A Short History of English Liberalism

Chapter 11

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Stated in plain terms, Darwin"s theory was that the old conception of man, as having been specially created by G.o.d in a state of blessedness from which he fell by his own sin, was false, and that he had in fact been gradually developed out of an inferior state to his present degree of perfection. Humanity, like every other living thing, had been developed, whether mechanically or by divine order was not important, by a constant struggle with environment. Individuals, varying among themselves, were placed under certain conditions of life, for which some were better suited than others. Those who were fittest for the particular environment survived, and transmitted their particular variations to their offspring.

When a sufficient number of generations had lived and died, these variations or characters were permanently fixed in the stock, and a cla.s.s or species had appeared on the earth, which was distinct from others, who in different environments had similarly developed different forms. This theory was connected, not only with experiments and observations in the field of biology, but with geological investigation and the system of historical examination of const.i.tutions, systems of law, and social structure, which was becoming increasingly common in Darwin"s day. All united to emphasize the idea of growth. The eighteenth century appeared to conceive of everything as stationary. The later {311} nineteenth century conceived of everything as in motion. The organisms which were healthy and vigorous were those which adapted themselves most successfully to their environment, fixed new characters in their stocks, and rose from a lower condition to a higher.

The immediate application of this theory to politics is obvious. If true, it gives a scientific explanation and justification of change and development. It is impossible at the present day for any political thinkers to do what Sir Henry Maine did at the beginning of the Imperialist reaction, and speak of change as a phenomenon peculiar to Western Europe and of a stationary condition as the general rule.[342] Events of recent years in j.a.pan, China, India, Persia, Turkey, and Egypt have exposed the false basis of his reasoning. But even without this experience, a post-Darwinian politician would point to the changelessness of the East as in itself a sign of degeneracy, and the restlessness of the West as a proof of its superiority. Life is identified with change. Movement is normal, activity the universal rule of health. The peoples who stagnate, decay; and the one test of vitality is the capacity to receive and to apply new ideas.

The primeval mollusc indeed saved itself from injury by its protective sh.e.l.l, and its descendants are molluscs to this day. The organisms which, consciously or unconsciously, preferred mobility and risk to immobility and perfect safety, have evolved, through countless intervening steps, to man.

The modern outburst of reforming zeal is thus not spasmodic, but only an acceleration of an eternal process of development. The old Toryism is dead and d.a.m.ned. The maintenance of the old, without inquiry and without readjustment, is the upsetting of the natural order. The prospect of change has lost its terrors. What we fear to-day is not change, but permanence; or rather, we seek for permanence in a line of change.

The evolutionary philosophy has thus come directly to the aid of Liberalism, and some reformers, particularly a certain school of Socialists, apply it mechanically to the growth of {312} society, as from home industry to factory industry, from factory industry to the Trust, and from the Trust to the national organization of production. But most advocates of change are more cautious, and are content to find in it a defence of the need or the harmlessness of change. On the other hand, it has moderated the reforming temper. No Liberal of any capacity of mind can now rush to the cutting and carving of society with the cheerful zeal of Paine or Bentham. There can be for him no cutting off and beginning afresh.

The historical caution which distinguishes Mill from Bentham must now be emphasized in his successors. Reform must be a process of training and adaptation, not of destruction and subst.i.tution. Logic must be applied with circ.u.mspection, and if the statesman has now a more certain hope that the people will ultimately achieve happiness, he is no less sure that they can never be dragged into it by the hair of the head.

While the idea of evolution has thus operated both to encourage and to discipline the Liberal temper, it has also operated to give license to the Tory. The most brutal egoism is supported by pseudo-scientific applications of the theory of the survival of the fittest. Some thinkers find in the mere existence of a governing cla.s.s a proof that its members were the fittest for their position. Capacity for government has been bred into our aristocracy, as beef is bred into a bullock, or speed into a racehorse, and the poor members of other cla.s.ses represent the unfit stocks, who have fallen, by the operation of natural laws, into the position best suited to them. Neglect of social reform is justified, in a similar way, on the ground that the economic struggle eliminates unfit types, and that to make life easier for the ma.s.ses of the people is to preserve undesirable stocks in the race. It is useless, and even positively dangerous, to interfere between landlord and tenant, and master and workman, or to put an end to slums and sweating. These things should be left to themselves. In the apparently dreadful conflict between individuals and their environment, beneficent laws are at work. The fittest men will survive out of this as the fittest {313} organisms survive in the animal kingdom. Good sense and common humanity have generally prevailed over these two applications of the theory. But in foreign policy it has unquestionably dominated modern Toryism. As among primitive invertebrates, so among civilized races of mankind, it is only in struggle that any one can be developed to its highest capacity. International politics should therefore be a system of perpetual antagonism. It is only in war that we can develop those vigorous qualities which are essential to human as to animal progress. Humanity and consideration for others are fatal to that success in the internecine strife, which is necessary for the survival of the fittest among nations.

The consideration of evolutionary Toryism in domestic affairs is postponed to the next chapter. It is here necessary only to deal with its connection with what is called Imperialism. At the end of the last century it unquestionably combined with the apparent success of Bismarck to revive and aggravate egoism in foreign policy.

The first serious suggestion of Imperialism was made by Disraeli in 1872.

Speaking at the Crystal Palace, he said that "self-government, when it was conceded, ought to have been conceded as part of a great policy of Imperial consolidation. It ought to have been accompanied by an Imperial tariff ...

and by a military code which should have precisely defined the means and the responsibilities by which the Colonies should have been defended, and by which, if necessary, this country should call for aid from the Colonies themselves. It ought further to have been accompanied by the inst.i.tution of some representative council in the metropolis which would have brought the Colonies into constant and continuous relations with the Home Government.... In my judgment, no Minister in this country will do his duty who neglects any opportunity of reconstructing as much as possible our colonial Empire, and of responding to those distant sympathies which may become the source of incalculable strength and happiness to this land." He exhorted his hearers to choose between national and cosmopolitan principles, and to fight "against Liberalism on the continental system."

Nothing was {314} done by his Ministry to carry out the plan of Imperial consolidation, except the addition of the Imperial t.i.tle to the dignity of the Crown and the abortive attempt to federate South Africa. The fight against cosmopolitanism was not avoided, and the demonstrations against Russia in Turkey and Afghanistan showed the fatal ease with which large conceptions of national importance degenerate into vulgarity. The new idea of Empire was thus early identified with national insolence and immorality.

The federation of self-governing dominions has not been the most striking feature of Imperialist policy since Disraeli. In the last thirty years of the nineteenth century four and three-quarter millions of square miles of land and eighty-eight millions of human beings were added to the Empire, and of the latter only two millions were white people.[343] The primary object of all these extensions was not the incorporation of free peoples in a federal union, but the subjugation of weak peoples for the purposes of private profit. The British trader and the British capitalist who wanted security for his foreign investments were the pioneers of Empire, and in South Africa they succeeded, not only in incorporating, by methods often worse than dubious, races of barbarians, but in dragging the whole British people into a costly war for the annexation of two civilized Republics.

Imperialism has not of set purpose extended liberty in any part of the globe. It has introduced order and justice into some unsettled tracks, it has provided capital for the development of neglected natural resources, and in South Africa it showed how readily it would subordinate the moral to the material interests of Empire. The only conspicuous extensions of liberty during the period of expansion have been made by Liberals, and in South Africa they acted in the face of almost unanimous protest from the Imperialist party. The successes of Imperialism have been material.

The steady deterioration which has taken place in the ideals of Imperialism has already been indicated. Its moral failure {315} is due simply to the fact that the object of expansion was never in any case moral.

Incidentally, as in India, Egypt, and Nigeria, an enlightened bureaucracy has avoided the blunders of exploitation and oppression. But for the most part, the best that can be said of our rule is that it is disinterested.

Little has been done, even in India, to train and develop the higher faculties of the natives, and it is only in the Liberal reforms of Lord Morley that definite steps towards self-government have been taken. We are in these countries frankly to maintain order and to produce wealth, and for the most part we attempt nothing else. Benefits to the natives are only incidental and not primary. Unquestionably the growth of the Empire has extended the advantages of civilization to backward and uncultivated districts. But it has been promoted by the zeal of the investor rather than of the missionary. The enormous growth of wealth required new fields for investment. Visions of national grandeur were employed to direct the common people from the social reforms which would have reduced this wealth. The Press, the pulpit, and the platform united to represent the material pursuit of gain as a disinterested labour on behalf of humanity. A mist of moral enthusiasm was wrapped about the crude realities of commercial enterprise, and the acquisition of wealth by private persons was disguised in the trappings of national magnificence. Much honest enthusiasm was thus generated which commercial and financial magnates turned to their advantage. But in the face of temptation the artificial structure collapsed. National egoism and cupidity have now converted the organization for the distribution of blessings into an organization for the monopolizing of profits. The Empire is to-day regarded by Imperialists as essentially national, and not as essentially international. It is to be surrounded by a tariff for the exclusion of the foreign trader, and it is to be organized as a gigantic weapon against those nations with which, for the time being, we happen to be at variance.

This conception of Empire has grown with those false applications of evolutionary theory to which reference has been previously {316} made. The objects of the organization of the State having ceased to be moral, it has ceased to be moral in its methods of working. International morality is flung away with the other rules of conduct, and material success becomes the sole justification of public action. "As a nation we are brought up to feel it a disgrace to succeed by falsehood; the word "spy" conveys in it something as repulsive as slave. We will keep hammering away with the conviction that honesty is the best policy, and that truth always wins in the long run. These pretty little sentences do well enough for a child"s pocket-book, but the man who acts upon them in war had better sheathe his sword for ever."[344] Out of success, by whatever methods it may be achieved, this school proposes to acquire the desirable human qualities. By warfare, and warfare only, whether it be military or diplomatic, is it possible for a people to develop and to retain strength, courage, and resource. Those nations which survive in this perpetual conflict are presumed, in the Darwinian phrase, to be the "fittest." Survival justifies itself. Success is the test of virtue, and the steps by which it is obtained may be safely ignored. The gross fallacies of this process of argument have been sufficiently dealt with by other hands.[345] It is only necessary here to suggest the Liberal answer. A State is not an individual.

It is simply an expression of the ideas of a human society, or aggregation of human beings. The morals of a State are nothing but the morals of its individual members. To say that morality must be observed by those members in their dealings with each other, but not in their collective dealings with the members of other States, is to weaken private and not public morality. Public morality is not distinguishable from private. The man who abstains from stealing his neighbour"s goods cannot, without personal deterioration, join his neighbours in appropriating the territory of another {317} nation. Morality has gradually spread from organizations within the State till it includes all persons within the State. In the remote past, morality was observed only in dealings between members of the same family. Strangers took their chance. At a later date it was extended to the tribe, or the village, or the Church, and finally to all subjects of the same central government. There is no reason for stopping the operation of moral rules at the Straits of Dover, that would not prevent an Englishman from dealing honourably with a Scotchman, or a Churchman from dealing honourably with a Dissenter. Morality must be universal, or it ceases to be morality. The argument thus outlined must be fatal to evolutionary Imperialism. Qualities cannot be developed in nations. They can only be developed in the individuals who compose those nations. To speak of a strong and virile State is to obscure the issue. Strong and virile States can only be those which are maintained by strong and virile human beings. States which "survive" by the exercise of force and fraud can only be those whose subjects have ceased to dislike force and fraud. In other words, the evolution of the individual and the evolution of the State cannot proceed upon different lines. Man has now reached a point of development where mere brute strength has ceased to be a desirable quality.

The test of a man is always a moral test. We have evolved morality. If we formally reject morality in our use of the State, for the express purpose, as it were, of "breeding it out," we deliberately turn back the course of human evolution. The State will react upon the individual, and the individual will suffer. We cannot select certain qualities for individuals, and certain others for States, and suppose that evolution can be directed towards the development of both together.

British Imperialism, thus strengthening its natural tendency to egoism by the a.s.similation of scientific theory, has been only a local manifestation of an almost universal tendency. The career of Bismarck in Germany formed an excellent example of the operation of the same principles. Germany consolidated, France and Austria humiliated, and territory s.n.a.t.c.hed from France and {318} Denmark have invested the gospel of "State might is State right" with a l.u.s.tre which conceals the deterioration of private morals, the distresses of the common people, and the profound social unrest, which this costly parade has brought in its train. Men and women as individuals may sometimes escape the Nemesis which waits on immorality. Nations can never die, and the debt incurred by one generation must always be paid by its successor. Only a short view of German history can fail to see the dangers which the policy of Bismarck has brought upon his country. The reaction of Russian policy upon the internal state of Russia is more obvious, and the case of Great Britain is hardly less clear. But for the moment, Imperialism is the fashion at home and abroad. The earth is parcelled out among the Powers. England, Germany, and France share Africa between them. Austria covets and by instalments obtains territory in the Balkans. Russia is thrust out of Manchuria, and compensates herself in Mongolia and Persia. All join in wresting concessions of territory and financial opportunities from China, and even the United States takes her colonies from Spain. In all parts of the earth the Powers are thus brought into new compet.i.tion. The Balance of Power is revived, but for investors and not for dynasties. The struggle is for opportunities for the private acquisition of wealth, rather than opportunities for the public control of territory. But the result is the same. Obligations are indefinitely extended. The risks of conflict are indefinitely increased. The burden of armaments grows larger every year. The common people are more and more removed from the decision of the most far-reaching public questions, and know little more of the things which may decide their fate than is forced upon them by the weight of their taxes and the advice which they receive from their governors for the direction of their national antipathies.

British Imperialism came to a head in the South African War. Since the troubles of 1880 the condition of the Transvaal had greatly changed. The discovery of gold had caused an enormous flow of immigrants, mostly of British descent. The {319} government remained in the hands of more primitive men, who resented the intrusion of this foreign and industrial population. Paul Kruger, the last President, was a stubborn member of the old school, and while he possessed the confidence of his own countrymen, he was incapable of appreciating the necessity for new ideas and new inst.i.tutions which the new economic conditions had produced. The older men, who had not forgotten how they had wrested their independence out of the unwilling hands of England, were being steadily overtaken by men of wider views, who saw clearly enough that independence could not be maintained for ever on the basis of racial distinctions. Government could not be kept for ever in the hands of Dutch agriculturists, when the most vigorous, the best educated, and almost the most numerous section of the community were British industrialists. The existing system was the system which produced our Irish problem. But in the Transvaal the problem was neither so old nor so acute as in Ireland, and there was no question that time would have remedied all the grievances of the Outlanders. The conflict of the two races would have died a natural death, and would have ended in the Transvaal, as it had ended long before in Cape Colony, in amicable adjustment. The disease would have run its course. But the folly of British Imperialism preferred a surgical operation. The Outlanders who agitated for reforms of the franchise, of taxation, and of the judicial system, were used for purposes other than their own. A group of South African politicians, headed by Cecil Rhodes, a genuine, if unscrupulous Imperialist, and including several financial magnates, whose interest in the Empire was pecuniary rather than hereditary, determined to use the legitimate grievances of the Outlanders as weapons for the destruction of the Transvaal Republic. Rhodes was determined, at all costs, to unite South Africa under the British flag. His less enthusiastic a.s.sociates wanted to control the Transvaal Government in their own interest, and they knew that they could not control it unless it was made British. Therefore they took steps to provoke a war which should end in the annexation of the Republic.

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Case for armed interference by Great Britain there was none. The Convention of 1884, which reserved to her some rights in connection with foreign affairs, was intended to leave the Transvaal independent in domestic matters. Undoubtedly she might have interfered on behalf of her own subjects, if they had suffered gross oppression. But they had not. They had entered the country in pursuit of gain, and many of them had acquired enormous wealth. They were denied the franchise, which they ought to have possessed. But disfranchis.e.m.e.nt had not exposed them to peculiar hardships, and the current of opinion among the Dutch was setting steadily in their favour. Taxation, though heavy, was not ruinous. Justice, though generally slovenly and sometimes corrupt, was no worse than in many parts of the United States. The general condition of the Outlanders was infinitely superior to that of the vast majority of the English people before 1832, and no grievance was so intolerable as to make it impossible to wait until the old governing cla.s.s of Dutch was replaced by the new. There was ample reason for political pressure from within. There was ample reason for diplomatic representations from without. There was no reason for armed force either within or without.[346]

Having no case for war on the merits, the Imperial and financial politicians proceeded to manufacture one for themselves. A systematic campaign of calumny against the Transvaal Government was begun in the African and British newspapers, every abuse was exaggerated, and every incident misinterpreted. The climax was reached at the end of 1895, when, with the connivance of Rhodes, Dr. Jameson led a small party of invaders into the Transvaal. This expedition, as wicked a violation of State rights as has ever been made, was designed expressly to provoke rebellion and intervention. It was invested with all the splendour of a war for liberty, and a forged invitation had been {321} prepared some weeks before, to be discharged at the critical moment, which represented that the honour of English women in Johannesburg was in danger from the Dutch. The Raid met with the fate which its vicious inspiration and the foul lie which accompanied it deserved. The final effect of it was to destroy all the moral authority of the British Government, and to convince even the Dutch Reformers that they could only maintain their independence by force of arms. When Mr. Chamberlain publicly declared that Rhodes had done nothing inconsistent with honour, and, in the course of further negotiations about the franchise, revived the obnoxious term "suzerainty," all chance of peace had gone. The Dutch were consolidated against the English as the French had been consolidated in 1793, reform was denounced as inconsistent with patriotism, and diplomatic language was received with suspicion as proceeding from a hopelessly corrupt and tainted source. War began in 1899, and ended, after a display of energy and resource by the enemy which none of our responsible statesmen had expected, in the annexation of both the Republics.

The events of the war are of little importance for this book. A Liberal, who witnessed this display of national egoism, with its boastful beginnings, its slovenly neglect of preparations for its own work, the b.e.s.t.i.a.l ferocity of language with which it a.s.sailed its enemy, and its hysterical exultation at its final triumph, can find no pleasure in the recollection of it. Posterity will pa.s.s its final judgment in its own time, and if it sees virtue in the conduct of our soldiers in the field and in the colonial zeal for the common interest of the Empire, it will doubtless see more in the stubbornness of the Dutch and in the devotion with which the people of the Orange Free State sacrificed life, property, and independence in a cause which was not their own. The actual event was probably more beneficial to us than either the thorough defeat which our vanity deserved, or the easy and overwhelming triumph which it antic.i.p.ated, would have been. The one might have broken up the Empire. The other might have led us into further exploits of the same kind, which could only have ended in {322} our final overthrow. The chastis.e.m.e.nt was serious enough to reform without destroying. The violent emotions produced by the war, and the distress consequent on its waste of life and treasure, roused the common people, whose attention had been diverted by conceptions of Imperial magnificence to other parts of the world, once more to the contemplation of their own affairs. Even before the end of the fighting the reaction had begun, and when the Imperialists were driven out of office in 1905, it was the despised and discredited Pro-Boer, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, who was at the head of their successors.

Before this change of Government, Toryism had completed its course of reaction. Its government of Ireland had finally broken down. The system of Local Government by County Councils, rejected in 1888, was established in 1898, and in 1904 British credit was pledged to secure the extinction of landlordism by purchase. But if Tory government of Ireland had become little more than the tardy application of Liberal principles, its government of England remained its own. In 1902 fresh vigour was given by the Education Act to the Established Church and its itch for instructing the children of Dissenters in its own dogmas. In 1904 the drink trade procured a Licensing Act, which gave it a new legal property in its opportunities for demoralizing the people, by making it impossible to abolish superfluous public-houses except on payment of compensation out of a limited fund. In 1903 Imperialism came to its natural end, by proposing to revive the old system of Protection, with a preference to the Colonies as against foreign countries. This was partly a Tory way of dealing with economic distress, and it has unquestionably appealed to honest as well as to corrupt sentiment. But its essential principles are national jealousy against foreign peoples, and the abuse of the common people by the plutocracy. To both these Liberalism found itself in 1903 in direct opposition. Tariff Reform involved a rise in the cost of living which would press most hardly on the poor, it involved the control of tariffs by vested interests of landlords and manufacturers, and, less certainly, of Trade Unionists. There was nothing in it which {323} distinguished it in essence from the old Protection, and Liberalism was, in this line of attack, reinforced by the Conservatism which had grown around Free Trade. A last provocation to the working cla.s.ses had been given by judicial decisions, which construed the legislation of thirty years before to deprive the Trade Unions of their powers of peaceful picketing, and exposed their acc.u.mulated funds to actions for damages for wrongs done by their agents during trade disputes. Trade Union activity was thus stimulated. The new Labour Party came into existence, and joined with the opponents of Tory Imperialism, the Nonconformists alienated by the Education Act, the people of all cla.s.ses who had been offended by the Licensing Act, the Conservative Free Traders, and those who were anxious to resume the work of economic reconstruction, to overwhelm the Tory Party at the General Election.

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CHAPTER XI

LIBERALISM SINCE 1906

The policy of the Liberal Government which came into power in 1906 was the policy of those who had followed the old course during the Imperialist reaction. The general principles laid down by the new Prime Minister did not differ substantially from those of Gladstone, though the problems with which he had to deal were not precisely the same. His argument against Tariff Reform was inspired by the same zeal for personal freedom as those which he used against Chinese Labour, the Education Act, and aggression in South Africa. It was a conflict between habits of mind, and not a difference of opinion. Protection placed the common people at the mercy of capitalists and landlords, and increased the political power of plutocracy.

Chinese labour established an industrial system, which had for its primary object, not the well-being of all its members, but the increase of the profits of capital. The Education Act subjected large numbers of Nonconformists to the domination of the Established Church in the instruction of their children. The Boer War was a brutal interference with the national concerns of a foreign race. The Liberal attack on the Imperialist position was thus general and not particular. Liberals in this matter were not fighting a single proposal, but a whole spirit and tone of policy and administration and legislation. "These fiscal proposals were saturated, as the whole of the present Government had been found to be, with restriction against freedom, with inequality between trade and trade with injustice towards the community of consumers, with {325} privilege and monopoly, with jealousy and unfriendliness towards other nations. They were essentially part of a retrograde and anti-democratic system."[347] It was this clear sight of the real issues of the moment which extinguished Lord Rosebery, and brought back the Liberals who had supposed they could at once support the Boer War and retain Liberal habits of mind in domestic affairs.

The great social currents which had run strong until Home Rule produced a temporary diversion had once more gathered head, and those who suggested that the Liberal party could take a clean slate, and ignore the writings of its predecessors, were sharply reminded by the result of the election that it was their duty to take up the tale where it had been interrupted twenty years before. When the flood of war had subsided, the social stream was found running in the channel which it had followed since the French Revolution. The bad memories of Ireland were not effaced. The problems of industry were more urgent than ever. The pent-up hopes of women broke free.

Nonconformity once more demanded relief from sectarian domination. Only those could deal with the new situation who had not tried to forget how they had been accustomed to deal with the old. Lord Rosebery, punting about for a new course, grounded on the shallows, and was left behind.

Campbell-Bannerman, holding on the old course through the storm, found himself afloat, and set for a prosperous journey.

Much of the Liberal work done since 1905 has consisted in the undoing of the work of reactionary Toryism. For the first time since the close of the French War, Liberalism has found itself engaged in maintaining establishments, and in leading the people to reoccupy positions which they have evacuated. Free Trade is a purely negative policy, and means nothing but keeping the ground clear for economic reconstruction. The unsuccessful attempts at Education and Licensing Reform would at best have done no more than restore the social values which had been established in the previous century. The extension of {326} self-government to the Transvaal and the Orange River Colony undid, so far as it could be undone, the war, and restored freedom.[348] The abolition of Chinese Labour was a complete reversal of a policy only a few years old. The Trade Disputes Act of 1906 put Trade Unions in the legal position which they had occupied without question for twenty years after 1874.[349] All this work of restoration hampered the Government in its positive work, and when it ought to have been free to deal with the peculiar problems of its own day, it was forced to wait while it resettled those of a previous generation. The most original work of the new Liberalism has been economic. What most distinguishes the Governments which have held office since 1906 is the degree to which they have interfered with the economic structure of society in order to give greater freedom to the poorer cla.s.ses. This work was begun under Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, and since Mr. Lloyd George has relieved Mr. Asquith of the duty of inspiring his followers with new ideas, has been controlled and directed by the present Chancellor of the Exchequer. The Budget of 1909, the Old Age Pensions Act, the Workmen"s Compensation Act, the Wages Boards Act, the Labour Exchanges Act, the Education (Provision of Meals) Act, and the Insurance Act have all one feature in common, the use of State machinery for the active a.s.sistance of the economically weak. The principle of the Factory Acts has been extended into projects for Social Reform, the number and variety of which may be almost indefinitely increased. Burke"s test of convenience is applied even to the {327} right of property. "Private property is no longer regarded as one of the natural rights of man; its incidents are considered and settled by the common modern criterion of all these matters--to wit, the balance of social advantage."[350]

This growth of the importance attached to economic problems has appeared sudden only to those who have been at once deaf to the warnings of history and without experience of personal hardship. The dangers once expected from extensions of the franchise had receded from the view of a plutocracy and a middle cla.s.s, which had contemplated for twenty years a common people dazzled by visions of national greatness.[351] The clamour with which these disposing cla.s.ses greeted the new democracy in 1906 expressed the natural dismay of those who had thought that they could always manage the people as they pleased, and now realized, in the presence of forty working men elected to the House of Commons, that the people were going to manage themselves. Gladstone"s concentration upon Ireland had delayed this advent.

But for his adoption of Home Rule, the new policy, already suggested by Mr.

Chamberlain, would have been incorporated in practical Liberalism at least fifteen years earlier. It was not made less ominous by the postponement.

Economic discontent was both more bitter and more articulate in 1906 than it would have been in 1891. The Trade Unions had been roused by hostile judicial decisions. The political organizations of workmen were perfected, and the Trade Unions and the Independent Labour Party worked in harmony.

The workmen formed a distinct party of their own, and several of their {328} representatives were of definitely Socialist opinions. Outside the working cla.s.ses the public mind had been directed more and more to the study of industrial problems. The Fabian Society had been active for twenty years, and Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Webb were only the most industrious of the many investigators who were establishing a historical and scientific case for reform. All this improvement of machinery marched with an increase in actual distress. The war added not only to the temporary, but also to the permanent burdens of the poor, and not merely by acc.u.mulating debt, but by increasing the expenditure on armaments which an immoral policy required for its defence. The dislocation of industry, which always follows a war, had brought insecurity to many and dest.i.tution to not a few. Casual labour was more general, and sweating not less than at any previous period. In every direction distress and discontent had increased, and the political machinery was now adapted to the direct and articulate expression of the feelings of the common people. The Parliament of 1906 represented the desire of the ma.s.ses to fit their conditions of life to their own capacity for growth.

Liberals were bound to apply themselves to the new conditions in a new way, and it savours of pedantry to accuse Liberal economists of 1906 of having departed from the principles of Liberal economists of 1846. Paradoxical as it may appear to say that a positive policy of constant interference is the same as a negative policy of constant abstention, it is true that the mental habit at the back of the one is identical with that at the back of the other. Both aim at emanc.i.p.ating the individual from the things which prevent him from developing his natural capacities. The Manchester School saw only the fetters which directly impeded him. The modern Liberal sees also the want of the positive aids without which he is only half free. "Of all the obstacles which obstruct men"s advance towards good living, and of all the evils with which politics can help to deal, there is no obstacle more formidable and no evil more grave than poverty.... Our first principle leads clearly and directly to a policy of social {329} reform. Whoever admits that the duty of the State is to secure, so far as it is able, the fullest opportunities to lead the best life, cannot refuse to accept the further proposition, that to lessen the causes of poverty and to lighten its effects are essential parts of a right policy of State action."[352]

Poverty cripples the individual in many ways. It deprives him of mobility, so that he cannot travel freely in search of employment. It prevents him from acc.u.mulating reserves for times of emergency, so that a depression in trade or an illness of a month"s duration may drive an honest and industrious man with his wife and family to the workhouse, and make it impossible for him ever again to resume his place in the ranks of independent labour. It disables him from saving enough to keep himself in his old age, and thus makes him either an additional burden on his children or a charge upon the ratepayers. If bad enough, it permanently reduces his bodily, mental, and moral efficiency, stunts his faculties, prevents the full development of his children, and creates disease, vice, and crime in himself and his descendants. The diseases, the temporary losses of employment, and the fluctuations in income which, to a man of substantial means, may never be, and cannot immediately be disastrous, often involve in the case of the ordinary wage-earner, the complete destruction of everything which makes life worth living. No one who seriously believes that it is the duty of society to secure freedom of growth to every one of its members can doubt that it is its duty to mitigate, so far as it is able, those consequences of poverty which no degree of thrift, enterprise, or fort.i.tude can avert.

To this end the economic reforms of the new Liberalism have been directed.

The Labour Exchanges Act did not furnish work for all. It provided facilities for obtaining work for all who sought for it. The workman is no longer left to scramble about for fresh employment. He goes to a public office, where he learns what posts are vacant, and is put in touch with those who may be willing to employ him. No man can now complain that because he cannot afford to travel in search of work, or to delay {330} for more than a day or two before he finds it, he has suffered a permanent deterioration in health or character. If this Act can eliminate the evils of casual and irregular labour, it will have enormously increased individual liberty for growth.[353] The Old Age Pensions Act removed from the shoulders of working-cla.s.s families what was to many an intolerable burden. Before the Act came into force some thousands of men and women, from no cause but the lapse of time, became incapable of supporting themselves. The alternatives were the workhouse and the generosity of their children. The first meant a loss of independence for themselves, the second a fetter upon the freedom of their relations. In the absence of sickness requiring hospital treatment, the pension of five shillings a week is generally sufficient to maintain the dignity of the pensioner and the efficiency of the children. The Workmen"s Compensation Act, extending Mr.

Chamberlain"s Acts of 1896 and 1900, insures the working people against accident as the Old Age Pensions Act insures them against age, and the Insurance Act against sickness and unemployment due to causes beyond their control. So the Act providing for the feeding of necessitous children in public schools aims at preventing the permanent deterioration of body and character which is produced by inadequate nourishment in the early years of life. So the Wage Boards Act and the Miners" Minimum Wage Act established machinery for fixing a wage in certain employments which, having regard to the circ.u.mstances of each trade, would insure that the wage-earner should enjoy a reasonable standard of health and comfort. All these measures are based upon the same principle, that absolute liberty of the individual meant the degradation, if not the destruction, of many individuals who were poor. There can be no equal chance of growth so long as accidents which cannot be averted, by any effort of the individual, may permanently impair his natural capacity. Social reform is {331} justified as a national army is justified. It is a system of common organization for the purpose of common protection. What Mr. Churchill said of insurance may be said of all these economic projects: "I think it is our duty to use the strength and the resources of the State to arrest the ghastly waste, not merely of human happiness, but of national health and strength, which follows when a working man"s home, which has taken him years to get together, is broken up and scattered through a long spell of unemployment, or when, through the death, the sickness, or the invalidity of the bread-winner, the frail boat in which the fortunes of the family are embarked founders, and the women and children are left to struggle helplessly on the dark waters of a friendless world."[354] The conception of society is no longer that of an extended procession, the strongest pushing on to the full limit of their powers, while the country to the rear is strewn with the sick and injured.

It is that of a compact army, every man of which has to be brought in, with a sufficient organization of waggons and ambulances to pick up all the stragglers.

This elaboration of the system of protection is not inconsistent with such compet.i.tion as is necessary for the development of character, and for the production of the wealth which is so distributed among the members of society. It is not Socialism. It is not a system of doles. It removes only some of the risks of failure, and only those which are beyond individual control. No man is made less thrifty because at the age of seventy he will receive five shillings a week. No man works the better for knowing that if he is ever ill for a month he and his family will never be free again, or will work the worse for knowing that his home will be kept together until he is able once more to support it by his own exertions. No woman gets any virtue out of working fifteen hours a day for seven days a week, with the knowledge that even then she will not earn enough to keep herself in food and clothing without recourse to charity or prost.i.tution, and her character will not be deteriorated when a {332} level is fixed below which her wages cannot fall. The benefit of compet.i.tion remains. The disasters inevitably attendant on it are averted. The poorer people no longer wrestle on the brink of an unfenced precipice. "I do not want to see impaired the vigour of compet.i.tion, but we can do much to mitigate the consequences of failure.

We want to draw a line below which we will not allow persons to live and labour, yet above which they may compete with all the strength of their manhood. We want to have free compet.i.tion upwards; we decline to allow free compet.i.tion to run downwards. We do not want to pull down the structures of science and civilization, but to spread a net over the abyss."[355] "It is clear that the unlimited and uncontrolled struggle of wages spells anarchy almost as painful in its effects as the unlimited and uncontrolled compet.i.tion of physical force in our streets and highways. What is to be the remedy? What, using the expression in its broadest sense, appears to be the solution--whether through Parliament, local boards, or an independent Commission--to which we are heading? A Plimsoll line for labour as well as for ships; a line above which the ship is not to sink with its burden when it puts out to sea; a line to limit with human lives on land as with those "who go down to the sea in great ships," the extent of peril and suffering to which the worker is to be liable. Not to abolish compet.i.tion any more than compet.i.tion has been abolished in ships. Compet.i.tion will always be powerful enough. But to limit the strife--to fix a ring round the prize-fight--to protect the vital parts from the blows of the combatants."[356] These statements reconcile the old individualism with the new. Individual growth can only take place in compet.i.tion. But it is not necessary that failure in compet.i.tion should be mortal. The struggle of compet.i.tion is to go on. But it is not to go on to the death. Economic society is to be converted into a gigantic Trade Union,[357] based upon the {333} belief that the highest good of the individual can only be secured in co-operation with his fellows, and limiting his freedom only in so far as it is necessary to secure freedom to his a.s.sociates.

It is obvious that this new economic Liberalism has borrowed largely from Socialism, and it has one character in common with Protection. Once we admit that it is right for the State to interfere with economic freedom, we have advanced one step on the road which leads towards the nationalization of industry and towards the regulation of production by tariffs. The difference between Social Reform and Tariff Reform is nevertheless clear.

Social Reform operates directly, only where it is needed, and without substantially interfering with any individual"s enjoyment of life. Tariff Reform, if it can destroy poverty at all, can only destroy it indirectly by giving higher profits to the employer, who may or may not share his increased gains with his workpeople. Its operation is also entirely capricious, it can only apply to industries which suffer from foreign compet.i.tion, and cannot touch those many underpaid forms of employment in which such compet.i.tion cannot or does not in fact exist. Finally, as it can only operate by raising prices, it can only give benefits to one cla.s.s of labour by imposing burdens upon another. It has only one certainty, the increase of prices, with the consequent increase of profits and rents. The benefits to be obtained from it by the poor are vague, must be confined to one section only, and cannot be got by that except at the cost of those which are differently situated.

The resemblance between Social Reform and Socialism is much more real. The sympathies and the objects of the two are not dissimilar, though their practical proposals are essentially different. Socialism, so far as it is ever expressed in definite terms, makes a logical application of a general formula. Private ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange means a combination of the owners of capital against the wage-earners to the injury of the cla.s.s which is economically the weaker of the two. Therefore society as a whole must take possession of industrial capital, production for use must be subst.i.tuted for {334} production for profit, work at a good wage must be guaranteed to every one who asks for it, and the fair distribution of wealth among the workers must be regarded as of more primary importance than the quant.i.ty which is produced.

Socialists differ widely about methods and the rapidity with which the economic change is to be effected. Generally, the modern Socialist of the Fabian type prefers a gradual evolution to the cruder appropriations of early thinkers, he is prepared to exempt certain industries from his scheme, and the equal distribution of rewards has gone the way of the cla.s.s war and community of goods. But all agree that, sooner or later, society, as politically organized in the form of the State, shall produce and distribute or control the production and distribution of wealth according to ethical principles. The Liberal is less universal in his proposals. He does not object to the munic.i.p.alization, or even nationalization, of mechanical monopolies, of industries which in fact do not admit of compet.i.tion. Such industries as the supply of water, gas and electricity, tramways and railways, are not in fact compet.i.tive, and efficiency is probably as well maintained by aggrieved payers of rates and taxes as by shareholders disappointed of their profits. But the Liberal is not disposed to admit that similar conditions would produce similar results in industries of a more speculative or hazardous character. Nor can he admit that private ownership of capital necessarily involves the exploitation of labour. In certain industries, notably the cotton industry of Lancashire, he sees examples of the successful combination of individual enterprise in management with minimum standards of life and wages fixed either by the Factory Acts or by powerful Trade Unions, and he is not satisfied that the enterprise would be as brilliant or the minimum standards as high if the capital engaged were owned by the State.

In particular, the Liberal distrusts the bureaucratic system of management which Socialism involves. The London School of Economics seems to him a very good servant. He has no doubt that it would be a bad master. Even with its disadvantages, the system which makes private gain at once the {335} incentive to efficiency and its only possible test may be much superior to that which leaves the determination of industrial policy to a sort of lay hierarchy. An active and persecuting aristocracy will at least keep its subjects alive. The dull and unimaginative methods of bureaucracy stifle even when they are inspired by benevolence. Officialism is generally fatal to new ideas, and apart from the reduction of wealth which would probably follow the abolition of private profit, the officialization of mind which would be diffused throughout society is a sufficiently deadly argument against Socialism. It might even destroy individual life as completely as did some of the religions of the East. This argument against Socialism is to some extent an argument against Social Reform. Social Reform requires the appointment of many officials. But the functions of such as have already been appointed are confined to inspection, to advice, and to the collection of money or information. We have had no experience of officials engaged in the manufacture of goods for export, or in the conduct of the shipping trade. Such experience as we have had of munic.i.p.al enterprise has only satisfied us of the capacity of officials who are controlled and criticized by unofficial ratepayers, who have a personal and pecuniary interest in the efficiency of the official. No Liberal Government has yet proposed to extend official management to those many fields where success depends upon the judicious calculation of risks. Until that proposal is made there will always be a gulf between Liberals and Socialists, and a distinction between the policy which limits the destructiveness of compet.i.tion for private gain and that which abolishes such compet.i.tion altogether.

A second objection which is urged against Social Reform is its cost; and the charges on the public, required by Old Age Pensions, Insurance, and Labour Exchanges, have afforded a good opportunity for contrasting the greatly increased expenditure of Liberal Government with the demand of Liberal Opposition for "Peace, Retrenchment, and Reform." As the terms are now understood, Retrenchment and Reform cannot go together. The new Liberalism has been compelled to recognize that {336} economy and parsimony are not synonymous expressions, and that the mere refusal to spend money may in the end prove more costly than a judicious outlay in the present.

What is too generally ignored by the critics of this new policy is that, in one way or another, all the service which is now being rendered by the State has already been rendered by society. Since the reign of Elizabeth we have admitted our duty to provide for the dest.i.tute, and the burden which has not fallen upon the poor rates has been borne by private charity, by public hospitals, and by the police. In public or private poor relief, in the curing of disease, and in the punishment of crime we have long been accustomed to pay for the consequences of poverty. The new Social Reforms merely transfer these various duties to the national Exchequer. It is impossible to compare figures of expenditure. But it is most probable that ultimately the total weight of poverty will be considerably less than under the old system. Prevention is better than cure. Relief used to be delayed until some permanent degradation of body or character had taken place. It is now applied while there is still a chance of restoring the unfortunate to their old efficiency. The Old Age Pension directly relieves the rates by keeping the pensioner out of the workhouse, or gives his family the opportunity of a fuller life by releasing the money hitherto required for his support. The Insurance Act should eventually abolish all that very large proportion of pauperism which is produced by casual sickness, prevent the deterioration which so often follows the temporary loss of work, and maintain the average level of industrial efficiency at a higher level than before. The Minimum Wage Acts impose a direct charge upon industry. It is possible that some trades may be extinguished because they cannot bear the charge. If that should be the event, it can only be because the trades in question are at present parasitic: they do not support themselves, but suck nourishment from society by way of outdoor relief, charity, petty larceny, or prost.i.tution. The cost to the community will here be made definite instead of remaining unknown. But in most of the underpaid trades the Acts will have the same effect as a powerful {337} Trade Union. So long as Parliament abstains from fixing wages, and confines itself to the erection of machinery for fixing them in accordance with the conditions of the trade, Minimum Wage Acts merely create by law what Trade Unionism creates by voluntary effort. The higher wages established under the Acts will do what higher wages established under Trade Unionism have done. They will mean increased efficiency, increased production of wealth, and increased purchasing power. In this case, as in those of the Workmen"s Compensation Act and the Insurance Act, not only will a burden be transferred from one part of the community to another, but it will in time be reduced in weight.

So the Act for feeding necessitous school-children, by preventing the reduction of physical, mental, and moral strength in the present, will prevent future expenditure in poor relief, hospitals, and police. The survey which includes nothing but the legislative reforms themselves is partial and deceptive. It is only when we realize that poverty is already being relieved in a tardy, disorganized, and unscientific way that we can see how the cost of the new reforms will be in fact a most wise economy of national resources, and that by spending on prevention instead of on restoration we will actually be saving money.

The philosophical argument against Social Reform which has most weight is neither the argument from bureaucracy nor the argument from expense. It is the argument which is more justly directed against Socialism, that by helping individuals the State deprives them, in whole or in part, of the disposition to help themselves, that they tend to rely more and more upon the social organization and less upon their own strength. Everything in the way of public a.s.sistance is thus regarded with suspicion. To feed school-children is to weaken parental responsibility. To raise wages by legislation is as demoralizing as to distribute doles. To offer a pension of five shillings a week in old age is to discourage thrift in youth. It is therefore better, in the end, that poverty should be allowed to run its course than that a misdirected benevolence should demoralize {338} the people. This argument, reproducing the logical individualism of the Utilitarians, has been greatly strengthened by Darwinism. No less impartial a man than Herbert Spencer has thus applied the theory of evolution to political affairs. "The well-being of existing humanity, and the unfolding of it into ... ultimate perfection, are both secured by the same beneficent, though severe discipline to which the animate creation at large is subject; a felicity-pursuing law which never swerves for the avoidance of partial and temporary suffering. The poverty of the incapable, the distresses that come upon the imprudent, the starvation of the idle, and those shoulderings aside of the weak by the strong, which leave so many in shallows and in miseries, are the decree of a large, far-seeing benevolence."[358] The conception, which makes of foreign politics an immoral conflict between nations, is to make of domestic politics an equally immoral conflict between individuals, in which justice and humanity are to be set aside as inconsistent with the progress of the race. At first sight it would appear that the whole of that progress up to the time of Darwin had been along a wrong line. If there is one thing which most distinguishes modern from ancient society, and society of any kind from the disorganized existence of primitive man, it is the prevalence of the idea that we are, in some measure, responsible for the condition of our neighbours. The emotions and the reasoning faculties which have produced moral inhibitions on our own desires, laws for the protection of the weak against the strong, the machinery of private charity, and the public relief of the poor, all these have been evolved with the other characteristics of humanity as we know it. If the course of past development is any guide we may be certain that unless we take steps to alter our conditions, we shall certainly continue in the same course in the future. It would be at least surprising that the salvation of the race should now be found to lie in deliberate reaction, against the movement of countless ages towards the stage of undisciplined human egoism which followed that of the anthropoid apes. A doctrine so repugnant to what we {339} have been accustomed to regard as our better feelings requires little examination to discover its fallacies.

The evolutionary argument against Social Reform falls to the ground when it is once admitted that the individuals in contemplation are individuals organized in a society, and that it is only so long as they are so organized that development, as we understand it, can take place. If mankind were left to scramble for such good things as it could get without co-operation, the race would no doubt, in course of time, develop such characteristics as that compet.i.tion would allow to survive. But if we erect higher standards, and require, even from selfish motives, the moral, intellectual, and physical benefits which only organization, culture, and the communication of ideas will produce, the comparison between human beings and the rest of the animate creation is useless for our purpose.

Some limitation of the struggle for existence is obviously needed, if we are not to fall back to the level where only the brute qualities of strength, swiftness, and cunning are of value. Once we admit the need of a social organization, which involves a very considerable check on mechanical evolution by the survival of the fittest, the only controversy is about the extent and character of the limits on compet.i.tion, and not about their existence. The beasts, birds, and fishes which are unfit for their environment, and have not those qualities which make for survival, perish by disease or are destroyed by their enemies. The man generally remains a drag on the community. What is the community to do with him? The lethal chamber being regarded as impossible, it must keep him in hospital, in prison, in the workhouse, or in a charitable inst.i.tution, and if he is not thus maintained he will maintain himself by crime or beggary. Throughout his life he remains a parasite upon his fellows. It is always therefore the most economical course, if it be possible, to alter his environment, so that he may have the chance of supporting himself.

But the argument for Social Reform is not based only on the possibility of altering environment so that individuals who are unfit for it may maintain themselves so long as they live. Spencer was reasoning away from the facts.

It is not only the incapable {340} who are poor. It is not only the imprudent who are overcome by distresses. It is not only the idle who starve. Bad conditions of life destroy not only the inefficient, but the efficient, and many of those whom they do not kill they maim. He is a very dull and stupid observer who supposes that all the slovenly, debauched, and criminal men and women whom he sees around him are what they are because of their innate qualities, or that all those who die of their own dirt, debauchery, and criminality are any worse. They were not all born criminals whom our great-grandfathers hung or transported for petty larceny, nor are they all born inefficients whom some modern eugenists would segregate or sterilize. A bad environment does not merely destroy the inefficient, it manufactures them; and it is as reasonable to oppose social reform, because it prevents the elimination of the unfit, as it would be to defend excessive eating and drinking, or sitting in wet clothes. Unhealthy living would no doubt destroy people with weak stomachs and livers, and a tendency to chalky deposits in the joints. But for every one who perished in this struggle with environment there would be ten who survived. Bad housing and bad wages produce the same results as bad habits. Of all the slum children who die of their surroundings, a large number would have lived to become valuable citizens if they had had better conditions of life in their early years. An ill-fed girl becomes the mother of weakly children. Inadequate housing produces disease, incest, and prost.i.tution, besides killing a few undesirable infants. Casual labour kills only after it has given birth to an incalculable amount of laziness, vice, and mental disorder. Everywhere the good is kept back, even if some of the bad is prevented from development. The slum creates what the slum destroys, and it discharges upon the community much that it does not destroy. The elimination of the unfit is uncertain and capricious. The deterioration of the fit is certain and remorseless. Social Reform, if it is nothing else, is thus the only possible means of discovering which individuals are fit in the human sense.

It is only when all have a chance of survival that we can distinguish the naturally inefficient from the accidentally inefficient. The {341} reformer need have no fear that his generous impulses are signs of an anti-social sentimentalism. He is in fact only Evolution conscious of itself. He marks a point in the great course of life, at which the cultivation of individuals ceases to be careless and wasteful, and becomes deliberate and economical, adapting its own environment to the achievement of its ideals.

When the necessity for Social Reform is admitted, the provision for its cost affords another opportunity for the conflict of Liberalism and Toryism. The Budget of 1909, which tempted a plutocratic House of Lords into a rashness which an aristocratic House of Lords had never ventured to display, was a clear expression of the new Liberal principles. Part of that Budget was merely an extension of the Finance Act of 1894. Another part was entirely new. It carried the principle of graduation to a further point, both in income tax and in death duties, and it imposed for the first time a tax upon the natural monopoly of land. To those who understand the meaning of Social Reform, the necessity of the Budget is clear. Money must be found for the purpose of

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