ENGLAND FOR ALL,
 
 ENGLAND FOR ALL 
 
 BY 
 
 H. M. HYNDMAN. 
 
 DEDICATED TO THE DEMOCRATIC AND WORKING MEN'S 
 CLUBS OF GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND. 
 
 Hoiition : 
 PRINTED BY : MESSRS. GILBERT & RIVINGTON. 
 
 1881. 
 [All rights reserved^
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 IN this changeful period, when the minds of men are 
 much troubled about the future, and many seem 
 doubtful whither we are bound, I have attempted 
 to suggest for the Democratic party in this country 
 a clear and definite policy. The views expressed in 
 this little work do not, I am aware, accord with the 
 commonly received politics and economy of the day. 
 Holding, as I do, strong opinions as to the capacity 
 of the great English-speaking democracies to take 
 the lead in the social reorganization of the future, 
 I think it right to state them, and to show at the 
 same time how seriously the working people suffer 
 under our present landlord and capitalist system. 
 
 From the luxurious classes, as a whole, I expect 
 little support. They have plenty of writers ready to 
 champion their cause. To the people alone I appeal, 
 and their approval will be my reward. 
 
 It was for the Democratic Federation that I
 
 vi PREFACE. 
 
 originally wrote this book, and I present to its 
 members the first copies to-day. 
 
 For the ideas and much of the matter contained in 
 Chapters II. and III., I am indebted to the work of 
 a great thinker and original writer, which will, I trust, 
 shortly be made accessible to the majority of my 
 countrymen. 
 
 H. M. H. 
 
 JuneZth, 1 88 1. 
 
 10, DEVONSHIRE STREET, PORTLAND PLACE, 
 LONDON, W.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 ) 
 
 PAGE 
 
 INTRODUCTION i 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 THE LAND 7 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 LABOUR 32 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 CAPITAL 65 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 ORGANIZATION 88 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 IRELAND . . . . . . . . . . .112 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 INDIA . 131 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 THE COLONIES 152 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 FOREIGN AFFAIRS 169 
 
 CONCLUSION 193
 
 ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 IT is impossible to survey our modern society without 
 at once seeing that there is something seriously amiss 
 in the conditions of our every-day life. All may 
 indeed lament the inequalities around them, the 
 wasted wealth and excessive luxury of the rich, the 
 infinite misery and degradation of the poor. So clear 
 is the mischief which results from causes apparently 
 beyond control, that now and then a paroxysm of 
 self-reproach seizes upon the comfortable classes, and 
 they try some new-fangled scheme of charity to 
 remedy the ills which, for the moment, they think 
 must be due to them. But this temporary feeling is 
 very short-lived. The conditions of human existence 
 are said to be unchangeable by collective, far less by 
 individual, action, and religion is often called in to 
 justify the let-alone policy which is so far the most 
 convenient to the well-to-do. 
 
 Possibly, however, a change is at hand. In Eng- 
 land as elsewhere, ideas in these days move fast. That 
 disgust with both the political parties in the State 
 which has long been felt by the more intelligent of 
 
 B
 
 ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 the working-class? that rooted impression that men in 
 broadcloth, no matter how they label themselves, 
 are banded together, in spite of their pledges at the 
 polls, to keep the men in fustian from their fair share 
 of the enjoyments of life, is spreading now from the 
 abler men to the less far-sighted. More and more 
 clear is it becoming to our people that their interest 
 in politics is something which, if fully understood, lies 
 far deeper than that of their daily or weekly wage. 
 " We working men," said one, " shall never know our 
 real interest in politics till the mother teaches the 
 truth about them to her child ;" and this phrase by 
 itself happily shows that a very different view of the 
 duty of the community to all is growing up from that 
 indifference and sluggishness which have hitherto 
 checked progress. How could it be otherwise ? Is 
 it conceivable that the men who make the wealth of 
 the country will permanently be satisfied with a sys- 
 tem which shuts them out for ever from all interest 
 in their own land ? that they will be content to live 
 from hand to mouth on the strength of mere phrases, 
 and that they will always consent to be deprived of 
 their due share of representation ? They are indeed 
 shortsighted who so suppose. Now therefore it be- 
 comes necessary that people of all classes who desire 
 that our existing society should be peacefully modified 
 should be content to examine, a little more deeply 
 than heretofore, into the present state of things. 
 
 This, so far as the wealthy are concerned, from the 
 most selfish point of view ; for there is nothing here 
 in the eternal fitness of things. The evolution of 
 mankind will not stand still, in order that landowners
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 and capitalists may continue their present leisurely 
 existence, or that the well-to-do generally may regard 
 the sufferings of the toilers as of small account. Such 
 poverty as now exists is not an inseparable accom- 
 paniment of human society ; neither is such excessive 
 concentration of wealth an incentive to human pro- 
 gress. The gospel of greed and selfishness, of cor- 
 ruption and competition, now proclaimed as the only 
 means of social salvation, is seen to be false in its 
 principles, and baneful in its results. This furious 
 'development of wealth, on which we sometimes con- 
 gratulate ourselves, has done little to elevate, and 
 much to lower, the tone even of the classes which 
 have benefited by it. What has it done for the 
 working class ? Never at any period in our history 
 were the many who work and the few who live upon 
 their labour so wide apart, socially and politically, as 
 they are to-day ; never and this is becoming in 
 itself serious has there been such a general sensation 
 of uneasiness without any immediate cause. 
 
 Yet who can wonder that uneasiness there should 
 be ? Political reforms have done very little for our 
 people. Periods of flash prosperity, speedily followed 
 by depression which pinches and starves even the best 
 artisan class ; education progressing so slowly that 
 still another generation will be suffered to grow up 
 instructed enough only to be ignorant ; overcrowded 
 insanitary dwellings permitted to continue, and paid 
 for at an exorbitant price because this is to the benefit 
 of the classes who trade upon the necessities of their 
 fellows ; vast monopolies encouraged and overwork 
 scarcely checked, here we have the boasted freedom 
 
 B 2
 
 ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 of the latter half of the nineteenth century. The very 
 champions of free trade as the universal panacea are 
 themselves driven to confess that, true though their 
 theory is, it has not produced the social effect they 
 predicted. 1 The rich have grown richer ; but the poor 
 their condition is but little bettered, and relatively 
 has gone back. Our civilization is in many respects 
 but an organized hypocrisy, filming over as ulcerous 
 places below as ever disgraced the worst periods of 
 past history. But there is something more than 
 hypocrisy or indifference to account for the crying 
 evils of our great cities, and the miserable poverty and 
 bad lodgment which degrades our agricultural popu- 
 lation. More general causes than any which individuals 
 can right, are at work. Private enterprise has been 
 tried and found wanting : laissez-faire has had its day. 
 Slowly the nation is learning that the old hack argu- 
 ments of " supply and demand," " freedom of con- 
 tract," " infringement of individual liberty/' are but 
 so many bulwarks of vested interests, which inflict 
 misery on the present, and deterioration on the next, 
 generation, in the name of a pseudo-science of govern- 
 
 1 Two professors of the straitest sect of economic orthodoxy, 
 Mr. Henry Fawcett and Mr. Thorold Rogers, are of the same 
 opinion on this point. Free trade is undeniably true in theory, 
 but they agree that it has benefited the poor very little in 
 comparison with the enormous wealth it has given to the rich. 
 Free Trade lowers the price of the necessaries of life ;but it also 
 keeps wages lower than they otherwise would be. It would be easy 
 to show that the working classes owe all the improvement that has 
 been made in their condition, not to free trade, but to combination 
 among themselves, and to legislation carried directly in the 
 teeth of the most violent opposition from the leaders of the 
 free trade party.
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 merit. Bad as is the education of the majority of 
 Englishmen compared with what it ought to be, they 
 have learnt enough to be dissatisfied with arrange- 
 ments which, when more ignorant, they might have 
 accepted as inevitable. Of the sufferings which the 
 real producers of this great industrial community 
 undergo, the comfortable classes hear but little. They 
 barely talk of their troubles to their most intimate 
 friends. The natural inclination of Englishmen is to 
 bear in silence. Hitherto many have found consola- 
 tion in religion, which held out to them the prospect 
 of happiness hereafter in return for sorrow and misery 
 here. That resource is now failing, and the bolder 
 spirits it is useless to blink plain truths openly 
 deride those " drafts on eternity " which they say are 
 issued solely in the interest of employers and rich 
 men. Their own ills nevertheless they may bear : 
 that they will consent to hand on the same lot to their 
 children is very unlikely. The day for private charity 
 and galling patronage is at an end ; the time for com- 
 bination and political action in redress of social wrongs 
 is at hand. 
 
 Such changes as are needed may be gradual, but 
 they must be rapid. In England, fortunately, we have 
 a long political history to lead up to our natural 
 development, the growth of a great nation such as 
 ours has its effect on all portions of the people. 
 Patriotism is part of our heritage ; self-restraint neces- 
 sarily comes from the exercise of political power. 
 Even the poorest are ready to accept the assurance of 
 real reform, rather than listen to those who would 
 urge them to resort in desperation to violent change.
 
 ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 Yet these reforms must in the end be far more 
 thorough than the enthusiasts of compromise, and the 
 fanatics of moderation are ready to admit. Hitherto 
 there has been patience, because all have hoped for 
 the best. But longer delay is not only harmful but 
 dangerous. We are ready enough to talk about 
 justice to others. Greeks, Slavs, Bulgars, Boers, 
 Negroes, are ever appealing to our sense of what is 
 due to the oppressed. Let the people of these islands, 
 without despising others, now be just to themselves. 
 If the theories now gaining ground all over the 
 Continent, as well as here with us, are to be met peace- 
 fully, and turned to the advantage of all, the necessary 
 change of front can no longer be delayed. The State, 
 as the organized common-sense of public opinion, 
 must step in, regardless of greed or prejudice, to regu- 
 late that nominal individual freedom which simply 
 strengthens the domination of the few. Thus only 
 shall the England of whose past we all are proud, and 
 of whose future all are confident, clear herself from 
 that shortsighted system which now stunts the physi- 
 cal and intellectual growth of the great majority, knit 
 together the great democracies near and far under our 
 flag, and deal out to our dependencies a full measure 
 of that justice which alone can secure for us and for 
 ours the leadership in the social reorganization 
 which will be our greatest claim to respect and 
 remembrance from countless generations of the human 
 race.
 
 THE LAND. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE LAND. 
 
 POSSESSION of the land is a matter of such supreme 
 importance to the libertyand well-being of Englishmen, 
 that the only marvel is not that there should be a 
 growing agitation on the subject to-day, but that the 
 nation should ever have been content to bear patiently 
 the monopoly which has been created during the 
 past 300 years. It affords indeed a strange commen- 
 tary upon the history of human progress, that we 
 have to look back more than 400 years to the period 
 when the mass of the people of these islands were 
 in their most prosperous and wholesome condition. 
 In those middle ages which our school-books still 
 speak of as days of darkness and ignorance, the 
 great body of Englishmen were far better off in every 
 way than they are now. The men who fought in the 
 French wars, and held their own against every Conti- 
 nental army, were sober, hardworking yeomen and 
 life-holders, who were ready to pay for their victories 
 out of their own pockets, instead of saddling their 
 descendants with a perpetual mortgage in the shape 
 of a huge national debt. They owned the soil and 
 lived out of it, and having secured for themselves
 
 ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 power at home and freedom by their own firesides, 
 they kept them. 
 
 The fifteenth century was the golden age of agri- 
 cultural England. Villenage had disappeared ; the 
 country far more populous at that time than is 
 commonly supposed was occupied and cultivated by 
 free men, who tilled their own lands, subject only to 
 light dues payable to feudal superiors. Such day- 
 labourers as there were, lived in perfect freedom, 
 owned plots of land themselves, and shared in the 
 enormous common land which then lay free and open 
 to all. Landless, houseless families were almost 
 unknown, permanent pauperism was undreamt of. 
 The feudal lords who maintained around them crowds 
 of retainers were at this time merely the heads of a 
 free, prosperous society, which recognized them as their 
 natural leaders alike in war and peace. Notwith- 
 standing, or rather by reason of the great subdivision 
 of land, the wealth of the bulk of the people was 
 extraordinary. They were their own masters, and 
 could speak their own minds freely to all ; the 
 degrading servility of the agricultural labourer of to- 
 day had not appeared to take the place of the 
 thraldom of the old serfs. No description ever given 
 of any people shows a more prosperous set of men 
 than the Englishmen of that time. Their sturdy 
 freedom was based upon property and good living. 
 
 " The King of England cannot alter the laws or 
 make new ones without the express consent of the 
 whole kingdom in Parliament assembled. Every 
 inhabitant is at his liberty fully to use and enjoy 
 whatever his farm produceth, the fruits of the earth,
 
 THE LAND. 
 
 the increase of his flock, and the like ; all the improve- 
 ment he makes, whether by his own proper industry 
 or of those he retains in his service, are his own to 
 use and to enjoy without the let, interruption, or denial 
 of any. If he be in any wise injured or oppressed, 
 he shall have amends and satisfactions against the 
 party offending. Hence it is that the inhabitants 
 are rich in gold, silver, and in all the necessaries and 
 conveniences of life. They drink no water, unless at 
 certain times, and by the way of doing penance. 
 They are fed in great abundance with all sorts of 
 flesh and fish, of which they have plenty everywhere ; 
 they are clothed throughout in good woollens ; their 
 bedding and other furniture in their houses are of 
 wool, and that in great store. They are also pro- 
 vided with all other sorts of household goods, and 
 necessary implements for husbandry. Every one 
 according to his rank hath all things which conduce to 
 make life easy and happy." This was merrie England, 
 in short merrie, that is, for Englishmen as a whole, 
 not merely for the landlords and capitalists at the 
 top, who live in ease on the fruits of their labour. 
 For a day-labourer, a plain, unskilled hand with his 
 geese, and sheep, and cow on the common could then 
 get something for his day's work. That of course is 
 the real test of the comfort and well-being of the 
 mass of the people, at all periods and under all 
 governments what food and what clothing a man 
 can get for so many days' work. 
 
 A common day-labourer, then, in the fifteenth century 
 could earn a fat sheep by four days' work, a fat ox 
 by twenty days' work, and a fat hog two years old by
 
 io ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 twelve days' work. Clothing he could obtain on at 
 least equally good terms. His own labour for others 
 and on his own plot supplied him and his family well 
 with all " the necessaries and conveniences of life/' 
 Those even of the poorer sort lived upon beef, pork, 
 veal, and mutton every day. There is no dispute 
 about this. There are the recorded lists of prices for 
 food, drink, and raiment, the rates paid in parish after 
 parish for unskilled labour. Men so different as 
 Cobbett and Favvcett, Thornton and Rogers, are all 
 agreed on these points. They are of one mind, that 
 the working agriculturist of the fifteenth century was 
 a well-to-do free man. 
 
 How do our present agricultural labourers figure in 
 comparison ? How much of such fare as that given 
 above are hired labourers on ten and twelve shillings 
 a week likely to get, and what sort of houses do they 
 too often inhabit ? We all can judge of that, even if 
 the reports of Agricultural Commissions were not at 
 hand to tell us. The agricultural labourer of to-day is 
 a mere pauper beside his ancestor of 400 years ago, who 
 probably owned the land out of which the landowner 
 and the farmer now permit his descendant to work 
 a scanty subsistence which barely enables him to taste 
 meat once a month. His wages are shameful and his 
 cottage a disgrace. What is the reason then of all 
 this increasing penury, accompanied in rural districts 
 by an astounding decrease of population ? Unques- 
 tionably the entire removal of the people from the land 
 is the chief cause of the mischief. Those yeomen and 
 free farmers, and fat well-fed labourers, who secured 
 for us those liberties which of late years have been
 
 THE LAND. 11 
 
 made such surprisingly little use of were turned out, and 
 the history of how it was done, and how our present 
 hand-to-mouth population was formed, is not a plea- 
 sant tale. The mass of men have now no real freedom 
 either in country or town, because the land has been 
 taken by the great landholders and never yet restored 
 to the nation at large. Thus the sense of property, 
 of ownership, individual or collective, is done away. 
 
 From our own land still comes the bulk of the 
 wealth of the country, the food, the ores, the coal, which 
 enable us to hold our own, and get a return from other 
 parts of the world. But the workers who do this for 
 England have no part nor lot in their country of to- 
 day. They own nothing but their bare right to compete 
 with their fellows in the labour-market. Who can 
 fail in such circumstances to recall these stirring 
 words ? " Freedom is not an empty sound ; it is not 
 an abstract idea ; it is not a thing that nobody can 
 feel. It means, and it means nothing else, the full 
 and quiet enjoyment of your own property. If you 
 have not this if this be not well secured to you, you 
 may call yourself what you will, but you are a slave. 
 Now our forefathers took special care upon this car- 
 dinal point. They suffered neither kings nor 
 parliaments to touch their property without cause 
 clearly shown. They did not read newspapers, they 
 did not talk about debates, they had no taste for 
 ' mental enjoyments ;' but they thought hunger and 
 thirst great evils, and they never suffered anybody to 
 put them on cold potatoes and water. They looked 
 upon bare bones and rags as indubitable marks of 
 slavery ; and they never failed to resist any attempt
 
 ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 to affix these marks upon them." And we too hold 
 much the same opinions, and we too regard pauperism 
 and destitution as disgraces to a free country. But 
 unfortunately this generation, and others before it, 
 have grown up to think such " indubitable marks of 
 slavery " unavoidable, and hold too that land should 
 rightfully belong in perpetuity to the handful of men 
 who drove the mass of the population from the soil, 
 or who bought from the descendants of those who 
 did. But the life of a nation like ours outlasts all 
 such temporary troubles ; its rights, though long in 
 abeyance, are never done away. The truth that the 
 land of England belongs to the people of England is 
 coming home to men of all classes ; and the best proof 
 that our existing system will no longer be borne 
 with contentment is that the historical wrong which 
 has been done is daily more and more considered. 
 
 That revolution which supplied England with a 
 bountiful succession of paupers, and laid the founda- 
 tion of landlordism in the country, and of capitalism 
 in the towns commenced in the last quarter of the 
 fifteenth century and the beginning of the sixteenth. 
 After the wars of the Roses had impoverished the 
 nobility, the dismissal of numerous baronial households 
 launched upon the country a whole horde of landless 
 people, without house or home. These unfortunates 
 had no place whatever in society as it then existed, 
 and became at once mere vagrants and competitors for 
 all sorts of chance employments. But for the 
 monasteries and other religious establishments their 
 condition would have been far worse than it was. 
 Even these outcasts, however, might have been
 
 THE LAND. 
 
 gradually absorbed ; but about the same time the great 
 nobles, who were at variance with the crown and the 
 parliament, set to work to restore their fortunes by 
 turning out the peasant owners, who under the feudal 
 law had at least as good a title as their own to their 
 holdings. Such raids were followed up by encroach- 
 ments on the common lands, which the labourers 
 depended upon for depasturing their animals. Ac- 
 companying these robberies also was a steady conver- 
 sion of arable land into pasture, on the ground that 
 more was to be gained by feeding sheep than men 
 a contention which has of late been put forward 
 also in Scotland, Ireland, and in newly-settled coun- 
 tries. To compete profitably in the wool-markets of 
 Flanders was more important than to maintain a race 
 of independent peasant farmers. 
 
 These changes worked a deplorable deterioration in 
 the condition of the mass of the people. The number 
 of the agricultural population who could find employ- 
 ment in the old way rapidly lessened. Even now, 
 with our improved methods of cultivation, and labour- 
 saving machinery, arable land will employ more than 
 twice as many men as pasture and raise more beasts, 
 for that matter, as well. But in those days the pro- 
 portion was probably far larger. At any rate, numbers 
 were thrown out of employment in that way. So 
 serious did all this become that Henry VII. and his 
 Parliament made constant efforts to check the 
 rapacious and harmful action of the barons ; but un- 
 fortunately to little purpose. The people were more 
 and more interfered with, and depopulating enclosures 
 were going on regularly. Laws were even framed of
 
 ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 the most stringent character to prevent ejection of 
 the peasants and the destruction of their houses. All 
 without effect. The landless class still increased, and 
 more and more people became dependent on others 
 for support. Henry VII., a great though penurious 
 monarch, saw clearly that the welfare of the mass of 
 his subjects, not the inordinate wealth and aggran- 
 dizement of the few, constituted the real strength 
 of his kingdom, however much he might attempt to 
 fleece them by monopolies out of part of their sub- 
 stance. He was anxious therefore to keep the land 
 in the hands of the small owners, who were really the 
 bone and sinew of the country. Even the day- 
 labourer received consideration, and was secured by 
 the laws four acres of land to his cottage. But the 
 process of expropriation went relentlessly on not- 
 withstanding, and had already produced a serious 
 effect. 
 
 But the confiscation of the lands of the monasteries, 
 and priories, and nunneries, at the time of the 
 Reformation, was a far graver blow to the welfare of 
 the people. Carried out with a shameless disregard 
 for the rights and privileges of the people, by the most 
 violent and despotic monarch who ever sat on the 
 English throne, this was the greatest injury inflicted 
 on the poor which our history records. The property 
 of the Catholic Church, though not always well 
 administered, was in reality at the service of the poor 
 and needy. Whatever might be urged against abbots 
 and friars, pauperism was then unknown. The celibate 
 parish priests had small expenses, and the land they 
 held was held, it may almost be said, in trust for the
 
 THE LAND. 15 
 
 people. The yeomen and labourers on their estates, 
 never disturbed or interfered with from generation to 
 generation, were a prosperous, vigorous folk. Besides, 
 the service of the Church was almost the only career, 
 except successful murder, by which a poor lad might 
 in those days rise to the highest dignities of the State. 
 Prelates and monks were founders of our noblest 
 schools of learning. They were, however, swept away, 
 their goods seized, and the lands taken from the people, 
 to be held by the king or given to his favourites. Parlia- 
 ment then, as later, was bribed to sanction illegal and 
 improper action, by which many of its members largely 
 profited. King and barons were once more knit together 
 in that happy participation in plunder which has been 
 the surest bond of union between monarchs and 
 aristocrats all over the world. Thus the poor who 
 had ever obtained ready relief from the Church, the 
 wayfarers who could always find food and shelter in 
 the religious houses, the children of the people who 
 repaired to the convent for guidance and teaching, 
 were deprived at one fell swoop of alms, shelter, and 
 schools, 
 
 When, however, the monasteries were thus 
 destroyed, and their lands confiscated for the benefit 
 of the King and the aristocracy, not only was almost 
 the last hold of the English people on their own soil 
 torn off, but the monks and nuns, priests and friars, 
 were turned loose upon the world to swell the ranks 
 of the have-nots. The shiftless hand-to-mouth class 
 thus grew with fearful rapidity. The whole country was 
 overrun with loafers and vagrants, deprived of the 
 means of living by no fault of their own. Not even
 
 16 ENGLAND FOR ALL, 
 
 the most atrocious laws could keep them within limits, 
 though they drove them into the towns, and into the 
 power of the shopkeeping class, now gaining strength. 
 Paupers being thus numerous, in the 43rd year of 
 Elizabeth who had resumed all the confiscated lands 
 a Poor Law was passed ; and from that time to this 
 pauperism has formed as integral a portion of our 
 social constitution as the aristocracy who created the 
 necessity for the law. How could it be otherwise? 
 The landed rights of the many had been sacrificed to 
 the greed of the few ; and confiscation, really put in 
 force to bolster up luxury and selfishness, was carried 
 on in the name of religion. 
 
 Between the fifteenth and the beginning of the 
 seventeenth century the whole face of England had 
 been changed. In place of well-being, contentment, 
 and general prosperity, as described by Fortescue* 
 depression and misery had become the common lot of 
 the people who owned no land. The mere wage-earner 
 took the place of the labouring, petty farmer a man 
 at the mercy of his employer. For the fine old 
 yeoman class fell more and more into decrepitude, 
 and the downfall of the ecclesiastical property pre- 
 ceded their own final ruin by but a short interval. 
 Yet even so late as the end of the seventeenth cen- 
 tury eighty per cent, of the population of England 
 was still purely agricultural. By the middle of the 
 eighteenth century there was scarcely a yeoman of the 
 old type left in a county. 
 
 The Stuarts were bad enough, but William III. was 
 worse than any of his immediate predecessors. This 
 great Whig hero treated England as if he had con-
 
 THE LAND. 17 
 
 quered it in respect to all he could lay hands upon, 
 and gave away lands he had no right whatever to 
 dispose of to his thick-headed and greedy Dutch 
 followers. Their descendants prey upon us to this 
 hour, though, with the exception of Lord William 
 Bentinck, not a single one of them has been of the 
 slightest genuine service to the State whose land they 
 have seized, or has illustrated our history even by mis- 
 chance in the field. All this long series of robberies 
 from the people, helped on by economical causes, ended 
 in an aggregation of property and influence in a few 
 hands to an extent never before equalled. 
 
 It was followed by an enclosure of the common 
 lands of a character even more nefarious. Parliament, 
 made up almost exclusively of landowners, and in no 
 sense whatever representative of the mass of the 
 people, framed bill after bill for the enclosure of the 
 commons, which alone were left to show that the soil 
 of England had formerly been looked upon as the 
 property of the great majority. No man, not a land- 
 lord, can read through the records of this disgraceful 
 pillage even now without a feeling of furious bitter- 
 ness. Nothing more shameful is told in the long tale 
 of class greed than this of the seizure of the common 
 lands by the upper and middle classes of Great 
 Britain. To deprive the people of their last vestige of 
 independent holding, and thus to force all to become 
 mere hand-to-mouth wage-earners at the mercy of the 
 growing capitalist class, such was the practical effect 
 of these private enactments, conceived in iniquity, and 
 executed in injustice. For up to so recent a date as 
 1845 these enclosures were done by private bill, and 
 
 C
 
 1 8 ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 of course exclusively in private interest. There was 
 no public discussion whatever ; and rich men who 
 coveted a few thousand acres of common which 
 belonged to their poorer neighbours, simply laid hands 
 upon them and added them to their estate. Fierce 
 protests were often made in the neighbourhood, but 
 they were invariably unavailing. In the course of 150 
 years, between 1700 and 1845, no fewer than 7,000,000 
 acres of public land, and probably a great deal more, 
 were enclosed by the landowners of England in 
 Parliament assembled, without one halfpenny of real 
 compensation ever having been made to the public 
 whose rights were thus ridden over. At that time, be 
 it remarked, the people of England but shabbily 
 represented now had practically no voice in public 
 affairs at all, and such a man as Sir Robert Walpolc 
 just " ran the machine " in the sole interest of his class, 
 for all the world like a Pennsylvanian log-roller or 
 wire-puller of our own day. Not even scraps of those 
 great and valuable common lands remain in some 
 districts to remind the English people of the robberies 
 that have been committed upon them. 
 
 Even since the introduction of public bills to regu- 
 late these enclosures matters were, until quite lately, 
 very little better. A wealthy landgrabber would 
 purchase land all round a common, and then stealthily 
 get it enclosed on some shallow pretext. This 
 occurred over and over again. The hard fight which 
 such a body as the Corporation of the City of London 
 had to wage in order to keep for the people of 
 London what remnant there is of Epping Forest, 
 shows the pertinacity with which individual selfishness
 
 THE LAND. 19 
 
 works on. Conservatives and Liberals who stand up 
 for the ancient and indefeasible rights of property at 
 the expense of others should look into these things. 
 The very people who ate up the whole country away 
 from their countrymen and make land a monopoly, 
 cry out fiercely that they are being ill-used and 
 robbed when an attempt is made to reassert some 
 small portion of the rights of the nation over that 
 which is, and always has been, the property of the 
 nation the land of England. What sort of title have 
 many of them to their lands ? Let them answer who 
 made the laws which gave the eternal right to harm 
 the people. Why, they themselves and their fathers 
 before them. None other. The owners of the land 
 had no voice ; violence, wrong, and fraud, weigh still 
 upon the country. But there need be no fear for 
 those who profited by these encroachments. The 
 people are never unjust, even in their own interest : 
 they pay to get back their simplest rights. 
 
 The effect of this seizure of the commons upon the 
 rural population has been most sad. Their condition, 
 never very flourishing since they were deprived of 
 individual ownership, became yet worse. But I will 
 quote a calm writer, who is fully convinced of the 
 beneficial effects of supply and demand, and freedom 
 of contract : " Many of the descendants of those who 
 once possessed valuable rights of common are agricul- 
 tural labourers, to whose miserable condition allusion 
 has already been made. Our rural population has 
 been deprived of that which once gave a most impor- 
 tant addition to their income. The common often 
 enabled them to keep some poultry, a pig, and a cow. 
 
 C 2
 
 20 ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 Many villages may now be traversed, and not a single 
 labourer can be found possessing a head of poultry ; 
 few even keep a pig, and not one in 10,000 has a cow. 
 What is the result of this ? The labourer does not 
 live as he did 100 years since ; he and his family 
 seldom taste meat, and his children suffer cruelly from 
 the difficulty he has in obtaining milk for them." 
 This, indeed, is a matter of common consent. The 
 agricultural labourer is far worse off than his fore- 
 fathers. But if the people have been deprived of 
 their commons, so also have their plots of ground to 
 their ill-drained, overcrowded cottages disappeared. 
 They make them too " independent." No property, 
 low diet, a pretence of education, and enforced servility 
 to their " betters " that was the way to bring down 
 the " proud peasantry " from their high looks of the 
 fifteenth century to the abasement of a ten-shilling-a- 
 week agricultural labourer, ever begging for some 
 dole out of the fruits of his own labour to be given 
 back to him, from the Hall, the Rectory, or the poor- 
 house. This kept him " in that state of life " which 
 the Church Catechism enjoins upon the lowly. No 
 agricultural labourer, it needs hardly be said, has ever 
 yet sat in the House of Commons to represent the 
 wrongs of his class. 
 
 These unfortunate families, deprived of their own 
 land and ousted from their common lands, became, as 
 we have seen, fair game for the most abominable 
 legislation. The laws against vagrants and men out 
 of work were ferocious and brutal, to a degree scarcely 
 to be credited until they were actually revived in 
 America the other day. By these means they came
 
 THE LAND, 
 
 into the towns, where, refused the right to combine, 
 and wholly destitute of means, they were delivered 
 over to a form of tyranny the more trying from its 
 being carried on under the name of freedom. The 
 very idea that the unfortunate had a definite interest 
 in the country was done away. The poor were only 
 not criminal. And this feeling grew among the 
 dominant class with the growth of that shopkeeper 
 spirit which has been paramount with English parties, 
 to the almost entire exclusion of any sense of justice 
 to the bulk of the community. The few landowners 
 of genuine old family who still remain, and who, one 
 would have thought, would look back with pride to 
 the times when their ancestors were the leaders of 
 well-to-do free men, have been as bad as the rest. 
 They have thought that their duties, such as they 
 were, began and ended with their tenantry. If the 
 labourers received a fair amount in charity after 
 having worked their lives through on starvation 
 wages, that was as much as they could expect. The 
 eternal law of supply and demand justified meat once 
 a fortnight, and short commons all the year round. 
 There stood the workhouse : what more could the 
 people want ? 
 
 But now what has been the outcome to us of to-day 
 of all these uncompensated expropriations in Eng- 
 land of the ducal razzias like those of the Dukes of 
 Sutherland and Argyll in Scotland (the latter worthy 
 peer now naturally standing out with his fellow 
 Liberal of Lansdowne in favour of the perpetuation 
 of serfdom in Ireland) what do we of the present 
 generation derive from all this long succession of
 
 22 ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 past iniquities ? Nothing is easier than to sum it all 
 up. We have then a great body of landowners, 2000 
 of whom alone hold actually 38,000,000 acres of our 
 land in estates of over 5000 acres each, the total 
 agricultural rental of this vast domain being not less 
 than 25,ooo,ooo/. annually. The whole of the agricul- 
 tural land in the kingdom is practically owned by 
 less than 30,000 persons ; and not all the systematic 
 fudging resorted to in the Landlord's Return, known 
 as the " New Doomsday Book," has been able to 
 shake that fact out of the minds of the people of 
 England. In that book Lord Overstone formerly 
 Mr. Jones, a banker of enormous wealth, who turned 
 landgrabber after the manner of his kind the Duke 
 of Buccleuch, and the Duke of Devonshire are put 
 forward as thirty-three different owners. This is only 
 a specimen of how the truth is blinked and covered 
 up by those who are interested in hiding it away from 
 their countrymen. And this monstrous monopoly the 
 landowners, and the big capitalists who hope to be 
 landowners, and their friends and relations the lawyers, 
 who live upon the complications of the laws they 
 themselves have formulated, are now striving to per- 
 petuate. 
 
 Not to speak of the injurious consequences politi- 
 cally of such a concentration of excessive wealth and 
 power in a few hands, the economical drawbacks stare 
 us in the face. Men who own half-a-dozen large pro- 
 perties in several different counties must be permanent 
 absentees from some of them. They take the rents 
 and spend them elsewhere, being themselves the 
 heaviest of all the burdens on the land. The majority
 
 THE LAND. 23 
 
 of landowners cannot do justice to the land they have 
 taken even in their own narrowest sense. Cumbered 
 up with mortgages, settlements, rent-charges, heaven 
 knows what, they are in no case to face a great fall 
 in rents, to encounter competition from without, or to 
 bring to bear that skill, labour and personal attention 
 now essential to success in agriculture. The sacred 
 trinity of landlord, capitalist-farmer, and agricultural 
 labourer has broken up. The labourer can be screwed 
 no lower, the farmer has had enough of giving his 
 capital to the landlord as rent. American " wheat 
 centres" have proved clearly that landlords are not an 
 essential element in English agricultural production. 
 A great change is therefore at hand. Agricultural ex- 
 perts aver with confidence that if the land of England 
 were properly handled, if sufficient labour and manure 
 were applied, we could profitably produce twice the 
 quantity of food we do from the existing cultivated 
 acreage. What stops us ? Unquestionably that de- 
 termination of landowners to hold on to their false 
 idea of greatness, and to those miserable customs of 
 settlement and entail which will necessarily be put an 
 end to as a wider and more useful method of dealing 
 with our soil opens up before us. Happily the land- 
 lords are themselves beginning to feel the pinch, and 
 may lead the way in the reforms which have now 
 become essential. If they do not it is no great matter ; 
 for sooner or later the people of England mean to 
 have back the land, and the sooner the better for the 
 interest of the landlords themselves. 
 
 For let it be remembered that the dominant classes 
 have done more than take the land ; by their Parlia-
 
 24 ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 ments they have actually shuffled on to the shoulders 
 of the mass of the people nearly all the taxes and 
 obligations which formerly came out of their rents as 
 a portion for the State and the poor. Laws enacted 
 by men for their own benefit in direct contravention 
 of the tenure on which the lands were originally taken 
 have no binding force whatsoever on posterity. Yet 
 the landowners of Great Britain were formerly subject 
 to a land-tax of four shillings in the pound on their 
 assessment. This they have whittled away almost to 
 nothing, and now the land-tax under their skilful 
 manipulation, produces but i, 074,9 ip/., instead of 
 i8,8o2,337/. as it ought. That is to say, the landowners 
 of Great Britain put into their pockets a sum of little 
 less than 1 8,ooo,ooo/., which, but for their own self- 
 gratifying ordinances would, according to the old laws 
 of this kingdom, have gone into the treasury of the 
 country at large. No wonder that our privileged 
 classes and their hangers-on howl " confiscation, 
 " communism," " socialism," and words more English 
 and less nice, when any fearless man begins to rake 
 up the history of their " sacrifices " to patriotism. 
 
 True patriots they ; for be it understood 
 
 They robb'd their country for their country's good ! 
 
 But this is not all either. Agricultural property is 
 well enough in its way, but the mines, all that under- 
 lies the soil has fallen also into the grip of the small 
 minority, and it is impossible to get a bill through 
 Parliament which will even compel the owners to 
 protect the lives of the men who work in them. The 
 miners should know their place, and have power to
 
 THE LAND. 
 
 " contract out of the Act." What matters the risk of 
 loss of life ? Then the urban properties, again, with 
 their vast unearned increment of rent, and the power 
 given to individuals to obstruct improvements whilst 
 they benefit by the expenditure of the public money 
 or railroads carried through by the decision of Parlia- 
 ment. What, in the name of all that is reasonable, 
 haveGrosvenors orBentincks for instance done for Eng- 
 land that they and theirs should interfere for ever with 
 the management of London, and pocket increasing 
 rents which, if exacted at all, should go to the munici- 
 pality which must shortly be created for this great 
 metropolis, and benefit the whole community ? Is it 
 well that millions should be spent on the Thames 
 embankment, for instance, and that landowners should 
 pocket thousands a year by the improvement of their 
 property ? These are points which come home to all, 
 and must, ere long, force on a change. Such enormous 
 revenues as those which were squandered in digging 
 catacombs in Welbeck Park, or laid out in providing 
 Westminster with a dukedom, ought not to be at the 
 unrestrained disposal of any single family. For no 
 idea whatever of duty is attached to these great pos- 
 sessions ; and artisans' dwellings, or a market, in a 
 fashionable locality might " damage the property," 
 and so are warned off. 
 
 How is it that the landowners themselves, or such 
 at least as come fairly by their property, do not see 
 that their political future depends upon recognizing 
 the vast changes going on beneath them, and 
 endeavour to associate themselves with the future of 
 their country ? Their object, one would think, would
 
 26 ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 be necessarily to meet and guide that flow of demo- 
 cratic opinion which manifestly precedes a new social 
 evolution. To stand on the brink and wring their 
 hands in dismay, is both cowardly and foolish. For 
 in a small, densely-peopled country like ours the 
 whole hangs together land in country and land in 
 towns, mines, communications, all go to make up the 
 complicated system under which we live. 
 
 But agricultural land of necessity stands first. Mr. 
 Clare Read says that all will come right, and that 
 twenty-five years or so hence the territorial grandee will 
 rise again to the enjoyment of his unearned increment, 
 the farmer shall be a man of wealth and substance, 
 and the agricultural labourer well, what tenant- 
 farmer ever thinks much about him ? Landlord-made 
 laws must undergo revision in the interests of the 
 landlords themselves, but far more for the sake of the 
 mass of their countrymen now dissociated altogether 
 from the land. It is humiliating to look back fifty 
 years, and note how little has been done since the 
 able band of democratic writers, headed by Cobbett, 
 first forcibly pointed out the historical injuries from 
 which Englishmen are still suffering. As it was 
 yesterday, so it is to-day ; but so shall it not be 
 to-morrow. The importance of the Land Question 
 in England is now fully understood by the inhabitants 
 of the counties as well as of the towns, and up to a 
 certain point a vast majority will combine to over- 
 throw the existing system, which lies like a dead 
 weight upon it. 
 
 When we come to the direction in which changes 
 should be made, however, the widest differences arise.
 
 THE LAND. 27 
 
 Some seem to imagine that mere free trade in land, 
 even without the plan of compulsory subdivision, 
 would bring about the planting of the people on the 
 land ; others look upon the removal of settlement and 
 entail as only preliminary to nationalisation, in the 
 sense that by limitation of the right of inheritance 
 and compulsory purchase at a valuation, the State, 
 the county, or the municipality should come into the 
 possession of all land within a calculable period. All 
 depends upon what we desire to bring about. Many 
 ardent reformers look forward to the day when English 
 farmers shall hold their ten, twenty, fifty-acre farms, 
 interspersed with larger holdings, as in former times. 
 Is this to be done ? Can we thus put back the clock 
 400 years ? It would scarcely seem so ; and yet on 
 the whole it should appear that small farmers who 
 depend chiefly on their own labour for their return 
 have suffered less in all parts of the country, and have 
 been readier to pay rent, than the large. In America 
 also, the unincumbered farmer holding no large extent 
 of land fared on the whole better than his wealthier 
 neighbour, who was growing not for produce so much 
 as for profit. 
 
 The main object necessarily is to get as much out 
 of the land as possible, and at the same time to 
 secure the agricultural labourer, and those of the 
 townspeople who take to the land, a fair return for 
 their labour, and a prospect of obtaining possession 
 of land if they desire to do so. Evidently the labourer 
 and the townsman will gain nothing by giving the 
 farmers in England fixity of tenure, nor much by free- 
 trade in land. All evidence goes to show, however,
 
 28 ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 that even under present conditions the more secure the 
 tenure, in an increasing ratio up to freehold, the 
 better on the whole the farming, until the limit of 
 acreage is reached where the owner thinks he can afford 
 to lie by and make an income by letting to others. 
 But the present tenants would be no better employers 
 as owners, or tenants on a permanent settlement, than 
 they are now; the agricultural labourer who really does 
 the work would still get his ten and twelve shillings 
 a week, his cottage would be equally destitute 
 of garden. On the other hand, if the capitalists 
 came in, does their behaviour in the large cities make 
 us very hopeful of what would take place under their 
 management in the country ? These are difficulties 
 which at once arise in any scheme of individual im- 
 provement. Even the virtual limitation of the amount 
 of land which may be held by any individual by means 
 of cumulative taxation the only fair taxation by the 
 way might not give the labourer on the land that 
 independence which would enable him to hold his 
 own. What the better, in short, would the mass of 
 the population be for any of the reforms proposed ? 
 Granting that twofold would be produced, would the 
 labourers or the urban population get a greater share 
 of it ? No doubt the diminution of the absurd social 
 influence attaching to the ownership of land would have 
 a great effect in lowering its value to a mere idler, espe- 
 cially if the game laws are speedily repealed. But all 
 this does not help the man who does the work for ten 
 and twelve shillings a week to get some fair portion 
 of the fruits of his labour to secure a decent home, a 
 plot of ground, least of all a small farm. What is
 
 THE LAND. 29 
 
 being done for Ireland, then, ought on a larger scale 
 to be done here ; though unfortunately want of educa- 
 tion and knowledge cripples the present generation, 
 and they have been more completely uprooted from 
 the soil than even the Irish. 
 
 We are manifestly here, as elsewhere, in a transi- 
 tion period. The stage of dominant landlordism is 
 passing away rapidly that of State management, or 
 co-operation in the interest of all, has apparently not 
 nearly been reached. Granting therefore that the 
 completest reforms of the land laws, in the shape of 
 abolition of settlement and entail, complete subdivision, 
 simplified registration, mortgage made illegal, and so 
 forth, have been carried, much will remain to be done. 
 Private enterprise cannot satisfactorily deal with the 
 many important changes to be made. Benevolent 
 investments at five per cent, are, in American parlance, 
 " a fraud." What a miserable hand-to-mouth creature 
 the agricultural labourer is to-day we know. Let, then, 
 that point be borne in mind in all reforms, that until 
 the labourer is placed in a position where he is really 
 able to contract freely, either by combination, or by 
 State assistance in the shape of permanent leases of 
 land, subject to disturbance only for bad culture 
 or non-payment of fair rent, no great change 
 will ever be made in his condition for the better. 
 For this too is for the interest of all. The titles 
 of the landlords are none so good that they can 
 afford any longer to run the risk of the cry, " The 
 land for the people/' Hitherto powers of expropria- 
 tion and interference have been used solely in the in- 
 terest of the upper and middle classes, who hold the
 
 30 ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 control. Ere long a similar process may be demanded 
 by the great majority in their favour, though not with 
 equal injustice. 
 
 As stepping-stones to further development, the 
 following reforms may be demanded at once : 
 
 Reform of the law of settlement and entail, putting 
 an end to the existing system altogether. 
 
 Compulsory registration of title, so as to make 
 transfer of land as easy as it is in America. 
 
 Extension of the powers of local bodies to acquire 
 land for all purposes and to lease it in small portions. 
 
 Compensated expropriation of property-owners in 
 large cities. 
 
 No confiscation or revenge for the forced removal 
 of the people from the land is asked for. But the 
 unborn have no rights, and the nation has always 
 both the power and the right to take any land at a 
 fair valuation. By immediate limitation of the right 
 of inheritance, and an application of the power of 
 purchase, the State or the local authority would 
 speedily come into possession of land, which could be 
 used for the common interest, and some comfort and 
 security obtained for those who at present have neither. 
 No longer then should the agriculturist be per- 
 manently kept away from the soil ; no longer should 
 the dweller in the city feel that, happen what might, 
 he could never leave the street or alley. Hitherto 
 the State has been regarded as an enemy : the time 
 is coming when perhaps all will be ready to recognize 
 that its friendly influence is needed to prevent serious 
 trouble, and to lead the way to a happier period. 
 That the landowners of England should join in a re-
 
 THE LAND. 31 
 
 solute endeavour to remedy the mischiefs which affect 
 them in common with the rest of the population is 
 apparently too much to expect. True, their interest 
 lies in this direction. To stir up class hatred is easy 
 enough, when, in spite of all sentimental talk and 
 useless charity, the men who work see that nothing is 
 really done which will permanently benefit them. A 
 higher ideal than mere selfishness may indeed be held 
 up, but those who are rich and powerful must lead 
 the way. Of this truer patriotism there is at present no 
 sign among those who claim to be the "natural leaders" 
 of the people.
 
 32 ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 LABOUR. 
 
 IN every civilized society the main point to be con- 
 sidered is the manner in which labour is applied to 
 production, and the share of his own labour which in 
 one shape or another the labourer gets in return. The 
 ancient historical civilizations were chiefly built upon 
 slavery. Here the labourer, his force of labour, and the 
 material on which he expended it, all belonged to the 
 master ; and the wealth of the latter might almost be 
 gauged by the number of slaves he possessed, though 
 only a portion of them would be actually employed in 
 the work of production. This employment of slave- 
 labour renders any comparison between the state of 
 society then and now almost futile; but the condition of 
 the poor freemen in Rome and Athens, constantly ex- 
 posed to the competition of slave-labour if they desired 
 to work themselves, resembled that of the mean whites 
 in the Southern States before the Civil War. The 
 peasant proprietor, or the member of a village com- 
 munity, holds again a totally different position from 
 that of the slave or the labourer of modern times. 
 The peasant proprietor, or the craftsman owning his 
 own tools and able to obtain his own materials, is 
 master of himself, of his means of production, and of
 
 LABOUR. 33 
 
 his produce, even though he may have to pay a por- 
 tion of the latter to a feudal chief or rajah. In both 
 cases, that of individual proprietorship and that of 
 ownership in common of the produce of a community, 
 there may be and generally is perfect freedom, save 
 the restrictions which arise from the necessity of pro- 
 ducing sufficient for the social necessaries of life. 
 
 It is quite possible that a man and his family may 
 live on the produce of their own farm, carry on the 
 simple operations of manufacture necessary to clothe 
 them, and rarely have the need to exchange anything 
 which they possess for the work of others. A good 
 harvest, or a favourable season with cattle, will repre- 
 sent so much extra wealth, which will provide against 
 bad times, or enable the little household to devote more 
 labour to increase of comfort. With a village com- 
 munity the necessity for exchange may arise less 
 often ; for these units of civilization comprise within 
 themselves the means of providing all the ordinary 
 needs, and some even of the luxuries of life. It is to 
 the interest of the whole family or village community 
 that all should be well nourished and strong for the 
 daily duty ; it is also advisable that a certain provision 
 should be made against the prospect of bad seasons. 
 Civilization, therefore, presupposes great forethought 
 in its earlier stages, or it would soon fall back again 
 to the condition of the Paraguayans, who ate the seed 
 given them by the missionaries. But all the wealth 
 thus produced by the work of individuals or com- 
 munities is clearly due to labour ; and that is not 
 wealth which is not recognized as an object of utility 
 in the social conditions of the time. 
 
 D
 
 34 ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 The great majority of economists before and since 
 Adam Smith have agreed that labour is the source of 
 value. " The real price of everything," says Adam 
 Smith himself, " what everything really costs to the 
 man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of 
 acquiring it What everything is really worth to the 
 man who has acquired it, and who wants to dispose of 
 it or exchange it 'for something else, is the toil and 
 trouble which it can save to himself, and which it can 
 impose on other people. Labour was the first price 
 the original purchase- money that was paid for all 
 things. In that early and rude state of society which 
 precedes both the accumulation of stock and the 
 appropriation of land, the proportion between the 
 quantities of labour necessary for acquiring different 
 objects seems to be the only circumstance which can 
 afford any rule for exchanging them for one another. 
 If among a nation of hunters, for example, it usually 
 costs twice the labour to kill a beaver which it does 
 to kill a deer, one beaver would naturally be worth, 
 or exchange for, two deer. It is natural that what is 
 usually the produce of two days' or two hours' 
 labour should be worth double of what is usually 
 the produce of one day's or one hour's labour." 
 
 " That this," adds Ricardo, " is really the foundation 
 of the exchangeable value of all things, excepting those 
 which cannot be increased by human industry, is a 
 doctrine of the utmost importance in political 
 economy. If the quantity of labour realized in com- 
 modities regulate their exchangeable value, every 
 increase of the quantity of labour must augment the 
 value of that commodity on which it is exercised, as
 
 LABOUR. 35 
 
 every diminution must lower it." This labour, of 
 course, includes the work necessary to replace the 
 wear and tear of tools and machinery, as well as the 
 labour which is actually expended on and realized in> 
 the commodities. Every useful article produced by 
 labour has two values, its value in use alone, and its 
 value in exchange. Its value in use is developed only 
 by being used and consumed : its value in exchange 
 consists in obtaining other useful articles in its 
 place. 
 
 Water, air, virgin soil, &c., are useful, but by them- 
 selves they constitute no value. A man may also 
 expend his labour on useful articles which never 
 become commodities or goods for exchange. These 
 may be destined simply for his own use, and never 
 for exchange. In all countries, however, where the 
 capitalist system of production prevails, wealth 
 appears in the shape of an accumulation of com- 
 modities or merchandise. Those products of human 
 labour devoted to natural objects are exchanged 
 according to the average quantity of human labour 
 expended in producing them. If wheat and axes are 
 exchanged in definite proportions, they are thus 
 bartered with reference to the common element in 
 each, by virtue of which an equality between them is 
 established. This is the quantity of human labour 
 expended in bringing them forward for exchange. So 
 many days of average labour embodied in one article 
 of utility, are equal to so many days of average 
 labour embodied in another article of utility. Thus 
 then the general rule is, that labour is the basis of 
 value, and quantity of labour the measure of value of 
 
 D 9.
 
 36 ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 commodities, or social values for the use of others, all 
 the world over. 1 
 
 Say that a coat is worth twice as much as ten yards 
 of cloth. The coat is useful and satisfies a particular 
 want. Two kinds or qualities of labour are embodied 
 in it that of the tailor who made the coat, and that 
 of the weaver who wove the cloth. So far as its use- 
 fulness is concerned also, it makes no difference 
 whether the tailor wears it or his customer. Now as 
 to its value. The coat is assumed to be worth twice 
 as much as the ten yards of cloth worth that is, 
 twenty yards of cloth. In point of value coat and 
 cloth as well are but expressions of labour itself. 
 Thus the coat is worth twice as much as the cloth, 
 because the cloth contains only half as much human 
 labour ; and it needs twice the quantity of labour to 
 produce the coat complete, cloth and all, as to pro- 
 duce the cloth alone. Reduce the quantity of labour 
 needed to make a coat by one half, and two coats are 
 only worth what one was before. Double the quantity 
 of labour needed to make a coat, and one coat is 
 worth what two were before. In the same way, " if a 
 piece of cloth be now of the value of two pieces of 
 linen, and if, in ten years hence, the ordinary value of 
 a piece of cloth should be four pieces of linen, we may 
 
 1 Professor Stanley Jevons has convinced himself that labour 
 has no influence on value. Utility is the sole source of value. 
 Labour, supply, utility such is the progression. This is not 
 the place to discuss this theory, which is of course turned to ac- 
 count at once by capitalists. The cloud of differentiations and 
 metaphysics which Mr. Jevons throws up as he goes along does 
 not, however, obscure the fact that without labour there would be 
 no value at all.
 
 LABOUR. -37 
 
 safely conclude that either more labour is required to 
 make the cloth, or less to make the linen, or that 
 both causes have operated." Thus then, no matter 
 whether the productive power of average human 
 labour in producing any article of utility and utility 
 is, of course, an essential element of exchangeable 
 value is increased or diminished, the same length of 
 labour, or the same quantity of labour, always repre- 
 sents the same value. But of course, if the labour is 
 more productive, more values in use are obtained in 
 a given time, and if less productive, less : only the 
 value for exchange remains unaltered. 
 
 But the above illustrations are easily extended. 
 When a coat is said to be worth twice as much as 
 ten yards of cloth, or worth that of twenty yards of 
 cloth, this means, as has been said, that the quantity 
 of human labour contained in the one is equal to, or 
 expressed in, the quantity of human labour contained 
 in the other. So with other articles of utility. A coat 
 may likewise be equal in value to ten pounds of tea, 
 or to half a ton of iron, or to a quarter of wheat, or to 
 two ounces of gold ; all these products of human 
 labour being also equal in value to twenty yards of 
 cloth, and varying in exchangeable value in propor- 
 tion to the amount of labour embodied in them ; 
 the simple meaning of the equality being that the 
 tea, the iron, the wheat, the gold, and the cloth, repre- 
 sent, each and all, the same quality of labour in the 
 several amounts of commodities. 
 
 But it so happens that it has been found convenient 
 for ages to express this general form of value in one 
 particular commodity. This in nowise changes the
 
 38 ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 fundamental proposition that labour is the basis of 
 value, and quantity of labour its measure. The only 
 further result is, that the coat, the ten pounds of tea, 
 the half a ton of iron, the quarter of wheat, the 
 twenty yards of cloth, are all equal in value, not only 
 to one another, but to the two ounces of gold, which 
 henceforward are taken as a meaure of value for 
 them all and become money. When commodities 
 now are valued, they are valued with reference to the 
 gold, which forms not only a real but an ideal valua- 
 tion. It is not the money which enables the com- 
 modities to be valued. Far otherwise. It is because 
 all commodities represent realized human labour 
 already expended on natural objects, thus producing 
 articles of utility, that their relative value is conse- 
 quently measureable by one another, and that they 
 can all be valued together in one special commodity. 
 This last becomes money, and is a measure for them 
 all, though, like the rest, its value consists in the fact 
 that it represents the expenditure of human labour. 
 
 But money is not only a convenient measure of 
 value, but also a means of putting commodities in 
 circulation. A commodity is exchanged for its 
 equivalent in money, and then again the money is ex- 
 changed for another commodity. In order to promote 
 a circulation of commodities there must be a sufficiency 
 of money, or the representative of money in some form 
 of currency, to avoid congestion. To bring about the 
 regular interchange of articles of utility in civilized life, 
 such a change of commodities for money, and again 
 into commodities, being the rule. This fact formed 
 the basis of the theory of the celebrated Law, who
 
 LABOUR. 39 
 
 desired to substitute for gold and silver, which cost 
 labour to produce, and yet are in themselves of little 
 utility, paper certificates of labour expended, which 
 would cost nothing, and yet serve the purposes of cur- 
 rency. Without however, entering upon, the pheno- 
 mena connected with money, it is now clear that in 
 all exchangeable value the human labour expended is 
 the basis of the value of commodities, and the quantity 
 of human labour the measure. 
 
 There is, of course, nothing new in all this. That 
 natural objects are of no value unless human labour is 
 expended on them is a truth as old as the world. 
 That labour is the real basis, not only of value but of 
 all civilized society, needs no elaborate demonstration 
 at this time of day. Yet it is precisely from this 
 generally admitted but little regarded truth that 
 consequences follow of the highest importance to our 
 modern society. Here come in those " differences 
 of value," those strange manipulations of the worth of 
 commodities, which go to the root of all business. 
 
 A merchant has a sum of money, say a hundred 
 pounds sterling. Therewith he buys on the market 
 suppose a hundred pounds' worth of cotton. So far 
 the exchange may be perfectly fair and exact. The 
 merchant has given his labour as expressed in a 
 hundred pounds sterling for another man's labour as 
 embodied in a mass of cotton. But, having bought, 
 hs goes away and sells his purchased cotton to an- 
 other person for no/., making, as it is said, IO/. by the 
 transaction. His ioo/. was turned into its equivalent 
 in merchandise, and then appeared again as no/. 
 Not only is the original sum replaced, but more is
 
 40 ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 added, and the merchant's money becomes capital. 
 The merchant buys not for himself, or to work up for 
 the use of others, but merely to sell the cotton again 
 at an enhanced price. This is something very 
 different from the use of money as the measure of 
 the value of commodities, or as the means of facili- 
 tating exchange. It is commercial capital, which its 
 owner takes upon the market for the purpose of 
 increasing it. Money to start with ; and then, after a 
 longer or a shorter interval, more money that, leaving 
 out the intermediate process of buying the cotton, is 
 the process. But the amount of value in circulation 
 at any given moment that is, the quantity of human 
 labour on the average embodied in commodities 
 cannot increase of itself. If a merchant has in his 
 possession a commodity whose value is expressed 
 in money by io/., this value, can only be increased 
 absolutely, and made say 1 1/., by the addition of 
 more labour to the labour-value represented in the 
 first instance as by making a coat of cloth. The 
 coat is worth more than the cloth, but the value of 
 the cloth remains the same. Thus then all conditions 
 remaining the same, the owner of the money to start 
 with must buy a piece of merchandise at its exact 
 value, and sell it again for what it is worth, and yet 
 have at the end more value than he had at the be- 
 ginning. 
 
 Now the problem begins to take shape. 
 
 The increase of value by which money becomes 
 more money and is turned into capital, obviously 
 cannot arise from the money itself. It follows then 
 that the conversion of money into merchandise, and
 
 LABOUR. 41 
 
 then of that same merchandise into more money, is 
 due to the merchandise. But how ? Commodities 
 can no more increase their own exchangeable value 
 than money. In order to obtain an additional ex- 
 changeable value from a commodity, a sort of mer- 
 chandise must be found which possesses the remark- 
 able quality of being itself the source of exchangeable 
 value, so that to consume it would be to obtain that 
 labour-force embodied in value, and consequently to 
 create value. 
 
 Now it so happens that the capitalist in embryo 
 does find on the market a purchaseable commodity 
 endowed with this specific virtue. This is called 
 labour, or force of labour. Under that name is com- 
 prised the entire capacities, physical and intellectual, 
 which exist in the body of a man, and which he 
 must set in motion in order to produce articles of 
 utility. Evidently the force of labour cannot present 
 itself on the market for sale, unless it is offered by 
 its owner ; he must be able to dispose of it that is, 
 be the free owner of his labour, of the force of his 
 own body. The moneyed man and he meet on the 
 market ; one buys, and the other sells, and both are 
 quits. But the owner of this labour-force must only 
 sell it for a definite time ; if he sells it for an indefi- 
 nite time, from being a merchant, he himself, his force 
 of labour and all, becomes a mere commodity. He 
 is a slave or serf at the command of his master as a 
 chattel. The more essential condition for the capi- 
 talist to be able to buy the force of labour is, that 
 the owner of the labour instead of being able to keep 
 himself by work on his own land, or to sell goods on
 
 42 ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 which he has himself expended his labour, should be 
 obliged to sell the labour-force in his body pure and 
 simple. A man in order to sell goods of his own 
 making, must of course command the means of pro- 
 duction tools, raw material, &c. Then he is master 
 of his own labour, an independent man ; he has the 
 means of exchanging his own labour as embodied in 
 useful articles, for other men's labour also embodied 
 in useful articles, upon equal terms. But in order 
 that money should be converted into capital, the 
 workman himself must be free in a very different 
 sense ; not only must he be ready to sell his labour as 
 a commodity, but further, he must be free so very 
 free that he has nothing else in the world but his 
 power of labour to sell that he should be completely 
 destitute of the means of realizing his own force of 
 labour in commodities by himself, having neither tools, 
 nor land, nor raw materials wherewith to do so. 
 
 How does this free labourer thus find himself on 
 the market, ready to enter into free contract ? That 
 does not concern the owner of the money, who looks 
 upon the labour-market as a mere branch of the rest 
 of the market for commodities, and governed by the 
 same laws. The appearance of this destitute labourer 
 there is nevertheless, as has been seen, the outcome 
 of a long series of economical evolutions and revolu- 
 tions extending over centuries. Driven from the 
 land, deprived of the possibility of earning a living, 
 the mass of the people find themselves concentrated 
 in the towns. Nature most assuredly does not turn 
 out possessors of money or goods on the one side, 
 and owners of their pure labour-force, and nothing else,
 
 LABOUR. 43 
 
 on the other ; nor is such a social state common to 
 most periods of history. So long, for example, as the 
 produce of labour is used to supply the needs of the 
 labourer, it does not, as has been seen, become mer- 
 chandise ; in the same way, the production and cir- 
 culation of commodities may take place under many 
 forms of society. It is not so with capital ; that only 
 makes its appearance when that part of the wealth 
 of a country which is employed in production, con- 
 sisting of food, clothing, tools, raw materials, ma- 
 chinery, &c., necessary to give effect to labour, is 
 found in the hands of an owner, who meets on the 
 market the free labourer come thither to sell his 
 labour. 
 
 Capital then forms an epoch in social production. 
 
 What, however, is this force of labour, which the 
 free owner of it comes on to the market to sell ? 
 Clearly it is a human force, physical, moral, intellectual, 
 which requires certain material, food, and clothing and 
 lodging all in the possession of the moneyed man, 
 and not of the labourer to keep it in order and 
 supplied, so that the waste of one day may be made 
 good, and it may return with equal vigour the next. 
 These necessaries vary, of course, with different 
 climates, and with different degrees of civilization ; 
 but in any given country and period the average 
 needs of the labourers are known. Nor is this fact 
 altered by the other fact that, as pointed out by Mill, 
 a series of circumstances may reduce the standard of 
 supposed necessaries. The amount of average neces- 
 saries thus ascertained is called by Ricardo, the 
 " natural price of labour," and is " that price which is
 
 44 ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 necessary to enable the labourers one with another to 
 subsist, and to perpetuate their race without either 
 increase or diminution. " In this way we have that 
 amount of average daily necessaries which will 
 maintain the present race of destitute bargainers, and 
 provide them with equally destitute successors. 
 
 Assume then that the cost of this amount of daily 
 foods, the natural price of human labour comprised 
 in the necessaries for existence for the twenty-four 
 hoMrs representing by rights only the quantity of 
 human labour expended in their production is six 
 hours' work. Half a day's average work is needed 
 then to reproduce the average amount of labour-force 
 expended. Take this at three shillings as expressed 
 in money. Then the owner of the labour who sells 
 its work for six hours at three shillings, sells it for its 
 exact value. " It is when the market price of labour 
 exceeds its natural price that the condition of the 
 labourer is flourishing and happy that he has it in 
 his power to command a greater proportion of the 
 necessaries and enjoyments of life. When the market 
 price of labour is below its natural price, the condition 
 of the labourers is most wretched ; then poverty 
 deprives them of comforts which custom renders 
 absolute necessaries." So far Ricardo again. But the 
 natural price of labour reaches its minimum when it 
 is reduced to the value of the means of subsistence 
 physiologically indispensable. When it falls to this 
 minimum, the price has reached a level below the 
 value of the labour-force, which then only just 
 maintains itself without immediate deterioration. 
 For example, a man who sells his labour for just
 
 LABOUR. 45 
 
 enough to keep himself and his family without 
 making any provision for old age, or future ill-health 
 from which he may suffer, is clearly going down hill. 
 The natural price of his labour has not in this case 
 taken a sufficiently wide range, 
 
 When also the capitalist buys the labour, it is -the 
 owner of that labour who sells on credit. He 
 advances his labour to the capitalist ; the capitalist 
 advances nothing to him without having been 
 previously paid for it. In every country where the 
 system prevails, the labourer is only paid after he 
 has worked for a certain period a week, a fortnight, 
 a month on credit. This enables the capitalist to 
 ''turn round." If the employer fails, the labourers 
 suffer : they are not paid ; for the labour has been 
 sold beforehand, and duly delivered by the expenditure 
 of force from the labourer's body. An illustration of 
 this occurred not long since in the great strike of 
 colliers in the north against the masters, who wished 
 to make their men break the law by contracting out 
 of the Employers' Liability Act. Once out on strike 
 they insisted most strongly upon the reduction of the 
 length of the advance of their labour to the capitalist, 
 from the fortnight to the week. This point also they 
 carried. Fortnightly or monthly wages are a hardship 
 to the labourer, which, like many others, can only be 
 removed by resolute combination ; for that value in 
 use which the owner of the labour advances to the 
 buyer, only shows itself in employment. And this 
 consumption of force of labour produces, not only 
 commodities, but surplus value besides. Everything 
 else needed for the purposes of production raw
 
 46 ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 materials, machinery, &c. have been bought by the 
 capitalist at their actual value, and paid for at their 
 actual price. It is labour only, the labour-force of 
 human beings, from which he derives his surplus value. 
 Out of this, his last purchase, bought on credit, the 
 capitalist makes his capital breed. This labour, bought 
 in the open market, and realized in the commodity 
 this it is which gives the capitalist the additional 
 value he hungers for. 
 
 Now we begin to see how it comes about that io/. 
 turns into ill., that ioo/ swells into no/., without 
 additional value. Now, too, the admirable working 
 of " freedom of contract " and " supply and demand " 
 in our modern society appears. Hear, too, William 
 Cobbettfora moment : " To those who labour, we who 
 labour not with our hands owe all that we eat and 
 drink and wear, all that shades us by day and that 
 shelters us by night, all the means of enjoying 
 health and pleasure ; and therefore if we possess talent 
 for the task, we are ungrateful or cowardly, or both, if 
 we omit any effort \vithin our power to prevent them 
 from being slaves. What is a slave ? For let us not 
 be amused by a name. A slave is in the first place 
 a man who has no property ; and property means 
 something that he has, and that nobody can take 
 from him without his leave or consent. A slave has 
 no property in his labour ; and any man who is com- 
 pelled to give up the fruit of his labour to another at 
 the arbitrary will of that other, has no property in his 
 labour, and is therefore a slave, whether the fruit of 
 his labour be taken from him directly or indirectly. 
 If it be said that he gives up the fruit of his labour
 
 LABOUR. 47 
 
 by his own will, and that it is not forced from 
 him, I answer, To be sure he may avoid eating and 
 drinking, and may go naked ; but then he must die ; 
 and on this condition, and this condition only, can he 
 refuse to give up the fruit of his labour. ' Die, 
 wretch, or surrender as much of your income or the 
 fruit of your labour as your masters choose to take.' " 
 
 To return. The working man who has sold his 
 labour works, of course, under the control of the capi- 
 talist to whom his labour thus belongs, and whose 
 object it is that he should work hard and continuously. 
 Besides, the product in which his force of labour is 
 embodied is the property of the capitalist, and in no 
 sense that of the labourer. The capitalist merely pays 
 him his wages, just as he would pay for the hire of a 
 horse or a mule. Then the employer applies the 
 human merchandise he has thus bought to his raw 
 materials and machinery. The result is a value in 
 use to be passed on to others ; and not only such 
 value, but a surplus value for the capitalist himself, 
 derived from this purchased labour. 
 
 Take, for example, cotton yarns. The capitalist 
 buys, say, ten pounds of raw cotton for los. In that 
 price there is already expressed the average labour 
 needed for the production, transport, and marketing 
 of the raw cotton. Now put the wear and tear of the 
 spindles, machinery, Sac., in working up the raw 
 material into yarn at 2s. If a piece of gold of the 
 value of 12s. is the output of twenty-four hours' work, 
 it follows that there are, apart from the labour in the 
 factory, two full days of work embodied in the yarn. 
 This accounts for the original labour needed to raise
 
 48 ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 and transport the raw cotton, as well as the labour 
 needed to replace the wear and tear. 
 
 It has already been assumed that the workman 
 must give six hours' labour in order to earn 3^., the 
 natural price of his labour required to supply him 
 socially with his absolute necessaries. Now assurjjf 
 further that it takes six hours' labour to turn ten 
 pounds of cotton into ten pounds of yarn ; then the 
 workman has added to the raw cotton a value of 3^., 
 a half-a-day's work. So at the end the ten pounds 
 of yarn contain altogether two days and a half of 
 labour ; raw cotton and wear and tear of spindles 
 stand for two days ; and half-a-day has been absorbed 
 by the cotton in the process of spinning. This quan- 
 tity of labour is therefore reckoned in a piece of gold 
 of the value of 1 5-r. ; that is to say, the price of the 
 yarn worked up from the cotton is is. 6d. a pound. 
 Here obviously is no gain to the capitalist. His raw 
 material, his wear and tear of machinery, his wages 
 paid for the labour which he has purchased, eat up 
 the whole of the capital advanced, and yet the ten 
 pounds of yarn only fetch is. 6d. a pound, which is 
 the value of the average quantity of labour contained 
 in it. This shows no profit whatever, much to the 
 horror of the capitalist if he stopped there. 
 
 But the employer has bought the labourer's whole 
 day's work upon the market. He can make him work 
 therefore not merely the six hours required to produce 
 the return of the $s. paid, but twelve hours a day's 
 work. Now if six hours' work produces ten pounds 
 of yarn from ten pounds of cotton, twelve hours' work 
 will give twenty pounds of yarn from twenty pounds
 
 LABOUR. 49 
 
 of cotton. These twenty pounds of yarn will thus con- 
 tain five days' labour, of which four are contained in the 
 raw cotton and the wear and tear of machinery and 
 spindles, and one day is absorbed by the yarn during 
 he process of spinning. The expression in money 
 then of these five days' work is 30^. That, therefore, 
 is the price of the twenty pounds of yarn, Thus the 
 yarn is sold now as it was before at is. 6d. a pound. 
 But the sum of the values of the merchandise (includ- 
 ing labour in the factory) embodied in the yarn does 
 not exceed 2js. ; that is to say, 2os. for the raw cotton, 
 4J-. for the wear and tear, and $s. for the labour in 
 the factory. The value of the product has therefore 
 increased. The 2js. have become 30^. Those 27^. 
 advanced by the capitalist have begotten a surplus 
 value of 30^., and the trick is done. The capitalist 
 has used a certain amount of another man's labour 
 for his own behoof without paying for it, and the trick 
 is done at that man's expense. That free labour 
 which is sold in the open market enables the capital- 
 ist to sell the twenty pounds of yarn he has made 
 at the regular price of is. 6d. a pound, and, neverthe- 
 less, to increase his capital by $s. on the output of 
 twenty pounds. Labour thus used is the origin of 
 surplus value, and all's well. 
 
 Once more it is permissible to look back to the io/. 
 made into ill., to the ioo/. swollen into no/. The I/, 
 like the io/. is obtained from that free labour which is 
 bound to be sold for less than its worth, in order that its 
 possessor may continue to keep body and soul together. 
 And the surplus value so produced the capitalist, the 
 merchant, the shopkeeper, divide among themselves. 
 
 E
 
 50 ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 In existing conditions of agricultural production, 
 the agricultural labourer in the same way provides 
 on his part the surplus value which the landowner, 
 the rent-charger, the farmer, the mortgagee, divide, in 
 the shape of rent, settlement, profit on capital, and 
 interest on money lent. The labourer himself, earning 
 his icw. to 1 2s. a week, is the man upon whom all 
 these worthy people live, though they do so in a more 
 indirect manner than the capitalist of the large 
 towns, and have perhaps a trifle more conscience left 
 to appeal to. 
 
 Capital itself, however, is divided into two parts, 
 that which is used to buy machinery and means of 
 production, and that which is expended on labour. 
 The former portion is constant, and is simply repro- 
 duced without increase, the latter is variable, and is 
 that which produces surplus value. Ordinarily the 
 rate of surplus value is calculated on the total amount 
 of capital employed, constant and variable, and is 
 dubbed profit on capital. But this is wholly 
 incorrect. The rate of surplus value produced, the 
 proportion of labour turned to account by the 
 capitalist should be reckoned only on the amount of 
 capital advanced to pay the owner of that labour 
 the natural price of his labour. What now is the pro- 
 portion which the necessary labour for this purpose 
 bears to the extra labour which is used for the benefit 
 of the capitalist alone ? 
 
 Nothing will illustrate this so clearly as actual 
 figures taken from the regular operations of a factory. 
 A mill with 10,000 spindles spins yarn No. 32 with 
 American cotton, and produces every week a pound
 
 LABOUR. 51 
 
 of yarn to the spindle. The waste of the cotton 
 amounts to six per cent. Therefore 10,600 pounds of 
 cotton are each week converted into 10,000 pounds of 
 yarn, and 600 pounds of waste. In April, 1871, this 
 cotton cost J\d. a pound, and consequently 342/. were 
 paid for the 10,600 pounds, in round figures. The 
 10,000 spindles, including the spinning machines and 
 the engine, cost io,ooo/. ; their wear and tear amounts 
 to ten per cent, or iooo/. a year, or 2O/. a week. The 
 ground-rent is 3OO/. a year, or 61. a week. Coal costs 
 4/. los. every week, gas, oil, &c. ; the total weekly 
 expenses in constant value amounting to 378/. 
 
 The wages of the hands are 52/. a week ; the price 
 of the yarn at \2\d. a pound for 10,000 pounds is 
 5io/. The value produced each week is consequently 
 5io/. 3787., or 1327. Now deduct the variable 
 capital, the wages of the hands, or 52/., and there 
 remains a surplus value of 8o/. Here the rate of 
 surplus value is therefore as 8o/. to 52/., or upwards of 
 153 per cent. That is to say, for an average day's 
 work of ten hours the necessary labour is but four 
 hours, and the extra labour six hours ; or, the labourer 
 works four hours for himself, and six for other 
 people, who divide his extra work among them. 
 
 And yet how unreasonable that the " hand," silly 
 fellow, should object to this division of his extra and 
 unpaid for labour, and fancy that somehow somebody 
 has got the better of him. Fool that he is, let him 
 listen to the voice of the preacher and the political 
 economist : " What you need, my weary, poverty- 
 stricken, Christian brother, is not to get back your 
 own extra labour, which you have expended, in the 
 
 E 2
 
 52 ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 form of money or goods for your own use. That is 
 believe us, who are your true friends robbery of the 
 capitalists. You, my good man, should be thrifty, 
 abstinent, saving, economical, and still go on steadily 
 providing extra labour for others, until you in turn 
 cease to be a labourer, turn capitalist, and extort extra 
 labour yourself." 
 
 What, however is this day's work, necessary labour 
 and extra labour together, which the capitalist buys 
 on the market ? Obviously there must be some 
 limit to it. A man can't work twenty-four hours 
 on end every day in the week, that is clear. But the 
 limits of the day's work are very elastic. We find 
 ten hours, twelve hours, fourteen, sixteen, even 
 eighteen hours, given as the amount of a day's work. 
 And this limit, however loose already, capitalists, from 
 the shirt-sweaters up to the railway companies, are 
 always striving to extend. They invoke the sacred 
 laws of supply and demand and freedom of contract, 
 to sanction an amount of daily toil which leaves a 
 man or a woman utterly exhausted at its close, which 
 weakens health, reduces vitality, and hands on a 
 broken constitution to the progeny. And all for what ? 
 In order to swell that surplus value which " society " 
 depends upon for its excessive luxury and continuous 
 laziness. "But," say the labourers when adjured not 
 to endanger society, " that is all very well ; but society 
 is shamefully wronging us. It is society which, hav- 
 ing entire command of the forces of the country, en- 
 ables the capitalist class thus to violate every law of 
 exchange with impunity. These are they who pay 
 us only one-half or one-third or one-quarter of the
 
 LABOUR. 53 
 
 real value of our day's work. They then are the 
 people who are endangering society, of which we form 
 by far the most important part not the working men, 
 who ask only that their labour should not be taken 
 for nothing." 
 
 There is a comparison at hand which philanthro- 
 pizing capitalists and there are many of them will 
 understand, if they do not appreciate. Under the old 
 system of corvee a man was obliged to give, say one 
 day's work in the week, or at most two, to his lord 
 without any payment. Such a man, though he had 
 the remaining five or six days wholly to himself, was 
 thought little better than a slave. Nor was he. 
 English capitalists would, of all men, subscribe largely 
 to relieve human beings from continuing in such a 
 shameful and degraded position. But here at home, 
 we have men, women, and children, who are obliged 
 to give four, five, six hours a day to the capitalist for 
 nothing, and yet are thought free. A factory hand 
 who, as in the instance given above, provides six 
 hours a day of extra labour, makes the capitalist a 
 present of three days' work in the week for nothing. 
 He gives, in fact, three times as much labour for no- 
 thing in the week to his employer, as the serf who 
 works one day in the week under corvee is obliged to 
 offer in unpaid labour to his lord. But in the one case, 
 under the system of daily or weekly wages, the neces- 
 sary labour and the extra labour are lumped to- 
 gether as so much paid-for labour ; in the other, they 
 are divided. Thus the forced, extra, unpaid labour 
 for the capitalist the industrial corvfa escapes 
 notice, though it is three times greater than the other,
 
 54 ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 and the capitalist is thrice as heavy a master as the 
 feudal lord. 
 
 Moreover, the capitalist class has ever been on the 
 look-out to increase the hours of labour beyond 
 measure, in order that they may obtain more extra 
 labour, and thus secure more surplus value. We in 
 England have had sad experience of the baneful 
 effects upon the working population of the never- 
 ceasing endeavours to increase the number of working 
 hours. The reports of the Factory Inspectors up to 
 a comparatively recent date, are positively filled to 
 overflowing with instances of the efforts made by the 
 capitalists to crowd extra labour on men, on women, 
 and, above all, on children. A little is filched from 
 the meal times ; the mill is opened a trifle earlier, closed 
 something later, than the prescribed hour. Always 
 this persistent scheming for extra labour. 2 Not only 
 up to the passing of the Factory Acts, but ever since, 
 the same tendency has been relentlessly displayed. 
 Free Trade, by reducing the natural price of labour, 
 increased the profit of capitalists and the number 01 
 hours on which they could depend for the production 
 of surplus value. Women and children have, of course, 
 suffered fearfully. They were used up as so much 
 
 2 Mr. Watherston, a jeweller, who has grown rich on other 
 men's labour, wrote not long ago to the Economist to complain 
 of the miserably short hours of work Englishmen now have. 
 They must work more, or trade his profits, he meant would 
 suffer. Of course this was the very man for the capitalist party. 
 They got him at once as chairman of the Westminster caucus. 
 How long will working men be gulled by landlords and capitalists 
 into providing them with more unpaid labour, under the pretence 
 of improving trade ?
 
 LABOUR. 55 
 
 food for surplus value, without the slightest regard to 
 humanity, or to the interest of the country at large. 
 The average age of the working classes was fearfully 
 shortened by the excessive toil. The cotton industry 
 of Lancashire alone in ninety years, or three genera- 
 tions of ordinary men, devoured nine generations of 
 work-people. What mattered that to the manu- 
 facturers ? There were more where they came from. 
 The poor bargainers reproduce themselves, and sup- 
 ply and demand goes merrily on as before. The 
 Factory Acts themselves, still by no means so stringent 
 nor so rigidly administered as they ought to be, were 
 carried against the bitterest opposition of the capi- 
 talist class, because the nation had gradually roused 
 itself to the truth that the whole population was 
 rapidly deteriorating, owing to the systematic 
 overwork of women and children. There are even 
 still economists of liberal views, who hold that women 
 in particular ought to be allowed to work in factories 
 as long as they choose, and that the State has no right 
 to interfere to protect the coming generation. Argu- 
 ment after argument is put forward also that longer 
 hours than those to which the Trade Unions have 
 happily reduced the working day are essential, because 
 otherwise capitalists cannot compete with foreign 
 nations. 3 
 
 3 To show how impossible it is for the capitalist class to shake 
 themselves clear of the prejudices in which they have been 
 brought up, it is almost enough to say that Mr. Bright a man 
 surely distinguished for his humanity in general concerns 
 opposed the Factory Acts, which may fairly be regarded as the 
 most beneficent measures of this century, with all his might ; 
 that when President of the Board of Trade he declared that
 
 56 ENGLAND FOR ALL, 
 
 There is, unfortunately, no need to go back to the 
 horrible details contained in the Health Reports of 
 a few years ago, as to the condition of the working 
 classes, whilst wealth is being piled up by their labour 
 all round them. In spite of a little permissive legis- 
 lation well-intended, but by no means effectual 
 things are almost as bad to-day. Some there are of 
 course who, rejoicing in the fact that our population has 
 consumed on the average 'ooi Ib. per head more of 
 bacon in the last ten years, or '002 Ib. per head more 
 
 adulteration was a legitimate form of competition ; and that to 
 this hour he cannot see that interference with freedom of con- 
 tract as between the capitalist and the labourer may be abso- 
 lutely essential in the interests of the community at large. Mr. 
 Thomas Brassey, as Professor Cairnes has pointed out, could not 
 understand that a reduction of profits might be quite as desirable 
 as a reduction of wages. It is amusing, too, to see a capitalist 
 who has taken 7oo,ooo/. out of the working classes by extra labour, 
 and owns a rigid monopoly, posing as a leader of the democracy. 
 Doubtless they all think themselves thoroughly in earnest ; but 
 how can hunters after surplus value, men who are every day en- 
 gaged in putting wages at a lower level than they ought to be in 
 order to enhance their own profits from unpaid labour, really lead 
 or benefit them by pretending to lead, the working class ? The 
 Liberal benches in the House of Commons at this very time 
 are closely packed with plutocrats, who have made all their 
 wealth, and mean to make more, out of the unpaid labour of 
 their own countrymen. The Conservative benches seat a grow- 
 ing proportion of men of the like kidney. What wonder that 
 working men who really understand what is going on around 
 them, almost despair of success in carrying measures which are 
 absolutely essential to the welfare of their class, when the power 
 of capitalism is increasing in every direction, when there is not 
 a single daily newspaper in existence which represents their 
 interests or advocates their claims, and when only three of their 
 class sit in Parliament ?
 
 LABOUR. 57 
 
 cheese, decline to look to that portion of the people 
 who bring down the average. 
 
 Such a speech as that delivered by the Bishop of 
 Manchester in June, 1880, ought to awaken the nation 
 to the mischief which is still being done. He, worthy 
 man, wrings his hands in despair at the state of affairs 
 in his own diocese. People living in the most mise- 
 rable poverty, from which there seems no escape. 
 Misery, filth, starvation, overcrowding, followed by 
 inevitable deterioration. Sadness and hopelessness 
 brood over the streets, and alleys, and cellars, he has 
 explored. What can education do with children 
 living in such conditions as those which he has so 
 graphically described ? The men and the women too 
 work hard enough when they can get the chance 
 work endless hours too do enough in short to feed, 
 and lodge, and clothe themselves in comfort. Yet in 
 Manchester and Salford, in Stockport and Altrincham, 
 in Oldham and Macclesfield, throughout the whole of 
 these great industrial districts, thousands on thou- 
 sands of labourers exist in good times in squalor, whilst 
 bad times drive them at once to the wall. Dr. 
 Fraser himself had shown a few years before what the 
 condition of the agricultural labourer was in this 
 respect, how hard he too works, how little he gets, 
 how foully he is lodged in many cases. Even orthodox 
 economists show further how farmers and manufac- 
 turers alike combine to keep down the rate of wages to 
 the bare natural price, or below it, whilst exacting the 
 longest possible hours of toil. 
 
 Admitting that in some respects matters have 
 improved, owing to the determination of the working
 
 58 ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 classes no longer to submit to such neglect and 
 oppression as of old, the very last report of the 
 Factory Inspectors shows how much remains to be 
 done, and how little machinery there is to do it. The 
 long weary struggle which has been carried on by the 
 working class, without even proper representation, 
 against laissez-faire, political economy, and selfish 
 ideas of freedom, seems still far from being successful. 
 A mere list of the provisions of the Factory Acts to 
 restrict tyranny by the masters and injury resulting 
 to the hands, proves conclusively that, but for State 
 intervention a condition of slavery of the worst kind 
 would exist now, as it did forty years ago. Meals for 
 instance are not allowed now to be taken in rooms where 
 the atmosphere is poisonous, and some restrictions are 
 even imposed upon keeping men, women, and children 
 employed in the poisonous atmosphere. In Bradford, a 
 city which has long lived in the full and rather greasy 
 odour of Liberal sanctity, the wool-sorting has for years 
 been carried on in such a manner as directly to involve 
 the loss of the lives of many of the hands. Not a single 
 improvement did the capitalists Mr. Coercion-Bill 
 Forsteris a Bradford man introduce, till forced to do so 
 bylaw, and by public opinion following upon the verdict 
 of coroners' juries as to the infamous state of things 
 which brought about the death of the wool-sorters. 
 Children still go to work full time in the collieries when 
 they are twelve years old, though in factories they, 
 fortunately, may not do so until they are thirteen or 
 fourteen. The parents, eager to get their children's 
 wages, take advantage of this, and the capitalist 
 colliery owner of course is always ready to employ
 
 LABOUR. 59 
 
 cheap child-labour for his engines or other pur- 
 poses. 
 
 In the dangerous trades great improvements have 
 been made by the Factory Acts, but still it is evident 
 far more stringent inspection and regulation is 
 required. In the brickworks we read of a girl carry- 
 ing to and fro eleven tons of clay in the day for 2s. ^d. 
 a day. Brickmaking, to which women are wholly 
 unsuited, fell into their hands, we are told, " because 
 masters at one time got wages down very low" 
 wanted to work women on the cheap in fact. In the 
 great cotton and iron industries years must still 
 elapse before the people recover from the deteriorating 
 effects of unrestricted competition. The best factories 
 and ironworks are not yet controlled sufficiently in 
 the interest of the men, women, and children who 
 work in them. But those who wish to understand 
 what capitalism is capable of, and what is its natural 
 bait, should read the reports of the factory inspectors, 
 Messrs. Lakeman and Gould, on the sweating system 
 at the East End of London, and the dens in which 
 the unfortunate milliners and dressmakers work at 
 the West End. " Workshops," says Inspector Lake- 
 man, "are generally small, over-crowded, very dirty, 
 overheated, badly ventilated ; and when half a dozen 
 gas burners are alight for five or six hours in a 
 twelve-feet square room, one can imagine that the 
 term ' sweater ' is not inappropriate. ... So gigantic 
 has the sweating system become, so rapid the produc- 
 tion (for the division of labour is strictly carried out), 
 so varied are the wants of each occupier, that one 
 despairs of making any impresssion upon these people
 
 60 ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 except by compulsion. They are bound to a system 
 which excludes freedom, and from long habit it seems 
 impossible to move them out of it. Now when we 
 see a cloth coat made, lined, braided by hand, the 
 silk and thread found by sweater, all for 2s. 3</., and 
 if the total number be not returned to the clothier 
 completed by the time specified, then a fine of six- 
 pence (I have seen one shilling) levied for each gar- 
 ment, one cannot wonder at the desire of the sweater 
 to keep his team late at night to complete his task." 
 Coats are sometimes " finished in this style," however, 
 as low as 2s. id. "When one thinks that there are 
 about 1 8,000 to 20,000 people toiling at this one trade 
 of making ready-made clothing, can we wonder at 
 beholding the palace-like premises of merchant 
 tailors who can advertise garments at a very low 
 price, which to them is the cost of material, and say 
 2s, id. for the making of a coat? It does not require 
 much depth of reasoning to judge where the profit 
 comes from." 4 No, worthy Mr. Inspector, it does not. 
 The profit of the merchant tailor, like the profit of 
 his noble allies the cotton lords and the wool factors, 
 comes out of the unpaid labour of others, whom he 
 throws upon the streets when they have served his turn 
 of providing surplus value according to the universal 
 law of supply and demand and freedom of contract. 
 
 But again ; hear Mr. Inspector Gould : "There is, 
 however, one branch of work, giving employment to 
 
 4 Lord Salisbury spoke at the Merchant Tailors' Hall not long 
 since, of the absurdity of " plate-hunger." It seemed more ridicu- 
 lous to his aristocratic mind than even the earth-hunger of the 
 Irish. Had he by chance a Conservative sweater at his elbow ?
 
 LABOUR. 6 1 
 
 thousands of girls and women, which, although 
 entirely harmless in itself, is yet, unfortunately, solely 
 by reason of the conditions under which it is carried 
 on, a typically unhealthy business, I need hardly 
 say that I refer to the making of all articles of ladies' 
 clothing, and principally to the dressmaking section 
 of the trade. Of the thousands of young and delicate 
 girls who are engaged in trying to earn a bare sub- 
 sistence in a deleterious atmosphere, no one can tell 
 how many go down in the struggle. No statistics 
 can be formed of the percentage of deaths, of enfeebled 
 constitutions, of the amount of disease engendered in 
 the first instance by the deadly atmosphere of the 
 workrooms in second and third class establishments 
 devoted to the dressmaking and ladies' clothing trade 
 in the West End of London. I know of no class of 
 female workers whose vital interests are so entirely 
 neglected, and who labour under such disadvantageous 
 conditions, as the unlucky victims of the dressmaking 
 ..industry. Nothing is more surprising than to hear 
 the advocates of ' women's rights ' of both sexes, in 
 full knowledge apparently of the hardships undergone 
 by the very class whose battle they profess to fight, 
 cry out for absolute liberty of action to all females 
 employed in labour ! " Evidently Mr. Gould is quite 
 ignorant of the real bigotry of the advocates of free- 
 dom, and had better look to himself. In the shops 
 themselves things are little better. Men and women 
 are kept at work from thirteen to fourteen hours a 
 day for five days in the week, and for sixteen hours 
 on the sixth day. 
 
 As to the accommodation of the labouring class,
 
 62 ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 out of whose unpaid toil the capitalist makes his 
 profit and society waxes fat, the Reports on Artisans' 
 Dwellings, give deplorable facts. Two and three 
 families pigged together into one or two small rooms ; 
 streets of houses torn down for improvements, and 
 their occupiers forced to crowd in upon the already 
 overcrowded streets adjoining. This is the rule through- 
 out all our great cities. London is no worse than Glas- 
 gow, nor Glasgow worse than Birmingham, Bradford, 
 Leeds, Manchester, or Newcastle. The latter city, 
 indeed, is perhaps the worst of all in this respect in 
 comparison to its population. Hitherto the mere 
 Permissive Acts to remedy this state of things have 
 been almost useless. Yet the homes of the poor are 
 not cheap ; they are dear. Cubic space for cubic 
 space, the dens of the East and West End cost 
 more than the mansions of the rich, who have good 
 air, good light, plentiful supply of water, and all that's 
 needed for healthy existence. Those who provide 
 them with all these benefits are left to take care of 
 themselves. No compulsipn : that would be too 
 serious. What ? force the municipalities to tear down 
 foul, unhealthy dwellings, at the expense of the rich, 
 and build up proper accommodation for the poor? 
 " Never," say the ratepayers ; " that would touch us : 
 it is communism, confiscation, the overturn of society." 
 We are now in a brief cycle of rising prosperity for 
 the moneyed and manufacturing class. Now is their 
 opportunity to endeavour to remedy in their turn too 
 some of the mischiefs below and around them. They 
 justly denounce the selfishness of landlords ; let them, 
 too, look at home. But the working class should rely
 
 LABOUR. 63 
 
 on their own power and peaceful strength they must 
 trust to themselves alone. To them, then, I say : 
 All wealth is produced by labour, and goods exchange 
 in proportion to the quantity of human labour which 
 is embodied in them. Between the workers of all 
 civilized countries there is no real difference : they 
 create the wealth and produce the food, and, under 
 proper conditions, all would live in moderation all 
 would have enough. But landowners, capitalists, 
 merchants, money-lenders, have possessed themselves 
 of the land, of the machinery, of the currency, of the 
 credit. They therefore compel the workman to 
 labour long and live hardly for their benefit ; they 
 take of the time, and the life, and the labour of their 
 fellows for nothing. Those who own the soil, and 
 those who manufacture those who live on interest, and 
 those who trade on differences of value, live alike in 
 luxury and in idleness out of the sweat and the misery 
 of others. They, therefore, are the enemies of the great 
 mass of the people, to be overcome by voluntary 
 combination and peaceful endeavour. You, then, 
 who produce the wealth in every country, consider 
 where you stand ; you, men who have seen your homes 
 broken up, your health destroyed, and have beheld 
 your wives and children fade away under the tyranny 
 of capitalism, stop and think. Let all who are made 
 poor and miserable for the advantage of others, take 
 heed to themselves. And having thus considered, 
 thus thought, and thus looked at home, stretch out 
 your hands, now powerless, to the workmen of the 
 world as your friends, and begin a new and better 
 social epoch for humanity. Working men and
 
 64 ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 working women of Great Britain and Ireland, who now 
 toil and suffer that others may be lazy and rich- 
 Unite ! Working men and working women of Europe 
 and America, who now rejoice in the gleam of a 
 transient prosperity, only to be cast into deeper 
 despair on the next stagnation Unite ! Unite ! In 
 union alone is safety and happiness for the future, as 
 in difference and selfishness have been danger and 
 misery in the past Therefore, once more, working 
 men and working women, ye who live hardly to day, 
 to pass on sadness and poverty to your children to- 
 morrow, Unite ! Unite ! Unite !
 
 CAPITAL. 65 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 CAPITAL. 
 
 CAPITAL is the produce of past labour devoted to present 
 production. " The wealth which has been accumu- 
 lated with the object of assisting production, is termed 
 capital ; and therefore the capital of the country is 
 the wealth which is not immediately consumed un- 
 productively, and which may consequently be devoted 
 to assist the further production/' Capital is in fact 
 the saving of past labour, for the special purpose of 
 increasing the future store. Undoubtedly capital 
 originally may have been acquired by saving or by 
 inheritance, though that is only pushing the accumu- 
 lation a step further back; and the grain pits of Northern 
 India, the yam barrows and tabu cocoa-nut groves 
 of Polynesia, the stores of the Mexican aborigines, 
 represent early and useful forms of capital. " No- 
 thing," says Mr. Fawcett, " more distinctly marks the 
 superiority of man over the brute creation than the 
 prudent foresight which causes an adequate provision 
 to be made for the future. The more civilized men 
 are, the more is this foresight shown. Civilized men 
 anticipate with keen perception the wants of the 
 future. To provide against the contingencies of the 
 
 F
 
 66 ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 future, engrosses perhaps the too anxious care of the 
 nation." 
 
 In these sentences Mr. Fawcett expresses far too 
 favourable a view of the foresight of the present gene- 
 ration of civilized men. Never perhaps since civiliza- 
 tion was first seen on the planet, have so many human 
 beings been passing through life at the same time 
 on insufficient food, as at the present moment. Nothing, 
 indeed, is more striking than the want of foresight 
 displayed under our present capitalist system of 
 production. Whichever quarter of the globe we look 
 to, we see the future entirely disregarded. We in 
 England, for example, a vast industrial community, 
 are content to base our supplies more and more upon 
 countries thousands of miles from our shores. America, 
 which affords us our chief quantity of food, is using up 
 wheat centre after wheat centre in a fashion similar 
 to that not long since in vogue in South Australia ; 
 forests, which can perhaps never be replaced, are 
 swept away, in every direction, to the permanent injury 
 of the climate. In England, manure to the value 
 of at least 25,ooo,ooo/. a year, is sent down into the 
 sea, though our soil is deteriorating for want of it. 
 Foresight, therefore, in any extended sense, cannot cer- 
 tainly be claimed for our existing civilization, unless the 
 Romans showed foresight when they worked out the 
 Campagna to ruin, and destroyed the future of Sicily 
 by their exactions. What capital has done for India 
 I shall show later on ; what it would do, if left unre- 
 strained, for our own people has been seen, in part, in 
 the last chapter. But granting that the capital which 
 begins work is the result of past frugality on the part
 
 CAPITAL. 67 
 
 of some hard-working man with a keen eye to the 
 good of his species, as well as to his own immediate, 
 interest, what is the next capital, and the next, and 
 the next, which rolls up so rapidly in this island of 
 ours ? Let us go back to the great cotton industry 
 once more, and look about us there. 
 
 A man has a capital of say io,ooo/., inherited from his 
 thrifty parent, who bequeathed it to him after a long 
 life of usefulness, with many prayers that he would 
 make it fructify. He does. Four-fifths he devotes 
 to buying machinery, raw cotton, &c., and one-fifth he 
 expends in wages. Every year he produces 240,000 
 pounds of cotton yarn of the value of I2,ooo/. His 
 io,ooo/. has been reproduced, and his surplus value 
 is in the 40,000 pounds of yarn, which are sold for 
 the sum of 2OOO/. This 2OOO/. of surplus value forms 
 a new capital, which; when set to work in like manner, 
 will produce in its turn a surplus value of 4OO/. and 
 so on, and so on, as may seem convenient to the 
 capitalist. The original io,OOO/. came from the pious 
 parent, but the history of the new capital of the 
 2OOO/., of the 4OO/. &c., stares us in the face. It is 
 simply surplus value, other people's unpaid extra 
 labour, capitalized. The means of production in 
 which this additional extra labour is embodied, as 
 well as the means which support it, are only portions 
 of the tribute levied every year from the working 
 class by the capitalist class. It is, of course, per- 
 fectly in accordance with the economical laws which 
 govern the production of commodities, and with the 
 ever sacred rights of property which follow thereupon. 
 Nevertheless there are the following results : 
 
 F 2
 
 68 ENGLAND FOR ALL, 
 
 1. That the product belongs to the capitalist, and 
 not to the producer. 
 
 2. That the value of this product includes both the 
 value of the capital and the surplus value, which costs 
 the workmen labour, but the capitalist whose lawful 
 property it becomes, nothing. 
 
 3. That the labourer has kept up his force of labour 
 and can sell it again on the market, if he is lucky 
 enough to find a buyer. 
 
 Thus capital rolls up by crystallizing unpaid labour 
 in the hands of the capitalist. 
 
 That the general position of the modern labourer 
 in dealing with his master the capitalist is bad 
 enough, has been shown only too clearly. Whenever 
 the Government slackens its intervention for a 
 moment, even with existing Factory Acts in full 
 force, the employers, as a class, strive their utmost to 
 extend the hours of labour, and thus to get more 
 unpaid work out of their hands. Not the slightest 
 regard is paid to the health or well-being of the men, 
 women, and children whose lives are used up thus 
 lelentlessly ; the truck system, which filches wages, is 
 resorted to wherever possible ; and adulteration has 
 become the rule rather than the exception in trade. 
 To increase the rate of surplus value produced per 
 head employed is of course a great gain ; the average 
 amount of profit on the variable capital used is at once 
 increased likewise. Who can wonder then that having 
 the control of the powers of the country, and the recog- 
 nized political economists as their submissive fuglemen, 
 the capitalist class should so long have ridden rough- 
 shod over the working class in the name of freedom ?
 
 CAPITAL. 69 
 
 In considering, however, the origin of the capitalist 
 system, it becomes clear that without a minimum 
 amount of variable capital wherewith to pay wages, 
 that mode of production cannot soon begin. A man 
 who works for himself alone, need work only the 
 eight hours which we may assume to be required, on 
 the average, to provide him with the necessaries of 
 subsistence. He would need then only the means of 
 production for his eight hours' work ; whilst the 
 capitalist, who makes him work an extra four hours, 
 needs an additional sum of money to provide the 
 means of production for those four hours. Moreover, 
 the capitalist, even if he lived no better than the 
 workmen he employed, would have to keep two of 
 them at work for twelve hours a day, in order that he 
 himself might have the necessaries of life in idleness. 
 Even so there would be no surplus wealth. So that, 
 according to this calculation, the lazy capitalist, in 
 order to be able to live without work even twice as 
 well as his workmen, and turn into capital half the 
 surplus value produced, must advance eight times the 
 amount of capital required for a single independent 
 workman, though only four hands will be employed 
 in producing surplus value. This done, capital at 
 once becomes master of the situation. The workman 
 no longer turns the means of production to account, 
 but they turn him to account, and work up his force 
 of labour into surplus value to an extent which has 
 never been brought about under any system of forced 
 labour known to history. 
 
 The history of the development of capitalist pro- 
 duction, from simple cooperation and manufacture up
 
 70 ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 to the present preponderance of the great machine 
 industries, shows an enormous growth of wealth for 
 the capitalist class, combined with steady pressure 
 upon the labourer to produce more surplus value by 
 low wages and overwork. At first the true capitalist 
 method scarcely makes head ; but when once labourers 
 are collected together in one building, to do separate 
 tasks at the bidding of an employer, they cease to be 
 separate individuals, and become an organism, bound 
 to exercise their collective capacity in accordance 
 with the rules of capital. Here comes in that minute 
 division of manual labour, so advantageous to pro- 
 duction, which has been described with so much 
 enthusiasm by many economists. The object of the 
 collection of the labourers together was, of course, to 
 cheapen the production of merchandise. The extra 
 ability which the workman derives from devoting his 
 attention to one operation instead of to several, the 
 time saved by the juxta-position of the labourers, &c., 
 all tell in favour of the capitalist, whose interest is 
 henceforth exclusively consulted. For the labourer 
 has already become a mere tool. He no longer pro- 
 duces commodities himself, as he did before, but 
 embodies his work in bits of commodities, or in help- 
 ing to make a complete commodity, only valuable 
 when put together. To carry on perpetually one petty 
 operation in a complicated whole, working day in and 
 day out to produce surplus value for the capitalist by a 
 series of purely mechanical operations, such is the la- 
 bourer's portion in this system of manufacture. He still 
 seems to be an independent agent working with his own 
 tools, but this is precisely what in reality he is not.
 
 CAPITAL. 71 
 
 Glass-making, watch-making, pin-making, and other 
 trades, are still to a great extent conducted on this 
 transition method, and afford illustrations of what was 
 not long since general. Whilst then the social division 
 of labour, with or without the exchange of commodi- 
 ties, belongs to the economical forms of most various 
 societies, the manufacturing division of labour is the 
 special creation of the capitalist system of production. 
 The workshop is in fact a machine, of which the parts 
 are human beings. Dissociate the individuals from 
 the machine as a whole, and they become almost as 
 useless as a crank, a pin, or an eccentric, detached 
 from a steam-engine. The labourer, to start with, 
 sells his force of labour to capital because he is desti- 
 tute of the means of production himself; now his 
 labour has become absolutely useless unless it is sold. 
 He can work henceforth to advantage only in the 
 workshop of the capitalist. It is also the tendency of 
 manufacture thus conducted to employ more and more 
 hands as capital accumulates and the minimum of 
 capital needed to commence, increases. 
 
 This sort of co-operation was a historical necessity, 
 in order to convert isolated labour into social work. 
 It begins about the middle of the sixteenth century, 
 and lasts to the latter half of the eighteenth century, 
 as the chief method of production in capitalist coun- 
 tries. During the whole of this period, and far on into 
 the nineteenth century, the most atrocious laws were 
 enacted by the small minority of the population who 
 owned the Houses of Parliament, against the increase 
 of wages, or any combination on the part of the 
 working classes to secure for themselves justice and
 
 72 ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 consideration. Capitalists might combine at their 
 pleasure ; employers might break their contract at 
 will ; but, woe betide those unlucky workmen who 
 thought that freedom meant the right to strike to get 
 better wages, or to step out of a contract which im- 
 perilled their health. For them the prison, flogging, 
 branding, forced labour at the filthiest tasks. But 
 for the capitalist ? he went on his way rejoicing, with 
 more and yet more of other men's labour at his mercy, 
 and in due course of time he " founded a family/' 
 figured as an Abolitionist, and died in the odour of 
 sanctity. 
 
 Steam machinery gave a new turn to the screw 
 which pressed down the working class, and began 
 those periods of inflation and stagnation, of over-pro- 
 duction and depression, which many have come to 
 regard as inevitable accompaniments of all produc- 
 tion. The machine sprang naturally out of manu- 
 facture, but the use of steam as a motive power gave 
 it a development in many directions which could 
 never have been obtained in any other way. At first 
 sight it would appear that machines must of necessity 
 improve the lot of the bulk of mankind that as they 
 so vastly enhance the productive power of human 
 labour, men would be relieved from excessive drudgery, 
 and yet wealth would abound more than at any pre- 
 vious period. 
 
 This was the view of the ancients. Aristotle fore- 
 saw that slavery could be done away if machines were 
 invented ; and others have dreamed of a state of society 
 where, by their help, the history of the people should 
 cease to be one of perpetual poverty and degradation.
 
 CAPITAL. 73 
 
 As machines save labour alike in agriculture and in 
 working up the raw material, there is nothing neces- 
 sarily chimerical in such ideas. But capital has 
 stepped in and taken order with these vain imaginings. 
 The riches due to machinery have gone to the 
 few : the many have become mere slaves to the 
 machine. For that is the result : human beings no 
 longer make use of their implements ; they themselves 
 are made to serve the machine. 
 
 The machine of course, though it increases the pro- 
 ductive power of the human labour employed, adds 
 no more value to the commodity produced than the 
 wear and tear during the process of work. But 
 the first effect of its introduction is to bring into com- 
 petition with adult male labour that of women and 
 children, who could, and do, serve machines as well as 
 the superior force of the men, and serve also to reduce 
 their wages the main object of the capitalist. But 
 another advantage is afforded by the machine to the 
 employer. We have seen that the profit of the 
 capitalist depends upon the amount of unpaid labour 
 he can exact from the free workman. In ordinary 
 circumstances this can only be increased by the 
 lengthening of the hours of labour. But by the aid of 
 machines the labour can be intensified as well as pro- 
 longed. Thus a man may produce the necessary 
 amount of labour-value in a shorter period, and leave 
 a larger portion of the working day as surplus value 
 to his employer, by an improvement in machinery 
 which renders the labour rapid and severe. Ever 
 since the law stepped in to shorten the hours of labour 
 for women and children, and men combined to shorten
 
 74 ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 their own hours, the endeavour to intensify labour by 
 increasing the rapidity of machines has been unceas- 
 ing. This has produced in the cotton and silk factories 
 a state of nervous excitement among the workers 
 which has greatly augmented the proportion of chest 
 complaints. Twelve hours' work are now compressed 
 into ten hours. This work, too, is of the most 
 monotonous, uninteresting character. In return for 
 that exhausting labour the working classes as a body 
 suffer as the Bishop of Manchester has so graphically 
 described. 
 
 But the effect of the introduction of new machines 
 of greatly improved capacity, used not for the benefit 
 of the whole community, but primarily for that of the 
 dominant class, has a far more serious influence upon 
 the working class than even the competition of women 
 and children which it admits of, or the intensity of 
 labour which results therefrom. A new labour-saving 
 machine means so much labour thrown upon the 
 market without the means of earning subsistence. This 
 effect of improved machinery is admitted by Ricardo, 
 who, after having previously held the contrary opinion, 
 satisfied himself "that the substitution of machinery 
 for human labour is often very injurious to the class 
 of labourers." This view is taken less clearly by 
 Macculloch, and Mill, and Fawcett ; but they con- 
 tend that the compensations are rapid, and in the end 
 beneficial. The labouring classes, according to them, 
 are therefore benefited, not injured, by the introduction 
 of improved machinery in every case. The labourers 
 whom the machine displaces are nevertheless thrown 
 upon the market, where they certainly increase the
 
 CAPITAL. 75 
 
 amount of labour available for the capitalist. This is 
 in itself a terrible matter for them all. But the amount 
 of capital invested in the machine ceases also to be 
 available fur wages ; and if the machine works up an 
 increased amount of raw material with far fewer hands, 
 the constant capital is clearly greatly augmented at 
 the expense of the variable, or that which is imme- 
 diately available for the payment of wages. The 
 men thus thrown out of work are good for very little 
 in other employments, and consequently fall to a lower 
 grade. If they get fresh work in the same trade, that is 
 owing to the introduction of some new capital, not cer- 
 tainly to that which is already locked up in the machine, 
 and employed in obtaining food for it in the shape of 
 raw materials. The machine itself has nothing to do 
 with the sad effect produced. The result of its em- 
 ployment is that the product is cheaper and more 
 abundant than ever before ; yet the workman is thrown 
 aside into penury, and the capitalist pursues his 
 triumphant career. For this temporary inconvenience 
 is now of perpetual recurrence ; and the fate of the 
 miserable hand-loom weavers of India, starved in 
 the interests of Manchester manufacturers, is repro- 
 duced in a milder form among the labourers whose 
 interests these very cotton-lords were pretending to 
 serve. The necessary influence of the machine under 
 present conditions is to place the labourers at an 
 increasing disadvantage a disadvantage which they 
 can never overcome, save by political and social com- 
 binations and rearrangements, carried out with stead- 
 fastness and zeal for at least a generation. 
 
 For this brings the question home to that miserable
 
 76 ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 see-saw of inflation and depression to that sad con- 
 dition of the mass of the labouring poor in the ever- 
 growing population of our great cities, to which 
 reference has so often been made. " Oh yes," say the 
 followers of Malthus, by no means confined to Mr. 
 Bradlaugh and Mrs. Besant, " but this over-population 
 is at the root of the whole mischief. If only the 
 working class would keep itself under restraint, and 
 not breed at such a terrible pace, they would at once 
 raise their wages by the eternal law of supply and 
 demand. They have to thank their own early mar- 
 riages and excessive birth-rate for much of their 
 present misery." 
 
 Is this so ? The evidence is really all the other 
 way. There is nothing whatever to show that these 
 islands are overpeopled in proportion to the wealth 
 that is being accumulated. Very much the contrary. 
 The population of Great Britain and Ireland has 
 doubled in the last seventy years. It is now increas- 
 ing at the rate of about one-and-a-half per cent, in 
 every ten years. But the riches, the income, the accu- 
 mulations of the country, are they increasing at a less 
 rate so that abstention from marriage and Malthusian 
 devices are so essential ? Why, it is notorious to all 
 that our wealth has increased out of all calculable 
 proportion to our population during the present cen- 
 tury. The whole world is laid under contribution, to 
 furnish additional wealth for the exported savings of 
 unpaid labour made by the comfortable classes here 
 at home. English capital brings back its return from 
 all quarters of the globe ; whilst in these islands, the 
 comparison between what was and what is, can
 
 CAPITAL. 77 
 
 scarcely be expressed in sober language. Nay, even 
 during this late period of prolonged depression, when 
 the hard, rough men of the iron districts, as well as 
 the distressed cotton-spinners and miners, were 
 declaring that they would not go into the workhouse, 
 and yet could not " clem " for another winter even 
 in those hardest of hard times, it was calculated by 
 an expert that in addition to ordinary investments, 
 which were going on all the time, no less than 
 25O,OOO,OOO/. were watching the opportunity to belaid 
 out to a profit when, to use the cant phrase, business 
 once more recovered. Whilst population is now 
 increasing at the rate of one-and-a-half per cent, in 
 every ten years, capital and wealth squandered in 
 luxury are rolling up at the rate of ten, twenty, thirty 
 per cent, per annum. 
 
 A few figures will make this quite clear. Taking 
 the years 1848 and 1878, the period of one generation 
 since last there was an agitation in favour of justice 
 to the multitude, we find that the total gross annual 
 value of property and profits assessed to Income 
 Tax in Great Britain and Ireland about half the 
 actual gross annual value, or less was in round 
 figures 275,ooo,coo/. in 1848, against 578,000,0007., in 
 1 878, or an increase on assessment for income alone of up- 
 wards of 1 10 per cent, in the thirty years. A truly enor- 
 mous increase. Yet the total population in 1848 was 
 28,000,000, as against nearly 34,000,000 in 1878. 
 Here, then in the United Kingdom, an increase of 
 the annual assessed income of no per cent, or of 
 3O3,ooo,ooo/., since 1848, has been accompanied by 
 an increase in the population of only 6,000,000, or at
 
 78 ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 the rate of less than twenty per cent, in the thirty 
 years. 
 
 What fatal nonsense then is it to talk of .over- 
 population in such a case as this. If the increased 
 capital had been used for the benefit of all, then 
 these extra 6,000,000, as well as the 28,000,000, would 
 have been living in comfort, health, and well-being 
 well-housed, well-clothed, well-fed, well-educated. 
 The over-population which the Malthusians think to 
 check by their wrong and mistaken methods, is due 
 to the special system of production under which we 
 groan, and will continue so long as, and no longer 
 than, it is brought under restraint for the advantage 
 of all. It is the deprivation of the means of selling 
 their labour on fair terms that does the mischief to 
 the mass of the population. Let the people remem- 
 ber, that if no one were overworked in this free land 
 of ours, there would not at this moment be hands 
 enough in the country to carry on its business that 
 if only one-half of the livers in luxury and idleness 
 on the excessive labour of others turned to some 
 higher ideal of patriotism, there would be plenty for 
 all. It is not the population that crowds on the 
 means of subsistence, but the concentration of the 
 produce of their toil in so few hands, that is obnoxious ; 
 though the way out to a better and fairer distribution 
 is not so simple as some of the easy handlers of the 
 complicated machinery of our modern society would 
 imagine. 
 
 This over-population then, which occasions such 
 sad scenes in times of depression, and is ever close at 
 hand in the flushest days of trade, is not actual but
 
 CAPITAL. 79 
 
 relative, and is directly due to the employment of 
 machines and the growing proportion of constant to 
 variable capital. Natural causes great famines in the 
 East, serious wars in Europe, short harvests at home, 
 may aggravate the depression, as sloth and unthrifti- 
 ness add to the misfortunes of the working class. But 
 such decennial crises as those now observable date 
 from the present century, and owe their development 
 to the circumstances stated. 
 
 The reproduction of capital necessarily carries with 
 it the simultaneous reproduction of the source of sur- 
 plus value force of labour. Accumulation of capital is 
 at the same time increase of the mere wage-earning 
 class. And the payment of wages presupposes that 
 a certain amount of labour is given for nothing. 
 Wages, therefore, can only rise because there is an 
 increase of capital in excess of the labour offered. Yet 
 the rise of wages and consequent diminution of unpaid 
 labour does not mean that the domain of capitalism 
 is restricted ; the small profits only necessitate bigger 
 capitals, and the workman sees in the wealth of his 
 master his only hope of safety. Or on the other hand, 
 the rate of wages retards the amount of accumulation, 
 and then the excessive amount of capital seeking 
 employment in comparison to the labour on offer 
 and then wages fall to the. level which suits the views 
 of capital. Thus the see- saw goes on. Now an 
 excess of capital arising from accelerated accumula- 
 tion, which renders the labour on offer insufficient and 
 raises its price ; again a slackened accumulation 
 makes the labour on offer relatively excessive 
 and reduces its price. All this has nothing to do
 
 So ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 with the increase and decrease of population, but 
 may occur, and does occur, when the population is 
 stationary. 
 
 The real law of capitalist production is this : 
 The relation between the accumulation of capital and 
 the rate of wages is only a relation between unpaid 
 labour converted into capital and the overplus of 
 paid labour that this additional capital needs in order 
 to set to work. This then is not a relation between 
 two matters quite independent of one another that 
 is to say, on the one side the magnitude of the capital, 
 on the other the number of the working population ; 
 but a relation only between the paid and the unpaid 
 labour of the same working population. If the quantity 
 of unpaid labour which the working class supplies 
 and the capitalist class accumulates increases with 
 sufficient rapidity for its conversion into additional 
 capital to necessitate an extraordinary addition to 
 the quantity of paid labour, wages rise. Other 
 things remaining the same, unpaid labour diminishes 
 in proportion. So soon, however, as this diminu- 
 tion reaches the point when the extra labour which 
 furnishes the additional capital is no longer forth- 
 coming in the usual quantity, a reaction ensues. 
 A less part of the return is converted into capital, 
 and the rise of wages is checked. Thus and this is 
 the point of most serious import to the working 
 classes of this country the price of labour can never 
 rise except between limits which leave quite untouched 
 the groundwork of the capitalist system and ensure the 
 reproduction of capital on a progressive scale. Never 
 then until the working class shake themselves clear
 
 CAPITAL. 8 1 
 
 of the notion that a mere rise of wages is all they 
 have to strive for, will they be able to control the 
 capitalist class. The labourer is thus really the slave 
 of his own production in existing economical con- 
 ditions. 
 
 For, as has been stated more than once, the demand 
 for labour is occasioned, not by the actual amount of 
 capital but by that of its variable portion, which alone 
 employs labour. But the magnitude of this portion 
 relatively to the whole is constantly decreasing. At 
 times, however, the conversion of variable into con- 
 stant capital is less felt, machines are introduced 
 less frequently. Then there arises that greater demand 
 for labour which under ordinary conditions follows 
 upon the accumulation of capital. But at the very 
 moment when the number of the workmen employed 
 by the capital reaches its maximum, there is such a 
 glut of produce that at the slightest check in disposing 
 of the goods the whole social machinery seems to 
 come to a dead stop, the discharge of workmen comes 
 suddenly on a vast scale and in a violent manner, 
 and the very upset forces capitalists to excessive 
 efforts to economize labour. Improved machinery is 
 introduced again, and the wheel works round. 
 
 Thus the tendency of our system of production and 
 the increasing accumulation of capital, is to increase 
 at the same time the amount of the over-population 
 relatively to the means of employment. An indus- 
 trial army of reserve is maintained of increasing 
 dimensions, ever at the disposal of capital, ready 
 to be absorbed during times of expansion, only to 
 be thrown back in periods of collapse. Only under 
 
 G
 
 82 ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 the control of the great industrial movement of our 
 time, does the production of a superfluous population 
 become a definite means for the development of 
 wealth. During periods of stagnation this industrial 
 army of reserve presses on the army in active employ- 
 ment to restrain its demands, when at length comes 
 the period of over-production and great apparent 
 prosperity. Thus, then, the law according to which 
 an ever-increasing mass of riches can be produced 
 with a less and still lessening expenditure of human 
 force this law which enables man as a social beins: 
 
 o 
 
 to produce more and more with less labour, is turned 
 by our capitalist system where the means of pro- 
 duction are not at the service of the labourer, but the 
 labourer at the mercy of his means of production 
 directly to his disadvantage. As a direct consequence, 
 the more power and resources placed at the command 
 of labour, and the greater the competition of labourers 
 for means of employment, the more precarious be- 
 comes the condition of the wage-earner, and his op- 
 portunities of selling his labour. The productive 
 population is always increasing in a more rapid ratio 
 than the capital has need of it. 
 
 All recent events do but serve to exhibit the general 
 truth of this in more striking shape. Look at the 
 movement of population ; take note of the operation 
 of strikes ; observe the world-wide effect of crises at 
 the present time : how the numbers of those who live 
 from hand to mouth, or minister as domestic servants 
 to the luxuries of the comfortable classes, grow in 
 proportion to the rest of the population ; how the 
 strikes invariably fail on a falling market, and often
 
 CAPITAL. 83 
 
 leave the workmen in a worse condition than they 
 were before they began ; how, when a crisis begins 
 in Vienna it is felt at once through the world, to the 
 United States, and we see, even in that great territory 
 3,000,000 of tramps, without house or home, wander- 
 ing through the country, exposed to the most furious 
 laws enacted by the well-to-do, and waiting till capi- 
 tal shall be good enough to employ them again, and 
 again turn them adrift ; how we ourselves discovered 
 that the capitalized unpaid labour taken from our peo- 
 ple to lend to rotten States, like San Domingo, Hon- 
 duras, Paraguay, and Peru, had merely brought about 
 here at home a fictitious industrial prosperity, to be 
 followed by the longest, and for the mass of the 
 working people the most trying, crisis known in re- 
 cent times ; how but it is needless to go further ; the 
 facts, the bare hard facts, condemn unceasingly our 
 unregulated system of capitalist production, which, 
 based solely on selfishness and gratifying greed, takes 
 no account of the morrow, nor any note whatever of 
 the mischief inflicted on the human race. Where the 
 State has interfered to control and change the bale- 
 ful conditions of life for the mass of our countrymen, 
 there, and there alone, has some little good been done. 
 What then, say the let-alone school, would you 
 stop the operation of machinery, throw back the evo- 
 lution of the race, and return to the natural savage 
 for a reorganization of modern society? They who 
 ask such questions are as silly as those who think 
 all attempts to change our social organization must 
 be necessarily traced to the French Revolution, and 
 that those who, like myself, are determined to modify 
 
 G 2
 
 84 ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 existing political and social conditions, must wish and 
 strive for a general overturn. It is not so. But the 
 working of capital is essentially immoral. It moves on 
 irrespective of all human considerations, save the 
 accumulation of wealth and the provision for ease 
 and luxury. For fifty years England has been under 
 the domination of the classes who live and trade upon 
 unpaid labour. Surely it is high time that those 
 people who provide it should be heard in their turn 
 as to the system which weighs them down. To 
 expect that the nation will at once abandon its idea 
 of fancied individual freedom, in favour of a real col- 
 lective freedom which shall consult and care for the 
 interests of all, is a chimera. But seeing, as we 
 cannot but see, the plain economical basis of so much 
 of the misery all deplore, is it not reasonable that 
 more rapid steps should be made in the direction of 
 general improvement ? So far all the sacrifices have 
 been made by the working class. What they in 
 their turn may rightfully demand at once as reason- 
 able and practicable remedies for some portion of their 
 ills, are : 
 
 1. A curtailment of the hours of labour, eight hours 
 being the working day. 
 
 2. Free and compulsory education in its widest sense. 
 
 3. A compulsory construction by the municipalities 
 and county assemblies of fitting dwellings for the 
 working classes, including a good and free supply of 
 light, air, and water, and garden-ground where possible, 
 
 4. Really cheap transport, so that artisans may 
 live at a distance from their work without incurring 
 heavy expenditure.
 
 CAPITAL. 85 
 
 Such social reforms would produce an effect more 
 speedily than might be supposed ; and the expenditure 
 would be far more than repaid to the community at 
 large by the increased physical strength, the superior 
 intelligence and morality, and the greatly enhanced 
 patriotism, in its best sense, of the mass of the com- 
 munity. That these changes would check the fearful 
 crises consequent upon the capitalist system of pro- 
 duction is nowise probable ; but they would lead the 
 way gradually to a better system, when all might 
 enter more fully upon their duties to the whole 
 country. 
 
 Men who are now deprived of the fruits of their 
 labour, who live under bad social conditions, who are 
 forced to resort to scamped work and adulterated 
 manufacture in order that their employers may make 
 a profit, would feel very differently if for their honest 
 labour invested in sound goods they could obtain a 
 rightful return themselves. The magic of property 
 could then be felt in the general as well as the 
 individual improvement. That industry will always 
 have the better of laziness, that thrift must be more 
 beneficial than extravagance, are truths which no 
 political or social changes can shake. But as we 
 stand, our laws and customs are directly calculated to 
 foster excessive wealth on the one side and miserable 
 poverty on the other. What wonder that the people 
 should begin to ask themselves the why and the 
 wherefore of all this disparity between the men who 
 work and those who use them ? None are more 
 ready to pay for mental toil than those who work 
 with their hands, none more ready to give up a por-
 
 86 ENGLAND FOX ALL. 
 
 tion of their labour for the benefit of their fellows. 
 Now, however, the perpetual conflict of wages, the 
 strife with capital, where the possibility of final 
 success is pushed farther and farther into the distance, 
 necessarily blunts that feeling of national greatness in 
 the best sense which does so much to sweep away, 
 even as it is, the meanness engendered by mere nar- 
 rowness and greed. Those who are never certain of 
 continuous employment, and have little time left for 
 education, might well be pardoned if they thought 
 only of their own selfish interests. That in the mass 
 they do not do so, is the best hope for the future. 
 
 But in coming changes it behoves us to be careful, 
 lest, in getting rid of the excessive influence of one 
 dominant class, we do but strengthen the power of a 
 meaner and a worse one in its place. If possession 
 of land as all reformers agree should be regulated 
 in the interests of the country in time to come, so also 
 must capital, machinery, and the national highways. 
 Conservatism has come to mean the dominance of 
 landowners : Liberalism has been degraded to the 
 service of capitalists. There is little perhaps to choose ; 
 but for the people it is to the full as important in the 
 future that capital should be controlled as the land. 
 Mere destruction for its own sake anarchy, where the 
 demon of Socialism may take the foremost and the 
 hindmost together is not in accordance with the views 
 of Englishmen. To pull down a system, however bad, 
 they must see that something is ready to take its 
 place. The infinite mischiefs of capitalism must be 
 removed as a better method of production grows up 
 from below. We have sad experience that our so-
 
 CAPITAL. 87 
 
 called individual liberty means too often only the 
 development of monopoly and the tyranny of wealth. 
 But that faculty of organization, that ingenuity in 
 turning science and invention to account, may as well 
 be used in the service of the many as to the selfish 
 gratification of personal desires. There is room enough 
 for the use of the highest powers, without the perpetual 
 money-getting now in the ascendant. No man can 
 live out of the current of his age ; but it is time that a 
 higher ideal were placed before the nation, and that the 
 common sense of the community at large should save 
 the next generation from the power of oppression 
 now accorded to a system which developes in those 
 who handle it neither foresight, patriotism, nor honesty. 
 The very tendency of capital itself renders this essen- 
 tial. Each year sees it rolling up into larger and 
 larger masses. The great joint-stock enterprises, where 
 enormous capital is obtained from many contributors, 
 gradually crush out smaller houses ; large emporiums 
 undersell small ; large factories dwarf smaller. With 
 this increase too, the personal relation between em- 
 ployers and employed ceases, and powerful corpora- 
 tions begin to assert themselves as a political influence 
 solely for selfish ends, and with the cold persistence 
 and disregard for human interests which such asso- 
 ciations invariably display. England, the greatest 
 capitalist country, may well show the world how to 
 take order with this dangerous growth that threatens 
 to overshadow human progress, and regulate without 
 injustice those purely selfish motives which hitherto 
 have been looked to as the sole hope of advance in 
 civilization.
 
 S8 ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 ORGANIZATION. 
 
 Now does any one imagine that with our present 
 restricted suffrage we are likely to carry in town or 
 country the social changes absolutely essential for the 
 well-being of the majority, or to reorganize our 
 political machinery in a workable shape within a 
 reasonable time ? Those who think thus must be of 
 a very sanguine disposition. When in history did 
 classes who hold property and power give up any 
 portion of their valuable and lucrative monopolies until 
 they saw clearly that surrender would be less harmful 
 than defeat ? The natural inclination of so-called 
 Conservatism is to make a dead stand against all 
 reform ; and only now and then does a man arise in 
 any country who can persuade the people in possession 
 that, if they wish to avoid an overturn, they must have 
 a distinct constructive policy of their own. 
 
 Yet it is true that mere extension of the suffrage by 
 itself does not suffice to bring about much beneficial 
 change. In France manhood suffrage imposed upon 
 the people the rule of Napoleon III., and his gang of 
 gamblers and political thimble-riggers for twenty years. 
 The master may have meant well enough in his way> 
 but his men and their mistresses looked upon France
 
 ORGANIZA TION. 89 
 
 as their fair prey. In Germany, as we see, universal 
 suffrage has not prevented Prince Bismarck from 
 maintaining the dominance of military Junkerdom 
 over a well-educated and, in the main, peaceful people. 
 In America the injurious influence of great capitalists 
 is severely felt, though there the people have the 
 power to put an end to their tyranny at once by com- 
 bination at the polls. Even here in England we may 
 observe the same slow action on the part of voters 
 to bring forward social grievances. Wonders, for 
 instance, were looked for from the Reform Bill of 
 1832. It would be quite amusing, if it were not a 
 little sad, to read in the writers of the first quarter of 
 this century what changes for the better would be made 
 so soon as rotten boroughs were swept away, and the 
 power of aristocrats shaken. Yet all this enthusiasm 
 notwithstanding, fourteen years elapsed before even 
 the Corn Laws were repealed and that was a capi- 
 talist not a working-class measure, inasmuch as cheap 
 food kept wages lower ; and the Factory Acts were 
 not passed, in a shape to be of any service, for sixteen 
 years. Then, too, the man who did more than any 
 other to force them on the legislature, in the face of 
 the interested opposition of the capitalists, was a non- 
 political aristocrat, the present Lord Shaftesbury. 
 
 So with the Reform Bill of 1867, which in the eyes 
 of such a man as Mr. Lowe involved nothing short 
 of revolution. What great measures for the advantage 
 of the community at large have yet resulted from that ? 
 Ireland, no doubt, has secured some attention ; and 
 the School Boards have commenced the work of educa- 
 tion ; but on the whole it is surprising how little has
 
 90 ENGLAND FOR ALL, 
 
 been achieved in fourteen years. Still, it is impossible 
 to doubt that pressure from without would assume a 
 very different shape if every man in the British Islands 
 not a felon were entitled to a vote. It is fair to assume 
 that no further change is pressed on now with vigour, 
 because the mass of the present voters have got all 
 they want. 
 
 For though it is the fashion to say that the Reform 
 Bill of 1867 gave power to the democracy, there is little 
 evidence of that as yet. To this day the working 
 class is outvoted by the shopkeeping class ; and the 
 preposterous absurdity of three-cornered constitu- 
 encies has been foisted on us by political theorists, 
 to make matters worse. The extension of the borough 
 franchise to the counties will, no doubt, make a 
 difference to the agricultural labourer, and facilitate 
 the dealing with the land ; but that only puts the 
 increasing working class in the towns at a greater 
 relative disadvantage. Manhood suffrage is really 
 the only logical outcome of any arguments in favour 
 of the extension of the suffrage at all. Those who 
 make the wealth of the country have the right, if any- 
 body has, to vote as to how it should be governed. 
 Drawbacks to such an extension there are, of course ; 
 and elsewhere, as has been already remarked, mere 
 universal suffrage has not secured the social advance- 
 ment which might have been hoped for. But unless 
 those who suffer most under present arrangements 
 have at least the means of putting forward repre- 
 sentatives definitely pledged beforehand to redress 
 their grievances, the very motive power for reform is 
 lacking alike in Parliament and in local assemblies.
 
 ORGANIZATION. 91 
 
 We are now in a vicious circle. Shut men out from 
 voting, and a minority unjustly controls the country : 
 give the vote to all, and there is the risk of whole- 
 sale corruption, as well as that ignorance should 
 become the ultimate court of appeal. 
 
 What probability is there, however, that, under any 
 circumstances, free compulsory education to remedy 
 this ignorance or the enactment that bribery shall be 
 felony, to put a stop to corruption will be carried in 
 our existing Parliament with the present suffrage ? 
 The idea is by no means confined to the Conserva- 
 tives that universal education must involve a very 
 inconvenient growth of independence, which will ren- 
 der men and women disinclined to supply menial 
 positions in the old-fashioned way. Possibly, too, the 
 workers of the community would begin to inquire into 
 the reasons of the present excessive disparity of wealth, 
 which would be more inconvenient still. School 
 Boards are already too expensive for some. The 
 contention that really complete education is the duty 
 of the State for the protection of the common inte- 
 rest, is looked upon as little short of socialism by the 
 well-to-do, who of course wish their children to start 
 lightly handicapped with a good education in the race 
 of life. The old hierarchical notions indeed still go 
 on, and people who have to fill the lower stations 
 ought to be mere animals, without too much know- 
 ledge to make them anxious for higher things. In this 
 matter England is still far behind countries which in 
 respect of political intelligence and political training 
 are greatly our inferiors. We who have hitherto 
 led the way in so many European improvements, need
 
 92 ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 not surely look any longer across the sea to find that 
 Frenchmen and Germans have more share in the 
 government of their country than ourselves. More 
 than ever important is it then, as the first step to- 
 wards the organization of democracy, that all who 
 add to the wealth of the country shall have a voice 
 in ordering how taxation should be levied and spent. 
 Manhood suffrage could alone supply the power to 
 carry out genuine reform. 
 
 But other mere mechanical changes are needed at 
 the same time. That a Parliament should last six 
 years without a dissolution, has been found to be a 
 matter of serious inconvenience to the State at large. 
 Men who know that they are irremovable for so long 
 a period trust to national forgetfulness to cover over 
 their blunders. Many instances could be given of 
 this calculation, and its effects upon the course of 
 public business. Triennial Parliaments, or, better still, 
 a retirement of one-third of the members each year, 
 would keep the House of Commons thoroughly in har- 
 mony with the constituencies, and quicken the general 
 interest in political affairs. Equal electoral districts 
 necessarily follow upon manhood or adult suffrage. 
 Any other arrangement would inevitably bring about 
 in a new form that injustice which we wish to get rid 
 of. The right of all to a vote once conceded, no man 
 can claim a greater share in representation than 
 another. 
 
 In the same way payment of all election expenses, 
 whether parliamentary or municipal, out of the public 
 funds, is essential. Wealth has already far too much 
 influence, without making political life almost im-
 
 ORGANIZA TION. 93 
 
 possible to the poor man, and especially to the work- 
 ing class. Why should a man be called upon to pay 
 a vast fine in order to fill a public office for which his 
 countrymen think him qualified ? The working class 
 can never hope to be fairly represented till this has 
 been carried at the least. In the same way, pay- 
 ment of members is but justice. Unpaid work as a 
 whole is bad work, done as a rule for social aggran- 
 dizement, personal advancement, or the like. A re- 
 presentative ought to feel that he is the servant of 
 the State, quite open to form his own judgment, but 
 still as much a part of the general executive as any 
 Minister. Moreover, this mere money business must 
 act as a drawback, or almost to the exclusion, of poor 
 men. Few can afford to throw their whole time into the 
 House of Commons work, on Committees, &c., without 
 remuneration. Those who do, have generally con- 
 contrived as a body landlords, capitalists, railway 
 directors, &c. to reimburse themselves in some way at 
 the expense of the country at large. 
 
 These four points therefore are imperatively needed 
 as the means towards a better organization : 
 
 Manhood Suffrage. 
 
 Triennial Parliaments. 
 
 Equal Electoral Districts. 
 
 Payment of Members and especially all Election 
 Expenses, out of public funds. 
 
 They are but means to an end ; yet it is humi- 
 liating to remember that they were demanded in 
 1848 by a powerful organization, and now here we 
 are in 1881 still without them. Englishmen have 
 lost pluck under middle-class rule. The influence
 
 94 ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 of the perpetual money-getting seems to have exer- 
 cised a weakening effect on every portion of the 
 body politic. Nowadays, any sturdy demand for 
 plain rights is styled revolutionary ; and a sort of cant 
 patter-song of moderation is chanted by both parties, 
 who on all these matters are practically at one. It 
 does one good at such times to breathe the free bluff 
 air of downright agitation, when men call a spade a 
 spade, and a trimmer a useless flabby creature, to be 
 thrown into the political gutter as soon as may be. 
 
 For the definite issue we are now debating has been 
 led up to for at least three generations. The shock 
 of the Revolution in France enabled the upper and 
 middle classes here to set back reforms till our day, 
 which were recognized as essential in a far different 
 state of things by such a man as Lord Chatham. Now 
 we see on every side nations beginning to govern 
 themselves wholly for the sake of the people. That 
 government of the people by the people of which 
 noble Abraham Lincoln spoke on the battle-field of 
 Gettysburg as the cause for which men fell there, is 
 the cause which we have yet to fight out peacefully 
 here. 
 
 For at this present moment, whilst we are discussing 
 the expediency of this or that step, a process of cen- 
 tralization and decentralization is going forward, 
 which, unless we take means to understand and take 
 advantage of it, will land us all in administrative 
 anarchy. Universal suffrage, giving vent to direct 
 personal interest, but harmonized and consolidated 
 into a general effect for the public good, must be the 
 basis of that new social and political period on which we
 
 ORGANIZATION. 95 
 
 are now entering. By itself it can do nothing ; but it 
 is surely possible, at our stage of political development,- 
 to combine the full satisfaction of the wishes of the 
 people, and the improvement of their social position, 
 with the ideal of a great country leading European 
 development by virtue of true sagacity and vigour. 
 It is such an ideal of public advantage that can alone 
 stimulate men to sacrifice their individual crotchets to 
 attain a great end. 
 
 To stand still is out of the question. Parliament, 
 as every one can see. no longer holds the position in 
 public esteem, or is able to carry on its work, as it did. 
 How far the House of Lords and the House of Com- 
 mons may require remodelling is a point on which 
 men differ. That great changes are needed, all are 
 agreed. The House of Lords stands only by reason 
 of its past. Many hesitate to attack it, as the City 
 hesitated to remove Temple Bar. It is antiquated 
 and cumbrous, and unquestionably blocks the way ; 
 but there are still historical associations which induce 
 men to shrink from a definite agitation for its over- 
 throw. Besides, it is at the present time the best 
 debating club of its kind in Europe. There, on great 
 occasions, the traditions of oratory, which are begin- 
 ning to fade from the House of Commons, may still 
 be found as a living force. But it is sad to see so 
 much ability fired into the air. Their lordships only 
 exchange their ordinary attitude of well-bred indif- 
 ference and drowsiness for a more active interest when 
 some reactionary motion has to be affirmed to no 
 purpose. Young men who grow up in that dull 
 atmosphere early acquire an apparent consciousness
 
 ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 of their own uselessness. Why should they longer 
 suffer, poor fellows, from this hereditary boredom ? It 
 would be charitable to relieve them from so false a 
 position as that which they now hold. A closer con- 
 tact with the moving forces of English political life 
 might perhaps develope in some of them a worthy 
 ambition to lead, instead of languidly attempting to 
 dam back, the current of their time. This at any 
 rate is certain, that the time is rapidly passing away 
 when a caucus of territorial magnates can play at 
 being superior creatures to their fellow-countrymen, 
 and amuse themselves by retarding legislation which 
 the mass of Englishmen have decided upon. 
 
 To sweep away any institution altogether is, how- 
 ever, scarcely our English way. So long as it can be 
 advantageously modified we cling to the old form. 
 That the hereditary principle must be done away with 
 as an anachronism and an absurdity would be ad- 
 mitted by thousands, who would still wish to have a 
 second chamber not to interfere with or hamper the 
 direct representatives of democracy, but to maintain a 
 continuity in general policy which such a body as a 
 reformed House of Commons could scarcely command. 
 Here, of course, is the great difficulty of our party 
 system of Government, and it can never be lessened 
 save by the formation of some great consultative 
 assembly, in which representatives of all portions of 
 our great commonwealth and dependencies find a seat- 
 It may be that the American Senate, devised by men 
 who had thoroughly studied the dangers of waves of 
 popular excitement, is too powerful a body for us to 
 wish to constitute a similar check upon the Lower
 
 ORGANIZA TION. 97 
 
 House ; for the Senate in the United States, owing to 
 its method of election, the personal reputatfon of its 
 members, and the authority accorded, is the powerful 
 House, and with us, if parliamentary government is 
 maintained in its present shape, the House of Commons 
 can scarcely fail to be supreme. The danger of dead- 
 locks with us, however, would not be nearly so great as 
 in our colonies, where the power of the purse is divided. 
 What we need in place of the House of Lords is a 
 Great Council for the public discussion and revision of 
 treaties, the maintenance of a constant survey of our 
 foreign relations which will be greatly facilitated 
 when the present system of secret diplomacy is put an 
 end to and a regulation of the policy towards our 
 great colonies and dependencies, in conjunction with 
 direct representatives from them. These duties are 
 now not performed at all ; and during the last twenty 
 years we have had but too many occasions to lament 
 that lack of continuity in our policy which at times 
 makes us the laughing-stock of the world. Such a great 
 consultative and deliberative council might worthily 
 take the place which the House of Lords held when it 
 was really a power in the State. Now it is merely a 
 nuisance ; and the sooner a change is made which 
 shall bring the second chamber once more into a 
 useful sphere of existence, the better for the stability 
 of the Constitution in its best sense. Such a modifica- 
 tion would indeed, though radical to start, be highly 
 conservative in the best sense in the long-run. The 
 abler men would probably welcome a change which 
 whilst, as we see in France, it makes no great difference 
 in the ; r social distinction for certain classes cling to 
 
 H
 
 98 ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 ancient lineage as something to worship freed their 
 hands and enabled them to enter into the real poli- 
 tical strife of the day without restraint. 
 
 The future of the House of Commons is a very 
 different matter. At the present time, partly by its 
 own fault, and partly by the force of circumstances, 
 that noble historical assembly has also lost influence 
 with the people, because it has grasped at more power 
 than it can conveniently handle, and is far too slow 
 to suggest any reform of itself. Did any body of men, 
 by the way, ever reform themselves ? That is really 
 the difficulty we are at present in. There is no power 
 outside the House of Commons to reform the House of 
 Commons ; and to hear some members talk, one might 
 suppose it was still the collective wisdom of the nation. 
 Such scenes, however, as those which occurred with 
 regard to the Irish members, the voting on the Brad- 
 laugh oath, and the hopeless block of legislation 
 occasioned not so much by obstruction, though there 
 has been a great deal of that without the justification 
 which the Irish members could claim on the 
 Coercion Bill, as by the endless flood of conversational 
 small talk which men of no special knowledge or 
 ability seem to think they owe to their constituencies 
 have gradually convinced the country that a complete 
 change in the functions of Parliament can alone right 
 the existing state of things. 
 
 Neither manhood suffrage nor the reform of methods 
 of election will put an end to obstruction, check 
 silly garrulity, or remove the excessive business with 
 which the House of Commons is cumbered. And here 
 we come to a point at which much difference of opinion
 
 ORGANIZATIONS 99 
 
 must necessarily arise. That greater powers should be 
 given to local assemblies to deal with many matters 
 which now come before the House of Commons, may 
 be admitted without dispute ; but how far the authority 
 of these local assemblies should extend is a matter of 
 difference. Irishmen demand home rule, or even 
 separation ; Scotchmen and Welshmen have no such 
 anxiety to obtain parliaments to themselves. But 
 with manhood suffrage in full force, it is clear that the 
 rights of the people will be far more completely pro- 
 tected than they are at present, and that power could 
 be more safely handed over to local authorities. 
 National and federal parliaments can scarcely be or- 
 ganized till there is a demand for them. The Irish do 
 make the demand, and the possibility of meeting it 
 without actual disruption is a pressing question at this 
 moment. 
 
 In England, Scotland, and Wales, however, the 
 county, the municipality, the township, are old well- 
 understood divisions, and to them, under one or other 
 of the numerous schemes which have been before the 
 public, might be handed over the jurisdiction in 
 respect of many matters on which the House of 
 Commons has at present to be consulted. Such 
 representations, properly elected to transact the 
 rapidly growing business of the whole population, 
 would take an amount of petty work off parliament, 
 with which it ought never to have been saddled. All 
 this, of course, will shortly be attempted ; and with 
 the power of the democracy brought to bear for the 
 collective advantage, the old local bodies will be 
 invigorated with fresh life. County assemblies and 
 
 H 2
 
 ioo ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 municipal boards will then perhaps cease to be, as 
 they so often are now, mere inefficient and corrupt 
 vestries. It is unreasonable that the House of 
 Commons should undertake to settle what these 
 local bodies could equally well arrange for themselves. 
 A wide scheme of decentralization, carried out with a 
 view to interesting the whole population in their local 
 business, would but serve to strengthen the House of 
 Commons for dealing with affairs now pushed aside 
 by less important matters to the injury of the whole 
 community, and raise again the character of its 
 debates. 
 
 It is remarkable, indeed, that as wealth, power, and 
 political influence have been concentrated in the 
 hands of the upper and middle classes local vigour has 
 to a certain extent died down. In the future the 
 municipality, as we can already see, will have far 
 wider duties to undertake than those which they per- 
 form at present. Gas, water, artisans' dwellings these, 
 instead of being left to individual companies will be 
 undertaken by the local bodies, as also the providing 
 of parks and recreation-grounds. When full power is 
 vested in such corporations and county boards to take 
 what land is needed at a valuation for the purpose of 
 either buildingor permanent leases foragricultural pur- 
 poses, a far greater amount of interest will attach to 
 the improvement of the management, and men of a 
 superior character will be anxious to take part in the 
 business. All such decentralization, in the sense that 
 these bodies are given great powers without applying to 
 Parliament, will also act in the direction of peaceful 
 development, and give the working classes that
 
 ORGANIZA T1ON. 101 
 
 impetus towards social improvement by their own 
 energy which is so manifestly necessary. 
 
 At the same time, though municipal and local 
 business may form a good training for local adminis- 
 tration, it by no means follows that a good vestryman 
 or alderman makes a good member of Parliament 
 when obligations beyond the range of a three months' 
 bill are under discussion. It is remarkable indeed 
 that in such matters working men, who literally do 
 not know whether their present week's wage will be 
 continued the next, have a far wider idea of their 
 duties, and take a much higher view of the position 
 which a great country like ours ought to assume in 
 its dealings with its dependencies and foreign powers, 
 than mere mercantile men. The latter are far too 
 apt to consider everything from the immediate 
 pounds, shillings, and pence standard. Will such a 
 policy increase immediately the national turn over ? 
 then it is excellent. Will it involve doubtful expen- 
 diture for a great moral principle, or serious political 
 agitation for a great future national benefit ? such a 
 proposal must of necessity be unsound. This sort of 
 reasoning is well enough up to a certain point, and the 
 kind of intelligence which developes it Lord. Derby 
 probably has that sort of capacity to the highest 
 degree of any man living is most careful to secure 
 economy in local affairs ; but where business of 
 national or imperial importance is involved, such 
 counsellors are feeble and dangerous. 
 
 Now as in the management of general municipal 
 improvements and county affairs of all kinds, local 
 energy, and even, in the wide sense, personal objects
 
 102 ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 ought to be allowed fair play, so in these more general 
 concerns, where the necessity for a greater centraliza- 
 tion is manifestly increasing, a reformed House of 
 Commons should exercise far more direct control, 
 delegating its authority, as at the present time, to a 
 great orncer of State and his department. 
 
 All can see quite plainly that in certain matters 
 management by the State is essential to efficiency. It 
 is perhaps a question whether the post and telegraphs 
 ought to be worked at a profit ; but no one doubts 
 nowadays that the business is on the whole better and 
 more cheaply done than if it were in private hands. 
 Blunders are made, no doubt ; but mistakes are 
 easily complained of and remedied. Obviously the 
 railways must sooner or later follow the same course. 
 This is one of the reasons why local business should 
 be removed from Parliament. It destroys the sense 
 of perspective for members to have constantly to 
 adjudicate on petty private bills, when matters of 
 really great national concern ought to be continually 
 before them. Nothing more shortsighted was ever 
 done by an English Parliament middle-class busi- 
 ness men, too, let us remember than the turning 
 over of the great new highways of the country to 
 monopolists for ever. This is what has been nay, 
 what is being, done to the permanent and growing 
 disadvantage of the whole community. No idea 
 seems to have entered the minds of our worthy rulers 
 that this handing over in perpetuity was as mischievous 
 a piece of folly as ever was perpetrated. 
 
 We Englishmen often jeer at Frenchmen for their 
 fondness for paternal rule ; and we certainly should
 
 ORGANIZA T1ON. 103 
 
 not submit for a week to many of the restrictions on 
 individual liberty which Republican France bears 
 without a murmur. Their tariff also we regard as 
 injurious, and many of their arrangements mistaken. 
 Yet they were shrewd enough to see that to saddle 
 coming generations with payments to private investors 
 was a grave injury to the nation and a sacrifice of 
 public property. As a result, within fifty or sixty 
 years France will be relieved entirely of her national 
 debt by the falling in of the railways, or transport at 
 cost will be secured to the community. Now that is 
 business ; that is foresight for a people. Such an 
 advantage we cannot secure, save by some great 
 change in the right of inheritance or by purchase. 
 The present system cannot be allowed to go on for 
 ever. That the labour of succeeding generations should 
 be eternally handicapped by payments to the labour 
 of the dead, is too preposterous. If turnpikes have 
 been found to be an intolerable nuisance, and fees for 
 bridges have been done away, it is scarcely probable 
 that we shall much longer put up with a system of 
 railway management so entirely opposed to the 
 interests of the mass of the people, as well as of the 
 trading class, as that which now we suffer from. We 
 are a long-suffering people, but we shall never stand 
 that. 
 
 This question of monopolies is rapidly coming to 
 the front. The old notion that competition would 
 always come in to serve the community, has proved 
 wholly fallacious. Combination has in many instances, 
 perhaps in most, defeated the calculations of the legis- 
 lature ; and the power of the great companies to fight
 
 ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 off those whom they consider intruders, has been 
 exercised without any scruple whatever. All the 
 recent evidence tends in the same direction. The 
 railway companies treat their customers as if the 
 public had been specially created by some beneficent 
 providence for these monopolists to prey upon and 
 get interest for shareholders. This view is natural 
 enough ; and we see in America that the system is 
 carried yet further. Monopolies granted by the State 
 are made the means of fleecing the community. 
 Thus once more we have the illusory freedom of con- 
 tract. The House of Commons, as representative of 
 the people, allows a monopoly to be created, and then 
 this monopoly is used to the public detriment. 
 Unfortunately, the remedy is not so easy as might 
 appear. 
 
 The total price of the railways at present quo- 
 tations would exceed I ,ooo,ooo,ooo/., and he would 
 be a bold financier who should propose to increase the 
 national debt by that sum at the present time. But pri- 
 vate interests cannot be allowed to stand permanently 
 in the way of the community at large. The right 
 of interference has never been disputed. If the House 
 of Commons had not been full of representatives of 
 the Railway interest, steps would long since have been 
 taken by the Government to secure for Englishmen at 
 large far greater advantage in return for the monopoly 
 granted. It is plain, for example, that the State 
 could construct a railroad from London say to Liver- 
 pool or Manchester, at a very much less cost than 
 the capitalized value of either of the existing lines. 
 If the stockholders have not taken this fact into account,
 
 ORGANIZA TION. 
 
 that is their own look-out. No Parliament nor any 
 succession of Parliaments, could guarantee a mono- 
 poly against another company that showed good cause 
 for the construction of a line, still less could it be 
 assured against the State. Consequently when it 
 becomes necessary, as it shortly must, to acquire the 
 railways, no such absurd estimate of value need be 
 made as in the case of the London water com- 
 panies. Our tendency has been for the nation to show 
 itself too considerate of so-called vested interests, 
 simply because the classes which hold those vested 
 interests have had the entire control in every way 
 to assume, indeed, when the State has to deal with 
 them that some exceptional price must be paid. This 
 is quite incorrect. When the decision is come to that 
 for the national interest the railways should be ac- 
 quired, it would be perfectly fair to purchase at a 
 valuation, without any reference to a future monopoly- 
 value, which does not and could not exist against the 
 country at large. A special issue of terminable annui- 
 ties might be made to cover the whole matter. But 
 without entering on details, it is clear that such a 
 notification as that lately issued with reference to 
 workmen's trains by the Metropolitan Railways will 
 probably bring this whole question to a climax. 1 
 
 That State management would pay, there is very 
 little doubt. Improved organization would produce 
 
 1 The infamous overwork of their servants by the Railway 
 Companies as recently exposed, is alone enough to call for im- 
 mediate State interference. The brutal greed of corporations 
 was never exhibited in a more shameless form at the expense of 
 both the men and the public.
 
 io6 ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 a profit by the reduction of working expenses. But 
 far more important than any idea of profit, is the 
 prospect, under proper direction, of cheapening trans- 
 port, and securing for the working-classes really cheap 
 travel in the neighbourhood of large cities. It is 
 scarcely too much to say that sixpenny < weekly 
 tickets, available for any distance within ten miles, 
 coupled with a well-regulated system of artisans' 
 dwellings, erected by the muncipality and let at 
 rents to cover cost of construction, would completely 
 change the whole life of great cities, reducing rents 
 for unwholesome tenements, and gradually leading to 
 a better condition in every respect. It is also by no 
 means certain that the suggestion made by a Civil En- 
 gineer that a one shilling fare should apply to the whole 
 United Kingdom, would not, in some modified form, 
 prove as great a success as the penny post. In any 
 case it is manifest that the Railways are the national 
 highways, that in regard to the transfer of both goods 
 and passengers they work for the shareholders and 
 not for the community, and that consequently the busi- 
 of the country is carried on at a growing disadvantage. 
 Besides, the land and the railways are inseparably 
 bound up together, and those who talk about dealing 
 freely with the one without touching the other, overlook 
 a most important feature in the whole business. 
 
 The chief objection to the acquirement of the railways 
 even on terms which might seem highly advantageous 
 from a financial point of view, would doubtless be 
 the danger of increasing the power of the Government 
 by the formation of so vast a bureaucracy. But this 
 ought to involve no political danger, with full pub-
 
 ORGANIZA TION. 107 
 
 licity and a distinct removal of the railways from the 
 sphere of State patronage. Certainly the fear of what 
 might happen in this way ought not to keep back the 
 country from laying hands upon a set of corporations 
 whose directors work their influence with the most 
 perfect selfishness, using their railroads to help their 
 politics, and their politics to help their railroads. 
 That sort of see-saw is quite as objectionable as any 
 bureaucratic taint. With the advance of democracy, 
 and the reference of all questions to the people, it has 
 become more and more clear that the Civil Service, 
 as a profession, should be kept clear of politics 
 and party. Where this is not done all sorts of mis- 
 chief creep in ; where it is, and full publicity is main- 
 tained an essential point too there the organization 
 is a great gain to all. The right of representation 
 of grievances by State officials must of course be fully 
 secured. 
 
 Railways, then, like the control of mines, factories, 
 and workshops, must be placed under the State the 
 former for management, the latter for supervision. 
 These are matters which affect the entire national 
 welfare, and can only be adequately dealt with by 
 national ordinance. Manifestly rivers, canals, and 
 drainage, fall under the same head. The neglect of 
 these as a matter of national importance is really 
 most astonishing. At present our rivers the water- 
 shed and drinking source of the whole country are 
 treated as municipalities, or even as individuals, think 
 fit. This too, though the urban population, as the 
 late census clearly shows, is increasing in density 
 almost to the danger-point. Decentralization in this
 
 io8 ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 matter is really ruinous to the public interest. Drain- 
 age works are carried out, sewage and refuse of the 
 most unpleasant nature is disposed of, without much 
 reference to the effect which the action of one town 
 or one owner may produce in other directions. No 
 doubt there are bye-laws and statutes, but they have 
 never been properly put in force. The injury already 
 done by this separatist system is enormous. For the 
 future all arrangements affecting rivers or canals 
 should be under the management of a public depart- 
 ment, specially constituted to take in the bearings of 
 the whole subject, whilst leaving to the county 
 assemblies, local boards, municipalities, and even 
 township vestries, the fullest powers of carrying out 
 their own projects within the limits that concern only 
 themselves. 
 
 As the powers of these local bodies to acquire land 
 and other property can scarely fail to be largely in- 
 creased in the near future and their rights to make 
 improvements extended, it is the more essential that 
 to start with the due position of the central authority 
 should be clearly defined, secured, and strengthened. 
 Of the existing departments, or the proposal to create 
 a Minister of Agriculture and Commerce, it is need- 
 less to speak here ; that is a mere matter of conveni- 
 ence in separating functions now combined. But in 
 all such matters the tendency towards the simul- 
 taneous operation of causes which tend to centraliza- 
 tion, as well as those which invite the strengthening of 
 local forces, ought not to be neglected. To create 
 social or political machinery is beyond the power of 
 assemblies or autocrats ; to take care that the natural 
 growth of a nation should be fostered instead of
 
 ORGANIZATION. 109 
 
 hindered is the true function of a statesman. Surely 
 it is reasonable to foresee that the existing fierce 
 competition will in many directions besides that of 
 railroads develope into combination, and thus gradually 
 be turned to the advantage of all. 
 
 There is no need to fear the crushing of individuality 
 in all this. Rather will there gradually rise up a higher 
 individuality, when each man can look to his own 
 development as contributing to the advancement of 
 all. But the success of any movement depends upon 
 the mass of the people, and the readiness of men who 
 ought already to have voting power to press forward 
 earnestly the interests of themselves and their chil- 
 dren. Nothing can be done unless the people are 
 prepared to organize their forces. Here, however, are 
 what seem the natural reforms demanded for the 
 organization of the great democracy on which the 
 future of England depends : 
 
 Manhood suffrage, with the other electoral reforms 
 already specified. 
 
 The reform of the House of Lords into a Great 
 Council, in which our colonies and dependencies 
 should be fully represented. 
 
 The restriction of the House of Commons as a 
 whole to dealing with national questions ; the arrange- 
 ment of great committees, &c., being adjusted to the 
 changed conditions 
 
 A great increase of power to be given to county 
 boards and municipal councils, to purchase land for 
 public use, &c.,so that even without federal parliaments 
 all matters affecting separate districts could be dealt 
 with locally, subject to the general law.
 
 no ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 The entire system of national railways to be pur- 
 chased at a valuation, by annuities secured on the 
 railways, and managed by a State department in the 
 interest of the mass of the community. 
 
 A department to be formed dealing more directly 
 with the main watercourses, canals, and forestry than 
 any now in existence. 
 
 An extension of the Factory and Mines Acts, and 
 inspection of shipping, so as to constitute the State 
 more completely the protector of men and women 
 who under freedom of contract are bound to risk their 
 lives and their health. 
 
 To these may be added the social reforms previously 
 advocated : 
 
 Free compulsory education for all. 
 
 Eight hours to be the working day. 
 
 Compulsory erection of artisans' dwellings by muni- 
 cipalities and county assemblies in place of unhealthy 
 houses or dwellings removed for improvements. 
 
 Cheap trains, at the rate of sixpence for a weekly 
 ticket, on all lines within ten miles of a great city. 
 
 By these means centralization and decentralization 
 would have free play to work themselves out ; a great 
 pressure would be removed from our historical assem- 
 blies both of which would be strengthened by a 
 reduction of numbers and a more direct representa- 
 tion of the mass of the people and the interests of the 
 whole empire. 
 
 Those who suppose that democracy tends to dis- 
 organization and anarchy quite misread the signs of 
 the times. Wherever educated democracy has the 
 freest play, precisely there will be found the most
 
 ORGANIZATION. in 
 
 complete organization, both in public and in private 
 affairs. The danger arises, if at all, from the opposite 
 quarter. But Englishmen have clearly begun to see 
 that in this direction only can their further develop- 
 ment go on. The aristocracy had their day ; and in 
 1832 their power was shaken, to be gradually sapped 
 up to the present time. They have chosen to throw in 
 their lot with the bourgeoisie, and to trade on the 
 necessities of the labourer with them. For fifty years 
 we have experienced middle-class rule : that now is 
 tottering to its fall, with no record but selfishness in 
 home affairs. Now comes the turn of England at large 
 as represented by the men who are really the England 
 of to-day. It is for them to see that their future is 
 worthy of the greatness of their country, ensuring the 
 physical and moral welfare of all by organization and 
 self-sacrifice.
 
 112 ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 IRELAND. 
 
 IT is perhaps the most telling commentary upon our 
 government of Ireland, that in dealing with the affairs 
 of that island English statesmen are still obliged to 
 proceed in every respect upon the separate system. 
 Ireland has been an integral portion of the United 
 Kingdom for eighty years, and yet we have at this 
 time more than 30,000 troops and 12,000 constabulary 
 occupied in keeping down a serious rebellion. This, at 
 any rate, is the contention of the people immediately 
 responsible for that law and order to secure which 
 a liberal ministry has been content to override the 
 first guarantee of all liberty, and to proclaim the 
 capital of the country in a state of siege. There is, 
 perhaps, no need for the mass of Englishmen to take 
 special blame to themselves for the harm which has 
 been done. They are scarcely responsible for a 
 policy over which as a mass they have exercised 
 no real control. Yet it is impossible to compare 
 what has happened with Ireland to that which has 
 taken place in regard to Alsace and Lorraine, or 
 Savoy and Nice, without being compelled to acknow- 
 ledge that in all that relates to a subject people they 
 manage these matters better in France. Reforms in
 
 IRELAND. 113 
 
 Ireland political, religious, economical, social have 
 in every case been delayed, until they have ceased 
 to be boons to the people ; pressure from without has 
 been waited for in every instance, until it took an 
 explosive shape ; and men who to start with were 
 ready to welcome moderate measures, have been 
 driven to combine on an almost revolutionary pro- 
 gramme, from sheer hopelessness of obtaining justice 
 in any other way. 
 
 There is no need to go back to the history of cen- 
 turies of misgovernment to account for what we see 
 to-day. Doubtless the wrongs of the past have done 
 much to embitter the relations between two coun- 
 tries which ought to be at one ; but enough has 
 occurred within the lifetime of the present genera- 
 tion to account for that sad state of affairs which 
 politicians of all parties deplore and all ought to 
 strive to remedy. In Ireland, as in England and 
 Scotland, the people have been deprived of the pos- 
 session of their own land in favour of a small minority. 
 Such manufactures as existed having been destroyed 
 long since by English legislation, and Ireland not 
 producing iron and coal to a profitable extent, the 
 men have been unable to seek in the cities the work 
 which their brothers in destitution across the chan- 
 nel were enabled to obtain. Hence arose that earth- 
 hunger which enabled landowners to exact rack- 
 rents, and left the people to multiply on poor food, 
 nearer and ever nearer to the limit of starvation. 
 Foreign conquest and absenteeism have aggravated 
 the mischief politically and economically. Difference 
 of race and religion rendered grave social ills more 
 
 I
 
 J ; 4 ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 difficult to deal with. But the great catastrophe 
 of 1847 ought to have opened our eyes to some por- 
 tion of the truth ought to have shown the people of 
 England that here we had an exceptional problem to 
 deal with, and that such dominance as had been esta- 
 blished was discreditable to the rulers and ruinous to 
 the ruled. 
 
 That fearful famine formed the starting-point of 
 the modern history of Ireland. It had been predicted 
 by men of very different views and capacities. It 
 came, as such cataclysms sometimes do, in its worst 
 possible shape, and was followed up by a revolu- 
 tionary legislation which all can now see was most 
 unfortunate. Instead of accepting the wise recom- 
 mendations of the Devon Commission made, be it 
 remembered, three years before the famine or the 
 still wiser advice of Lord Beaconsfield, given about 
 the same time, but later so unfortunately withdrawn 
 full rights were given to landlords, new and old, to 
 uproot the population, tear down their miserable 
 dwellings, and hurry them across the Atlantic, famine 
 fever wearing out their bodies, and fury at such in- 
 justice and tyranny rankling in their minds. Who 
 that has read through the details of that miserable 
 time, when men, women, and children were turned 
 out of their holdings, as they are now being turned 
 out, though happily in far fewer numbers to wander 
 in starvation and misery along the highways, can 
 wonder that a generation has grown up in Ireland 
 and in the United States which regards with posi- 
 tive hatred England and all that belongs to her ? 
 The very Encumbered Estates Act, a most valu-
 
 IRELAND. 115 
 
 able measure in itself if carefully carried out, 
 forced the lands of ancient proprietors who under- 
 stood the people, not into the control of the State, 
 which would have acted with some consideration, but 
 into the hands of foreign speculators, who bought at 
 a low price with the express purpose of raising the 
 rents upon the tenants. An absenteeism was thus 
 created worse than that which had existed before. In 
 the end, doubtless, good came out of evil for those 
 who were left ; but twenty-four years elapsed before 
 any effort was made on the part of the Imperial 
 Parliament to secure to the mass of the people of 
 Ireland some portion of the benefits which even the 
 Devon Commission had urged. 
 
 All this while, over the greater part of Ireland a 
 purely agricultural community had no security of 
 tenure of any sort or kind, and the church of the 
 small minority was kept up at the expense of those 
 who were of a different creed. Irishmen, who in the 
 United States did an amount of hard work which 
 almost reconciled the not very sympathetic Americans 
 to their gregarious habits in the cities, and their 
 religious belief, so hostile to the Puritanism which 
 even sceptics in that great country still consider it 
 prudent to affect Irishmen, who in our colonies, 
 notwithstanding many defects, have brought them- 
 selves to the front by their industry, were accused in 
 their own country of idleness and indifference, because, 
 after centuries of misrule, they could see no object 
 in giving their masters their labour for nothing. 
 That was really the fact. All accounts agree that 
 wherever in Ireland a man has a permanent tenure of 
 
 I 2
 
 n6 ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 a fair piece of land, in the great majority of cases he 
 works as hard as an Indian ryot or French peasant- 
 proprietor. It is absurd, of course, to deny the in- 
 fluence of race and climate ; none would contend 
 that a Saxon and an Irishman have the same quali- 
 ties. But the remarkable feature in the whole matter 
 is, that the descendants of Saxons have been just as 
 much opposed, and more violent in showing their 
 opposition to the landlord-made legislation, as the 
 Irish themselves. Nor have they been one whit 
 more industrious than their Celtic neighbours. The 
 descendants of Cromwell's soldiery, though more 
 turbulent under injustice, have not been any more 
 inclined to give the fruits of their labour to 
 their landlords than the Catholics around them. 
 But wherever tenant-right has been introduced and 
 fairly held to, there, notwithstanding the fact that 
 economical disturbances American competition, 
 slackened demand for store beasts in England and 
 Scotland, no requirement for casual Irish labour 
 in the summer have affected the whole island, 
 there peace and quiet have in the main pre- 
 vailed. 
 
 As a mere matter of national business it would have 
 been cheap to have given the tenants a permanent 
 hold upon the soil, even if the landlords had been 
 compensated beyond the value of what they parted 
 with. The cost of the maintenance of a large army 
 and a great constabulary in Ireland cannot well be 
 estimated in actual money. Many considerations are 
 involved. But in any case, have we the right to pre- 
 vent 5,500,000 people from settling their own local
 
 IRELAND. 1 17 
 
 business in their own way ? Surely there is not 
 an Englishman of either party who does not feel 
 that our present attitude is somewhat hypocritical. 
 It may be that Irishmen if left to themselves would 
 not make the best possible settlement of their own 
 affairs ; but are English landlords qualified to judge 
 of the matter for them any better ? They have 
 hitherto constituted the ultimate court of appeal. 
 When we speak of the unfairness of Irish juries in 
 agrarian cases, let us at least remember the persistent 
 unfairness of the great English jury of legislators on 
 this question of life or death to the people of Ireland. 
 Even when the House of Commons has been willing 
 to give in, the House of Lords has stood by their own 
 class ; and here, in the last quarter of the nineteenth 
 century, we have as honest and patriotic a man as 
 ever lived, hotheaded and furious though he be, taken 
 and put in gaol, though also a member of Parliament, 
 for having denounced, and urged his countrymen to 
 resist, a most tyrannous system of evictions. And let 
 us bear this in mind, that unfortunately the immense 
 majority of the Liberal party have been quite delighted 
 at the arrest of Mr. Dillon, and cheered like madmen 
 at the arrest of Mr. Davitt. 
 
 The history of the last few months of panic and 
 misgovernment in Ireland is worth consideration by 
 all who hold that freedom and justice are worth some- 
 thing in themselves, aside from the question whether 
 a party chooses to throw them over or not. What 
 has occurred since July of last year is alone enough 
 to prove conclusively that no country could be peace- 
 able under such a rule as we have inflicted upon the
 
 ii8 ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 people of Ireland. Steady despotism would be far 
 preferable to such miserable incapacity and vacillation 
 as has been exhibited. 
 
 For here is what has taken place. Last year, after 
 Ireland had suffered from a period of severe privation, 
 which fell upon the small tenant-farmers and the 
 labourers with redoubled severity owing to their 
 being unable to obtain work in England, the landlords 
 or rather a few of the baser sort began to evict their 
 tenantry. Hunger and sense of injustice combined 
 made men desperate. The Land Bill of 1870, though 
 by no means a satisfactory measure, had given a 
 tenant a certain claim for compensation for disturb- 
 ance in all cases save non-payment of rent. If evicted 
 for not paying his rent, however, this right to com- 
 pensation was gone, and he went out upon the high 
 roads a pauper, with the workhouse as his only 
 refuge. This eviction, therefore, was felt to be a 
 greater hardship than any previous eviction, because 
 it was not only harsh, but in the view of the tenant 
 unjust. Good landlords, of course, were considerate 
 in Ireland as elsewhere : people like Lord Lansdowne, 
 whose idea of landed property necessarily involved 
 serfdom and servility (as he was good enough to 
 inform the Americans, of all people in the world, 
 through the Chicago Tribune], were naturally eager 
 not to lose the advantage of any misfortune among 
 their tenantry. That few should have acted in this 
 Contemptible fashion gives no conception of the alarm 
 produced. Not a very large proportion of tenants 
 in the year are rack-rented ; but that proportion acts 
 as a damper upon thousands of others in improving
 
 IRELAND. 1 19 
 
 their farms, and prevents them from making the 
 best of their labour. 
 
 These evictions, then, having begun, and going on 
 in an increasing ratio, the Government boldly and 
 rightly introduced a Bill of the most carefully-guarded 
 character, to prevent downright oppression and 
 tyranny from being brought to bear. That Bill, after 
 some of the most bitter discussions in the House of 
 Commons and in the press ever known, was passed 
 by a considerable majority, the Prime Minister 
 making himself prominent of course in its champion- 
 ship, and saying, what recent events have proved only 
 too clearly to be the truth, that if it were not passed 
 we should be within a measureable distance of civil 
 war. This, be it remembered, also took place after 
 the Government had declined to renew the Peace 
 Preservation Act, on the express ground that it was 
 contrary to the principles of liberty and Liberalism. 
 Very well. What followed was not only probable but 
 certain. The House of Lords, seeing the whole right 
 of eviction when contrary to common interest jeopar- 
 dized by the measure, threw out the Bill. The 
 Government that is the opinion of all parties in 
 Ireland winked at the agitation which followed. 
 That agitation was, in view of what had passed, 
 justifiable and righteous, and was carried on, when 
 once the Land League had obtained a hold upon the 
 people, with surprisingly little bloodshed or bad action. 
 A vast agrarian strike was organized not against all 
 rent, but against rent above a certain valuation. 
 There were also rattenings and boycottings, where 
 men took land from which tenants had been evicted.
 
 120 ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 Many things, no doubt, were done, and are being done 
 now, most obnoxious to Englishmen : the injuries to 
 cattle in particular are dastardly in the extreme. 
 Gradually, as evictions went on, and help was received 
 from sympathizers in America, temper rose, and the 
 feeling mingled with that race and religious hatred 
 which is the worst feature of all, because the least 
 capable of yielding to reason became very bitter. 
 
 But what has it been after all ? A trifle beside the 
 agitations of 1848 and 1833, and to be met that was 
 the just contention of the Government and the Liberal 
 party not by repression, but by reform. " Force is 
 no remedy," said Mr. Bright, strong as he always has 
 been on this Irish question ; and there was not a 
 genuine liberal Englishman in the country who would 
 not have stood behind those words. And force has 
 been no remedy has only aggravated the whole 
 mischief. But what comes now ? The Cabinet 
 having been summoned in hot haste in December, 
 decided that in these days we must deal with popular 
 grievances, even when exaggerated, by reason and 
 argument, and not by bullets and buckshot and 
 separated without calling Parliament together. A 
 little while and Mr. Forster again comes over, with 
 woe-begone visage, and Parliament is summoned. A 
 Coercion Act and Arms Act become law, at what a 
 strain to our whole system of parliamentary govern- 
 ment we perhaps yet scarcely know. Members of 
 the House of Commons, acting no doubt very pro- 
 vokingly and very foolishly, but still within their rights, 
 are silenced and ejected ; and Ireland is put under a 
 suspensive state of siege.
 
 IRELAND. 121 
 
 Thus the very Government which had declared that 
 evictions of a certain kind were most unjust, and must 
 be restrained, put in the hands of the landlords as 
 complete a machinery of eviction as they had ever 
 possessed, and backed it up by pouring troops into the 
 country. And evictions soon multiplied. Men, 
 women, and children were turned out under circum- 
 stances which reproduced here in England would 
 have brought about an insurrection. 
 
 What ? Let us for once use plain language about 
 these things. Has a Government, have any number 
 of landlords, sitting in Parliament to represent a 
 dominant caste, the right to turn a man, his wife, and 
 children, out into the bitter air of January, because, 
 poor devil, there had been a famine, and he could not 
 pay his rent ? I say No. Last year the vast majority 
 of the House of Commons said No ; and if the ques- 
 tion were fairly put to them I believe the vast 
 majority of Englishmen to-day would say No. Ire- 
 land, it is true, cannot hope to resist successfully such 
 shameful oppression, but why should English work- 
 ing men sanction and support action which, if applied 
 to themselves, they would rise against ? The truth 
 is, and this will shortly become apparent to all, the 
 tenant-farmers and labourers of Ireland are fighting 
 the battle of the working-classes of England in 
 relation to the land, and get far less support than 
 they ought to get on grounds where they are both 
 agreed. This, at least, is certain, that unless the 
 Land League had been formed, and the Irish had 
 stood together in a great economical movement, no 
 such Land Bill as that of 1881 would have been
 
 122 ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 brought before the English House of Commons at 
 all. The Land League, whether it be called com- 
 munistic, nationalistic, or what not, has brought the 
 first genuine attempt yet made at reform within the 
 range of practical politics. 
 
 The facts in relation to Irish land have been made 
 known to all by means of the propaganda which they 
 carried on. There are but 1 2,000 landowners in all 
 Ireland, and IOOO of them own two-thirds of the island. 
 One fourth of these landowners are permanent absen- 
 tees, who take their rents to the amount of millions 
 sterling out of the country, and spend them elsewhere. 
 And yet six-sevenths of the population have to derive 
 their subsistence from the land, and naturally enough 
 compete against one another to such an extent as to 
 raise rents to a high figure. Say the theorists, Irishmen 
 are too fond of land, are too much given to agricul- 
 ture. This is quite absurd. In the United States 
 the Americans make precisely the opposite complaint. 
 They say that the Irish are too much addicted to 
 crowding into the cities ; and so they undoubtedly 
 are. But in Ireland they stick to the land, for the 
 best of all possible reasons, that there is nothing else 
 for them to get a living out of ; and as arable land is 
 being continually turned into pasture by the large 
 landowners and large farmers, there is less and less 
 employment for them as labourers, and less and less 
 land which they can take up to feed themselves and 
 their families upon. No one disputes the sad condi- 
 tion of a vast proportion of the tenant farmers who 
 hold under fifteen acres, which amount to more than 
 half the whole 500,000. Those who drag out a
 
 IRELAND. 123 
 
 miserable existence in Mayo and Connemara, would 
 be no better off if they held their patches in fee. 
 Migration and emigration are the only possible 
 remedies for these people. 
 
 But here, as in England, the first step is to get the 
 land out of the hands of the large proprietors, and 
 enable the people of Ireland to work out their own 
 social difficulties. The great main drainage works 
 which some reformers clamour for, cannot possibly 
 be carried out for the benefit of the landowners, whose 
 properties would be improved ; neither can reclama- 
 tion go on without some regard to economical and 
 physical conditions. The tendency of bog to revert 
 to bog is as well-known in Scotland as in Ireland. 
 That Ireland is in itself a poor country has lately 
 been disputed, and with good reason. It is not a 
 poor country, but a poor people, that we have to deal 
 with. In Ireland, to take the same comparison as 
 was made in the case of England, the population has 
 decreased nearly 3,000,000 in thirty years, and the 
 assessment to income-tax has grown by I5,ooo,ooo/. 
 annually. Moreover, the deposits in the banks point 
 in the same direction. Ireland itself, therefore, has 
 become far richer in the last generation, but the dis- 
 tribution of that wealth is so faulty that a year of bad 
 crops means little short of famine to a large popula- 
 tion. 
 
 Happily, the Bill of 1881 accepts principles which 
 have hitherto been scouted as communistic. The 
 distinct object which underlies the complicated 
 economical clauses is to secure to a portion at least of 
 the population that right to the fruits of their labour,
 
 124 ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 of which they have hitherto been deprived by land- 
 lords under the name of freedom of contract. Why 
 is it that peasant proprietorship has, on the whole, 
 been beneficial where people have been settled on the 
 soil ? Surely because in this way alone can a man 
 and his family, in our system of society, be secure of 
 the fruits of his own labour. In every other case, 
 where the poor man wishes to obtain employment he 
 is deprived of a portion of his produce for the benefit 
 of others. Unquestionably the Liberal Government 
 has made a great step forward when it recognizes in 
 a definite measure that freedom of contract, where the 
 force is all on one side, may, and in many cases must 
 mean, injustice and tyranny. 
 
 But to suppose that any Land Bill, however care- 
 fully drawn that any courts, however impartial will 
 settle the Irish question, is to assume far more than 
 the facts warrant. Nothing is more noteworthy than 
 the disposition of the tenant-farmers all over the 
 country to sink their differences in view of the agita- 
 tion for a mitigated form of the three F's, which will 
 probably break down or a peasant proprietorship, 
 which will involve the pressure of the gombeen man. 
 This latter point is worth a moment's consideration. 
 India is, it is true, different in many ways from 
 Ireland ; but there the right of eviction by the money- 
 lender has been found more dangerous and objec- 
 tionable than eviction by any other method. Should 
 not restriction be placed on mortgage and bill of sale 
 here, too, if we desire to prevent similar expropria- 
 tions from taking place there, and giving rise to a 
 distinctly socialist agitation, which could not be dealt
 
 IRELAND. 125 
 
 with under present conditions? But the Land Bill 
 as it stands constitutes such an enormous advance 
 upon what seemed possible even a few months ago, 
 that Irishmen would be foolish indeed not to make 
 as much of it as they can. To secure the tenants in 
 their holdings, to obtain assistance in settling a 
 peasant proprietory on the land, and help for emigra- 
 tion and migration, are steps towards that pacification 
 which full patience alone can bring about. But for 
 the shameful and silly Coercion Bill a hope might 
 have arisen, not of a settlement of all Irish difficulties 
 such impatience to get rid of the natural troubles 
 of administration argues weakness and incapacity 
 but of a better understanding between the English 
 and the Irish peoples. 
 
 That, little as it may seem to be so at this moment, 
 has really been the outcome of the agitation. For 
 the first time in recent Irish history, a vast number 
 of Englishmen of all classes have felt that wrong was 
 being done in their name when the common rights of 
 the United Kingdom were suspended in deference to 
 the clamour of an interested and panic-stricken 
 minority. Even the race hatred and the jealousy of 
 keen competitors in the labour-market ha/e been to a 
 certain extent laid aside in view of the fact that 
 injustice was being done. Had the Irish managed 
 their own case better, and kept religious differences 
 altogether out of sight when a political end was in 
 view, this understanding between the democracy of 
 the two countries might have already progressed even 
 farther than it has. There need be no real differ- 
 ence. There is room enough and to spare for the
 
 J26 ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 workers of both races under a better system than that 
 which has hitherto found favour. We are, let us 
 hope, approaching the time when we shall endeavour 
 to rule in any case with the consent of the majority 
 when the highest aim of every statesman will be to 
 reconcile all to a beneficial union, in which every 
 member is contented and free. 
 
 That many grievances still remain unredressed 
 even if the Land Bill is passed with reasonable 
 amendment, is unfortunately but too certain. That 
 absurd playing at Viceroyalty in Dublin, with an 
 English Chief Secretary, and a worn-out bureaucracy 
 at the Castle, would aggravate a less touchy people 
 than the Irish. What do they want with a Viceroy 
 and underlings, any more than the Scotch ? Why 
 should Irishmen more than Scotchmen be shut out 
 from the management of their own affairs ? " They 
 hate you, it is said, and long to drive you out." Has 
 any reason for love been given ? At least let us 
 wait to see whether a definite alliance between the 
 English and Irish democracies be not possible, before 
 continuing to support such methods as have hitherto 
 been favoured. Local administration there must be. 
 The management of local business in Ireland as a 
 whole must henceforth be carried on by Irishmen, if 
 there is to be any success at all. That process of 
 decentralization which must go on in Scotland, Wales, 
 and England, is applicable to Ireland too. There, 
 more than here even, the railway, and drainage, and 
 road systems need to be under one great administra- 
 tion. Let them in Heaven's name try their hand 
 with manhood suffrage, at the improvement of their
 
 IRELAND. 
 
 own country ; leave them the task of carrying out the 
 detail of the reforms they have rightly forced us to 
 adopt. 
 
 This at least we must all admit, that we cannot 
 continue parliamentary government if we are per- 
 sistently to run counter to the opinions of the 
 majority of 5,000,000 of people represented in our 
 own House of Commons. It is because separation 
 would be injurious to both countries, as mutual 
 understanding would be beneficial, that Irishmen 
 should at length be granted fair play. Take the 
 absentees, for instance. They are not dealt with ; 
 and yet no man can hold that absenteeism is not a 
 serious drawback to Irish prosperity.. Such a question 
 concerns the whole country most seriously ; but their 
 compulsory expropriation or a heavy exceptional tax- 
 ation which commended itself even to Lord George 
 Bentinck has not been suggested by the Govern- 
 ment. The labourers also have to be considered. It 
 is true that the fullest justice to the farmers does not 
 directly benefit them, though the well-being of one 
 class might slowly re-act upon the other. Here again 
 is encountered, in a less complicated shape, the same 
 problem that is met with in England how to benefit 
 the real workers on the soil at the same time that 
 the most is made of the land. The 500,000 tenant 
 farmers of Ireland form, however, a very different pro- 
 portion of the entire population, as well as of the agri- 
 cultural population, from that which a similar class 
 does here with us. To improve their condition with- 
 out injustice to others, if this can be done, is already 
 much gained.
 
 128 ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 There is no reason however, why we should stop 
 there. Men who know that they are secure of posses- 
 sion are always ready to reclaim land, and might well 
 be given the option of taking part in such reclamation, 
 or in being assisted to obtain farms in English colonies. 
 Let us not, however, lose sight of the principles in- 
 volved in all such proposals. We recognize thereby 
 that the State is responsible for the removal of the 
 causes which can be proved to lead to the wretched 
 poverty of the mass of the people. We are entering 
 plainly upon the path of restriction of selfish compe- 
 tition, because, under certain conditions it has failed 
 in agriculture as it has in other directions. Hitherto in 
 Ireland brute force the brute force of the people of 
 England has stood behind the dominant class, ready 
 to maintain their views of a political economy which 
 might have been in vented in the interest of monopolists. 
 A peaceful revolution has to be brought about, and the 
 first step has been taken. Those, however, who con- 
 tend that the modification of the land laws of Ireland 
 must extend to England have right on their side. 
 It is impossible any longer to use two sets of argu- 
 ments on the two sides of the Irish Channel. When, 
 therefore, fixity of tenure, purchase of property, 
 reclamation of land, assisted emigration, and main 
 drainage, are accepted for Ireland, we are not far 
 we could not be far from the consideration of similar 
 proposals in England and Scotland. 
 
 But even supposing the land question in a fair way of 
 settlement, and local administration set on foot, there 
 remain the race and religious hatreds to consider. 
 These of course are difficulties of a very different
 
 IRELAND. 129 
 
 character from any which Acts of Parliament can 
 touch. How can Celts and Saxons, Catholics and 
 Protestants, live together in unity ? Yet such things 
 have been ; and at this moment the leader of the irre- 
 concileable Irish party is neither an Irishman nor a 
 Catholic. Leave the Irish more liberty to arrange 
 their own business, and they will find out some way 
 of getting on with one another, when once the in- 
 justice complained of for centuries has been reme- 
 died. Ireland has been conquered by arms from 
 generation to generation ; it remains for us to con- 
 quer finally by justice, magnanimity and considera- 
 tion. 
 
 Many of the noblest names in English history and 
 literature are those of Irishmen ; the Irish party in the 
 House of Commons to-day contains men of ability 
 out of all proportion to its numbers ; the two most 
 distinguished of our younger generals are Irishmen 
 by birth. Would it not be well, then, for all to con- 
 sider whether, even at the cost of some sacrifice of 
 consistency, and some forgetfulness of past domina- 
 tion, the loyalty of such a people could be secured, 
 by a freedom which is yet reconcilable with common 
 action ? The national feeling now running so high in 
 Ireland could find as full an outlet in the British 
 Empire as that of Scotland, when once it is under- 
 stood that supremacy is no longer claimed in the 
 interests of a small minority, but to give satisfaction 
 to the high ideals of empire and greatness which a 
 petty island like Ireland, overshadowed perpetually 
 by English power, could never attain. A complete 
 agreement between England and Ireland will be 
 
 K
 
 130 ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 possible only when the people of both countries can 
 control their own policy, and secure at home and 
 abroad that the benefit of the many, not the gain 
 of the few, should be the end.
 
 INDIA. 131 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 INDIA. 
 
 IF Ireland, a little island close to our own shores, its 
 people speaking our language, sharing our civilization 
 and religion, with all its problems lying, as it were, in 
 the hollow of our hand and open to inspection with 
 the naked eye if, after centuries of absolute rule over 
 the inhabitants, we are beginning to confess that the 
 matter is well-nigh too hard for us, and look to enlist- 
 ing Irishmen in the government of their own country 
 as our only hope of success in the future if, I say, this 
 little business has plagued us so sore, what are we to 
 think of the task of ruling 200,000,000 of people, of 
 totally different race, language, civilization, and creeds, 
 thousands of miles away from England, by means of 
 900 young gentlemen who do not set foot in 
 the country till they are over twenty years of age, 
 and work without the slightest help from the natives 
 in the higher branches of administration ? Yet this is 
 what we, the English people, are now trying to do in 
 India ; and with such unfortunate results to the inhabi- 
 tants, that it is absolutely essential that the great mass 
 of the community, on whose shoulders now rests the 
 weight of this vast empire, should take the matter into 
 their own hands. This, indeed, is now the only hope 
 
 K 2
 
 132 ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 that the English people will see the mischief that is 
 being done, and insist that neither vested interests nor 
 regard for individual reputations shall longer stand in 
 the way of absolutely essential reforms. 
 
 No man can read the history of our early conquests 
 in India without a strange admixture of feeling. 
 Deeds of the noblest heroism and determination are 
 found side by side with the records of such meanness, 
 cruelty, and greed, that at times we doubt whether it 
 is possible that qualities so different should have 
 belonged to the same race. A mere merchant com- 
 pany, humbly suing for permission to trade, grew into 
 power and influence in spite of themselves, till they 
 became of necessity the heirs of the Great Mogul, and 
 the conquerors of the rising Mahratta confederation ; 
 their clerks and supercargoes, their shopmen and 
 peddlers, figured forth before the v/orld as warriors, 
 statesmen, and administrators. Whilst the king and 
 the aristocracy were losing, by sheer ignorance and 
 incompetence, the noblest inheritance across the 
 Atlantic that ever fell to the lot of any nation, ordi- 
 nary Englishmen were conquering an empire just in 
 the way of everyday business, which, had it been 
 properly managed, would in some degree have com- 
 pensated for that monstrous blunder. A great and 
 ancient civilization had fallen under their control, and 
 it needed but a right comprehension of its tendencies 
 to lead the people on, with little of change, to a wider 
 and a higher development, which should have been to 
 the advantage of all. This was the idea of some of 
 the nobler spirits, who saw clearly that a growth of 
 thousands of years could not suddenly be twisted in
 
 INDIA. 133 
 
 accordance with foreign notions without grave danger 
 of injury to rulers and ruled. To raise the tone of the 
 native Governments to the best native standard, slowly 
 introducing the leaven of Western ideas into the 
 administration without altering the form of society or 
 pursuing the fatal policy of complete annexation 
 this was the view of men who had, unfortunately, 
 too little weight as against more vehement coun- 
 sellors. 
 
 The East India Company itself, however, protested 
 constantly against the violent methods of its own 
 servants ; but the inexorable necessity of paying 
 interest had, very early in its history, a most 
 baneful influence upon the system pursued by us 
 in India. Annexation became the rule; and even 
 forty or fifty years ago the natives of India had begun 
 to discuss the effect of the drain of produce to England 
 consequent upon the multitudes of fortunes made by 
 Englishmen and withdrawn on their leaving. The 
 nabobs who returned after shaking the pagoda-tree, 
 represented so much wealth taken out of India, which 
 was never returned. Nevertheless, the rule of the 
 East India Company was on the whole economical. 
 It was soon found out that countries governed by 
 foreigners, in which the old native system had been 
 broken down, seemed somehow not to have the 
 elasticity and power of recovery for which India had 
 been celebrated for centuries. India, the administra- 
 tors in Leadenhall Street discovered was a poor 
 country, not to be treated as if untold wealth could 
 be taken for the asking without harming the people. 
 
 To enter upon the beneficial changes made in native
 
 134 ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 usages, the noble work of Sleeman in uprooting the 
 Thugs, of Outram in settling the Bheels, of Edwardes 
 on the Indus border, or, on a wider field, the reforms 
 adopted by Lord William Bentinck, would be to extend 
 this chapter far beyond the limits of this little work. 
 Natives of India know well that had Englishmen 
 confined their efforts to such objects as these nothing 
 but good would have come of their rule. To this 
 day the government of the old East India Company, 
 in those countries where good native customs were 
 respected and the people not worried, is looked back 
 to with regard and even affection. Men who went 
 out to India as mere boys got to know the people, and 
 loved them ; they made their homes in the country, 
 and returning but rarely to England, held a very 
 different position from that of their successors of 
 to-day. 
 
 Asia is the land of long memories, and those who 
 treat its people with justice, firmness, and consideration 
 pass on their legacy of good feeling to the next gene- 
 ration. All who read the writings of Metcalfe, Shore, 
 Malcolm, Mountstuart Elphinstone, Henry Lawrence, 
 Meadows Taylor, or Sleeman, will find that below 
 the surface there is a constant undercurrent of regret 
 at the needless Europeanization which they see going 
 on. And the natives of India have ever been most 
 easily led by men who, whilst combatting their faults, 
 were not above appreciating their good qualities, 
 even when they have shown themselves rigorous and 
 exacting. Thus it happened that, notwithstanding 
 many great errors, and a gradual impoverishment, 
 which was then scarcely perceived, the agricultural
 
 INDIA. 135 
 
 population of British India fully three-fourths of 
 that vast population was loyal to the rule of the 
 great Company when Lord Dalhousie was appointed 
 Governor-General. It was the mission of this arbi- 
 trary bigot to overthrow all the best traditions of 
 our rule in India, to shock every native idea of jus- 
 tice or good faith, to commence that course of un- 
 scrupulous annexation and wholesale Europeanization 
 from which our Empire is now suffering, and to lead 
 up by his policy to one of the most, serious rebel- 
 lions that ever shook the power of any Government. 
 The great Mutiny of 1857 was the direct outcome of 
 Lord Dalhousie's headlong career of violence and 
 chicanery. How the rebellion was put down, and 
 what marvellous vigour and tenacity our countrymen 
 showed in resisting the attack of their own trained 
 soldiery, assisted in the more recently annexed terri- 
 tory by the people themselves, are matters of history. 
 It was again a story of marvellous capacity chequered 
 by grave mistakes. 
 
 Peace was at length restored ; the rule of the East 
 India Company came to an end ; and with the as- 
 sumption of the government by the Crown the 
 English people became directly responsible for the 
 beneficent management of their own great dependency. 
 Throughout the fierce conflict which was waged the 
 sympathy of the mass of the people was with us 
 rather than with the mutineers. If it had not been, 
 we could not possibly have overcome the rebellion. 
 Here, then, if ever in history, was an opportunity for 
 the governing race. It lay with Englishmen to ac- 
 cept the better portion of the system which had been
 
 136 ENGLAND FOR ALL- 
 
 superseded, and to retain the goodwill of the people 
 by light taxation and consideration of their ancient 
 customs. 
 
 Unfortunately a different course was adopted. At 
 first all went well. Lord Canning, to his eternal 
 honour, kept his head in panic-stricken Calcutta, and 
 refused to allow millions to be treated with cruelty 
 and injustice because a few infamous ruffians had 
 been guilty of horrible, never-to-be-forgotten outrages. 
 The Queen's Proclamation of 1858 was an admir- 
 able document, rightly called the Great Charter of 
 India. Princes and people looked forward to a 
 period when all the advantages which had been 
 secured to them by the Company peace, order, 
 freedom from exaction should be combined with 
 a gradual preparation for self-government and a 
 careful reorganization of native rule under English 
 guidance. But it was not to be. The word went 
 forth from high quarters that India had been neg- 
 lected, that what she stood in need of was English 
 capital, at five per cent, guaranteed interest paid 
 half-yearly and English energy, at very high sala- 
 ries paid quarterly. India, in fact, became the out- 
 let for the savings of the upper and middle classes 
 and an opening for their sons. Now began the 
 reign of capital in good earnest and with it a pres- 
 sure of taxation, an increase of famines, a deteriora- 
 tion of the soil, and an impoverishment of the mass 
 of the people unprecedented in the long history of 
 India. 
 
 But the administration comes first. In this, one 
 fatal principle has been followed out for the last three-
 
 INDIA. 137 
 
 and-twenty years. Wherever room could be found 
 for a European, he has been chosen in place of a 
 native. Even in the judicial department, where the 
 natives have greatly distinguished themselves, none 
 of the highly-paid posts are open to them although 
 at a lower salary, and with less important positions, 
 they try cases involving quite as grave issues as those 
 tried by the Europeans. The extent lo which this 
 employment of Europeans has been carried in every 
 department, surpasses belief. Young natives are 
 educated in the colleges for the highest class of ad- 
 ministrative work, but no prizes are ever open to 
 them. They receive the compliments of the Chan- 
 cellor of the University, who is perhaps also the 
 Governor of the Presidency, on their ability and 
 then they find themselves ousted by a number of 
 Englishmen from posts in which they might fairly 
 hope to serve their country. 
 
 Now this has been very far worse under the Crown 
 than it ever was in the Company's time. In the 
 Public Works Department alone, the European esta- 
 blishment actually cost 2,3oo,ooo/., a year or two ago ; 
 this too, though the natives of India are specially apt 
 at engineering, and all the great irrigation works in the 
 country of any real value have been built by natives, 
 or constructed by Europeans on native principles. 
 Where these have been abandoned the grossest 
 blunders have been made, and millions of acres of land 
 ruined. Time after time requests have been put forward 
 by the people of India, through the only channel open to 
 them, that the total amount paid in salaries to Euro- 
 peans in India should be published, but this has never
 
 138 ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 been done. The effect of this excessive employment 
 of Englishmen is most serious in every way. Millions 
 sterling every year which might go to the people of 
 the country are taken by foreigners, who, though 
 honest enough, and in some respects more capable 
 than natives, yet really devour the substance of the 
 people whose country, they no doubt wish to benefit. 
 More than this, in addition to the salaries they re- 
 ceive in the country, and spend on luxuries which a 
 native would rarely dream of, or the savings which 
 they bear away to England when they depart, every 
 European who leaves Government employment re- 
 ceives a pension, which likewise is so much paid by 
 India to Englishmen out of the country. But there 
 is a further objection still. By this enormous mass of 
 snperincumbent Europeans, who fill every office of 
 importance in a country inhabited by 200,000,000 
 people, those who might be in training for self-govern- 
 ment, and who in time might be able to carry on our 
 best methods without their drawbacks, are turned 
 into a disaffected class. These men see their country, 
 as they think, ruined in the interest of foreigners who 
 have less and less sympathy with the people they 
 rule. 
 
 Europeanization is stunting all natural growth in 
 India, and this with less and less excuse every day ; 
 for civilians and others no longer live in India as they 
 used to do, rarely make real friends of the people, 
 and are perpetually moved about from post to post or 
 come home on furlough. But they equally prevent 
 any change of system ; and on their return to England 
 they form, with some few noble exceptions, a com-
 
 INDIA. 139 
 
 pact body, opposed both by interest and tradition 
 to any real justice to India. 
 
 Now if this administration were on the whole succes- 
 ful, it would not even then outweigh the enormous 
 economical drawbacks involved. As, however, it is 
 a failure in almost every branch, and we are now 
 obliged to go back in sheer desperation to some modi- 
 fied form of the old native laws, surely no longer ought 
 we to hesitate to make a definite change. For take 
 even our civil courts ; these we were confident could not 
 fail to be successful. What has occurred ? They are 
 a complete curse to the people, bringing about endless 
 litigation, and involving gross injustice to the poor, 
 owing to their expense. Our land laws : these are 
 found to be utterly ruinous, not in one part of India 
 alone but in many, driving the cultivators first into 
 the hands of the money-lenders and then into gaol. 
 Our educational system : of that it is needless to 
 speak. So far, it is practically non-existent, save for 
 the well-to-do. Our public works but these come 
 under another head more conveniently. Now all these 
 objections to our existing methods are made, not by 
 outsiders, but by tried and trained official Englishmen, 
 who having been appointed to account for the mis- 
 chiefs which have arisen, speak plainly of the baneful 
 effects of our blunders, and themselves suggest a re- 
 version to native plans, which we had discarded before 
 as unsuited to the people. It is painful to read their 
 confession that somehow our system does not work, 
 and yet to find that the very men who honestly admit 
 this are averse from the only possible remedy. 
 
 For now comes the most serious part of the matter.
 
 ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 India is a poor country. We have been trying to 
 enrich her, and this is how we have done it. In 1856, 
 a year before the mutiny, the sum of 23,ooo,ooo/. was 
 taken from the people of India for the purposes of 
 government ; in 1880, twenty-four years after, no less 
 a sum than 68,ooo,ooo/. was taken from them for the 
 same purpose. Has India, then, become so much 
 richer in the quarter of a century ? There is no evi- 
 dence to that effect ; much the other way. We know 
 from official reports and official protests that, light as 
 the taxation may seem to us, it is heavier than the 
 people of India can bear. Any increase would be I 
 know no authority to the contrary of that politically 
 dangerous. The salt tax levied, bear in mind, to 
 the tune of 700 per cent ad valorem interferes with 
 the consumption of that necessary of life most 
 seriously ; whilst no less a man than the late Lord 
 Lawrence thought the murrains among the cattle 
 which have been so frequent of late years were, in 
 part at least, due to the want of salt owing to its ex- 
 cessive price. 
 
 But there is graver evidence than the death of cattle, 
 the ever-increasing spread of famines, and consequent 
 death of men. Famines are far more frequent than 
 they were. In the last twenty-three years there have 
 been not fewer than six serious famines, which have 
 swept away millions of the people, and millions of 
 cattle too. The last great famines those of Bombay 
 and Madras, and the North-West Provinces were 
 something terrible ; not fewer certainly than 7,000,000 
 of people died of starvation and famine-fever between 
 1876 and 1879 in those provinces. This is the worst
 
 INDIA. 141 
 
 famine of which there is any record whatever ; and it 
 occurred, not in the India of old time, with difficult 
 communications, tottering Governments, indifferent 
 and careless administrations ; but in the India of to- 
 day, with a powerful Central Government, with rail- 
 roads and highways, canals and irrigation works to 
 say nothing of money freely poured forth to save 
 these people from their dreadful fate. But this was 
 an exceptional affair, it may be said ; there was some 
 phenomenal drought all over the country ; the rains 
 ceased, the whole land was barren. Drought no doubt 
 there was, but by no means of inordinate severity, and 
 this alone would not have accounted for the fearful 
 mortality. Nowadays, sad to say, our people the 
 greater part of the 200,000,000 we are responsible for 
 are living nearer, and ever nearer, to the limit of 
 starvation ; thus what in happier periods would 
 have been a scarcity, now deepens into a serious 
 famine. And the main causes for this miserable state 
 of things are not far to seek. 
 
 The total net revenue of the Government of India 
 raised from the many and various races under our rule 
 does not exceed 38,OOO,ooo/. a year, after making de- 
 ductions for the cost of collection. This revenue so 
 raised cannot safely be increased : the mass of the 
 people are, as has been said, taxed up to the hilt. 
 But year after year we take out of the country agricul- 
 tural produce to the amount of 2O,OOO,OOO/. at the very 
 lowest estimate, to bring to us here in England, in 
 order to pay interest, pensions, and home charges, for 
 which there is no commercial return. 
 
 Now just think for a moment what this means. It
 
 H2 ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 means that this very year we Englishmen are taking 
 from the people of India, for European rule and the 
 use of European capital, more than we have ever taken : 
 it means that this amounts to more than the total 
 land revenue of all British India to more than half 
 the net income from all sources as calculated above. 
 Yet India is a poor country a very poor country, as 
 Indian officials tell us. And this is how we " develope " 
 it. We drain away from the country that produce 
 which might be so beneficially employed by our fel- 
 low-subjects ; and then we beat our breasts when famine 
 comes, and call out to Providence to wipe off those 
 spots on the sun which somehow or other do all the 
 mischief. 
 
 What cowardly pretence is this. The truth lies open 
 to all. We are ruining India because our upper and 
 middle classes will persist in exacting from its people 
 agricultural produce to pay interest, home charges, 
 and pensions. No country in the world, not blessed 
 with virgin soil of exceptional fertility, could possibly 
 stand such a drain without exhaustion. The real 
 effect of this drain once fully grasped, all talk even 
 about the uncertain opium revenue, about the grinding 
 salt tax, about the mischievous licence and stamp tax, 
 becomes idle ; for by this constant demand we are 
 draining away the very life-blood of our people. 
 What would Englishmen say if the whole agricultural 
 rent of the country went over to France every year, 
 because we had French prefects in every county, and 
 French money had built our railroads and excavated 
 our canals ? Yet the agricultural rent of England is 
 a mere fleabite in comparison with the drain from
 
 INDIA. 143 
 
 India, the relative wealth of the two countries being 
 taken into account. 
 
 " But then," say investors, " the railroads, the canals, 
 have increased the wealth of India ; we must have 
 interest from our money, no matter how many are 
 starved every now and then to pay us. To argue 
 otherwise would be communism, confiscation again. It 
 is absurd to forego interest to keep people alive." 
 Well, have the railroads increased the wealth of India ? 
 are the numberless foreigners employed a burden or 
 the reverse ? The matter really requires but little con- 
 sideration. Railroads do but transport wealth from 
 one point to another more conveniently than common 
 roads. They themselves, make no wealth, neither do 
 they add to that already in existence. Those who 
 find the capital deduct a certain proportion of the 
 produce transferred for the payment of working 
 expenses and interest. Now if this proportion of 
 produce remains in the country, and is paid to 
 natives, it is still at hand to feed the people; but if it 
 is loaded on board ships, as jute, cotton, or indigo, 
 and sent to a foreign country to pay interest on capital 
 [which as we have seen, means the wages of past 
 (unpaid) labour, now owned by those who neither toil 
 nor spin], then so much wealth is taken clean out of 
 that country, never to reappear or to return to fer- 
 tilize the soil. There are new colonies, no doubt, 
 which can afford to pay this toll to foreigners, because 
 the application of labour to virgin soil is exceedingly 
 profitable, though even in that case the drain is often 
 more injurious than it seems at the time. But in the 
 case of India the result is disastrous from the first.
 
 144 ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 Interest is taken away, and Europeans are paid high 
 salaries, alike in famine and in plenty, in drought 
 and in flood. Moreover, much more than 2o,ooo,ooo/. 
 have been thus paid away under the guarantee which 
 have never been earned at all. Losing railways 
 have consequently been made profitable investments 
 to home capitalists by the truly beneficent interven- 
 tion of their own Government. Railways therefore in 
 India, worked by Europeans at a high salary, and 
 paying interest on the money borrowed by sending 
 agricultural produce out of the country, are very 
 different from railways here with us in England. 
 This has now been acknowledged. Borrowing out of 
 India is seen to be most injurious ; and yet the country 
 is getting deeper and ever deeper into debt for public 
 works, and the exhausting drain is being increased 
 by the employment of more Europeans. 
 
 The truth is that, built with the best possible in- 
 tentions, the public works of India are a burden on 
 the people. Eager to enrich the country and yet to 
 derive advantage from it, our proceedings for the last 
 three-and-twenty years have been harmful and ruin- 
 ous in the highest degree. This is no secret. The 
 most important officials at the India Office know it 
 well. The fearful effect of the drain from India has 
 been the subject of more than one grave confidential 
 memorandum, as well as of protests from Indian 
 Finance Ministers, who, however, could not see them- 
 selves that the construction of unremunerative public 
 works out of borrowed money was ruinous. But such 
 is capitalism selfishness so ingrained that five per 
 cent, per annum cannot possibly' be wrong, though
 
 INDIA. 145 
 
 millions may starve because it must be punctually 
 paid. We have lent nearly 2 50,000, ooo/. to India, 
 and must have our return, though the people had no 
 voice whatever in the borrowing, and now begin to feel 
 only too sadly that their substance is being taken 
 from them, they scarcely know how. 
 
 But this drain must be stanched ; the taxation must 
 be lowered ; more natives must be employed. Eng- 
 land, in short, must rise to the level of her great respon- 
 sibilities, and take order with the ex-officials who 
 pour forth optimist harangues in praise of their own 
 administrative capacity. . For hear what all agri- 
 cultual experts say. With one accord Mr. Buck, Mr. 
 Harman, and Mr. Robertson declare that the soil of 
 India is undergoing steady and permanent deteriora- 
 tion that it will support fewer men and fewer bullocks 
 as years pass by. Mr. Robertson puts the deteriora- 
 tion at not less than thirty per cent, in thirty years. 
 Thirty per cent, less produce per acre in thirty years ! 
 Who can wonder? The produce of the earth is 
 taken away to be brought over here, to an increasing 
 extent, and there is now less manure than ever to put 
 into the soil. At the same time the destruction of 
 the forests for railway sleepers and fuel has, as in the 
 United States and Australia, most seriously affected 
 the climate for the worse. Drought and floods alter- 
 nate in districts where formerly the rainfall was 
 beneficial and equable. Such is the foresight of 
 capital in India the care of our civilization of to-day 
 for the civilization of the human beings of to-morrow. 
 From all provinces comes the same sad cry. From 
 the North- West and from Oude, from Bombay as well 
 
 L
 
 H6 ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 as from Madras, from large tracts of Bengal, and 
 even from the Punjab, one mournful story is heard ; 
 the land does not, as of old bring forth of its abun- 
 dance ; there is no blessing on the crops in our day. 
 A deteriorated race of men, an inferior description of 
 bullocks, bear witness to the truth of what they say. 
 
 So serious did all this seem, so fearful was the 
 famine period of 1876-79, that Mr. James Caird was 
 sent out to India as a Special Famine Commissioner, 
 with the ready consent of both parties in the State, to 
 examine, as the ablest English agricultural expert, into 
 the condition of our noble dependency. He returned 
 to tell us that unless we change our system a great 
 catastrophe is inevitable. Catastrophe is easily 
 written, but Mr. Caird evidently used the word in no 
 light sense. After an elaborate investigation of the 
 state of things, he too came to the conclusion that 
 the soil of India is deteriorating, whilst the popula- 
 tion is increasing in certain districts, so that the 
 people live in perpetual semi-starvation. The very 
 next famine period may therefore bring with it an 
 economical cataclysm beside which even the great 
 Irish destruction will sink into insignificance. Mr. 
 Irwin prepares us in Oude for similar fearful 
 trouble ; Mr. Connell from the North- West Provinces 
 takes up the tale. But Mr. Caird's earnest protest 
 has, so far, produced no effect ; so what should they 
 avail ? Even Mr. W. W. Hunter, the Director- 
 General of Indian Statistics, and a year ago advo- 
 cate of the interests of the Indian bureaucracy 
 and - capitalists at home, even he, alarmed at last 
 by his own very inaccurate figures, tells us that at
 
 INDIA. 147 
 
 least 40,000,000 of the people for whose welfare we 
 are responsible 100,000,000 would be nearer the 
 mark are going through life on insufficient food. 
 Nay, more ; he shows that the Mogul Emperors raised 
 far more than twice the revenue we now get out of 
 India, for six generations, without exhausting the 
 country, whilst we who drain away the produce can- 
 not take our present revenue without a great risk of 
 collapse. By the side of this drain, and the conse- 
 quent deterioration of the soil, helped on by denuda- 
 tion, all the rest of our blunders, great as they are, are 
 mere child's-play. Another famine period is even now 
 approaching, no preparations have been made to meet 
 it, and how far the inordinate cost of the Afghan wars 
 has crippled our Indian exchequer is not even yet 
 fully known. 
 
 Thus on every side the prospect is gloomy and 
 overcast, and in the opinion of the ablest observers 
 we are drawing nearer and nearer to an almost 
 overwhelming disaster. Year after year we take 
 from India agricultural produce which she cannot 
 spare, because we are masters of the country, and, 
 paying ourselves handsomely all round, leave those 
 who depend upon us for safety to perish from want. 
 Whilst we are disputing about the defence of the 
 empire we ourselves are preparing its ruin, only to 
 learn the truth too late : the knocking will come 
 through the darkness from without the murder 
 within will be done. Let then the sun of English 
 justice arise and shine outshine all the glories of the 
 East ; let a message of mercy, whose wings are as 
 silver wings and her feathers as gold, go forth from 
 
 L 2
 
 148 ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 the people of England to the many races and nations 
 under their rule, saying to all that, though they have 
 ills of their own to suffer from and endless sorrows to 
 bear, they would not that others should be made 
 poorer or more miserable for them. So as death 
 shall close our eyelids in never-ending slumber, we 
 may feel that countless millions have some share of 
 happiness which but for us they would have lacked, 
 some joy and contentment which but for us they 
 never would have known. 
 
 For the alternative course lies open before us once 
 more. There are in India, as in Ireland and at home, 
 two policies, the one of mock freedom and real op- 
 pression, the other of beneficent government and steady 
 progress. Strange that having tried both methods in 
 India, we should as a nation stick to the failure and 
 discard the success. Wherever native administration 
 has had free play under gentle European guidance, 
 there we have seen prosperity and contentment 
 spring up and endure. In Travancore and Baroda, 
 in Mysore and Hyderabad, wherever English influence 
 has been confined to supporting upright native rule, 
 the change has been marvellous for the better, though 
 the tendency even then is to interfere too much by 
 the introduction of Western ideas. Still it is not Euro- 
 pean administration that is necessarily ruinous : that 
 we have seen in numerous instances. It is not that 
 public works are not highly beneficial. But when 
 European agency and public works are alike over- 
 done ; when foreign soldiers and foreign systems are 
 imposed upon the population to an extent which 
 savours of the very fanaticism of so-called improve-
 
 INDIA. 149 
 
 ment, then, as we see, the result is starvation, ruin,, 
 and death, a famine-stricken people, and an exhausted 
 soil. 
 
 The recent return of Mysore to native administra- 
 tion after fifty years of European rule is, we may 
 hope, of good omen for the future. Our task now is 
 to cut down the European establishments in every 
 possible way to curtail the home charges, even if we 
 have to reduce the rate of interest arbitrarily by one 
 half and take some portion of the pensions on to our 
 own shoulders. This money that is now taken is not 
 ours, and no native has ever voted a single rupee of it 
 to us. The enormous expense of the European army 
 must likewise be curtailed, and a very different policy 
 from that of suspicion and hauteur adopted towards 
 the native princes. We have, in fact, to prepare the 
 many peoples of India for self-government, by a pro- 
 cess of decentralization, by building up the old States 
 again wherever possible, and by removing the crowd 
 of Europeans who now eat out the prosperity of the 
 country. Let any man consider. No such system as 
 that which we now foster could by any possibility 
 succeed. The old Mogul rulers were wrong-headed 
 enough in many ways, but they were not such fools 
 as to think they could govern India from Samarcand 
 and in accordance with Mussulman prejudice, or that 
 they could dispense with the assistance of the able 
 Hindoo administrators in the management of their 
 provinces. Akber was perhaps the greatest monarch 
 that the East ever produced, yet he relied and as the 
 event showed, wisely relied upon the noble rajah 
 Toder Mull to reorganize his finances. With us
 
 150 ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 Toder Mull, the most masterly financier beyond all 
 comparison that has ever had control of the Indian 
 exchequer, would have been "a damned nigger 
 accountant, who would keep writing to the papers." 
 Such incapacity to appreciate the abilities of our own 
 subjects, let us remember such eagerness to crush 
 down rather than to raise up such sad indifference to 
 the ruin being wrought in our own territory, when 
 close at hand countries equally under our control, but 
 managed by natives, are flourishing and prosperous 
 such strange determination not to understand, I say, 
 will gain us but a doubtful reputation for foresight 
 with those who come after, even if it do not involve 
 ourselves in ruin. 
 
 But if, on the other hand, we resolve to make the 
 necessary changes at once, and to restore to the 
 natives, in some degree at least, the control of their 
 own Governments and their own property, then India 
 may more than repay us for our sympathy and good- 
 will. There, directly or indirectly under our rule, are 
 250,000,000 of the human race, who, weary as they are 
 of waiting for fair treatment, would recognize with 
 joyous loyalty a determined effort to relieve them 
 from the excessive pressure of foreign government, 
 and the ruinous drain for foreign payments, which 
 now impoverish them more and more. This assuredly 
 is no party question ; but those who profit by India's 
 ruin will scarcely of their own motion make the sacri- 
 fices needful to restore her prosperity. It is to 
 the mass of Englishmen, then, to the great democracy 
 of this country, that the peoples of India must now 
 appeal for justice. Represented fairly here at home,
 
 INDIA. 151 
 
 they might hope to secure their long-delayed hearing, 
 and with that hearing consideration for their wrongs. 
 Here too, I say once more, the right course is that 
 which is best also for our own people. Let the people 
 of India but grow in wealth, as they would under any 
 fair conditions of existence, with but slight supervision 
 from us, and the exchange of their products for ours 
 would be far more advantageous than the continuous 
 impoverishment which disenables them from making 
 purchases. On every ground, therefore, of humanity, 
 morality, self-interest, future credit, and ordinary 
 common sense, we ought not longer to postpone the 
 necessary reorganization. But our present parlia- 
 mentary system has proved quite inadequate to cope 
 with this great crisis. If India is to be retained at all, 
 she must have a direct voice in her own administra- 
 tion, as well in England as in India.
 
 ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE COLONIES. 
 
 THERE is happily one portion of our empire which is 
 almost entirely free from the political difficulties we 
 encounter elsewhere. The drawbacks to our great self- 
 governed colonies are common to our age and civiliza- 
 tion ; their advantages are peculiar to themselves. 
 Notwithstanding the mistakes of both political parties 
 in dealing with South Africa mistakes which have, 
 to a great extent, overclouded the prospect in that par- 
 ticular region the colonies are, and will remain, the 
 chief mainstay of Anglo-Saxon dominion outside these 
 islands, when India has returned to native rule, and 
 our other dependencies are held rather as a duty than 
 as contributing to our power. With them, indeed, 
 and the United States, lies the future expansion of 
 our race. For although the Americans were driven 
 into hostility more than a century ago, we may still 
 hope that in time to come the great English-speaking 
 democracies of England, Australia, and North 
 America, may find ground for a common under- 
 standing, which will enable them to secure peace 
 and justice throughout the civilized world, by the 
 overwhelming force they could array against any
 
 THE COLONIES. 153 
 
 aggressor. This, however, is for the moment no 
 more than a pleasant vision. 1 
 
 The possibility of a closer connexion with our 
 colonies is an immediate practical business. On this 
 point too, fortunately, men who differ most widely on 
 other questions are often .agreed. Taught by the 
 disastrous result of the attempt to tyrannize over the 
 North American colonists, we have carried the doc- 
 trine of self-government almost further than the 
 colonists themselves wished. Not content with 
 granting them the most complete home rule, we have 
 at times repulsed their advances towards a closer 
 union, and, on the other hand, wronged our poorer 
 classes by handing over the entire administration of 
 an almost limitless unoccupied territory to the handful 
 of people who first settled there. But even so the 
 result is surely in marked contrast to our relations with 
 Ireland. No portion of our dominions are so loyal to 
 the British connexion at this very time, none so 
 anxious that England should rightfully maintain her 
 position in the world, as the colonists. Left to solve 
 their own social and political problems, they turn 
 naturally to the mother country to keep alive the 
 
 1 " Blood is thicker than water,'' said Admiral Farragut when 
 he stood by our sailors in the China seas. Years later, after 
 the grand old man had been the soul of the Northern navy 
 during the Civil War, he was in port in the Mediterranean with 
 his wooden flagship. A fleet of British ironclads was there at 
 the same time. As he weighed anchor and sailed out to sea, 
 the English ships also left their moorings and made two lines 
 for him to pass through. The compliment was wholly unlooked- 
 for, but it thoroughly expressed the feelings of the nation to- 
 wards that noble seaman.
 
 ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 ideal of a greater political action than any which can 
 be hoped for from mere separation and local ambition. 
 And this feeling grows even at the time when absen- 
 tees are being denounced, and the power of demo- 
 cracy gains ground each day. There, as at home, 
 centralization and decentralization are working them- 
 selves out ; though, by the mistake of not maintaining 
 a federal union, great difficulties are now encountered 
 in bringing together colonies which ought never to 
 have lost the common tie, even on matters which 
 could manifestly be handled bast by all collectively. 
 
 There can be no greater contrast between the 
 relation which Canada now bears to the United 
 Kingdom than that of the North American colonies, 
 when they fought for independence. In that case we 
 insisted upon the right to tax without permitting the 
 colonists the right of representation. Now we have 
 given Canada not only self-government, but the right 
 to impose almost prohibitive duties on our own goods. 
 That this need not have occurred had a better under- 
 standing been kept up with the colonists, and free- 
 trade, when commenced, enacted as the law for all 
 self-governed portions of the empire, we can scarcely 
 doubt. The history of Canada, however, since the 
 separation of the American colonies, is creditable to 
 her and to the home country. At first sight it would 
 have seemed impossible that the French colonies of 
 Lower Canada, conquered by a people with whom 
 their nation was at perpetual war, should ever have 
 come to be loyal to the English Crown. But the 
 consideration shown for their language, creed, and ( 
 customs, the steady determination not to interfere
 
 THE COLONIES. 155 
 
 with their local rule, gradually won over the French 
 settlers, until at the present time they are as devoted 
 to the British connexion as any portion of the popu- 
 lation of English descent. Troubles at times there 
 have been with the English colonists, and rather more 
 than forty years ago a rebellion was threatened. 
 Yet all settled down ; and now it seems that the 
 Dominion of Canada has before her as fine a career 
 in the future as the more energetic democracy on the 
 other side of the border. That the withdrawal of 
 our troops was brought about in a most unmannerly 
 fashion, and in such wise as to offend the best in- 
 stincts of the Canadians that also Lord Carnarvon's 
 plan of federation was rather premature, and carried 
 by doubtful means, have not changed the sentiments 
 of the colonists towards the mother country. 
 
 Incorporation with the United States would leave 
 less of freedom for natural expansion than there is at 
 present under England's light rule. A race of sturdy 
 sober-going men and women have grown up in that 
 rude Canadian climate, who will carry on the best 
 traditions of English Government side by side with 
 the great Republic. There, in the great expanse of 
 the Far West, lies an opening for those who, in the 
 coming changes here at home, may think they see 
 their way to a wider field, still under the name and 
 in connexion with the old country. In Canada, even 
 more than in the United States, the natural inclina- 
 tion of our race for the sea manifests itself. The 
 4,000,000 who make up the Dominion of Canada own 
 the fourth largest mercantile marine in the world. 
 As, also, the new continental railroad is pushed forward
 
 156 ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 to the Pacific slope, the splendid region of British 
 Columbia will be opened up to colonization, and yet 
 another connexion made with the English colonies in 
 the South Pacific. 
 
 Nor, when the distance by sea is spoken of, and 
 the impossibility of a permanent connexion insisted 
 upon, should we forget that Canada and the other 
 colonies of the Atlantic slope are nearer to us to-day 
 than Aberdeen or Cork were a century ago. Canada 
 is now wholly self-supporting, costs the people of 
 England not one farthing of expenditure, whilst the 
 increasing power of democracy would find a help and 
 offer valuable assistance to a similar growth with us 
 at home. The Dominion will, we may hope, as 
 time passes on, bind together closer the various set- 
 tlements. Already the Parliament at Ottawa sitting 
 in the finest block of buildings on the American con- 
 tinent worthily represents the Federal Union of a 
 magnificent group of peoples. Let them also find 
 representation here in England, and thus bring to bear 
 upon all international arrangements the ever-increas- 
 ing force of a united democracy of English-speaking 
 peoples. At the crisis of the Eastern question when 
 it seemed as if England might be involved in conti- 
 nental warfare, the Canadians were not slow to offer 
 their assistance in a cause where their own interests 
 were in no way involved. Surely it is for the great 
 mass of the people of England to hold out their hands 
 in fellowship to those who wish nothing better than 
 to work together on the same lines for the strengthen- 
 ing and improvement of all. There is something in 
 great ideas which vivifies and enlarges the national
 
 THE COLONIES. 157 
 
 imagination. We here at home have indeed much to 
 carry out ere we can achieve our own full government 
 of ourselves, or place ourselves on the same level 
 which the Canadians have already happily attained 
 to in many respects. Reason the more that we should 
 endeavour to make common cause in the direction of 
 further progress. 
 
 But if this applies to Canada, still more true is it of 
 the Australian colonies and New Zealand. These 
 colonies are the growth of the present generation. 
 In the last thirty years they have sprung up from 
 mere settlements to be great and prosperous commu- 
 nities. In Australia Victoria and New South Wales, 
 South Australia, Queensland, and West Australia, 
 form a group of states unsurpassed in any part of 
 the world for energy, enterprise, and growing con- 
 sideration for the education and well-being of the 
 rising generation. That the distribution of wealth is 
 here also sadly faulty is indeed too certain. In Mel- 
 bourne and Sydney, cities large out of all proportion 
 to the population engaged in agriculture or mining, 
 the contrast between the wealth of the few and the 
 poverty of the many, is at times very serious. Here, 
 too, is felt the alternation of inflation and stagnation 
 consequent upon our capitalist system, and the large 
 capitalists, either English or native, are gradually 
 acquiring excessive preponderance. But the possi- 
 bility of a man taking himself out of the wage-earning 
 class is, of course, as in Canada and the United States, 
 far greater than in England. The abundance of 
 virgin soil, the rapid increase of wealth in proportion 
 to the population, keep wages at a higher level than
 
 158 ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 in old countries. Both politically and socially, how- 
 ever, the Australian colonies are passing through a 
 phase in their history which is of the highest impor- 
 tance, and corresponds to similar changes here at home. 
 In purely political matters the democracy is increas- 
 ing in strength day by day ; but unfortunately these 
 colonies have not, until of late years, had anything 
 to compare to the admirable school system of America 
 which should bring the whole population within 
 reach of education. This, however, is being remedied ; 
 and in Victoria, the most democratic colony of all, the 
 people are beginning to learn that a sober combina- 
 tion to deal with existing difficulties which may well 
 perplex the ablest statesman is in the long-run better 
 for the interests of all than a hasty agitation which 
 overthrows confidence in present arrangements with- 
 out substituting anything in their place. Those who 
 fasten their attention on Victoria, and declaim against 
 the folly of a democracy because it favours protection, 
 conveniently forgot that New South Wales, where 
 the people are equally masters, is in favour of free 
 trade, and South Australia shows a growing tendency 
 in the same direction. Nothing, indeed, is more 
 absurd than to gauge the political intelligence of a 
 country by such a test. If protection can keep up 
 the relative wages of the mass of the working people 
 above the level which they will obtain under free 
 trade, then beyond all question protection is, on the 
 whole, the policy best suited to the welfare 6f the 
 mass of that community. Theorists who reason as if 
 the only object of all human society were to make the
 
 THE COLONIES. 159 
 
 rich richer and the poor poorer would, of course, not 
 admit even that. 
 
 But it may be reasonably allowed as absurd that 
 colonies founded by men of the same nation, and 
 living under the same government, in the same terri- 
 tory, should deliberately set up tariffs against one 
 another, and against the mother country. This is 
 what we see in Australia, and it shows clearly how 
 important a better understanding is between the 
 various colonies on matters which concern the in- 
 terests of all. The difficulty of bringing about a 
 federation in Australia, even on t.his simple matter of 
 customs, seems insuperable. Time after time have re- 
 presentatives met, but on each occasion have separated 
 without coming to any definite arrangement. Local 
 interests and local ambitions shut out the view of the 
 general advantage which would be gained by a closer 
 understanding. But the completion of a railroad 
 between Sydney and Melbourne, and the rapid ex- 
 tension of the other Australian railways, must bring 
 this question again to the front. It may be that the 
 solution will be found in that wider federation which, 
 without in any way sacrificing the local administration, 
 may bring about the full representation of Australia 
 in a general council where the interests of all will be 
 fully considered. There are, in these days, many 
 matters which can be better settled when dealt with 
 as a whole than when regarded piecemeal, and few 
 can doubt that such enterprises as the railways and 
 public works of Australia could be better and more 
 cheaply handled together than separately.
 
 160 ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 In these Australian colonies also, and particularly 
 in New Zealand, may be seen the system of State 
 management carried out under the most democratic 
 form of government. Railways, posts, telegraphs, 
 public works, schools, public lands, are all entirely 
 under the control of the bureaux appointed by the 
 State, and managed by a responsible Minister. 
 Where the appointments also are kept clear of poli- 
 tical influence, the system works well. There are 
 temptations to grave jobbery, doubtless, but they are 
 kept under restraint by universal publicity ; and the 
 mass of the population have abundant opportunities 
 of making themselves felt. A graver danger than 
 any arising from over-officialism is that of over- 
 borrowing from the mother country. In New Zealand 
 especially this danger is very great. Not only is the 
 Government largely pledged to pay the produce of 
 the 400,000 colonists to home lenders, but the settlers 
 themselves have pledged their resources to an enor- 
 mous extent to English capitalists. These vast pay- 
 ments out of the country for money borrowed can 
 scarcely go on for ever. Labour expended on virgin 
 soil will no doubt produce enormously; but slack times 
 come even there, and the difficulties which we have 
 seen in India will be reproduced on a smallerscale. This 
 vast tribute, in the shape of interest on money lent, 
 which the English colonists have to transmit out of 
 their labour to the mother country, is one of the 
 least pleasant features of the colonial connexion. 
 
 It may be that under a better arrangement the 
 colonists in all our great free-governed dependencies 
 will be able to combine with the mother countrv for
 
 THE COLONIES. 161 
 
 the more adequate development of their magnificent 
 territories, in the interest of the whole of the federated 
 portions of our empire. In their temperate climate, 
 and with their unrivalled soil in Canada, Australia, 
 Tasmania, and New Zealand millions on millions 
 of our race might find happiness and comfort, which 
 would re-act upon the welfare of our people at home. 
 As our home arrangements undergo modification, we 
 ought to carry with us the people of the colonies in 
 aiding to bring about, without disturbance or blood- 
 shed, a more equitable distribution of wealth than 
 that which now we see. Those who desire to leave 
 our shores to try a fresh life in another country, 
 might then feel sure, not of the coddling of a maternal 
 government, but of assistance, encouragement, and 
 capital, where now all these are lacking. The great 
 disparity between the sexes in England in one direc- 
 tion, and in the colonies in the other, alone shows 
 how faultily the present arrangements have worked. 
 It is with a view to bringing about a more com- 
 plete understanding on all such questions, a regulation 
 of the mere laissez-faire system which up till now has 
 found favour, that a nearer connexion is so essen- 
 tial. Friendly democracies can always help each 
 other. They have no real ground of mutual distrust. 
 But when we see in the United States such misery as 
 that produced by the late stagnation ; when we know 
 that in New South Wales, Victoria, and New Zealand, 
 men were thrown out of work and clamouring for 
 employment, though millions of unoccupied fertile 
 land lay at their disposal all round them, then it 
 becomes more clearly apparent than ever how mis- 
 
 M
 
 162 ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 chievous is the system which refuses to make the 
 most of such enormous advantages, and supposes that 
 stagnation and depression are really inevitable 
 because those who hold the capital choose to make 
 it so. 
 
 It is because social matters are kept so carefully 
 in the background, and the real producers of wealth, 
 whether in England, Ireland, or abroad, are shut out 
 from comparing notes on matters which so nearly 
 concern them, that these serious errors are made. 
 Even as it is the colonies, with their marvellous power 
 of recovery, have been our best customers, and have 
 enabled the English working class at home to pass 
 through the long period of crisis with less of pressure 
 than would otherwise have been felt. Here, even in 
 business, where sentiment is said to have no play, 
 we find the trade follows the flag that men prefer to 
 deal with their own people. Surely those who are 
 in favour of a unity of all peoples, who hold that in 
 the near future the men who have hitherto worked 
 for others will see that in common action lies the hope 
 for humanity, cannot fail ere long to understand that 
 the first step towards this great end must be a closer 
 and yet closer union of peoples 01" the same race, lan- 
 guage, and political traditions, working together for 
 the good of all portions of that noble federation. 
 Leaving freedom to all, and en forcing none holding 
 up before us a high ideal in which all may share and 
 all may find full development thus, and thus only, 
 shall we gather them in. 
 
 But it is not merely in relation to their own indi- 
 vidual interests that it would be of the highest impor-
 
 THE COLONIES. 163 
 
 tance that our great democratic communities beyond 
 the sea should be represented. Difficulties affecting 
 all portions of the empire have to be considered, 
 which can never obtain proper attention save by the 
 personal discussion of those who have a direct interest 
 in their wise settlement. The questions of tariff and 
 trade have already been spoken of. No complete 
 arrangements on these heads can possibly be arrived 
 at so long as the hide-bound bureaucrats of the 
 Colonial Office, with their encrusted traditions of 
 meddling and muddling, have full swing. Only when 
 men see for themselves that local selfishness can 
 fitly be merged in a greater and more enlightened 
 common interest, will they abandon ideas which they 
 have adopted almost as an evidence of free judgment. 
 A Customs Union of the British Empire will be the 
 outcome of the representation of our colonies in the 
 Great Council which will take the place of our present 
 worn-out second chamber. Or it may be even that 
 we shall follow the French system, and invite colonies 
 to send representatives to the popular House, when 
 local business has been properly handed over to local 
 authorities. Whichever course may be adopted, 
 there is a growing opinion, both in the colonies and 
 in England, that in such representation lies the true 
 solution of many problems which now seem most 
 thorny. A complete Union thus brought about could 
 scarcely fail to have a peaceful influence on the whole 
 civilized world. Such an overwhelming combination 
 of naval strength as could then be relied upon, 
 could be made by no conceivable alliance of despotic 
 powers. 
 
 M 2
 
 1 64 ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 This, however, brings us at once to the question of 
 general defence, which is now being discussed by a 
 Royal Commission. On that Commission the colonies 
 are inadequately represented, yet it is of the last 
 importance that they should enter completely into 
 any plans that may be suggested. For on the due 
 ordering of our Imperial defences, and the security of 
 our lines of communication, can we alone depend for 
 maintaining in time of trouble that connexion with 
 our countrymen across the sea, and for the certainty 
 of obtaining our food supplies, which are essential not 
 only to our influence but to our safety. These 
 matters have been sadly neglected under the happy- 
 go-lucky regime of the past twenty or thirty years. 
 Men who are always looking to throw off what they 
 call the " burden of empire," regardless of the help 
 and encouragement we can obtain in coming political 
 changes from the democracies of our own race, natu- 
 rally looked askance at any measures which should 
 tend to unite and not to separate, to bring together 
 and not to drive away. It is well that at this par- 
 ticular time another view should be taken. By a 
 careful organization of our resources, and a judicious 
 strengthening of the many ports we possess, it would 
 be made quite impossible for any enemy or enemies 
 to interfere seriously with our affairs even in time of 
 war, whilst the denunciation of the Declaration of 
 Paris would make us more powerful than we ever 
 were before. In these days coal and coaling-stations, 
 the opportunity to go into port and refit at all times, 
 are essential. And these advantages we possess to 
 such an extent, that it may almost be said that all
 
 THE COLONIES. 165 
 
 the rest of the world together could not rival us. In 
 the Atlantic and Pacific, in European waters and 
 the China seas, from the Cape of Good Hope to Cape 
 Horn, and from the British islands to Australia and 
 India, we hold a chain of posts which will enable us 
 to exercise at the fitting moment an almost over- 
 whelming pressure, if in time of peace we take 
 the means to prepare for any difficulty. Halifax 
 and Vancouver's Island, Bermuda and the Falkland 
 Islands, Gibraltar, Malta, and Aden, Sydney, Mel- 
 bourne, King George's Sound, and Auckland, to say 
 nothing of the Indian ports, and scarcely less valu- 
 able possessions elsewhere, such as Hong-Kong, Fiji, 
 and the Mauritius, constitute an array of maritime 
 citadels which, maintained in proper defence by our 
 ourselves and our colonies, must, in conjunction with 
 a fleet proportioned to our maritime interests, render 
 future naval war against us almost impossible. Nor 
 should we hold or exercise this truly enormous power 
 for our own selfish advantage. English ports are 
 open to the ships of all nations without let or hind- 
 rance ; we throw open to the world the advantages we 
 possess, asking nothing in return. Here, then, when 
 fully represented, our colonists may fairly take their 
 share in arranging with us the defence of the common 
 interest, and organizing the national defence. 
 
 Still more necessary, however, is colonial help in 
 considering the bearing of treaties which we may 
 negotiate with foreign powers, or the action which 
 the colonists themselves may take in their own interest. 
 At present there is no special consideration given to 
 the effect which may be produced on our existing
 
 1 66 ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 artificial system by any fresh arrangement so far as 
 it affects colonies or colonists, and our greatest de- 
 pendency counts for still less in such matters ; whilst 
 as to the colonists themselves, it is sufficient to note 
 their action with regard to the Chinese to recognize 
 at once that questions may arise which can only be 
 dealt with from the point of view of general interest. 
 This Chinese question is indeed one which by itself 
 needs the gravest consideration, as a political, social, 
 and international problem of the greatest difficulty. 
 Here we are in fact threatened with a conflict of races 
 and civilization, the like of which has never yet been 
 seen on the face of the planet. China has awakened 
 from her long sleep of centuries, and is fast breaking 
 from her isolation, and entering into the full stream 
 of the political and social life of our times. What the 
 results of this may be no man can foretell. A people 
 who have been civilized for ages, who yet retain vigour, 
 capacity, and physical qualities, whose bearing on the 
 future we do not yet fully understand, are now absorb- 
 ing the newest truths of Western investigators. The 
 effect upon us so far has been to bring the industrious 
 Chinese, with their ideas of individualism only modi- 
 fied by their secret societies, into direct competition 
 with our own colonists. There are thousands on 
 thousands of Chinamen under our rule in the East 
 alone, and as workmen and merchants they are most 
 formidable rivals. But with the emigration to the free- 
 governed colonies and America a new feature begins. 
 Our colonists positively will not put up with them, any 
 more than the Americans will. At this very time the 
 people of British Columbia, as well as the colonies of
 
 THE COLONIES. 167 
 
 Australia, have decided to keep out the Chinese. 
 They are to our modern industrial colonists what 
 shells are at sea missiles to be kept out, at any cost 
 to theory or beauty of design. But the result is at 
 once seen to be serious. It is the recognition of a per- 
 turbing element in all calculations of an incapacity 
 on the part of our race to face a nation of protec- 
 tionists who regard themselves as mere passers-by in 
 every country they enter. That our colonists should 
 have the right to tax every Chinaman who lands, 
 surely carries with it the right of Chinese to tax every 
 Englishman who lands in China. As our relations 
 with China grow, and these points come more promi- 
 nently forward, the absolute necessity for some general 
 understanding will become apparent. Perhaps ere 
 another generation has passed away the question of 
 our relation to China will completely dwarf all others 
 in importance. Meantime the commercial connexion 
 between Australia and Asia is rapidly growing ; and 
 in view of the unfitness of the northern portion of that 
 great island-continent for colonization by men of our 
 race, it is even possible that immigrants from India 
 or China may find place in that vast unpeopled 
 region. 
 
 These, however, are the possibilities of the future. 
 What most concerns us now is, to lay the foundation 
 of a cordial understanding between all portions of our 
 great colonial empire to bring together on the wider 
 field of a wide-reaching policy of the commonwealth 
 those who in their own several spheres, are striving to 
 bring about a better social and political system than 
 that which now presses upon all portions of the empire,
 
 i6S ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 though less in the colonies than elsewhere. The 
 natural and wholesome pride of a Canadian, an 
 Australian, or a New Zealander in the growing great- 
 ness of his country, need in no way be irreconcilable 
 with a deep love for the old home, and a yet higher 
 pride in sharing in a general improvement which shall 
 embrace and welcome all. The Anglo-Saxon race, 
 which has shown the world how to reconcile freedom 
 and order with steady progress, can by combination 
 and determined effort secure for themselves and their 
 children the leadership in the social changes and re- 
 forms which are close at hand. Those great demo- 
 cracies of English-speaking peoples, who now have 
 complete control over their own affairs, will find that 
 in permanent union with the more ancient democracy 
 of England lies the best hope of securing the fullest 
 development in the future.
 
 FOREIGN AFFAIRS. 169 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 FOREIGN AFFAIRS. 
 
 THE relation which England should bear to the 
 nations of the Continent of Europe, and the action 
 which ought to be taken in reference to foreign policy 
 generally, would be very summarily settled by one 
 party among us. Non-intervention is their sole idea 
 of the management of such affairs. Let others do 
 what they like to or with one another, we will severely 
 mind our own business, look after our trade, and, 
 secure behind the silver streak, amass money for the 
 comfortable classes of course to our hearts' content. 
 Thus the individual selfishness, upon which they are 
 content to rely absolutely for all management at 
 home, is fitly supplemented by a still more thorough 
 collective selfishness applied to affairs abroad. 
 
 Capital is timid, it is said,peace is ourgreatest interest, 
 intervention means, sooner or later, war or threat of war. 
 A soldier or a sailor therefore, in the opinion of these 
 gentlemen, ought to be scouted as a pariah, though, 
 as all save fanatics can see, our army and navy are 
 as natural portions of our industrial organism in the 
 present state of international morality and economi- 
 cal development, as our custom-house or excise. 
 Only stand aside, such is the argument, and no one
 
 i;o ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 will harm you. A purely trading power will arouse 
 no jealousies ; and Europe will see in England a 
 country which, in the plenitude of its strength, steps 
 aside from all save commercial transactions, and is 
 content to figure simply as a pattern to others. Now, 
 few would doubt that if all were like-minded in this 
 matter if the lion of greed could indeed lie down with 
 the lamb of wealth outside him, that here is the true in- 
 dustrial future for the human race. But we are, alas ! 
 far from such a happy state of things. No nation 
 in existing conditions can thus safely boycott itself, 
 without grave risk of being boycotted, or perhaps 
 preyed upon, by others. And we, of all countries in 
 the world, are the least capable of secluding ourselves, 
 and enriching ourselves whilst others look on. Our 
 flag floats on every sea ; our trade competes with every 
 nation ; our absolutely necessary supplies, without 
 which we should starve, come to us from far and near. 1 
 A commercial country owning such extended terri- 
 tory is more open to attack than any other; and even on 
 the ground of simple selfishness, some alliances should 
 be made, and some preparations maintained against 
 danger. But there are higher reasons even than 
 those of expediency for taking part in the politics 
 of the world. A great country has moral duties, as a 
 man has moral duties ; and these are not confined to 
 simple business relations and trading for gain. We 
 are, or might be, the leaders and protectors of free- 
 
 1 We have ordinarily less than three weeks' supply of food at 
 hand. A naval combination which could blockade our ports 
 for a fortnight, could starve us out. Two powers, acting to- 
 gether, could even now have a stronger fleet in the Channel than 
 we could command.
 
 FOREIGN AFFAIRS. 171 
 
 dom, independence, and true liberty in Europe, as 
 we were in the time of the Great Protector. Our 
 power, properly organized, and wielded with the con- 
 sent of a united people, may suffice at no distant 
 date to turn the scale in that great struggle between 
 industrialism and militarism, between tyranny and 
 freedom, perhaps between barbarism and civilization, 
 now threatening on the continent. To stand aloof 
 finally when such issues as these are being debated 
 is not, as I venture to think, the nature of my coun- 
 trymen. They have often fought in times gone by to 
 save others from foreign domination ; it maybe that 
 in the near future a still greater task will be theirs. 
 
 The history of the modern connexion of England 
 with continental affairs, may be said to begin with the 
 accession of William III. That long policy of secret 
 negotiations carried on by Elizabeth with the Pro- 
 testant populations of Europe, had involved us in war 
 with Spain ; and the policy of the Stuarts had, after 
 Cromwell's short and glorious period of supremacy, 
 made England subservient to France. But these 
 wars and alliances had really as little to do with the 
 events which followed, as the old wars in France 
 under the Plantagenets. With William III., however, 
 began that bitter rivalry with France which thencefor- 
 ward became the mainspring of English foreign policy 
 for at least five generations. Rivalry no doubt ex- 
 isted between Englishmen and Frenchmen when the 
 Prince of Orange came to the throne, but thencefor- 
 ward it spread from the people to the Governments, 
 and the fierce struggle which followed spread to all 
 quarters of the globe. William III., in fact, began a 
 settled policy of interference in European State po
 
 172 ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 tics in the interest of Holland and Germany, as 
 distinct from any cause which called us to take the 
 field on our own account. As a consequence we were 
 driven to fight foreign battles by means of subsidies 
 and mercenary troops, instead of trusting to our 
 power at sea, where lies our real strength. 
 
 For, strange to say, it never occurred to either the 
 Plantagenets, the Tudors, or the Stuarts that it would 
 redound to our credit and influence to carry on cam- 
 paigns on land with German soldiers at England's 
 expense. William III., however, commenced the 
 system, because it aided the policy of his own country 
 laid down by himself that of persistent opposition 
 to Louis XIV. and the French. The result has been a 
 crushing load of debt, permanently imposed for 
 foreign objects on the English people. For the 
 House of Brunswick, confirmed and greatly extended 
 the mischievous policy introduced by the Dutch king, 
 and henceforth England became the citadel of German 
 resistance to French attacks upon Germany. We no 
 longer had a continental policy of our own ; every 
 step taken had reference to the relations and intrigues 
 of other Powers, who came to look upon England and 
 English Ministers as necessary supports of a system 
 of international war and jealousy, with which, as a 
 matter of fact, the English people had nothing what- 
 ever to do. The unquestioned facts that we fought 
 bravely, won battle after battle, and acquired some 
 magnificent colonies, are mere incidents of this State- 
 system which blind us to the true bearing of the 
 policy itself. 
 
 Had not the Dutch and German elements become 
 paramount in the guidance of our foreign relations,
 
 FOREIGN AFFAIRS. 173 
 
 there was no such necessary antagonism to France 
 as has been pretended. Lord Chatham himself, whose 
 management of our external affairs was the wonder of 
 Europe, was vehemently opposed to the " German 
 War," which, having once commenced, not even his 
 genius could clear us from. Thus England was 
 dragged along at the heels of Frederick II. the most 
 unscrupulous adventurer who ever made a kingdom out 
 of a province, and we of to-day have the privilege of 
 paying, in the shape of interest on the national debt, 
 for the position which Prussia holds in Europe. This 
 went on, notwithstanding protests from patriotic men 
 against this ruinous squandering of the resources of 
 the country, until the time of the French Revolution, 
 when our antagonism to France, already pronounced 
 enough, was still further aggravated by the calculated 
 panic of the governing and well-to-do classes. With 
 the internal affairs of France we had no concern ; and 
 the mass of the people of England sympathized with 
 the men who had overturned the meanest, and at the 
 same time most galling tyranny that could oppress 
 an agricultural people. The loss of the American 
 Colonies, when Germans and Indians were used to 
 shoot down and scalp men who were fighting for their 
 rights, had opened the eyes of the poorer classes to 
 the real bearing of the vicious mercenary system. A 
 magnificent heritage had been lost, because the men 
 at the head of affairs set aside the advice of English- 
 men like Chatham and Burke, to pander to the pre- 
 judices of a German king and the aristocrats around 
 him. France had now learnt something from America ; 
 and there was more admiration than ill-feeling to 
 begin with on our side of the Channel.
 
 174 ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 But in all this the rulers ot that day saw and 
 rightly saw a grave danger to themselves. The 
 rupture with France was made unavoidable by the 
 counsel and support extended to her invaders. Once 
 involved in the anti-revolutionary fever, nothing was 
 easier than to inflame still further the national rivalry, 
 until for nearly a generation the very name of French- 
 man became obnoxious to English ears, and children 
 grew up to be men believing that only by the de- 
 struction, of France could England be made secure. 
 The astounding career of Napoleon I., and the state- 
 craft of his reactionary empire, gave our policy a 
 further push forward in the same direction. England 
 became the rallying-point of resistance to a military 
 usurper, who evidently aimed at the dominance of 
 Europe. 
 
 His answers to our persistent hostilities took the 
 shape of a threat of invasion, and a continental 
 blockade against English goods. The first of these 
 two measures became hopeless after Nelson's crowning 
 victory at Trafalgar. The second was rendered futile 
 though the fact is not generally known by the 
 friendly policy of the Ottoman Empire. The remark- 
 able geographical configuration of that State gave us 
 an advantage which Napoleon was unable to over- 
 come. The Turks opened their numerous ports, and 
 Europe was flooded with smuggled English goods. 
 Thereupon the blockade became useless ; Power after 
 Power withdrew from the league, and we were relieved 
 from further anxiety in regard to the most dangerous 
 plan of campaign ever formulated against us. As a 
 natural sequence of our long opposition to France,
 
 FOREIGN AFFAIRS. 175 
 
 we were driven more and more into alliance with the 
 despotic powers of Europe. Those armies which 
 overthrew Napoleon, were as much intended for re- 
 pression at home as to repel the foreign invader ; and 
 Europe was prepared by the Treaty of Vienna for the 
 supremacy of the Holy Alliance. The great name 
 associated with all this policy is that of Castlereagh, 
 who bound us hand and foot to Russia, and made us 
 little better than a hanger-on to the Holy Alliance 
 itself. Thus for thirty years England was linked on the 
 continent of Europe with powers whose very existence 
 depended upon the denial of freedom to the peoples. 
 
 Upon this phase followed a modification rather than 
 a change of policy. The extravagant pretensions of 
 the Holy Alliance with reference to Spain, and the 
 absurd claim of its members to regulate the internal 
 affairs of every kingdom of Europe, brought about 
 the policy of which Canning became the chief ex- 
 ponent. This was the support of constitutionalism in 
 Europe, as equally opposed to autocracy and to 
 revolution. It was an attempt to trim between two 
 irreconcilable opposites. Canning himself called into 
 existence that remarkable New World to redress the 
 balance of the Old which, since it first came above the 
 political horizon in the House of Commons, has been 
 wholly incapable of balancing even itself. The rest 
 of the policy had as little solid foundation as this 
 famous outburst. Constitutionalism did not thrive, in 
 spite of English protection ; and we gradually drifted 
 into a defence of what appeared our most tangible, 
 interest that of the overland route to India. 
 
 Canning was followed by Palmerston and Russell.
 
 i?6 ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 The episode of Navarino, which weakened Turkey 
 without constituting a strong Greece, was merely a 
 prelude to a definite championship of the integrity 
 and independence of the Ottoman Empire, involving 
 Lord Palmerston's Syrian policy, and eventually leading 
 up to the Crimean War. Jealousy of France, and 
 desire to maintain the balance of power, still had a 
 great influence. But capitalism was now beginning 
 to assert its sway, and plain Whig principles meant 
 compromise at home and selfishness abroad. There 
 was not even the violent old Toryism of Pitt and 
 Castlereagh to rouse opposition or stir enthusiasm. 
 
 The shake of 1848 brought the weakness of this 
 whole system into clear relief. Unpleasant people, 
 who thought a dungeon smelt quite as dank under 
 " moderate constitutionalism," as when kept exclu- 
 sively at the service of autocrats, gave the constitu- 
 tionalists many awkward misgivings. London at this 
 time naturally became the headquarters of the consti- 
 tutional monarchs, and the metropolitan bankers the 
 custodians of their savings. We, however, in the 
 struggle which followed, neither gained nor deserved 
 the gratitude of either party. Opposed to auto 
 cracy, we showed a friendship for Hungary, for 
 instance, which the horror of our middle classes for 
 real revolution quickly induced us to betray. Matters 
 were worse with Venice, Sardinia, and Sicily, when 
 England deliberately abandoned people who had 
 been induced by surreptitious assurances to rely upon 
 her for assistance. " England wishes only for peace," 
 Pasini wrote, bitterly, to Manin ; and that summed up, 
 not perhaps Lord Palmerston's own policy, but the
 
 FOREIGN AFFAIRS. i?7 
 
 policy of the capitalist class, now gaining power 
 rapidly, and to which all Foreign Ministers have since 
 been forced in some way to bow down. 
 
 But here, nevertheless, lay the true line for Eng- 
 land. In 1848 she could have placed herself at the 
 head of the enfranchised peoples of Europe, and lent 
 her unrivalled naval power to support those who, with 
 her assistance, could not have been subdued. The time 
 however, was not ripe for so bold a policy ; the 
 dreaded principles of revolution were once more 
 abroad. Chartism at home was affiliated to the 
 accursed thing. So, without absolutely allying our- 
 selves with the oppressors, Great Britan saw without 
 regret the re-establishment of the autocracy, which to 
 her self-seeking merchants was so far preferable to the 
 rule of the people. Thus the general result of our 
 moral support of constitutionalism and Liberal prin- 
 ciples was the firm re-establishment of despotism in 
 Europe. At this period too was shown fully that 
 absolute agreement between Russia and Prussia 
 which has been the key to continental policy since 
 1821. Russia came forward in 1848 as the protector 
 of despotism in every country. Germany and 
 Austria were completely under her thumb. Every 
 petty princeling whose throne had been pulled from 
 under him, stretched out his hands in prayer to the 
 deity of St. Petersburg to set him up straight again ; 
 and Nicholas, to do him justice, did his king-making 
 in fine old barbaric style. So long as these small fry, 
 from the King of Prussia downward, obeyed his 
 Imperial behests, and abstained from all tampering 
 with liberalism or revolution he was content to support 
 
 N
 
 ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 them for the mere gratification of the thing. The 
 Power which held Poland could not afford that either 
 freedom or the rights of nationalities should be dis- 
 cussed in her neighbourhood. It was a revival of the 
 policy of the early portion of the century, in a more 
 pronounced shape. An armed barbarism lent its aid 
 to all the reactionary influences in Europe, and 
 Liberal England was content to stand aloof arVd wish 
 well to the oppressed nationalities, without raising a 
 hand to help them. Had a more far-seeing plan 
 been adopted, the Crimean War, with its unfortunate 
 alliance with the Second Empire in France might 
 have been unnecessary. 
 
 Turkey was saved from Russia by that war, at the 
 expense of thousands of lives and a hundred millions 
 of money to this country. But for twenty years, 
 though the Liberal party was almost continuously in 
 office, no steps whatever were taken to reorganize the 
 Ottoman Empire, or to help the better elements to 
 organize themselves, whilst we lent the corrupt clique 
 of Pashas at Constantinople tens of millions, which 
 were squandered in corruption and debauchery. The 
 close of the Crimean War, however, was signalized by 
 a treaty, which could only have been reasonably 
 accepted by us if we had been defeated instead of vic- 
 torious. Hampered by our alliance with the Govern- 
 ment, and not with the people of France, we were con- 
 strained to make peace practically on the terms which 
 suited our ally. A step also was taken, without any 
 reference to the people of England, by the two English 
 Plenipotentiaries, which sacrificed the only important 
 weapon that an essentially naval power like ourselves
 
 FOREIGN AFFAIRS. 
 
 has in a continental war. The history of the deplor- 
 able surrender is even yet not fully know ; its effect 
 we shall only feel when we are again opposed as we 
 may be at any moment opposed by a European 
 coalition directed against us. 
 
 During the long wars with France under the 
 Republic and Napoleon we held one great advantage, 
 but for which we could scarcely have faced the com- 
 bination which that great genius contrived to work up 
 against us. This went by the name of Maritime 
 Rights. Supreme on the ocean, and able to cover the 
 seas with a swarm of privateers, the carrying trade of 
 the world was at our mercy. The Right of Search was 
 the point on which this power hinged. This meant 
 that if neutral vessels were carrying our enemies' 
 goods, we had the right, whether contraband of war 
 or not, to stop those vessels and confiscate those 
 goods. Thus we could rely upon our real arm, that 
 which is given us by our geographical position and the 
 hereditary capacity of our men the knowledge and 
 mastery of the sea. Time after time when the for- 
 tunes of the country had seemed at the lowest ebb, 
 this power sufficed to turn the tide in our favour. 
 Its possession made us a valuable ally to the most 
 powerful continental state ; whilst, as we have seen, 
 with the friendly connivance of Turkey it enabled us 
 to break up the famous continental blockade against 
 our goods. Naturally this unequalled weapon, for a 
 country of such wealth as ours, had been envied us by 
 the continent ever since we began to use it, and con- 
 stant efforts had been made by our rivals and enemies 
 to deprive us of it. Up to the date of the Congress 
 
 N 2
 
 i8o ENGLAND FOR ALL, 
 
 of Paris, however, all such pretensions had been 
 scouted by English statesmen as absolutely inadmis- 
 sible, and ruinous to our country. Nothing to the 
 contrary of this had or has ever been shown. The 
 cry of " free ships, free goods," had been raised by 
 those who wished the downfall of England's influence ; 
 for once admitted, it reduced our fighting power to 
 nothing. 
 
 All these facts notwithstanding, Lord Clarendon and 
 Lord Cowley, acting in that spirit of the pure trading 
 interest which had then become really paramount in 
 English foreign politics, gave up by the Declaration 
 of Paris, without argument, debate, or proper authority, 
 those maritime rights which could alone enable the 
 growing democracy of these i f lands to exercise due 
 weight and influence in Europe. No such sacrifice has 
 ever been made by any country. That we should 
 permanently adhere to it is incredible. The United 
 States was guilty of no such folly. Her statesmen 
 declined to give up privateering, except under pro- 
 visions which they knew would not be accepted. 
 No long period can elapse before this whole question 
 is again brought forward. When it is, the people of 
 England should never cease to recall the fact that their 
 position in the world awakens the jealousies of other 
 nations, that these are the days of violent aggression 
 and secret combinations, and that the weapon, the 
 only weapon which nature has placed in our hands 
 wherewith with perfect freedom to face and overcome 
 the military despotisms of Europe, is that of being able 
 to dominate the commerct of the globe. 
 
 Soon after the Treaty of Paris, the Indian Mutiny
 
 FOREIGN AFFAIRS. 181 
 
 broke out. It ended in the handing over of India to 
 the Government of the Crown. The effect of the con- 
 quest of India upon our foreign policy has been two- 
 fold. First, the direct necessity of taking certain 
 strong places on the route to our great dependency, 
 and our alliance with the Porte. From England to 
 the East we hold a chain of posts which are essential 
 to the safety of our communication, but which render 
 us liable as time goes by to the maintenance con- 
 stantly in the Mediterranean of a fleet at least equal to 
 that of France and Italy combined. Secondly, our 
 hold upon India has greatly increased our timidity in 
 championing any great cause, and has turned our 
 attention from the sea, where our real strength lies, to 
 the land, on which our national aversion from conscrip- 
 tion must always make us fight at a disadvantage. 
 In India England is perforce a great military power ; 
 and this, which is wholly at variance with our tradi- 
 tions for, as has been well said, we are a warlike, but 
 not a military people tinges the whole current of our 
 foreign policy. Indian policy on more than one occa- 
 sion has taken precedence of English ; Asiatic ideas 
 have had too great influence ; we have, in short, what 
 with fear of invasion, and dread of a rising in India 
 itself consequent upon misfortune in Europe, lost all 
 sense of proportion in considering the external rela- 
 tion of such a country as ours. Asiatic politics must 
 inevitably enter largely into our calculations merely on 
 the ground of our commercial interests ; but India, 
 with its 60,000 European troops, is, as at present 
 governed, a source of increasing weakness to the 
 people of these islands, who may find themselves
 
 i?2 ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 seriously hampered at a great national crisis by the 
 necessity for protecting their countrymen in Hin- 
 dostan. This will become more clear now that 
 our frontier all but marches with that of a great and 
 troublous military power. India, consequently, will 
 prove a more disturbing element in our foreign policy 
 of the future than it has been in the past. 
 
 With the Treaty of Paris, however, England may be 
 said to have entered practically on the stage of per- 
 manent non-intervention in continental affairs. Our 
 efforts to preserve peace when it was once understood 
 that under no circumstances whatever would we go 
 to war, became futile and even ludicrous. This was 
 apparent with regard to the French campaign against 
 Austria. Had we proclaimed our intention of siding 
 with either party, war would not have been declared. 
 But the establishment of the independence of Italy, 
 by French arms first, and by Garibaldi's expedition 
 afterwards, met with the cordial sympathy of the 
 great mass of Englishman. Though the upper classes 
 still clung to the Austrian alliance, the people were 
 more clear-sighted, whilst Cavour's happy moderation 
 reassured the middle class. Thus, all rejoiced at the 
 rise of Italy into a great power, and the extra- 
 ordinary reception accorded to Garibaldi by the 
 democracy of London, gave evidence that the real 
 feeling of Englishmen is with the peoples of the 
 continent, and needs but a proper occasion to mani- 
 fest itself in full force. The contest between the 
 North and the South in America, brought this truth 
 into stronger relief. Once more the upper and middle 
 classes, as in 1848 and 1859, linked themselves with
 
 FOREIGN AFFAIRS. 183 
 
 the side of reaction, and that side, unfortunately for 
 their credit and influence, was this time the weaker. 
 Nothing finer is. recorded than the behaviour of the 
 Lancashire operatives during that awful period of con- 
 tinuous want. The capitalists who employed them 
 showed no such real perception of the truth, and their 
 selfishness appeared in protesting against any scheme 
 which might remove the hands, and thus perhaps 
 raise wages on the return of trade. That by the way. 
 The fact that the working class saw the issue lay be- 
 tween freedom and despotism, and clung to their 
 opinion under every discouragement, is evidence of 
 a capacity which needs but education and organiza- 
 tion to have a deep effect in other fields of foreign 
 policy. 
 
 The hare-brained French expedition to Mexico 
 was the outcome of the American Civil War, and this 
 eventually brought the French Empire to destruction. 
 For no sooner was the shameless attack upon Denmark 
 by Prussia and Austria at an end when German in- 
 fluence again appeared in our counsels than the two 
 great Powers who took part in that act of brigandage 
 fell out themselves. The cooler-headed brigand fell 
 upon his neighbour, and by the victory of Sadowa the 
 supremacy of Germany was gained by Prussia. Here, 
 of course, was an end of all international law. Thence- 
 forward we have been living in an epoch of wrong and 
 robbery. France, crippled by the Mexican campaign, 
 could not afford to help Austria against Prussia and 
 Italy merely, in fact, displaying her weakness to 
 a watchful enemy. England counted for nothing 
 in all this, and the only benefit which accrued to the
 
 1 84 ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 peoples from the bloodshed and treachery was the 
 annexation of Venice by Italy. The extension of 
 the power of military Junker-ridden Prussia over the 
 pacific old Bund could only be viewed with satisfaction 
 by those who, whilst pretending to be Liberals, secretly 
 sympathize with brute force so long as it is organized 
 against the mass of mankind. In any case Prussia, 
 still closely allied with Russia, became the first Power 
 in Europe, and the next move was merely a matter 
 of time and opportunity. 
 
 By the year 1870 England had not only ceased 
 to have a continental policy, but she positively 
 had not the least idea of what was going on. It is 
 really alarming, especially at a time like the present, 
 to note the depth of ignorance in the English Foreign 
 Office eleven years ago. At the very moment when 
 the Frederick the Great of modern diplomatic Ger- 
 many had made up his mind to strike France once 
 for all, and had contrived to " localize " the war after 
 his favourite fashion by arrangements with Russia 
 and Italy, our Foreign Office had come to the con- 
 clusion that no elements of war, so much as remained 
 in Western Europe at all. France was easily over- 
 thrown ; and England, unfortunately for our credit 
 and our interests, refused to help the Republic which 
 rose upon the ruins of the Empire. Then, if the 
 phrase ever meant anything, was the time to show 
 the meaning of a real balance of power. France had 
 been beaten ; the Empire, with its wretched array of 
 stock-jobbers and intriguers, had been swept away. 
 So far we had no right to interfere ; but the people 
 of France were in nowise responsible for the errors of
 
 FOREIGN AFFAIRS. 185 
 
 Napoleon ; and "a. bold policy would have rallied Italy 
 and Austria at once to our side, to prevent a brave 
 nation from being crushed. That course was not 
 adopted, and any remonstrance met with insolence from 
 the German Government. Our position became indeed 
 that for which our non-interventionists had striven. 
 Of course further plots could be carried on inde- 
 pendently of any consideration for the only Power 
 in Europe which has no real interest except in fair 
 play to the peoples. 
 
 It is needless to pass through the long and troubled 
 period which began with the Austrian imperial intrigues 
 in Bosnia and the Herzegovina, the Servian War, and 
 can scarcely be said to have ended with the Treaty 
 of Berlin. That a whole scheme was laid down for 
 the partition of the Ottoman Empire by the renewed 
 Holy Alliance, is clear. Russia, Germany, and 
 Austria had each their portions assigned, whilst the 
 advantages to be received by France and England 
 were doubtless considered ; perhaps the latter might 
 be content with nothing at all. The Bulgarian 
 atrocities helped Russia to carry out her part of the 
 programme, though the weakness engendered by the 
 war has certainly not been repaid by the advantages 
 she has as yet secured. England's part in the business 
 has again been most unsatisfactory. A war in Europe 
 was avoided ; but a war in Asia was begun, which 
 has saddled our impoverished dependency with a 
 fearful expenditure. By showing, however, even a 
 moderately bold front in Europe, the Conservative 
 Government proved conclusively the influence which 
 England could exert, if only casting aside all lust for
 
 1 86 ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 territory, and all underhand intrigue, she stood once 
 more with clean hands before the world as the reso- 
 lute champion of justice and freedom, honesty and pub- 
 lic faith. Then she could rally to her side the alliances 
 of the future, beside which the possession of Cyprus, 
 or even the control of Constantinople and Asia Minor 
 would seem mean and contemptible. But the result of 
 the game of brag which the last Government played 
 was not creditable. Instead of holding forth a plain, 
 intelligible policy to Englishmen, and appealing to 
 them to stand by even a downright Tory self-assertion, 
 there was a mixture of trimming and secrecy, of com- 
 promise and timidity, which spoke of divided counsels 
 and irresolute minds. The people of England there- 
 fore refused to go " blind " into a business which com- 
 bined secret agreements abroad with the threat of 
 reaction in Ireland and at home. These, happily, are 
 the days of democracy, publicity, and open speech. 
 The statesman who is ambitious to lead England in 
 such times must take the people into his confidence, 
 and convince them that he is using their influence and 
 their power not merely for selfish national interests, 
 but for the best interests of Europe and the world. 
 
 That the result of our secret diplomacy and party 
 foreign policy has not yet been fully seen is plain 
 enough. Non-intervention to start with, and secret 
 bargaining to end with, have landed us in a very un- 
 enviable position. The nation refused to countersign 
 the policy of the Conservative Government, and the 
 Liberals came in with the promise of a special under- 
 standing with France and perfect openness to the 
 country. France has so far dissembled her love for
 
 FOREIGN AFFAIRS. 187 
 
 the Liberal administration that she has kicked our 
 Foreign Secretary downstairs at three bounds. Greece, 
 the Commercial Treaty, and Tunis, are evidences of 
 the perfect entente cordiale which exists. The last 
 coup is the worst of all, for it came after assurances of 
 the most solemn nature that nothing whatever was 
 meant. Can we be surprised ? A policy of pure 
 selfishness has ended in our complete isolation. The 
 behaviour of France is shameful, and contrary to her 
 best interest. Granted. The treatment which we 
 have received in the matter would in different times 
 have led to a rupture of friendly relations between 
 the two countries. But at this moment we cannot 
 rely upon a single ally on the continent ; and for all 
 we know, arrangements may be contemplated which 
 would occasion us very grave uneasiness. 
 
 For those who talk of non-intervention forget that 
 we have entered into definite guarantees, which the 
 least bellicose among us could not wish to shirk. 
 The overthrow of international law, which is pretty 
 complete now, would be fully accomplished indeed, 
 if England were to withdraw from her defence of 
 liberal little Belgium. We have had of late very 
 valuable experience as to what the concert of Europe 
 amounts to when booty is in the wind. It is more 
 than probable that the redistribution of territory 
 and power, which began in 1866, will not be con- 
 fined to Eastern Europe. Should we desire, then, to 
 see the same sort of morality, which is good enough 
 for Turks, applied to Dutch, Belgians, and Swiss ? 
 The idea that justice influences either republics or 
 empires in these days had better be laid aside for the
 
 1 88 ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 present as the figment that it is. A power which 
 could act as France has acted about Tunis, would 
 have small scruple in using similar tactics nearer 
 home. 
 
 But even more important to us than any bargaining 
 which may be going on, is the general aspect of 
 European affairs. We see four, not to say five, great 
 Powers absolutely bowed down with the weight of 
 their military expenditure ; whilst the great country 
 which in 1848 acted as the guardian of autocracy 
 in Europe, hovers between bankruptcy and revo- 
 lution. Whatever else may be doubtful, this is past 
 all question, neither Germany nor Austria can per- 
 manently bear the strain of the tremendous armaments 
 now kept up. For these armaments not only exhaust 
 the resources of the several countries, but prepare the 
 ground for internal revolution of the most serious 
 character. It is not Russia alone which is honey- 
 combed with secret societies and festering disaffection. 
 There, indeed, the situation is graver than elsewhere. 
 Over-taxation, the drain of produce to Western 
 Europe, the influence of capitalism, and the break up 
 of the Mir coming at a time of serious famine, have 
 produced a state of affairs throughout the Empire 
 which would probably lead to revolution in one shape 
 or another, if the Nihilists had never been heard of. 
 That extraordinary conspiracy is but the natural out- 
 come of a still more remarkable condition below. 
 Western civilization, with all its paraphernalia of 
 stockjobbing, corruption, and extravagance, has been 
 imposed on a country but just emerging from 
 barbarism. Almost anything may occur in such cir-
 
 FOREIGN AFFAIRS. 189 
 
 cumstances. The murder of the late Czar shocked 
 Europe : but the cruelties which led up to that crime 
 were really even more shocking than the revenge. More 
 people were swept off to Siberia without trial by the 
 benevolent Alexander II. than ever found their way 
 thither within an equal period during the worst days 
 of the reign of Nicholas. Now there is another Czar, 
 who lives in constant fear for his life ; and the recent 
 changes seem to betoken a continuance of autocratic 
 rule at home, combined possibly with a renewal of 
 aggression abroad. Men live as in expectation of an 
 earthquake ; and the attacks upon the Jews and other 
 money-lenders in Southern Russia look like the pre- 
 monitory shocks. 
 
 If the disturbances do begin in earnest in Russia, 
 they are almost certain to lap over into other 
 countries. Already the grave social issues involved 
 in the existing capitalist system as applied to agri- 
 culture and business are being debated with increasing 
 earnestness all over Europe. In Germany the party 
 of the Social Democrats has gained strength of late 
 years to a surprising extent, notwithstanding the 
 pressure of similar laws to those which we are now 
 applying with such great success in Ireland. Con- 
 scription does but give the disaffected more confidence ; 
 and as they see that peaceful agitation is considered 
 a crime, the propaganda might easily assume a more 
 dangerous shape. A military system like that of 
 Germany carries with it the certainty of its own 
 destruction at no distant date. All Prince Bismarck's 
 unscrupulous energy will not suffice to stop the 
 current of ideas which show men how and why they
 
 190 ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 are robbed and oppressed. In Austria the agrarian 
 difficulty is assuming daily a graver aspect. Nor is it 
 the less serious because the people have not as yet 
 dissociated the agitation from religion or loyalty. 
 They scarcely understand themselves how it is that 
 capitalism and difference of value impoverish them. 
 In France a party holding similar views to that of the 
 Labour party in Germany, has been formed, and they 
 alone have had the courage to protest against the 
 attack on Tunis, as contrary to the interest and the 
 true sense of morality of the French people. 
 
 How far these various socialist bodies in Russia, 
 Germany, Austria, France, and Italy, would act 
 together in any general programme may be doubtful. 
 But these organizations consisting almost exclu- 
 sively of working men alone seem to have grasped 
 the truth that the people of the various countries have 
 nothing to expect from war but loss and suffering ; 
 consequently they alone are prepared to consider 
 existing difficulties with a view to their peaceful 
 settlement. Men who hold that their class is under- 
 going suffering and misery because the workers of 
 all nations are not sufficiently at one, will not be 
 likely to foment those national hatreds which are 
 generally turned to the aggrandisement of individuals. 
 But this rising feeling of democracy, this growing dis- 
 inclination of the men who work to be handled any 
 longer for the advantage of emperors, aristocrats or 
 even bond-buyers, is viewed with very uneasy eyes by 
 the military powers of Europe. It is not the 
 assassination of the late Czar, or threats against the 
 present, which are drawing together " saviours of
 
 FOREIGN AFFAIRS. 191 
 
 society " on the continent. They see that, let affairs 
 in Russia take what turn they may, another and more 
 serious '48 movement is going on below the surface, 
 which they wish beforehand to encounter and defeat. 
 Hence the attempts to bring about some understand- 
 ing with reference to the surrender of political re- 
 fugees, and the demands which have been made, or 
 will be made, upon us. 
 
 Now arises an important question for us English- 
 men and especially for those of the working classes 
 to decide. Will they in the coming struggle 
 between militarism and democracy lend their aid in 
 any way to the former, or even stand aloof and see 
 the peoples of Europe repressed as they were a gene- 
 ration since ? I judge not. Jealousy of this or that 
 nation there may be for a time, and French vanity 
 and unfortunate spread-eagleism may render all 
 combinations in Western Europe impossible. But, 
 with the rising feeling of democracy here at home, 
 any understanding with reaction as in old days would 
 be ruinous to the party which attempted it, as any 
 effort to convert us into a military power may be 
 fatal to our existing system of government. As time 
 has passed on, it has become more and more clear 
 that in the direction of the national inclination of the 
 great majority of Englishmen lies at the same time 
 the most advantageous policy for England. Lying 
 apart from the continent of Europe, and practically 
 free from the risk of invasion, we can not only 
 shelter men who are driven from their country for 
 mere political offences, but we can righ':fully stand 
 forth at the critical moment on behalf of those who at
 
 I 9 2 ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 present think that England must necessarily range 
 herself on the side of a conservatism which has come 
 to be revolutionary. Each nation, doubtless, must 
 work out its own social troubles ; but a combination 
 of despotisms can only be met and overcome by a 
 combination of peoples. The true alliances for 
 England in the future are the democracies of Europe, 
 and her real strength is on the sea.
 
 CONCLUSION, 193 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 THUS in every direction the policy of the demo- 
 cracy is clear and well-defined. Freedom, social 
 reorganization, thorough unity at home, justice, self- 
 government, and consideration for our colonies and 
 dependencies, and a warm friendship and ready assis- 
 tance for the oppressed peoples abroad, such is the 
 work we are called upon to begin and carry out. 
 Democracy, which the so-called " governing classes " 
 jeer at as anarchy, incapacity, and self-seeking, means 
 a close federation, first, of our own people, and next, 
 of the workers of the civilized world. This is a policy 
 not of to-day or of to-morrow, now to be taken up 
 and again to be laid aside ; it is an undertaking in 
 which each can continuously bear his share, and 
 hand on the certainty of success to his fellow. 
 
 The current of events will help on the cause of the 
 people. Within the past generation greater changes 
 have been wrought than in centuries of human exis- 
 tence before. For the first time in the history of 
 mankind the whole earth is at our feet. Railways, 
 telegraphs, steam communications, have but just 
 begun to exercise an influence. Education and in- 
 tercourse are breaking down the barriers of ages. 
 The men who do the work of the world are learning 
 from one another how it is that the poor and the 
 
 O
 
 F94 ENGLAND FOR ALL. 
 
 miserable, the unfortunate and the weak, suffer and 
 fall by the wayside. In our own country, which has 
 led the way to the new stage of social development, 
 all can see that the lot of the many is sad, whilst the 
 few are rich and luxurious far beyond what is bene- 
 ficial even to them. Our action in redress of these 
 inequalities and better ordering of our affairs will 
 guide and encourage the world. We, perhaps, alone 
 among the peoples can carry out with peace, order, 
 and contentment those changes which continental 
 revolutionists have sought through anarchy and 
 bloodshed. Religion, which should have helped in 
 this striving for a happier period, has suffered the 
 rich and powerful to twist its teachings to their own 
 account. Now, therefore, is the time, in the face of 
 difficulties and dangers which threaten from many 
 quarters, for Englishmen of all classes, creeds, and 
 conditions to push aside the petty bickerings of 
 faction or the degrading influence of mere selfish 
 interests, to the end that by sympathy and fellow- 
 feeling for their own and for others they may hold 
 up a nobler ideal to mankind. Such an ideal is not 
 unreal or impracticable. Not as yet of course can we 
 hope to realize more than a portion of that for which 
 we strive. But if only we are true to one another, and 
 stand together in the fight, the brightness of the future 
 is ours the day before us and the night behind. So, 
 when those who come after look back to these islands 
 as we now look back to Athens or Palestine, they shall 
 say, " This was glory this true domination ; these 
 men builded on eternal foundations their might, 
 majesty, dominion, and power."
 
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