Aav«8ni^^ ^ojijmmw ^mwm^ v/jjaAiN(i3wv lEUNIVERS/A 19 ^3 \T7^ J ^^ OO ^ 5 ^RARYQ/:, C_3 5 M i ^1 ^ Q 5 i«^ llo i mnw '-^okmrnw ■^smwm^ '^/smmiiW ^o IVfR% CO im w^ ^^imrn-i^^ f ^OFCAIIFOB5^ ^OFCAllF0«5ij^ g UJ > WT^P ^IIIBRARY^. IV3J0^ kLi^U£i> IIVER%. ^lOSANCn'- <¥.S01# %MAlNn-3WV^ JV'SO^^ %jOMNfl.3\«^ POSTERITY ITS VERDICTS AND ITS METHODS OR DEMOCKACY A.D. 2100 WILLIAMS AND NORGATE 14, HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, LONDON 20, SOUTH FREDERICK STREET, EDINBURGH AND 7, BROAD STREET, OXFORD 1897 . . . " What a fearful and immense question this of Pauperism is : with what ominous rapidity the demand for a solution of it is pressing on : and how little the world generally is yet aware what methods and principles, new, strange, and altogether contradictory to the shallow maxims and idle philoso- phies current at present, would be needed for dealing with it." Thos. Caelyle [Mevioir of Chas. Buller). " They enslave their children's children Who make compromise with sin." J. R. Lowell. I > ANNO DOMINI 1897. In the year of our Lord, 1897, I had some reason to be tired of my life. Fortune had been very unkind to me through a series of disastrous years, 3 and I suffered from a depression of mind "vvhich made existence an intolerable burden. But the c longer I reflected upon it the more puzzled I Q became as to the means by which I could most decently, and with a due regard for appearances, . make my exit from a stage on which I had become s superfluous, and upon which circumstances beyond J my control effectually prevented my appearing with the dignity which to most men is a first necessity of life. In this predicament I determined s to consult my old friend, Kelvin Grove, whose i arguments in favour of euthanasia had greatly c interested me in former days, I called upon him, and expressed my surprise at finding him at liberty so early in the day. "1 have given up medical practice," said he, " in order to have more time for the study of a 2 very important question — nothing less, in fact, than the problem of death." ''The very subject I came to discuss with you/' I said. I gave him a short history of my troubles, and soon convinced him that the Next World, little as we know of it and dim as is our conception of it, had more attractions for me than this scene of ill-fortune undeserved and of disaster un- expected. " You want a tonic," he said. " You must have change of air and of scene." *' Can these put back the hand of time ? Will they restore to me the esteem of those whose goodwill was more to me than mere fortune or worldly success?" " By-and-by you will take a saner and a juster view of life and its duties." "My world is out of joint. I am determined to have done with it." He felt my pulse, sounded my heart and lungs. " You are as sound as a roach, and you are just the subject I am looking for. Come to me in two months' time, and if you are then in the same mind I will do for you all that you ask, and more. Take plenty of exercise, seek cheerful society, and come back to me in good bodily and mental health." I carried out his programme, and I soon felt that our humdrum world still had attractions which I had overlooked or forgotten. Nevertheless, in two months I presented myself again before my friend, and when I told him that whilst I had never befoi h'uly appreciated the world and its advanta^ i , yeo my design was unchanged, he did not conceal his satisfaction. " I have made every preparation," said he, " and if you will make your will and say good-bye to your relatives, we will lose no time. I must explain how I propose to dispose of you. For years past I have experimented on living creatures with a view of preserving them in a state of suspended animation for an indefinite time, aad I feel satisfied that I can preserve you in such fashion that you need not wake for centuries. I shall put you into a trance, and place you in an air-tight glass jar. I shall then exhaust the air, and re-fill the jar with a mixture of gases specially prepared and at high pressure, which will prevent any decay ; and so long as your tenement remains unbroken you will sleep in absolute safety.'^ 1 * ANNO DOMINI 2100. Such buzzings iu my ears ! vSucli pressure on my eyes; such " pins and needles ^^ in my limbs as no words can describe, a blinding glare wbicli seemed to cut into my brain. Then I became conscious of voices^ and one, with a foreign accent, said, " A little patience and you will feel better." I was lifted into a hot bath, which gave me instant relief, and the choking in my throat relaxed. Next I sipped a basin of hot soup, and was tucked away in cool, soft sheets for a long, long sleep. I awoke refreshed, and found by my side a man of middle age and dignified presence, who, after many inquiries as to my strength and my health, expressed the pleasure it gave him to find me fairly convalescent. I thanked him warmly for the care they had taken of me, and asked him to tell me how long I had slept, and to whom I was indebted for the hospitality I now enjoyed. {He) " This is the year 2100, and you are a guest of the police office of the Windsor district of London. Be good enough to tell me in what year you were interred, in order that I may enter your name ou the district register. You may then obtain a passport, and eventually, no doubt, a certificate of citizenship." (I) "hi my time we had given up such puerilities as passports and certificates." {He) " To be a citizen of this country is a high privilege, and one not easy of attainment. If it could be claimed by every new-comer we should soon be inundated with millions inferior to our- selves in morals and in conduct — meu quite unfitted for association with our citizens." Remembering that in 1897 we allowed any pauper or incapable, from any tribe or nation, however uncivilized, to mix with our population, to lower the rate of wages and to degrade the standard of living, I thought it well to change the conversation. I therefore mentioned that I was bui-ied in 1897, and that I was of English birth and parentage. " I trust," said he, " that you will be exact in your statements. Our laws take a very different view of moral obligations from that which obtained in your time. The penalty for falsehood is heavy, and usually entails imprisonment." (Z) "And you call that civilization! I can under- stand that perjury in a court of justice should be punished — but a simple untruth ! It seems to me bai-barous to put a man in prison for so small an offence as a mis-statement of fact." [He) " To tell a lie is not a small offence. Our laws declare that a falsehood is an offence against morality, and therefore punishable. For a first offence the penalty is imprisonment until the examiners of the district are satisfied that he has studied the books and fully comprehended the arguments which have been put before him. Repeated and incorrigible lying is punished with death.'' (I) " What a bloodthirsty generation ! " I exclaimed, hotly. (He) " The existence and the well-being of society are superior to the right-to-live of each of its members. We have no maudlin sympathy with crime. Knowing that the criminal cannot act otherwise than criminally, we make every possible effort to educate his faculties into a, normal and healthy condition ; but when we find that our best efforts are without avail we unhesitatingly discon- tinue his existence. May I ask when it will suit you to see the doctors?" "Thank you," said I, "I will not trouble them. I am now quite well." {He) '' You cannot obtain your certificate until you have passed a medical examination.'' (7) " I feel satisfied that I have no infectious disease." [He) " The examination is not for contagious but organic disease. Your lungs might be consumj^tive, and then you would be ordered to a dry, cool climate. Your liver might be disordered, in which case the police must be called iu. A diseased liver is certain to result in unsocial conduct ; ill-temper, selfishness, arbitrary action, imputations which generate ill-feeling, ungenerous criticism of others, make it desirable to isolate the individual. The sentence pronounced in such cases is usually con- fined to a few months' hard labour on a strict diet, with frequent bathing and such slight mental exertion as the patient can bear. These measures, I ought to explain to you, are necessary not only for our own peace and comfort, but in the interest of future generations.'^ " What have you to do with future generations ? " I inquired; "they will take care of themselves when their time comes.'' "There, indeed, you well express the selfish spirit of your barbarous time," said he. "Do we owe nothing to the labours of our predecessors ? And to whom can we pay the debt except by caring for the interests of our descendants ? We inherit the accumulated results of the labours of former generations : their toil, their ingenuity, their self- denial, have given us a wealth of material posses- sions which I could not enumerate without putting your patience to a grievous trial. A million miles of asphalted roads and streets ; twenty million convenient houses ; a thousand gigantic reservoirs ; a complete network of railways ; every acre of land perfectly drained ; all mountains and waste lauds planted with forest and fruit trees ; all tides, rivers and waterfalls harnessed to power accumulators 8 and several hundreds of deep artesian Avells bringing molten metals and other forms of wealth from the deeper layers of the earth's strata." {I) " Evidently you have not been idle during the last few generations, and I shall investigate with much interest your discoveries and inventions, but your rigour towards offenders amazes me. The whole tendency of legislation in my time was towards leniency. You seem to attach little value to human life, and not much to individual liberty. I call yours a retrograde civilization." (77t') " It is not that wo value human life less, but that we value happiness and social and domestic peace more. Of what worth is life without peace, liappiness and security ? Surely, it is better that a nation should consist of ten million citizens, fully developed morally, physically and intellectually, able to appreciate and enjoy all the advantages and delights of this world of infinite variety, and making progress without painful effort, than of one hundred millions bearing in their midst a mass of discontent and misery, with every kind of vice and every variety of unhappiness." (/) " I wish I had a file of the Daili/ Telegraph with me, I could soon convince you that an increas- ing population must, under any circumstances, bo a benefit to the community, and that mental cultiva- tion is a small thing compared with the great fact that the Prince of Wales's horse won the Derby. But you must not think that our population were entirely neglected : we spent large sums to 9 educate, as far as we could, every cliild in the king- dom." {lie) " And posterity lias done you full justice for your efforts ; but, very cliaracteristically, you begau at tlie Avrong end. Instead of commencing hy teaching each child a trade, or the rudiments of a trade or handicraft, or the use of the tools of a trade, so as to make him an efficient citizen, and fit him for that, to him, most important of all efficiencies, the earning of a liveUhood, you thought it better that he should read and write and acquire a super- ficial smattering of knowledge which could not be useful in any way to a man without a trade or other means of earning his bread. Qualifications desirable, no doubt, in every citizen, but which, for thirty-five out of your forty millions, were useless for the attain- ment of that first and foremost necessity, the making of a livelihood. If you had wanted forty million clerks you took the right steps : but you did not, you wanted a tool-using population. And yet, how much less irksome it is to the youngest child to use a chisel, a pencil, a saw, a rule, a brush, or any other kind of instrument or tool, than to puzzle over spelling or grammar. It is not difficult to see how and why you went wrong. It saved you some trouble. It was easier to engage a large number of teachers all of one pattern and all teaching the same lessons. As J. S. Mill said — 'You can induce men to work for you, to fight for you, and even to die for you, but you cannot get them to think ' — and that is exactly where you shirked your dut^'. 10 If you had determined to make all the children into practically efficient and self-dependent citizens you would have had to do some thinking and take much trouble. The children would have had to be sorted and divided according to their aptitudes, abilities and desires. Efficient instructors would have had to be found amongst machinists, carpenters, black- smiths, engineers, moulders, plumbers, cooks, cobblers, tailors, engravers, gardeners, farmers, electricians, and scores of other trades and crafts. All this would have required thought and contriv- ance, and it would not have lent itself so readily to the loud shouting and self-gratulation, in which, like other semi-civilized peoples, you delighted so much. What a shocking mockerv it must have seemed to the millions of youths who left school full of eagerness for the actual work of life, when they realized that their irksome tasks had fitted them for nothing — that they were useless except as labourers, and that there was no organization by which they could learn a trade or handicraft, and thus become efficient workmen." (I) '^But, since our resources did not allow of our giving both a technical training and an intellectual one, we were surely right to cultivate the mind first." (He) " Herbert Spencer had settled that point for you, when he replied to the query, ' What knowledge is of most worth ? ' ' That which enables the man to obtain a livelihood.' You began at the wrong end. To educate poverty is to breed bitter- 11 ness of mind and destroy social harmony. Without technical knowledge the worker is not equipped to obtain his share of the benefits arising from the great array of modern inventions and discoveries. How vast the difference between a nation of competent wealth-pi'oducers, men of usefulness and skilly and one of unskilled and unable men. No doubt you were handicapped by the presence in your midst of a multitude of paupers — helpless^ hopeless, shiftless, immoral, idle by inheritance, who lived on public or on private charity, demoralized by generations of pauperism, who mixed and interbred with the industrious and capable working class, and thus, by proximity and contagion, helped to contaminate them.'^ {I) " Vie knew all this, but what could we do ? You would not have had us kill off" all our pauper class. ^' (He) "The loose thinking and hysterical senti- mentalism so prevalent in your time made it impossible to apply so drastic and so effectual a remedy, but it Avould have been far better than your actual practice, which was to encourage them in idleness by maintaining them in comfort at the public expense. In all ages the thriftless and incapable have sunk to the bottom of the social scale, and in all ages to come they will so sink, l)ut there is a depth at which society should step in, and, in self defence, remove from its midst the unsound or diseased growth. You protected the poor creatures from the operation of nature's 12 salutary law of the extinction of tlie unfit because you lacked the manly firmness to protect unborn generations from gross moral contamination. Un- thinking moralisers boasted of your pauperising generosity as being more humane than the practice of those neio-hbourinsr nations who had no such human- nature-enervating poor law. But they were blind to the fact that the grave moral canker thus produced poisoned and demoralised large numbers of other- wise sound and healthy-minded citizeos, whilst those other nations had no such pauper class, though their wealth was less, wages were lower, and their natural resources were inferior. You deliberately helped the undeserving to increase ; you carefully preserved the incapable, and the maudlin philanthropy by which you jjreserved the useless at the expense of the useful, inflicted grave injustice on future generations. What you called generosity was really a want of moral fibre. You lacked the resolution to apply the salutary caustic to the diseased spot. And yet, the fact that your people were thriftless and improvident beyond any other European population was evident to the most careless observer. When you ask me if your ' residuum ' should have been killed off, I can but say that such a massacre would have involved both injustice and cruelty. Each individual should have been subjected to prolonged observation. A certain number would have been found to be so unsocial and so obviously vicious or criminal-minded that they should have been put out of their wretchedness 18 with as mucli tenderness and as little delay as possible. Another large fraction would have been just as obviously capable of cultivation and education into social harmony. The remainder, beyond a doubt, would contain many worthy ones, dull-witted and of small capacity, but showing such patience under affliction, such sj^mj^athy with suffering, and such evident aspiration towards goodness, as to well reward the State for any trouble or expense they might cause. There is neither cruelty or injustice in depriving of life a being whose mind is debased and whose habits and ideas are so vitiated as to make him an object of disgust and contempt to healthy-minded men. The cruelty consists in helping to continue the existence of beings so degraded that their presence means contamination to the innocent and pure minded, and pain to all who must come into contact with them." (T) " Have you no poor or destitute class." {He) ''I am glad to say that although we still have poor, we have no destitute ; and our poor are poor because there are still, and will always be, many who are incompetent ; they are evidence that inequality of condition results from inequality of natural gifts. Your poor-law was intended to counteract the effect of the natural law of evolution. We have reversed your practice. We assist that evolution, which consists partly in the selection and rejection of the unfit. You preserved those, who, being unfit and unsuitable, would have perished. 14 One principal cause of our serenity and prosperity lies in tliis, that for many generations we have prevented the morally unsound and the mentally diseased from leaving progeny to trouble succeeding generations with their unsoundness. Thus, each generation starts with health of mind and health of iDody, and all experience shows that happiness lies more in these than in more material conditions. A sound mind in a sound body finds labour a pleasure and gives keen enjoyment to the mere sensation of being alive." (/) " You were good enough to speak of my ofeneration as beinof barbarous : but if vou could have gone through a London season with me I think I could have shown you that we were superior to any other people in refinement, in wealth, in luxury, in ease of life and in appreciation of art." {He) *' We do not now consider these to mark a high state of civilization — and I may tell you that the following are undoubted marks of barbarism : " 1 = A want of comfort in any one class of the people. " 2 = Absence of refinement amongst the masses. •^ 3 = That millions of young citizens should be pitchforked into the world without a trade or endowment of any kind. '^ 4 = The absence of any system for eradicating the unsocial and criminal-minded. " b = The undue importance attached to wealth and rank. 15 " G = The moral fiabbiness witli wliicb your legis- lators were afflicted. " Besides these, I may mention the universal passion for adornment and ostentation with whicli you were troubled, and which was as pronounced among you as in any tribe of savages. It seems to have pervaded every class : and whilst millions of money were required to furnish forth your women- folk in silivs, laces, diamonds and other ornaments — and more millions for carriages, horses, footmen, grooms and other superfluous servants : mostly en- gaged, not so much for use, as for ostentation : yet, at the same time, hospitals were starved, children went dinnerless to school, and widows and orphans unnumbered faced a cheerless and a heedless world in terror and despair. For any one man who devoted his yearly surplus in mitigation of the dis- tress and difficulties of his neighbour, a thousand others piled up their wealth with a view to enabling their heirs to live in idleness — or spent the money in the useless and baiTcn luxury of display. I am glad to say that we have changed for the better in that respect. The wealthiest families now teach their children that life without work is neither dignified nor enjoyable, and, accordingly, every man and every unmarried woman is occupied with some trade or profession. That an idle life is a degrad- ing life is not a mere counsel of perfection — it is a real and abiding conviction, born of centuries o suffering and observation and sanctioned by the experience of many generations. Happiness results IG from a wise and temperate exercise of all our faculties. Exertion brings satisfaction — idleness is still, as ever, tlie mother of evil Another hindrance to progress in your day lay in the fact that science and relig'ion were in conflict. But religion is a social and spiritual necessity, and moral progress was greatly hindered until these two prime factors of civilization were brought into harmony. Eventually dogmas were dropped in favour of ethics, and since then, religion and science have operated, generation after generation, as the twin-levers by which the moral and social level of the mass of the population has been raised." "I suppose the Church of England was dis- established long ago ? " I asked. [He] "It would have suffered that fate early in the twentieth century — for rationalism had sapped its dogmatic buttresses, and the people were be- coming estranged by the Eomish tendencies of many of the priests — had it not been for the wisdom of a Tory Ministry, who, declaring that the claims of Christianity are superior to those of the Estab- lished Church, and that true Conservatism consists in reconstructing an edifice rather than in mourn- fully deploring its decay, determined to strengthen the foundations and to broaden the base of the Church by throwing open its pulpits and endow- ments to all clergymen of any Christian denomina- tion who could succeed in obtaining election by a congregation, subject only to certain definite con- ditions and tests— a measure which had immense 17 effect in liberalizing and popularizing true religion. There can be little doubt, moreover, tliat the power, the enormous wealtli and the vast influence now wielded by the Anglican Church are the result of that drastic reform. Our Church is now the lead- ing light and best exemplar of Universal Chris- tianity : it not only retains its hold upon the people, but increases in influence : it remains a living and a growing organism with a hold upon the afl'ection of the people which deepens as generation after generation of teachers and workers have refined and sublimated its doctrines and brought them into harmony with the teachings of science, with the conclusions of philosophy and with the needs and aspii'ations of humanity.'' (J) " Sounds to me too much like works ! But do I understand that all clergymen, of any Christian denomination, are eligible for Church endowments and preferments?" [He) " Not for all preferments, but for all parochial livings and for curacies. The Act of Parliament provided for a redistribution of all emoluments subject only to the life interest of the then incumbents. No living was to exceed £600 per annum, with £300 for each curate. Any excess was taken to supplement the poorer livings. All bishops were cut down to £1000 per annum, besides salaries for secretary, chaplain, surveyors, clerks, &c. All the Cathedral chapters were re- organized upon the basis of work actually required and performed. The efi'ect of this has been con- 2 18 spicuous in the increased earnestness and activity of the clergy. The listlessness and conceit which had characterized so many of them, and which had discredited reh'gion with many earnest men, gave- place to zeal and industry. The perfunctory per- formance of routine duties was transformed into an eager desire to attract the largest possible congrega- tions, and to enlist all good men in the army of moral and social workers. Their concern became more with the essence and less with the forms of religion — more with the ethics and less with the dogma of Scripture. When vestments take the place of doctrine, and when formulas displace enthusiasm, the time has come for radical reform, otherwise either religion will suffer or the Church, must perish." (Z) " Surely it is not right that Dissenters should) occupy the pulpits of the Church of England.-'^ {He) " Sectarianism has greatly declined since- 1897. The endowments of the Church are as much the birthright of a Methodist, a Baptist, or a Con- gregationalist as of any other Englishman ; and you cannot have forg'otten that those whom you class as Dissenters were usually more zealous, more devout and more earnest in religion than the more decorous Church people, whose religious enthusiasm was often somewhat tepid." (7) " Perhaps you do not know how enormously the Church expanded and how truly great were her achievements in the second half of the nineteenth century ? A system which can point to results- 19 of such splcudour may surely be said to have justified its existence, and ouglit to have been allowed to continue its beneficent work undis- turbed." {He) ''Those results were highly creditable to the Church, but, strictly speaking, they were simply a part of the Victorian Renaissance. If the Thirty-nine Articles had been struck out of her constitution, together with the Athanasian Creed, the revival would not have been retarded but rather helped. If the Church, as a Church, is to claim all the credit of that revival, why did it not occur in the eighteenth century rather than in the nineteenth ? There was plenty of room for it." (/) " If the Church had been disestablished and dis- endowed in the year 1800 1 feel satisfied that religion in England would have fallen to the level at which it stood in America, in France, and in Germany. The need for endowments was most conspicuous in America. There, when farming became unremuner- ative, the ministers' stipends were cut down to starvation point, with the result that thousands of conscientious and deserving men were plunged into misery, and millions of willing worshippers were deprived of all religious organization." (He) " I am inclined to agree with you, but happily there has never been a majority in England in favour of applying religious endowments to secular uses. There is a more excellent way. The demand has been that existing endowments should be applied to produce the greatest benefit to the 2 =f. 20 greatest number, and now that we have ensured their being so applied the flow of new endowments is greater than ever before.'^ (J) " I cannot conceive why the system of prefer- ment should have been altered. The clergy, in my time, were the most cultured, devout and gentle- manlike body of men in the world, I firmly believe, without exception — emphatically an element for good in the nation and a credit to their class and to the Church.'' (He) " Were any of them idle ? " {I) " If they performed the duties of their sacred office they were surely entitled to employ their spare time in their own way.'' (Se) " Were any of them conceited ? Especially those whose attainments were of the poorest ? " (I) " To be candid, perhaps they were ; but you must remember that the very system removed them from that contact and competition with other men which, in other professions, compels men to keep abreast of the times and helps to rub off their peculiarities and knock the conceit out of them." [He) " Exactly so. Put any average man into a pi'ivileged position, tell him that he may be as idle as he likes, and yet that he cannot be removed to make room for a better man ; surround him with an admiring coterie of feminine worshippers, and he must be a man of strong fibre and of a stern sense of duty if he does not become an egotist and probably a prig. The best means by which such 21 a result can be avoided is to make liis tenure of office dependent on results." (/) " Is it right that results should decide the tenure of so sacred an office ? " {lie) " The higher and more sacred an office the more necessary is it that its incumbent should exhibit humility, sincerity, industry, unselfishness, and absolute devotion to duty. It never should have been necessary to pay a clergyman £15,000 or £5000 a year to ensure his doing- his duty. Since j'our time the range and the importance of a clers'vman^s duties have increased, but no incum- bent receives more than £600 a year, unless his congregation voluntarily present him with an addition to that sum." (Z) ''How does the Church of Eome stand?" {Be) " Since the Roman Catholic priesthood abandoned political intrigue their influence has increased and they have done excelleut work, though their hold upon the cultivated classes, both in Europe and in America, is not so strong as in former times. But they have greatly extended their operations in Africa and in Asia, where they have more than made up for their losses elsewhere. The organization of the Papal Church would seem to be too rigid. It cannot, apparently, adapt itself to the improved ethical conditions of the white races, and its best field of operations for the future would seem to be in the Tropics and amongst the dai-k-skinned peoples." {I) " Tell me, in few words, how we stand with 22 regard to our Colonies. Was the twentietli century as prosperous for Eug-land as the nineteenth ? " [He) " The twentieth century was the cuhnination and the crowning point of British infiaence and power. The eighteenth and nineteenth were but the prelude to a great expansion of the Empire, to a huge outburst of material prosperity, and an increase of power such as the parochial section cf your Liberal party could never have dreamed of. That expansion was only the legitimate develop- ment of two centuries of effort and self-sacrifice, during which many generations of patriotic and philanthropic Englishmen had given their lives to extending the beneficent rule of England over the waste and desert places of the earth. But if the twentieth century had not bred a race of firmer fibre and of larger ideas than the nineteenth the chance would have been lost, and England would have fallen from her proud place of eminence among the nations. Fortunately, your descendants rose to the height of the opportunity, and the dominance of the English-speaking peoples wns assured beyond dispute. Our former Colonies are now prosperous and wealthy nations, many of them being equal in dignity and in political importance to Britannia herself ; whilst we (Britannia) are simply a unit in that great federation of nations, which, under the name of the English-speaking Pact, dominates the world and arbitrates for till nations, and in Avhich America, by its enormous population, its wealth and its commanding position. 23 is the dominating power. But altlaougli we are thus politically oversliadowed, as was indeed inevitable, yet England remains, for one-half the human race, the classic laud of liberty and progress, to which come cultured men fx'om every country as pilgrims to a shrine of old traditions and of great achievements." {I) "I think I shall feel most interest in the actual events of the twentieth century if you can sketch them for me in outline. I can obtain the details at my leisure." {He) " The most stirring event was the great war of 1925 to 1928, in which Britannia was attacked by a strong coalition." (7) '' Who is Britannia ? " {He) " By Act of Parliament the cumbersome title of the United Kinscdom of Great Britain and Ireland was exchanged for the single word Britannia. In the year 1925, envious of the increasing cohesion of the British. Empire, which had been strengthened by a Customs Union and by a Council of Imperial Defence sitting in Loudon, and on which all Britannic possessions were represented, a coalition was secretly formed by France, Russia and Germany. The allies engaged to invade England, to march upon London and to dictate the following terms of peace. Russia was to take Constantinople, Persia and India. France was to have Belgium, Egj'pt, Malta, Siam and Malaysia. Germany was to absorb Holland and her Colonies, South Africa, Australasia and Zanzibar, A money indemnity of £900,000,000 24 ■was to be exacted and equally divided. The first intimation of Avar avus given by the neAvs of the complete annihilation of our Mediterranean fleet by the combined fleets of the allies. We lost ten battleships and sixteen cruisers, and although the enemy snff'ered an equal loss^ yet their object Avas attained. Malta was bombarded and captured by assault Avithin fourteen days. Alexandria suffered the same fate and 50,000 French troops landed and marched upon Cairo. The Suez Canal was blocked against arrivals from the Hed Sea. Gibraltar was invested and Spain joined the allies on being promised Gibraltar and Tangier. All British ships ill continental ports and in the Baltic and Mediter- ranean seas Avere seized by the allies, who also laid an embargo on all Dutch, Belgnan and Danish ships. The Channel Islands were occupied by the French. The French Channel fleet left Brest for the west coast of Ireland escorting a huge fleet of transports with 120,000 troops of all arms Avhich Avere landed successfully in Galway, Avhilst the English fleet, Avhich had started in pursuit, AA-as recalled by special order from the Admiralty before the fleet had passed the Scilly Islands, thus leaving the French fleet free to intercept all commerce coming from the south or from the west to England. At the same time, ncAvs arrived that five more fleets of transports, each conveying three complete army corps, were destined to land on the English coasts, of Avhich four were actually afloat and on the way, each escorted by all the available ironclads and 2o gunboats that could be got together. The first news of the outbreak of hostilities was received in London from Malta {via Bombtiy) at 8 r.M. on March 25th, and it would uot have been believed, but that it explained thu immense secret preparations which had occupied all the French and German dockyards for twelve months previously, and which our Government had assumed to be intended for a Franco-German conflict. Before midnight the Cabinet joined the King in Council and remained in permanent session issuing Orders in Council of great scope for immediate and arbitrary enforcement. It was clearly seen that the existence of the nation was at stake, and not of our dependencies only. The state of siege was proclaimed throughout Britannia. Ireland was perforce abandoned to the French, and 30,000 troops, with 10,000 constabular}-, were withdraAvn to England within three days, via Holyhead. Every man between eighteen and forty years of age was ordered to place himself within twenty-four hours at the disposal of his County Council who would send him to the nearest camp for enrolment. Thirty-six entrenched camps were ordered to be formed. Each private was to receive five shilliugs pay per day and volunteers twice that amount. The next day a loan of £500,000,000 at 3 per cent, was subscribed at par. All ordinary business was suspended and the whole country was instantaneously transformed into a series of arsenals and camps. Work went on night and day in all the dockyards and private shipyards. Within five 26 days sixty mail steamers partly armoured and fully equipped as cruisers assembled in two fleets, one off Dover and one in the Mersey. But tlie press- ing danger, against which all energies were directed, and which overshadowed every other consideration, was the actual invasion, which com- menced with the successful landing at Grimsby of 120,000 German troops of all arms who had lost not a moment in commencing their march upon London. At the same time a fleet of French transports arrived off" Hastings and had landed 80,000 men, when the Channel fleet, hurriedly recalled from Scilly, appeared amongst them, sank every ship with 40,000 troops and all the cavahy, artillery and stores, and then Admiral Elson divided his fleet into two squadrons, one of which steamed to Havre and there met another immense fleet of transports coming down the Seine. As time was all-important, he could not accept surrender, but simply sank or crippled every ship that remained in sight, with a loss to the French of 75,000 troops. He then sailed for the Elbe, where he found a scratch fleet of English cruisers and guard-ships maintain- ing an unequal fight with the main German fleet. His arrival redressed the balance and the Germans took shelter in the Elbe, where another vast fleet of transports, laden with three army corps, awaited the issue but never succeeded in gaining the open sea, for every hour fresh battleships and ironclads .arrived from Sheerness, Portsmouth and Plymouth, where the reserve ships of all kinds were being 27 manned and equipped night and day. Three days previously, a piece of pluck and luck combined had sealed up another of the German transport fleets in the North Sea Canal. An English cruiser steamed into the Canal on the night of March 26th; the captain sank his ship and then surrendered, with all his crew, to the exasperated enemy. "'Meantime Elson's second squadron had gone in search of the German ' transport fleet No. 2,' which had left the Elbe and steamed to Lowestoft, where it was busy landing troops wdien the English ironclads came upon them. With shot and shell, and by ramming, every ship was sunk, but not until 05,000 men had landed, though very poorly equipped. This army started for London, but on the second day, finding enormous forces opposing tbem, altered their direction toAvards Grantham, in order to join the army now advancing south from Grimsby ; but the two armies were destined not to meet, for, after three days of continual fighting, their ammunition gave out, and though they took possession of King's Lynn, and held it for some time, they were at once besieged, until more eff"ectual measures could be taken against them. In the meantime, however, the German army coming from the north was the cause of terrible anxiety. It was completely equipped ; its leaders knew that time was the very essence of their position, and they spared neither blood nor iron to make progress southAvard. A terrible battle was fousrht at Retford, in which the invaders w^ere 28 completely victorious^ tliougli "witli heavy loss on both sides; but, as they advanced, not only were the rails torn up, but a fresh army was met with, entrenched behind earthworks, at every five miles. Each day that passed cost them 5000 men, even though it cost the English 10,000. Cat off from their base, supplies diminishing daily, and harassed by incessant attacks from the rear and on either flank, they yet pressed on gallantly, and fought another pitched battle at Xevvark, and again, three days later, at Grantham ; but when they reached Hitchin, they found themselves confronted with 200,000 men well posted, with 400,000 more advancing from Barnet, and they had no alternative but to surrender, 40,000 strong, having lost 80,000 men in fourteen days. The French armv at Hasting's never had a chance to fight a battle. Without cavalry, or artillery, or supplies, hemmed round on every side by consider- able forces, mostly volunteers, who were entrenched behind earthworks, and well content to let time fight for them, the French army was starved into surrender, and the first day of May witnessed the end of the formidable invasion of England. *'And now the tide began to turn. The arrival of the three squadrons — from the north Atlantic, from the West Indies, and from the west coast of Africa — enabled Elson to sail in pursuit of the French and Russian fleets, which had also received large reinforcements. A terrific naval battle took place in the Bay of Biscay. The losses 29 were appalling; sliip after ship sank beneath the waves like so many iron pots, bnt the English felt that this was a time for Englishmen to die, and their audacity liad its reward. Even as the battle continued, and as tlie French fleet edged off towards the French coast, fresh ships continually arrived to join in the fray, and all luere Engli\s]i, and every ship went straight into the smoke, and sought to ram or board a French or Russian ship. Many of them were sunk, but they rendered immense service, and when nightfall came, not a Fi'ench flag was flying ; all were either sunk or captured. '' The French army in Ireland had a very pleasant experience. They took possession of the entire country, from Cork to Derry, from Galway to Kingstown. Not a shot was fired nor a life lost. They were well supplied with all they asked for, except sliifs. Balls, parades, and picnics were the order of the day ; they conquered the hearts of the women and fraternized with the men, and on the fifteenth day of July they received orders from Paris to lay down their arms, and they were then comfortably ferried across to St. Malo. " By this time all the seas of Europe swarmed with vessels carrying the British flag; they came from every colony and from every quarter of the Globe. Canada, India, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Singapore, and even far Hong Kong sent ships and men to the heart of the Empire, to keep up that steady beat, whose jjulsations, they 30 fully recognized^ were necessary to the healthy circulation of their own life and the maintenance of their freedom. All were useful, because it was decided to blockade every French, German and Eussian port and river. The war continued for three years, during which time the world's commerce was in the hands of Britannia and her colonies. Before the end of 1925 France was driven from Egypt, Tunis, and Algeria. The two latter, with Corsica, were handed over to Italy. Madagascar and the rest of the French colonies were taken by Britannia, except Tonquin, which fell to Japan as a reward for her friendly attitude in helping us at Hong Kong and Singapore when the war first began. I need not describe to you the attempted invasion of India by the Hussians, because their 500,000 troops never succeeded in crossing the border. Once entangled in Afghanistan, their progress was principally a record of fatigue, hardships, and bloody encounters under enormous disadvantages. In 1927 an English army, advancing through Persia, took Merv, cut off their supplies, and they were starved into surrender. " In August, 1925, the allies proposed peace on the basis of the status quo ante. In 1926 they offered the uti possidetis. In 1927 they agreed also to relinquish Holland and Belgium. In 1928 they added to these terms an indemnity of £150,000,000 each, and peace was accordingly concluded. " The results of that war were great and lasting. 31 It freed commerce in many lands from restrictions- imposed by the selfish policy of protectionist states. It extended British trade over vast areas hitherto administered by bureaucratic despotisms^ and gave a stimulus to commerce over the whole world. It freed Britannia from the paralysis of a set of fanatics (the ' little England ' party) ' friends of every country but their own/ whose chief aim was to prove that their country was in the wrong and her antagonists in the right. For many years it had been plain that the screeching misrepresenta- tions of that small knot of men had brought upon us the contempt of the outside world with conse- quent difficulties and disputes in all directions. But now, that wretched party disappeared and the English people saw clearly enough what their chief Statesmen had long known, that the great and dominant factor in the world was the British EmjDire, and the confidence thus acquired encour- aged her citizens to take that commanding position which destiny and the course of history combined ta offer her. "But now, in 1928, occurred a series of strange and unexpected phenomena. In Germany, a war witli England had been loudly called for by their Jingo party, though the idea was never popular witli the masses. When their reverses beofan : wben their ports were blockaded : when taxation increased : when industry languished and employ- ment diminished, and when agricultural distress in Hussia brought millions of needy men into Ger- 32 inany to lower tlie rate of wages below subsistence pointj a strong undercurrent of discontent and suppressed agitation came into existence. It per- vaded all classes, and the German Emperor, seeing that exceptional measures were needed, formed a camp of 300,000 troops on tbe Tempelhof in order to overawe the unruly Berlin populace. It was soon seen, however, that the army was itself in a state of ferment — and although rigorous discipline was exacted and stern punishment inflicted for even trifling offences, yet the agitation visibly increased and the reports of the Colonels became daily more gloomy. Eventually, a regiment refused to ' fall in ' when summoned, unless their grievances were redressed. The men were at once confined to barracks. A court-martial was held on the spot and fifty ringleaders were sentenced to be shot. The following day the whole army was drawn up to witness the execution, but persistent murmuring was heard along the lines : shots were heard : obnoxious officers fell in all directions — the remaining officers were overpowered and put under arrest, whilst the soldiers elected oflficers from the ranks to replace them. The next day seven army corps marched into Berlin, deposed the Emperor and appointed a Social Dictator. Sanguinary scenes occurred in every town in Germany, but the Revolution triumphed, and when a plebiscite had confirmed the Social Revolt, and adult (male and female) suffrage elected a Paidiament, its first Act was to declare the State the sole owner of all wealth. 33 Further enactments decreed that 5000 marks (equal to £250) should be the highest income of any citizen — decreed that each citizen should receive from the State 40 marks per week — that eight hours should be a day's work and that the State should guarantee employment to all. Tax- ation was abolished — interest on loans declared illegal and the reign of equality and fraternity had begun. There should be no rich and no poor : men should become distinguished for their virtues or for their ability, but in no other way. The struggle for existence and the fight for supremacy should disappear : the race for wealth, the oppres- sion of the poor and the fear of destitution were to be removed : peace and harmony should fill men's minds, whilst the only contest should be as to who should be first in virtues and in usefulness to the State. A time of great ease and apparent pros- perity followed. The standard of living rose enormously in so far as food and amusement were concerned — the consumption of beer, tobacco and other luxuries more than doubled — the marriage- rate and the birth-rate both increased — but exports declined, and a large importation of food and luxuries made up for the reduced production of home- made products and manufactures. It was soon found that money had disappeared, but the Social State issued its own bank-notes and decreed them legal tender for all debts and purchases. Of course the (paper) prices of clothing, food and other necessaries rose considerably and the 3 34 citizen's income of 40 marks per week was no longer the solid income it would have been before the Eevolution, and I may tell you that there have been many years since then when it has amounted to nothing more than a bare insurance against starvation. Meanwhile all families and persons whose possessions could be exported or remitted abi'oad emigrated without delay, a loss which was not of vital consec^uence, because an industrious people can quickly replace such capital ; but another loss, which was indeed irreparable, and which, in one sense, was vital, was a continuous emigration of men of capacity — men whose energ}', whose ideas and judgment were worth more than 5000 marks per annum. These men were welcomed in countries where there is * always room at the top,' and where it is known that whereas some men are dear at any price, there are others whose capacity for organization, con- struction and administration is worth millions to the people who are fortunate enough to obtain their services (Wellington, Bessemer, Rhodes, Lincoln, Edison, Kelvin, I murmured to myself), and ihat emigration has not ceased to this day. Probably the greatest of Germany's misfortunes has been this constant loss of men of capacity ; statesmen, ca.ptains of industry, organizers of men and directors of events. It was not so much that they all despised even 5000 marks, but they learned by experience that the multitude, who are now the ultimate authority in all things in 35 Oerraany, are most attracted by the loudest talkers and the lai'gest pi'omisers, and that there is no possible organization for the selection of capable men ; in which respect, it is often said, the worst Monarchy is superior to the best Republic. On the other hand, the new Republic received a copious immigration of destitute incapables from all the surrounding countries, and the reign of dulness and mediocrity commenced. The natural selection of the most capable was replaced by the artificial protection of the lethargic, the least helpful and the least worthy. The system automatically placed a premium on idleness and incapacity, whilst it depressed, and indeed penalized, industry and ability. The ^Master's eye' was no longer there correcting faults, supplying deficiencies, suggesting improvements, rewarding industry, promoting merit, rejecting the vicious, excluding the incapable. That generous emulation to produce the best work, which is the salt of life to competent men, was sneered at because it savoured of ' competition ' : confusion replaced systematized industry and the loafer reigned supreme. The decreased production of commodities, and particularly of food, troubled the community not a little, for within a year or tAvo there was scarcity approaching to famine. This resulted partly from a steady migration of country labourers to the towns, but principally because the farming classes, instead of working twelve to fifteen hours a day, decided to reduce their toil to the legal eight hours ; and even that 3 * 36 became a kind of piciuc when tliey found that their surplus crops brought them no extra reward from their new employer, the State. The same result followed in other large industries, and the number of State employes engaged in tabulating and checking the multifarious labours of fifty millions of people, occupied in a thousand different avocations, increased continuously, until it was at length said that one-half the nation was engaged in directing, overseeing, instructing, prosecuting, reporting and spying upon the labours which the other half were trying to shirk. There were many industrious and conscientious citizens who did their duty manfully, until the spectacle of the general disorganization and demoralization that surrounded them discouraged and disheartened them. Then they discovered, for the first time, how weak is human nature in the face of temptation. Then they realized that the true reason why mankind, for uncounted generations, had laboriously carried out their toilsome tasks day after day was not at all a sense of duty, but simply the unceasing spur of necessity, and that when that was removed chaos came again. From the precise moment when that sharp spur was cast aside a state of progressive degeneration began. The enthusiasts whose hopes were shattered — who had prophesied the advent of a Golden Age for suffering humanity — were terribly disappointed. Their intentions had been so good, and the result was so deplorably bad ! Only a few short years before, a million families had existed in great refinement^ four millions in complete comfort, and another five millions had lived laboriously, but still without fear of destitution ; whilst with each new generation their position had steadily improved. And now the net result was this — that all refine- ment had vanished, and decent comfort had degenerated into poverty of life, poverty of thought and a vulgar scramble for plenty to eat and plenty to drink, with a vast amount of idle time which the masses were totally unfitted to employ worthily or profitably. It is easy to destroy, but a rare combination of energy and wisdom can alone construct. They thought to raise the masses by abolishing luxury ; they had produced a dead level of vulgarity and sordid gluttony. They now realized how delicate and complicated a mechanism is civilized society. How interdependent are the classes that make up the social body ; and how little it benefited the vast multitude to level down the luxuries of the rich ; how impossible to fill up a yawning gulf by cutting down a hillock raised by the labours and economies of many generations, and how promptly the desert asserts itself when the irrigating bi'ooks are dried up. That Competition, which they had so vehemently denounced, had been the source of wealth for most and pi'osperity for all. How to restore it was now their ardent aspiration, but they had thrown away the lever by which progress was effected, and it could not be restored. The New Birth had brought not Regeneration, but Degeneration .'' 38 I could not but feel saddened at such news of so- cultured, intellectual, and valiant a people as the great and powerful German nation, and I expressed ■ as much to my guide. '^Mental cultivation/' said he, "was never so Avidely spread in Germany as in some other countries. Their achievements in science and in philosophy obtained for them wide and well- deserved renown, but those achievements were the work of a comparatively small section of their people. In military drill and discipline and in the- habit of unquestioning obedience to orders they had arrived at perfection, and there is little doubt that these qualities contributed to the ease with which the Social Eevolution was effected. Red- tape and over-organization paralyze individual effort. Improved methods in machinery or other industrial processes are not now introduced in Germany, because it is nobody^s business to adopt them. The people have no initiative, because- every man relies upon the State, and when a useful proposal or suggestion is put forward, it is frowned down, because, whilst it would give trouble and involve some risk to certain definite persons, yet no single individual could possibly benefit except that intangible entity — the State. The chronic poverty now prevailing in Germany is due principally to the paralysis of individual effort caused by the Socialist form of government. Instead of Germany consisting of a strong government supported by 150,000,000 of people, we see the ludicrous, almost 39 absurd, sight of 150,000,000 people asking the State to support tbem ! Their poverty, moreover, is intensified by the large increase in the numbers of the population. In every country the classes which multiply most recklessly are the thriftless, the shiftless, and the least intelligent. In Germany there is absolutely no restraining influence; they marry early, and have large families. If it were not that emigration takes off large numbers, they would, suffer from chronic famine. Their young men of energy and of spirit overflow to every country on the globe. They make useful citizens everywhere, but they do not return to a country cursed by the paralysis of Socialism.^' [I] " But since the State assui-es to each citizen an equal income, the distress arising from extreme want and from inequality of condition cannot now exist. However poor the condition of the people may be, it must be a great thing to know that no one need starve." {He) " In England, in the nineteenth century, the Poor Law ensured that no one need, starve ; and yet the high-spirited and self-respecting few who fell into distress did starve. It was the multitude of ignoble and degraded ones, who were content to take alms from the parish, who were saved from that fear of starvation, which, in the absence of your Poor Law, would have made of them industrious and thrifty men and women. The German Social State is simply your Poor Law operating on a larger scale and possibly on 40 "better material than the Englisli pauper class furnished." (I) "Bat why do not the Germans retrace their steps ? Since women hold the franchise equally Avith men, is not their vote given in favour of progress and enlightenment ? " {He) " On the contrary, it is their vote which maintains the status quo. They dread a conflict. Whatever is, is good. They know not what ills might come with change. Practically nearly every woman marries, families are large, and they prefer the ills they have to intangible possible benefits which may upset the family life on which they rightly set much store. They care not a fig for ' progress/ if it is likely to set their sons impossible tasks and to leave their daughters unmarried. Poverty does not appal them, since everybody is just as poor as they ; nor does even squalor, for it has now been their normal condition for genera- tions. There was a time when every German aspired that Germany should lead the world. So long as the Social State exists such aspirations can but raise a smile. Numberless countries have sent commissions of inquiry to Germany, ' the land where all wealth is held in common,^ to report as to how far their methods should be imitated; but the results of their investigations are too depressing. The Republic of Patagonia was the latest inquirer ; a country which lives principally on its mineral exports and on the produce of its fisheries; but the report is, substantially, that under such a system 41 Patagonia would be stricken with famine within two years, and that the German people are a nation of slaves in a state of abject servitude to their own social body. Fortunately for us, Britannia has avoided that great mistake, our energies have been devoted to obtaining for all men the fullest chance to compete. Equalit}'' of opportunity has been our goal. Laissez falre is dead : the State now interferes more and more, not to repress, but to encourage that healthy competition which brings out the best effort of each citizen. Knowing, as w'e do, that the inexorable law of evolution prescribes for us the alternative of progress or degeneration, we cannot but choose the former. In your time the existence of that law was recognized, but you did little to direct the course of evolution ; the criminal classes and the morally unsound were allowed to breed ; the physically and mentally weak reproduced a weak generation ; the pauper class were not restrained from marriage — " " Hold ! '' said I. " Would you deny to the poorest, not only their share of the world's wealth, but even the alleviation that wedlock affords ? I do not say, as was freely asserted in my time by socialists, that the poor are poor because the rich are selfish, or because the rich exist — but poverty is not a crime, it results from the nature of things and not from any deficiency in the man himself.^' '' -^^^^ you not in error there ? " said my friend. "In every society where competition comes freely into play the morally, mentally, and physically 42 superior will eventually rise and the inferior will sink. It was so in your time. I do not forget that the poor were unfairly handicapped by ignorance and by the absence of that technical equipment which is now given to each citizen, but, notwith- standing that, the broad principle of the survival of the fittest operated unfailingly. The drunkard, being morally weak, the criminal being morally unsound, the idle, incapable, thriftless, improvident, sank in the social scale. And when they sank so low as to become a burden on the State and a clog to progress, the least condition that Society ought to have imposed was that they should refrain from reproducing their evil kind. Owing to the great accumulation of wealth, we are now able to give to each citizen a fair start m a society which affords- equal opportunities to all; but we are not so unwise as to give equal power to the least capable and to the wisest, as was done in the nineteenth century by the fatuous and invertebrate statesmen (save the mark !) who, led by words and not by ideas, gave political power to the ignorant and vicious in the same measure as to the wisest and most capable. To-day, with us, the rich, as such, have no more power or authority than the poor ; but the cultivated man, the mentally and morally superior man, whether poor or rich, is given greater authority than those who are either mentally or morally his inferiors. The struggle for existence continues, modified by social and ethical conditions which qualify its bitterness ; but it continues, and 43 to tlio healthy mind, the very strugg'le adds to existence a fresh savour of the joy of living". There is always a small minority who find them- selves unfit for the struggle, who must be removed, for a time from the conflict and placed under conditions favourable to their improvement, but if the anti-social tendencies cannot be ei'adicated or changed, the patient is either put aside perman- ently, or, more or less agreeably, extinguished/' (7) '' May I ask what you have done with Seven Dials, Lisson Grove, the hop-pickers, the casuals,, and the noble army of tramps ? They gave us some trouble, I can assure you. My cousin the vicar used to tell me that ' true Socialism ' would elevate them and make us all brothers/' {He) " That Socialism which, in the theory of the man of culture, is half philosophy, half religion, becomes in the practice of the multitude half greed,. half idleness, and wholly selfishness. The class you allude to could not be otherwise than poisonous to any community, but they could only be eliminated by degrees. We have laboured at their improve- ment and eradication for two hundred years, and they would be with us yet if your descendants had not de- veloped a firmer moral fibre than your own generation exhibited. Heroic measures had to be adopted,, but we have proceeded on different lines from yours. Moral cultivation, rather than mental, has been our method : and it was needful first to remove the poison^ from our midst. Your friend the vicar had a larare heart, no doubt: but evil is w^rought from want of 44 thought more than from want of heart. Perhaps you do not know how those poor little waifs, the * children of the State/ were treated in your time ? Their destiny was left to the vestrymen of each locality — honest tradesmen, with as much knowledge of social philosophy, of political economy, and of the true basis of morality, as a baby. The little folks were gathered in multitudes into huge bar- racks ; put under the control of vulgar, ill-educated men and women who could not possibly impart to the observant minds of the children any conception of courtesy or of personal dignity, because they were themselves destitute of anything of the kind. Under such a system the children had no opportunity to realize what is required from a citizen, what ideal they should aim at, or what temptations they were required to shun. Trailing clouds of glory they came to you, prepared to copy whatever examples were set before them— a white sheet of paper for you to write upon; but with so dreary and sordid a prospect, learning naught but idleness of energies and weariness of mind, how could such automata develop into worthy citizens ? And the system was actually more costly than the much more useful and human plan of placing them to live with private families, tens of thousands of whom would have been glad to receive such boarders and give them all the advantages of family life, for one-half the cost of the barrack system. To-day, our treatment of the orphans of the State is the very antipodes of the method pursued in the nineteenth century. Each 45 child is surrounded by examples of duty conscien- tiously pei-formed. From their earliest years no moment of barren idleness is allowed them. When they are not at play they are engaged in some use- ful occupation or pui'suit. Each boy or girl has its daily, almost hourly, round of duty to engage its attention, to educate its energies and to prepare it for its coming responsibilities. Constant discipline is tenderly enforced to inform the unfolding con- sciousness with a knowledge of their actual position in the social body, of the difficulties and dangers before them, and of the means by which these can be surmounted. Personal influence is used to convince them that it is good to exercise self- restraint, to subjugate the crude animal desires and instincts, and to awaken in them a sense of duty and of responsibility towards theirfellows. Finally, a suflicient equipment is given to enable them to obtain a position in the social body and to take their place side by side with other citizens, without mark or stigma to their disadvantage. They thus have every encouragement to become worthy members of society, and it is probable that the knowledge that unsocial conduct is now visited with pronounced severity, has some effect in deterring minds of uncertain tendency from lapsing into hazardous or doubtful action." (I) " Since when have legislators acted with such draconic severity to social offenders ? " {He) " It came about in the twentieth century and was probably the outcome of three principal factors. 46 The first %Yas the touic and bracing effect of the Great War whicli strengthened the moral fibre of the people. The next was the deplorable state into which Socialism had brought the German nation. The degenerate condition of that gallant people was so evidently the result of the relaxed moral tone which followed upon the ostracism of the best elements of the nation and to the possession of supreme power by a multitude who had failed to reach even the level of the low ideals at which they had aimed. The third of the stimulating factors was a better appreciation of the civilization of Japan and of the means by which social and moral •excellence had reached even the poorest and most ignorant of her citizens. These object lessons, coinciding with the increasing influence of the doctrine of evolution, taught our legislators that, in order to be just to the social body, and more especially to the generations which will succeed us, we must be severe to the unfit. Consequently, the tendency of criminal legislation has been to draw a line in our treatment of offenders, below which the individual is painlessly extinguished : above it, the offender is most carefully trained and educated with a view to his being ultimately restored, under conditions, to social life." (J) " Your reference to Japan surprises me. We looked on them as a semi-civilized people." {He) ''You did not rightly appreciate the qualities of the Japanese. In science and in mechanics they had everything to learn, but in moral elevation and in 47 the personal courtesy and self-respecfc of their citizens, as well as in the production and the right appreciation of some forms of art, they have taught the Western world lessons of much value. Civiliza- tion does not consist in steam engines^ manhood suffrage and unlimited beer. In the nineteenth century^ in England there was much moral excellence in every class (except the residuum, as I might call the pauper class), but real refinement and personal courtesy were limited to less than half of the popu- lation, whilst the bulk of the Continental peoples were coarse and vulgar in manners, especially towards those below them in the social scale. In Japan, courtesy of manner had been the common property of all classes for centuries. The poorest labourer, living- on a few handfuls of rice daily, inherited a delicacy of sentiment and a sense of duty to his neighbours such as was very uncommon amongst the poor and ignorant of other peoples. Simplicit}^ of life, ' plain living and high thinking,' with much gentleness of manner, were the outcome of the severe discipline of the feudal period, whilst the high moral precepts of Buddhism became a true guide to right conduct. The one conspicuous deficiency in Japanese moral practice was the inferior social position assigned to women : a grievous blot which they long since removed, in so far as it could be remedied by legislation." (7) " But surely, the ethical doctrine of Buddhism is not superior to that of Christianity. '' {He) " Certainly not ; but Christian priests of all 48 sects have invariably placed dogmatic theology first and moral teaching second, with the natural result that ethical progress in Christendom has been grievously impeded by the continual conflicts which the many sects have unceasingly waged against each other." (I) " Since Socialism is found to yield such unsatisfactory results, how is it with its rival. Collectivism ?" {He) ''Within certain well-defined limits the principle of collectivism is found to yield excellent results, as, indeed, it did in your own time ; but its application is essentially local. Whatever can be done for the public benefit more economically and more efficiently by the local government than by individual enterprise is given over to the Parish or the County Council. The working of this prin- ciple varies almost indefinitely in every town and in every county. Its benefits are enormous, but it is not capable of indefinite application, and the limits of its scope have been taught to us by numerous and sometimes very disastrous failures; in consequence of which it is now difficult to persuade the local councils to add to the numerous duties and undertakings with which the people have already burdened themselves and their servants — the local authorities. The sale of intoxicants, of drugs, of firearms and of explosives is now every- where in the hands of the county authorities. Banking is entirely a State monopoly, and so are fire insurance and life assurance. There are towns 49 ■\vliicli landertake manufacturing operations of various kinds, but sooner or later it is found better to relegate such concerns to private or joint-stock enterprise." (/) " How does Co-operation succeed with you ? In my time it met with some success, and seemed likely to spread." (He) " In your time the true principles of Co- operation had hardly been tried. The ' stores ' which used the title of ' co-operative ' were simply gigantic shops carried on by joint-stock companies for the benefit of the shareholders. Co-operative production was almost unknown. Bat we now have thousands of Associations, engaging the labours of millions of men and women, covering every kind of manufacture and every branch of production, the capital of which is owned entirely by the workers ; and by that means the industrial classes practically obtain for themselves the utmost benefit that any scheme of Socialism could claim for them, or for the community at large, without the terrible drawbacks inevitably attendant on such schemes.'* (Z) '' Well, you seem to be making progress towards the solution of some of the problems which troubled us. But I must still protest against the term 'barbarous' being applied to the England of the nineteenth century." [He) " Then I must put before you three short paragraphs extracted from a newspaper published in London on June 20th, 1896 ; nnd I venture to say that any thoughtful man, knowing what social 4 50 conditions are involved and disclosed in the recital of such facts, will say that a society which could permit such occurrences could only be described as barbarous and cruel, and entirely regardless of the welfare of future generations." " The Camberwell Guardians having applied tO' the Poor Law Board for permission to put on low diet such able-bodied paupers as refused to work, were informed that the law did not allow this to be done, and the lazy fellows continue, therefore, to enjoy the same generous food and treatment as the rest of the inmates." "A woman applied to a Magistrate, asking him to protect her from her husband, who had just been discharged, temporarily cured, from a lunatic asylum for paupers ; but she was told by the Magistrate that the law afforded no protection for her. She must continue to live with him !" " An inquest was held on the body of a deaf-mute,, during which evidence was given that he had been allowed to marry a woman who was blind, deaf and dumb, and whose four children were all deaf and dumb." " But," I said, '' even a deaf-mute has the instincts of human kind, and has as good a claim to enjoy happiness as those who are not sa 51 afflicted. Common humanity prescribes that we slioLild sympathize with him and alleviate his lot. Apparently you propose to further afflict him with civil and social disaLilit3^" (//«) " Citizens so unfortunate have every right to all the sympathy and active help, both moral and material, that their relatives, their neighbours and their acquaintance can offer them. Nay, indeed, so long as they live they have a fair claim to such assistance as the Local Government can afford, with a view to making them self-helpful and life enjoyable. But mari-iage is a social act and not a mere self-regarding function. The 'personnel of the next generation are the creation of the marriage laws of to-day. There are few matters of legislation on which such care is bestowed and to which so much importance is now attached as to this question of the conditions under which persons shall be allowed to marry." (J) ''And as for the lazy fellows who refused to work, what could we do ? You know that Herbert Spencer, on this subject, said, 'Do nothing. Leave good-for-nothings to perish.' " {Re) " The only thoughtless words that great man ever uttered. How much better to extinguish a life which is no longer either useful to others, ci-editable to the social body, or in itself capable of rational enjoyment ! Happiness and usefulness are the true sanction of the social state, and when the life is no longer useful to others or to the social body, and unable to enjoy a self-respecting 4 * happiness, it becomes the duty of the State to suppress the life ; or, at least, to remove the degrading object from contact with the ordinary citizen. '^ (Z) " Such harshness towards wretches who know no better can only be called cruelty/' {He) " A little more firmness in your moral fibre would enable you to see that the cruelty exists only in your imagination. By doing our duty to the unfortunate offender, we save all our citizens from the painful and demoralizing sight of his degrada- tion ; we save the man himself from the discomfort and the physical pain of his daily decadence, and we save some weak-minded people from the contamination of his vicious life and example.* When you learn with what care and tenderness we nourish every worthy being that meets with misfortune, or that needs our help from any cause, you will not accuse us of cruelty. The key-note of our civilization is Duty, and it is just as clearly our duty to cut off from the social body the human sores and parasites and excrescences which hinder our social health, as it is to tend with care the aged, the weary, and the sick ; to comfort and * " To thee, caitiff, these things (God's hatred of sin, &c.) are quite incredible. We, not to be partakers in thy destructive adventure of defying God and all the Universe, dare not allow thee to continue longer among us. We send thee back into the whole Universe, solemnly expel thee from our community ; and will, in the name of God, not with joy and exultation, but with sorrow stern as thine own, hang thee on Wednesday next, and so end."— r/ios. Carhjlc. 53 restore tliem, and to give them happiness in so far as it can be given by hnman skill and endeavour. The spirit of our age is expressed in self-effacement for others' g'ood, in gentleness and purity, in courtesy, in charity, and in consideration for the weak and for the poor in spirit. To revel in the knowled"o that Ave have sacrificed our own ease and comfort in order to promote the well-being of one less fortunate — to infuse the lives of the suffering and of the poor with something of beauty and of grace; these are objects sufficiently elevating to satisfy the most exalted ambition. This is one part, and the pleasurable part, of our duty ; but it has another side, which, though made imperative by reason and by experience, is yet both painful and repellent. It consists in rigorously weeding out those members of the social body who are unworthy, incapable, vicious, immoral ; the criminal, the unteachable; in order that they may not breed and thus reproduce their unsocial tendencies in another generation. ' Because the fathers have eaten sour grapes, tlierefore the children's teeth are set on edge.' We do not intend that our children shall be troubled with criminal neighbours, felonious associates, or evil-minded fellow-citizens. In the nineteenth century you had not realized the undoubted fact that most criminals are born, not made. Of what avail are the labours of the great army of philanthropists, clergymen, teachers, and doers of good works generation after generation, if their results are to be overturned by the steady 54 influence of the mass of moral corruption existing in that residuum whose immorality is constant and irremediable because it consists in malformation or disease of the brain or other part of the nervous system? A healthy-minded man with a sound body, the son of sound-bodied and honest parents, cannot commit criminal acts, for the simple reason that it is less distressing to him to starve to death than to make of himself that most loathsome of all human creatures — a moral leper. The criminal inherits malformed faculties ; his tendencies are non- normal. He resembles a savage in this respect, that to him law is oppression ; whilst to the instructed and normal-minded citizen, law is the safeguard of life, of liberty, and of the fruits of his labour.^' * (I) "To what single force do you attribute your increased prosperity since the nineteenth century ? " * An experienced prison chaplain thus writes : — " It was at one time a prevalent idea that ignorance was a very- important factor in the production of crime, but almost all investigators in the department of criminal statistics are hostile to this belief. In France : Guerry, Ivernes, Haussonville ; in Italy : Lombroso, Garofalo, Ferri ; in Belgium and Germany : Quatelet, Van Oettingen, Valestini, Starcke — are all more or less emphatically of opinion that instruction in reading and writing has little or no effect in elevating the character and diminishing the volume of crime." — Quarterly Review, April, 1897. " Men are given a superticial tuition out of all proportion to their acquisition of moral culture. Schools do little good. Tuition is not education." — Wordsworth (in conversation with Emerson in 1845). 55 {ire) " Many inventions and discoveries liave multiplied the efficiency of labour^ and have thns greatly ameliorated the material condition of human-kind, but the one potent force which has operated to increase human happiness is improved morality.'' (J) "How can improved morals affect the material condition of the people ? " {He) " I can best answer you by an illustration drawn from the year 1897. In England the working class earned wages varying from Ihs to 60s per week. In Japan wages ranged from 4s to 8s, and yet, although the climate is not appreciably better, the Japanese were not only content, but light-hearted and happy, because although mentally and physically they were probably inferior to Englishmen, yet morally they were superior. They had no pauper class, no beggars, no workhouses, no drunkenness ; whilst a large proportion of the English people frittered away, or rather squandered, their earnings on beer, whisky, tobacco, ' treating,' betting, and ' sprees.' No thrift, no thought for to-morrow. The stomach must be filled with the best that money could buy, regardless of that rainy day which comes to every man sooner or later, apparently unknowing that the surest way to prosperity and financial inde- pendence, for the individual as for the State, is to accumulate capital. And yet their protagonists continually cried out against that accumulation of capital to which their steady employment was due, 56 and to wliich they owed sucli prosperity as they enjoyed. Tliey even ascribed their poverty to the fact that the rich, whose ability and forethought alone created a demand for labour, were numerous, ignoring the sufficiently patent fact that the popu- lation of those countries which had no rich class were wretchedly poor and degraded. Take, as an instance, Corea, where the prosperous and thrifty class were taxed and pillaged by the government until accumulation became impossible, and where the citizens showed no enterprise because they could not be sure that they would be allowed to reap where they had sown. The inevitable con- sequence was, no employment for the masses, no weekly wages to support the family, no industries except such as could be carried on in the cottages, or rather huts, in which they lived, and the popula- tion was kept down by semi-starvation. There was thus no accumulation of that capital which, 2')ace the socialists, so oppresses the poor. Corea would seem to have been an ideal country for socialists to emigrate to, in order that their theories might be tried at their own risk, instead of clamouring for the confiscation of capital accumulated throughout many generations by the labour and thrift of others. The evolution of society which proceeded definitely enough in Japan and China, where the rights of property were respected, made no progress in Corea. Had it not been for the very large accumulation of capital in England you would have found it impossible 57 to support youi* always-increasing population. Between 1800 and 1900 your people quadrupled in numbers^ aud whilst the condition of the people at the later date was enormously improved, not- withstanding- the immensely increased numbers, yet they might have been very much more com- fortable had they but exercised self-control, a little more thrift and temperance. In alcoholic drinks they spent £120,000,000 a year, and the incidental waste and loss consequent upon that same drink- demand involved the expenditure of an additional sum probably not inferior to that gigantic amount. If that money had been invested in house property'" and in remunerative industrial undertakings, each individual workman's family in the kingdom could have accumulated upwards of £1000 within the limits of one generation, and thus have solved the problem of poverty, taken away all fear of destitu- tion, and made them independent of their employers, the capitalists. Nay, it would have done more than this ; for it would have reduced rates and taxes by saving fully one-half the Poor Law expenditure, and some portion of the cost of prisons aud of the administration of the criminal law.'' (Z) ''But you would not have had Englishmen live on 7s per week ? " {Hr) " Certainly not. A higher standard of living was better for them as individuals and for the nation as an economic whole. Good food, clothing and furniture and ample house-room, with literature and some means of relaxation were due to them. I 58 point out to you the unnecessary Avaste due to unthrif't and want of moralized life, and I mention the case of Japan to show what was quite within the bounds of possibility. Your people were wanting in self-respect and in a sense of duty to their families and to the social body. If the English workman in the nineteenth century had possessed the virtues of temperance and thrift in the same degree as the Japanese, destitution and extreme poverty would have disappeared from the land. If he had exhibited in the same measure the qualities of courtesy, of self-respect, and of consideration for others, life would have been transformed : vulgarity must have given place to gentleness, coarseness to elegance, and rudeness to good breeding. A combination of plain living with high-thinking is only possible with adequate moral development and fair mental endowment, but given these conditions, happiness is not dependent on expenditure. Many a poor clergyman and many a learned German professor lived contentedly on the income which Eno-lish artisans found to be insufficient for their reckless habits and gross tastes. And yet, with these facts before them, the common knowledge of all men, your soft- headed moralizers asserted ad nauseam and pro- tested before all men with piercing shrieks and loudest declamation, that the social system must be reorganized : that capital must be confiscated to supply the needs of the poor : that the selfishness of employers was the cause of poverty, and that the 59 masses would no longer submit to tlie injustice of not being allowed to enjoy other people's accumula- tions ! To-day, such irresponsible spouters would be laughed at; not a man would listen to them unless their demands were backed up with facts and reasoning which would bear sober examination, for we have succeeded in reducing both the idlers at the upper end of the social scale and the thriftless and incompetent at the lower end. The abolition of the Poor Law ; the drastic elimination and extermination of the incurably vicious ; the improved training of the young; the beneficial effect of the conscription ; the extended cultivation of the mind; increased earnestness of religious belief, and the steady pressure of public opinion have combined to produce a widespread sentiment in favour of thrift, simplicity of life, due limitation of all the purely animal appetites — and there cannot be a doubt that it is principally due to improved morals that nearly every family are able to live in their own freehold house : every citizen possesses capital profitably invested, usually in the firm or co-operation he works for, and thus, notwithstanding our 100,000,000 of population, destitution is confined within such narrow limits that the parish councils can easily care for every individual who is found to require help.'' (/) " A nation cannot jump at one bound clear of all the weaknesses and defects which have accumulated for generations — and we certainly made remarkable progress in some directions. I 60 had every confidence in the future progress of the bulk of the people^ but I felt much concerned at the apparent increase of vice and poverty, simultaneously with the aggregation of great wealth in few hands/' (He) " The increased influence of morals has had effect at both ends of the social scale. We have, practically, no idle class. It would be a sad reflection on any man's character if he were content to live idly on wealth accumulated by his ancestors. Every man works ; even wealthy citizens, unless they hold public otiice or are engaged in managing their own estates, invariably attach themselves to a definite occupation. Public opinion would find means to express disapproval of the conduct of any man who had no more useful or elevating pursuit than to attend race tneetings, regattas, billiard matches, and society entertainments. Not that these amusements are frowned upon. On the contrary, they, and other healthy methods of relaxation, are as much in request as ever, but not as the sole occupation of anybody. It is a matter of course that all men work, not necessarily at manual labour, because, with the progress of science and of rational investigation, the work of the world is done more than ever by the brain and by the touch, and less by actual muscular effort. This healthy sentiment in favour of active work, and the feeling that it is a disgrace to a man that his faculties should rust in idleness, is simply the outcome of refined morals and of the pressure of 61 public opinion. It is now so well acknowledged an. axiom of ethics tliat no argument or exhortation is needed to enforce its operation, it exists in every man's consciousness and is just as self-evident a truth as the immorality of theft or of falsehood. There wnll come a time, beyond a doubt, as morals improve, when altruism will become an effective social force; when the desire to benefit mankind will become a second selfishness. We have made some progress in that direction, but it is not safe to venture on thin ice and we must be content to know that we are on the right path. Ethics is the ripe seed of a well-ordered social organism ; religion is its hand-maid and the increased earnestness of religious belief has effectively aided morals." (I) '' But, surely, since religion has become rationalized it cannot be so earnest as formerly ? Is Divine service well attended ? " [He) " Undoubtedly ; never were there so many churches and never were they so well filled. I would not miss my Sunday service on any account '• I usually attend twice a day. Not only do we hear sound moral doctrine expounded with high literary skill often rising into eloquence, and enunciated with the sympathy and deep feeling which are the foundation of dramatic art, but we hear the best poetry of ancient and of modern times rendered by music of a high order ; in fact, all the influences which can elevate thought, raise emotion to enthusi- asm, and inspire the audience with a fervour for the service and the elevation of mankind. There 62 are few who are not lifted up by so strenuous an influence. For myself, I can say that it is easier for me to live my life cleanly and usefully, to check my passions and my appetites, than if I spent the day at cricket or tennis : easier to do my duty to the afflicted and unhappy : to deny myself luxuries that I may help those who fall by the wayside : to devote an evening to the recreation of the inmates of the parish hospital : in a word, to join in the service of humanity. But religion is much changed since your time. Dogmatic Theology is dead ; dead as a herrino-. The first article in everv man's creed is sympathy for others — the last, least, and lowest is faith.'' (T) '' But if theology is discarded how can there be any uniformity of belief?" (Re) " There is no uniformity of belief. People are taught to think for themselves, and amongst the 100,000,000 of Christians in this country it is quite possible that there are not two whose belief is exactly the same in all particulars. My own favourite preacher impresses on us constantly that this present life is only one stage of our progress, tlia,t we have lived before and that we came from someivhere : a conception, which is not only more complete, more logical, and more in accord with the teaching of science, than the view presented to us by the high and dry theologian, but which tends to raise immensely the average man's self-respect and his conception of his responsibilities to human kind. 63 ' Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting ; The soul that rises with us, our life's star, Hath elsewhere had its setting, And Cometh from afar. ' He supports tliis view not only by ethical reasoning, poetical illustrations, and biblical quotations, but by solid argument derived from psycho-biology and other sciences.* Indeed, reliance on the immortality of the soul would probably be as slender as it was in your own time, were it not that the belief in a pre-natal life has now reinforced it. Religion is now a vital force : in the nineteenth century it seemed to be in decay, though it was probably only in a state of transition. Apparently, superstition was its chief sanction, though the desire to be socially ' correct ' swelled the ranks of the devout. Aspiration towards perfection and the longing* to be useful to his neighbour filled a secondary place in a man's religious professions. Probably all these motives are still in action, but the two last are the operating inducements which take people to chiirch, and when 1 tell you that although the chief appeal is made to the reason, yet the emotions are evoked as strenuously as in any theatre, whilst the impres- sions left on the mind are far more satisfactory and more elevating than a theatrical performance can produce, you will not be sur^^rised to hear that * ' As old mythologies relate Some draught of Lethe may await ^^.^^^^^-'TTTq m | C^-p The slipping through from stata^J^t^te/- r/. ^J^^mu^^^^ ^'^ '^^ 210CT.19^0 64 ttougli we have twice as many cliurches as you had, in proportion to our numbers ; yet not only are they crowded, but many schools and theatres are filled with worshippers every Sunday. Religion covers more ground than formerly, and yet it is more definite, and its teachings accord with oar experience of social life : there is more backbone in it. Instead of weakly pleading that worthless and degraded lives should be helped to a prolonged and useless existence, our ethical teachers now insist that the dangers of contamination and of immoral example should be eliminated by the dis- continuance of incurably vicious lives. We cannot take too much pains with the education of young children, for we find that moral training is all- powerful on conduct. Mental training has little influence on character. Right conduct can be taught and fostered by judicious methods, if such teaching is begun at an early age. The youth who has learnt the value and the propriety of industry, prudence, temperance, sympathy and self-control, Avill rather die than break a just law. Crime is not, and never was, principally caused by poverty. Some poor countries have little crime; some of the richest countries have most criminals. The greater number of our criminals are born with malformed or with undeveloped organs. Probably you know that of fifty thousand children under twelve exam- ined in 1888 by Galton, about two hundred were found to be so abnormally developed that, in the absence of very special training, their natural 65 tendency must liave been unsocial, if not criminal. Poverty, also, is a good deal dependent upon organic defect or congenital incapacity : next in order comes drink or some otlier vicious appetite ; last comes unavoidable misfortune or want of opportunity/' (7) "Then I am to understand tbat with the exception of the Death penalty, which is freely used (and principally for the sake of your descend- ants), your punishments are rather educational than deterrent ? I should therefore judge that since altruism is to some extent operative, and temper- ance in the indulgence of appetites is common, you have few of the small offenders who filled our police courts and sessions courts? " {He) "It is true we have few drunkards, and the degraded pauper-criminal class have entirely disappeared, but we have plenty of offenders. Our prisons are educational institutions. No offender is sentenced to imprisonment merely ; it would be a useless cruelty. If he is not capable of improve- ment we discontinue a life which should never have been allowed to develop ; but life is pleasant enough nowadays, and men will try hard to suppress their ill tendencies and their unsocial appetites rather than join another world under circumstances of ignominy and disgrace. The class of offenders now brought before juries are somewhat different, and their offences are certainly less simple in char- acter than in your time. I cannot do better than describe to you a few of the cases which are now 5 6Q before tlie magistrates and the juries in the various courts. I must first tell you that the normal number of a jury is three. A defendant or a litigant can claim to increase the number to five, and a judge may decide to have seven jurors, which is the maximum number. A bare majority only is required for a verdict. It is matter of much wonder to us that you continued to require twelve men on juries. It must have been a tax on the citizens; and besides being wasteful, the sense of responsibility of each juror was necessarily small. A very important case has just been decided. A member of the London County Council was elected who had promised, before the election, to exert his influence to increase the salaries of school teachers and of the police. All the police and teachers, together with their relatives, combined their votes in his favour, and he was thus elected. The Public Accuser arraigned him with about four thousand of the voters as having conspired for personal ends to the detriment of the State. The trial aroused great interest, but the jury, seven in number, were unanimous as to their guilt. The Councilman was deprived of his seat, fined heavily, and declared incapable of holding public office asrain. The four thousand defendants were fined two months' salary, and some of them were dis- missed from office. Public opinion confirms the verdict. Another case was as follows : — An iron- clad was built, which should have had a freeboard of nine feet. When lauuched and equipped she 67 was found to be eighteen iuclies deeper than the estimate. Accordingly the Chief Constructor and an assistant were tried for incapacity. The original calculations had been made by the assistant, but it was the duty of his superior to see that they were checked by a competent person. He failed to do this, and the error was not discovered until too late. The jury acquitted the assistant, but found the chief guilty, and he is dismissed from the service.^' (J) " But, surely, that was hard — to ruin a man of liigh position for one oversight.'^ {He) *^ The jury were bound to consider, not only the man before them, but the thousands of servants of the State who are always liable to neglect their duty. True, ho was a man of high position ; but if lie had been a labourer the jury could have done no less. How much more important to protect the State when the offender filled so high a post. In another case a barrister had undertaken to represent a suitor in a civil case in a court of law. He failed to appear when the case was called on, and his client lost his case. The client brought an action against him, and the jury condemned the barrister to pay the costs of the trial. In that same case the jury had another painful duty to perform. With the object of discrediting the evidence of a lady witness, the barrister had the bad taste to put questions to her which reflected on her past life. As this cross-examination had no direct bearing upon the case before the jur}^, and was intended to 5 * 68 intimidate tlie witness^ she appealed to the judge to protect her, but he dechned to interfere. At the conclusion of the trial the jury unanimously indicted the judge for dereliction of duty : he will now be tried before a bench of judges, and will most likely be removed from the bench ! In another case a well-known society lady had spread a report that a rival was the daughter of a man who had been convicted of crime. It was true, but the malice was evident, and she was sentenced to three months' hard work as a charwoman at the parish hospital. A stockbroker induced his agent in Paris to send telegrams announcing a conflagration at the Galiciau oil works. The shares dropped; he bought largely and cleared a large profit. The jury sent him to Paris to be tried with his fellow conspirator. . . I am myself a magistrate, ex officio, and I sit on the Windsor bench once a week. Yes- terday a wealthy citizen and a poor woman were charged before me with giving and receiving alms respectively. A citizen heard the woman pouring out her piteous tale in the street, and saw the man give her money : whereupon he gave them into custody. I fined the man £5 and gave him three days' study of ethical economy. The immediate needs of the woman were attended to, but I fear I must send her for a year's training and instruc- tion, as she seems at present to be quite unsuited to social life." (I) " But why punish a man for a kind act ? " [He) " Indiscriminate almsgiving is a most per- 69 nicious practice. If it were allowed, thousands of honest but weak-minded people would be tempted to join the ranks of indigence. In the nineteenth cen- tury begging was a trade, and the begging fraternity formed a festering sore upon the social body. Alms- giving tempts and corrupts the poor — it was only less harmful than that Poor Law Avliich encouraged reckless breeding and stereotyped improvidence among you. Beggars deprive the unfortunate, or, perhaps, not very capable, but honest citizen of that sympathy which every man and woman desires to extend to those who need help. The man who seeks to gratify his benevolence by indiscriminate gifts shirks his duty, which he well knows consists in taking an active part in the work of those societies which seek out every case of misfortune and help the objects of their sympathy to help themselves, which is all that can be done for them. . . A youth was brought before me charged with falsely assert- ing that he had served his time as a conscript. I sentenced him to serve eighteen months' instead of twelve as a punishment." (I) '' What ! have you a conscription ? " {H<') "Yes, and for two hundred years past. Every civilized nation has adopted it in one form or other. It was most fortunate for us that we adopted it some vears before 1925, otherwise we could never have repelled the formidable invasion of that year. The original motive for its adoption was only partially the desire for a defensive military force: it was principally a wish to raise the standard of manners, 70 of personal bearing, of self-respect and of considera- tion for others amongst the children of the least cultivated classes. The boys of those classes, having no opportunity to travel, had no possible means of knowing more of the world, of their native land and of their fellow-citizens than their own narrow circle afforded, and, perhaps, their own street or alley. They naturally inherited and imbibed the clumsy and boorish behaviour of their fellows. It was needful to take them absolutely, for a time, from the narrow limits of their home and put them into association with youths taken from every class and from other towns and districts ; to drill them, to put them under strict discipline, to teach them to shoot straight, to give them habits of order, obedi- ence, exactness and industry, to give them a just pride in the extent of the Empire, and to show them, of what that Empire consists and how it has been built up. The actual cost of all this was small, but the results were startling. Not only did crime and pauperism decrease, but thrift and self-helpful- ness increased perceptibly.* Labour became more efficient : patriotism was no longer a virtue of the middle classes, but an active force, reaching down to the humblest, and thus contributing to strengthen the hands of the Government in all questions affect- ing the national welfare. The unformed, manner- less lout was transformed into a smart, alert, and * " All of us are the better for authority. In schools and colleges, in fleet and army, discipline means success, and anarchy means ruin." — J. A. Froucle. 71 self-respecting young citizen. The nation is a more efficient and capable community, and since then, politics have become something higher and better than a struggle for power by Avhich one class or section may annex the property, or curtail the rights or increase the burdens of the remainder. I may mention that vast numbers struggle for the privilege of serving their twelve months on board a cruiser or a training ship, and, of course, no man can pass his examination for matrimony until he has served his time in the army or the navy." (/) " Examination for matrimony ! Surely a grown man may marry when he chooses ! " {He) " Certainly not. Marriage is one of those social functions in which the State is entitled to lay down conditions. Not that any man or woman whose mental capacity and physical health are normal need find the obstacles insuperable. But the State insists that marriage is a privilege not to be carelessly exercised or easily attained, and our citizens must submit to conditions which are shown by experience to make for harmony in the family, for the happiness of the children, and for sohdarity in the national life. The life of a nation is not a span; it must calculate for centuries, and not for years. But young people cannot take wide views. To them marriage is no lottery; it is all prizes and no blanks ; its attractions are evident and immediate ; its responsibilities are dim and distant. The law now insists that the man shall be proficient in his trade or profession. The woman must be examined in housekeeping, including cookery ; and botli must pass a rigoi'ous examination in physiology. A small number of both sexes are annually rejected for one or other of the various tests ; but though we cannot but sympathize with their ill luck, yet the law must be obeyed for the sake of our descendants, and for the good of that state which will continue to exist when every soul now living will long have been forgotten." (Z) "And what about the New Woman? Has she humbled the pride of the tyrant, Man ? Has she achieved political equality, and taken her share in the dangers and in the arduous labours of the rough-and-tumble of life ? " {He) "Your query sounds very comically. Can my right hand quarrel with my left ? A man and a woman are two halves of a whole. There cannot be such a quarrel. In your days economic causes compelled the emigration of multitudes of youths : many girls were necessarily left unmarried, and this was the proximate cause of the revolt of the New Woman. But there was a permanent need for higher education, and for the extension of employ- ments to women : " 1st. As a development of the economic re- sources of the nation. " 2nd. As an education : that they might be brought into line with the improved mental status of the race. " 3rd. That by their intellectual development the future of the nation might be brought to accord 73 with tliat line of natural selection wliicli was to insure a reduction in the number of children per family ; for it is a well-established psycho- physiological fact that high mental cultivation tends to small families, with offspring of high mental power. In these several ways the nation has benefited : but there is a strong feeling still among women that the ' good old times ' were the best ; when they were not troubled with studies or examinations or six hours' labour per day ; and that the love and companionship of one good man are better than the very highest pinnacle of pro- fessional or commercial success with celibacy. No, the New Woman is very much the same lovable old woman, whose tenderness and care and whose emotional inconsistencies are the chief blessing this world affords — without which, indeed, every man's life is but a barren and a toilsome journey. You will observe differences, the product of six generations of improvement, or rather of moral and intellectual development, and I do not doubt that you will decide that a year of com- panionship with a well-informed and cultured wife of our time is Avortli a cycle with ignorance, how- ever submissive and devoted. The co-education of the sexes has elevated both — responsible employ- ments have increased the range of woman's habilitudes and her extended mental cultivation has blessed mankind with a new reserve of moral force and of originality of which we had great need. The training of orphans and other ^children of the 74 State ' is now chiefly left in the hands of unmarried Avomen and of widows, with the best results. A very trivial incident called the attention of the nation to the need for moral training for such children as fall under the control of the State. Whilst the need for adopting a better system than the ' Barrack schools ' was being discussed, an unruly scholar at a Board school was brought before a magistrate for some breach of the rules. The father, a respect- able man, was asked, 'Why do you not teach your boy better manners ?^ ' If I teach my children to be honest and industrious,' said the father, ' it is all I can do. They must pick up manners for themselves.' This answer threw a flood of light upon the absence of personal dignity and of con- sideration for others which characterized so many thousands of uncultivated but otherwise most worthy people. A suggestion was made that ladies in reduced circumstances should qualify themselves to undertake, as a profession, the charge of infants and their training. This was tried with many orphan and pauper children and the results were found to be admirable. Manners are an important branch of ethics. Such children have no tendency to lapse into pauperism. Formerly they were centres of contagion disseminating idleness, rude- ness and ill-breeding. Now, they are examples of courtesy, diligence and modest bearing : welcome members of any community in which fate may place them. Thus a useful profession was founded which gives a suitable and honoui'able livelihood to- 75 many ladies whose energies and affections would otherwise be wasted and practically lost to t]i& world. No longer can any unmarried woman be said to have failed in her career — most o£ the women thus employed are as fully satisfied with their lot as are the most favoured amongst the feminine portion of the population/' {!) " What is the total population of Britannia ?" {He) " About 100,000,000. Our numbers are almost stationary. Since Imperial Federation made our position secure there is no objection to a proper limitation of families. About a century ago much anxiety existed at the steady increase in the population. Legislation then expressly limited the number of children allowed to a family, but we now find a natural tendency to small families owing to the increased mental development of the citizens, both male and female — and it seems likely that we have reached our utmost limit of population." (/) "But how can so large a population subsist in such apparent comfort ? We thought ourselves over-populated with less than forty millions." ( He ) " You found it easier to provide for 40,000,000 than your grandfathers for their 15,000,000 because of — " 1st. The progress of invention and discovery. " 2nd. The increased accumulation of capital. " 3rd. Improved means of communication. " To these we have added — " 4th. Improved morals. " 5th. A more uniform distribution of wealth. 76 '' These are sufHcient to account for the higher standard of material comfort that we enjoy, but some of our comfort, and very much of our im- proved equanimity and enjoyment of life, are due to the operation of our doctrine of selection and rejection of the unfit which is certainly drastic, and which you have described as inhuman. The effec- tiveness of labour has greatly multiplied since your time. A day's labour now produces more than a week's work produced in 1900, and although our requirements are greater because of increased refine- ment, yet life is simple, and comfort is assured with moderate labour and without much anxiety to competent men. Industry is divided into two methods — Competition and Co-operation. Com- petition is practically emulation to supply the world with wealth. Our errors in the past have consisted in hindering the operation of that principle. The reason why all Socialist schemes have resulted in practical failure is this — that ability is swamped by mediocrity, and that the man of slowest action and most sluggish mind sets the pace for all. When a man will not work, how can a Socialist State logically use force to compel him ; and can the industrious be expected to exert themselves strenuously to supply the shortcomings of those who are only as industrious as they are made to be ? Moreover, invention is found to be best encouraged by competition. No inventor was ever content simply to benefit humanity at large. To stimulate him to days and nights of continuous and painful thought something less 77 abstract and more in the nature of a material reward is necessary. Not only invention, but all originality or initiative is discouraged by Socialism. The English Poor Laws were simply the essence of Socialism in actual operation for centuries. They were originally passed, and from time to time amended, from motives of the purest philanthropy. None should stai've : the poor and helpless should be helped in their struggle for existence — and what have been the permanent and abiding results ? The creation of a whole class of degraded wretches, weak in mind, debauched in morals: without industry, easily tempted, and void entirely of self-respect, self-helpfulness, and all manly virtues. The com- plement of competition is liberty ; the opposite of competition is slavery or compulsion. There are hardships under all forms of government, but Socialism produces so low a level both of aspiration and of success, such depression of energy and of individuality, and so tame a uniformity of view as no other form of civilization can show, and as for liberty it is given up to that octopus, the State. Socialists claim the liberty to do as they like and to make everybody else do it. A complete theory of what political life ought to be would probably not be solely individualistic; it should be leavened with Socialist doctrine ; but so long as human nature remains inherently selfish and sadly imperfect, the working system must differ from the hypothesis of perfection — must, in fact, conform to facts. No rigid system can last indefinitely, and that which best 78 admits of alteration and adaptation will work the best. Socialism and Protection are alike in this, that they weaken self-reliance and encourage State interference — they enfeeble the motives for thrift, ■economy and strenuous industry." (/) " How has Free Trade progressed ? " (Re) " It has conquered everywhere in theory, out in practice there are many exceptions to it. The tariif is for revenue only in all enlightened States. With the exception of the Defence Tax (which is a 5 per cent, dut}^ on all importations from countries not included in the ' Pact ' or Federation of English- speaking peoples) our Customs duties are levied on alcohol, tobacco, opium, drugs and some luxuries, to which I may add an export duty on coal and other minerals." (I) " A duty on exports ? Never ! " {He) " Why not ? Our raw minerals are part of ihe national capital. It is in our hands for our own use and for the generations after us. They should always have been held as an asset to counterbalance the National Debt, and this export duty has enabled us to pay off the debt. The chief opposition to the export duties came from the Trade Unions, but all parties now acquiesce in the expediency of the measure." (J) " Do Trade Unions exercise much power ? " [He) '' They are wealthy and injBuential bodies, and useful instruments for giving voice to the opinions and wishes of their members. They thus influence legislation with beneficial effect, and they 79 are powerful agencies in enabling workmen to join together their capital in various forms of co-opera- tive production. They do not encourage strikes in any form, and their enormous influence is invariably used to encourage and even enforce arbitration in industrial disputes. Long ago they abandoned their tyrannical practice of refusing to non- unionists the right to work. In the course of industrial evolution trade unions were, at one time, a necessity; they were the only means by which Avorkmen could enforce their claim to a fair share of the profits of capital, and to such consideration as ensured them against the tyranny and oppression of thoughtless or greedy or overbearing employers : but, as is inevitable with such organizations, they abused their position, and unthinkingly injured the pi'ospects of large numbers of artisans and others. They endeavoured to create a privileged class, an aristocracy of labour, which should exclude all workers below them in the social scale from any participation in well-paid, high-class employments. As an illustration, take the case of the glass trade in the nineteenth century. A compact and well- knit union of glass-workers was formed, who declined to work below a scale of wao-es rano-ino- from 40s to 60s per week. At these rates the employers could only manufacture the more costly kinds of glass-ware : and thus, although this countxy produces all the necessary materials, and the commoner sorts of glass could be made here as efficiently and as economically as elsewhere, yet its 80 production was impossible, because workmen were not allowed to accept work at a rate of wages lower than that fixed by the trade union. The consequence was that whilst tens of thousands of able-bodied men remained unemployed, and there were capitalists in abundance who would have been glad to establish the necessary plant^ yet, year after year, England imported £2,500,000 worth of glass from abroad because Belgian and German workmen were not prevented from accepting work at such rates of pay as employers were able to offer. This condition of things in England was all the more unreasonable because — " 1st. Owing to our Free Trade system the manufacture could have been done here more cheaply (wages apart) than elsewhere. " 2nd. Food and clothing being cheaper here, wages would go farther. " 3rd. The whole of the £2,500,000 would have remained here, either as wages or profits. " Whoever considers the whole of the circum- stances must conclude that the only reason why the cheaper kinds of glass-wai'e were not made here was the action of the trade union in refusing to allow men to work at a rate of wages which would have enabled glass-makers here to compete with foreign makers. And there is no doubt that the reason why £80,000,000 worth of manufactured goods were imported into the United Kingdom in 1895 was not at all because you had no men to spare for the work — for you always had plenty of 81 unemployed men and of surplus capital — but simply because trades unions in many brandies of manu- facture forbade men to work below the established rate of wages, preferring that tens of thousands of workmen should remain without employment, whilst an immense aggregate of capital was sent abroad for investment. Of that £80,000,000 paid for goods of foreign manufacture, at least £60,000,000 would have remained in the pockets of English men and women." (/) " Doubtless you are right ; but I cannot see what remedy we could have applied. We stood on the broad principle of government by the people, and even if we had seen this especial ill con- sequence of democratic rule we could not have interfered to prevent that diversion of employment from Englishmen to foreigners." {He) " Probably not, because nine-tenths of your electorate were so ignorant of political economy and of the economic history of civilized peoples as to be incompetent to decide the complex problems which continually arose for solution. Our conception of a democratic State is radically different from that which seems to have obtained in the nineteenth century. You gave political power equally to the ignorant and the learned, the foolish and the wise, the vicious and the virtuous. With us, on the contrary, power is only given to those who can give evidence of the necessary knowledge and ability to judge intelligently the intricate problems which a progressive nation must solve. G 82 It is not easy to gain tlie franchise, thougli not more difficult for poor men than for rich, and few- men succeed in qualifying for it until they are twenty-eight or thirty years of age. A vote is not a right, it is a trust. It is an object of ardent desire to all men : they make great eiforts and even sacrifices to obtain it. It is the first aim of every citizen, it is one criterion of a man's social standing, it is the first step towards distinction. The result is that the Britannic electorate are perfectly competent to discuss exhaustively any question that may arise for decision, and no man would dare to present himself for election as a Member of Parliament who is not fully equipped for the work of legislation. The terrible muddle you made of foreign and colonial affairs in the nineteenth century is ascribed by historians to a knot of Eadicals, who, masquerading as Liberals, paralyzed the efforts of those who, seeing a world- wide empire ready to their hands, prepared to take and to administer it as England alone could successfully and worthily administer. But the responsibility really lay with the electorate, which was absolutely incompetent to judge any but the simplest issues. Time after time you admitted millions of the most ignorant citizens to join in the government of a great empire without imposing* on so great a gift the slightest condition or test of fitness. What Avonder, therefore, that you did foolish things in the Transvaal, in Siam, and in East and West Africa — that you made Britannia a 83 laug-liing-stock to all the world^ when you allowed golden opportunities of increasing- your heritage, and extending the benefits of civilization to half- savage peoples, to slip by through the timidity (the ' craven fear of being great ') of ministers elected by voters ignoi'ant of history and ignorant even of the political geography of their own time. It is now an axiom of the Constitution that no man shall obtain that privilege until he has shown that his knowledge and his judgment are such as will enable him to fulfil his duties as a Parliamentary Elector." (7) " But I think I can show you that our system worked well, though it was, theoretically, defective. For instance, we admitted two millions of labourers to the franchise in 1886. Now, a certain number of them did possess sufficient knowledge to vote intelligently and wisely. Let me assume that 400,000 fulfilled these conditions, there would remain 1,600,000 incompetent, who would vote blindly and erratically. But upon the theory of chances their votes would be cast equally between the two contending parties, viz., 800,000 for one and 800,000 for the other, so that no actual harm would be done." (He) " But you forget that, although ignorant, they were not without passions and prejudices, and that they would therefore be likely to follow a windbag sufficiently unprincipled to tell them that the * masses ' and the ' classes ' were in deadly opposition; and that they should receive benefits 6 * 84 by voting for him. Appeals of this kind to their prejudices, their passions, or their self-interest, are fatal to your theory. Useless to blame the poor fellows : the blame is on those who gave them such onerous responsibility, and on the long-tongued demagogue, who was willing to pay any price to obtain power. Possibly he was himself led away by the canting phrases which he and his sycophants coined in such plenty. ' Force is no remedy ' was one excuse for treason and criminal conspiracy — as if any remedy could be applied that was not backed by force ! If a cruel savage came into contact with British troops we were told that ho was '^ rightly struggling to be free.^ If a Clive, or a Frere, or a Rhodes proposed to briug within the influence of law and civilization any unruly tribe that lived on our borders and menaced the order that we had established, he was dubbed a ' prancing proconsul,' and that stupid petitio principii ; the ' weary Titan ' phrase was invoked in order to prevent men from thinking out the problem for themselves, though it was evident to all men, not blinded by prejudice or partizanship, that no other people w^ere so com- petent as were Englishmen, both by training and by organization, to undertake the control and education of inferior races, to bring them into obedience to law, and to teach them habits of industry : that no more worthy or more dignified employment could be found for the energies of Englishmen : that the waste places and the savage peoples of the globe were crying out for organizers and for teachers ; and that no other people had hitherto shown themselves possessed in sufficient measure of the political genius which made their rule and guidance acceptable equally to the Asiatic and the African, the American Indian and the Maori, to the Negro, and to the many opposing races which peopled the crowded continent of India. . . You will be interested to know that the large statue of Gladstone which was erected by his admirers after his death, was subsequently removed by authority of a special Act of Parlia- ment, and a statue of Gordon was erected in its stead. This was not intended to impute to Gladstone any special responsibility for Gordon's death, but to show that their fellow-countrymen at length appreciated the relative value of the man of action and of inflexible moral principle who seldom spoke, and that of the man of multitudinous words, whose equivocations have become a bye-word, and who did not hesitate to throw to the winds the professions and the practice of a lifetime in order to gain, as he fondly hoped, a party advantage. Similarly, Earl Granville's statue was replaced by that of Sir Bartle Frere, with the inscription, 'A great Pro-Consul ; ' and on the day of its inaugura- tion the citizens very w^rongly wrecked the office of the Daily News, and most inconsistently left behind a huge placard inscribed ' Force is no remedy ! ! '" (I) "I must admit that Radicalism and Patriotism were not identical terras in the fourth quarter of the nineteenth century : indeed, there 80 were many worthv Radicals of my acquaintance who shuddered at the very mention of the word Empire and whose chief notion of their duty to the proudest and most enlightened State on earth was to fling mud at it, to belittle it in the eyes of all men, to prove to demonstration that in any dispute with a foreign Power Great Britain must be in the wrong : to tremble at the very idea of giving oftence to any other nation by any act, however legitimate or even necessary, and who were ever ready to censure any act of genuine patriotism in the larger meaning of the word." {He) " Doubtless they were a survival of the struggle by which the final overthrow of privilege and exclusiveness had been accomplished — and yet, though such narrowness amongst men who loved their country seems incredible, there was some excuse for them. Patriotism must have been weak when the whole of a man's energies and aspirations were absorbed in the struggle for a bai-e subsist- ence : when the Social body, like a cruel step- mother, did nothing for him except to put him in. prison if he offended or take him into the work- house on the condition that he should do no work and declare himself incapable and without means. Society would punish him, and it would corrupt him with doles, if his ignorance and incapacity compelled him to apply for alms, but it would not help towards that technical training which was absolutely necessary to make him an efficient wealth- producer. Xow, we have changed all that — every 87 citizen whose parents cannot provide for liira, can claim to be taugflit a trade or handicraft and he is thus able, at a very early age, to take his place amoug the ranks of self-respecting and indepen- dent citizens filled with gratitude and affection for the State which has thus equipped him with power, besides furnishing him with such knowledge of history as warms his heart and hres his brain with enthusiasm for the great traditions of the State which is to him so true and wise a parent. Now, patriotism to a Briton means that he starts life with capacity and faculties for competition on equal terms with all others of the race. It means that he is a member of that dominant imperial race which leads the world — that he is of equal kin with Shakespeare and Milton — with Washington and Lincoln — with Scott and Macaulay — and his knowledge of the past gives him a vision of the future which makes him a hero in conflict, a martyr in adversity and an optimist at all times. A King Log that leaves me in ignorance, that gives me no help, that leaves my weakness a prey to vice and to temptations which drag me to lowest depths of suffering and misery is not a king to evoke either loyalt}'" or pride. But a State which tells me of a glorious past and of a splendid present — warns me of dangers to be shunned — protects the weak — enforces contracts, but cancels improper contracts, and uses its great powers always for noble ends, necessarily evokes affection, gratitude and devotion without limit. This improvement of the man. 88 moreover, re-acts on the State, wliicli is nothing more than the aggregate of such units. It is as necessary for the State to improve as for the indi- vidual, because competition between States is now a prime factor in the world^s progress, and those nations which are deficient in power, in vitaUty and in coherence will sink in importance and lose their rank in the world if their aggregate of intelligence fails to keep pace with the progress of other competing peoples. There is no mean between progress and deterioration. The law of nature is movement, forward if you like, but if not, then backward.'^ (I) "Then I must tell you that you have gone back in some respects. Your laws, if not inhuman, are much too drastic and arbitrary to agree with my notion of mercy and humanity.'^ {He) " I imagine that your failure to approve our methods arises from the exaggerated importance you allowed to the individual and from your not having rightly appreciated the superior claims of the social body. Long ago we abandoned that old conception of the duty of the State, which claimed for each citizen complete freedom of action subject to no restriction, but that of not injuring others. That theory left out of view altogether something, which is not only more important than any one citizen, but greater than the whole body of citizens, viz., the social organism. For the whole body of men now living will be forgotten when the State will still be an entity — and an entity which will 89 have been deeply affected by the operation of laws passed to-day — nay, it will be the creature of those laws. It is this view of our duty, this conception of our twofold duty primarily to the individual, but permanently and fundamentally to the State, which is the sanction for our apparently merciless extinction of the unfit, the noxious, the detrimental. Fortu- nately for mankind, the narrow parochialism of the nineteenth century Radical has vanished. The English-speaking races have taken the lead in the government and education of the world, and although Conservative Britons grumble at our having surrendered our independence by accepting the rule of the Pact, and thus apparently playing second fiddle to the great American people, yet our greatest statesmen and our chief philosophical writers recognize that our position is thereby more assured, whilst our le""itimate influence in the world is not diminished, and the progress of mankind is placed on an enduring and apparently everlasting basis." (i) " What is now the position of Ireland ? " {He) " Our only political trouble with Ireland is this. Her influence in Britannic affairs is so strongly Conservative that the progressive parties in England and Scotland hav^e done their utmost to compel or induce her to sever the Britannic connection, and to make her an independent member of the Pact. But she resists this most strenuously, partly for fiscal and commercial reasons, but principally on sentimental grounds. The starting point of her present prosperity, and 90 •of that reputation for industry and thrift for wWcli she is famous amongst nations, was the abolition of the Poor Law. The boring of the Deep Wells in the twentieth century put her on equal terms with the most favoured nations as regards indus- trial and manufacturing advantages, but the Con- servatism, politically speaking, of the Irish people is extraordinary at the present time. The enor- mous influx of German families from 1930 to 1950 furnished a needed element of enterprise, and, •outside Ulster, most of her great industrial under- takings were founded by men who sprang from the mixed Irish-German blood, but since the population reached 20,000,000 they have greatly restricted immigration. ■'' (/) " It is quite a relief to me to find that Ireland is no longer troublesome. We made every possible concession to them, and yet could never satisfy them.'' {He) " What Ireland wanted was simply the same treatment as that which was given to Scotland and to England; but your invertebrate politicians were incapable to administer simply justice in the face of shrieks and clamour. When the fervid Celtic orators, with all the Celtic virulence, called heaven and earth to witness that your fathers had oppressed and wronged them, why were you so silly as to accept their word ? The pernicious influence of Mr. Gladstone's legisla- tion rested on the people for generations. Ic 'debauched their self-reliance, until they imagined 91 that their best way to prosperity was conspiracy. The State took half the hmdlord's property, and gave it to the tenants, who had done nothing to deserve it. The landlords were not compensated : surely a most unjust thing. Amongst savages we do not wonder if a chief takes from one and gives to another, but it was out of place in Europe in the nineteenth century. If you wished to help the farmers why did you put your hands into the landlords' pockets instead of into your own? That kind of liberality would not pass muster nowadays. So long as there was anything to get by conspiracy the Irish people conspired : first against the land- lords, next against the State. Though they were more lightly taxed than the English, Scotch, French or Americans, they protested that they were being 'sweated' to fill the pockets of the English and the Scotch — in fact, conspiracy became a trade. The only actual tax the poor needed to pay was fourpence per pound on tea and a trifle on coffee — for the duties on whisky and on tobacco are voluntary taxes, these articles are not necessaries — and the fictitious nature of their complaints of the rapacity of landlords is shown by the fact that as rents were reduced by legislation, until the tenants were able to sell the right to cultivate their farms for a larger sum than the landlord could obtain for (what remained to him of) the fee simple of the land, so did the consumption of whisky increase, although the population was declining. The influence of race was clearly shown by the difference between Scot- 92 land and Ireland. The Scotch are an industrious people Avho abhor conspiracy and crime and who would not claim alms from any government. They emigrated in large numbers, but neither in America nor elsewhere have they ever been known to con- spire against the State or against any class." (/) "But Gladstone assured us that the Irish people had been oppressed.^' [Ee) " Why could you not examine the facts for yourselves ? An examination of Gladstone's speeches shows most clearly that he was absolutely ignorant of the history of tlie Irish Celts. One principal cause of the unfitness of the Irish for steadv industry and for law and order lay in this fact — that whereas that essence of civilization, the Roman Law, was adopted in Eugland and other western countries eighteen hundred years before your era, and had beneficially moulded the ideas of men and the structure of society, and had cultivated amongst all classes a deep and abiding attachment for equal justice and the habit of calm and unbiased judg- ment during all those long centuries; in Ireland the tribal system, with all its cruelties, its injustice and its thriftlessness was still in existence until the sixteenth century, when the English stepped in and established English laws as soon as circumstances allowed them to do so. In 1550 the vast bulk of the people were savages and had always been savages. The so-called Brehon laws were not fit for a civilized or even a half-civilized people — and such as they were they were not enforced for the 93 benefit of the pco])le. Tlicy were bravo and hos- pitable and well-meaning savages. No security for life or property existed. No industry was possible where men could not enjoy the fruits of their labour. Each tribe was at war with all other tribes and the constant oppression, murders, insecurity and tribal warfare kept the population at a low point, and yet they suffered from frequent famines owing to the want of that first requirement of civilization, private ownership of land, and the consequent encourage- ment of cultivation. A people of conspicuous virtues and yet terribly untruthful, treacherous, prone to conspiracy, and without industry. Under the protection of laws which guaranteed to them the fruits of their labour, which protected their lives and impartially punished wrong-doers, their condition improved so much under English rule that, being naturally improvident, they multiplied faster than the means of subsistence, and they then imputed their poverty to the oppression of the ruling race." (J) " Many an hour have I listened to tlie diatribes of Radicals and Home Rulers dilatiner on the woes of Ireland, and yet not a word did I hear of this, which seems to throw a flood of light upon the Irish Question." {He) " And yet there was no lack of knowledge on the subject for those who Avished to be guided by reasoning and by facts.* There Avas abundant * " Under the tribal system the land was owned by the tribe in common, except a portion that was held by an elective chief for 94 evidence on the subject if the office-seekers who ' found salvation ^ so readily had cared to know the facts. The bulk of the Irish people, as late as the sixteenth century, were socially, intellec- tually and economically exactly as they were (and as the British had been) sixteen hundred years before, and it was not until the beginning of the eighteenth century that the acquisition of the civic and social and political virtues and acquirements began. In pointing this out I must not be supposed to impute to the Irish race any the time being. No people has ever become civilized until this system has been discarded." — Pelleiv. Sir John Davis said : "There was not a house of brick or stone^ among the Irish down to the time of Henry VII., not even a garden or orchard, or well fenced or improved field ; neither a town nor a village. The chiefs prevented the people from ploughing that they might assist him in his tribal wars." In 1-581 Andrew Trollope wrote to the Earl of Walsingham : " If Hell were open, and all the evil spirits were abroad, they could never be worse than these Irish : they degenerate from all humanity. No governor shall do any good here except he show himself a Tamerlane." Dean Church says the place of Lord Deputy of Ireland had wrecked the reputation and broken the hearts of a succession of able and high-spirited servants of the English crown, and that even Spenser, the poet, a man filled with the tenderest sympathy for suffering humanity, came to look upon Ireland and the Irish with loathing and impatience : " In the native population he saw nothing but what called for antipathy and deep moral condemna- tion. It was not merely that the Irish were ignorant, thriftless, filthy, debased and loathsome in their pitiable misery and despair r it was that justice, truth, honesty had utterly perished among them." " The chiefs (about IGOO) dwelt in clay or turf cabins. They 95 want of individual or persouul virtue or exceUence. Man for man they were probably as worthy,, whether as fathers and sons or as neighbours, as any body of men in any nation. The radical difference between the British peoples and the Celtic Irish, does not necessarily imply that either is snperior in personal excellence to the other ; but politically, and in all that makes the good citizen, the one people were immensely superior to the other, because they had gone through sixty genera- tions of training for the performance of the duties had no tables, but set their meat on a bundle of grass. They had hardly any clothing, and feasted on fallen horses." — Fynes " If some of the Anglo-Irish squires of eighteenth century rack- rented their tenants, an O'Rourke and an O'Flaherty of the sixteenth century literally //ayeti them alive.'" — H. P. Hore. "If a man was not in some degree akin to another he was no better than a beast, and might be killed without comjjunction. The bare right of existence extended only a few miles from your own door to the men who bore the same name as yourself. Beyond that nothing was sacred, neither age nor sex, neither life nor goods. Life was one perpetual carnival of fighting, burning, plundering. This enables us to understand that marked inability to settle down to ordinary life, which runs through all Irish history. ' ' — La ifZt'.M . Even Swift, the champion of the Irish people, admitted (in 1721)) " the laziness, the perverseness and the thievish disposition of the poor native Irish." He believed that " the compulsory abolition of the Irish language would civilize even the most barbarous among them, and reconcile them to our customs and manner of living." To anyone acquainted with the condition of the bulk of the Irish people at that time these words convey a, fund of meaning. 06 and for the exercise of the rights of citizenship. Whilst mankind live in the tribal state the sense of justice and the feeling of individual self-reliance are weak. Clanship alone is strong : i.e. fidelity and devotion to the chief. Land being held in common, there is little or no cultivation ; industry is a rare virtue, and no man can know that he will reap where he has sown. The chief's will is law. Human life is held cheap ; there is no security for property; no redress for injuries; no power to enforce contracts. Any contemporary description of the condition of the Irish people in the sixteenth, or seventeenth century will confirm w^hat I say. The 'mere Irish' were just as unfit for citizenship in a highly organized community as were the Matabele or the Red Indians. The British peoples have improved continuously during all those long centuries, thanks to the start given to them by the Eoman conquest, w^hich gave them order, roads and law ; and, above all, placed the whole country under a single rule. Thanks to the successive invasions of Saxons and Normans, and to that continuous infiltration of Danes, Dutch, Germans, Huguenots, and others, which has raised the type of the race and produced a helpful and self-reliant people ; thanks to that first preliminary of all civilization, the private ownership of land and the industry and thrift w^hicli almost necessarily follow in its train ; thanks to that sentiment of patriotism, that larger national pride, which has pulled us through so many difficulties and built up for us a system of 97 self-government -wliicli has been copied hy all the civilized world; thanks also to the industry, the prudence, the self-reliance, the respect for law and hatred of conspiracy, none of which qualities can arise, or, indeed, begin to arise, until tribal protec- tion and tribal communism are withdrawn, the English had for many centuries enjoyed all the rights of freemen, had become accustomed to self- government, had become used to protecting their own interests in making contracts, had enlarged the area of their employments and widened the range of their capacities ; had abandoned emotion for calculation ; had given up passion and adopted toleration. In all these important respects the Irish character and Irish aptitudes were so funda- mentally different from your own that it cannot excite surprise to find that they could not perfoimi the duties or projoerly exercise the rights which came upon them with their improved position. Since your time, I am happy to say, they have progressed enormously. The proximity of the highest civilization enabled them to take a short cut to improvement. They have avoided much of the painful experience which the English had had to go through, their native excellencies have emerged, and they will now bear comparison with any European population. But in the nineteenth century they were not fully equipped for the stress and effort inseparable from association with a people who had pushed competition to painful lengths," 98 (J) " Does not your admission constitiite a justi- fication of Gladstone's land legislation ? " {He) " You cannot educate a child by giving it sugar-plums, and if the plums are not yours to give you do an immoral as well as a foolish thing. Wisdom can only be gained by experience. Stern, exact and equal justice will sooner or later teach the most backward people that industry, thrift and vigilance are the true road to prosperity. What words could I use to describe the morality of robbing one class to give to another ? It was an easy and a thoughtless way of helping people who were, no doubt, very poor, but surely if England and Scotland wished to be generous it should have been done at their own expense and not at the landlords' ! Irresponsible spouters talked feelingly in Parliament of the wrongs of Ireland, but these limp legislators never condescended to particulars. As a matter of fact, there were no wro7ig.s. The English have at all times treated the Irish better than any other conquering race ever treated the conquered. The standard of justice, of clemency, of pity and of thoughtfulness was not so high in IGOO and 1 700 as in 1800 or in 1900. It has never been pretended by any thoughtful man that if the Irish had got the upper hand they would have treated the English with such consideration and generosity as they actually received from England. Of the two stages which precede civilization, viz., tribal savagery and semi-barbarism, the Irish people, broadly speaking, were in the former. The 99 peoples of Great Bintain were more advanced in civilization in the first century of the Christian era than the Celtic Irish were fifteen hundred years later. When Henry VIII. and Elizabeth commenced to break up the tribal organization, the Irish people required five hundred or a thousand years of semi- barbarism to lead them up to a condition in which the responsibilities of self-government could equitably and reasonably have been imposed upon them. They were totally unfitted for self-govern- ment. It seems like a paradox to say that a courageous and high-spirited people were barbarians, but the vices, the failings, and the virtues of the Irish people were exactly the outcome of the savage tribal system. Their cruelty, their excitableness, their crazy credulity, and their liking for conspiracy, were not different in kind from the same qualities as exhibited by the Mata- bele or the Malay races. The greatest misfortune for both countries was the difference of religion. The English had suffered from the oppression of Catholicism, and they were in continual danger from the hostility of the great Catholic nations. The}'- desired to discourage the ancient faith and to encourage the growth of Protestantism amongst the Irish people, and they accordingly took such measures for that end as were usual in those times amongst all European peoples. The natural resent- ment of a superstitious people was fomented for two hundred years by all the power of the Papacy, acting secretly through an all-powerful priesthood. 7 ^ J 00 Simply stated, that was the stumbling-block to all attempts to quiet tlie natural turbulence of tlie people/^ (/) " But there were no disabilities in my time, and yet they were full of complaints/^ {He) " The mischief was begun in the seven- teenth and eighteenth centuries. It was the natural ineptitude of the people that caiised them to grumble. No legislation could supply their natural deficiencies. The prosperity of Ulster, which is naturally less fertile than the rest of the island, is a standing object-lesson upon the indus- trial and political superiority of the British peoples. The settlement of Ulster by Scotch and English resulted in that magnificent race of men whose energy and thrift and brains have established the flourishino" industries which have broug-ht them great prosperity, and which have made Belfast one of the chief manufacturing cities of the world. Volumes of assertion and of description could not describe more emphatically the fundamental diifer- ence between the two peoples and the unsuiteduess of the Irish people to the give-and-take of modern political life and to the strenuous, exact, and laborious strain of successful commercial and industrial life." (I) " That was generally admitted, even in my time. The names most prominent in Irish commerce and Irish industries were English and Scotch names; hardly a name of Celtic-Irish extraction could be found among them, and that want of adaptability 101 extended in many directions. It was matter of common remark that though they had the finest deep-sea fishing in the world off their own coasts, yet they allowed it to be exploited by the English and the French. They pleaded that they had no capital, boats, or nets ; but these were supplied to them time after time and yet the fishing lan- guished." {Ill') "■ The people were unfit, by their descent, for any other occupations than agriculture and fighting. Not in one generation, nor in two, and hardly in twenty, can be built and furnished those chambers of the brain which hold the qualities of patience, of diligence, exactness, of careful and strenuous thought, of respect for others' rights, of obedience to law, and of that unconquerable sense of justice which resists all temptation to truculence, conspiracy, cruelty and assassination. The British peoples for hundreds of years had drawn great wealth from the sea-fishing. Their profits averaged £5,0U0,000 per annum. In Scotland 45,000 men were employed, but the number in Ireland never exceeded 9000, of whom one-half would only follow that calling during the summer. There being a large surplus of labour in Ireland it might have been thought that men would crowd to the fisheries, but it was not so : they would undertake any work in connection with agriculture, however poorly paid, but deep-sea fishing involves arduous and continuous toil, privation and discomfort, and such cold, stubborn courage in fighting the elements 102 as few races possess. The Irish are not deficient in courage ; when their blood is up^ they will fly into the very teeth of danger^ but the persistent dispassionate struggle with storm and with the implacable winds is not their choice. Hence, with all the help showered upon them by philanthropists^ by Government and by capitalists, they required the training of several generations before the deep-sea fishery became a success/' {I) " Then I may take it that history has done some justice to the many and persistent sacrifices which England made to help and to satisfy the Irish people ? '' (He) " To the English people Ireland, for centuries, was a source of expense, danger, and weakness without intermission. No doubt the Protestant Church in Ireland was an eyesore to Catholics, and the penal laws were both unjust and tyrannical, in the light of modern ideas ; yet England's oppression of Catholic Ireland was mild and gentle compared wath the Catholic persecution in France, Austria, Italy and Spain ; where Protestants were simply exterminated with fire and sword. All the woes of Ireland may be traced to three great misfortunes. The first and greatest consisted in the fact that Ireland was the only European country which failed to feel the civilizing influence of the Roman Empire. If the Roman armies had entered Ireland and imposed upon her the heavy but beneficent yoke, Avhich in other parts of Eurojae had abolished barbarism and 103 substituted law, witli security for property aud life, and the consequent encouragement of industry and of self-government, Ireland might have taken her place amongst the nations of the world. Instead of which, she was condemned, for 1500 years more, to wallow in the slough of barbarism, without a king, or government or organization of any kind. Her next misfortune was that the Norman invasion, in the twelfth century, was partial and incomplete, and therefore worse than useless ; because, instead of subduing and pacifying the land, it simply added one more element of strife to that internecine warfare which was jDerennial amongst the tribes. The other great misfortune lies in the fact that the Irish people were nominally Catholic, whilst the English people, at the time of the conquest of Ireland by Elizabeth, had joined the Reformed Church. For a hundred years afterwards England was in danger from the hostility of the great Catholic Powers, and for another hundred years the Crown was threatened with Jacobite conspiracies, secretly supported by Rome. The result of this was that, in accordance with the illiberal and short-sighted policy of the times, a policy which was common to all European Govei'nments, repressive laws were enacted; laws which were not sufficiently severe to effect their purpose, but quite severe and irritating enough to leave a deep sense of wrong and injustice. If the English had acted with the severity of Spain, of Austria, or of the Italian Governments, Ireland 104 would Lave become Protestant from one end of the island to the other. If, on the other hand, it had been possible for English Statesmen in the seventeenth century to act upon the liberal and tolerant principles which actuated the Statesmen of the nineteenth, a vast amount of trouble and very much suffering would have been saved to both countries. It was hard, no doubt, for Englishmen in the nineteenth centurv to bear the mis- representations, the imputations of injustice, of cruelty and of oppression which the ardent and ignorant Celtic orators fully believed in, and which they spread throughout the world with increasing industry — one man can disseminate a libel which all the exertions of ten thousand men cannot remove. That other nations should have given credit to the libels is not to be wondered at. What is really surprising is that you yourselves believed them. Only a thick-headed and a highly conscientious people would have done so. Your self-accu sings after the famine of 1848 would be a laughable spectacle if it were not pathetic. That famine was an absolutely inevitable occurrence under the given circumstances. In pre-English days famines were not at all uncommon, when there were no absentee landlords and when the population was not one-sixth part of 8,000,000. In those remote days, although the population were prolific enough, their numbers were kept down by frequent massacres and by famines. But the security for life and property under settled government and 105 equal laws enabled them to increase in numbers very rapidly. From 1730 to 1848^ say 120 years, they increased from 2,000,000 to 8,175,000. The industries and the capital of the country did not increase in the same proportion, and so great was the disproportion that a famine was simply a ques- tion of time. Ten thousand vehement Irishmen asserted, with all the extravagance of language for which the tribal Irish had been famous, that the famine was caused by mis-government. Ten thou- sand ignorant, reckless, brainless Radicals knowing nothing of the facts, and nothing of Ireland and less of Irish history, echoed the accusation. Con- sequently, for forty years after that event you suffered all the pangs of remorse for crimes which had not been committed either by you or by your ancestors or by anybody. For forty years the Statute book was filled with Acts far more liberal than the laws extended to England or to Scotland, each one of which successively was guaranteed to cure Irish disaffection : each of which was hailed by the Irish agitators, and by a cynical world, as a fresh confession of guilt : each of which was used as the starting-point for a fresh series of demands — demands increasing in their scope with each new concession, until agitation became a well-paid trade and conspiracy a very lucrative profession. Given an ignorant and a superstitious people, accustomed for uncounted centuries to the unchecked oppres- sion of petty chiefs whose will was law, without security for life or property, with no incentive to 106 industry or production, eacli tribe being at enmity with the surrounding- tribes (there was, of course, no king of Ireland, nor any central government, and never had been), compelled, in the absence of law, to take refuge in cunning and conspiracy, knowing no medium between servility and outrage — under the most favourable circumstances it would have been difficult to bring such a people into har- mony with an older civilization, with a people, who, for fifteen hundred or sixteen hundred years had been subject to a civilizing Jurisprudence, who had increased during all that time in the habit of self- reliance and in the practice of self-government. But when to these differences is added that of two opposed religions it becomes exceedingly doubtful whether it was either expedient or wise to grant to the masses of the Irish people exact political equality with the Scotch and the English. As the Irish were at all times ready to excuse their own inepti- tude and their want of success by accusing the English of oppression, and as the average British member of Parliament (say, of the year 1886) was completely ignorant of the real facts of history, it is hardly wonderful that when Mr. Gladstone, in his second childhood, invited them to ' make amends ' for crimes which had never been com- mitted, by putting Ireland into the hands of a body of self-seeking traitors, they should have been half- inclined to give way to his violent and even virulent appeals." (I) " It would not be possible for me to convey 107 to you a full conception of the bitterness — I might almost say despair — with which wo heard Gladstone propose to equip the one disloyal section of the population with the means to make their hostility effective and dangerous. I had been an active member of the Liberal party all my life. I had unwillingly assented to many proposals of Gladstone's which I felt to be doubtful and even mischievous^ in order not to break with my life-long political associates, but this was so obviously unjust, it was so clearly a sop to sedition, it involved such certain robbery of landowners, and such danger to Pro- testants and Jews, that I felt it to be utterly impossible — in fact, the whole country gave a sigh of relief when Bright, Hartington, Chamberlain and every other self-respecting Liberal rejected the scheme. A few well-meaning men of some position, a multitude of ignorant, and all the rabble of the party acclaimed the poor old man as a 'heaven-born statesman,' but his following became smaller with each succeeding year.'' (He) " Did you form any definite opinion as- to the reasons which impelled him to make a pro- posal so fraught with danger and with injustice and so completely opposed to all the principles, the practice and the declarations of his previous lifer" (7) " In extreme old age the moral perceptions- are liable to weaken equally with mental vigour. There is a real danger that the cunning of the fox may take the place of the reasoned justice of the 108 pliilosopliic statesman. Mr. Gladstone had been responsible during a long life for so many Acts of Parliament (originated by others and only passed by him when we insisted on them) which had proved to be useful, that, with the self-confidence of the auto- crat, he felt that no proposal made by him could be noxious. Moreover, we had so acclaimed him, year after year, the greatest of men that he knew himself to be indispensable to a properly organized govern- ment: he had given way to the vulgar temptation to despise his adulators and had the most profound contempt for England and Scotland. Any humilia- tion he could inflict upon them would be another proof of his own magnanimity. The last seven years of his public life were a painful and pitiful spectacle, but some good came out of our tribulation. For many yeai'S the abolition, or the radical reform, of the House of Lords had been demanded. Its con- stitution was logically indefensible, and previous to 1886 its very existence was at the mercy of any popular minister who might have chosen to demand its overthrow. But when that House saved us from Irish Rule and we realized that it might some day be the only barrier between our liberties and the designs of some unscrupulous demagogue, hardly a vote could be found for abolition and even a reason- able reform of the hereditary House was put aside by common consent. Is the hereditary principle discontinued in the British constitution?^^ (He) " It has disappeared as regards the House of Lords which is partly composed of elected mem- 109 bers and partly of retired governors, diplomats and others who take their titles and seats by right of past services; but the Crown is, of course, hereditary. There has never been any great demand or serious agitation for a Republican form of government. The frightful financial crash in France in the twentieth century : the long-continued corruption in American municipalities and legislatures, and the confirmed anarchy to which the South American Republics have always been subject have been so many object-lessons of what we had to fear. The British have always been noted for a conservative adherence to the ills they have. Many of our monarchs have been very poor stuff. The system, in fact, is theoretically very bad. A man who is taught from his very cradle that he is superior to other men must infallibly turn out something of a dunce. Nevertheless, in actual working, our system gives better results than any other. We know what monarchy costs us, and we do not like the expense, but we know also that it saves us from leakages and breakages, and rocks of sundry kinds, and, perhaps, from barratry and mutiny, and from conspiracies which could not be defeated at twenty times the expense of our present system. No democratic constitution has yet devised a decent method of selecting the best men to fill responsible posts. Not a day passes without some important appointment being made — governors of colonies, ambassadors, diplomats, admirals, generals, judges, bishops, lieutenants of counties, magistrates, con- 110 sulSj heads of departments, &c., and no substitute for the king's authority has yet been found. Seniority and length of service are the rule, but efficiency perpetually requires that the rule shall bo set aside, and although the ministry of the day are supposed to make the selection, yet they consult -the king in each case, because his longer experi- ence makes him a sounder judge, in nearly every case, than a Prime Minister. This is in reverse of the tendency of your time, but experience shows that the flattery, the adulation and the personal influence which can be brought to bear on a minister, have no effect in determining the choice of a king. We still overpay our chief servants, but we do succeed in getting the best men, and that pays for everything. The expenses attendant upon royalty have been reduced from time to time — the pageantry and splendour of the Court are replaced by simplicity and refinement — but we have certainly reached the limit of reduction, and there is now a widespread fear lest the Brunswicks should abdicate "their position. In 1946, a great-great-grandson of Victoria declined to serve, and resolutely retired into private life. His brother ascended the throne by virtue of a special Act of Parliament. The king's public duties, of course, are purely cere- monial, ])ut the responsibility of making appoint- ments to important public posts in the full light of public discussion and criticism are quite enough for the energies of one man, however ably he may be aided by the ministry of the day. I may mention Ill that the popularity of the monarchy was increased by a law which prescribes that the Royal family may only marry English subjects, consequently, if one of them desires to marry a foreigner, a special Act of Parliament becomes necessary/' (!) " A very judicious change. It used to be a common remark that the Royal family had not a drop of English blood among them ; whilst they were continually pressed to provide for a horde of impecunious German relatives at our expense ; though it was notorious that the German royalties did not dare to provide for a single Englishman, because of the unconcealed jealousy of the German populace, who naturally considered that any good bei'ths they might have to bestow should be given to Germans. I suppose war is abolished now ? " {Hf) "No, indeed. War is still found to be the only remedy for some evils. It has been an unfor- tunate necessity, and must still be reckoned as a terrible possibility. It is a tonic, without which the race degenerates, and society is in danger of stagnation and corruption. Its effect is nearly always beneficial. It is Nature's method of purging nations from greed, pride, and sloth- fulness." (i) " It may be a necessary evil, but I defy you to prove to me that it is beneficial." {He) "Take the actual results of the two greatest wars of your own time. If Gladstone had been in Lincoln's shoes the terrible American Civil War would not have taken place. The idea of 112 coercing the Southern States would not have been entertained for one moment. He would have produced ten thousand excellent invertebrate dialectical reasons for avoiding a conflict — and the result ? Slavery would have been established on the Gulf of Mexico for many generations, if not for ages ; and instead of one undivided American nation, there would have been two nations with hostile Customs' tariffs and a line of Custom-houses stretching across the continent; two armies and two fleets always watching for causes of conflict^ always intriguing for European assistance, and even (0 ! lowest degradation) looking for support amongst the South American republics. The results of the war of 1870 were almost equally o-ood. Without it German union could not have been attained and French arrogance and conceit would have brought on continual conflicts. See, too, the energy, the seriousness, the reforming and progressive spirit which possessed all those nations after their various disasters. Notwithstanding the oppressive bureaucracy to which both nations were subject, the France and the Germany of 1900 were a hundred years a-head of their condition in 1870. It is now hardly disputed that although war, like medicine, is a thing to be avoided, if possible, yet its results are usually beneficial to both parties, and without it some nations decline in patriotism, courage, industry, fortitude, and all the sterner virtues. War has been a useful and effective instrument, though a terrible one, iu the training 113 and the progress of the human race, thoug-li we naturally prefer to avoid that form of education and of chastisement so long as we can do so without dishonour. A chief objection to war has been that the men killed in battle are usually the bravest, the men who court danger and whose natural daring has led them to enlist; but with conscription this objection disappears, whilst the argument founded upon the suffering entailed by war is balanced by the undoubted fact that continued peace encourages effeminacy and pusil- lanimity when peace can only be kept by a coward- like avoidance of the risks and perils which must come to every nation from time to time. Death is sm-ely preferable to loss of manliness and national self-respect. Death may take us prematurely to the Next Life, but how much more satisfactory to arrive there sealed with the seal of duty fulfilled and branded with the stamp of heroism, than to slink through life for a few more years in dishonoured and inglorious ease. A nation content to live on the memory of past laurels, content to fatten in peace under the contempt of its neigh- bours, has taken the first step upon that steep decline which ends in obliteration. There are worse evils than war. The humiliations which England endured in your generation, brought upon you by the emasculate statesmen (!) who could do naught but talk, who shrank from decisive action or the use of force when action and force could alone save 3'ou from grave reproach or disaster, 8 114 must have been hard to bear. All your troubles in South Africa came upon you from Mr. Gladstone's mistaken leniency to the Boers of the Transvaal. Your difficulties in Ireland would not have occurred if you had given the Irish people the stern and exact justice which sufficed for Englishmen and for Scotchmen. I am glad to say that the sophistical rhetoric by which you allowed your- selves to be led astray would no longer have power over us. For nearly two centuries past we have submitted our international relations to the Ruling Council of the Pact, whose influence strongly tends to peace, principally because the forces behind it are irresistible, but also because their decisions are governed more by law and by precedent than by sentiment or expedience." (7) " What was the origin of the International Alliance which you speak of as the Pact ? Was it in existence at the time of the Invasion of 1925 ? And what were the proximate causes of the 1925 Coalition against Britannia ? " {He) " The Pact did not come into existence until after the Great War. Eussia and France were irritated because we had spoiled their cherished scheme for dividing China between them. We had organized a Chinese army, officered by English and by Germans, and our influence was supreme in China because of our wish to maintain her independence. As for Ger- many, the unaccountable jealousy and spite which so surprised you in 1890 to 1900 broke out from 115 time to time, and this hostility, however causeless, was none the less patent to all men. But it is now- known that the chief reason for the Coalition was the growing- strength of the British Empire as represented by the Council of Imperial Defence, which was the forerunner and origin of the Great Pact. In your time the British Empire consisted of a bundle of nations loosely held by a nominal allegiance to the Crown, together with certain Crown Colonies and Dependencies. The whole burden of defending these scattered allies and retainers fell upon Britannia, and it was required to achieve two main objects. Firstly, that a scheme of Imperial Defence should be perfected, by which each unit of the Empire should contribute, in pro- portion to its means, towards the cost of defending the whole. Next, that a Deliberative Council should be formed, on which each unit of the Empire should be represented in proportion to the amount con- tributed. Both these results were attained in the following scheme : — First, Britannia agreed to impose a Customs tax of 5 per cent, on tlie value of all imports, except the productions of the British Empire. Next, the various Colonies and Dependencies imposed a similar (extra) tax on all goods imported from foreign countries. This tax (or rather surtax) was everywhere known as the Defence Tax. The amount thus raised by Britannia was about £20^000,000, which was spent on the Navy and in providing for the Conscription, with a concurrent scheme of schools for technical 8 * 116 trainiDg. The Defence Tax raised by tlie outlying portions of the Empire, India and the Colonies, amounted to £18,000,000 per annum, which was spent entirely upon ships and fortifications/' (J) "But how could Englishmen be got to con- sent to a Protective duty ? In my time Free Trade was a fetish. Not a thing to be justified by reason- ing and upheld by argument, but a bogey ! And the man who questioned it was held to be guilty of the Unpardonable Sin." (He) " There cannot be a doubt that Free Trade was the foundation of British commercial pre- dominance, but your superficial legislators were ludicrously inclined to overvalue its usefulness, and they were incapable of appreciating the effect of any modification of it. Consider, for instance, the effect of the bounty on refined sugar, paid by France and Germany. The bounty went into the pockets of British consumers, of course, and that was clearly a boon to our people; but, as the bounty must in time effect the ruin of British sugar-refiners, the common-sense course would have been to put on an import duty exactly equal to the bounties. The Exchequer would thus have intercepted the bounties for the benefit of the con- sumers, whilst the refiners could have carried on their business without disturbance. But no sooner was the proposal made than an outcry was raised by all the tadpoles of the Eadical party against the proposal to ' protect ' sugar-refiners ! It was purely a party cry, but your nerveless government 117 gave way to it and many of the refiners were accordingly ruined. Tho cry of 'protection' was raised again wlien the 5 per cent. Defence Tax was adopted^ and with more reason than in the case of the proposed countervailing duty against sugar bounties : but this time the nation was in earnest in desiring to meet the Colonies half-way in any workable pi'oposal for a closer union, and eventually the Defence Tax was adopted, not as a protective tax but simply to provide funds for the defence of the Empire and to establish a closer bond with those important nations which we were pleased to call our Dependencies. Probably it costs us a trifle more than some other kind of taxation — possibly we lost 10 per cent, of our total trade by the falling off of our trade with foreign countries, and that only nine out of that 10 per cent, was recovered by the increased trade with our own Colonies — but we could Avell afford so small a loss in consideration of the increased security to the Empire and of the enhanced friendliness of each part of the Empire for every other part. Practically, few but fanatics objected to the measure, whilst the conclusive and irresistible argument in its favour was that it was the only possible system by which our object could be attained. To reject the scheme would have been to throw away the opportunity of establishing a strong working Federation of the Empire and an efficitnt scheme of defence against any possible coalition. . . . Xow, Germany, France, and Russia 118 had always taxed, our products, not 5 per cent. but 25 per cent, and more, so that we could but laugh when they loudly complained that the Defence Tax encouraged inter-Britannic and inter- Colonial trade at the expense and to the disad- vantage of foreign nations. Nevertheless, both France and Germany took it amiss that we should dare to increase our trade with our own possessions at their expense, and the German Foreign Office redoubled the efforts, which began in Bismarck's time, and which they had never ceased to make, to embroil us with France, or with Russia, or both. But about 1922 a change for the better became apparent. The German Press received orders to cease their vituperation of England, and the British began to congratulate each other that amicable relations were being established. Soon after, rumours were spread that Russia and France were meditating an attack upon Germany. All three made immense preparations for war, and although Britannia offered her services as mediator the pre- parations continued and the Liberal Ministry assured the House of Commons that we need not spend money on armaments because our intentions were pacific ! But, early in 1925, sundry unreasonable claims were pressed upon us, and as we could not possibly agree to them, an ultimatum was presented jointly by the Ambassadors of Russia, France, and Germany, who then presented letters of recall, and the following day our Mediterranean fleet was annihilated by the combined fleets of the allies.''^ 119 (7) " How did the Pact arise ? " {Be) " After the great war Canada made a formal proposal to the Council of Imperial Defence that she should be allowed to join the United States on condition that they, the United States, should join the League for Imperial Defence. As America had everything to gain by this and nothing to lose, as she would thus realize her long-cherished dream of a single people, under one flag, speaking one language, and reaching from the Gulf of Mexico to the North Pole, whilst her internal affairs remained under her own sole control and she obtained admission on equal terms to the markets of the biggest Empire and of the most important commercial countries in the world, Congress agreed eventually to the proposal : the more readily, perhaps, because Americans thus acquired rights of citizenship in the best climates of the temperate zones; they realized the advantage of access to many more good markets for their increasing manufactures and other pi'oducts ; they thus acquired a voice in the direction of the world's aifairs which they could not otherwise obtain, and a hundred millions of Americans discovered that life possessed more colour, more variety and a wider range of interest than when their sympathies Avere confined to their own prosaic and essentially matter-of-fact land. Americans now have an important voice in the government and adminis- tration of India, Africa, Ceylon, Southern China, the West Indies and the Pacific islands. The 120 continued existence of the Great Pact is, in fact, a guarantee that the civilization of the world shall proceed upon Anglo-American lines, that arbitration shall supersede war whenever that is possible, and that the rivalries and jealousies which are fomented by differences of language and of institutions shall, outside Europe, be replaced by a keen but friendly and generous emulation in the arts of peace, aud for the amelioration of the condition of mankind. The admission of America as a member of the Pact was not effected without much opposition, and it was curious that whilst in England the opposition came from the Tory party and the educated classes, the masses being favourable to the proposal, in America the educated and intelligent classes were entirely in favour of the scheme, whilst the opposition came from the ignorant and unthinking amongst the masses, chiefly descendants of Irish, Italians and Germans. Eventually, how- ever, it was ratified both by Congress and by Parliament, and it is beyond question that the arrangement benefits both countries, though it is not soothing to our pride to see our offspring surpass us in numbers, in wealth and even in masterfulness/' (!) " Do they still celebrate the 4th of July ? " (He) " Certainly, but without the sjDreadeagleisni and brag which formerly accompanied the celebra- tiou. Since their historical writers plucked up courage enough to tell the tale of the War of Independence without bias the conviction has made 121 its way into the minds even of Americans, that although independence was inevitable some time or other, and they are right to magnify the deeds of the untrained colonists who stood up so bravely against regular troops, yet it is well for them, as self-respecting men, not to crow too much. It is recognized that it was ungenerous and mean to refuse to make a reasonable contribution towards the heavy expenses which England for 150 years had defrayed in wars against savages, and against France and Spain, and that the stamp duties and the tea duty were the smallest contributions they could be asked for. Moreover, the debates in Parliament at that time show clearly that they could have obtained complete self-government, with patience and firmness, by constitutional means. Uistorians, too, admit that the colonists would not have had the ghost of a chance of success in the revolutionary war had it not been for the fact that the whole of the energies of Great Britain were engrossed by the war with France and Spain. Time, however, has soothed all our griefs and given to Americans that breadth of view which could hardl}^ be expected in a young and sensitive people elated with the pride of growth and of their success in the achievement of their immense expansion within so brief a period of time. . . The history of America during the last three centuries is a record of startling surprises, fierce contests, amazing tragedies, and of such upheavals and conflicts as constitute a terrible page in that appalling story. 122 the Martyrdom of Man — a record also of much success in the solution of social and economic problems. When they adopted Free Trade and when they afterwards joined the Pact they felt the impulse of a quickened commerce and an enlarged national life. For the first time, they then became a world-power — and since then their interest in the education and the development of Africa and Asia lias been as vivid as our own. Their political genius in governing and training inferior and undeveloped races is equal to that of the British, ■whilst the strenuous and intense crises and conflicts through which they have successfully passed have given them a seriousness and solidity of character •which they did not exhibit in their callow youth. Democracy has presented to them many a riddle, upon the right solution of which has depended their national existence, but eternal vigilance has pulled them through in triumph. Euroj)e rejoiced greatly when America adopted Free Trade, but Europe now finds in her a commercial antagonist whose productions flood the world and challenge all comers, not only for cheapness but for ingenuity and excellence. Their admission to partnership with us in our Colonies and Dependencies was a stroke of luck to them : it gave them the free run of the largest and best markets in the world : and although there are Britons who bewail the fact and .speak as if Americans monopolized all the good posts, yet there cannot be a doubt that we gained more than we gave, whilst America gained without 123 giving anything. Both countries increased their trade area : both gained in pohtical weight and importance. America acquired a real interest in peoples and in countries of infinite and picturesque variety, whilst we and all our colonies benefit by the force and enterprise imparted to our national life by the inclusion of 500^000^000 of energetic citizens. Each step forward that America or Australia or Britannia takes, in social usages or political practice is copied or bettered bj'^the others, and this international emulation, operating in the sight of all mankind, has very pronounced results. . . . The king has lately appointed Jon" Emocrat, a retired President, to be Viceroy of Egypt, and the Council of Defence confirmed the appointment unanimously. . . . In the twentieth century the world looked to London for news, for example, for stimulus and for initiative. The twenty-second century has given America the first place, and in the Cairo Herald, the Timbuctoo Joarnal, the Tokio Times and the Simla News, readers usually turn to the columns of telegrams from Chicago and from New York to learn the latest event or the next excitement, before they read the news which London sends." (J) " No doubt, your statesmen are men of mark and of great mental gifts, to fill with success posts of so much responsibility as is involved in the government of nations so mighty and so jDopulous?" {He) *'No unusual talent is required to make a statesman. Any man of wide cultivation and of 124 broad sympathies can fit himself for any such post providing he possess tbe two indispensable requisites viz., perfect integrity and firmness of character. You shall read in the pages of our historians the contempt which fills the minds of men when they consider the misdoings of some of those emasculated spouters who posed as statesmen in the nineteenth century, but who could do naught but talk — who shrank from decisive action, or the use of force, when force and action could alone save the State from graver evils — who drifted helplessly with popular clamour — who could but follow the stream of ignor- ant opinion — who worshipped mere numbers — who counted empty heads and said 'here is wisdom' — who gave a cowardly acquiescence to accomplished fact, however fatuous or even immoral — who dared not be in the right with two or three. You will find that the verdict of history upon those men is a condemnation of them and of their methods. Your Gladstones and your Granvilles were utterly unfit for the responsible posts and the great dignity you conferred upon them." (I) ''Mr. Gladstone and Earl Granville took the view that conciliation is better than running the risk of bringing upon the nation all the horrors of war; and it was with the consent of Parliament that we sacrificed much in order that we might be able to reflect that we had unselfishly done our duty to the many peoples who had been placed by Providence in our hands and who were subject to us." [He) " If you had sacrificed a little less and ruled 125 a little more, you would have deserved better, both of the races subject to you and of your descendants. There was too nuich snivelling about you, and not enough backbone. I do not say that you were hypocrites, but you were over-concei'ned as to what the world would say about you. Your unctuous conscientiousness became a canker which paralyzed all action, if action meant coercion of any body, no matter how lawless, selfish, or immoral that body might be. Consider the condition of the negroes in some of the West India Islands, how utterly idle, ignorant and immoral they became under your supine benevolence, and reflect how industrious, obedient and prosperous they would certainly have been made by a Cromwell, a Bismarck, a Skobeleff or any other firm ruler. When Hindoos clamoured for a Parlia- ment for which they were unfit — when Irishmen howled at being compelled to pay their debts — when Boers shrieked for liberty' whilst denying the ordinary rights of citizenship to Englishmen in the Transvaal : your fits of flabby remorse were not only laughable but contemptible. You remember the case of the Frenchman, who, being convicted of the murder of both his parents, appealed to the jury for mercy on the ground that he was an orphan ? If that man could have made his appeal to an audience in Exeter Hall, or to a mob in Hyde Park on a Sunday afternoon, he would very possibly have been acquitted by acclamation. Oppression is a hateful thing and demoralizes both the tyrant and his victims^ but the people who have not the firmness 126 to insist tliat moral and legal obligations must be fulfilled, are on the downward path : the sceptre is falliug from them : the nerveless grasp that cannot hold the sword of Justice must drop the keys of power. Posterity looks with loathing at your nine- teenth-century feebleness — your great opportunities Avasted — your concessions to lawlessness in Ireland — your timidity in dealing with the International questions which arose with Eussia, France and Germany successively. Tiie pitiful yielding to every power that chose to make a claim against you — and what power did not make claims, knowing that, no matter how extravagant or outrageous such claims, England would bear no malice and woidd exact no sufficient reparation for outrages when backed up by menace and vulgar agitation ! ^' (/) ''''You should remember that the statesman who wishes to avoid war is greatly tempted to make concessions so long as his country^s interests are not vitally affected.''^ (He) " The statesmen who make concessions which are not in accordance with strict justice are unfit for their high position. They should be rele- gated to the obscurity of private life and the contempt of all self-respecting people. Such men are not competent to rule a State of wide dominions, and of old and great traditions. They might have suited Servia, or Bulgaria, or Peru ; but they could have had no sufficient conception of the dignity of the people whom they represented. They could not have realized the obvious image which filled 127 the minds of all other Britons, viz. : that in each of these 'concessions' the "svhole world was an onlooker : that public men in every country throughout the world had their eyes upon each of those transactions : that all over the world men said to each other, ' England always gives way, no matter how important the question involved : no matter how puny the State which has the im- pudence to " claim : " no matter that the claimant would not dare to raise such pretensions against any other State with only a tithe of England's power. It was so with Ancient Rome in the days of her decadence : she always gave way : she did all she honourably could to avoid war : she also became a Colossus with feet of clay. England is the only great Power that does not resent a slap on the cheek or an attempt to filch her patrimony. Let us therefore filch a trifle, and not be afraid to slap if she objects. We know the fate of Carthage ; we know the fate of Imperial Rome. A State which cannot be kicked into fighting must submit to lose her possessions and her position.' " (I) " The leniency with which Mr. Gladstone and Earl Granville treated the presumption of the smaller powers who raised up disputes with us, was due to the facL that they were emphatically, in the personal sense, gentlemen. They would not tolerate any approach to bullying or intimidation. The truculence and arrogance with which Germany and France treated small States stank in their nostrils, and they would not endorse or countenance so 128 mean a spirit under any conditions. Their rule was that England's attitude to Portugal, Nicaragua, or the Transvaal should be as studiously consider- ate, and as little aggressive, as her treatment of Russia, France, America or Germany." {Re) " I accept your statement, and I am glad to say that such an attitude is worthy in every way of a powerful nation ; but you were not dealing with men, or with nations, which possessed a similar sense of personal dignity, and although the policy of giving way on all occasions was easy and pleasant — was it safe ? Did it not invite aggres- sion ? Was the Quai d'Orsay, any more than Pretoria or Caracas, actuated by the principles of the Sermon on the Mount ? In the circum- stances of the time, and in view of the reflex effect of such action, was it well to allow the smaller and weaker nations, which are seldom governed by men with so deep a sense of responsibility as are the statesmen who guide the destinies of the greater States, to acquire the conviction that they could 'bluff' England into accepting any insult, or making any desired concession, by simply claim- ing arbitration for their alleged grievance ? "Was it not an invitation to all the world to try the pleasant game of baiting the Britons, and by thus making yourselves and your country and your national dignity cheap in the sight of all mankind, were you not making war inevitable sooner or later ? " (I) '' Probably you do not know how our states- 129 men and legislators were hampered by the loud shouting- of Radical-philanthropists who knew nothing of the world outside their own narrow circle (what do they know of England who only England knowV), well-meaning men and women, full of social and personal virtues, whose tea-table politics were better fitted for the guidance of a lady's school than for the government of a world- wide Empire, with a stately record stretching back through centuries of danger and of strife. These worthy people invariably threw all their influence in favour of peace and quietness, and never could be persuaded that anything whatever was worth fighting about. I Avill admit that any statesman worthy of the name would have carried out what he knew to be right, no matter how great the risk, and no matter how violent the clamour from these parochial politicians. I must admit, too, that all our troubles in South Africa arose from Mr. Gladstone's mistaken leniency to the Boers. He applied the Golden Rule to them, who had never themselves applied the Golden Rule in practice to any man, or tribe, or nation. He thought that so pious a people must be a humane, a truthful and an enlightened people. No doubt, also, our troubles in Ireland were aggravated by the constant con- cessions, many of them quite illogical and even unjust, which were made to mere clamour. Con- cessions to a sober reflecting people like the Scotch would result in cordial feeling. To an emotional people like the Irish they simply added fuel to the 130 flame. And yet I must say that I never met a cultivated Irishman for whom I did not experience a most cordial feeling." (He) " Personally and individually most Irish- men and Irishwomen are, and always were, attractive and even lovable ; but politically, in your time, they were among the most backward and intractable of peoples. To arrive at a clear and impartial judgment upon Irish history and Irish politics, it is absolutely essential to know as exactly as possible the state of complete barbarism in which the people existed during the first fifteen or sixteen centuries of the Christian era and the obstacles which impeded the course of their development for the succeeding two or three hundred years. Without that knowledge it is a puzzle, an insoluble enigma — with it, that which is apparently strange and abnormal in Irish history becomes explicable and intelligible. It is the key to many puzzling and curious problems which are otherwise without solution. The strange absence of great, or talented, or distinguished men of Irish- Celtic birth, the fact that the leaders of the Catholic-Irish have almost always been of English or Scottish, and often Protestant, parentage. It explains the cruelty, the outrages, maiming, mutilation and torture which have distinguished the 'mere Irish' as one of the cruellest of the races of mankind, and it explains the proud boasting of Mr. Wra. O'Brien that he was prepared to suffer martyrdom at the hands of the hated Saxon, 131 followed by his piteous shrieking when he found himself deprived of his nether garments. It accounts for the faint sense of responsibility and of self-respect in forty Irish Members of Parliament, who, having sworn allegiance to the Queen, were afterwards convicted, upon the clearest evidence, of having engaged in a criminal conspiracy ao-ainst her o-overnment, and of having incited to outrage and to fraud an ignorant peasantry, onl}' too prone, at all times, to turbulence, to conspiracy, and to discontent.* It makes clear the cause for that tendency of the Celtic-Irish, at all times and in all places, to conspire against the law and against their fellow-citizens, wherever they could gather together in numbers sufficient for that purpose, and it explains that querulous com- plaining of the Irish population and their inveterate tendency to discover and cherish a ^ grievance ' or a ' wrong,' and to hug it to their souls with an ardour and a persistence that tells the tale of social instincts onl}'- partly developed and of political responsibility still in embryo. It explains, too, their childish sudden emotion in favour of each new 'grievance' that was recommended to them successively — as, for instance, the discovery that they, the most lightly taxed people in Europe without exception, had been over-taxed by £3,000,000 per annum for many years for the benefit of Eno-land and Scotland — thouo-h it was known to every student of histor}^ that Ireland for * See Note A, page lC-1. 132 liundreds of years was a continual source of expense to the English people : an expense, too, for which the latter obtained no equivalent whatever." (/) " How has posterity pronounced upon Mr, Gladstone's extraordinary volte face in the matter of Home Rule ? We were much divided in opinion on the subject in my time. Many men explained it as being simply a dishonest bid for power — he wanted to be Prime Minister for the rest of his life and imagined that the union of the great Liberal party with Parnell's eighty-five votes would enable him to defy opposition. He did not suppose for a moment that Liberals would, dare to oppose him. Others explained it as senile imbecility stimulated b}^ the arrogance produced through a long course of years by our senseless and unreasoning adulation of him." {He) " The question is curious enough, but unsavoury, and most writers are content to pass it by, or refer to it as an inexplicable blot on the career of an amiable and cultured man who missed, his true vocation when he entered political life. Nature intended him for the Church or the Law; for casuistry and the splitting of verbal hairs were bis best achievements. Much evidence has been brought forward and many books have been written on the question. The foundation of his arbitrary action in the matter was probably a sentiment of profound contempt for a people who could so bespatter him with adulation for having succeeded in translating into fact so much of the outpourings 133 of scatter-brained Radicalism and tlie preachings of shallow-pated newspaper editors. Add to tliis the desire to show to the world how omnipotent was his influence with the ignorant masses — the decadent morality which sometimes accompanies mental decline — and a petulance, an irritation of mind, and an arrogance, which are not uncommonly the accompaniments of old age : and that strange, unnatural and catastrophic termination to an other- wise brilliant career is explained/' (/) " Your contemptuous reference to newspaper editors reminds me that I have seen no ncAvspapers about in your houses since I arrived amongst you/' (Here he handed me a quarto volume, neatly bound, saying:) "To-day's Times consists of four volumes like this. Newspapers are always bound ; the cost is trifling with our present machinery." (I) " This type is admirably clear, and I like the wide margins. The altered spelling seems reasonable enough too. But why have you so many new words ? What is the meaning of terno, krati, thallar, blick, stat, palla, megron, spodor, and scores of similar words which convey no meaning to my mind ? " {He) " Fully to describe those and hundreds of other new words would require much more time than either of us can spai*e just now. They have been necessitated either by altered social conditions, by the progress of mechanical invention, or by new scientific processes. Imagine what long and detailed explanation and instruction a contemporary of Shake- 184 speare would have required from you, if sucli a one had appeared before you in the year 1897. How could he interpret steamer, oxygen, loom, telegraph, telephone, H.P., railway, bicycle, piston, motor, chloroform, revolver, rubber, rifle, gas, and a thousand other terms, familiar enough to your- selves ? How blank to him such names]as Cromwell, Pitt, Washington, Napoleon, Wellington, Cobden, Lincoln, Macaulay, Tennyson, Byron, Lowell, Bismarck, and yet how full of meaning to yourself [ And how much fuller and wider does the world become when Australia, Japan, Chicago, 'Frisco, New York, Hong Kong, Delhi, Calcutta, Uganda, Rhodesia, Khartoum are mentioned ! How explain to your visitor the vast revolutions in human power and knowledge connected with the names of Newton, Huyghens, Linnasus, Watt, Arkwright, Stephenson, Laplace, Bessemer, Darwin, Edison, Spencer, Kelvin ? And when I tell you that these illustrious men were only the forerunners of many, many others, equally original and distinguished, whose mere names bring to mind a flood of knowledge ; whose discoveries and inventions have quadrupled the effectiveness of labour, immensely increased man's dominion over nature, multiplied our advantages, and greatly diminished our risks, our toils and our pains, you will understand what pleasure lies before you when you have time to investigate the splendid history of the last two centuries. You had already, in the nineteenth century, a mass of literature in history, philosophy, ]35 poetry and fiction^ of which you were proud enough, and which, in itself, constituted a world of enjoyment, open to the very poorest of English- speaking men. During the last two hundred years, that invaluable series of intellectual achievements has never been interrupted. The elevation of mind : the acute appreciation of intellectual excellence : the vivid sympathy, and the keen desire to assuage suffering, which I trust you will recognize in all classes of our people, are due, in no small measure, to the stimulating influence of that invaluable body of literature." (7) " Is it principally the work of the British- born ? In my time, America played second fiddle to us, most decidedly, in the production of high- class literature." {He) "In your time, America was occupied with material growth and development. All her ener- gies were required for the building of cities and railroads, and for developing the resources of a vast Continent : whilst England had possessed for many generations, in thousands of cultured homes, a class of men and women whose energies turned inevit- ably to pursuits purely intellectual. Besides which, the refusal of Congress, for a long series of years, to agree to a copyright law with England, effec- tually starved American authors, because they were unable to compete with the cheap pirated literature which their publishers, for three generations, bor- rowed from England. But the twentieth century ■witnessed a grand uprising of American literary 136 acliievement — nothing less than a sunburst of intel- lectual glory, whose rays gladdened the hearts of Americans, English, Australians, and Africanders, and gave them all good reason to rejoice that they were English-speaking men. From that time until now America has more and more led the wav for all the English-speaking nations in aiming at a high standard of excellence in every branch of literature. I can promise you a keen pleasure in the apprecia- tion and enjoyment of American literature alone. Our great kinsmen in the Southern Hemisphere, Australia and New Zealand, are also close competi- tors with us for the laurel wreaths, and you will soon realize how highly stimulating to the best efforts of mankind are the action and inter-action of all these great and cultivated nations upon each other." (I) " I do not like to think of England being dwarfed even by nations of our own blood." [He) " We prefer to speak of Britannia rather than of England, when the collective history, or power of these islands is alluded to, for both Scotch and Irish men have contributed very largely to our great historic past. In numbers, in wealth, and in political importance we are now overshadowed by America, Australia, and South Africa — but this will always be a classic land — a shrine in which all culti- vated men feel the deepest interest : which all men wish to visit some time in their life, and whose history is of more importance to the statesman and the philosopher than that of any other single country. 137 Not so much by reason of her colonies, lier con- quests and her victories, nor for the inventions and discoveries with which she has enriched the world, but because of the political genius by which the world has been taught how to reconcile social pro- gress and moral development with the enjoyment of political equality and complete individual liberty — and, perhaps I should add, because so much of the world's best literature has emanated from this little island. Our accumulated wealth is enormous, far beyond any estimate that you would be likely to form — but we would rather part with every shred of our great material advantages than lose that store of intellectual wealth which consists in the accumulated efforts of the genius of past ag-es, and which constitutes a most precious endowment, not only for ourselves, but for two thousand millions of English-speaking peoples." (J) " Doubtless the literature of the French, German and Spanish peoples has shown a similar development ? " {He) " A notable development, certainly, but not to the same extent either in quantity or in quality and for a very obvious reason. The world now contains 2,000,000,000 of Enghsh- speaking peoples : whereas French is spoken by less than 200,000,000 and German by 300,000,000 only. An author in England has so vast an audience that success means not merely instant fortune, but enormous influence : and a very small measure of success ensures an easv livelihood. 138 rbis leads to the cultivation and devotion of many- minds to the literary career^ and thus an amount or quantity of real excellence comes to the front, of which a certain percentage is found to be of that quality which is universally recognized as genius. A man must have a real message to deliver if his- productions are to live — second-class matter is simply crowded out by the abundance of those- productions of acknowledged excellence which are recognized as being facile priuceps. Ko mute inglorious Milton need remain silent : the field is so large^ and the demand so extensive, that when a genius appears he finds no difficulty in obtaining a hearing ; and the money reward is the least of the incentives to an author to continue his labours. It is a great thing to know that your work is hailed with joy in the remotest corners of the civilized world ; to know that your name is a household word to half the h.uman race. It is a grander thing to know that your message is doing good ; that your ideas are moulding the destiny of mankind, and that your name may perhaps be enrolled with the imperishable ones. You will be interested to know that a distinguishing feature of English literature, for many generations past, has been the notable part taken by women in the production of romantic literature. In America and England, especially, more than one-half of the best novels are produced by women. In crisp narrative and sparkling dialogue it is generally conceded that they excel ; but no poet of the first rank has yet- 130 appeared from the ranks of tlic feminine sex, nor do they appear among" the great humourists. . . Writers of some eminence have appeared from time to time in the less extensive languages — Dutch, Danish, Swedish, &c. — but the number of those in the first rank is not great, for the reason that the rewards being small there are few candidates, and therefore few authors of great eminence." (I) ''How comes it that the English language has spread so widely ? " (IL) " So much of the world's trade is carried on by America, Australia, New Zealand, India,. South Africa and other English-speaking countries that it is now the common language of commerce and finance in all parts of the world : and the language contains so many of the world's classics : so large a part of the world's science, the current literature, the foremost thought, that all men of education, in every nation, must acquire it. Thus its very preponderance tends to make it more- preponderant." (Z) " Is India an English-speaking country ? How did that come about ? " {IL;) ''Even in your OAvn time it was becoming* a necessity that every educated man in India should speak English, no matter to which nation he belonged of the many nations of which that vast Empire is composed : irrespective of his religion, his caste, or his own native vernacular. That tendency has spread, generation after generation. 140 and when at length the Government decreed that English should be taught in all public schools, there was universal satisfaction^ because all thinking men agreed that no more practical step could be taken to give that huge agglomeration of nations, races, creeds, languages, castes and tribes the feeling that they have a common country and common interests than to give them a common language, especially as that language is the best and easiest medium for teaching such knowledge as those peoples are most in need of. The restrictions of caste, the jealousies of race, and the hatreds of creeds are being effectually dissolved by two chief agencies — the diffusion of the English language and the conscription, which takes every youth from his home for one year, and returns him to his parents with wider ideas and with a sentiment of affection for and loyalty to his native land, a feeling which the masses in India never before experienced.'^ (J) " Conscription in India ! I doubted the wisdom of your adoption of the conscription in England, but it seems to me still more doubtful in India/' (i/e) "All countries now submit to conscription. It is not always for military reasons, but because a nation cannot reach its full measure of efficiency without it. In India each conscript has to serve at a long distance from his place of birth. Besides the discipline and obedience taught by military drill, he learns to speak English, and a good part 141 of his term is spent in making- or repairing those huge reservoirs, or hikes, Avhich now so effectually guard the country from famine when the rains fail, and which, under the management of the Fisheries Department, have furnished so large an addition to the food resources of the country. In England, in your time, the newspapers, with that shallow flippancy with which they treated most subjects of importance, condemned conscrip- tion as being ' un-English ' and a terrible drain upon a nation's resources. The fact being that a well-ordered conscription is an addition to the resources of a nation, and without it no nation, large or small, can be properly organized to bring out its full capacity for military defence, for industrial development, or for the successful con- struction and maintenance of a harmonious social organization. It was a most fortunate thing for England that Parliament should have decided in 1915 to adopt a tentative kind of conscription, for without the skeleton organization thus furnished it is very probable that the Great Invasion of 1925 could not have been so successfully met." {I) " It used to be held, and by competent military experts, that if a well-equipped hostile army of 100,000 men should once gain a footing on our shores, they could not be resisted. But it was so strongly felt that a conscription meant an infringement upon the liberty of the individual citizen that no government dared to propose it." {He) " Emancipation from authority is not liberty. 142 Freedom consists in self-control, in submission to the laws and in active co-operation with other citizens for the good of all. Fortunately, in 1925, about three millions of men had gone through their drill and were on the rolls for mobilization at a &AHVH8n-i;^ ^ ^1 I rvr t .bA #-1 *^ so. 5; ^ II lllllilhlililiiliii AA 000 398 713 8 Uoiversiiy o' if";,,,; 11 L007 191 985 6 fO% ^0FCAIIF0% I ^rlt•u«lvtK. ^ \^^ 1^ ^OAHvaani^'^ i^^l ^ ^^ 5 = f % ^ ^ i sov >^ "^/^aj >J0^