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 OIYILIZATION AND PROGRESS: 
 
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SOCIOLOGY 
 
 APPLIED TO 
 
 PRACTICAL POLITICS. 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN BEATTIE CROZIER, 
 
 Hon. LL.D., 
 
 Ani/ior of 
 
 '■'Civilization and Progress,''' ^'■History of Intellectual Drrelopmeiit," 
 
 "The Wheel of Wealth," ^-c. 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO., 
 
 39, PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON; 
 NEW YORK. BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA. 
 
 1911. 
 

 I'RINTERS ; 
 
 ARMY ANP NAVY CO-OPKKATIVK SOCIKTY, LI>iriKD 
 
 105, VICTORIA STREET, J.ONDON, S.W. 
 
TO 
 
 :My FRIEND AND FKLLOW-COUNTRYMAN, 
 
 SIR GILBERT PARKER, 
 
 Canada's premier Novelist, and one of the 
 
 most i)rominent exponents of her interests 
 
 in the Imperial Parliament, 
 
 i dedicate 
 
 This Volume. 
 
 223145 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 T N my first volume, Civilization and Progreifx^ I endeavoured 
 to lay down the First Principles of Sociology with their 
 laws and dependencies, in so far, that is to say, as these could 
 be extracted from a general survey of the evolution of Societies 
 and Nations as a whole. In the third volume of my Jiistory of 
 Intellectual Development 1 went a step farther, and endeavoured 
 to exhibit the practical use to which such First Principles 
 might be 2>ut, if tiiey were applied to the Politics of different 
 nations, over periods of time sufficiently long to allow tempor- 
 ary disturbances calculated to deflect them from their normal 
 course of evolution to work themselves out. For this purpose, 
 I selected as object-lessons for my forecast the Political and 
 Social Evolution of England, France, and America, respec- 
 tively, for the Twentieth Century, as foreshadowed from their 
 evolution in the Past ; my idea being to sec to what extent 
 Sociology could supply Politics with an instrument, or set of 
 principles, which, like a ship's compass and chart, would enable 
 practical Statesmen to embark with more confidence and on 
 longer voyages over the open political sea of the Future, than 
 would be possible at present, where from the absence of such 
 compass and chart they are obliged, like ancient mariners, to 
 hug the shore, and living from hand to mouth, to wait patiently on 
 Providence for wind and tide. Now. should Sociology be able 
 to furnish us with such general guidance, it would at least help 
 to keep the evolution of nations up to the highest possibilities 
 marked out for them by their special natural powers and advan- 
 tages ; as well as keej) that evolution in as straight a path as 
 possible, and so avoid those to-and-fro tackings and zig-zags of 
 political reaction, which obscure a nation's political bearings, 
 confuse its judgments, and waste its force. 
 
 But in the present volume I am prepared to go still farther, 
 and have endeavoured to show that if Sociology is to fully 
 justify itself as a science whose principles cannot be neglected 
 with impunity by practical Statesmen, it ought to be able 
 to render some assistance in the solution of the political, social. 
 
vni. PREFACE. 
 
 and economic problems of the passing day as well ; and it is to 
 just these problems that I propose to apply, in the present 
 volume, such of the First Principles of Sociology as seem to 
 me to be at once relevant and indispensable. 
 
 And accordingly, when questions like those of Socialism, 
 Tariff Reform, Imperial Preference, the Mixing of Races, Race 
 Degeneration, etc., chanced to come to the front. I seized the 
 opportunity to get a hearing, in one or other of our Reviews, 
 for the treatment of them from the side of Sociology ; and it is 
 of these articles that the present volume forms a collection. 
 
 Each section of the book has, I may mention, a unity of its 
 own running through its chapters ; so much so, indeed, that 
 they may be said to form rather a number of small books, than 
 a bundle of heterogeneous magazine articles merely. In most 
 of these divisions, small as they are, I have practically said, 
 without padding, all that 1 had to say on the subjects discussed. 
 
 As rewards my method of treatment of these various subjects, 
 it has in all cases been the same ; and consists simply in 
 driving back the logical arguments of my opponents to their 
 First Principles, that is to say, to those presuppositions of a 
 sociological nature (often held by them quite unconsciously) of 
 which I propose to exhibit the fallacy, — presuppositions on 
 which their whole logical train of argumentation proceeds. 1 
 then try to plant my own flag of First Principles or Pre- 
 suppositions in their place on the mast-head ; deducing all such 
 sequences and connexions as occur to me from my own special 
 principles, and— after comparing them with those of my oppo- 
 nents — leaving the issue to the reader. 
 
 The articles on Mr. Kidd and Mr. Wells, and the note on 
 Herr Houston Chamberlain, have been embodied in this volume, 
 with the object of showing what kind of Sociology it is from 
 whose First Principles no help need be looked for by Practical 
 Politicians ; and what kind, on the other hand, is likely to be 
 useful; as well as of exhibiting by these means the diagnostic 
 symptoms which will enable the reader to judge in each case 
 
PREFACE. IX. 
 
 for himself. In the chapter on Taxation Schemes, I have made 
 special reference to the schemes of Mr. IJernard Shaw and 
 Mr. Sidney Webb, inasmuch as in these schemes, the way by 
 which they came to their Socialism, and especially to their 
 Fabian variety of it, as well as the carefully hidden devices 
 by which they covered up their tracks, is clearly seen. 
 
 A word or two, perhaps, may here be said in reference to the 
 articles on Free Trade and Protection. As the title of the first 
 of them indicates — A Plea for Reconsideration, — they were 
 the first attempt made in England to re-open, from the 
 speculatit)e side, the then long-closed Tariff Controversy, by 
 the presentation of a fresh set of arguments in favour of 
 Protection. Like all the younger men of a generation ago, I 
 had been brought up in the simple unquestioning belief in Free 
 Trade ; and it was not until I began to concentrate my 
 attention on the materials which I had for years been collect- 
 ing for my volume on Political Economy, The Wheel of 
 Wealth, that I became aware, to my surprise, that the entire 
 drift and trend of my deductions from these materials ran 
 steadily and uniformly in the direction of Protection — and not 
 of Free Trade. As these fresh considerations emersfed one 
 after another in my mind, they became the occasion for a 
 series of articles in the Fortnightly Review. With the 
 exception of one or two sentences here and there added or 
 subtracted, I have left them as they appeared, with the many 
 personal and political associations and allusions of the time still 
 clinging to them ; in the hope that this local colouring may in 
 the future prove a useful historical document bearing on the 
 attitude of the public and the Press to Protection in the year 
 or two immediately preceding the taking up of the question 
 by Mr. Chamberlain. But the main reason for my publishing 
 the articles as they were written is, that they represent 
 successively higher stages of the argument in favour of Pro- 
 tection ; beginning with the most general considerations, and 
 ascending to more and more definite positions ; until in the 
 
X. PREFACE. 
 
 article on Professor Marshall's Memorandum, more recently 
 written, the argument reached not only the highest point of 
 condensation of which I was capable, but put into a single 
 proposition the essence and upshot of all the preceding- 
 argumentation; so much so, indeed, that were it alone fairly 
 and squarely refuted, I personally should be prepared frankly 
 to throw Protection overboard altogether. I trust, therefore, 
 that I have made the argument in that particular section so 
 clear and free from ambiguity, that my opponents may join 
 issue with me on its few main points alone, if on no others. 
 
 I regret that when the articles are read consecutively, the 
 repetition of certain doctrines may be felt by some readers to 
 have been carried to excess. My apology must be, firstly, that 
 they are the few central doctrines for the sake of which all the 
 rest of the book has been written ; secondly, that all along the 
 years during which the articles were appearing, these doctrines 
 were not recognised by any of the political parties in the 
 State; thirdly, that fresh situations and complications were 
 constantly arising to enforce anew the necessity of their 
 reiteration and application ; and lastly, that even to-day they 
 have scarcely yet got beyond the threshold of our political 
 consciousness, let alone come into their full heritage. 
 Especially is this the case with three of the more important of 
 these political principles drawn from Sociology ; first, the atrocity 
 of mixing antagonistic races, colours, and creeds on the same 
 areas of political soil ; second, the fallacy of applying the purely 
 abstract ideal oi Justice to any political situation whatever — 
 instead of that relatively concrete justice (made up of many 
 co-operating elements) which orderly evolution demands; 
 thirdly, the thick and thin devotion to that mischievous 
 doctrine of Laissez-faire (now at last in its dotage, thank 
 Heaven ! ) which has allowed the concentrated dust heaps and 
 slumdom of degenerate humanity to accunudate unchecked, 
 until they have reached that point of despair which we see to- 
 day ; and fourthly, that it is impossible, except by constant 
 
PREFACE. XI. 
 
 repetition, for any mere writer to get a serious hearincr for 
 any political doctrine whatever, until or unless he can manage 
 to get it proclaimed by responsible Statesmen from within the 
 four walls of Parliament. 
 
 As for the Young Turks and their Constitution, I am afraid 
 that my over-confident and perhaps gratuitous prophecy cannot 
 be said to have as yet been justified by the event ; still, I think 
 it right to let it remain as written, on the ground that ofttimes 
 in a reasoned and connected argument, as much of value comes 
 out of an author's misses and mistakes as out of his more 
 palpable or fortunate hits. 
 
 The articles on Banking are illustrations i-ather of the appli- 
 cation of Political Economy to the subject, than of Sociology ; 
 but I have introduced them here, not only with the view of 
 giving the unfamiliar reader, through the medium of a pictorial 
 presentation, some idea of the mechanism of a great Banking 
 System in operation, but of making him realize how all-import- 
 ant is the question of Credit for a nation, as for an individual. 
 The contrast between English and American Banking was 
 introduced to bring out the profound effect which the stage of 
 Industry reached in a country may have on the stability of its 
 Credit System. As regards the forecast itself, which I have 
 ventured to make, of the future of Banking in England and 
 America respectively, it makes no pretension to any authori- 
 tative or dogmatic value — that is a question for the experts to 
 decide — but it may serve as a kind of hypothetical object-lesson 
 for the purpose of exhibiting how great a part is played both 
 by the Sociological and Political conditions of the environment, 
 even on so apparently self-enclosed and independent a depart- 
 ment of business as that of Banking. 
 
 I have to thank the Editors of the Fortnightly Review and of 
 the Daily Mail for their kind permission to re-publish the 
 articles which originally appeared in their respective columns. 
 
 J.B. C. 
 
 Athen^um Club, 
 
 Pall Mall, S.W. 
 
 July, 1911. 
 
BOOK 1 
 
 A CHALLENGE TO SOCIALISM. 
 
 Chap. 1. — The Street-Corner Men . . . 3-20 
 
 „ II. — On Social Justice .... 21-39 
 
 „ III. — The Fabians and Parliamentarians . 40-57 
 
 „ IV. — A Dialogue with Marx . . . 58-76 
 
 BOOK II. 
 
 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICS. 
 
 Chap. I. — Mr. Kidd's " Principles of Western 
 
 Civilisation" 79-97 
 
 „ II. — Mr. Wells as a Sociologist. . . 98-112 
 
 „ III. — A Sociological Symposium . . .113-119 
 
 „ IV. — Race, Colour, and Creed . . . 120-131 
 
 V. — A Note on Race Degeneration . . 132-13G 
 
 BOOK III 
 
 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 Chap. I. — Free Trade or Protection for England 139-148 
 
 „ II. — IIow to Ruin a Free Trade Nation . 149-174 
 
 „ III. — The Condition of England Question . 175-199 
 
 „ IV. — Free Trade, Protection, and Prefer- 
 ence 200-221 
 
 „ V. — Suggestions for a New Political Party 222-244 
 
 „ VI. — Taxation Schemes and their Values . 245-265 
 
 „ VII. — Professor Marshall's " Memorandum 
 
 ON Fiscal Policy " . . . . 266-286 
 
 „ VIII. — The Exi^LisH Banking System in 
 
 Oi'eration 287-306 
 
 „ IX. — English and American Banking 
 
 Contrasted 307-316 
 
BOOK I. 
 
 A CHALLENGE TO SOCIALISM. 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE STREET-CORNER MEN.* 
 
 X PROPOSE in this article to touch only on those under- 
 lying doctrines of Socialism on which all the " street- 
 corner " orators of the party are practically agreed, as it is on 
 the opinions of these men, owing to the mass of votes they 
 control, that Socialism as a working scheme for the organic 
 reconstruction of society, if it ever come at all, wiD have to be 
 built. As for the " intellectuals " of the party in Parliament 
 and in the Fabian Society, on the other hand — men like Mr. 
 Ramsay McDonald, Mr. Snowden, Mr. AVells, and Mr. Bernard 
 Shaw — I have myself so much in common with them, that my 
 criticism of them will be confined to a much narrower belt of 
 doctrine, though one even more important, namely, their 
 scheme of Social Reorg-anisation itself. 
 
 In Mr. Robert Blatchford, however, who, as the leader of 
 the street-corner men, has been hailed by one writer as the 
 " Rousseau of Socialism," and by another as " the most 
 influential force in socialistic literature," I am glad to recognise 
 an opponent of the highest honour and sincerity, and one, too, 
 whose views and expositions have commended themselves to 
 the great masses of the party, more, perhaps, than those of any 
 other single writer. If, then, in this friendly passage of arms 1 
 am obliged, in order to bring out my points more clearly, to 
 
 • Fortnightly lleciew, January, 1908 
 
4 ■ A CtfA'LLEkGE TO SOCIALISM. 
 
 represent my opponent's positions as moves in a somewhat 
 slippery game, it is on the distinct understanding that no 
 unworthy moral implication is anywhere involved, — any more, 
 indeed, than in all sincere party controversy, where the rival 
 leaders, if they have managed to deceive their followers, have 
 only done so after first having deceived themselves. 
 
 Without further preliminary, then, I shall plunge at once 
 into the heart of my subject, and let my story tell itself as it 
 goes along ; the upshot of my demonstration being to prove 
 that, until the intellectual world has entirely lost its centre of 
 gravity, Socialism, except by a physical-force revolution, 
 cannot, and will not, come. 
 
 Now, the proposals of the Socialists are so well known that 
 they need only detain us for a moment. They may be formu- 
 lated as follows : — Firstly, the taking over by the State of the 
 whole of the instruments of Production, of Distribution, and 
 of Exchange, to be worked in the interests of the great mass 
 of the people ; secondly, the contention that in the normal 
 course of Social Evolution the time is now ripe for this to be 
 inaugurated, and for the process of social reconstruction 
 founded on it to begin ; and, lastly, that this reorganisation is 
 not only to be sanctioned, but to be initiated, directed, and 
 controlled, by the Working Classes or by those of their leaders 
 in whom they may choose to repose confidence. 
 
 On these positions there is a practical unanimity of opinion 
 among all classes of Socialists ; but as to the amount of 
 compensation to be paid to the owners for their expropriation 
 by the State, this will differ according to the wing of the 
 Socialist camp to which they happen to belong. The street- 
 corner men, with their vast army of followers, would give the 
 owners but a short shrift, with scant compensation or none ; 
 the Parliantcntary cohort would be somewhat more liberal, 
 perhaps even indulgent ; while the Intellectuals of the Fabian 
 right wing would make tlieir terms with the dispossessed 
 landlords and capitalists so easy, and tlieir absorption by the 
 
THE STREET-CORNER MEN. 5 
 
 State so gmdual, that in a cause at once so noble, patriotic, 
 and honourable, noblesse oblige itself would almost suffice to 
 secure their acquiescence, and make them doff their liats to it 
 all, in token of their courtesy and goodwill ! But however 
 much the different wings of the party may differ on this 
 matter of compensation, whether on the ground of principle, of 
 expediency, or of common social decency, all are agreed in the 
 three points 1 have mentioned above. But these are so 
 complete a turning upside down of all the recognised processes 
 of human evolution up to the present hour (except as episodes 
 in times of revolution), are so clearly a case of the tail wagging 
 the doff instead of the docj its tail, that what I have to do here 
 is to show where these curious conceptions came from, what 
 the intellectual illusions are which have given colour to them, 
 and made them seem plausible, and what the reasons are which 
 have made it appear that the time is ripe for their inauguration 
 and advent. 
 
 For all practical purposes, then, we may say that these 
 fundamental conceptions of Socialism arose and gained currency 
 through the peculiar Political Economy of Karl Marx. He 
 had observed that Modern Machine Production, unlike the 
 hand production of the preceding centuries, yielded a large 
 surplus over and above what was necessary for a decent sub- 
 sistence ; and that this surplus, ever mounting up higher and 
 higher, was being drained off and diverted into the pockets of 
 a small body of men — the Capitalists — who had had the good 
 fortune, while playing the game of wealth according to the 
 constitution and laws of the country, to get hold of these 
 machines. And as the question with Marx was one, not so 
 much of ordinary legal justice as of strict economic justice in 
 the division of the surplus — whereby each man should get the 
 fruits of his labour, neither more nor less — it became necessary 
 as a preliminary for him to enquire as to precisely what men 
 or body of men it was to whom this surplus was due, and 
 without whose special exertions it could not have come into 
 
6 A CHALLENGE TO SOCIALISM. 
 
 being at all. Now, Marx himself quite recognised that the 
 Working Men without machines or rude implements of some 
 kind, must, metaphorically speaking, " eat their heads oflf " 
 from day to day, with as little hope or chance of accumulating 
 any surplus for themselves as the swarming millions of Hindoo 
 peasants. He saw, in fact, that it was to the machines, and to 
 them alone, that the surplus was due; or, in other words, to 
 those Powers of Nature which were embodied in the machines, 
 and which, when yoked to human labour, added, after all 
 deductions for their upkeep, a hundredfold power at every 
 moment of time to that labour. And he saw further that 
 these machines, without which the powers of Nature could not 
 be enchained, were the result of the toils of a small class of 
 men whose united brains had produced them — namely, the 
 Scientists of various orders engaged in discovering the laws of 
 Nature which regulated the operations of the steam power, the 
 electricity, the chemical or other processes involved in the 
 machines ; the Inventors, who devised the mechanical con- 
 structions necessary to bring them into concerted action and 
 use ; the men of organising capacity who brought the machines 
 together into factories and workshops, in combinations involving 
 the greatest output with a minimum of waste ; and the men 
 of financial or business ability whose schemes brought the 
 product to market in the cheapest and most effective way. If, 
 therefore, his cue was to insist on strict ideal economic justice, 
 instead of the ordinary maimed and imperfect justice of the 
 existing laws of the State, it was to these men that the surplus 
 really belonged, as being directly the result of their labour, and 
 not to the ordinary working men at all. As for the division 
 of this surplus, again, among the various orders of this small 
 body of men of brains, we have it on the published authority 
 of Mr. Carnegie that in his judgment (and it was right honest 
 of him to admit as much) the lion's share ought to go, on lines 
 of strict economic justice, to the Scientists, Inventors, and 
 Discoverers of the first rank engaged ; and only a much lesser 
 
THE STREET-CORNER MEN. 7 
 
 amount to the great Organisers and Capitaliste like himself, or 
 to the great Financiers ; inasmucli as without the Scientist, 
 the Inventor, and the Discoverer of new processes, the labours 
 of the Organisers, Capitalists, and Financiers, would be as 
 barren of surplus as those of the whole united body of ordinary 
 Working Men. But Marx saw as well that by the existing 
 laws of the State, on which the game of wealth was being 
 played, the money capitalists (Mr. Carnegie's lower grade men) 
 who had managed to get hold of the machines, held the whip- 
 hand not only over the Working Men, but over the Scientists, 
 Inventors, and the non-capitalist section of the Organisers as 
 well, and that, from their coign of vantage, they could, under 
 the aegis of certain injustices in the existing laws, squeeze, and 
 in the end (as we see in America on the large scale) skin them 
 all alike ; even Edison admitting that had he not started 
 capitalist on his own account, his inventions would have left 
 him as poor as before. Now, it was this yawning gap between 
 the ordinary code of social justice as embodied in the existing 
 laws, and the strict ideal economic code which Marx professed 
 — whereby each man was to be fully compensated for his 
 labour, neither more nor less — that gave this astute Economist 
 his opening ; and, like a skilled attorney, he seized on it at 
 once as just what he wanted in order to play his cards in the 
 interests of his clients, the great body of Working Men. And 
 the series of intellectual manoeuvres and illusions by which he 
 sought to accomplish his end were, it must be confessed, as 
 bold and ingenious as they were successful. Observing, on 
 the one hand, that by the existing laws of property the small 
 company of really great men who in their various ways were 
 the originators, and, in the true sense, masters of the surplus, 
 had been despoiled of their birthright ; and, on the other, that 
 this fraud and injustice, having come down to them from long 
 past ages, had become so consecrated by tradition and custom 
 as a thing of course, that it was scarcely even felt by its 
 victims to be an injustice at all ; and further, being alert 
 
O A CHALLENGE TO SOCIALISM. 
 
 enough to see that it was neither to the interest of the Capitalist 
 masters, nor of the miscellaneous millions of their workers, to 
 raise the point, but rather to keep it dark ; finding, I say, that 
 this conspiracy of silence, like a guilty secret, was covered by 
 a seal which neither the Capitalists nor the Workmen dare 
 break, on pain of cutting off their own claim to the inheritance ; 
 and knowing, besides, that he could prove that the surplus, to 
 whomsoever it was due, was not due to the mere Capitalists, 
 as such, who had managed to get hold of it as their private 
 property : — seeing all this, Marx boldly stepped forward and 
 with every appearance of sincerity announced that it was to 
 the Workers alone that the whole of this surplus was due ! 
 The ivhole of the surplus — and to the ivorkers alone ! Well, 
 here was indeed curious doctrine for the world to hear for the 
 first time ; but nothing daunted, he proceeded to make it good, 
 by playing ofl on his followers a series of intellectual illusions, 
 all of which he advanced with an ingenuity and dexterity 
 which proved that if he was not a really great thinker, he was 
 at least an exceedingly wide-awake and shifty one. 
 
 The first of these illusions Marx took from the existing 
 Political Economy of his time — that old Economy of Adam 
 Smith, Ricardo, and Mill, which was then accepted by all as 
 the tnie gospel, but which we have now the high authority of 
 Professor Ashley (in his inaugural addi'ess as President of the 
 Economic Section of the British Association) for saying is 
 regarded by all competent specialists of the science as at last 
 quite " dead." In this old Economy, it was written down 
 by Adam Smith that Labour was the source of all value, 
 and of all surplus. This dictum Marx snatched at, and 
 urged it on his followers as authority for his contention 
 that to them, in strict economic justice, the whole surplus 
 belonged — and to them alone. Ricardo, again, had shown that, 
 owing to the pressure of population on the means of subsistence, 
 the wages of the workmen could, by what he called an " iron 
 law," never rise above the level of a bare subsistence. Putting 
 
THE STREET-CORNER MEN. d 
 
 these two doctrines of what is now an old and dead system of 
 Political Economy together — ridiculous fallacies both, as the 
 logic of events has since demonstrated — Marx had no difficulty 
 in persuading his followers that, although they were the real 
 authors of all the wealth of the world, they were condemned 
 by an " iron law," from which there was no escape, to for ever 
 exist on the hungry mai'gin of a bare subsistence ; while their 
 masters, the Capitalists, who reaped where they had not sown, 
 appropriated the surplus, and on it lived their lives of luxury 
 and self-indulgence. He carefully abstained from telling them 
 that it was the surplus product of the machines which the 
 Capitalists had expropriated — which would have been true — 
 but told them instead that the surplus was their product, which 
 was false. But lest there should remain any lingering doubts 
 in their minds that they, the Working Men (incredible as it 
 might appear) were really the authors of all the wealth of the 
 world, and that they therefore should possess it all, Marx 
 undertook to demonstrate it to them independently on his own 
 account, in his celebrated work on " Capital." He proposed, 
 in a word, to show them in this book the trick by which those 
 who had " made " all the wealth of the world, the Working 
 Men, had been and were being kept out of it by the Capitalists; 
 and, further, to prove that this could only be done by certain 
 deep economic laws of Political Economy, of which he alone 
 held the key. Now, I wish to protest here that there is no 
 economic law involved in the matter at all. It is purely a 
 question of the possession of economic poioevy and the playing 
 of it, like a hand of cards, according to the rules of the game 
 of wealth, as embodied in the ordinary laws of the State. 
 There is no mystery in it ; no obscure and recondite economic 
 laws known only to the initiates and experts ; it is the merest 
 platitude and truism ; so much so, indeed, that I will venture 
 to say that if the Trades Unionists could only gather in all 
 the workmen within a single fold to-morrow, and get them to 
 hold solidly together, they could, in their turn, unless the rules 
 
10 A CHALLENGE TO SOCIALISM. 
 
 of the game were altered, squeeze the Capitalists until they 
 were bled white, so far as any economic law, other than that of 
 simple legal power, was concerned. The Capitalists own the 
 machines — which, as we have seen, really do the work and are 
 the causes of the surplus — precisely as the landowners o^vn the 
 land, whose natural fertility again is the cause of the surplus 
 from which they derive their rents. They have either pur- 
 chased these machines or invented them themselves, just as the 
 landlords have either purchased their lands or inherited them 
 from those who won them by conquest. The landlords, as is 
 still common in many parts of Europe, clear the land, drain it, 
 and build the necessary barns and outhouses ; precisely as the 
 Capitalists pay for the making of the machines, the keeping of 
 them in repair, and the building of the necessary workshops. 
 If the peasants work all day long, and the land is so fertile that 
 by delving and weeding it for, say, six hours, the peasant 
 produces his own subsistence, the landlord can make his rent 
 out of the other six, and so goes on with cultivation ; if it is so 
 poor that by working all day long the peasants can only earn 
 the barest living for themselves, with nothing over for the 
 landlord's rent, he abandons it, or keeps it on, out of motives 
 of philanthropy, for their sake. So, too, if the Capitalist has 
 got hold of machines so efficient that he can see his way at 
 existing market prices to put their product on the market with 
 a profit (owing to the fact that in the twelve hours' attendance 
 on the machines, for which he pays wages, the product of six 
 hours, say, covers all expenses, and the surplus he gets for 
 himself), he goes on with the business ; but if the whole twelve 
 hours' attendance will only pay his expenses and leave nothing 
 for himself, he closes his works — that is all. There is, I repeat, 
 no mystery in it ; for where did Marx really imagine the 
 Capitalist could get his profits fron), if not out of the men '? 
 The machines do the work, it is true, but they are not made of 
 gold, bits of which he can scrape off for his living, as men in 
 the old days did by " sweating '' sovereigns. They must be set 
 
THE STREET-CORNER MEN. 11 
 
 going and otherwise attended to, and their products taken from 
 them as they emerge ; but as men only can do this, and not 
 horses, or dogs, or apes, how, I ask, can the Capitalist make his 
 living, if he is to continue in business, unless he gets it out of 
 the men '? And that means, not that the men do the work, while 
 the Capitalists dock them of part of their pay, but that the 
 machines do the work, and that both Capitalists and men are 
 partners who must settle between them their respective divisions 
 of the spoil. If they quarrel over the division — having as a 
 preliminary paid the inventor first for that amount of the 
 produce which they have made out of his machine over and 
 above what they could together have produced without it — 
 they can settle the question of which of them exploits the 
 other, by considering how they would respectively fare if 
 obliged to work without the help of the machines. The 
 inventor, unless, like Edison, he does the work himself, requires 
 the aid of the organiser, who in consequence can, by reason of 
 his brains, command, like a barrister or physician, his own 
 terms ; but where would the poor artisans be in their millions 
 if, deprived of the invention, they had to do their work on 
 their old hand-looms, or with their old gin-horses or windmills ? 
 Whj , instead of arguing with their employers on the hardships 
 of their lot in having to work a few hours extra in order that 
 he too should, like themselves, make his living, half of the 
 present existing population would have to work the whole 
 twenty-four hours round for the privilege of existing at all ; 
 and the rest would die of starvation. That, to put it bluntly, 
 is what the whole thing would amount to, if you will insist, as 
 Marx does, on a strict economic justice. It is a simple state- 
 ment of fact. The whole matter is one of brute econom.ic power 
 of one man over others or another, such as is seen every day 
 and in every walk of life ; and there is no economic laic, properly 
 so-called, in it at all. But Marx does not put it so ; and what 
 I charge him with is that he misrepresented the plain facts 
 (sincerely, no doubt), as I have given them, in the interests of 
 
12 A CHALLENGE TO SOCIALISM. 
 
 hie clients. What he did in his work on Capital was this, and 
 it may be put in a nutshell; indeed, the reader wiU already 
 have anticipated it for himself without any prompting. He 
 cunningly substituted everywhere the work of the artisans and 
 labourers attending on the machwes for the work of the machines 
 themselves, as if the two were identical ; on the ground, I 
 presume, that as the machines are but dead wood and iron, 
 and cannot themselves be paid in any way for what they do, 
 and the inventor is not found standing beside them all day 
 long, drafting off his share into his own private warehouse, the 
 workmen who attend them can step into his place and claim 
 the united product as their own — as if, like Coriolanus, they 
 "alone did it." And to cover up this subtle perversion, and 
 divert the eyes of his followers from it, he everywhere through- 
 out the book speaks of the mere building of the machines by 
 the artisan as if it were the same thing as the inventing of the 
 machine itself by the inventor ; and so leads them to believe 
 that the mechanical product of the artisan, namely, the machine, 
 was the same thing as the product of the machine itself ! It 
 was as absurd as if the peasants should argue that the cause of 
 the crop lay in the mere mechanical work of ditching and 
 delving, rather than in the fertility of the soil ; or as if the 
 materialists should insist that the actual food which had kept 
 Shakespeare alive, was the cause of the plays ; or the printer 
 who set them up, of their value. And with this hocus-pocus 
 by which he had deceived himself, played off on his followers 
 all through the book — which he everywhere lays out in chapters 
 having every appearance of logical continuity and scientific 
 form, and expressed, too, in the most solemn economic 
 phraseology — it is no wonder, I say, that he deceived his 
 millions of economists from the workshop and the mine in 
 Germany, England, and France who still wear the old cast-off 
 clothes of Adam Smith, Mill, and Kicardo (which even an 
 academic like Professor Ashley aduiitu must now be thrown 
 into the dustbin), into sincerely believing that they, the Workers, 
 
THE STREET-CORNER MEN. 13 
 
 are the real makers and authors both of the machines them- 
 selves, and of their surplus products of which the Capitalists 
 have robbed them. But it is strange that this pure perversion 
 of the actual facts, based simply on the existing distribution 
 of industrial power and not on economic laio at all, should have 
 gone so far as to throw one of the leaders of the Socialist 
 movement in England into such a state of ecstasy and 
 admiration, as to make him exultingly declare in the columns of 
 his paper, that Marx was the " A.ristotle of Political Economy." 
 Now, all this was from the purely economic side ; but I have 
 a more serious indictment to make against Marx from the 
 mm'al side, in that, by the intellectual sleight-of-hand which I 
 have endeavoured to expose, he has perverted the highly moral, 
 and indeed ideal, economic code which he and his followers 
 profess, and substituted for it one of the worst injustices of 
 the moral code of his opponents. This was done by the trick 
 of what I shall call for the nonce " the dead invention," — and 
 a single illustration will be ample to make clear ray meaning. 
 A scientific man, or inventor, alone or in co-operation, has 
 produced, let us say, a successful invention or new process, like 
 the steam engine, the power loom, or a chemical dye, and after 
 enjoying a royalty on it for some fourteen years or so, it 
 reverts by decree of existing law to the public, and he, the 
 inventor or discoverer, becomes thereafter economically dead ; 
 so much so indeed, that any machinist or workman who 
 can pay for the materials of which the engine or loom is 
 composed, may make one and set it up in his back garden or 
 shed, and as he contemplates with pride the excess of its 
 products in a week over what he himself could ever have 
 produced without it in a lifetime, can complacently look the 
 world in the face and say : " See what I by my own industry 
 and unaided exertions have done " ; and really imagines, poor 
 soul, that because he has no longer to pay the inventor a royalty 
 for its use, he is in strict justice as much entitled to the lohole 
 produce of his machine or process as if he had invented or 
 
14 A CHALLENGE TO SOCIALISM. 
 
 discovered it himself ! And yet had this apostle of pure 
 economic justice, Marx, who was going to have no economic 
 injustice in his Commonwealth, paused for a moment before he 
 attempted to pass this spurious coin off on his followers as 
 genuine, and told them that as the question was one of strict 
 economic justice (and not of the ordinary so-called justice of 
 the existing laws, which according to him were a rank injustice), 
 the Scientist, Inventor, and Discoverer had as much right to 
 the surplus of product which came from their brains, and for 
 as long a time, i.e., in perpetuity, as the landlords had to their 
 lands, or the workmen to their tools, — had he told them this, 
 and then turned round on the engine or loom maker, and asked 
 him what part of that produce (over and above what he could 
 have himself made without it) he should now expect to get 
 from it, he would have opened the eyes of his deluded followers 
 to the fact that but for the absence of the royalty which had 
 been stolen in its perpetuity from the inventor by the power, 
 rather than by the economic justice, of the State, he (the work- 
 man) who had just been boasting of the wealth which he had 
 made, would find himself in his old kennel again, " eating his 
 head off," and feasting, not on the sirloin, but on the scrag-end 
 of the bone, as before ! It was a rare piece of hocus-pocus, 
 this of Marx, and has completely " taken in " his followers — 
 the orators of the street-corner — who, themselves deceived by 
 it, score most of their debating points over the audiences 
 whom they address, by confounding together and playing off 
 against each other, as suits their argument or purpose, these 
 two kinds of justice on whose distinction and difference they 
 themselves lay so much stress — namely, the ordinary justice as 
 embodied in the accepted rules of the industrial game and the 
 existing laws of the State (which are founded on Political 
 I*ower, and against which they protest), and the strict laws of 
 ideal economic justice on which, should the heavens fall, they 
 profess that Socialism must and shall be made to stand. 
 
 The Socialists have, therefore, if they would release them- 
 
THE STREET-CORNER MEN. 15 
 
 selvea from this disingenuous position, to choose on which of 
 these horns they prefer to be impaled. If they choose the 
 former, namely, the ordinary justice of the constitution and 
 laws of the State, they will, of course, do as all other political 
 parties when they had the power have done before them : they 
 will use the political power which their numbers and their 
 votes have given them, to turn upside down the existing 
 Constitution, and install in its place, for the first time in 
 history, a Government not only fi*amed in the interests, but 
 "run" and administered by the great masses of working men; 
 their banners inscribed with the war-cry of the orators of the 
 street-corner : " We, the working men, who do all the work, 
 and alone produce the surplus of wealth of which our Capitalist 
 masters and employers have robbed us, having now come into 
 our own, hereby declare," &c. Now, were I a party politician, 
 I confess I should not blame them, for this is precisely the 
 type of Social Justice — the Justice of Power, we may call it — 
 with which their existing political masters have always indoc- 
 trinated them. When the landowners were in power, they so 
 arranged it that they should skim off the cream of surplus, and 
 give their herd of retainers, petty tradesmen, and artisans, the 
 leavings ; when the turn of the manufacturers came, they did 
 the same with their workers ; and when the age of machine 
 industry at last set in with the great inventions, these same 
 manufacturers, now grown to mighty capitalists, wuth the aid 
 of their collaterals — the financial potentates on the one hand, 
 and the Tory, Whig, Liberal, and even Radical politicians 
 (with their doctrine of laissez-faire) on the other — were enabled 
 to squeeze the poor Working Man more than ever; and not 
 the Working Man only, but the Scientists, Inventors, and 
 Discoverers, w^ho, as we have seen, were the real authors of 
 the accumulating surplus wealth of the world as well. But 
 with this difference : that while the old political parties — Tory, 
 Whig, Liberal, &c. — would, and indeed did, grant those who 
 figure in the industrial annals of a country as its " great men " 
 
16 A CHALLENGE TO SOCIALISM. 
 
 some small honorarium for their services, either in the form of 
 a few years' royalty, or a belated knighthood, or perhaps a 
 book or newspaper eulogium after their death, the Socialists 
 would skin them all alike, and give them, on their basis of 
 "average labour time," only the wages of the navvies, the 
 coalheavers, the wool-pickers, the railway porters, or the 
 miners. Indeed, on this basis, there is no reason why they 
 should not at a pinch vote them even less than their horses, 
 who do so much more work — and especially those of them who, 
 like Mr. Blatchford, are Darwinians — now that the old wall 
 has been broken down which was formerly believed to separate 
 man from the brutes ! 
 
 Now, to this complexion must the Socialists logically come, 
 if, when caught shuffling the moral bases of their doctrine, 
 they elect to follow the one given them by the existing political 
 parties, and stand by the ordinary enonomic justice of the laws, 
 based on Class Power, and worked in its interests. If, on the 
 other hand, the Socialists elect to stake their cause on the pure 
 ideal economic justice which they profess, and are prepared to 
 stand or fall by it — whereby each man gets economically 
 precisely that share of the surplus of wealth which he has 
 produced, neither more nor less — then they will have to follow 
 Mr. Carnegie in the apportioning of what this ideal justice 
 demands ; and the division will have to go in a descending 
 ratio : — the lion's share falling to the Scientists and Inventors, 
 who have discovered the laws of Nature and devised the 
 machines ; a less amount to the Organising Capitalists : still 
 less to the collaterals, the organising Financiers ; and so on 
 with the rest, in descending degree. But where, then, would 
 their clients be — the great masses of the Working Population ? 
 With a little more comfort, perhaps, but, on the whole, much 
 where they are to-day ! Now, in putting the matter thus 
 brutally, it is to be, of course, understood that I am doing so 
 to clear the minds of the Socialists of cant, and to let them see 
 what their theory and plan of campaign will come to, if they 
 
THE STREET-CORNER MEN. 17 
 
 take the purely economic view of justice as the basis of Social 
 Evolution. Personally, I take ray stand on quite another kind 
 of justice — Evolutionary Justice, if I may call it so — which 
 differs toto caelo from this pure Economic Justice, as we shall 
 see in the next chapter. But if the Socialists will insist on 
 their Economic Justice as the be-all and end-all, I shall 
 continue to hold a brief for the really "great men^' of the 
 Economic world — the Scientists, Discoverers, and Inventors — 
 as being the real dispossessed, disinherited, and exploited ; 
 and not for the vast miscellaneous multitudes of ordinary 
 working men. And I will go farther, and venture to say that, 
 unless the old political parties put their shoulders to the wheel 
 to remedy this existing economic injustice, the Socialist orators 
 of the street-corner will continue to play off on the public their 
 tricks of the "dead invention," and the rest, with ever- 
 increasmg success. 
 
 I am, of course, quite aware of the considerations which are 
 advanced by the Socialists, as well as by the older political 
 parties for that matter, to minimise the economic position 
 which I have given to the Scientists, Inventors, and Dis- 
 coverers : — of how, for example, hundreds or thousands of 
 minor workers have been engaged in building up the successive 
 steps to every great scientific discovery and invention, before 
 the single discoverer with whose name the great invention is 
 identified has planted his flagstaff on the summit; of how, 
 again, many, if not most of them, have been foremen or ordinary 
 working men, so lending colour to the claim that " we, the 
 working men, have done it all," &c. Well, I am quite 
 prepared to welcome all these in their degree to my fold, and 
 to claim them as my clients ; and yet I still insist that if you 
 take, say, the great inventions and discoveries of a single 
 generation, and compute the wealth that has been added to the 
 nation or the world by them within that period, you could pack 
 the really great men concerned in an ordinary sailing-boat : 
 the miscellaneous multitude of unknown foremen and workmen 
 
18 A CHALLENGE TO SOCIALISM, 
 
 who have made the smaller improvements, and so led up to the 
 greater inventions, in an ordinary merchantman ; and all the 
 rest in one or two big men of war. And if in each generation 
 these should sail away in disgust from their own inhospitable 
 shores, taking, if it were possible, their discoveries and inven- 
 tions with them, and leaving behind the miscellaneous millions, 
 these latter left to themselves would have to scratch the 
 ground with their wooden ploughs, or live on potatoes and 
 herbs as of yore — unless, indeed, as a makeshift, they fell back 
 on the antiquated machinery of the " dead inventions " of 
 former generations, of which the disinherited families and 
 heirs have been defrauded. The simple truth is, that all the 
 really great things that make the civilisation of the world in 
 every department of life are the outcome and results of the 
 brains of a small number of "great men," who in each genera- 
 tion can (when an inventory is taken in the retrospect) be 
 counted almost on one's fingers ; and for the great masses of 
 men of whatever station to deny it, minimise it, or pretend not 
 to see it, is an organised hypocrisy. In the sports and games 
 which these masses most affect, this is freely admitted — 
 whether it be in reference to chess, or billiards, or cricket, or 
 tennis, or what-not — for here their pretensions can be promptly 
 brought to the test ; and, indeed, they have the good sense 
 not to try it, but to"^ confine themselves rather to looking on, 
 seeing fair play done, and applauding and rewarding the 
 victors. But in intellectual matters of all kinds, this is not 
 the case ; and in spite of the fact that the names of the great 
 men in all these departments, on whom not only the civilisation 
 but the wealth of the world depends — whether in Religion, 
 Philosophy, Science, or Mechanical Invention — can from the 
 beginning of recorded history be compressed within the index 
 of an ordinary encyclopaedia, so tardy has been their recog- 
 nition and so infamous their treatment and pay, that many, if 
 not most of them, have had to go to their graves leaving their 
 wives and families in poverty. And as the question at this 
 
THE STREET-CORNER MEN. 19 
 
 point in my challenge to the Socialists is one of Economic 
 Justice, I must repeat that until this scarlet injustice, this 
 ignominious public theft (for it is no less) is remedied by the 
 existing political parties of the State, of whatever shade, the 
 Socialists with it in their rear need have no fear of putting on 
 full steam ahead, and as soon as they have gained the power 
 by their numbers and their votes, proceeding to squeeze the 
 " classes " as they themselves have already been squeezed by 
 them ; and no one will logically, from a party point of view, 
 have the effrontery to say them nay. But were this existing 
 legal injustice once remedied, there would, on the Socialists' 
 own professed lines of a strictly Economic Evolution, no 
 longer exist any raison d'etre for their proposed revolutionary 
 upheaval or reconstruction of society at all; for, with their 
 numbers and their votes, all existing injustices between them- 
 selves and their capitalist employers could easily be adjusted 
 by ordinary changes in the constitution of the country and its 
 laws ; while with capitalists like Edison or Westinghouse as 
 their masters, their envy would be turned into an admiration 
 as great, and their hatred into a loyalty as devoted and pure, 
 as that which they now so willingly and spontaneously give to 
 their heroes of the cricket and the football field. 
 
 Here ends, then, my indictment of Socialism on its purely 
 Economic and Moral side — on those aspects of it, in a word, on 
 which the orators of the street-comer (whom, as followers of 
 Marx, I have proposed to myself as my special opponents in 
 this paper) profess to rest their whole case as basis and 
 preliminary to their reconstruction both of Industry and of 
 Society — much in the same way as the French Revolutionaries 
 based their schemes for the reconstruction of France, on the 
 Liberty, Fraternity, and Equality of the teachings of Rousseau. 
 
 In my next chapter, I hope to show what those First 
 Principles of Sociology are which have compelled me to take 
 my stand, neither on the existing Laws of the State, on the 
 one hand, nor yet on the ideal Economic Justice demanded 
 
20 A CHALLENGE TO SOCIALISM, 
 
 (but perverted, as we have seen, by the Socialists, on the other; 
 but rather on what I have called Evolutionary Justice, which 
 demands the consideration, as we shall see, of a much larger 
 number of factors than the purely Economic or Industrial one. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 ON SOCIAL JUSTICE AND ITS EVOLUTION.* 
 
 TN this, my second chapter, I shall endeavour to carry out the 
 promise I made in my first article, and to show that the 
 Socialists have flanked and buttressed both the economic and 
 the moral basis of their scheme by a theory of Human Evolution, 
 which I will venture to assert is at the present time of day one 
 of the most curious exhibitions of simplicity the intellectual 
 world has yet seen. In general terms, it consists in no less an 
 absurdity than this — that the infinitely complex evolution of 
 Human Society and Civilisation, involving as it does the subtle 
 co-operation of the most various factors — War, Religion, 
 Government, Law, Education, Political Institutions, and the 
 whole domain of Science — can be narrowed down to a single 
 thread of this complex web, namely, its purely Economic or 
 Industrial Evolution ; and that this again can be so cut down 
 as to coincide with the industrial evolution of the great mass 
 of the manual labourers and artisans — the working population 
 of the world. Now, the merest outline sketch of the way in 
 which Human Evolution really goes, and has always gone, 
 when compared with this poor, naked, skin-dried residue which 
 the Socialist would substitute for it, will expose its nullity 
 better than volumes of merely abstract argument. But before 
 entering on my detailed proof of this, I shall assume to start 
 • Fortnightly Review, March. 1908. 
 
22 A CHALLENGE TO SOCIALISM. 
 
 with that both sides to the controversy will agree with me that 
 if any essential factor of the problem, or any ineradicable 
 element of Human Nature involved, is either ignored or 
 suppressed by the Socialists, their whole doctrine, together 
 with the scheme of reconstruction which is founded on it, must 
 fall into bankruptcy. If this be granted, let us now see what 
 these ultimate essentials and ineradicable elements of Human 
 Society and Human Nature are which are involved in the 
 problem of Human Evolution. I shall emphasise by italics a 
 few of the more important points as I go along. 
 
 They are, in brief, those of a creature called Man, who goes 
 in families and herds known as tribes or nations, and, like 
 other animals of a like kind, always under the direction of 
 leaders ; but a creature withal with this peculiar differentiating 
 characteristic, that he has within him a spark of the Divine, or 
 if anyone prefers it (to keep the facts free from religious 
 implications) the merely human impulse towards the Ideal, 
 which keeps ever impelling him onwards and upwards along 
 the winding path of Progress and Civilisation. 
 
 Now, this creature as it moves in its myriads across the cen- 
 turies, in search, like the Israelites, of the Promised Land of the 
 Ideal, makes for itself as it goes along, all the moral, social, and 
 intellectual baggage which it carries with it — its customs, 
 habits, traditions, its stock of knowledge and culture, and its 
 moral and social ideals — and all these in their interlacing 
 complexity form for each nation as it moves down the ages, a 
 single, continuous iveb, without rent or seam ; the Present every- 
 where being indissolubly wiited with the Past and xoith the F)Uure. 
 So that what is called Human Evolution consists precisely in 
 this, that these tribes and nations are obliged, under the 
 direction of their leaders, continually to mould and modify the 
 outward form and vesture of one and all of their modes of life 
 and ideals under 'pressure of the environment ; whether these 
 changes be caused by physical and material difficulties outside 
 themselves, in the matter, say, of food and shelter; by the 
 
ON SOCIAL JUSTICE AND ITS EVOLUTION. 23 
 
 aggressions on, or the defences against, neighbouring tribes or 
 nations ; or, lastly, by changes in their own internal structure, 
 necessitating a different arrangement of the social classes and 
 functions of which they are composed. But to come to the 
 point which will most engage our attention in this article, we 
 must go a step farther, and lay down the doctrine that the 
 Social Justice on which the Socialists lay so much stress, and 
 which each tribe and nation makes for itself, as I have said, as it 
 goes along, consists simply in the gradual adjusting of the relations 
 between these classes and the functions they perform. If this, 
 then, be Social Justice ; and if to a being like Man, constituted 
 as we have seen him to be, Social or Human Evolution can, 
 especially in these civilised days and among civilised nations, 
 consist only in the progressive improvement and amelioration of 
 the laivs, in the upward look and trend toivards the Ideal, it will 
 behove us to examine as closely and scientifically as possible 
 the texture and composition of this Social Justice, and the 
 way in which it gets itself embodied in the fibre of Human 
 Evolution, before we can effectively contrast it with the 
 mummified substitute and simulacrum of it which the Socialists 
 seek to palm off on the world — a substitute which, violating as 
 it does every one of the root principles of Human Nature 
 which I have just emphasised, must end in mere Utopian 
 dreams. Now that I am not leading the reader into a mere 
 side-track in asking him for a moment to concentrate his 
 attention on this matter of Social Justice and the place it 
 occupies in Human Evolution, may be seen in this, that 
 there is nothing on which the Socialists lay more stress as a 
 foundation for their scheme for the reconstruction of Human 
 Society ; and further, that it is to their own peculiar reading 
 of Human Evolution, with the particular type of Social Justice 
 which they found on it, that appeal is made by them in every 
 argument. To the steady, continuous operation of this Evolu- 
 tion in the future as in the past, they profess to look forward ; 
 and on it, as on a Bible, they take their stand to extinguish all 
 
24 A CHALLENGE TO SOCIALISM. 
 
 doubt and controversy as to the necessity for its inauguration, 
 when they are warned by their opponents that, even if their 
 system may ultimately be adapted to some millennial age, its 
 present advent would end in a general overturn. 
 
 How, then, we ask, does Social Justice arise, and of what 
 does it consist if we make a section of it, as it were, at any 
 given point in the progressive Evolution of Mankind ? 
 
 The first consideration I would emphasise is, that as it is 
 made by Man himself as he goes along, it must groio out of the 
 entire complex of the relations in ivhich men stand to each other 
 and to the functions they perform — in War, Religion, Govern- 
 ment, Law, Science, &c. — and cannot be merely stamped on 
 them from the outside, as it were, in its ideal and perfect 
 completeness, like an imperial figure-head on a coin, at any 
 and all times ; it is, in a word, a gradual precipitate thrown 
 down by all these complex activities and relationships of men, 
 and, like a nutritious food, is never at any given time more in 
 amount than they can digest and assimilate — a fact to which 
 the most determined attempts of the most powerful religions 
 of all ages bear witness in their efforts to raise the general level 
 of human life. Like the gradual deposition of the geological 
 strata, to which the sun, the winds and rain, the sea and the 
 mountain peaks are all alike contributory, it slowly arises from 
 below in a series of terraces, on each of which, as it arises, the 
 lowest of mankind can henceforth walk with an ampler air. 
 with less impediment, and with a more independent mien. In 
 other words, Social Justice is not the full-blown flower of the 
 Ideal, ready to be let down from Heaven as it were, at any 
 time, and which, like a coating of white paint, can be plastered 
 over all alike ; or a snowdrift which would smother mankind 
 under an undistinguishing canopy of equality ; but is a complex 
 graduated thing, made up of many different measures and 
 degrees, both in its [)enalties and rewards. If the reader has 
 his doubts, and is not inclined to follow me here, let him reflect 
 for a moment that in the early Middle Ages, when the Christian 
 
ON SOCIAL JUSTICE AND ITS EVOLUTION. 25 
 
 Church was supreme over the minds of men, and existed for 
 the very purpose of clapping this absolute equality on the 
 bodies, souls, and possessions of all alike (because they were 
 equally the sons of Adam and created by God), it never could 
 compass more with all its efforts than this graduated justice. 
 In the punishments of the early Middle Ages, so much was 
 paid for the taking of the life of a bishop ; so much less for 
 that of a nobleman ; and less again, down even to an irreducible 
 minimum, for that of a serf ; while as for the rewards of men, 
 even at the present hour, not only kings and other great 
 personages, but the whole tribe of Leaders of every kind — 
 Salvation Army leaders, Parliamentary leaders, and even 
 Socialist leaders — have honours, services, and emoluments of 
 all kinds thrust upon them as freewill offerings by their herds 
 of followers, and in such extremes of profusion and degree, as 
 no mere white-painted postage-stamp doctrine of human 
 equality could ever pretend to justify. And as for the 
 relations of conquered peoples to their conquerors, when once 
 soundly thrashed and admittedly beaten, you can depend on 
 their feeling honoured to kiss the feet of their masters for (in 
 some instances) a good thousand of years. And if they do 
 not do so, it is because they have had to earn and win their 
 liberties and exemptions, either by their power in its many 
 various and different kinds (as the Greeks and Barbarians in 
 their respective ways did from their Roman masters), or as is 
 more usual in recent civilised times, by their masters them- 
 selves following the gleam of the Ideal existing in all men, 
 and conferring these liberties and exemptions piecemeal on 
 them; but rarely or never by the acquisitions, intellectual, 
 moral, or physical, of the herd itself — except, perhaps, by a 
 sudden eruption of brute force in times of revolutionary 
 violence. Now this, thus brutally put for the purposes of my 
 argument, is precisely the Social Justice of Human Evolution, 
 neither more nor less ; and must be so for a creature like Man, 
 still three-fourths animal, that goes in families and herds under 
 
26 A CHALLENGE TO SOCIALISM. 
 
 the direction of leaders ; and led on by an Ideal which is but 
 the feeblest of sparks, and can only be kept alive by the select 
 spirits of each age, and the good and great of all ages, 
 sitting around it like the Vestal Virgins, and blowing 
 assiduously, desperately, and continually on it, to keep it aglow 
 at all. But to define it more closely, and sum it up before we 
 leave it, we may say that the Social Justice of Evolution is 
 found always to be (when a section is made through it) a 
 complex, not a simple, homogeneous thing ; and is made up of 
 Power, Authority, Custom, and Prestige on the one hand, and 
 of the Ideal of Right scattered thinly through its continuous 
 web in golden seams, on the other. It consists not in Might 
 alone, nor yet in the abstract ideal of Right alone, but in the 
 happy, artistic commingling of both ; and has, besides, this 
 peculiarity, that at any one time it always contains more of the 
 Ideal than the strict balance of powers and functions in 
 Society would justify ; and further, that this surplus of the 
 Ideal to the good, as it were, continually increases, in pro- 
 portion as Mankind itself advances. It is a slowly and steadily 
 accumulating deposit, as I have said, won by Civilisation on 
 the credit side of the Ideal ; and not an unlimited bank account 
 on which Humanity can draw, in current moral coin, at any or 
 at all times. This, at any rate, was Shakspeare's conception 
 of Social Justice, as I have elsewhere had occasion to insist, 
 and is distinctly enunciated by him in Troiliis and Cressida in 
 the passage beginning with " Take but degree away, and hark, 
 what discord follows," &c., and summed up in his memorable 
 aphorism that " it is between the endless jar of Right and 
 Wrong (or, in other words, of Might and the abstract ideal of 
 Right), that Justice resides." 
 
 Now, this is my own conception of Social Justice ; and one, 
 
 too, which all my studies of History* and Civilisation confirm. 
 
 I lay stress on it here on account of its immense importance to 
 
 my argument ; for if true, it must modify the entire complexion 
 
 *For the details see my volume on Civilination and Progress. 
 
ON SOCIAL JUSTICE AND ITS EVOLUTION. 27 
 
 of Modern Politics, which since the time of Rousseau and the 
 French Revolution have been over-tempted by the forbidden 
 apple of abstract Liberty and Equality which he flung into the 
 arena, and have drawn on this fetish more than the laws of 
 Evolution, whether of Nature or of Human Nature, can justify 
 or redeem. Until, then, the Socialists can overturn this, as I 
 believe, true conception of Social Justice, their schemes must 
 be but so much wind and foam ; and the world may, except by 
 some subterranean Revolution, repose peacefully on its old 
 foundations. 
 
 And now let us see in detail the series of dodges, subterfuges, 
 and false trails by which the Socialists have sought to under- 
 mine and dismantle this stronghold of Human Evolution, and 
 the Social Justice that is founded on it ; as well as the essential 
 elements both of Nature and of Human Nature which they 
 have been obliged to cut bodily out of the problem in the 
 process. 
 
 Their first movement is one of general strategy, as I inti- 
 mated at the outset, and consists in their attempt to cut out 
 at a stroke all the great ejfficient factors of Civilisation — War, 
 Religion, Law, Government, Political Institutions, and 
 Scientific Knowledge in general — as if they were but appen- 
 dages or surplusage ; and to substitute for the complex result 
 of all these, a single, simple figure, namely, that of a pure 
 Economic or Industrial Evolution which they have cunningly 
 slipped into its place ; the object of the move being, to identify 
 this purely economic evolution with general Human Evolution, 
 and particularly with the evolution of the industrial conditions 
 of the great masses of Working Men ; as if these latter had 
 been all along the efficient, active factors in Human Evolution, 
 instead of its auxiliary and dependent ally and supplement. 
 Now, although no one believes more firmly than myself that 
 the expansion and elevation of the great masses of men is the 
 end and aim of all human evolution (without which, indeed, it 
 would be a ghastly farce and failure), or has worked more 
 
28 A CHALLENGE TO SOCIALISM. 
 
 Strenuously (in ray books) to get this recognised, the idea that 
 either manual labour in itself, or the efforts of the labourers, 
 has been the dominant active factor in human progress, is as 
 absurd as if one should draw out the stomach and entrails of a 
 man, and because these are essential factors in working up the 
 fuel for his mere animal existence, declare them to be the 
 most important and immediate factors in his mental progress 
 and development as well ; as if, in short, Man, like the worm, 
 were but an elongated gut, and his evolution and development 
 ran on the same or parallel lines as the worm's. 
 
 But the Socialists have a second and more important object 
 in selecting this mere economic or industrial evolution of the 
 Working Classes as the active germ in human evolution. It 
 is to make it appear plausible that the manual workers of the 
 world, being the great masses of the world as well as its 
 immediate feeders, ought by some kind of inherent or abstract 
 justice to be its governors, directors, and administrators also ; 
 and should seize the reins from the hands of the great States- 
 men, Inventors, Scientists, and Captains of Industry who have 
 hitherto, as their leaders, selected and assigned them their 
 tasks, — and as soon as opportunity offers, drive the coach 
 themselves. 
 
 Now, if the Socialists could only feel sure that they could 
 succeed in establishing the two above propositions — firstly, 
 that Human Evolution was practically the same thing as the 
 Industrial or Economic Evolution of the Working Men ; and 
 secondly, that in this Industrial Evolution, '• we, the workers, 
 wiio are the authors of all the surplus wealth of the world," &c., 
 have in consequence the right to organise, direct, and guide 
 its general Human Evolution and development also ; all else, 
 they feel convinced, would be plain sailing, and the future of 
 Socialism would be assured. They have, accordingly, 8[>ared 
 no pains to fortify and entrench these two positions as strongly 
 as possible ; and if I have to press them somewhat severely 
 and even harshly here, it is from no want of sympathy either 
 
ON SOCIAL JUSTICE AND ITS EVOLUTION. 29 
 
 with the working men themselves or with their cause (indeed 
 I go a long way with them myself), but only with the means 
 they propose to employ to compass it. 
 
 Now that I am not wrong in saying that the Socialists of 
 the street corner, i.e., of the school of Marx, wish to identify 
 their single wire-drawn thread of Economic or Industrial 
 Evolution, with the rich and varied complexity of the web of 
 Human Evolution in general, is seen in the fact that the 
 earliest and strongest of their leaders in this country, Mr. 
 Hyndman, has been careful to pave the way for it by a book 
 on Industrial Evolution written on these lines ; and that others 
 among the later leaders have followed him up in this, by 
 writing books to justify the various special revolutions and 
 uprisings of the Working Classes all along down the course of 
 History. As for Mr. Hyndman : — after wiping out all the 
 other elements of the problem, and concentrating on its purely 
 industrial aspects ; and after dwelling lightly on the passage 
 of the masses of mankind from Slavery in the Ancient AYorld 
 to Serfdom in the Feudal Mediaeval World, and from this 
 again to Labour under Capitalism in the Modern World ; and 
 after showing further that Capitalism, by its exploitation of 
 " the workers who do all the work and make all the surplus," 
 has now, from its gross injustice, become a bye- word and a 
 hissing ; he winds up this detruncated exposition of what for 
 him stands for the very essence of Human Evolution, by 
 turning round on his simple-minded followers and asking them, 
 how much longer they propose to stand this sort of thing, and 
 whether the time is not ripe for the next and most immediately 
 pressing stage in the evolution of mankind to begin here and 
 now ; the stage^ namely, in which they, the workers, shall take 
 over all the instruments of Production, Distribution, and 
 Exchange, and share and share alike the products among them, 
 with little or no compensation to the existing owners. Now, 
 it was a fine piece of intellectual foppery on the part of 
 Mr. Hyndman to assume that because the evolution of the 
 
30 A CHALLENGE TO SOCIALISM. 
 
 masses from Slavery to Serfdom, and from that on to Free 
 Labour under Capitalism accompanied the elevation of the 
 Working Population in the scale of living, that therefore they 
 had in each instance won and earned these expanding franchises 
 for themselves, instead of having them largely conferred on 
 them. The real truth is, that the peasants, labourers, and 
 working classes generally, were lifted on to a higher plane at 
 each remove, not so much by improvements in their own 
 manual labour, or by their own initiative and exertions, as by the 
 sympathetic aid of the great men, their leaders, who followed 
 the gleam of the Ideal : — the leaders of the great Catholic 
 Church in its early purity and noble devotion to Humanity ; 
 the great Emperors and Kings who (with more personal and 
 selfish motives, it is true) succeeded them and took over from 
 them their work when they had fallen into luxury and deca- 
 dence ; the great Philosophers, Poets, and Scientists who 
 (going to their graves for the most part in poverty) aided and 
 encouraged these again in their work ; and the great Inventors 
 and Organisers who were necessary to bring all this work to 
 its successful fruition. These were they who by their brain 
 power, moral power, and other aspects of their genius in their 
 various walks (always a mere handful of men at most), seized 
 the forelock of opportunity when the Material and Social Con- 
 ditions of the world were ripe and favourable, to make their 
 Ideal a reality for the Working Classes of mankind ; and not 
 (except in periods of quite righteous unrest and uprising) the 
 miscellaneous multitudes at all. 
 
 And this leads me to say a woi'd on the next of the great 
 stumbling blocks with which the Socialists are confronted, 
 namely, the Institution of the Family, which is the main instru- 
 ment through and by which the Present is everywhere indis- 
 solubly interwoven with the whole Past, and with the whole 
 Future, in a single, continuous and unbroken web or chain of 
 Human Evolution. 
 
 Now, the reason this institution of the Family is the source 
 
ON SOCIAL JUSTICE AND ITS EVOLUTION. 31 
 
 of SO much difficulty, and even woe, to the Socialists is, that it 
 is owing to it mainly or alone that Social Evolution cannot 
 overleap the element of Time, and realise itself now and here, as 
 if it were some old building which could be torn down to-morrow 
 and another erected in its place at a moment's notice ; but, on 
 the contrary, has to creep on its petty pace from age to age, 
 while not individuals alone, but whole generations of human 
 souls, seeking to grasp at the Ideal, have to go to their graves 
 with their dreams and hopes and schemes unfulfilled. The 
 Socialists are right, therefore, in making much of the grip 
 which this institution of the Family has on human life ; and 
 accordingly have set all their engines and magazines of de- 
 struction to work, with the view of cutting it out altogether 
 from the complex problem of Human Evolution. To effect 
 this, their strategy has so far consisted in two principal direct 
 operations, with some subsidiary flank movements, each of 
 which need detain us but for a moment. For when once well 
 ventilated, they carry their own refutation with them, and can 
 never again be played off with the old authority which the 
 teachings of Marx and the early Socialists lent to them. 
 
 The first of the direct attacks in this series of manoeuvres 
 was to cut out the ordinary conception of the Family, which, 
 as we have said, binds together by its multiplex ramifying 
 tendrils all the generations of mankind in a single, continuous, 
 evolving unity ; and to replace it by a succession of isolated 
 Fathers or Heads of families only ; precisely as if they were 
 the separate and independent segments of a tape-worm, each 
 like every other in nature and function, and all alike capable 
 of independently feeding themselves; and where the families 
 are tucked away and hidden under the paternal overcloak, like 
 those male frogs which carry their family eggs under their 
 bellies or on their backs, in order that the head of the family 
 should be all in all, — a separate, detachable, isolated, independent, 
 individual unit, — a kind of social eunuch in short, torn at once 
 from his fellows and his family, and from the unbroken web of 
 
32 A CHALLENGE TO SOCIALISM. 
 
 human evolution of which he is an integral part, and having 
 only one single recognisable function — the purely industrial, 
 economic one. Now, the object of this manoeuvre of chopping 
 mankind up into separate isolated bits, called heads of families, 
 is to furnish the Socialists with an object on which they can 
 clap their favourite principle of Social Justice, namely, " one 
 man^ one economic value " or rate of pay ; in the hope that 
 having reduced man or men to such a skeleton object, they can 
 then stamp this shibboleth on every rank, class, condition, and 
 occupation of mankind. This position was one which they 
 saw could be easily occupied, and, moreover, without any danger 
 of its being seriously challenged ; for had not their opponents 
 of all the old political parties alike — primarily those of the 
 Whig, Liberal, and Radical camps, and later those of the Tory 
 and Conservative camp as well (who, under Beaconsfield, 
 " caught the Whigs bathing and stole their clothes ") — taught 
 them that " one man, one vote " was the soundest and most 
 orthodox of universally admitted political principles ? And if 
 " one man, one vote," thrust on all men alike whether they will 
 or no, and without their making even a pretence of earning it, 
 can whip the money out of my purse by legislation as easily 
 (and almost without my knowing it) as if the owners of the 
 votes were the most deft of professional pickpockets, why should 
 not the Socialists with equal assurance openly announce (what 
 can only amount to the same thing) that their motto is " one 
 man, one economic value," — and so get credit for their greater 
 honesty, straightforwardness, and sincerity as well ? Why not ? 
 we can only repeat after them. The Socialists themselves, 
 however, did not stop there, but feeling apparently that the 
 ground in all this political region where men had votes thrust on 
 them without earning them, sounded (from their standpoint of 
 Social Justice) rather hollow, they pressed rapidly onwards 
 and over it to entrench themselves in what they imagined to be 
 a more secure, because a more sacredly-guarded position ; and 
 one, too, which would give them a much higher authority and 
 
ON SOCIAL JUSTICE AND ITS EVOLUTION. 83 
 
 excuse foi' nailing a universal equality, both political and 
 economic, on the backs of all mankind, and securely fixing it 
 there. 
 
 Now, this new position was stolen from Christianity ; not 
 because the earliest Christians held all things in common, but 
 because for the first time in the history of the world, among 
 Western nations at least, a doctrine of ideal Human Equality — 
 political, economic, and social — had been let down from above 
 in its full completeness and purity, and had been clapped on 
 the backs of all mankind alike ; thus guaranteeing, in principle 
 at least, an absolute equality of goods, privileges, rights, 
 authorities, and powers to each individual, in virtue of their 
 being all alike and equally, in the sight of God, the sons of 
 Adam. This the Socialists snatched at, while ignoring the 
 other express injunction of the Founder of Christianity, to 
 " give unto Caesar the things that are Cassar's, and unto God 
 the things that are God's," as being unsuited to their purposes ; 
 and then coolly and quietly proceeded to entrench themselves 
 on those other clauses of the sacred text bearing on general 
 human equality; holding them out meanwhile, like a white 
 flag of truce, to deceive their sympathisers in the opposite 
 camp, who comprised not only the specially Christian contingent, 
 but the whole race of party parliamentary politicians of every 
 shade, who (now that each man had his vote) were obliged to 
 play to the same miscellaneous multitude whom the Socialists 
 were trying to attract. This white flag gave the Socialists 
 time to mature their plans for those further operations on the 
 enemy which we shall presently see ; but in the meantime I 
 may, perhaps, be permitted without wearying the reader to 
 make a general observation or two on the points I have just 
 raised. 
 
 The first is, that this postage-stamp conception of Social 
 Justice, this universal equality of 7'ights of every kind — political, 
 economic, and social — to be stuck on the backs of each unit of 
 a creature like Man, has all along had to be safeguarded and 
 
34 A CHALLENGE TO SOCIALISM. 
 
 modified not only by the Church itself, but by the common 
 sense of mankind in general. This has been done, in Christian 
 communities at least, by a division between the Temporal and 
 Spiritual Powers ; the purity of the abstract ideal of equality 
 being in the keeping of the Church, while the inequalities of 
 men and of the functions they perform in the rough but 
 necessary work of the world, were relegated to the Temporal 
 Power; the only dispute being as to which of these powers 
 should be supreme over the other, the Church or the State ; 
 the Church, in the Middle Ages especially, when the dispute 
 had reached white heat, claiming that she was the Sun, and 
 the State only the Moon — a position, however, which the 
 modern world has almost entirely reversed in favour of the 
 State. But when the State at last took over from the Church 
 this abstract ideal of Human Equality, which since the time of 
 Rousseau and the French Revolution it has finally decided to 
 do, it little realised what the consequences would be. For 
 although an excellent principle for the starts by giving all men 
 alike an equal chance and opportunity ; and although entirely 
 appropriate, no doubt, for the final goal of Humanity when men 
 and women shall be as the angels in Heaven ; it is at once im- 
 potent and impossible for the running — for the race of life itself. 
 Now this, which ought to be the veriest political platitude, 
 although I shall be condemned as a heretic for saying it, is 
 ignored more or less by all the existing political parties, as well 
 as entirely by the Socialists ; so that I must emphasise the fact 
 that at any period short of the millennium, Human Life is and 
 must be essentially a race between the individuals of each 
 tribe and nation of which it is composed, and one, too, in which, 
 however equal the start, there must be at least some inequality 
 at the finish — else what motive can there be, but bare animal 
 existence, for playing the game of life at all? 
 
 Besides, if we consider it, all the passions and active powers 
 of Man can live and breathe only in an atmosphere of potential 
 inequality ; the hope and prospect of it is their very life ; and 
 
ON SOCIAL JUSTICE AND ITS EVOLUTION. 35 
 
 until men are mentally emasculated, it must continue to be so. 
 But this doctrine of Social Justice of the Socialists, whereby 
 an absolute equality not only of political rights but of economic 
 I'ights as well (as seen in equal rates of pay), should be 
 practically guaranteed them from the start to the finish of 
 their career, would be as absurd as an absolute^ instead of the 
 ordinary graduated, handicap in a race, and would bring them 
 all in at the winning post at once ; so that not even a shilling 
 bet would be given or taken on the event ! And for a being 
 like Man, whose life everywhere and everywhen (until death 
 reduces all alike to a common equality of dust) is a struggle as 
 much for inequality in wealth, position, power, glory, or good 
 name, for those who are ah-eady on an equality, as it is for 
 equality in those who are down in the ranks, and have their 
 spurs still to win ; this doctrine would, I repeat, if forced on 
 the world by Socialism, whether by revolution or by mere 
 brute numbers of votes, not only drive him into imbecility or 
 suicide, but would quench that very Ideal which it is the 
 professed object of the Socialists to keep aglow. Appropriate 
 for the lotus-eaters in the Isles of the Blest, or for the gods 
 who sit sipping their nectar on Olympus, and for whom sleep, 
 rest, and the indulgence of the passions are, when all material 
 wants are provided for, the natural end and aim of existence, 
 it would drug to death a being like Man, who has to make his 
 way through life by the sweat of his brain or brow. Besides, 
 what does Social Justice by its very nature involve but the 
 existence of unequal individuals and conditions of life between 
 whom it has to adjudicate, and between whom it can alone find 
 its sphere of exercise ; so that to cut out of the problem of 
 human life practically all inequalities of fortune, merit, or 
 desert, as expressed in the simple and universally recognised 
 scale of rank, honour, or money, would be tantamount to 
 cutting out Justice itself. 
 
 Now, this doctrine of abstract Economic and Social Equality, 
 with all it involves, was, as we have seen, filched and appro- 
 
36 A CHALLENGE TO SOCIALISM. 
 
 priated by the Socialists from that very Christianity every one 
 of whose central doctrines they repudiate ; their leaders, and 
 the street-corner men, from Marx down to the present time, 
 openly avowing their disbelief in Christianity and in all its 
 ways and works ; most of them being Agnostics, if not avowed 
 Atheists. The consequence is, that being themselves aware 
 of this discrepancy between their beliefs and the arguments 
 drawn from Christianity with which they support their 
 doctrines, they are obliged for very decency to look elsewhere 
 for their proofs ; and to underprop this, to them, rotten piece 
 of masonry by a more ingenious and, as they believe, a really 
 strictly scientific economic doctrine, pure and simple, namely 
 that of "average labour time," of which, from its great import- 
 ance in their scheme, I am now obliged to say a word. 
 
 This curious doctrine, then, of average labour time, 
 elaborated by Marx, proceeds on the assumption that the 
 labours of the Scientists, the Inventors, and the Organisers of 
 all the great industries of the world (whom he carefully keeps 
 out of sight all through his work on "Capital"), are to be 
 paid on a level of practical if not absolute equality with those 
 of the navvies, the coal-heavers, the miners, the stokers, the 
 engine-drivers, the pickers up of broken threads in cotton or 
 woollen mills, the drivers of vans and milk carts, and the 
 multitudinous swarms of skilled and unskilled labourers eveiy- 
 where — provided always that the latter do each his work 
 honestly and in a fair " average time," without loitering by 
 the way, or making things that nobody wants ; precisely as if 
 all men were as equal in power and ability as the homogeneous 
 sections of a worm. Now, this doctrine, like the " ca' canny " 
 principle of some modern Trade-Unionists, is a premium put 
 not on those who shall get at the production of the greatest 
 amount of wealth by the shortest way, through invention and 
 discovery, but on those who get at it by the longest way, 
 through ordinary manual labour, and in the longest time. 
 Now I protest that when a doctrine comes to this pass (and 
 
ON SOCIAL JUvSTICE AND ITS EVOLUTION. 37 
 
 with economic justice, too, of all things^ as its professed guiding 
 principle) that it would recompense the average dullard, not 
 only on the same scale as the alert and skilful in the same line 
 of work, but as the " great men " in every line of work ; and 
 wlien this rotten prop is used for the express purpose of 
 buttressing up the central principle in their scheme for the 
 reorganisation of society, namely, the taking over by the Work- 
 ing Men of all the instruments of Production, Distribution, 
 and Exchange, the products of which are to be ladled out from 
 common storehouses, on the principle of share and share alike, 
 to all persons whatever who are doing an average amount of 
 work of aiiT/ kind at all ; I protest, that so monstrous an 
 inversion of all human reason, of all Evolution and History ; 
 so deliberate a dagger stab into the very heart of Progress and 
 Civilisation itself, must, until men have lost their reason, put 
 it out of court everywhere, covered with ridicule and contempt. 
 For if just and true now, it ought to have been true from the 
 beginnings of recorded history ; for the hewers of wood and 
 drawers of water have always been with us. And that this is 
 precisely what the Socialists do think, is seen in this— that 
 there is scarcely a rebellion of the Working Men, scarcely a 
 rising of slaves in antiquity, of peasants and serfs in the 
 Middle Ages in Europe or England, or of the negroes and 
 inferior or more backward races everywhere, of which the 
 Socialist leaders have not been the apologists ; or of which 
 one or other of them has not written a pamphlet or a book in 
 its express justification. Not that they are not right in their 
 justification of these uprisings and rebellions as specific acts 
 ad hoc ; personally I think they are ; for human decency and 
 the Ideal alike demanded them, when necessary evolutionary 
 reforms were being too long delayed. That is not my point ; 
 but it is this, that the peculiar grievance of the Socialists with 
 the world is, that it did not allow these rebels to be permanently 
 successful in overturning society in the interests of the pro- 
 letariat, even when, as in the case of the French Rev^olution, 
 
38 A CHALLENGE TO SOCIALISM. 
 
 the whole country and even the "rump" of the old Convention, 
 as well as the members of the Directory themselves, were 
 secretly relieved when Napoleon with his iron hand swept away 
 the anarchy, corruption, and confusion which the Constitution 
 of the Revolution had inflicted on France. For had these 
 revolutions and uprisings proved successful, the Social Evolu- 
 tion of mankind would have proceeded, like the politics of the 
 South American Republics, on the principle of Revolution 
 erected permanently into a first principle of Government, and 
 not by normal evolution at all. And with what further result ? 
 This, namely, and it were well for the Socialists to consider it, 
 as it follows by a logical necessity out of their own doctrine : — 
 that whenever the lowermost stratum of ditchers and delvers 
 feel that the time is ripe for them (on the principle that " we, 
 the workers, do it all," &c.) to put all those who have raised 
 themselves to employments not requiring actual manual labour 
 into their proper places again (i.e., on a dead level of economic 
 and social equality with themselves), they have as strong 
 authority for their action as that conferred by any of the 
 ordinary laws of the State. Even Robespierre and his 
 associates restricted their " Liberty and Equality " to men's 
 purely political rights, and left their economic inequalities, or 
 opportunities for inequality, as before, — except in the case of 
 the expropriated Landlords and the Church. But the 
 Socialists who, like the " sea-green incorruptible " himself, 
 affect to regard their own love for the abstract Ideal as 
 conferring on them some more vague elevated distinction than 
 that to which more practical idealists, who have had to pitch 
 their keynote and attune their actions to a much lower strain, 
 can lay claim, would clap their red cap of equality on men's 
 economic goods as well, but without the excuse which 
 Robespierre had in the glorious vision which for the first time 
 in history the teachings of Rousseau seemed to have brought 
 within the possibility of actual realisation. But that a century 
 afterwards, another generation of Utopians should arise, and, 
 
ON SOCIAL JUSTICE AND ITS EVOLUTION. 39 
 
 with this century of experience at their back, would seek to 
 top this red cap of political equality by the added one of 
 enforced economic equality also, and by such a tissue of 
 intellectual absurdities, too, as we have seen ; this is, indeed, 
 one of the strangest and wildest of dreams. And yet I am 
 bound to admit that the deplorable condition of so many able 
 and willing working men, with no work to do, in nearly every 
 country of the world, will justify almost any attempt, however 
 chimerical and desperate, to alter it. But here, again, I would 
 point out (and on this I lay much stress) that this condition of 
 things has arisen and grown to its present height, not from 
 Capitalism as such, as the Socialists imagine, much as it has to 
 answer for, but from that most deadly, hopeless, and even 
 damnable doctrine of " laissez-faire," which all political parties 
 alike, hypnotised into it by the teachings of Rousseau and 
 Adam Smith, have openly nursed and encouraged. 
 
 In my next chapter I shall deal with the Fabian recon- 
 struction of society. 
 
CHAPTEK III. 
 
 THE FABIANS AND PARLIAMENTARIANS.* 
 
 TN the present chapter I propose to concentrate more 
 especially on the Fabians' reconstruction of Society and 
 Government on the basis of Socialism, while protesting at the 
 outset that, strictly speaking, as I shall now attempt to show, 
 they are not justified in calling themselves Socialists at all. 
 They are no more Socialists in the ordinary acceptation of the 
 term than I am a Socialist, although I go with that party a 
 good three-fourths of the way in their special proposals taken 
 separately and ad hoc, as it were ; or than I am a Tory, although 
 I still stand firm on some of the ancient ways which the party 
 have long since abandoned ; or yet a Protectionist, although at 
 the present critical point in social and economic evolution I 
 would carry out most of the Protectionist principles, with a 
 rigour unknown outside of Japan ; or, yet again, a Liberal, 
 because, although disagreeing as to means, I am entirely at one 
 with them in their ideal ends and aims. And the reason for 
 my protest is mainly this : — that no merely ultimate or abstract 
 ideal like that of the taking over of all the instruments of 
 Production by the State can legitimately, and without con- 
 fusing all political categories, be made the basis of a political 
 party programme, unless there is a reasonable chance, whether 
 by revolution or conversion of the electorate, of its being 
 placed on the Statute Book within a generation or two at most 
 'Fortnightly Review, May. 1908. 
 
THE FABIANS AND PARLIAMENTARIANS. 41 
 
 from the time of its inception. And as for the Fabians, of 
 all people, who by their methods, as we shall see, would 
 protract the separate stages of their process, like the succession 
 of Macbeth's ghosts, "to the crack of doom" before they 
 expect them to be realised — why, not only the most hardened 
 and fossilised of Tory landlords, but even those old " harlots " 
 of the Socialist imagination, the Whigs and Liberals, as well 
 as all the Churches of Christendom — not even excepting the 
 Catholic (as things are now going) — and even the very " man 
 in the street " himself, will have arrived at the Fabian's own 
 Kingdom of Heaven before him ! — and that, too, by the ordinary 
 normal course of orderly human evolution. It is not the 
 function of practical statesmen, but of Utopian political 
 philosophers, to project these millennial programmes on the 
 horizon of men's dreams ; and this, indeed, is the very reason 
 why the world in general, and statesmen in particular, have 
 always utterly ignored the opinions of doctrinaire philosophers, 
 as such, on current political problems ; as feeling (and in my 
 judgment justly) that these ultimate abstract ideals, however 
 worthy of respect as inspiration, comfort and solace for the 
 private heart, and however important for the future ages, are 
 like the Christian principle of turning the other cheek also, 
 fi'ankly unrealisable now and here, or in any reasonably near 
 future of the existing political world. Had Rousseau himself 
 been resurrected from his grave in the early days of the French 
 Kevolution, and seen and heard the leaders at the street-corners, 
 in the Jacobin clubs, and in the Assembly, quoting from his 
 Social Contract as from a political Bible, with the view to its 
 immediate application to the politics of despotic France of all 
 places, he would have stood aghast at the apparition. His 
 only possible hope, indeed, could have been, that a revolution 
 (which was in fact precipitated by purely political conditions 
 outside of his own making) should proceed until it had cleared 
 the ground of all the standing institutions of centuries, and so 
 leave a free, unimpeded field for the entrance of his own 
 
42 A CHALLENGE TO SOCIALISM. 
 
 political designs. And as in the event this was precisely what 
 did happen, there was, of course, no reason why his own 
 Utopia, or that of another, should not enter in and dictate 
 and fashion, as indeed his did, almost every change in the 
 constitution of Revolutionary France from start to finish ; until 
 Buonaparte, striding in like another Cromwell, turned the 
 Revolutionary Government out of doors, and with it Rousseau 
 and all his Utopian dreams and schemes as well. If, then, the 
 Fabian philosophers, with their Utopian projects and ideals, 
 will insist on turning themselves into practical politicians, they 
 must do one of two things : either, like the Marxians, plump 
 for Revolution and the capture of the Central Power, whether 
 by physical force or by the Press and sti-eet-corner conversion 
 of the working-class electorate ; or else fling away one and all 
 of their ultimate remote ideals in favour of immediately 
 practical and concrete ones. They must be prepared to change 
 their present intellectual garments as completely and rapidly 
 as the " quick change " artists of the music-hall ; and shift 
 their centre of gravity as entirely as do the divers in the deep 
 sea, loading their feet with lead rather than their heads with 
 dreams, if they are to keep themselves erect at all in the 
 existing political environment. They will, in a word, have to 
 follow the example of the wise Goethe, who declared that as 
 a man of science he was obliged to turn himself into an 
 Agnostic ; as a poet of Nature, into a polytheist ; as a con- 
 templative religious spirit, into a Theist ; and as a World- 
 philosopher, take his stand " in the middle," as he called it, as 
 the right position for the equal and level survey and co-oidination 
 of them all. Otherwise the Utopian political philosopher turned 
 practical politician is apt to become as ridiculous a figure as a 
 stage buff"oon, as futile as one of those modern epigrammatists 
 who, knowing that plain, straightforward thought is a boredom 
 to the "average sensual man," strive, like Oscar Wilde, to 
 hold their audience by intellectual antics, and the turning of 
 cheap social and moral platitudes inside out to give them a 
 
THE FABIANS AND PARLIAMENTARIANS. 43 
 
 show of cleverness and originality ; or like Mr. Chesterton and 
 Mr. Shaw, who, taking the whole world of men and things as 
 their province, look at all alike from between their legs, as one 
 might look at the houses along a street, for the fun of seeing 
 what amusing or fantastic combinations can, by the application 
 of a strict formal logic, be made of them ! And hence, I 
 repeat, that unless the Fabians and the " Intellectuals " of the 
 Socialist party are bent on confusing and confounding all 
 possible categories and issues, they have no right to lend the 
 weight of their prestige, their intellectual status, or their 
 authority among the cultivated, to the name of Socialism as a 
 separate political party in the State ; and on so slender and 
 shadowy a practical basis as this, viz., that they are prepared, at 
 some indefinite time or other, token the nation is ripe for if, for the 
 taking over of all the instruments of Production, Distribution, 
 and Exchange by the State. They might as well make it a 
 reason for a new political party, that they are in favour of so 
 ultimate and abstract an ideal as that, when the time is ripe 
 for it, they will welcome a concordat of the nations on the basis 
 of a Universal Peace. And for this simple reason, which it 
 would be invidious to deny, namely, that abstract ideals like 
 this are the prerogative of no one party or person, but are 
 ultimately as much the desire of the most fire-eating military 
 Tory, as of the most meek and submissive of Quakers. Besides, 
 there is no point in it all ; for the existing political parties, 
 pricked into quickening their pace by the Marxian main body 
 on their flanks, are already taking over such of the instruments 
 of Production and Distribution as are palpably ripe and ex- 
 pedient for the operation, in the normal jog-trot of ordinary 
 political evolution. If the Fabians should reply that although 
 the time for the inauguration of the full Socialist regime be 
 remote, their immediate aims, at any rate, are very concrete 
 and practical, it will be my point to demonstrate in this article 
 that by their whole policy and method of approach this is as 
 good as impossible. And for the following general reasons : — 
 
44 A CHALLENGE TO SOCIALISM. 
 
 1. That they propose to base their scheme for the recon- 
 struction of Society on a false foundation ; as if the material 
 with which they have to deal were dead wood and stone instead 
 of living human beings. They propose, that is to say, to 
 found it from heloxo on the individual opinions of the great 
 masses of men, instead of from above on the leaders of political 
 opinion in the State. 
 
 2. They propose to reach it by an approach from the lorong 
 end, namely, from the extremities and circumference of political 
 life, the tail, rather than from the Central Power, the head. 
 
 To plunge, then^ into the centre of the matter without 
 further preliminary, I propose to lay down for the reader's 
 consideration a political maxim which, as it took me some 
 thirty years of diligent search, doubtless owing to my own 
 stupidity, to get my eye on it, I naturally regard as of capital 
 political importance. Like the old Roman maxim of divide et 
 impera, it is a principle which, although unconsciously acted 
 on by practical statesmen since the world began, has not even 
 dawned on the Utopian political philosophers either of ancient 
 or modern times ; and especially on that whole long tribe of 
 them, including the Socialists, who since the beginning of the 
 nineteenth century have taken their political keynote, as well 
 as the master presuppositions of all their arguments, from the 
 abstract doctrinaire ideals of the school of Rousseau and of the 
 French Revolution. This principle may be put into a phrase, 
 and inscribed as a motto on one's crest or finger-ring, and it is 
 this : — that they who nominate, govern ; to which I may add, that 
 these nominators must always be few in number, and that, how- 
 ever often the individuals who compose them may be changed 
 and replaced by others, still as a body, they, the few, must 
 continue to govern. It is a simple and harmless enough looking 
 principle, 1 confess, but its consequences, as we shall see, for 
 the future of all practical politics are immense. For it rests on 
 the immediate fact that the vast miscellaneous multitude of 
 voices are but echoes, who have a veto, it is true, over all things 
 
THE FABIANS AND PARLIAMENTARIANS. 45 
 
 that come before their judgments for discussion, but neither 
 the initiative nor the organising, shaping, and directing power 
 for ■particular purposes or ends, which must always remain in 
 the hands of the few, better or worse, for good or for evil. 
 And this again rests on the still more ultimate facts : — that 
 Man is a creature that goes m families and herds under the 
 direction of leaders ; that the only available cohesive force 
 anywhere to be found to keep the separate human beings of 
 the herd together is the will of some other human beings like 
 themselves ; and that the whole constitution of the human 
 mind is as accurately framed and adjusted to this double necessity 
 by which the many shall have the veto, but the few, the 
 direction, or government, as the human foot is for walking on 
 the ground, or the monkey's for its life among the trees. 
 Napoleon, with his usual penetration, in his scheme for the 
 reconstruction of France after the Revolution, grasped this 
 principle — that they who nominate, govern — completely, and 
 utilised it to the full. Hamilton also, in his reconstruction 
 of the Constitution of the United States, after a similar 
 revolution, saw it clearly, but not having the same free hand 
 as Napoleon, he had to drop a good half of it in practice, owing 
 to circumstances over which he had no control — but mainly to 
 the circumstance that the doctrines of Rousseau on the "Rights 
 of Man " had arrived in America, and had got hold of the 
 opposition leaders before his time, and so were too strong for 
 him ; and with results on the political condition of America 
 to-day which are an object-lesson to all the world. For the 
 principle is a veritable death-trap to all those Utopian politicians 
 and statesmen who ignore it ; and if I now venture to apply it 
 rigorously to the scheme of the Fabian Society, it is not that I 
 think that all the leading members of that Society have 
 stumbled over it and fallen into the pit ; on the contrary, Mr. 
 Shaw and Mr. Webb, as we shall presently see, have more than 
 scented it — if their persistent application of it in a hole-and- 
 corner way be a criterion of their position in regard to it. It 
 
46 A CHALLENGE TO SOCIALISM. 
 
 is not in this that, in my judgment, these gentlemen have 
 erred, but rather in the point of the social organism at which 
 they have tried to apply it — namely, the tail-end of Bumbledom I 
 Mr. Wells, alone of the Fabian leaders, has entirely missed the 
 principle, and in consequence has, as we shall see, wrecked his 
 scheme by its neglect. 
 
 Let us begin, then, with Mr. Wells. In his New Worlds 
 for Old, the reader will hare observed that when he comes to 
 a hitch in the arrangement of his Socialist Utopia, whether 
 local or general, he glides over the difficulty as easily and 
 naively as the famous Captain Bobadil in Ben Jonson's play 
 did in his method of defeating an army. And just as the 
 latter worthy, when the enemy began to advance, at once set 
 on his own men to shoot them down ; and when they were 
 reinforced by other auxiliaries, set on fresh detachments to do 
 the same ; and the same, again and again, until the last man of 
 the enemy lay stretched on the field ; so Mr. Wells always has 
 in reserve an army called " the People," who can be brought 
 together at any moment by his magic wand — in town halls, 
 market squares, or what not — to propose resolutions, take 
 shows of hands on them, appoint officials to carry them out, 
 &c. ; when, hey presto I the thing will have been done, and the 
 whole difficulty have vanished. But this easy Bobadil method 
 of capturing the electorate involves one or two oversights 
 which do not appear on the surface. The first is, that when 
 any number of men animated by a common sentiment are called 
 together in a public meeting for any object whatever, those who 
 call the meeting, by that very act, separate themselves off from 
 the people called, and become what we may call the " platform " 
 men, as distinct from the " body-of-the-hall " men. The one set 
 become the organisers, a more or less close and compact body 
 who take the initiative, frame the resolutions, nominate the 
 officials, and in general direct the business of the meeting as 
 its leaders ; the other set become, for the time being, a mere 
 tail of separate individual units, who, if the business in hand is 
 
THE FABIANS AND PARLIAMENTARIANS. 47 
 
 organised for a ^>grma»«??< end (and not merely a temporary 
 occasion), have only a veto — a choice, that is to say, of different 
 alternatives imposed on them ; and the longer the organisation 
 continues, and the more firmly it gets set, as it were, the 
 narrower does this choice become. In the old Roman Com- 
 monwealth before the Caesars, it will be remembered that the 
 Senate, by an informal consensus among its members, nominated 
 the officers of State, and dictated all the legislative measures ; 
 flinging only the ofFal of government, the veto, to " the People " 
 and to the tribunes who represented them in the Senate, ae an 
 illusory sop — a choice of alternatives merely, any one of which 
 was acceptable to the governing body who already held all the 
 trumps. It was in essence as real a despotism as that of the 
 Czars, only more veiled, and with less directness and rigidity ; 
 and the Senate, as we know, governed the Roman world for 
 four hundred years ; the nominations, in such slight shades of 
 party division as existed, being distributed and arranged on 
 the accepted informal basis of " turn and turn about." And it 
 was not until these party divisions in matters of legislation 
 became so accentuated that no appeal but to the sword was 
 possible, that the power of nomination passed, with the power 
 of legislation, into the single hands of the Caesars ; and so the 
 popular veto, poor outside sham as it always was, ended at last 
 in a mere "Hobson's choice," without any alternatives at all. 
 It was the same, too, in the Venetian and other Italian 
 Republics of the Middle Ages — with their " Councils of Ten," 
 or what not, who were always to be found hidden somewhere 
 behind the arras, or under the coverlids of the beds, when the 
 decorative upholsteries of these window-dressed Constitutions 
 were removed. In the reconstruction of France by Napoleon, 
 too, after the Revolution, as was well seen in his Concordat 
 with the Pope, there was nothing which he held with a firmer 
 grip, and parted with more unwillingly, than this same power 
 of nomination. He haggled about it to the minutest detail, 
 and with as much pertinacity, as if he were an old fish- 
 
48 A CHALLENGE TO SOCIALISM. 
 
 saleswoman of the rue St. Antoine haggling with a " tight- 
 fisted " customer on a Saturday night. He knew instinctively 
 that they who nominate govern, and, therefore, that if in this 
 division of the power of nomination between himself and the 
 Church he should capitulate on any cardinal point, all would 
 be lost — even although his Imperial power rested on the free 
 and independent votes of thirty millions of Frenchmen. And 
 further, that unless he could keep his sovereign control over 
 nominations intact, most of those millions, if left to their free 
 and so-called independent votes, would in ten years have run 
 back to their old Sansculottism again. It is the same, too, 
 with the British Cabinet, where the very representatives of " the 
 People " are but mere voting tail, with only the merest scrag- 
 end of a veto thrown to them ; while as for " the People " in 
 their millions of isolated units, each with his free and independent 
 vote, they are for ever condemned to the barest choice of 
 alteraatives, — " rabbits hot, or rabbits cold," Conservative or 
 Whig, Radical or Socialist — even with the powerful Press 
 organised on party lines at their back. And so it must be 
 everywhere and everywhen ; and were each particular voter a 
 Solon, and each member of Parliament a Demosthenes, wagged 
 as a tail the mass of them must continue to be, so long as Man 
 remains a creature that is compelled by his constitution to go 
 in herds under the direction of leaders. Why, not even a 
 society of extremest Anarchists, each one of whom is prepared, 
 for the sake of his ideal of freedom from leadership, to go to 
 his grave as to a bed, could exist together for a week in close 
 contact without falling under the domination and authority of 
 leaders better or worse, however nominated. 
 
 But let us take another even more pregnant illustration of 
 our princi])le — that they who nominate, govern — from a more 
 mundane, bread-and-butter sphere, and one, too, where each 
 separate individual in the mass has a more direct and immediate 
 personal interest (if money be a motive at all) than that to 
 which any political party or cause can afford a parallel — I 
 
THE FABIANS AND PARLIAMENTARIANS. 49 
 
 mean the ordinary .Joint Stock Company. And who, I ask, 
 has ever imagined that the great body of dispersed, and to 
 each other mostly unknown individuals who compose it, ever 
 hope to be other than a mere ineffectual tail at the mercy of 
 the directorate ? Veto the directors they can, and change 
 them every week if they choose, but in doing so they only 
 change their masters, not free themselves from their yoke ; and 
 shout or wriggle as they may, on their back, like the old man 
 of the sea, the directorate will sit, and continue to sit. But 
 who is it that nominates the new directors, the reader will ask ? 
 The whole body of the shareholders, of course ! Not at all ; 
 on the contrary, the nomination will be left to the few 
 individuals among the shareholders in the body of the hall, 
 who are already knoion to have either a greater pecuniary stake 
 in the concern, a greater business ability and experience, or a 
 greater reputation for honesty, than the rest of their body, 
 mostly unknown to each other, can possibly claim for them- 
 selves, even were each of them in actual fact the possessor of 
 all the virtues. It is these few nominators who play the part 
 of the intermediate gods, when one directorate falls and 
 another has to take its place ; it is they who now in their turn 
 push their own particular puppets on the stage, or enter in 
 themselves. And so the game goes on ; while the body of the 
 shareholders, in spite of their veto, their separate or equal vote, 
 their individual independent judgments, remain the same old 
 "rump " or tail as before — isolated, unknown figures wandering 
 distractedly along the corridors, who have to receive orders 
 and not give them ; and who if the ship founder have to go 
 down with it, whatever their real power or penetration as 
 separate individuals may be. They have of necessity, not of 
 choice, by the very act of coming together to form an 
 organised company for a definite end or pwpose, become a mere 
 series of divided, isolated units or points, in spite of the 
 common unity of aim in money-getting that brings them all 
 alike together ; and it is the divided who are governed. They 
 
 D 
 
50 A CHALLENGE TO SOCIALISM. 
 
 have, too, of necessity, not of choice, lost the power of nomina- 
 tion, while retaining the mere husk of the veto ; and again, 
 as we have said, it is they who nominate that govern. In 
 most countries the King himself does little else than this work 
 of nomination, his counsellors doing the rest ; and that is why 
 it is he alone who governs. In other countries, as in England 
 after the Revolution which put William and Mary on the 
 throne, the Aristocracy captured this power of nomination, 
 and governed accordingly until within living memory. In 
 America, on the other hand, a conclave of saloon-keepers, 
 bosses, Tammany Hall rings, and industrial magnates — a hand- 
 ful of men at most — who stand, it will be observed, outside 
 the vast millions of voters, have succeeded slowly but 
 eflfectively in capturing the power of nomination to most of the 
 important offices in the government of the separate States ; 
 and accordingly it is they who govern — and not the Federal 
 Congress, or even the President himself. But as one and all 
 of these nominators are, like the gods, all-potent but rarely 
 seen, seated as they are high above the clouds, or standing like 
 conspirators in the background or wings, and known only 
 through the acts of their puppets whom they direct and push 
 on the public stage, it may truly be said that the true aim of 
 practical politics is a proper machinery for the selection and 
 control of these unseen, all-powerful nominators, wire-pullers, 
 or caucus -managers of every grade and sphere, so as to ensure 
 the identity of their interests at every point and at all times 
 with the public good. This I commend to that most genial- 
 smiling, smooth-sailing, sentimenttd-persuasive Bobadil of the 
 Fabian Society, Mi-. Wells, who imagines that by merely 
 calling a meeting of " the People," with their individual votes, 
 and by " leaning on the Labour Party," he is going to pilot his 
 Fabian Utopia into port, without having first got safely under 
 hatches those invisible gods who do the wire-pulling from 
 behind the scenes. For in that case the human animal would 
 have had to be organised like the hawk, which does its foraging 
 
THE FABIANS AND PARLIAMENTARIANS. 51 
 
 alone, and not like the creature Man is, who goes in herds, as 
 Nature intended him, and for which she has mentally as well 
 as bodily equipped him. The point only requires to be 
 definitely stated, and pressed home firmly enough, to be seen 
 on a moment's reflection ; and, if true, the consequences of its 
 recognition, I repeat, for the futm'e of all politics, will be as 
 great for the next century as were the teachings of Rousseau 
 for the last ; for instead of keeping its eye on numbers of votes 
 and ballot-boxes, the world will keep its eye on the invisible 
 nominators who appoint the leaders, who in turn rule the ballot- 
 boxes and votes of these vast miscellaneous herds. So that in 
 accusing the Fabians in general of beginning their recon- 
 struction of Society from below, from the tail, rather than 
 from above, 1 am accusing them of what, from the natui*e of 
 things and of the creature on whom they propose to operate, 
 is a flat ineptitude. 
 
 But now, leaving Mr. Wells for the moment, we have next 
 to consider Mr. Shaw, Mr. Sidney Webb, and Mr. Kamsay 
 Macdonald, all of whom also propose to begin their operations 
 from below instead of from above, from the tail-end or circum- 
 ference of society instead of from the centre ; and that, too, 
 before they have captured either the physical arm, or the 
 active, sympathetic co-operation of the Central Power. Their 
 schemes, in consequence, are as chimerical as that of Mr. 
 Wells ; and the millennium would indeed be here before, by 
 their respective methods of approach, they would have arrived 
 in sight of their goal. A contrast of these methods will of 
 itself let us into the inner workings of the whole Fabian scheme, 
 better, perhaps, and more quickly than any amount of separate 
 detailed delineation. 
 
 The plan of Mr. Webb and Mr. Shaw, then, is to get their 
 trusted nominees elected to borough councils, vestries, school- 
 boards, boards of guardians, &c., in town and country, there to 
 sow among their confreres on these bodies the seeds of their 
 policy of the final taking over of the instruments of Production 
 
52 A CHALLENGE TO SOCIALISM. 
 
 and Distribution by the State. This process of secret and 
 gradual insinuation was, in effect, a real conspiracy, as Mr. 
 Shaw with his usual frankness and humour admits ; and so 
 successfully was it carried out for a number of years by 
 Mr. Webb, the arch-conspirator in it all — at whose audacity 
 in this thimble-rigging of Bumbledom even Mr. Shaw stands 
 amazed ! — that it was believed by them that the Fabian dream 
 was actually abovit to be realised. When consummated in 
 these little hole-and-corner groups of the political world, and 
 when the Fabian leaven had had time to work its way freely 
 among them, the plan of the chief conspirators was to expropriate 
 only just as much of the Land and other instruments of Pro- 
 duction and Distribution within the area, or the immediate 
 vicinity, of these parishes and boroughs, as would furnish the 
 capital necessary for the next wider circumference of advance ; 
 arranging for the compensation which was to be paid to the dis- 
 inherited owners, to come out of the pockets of those other land- 
 lords and capitalists in the neighbourhood for whom the guillo- 
 tine was not yet ready ; much in the same way as it is proposed 
 to compensate the licensees of superseded public-houses out of 
 the enforced contributions of their brethren still left in the trade. 
 In this way it was hoped that by beginning thus stealthily and 
 noiselessly from the circumference, the propaganda would enlarge 
 itself in ever-widening circles from stage to stage, paying its 
 way as it went, until the whole country would have been 
 silently converted to Socialism almost without knowing it ; 
 and that, too, while the Central Government, unaware of its 
 existence and lapped in security, had fallen asleep. It was a 
 Utopian, Bobadil scheme, no doubt, without the collusion of 
 the Central Power to back it, and was sure to have been found 
 out at last ; though it had its " points," nevertheless, as we 
 shall presently see. But the West Ham Workhouse scandals 
 gave it the coup de grace, and ruined all ; and since then Mr. 
 Shaw and Mr. Webb, retiring discomfited to their tents, have 
 now to sit in " cold obstruction " and consider themselves, 
 
THE FABIANS AND PARLIAMENTARIANS. 53 
 
 before plotting out some new and more deeply-laid design ! 
 The central fallacy in it all lay in their imagining that any 
 log-rolling scheme to be engineered from the tail-end and 
 extremities of Society, without the connivance and support of 
 the Government, could avail them within any period which the 
 most time-piercing telescope could bring within the range of 
 sight. As well imagine that any number of votes of the petty 
 tradesmen and artisans around the village greens, or any 
 number of armed insurrections of John Balls or Jack Gades, 
 could dispossess the great landlords by any disposition of their 
 forces whatever, without the latter being first coerced to it by 
 the Central Power. They would be defeated in detail as they 
 arose. And when, as in the scheme of Mr. Webb and Mr. 
 Shaw, the landlords and capitalists, instead of being benefited, 
 like the publicans, by the expropriation of their neighbours and 
 comrades, stand on every count to lose by it, and ultimately 
 will have to feel the full weight of the axe on their own necks ; 
 to imagine, I say, that they, too, will put their hands in their 
 pockets at the word of command of isolated cliques of Bumbles 
 on the outskirts of society, is a downright absurdity. Instead 
 of standing around the bodies of their dead comrades, like 
 sheep waiting themselves to be bled, they would fly from the 
 scene like hunted foxes, and with their fire-branded tails set 
 the country around them in a blaze of insurrection and terror 
 as they went ; and all because the conspirators had not first 
 secured both the sympathy and the sword of the Central Power. 
 Mr. Wells himself, who appears anxious in his book to con- 
 stitute himself the sole High Pontiff of Fabian Socialism, and 
 who tries to extrude the older policy which Mr, Shaw and 
 Mr. Webb had so carefully laid in the Fabian nest, in order to 
 deposit his own single cuckoo egg there, talks of this policy 
 and method of approach of theirs as if it were a piece of parish- 
 pump politics, worthy only of the 'eighties when it was first 
 framed and projected by these gentlemen, — as a kind of back-stair 
 approach, in fact, which could only win over at best the chief 
 
54 A CHALLENGE TO SOCIALISM. 
 
 butler and his staff of consequential underlings of the servants' 
 hall ! But their scheme has its " points," as I have said, and 
 indeed is in every v^ay superior, as we shall now see, to the 
 scheme by which Mr. Wells proposes to supplant it. For they 
 saw vaguely and, like Buonaparte, felt instinctively, what Mr. 
 Wells has not yet even caught a glimpse of, namely, that they 
 who nominate, govern ; and they have in consequence taken 
 the best possible means open to them by which to compass 
 their ends — in the absence, that is to say, of all co-operation 
 from the Central Power. They rightly saw that, by making 
 the unit of their area of operation the smallest possible, the 
 parish Bumbles (before whom, like a couple of British envoys 
 to a native Oriental Court, they contemptuously bent and 
 salaamed, the better to win them over to their designs !) were 
 the only men who had any initiative or political influence over 
 the petty tradesmen, artisans, and peasants of these boroughs 
 and parishes, each man of whom would be personally in touch 
 with them. 
 
 But what does Mr. Wells propose in place of this ? Firstly, 
 to enlarge the unit of area over which the Fabian propaganda 
 is to operate, to the size, as he says, of a mediaeval principality, 
 that is to say, to a circumferential range so wide that men can 
 know as little of each other as they do of those invisible gods — 
 the few wire-pullers who must everywhei'e exist in the back- 
 ground of every large body of men thus isolated and dispersed 
 — who, we may be sure, are not going to be pushed from 
 their stools by any number of mere Fabian " carpet-baggers " 
 sent down among them, who as " Intellectuals " would be 
 "suspect" from the start! And when, as in his second 
 proposal, he declares that he is prepared to " lean on the 
 Labour party" in these enlarged constituencies entirely for 
 his support ; that he further counsels this Party to beware of 
 any devotion to " leaders," all of whom he would wipe out and 
 replace by what he calls " the continuity of the collective 
 mind," that is to say, the tail itself, it looks as if their only 
 
THE FABIANS AND P\RLIAMENTA11TANS. 55 
 
 authority and guide was intended to be no other than Mr. 
 Wells himself — or his book ! It is evident, therefore, that 
 this scheme of his for capturing the Government by the 
 isolated votes of sheep without bell-wetliers, and that, too, 
 without any aid from the Central Government, is more Utopian, 
 and, with all its pretensions, in every way inferior to that of 
 Mr. Shaw and Mr. Webb. It has thrown away all the good 
 points of their parish Bumbledom scheme, and without any 
 countervailing advantages of its own. 
 
 But behind these three g-entlemen who stand in the limelio^ht 
 in the foreground of the Fabian stage, there is Mr. Ramsay 
 Macdonald and his Parliamentary Labour cohort, of later and 
 fresher blood, in the wings. What shall we say, then, of him 
 and them ? Mr. Macdonald himself, in his book on " Socialism," 
 has grounded himself on a theory of Evolution in my judgment 
 as superior to that of the Fabians I have mentioned as theirs 
 is to the crude economic theory of Marx out of which it arose ; 
 and of which both it and Mr. Macdonald's still retain some of 
 the early tang. Otherwise Mr. Macdonald's theory proceeds, 
 as it winds itself along, with so much really fine discrimination 
 and penetration, and harmonises so well in its outline with my 
 own views, that it was not until (assuming the role of 
 philosopher turned practical politican) he suddenly cried halt 
 at a particular point, that I felt obliged to protest. This point 
 was reached when, after insisting, like the Socialists in general 
 and the rest of the Fabians in particular, on our cropping the 
 heads of the great Leaders and Organisers of the world in their 
 various departments (the race of merely hereditary do-nothing 
 capitalists and interest-receivers he would shave down to the 
 scalp itself!), he proposes to allow the vast miscellaneous tail 
 of the casual, unskilled incapables and slum-dwelling wreckage 
 to breed freely, multiply, and stagnate in their millions un- 
 checked — with their complement of alien paupers added — 
 until, like the tail of a comet, they fill the whole belt of heaven, 
 and sprawling out to infinity threaten to blot out the very 
 
56 A CHALLENGE TO SOCIALISM. 
 
 Stars ; while starving, in the meantime, the rank and file of the 
 genuine army of efficient working-men, — and all for what? 
 To give to this herd of camp-followers a first lien for 
 subsistence, as with the old Roman populace, on all the 
 resources of the State ! The thing is monstrous. Indeed, to 
 carry this portentous ever-expanding tail, and expect to make 
 of it on any scheme of human evolution whatever, a compact, 
 coherent, social organism, would be an impossibility for gods 
 or men. But a bargain is a bargain ; and if Mr. Macdonald 
 and the Fabians will consent to cut down this overgrrown tail 
 to reasonable proportions, there is nothing in my theory of 
 evolution at least which would prevent my seeing with 
 equanimity the heads of the overgrown millionaires or other 
 overblown parasites of the world cropped to the same reason- 
 able proportions; but not until then. But will they, dare 
 they, agree to this ? Logically they should, for, firstly, as they 
 intend to begin their operations, as we have seen, from the tail, 
 the pruning of it of its redundant elements ought to be their 
 first concern. Secondly, because having thrown in their lot 
 with the party of Peace, almost at any price ; and realising, 
 doubtless, that the internal reorganisation of society is itself a 
 suflficiently big problem for any nation to handle, without 
 having, like the defenders of Jerusalem, to build with the 
 trowel in one hand and the sword in the other ; they may well 
 feel that it is no longer necessary to keep vast herds of possible 
 shilling-a-day conscripts always on hand and available as food 
 for powder ! And thirdly, because it is neither decent nor 
 fair to put coercion and restraint on any one section of society 
 without applying an equal pressure to every other. To cut an 
 organism like human society into two sections, to one of which 
 the most drastic, despotic central control is to be applied, while 
 the other section is to have unlimited laissez-faire to welter, 
 sprawl, and gender in as it pleases, is not only a moral injustice, 
 but an intellectual insanity. And when it is done under a 
 theory of evolution as generally sane as that of Mr. Ramsay 
 
THE FABIANS AND PARLIAMENTARIANS. 57 
 
 Macdonald, one must press him hard to tell us precisely whut 
 he proposes to do with this ineffectual expanding tail. Does 
 he agree, for example, with Carlyle, who in disgust with the 
 hopelessness of laissez-faire methods, humorously but grimly 
 proposed in Sartor Resarhts to shoot them outright, like Spartan 
 helots, as good rifle-practice for the more ingenuous youths ! 
 Or would he rather, as an alternative, emigrate them wholesale 
 to other lands '. Or would he, on the other hand, prefer to 
 stop their breeding by penalties, or by artificial methods like 
 those proposed by Bradlaugh and John Stuart Mill ? Or, 
 perhaps, he would break up their warrens in the slums, and 
 (as ought to have been done any time for the last fifty years) 
 spread them evenly over the whole country as fertilising 
 compost, instead of allowing them to concentrate and stagnate 
 like poisonous sewage. Or, lastly, in despair of any or all of 
 these solutions, would he leave them, with their free laissez- 
 faire tickets on their backs, to hang for ever on the necks of 
 mankind, as the negroes are doing to-day, and will continue to 
 do, on those of the Americans — or what? And when he and 
 his fellow Fabians of the House of Commons have selected 
 their method, I shall then challenge them openly to announce 
 this method to their constituents — that very tail on whose 
 votes they (with their intellectual ideals) illegitimately draw, 
 and on whom they depend for the installation of their regime 
 in power. But will they ? I trow not. 
 
CHAPTEK IV. 
 
 A DIALOGUE WITH MARX.* 
 
 TN this my final chapter I have been deflected unintentionally 
 from iny normal course by an irruption of the followers of 
 Marx and the Social Democratic Federation, who have given 
 me roundly to understand that no triumph of mine or another's 
 over the sentimental " Clarionettes," of whom Mr. Blatchford 
 is the leader, or over the Parliamentary contingent, as repre- 
 sented by Mr. Snowden and Mr. Ramsay Macdonald, and, 
 above all, over those half-hearted Laodiceans and waiters-on- 
 Providence of the Fabian Society — Mr. Wells, Mr. Webb, and 
 Mr. Bernard Shaw — will avail me a jot unless I can get out 
 of the way, first of all, Karl Marx's great book on Capital — 
 the basis, as they declare, of the only Socialism worthy of the 
 name, and on which, or on nothing, their Utopia, should it 
 ever arrive, must rest. And as the main body of the Socialist 
 Press keeps on reiterating this opinion of my ardent and 
 stalwart young friends of the street-corner, whose sincerity 
 and unselfish devotion to their cause cannot for a moment be 
 doubted, I feel I have no alternative but to accept their 
 challenge in the friendly spirit in which it is offered ; the more 
 so as 1 am pricked to it as a point of honour by one of their 
 number, who tells me plainly that the depths of Marx are 
 " beyond the reach of my comprehension." 1 had, indeed, 
 'Fortnightly Beview, July, 1908. 
 
A DIALOGUE WITH MARX. 59 
 
 imagined that I had already said quite enough in my previous 
 articles to have got Marx out of the way altogether as a serious 
 Political Economist ; and I had hoped that with Marx and his 
 irreconcilables well under hatches, there might at least be a 
 chance of this discussion ending in some kind of scheme which 
 would draw all reasonable English Socialists nearer into line 
 with the other political parties in the State. Mr. Blatchford 
 had already, as we have seen, made me quite spontaneously 
 some important admissions and concessions ; Mr. Snowden has 
 added more, and Mr. Ramsay Macdonald yet others ; and later 
 on I was prepared on my own part to round off the accentuated 
 edge which I had put on portions of my argument, for the 
 purpose of cutting out more clearly those anomalies and 
 absurdities which lie concealed under every form of Socialism 
 as a practical working scheme for the present age of the world, 
 but which it is not the cue of any one of its representatives to 
 allow too openly to appear. I was also prepared to make a 
 number of concessions on my own account to what I believe to 
 be both good and true in Socialism ; but in imagining that I 
 had made even the slightest impression on the Social Democratic 
 Party and the other adherents of the School of Marx, it appears 
 that I was entirely mistaken. Mr. Hyndman, in refusing to 
 take up my challenge in this article to discuss with him the 
 Political Economy of Marx's book on Cajntal, tells me quite 
 frankly that nothing which has appeared in my former articles 
 leads him to think that I "understand Marx at all." Mr. 
 Belfort Bax, however, who, with Mr. Hyndman, is one of the 
 two accredited exponents of the Marxian Political Economy in 
 England, has gallantly stepped into the breach, and has willingly 
 consented to reply to anything that I might here have to say. 
 
 Now, the chief deterrent for English readers in Marx's book 
 on Capital, is not so much its profundity ; on the contrary, as 
 we shall see, it is a most simple and childlike piece of work ; 
 but is rather the difficulty of grasping it, owing to the peculiar 
 phraseology in which he has chosen to express himself. I have 
 
60 A CHALLENGE TO SOCIALISM. 
 
 just re-read the book for the purposes of this article ; and to 
 show that I am doing no injustice to his style, which is obscure 
 and involved to a degree, and besides is so vague by reason of 
 its endless circumlocutions and want of directness that it can 
 only be grasped with an effort, I shall inflict on the reader only 
 a single quotation, as a fair sample of the whole book. Let us 
 take the following mystic utterance : — " The value of a machine 
 is determined not by the labour process into which it enters as 
 a means of production, but by that out of which it has issued 
 as a product." Now this looks very profound, does it not? 
 And yet it only means this : — That the value of a machine is 
 determined not by the amount of wealth which it can produce, 
 even were it to rain down sufficient manna from heaven con- 
 tinuously to feed all mankind, but by what it will cost an 
 ordinary workman to buy its materials, fit the pieces together, 
 and feed, stoke, or otherwise attend the machine as it runs ; or, 
 in other words, its value is not as an invention, that is to say, 
 as a mental product, but as a mere piece of manual labour, 
 whether skilled or unskilled. But it would not have done for 
 Marx to yay so straightforwardly ; for not only did he himself 
 know quite well that it was the machine as an invention, and 
 therefore the inventor, who at bottom was both primarily and 
 ultimately the author of most of the added wealth which his 
 mere machine as a piece of wood and iron was giving to the 
 world ; but he knew as well that even the most stupid of the 
 workmen who either made or attended the machine instinctively 
 knew it also. And as his object was to get the Inventor of 
 the machine huddled away and hidden out of sight in the 
 background or wings of the stage ; and the Capitalist, who had 
 bought the machine with his own money, put under lock and 
 key as a criminal exploiter and thief, in order to concentrate his 
 limelight solely on the Workmen and their machines in the 
 centre and foreground of the stage; he was obliged to cover up 
 his footsteps as he went along, and, like the wily old fox he was, 
 try rather to elude the vigilance of his followers than honestly 
 
A DIALOGUE WITH MARX. 61 
 
 to assist them on the trail. Hence the series of sentences, like 
 the one I have just quoted, which attend him with ever- 
 increasing vagueness, reiteration, and obscurity throughout the 
 whole course of his book. 
 
 If Mr. Bax should reply that it is the mere " exchange " or 
 market value of the machine which Marx is dealing with here, 
 then I must press him for an explanation of why Marx, when 
 he is dealing with the wages of the workmen, should shift his 
 position from the mere "exchange " value to the "real" value 
 of their labour ? For he cannot have it both ways. If he 
 decide on the " exchang-e " or market value as his criterion of 
 value, everybody already gets his due — inventors, capitalists, 
 workmen, and all — by competition and the supply and demand 
 of the market;* if he decide on " real " value as his criterion of 
 value (as, indeed, he must do in a Socialist State where the 
 competition of the market is abolished), then the giving of the 
 navvy or workman the same pay as the inventor of the machine 
 is a convicted piece of imposture and absurdity. But all this 
 I have already said in effect in my previous articles. I must 
 therefore beg of Mr. Bax that he will be good enough in his 
 reply to me to take into his purview, as part of my impeachment 
 of Marx's book as a whole, those portions of my previous 
 articles in this challenge which bear on these particular aspects 
 of his doctrine, but which I have not the space to repeat again 
 here. By so doing he will enable me to concentrate on the 
 only part of the book bearing on the relation between the 
 
 •Readers who may be interested in seeing what a flood of light may be 
 thrown on practical economic problems by reducing all their factors into 
 terms of real cost (as distinct from the "exchange" and "utility" value 
 with which alone the ordinary text-books deal) can be recommended to read 
 Mr. Ewart S. Grogan'sbook, " The Economic Calculus," as well as its popular 
 sequel, "Tariff: the Workmen's Charter." In the ordinary text-books, so 
 indefinite and variable a quantity or thing as " Labour " is made the standard 
 in relation to which all other things exchange with each other ; but in Mr. 
 Grogan's book, Food standardized according to the amount of nutritive 
 material it contains, is made the measure of real cost, into terms of which all 
 "value," "labour," "capital," "machinery," "production," "consumption," 
 "profit," " interest," &c., maybe reduced as into their common denominator. 
 This once done, all economic calculations henceforth become simple matters 
 of addition or subtraction. 
 
62 A CHALLENGE TO SOCIALISM. 
 
 Political Economy of Marx and his Socialism, on which I have 
 not yet touched. In the present article, therefore, I propose 
 to put this part of Marx's book into as plain Enoflish as I can 
 command; and should I then still be charged either with 
 misrepresentation or omission, shall throw on Mr. Bax the 
 burden of transcribing the passages from Marx which go to 
 prove the charge. 
 
 The general problem, then, which Marx proposed to himself 
 was: — How by putting into his logic mill a heterogeneous 
 multitude of Inventors, Men of Science, Capitalists, Organisers, 
 Financiers, and skilled and unskilled Workmen of every shade 
 and degree, to bring them out at the other end, all on a footing 
 of perfect economic equality f Now, one would have said, not 
 only on grounds of economic justice, but of ordinary human 
 reason, that an equality of pay among them all would have been 
 regarded both as a theoretical and a practical impossibility. 
 Not so, thought Marx; and it was to show his army of 
 working-men followers not only that in strict justice they ought, 
 morally speaking, to get an equality of pay with their capitalist 
 masters, but that if they would only follow his prescription in 
 seeing that this justice was rigorously enforced, they must, 
 and would, get it on true economic princij^les as well, that he 
 wrote his book on Capital. This, however, was perhaps the 
 least perplexing part of his problem, for it was comparatively 
 easy to persuade the workers of the truth of doctrines which 
 were so obviously framed in their own immediate interest. 
 The real difficulty arose when he had to show this motley crew 
 of workers, skilled and unskilled, how they themselves, too, 
 like a Barnum's " happy family," could by the magic of his 
 scheme be all induced to lie down peacefully together on an 
 equal rate of pay — a difficulty all the greater, inasmuch as the 
 small number of intelligent and highly skilled mechanics in 
 their pride of rank and superiority, showed up against the loose 
 Falstaffian regiment of nondescript unskilled casuals, like a 
 thin sprinkling of gold-epauletted officers against the rank and 
 
A DIALOGUE WITH MARX. 63 
 
 file. But Marx, undaunted by all difficulties, entered on his 
 task with a light heart, and started out gaily with his first 
 purely economic proposition, which was : — That in the present 
 stage of the world and of competitive industry, salaries, wages, 
 and pecuniary remunerations of all kinds, except those which 
 are regulated by custom or law (and so do not belong to 
 Political Economy as such), are not paid according to ability, 
 but entirely according to supply and demand, or, in other 
 words, according to the relative scarcity or abundance of the 
 competitors who enter the field at any given point ; as you 
 would soon discover, he assumes, if the Kelvins, the Edisons, 
 the Bonapartes, the Turners, or the Pattis of the world lay as 
 thick on the ground, and were to be picked up as easily for 
 the stooping, as either your ordinary working-men or even 
 your skilled workmen. We could breed at a pinch, he thinks, 
 as many '' great men " as we require for every emergency of 
 life, just when, where, and as we want them, precisely as we 
 would mushrooms or cabbages ! " Pray pardon my interrupting 
 you at so early a stage of your argument," I interpose, "for I 
 have noticed that all the men of your school, as we shall see 
 presently, carry this huge imaginary presupposition with them 
 into every argument, as if, indeed, it were an elementary axiom ; 
 in the hope^ apparently, that it may escape detection among 
 the number of considerations which at the first blush would 
 seem to countenance it. Now, although this presupposition 
 of yours may be true in ultimate Nature, or, if you like, in the 
 decrees of Providence or Fate — as, indeed, the fact that 
 successive generations of mankind in their passing away and 
 giving place to each other, always leave someiohei^e on the earth 
 great men enough in every department of life to carry on the 
 evolution of the icorld as a lohole to higher and higher issues, 
 would seem to indicate — it is not true that the breeding of 
 them can be done as yet by any means known to Science ; nor 
 is it likely to be practically applicable for generations yet to 
 come. Nor is it possible for any particular nation to premise 
 
64 A CHALLENGE TO SOCIALISM. 
 
 that the great men necessary for its particular development 
 shall arise within its own borders ; and, above all, it is not true, 
 should any particular State, by its own man-made laws — like 
 that decree of Herod for the ' Massacre of the Innocents,' de- 
 signed to catch Jesus in its net — exterminate these great men 
 outright as they arise ; nor, again, if priding itself (as you 
 Socialists do) on its facility in reproducing them as they are 
 wanted, should drive them away by poverty, tyranny, or 
 disgust to other lands, where their particular genius will find 
 a welcome, and where, with adequate liberty and remuneration, 
 they are encouraged to expand and put forth all their fniit. 
 If Corsica, for example, had been still united to Italy instead 
 of to France during the early manhood of Bonaparte, how 
 different indeed would it and must it have been for the future 
 of France and the world ! Your presupposition is only true 
 provided that all the wo7'ld has embraced a Socialist regime 
 organised on your particular pattern ; but that, again, is for 
 the millennial time, when all the other factors making for 
 absolute equality in the conditions of life shall have been 
 levelled up to it, but not for any age of the world yet visible 
 through the most powerful of time-piercing telescopes. How- 
 ever, apologising for my interruption, and admitting your 
 assumption for the moment — what is the next step in your argu- 
 ment? " " Why this," continues Marx — "if men are paid not 
 according to their ability or the quality of their work, but only 
 according to the numbers of them in the field of competition, 
 it follows, does it not, that if there be any necessary difference 
 in their salaries, wages, or incomes, it can only come, under 
 fair and equal conditions, from the length of time they work, as 
 there is no other alternative. And from this it follows aofain. 
 that if we could get all men to work the same number of hours 
 a day, and in each of their hours do an average stroke of work, 
 without either loitering or hurrying (average " labour time ") ; 
 and if each class of these workers would only make just as 
 much of its own particular product as was necessary to meet 
 
A DIALOGUE WITH MARX. 65 
 
 the demand, neither more nor less (" socially necessary human 
 labour ") — just the right number of shirts or clothes, or house- 
 hold utensils, or cutlery, or what-not — would not this make 
 the wages of all men equal who were doing honest work to the 
 best of their ability ? " " For, look you," he goes on, " if the 
 supply of the same commodity is always kept equal to its 
 demand, its price, or value, must remain the same ; if different 
 commodities take the same average time to make, their prices 
 too must remain the same (or vary only in proportion to the 
 length of that time) ; and if all men work the same number of 
 hours a day, and at the same pace — whether engaged in mental 
 or bodily labour matters not — then would not the wages, salaries, 
 or incomes of all men be the sai7ie ; and so at last the economic 
 status and earnings of our colossal magnates on the one hand, 
 and of their sweated, exploited, poverty-stricken and over- 
 toiled workers on the other, be reduced to equality?" "Yes," 
 I assent, " but that is because things that are equal to the 
 same thing 7nust be equal to one another ; and I should as soon 
 think of denying the truth of these elementary propositions of 
 yours as I should of denying the axioms of Euclid ; or of 
 denying the proposition that if you divide up a ten-acre field 
 into closed compartments, each of the same size and with the 
 same quantity of grass and water in each, and into each of these 
 put a single colt, the present and future economic condition of 
 these colts in food and drink must be equal, however much 
 they might have differed had the colts been allowed freely to 
 overleap their fences, or get at each other's provender by 
 kicking these fences down ! No, it is not your economic 
 propositions which I intend to dispute ; it is the " ifs " and 
 "ands," the "provisos" and "conditions" with which you 
 have hedged them round, that give me pause. For should 
 any of these, like Shylock's e^vact pound of flesh, miscarry in 
 the event, all the old inequalities of wages and incomes under 
 the regime of Capitalism would flow in again from all sides : — 
 as, for example, if little groups of workmen in certain trades 
 
66 A CHALLENGE TO SOCIALISM. 
 
 should make little " corners " among themselves by working 
 longer hours ; or, as in piecework, should push their work 
 through more expeditiously in a given time ; or, like miners, 
 should restrict their output to keep up prices : or, like retailers, 
 should continue their customary tricks of sale, or what not ; 
 and in the end these increments and differences between one 
 class and another, or one set of workmen and another, would 
 gradually roll themselves up like snowballs, and at last destroy 
 that very equality of incomes which you consider ought to be 
 the prerogative of all human beings, and which you say must 
 sooner or later be realised at all costs." "How then," I repeat, 
 "are you going to handle these 'ifs' and 'ands' and 'con- 
 ditions ' so as to compel all wages and incomes to work out on 
 a level equality? " " Nothing could be simpler," replies Marx, 
 " for if you will only let me take over all the instruments of 
 Production, Distribution, and Exchange, and will supply me 
 with a complete register of the state of demand and supply of 
 every commodity, whether of brain or hand (a thing which the 
 State could easily do), and will undertake as well to see that 
 no more commodities of each kind are at any time made, or 
 kept on supply, than will just meet the demand, I will under- 
 take to guarantee in turn that men shall have equal incomes — 
 or, rather, not I, but these laws of Political Economy which I 
 have just laid down, will do it for us of themselves, whether I 
 guarantee it or not — Voila ! " And then, turning round to his 
 followers, he asks: "How does this strike you, my comrades? 
 Cannot you, with your numbers, your votes, and, if necessary, 
 your physical force, see to it that these ' conditions ' of mine 
 are fulfilled ? " Whereupon the millions of working-class 
 Socialists in Germany, France, and England, like the simple- 
 minded Othello when he heard of the discovery of the handker- 
 chief, jumped up and with one accord exclaimed, " Now do we 
 see 'tis true " ; and, as if their imaginary swords were already 
 leaping from their scabbards, declared that if this were all, he 
 might rely on them to see that it was done. " But softly for 
 
A DIALOGUE WITH MARX. <57 
 
 a moment," interposes Marx, waving over them like another 
 General Booth his deprecating hand, " you cannot be expected 
 to do this thing as individuals and by yourselves, you know ; 
 the State must do it for you collectively, as it were ; only you 
 must give the State your individual allegiance, authority, and 
 support." " Done ! " said the men ; and with this the shade 
 of Marx vanished, and Socialism as a living force was ushered 
 into the open arena of the world. 
 
 Now, the above, stripped of the obscurities of style and pre- 
 sentation by which Marx has enshrouded it, and by which he 
 has sought to give it a show of profundity, is the real inner 
 logical core of the doctrines embodied in his book on Capital. 
 But I would respectfully point out to his followers of the Social 
 Democratic Federation that these simple truisms are not, as 
 they fondly imagine, sufficient to justify them in regarding his 
 book as a new departure in Political Economy. Like the 
 mathematical axiom that things that are equal to the same 
 thing are equal to one another — to which, as we have seen, 
 they are an exact parallel — propositions like these of Marx are 
 involved at every stage of every argument of every system of 
 Political Economy that ever was written, whether those 
 systems are true or false. They are, in fact, mere identical 
 propositions, from which no practical conclusion whatever, 
 having any scientific validity, can ever be di'awn ; and remind 
 one of nothing so much as of those mediaeval biologists, who 
 imagined they were telling of something important when they 
 announced with all gravity that the " vital principle was the 
 cause of life " ; or of that modern barber who once told me 
 that he had explained to one of his clients who was exercised 
 in his mind as to the cause of his baldness, that it was due — to 
 the loss of his hair I Besides, the logic of the whole scheme is 
 as useless and inept for all practical purposes as that of the 
 Quakers and other Utopians, who solemnly assert that if all 
 the world would only keep the peace, there would be no war ; 
 and if no war, then how much more happy and blessed we all 
 
68 A CHALLENGE TO SOCIALISM. 
 
 should be ! It is not, therefore, the Political Economy of 
 Marx that need give us the least concern, except, perhaps, his 
 doctrine of " surplus value," which I have already exposed in 
 ray former articles, — but which, I may remark in passing, my 
 opponents, so far, have either agreed with me in repudiating, 
 or have passed by in severe silence on the other side. It is, I 
 again repeat, these " ifs " and " provisos " and " conditions " in 
 which Marx has enveloped his simple economic platitudes that 
 are alone important for us either to dispute or to consider ; 
 and to these I must, in the remainder of this article, transfer 
 the entire burden of my argument. 
 
 We will begin, then, by asking : — What living human reason 
 there is for believing that if the mass of working-men who 
 have the votes, and could to-morrow, by simply walking to the 
 nearest ballot-box, realise those blessings of a Universal Peace 
 on earth, to which they pay so devout a lip-homage, — and that, 
 too, without a tax either on their principles, their liberties, or 
 their pockets — and yet in spite of the prayers of Quakers or 
 Saints will not do so, but, on the contrary, will continue, like 
 mediaeval theologians, to find grounds of quarrel in the most 
 trumpery pin-points of distinction of i*ace, colour, or creed ; 
 what living reason, I ask, is there for believing (unless, indeed, 
 in some fit of temporary political insanity, or hypnotised into 
 it by abstract clap-trap phrases) that these men, or any or all 
 men, who are still, as I have so often to repeat, three-fourths 
 animal, will consent to annihilate at a stroke their liberty, their 
 self-interest, their vanity, and, above all, their devouring love 
 of social inequality, for so entire an overturn of all their habits, 
 their customs, their traditions, their modes of life, and their 
 very human nature itself, as the taking over of all the instru- 
 ments of Production, Distribution, and Exchange, by some 
 empty abstraction called the State, would involve? None 
 whatever. 
 
 Where, then, lies the fallacy, the reader will ask ? It lies 
 in their neglect of the great general fact, that a healthy man is 
 
A DIALOGUE WITH MARX. 69 
 
 a creature who everywhere and always lives in the future — in 
 the look-out ahead from the prow, and not in the retrospect 
 from the stem — and that the taking of chances in consequence 
 is the very life-breath of his existence. It is only the insane, 
 the idiotic, the old, the intellectually, morally, or spiritually 
 dead, who live in the past or the present ; and, if so, what sort 
 of an outlook into the future do the Socialists propose to offer 
 to the trillions of men, each of whom, in order to carry out 
 their scheme, will have to be imprisoned like our young colts, 
 from youth to age, in separate compartments, with every 
 "condition" of their lives reduced to an enforced equality; 
 and how do they propose to prevent them from overleaping 
 the fences in which they are confined ? My answer is, that it 
 can only be done by a restriction on their liberty as complete, 
 an espionage of each by the rest as jealous, vigilant, and un- 
 relaxing, and a despotism and discipline as all-pervading and 
 crushing, as ever prison walls inflicted on their usually 
 sufficiently fed but always unhappy inmates. Let us consider, 
 then, how it will work out In detail ; and take first the 
 Scientists, Inventors, and Discoverers, whom Marx has ruled 
 entirely out of his economic scheme, but whom Mr. Blatchford, 
 throwing over his Marxian street-corner followers bodily, 
 agrees with me in regarding as the real authors of the " surplus 
 wealth " of the world, on whom not only all other brain- 
 workers, but a good half at least of the present population of 
 the world depend for their very existence. How, then, will it 
 fare with these men of genius under a Socialist regime, with 
 the ropes around their necks, and with the pay of the coal- 
 heavers as their reward ? Manual workers of all kinds, whose 
 work Is seen, and can be appraised from hour to hour, may, it 
 is true, as the history of the world shows, be kept up to their 
 work, even if by the lash ; but how about the brain-workers 
 whose methods and processes are unseen '^ " Oh ! give them 
 their reward for the time being," say the Fabians ; " for if we 
 don't, they can bolt elsewhere, and leave us in the lurch ; but 
 
70 A CHALLENGE TO SOCIALISM. 
 
 see that this reward is cut down to a minimuin, as a set-oft 
 against the fact that they need us as much as we need themJ" 
 " No," says Mr. Blatchford and the Clarionites, " let them take 
 their reward out in honour instead ; wealth would only corrupt 
 them ; and besides, we can do without them altogether for that 
 matter, and live on what they have already given us when their 
 existing patents run out. If they don't like it, well then, let 
 them go, and we will breed as many more of them for ourselves 
 as we want, and just when we want them, as we breed 
 vegetables or chickens." " No, not at all," say the Marxian 
 main body of street-corner stalwarts, " not a penny more than 
 a navvy shall any one of them have ; for if he does, it will 
 bring back all the old inequalities of fortune, and all the old 
 exploitations again ; and after all our labours we might just as 
 well remain where we are, in the old sty as before. But if they 
 try to escape and leave the country, arrest them at the ports of 
 embarkation and bring them back again " ! 
 
 But, leaving the brain -workers, and allowing them to shift 
 for themselves, and to escape from the tyranny as best they 
 can, what are we to say of the rest of the world, penned up in 
 their millions, each in his separate box, each working the same 
 number of hours, at the same average pace, and each with the 
 jealous eyes of his comrades upon him to see that he neither 
 exceeds nor falls short of his stint of work ; and yet each, like 
 our young colts, longing to " kick over the traces " and get 
 for himself, in pastures new, a breath of liberty % What of 
 these % Why, they would die of boredom and disgust. And 
 if to these chains are added those of a broken-up family life, 
 with husbands separated from wives, and both from children 
 (for this is the prescription of the most rigid sect of Socialist 
 Pharisees), no government once inaugurated and set to work 
 on these lines could endure for an hour. The world of men 
 would die rather than submit to it ; for it is one thing to whip 
 oneself up into i-aptures over State Socialism while you are still 
 free, as over war while you are still enjoying the blessings of 
 
A DIALOGUE WITH MARX. 71 
 
 peace ; each may be good as a diversion or sport, or as casual 
 relief from monotony or tyranny ; but to contemplate a 
 continuance of either for an indefinite time, and especially for 
 the "dim common population" whose main occupation in life 
 is, and must be, in their humble way and with the general 
 approbation of their fellows, to raise their heads before they 
 die, be it ever so little, above those of the same rank, class, 
 occupation, or condition as that in which they were born or 
 brought up ; this forced economic equality, fastened on them 
 like an iron vv^aistcoat, would, I repeat, be at once their social 
 and moral death. But in this opinion it would appear that I 
 have reckoned without my host ; for the Socialists, not 
 apparently having ever suspected this forward chance-taking 
 outlook of all healthy human creatures from the prow of the 
 boat, but having been taught by existing political philosophy to 
 regard only the dShris, the backwash, the social wreckage, and 
 the excreta left by laissez-faire to accumulate in its wake, and 
 to generalise from that alone as if it were human life ; the 
 Marxians, I say, think they have a device by which they can 
 turn the flank of objections such as those I have just raised, 
 and by means of which the mixed millions of brain- workers, 
 the skilled and unskilled manual workers, the hopeless incapables 
 of the slums and all, can be kept each in the little separate, 
 equal-sized, equal-conditioned pens in which, with their equal 
 supply of money or food, they have been imprisoned by Marx — 
 and all so quietly, peaceably, and contentedly, that not a kick 
 of revolt or even a sigh for the good old times of liberty is left 
 in any one of them ! Now, this strange imagination takes its 
 rise from that most curious and Utopian, perhaps, of all the 
 Socialist's dreams, namely, that mankind in general, when once 
 their pecuniary anxieties are relieved by the economic equality 
 which the Socialists would practically confer on all alike, would 
 immediately apply themselves as an outlet from their restraints 
 to the higher things of the mind as their rightful birthright 
 (after being so long defrauded of them) ; and would be found, 
 
72 A CHALLENGE TO SOCIALISM. 
 
 after their short and leisurely hours of labour, sitting in crowds 
 in the galleries of vast amphitheatres during the rest of the 
 day, listening to the discourses of modern Platos on the 
 Immortality of the Soul; to ethical lectures on the " Perfect 
 Life " or the Higher Criticism ; to artistic and literary 
 dilettanti on the higher beauties of Michael Angelo, Wagner, 
 Browning, or Meredith : to lectures on Philosophy by the 
 Herbert Spencers of the time ; or to religious hymns, like the 
 "Red Flag," in praise of Socialism itself! Now, as I would 
 treat this method of preventing the young colts " kicking over 
 their traces " by making them stand on their heads — with the 
 State alternately hypnotising and whipping them up to keep 
 them there — with the serious consideration which the Socialists 
 themselves have given to it, the first remark I would make is, 
 that just as the number of really " great men " In the world in 
 any and every walk of life at any one time in its history is a 
 mere handful, so the numbers of those who really appreciate 
 and enjoy the higher things of the mind for their own sake is 
 the merest fraction of a fraction of every community ; and that 
 by no process yet known can either the State or Religion, 
 either gods or men, by merely bringing them to the bread and 
 waters of life make them either eat or drink freely. Did the 
 Roman populace rise to this ideal height, even when they were 
 supported by the State, and when the corn ships fr(>m 
 Alexandria, Sicily, and North Africa, which fed them, arrived 
 at the mouth of the Tiber with the regularity of the tides'? 
 Did the highly-cultivated Greeks, after their conversion to 
 Christianity, and at a time when each man of them really 
 believed that he would have to answer for himself before the 
 Judgment Seat — did they spend the rest of the week in 
 meditating on the words of the " golden -mouthed " Chrysostom 
 after listening to his Sunday discourses ? Not they ; on the 
 contrary, they rushed instead to the doors of the Circus, and 
 when they got inside fought over the colours of their favourite 
 charioteers of the "blue" or the "green" factions, with the 
 
A DIALOGUE WITH MARX. 73 
 
 mingled desperation and revenge of a crowd of lynchers in the 
 Southern States. And so, too, the men of the Middle Ages, 
 who also walked through life on pain of eternal perdition at 
 every turn, crowded the bear-gardens rather than the churches, 
 and listened more eagerly to stories of illicit love than to 
 discourses on morality — except, perhaps, when the Puritans, 
 frightened out of their wits by midnight visions of hell, put an 
 embargo for a season on all mundane joys alike. And why, I 
 ask, should it be different to-day? Whence, then, did this 
 idea of the Socialists of founding their Commonwealth on the 
 virtues and on the higher life of the soul arise ? And how did 
 it get its foothold of feasibility ? 
 
 The truth, I believe, lies in that old fallacious assumption 
 that " the love of money is the root of all evil," which the 
 Socialists have stolen without acknowledgment from a Christi- 
 anity in which they do not believe, and which is the source 
 of all their Utopian dreams. Now, although good as a 
 doctrine for a Kingdom not of this world, or for a millennium 
 on earth believed to be close at hand, as in the early days of 
 Christianity ; when preached to a human animal who can 
 reach his heaven on earth only by the slow process of evolution, 
 who is still knee-deep in the primeval slime from which he is 
 only just painfully emerging, and especially to men who have 
 been led by some abstract hocus-pocus of a theory, like that of 
 Rousseau or Marx, really to believe that by a dead heave and 
 a general overturn it might be realised to-morrow, it is a most 
 pernicious and even poisonous doctrine. For while I am only 
 too willing to insist that dire and widespread poverty below 
 the human decency line is a curse to the State as great as its 
 opposite, the accumulation of colossal fortunes in the hands of 
 a few who have both the power and the eagerness to exploit 
 this poverty, I will still venture to contend that the pursuit 
 and even the struffo-le for wealth, if its maximum amount in 
 the case of each individual is rigorously restrained by law, 
 taxation, or public opinion within a sufficiently elastic and yet 
 
74 A CHALLENGE TO SOCIALISM. 
 
 comparatively narrow belt, would be the salvation of the world 
 in its present stage of evolution — and not, as priests and 
 Socialists imagine, its bane. For it provides that scope for 
 human inequality which is as absolutely demanded by a creature 
 like Man, when you try to force on him an absolute equality 
 with his fellows, as is its opposite, the love of equality, when 
 he is down in the ranks, or is what Mr. Blatchford calls " the 
 bottom dog " — if, that is to say, there is to be any game of 
 life properly so-called at all. And it has besides this unique 
 merit that, when the game is played under stringent rules, 
 sternly enforced, and leaving no loopholes for evasive scoun- 
 drelism, it is a training in that moral self-restraint and con- 
 sideration for others out of which all the higher social virtues 
 of every kind can grow. Compared, indeed, with this efficacy 
 of money-making as a school for human virtue for the masses of 
 mankind, when thus conditioned and restrained, and as a 
 means of satisfaction for their love of inequality, the boasted 
 efficacy of manly, healthy field sports, much as I believe in 
 their value for the few who can actively participate in them, 
 shows up in perspective like the merest shadow of a shade. 
 But that the Socialists should seek to build up the world anew 
 by an industrial overturn, with the express object of reducing 
 all mankind alike to a dead-level of economic equality, and by 
 the doctrine of " average labour time " keep them there at 
 each and every stage of their passage through life, so that 
 there would really be no game of life to play, or race of life to 
 run at all; this, I repeat, far from throwing them on their 
 higher nature for relief, as a resource against the boredom and 
 troubles of life, would throw them back on their primal 
 instincts and passions rather, and in the end would plunge them 
 into barbarism again. P^or rather than sit there in this beggarly 
 enforced equality, scraping together the few odd shillings 
 which under any circumstances would, relatively speaking, be 
 the utmost which the doctrine of " average labour time " 
 could or would permit any one individual to acquire over 
 
A DIALOGUE WITH MARX. 7.5 
 
 another by his most careful saving ; rather than come to this, 
 the world of active men, who live in the future, as we have 
 seen, rather than in the present or past, with their economic 
 future once secured to them whatever befalls, would from sheer 
 desperation and ennui beguile their time by a universal 
 gamble ; would exchange their wives like flies ; or, like boys, 
 take to personal combats in the streets for the purpose of 
 getting some kind of personal inequality at least recognised 
 among them ; and, like the old Roman populace whose bread 
 was secure, would in the end turn the cities of the world into 
 vast amphitheatres for the exhibition of their personal prowess. 
 Or, if not that, then, like French peasants, they would make 
 the saving of these shillings their religion ; and would thereby 
 destroy, as ruthlessly as if they were Red Indians, all the 
 richer amenities of the higher civilised life, living by the 
 chase or on roots and herbs, or like wandering Arabs, beyond 
 the reach either of the riches or the poverty of Civilisation. 
 Mankind, in a word, would run to seed, and revert to its 
 original wild stock again, as surely as do the highly-cultivated 
 plants and flowers of the conservatory when left to propagate 
 themselves promiscuously in an open field. And in the absence 
 of all that hope of promotion which the existence of gradations 
 of loealth alone can hold out to the undistinguished millions of 
 mankind, men would be left without resources at forty, when 
 their physical powers or personal attractions were being super- 
 seded by those of younger men ; and at fifty would have to be 
 chloroformed outright to get them out of the way ! Speaking 
 broadly, this is no exaggerated fancy picture ; for unless human 
 nature itself is going to change in the meantime by the mere 
 advent of a Socialistic regime and by a universal equality of 
 material fortunes, all the analogies of experience confirm it, 
 and all the deeper analogies of History give it proof. So 
 important is it for States to have at hand some simple common 
 measure of universal desire, like money, as a basis of inequality 
 on which the qualities and achievements of their citizens can 
 
76 A CHALLENGE TO SOCIALISM. 
 
 range themselves as on a scale in the pursuit of what is called 
 " success in life." And as all the basal instincts of men look 
 to the future, as I have already said, and have the hope of 
 inequality both as their stimulus and their goal, there can, I 
 am convinced, be no question that the pursuit of wealth, when 
 severely restricted in amount, both in its upper and its lower 
 registers, is by its double action in at once restraining the 
 unsocial passions and stimulating the active powers of man, 
 the best soil yet known out of which the higher interests of 
 the Family and the State can grow. Absolute political equality 
 may be good, bad, or indifferent for mankind at the present 
 stage of his evolution ; but as for the Socialists, not content 
 with this merely political equality, but going on the principle 
 apparently that if a single full dose of arsenic is good, a double 
 dose must be better, they would, with a want of penetration 
 which is as infantile as if the world were born but yesterday 
 and History had nothing to teach them, stick an extra plaster 
 of economic equality as well on the top of the political one ; 
 and so would poison their patient in the innocence of their 
 hearts whilst really believing they were giving him an added 
 strength ; forgetting that in thus cutting off such reasonable 
 inequalities as are necessary to keep the activities of the most 
 energetic spirits aglow, and, above all, those inequalities of 
 money incomes by which alone the great masses of mankind 
 can be roused to exertion, they have cut away the roots of the 
 tree from which alone the blossom and the fruit — namely, the 
 Ideal — can spring and grow. 
 
 Such would be the effects if the Socialism of Marx and of the 
 street-corner orators and their followers should succeed in 
 the vain imagination of trying to make mankind stand on its 
 head rather than on its feet ; and if the leaders of the Marxian 
 main body should succeed in imposing what they call Marx's 
 " new system " of Political Economy ou the world. 
 
BOOK II. 
 
 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICS. 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 MR. BENJAMIN KIDD'S "PRINCIPLES OF 
 WESTERN CIVILISATION."* 
 
 T PROPOSE in this paper to make a few observations 
 -■- on Mr. Kidd's new book, Principles of Western Civilisa- 
 tion, with the view of helping those readers who have not made 
 a special study of the subject to some knowledge of what the 
 problem of Civilisation as it stands at the present time really 
 involves, and under what category Mr. Kidd's book is to be 
 placed in regard to it. 
 
 And perhaps I may as well say frankly at the outset that the 
 farther I proceeded in the volume the more disappointed I 
 became with it ; and when I found one by one the definite 
 results so hardly won for historical science by generations of 
 students and specialists of the different periods, all washed out 
 by a mop, as it were, in the interests of a particular hypothesis 
 which the farther I went seemed to me to be ever the more 
 confused, cloudy, and unreal, my disappointment was complete. 
 For Mr. Kidd, instead of taking up the problem where his 
 predecessors had left it, modifying their results while em- 
 bracing and embodying all that M^as of value in them, as is the 
 recognised mode of all scientific observers, has chosen to stalk 
 ruthlessly over them all, as if unaware of their existence. No 
 mention, for example, is anywhere made of the systems of 
 * Fortnightly Revieiv, April, 1902. 
 
80 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICS. 
 
 Corate, of Hegel, of Buckle, of Guizot, to say nothing of 
 lesser lights, and even Mr. Herbert Spencer himself, whose 
 work, however one-sided it may appear to many, has neverthe- 
 less, on that one side at least, proceeded on the strictest lines 
 of scientific evolution, is only mentioned to be patronised and 
 dismissed as if he were a mere tyro. And all, as I have said, 
 in the interests of a hypothesis more cloudy, empty, and unreal 
 than any I have yet known. For in this work, as I hope to 
 demonstrate presently, Mr. Kidd has retrograded to a stand- 
 point vaguer, more crude, and, scientifically speaking, less 
 advanced than any occupied by those earlier philosophers 
 whose works he so lightly brushes aside. 
 
 Comte, it will be remembered^ divided the whole course of 
 Civilisation into three stages, namely, that in which Aggressive 
 Warfare prevailed, that in which Defensive Warfare prevailed, 
 and lastly, our present stage of Industry ; and these divisions 
 not only were firm and well defined, but had tangible realities 
 at the back of each of them. Buckle, on the other hand, split 
 it up into two divisions, one in which Superstition mainly 
 prevailed, and the other in which Physical Science played its 
 part ; and this division, too, although ignoring many other 
 equally important factors, nevertheless rested on tangible realities 
 whose effects are easily recognised through the course of history, 
 and on which you can place your hand to-day. But Mr. Kidd 
 breaks the back of Civilisation quite in two, at the time of the 
 birth of Christ ; not to place the two divisions under the 
 influence of principles which have a real operative efficiency in 
 themselves, but under a couple of abstractions which, even if 
 true, could have no more operative power than if they had 
 been a triangle and a circle respectively. But they have not 
 even the definiteness and distinctness of outline of these 
 geometrical abstractions ; on the contrary, they are so vague 
 and shadowy that they not only give the reader considerable 
 difficulty at the outset in definitively fixing them, but their 
 outlines are so changeable, shifting, dark, and uncertain, that 
 
MR. KIDD'kS "principles OF WESTERN CIVILISATION." 81 
 
 under them the operator, like a magician, can work any hocus- 
 pocus he pleases. These two vague and shadowy coverlets 
 Mr. Kidd figures as the spirit of the Present, and the spirit of 
 Future respectively ; or, to put it more precisely, as that some- 
 thing which in the one division of Civilisation is represented 
 as centring men's lives on the aims and interests of the present 
 hour alone, and that something which in the other is re- 
 presented as centring them on an indefinite and shifting future 
 somewhere or somewhen, now in heaven, now on the earth, and 
 now in both, as the exigencies of his argument require. 
 
 This division of Civilisation into two parts is made by Mr. 
 Kidd coincident with the dawn of Christianity, all mankind 
 before that point being represented by him as lying, like the 
 brutes, under the shadow of the Present, without hope or ideal 
 in the Future either for themselves, or for their tribe, their 
 nation, or their State ; all after that point as projecting their 
 centre of action into an Ideal World yet to be realised. In 
 other words, all peoples living before that epoch, being born 
 without the sense of the Ideal or Infinite to cast its rainbow 
 colours into the Future, lived, like the brutes, only for the 
 interests of the day that was passing over them ; all after it, 
 possessed of a sense of this Infinite and Ideal, lived and worked 
 for a something in the Future better than they had in the 
 Present, but which they individually might not live to see. 
 Having thus cramped and squeezed the history of mankind so 
 as to fit it into these two divisions prepared for it — under the 
 shadow of these two cloud-capped abstractions, these two huge, 
 immeasurable Brobdignagian hats — and having duly labelled 
 them respectively the Present and the Future, or that which 
 has its centre of eflficiency in the Present and that which has 
 its centre in the Future, " projected efficiency," as it is called, 
 Mr. Kidd then stands back from the picture as a whole, and 
 contemplates this wondrous explanation of the evolution of 
 Civilisation with awe ; and as each feature of it appears to him 
 more wonderful than the last, triumphantly exclaims, with 
 
 F 
 
82 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICS. 
 
 Dominie Sampson, " Prodigious," " remarkable spectacle," " the 
 overshadowing significance of which has never dawned on the 
 world before " ; while, when he thinks of his poor predecessors, 
 or of contemporary thought in general, he talks of '"its 
 intellectual basis being completely struck away," and as being 
 "dwarfed into comparative insignificance " by his new discovery. 
 Not only so, but nearly every paragraph is heralded with the 
 remark that it is " one of the most interesting facts," or is " one 
 of the most surjirising spectacles " that history offers, and the 
 like, quite in the manner of the medicine-vendors who stand 
 at the corners of the ofF-streets of our main thoroughfares 
 and, pointing with their sticks to the maps of the organs of the 
 body before them, tell their gaping audiences that this is the 
 heart, "the most wonderful organ of the body"; that the 
 stomach, "second only in importance to the heart," while the 
 listeners, like boys who are told that certain specimens in a 
 museum are " fish " and othei's " reptiles " or " mammals," are 
 expected to exclaim " how wonderful " ; or like children are 
 expected to be satisfied when told that the cause of baldness 
 is the loss of hair! For, as we shall see presently, the two 
 principles of Civilisation, which appear to Mr. Kidd so wonder- 
 ful that their significance has never dawned on the world 
 before, arc really only othei' naviex for the phenomena to be 
 explained, and not real explanations at all. And hence it is 
 that when these unreal pseudo-causes, the spirit of the Present 
 and the spirit of the Future, which, like the wand of the 
 magician, are supposed to work such wonders, although they 
 are really nothing but the things themselves over which they 
 are flourished ; when once these have been stripped off, it will 
 be seen that Mr. Kidd's book is not a philosophy of the 
 evolution of Civilisation, as its title would seem to imply, but 
 is really only :i record of certain stages and [)hases in that 
 evolution, in winch there is nothing original or tliat has not 
 been published in scores of volumes. 
 
 And further, instead of working out the course of historical 
 
MR. KIDD'S " PRINCIPLES OF WESTERN CIVILISATION." 83 
 
 evolution from point to point along its own line, as a biologist 
 does with animals, and letting it tell its own tale sim])ly and 
 independently, he projects his two vague and abstract 
 hypotheses into each division of Civilisation, and picks out, as 
 we shall see, only those haphazard historical facts which seem 
 to support his classification, but which, even when they fall 
 under it, receive no illumination or explanation from it. And 
 in order to do this he is obliged, as we shall presently see, to 
 pervert the course of History and to confuse all recognised 
 landmarks and categories both of language and of thought. 
 And besides, with the back of Civilisation thus broken in two 
 in its very centre, as it were, he can furnish us with no single, 
 continuous, unbroken line of development such as evolution 
 demands, which shall either illuminate the Past or help us to 
 steer our course in the Future. For what we want to know is, 
 not that there are creatures that can be labelled as fish, reptile, 
 monkey, or man, however interesting this may be, but how the 
 fish passed into reptiles, how the monkeys became men ; not 
 that certain nations at certain periods centred their intei'ests 
 on their own nation in the Present, while others included the 
 Future in their purview as well, but (inasmuch as Man has to 
 forg-e for himself the ideals he uses to advance himself from 
 stage to stage, as a blacksmith his tools) how at each stage he 
 made for himself the bridge that carried him across to the 
 next. This is the great problem of Civilisation, as it is the 
 problem of Biology ; not the mere breaking up of the process 
 into divisions, and after labelling these divisions, invoking as 
 causes those labels which are only general names for the 
 separate things which have to be explained. 
 
 And why, again, one naturally asks, this surprise of Mr. 
 Kidd's, expressed in such phrases as "tremendous importance," 
 " extraordinary reach," " remarkable spectacle/' " overshadow- 
 ing significance," " never before has a principle of such reach,"" 
 etc. (and this, too, from a professed evolutionist to whom 
 gradation and continuity everywhere, without cataclysms, 
 
84 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICS. 
 
 should be an axiom of thought) : why this surprise that at one 
 period of CiviUsation men found their interest and pride in the 
 glorification of their particular tribe, or nation, or State alone, 
 and at another and later period found it in working for the 
 good of other nations as well — and since the French Revolution, 
 even for the negroes, the yellow races, and humanity generally — 
 why this surprise, we ask? Why not as much surprise that 
 there should ever have been a time when thei-e were savages 
 and barbarians who did not even know the value of shirt collars, 
 or that there ever was a time when there were not only no 
 savages but no apes, no lower mammalia, no birds, no reptiles, 
 no fish, but only molluscs, worms, sponges, and the like. Why 
 any surprise at all? They were all stages in the one unbroken 
 process of evolution. 
 
 But now to come more to detail. And first I have to show 
 that Mr. Kidd's separation of mankind before and after the 
 advent of Christianity into two divisions, namely, of those living 
 in the present hour without ideal of any kind stretching beyond 
 the Present, either in this world or the next, and those who 
 had an ideal in the Future which made them dissatisfied with 
 the present, would be to divide mankind not into men and men, 
 but into men and brutes, to wipe out, as with a sponge, the 
 one thing that distinguishes men of every age and time from 
 the brutes, namely, the sense of the Ideal, and so to pervert 
 and vitiate the entire course of human history. For consider 
 it. For forty centuries or more before the birth of Christ the 
 innumerable myriads of the Egyptian people had, in their 
 prayers to Osiris, recounted their charities, their deeds of 
 mercy, the uprightness of their dealings with their neighbours, 
 and their gifts to the holy priests, the temples, and the gods, 
 and had given orders for their bodies to be embalmed, all in 
 the hope of a more glorious future somewhere than they had 
 known in this world. .For seven or eight centuries before 
 Christianity, not only was the life of every Roman bound up 
 with tlic j»rosperity of his city in the present, but ever as it 
 
MR. KIDD's " PRINCIPLES OF WESTERN CIVILISATION." 85 
 
 extended he identified himself more and more with its fortunes, 
 until in the end its continued existence into future ages became 
 synonymous with Civilisation itself. So long, indeed, had it 
 been a kind of universal postulate that when Rome fell the 
 world should fall, that in the general consternation that ensued 
 on her capture by Alaric, St. Augustine had to reassure the 
 Pagan world, whom Mr. Kidd represents as living only for the 
 day that was passing over them, by conjuring up before them a 
 " City of God " within the Empire, which should continue its 
 glories long after its colossal framework had been broken and 
 its merely political unity had for ever passed away. For ten 
 centuries or more the Jews had believed themselves to be the 
 people chosen by Jehovah Himself, not only as His own peculiar 
 people in the present, but as heirs of His future Kingdom ; and 
 had lived in that sweet dream during all their wanderino;s, their 
 persecutions, and their exiles, until at last not only the nation 
 as a whole, but each individual in it, longed and hoped and 
 prayed for the Coming Messiah, and for that day when all 
 nations should come up, even from the ends of the earth, to 
 worship on the holy hill of Zion. But more than all, the 
 Hindoos, for centuries before the Israelites appear on the scene, 
 had looked to the time when, by their asceticism and mortifi- 
 cations, their penances, fastings, and prayers, they should be 
 deemed worthy to unite Avith that Universal Spirit or Brahm 
 which to them was alone real ; while Buddha, still before the 
 time of Christ, had taught his followers how to realise their 
 dream of escaping from the miseries and sorrows of this life, as 
 well as from the weary rounds of reincarnation yet to be 
 traversed, in a Nirvana of everlasting extinction or rest. 
 
 Now, each and all of these nations, having souls in them as 
 well as bodies, lived in some ideal of the future, which they 
 hoped to realise either in this world or in another ; and for Mr. 
 Kidd to break the Evolution of Civilisation into two antithetical 
 halves in order to prove the opposite, simply because it was not 
 specially a Christian Heaven they were looking forward to, is 
 
86 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICS. 
 
 to obliterate the very first category on which Evolution 
 proceeds, namely, that of continuity of essence with infinite 
 vaiiation and difference in detail ; and so to put himself as a 
 scientific historian quite beyond the pale of serious discussion. 
 Does he imagine that because the Egyptians looked only to a 
 future in the under-world or elsewhere, the Romans to the 
 future of their City or Empire, even when they had to give 
 their lives for it, the Jews to the futui'e of their race long after 
 they were individually forgotten, the Hindoos to a union in the 
 future with the Divine Spirit, and the Buddhists to a future 
 of everlasting rest — does he imagine that because Christianity 
 gave promise of a diflferent future, and carried in its core a 
 principle of wider expansion than the others (as I have myself 
 elsewhere abundantly shown), that, therefore, he is justified in 
 cutting Civilization into two, because he failed to find the 
 bridge which by natural evolutiom took men across"? To do 
 this is to revert to the position of those who, before the advent 
 of scientific biology, imagined that a whale must be a fish because 
 it swam in the sea, and did not, like other mammals, walk on 
 all fours and on dry land ! For, just as a shark, swimming 
 along in the natural way, has to turn on its side or back the 
 more easily to catch its prey, so Civilisation has at times to 
 turn bottom upwards, as it were, the better to effect its ends ; 
 as when the colossal despotism of Rome, entrenched in Physical 
 Force and backed by the great and powerful of the world, had 
 reduced the greater part of mankind to slavery and ignominy, 
 Christianity had to come in to give the underside of Humanity 
 — the poor, the down-trodden, the oppressed — that chance of 
 liberty and expansion which was for ever denied them in the 
 existing world. But all this topsy-turvj-dom, which to the 
 superficial eye looks like a cataclysm of Nature, is only one 
 other of the means by which Civilisation reaches its ends; and 
 to imagine tiiat it was not the same evolution that effected the 
 transformation, ah iiough by a difference of means, is to imagine 
 that it was not the same shark that turned over to cutch its 
 
MR. KIDD'S " PRINCIPLES OF WESTERN CIVILISATION." 87 
 
 prey, but some other fish ! Mr. Kidd might as well ask us to 
 regard it as a breach in evolution because at certain points of 
 time, for the greater material comfort and convenience of men, 
 railways replaced coaches, steam-power horse-power, electricity 
 gas ; and to exclaim in wondering surprise, " marvellous 
 spectacle," " profound significance," " a principle never seen in 
 the world before ! " He must choose between Evolution and 
 Cataclysm, each of them in its own way a potent instrument to 
 conjure with still, but he must not attempt to combine both. 
 
 But not only does Mr. Kidd pass his mop over Civilisation 
 in general, obliterating all its recognised lineaments and land- 
 marks, but he does so, too, over nearly every special period on 
 which he touches. An instance or two may be picked out here 
 and there as samples of what I mean. Take, for example, his 
 account of the Gnostic and other heresies of the Early Church. 
 He represents these heresies as having been extruded from the 
 Church because they were relapses into that life in the present 
 which he made distinctive of Paganism, and so would have 
 closed again that ideal in the future which Christianity had 
 opened up to men. Now, if there is one thing more than 
 another which will show you at a glance whether an individual 
 is living in the present hour and in the satisfaction of his own 
 natural virtues, or in a future not yet realised, it is the practice 
 of Asceticism. Wherever that practice prevails, whether 
 among the Hindoos or Egyptians of ancient times, or the 
 Gnostics and Monastics of Christian times, you may know 
 beforehand that men are attempting by it to realise in them- 
 selves virtues lying beyond the range of the Present and of 
 their own natural inclinations ; you may know, in a word, that 
 in whatever age of the world this practice is to be found, an 
 ideal of the future, unrealised as yet now and here, has been 
 opened up to the minds of men — an ideal which Mr. Kidd 
 confines to the ages of Christianity alone. Indeed, if there 
 were nothing more than this, it would be sufficient to show the 
 havoc made in history by the attempt to cramp Civilisation 
 
88 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICS. 
 
 under two separate antithetical hats, and would stamp Mr. Kidd 
 as unfitted by his want of penetration to be an historian of 
 Civilisation. As for the Gnostics, Arians, and other sects, 
 they were expelled from the Church, not because they were 
 wrapping themselves up in present indulgences — on the 
 contrary, with the exception of the Carpocratians, none felt 
 more deeply the need for redemption or subjected themselves 
 to more self-denying mortifications to attain it. Or does he 
 imagine that men like TertuUian and Origen, who did more, 
 perhaps, than all others beside to make the future of early 
 Christianity, but who were afterwards extruded as heretics 
 when the full-blown doctrine of the Trinity had been reached, 
 like fathers devoured by their own children — does he imagine 
 that men like these, who died in the very odour of sanctity 
 looking forward to a blessed resurrection, were living a life in 
 the present hour, or depending on their own merits and not on 
 those of Christ for salvation '? The thing is too ridiculous for 
 discussion. And as for the Pelagian heresy, again, had it been 
 accepted by the Church, it would no more have caused the 
 members to relapse into the Pagan life of the present, because 
 it made salvation depend on man's free will rather than on the 
 grace of God, than it does to-day among Calvinists and 
 Arminians respectively. 
 
 But dip into Mr. Kidd's volume where you will, and you 
 will find that his history has been muddled and perverted by 
 these empty chimeras called Principles, projected retrospectively 
 into it, and which, as we shall now see, are as practically useless 
 as they are unreal. But what can you expect from a writer 
 who, professing to be an exponent of Evolution, begins by 
 digging two great pits of the Present and the Future respec- 
 tively, which he figures as antithetical, as light and darkness, 
 into one or other of which all the facts of history are to be 
 thrown for interpretation. As well throw them into their 
 gi'avcs as far as any further use they can be for a Theory of 
 Civilisation is concerned. Indeed, were this j)ractice of writing 
 
MR. KIDD'S "principles OF WESTERN CIVILISATION." 89 
 
 histories of Civilisation on a basis of single antithetical 
 elements to prevail, we might have as many theories of 
 Civilisation as there are antitheses in Society — theories splitting 
 Civilisation into periods, in one of which War mainly prevailed, 
 in the other Peace ; one in which Force, the other Right ; one 
 Superstition, the other Science ; one political and social 
 Antagonism, the other political and social Co-operation ; one 
 Inequality, the other Equality ; one Despotism and Slavery, 
 the other Freedom and Industry ; and so on. 
 
 And now I have to remark that the worst of all these 
 attempts to split Civilisation into two antithetical halves is, 
 that they are of no practical value whatever. For when their 
 authors have brought their histories down to our own times, 
 and are then asked, " Well, what do you propose we should 
 now specially do 'I " what can they answer but to say, we have 
 a little too much War, let us have a little more Peace ; too 
 much Force, a little more Right ; too much Hunger, a little 
 more Bread ; too much Credulity, a little more Knowledge ; 
 too much hard Reality, a little more of the Ideal ; and the 
 like — all of which could with justice have been said at any and 
 every stage of Civilisation, and can be heard every day from a 
 thousand-tongued Pulpit and Press, as well as from the man 
 in the street. But we expect more from a philosopher of 
 Civilisation. We expect him to tell us how these various and 
 complex factors of Civilisation are related to each other, and 
 how they can be combined at any particular point of time so 
 as to get what we want, and so to advance Civilisation another 
 stage. But all that Mr. Kidd can do is, like the rest, to cry 
 out, Let us have a little more free play of thought and indi- 
 viduality, a little more Industrial Liberty, and a little more 
 Religion ; but of how to set about getting it, which would have 
 been a real test of his insight into Civilisation, not a word. 
 
 How, then, the reader may ask, do I suggest Mr. Kidd ought 
 to have proceeded in order to have made his work both a true 
 and a useful philosophy of the evolution of Civilisation. He 
 
90 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICS. 
 
 ."should, I submit, have done something like the following : — 
 He should have represented the v^hole movement as a single, 
 continuous, uninterrupted process from beginning to end, and 
 not broken in two in the centre. He should have made it set 
 out like a boat from the shore of pure Brute Force and 
 primitive savagery, and gradually cross the stream, getting 
 ever nearer the opposite or Ideal Shore though never reaching 
 it, or never, indeed, until the Millennium comes. He should 
 have shown that each point in its course represents the actual 
 net result of Liberty, Morality, and Social Expansion solidly 
 realised and won from the primitive barbarism and night. And 
 he should have shown that at each point this result was not 
 the result of any mere general abstraction like his spirit of 
 efficiency working in the Present, or "projected efficiency" 
 with its centre in the Future, but was the net resultant, at 
 once of the co-operation and of the opposition, of all the 
 factors engaged — Religion, Government, Philosophy, Science, 
 and Material and Social Conditions generally — and instead of 
 dipping into the current here and there, should have worked 
 the whole process out continuously from stage to stage. It 
 would then be seen that just as all the artillery of thunder and 
 lightning and storm clouds in the heavens are but means for 
 watering the earth and making it fruitful, so all the religions, 
 governments, sciences, wars, institutions, and ideals of men 
 are but means for the gradual increase of individual and of 
 social Morality, and for the greater and greater expansion of 
 the human spirit. This alone is the core of Civilisation, all 
 else but husk ; and the direction taken by this line in the past; 
 and the combination of means by which at each point it was 
 effected, not only will give us the direction in which we must 
 steer in the future, but will yield us principles and precedents 
 innumerable on which to draw for hints as to how we are to 
 combine existing forces to reach the next stage. This would 
 be a real Philosophy of Civilisation, fruitful in speculation and 
 useful in {)ra('tice. But Mr. Kidd's theory can give us nothing 
 
MR. KIDD's '■ PRINCIPLES OF WESTERN CIVILISATION." 91 
 
 of all this. It is what an American friend of mine calls a 
 " one-horse theory '' of Civilisation — that is to say, a theory 
 where the presence or absence of a single general element ii^ 
 made to explain each and every stage of progress, namely, the 
 principle of Projected Efficiency. Now you can no more get 
 the explanation of a particular stage of evolution from a single 
 abstract element, or from that element and its polar opposite, 
 than you can get an explanation of a particular temperature 
 fi'om heat or cold in the abstract, or of a progressive increase 
 of light from light or darkness in general. To get these you 
 must have at least some third element to fix and definitise 
 them. And so with Civilisation. But Mr. Kidd's flag of 
 " Projected Efficiency " floats gaily alone over the entire period 
 of Modern Civilisation, ignoring not only Government, 
 Philosophy, and Material and Social Conditions generally, but 
 most extraordinary of all, perhaps, the immense influence 
 exercised on every aspect of thought and life by the Copernican 
 Astronomy and by Modern Physical Science. 
 
 But is there no truth at all in Mr. Kidd's account of 
 Civilisation ? the reader will ask. Now, to answer this, and to 
 be quite fair to Mr. Kidd, I will assume for the nonce that his 
 doctrines are all quite true, and shall now ask the reader to 
 consider with me what that truth really amounts to. And 
 nothing, perhaps, will better help to make my meaning clear 
 than an analogy from Biology. But to definitely fix Mr. 
 Kidd's position, let us take the summary of his two principles 
 of Civilisation. He contends that the principle that presides 
 over the first division of the break he has made in Civilisation 
 is one in which the ruling end is being obtained by the sub- 
 ordination of the individual to existing society ; the principle 
 that presides over the second is one in which existing society is 
 subordinated to the society of the future. Now, without 
 waiting to do more than merely allude to the confusion of 
 categories by which the individual in the first is contrasted, 
 not with the individual in the second, but with society — a 
 
92 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICS. 
 
 cardinal error in logic — it will be apparent to the reader that 
 this division corresponds precisely to the earliest, simplest, 
 vaguest, and least scientific stage of Biology, namely, that in 
 which livinor thino^s were divided into the Veofetable and 
 Animal Kingdoms respectively ; the vegetables corresponding 
 to Mi\ Kidd's civilisations that lived only in the Present, being 
 rooted to their place and unable to move ; the animals, corre- 
 sponding to Mr. Kidd's civilisations that lived in a wider 
 Future, being, whether as individuals or as herds, free to roam 
 over areas distant from those in which they were born. If 
 this be a true analogy, I submit that just as a more scientific 
 stage in Biology was reached when the Vegetable Kingdom in 
 general was divided into the Flowering and the Flowerless 
 Plants respectively, and the Animal Kingdom into Molluscs, 
 Fish, Reptiles, Birds, the lower Mammals, and Men, so it 
 would be an advance on Mr. Kidd when some one of his own 
 school should subdivide again his first division, namely, of men 
 living in the Present, into men living for their own Family 
 alone in the Present ; men living for their Tribe alone ; men 
 living for their State alone ; and, finally, men living for their 
 Empire alone ; and his second division into men living for a 
 future life in Heaven alone, as among the Early Christians and 
 the Church and monks of the Middle Ao;es ; men livincr as 
 individuals for Heaven alone, but, finding that the earth was 
 not coming to an end so quickly as they expected, trying to 
 distil some of the dews of Heaven on to Society below, as up 
 to the Reformation period ; then men living still for a future 
 in Heaven as individuals, but determined tliat the will of God 
 should be done on earth as in Heaven, as in the Reformation 
 period ; then since the French Revolution, men inspired with 
 a vision of a more glorious future for society on earth, when 
 freed from the feudal and priestly chains which prevented its 
 expansion ; and, lastly, this idea still further intensified, but 
 inspired by a different view of how the Infinite works, and 
 what it requires of us in this world. Now this, it is evident, 
 
31R. KIDD'S "TRINCIPLES OF WESTERN CIVILISATION." 93 
 
 would be a more scientific classification than that of Mr. Kidd, 
 which jumbles them all together under the two vague divisions, 
 of those who live for the Present, and those who live for the 
 Future. But even had he advanced to this classification, 
 what would it have amounted to ? It would only have been 
 a record of stages, not a scientific account of their evolution. 
 For just as Darwin did not begin his account of the evolution 
 of species until the vegetable and animal world had already 
 been distributed into their various classes and divisions, so a 
 true scientific account of the evolution of Civilisation could 
 not properly begin until long after the stage reached by Mr. 
 Kidd ; not, indeed, until after some future Mr. Kidd had still 
 further subdivided his two divisions in the way I have 
 indicated above. For just as the biological problem of 
 evolution is not so much to relegate any special animal to its 
 class or species, as to find hoio species pass into each other and 
 by what connecting links, so the problem of Civilisation is not 
 to point out that this or that people is living in this or that 
 stage, but hoio Society got across from one stage to another, 
 and by what methods it forged the instruments which it used 
 for the purpose. It would have to show how Grseco- Roman 
 Paganism, for example, got across to Christianity by way of 
 Judaism ; how Judaism forged the conception of God which 
 was used for the purpose ; what changes in its environment 
 necessitated the change of the Early Church into Catholicism ; 
 Catholicism into Protestantism ; and Protestantism into the 
 Liberty and Equality of Rousseau. And not only so, but it 
 would have to show how the strange metaphysical bedfellows 
 who forged the necessary doctrines for these transitions, and 
 Avhom (although they mutually anathematised and made 
 heretics of each other) Mr. Kidd manages to get to lie down 
 quietly together under the same coverlet, namely, the doctors 
 of Early Christianity, Ante-Nicene Christianity, Catholic 
 Christianity, Reformation (Christianity, post Reformation 
 Christianity, and so on ; how these passed into each other by 
 
94 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICS. 
 
 natural evolution, — all this is the problem of the Evolution of 
 Civilisation for any writer who would be up to date. But no- 
 where does Mr. Kidd make any attempt to show how any one 
 of these things was brought about ; he merely records the fact 
 that so it was, in the same way as if one should record the fact 
 that in the course of evolution the molluscs gave place to fish, 
 fish to reptiles, reptiles to birds, birds to mammals, and 
 mammals to men. 
 
 To sum up, then, we may say : (1) That Mi-. Kidd's book is 
 not a scientific evolution of Civilisation or of any part of it, 
 but a mere historical record. (2) That it is not a closely- 
 written history but a series of generalised sketches picked out 
 at certain points. (3) That its explanations are mere labels 
 attached to its divisions, and these divisions, again, are of the 
 most primitive scientific character, like the division of Life 
 into the Vegetable and Animal Kingdoms. (4) That to cramp 
 his facts under these two immeasurable hats of the Present 
 and the Future he has to pervert history, confound all human 
 categories, and lump together things most opposite in essential 
 nature. (5) That he nowhere even starts on the real problem 
 of Civilisation, namely, of showing hoto one stage passed into 
 the other, and by what means, and out of what materials, Society 
 forged the tools necessary for these transformations, or how the 
 great factors of Religion, Government, Philosophy, Science, 
 and Material and Social Conditions co-operated at each point 
 to produce them. (H) That he cannot, in consequence, get 
 any fixed, con tinous, and definite line of direction oi Civilisation, 
 and so has no line — as that of a mariner's chart — by which to 
 steer the course of evolution, either in the present or in the 
 future. (7) And lastly, that, incredible as it may seem, he 
 nowhere assigns any part in the development of Modern 
 Civilisation to the results of Astronomical and Physical Science. 
 
 And now a word or two as to the general style, tone, and 
 manner of the book. And here, again, we may say that it 
 possesses all the characteristics which one would expect in a 
 
MR. KIDD's "principles OF WESTERN CIVILISATION." 95 
 
 work in which facts and principles have to be clipped, tortured 
 and coerced, in order to get them to lie down peacefully 
 too^ether under the two vague and ail-embracing abstractions 
 with which Mr. Kidd seeks to cover them. Tom-toms are 
 beaten, cannon salvoes are kept booming all along the route, to 
 herald the approach of the new revelation, while he, panting 
 and breathless in the midst of it all, and in a white intensity 
 of earnestness, first hypnotises himself with the importance of 
 his message and then hypnotises his readers by wrapping it up 
 in a cloud of words and phrases, windy, confused, and without 
 real definiteness or point ; while in the one particular of sheer 
 repetition, the world of literature, I will venture to say, has not 
 its parallel. Like that tailor whom I once saw sitting cross- 
 legged in the grounds of a Canadian asylum, fiddling without 
 intermission all day long as if engaged in some life-and-death 
 struggle with his instrument, and who, I was told, began the 
 morning with the continuous repetition of a single tune, but as 
 the day wore on added another and yet another to his repertoire, 
 repeating each of them from the beginning with quickened 
 intensity of pace until, by nightfall, he had fallen over exhausted, 
 Mr. Kidd starts out modestly enough with the repetition of 
 some single phrase, but keeps adding others and yet others to 
 it, hoarding them all the while and counting them over ant! 
 over lest any coin of them should be lost, until, when the 
 middle of the work is reached, the list becomes so long, and the 
 repetition so tedious, that not only is the narrative blocked at 
 every turn, but it is with the greatest difliculty that you can 
 keep your attention until it begins again. One can stand the 
 house that Jack built, and the malt that lay in the house that 
 Jack built, and even the rat that ate the malt that lay in the 
 house that Jack built, but when it gets to the cow with the 
 crumpled horn, the maiden all forlorn, the man all tattered and 
 torn, and the rest, and when you can see it all coming before it 
 arrives, nothing but the sheer sense of duty to your author can 
 avail to keep you awake through it all. The very drumming 
 
96 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICS. 
 
 of the sound and the regular repetition and fall of the same 
 phrases, and especially of that terrible one " within the limits 
 of political consciousness," drug and hypnotise the senses and 
 the mind. 
 
 The style, again, is that of bald prose, varied and interspersed 
 Avith eruptions of hyperbole all along the course of the work to 
 keep up the reader's attention ; one or other of such phrases 
 as " extraordinary character," " deep significance," " gigantic 
 problem," " over-mastering conviction," " one of the most 
 remarkable spectacles," etc., meeting you on nearly every page. 
 But in justice to Mr. Kidd it must be said that, amid all this, 
 one comes occasionally on islets of real narrative, scattered like 
 oases here and there in this desert of verbosity, and especially 
 in some parts of the sections on the Middle Ages and after. 
 You catch a hint of their coming from the flourishes with 
 which they are heralded, and you prick up your ears to listen, 
 but as a rule your interest will not be at once gratified, for the 
 chances are that just as you think you have come up to them 
 you will be whisked on to the house that Jack built, again, and 
 so you must bide your time. But when he has run through all 
 the variations on this theme, and, forgetting himself for the 
 moment, gets to his real subject, you have some really excellent 
 pieces of description, clear, straightforward, and illuminating ; 
 but these, alas ! become fewer and fewer as we proceed, until 
 towards the end all is lost in the general haze again. The 
 quality of intellect displayed, if one may venture to judge it 
 by the way in which the subject is handled in this volume, is 
 that of a vague discursiveness founded, it is true, on a wide 
 range of reading, but without real penetration into concrete 
 things and into the complex combinations of political and social 
 forces ; and so is unavailing for the wants of the present time, 
 which demand from the philosopher practical constructive 
 power and grasp ; the only effect being to give to those who 
 have lost all regard for Philosophj' another occasion to 
 blaspheme. Here, for example, is a passage in which Mr. 
 
MR. KIDD'S " PRINCIPLES OF WESTERN CIVILISATION.*' 97 
 
 Kidd sums up in italics the principle which, among the most 
 advanced peoples, is to come into operation in the future, and 
 from it as a specimen it will be apparent how greatly the 
 patience and intelligence of the reader are sometimes tried. 
 
 It is only within the great spaces cleared in the world-process around 
 ideals which are in the last resort the impression of the ethical principles 
 here enunciated, and which are held open and free in the present by an 
 irresistible will operating in obedience to a sense of responsibility to a 
 principle of tolerance transcending the claims of aU existing interests, 
 that the controlling meaning of the economic process can ever be 
 permanently projected out of the present on the world-stage ! 
 
 And with this I shall end. I have been severe on Mr. Kidd, 
 I am aware, and regret sincerely the necessity for it, but at a 
 time when so many of our best workers cannot even get a 
 hearing, the over-puffing of laborious mediocrity which has 
 brought a work like this to the very crest of the wave, is a 
 scandal which ought to be abated. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 MR. WELLS AS A SOCIOLOGIST.* 
 
 T PROPOSE in this paper to make a short commentary and 
 
 criticism on Mr. Wells's A Modern Utopia, that pleasing 
 
 imaginative excm'sion into the future of politics and society, 
 
 presented by him in recent numbers of this Review, and now 
 
 re-published in more permanent form as a book.^ But as my 
 
 space is limited I shall be obliged to confine myself almost 
 
 entirely to the claim which he himself makes on its behalf as 
 
 a serious contribution to the science of Sociology, both in its 
 
 methods and in its subject-matter. Now, although I have read 
 
 the book with genuine pleasure as an imaginative construction 
 
 of the kind with which his other works have familiarised us, I 
 
 confess I was somewhat surprised when I gathered from an 
 
 article by Mr. Wells that he had intended his work to be taken 
 
 much more seriously ; and especially when I ascertained that 
 
 its design was not so much to supplement as to actually 
 
 supplant, both in its method and its results, the works not 
 
 only of the founders of Sociology , but of the entire line of 
 
 their legitimate successors down to the present time. The 
 
 method of Comte and Herbert Spencer of founding conclusions 
 
 as to the future of Society mainly on generalisations of the 
 
 ways and means by which it has advanced in the past, he 
 
 characterises as a delusion, and declares that the proper and 
 
 • Fortni<jhtly Review, Sept. 1905. 
 
 (1) A Modern Utopia, by H. G. Wells (Chapman and Hall, 1905). 
 
MK. WELLS AS A SOCIOLOGIST. 99 
 
 distinctive method of Sociology, on the contrary, " its very 
 backbone," in shoi't, " is the creation of Utopias and their 
 exhaustive criticism " ; and further, that the existing political 
 and social world is to be measui*ed by the standard of these 
 Utopian ideals, and not vice versa. And accordingly we find 
 that this is precisely what Mr. Wells has done in his A Modern 
 Utopia. He has given us his personal version of the social 
 ideals of the future, has elaborated his picture, after the 
 manner of the novelist, with profuse descriptive details, con- 
 versations, didactic dissertations, and the like, all rich and 
 seemingly life-like in their imaginative setting ; and has held 
 up the whole before us as a model or standard to which not 
 only existing society but Sociology itself, and the past and 
 present generations of its exponents, are to be brought for 
 judgment. What, then, we ask, are the particulars of thit^ 
 Utopia ? Roughly, they are the following : — The whole world 
 is to be a single State, with all national boundaries obliterated 
 or abolished, a synthesis of all the races, tribes, and nations 
 existing on the earth, all speaking the same language, all like 
 friends and brothers, at peace with each other — European, 
 Negro, Mongolian, Semite — and all freely marrying and inter- 
 marrying as they choose. He tells us, further, that the political 
 power of this vast confederacy is to centre in an order of men 
 called the Samurai, who are to be the only administrators, 
 officials, and voters in his World-State, an order closed to mere 
 wealth, but freely open to all who by their intellect, virtue, 
 heroism, and self-restraint, are deemed worthy of it. He 
 further explains that this World-State is to be the sole land- 
 owner, as well as the owner of all natural sources of supply 
 whatever — food, fuel, electricity, wood, water, and the like, — 
 except what it delegates to local governments and municipali- 
 ties, who hold of it as of a feudal superior, and who let these 
 out in turn to individuals to carry out what experiments or 
 industrial plans they please, in perfect freedom ; the State 
 meanwhile, in the persons of the Samurai, looking on and 
 
100 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICS. 
 
 making a ring, as it were, for the best players in this game of 
 industry and of life, to fight it out in ; the winners being 
 rewarded, not with wealth mainly (for most of that reverts to 
 the State), but with positions of dignity and honour. He goes 
 on to tell us, too, that in his World-State units of physical 
 energy will be the medium of exchange instead of coin, units 
 of electrical energy chiefly, in which all accounts will be kept ; 
 and that as employment will naturally flow from place to place 
 according to where the supply of energy is the cheapest, the 
 price of this energy will tend to be always uniform, and not to 
 vary in value as gold and silver do when they are either too 
 plentiful or too scarce. Again, disputes between employer and 
 employed are to be referred to conferences between the repre- 
 sentatives of each, at which a minimum wage will be fixed, 
 although individuals will be allowed to make special bargains 
 for themselves above that rate ; while the State will make 
 itself the reserve employer, and will undertake to transport the 
 workmen from one part of the world to another as they are 
 wanted. As for the criminals, habitual drunkards, and ne'er- 
 do-weels, they are to be segregated and shipped as exiles to 
 islands in the outer seas, the State taking the necessary means 
 to prevent either them or the incompetent and useless citizens 
 from having children born to them. On the other hand, as the 
 bearing of healthy childi*en is a real service to the community, 
 all married women having children will be kept by the State ; 
 the danger of an excess of population being carefully watched 
 and guarded against by marriage laws ; while marriage itself 
 may be terminated by the infidelity of the wife, by drunken- 
 ness, crime, desertion, violence, or the failure of children after 
 three or four years of married life. 
 
 Such in rough brief outline is an abstract of the ideas to 
 which Mr. Wells has given an imaginative setting in his 
 A Modem Utopia, and which with a wealth of detail, in itself 
 quite admirable, he has painted in large letters on the walls of 
 the world, not only for the contemplation of the merely curious^ 
 
MR. WELLS AS A SOCIOLOGIST. 101 
 
 but for the instruction of statesmen, publicists, and sociologists. 
 Should others send in pictures differing from this of Mr. Wells 
 in this or that particular, whether of form or essence, he will 
 not object ; for it is his special point that it is in the com- 
 parison of these personal Utopias with one another, and of 
 existing institutions in turn with them, that the true method 
 of Sociology consists. You choose from the collection the 
 Utopia you most fancy, as you would a picture from the walls 
 of the Academy ; and when by a consensus of opinion Society 
 has agreed on the most excellent, there is nothing to do but to 
 set to work to realise it in the actual workaday world. But 
 how, it will be asked? Now, it is in the answer to this 
 question that the weak, indeed the fatal spot, in Mr. Wells's 
 Sociology will be found. For it is distinctive of his doctrine 
 that he will have nothing to do with the ordinary methods, the 
 ordinary ways and means of either existing Statesmen or 
 existing Sociologists. He expressly asserts that all inquiries 
 concerning the expedients whereby to meet the failings and 
 imperfections of existing institutions, although of importance 
 to the politicians, have nothing to do with Sociology. And the 
 reason he thinks the consideration of these ways and means is 
 of little or no value is, that they depend on past experience, 
 whereas the action of human beings cannot be depended on to 
 follow any generalisations or laws of human nature founded on 
 the past in the same way in which masses of matter may be 
 depended on to follow the law of gravitation, or its particles 
 the laws of chemical affinity. For to do this all men, he 
 contends, would have to be as alike as two beans or grains of 
 sand, whereas they are not so. Even two sheep are not exactly 
 alike, nor, if it comes to that, even two atoms ! And as for 
 human beings, each man or woman is so individual, so unique a 
 ci'eature, that he or she cannot, he thinks, be generalised, 
 lumped, or classified under any laws whatever drawn from the 
 actions of human beings in the past. You never can predict 
 what the next new man or woman you meet wiU do ; and indeed 
 
102 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICS. 
 
 it has been often said that a whole three-voKime novel might be 
 written and yet not exhaust the uniqueness, the individuality, 
 or the peculiarities of any living child of Adam ! Mr. Wells 
 admits, it is true, that if you could take men " by the thousand 
 billion," you could generalise about them as you do about 
 atoms ; but because the human race is neither as small as a 
 country parish, nor as innumerable as the sands of the sea, he 
 does not see how its actions can be generalised ! Now, if this 
 were true, it is evident that the past of human history and 
 civilisation could be of little use for our guidance in the future. 
 But one naturally asks, would nothing less than the " thousand 
 billion " for which Mr. Wells stipulates be sufficient for a 
 generalisation on human beings and their actions I Would not 
 the mankind of the present day, with its diversity of races and 
 types, be sufficient, especially when taken with the very exten- 
 sive knowledge we already have of the life and times of the 
 past ? M r. Wells thinks that men are very much like sheej) 
 and other living things in having this individuality and unique- 
 ness — only more so. It is true that no two sheep are quite 
 alike when narrowly inspected, any more than any two men ; 
 but would not a single flock of sheep, or, at any rate, the 
 relation between a few sample flocks, be sufficient to determine 
 the laws that will regulate the actions of sheep in the future as 
 in the past ? Or would nothing less than a whole world full 
 of sheep be sufficient for Mr. Wells ? Be this as it may, how- 
 ever, it is certain that generalisation from human life and 
 experience in the past is not the true method of Sociology with 
 Mr. Wells. To give his assent to any such doctrine would 
 have been to bring his Utopia for judgment to the bar of 
 History, of Civilisation, of Experience ; whereas what he 
 insists on is, that generalisations from history, civilisation, or 
 experience are to be brought for judgment before the bar of hia 
 or another's Utopia. And even if his Utopia were to prove as 
 glorious and as perfect a creation as the millennial reign of the 
 saints, how are you going to get men to unite to bring it to 
 
MR. AVELLS AS A SOCIOLOGIST. 103 
 
 pass, if each man is so unique a being that you can no more 
 rely on his agreeing with his neighbour in his beliefs and ideals, 
 than in his taste in wines or the pattern of his clothes ■ But 
 soft you ! for Mr. Wells has another method still in reserve, a 
 method that will require no scheme of principles, no generalisa- 
 tions drawn from the Past, no constructive scheme of ways and 
 means founded on evolution, to bridge the transition to his 
 Utopian dream and gradually bring it to pass. It is a method 
 much more simple, the method namely of the conjurer, the 
 faith healer, the Hindoo mahatma and fakir. All you have to 
 do is to hoist your Utopia on high, like the serpent in the 
 wilderness, and get men to gaze at it until they become 
 thoroughly hypnotised and possessed by it. This once done, 
 the rest follows naturally and without any scheme of construc- 
 tive policy, or other scientific body of ways and means for 
 brido;inff the intervenino- stages that have to be travelled before 
 it is reached. All you have to do is to give the order, and the 
 old world will dislimn, and the fairy Utopia will take form and 
 substance in its place, arising like a dream out of the mist, or 
 the love goddess from the foam of the sea. 
 
 Now, I grant you that had Mr. Wells formed his Utopia, like 
 Mahomet his Koran, on a special revelation from Heaven ; or 
 had he, like Rousseau, been fortunate enough to catch the ears 
 of the leaders of public opinion in a time of revolution, as in 
 France ; or had he been merely the ordinary benevolent despot 
 with a sword in his hand, there might have been some hope for 
 him and his Utopia ; but to protest on the one hand that he is 
 only a simple, uninspired individual repudiating the help ahke 
 of supernatural agency and the sword, and only appealing to 
 science and reason, and yet, on the other hand, to repudiate the 
 methods of science and reason whose very essence is to con- 
 struct your future by the light of the Past, even when some- 
 thing new is always being added to it — this is to cut away his 
 own standing ground. Even Rousseau could not get his 
 Utopia except by the return to a fictitious Past, and by a vast 
 
104 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICS. 
 
 array of ways and means, which only failed because they were 
 based on a false Sociology, The truth is, the construction of 
 these model Utopias is as simple and cheap as the construction 
 of air castles or millenniums, for they consist precisely of those 
 combinations of things about which all people are so agreed 
 that it is not thought necessary to mention them. We should 
 all like, for example, to see a reign of peace on earth, with the 
 sword beaten into a ploughshare, and all men alike, Hindoo and 
 Hottentot, Chinaman and European, living in amity as friends 
 and brothers, all speaking the same language, and all obeying 
 a single code of the purest and highest laws ; we should all 
 like to see the governing classes of the world men of the 
 highest honour, intelligence, and integrity, like the Samurai 
 men of plain living and high thinking ; we should all like to 
 see poverty abolished, crime banished, happy homes, healthy 
 offspring, beautiful public architecture, and the triumph every- 
 where of artistic mechanical inventions for the comfort and 
 conveniences of life. But all this needs no preaching and 
 enforcing. What is wanted is tlie combinations of xcays and 
 means by which the world is to be conducted to these ideal 
 goals of the future — gradually and from stage to stage — com- 
 binations of Religion, of Science, of Government, of Material 
 and Social Conditions, and the like. You may preach peace, 
 for example, till doomsday, but with no result ; but if you can 
 only contrive to make the material powers of rival nations so 
 nearly equal that the results of fighting are too uncertain to be 
 risked, you will have struck on one of the most powerful per- 
 suaders to peace — as even old Thucydides saw. But Mr. 
 Wells, who begins by ignoring all the ordinary ways and 
 means derived from Science, from Evolution, and from the 
 History of Civilisation, puts himself in the position of the dog- 
 fancier who aims at a particular shape of head or jaw in his 
 breed of dogs, while ignoring the scientific laws of breeding by 
 which it is to be effected ; or of the engineer who would 
 like to span the ocean by a bridge, but ignores the difhculties 
 
MR. WELLS AS A SOCIOLOGIST. 105 
 
 which attend it ; or of the doctor who loves to contemplate the 
 image of perfect health, but ignores the laws of the organs and 
 functions by which it is to be reached ; or of the tlieologian 
 who would fix your gaze on Paradise, but without a scheme of 
 salvation by which it is to be attained. Now, it is the aim of 
 Sociology to help forward the realisation of Utopias like this 
 of Mr. Wells from stage to stage, by penetration into the 
 present world, and the working of its organised machinery — of 
 i-eligion, government, science, material and social conditions, 
 and the like — combined with generalisations founded on the 
 ways and means by which mankind has advanced in the Past. 
 But because, when minutely scrutinised, no two men, as no two 
 sheep, are exactly alike, but each is individual and unique, 
 Mr. Wells has no faith in any such ways and means, and will 
 have nothing to do with them. 
 
 And this brings us flush on the central fallacy in Mr. Wells's 
 whole conception, and it is this, that he thinks the uniqueness 
 and unlikeness of individuals on which he lays so much stress 
 is a problem for the Sociologist, whereas it is really the problem 
 of the novelist or dramatist. The problem of Sociology deals 
 entirely with the laws of men in the mass, who can be predicted 
 not to fly off at a tangent from each other, but to follow their 
 chosen leaders as surely, if not quite as regularly, as sheep, 
 whether it be in matters of taste, of fashion, of art, of politics, 
 or of religion. But are not these leaders themselves to be 
 regarded as uniques of whose future nothing can be known, 
 the reader may ask? As individuals, yes, but as leaders or 
 representatives of groups or classes, no ; otlierwise they would 
 not have been chosen as leaders. For the office of a leader, 
 that, indeed, for which he is chosen, is not so much to propose 
 some new end, ideal, or Utopia (for usually that has alreadv 
 been agreed upon) as to suggest the best wai/s and means of 
 reaching it. So long as he stands alone in the uniqueness or in- 
 dividuality of his genius, character, or ideals, he is not yet a real, 
 but only a potential leader. And it is because individual great 
 
106 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICS. 
 
 men in their capacity as leaders, follow as well as shape the 
 instincts and traditions of the masses whom they are privileged 
 to oruide ; and because the instincts and traditions of the 
 masses, in turn, follow the general laws of evolution proper to 
 all living things, that a science of Sociology, basing itself on 
 generalisations drawn from the evolution of mankind in the 
 Past, is possible. 
 
 But as for Mr. Wells's contention that the present science of 
 Sociology and its exponents are to be brought before the bar 
 of Utopias like his own, or those of Rousseau and the rest, for 
 consideration or approval, instead of his and their Utopias 
 being brought before the bar of Sociology — the thing is as 
 absurd as if he were to ask the present exponents of the science 
 of Biology to stand cap-in-hand before the ancient creators of 
 the mermaids, centaurs, and other fabulous creatures of the 
 imagination, and do homage to them. 
 
 But it is only when we trace the component parts of his 
 Utopian World-State to their origin, that the immeasurable 
 complacency involved in this claim of his to bring all existing 
 Sociology and Sociologists before it for judgment becomes 
 apparent. For it will be found that all those parts of his 
 scheme which are not merely modified versions of current 
 social aspirations and dreams, have been culled from the works 
 of those very Economists and Sociologists whom he affects to 
 ignore ; while at the same time he is careful to kick away the 
 ladder by whose aid he reached his conclusions. His single 
 World-State, for example, with its reign of universal peace and 
 human brotherhood, is a part of the current social ideal ; 
 although his mixing up of all races and colours in a common 
 promiscuity of marriage is decidedly new ! That his World- 
 State, again, should be the sole owner of the laud and instru- 
 ments of production is a commonplace of modern Socialism : 
 and is defended by Socialists, be it remembered, not as the 
 Utopia of some individual genius, thrown off at a happy 
 venture, but as the next stage in the normal evolution of 
 
Mi:. WELLS AS A SOCIOLOGIST. 107 
 
 Industry, founded on its evolution in the past. That the World- 
 State exists for the free play, elevation, and expansion of 
 individual minds, and should form a rinp^ around them for that 
 purpose ; and that the causal and initiating factor in all progress 
 (if not the controlling factor) is to be found in the new ideals 
 of Truth, Beauty, and Right, inaugurated by great men like the 
 elect of Mr. Wells's Samurai, is to be found in my Civilisation 
 and Progress, published twenty years ago. That the general 
 wealth, expressed by units of recognisable value, should take 
 the place of coin as a measure of value, has often been 
 broached, and was propounded to me in detailed form more 
 than a decade ago by Mr. Perdicaris, the late captive of Raisuli 
 the bandit of Morocco ; and a similar idea, placed on a mathe- 
 matical basis of ideal units, is to be found in Mr. Kitson's book 
 on the Money Problem, dating from Mr. Bryan's candidature 
 for the American Presidency. As for Mr. Wells's miscel- 
 laneous proposals, as, for example, the restraints on population 
 by marriage laws : the dissolution of marriage itself for 
 drunkenness, crime, violence, or the failure to have children ; 
 the establishment of State bureaus for the employment of out- 
 of-works, and for distributing and transporting labour from the 
 points where it is congested to those where it is wanted ; 
 disputes between employers and employed referred to con- 
 ferences between the representatives of each ; the restriction of 
 voting power to those who can show they have earned the 
 privilege by character and ability ; the segregation of criminals, 
 and the like — all these have been so worked into the very 
 texture of current sociological literature in books, magazine 
 articles, and contributions to the Press, that it would be 
 invidious to attempt to assign them to any particular authors. 
 
 And this brings us to Mr. Wells's most important claim on 
 behalf of his Utopia, which is that whereas all former Utopias, 
 like those of Plato, More, Harrington, Rousseau, and the rest, 
 were fixed and rigid arrangements cut out of the movino- 
 progressive world, and protected by walls, or by the seclusion 
 
108 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICS. 
 
 of mountain glens and the like, complete in themselves, and 
 exempt from all progress, change, or decay, his Utopia, on the 
 contrary, is a progressive one, changing and evolving w^ith the 
 years, and with the changing material and scientific conditions 
 of the world ; that, in short, it is a dynamical self-evolving 
 construction he has given us, and not a stereotyped, immobile 
 and statical one. 
 
 Now, if this were true, it is evident that Mr. Wells would 
 have given us the body of principles on which this evolution 
 would proceed, as Comte, for example, did when he based his 
 conception of the future of Western Europe (which Mr. Wells, 
 be it remembered, thinks is Comte's great contribution to 
 Sociology) on generalisations drawn from the evolution of 
 Society in the past, but adapted to new conditions. But this, 
 as we have seen, is precisely what Mr. Wells has refused to do, 
 on the ground that it is not the proper method of Sociology, 
 for the reasons we have seen. 
 
 The truth is, this Utopia of Mr. Wells is a purely personal 
 imagination of its author, founded, like any other millennial 
 dream, on what he personally would like to see realised ; its 
 details culled, like an artistic bouquet, from existing sociology, 
 political economy, and politics, but with no scheme of operative 
 causes by which it is to be realised, except that new men in the 
 future will have new ideas as they have always had in the 
 past; and that these new ideas will fight each other until the 
 strongest prevail, the Samurai guarding the ring, and seeing 
 fair play done ; a proposition as true but as barren as that so 
 long as human beings are born alive they will be found 
 kicking, and that so long as they continue to live they will 
 continue to do or to think of something new ! As for his 
 Utopia being one with a principle of evolution in it, and not 
 rigid and fixed like those of his predecessors, — had he em- 
 bodied his ideas in an abstract discourse, they would have 
 been seen to be as immovable and fixed as the statues of the 
 gods around the walls of a pantheon, but by draping his figures, 
 
MR. WELLS AS A SOCIOLOGIST. 109 
 
 after the manner of the novelist, in appropriate costume, he 
 would lead us to believe, skilful conjurer that he is, that his 
 Utopia is really alive and raovincr, with all the possibilities of 
 evolution and progress in it. We see the intellectual, high- 
 minded, and grave Samurai moving calmly about in their 
 white cloaks with purple borders, like old Roman senators ; 
 the women dressed after the manner of " the Italian ladies of 
 the fifteenth century," in soft coloured stuffs, their hair plaited 
 or coiled, but without hats or bonnets, and without changes of 
 fashion. We see the men, too, talking and acting as in life in 
 their hours of relaxation, drinking (but in strict temperance) 
 the soft and kindly Burgundy with their lunch, or " the 
 tawny port three or four times, or it may be five, a year when 
 the walnuts come round," not without good mellow whiskey in 
 moderation, "nor upon occasion the engaging various liqueur" ; 
 the line, however, being stringently drawn at ginger-ale and 
 lemonade, and those terrible mineral waters which only fill a 
 man " with wind and self- righteousness " ! But we are not to 
 be deceived by this show of life and colour, for having 
 discarded all the methods, laws, and principles of evolution, we 
 know beforehand that when once his puppets are placed in 
 position they will be as much fixed and rooted there in their 
 ultimate destiny as are the draped waxwork figures in the 
 showrooms of Madame Tussaud ; the only principle of move- 
 ment or change in all the scheme being this : — that new men 
 will have new ideas, and do new things, and so the world will 
 wag as of yore. 
 
 One might pursue the matter further from other points of 
 view, but the above, perhaps, will be sufficient for the purpose. 
 I cannot, however, close this paper without entering a protest, 
 in the interests of Sociology, at the tone which Mr. Wells has 
 chosen to adopt towards the work of the Sociological Society in 
 general, and of the past and present exponents of Sociology in 
 particular. One would have thought that common decency 
 and modesty would have restrained him from speaking of the 
 
110 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICS. 
 
 work of Comte and Herbert Spencer as that of a couple of 
 " pseudo-scientific interlopers " ; of characterising Spencer's 
 work as " an accumulation of desiccated anthropological 
 anecdotes that still figures importantly in current sociological 
 work" ; and of Comte's great law of the Three Stages as " a 
 smart saying passing muster when men talked raetapyhsics 
 and history and nonsense after dinner." After these amenities 
 one can have little doubt as to the kind of treatment that will 
 be meted out to the more recent exponents of science. And 
 accordingly we find Mr. Francis Galton's careful and im- 
 portant contributions to Sociology dismissed with a sneer; 
 those of Dr. Westermarck as " entertaining anthropological 
 gossip," while Dr. Steinmetz finds himself " in the position of 
 Mr. Karl Baedeker scheming a tour through chaos." Mr. Kidd, 
 too, comes in for his share of reprobation, and coupled with 
 his name is my own, to which, however, I should not have 
 referred were it not that I am prepared to offer Mr. Wells a 
 challenge. After a passing contemptuous reference in general 
 terms to our works, Mr. Kidd and I are definitely told that 
 " no one will ever build on these writers," that " new men 
 must begin again on the vacant site," and that " the search for 
 un arrangement or method continues as though they were not." 
 Now, Mr. Kidd may well be left to speak for himself, and the 
 followers of both Couite and Spencer are sufficiently able and 
 numerous to defend themselves or their masters from these 
 aspersions ; what I have now to say concerns my own position 
 only. The reader may remember that in an appendix to his 
 Modern Utojna Mr. Wells has added a chapter entitled the 
 " Scepticism of the Instrument," a paper read originally before 
 the Oxford Philosophical Society, and that in this paper he 
 claims to have discovered a new way of focussing the intel- 
 lectual instrument for the pur[)oses of knowledge. I have not 
 space to go into the matter here, but if priority of publication 
 in matters intellectual gives a claim to precedence in the rights 
 of property in ideas, I may be permitted to remind him that 
 
MR. WELLS 4S A SOCIOLOGIST. Ill 
 
 the substance of the positions he has taken up is to be found 
 in my first essay, " God or Force ? " written more than a 
 quarter of a century ago, and in my essay on '' Herbert 
 Spencer " a year or two later, and both republished in my 
 Religion of the Future. But the challenge I wish to make 
 Mr. Wells is in reference to his A Modem Utopia, and it is 
 this : — Barring the drapery that is proper to the novelist, let 
 him put his finger on any single sociological idea or principle 
 of the first rank in its range and scope in his book, or synthesis 
 of ideas or principles, whether in reference to the Samurai, to 
 the economics of Utopia, the relation of the sexes in Utopia, 
 the treatment of the vicious and of the failures, the restraint 
 on population, or, indeed, on any other division of the great 
 sociological problem (with the exception, perhaps, of the 
 mixture of races in unfettered marriage promiscuity) that is 
 not to be found in the works of one or other of the acknow- 
 ledged Sociologists and Economists, and published years in 
 advance of his own book, and I, for one, will willingly concede 
 his claim to have advanced by his work, A Modern Utopia, the 
 science of Sociology, but not till then. If he shall succeed in 
 doing this, we can then return afresh to the discussion of his 
 main contention, which is, that the proper and distinctive 
 method of Sociology, and, indeed, its very backbone, is " the 
 creation of Utopias and their exhaustive criticism."' 
 
 Since the above article was written, a work of great scope and compass 
 on the subject of Civilisation and Sociology has appeared from the pen of 
 Herr Houston Chamberlain, entitled, "The Foundatioi s of the XlXth 
 Century." It has only recently been translated into English, but I have 
 thought it right to mention it here, for the purpose merely of emphasizing 
 the fact that, whatever its other merits may be, and to me they are great and 
 various, it still remains largely academical in character ; and however true, 
 both in detail and in the large, its doctrines may be, there is little or nothing 
 in them that can be utilized for purposes of Practical Politics ; — and this for 
 the simple reason that, like the pious aspirations of Mr. Kidd, or the 
 gorgeous Utopia of Mr. Wells, they tell us only of what Civilization has to 
 aim at, but not of how we are to realize that aim. The book, in short, is a 
 brilliant and laboured demonstration of the obvious fact that the best races 
 of mankind, like the best breeds of animals, will win in the struggle for 
 existence ; and that it is to the best and purest of these races that the future 
 
112 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICS. 
 
 of Civilization must be confided. But the question of how you are to breed 
 these races, or others better still, receives from Herr Chamberlain no answer; 
 and all he has to suggest is, that we should keep the best of the existing 
 races free from admixture, and up to their existing standard of purity ; and 
 after weeding out and extruding from the fold all alien and mongrel 
 elements, leave the result to Nature, Providence, or Fate. He gives us, it 
 is true, excellent analytical dissections and summaries of the merits and 
 defects of the existing races— Jews, Chinese, Hindoos, Germans, Anglo- 
 Saxons, and the rest, — and points out clearly the mental and moral elements 
 in which they are respectively strong or weak, whether as regards their 
 Science, their Civilization, or their Culture ; but he seems to have forgotten 
 that Sociology, if it is to be a live Science, and one applicable to Practical 
 Politics, must be more than a mere inventory and catalogue of the mental 
 attributes of races, or a comparison of the relative values of these races; 
 and must leach us, say, how, as in the breeding of animals, out of a mongrel 
 race we can make a great nation, — as the Romans out of a small tribe made 
 a great Empire. And this, it is to be observed, is a question rather of how 
 we are to handle the mijtds of the individuals of a race through their system 
 of beliefs, than, as Herr Chamberlain would have it, of operating directly on 
 the race itself by exclusions or expatriations. Human nature being in essence 
 identical everywhere. Civilization or Progress is, therefore, a problem not of 
 the race to which an individual belongs, but of the system of beliefs — religious, 
 scientific, and political, — into which he can be indoctrinated, as is seen in 
 the recent conversion of the Japanese to Western ideas ; — and this requires 
 a knowledge of how Religion, Science, Government, and Material and Social 
 Conditions generally are related to each other by definite laws ; so that when 
 any one or more of these factors of Civilization becomes a stumbling-block 
 to farther advance, we may know precisely at what point or points to plant 
 our leverage, the better to realize our aims. In a word, it is a question 
 ultimately of standardizing the minds of individuals through their knowledge 
 and beliefs, rather than of standardizing their bodies merely, through 
 Eugenics — all important as this is ; and how to do it depends on a knowledge 
 of the laws of Sociology, not of Race Biology. 
 
 Otherwise, Herr Chamberlain's book, both as a whole and in detail, has 
 been to me in every way an unfailing delight ; and no reader can rise from 
 it, I venture to say, without stimulus, instruction, and profit. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 A SOCIOLOGICAL SYMPOSIUM.* 
 
 T)ROADLY speaking, Sociology may be defined as the 
 ^~^ Science of General Civilisation, or of civilisation in general, 
 and before it can have a definite status of its own, and the 
 specialisms that fall under it can be worked with advantage, its 
 function in relation to these specialisms must be clearly deter- 
 mined. In my judgment, Sociology performs a double function 
 in reference to these specialisms, at once a controlling and a 
 receptive function — a controlling function, inasmuch as it is to 
 it that we must look for the general laws and principles which 
 are to guide the specialisms in arranging and distributing the 
 material with which they severally deal ; a receptive function, 
 inasmuch as it must be continually perfecting these laws in 
 their application to detail by the reports of fresh facts that 
 are being constantly sent up to it by these specialisms. Its 
 function may be compared to that of the brain, which, while 
 controlling and co-ordinating the action of the different organs 
 of the body, is in turn aifected by them ; or to the central 
 government of a country, which, while guiding and controlling 
 the action of the various provinces and municipalities, is in 
 turn modified in its action by them. In other words, while 
 Sociology is distinct from the specialisms, it is not separable 
 from them, while in and among them, as it were, it is not of 
 * Sociological Papers, 1904. 
 
 H 
 
114 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICS. 
 
 them. For its laws, although mingling in all the work of 
 these specialisms, are not drawn from the specialisms, but, on 
 the contrary, have to be introduced into them as a seminal 
 principle before they can become fruitful and effective. And 
 it is here that I differ from Professor Durkheim, who appears 
 to think that the laws of Sociology are to be got only by 
 generalisations from the specialisms, for whose reports in con- 
 sequence they have to wait, as we have to wait for the milk 
 before we can skim off the cream. I contend, on the contrary, 
 that just as the laws of Psychology, although bound up with 
 physiological processes, and in their action affected by them, 
 require a separate method for their discovery, viz., that of 
 introspection ; so Sociology, although not to be separated from 
 the specialisms dealing with human evolution, draws its laws 
 from other quarters, viz., from psychological penetration, from 
 insight into the loorld of to-day, and the relation of its institutions 
 to the human mind. For example, the effect of Slavery on the 
 mind and character of both master and slave is to be determined 
 by direct penetration and insight into the condition of slavery 
 as it exists around us. Once discovered, it can be reduced to 
 a definite law which will hold good for any time or place in 
 the world's history, and so belongs to Sociology as a science ; 
 but whether, and to what extent, at any given time or place 
 slavery would work beneficially or the reverse in comparison 
 with alternative organisations of society is a question of the 
 collateral conditions, and must wait for its solution until the 
 reports of the specialisms dealing with the details of the 
 country or period in question are sent in. While, therefore, 
 I agree with Professor Durkheim that Sociology must keep in 
 touch with all the facts disinterred by the historical special- 
 isms — Ethics, Psycholog}^ Politics, Political Economy, Anthro- 
 pology, Folklore, Social Statistics, etc. : while I also agree that 
 these specialisms have now found the right road on their own 
 account — viz., the method of history, compamtive study, and 
 evolution, as distinct from the old theological or metaphysical 
 
A SOCIOLOGICAL SYMPOSIUM. 115 
 
 methods, I disagree with him in his belief that Socioh)gy has to 
 wait for the specialisms to come up, and then to extract its 
 laws from them by skimming them off as generalisations. On 
 the contrary, I hold that the laws of Sociology have to be 
 determined in the first instance quite apart from the historical 
 specialisms, niz., by general insight and penetration into social 
 life around us — by philosophical speculation, in a word, — and 
 then projected into the specialisms ; the entire process being 
 first the discovery of the laws in a crude general way, then 
 these laws to be carried with us as a lamp wherewith to ran- 
 sack and illuminate the garret of the specialisms ; the new 
 facts discovered forming an ever increasing aureole of lesser 
 laws surrounding the major ones, and giving a more delicate, 
 scientific shading to their original bareness and crudity, — and 
 so on. 
 
 And this leads us to ask. What are the elements which 
 these Laws of Sociology when discovered are supposed to 
 connect and weave into a unity! The answer is, certain 
 great general factors which are common to every age and 
 condition of the world, and which, like the x, y, and z's of 
 algebra, resume them and sum them up — such as Religion, 
 Government, Philosophy, Science, Physical Conditions, Ma- 
 terial and Social Conditions, and the like. And the first 
 problem of Sociology is to determine what these are, both in 
 number and character — neither lumping together those that 
 have a separate sphere of operation nor separating those that 
 can be handled as one. (I may say in passing that I have 
 myself been in the habit of using all of those just mentioned.) 
 When these factors are determined, we then have to find the 
 laws of their connexion and how they act and interact on each 
 other ; and this, as I have said, cannot be got arithmetically, 
 as it were, by generalisations from the concrete facts supplied 
 by the specialisms, but only by direct penetration and psycho- 
 logical insight — as in a calculus, where certain abstract factors 
 have to be determined as functions of others, varying directly 
 
116 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICS. 
 
 or indirectly with them, and united with them by certain laws. 
 If, then, we ask how Sociology stands at the present time in 
 reference to all this, we may say that there are some half-a- 
 dozen competing systems in the field which differ from each 
 other either in the number of factors with which they operate, 
 the way in which these factors are connected, or in both ; but 
 as to which, if any, of these is the true system has scarcely 
 yet been debated, much less settled. Buckle, for example, 
 operates with two factors, viz., Physical Science and Physical 
 Geography, or practically with one only. Physical Science ; 
 making the progress not only of knowledge but of Civilisation 
 in general depend entirely on this, and wiping out at a stroke 
 Religion, Government, Philosophy and Literature, as mere 
 obstructions ; lumping them all together in a kind of outer 
 darkness, as in a picture by Rembrandt, with no determined 
 relations at all beyond the merely negative one of doing more 
 harm than good ! Carlyle, too, selects a single factor as all- 
 important, viz., the moral force of individuals, of heroes and 
 great men, degrading all the other factors of Philosophy, of 
 Science, and the organised machinery of Religion and Govern- 
 ment, as well as the Material and Social Conditions of men 
 and nations, into better or worse appendages merely ; and 
 leaving their positive functions a mere blank, without attempt 
 at scientific determination or co-ordination. Hegel, again, in 
 his " Philosophy of History," also settles on one factor as all- 
 important, in his case that of philosophical concepts or categories ; 
 figuring all the other factors as being dragged along in the 
 train of these by a chain of logical necessity, as if they were a 
 kind of baggage ; as if men could act in this world from no 
 motives but philosophical conce{)tions alone. These three 
 sociologists may be called the specialists of principles, in the 
 same way that the ox'dinary specialists are specialists of facts ; 
 and fall, therefore, under Professor Durkheim's censure of those 
 who would interpret all social phenomena in terms of one 
 specialism ; as of Political Economy, or of the religious 
 
A SOCIOLOGICAL SYMPOSIUM. 117 
 
 interpretation of history, or what not. Comte, on the other 
 hand, deals with nearly all the factors I have mentioned, but 
 while he draws, in my judgment, the true law of relationship 
 between Religion and Physical Science, he fails, I think — 
 owing to his confusing of concomitants with causes, and putting 
 causes for effects — to give proper weight to the Material and 
 Social Conditions of men and nations, or else he leaves their 
 relationships confused. But this is, of course, only an opinion 
 of my own, on which I have no right to dogmatise, and is a 
 proper subject for the discussion of a sociological society. 
 And now for Herbert Spencer — what shall we say of his work ? 
 His position is somewhat peculiar; and here I am obliged 
 again to differ from Professor Durkheim, who seems to think 
 that Spencer by positing the differentiation of social types 
 helped to rectify the general conceptions of the Comtist soci- 
 ology. In my judgment, on the contrary, Spencer has done 
 nothing whatever towards establishing a science of Sociology 
 in the true sense of the term, as we have above defined it. 
 For if we consider it, the single law of Sociology under which 
 he worked was that of Evolution in general; and as that is 
 common alike to the organisation of the planets and stars and 
 the growth from the egg of the chick, it is too general for 
 human pui-poses. The fact that societies in their progress 
 through the ages, like everything else, split and differentiate, 
 passing from a homogeneous to a heterogeneous condition, and 
 integrating while they differentiate, is rather a statement of 
 facts, and a careful sorting of them under the general law of 
 evolution, than a compend of laws connecting the definite 
 social factors of religion, government, science, material and 
 social conditions, etc. However true, therefore, it may be, it 
 cannot fulfil the function of a Science of Sociology, whereby 
 one or more elements or factors of a society being given, others 
 may be in a measure anticipated or predicted — the only true 
 test of a science. What Spencer really accomplished was 
 rather excellent pieces of special work, such as, for example, 
 
118 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICS. 
 
 liis tracing of the different stages passed through in the 
 evolution of the conception of God, or the gods, and of 
 morality, among savage and civilised races; but all this, 
 original and suggestive as it was, like everything else of his, 
 formed rather the material on which a science of Sociology 
 could operate, than any part of the science itself. 
 
 The above were among the main attempts that had been 
 made to establish a science of Sociology when I first entered 
 on the study of it, some quarter of a century ago. Of my 
 own small contribution to the subject it would be unbecoming 
 in me to say anythiag, but I may, perhaps, be permitted to 
 express my entire agreement with Mr. Branford in what he 
 states to be the task imposed on the sociologist at the outset. 
 He lays it down that the sociologist must (1) construct a 
 reasoned account of the existing phase of that interaction of 
 the sciences and of the arts which we call contemporary 
 civilisation, (2) that he must reconstruct the corresponding 
 phases which historically have preceded and developed the 
 contemporary phase, and (3) that he must work out ideals of 
 more ordered development for the future. Now, these, if I 
 may venture to say so, are precisely the problems which I have 
 myself attempted to work out — the first in my " Civilisation 
 and Progress," the second in the first volume of my " History 
 of Intellectual Development," to be continued in the second 
 volume, and the third in the third volume of that work. 
 
 And if, in conclusion, I may be permitted to say a word in 
 reference to the tasks that lie before a young Sociological 
 Society, it would be this : tliat just as when Darwin announced 
 his law of Evolution, botanists, geologists, paheontologists, and 
 zoologists with one accord laid down for awhile their hammers 
 and scalpels, their microscopes and lenses, to take part in the 
 fray, until it was once for all settled whether the law of 
 Natural Selection and its corollaries was the law under which 
 they were in future to work ; so before the specialisms 
 connected with the Evolution of Man and hie Civilisation can 
 
A SOCIOLOGICAL SYMPOSIUM. 119 
 
 become fruitful and effective, they must pause for a time and 
 give themselves up to determining under what system of Soci- 
 ology they are to work — whether under one or another of those 
 I have mentioned, or under none of them, but under some 
 other more true and complete which has yet to see the light. 
 Until this is done, the specialisms of History, Psychology, 
 Ethics, Religion, Political Economy, etc., must one and all 
 continue to wander in the dark, wasting much of their time, 
 and laboriously losing their way. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 RACE, COLOUR, AND CREED.* 
 
 A PREDICTION, 
 
 TTN this article I desire to raise for the consideration of the 
 ■*■ reader a single political issue, but one which I believe to 
 be of the very greatest political importance at the present time, 
 in view of possible forthcoming contingencies, inasmuch as the 
 opposition of principles involved in it has barely as yet 
 reached the threshold of serious political discussion. 
 
 It bears on things so apparently wide apart as the new 
 Constitution for Turkey on the one hand, and the negro riots 
 in America on the other, but may be summed up in the one 
 general question, viz., as to the amount of weight to be attached 
 to all attempts (for whatever reason) to mix antagonistic races, 
 colour's, creeds, and codes of social morality on the same area of 
 political soil. 
 
 The general opinion of the world, as we know, is that these 
 mixtures may be safely permitted, provided always that the 
 Government in power will see to it that strict justice is done 
 alike to all the races and creeds concerned, without fear or 
 favour. This was the general opinion in America before the 
 war, when she freed the slaves and gave them all the legal 
 • Ihnhj Mail, 1908. 
 
RACE, COLOUR, AND CREED. 121 
 
 rights and privileges of citizens ; but the experiment, it is now 
 generally admitted, has, with the best intentions, been a failure. 
 
 President Roosevelt, it is true, still clings to the belief with 
 a noble and disinterested tenacity, and when he entered on the 
 Presidency was determined that it should have yet another 
 trial, but he got no further, it will be remembered, than the 
 tentative experiment • of inviting the high-minded and intelli- 
 gent negro, Mr. Booker Washington, to his dinner table. 
 Even this harmless courtesy raised such a din and outcry both 
 in the North and South as almost to drown the voice of Justice 
 herself ; and I doubt not that had he proceeded further in the 
 way of definite political action on behalf of the negroes, the 
 lynchings would have gone on in even greater numbers than 
 before. And yet his is still the opinion of most of the high- 
 minded people in the world to-day — with the exception, perhaps, 
 of our Colonists, by whom the question is debated largely on 
 grounds special and peculiar to themselves. 
 
 Now, what I venture to affirm on the contrary is, that of all 
 the political curses vs^hich can befall a nation, this mixing of 
 inherently antagonistic races, colours, creeds, and codes of 
 morality, is the one which, when once it has been allowed (it 
 matters not for what reason), is of all political complications 
 the most irremediable by any and every known instrument for 
 the uplifting of mankind — whether by the exhortations of the 
 Pulpit or Press, by Legislation, by the Good Will of all con- 
 cerned, or even (if the races are any way evenly matched) by 
 Physical Force itself, short of a war of extermination — as, 
 indeed, the negro problem in America, the Jewish problem on 
 the Continent, the mixture of races and creeds in Austria- 
 Hungary, in the Balkans, in Ireland, and in India, bear only too 
 eloquent and despairing witness. 
 
 And the reason is as simple as it is deep and universal, and 
 may be put in a nutshell — namely, that the pure white of 
 Justice, which is believed to be the remedy for all political evils, 
 will be stained and degraded by the impure colours of the mix- 
 
122 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICS. 
 
 tures into which it has to plunge and dye its hand, long before 
 these mixtures will admit of justice being applied to them ; and, 
 further, that the higher moral code of nations, instead of being 
 raised by the attempt to apply it, will, during the progress of 
 the experiment, become more and more degraded, until it 
 descends, with its lynchings and homicides in its train, to the 
 level of barbarism again. My contention, in other woi'ds, is 
 that the application of pure justice to these mixtures can never 
 get a foothold at all, but will be blocked at every turn from the 
 start ; and that to imagine or expect otherwise is of all delusions 
 and Utopias the most hopeless — besides being fraught with the 
 most terrible consequences to the posterity of any and every 
 nation that embarks on it. 
 
 And now for the application of this principle to the new 
 Constitution for Turkey. The world in general, as was natural, 
 was lost in amazement when it learnt that the Turk, of all 
 persons, had suddenly taken to embracing and falling, weeping 
 for joy, on the necks of the Chi-istians at the prospect of the 
 new era of liberty, fraternity, and equality that was opened up 
 before them — and no wonder. But the curious fact is that the 
 world is waiting in an attitude of hope and expectancy, and 
 with quite an open mind, in regard to it ; as if, perchance, it 
 were an even balance of probabilities whether the experiment 
 might not be a success and work out all right after all. 
 
 Now, I confess I have personally no hesitation whatever in 
 predicting the result, and it is precisely because the matter is 
 in this embryonic weeping and embracing stage that I am 
 venturing to record my opinion, with the view of testing the 
 principle before time and the event shall have decided the 
 matter for us. What I propose, then, is personally to take all 
 chances and odds on the issue, without any reservations what- 
 ever — whether the Constitution proves to be a good or a bad 
 one, whether it gets fair plaj- or not, whether the Sultan proves 
 recreant or not, or whether justice is done to all the races and 
 creeds concerned or not — and to predict unhesitatingly that, 
 
RACE, COLOUR, AND CREED. 128 
 
 when once the Constitution is fully framed, it will not have 
 settled down to practical political business for a year before 
 either the mixed races or the mixed creeds, or both together, 
 will be at each other's throats again, literally or metaphorically, 
 as before. Indeed, I should as soon think of standing waiting 
 and wondering and hesitating as to whether oil and water 
 would really amalgamate if I shook them up until they formed 
 for the moment a homogeneous mixture, as I should in the case 
 of this new Constitution for Turkey. 
 
 Now, should I prove wrong in this forecast, I will gladly 
 admit that my studies of Civilisation will have proved them- 
 selves false and useless, and will all have to be thrown into the 
 melting-pot again. Should I prove right, on the contrary, it 
 may be permitted to indulge the hope that, as the past admix- 
 tures of races cannot now be reversed, the nations (with an 
 object-lesson like this experiment of Turkey before them) will 
 never again hear the very mention of any suggestion for the 
 mixing of antagonistic races, colours, or creeds, on their own 
 soils, without a shudder; as knowing well that until the 
 Millennium comes, there is no political complication which will 
 more surely act as a direct incentive to murder, anarchy, and 
 every form of moral degradation, than these unblest and thrice- 
 accursed unions. The whole scheme of Nature goes dead 
 against them, and all history is strewn with the ruins of the 
 nations that have either knowingly encouraged, or unwillingly 
 have been forced to submit to them. 
 
 It may be interesting, therefore, to indicate briefly what I 
 believe to be the fallacies, both in the minds of Statesmen and 
 of the public in general, which cause them to attach so little 
 importance (say 10 per cent.) to the mixing of the races, and so 
 much (say 90 per cent.) to the economic advantages of the 
 importation of their cheap labour ; as distinct from the 90 per 
 cent, which I venture to think should be attached to the 
 dangers of the importation, and only 10 per cent, to all other 
 considerations whatever, economic, political, or philanthropic. 
 
124 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICS. 
 
 The first lies in the fact that the attempt to do it runs 
 athwart the entire genius and scheme of Nature, whose aim 
 everywhere is to keep the diflferent varieties of the same species 
 of animals apart, and not to run them together. It is true that 
 animals of every kind — mammals, birds, reptiles, insects, etc. — 
 can co-exist on the same area of soil, and find their living and 
 well-being there, with just so much balance kept between their 
 numbers as the 'wild justice' of Nature permits. But this, it 
 is to be observed, never holds between varieties of the same 
 species of animals, of which the different races of mankind are 
 only another example ; for then there is nothing for it but a 
 * fight to the finish,' until one or other of these varieties is 
 exterminated or driven from the field. A Government might 
 just as well say, " Go to ! we must try and rectify the injustice 
 and inequality of Nature whereby a single bull in a herd of a 
 particular breed is permitted to drive out all its poorer and 
 weaker rivals of other breeds equally good, by allowing to each 
 and all of them indiiFerently within the same enclosed field an 
 equal number of cows," as to attempt to realize a civic and 
 social justice and equality among a motley admixture of human 
 races of different colours, traditions, and codes of morality, on 
 the same area of soil. It can only be done by keeping these 
 races apart in their respective countries ; precisely as justice, or 
 equality, to all the bulls can only be done by keeping them with 
 their equal contingent of cows in separate fields. Otherwise, 
 what will be the result ? Why this (and it is the pathos of 
 the whole situation), that the very end for which all good men 
 are striving, namely, to do justice and mercy to all poor human 
 souls of whatever race, or colour, or creed, will be damned by 
 the very means which are being taken to effect it. For, as the 
 mixture of negroes and whites in America bears witness, instead 
 of getting that high ideal of justice which is the flower of 
 civilization, you will get — what? Lynching, or a return to 
 that lowest form of justice which is proper to barbarism; and 
 so the work of the asres will all have to be done over ajjfain from 
 
RACE, COLOUK, AND CREED. 125 
 
 the bottom upwards. The mere presence of alien races and 
 colours in suffiwent numbers on the same area is enough to 
 work its damning effects even without intermarriage, the 
 vote, or social promiscuity. For just as the pigeon-fanciers 
 tell us that you can spoil a particular strain by keeping other 
 breeds alongside of it, even when there is no intermixture in 
 the mating; so all we should have to do in England, for 
 example, would be, as I said in another article, to admit a 
 sufficient number of Kaffirs into the country to do menial or 
 unskilled labour, and a sufficient number of Chinese or Japa- 
 nese to do the more refined and skilled forms, when it could 
 safely be predicted that, within a generation, hardly a self- 
 respecting Englishman, short of starvation, would be found to 
 do a stroke of menial labour for love or money — as was seen in 
 the Southern States of America before the war, and as we see, 
 in a way, in the South Africa of to-day. And if respect for 
 honest labour is recognised by all as an indispensable prelim- 
 inary to social justice and equality, and to the best well-being 
 of States, would not this be a fine stultification of our end by 
 the very means with which we are seeking to effect it ? 
 
 The root-fallacy of it all lies, as I have had so often to 
 repeat, in not perceiving that Justice is not an unlimited bank 
 credit which can be brought down from Heaven and drawn on 
 like divine grace to its full amount at any time, but is in each 
 and every age of the world, and as a matter of actual concrete 
 fact, strictly limited by the material and social conditions of 
 the time; as on a chess-board, v/here the prospects of the game 
 are determined at each point by the relative positions of 
 the pieces on the board, and not by the mere goodwill of 
 the players ; so that if you have whites, negroes, Chinese, 
 Mahommedans, and Hindoos confronting one another in the 
 street, and spitting in each other's faces as they pass, the 
 amount of social justice that either gods or men can get out of 
 such a relationship will quickly be discovered to differ foto 
 ccelo from what can be 2;ot without effort or strife from the 
 
126 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICS. 
 
 simple relations of fellow-citizens of the same blood, colour, 
 religion, and code of social morality on the same area of 
 political soil. And just as the properties of a chemical com- 
 pound, whether of prussic acid or our ordinary food, will 
 depend on how you arrange, by bringing together or keeping 
 apart, the same chemical elements common to both ; so the 
 character and quality of the justice and the social morality you 
 can get out of men will depend on whether you mix the 
 different races, or keep them apart, on the same areas of soil. 
 
 And after all, with the history of the world behind us, what 
 is the point of this determined, and in the end accursed 
 attempt at mixing these different races on the same areas? 
 The age of colossal mushroom empires made up of every 
 variety of admixture of races and colours went out with the 
 Roman rule ; and from that time to this, the evolution of 
 Civilization has made steadily in the direction of separating out 
 men of the same race, colour, social and moral codes, and in 
 consolidating them and keeping them apart as separate 
 nationalities. Why, then, this anxiety to introduce the old 
 complications again ? We are not now living in the time 
 when it was necessary to import Flemish weavers and 
 Huguenot artisans to teach us new arts and crafts ; all this 
 can now be done by the simple process of sending our own 
 men abroad to learn them ; and as to the importation of 
 sweated alien tailors and the refuse of continental Europe into 
 the very capital of our empire — the thing is monstrous. I 
 scarcely ever take up my morning paper without expecting to 
 hear of the beginninj^s of an outbreak between the inhabi- 
 tants of the East End of London and the aliens who are being 
 permitted to swarm in and drive them from their homes. If, 
 then, statesmanship consists not so much in knowing that each 
 separate factor of a political complication has this or that 
 tendency, good or bad (for this all men know in a way), but 
 in knowing on which of the complex factors at any given time 
 the weight and emphasis are be laid ; then, if, as I contend, 
 
RACE, COLOUR, AND CREED. 127 
 
 90 per cent, of weight is to be attached to the necessity of 
 preventing the admixture of races on the same areas, and only 
 10 per cent, to all other benefits whatsoever — political, philan- 
 thropic, economic. — the attempt to reverse this order of im- 
 portance, as is done practically by Statesmen everywhere at the 
 present time (there is a rumour that even Germany is thinking 
 of importing Asiatics), will be, in my judgment, to try and 
 make the pyramids of the nations stand and march on their 
 apices, and with nothing but disaster and ruin in the wind — 
 either the danger of colossal wars at any moment, or the 
 degradation of the morals of men to those of barbarism — and 
 however great and creditable this may be to the heart of the 
 world, it would be a disgrace to its intelligence ; the moral of 
 it all being, for Statesmen especially, to beware of abstract 
 political presuppositions and formulce, unless they are rooted 
 and grounded in History and in the Evolution of Civilization. 
 
 II. 
 
 In returning to this important question of the mixing of 
 antagonistic races, colours, and creeds on the same area of 
 political soil, I am glad to take this opportunity of replying to 
 one or two of the many correspondents who have been good 
 enough to favour me with their criticisms. 
 
 " W. M, " in The Daily Mail did not definitely deny my 
 position, but, flinging Herbert Spencer at my head, asked me 
 to beware lest I should have omitted some factor which will 
 make all the difference in the result, and so quite falsify my 
 prediction in reference to Turkey. 
 
 In reply I would beg to remind him that Spencer, whose life 
 was spent, among other things, in preaching the doctrine that 
 so long as you let each and every species of animal mixture — 
 fish, flesh, fowl, or man — hang like the proverbial herring 
 resolutely "by its own head " and carve out its own destiny for 
 itself without fear or favour, you will find that you will have 
 eternal justice on your side at last ; even Spencer, I say, when 
 
128 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICS. 
 
 asked semi-officially by the Japanese whether in his opinion it 
 was wise for them to allow foreigners to come into their coun- 
 try to mix freely as citizens with themselves, was obliged to 
 answer : " By all the gods, no, if you wish to meet with the 
 least resistance, not the greatest, in following out your own 
 appointed destiny." 
 
 Indeed, in all these instances Nature herself gives us the 
 cue ; for not only do different species when crossed lead to 
 sterility, but different varieties of the same species when 
 sufficiently divergent are prevented from interbreeding by a 
 sexual or physiological selection which bars their inclination to 
 unite ; and to this the natural aversion from intermarriage of 
 races so distinct as Negroes, Mongols, Red Indians, and Euro- 
 peans is a sufficient parallel. 
 
 And this leads me to the objection of my next critic, who 
 asks me triumphantly whether the admixture of our own ances- 
 tors — Romans, Saxons, Danes, Normans, and Celts — has not 
 been a success ? Of course ; but then these peoples all belong 
 to the same Indo-European stock, and, as we see, freely inter- 
 marry when not bari-ed by the definite injunctions and penalties 
 of antagonistic religious creeds. The admixture was a pure 
 good for the race, especially the admixture of Celt and Saxon 
 — than which nothing could have been more felicitous. Nature 
 herself has sanctioned and blessed them ; just as she has done 
 concerning that custom in savage tribes descended from the 
 same original stock, whereby marriage outside the bounds of 
 their own particular tribe, is not only encouraged but enforced. 
 
 But, if my critic asks me, even here, whether our admixture 
 of Celts and Saxons and Danes made for human happiness 
 while it was " shaking down " and being consolidated, I would 
 point him to the massacres, the burnings, and the extermina- 
 tions of race by race at the time of the Heptarchy and after 
 the Norman Conquest, as well as to the centuries of bloody 
 wars needed to bring Scotland, and even gallant little Wales, 
 into the peaceful political union of the present day. Besides, 
 
RACE, COLOUR, AND CREED. 129 
 
 these were the ages of warfare, as necessary in their time for 
 evolution and the progress of civilisation as our present age of 
 relative peace — as the consolidations of the Babylonian, 
 Assyrian, Grasco-Macedonian and Roman Empires have given 
 proof. And it must be remembered that these consolidations 
 were imposed on the conglomerate of races by pure physical 
 force, and not, as in the proposed Constitution of Turkey, by 
 sentiment, goodwill, and, of all things, representative institu- 
 tions ! 
 
 The truth is, we have now entered on a new era in World 
 History, and one essentially of peace, but still with certain out- 
 standing possibilities of war at disputed points studded round 
 its circumference — possibilities the results of difficulties at 
 once so trivial, imaginary, and unreal, that if men were only 
 decently reasonable creatures, they could be solved by a Hague 
 Conference to-morrow. And yet, when we remember that men 
 are still three-fourths animal, these difficulties are at the same 
 time so real to this brute creature, Man, that no mere soft-soap 
 lather of humanitarian sentimentalism whitewashed over them 
 all — as in the case of the Turks weeping on the necks of 
 Christians — ^vill avail to touch them one jot. 
 
 But it is precisely this belief in a new era of peace and good 
 will for the world which has made all these separate races and 
 colours and creeds of mankind long each for a political home 
 of its own wherein to set up for itself, as private households do. 
 And, indeed, were these nations pure and unmixed, I believe 
 that it might be done to-morrow, but where they are inextric- 
 ably mixed and confounded, and in antagonisms as deep as 
 those of Turkey, they will, I fear, have to sit by the waters of 
 Babylon and weep and long for many a weary day before their 
 ideals are realised. Even for a tolerable existence together, as 
 in the case of ill-assorted marriage unions under the existing 
 laws, there are in my judgment only four alternatives open to 
 them, and these all bad, or difficult, or obnoxious. 
 
 In the first place, they must either be kept down by physical 
 
130 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICS. 
 
 force exerted over them by one or other of the races that have 
 succeeded in gaining the mastery over the rest ; or by pressure 
 exerted over them from the outside, as in the various proposed 
 conferences of European Powers. 
 
 The second alternative is that wholesale religious conversion 
 should take place on a great scale, as in the Roman Empire, 
 where Greeks, Orientals, and Western Barbarians — Pagans, 
 Druids, Sun - worshippers, Serpent - worshippers, Nature- 
 worshippers, etc. — were all alike swept into the Christian net ; 
 and especially where whole tribes and nations of them were 
 converted in batches in a day by a nod from their respective 
 chieftains or kings, as in England, France, and Germany ; but 
 all alike, while the process of conversion was going on, held 
 together in an enforced peace by the physical force of the 
 dominant power as before. 
 
 But the third and most important point of all is, whether 
 these races, when they have once been given their freedom 
 under a constitutional Government, will intermarry or not. If 
 they will, then there are abundant reasons for hoping that they 
 will peacefully amalgamate. If they will not, there is not 
 merely no hope for them, but the mere fact that they have now 
 got a constitutional Government where each race can make 
 such political and social arrangements for itself as seem good 
 to it, will inflame their innate antagonisms and animosities ten- 
 fold more than when they were kept down. And with what 
 result ? This, that they will again begin fighting until one or 
 other of the races obtains the mastery, and holds the rest down 
 by force ; and then again we shall see the same old weary round 
 of despotism, persecution, and massacre, as before. 
 
 But this matter of the willingness or not of antagonistic 
 races to intermarry, when not prevented by religion or the laws 
 of the state is, besides, in cases of difficulty, one of the best 
 touchstones as to whether the particular races are essentially 
 too wide apart for Nature to sanction them or not. If the 
 repulsion is too great, as between whites and negroes and 
 
RACE, COLOUR, AND CREED. 131 
 
 Mongols, it is a sign, like the aversion of the very young from 
 marriage with the old, that the deep instincts of Nature are of 
 greater validity than the mere temporary expediences of limited 
 human reason, and cannot be neglected with impunity. 
 
 The fourth and last condition which may at least help in the 
 direction of amalgamating mixed races on the same political 
 soil is, that each should be kept as far as possible separate and 
 to itself on its own particular area — as the Catholic French 
 Canadians are in Canada, the Saxon Protestants and Catholic 
 Celts in Ireland, and, to a certain extent, the Germans, the 
 jMagyars, and Slavs in the Austro-Hungarian Empire ; and so 
 on. But even in these instances the great difficulty in keep- 
 ing the peace between them is so well known as to need no 
 comment of mine. And now that in this age of peaceful 
 constitutional Governments each people, like the violet in the 
 clefts of Alpine snows striving to raise its tender petals to the 
 light, is seeking to become free, the difficulty of keeping even 
 closely allied races together in a political union can nowhere be 
 better seen than in the recent instance of Norway and Sweden. 
 Here are a couple of peoples as alike in race, colour, creed, 
 and codes of morality as Siamese twins, and yet from some 
 shadow of imagined slight of one by the other — the one being 
 democratic in sentiment, the other aristocratic — they have 
 agreed to separate, and to set up private political establishments 
 of their own ! 
 
 If this can be done in the green tree what can we expect 
 in the dry, where, as in the Turkey of to-day, the antagonisms 
 of race, colour, and creed are at once so colossal, so deep-rooted, 
 so all-pervading, and so inflamed by centuries of despotism 
 and persecution % 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 A NOTE ON RACE DEGENERATION.* 
 
 A S regards the problem of Race Degeneration, I may admit 
 ■^-^ at once that in Great Britain the race, if not essentially 
 degenerating, is at least not as sound as it ought to be with 
 the knowledge at our disposal — and that owing to our neglect 
 to apply the known laws of disease, and especially those aspects 
 of it which are concerned with heredity. And by this I would 
 imply that disease and racial degeneration are primarily not 
 biological in character, but sociological ; are not inherent in the 
 race as such, but have been bred in it ad hoc, as it were, from 
 day to day by this neglect to apply the most admittedly elemen- 
 tary knowledge of disease. Indeed, had race degeneration been 
 mainly biological, that is to say, due to Nature herself (instead 
 of to sociological causes — the work of Man), she would have 
 made short work of these degenerates as they arose — the 
 idiotic, the insane, the paralytic, the syphilitic, the rickety, 
 and the rest — and w^ould not now have had to confront this 
 knee-deep accumulation, but, as in the case of other animals, 
 would have wiped them off as tliey arose by the mere struggle 
 for existence. But from the time that Man took the reins 
 into his own hands, one might have known beforehand that 
 these heaps would gradually accumulate as residual deposits 
 at each stage of the world's progress, from the natural 
 operation of two principal causes — one the imperfect, and to 
 'The New A fie, 1911 
 
A NOTE ON RACE DEGENERATION. 133 
 
 that extent false, science of the past in physiology and biology, 
 as regards the human body ; the other, the bad Sociology of 
 the present, especially in its larger principles and their bearings 
 on I'eligion, morals, social duty, government, etc. But as I 
 have already said that the biology and medical science of the 
 present day, as distinguished from that of former generations, 
 is quite sufficient to deal with race degeneration if it were only 
 applied, it follows that the fault must be laid at the door of 
 the existing sociology ; the different impasses it has created 
 for itself being found at certain well-defined points. The 
 more important of these, in my judgment, are as follows : 
 
 The first is, that the conflicting Principles, Presuppositions, 
 and Doctrines, of the reigning schools, creeds, and parties, 
 whether in religion, moi'als, or government, so block each other 
 through their antagonisms, that they leave the Practical States- 
 men no common ground of generally accepted principle on 
 which they can take action. 
 
 The second difficulty is, that even if the leaders of these 
 various sides of sociological opinion were sufficiently agreed, 
 still they must wait until the great gregarious human herd, 
 who are always a generation or two behind the most advanced 
 of their leaders, have come up into line. And the reason they 
 cannot line up sooner in readiness for action (either by them- 
 selves or by the statesmen on their behalf) is that it is the 
 function of the herd themselves to work each new advance in 
 religion, morals, and government, made by their leaders, into 
 the very warp and woof of the entire social organism, before 
 they can go on to the next advance ; and all this has to wait 
 " on dilatory time." This difficulty we may call almost a 
 necessity of Nature, but it is not so with our third, which 
 might be removed to-morrow. 
 
 This is the absence everywhere — whether in primary, 
 secondary, or university Schools — of the kind of Education for 
 the young that would help to break up this stagnation of the 
 general herd, and keep it more closely lined up and in touch 
 
134 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICS. 
 
 with its leaders — instead of lagging a generation or two behind. 
 To do this, the Sociological Specialisms themselves must not 
 remain broken, divided, and conflicting, as at present, owing to 
 each taking its own special and narrow point of view as the basis 
 for its conclusions, but must themselves line up under some 
 single, large, and all-embracing generalisation, precisely as all 
 the divisions of the biological sciences are now doing under the 
 general Law of Evolution. But where are such central principles 
 to be found in Sociology, the reader may ask 1 In the First 
 Principles of the evolution of Civilisation itself as a whole. 
 This ought to be the Bible of the Nations ; and to its principles 
 and precepts all the lesser specialisms which work under it 
 ought to keep time, measure, and proportion ; each checking 
 itself by the first principles of the others, and all by the first 
 principles and laws of civilisation itself. 
 
 Instead of this, each of its component parts has started up 
 in turn, and tried to jump into the chair of authority, with the 
 view of making its own special principle supreme. There is, 
 for example, the specially Religious and Humanitarian point of 
 view, which, if you would allow it, would mix your antagonistic 
 races, creeds, and colours, on the same area of soil, with as 
 much unconcern as if they were ingredients in a pudding ; in 
 the fond imagination that by sprinkling the phrase " religious 
 equality " over them, as if it were a species of holy water, all 
 these antagonistic elements would vanish, or lie down [)eace- 
 fully together ! Then, again, there is the purely Ethical point of 
 view of civilisation, which would deny the teachings of history, 
 or shut them out altogether, rather than admit that abstract 
 millennial justice cannot be brought down from the clouds and 
 applied now and here to every circumstance and condition of 
 life ; and this owing to the curious illusion that Justice, because 
 it is an ideal, must also be something that can be stuck in its 
 entirety, like a stamp, one and indivisible, on every situation 
 of life as it ai'ises, and between every class and condition of 
 men, instead of growing out of the existing relations of men , 
 
A NOTE ON RACE DEGENERATION. 135 
 
 SO that only so much ideal justice can be absorbed and realised 
 as the existing conditions and environment will permit. 
 
 But to return to our problem of Race Degeneration and its 
 causes, we must now ask whether there is not, as there ought 
 to be, some single prevalent sociological or political doctrine 
 into which all these various rills of error and false sociology 
 have run and culminated ? 
 
 There is, and it will be found to be that most baneful of all 
 the products of a false Sociology, viz., the doctrine of laissez- 
 faire — a doctrine which since the inauguration of the industrial 
 revolution in England by machinery and steam power, and the 
 French Revolution by the doctrinaire sociology of Rousseau, 
 has been erected Into the first principle of practical sociology, 
 and applied successively to each and every department of 
 political and social life. It was a negative principle from the 
 beginning, and could in itself, if continued long enough, lead 
 to nothing but anarchy everywhere ; but fortunately England, 
 who for at least two generations was infected by it, is at last 
 besrinnino; to discover that she must now shake herself free 
 from it on pain of social, political, and economic death. For 
 this doctrine of go-as-you-please without central control from 
 either gods or men (beyond that of each man's immediate 
 neighbours, or the parish constable) has no justification or 
 backing in the wide range of Nature, or in the government of 
 men up to this hour ; each race of animals being controlled and 
 kept up to the mark either by the strongest leaders inside the 
 race, or by the hostile I'aces that prey on it from without. 
 Now, it is to this false and negative doctrine of laissez-faire, 
 which has usurped the place that should have been occupied 
 by some great positive Central and Controlling Principle of 
 Sociology, that is due the race degeneracy of the present day — 
 that dense and compacted heap which has accumulated from 
 decade to decade, and against which as remedy all private and 
 philanthropic spade work is but a scratching of the surface 
 merely. I have already said that it is not the scientific know- 
 
136 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICS. 
 
 ledge of disease, or of the causes and treatment of degeneracy, 
 which has been wanting in all this, but the recognition of the 
 duty of the State to apply that knowledge. And yet, if we 
 consider it well, it would be at once apparent that if each 
 Parish or Municipality throughout the kingdom had been armed 
 with central authority to keep its own border clean (as each 
 householder used to do, in the case of the snow in front of his 
 house), the present accumulation of race degenerates would 
 have been prevented, or reduced to manageable proportions, as 
 they arose. Not that the State should undertake the entire 
 control of the will of individuals, but only that it should lay 
 down those great general principles of social control within 
 which, as in a game of cards, the free initiative of individuals 
 must confine itself. This is not State Socialism, but State 
 Regulation — quite a different thing. 
 
 Our remedies, then, must be : — (1) A Sociological Bible which 
 will supply the first principles under which the several depart- 
 ments and specialisms in the body politic must work. (2) A 
 system of Education under which the rank and file will be kept 
 close in line with their leaders and officers in these specialisms. 
 (3) A Central Executive Authority working under these, as the 
 barbarian kings did under the mediaeval Church, who will see 
 to it th«»t no laissez-faire in connection with race degeneration, 
 or anything else, shall be permitted to exist in any department 
 of the State or of social life. 
 
BOOK III. 
 
 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
CHAPTEK I. 
 
 FREE TRADE OR PROTECTION FOR ENGLAND? 
 
 A Plea for Reconsideration.* 
 
 T AM glad to embrace the opportunity of offering a few 
 remarks in favour of a reversal, or, at any rate, a sus- 
 pension of judgment on the great question now beginning to 
 raise its head again among us, and causing uneasiness in many 
 minds, namely, that of Free Trade or Protection for England 
 in a possibly near future. I do not mean by this that I am 
 preparing an attack on the old arguments in favour of Free 
 Trade ; on the contrary, I hold those arguments, when regard is 
 had to the historical conditions out of which they arose, as final 
 and unanswerable. What I propose rather is to go a step 
 farther than has yet been attempted by economists, and to map 
 out in sharp and definite outlines the general conditions which 
 determine whether any given country is better suited to a 
 poKcy of Free Trade or Protection ; to remove the tangle of 
 illusion by which these determining conditions have been over- 
 laid and obscured ; and to restate the problem in its bearings 
 on England when once all the new factors have been taken into 
 consideration. 
 
 And here, at the outset, I may perhaps be permitted to say, 
 that in pleading for a reconsideration of the question, I do so, 
 
 * Fortnightly Review, March, 1902. — The article reopening, as it did, what 
 wa3 supposed to be a closed controversy, was, with the succeeding articles, 
 the first attempt made to place the old and at that time exploded doctrine of 
 Protection on a fresh theoretical basis, prior to Mr. Chamberlain's taking of 
 the matter up in the Autumn of 1903. 
 
140 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 not 80 much in the interests of abstract political science as of 
 what is of much more importance at the present time, namely, 
 of immediate and urgent national necessity. In this I am not 
 expressing merely my own changed opinion, drawn from my 
 studies of historical evolution, but the feeling as well of some 
 of the more clear-sighted of the younger economists, of many 
 public men of both parties in politics, as well as of a large 
 number of thoughtful and penetrating minds of all shades of 
 opinion who have not yet found for their thought adequate 
 public expression. 
 
 But before proceeding to my main argument, the first illusion 
 I would point out is that the expediency and validity of the 
 policy of Free Trade never really rested, as is imagined, 
 on the abstract economic arguments by which it was supported, 
 either by the Economists or the Practical Politicians who 
 carried it, but rather on certain industrial conditions which did 
 not appear in the argument, and which, although unavowed, 
 lent to that argument all that it had of weight and cogency ; 
 and, further, that it is only so long as these industrial con- 
 ditions last that the arguments can retain their validity. 
 
 What then, in a word, are the industrial conditions which 
 can be used as a rule or principle in determining whether a 
 given country is better adapted to a Free Trade rather than a 
 Protectionist policy, and vice-versa''? Leaving mixed and 
 intermediate conditions out of account, for the sake of clearness 
 and simplicity, we may say, speaking broadly, that there are 
 two that favour Free Trade, and two that favour Protection ; 
 and if our reasoning should prove sound, it is evident that 
 when the statisticans shall have told us to which of these 
 England belongs, or is likely soon to belong, the question will 
 have been solved for us. 
 
 Now, the first condition of a Free Trade policy is that the 
 country in question should possess some single natural advan- 
 tage or combination of advantages natural or acquired, which 
 shall give that nation an industrial advantage over the rest of 
 
FREE TRADE OR PROTECTION FOR ENGLAND? 141 
 
 the world in the production of important articles of world- 
 wide demand — whether it be silver or gold mines ; exceptional 
 commercial situations, as the position of Corinth on the 
 Isthmus in the ancient world, or of Florence, Venice, and 
 Genoa in the Italy of the Middle Ages, and before better 
 trade routes were discovered ; the shipping and carrying trade 
 of Holland before the Navigation Acts of England killed it ; 
 the cotton-growing soil of the Southern States of America ; the 
 sugar-growing climate and soil of the West Indies before the 
 manufacture of sugar from beetroot ; the corn-growing facilities 
 of Russia; or the coal and iron mines close together of 
 England ; and the like. Such conditions of industrial pre- 
 eminence, when present in any nation where the extent of the 
 industry is capable of employing a large part of the population, 
 and where the demand of the outside world for the produce is 
 effective and enduring, make a Free Trade policy for that 
 nation scientifically demonstrable ; and there all the old argu- 
 ments for Free Trade retain their validity unimpaired. 
 
 The second condition which makes a policy of Free Trade 
 expedient is just the opposite, namely, where a country is so 
 jyoor in iiatural resources that it has and can have no industrial 
 pre-eminence in anything ; and so, not being in the running at 
 all, a policy of Protection to enable it to proji^fb^what it wants 
 for itself would only be a waste of time and human labour. 
 All this, perhaps, needs only to be stated to be admitted; it is 
 when we come to the conditions justifying a policy of Protec- 
 tion that disputes are likely to arise, and we shall have to pro- 
 ceed more cautiously. What, then, in my opinion, are these 
 conditions f They also are two, speaking broadly. 
 
 The first industrial condition justifying Protection is where 
 countries of g-reat natural advantao-es and of a high intellectual 
 and political outlook, come late into the field of industry, so 
 that, like some infant Zeus or Hercules, they have to be guarded 
 and protected with sedulous care until they arrive at indus- 
 trial manhood. Under the name of " infant industries," such 
 
142 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 countries have always been admitted, although grudgingly, 
 by men like Stuart Mill and the more open-minded of the old 
 Economists and Free Traders, to be justified in adopting some 
 form or measure of Protection, as in the case of America and 
 the colonies. At that time England, it is to be observed, with 
 her great firms freely competing against each other, was 
 believed to have attained the acme of industrial development ; 
 but what we have now to point out is that until these industries 
 have been brought to that high stage of concentration and unity 
 which is seen in the mammoth Trusts of America, they cannot 
 be said to have reached their full development in utilising our 
 natural advantages in the cheapening of production, and so 
 quite logically and truly cannot be said to be yet full-grown ; 
 and so, by the admission of Mill and the old Economists, if they 
 are to attain to that point, must still fall, in a way, under that 
 category of infant industry which may under certain circum- 
 stances favour some form or degree of Protection. But this, 
 too, will probably be admitted without further dispute ; and 
 we may now pass to the second set of industrial conditions 
 which, as I am now to shoAv, appear to me to demand a most 
 rigid system of Protection. Unfortunately, it is just one of 
 these conditions with which England is threatened in the near 
 future ; and it is in order that we may be prepared, that this 
 discussion, in my judgment, claims precedence over all others 
 at the present time, so numerous are the pitfalls and illusions 
 with which it is strewn. 
 
 The condition I refer to is that of a country once industrially 
 supreme, and still as rich as ever in natural resources, but 
 which has been effectually beaten in the race by an enterprising 
 rival, hy however small a margin, provided that margin is likely 
 to be enduring ; and this it is admitted is the condition with 
 which we are threatened by our trade rivals, America and 
 Germany. Now, it is assumed by the Free Tmders that even 
 in the event of the loss of our supremacy in those industries 
 which have made the country great, still the nations arc all 
 
FREE TRADE OR PROTECTION FOR ENGLAND? 143 
 
 such common sharers in the industrial wealth of the world that 
 our loss would only be m proportion to the largeness of our 
 stake ; just as in business, losses or gains are divided in pro- 
 portion to the shares in the partnership of the persons 
 concerned. This is the first illusion. The second is that even 
 if we were beaten in the industrial race, it would still be as 
 much better for us to keep our ports freely open for the 
 entrance of foreign goods as it would be for a rower (even if 
 he had lost some of his original power) to still feather his oar. 
 
 Now, all this is most plausible, but, as we shall now see, most 
 false ; and if acted on would mean ruin, speedy and complete. 
 Where, then, are the fallacies % They lie in imagining that 
 what is right, natural and expedient to do before an industrial 
 defeat, must be so after it ; whereas it is precisely the opposite. 
 Instead of our losses being, as among partners, only in 
 proportion to our stake, the true analogy is that of a fight 
 between rival bulls or stags in a herd, with the rest looking on, 
 where the victor takes not his proportion according to his 
 strength, but the entire herd ; or like the race for the Derby, 
 where the horse that is only half-a-neck ahead takes the whole 
 stake ; or better still, perhaps (to bring out the difierence 
 between before and after an industrial defeat), like the 
 provinces of the Roman world after Pharsalia. Before the 
 battle, Pompey and Csesar divided almost equally these 
 provinces between them, but after it, although it was won only 
 by a happy thought, Pompey lost all and was ruined, while 
 Cassar, gathering up the entire spoil, stalked off with it, and 
 put the imperial diadem of the world in his pocket. 
 
 Now, how does this specially operate in the case of an 
 industrial defeat such as we have in view ? It does so by a 
 double action, as it were. In the first place, to a nation once 
 thoroughly and decisively beaten by however small a margin 
 in a commercial sense, no one will come to buy ; not its success- 
 ful rival, because it can buy cheaper at home ; not the outlying 
 nations, because they can buy cheaper from the conqueror ; 
 
144 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 not even the defeated nation itself, because its people, too, can 
 buy cheaper from their successful competitor than at home. 
 The consequence is, that except to bring in such trifles as 
 fruits, spices, tobaccos, cheap wines, knick-knacks, and other 
 such things, foreign to the great main industrial issue, the 
 ships of the nations will no longer crowd and jostle each other 
 in the ports of the defeated nation as before, but will sail past 
 her to swell the triumph of her conqueror. On the other hand, 
 and by the wind of the same stroke, no one within the nation 
 will continue any longer to manufacture those products which 
 gave it its former supremacy, simply because, with no guarantee 
 against the return of the conqueror, no one will consent to 
 produce. Mills and workshops will stand stock-still or fall to 
 ruin, not by a slow and lingering decline, but as if a bolt had 
 struck them. As well expect a Turkish or Moorish peasant to 
 do more than scratch his fertile soil with a stick, when some 
 Pasha can swoop down on him as he passes along and 
 commandeer the fruits of his industry with impunity. 
 
 It is not that the mills cannot go on, but that they will not ; 
 and the reason is, that in the present stage of industrial 
 development there is for the individual producer no national or 
 collective guarantee, as there is for the protection of property, 
 but each producer has to take his own risks. And the eftect 
 of this is the same as if the Bank of England were suddenly 
 to suspend payment without the Government at its back. 
 Possessed of that guarantee, the commercial world, with here 
 and there a failure, would go on much as before ; but without 
 it, not a market or an industry would stir, although all the 
 world should raise its eyebrows in mild surprise, and ask what 
 has the Bank of England to do with the running or not of the 
 mills of Lancashire. For industry at the present day is so 
 bound up with a subtle, all-pervasive, and interconnected system 
 of credit, that, when that is widely and rudely shaken, each 
 man is as suspicious of his neighbour's solvency as a number of 
 people at a masked ball are of each other's personality. Now, 
 
FREE TRADE OK PROTECTION FOR ENGLAND? 145 
 
 precisely the same effect would be produced on our industries 
 if we were suddenly struck by a successful rival in our markets 
 at home and abroad — and that, as I have said, because industry 
 in its present stage has no collective or national guarantee. 
 And if no single individual will produce without guarantee, 
 then the nation which is made up of these individuals will not 
 do so either; and if not, with mills standing idle, England 
 would fall as far in a single decade as Florence, Venice, and 
 Genoa of the Middle Ages did in a century. For it is to be 
 observed that it is not now as it was in the days when these 
 States lost their Eastern trade through the opening of better 
 trade routes, or Holland her shipping through the English 
 Navigation Acts, where, in the difficulty of starting new 
 industries outside the beaten track of custom and routine, 
 intending rivals had to have a very great natural advantage 
 over the nations formerly enjoying the supremacy, and required 
 a long time before they could reduce them to ruin. On the 
 contrary when, as at the present time, whole industrial armies 
 can be transported, fed, and planted down with all the 
 machinery and appliances of production to their hand, at any 
 point in the wide world in a night, as it were ; and when the 
 smallest margin of differential advantage in production of one 
 nation over another can be seen in the morning papers, or read 
 off the tape from hour to hour in the great central exchanges 
 of the world — in such a state of the industrial world, a nation, 
 if beaten, might easily lapse into a third-rate power in a single 
 generation. 
 
 In what, then, do I expect a strict Protection to help us, it 
 will be asked? Simply by giving that national guarantee of 
 which I spoke, and which would ensure that what is produced 
 by us, if sold at all, would be sold at a remunerative price. 
 But if the foreigner will not buy from us because he can buy 
 cheaper elsewhere, will not our trade be greatly contracted ? 
 Certainly, our foreign trade, for you cannot both lose your 
 industrial supremacy and keep it. It is not a choice between 
 
146 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 first and second best — that will have been settled by our defeat. 
 It is rather a choice between a good second-best with 
 Protection, or ruination, speedy and complete, with a continu- 
 ance of Free Trade. But although we should lose our foreign 
 markets, we should still have a population of between thirty 
 and forty millions, with capital abundant, and machinery and 
 workmen equipped and at hand ; and more than all, with a 
 fertile soil that, as Krapotkin has conclusively shown (it came 
 as a revelation to me), could if necessary be made to support 
 many times the population we have now ; and with all these 
 advantages there would be the same difference between 
 stagnation and ruin with Free Trade on the one hand, and a 
 good, if second-class, industrial status with Protection on the 
 other, as there would be between a field which, although of 
 excellent quality of soil in itself, is altogether abandoned 
 because a better can be found for our purposes, and the same 
 field which, if it had to support a family, could be made to 
 yield, by a little more labour it is true, an abundance of fruit. 
 
 But why not participate in the prosperity of the conqueror, 
 throwing aside our private griefs and losses, and let the country 
 lie idle, with its mills closed down, its workmen out of work, 
 farmers throwing up their farms, the country districts deserted, 
 in the knowledge that the outlying world is benefited by our 
 defeat ? asks the cosmopolitan Free Trader ; even if, like Irish 
 peasants, there is nothing for us to do but to squat on our little 
 potato patches, and plant and hoe enough of them to keep 
 each his own family. For, consider it well, that is what we 
 should come to if we were soundly beaten by America or 
 Germany in our manufacturing industries ; and if Russia could 
 supply us with corn, and other counti-ies with cattle, cheaper 
 than we could produce them here. We should be reduced, it 
 is evident, to the status quo ante — to the condition, that is to 
 say, of England before the factory system of the last century 
 gave us our manufacturing supremacy — in the same way as 
 Holland has been reduced to what she was before her mercantile 
 
FREE TRADE OR PROTECTION FOR ENGLAND? 147 
 
 supremacy began ; and Spain before her time of prosperity 
 from her mines. For our supremacy never at any time 
 depended on Greek art, nor yet on " the fantastic carving of 
 cherubs' heads on cherry-stones " — not on the ingenuity and 
 inventiveness of the Americans, the science of the Germans as 
 applied to Industry, nor the encouragement given to intellect 
 either in general or particular, as in other countries ; but on 
 simple gross masses, which happen to lie close together, of 
 coal and iron ; and when we have been beaten in these, we 
 have been beaten in all; and shall have naught left with which 
 to face the future save pluck and grit, energy and honesty 
 alone — great and important as these are. 
 
 Why not emigrate, then, with these to our conquerors ? 
 We shall do so when the time comes that country is nothing, 
 patriotism nothing, a common home nothing, pride of race and 
 ancient prestige nothing, family ties nothing ; and when it is 
 indifferent whether we are ruled by an American or German 
 sitting in London, or by one of ourselves — but not till then. 
 And certainly not for an economic fetish, which, although a 
 beneficent deity to nations living under industrial conditions 
 to which it is suited, as it has so long been to us, would prove 
 a demon and a curse when these conditions have passed away. 
 
 In the above argument I have assumed, for the nonce, that 
 we are likely to become a defeated industrial nation in the near 
 future ; and have laid on the colours rather strongly for the 
 purpose of bringing out more sharply the principles that in my 
 judgment ought to guide us in the solution of this great question 
 of Free Trade or Protection, And with this my part in the 
 discussion ceases ; and the problem must now be handed over 
 to the specialists and experts in the various branches of industry, 
 to tell us to what extent the statistics of probability wiU 
 justify us or not in our fears. 
 
 But while this is pending, and in order that we may be pre- 
 pared for the worst, 1 shall, in my next article, still assume, for 
 the purposes of argument, that we are a beaten nation, and taking 
 
148 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 advantage of the revelations of Ki'apotkin as to possibilities of 
 land culture, and of the new economic truths on the relation 
 between Production and Consumption established by Hobson 
 and others of the new school of Economists, as well as of the 
 facts so carefully collected and collated by Macrosty on the 
 subject of Industrial Trusts, shall indicate a few of the means 
 by which, without recourse to Protection, we could raise our 
 industrial efficiency to the highest point compatible with our 
 natural advantages. But still assuming that, in the judgment 
 of the statisticians of industry, these, too, will prove inadequate 
 for the maintenance of our industrial supremacy, I shall go 
 farther, and proceed to outline as a basis of discussion a sketch 
 of the Protection policy which I believe to be necessary to 
 meet the new conditions, as well as of the general policy 
 required to bring the different parts of our industrial system, 
 manufacturing and agricultural, into harmony with it. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 HOW TO RUIN A FREE-TRADE NATION * 
 
 1 PROPOSE in the present paper, with the reader's 
 indulgence, to extend somewhat farther the series of 
 considerations with which I opened my plea for a re-hearing 
 of the imminent and now all-important question of Free Trade 
 or Protection for England. In the former article I dealt with 
 the matter in a discursive and formal manner, confining myself 
 to pointing out in a general way those conditions of industry 
 which in any given country favour a Free Trade policy, and 
 those which favour its opposite. I pointed out that the former 
 were those of what may be called industrial peace, the latter 
 those of industrial war. By industrial peace I meant, first, 
 where a nation was either so strong in some large department 
 of industry that it could practically undersell the world in that 
 department, and where, in consequence, having no effective 
 rivals, it could open its ports freely to all the world, using their 
 produce as but cheaper material or fuel with which to feed and 
 enhance its own supremacy ; or, secondly, where a nation, on 
 the other hand, was so weak in natural advantages that it could 
 never hope to be a serious rival to any, and where, in 
 consequence, like a simple mediaeval peasant, intended only to 
 cultivate his paternal fields, the protective chain armour of the 
 mail-clad knight would be an encumbrance rather than a help. 
 And lastly, by industrial peace I meant that far-off millenial 
 * Fortnightly llevieic, July, 1902. 
 
150 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 time when all nations having become but one nation, and their 
 peoples all alike friends and brothers, it would matter little 
 whether it was a peasant in Lithuania or in Kent that was 
 being well or ill fed ; a manufacturer in Lancashire or in Russia 
 that was reaping the world's profits ; or whether the decrees for 
 the extension, shifting, or suppression of the world's industries 
 should go forth from London or Paris, Berlin or New York. 
 Under these three conditions, wherever they have appeared in 
 history, or whenever they shall appear, Free Trade offers the 
 best facilities for the production and exchange of wealth. 
 
 But in conditions of industrial war it is diiFerent. The first 
 of these is where a young nation, like an infant Jupiter, has 
 natural advantages so great that it gives promise when it 
 reaches maturity of successfully entering the arena and disputing 
 the palm with the older nations, then industrially supreme ; 
 and where, in consequence, during its period of infancy and 
 growth, a systematic, close, and rigid policy of protection is 
 indispensable if it is not to be strangled at its birth. The 
 second condition is where a nation, once industrially supreme in 
 its own line, is threatened on all hands by younger rivals, and is 
 at last beaten, by however small a margin^ in that which gave it 
 supremacy, and where, in consequence, some form of Protection 
 is the simplest, swiftest, and most efficacious way of avertiu'^j 
 disaster, until such time, if ever, as by internal reorganization of 
 its forces, it is able to claim the supremacy again. 
 
 Now, imagining that these positions framed thus generally 
 had only to be stated to be accepted as axiomatic (and, indeed, 
 they have not yet been gainsaid), I then appealed to the 
 statisticians and specialists to let us know how near we were 
 getting to this danger-point of being beaten in our staple English 
 industries, and there left the matter for the moment. But, 
 curiously enough, at this very time, one or another of the most 
 eminent Economists, Financiers, Statisticians, and practical 
 Business Men, were engaged, each from his own special point 
 of view, and without previous concert or collusion, in illustrating 
 
HOAV TO RUIN A FREE-TRADE NATION. 151 
 
 "the very positions I had raised for consideration. Mr. Hobson, 
 
 in my judgment one of the most subtle, clear-sighted, and 
 
 penetrating of living economists, wrote an article in the same 
 
 number of this Keview as that in which my article appeared, 
 
 in which he demonstrated the necessity of reconsidering Free 
 
 Trade at once from the political and from the economic side. 
 
 In the same and a preceding number of the National Review, 
 
 Sir Vincent Caillard, an international financier of acknowledged 
 
 repute, sought to establish the same positions in one of the 
 
 most careful, elaborate, and well-sifted collections of trade 
 
 statistics which has yet appeared ; while Mr. Holt Schooling, 
 
 also an ackowledged authority, had in an earlier number of the 
 
 Monthly Review shown, in an admirably clear and condensed 
 
 form, that the heyday of our supremacy was already past, and 
 
 that all along the line we were slowly but definitely on the 
 
 decline. And last and not least, in a book on Protection, 
 
 written some time before by Mr. Byng, a manufacturer in a 
 
 large way of business — a book, I may remark in passing, which 
 
 exhibits not only an insight into every department of practical 
 
 business, but a directness of penetration into the general play 
 
 of economic forces such as I had not yet found in the political 
 
 economy of the schools, — in this work, the positions I had 
 
 laid down were anticipated and demonstrated from practical 
 
 experience with as close a fidelity almost as if the author had 
 
 had them in his mind while writing.* 
 
 Now, the above, I submit, was a combination of expert 
 
 opinion so simultaneous, independent, and unforced, and all 
 
 converging to a common centre and conclusion, that it ought 
 
 not in decency to have been ignored. But the Press, imagining 
 
 that the advance and encroachments of rival foreign industries 
 
 were to be calculated by an arithmetical progression, so many 
 
 stadia a decade, as it were, and not, as we shall presently see, by 
 
 a geometrical one, in which whole provinces may be detached 
 
 *Notably was this the case in the philosophy of " dumping," which we 
 had reached independently, and were the first to announce — he from the 
 practical, I from the theoretical side. 
 
152 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 in a night; the Press, I say, taking a passing glance at the 
 figures, and finding that, although the foreigner was gaining 
 ground on us, he had still so much to cover that we might 
 continue to indulge our Rip Van Winkle sleep for a long time 
 yet, and still wake up to find ourselves far and away ahead, 
 after a passing call to the manufacturers to wake up and improve 
 their machinery and methods if they would out-distance their 
 competitors as of yore, turned over on its side and went to 
 sleep ! The vast miscellaneous multitude, therefore, who have 
 the votes and whose ear hangs on the voice of the Press as that 
 of the Greeks did on their oracle, were not even informed that 
 there was such a thing as another important side to the Free- 
 Trade question ; and so the facts and statistics compiled wdth 
 80 much care, as well as the arguments drawn from history and 
 civilization, were left orphaned on the rocks by the seashore, 
 within ear-shot of the public, it is true, but without reaching it 
 (for to consign an argument to magazines or books is, so far as 
 the great Public is concerned, to consign it to the tomb), and 
 were washed away by the next incoming tide, and by this time 
 are forgotten. But in the short interval since then, events 
 have moved so fast, and industrial enterprises so gigantic in 
 scope and design, so multiform, and vaguely menacing in their 
 character, have appeared on the horizon, that both the public 
 and the Press have been staggered and bewildered by it ; and 
 so my orphaned friends of the magazine and myself have 
 another chance given us of trying to catch the public ear on 
 this momentous question ; and this time, I trust, we may meet 
 with a more cordial and attentive reception. 
 
 At any rate, I propose to open the campaign again on the 
 same issue as before, but this time to take the offensive, and if 
 1 may venture on so bold an undertaking, to carry the war into 
 the very heart of the enemy's camp, investing the Free-Trade 
 position more closely, and laying siege to it both in fiank and 
 in front ; and by drawing on those elements bearing on tlie 
 problem which have not yet entered into the purview of the 
 
HOW TO RUIN A FREE-TR\DE NATION. 153 
 
 Old Political Economy on which the gospel of Free Trade 
 hangs, shall hope to drive the enemy from the trenches in 
 which he has long lain so securely, and from behind those 
 paper barricades by which his essential weakness is obscured. 
 In this way, although we may fail in reducing him or in 
 silencing his guns, we shall at least have brought to the public 
 notice the new artillery which the New Political Economy, the 
 new methods of industrial warfare, as well as the latest 
 generalizations drawn from history and civilization, have 
 brought into the field ; so that when the logic of events, if not 
 of ai'gument, forces the question, as it will most assuredly do 
 presently, to the forefront of practical politics, no factor of 
 impoi'tance which either economics, history, or political experi- 
 ence can supply shall, if possible, be omitted from our purview, 
 or shall suddenly be sprung on the nation without having 
 already received its due weight and consideration. Trusting, 
 therefore, to the goodwill, if not the assent, of the public and 
 the Press, I shall endeavour to show how a Free-Trade nation 
 like England, which, according to the logic of the old political 
 economy, can never be overtaken if only she will put forth her 
 full powei's and obstinately refuse to close her ports, by hostile 
 tariffs, against the foreigner, can in actuality be caught up 
 with and overpassed at a few bounds ; and that, too, as easily 
 as the fabled tortoise was, which the logic of the Greek 
 philosophers proved to a demonstration could never, if it got 
 the start, be overtaken by the hare during all time. In other 
 words, I shall attempt to show how the margin of our industrial 
 supremacy, which at the assumed arithmetical rate of progression 
 might take centuries to be overpassed, can, by the geometrical 
 progression which my argument involves, be jumped all along 
 the line in as many decades, and our trade ruined as we sleep. 
 Now this, I am aware, is what the Americans would call a 
 " large order " ; and as a prophecy it can only be saved from 
 derision by the most rigid demonstration of the trend, 
 momentum, and incidence of all the forces maturing to that 
 
154 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 end. But with the hand of cards held by my friends and 
 myself in this enterprise, I hope, with ordinary good fortune, 
 to demonstrate its feasibility, relying on my trusty comrades 
 in arms to eke out my deficiencies by their superior knowledge. 
 For, to sit here and see our commerce captured by precon- 
 certed design, and our industries one by one given over to the 
 spoiler like sheep on an open plain, because the ghost of a dead 
 and superannuated political economy has forbidden the erection 
 of defences against the wolves, and because it has decreed that 
 trade will best thrive when it is allowed to wander at its will 
 anyAvhere and without protection — this, indeed, would be an 
 inherent cowardice, and those who shall deliver the nation from 
 this Old Economy under which it sits enchanted will, like 
 Cato, deserve, if they do not receive, the gratitude of their 
 country. Let us, therefore, to the arena, and with the gods 
 and the Press propitious, make another attempt to arouse 
 opinion on this all-important theme ; shaking hands as is the 
 manner of the prize-ring, before we enter on this friendly 
 encounter for the public good. 
 
 But in order that the controversy may be fought on a 
 definite issue, and that our demonstration may have the greatest 
 possible clearness, it is necessary that we should find some 
 single object, natural or artificial, in which every side and 
 aspect of our subject may be envisaged and surveyed at once 
 as in a bird's-eye view, and on which the reader may concen- 
 trate as the course of the demonstration proceeds. And for 
 this purpose I propose to represent the play and interaction of 
 the wheels of industry by the Great Wheel at Earl's Court. 
 If, therefore, the old economists of the Academic chairs, as 
 well as the young lions of Parliament and the Press, who, from 
 sitting at their feet, have come up to town to champion them, 
 as well as the j)ublic generally who have received this gospel 
 of Free Trade from them as a sacred deposit and heritage, will 
 do me the honour during the month in which this article runs, 
 to concentrate on this Wheel I will undertake to say that, witli 
 
HOW TO RUIN A FREE-TRADE NATION. 155 
 
 the Press as referee, we shall either be victorious all along the 
 line, or I personally shall be compelled to lay down my arms 
 and be driven from the field. But if, as 1 hope to show, this 
 wheel will stand all the strain which can be brought to bear on 
 it ; and if in the upshot it shall be seen that the old and fabled 
 Science of Political Economy, with the Free Trade that hangs 
 on its skirts, must dash itself to pieces on its iron bars and fall 
 to wreckage, then out of their ruins there will also be seen to 
 arise, as out of the dead snake in Goethe's tale, a ring of 
 precious jewels of universal currency and validity — a single law 
 of Trade and of the production of Wealth ; a single law of the 
 distribution of wealth or division of the spoils ; and out of these 
 two again, a single law for building up Trade, and a single law 
 for ruininof it. 
 
 To begin with, then, let the different compartments of the 
 Earl's Court Wheel represent those great industries which have 
 given Eno-land, and in the ao^o;reo;ate still orive her, althousfh 
 on a declining day, her world-wide supremacy — the cotton 
 industry, the coal industry, the shipping industry, the woollen, 
 iron, steel and machine industries, and the rest. And let these 
 separate compartments be filled with the workmen connected 
 with these special industries ; each compartment being divided 
 into two halves, one half representing the food, shelter, clothing 
 and other articles of convenience or luxury which the workers 
 consume and enjoy, the other half (of which the masters hold 
 the keys) representing the land, workshops, machinery and 
 tools used by them in their several industries, and by the use 
 of which all the material wealth of the country is produced. 
 Xext let the great wheel, with these compartments all 
 suspended from its inner rim and circumference, begin to 
 revolve, carrying its compartments up and around with it ; and 
 as a standard of the normal activity of industry, let the wheel 
 make a single complete revolution in twenty-four hours ; any 
 increase or decrease in the production of wealth by the workers 
 being represented by the quickening or slowing of the wheel 
 
156 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 in that given time. And now let the workmen in the different 
 compartments be engaged while ascending the wheel, say in 
 the evening and at night, in consuming in one division, the 
 food, clothing, comforts and luxuries, which they have pro- 
 duced in the other on their way down the wheel, say in the 
 morning and afternoon ; and let this process go on from day to 
 day, the occupants all engaged during one-half of the day in 
 consuming what they have produced in the other. 
 
 And now let the owners or others who have interests in the 
 Earl's Court Wheel, and who charge the public a certain sum 
 for entrance to it, and for the permission to enjoy its privileges, 
 represent the landowners, the capitalists, the shipowners, the 
 manufacturers, and the rest, as well as the tax-collectors of the 
 Government, all of whom, or their agents, stand around the 
 base of the wheel and take tax, toll, rents, commissions, profits, 
 or what you will, for protecting the wheel, for directing the 
 running of it, or for the use of the laud, workshops, machinery 
 and tools, which occupy, as we have seen, one-half of each of 
 the compartments ; the landlords taking their toll in the shape 
 of rents for the use of the land in the agricultural compart- 
 ment ; the capitalists and owners of the manufacturing, shipping, 
 and transport compartments taking theirs in the form of 
 profits ; while the Government takes its share in the form of 
 taxes from all the compartments alike. And let all these rents, 
 tolls, profits, taxes, or commissions, be taken out of the pro- 
 ducing division of the compartments, as each in turn reaches the 
 landing-platform, and before what is left over is passed through 
 to the consuming divisions to be consumed and enjoyed by the 
 workmen and their families on their way up the wheel again. 
 
 The above, then, may stand to represent the great wheel of 
 industi'y and its adjuncts jvnd appendages, freed like a mathe- 
 matical diagram from all unnecessary complications, and in its 
 simple structure and arrangements serving as a moving image 
 not only of the industry of the world in any age or nation, but, 
 if we consider it, of its governments and politics as well ; and 
 
HOW TO RUIN A FREE-TRADE NATION. 157 
 
 to it as to a kind of universal touchstone we may bring all 
 theories of political economy or of national policy to receive 
 their justification, confirmation, or refutation. Let us regard 
 it, therefore, for a moment to make sure of its universal and 
 representative character, before putting to it those special 
 questions the answers to which will, in my judgment, be seen 
 to seal the doom of the Old Economy, and of the principle of 
 commercial policy which is founded on it, namely, of Free 
 Trade absolute and unlimited for all peoples and at all times. 
 
 Now, the first point we would notice, and the most important 
 of all for our Free-Trade argument, is that the occupants of 
 the Wheel are neither exclusively producers nor consumers, but 
 are at once both producers and consumers, each man beino- a 
 producer in the daytime and a consumer at night, so that thev 
 may all be called producer-consumers. 
 
 The next point is, that the Wheel is equally representative 
 of industry at any and every stage of its development, from 
 the savage who lives in the evening on the fruit he has 
 gathered, the fish he has caught, or the game he has killed in 
 the morning, whether he give over any part of it to a chief or 
 medicine-man' or no, up to our own complicated modern de- 
 velopment, with its tax-receivers, rent-receivers, profit-receivers, 
 and interest-receivers, all waiting around the base of the wheel 
 to take tax, toll, and commission from it. 
 
 The third point is, that in strict science the Wheel as it 
 stands at any given time is the source of all the wealth of the 
 community ; in the same way as the engine, and not the driver, 
 does the work of the train. So that although the capitalists 
 and owners who run the wheel for profit are of the o-reatest 
 importance, inasmuch as by their energy, invention, and fore- 
 sight, or the want of them, they may cause it to revolve more 
 quickly or more slowly, may run it well or badly, still they are 
 strictly no essential part of it. Like the engine-driver, if they 
 run it badly it will slow down or stop of itself, and both they 
 and its occupants may be ruined ; if thev run it well and 
 
158 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 skilfully, thev, like the rest, will participate in the increase of 
 the products and in the growing general prosperity. 
 
 And now Ave have to ask of the Wheel how it is to be worked 
 in order to produce most wealth, in the same way as we ask of 
 an engine how it will do most work. To answer this we may 
 begin by remarking that as the amount of wealth depends on 
 the number of revolutions of the wheel, the question is whether 
 it can be best increased by stimulating the producing or the 
 consuming side of the wheel, its downward or its upward move- 
 ment. But just as no man will give himself the trouble (except 
 for sport) of catching half-a-dozen fish when one is sufficient 
 for his own consumption, unless, indeed, he knows of those 
 who will take the extra five off his hands and give him 
 something for his trouble, so the workers on the wheel will not, 
 if they have no rents, taxes, or commissions to pay, produce 
 more than they can themselves consume; if they have such 
 rents to pay, then they will not produce more than both them- 
 selves and the rent-receivers can consume. For should they 
 in one revolution of the wheel produce more than this, as some 
 of it must go to waste, they will on the next revolution 
 produce less, and the movement of the wheel will be slowed 
 again, unless, indeed, foreign consumers can be found to take 
 the surplus off their hands. So long, for example, as the 
 Southern planters of America can connect the productive side 
 of their cotton-growing wheel with the consuming side of a 
 cotton-spinning wheel in Lancashire (as one wheel in a factory 
 is connected with another by throwing a belt across both of 
 them), the cotton -growing wheel may still keep up its pace even 
 should the negroes on it receive but a bare subsistence ; but 
 were the planters so situated that they had only to produce 
 sufficient for their own backs and those of their negroes, it is 
 evident, is it not, that the speed of their wheel would slow 
 down almost to stagnation ? And, therefore, unless you can 
 find consumers either in your own nation or in the world 
 outside, however fast you may start your wheel a-going by 
 
HOW TO RUIN A FREE-TRADE NATION. 159 
 
 acting on its productive side alone, it must slow down again 
 unless the consuming side can take off the produce by being 
 able to pay for it. On the other hand, if the consuming side 
 can take it off as fast as it is produced, and can pay for more as 
 well, the w^heel will not only start revolving quickly, but will 
 increase its speed more and more until the power and the 
 willingness to consume are exhausted. In other words, the 
 quickness or slowness of the revolution of the wheel, and 
 therefore the greater or less production of wealth, depends on 
 and takes its initiative from the conswning and not the 
 producing side of the wheel. It seems almost a truism, and 
 yet it has been entirely missed by the Old Economists from 
 the time of Adam Smith to the present day. By putting 
 production before consumption, they put the cart before the 
 horse, and while urging manufacturers to go on producing by 
 whipping up the cart, with Carlyle jeering at them, they could 
 not understand why the horse would not stir from the spot I 
 And yet the first tradesman they met could have put them 
 right. For he would have told them that it was the number 
 of consumers coming into the front door of his shop that 
 determine the number of wholsaler's carts unloaded at his back 
 door ; the number of orders given to the wholesaler, again, 
 that determines, in turn, the number given by the wholesaler 
 to the manufacturer ; and the number to the manufacturer that 
 keeps going the cotton-growing, stock-raising, sheep-breeding, 
 corn-producing, coal and iron mining of the farmers, planters, 
 and landowners. In other words, the " turnover," as it is 
 called, or the number of revolutions of the wheel in the pro- 
 duction of wealth, depends on and takes its cue from con- 
 sumption, and not production; as, indeed, might have been 
 seen a pnori from the knowledge of human nature itself, 
 which, although for sport it may produce what it does not 
 intend to consume, in business will produce nothing but what 
 it has a reasonable expectation of consuming and enjoying. 
 Now, it may seem a small matter this, of whether you make 
 
160 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 consumption or production the primary and initiative cause in 
 the production of wealth (and it seems so frankly natural that 
 the production of wealth should depend on its production, and 
 not on its consumption), but like taking; a wrong turning in a 
 country lane on a dark night, it led the old economists farther 
 and farther into the bog, until they ended by being not only 
 wrong in one conclusion, but in practice wrong in all. 
 
 The first illusion into which this divorce of production from 
 consumption led them, was the imagining that the share in the 
 product which should fall to each class, could be determined 
 scientifically by economic laws alone. They were prepared to 
 admit, it is true, that no such scientific division was possible in 
 other ages of industry ; as in the Roman Empire, for example, 
 where the landlords and capitalists were masters, and much of 
 the work done by our present capitalists was done by freedmen 
 and slaves to whom could be thrown such leavings as the 
 masters in their discretion chose to give them ; nor could it be 
 scientifically divided when the sword of the conqueror was 
 thrown into the scale to carve out for himself from the produce 
 what share of it it was his good pleasure to receive ; nor even 
 in the present day in countries like Turkey and Morocco, 
 where rapacious Pashas, with the connivance of their Sultans, 
 can commandeer such of the stock and produce of factory or 
 field as lies within their line of sight as they pass along the 
 highway. 
 
 But living, as these Old Economists did, before the time of 
 the giant "Trusts" and the equally-powerful Trade-unions, 
 they figured the isolated capitalists, great and small, as well as 
 the isolated working man, as ever on the wing, ready to 
 transport themselves anywhere, and to alight on any the 
 slightest coign of vantage that offered itself. They imagined 
 that in countries where property was secure, competition open, 
 and contracts free, the problem was only to find how quantities 
 of dead material or of human chattel flowing freely hither and 
 thither like water or sand shaken in a sieve, would find their 
 
HOW TO RUIN A FREE-TRADE NATION. 161 
 
 appointed level according to economic law, yielding so much to 
 the landlords, so much to the capitalists, and so much to the 
 workers respectively. 
 
 It was Mill who gave to this division its final scientific 
 expression ; and accordingly in his work on Political Economy 
 you see the produce piled up in the little mounds or hillocks 
 that fell to the lot of each, all rising from a common level and 
 margin of " free contract " and " free competition," like a range 
 of hills of varying size rising from the margins of a lake. In 
 this division, while the landlords' share varied with occasion, 
 but still by definite law, the labourers' share always remained 
 a mere tail-end to capital — a " bare subsistence wage " to which 
 population and necessity for ever kept it down. But these Old 
 Economists forgot that it was not merely a question of dead 
 material or human chattel transported hither and thither 
 according to supply and demand, but that behind all these 
 hillocks and mounds were human wills, w^ho, by uniting and 
 combining, could as easily get their backs against the wall by 
 manoeuvring, as ever rapacious despots and Pashas had done 
 by their swords. And the consequence was, that they had no 
 sooner settled the division to their own satisfaction, than the 
 hillocks began to rock and tumble as if earthquakes or volcanoes 
 had opened beneath them. Henry George saw in vision the 
 horrid spectre of Landlordism rising higher and ever higher 
 till it threatened to fill the whole heaven and to submerge 
 Capitalist and Wage-earner alike, but imagining that it all 
 came by economic law, and not realising that subterranean 
 powers might be at work as well, called on Heaven for justice 
 and for expropriation while it was yet time, and before 
 civilisation itself should be submerged. But he had hardly 
 time to utter his prayer before the subterranean powers lying 
 behind another mound decreed it otherwise. This time it was 
 the Capitalists, who in his own country of America had begun 
 by getting hold of the means of transport and communication, 
 and from that as point of support, worked outwards, throwing 
 
162 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 their coils alike over forest and mine and field, and by means 
 of boycott, preferential rate, the alternative of purchase or 
 ruination, or what not, at last issued in those giant Trusts 
 which shot the mound of capitalism so high that it filled the 
 sky like a Chimborazo, dwarfing the spectral landlordism of 
 Henry George to a wart ; while Labour meanwhile rising 
 steadily higher and higher on the back of its underground 
 Trades-unions, and no longer now the mere tail-end of capitalism, 
 confronted these giant trusts on equal terms on its own rival 
 peak. The truth is, there is no economic law as such for the 
 division of the products of industry among the different classes ; 
 it depends entirely on the law common to all civilisation, that 
 " they will take who have the power,^' and who by manoeuvring 
 can get their back against the wall as against the rest ; — and 
 there are as many opportunities for this in a regime of *' free 
 contract " and " free competition" as under the most precarious, 
 slippery, or ruthless of despotisms. The fear of starvation or 
 of the poor-house to men cut off" from access to the land or to 
 the workshop, although more slowly and silently operative, is 
 as eff'ective in its results as the immediate fear of death ; and 
 while throwing open all doors for them individually to walk in 
 or out without compulsion, you can strangle them in the mass 
 unless protected, by operating on them individually, as surely 
 as you can the occupants of a pit or gallery by the cry of fire, 
 with all the exits free. On the other hand, by detaching each 
 individually from the union which is his defence, you can do 
 it with a show of generosity, largesse, and magnanimity even, 
 as deadly in its effects as if it were a preconcerted massacre ; 
 in the same way as by throwing a few coins into a dense and 
 excited crowd you can make them ti-ample each other to death, 
 each strangling the other as in a doorway by his own excess 
 of eagerness and desire. 
 
 The question is, therefore, not whether the game is being 
 played fairly on a smooth and even table by " free contract," 
 " free competition,'' and the like, according to recognised laws ; 
 
HOW TO RUIN A FREE-TRADE NATION. 163 
 
 for this is never so. One or other of the dice is always loaded. 
 Either it is done openly and frankly, as at the Bank of Monte 
 Carlo, where the " zero " always gives the proprietors a steady 
 advantage ; or secretly by one or other of those concealed 
 combinations underneath the table, where the conspirators, by 
 merely raising their backs, can by means of " corners " and 
 monopolies upset all the legitimate rules of the game. Let 
 our idealist friends, therefore, who are nothing if not sticklers 
 for Justice, and for seeing it rigidly executed in this world, 
 but who are too often so intent on watching the rat-holes of 
 life to find the man who stole the sixpence or the loaf of bread, 
 that they let the elephant go by unheeded — let them, if they 
 would have a " cause " or theme worthy of their great argu- 
 ment, look to these concealed monsters rather, if they would 
 see the game of industry and life played under fair and equal 
 conditions. Otherwise grandiose hypocrisies such as would 
 make the heavens blush, creeping from their concealment, will 
 stalk through the world blameless and unabashed, posing as if 
 in all meekness and humility they were the lowly exemplars 
 of uprightness and peace. 
 
 Now, all the Old Economists saw these inequalities, and 
 deplored them, but thinking them to be the natural effects of 
 purely economic law (instead of cunningly-devised combinations 
 of human wills and powers), either resigned themselves to them 
 as to the ordinances of Nature, like Mill, or appealed to heaven 
 and abstract justice to right them, and so too often fell into 
 mere Utopias and dreams — Henry George, as we have seen, 
 calling aloud for the expropriation of the landlords out and out, 
 and without compensation ; Kuskin, for a division of the 
 product founded on the range and character of the social 
 services of each class, and on the amount of ability and virtue 
 displayed ; while Karl Marx, appealing alike to justice and 
 the street-barricade (when chance offered), on behalf of the 
 rights of the workers, championed their claim to take most of 
 the produce, if not all. 
 
164 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY, 
 
 With all these illusions clinging to the skirts of the Old 
 Economists, we are not surprised to find that, figuring Industry 
 as a kind of rigid walking-stick divided into parts with Labour 
 as its tail-end, and where, accordingly, the less Labour got, the 
 more there was left for the other classes, and vice versa, they 
 should be perplexed when confronted with the paradox, that 
 the more Labour got, as in America, the more all other classes 
 got as well ; and the less it got, as under Turkish Pashadom, 
 the less, instead of the more, did the other classes receive. 
 But the reason is simple. Industry is not a rigid walking- 
 stick, but a wheel whose revolutions when stretched out on the 
 flat are as elastic as rubber; if made to revolve slowly, it 
 contracts, until there is little or nothing for anyone to divide, 
 even for the Pasha himself ; if quickly, it may measure more 
 than the entire length of the stick, and so there will be the 
 more for all. And as it is Labour that is on the wheel, it is 
 really a case, so far as the Old Economists are concerned, of 
 the tail wagging the dog ! 
 
 But the most fatal legacy left by the Old Economists in 
 their attempt to separate the production of wealth from its 
 consumption, was their doctrine of Free Trade as a principle 
 of commercial policy absolute and unlimited, the best for all 
 nations and at all times. It was as if they had divided the 
 Wheel of Industry into two parts, and tried to make each part 
 run independently of the other. Or as if they had divided 
 men into mouths and stomachs on the one hand, and arms and 
 hands on the other ; and had then said to the one. Consume all 
 you can, and at as cheap a price as you can get it, whether 
 from at home or abroad ; and to the other, produce all you can 
 as cheaply as you can, and when one industry is ruined by the 
 foreigner, try another where your capital can be employed to 
 better advantage ; and you will all then have attained the 
 maximum of industrial prosperity and felicity possible to you, 
 and your problem of industry will be solved. Now, the 
 difference between a double-sided thing like a wheel, and the 
 
HOW TO JiUIN A FllEE-TRADE NATION. 165 
 
 same thing split into separate halves, is this, that whereas in 
 the latter you can go to any length with the one half without 
 paying any regard to the other, in the former you have to be 
 careful not t<> press so strongly on one side as to injure the 
 other. This is true of all concrete things, from a nation as a 
 whole down to every man or animal in it. If you divide a 
 nation into two absolutely independent and unrelated sections, 
 say a warlike class and an industrial class, and treat each as if 
 it were independent of the other, you can say to the one class, 
 Fight as much as you can and whenever and Avherever you can ; 
 and to the other, Push your trade wherever you can and to 
 any extent you can, and all will be well ; but if they are only 
 two related paris of one and the same nation, you can only say 
 to the one, Fight whenever you can, and as much as you can, 
 so long as you do not thereby endanger your trade ; to the 
 other. Push your trade wherever you can and by any means 
 you can, so long as you do not bring on a destructive war. A 
 State may maintain a class of celibates or Quakers with nothing 
 but advantage to itself from their example, but all must not be 
 celibates or Quakers ; some worldlings must be reserved, if the 
 population is to be kept up ; some soldiers, if the national 
 independence is to be preserved. It is the same with Industry. 
 A workman may barter all he has for cheap food and clothing, 
 but not his tools ; a big game hunter all his old guns, but not 
 his rifle ; a fighting tribe of Ked Indians, everything else but 
 their weapons of war ; a stockbreeder all his inferior bulls, but 
 not his last and best one — that must be reserved. 
 
 And now if we apply this principle to the Free-Trade 
 position, it will be evident at a glance that a nation can only 
 permit cheaper imports from abroad for the consuming side of 
 its wheel, so long as it reserves some Industries which will keep 
 the productive side agoing to pay for them. But the Free 
 Trader is not satisfied with this, but cries. No, let not only 
 some things come in cheaper, but all things whatever, if they 
 can be had cheaper abroad. It is as if all the members of a 
 
166 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 tribe were to be secretly inveigled into parting with their 
 rifles, or all the stockbreeders into parting with their bulls I 
 And now let us see how it works out in detail. As each 
 industry in turn is ruined by being undersold from abroad, the 
 works of that compartment of the wheel must close down, and 
 the capitalists, putting the keys in their pockets, must transfer 
 the wreck of their capital to some other compartment of the 
 wheel ; while the workmen must either clamber up the wheel 
 and distribute themselves among the other compartments as 
 best they may, as unskilled workmen, or fall oiF the wheel 
 altogether into the gutter or the slums. If now we suppose 
 our great manufacturing industries invaded in turn, the coal, 
 iron, steel, woollen, and machine industries — those great 
 industries which by weathering the open competition of the 
 world for a generation or two of Free Trade have best proved 
 themselves able to survive in the struggle for existence — until 
 all but a few of the strongest have succumbed ; the workers 
 having all clambered up into these compartments, or fallen off 
 the wheel into the gutter ; still all may yet be well, and the 
 nation as a whole be richer for it, even although the millions 
 of workers displaced have to be fed like the Roman populace 
 on "bread and the circus," in every city and town of the king- 
 dom ; provided always that the one or two industries that still 
 keep their ground (and in which the wrecks of the capital of 
 all the rest are now concentrated), can still hold the World 
 market so securely, that they can pay easily for all the imports 
 from abroad, and still have something to the good. Even a 
 single industry would suflSce, say the Cotton industry, the 
 largest and strongest of our industries. It was so in 8pain, 
 when after having become possessed of the gold and silver 
 mines of Mexico and Peru, she abandoned all her old cotton 
 and silk and woollen manufactures, and still grew ever the 
 richer, waving her flag more triumphantly than before on the 
 produce of these mines alone. But now let our last industry 
 be successfully attacked and captured, as Spain in eft'ect was 
 
HOW TO RUIN A FREE-TRADE NATION. 167 
 
 when her mines were exhausted, or Rome when Alaric and the 
 other Barbarians, advancing by easy stages through her 
 exhausted and now defenceless fields, tenanted as they were 
 only by Sybarites and slaves, sat down before the walls and 
 demanded her keys. Will the Free Trader still wave his flag 
 and exclaim, " Oh ! let it all come in, it is all for the benefit 
 of the ' poor consumer ' " 1 Will he still shout in the ears of 
 the capitalists, vs^ith all the other industries ruined in their 
 rear, to wake up and employ their capital and labour in 
 industries that will give them a better advantage ? Or, most 
 helpless delusion of all, will he still expect the imports to 
 go on coming in % Did the English manufacturers still go on 
 pouring their goods into Spain as a charity when her mines 
 had given out 'i Did the granaries of Egypt and Africa still 
 continue to empty their corn into the lap of Rome as a free 
 gift, when the Barbarians had taken her sword ? 
 
 Man for man, for every consumer on the wheel there is a 
 corresponding producer, and for the very good reason that each 
 man is, as we have seen, a producer-consumer. If, therefore, 
 you let all products come in free from abroad, because they 
 can be had cheaper, you (having by the same act been under- 
 sold in all) have the keys turned on every workshop in the 
 kingdom, and unless fed by manna, the grace of God, or 
 foreign charity, how on the next turn of the wheel are men 
 to eat, and clothe and house themselves, if they do not, and, 
 by the nature of the case, can no longer produce anything 
 either for their own consumption, or in exchange for imports 
 from abroad? The conclusion is obvious — Free Trade as a 
 principle of commercial policy absolute and unlimited is false ; 
 to make it true both in theory and fact, we must substitute 
 for it a Free Trade in which some industries, or a single 
 industry, must in the last resort be protected and reserved ; 
 like the last rifle of the hunter, and the last bull of the herd ; 
 and, for preference, those industries for which the nation has 
 the greatest natural advantages, the greatest natural genius, 
 
168 SOCIOLOGY a:nd political economy. 
 
 and the greatest stock of acquired skill and knowledge. For, 
 with our last industry captured, the very contemplation of 
 having to deliver over to the statesmen to feed, some forty or 
 fifty millions of people who will go on living and will neither 
 consent of their own free-will to starve, or to be shot, drowned, 
 or otherwise mercifully disposed of, ought of itself to be enough 
 to give the unlimited Free Trader pause. 
 
 But if the above considerations are not sufficient for the Old 
 Economist and Free Trader, and he still requires more to 
 convince him of the illusory nature of the life-belt to which 
 he has entrusted his fortunes, and by which, as he has recently 
 declared, it is his intention either to sink or swim, let him take 
 a glance with me at the phenomena of industry, not as seen 
 through the mere crack in the wall of a single generation or 
 two, where only the tail of the dog is visible in the procession, 
 but when broadly surveyed in full perspective along the course 
 of History. For then he will see that no nation that has risen 
 to supremacy, either in commerce or in manufactures, has done 
 80 by Free Trade alone, or yet by Protection alone, but by a 
 combination or alternation of the two. England, for example, 
 began by exporting her wool through the shippers of the 
 Hanseatic League ; she then invited the Flemish Aveavers over 
 to teach her how to manufacture it ; then she made the 
 Hansards spend all they got from their imports, on English 
 products ; next she expelled the Flemish weavers and let her 
 own do the work ; and lastly, she shut the door in the face of 
 the Hansards, and let her own shippers do her carrying trade. 
 And when she had at last, by her natural advantages, become 
 the chief manufacturer of the world, she shut the door in turn 
 on the Dutch, who had succeeded the Hansards as the main 
 carriers for Europe and the East, and by tlie Navigation Acts 
 which confined the carrying of her manufactures to her own 
 ships, ruined Holland at a blow. 
 
 The Hanseatic League itself began by being, as England is 
 to-day, the great carrier for all the northern nations of Europe, 
 
HOW TO RUIN A FREE-TRADE NATION. 169 
 
 buying everywhere in the cheapest markets — wool in England, 
 iron in Sweden, manufactures in Belgium, agricultural produce 
 in Poland, and so on — but protecting her commerce meanwhile 
 by allowing none of this produce to be carried in any but her 
 own vessels. After a time each of these nations, nursing the 
 while its own shipping for political and other reasons, closed 
 its doors in turn on the League, and excluding her vessels 
 from its ports, she, too, was ruined. 
 
 Flanders, on the other hand, began by Free Trade, as well 
 she might, for there was none to compete with her manufactures, 
 but when England expelled her workmen, and Colbert closed 
 France against her goods in order to protect his own, she too 
 was ruined. Portugal, again, had begun by protecting her 
 manufactures until they were in a flourishing condition, but 
 having, in an evil hour, agreed, by the Methuen Treaty, to 
 admit English manufactures free in return for her wines, the 
 country was so flooded with them that her home manufactures 
 perished, and could not afterwards be revived. 
 
 The American manufactures which had taken root during 
 the War of Independence were, at its close, threatened with 
 ruin by the influx of the cheaper manufactured goods of 
 England. A tariff was then put on, and they revived ; it was 
 taken off, and they again drooped ; it was then doubled, and 
 gradually raised tier on tier to the formidable and inaccessible 
 barrier it is at the present day ; — and with results, as an object- 
 lesson, which all the world may see. It was the same with 
 Germany, who, after the Napoleonic Wars, was threatened 
 with the ruin of her manufactures by the imports from England, 
 but after much diffculty she succeeded in getting them pro- 
 tected (with Free Trade, however, within her own borders), 
 and so gradually brought herself to the industrial position 
 which she occupies to-day. 
 
 And Avhen England by reason at once of Protection, of her 
 great natural advantages, and of the number of great inventors 
 born within her realms, had managed to outpace all her rivals 
 
170 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 both industrially and commercially, on land and on sea, and so 
 attained to the industrial supremacy of the world, she too, 
 having now nothing to fear from foreign competitors, opened 
 her ports freely to all nations, and invited them all to come in ; 
 and continues to do so to the present hour. But to imagine 
 that this industrial supremacy thus slowly built up like a coral 
 reef from sta^e to staije, and behind a series of enclosures and 
 barricades in which the exits and entrances were as cunningly 
 devised to meet the attacks of the enemy as the drawbridges, 
 portcullises, and underground passages of her old Baronial 
 castles ; to imagine that each of her nascent industries could 
 have stood on its own feet and without Government protection 
 in the teeth of older and more developed industrial nations 
 standing over them with drawn sword, and ready to strike 
 them down ; to imagine all this, and further to believe that 
 because in looking through the keyhole of a single generation 
 of men and finding Free Trade flourishing without bolt or bar, 
 it would have been better had it been always thus, and will be 
 better to be always so, is to imagine that the unwalled towns 
 of to-day, protected as they are only by sentiments of peace, 
 would have been equally secure against the robber-barons of 
 the Middle Ages, or would be so to-morrow, unless new barri- 
 cades were devised, if the country were invaded and overrun 
 by a foreign foe. 
 
 The Old Economists, then, having failed to see that Industry 
 is a Wheel of producer-consumers, and not a dead, inelastic 
 walking-stick in which production is separated from con- 
 sumption and independent of it, missed the one and only Law 
 of the Production and increase of wealth, namely, that the 
 stimulus comes from the side of consumption, and not of 
 production. They have missed, also, the one and only Law of 
 its Distribution, a law which comes from civilization in general, 
 and not from Political Economy at all — the law, namely, that 
 the lion's share of the produce must always fall to that class 
 which, by the most skilful manoeuvring of its forces, succeeds 
 
HOW TO UUIN A FREE-TRADE NATION, 171 
 
 in getting its back against the wall. They have also misled 
 the Free Traders into believing that Free Trade is a principle 
 of absolute and universal validity applicable to all nations and 
 at all times, instead of being severely limited in its application, 
 and always with the most vital industries protected and reserved. 
 And further, both they and the Free Traders alike, by looking 
 through the keyhole of a single generation, have missed the 
 one and only lesson of History bearing on the subject, namely, 
 that nations that have attained to industrial supremacy have 
 done so by judiciously mingling Free Trade and Protection, 
 either alternately or in combination, according to the industrial 
 necessities or conditions of the time. 
 
 If all this be true, it is evident that with Eno^land as a Free- 
 Trade nation, thus tempting Providence by lying helpless and 
 exposed on an open sea like a floating mass of undefended 
 blubber, ready to be harpooned by every adventurer that passes 
 along, the problem of hoic to r^uin he?- ought not to be one 
 altogether passing human ingenuity. On the contrary, it is 
 as simple and " easy as lying," as Hamlet says ; and, indeed, 
 the process has already begun. The problem being how to 
 jump the now small margin of superiority on our part vvrhich 
 separates us all along the line of our greatest industries from 
 that of one or other of our foreign rivals, and to jump it, not 
 by a slow advance requiring decades or centuries, but by leaps 
 and bounds, two principles or modes of operation are involved ; 
 first, to get your weapon of attack, and next, to effectively use 
 it. In regard to the first, it is to be observed that just as a 
 cannon baU of sufficient size will demolish a fortress which 
 would be impregnable to the assaults of a number of rifle 
 bullets, although in the aggregate they were equal in weight of 
 metal to that ball, so an amount of capital concentrated and 
 wielded by a single hand will break down industrial defences 
 which no equal amount of capital dispersed in small amounts 
 among a number of isolated and independent capitalists can 
 touch. For, giant capitals wielded by single hands are as 
 
172 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 much a real invention in Industry as the Armstrong gun was in 
 War^ and in their range and efficacy of operation are as the 
 difference between steam-power and hand-labour ; and when 
 once they have appeared in the field of industry will silence 
 all lesser aggregations, as the power-looms did the hand-looms ; 
 and especially when brought to bear on a Free-Trade nation 
 like England, whose capitalists, still more or less isolated and 
 unrelated, can be bought or sold for money without infringing 
 any of the current conceptions of commercial honour, and can 
 be pitted against each other, or caught at angles where they 
 can be isolated, detached, and defeated in detail, as in the 
 tactics of Buonaparte in war : and more especially so where, 
 with open ports and no protective defences anywhere, the 
 enemy is invited to step in and freely choose his own ground 
 and points of vantage for the attack. It is a question only of 
 Capital enough ; give us that, and were the world made up of 
 Free-Trade nations to-morrow, they could be overrun as easily 
 in a night as the isolated states of Greece were by Rome, of 
 the East by Alexander, or of Germany by Napoleon ; each 
 being incorporated in the rolling ball as it went along and 
 made the instrument of further conquests, until all were 
 subdued. 
 
 And the way in which these giant capitals are to be handled 
 for the purpose may be seen at a glance, if we observe the way 
 in which arreat industries which otherwise might have held out 
 indefinitely have been ruined at a bound — namely, by means 
 of Foreign Bounties. Now, a bounty is in essence a certain 
 portion of capital detached from the great ball of capital which 
 constitutes the revenue of a State, and is discharged by its 
 Government at a loss, or altogether sacrificed, for the purpose 
 of ruining the trade of a rival nation, as was the case with our 
 Sugar Trade. It was a minor industry, it is true, and although 
 it involved the ruin of many, both here and in the Colonies, 
 the loss was compensated in other ways ; and on the whole, 
 perhaps, the industry was one which for the general good 
 
HOW TO RUIN A FREE-TRADE NATION. 173 
 
 might with advantage be sacrificed. But the principle of how 
 to ruin a trade lay in it ; the difficulty being in the case of 
 bounties to get nations to consent to the sacrifice involved in 
 them for the benefit of a small section of their peoples ; and 
 more especially to find foreign industries so nearly on a level 
 with their own in point of strength, as to require the sacrifice 
 involved in their ruination to be kept up for only a limited 
 time. But in the hands of private individuals, these monster 
 capitals are, like Olympian bolts, a free force to be directed at 
 will and without obstruction, by the hands that wield them, to 
 any point of the industrial horizon. Since the first draft of 
 this article was sketched, a large slice of our shipping industry 
 has been detached by a single coup, and in a way so familiar to 
 all, that further exposition is rendered needless. Suffice it to 
 say here, that if these American capitalists who can freely 
 handle an amount of capital equal to the revenue of great 
 States, should continue to be protected in their home industries 
 by a wall of tariff so high as to allow of no danger from foreign 
 competition ; and if, after having brought their price-lists in 
 our own great vital industries of coal, iron, steel, machinery, 
 and the rest, up to a point where they can not only hold their 
 own in neutral markets, but have only the Atlantic freightage 
 standing between them and our own home markets ; if these 
 men, I say, standing on the shores of the New World, should 
 concentrate their forces, and call on their nation to stand by 
 them by permitting them a monopoly price at home, while their 
 industrial army was carrying the war into the enemy's country 
 (in the same way as they Avould bear military taxation for a like 
 purpose), could they not promise them, if they were successful 
 in capturing the World-market after first capturing ours, a 
 golden harvest for all their sacrifices and for the troubles which 
 for the time they endured? And would our Free Trader 
 contemplate this altogether with a light heart? Would he 
 still trust to his arithmetical progression as regulating the rate 
 of their advance, and of the time it would take them to defeat 
 
174 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 US, fighting as we do only as isolated industrial concerns ? 
 Would he still go to his Rip Van Winkle sleep in the assurance 
 that he would wake up to find his margin still secure ? Had 
 he been able to do so, our sugar industries might still have 
 continued flourishing for a century to come, whereas the 
 foreign bounties jumped them at a leap, and ruined them in a 
 night. The great match manufacturing firm of Bryant and 
 May, believed to be impregnable, was brought to its knees in 
 an open fight in two years, and had the alternative given it of 
 amalgamation or ruination. And the way in which it is done 
 is so obvious that it needs only to be stated ; it is to make the 
 extra profits realised hy monopoly on a mammoth capital cover 
 the losses incurred in detaching a portion of that capital sufiicient 
 in amount to ruin a rival industry {which must either make the 
 ordinavy rate of profit or succumb) by underselling it. 
 
 What, then, do I propose should be done 1 As my limits of 
 space are now more than exhausted,! must leave this important 
 matter for another article. 
 
CHAPTEE III. 
 
 THE CONDITION OF ENGLAND QUESTION.* 
 
 T PROPOSE in the present paper to make a few remarks 
 on what may be broadly called the Condition of England 
 Question, and particularly on those aspects of it which are of 
 immediate practical importance to us at the present time. In 
 discussing this matter I shall use other nations freely as 
 foils, with the view of developing, by means of contrast and 
 comparison, a clearer image of just how and where we stand in 
 the new century on which we have entered, with its new 
 methods, aims, and potentialities; taking as our standpoint, 
 throughout, the Political and Social Evolution of the nation as 
 a whole as the only point of view from which we can truly 
 undei'stand the present or form a just forecast of the future ; 
 and endeavouring, at the same time, to determine Avhich of 
 our difficulties are amenable to changes of opinion, and so are 
 remediable by legislation, and which of them, if there be any, 
 are so stiff and unyielding as to be practically unchangeable, 
 and so, as being beyond the reach of political surgery, must 
 be left as hostages to fate. This done, I shall then outline a 
 scheme to meet these difficulties, or as far as possible to 
 alleviate them. 
 
 Our subject naturally divides itself into the two great 
 departments of War and Industry, Of the former I have 
 * Fortnightly Review, Jannary, 1903. 
 
176 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 neither the knowledge nor the authority to speak, and shall 
 confine myself, therefore, to the latter, in the hope that under 
 it the various aspects of our national life which make up what 
 we have called the Condition of England Question, will be 
 found, before we have done, freely to range themselves. Of 
 the historical background necessary to give perspective to 
 what is to follow, only a word need here be said, and it is this. 
 By the sagacity and skill of our early Kings and Ministers, 
 and later, of Parliament, in alternately opening and shutting 
 our ports to the foreigner; by Free Trade and Protection 
 skilfully and judiciously applied in varying detail to the 
 leading branches of our industry as circumstances required ; 
 by treaties of commerce made and unmade, and often enforced 
 by our arms ; England ruined in turn Belgium, the Hanse 
 League, Portugal, Spain, and Holland, and grew and grew in 
 industrial and commercial power, until she became at once the 
 mistress of the seas, the arbiter of war and peace, and the 
 provider of all the world by the products of her workshops and 
 looms. 
 
 Sailing thus triumphantly on an open sea, clear at last of all 
 hostile sails, and with no rivals to fear, she was then able to 
 take her hand off the tiller, and to let the vessel drift, freely 
 opening her ports to all the world, and inviting and even 
 challenging them to come in ; cutting her Government loose 
 from all connection with Industry ; hoisting her motto of 
 '* Laissez-faire " over the prow ; and giving the Colonies 
 notice to quit whenever they felt inclined, — the Industrial 
 sovereignty of her own little isle being sufficient for itself and 
 a match for them all. This halcyon time lasted for just half 
 a century. But now a new epoch of World-Industry has 
 opened on us with the appearance in the field of rival nations 
 who, creeping up stealthily meanwhile from behind their tariff 
 walls, and armed with the most elaborate scientific devices and 
 inventions, have inaugurated the new era of what we may call 
 developed or Scinitijic Industry, as distinguished from the old 
 
THE CONDITION OF ENGLAND QUESTION. 177 
 
 Feudal Industry with which it is now seriously to dispute the 
 palm ; the difference between the two being roughly this, that 
 whereas feudal industry is mainly the product of the raw 
 material of a country existing within its own domains, and the 
 mechanical skill and knowledge that spring from it are a 
 natural product adapted to it and limited in quality by it, as 
 the wild flowers are by the soil in which they grow ; scientific 
 industry, on the other hand, is a highly developed product of 
 special cultivation, engineered by vast aggregations of capital 
 concentrated in a few hands, and dependent neither on the raw 
 material of its own nor of any other particular country, nor on 
 any merely local science, invention, or skill, but fully availing 
 itself of them all, wherever over the wide world they are to 
 be found. 
 
 And this brings us, without further preliminary, to the 
 nodus of the question to which this article will be mainly 
 devoted, namely, as to how England is equipped for this new 
 stage of Scientific Industry into which the old Feudal one has 
 so suddenly evolved. To answer this question adequately, 
 none of the great factors that enter into it must be overlooked, 
 for they comprise not only our material resources, but matters 
 of government, of policy, of historical and social ideas as well ; 
 and, as we shall now see, a marked deficiency in any one of 
 them will prove, when the race becomes keen, a severe 
 handicap. A certain rough general equality among the com- 
 peting nations in natural resources and facilities of one kind 
 or another, and an adequate supply of accumulated capital are, 
 of course, assumed; and this, of itself, puts out of the 
 running our own Colonies as still too young and insufficiently 
 developed, as well as all the minor States of the world. But 
 this being granted, the conditions essential for industrial 
 supremacy in the new age opening on us may be reduced 
 to four: — 
 
 1. Centralisation of industrial power, whether in the hands 
 of the Government or of private capitalists. 
 
178 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 2. The spirit of social as distinguished from political 
 
 democracy. 
 
 3. The identification of the State and its resources with 
 
 the interests of Industry, as they have always been 
 identified with the interests and defence of territory 
 acquired by War. 
 
 4. The makine; of Intelliorence and Knowledofe as such in 
 
 all their forms, but especially of Science in its appli- 
 cation to the Industrial Arts, a twin-ideal with any 
 other which happens to exist in the minds of a 
 people. 
 Our first factor, a Central Controlling Initiative, is the 
 primary condition of supremacy in Trade as in War, when 
 once rivalry becomes keen — a controlling power that shall 
 freely open up, develop, combine, suppress or transplant 
 industrial operations as necessity demands, and mass them, as 
 in war, at the points where foreign competition presses the 
 hardest ; whether this controlling power be a centralised 
 despotic Government, or a small number of private individuals 
 like the organisers of the great American Trusts, 
 
 For a political democracy as such, where the votes of a 
 majority rule in all things, although it is the safeguard of 
 individual liberty, and indeed of most things that make life 
 worth living, is as great a handicap in a contest for industrial 
 supremacy, as it is in war. Of all democratic Constitutions, 
 perhaps that of America is in this aspect the worst. Had her 
 laws been administered as they were intended by the framers 
 of the Constitution, hardly any industrial or commercial enter- 
 prise could have reached beyond the borders of its particular 
 State ; and her industries, far from being a fighting instrument 
 in the world, would have shown like a scries of impotent 
 scattered molehills ; while without her tariffs even those would 
 have been washed away as they arose by the flood-tide of 
 English competition, — as indeed they were whenever the 
 experiment was tried of pulling down the barriers that pro- 
 
THE CONDITION OF ENGLAND QUESTION. 179 
 
 tected them. But it is curious to notice how private individuals, 
 working each for his own hand, succeeded in turnino; the edore 
 of the obstruction (the public winking the while), and did for 
 American industry what the spirit of the Constitution and the 
 strict administration of its laws would have forbidden. Free 
 grants of land for railway and other purposes were the first 
 beginnings of future industrial greatness ; for these getting 
 into the hands of a few individuals by Stock Exchange manipu- 
 lation were used by them as a solid nucleus for their operations ; 
 the discovery of rich silver mines manipulated in the same way 
 formed a second nucleus ; and the great central emporia for the 
 corn and cattle trade of the West were a third. These ffreat 
 balls of capital concentrated in single hands, then united their 
 forces at this or that point, using their surplus in lobbying and 
 bribing the weaker members of Congress and State Legisla- 
 tures to get their further schemes passed, until at last, having 
 crushed out all rivals either by underselling, by boycott, by 
 threats, or by purchase, they formed those gigantic Trusts which 
 now threaten to bombard the world with masses of capital 
 compared with which the accumulations of Europe are as bullets 
 to cannon balls. And having escaped in this way through the 
 meshes of a political system which otherwise would have 
 strangled it, American industry now comes before us as the 
 representative of the most perfect form of industrial concentra- 
 tion yet known, namely, free controlling power and initiative 
 vested in the hands of a few individuals whose personal 
 interests are staked on the skill with which they are handled ; 
 and that, too, without any weakening of the Constitution, 
 which can at any moment put its finger on the stop and attune 
 this enormous power to the general welfare, should self-interest 
 ever prompt it to overstep it. As for Germany, our only other 
 serious rival, the central control of the Emperor, which is so 
 effective for purposes of war, is robbed of half its force for the 
 direction of industry by the financial power of his Parliaments, 
 while the mere existence of that control makes a perfectly free 
 
180 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 hand on the part of individual capitalists impossible. Russia, 
 again, in spite of her absolute political centralisation, and the 
 power of the Czar to initiate and carry through industrial as 
 well as political reconstructions, is still a raw, undeveloped 
 Cimmeria with rapidly growing, but as yet vague and unkown, 
 industrial potentialities. 
 
 And now, if we ask how England stands in reference to this 
 first prerequisite of industrial supremacy, namely, the centralisa- 
 tion of inchistry in the hands of either the Government or of 
 private capitalists, we shall be obliged, I think, to confess that 
 she is more severely handicapped than them all. The King has 
 no power either of initiative or interference, neither the full power 
 of the Czar, nor the modified initiative of the German Emperor ; 
 Parliament cannot easily be " lobbied," nor can the committees 
 on private Bills be bribed like Congress and the State Legisla- 
 tures of America; and the House of Commons is composed 
 almodt entirely of capitalists massed in groups as representatives 
 of a few great rival interests — land, railways, manufacturing, 
 mining, banking, shipping, and so on — each with its collaterals 
 strong enough to entirely block all central legislation initiated 
 by the Government with the object of coercing, combining, or 
 reconstructing them in any single great national industrial 
 design. Outside of the walls of Parhament, again, there is no 
 single body of capitalists, as in America, capable of buying out 
 rival interests where it is unable to crush them, and so of 
 reconstructing the industrial world after its own dreams — 
 neither railway magnates, nor mine owners, nor ship owners, 
 nor manufacturing Trusts — but all alike mutually balance while 
 they block one another ; while the landed interest is so deeply 
 entrenched in parchment and entail, as well as in the sentiments 
 of the people, that the attempt to fundamentally interfere with 
 the land for industrial purposes while the House of Lords as at 
 present constituted blocks the way, must be foredoomed to 
 failure. And hence it is that as neither the State nor private 
 capitalists can create a central organisation of industry ; in this, 
 
THE CONDITION OF ENGLAND QUESTION. 181 
 
 the first pre-requisite of industrial supremacy in a world- 
 struggle in which, as in a pitched battle, the nation who wins 
 takes not merely its share of the spoil, but, as in an encounter 
 of rival stags, takes all, we are very seriously handicapped. 
 
 The second essential for industrial supremacy under the new 
 conditions is the spirit of Social as distinguished from merely 
 Political democracy. In itself, as we have seen by the example 
 of America, political democracy is a direct drawback to 
 industrial ascendancy ; nor are the mere race qualities usually 
 found among people with representative institutions, such as 
 personal courage, steadiness, and character, sufficient to 
 counterbalance this, unless, indeed, they are exercised under 
 conditions which breed energetic initiative and which open out 
 wide ranges of expansion to the individual mind. But these 
 are only to be found in burning social democracies having 
 " Liberty and Equality " as their watchwords, as in the 
 revolutionary period in France, where, at the outset, and before 
 a new hierarchy had time to be created, not only every soldier 
 carried a marshal's baton in his knapsack, but every sans-culotte 
 a possible Government portfolio, and where, in the universal 
 delirium of expansion, no design was too colossal for the 
 imagination to conceive or the hand to execute, a spirit whose 
 terrible energy, impossible under all the older regimes, carried 
 the revolutionary banners from the Pyrenees to Moscow. And 
 it was this personal elasticity, buoyancy, energy, and initiative 
 of the "Liberty and Equality " preached by Rousseau, which, 
 transferred to the virgin soil of America, and turned there to 
 industry instead of war, have developed that alertness, resource- 
 fulness, and world-storming industrial daring which are at once 
 the wonder and admiration of the mercantile and industrial 
 world. Germany, on the other hand, it is needless to say, has 
 none of this cloud-compelling intrepidity, nor could her stolid 
 phlegm be whipped to it by any process yet known. Owing to 
 the Slavonic strain incorporated from early historic times in 
 nearly all the German blood, except, perhaps, in the regions 
 
182 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 bordering on Switzerland and France, there is a softness, a 
 tameness, and want of " go " in the national character, a 
 passivity and obedience ingrained by centuries of serfdom, 
 which not even the trumpet blast of the French Eevolution 
 callincr on them to arise could awaken into reaction, and which 
 forbids the hope for many a long year of a real social democracy 
 as distinct from the abstractions and dreams of a democratic 
 socialism. And although we shall see later that she has so 
 highly developed other qualities necessary to industrial supre- 
 macy as to largely neutralise her deficiency in these, still the 
 practical personal alertness and energy bred in favoured races 
 by social democracy, and required for industrial success, are in 
 Germany yet to seek. And now, how does England stand in this 
 connection? Not altogether satisfactorily, it must be con- 
 fessed, for while her political democracy is, as we have seen, 
 rather a detriment to her than otherwise in the race, she has, 
 curiously enough, none of the social democratic spirit which 
 would help her to make good her deficiency. On the contrary, 
 hers is the most perfect type of a social aristocracy in the best 
 sense of that term which the modern world has yet known. 
 There are no absolute exclusions anywhere, as is still the case 
 in the old feudal regimes of the Continent, nor are there any 
 gaps so deep between her different classes as not to leave points 
 of contact with those below them, but, as in the rungs of a 
 ladder, each is easily accessible from stage to stage. But 
 although this has proved most admirable for the development of 
 her own proper qualities of order, freedom, stability, justice, and 
 personal liberty, it does not fire the blood to great enterprises 
 as in a country where all avenues arc alike open to all, from 
 office boy to millionaire, from the log cabin to the Presidency. 
 For wherever you have a system of caste resting on birth or 
 occupation, however elastic it may be, there the sliadows fall ; 
 and men rarely aspire or range beyond the circuit which has 
 been cut out for them as the limit of their predestined flight. 
 This once reached, they no longer have the disposition to tax 
 
THE CONDITION OF ENGLAND QUESTION. 183 
 
 their energies farther, but, slackening the pace, sit down con- 
 tented for the future to enjoy rather than to work, or to think and 
 act only in the grooved routine which, by tacit understanding, 
 society has prescribed for them. This reaches its extreme in 
 the caste of the East, but is present in all social aristocracies, 
 and is still, to a certain extent, true of England ; and in so far 
 must, when the race becomes keen, be a bar to her industrial 
 success. 
 
 The third essential for industrial supremacy in this new era 
 is the identifieation of the State and its resources with the interests 
 of industry, as with those of territory acquired hy War. This, 
 as I have shown elsewhere, was always the policy of our Kings 
 and Statesmen from the earliest times until the era of Free 
 Trade fifty years ago ; and it was by the rare skill and sagacity 
 with which through the centuries they steered our trade 
 through the hostile combinations that otherwise would have 
 wrecked it, that England reached the industrial supremacy 
 which she has so long enjoyed. And so long as! she can keep 
 her supremacy in the great staple manufactures which have 
 made her fortimes, she can continue to enjoy Free Trade 
 without, on the whole, any serious detriment to herself. But 
 for other nations to claim this royal prerogative while England 
 is still supreme, or for England herself to think that she may 
 still keep it now that the foreigner is closing in around her on 
 all hands, is a generous but foredoomed illusion. America tried 
 it several times after the War of Independence, but so speedily 
 on each occasion were her infant industries brought to the 
 verge of extinction by the cheap products of the English looms, 
 that she was obliged to promptly put up her bari'iers again. 
 Germany, France, and Russia all tried the same experiment at 
 one time or another, but with the same result. And when, in 
 the year 1860, England finally embarked on an out-and-out 
 Free Trade policy, she deliberately cut the last thread that 
 bound the State to the interests of industry ; and now that the 
 sea is once more covered with hostile sails prepared to dispute 
 
184 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 her supremacy, instead of reaching for the tiller again, she 
 affects to ignore them and continues to lurch about at the 
 mercy of wind and tide. Now, this curious reversal of the 
 consolidated experience of mankind in the matter of trade, 
 with all the possibilities of disaster that it involves, must be 
 laid at the doors of the academic Professors, their younger 
 disciples in Parliament and on the Press, and the old exponents 
 of the doctrine of Free Trade surviving from its early days ; 
 and its origins, as we have seen, are to be found in the confusion 
 of thought bred of an old, dead metaphysical economy, and in 
 the long tenure of our supremacy which has led to the belief 
 in its indefinite continuance. My excuse for reverting to the 
 question here is its vital importance; for so long as Free 
 Trade is accepted as the true principle of trade under any and 
 every condition, the ghost of its withered form will continue 
 to haunt the Legislature, and not only confirm the Government 
 in its illusion of refusing to identify the State with the 
 interests of industry (thus blocking on the threshold every 
 attempt to co-ordinate and regulate the course of trade), but 
 will, as we shall see, vitiate every step taken in om* Foreign 
 and Colonial policy also. 
 
 To sum up my objections to the whole doctrine, I would say 
 that, in my judgment, it confounds the conditions which 
 facilitate trade with those that determine the continuance of 
 trade. What the Free Trader says is, that all buying and 
 selling must benefit both parties alike, otherwise there would be 
 no deal ; that this mutual benefit will be all the greater the 
 more easily the exchange is eff^ected, and will, therefore, be 
 greatest of all when all artificial barriers whatever are abolished ; 
 much in the same way as it would be if all the distances over 
 which goods have to be carried were annihilated, and exchange 
 could take place now and here. This being granted, for it is 
 quite indisputable, it would seem to follow that it would make 
 no difference whether we supplied all the world witli goods or 
 all the world supplied us, for, as the Spectator \n\is, it, "it is 
 
THE CONDITION OF ENGLAND QUESTION. 185 
 
 essentially as blessed to buy as to sell." And from this the 
 strange conclusion is drawn that if we will only not interfere 
 with the beneficent process of exchange by putting on tariffs 
 which, like irritating grains of dust between the wheels of a 
 watch, tend to interfere with it at this or that point, or altogether 
 put a stop to it, it will, like a perpetual-motion machine, go on 
 indefinitely, and we may rest quietly in the sure knowledge 
 that all will be well. In other words, we are taught to believe 
 that if we only make the process of exchange smooth enough, 
 we may count on the indefinite continuance of trade. Now, 
 here we must walk warily, for the very nodus of the problem, 
 it is evident, consists in the continuance of trade, and not in 
 the benefit both parties receive from each separate transaction. 
 It is as if you should say that because, so long as a locomotive 
 continues to run, each side of the piston which drives the 
 wheels receives the benefit of an equal amount of steam, 
 therefore, if you will only grease the piston and the wheels 
 sufficiently, the locomotive will run on indefinitely or for ever ! 
 With the Free Trader, that is to say, the greasing of the 
 wheels is all ; and as for the Editor of the Spectator, he is so 
 convinced and enamoured of this connexion between the 
 greasing of the wheels of exchange and the continuance of trade 
 by this means alone, that he boldly affirms his readiness to 
 stake the whole doctrine of Free Trade on its truth ! 
 
 Now, in reply to this, I think my readers will agree with 
 me that in the case of a locomotive there is something 
 more essential to the continued running than even the 
 greasing of the machinery and wheels, — namely, the stoking it 
 with coal ! Our next question then is, where the coals are to 
 come from ? If we take England as an example, with her land 
 going out of cultivation, and two-thirds of the population 
 having to be fed on foreign corn, it is evident that the stoking 
 can only be done from the sale and exchange of the produce of 
 our manufactories and mines. 
 
 The main point then is, how long will these sales continue'^ 
 
186 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 To this we reply that with our ports freely open and the 
 wheels of exchange fully greased, precisely so long as our staple 
 manufactures cannot be 7indersoId by the foreigner, first in 
 neutral markets and at last in our home market — and no longer. 
 When our manufactures are undersold in neutral markets, our 
 locomotive will slacken ; when they are undersold in our own, 
 it will stop altogether. For with our mills and mines closed 
 down, we cannot stoke our engine ourselves, and liaving 
 nothing now to exchange with the foreigner for doing it for 
 us, he, too, after we have paid him for it out of our capital 
 until it is all gone, will cease to do it ; and England, ruined 
 like Genoa and Venice, Spain and Holland before her, will 
 have to return to her fields and sheep-walks, and sink to the 
 obscurity and dependence of a second-rate Power. And yet 
 at each point in the process, and until the last act of exchange 
 shall have brought the trade to a stop, both sides, if it be any 
 satisfaction to the Free Trader to know, will have been 
 mutually benefited. But there need be no mystery in it all, 
 for how does the Free Trader imagine we came by our 
 industrial supremacy, except by being able to undersell the 
 foreigner in the markets of the world % I have said that the 
 theory of Free Trade was a product of dead metaphysics, and 
 now the reader is in a position to see why. For the fallacy of 
 the Free Trader is the old fallacy of Zeno, who, if you were 
 prepared to grant him that a flowing line was made up of an 
 infinite number of separate and isolated points, would prove to 
 you that the hare could never overtake the tortoise ! Now, 
 trade is a flowing thing, a question of contimied movement, of 
 dynamics, and its laws can never be seen by regarding it 
 statically as a number of separate exchanges, with however 
 little friction these exchanges may be eflected. Being a thing 
 of continued movement, trade always requires a force some- 
 where in the background to keep it going, like our locomotive 
 its coals ; and it is Industrial Supremacy alone that can confer 
 this force. Free Trade, on the other hand, is a negative thing. 
 
THE CONDITION OF ENGLAND QUESTION. 187 
 
 a mere removal of friction, and has no force or life in itself for 
 continuance. Let the Free Trader, therefore, when his engine 
 threatens to come to a standstill, cease going round and round 
 it with lantern and grease-pot in hand, and let him look rather 
 to his supply of coals. The madness of the old perpetual- 
 motion schemers consisted in forgetting the gradual loss of 
 force which the friction of the wheels of their machine 
 involved ; the new perpetual-motion schemers have fallen into 
 the opposite delusion of imagining that if they only get rid of 
 the friction, their machine will go on of itself for ever ! But 
 is there any certainty, it will be asked, that our great staple 
 manufactures will ever be undersold ? Not necessarily, and 
 certainly not as yet ; but with America and Germany 
 confronting us, manufacture for manufacture, with equal 
 natural resources, and prepared, as in the case of America, to 
 bombaz'd us with giant capitals compared with which ours are 
 but, as we have said, as bullets to cannon balls, does the Free 
 Trader, with our ruined agriculture, with the possibility of our 
 mills closing down, and with forty millions of people to feed 
 in case of disaster, himself feel so absolutely secure ? 
 
 The reason I have returned to the question here is, that so 
 long as Free Trade, in its function of greasing the wheels, is 
 regarded as the sole condition for the prosperity of trade, all 
 attempts to get the State to identify itself with the interests of 
 Industry, as it does with War, must be hopeless ; and for this 
 simple reason, that having freely opened our ports we really 
 believe that we have done all that is necessary, and that, there- 
 fore, the best policy of the State is now to leave it absolutely 
 alone to run of itself ; like those " Peculiar People " who, 
 believing in all simplicity that Providence does all in disease, 
 will themselves do nothing ; or those faddists who, believing 
 that Nature does all, will equally do nothing. And with 
 result — what? Two hundred and fifty millions cheerfully 
 given to shoot the Boers for the acquisition or defence of 
 territory, to end in our allowing the Americans to walk in and 
 
188 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 take all they can get on equal terms ! We might just as well 
 have conquered the Philippines for them while we were about 
 it, and then retired for them to enter in. Ships and armaments 
 to protect some petty territorial possession not worth keeping, 
 but not a penny to assist the greatest industi'ial designs 
 without which, indeed, there will soon be no armaments with 
 which to protect ourselves. Imperialism in the abstract 
 rampant, and yet the Colonies beseeching us to form a closer 
 union with them commercially, and making the first advances 
 by cheerfully offering us the preference, but we, catching sight 
 of the uplifted warning hand of the Free Trade spectre, coldly 
 turning away. Parliament consenting to the abolition of the 
 sugar bounties after looking on the slow decay of the West 
 Indian Colonies for thirty years without a sigh, but on sight 
 of that dead hand, nervously anxious to prove that the abolition 
 did not violate the principle of real Free Trade. The land of 
 this country going to decay and farms deserted, but landlord 
 and farmer alike hypnotised by this evil eye, humbly 
 submitting to it all as an ordinance of fate. And all from 
 what ? From this dead metaphysical ghost of Free Trade, 
 which haunts the portals of the Legislature, and with its 
 forbidding hand arrests and petrifies all who would pass it. 
 
 And the worst of it all is that the people are being deceived. 
 It was not for some cosinopolitical gospel for the benefit of all 
 the world that these millions in all loyalty and trust gave their 
 allegiance to their teachers and guides in this matter of Free 
 Trade, but on the understanding rather that it was to be a 
 strictly national benefit. They did not take in that the Free 
 Trade argument was as if you should say that because when 
 some great tradesman ruins all the smaller shopkeepers in his 
 vicinity by underselling them, the nation is not injured, 
 therefore, if other nations should undersell us it would be just 
 the same thing, and we should be none the worse. But the 
 most clear-headed of the Free Traders, Mr. Hobson, to his 
 honour be it said, has left them under no illusion on this point; 
 
THE CONDITION OF ENGLAND QUESTION. 189 
 
 for on being challenged he boldly told them that if they meant 
 trade to be of purely national benefit, and not the international 
 benefit at which he himself was aiming, they had better either 
 be prepared to take control of the organisation of industry by 
 the State again, as before the era of Free Trade, or to put on 
 at any moment Protection swift and effective, to escape 
 ruination ; for that if a merely national interest was their aim, 
 Free Trade Avas likely to prove a will-o'-the-wisp that might 
 one day land them in the bog. And these millions will have a 
 rude awakening when they find that in economics, as in life, 
 nations do not share the spoils with the vanquished according 
 to the measure of the stake which each pledged before the 
 contest, but that the nation that wins takes all. 
 
 And this brings us to the consideration of how England 
 stands in reference to the fourth and last pre-requisite for 
 industrial supremacy under the new conditions, namely, in the 
 making of Intelligence or Knoivledge, as such, a iivin ideal in the 
 national life, either with money, as in America, or with 
 feudalism and caste, as in Germany. Now, in this regard we 
 may, I think, fairly say that in no empire or nation since that 
 of ancient Rome, unless, indeed, it be Spain, has the want of 
 admiration or regard for intelligence and knowledge^ as such, 
 reached a lower depth than in England ; and that, too, as a 
 direct result of those very excellencies which have made her 
 the mother and home of liberty, of personal freedom, of orderly 
 government, and even, paradoxical as it may seem, by means 
 of these, of the advancement of knowledge itself. But in the 
 present day of developed or scientific industrialism this disregard 
 for intelligence is as deadly in its effects on the future of the 
 Empire as that spectral hand of Free Trade itself; and with 
 this addition, that whereas false views of trade a?'e amenable to 
 reason and knowledge, the traditional ideals of a nation are 
 not ; and he, indeed, will be a political magician who can 
 exorcise them. It may be all summed up in the now classic 
 phrase in which General Ian Hamilton condensed his con- 
 
190 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 elusions before the Committee of Inquiry into the unsatis- 
 factory condition of our military schools : " It is not good form 
 to be keen " — a text which, for its pregnant brevity and 
 significance, may well be written up with the parallel one from 
 Dante over the gates of the Inferno : " Let all who enter here 
 leave hope behind." 
 
 Now, as to the cause of this most strange of all anomalies in 
 the modern world, and especially in a nation that literally lives 
 by its industry, it is to be found in the difficulty, nay, almost 
 impossibility, of the human mind entertaining icith equal regard 
 two opposite ideals at once. It is true that in America the 
 regard for intelligence and knowledge, as such, has grown like a 
 flower from its baser roots in the twin ideal of money ; but 
 that is because keenness, alertness, smartness, and rapid 
 assimilating power are precisely the best means for reaching 
 that ideal, in the same way as in feudal times feats of arms 
 and chivalry became a twin ideal with noble blood and knight- 
 hood because they were the best means of attaining these. In 
 Germany, again, where Serfdom for many centuries reached 
 its lowest depths outside of Russia ; where the great magnates 
 of the Church were independent princes ; and where the 
 Universities have always been the centres from which issued 
 all the great movements, whether in thought, religion, or 
 politics; Knowledge and Learning, as such, have always 
 occupied a place of almost coequal authority with feudal rank and 
 title themselves ; so that when the nation, since its incorporation 
 by the Empire, entered on the race for industrial supremacy, it 
 got its inspiration, its methods, and stimulus, as it had its 
 politics and religion, from ahove, as it were, and not, as in 
 America and the Colonies, from below. The consequence was 
 that when it wanted to know how best to compete with a new 
 industrial method, or how a particular product was to be 
 obtained and utilised at the least cost, it called to its aid the 
 University professor and the scientific specialist, and not, as in 
 America, the born inventor and practical organiser, " the 
 
THE CONDITION OF ENGLAND QUESTION. 191 
 
 Connecticut man." And the University professor, with his 
 infinite patience, his systematic methods, and his cheerful 
 passivity, was as willing to devote his life to these pursuits as 
 to the investigation of the evolution of a gnat, or the origin of a 
 Greek verb or particle. And hence the Germans must ulti- 
 mately prove most formidable rivals to the Americans in a 
 neck-and-neck race for industrial ascendancy; for here you 
 have the scientific process, the minute investigation and calcu- 
 lation, the genuine thing; and it will take much "hustling," 
 much of the alertness and practical organising power of the 
 Americans to cope with the laboratory processes of these 
 minute and indefatigable workers. 
 
 But in Eno;laud it would be as difficult to eno-raft the ideal 
 of Intelligence and Knowledge on her present high but totally 
 difierent ideal, as it would be to engraft the ideal of the 
 Orientals on those of Western progress. And the reasons for 
 this, again, are not far to seek, but are to be found in the 
 unbroken continuity of her historical traditions. With a 
 population of the best-tempered metal, with none of the softness 
 of the Slav iu its composition and with just enough of the Celt 
 to give it plasticity, England was for many centuries cut off 
 from foreign disintegrating influences by the sea ; and was allowed 
 to weld her original heterogeneous elements into almost a pure 
 homogeneity through long ages of internal peace. There has been 
 no grinding oppression of one class by another, as in France 
 and Ireland, to keep open the deep-seated cleavages of race, 
 sentiment, or interest, and in consequence no great revolution 
 to permanently divide the nation ; the passing Puritan revolt, 
 which originated rather in degrees of religious tension or 
 fervour, and which swiftly ran through its gamut of Presbyterian, 
 Independent, Baptist and Quaker notes as in a musical scale, 
 becoming politically acute only at a single point, and being 
 rapidly absorbed into the old political unity again ; until by 
 the time of Burke, and before the appearance of Whitfield and 
 Wesley, it had almost disappeared as a serious dividing agency, 
 
192 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 till revived by the Education Bill. The land-owning Aris- 
 tocracy, supreme from the beginning, and the guides and 
 counsellors of the people both in peace and war, have all along 
 been patterns of paternal and patriarchal rule^ living on their 
 estates and keeping all classes closely in touch and bound to 
 them in successive ranks and circles of political and social 
 infeudation. No gaps existed between these classes too deep 
 to span, but each was in touch with that above it, and capable 
 of rising into it ; while the clergy, except during the Puritan 
 crisis, everywhere reinforced the authority of the landlords, 
 upheld their honour and prestige, accepted their ideals, and 
 inculcated obedience and reverence to them as to the King. 
 In this ancient, homogeneous land. Modern Industrialism shows 
 but as of yesterday ; and the great towns which have grown 
 up under its attraction, being perennially recruited from the 
 country, have never been able altogether to escape from the 
 encompassing atmosphere of the Castle and the Hall, and 
 being still but annexes of the counties, have always been 
 animated and moulded by their sentiments and ideals. These 
 ideals are purely feudal in character — hospitality, sport, chivalry, 
 honour, integrity, noblesse oblige, and the cult of the 
 " gentleman " — a consummate flower of feudalism, as it were, 
 realising that at which other ages have only aimed, and purged 
 of the grossness, barbarity or cruelty which disfigured it in 
 other lands ; standing unchanged and all of a piece, harmoniously 
 modelled and proportioned like a Greek statue, chaste, polished, 
 and with a classic dislike of excess in all things, avoiding both 
 the grossness of the German and the elaborate artificiality of 
 the old French regime — a feudalism transfigured and refined. 
 
 After this classic model, streaked but not altered in form by 
 veins of Puritanism, the entire nation has formed its ideal, in 
 the same way as the Scotch since the times of Knox have 
 formed theirs on that of the parish minister, with his devotion 
 to hard thinking and admiration for things of the mind. 
 Now, it is evident that on the surface of this polished image 
 
THE CONDITION OF ENGLAND QUESTION. 193 
 
 of sublimated and transfigured feudalism, mere intelligence or 
 knowledge, as such, can find no crevice in which to take root 
 (except, perhaps, along the veins of Puritanism), but must fall 
 off it as from tne surface of a mirror. Mr. Benson expresses 
 this quite naively when, speaking from his experience as a 
 tutor, of the atmosphere of the Universities and Public Schools, 
 he says, " Intellectual things, to speak frankly, are not fashion- 
 able." And where intellect, science, and knowledge, as such, 
 are not ideals, or where, as he also admits, they are openly 
 flouted or contemned, it is inevitable that the great body of 
 the people will cultivate them only in so far as they minister 
 to their private ends, or round off some accomplishment 
 needed in special spheres, and will be quite satisfied with only 
 so much of them as, like household bread, will serve them for 
 the day that is passing over them ; while the intellectual men 
 themselves feel the presence of this indifference as a pall. 
 Men of genius are, of course, found everywhere, and nowhere 
 more than in England, but they count for less in public esti- 
 mation, authority, and repute than perhaps in any other 
 civilised land. The consequence is, that only just as much 
 knowledge is demanded, even in the most important services 
 of State, as is consistent with the national ideal of the 
 " gentleman " and amateur. In the Army, as we have seen, it 
 is " not good form to be keen " ; at the Universities and Public 
 Schools intellectual things are not "fashionable," and football 
 and cricket have taken their place ; while the scions of the 
 great commercial, manufacturing, and industrial houses on which 
 the industrial supremacy of England rests, lie so closely on the 
 fringe of the aristocracy that they become infected by their 
 ideals, and, taking to their yachts and hunting, cease to keep 
 in touch with the industrial enterprise of the age ; their sub- 
 ordinate managers, meantime, being of a lower social grade, 
 not being thought worthy of the encouragement necessary to 
 make good the growing slackness of their principals. The 
 consequence is that intelligence, as such, is nipped as by a 
 
 N 
 
194 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 chilling blast just at the point where otherwise it would become 
 effective as a differential force in the coming conflict of the 
 nations for supremacy — a conflict where all our talent must be 
 sought out and kept at white heat if we are to stave oft 
 disaster. A further consequence of this national indifference 
 to intelligence and knowledge is, that great intellectual designs 
 in all walks of life, if they require either financial or moral 
 support, are starved or frost-bitten from their birth ; and this 
 deadly blight usually chokes off before middle age all but the 
 most robust and resolute spirits. Even the Royal Society, 
 the pride of British science, if it has any large and necessary 
 work in contemplation, is often so cramped for want of funds 
 that it has to "pass round the hat," and when the public are 
 slow in responding, cheerfully accepts a donation from Mr. 
 Carnegie, the pinched result at best being blazoned as a 
 triumph of our English way of doing things by " voluntary 
 effort." The highest honours of the State are given to the 
 successful generals, but to the inventors of the guns and 
 scientific weapons that made their victories even possible, 
 nothing more than is within the easy reach of the successful 
 tradesman. Two hundred and fifty millions, as we said, 
 cheerfully given to shoot the Boers, and not a sixpence for 
 those scientific researches which at no distant date must 
 decide the question of our supremacy, or indeed of our very 
 existence as a first-class power. It is part of the madness that 
 inheres in the core of every solitary and fixed ideal which can 
 admit no other beside itself; and in an age of industrial 
 supremacy only wants time to make its influence on the future 
 of industry as paralysing as that of the Koran itself. 
 
 Now, my reason for dwelling on all this with so much 
 insistence is that it is so important for tlie world and for 
 humanity that England, with the precious jewels she carries 
 and dispenses, should not be degraded to the rank of a second- 
 rate power by the loss of that industrial supremacy which has 
 given her her present position in the world. Her high code of 
 
THE CONDITION OF ENGLAND QUESTION. 195 
 
 honour, industrial and national, her sense of justice and fair 
 play, her supreme merits as a coloniser, her skill in the 
 management of inferior races, and, above all, her humanity, 
 compared with which that of the best Continental nations 
 shows like cruelty or brutality, are a precious possession and 
 model which the world ought not to willingly let die. America 
 and the Colonies have inherited all this, of course, direct from 
 the Mother-country, and, except where the curse of mixed 
 I'aces prevails, have improved on some aspects of it ; but they 
 are still inferior in those attributes which require for their 
 perfect fruition a long course of special cultivation and of 
 strict tradition continued through centuries ; and were England 
 wrecked hy industrial defeat, they could not in these particu- 
 lars easily take her place. 
 
 What, then, is to be done, it will be asked I If our 
 diao-nosis be correct, the treatment will be manifest to the 
 man in the street without prompting, and may be digested into 
 the following scheme. In the first place, as Free Trade (as an 
 absolute principle) is our most immediately pressing enemy, 
 let the State again grasp the tiller of Industry, and be prepared 
 to I'everse this policy the moment our most vital industries 
 are really threatened, treating the fifty halcyon years of our 
 supremacy, under its careless and easy drifting, as if they had 
 never been. 
 
 And now to summarise my reasons for this opinion at the 
 risk of some repetition : — 
 
 As a speculative doctrine Free Trade must be thrown out : 
 
 (1) Because it ignores the teachings of history as to the 
 industrial rise and fall of States — Venice, Genoa, Spain, 
 Holland, and the rest; ignores the skilful arrangement of 
 tariffs which originally gave us our supremacy; and ignores 
 both the beliefs and practice of all other civilised States. 
 
 (2) Because in itself it is a product of dead metaphysics, 
 and proceeds as if dealing with a machine at rest instead of 
 a machine in motion. It regards Industry as an infinite 
 
196 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 number of isolated exchanges without the force to wekl them 
 into a continuous movement, and imagines, therefore, that if 
 you can only reduce the dijfficulties of exchange to a minimum 
 by the entire removal of tariffs, you will by the same operation 
 get the force required to keep the whole in continuous 
 motion, — a most subtle and dangerous, and, in the end, fatal 
 want of insight. 
 
 (3) Because, holding as it does that in all separate exchanges 
 both parties benefit alike, and that the nation in consequence 
 that supplies the world gets no more benefit from its separate 
 exchanges than the world which it supplies, it jumps to the 
 conclusion that no admission of the products of foreign capital 
 can hurt us, whereas the truth is that, like standing armies 
 when they march against each other, capitals engaged in the 
 same trade fight until one extinguishes the other, as the rays 
 of the sun the heat of the fire, and all the more quickly the 
 more the absence of tariffs enables them to come to close 
 quarters : the process of underselling ruining nations in trade, 
 as pitched battles do in war. 
 
 As a practical doctrine Free Trade must be thrown out : 
 
 (1) Because it is true only for those favoured nations that 
 have already attained industrial supremacy in some great staple 
 article of world-demand. 
 
 (2) Because, it is a cosmopolitical doctrine, not a national 
 one ; a millennial doctrine for the time when all nations shall 
 be friends and brothers, and where it matters little which is 
 supreme, as all alike will share in the fortunes of all, and not 
 for an age like the present, when each nation, like Hal-o'-the- 
 Wynd, is fighting for its own hand. 
 
 (3) Because, in so far as tlie imminency of the danger is 
 concerned, giant capitals in single hands are new inventions, 
 like that of the Armstrong gun in war, and in an industrial 
 contest are as superior in efficiency, as I have said, to an equal 
 amount of lesser capitals dispersed, as cannon balls to an equal 
 weight of bullets. 
 
THE CONDITION OF ENGL\ND QUESTION. 197 
 
 (4) Because in industry, as in war, the nation that conquers 
 in a pitched battle takes not merely its relative share of the 
 spoil, according to its capital invested or men engaged, but 
 takes all. 
 
 If, pending discussion of them, we assume that these argu- 
 ments against Free Trade as a principle are valid, we should 
 not necessarily rush to put on tariffs all round on the ruck of 
 petty industries, or indeed to put them on at all until neces- 
 sary, but only be prepared to concentrate, as in war, on those 
 great vital industries, like cotton, iron, and coal, in which to 
 be undersold in our own home, as well as in foreign markets, 
 would spell ruination, but which if protected would still be a 
 mighty asset for ourselves, if not for the w'orld. 
 
 As for our second great drawback, namely, the absence of 
 Intelligence and Knowledge from among the ideals of the 
 nation, this is as impossible to alter as the religion of a people ; 
 for ideals are the hostages that all nations give to fate. 
 Throughout the entire course of civilisation I know of no 
 nation that has gone down but has gone down hugging to its 
 bosom all the more closely the ideals ingrained in its history — 
 the JcAvs, the Greeks, the Romans, the Spaniards, and the 
 Orientals generally ; and when the time comes for the Turk to 
 go too, he will go carrying his ideals and his religion with him. 
 With nations still flourishing, independent, and free, the most 
 that can be done, when their ideals become unsuited for a new 
 era of world-history, is to try, by a process of engrafting and 
 mental interbreeding, to get the variation required, — as was 
 done, for example, when the Jewish conception of God, as 
 modified by Jesus, was engrafted on, and literally bred into, 
 the pagan world. And in the present day, and in a country 
 like England, where it is essential to preserve the continuity of 
 her historical ideal, so necessary for order, for stability, for 
 justice, and for individual liberty, the only way is to make the 
 qualities essential to the new ideal the means for realising the 
 honours of the old one — not disturbing the old, but allowing 
 
198 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 the new to exist side by side with it, and gradually to 
 interpenetrate it. And for this we should require — 
 
 (1) Men of marked originality and energetic initiative in 
 every department of life, practical and speculative; discoverers, 
 organisers, inventors, technologists, scientists, men of historical 
 penetration and speculative intelligence, and all the real 
 teachers of the people, winnowed and drafted from the Univer- 
 sities and schools and from the nation in general wherever 
 found — a very beehive of original workers ; not mere scholars 
 or echoes, pedants, encyclopaedists or prize-winners with 
 engorged memories, who may be left to the ordinary school- 
 masters, tutors, and other devotees of routine existing outside 
 — and all set to work on special problems of larger or smaller 
 compass, according to the range and character of their powers.* 
 
 (2) Premiums put on the services of all the great men who, 
 in their different walks, are attached to this Government 
 Service, with honours, distinctions, emoluments, rank and 
 authority, parallel to those of the other men of rank, position, 
 character, and authority who now represent the national ideal, 
 but who, not being " keen," must be left outside the new 
 Service, or be gradually engrafted on to it. 
 
 (3) A table of social precedence remodelled to embody this 
 scheme and drawn up under the authority of the Crown ; for 
 without this, indeed, in a country like England, where social 
 precedence is the very soul of the transfigured feudal ideal of 
 the nation, all else would be in vain. 
 
 (4) The principle of gradation, with innumerable rungs and 
 stages from bottom to top, to be applied everywhere ; with no 
 gaps but those created by genius itself as crown and summit of 
 each department ; the nation to be sifted for this wherever it 
 is to be found, as Mr. Pierpont Morgan is said to sift the 
 younger men for the lieutenants necessary to his designs. 
 
 (5) The Press, so organised as to be the focussing point of 
 
 * For the organisation of this, see the chapters on "The Bible of the 
 Nations " and " National Education " in vol. iii. of my History of Intellectual 
 Development. 
 
THE CONDITION OF ENGLAND QUESTION. 199 
 
 the intelligence of the nation on the one hand, and the people 
 at large on the other ; selecting those whom it regards as the 
 real leaders of the nation on either side by an informal con- 
 sensus, and so gradually transferring the initiatioe in all public 
 policy from the old ideal, with its quasi-sacred official ParHa- 
 mentary representatives — whose training has taught them that 
 too much knowledge is " bad form," and whose boast it is "not 
 to know " — to the men whom the new times demand. To the 
 Press we would give also the keeping well in hand of the 
 specialists, faddists, dreamers, and unpracticals, on the one 
 hand, and the wind-bags, the mob-orators, and the multiform 
 deluders of the populace, on the other. And all this with an 
 open arena, and " devil take the hindmost ! " 
 
 In this way, by giving precedence to Knowledge in all those 
 departments of the national life in which it is the controlling 
 factor, and by gradually marrying it to the old historical ideal 
 of a refined and modernised feudalism, the nation might still 
 keep its old supremacy without breach of historical continuity 
 or the loss of the most valuable traditions of the past. 
 
CHAPTEE IV. 
 
 FKEE TEADE, PROTECTION, AND PREFERENCE.* 
 
 T PROPOSE in this, the fourth of my series of articles on 
 -^ Free Trade, to direct attention to the practical rather than 
 the theoretical aspects of our subject, and, taking advantage 
 of ]\Ir. Chamberlain's invitation to discussion, shall make the 
 scheme which he has submitted to Parliament the central point 
 from which the whole is to be surveyed. But before doing so, 
 and especially as Mr. Balfour has suggested that the question 
 should receive as scientific a treatment as possible, I desire to 
 point out at the outset that no discussion of it at the present 
 time can hope for the least success, or be bestrewn with aught 
 but the most dangerous pitfalls, unless two at least of the most 
 subtle and widespread illusions in connection with it are 
 removed from the background of the public mind. The first 
 seems to be practically universal, being held alike by Pro- 
 tectionists and Free Traders, by the Press, and by the orthodox 
 Economists of the schools, and runs to this effect, that however 
 possible it may be that in the future some measure of Protection 
 may be necessary for our industries, owing to the walls of 
 hostile tariffs that everywhere surround us and hem us in, it 
 still holds true that if all the ivorld would only embrace Free 
 Trade, not only would the world in general be benefited, but 
 each nation composing it would participate in that benefit and 
 be a sharer in its prosperity. Now, this I categorically deny, 
 * Fortnightly Review, July, 1903. 
 
FREE TRADE, PROTECTION, AND PREFERENCE. 201 
 
 and assert, on the contrary, and shall now attempt to prove, 
 that were Free Trade to be embraced by the world to-morrow, 
 only the strongest industrial nations would be benefited, while 
 the weaker, far from participating in their prosperity, would 
 be crushed out all the sooner, sucked dry by their stronger 
 rivals until nothing was left of them but their skins. Now, 
 here is a definite issue, but if I am right, how, the reader may 
 ask, do I account for a whole nation being under so great an 
 illusion, and for its being so long and so persistently deceived '? 
 I will answer at once, by giving him the connection of the 
 subtle threads of assumption that make it up, and he will judge 
 for himself. Trade, it is said, is in its essential nature a 
 peaceful thing, and as both parties are alike benefited in every 
 transaction, otherwise they would not exchange, it follows that 
 there can^ in the nature of things, be no warfare in trade 
 except the tolls, tariffs, and other barriers that are raised to 
 impede it. This is the first assumption, and from it there 
 follows further, and also as a necessary consequence, that, 
 unlike war, not only the more trade there is the better, but if 
 each nation or individual will go on producing all it can with 
 the material at its disposal, not only will the world in general 
 benefit by the increase, but provided that all tolls are removed 
 and ports are kept freely open, this benefit, like a fertilising 
 stream poured on level ground, must diffuse itself equally over 
 all the nations and peoples, in proportion to their existing 
 productive powers ; and, further, that exchange being free, all 
 oscillations or disturbances that may occasionally arise here or 
 there must be self- balancing, and, like the waves of the sea, 
 when rocked by a sudden breeze, will speedily right themselves 
 again; the crests and ruffles, as they become calmed, quietly 
 difiusing themselves over the whole surface as before. And 
 from this it is concluded that if each nation will only go on 
 producing that for which it is best suited, and vdll remain 
 steadfast in the faith and practice of keeping the ports and 
 avenues of exchange and communication open and free, it may 
 
202 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 rest in security and have no fear of ever coming to grief. In 
 other words, absolute freedom of trade among all nations would 
 be tantamount to the continuance of trade prosperity among them 
 all, in proportion to their productive powers. Now the above, 
 I think, is a fair resume of the underlying assumptions of the 
 public faith, which may be read every day of the week in the 
 Press ; and the fatal thing about them is that they seem so 
 simple, and sound so true. If, therefore, I can dispose of them 
 here and now, the back of the Free Trade position will be 
 effectually broken ; for in them, all its fallacies lie concealed. 
 
 Now, the first thing we have to remark about this chain of 
 assumptions is, that if true at all they are abstract truths, truths 
 of industry in the abstract, of exchange in the abstract, of 
 production and consumption in the abstract, of mankind in the 
 abstract, and so correspond in their way to the pasteboard 
 " economic man " of the old Political Economy. But now we 
 must bring them down to the concrete, so that they shall 
 correspond to the actual facts of the world, and consider them 
 as operating between nations anxious to preserve their indi- 
 viduality as political units, and everywhere striving to protect 
 and aggrandise themselves if necessary at the expense of the 
 other nations, rooted each in its own geographical locality, with 
 its own particular climate, soil, and natural productions, and 
 each more or less specialised in the kind of things it can profit- 
 ably produce for exchange with the rest of the world — some, 
 corn and foodstuffs, others fruits, others wine, or oil, or tobacco, 
 others minerals, timber, or other raw materials, and so on. 
 And now, if we start these nations trading with one another, 
 what shall we see? The first glance will show us that, as 
 between the sexes, it is only between opposite or complementai'y 
 productions and commodities that a fruitful exchange beneficial 
 to both parties takes place, and therefore only between the 
 countries that produce them ; between corn and food-growing 
 countries, and those whose speciality is manufactured goods ; 
 between the wine or fruit-growing and the corn-growing ; and 
 
FREE TRADE, PROTECTION, AND PREFERENCE. 203 
 
 80 on ; and not between those mainly or wholly engaged in the 
 production of the same class of commodities, between whom, 
 on the contrary, all is rivalry and warfare, as between jealous 
 lovers suinff for the same hand. So that, instead of all the 
 world exchanging merrily with each other, and each, like a 
 promiscuous dance of holiday-makers on a village gi'een, 
 getting its full share of all the kisses and favours that are going, 
 regulated exchanges only go on, as in a ball-room, between 
 opposite partners drawn up in regular lines. Or, to show its 
 tragic side more clearly, the trading world may be compared 
 to a country intersected by streams, to the opposite banks of 
 which the nations, like Indian trappers, repair to exchange 
 their wares, and where the peaceful exchange on which the 
 Free Traders love to dwell, takes place only between those, be 
 it observed, who have actually arrived there. But arrived 
 how? Bloodstained with the dead rivals they have had to 
 extinguish on the way, whose bones line the trail as those of 
 camels do the route of an Eastern caravan, all perished before 
 they could arrive ; but all lying, unseen by the eyes of the 
 spectator, in the background and interspaces of the streams, 
 like the heaped-up piles of dead gladiators that filled the pits 
 in the rear of a Roman amphitheatre. There is not a corn 
 exchange in the world where the arrival of a peaceful bidder 
 from a new and unknown land might not, by the figure he 
 quietly chalks on the blackboard as the price at which he is 
 prepared to sell his corn, reduce whole countries to permanent 
 ruin and starvation. The lively exchange that goes on across 
 the counters of the great retail stores in the leading thorough- 
 fares of London and other great cities, and which looks so 
 peaceful and satisfactory to all concerned, conceals Its holocaust 
 of victims ; for it has been built up too often on the ruin of 
 whole streets of surrounding shopkeepers. The exchange is 
 between the public and the prizewinners only, all the rest being 
 drained of customers or obliged to close. Now, it is here, if 
 the Free Trader will consider it, that the warfare comes in, in 
 
204 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 that peaceful idyllic picture of his in which, if you will not 
 put up hostile tariffs, trade, being fruitful and peaceful in its 
 essential nature, can contain in itself none of the destructive 
 elements of war. Of course, it does not matter who loses or 
 who wins in the contest between rival shippers, manufacturers, 
 wholesale men or tradesmen in the same country. It is part of 
 the game, and however it ends the country as a whole is no 
 worse off, but probably better than before. But apply it to 
 rival nations, with ourselves as one of the combatants concerned, 
 and unless we can complacently assure ourselves that we must 
 be the winner, how then ? And this brings me within sight 
 of the point at which I am driving, namely, that the more free 
 the trade, the more open the communications, and the fewer 
 the tariffs, the more swift, decisive, and complete is the 
 ruination and defeat. Instead of its oscillations, when left 
 perfectly free, diffusing and propagating themselves and the 
 benefits they bring equally, like the waves of the sea, over all 
 the nations engaged, and leaving each as secure and fixed in 
 its place as the buoys that rock themselves in even swing from 
 trough to crest on its smiling waters, the truth is exactly the 
 opposite. Like these very waves, which in reality are steadily 
 drifting in the direction of the tides and the moon, this trade 
 of the nations is ever drifting quickly or more slowly in the 
 direction of the peoples with the most effective productive powersy 
 slipping away from one to the other as each is overcome in the 
 race, heaping its riches now on one shore, and then ebbing 
 from it to follow the fortunes of its stronger rival, and leaving 
 it stranded high and dry ; and all the more rapidly, be it noted, 
 the fewer bi*eakwaters there are in the shape of tariff fences or 
 entrenchments to break the precipitancy of its retreat. All is 
 drifting, the trade of the little retailers towards that of the 
 great shopkeepers, leaving them dying or extinct in its wake ; 
 the old iron and coal mining of Kent and the south long since 
 drifted to the Midlands and tiie north ; the woollen mills of 
 the eastern counties to Yorkshire and Lancashire, and becoming 
 
FREE TUADE, IMIOTECTION, AND PREFERENCE. 205 
 
 concentrated there, with the old mills closed down behind them 
 in their flight ; the freer the trade, the greater the facilities of 
 transit and communication by canal or steam, and the wider 
 the ai'ea to be tapped and supplied, the quicker the concen- 
 tration, the greater the ensuing supremacy, and the more 
 exhausted and deserted the regions left behind. For the same 
 river, tliat b}- its facility of communication has just brought 
 trade and prosperity to one of the little landing places in its 
 course, washes it away again as soon as the country is opened 
 up, sacrificing it to a more fortunately situated upstart farther 
 down the stream. The new railway that in its progress from 
 village to village makes the fortune of each in turn, leaves 
 them all again, except the one or two more favourably placed, 
 to sink into stagnation and decay. And these favourites of 
 fortune, as I have elsewhere insisted, do not, as the Free 
 Trader imagines, share their advantages with their defeated 
 rivals, but, like a victorious general after a battle, or the 
 strongest bull in the herd, take all ; or, if not, like the giant 
 Trusts of America, who, after having crushed out their smaller 
 rivals one by one, reinstate them again as managers, take the 
 cream of the trade for themselves, and leave the vanquished 
 only the skim milk ! 
 
 Here, then, is a reversal of all our old traditional beliefs on 
 this matter, and yet I am confident that the History of Nations, 
 too, will bear me out. The trade of the East and West, which 
 at first was monopolised by Phoenicia and Carthage, on their 
 fall concentrated itself in Rome and Alexandria, and afterwards 
 at Amalfi and Constantinople, being extinguished in each in 
 turn by conquest in war. When it finally settled in Venice, 
 Genoa, Florence, and other Italian cities, purely economic 
 causes did for these, again, what war had done for their pre- 
 decessors. The mere discovery of the passage to India around 
 the Cape was sufficient to transfer their supremacy to Spain 
 and Portugal, where, after remaining for a time, other economic 
 causes equally potent in their way next transferred it to Holland 
 
206 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 and the Baltic, and finally to England. But each of these, 
 instead of sharing in turn its prosperity with the one it had 
 supplanted, and diffusing its splendour over Spain and the 
 Italian cities, kept it, on the contrary, tenaciously to itself ; so 
 that the Free Trader may well ask in mild surprise alike of 
 Venice and Genoa, Florence, Holland and Spain, where are 
 your glories now? And yet each of these rose to supremacy, 
 not by Protection alone, nor yet by Free Trade alone, but by 
 a mixture or alternation of each skilfully and wisely applied 
 according to its own needs and to the circumstances of the 
 time ; always rigorously protecting itself when fighting its 
 way up to supremacy, and usually relaxing, as we ourselves did, 
 when that supremacy was assured, and Protection was no 
 longer required. In a former article I went into this matter in 
 detail, pointing out especially that England had reached 
 supremacy long before Cobden and the Corn Laws were heard 
 of, and I need not repeat it here. Suffice it to sum up the 
 conclusion I there reached, namely, that when once a nation 
 like England, that was once industrially supreme in its own 
 line, is threatened on all hands, as we are at present, by 
 younger rivals, and is at last effectually beaten, by however 
 small a margin^ in its home markets, in that which gave it its 
 supremacy, it must be prepared to put on Protection rigid as 
 quarantine, as the simplest, swiftest, and most efficacious way 
 of averting disaster, until such time, if ever, as by an internal 
 reorganisation of its forces, it is able to contest the supremacy 
 again. 
 
 So different a complexion is thus put on the abstract chain 
 of assumptions on which Free Trade is built, by the actual 
 economic facts of the world. If we substitute the conception 
 of animal for that of trade, the Free Trade syllogism will run 
 thus: — All animals, like trade, are by nature reproductive ; all 
 animal flesh is good as human or animal food ; the more 
 animals, therefore, you can bring together, if left alone, the 
 more food there will be for all to divide. But supposing the 
 
FREE TRADE, PROTECTION, AND PREFERENCE. 207 
 
 animals brought together were lions and antelopes, wolves and 
 sheep, cats and mice, how then ? Where then would the 
 increase of food be found ? 
 
 If Free Trade, then, became universal to-morrow, we may 
 fairly conclude that, far from being a benefit to all the world, 
 it would benefit only those great complementary nations which 
 by their original or acquired productive powers have fought 
 their way to supremacy, degrading all the rest into mere 
 appendages or annexes, and bringing them all alike more surely 
 and swiftly to decay ; as is seen in our agriculture, for 
 example, where fields that might now be smiling with golden 
 harvests, and stocked with men, are lying, in places, as 
 untenanted and untilled as if the hoof of the conqueror had 
 passed over them, extinguished as completely by the bloodless 
 process of being undersold in the corn market, as by war. Had 
 all the world embraced Free Trade fifty years ago, England 
 would have extinguished their manufactures in detail before 
 they had time to take root and grow, much as animals and 
 tramps and boys do the produce of unfenced fields and gardens ; 
 their populations confined to the country would have remained 
 as unprogressive as Dutch Boers ; and the total produce of the 
 world, far from being increased, would have been reduced to 
 little more than was necessary for mere subsistence, in the 
 same way as the produce of miscellaneous human promiscuity 
 must be less than that of separate and regulated families and 
 homes. And this gives us the hint as to the true law of the 
 production and distribution of wealth, a truth to which Nature 
 herself and the present course of the world both point the way. 
 It is this, that the greatest amount of produce for each, as for 
 all nations, will be got from a world, each of whose great 
 divisions, like enclosed fields, is self-contained ; in the same 
 way as Nature gets the greatest amount of work out of a 
 number of individual animals and plants of endless variety, 
 each of which is self-suf&cing, and stands complete within its 
 own skin. The nations themselves have long seen it, in spite 
 
208 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 of their pedants and doctrinaires, and are now busily engacred 
 in rolling themselves together as fast as they can into separate 
 self-contained balls, founded on racial affinities and geographical 
 landmarks — Slavonic, Germanic, Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, and 
 what not — and the attempt to reverse this instinctive process 
 is like tampering with gravitation, elective affinity, and other 
 ordinances of fate. And all this means, in a word, Protection 
 for the great progressive nations in all those productions that 
 are needed to make them round and self-sufficing, with a free 
 entry for all that their own soil cannot with advantage produce ; 
 the amount of free or preferential trade being regulated as if 
 they were port-holes in a ship, which are used to let in a 
 plentiful supply of fresh air from the outside — but not the sea ! 
 Summing up, then, we may say that most of what is vital in 
 the new Science and Art of Political Economy which it has 
 been the object of this series of articles to inaugurate, may 
 be written on your finger nails, and may be catalogued as 
 follows : 
 
 1. That Trade is a game of skill, not an eviscerated 
 
 abstract skeleton of pedantry and the Schools, and 
 that in all its transactions whatever, whether in 
 regard to rents, profits, and wages, or to a purely 
 private deal, whether between individuals, classes, or 
 nations, he wins and takes the lion's share who by 
 skilful manoeuvring manages, like Napoleon in his 
 campaigns, to get the advantage by a larger con- 
 centration of ertective productive force at each po'mt. 
 
 2. That the greatest produce for the world and for each 
 
 nation is to be got, not from universal Free Trade, 
 but from large, enclosed, self-sufficient nationalities 
 grouped according to race and geographical distinc- 
 tions, and following in trade the principle of Pro- 
 tection ; the same principle which induces men to 
 enclose their fields and gardens, and not to leave 
 them open to the highway for the crops and fruits to 
 
FREE TRADE, PROTECTION, AND PREFERENCE. 209 
 
 be plucked or devoured before they have had time to 
 sprout or ripen ; and with gates not to stand open of 
 necessity, but to be opened or shut as expediency or 
 circumstance dictates. 
 
 3. That, as for purposes of trade, men cannot be divided 
 
 into separate classes of producers and consumers, but 
 each is both producer and consumer at once, you 
 cannot get the best results by studying cheapness in 
 consumption alone, but only by studying cheapness 
 so far as it will not paralyse the arm for production, — 
 and no farther. 
 
 4. That in a Free Trade country like England which, 
 
 owing to its undisputed world supremacy, has been 
 enabled so long to prosper under that regime, when 
 once the great vital industries that gave it its supre- 
 macy are seriously attacked or beaten, it must be 
 prepared to put on Protection swift and sharp ; that 
 when its less important ones are captured, it may 
 cheerfully let them go, as in a game of cards, only if 
 it sees its way to confront its opponent by a more 
 decisive coup later on in the game. 
 These principles bring us at last full flush on Mr. Chamber- 
 lain's scheme, and if by means of them we have succeeded in 
 getting the illusions of the old Political Economists well 
 under hatches, and have exorcised those dead ghosts which, 
 haunting the background of the mind, by their uplifted warn- 
 ing hand have so long affrighted and perplexed the judgment, 
 we may now sit down and calmly consider what we are to 
 think about it in detail. 
 
 After what has been said, I need scarcely say that in my 
 opinion the raising of the question at all is of the most vital 
 and profound importance to the interests of England at the 
 present time ; and further, that could a beginning be made 
 to-morrow in the introduction of the protective principle on 
 which the scheme is founded, it could issue in nothing but 
 
210 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 good. That the skeleton of the scheme, which is all that 
 Mr. Chamberlain has as yet vouchsafed us, is in principle 
 thoroughly sound, I have no doubt ; my only fear is that it is 
 premature, and that the parts of it cannot be so timed in 
 execution as to form that full, round, and harmonious whole 
 which is needed to secure its "acceptance ; that its separate 
 parts will be in turn so blocked by private interest, prejudice, 
 illusion, and economic fanaticism, that the scheme as a whole, 
 whether in regard to England alone or as embracing the 
 Colonies as well, will never get over the bar at all. Indeed, to 
 carry it out completely would seem to require rather a genera- 
 tion than a session or two of Parliament, or even a decade. 
 But to see how all this will operate, let us fix in our minds 
 definitely what the general objects are which the scheme is 
 intended to effect. In the large, they may be said to be, first, 
 to restock our vacant agricultural fields with men and homes 
 again ; second, to protect our great manufacturing industries 
 against the foreigner, and relight the mill and factory fires 
 blown out by bounty-fed foreign products and the cheap sur- 
 plusage and excess of gigantic protected Trusts thrown on the 
 market " at a song " ; and, thirdly, to bring in the Colonies, 
 with a view mainly of knitting the Empire more closely 
 together and of protecting ourselves and them in the hour of 
 danger, by means of solid business advantages to be given and 
 received. 
 
 Let us take England, therefore, by itself first, and see what 
 the difficulties are ; we can then bring in the Colonies after- 
 wards, and consider how they will advance or retard the 
 scheme. 
 
 Now, to restock our country districts and their fertile fields 
 with men again — that dark spot in the heritage left us by 
 Free Trade — with the decline in the value of the land in the 
 last quarter of a century of £1,000,000,000, and loss of farmers' 
 capital of £150,000,000, it must be done on a sound scientific 
 principle. Not on the theory of Rousseau which took effect 
 
FREE TRADE, PROTECTION, AND PREFERENCE. 211 
 
 in France after the Revolution, with its millions of peasant 
 proprietors on their five to ten acre patches, showing like a 
 vast sand sea of sordid human particles bent and half embruted 
 with the toil needed to wring subsistence from them ; for this 
 is a lot worthy of no distinctively human life. Not, again, 
 like the stalwart quarter-section farmers of America, with 
 their 160 acres each, and covering the country from sea to 
 sea — that solid backbone of the country and its rock of 
 defence against all the machinations and corruptions of Bosses 
 and Trusts ; for England is too small to admit of so much 
 space to each ; but graded rather according to the historical 
 character of the people, and providing at once for equality and 
 inequality, for authority and liberty, for necessities and even 
 luxuries ; with your " three acres and a cow " for the working 
 man and labourer on the outskirts of towns and villages ; your 
 twenty, fifty, one hundred, five hundred acres, in enlarging 
 circles, all alike freehold, as in France, America, and the 
 Colonies ; and as crown and summit, the great landlords and 
 their castles as the centres of authority, taste, and culture for 
 all. But how attain this ideal, which would involve the dis- 
 memberment and sale of the larger portion of the great estates 
 (now on the eve of accomplishment in Ireland), with the 
 House of Lords still standing, and a House of Commons 
 largely identified with it in sentiment if not in interest ? It 
 cannot be done. Besides, to be a success it would involve 
 Protection, in spite of Prince Krapotkin's gallant attempt to 
 prove that the country by a sufficiently intensive culture could 
 be made self-supporting both in corn and every other form of 
 produce. But how, again, get the inhabitants of the cities 
 and towns to so far sacrifice themselves (as they do in France 
 for the peasant proprietors) as to have the price of bread 
 raised on them by tariff in order that after a pass or two 
 the advantage must find its way, as Lord Rosebery himself 
 admitted, into the pockets of the present landlords ? That, 
 too, cannot be done. 
 
212 sociOLoaY and political economy. 
 
 Let us turn, then, to the protection of our Manufactures, 
 where, out of our thirteen or fourteen great and supreme 
 industries, we have in the last quarter of a century declined in 
 cotton, iron and steel, woollen and yarns, linen, leather, engines 
 and hardware, and have improved only in coal, machinery, 
 apparel, and chemicals ; the improvement in coal ranging 
 higher than all the rest put together, and our supremacy, there- 
 fore, in this, being but a living on capital, and on the pro- 
 gressive exhaustion of the mines. Many of the above will soon, 
 if they do not already, require protection to save them from 
 gradual extinction. Can we not, therefore, get the working men 
 to consent to the slight increase in the cost of living which the 
 protection of agriculture demands, by promising them an 
 increase of wages, by the protection of manufactures, as its 
 balance and set off, and so get both our ends by a single 
 throw ? Yes, if they were sure that protection of manufac- 
 tures must lead to a higher wage, or if they were thrown out of 
 work in great batches all over the country at the time when 
 the question came on. But how get them to see it while they 
 are still in work, and the evil day that is surely approaching for 
 them, if the Free Trade regime goes on, has not yet dawned ? 
 How, indeed, when not only the universal Press and the 
 Economists, but their own Leaders din into their ears daily 
 that they are consumers only, and must study only cheapness 
 of living ; and that as for their employers, the producers, they 
 cannot go wrong so long as they get their raw material in cheap 
 and free; and so, in consequence, workmen and employers 
 being separ'ateli/ best served, both must be best served ; not 
 seeing that if once the employer is undersold in the home 
 market, whether his material has come in free or not free, all 
 alike must go down together. Besides, Protection of itself 
 does not necessarily raise wages, although it can be made 
 indirectly to raise them, if Government will only ascertain 
 accurately what the increased cost in living from the Tariff 
 ought to be, publisii it to the world, and then advance the 
 
FREE TRADE, PROTECTION, AND PREFERENCE. 213 
 
 wa»es of all the workmen in its own employ to that amount ; 
 and so give the Trades Unions throughout the country the cue 
 as to what their increased demands from their employers ought 
 to be ; and with this moral support at their back leave them to 
 fight it out for themselves. But to do this the workmen must 
 put their own shoulders to the wheel. The official publication 
 of what the increased cost of living ought to be would also help 
 the workmen to squeeze the great Middlemen, who, sitting like 
 spiders on their coign of vantage, in secret unseen combination, 
 are an enemy more remorseless and devouring than any tariff; 
 for their yearly extortions alone, were they made to disgorge 
 them, would of themselves go a long way towards giving the 
 working man his free breakfast table and his old age pension. 
 And when this superflux, shaken from the middleman, was 
 combined with the amount we could skim off the foreigner's 
 profits (who with thirty millions of quarters of wheat more 
 than the world requires would let us have it in spite of our 
 tariff at a minimum, rather than feed his pigs with it), the 
 workmen would be almost as well off in the matter of cheap- 
 ness of consumption as before. But in itself Protection would 
 not raise Wages. They depend in any given country, like all 
 things else in this world, on custom, precedent, and the stage 
 of evolution reached, modified by the extent to which, at any 
 given point of time, one or other of the opposing parties has got 
 its back against the wall. Roman nobles had the j)lunder of 
 whole conquered provinces made over to them, but their slaves 
 did not share it ; Golcondas fell to Spanish grandees on the dis- 
 covery of the Mexican and Peruvian mines, but their serfs 
 fared the same as before ; capitalists made colossal fortunes out 
 of their cotton mills in Lancashire at the beginnino; of last 
 century, but the men, women, and children whom they 
 employed had by combination to heave the lead for every 
 smallest increment of rise they received. Wages are, and 
 always have been, relatively high in America and the Colonies, 
 from the history, traditions, and custom of the people ; they 
 
214 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 remain so under Protection. They would remain low indefi- 
 nitely, for the same reason, among the labourers and peasants 
 of Italy, Russia, Germany, and the East, if Free Trade were 
 established in these countries to-morrow. 
 
 Again, how are " the great unwashed " at the bottom of the 
 scale, the millions of residuum below the decent poverty line, 
 the impotent, the besotted, the wrecks and failures whom the 
 depopulation of the country districts has helped to drive into 
 the slums of towns and cities, how can Protection raise the 
 wages of these ? There are no Trade Unions to help them, no 
 power of combination among themselves to secure them a living 
 wage. No stimulus given to manufactures or production would 
 in itself much benefit them, for they are unskilled ; and Pro- 
 tection is a remedy for the difficulties of the efficients of the 
 industrial world, and not for its waste refuse. They would be 
 hopeless under any regime. And yet you cannot run a nation 
 in the interests of its lamed industrials, however numerous they 
 may be, any more than you can an army in the interests of its 
 camp followers, as the Americans found out to their cost when, 
 for a season, they tried to run their Republic in the interests 
 of the newly-enfranchised slave. But in an age of Utopian 
 philanthropy, which long years of peace, abetted by doctrinaire 
 philosophies and " the rights of man as man " have engendered, 
 where, in considering Mr. Chamberlain's scheme, shall you find 
 the leverage on public opinion necessary to carry through a 
 policy which would leave these twelve millions of water-logged 
 incapables of the slums in its rear ? It cannot be done. 
 Emigrate them, say you ; pack them off in gangs and regiments 
 to the country to help restock its deserted fields ; exclude the 
 pauper alien, and trust to the rest being re-absorbed in a measure 
 in the cities, when declining industries shall be revived by Pro- 
 tection. So say I ; but where is the peasant proprietary and 
 sub-division of the soil that is ready to reabsorb and distribute 
 them'i; And, if it were, who is going to do it in an age of 
 lainsez-faire, where, except in matters of War, or of Education 
 
FREE TRADE, PROTECTION, AND PREFERENCE. 215 
 
 with sectarian shibboleths as war cry, all alike until but yesterday 
 upheld the motto, " Everything by voluntary effort, nothing 
 by the State." But in an age of infinite differentiation and 
 specialisation of nations, of industries in the same nation, 
 and of individuals in the same industry, where regulation, 
 and your hand on the rudder, are required at every tui'n, and 
 where the politics of a nation demand the mental agility 
 and poise of a gymnast at every point, this doctrine of 
 laissez-faire, of go-as-you-please, and things will right them- 
 selves, and that what cannot be done by voluntary effort had 
 better not be done at all, is an even more fatal heritage than 
 that of Free Trade itself. 
 
 And now we have to ask to what extent, if any, a Pro- 
 tective policy for England alone, which must be landlocked 
 for many years, owing to the above and other causes, will 
 be hastened by working the Colonies into the scheme ? The 
 answer to this will be found in the answer to the question 
 as to what, if any, relations of an economic and industrial 
 kind can be established with the Colonies that shall have 
 the element of continuance in them, and will be attended 
 with pure good without danger of friction or the chances of 
 alienation ? And for this I shall be obliged to confine 
 myself entirely to the principles involved, and on which the 
 solution of the problem depends; and as Mr. Chamberlain 
 has himself not yet gone into details, I shall venture here 
 only to indicate the more important of these principles, and 
 the way in which they are to be applied. 
 
 To begin with, I shall assume that the aim and destiny 
 of the Colonies, as of ourselves, and all other progressive 
 modern States is to be self-complete and self-contained, so 
 far as is compatible with the natural productiveness of their 
 soil ; having that healthy balance between town and country 
 life, between commerce, manufactures, and food supply, which 
 is essential to nations destined for progress and culture. 
 And the first principle I would lay stress on is the extreme 
 
216 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 difficulty of establishing permanent relations of any but the 
 most loose, elastic, and general character between countries 
 separated by sea or inaccessible land barriers, whether they be 
 Colonies and the Mother Country, or not ; as the history of the 
 colonies of Rome and the cities of ancient Greece abundantly 
 testifies. And the reason is, that a man's country or fatherland 
 extends no farther than the horizon which he figures in imagi- 
 nation as the boundary of his life's activities, and within 
 which he finds the arena for his dreams; and the pressure of 
 whose bonds, political, social, and personal, surrounding him as a 
 milieu, is the deepest influence by which he is at once im- 
 pelled, supported, and restrained. All other communities, 
 however close may be the political and merely sentimental ties 
 that bind them, are in their nature foreign, and on the slightest 
 ruffle to these deepest sentiments and interests are apt to 
 assume an unfriendly or hostile aspect. In considering our 
 relation to the Colonies, therefore, in the matter of a closer 
 commercial union, they are to be regarded at once as children 
 and as adults ; children, as being as yet entirely on our hands 
 for protection against foreign Powers ; adults, inasmuch as 
 they are already full grown and independent, being settled in 
 life for themselves, and attached to their own land and soil as 
 to their bride. No bond, therefore, of any kind between us 
 and them can be drawn more tightly or more permanently 
 than between sons on the one hand, each with his own family 
 and business interests to consider, and the parent still engaged 
 in active business on his own account, wliere though all are 
 ready to unite when the common family interest, honour, or 
 good name is impugned, or the common family possessions 
 attacked, and are prepared to do good turns to each other in 
 moments of illness or misfortune, or in putting business in each 
 other's way ; still the steady standing Oudness intei'cst of each 
 is and must be the fixed and permanent principle of action of 
 each and all alike. To try and get more out of tlie relation- 
 ship than this, is to invite disaster and to court the fate of the 
 
FREE TRADE, PROTECTION, AND PREFERENCE. 217 
 
 Greek cities and their colonies who, although ready to start to 
 arms on a spurt against the common Barbarian, fell into dissen- 
 sion, ending often in permanent hatred and alienation, when 
 left to themselves to apportion their relative shares of the spoil. 
 Now, in the relation between us and the Colonies, the common 
 bond of the Crown, which rests on sentiments and interests deep 
 and enduring, is quite sufficient for purposes of any casual war 
 that is likely to arise in the immediate future, provided always 
 that the steady business interests of each continue to work 
 smoothly and for mutual advantage, and without the danger of 
 arousing through friction sentiments unfriendly to ourselves. 
 But as the very object of our proposed closer amalgamation of 
 business interests with the Colonies is precisely for the purpose 
 of strengthening the mutual defences and resources of the 
 Empire in each and every part, in that larger ultimate war 
 between gathering and consolidating races — Anglo-Saxon, 
 Germanic, Slavonic, Celtic, Mongolian, etc. — which is the 
 dark spot looming in the remoter future, it behoves us to 
 consider well the lines and principles on which this commercial 
 union is to be drawn, so as to be most certain of attaining this 
 end without the danger of reaction or recoil. The problem, 
 that is to say, is, what is the best business relationship between 
 us and the Colonies in peace, that will put us all alike on the 
 best ultimate war footing, and at the same time add to our 
 immediate and prospective material prosperity ? 
 
 In the first place, then, I should exclude all that pertains to 
 War from any arrangement that is intended to be either 
 definite, permanent, or binding, leaving such contributions as 
 the Colonies care to make for the common defence to the 
 sentiment and free will of each and to the honourable rivalry 
 among them all, while retaining in our own hands, and placing 
 beyond the reach of cavil, the free ultimate decision in the 
 disposal of the forces of the Crown for the common defence, 
 as now. As for the nature of the permanent business basis 
 between us, I should, in order to diminish friction to a 
 
218 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 minimum, exclude from it all that is personal, as it were, and 
 peculiar to each Colony, all that each Colony conceives to be 
 vital to its own individual interests and prosperity, its own 
 peculiar ideals, aspirations, and aims, and the free manage- 
 ment of which it wishes to keep in its own hands, and which 
 it could not pledge or part with without danger of after 
 discontent or regret. But of what remains and can be made 
 a matter of permanent and binding relationship between us I 
 should, bearing in mind the proverbial difficulty of business 
 relations between near relatives, have it clearly understood 
 from the start that all favours or hopes of favour, other than 
 those in the bond, should be ruled out of purview, all expecta- 
 tions that miffht be made to hano; sentimental or other 
 grievances upon — like that man in the Gospel who expected 
 more pay for working in the vineyai'd longer hours than 
 another, although what he got was what he bargained for ; 
 and that all arrangements whatever should be put on a strictly 
 business footing, without prejudice, afterthought, or heart- 
 burning, each side having a perfectly free hand to agree or 
 disagree as it likes, as much so, indeed, as in a treaty between 
 foreign nations. And for this purpose the only way possible, 
 it seems to me, is to deal with each Colony separately, to ifind 
 out the margin of a possible reciprocal deal with each ; to 
 arrange that there shall be such a margin, however small, 
 against the foreigner wherever the two come into competition 
 in parallel lines of work, and to give effect to this as the 
 common principle of trading within the Empire. Any attempt 
 to deal with these matters, where some of the Colonies must 
 be behind the rest, by a liound-table Conference of the 
 representatives of each sitting on them in court, on the basis of 
 distributive justice measured out to each according to the 
 several pretensions or claims, would be as hopeless and Utopian 
 as to attempt to square the circle or to regulate the entrances 
 and exits of ambassadors without strict rules of precedence, 
 and would wreck the scheme from the outset. Let tliere be 
 
FREE TRADE, TROTECTION, AND PREFERENCE. 219 
 
 no question of justice in the strict sense of the term in the 
 matter at all, but pure business expediency alone ; and the 
 margin of preference that may in each case be granted, 
 based as much as possible on figures and trade returns, once 
 agreed upon^ let the whole agreement (as between the Colonies 
 and the Mother Country, there can be no question of coercion) 
 be held as a matter of sacred honour and good faith. What 
 this margin may be will depend on circumstances, but as each 
 will fix it on the principle of what it can afford to do a/te7' it 
 has put on such tariffs as are necessary for its own internal 
 industrial objects and aims, not only against foreign nations, 
 but against its sister Colonies and ourselves as well, and vice 
 versa, the margin of common reciprocal trade between the 
 several parts of the Empire will, I suspect, be a narrower belt 
 than is generally anticipated. We can only afford to let in 
 Colonial corn and other produce at a point of cheapness which 
 will not interfere with our fixed intention of making our own 
 corn and produce pay sufficiently to enable us again to restock 
 our country districts with men. The Colonies can only allow 
 our manufactures to come in at the point where they will not 
 drown their own, especially in those lines for which they have 
 sufficient natural advantages and are resolved to develop them. 
 It is in the narrow belt of discriminating preference lying 
 between these points and the still higher points of the tariff 
 fixed for the foreigner that the mutual benefits would arise 
 from which the Empire would draw its harvest. But as this 
 belt, however narrow, would constitute a virtual monopoly for 
 England on the one side, and the Colonies on the other, the 
 area over which it would extend would ultimately be so rich 
 and wide as to inaugurate an era of vast and increasing activity 
 and enterprise throughout the whole Empire, and one, in my 
 belief, out of all proportion to the loss at first sustained in our 
 strictly foreign trade. Emigration from England and America 
 would overflow into Canada to take up farms and get the 
 differential advantage of our tariff", and the men who entered 
 
220 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 would, in the second generation, become loyal subjects of the 
 Empire. And so with the other Colonies in their different 
 ways. As for America, instead of shipping her goods here 
 and underselling us, she would bring her capital over and 
 manufacture them here out of such of our natural resources as 
 are as available as her own ; and her sons, too, in the second 
 generation, would amalgamate with us to our mutual benefit. 
 In the meantime, common action, on the basis of the Monroe 
 doctrine, and for such common objects, for example, as 
 keeping ports open in Asia, as against the aggressions of other 
 European Powers, would help later to bring America, too, into 
 the Anglo-Saxon fold, and so help to weld into a unity that 
 universal Anglo-Saxondom which, before the century has 
 reached its meridian, will find itself confronted with Pan- 
 Germanism, Pan-Slavism, Pan-Mongolianism, or what not, in 
 the struggle in which the nations will be engaged in carving 
 out for themselves heritages among the retrograde peoples and 
 vacant spaces of the earth. 
 
 The inclusion of the Colonies in Mr. Chamberlain's scheme, 
 then, owing to the dangerous nature of the material with 
 which we have to deal, and which must be handled with the 
 utmost delicacy, cannot be contemplated altogether without a 
 shade of misgiving, and we may well hesitate before finally 
 embarking on it; all its aspects being double-edged, both in 
 regard to the Colonies, the foreigner, and ourselves. Their 
 inclusion will hasten, perhaps, the acceptance of Protection for 
 England, but it will be as much for its glamour as for any just 
 insight into the complex play of forces involved. But I should 
 have preferred Protection for ourselves independently, in the 
 first instance at least, with preferential treatment on either side 
 purely gratuitous and spontaneous, in the way in which Canada 
 has set the example, rather than witli the slightest tinge of 
 bargain or sale between us. But, if Mr. Chamberlain and the 
 Colonial statesmen can see their way to make a business 
 scheme which shall draw the bonds tiofhter work without 
 
FREE TRADE, PROTECTION, AND PREFERENCE. 221 
 
 friction, the endeavour can be fraught with nothing but 
 good. 
 
 And yet, in contemplating the return to Protection which 
 sooner or later awaits ua, we cannot but linger with a sigh 
 over the halcyon days of Free Trade, a brief summer of 
 Imperial supremacy like that of Rome in the age of the 
 Antonines, before her inevitable decay set in ; for, with a 
 Parliamentary Government without central, controlling initia- 
 tive like that of the Czar or German Emperor, to keep its 
 hand on corruption, the vast interests involved in every change 
 of tariff under a rSgime of Protection must put such pressure 
 on individual members of the legislature that the present purity 
 of our political institutions will gradually tend to disappear, 
 and the Boss, the Lobbyist, and the professional politician, as 
 in America, will enter with all their train. 
 
CHAPTEE V. 
 
 SUGGESTIONS FOE A NEW POLITICAL 
 PARTY.* 
 
 Its Principles and Methods, with Some Applications. 
 
 T PROPOSE in this paper to take advantage of the 
 hospitality of the Editor in permitting me to explain in 
 some detail, by means of illustrations and applications, the 
 principles of a New Political Party which for some time I 
 have been contemplating, and from the standpoint of which 
 previous articles of mine in this Review have been written ; 
 a party which I believe to be botli desirable and necessary, 
 and, as I shall now attempt to show, sufficiently urgent to be 
 ripe for formal statement and discussion. But lest the reader 
 should be startled at the very suggestion of a new political 
 party, as of something portentous, presumptuous, or altogether 
 ridiculous, let me hasten to reassure him by adding that the 
 party I have in contemplation will not challenge the validity 
 of any of the existing political parties, or seek in any way to 
 displace them, but will attempt at most, in a quiet way, to 
 modify or qualify them from within, themselves. It will not 
 • Fortnightly Review, February, 1905. 
 
SUGGESTIONS FOR A NEW POLITICAL PARTY. 223 
 
 require any organisation to start it, or keep it a-going — neither 
 subscription lists, ballot-boxes, nor franchises — but when once 
 thoroughly grasped, will go on of itself, without either leaders 
 to direct it, platform orators to justify it, or popular enthusiasm 
 to keep it alive. It is purely a thing of the mind, as it were — 
 a new point of view, if I may say so, and principle of 
 co-ordination founded on Evolution and History — to be applied 
 to political problems when they have to be handled j^ractically, 
 and not merely critically^ or speculatively ; and so can lie side 
 by side with the older political parties without aggression or 
 offence. In a general way it will aim at playing the part of a 
 kind of political mariner's chart, by furnishing a definite line 
 or curve along which to steer ; and should it prove acceptable, 
 will rely for its support on that great body of thoughtful voters 
 among all parties, who, although scattered, are the main agents 
 in turning out ministries when they become retrograde or lose 
 their grip on realities — those men who, although firmly 
 attached to their respective parties, are nevertheless com- 
 pelled to steer their course, when obliged to oppose them, 
 rather by natural instinct, rule of thumb, or that kind of com- 
 promise which consists in " splitting the difference," than by 
 any body of well-defined principles applicable to all causes and 
 situations alike. And yet, so great is my faith in these 
 principles, that when once they are co-ordinated and bound 
 into a harmonious whole, I expect them to stand like an image 
 or statue of Peace amid the roar of distracting parties ; and 
 should my hopes in their regard be realised, a decade will not 
 have elapsed before their influence is definitely felt, nor a 
 generation without their having so coloured the older political 
 parties as in a measure to have silently transformed them. 
 Let me, then, without further preliminary, define the principles 
 of this New Party from which I expect so much, give the 
 reasons for its urgency and necessity, point out the wants it 
 will supply, and explain the manner in which I conceive it will 
 act. But as it is more than probable that, with the limited 
 
224 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 space at my disposal, my explanations will still leave much to 
 be desired, I propose, in a measure, to remedy this defect by 
 applying the principle in question to some of the political 
 problems of the present hour — imitating in this that Yankee 
 inventor I once knew, who, finding that people would not, 
 or could not, understand the pamphlet in which the advantages 
 of his patent hay-and-straw-cutter were described, set up his 
 machine like a guillotine in the market place, prepared to 
 demonstrate its merits by chopping wisps of hay or straw for 
 all and sundry of the farmers who chanced to pass along ! 
 
 But first, let me not so much apologise for my own temerity 
 in proposing to start a new political party on the lines of 
 Evolution, as express my surprise that it should not have been 
 done before. For there is no other department of life or 
 thought except this of Practical Politics in which the principle 
 of Evolution has not driven all other principles out of the 
 field, not only in speculative philosophy, but in matters so 
 practical as the breeding of horses, sheep, and dogs. And yet, 
 in none is its application more urgent and pressing than in 
 practical politics ; and the more so the nearer the government 
 of a country approaches that of a pure democracy. For, from 
 the time that the French Revolution proclaimed the doctrines 
 of absolute Liberty, Fraternity, and Equality, which have 
 been accepted by the progressive parties in all modern States, 
 you cannot keep the natural evolution of nations in a steady 
 line by merely " splitting the difference " between the rival 
 parties, as you do in the breeding of animals, and as was still 
 possible in the days when kings, as mediators, kept their hold 
 on the rudder of legislation. And the reason is, that these 
 opposite parties are entirely different in essential nature. One 
 of them — the party of abstract Equality — is self-contradictory 
 and absolutely unreliable ; so much so, indeed, that any cross 
 between it and a party founded on ordinary material interests 
 would be like a union between angels and men, producing 
 demons ; or between man and horse, woman anil fish, pro- 
 
SUGGESTIONS FOR A NEW POLITICAL PARTY. 225 
 
 ducing monsters, — the centaurs and mermaids of fable. But 
 why so? Because each and every man by nature loves as 
 much to become superior to his neighbour when he has already 
 become equal to him, as to become equal when he has been 
 inferior ; loves as much to impose his will on those placed 
 below him, as to shake off the will of those above him ; to 
 exclude the neighbour whom he has beaten, as to fraternise 
 with the neighbour who keeps him out in the cold. That is to 
 say, that in thus facing both ways, men can only believe with 
 half their mind in abstract liberty, fraternity, and equality 
 after all ! And hence, when you attempt to do work with 
 these principles in the present world, they break in your hand ; 
 and are as useless as is a painted razor when you wish to shave, 
 or the razor itself when you wish to cut down trees. It is 
 only in some millenium of the future where there shall be 
 neither Physical Force, Inequality, Authority, Exclusiveness, 
 nor Precedence, but where men shall be as the angels in heaven, 
 that these abstract ideals as party cries can possibly be realised. 
 Hence I have called them millenial ideals. And therefore it is 
 that in those countries where there are no kinoes at all, as in 
 France and America ; or where the king reigns but does not 
 govern, as with us ; or, again, where the presidents have the 
 power of vetoing but not of initiating legislation — there being 
 no third party of Evolution to keep the ship of State in a 
 steady, even course — both Government and Legislation have 
 followed, as we see, a zigzag course, tacking this way and that, 
 and plunging from side to side in the most erratic manner ; 
 now making a dash to realise an abstract ideal, only to lose 
 themselves in the open sea, and then back again to the shore 
 to be stuck in the sands ! In France, this zigzag from abstract 
 Utopias on the one hand, to despotisms of Force on the other, 
 and back again, first in relation to Government and now to the 
 Church, has gone on, it is unnecessary to point out, ever since 
 the days of the Revolution. But America is perhaps the most 
 pregnant and typical instance for our purpose. Founded on 
 
226 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 the pure millennial ideal of the absolute " equality of man as 
 man," she plunged into the sea, on the first opportunity, to 
 realise her dream, sacrificing first a million of men to free the 
 slave, and then, in order to protect him in his freedom (frankly 
 and nobly, be it said), giving him the franchise. But, having 
 rushed to this extreme point of the compass, and found, as was 
 inevitable, that the negro was becoming more and more a mill- 
 stone around her neck, she is now reversing her rudder and 
 setting sail in exactly the opposite direction ; and is taking 
 back the franchise as fast as the blunder of it all, and the sense 
 of public decency, will permit. And, after all^ what was it all 
 for? For an abstract Utopia and dream, hatched in the 
 imagination of a single sentimentalist recluse, Rousseau, who 
 deliffhted his own mind and those of his fellow-sufferers with 
 the contemplation of this dream as a refuge from the tyranny 
 of his time ; but when fastened on the neck of a virgin 
 democracy like America, which needed no Utopias, be it 
 observed, to reinforce the natural equality which her citizens 
 already possessed, it could only end in disaster. For does any- 
 one imagine that if to-day the same situation were to arise 
 again, a single man would lose his life in the cause? And, 
 what is more to our point here, does anyone imagine that had 
 there been a party of Evolution in America then^ such as that 
 for which I am now pleading, the negro would have ever got 
 a vote at all ? Or that, having founded their republic on the 
 absolute equality of all men, they could then have permitted 
 that primal curse of nations, the mixing of antagonistic races on 
 the same soil — a thing only possible at all where one is in 
 suboi'dination to the other? Or that, if the mixture of races 
 were already an accomplished fact, they could then have 
 decreed absolute equality by law ? And again, to what is that 
 municipal corruption in large cities which soils the fair fame of 
 American democracy due, but to the same Utopia, to the dream 
 that equality/ of opportunity, which is all that any mortal ever 
 dreams of claiming in civil life, is not enough in political life, 
 
SUGGESTIONS FOR A NEW POLITICAL PARTY. 227 
 
 but must be pushed to an absolute equality of rights; that, 
 although a loaf of bread must be paid for under penalties 
 before it can be eaten, votes which affect the bread of thousands 
 may be thrust on all alike — on the drunken, the incapable, the 
 indifferent, the submerged. And with result — what? The 
 arming of the offscourings of Europe, when they land, with the 
 franchise as with a weapon ; and the regimenting of them and 
 of the existing slum population into battalions of voters by 
 buccaneers and bosses, for the purpose of extorting toll and 
 over-riding the general will ; and this because the ballot-box 
 and franchise, which originated in old countries as means and 
 instruments of defence against tyranny, became at last, like some 
 beneficent tree erected into a heathen god, worshipped on their 
 own account as ends in themselves. And here again, had there 
 been a party of Evolution iox practical action in the bosom of 
 the other parties, this grotesque result could not have occurred. 
 And now for the principles of this party of History and 
 Evolution, and its method of handling practical political 
 problems. To economise space, I cannot do better, perhaps, 
 than use for their exposition the analogy of the principles and 
 methods of the Christian Church of the first ten centuries — the 
 only institution in recorded history confronted by the same 
 problem which perplexes the political world of to-day. For 
 she, too, had to find a pathway of orderly evolution between 
 Pagan societies founded on Force and material interests, on the 
 one hand, and the abstract millennial ideals, for the first time 
 introduced into the world by Christianity, on the other; 
 between the ignorance, brutality, and insolence of barbarian 
 kings and chieftains, and the saints, the ascetics, the celibates, 
 who were tm'ning the other cheek, giving their coats as well as 
 their cloaks, and in every way trying nobly to carry out the 
 letter as well as the spirit of the millennial ideals of Jesus in 
 their purity ; but whose celibacy and asceticism, vows of 
 poverty and chastity, had they been nniversally practised (the 
 only practical test of their absolute truth and rightness), would 
 
228 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 have unpeopled the world ; while their obstinacy and their 
 refusal to fight in the wars of the Empire against the 
 Barbarians, were becoming, as they increased in numbers, more 
 and more a source of real danger to the Roman State. But 
 the Church was equal to the problem, and managed to saturate 
 the Paganism and Barbarism of the time with as much of the 
 abstract ideals of Christianity as they could absorb, binding all 
 and Interlacing all into a single organic unity. For the Church 
 not only teas Society (as all alike, barbarian and saint, belonged 
 to it), but it was the organ of evolution of society — a third 
 something in its midst, not made up of abstract ideals, like the 
 dreams of the celibates and saints, but a concrete living 
 Church, as much a Polity as a Religion ; and was not got, be it 
 observed, by merely splitting the differences between saint and 
 sinner, but required the great systems of St. Paul, St. Augus- 
 tine, and St. Thomas to organise it. It may well, therefore, 
 serve as a model for all succeeding ages when confronted with 
 the problem of how to get a straight and steady line of 
 evolution by which to steer between material earthly interests, 
 on the one hand, and abstract ideals, for which the world is 
 not yet ripe, on the other. 
 
 With this as analogy, then, the principles and methods of our 
 proposed party of Evolution may be summarised as follows : — 
 
 1. It is a party of action, of practical constructive states- 
 
 manship, and not of party platform propagandism or 
 appeal. 
 
 2. It will form a central core tvithin each and all of the 
 
 existing parties, and not a separate party outside them. 
 
 3. It will rely for its voting power on the great body of 
 
 thoughtful men of all parties, and of all conditions of 
 life, who furnish that swing of the pendulum, as it is 
 called, which brings in Ministries and turns them out 
 again. 
 As for its principles : — 
 
 1. It will admit no rotten planks in the shape of abstract 
 
SUGGESTIONS FOR A NEW POLITICAL PARTY. 220 
 
 ideals into Its political platform— no abstract "rights of 
 man as man," no abstract equality, no abstract 
 franchises, or quakerisms, in short no impotent blood- 
 less abstractions at all— but only such mixed and 
 tempered ones as will stand the wear and tear of 
 ordinary human nature, and be in harmony with the 
 material and social conditions of the time — the glorifi- 
 cation of abstract ideals being left to literature, to 
 the pulpit, to the party platform (their proper ex- 
 ponents), for aspiration, for hope, and for solace to 
 the private heart. 
 
 2. And hence it will substitute the principle of equality of 
 
 opportunity/ for that of absolute equality of rights ; make 
 a man earn his vote before he can use or enjoy it; and 
 instead of regimenting the venal ragamuffins and 
 incapables of the slums, as in America, by thrusting 
 votes into their hands with which to prey on society, 
 it will be disposed rather to take them in hand itself 
 for their own good. 
 
 3. It will for ever abolish both the word and the con- 
 
 ception of laissez-faire from the political speech 
 of men. 
 
 4. Its aim will be to preserve as far as possible the organic 
 
 type on which a State is founded, as determined by 
 its history and antecedents ; a different policy being 
 required in Oriental nations to that in Western 
 (unless, like Japan, a nation is resolved to jump out 
 of its old skin altogether) ; a different one in nations 
 founded on Koman traditions and Roman law, and in 
 those that have grown up outside these influences ; in 
 nations that have their roots in Feudahsm, and in 
 those, like America and the Colonies, to whom the 
 conception is unknown. 
 For its methods : — 
 
 1. It would advance to the next stage in normal evolution 
 
230 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 by always beginning operations on the existing 
 material and social conditions, whatever they may be, 
 as breeders do with animals, and only indirectly by 
 doctrinal teachings, or the mere preachiyig of morality 
 in the abstract, whether in political, religious, or social 
 affairs. If, for example, the problem were how to 
 change America from a democratic to an aristocratic 
 country, reformers might preach its necessity for ever 
 without advancing a step ; for the material conditions 
 of the country and its present system of land tenure 
 would of themselves breed democratic sentiments 
 faster than preaching could uproot them. But if 
 there were enough millionaires to buy up the land in 
 large estates, to be let to farmers on the same 
 precarious tenure as in the United Kingdom, in a 
 generation men would touch their hats, and women 
 curtsey to their new masters as they pass, and the 
 thing would be done of itself ! 
 
 2. And in order to find the strongest stimulus to personal 
 
 exertion for all the citizens, it would do as Napoleon 
 did when he proceeded to reorganise the institutions 
 of France after the Revolution ; it would leave no 
 unbridgeable gaps between persons or classes, but let 
 all be connected by gradated stages, everywhere 
 careers being open to talent and virtue, and every- 
 where ladders and openings provided from the bottom 
 to the top ; the very proximity of the next stage at 
 each and every point being a perpetual incitement to 
 grasp it. 
 
 3. It would, wherever possible, substitute a wider ad- 
 
 ministrative discrimination for fresh legislation ; and, 
 instead of making; ijeneral laws which must alwavs be 
 so wide as to catch the morally innocent while letting 
 the guilty escape, from the difficulty of enforcing 
 them, it would be as well [)rovIded witii administra- 
 
SUGGESTIONS FOR A NEW POLITICAL PARTY. 231 
 
 tive officers to settle all questions of social morality, 
 as we now are with judges and policemen to deal with 
 the man who steals a sixpence or a loaf of bread. 
 But all my efforts to make out a case for a new party of 
 Evolution within the bosom of the other parties in the State 
 will be vain, unless I am able in some measure to reverse the 
 current conception of what constitutes Justice or Right. For it 
 is only because it is believed that absolute political equality 
 and liberty can be claimed by all men as their birthright, as 
 being that which Eternal Justice demands, that so many good 
 and noble men can be found who will willingly risk so much to 
 realise their dream. Rousseau was the first to give currency 
 to this idea of abstract liberty and equality, and from him it 
 soon found its way into the French and American Constitu- 
 tions as their chief corner-stone ; and it has ever since been 
 the watchword of liberal and progressive politics throughout 
 the world. And yet neither Jesus, nor Paul, nor the Early 
 Fathers ever dreamt of it : and the reason Rousseau did was, 
 because he believed that men had once been absolutely free 
 and equal, but that, owing to bad political arrangements, they 
 were now, as he said, everywhere in chains. But although the 
 world which believes in Evolution as a universal fact, now 
 knows that the golden age for the realisation of its dreams lies 
 in the far distant future, it nevertheless still retains them in 
 its politics long after they have lost the philosophical support 
 which once gave them their power. And this it does because 
 it believes with Rousseau that Justice or Right is a single, 
 separate something let down from heaven in its purity, to be 
 clapped, like the figurehead of a king on a coin, on every 
 situation that arises, without regard to consequences ; whereas 
 in fact it is always a composite, and is like a medicine rather, 
 where the effect on the patient has to be taken into considera- 
 tion as well as the abstract purity of the drug. It is not like 
 a single shot, which if it hit the mark, you say that it is right 
 and just, and ought to be done even should the heavens fall ; 
 
232 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 but is rather like the throw of a boomerang, of which you 
 cannot say that it is right until you see whether, in the 
 rebound, it hits you on the head or not ; in other words, it is 
 the knowledge that, should the heavens fall as the result of 
 your action, that action could not have been just or right, 
 however noble the motive may have been. It is to be repre- 
 sented rather by a loop or a circle than by a straight line ; and 
 is neither to be identified with pure Might, as with Carlyle, 
 nor with the abstract ideal of Right, as in the popular concep- 
 tion ; but rather with the harmonious admixture of both in 
 every act — of Force, Authority, Prescription, Custom, etc., on 
 the one hand, and abstract or Ideal Right on the other — as 
 with Shakespeare, who declares that it is between the endless 
 jar of right and wrong that Justice resides. Either it is this, 
 or it has never existed in the political world at all. For if you 
 make a section through Civilisation at any point in its long 
 history, you will nowhere find the abstract ideal in its purity, 
 but always alloyed with a certain admixture of baser metal to 
 give it currency ; always as an ingredient in it you will find 
 Physical Force, open or concealed, and the authority of " the 
 powers that be " that go with possession, prescription, privilege, 
 or prestige, and even with the soil on which one is born. And 
 hence it is that the thoroughgoing application of purely 
 abstract political ideals without regard to circumstances and 
 conditions, is in its consequences as fruitful of evil as that of 
 brute force itself. If, then^ the reader remain firm in holding 
 the old view that Justice is an abstract archetypal and perfect 
 ideal, to which all things ought to be made to conform should 
 the heavens fall, no party of political statesmanship founded on 
 Evolution and History will be possible ; but if he take with 
 me the view that Justice and Right consist in only so much of 
 this abstract ideal as the stage of civilisation reached can be 
 made to absorb without reaction or recoil, then the party of 
 Evolution must in time become the party of liberal and pro- 
 gressive politics, not only in England but throughout the world. 
 
SUGGESTIONS FOK A NEW POLITICAL PARTY. 233 
 
 And now for a few concrete examples to show how the party 
 of Evolution differs in its application from that of the existing 
 political parties ; and here it will be seen that the difference 
 consists mainly in the way in which it shifts the weight or 
 emphasis to be attached to the various political factors in the 
 problems, and so alters the centre of gravity, as it were, on 
 which their solution depends. 
 
 To begin with, then, Conservatism in general, taking its 
 stand on possession and prescription, would keep up the old 
 feudal constitution of society, alike in the tenure of land, in 
 education, in personal ideals, and even in its organisation for 
 war (" not good form to be keen," &c.), and that, too, in an 
 age of the world when the future of all nations depends on 
 Science and Industry, on keenness for Knowledge, as such, and 
 on the application of Science to the art of war. Official 
 Liberalism, on the other hand, would make haste to de- 
 nationalise politics and make cosmopolitan both trade and 
 territory; and that, at a time when the principle of nationality 
 not only is not passing away, but is just beginning to get a 
 real foothold in the world ; and when races everywhere are 
 beginning to consolidate into great fighting nationalities — pan- 
 Germanism, pan-Latinism, pan-Slavism, pan-Mongolianism 
 and so on. Abroad, the Radical wing is ever on the look-out 
 for more negroes or other barbarians to set free from all 
 restraint, with ballot-boxes to protect them in their " rights " 
 — as they lie basking in the sun or sleep away the day in their 
 kraals — in the firm belief, like Robespierre and his guillotine, 
 that the cure for the evils of democracy and laissez-faire lies in 
 still more democracy and laissez-faire ! At home, in conse- 
 quence, the same Radical wing would look out for still more of 
 the outcasts, the incapables, and the derelicts on whom to 
 confer the franchise, and would mix you different alien races 
 on the same areas of soil with as much nonchalance and in- 
 difference as if they were mixing the ingredients in a pudding, 
 and with the expectation, too, that the national flavour tvould 
 
234 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 be improved thereby ! It would do anything to reclaim the 
 drunkard ; but with the bogey of laissez-faire before its eyes 
 stands like a helpless nose-of-wax, and insists that on no 
 account can he be coerced ! Even the ubiquitous able-bodied 
 tramps (not more than two per cent, of whom, according to 
 official accounts, are genuine working-men) can infest the 
 public parks and litter the seats, swarming with vermin ; but 
 on no account must they be disturbed, as thereby the sacred 
 "liberty of the subject" would be infringed. The most 
 extreme section, the followers of Henry George, would expro- 
 priate the landlords without compensation or compunction, 
 and that, too, in the sacred name of Justice, but would leave 
 the exploiting, monopolising capitalist to flourish unscathed. 
 Would these doctrinaires, I wonder, expect rival nations to 
 share and share alike after one had beaten the other in war? 
 If not, why not ? For what has a battle or the result of a 
 battle to do with abstract eternal Justice ? The Socialists, 
 again, of the school of Marx are guilty of still greater intel- 
 lectual atrocities. Their theory demands that, as all are to 
 share equally in the benefits of labour, the work of all must be 
 somehoio equal in value ; but, as the inventor has to be expro- 
 priated as well as the capitalist, it taxed their ingenuity to see 
 how this equality could be made good. They were equal to it, 
 however, and their solution was — what thinks the reader^ 
 That the coalheaver who stokes the engine and the inventor 
 of the engine are worthy of equal reward, on the ground that 
 when fully employed their work will occupy the same length of 
 abstract " labour time " ! They might as well contend that 
 they were equal on the ground that their bodies occupied the 
 same extent of abstract space ! But I have not yet heard that 
 they have applied this curious estimate of relative values to 
 the commander and the private soldier, or to the private and 
 the inventor of a new gun. And if not, again, why not? 
 Meantime, the important point to note is that the one thing in 
 which all these devotees of abstract political ideals agree is in 
 
SUGGESTIONS FOR A NEW POLITICAL PARTY. 235 
 
 shouting aloud that if their millennial dreams are not carried 
 out imo and here, what they call Justice and Right will have 
 suffered a real defeat. 
 
 And now, what would our new party of Evolution have 
 to say to all this ? Acting on the principle that there should 
 be as few unbridgeable gaps as possible between the different 
 classes in the State, and replacing the principle of an ideal 
 equality of rights by that of a real equality of opportunity (which 
 is as much of ideal equality as the present stage of civilisa- 
 tion will bear or can absorb, except the equal " rule of the 
 road" and the equal justice of the civil courts), and seeking 
 to provide as well for inequality and superiority as for 
 equality and mediocrity, for ambition as well as for present 
 status or possession, for aristocratic as well as for democratic 
 sentiment, it would expropriate neither landlord nor capitalist, 
 nor yet leave them altogether as they are. It would alter 
 the tenure of land to suit an industrial, not a feudal age of 
 the world. It would cover the country neither with myriads 
 of petty holdings, as in France, nor with quarter-section 
 farms, as in America ; but would grade its divisions, all held 
 in freehold, from " three acres and a cow " up to ten, fifty, 
 one hundred, five hundred, or a thousand acres, but with 
 sufficient large properties left to keep up the best traditions 
 both of character and manners of the old proprietors. In 
 fact, it would grade all callings and industries whatever, and 
 especially all Education, with free passage everywhere from 
 bottom to top ; it would make men earn the franchise, as 
 they do their bread, by some broad minimum standard of 
 social and intellectual attainment ; and, as in the old Kepublic 
 of Rome, would take the effective initiative power out of the 
 hands of those who from their mere numbers would fashion the 
 State in the image of their own ignorance or incompetency. 
 In this age of consolidating race nationalities, it would, while 
 deprecating war, still prepare for it by making it scientific, and 
 not feudal in character ; and would help on pan-Anglo- 
 
236 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 Saxondom by not only keeping the Colonies, but by trying to 
 brinof back America to the fold. 
 
 But nowhere will the difference which is made by the party 
 of Evolution in the solution of political problems be more 
 apparent than in the recent problem of indentured Chinese 
 labour. As my space is limited, this is the only question that 
 I am able here to discuss in any detail. The Conservative 
 party, resting as it does largely on material interests, is frankly 
 indifferent to any ulterior considerations other than those of 
 the speedy opening up of the Transvaal and the development 
 of its material resources, provided always that the external 
 decencies of civilisation are fairly preserved. Should the 
 interests, therefore, of miners and landowners conflict with the 
 higher considerations of general policy, it is to the different 
 sections of the Liberal party that we must look to restrain 
 them by a policy which will satisfy the nation at large. How, 
 then, do the Liberals propose to deal with it ? Why, as we 
 should know beforehand, by clapping the old, played-out 
 Utopia and dream of the abstract rights of man, of abstract 
 liberty and equality, as extinguishers on it ! Not that they 
 would mind the indenturing, the confinement to special task- 
 work, or other onerous conditions, into which the coolies have 
 entered of their own free will, but because the old ballot-box 
 (which with its vote for every creature above the level of the 
 ape has been, as we have seen, the curse of America in its 
 dealings with the negroes) is not to be thrust into their hands. 
 It is strange, but true ; for have they not distinctly asserted 
 and reiterated it ? The Westminster Gazette, one of the 
 accepted Press champions of Liberalism, has })ressed the 
 point over and over again, that it is not the indenturing 
 of the Chinese that it objects to, but the fact that when 
 they have served their time they will not be allowed to 
 mix freely as citizens with the Avhites and with each other, 
 not have votes like other people, and not be allowed to 
 
SUGGESTIONS FOR A NEW POLITICAL PARTY. 237 
 
 intermarry (even if they filled up the very landscape with 
 half-breeds), so as to fulfil the law of perfect liberty and 
 equality ! 
 
 And now we have to ask, what the party of Evolution would 
 say to this monstrous proposition ? This, namely : that the 
 mixing of antagonistic races on the same areas and soils is, as 
 I have elsewhere said, the supreme crime, the supreme treachery 
 to the future of a country ; more infamous than treason in war ; 
 and for which the names of all engaged in it must be execrated 
 in after ages — as, indeed, the history of the negroes in America, 
 of the mixture of Spaniards and Indians in South America, of 
 Greeks, Bulgarians, and Turks in the Balkans, of the Magyar, 
 Slav, and German in Austria-Hungary, and of the Jews on the 
 Continent everywhere, has demonstrated and painted in colossal 
 characters black on the walls of the world. And that for the 
 following reasons: — The first, and the one on which the others 
 depend, will come to most people as a novelty, and yet to 
 Evolutionists it need only be stated for its truth and signifi- 
 cance to be at once seen. It is this : that Civilisation, with its 
 fine flower of all that is best in character, intelligence, morality, 
 and love of truth and justice, and which it is as much a part of 
 national honour with each generation to transmit untarnished 
 and undlmmed to its children as their heritag-e and birthright 
 as the national soil itself, is not a thing which is built into the 
 very texture and organisation of a people, like their appetites, 
 their sensual loves, their love of children, and the like, as a 
 thing of course, whose indefinite continuance may be as much 
 taken for granted as the continuance of abstract time itself. 
 On the contrary, it is as much an ai-tificial product and hot- 
 house growth as the flowers in a conservatory, and like them 
 will, without the most assiduous care and culture, speedily 
 relapse into the wild state again. Unfavourable material and 
 social conditions, like unfavourable atmosphere and soil, will, 
 indeed, gradually destroy the finest qualities of fruit and flower 
 of civilisation, but if you would ruin them all at a stroke, all 
 
238 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 you have to do is, as with the finer breeds of dogs or pigeons, 
 to mix antagonistic races on the same areas, and let them have 
 a free run of promiscuity. If this were consistently carried 
 out, and on a sufficiently large scale, you could set back civilisa- 
 tion as much in a generation as in a hundred years by the 
 ordinary processes of decay. Not even intermarriage or pro- 
 miscuity is necessary. Mere proximity is enough. Trans- 
 plant enough Kaffirs to England to do its menial or unskilled 
 work, and enough Chinamen or Hindoos to do the more refined 
 and skilled forms of labour, and in a generation or two not an 
 Englishman could be found to do a stroke of manual work for 
 love or money. England as a factor in civilisation would be 
 wiped out of the high circle of nations, and its inhabitants 
 would differ as much from the men we know as the " mean 
 whites " of the South before the War did from their go-ahead 
 brothers of the North who have made the America of to-day. 
 So precious, but skin-deep and precarious a thing is Civilisation ! 
 Now, the reasons why a civilisation is so quickly destroyed by 
 mixing the breed are mainly three. The first is psychological,^ 
 where the effect of such admixtures, especially when the races 
 are so radically different as the Aryan and Semitic, the Negro 
 and Mongolian, is, as is well known, to eliminate from the 
 offspring the best points in the character of both parents, and to 
 bring them down to the instincts of the barbarians from whom 
 all civilisations alike have started ; in the same way as crosses 
 between the finest opposite breeds of pigeons are sure sooner or 
 later to bring a reversion to the wild " blue rock " pigeon from 
 which they originally sprang. The second effect is a result of 
 the first, and is sociological, namely, that all the finer products 
 of civilisation and morality which come from the breed or stock 
 of the men on whom these products have been engrafted, are by 
 this admixture quite shorn away, and the work of civilisation 
 has all to be worked up again from the beginning, and this time 
 from an inferior stock ; so that the very end for which the 
 idealist reformers are so zealouslv striving, namely, a higher 
 
SUGGESTIONS FOR A NEW POLITICAL PARTY. 239 
 
 morality, is, like the song of an over-fed canary, blasted by the 
 means nsed to compass it. 
 
 The third effect of mixing antagonistic races on the same 
 soil is to degrade the higher code of morality of civilised 
 peoples by reason of the political and social antagonisms it 
 engenders and the passions it lets loose, and which, if continued 
 long enough, will, as seen in the lynchings of negroes in 
 America, gradually sink society to the ethics of the ages of 
 bai'barism and civil war ; and so again the work of civilisation 
 will all have to be built up afresh from the beginning. 
 
 It will thus be seen that the object of our new party of 
 Evolution is to supply a norm or concrete image founded on the 
 laics of History and Civilisation, to which the other parties, 
 founded on class interest or cosmopolitan sentiments, can turn, 
 to check each other's exploitations, vagaries, or reactions ; a 
 table of relative values for those, on the one hand, who would 
 make two and two five, and for those, on the other, who would 
 make them three ; a kind of political mariner's chart,* with a 
 steady line by which to steer amid the alternate plungings and 
 reactions, the driftings and thwartings which inevitably ensue 
 in parliamentary government when one party is based frankly 
 on material interests, the other on purely millennial ideals. 
 
 But, being a party for action and not for platform oratory or 
 party propagandism, it is primarily a body of doctrine for all 
 those who in any way take the initiative in public affairs ; and 
 therefore for ministers in power, and when actually engaged in 
 making laws to meet practical emergencies, rather than when 
 in opposition. It is a body of doctrine, too, for the Academical 
 Specialists holding chairs of sociology, politics, and political 
 economy in the Universities, whose judgments given before 
 Parliamentary Commissions on questions demanding a co- 
 ordinated knowledge of many specialisms, but delivered mainly 
 
 * For the detailed historical basis of this article, the organisation of 
 education, the treatment of subject races, and the different policy which the 
 party of Evolution would prescribe for England, France, and America 
 respectively, see my " History of Intellectual Development," Vol. III. 
 
240 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 from the point of view of their own particular specialism, not 
 only are not likely to be true, but must be more or less false. 
 It is a body of doctrine, too, for the Working-class Leaders in 
 and out of Parliament ; for they are nothing if not intellectual, 
 but being, from the lack of the necessary opportunities for 
 culture, too often men of one book, if left to themselves they 
 usually deck themselves out in the old clothes of some favour- 
 ite authority — Mill, Karl Mai'x, Cobden, or other — just at the 
 time when men of more catholic culture are leaving them off. 
 But above all it is a body of doctrine for the Press, and for all 
 those engaged in political writing, whether as authors or 
 publicists — but mainly for the Press — and that for a number 
 of reasons. In the first place, the Press is the official political 
 instructor of the Public, the sole mediator between it and 
 Parliament, having managed like a College of Cardinals to 
 extrude from political influence all other mere writers but those 
 of its own body. In the second place, the Press occupies what 
 I venture to think is the right attitude in dealing with public 
 affairs, namely, not that of the doctrinaire, the pedant or the 
 academic specialist, but that of the man of wide general 
 culture who collects his arguments and material for judgment 
 from all the specialities, according to the nature of the 
 problem and the material with which he has to deal. But as 
 drawback and set-off to this, it has, in the third place, neither 
 sufficient instruction nor the right kind of knowledge for its 
 purpose ; for neither its snapshots at the passing day, its 
 history books, nor its encyclopedias will avail ; nothing but a 
 scientific correlated knowledge of civilisation as a whole — a 
 separate science in itself, but one which the Press affects to 
 have no need for, or else studiously seeks to ignore. And, in 
 the fourth place, it will neither itself take that initiative in 
 legislation which its mediating position between Parliament 
 and the Public demands, nor will it have a care that only the 
 first-rate players of the game should have that initiative. Now, 
 this is not the case either in America or in France ; but in 
 
SUGGESTIONS FOR A. NEW POLITICAL PARTY. 241 
 
 England, where the Governinent waits for the voice of the 
 constituencies, and the constituences for the lead of the Govern- 
 ment and the Press, the Press in turn sits waiting for the lead 
 of both, with the result that all alike lean on each other, back 
 to back, in a kind of frozen circle of enchantment ! It is true 
 that not long since the Spectator, not waiting for red tape 
 and the War Office, boldly took the initiative in putting 
 forward preliminary suggestions as to the reorganisation of the 
 Army and Volunteer forces ; that the same journal, with the 
 Times, West)iiinster Gazette, and other papers, on the rumour of 
 the Bagdad Railway and the Venezuelan imbroglio, intervened 
 at once to stop the mischief without waiting for a Cabinet 
 decision ; and these, together with the impetus originally given 
 to go-ahead journalism by Mi'. Stead, and now by the Daili/ 
 Mail and »S^. James's Gazette, are all admirable examples of the 
 function which the Press by its position in a self-governing 
 State (where the Crown has lost its initiative) ought to 
 fulfil. 
 
 But, taking its origin in a time when the government of the 
 country was in the hands of a few great territorial families who 
 divided the executive offices of State between them, and 
 initiated all policy, foreign and domestic— and when it would 
 have been regarded as as great an impertinence for either the 
 Press or private individuals outside these restricted family 
 circles to venture to suggest a new policy as it would be to-day 
 in the dominions of the Czar — the Press more or less feels and 
 acts as if it were still not its place to initiate any new policy 
 or principle, to stir up any new question or issue, but only to 
 express an opinion when its opinion is asked for by those 
 whom it loves to contemplate under the jealously-guarded, 
 rigorously-exclusive and quasi-sacred designation of " states- 
 men." Now, this were both right and proper were the 
 individuals so designated, as in Science, the professions, 
 cricket, billiards, or chess, the picked and winnowed players in 
 the game, but, returned as they are to Parliament for any and 
 
 Q 
 
242 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 every reason almost but those relevant to the real game of 
 statesmanship — for mere wealth or title, stump oratory or 
 demagogy — and often from the class who make it their boast 
 that they " don't want to know," and that it is " not good form 
 to be keen," there is little more chance of their being the 
 picked players of the nation in those higher walks of politics 
 which require science and not hand-to-mouth expediency, than 
 if they were picked haphazard from the crowds that pass along 
 the Strand. And when we think of how they rise to Cabinet 
 rank and get the blue-ribbon badge of *' statesman " affixed to 
 their breasts, with their column and half-column of Press 
 reports for their lightest utterances (while all the rest of the 
 world is thankful if it get half-a-dozen lines) the thing becomes 
 ludicrous. One man rises to full-column Press consideration, 
 and to within sight of the Treasury Bench, by making a 
 specialty of small epigrams, which he carefully hatches in his 
 study and fires off in the House to be borne on the wings of 
 Press quotation to the remotest constituency — epigrams which 
 the hard-up literary hacks of the British Museum or Fleet 
 Street will turn you out for a few pence apiece ! Another, 
 especially if he have a safe constituency, hopes to rise by 
 emulating the example of the late Lord Randolph Churchill, 
 and by baiting the Ministers on his own side (with a spice of 
 personal abuse thrown in) either gets a minor office to keep him 
 quiet, or secures public favour by the prominence given to his 
 utterances as " good copy." One goes on the grand tour of 
 the provinces at a critical juncture, and, by the full-page reports 
 which he gets, finds to his surprise on his return that by the 
 mere reverberation of his name, and its constant appearance on 
 the placards, he has already quite outdistanced his former 
 rivals and equals. Another happens to get his name attached 
 to a particular clause or amendment of a Bill, the " Ilealy- 
 clause," the " Kenyon-Slaney amendment," or what not, and it 
 is his own fault if he is not borne on it to political fortune. 
 The " safe " man, again, oftenest rises by a small assiduity and 
 
SUGGESTIONS FOR A NEW POLITICAL PARTY. 243 
 
 diligence, as of a responsible head-clerk, in memorising the 
 figures of Blue-book and statistical reports, or by the more 
 solemn kinds of gravity befitting the traditional conception of 
 a statesman ; the mere number of times he rises in Committee 
 being the measure of his importance, and scored as if (as in 
 cricket) they were real " runs " ! But, strangest of all, 
 another will get his column or half-column of report before he 
 has barely had time to take his seat in the House, and that, too, 
 without any effort at all, except the reputation he brings with 
 him that he is in some way or other like his distinguished 
 father who preceded him ! and so on ; all of them ways, as if 
 purposely devised, to catch the tenth-rate players, but as little 
 likely to catch first-rate statesmen as they would be to catch 
 first-rate chess players. In all other games the great players 
 are so winnowed that they represent the best the nation can 
 show ; in the game of statesmanship, it would be a miracle if 
 by present methods a really great statesman appeared once in 
 a century. Statesmanship deals with large principles of 
 general policy, and now that, through rail and telegraph, the 
 whole nation is one large ear, the Press, were it alive to its full 
 range of duties and responsibilities, could as easily collect, 
 focus, and register the best solutions to all political questions 
 that anywhere appeared, and the best men to handle them, as 
 it now does the answers to its prize puzzles. But with its ear 
 resolutely fixed, and even glued, to the utterances of the few 
 Parliamentarians who have risen to Cabinet rank by the above 
 or other means, what chance or hope is there of it ? And, after 
 all, what has the mere holding of Cabinet administrative otfice 
 to do with the great principles of statesmanship ? Nine-tenths 
 of the work is already done by the Permanent Under-Secre- 
 taries, and the reason it is not all left to them is because it is 
 believed that the Cabinet Ministers will bring with them from 
 the outside a breath of fresh air and originality. But do they ? 
 And are the training and work of the rent receiver, the carpet 
 manufacturer, the barrister, the solicitor, the bookseller, likely 
 
244 SOCIOXiOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 to call forth those greater qualities of statesmanship which 
 depend on a knowledge of History, of Evolution, of Civilisation'? 
 My conclusion on the whole, then, is, that unless the Press 
 can contrive to let its searchlight cover more of the intellectual 
 landscape than the squirrel tracks leading to the House of 
 Commons, no statesman of higher rank than a third-rate player 
 will, except by accident, be found within its portals. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 TAXATION SCHEMES AND THEIR VALUES.* 
 
 TN the present article I propose to raise afresh the problem of 
 Taxation from the point of view at once of Sociology and 
 of Political Economy. 
 
 Now, of all the various schemes of Taxation, those which 
 will find a place here, owing to the numbers or importance 
 of their following in the country, may be divided into two 
 categories. 
 
 The first, which stands by itself, is what we may call the 
 Treasury scheme, — for it has received the sanction of all the 
 Chancellors of the Exchequer, whether Liberal or Conservative, 
 from the time of Pitt down to the present hour. It goes on 
 the principle that Taxation is to be levied, as far as possible, 
 equally on the incomes of all classes of the population, whether 
 directly or indirectly, and without consideration of how any or 
 all of them came by their incomes, so far, that is to say, as any 
 canons of justice outside or beyond the mere conformity to the 
 existing laws of the State are concerned. This Treasury 
 scheme is founded on the Old Economy of Adam Smith, Stuart 
 Mill, and the whole body of Academical Economists, with their 
 triple watchwords of Laissez Faire, Free Competition, and the 
 " Devil take the hindmost." It is only quasi-evolutionary in 
 principle, inasmuch as coming down from the past and being 
 * Financial Review of Reviews, April, 1909. 
 
246 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 changed in detail from year to year for purposes of revenue, it 
 has never yet incorporated into itself from the environment 
 anything outside of, or beyond, these, its original principles. 
 
 The second category, on the other hand, consists of those 
 recalcitrants w^ho a generation ago began to raise the question 
 of how these different classes of people came by their incomes, 
 and w^hether it was right that they should have them at all or 
 not, to be taxed. These men have broken themselves up into 
 different divisions or schools, but have now so increased in 
 numbers that they lie like whole armies of rebels in the field, 
 overshadowing and thi-eatening the Liberal camp itself to which 
 in their ultimate general economic principles they are naturally 
 allied. They consist, firstly, of the great body of Land Taxers, 
 of whom the Daily Chronicle has made itself the representative, 
 all of whom derive ultimately from Henry George ; next of the 
 taxers of the Capitalists, as represented on the one hand by 
 Mr. Sidney Webb and Mr. Bernard Shaw in the County 
 Councils and Municipalities, and on the other hand by 
 Mr. Ramsay Mac Donald and Mr. Snowden with the Inde- 
 pendent Labour Party as their following in the House of 
 Commons and the country ; all of them being the pale 
 exsanguined ghosts of Karl Marx and his army of Continental 
 Socialists ; and lastly, of the advanced Liberals and Radicals, 
 whose scheme, although founded on the Individualist princi- 
 ples of the Liberal Party, has now become so encompassed 
 and interpenetrated with Socialism, that it, too, finds itself in 
 the field against the traditional principles of the Treasury and 
 of the Liberal Party to which it naturally belongs. 
 
 Now, all these men take their stand not on Evolution, but on 
 something which they love to represent to themselves cither as 
 Eternal Justice, or Ideal Human Justice; the whole or a part 
 of which they would ruthlessly apply noio and here to whom- 
 soever it concerns, as a protest against the ti*aditional method 
 of the Treasury, which (as it regards all incomes as the result 
 of Work and Saving) considers .Justice in taxation to be fully 
 
TAXATION SCHEMES AND THEIR VALUES. 247 
 
 met when it has distributed its burdens equally on all classes 
 and persons alike according to their respective incomes, without 
 regard, as we have said, to how they came by them. Henry 
 George himself would apply it in full measure, and let his 
 heavy axe fall on the necks of all Landowners whatever, with 
 its full weight of 100 per cent., and so decapitate them out- 
 right ! But he would not touch a hair of the heads of the 
 Capitalists, on the ground that, owing to the ease with which 
 they can pass over the borders to join the ranks of the 
 Labourers, and the Labourers over to them in turn, like water 
 at opposite ends of a trough, neither can exploit the others of 
 anything that is justly due to them. 
 
 The extreme Socialists, again, who follow Marx, agree with 
 George as regards the Landowners, but would go a full step 
 farther, and include the whole body of Capitalists as well in one 
 fell swoop and condemnation. This they do on the ground that, 
 as Machinery and the great Chemical processes are the origin 
 of all the "surplus wealth " by which the vast populations of 
 Europe are maintained, and as the existing laws have already 
 sweated or starved the great Scientists and Inventors down 
 below the taxable point (unless, indeed, like Kelvin, Edison, 
 and Marconi, they have become their own manufacturers), the 
 ordinary Capitalists have no claim to a penny of what is actually 
 produced by the labour of their Workmen, skilled and unskilled. 
 Off, then, with their heads, too, to the tune of 100 per cent, 
 taxation ! This we may call Eternal Justice, or Ideal Human 
 Justice, in its full measure, now and here ! 
 
 But the rebels whom I am now to consider, and who have all 
 sprung originally from the loins of Henry George or Karl 
 Marx, or of the two combined, are at once more modest and 
 less precipitate in their claims ; and would give the Landlords 
 and Capitalists a longer time to turn round in before their 
 ultimate extinction. Their method is to inject the virus of 
 taxation into these, their victims, by easily graduated instal- 
 ments, as it were, satisfying the demands of Ideal Justice the 
 
248 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 while by a snippet only at a time from the skirts of her robe ; 
 and trusting either, as Mr. Sidney Webb, Mr. Shaw, and their 
 followers do, to the ingenuity of their own particular scheme, 
 whereby, after a small preliminary tax laid on the landlords, all 
 will follow, with ease and without further disturbance, the 
 general laws of business competition ; or, as the Land Taxers 
 of the Daily Chronicle do, to the trick which they think they 
 know, whereby a tax when once laid, will, like a tombstone on 
 its incumbent, lie where it falls, without the possibility of its 
 ever being shifted ! 
 
 Let us, then, proceed at once to pass under review the separate 
 contingents of these rebel Taxers, all devotees of Free Trade, 
 as they lie entrenched within the borders of the Liberal camp, 
 and see how they will figure under closer inspection and 
 analysis. 
 
 And, first, we will take, as our objective, those fallacies of 
 the Treasury scheme of Taxation which have caused all this 
 defection and revolt. They may be all summed up in the 
 single watchword which successive Chancellors of the Exchequer 
 have accepted in all simplicity from the Old Economists, 
 namely, that " capital is the result of saving"; from the deifica- 
 tion of which virtue, indeed, they have been fortified in their 
 conclusion that justice will be broadly done if you tax men 
 rigidly according to the amount of their possessions, without 
 inquiring more curiously as to how they came by them. Now, 
 this was all very well in the days of the small competing 
 capitalists for whom this system of taxation was originally 
 designed. But to-day the great capitals are made not by 
 Saving, but by Combination, Scarcity Vjdue, or Monopoly — as 
 we see in the giant Trusts of America, which have extinguished 
 there all hope of a return to the days of small private competi- 
 tion ; or even in England, where combinations, as readers of 
 Mr. Macrosty's authoritative work may see, are marching to 
 the same consummation with an ever accelerating stride. That 
 the Treasury should imagine that the £100,()()(),()(>0 or so of 
 
TAXATION SCHEMES AND THEIR VALUES. 249 
 
 Mr. Rockefeller, or the £40,000,000 odd of Mr. Carnegie, 
 were solely the result of Saving, was to damn its scheme of 
 Taxation from the beginning ; and was enough of itself to call 
 all these rebel hosts into the field. 
 
 Gladstone, who was more infected and hypnotised by this 
 delusion of Saving than perhaps any other man of his time 
 (even after he had lived long enough to see these vast exploita- 
 tions of the American Trusts), could close his eyes on the 
 Treasury Bench, and praise the Lord for the money-saving 
 virtue of which colossal fortunes like these were the blessed 
 fruits ; and would have hesitated as much to put an income-tax 
 on these Leviathans (except on the rare occasions when the 
 pinch of his Free Trade policy of taxation for revenue com- 
 pelled him) as on the smallest capitalist minnows in the stream. 
 With the shades of Adam Smith and Cobden ever before him, 
 he was haunted as much by this shibboleth of " Capital, the 
 result of Saving," as a savage is by a ghost or the magical 
 taboo of his tribe ; and crossed himself day and night con- 
 tinually for his sins, until he had taken the obnoxious income- 
 tax off again ! But the Liberals of the present day have no 
 such compunctions, superstitions, or fears ; and it may safely 
 be predicted that, so long as a Free Trade regime lasts, with the 
 increasing perplexities of how to find revenue enough for the 
 necessities of a modern civilised State, never again will those 
 who possess incomes over a certain decent amount find the 
 incantation or dinig which will " medicine them to that sweet 
 sleep which they owed yesterday." 
 
 The Scheme of the Fabian Society. 
 
 Let us turn, then, to the men who are prepared to disturb 
 this complacent naivete of the Ti*easury, and begin with the 
 scheme of Taxation of Mr. Sidney Webb, Mr. Bei'nard Shaw, 
 and the Fabian Society, a scheme which exercises a vague, 
 diffused influence over the " intellectuals " of all classes en- 
 gaged in the study of these problems. 
 
250 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 It proposes to start from the extremities — the Municipalities 
 — in the hope that if it succeeds in them, it will have thereby 
 converted to full-blown Socialism the entire policy of Parlia- 
 ment and the State. It is an elaborate scheme, and yet simple 
 and superficially harmonious in its construction, and by its 
 autonomous action proposes to create the smallest amount of 
 initial disturbance in the existing order ; and, indeed, were it 
 not so slow in its action as to take a millennium to realise it in, 
 its easy, Bobadil-like air of confidence and self-sufficiency 
 would give it an insidious kind of atti'action for the less 
 furnished minds. Its plan is this : — The Municipality will 
 purchase at market i-ates any piece of land it may want for its 
 own purposes, and pay for it by taxing all the other landlords 
 in the municipal area at a rate just sufficient, and no more. 
 It will then erect a municipal workshop, or start some business 
 on this site, which being now free from ground rent, will be 
 able to under-sell all other private capitalists in the same 
 business who still have to pay this rent. It will then buy up 
 another piece of land for another kind of business or workshop, 
 and then another, and yet another, until the landlords are all 
 paid oflf ; the amount of the tax on the remaining landlords at 
 each stage becoming, like the price of the Sibylline Books, 
 ever the greater the fewer in number they become, until at last, 
 as they look around on the dead bodies of their confreres, 
 strangled by this insidious Municipal taxation, they can only 
 emit a groan and die ! 
 
 But the private owners of business premises, especially of 
 those valuable sites which would enable them to hold out 
 against the competition of the Municipal businesses in spite 
 of the freedom of these latter from ground i-ents — What of 
 them? Why, says Mr. Shaw, nothing could be easier than 
 to bring them to their knees. Let the Municipality run a 
 tramway, say, in a direction that would take their custom away 
 from them ; or neglect the paving of their street, until their 
 customers had to wade through a sea of mud to get to them ; 
 
TAXATION SCHEMES AND THEIR VALUES. 251 
 
 or, if that did not suffice, erect a lunatic asylum within earshot 
 of them ; or, finally, if that, too, failed, try the effect of a 
 smallpox hospital in their immediate neighbourhood ! And if 
 that does not put a whole street of these obstinate competitors 
 to flight, and throw their premises into the hands of the 
 Municipality " for a song," nothing will ! In all this, I recognise 
 Mr. Shaw's sense of humour, but in his Fabian Essay on 
 " Transition," in which it is propounded, he is serious to 
 desperation, and " means business " all the same ! 
 
 Having thus disposed of the Landlords and the competition 
 of private property owners, how does he propose to deal with 
 those " Managers of Ability " who play so great a part in the 
 great American Trusts, where they are considered cheap for 
 their money at £20,000 to £50,000 a year ; but who in England 
 earn, according to Mr. Shaw, only about £800 ? Easily, says 
 Mr. Shaw : " Establish Technical Schools all over the land, 
 and they will then lie as thick as leaves on the ground, to be 
 had, like present-day clerks, for the picking up." But should 
 any "organiser of genius" appeal" among them, who would 
 still enable the private capitalist to hold out against Municipal 
 competition, or any great professional men who still get high 
 fees, then put an income-tax on them which will sweat them 
 down to the pay of an ai'tisan, or even less — of a navvy ! To 
 this, Mr. Shaw thinks, the municipal managers of ability will 
 willingly consent, on the ground that their importance, pom- 
 posity, and rods of office as Parish Bumbles or Malvolios, will 
 fully compensate them for any loss of pay ! Good Heavens ! 
 Oh yes ! says Mr. Shaw, with pious unction (for he is a con- 
 vinced fanatic in all this) — for " whosoever of you will be the 
 chiefest, shall be servant of all ! " After this puerile ineptitude, 
 we may well exclaim with Enobarbus in " Anthony and Cleo- 
 patra," " Caesar, thou hast subdued his judgment also ! " For 
 in it we see the cloven hoof of Karl Marx (from whom Mr. 
 Sidney Webb and Mr. Shaw originally derived their fanaticism 
 — namely, that the pay of all men whatever should be equal as 
 
252 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 counted by hours of average "labour-time" alone) appearing; 
 and the more deadly earnest they become in their advocacy, 
 the more apparent it is. 
 
 Now, my reply to all this may be put in a few words : — In 
 a general way, I may say that it is Utopian throughout, and 
 that the chain of consequences which they expect to flow from 
 their original small tax on Land Values is so full of fallacies 
 at each link, that it is impossible it should ever " materialise." 
 
 In the first place, it is Utopian, because it begins at the 
 wrong end, at the Municipalities — at the back door, as it were, 
 and by way of the tradesmen's entrance — before they have got 
 their sword of taxation at all from the authority of Parliament, 
 and by permission of the Central Power. The consequence 
 would be that, with the guillotine thus suspended over them, 
 Landlordism and Capitalism would consolidate everywhere 
 into a fully-armed phalanx, ready to crush it long before it 
 could make its first move. To imagine that they can recon- 
 sti-uct society by beginning at this side-door entrance, and 
 playing their game there of hide-and-seek between municipal 
 and private capitalists, like boys on the village green, is to 
 justify us in believing that Mr. Webb and Mr. Shaw must have 
 sat all their lives, as an eminent American once said, " watching 
 the rat holes of life while letting the elephant jkiss by 
 unheeded ! " 
 
 Secondly, it is as fallacious as it is Utopian, inasmuch as it 
 rests on absolutely free competition among petty etnplot/ers, 
 whereas the great watchword of business to-day, as we have 
 seen, is Monopoly through Combination. It is true that these 
 great capitalist monopolies in the cotton, wool, hardware, 
 breweries, soap, and, indeed, every other trade, are bui^t on 
 municipal or parish land soniewliere ; but their works, or 
 premises, are so few in number that they may practically be 
 counted on the fingers. To believe that the remission of 
 ground rent to all the tens of thousands of petty municipalities 
 in the kingdom would enable one or all of them thereby to 
 
TAXATION SCHEMES AND THEIR VALUES. 253 
 
 compete with these few giant private manufacturers of the 
 staple necessities of life, merely because the latter would vStill 
 have to pay the rent, is a dream. For however Iari!;e this 
 Land Tax may be when their works happen to be in the centre 
 of great cities, it is but a trifle in comparison with their 
 enormous business turnover ; and unless you tax their capital 
 almost to extinction as well, they would overleap every muni- 
 cipal wall, and break down and trample out each little municipal 
 business in detail as it arose, while still canying the load of 
 Land Tax on their shoulders with an easy grace. And if our 
 own great Capitalist Magnates could not do it, the great 
 Trusts of America, whose land taxation is inappreciable, would, 
 with our Free Trade policy, soon teach Mr. Webb and Mr. 
 Shaw how easily it could be done. 
 
 Thirdly, this scheme is inconsistent with itself, inasmuch as 
 it is precisely on these combinations of Municipal businesses, 
 working on a great scale, that they rely to oust the stronger 
 private Capitalists who threaten to hold their own ; and pre- 
 cisely by the same means as those used by the great existing 
 Combinations and Trusts, namely, by setting aside large 
 blocks of over-remunerated capital to crush them out by 
 underselling: them. 
 
 As for the Education that is going to breed a race of 
 "managers of ability," who, on account of their municipal 
 pride of office, can be had for " less wages than an artisan " — 
 What kind of managers and organisers do they expect them to 
 be if they are to stem the tide of the great Combines ? A 
 whole race of managers of ability you can breed by Technical 
 Education it is true, as you can clerks of ability by School 
 Boards ; but the few great organisers of genius whom the big 
 combinations must have at any price, are born and not manu- 
 factured in the gross ; and unless things will so change under 
 Mr. Webb and Mr. Shaw's regime that men will be as the 
 angels in heaven, they will not be picked up by municipalities 
 at " less than the wages of an artisan " ! It is clear that 
 
^54 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 although this scheme seems to lay claim to our consideration 
 on the ground that it is a very slow and evolutionary one, it is 
 not an evolution that would complete itself in the short span 
 of a few mortal lives, but one that works rather on the slow 
 scale of Nature, each step of which takes a millennium to 
 make good ! 
 
 The Scheme of the Independent Labour Party. 
 
 As for the Taxation Scheme of the Independent Labour 
 Party, with its mixed following of Socialists and Trades 
 Unionists, little need here be said, inasmuch as it is pervaded 
 by precisely the same fallacies and Utopias as those 1 have just 
 passed under review — but with this difference in the quicken- 
 ing of the pace of its evolution, that it has two strings to its 
 bow instead of one. It would tax the " unearned increments" 
 of capitalists, as well as the ground rents of landlords ; and if 
 it once got a foothold would soon skin them both as effectually 
 and completely as the Marxian Socialists propose to do ; the 
 one by a tax on land values, the other by a super-tax on 
 incomes. It is more revolutionary, but less Utopian, than the 
 scheme of the Fabians, inasmuch as it proposes to enter into 
 power not by the back door of the Municipalities, but by 
 capturing the Central Government Avhenever it can pack 
 the House of Commons with a sufficient number of its own 
 nominees. 
 
 The Scheme of the Land Taxers. 
 
 With this, we may now pass to the much-debated scheme of 
 the Land Taxers — with the Daily Chronicle as its representa- 
 tive. They are essentially followers of Henry George, but on 
 the instalment and small increment plan, and, like their master, 
 far from touching a hair of the head of the Capitalists, they 
 would even make them a substantial present by relieving them 
 of a portion of their taxation, by shifting it on to the Land- 
 lord's ground rents ; and, like good Kadicals, all on the specious 
 
TAXATION SCHEMES AND THEIR VALUES. 255 
 
 plea that it will eventually find its way into the pockets of the 
 hard-worked, struggling poor. Their scheme, in brief, is simply 
 to put a tax of a penny in the pound on to the market value of 
 land, in the belief that half of it, say, will go to help the 
 necessities of the Treasury without resort to Protection, and 
 that the other half will be taken off the taxes now paid by the 
 farmers on their buildings and improvements, by the builders 
 on the dwelling-houses or business premises they erect in cities 
 and towns, and by property holders of any kind everywhere, 
 as distinguished from the ground landlords. And the theory 
 on which they proceed is, that according to the teachings of 
 the Old Academic Economy, a tax on land cannot be shifted, 
 but must lie where it falls ; whereas a tax on all industrial 
 works, constructions and operations whatever, engineered by 
 Capital, will be shifted by the Capitalists on to the already 
 overburdened shoulders of the " consumers " — the great body 
 of the population. 
 
 Now, nowhere will the curse of that old dead Economy of 
 the Schools, when used as text-book and gospel, become more 
 manifest than in a dangerous experimental scheme of Taxation 
 like this of the Daily Chronicle. For it proceeds from founda- 
 tion to roof on the pre-supposition that a competition alert and 
 omnipresent presses everywhere like an atmosphere on each 
 and every square foot of all departments of industry, and of all 
 the employers, organisers, and workers engaged in it ; and in 
 justification of this, they point to the shoals of applications 
 that come by every post for situations of all kinds, qualities, 
 or degrees everywhere, and from all points of the compass. 
 It is this that lends the doctrine its plausibility, but it is 
 fallacious nevertheless. For Competition, in this its full- 
 blown universality, is as a principle strictly limited to the 
 class of the employed, as distinct from their masters; and to 
 the products of industry as distinct from the instruments of 
 production owned by these masters. It is only partially 
 operative among the capitalist employers themselves ; but 
 
25(i SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 among the greater magnates (so far, that is to say, as the 
 Daily Chronicle's dependence on it as a panacea against 
 shifting is concerned) it is scarcely operative at ail. For in 
 the present day, it has among these been almost entirely 
 replaced, as we have said, by Combination (or by gigantic 
 private capitals which in themselves have the power of com- 
 binations), and by whole or partial Monopoly ; and every 
 consequence that hangs on this state of affairs is, it is to be 
 observed, the diametrical opposite of the corresponding one 
 which follows from the law of unlimited Competition. For by 
 Competition, every business bargain that is made between man 
 and man is cut down to a money minimum of difference ; 
 whereas by Combination or Monopoly, this difference is every- 
 where expanded to the maximum ; so much so, indeed, that 
 one of the parties can often make a fortune by a single coup 
 while the other may be skinned to the bone — as may be seen 
 in America to-day, where the great Trusts have managed to 
 get their ropes around the necks not only of their Employes 
 and of all other Capitalists of lesser degree, but of the Stock 
 Exchangers, of Bankers, of Financiers, of Inventors, of 
 Organisers, of the general population, and even, in a degree, 
 of the Government itself ! 
 
 Again, there is no level law of competition between the 
 Capitalist Employers and their employes — who can be crushed 
 out in detail (unless they are protected by their Trade Unions) 
 as they always have been. The employes lie on a level plain, 
 and are exposed to universal competition ; but the great pro- 
 ductive Combinations and the Trusts, the holders of monopoly 
 or scarcity values, the landlords, and the builders on favoured 
 sites, lie on the slope of a hill, as it were, in an ascending 
 hierarchy of bargaining power; and between them there is 
 little or no real, but only a formal, competition. For their 
 instruments of production, according to their efficiency and scale 
 of magnitude, already determine the results of competition 
 beforehand, however many competitors may have entered the 
 
TAXATION SCHEMES AND THEIR VALUES. 257 
 
 market with the product of these instruments for sale. 
 Whether they can shift a tax from one to another, or on to the 
 consumer, will depend entirely on the power they respectively 
 have of resisting or "exploiting" one another — it matters not 
 whether that power is purely economic, from the weight of 
 their possessions ; or political, as the result of the position 
 which the law gives them. As for the miscellaneous millions 
 among whom pure and severe competition rules, they must 
 for ever, so far as an even bargain is concerned, be among the 
 exploited. 
 
 Replacing, then, the principles of the Old Economy with 
 these principles of the New — how does the matter stand in this 
 question of the shifting of a tax ? It is evident, is it not, that 
 it will depend on what I have called the incidence of power; and 
 not on any mere vague presumption of a " square deal " 
 through competition at all. The landlord can make a shrewd 
 guess as to whether he can shift the proposed tax on his land 
 on to one or all or none of his capitalist tenants ; the tenants, 
 on the other hand, will know to what extent he can afford to 
 give them notice to quit if they do not pay the tax. If he be 
 a duke, for example, with large estates of good land, it is 
 probable that he will shift the tax on to his tenants ; if a small 
 squire, with sons at college to educate, he probably will not, 
 but will pay the tax himself. So, too, with the ground land- 
 lords of favoured sites in great cities. While the leases of the 
 capitalists who hold the property run, the landlords will have 
 to bear the tax ; but to imagine that the relieved capitalists are 
 going to pass on the immunity from taxation of their buildings, 
 to their tenants, in cheaper house rents, and without a fight to 
 keep it in their own hands, is a myth. So, too, with the Builders 
 on the outskirts of congested towns. If there are a number of 
 them actively competing on borrowed money, the tenant will 
 probably get the benefit in a remission of rent ; if one of them 
 be sole building king of the neighbourhood, he will probably 
 pocket the difference, and make his tenants pay the same rent 
 
 B 
 
258 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 as before. But the Daily Chronicle and its large contingent of 
 Land Taxers, not perceiving that the area within which houses 
 are desired on the outskirts of any town or city, even of 
 London itself, is strictly limited, and that these limits once 
 defined will in any given direction meet the wants of the 
 people for, perhaps, a period of ten, twenty, or thirty years, will 
 have it that the competition will and must extend these limits 
 until the landlords let go their grip over their tenants — even if 
 fresh builders have to take all the distance between John o' 
 Groats and Land's End, or between the Irish Sea and the 
 German Ocean, to do it in ! 
 
 The thing is altogether ridiculous ; and if the Chancellor of 
 the Exchequer and the Treasury are, as is surmised, favourably 
 inclined to this particular scheme of the Land Taxers — partly 
 as a good war cry against " idle, do-nothing Landlordism," and 
 partly because they traditionally believe and act as if 
 competition everywhere ruled without limits — let them consider 
 well and think twice before they embark upon it. Not that 
 they cannot get their own revenue out of it ; for they stand to 
 win by the tax whoever loses in the fight between the Land- 
 lords, the Capitalists, and the General Public as to who shall 
 bear the burden. But if their aim, like that of the Land 
 Taxers, be a larger instalment of justice as well as of revenue, 
 they will be mightily surprised to find, as I venture to predict 
 they will, that their sword of justice will in a good half of the 
 cases be found to have fallen on the wrong necks ! And 
 further, that in the process, the existing investments of the 
 poor in Building and Friendly Societies, and the monetary 
 position of Landlord, Capitalist, and Tenant, everywhere, will 
 be so disturbed, that the stable footing on which all credit as 
 well as all business forecasts rests, will for a time be shaken, 
 and the wealth of the country be more impaired by the 
 stoppage of business, than the Treasury enriched by the tax. 
 
 To sum up my criticism, then, in a word — if this scheme of 
 the Land Taxers and the Daily Chronicle is to succeed, it nuist 
 
TAXATION SCHEMES AND THEIR VALUES. 259 
 
 be accompanied by a drastic law making all contracts evading 
 it null and void — with the endless interference with business 
 enterprise which this would involve. 
 
 The Protectionist Schemes. 
 
 Let us now take a sample or two of Protectionist schemes 
 by way of contrast. These differ from the Free Trade ones, 
 inasmuch as they are based not on any fancied Ideal of Justice, 
 whether in full flower like those of Henry George and Karl 
 Marx, or to be injected only by gradual instalments, like those 
 we have passed under review, but on ordinary business 
 principles, and a total repudiation of the Old Political 
 Economy and all its works. It would be idle for me to deny 
 that I come to them with a very large measure of sympathy, 
 inasmuch as in my " Wheel of Wealth " I have advocated 
 a scheme of Protection more rigid than any of them, and more 
 thoroughgoing than is to be found outside Japan. 
 
 It is necessary to begin with a passing formal allusion to the 
 scheme of Mr. Chamberlain, as it, or something like it, will be 
 the Treasury scheme when once the Protection Party comes 
 into power. It throws away once and for all the Laissez Faire 
 and other worthless baggage of the Old Academical Economy, 
 along with its Gospel of Free Trade, but stiU lays too much 
 stress, I think, on the value of the Competition principle which 
 I have just exposed. It is accordingly rather a hesitating, 
 tentative experiment and instalment in the right direction than 
 a completed scientific scheme. Whether the putting of a 2^% 
 Tariff on manufactured articles and a 7^% on food stuffs, is the 
 ideal ratio for a Protective Tariff at the present time or not, is 
 open to discussion ; but these details can easily be modified, 
 when once a start has been made, by the officials of the Board 
 of Trade, by the Chambers of Commerce, the Tariff Reform 
 League, or other expert agencies, when controlled at once by 
 an alert Parliamentary Opposition, by the Press, and by 
 competent independent outside Protectionist Economists 
 
2H0 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 The scheme, besides, is one based, as it should be, on purely 
 ousiness principles, precisely as in the case of a great private 
 estate, or a great private corporation like that of the Standard 
 Oil Company ; only that it is a national and not a private 
 domain that is being handled by it. I need scarcely say that, 
 personally, I am inclined to entirely bless it as the beginning 
 of a new^ order of things, but one which for its perfecting will 
 have to be broken up and extended as time goes on into ever 
 finer differentiations, with ever increasing scientific precision, 
 and with a more iron hand to control its operations — not only 
 as regards imports, but exports as well. As to the amount of 
 ordinary human justice that can be realised in the fair and equal 
 distribution of the results of the scheme, this must be left to 
 Parliament, the Pulpit, and the Press in combination, who on 
 behalf of the community at large, will, like the Church of the 
 Middle Ages, but with the finer ideal of the humanities proper 
 to the present age, stand by and watch all the operations from 
 stage to stage, to see that substantial justice according to these 
 higher standards is done. This is evolutionary economic 
 Politics in its true and best sense ; and consists in first laying 
 the Economic basis securely, and then injecting as much of 
 Ideal Human Justice as the people can be made to absorb after- 
 wards, or coincidently with it. But to commence with some 
 abstract Eternal Ideal of Justice stuck like a postage stamp on 
 the backs of certain individuals or classes so as to mark them 
 out for exploitation for their sins (as we have seen the framers 
 of the various schemes I have alluded to do), and then try to 
 make taxation follow and conform to it, would be, like the 
 fanatics of the French Revolution, with their abstraction of 
 " Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity," to turn a high ideal, good 
 as a stimulus and inspiration, but useless as an instrument for 
 working with, into a practical curse. But why, the reader will 
 ask, should it necessarihi do thist Simply because Man is only 
 a hio-her animal that comes slowly down the centuries like other 
 animals, grouped in families and herds under the direction of 
 
TAXATION SCHEMES AND THEIR VALUES. 261 
 
 leaders, and has as yet only the feeblest spark of this Ideal in 
 him at best; and human justice, in consequence, as distinct 
 from this white-robed ideal kind, must at each and every point 
 in his evolution, be a compromise between the authoi'ity of 
 Tradition, Custom, Power, Law, Precedent, and Family ties, 
 on the one hand (with all the complex web of obligations which 
 they impose on a society for at least a generation as the unit of 
 time), and this abstract Eternal Ideal of Justice on the other. 
 For this is only suitable to white-robed angels, or for Man when 
 he has become as abstract and bloodless as itself. How this 
 distinction between Human Justice and Ideal Justice will 
 operate when men get their eye on it, and how it will affect the 
 ideal taxation-schemers who with their gleaming blades would 
 decapitate whole classes and families of mankind at once, or 
 with their lancets more slowly bleed them to death, it needs no 
 wizard to foresee. They have shied at sight of it, as their 
 academical Economic brethren have at the New Protection 
 Economy ; but with Shakespeare himself as its prophet and 
 sponsor, they will have in the end (unless Mr. Shaw puts his 
 foot down !) to face it, and get accustomed to it, all the same ! 
 But to return. 
 
 The first, and in my judgment the most successful, attempt 
 yet made to introduce a finer scientific differentiation into this 
 tentative early scheme of Mr. Chamberlain — which, in passing, 
 I may say was anticipated in its essential outlines some five or 
 six years earlier by Mr. W. J. Harris, of the Statistical Society 
 — was made by Mr. Henry Lowenfeld in a pamphlet published 
 about a year ago, entitled " Our Unjust Taxation and its 
 Remedy." The basis of his scheme, in brief, is the separation 
 in the case of all manufactured imports whatever entering this 
 country, of the amount of raio material they contain, from the 
 amount of labour which has been expended on them in the 
 foreign countries from which we have received them. This, he 
 believes, could be done with ease by our Associated Chambers 
 of Commerce if they were supplied by the Board of Trade with 
 
262 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAT ECONOMY. 
 
 a complete and accurate list of all the variety of goods we 
 import. He would then put a protective tariff on the labour 
 only which has been expended on their production abroad, 
 leaving that part of their value which comes from the raw 
 material in them untaxed. This, in effect, would throw the 
 manufacturing of all articles whatever for which we have any 
 facility (and with our machinery and the hereditary skill of our 
 workmen, for what articles have we not?) into our own hands, 
 while giving us all the raw material we require at its cheapest 
 rate. It would, besides, set all the mills and factories of all 
 kinds at work for which we could find workmen ; and so realise 
 that first moral obligation of every nation, namely, to give the 
 utmost possible employment to its own people. 
 
 But would it have this effect? In my judgment it un- 
 doubtedly would, provided Mr. Lowenfeld is right in saying^ 
 that either the Chambers of Commerce or the Board of Trade 
 can really discriminate between what is labour value and what 
 is raw material value in the finished article. He avers that they 
 can, and that he himself is prepared to " explain to the perma- 
 nent officials the practical means of surmounting any obstacles 
 which may baffie them." He claims for his scheme that it 
 would turn our country from an ever-increasing importer of 
 manufactured articles to an importer, largely or mainly, of raw 
 materials ; and that it would turn us back again, as before the 
 regime of Free Trade, into our old role of a nation of manu- 
 facturers and shippers — the original basis of our wealth. This 
 he illustrates by the pregnant instance of the Tobacco Trade, 
 where the simple fact that manufactured tobacco pays double 
 the import duty charged on the raw article, has had the effect 
 of giving employment to something like double tlie number of 
 men engaged in manufacturing it here, while the number of 
 those engaged in manufacturing it for us abroad has remained for 
 twenty years almost stationary. In a word, we now, in 
 consequence of the duty, do the manufacturing ourselves, while 
 they supply us with more and more of the raw material 
 
TAXATION SCHEMES AND THEIR VALUES. 263 
 
 necessary. By this scheme, Mr. Lowenfcld goes on to say, that 
 our own exporters would be no worse off in their competition with 
 foreigners, inasmuch as in the case of the half-manufactured 
 imports which serve often as raw materials for our own more 
 highly-finished products, they would be given, as is quite right 
 and proper, a rebate on the tariff which they had paid on the 
 foreign labour embodied in them ; and thereby would be 
 enabled to compete in the foreign market as successfully as 
 before. And as upshot of it all, if on account of the tariff we 
 had less manufactured imports than before, we should now have 
 more raw material imported to balance the trade ; while we 
 should export quite as much of our own manufactured goods to 
 pay for them all ; besides getting all the profit that comes from 
 the use of our own machines to supply our wants instead of 
 paying the foreigner for the use of his. 
 
 And above all, and as a set off to the rebate, we should be 
 giving employment to an ever-increasing number of competent 
 workmen among our own people. He claims, besides, for his 
 scheme, that by it there would be, firstly, a stability in the 
 amount of Tariff that would be put on the foreign labour in an 
 article, inasmuch as every manufacturer knows himself precisely 
 the amount of that labour ; secondly, that all traders would be 
 protected by the tariff in an equal degree, because it would 
 automatically adjust itself to the labour in each article ; and, 
 lastly, that by treating all alike it would make lobbying for 
 favours to special trades unavailing, and political corruption 
 impossible. 
 
 When once his scheme had been put into operation, he 
 contends that the extent to which the tariff would fall more 
 heavily on the poor than on the rich, or vice versa, would be 
 known by the labour embodied in the goods these respective 
 classes habitually consume ; after which an income-tax on tiie 
 rich, or a corresponding tax on the household budget of the 
 poor, could be so laid as to make the balance of taxation fall 
 equally on all classes of the community alike. As for a tax on 
 
2^4 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 imported corn, with the object of re-peopling anew the vacant, 
 half-deserted lands of England, and so helping the better to 
 feed the population in the event of war — that, like the Army 
 and Navy, belongs to the category of political necessities, 
 which in the present imperfect world lie high above all else, 
 and must dominate all mere considerations of taxation and its 
 incidence. But here again, an equalisation of the incidence, 
 so as to be fair all round, could be easily effected by a still 
 further adjustment, either of the tariff or of internal taxation— 
 and in it all there must be no more easy-going laissez /aire, but 
 a scientific coercive adaptation to circumstances and necessity. 
 
 Such is Mr. Lowenf eld's scheme in bald outline, uncompli- 
 cated by the admirable analysis of present day taxation which 
 precedes and enforces it. In itself it is, in my judgment, an 
 excellently clean-cut, scientific, and harmonious scheme, and 
 much superior to the simpler, less differentiated, and rightly 
 tentative scheme of Mr. Chamberlain — provided, as I have said, 
 that the Board of Trade or Chambers of Commerce can clearly 
 separate between the raw material and the labour entering into 
 imported goods, which is its basis. 
 
 Personally, I can the more cordially approve of it, not only 
 because it is the first and most important stage in that scientific 
 differentiation required for the New Economy of Protection, 
 and which we shall still have to carry some stages further 
 before the Tariff is entirely water-tight and complete ; but 
 because it emphasises the principles I laid down in my " Wheel 
 of Wealth " — namely, firstly, that it is the wealth-producing 
 powers of Nature, and not of Man, that give to all instruments 
 of production — whether of the Soil, or of Machinery, or of the 
 Chemical and other processes which are their adjuncts — that 
 " surplus " of wealth on which alone the increasing populations 
 of the world are fed, and from which the rents, interests, or 
 profits of all those who own this land or this machinery are 
 drawn ; secondly, that these wealth-producing powers of 
 Nature are a free gift to their capturers and owners, over and 
 
TAXATION SCHEMES AND THEIR VALUES. 2G5 
 
 above all the mere human labour that is expended in preparing 
 the soil or making and fitting the machines ; thirdly, that in 
 consequence of this, in the trade between nations, it is the 
 nation which owns the most effective of these machines, and 
 in the greater number, that gets this free gift in any and every 
 deal between them ; the other nations so far satisfying their 
 wants the while, it is true, but economically speaking " eating 
 their heads off" and merely marking time — at any rate until 
 they can get better land, or the same or other kinds of 
 machines of greater eflficiency by which to exploit their trade 
 rivals in tuna. And, therefore, fourthly, that no nation should 
 part with an instrument of production, even if it has become 
 inferior to a corresponding one owned by its foreign rivals, 
 without, in the international deals between them, haggling and 
 bargaining for it by means of " reciprocity " arrangements and 
 otherwise to the last penny. 
 
CHAPTEB VII 
 
 PROFESSOR MARSHALL'S 
 "MEMORANDUM ON FISCAL POLICY."* 
 
 "PROFESSOR MARSHALL, who is regarded by his circle 
 -■" of academic associates as " the greatest of English econo- 
 mists," has just published as a Parliamentary Paper, by order 
 of the present Government, a " Memorandum " written by him 
 in 1903 on the " Fiscal Policy of International Trade," and on 
 it in this article I propose to offer some comments. It is 
 a document of considerable length, and is divided into 82 
 separate paragraphs ; but I shall only be able to give here the 
 most general view of the character of his performance and of 
 the kind of fallacy by which from beginning to end it is 
 pervaded. In a general way it may be characterised either as 
 an expansion of that Free Trade Manifesto drawn up by 
 himself and twelve of the other academical High Priests of 
 Political Economy in 1903, over which the Press, both Free 
 Trade and Protectionist, made itself so merry at the time, on 
 account of its pontifical airs and its solemn platitudes ; or it 
 may be regarded, on the other hand, as a concentrated basket- 
 ful of all the old dead Political Economy of the schools on this 
 question of Free Trade and Protection, emptied on to the 
 benches of the House of Commons in a heap ! But in every 
 way it is a most poor and unsatisfactory document — vague and 
 evasive at the points where it ought to be most definite and 
 * "Financial Review of Reviews," January, 190'.>. 
 
PROF. Marshall's "memorandum on fiscal policy." 2(i7 
 
 precise ; heavy, confused, and platitudinous throughout ; and 
 each of its separate propositions so worm-eaten with exceptions 
 that you can find no solid footing anywhere as you go along. 
 Now, in saying this, it is not 1 that am seeking to damn 
 Professor Marshall's " Memorandum " beforehand ; for the 
 President of the Economic Section of the British Association 
 of last year has already officially done this for me. He said in 
 80 many words in his Address that the Political Economy of 
 Adam Smith and Stuart Mill was dead ; so, too, was that of 
 Jevons ; while that of the present Austrian and American 
 schools was in not much better plight — and Professor Mar- 
 shall's is but a concentrated rehash of all four ! The document, 
 as I have said, is only an expansion of the old " Manifesto " of 
 1903; and I take it as a piece of rare hardihood, therefore, on 
 the part of Professor Marshall that he peraiitted this precious 
 document to be tabled on the House of Commons; as if, 
 indeed, it had come, by a consensus of opinion, triumphantly 
 out of the ordeal of the Magazine and Press controversy of 
 that year, instead of being received, as it was, with general 
 derision. For while, during all that time, Mr. Garvin in the 
 Telegraph, Mr. Wilson in the Daily Mail, Mr. Holt Schooling, 
 Sir Vincent Caillard and others, in the Monthlies, were raining 
 on its abstract propositions an array of facts, arguments, and 
 accurately verified statistics that ought, if there is any virtue 
 in human reason, to have drowned them out ; — what did Pro- 
 fessor Marshall and his twelve academic and apostolic associates 
 in the Manifesto do ? Keply ? Not at all ; on the contrary, 
 in disgust at the indignity they had met with from the public, 
 they retired, like the Olympians, to their lofty peaks, wrapped 
 their cloaks around them, and with the tables of Economic 
 Law under their arms, sat in silence and sulked ! Professor 
 Pigou, if I remember rightly, as the youngest member of the 
 band, alone appearing as their champion before the people, but 
 without result. Now, had the Government asked Mr. Hobson, 
 for example, who is a Free Trader, to table a Memorandum on 
 
268 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 Free Trade, it had been well ; for he deals with realities, not 
 with economic abstractions, and everything he says on Econo- 
 mics is well worth careful pondering ; but the academic 
 economists had long since boycotted his books for heresy, and 
 their ban rests on him and them to this day. 
 
 But this by way of preliminary, and now let me at once 
 come to the pervasive fallacies in Professor Marshall's " Memo- 
 randum," which have so discredited it. 
 
 1. The first great fallacy is one he has in common with all 
 the academical economists, and lies in his splitting the Wheel 
 of Wealth down the middle, as it were, into two separate and 
 independent halves, and treating these as if they had no 
 necessary connection with each other. He keeps the Produc- 
 tion factors in wealth — the land, the mines, the factories, the 
 machinery, and other instruments — apart from the Consumption 
 factors which enter into men's food, clothing, and other 
 necessaries, conveniences, and luxuries of life, as if these were 
 as different in fact as they are in name ; whereas the slightest 
 reflection will convince the reader that the two cannot for a 
 moment be disjoined without producing endless fallacies in all 
 our economic thinking. For it is precisely the same goods 
 which are put on the one side of the wheel, from the land, the 
 mills, and the factories, that are in the "turnover" taken off 
 it to be consumed on the other side : and, it is evident, is it 
 not, that anything which interferes with or clogs the mechanism 
 of Production slows the lohole wheel, and lessens Consumption 
 as well ; while this lessening of Consumption again, on the 
 next turn of the wheel, causes fewer orders for goods to be 
 given, and less wealth to be produced to meet them. On the 
 other hand, anything that stimulates Production and increases 
 its products, thereby raising either Wages or the numbers of 
 Workmen employed, or both, stinudates Consumption also by 
 increasing the demands of the workmen, who have more money 
 to spend on the products ; and this again, on the next turn of 
 the wheel, stimulates production anew in order to meet this 
 
PROF. MARSHALL'S '"MEMORANDUM ON FLSCAL POLICY." 26if 
 
 increased demand, and so on indefinitely. In other words, just 
 as in an ordinary running wheel you cannot accelerate the pace 
 of one side without accelerating that of the other, or put a 
 brake on the one without putting it on the other to a precisely 
 equal degree ; so, too, is it with the continuously running 
 Wheel of Wealth. Now, what conclusions do I ask the reader 
 to draw from this, and to keep in his mind for what is to 
 follow? These, namely : — 
 
 1. That Production and Consumption must never be 
 
 disjoined and treated .separateli/, but always as a coji- 
 tinuous process or whole without a break ; and one in 
 which Production and Consumption, continuously 
 running into and reacting on each other, are to be 
 regarded as romplementary sides or aspects only. 
 And therefore : — 
 
 2. That in any "Memorandum" or statement professing 
 
 to be scientific, no cause operating primarily on the 
 one side (whether it be the Production or Consump- 
 tion side matters not), can show its whole range of 
 effects until it is followed around the wheels full 
 circle to the point from which it started. 
 Now, does Professor Marshall in the S'l paragraphs of his 
 " Memorandum," or do his academic Free Trade colleagues, in 
 their books, follow the effects of a tariff, or the absence of a 
 tariff, around the whole circuit of the wheel of circulation in 
 this way ? Not at all ; or only when they are driven by some 
 complication into a corner, and are searching about anywhere 
 for some plausible avenue of escape. What they do is to 
 confine their investigations to that side only on which the 
 tariff" at first directly falls, namely, the side of Consumption ; 
 or if they glance at Production, it is to consider the effects of 
 the tariff on the foreign countries against whom the tariff is 
 laid ; as the reader will see, for example, in the long disserta- 
 tion of Professor Marshall in his " Memorandum " (sec. 6-17) 
 on whether any part of a tax on foreign imports is paid by the 
 
270 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 fo)-eipn producer — and where, by the way, he decides with the 
 Protectionists, and contrary to all Free Trade orthodoxy, that 
 in some cases it is so ! But it never occurs to him that the 
 point is, what effect the tariff will have on the hoine producer. 
 And the reason of this is, as I have said, that having split the 
 wheel of a nation's wealth into two separate halves, which, as 
 he believes, although they may have an occasional, have no 
 necessary connection with each other, he does not think it 
 either worth while or incumbent on him to consider its other 
 side. Now, I protest that this procedure is as absurd as if a 
 physiologist were to cut the human body in two, and then 
 frame his doctrines from the effects of food and drink, on one 
 part alone, without reference to the other. Indeed, if anyone 
 doubts that Production and Consumption are but the two 
 sides of a single process, and can never be disjoined in thought 
 or business speculation, let him ask himself what is the reason 
 that the great Bankers and Financiers who stand on the axle 
 at the centre of the Wheel of Industry are obliged, if their 
 business is to prosper, to keep an accurate register both of 
 what is being produced and what is being consumed in the area 
 of their operations, and never for a moment to take their finger 
 off the pulse of this double movement. It is because in doing 
 this they know that they can with safety make larger advances 
 to farmers, millowners, and merchants, when the consumption 
 of any of their products is likely to be greater; but must 
 restrict their advances, when the consumption shows signs of 
 falling off. And the great International Financiers do pre- 
 cisely the same for the world as a whole. And does this not 
 prove to demonstration that Production and Consumption 
 must be considered together at eacii and every point of any 
 argument on Free Trade or Protection ; and not sepai'ately 
 and each by itself, as is done by Professor Marshall and his 
 academical associates? Indeed, if it were for nothing else, a 
 falsity like this at the very basis of their science would be 
 enough to make tluMr arguments as fallacious, bankriij>t, and 
 
PROF. MARSHALL'S "MEMORANDUM ON FISCAL POLICY." 271 
 
 out-of-date as are treatises on Arab Philosophy or Medieval 
 Theology. 
 
 With these preliminaries to show how unjustified are the 
 authority and prestige which this old Political Economy of the 
 Universities and Schools, of which Professor Marshall's 
 " Memorandum " is the outcome, enjoys, we can now concen- 
 trate on the real nodus of this whole problem of Free Trade or 
 Protection, namely : — As to whether or not there is anywhere 
 to be found on the Production side of the wheel of industry 
 any gratuitous asset or suplus which can not only neutralise a 
 tariff put on foreign goods on the Consumption side, but if 
 judiciously handled will recoup all national loss from the tax on 
 the side of Production as well ; and so will leave to the Nation 
 a balance of wealth to the good ? This is the whole problem 
 in a nutshell ; and according to how we answer it, shall we be 
 Free Traders or Protectionists. It is necessary to put the 
 question in this way, because Professor Marshall and the Free 
 Traders deny that there is any such gratuitous surplus to be 
 found anyivhere as a set-off to a tax on foreign manufactured 
 goods. 
 
 Now, that there is such a gratuitous asset on the Production 
 side of the wheel, may be shown to be at least possible, if we 
 can find anywhere a tax on Consumption which is not only 
 recouped, but more than recouped, from the Production side — 
 as everybody j^ including Professor Marshall, will admit. Now, 
 what are the facts ? In backward countries, as in Egypt, for 
 example, a man like Lord Cromer will, as we have seen, add 
 manyfold to the wealth of a nation, after paying all the addi- 
 tional taxes on Consumption which his reforms necessitate ; 
 and that merely by the superior organization of its existing 
 Productive forces, without having cultivated a single acre of 
 ground, planted a single fruit-tree, or built a single factory or 
 mill at the public expense. In troubled times, this recouping 
 of a tax by a great Administrator or Statesman is still more 
 marked. When Bonaparte undertook the reorganisation of 
 
272 SOCIOLOGY xVND POLITICAL. ECONOMY. 
 
 France from the impending bankruptcy into which she had 
 been plunged by the Revolution, he so vastly increased the 
 productive energies of the country by the stimulus he gave to 
 them thi'ough his superior organization of them, that when the 
 balance was struck before and after his Consulate, it was found 
 that the national wealth had increased so enormously that the 
 taxes on consumption necessary to meet it had been reduced 
 from 79 per cent, of individual income to 21 per cent.; and 
 that, too, with all the expenses of his wars thrown into the 
 opposite scale. Even in the midst of the colossal wars of the 
 Empire, he never had to borrow a penny ; the French Funds 
 stood as high as with most nations in times of profoundest 
 peace ; and remained steadily there until the eve of his down- 
 fall. Economically speaking, it was an object-lesson on the 
 grandest scale to prove that there is no mere necessary tax 
 on Consumption which cannot be recouped, and more than 
 recouped, by a nation from its Production side, if you only 
 know where to look for, and how to organise its existing pro- 
 ductive resources ; — instead of sitting, as the Free Traders do, 
 nursing the old fetish of laissez-faire which has been their 
 bane, and terrified as misers lest a preliminary shilling tax 
 once extracted from the people's pockets, can never again be 
 recouped to them in this world ! 
 
 But to all this Professor Marshall and his Academic followers 
 will object that these administrative organisations are really 
 mental assets — the gratuitous surpluses that come from the 
 brains of great men, — and not from solid, tangible economic 
 quantities, like a mine, a piece of land, a steam or locomotive 
 engine, or a machine in a mill or factory. Precisely so ; but if 
 I can show them where they will find in the plant of these very 
 mills and factories (for it is around these mainly that the tariff 
 controversy turns) a gratuitous surplus infinitely in excess of 
 any that can ever be got out of the mere reorganising arrange- 
 ments of administrators or statesmen, I shall, I contend, have 
 shattered the very foundations of the Free Trade theory, which 
 
PROF. Marshall's ""memorandum on fiscal policy." 273 
 
 goes on the pre-supposition that there is no such surplus or 
 as.^et anywhere to be found. Well ! these gratuitous surpluses 
 are so patent when once pointed out, that, like Columbus' egg, 
 the wonder is that anyone ever could have missed them ! They 
 are to be found, of course, in the enormous jyroductivily of the 
 great Machine Inventions (which had no existence, it is to be 
 remembered, in the time of Adam Smith) over and above all 
 the cost of Labour spent in making them and putting them 
 together. This, too, is a brain surplus, if you choose, but it is 
 one proceeding from a different order of men to the Statesmen 
 and Administrators ; — primarily from the great Physical 
 Scientists, who discover the laws and modes of operation of 
 the great wealth-producing powers of Nature ; next from the 
 great Inventors, who by their constructive mechanical ingenuity 
 are able to yoke these gratuitous powers of Nature to their 
 machines ; then from the great organising Capitalists and 
 " Captains of Industry," who so arrange these machines that 
 they shall do the greatest amount of work at the least cost ; 
 and finally from the great Financiers, who enable the 
 Capitalists to increase the number of their machines as they 
 are needed, and plant them on those areas of territory where 
 they can function with the greatest efficiency. Now, where in 
 Professor Marshall's "Memorandum," or in the books of the 
 Academic Economists, shall we find any recognition of this 
 enormous asset given by the poivers of Nature as a free gift to 
 a nation? Nowhere. If, therefore, I can now give a satis- 
 factory reason why the Free Traders should have missed so 
 obvious a surplus, and one which will more than recoup a tax 
 on Consumption, I shall, I trust, be considered to have entirely 
 justified my impeachment of them in this article. 
 
 Now, the first reason why they have not seen this gratuitous 
 surplus is, that it has not been written down in the treatises of 
 the Fathers of the Science, or in those of the line of Apostolic 
 succession of the Professoriate of the Universities and Schools, 
 who have hung on each other's skirts in regular file from the 
 
 s 
 
274 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 Physiocrats and Adam Smith to the present time. The 
 Physiocrats, from whom Adam Smith derived nine-tenths of 
 his doctrine, frankly denied that there was any sm'plus to be 
 found anywhere except from the Land ; and contended that 
 Manufacturers, Merchants, and Workmen alike " eat their 
 heads off." Adam Smith was willing to admit that a certain 
 surplus came from " the division of labour," as he called it, 
 owing to the time it saved, and the greater skill of the work- 
 men — as was shown in the manufacture of pins. Then came 
 Stuart Mill, who was so impressed and even awed by these 
 pins of Adam Smith — five thousand of them a day by " the 
 division of labour " made by each man, if I remember rightly, 
 as against two or three only a man without it ! — that in spite of 
 the great modern Machanical Inventions, with their enormous 
 productivity staring him in the face, and in spite of his open- 
 mindedness, he took not the slightest notice of these huge 
 additional sources of wealth. And the reason of this again 
 doubtless was, that seeing the Scientists and Inventors (who 
 were the main authors of this hugh surplus, it must be 
 remembered), getting themselves either nothing at all 
 personally for their labours ; or, in the case of the Inventors, a 
 sum which in most instances barely kept them from starvation 
 for the fourteen years during which their patent-rights ran, he, 
 naturally enough, concluded that that for which these men 
 were not paid, could not have much economic value, however 
 creditable to them otherwise ! At any rate, he never saw any 
 surplus on the Production side of the wheel which could be 
 drawn on as a balance or offset to a tax or tariff on 
 Consumption, except that caused by the " division of labour" 
 of Adam Smith. Why, then, the reader will ask, did he and 
 his successors, including Professor Marshall, not utilise even 
 this comparatively modest asset in considering the problem of 
 Protection or Free Trade ? Probably because, having split the 
 wheel of wealth into two separate, independent parts, they did 
 not even think of it! There was an excuse for the Physiocrats 
 
PROF. Marshall's "memorandum on fiscal policy." 275 
 
 and Adam Smith, because they lived before the days of 
 Modern Machine Industry ; but there is no excuse for Stuart 
 Mill, or for Professor Marshall and the modern school of Free 
 Trade Economists. 
 
 Now, that I am right in saying that these older Academical 
 Economists believed that there is no asset or surplus aiiywhere 
 available which can counteract the depressing effect on Trade 
 of a tariff, will be seen if we take their most definite and 
 characteristic doctrines. They laid it down that all Wealth 
 was the product of Labour, and of the organisation of labour 
 by its capitalist employers. The pay of the Labourer, owing 
 to the pressure of population on the means of subsistence, 
 tended always, they believed, towards " a bare subsistence " 
 wage. It was evident, therefore, that, as the labourer thus 
 *• eats his head off," no tax or tariff" on his consumption, could 
 be recouped from him, on his production, without driving him 
 into actual starvation. As for the Capitalist employer, again, 
 he, according to the Free Trade Economists, was only paid the 
 bai'e interest on his capital, his bare wages for superintending 
 the organisation of labour, and his legitimate trade risks. Hez'e, 
 again, it was evident that he, no more than the labourer, could 
 stand any tax or tariff on the articles he wanted for his mill or 
 factory without having either to throw up his industry altogether 
 or go into bankruptcy. And hence we see why it was that the 
 old Free Trade Economists really believed that there was no 
 asset or surplus anywhere in the nation's Production, that could 
 by any possibility recoup it for a tax or tariff laid on the foreign 
 products which it used or consumed. But they forgot (because 
 they did not even suspect) the tremendous gratuitous surplus 
 which, as we have seen, the Inventors and Scientists, utilising 
 the free gifts of the loealth-producing poioers of Nature, had 
 given the nation on its productive side, and which were packed 
 and stored in the machinery of the factories and mills of the 
 kingdom — a surplus which of itself would not only enable the 
 
276 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 nation to stand an ordinary necessary Protective tariff, but 
 would yield besides an enormous surplus to the good. 
 
 To make this quite clear, let us take a nation isolated from 
 commercial intercourse with its neighbours ; and let us suppose, 
 to begin with, that its productive powers, as embodied in its 
 Land, Mines, Machine industries, and Chemical processes, 
 represent on an average a free, gratuitous surplus of, say, fifty 
 units of wealth, got by it from the powers of Nature after all 
 costs of labour, etc., have been paid. 
 
 Let us further suppose that this average of fifty units is 
 made up of land, machinery, etc., embodying some of it one 
 hundred units of gratuitous wealth, others eighty units, others 
 fifty, and so on, down to thirty, twenty, or ten, until at last we 
 get to ordinary horses and ploughs, carts, wheelban-ows, or 
 spades, which we may represent by five units, or even by one, — 
 all being gratuitous gifts, and all averaged at a standardized 
 cost, whether in terms of horse-power or food-power, matters 
 not. Now, let us imagine that this nation is England, and that 
 the industries which would in a fair and open field still give her 
 a world supremacy — say her cotton, coal, shipping, iron and 
 steel, machinery, engines, woollens, hardware, etc., — represent 
 her one-hundred-unit standard of surplus work done for her by 
 the powers of Nature for nothing ; that others, like chemicals, 
 apparel, leather, linen, etc., represent, say, a ninety or eighty- 
 unit standard, while all the rest are but a common ruck of 
 fifty, forty, thirty, or twenty-unit powers, in which she has 
 little or no advantage over many other nations, and where a 
 small difference of freightage one way or the other would be 
 sufficient to put a stop to all exchange between them in these 
 products. And now let us assume, for the nonce, that some 
 one or more of these foreign nations has at last caught up to, 
 and finally beaten England in her supreme, her one-hundred- 
 unit industries, in her own home market, by however small a 
 margin (so long as that margin gives the rival nation a final and 
 definite power of underselling her) — say of two units in the 
 
PROF. Marshall's "memorandum on fiscal policy." 277 
 
 hundred — so that it can put its hundred-and-two-unit machines 
 in the field against her hundred-unit ones, what then will happen? 
 Clearly that her hundred-unit industries will be wiped out, 
 and their great wealth-producing machines put out of action 
 altogether ; and that she will then have to fall back, first on 
 her ninety and eighty ones, and at last on the poor fifty, forty, 
 or twenty-unit standards of industry which would reduce her 
 at a blow to the rank of a fourth-rate industrial power. And 
 not only that, but she would have to carry down with her in 
 her defeat the tens of thousands of workers who had been 
 dependent on her high-class machines for their existence, but 
 whom she could neither shoot like rabbits, nor allow to perish 
 of famine like Hindoos, but must manage in some way or 
 another to keep alive. In other words, while Protection would 
 only lose her the three per cent, of Tariff necessary to keep out 
 the two per cent, superiority of the Foreigners in wealth 
 producing power, a continuance in Free Trade would lose her 
 ten, twenty, or forty per cent. By Protection she would still 
 keep her highest wealth-producing machines, and would lose 
 only the small percentage of their products represented by the 
 Tariff; but if she continued the Free Trade regime she would 
 h>se the machines themselves and all that they produce. In 
 other words, if she were really defeated by the superior 
 productive powers, natural or acquired, of other or larger 
 nations, her descent and fall, under Protection, would be slow 
 and gradual (in so far, that is to say, as she had to put on 
 more and more tariff to protect her most valuable industrial 
 assets), and would be only an arithmetical progression towards 
 decay ; whereas under Free Trade, like Milton's fallen angels, 
 she would be flung sheer down from battlement to battlement 
 in geometrical acceleration, to the bottomless pit itself ! Is 
 this good business ? I think not. And if not, where, then, 
 is the value of the Free Traders' old standing argument, that 
 if we are beaten in one trade or industry we can turn to another 
 and yet another, when that is seen to mean, not that we are to 
 
278 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 walk along a level business thoroughfare where the profits or 
 costs are the same at each stage, but are to be forced up a steep 
 and steeper hill where at each stage we can only get the same 
 amount of real wealth as before in a given time, at double, or 
 treble, or quadruple its cost. At any rate, on the argument 
 embodied in the above crude illustration alone, I am prepared, in 
 the last resort, to take my stand, and to stake on it the whole case 
 for Protection as against Free Trade ; and all because, if I may 
 put it in a word, the Free Traders have neglected to take into 
 account in their calculations the immense and increasing surplus 
 of gratuitous wealth given to a nation by the possession of 
 superior machines over lower-class ones, when compared with 
 the small difference of cost in the mere making, fitting, superin- 
 tending, and running them ; and because they have also 
 neglected the broad fact that Protection is strictly analogous to 
 Insurance ; and that just as in Insurance you can, for a small 
 percentage of its value, protect your property from spoliation 
 or fire, so by Protection you can also for a small percentage of 
 the value of their products, prevent your greatest wealth-pro- 
 ducing machines from being brought to a standstill, without 
 any compensation at all. Now, I protest that neglects of this 
 kind at the very core and basis of the old Free Trade Political 
 Economy is absolutely fatal to it. For where, but from the 
 gratuitous surplus of these machines, do they suppose that the 
 enormous and continuous increase of the wealth of nations like 
 America, Germany, and France, who impose Protective tariffs 
 high as sea walls, come from 'i And why, the reader will ask, 
 have ^re«e»f-day economists like Professor Marshall missed this 
 asset ? Simply because, strange as it may seem, they have not 
 seen or even looked for a gratuitous surplus from Machine 
 Invention ; but, imagining that Mill and the older Economists 
 had settled the matter once and for all, have since his time 
 concentrated on " theories of value," " marginal increments," 
 and other ingenious academic exercises, which, whether true or 
 false (and in my " Wheel of Wealth," I have tried to show 
 
PROF. MARSHALL'S "MEMORANDUM ON FISCAL POLICY." 279 
 
 they are absolutely false), have no bearing whatever, one way 
 or another, on the problem of Free Trade and Protection. 
 
 But to show into what a state of perplexity Professor 
 Marshall and his associates have been thrown in this problem, 
 we have only to look into his " Memorandum," where he admits 
 that countries with "infant industries" may be pi'otected. 
 But why so, we ask, if there is no surplus wherewith to pay a 
 tariff to be got out of any industry '? Besides, when any one 
 country has unified and consolidated its great industries to the 
 point reached by America, for example, with its gigantic 
 Trusts, and so has reduced expenses to a minimum, the manu- 
 factures of all other countries, even England included, must be 
 put in the category of " infant industries,^' however supreme 
 they may once have been. It is no wonder, then, that John 
 Bright, on reading this exception to universal Free Trade in 
 Mill's book, was heard to remark that the admission was 
 sufficient to neutralise, for the cause of Free trade, the whole 
 of the arguments in the remainder of his two volumes ! It is 
 not merely their " theory of value," therefore, that Professor 
 Marshall and the existino- Academical Economists have to 
 perfect, but rather to remodel and reconstruct their whole so- 
 called Science from the foundation. 
 
 If, then, I have proved to the reader's satisfaction that there 
 is a gratuitous asset in Machine-industry which the Free 
 Traders have missed, and one which is capable of recouping a 
 nation for a tariff on its foreign products, we have now to see on 
 the other side into what pitfalls Professor Marshall and his 
 followers have fallen when they are defending Free Trade. 
 And here, again, we shall see that they repeat their old fallacy 
 of considering only one side of the wheel by itself, and without 
 connection with the other. But this time it is the Production 
 side to which they are glued. They admit ad hoc that any 
 partiadar industry might be ruined under Free Trade, when- 
 ever any foreign nation was able by its superior efficiency to 
 send us a cheaper article and of equal quality to that turned 
 
280 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 out by our own machines. But instead of following the effects 
 of this around the wheel to the Consumption side (where they 
 would find that when a great industry has to close down, the 
 whole body of workmen employed will, in spite of their duty- 
 free loaves and shirts piled to the ceiling in the retail shops 
 around them, either have to starve, steal or beg), they ignore 
 this Consumption side altogether ; and fail to see that with 
 sufficient tariff to protect the industry and keep its machinery 
 going, these workmen would still have enough of modest fare 
 to keep them alive, out of that gratuitous surplus which, as we 
 have seen, all the great machine inventions yield over and 
 above the produce of men's mere hands. For, " what is the 
 use of your ' free loaf,' " as the last remaining old Stoic of the 
 Protection age who had come down to the time when Free 
 Trade was the universally accepted doctrine of these islands, 
 said contemptuously to me thirty years ago ; — " What is the 
 use of your ' free loaf ' if you have no Saturday night's pay to 
 buy it with '? " This has since become so palpable a truism 
 that it is almost an insult to the reader's intelligence to force it 
 on him, I only do so to make more apparent the absurdity of 
 Professor Marshall and the Free Trader's entire procedure in 
 dealing with the problem. For, obsessed with the craze for 
 keeping the two sides of the wheel apart,, what they do is to 
 consider how the loss of a particular industry (driven out of 
 the field by foreign competition in its own as well as foreign 
 markets), will affect, not the home consumers on the other side 
 of the wheel, but the home producers on the same side. And 
 their conclusion is, that the capital of the closed-down industry 
 will be transferred in bulk, to help some other industry in need 
 of it. If that, too, is extinguished by the free imports of some 
 other nation which has caught up to and surpassed us, then the 
 combined capitals of these two extinct industries will be again 
 transferred to a third, and so on ; and when all the manu- 
 facturintr industries which have made Eny^land's uTcatnoss are 
 extinguished one by one, the united capitals of them all can, 
 
PROF. Marshall's "memorandum on fiscal policy." 281 
 
 in the last resort, be put into jams, pickles, bottles, sweated 
 clothing, and other nondescript miscellanea, which, one may note 
 in passing, from the accumulation of capital thus invested in 
 them, the whole world itself could scarcely take off our hands 
 at a remunerative price ; — and when barred out of other nations 
 by hostile tariffs (as they would be almost sure to be) would 
 stand piled here in stacks so high and unsaleable, that, like the 
 wheat of Western America, which, before the days of cheap 
 transportation, was used to feed the pigs, it would almost pay 
 U3 to make a present of it to the foreigner to get it out of the 
 way ! The whole argument, especially in these days when the 
 separate great industries are so compactly organised in closely- 
 knit co-operating groups, and with multitudes of minor branches 
 as adjuvants to each of them, is too ridiculous for serious 
 discussion. For what does it mean ? It means that Professor 
 Marshall and the Free Traders really believe that the Capital 
 of a country is as round and solid as a billiard ball, which can 
 be put first into one pocket, and then into another, then into a 
 third, and so on, and come smilingly out of the last as unworn 
 and undiminished as when it was put into the first ; instead of 
 being like a " sweated " sovereign, which loses something at 
 the coiner's hands at each operation and transfer. If the 
 reader doubts it, let him put his capital into a farm, and if that 
 fails, into a manufactory, and then again into a wholsesale 
 concern, and see whether it comes out of the ordeal as solid 
 and intact as our billiard ball ! And yet, with these practical 
 facts of industry before them, the Academicals, with Professor 
 Marshall at their head, still keep up their ghastly monotonous 
 refrain : — " If the capital of a country is driven out of one 
 industry after another by the competition of one or another 
 foreign nation, it can always recoup itself by being transferred 
 to the others that still remain." Is it any wonder, then, that 
 business men have long since " kicked their foot " through this 
 old so-called science of Political Economy, and ignominiously 
 
282 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 flung it out of doors as the useless rubbish, the convicted, 
 priggish, pedantic absurdity it really is? 
 
 But these are not the only patent facts that Professor 
 Marshall and the Free Traders are blind to. They do not see 
 any difference made in the problem of Free Trade by the 
 distinction I have drawn in my " Wheel of Wealth" between 
 complementary and competitive foreign imports. This distinction 
 is vital and fundamental, and the neglect of it fatal. Comple- 
 mentary products are all such goods as we require either 
 directly as food or as subsidiary and essential to our industries, 
 but which we have no natural facilities for growing or pro- 
 ducing at home — oranges, grapes, currants, lemons, tea, sugar, 
 silk, coffee, gold, silver, copper, or the like. These can be 
 admitted duty-free as helps and adjuncts, and with nothing 
 but advantage to the general wealth of the country. But if 
 anyone imagines, as Professor Marshall does, that therefore we 
 can let in foreign products that directly compete with our own, 
 duty-free, for the sake of their greater cheapness, let him fix 
 his mind on the land that has gone out of cultivation and the 
 hundreds of millions of capital which has been lost by our 
 farmers, beyond redemption, in the last thirty years, from the 
 free importation of foreign food and cattle, and say whether 
 there is or is not any validity in the distinction. And the 
 result will be precisely the same both in principle and in fact 
 under the free importation of fo7'eign competitive manufactured 
 goods. I know that Free Traders will say in reply, that all 
 these are but the cheaper products of foreign land and machinery 
 more fertile and effective than our own, and so will be all to 
 our gain. Now, this looks plausible, but it only brings out the 
 same great oversight at the very core of their system which I 
 have already so often pointed out. They do not see, and will 
 not sec, that the only surplus which can make a nation richer 
 next year than it is this, conies, as I again repeat, not from the 
 labour as such, but from the gratuitous poicers of Nature in 
 the soil, and in the great machine inventions ; and as, in the 
 
PROF. Marshall's "memorandum on fiscal policy." 2.S3 
 
 case now under consideration, it is the foreigner who owns the 
 land and the machines, this surphis goes to him, not to us — 
 except the small portion we save, as represented by the shght 
 difference in cheapness of the price of goods under free imports 
 and under a tariff; whereas the great bulk of our national loss 
 is all our own, as our gi'eat instruments of production — our 
 land and our machines — in consequence of this foreign compe- 
 tition, fall gradually but surely into disuse. Of course, if 
 you do not mind whether it is your own or another nation that 
 is benefited, so long as the world in general is benefited by the 
 free exchange of goods — as, indeed, is the case with many 
 good Free Traders who take a cosmopolitan standpoint — there 
 is nothing more to be said. My argument concerns only what 
 will benefit my own country primarily ; and I take it that this 
 is the point on which the reader will expect all my arguments 
 to converge. 
 
 The truth is, that Professor Marshall and the Academical 
 Economists have not the slightest conception that there is any 
 difference not only between complementary and competitive 
 imports, but between an instrument of Production and the 
 consumable products of that instrument ; and therefore they 
 ought in theory to be as willing to put a direct tax on the 
 instruments of production as on their consumable products. 
 For if there is no difference between an instrument of pro- 
 duction—whether it be a piece of land or a machine — and its 
 products ; if there is no asset on the Production side which is 
 not balanced by an equal one on the Consumption side ; there 
 ought to be no difference between putting a tax on the instru- 
 ment of production on the one side of the wheel, or on its 
 products on the other. And yet who ever heard of any 
 statesman in a civilised country, be he Free Trader or Pro- 
 tectionist, ever dreaming of laying a direct tax on an instrument 
 of production — on a man's horse and cart, a farmer's stock-in- 
 trade, a peasant proprietor's fruit trees, a manufacturer's 
 buildings and machinery, etc. — however high he may pile them 
 
2y4 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 on the consumable products of these very instruments? On 
 the contrary, except under stress of the direst political necessity, 
 he will keep them free as air, in order to give every stimulus 
 to their extension, expansion, and free, unimpeded functioning ; 
 as knowing well, by instinct if not by theory, the spontaneous 
 gratuitous wealth they give to a nation over and above their 
 labour and cost. It is only Turkish and other Oriental despots 
 who ever dare to touch these " hen-roosts " ; and that is why 
 these countries, in spite of their great natural riches, have 
 remained barren and poverty-stricken from the days of the 
 Roman Empire to the present hour. When Cromwell taxed 
 the landlord Cavaliers' rents to the point almost of extinction, 
 and they were forced to give up their establishments and live 
 in genteel poverty, if not penury, abroad, he but scotched the 
 snake ; for having left them with the title-deeds to their lands 
 still intact, on the return of Charles II. they came back with 
 him smiling, to be soon as prosperous as ever, and to remain so 
 to this day. But when the French Revolution took the land 
 itself from the noblesse and the Church — where, we ask, are 
 the family descendants of this noblesse, and where the wealth 
 of France's once red-heeled Cardinals and Archbishops now? 
 The Revolution, in a word, had confiscated the Land itself — 
 an instrument of Production ; Cromwell had only taxed its 
 products. Hence the difference. This is why the ravages of 
 war, fire, or flood, even if they devour a country's stock of 
 provisions as remorselessly as if a horde of locusts had passed 
 over them, are so ephemeral, so long as its mills, machinery, 
 warehouses, and other instruments of Production are spared ; 
 and why whole generations of men may still feel their desolating 
 effects, if these have not been spared. But Professor Marshall 
 and his academical contingent, seeing, as we have said, no 
 distinction between complementary and competitive imports, 
 between taxing instruments of production and taxing their 
 products, lump them all alike together as gains for Free Trade, 
 and keep calling aloud to the nation to " let them all come in 
 
PROF. Marshall's " memorandum on fiscal policy." 285 
 
 duty free, and the more the better ! " It is as if they were to 
 advise a man who lived by hunting, to yield up his only rifle or 
 gun to a rival, for a more highly tempting or larger mess of 
 pottage. With his gun he could have worried along .somehoic, 
 better or worse, even if he had to put up with some temporary 
 privation ; but without it, he must starve. And the reason, of 
 course, is that the gun yields him a permanent gi-atuitous asset 
 which he could not get with his own hands, arms, or skill, — an 
 instrument of production which, with a little cleaning or re- 
 pairing, will last him a life-time ; whereas the larger mess of 
 pottage yields him a momentary/ enjoyment or satisfaction only, 
 to which, if he give way, he will rise on the morrow with his 
 gun gone, and with nothing now to give in exchange for 
 another cheap meal, or, indeed, any meal at all ; and hence- 
 forward his rival has no need of shooting him to get him out 
 of the way, but has merely to pass him by on the other side, 
 and allow him quietly to starve ! It is in this way that a 
 nation's industries can be ruined piecemeal and in detail by 
 Free Trade, when once other nations have become superior to 
 it in productive efficiency, hoivever slightly — one in one industrv 
 and another in another — and all because of its encouraging, for 
 the sake of some extra cheapness, the importation of foreign 
 products duty-free. The shoemaker's wife may from pride or 
 disgust refuse to buy a cheaper American boot, but her neigh- 
 bour, the piano-maker's wife, will ; the piano-maker's wife a 
 cheaper German piano, which the shoemaker's wife will ; but 
 in spite of this cross-firing, if Free Trade become effective all 
 along the line, from one industry to another, all alike must be 
 ruined in the end. For so long as the present stage of society 
 lasts, people will take the cheapest route to their economic 
 wants and ends, irrespective of their neighbour's interests, and 
 will all, — like people who on the cry of " Fire ! " in a theatre, 
 in their eagerness to save their own skins, strangle themselves 
 on the staircases and corridors — make so great a rush for 
 cheapness for itself alone that, unless a protective tariff is forced 
 
286 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 on them by law, all the industries in the country may be choked 
 and ruined by their act, almost before they are aware of it. 
 
 But I must stop here. For a detailed exposition of all this, 
 and of what I have had to leave unsaid on the other complica- 
 tions of the problem, I can only refer the reader, who cares, to 
 prosecute the matter farther, to my " Wheel of Wealth," 
 where, what I may venture to call the principles and methods 
 of the New Political Economy, are set forth in detail. But 
 I must permit myself just a word or two in conclusion. 
 
 The first is the general remark, that there is no reason for 
 imagining (for America proves the contrary) that under Pro- 
 tection there will be less competition among our own manufac- 
 turers, and therefore less efficiency, than there would be with 
 the stimulus of foreign competition under Free Trade. The 
 second is a practical one, namely, never to sacrifice an Instru- 
 ment of Production so long as we can hold it ; and when 
 we are obliged to let it go to another nation, to haggle and 
 bargain for it — by threats of tarid or otherwise — as if we were 
 housewives bargaining at a fish shop for remainder sales on a 
 Saturday night ! yielding not an inch of economic territory 
 except for a quid pro quo. 
 
 And my last word is Educational, namely, that pressure 
 should be put on those Professors of Political Economy in our 
 Universities and Schools, who are turning out our future 
 Statesmen, year by year, indoctrinated with those Free Trade 
 principles which in this article I have attempted to show are 
 now utterly bankrupt ; and that these men should be compelled, 
 by the pressure put on them by public opinion, to withdraw the 
 boycott which they are now systematically and persistently 
 putting on the principles of the New Economy of Protection. 
 For the problem is now becoming urgent, and its solution 
 fraught with the most serious consequences to the nation, 
 according as it is decided in this way or in that. 
 
CHAPTEE VIII. 
 
 THE ENGLISH BANKING SYSTEM IN 
 OPERATION. 
 
 IN general terms, we may say that all the virtues of a 
 Banking System may be summed up in the extent to 
 which it can fulfil the two supreme necessities of all Banking, 
 namely, the certainty with which it can meet its issues and 
 liabilities when called on, and the degree of elasticity it 
 possesses compatible with that certainty. The first demands 
 a rigid and inflexible mechanism beyond the reach of individual 
 will or caprice, either to alter or control; the second, a 
 discretionary power of adaptation to circumstances and con- 
 ditions which must be confided to the judgments of individual 
 men. And accordingly, in any organized system of Banking, 
 composed of many banks, and, therefore, of many independent 
 and yet correlated parts, a division of function is necessary to 
 adequately meet these supreme necessities, so opposite in 
 character and in the virtues they demand. But unlike all other 
 organized things, where mind takes the initiative and is 
 supreme over all its mechanical adjuncts. Banking, on the 
 contrary, demands that mechanism should take the supreme 
 place ; and that to this mechanism not only the functions of all 
 other parts must be subordinate, but the wills of all who preside 
 over them must bend ; like that impersonal and abstract 
 necessity which the Greeks believed to be supreme over all 
 
288 SOCIOLOGY AND POT>ITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 their personal gods, from Jupiter on Olympus to the Lares 
 and Penates of their hearths and homes. Now, to fulfil its 
 function properly as the supreme head of a Banking System, 
 this Mechanism must have a number of clearly defined 
 characteristics. To begin with, it must have a cast-iron rigidity, 
 and must work with the precision, certainty, and regularity of 
 a machine ; when set in motion it must be as self-compensaii?ig 
 Olid self-acting as a piece of clock-work, and as devoid of impulse 
 or passion as a guillotine, but with all the sharpness in 
 execution of that instrument in the incidence of its stroke and 
 the precision of its fall. It must be as independent of the 
 Executive Government of a country as a Supreme Court of 
 Judicature ; and as free from individual caprice as a code of 
 abstract Law. It must, in a word, have all the virtues of that 
 old Doctor's Head in the Arabian Tale, which performed all 
 the functions of intelligence without conscious personality, 
 could be screwed on and off at pleasure, and be as good dead 
 as alive ! And such, indeed, is the Public Department of the 
 Bank of England ; and that is why it approaches in its way the 
 ideal of what the head of a Banking System should be. It is 
 also a large part of the reason why it can carry not only the 
 finances of England, but in an emergency a large part of the 
 finances of the outside world as well, on its single shoulders 
 with secuinty and ease. It combines, as is well known, the 
 responsibilities of a Private and of a Public Bank, but I have to 
 speak here of its public side only ; and it is the rigid, self-acting, 
 self -protecting mechanism of this Public or Issuing department 
 of the Bank (as distinct from its ordinai*y Banking department) 
 that gives it a stability which neither its own private side nor 
 the raids and incursions made into it by the other Banks, by 
 Bill Brokers, and by the Public generally — with demands for 
 credit in their hands, and on the security of paper, good, bad 
 or indifferent — can touch. 
 
 Now, this really admirable mechanism, it may be said in pass- 
 ing, was not struck out, as from a die, by a single stroke, but 
 
THE ENGLISH BANKING SYSTEM IN OPERATION. 28V) 
 
 grew to what it is by haphazard, as it were ; by chances and 
 changes in connexion with the Bank Acts at the time unforesee- 
 able in their consequences ; like those institutions which, having 
 failed in their original intention, have been found, after slight 
 modifications, to answer admirably for some ulterior design. 
 Since the Bank Acts were passed, the other banks have one 
 by one lost their former power of issuing their own notes, 
 until now this power has been confided for all practical pur- 
 poses to the Bank of England alone ; and it is in this particular 
 that one of its supreme merits lies. Another merit is, that it 
 is independent both of the Grovernment and of the Public in 
 fulfilling its high function ; inasmuch as it is in private hands, 
 and so is neither subject to the changes and caprices of Parlia- 
 mentary majorities and factions nor to the interference of the 
 general public, but " all alone," as Shakespeare says, " stands 
 hugely politic " ; and yet is so open in its methods withal, in 
 the midst of the vast responsibilities that lie on it, that it can 
 be checked at any time, not mez'ely by the Government, but 
 by the Public itself as well. It stands, in a word, in the open 
 forum of the world, with its colossal self-compensating clock- 
 work, registering, as on a dial plate, the moving equilibrium of 
 its gold and of its note issues for the public to read from week 
 to week ; and with as yet no overgrown magnates, potent both 
 over it and over the public alike, concealed within its inner 
 mechanism to alter its hands ; and so is not only as safe, but 
 is more steady and reliable, and, besides, more free from pertur- 
 bation, than if the note-issuing power of the country had been 
 in the hands of the Government itself. So far, then, as the 
 Bank of England is concerned, all is as well as need be with 
 the financial credit of the nation as a whole. 
 
 The faults in the English Banking System, such as they are, 
 lie not with the Bank of England as its head, then, but with 
 the other banks that are its feeders and dependencies, but over 
 which, it must be remembered, it has not a shred of legal 
 authority or control. Not, indeed, that much blame is to be 
 
 T 
 
290 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 attached to these banks, when i-egard is had at once to the 
 vast scope of their operations and to the difficulties under 
 which they work. In fact, such faults as they have are refer- 
 able to a lack of suffi^cient control, for which the Government, 
 rather than themselves, is responsible; and, in any event, the 
 onus has to be shared by the Foreigner, the Bill Broker, and 
 the public generally. And yet that there is a certain danger 
 lurking in this lack of sufficient control is not to be altogether 
 denied. The safeguards at present against such dangers as 
 there are, are mainly three ; all of them psychological rather 
 than material in their nature, but none the less potent on that 
 account. The first is the mere presence among them of the 
 Bank of England ; and their knowledge that, as the keeper of 
 their cash balances, it can form a very shrewd guess as to how 
 they are trading. The second is, that owing to the prevalence 
 of the Joint-Stock principle in Banking at the present day, their 
 independently audited balance-sheets are open to the inspection 
 of their shareholders at their yearly meetings, and through 
 them to the public indirectly by the reports in the columns of 
 the Press ; but as to hoto they are trading in the interim, or on 
 what kind of securities, neither their shareholders nor the 
 public can know. That they habitually do business on an 
 insufficient reserve is generally believed, and as we shall see 
 presently, is as good as demonstrable ; and it is also generally 
 understood that a good deal of " window-dressing " in the 
 matter of refusal of accommodation, and the calling in of loans, 
 has to be gone through, with the object of concealing the 
 insufficiency of these reserves, before their yearly or half- 
 yearly statements can be pi-esented to their shareholders with 
 satisfaction. The third safeguard lies in the general high 
 character of the directorate of these bunks - their " psychological 
 reserve," as an admiring American has called it. These three 
 safeguards, then, shadowy as they may appear, but in my 
 judgment very effective all the same, are the only protection 
 the public has against a condition of affiiirs which under certain 
 
THE ENGLISH BANKING SYSTEM IN OPERATION. 291 
 
 contingencies might become as dangerous as in the bad old 
 times of seventy years ago, before the Bank of England had 
 taken over their note issues, and when they tumbled down into 
 bankruptcy and insolvency by the score. But on the whole 
 we may say that any jyositive danger to the banks, as such, is 
 but trivial, and need give neither the shareholders nor the 
 public a sleepless night. That is not the difficulty ; it lies 
 rather in the discomfort, the disturbance, and the consequent 
 pecuniary loss to the trading community, which attends on 
 anything which shakes the steadiness of a market on which 
 business forecasts depend. But to bring out the position 
 which I wish to make in this chapter, I must ask the reader 
 to accompany me a little farther, until we get a closer grip 
 on this all-important matter, and on the central cause which 
 underlies it. 
 
 Now, to begin with, we may say that no system of any kind, 
 as such, whether it be a Religious System, a Political System, 
 or a Banking System, can have any hope either of ultimate 
 endurance, or of a steady equable movement as a working 
 concern in this world, which does not keep a definite relation, 
 gradation, and proportion between its several parts ; or where 
 each part fails to keep time, as it were, with all the rest. And 
 the first thing in this connexion that strikes us in a comparison 
 between the English Banking System of to-day and what it 
 was forty years ago is, that the Bank of England has gradually 
 lost one of the most important of the bonds by which the other 
 banks were kept in due subordination, gradation, and time, with 
 itself as the head and crown of the entire system. I mean that 
 it is they who now fix among themselves the actual market rate 
 of interest for discounts and loans, as distinct from the nominal 
 rate which is fixed by the Bank of England ; and although 
 their rate bears, of course, some relation to the Bank rate, it is 
 more loose and intermittent in character, and not so close and 
 continuous as it was formerly. Forty years ago, when Bagehot 
 wrote his classical book on the Money Market, the Bank of 
 
292 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 England itself still did so large a part of the ordinary banking 
 business of the country that it was able, through its own rate 
 of discount, to give the cue, as it were, and to fix the price of 
 the loans and discounts of all the other banks in some sort of 
 definite relation to its own, and to keep them there. And as 
 its own rate of discount was neither a matter of its own dis- 
 cretion, nor yet subject to the ups and downs of competition, 
 but was fixed for it, as we have seen, by the mechanical 
 necessity under which it lay of keeping its gold and Govern- 
 ment securities in an exact moving equilibrium with its 
 fluctuating note-issues, the consequence was that the whole 
 banking system was, in its great organic outlines, so integrated 
 and knit together, that the other banks not only kept time and 
 tune with it, but largely with each other ; and so formed a 
 compact, harmonious unity. But much has changed in the 
 conditions of the banking world since then. The great Joint- 
 Stock Banks have enormously increased in numbers, and in the 
 vast extension of credit which they have created for themselves 
 out of their own and their depositors' money, through the 
 medium of cheques — a species of short-time quasi-currency, I 
 may remark in passing, which extinguishes itself almost as 
 soon as it is born, by being written off against itself, as it were, 
 in its passage through the Clearing House, — and so can neither 
 be regulated in its issue, checked in its amount, nor followed 
 up to its destination, as the Bank of England note circulation 
 can be. It is this, together with the decline in the use of the 
 legal tender notes which these cheques have superseded, that 
 has brought it about that the public can get almost all the 
 accommodation it requires through the other banks, without 
 the necessity of applying, except at a pinch, to the Bank of 
 England. And the consequence of this, again, has been, not 
 only to throw the Bank of England (on its ordinary banking- 
 side) out of the running, as it were, in ordinary jog-trot times, 
 but to reverse the former relation existing between it and the 
 other banks. For now, as I iiavc just said, it is the other 
 
THE ENGLISH BANKING SYSTEM IN OPERATION. 203 
 
 banks that fix tlie market rate of discount for their customers ; 
 the Bank of England only fixes it for the stability and fixity 
 of Public Credit at large. And with this result, that the 
 unity of the Banking System has been divided, relaxed, and 
 weakened : so that, instead of living together like children of 
 one family, the banks are more like married couples, under the 
 same paternal roof, indeed, but each with its own separate and 
 independent menage, and with no responsibilities to their 
 common parent, but each to its own belongings only — its 
 Shareholders. I had long suspected this, but I am glad to be 
 confirmed in it by the book of Mr. Hartley Withers, recently 
 published — a book, I ought in justice to say in passing (for T 
 have got some most important particulars from it which 1 had 
 no opportunity of knowing otherwise), which is as clear-cut, 
 accurate, and authoritative for the Banking System of to-day 
 as Bagehot's was for forty years ago. Let us, then, in order to 
 make this position good, take a glance at some of the semi- 
 humorous incidents in this moving melodrama of Banking as 
 seen in its actual working from day to day. 
 
 Now, the first to create a disturbance in the ordinary hum- 
 drum of events in the Banking world, is the Foreigner — whom, 
 with some of his fellow-conspirators here at home, we may 
 good-naturedly figure for the nonce as the " villain " of the 
 play. For it is he who watches his time and opportunity to 
 appear on the scene just when the money market is ripe for 
 him. Knowing that England alone of all the world keeps a 
 free and open market for gold, he walks into the Exchange 
 when this market is full to overflowing, and when money, in 
 consequence, awaiting suitable investments, can be had cheap. 
 Into the complex causes which produce cheap money, I cannot 
 enter here farther than to say in general terms that it is pro- 
 duced by three variables between which a balance has to be 
 struck ; namely, a slackness of demand for it for business pur- 
 poses ; an abundant supply of it ; and a business sky free from 
 clouds or suspicions. If either of these factors be absent, the 
 
294 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 market rate will immediately tighten, money will rise in value, 
 and the rate of interest for its loan will become high. If, for 
 example, money has been greatly in demand for, say, a number 
 of Government Loans, home or foreign, and has been sunk in 
 them to the extent of millions perhaps, with no return of this 
 njoney from them except the bare interest as it dribbles in 
 from year to year; if, again, in addition to this, and at about 
 the same time, a number of established businesses, owing to 
 the briskness of trade, are clamouring for money for extending 
 their premises, or adding to their plant, or what not, and 
 money is sunk in them, too, without hope of immediate return 
 except in the same small driblets in the shape of interest or 
 dividends ; and upon the top of these, again, all kinds of new 
 enterprises as well are absorbing money which can only return 
 to the money market in the same slow and trickling way — as, 
 for example, when some new, rich, and accredited mine has 
 been discovered, or new railways opening up virgin fields of 
 admitted wealth in new countries are being constructed, or 
 what not — in all these conjunctures of absorption, money must 
 be dear, and the interest payable for the use of it high. Not 
 that the money or its worth is lost, for we will assume for the 
 nonce that all of it has been invested, whether by governments, 
 or individuals, or corporations, in reproductive works, which are 
 turning out fresh money or money's worth daily, but which 
 cannot, of course, replace the amount of money sunk in them 
 in less than ten or fifteen years, on an average, in the most 
 prosperous times. The consequence is that for the time being 
 you cannot put your hand on the money sunk, however much 
 you may want it. It is not lost, but is as unavailable for the 
 money market as if it were sunk at the bottom of the sea. It 
 is locked up, in a word, for the present, and there is no key 
 that can get it out, except in such yearly driblets as we have 
 seen. Money, in consequence, must be dear, and its rate of 
 interest high. But that is not all. Even what comes in will 
 be put under a second and different kind of lock and key, if 
 
THE ENGLISH BANKING SYSTEM IN OPERATION. 295 
 
 another class of contingencies happens to follow on the first. 
 If, for example, ominous birds appear in the business sky : 
 revolutions in governments ; new forms of taxation, the incidence 
 of which, and the persons they will hit, is uncertain ; irruptions 
 into the settled order of States of new-fangled schemes like 
 those of aggressive Socialism, with confiscation of the property 
 of those who have any to lose, as its end, and producing, in 
 consequence, a vague unrest in the mind of each individual as 
 to how he may fare in it all ; bankruptcies of eminent firms of 
 hitherto undoubted credit ; the suspicion that great banking 
 houses have been involved; or, indeed, any widespread sus- 
 picions whose causes are unknown, and the extent of whose 
 ramifications, as affecting the credit of individuals, are hidden, 
 and therefore incalculable. In all cases like these, it matters 
 not how much money may be returning from all kinds of 
 legitimate business enterprises, it will not come into the open 
 market for investment ; but will either be put away into 
 Consols or other gilt-edged securities, or left to stagnate in 
 Bank ledgers, or even be hoarded in gold or notes in old stock- 
 ings, up the chimneys, under the beds, or in holes in the 
 ground, until the business sky is clear again ; and so the dearth 
 and dearness of it will still continue. And, a fortiori^ if this 
 business suspicion reaches what Carlyle called the " preter- 
 natural" point, and has brought on a banking crisis or panic, 
 money then can hardly be had at any rate of interest whatever. 
 
 Now, it is conjunctures like these which explain the paradox 
 that money may be dear even when legitimate individual 
 business is abounding, and will throw light, as we shall see 
 later, on the problem of the Geographical Distribution of 
 Capital. The money, or money's worth, is there all right, but, 
 like ladies' parasols, no one would know it on a rainy day, or 
 believe it, perhaps, until the sun shone out again. 
 
 On the other hand, money will be dear (and this, too, is a 
 paradox) when business and trade, instead of being abounding, 
 are slack ; and still more so when for the time being they are 
 
296 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 half paralysed or altogether dead. This will occur, not 
 immediately, but after a time, if the money invested in the 
 Government loans has been blown away, either by our own or 
 by foreign Governments who are our debtors, in war or war 
 material — armies, navies, barracks, fortresses, and the like — 
 none of which in themselves are productive enterprises or can 
 bring back to the money market, as such, any return ; or, again, 
 if private Joint-Stock Companies have tempted millions out of 
 the pockets of the investing public for mines without metal in 
 them, or for the thousand-and-one rotten Stock Exchange 
 speculations, the money sunk in which is lost beyond recall — 
 amounting during the last forty years, it is said, to a figure 
 which would pay off the entire National Debt three times over. 
 Now, after a period of this kind, it is evident that there are 
 no parasols to bring out, sunshine or no sunshine, but black and 
 dripping umbrellas instead ! Under such circumstances money 
 is dear, not because business is good, and money accumulating, 
 as in the former case, but because business is bad, and there is 
 no money to be had. But why not run off the gold that is 
 filtering in from the mines, into this channel of the money 
 market t the reader may ask. It would avail nothing ; for the 
 gold is wanted by the public, not for its use by the goldsmith 
 or jeweller, but as a medium of exchange ; and once credit is 
 paralyzed or dead, Exchange will be paralyzed or dead also ; 
 and so the gold would be of no use except for hoarding. But 
 even then the gold would have to be paid for in money ; 
 inasmuch as all kinds of credit notes or other securities would 
 for the time being be so much waste paper merely. And 
 hence, even if the gold were flowing in from the mines in a 
 Pactolian stream, not a bar of it would be turned into money 
 on that account ; on the contrai'y, it woukl only lie as dead a 
 drug on the banker's hands as a bale of unsaleable goods on a 
 draper's. 
 
 Let us now return to the point from which our Banking 
 drama was about to start, namely, fronj a period of cheap 
 
THE ENGLISH BANKING SYSTEM IN OPERATION, 297 
 
 money. This, I may also say in passim^, is caused by a 
 reversal of all the conditions which we have just seen producing 
 dear money ; and usually occurs after a long period of business 
 prosperity, during which money has been accumulating in great 
 masses in banks, consols, or elsewhere, waiting for a sunny sky 
 and fresh enterprises to bring it into the industrial market 
 again ; but where, for some reason, business has become slack, 
 either from some arrest of normal consumption, due to bad 
 harvests, or to workmen thrown out of work, or to other 
 conditions which for the time being have dried up the 
 innumerable rivulets of demand which feed the greater streams 
 of business enterprise, and on which, after all, they mainly 
 depend. It is this combination of an idle, stagnant, but 
 plethoric money market, following, as by a kind of exhaustion, 
 on a period of intense business activity, together with the 
 absence of anything ominous or suspicious in the business sky ; 
 it is these two conditions mainly that give rise to cheap money ; 
 and when they both pull together, like the sun and moon on the 
 waters, the money market is likely to be in full tide and 
 overflowing with cheapness. 
 
 Now, it is in times like these that the Foreigners — not only 
 the steady-going trader, but the Avhole tribe of Company 
 Promotors and their camp followers — flock to our shores from 
 all the winds, to carry our gold away I In ordinary times money 
 is dearer everywhere abroad than it is here, and is much harder 
 to get at even in the best of times. If the German opens his 
 mouth too wide in seeking for accommodation at home, the 
 banker will look at him so hard, however good his securities 
 may be, that he will think twice before making a second 
 application ; while the French banker will be apt to hand over 
 to his customer a part of what he wants in silver, which will, of 
 course, be of no use to him in other countries, where it is not 
 legal tender. Accordingly, when the state of the Exchanges 
 is favourable to him — that is to say, when money in our market 
 is cheap, and he has the best of the trading that is going on 
 
298 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 between the two countries, — the steady-going but wily foreign 
 trader decides that he will take the trade balances due to him 
 on his bills back home with him " in gold, if you please," and 
 not renew these bills, inasmuch as the gold will be of more 
 value to him at home than here ; and no one can say him nay. 
 Now, when this depletion of our gold has been going on for 
 some time, the result will presently be that the Bank of 
 England, in order to stop the drain, and to get back the gold 
 again to the point where it will balance its outstanding notes, 
 will be obliged to raise the rate of discount to the point where 
 the Exchanges will be reversed, and the gold, through the 
 same process in the bill market, will come flowing back to the 
 Bank again from abroad. But the moment the stringency of 
 the money market is again relaxed, whether from a temporary 
 or more lasting cause, and money is again cheap, in steps the 
 foreigner again, to carry it off as before ! If the cause is one 
 of those I have enumerated, which usually operate over a 
 considerable period, he will be accompanied or followed by a 
 whole train of Company Promoters, who will help him to 
 complete his depredations — not like himself, through the Banks 
 and Bill Brokers, so much as indirectly through the medium of 
 the Stock Exchange — on the pockets of the public. And thus 
 the gold goes in and out of the country in regular systole and 
 diastole, with the Black Flag of the Bank run up and down as 
 its accompaniment, announcing to all the world when it is 
 hoisted, that cheap credit is dead for the time, and that the 
 Foreigner may as well depart ; and when it is hauled down, 
 that the rate of interest has fallen, and he may come back 
 again ; but keeping the unhappy English trader the while 
 rocked up and down in endless business uncertainty and pertur- 
 bation. And yet it is not the Foreigner who is to blame : it is 
 rather the Bankers, the Bill Brokers, and the Stock Exchangers 
 who have given him a standing invitation to come in. For 
 now that the Bankers and Bill Brokers between them practi- 
 cally fix the market rate of interest for themselves, they have 
 
THE ENGLISH BANKING SYSTEM IN OPERATION. 299 
 
 got quite out of hand ; and in the keenness of their competition 
 with each other for discounts and advances, continually keep 
 their rates so low that the Foreigner is hardly out before he is 
 in again ; and the Black Flag of the Bank, in consequence, has 
 to be hoisted in self-preservation half a dozen times for once 
 that would be necessary if the other banks would keep their 
 rates more closely in relation and consonance with its own. 
 
 And this brings us to the vital question : — Are these banks 
 really overtrading on an insufficient reserve? At the first 
 blush, one would say — yes, certainly, if for nothing more than 
 the comedy that goes on between them. The Bankers, it is 
 generally understood, in their competition with the Bill Brokers, 
 habitually cut their rates so fine that in their eagerness to catch 
 a stray customer they positively stumble over each other in a 
 way that would be dangerous if it were done even on large 
 cash reserves, and if their operations were not covered up under 
 a veil of secrecy. The Bill Brokers play the same game as the 
 Bankers, and when in the midst of some superfinely-cut deal, 
 the rate of interest happens to be raised on them by the Bank 
 of England, they are obliged to run to the very bankers against 
 whom they are competing for accommodation to replenish 
 their temporarily depleted credits. And when both bankers 
 and bill brokers have extended their nets so wide, in order to 
 catch the smallest minnows in the stream, that they cannot 
 haul them in again, they both have to hie them in hot haste 
 and desperation to the Bank of England for relief. And she, 
 good old grandmother, takes them in — but on her own terms, 
 of course, — until the tension and stress on their resources have 
 passed ! What they would do if she refused, and what the 
 Public would think of it all, had they not the vague idea that 
 whatever the Bank of England does, the Government, in the 
 event of a crisis becoming imminent, would always intervene 
 and by its credit prevent its going any farther, it is difficult to 
 say. But if proof more relative than this were wanted that 
 these banks are constantly straining their reserves to an illegiti- 
 
300 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 mate extent, it will be found in what I read in Mr. Withers' 
 hook, but which I did not know before, namely, that the Bank 
 of England will, when she sees these banks making too free 
 with their cash, buy up that cash herself even when she does 
 not want it, and lock it up under her own wings, like a hen its 
 chickens when a hawk is in the sky, in order to save them from 
 themselves ; as well as to avoid raising the bank rate on the 
 Trading Public — as she otherwise would be obliged to do. For 
 it is the trading public, it must be remembered, who have to 
 "pay the piper" for all this fast and loose disposal of the 
 depositors' money on the part of the banks in their breakneck 
 race to make dividends for their shareholders on an insufficient 
 cash reserve of their own. It is the trading public that has to 
 pay to get the gold back from the astute and wily Foreigner 
 who is continually carrying it off. And it is the trading public 
 that has to pay the bankers for that Free Trade in gold which, 
 like all one-sided things in this world, has a double edge when 
 you come to use it. And yet when the Bank of England, like 
 a good policeman in a congested street traffic, has to intervene 
 to save the public from all this and from itself, by the use of 
 its guillotine, it is abused by all alike as a common enemy, 
 rather than hailed and thanked as the common protector ! 
 The Bill Brokers cry out against the Bank when they find 
 themselves entangled in their own meshes, and when a rise in 
 the Bank rate cuts down into the middle of tiieir too finely cut 
 transactions and turns their calculated profits into losses. The 
 other bankers grumble when the Bank rate is lowered so far 
 that they can only skim off the thinnest layer of cream in the 
 way of discounts for their shareholders, and these, too, on 
 securities of less assured quality. The Underwriters, Stock 
 Exchangers, and the whole tribe of Company Promoters cry 
 out, on the other hand, when money is dear; and their occupa- 
 tion, thus gone for the time, has to wait for the turn of the tide, 
 which, however, may be a long time in coming. And, lastly, 
 the Tradinjy Public cries out ay-ainst the Bank when it finds 
 
THE ENGLISH RANKING SYSTEM IN OPERATION. 301 
 
 itself held up, like a South Easteru train at the entrance to a 
 station, by a rise in the Bank rate, in the midst of delicate business 
 operations., when a fraction of one per cent, may mean success 
 or failui'e, and kept waiting there until the signal is lowered 
 again ; and all because the Foi'eigner and his cohort, abetted 
 by the competition of the bankers and bill brokers, have been 
 allowed to make off with our gold when it was cheap ; and 
 because the bankers themselves are forced to dole it out more 
 sparingly and suspiciously when it is dear — or even button it 
 up in their pockets altogether ! — but either way to the detriment 
 of the sound and steady-going trader. It is little wonder, 
 then, that he calls out, and even "uses language" on occasion; 
 especially when he finds himself either rocked up and down in 
 a windy sea, now in the trough and now on the crest of the 
 wave, in endless uncertainty, or else stranded or beleed alto- 
 gether in midstream until gold from abroad arrives at the Bank 
 to float him into harbour again. And when he has to pay for 
 all this out of his own pocket (for that is what it amounts to), 
 his feelings may better be imagined than described I And yet 
 the Trading Public are not altogether free from blame in this 
 matter, for it is they who in their own private interests abet 
 and accentuate the neck-and-neck competition of the bankers 
 and bill brokers by the pressure they put on them for cheap 
 and risky credit and accommodation, and then turn round and 
 abuse the Bank of England when it is obliged to come down 
 on them all alike with its guillotine in order to save the credit 
 of the Nation. But the Foreigner — what of him ? He lies 
 low and keeps dark the while, of course, waiting his opportunity 
 to make ofi' with our gold again as his share of the spoil, rubbing 
 his hands with glee and laughing in his sleeve that we should 
 be the fools we are to give him such easy invitation and access I 
 The frock-coated Banker himself is of all these stage players 
 the one perhaps who can afford to take it all the most uncon- 
 cernedly and philosophically. Shielded by the Bank of 
 England, which winks and says nothing to outsiders, when his 
 
302 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 cash balances are getting suspiciously low, he takes his toll 
 from all alike indifferently, whether the Bank rate be high or 
 low. If he has a preference, it is that money should be at that 
 medium price which will combine the highest rate compatible 
 with the largest amount of turnover : but whatever befalls, he 
 can still sit in his bank parlour and whiff his cigarette in con- 
 scious security and ease ! And yet it is this mere handful of 
 Bankers, Bill Brokers, Stock Exchangers, Company Promoters, 
 and Foreigners who are making all this commotion on the 
 public stage, and who fill the general ear with their din and 
 uproar. Like those stage armies where a number of supers 
 dressed up as soldiers come in at one wing of the theatre, cross 
 the boards in single file, disappear at the other wing, and 
 reappear from behind the curtain in an unbroken, continuous 
 stream, these consequential gentlemen are enabled to bulk 
 themselves out so large in the public imagination that they 
 would almost seem to be the saviours of the credit of the State, 
 rather than its exploiters ! It would indeed be surprising, then, 
 if, as is well known, the news of the arrival or departure of 
 gold at and from the Bank of England were not awaited by 
 them with intense interest and anxiety, as well as by the 
 Trading Public generally. 
 
 Now, from all this it is evident, is it not, that it is to the 
 Bank of England, and to it alone, that the public must look for 
 the integrity and security of the national financial Credit as a 
 whole? Not that I imagine that if the safeguards I have 
 mentioned were withdrawn, something equally efficacious or 
 more so would not be found to take their place ; but so long as 
 that old doctrine of Laissez-faire, which reached its climax as 
 a serious pronouncement in the memorable dictum of John 
 Bright, that " adulteration is only another form of competition"; 
 so long as this abomination still clings to Englisii Political and 
 Business methods and ideals, it would probably take the public 
 so long to turn round before it dawned on it that any business 
 whatever should not do as it pleased within the limits of the 
 
THE ENGLISH BANKING SYSTEM IN OPERATION. 303 
 
 law, that in this momentous matter of National Banking Credit — 
 
 of all things the most delicate and dangerous instrument to 
 
 tamper with — irreparable injury might be done before the 
 
 Government would be called upon to intervene. What the 
 
 Government, in my humble judgment, ought long ago to have 
 
 done, and would, indeed, have done, but for the paralyzing 
 
 influence of this old fetish of Laissez-faire, would have been to 
 
 have tightened up those bonds of the Banking System which 
 
 had been allowed to become relaxed, and to have compelled all 
 
 the other banks to line up more closely and in nearer touch 
 
 with the Bank of England in this matter of their discounts 
 
 and reserves ; so as to leave no part of the Banking System 
 
 outside of the legitimate influence of that Bank. It is the official 
 
 Bank Rate which, by the self-acting mechanism that equalizes 
 
 its notes and its reserves, gives a continuous stability and 
 
 safety to the whole Banking Edifice ; but that weary old Titan, 
 
 the Bank of England, already loaded up to the full, can carry 
 
 no more responsibilities on its back in the present state of the 
 
 law ; and cannot go on for ever buying up the cash of the other 
 
 banks to prevent their making " ducks and drakes " of it ! It has 
 
 enough to do to look after the public and keep its own private 
 
 skirts clean. It is the otJier banks, I repeat, that are at fault, 
 
 and not the Bauk of England, as so many imagine. For, 
 
 having slipped the official noose, as we have seen, they have set 
 
 up housekeeping on their own account, and with the exception 
 
 of a casual glance at the official Bank rate signboard, to see 
 
 what game is afoot, they can play as fast and loose with their 
 
 cash reserves, their advances, and their securities as they please. 
 
 It is this divided authority in what ought to be a single 
 
 undivided household, this double centre in a single system, 
 
 that is the prime cause of the eccentric comedy which we see 
 
 constantly being played (at the expense of the trading 
 
 community) between the Foreigner, the Banker, the Bill Broker, 
 
 the Company Promoter, and the Stock Exchange operators 
 
 generally. It is essential, of course, to business enterprise that 
 
304 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 there should be a very large measure of elasticity and fluidity 
 in the accommodation offered to the public by the other banks, 
 as a balance and set-ofF against the stiffness, the rigidity, and 
 the top-hat respectability of the Bank of England. But this 
 should be kept in more close and definite relation to the official 
 Bank rate ; and the freedom which is willingly accorded the 
 other banks should not be allowed to go so far as to degenerate 
 into license — as it does at present. And if it be true, as Mr. 
 Withers authoritatively declares (and this is the point I should 
 like my readers to make sure of for themselves), that the Bank 
 of England really has at times to buy up its own legal tender 
 notes to prevent the other banks from using them to the public 
 detriment, then I contend our case has been made good. 
 
 And yet, after all, it would not take much to put the whole 
 matter right. The Government could itself solve the problem 
 by taking charge of the relation existing between the reserves 
 and the business of the banks ; but this, for political and other 
 reasons, is not to be entertained. A better way would be for 
 it to give additional powers of pressure to the Bank of England 
 in insisting that the reserves of the other banks should be kept 
 in normal proportion to their trading ; and make the Bank 
 responsible for seeing that it was done. Or, better still (for 
 there would then be no need of official coercion of any kind), 
 that these banks should be obliged to publish as full and faith- 
 ful a weekly statement of their assets and liabilities as the 
 Bank of England does now. The PubHc would then, through 
 the ])ublicity of the Press and the lynx eyes of its shrewd and 
 able City Editors, be itself the judge of how things stand ; and 
 with the light thus let in on the banks, as in all other human 
 concerns where self-interest is the main-spring of action, it is 
 extremely improbable that further legislation or regulation of 
 any kind would be necessary. 
 
 Were this done, the market rate of money would no longer 
 diverge as widely as it often does now from the official Bank 
 rate, and the banks would no longer stretch their arms so far 
 
THE ENGLISH BANKING SYSTEM IN OPERATION. 305 
 
 afield to catch the smallest competitive increments of ^ain, 
 only to draw them in again in haste when they find they have 
 gone too far ; but all of them would move in unison as a single 
 column, at a regulated distance from their head. The Foreigner 
 would be checked in his incursions on our shores, and would 
 not find it worth his while to come here so often to carry away 
 our gold, to the detriment of our own traders and at the public 
 expense. The Foreign Exchanges would not be made so easily 
 to kick the beam against us on so small a margin of trade 
 difference in the Foreigner's favour, to the still further detri- 
 ment of the industries on which our prosperity depends. For 
 no merely Banking prosperity will long avail a country unless 
 it has great and independent industrial resources at its back to 
 give it permanence ; as the history of the ephemeral nations 
 that were mainly Banking or Commercial centres — Holland, 
 Venice, and the Italian cities of the Middle Ages — abundantly 
 establishes. Banking prosperity always follows, it must be 
 remembered. Industrial or Commercial prosperity, but never 
 either precedes or survives that prosperity. The Black Flag 
 would not have to be so often hoisted and hauled down again 
 over the Bank of England ; and the anxiety of all City men 
 and Traders as to the arrival or departure of gold at or from 
 the Bank would be allowed to sleep over longer periods of time. 
 The weaker and more unscrupulous of the banks in this matter 
 of straining their reserves would either have to mend their 
 ways or lose their clientele ; the honest and soundly secured 
 traders would make up in greater facilities of accommodation 
 for what they might perhaps at times lose in higher rates; 
 w^hile the shady or utterly bad concerns would have either 
 more difficulty in carrying out their nefarious designs to begin 
 with, or would anticipate their fate and the open bankruptcy 
 which awaits them anyway, before they had time to draw the 
 investing public wholesale into their meshes. Foreign relations 
 and political complications would be less disturbing than they 
 are at present even to the soundest investors ; and bank crises 
 
 V 
 
306 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 and panics, already almost unknown here, would in future be 
 rendered still more difficult either to foment, precipitate, or 
 create. And yet the danger of these crises and panics can 
 never altogether be dismissed in a trading world so complex 
 as the present, where business men have to adventure their 
 barks every day on unknown seas, and take chances against 
 the unknown future and its unsuspected conjunctions of the 
 stars and the fates. Like the occasional earthquakes in great 
 cities, these crises have always to be reckoned with, even if 
 they are only to be classed among the " visitations of God " ; 
 for no amount of bank reserve in the shape of gold, however 
 adequate in ordinary times, would then be of any use ; inasmuch 
 as there is not to-day in existence in England more than a 
 tenth of what the banks would require if at any moment they 
 were pressed to meet their existing legal liabilities. 
 
CHAPTEE IX 
 
 ENGLISH AND AMERICAN 
 BANKING CONTRASTED— A DANGER FORECAST. 
 
 IN the present article I would invite the reader's attention 
 to some dangers which I imagine I foresee lying in the 
 future of English Banking, in spite of itself, as it were. To 
 bring out this point, a passing consideration of the differences 
 which exist to-day in the relations between General Industry 
 and Banking in America and England respectively will best 
 serve our purpose. 
 
 Now, in America it is a matter of common notoriety that 
 there is scarcely a single department of trade, a single staple 
 article of food or clothing, a single necessary household 
 utensil, or other convenience of life, which has not been swept 
 up and amalgamated into some gigantic Trust or Combine, 
 which — like the Standard Oil, Steel, Beef, Sugar, and other 
 established Trusts — either already enjoys a real and undisputed 
 monopoly, or, at the pace at which this tendency to combi- 
 nation is going, a prospective one in the near future. Not only 
 ai'e the incomes of these great monopolies colossal in themselves, 
 but, what is more important for our present purpose, they are 
 concentrated mainly in the hands of a few great controlling 
 millionaires ; and with this result, that the ingenuity of these 
 gentlemen is as much taxed to findvfresh openings outside their 
 own special lines of business for the investment of their 
 
308 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 enoinnous incomes as in the superintending of these businesses 
 tliemselves. Indeed, in one instance that I have known, an 
 expert at the head of the Investment Department of a great 
 Insurance Company was induced to throw up his position and 
 go over to the service of one of these great Trusts, at a yearly 
 salary equal to the income of a millionaire. Where, then, are 
 the most feasible of these investments naturally to be found ? 
 Obviously, when once they have lapped up the stock of other 
 companies still competing with them in their own line of 
 business, or gobbled it up when these opponents are in difficul- 
 ties, they naturally turn for their fresh investments to the stock 
 of other successful monopolists in other lines of trade ; and 
 notably — as at once the easiest of admittance, and on the 
 whole the most reliable and secure — to Insurance Companies 
 and Banks. It is generally understood, I believe, that the 
 Standard Oil Company, for example, has a finger, if not a 
 controlling interest, in most of the great industrial and com- 
 mercial enterprises — Railways, Electric, Water, Gas, and 
 Tramway Companies, Insm'ance Corporations and Banks — 
 between the Atlantic sea-board and the Pacific Coast. For 
 when these great magnates enter in as investors, it is not by 
 the front door, as it were, like the ordinary public, who are 
 content if they can get a little more than the usual rate 
 of interest for their savings, but by the side door, and into the 
 parlour where their fellow monopolists and magnates sit, and 
 where they mean not only to get special terms and the most 
 plum-yielding part of the stock, but, what is more to the 
 purpose, a seat on the controlling board of the Directorate 
 as well. 
 
 Now, the danger which attends this entrance of the great 
 Industrial Magnates into the Banking System is, that by their 
 money power, their influence, and their general prestige, they are 
 enabled at a pinch to obtain from the Bank advances, loans, 
 and renewals of loans, on terras which no outside customers 
 could obtain with anything like the same facility ; or on 
 
ENGLISH AND AMERICAN BANKING CONTRASTED. 309 
 
 *' collateral " which would be passed and accepted with so light a 
 scrutiny by their fellow members. But the time has as yet been 
 much too short for them to have already taken possession of, 
 and divided between them, the heritage of the Banks. For 
 these institutions still retain much of their original independence, 
 and in most instances, perhaps, a large measure of their original 
 freedom from the domination of any body of business men. It 
 is true that the Directorate of Banks are themselves drawn 
 from the ranks of such men, but as a rule these men are so 
 independent of each other in their business concerns, that no 
 single voice has much more weight than another. But at the 
 present time (now that the great magnates have entered in) 
 many members of the Board are already leagued together by a 
 secret bond, namely, that of each being as pecuniarily interested 
 in the business of these fellow members, through his own holdings 
 of their stock, as in his own. And hence I venture to predict, 
 that if the Constitution of the United States remains as it is 
 to-day, and if the wings of these great Trusts are not in the 
 meantime clipped by the extension of a socialistic legislation, 
 growing daily more and more menacing in the Press and in the 
 streets, these Trusts will in a decade or two, at the geometrical 
 pace at which they are going, not only have swallowed up the 
 Banks as a field for the overflow of their investments, and have 
 dominated them entirely, but, in my judgment, will have begun 
 to lay their unholy hands on the Land of the country itself, as 
 the crown at once of their social ambition and family pride. 
 Then farewell, a long farewell, to the boasted Democracy of 
 America, and to the glorious traditions of freedom which 
 heretofore have made of her the envy and the ideal of the Old 
 European world. But that by the way. The question here is, 
 how in the present early and transitional stage of the develop- 
 ment and concentration of the capital of the country in a few 
 hands, and the entrance of the men who control it into the 
 Banks, — how is all this affecting the stability and security of 
 American Banking: itself ? The answer is written large in the 
 
310 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 history of the Bank panic of 1907, where the suspicion that 
 these great corporations were using the assets of the Bank to 
 further their own designs ended by precipitating the crisis. 
 And what conclusion do I propose to draw from this "'' It 
 would seem natural that if these things are done in the ffreen 
 tree — that is to say, in the transitional period, when the 
 magnates, having already entered in, have not as yet been able 
 to bring the Banks entirely under their subjugation and 
 control — what we may expect them to do in the dry, when they 
 are fully enthroned, must be something much worse. But that 
 is not my opinion. On the contrary, I venture to suggest, 
 that when the magnates have once fully incorporated the Banks 
 as a separate department among the other departments of their 
 business energies and enterprises, these Banks will be as safe 
 as their other purely industrial monopolies ; and indeed quite 
 as safe as the English Joint-Stock Banks are to-day, or, for that 
 matter, the Bank of England itself. Now, as it is necessary for 
 me to raise this point, in view of what is to follow, the reader 
 will, perhaps, permit me for a moment to indicate some of my 
 reasons for this opinion. 
 
 In the first place, when once all the greater fields for invest- 
 ment have been captured and closed by the magnates, and when 
 the lesser members of the plutocracy meantime have been 
 squeezed and weeded out by ruthless and insistent pressure 
 (after the manner described by Mr. Lawson in his book on 
 Frenzied Fina7ice), a limited number of multi-millionaires, 
 with boundless and unimpeachable credit and prestige, will have 
 come into the ownership, management, and control of the 
 Banking system of America. And when that time comes, they 
 will not only have all the capital and credit in general which 
 can possibly be required of them by the public to maintain their 
 position, but they can set aside, as among the smallest of their 
 liabilities, all the legal tender necessary for their Banking 
 reserve as well. As monopolists, too, of all the great instru- 
 ments of production, distribution, and exchange, and with 
 
ENGLISH AND AMERICAN BANKING CONTRASTED. 311 
 
 tariffs to keep themselves free from competition from without, 
 they could anticipate their incomes and earnings with a degree 
 of certainty undreamt of at the present time. Besides, by the 
 very magnitude of their credit, and the tranquillizing effect 
 this would have on the public mind, they would stand in as 
 good a position for the allaying of panics as most of those 
 States do whose Governments come to the rescue of the Banks 
 in times of anxiety, when a run on them is imminent or has 
 begun ; inasmuch as by that time the known resources of this 
 confederacy of millionaires would not only be equal to what 
 these States could raise by taxation, but would be free from the 
 political difficulties involved in getting these taxes voted and 
 brought into the Treasury. They would simply tax themselves 
 by setting aside a certain portion of their income as a Banking 
 reserve, and the thing would be done. But this is not all. 
 Being a purely economic concern, and not a political one, they 
 would have this further advantage over anything like Govern- 
 ment supervision and control, namely, that they would be 
 obliged to administer the banking side of their business with 
 an even greater scrupulosity and regard to the public interest 
 than to their own ; inasmuch as a Banking crisis would not 
 only ruin their banks, as such, but would for the time being 
 ruin all the other departments of their business as well. It is 
 one thing to leave the administration of a man's own property 
 to himself, in the full belief and confidence that every penny 
 of it will be expended to the best advantage for his own safety 
 and security ; it is quite another to leave to governments and 
 bureaucracies the disposal of the property of other people. 
 With the Banks, then, in the hands of the same people who 
 would practically own and control all the other great instru- 
 ments of production, distribution, and transport, the public 
 would be doubly secure ; first, from the fear of Socialistic 
 legislation, provided, that is to say, that socialistic ideas, which 
 are advancing in all countries with steady even tread, shall not 
 get ahead of the march of concentration and combination of 
 
312 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOjMY. 
 
 the magnates before they reach the goal at which, if unchecked, 
 they are destined to arrive ; and secondly, the public would be 
 protected, inasmuch as, if the control of the magnates as 
 Bankers were used for extraneous mercenary, and not for 
 internal legitimate Banking ends, the sword they wield would 
 be turned inwards on themselves, and bleed them more effectu- 
 ally than it could the public ; thereby securing that what was 
 for the nation's best advantage would be for their own best 
 private interest and advantage also. Personally, 1 have no 
 belief that these high-soaring eagles will ever reach the height 
 of domination necessary to give them that control of all the 
 instruments of commerce towards which they are surely tend- 
 ing, and at which, if not arrested in mid-career, they are almost 
 sure in time to arrive. On the contrary, all indications go to 
 show that they will not be permitted to go on at their present 
 pace much farther without the Public itself intervening, and so 
 clipping their wings by legislation in many and various direc- 
 tions as to bring them down to the level of the ordinary earthly 
 biped again. I have indulged in these matters of pure specula- 
 tion entirely with the view of emphasizing the position I wish 
 to make, and that is simply this : that it is not when the 
 great Trusts have been fully consolidated, regimented, and 
 concentrated in a few hands by the squeezing out of all their 
 weaker members, that there will be any danger either to the 
 soundness, the credit, or the efficiency of the Banks which they 
 control ; but that, on the contrary, the danger of panics and 
 crises like that of 1907 is only to be apprehended in the present 
 transitional stage both of American Bankincj and of American 
 Industry. For at the present time in America, and while the 
 higher business principle of combination confronts the old and 
 primitive method of covipetitiov, without as yet having alto- 
 gether subdued and subjugated it ; and where the frontiers of 
 all the great businesses still overlap each other, and their juris- 
 dictions are still in separate hands; where competition still 
 disputes inch by inch, but on a retiring day, the inroads of 
 
ENGLISH AND AMERICAN BANKING CONTRASTED. 313 
 
 combination and the Trusts; where there are as yet neither 
 skeleton keys enough to unlock all private doors by night, nor 
 power enough to openly force them in the public daylight ; the 
 invaders, like those kings who have to round off their still 
 unconquered dominions either by direct purchase, or a tempt- 
 ing share in the new jurisdiction, or by the marriage of their 
 daughters with the recalcitrants, are obliged to resort to endless 
 " deals," manoeuvres, stratagems, diversions, and transfers of 
 property to attain their end ; the consequence being that great 
 blocks and bales of over-watered or over-depreciated stock, 
 with unknown possibilities and values, are flung across between 
 the parties to the deal in bewildering profusion; and in the 
 pell-mell and bustle of business and bargaining are, and must be, 
 accepted more or less at the face value of their labels, or on the 
 reputed standing of their owners, and so find their way as 
 " collateral " into the Banks, already inflated, if not entirely 
 dominated, by the very men between whom these transactions 
 occur. And with result — what? Panics like those of 1907, 
 with the danger of more ahead, so long as this transitional period 
 ushering in the full triumph of the combination and consolida- 
 tion of industry continues. Indeed, this must be so in a country 
 stiU half developed, and with thousands of new and unknown 
 ventures emerging on the horizon of every day, puff"ed up or 
 depressed with Stock Exchange and newspaper inflation and 
 intrigue, to-day in the trough of the wave, and to-morrow on 
 its crest. 
 
 Now, at the present time, none of the conditions which I 
 have just described are to be found in connexion with the 
 English Banking System. Here all is diff'erent, and all in a 
 more primitive stage, but one which the Old Academical 
 Economists would fain persuade us is the very apex and 
 flowering of the golden industrial age ! In the first place, 
 beyond a few manufacturing industries in special lines of 
 work, no great department of English trade has as yet even 
 begun to fall under the domination of a Trust, or the control 
 
314 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 of one or a few individual men, in the American sense of these 
 terms — none of the railways or other great carrying agencies, 
 none of the great staple articles of universal domestic con- 
 sumption, or utensils of household necessity, not the great 
 steel industr}-, not the shipping, not the wholesale trade, not 
 insurance, and, lastly, not the banks. All these alike have 
 hitherto been split up and distributed among individual firms 
 independent largely of each other, many of them great in 
 themselves, but, with a few exceptions, none of them as yet 
 able to dominate or dictate terms to the rest. Now, as a Pro- 
 tectionist, I am quite prepared to admit that this relative 
 backwardness of England in emerging from a more primitive 
 stage in the organization of Industry, namely, that of free com- 
 peting Industries, with their waste, friction, and expense, into 
 the higher constructive stage of Combination, with its immense 
 economic advantages and its saving of waste and cost, is to a 
 large extent due to our system of Free Trade. But to those 
 Academical Economists, who knowing well that, if Competition 
 as an economic principle were once replaced by Combination, 
 they and all their works would be sunk in the deep sea ; and 
 who, in consequence, love to imagine that this little three-legged 
 tripod of theirs, resting on Competition, Laissez-Faire, and 
 Free Trade, will remain as an eternal oracle of the world, I 
 will venture to say that, Free Trade or no Free Trade, they 
 might as well attempt to hold back the planets in their courses 
 as to prevent the principle of Competition in the business 
 world from passing everywhere in all complex industrial States 
 into the principle of Combination, as we see it to-day in 
 America. 
 
 In Mr. Macrosty's standard work on Trusts, we see the 
 quiet and insidious way in which these Combines are already 
 extending — here in this business, there in that — but, as yet, like 
 submarines with only their funnels visible to the man in the 
 street ; but they have arrived, nevertheless, and mean to stay 
 all the same. Nor is there any living reason why they should 
 
ENGLISH \ND AMERICAN BANKING CONTRASTED. 313 
 
 not arrive. There is a sufficient Home Trade to justify them 
 in all the great industries which have given England her 
 position in the world, and which still constitute a good three- 
 fourths of all her trade ; while as a fighting force in her 
 Foreign Trade, the mass and weight of capital behind each of 
 their keen cutting blades would, whether in resistance to the 
 " dumping " of other nations on us, or in helping us to dump 
 on them, be an enormous industrial asset in our favour. The 
 sharing of the spoils with these great magnates, as a legitimate 
 offset to the extra profits which their monopolies permit them 
 to enjoy, is a separate matter, and belongs to the domain of 
 Politics and Legislation, if, as is most probable, their beards 
 will have to be trimmed and their locks cropped in some 
 proportionate measure to the privileges which, as monopolists, 
 they will enjoy. But as it is only the economic and purely 
 business aspects of the matter that I am considering, this need 
 not now concern us. What I wish to emphasize here is simply 
 this, that no political movement, whether in the direction of 
 the most aggressive Socialism or of the most rigid or 
 reactionary Conservatism, can arrest the progress and develop- 
 ment of Industry in England from the stage of Competition 
 to that of Combination ; and that in the transitional period 
 between the two, on which we are now only just entering, 
 great Trusts and magnates here, like those in America, will 
 find their way into our Bank parlours precisely as they have 
 done there, and with the same danger to Banking stability and 
 credit here, during the period over which the transition lasts, 
 as we have seen there. And when that period Is fully entered 
 on, no longer will the frock-coated gentlemen who preside over 
 these Banks enjoy that sweet repose which they own at present ; 
 nor the Banks over which they preside, that confidence and 
 stability which is theirs to-day. At the present time, and, 
 indeed, for generations, the Boards of Directors of the great 
 English Banks have, like the Jewish Priests in the Temple 
 Service, held themselves unspotted in their high calling, and 
 
316 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 have preserved unsullied the semi-sacred traditions of their 
 office — of high business honour, integrity, decorum, and scrupu- 
 losity in the minutest matters of their Law, — but once the 
 exploiting magnates of the coming Trusts have entered in, they 
 will, like the money-changers who had their seats in the outer 
 courts, transform them into Boards of hustlers and stock- 
 exchangers rather, shoving their sheaves of securities, good and 
 bad alike, into their managers' hands by compulsion, and 
 making: of the Banks themselves convenient houses of resort 
 for the driving home of accommodations and deals between 
 themselves and their fellow-conspirators. That is the idea, a 
 little overcharged, perhaps, to bring out my meaning and 
 conviction, for purposes of illustration, — but it may stand. 
 Besides, it is a thing not for the present but for the future 
 to see, if at all. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 America, Unity with ... ... 220 
 
 Asceticism. Practice of ... 87 
 
 Ashley, Professor ... ... 12 
 
 Augustin, St 85 
 
 B 
 
 Banking System, Dangers of 
 
 American ... ... 308 
 
 Millionaires and ... ... 310 
 
 Banks, Faults in English ... 290 
 
 Bax, Mr., on Marx's Book ... 61 
 
 Benson, Mr., on PubUc Schools 195 
 Blatchford, Mr. Robert ... 3, 16 
 
 On Surplus Wealth ... 69 
 
 Attitude to Inventors, etc. 70 
 
 Buckle, Divisions of ... ... 80 
 
 Sociology of ... ... 116 
 
 Capital, Saving and 248 
 
 Carlyle, Sociology of ... 7, 114 
 
 On Political Economy ... 199 
 
 Carnegie, Mr. ... ... ... 6 
 
 Chamberlain, Mr., Residuum 
 
 under Scheme of 209, 214 
 
 Colonies and ... 210, 215 
 
 On Tariff 259 
 
 Herr Houston, his "Foun- 
 dations of the XlXth 
 Century Ill 
 
 Christianity, Mr. Kidd and ... 84 
 
 Effect on Civilization ... 86 
 
 How Paganism crossed to 93 
 
 Church, Method of 227 
 
 Civilization, Kidd on ... ... 80 
 
 Great Problem of ... 83, 93 
 
 Kidd's Theory of, useless 89 
 
 What Kidd should have 
 
 given us on ... ... 90 
 
 Kidd's Confusion of Cate- 
 gories in Principles of 91 
 
 Not a Natural Product ... 237 
 
 Colonies, War and 217 
 
 How to Deal with 218 
 
 Comte, His Three Stages ... 80 
 
 Mr. Wells and ... 98,110 
 
 Sociological Factors of ... 117 
 Competition, Combination and 
 
 256, 312 
 
 in Banking 315 
 
 Credit, Bank of England and 302 
 
 Durkhelm, Professor, Sociology 
 
 of 114 
 
 On Spencer 117 
 
 E 
 
 Economists, Old, on Free Trade 164 
 
 Mistakes of 170 
 
318 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Economy, Political, Old ... 8 
 
 Producers and Consumers 
 
 and ... 157, 164, 212 
 
 Illusions of 160 
 
 Resume of New 208 
 
 Edison 7, 19 
 
 England, National Ideal of 
 
 189, 191, 197 
 
 Importance to World of ... 194 
 
 To Re-stock Fields of ... 210 
 
 Bank of ... 288, 305, seq. 
 
 Equality, Marx on 65 
 
 America and Doctrine of... 226 
 
 Evolution, Party of and Political 
 
 Problems ... 223, 226 
 
 Principles of Party of 228, 235 
 
 Whom Party of, Suited for 289 
 
 Fabians, not True Socialists ... 41 
 
 Why their Methods Impos- 
 sible 44, seq. 
 
 On Inventors ... ... 69 
 
 Families, Man goes in 22, 45 
 
 Family, Socialists and Institu- 
 tion of 30 
 
 G 
 
 Galton, Sir Francis, Wells' 
 
 Treatment of .. , ... 110 
 
 George, Henry, and Landlordism 161 
 
 Justice and... ... ... 246 
 
 Land Taxers and ... ... 254 
 
 Gladstone, on Saving ... 249 
 
 I 
 
 Ideal, The, in America, 
 Germany, England, 
 
 Scotland 189 
 
 Knowledge not England's 
 
 198, 197 
 
 Consequence of England's 194 
 
 New, for England ... 197 
 
 Industry, Feudal and Scientific 177 
 
 American Constitution and 178 
 
 No Centralization of, in 
 
 England 180 
 
 Social Democracy and ... 181 
 
 Social Aristocracy and ... 182 
 
 State, Non - interference 
 
 with 187 
 
 Inequality, Love of ... ...68, 74 
 
 Inventors 7, 17, 30 
 
 Pay of 36 
 
 Marx on 62 
 
 H 
 
 Hyndman, Mr. 
 
 29, 59 
 
 Justice, Economic 
 
 ...11, 14 
 
 bfPov>'er 
 
 ... 15 
 
 Mixing of Races and 
 
 121, 124 
 
 Social 
 
 28. 125 
 
 Definition of 
 
 26, 231 
 
 Idea of, Stolen 
 
 from 
 
 Christianity 
 
 ... 38 
 
 Economic Rights and 
 
 ...35, 38 
 
 Marx on Economic 
 
 ... 62 
 
 Idealists and 
 
 ... 163 
 
 In Taxation 
 
 246, 260 
 
 K 
 
 Kidd, Mr. , On Spirit of Past 
 
 and Future ... 81, seq. 
 
 Kitson, Mr., On Money 
 
 Problem 107 
 
INDEX. 
 
 319 
 
 Labour, Trade Unions and ... 162 
 Old Economists and ... 164 
 
 Laissez-faire, An Age of 214, 233 
 
 Taxation and ... ... 245 
 
 Bank Credit and 302 
 
 Lowenfeld, Mr. Henry, 
 
 Tariff Scheme of 261 
 
 M 
 
 Macrosty, Mr., On Trusts ... 314 
 
 Marshall, Professor, Separating 
 Consumption from 
 Production 274 
 
 Finds no Surplus 278 
 
 Marx, Karl ... ... ... 5 
 
 His Book on Capital .59, seq. 
 
 Political Economy of ... 67 
 
 Fallacies of 68 
 
 On Taxation 246 
 
 McDonald, Mr. Ramsay ... 3 
 
 "TheTaU" and 55 
 
 On Taxation 246 
 
 Mill, .Tohn Stuart, On Infant 
 
 Industries ... ... 142 
 
 Political Economy of 
 
 ... 161 
 
 Money, Love of 
 
 73, seq. 
 
 Dear and Cheap ... 
 
 ... 295 
 
 N 
 
 
 Nature, Powers of 
 
 6 
 
 
 
 Origen ... 
 
 88 
 
 Past, Mr. Wells on uselessness 
 
 of 101 
 
 Perdicaris, Mr. Ion, suggestion 
 
 of, on ' units of value '... 107 
 
 Present, Mr. Kidd on Living 
 
 in 81, 92, seq. 
 
 Press, Attitude of 240 
 
 Origin of English 241 
 
 " Statesmen " and ... 241 
 
 Producers, Consumers and 
 
 157, 212 
 
 Production, Instruments of. 
 
 256, 264, 283 
 
 Marshall on Consumption 
 
 and 268,280 
 
 Surplus 271, 273 
 
 Protection. Conditions which 
 
 Justify 141 
 
 England and 142 
 
 Gives National Guarantee 145 
 
 flobson, Caillard, Holt- 
 Schooling, Byng, on... 151 
 
 Wages and... ... ... 213 
 
 " The Boss " under ... 221 
 
 R 
 
 Race Degeneration, causes of 132 
 
 DiflBculties in dealing with 133 
 
 Sociology and 134 
 
 Remedies for 136 
 
 Races, Mixing of 121, 136, 238 
 
 Government Fallacies in 
 
 Mixing ... ... 124 
 
 Why Wish to Mix ... 126 
 
 Spencer on Mixing ... 126 
 
 Admixture in Europe ... 128 
 
 Four Alternatives in . . 129 
 
 Roosevelt, Negro and ... 120 
 
 Rousseau, Negro and ... 226 
 
 Justice and ... ... 231 
 
 Ruskin, On Division of Pro- 
 duct 163 
 
320 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Samaurai, Mr. Wells, 99, 104, 107, 109 
 
 Shaw, Mr. Bernard 3 
 
 On Taxation ... 246, 250 
 
 Fallacies of his Scheme ... 252 
 
 Smith, Adam 8 
 
 Snowden, Mr 3 
 
 On Taxation 246 
 
 Socialism, Boredom of ... 70 
 
 Socialists, Proposals of ... 4 
 
 Sympathy with Rebellion 37 
 
 Their Utopia 71 
 
 What, Stole from Christi- 
 anity ... ... 73 
 
 Marxian 234 
 
 Taxation 246, 250 
 
 Eminent, Wells on 110 
 
 Sociology, Problem of... . 105, 115 
 
 Based on Past 106 
 
 Its Function ... ... 113 
 
 Durkheim and ... 114, 116 
 
 Laws of, whence drawn ... 114 
 
 Buckle's, Carlyle's, and 
 
 Hegel's Factors of ... 116 
 
 Mr. Branf ord and 118 
 
 False, and Race Degener- 
 ation ... ... ... 135 
 
 Spectator, on Buying and 
 
 Selling .' ... 184 
 
 Spencer, Herbert — Mr. Wells 
 
 on 99 
 
 Sociology of 117 
 
 Taxers, Land, Schemes of 254, 258 
 
 Taxes, Shifting of 257 
 
 Tertullian ... ... ... 88 
 
 Trade, Laws for Building up... 155 
 
 Like Locomotive Engine... 185 
 
 Complementary 202 
 
 Historical resum^ of ... 205 
 
 Trade, Free, Conditions that 
 
 favour 140 
 
 England and ... 153,169 
 
 When, is false ... ... 166 
 
 Historical Survey of 168, 176 
 
 To ruin England under 
 
 171, 183, 277, seq. 
 
 Cosmopolitanism and 
 
 146, 188, 196 
 
 Reasons for throwing out 195 
 
 When Profitable 202 
 
 Universal 207 
 
 In Gold 300 
 
 Traders, Free, Illusions and 
 
 Fallacies of 142, 186, 200 
 
 Peaceful Exchange and 201, seq. 
 
 Surplus Production and 
 
 273, 275, 278 
 
 Their Theory of Capital ... 281 
 
 Complementary Products and 282 
 
 Turkey, New Constitution of 122 
 
 u 
 
 Utopia, Foundation of Mr. Wells' 108 
 
 Utopias, Mr. Wells on ... 99, seq. 
 
 Easy to Construct ... 104 
 
 w 
 
 Webb, Mr. Sidney, Scheme of, 
 
 and Mr. Bernard Shaw 51, 252 
 
 Wells, Mr., What he ignores 46, seq. 
 Scheme of ... ... ... 54 
 
 Indebtedness of ... 106,111 
 Claims for his Utopia ... 107 
 
 Wheel 155 
 
 Producers and Consumers on 
 
 157, 167 
 
 Withers, Mr. Hartley, on Bank 
 
 of England 300 
 
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