the final
proposition "That the bill do pass," while financial bills have even
more stages to go through; and although, of course, all these
opportunities for almost unlimited obstruction are not often made use
of, they exist and should be diminished.
Another fruitful source of wasted parliamentary time is the provision
that if a bill is dropped at the end of a session, however far it may
have progressed short of actual passing, it has to be started afresh
when the House re-assembles, and every stage has to be as laboriously
again gone through as if the measure had never been heard of before. One
can understand why a new Parliament should start with a clean sheet, for
no decision of a previous one in favour of the principle of a certain
measure can bind it to pass that measure into law. But within the limits
of the same Parliament, a decision once given should be so far binding
that it should not be necessary for a bill to pass the stage of second
reading four or five years running, because effluxion of time had
prevented it passing into law during any of the sessions.
Against such waste of time as this--waste which is imposed by the very
rules under which Parliament works--the closure is no remedy. It is a
weapon with which it is right that the majority should be armed, but it
requires great skill in the wielding lest the legitimate efforts of the
minority be stifled. What is wanted is the better ordering of the whole
machine. When private bills and purely local business are taken
elsewhere, when the stages of each measure are lessened, and when bills
which have passed their second reading are not killed at the session's
end, but allowed to remain in a state of animated expectancy, even then
other means will have to be sought to make the machine move more surely
and with greater expedition.
Something has been done to this end by the earlier hour of assembling
and fixed hour of adjourning which the House has now adopted. But why
should not the process be carried further, and the affairs of the
country be settled by day instead of by night? The first answer is that
it would not be possible for a legislative body to do its business
during the day; and a sufficient answer should be that the French
Assembly and the German Reichsrath do theirs during that period. The
next is that Ministers could not get through their work if the hours of
meeting were made earlier; the reply is to the same effect--that what
French and German Ministers can accomplish, English Ministers must be
taught to do. A further contention is that such barristers and business
men as are members would not be able to attend sooner than at present;
and the answer of many as to the barristers would be that it were well
for the country if three-fourths of those in the House never attended at
all, for it is largely owing to the number of lawyers in Parliament that
the law is a complicated and costly process, often proving an engine of
injustice in the hands of the rich, and a ruinous remedy for the injured
poor; while as to the business men who cannot attend earlier than now,
their number is so exceedingly limited that their convenience ought not
to be consulted to the detriment of parliamentary institutions. There is
one more argument which would be of greater weight than all the rest if
present conditions were likely to continue, and that is, that it would
be a serious hindrance to private bill legislation, because members
would be loth to serve on committees during the time the House was
deliberating; but it is obvious to all observers of the parliamentary
machine that the greater portion of private business will have soon to
be delegated to other bodies, and the main point of an undeniably strong
argument will thus be destroyed.
But even such a reform in the hours of work would not expedite matters
to a sufficient extent, if the present power of unlimited talk be
preserved. Every member has the right of speaking once at each stage of
a bill, and as many times as he likes during committee. If the number of
stages be lessened, as they are likely to be, there will not be much to
be objected to in the continuance of this right; but its retention
should be contingent upon the shortening of each speech. This is a
proposal which can be justified on "plain Whig principles," and has
certainly a plain Whig precedent. For Lord John Russell, when Prime
Minister, brought forward in 1849 a proposal to limit the duration of
all speeches to one hour, except in the case of a member introducing an
original motion, or a minister of the Crown speaking in reply. The
proposal fell through, but that it was made by so cautious a Premier is
a proof that there is much to be said in favour of compulsorily
shortening speeches.
The proposition that Parliaments should be chosen more frequently in
order that they may preserve a closer touch with the people should be
earnestly pressed forward. In the early days of the House of Commons
annual Parliaments were practically the rule, an assembly being summoned
to vote supplies and do certain necessary business and then dissolved.
When matters were put upon a more certain footing, after the Great
Rebellion, Parliaments elected for three years were ordained, and this
term was extended to seven years shortly after the Hanoverian Accession,
in order to guard against a Jacobite success at the hustings, which
might seriously have endangered an unstable throne. The time has now
come to ask that a term adopted in a panic, and for reasons which have
long passed away, should be shortened. A four years' Parliament has been
found to be long enough for France, Germany, and the United States; and
as the average of the last half-century has proved a seven years' period
to be unnecessarily long for England, the briefer should be enacted. Now
that the suffrage is on so wide a basis, it is essential that members of
Parliament should be in as close touch with the people as possible. Once
elected, members frequently forget that they are not the masters of
those who have chosen them, and that, though called in one sense to rule
the country, there is another sense in which they are called to serve.
It is necessary that this truth should be enforced upon such members as
are apt to ignore it, and shorter Parliaments would enforce it.
There are some who believe that by payment of members a better
representation of the people would be secured. The example of other
countries can certainly be quoted in favour of such a proposition, but
there appears no necessity for any general payment in England. As,
however, it is in the highest degree desirable that representatives of
every class in the community should appear at Westminster, some
provision should be made by which members, upon making a statutory
declaration of the necessity for such a course, would be able to claim a
certain moderate allowance for their expenses during the session. There
would be nothing revolutionary in this; the fact of members being paid
would be merely a return to the practice which prevailed for close upon
four centuries after the House of Commons was established upon its
present basis.
XIII.--IS OUR ELECTORAL SYSTEM COMPLETE?
Many would be surprised if told that there remained serious deficiencies
in our electoral system; and would ask, "How can that be? We now have
the ballot at elections, household suffrage in both counties and
boroughs, and a nearer approach to equal electoral districts than the
most sanguine Radical ten or even five years ago would have thought
possible?"
But has the suffrage really been extended to every householder? As a
fact, it has not; it is largely a merely nominal extension; and tens of
thousands of qualified citizens are disfranchised for years at a time by
the needless restrictions and petty technicalities which now clog the
electoral law. Registration should be so simplified that every qualified
person would be certain of finding his name on the list; and the duty of
compiling a correct register should be imposed upon some local public
official, compelled under penalty to perform it.
The common belief is that a twelvemonth's occupation qualifies for a
vote, but all that it does is to qualify for a place on the register,
which is an altogether different matter, the register being made up
months before it comes into operation. At the very least, a man must
have gone into a house a year and a half before he has a vote for it,
and it often happens that he has to be in it for two years and a
quarter, and even more, before he possesses the franchise. Let me state
such a case. A man goes into a house at the half-quarter in August,
1888; he will not be entitled to be placed on the register in the
autumn of 1889, because he was not occupying on July 15 of the previous
year; if he continues to occupy, he will, however, be placed there in
the autumn of 1890; but it is not until January 1, 1891, that he will be
able to exercise the suffrage. So that all taking houses from July 15,
1888, are in the same position as those who take them up to July 15,
1889, and will have to wait for a vote until 1891.
"But," it may be said, "when a man once has his vote he is able to
retain it as long as he holds any dwelling by virtue of 'successive
occupation.'" That is so only as long as he remains within the
boundaries of the constituency wherein he possessed the original
qualification. He may move from one division of Liverpool to another, or
from one division of Manchester to another, or from one division of
Birmingham to another, and retain his vote by successive occupation; but
if he goes from Liverpool to Birkenhead, from Manchester to Salford, or
from Birmingham to Aston, his vote is lost for the year and a half or
the two years and a quarter before explained. The effect of this is most
apparent in London, where thousands of working men are continually
moving from one district to another, treating the whole metropolis as
one great town, but by passing out of their original borough they are
disfranchised. And this is the more a grievance because the
Redistribution Act, though dividing the larger provincial towns into
single-member districts, left them as boroughs intact; while the old
constituencies in London were not merely divided, but split up into
separate boroughs. Lambeth thus became three boroughs--Lambeth,
Camberwell, and Newington--each with its own divisions; Hackney was
severed into the boroughs of Hackney, Shoreditch, and Bethnal Green;
Marylebone into the boroughs of Marylebone, Paddington, St. Pancras, and
Hampstead; and so throughout the metropolis. And the consequence of the
purely artificial nature of the boundary lines thus created is that many
a man who merely moves from one side of the street to the other, or even
from one house to another next door, is disfranchised for a couple of
years. The obvious remedy for this peculiar evil is that London should
be treated as one single borough, like Liverpool, Manchester, and
Birmingham; but the remedy for the whole evil is that when a man has
once qualified for a place on the register, proof of successive
occupation in any part of the country should suffice to give him his
vote in the constituency to which he moves.
When we pass from the household to the lodger franchise, we are faced by
one of the hugest shams in the electoral system. There are certain
constituencies which contain hundreds of lodgers, and of these not more
than tens are on the register. The reason is twofold: it is not merely a
trouble to get a vote, but there is a yearly difficulty in retaining it.
For a lodger, as for a household vote, a twelvemonth's occupation is
necessary to qualify, and the purely nominal nature of this
qualification is the same in both; but the lodger has the additional
hardship of being deprived of even as much benefit as "successive
occupation" gives the householder, for if he moves next door, though
with the same landlord, he is disfranchised, while the landlord retains
his vote. And, further, he has to make a formal claim for the suffrage
every succeeding summer, an operation too troublesome for the vast
majority of lodgers to undergo, and one from which the householder is
spared. And thus this particular franchise is a mockery, and the
proportion of lodger voters to qualified lodgers is absurdly small.
Of course, the term "householder," equally with the term "lodger,"
presupposes at present that the one who bears it is a man, and, equally
of course, an agitation is on foot to give the franchise to women. This
is a matter which is likely to be settled in favour of the other sex,
and the only question is as to how far it should go. The extreme
advocates of female suffrage would give it to married women, but what
appears the growing opinion is that spinsters and widows, qualified for
the suffrage as men are qualified, should receive it; and this is a
settlement which will probably soon be reached.
Much dissatisfaction would continue to be felt, even were these points
granted, if "faggot-voting" were still suffered, or a single person
allowed to possess a multitude of votes. The "forty-shilling freehold"
is a prolific source of bogus qualifications: abolished in Ireland by
the Tories because it gave the people too much power, it ought to be got
rid of throughout the kingdom by the Liberals because it leaves the
people too little. For it is largely by its means that some men are able
to boast that they can exercise the franchise in six, or ten, or even a
dozen constituencies. Men of this type occupy themselves at a general
election by travelling around, dropping a vote here and a vote there,
and they ought to be restrained. That this can be done without violating
any right is evident even under the present system. However many
qualifications a man obtains, he can vote for only one of them in any
constituency; and more, if he has qualifications in every division of
the same borough he has, when the register is made up, to state for
which division he will vote, and in that division alone can he claim a
ballot paper. If it is right to prevent him from having more than a
single vote in any one division--or, which is a still stronger point, in
any one borough--it must be equally right to limit him to a single vote
throughout the country. "One man, one vote," should be the rule in a
democratic state. If a person possesses qualifications for various
constituencies, let him be called upon to do what he is now compelled to
do if he has qualifications for different parts of the same
constituency--vote for only one of them; and that one should be the
place in which he habitually resides.
An indirect method of practically securing the "one man, one vote,"
result would be to have all the elections throughout the country on the
same day. Under the existing system, the polls drag on for weeks, and
not only does this distract the attention of the nation and put a
hindrance to business for a far longer period than is necessary, but it
has the further evil effect of causing many voters in the constituencies
which are later polled to waver until they see whither the majority
elsewhere are tending, and then "go with the stream." The only instance
in recent electoral history when the later polls reversed the verdict of
the earlier was at the general election of 1885, when the boroughs,
speaking broadly, voted Tory and the counties Liberal; but that, owing
to the recent extension of the county franchise, was an abnormal period,
and the rule is that the stream gathers as it goes, and the waverers are
swept into the torrent. That it is possible for a great country to be
polled on the same day is evident from the examples of Germany and
France, and it is only adherence to worn-out forms which prevents its
accomplishment here.
The remedy, therefore, for the anomalies caused by the defective
"successive occupation," the presence of "faggot voters," and the
prolongation of the pollings, is simply to treat the kingdom as one vast
constituency, in which a man once on the register remains as long as he
has a qualification, in which no one has more than a single vote, and in
all the divisions of which the poll is taken on the same day.
This suggested single constituency would, of course, resemble the great
county and borough constituencies of to-day in having divisions, but it
would not be single in the sense proposed in Mr. Hare's original scheme
of "proportional representation," by which the possessor of a vote could
cast it where and for whom he liked. Those who have adopted Mr. Hare's
ideas, while modifying his methods, have not been successful in
discovering any feasible plan for representing public opinion in the
proportion in which it is held, the sort of Chinese puzzle proposed by
Sir John Lubbock and Mr. Courtney having failed to commend itself to any
practical politician. It is wrong, however, to imagine that the present
system of single-member districts roughly secures that the minority
shall be duly represented while the majority retains its due share of
power; for it was proved in some striking instances, the very first time
it was put in operation, that, so far from retaining, it often
sacrifices the rights of the majority. At the general election of 1885
the Liberals of Leeds cast 23,354 votes, and the Tories 19,605, and yet
the latter gained three seats and the former only two; the Sheffield
Liberals won but two seats with 19,636 votes, while the Tories secured
three with 19,594; and the Hackney Liberals could win only one seat with
9,203 votes, and the Tories two with 8,870; while, on the other side,
the Southwark Tories, with 9,324 votes, returned one member, and the
Liberals, with 9,120, returned two. The reason is obvious: a party with
overwhelming majorities in one or two districts is liable to be beaten
by narrow majorities in most of the divisions, and the minority thus
elects a majority of members. The present system, therefore, is
evidently imperfect. It was adopted in haste and without due
discussion; it has failed in France, Switzerland, and the United States;
and in at least the divided boroughs it ought to give place to double or
triple member districts.
The question of having second ballots, so as to provide that, as in
Germany and France, where there are several candidates and none secures
an absolute majority of votes given, another ballot shall be held, is
not an immediately pressing one, though much may be said in its favour;
but that of the payment of election expenses out of the rates ought to
be dealt with at once. It is highly unfair that a candidate should be
fined heavily, by the enforced payment of the official expenses, for his
desire to serve the country in Parliament; and it is the more unfair
because the official expenses of elections for town councils, school
boards, and boards of health and of guardians are paid by the public.
This fine helps to keep men of moderate means out of the House, though
their abilities might prove to be most useful there; and another method
by which the wealthy have the advantage in parliamentary contests ought
equally to be attended to. People are forbidden by law to hire
conveyances for carrying voters to the poll, but they are allowed to
borrow them, with the result that constituencies on an election day
swarm with carriages of peers and other rich people, who have nothing
whatever to do with the district, and who yet affect by this influence
the voting. The use of carriages should not be prohibited, for the aged
and infirm ought not to be disfranchised; but no importation of vehicles
should be allowed, and while an elector, and an elector only, should be
entitled to use his own, it should, as a means of identification, be
driven by himself. Such a provision would largely diminish the present
interference of peers in elections. They may address as many meetings as
they like; but, as long as they have a legislative assembly of their
own, they must not be allowed to use their wealth and position to
interfere with the voters for the Commons House of Parliament.
XIV.--SHOULD THE CHURCH REMAIN ESTABLISHED?
From the great concerns of the State it is natural to come to the
Church, and when that point is arrived at, the problem of
disestablishment at once arises. "_Can_ the Church be disestablished?"
is a question sometimes put, and the answer is plain, for that answer is
"Most certainly," and a further question "Where is the Act establishing
the Church?" as if the non-production of such an enactment would prevent
Parliament from severing the link which binds Church and State, may be
replied to by another. Supposing one asked, "Where is the Act
establishing the monarchy?" would the non-production of that measure
prove that it is not a parliamentary monarchy under which we live? By
the Act of Succession, Parliament "settled" the monarchy; by various
Acts in the reigns of Henry VIII., Edward VI., Elizabeth, and Charles
II., Parliament has "settled" the Church. There is no authority in this
realm higher than Parliament; and if Parliament chooses to "unsettle"
either monarchy or Church, it can do so.
This is no new-fangled Radical idea; it is an old Whig principle.
Charles Fox, in a debate just a century since, observed, while
favourable to the principle of religious establishments, "If the
majority of the people of England should ever be for the abolition of
the Established Church, in such a case the abolition ought immediately
to follow." Macaulay, in his essay on Mr. Gladstone's youthful book on
"Church and State," was clearly of the same opinion. And Lord
Hartington, in his declaration a few years ago that if the majority of
the people of Scotland desired disestablishment their desire ought to
be satisfied, completed the chain of Whig traditional opinion.
If upon such a matter one is not content to swear by the Whigs, the
verdict of the bishops may be accepted. Dr. Magee, of Peterborough, has
declared that "Our Church is not only catholic and national: she is
established by law--that is to say, she has entered into certain
definite relations with the State, involving on the part of the State an
amount of recognition and control, and on the part of the Church
subjection to the State."
The very use of the common term "The Church of England as by law
established" involves recognition of the fact that what the law has done
the law can undo. And if any one doubts the power of Parliament in this
matter, let him read a table of the statutes passed in the session of
1869, and he will find that the most important of all of them was "An
Act to put an end to the Establishment of the Church of Ireland." Now,
the legal position of the Irish Establishment and the English
Establishment was identical. Is any further proof required that, if
Parliament chooses, the latter can at any moment be severed from the
State?
It is sometimes said that Nonconformist bodies are equally established
with the Church because they are subject to the law, as regards the
construction of their trust-deeds, and other matters, of which the
courts of justice have occasionally to take cognizance. But that is as
if it were argued that all persons who come within the enactments
affecting the relations between employer and employed should be
considered servants of the Crown as well as those engaged in the
government offices. The difference is plain: the law regulates all, the
Government employs only some. The Crown appoints the Archbishop of
Canterbury, but has no right to choose the President of the Wesleyan
Conference; Parliament can deal with the salaries of the bishops, but
cannot touch the stipend of a single Congregational minister.
There being no doubt that, if the people will, the Church can be
disestablished, a further question remains, "Ought it to be so dealt
with?" and the reply in the affirmative is based upon the lessons of
the past, the experiences of the present, and the possibilities of the
future.
The Church, though possessed of every advantage which high position and
vast wealth could supply, has failed to be "national" in any true sense
of the word. So far from embracing the whole people, it has gradually
become but one of many sects; and, had it not been for the efforts of
those who conscientiously dissented from its doctrines and its practice,
a great portion of the religious life we see in England to-day would not
have existed. Further, and from the time of its settlement on the
present basis, it has been the consistent friend to the privileged
classes, and foe to any extension of liberties to the mass of the
people. In defence of its position and emoluments it has struck many a
blow for despotism. The harassing and often bloody persecutions of
Nonconformists and Roman Catholics in England and Wales, and of
Covenanters and Cameronians in Scotland, were undertaken at its desire
and in its defence; while the hardships and indignities inflicted for
centuries upon the Catholics of Ireland were avowedly in support of "the
Protestant interest"--a Protestantism of the Establishment, in which the
Presbyterians were allowed little share. In its pulpits were found the
most eloquent defenders of the English slave trade, which was from them
declared to be "in conformity with principles of natural and revealed
religion;" and when Romilly strove to lessen the horrors of the penal
code, its bishops again and again came to the rescue of laws the
disregard of which for the sanctity of human life can in these days
scarcely be conceived. And when it was proposed to give to some extent
the government of the country to the people whom it mainly concerned, it
was the bishops who threw out the first Reform Bill.
At this present the efforts of the better men within the Establishment
are hampered by the State connection. It cannot bring its machinery into
harmony with the growing needs of the time without appealing to a
Parliament in which orthodox and heterodox, Catholic and Atheist, Jew
and Quaker, Unitarian and Agnostic sit side by side, and to which a
Hindoo has twice narrowly escaped election. By a Prime Minister
dependent upon the will of this body its bishops are chosen; by a Lord
Chancellor equally so dependent are many of its ministers appointed.
Because of the necessity for going to Parliament for every improvement,
little improvement is made. Private patronage is left untouched; the
scandal of the sale of livings remains unchecked; criminous clerks are
often allowed to escape punishment because of the cumbrous methods now
provided; and disobedient clergymen defy their bishops and go to prison
rather than conform to discipline, the law which permits persistent
insubordination and provides an unfitting penalty remaining unaltered
because Parliament has too much to do to attend to the Church.
As to the future, things are likely to be worse instead of better. Then,
as now, the connection between State and Church will injure both--the
State because it is an injustice to all outside the Establishment that a
single sect should be propertied and privileged by Parliament, and the
Church because it is as a strong man in chains attempting to walk but
only succeeding to painfully hobble.
In how many ways disestablishment would benefit the Church, let Dr.
Ryle, Bishop of Liverpool, declare:--"(1) It would doubtless give us
more liberty, and enable us to effect many useful reforms. (2) It would
bring the laity forward into their rightful position, from sheer
necessity. (3) It would give us a real and properly constituted
Convocation. (4) It would lead to an increase of bishops, a division of
dioceses, and a reconstruction of our cathedral bodies. (5) It would
make an end of Crown jobs in the choice of bishops, and upset the whole
system of patronage. (6) It would destroy all sinecure offices, and
drive all drones out of the ecclesiastical hive. (7) It would enable us
to make our worship more elastic, and our ritual better suited to the
times." True, the bishop adds that the value of these gains must not be
exaggerated; but if disestablishment can do even as much good as this to
the Church, it cannot be the bad thing some of its opponents would have
us believe.
But it is sometimes urged that if the Church were disestablished, there
would be no State recognition of religion, and England would become
un-Christian. Is not this a technical rather than a real argument? Would
the number of Christians in this country be lessened by a single one if
the Church were deprived of State support? Was not the same thing said
when Jews were admitted to Parliament and Atheists claimed admission?
And has England ceased to be Christian because Baron de Worms is sitting
on one side of the Speaker and Mr. Bradlaugh on the other?
A more real argument is that disestablishment would break up the
parochial system; but those who use it impute a discreditable
lukewarmness to their own community. Seeing what the Wesleyans, the
Congregationalists, the Baptists, and the other dissenting denominations
have done to spread religion in every village in England and Wales; what
the Free Kirk has accomplished in Scotland; and what the Roman Catholic
Church has effected in Ireland--and all without a penny of State
endowment, and dependent alone for success upon the gifts of their
members--is it to be believed that the adherents of the Episcopal
Church, among whom are included the wealthiest men in the country, will
permit that institution to perish for lack of aid? Is not experience all
the other way? Is not that of Ireland in particular a striking testimony
to the wisdom of substituting the voluntary system for State support?
Upon this point the testimony of two Irish Protestant bishops is
abundant proof. The Bishop of Ossory, Ferns, and Leighlin averred, in
1882, that "no one could look attentively upon our Church's history
during the last ten or twelve years without perceiving that, by the good
hand of God upon them, there had been a decided growth in all that was
best and purest and most important. Never in his recollection had their
Church been more clear or united in her testimony to Christian truth, or
more faithful in every good word and work;" and Lord Plunket, the
Archbishop of Dublin, has congratulated his clergy that disestablishment
saved the Church from being involved in the land agitation, adding, "The
very disaster which seemed most to threaten our downfall has been
overruled for good."
The question is likely, however, to be considered a more immediately
pressing one for Scotland and Wales than for England. In Scotland it is
the Presbyterian and not the Episcopalian form of Christian government
which is State supported; and the fact that forms so opposed in striking
points of doctrine and practice should be established on the two sides
of the Tweed, is an interesting commentary upon the system generally.
When the majority of the members for Scotland demand disestablishment,
and press that demand upon us, it will as assuredly be granted as was
the like demand from Ireland just twenty years ago. And "the Church of
England in Wales"--supported by a small minority, and never enjoying the
confidence of the body of the people--should similarly be dealt with,
according to the wish of the Welsh parliamentary representatives.
The continued existence of the Church of England as an establishment is
the largest question of all, and it is one which politicians will have
to face, if not this year or next year, yet in the early years to come.
It is only its continued existence "as an establishment" which is in
dispute, for it would be a slanderous imputation upon its sons if it
were said that a withdrawal of State support would cause its collapse as
a religious body. The very strides it has made during the last few
years, which are sometimes urged in its defence, have been made not by
State help but by voluntary effort; and if that voluntary effort had
free scope, the good effect would be greater and more lasting.
What is wanted is that which Cavour asked, "A Free Church in a Free
State," for both would be benefited by the process, and particularly the
former. When the late Lord Beaconsfield was asked why, in the height of
Tory reaction, he made no effort to re-establish the Irish Church, he
replied that there was a difference between cutting off a man's head and
putting it on again. But the illustration was imperfect, for it is a
strange kind of decapitation which strengthens the patient; and that was
the effect in Ireland. And the Irish Church was not only disestablished
but _disendowed_. In the mind of the practical politician the two
processes are inseparable.
XV.--WOULD DISENDOWMENT BE JUST?
The question, "Would disendowment be just?" is admittedly a crucial
point to determine when the whole subject comes up for settlement, for
there are many defenders of the Establishment who exclaim, "We are quite
prepared for the severance of the Church from the State, but only upon
condition that she retains her endowments."
But the two concerns cannot be separated. Supposing the Government
engaged an officer to perform certain functions, and that, in process of
time, finding these functions not fulfilled, it determined to sever the
connection, would the officer be justified in demanding not only
consideration for his long service and his life interests, but that his
salary should be paid to himself and his descendants in perpetuity,
though directly neither he nor they would again render service to the
State? If it be contended that the illustration is not applicable,
because the Church receives no aid from the State, issue can be joined
at once.
For what is the first question that naturally arises? It is as to the
source from which the Church originally derived her revenues. "Pious
benefactors, stimulated by the wish to benefit their fellows and save
themselves," is the reply of the average Church defender. But any
attempt to prove this fails. Does a solitary person believe that every
proprietor of land in each parish of England and Wales voluntarily and
spontaneously imposed a tithe upon his possessions? Is it not an
admitted fact that it was by royal ordinance such an impost was first
levied, and by force of law that it has since been maintained?
This most ancient property of the Church in England, the tithe, is a
law-created and law-extorted impost for the benefit of a particular
sect. As far back as the Heptarchy, royal ordinances were given in
various of the kingdoms of which England was composed directing the
payment of tithes; and that the far greater portion of these were not
voluntary offerings is indicated in Hume's account of the West Saxon
grant in 854. "Though parishes," he observes, "had been instituted in
England by Honorius, Archbishop of Canterbury, two centuries before, the
ecclesiastics had never yet been able to get possession of the tithes;
they therefore seized the present favourable opportunity of making that
acquisition when a weak, superstitious prince filled the throne, and
when the people, discouraged by their losses from the Danes and
terrified with the fear of future invasions, were susceptible of any
impression which bore the appearance of religion."
When England became one kingdom, and tithes were extended by royal
decree to the whole realm, penalties soon began to be provided for
non-payment, Alfred ordaining "that if any man shall withhold his
tithes, and not faithfully and duly pay them to the Church, if he be a
Dane he shall be fined in the sum of twenty shillings, and if an
Englishman in the sum of thirty shillings;" and William the Norman,
speedily after the Conquest, directed that "whosoever shall withhold
this tenth part shall, by the justice of the bishop and the king, be
forced to the payment of it, if need be." These provisions are part of
the common law of England, and they effectually dispose of the idea that
the tithe was a voluntary offering which the farmer to-day ought to pay
because of the supposed piety of unknown ancestors.
The proceeds of the tithe--which originally, according to Blackstone,
were "distributed in a fourfold division: one for the use of the bishop,
one for maintaining the fabric of the church, a third for the poor, and
a fourth to provide for the incumbent"--were the first great source of
revenue to the Church; but in the course of centuries that revenue was
largely added to by gifts. It was not uncommon for a man to hand over
his property to a monastery upon condition that he was allowed a
sufficiency to keep him; while the money given for the provision of
masses for the dead was a considerable aid to the Church in the Middle
Ages. And as the monks were exceedingly keen traders, their wealth was
increased by farming, buying, and selling to a degree that at length
tempted the cupidity of a rapacious king. It was during that period that
our great cathedrals and all our old parish churches were built; and
when, because of a divorce dispute, the Eighth Henry resolved to cut the
Church in England altogether adrift from the Church of Rome, he adopted
a measure of Disendowment which, though not complete, was very sweeping,
and proved in the most absolute form the right of the State to deal as
it willed with the property of the Church.
In the preamble of the Act dissolving the lesser monasteries, it is
declared that "the Lords and Commons, by a great deliberation, finally
be resolved that it is and shall be much more to the pleasure of
Almighty God, and for the honour of this His realm, that the possessions
of such small religious houses, now being spent, spoiled, and wasted for
increase and maintenance of sin, should be used and committed to better
uses." The State in this asserted a right it had never forfeited, and
which, by successive Acts of Parliament, has been specifically retained.
No one to-day would defend the fashion in which Henry took property
which had been devoted to certain public uses and lavished it upon
favourites and friends. The main point, however, is not the manner of
disposal, but the fact that it could be disposed of at all; and when any
one doubts the power of the State regarding the property of the Church,
a reference to what Parliament has done in the matter is sufficient to
show constitutional precedent for Disendowment.
But though much was taken from the Church at the Reformation period,
much was left, and it was left to a body differing in many important
particulars from that which had been despoiled. As Mr. Arthur Elliott,
M.P., a Whig writer, observes in his book "The State and the Church,"
"It would be to give a very false notion of the position of the Church
towards the State to omit all mention of the sources from which, as
regards its edifices, the Church of England finds itself so
magnificently endowed. In the main, the wealth of the Church in this
respect was inherited, or rather acquired, at the time of the
Reformation, from the Roman Catholics, who had created it. The Roman
Catholics and the English nation had been formerly one and the same.
When the nation, for the most part, ceased to be Catholic, these
edifices, like other endowments devoted to the religious instruction of
the people, became the property of the Protestant Church of England, as
by law established."
The new Act of Parliament Church--for it had its doctrines and its
discipline defined by statute--became possessed, therefore, of the
cathedrals, the churches, much of the glebe, and a large portion of the
tithe that had been given or granted to the Roman Catholic communion,
which had held the ground for centuries. And succeeding monarchs, with
the exception of Mary, so confirmed and added to these gifts that "the
Judicious Hooker" was led to exclaim--"It might deservedly be at this
day the joyful song of innumerable multitudes, and (which must be
eternally confessed, even with tears of thankfulness) the true
inscription, style, or title of all churches as yet standing within this
realm, 'By the goodness of Almighty God and His servant Elizabeth, we
are.'"
And it was not only "His servant Elizabeth" who, among monarchs since
the Reformation, has assisted the Houses of the Legislature to
pecuniarily aid the Church. Queen Anne surrendered the first fruits, or
profits of one year, of all spiritual promotions, and the tithe of the
revenue of all sees, in order to create a fund for increasing the
incomes of the poor clergy; but Queen Anne's Bounty comes straight out
of the national pocket, for, had our monarchs retained this source of
income, it would have been taken into account when the Civil List was
settled at the commencement of the reign, and at least L100,000 a year
saved to the Exchequer. And the nation has even more directly helped the
fund, Parliament having, between 1809 and 1829, voted considerably over
a million towards it.
But this is not all. Dealing merely with national money appropriated to
Church purposes during the present century, it may be added that in 1818
Parliament voted a million sterling for the purpose of building
churches, that in 1824 a further sum of half a million was granted for
the same purpose, and that a subsequent amount of close upon ninety
thousand pounds has to be added to the total. And not only by large
grants did Parliament help the Church. In the old days of Protection,
when almost every conceivable article was taxed, the duty chargeable on
the materials used in the building of churches was remitted, this
amounting between 1817 and 1845 to over L336,000. A drawback was also
granted on the paper used in printing the Prayer Book, and this, while
the paper duty was levied, could scarcely have averaged less than a
thousand a year. In small things, as in great, Parliament helped the
Church, for an Act of George IV. specifically exempted from toll the
carriage and horses used by a clergyman when driving to visit a sick
parishioner.
I claim, therefore, that the State has a right to dispose of such
property of the Church as was not given to it in recent times by private
donors, knowing it would be appropriated to the purposes of a sect; and
I claim it because the tithes were law-created, because the bulk of the
possessions passed from one communion to another by force of law, and
because the State has continued to pecuniarily aid the Church throughout
the centuries during which she has existed. And, if constitutional
precedent be demanded, they are to be found in abundance upon the
statute book, notably in the measures affecting the monasteries, the
Tithe Commutation Act, and the Act putting an end to the Established
Church in Ireland.
If it be urged, as it sometimes is, that, because the original royal
ordinance enforcing tithes was granted before our regular parliamentary
system was in existence, Parliament has no power to deal with it, it
must be answered that in all matters within these realms, touching
either life or property, Parliament is supreme. And, as bearing even
more directly upon the point raised, it may be added that rights of toll
and market, granted to boroughs by royal charter before Parliaments were
chosen as at present, have been altered and abolished by Parliaments
since; and that Magna Charta itself, signed many years before Simon de
Montfort called the first House of Commons into being, has been
modified, and often modified, since that event.
If further proof be wanted, not only of the power but of the will of
Parliament to interfere directly in the monetary affairs of an
Established Church, the Act disendowing the Irish Establishment eighteen
years ago, and another passed fifty years since, chopping and changing
the salaries of the English bishops, may be referred to. And, regarding
a further measure of the last half-century, the words of such a sturdy
Conservative as Lord Brabourne, used in a letter written in 1887, are
eminently satisfactory:--"The Tithe Commutation Act was nothing more nor
less than the assertion by the State of its right to deal with tithes as
national property."
But, it may be said, the property, whether contributed by private
benefaction or royal grant, was distinctly given to the Church, and
ought not, therefore, to be taken away. I dispute both points of the
contention. The property was allotted to a Church which acknowledged the
supremacy of the Pope, and it is used by one which abjures it; to a
Church possessed of seven sacraments, and used by one with only two; to
a Church believing in transubstantiation, and used by one holding that
doctrine to be a dangerous heresy; to a Church with an unmarried clergy,
and used by one in which the large families of the poorer parsons are
their stumbling-block and reproach; to a Church which performed its most
sacred mysteries in the Latin tongue, and used by one whose ceremonies
are delivered in a language understanded of the people. If it be true
that the Church to-day is the Church as it has always been, why, in the
name of common reason, was Cranmer, the Protestant, burned by Mary, and
Campion, the Jesuit, hanged by Elizabeth?
From the fact that the Church of England is not a corporation--that is,
it has not property in its own right, and what is possessed by its
members is vested in them not as proprietors but as trustees--there
flows the consequence that it is mainly the life interests of those
engaged in clerical work which have to be considered. And those life
interests will be considered and generously dealt with when the time for
disendowment arrives.
And then comes a question which many will deem of all-importance--"How
is the Church to exist afterwards?" or, to put the point in the
extremest fashion, and in the words addressed to the clergy in the very
first of the "Tracts for the Times," "Should the Government of the
country so far forget their God as to cut off the Church, to deprive it
of its temporal honours and substance, on what will you rest the claims
to respect and attention which you make upon your flock?" And the answer
is that, if the Church be worthy to exist, it will be able, like other
religious bodies, to stand upon the open and constant manifestation of
its own excellences.
Look around and see what the voluntary system has done. In England it
has planted a place of worship in every corner of the kingdom; in Wales
it has saved from spiritual starvation a populace neglected by the
Establishment; in Scotland it has founded a Free Church by sacrifices
which were the marvel and the pride of a preceding generation; and in
Ireland it has secured to the mass of the people the ministrations of
their own religion, despite every bribe, persecution, and lure. Is it in
England, where the Episcopalian system has most that is wealthy and all
that is socially influential on its side, that a State endowment is
needed to provide for its professors what the miners of Cornwall and the
labourers of Carmarthen, the hardy toilers in the Highlands, and the
poverty-stricken peasants of Connemara provide for themselves? If this
be so, then no greater indictment could be levelled against the process
of Establishment, no more certain proof could be afforded of the evils
which follow in its train, than that it produced such a mean coldness of
soul. But the supposition is so dishonouring to the great body of
church-goers that its use proves the straits in which the defenders of
the existing system find themselves.
Disendowment would undoubtedly reduce the larger salaries allotted to
the clergy, and probably increase the smaller. A parson would then be
paid according to his value to the parish, whether as preacher or
administrator, and he would not draw a thousand a year for doing
nothing, while his curate received eighty or a hundred for performing
the work. The Church would no longer be a rich man's preserve, wherein
younger sons could obtain comfortable family livings, while their duty
was done by ill-paid deputies. We should no longer see an Archbishop of
Canterbury, with a salary of L15,000 a year, begging upon a public
platform for worn-out garments for the poorer working clergy. A primate
is conceivable at a third the cost, and the money thus saved to the
Church alone would prevent the necessity for such a humiliating
proceeding as openly asking for old clothes for toiling clergymen. With
disendowment, in short, men would be paid according to their merits and
not their family connections--according to their work and not their
birth. And, further, the scandal of the sale of livings--the shame of
the public advertisement of cures of souls as eligible according as they
are in a hunting country, or near a fishing river, or close to "good
society"--would be done away with. Would all these gains count as
nothing to the Church, considered as a religious body?
The process of disendowment, then, is the necessary accompaniment of
disestablishment; it is possible; it is just; and its effects would make
for good. It is necessary, because if the Church is to be severed from
the State on the ground that it has failed in its mission, it would be
obviously out of the question to leave it possessed of the property
given to it to secure that mission's due performance. It is possible,
because Parliament is not merely supreme in all such matters, but has
shown within the past few years its capacity for disendowing a Church
having precisely the same rights and privileges as the English
Establishment. It is just, because no one sect has the right to property
granted it on the ground that it represented the religious sentiment of
the whole nation. And it would make for good in giving a more
distinctively religious character to the clergy, in paying them
according to their deserts and not according to the length of the purse
that purchased them their livings, and in freeing a religious system
from the ignoble associations of the auction mart.
Upon these grounds it is demanded that, with disestablishment,
disendowment shall come. Life interests will be respected; all modern
gifts to the Episcopalians as a distinct sect will be fairly dealt with;
further than this the Establishment is not entitled to demand, and
further than this Liberals will not be prepared to go.
XVI.--OUGHT EDUCATION TO BE FREE?
A question which is intimately connected in many minds with the Church
is that of national education. It stood next to it in order in that
early programme of Mr. Chamberlain which demanded "Free Church, free
schools, free land, and free labour."
This matter of free schools is not likely to create as much opposition
as it would have done even a short time since, for no question awaiting
settlement is ripening so rapidly. Experience is teaching in an
ever-increasing ratio that certain defects exist in our system of
national education which hinder its full development, some of which, at
least, could be avoided by the abolition of fees.
The progress which has been made in public opinion within only half a
century regarding the amount of aid that should be given to elementary
schools, encourages the hope that more will yet be given, and that very
speedily. It is but a little more than fifty years ago that a Liberal
Ministry led the way in devoting a portion of the national funds to this
purpose; and no one unacquainted with the history of that period could
guess the number and the weight of the obstacles thrown in the way of
even such a modest proposal as that Ministry made. The Tories, while not
particularly anxious that the mass of the people should be educated at
all, were decidedly desirous that such teaching as was given should be
under the direct control of the Church. Archbishops and bishops, Tories,
high and low, joined to continually hamper the development of any system
of national education which afforded the Nonconformists the least
privilege; but despite their every effort the movement spread. The
annual grant of L20,000, which was commenced in 1834, grew by leaps and
bounds. In a little more than twenty years it had become nearly half a
million for Great Britain alone; in thirty years it had increased by
close upon another quarter of a million; and in fifty years (and the
growth in the meantime had been mainly the fruit of the Education Act,
passed by the Liberal Ministry in 1870) it had touched three millions.
And that sum, vast as it was, represented only the amount granted from
the national exchequer, being supplemented by an even larger total
raised by local rates.
So far has the nation gone in the path of State-aided and rate-aided
education, and the question is whether it is not worth while to go the
comparatively little way further which is needed to make elementary
education free. For the fees which are now paid do not represent a
quarter of the amount which the teaching costs. And not only so, but the
existence of these fees is a continual hindrance to the working of the
Act. The effect of the fee is to keep out of the board schools thousands
of children who ought to be in them; and the attempt to enforce its
payment increases the odium which almost necessarily attends upon
compulsion.
"But," it will be said, "where a parent is too poor to pay, the fee can
be remitted." That is true, and the extent to which the system of such
remission is carried in some districts is one of the strongest arguments
in favour of free education. It is desirable to get the children into
the schools, but it is highly undesirable to do this by practically
pauperizing the parents. If elementary education were free to all, all
could partake of it without any appearance of favour on the one hand or
shame on the other. But the independent poor have now the choice of
making themselves still poorer by paying the fee for the education they
are bound to have administered, or of losing their independence by
asking the school board or the poor-law guardians for relief. And the
consequence, of course, is that many who have no independence to lose,
and are the least deserving of help, receive the assistance they are
never backward to ask.
"What is worth having is worth paying for" is a remark sometimes made
in this connection, but is it not as applicable to the State as to the
individual? For it is for no philanthropic but for a decidedly practical
reason that the country assists education. All men in these days admit
that the most cultivated people, like the most cultivated individual
man, has the best chance of success. With educated Germany, and educated
France, and educated America pressing us hard, it is a necessity of
existence for England to be equally educated. And seeing that the school
board rate and the Government grant mount higher and higher and the fees
become lower and lower, the only practical question is whether the State
had not better boldly step in, abolish fees which are a hindrance to
educational progress, pay the whole amount instead of three-quarters,
and provide free teaching for all.
If such a consummation were secured, the status of what are now called
voluntary schools would of necessity be materially altered. As at
present applied, the name "voluntary" affixed to the schools of the
National Society and similar bodies is very much a misnomer. It conveys
that the schools are supported by voluntary subscriptions; but this is
true in only a limited degree, for it is the Government grant--that is,
money taken out of the pocket of every one who pays taxes, direct or
indirect--which keeps them in existence. And, therefore, when Churchmen
complain, as some of them are occasionally ill-advised enough to do,
that they not only subscribe to their own schools but have to pay the
rate as well, ought it not to be enough to remind them that their
schools are supported not alone for educational but for sectarian
purposes, and that, if they wish to proselytize, they must pay, in
however inadequate a degree, for the privilege? The real hardship is
that those who do not believe in the clerical system of education have
to pay heavily by means of taxation to keep up establishments over which
they have not the least control, and which are used by the clergy for
denominational ends.
One result, then, of free education would be, not to destroy the
voluntary schools, but to put them under the control of those who really
and not nominally pay for keeping them up. If Churchmen demand schools
of their own, they must support them out of their own pocket and not out
of other people's, though it may be well that, under a stringent
"conscience clause" and with direct popular control, they should still
share in the taxpayers' grants. As matters stand, the national
schoolmaster is too often treated as if he were a mere servant of the
clergyman, an idea which, with free education and popular government of
all State-aided schools, would be bound to cease.
The cry raised by some clergymen when the Education Act was passed, that
the undenominational system would be fruitful only in producing "astute
scoundrels and clever devils," has died away. It is doubtful whether
anybody ever really believed it; it is certain that no man with a
reputation to lose would now repeat it. And, that being the case, the
excuse for keeping up at the public expense two rival sets of
schools--one sectarian and the other undenominational--has so largely
disappeared that the onus of proving its necessity lies upon its
advocates, and the burden of paying for it should be shifted upon the
right shoulders.
Of course it is said that this proposal of free education is only
another step towards Socialism, but no one should be frightened by
phrases. Socialism has as many varieties as religion--some as bad and
some as good--and from them must be selected those worth having. If,
upon consideration of the whole case, free education be thought to be
one of these, the fact that it is called Socialistic will not weigh to
its disadvantage with a single sensible man.
What, then, is it that is asked, and why is it demanded? It is asked
that elementary schools shall be freed from fees, and entirely supported
out of the public funds, local and imperial; that advanced and technical
education shall be made cheap and accessible, in order that those who
want to progress can do so with as few hindrances as possible; and that
all schools supported by public money shall be placed under popular
control, and the schoolrooms, out of educational hours, made available
for public use.
These things are demanded because by the present arrangements the
progress of compulsion is hampered, the deserving and independent poor
are inequitably dealt with, and the cost of collecting the fees is out
of all proportion to their value when received. Already the public pay
three-quarters of the cost of elementary education, and they do it for
the benefit of the community; if payment of the remaining quarter would
increase the efficiency of the system, even only to a corresponding
degree, it would be worth making. "Vested interests" might object; but
the national welfare must override them, though there is no intention of
dealing with them otherwise than fairly. Due allowance would be made for
the subscriptions which have been raised towards the erection and
support of the voluntary schools; but the nation has rights as well as
individuals, and, in considering any compensation which may be demanded
by the managers of such institutions, if free education be adopted, the
public money which has been expended upon them must be taken into
account equally with the private.
This much is certain: although England will not be able to hold her own
simply with "the three R's," and advanced and technical education
should, therefore, be widely spread, it is our duty to make "the three
R's" as widely known as we can. It is not a question of principle, but
of policy. Opposition to any education at all for the masses has
disappeared; the State and the parish already pay most of the cost; if
the system can be made more perfect by the abolition of fees, fees will
have to be abolished.
XVII.--DO THE LAND LAWS NEED REFORM?
Immediately the question of the land is touched, a whole host of
opponents to progress are roused to fierce and continuous action,
though, as all politicians in these days affect a belief in the
necessity for land reform, the question appears at first to be more one
of degree than of principle. But, at the very outset, it is necessary to
face the fact that there is an active propaganda going on which denies
that any reform, even the most sweeping, will be of avail, and asserts
that it is the very existence of private property in land which must be
done away with.
In what is termed "Land Nationalization" a very dangerous fallacy
exists. The first thing to be asked of any one who advocates it is to
define the term. It is vague; it is high-sounding; but what does it
mean? If it means that the State is to take into its keeping all the
land without compensating the present holders, it proposes robbery; if
it means that the process is to be accompanied by compensation, it would
entail jobbery. There are thousands who, by working hard, have saved
sufficient to buy a small plot on which to erect a house. Is that plot
to be seized by the State without payment? And if fair payment be given,
and the taint of theft thus removed, does a single soul imagine that a
Government department would be able to manage the land better than it is
managed at present? Are our Government departments such models of
efficiency and economy that such a belief can be entertained for a
moment? What may fairly be demanded of all advocates of the
nationalization or municipalization of the land is that they shall
clearly show that the process would be honest in itself, just to the
present holders, and likely to benefit the whole community. Unless they
can do all these things, generalities are of no avail.
The land, it is sometimes urged, has been stolen from the people; but it
cannot have been stolen from those who never directly possessed it: and,
whatever may be said of the manner in which the large properties were
secured centuries ago, much of the land has changed hands so often that
most, at least, of the present holders have fairly paid for it. There is
an old legal doctrine that the title of that which is bought in open
market cannot afterwards be called in question, and that applies to the
present case. And when we are told that there cannot exist private
property in land because that commodity is a gift of God to all, is it
not the fact that, in an old country like ours, land is worth little
except it be highly cultivated; that the labour, the manure, and the
seed are private property without the shadow of a doubt; and that it is
these we largely have to pay for when agricultural commodities are
bought? Upon the same ground it is sometimes contended that we should
have our water free because it falls from the heavens; but nature did
not provide reservoirs, or lay mains, or bring the pipes into our
houses; and for the sake of obtaining water easily we must pay for the
labour and appliances used in collecting and distributing it. And the
value of these illustrations, both as to land and to water, is to teach
an avoidance of sounding generalities and a resolve to look at all
questions in a practical light.
Recognizing, therefore, that private property in land has existed, is
existing, and is not likely to be abolished, the duty of progressive
politicians is to see how the laws affecting it can be so modified as to
benefit a considerably larger portion of the community than at present.
And three of the points which have been most discussed, and which now
are nearest settlement, are the custom of primogeniture, the law of
entail, and the enactments relating to transfer.
After spurning for many years the Liberal demand for the abolition of
the custom of primogeniture--by which the land of a man dying without a
will passes to the eldest son, to the exclusion of the rest of the
family--the Tories in 1887 themselves proposed it; and in the House of
Lords only one peer had sufficient courage to stand up in defence of a
custom which the whole peerage had sworn by until that time. It puzzles
any one not a peer to understand how a distinctly dishonest practice
could have existed so long, save for the utterly inadequate reason that
its tendency was to prevent large estates from being broken up, and that
there were those who imagined that large estates were a benefit to the
country. In actual working, however, it did not affect the largest
estates but the smallest, and primogeniture was thus a question touching
much more closely those of moderate means than the possessors of great
wealth. A large holder of land is an exceedingly unlikely person to die
without a will; a small holder frequently does so, with the result of
much injustice to and suffering among his family.
A practical instance is worth a hundred theories upon a point like this,
and here are some such which have come under my own notice within the
past few months. A man possessed of a small landed property died
intestate; his daughter, who had ministered to his wants for years, was
left penniless, the whole of the property going to the eldest son.
Another similarly circumstanced, whose stay and comfort during his old
age had likewise been a daughter, shrank, with the foolish obstinacy of
the superstitious, from making a will; his friends, recognizing that, if
he failed in this obvious duty, the daughter would be thrown without a
penny on the world, while the eldest son, who for various reasons had
not the least claim upon his father, would take everything, besought the
old man to act reasonably; and almost at the last moment he did. In a
third case, a fisherman, who for eighteen years had been paying for a
piece of land through a building society, was drowned in a squall; and
his savings, designed for the support of himself and his wife, were
swept straight into the pocket of his eldest son. Now in all these
instances, had the money been invested in houses, ships, consols--in
fact, anything but land--it would, in case of no will being made, have
been divided among the whole family in fair proportion. The accident of
it being put into land caused wrong and suffering in two cases, and
wrong and suffering were very narrowly avoided in the third. The
abolition of primogeniture, therefore, is much more needed by the
working and the middle classes than by the rich, whose lawyers very
seldom allow them to die without a will.
The law of entail is on its last legs, as well as the custom of
primogeniture, and the Tories, by Lord Cairns' Settled Land Act, and a
subsequent amending measure, have practically admitted that it is
doomed. Entail affects the community by giving power to a man to fetter
his land with a multitude of restrictions for an indefinite period; it
makes the nominal owner only in reality a life tenant; and by cramping
him upon the one side with conditions which may have become out of date,
and tempting him on the other to limit his expenditure on that which is
not wholly his own, the development of the land is impeded, and the
progress of agriculture hampered by force of law. Entail, like
primogeniture, has been defended on the ground that it tends to keep
large estates intact; but it is now so generally believed that a more
widespread diffusion of land is desirable, that it is only necessary
here to state the argument.
A more widespread diffusion of the land will not, however, be attained
unless the process of transfer is at once cheapened and simplified. The
lawyers reap too much advantage from the present system, and many a man
refrains from buying a plot he would like because the cost of transfer
unduly raises the price. If it were provided that all estates should be
registered and their boundaries clearly defined, there would be no more
difficulty and expense in transferring a piece of land than is now
involved in selling a ship. In these days buyer and seller are parted by
parchments; and many who would like a plot, but who do not see why they
should pay, because of the lawyers, ten, or fifteen, or twenty per cent.
more than its value, put their money into concerns in which
meddlesomeness created by Act of Parliament does not mingle.
Simpler and cheaper transfer would be a step towards the more general
ownership of land by those who till it. Let all artificial aids to the
holding together large estates by power of Parliament be abolished, let
transfer be cheapened and simplified, and then let him who likes buy.
Free trade in land is what we ask, and when it is attained land will be
able to be dealt with the same as any other commodity, and those who
want a piece can have it by paying for it.
But although it may not be desirable for the State to interfere in
England for the creation of a peasant proprietary, it is needful that
Parliament should do something tangible in the direction of securing
allotments for the labourers. Upon that point, as upon primogeniture and
entail, the Tories profess to be converted; but as their Allotments Bill
of 1887 appears in practice to be a sham, it is necessary that such
amendments should be introduced as may render it a reality.
XVIII.--SHOULD WASTE LANDS BE TILLED AND THE GAME LAWS ABOLISHED?
A dozen or fourteen years ago the questions attempted now to be answered
were put much more frequently than at present. In the last days of the
first Gladstone Administration and the earliest of the second Government
of Mr. Disraeli, Liberals were looking for other worlds to conquer; and
many of them, not venturing upon such bold courses on the land question
as have since been adopted by even moderate politicians, fastened their
attention upon the waste lands and the game laws. No great results came
from the movement; other and more striking questions forced themselves
to the front; and we are almost as far from a legislative settlement of
the two just mentioned as in the days of a more restricted suffrage.
This is the more surprising because the points named are of practical
importance to the agricultural labourer, and the agricultural labourer
now holds the balance of political power. But it is not likely that this
state of quietude upon two such burning topics will long continue, for
the country voter is certain soon to profit by the example of his
brethren in the towns, and to demand that his representatives shall
attend to those concerns immediately affecting his interests.
And first as to the question of waste lands. Town-bred theorists who
have never walked over a mile of moorland are apt sometimes to talk as
if all the uncultivated land in the country was in that condition
because of the wicked will of those who own it, and to argue that, if
only an Act of Parliament could be secured, the waste lands would
blossom like the rose. They have the same touching faith in the efficacy
of legislation as had Lord Palmerston when he put aside some difficulty
with the exclamation, "Give me an Act of Parliament, and the thing will
be done." But facts are often too strong for legislation, however well
intentioned and skilfully devised, and those about much of our waste
land come within the list.
A large portion of uncultivated land is mountain and moor, the greater
part of which it would be impossible to make productive at any price,
and the remainder could not be turned to account under a sum which would
never make a profitable return. Those who think it an easy matter to
cultivate waste land should visit that portion of Dartmoor which is
dominated by the convict establishment. There they would see many an
acre reclaimed, but, if they were told the cost in money and labour,
they would be convinced that, were it not for penal purposes, both money
and labour might be put to better use elsewhere. And if it be argued
that the State should step in and advance all that is required to
cultivate such waste as can by any possibility be brought under the
plough, it must be asked why the taxpayer (for in this connection the
State and the taxpayer are one and the same) should add to his burdens
for so small a return.
But there is, without doubt, a large amount of land in this country
which now produces nothing, and which could be made to produce a deal.
That which is absorbed by huge private parks, scattered up and down the
kingdom, forms a great portion of this; and though, for reasons which
are mainly sentimental, one would not wish to see all such private parks
turned into sheep-walks or turnip-fields, there is the consideration
that property--and peculiarly property in land--has its duties as well
as its rights, and that those who wish to derive pleasure from the
contemplation of large spaces of cultivable but not cultivated land, and
in this way prevent such from being of any direct value to the
community, ought to pay for the privilege. The rating of property of
this kind at the present moment is ridiculously low; it should at least
be made as high as if t
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