JC
A 449537
423
.P6
The Conflict
of
Oligarchy and Democracy.
J. ALLANSON PICTON M.P.
bk

FROM THE LIBRARY OF
ROBERT MARK WENLEY
PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY
1896
1929
GIFT OF HIS CHILDREN
TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
738
A.
STENHOUSE,
UNIVERSITY
BOOK EMPORIUM,
COLLEGE GATE,
HILLHEAD,C
,OLASGOW.
曩
​THE
CONFLICT
OF
OLIGARCHY AND DEMOCRACY.
SIX LECTURES
BY J. ALLANSON PICTON, M.A., M.P.
LONDON:
ALEXANDER & SHEPHEARD,
21, CASTLE STREET, HOLBORN, E.C.
1885.
9-71-3·8
PREFACE.
ON various occasions, when taking part in dis-
cussions on Communism, I have found that in
the popular mind there is a broad though vague
distinction between that and Socialism.
I am
not aware of anything in the writings of the chief
authorities on the subject to justify such a dis-
tinction; but in almost any Radical Club it will
be found that discussion cannot conveniently be
carried on without recognising it. When, for
instance, it has fallen to my lot to urge that
Socialism involves the suppression of all indi-
vidual property, even in the form of tools or
produce from labour, I have been told that this
is not Socialism at all, but Communism, which
my interlocutors did not profess to support.
When, however, I have pressed for a farther
development of the distinction, I have not been
very successful in obtaining what I wanted. All
I have been able to gather is that Socialism,
according to this view, means a regard for the
welfare of the community as a whole, and an
iv
Preface.
unhesitating vigour in repressing, not only
privilege, but any inordinate exaltation of the
fortune of individuals. The only principle dis-
coverable in this vague kind of Socialism is the
superiority of the general interest to all particular
interests. This of course is a principle which no
one of any school will be found to deny; and
the only importance to be attached to the pre-
valence of this discursive talk about Socialism is
the indication it affords of a profound conviction
on the part of the many that the principle,
though universally recognised, is not observed.
To those whose experience is similar the
prevalent fears about the spread of Communistic
doctrine must appear almost entirely groundless.
Whatever may be the case on the continent of
Europe, the so-called Socialists of our rising
Democracy have for the most part no idea
whatever of abolishing the institution of private
property. But they insist very strongly that
private property derives its original right from
the just claim of a man to retain the produce
of his own labour. They would admit indeed
that this claim is necessarily limited by the fact
that in most cases the labourer works upon raw
materials which are not his own, but belong to
some one else. Still they suspect that of the
Preface.
increased value, given by labour to the raw
material, too small a portion is retained by the
labourer whose industry has created it; and they
trace this wrong to institutions, laws, and customs,
which tend to concentrate all the profits and
advantages of our civilisation in the hands of a
few. Therefore they attach great value to the
utilitarian formula, "the greatest good of the
greatest number"; and their Socialism consists
merely in a desire to effect such constitutional
and social changes as will bring us nearer to the
utilitarian ideal.
But their notions about the changes necessary
are very fluid and fluctuating. A considerable
number of democrats are greatly taken with Mr.
Henry George's doctrine of "land nationalisation";
but the meanings attributed to the phrase are very
various. National communism in the use of all
natural raw material suggests itself to some; and
others have a dream about the possibility of
throwing all accumulated capital into one common
fund, to be used under some public authority for
purposes of production. But it will usually be
found that all through such speculations there
runs the assumption that the individual labourer
will keep intact his house and home, his furniture
and tools, nay, his garden plot, and his savings.
vi
Preface.
The inconsistency between this assumption and
the dreams to which I refer is not perceived;
and when once it is realised that the destruction
of private property in land-tenures, and still more
the nationalisation of capital, involves the sup-
pression of all private property whatever, refuge
is taken in the convenient but indefinable
distinction between Communism and Socialism.
It was with the hope of giving some help
towards a better and more definite direction of
these vague Socialistic aspirations, that the
lectures here printed were delivered. The aspira-
tions are right and good. It is impossible to
deny that the complaints made by the many
about the one-sidedness of our civilisation have
been amply justified by history, and are still
sustained by present experience. But if the
grounds of those complaints are to be removed,
the multitude must have an intelligent and a
definite idea both of the origin of the disad-
vantages under which they labour, and also of
the proper scope of the remedies suggested. In
the following lectures I have endeavoured to
trace the roots of oligarchy in our history. It is
not so much the limitation of political power to
a few that I have had in mind, but rather
the excessive concentration of wealth, luxury,
Preface.
vii
and even comfort over a very limited area. I
have endeavoured to illustrate both the power
and the impotence of political reform; and have
insisted upon the enormous and overwhelming
importance of unrestricted education for the
million. In the lectures on the Land Monopoly,
and On the Distribution of Wealth, I have indicated
two definite lines of reform by which reasonable
comfort in life might be more equably diffused.
And in a concluding lecture, while urging that
popular character is necessarily the basis of
popular happiness, I have given reasons for
taking a hopeful and even sanguine view, not
only of the material improvement, but of the
moral elevation of the future democracy.
J. ALLANSON PICTON.
March, 1885.
CONTENTS.
LECTURE I.
"THE ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE ENGLISH OLIGARCHY "
LECTURE II.
•
:
"CAUSES AND HINDRANCES OF REFORM"
LECTURE III.
"THE RELATION OF POLITICAL REFORM TO SOCIAL PROGRESS "
21
41
LECTURE IV.
"THE LAND MONOPOLY"
65
LECTURE V.
"THE DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH"
89
LECTURE VI.
"DEMOCRATIC MORALS"
113
5
THE CONFLICT OF OLIGARCHY AND
DEMOCRACY,
:
LECTURE I.
THE ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE
ENGLISH OLIGARCHY.
THE British Constitution is commonly described as re-
sulting from the happy balance of three estates-crown,
lords, and commons. To these, in old times, it would have
been necessary to add a fourth, or rather, perhaps, to inter-
polate it between the crown and the lords. This estate
was the Church, professedly identical with the nation of
Englishmen as Christians, but most conspicuously mani-
fest as a hierarchy holding the balance of power between
king and nobles, or sometimes dominating both. But after
the Reformation this hierarchy, condemned by the Catholic
Church as schismatic, and too proud for brotherhood with
German, Swiss, or Dutch Protestants, was forced to cast
in its lot with the ruling powers at home, and hence-
forward identified its interests with those of the territorial
aristocracy. The Church practically ceased to exist as a
separate estate of the realm. Convocation surrendered the
power of taxing the clergy. For more than a century it
was not allowed to transact any business at all. And
though in our time it has reappeared, we view it with
something of the same eerie and uncomfortable feeling
I
2
The Conflict of Oligarchy and Democracy.
a
that we should probably experience if we met a ghost.
So far as constitutional forms are concerned, the political
survival of the Church as an estate of the realm is sym-
bolised mainly by the presence of bishops in the House
of Lords, and by certain Ecclesiastical Courts;-perhaps
we might add also, by the existence of clerical magistrates.
Otherwise the political power of the Church, enormous as
it continues to be, is exerted almost exclusively by means
of social influence. When we come to consider in more
detail some special aspects of the conflict between
oligarchy and democracy, it may be necessary again to
refer to ecclesiastical influence; but for the present let us
confine our attention to the three estates of the realm as
ordinarily reckoned-crown, lords, and commons.
By the last term—at least for the purpose of our present
study-we should not understand only the House of
Commons. For that chamber consists of representatives,
and it is with the people they represent that we shall be
concerned in these lectures, rather than with the lower
House of Parliament. In this larger sense the commons
consist of all unprivileged persons. Both the sovereign
and the lords are born into the world invested with a
legal claim to special legislative powers on the demise
of their predecessors. But the commons come into the
world with no legal claim to anything more than an
ordinary share in the rights and duties of Englishmen.
By the second estate, that of the Peers, we mean, if we
speak with legal exactness, all those gentlemen whose
titles give them, or at any rate are supposed to give
*The claim is denied by some authorities on Constitutional History.
•
The Origin and Growth of the English Oligarchy. 3
•
1
them, a personal claim to be summoned by the Sovereign
to the Upper House. But this narrow definition would
exclude a considerable number of persons whose opinions
and interests are by various causes identified with the
second estate of the realm rather than with the commons.
For instance, by a very happy peculiarity of the British.
constitution all the children of peers are commoners.
Properly speaking, as Mr. E. A. Freeman has acutely
pointed out, there is no such thing as "noble blood" in
this country. For no inheritance of blood by itself is
sufficient to distinguish a scion of aristrocracy from the
commons. Even the eldest son of a duke is a commoner
until he succeeds to the title of his father; and the
younger sons, though by courtesy called lords, remain
commoners all their lives unless specially created peers.
It is not, therefore, the blood that ennobles, but the
entailed estates and title. We have not, and never had,
any distinct class or caste of nobles, such as existed in
France until the Revolution, or such as in a shadowy form
exists in Germany to the present day. Our only legal
nobility are the peers of Parliament, and all outside of
this privileged number, however closely connected by
blood with the peerage, are merged in the commons.
But whatever may be the correct method of stating the
case legally, the old proverbs hold good that "birds of a
feather flock together," and also that "blood is thicker than
water." In the political conflicts of our national history
the peerage has always shared its aristocratic lustre and
imperious temper, not only with its own cadets and scions
of nearer or more remote connexion by blood, but also with
untitled territorial magnates, and more recently with a new
I*
4
The Conflict of Oligarchy and Democracy.
plutocracy, who suppose themselves to have an interest in
defending ancient privilege. Although, therefore, the
second estate consists, in strictness, only of some five
hundred hereditary legislators, we shall take the liberty of
including many satellites and imitators with them, as
representing the principle of Oligarchy both in past and
present days.
It is not necessary to say much about the first estate of
the realm, and that for reasons which will presently
appear. The crown of England once represented the
culminating issue of feudalism, perhaps the most ex-
aggerated development of feudalism that the world has
seen. It was not as an oriental despot, not as a monarch
by divine right, not even as a king of men, that William of
Normandy reigned, but as a lord of land. The Norman
kings were supreme landlords more than anything else.
And just as the petty squire of modern times has supposed
that his possession of acres gave him the right to appro-
priate the fruits of other men's labour on those acres, just
as he claimed to direct the religion, and politics, and
manners of all who lived on his lands, so the royal squire
of all England used to claim, as supreme landlord, to take
aids, and subsidies, and service from his tenants, and
within certain limits to subject them to his orders. That
was what the crown of England used to be. But, by a
succession of salutary changes, the crown has now come
to be simply an impersonation of the executive power of
the realm: a power to be always exercised in accordance
with the constitutionally ascertained will of the people.
Of course, this is essentially republicanism. Those who
regard things more than names can easily understand that
1
The Origin and Growth of the English Oligarchy.
5
66
it is not the institution of an hereditary chief magistrate
which prevents our being a republic. It is the obstruction
of democracy by oligarchy. It is the persistent main-
tenance, contrary to public policy and national welfare, of
class privileges, inconsistent with a commonwealth. The
passing Franchise controversy is pregnant throughout with
hints of this truth. When politicians talk with scorn of the
equal distribution of political power as the domination of
mere numbers," I suspect them of scant respect for mere
humanity; for it is that which mere numbers represent.
When they argue in favour of representing "classes and
interests" rather than "mere numbers," I fear there is in
the privileges to be protected something that will not
readily commend itself to the common sense and right
feeling of the majority. If, after our thousand years of
political evolution, we still grope in vain after the ideal of
a commonwealth in which each is for all and all for each,
it is this oligarchic cowardice and not the British crown
that hinders us. A brief glance at the past will make this
clear, and will open the avenue of future speculation.
The English monarchy was never, in any proper sense
of the word, despotic, except under the dynasty of the
Tudors and during the reign of the first two Stuarts.
Another exception might be made of the reign of the
great William, the first Norman king. A man who has a
whole kingdom to distribute at his pleasure among his
followers is naturally a dictator. But the great tenants
holding from the crown, when once settled in their posses-
sions, soon became a very powerful counterweight to the
royal supremacy. The first Henry, the son of the
Conqueror, found it necessary to make terms with the
}
6
!
The Conflict of Oligarchy and Democracy.
barons, and to renounce arbitrary powers on condition of
receiving regulated legal dues, both in money and service.
When the infamous John tried to substitute a capricious
tyranny for feudal lordship, he found his great tenants too
strong for him. The result of the struggle was Magna
Charta, the provisions of which are, at any rate vaguely,
known to every juvenile debating society. Freedom from
arbitrary imprisonment, judgment by a man's equals,
fixed courts of justice, condemnation of judicial corruption
were assured in the interest of all classes alike. Ancient
municipal liberties were restored and guaranteed. And,
above all, the exactions of the royal exchequer, with the
exception of certain customary and recognised feudal
dues, were brought under the control of the great council
of tenants in chief, the first germ of an effective Parliament.
I do not suppose that the sub-tenants and labourers
outside municipal boundaries gained any great immediate
advantage from this charter. The difficulties of communi-
cation, when two-thirds of the country were forest or wild
moorland, helped to maintain the semi-independent state
in which every great landholder reigned over his own
domain. His retainers, his husbandmen and servants
would experience the spirit of the great charter in his
dealings with them just so far, and no farther, than his
own good nature, or binding custom, and his sense of
policy required. Their impotence may be understood by
an analogy of the present day. When a party of filibus-
tering white men have established themselves on the
remotest boarders of civilisation in Africa, what chance
have their black dependents of justice against them in
case of wrong? In the first place, the poor creatures are
忠
​The Origin and Growth of the English Oligarchy.
so ignorant that they do not know what steps to take. In
the next place, the risks of a long journey through forest
or desert appear more terrible than their actual suffering.
And, finally, they have a shrewd suspicion that power
usually sympathises with men in possession. Very similar
was the case of English dependents, even after Magna
Charta, in relation to their Norman lords.
But the lesson to be chiefly enforced is that the barons
kept the advantages of the charter mainly to themselves,
because outside the towns they alone understood the
political position, and knew how to avail themselves of it.
If the common people had known their strength, if they
had possessed sense and self-control enough for combina-
tion, they might have ante-dated by six hundred years the
struggle of democracy against oligarchy. The key to the
whole woeful mystery of the oppression of the many by
the few through so many ages of the world is not to be
found in forms of government, nor in commercial neces-
sities, nor in economical laws, but in popular ignorance.
And they are not the truest patriots only, but the most far-
seeing philanthropists, who set in the forefront of their
policy the emancipation of the multitude from ignorance.
King John's barons had not indeed very much education
as it is understood in colleges, or even in board schools.
It is doubtful whether many of them could have passed
the "first standard." But the most effective education is
that which gives, not merely a knowledge of books, but
a knowledge of things. In our time books are of course
an indispensable means of education; but woe unto us if
we make them the end! In the thirteenth century, on the
other hand, for a knowledge of practical life, books were
8
The Conflict of Oligarchy and Democracy.
not even an indispensable means. The great barons had
the advantage of the multitude, not by reason of any skill
in reading and writing, much less in languages or mathe-
matics, but by reason of their better understanding of the
forces that ruled the world and the methods of their
combination. They knew that collectively they were
stronger than the King. They understood all the diffi-
culties of union, and were content to make sacrifices to
overcome them. They could suppress mutual jealousies
in the presence of a great purpose. They estimated at
their true worth the power of the Pope, the national
feeling of the English clergy, the balance of parties in
France; and they knew how to use all such means in turn
as occasion served. It was practical wisdom of this sort
that gave them their superiority; and when they
gained their victory their knowledge of men and things
enabled them to use it so as to keep their class supreme,
except only in the towns. In the towns alone the stimulus
of trade and commerce diffused this sort of practical
education amongst the many, and it was in the towns that
the seeds of modern English democracy were nourished.
From the time of Magna Charta until the battle of
Bosworth, in 1485, the relations of the crown, the barons,
and the people remained much the same.
The sum-
mons of borough representatives to Parliament in 1265,
an event pregnant with all following history, was regarded
at the time only as a piece of clever tactics for getting
money more easily. But, on the other hand, even the
most splendid kings, such as the first and third Edwards,
and the fifth Henry, were indebted more to strength of
character than to any inherent despotic powers for the
The Origin and Growth of the English Oligarchy.
9
supremacy they exercised. Edward I. in the full tide of
victory was compelled to abandon illegal taxes, and
solemnly to renew the great charter; and the barons
demanded that his ministers should have the confidence
of Parliament. As to the weaker sovereigns, such as
Edward II. and Richard II., they were browbeaten and
restrained, humiliated, and finally deposed. Henry IV.
was himself a revolted baron, and obtained the crown by
gift of Parliament. In fact, through all those reigns the
kings of England were simply first among their peers, and
were as much limited by the feudal rights of their great
tenants, as they were enriched and fortified by their own
feudal claims. But it would be a mistake to describe the
government in those ages as an oligarchy. For this term.
expresses an organised union of a few to control the
many. But the barons had no such thought in their
minds. They were occupied only with their individual
rights; and their union was only accidental, occasioned by
necessity, while at other times they fell out and fought
among themselves. In truth, feudalism was an arrange-
ment standing apart, and difficult to compare with any-
thing else. The nearest definition of it perhaps would
be a federation of petty kings kept together for certain
special ends by the over-lordship of a suzerain.
But the sanguinary conflict prevalent, during the long
reign of Henry VI., between the houses of York and
Lancaster, inflicted impoverishment, exile, or death upon
so many baronial chiefs that when Henry Tudor ended
the feud on the field of Bosworth, he was able to convert
the over-lordship of his predecessors into a despotism.
The lingering agony of civil war had not only broken the
Ια
ΤΟ
The Conflict of Oligarchy and Democracy.
power of the barons, but it had dispirited the commons.
So far were the people's representatives in Parliament
from discerning their opportunity in the ruin of the old
baronage that, with little resistance, they were made sub-
servient instruments for enriching the crown.
This so
pleased the new dynasty that the Tudor monarchs
thought Parliament an excellent institution, and, after a
little hesitation at first, so constantly availed themselves
of its aid, that its place in the constitution was confirmed
and fortified. The blindness with which the self-confident
tyrants nourished the power that was to overturn the
throne, and the irony of fate which disguised in decorous
servility an omnipotent instrument of rebellion, should
teach us both confidence and patience and hope amidst
the strange combinations often veiling the real issues of
the future. A Tory democracy is a repulsive but by no
means an impossible conception. There have always
been slaves who hugged their chains. But when, in
1874, household suffrage appeared to justify the infatuated
confidence of a new dynasty of Tories, frightened Liberals
forgot that apparent reaction is sometimes a necessary
phase of evolution. As the subserviency of Parliament in
the hands of Thomas Cromwell promoted its use, and
ensured its ultimate power, so, perhaps, we may say that
the Conservatives, in their joy over a popular triumph,
were led to cultivate democratic methods as they had
never done before. And this can have but one issue, as is
already beginning to be seen. If you catch leviathan
asleep, you may perhaps put your hook in his nose. But
whether you can lead him after the operation has roused
him is altogether a different question.
The Origin and Growth of the English Oligarchy.
II
During the reigns of Henry VIII. and his family the
despotic power of the crown seemed firmly established.
It was, indeed, decently veiled by parliamentary forms.
But the determining force in both foreign and domestic
questions was the personal will of the sovereign, or
in the case of the boy king, Edward VI., of his protectors.
Yet so long as the vitality of a race endures its character
cannot be eradicated. That character may be apparently
suppressed in the exhaustion induced by a period of
passion, like the dynastic wars of the Roses. But ex-
haustion itself brings rest and recuperation; and then with
a new stimulus comes revival and resurrection. In the
case of our own country, the new stimulus was given by
the rise of Puritanism. The theological vagaries of that
age have little interest for us now, except so far as they
were the accidental forms of a moral awakening. The
feature in Puritanism that interests me is its stern sense of
individual responsibility overmastering all conventional
The true
traditions and lazy habits of acquiescence.
spiritual descendants of the Puritans are not those who
tread a monotonous round of religious or secular customs,
tethered by sectarian creeds, or by inherited social bonds.
They are rather those who find conscience more authorita-
tive than all the churches and all the Fathers to boot.
But let us take heed lest we confound self-will with
conscience. For the true Puritan was, and is, a man over-
whelmed by a realisation of his own direct and unre-
served subordination to an Eternal Power, high above all
kings, or potentates, or priests. And whatever name you
give it—a matter of little concern in this connexion, be it
God, or the Universe, or Nature, or Law-that Power
12
The Conflict of Oligarchy and Democracy.
is the only inviolable sovereign, enthroned on reality,
manifested and embodied in everlasting order.
Now it was the awakening of Puritanism in this sense
that troubled the latter years of Elizabeth's reign with the
tremors of a coming earthquake. And it was the man-
hood begotten of responsibility, the dignity inspired by
loyalty to eternal law, that safeguarded'the perilous revolu-
tion of the next age, and made it restorative and con-
structive rather than destructive. The consummation of
the struggle in 1689 effectually disposed of the chances of
despotism in Great Britain; and the Act of Settlement in
1701 extinguished all nonsense about divine right. That
Act may be described as the determination by authority of
Parliament of the line to be taken by hereditary succession
to the crowned presidency of the British Commonwealth.
And it is one of those happy compromises which reconcile
past and present without any surrender of principle.
Since that Act, notwithstanding some frantic spurts of
royal self-will, the dignity of the crown has been more
and more identified with an impartial and impersonal
administration of the law as determined by Parliament,
and under the responsible advice of ministers. Were it
conceivable-which I do not think it is-that the advice
of responsible ministers should be rejected, the Act of
Settlement is no more unalterable than any other statute.
I do not here enter on the question whether a more ideal
arrangement may be possible in the exhaustless future.
What I have said is sufficient to suggest that the political
genius of the British people has succeeded in the appa-
rently impossible task of reconciling monarchical forms
with a substantially republican constitution.
The Origin and Growth of the English Oligarchy. 13
come.
But a republic is not necessarily a democracy. And
though the enormous development of parliamentary rule
since the Revolution may justify what I have now said as
to the reconciliation of monarchical forms with a republi-
can constitution, yet the day of democracy is still to
The parliamentary victory over the Stuarts by no
means transferred power to the commons, at least in the
larger sense of that term. As the Tudor despotism rose on
the ruins of the baronage, so the Stuart dynasty was
finally disestablished by an oligarchy; while the common
multitude, in either case, were only as spectators who
might sympathise or applaud, but could do little more.
At the Revolution the vessel of State escaped from a
stormy whirlpool of passionate vicissitudes into a peace-
ful current, flowing straight toward democracy; but the
issue was unseen then, and is only now coming clearly
into view. The constituencies returning the Parliaments
of William III. and Mary were not those instituted by the
wise reforms of the great Oliver. For, at the Restoration,
the Parliamentary system had reverted to what it was
before the Civil War, and representation had hardly any
rational proportion either to numbers, intelligence, or
wealth. Through change of circumstances, and decay of
the institutions that originally moulded it, the representa-
tive system had become degraded into the most conve-
nient tool that oligarchy could possibly have desired. A
military force is the proper instrument of personal rule,
or imperialism; but it is a very dangerous weapon for an
oligarchy to handle, as the Long Parliament found to its
cost in the days of its decay. What serves an oligarchy
best is a pretence of popular self-government so devised
14
The Conflict of Oligarchy and Democracy.
2
as to exclude the reality. And the great families of the
eighteenth century found this ready to their hand. The
centres of modern life, round which the elements of
democracy have gathered, were either wholly unenfranchised
or ridiculously under-represented. But while millions of
capable citizens had no representatives, many representa-
tives had no electors They were nominated by land-
owners in some cases, and in others by close corporations.
The freemen, who, like the peers, held political power by
accident of birth or purchase, valued their privileges,
like their betters, for the profit to be made out of them.
Bribery was open, shameless, unrebuked. And thus the
whole pretended representation of the people was practi-
cally in the hands of a few great patrons, who bought and
sold, like all merchants, with a view to their own gain.
I must now revert to a remark made a little time ago
in speaking of the old baronage in the days before the
Tudors. I said that, all powerful though these nobles were,
they could not be described as an oligarchy, because this
means an organised union of the few to control the many.
Such an idea never entered into the heads of the barons.
They had no need of it. Their powers were undisputed by
their feudal dependants, and in the rude plenty afforded to
a very sparse population, they could live and let live without
grudging. It was the crown they distrusted, not the
people. And what they wished to guard against the
crown was not so much the interest of their class, but
rather their individual independence.
But the case was very different with the great families
to whom the Revolution handed over political power. As
a military system feudalism had then long been dead.
The Origin and Growth of the English Oligarchy, 15
But as a social system it survived, and circumstances had
combined to throw all its privileges into the hands of the
few, while whatever benefit the humble retainers had once
found in it were extinct. It is a familiar story how the
great landholders in the first Parliament of Charles II.
threw off all their own feudal burdens, and generously
granted the Crown, in compensation, an ample excise on
the drink and tobacco of the people. And though the costs
of war afterwards compelled them to submit to a land-
tax, they succeeded in arranging it on such favourable
terms that the public were gradually cheated of their
legitimate revenue from the national domain. Feudal
sub-tenancies had already been long exchanged for mere
rent-paying occupancies. But while the landlords or crown
tenants carefully nursed this commercial relationship so
far as it enriched them, they kept up all the old habits of
feudalism, so far as these could be applied to the advan-
tage of landlords in a modern age. If farmers were not
summoned to appear in arms to fight for their lord, they
were expected, as a matter of course, to back his opinions
at the polling booth. If they had not to pay fees for the
knightood of his son, they were bound to return the boy
to Parliament. In religion, as in politics, they must follow
their owner, and take their chance of heaven or hell as
his chosen parson might direct. How much they might
keep out of their earnings was for his benevolence or greed
to decide, and every stick and stone they put upon the
land, every improvement by which they raised its value,
remained his unbought property whenever he chose to
turn them out. To keep up rents the price of corn was
forced up by duties on imports, and bounties on exports,
16
The Conflict of Oligarchy and Democracy.
paid at the expense of hungering millions. To keep
down wages, rates were extorted from all forms of thrift
and industry to supplement the niggardly dole of agricul-
tural employers. And lest the poor should learn the
strength that lay in their numbers, old laws against com-
bination were cruelly worked, and new ones were imposed
by men who were at once witnesses, judges, and legislators
in their own interest.
Such statesmen as Walpole and William Pitt were, of
course, not wholly blind to the injustice and mischief of
the territorial and financial system of their time. But
though they dreamed of reform, the oligarchy was too
strong for them, and both alike had to give way to the
stolid self-immolation of a pugnacious people. How
immortal is popular folly! And how changeless its
essential features amid the caprices of fashion! Two
delusions, the one that of protection, the other that of
military glory, seem to be so ingrained in the very heart
and soul and life of poor humanity that nothing short of
torture by hunger seems ever wholly to disenchant a
people. Only the horrors of famine drove us into free
trade; and such is the inveteracy of humbug upon this
subject that we only retain our privileges now because
no section of consumers can be found benevolent enough
to be willingly robbed for the benefit of the rest. But
in the eighteenth century, and in the beginning of
Our own age, people were used to it; and every-
one, except a few supposed madmen, believed that
the infallible way to increase national gains was to
choke commerce by restrictions. Only think that for
more than a hundred years, a whole nation submitted
The Origin and Growth of the English Oligarchy.
17
to be starved in order to pamper a few thousand landlords.
That is the plain fact in few words. And nothing could
illustrate more startlingly the tyrannic spell by which the
millions, resistless if they had known it, were held
enslaved. The only folly that could match it was the
sanguinary mania mistaken for patriotism. When Sir
Robert Walpole, against his sober judgment, was forced
into war to avenge the cropped ear of the adventurer
Jenkins, joy-bells were rung in many a town. "They may
ring their bells now," said he, "but they will be wringing
their hands soon."
Yet there is no doubt that the tremendous efforts made
by this country to fight all the world, served admirably the
interests of certain limited classes. Army supplies, ship-
building, the growth of national debt, and opportunities for
speculation, caused a wonderful flow of profit into the
pockets of various contractors and manufacturers. At the
same time glorious careers were opened for scions of
the aristocracy, and splendid pensions were earned. But
the tendency of such ill-gotten national gains is always to
concentration, never to diffusion. Fortunes might be
made, but wages sank, and provisions rose to famine
prices. Squires might rejoice at news of their gallant
sons; but when their labourers on seven shillings a week,
with wheat at £5 a quarter, would drown their misery in
beer, drinking the health of the young master, and would
hiccup forth the lying chorus that "Britons never will be
slaves," it was a sorry satire on the sort of patriotism
advocated by an interested oligarchy.
Is that tyrannic spell of class interests over popular
delusions exhausted yet? Why, it is not ten years since
18
The Conflict of Oligarchy and Democracy.
the wicked folly of the last Afghan war was applauded and
cheered, and the still more criminal madness of protecting
Turkish devilry at the risk of European war, was the fond
theme of popular song. Whose interests would that have
served? Who are the gainers by the policy that threatens
to embarrass us with half of Africa in addition to India?
It is almost maddening to hear the canting talk of "British
interests," with the vulgar and fallacious interpretation put
upon the phrase. For British interests do not concern
wholly, or mainly, statesmen and military officers, or even
capitalists, merchants, and bondholders. But British
interests ought to mean fulness of life for the whole thirty-
six millions of our fellow-countrymen. It is not their
wages only that I care about, but their cultivation, 'the
refinement of their perceptions, the extension of their
sympathies, the elevation of their pleasures, the enlarge-
ment of their energies, the ennoblement of their views of
life. But all this requires education, sanitation, improved
dwellings, healthy literature, the popularisation of art and
science. And these again are impossible without thrift,
both national and individual. But while our resources are
squandered, and our attention distracted by sanguinary
enterprises all over the world, the more substantial British
interests will never receive the care or sacrifices they
deserve.
And what is the remedy? The remedy is, I verily
believe, the conversion of oligarchy into democracy; a
belief I hope to justify in the course of these lectures.
The sense in which I employ the first term is, I trust,
apparent now, though I have not given more than a
passing definition. Whatever the forms of a constitution
The Origin and Growth of the English Oligarchy. 19
may be, so long as it works mainly for the benefit of a
limited class, whether landholders or capitalists, it is prac-
tically an oligarchy. It would be contrary to human
nature if such a class did not endeavour to keep power in its
hands. Nor is it necessarily open to unreserved condem-
nation on that account. For it is quite possible that it is
unable to understand how the country could survive except
by methods which custom disguises as laws of nature. In-
deed, nothing is more honourable to our native land than
the fact that so many have broken with the prejudices of
their birth and breeding to champion the cause of the
people at large regardless of all class interests. But such
acknowledgments cannot neutralise the truth that down to
the present day political power, though far more just than
ever before, is still specially careful of an old social and
territorial system incongruous with the age. At the com-
mencement of this lecture we remarked that when we
speak of our constitution as comprised of crown, lords,
and commons, we should not confine the second term to
peers of parliament. Practically as well as socially that
aristocratic element includes all great landowners, and is
thus very prevalent in the House of Commons as well.
The power of great families has indeed almost passed away.
But if any one should hold that oligarchic rule passed
away with it, I would put to him a test case. Why is it
that we still endure land laws and game laws, which make
the soil of our native land a luxury of the rich instead of
the basis of labour? To me it seems that this, like the
long continuance of corn-laws, is only explicable by the
survival of oligarchic rule.
Finally, the democracy I would put in contrast would
20
The Conflict of Oligarchy and Democracy.
mean the rule of popular opinion after free discussion,
and by means of a parliament fairly representing the
unbribed and unconstrained views of the majority.
For the fulfilment of this ideal, members should be dis-
tributed in strict proportion to the population represented,
and all collateral standards of assessments or distance
should be discarded. Classes and interests are only of
value in proportion to the number of people concerned
in them or affected by them. If it be said that land-
owners and farmers are important to the population
outside their own ranks, I would observe that the same
thing may be said with equal truth of doctors and school-
masters. But no one advocates giving the latter a special
representation. It is not necessary; because the popula-
tion at large may be trusted to know and feel what classes
and interests are important to them. To such questions,
however, we shall have to return. Meantime it is suffi-
cient to note how history, so far as we have traced it,
shows us the millions managed by the hundreds in the
interest of the hundreds. It remains hereafter to note the
efforts hitherto made, or yet to be made, in order that vote
and interest, power and profit, progress and growth, may
be managed and administered amongst the millions them-
selves with a nearer approach to equality.
;

LECTURE II.
CAUSES AND HINDRANCES OF
REFORM.
THE view of English History exhibited in the preceding
lecture is of course incomplete. I have been concerned
only with the devolution of political power, and this I have
described as passing at successive periods through the
stages of feudalism, despotism, and oligarchy. But the
devolution of political power is after all only one among
many processes in the complicated life of a nation, and
the farther progress of political development during the
present century cannot be explained without a reference to
other aspects of our history. The English race has always
been characterised by a strong and keen sense of personal
rights. Yet this has rarely taken a sentimental form.
The peasants who in the fourteenth century were roused
by John Ball and followed Wat Tyler were not actuated
by any abstract ideas of liberty or human dignity, but by
intolerance of shameful misery. The rising of Cade in
the following century was more distinctly political in its
aims. But he also exemplified the practical nature of the
politics of his party by his sanguine promises about the
size of pint pots and the price of fat capons. Even Crom-
well's Ironsides, though strongly tinged with fanaticism,
were singularly business-like in their ineffectual attempts
at a settlement with the infatuated king. However wild
some of their religious notions, their ideas about more
2
22
The Conflict of Oligarchy and Democracy.
mundane affairs were really summed up in the common
motto, "live and let live." Indeed, fairness as between man
and man has, in the politics of the English Commons,
been always the actuating principle much more than any
"visions of a perfect state." All sorts of policies, imperial
and commercial, arrogant and truckling; all sorts of leaders,
aristocratic and vulgar, heroic and selfish, have in turns
swayed their passions. But the popular song which
expresses contempt for any one who would "rob a poor
man of his beer," hints very suggestively at the limit of
their toleration. They would not, if they could help it,
allow their right to a reasonable enjoyment of life to be
questioned. But this being granted, they have been for
the most part far too careless about the form of their
government.
Perhaps I may exhibit more clearly at once the
sturdiness and the unsentimental nature of this English
sense of personal right by examples pointing two extremes
of character between which it lies. In the vast empire of
India, the dread responsibility for whose welfare is too
little realised amongst us, recurrent periods of famine have
slain hundreds of thousands by starvation. But such
famines have rarely, if ever, been the occasion of serious
disturbance. No such uprising as the Sepoy mutiny has
ever sprung from such a cause. The people lie down in
the roads and die, like flies smitten by a frost. Fate is
upon them, and they are silent, without even a muttered
curse upon their lips. Amongst all the millions threatened
from time to time by such a horror, the notion of self-help
never seems to occur. The right to life is not a conscious
sentiment. The famine, like the sunset, is in the inevitable
·
Causes and Hindrances of Reform.
23
course of nature, and they have no more thought of
resenting the one than the other. Such abject resignation
cannot be paralleled, perhaps, amongst any western race.
But whether the Englishman has a more imperious appetite
than most, or whatever be the cause, certain it is that he
is very speedily moved to vigorous action by any curtail-
ment-I will not say of his beef, for time was when he
rarely tasted it but of his bread, and cheese, and beer.
Witness the action of the "club-men" in the time of the
great civil war. When the fight between King and Parlia-
ment began to threaten farmers, labourers, and village
tradesmen with ruin, in the districts where it raged, these
poor people, armed for the most part only with clubs,
scythes, and pitchforks, conceived the daring purpose of
resisting both contending armies, and defending their
household goods against either. As to Magna Charta or
the new Petition of Right, they knew and cared nothing.
But they had a right to live, and to the means of life; and
for this right they were ready to fight either King or
Parliament, or both in succession.
It would be difficult, I think, to match this audacity in
any records of Continental wars. Still, no mob of any
western race would die of starvation without striking a
blow against fate. The great French Revolution was
hurried on by lack of bread; and when the maddened
mothers of perishing families marched out to Versailles
and dragged the King, Queen, and Dauphin to Paris, they
shouted, as they returned, "We have brought the baker,
the baker's wife, and the baker's son." But this popular
uprising in France was speedily distinguished from any
analogous movements in England, by the rapid pre-
2*
24
The Conflict of Oligarchy and Democracy.
dominance of grand phrases and formulas over practical
demands. "Liberty, equality, and fraternity” are fine words;
but when men are so charmed with their sound that they
shirk the patient labour and self-control necessary to evolve
the practical realities represented, the result is often the
very reverse of what was desired. It is impossible to
deny that something of this kind occurred in the sequel of
the French Revolution. Satisfied with asserting their
liberty, the people were content to leave in the hands of
the official class a degree of irresponsible power which the
more practical English race has never willingly tolerated.
Intoxicated with the glorious idea of a fraternity wide as
humanity, they insisted upon realising this idea by force
of arms, and thus sold themselves to a family of military
adventurers. But throughout the whole story, sometimes
glorious, oftener dismal, our neighbours have deluded
themselves with the flattering notion that they were
worshipping ideas, when in reality they had become the
slaves of phrases.
Now English political feeling appears to me to repre-
sent a mean between the two extremes that I have
described. Substantial wrongs, injustice that robs the
home or hearth, have never been patiently endured by the
English race. But on the other hand, if they could get
along with reasonable security for life and earnings, they
have not troubled themselves much as to the sentimental
aspects of the political forms under which they live. I
would not have it supposed that I regard our race as
sordid, or incapable of inspiration. So far am I from this,
that I believe, if the facts are accurately weighed, it will be
found that no nation in the world has ever made such
1
Causes and Hindrances of Reform.
25
sacrifices for principle.
But then the condition has
always been that the principle must be represented by
some concrete need, and not merely embodied in eloquent
phrases. Fresh proof of this is afforded by the fact that
next to the sense of tangible personal wrongs, nothing has
ever given so decisive an impulse to political progress
amongst us as authoritative outrage upon conscience. For
illustrations of this it is sufficient to refer to the lessons we
gathered, in a previous series of lectures, from the rise and
fall of the Commonwealth.
We must keep these characteristics of our race in view
if we would understand either the long delay, or the
recent rapid progress, of political reform. After the
Revolution the chief causes of former discontent had been
very largely diminished. The consent of the people's
representatives had become an indispensable preliminary to
taxation. The evils of billeting and of forcible enlistment
had been greatly lessened. Illegal imprisonment had
become, if not impossible, at least very exceptional. The
Toleration Act gave considerable freedom of religious
organisation. All these together did not amount to an
ideal settlement of the kingdom; and a less practical
people would have found ample reason for continued
disturbances. But, on the whole, our forefathers at the
beginning of last century found they could work together
comfortably by means of these rough compromises, and,
therefore, they contrived to ignore the absurd irrationality
of an effete representative system. To this contented
mind the absence of any acute distress and the compara-
tive sparsity of the population very much contributed. Of
course the nation, considered as a whole, was very much
26
The Conflict of Oligarchy and Democracy.
poorer than it is now; but then the wealth that existed
was somewhat more evenly distributed. The food of the
labouring class was far inferior to what is obtainable now;
but it was not generally deficient in quantity. And if
cottages were sparely and rudely furnished, there were
fewer millionaires to accentuate the contrast by the
multitude of their splendid palaces. When times of
trouble and dearth came, the distress was within more
manageable limits, and it was comparatively easy for the
comfortable classes to enjoy the luxury of effective charity.
Thus, during the greater part of the eighteenth century the
people contented themselves with their government, such
as it was; and suggestions of reform fell comparatively
flat.
The Earl of Chatham, in his younger days, did
indeed attempt to interest his aristocratic friends in
projects for a reform of the representative system. But he
does not appear to have been greatly disappointed that he
met with no support. His brilliant son, in 1782, moved
for a select committee on Reform, but was defeated by 161
to 141. In 1785, William Pitt, as Prime Minister, made a
singular proposal, which it is worth while to notice because
of the absurd extreme to which it carried the doctrine of
vested interests. He treated the right of representation
in Parliament as a property, to be estimated by pecuniary
value. There is no doubt that the state of things existing
in that day fully justified him in doing so. For the owner-
ship of a pocket borough was far more valuable than even
the ownership of a church living, and the enormous
amount of money spent in small towns at election times
was no inconsiderable element in the trade of the place.
Causes and Hindrances of Reform.
27
Now we all know how vested interests in public abuses
are treated in our own day. The abuse, whether in the
form of land monopoly or ecclesiastical exclusiveness, is
solemnly condemned; but at the same time it is piously
suggested that property has a sacredness which cannot
safely be outraged; and the compensation demanded by
vested interests before the population can enjoy their own
again is usually put at a very high figure. William
Pitt's proposal sounds like a satire on such doctrines. He
suggested that the right of representation in Parliament
might be bought for a sum of money from thirty-six small
boroughs, and that the right thus purchased might be
transferred to counties or populous places. And farther,
with more foresight than is usually characteristic of
reformers, he proposed to make permanent provision for
repeating the process as often as might be necessary.
Thus, whenever a poor decayed borough had fallen below
the figure justifying representation in Parliament, the
burgesses would have had the consolation of receiving a
good round sum from the Government as the price of
surrendering the claim to which they had no longer any
just title. Mr. Pitt, however, was defeated. Every member
for a small borough was afraid lest his own might be
amongst the thirty-six; and, as it was improbable that his
constituents would share the plunder with him, he voted
against the Government. From that time forward William
Pitt abandoned the cause of Reform, and, much against
his will, he was speedily dragged into foreign complica-
tions and sanguinary wars, such as have always neutralised
democratic progress at home.
But, at the close of the century, several causes con-
28
The Conflict of Oligarchy and Democracy.
tributed to create the discontent that has unfortunately
been, as a general rule, the essential condition of popular
interest in better government.
The corn-law then in
existence kept up the price of bread; and, while the
home supplies were very inelastic, the population was
rapidly increasing. Manufactures had already been con-
siderably expanded, and the concentration of workpeople
in great centres had already begun. Disputes about
wages were carried on under all the disadvantages of the
Combination Laws and the tyrannical interpretation of
the common law on the subject of conspiracy. The
growing distress occasioned by such causes naturally drew
attention to any laws that could be supposed to favour the
rich at the expense of the poor. This again led men to
ask themselves how it was that such laws could be framed
and maintained. The poor were in a vast majority; and
though the constitution of the country was ridiculously
inconsistent with its theory, it was even then supposed
that the common good was guaranteed by the necessity of
popular consent to all legislation. The discontented
therefore began to question how it was that the theory
was so inconsistent with the practice; and when once this
question was asked, it speedily became apparent that the
machinery of the constitution was exceedingly ill adapted
to work out the theory.
Such reflections, and the political unrest arising from
them, were considerably stimulated by the great French
Revolution. This Revolution had been preceded by
an outburst of philosophical and political speculation
in France the influence of which extended more Οι
less to this country. The result was that clubs and
Causes and Hindrances of Reform.
29
associations began to be formed for the purpose of
Although the grandfathers
before the beginning of
separated from us by such
mending the constitution.
of many of us were born
this century, that period is
enormous changes that the condition of things then
existing is almost as difficult to realise as the buried
Assyrian empire. Even the most intelligent of popular
audiences have probably but little idea of the extent to
which the House of Commons was then the mere tool of
a privileged few. I shall make no apology, therefore, for
giving some facts which to the historical student are of
-course familiar.
In the year 1793 one of the most remarkable petitions
ever addressed to Parliament was presented to the House
of Commons, urging a reform in the representation of the
people. It was remarkable, not only because of its length,
but because of the clear, incisive, outspoken language in
which it was composed, and the careful elaboration of the
case it stated. The signatories called themselves an
association of friends of the people; and the main object
was to show in a glaring light the wrongs done by the
absurd travesty of representation into which the people's
House had degenerated. The facts alleged were so start-
ling that the petitioners, in token of their good faith, felt
it necessary to declare themselves ready to adduce legal
proof of every allegation. They stated that out of 658
members of the House of Commons, seventy were returned
by thirty-five places where there were practically no voters
at all. One of them was the desolate mound of Old
Sarum, from which all signs of habitation had disappeared.
The rest were ancient decayed boroughs where the holders
!
2α
30
The Conflict of Oligarchy and Democracy.
of a few "burgage tenures," as they were called, had
entirely surrendered whatever political rights they had ever
possessed to the Lord of the Manor, who could have sent
up his butler or valet to Parliament had he so pleased.. In
addition to these seventy members, ninety more were
elected by forty-six places, in none of which were there
more than fifty voters. In most of these, likewise, either
the Lord of the Manor was the dictator, or
a few
possessors of corrupt privilege pocketed their fees and
returned the man who paid them. The petitioners went on
to specify various classes of boroughs, with voters in no
case exceeding two hundred; and summing up these
places they showed that an actual majority of the House of
Commons was returned by such constituencies as these.
No census of the population was taken at that time. The
only means of estimating it were the lists made by tax-
gatherers. From these it was found that the number of
householders paying taxes in England and Wales was a
little short of one million; and of this number 939,000
were without any franchise at all unless they purchased
it, which of course very few cared to do. The purchase
was not, I suppose, by way of direct bargain and sale, but
by payment of fees for entry into privileged bodies which
at that time had the election of members.
It seems incredible that such a ridiculous mockery of
representation should have been allowed to exist for forty
years longer without reform. Both incentives which we
have noted as always effective with English people existed
in growing strength. The physical misery of the populace
always verged on starvation; and periodically went over the
verge. The Toleration Act did not prevent religious in-
Causes and Hindrances of Reform.
31
equalities that insulted the faith of a large number amongst
the middle classes. Thus in the case of thirty boroughs,
where the members were returned to Parliament by the
municipal corporations, all Papists and Dissenters were
excluded from the franchise by the operation of the Test
and Corporation Acts. Yet this misery and this shame.
were patiently endured until the time when the elder
How was this?
amongst us were coming into the world.
The mystery is solved by the explanation which we have
too often found applicable to popular tolerance of wrong.
It was the "
gunpowder and glory business"; it was the
pomp of war and pride of slaughter; it was the rapid and
unholy gains poured into the lap of a fortunate few by the
enormous expenditure upon armaments—such was the
secret of the comparative inattention of the people of
this country throughout a whole generation to Parlia-
mentary abuses that should have been intolerable. If the
newly enfranchised, if the working classes of our great
towns, with their enormously increased political power,
will not learn this lesson emblazoned in horrid characters
on every page of our sanguinary history, their blood must
be on their own heads. They will now have no one to
blame but themselves. I am not for "peace at any price”;
I am aware that in the mysterious constitution of this
world the struggles of war have been in the past amongst
the conditions of progress; and though I am certain that
it is not and cannot be an everlasting condition, yet I
cannot pretend to any confidence that the day has yet
dawned when armaments can be regarded as wholly
unnecessary. But of this at least I am convinced, that if
on our part no war other than strictly defensive were ever
32
The Conflict of Oligarchy and Democracy.
henceforth to be tolerated, and if we confined our ideas of
defence to actual maintenance of acquired rights, we
might soon diminish our army by one half, and at least
be at rest from panics about our fleet.
Of course all wars are said to be defensive. But then
they are made so by interpretations non-natural and
contrary to common sense. The war against the French
Republic and against the French Empire was supposed
to be defensive. Our monarchical institutions were be-
lieved to be threatened, our religion to be menaced by
French atheism. Besides, if the French took Egypt
they might oust us from India, and then what would
become of the fortunes of the great East India Company?
Still farther, the aggressive Republic of France was
threatening Holland, and we were entangled in treaties.
which compelled, or were interpreted as compelling us
to go to the rescue, no matter what the cost might be
to our own suffering poor. By such arguments it was,
and is still, maintained that the war against France was
purely defensive, and could not honourably be avoided.
Then, when the ill-feeling engendered between the two
nations naturally suggested to Bonaparte the destruction
of English commerce by closing Europe against us, it was
easy to persuade the groaning taxpayers that there was no
help for them now but the destruction of their enemy at
any cost. Thus, like desperate gamblers, they played
double or quits, until at last they spent as much money as
would have endowed every labourer in the country with a
cottage and garden ground, freehold for ever.
I know the struggle was not without its compensations.
I am as proud as any one can be of "British pluck
"" But
•
1
Causes and Hindrances of Reform.
33
I think the time is come-aye, and had come at the
beginning of the century-when pluck might be shown in
nobler forms than those we share with the bulldog. I
fully recognise the force and brilliancy with which Prof.
Seeley, in his "Expansion of England," has urged the
development of political capacity, the inspiration of
legitimate ambition, the wide extension of our race,
language, ideas, and literature, as the happy consequences
of our pugnacity. But I do not believe that such results
were attainable only by war; and I contend that the fate,
if fate it was, which drove us to the choice of such means,
robbed us of more than half the value of our gain.
Prof. Seeley himself commends, as a not unprofitable ex-
ercise, speculation on the different issues that would have
arisen had the course of history been other than it has been.
Think, then, what might have been the result if the better
instincts of William Pitt had been followed, and he had
engaged his countrymen in domestic reforms instead of
foreign conquest. He would have maintained the right of
the French to manage their own affairs without inter-
ference from us. And if continental powers chose to
make war on them, he would have suffered fanatical repub-
licans, stolid despots, and infatuated emperors to fight it
out amongst themselves, while Great Britain maintained a
strict neutrality. Then there would have been no conti-
nental decree against English commerce. Egypt might—
probably would-have fallen to the French, and a consider-
able part of India might have followed-for a time. But
with the rest of Europe on her hands, Republican France
would scarcely have wantonly attacked the distant de-
pendencies of Great Britain. The rapidly growing com-
34
The Conflict of Oligarchy and Democracy.
merce of this country would have derived an enormous
impulse from the advantages inevitably falling to a neutral.
Harried industries would have fled hither, as did the
Flemings and the Huguenots in previous ages. The
tendency would have been to associate England in politics,
as well as in commerce, with the young republic of the
West, instead of the crumbling system of the old world.
Reconciliation and amity would thus have been hastened;
the war of 1812 would probably have been avoided;
and though nothing would have disillusionised the States
as to their protectionist superstitions, our present cordial
relations would have been anticipated by a generation.
Meantime the caldron of war in Europe would have
boiled until it overflowed and extinguished the passions
and corruptions that set it seething. But the humiliation of
France could hardly have been so complete as it was made
by the alliance of our naval supremacy and financial
resources with continental armaments. It is surely not un-
reasonable to conjecture that the result of the more equal
balance of forces would have been the destruction of
French imperialism on the one hand, and of old world
tyrannies on the other. No triple or quadruple alliance of
monarchs would have been in a position to resettle Europe
in their own interests. The Revolution which, in spite of
all opposition, has permanently remodelled France, would
have left its mark more conspicuously on the constitutional
forms of all European countries except Turkey and Russia.
No second Empire would have demoralised our neigh-
bours. German patriotism would have found nobler scope
in the development of free institutions than in the triumphs.
of war. Italy must have been unified early in the century;
Causes and Hindrances of Reform.
35
Mazzini and Garibaldi would have had a more peaceful if
not a more glorious mission. In the exhaustion of Russia
and the preoccupation of Austria with constitutional
changes, Constantinople might have become once more
the capital of a revived Greek Empire, and the Turk
banished into Asia. If these things did not happen it was
because the natural course of events was disturbed and
distorted by the mad insistance of our statesmen on stem-
ming the tide of the French Revolution. They did succeed
in damming it up for a time and leading it into artificial
channels. But the barriers were not permanent; and they
have yet to be swept away in fresh complications of ruin.
The natural issue of that great uprising would have been
to revolutionise Europe; and if Europe had been revolu-
tionised at the beginning of the century, perhaps it would
not be bristling with bayonets now.
Nor would the natural development of the French Revo-
lution have been disadvantageous to any real interest of our
own country. A neutral nation, with commercial instincts,
with an expanding population, with enormous resources in
coal and iron, and unhindered access by sea to all parts of
the world, must necessarily have had the first and best
opportunities of profitable colonisation. As to India-that
splendid peril, which inspires Tory editors with a spirit of
prophecy, and periodically, like conscience, makes cowards
of us all-whatever might have been the case with the
natives of that country, the absence of responsibility for
their government would, in my view, have been a distinct
gain to the natives of this. But it is hardly likely we
should have been saved from that responsibility by the
course of events I have suggested. Having no military or
36
The Conflict of Oligarchy and Democracy.
naval object to serve there, France would have yielded to
the necessities of European conflict, and so far have with-
drawn her attention from India that the relative position
there would have probably become much the same as it is.
But the principal advantage we should have gained by
abstinence from the carnival of blood would have been the
anticipation by thirty years of the Reform era, and com-
parative freedom from the cruel burden of debt which
now costs us twenty-eight millions a year. For as the
question of Reform was undoubtedly shelved by the dis-
traction of public attention to foreign wars, it is safe to
conjecture that had peace been preserved, this question
would have forced its way to the front. And surely we
should have been happier and better at this moment,
nearer the solution of the terrible problems of pauperism,
intemperance, ignorance, and the land famine, if our
grandfathers, amidst their more brilliant and heroic
qualities, had possessed the common sense to mind their
own business. In fact, we should have been in the posi-
tion yet in store, we hope, for our great-grandchildren.
It is a bitter pleasure to conjure up visions of the inheri-
tance thus deferred-universal free education, free trade
in land, secularised Church property, security and hope for
farmers, co-operation and diffusion of profits in trade and
manufacture, improved dwellings, higher morality, culture,
and mental pleasures made accessible to all. But I trust
we are not so self-centred that we cannot rejoice in the
better fortune of those who come after us, our own flesh
and blood, for whose advancement we toil and strive.
And perhaps the most precious heritage we can hand
down to them is the conviction inwrought into the inmost
Causes and Hindrances of Reform.
37
texture of the life they draw from us, that amongst nations,
as amongst individual men, violence, and passion, and
pride make a desert of long coming years.
The demoralising influence of war did not cease with
its termination. The nation, which in 1793 seemed ripe
for reform, was in 1815, at the restoration of peace, still
seventeen years from the goal. As an occasional drunkard,
after a week's dissipation, has to wait several days before
he can resume the current of his life, and then does so at
a disadvantage, so, after the fierce intoxication, and splen-
did but futile dreams of that long passion, the British
democracy was dazed, and weary, and dull, incapable of
the organisation and toil necessary for the victories of
peace. The country was pervaded by disbanded or in-
valided soldiers, all whose talk was of guns and drums,
and sieges and slaughter. Then, also, the changes in
business and a certain expansion of trade when the world-
wide state of siege came to an end, brought the usual for-
tunes to a few capitalists and speculators. But lest British
interests should suffer by too great a plenty of food, the
corn law, the landlord's guarantee of rent, was made more
stringent and secure. Thus farmers received high prices,
and the poor-rates, to supplement the starvation wages of
the labourers, were borne with the less grumbling by the
foolish shopkeepers and professional people. For when
rents were high, and cheerfully paid, surely every one
must be well off. But how few they were who really
profited by the peace may be judged by one or two facts.
Up to 1820 wheat was nearly £5 a quarter, and an agri-
cultural labourer had to work twelve or fourteen weeks to
earn as much. Even skilled artisans thought a pound a
38
The Conflict of Oligarchy and Democracy.
week good wages. But in 1818 the poor-rate in England
and Wales amounted to £8,000,000, or 13s. 9d. a head
for the whole population. What wonder, then, that
fierce discontent began to shake the foundations of
society? Yet worshippers of established power talked
then, as they talk now, about the impossibility of healing
social distress by political reforms; and successful men of
business preferred to mitigate suffering by charity rather
than risk the disturbance of profitable trade by changes
thought to be revolutionary. Miserable mill-hands were
cut down in the streets of Manchester by sleek mounted
farmers, who owed their good condition to the starvation
of the men they murdered. But now the spirit of the
people was roused. Things had come to that pass that
for the majority of the nation life was unendurable, and
they thought little of risking it in the effort to relieve their
wretchedness. Nightly drilling went on amongst the
Lancashire and Yorkshire dales; arms were secretly pre-
pared. A thousand men, carrying nothing but a blanket
to wrap them in at night, resolved to march on London,
that, if possible, they might frighten the capital and the
Government with their gaunt despair. Birmingham and
Bristol became centres of incipient insurrection; and at
last, like wretched bears, which dance only because the
ground they stand on is made too hot for endurance, the
borough-mongers, and nominees, and parasites who filled
the benches of Parliament, consented to follow Lord John
Russell, only to avoid civil war. Yet even then, it is well
known the Lords held out, and nothing brought them to
* Rogers' “Six Centuries of Work and Wages,” p. 494.
Causes and Hindrances of Reform.
39
•
reason but the fearful threat of deluging their House with
plebeian parvenus by royal prerogative. What was not
yielded to avert the terrible curse of domestic bloodshed
was conceded at once to prevent nobility being vulgarised.
And thus we see that while the causes of reform are
democratic self-respect, intolerance of injustice, peaceful
aspiration, and political education among a people, its
hindrances are the deceptions of sectional prosperity,
popular ignorance, the distractions of war, want of organi-
sation, and an oligarchy blind and deaf to everything but
privilege.

7
་
LECTURE III.
THE RELATION OF POLITICAL REFORM
TO SOCIAL PROGRESS.
THE promoters of the great Reform Bill believed that they
were ushering in the golden age. And so they were, in
one sense, but not exactly as they intended it. For
amongst the indirect consequences of that measure of
political regeneration, certainly the most palpable and
striking was the removal of restrictions on trade and com-
merce. This release of commerce followed just upon an
enormous development of mechanical invention, and co-
incided with a large extension of markets in America,
Asia, and Africa. The result was such a sudden expan-
sion of trade, and such a rapid accumulation of wealth, as
the world has never seen before, and will probably never
see again. For instance, those born in the fateful year
1832 have seen the exports and imports of this country
multiplied at least fourfold during their own lifetime.
What the expansion of capital has been during that period
may be imagined from the extension of foreign trade.
For, while the population has doubled, our manufacturers,
besides keeping pace with an enormously increased home
demand, have choked every port in the world with their
products; and now they are lamenting, like Alexander,
that there are no more worlds to conquer.
We hear much grumbling about depression of trade just
at present. But on the whole I suppose there never was a
3
42
The Conflict of Oligarchy and Democracy.
&
half century in human experience that afforded such a happy
time for capital combined with industry and enterprise.
The favoured few, who knew where to tap the golden stream,
have not only received a maximum of profit with a mimi-
mum of toil and anxiety, but they have lived in an age
when money could procure for them an enjoyment of life
far longer, far more various, and far more refined than was
ever possible to successful industry before. The four
quarters of the earth have invited them to travel for
amusement. The ocean has obsequiously bent beneath
their yachts-each as costly as a king's navy in old
times. Science has unfolded the secrets of nature for
their delectation, has turned Alps and Andes into a
museum of geology for them, and converted the deserts of
the earth into a vast zoological garden for their instruc-
tion, or a park for their sport. Art has inspired a series.
of painters not disdained even by Mr. Ruskin; and all
their masterpieces have been at the command of the
millionaire. Or if a man had nobler aspirations still, and
found delight in doing good, the more complex life of our
time has opened out a hundred lines of public service, in
all of which money and leisure have trebled the value of
individual powers. As leaders of agitations, as presidents
of societies, as layers of foundation stones, as members of
Parliament, successful men of business have never been so
much in request since the world began. There never was
any other age in the past, and I strongly suspect there.
never will be another in the future, so desirable as the life-
time of the money-making man. And this characteristic
of the age may be traced in no inconsiderable degree to
the Reform Bill. For this gave the management of
The Relation of Political Reform to Social Progress. 43
affairs into the hands of capitalists precisely at the junc-
ture when steam-power and extended markets enabled
them to make the most of their opportunity. In that sense,
indeed, our fathers were right when they believed that the
triumph of reform ushered in a golden age.
But, unfortunately, there is another side to the picture.
For while the past fifty years have been such an uncom-
monly happy time for the rich, it is impossible to say so
much for the poor. It would be natural to suppose that
so vast an influx of wealth would sweep away all pauperism.
But so far is this from being the case, that on January 1 I,
1883, the number of paupers in England and Wales alone
was, as nearly as possible, 800,000; and of these more
than 100,000 were adult, able-bodied men and women.
For the maintenance or relief of these people more than
£8,000,000 was spent, after being wrung from a popula-
tion of whom at least two or three millions were themselves
on the verge of pauperism every day of their lives. Out of
the thirty-six millions, or thereabout, forming the popula-
tion of the United Kingdom, six-sevenths, or thirty
millions, have so narrow a margin between income and
the necessities of bare sustenance, that they cannot pay
the annual cost of their children's education, and are
obliged to have it spread through all their lives by means of
rates and taxes. Prof. Rogers, M.P., in his "Six Centuries
of Work and Wages," gives accumulated proofs that the
earnings of labour, if measured by their purchasing power,
are not, on the average, so good now as they were in the
fifteenth century. Of course the case of highly skilled
artisans is exceptional. But they are so few compared
with the vast mass of the population that the average
44
The Conflict of Oligarchy and Democracy.
ན་
remains as stated. The shameful squalor in which
myriads live under the very shadow of palaces has been
the cause of emotions that remind us too much of the
proverb, "Much cry and little wool."
But what is this new horror accidentally revealed to us
by inquiries resulting from the maudlin cant about "over-
pressure" in A B C? Thousands of children, we are
told, come breakfastless to school, and hundreds of
thousands go for days without any more substantial dinner
than bread and dripping. But what are we to think of the
infatuated folly which urges this misery as a reason for
keeping them in ignorance, and depriving them of the
only hope of their redemption? Through ignorance their
ancestors for a hundred generations have been the blind
sport of accident. Through ignorance, their forerunners
could raise no effective protest when labour guilds were
plundered, when the coin that paid their wages was
debased, when the price of labour was fixed by authority,
when cruel laws of settlement were passed, and destitute
wanderers branded or even hanged as criminals. Through
ignorance the forefathers of present day wretchedness
could offer no resistance while lordly tenures were turned
into ownership, and servile tenures were exchanged for
Common
more servile tenancies, or wholly abolished.
pasture might be stolen, common lands distributed to
titled greed, and game laws might be increased in
stringency till land became worth more for sport than for
labour; but the ignorance of the many was helpless,
where the keen foresight of the few foresaw the land
famine of to-day.
But ignorance does not kill outright. When agonised
The Relation of Political Reform to Social Progress. 45
by the misery it causes, we might almost wish it did.
No; it tends to thriftless, heedless, senseless multiplica-
tion. The parents of these hungry children stumbled
through ignorance into marriage. In the stupidity of
ignorance they multiplied mouths when there was no
prospect of food for them. The poor little ragged, pining
creatures themselves are the embodiment and illustration
of all the miseries and wrongs wrought by ignorance
amongst the many. And the superfine philanthropy of
doctors and enemies to school boards tells us, for pity's
sake, to keep them ignorant still. Alas, it is not the
wicked only whose "tender mercies are cruel." Why do
they not rather propose some euthanasia? Better death,
and silence, and rest, than the pauper's life of periodic
torture and everlasting shame. Better death; for there
the rich and poor meet together, and the horrible in-
equalities of an unnatural life are annulled; there the
wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest.
But if you keep them alive, teach them! In God's
name teach them; and not grudgingly, but largely, liber-
ally, in heart and soul, as well as in head; not as parrots,
but as little brethren of Shakespeare and Milton-aye,
of Christ! Teach them, I say, in free schools, in well-
appointed, costly schools, and with all the best appliances
that money can buy, even if you have to pawn all the
guns and bayonets in every armoury of the land. The
whole future of the civilised world is locked up in the
wizened faces and pinched hearts of these victims of
ignorance.
Forgive the digression; for I feel a touch of madness.
when I think of those who, because children's bodies are
46
The Conflict of Oligarchy and Democracy.
starved, think to mend matters by starving their minds.
Feed them by all means. So many of their parents have
gone far beyond any possibility of fresh degradation
through charity, that it is really not worth while raising
objections on that score. But what does amaze me in the
philanthropic doctors and their allies, is their stolid
insensibility to the grim humour of the position. Here is
a nation which began to reform itself half-a-century ago,
and did it so effectually that Croesus was a pauper com-
pared with the British Government at the present day.
Yet when we want to teach the nation's children in this.
age of gold, we find that hundreds of thousands among
their parents cannot afford to give them a dinner.
What is the worth of political reform that leaves un-
touched social miseries such as these?
But this is not the only illustration of the difference
between promise and performance in the history of
political reform. We have seen that the Act of 1832 was
regarded as bringing the practice of the constitution into
conformity with its theory. The theory, as held in the
past, has been that while the main framework of our
glorious constitution in Church and State is taken for
granted-indeed, assumed to be part of the order of
nature—our institutions in detail have been supposed to
be moulded and directed by public opinion operating
through Parliament. For reasons amply set forth in a
petition mentioned in the last lecture, the House of
Commons had long ceased to fulfil its function as the
organ of public opinion, and consequently the working of
the constitution was choked with abuses. The change
made in 1832 was thought to be revolutionary in its
The Relation of Political Reform to Social Progress. 47
vastness, and while the timid expected the throne, the
church, and the ten commandments to disappear in a
whirlwind, the hopeful looked for a new heaven and a
new earth dominated by reason and right. But things in
general showed a tenacious conservatism equally unex-
pected by both the fearful and the sanguine. Parliamen-
tary reform was necessarily and speedily followed by the
reform of municipal corporations. But it was fourteen
years before the repeal of the Corn Laws was carried,
with the results we have described. Beyond these there
were few great and vital improvements made in our laws
for many years. And in particular, all forms of social
injustice showed a remarkable tenacity of life.
Take for instance ecclesiastical law. The Marriage
and Registration Acts, relieving Nonconformists from the
inconveniences they suffered by going to their own places
of worship for marriage or baptism, were certainly a great
concession, and were passed in 1836. But it was not
until 1855 that penalties were abolished for holding an
assembly for worship in an unregistered room.
It was
1858 before Jews were admitted to Parliament. It was
not until 1868, and after the passing of a new Reform
Bill, that church-rates ceased to be compulsory. And not
until 1870, forty-eight years after the supposed era of
popular emancipation, was the first general education Act
in our national statutes passed into law.
Perhaps the case is still more striking if we turn to the
laws affecting labour. Down to 1824 any combination
whatever amongst workmen for the purpose of raising
wages was treated as a conspiracy and punished accord-
ingly. In that year the combination laws were abolished,
48
The Conflict of Oligarchy and Democracy.
1
and the right of association asserted. But in the very
next year this Act of relief was repealed, and another
passed of a very specious character, but disastrous in its
effects. For while avowedly renewing the sanction given
in the previous year to combinations of workmen, it made
association on any but the smallest scale both difficult and
dangerous. Thus, it revived the common law on the
subject of combinations obstructive to trade, and it
excepted from penalty only those who were actually
present at the meetings when the rate of wages
was discussed.
Thus a loophole was left for the re-
entrance of the old tyrannical spirit, and no strike-
indeed, no trades union-could be conducted without
danger of prosecution. Now, when it is remembered
how largely the reform unions of that period, and the
secret associations for drill, and the incipient armies
threatening to march on London, were composed of
working men, it must have seemed inevitable that the
passage of the Reform Bill should be followed by
measures of full and adequate justice to workmen's asso-
ciations. But nothing of the kind followed. Mr. George
Howell-from whose valuable book on the Conflicts of
Capital and Labour I glean these facts-tells us that—
"From 1834 to 1842 a good deal was done in the way
of further organisation; occasional protests were from
time to time made against the administration of the law,
but there was no positive demand for its alteration. In
1842, and again in 1845, there were numerous strikes, and
with them, almost as a matter of course, there came pro-
secutions, and protests against the administration of the
law. In nearly every case these were directed against
!
The Relation of Political Reform to Social Progress. 49
the use which was made of the common law of con-
spiracy, by which the masters endeavoured to reach not
only the perpetrators of unlawful acts, but also the
committees of the several unions, and in every case to
extend the punishment beyond the term of three months
as fixed by the statute law to two years under the common
law."
Now the period referred to in this passage comprises
the thirteen years immediately following on the Reform
Act that was to set everything right. Yet we find work-
men still debarred from the right of effective combination
for a perfectly legitimate purpose. A scandalous instance
of this occurred, as Mr. Howell tells us, only two years
after the triumph of reform. Six Dorchester labourers
had committed the unpardonable offence of urging their
mates to combine for their own protection. So much the
law permitted, as we have seen, provided that their pro-
ceedings affected none except the men actually present
when any binding resolution was agreed to. But means
were found of getting these poor men condemned for
administering unlawful oaths; and they were actually
sentenced to seven years' transportation. A great agitation
was the result. A procession of 40,000 workmen carried
to Lord Melbourne a petition on their behalf with more
than a quarter-of-a-million signatures. But meantime the
poor wretches had been hustled on board ship, and, after
the horrors of the "middle passage," were sold as slaves
in Australia at a pound a head. They were graciously
pardoned, it is true. But the period of their sentence had
nearly expired before some of them heard of it.
may be urged, was an exceptional incident;
This, it
and no
за
>
50
The Conflict of Oligarchy and Democracy.
doubt it was the worst case of the kind. But it sounds
incredible that the state of the law, making such an out-
rage possible, remained practically unaltered for thirty-five.
years after the Reform Act; that is, until 1867. The
coincidence of the date with that of the second Reform
Bill, will suggest that the impending emancipation of the
workmen in towns had something to do with the improve-
ment then made by the Master and Servants Act. But
that is scarcely probable. For so far as the franchise.
operates on such matters at all-a question we shall
consider presently-it operates after the oppressed have
received a vote, and not before.
The obstacles to fair and open action on the part of
Trades Unions had the usual effect of begetting unfair
and underhand conspiracies. The occurrence of mysterious
outrages in Sheffield and Manchester led to one of the
most drastic and searching Commissions of enquiry ever
held in this country. And the discoveries made by this
Commission excited horror everywhere. It was proved
that in Sheffield, and to a more limited extent in
Manchester, mischief, outrage, and murder were syste-
matically used by secret tribunals for the purpose of
enforcing the decrees, not of any wide organisation, but
of a little savage clique of conspirators. Then a fierce cry
was raised for a Coercion Act against Trades Unions. They
were to be swept off the face of the earth as satanic, and,
still worse, as un-English inventions. All the wiseacres,
who thought the disclosures a timely revelation of what
democracy would bring us to, confidently expected the
Commissioners to advise very strong measures. At the
time when the Masters and Servants Act was passed the
The Relation of Political Reform to Social Progress. 51
Commission was only beginning its work. But the feeling
of uneasiness caused by these outrages had existed for
years, and had much to do with the attention given to the
subject. Sensible men maintained that the evils deplored
were the results of secrecy resulting from arbitrary repres-
sion. The Masters and Servants Act was partly the
consequence of this feeling. But the horrible revelations
that followed appeared to stamp it as a weak concession to
crime. The Commissioners, however, were men of a
judicial temper. They observed that the evidence of
outrage was confined almost entirely to two places, and
they came to the conclusion that increased liberty com-
bined with a more effective criminal law, would be a better
remedy than any suggested by shrieking reactionaries.
The result was the law of 1871, which, to their credit be
it spoken, a Conservative Government farther improved in
1875.
I have said amply enough now to illustrate my point,
that there is an enormous difference between promise and
performance in the history of political reform. We have
now to ask the reason of it, and what hope there is of any
improvement in the case of the new measure of reform on
which Parliament is engaged at present. In that enter-
taining and remarkable novel entitled "All Sorts and
Conditions of Men," a considerable portion of the plot is
connected with the Radical Club in Redman's Row. The
hero of the story takes part in the debates of this club,
and, of course, always has much the best of the argument.
Among other things, he tells his fellow members that they
are great fools to trouble themselves about the House of
Lords, or the State Church, or the conflicts of parties.
52
The Conflict of Oligarchy and Democracy.
What they want is better houses, unadulterated food and
drink, purer amusements, in a word, a richer and higher
and brighter life. This, he says, they can get if they
determine to have it; but he does not exactly tell them
how. He only says that they are wasting their time in
wrangling about political institutions. Now, at first sight,
our reflections so far would seem to justify the novelist.
For we have been insisting that so far as social justice and
reasonable equality are concerned, the effects of political
reform have fallen far short of what might have been
expected. Still it must be acknowledged that without
political reform, we should at the present day have been
in an almost infinitely worse condition than we are.
Without the aid of the ten-pound voter even the Irish
famine would not have permanently broken down the corn
laws. Without household suffrage, we should not to the
end of the century have obtained even an approxima-
tion to a common school system. These two measures
alone, to say nothing of the Irish Land Act, are sufficient
to justify us in attaching great value to a reform in repre-
sentation. But it is my business at present to show, if I
can, why it is that we have not got much more.
The reasons for this, I believe, to be partly political
and partly social. The political reasons are two; in the
first place, Parliamentary reform has never been carried
far enough; and, in the next, our oligarchic system is so
deeply rooted that, even when exposed unsheltered to the
assaults of democracy, it repels them. And the social
reasons are three-ignorance, habit, and a low moral tone.
In the present and succeeding lecture, I shall be con-
cerned mainly with the political reasons. In the two
:
The Relation of Political Reform to Social Progress. 53
concluding lectures, although the social obstacles to the
full fruition of reform will not be my main subjects, yet they
will be constantly kept in view.
I affirm, then, that parliamentary reform has never been
carried far enough to secure the utmost practicable redress
of contemporary abuses. Are you not amazed that, after
all the storm and struggle preceding 1832, after the
mutterings of a social earthquake, and the immediate
imminence of civil war, the agitators should have been
satisfied with the enfranchisement of 500,000 comfortable
and well-to-do householders, while the miserable were left
powerless as ever? Can you conceive now the political
feeling of a generation which thought it a glorious victory
to secure for Manchester a voice as potent as those of
Woodstock and Eye combined? That after the long
delays on which we have previously commented, and after
the promulgation of ideas more advanced than, have ever
been realised yet, our fathers should have been satisfied
with such a stop-gap as the Act of 1832 is a paradox
strikingly illustrative of the British love for compromise.
Now that affection is often an advantage; but it is almost
as often a disadvantage and a weakness. Which it was in
1832 I shall not take on me to decide. In previous
lectures I have urged in defence of the settlement that the
alternative was civil war. Perhaps it would have been
better to have said that the alternative lay between civil
war of a sharp, short, violent kind and civil war of a
slow, wearing and tedious character. On the whole our
fathers were no doubt right to choose the latter. But we
cannot help sometimes wishing that they had made a push
for household suffrage then. However, they did not; and
54
The Conflict of Oligarchy and Democracy.
the result was that, though the absolute predominance of
the landed interest came to an end, the oligarchy in which
it was vested was not succeeded by democracy. What
happened was this: the commercial and manufacturing
aristocracy received a considerable accession of power, by
which they were able to break down restrictions on trade.
The enfranchisement of the ten-pound householder in towns
gave a very considerable leverage to that section of the
community whose interest lay in the most unrestricted and
advantageous employment of capital. Spinners and
manufacturers, engineers and machinists, overlookers, fore-
men, skilled workmen, with all the thousands of shop-
keepers engaged in supplying their wants, constituted a
formidable political army; and when led by men of con-
spicuous genius, and untiring energy, in a movement
palpably justified by the needs of the whole community,
they were resistless. But even the giants of those days,
when they tried their strength in other directions, proved
comparatively powerless. They could not stop the mad-
ness of the Crimean War. They could not appease the
unreasoning passion that smashed the crockery of the
Chinese Emperor's summer palace. They could not
persuade Parliament that
that robbery by Irish landlords
meant conspiracy and murder by tenants.
When they
denounced the land monopoly and the game laws, they
were as a voice crying in the wilderness and regarded by
none. They could not secure national education, though
I remember hearing Mr. Cobden press it with all the
piercing force of his practical logic. Indeed it was a
common sneer amongst the resting and thankful Whigs,
that the leaders who had carried Free Trade were men of
21
The Relation of Political Reform to Social Progress. 55
one idea, and could do nothing else. But the reason was
evident. It lay in no defect of the leaders. It lay in the
nature of the franchise of 1832. For that was essentially
a commercial franchise, and comparatively ineffective, save
where the interests of trade and working capital were
obviously concerned.
Do not suppose that in this argument I imply any
special reproach against the classes enfranchised in 1832.
When condemning the subjection of the nation to an
hereditary oligarchy, I have never spoken of the men
comprising that privileged class as worse than others in
natural disposition. Nor do I now insinuate that the
commercial aristocracy are more self-seeking, or less
desirous of the general welfare, than the millions socially
below them. If I were betrayed into such a charge, facts,
the most brilliant and eloquent, would convict me of un-
generous slander. The names of William Brown, Francis
Crossley, Titus Salt, Isaac Holden, Alfred Illingworth,
Thomas Potter, and a hundred others that might be
mentioned, are not representative of a miserly grasping
class, bent only on profit grinding. In a score of flourish-
ing towns, public parks, and free libraries, and model dwell-
ings, and mechanics' institutes, are solid monuments, not
of the liberality only, but of the wise, far-seeing philan-
thropy of this class. To this very class, indeed, we owe
the most prominent radical statesmen of the coming time.
Yet still, for all that, it stands good that the politics of
average man in any class, whether that of landowners
or traders, will necessarily be moulded by the ideas,
habits, and hopes and fears most familiar to them. And
those who are the most anxious to be disinterested are
56
The Conflict of Oligarchy and Democracy.
usually the first to confess how difficult it is to be so. It
is, therefore, perfectly consistent with the highest appre-
ciation of the trading and commercial aristocracy to
suggest that they would naturally be inclined to regard
Free Trade as the one cure for all social ills, and indis-
posed to allow sufficient importance to other and possibly
larger issues. So it came to pass that while, under the
franchise of 1832, everything was done to encourage trade,
there was not sufficient voting power to support radical
reforms in regard to education, land, church, or foreign
policy.
This view is confirmed by the fact that the enactment
of household suffrage for borough constituencies in 1867
was very speedily followed by a vigorous attack on the
more pressing social problems that had been neglected
under a narrower suffrage. Incidents of our own experi-
ence make a deeper impression upon us than any historic
records. And hence I have referred more than once,
perhaps in the hearing of some here present, to one of
the most remarkable instances of fulfilled prophecy within
my observation. For I very well remember hearing Mr.
Bright declare in public, several years before 1867, that not
more than three years would elapse after the enactment of
Household Suffrage before a complete measure of national
elementary education would be passed through Parlia-
ment. I cannot fix the precise date, for I made no note
at the time, but I have the words ringing in my ears still;
and I know by certain chronological landmarks of my
own history that it must have been before household
suffrage was within the range of practical politics. Well,
that extension of popular power was made in 1867, and
The Relation of Political Reform to Social Progress. 57
in 1870 the Elementary Education Act was passed, and
the principle of compulsion established by general, if not
universal, consent. This was accompanied by the removal
of that crying scandal, the Protestant Establishment in
Ireland. Headway has also been made more slowly,
though still decisively, against an unjust land system.
And, for the first time in our history, earnest efforts have
been made, as already mentioned, to put employers
and employed on a footing of entire equality before
the law.
Sometimes, when we call attention to such results of an
extended suffrage, we are assured that they are entirely
accidental, and of no weight sufficient to remove the in-
herent absurdity of expecting enlightened legislation from
the uneducated many. No matter what the facts of ex-
perience may be, your theorist is always ready to explain
them away, while he falls back upon the incontrovertible
principle that the political ideas of the educated few
ought to be better than those of the ignorant multitude.
Unquestionably they ought. But as a matter of experience
are they so? I imagine that it would not be unfair to
take such ably conducted journals as the Times and the
Saturday Review to be exponents of the political doctrines.
in favour with the " 'upper ten thousand," to whose train-
ing the universities have until quite recently been mainly
devoted, and who yet enjoy a monopoly of the great
public schools. Now a file of these journals is simply a
museum of exploded fallacies, of confident predictions
put to shame by facts, of anachronisms in thought and
sentiment, of ancient barbarisms dressed out in the re-
finements of modern culture. If anyone loves the Sopho-
;
The Conflict of Oligarchy and Democracy.
58
clean irony which consists in the grim incongruity of unre-
cognised facts with the passion of heroic utterance, let him
read again the lofty eloquence, only possible to conscious
infallibility, with which Saturday Reviewers demonstrated
the certainty of the slaveholders' triumph and the inevitable
bankruptcy of the American Union. On the other hand, it
is a familiar political experience that matters hidden
from the wise and prudent are revealed to babes. The
Chartists were not as a general rule highly educated
men, but they have proved to be the educators of our
great statesmen, and, after adopting their ideas about
the ballot, we are now within a measurable distance of
others, such as manhood suffrage and equal electoral
districts.
But it would be utterly absurd to draw from facts like
these the inference that ignorance is favourable to political
liberalism. Take two men, the one a real scholar, with a
knowledge of man and nature rather than of words, the
other an ignorant boor; suppose them separated from all
disturbing influences, such as fear for institutions in the
case of the scholar, or hunger and craving on the part of
the boor; and undoubtedly the educated man would be
an idealising Liberal, and the boor a crass Conservative.
But in politics we have not to deal thus with individual,
isolated men. We have to do with multitudes ranged in
more or less definite sections. Now, the object of politics
is the common good, not the advantage of sections. But
human nature being what it is, if power be concentrated in
the hands of any one section, the common good is too much
identified with the prosperity of that section. On the other
hand, if power is distributed among all, the conflict of
"
The Relation of Political Reform to Social Progress. 59
supposed interests issues in a general compromise roughly
identical with the common good. Hence, so long as any
constituent part of the community is excluded from power,
the resulting policy is sure to lack universality. Thus,
for instance, I cannot doubt that the exclusion of the
agricultural labourers has been one chief cause of Con-
servative success in staving off the land question. I
do not expect that their opinions on this or any other
subject will ripen very quickly. But I cannot conceive it
possible that two million men, of whom the majority
depend for their livelihood on land as their raw material,
will tolerate for ten years the laws which make that
land a mere luxury of the rich. And this is another
illustration, if more were needed, of the prevention of
social progress by a want of thoroughness in political
reforms.
I may, however, be reminded that the fears still
haunting Conservative minds about the recent Franchise
Bill are perfectly consistent with the argument just now
urged as to the dependence of the common good on a
fair distribution of political power. For it is often insisted
that the class now enfranchised, if allied with the poorer
householders in the towns, will outnumber all the other
sections of the population, and swamp them by their votes.
But this, it is added, means that all national policy is to
be moulded in the interest of one section alone. When
I hear talk of this kind I am reminded of a remark once
made to me by a great master of science during a dis-
cussion in a certain School Board, on which we both at
that time had seats. The subject was some phase of the
"religious difficulty," and denominational speakers natu-
60
The Conflict of Oligarchy and Democracy.
rally identified their own opinions with Christianity, while
they treated the Catholic Church as a sectional heresy.
"This amuses me," said the learned professor; "it is as
if a little creek in the shore were to condemn the arro-
gance of the ocean in assuming to itself an undue share
in the control of the tides." Now it is surely as incon-
gruous to treat the vast majority of the nation as a section
of the community, or to speak of its predominance as that
of selfish interests.
We have seen that at least six-sevenths of the nation
live so much from hand to mouth that it is admitted
they cannot, out of current income, pay the real cost of
education. Surely it is ridiculous to speak of such
a large majority as a mere section. They are not the
whole nation of course, but they are so nearly this that we
may well consider their voice as equivalent to that of the
nation. If, therefore, their votes were really to swamp
the remaining minority, it would be more likely that the
common good should be thus secured than by the reverse
process, with which we are familiar, of the minority swamp-
ing them. But it is altogether a false assumption to suppose
that these millions are a homogeneous mass, all animated
by one mind. In one respect, indeed, they are so. Having
so little property or privilege to defend, their only hope
lies in the predominance of the common good; and there-
fore they may all be expected to agree in hostility to mono-
polists, or one-sided laws and customs contrary to the
general interest. But, when we come to consider special
schemes for new social arrangements, there is as much
difference amongst them as there is amongst the select
minority of their "betters." They are as much aware
The Relation of Political Reform to Social Progress. 61
of their interest in the preservation of order and in the
defence of legitimate property as the richest can be.
And they may safely be trusted to assess the practical
value of institutions, offices, and orders. They are not
in the least likely to dissipate or squander the accumu-
lated wealth by which learning and charity are endowed.
But it is very likely indeed that they will protest against
its being wasted on comfortable sinecures and ceremonial
pomp. We may, therefore, hail the ascendency of the
million not only without fear, but with confidence that
their action will speedily prove what political reform can
do for social progress.
*
Perhaps the only considerable danger of still farther
disappointment lies in the possibility of a successful appeal
by Democratic Toryism to the indolence, self-indulgence,
and servility always inherent in our common humanity.
In speaking formerly of "The Sources of Popular Enthu-
siasm," it was necessary to point out that "popular favour
may always be gained, at any rate for a time, by appealing
to men's worse nature, as well as by arousing their better."
And this accounts for the frantic applause often evoked by
a sanguinary policy in foreign affairs. On the same prin-
ciple a domestic policy that favours laziness and gratifies
momentary appetite is sometimes more attractive to the
multitude than any summons to a higher life conditional
on exertion and self-denial. Thus, what I may call a
policy of doles has often diverted the multitude from
insisting on a policy of justice. And that is the chief
danger to be apprehended now. There are signs of it in
* "Lessons from the Rise and Fall of the English Commonwealth,"
Lecture V.

62
The Conflict of Oligarchy and Democracy.
the line adopted by many Tory orators when dealing with
social problems. For while they are strongly opposed to
the disendowment of the Church, to the overthrow of the
land monopoly, and to the abolition of the game laws, they
are very ready to provide labourers' dwellings at the public
expense, they advocate emigration at the cost of the
Government, and they are generous in the distribution of
coals and blankets. There are some of them who, under
the pretext of fair trade, are ready to impose a poor rate on
all consumers to support the distressed capitalists and
operatives of any depressed industry.
But perhaps the truest test of an inclination to a policy
of doles, instead of a policy of justice, is afforded by a
man's views about public elementary education. For it is
a curious fact that Democratic Tories who advocate rate-
sustained dwellings and pauperising charity in the form of
free food and clothing, most commonly draw the line at
free schools. The very same people who insist on relieving
parents from the responsibility for feeding their hungry
children, will repudiate free schools as the first step
towards communism. But there is method in this mad-
ness. For free schools would do more than anything else
to make the ignorant multitude masters of their own
destinies. And although I do not for a moment suggest
that the good people I am criticising would consciously
adopt this as an objection to free schools, yet the real
motive is only the same thing disguised. For free schools
would either destroy sectarian education altogether, or
reduce it to its proper place as the crotchet of a small
minority. And this process would be very perilous to a
good many forms of parochial patronage. It would
}
The Relation of Political Reform to Social Progress. 63
make the multitude more independent; and many pious
philanthropists are of opinion that the people are too
independent already. But this is the very reason why some
of us, who generally condemn both communism and pauper-
ising charity, are yet most eager for a universal system of
free schools, open to all classes alike. We say it is the
one form of communism that tends to cultivate character,
energy, and enterprise. We want free schools because we
are convinced that, after we have had them for a genera-
tion, the multitude will be able to take care of themselves.
In fact, it is precisely because we are in favour of a policy
of justice, and not of a policy of doles, that we insist on
a free and generous education, fitting the people to do
justice to themselves.
On the other hand, how common it is to hear a cry of
spoliation, confiscation, communism, and nihilism raised
against Radical statesmen because they suggest freer access
for everyone to the land, and the protection of industry
against landlordism! Such men are compared to Jack
Cade in his appeals to vulgar greed, and scolded for
exciting popular cupidity. But surely these invectives are
strangely incongruous from men whose one plea with the
people is that they should "open their mouths, and shut
their eyes, and see what Heaven will send them." All
that the Radical statesman offers is better opportunity for
hard work. Access to the land is not of the least use to a
man too lazy to dig; and security for the fruits of
industry is only of value to the industrious. Here, in fact,
is the great distinction between the Radical policy of
justice and the Tory Democrat's policy of doles. The
policy of justice would remove obstacles to industry, and
64
The Conflict of Oligarchy and Democracy.
stimulate men to exertion. The policy of doles would
leave industry hampered as it is in the interest of
patronage and sport, but would keep down discontent by
the unearned gifts of charity. The new Democracy will
have to choose between these two; and I pray Heaven
they may choose aright.
Yet let us not expect too much. We shall have no
sweeping changes, no swift revolution. The British
oligarchy holds its powers by other sanctions than those
of a limited franchise. Our lords, and squires, and
parsons are far from perfect; but they have never been so
anti-human as the pre-revolutionary French nobility.
Leave them their precious system of the three profits,
with the three orders, landlord, tenant-at-will, land-
less labourer, and you shall usually have no fault to
find with their perfection of manner, their genial courtesy,
their free-handed charity. Our cotton lords, our iron
kings, and golden dustmen are a little stiffer in the joints,
and if I may be pardoned the word-stand-offish in
manner. But their system of capital and labour, profits
and wages, high pressure, and quick returns on lowest
market rates, has so wrought itself into the machinery of
our life, and into the prime conceptions of our manufac-
turing population, that new ideas about the distribution of
wealth are likely to be of very slow growth. Yet I am
not one of those who are impatient of British conserva-
tism. The coach of state has a tremendous hill to get
down before it reaches the level of equality. And I shall
not complain of the shrieking and smoke caused by brakes.
and drags, provided only that they do not bring about a
dead-lock.
LECTURE IV.
THE LAND MONOPOLY.
IN the three preceding lectures we have traced the main
causes which, notwithstanding the democratic temper
and traditions of our race, made government by oligarchy
an inevitable phase in our history. We have also seen
how the revolt of the many against the few has been
moderated and softened into a course of gradual political
change. We have finally observed that changes in
political forms have been very far indeed from improving,
as much as was expected, the social condition of the
people. We have found one reason for this in the fact
that political reforms have never until now been carried far
enough to make the people masters of their own destinies,
except on condition of such general excitement and
passionate resolve as ought not to be required. But we
have also acknowledged that there are other reasons for
our disappointment. For the position of the oligarchy is
so firmly rooted in the constitution of society, that even
the most extensive political changes do not materially
affect it. And, on the other hand, amongst the million,
ignorance, prejudice, spiritless indolence, and a low moral
tone make many the dupes now of purse-proud patrons,
now of impracticable dreamers, and again, of self-seeking
adventurers. All such influences are against the common
good.
But if the million are thus blinded to their best interests
4
66
The Conflict of Oligarchy and Democracy.
the fault lies much more in circumstances than in personal
character. "Much more," I say; not that I forget the
importance of personal character, or would undervalue
individual responsibility. I shall not dispute for an
instant that if every man in our industrial army and
among its destitute stragglers were a saint and a hero, a
beneficient revolution would be accomplished in twelve
months. And the fact that they are not, as a general rule,
saints and heroes, is very properly a subject of regret,
mingled with reproach. To this extent, and in this sense,
we may rightly admit that our social miseries are caused
by defects of character. But taking men as we know
them, generally inclined to good, but not very eager about
it, and more fond of pleasure than of work, common sense
teaches that favourable surroundings are necessary to keep
them right, and that average character will go wrong if
circumstances are adverse.
De-
In trying to influence individuals, we have a right to
assume that every man will strive to be above the average,
and to overcome circumstance. Every one whom we
can inspire with this ambition is a hero won for the
army of progress. But in dealing with the masses and
their prospects, we dare not take this course.
pendence on such a slow process of redemption would
drive us to despair. We must change circumstances
if we would save the world. And yet the only powers
at our disposal for this enterprise of changing circum-
stance are the million, whom circumstances make what
they are Reflection on this truth may well prevent
Radicals from being over sanguine; but it should also
make them the more earnest. For thousands of years cir-
The Land Monopoly.
67
cumstance and institutions have conspired to deprive the
multitude not only of outward fortune, but also of the
capacity for well-directed aspiration. Hence, the Nihilists
cry "Destroy all institutions, and let us begin afresh!"
But we say no; for that would be to sacrifice the hard-won
experience of ten thousand years; and from the barbaric
chaos thus created, you would have to start once more on
the weary pilgrimage through all the stages of savagery,
communism, feudalism, and I know not what, through
which we have laboriously reached our present position.
No; do not destroy; but make a valiant effort to change;
an effort impelled and guided by the discovery of the
present generation, that political reform is of no use
except as a lever to bring about organic change in our
social conditions.
I know nothing more indicative of the oligarchic spirit,
than the glibness with which successful and so-called
practical men will meet all your complaints of social
injustice with the heartless refrain that "the chances are
the same for all." Here are two boys born in neigh-
bouring cottages, and brought up under precisely the same
village influences. The one becomes a railway contractor
and a millionaire, the other a cadger, a drunkard, and a
pauper. What would you have? The chances are the
same for all. Of two boys attending on the same plough,
one emigrates and becomes a great sheep farmer in
Australia. The other turns poacher, is sent to prison, and
comes out a criminal ready for felony. You may pity him
and admire his brother, but the chances are the same for
all. Throughout the thronging population that crowds.
the land ceaseless currents are flowing, as marked and
68
The Conflict of Oligarchy and Democracy.
constant as those of the ocean. From every village there
is a drain of human life to the squalor of our large towns,
as perpetual as the descent of pure mountain rills to the
shameful filth of our great rivers. But that is not the only
current. From the dark places of labour and suffering,
energetic souls force their way to the light of prosperity;
and, on the other hand, from the high places of fortune,
indolence, extravagance and dissipation draw their victims
into the haunts of destitution. Is it not just? The
chances are the same for all. And so, whatever you may
urge as to the concentration of wealth and the diffusion of
poverty, it will wring from your successful master of
fortune nothing more than an acknowledgment that the
world is hard for those who do not know how to manage
it; but, he will add, the chances are the same for all.
Now, here I join issue. It is not accurate to say that
the chances are the same for all, except in this sense, that
we all live in the same world. For the conditions of
society may be so weighted as to give a special premium,
not sanctioned by justice, to exceptional character and
ability. If food, for instance, were made the prize of a
three-mile race, it would not be true to say that the
chances were the same for all. They are not; they are in
favour, and disproportionately in favour, of the longest
legs and the largest lungs. I say disproportionately,
because in prescribing the progress of man, nature has
not assigned such a value to legs and lungs as to make
the right to live dependent on their superiority. But
the case is very much the same in principle, if all con-
ditions, for instance, are disproportionately in favour of
parsimony, cool blood, exceptional endurance, or specula-
The Land Monopoly.
69
tive genius. Society cannot be justly constituted, unless,
on the whole, it is favourable to an equable diffusion of
comfort, knowledge and refinement amongst average men.
Now, that society as we know it is actually so constituted
will scarcely be maintained by anyone, Tory or Radical,
Christian or Positivist.
&
I suppose that no part of Mr. Henry George's "Pro-
gress and Poverty" secured more general assent than
his description of the evils uniformly attendant on the
highest forms of modern civilisation. People may differ
as to his proposed remedy; but as to the existence
of the disease, any hesitation to admit it is scarcely con-
sistent with candour, or, indeed, with sanity. It is of no
use to tell us that poverty is an inevitable accident of
progress. Exceptional poverty may be so; but not the
existence of a million paupers. It is of no avail to sneer
at impossible dreams of equality. Equality is not now in
question, but only reasonable comfort. Let any one
answer this as he would have it answered in his
own case. Does reasonable comfort exist where the
slightest raising of the standard of subsistence must
destroy the balance between income and expenditure?
Suppose a change of manners and ideas should add to
necessary subsistence, as ordinarily reckoned, some article
of refinement or decency, costing, say, three shillings a
week: could it be fairly held that reasonable comfort was
general, if it were proved that six-sevenths of the popula-
tion were incapable of that expenditure? In the story
of the French Revolution we hear a good deal about
the sans-culottes, destitute people who went without
breeches for the simple reason that they could not afford
70
The Conflict of Oligarchy and Democracy.
}
to buy them. True, they were used to it. They inherited
squalid traditions, according to which breeches were
unnecessary. But when different fashions came in, and a
higher standard of decency was established, surely the
fact that these poor wretches could not, by reason of
poverty, adopt it, afforded a presumption that reasonable
comfort did not prevail amongst them. On the same
principle, I insist that the necessity for state-paid educa-
tion, proves the absence of reasonable comfort amongst
six-sevenths of our own population. In days gone by, our
intellectual sans - culottes never dreamed of elementary
education as a necessary of life. And when public
opinion made it so, it was found that they could not afford
it. This slight addition to the standard of subsistence
(amounting, on an average, to probably three shillings a
week) could not be made without calling in the assistance
of rates and taxes for six-sevenths of the people.*
If any
* This may seem like a condemnation of state education; but what
is really condemned is the unequal and one-sided distribution of wealth
which has made it necessary. I have never concealed from myself
that if every parent could have afforded to pay the whole cost of
his children's schooling, state education would have been unnecessary,
and open to all Mr. Herbert Spencer's objections. But it is necessary,
imperatively necessary. The morbid distortion of progress has made
it so. And now the one thing needful is to make it effectual, by
abolishing fees, which, directly and indirectly, cost far more than they
are worth. I must also guard myself against another possible
misunderstanding. I have elsewhere often argued that poor parents
do, in the long run, pay, through their rates and taxes, the greater
part-in some cases the whole-of the cost of schooling. But then
the cost is spread over the whole of their lives as ratepayers, perhaps
forty or fifty years. This contention is quite consistent with the
allegation in the text-that they cannot afford an additional three
shillings a week out of current income.
The Land Monopoly.
71
apology is needed for my constant reiteration of this fact,
I must plead the difficulty of getting it appreciated. We
are so accustomed to rates in aid that we do not reflect
what they mean. To my own mind, this acknowledged
inability of so large a proportion of our fellow-countrymen
is proof demonstrative of the extensive absence of reason-
able comfort. Surely such a state of things as this is not to
be accounted for by defects of individual character. Nor
can it be justified by the fallacy that the chances are the
same for all. It indicates, rather, a false, ill-balanced con-
stitution of society. It suggests that the chances are
weighted, as in the tables of a gaming-house, so that
fortune inevitably gravitates to a few.
The question thus raised is a very complicated one, and
I have not the presumption to suppose I can give a
complete solution. But there are two causes of social
injustice that seem to me so plain and palpable as to
require instant consideration, not from us only, but from
the whole nation. I refer to the land monopoly, and also
to the present apportionment of the profits arising from
production. Our immediate concern is with the former:
the latter will be considered when we come to speak
of the distribution of wealth. But the land monopoly has
a great deal to answer for, especially when we bear in
mind the means necessary to maintain it. For it converts
into a luxury of the few what is really the most necessary
of all raw materials. It minimises the number of tillers of
the soil; it lessens production; it maintains barbarous
sports totally inconsistent with high cultivation. It tends
to redundancy of population, and turns that redundancy
into a curse.
It drives into overcrowded markets the
72
The Conflict of Oligarchy and Democracy.
children whom it produces. It depresses the standard of
subsistence, and thus operates doubly to keep down wages.
Over a great part of the country it creates a state of things
in which it is positively no one's individual interest to
improve the land. It robs the nation of a just revenue
from the soil, and thus unfairly increases the burdens
oppressing trade and commerce. Now, if this accusation
can be made good, as I believe it can, surely we are
justified in tracing no small part of our social disease to
the land monopoly.
We are often told that the phrase is altogether an im-
proper one. For "monopoly" means an exclusive right of
sale vested in some favoured person or company. But
there is no such exclusive right in the sale of land. Every
one may legally buy and sell it, whenever he can get the
chance, provided of course that he observes the form and
conditions imposed by law. And this, no doubt, is true.
Yet it is equally true that the forms and conditions,
together with other restrictions imposed by law, operate
practically to reduce to the lowest possible limits the
number of men possessing territorial interests, influence,
or power. And to such a condition of things the word
monopoly may very properly be applied, if not in its
original literal meaning, at least in an obvious sense very
commonly understood.
The extent to which this monopoly prevails may be
very easily disguised. Thus a return issued in 1873, gives
the total number of landowners in Great Britain and
Ireland as no less than 1,173,724. When we remember
that the number of separate families in the three kingdoms
cannot be much more than 7,000,000, it is, at first sight,
1
.*
The Land Monopoly.
73
rather gratifying to find that about one-seventh of all the
fathers of families would appear to be landowners. But
our satisfaction is lessened when we find that in this
return, individual and also corporate owners are multiplied
by as many holdings as they happen to possess in separate
districts. Thus, the estates of the ecclesiastical com-
missioners are counted as held by forty-nine owners, and
the crown lands by an equal number. A noble Duke is
returned as fourteen landowners. The same source of
error exists in a great many other cases. But farther,
every one is called a landowner who possesses the freehold
of any building site, however small. In fact, out of nearly
1,200,000 alleged landowners, it turns out that upwards of
852,000 hold possession of less than one acre each. Now
the whole area of the United Kingdom is more than
77,000,000 acres. Deduct 500,000-a fair allowance for
the 852,000 owners with less than an acre each-and you
have 76,500,000 acres to be allotted, with due allowance
for commons, to the remaining 348,000 owners. The
total amount of land still subject to common rights is
probably little more than 2,500,000 acres. Deducting
this, you have 500,000 acres at most, owned by 852,000
people; and, on the other hand, 74,000,000 acres owned
by 348,000. Such a state of things is at least suggestive of
something very like land monopoly.
But the case may be put more strongly still. The
owners of about half the United Kingdom could prob-
ably be accommodated with seats in Exeter Hall. The
area of England and Wales is a little over 37,000,000
acres, and as nearly as possible one quarter of this
is in the hands of 874 men. The case of Ireland is
4a
74
The Conflict of Oligarchy and Democracy.
.
still worse; for 744 men possess nearly half of it. And
Scotland is worst of all; for almost one quarter of it is
comprised in the estates of twelve men; and about one-
fourteenth of the whole of that ancient kingdom is now the
domain of one nobleman. It would be absurd to suppose
that this concentration of landed property in a few hands
is the result of any natural and legitimate process. There
must be in our history and laws some reason for this
abnormal state of things; and I will first give my own
opinion of what the causes have been, in order that we may
be the better prepared to estimate its bearing upon the
conflict of oligarchy and democracy.
In every settled and prosperous country of course the
possession of land must confer some special advantages
not offered by other forms of property. Its security is
necessarily greater than that of gold or jewels. And if it
does not rival commerce or manufacture in profits, it is at
any rate generally increasing in value without any effort of
the owner. In addition, it is usually considered, whether!
rightly or wrongly, a specially honourable form of property,
and even where landownership is most widely diffused it
confers the social consideration due to a settled and sub-
stantial citizen.
But certain features in the history of our country, as
described in outline at the beginning of these lectures,
have rendered the association specially strong between
landed possessions and social dignity, as well as political
power. For the feudal system was not in our country, as
in most others, merged in the one all-absorbing despotism
of the royal overlord. Even the Tudors did not succeed
in bringing this about. And the revolt against the arrogant
The Land Monopoly.
75
incompetency of the Stuarts ended, not in a democracy,
but in the substitution of a social for a military feudalism.
The old baronage having been all but extirpated by its
own violence, the new aristocracy sought to better the
example by substituting a peaceful social domination for
the old military rule. The position of the lord of a manor
in the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the
eighteenth century was one of very great local power,
which he exercised without any of the vital risks that
harassed the ambition of the old barons. As justice of the
peace he administered the law, without much danger of
inquiry as to his interpretation of it. He had special
rights over all common lands, and sometimes stretched
those rights at his pleasure. As owner of the village and
its fields, he could compel everyone to obey his will on
pain of banishment from the neighbourhood. He could
dictate both the politics and the religion of all his tenants.
His only equals were neighbouring magnates, and his
assistance was sought at election times with much flattery
and many promises by his superiors in the state. Farming
had to be conducted with due regard to the interest of his
lordship's sport. But if he thus entailed roughness and
waste on agriculture, he was protected from loss, not only
by the one-sided laws affecting landlord and tenant, but
also by an almost prohibitory tax upon foreign importation
of food. He was the ultimate heir of all the industry and
enterprise of the neighbourhood. For whatever was done
to improve the land or attract custom to the village, the
ultimate profit gravitated into his pocket. If a farmer
knocked a post into the ground it became the landlord's.
If the poor man were fool enough to put in drains, or erect
76
The Conflict of Oligarchy and Democracy.
a pump, or build a shed, he simply made a present to the
landowner, who might turn him out on six months' notice,
and keep his goods. Whatever creditor came short, the
landlord was safe so long as he did not let arrears accu-
mulate beyond the value of the tenant's furniture and stock.
For if the farmer were bankrupt, the lord must first be
satisfied in full, even though not a farthing was left for
anyone else. When to this it is added that the landed
gentry formed a caste amongst themselves, and looked
on any contact with shopkeepers or commercial men
as an American would regard an invitation to dine
with a negro, we have said enough to suggest strong
reasons for a very stiff Conservatism amongst the terri-
torial gentry.
But Conservatism does not always mean simply keeping
things as they are. Where the instinct of self-preservation
is aroused in a privileged caste, there is no novelty which
it will not sanction professedly for the prevention of change.
Hence there are no revolutionists like your Tory dema-
gogues, who, rather than concede equal rights, will pauperise
a whole nation with doles. At the end of the seventeenth
century new customs began to prevail in regard to the de-
volution of land, customs as disastrous as they were novel,
but, like many other Conservative innovations, intended for
the preservation of privilege. The law of primogeniture
is, of course, as old as feudalism, and was perhaps justified
by the necessity then existing for a territorial army. But
for the preservation of the territorial social system of later
times, the operation of primogeniture was found to be
uncertain. Any spendthrift heir when he came into pos-
session might sell the land, or, being made bankrupt, might
.
The Land Monopoly.
77
be deprived of it; and thus the family would lose its ter-
ritorial position. This difficulty was met in part by the
legal permission to entail estates, so that each successor
should only be a tenant for life and not absolute owner.
The obvious inconveniences to the public interest of such
an arrangement were corrected by another provision
enabling each "tenant in tail," as he came into possession,
to execute a deed which, when enrolled in the Court of
Chancery, constituted him owner of the fee simple. But
such a provision exposed the continuity of territorial
families to all the dangers just indicated. To meet this
the system of settlement was invented, and came into vogue
toward the end of the seventeenth century. The law does
not allow any estate to be settled for a longer period than
twenty-one years beyond the expiry of existing lives. But
as each successive heir to an estate comes of age he can
join the tenant for life, usually his own father, in cutting
off the previous entail, and resettling the estate for his own
life and twenty-one years afterwards. The settlement,
usually includes arrangements providing a charge on the
estate for the support of other members of the family.
But its chief effect is to make the property inviolable for
the lifetime of the heir in tail and twenty-one years after-
wards. The heir and successor may be a spendthrift and
a gambler hopelessly bankrupt. Yet that does not affect
the continuity of the estate. The income may be se-
questrated, and the hereditary mansion may be let. But
nothing disturbs the settlement. The estate cannot be
sold by the creditors, because it is not really the
bankrupt's property. He is only a tenant for life.
Thus the estate is kept together for the next heir in
78
The Conflict of Oligarchy and Democracy.
tail, and he, if he marries a rich heiress, may restore
all things as they were in the days of his forefathers,
with the addition, probably, of many acres to his paternal
inheritance.
Sometimes, if we speak of this practically unlimited
power of settlement as a defect of the land laws, legal
experts smile at our simplicity, and assure us that this
power of settlement is not confined to land at all, but is
equally applicable to stock or railway shares; and that as
a matter of fact, it is constantly exercised in the case of
heirlooms-such as pearls, or diamond necklaces, or
ancient plate. Precisely. And with what object is the
settlement made in such cases? Manifestly to keep the
precious articles in the exclusive possession of one family,
and to guard them against the ordinary vicissitudes of for-
tune. Now in regard to gold and jewels it is of little con-
sequence to any one, save the creditors of a bankrupt heir,
that such articles should be kept out of the market. But
the case is very different with the land. Here the com-
monwealth is as directly interested as any creditors can
be in maintaining freedom of trade. And therefore it is
no defence whatever of settlement as applied to land, to
say that it is equally applicable to other things. It does
not do as much harm in the case of other things as it
does in the case of land; and therefore we are perfectly
justified in asking that its application to land may be
more stringently limited.
It is obvious how these laws and customs bear upon the
land monopoly. The national constitution, class tradi-
tions and social habits have long combined to exaggerate
in this country the advantages everywhere attendant on
'
The Land Monopoly.
79
The
possession of land. These advantages have been precisely
such as would naturally stimulate family pride and make
the parting with an estate equivalent to extinction. No.
wonder, therefore, that careful provision has been made to
prevent the dissipation of estates by their temporary
holders. The general nature of that provision we have seen.
Its effect has been, that while most of the usual courses
of sale or partition have been barred, each great family
that held out for half-a-dozen generations has had many
opportunities, by intermarriage and otherwise, to increase
its estates. But other reasons for accumulation exist,
cumbrous title-deeds, with their tiresome recitations, have
been encouraged or necessitated by our territorial system,
and have reacted so as to confine the possession of land
for other than commercial purposes to the territorial hier-
archy. And again, our traditional land system, with its
game laws, its hunting raids, its want of security for
farmers' investments, its stereotyped rotations of crops,
and landlord dictation in general, has so kept down the
returns from agricultural land that no one cares to have it,
except for purposes of social ambition. None but a very
rich man, or a man of daring enterprise combined with
genius, can afford to hold agricultural land in England.
This necessarily co-operates with all other mentioned
causes to confirm the land monoply.
From this sketch the relation of these abuses to some of
our social difficulties ought to be tolerably plain. And, first
of all, I hope I have made clear what was meant by saying
that these abuses convert into a luxury of the few what is
really the most necessary of all raw materials. For, as we
have seen, the absorption of land by our oligarchy is not
4
80
The Conflict of Oligarchy and Democracy.
to be accounted for solely, nor even mainly, by greed of
gain; but rather by social ambition. Landowners have
often urged it as a merit that they are content with
a return of 2 per cent. on the capital supposed to
be represented by their estates. But the fact is that
they have taken out the other 2 per cent. in sport, in
patronage, in political influence, in ecclesiastical dicta-
tion, in local supremacy. In other words, the posses-
sion of agricultural land is not a business investment;
it is a luxury which only the rich can afford. Now pray
remember, that notwithstanding the enormous spread of
manufactures, the part of our national territory assigned.
to agriculture, pasture, or sport is still enormously pre-
ponderant. And then ask yourselves whether in all your
reading you have ever met with another instance of a
nation making its domain practically the pleasure ground
of a rich oligarchy ?
Yes, there was something like it in ancient Italy when
the Roman republic, gorged with conquest, degenerated
into the Roman Empire. In the century preceding
the Christian era there had been enormous accumula-
tions of land in the possession of a few rich men, who
cultivated it by hordes of slaves. In the Italy of that day,
as in the England of this, poor men could hardly afford to
hold land. There, as here, large sections of the country
were depopulated of freemen, while Rome swarmed with a
horrible population of half savage paupers, who were only
kept in good humour by doles. Then, as now, charity was
more fashionable than justice, and rich men distributed
every day at their doors baskets of food. Then, as now,
bread was distributed at public expense, and conservatives
1
The Land Monopoly.
81
were ready to charge the revenue with any amount of
pauperising gifts to the people in a desperate attempt to
avoid fundamental reforms. But all injustice is only an
embodied lie, that carries within it the elements of convic-
tion and destruction. As the overthrow of the Western
Empire was prepared by the pauperism, wretchedness,
vice, and crime that festered in the overcrowded popula-
tion of Rome, we may very well believe that it was begun
by the huge solitudes of luxury from which the people
were repelled into the city.
I am not going to press the analogy too far. We live
in a different world. Thanks to that "enthusiasm of
humanity" which, let Positivists say what they will, we
owe to Christianity, we have resources of moral recupera-
tion and political reform such as not the noblest Roman
of them all could imagine. We shall not meet the fate of
ancient empires. We shall not be the fools of a stolid
conservatism, nor the dupes of suicidal violence. Still, it
is surely an ominous fact that such a conversion of the
central domain of the empire into a luxury for the few, as
exists among ourselves, can hardly be paralleled anywhere,
except in the system that sowed the seeds of ruin for the
Romans.
Where land is a luxury, the luxurious find its enjoyment
heightened by solitude. "Woe," cried the ancient prophet,
"to them that lay field to field till there be no place, that they
may be placed alone in the midst of the earth!" But is not
that what has been done in the north of Scotland for half a
century past? And, to a smaller extent, it has been the
policy in England for even longer. Why have so many
cottages been pulled down? Why have labourers to walk
82
The Conflict of Oligarchy and Democracy.
five or six miles before beginning a weary day's work?
Surely it is because the old law of settlement started a
policy persevered in now for other reasons. No one must
reside on the estate but those who are absolutely necessary
to the great owner's convenience. And the tendency has
been to diminish these in number. Fewer hands are now
needed, I suppose, in proportion to acreage than ever
before. It is no justification to urge that in this way the
largest revenue is obtainable. That system is best, not
which brings in most money, but which plants most men
on the soil in remunerative employment. But whatever
may be said about the superior productiveness of English
land as compared with that of France, for instance, the
experience of some few tillers of their own land is very
suggestive of the possibility of a large increase. Yet, so
long as the landlord's sport is as important as the farmer's
crops, so long as trim fields may be ravaged, and fences
broken and gates smashed by the galloping of a hundred
horses at the tail of a fox, it is not likely that the exac-
titude and order and neatness of high scientific farming
will be extensively attained.
But farther, the influence of the oligarchic system of
society in our rural districts has not been morally, any
`more than materially, beneficial to the scattered millions
there. The ideal of a jovial squire and a gentlemanly
parson, patronising and cultivating their humble neigh-
bours, is rarely attained; and, when attained, it is not a
high one. People receptive of blankets, soup, and tracts,
receiving on authority a religion they do not understand,
and meekly obeying orders as to baptism, vaccination and
catechism, are not likely to develop much independent
4
The Land Monopoly.
83
manhood. And, without independent manhood in the
million, social reform is impossible. Fathers and mothers,
taught to rely on charity, bring children into the world by
the dozen, and then know no more what to do with them
than “the old woman who lived in a shoe." The end is,
they are drafted off to the thronging towns to look in vain
for labour, and then to cadge for charity there. Such a
state of things must necessarily depress the standard of
subsistence, on which the general market rate of wages so
much depends. For while the millions at the base of the
social structure live on charity and chance, the million
next above them are liable to a very demoralising, because
unnatural, competition.
Now if by some fantastic doom of invisible powers this
land system with all its curses were made a necessary
accident of national prosperity, we might resign ourselves
to fate. But national prosperity does not mean the riches
of a few hundred thousand men and the poverty of the
rest; and it is demonstrable that by the working of this
system the land itself is impoverished and the nation
robbed. For, as we have seen, the owners of all great
estates are only life tenants, and whatever they expend on
improvements is deducted from their personal income
without hope of adequate return. Besides, the settlement
has in many cases so saddled them with rent charges, that
they have hardly enough left to keep up their dignity.
The farmers, liable, mostly, at any moment to disturbance
and spoliation, have no inducement to put money in the
land. The heir in tail watches jealously lest any changes
should interfere with his rights or threaten his pro-
spects of sport. The effect of all is to keep drainage,
84 The Conflict of Oligarchy and Democracy.
!
fencing, and manuring far below the level necessary
to the best scientific methods. And at the present
moment neither life tenant nor occupier, nor anyone
else, has his individual interests so engaged as to prompt
him to enterprise.
Finally, so far as the evils of the territorial system are
concerned, it has favoured the land owners in throwing off
their legitimate burdens. I do not believe either in the
practicability or the efficacy of Mr. Henry George's plan
for taxing all land up to its full annual value. But, on the
part of those who are necessarily excluded from the
possession of land, it is a very fair claim that the national
territory should, through its privileged occupiers, pay a
very large share of the expenses of government. In
fact this was acknowledged in 1692, when land.
owners agreed to pay one-fifth of the annual value, or
four shillings in the pound. But having previously
got rid of their feudal obligations, the territorial oli-
garchy found it easy to manipulate the money charge.
And whereas at the present day four shillings in the
pound would produce nearly thirty-five millions, the
actual amount received from the land tax is very little
over one million.
The case is too strong to need farther argument. And
though it is not half stated, it may well fill us with amaze-
ment that such a land system has been tolerated so long.
The explanation lies partly in popular ignorance, and partly
also in the fact that in the brief intervals of lucidity between
our fits of war fever and panic, we have had enough to do
to get parliamentary reform and free trade. But now we
have, or are assured of having, parliamentary reform
The Land Monopoly.
85
enough for all practical purposes, if only we have sense
and self-control to make use of it. I well know how many
abuses and nuisances await the radical besom. But I
declare I know of nothing Parliament can touch that would
be so pregnant with good to the people at large as land-
law reform. I do not wish to exaggerate. I do not for a
moment expect that this alone will suffice to extinguish
pauperism or crime. But I am certain that it will do very
much indeed to raise the standard of subsistence and to
extend reasonable comfort.
We hear a great deal in these times about "land nation-
alisation," and, if the phrase is reasonably understood, the
idea is a very good one. In one sense, and that a very
real one, a sense emphatically sanctioned by lawyers, the
land is national property already, and cannot possibly be
denationalised. For lawyers will tell you that neither
individuals nor corporations can have more than a tenure
in land. Absolute property in it, they say, is impossible,
except to the crown-by which I understand the nation.
The case, then, is this, that holders of land under the crown
have abused their tenure by various innovations and cor-
ruptions, until their tenancy has become an intolerable
nuisance. The true remedy would seem to be neither
wholesale confiscation, nor any impracticable communism,
but a repeal of the various innovations, or abuses, or effete
privileges, that have turned the necessary institution of
private land tenure into a huge land monoply. The main
purpose in land tenure, as in everything else, should be the
common good; and all accidents of land tenure opposed
to the common good should be swept away. We have
seen how primogeniture, and entail, and strict settlements
86
The Conflict of Oligarchy and Democracy.
tend to monopoly. They should, therefore, be abolished
by the first democratic parliament. We have seen how
the power of eviction makes a landlord a despot. It
should, therefore, be greatly limited, and, in the case of
farmers who pay their rents, should be as difficult as in
Ireland. Agriculture is continually subordinated to sport;
and for this reason, as well as because of the bad blood,
and crime, and cruelty they cause, the game laws should
be erased from the statute book. In a word, take away
the accidental features of land tenure which make land a
luxury instead of a business investment. Make it impos-
sible for any one to ensure the continuity and integrity of a
landed estate beyond his own lifetime. Deprive landlords
of their despotic and popish powers. Raise honest tenants
beyond their vengeance, by fixity of tenure. Compel
owners to sell on reasonable terms when land is wanted
for places of worship, or study, or amusement desired by a
sufficient quorum of inhabitants. Take away all induce-
ment to waste good land on sport, by leaving hunting and
shooting free to all, till there is nothing left to hunt or
shoot. In a word, this is a case for levelling down rather
than levelling up. Take away all privileges that make land
a luxury; substitute a public register for cumbrous title-
deeds; impose a sufficient land tax; and then you will
find the distribution of land accommodate itself to the re-
quirements of general enterprise-that is, of the common.
good.
If any man would go farther I would invite him to con-
sider some arguments in the next lecture. It is impossible
now to give all the objections I feel against any system of
land communism. Nor, indeed, is it necessary. For, in the
The Land Monopoly.
87
But, lest I should seem
stage of progress we have reached, the thing is as much out
of date and as impossible as the clan system in the High-
lands, or the septs of Ireland. Talk about it is, in my
conviction, sheer waste of time.
guilty of intolerance towards any earnest friends of progress,
I shall hope to say something on the subject when dealing
with the distribution of wealth; for that, to some people,
naturally suggests communism.
Indeed my object now is not so much to advocate or to
condemn any detailed projects of reform, but rather to urge
the overwhelming importance of the issue. Conservatives,
or whatever may be the name of the new party that is to
succeed to the inheritance of the dead-will do their
utmost to distract attention from this subject by schemes
of relief out of rates and taxes, or by projects of emigration.
But that is a cruel kindness which, by way of compensation
for past injustice, robs people of self-respect and the power
of self-help. I do not want to see a peasantry with houses
built out of the rates; I want to see them build houses for
themselves, and on their own land. Emigration is the
natural means by which a strong and enterprising race
asserts its vitality and extends its life. But to crush
people into pauperism, and then send them out to battle with
wild nature, is not the true method of emigration. A
contented and prosperous population are soon aware when
they are too thick upon the land, and they are all well able
to arrange emigration for themselves. But to make
solitudes for wealthy luxury, to drive labour into the towns,
and then cry out that the country is overcrowded, does not
seem like rational statesmanship. Let us insist that our
land laws accommodate themselves to the needs of the
88
The Conflict of Oligarchy and Democracy.
ין
time. Let us set before us as our aim, not the greatest
profit in money, but the sustenance of the largest number
of people on the land. And if other co-ordinate measures
secure the fruits of industry to the right owners, we may
be sure that, in the long run, emigration will take care of
itself.

LECTURE V.
THE DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH.
THE introductory remarks of the last lecture are equally
applicable to the subject we now have in hand. It is need-
less to recapitulate them, though it may be as well briefly
to remind you of their purport. We found that by acknow-
ledgment of all political and economic parties, our civili-
sation in its social aspects is gravely defective, and that the
one most striking defect which equally impresses itself upon
the hearts of all is the extraordinary extremes of luxury on
the one hand, and destitution on the other, characteristic
even of the most prosperous states. Some social reformers—
Mr. Henry George in particular-are in the habit of tracing
the whole of this evil to the institution of private property
in land. With this view I professed myself unable to agree.
It is an exaggeration to say that the whole of our miseries
are to be traced to this source. At the same time, I not
only admitted, but strongly insisted, that our antiquated
territorial system has become an anachronism wholly
incongruous with the present age, and, like all institutions
founded on falsehood, productive of enormous mischief.
But surely another main source of the evils afflicting society
is the defective and unjust distribution of the wealth
produced by the alliance of capital and labour.
Let us suppose for a moment that our land laws were
made ideally perfect, in whatever direction such perfection
may lie. Still, of course, it is inconceivable that the whole

5
90
The Conflict of Oligarchy and Democracy.
But
population should receive their sustenance direct from
their own land. Even in a completely agricultural com-
munity this would be impossible. Land is incapable of
infinite subdivision, and even if you started with a system
under which every man should cultivate with his own
hands his ten or twelve acres, twenty years would not
elapse before a class of labourers would have arisen who
would depend for their sustenance upon wages.
we are not specially interested in a purely agricultural
community. In our country the population is about equally
divided between agriculture on the one hand and manu-
factures or commerce on the other; and even though we
should succeed in restoring to the rural districts a larger
population than is at present found there, yet it is probable
that the commercial and manufacturing part of the nation
would, in the meantime, increase in a corresponding ratio.
No reform of the land laws, therefore, would directly and
immediately affect more than one-half of the people. Its
indirect and more remote effects would undoubtedly be
universal. It would, I believe, tend to raise the standard of
subsistence, to diminish pauperism, and to lead emigration
into natural channels. Still, however much the standard
of subsistence may be improved, so long as a man's whole
income is spent in keeping it up, we can scarcely allow
that he lives in reasonable comfort. It is evident, there-
fore, that the distribution of wealth has to be considered
altogether apart from the land laws.
Whether any form of communism is necessary, or desir-
able, is a question that may be considered presently.
Meantime it is more important to make plain the precise
point we are to keep in view. "The distribution of

The Distribution of Wealth.
gr
wealth" is a wide term, and might be taken to include a
good deal more than I care to touch just now. For
instance, it might embrace the devolution of property, the
division of estates, the commercial currents set up by
foreign investments of English money. But all that we
are concerned with now is the mode in which the wealth
produced by industry and enterprise from year to year is
distributed amongst those who produce it. Let us take an
imaginary case; and while I am stating it pray bear in
mind that it is not the exact figures that are important, but
only the principle illustrated. For the figures may be
altered indefinitely, and yet the principle may remain the
same.
Let us then suppose a capitalist to engage in an
undertaking that requires him to invest £100,000 for
a full year before any returns come in. Let us farther
premise that the work is begun at a favourable time,
and that it is fairly remunerative. In order to carry
out the enterprise, he has to employ a considerable
amount of labour, partly skilled and partly unskilled;
and the wages he pays will be governed entirely by
the state of the labour market. His skilled workmen
may receive from £1 10s. to £2 a week; and unskilled
labourers 18s. to £1 2s. I leave out of the question boys or
women. Their lower wages would not much affect the
argument, and would needlessly complicate the statement
of the case. The men work, say, fifty weeks in the year,
and receive their pay regularly. This is part of the
expenses essential to the enterprise, as much so as coals
for the steam-engine, or the cost of raw material. At the
end of the year, taking the wages of the skilled workmen
>
92
The Conflict of Oligarchy and Democracy.
at an average of £1 15s., each will have received £87 10s.
for fifty weeks' work, and they have nothing more to
expect. The labourers, allowing them an average of £1 a
week, will have taken £50, and also have nothing more to
expect. At the end of the year they are none of them one
penny richer than they were at the beginning. The skilled
workman might, no doubt, by thrift and self-denial above
the average, have put £5 or so in the savings' bank. But
how the town labourer with a wife and four children lives
at all on £1 a week is known only to himself and his kind.
In most cases, I presume, he must be content with a
habitation of one room, that serves as kitchen, parlour,
dormitory, nursery, and washhouse.
I
Now what does the capitalist look for at the end of the
year? He receives back, in the first place, his £100,000,
with £5,000 additional as interest. This he does not
reckon as profit at all. It is regarded as simply recouping
money out of pocket. For if he had not employed his
money in this way he could have lent it on mortgage at
5 per cent. In addition to this, it is supposing no extra-
vagant gain in good times if we credit him with a real
profit of 15 per cent., or £15,000. It might be very much
more; but the precise possibilities of the case do not
concern us. What we wish to examine is the question
whether the principle of the absorption of all profit by
capital is fair and right.
We need not be afraid of it. I fully acknowledge that
it is a burning question; but it is not an explosive one.
It affects only indirectly the unemployed and destitute,
who are the real elements of revolution among us. Should
the steady wage-earners come to the conclusion that a
:
The Distribution of Wealth.
93
change in the system is necessary, they will seek it only by
moral pressure. It would not pay them to make a wide
convulsion in the labour market for the purpose. The
change, if desirable, can only be brought about gradually,
by tentative processes such as will enable trade and com-
merce to adapt themselves to new conditions. It is a
matter in which the Legislature cannot possibly interfere.
We have long abandoned the notion that wages can be
settled by law; and still less is it possible to settle by law
the division of profits. There is, therefore, no reason why
we should shirk the question; and we cannot do so; for
if we would, it is being forced upon us by the imperative
necessity for greater equability in the conditions of life.
Well, then, we put the question thus: Is it just and fair
that the capitalist, in an enterprise such as we have out-
lined, should absorb the whole of the profit to himself?
Observe, that the claim to reasonable interest on his
money is not for a moment doubted. We may also put on
one side as indisputable his right to an adequate remuner-
ation for his labour and skill in superintendence. Let us
say that is worth £1,000 for the year, and let us deduct
it from the 15 per cent. of profit. There will still remain
an amount of £14,000, which is clear gain, over and above
the repayment of all expenses, salaries, and interest. I
know it is commonly, though not universally, regarded as a
matter of course that the whole of this gain should be
appropriated by capital. But I confess it does not appear
to me a matter of course at all. Here are a number of
men voluntarily engaged in a common enterprise. A
hundred of them contribute labour and skill; and one
alone contributes the necessary money, together with the
94
The Conflict of Oligarchy and Democracy.
general design and directing wisdom. There is evidently
quite sufficient reason for his keeping the lion's share of
the profit, and I quite admit that, were this not allowed,
individual enterprise would be discouraged, and probably
exterminated. But, if he brings money and oversight, the
workmen bring labour. The second contribution is as
indispensable as the former; and I cannot quite see the
justice of an arrangement by which at the end of the
common enterprise he is £14,000 to the good, and all the
rest are precisely where they were at the beginning. Very
few of them have even £5 between them and recourse to
the pawn-shop. They have just been kept going; that is
all. But they have made no profit. Now, suppose that the
capitalist were to content himself with three-fourths of the
clear gain, say £10,500. Then there would be £3,500 to
divide amongst the workers. They ought not all to share
alike, but in proportion to the value of their contribution
to the common enterprise. And this would be best deter-
mined by the amount of their earnings in wages. But
supposing the number of workmen were a hundred, there
would be an average of £35 assignable to each as his
share of profit over and above his wages, and he would
be that much better off at the end of the year than at
the beginning.
This is the system of "profit-sharing" advocated by
Professor Sedley Taylor in a little volume of collected
essays. It is not a mere dream. It has been practically
carried out in principle, though with many differences of
detail, in a variety of businesses, especially in France. M.
Leclaire, a house decorator in Paris, was, I believe, the first
to adopt it. He persevered in it to the end of a long life,
The Distribution of Wealth.
95
and nothing made him more angry than compliments on his
generosity. For he declared that he was actuated by
purely mercenary motives, or at least business principles, and
to his dying day maintained that he had made more money
out of his business by this plan than he could have done on
any other. The reason he gave was, that as all workmen
were directly interested in swelling the profits, there was
less waste, more economy, and greater energy in work than
would otherwise have been possible. I shall not pretend
to judge whether M. Leclaire was precisely accurate in
saying that he had made more money for himself by his
scheme than he could have done on the ordinary plan.
Yet this at least is true, that what he did make was worth
far more to him than millions made by grinding the faces
of the poor. But I am most anxious that his plan should
not be misunderstood. You are not to suppose that the
wages he paid were dependent on his profits. For he gave
wages week by week according to the rate prevailing in
other shops of the same kind. And then at the end of the
year, after the balance-sheet had been made up, he dis-
tributed, in addition, a share of the profits, reckoned to
each man in proportion to his wage-earnings. As might
be expected, the dividends of the workmen were to a
considerable extent invested in the business, and of late it
has developed, I believe, into a practically co-operative
partnership.
The example of M. Leclaire has been followed by
several other capitalists in France, and it seems likely
to spread. In England, many employers give a bonus
in good years to their chief assistants; and, on the
other hand, a considerable amount of attention has
96
The Conflict of Oligarchy and Democracy.
been excited by co-operative enterprises. But the division
of profits between capital and labour on any fixed and
definite system has not hitherto made any way amongst us.
I am aware that it has been tried in some cases, and has
broken down. The alleged reason in one or two remark-
able instances was the unreasonable notion of the work-
men that a division of profits was always possible both in
bad years and good. If that were so, it is a fresh proof
of the need of popular education, moral as well as intel-
lectual. Self-control and fairness are as necessary to the
emancipation of the million as an assertion of their own
claims. Nevertheless, I cannot conceive how the present.
terrible contrast of luxury and destitution are to be mode-
rated unless profit-sharing finds a place in our measures of
social reform.
Before indicating how it might be expected to work,
and how in fact it has worked to a certain extent in
France, let me endeavour to anticipate the volley of
objections certain to be made were this a meeting for
debate. And, first, there are those who hold that work-
men who have been paid the market rate of wages have
already received their share of the profit from the common
enterprise. They might as well say that the steam-boiler
has consumed profit in the tons of coal that were burned
under it, or that the horses have eaten so much profit in
their oats. In a badly-managed business it is quite con-
ceivable this might be true, because more coals and more
oats than were necessary had been used, and therefore the
really productive expenditure would have to recoup this
waste; that is, it would be so much taken out of profit.
But in the case of all expenditure absolutely necessary to
The Distribution of Wealth.
97
the production of work this is not true. It is no more a
diminution of profit than seed cast into the ground and
fructifying is a loss to the granary. All wasted seed is a
loss; but not that which sprouts and ripens. Just so, all
needless expenditure is so much deducted from profit, and
is, therefore, taken out of it. But not so with necessary
expenditure. This comes back again with interest.
does not diminish the profit, but makes it.
It
Wages, therefore, are not the workman's share of the
profit. They are part of the necessary expenses of the
common enterprise. In the cotton states of America,
when slave labour was employed, it was a fallacy to
suppose that no wages were paid. The only difference
was that they were paid in kind: that is, in food,
clothing, lodging, medicine, and care, not only for the
adults, but for their families as well. The standard
of subsistence for a slave was very low, and therefore
the wages were low: coarse food, rough, scanty cloth-
ing, and miserable lodging. As a consequence the
returns in work were low; for it is well known that slave
labour was wasteful, and made scientific agriculture im-
possible. But the point is that the keep of the slaves was
an absolutely necessary expense; and will any one say this
was taken out of profit? When we turn to free labour, the
case is not so much different as might be desired. Wages
are paid in money, and not in kind. The standard of sub-
sistence is higher. But the rate of pay, though it fluctuates
slightly, is always kept so near the standard of subsistence
that wages really represent the necessary expense of keep-
ing the labourer and his household alive while the work is
going on. There is no question of profit here. It is not
"
5a
98
The Conflict of Oligarchy and Democracy.
taken out of the capitalist's profit, and it represents no
profit to the workman.
Again, it is said, if the workman is to share in profits, he
also ought to share in losses. This sounds very plausible,
but, like a good many other plausibilities, will not bear
examination. For out of what do the employer's losses
come? Out of his capital. Of course, he may have
reserve funds, or accumulations not actually employed in
his business, and he may draw on these. But he does so
to replace lost capital. Now, out of what is the workman's
share of loss to come? Out of his bread basket, and his
oven, and his cupboard, I suppose. Wages are so near
the standard of subsistence that if they are seriously
diminished this is what it comes to. When one man meets
a loss by selling a carriage and horses, while the other has
to pawn the coat off his back, they are scarcely on commen-
surable terms. Still it may be objected, if a hundred
workmen received an average profit, as just now suggested
of £35, in addition to their year's wages, at least a levy
might be made on this if the next year turned out badly.
But with what justice could this be asked? They will
undoubtedly suffer by having no profit in addition to their
wages at the end of the bad year. To that extent they
will suffer and ought to suffer with the employer. If the
depression be general also, the market rate of wages will
be forced down, and they will suffer in that way as well.
But to inflict any other fine upon them would be sheer
robbery. The bonus given the previous year was part of a
finished transaction. The next year's operations are another
transaction altogether. They have no share in directing
it, and if it turns out badly it would be monstrous to re-open
The Distribution of Wealth.
99
the business of the previous year, and ask them to refund..
If indeed they have invested their savings in the business,
then those savings are liable to the risks of the business,
but not otherwise. It may be urged that in this case the
workmen might cry, "Heads we win, tails you lose."
Not quite so, for they lose their bonus, and their gain in
prosperous years is utterly insignificant compared with
those of the capitalist. In fact, it is only on condition of
his accepting the losses in adverse times that it is at all
possible to justify his absorption, in good times, of a half
or three-fourths of the profit, in addition to interest on
money and salary for superintendence. Such an advantage:
is quite a sufficient consideration for his risk. To recur
to our supposed case: if he makes £10,500 one year-
besides interest and salary, be it remembered-he may
very well afford to lose £2,000 a year for three bad years,
and still be the gainer in the end.
I do not care to reply to other and more vulgar objec-
tions, resting on the bad uses often made of an occasional
and accidental excess of wages. During the coal mania
of a few years ago we were amused by stories of prosperous
colliers drinking magnums of champagne, or feeding bull-
pups on prime steak. So far as such stories represent
truth, they showed that human nature in colliers is very
much the same as in the golden youth of our aristocracy.
But with such follies I have nothing to do at present.
You are not to withhold just concessions from men
because it is possible they may make a bad use of
them. Our excessive social inequalities have undoubtedly
depressed the moral tone, as well as the physical comfort,
of millions. Correct the injustice with one hand, while
100
The Conflict of Oligarchy and Democracy.
+
you sow the seeds of higher culture with the other, and in
the long run the result will be unmingled good. The
common-place virtues, that perhaps haunt by preference
the middle ranks of our social grades, are certainly not
owing to any superiority in the human nature found there.
They are favoured by the happy union of constant occupa-
tion with a balance at the bank. If the golden youth of
the London clubs had to work for their living, and if the
millions of toilers had a little surplus over the barest
necessary expenditure, middle-class virtues would gradually
permeate both extremes. In saying this I do not wish to
imply that character is solely the fruit of physical con-
ditions. But making due allowance for cases of excep-
tional vigour of will, the average development of character
is necessarily limited or stimulated by circumstances. And
hence it is not merely for the spread of reasonable enjoy-
ment-though that surely is worth something-but it is
much more as a potent instrument in moral regeneration
that I long for a juster distribution of wealth.
Suppose now that by some such apportionment of
profits as has been suggested, and also by the subordina-
tion of land laws to popular needs, it became the rule, and
not the exception, for the millions to have a margin of
income beyond the mere necessaries of life. All ex-
perience of human nature goes to show that habits of
thrift would be gradually formed. It is of no use to urge
against such an expectation the drinking bouts and vicious
amusements and betting manias that follow a brief hour
of prosperity. For the customs and institutions of five
hundred years have induced in the average Englishman a
habit of living from hand to mouth-not likely to be
The Distribution of Wealth.
ΙΟΙ
surrendered except under a permanent change of condi-
tions. A man who usually gets 1 a week, and for once
makes £1 10s., is almost certain to spend the extra half-
sovereign in some extravagant excitement to relieve the
monotony of life. But if he get a permanent increase of
twice or thrice that amount, supposing him young enough
to change, and surrounded by suitable moral influences,
he will accommodate his habits to his income, not in the
way of self-indulgence, but in the increase of convenience
and refinement.
The same principle applies to whole classes of men.
Brief and exceptional gains induce extravagant indul-
gence; but a permanent increase of means inspires a
better ambition. It would not come about all at once.
A generation or two would disappear, and education,
uncontrolled and unwarped by ecclesiastical vested in-
terests, would have to do its work, before the full
effect was seen. But little by little the decencies and
elegances and safeguards, made possible by a margin
of income, would win their way. Fashion is as mighty
amongst the million as amongst the upper ten thousand;
and when thrift had been made a general possibility, it
would in time become the fashion.
But the growth of thrift is only one among the ad-
vantages that would spring from a better distribution of
wealth, and the general establishment of a margin between
income and bare subsistence. For capital and labour
would enter into their true relation of alliance, instead of
opposition. The increase of profit would be clearly to the
interest of labour, as well as of capital, because labour
would share it. The experience of the profit-sharing

102 The Conflict of Oligarchy and Democracy.
system in France goes far to prove that under such cir-
cumstances the utmost possible economy, both of time
and materials, is secured; and as a result the total amount
of profit is substantially increased. On the other hand,
there has, I believe, been some apprehension amongst
trades' unions that the sharing of profits might be made a
pretext for depressing wages. But I do not think there is
sufficient reason for such a fear. For French experience
shows that, as a matter of fact, enterprises conducted on
this plan have always paid the market rate of wages. And
besides, the constituents of trades' unions would be much
stronger than they are at present. At least it would be
entirely their own fault if they were not. For as they
could very well store up a reasonable portion of their
profit-dividend, they could, if necessity arose, hold out
better against unjust proposals to reduce wages. Nor
can it be supposed that so uncertain and fluctuating an
element as profit could, in the long run, interfere with the
economic law by which average wages are caused always
and everywhere to hover somewhere near the cost of
subsistence. This is an essential expense, without which
business could not be carried on, and it will always keep
its place in the calculations of enterprise. For the
labourer has to live, whether the enterprise succeeds or
not.
But another aspect of profit-sharing seems to shed the
light of hope upon the fluctuations of trade. Let us go
back to the case of a capitalist who in a good year makes
15 per cent. He is, of course, not alone; there are
hundreds around him making the same profit, or even
more. Now what do they do with it? They say, next

The Distribution of Wealth.
103
year will be like this, and much more abundant; there is
a wave of business prosperity coming, and we must be
ready to take advantage of it. And so a large part of the
profit is invested in new machinery, bigger engines, and a
larger supply of the raw material. More and more goods
are produced in a ratio rapidly overtaking demand. Then
the market is glutted; the new machinery stands idle;
wages fall; half-time is proposed. Rich men with money
locked up begin to curse the Government and free trade,
while poor men with empty pockets growl about com-
munism and Mr. Henry George. Now, suppose that some
share of the profit in these prosperous years had gone to
the workers in addition to good wages. Certainly there
would have been a little less to spend on new factories or
on the reckless extension of production; and I do not
think that would be a great disadvantage. But a very
clear advantage would have been this: that so much more
money in the pockets of the million would have tended to
keep up the demand in the home market. There would,
therefore, be a double influence at work tending to equalise
the course of trade. Thus, there would be less money
available for mere gambling on future chances. But there
would be more money to keep up the home market,
and the demands for this would lessen the danger
of a glut abroad. It is not unreasonable, then, to
presume that a system of profit-sharing, if generally
adopted, would tend to prevent the violent oscillations
from which commerce suffers, and to give a more even
tenor to trade, as well as to diffuse comfort among the
many. We might have fewer millionaires, but we should
also have less destitution. In such a community moderate
ذكر
104
The Conflict of Oligarchy and Democracy.
riches would give a purer and nobler happiness than
extravagant wealth does now. And, on the other hand,
occasional failure, or exceptional poverty, would not be
embittered, as it is now, by the glaring inequality of
chances for the many and the few.
Once more I must guard myself against misapprehen-
sion of the views I have put forward on this subject. The
principle is one that cannot possibly be enforced by law.
Where it commends itself to a sense of justice it will, I
believe, afterwards approve itself to practical minds by its
commercial and social results. The land laws, of course,
need the drastic hand of the Legislature; and their reform
would do something towards a more equable diffusion of
wealth. But this would be quite incomplete and in-
adequate apart from a more equitable distribution of the
wealth produced by the alliance of capital and labour.
This second reform is dependent wholly upon moral
forces, and I cannot conclude without a word of profound
regret that one institution, from which the needful moral
inspiration might have been expected, has not only been
indifferent to the question, but has set a most demoralising
example.
""
That institution is the Church-not one sect or denomi-
nation only, not the Establishment alone-but the whole
organised multitude of the professed followers of Him who
said, "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the
earth.' This saying, which obviously points to the
blessedness of contentment with a little, and of loyalty to
the divine order of the world, has been taken as a promise
of wealth and security as the reward of a pious temper.
Experience shows that every religious society, when once
A
The Distribution of Wealth.
105
""
maturely organised, tends to make its members prosperous.
It has been so with the Quakers conspicuously; and to a
smaller extent it is true of the Independents, the Baptists,
and the Wesleyans. The result is that, with the exception
of the Primitive Methodists, such societies, even if they
originated amongst the poor, tend to become more and
more respectable" and exclusive. This is the reason
why from time to time novelties, like the "Hallelujah
Band," and the "Salvation Army," have to be invented in
order to gather in ragged regiments from the streets. In
fact, this tendency of religion to make its votaries comfort-
able is often dwelt on with much complacency. For it is
said, and with good reason, that the success is assured by
the moral qualities, such as industry and self-control-I
am not sure about honesty-that are formed by church
training. Now, all this may be true. Yet remembering
the first Teacher of Christianity, and how all his longing
was to seek and to save the lost, we cannot but regret that
in ecclesiastical congresses the question of the distribution
of wealth is touched so timidly.
But then we are told to contrast the example of the
great Establishment. Here, at least, is a Church avowedly
set for the defence of the poor, with sacred buildings
planted everywhere, even in the poorest districts, and with
an endowed gentleman in every parish to show a good
example. The theory is capable of exhibition in very
beautiful forms, but the practice somehow does not answer
to it. That in itself would, of course, not be very sur-
prising. But it is surely strange to hear men speak of the
Church Establishment as a corrective to social inequalities,
when the whole of its external organisation is dictated by
106 The Conflict of Oligarchy and Democracy.
the worship of wealth. There is nothing in all our
institutions, neither primogeniture, nor entail, nor the
marriage market, nor even sweating shops-nothing that
teaches such wicked and anti-Christian lessons on the dis-
tribution of wealth as the division of Church revenues.
And for this reason, that it is poison where we expect
medicine, corruption where we look for inspiration, a
justification offered to our baser desires where we look for
an example to our nobler nature. If that corruption is
worst which affects what is best; if the defection of a saint
or hero is more harmful than shameless vice; if treachery
in the trusted guardians of a sacred cause is more fatal
than open opposition, then surely injustice in the distribu-
tion, within the Church itself, of wealth appropriated to the
service of religion is a worse evil than even dishonest
greed in trade. The revenue from ecclesiastical estates
and tithes is at the least £6,000,000 a year, and voluntary
contributions, with pew-rents-the latter a bad source of
income, but still available for the support of the clergy-
probably add not less than another million. Taking the
clergy actually engaged in the cure of souls at 20,000, this
would allow an income of £350 a year to every one of
them. An exactly equal distribution is for many reasons
impossible. But remembering the number of young men
in the profession with no one but themselves to keep, and
for whom £200 would be sufficient, there is obviously
margin enough to allow of reasonably large incomes in
cases of exceptional responsibility and expense. I am not,
therefore, suggesting an impracticable equality. Yet,
surely, it would be but reasonable to expect that the
richest Church in Christendom should give a salutary
The Distribution of Wealth.
107
example of at least moderate fairness in the distribution of
wealth, or at any rate should not sanction by her authority
the glaring inequalities, the unnatural extremes of splendour
and misery, that distract our civilisation.
Every one knows how contrary to such a reasonable
expectation are the actual facts. Two archbishops, and
thirty bishops, between them draw £163,300, and this
does not include the annual value of their official
residences, reckoned at £13,200. Thus these thirty
dignitaries divide among themselves £176,500 a year, or
an average approaching £6,coo. And at the other end of
the scale you have hard-working curates grateful for old
clothes and hampers of provisions. Nay, the case of the
beneficed clergy is quite strong enough to prove my case.
For a clergyman writing to the Times the other day
explained that there were more than 8,000 livings with
incomes of less than £300 a year, and out of this either a
curate has to be paid, or a considerable part of the work
must be left undone. The average for the whole country
is stated by Mr. Martin at £285. Now, when it is remem-
bered that a considerable number of benefices give the
incumbent £1,000 a year or more, it will be seen that a
very much larger number can yield little more than £100
to £150. But meantime the Archbishop of Canterbury
has £15,000 a year besides his palaces; the Archbishop
of York £10,000, and the Bishop of London the same.
It is of no avail to plead, as is sometimes done, that
these revenues belong, not to the Church at large, but to
corporations sole," with a sufficient title to their property.
For Parliament has repeatedly set aside any such claims,
and has manipulated the revenues at its pleasure. The
r08 The Conflict of Oligarchy and Democracy:
bishops are now not owners at all. Everything is in the
hands of commissioners. And the fact that this enor-
mously wealthy Commission, with revenues constantly
swollen through the increasing value of suburban land,
should be so constantly engaged in works on episcopal
palaces and grounds, while poverty, and sometimes even
destitution, harass so many of the clergy, is surely a
scandal that ought to make a deeper impression than it
does. It is not the fault of the men concerned. They
execute their commission faithfully. But that commission
itself is the outcome of the Church's own teaching on the
distribution of wealth. And never in all the history of
Christianity was there a heresy more deadly than this. The
notion is that spiritual dignitaries, to be respected, must be
clothed in pomp like secular princes. If that be so, there
can hardly be a surer proof that religion is dead. But I,
for one, do not believe it. The priests of most immortal
power have not been Wolseys, but men like Wyclif and
Wesley, to whose transcendent earnestness food and
clothing sufficient for the day were all the revenue wanted.
For some dangerous forms of extreme re-action against
the present distribution of wealth the churches of all
denominations are largely to blame. For through the
excessive importance attached to money, whether in the
shape of endowments, or pew-rents, or ostentatious
subscriptions, they have themselves been infected with the
commercial spirit. Prophets clothed in a hair shirt and a
leathern girdle, content with locusts and wild honey,
could address both tax-gatherers and merchants and
soldiers with an authority altogether impossible to the
pleasant social clubs gathered now by the attractions of
The Distribution of Wealth.
109
the pulpit. Neither learning, nor zeal, nor philanthropy
are wanting. But the power of protest against the sleek
complacency of commercial success has been for centuries
in abeyance.
Yet it is not a little remarkable that social reformers
outside the Church should seek their precedent in the
fiery days of primitive Christianity, and should advo-
cate a system of communism once tried in Jerusalem
and found impracticable. In spite of the contradiction of
her professed followers, the original bent and natural
inclination of Christianity is in the direction of com-
munism. For he that loves his neighbour as himself
cannot be happy if he fares sumptuously every day
while Lazarus lies at the door in rags. But then this
passion for equality was, in the primitive Church, some-
what like the wild justice of modern revolutionists—
a generous but impossible dream. It was most valu-
able--it would be most valuable now-as a corrective
of unrestrained individualism. But, as in the solar
system centrifugal force is, equally with gravitation, an
essential condition of orderly movement, so in any
advanced stage of human organisation individualism is as
necessary as socialism. Nomads, or savages, or Russian
peasants, may live contentedly in communism, because the
organisation is simple, and the sense of individuality is
small. But humanity rises to higher and more complex
organisations just in proportion as individual character and
energy are independently developed. This development
has its dangers, and needs correction. But to think of
extirpating it is to propose a return to barbarism.
Individual development needs individual aims, motives,
!
ΙΙΟ The Conflict of Oligarchy and Democracy.
and ambitions to stimulate it. And, constituted as we are,
such excitements are not usually possible apart from the
institution of private property. It must be limited by, it
must be subordinate to, the common good. But its total
suppression would paralyse the energies of progress.
And I am sure that this is felt and believed even by
many who use the word communism as a spell. The
present ill-regulated distribution of wealth bears upon
millions so heavily that the speculative amongst them
are ready for desperate schemes. Yet, if by some un-
imaginable change every father of a family were to receive
to-morrow a house, garden, furniture, and stock-in-trade,
he would certainly wish to keep them to himself. The
idea of holding them on sufferance would be intolerable;
and if the institution of private property had been
abolished, the new nation of happy cottagers would very
soon restore it. In other words, it is undoubtedly to the
interest of the many that more equal chances should be
given to all. But to destroy private property would be to
deprive all alike of the independence, and self-reliance,
and security for the sake of which those more equal
chances are desired. And the same principle applies to
land. Land itself, indeed, cannot be individual property;
but the tenure of it can, and must be, if enterprise and
industry are to have a solid basis. But if you once grant
this fixity of tenure-and even Mr. George does not deny
the need for that-you have immediately a merchantable
property, which no possible exaction of rent to the State
can wholly deprive of value. For, say that the whole land
value of a particular site were paid to the State in rent.
An enterprising holder who establishes a flourishing
The Distribution of Wealth.
III
business there would soon confer on the site itself an
additional value altogether apart from the buildings on it;
and of this additional value conferred by his own industry
it would be monstrous to rob him. If he sold his tenure,
he would get that value. If he preferred to let it-and
there is nothing in Mr. George's proposals to prevent
that-then he would get annual payment for the special
eligibility he had conferred on the site. But this is
private rent over again. And the fact that all taxes were
paid out of land revenue would set free a good deal of
money to compete for advantageous tenures such as we
have supposed. This would go on all over the country;
and in fifty years preferential rents would be a common
form of property.
After all, men have not been wholly fools even in the bad
old times; and amongst the relics of ancient wisdom is the
saying that, if you pitchfork nature out at the door, she will
come in by the window. All reforms ought to recognise
this truth. I would not be sparing of abuses. I would
insist that the common good should be paramount over
every consideration of law, custom, rank, or privilege. But
I do not believe that the common good would really be
served by making a bee-hive or an ant-hill the ideal of a
human republic. The soul of man wants scope for personal
character and power. In the heavens above us the story
of eternal order and progress is illuminated by the stars.
For astronomers show us the beginning of systems in the
faint light of incoherent nebulæ, where there is neither sun,
nor planet, nor satellite; nay, the chaotic mass has not
yet developed chemical distinctions of matter as we know
it. There is a molecular communism, where everything is
112
The Conflict of Oligarchy and Democracy.
alike all through. Then, at the other end of the scale,
astronomers point to our own solar system with a compli-
cated equilibrium of moving order, each orb complete in
itself, yet dependent on all the rest. And we are told
that very probably myriads of the stars we see are the
bright centres of systems like our own. The constellations
that divide the sky are composed of them.
Here
Heaven mirrors itself in the lower world.
too, we. see at one end of the scale simple, incoherent
societies, where all characters are alike, and there is
little division of labour or distinction of property.
Separate, independent consciousness hardly exists. Even
women and children are held in common. There
is only a vague, feeble shimmer of that glory we
call human life. But, at the other end of the
scale, we see, or we anticipate, civilisations of com-
plex movement in delicate equilibrium, where each
individual man is the centre of a little world of his
own. His family move around him as the planets
round their sun. And though he is as nothing compared
with the vast political constellation to which he belongs,
he has his own domain, his own character and influence.
This individuality, as well as his subordination, is governed
by an eternal law of progress; and its suppression would
threaten a return to primitive chaos. Perhaps the old
prophet was a believer in evolution who said, “Better is
the end of a thing than the beginning thereof." The
systems of separate worlds are nobler than the confused
nebulæ. And it is possible to give a scientific interpreta-
tion to the prophetic utterance, "They that be wise shall
shine as the brightness of the firmament, and they that
turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever."
LECTURE VI.
DEMOCRATIC MORALS.
In human affairs everything in the last result turns on
character. If in the course of these lectures we have
found it necessary to insist with some iteration on the
importance of circumstance, this has only been because
we have observed that it is too much overlooked. For
instance, how often have we been told that intemperance
and thriftlessness are the causes of almost all social
misery. And we feel that there is a great deal of truth in
the assertion. But then we are impelled to ask, what is
the cause of intemperance and thriftlessness? To this
question some good people have no difficulty in replying
that it is all owing to "original sin" and human depravity.
Such an answer we have found to be not quite conclusive;
because, apart from metaphysical difficulties, it does not
account for the fact that intemperance and thriftlessness,
like small-pox and cholera, haunt by preference squalid
neighbourhoods, where low conditions of life prevail. It
is not denied that moral heroism may overcome the most
adverse circumstances; and in doing so it always has its
reward; for there is no victory more glorious. But, on the
other hand, we have contended that heroism of this kind
is not a very common quality, and that if average men are
to be kept right they must have conditions in their favour.
On this ground we have insisted that one of the chief
6
114
The Conflict of Oligarchy and Democracy.
difficulties in the way of the moral regeneration of society
is the excessively unequal distribution of wealth, and the
abject poverty of millions.
Still, it remains true that in human affairs everything
ultimately turns upon character. It is because of weak-
ness in character that adverse circumstances so easily
prevail against us. And unless more favourable circum-
stances should foster a higher character, they cannot
possibly secure happiness. We have been told by a great
critic that " conduct is three-fourths of human life." But
character is the heart of conduct, the origin of its impulses,
the fountain of its energies. Therefore it is that I have
desired to conclude this series of lectures on the struggle
of democracy against oligarchy by some remarks on demo-
cratic morals. For I am very sure that if Conservative
forebodings were true, and if the unrestrained power of the
multitude were likely to make a moral chaos, then we had
better all turn Tories at once. We have only to think for
a moment what character means, to see how vital is the
question.
Character is the stamp of moral individuality borne by a
man, and affording a guarantee that his actions will be
marked by coherency and consistency. During the
Peninsular War a certain commissariat officer complained to
Lord Wellesley that he was threatened by General Picton
with suspension from the nearest tree unless supplies
were forthcoming on the next morning. "Do you mean
to tell me that Picton says he will hang you?" asked Lord
Wellesley. "He does, my Lord, he does,” replied the
officer. "Then," rejoined the Commander-in-Chief, "if
Picton says he'll hang you, he'll do it; be sure he'll do it."
Democratic Morals.
115
Let us hope the supplies were forthcoming. But, at any
rate, the story may illustrate what is meant by character;
such a stamp of moral individuality as makes a man's
actions calculable. If the friend you have known for
thirty years as an honest man were arrested for picking a
pocket, you would say at once what a fool the policeman
must have been! Because, in your view, your friend has a
certain stamp of moral individuality, a continuity of
inclination, tendency, and motive, such as to make the
alleged action inconceivable. Of course, there may be
both good characters and bad. But, by custom, the word
"character," as now defined, is generally taken in a good
sense. To say of anyone that he is a man of character,"
is to commend his uprightness; and, on the other hand,
of a worthless pretender, we say he is "a man of no
character."
It only needs an intelligent appreciation of the events
of everyday life to realise of what enormous importance it
is to society that the common-place millions, as well as the
exceptional heroes, should possess character. There is a
vulgar saying that, if in spiritual things we are saved by
faith, in secular matters we are saved by the want of it.
Yet, like a great deal that passes for wit, the saying is only
the grotesque exaggeration of a half-truth. For though
the imperfections of our fellow-creatures certainly compel
us to keep a sharp look out, yet unless their actions were
to some extent calculable, their promises trustworthy, and
their loyalty a reasonable ground of confidence, social and
commercial life would be impossible. However cleverly
you may secure yourself by checks and counter-checks in
the management of a business, you cannot avoid some
6*
116 The Conflict of Oligarchy and Democracy.
dependence on the faithfulness of the assistants who carry
out your plans. We must all feel that we need overlooking.
Conscience is often very drowsy, and wants poking up by
the insistance of others on their just claims. But what a
hell this world would be if there were no conscience at all,
and conduct were never prompted by character! Not a
meal could be eaten without fear of poison, not a bargain
carried out except under the eyes of both parties to it, not a
servant could be trusted out of sight, not an employer
respected or believed. Our life would be like that of wild
creatures in the woods, peering stealthily here and there for
expected foes, and ready to strike or spring away at a
shadow. In the last cold weather I watched some birds
attracted by a handful of crumbs flung out on the frosty
path. It was pathetic to mark their suspicion and distrust.
They hopped wistfully within a yard or two, and fluttered.
sideways here and there in an agony of desire and fear. At
length one would make a rush at a crumb and instantly fly
away in terror. Emboldened by this example, another and
another would snatch a morsel, till all was gone. But
throughout it seemed that doubt and dread poisoned the
feast. We may make mistakes in such a case in imputing
human emotions to lower creatures. But be that as it
may, I thought it was a picture of what life would be
without the confidence inspired by character among our
fellows.
Now, if character has had this importance, even under
despotisms and oligarchies, of how much greater conse-
quence must it be in democracies, where there is no
longer any pretence of resistance to the undisguised might
of the multitude! For the privileged few have maintained
Democratic Morals.
117
very good rules for the morality of the multitude, even
though they have not always set an example by keeping
those rules themselves. The virtues of hard work, self-
denial, domestic purity, and respect for authority, may have
been enforced too often by oligarchies who did not con-
spicuously practise them. But the virtues are not the less real
for all that. And if the democracy, when they become “a
law unto themselves," should disdain such humble virtues,
and count them redolent of slavery, then I would rather
die before King Mob is crowned. It has been bad
enough when class was arrayed against class; yet there
was at least this consolation, that, at any rate within each
hostile section of the community, a limited spirit of loyalty
was cultivated, and self was often sacrificed to class
interests. But if democracy means every man for himself,
and if the conflicts of classes are to be merged in a free
fight, each man with his hand against every other man,
then it is another word for a moral chaos. Against such an
issue no mere institutions can be a sufficient guard.
Neither proportional representation, nor home rule, nor
local option, nor the three F's, will avail us much unless
democratic opinion enforces moral discipline in restraint
of private greed. And the opinion necessary to maintain
such discipline can only spring from the prevalence of
character.
What, then, are the probabilities of the future? If we
are to believe certain pessimists, the triumph of democracy
must necessarily involve the subversion of morality. It is
true that among such pessimists the security of wealth is
usually the subject of chief anxiety. And, hence, among
Tories, it is a common and legitimate matter for sneer that
118 The Conflict of Oligarchy and Democracy.
1
Radicals, who become millionaires, for the most part
develop a political as well as a commercial conservatism.
But it is not about wealth alone that the watchmen sound
an alarm. For democracy is declared to make communism
inevitable; and communism is said to be defiant of
religion, impatient of the marriage tie, incapable of
respect for purity. Such fears as these beset not only
political Conservatives. In fact, I fancy that most of
these, being men of the world, know better than to believe
in their own prophecies. But there are many good people
of a sacred simplicity who, though tradition and associa-
tion keep them in the Liberal ranks, yet as they look
forward to the strange issues of the future, often breathe
forth the ancient sigh, "If the foundations be destroyed,
what can the righteous do ?" I believe such fears to be
groundless; and I wish to say why I have strong con-
fidence in democratic morality.
You know the sort of appeals to history by which those
fears are supposed to be justified. Never, it is said, has
any uprising of the mob against authority attained a
temporary success, without bringing in its train crimes of
violence, the plunder of property, and the disorder of ali
social relations. So it was under John Ball and Jack
Cade. The rising of the peasants in the time of Luther
terrified even the Reformer by its violence, and wrung from
him indiscriminate denunciations, which are amongst the
least worthy of his utterances. Above all, we are con-
fronted with the excesses of the French Revolution, the
butcheries by a blood-thirsty mob, and the shameless
apotheosis of a harlot. Now, on such frightful examples
I would make three remarks. In the first place, they are
Democratic Morals.
119

not cases of democracy at all. The argument that would
make them such is based on a very common confusion
between that and mobocracy, which is a very different
thing. What the precise difference is I shall try to
express by and by. Meanwhile I would note that far
truer types of democracy are to be found in the Swiss
Federation of Republics, and in the United States of
America. Of course, many just criticisms may be passed
on both of these nations; but no one can say that the law
is powerless, or that mob violence threatens public order.
It is indeed too true that the judicial system in the United
States is generally supposed to be not free from corruption.
But an organisation that has survived the convulsion
necessary to get rid of slavery is well capable of shaking
off lesser evils.
The second remark I would make on those historical
warnings against democracy is, that the disorders con-
demned were a passionate re-action against intolerable
wrong; and it is altogether unfair to argue from this to
the probable character of any democracy born of peaceful
and gradual evolution. For if oppression, as we are told,
"driveth a wise man mad," how much more likely is it to
madden poor ignorant people whose first sense of injustice
comes with the pinch of hunger! And my third remark
is that, when fully admitted, the excesses condemned do
not prove that even mob rule is worse than irresponsible
government by privilege. For those alleged crimes of the
oppressed were at any rate no worse than the wrongs they
avenged. Nay, there was in them a sort of wild justice,
that betokened the awakening of a nobler nature. It is
no doubt right to condemn the orgies of murder with
120 The Conflict of Oligarchy and Democracy.
which the Parisian mob, in the September massacres,
slaked their thirst for blood. But it is surely altogether
wrong to forget that the old court and nobility had upheld
the law only that they might the more securely indulge at
their will in extortion, adultery, and arbitrary imprison-
ment. When we call to mind how no peasant's crops
were safe from noble greed, no peasant's daughter secure
from courtly lust; when we remember how Louis XV.,
satirically called the "Well-Beloved," kept a house near
his palace for purposes which by our law are punished with
penal servitude, and deserve the gallows more than many
a murder, we cannot wonder that such a state of things
needed purification by blood and fire; and we may well
doubt whether even the September massacres were worse
than its continuance.
But now let us return to the first remark made by way
of criticism on jeremiads about democracy and its dangers.
We said that they referred properly to mobocracy—a very
different thing. And here is the difference. A mob is a
crowd swayed hither and thither by momentary impulse,
without method, without order, and without any sense of
responsibility on the part of those that start the impulse, or
of those who give it effect. Between such a crowd and the
idea of a self-governing people, as embodied in the Greek
word "democracy," there is a striking contrast. For this
is a people organised by distribution into various districts,
callings, and offices, so that every man has his own duties,
every man some orderly means of influencing the common
decision, and also some responsible part in carrying it out.
Undeniably there is one element common to the two
conceptions-that of the mob and of the organised people.
Democratic Morals.
121
In both cases there is the prevalence of a general desire,
In both also it may
in place of submission to command.
be said that the ultimate decision is impersonal-an
aggregate rather than an individual resolve. But in the
one case, that of the mob, the decision is an impulse of
unreflecting passion, with no appreciation either of causes
or of consequences. In the other case, the decision is
the result of orderly discussion under a sense of responsi-
bility, and therefore, to some extent, it will be an outcome
of reason. We are not however here concerned with the
degree of intelligence likely to characterise democratic
counsels. I have already in a previous lecture suggested
some explanation of the paradox that political justice is
often more manifest to the half-educated many than to
the cultivated few. But it is on the moral elements in
this conception of democracy that we should fix attention
now. For in the distinction between the mob and the
organised people, two moral characteristics are clearly
present in the latter and wanting in the former. These
are order and responsibility.
I call order a moral characteristic; for in any sufficient
and vital form it is impossible without loyalty—that is, will-
ing devotion to the law of that whole to which we belong as
parts. Surely social order, in any adequate conception of
it, is not a dead thing-the mechanical sway of physical
force. As some masterful conquerors have “made a desert
and called it peace," so they have established slavery and
called it order. But the name is no more applicable in
* For fuller explanation of this I may venture to refer to "Lessons
from the Rise and Fall of the English Commonwealth," Lecture V.
ба
122 The Conflict of Oligarchy and Democracy.
+
the second case than in the first. For order, like peace,
means an equilibrium of life and energy, a harmony of
wills, not the paralysis of human faculties. It concerns the
mind and temper of a people, and not their bodies only.
When therefore the late Emperor of the French on one
occasion told his subordinates to mind their own business,
and he would answer for public order, he made a profes-
sion which he and such as he never can fulfil. For the
deadly acquiescence he secured was but the apparent peace
of a corpse full of gnawing worms within. Sullen hate,
loathsome corruption, mutual jealousies, bitter faction,
suppressed passion, made a hell of the inner life of the
Second Empire; and at the first great strain it broke up in
ruin. The same observations might be made wherever
force is idly supposed to be a remedy for the fever of dis-
content, whether in the prison-city of St. Petersburg, or in
an Irish district under coercion. For real order you want
loyalty. And, in the sense we attach to the word, that is
never to be found so pure and noble and strong as in a true
democracy.
Then, again, a general sense of responsibility is clearly a
moral characteristic essential to a true democracy. And
by responsibility we need not necessarily mean the fore-
boding of an account to be rendered to a personal or cor-
porate judge, as, for instance, a sovereign, or a parliament,
or a constituency. Such a prospect is, no doubt, a healthy
stimulus to poor humanity. But my notion of responsi-
bility goes beyond that. For we have to answer to our-
selves, if we answer to no one else; and when we have
reached a certain stage of moral evolution, self-contempt
is "the worm that dieth not, and the fire that is no
Democratic Morals.
123
quenched." But, more than that, there is slowly permeat-
ing the heart of humanity just now the sense of a univer-
sal order, certain, imperious, irreversible, binding effects to
causes just as surely in the affairs of human life as in the
' movements of the stars. One of the results of this dawning
perception is seen in a growing respect for the laws of
health. May we not have confidence that the same per-
ception will extend to conduct? One of the best gifts of
the highest religions of the world has been their embodi-
ment in pictorial and emotional forms of a supreme moral
order. "Be not deceived," they have said; "God is not
mocked; whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he reap."
And I confess I cling to the hope that while science
confirms the certainty of this order, and; clears it of mis-
conceptions, it will not, cannot, ultimately deprive us of
the emotional sanctions enshrined in the traditions of
religion. At all events we are encouraged by many signs
to believe that a rational sense of responsibility for con-
duct is gradually pervading the multitudes who in old times
used to be ordered about like children by their pastors and
masters. And this is especially manifest wherever political
power has been but lately acquired, For if you watch the
proceedings, for instance, of the Trades Union Congress,
an assembly fairly representative of the rising democracy,
it must surely strike you that one of its most striking
characteristics is a sense of responsibility bordering upon
conservative caution.
From our point of view, democracy, or the self-govern-
ment of an organised people, is the polity best adapted to
diffuse most widely these moral elements of willing order
and conscious responsibility. It is, therefore, most
124 The Conflict of Oligarchy and Democracy.
1
#
favourable to the development of character in the multi-
tudinous members of a state. In a recent number of the
Quarterly Review an able writer appeared to think he was
announcing a notable discovery in assuring us that, after all,
democracy is "only a form of government." But surely,
looking at the vital importance of organisation to the
evolution of humanity, a form of government may be preg-
nant with consequences. Now, democracy is that form of
government which aims at the widest possible diffusion of
political power and responsibility. It seeks to impress.
every man with a sense of duty owed, not to rulers, but to
the common good. With this view, it attempts to give
everyone the opportunity of exerting precisely the influence
possible to his character and energy, altogether apart from
birth, rank, or fortune. Such an ideal is indeed difficult
of attainment, and we are a long way from it yet. But it
is what we aim at; and one of our reasons for keeping it
steadfastly in view is that the nearer we approach it, the
more favourable to popular morality do we make the con-
ditions of life.
I know the incredulous laughter with which such an
assertion has been hailed by the prophets of despotic
force. I recognise, within limits, the justice of scornful
sneers at Tamany rings, and official corruption, and all the
moral diseases incidental to the yet incipient growth of the
gigantic democracy across the Atlantic. But I remind
myself that these curses are partly confined to city life,
where the imported rascality of Europe abounds; and
partly the result of a generally redundant prosperity and
unassailable security, which make imperial politics of less
consequence to the common multitude in the United
ว
!
Democratic Morals.
125
States than they are to us. And when all that is dis-
counted, it remains true that never in recorded history were
comfort, intelligence, self-respect, morality, and interest in
life so fairly shared amongst fifty millions of people as
they are in the great American Republic at the present day.
I am not afraid of appealing, either to reasonable theory
or to concrete facts, in maintaining that with democracy
lies the best hope of that general diffusion of character on
which the higher evolution, or, as some prefer to style it,
the redemption, of humanity must depend.
We are speaking of democratic morals. We have seen
that an organised people, mutually dependent on each other,
may be expected to show a willing order and a conscious
responsibility that are of the essence of morality. But we
may be reminded that human passions are strong. We
may be told that the brute nature in us has only been kept
in order by representatives of heaven, brandishing the
terrors of hell. And we may be challenged to show how
the rule of morality is likely to be maintained when the
sword of the magistrate is held by universal suffrage, and
churches are robbed of their spiritual thunders. We need
not shrink from the attempt, though at the same time it
would be ridiculous to suppose that any forecast of ours
can explore the strange and immeasurable future that is
opening before us. Righteousness, without despot or
priest; religion, without metaphysics or miracle: these are
the future conditions of democratic morals. And what
have we to say to their possibility?
Amongst the essentials of morality are a standard or a
rule of right; a sanction, or a binding authority; and an
inspiration, or an effective impulse. The last is too often
126
The Conflict of Oligarchy and Democracy.
forgotten. But it is as necessary as the other two. For
it is an old plague of humanity that we may own what is
right and feel its authority, yet lack the impulse to do it.
We want the inspiration that fires with love of good for its
own sake. I mean nothing miraculous, save as "all this
unintelligible world" is miraculous to contemplative souls;
and, most of all, the mystery of human life. But the inspira-
tion of which I speak must be a common gift, as universal
as the rush of blood through the heart, if it is to be
available for democratic morals.
First, however, a word or two on the standard of
morals, or the rule of right. If this were a philosophical
lecture-room or a theological hall, I might puzzle both
my audience and myself with fine-drawn issues about
utility, intuition, nature, and revelation. But being
anxious only about practical considerations suitable to
plain men, perhaps I may best start from the assumption
that moral right and the greatest good to humanity are in
the long run identical. I do not say that utility con-
stitutes rightness. In fact, I do not myself believe that it
does. But at any rate rightness is, in the long run, co-
incident with utility, or the greatest humán good. And by
the greatest good, I do not mean the largest mess
of pottage-not fatness and comfort: I mean the highest
development of faculty and energy, both in heart and
mind and body. Whatever tends to that will be found
identical with the best morality. I do not care to dispute
now whether it is right because it has that tendency, or
has that tendency because it is right. It is enough at this
point to insist on the practical coincidence.
But, of course, it is very vague to say that the standard of
Democratic Morals.
127
moral right means practically the highest good to humanity.
We want a standard of morals much more articulate and
detailed than that, we want a code setting forth the rules
that make for the highest good. Here, the experience of
the race comes to our aid. For more centuries, for more
millenniums than science has yet counted, mankind have
been slowly growing toward the light of the higher life. All
this time they have been learning by experience what is good
for them. For the most part their experience is a vast, vague,
impersonal store of unconscious instinct and habit. But
sometimes it becomes articulate; and all words that truly
express it are an everlasting possession. Such are many
of the utterances of prophets and great religious teachers.
They are not discoveries, like the revelations of science.
They are not inventions, like the schemes of politicians.
These great and immortal utterances are only the secre-
tion, in a definite form, of the previously vague and
unconscious experience of humanity in the quest of the
highest good. You know how in a strong solution of
any substance-zinc, for instance- the dissolved solid
tends to crystallise round any hard points thrust into the
saturated liquid. Just so, when human experience has
become pregnant with great moral principles, existing in
solution as it were, the birth into the world of some
marked personality causes a crystallisation of unrecognised
truth about the gifted soul. Such truths once uttered
answer to the prepared hearts of men. They bring their
own evidence with them. They are stored up in human
memory. They are enshrined in sacred books, along with
many perishable superstitions. And these books become
the treasury of moral wisdom. They need not be final or
128 The Conflict of Oligarchy and Democracy.
infallible.
They may be mixtures of truth and error.
But
the truths commend themselves to every age by answering
to experience; and the errors perish, because experience
convicts them.
In this way the moral standard based on experience
takes definite form, but a form always capable of further
development. Many races have possessed such books.
The Vedas, the Avesta, the Buddhist Pitakas, the Koran,
are instances of what I mean. And if to these I add the
Jewish and Christian Scriptures, I shall not conceal my
own profound conviction that the vaster fulness of the
moral life they inspire goes far to account for the higher
range of the civilisation they have moulded. But in all
these writings alike, the moral wisdom and goodness of
many ages have been crystallised in popular language.
They are all alike clouded with exhalations of ancient
ignorance and passion; but amidst the rifts of those clouds
their words of truth and justice shine like the stars with
their own light. Such words want no proving. The
simplest heart feels in them a wealth of concentrated
experience that joins past, present, and future in an ever-
lasting life. But if still some test is craved, it is fresh
experience alone that can prove them, and by this test the
noblest utterances are always most conspicuously con-
firmed. "Thou shalt not steal." "Thou shalt do no
murder." “Do unto others as ye would that they should do
unto you." "Blessed are the peacemakers."
"Blessed are the
meek, for they shall inherit the earth." A nation hankering
after a spirited foreign policy despises old-fashioned wisdom
like this, and scornfully defies the warning voices that
have echoed it from centuries of calamity. But it is not
Democratic Morals.
129
long before the bloodshed, and the waste, and the debt, and
the world-wide suspicion incurred bring the inevitable
confirmation of immortal truth; and in remorseful self-
condemnation men learn again that the higher morality
meant the wider good.
Besides the standard of right we want an authoritative
sanction. For that is no morality which does not bind us
even against our lower inclinations. But we have already
anticipated the sanction, in showing that the test of moral
truth is experience. It is so, because the sanction of
morality lies in the order of the universe. The world is
so framed that, in the long run, truth and right must come
uppermost. Try it, and you will see. Some worshipper
of the great idol Humbug may say that he has tried, and
that he finds this sort of idolatry pays best. Oh, yes, you
may play tricks, and you may tell lies, and conceal your
crimes, and you may think you have cheated eternal law.
But the very fact that you do think so is part of your
punishment. For you are degraded, and you have lost.
your self-respect. You have no safety but in meannesses
and deceptions. You may brave it out; but you are a
pitiful creature, and you know it. You have a shrewd
suspicion that if you escape it will only be because you die
before the deluge comes. For as Punch-often as wise as
he is genial-once said in homely expostulation with slave-
holding America, some years before the curse came down :
"If those eternal laws you spurn,
They'll certainly your kicks return.
They will be even with you yet;
And what a kicking you will get!
""
Heaven forbid I should ignore the fact that many-
130
The Conflict of Oligarchy and Democracy.
perhaps almost all-of the noblest men I have known
would prefer to describe the sanction of morality in other
and more theological terms! I am not here to controvert
them, nor do I conceal my sympathy with them. But I
am dealing with democratic morals, and I must find a
sanction capable, at least in practice, of operating
altogether outside theological controversy. This sanction
we have in the order of the universe. And if any doubt
that, all we have to say to them is,―try it. "Experience
keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other." In the
course of a thousand generations men have found that in a
universe of order an ordered life is best, and the lessons of
morality are guaranteed by a perception of everlasting law.*
Similar observations might be made on the inspiration
necessary to make the moral standard and its sanction
effective. We may know what is right and we may realise
its authority, while at the same time we may have no impulse
to do it. This is the case, for instance, with all lazy
electors, who know that education is the one lever of justice
for the million, but who will not take the trouble to go and
vote for the right men at the election of a school board.
It is the case with those that know that organisation is
necessary to the maintenance of a policy of righteousness,
but who will not spare an hour in a month away from their
cosy firesides to help it. Perhaps we have almost left
behind us questions of life or death, and of high heroics,
* If I am asked whether I think this consistent with atheism, I reply,
No; I do not. But I never met with an atheist yet, except in the
sense of a man whose God is not recognisable as mine-¿.e., whose idea
of eternal being and power is other than mine. In this sense Polycarp
was an atheist to the Smyrnæans.
Democratic Morals.
131
in the political conflict.
intense excitement that stand most in need of inspiration,
because they usually bring their inspiration with them.
Those moments are only made by some strong impulse lifting
a people above selfish interests. On the other hand, the
level round of common duty that every member of a
democracy must be content to tread, if the Commonwealth
is to be kept healthy, requires an unfailing impulse of
loyalty. And this can only be secured in proportion as
the instinct of corporate devotion is developed. Here I
But it is not moments of most
"*
shall refrain, as far as possible, from going over old ground.
In dealing formerly with "The Sources of Popular Enthusi-
asm we saw, I hope, that devotion to any whole of which
we form a part is essentially of the nature of religion, and
susceptible to prophetic fire. The moral side of elemen-
tary education has hitherto been lacking in the cultivation
of this spirit. The interests of theology have been allowed
to override those of religion. And thus, while children
have been drilled to answer test questions on the Deluge
and the migrations of Abraham, "the weighter matters of
law, judgment, mercy, and truth" have been lightly passed
by. There is no book so full of democratic inspiration as
the New Testament. From it Mazzini drew the fire with
which he kindled his countrymen. But, used in the schools
as a book of the churches, and not of humanity, it is too
often made to teach a poor, withered, and emasculated
Christianity. If our children heard less about miracles
and metaphysics, but more about the " many members in
one body," more about the new humanity abolishing the
* "Lessons from the English Commonwealth." Lecture V.
132
The Conflict of Oligarchy and Democracy.
.
hatreds of "Greek and Jew, Barbarian, Scythian, bond or
free," we should have less sectarianism and more suscepti-
bility to political enthusiasm. When will church bells
tune themselves to the appeal of the poet?
"Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land;
Ring in the Christ that is to be! "
At all events, while political party spirit should have no
place in religion devotion to the common good ought to
be one of its foremost lessons. And school board con-
stituencies that fail to insist on this have not realised
either their powers or their responsibilities.
This review of the standard, the sanction, and the
inspiration of right-doing surely suggests considerable
hope of democratic morals in the future. For the greatest
good of humanity is far more likely to be an object of
desire where a sense of equality prevails, than where un-
just privilege excites envy, and sets class against class.
Granting the spread of education, the order of the universe
is most likely to command the awe of men where the
apprehension of a common brotherhood and common
destinies brightens the sense of an Eternal Power reigning
yesterday, to-day, and for ever. And where is the inspira-
tion of loyalty likely to be so strong, as where the one
principle embodied in every institution of the common-
wealth is that each man lives for all and all for each ?
But we have not only abstract theory to go upon. For
history, when rightly interpreted, confirms our faith.
Only it should be remembered that democracy, in any
strict interpretation of the term, is a new thing in the
Democratic Morals.
133
world.
The Greek States that furnished us with the word
were, in reality, oligarchies of the narrowest and most
exclusive kind. For example, when Athens was at the
summit of her glory, some thirty thousand privileged
Athenian citizens ruled with absolute power over about
two million subjects, who had no voice in determining
their own destinies. Under the Roman Republic the
efforts of the plebeians to break through their political
bondage afford one of the most interesting and instructive
studies in all history. But the lust of foreign conquest
diverted the course of Roman development, and before the
republic became a true democracy it degenerated into an
empire. In fact, I know of no genuine democracy, as dis-
tinguished from an oligarchy, before the Swiss Federation.
For even the Italian republics of the middle ages were
swayed by privilege. But in Switzerland equal rights pre-
vailed; and in the character of that federation I do not
think that democracy has anything to be ashamed of. I
have spoken already of the American democracy, and have
explained in what sense I consider its example as hopeful.
But, after all, our own country is most familiar; and it is
matter of uncontrovertible history, patent on every record,
that the decrease of bribery and corruption, the growth of
political principle, and the increasing importance of
personal character in public life, have proceeded equally,
step by step, with the progress of democracy. The votes
of members of Parliament used to have their price in
money; they afterwards had their price in place and
patronage; but, thank Heaven, they are scarcely to be
bought at all now; and the change has been wrought in
almost strict proportion to the advance of popular power.
134
The Conflict of Oligarchy and Democracy.
Nor is the change confined to representatives. That man
must be unsusceptible indeed to sympathy with his times
who does not realise how much more widely spread is
political intelligence now than it was twenty-five years
ago; and not intelligence only, but high political principle
as well.
What, then, is the reason of the forebodings and fears
that trouble pious hearts at the progress of democracy?
What is the bearing of the invectives we hear against
democratic rapacity and greed? There is no conscious
injustice in these irate utterances. The speakers and
writers of them are profoundly convinced that any curtail-
ment of landlord privilege and power must needs be an act
of spoliation. But we have to bear in mind the effect of
custom and habit in obscuring considerations of equity.
Take, for instance, the sale of church livings. It is only
recently that the consciences of patrons have been troubled
about the sale of next presentations. And advowsons are
still regarded as a properly marketable commodity. Yet one
would suppose that so serious a responsibility as that of
appointing a man to lead a whole parish to heaven or hell
ought to be regarded as something altogether above the
possibility of mercenary bargain. But by thinking only of
the temporalities, owners persuade themselves that the
right of presentation to a good thing is fairly marketable.
The spiritual responsibility is ignored; and custom
obscures equity, so that the legal suppression of patronage,
without compensation to patrons, would be regarded as
robbery. Yet, surely, if an unsophisticated conscience
were confronted with such transactions for the first time,
it is the existing system that would appear immoral. Its
?
Democratic Morais.
135
suppression would be obvious justice, and any attempt to
compensate traffickers in holy offices would seem a condo-
nation of sacrilege. But it is not in the Church only that
this eclipse of equity by custom and habit occurs. In the
political and social world a hundred ancient wrongs are
claimed as rights; and then, of course, those who attack
them are condemned as robbers. Remember the case of
Ireland. Twenty-five years ago it was considered a matter
of course that the reclaimer of a bit of bog should pay rent
to the landlord for the increased value that the poor man's
labour had created. And when this iniquitous system was
partially stopped, a cry was raised that the landlord was
being plundered. But public opinion decided rightly that
precisely the reverse of this was the case. It was the
tenant who had been plundered; it was the landlord who,
all unconsciously, was the robber. And the so-called act
of spoliation was only an imperfect atonement for the
wrongs of centuries.
There are many analogous wrongs in Great Britain; and
we should not be surprised if attempts to right them are
quoted as proofs of the immoral tendencies of democ-
racy. Take the case of church property. It is surely a
flagrant injustice that the stored wealth of our ancestors,
enormously increased by the common labours of all
Englishmen in this industrial age, should be absorbed by
a sectarian community which to our pious forefathers.
would have appeared a schism and an apostacy. It is
surely a wrong, both to their memory and to their children,
that their benefactions should thus be diverted from the
general good, to which, in their blundering way, they
wished to devote them. Equity clearly suggests that, as the
136 The Conflict of Oligarchy and Democracy.
1.
religious purpose they intended has become an anachro-
nism, we should still fulfil their desire to benefit the whole
community, by diverting their bequests to secular uses.
But here again, so blinding are the blinkers of habit, that
this plain and palpable justice is denounced as an instance
of radical immorality. I shall not multiply illustrations.
The land laws, the game laws, building leases, and the in-
equalities of taxation and rating would supply illustrations
by the dozen. But they are needless. We have said
enough to explain how it is that a democratic policy some-
times gets a bad name without deserving it.
On the other hand, we should undoubtedly be on our
guard against short cuts to public good through injustice
to individuals. For, after all, the commonwealth is the
aggregate of individual rights and duties, limited and
modified by mutual relationship. To disregard the just
right of one man is therefore to disregard the rights of all,
and a wrong to the commonwealth. For if you disregard
individual right for the sake of convenience in one case, it
only requires a little more pressure and you will disregard
it in others as well. And then the security for labour and
its reward is undermined. If one man by honest industry
makes a hundred pounds, and another man by equally
honest industry makes a million, you cannot confiscate
five hundred thousand pounds from the savings of the
millionaire without shaking the security of the poorer man's
hundred. And those who talk of sequestrating all land rents
for public use too often forget that the chief securities of
poor men's benefit societies are in land. The day that saw
such a deed done would witness the bankruptcy of all the
insurance companies and chief benefit societies in the
Democratic Morals.
137
country. Graduated taxation, increasing in proportion to
the amount of each man's surplus wealth, is justifiable,
though difficult to carry out. And the succession duties
may fairly appropriate a considerably larger proportion of
great fortunes than of small ones. But even such arrange-
ments ought to be brought about gradually, so that every
one may know the conditions under which property is to
be acquired and transferred.
We may have every confidence that the democracy now
entering upon the fulness of its powers will treat such
questions with reason and fairness. For it is not a
revolutionary mob. It is not a crowd of sciolists and
sentimentalists, bitten with a philosophical frenzy. It is
not a horde of backwoodsmen laying down on virgin soil
the theoretic sketch of an ideal state. It is simply the
latest generation of Englishmen, embodying in their
traditions and associations the national life that has
endured for a thousand years, and is now more vigorous,
more expansive, and more intensely true to itself than ever
before. This democracy, so trained by experience, so
practised in policy, so inspired by religion, so exercised in
freedom, so disciplined in willing order, so fearless in enter-
prise, is a human organization such as the world has never
seen before. The Swiss Federation is narrow and poor
compared with it. The United States are in raw youth,
and dazzled with a new world. Their future, indeed, is
immeasurable. But for the present there is no democracy
that has at once the opportunities and the ripened fitness
of the British Commonwealth. I will not fear either for
its justice or its courage. It will not tolerate un-
natural and factitious inequalities. But it will never dream
138 The Conflict of Oligarchy and Democracy.
of planing all human faculties and possessions down to a
dead level. We are not speaking of any one class or
section of the community. We are speaking of the whole
people, gentle and simple, rich and poor.
And we
may be confident that, as their forefathers have adapted
themselves to the successive conditions of progress, so the
present and coming generation will live up to the demands
of a peaceful revolution. But the greatest demands will
be made on their moral energy. For the signs of the times
point toward the diminution of all extremes, whether of
poverty or wealth, and the establishment of a more evenly
tempered commonwealth, wherein all shall, as far as
possible, possess an equal interest, and each shall be more
consciously dependent on every other for opportunity,
order, and peace.
Whether the blessings of that better age shall be reaped
sooner or later depends very much on the attitude and
conduct of those whom accident or enterprise pushes to
the front amongst the multitude. If they are violent,
overbearing, unreasonable, they may interpose a brief
period of chaos between the old order and the new. If
they should temporize, and negotiate for doles instead of
justice, they may delay indefinitely the fate of ancient
forms of wrong. If they should be ambitious and self-
seeking, they may paralyse progress for awhile by discords
and divisions. But if the time should ever come when all,
or almost all, men shall realise how the supremest joy of
life is to be conscious of having done something, how-
ever little, for the good of humanity, then will have
dawned that redeemed world, that commonwealth of man,
which is the same thing as the kingdom of God.
.
NOW READY, THIRD EDITION.
Crown 8vo, cloth boards, Is. 6d.
LESSONS FROM THE RISE AND FALL
OF THE
ENGLISH COMMONWEALTH.
By J. ALLANSON PICTON, M.A., M.P.
CONTENTS:
Introductory-Treason and Loyalty-The Limits of Moral Force-The Limits
of Physical Force-The Sources of Popular Enthusiasm-Republicanism :
Form and Substance.
The Leicester Chronicle says:-"This is in all respects an admirable little
book
splendidly written, and should be placed in the hands of every
·
young man.
""
·
The Junior Liberal Review refers to its "display of a marvellous command
of language, power, and felicity of illustration, eloquent and pithy generalisa-
tion, and consummate skill in reasoning," and says, "The book will doubtless.
be a sufficient proof of the great value of Mr. Picton's addition to the House
of Commons."
The Echo says:-"There is no writer now living who knows the Common-
wealth period so well, or who is so far qualified to draw lessons from it for our
own times. His little book is full of thought and noble teaching. It may be
commended as a work of solid value and great political usefulness."
The Burnley Gazette says:-"It will repay reading, and reading again and
again. We are deeply indebted to the author for his timely, thoughtful,
instructive, and suggestive volume."
The Freeman says:-"We gratefully acknowledge the great worth of these
lectures. Their varied erudition, their glowing enthusiasm, their fearless.
integrity, their sound political wisdom, and their exquisite grace of style render
them an invaluable text-book. They ought to be circulated by thousands."
The Nonconformist and Independent says:-"Mr. Picton has done a
service by the publication of these lectures. They are à propos to present-
day controversies, and are full of wise, practical suggestions.
Abound
with pregnant practical dicta, with sagacious and far-seeing criticism, and.
happy illustration.”
LONDON:
ALEXANDER & SHEPHEARD, 21, CASTLE STREET, HOLBORN;
AND ALL BOOKSELLERS.
Crown 8vo, cloth, price 2s., post-free.
ESTABLISHED 1869.
Studies in Physical Science. The Academy:
By W. J. MILLAR, C.E.,
Secretary to the Institution of Engineers
and Shipbuilders in Scotland; Author
of "Principles of Mechanics," &c.-
"It treats. in a racy, readable, and very
instructive form of such subjects as the
Sun, the Moon, the transit of Venus,
Spectrum Analysis, Glaciers, Whirlwinds,
and the like, and we have never yet seen
these abstruse and important scientific
subjects so plainly and so readably treated
upon. This is certainly a most valuable
book, and cheap too."-Lincolnshire,
Boston, and Spalding Free Press.
ALEXANDER & SHEPHEARD,
21, Castle St., Holborn, London.
Price One Penny; postage, d. (Special
Terms for Quantities).
Lessons in Cookery.
,,
Containing an Article entitled "Cookery
Teaching under the London School
Board.' By Miss DAVENPORT-HILL.
Also a Syllabus of Lessons, including
the Recipes used by the authority of
the Board at their Cookery Centres.
HEALTH says it is "a really wonderful
pennyworth. The variety of the dishes de-
scribed, and the simplicity of the directions,
constitute two features of interest which are
sure to commend the book to all interested
in the welfare of the working classes
especially. Persons of a philanthropic turn
of mind could not do a kinder or wiser thing
than distribute this cheap and handy
pamphlet among the masses.'
ALEXANDER & SHEPHEARD,
21, Castle St., Holborn, London.
THE "LONSDALE "
A Weekly Review of Literature,
Science, and Art.
Price Threepence; free by post, Threepence-
halfpenny.
Annual Subscription, 13s.; free by post,
15s. 2d. Payable in advance.
Published every Friday in time for
that day's post.
CONTAINING EVERY WEEK-
Signed Reviews of Important New Books,
English and Foreign, in Belles-Lettres,
Travel, History, Biography, Philosophy,
Natural Science, Philology, the Fine Arts,
and Archæology. Periodical News-Letters
from Oxford, Cambridge, Paris, Rome,
Florence, Berlin, and other Centres of
Learning and Literary Activity.
Obituaries of Distinguished Men. Trans-
actions of Learned Societies. Correspond-

ence.
Notes and News, Literary, Geographical,
Scientific, and Artistic. Jottings respecting
Rare Books, Sales, and Curiosities. Publish-
ers' Announcements, &c.
PUBLISHING OFFICE:
27, CHANCERY LANE, W.C.
To be had at all Railway Stations, and of all
Newsvendors in Town and Country.
A SPECIMEN NUMBER sent to any part of
the United Kingdom on receipt of three-
pence-halfpenny in postage stamps.
GOLD PEN. Scale of Charges for Advertising in Tas
DIAMOND POINT.
WILL LAST FOR YEARS.
Price 6d. each; post-free 7d.
This Pen is perfectly Anti-Corrosive; and
has all the flexibility of the Quill, and from
the great length of time it will wear, and its
perfect adaptation to any handwriting, it
is decidedly the best and most economical
Pen yet offered to the Public.
ALEXANDER & SHEPHEARD,
27, Chancery Lane, London, W.C.
ACADEMY:-
Five Lines of Small Type
Every Additional Line
Half a Column.
A Column
THE
£ s. d.
0 26
006
1 10 0
300
A Page (equivalent to Three Columns) 8 8 0
Special Arrangements for a Series.
Advertisements should be sent to the
Publisher, H. VILLERS, at the Office, 27,
Chancery Lane, W.C., on or before the
Wednesday previous to the Saturday on
which they are intended to appear.
* THE ACADEMY is a desirable medium
for all Advertisements addressed to the
Educated Classes.
THE PEOPLE'S EDITION.
Now Ready, with PORTRAIT, price 6d. (special terms for quantities).
JOSEPH MAZZINI.


A MEMOIR BY E. A. V.
WITH TWO ESSAYS BY MAZZINI:
1. "Thoughts on Democracy." 2. "The Duties of Man."
OPINIONS OF THE PRESS.
"We doubt not that it will have an immense circulation."-Echo.
"I wish women would buy this book, and, having bought it, would take a
little pains to thoroughly master the second essay—the one on duty. If they
would make an earnest effort to master the thought, and enter into the spirit,
they would get inspiration, which would help them a good deal. If one
comes to think of it, SIXPENCE IS NOT MUCH TO PAY FOR INSPIRATION.”
PHYLLIS BROWN, in Liverpool Mercury.
"Madame Venturi's very interesting Memoir of Joseph Mazzini,' together
with essays by Mazzini himself, has been republished in a neat sixpenny
volume. In its new form it should have thousands of new readers."
Weekly Dispatch.
"The work well deserves, as it will doubtless receive, a very wide circula-
tion. IT WOULD BE CHEAP AT A GUINEA."-North British Daily Mail.
"A touching and sympathetic memoir, re-issued in a very cheap form."
Lloyd's Weekly News.
"The beautiful life he lived is fruitful of suggestion to the young men of
our time. It seems incredible that a memoir of Mazzini and two of his essays
can be had for sixpence."-Methodist.
"It appears at an opportune moment, now that a further great stride has
been taken in the direction of giving power in England to the Democracy.
The book is one to be read with profit by all."-Schoolmaster.
"Written with a good deal of vivacity, and evident knowledge of the
subject."-Scotsman.
"A reprint from an edition published shortly after the death of the great
champion of Italian liberty. The essays are well worth study, containing, as
they do, democratic principles now more generally acknowledged to be just
than when they were laid down by the author."-Literary World.
"Mazzini was one of the noblest, purest souls who ever walked the earth.
The enthusiasm of humanity inspired him from beginning to end of his life.
The brotherhood of man, that was the gospel he preached and lived, and that
is the gospel that should inspire the reformers of to-day."-Bradford Observer.
"Mazzini was one of the noblest patriots who ever wrought for the eman-
cipation of peoples, and his life and work ought to be reverently studied by
every Englishman."-Northampton Guardian.
ALEXANDER & SHEPHEARD, PUBLISHERS, 21, CASTLE STREET,
HOLBORN, LONDON.
Order through any Booksellers.
TELEPHONE No. 2,519.

LONSDALE PRINTING WORKS,
Lonsdale Buildings, 27, Chancery Lane.
ALEXANDER & SHEPHEARD,
Printers to the School Board for London, and to
very many Socięties and Institutions.
A, & S. solicit Orders for Printing
BOOKS, PAMPHLETS, MAGAZINES,
NEWSPAPERS, AND PERIODICALS;
ALSO
REPORTS OF SOCIETIES AND INSTITUTIONS, CIRCULARS,
PROGRAMMES, POSTERS AND HANDBILLS FOR LECTURES,
CONCERTS, &c., AND ALL GENERAL WORK.
ESTIMATES FURNISHED AND CONTRACTS ENTERED INTO.
LONDON:
LONSDALE BUILDINGS, 27, CHANCERY LANE,

3 9015 00697 7006
Bimed by Truenmayon
1991

X