( LIBRARY UNIVEMBTY OP CAUF«RNIA SmN DIESO U M) fUtt*- A MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY NAPOLEON. [Frontispiece MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY ERNEST SCOTT Professor of History in the University of Melbourne MELBOURNE: MACMILLAN AND CO. LTD. Head Office': LONDON 1920 $&$& MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited LONDON' - BOMBAY - CALCUTTA - MADRAS MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK - BOSTON - CHICAGO DALLAS - SAN FRANCISCO - ATLANTA THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. TORONTO PREFACE This book grew out of a practical need which the writer experienced for a series of short explanations of some typi- cal modes of political thought illustrating what may be figured as the background of modern history. The method employed has been to take a leading thinker or statesman representing a distinct school or point of view, to expound the ideas which he taught or upon which he acted, and to connect with this biographical nucleus cognate systems of thought. For example, the study of "Rousseau and the Rights of Man" discusses the philosophy of political rights expounded by Rousseau, and connects it with the question of slavery. By the choice of typical examples an attempt has been made to illustrate the main currents of political and social thought in recent times. In each instance the aim has been to state the case fairly from the point of view of the thinker or statesman selected, and to indicate opposing views. The object is to make diverse modes of thinking understood, not to advocate any particular one. If the book professed to be either a comprehensive his- tory of events or a complete exposition of political thought it would certainly fail to satisfy reasonable requirements in either direction. But it has a more modest purpose. It selects twenty-four men, each of whom is representative of some particular way of looking at things, and in consider- ing their personality presents a critical view of their out- look and philosophy. There was not room for representing in one book every point of view concerning subjects which cover so wide a field, since each of the chapters might easily be expanded into a volume of august proportions, and, in fact, each of the subjects has been considered in many works. But as the author wished to indicate as many aspects as possible he determined to append to every chapter a handful of PREFACE things well said by men of various ways of thinking. These short expressions of opinion should open up fresh trains of thought. The bibliographical notes at the end of each chapter have been purposely confined to very brief dimensions. Longer lists of books might easily have been supplied, but might have alarmed instead of inciting some readers. CONTENTS PAGE CHAPTER I Rousseau and Human Rights .... 1 CHAPTER II Voltaire and Freedom of Thought ... 15 CHAPTER III Napoleon and Efficiency in Government . . 29 CHAPTER IV Metternich and Absolutism .... 45 CHAPTER V. Louis Blanc and the Rights of Labour . . 59 CHAPTER VI. Palmerston and Foreign Policy .... 75 CHAPTER VII Mazzini and Nationality . .... 93 CHAPTER VIII John Stuart Mill and Economics . . . 107 CHAPTER IX Lord Durham and Responsible Government . 121 CHAPTER X Abraham Lincoln and Democracy . . . 135 CHAPTER XI Karl Marx and Socialism ..... 149 CONTENTS. PAGE CHAPTER XII COBDEN AND FREE TRADE . . . . .165 CHAPTER XIII Darwin and Modern Science .... 179 CHAPTER XIV Herbert Spencer and Individualism . . . 191 CHAPTER XV Bismarck and Blood and Iron . . . . 205 CHAPTER XVI Gambetta and Republicanism .... 217 CHAPTER XVII Gladstone and Liberalism ..... 231 CHAPTER XVIII Disraeli and Conservatism .... 245 CHAPTER XIX Chamberlain and Imperialism .... 261 CHAPTER XX Tolstoy and Pacifism ..... 275 CHAPTER XXI Matthew Arnold and Education . . . 289 CHAPTER XXII William Morris and the Relation of Art to Life 303 CHAPTER XXIII Woodrow Wilson and the League of Nations . 317 CHAPTER XXIV H. G. Wells and Futurism ..... 333 "There is a history in all men's lives Figuring the nature of the times deceased; . The ivhich observed a man may prophesy, With a near aim, of the main chance of things As yet not come to life, which in their seeds And weak beginnings lie intreasured. Such things become the hatch and brood of time. ROUSSEAU. MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY Chapter I. ROUSSEAU AND HUMAN RIGHTS. JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU was not the first philo- sopher to expound doctrines concerning human equality, the fundamental rights of mankind, and the contractual nature of human society, which are the three principal political ideas associated with his name. There are more persuasive statements of those doctrines than are to be found in his writ- ings. But he may be taken as the most famous, and perhaps by reason of the wide influence of his works the most important, of those who have penetrated beneath law, government, custom, morals, religion, to determine what it is that man in society. is justified in claiming by virtue of his humanity, and what is the nature of his relation to the political organism of which he is a part. Sir Henry Maine was of opinion that "the world has not seen more than once or twice in all the course of history a literature which has exercised such prodigious influence over the minds of men, over every caste and shade of intellect, as that which emanated from Rousseau between 1749 and 1762." Born at Geneva in 1712, Rousseau was by turns an engraver, a footman, a music teacher, an ambassador's sec- retary, a playwright and an author of books; at heart he was always a vagabond ; he was, moreover, a lover of the beautiful in nature, of not a few women, and, theoretically 2 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY at least, of all mankind. He made little money out of his writings, though they gained him great reputation in his own lifetime. His philosophical romance Emile was denounced by the Archbishop of Paris as containing "abominable doctrine, erroneous, blasphemous and here- tical," and to avoid arrest Rousseau fled from France and threw himself on the indulgence of Frederick the Great of Prussia. Men of education who were not affected by theological bias perceived that this thin, bent man, with refined features and eyes full of fire, who spoke with such sensitiveness about plants, flowers, mountains, rivers, water- falls and birds, and who discussed the deepest problems of the universe with such profound conviction, was worthy of their esteem. The reigning Duke of Wurtemberg consulted him about a plan for the education of his daughter. He was beloved by those of his friends who learnt to overlook his waywardness. His happiest hours were spent in ftie woods and fields, gathering plants, for he was a devoted botanist; and he wrote about the things of nature with intense delight. In such passages he is a Wordsworth of French prose; and indeed the poetry of Wordsworth owed very much to Rousseau's influence. He himself wrote in his declining months, "my whole life has been nothing but one long reverie divided into chapters by my daily walks." But his deistical views, which were much misrepre- sented, evoked mob passions and official condemnation, and he found it to be expedient to take refuge in England. There the influence of David Hume procured for him a pension from George III., which, however, he did not take for more than one year — he even refused to accept the accumulated arrears long afterwards, when he was very p 00r — because a violent quarrel broke out between him and Hume, and Rousseau angrily spurned a benefaction obtained through one whom he now regarded as his enemy. The inci- dent was not, in fact, to the discredit of Hume, who did not deserve the fierce onslaught which Rousseau made upon him. At this period of his life he was morbidly sensitive, over-fond of solitary brooding, suspicious to the point of misanthropy, and quite frantically egotistical. Edward Gibbon called him "an extraordinary man with imagination enough for twelve and without common sense enough for one." In England he wrote a large part of his Confessions, one of the nakedest pieces of self-revelation ever penned by a man. ROUSSEAU 3 Returning to France, he lived for ten years in sickness and poverty, copying music for a few sous per page, dream- ing, writing, arranging and poring over his botanical speci- mens. He died in 1778. The purely political writings of Rousseau fill two sub- stantial volumes in the edition edited by Dr. C. E. Vaughan, and published in 1915. His earliest effort of the kind was a Discourse on Human Equality; but the principal piece was his Social Contract, which came from the press in 1762. That compact little treatise, in its forty-eight very short chapters — some of which consist of only a few oracular paragraphs, whilst one is complete in three sentences — expounds his mature views on government and questions relative to it. When he was old and his book had earned celebrity for him he professed to be dissatisfied with it. He then said that "those who boast that they understand the whole of it are cleverer than I am. It is a book that ought to be re-written, but I have no longer the time and strength." But even the author of the Contrat Social might have spoilt it by further revision. Rousseau took pains with his work, and wrote slowly. To have elaborated the crisp, precise, well-meditated sentences might have made the book more voluminous but could hardly have added to its force. Great little books should not be mini- mised by inflation. If there are obscure passages it is the business of the commentators to make them plain. We may hope that they have done it ; for there have been many more writers on Rousseau than there are paragraphs in the Contrat Social. Rousseau commences with a proposition and a ques- tion. "Man is born free, and everywhere he is enslaved. Many a one believes himself to be the master of others, and yet he is the greater slave than they. How has this change come about?" No man, acting compatibly with his own nature, voluntarily surrenders his liberty; a slave is only a slave because another man, or a political society, has by superior force established mastery over him. But this superior force constitutes no moral sanction. The pos- session of power does not confer any right upon a man to exercise authority over his fellow men. True, a man sac- rifices something of what Rousseau assumes to have been the primitive freedom of his race when he lives in a com- munity. He has to obey laws and accept conventions. But 4 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY in so doing he enters into a "social pact." Bach submits himself to the general will, and in return becomes a mem- ber of the whole. By giving himself to all, however, he gives himself to nobody ; for nobody acquires any rights over him which he does not acquire over others. He gains an equivalent for what he surrenders, and a greater power to preserve what is his own. The "social pact" is an assumption for the purposes of Rousseau's argument, not an historical occurrence. He assumed what never happened anywhere at any time. He made no attempt to support his hypothesis by an examina- tion of the facts as to primitive man, or man in civilised society. Neither anthropology nor history furnishes evi- dence of a "state of nature" wherein man enjoyed unlimited freedom, and nothing is known of any period when part of this freedom was consciously exchanged for the advantages secured by social life. As Huxley said, "even a superficial glance over the results of modern investigations into anthro- pology, archaeology, ancient law and ancient religion, suffices to show that there is not a particle of evidence that men ever existed in Rousseau's state of nature, and there are very strong reasons for thinking that they never could have done so and never will do so." Competent scientific obser- vers who have lived amongst those tribes of savages whose condition approaches most nearly to the "state of nature," have been surprised to find how complex their social organi- sation was. A good example is furnished by the experiences of Baldwin Spencer and Gillen among the Arunta tribe of Central Australia. They remark that "when a white man goes among Australian savages, one of the first things which strikes and also puzzles him is the intricate nature of their social system." 1 The elaborate description of the totem system of the tribes among whom these observers worked bears out their testimony completely. But this point must not, in fairness to Rousseau, be pushed too closely against him. He hardly professed to be stating a historical fact. He said, "I assume that men have reached a point at which the obstacles that endanger their preservation in the state of nature overcome the forces which each individual can exert with a view of maintain- ing himself in that state." His hypothesis was not so i Spcnr-cr and Gillen, "Across Australia," L, p. 201. ROUSSEAU 5 illogical as some of his critics have represented. Huxley jabbed his lancet into it thus: "The amount of philosophy required to base an argument on that which does not exist, has not existed, and perhaps never will exist, may well seem unattainable." But it is true that somehow, if not originally at some dateable time and in some definable place and by some producable document, man has become subject to his fellow men in various degrees of obligation. We do not know of any condition of society, since homo sapiens was evolved, wherein this was not the case; yet for the purposes of an enquiry into fundamental rights, if there are any — and that is necessarily part of the enquiry — we commit no outrage on reason in starting from the hypo- thesis of an unrestricted freedom. It must be admitted, however, that very often Rousseau seems to have taken the assumption to be a positive fact of history. He assumes something, and then, getting warm with his argument, forgets that it was no more than an asumption with which he started. Rousseau proceeds to the contention that the social pact "tacitly includes" the consequence that "whoever refuses to obey the general will shall be constrained to do so by the whole body." Without this power of restraint the social pact would be a vain formula. The general will alone can direct the powers of society to the common good of its members. This general will constitutes the sovereignty of the community. The sovereignty may be vested in a person — a king or a republican president — or it may be assumed by a tyrant or a conqueror, or it may be forcibly usurped by a group in the interest of a class ; but essen- tially the sovereignty belongs to the whole body of those who have given up part of their individual freedom. What, then, are the "rights" of the person in the society of which he is a member? They are not formulated in any chapter of the Contrat Social; indeed, the phrase "the rights of man" nowhere occurs in the book. That phrase is most familiar to us, perhaps, as the title of another famous little book, by Thomas Paine, published as a reply to Burke's Reflections on the French Revolution, twelve years after Rousseau's death. Paine's title was taken from the "Declaration of the Rights of Man," which was being drafted by the Constitutional Committee of the Nationa! Assembly of .France at the time when he was writing his 6 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY book (1790). Both the Declaration and Paine's work are steeped to the very commas in Rousseau's dye. There is nothing in the Declaration which is not in Rousseau; the Declaration is a synopsis of the Contrat Social. If then we set down its seventeen propositions as shortly as pos- sible, we shall have a convenient summary of the book as well as of the preface to the first constitution prepared for France. They were these: — (1) Men are born free and with equal rights. (2) The aim of every political community is to preserve the natural rights of man. (3) The principle of sovereignty resides essentially in the nation. (4) Liberty consists in being able to do anything which is not injurious to others ; the exercise of natural rights by each man is limited only by the assurance of the same rights to other members of the community ; those rights can be determined only by law. (5) The law has the right to prevent only such actions as are injurious to society. (6) The law is the expression of the general will ; all the citizens have the right to concur, personally or through their representatives, in the formation of the law. (7) No man should be accused or arrested except in accordance with the law, but every citizen arrested under the law should obey on the instant. (8) The law ought to ordain only such punishments as are strictly necessary. (9) Every man being presumed to be innocent until proved guilty, he should be subjected to no rigours while he is under arrest. (10) No man should be interfered with on account of his opinions, religious or otherwise, provided that the expression of them does not disturb public order. (11) The free interchange of thought is one of the most precious of the rights of man ; every citizen ought therefore to be able to speak, write and print freely, except for abuses of that liberty, as may be deter- mined by law. (12) The guarantee of the rights of man necessitates a public force, to be maintained for the advan- tage of all. (13) This force should be maintained at the expense of all. (14) The whole body of the citizens have the right to express their views, personally or through their representatives, upon the taxes imposed upon them. (15) The community has the right to demand that any public officer shall give an account of his stewardship. (16) No community wherein these rights are not guaranteed can be said to have a constitution. (17) Property being an ROUSSEAU 7 inviolable and sacred right, no man should be deprived of his property, except when public necessity, legally declared, demands, and then he should receive a just indemnity. The principles thus distilled by the Committee of the National Assembly from the Contrat Social were not new. Rousseau had studied the works of Hobbes and Locke, and there is very little of importance in his political writings which is not to be found in theirs. Anyone who reads Locke's treatises on Civil Government will find himself truly in a drier atmosphere than that which he breathes in the more humid and flowery landscape designed by the gardener of Geneva, but the main topographical features are alike. Rousseau started from a supposed "social pact" and a "state of nature." Locke starts with Adam. Thus : "Adam had not either by natural right of fatherhood or by positive donation from God any such authority over his children, or dominion over the world, as is pretended ; if he had, his heirs had no right to it." Locke, like Rousseau, starts from the hypothesis of the primitive equality of men in "The State of Nature" — which, indeed, is one of Locke's chapter headings. In Locke's eighth chapter we find the proposition that, "men being by nature free, equal and independent, no one can be put out of this estate and sub- jected to the political power of another without his own consent" — where phrasing and thought alike remind us that Locke was one of the intellectual parents of much that is in the American Declaration of Independence, the French Declaration of the Rights of Man, and in Rousseau. But the great influence which the doctrine of the rights of man exercised in the world was directly due, undoubt- edly, more to Rousseau than to Locke. He was the inspira- tional force of the French Revolution ; and it was from him that Jefferson derived the formulae which he placed at the head of the Declaration of Independence ' (1776). — "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal ; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights ; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness ; that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed," and so forth in a cascade of pellucid propositions all flowing from Rousseau, as Moses in the wilderness struck the rock and made the water gush forth. In the original draft of the Declaration 8 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY Jefferson had inserted a strong condemnation of George III., partly on the ground that he "determined to keep open a market where men should be bought and sold, he prosti- tuted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain this execrable commerce." This passage, however, was omitted by the American Congress from the draft. But here we come against a perplexity. Joseph Jeffer- son, the author-in-chief of the Declaration of Independence, who wished to insert these harsh words, was himself a slave owner. At the close of the war he owned, according to one of his own letters, ten thousand acres of land, "154 slaves, 34 horses, 5 mules, 249 cattle, 390 hogs, and 3 oheep." 1 George Washington also owned slaves on his estate at Mount Vernon. Both represented Virginia, which con- tained a population of about four hundred thousand, one- half of whom were slaves. It should in justice to Jefferson be added that throughout his public life he professed him- self opposed to slavery as an institution, regretting, he said, that "the public mind would not yet bear the propo- sition ;" but even if all the slaves could have been freed, Jefferson confessed that "no preparation would render it expedient to admit them to the full rights of citizenship by making them a part of the electoral body." 2 What a mockery it was to aver in a solemn state document that "all men are created equal," and that "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" were "inalienable rights," when the very hand which wrote the words was that of a slave owner who did not believe that it would ever be expedient to admit negroes to the full rights of citizenship! Perhaps King George III. had sometimes "prostituted his negative" — that is, by disallowing colonial acts — but surely Jefferson com- mitted something like a prostituting of his positive. He conveniently overlooked the declaration of his mentor Rous- seau, that "these terms, slavery and right, are contradictory and exclusive." His own objection to slavery never got beyond the theoretical and sentimental stage. The application of Rousseau's theories to France led to consequences much more unfortunate. The negro slaves of San Domingo claimed that the Declaration of the Rights of Man applied to them as much as to the whites. The i Partem 's ' ' Life of Jefferson, ' ' p. 453. 3 Randall, "Life of Jefferson," Vol. III., p. 667. ROUSSEAU 9 National Assembly of France concurred with their demand, and in April, 1792, decreed that "people of colour and free negroes in the colonies ought to enjoy equality of political rights with the whites." In 1794 slavery was abolished in all French colonies. The whites of San Domingo could not permit the blacks, who greatly outnumbered them, to become their political masters, and foretold, correctly as events proved, the total destruction of the colony. Outrage and massacre, a frenzied carnival of killing and burning, with fiendishly fantastical devices for punctuating the tale of horror, marked the risings of negroes and mulattoes. The Rights of Man prevailed at the cost of the total extermi- nation of the white race. 1 The principle was imprudently applied in this instance, for people well acquainted with the colonies predicted what would occur if enfranchisement were conferred at a stroke, without taking precautions to protect the whites. But at all events the French cannot be accused of asserting funda- mental rights merely for their own advantage. They fol- lowed out the logical consequences of their doctrine to the fatal end. Whether they were as wise as they were logical is another matter. The unwisdom, the sheer inhumanity, is at once apparent of leaving twenty thousand white people to be butchered by nearly half a million negroes, drunk with the insolence of suddenly-obtained freedom. When we turn to writers of another kind — to what may be termed legal-minded authors — we find the word "rights" used in a different sense from that given to it by such as we have considered. It is, indeed, a word with a bewilder- ing variety of meanings, as may be seen by consulting the definitions given in the New English Dictionary. We have been considering a "right" as something inherently belong- ing to a human being, irrespective of law, something funda- mental, pertaining to humanity as such. But in reality there is no such thing. A savage living in an actual "state of nature" — not Rousseau's imaginary state — had no rights other than those which his tribe allowed. Civilised man has no more than his laws ensure for him. It was simple for the American Declaration of Independence to say that all men are "endowed by their Creator with certain unalien- able rights," but if any Georgian or Virginian slave in 1 T. E. Stoddard's "The French Revolution in San Domingo/' tells the stow vividly. 10 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY 1776, or at any time later, had quoted that rhetorical sen- tence it would not have been of the slightest use to him. Even now, when the thirteenth amendment of the United States constitution (1865) declares that slavery shall not exist within the territories of that country, intense racial antagonism in the former slave states imposes upon the negro disabilities which make him less than a free man in a free country. "Unalienable rights" then are not un- alienable, and they are not rights in the very country which adopted those words in the forefront of its national charter. Mr. Edward Jenks, in his Short Histoi'y of Politics (p. 93) gives us a definition which may not sound so well, but which means much more. "Leaving aside technicalities," he says, "we may define a right as being a power enforced by public sentiment. In early times," he goes on, "public opinion is expressed only in the vague form of custom; in later days it is definitely expressed in legislation and enforced by tribunals and officials. It sometimes happens that the exercise of a right is opposed to public sentiment either because there are special circumstances which render a particular application of it unpopular, or because public sentiment has changed. Nevertheless a right is really the creation of public sentiment, past or present." Similarly, Mr. D. G. Ritchie, in his searching book on Natural Rights, puts the same point thus : — "Natural rights when alleged by the would-be reformer, mean those rights which in his opinion would be recognised by the public opinion of such a society as he admires, and would either be supported or at least would not be interfered with by its laws, if it had any laws ; they are the rights sanctioned by his ideal society, whatever that may be." The idea of rights only occurs among social beings, and applies only to things enjoyed by some, or by all. They are sanctioned by law or custom, so that in the event of their being disputed a person affected could protest, "But this is my right." There would be no question of rights if each of us lived a solitary life, having no relations with others. There is no question of rights about things which everybody may have unquestioned by any. There is no right, for example, in moonlight or sunshine, because nobody wants all the moonlight or sunshine and everybody may have as much as is available. There was no right in the air before aviation was made possible; but already ROUSSEAU 11 there is beginning to be a law of the air, and in time regu- lations concerning the use of it by flying machines will become important. Law and custom will embrace atmo- spheric rights when it becomes expedient to do so. Human rights, then, do not depend for their liberality, their beneficence, upon something inherent, which every person may claim by human prerogative in whatever kind of society he may be born. In some communities, as in Sparta, life itself was denied to children whom the com- munity did not desire to grow to maturity. Liberty has been denied to large classes of persons, even by civilised nations, until quite recent times. Rights are conferred by law and maintained by law, and the attempt to get beneath this foundation to a bedrock of natural right was only suc- cessful to this extent: that it made clear what ought to be regarded as human rights in a highly developed, morally sensitive, justice-loving society. The task of peoples who have realised for themselves a high conception of human rights is to diffuse that type of society as widely. as possible. The great value of the work of Rousseau was that, by examining the form of society with which he was most familiar, and questioning the prin- ciples on which it rested, he made people think about this question of human rights, and, when the appropriate time arrived, endeavour to break down a mass of impediments to free human development. He asserted much ; he proved little; but by a Certain warmth and clarity of expression he induced large numbers of people to accept his dicta as philosophical truth, and work towards the attainment of a nobler ideal of human rights than any previously realised in European communities. Two other things about Rousseau may be said before we leave the subject. (1) Though his Social Contract may be taken as a text book of the principles of democratic government, he recognised that a democracy is subject to errors. The collective will may be the collective wisdom, but the collective wisdom may not always be wise. It may be ignorant, selfish, misled. He believed that the public advantage must on the whole be promoted by giving effect to the general will, but did not pretend that the deter- minations of the people will always be right. "Men always desire their own good, but do not always discern it." A people may be deceived, or influenced by factions to the 12 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY injury of society generally. (2) He did not stress the importance of human rights without recognising that they imply duties. "All the services that a citizen can render to the state he owes to it as soon as the sovereign demands them." Rousseau's Social Contract, translated by Henry J. Tozer, with annotations, is a very serviceable English edition of the famous book. H. G. Graham's Rousseau is a charming little book. Morley's Rousseau is a magisterial work, the best treatise on the subject in English. On the matter of human rights generally, there is nothing better than D. G. Ritchie's book on Natural Rights. Sir, I would sooner sign a sentence for his [Rousseau's] transportation than that of any felon who has gone from the Old Bailey these many years. Yes, I would like to see him work at the plantations. — Dr. Johnson. Man cannot enjoy the rights of an uncivil and of a civil state together. That he may obtain justice he gives up his right of determining what it is in points the most essential to him. That he may secure some liberty he makes a surrender in trust of the whole of it. — Burke. A dozen books in political literature — Grotius on the Rights of War and Peace (1625), for instance, and Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations (1776) — rank in history as acts, not books. Whether a dozen or a hundred, the Social Con- tract assuredly was one. — Lord Morley. It would have been better for the tranquillity of France if that man [Rousseau] had never lived. — Napoleon. The traditional theory of the conventional and mechani- cal character of political society was too firmly fixed to be shaken even by the immense influence of St. Thomas Aquinas, and it continued to dominate European political theory until the genius of Rousseau finally restored to Europe the organic conception of the state. — A. J. Carlyle. Rousseau, though one of the most fascinating, is one of the most inconsistent of political writers, and he continually lays down broad general principles but recoils from their legitimate consequences. — Lecky. While the Declaration of Rights was before the National Assembly, some of its members remarked that if a decla- ration of rights were published it should be accompanied ROUSSEAU 13 by a Declaration of Duties. The observation discovered a mind that reflected, and it only erred by not reflecting far enough. A declaration of rights is, by reciprocity, a decla- ration of duties also. Whatever is my right as a man is also the right of another ; and it becomes my duty to guar- antee as well as to possess. — Thomas Paine. When the people contend for their liberty, they seldom get anything by their victory but new masters. — Lord Halifax. If men could rule themselves, every man by his own command — that is to say, could they live according to the laws of nature — there would be no need at all of a city, nor of a common coercive power. — Hobbes. If the liberty of man consists in the empire of his reason, the absence whereof would betray him to the bondage of his passions, then the liberty of a commonwealth consists in the empire of her laws, the absence whereof would betray her to the lust of tyrants. — Sir John Harrington. The constitution of all society requires that each indi- vidual member of it should yield up a part of his liberty in return for the advantages of mutual help and defence; yet at the bottom that surrender should be part of the liberty itself; it should be voluntary in essence. — William Morris. The meaning of the term Natural Law necessarily varies from age to age. It stands for nothing more than the code of morality commonly accepted in a given state of civilisa- tion. And in an essentially unmoral — not, it will be observed, immoral — age, like that of primitive man — an age which is without "moral relations" of any sort or kind — it can have had no existence at all. — C. E. Vaughan. Rousseau sent his children to the foundling hospital, and could not afterwards trace them. His spiritual chil- dren can be found more easily. If one considers the most characteristic features of a great part of European thought since Rousseau's time — the literature of sentiment, the genuine or affected love for natural scenery, the reaction against rationalism and against classicism, even the pes- simism of the nineteenth century, along with its deeper sense of sympathy (often more sentimental than rational) with the poor, one might say that, in some degree, we are all Rousseau's children. At least there are a good many of them at the present time who do not know their spiritual father. — D. G. Ritchie. VOLTAIRE. [Page 14 Chapter II. VOLTAIRE AND FREEDOM OF THOUGHT. THE reason for the choice of Voltaire as our typical man in the history of the intellectual warfare for freedom of thought is not that he was the great- est force, or the most original thinker, or the boldest among the daring company. His methods were often more calculated to wound his adversaries than to demolish their case ; and as one reads his witty, stinging attacks, it is easy to understand that if "no writer has ever roused more hatred in Christendom than Voltaire," 1 the reason was not merely that his arrows flew straight, but that their barbs were envenomed. With- out having any sympathy with his enemies, and fully recog- nising that in the eighteenth century the devil of persecution could not be exorcised with the holy water of sedate reasoning, the irritation provoked by this fierce foe of clericalism is not very surprising. Heresy is the per- petual hair-shirt of the church ; Voltaire added pin points to it. Whatever his limitations, Voltaire was the central figure in the history of this subject. His thin, wizened form casts its shadow between two ages: that is, as nearly as we can ever say that there is a clear demarcation between one historical period and another. In reality, .we cannot paint streaks across the surface of time and say that one period ended here and another began there. We make such divisions for our convenience, but they are never hard and fast. There was much free critical speaking and writ- ing about theological and political things before Voltaire ; there has been a terrible amount of persecution of opinion since Voltaire. Yet it is true that he is the central man, iBury, "History of Freedom of Thought," p. 156. 15 16 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY standing between an age when persecution was rife, free- dom of thought restrained, and one when such freedom grew into vogue and persecution became not so much a policy as an intermittent ebullition of spiteful and half- ashamed bigotry. Voltaire himself contributed very largely to produce the change. The orthodox church wielded immense power in France during his lifetime. "In France," writes Morley, "the strictly repressive policy of the church in the eighteenth century, sometimes bloody and cruel as in the persecution of the Protestants, sometimes minutely vexatious as in the persecution of the men of letters, but always stubborn and lynx-eyed, had the natural effect of making it a point of honour with most of those who valued liberty to hurl them- selves upon the religious system, of which rigorous intole- rance was so prominent a characteristic." 1 It was this huge ecclesiastical machine that Voltaire attacked with the facile and voluminous energy which was so characteris- tic of him. No one had ever assailed it so fiercely before. Martin Luther was conservative and heavy-handed in com- parison with Voltaire. Besides, Luther's aim never was freedom of thought; Voltaire's emphatically was that. In the whole fifty-two volumes of his books and correspon- dence, it is safe to say that not a sentence was writ- ten for any purpose other than that of winning scope for the candid expression of the critical judgment of the individual. Nor was he ever wantonly an enemy to any kind of sincere belief which was not associated with an organisation seeking to wield power by means of force and deception. "You will perceive," he says in a letter, "that I speak only of superstition ; as for religion, I love and respect it as you do." 2 Francois Marie Arouet, the son of an attorney, was born near Paris in 1694. He was educated at a Jesuit school. Before he was twenty he was writing poems and plays which brought him into prominence. The turning point in his life occurred shortly after he adopted the name which he made so famous. Dining at the table of the Due de Sully, and flashing his wit freely in his habitual man- ner on the subjects of conversation, he drew upon him an i Morley 's "Voltaire," p. 219. 2 See on this point Morley, p. 221. VOLTAIRE 17 insolent snub from a young man of the great house of Rohan. The youth asked who this was who talked so loud. "It is one who does not drag a big name about with him, but who secures respect for the name he has," replied Voltaire. 1 The aristocrat, vanquished by Voltaire's rapier, took his revenge with cudgels. He employed some ruffians to belabour the poet. There was no legal redress in France for a plebeian against a nobleman, so Voltaire challenged de Rohan to a duel. The only satisfaction vouchsafed to him came in the form of a lettre de cachet, by which he was consigned to the Bastille. His imprison- ment lasted only about a fortnight (April 17 to May 2, 1726), and he was treated with much consideration. He secured his liberation on giving an undertaking that he would leave France. In choosing England as his place of exile, Voltaire did well. Already famous, he was welcomed among the men of letters and philosophers, who maintained in the reign of George I. the bril.liancy which had marked the period of Queen Anne. Still more important was it that Voltaire set himself to study the philosophical writings of Locke, Shaftesbury and Collins, as well as the poetry of the mas- ters of English verse, from Shakespeare to Pope. The deistical works in particular gave an entirely new direc- tion to his thought. He was mentally stimulated by the personal contacts and the fresh and vigorous thinking which were the best gifts that England had for him during his pleasant residence there of two years and nine months. There is much that a modern man will heartily dislike in the England of the first two Georges; but, after all, it was the England of Newton, Swift, Pope, Bentley, Butler and Berkeley ; and Voltaire found there an atmosphere of freedom to which he had been unaccustomed in his own country. All things are comparative in this imperfect world, and it was surely something that so acute and eager a spirit should have been impelled to say, "I must disguise in Paris what I could not too strongly say at London." "The example of England," says Condorcet, "showed him that truth is not made to remain a secret in the hands of a few philosophers and a limited number of men of the world, instructed, or rather indoctrinated, by the philo- i See Carlyle, Frederick the Great, llf., p. 226. 18 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY sophers. . . . From the moment of his return Voltaire felt himself called to destroy the prejudices of every kind of which his country was the slave." 1 The productivity of Voltaire during the next twenty years was amazing. Poems, tragedies, history, philosophy, literary criticism, polemical writings poured from his pro- lific pen; and all the while he kept up an enormous corre- spondence with a great number of people. His Philo- sophical Letters in particular created a sensation. His brilliancy won for him the favour of powerful friends in those circles which liked to be tickled and amused, and even a little shocked. He became something of a person- age at the court of Louis XV. and Madame de Pompadour. Favours and protection of this kind were useful to him, though he was much bored by the company which they compelled him to endure. Meanwhile Frederick the Great of Prussia had been attracted by his writings, and repeatedly pressed him to take up his abode at Berlin, with promises of a liberal pension and favours of the most gracious kind. The accep- tance of this invitation opened a new chapter in Voltaire's life. The Prussian king .had literary facilities, and wanted the aid of an accomplished man of letters to polish his periods for him. Voltaire quite realised that he was an orange, and that Frederick, after extracting the juice, would throw away the skin ; or, as he said to a General who asked him to revise his Memoirs, "the king sends me his dirty linen to wash, so yours must wait." His three years in Berlin (1750-53), about which there are some rather rancid chapters in Carlyle's Frederick the Great, made a vivid interlude between his Parisian period and his last twenty-five years, which were spent in unflagging work at Ferney and Lausanne. To this final quarter of a century, when he enjoyed the reputation of being, in Gibbon's view, "the most extraordinary man of the age," belong his satire Candid e, his essay on Manners, his contributions to the French Encyclopaedia, and his strongest attacks on the church. For all his controversial fury he was a very gentle, generous, lovable old man, easily angered but easily assuaged, as full of humanity as of genius. He died while on a visit to Paris in 1778. 1 Cited by Morley, ' ' Voltaire, ' ' p. 59. VOLTAIRE 19 The influence of Voltaire has been incalculably great, and his best works are still read and enjoyed. There have been several collected editions of his writings, and if we estimate the number of particular volumes which have been issued we must speak in terms of millions. In France he appears to have been most read in times of political and clerical reaction, as a tonic, it is to be assumed. Thus, one of his biographers 1 calculates that in the seven years between 1817 and 1824 — in the midst of the Bourbon Restoration — no fewer than 1,598,000 volumes of Voltaire's writings came from the press. It is natural to ask : Why did authorities, civil and eccle- siastical, seek to control the thought of mankind? The motives in each case were not always the same. The Catholic Church claimed to be the divinely appointed expositor of Christian truth, and regarded heresy as a crime. But before it attained to a position of spiritual supremacy in western Europe there had been fierce struggles with a variety of heresies. Arians and Donatists, the rival schools of Antioch and Alexandria, Nestorianism and Mono- sophytism, provoked controversies about which Christians fought among themselves with a livelier zeal than they displayed in converting the heathen. Greek and Roman Christianity grew apart, "the baseless fabric of unity vanished like a dream," and two great churches placed entirely different interpretations upon doctrines. Even in Western Europe the claims of the Catholic Church were disputed. In the Middle Ages heretical sects made their appearance and gained many adherents. In France the Waldenses in the twelfth century and the Albigensians in the thirteenth, in England the Lollards and in Bohemia the Hussites in the fifteenth century, were sects which, holding unorthodox views, were subjected to severe perse- cutions. Morally, these pre-reformation dissenters were good people. Their sincerity is evinced by their endurance of suffering for their faiths. The Albigensians were, how- ever, ruthlessly crushed by an army which enjoyed the blessing of Pope Innocent III. and followed the leadership of Simon de Montfort, father of the earl who rendered England some service. John Huss was burnt. The Eng- lish Lollards were hunted into the hills, and the infamous 1 Gustave Lanson's "Voltaire,'' p. 205- 20 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY statute de heretico comburendo was enacted in response to the express petition of the clergy 1 for the purpose of rid- ding the land of heresy by burning its adherents at the stake. The first English martyrs were burnt under this evil law in the reign of Henry IV. The beliefs entertained by these sects may be freely entertained to-day, and, indeed, the Waldensian sect even survives under that name in Italy. The "growing rigidity of dogma" has been noted as a characteristic of church polity during the Middle Ages. There was developed "out of the original and natural attach- ment to the teaching the Apostles preserved by tradition the idea that the church, is the divinely appointed guardian of doctrine, able to supplement as well as to interpret the revealed word; and with this there had also grown up the habit of exalting the universal conscience and belief above the individual." 2 To diverge from doctrine which the church pronounced true was not merely to err; it was to commit deadly sin. The secular arm must punish what the spiri- tual power condemned. The connection of the church with the actual perpetration of torture and death became more immediate as the spread of heresy increased, and when the Inquisition was set up in Rome itself it was governed by a body of Cardinals with the Pope at their head. "The mediaeval theory was that the church condemned and the state executed, priests having nothing to do with punish- ment, and requesting that it might not be excessive. This distinction fell away, and the clergy had to conquer their horror of bloodshed. The delinquent was tried by the Pope as ruler of the church and burnt by the Pope as ruler of the state." 3 When the Reformation completely destroyed that theo- retical unity of Christendom, which in fact had only been maintained by the stifling of criticism and by pitiless per- secution, we find the rulers of states endeavouring to prescribe the religion of their subjects. Why? It was not that these rulers were themselves religious people, in any admirable sense of the term. They might affect theolo- gical scholarship, as Henry VIII. did, or be pedantically pretentious, as James I. was, or be merely secular-minded i Oman, "Political History of England," IV., p. 171. 2 Bryce, "Holy Boman Empire," p. 94. 3 Lord Acton, "Lectures on Modern History," p. 112. VOLTAIRE 21 politicians, as Catherine de Medici of France and Elizabeth of England were, or zealots like "bloody Mary" — but they worked on the same theory, that the religion of the ruler must be the religion of the state — "cuius regio, eius religio." After the massacre of St. Bartholomew, Catherine de Medici assured Queen Elizabeth that she would have no objection if she treated her Catholic subjects in England as the French Protestants had been treated. In principle there was no difference between the rooting out of the Huguenots after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes by Louis XIV. on the one hand, and on the other the policy of James I. towards the Puritans — "I will make them conform, or I will harry them out of the land" — and the persecutions under Archbishop Laud, which occasioned the Puritan exodus to New England. There was no hospitality for the independent thinker under the one regime or the other. Little comfort was to be gained from stepping out of the Catholic frying-pan into the Protestant fire. The idea underlying the policy of these rulers was that unity of religious thought on the part of subjects was essential to the security of the state. There were, it is true, some rulers who, as a Catholic historian says of Queen Mary, "conscientiously liked to persecute ;" some, like Philip II. of Spain, who gloated over agony — that sovereign cried to a nobleman on his way to be burnt, "if my son were as perverse as you, I myself would carry the fuel to burn him." To these the suppression of heresy was a luxury. But by monarchs generally it was regarded as a necessity. By controlling opinion they controlled policy. Docile minds made obedient subjects. There was an end to that point of view as soon as men perceived that the true aim of government is to promote the good of the governed, not to compel people to submit themselves to the will of rulers. But freedom did not come as a gift from any church. There was fierce intolerance among the Puritans; the Church of England during the entire eighteenth century and a large part of the nineteenth used its political ascendancy and its social prestige with bitter and rather supercilious assertiveness. But the mul- tiplicity of sects at length made systematic persecution impossible. Voltaire put his finger on the cause of the ameliorating tendency when he said, "If there were but one religion in England its despotism would be formidable; if 22 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY there were only two they would throttle each other; but there are thirty, and they live happily and peaceably." It was exactly so in America also. The stiff Puritans of Massa- chusetts ejected other Puritans who were not so stiff. The Protestants generally persecuted the Catholics of Maryland. But when sects multiplied they simply had to put up with each other. To-day there are so many of them, and fresh ones arise so frequently, that statistics on the subject are out of date before they are printed; with the charming result that "there are no quarrels of churches and sects; Judah does not vex Ephraim nor Ephraim envy Judah." 1 And, when all is said, Salt Lake City and Zion City smell sweeter than Smithfield ever did. Reason had done its best to convince mankind that freedom was the safe and sound line long before circum- stances compelled the adoption of that view. Milton wrote a defence of "the liberty of unlicensed printing," which is one of the noblest pieces of English literature. "Though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so truth be in the field, we do injuriously by licens- ing and prohibiting to misdoubt her strength. Let her and falsehood grapple ; whoever knew truth put to the worst in a free and open encounter?" "Give me the liberty to utter and to argue freely according to conscience above all liberties." Thus the great voice speaks in the majestic sentences of Areopagitica. Locke's three letters on Tolera- tion, which were known to Voltaire, contain the essence of the thing, notwithstanding that he would have excluded Catholics and non-Christians. But it is to be remarked that Locke's reasons for these exceptions were political, not religious. Writing in the reign of William III., when England had just legislated to bar any Catholic from accession to the throne, he could not overlook the fact that the Catholic Church was much more than a religious corporation. It was a state, and the Pope was a sovereign prince. "They who jumble heaven and earth together," in Locke's view, "create political con- fusion." He held that "that church can have no right to be tolerated by the magistrates which is constituted on such a bottom that all those who enter into it do thereby ipso facto deliver themselves up to the protection and ser- i Bryce, "American Commonwealth," II., p. 874. VOLTAIRE 23 vice of another prince." Secondly, Locke would have refused toleration to those who "deny the being of a God," because he held that they could not be bound by "promises, cove- nants and oaths, which are the bonds of human society." Whether he had met any who made such a denial he did not say, nor did he propose to place special disabilities on any others who had actually shown that they were not to be bound by promises, oaths and covenants, though such persons were particularly numerous among the prominent politicians of his day. Except for these limitations, however, Locke's plea for toleration is a cogent piece of reasoning. One of his best passages is that wherein he shows the impossibility of con- vincing anybody by compulsion; that the political power may compel men to comply by making hypocrites of them, but cannot lay hold of their minds. "But after all," says Locke, "the principal considera- tion, and which absolutely determines this controversy, is this : Although the magistrate's opinion in religion be sound, and that way that he appoints be truly Evangelical, yet, if I be not thoroughly persuaded thereof in my own mind, there will be no safety for me in following it. No way whatsoever that I shall walk in against the dictates of my conscience will ever bring me to the mansions of the blessed. I may grow rich by an art that I take not delight in ; I may be cured of some disease by remedies that I have not faith in ; but I cannot be saved by a religion that I distrust and by a worship that I abhor. It is in vain for an unbeliever to take up the outward show of another man's profession. Faith only, and inward sincerity, are the things that procure acceptance with God. The most likely and most approved remedy can have no effect upon the patient if his stomach reject it as soon as taken ; and you will in vain cram a medicine down a sick man's throat which his particular constitution will be sure to turn into poison. In a word, whatsoever may be doubtful in religion, yet this as least is certain : that no religion which I believe not to be true can be either true or profitable unto me. In vain, therefore, do princes compel their subjects to come into their church communion, under pretence of saving their souls. If they believe they will come of their own accord ; if they believe not their coming will nothing avail them. How great soever, in fine, may be the pretence of 24 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY good will and charity, and concern for the salvation of men's souls, men cannot be forced to be saved whether they will or no. And, therefore, when all is done, they must be left to their own consciences." What are the limits to freedom of discussion in all things, religious and political, in a free state? Clearly there must be some. No important element in life can be outside the reach of law. Regulation, too, really conserves liberty. An ordered freedom, which makes for public harmony and protects individuals against the abuse of criticism, is a larger freedom on the whole than the contrary condition could be. Libel laws are good and necessary limitations of this kind. They restrain "envy, hatred, malice and all unchari- tableness," and preserve a measure of decency in places where there sometimes seems to be little natural inclination thereto. They make it imperative for even the most reck- less of publications to exercise some care in their references to individuals. There evidently should be a restraint 'of liberty to print things which are false and injurious. Liberty should be an instrument of public utility, not of personal malignity. Laws enforcing a standard of decorum in the discussion of subjects of public interest are not an invasion of liberty, but a proper regulation of it. Unfortunately some laws, which in practice are enforced under this plea, had their origin in less tolerant times, and are liable to be used occa- sionally for their primitive purpose. The Blasphemy Laws are an instance. They have been enforced to punish bad taste, which was said to have "outraged the decencies of controversy," but, as Professor Bury has pointed out, the law imposes no restraint on the orthodox, no matter how offensive their methods of controversy may be — and theolo- gical controversial literature can be very offensive indeed. Consequently, such laws are not "based upon an impartial desire to prevent the use of language which may cause offence," and, as administered, are in principle persecut- ing laws. A censorship during time of war is one of the penalties which a state of war entails. It is apparent that when a nation is fighting for its life disaster may easily be occa- sioned by the indiscreet publication of information, and that morale, which is as essential to endurance as munitions VOLTAIRE 25 and man-power, may be weakened by reckless, ignorant or even deliberately mischievous writing. It is a grave mis- fortune to have to impose restraints upon free discussion ; but it is much graver to imperil armies who are risking their lives every hour, or to slacken that moral fibre without which armies cannot be efficiently supported. In such crises a censorship is the least of several evils. The United States during the Civil War found it to be necessary to enforce a very strict censorship. 1 That censors will at times act foolishly, and even tyrannically, is unfortunately true. Such evils are incidental to the exercise of functions like theirs. But as it is better to suffer thus than to lose in a great cause, the sacrifice of liberty to this extent must be reckoned one of the many sacrifices — and assuredly not the least of them — which the stern ordeal of war lays upon free nations. It is argued by the apologists for persecution during earlier ages that, just as the state is justified, for the defence of its integrity, in prescribing the liberties of its subjects, so the church was justified in endeavouring to maintain authority over belief. What treason and sedition are in the body politic, heresy is to the church. The argument is open to this answer: that whilst sedition and treason, if permitted, would destroy the state, and thereby reduce social life to anarchy, heresy, as a matter of fact, has not destroyed the church, and the spread of many varie- ties of it has contributed to the welfare of mankind. There cannot in the nature of things be more than one govern- ment in the state; but there can be many churches in the state, and there can be good citizenship without churches at all. Experience has proved the wisdom of allowing every citizen to suit himself in that respect. To churchmen in the Middle Ages it did seem, no doubt, an appalling pros- pect that the seamless fabric of ecclesiastical unity should be torn, and their perfect sincerity in restricting that ten- dency is not questionable. But events have proved them wrong. Human progress has been furthered, not by common con- currence in accepted ideas, but by enquiry and dissent. If all agree there is no movement. Advance is made when 1 See J. Randall, ou "The Newspaper Problem in its bearing on Military Secrecy during the Civil War," in "Americas Historical Review," January, 1918. 26 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY an accepted proposition is challenged and shown to be erro- neous. Even when we reject a criticism adverse to a belief which we hold, we are surely the better for paying heed to it. For, as John Stuart Mill urged, "he who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them ; but if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the oppo- site side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for professing either opinion." Impa- tience with arguments against our own views too often sig- nifies inability to sustain them, not depth of conviction. The employment of virulent abuse is commonly due to the same weakness. It is so much easier to call a man a fool or a knave than to prove him wrong. We ought, in truth, to be grateful to anyone who furnishes us with a point of view or a fact which we had not perceived before. "Truth's like a torch, the more it's shook it shines," and if we will not shake our own torch the man who jogs our elbow ren- ders us a service, though we may not be gracious enough to thank him for it. Voltaire did very much to unseat authority in the realm of thought and to make it easier for reason to have free play. He was not one of the martyrs of the great cause of the emancipation of the human spirit. Indeed, his life was comfortable on the whole, owing to his friendships and his shrewd and prudent investment of his earnings. But he was a very courageous gladiator in an arena where many have been slain by wild beasts. His own conquests and the sharpness of his weapons caused them to be afraid of him and to gnash their teeth at him, but they did not get near enough to bite ; the reverberation of their roaring, however, can still occasionally be heard together with the sound of his name. Morley's Voltaire is the most charming of the author's works, except the first volume of his Recollections. Ham- ley's Voltaire is a very bright short study. Voltaire in His Letters, by G. S. Tallantyre, gives the essence of his copious correspondence. Mill's golden book, On Liberty, in its third chapter, presents an argument on this subject on a high level of thought. J. B. Bury's History of Freedom of Thought is a short volume in the Home University Library. Two more elaborate works are A. W. Benn's VOLTAIRE 27 History of English Rationalism in the Nineteenth Century, two volumes, and J. M. Robertson's Short History of Free Thought, Ancient and Modern. Both are better books than the more celebrated work of Lecky's younger years, his History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Ration- alism in Europe. If all mankind, minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of a contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing- that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind. — John Stuart Mill. I found that riches in every country were but another name for freedom, and that no man is so fond of liberty himself as not to be desirous of subjecting the will of some individuals in society- to his own. — Oliver Goldsmith. Liberty without obedience is confusion, and obedience without liberty is slavery. — William Penn. Men grind and grind in the mill of a truism and nothing comes out but what was put in. But the moment they desert the tradition for a spontaneous thought, poetry, wit, hope, virtue, learning," anecdote, all flock to their aid. — Emerson. No friend to truth and knowledge would lay any restraint or discouragement on thinking. — Berkeley. I do not like your great men who beckon me to them, call me their begotten, their dear child, and their entrails ; and if I happen to say on any occasion "I beg leave, sir, to dissent a little from you," stamp and cry, "The devil you do," and whistle to the executioner. — Landor (who in an Imaginary Conversation puts the sentence in the mouth of Montaigne). The art of understanding adversaries is an innovation of the present century [the nineteenth], characteristic of the historic age. Formerly a man was exhausted by the effort of making out his own meaning, with the help of his friends. The definition and comparison of systems, which occupies so much of our recent literature, was unknown, and everybody who was wrong was supposed to be very wrong indeed. — Lord Acton. Talk as we may about reason and faith, no one really begins to depreciate reason till he suspects strongly that it means to give judgment against him. Every one gets 28 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY as much of it on his own side as he possibly can. — Sir James Fitzjames Stephen. Ecclesiastical authority, not argument, is the supreme rule and the appropriate guide for Catholics in matters of religion. — Cardinal Newman. I always had an intense desire to learn how to distin- guish truth from falsehood, in order to be clear about my actions and to walk surefootedly in this life. — Descartes. Those opinions have the most authority which are the most rational ; and the safest test of rationality is that they have commended themselves to independent enquirers, who themselves acknowledge no law but reason, and have not been propagated by ignorance, blind submission to arbitrary rules, and reluctance to believe unpleasant truths. — Leslie Stephen. Liberty must be limited in order to be possessed. — Burke. Chapter III. NAPOLEON AND EFFICIENCY IN GOVERNMENT. THE fame of Napoleon Bonaparte as a soldier is so great, and warfare formed so large an element in his amazing life, that the world is apt to overlook his very remarkable work as a statesman in non-military affairs. It certainly is no part of the purpose of the present study to pretend that his achievements as a commander were in any way secondary in importance to his other activities. Such a contention would not only be false, but would be especially absurd when the application of Napoleonic ideas by a general who has been a pupil of the great master's methods has but lately carried France and her Allies to victory in the greatest war in history. For Napoleon was the "creatoi! of the modern art of war," 1 and Marshal Foch has been a most assiduous student of his maxims and principles — has, indeed, put them into scientific shape in his own writings and into ever-memorable effect on the field of battle. Nor need we, in concentrating attention on Napoleon's reconstructive work, overlook his personal feelings. Egoism blazed out of him. Perhaps a man with such a career as his could hardly have avoided thinking himself a super-normal phenomenon — as, indeed, he rather was. But, even so, he outraged the canons of good sense, to say nothing of good taste, by his blatant effrontery and self- assertion. Principalities and powers, popes and peoples, must bend to his will. He saw himself as an improved and more powerful reincarnation of Alexander, Caesar and Charlemagne, and the whole world was made for him to l Colonel Jean Colin 's "Napoleon," p. 173 — the last book from the hand of this excellent French military historian, who was killed in battle in December, 1917. 29 30 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY refashion according to his desire. The train of his errors sprang from this egoism, but many of his great qualities are also traceable to it. A man with a less complete belief in himself could not have carried through as he "did the coups which placed him in supreme power in France. It may be that most vices are virtues in excess: Napoleon's were, at all events. The qualities by which he forced his ascent, grown stupendous, were the cause of his ruin. On seeing a workman fall from a roof at St. Helena, he said, "Ah! well, he has not fallen so far as I have done." It was not so much a matter of distance as of moral decline. But when we have said all that need be said about Napoleon's passion for war, his egoism, his ambition, there remains what is now our theme — his statesmanship; and that is worth studying, both for what it was in itself and for what is to be learnt from the circumstances of it. Much of it has been of enduring value. If, for example, we com- pare the work of Napoleon in France and that of Pitt, his distinguished contemporary in Great Britain, and ask how much of what each did is of any importance in the life of the two countries to-day, the answer is all in favour of Napoleon. Pitt is an illustrious name in British history, and he was a very great man, but there is nothing in actual operation by which to remember him in Great Britain, except the Income Tax, the Dog Tax and the Act of Union. But how different is the case with Napoleon may be seen shortly stated in one page of Bodley's France: — "Before the ambitious conqueror had got the better of the ruler and the organiser, he had accomplished work which at the end of the century, after revolutions and inva- sions, after changes of dynasty and misgovernment of every form, lasts as the solid foundation and framework of French society. The whole centralised administration of France, which in its stability has survived every political crisis, was the creation of Napoleon and the keystone of his fabric. It was he who organised the existing administrative divi- sions of the departments, with the officials supervising them and the local assemblies attached to them. The relations of church and state are still regulated by his Concordat. 1 The University, which remains the basis of public educa- tion, was his foundation. The Civil Code, the Penal Code, 1 Mr. Bodley, of course, wrote this passage before 1906. NAPOLEON 31 the Conseil d'Etat, the Judicial System, the Fiscal System — in fine, every institution which a law-abiding Frenchman respects, from the Legion of Honour to the Bank of France and the Comedie Franchise, was either formed or reorga- nised by Napoleon. No doubt the revolutionary assemblies sometimes paused in their work of demolition to essay a constructive project. The Constituent Assembly created the departments ; the Directory remodelled the Institute ; and Condorcet might have carried out his schemes of educa- tion had not his colleagues of the Convention driven him into suicide to escape the guillotine. But when Bonaparte arrived in France in 1799 from the camp and the battlefield, he found that the result of the Revolution, for ten years in the hands of jurists, rhetoricians and theorists, was chaos. It was illumined with a few streaks of light which dis- played the fragmentary beginnings of well-conceived designs. It was none the less a chaos, needing the inspira- tion of a creator to evolve order from it, and the authority of a master of men to utilise the misapplied intellects of that erratic epoch. "The institutions of the Napoleonic establishment sur- vive, not as historical monuments, but as the working machinery which has regulated the existence of a great people throughout the nineteenth century. Their minute examination shows that they operate satisfactorily. M. Taine and other critics of the Napoleonic reorganisation say it was imperfect, and ascribe to it many of the ills from which France has suffered. It was not perfect; no human work is. Yet admirably suited to the French tem- perament is the organisation which, created in less than a decade amid the alarms of war, has not only performed its functions for three generations, but stands erect as the framework to keep French society together amid the fever of insurrection or the more lingering disorder- of parlia- mentary anarchy, just as though it owed its stability to the growth of ages." 1 Here, then, is something directly relevant to our sub- ject — an efficient government established by a master mind on the ruins of an ancient system which had been destroyed by revolution. We may as well pause on the threshold and ask how it was that Napoleon secured the opportunity of i "France," by J. R. C. Bodley, pp. 88-9. 32 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY accomplishing this work. No series of events in modern history is more deserving of close study in the present age. We have been living while great revolutions have been in progress in Russia, Germany, and Austria-Hungary. The causes of them are well known. Somehow, in some form, order must emerge out of the turmoil in those countries, for man cannot do his work in the world without order. Unless order, can be maintained by democratic means, dic- tatorial methods will certainly be applied ; for a people who retain their sanity will be convinced that firm government by a dictator is preferable to continual disturbance. His- tory does not repeat itself, and historical analogies are apt to be misleading; but still it is true that like conditions will produce like results. It is a very striking fact that years before Napoleon emerged out of obscurity the advent of some such man was accurately foretold by Edmund Burke. There surely is not in political literature a more prescient passage than that wherein this searching student of public affairs — whose style keeps his writings fresh when the events about which they were written are more than a century old — prophesied that some such man would arise in France and do precisely what Napoleon did. These words were written in 1790, almost at the beginning of the French Revolution. Burke observed the decay of stable government, and pointed to what he believed would be the inevitable outcome: — "In the weakness of one kind of authority, and in the fluctuation of all, the officers of an army will remain for some time mutinous and full of faction, until some popular general, who understands the art of conciliating the soldiery, and who possesses the true spirit of command, shall draw the eyes of all men upon himself. Armies will obey him on his personal account. There is no other way of securing military obedience in this state of things. But the moment in which that event shall happen, the person who really commands the army is your master; the master (that is little) of your king, the master of your assembly, the master of your whole republic." 1 Every word of that passage came true, though France had to endure much suffering in the process of realising i Burke's "Beflections on the French Revolution," original edit., p. 317. NAPOLEON 33 it. But ten years after Burke's book was published, the last of the successive revolutionary governments was over- thrown, and Napoleon Bonaparte became First Consul of the First Republic (December, 1799). The whole of the evidence we have shows that France welcomed the change and was prepared to trust this brilliant young soldier to the fullest degree. Pitt might declaim against "this last adventurer in the lottery of revolutions," and describe the final outcome of Jacobinism as "at once the child and the champion of all its atrocities and horrors ;" but observers on the spot were quick to discern that the country looked to Bonaparte to restore the order, tranquillity and security which had so long been absent from the life of France. "All previous revolutions," the Prussian ambassador wrote to Berlin, "inspired distrust and fear. This one, on the contrary, I myself can testify, has refreshed the people's spirits and kindled the brightest hopes." What Bonaparte gave to France during the Consulate was what she needed most — good, firm, efficient govern- ment. There are times when people need to have it im- pressed upon them that that is the first requirement of civilisation, and that everything else is secondary to it. Hence it is that a nation which has thrown everything into the melting pot and failed to construct a theoretically per- fect system, will prefer a despotism to disorder. Bona- parte had grown up amidst talk about the rights of man. popular government, liberal constitutions, and freedom all round. He observed none of these things when he had the power. He shackled the press, censored the theatre, and cunningly provided for the construction of a constitu- tion which left complete control in his own hands. When the Consular constitution was first proclaimed, a woman who heard it read out confessed to a man next to her that she had not understood a word of it. He replied that he understood it perfectly. "What does it mean then?" "It means — Bonaparte," answered the man. True, it meant Bonaparte ; nothing less and very little more. But France, having experienced Bonaparte's rule, and comparing its efficiency with the confusion of ten years of revolution, voted by enormous majorities at plebiscites for making him, first, Consul for life (1800), and next, Emperor (1804). France made a mistake in surrendering herself so com- pletely, and Napoleon allowed his ambition to carry him too 34 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY far in aiming at a dynasty ; but his immense popularity had been earned by invaluable service. The impartial tes- timony of two eminent English writers may be allowed to clinch this point: — U "He was a great administrator. He controlled every wheel and spring, large or small, of his vast machinery of government. It was, as it were, his plaything. He was his own War Office, his own Foreign Office, his own Admi- ralty, his own Ministry of every kind. . . . His financial man- agement, by which he sustained a vast empire with power and splendour, but with rigid economy and without a debt, is a marvel and a mystery. In all the offices of state he knew everything, guided everything, inspired everything. He aptly enough compared his mind to a cupboard of pigeon holes; to deal with any subject he opened the pigeon-hole relating to it and closed the others ; when he wished to sleep he closed them all. Moreover, his inexhaustible memory made him familiar with all the men and all the details as with all the machinery of government. ... In the first period of his Consulate he was an almost ideal ruler. He was firm, sagacious, far-seeing, energetic, just. He was, moreover, what is of not less importance, ready and anxious to learn. He was, indeed, conscious of extreme ignorance on the civil side of his administration. But he was never ashamed to ask the meaning of the simplest word, and he never asked twice." 1 2. "We may call the government of the Consulate and the Empire a tyranny if we please, but, compared with the government which preceded it, it was a reign of freedom. It bridled the press, stamped out political debate, shook itself free from constitutional checks, and here and there, when political interests were involved, harshly interfered with the course of justice and the freedom of the subject. But it substituted a regular, scientific, civilised administra- tion for a condition of affairs which bordered upon anarchy. It cleared the air of spite and suspicion, and made life safe and easy for the ordinary householder who was content lo let the great world of politics go its own way." 2 The maintenence of public confidence, security, order — these were the aims of Napoleon's administration, and they i Lord Bosebery, "Napoleon, the Last Phase," pp. 229 and 2:!4. 2 H. A. L. Fisher, "Bonapartism, " p. 29. NAPOLEON 35 were promoted by laws and policies which were vigorously administered. His settlement with the church — the Con- cordats — was made not because he had any fondness for it as an institution, but because he recognised that as the majority of the French were Catholic it was expedient to enlist the bishops and priests in support of his government. The church had been treated with extreme harshness dur- ing the Revolution. Napoleon had no intention of allowing it to dominate the state, but, by making the state its pay- master, he would establish a claim to its grateful service, whilst by retaining in his own hands the nomination of bishops he ensured that his purposes would be promoted. And, in fact, the docility of the clergy during the Empire in upholding the conscription from the altar went far to keep up Napoleon's armies. The institution of the legal codes was due principally to his driving force. The details were hammered out by expert committees, but he presided over a large number of the meetings of the Council of State at which the first drafts were finally revised and adopted as parts of the Code Napoleon. On these occasions his criticism was invariably searching, going to the very root of the matter under debate. Yet he was careful not to spoil careful work by dogmatically enforcing his own autho- rity. He frankly said at one of the meetings, "In these discussions I have sometimes said things which a quarter of an hour later I have found were all wrong. I have no wish to pass for being worth more than I am." 1 An energy scarcely less than that infused into raising armies and making war was applied by Napoleon to stimu- lating industry and commerce and improving education. He chose the eminent chemist Chaptal to be Minister of the Interior because he recognised the necessity of apply- ing the best science of the day to industry, and this able man, backed up by Napoleon in all his proposals, promoted fresh industries, rewarded inventors, introduced skilled workmen from abroad — principally from England — and appointed engineers to study new machinery and arrange for its adoption by France. Roads and canals were built to facilitate trade. The finances of France were completely overhauled, and standards of honesty and efficiency were enforced in the taxation and spending departments, such as it is safe to say had never existed in the country before. 1 Thibaudeau, "Bonaparte and the Consulate," English edit., p. 170. 36 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY The very striking result of this policy was that though France was in a chronic condition of insolvency during the years of revolution, yet at the conclusion of the Napoleonic wars, while Great Britain had a national debt of £861,000,000, the beaten nation was not encumbered with any debt incurred during the Consulate and Empire. 1 True, the Napoleonic policy of making war "pay for itself' — that is, of making those countries in which French armies fought sustain them — cheapened campaiging; but the fact remains that Napoleon's administration was consistently well- managed, capable, thorough, and economically prudent. Especially was good order maintained. Brigandage, which had become almost a national industry during the revolutionary years, disappeared from the country districts. Life again ran on quiet, even lines. The man who sowed had not to fear that some robber would reap. The traveller had no longer reason to dread that assassins lay in wait in every coppice. In the period when doctrinaires argued about rights and liberties, the right to live in security and the liberty of ordinary decent citizenship had- almost dis- appeared. Revolutionaries of various patterns "had made a divinity of the word but proscribed the thing." And that, as Vandal points out, "is why the French hailed Napoleon as a liberator, and exchanged so readily the oppression of miserable despots for a high and impartial tyranny." Fur- ther, strong, firm rule put an end to the frantic mob violence which since 1789 had placed Paris and the large provincial towns under a continual menace. In short, ten years of very bad government had taught France that it was better to submit to a man of genius who could and would give her tranquillity within her borders, though he was a tyrant, than to endure a chaos in which one faction after another fought for supremacy and no faction was respectably com- petent to rule. If it seem strange that a people who had so strongly indoctrinated themselves with the "principles of 1789," should accept gladly the kind of government which Napo- leon gave to them, the reason may be found in their own bitter experience. For however much liberal institutions 1 See Pariset, in "Cambridge Modern History," IX., p. 119. "It was Napoleon's amiable reflection after his first abdication that lie had at least planted this 'poisoned dart' in the vitals of England." — Smart, "Economic Annals of the Nineteenth Century," p. 433. NAPOLEON 37 may be desired, if those who essay to realise them do not at the same time give order and security, life under them may easily be less endurable than under a downright des- potism. Noble principles butter no bread, they grease no wheels. Nor, unfortunately, is there any guarantee that those persons who espouse them will be honourable or cap- able. Many of those who seized power during the French Revolution were, in fact, base men ; many more were simply wind-swollen stupid men. But the point is that always the greatest interest of the great bulk of the people in a community is order. Without order agriculture will decay, commerce will be paralysed, industry will languish, life itself will be insecure. It is never the wish of -the majority of people that these things should occur. When they do occur there is lessened production ; consequently there is less to consume, and that means poverty all round. So true is all this that it is safe to say that rarely has a revolution been accomplished anywhere with the sanction and support of the majority of the people. Revolutions have generally been the work of comparatively small fac- tions, which, in circumstances favourable to them, havo seized power, commanded military force, and for a time dictated to the community at large; and, because they never represented the majority, reaction has followed at some time, often with the consequence that the subsequent government was more tyrannical than the one which the revolution destroyed. The revolution which overturned the English throne and culminated in the execution of Charles I. in 1649 was not the work of the nation. It was the work of Cromwell's army, which was resolved to wreak vengeance on its arch enemy. Cromwell himself knew that, and it is well understood that he would have restrained the fanatical zeal of the army had it been possible to with- stand its resolve to have the life of the "man of blood." A revolution created by the army had to be upheld by the army, and during the eleven years between the execution of Charles I. and the restoration of his son there was nothing but despotic rule in England. It is beside the point that it was for the most part good government, for during seven years the ruler was Oliver Cromwell, a man of sovereign genius. What is certain is that it was not government by the will of the people. And as soon as Cromwell died the Commonwealth tottered, collapsed, and 38 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY was swept away in the torrent of enthusiasm which carried Charles II. to the throne. At the French Revolution the Jacobin party, whose members were the master spirits of a decade of disturb- ance, were really a very small fraction of the French nation. But they were well organised ; they understood the arts of electioneering, and by manipulating the franchise, com- bined with ruthless terrorism, they forced their will upon the whole people. But we need not dwell upon that classic instance: we have a contemporary one of great interest. The Russian Revolution which destroyed the Tzardom did not begin as a social revolution. It began as an army mutiny. Thereupon revolutionists secured control of the disorganised army, by its means attained political power, and, being themselves a minority, exercised tyrannical authority over the whole of Russia. Murder, plunder, ter- rorism, the gagging of the press, corruption, revenge, massacre, and the utter perversion of justice have been the characteristics of Bolshevik rule. The elements in the nation which detested these evils were held down by Red Guards. No appeal was made to the nation at large -to express its will. A truculent minority ruled by force, exercised in its most repulsive forms. The end of such unrighteous proceedings has been the same wherever they have been manifested. Faction can rule as long as its armed support is faithful to it, but no longer. Other factions may succeed in usurping authority for awhile, but no faction can permanently govern a nation. If means are not found for enabling the people as a whole to find a form of government which satisfies the majority of them, sooner or later the whole of the factions adverse to the ruling faction will combine with the mass of the people, who hate all factions alike, in support of some generally-trusted man who will be strong enough to give peace, security, and contentment. He may rule tyranni- cally in many respects, but if he rule well on the whole his faults will be forgiven, and gratitude for the order and security which he gives will overcome every other conside- ration. What do we mean by efficient government? It may be taken to mean government which uses the collective power to provide for the whole body of the people — first,, security and order; secondly, the performance of certain NAPOLEON 39 functions which must or can 'be most advantageously per- formed by the state ; thirdly, the freest possible scope for the exercise by the individual of his capabilities and the pursuit of his own welfare, interests and pleasures. How much the state shall undertake to do is less a matter of principle than of expediency. But those functions which it does undertake an efficient government will discharge at the lowest cost and with the largest advantage. Judged by these standards, Napoleon's government was excellent; and if he had not been so much a soldier that warfare occupied the larger part of his energies, it is very likely that he would have been the most capable statesman who ever lived. He did not take a narrow view of the scope of government. The arts were embraced within the purview of his policy, for he recognised that culture is a vital interest of a civilised community, and should be encouraged by the ruler. To those who have been accus- tomed to the rather shabby and humdrum life of modern democratic countries, which treat the arts as exotics need- ing to apologise for their existence, the vigour which Napoleon inculcated in these matters seems exemplary. Napoleon had no reasoned philosophy of government, and on some aspects of it his ideas were extremely crude. In his early years he had read with avidity all kinds of books, and his attention is known to have been arrested by remarks in Plutarch or other favourite authors on ques- tions of law, administration, the exercise of power, and so forth. But there is nothing to show that he had ever studied such problems systematically. His singular shrewd- ness and swiftness in penetrating to the heart of any ques- tion that came up for discussion in his presence was, how- ever, exhibited in these, as in all other things; so that his letters and the records of his sayings made by writers of memoirs teem with comments which reveal his mind. He was never regardless of public opinion, which, he said, "is the thermometer which a ruler must constantly consult." Yet he had seen so much of popular passion that he mis- trusted mankind in the mass, considered them capricious, and held that they must be kept in tight restraint. "In the last analysis it is necessary to govern as a soldier; you control a horse only with the bridle and the spur." Yet he fully recognised that moral forces are in the long run superior to physical forces in the affairs of mankind. His 40 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY mind frequently recurred to this theme. "In all civilised countries/' he said, "force gives way to civil qualities. Bayonets are lowered before the priest who speaks in the name of heaven and before the man who commands atten- tion by his knowledge." And again : "Force is always force, and enthusiasm is nothing more than enthusiasm ; but per- suasion endures and is engraved in the heart." Once more: "Intelligence has rights which come before those of force. Indeed, force itself is nothing without intelligence." "The Idea," he said on one occasion, "has done more damage than the Deed. It is the capital foe of tyrants." These sayings, and many more which could be quoted, are not consistent with much that Napoleon did, nor were his numerous obiter' dicta always consistent with them- selves. He often spoke with a startling perception of the essential truth of things, because his mind was accustomed to fly, as the lightning strikes the steel rod, swiftly to the mark. His art of government, in which he was singularly successful, was guided by the same rapid, instinctive divi- nation of the right thing to do at the moment to achieve the best results, as guided him in command at such won- derful battles as Marengo, Ulm, Wagram and Austerlitz. As a practical man of affairs he was incomparable, and a more untiring worker has never lived. Fascinating as the military career of Napoleon is, and wonderful as was the exhibition of his genius in that field, it is questionable whether his truest greatness was not in his civil administration. He performed a most masterly task in reorganising France after the unfortunate period of anarchy, rascality and wild wandering after ideals that would not realise themselves. True to his power of directly seizing the essential, he insisted on order as the fundamen- tal principle of civil government, without which nothing worth having is attainable. Every country which, after shattering its social system, fails to set up another one which will work to the general satisfaction, will need its Napoleon, and happy will she be if she finds him soon. But she will have cause for grievous lamentation if she does not succeed in keeping him to that task. So much of the good Napoleon did for France was negatived by the waste- ful adventures of war. When, after the final downfall of Waterloo, and the occupation of Paris by the allies, Metter- nich walked through the splendid galleries of St. Cloud NAPOLEON 41 with Marshal Bliicher, the old soldier said, "That man must be a regular fool to have all this and go running after Moscow." He burnt away on the altar of Bellona more than the "all this" of St. Cloud. He dissipated in smoke much of the value of his reconstructive work. Fisher's Napoleon in the Home University Library is the best short study in English. J. Holland Rose, The Personality of Napoleon, eight lectures, is a well-balanced review. The best biographies in English are Fournier's, an Austrian work, translated, two volumes, and Holland Rose's. Order means the preservation of peace by the cessation of private violence. Order is said to exist where the people of the country have, as a general rule, ceased to prosecute their quarrels by private force, and acquired the habit of referring the decision of their disputes and the redress of their injuries to the public authorities. — John Stuart Mill. Much more is dependent on government than at first sight appears. Its functions do not merely include peace and war, the maintenance of justice and the regulation of police ; but they relate to material well-being of all kinds. And, what is perhaps of even greater importance, the advancement of art, science and literature depends much more than is generally imagined upon the functions of government being well defined, well directed, and judi- ciously exercised. — Sir Arthur Helps. Anarchy always conduces to absolute power. — Napoleon. Progress can only arise out of the development of order. — Comte. Liberty is the perfection of civil society, but still autho- rity must be acknowledged essential to its very existence; and in those contests which so often take place between the one and the other, the latter may, on that account, challenge the preference. — David Hume. The great ideas and causes which were advanced by the career of Napoleon owed neither their nature nor their existence to his selfish ambition. They did not, however, owe them to any non-human cause; to any operation of ideas otherwise than in the minds of men. They came into existence through the working of innumerable minds to- 42 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY wards objective ends by the inherent logic of social growth, with various degrees of moral insight, and they were pro- moted by Napoleon's career in virtue of the common char- acter which united his aims, in so far as they had a reason- able side, with the movement shaped by the ideal forces of the age. — Bernard Bosanquet. Napoleon, as the heir of the Revolution, tried to realise the monstrous plan of a world monarchy, which he, almost cynically, dubbed a federated system. His ideal was that of a France surrounded by her satellite states. At first fortune favoured the gigantic adventure, but it was wrecked at last on the rock of its own unreason. — Treitschke: As for discussions about any one ideal form of govern- ment, they are simply idle. The ideal form of government is no government at all. The existence of government in any shape is a sign of man's imperfection. — Edward A. Freeman. In early times the quantity of government is much more important than its quality. What you want is a compre- hensive rule binding men together, making them do much the same things, telling them what to expect of each other, fashioning them alike and keeping them so. What this rule is does not matter so much. A good rule is better than a bad one, but any rule is better than none; while, for reasons which a jurist will appreciate, none can be very good." — Walter Bagehot. Sovereignty is the daily operative power of framing and giving efficacy to laws. It is the originative, directive, governing power. It lives ; it plans ; it executes. It is the organic organisation of the state, of its law and policy, and the sovereign power is the highest originative organ of the state. It is none the less sovereign because it must be observant of the preferences of those whom it governs. The obedience of the subject has always limited the power of the sovereign. — Woodroiv Wilson. The difference between the kinds or forms of common- wealth consisteth not in a difference between their powers, but in a difference between their aptitudes to produce the peace and security of the people, which is their end.- — Hobbes. Solon, being asked what city he thought best governed, answered, That city where such as receive no wrong do as earnestly defend wrong offered to others as the very wrong and injury had been done unto themselves. — Plutarch. METTERNICH. [Page 44 Chapter IV. METTERNJCH AND ABSOLUTISM. PRINCE METTERNICH was for half a century one of the principal figures in the politics of Europe, and for over thirty years he prob- ably exercised more influence in international affairs than any statesman among his contemporaries. First as Austrian Ambassador, later as Foreign Min- ister of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and lastly as Chancellor, he acquired an exceptionally large experience of diplomacy ; he had an intimate acquaintance with the monarchs and ministers who directed the policies of states in this period ; and during the whole of his long official career he held with undeviating tenacity to a perfectly rigid doctrine of government. "Metternichian" is as well estab- lished a word in politics as "Machiavellian," and what the former signifies is far more fairly attributable to the Aus- trian statesman than the common meaning of the latter is to the Florentine philosopher. Born to great wealth and the bearer of a name of high repute in Austria, Metternich grew to maturity amidst the crash of the French Revolution. His tutor had been an intimate friend of Robespierre. He entered the diplomatic service after completing his studies at the University of Strasburg, and he married the grand-daughter and heiress of crotchety old Kaunitz, who had been the Chancellor and' much-indulged friend of the Empress Maria Theresa. He possessed so many estates that there were some which he never had time even to visit. He mentions in his diary that, being told that a castle belonging to him overlooked an especially magnificent landscape, he determined to go and look at it. He arrived late at night. A courier followed him with important official papers, which necessitated his leaving very early on the following morning ; so he did not see the 45 46 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY view, and could not find time to visit the place on another occasion. The list of his honours and distinctions occupies sixteen large pages in the French edition of his Memoirs, and he had received more decorations than any human chest could have displayed all at once unless it had the spacial dimensions of Pantagruel's, or of an advertisement hoard- ing. In private life Metternich was one of the most charming of men. His portraits show a face which might almost be called beautiful, well-modelled features, large eyes full of liveliness, a sensitive mouth ; alertness is written all over it. His manners were exquisitely cultivated; his taste in art was fine ; he was well read ; and in conversation he was fascinating. This personal charm is certified by innu- merable witnesses. An English woman of much experi- ence of the world, Frances, Lady Shelley, who met him at Vienna in 1817, noted in her diary pleasing impressions of his "elegant address, courtly manners and deep politeness, joined to a fine person." "A sparkling wit which never wounds, an easy gaiety which inspires those who talk to him, and the gift of drawing out whatever is agreeable in those with whom he converses (thus making them pleased with themselves) may be used in the cabinet for political purposes; but it is in intimate society that these gifts inspire an attachment, often feigned but seldom felt, for an absolute minister. Prince Metternich is beloved to an extra- ordinary degree by all who do not smart under his diplo- matic talents. He is universally admitted to be the most amiable man in Vienna." These qualities masked a mind subtle and insinuating, cool, calculating and sharp. In very many passages in Met- ternich's private letters and diaries we are let into the secret of his methods, and see him dexterously twisting monarchs and statesmen round his fingers, looking into their faces with those luminous eyes of his, and leading them to do precisely what he wanted; and all the while laughing at them without betraying a sign that could dis- concert them. "Good heavens !" he writes, after an inter- view with Count Capo d'Istria, the Greek who was for a while one of the Tzar Alexander's Ministers, "Good heavens ! why is it that so many fools are thoroughly good men, as is the case with Capo d'Istria?" And again, after some negotiations with the same statesman, "Capo d'Istria METTERNICH 47 twists about like a devil in holy water, but he is in holy water, and can do nothing." In one passage he expressed surprise that anyone should have thought him a man who disguised his real purposes. "I have never worn a mask, and those who have mistaken me must have very bad eyes." That is true enough as to his main political objects, but there is much evidence in Metternich's own political memoirs which exhibits his per- fect self-control, and often his enjoyment of the art of manipulating people who had no perception that they were subject to the process. Thus, at the commencement of the Conference of Vienna of 1819, he wrote: "I am surrounded with people who are quite enchanted with their own force of will and yet there is not one among them who a few days ago knew what he wants or will want. This is the universal fate of such an assembly. It has been evident to me for a long time that among a certain number of persons only one is ever found who has clearly made out for himself what is the question in hand. I shall be victorious here as in Karlsbad : that is to say, all wish what I wish, and, since I only wish what is just, I believe I shall gain my victory. But what is most remarkable is that these men will go home in the firm persuasion that they have left Vienna with the same views with which they came." His capacity for hiding his feelings was tested when his daughter Clementine, to whom he was deeply attached, died while the Conference was in session. (Her portrait by Lawrence shows a being of rare beauty.) "I have, hap- pily," wrote Metternich in his diary, "the art of keeping my feelings to myself, even when my heart is half broken. The thirty men with whom I sit daily at the Conference table have certainly never guessed what I was going through while I talked there for three or fours hours and. dictated hundreds of pages." One is irresistibly reminded of the English comedian who never clowned it better than on the night when he was in agony on account of a dying child, for in both instances, that of the statesman and that of the player, habitual professional demeanour overpowered the natural emotions of the man. The Metternichian system of government, with which the name of this adroit statesman is associated, grew partly out of the eighteenth century benevolently-despotic idea that Maria Theresa and her son Joseph II. developed in 48 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY Austria; and partly it was a phase of shocked reaction against the flood of liberal thought let loose by the French Revolution. Austria was a strongly centralised state, and the early sovereigns of the House of Hapsburg-Lorraine cultivated a conscientious responsibility for the social and spiritual welfare of their people. Joseph went too far for his generation, and ended his reign with the uncomfortable feeling that it is easier to dream of a millennium than to create one. But the violence of the Revolution west of the Rhine, and the torrential career of Napoleon, threw all Europe into confusion, and when the great disturber was at length chained at St. Helena, Austria, with Metternich now appointed to direct her destinies, retained her intense centralisation, whilst her rulers cast aside all thought of meddling with such an explosive as reform. What was wanted was not change, but inflexible government. Metter- nich made it his proud boast that throughout his long period of rule, "Ich war ein Fels der Ordnung" — I was a bulwark of order; and at the end of his life he said, "I have proclaimed in the face of all the world the 'system of Metternich' in a few words. 'Force is law,' is a motto which I have chosen for myself and my descendants." It was the function of law, dictated by sovereigns, to ordain ; it was the duty. of subjects to obey and not criticise. Metternich took his stand on the principle of Legiti- macy. Existing governments, presided over by sovereigns who were members of long-established ruling families, were divinely appointed to rule over peoples, and any ques- tioning of their authority was an offence against morals. As he himself wrote, "Providence has confided to princes the duty of preserving authority and saving the people from their follies." That rulers might themselves commit follies was a con- tingency which was not beyond imagining; indeed, Metter- nich had rather a deprecating opinion of several sovereigns. The vanity and mysticism of Alexander of Russia offended him; he despised the King of Naples. But the errors of rulers could best be mitigated by the brotherly advice of other divinely appointed kings and their sagacious and friendly-critical statesmen. The remedy was not to admit anything like popular control ; that was only to turn on the deluge. "From the time that men attempt to swerve from these bases to become rebels against the sovereign arbi- METTERNICII 49 ters of their destinies," he wrote, "society suffers from a malaise which sooner or later will lead to a state of convul- sion. Respect for all that is ; liberty for every government to watch over the well-being of its own people ; a league between all governments against factions in all states ; contempt for the meaningless words which have become the rallying cry of the factions ; respect for the progressive development of institutions in lawful ways; refusal on the part of every monarch to aid or succour partisans under any mask whatever — such are happily the ideas of the great monarchs ; the world will be saved if they bring them into action, it is lost if they do not." Was there, then, to be no such thing as reform, no change whatever in the prevailing system in any country? If the rulers thought a change advisable, yes ; otherwise, certainly not. Metternich was quite decisive on this point. "The principle which the monarchs must oppose to the plan of universal destruction is the preservation of everything legally existing. The only way to arrive at this end is by allowing no innovation." And again : "No time is less suited than the present to bring forward in any state reforms in a wide sense of the word. But, happily, the machine of state is constructed on such good principles that in a wide sense there is really nothing in the machine itself to be altered." Once more: "The first principle to be maintained by monarchs is the maintenance of the stabi- lity of political institutions against the disorganised excite- ment which has taken possession of men's minds, the immutability of principles against the madness of their interpretation, and respect for laws actually in force against desire for their destruction." In a letter to Lord Palmers- ton, Metternich said :"We follow a system of preservation in order that we may not be compelled to follow one of repression. We are firmly convinced that any concession a government may be induced to make strikes at the basis of its existence." This idea of rigidly maintaining existing systems, insti- tutions, laws, of resisting demands for innovation in every direction, Metternich emphasised repeatedly He stressed it in his "Secret Confession of Faith," written for the edifi- cation of the Tzar Alexander in 1820 — one of the most interesting pieces he ever wrote, containing an interpreta- tion of human history strictly conformable to his point of 50 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY view. He impressed the same idea upon the mind of his own sovereign, the Emperor Francis II., who was in fact the admiring pupil of his Chancellor, and who left a letter of advice to his son and heir, Ferdinand, which was full of echoes of Metternichian maxims — e.g., "Disturb nothing in the foundations of the edifice of state; govern and change nothing." The maintenance of the Metternichian system involved continual watchfulness, lest disturbing ideas should find their way into Austria. The police and the bureaucracy were directed to exercise the censorship strictly and to report any tendencies towards liberalism. The importa- tion of all foreign journals was prohibited. Every news- paper published in Austria was under Government control. One journal was allowed in each province of the monarchy, and these semi-official sheets had to take their views from the Austrian Observer, printed at Vienna. Metternich would no more have dreamt of permitting freedom to pub- lish newspapers than freedom to murder. He spoke of "the liberty of the press" as "a scourge unknown to the world until the latter half of the seventeenth century, restrained until the end of the eighteenth with scarcely any exceptions but England — a part of Europe separated from the continent by the sea, as well as by her language and her peculiar manners." "No government," he said again, "can pursue a firm and undeviating course when it is daily exposed to,. the influence of such dissolvent conditions as the freedom of the press." Similarly a vigilant restraint was exercised over books which it was considered dangerous to allow to be imported into Austria. The officials at the frontiers were furnished with lists of prohibited works, compared with which the Index librorum prohibitorum was a broadminded and indul- gent composition. Historical works of all kinds were pro- scribed. Lest thought which the government could hinder from circulating through printed matter might find cur- rency by means of teachers and University professors, an odious system of police surveillance over their labours was maintained. "He who serves me must teach what I com- mand," pronounced the Emperor Francis II. Metternich became uneasy when he heard that certain professors at German universities, beyond his control, were expounding inconvenient doctrine. He recommended that these gentle- METTERNICH 51 men should be, not dismissed in disgrace, since that might defeat the object in view, but provided with posts in the government service, where they would be well paid and well watched, their university chairs being meanwhile filled by others, selected carefully, who could be depended upon to teach only things agreeable to authority. Heterodox religious teachings were likely to be as dis- turbing as unauthorised political ideas, and therefore they, too, under the Metternichian system, must be kept out of Austria. The church was regarded by Joseph II. and Francis II. as "a branch of the Civil Service," and if Met- ternich himself did not formulate the notion quite so crudely as that, he acted on the principle that whilst the church was to exercise its great influence to hold the minds of the people in quiet submission, the state would see to it that rival sects were not allowed to propagate their damn- able diversities. In 1817 Metternich became alert to the prevalence in the world outside Austria of "certain mala- dies of the mind which present all the symptoms of true epidemics." These were evangelical movements. "For some time the Methodists have made great progress in Eng- land and America, and this sect, following the track of others, is now beginning to extend its proselytism to other parts of Europe." The spread of this dangerous tendency must be prevented. It was like "a new kind of revolution." "It is doubtless worthy of the wisdom of the Great Powers," wrote Metternich, "to take into consideration an evil which it is possible, and perhaps even easy, to stifle at its begin- ning, but which can only gain in intensity in proportion as it spreads." The hammer of the Great Powers was not, however, called into play to crack the Methodist nut, for the very good reason that no other Power than Austria would have sanc- tioned such a proposition. The Tzar Alexander was him- self at the time under the spell of religious mysticism, and even used his influence to try to induce Metternich to per- mit the promoters of a Bible-reading movement to carry on operations in Austria. Metternich's reply to the Tzar's Foreign Minister, Nesselrode, is interesting: "We have never abolished the Bible Society among us," he wrote, "for one never existed. I believe, however, that I am in the position to assure you that the Emperor will never allow the establishment of one, and the confidence you have in 52 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY me induces me to acquaint you with His Majesty's reasons. The heir of so many Emperors of Germany and the nephew of Joseph II. knows what is due to God and his crown. The Catholic Church does not encourage the universal read- ing of the Bible, and it acts in this respect like a father placed above the passions and consequently the storms of life. The Catholic Church not only allows but recommends the reading of the sacred books to men who are enlightened, calm, capable of judging the question. She does not encou- rage the reading of such books, or of passages full of crimes and obscenities which the Book of Books contains only too often in histories simply like the first ages, and like all that is true. For myself, I think the church is right, and I judge by the effect which the reading of the Bible has with me at the age of forty, so different from that which the same reading produced on me at the age of fifteen and twenty." Consequently no Bible-reading societies were permitted to be founded in Austria as long as Metternich wielded power. Strict Catholic as he was, however, when he visited Rome he was much displeased with what he saw of the church at its centre. The statesman in him suffered dis- illusionment. "I acknowledge," he wrote in 1819 (the reigning Pope was Pius VII.), "that I cannot understand how a Protestant can turn Catholic at Rome. Rome is like a most magnificent theatre with very bad actors. Keep what I say to yourself, for it will run all through Vienna, and I love religion and its triumph too much to cast a slur upon it in any manner whatever." Metternich's period of maximum influence and power in Europe was between 1815 and 1830. In 1820 he endea- voured to induce the Great Powers to subscribe to the Protocol of Troppau, which would have laid a political inter- dict upon any state which underwent "a change of govern- ment due to revolution," and would have bound all the Powers, if such revolution threatened other states, "by peaceful means, or if need be by arms, to bring back the guilty state into the bosom of the Great Alliance." Great Britain, however, refused to have anything to do with a plan which, under a very thin disguise, meant that the Great Powers were to use their military strength to enforce absolutism throughout Europe. Both Castlereagh and Can- ning, who succeeded him at the Foreign Office, were at METTERNICH 53 one in this regard — much to Metternich's annoyance, since the obstention of Great Britain made his policy fruitless, Canning especially became Metternich's bete noir among statesmen ; he was, as the Prince said, "the malevolent meteor hurled by an angry Providence upon Europe." But Canning's position was firmly maintained. "Our business," he said, "is to preserve the peace of the world, and there- fore the independence of the several nations which com- pose it. In resisting the Revolution in all its stages we resisted the spirit of change, to be sure, but we resisted also the spirit of foreign domination." Between 1830 and 1848 the star of Metternich waned. France in the former year overthrew the last of the Bour- bon kings. In Great Britain in 1832 the passing of the Reform Act reduced the power of the Whig and Tory olig- archy which had kept the control of affairs in the hands of a group of governing families ever since the downfall of the Stuart dynasty. The Belgians tore up the instrument by which the Great Powers settled their destiny without regard to their wishes. Mazzini in Italy had commenced working for the nationality and unity of his country, which meant the destruction of the temporal power of the Papacy and the uprooting of the petty Italian principalities which Austria really dominated. The spectre of revolution took corporeal form in many countries at once, and at last, in 1848, the entire Metternichian system went to pieces in Austria and Hungary. Amidst political earthquake and eclipse, the Emperor fled from Vienna, and Metternich, while the mob was hurling curses on his name and burning his palace, slipped out of the capital and made his way to London. In that exciting year crowns, sceptres, fragments of thrones, scraps of constitutions and shreds of treaties were hurtling through the air like roofing tiles and chimney pots in a tornado ; but the habitual ironical calm of the pictur- esque, white-haired old gentleman whose word for so many years had been accepted as the authentic pronouncement of ultimate wisdom in Austrian politics, was quite unruffled. He had, in fact, known all along that the system could not last, but he had made it last as long as possible. There is pathos in that confession of his — "I have come into the world either too early or too late. Earlier, I should have enjoyed the age ; later, I should have helped to reconstruct 64 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY it; to-day, I have to give my life to propping up the moul- dering edifice." Both the Emperor Francis and the Tzar Alexander also recognised that the political system of Europe was unsound. "My realm," said Francis, "is like a worm-eaten house — if one part is removed one cannot tell how much may fall." And the Tzar confessed that attempts "obstinately made to revive institutions which have perished of old age did not deserve to .succeed," and that "the new spirit of the peoples is too little consulted." Justice to Metternich demands that it should be recog- nised that his system entailed the maintenance of peace between nations as well as the subordination of peoples to their rulers. In a sense both he and the Tzar Alexander were pioneers of a "League of Nations." Unfortunately, free nations were not within their contemplation. They aimed at a league of sovereigns to enforce absolute sove- reignty. But still it is a fact that between 1815 and 1848 Austria-Hungary was not engaged in a single war. The statement commonly but unjustly made that wars have been provoked by rulers and never by peoples is conspicuously false in this instance. Peace is not everything, and it is true that Austria under Metternich was industrially stag- nant, intellectually sterile, and politically prostrate. That kind of peace is bought at a high price. Metternich him- self said : "The people know what is the happiest thing for them, namely, to be able to count on the morrow, for it is the to-morrow which will repay them for the cares and sorrows of to-day. The laws which afford a just protec- tion to individuals, to families and to property are quite simple in their essence. The people dread any movement which injures industry and brings new burdens in its train." Metternich died on 11th June, 1859. The Emperor Francis Joseph had commenced his long reign in the year of the distinguished Minister's downfall. Exactly seventy years later the Austro-Hungarian monarchy went up in smoke and flame. The official life of this remarkable states- man was so long that he experienced the strange sensation of being able to read works of history wherein his own actions were discussed in connection with those of person- ages who had vanished from the world, so that he saw him- self very much as posterity would see him. An entry in his diary records such an experience: "I have passed a METTERNICH 55 strange night. A history of the war of 1814 by Koch has just appeared in Paris; one of the best works which has yet been written on that subject. Apart from some errors which an author placed as he is, outside the affairs, can hardly escape, the book contains much that is true. I took this book to bed with me yesterday evening and read it with the greatest interest. To read the history of an important epoch in which one has oneself played a promi- nent part is a most curious thing. I found myself placed before posterity, and felt called upon to judge myself. During this three hours reading I did not indeed feel inclined to accuse myself ; but how much could I have added to every occurrence, to every page, indeed to every line of the book." In his last years he was always accessible to historians who wished to consult him about events of which he had an intimate inner knowledge. He admitted that he valued the good opinion of educated posterity more than he had ever cared for public opinion during his political lifetime. The personality of Metternich is attractive by reason of his urbanity, his serene manner, his air of cultivated grace. He was never an inaccessible man despite his lofti- ness of station and his command of power. He enjoyed conversing with men and women of various ways of think- ing, though he strove so resolutely to shut up Austria in a hothouse with a regulated temperature. He once had a long talk with Robert Owen, whose socialistic experiments must have seemed to him a rare kind of lunacy tinged with sinfulness. He stands as a type of absolutist with whom it is difficult to find a parallel among modern statesmen, and his policy broke down before a thrilling outburst of popular indignation. But dependable witnesses testify that Metternich was not personally unpopular in Austria. In Europe generally he was detested as the incarnation of an evil system. But he never winced under such attacks ; they were as the dust thrown up by his carriage wheels — merely disagreeable concomitants of the road. Metternich's Memoirs, edited by Prince Richard Metter- nich and A. von Klinkowstrom, are not complete in the five- volume English edition. The French edition, in eight volumes, which is complete, has been used for the purposes of this study. There are two readable short books on Met- 56 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY ternich, one by Malleson, the second by Sandeman, but neither of them devotes much attention to his political system. I should have liked Robespierre better than Abbe de Pradt, and Attila better than Quiroga. A tyrant does not alarm me ; I should know how to avoid his attacks or bear them with honour. But the Radical maniac, the senti- mental boudoir-philanthropist, make me uncomfortable. I like iron and gold, but I hate tin and copper. — Metternich. The angry buzz of a multitude is one of the bloodiest noises in the world. — Lord Halifax. The best political institutions are those which are the most effective in the ablest hands. — Treitschke. Every supreme government is free from legal restraints ; or (what is the same position dressed in a different phrase) , every supreme government is legally despotic. The distinc- tion, therefore, of governments into free and despotic can hardly mean that some of them are freer from restraints than others ; or that the subjects of the governments which are denominated free are protected against their govern- ments by positive law. — John Austin. If it be objected that I am a defender of arbitrary powers, I confess I cannot comprehend how any society can be established or subsist without them. The difference between good and ill governments is not that those of one sort have an arbitrary power which the others have not, for they all have it; but that in those which are well con- stituted this power is so placed as it may be beneficial to the people. — Algernon Sidney. The form in which our King exercises Imperial rights in Germany has never been of importance in my eyes; to secure the fact that he exercises them I have strained all the strength God has given me. — Bismarck. Therefore my son first of all things learn to know and love that God whom-to ye have a double obligation; first, for that He made you a man, and, next, for that He made you a little god to sit on His throne and rule over other men. — King James I. A prince who is wise and prudent cannot or ought not to keep his parole when the keeping of it is to his preju- dice, and the causes for which he promised removed. Were METTERNICH 57 men all good this doctrine was not to be taught, but because they are wicked and not likely to be punctual with you, you are not obliged to any such strictness with them ; nor was there ever any prince that wanted lawful pretence to justify his breach of promise. — Macchiavelli. The revival of monarchy during the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had unquestionably many bene- ficial results to general civilisation. It restrained, in con- siderable degree at least, the privileged classes from oppress- ing the common subjects. It improved the condition of the common man. It developed the feeling and the idea of national unity and of the nation. It substituted one law for a variety of feudal customs. It introduced the distinction between private property and public office. But from the point of view of the reconciliation of Government with liberty it did nothing, at least nothing directly. It sacrificed liberty completely to government, in that it made government sovereign. — John W. Burgess. The people never revolt from fickleness or the mere desire of change. It is the impatience of suffering which alone has this effect. — Sully. He that is to govern a whole nation must read in him- self not this or that particular man, but mankind. — Hobbes. There is but one way to govern men, and it is eternal truth. Get into their skins. Try to realise their feelings. That is the true secret of government. — General Gordon. LOUIS BLANC. [Page 58 Chapter V. LOUIS BLANC AND THE RIGHTS OF LABOUR. BETWEEN 1830 and 1848, in all the countries of Europe which had felt the influence of the great changes in industrial conditions, known, in Arnold Toynbee's phrase, as the Industrial Revolution, there was a stirring of working class aspi- rations. Among the effects of that transformation were an increase in the size of towns which were centres of manufacturing energy, and a marshalling of men in factories, workshops and yards, for the cheaper and more rapid production of commodities. The application of steam power to industry necessitated a decay of hand work and home work ; labour was cantonned and regimented. But legislation lagged far behind the requirements of the industrial world, partly because the landed and legal classes, in whose hands the mechanism of government chiefly lay, imperfectly appreciated the meaning and nature of the changes, and partly because the new class of wealthy manu- facturers used their political influence to keep the hand of authority from laying restraints upon their activities. Consequently the evils attendant upon the rapid growth of the factory system were glaring and notorious, whilst the measures for protecting the victims of it were weak, hesitating and ill-administered. The first English Fac- tories Act, that of 1802, restricted hours of labour in cotton and other mills to twelve per day. But it applied only to mills wherein apprentices were employed, and was very easily evaded by dispensing with apprenticeship. Children could be swept into the mills just as easily, and the hours of labour could be as cruelly long, as before. The successive efforts made to limit the hours of work, to diminish the barbarous wickedness of child labour, and to impose a stan- 59 60 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY dard of decency in conditions of employment were founded upon evidence so large in volume, so sickening in its details of human degradation, so discreditable to the authorities which permitted the system and to the manufacturers who profited from it, that the period may fairly be reckoned as one of the darkest in modern history. The working classes became, in the cutting phrase of recent investigators, "the cannon fodder of industry." 1 Not till 1833, when Ashley's (Lord Shaftesbury's) Ten Hours Bill was passed, was any substantial step taken to set a limit to the devouring process. Yet within about a quarter of a century, terminating with that year, Great Britain had taken a leading part in the suppression of the slave trade, and the final act abolishing slavery throughout the British colonies was passed in the same year as Lord Ashley's Ten Hours Bill. The conscience of a people who could be horrified by West Indian black slavery, but could endure with complacency the white slavery of Lancashire and Yorkshire, was in some need of renovation. While ameliorating measures were so tardy, all efforts on the part of the working classes themselves to bring about improvements by organised effort were viewed by governments as dangerous. The pioneers of Trade Unionism were threatened as promoters of associations of "criminal character," "illegal conspiracies, and liable to be prosecuted as such at common law." As, however, Lord Melbourne's government in the early thirties of the nine- teenth century was not certain about the efficacy of the existing law to suppress Trade Unions by direct means, and as King William IV., on the one hand, and the manu- facturers and mine owners on the other, pressed for decisive action to be taken, resort was had to devious methods. Victims were found in a little group of poor Dorsetshire labourers, who had formed themselves into a union to keep up their wages. The government discovered a pre- text in the fact that an oath of secrecy was administered to the members, and the taking of such an oath was, it was maintained, illegal under an act of 1797 — which was passed for coping with the naval mutinies of that period. Five members of the union, all labourers of the village of Tol- i J. L and B. Hammond, ' ' The Town Labourer. ' ' LOUIS BLANC 61 puddle, in Dorsetshire, were arrested, convicted and sen- tenced to seven years' transportation. They served part of their sentences in Tasmania ; but the scandalous abuse of power which sent these very decent and worthy men to a penal colony to herd with felons aroused so much righteous anger that Lord Melbourne's government re- prieved them before their term was completed. The leader of the five Dorsetshire labourers, George Loveless, wrote a short account of the trial and of his experiences in Tas- mania, in his little book, Victims of Whiggery : A Statement of the Persecutions Experienced by the Dorsetshire Labourers. It is incidentally a valuable piece of evidence as to the convict transportation system in its last phases. These English incidents may be taken as illustrative of the conditions prevailing in the industrial world in the first half of the nineteenth century, because the Industrial Revolution had then produced far more radical changes in England than elsewhere. France was the country upon the continent wherein the system had wrought the greatest changes. Germany was slower in development. In France the emergence of a definite working-class organised force in politics was not quite so clearly perceived as in Eng- land, because the numerous political changes which char- acterised French history after the great Revolution rather obscured the view. Amidst the crashing of successive forms of government, the fundamental economic transfor- mations were clouded in dust and smoke. The overthrow of the Directory Government by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1799, the establishment of the Napoleonic Empire in 1804, the annihilation of that Empire in 1814-15, the restoration of the Bourbon kings, the destruction of that dynasty and the setting up of the "bourgeois" monarchy of Louis Philippe at the revolution of 1830, the expulsion of that .sovereign at the revolution of 1848, and the formation of the second republic, lastly the coup d'etat by which Prince Louis Napoleon overturned the Republic and founded the second Empire in 1851 — these events constitute a series of chap- ters of rapid and radical alterations of the political structure, which tended to divert attention from the inte- resting fact that beneath the surface economic forces in volatile France were working out in much the same way as in stolid, slow-changing England. The parallelism is interesting. In both countries there 62 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY were examples of Utopian Socialism. In England Robert Owen experimented with co-operative production ; and his contemporaries, Saint Simon and Charles Fourier in France dabbled with fanciful schemes for regenerating humanity, the former by a kind of propertyless co-operative com- munism, the latter by starting human ant-heaps or bee- hives, called Phalansteries, wherein all labour and the proceeds of production were to be shared in common, marriage was to be banned, and children were not to know their own parents, but were to be reared by the community. Owen, Saint Simon and Fourier were men of generous sympathies, whose souls rebelled against the human degra- dation, the abject poverty, the apparently hopeless outlook of the mass of those who toiled, which were produced by the Industrial Revolution in its most ruthless period. They were optimists concerning their schemes and the perfecti- bility of mankind if such were adopted. Saint Simon was temperamentally disposed to count his chickens before they were hatched, as illustrated by his alleged proposal of marriage to Madame de Stael : — "Madame, you are the most extraordinary woman in the world ; I am the most extraordinary man ; between us we should no doubt pro- duce a child more extraordinary still." No one of them effected permanent results. Their schemes conduced to bitterness and disappointment, though a community founded by a disciple of Fourier lasted in America till 1895 ; it was called Icaria, and its promoter was Etienne Cabet. 1 The Utopians were not strong in their analysis of the causes of the misery which they surveyed and deplored. They were men accustomed to the handling of wealth, with a cherished dislike of their own "bourgeois" class. Saint Simon's views were coloured by religious mysticism, Owen's by anti-religious bias, Fourier's by his almost fanatical dislike of individual distinction. They loved humanity better than they understood it, but their very failures were valuable, as showing the way in which progress could not be impelled. The word "socialism" came into use in connection with these plans of reconstruction. Whether it was first em- i See the interesting article, "Icarie et son f'ondateur Etienne Cabet," by J. Prudommeaux, in the "Eevue Historique, " xcviii., p. 321. LOUIS BLANC 63 ployed in France in 1832, or in England in 1833, is of no importance for present purposes. It vaguely designated either the Owenite theories, or the fairy-tale, soap-bubble phantasies of Saint-Simonism and Fourierism. It was a nickname applied to those who were thought to have revo- lutionary leanings, or a rallying cry for the builders of castles in Spain of any architecture whatever. But Social- ism did not become a force in practical politics until a school arose in France with definite aims, principally under the influence of the writings of Louis Blanc. Hence the interest which attaches to the ideas of the man who is mainly the subject of this study. Louis Blanc published his little book, Organization du Travail, in 1839, and five editions of it were called for between that date and the outbreak of the revolution of 1848. He was well known as the editor of journals which were vehicles for the propagation of the ideas formulated in his book. His plan was pressed as being immediately prac- ticable, and was accepted as such by many thousands of persons throughout France. During strikes, at elections, and at gatherings where political issues were discussed from the working class point of view, the teachings of Louis Blanc were accepted eagerly as embodying a solution of industrial grievances and social ills. The consequence of this propaganda was that when the revolution of 1848 broke out, and King Louis Philippe fled from France to England under the name of Mr. William Smith, Louis Blanc was regarded as one of the inevitable members of the Provisional Government formed under the presidency of the poet Lamartine. He was the pre-ordained exponent of working class demands. The revolution itself was not solely an ebullition of discontent on the part of workmen. It was a general outburst of dissatisfaction with a regime under which political power was held by fairly well-to-do property owners and landed proprietors. This middle class autocracy, under a king who had been enthroned by the "bourgeoisie," and depended upon its suf- frages, had become obnoxious to France. It had neither the distinction of an aristocracy nor the breadth of a demo- cracy; it was considered pretentious, purse-proud and rather stupid. But while several parties united to topple over the throne of Louis Philippe, they were far from being in agreement as to the kind of government which they 64 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY wanted. Liberals, Republicans, Socialists, Legitimists and Bonapartists had only one bond of union: to get rid of the old government. Having done that, they watched each other with jealous and suspicious eyes, and in the end obtained a revival of Napoleonic Imperialism, from which, probably, nine-tenths of the people of France would have shrunk with aversion if at the beginning of 1848 they had realised what was coming. Now, this revolution should have afforded to Louis Blanc an opportunity to put his plans for the organisation of labour into effect. That such would be the result was hoped by him and by the thousands who believed in him. That they would have failed if they had been tried in completely favourable conditions it is possible to maintain ; they might have failed from their own inherent weakness. But it is not possible to maintain that they were fairly tried in 1848. In the reprint of the book which has been issued under the editorship of Mr. J. A. R. Marriott, M.P., 1 it is stated (p. xlix) : — "Louis Blanc enjoyed one advantage which falls to the lot of few philosophers. He had the opportunity of putting his principles to the test of practical experiment." But in fact no such opportunity was enjoyed. Indeed, we have it on the acknowledgment of Lamartine himself, the head of the government, that Louis Blanc's colleagues, being determined that his scheme should not succeed, placed the experiment under the direction of a minister and officials who were known by them to be antagonistic to it. The naive Machiavellianism of this confession is surpris- ing, coming from a poet with a turn for moralising, as Lamartine was ; but at least there is no mistaking the meaning of the passage in his Histoire de la Revolution de 184-8, wherein he explains what was done. 2 Lamartine relates that M. Marie, who took charge of this work, and his officers, were men "who secretly shared the anti-socialist opinions of the government;" that the national workshops were regarded as "merely a transient expedient," and that they were "tolerated until such time as, the revolutionary crisis having passed over, these ele- ments were re-absorbed by private labour." Meanwhile, Louis Blanc himself, who should have been entrusted with i Published by the Clarendon Press. 2 See the English edition, p. 336. LOUIS BLANC 65 the direction of his own scheme if Lamartine's govern- ment wished to give effect to it and make it succeed, was appointed to preside over a commission which sat at the Luxembourg to enquire into "the claims of labour and the well-being of the working class." This commission was perfectly useless ; it propounded a series of somewhat rheto- rical propositions based upon the phrase "t 1 e right to work" — "droit au travail" — -which was a kind of watchword with the working class revolutionaries of the time, 1 and upon the principle of securing "for him that works the legitimate reward of his labour" — a vague phrase, to which the most conscienceless employer might have subscribed. To state these facts in justice to Louis Blanc is not to affirm that his scheme had any real chance of success in 1848, or that it was a workable scheme at all. But, in fact, all that was done was to spend a large amount of public money in employing a huge army of idle men on utterly useless labour. As Louis Blanc quite truly affirmed, "the national workshops were nothing more than a rabble of paupers, whom it was enough to feed from the want of knowing how otherwise to employ them." Artisans, artists, clerks, literary men, actors, mere idlers and wastrels, all whom the disruption of the times had thrown out of employ- ment, and all who never wished for serious employment, were set to valueless tasks, and were paid by the state whether they worked or did not. The whole business was, in the words of Lamartine, a "distribution of alms on the part of the state and honoured by the semblance of labour." As soon as the new Government felt that it could safely do so, it dissolved the so-called workshops and broke up the resistance by military force, by which ten thousand persons were killed or wounded in the streets of Paris. In these circumstances, whatever the defects of the scheme might be, no fair judgment upon it can be passed on -account of the failure of 1848. As there was no intention to succeed, failure was a matter of course. What, then, were the ideas of the Organization du Tra- vail ? 1 But, as pointed out by Sidney and Beatrice Webb, in their "In- dustrial Democracy,'' IT., p. 570, the phrase, "the right to work,'' \\;is used seventy years before 1848 by Turgot, in arguing against the mono- polies of the guilds: "The right to work is the property of every man, and this property is the first, the most sacred, and the most inalienable of all." 66 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY Louis Blanc affirmed that by the better organisation of labour human misery would be assuaged; crime, the child of misery, lessened ; and the spiritual capacities of man ele- vated through education. Political reform alone was bound to lead to disappointment unless coupled with economic amelioration. But no substantial change could be effected under the existii g system. Competition was destructive to the working class and a constant cause of impoverishment and ruin to the employing class. Salvation for all was to be found only in the elevation of society as a whole. General propositions of this benevolent kind do not carry the argument much further, but the author comes to closer quarters with his handling of the problem of unem- ployment. He shows, from facts collected with much care, that the industrious work people under the competitive system in vogue were continually thrust into poverty by intervals of unemployment, when savings accumulated while they were at work were consumed. Further, competition forced down wages below a level at which a man could live decently. (He was writing before there were trade unions in French industries.) He gives an example. Three work- men present themselves for one job. "How much for your labour?" "Three francs; I have a wife and children." "Good; and you?" "Two and a half francs; I have a wife but no children." "Excellent; and you?" "Two francs are enough for me; I am alone." "The job is yours." Com- petition, in his view, worked equally injuriously upon society in general, and he devoted a whole chapter to its ravages in England, "since it is from the English that we have borrowed that deplorable system." Louis Blanc, then, would have eliminated competition from industry, and he believed that that could be done, and the happiness of producers promoted, by the following means: — The government should regulate production; it should use its credit to raise loans, which should be applied to the creation of co-operative workshops (ateliers sociaux) in the most important branches of industry. In these work- shops should be employed workmen who gave guarantees of good conduct, and all should be paid alike. During the first year the government should regulate the workshops ; afterwards, when the workmen had settled down to their tasks, and had learnt that they were all equally interested in the success of the enterprise, they should elect their own LOUIS BLANC 67 management. The proceeds should be divided into three parts. One part should be divided equally among all the workmen. The second part should be applied, one-half to a fund for relieving sickness, old age and infirmity, and one-half to meeting crises affecting the industry in question and other industries which might require similar aid. The third part should be devoted to purchasing tools and appli- ances. To each national workshop should be attached groups of specialists, who would participate in the division of proceeds. It was contemplated that capitalists might invest in such ventures if additional capital was required; in such cases interest would be guaranteed on the capital invested, but there would be no participation by the capi- talists in the profits. Louis Blanc did not recommend the suppression of private ventures in the industries in which co-operative workshops might be established. There might for a time be competition between private and co-operative workshops ; but he did not think that it would last long, because the co-operative workshops would have the advantage that all employed therein would be directly interested in good and speedy production, and would see to it that the system was economically worked. The scheme was subjected to severe criticisms from con- temporary writers, and later critics have too often con- demned it in the light of the dismal failure of the national workshops established to relieve the acute industrial dis- turbance produced by the revolution of 1848. But it is necessary to insist that that experiment was not in any way a testing of Louis Blanc's plan, that he disapproved of the measures then taken, that he was neither responsible for them nor in charge of them, and that those who did super- intend them were not favourable to his ideas. The weak- nesses of his scheme are many, but he should not be blamed for the failure of a policy which did not try that scheme. Some efforts were made by associations of French work- ing men, without state aid, to form co-operative produc- ing societies, and these were the chief practical results of Louis Blanc's writings. But they were not permanent. Co-operative industrial effort has never been so successful in France as in the north of England, notwithstanding the great impetus which might have been expected to be given 68 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY to the co-operative principle by the movement which we have been considering. It must be admitted that the scheme of the Organiza- tion du Travail gave no promise of a satisfactory solution of industrial troubles, and that the enthusiasm for it in 1848, like so many other enthusiasms, was not based upon careful consideration. It was very limited in scope. It applied only to factory workers and those engaged in manu- facturing commodities. Farmers, cultivators, miners, fishers and producers of raw material of all kinds were not contemplated by it, nor were those engaged in distri- buting and transport industries. The scheme seemed to assume that the only workers for whom it was necessary to make provision were those engaged in converting raw material into finished articles. But ignoring the producers of raw materials and those engaged in the highly important business of distribution was seriously neglectful of large essential interests. It was also assumed that the payment of one-third of the produce of industry in wages would prove satisfactory to the workmen. But neither Louis Blanc nor the thou- sands of workmen who thought that his scheme would confer blessings upon them took the trouble to ascertain whether one-third was not less than was already being received in most branches of private employment. It is highly probable that many workmen under this scheme, if proper effect had been given to it, would have found them- selves worse off than they were before. It is not possible to state exactly what proportion of the product of industry was paid away in wages in France in the years before 1848, but Prof. A. L. Bowley's calculations supply dependable infor- mation as to British wages in the period before 1914; and, making every allowance for the steady improvement during the intervening three-quarters of a century, it seems clear that Louis Blanc's provision of one-third would have im- poverished those whom he desired to benefit. Professor Bowley, in his book The Division of the Product of Industry (1919), shows that in the group of industries for which he had reliable information, fifty-eight per cent, of the net product went to manual workers, four per cent, in small salaries, six per cent, in salaries over £160 : in all, sixty- eight per cent, to those employed. The capital for forming the National Workshops was LOUIS BLANC 69 to be provided by the state — that is, by the whole body of the people — to set up in business one class, and no pro- vision was made for repayment, nor even for payment of interest on the money borrowed. Employers and workmen engaged in private businesses were to contribute funds to be used in ruining their industries — that is, assuming that the co-operative workshops did, by superior management and cheaper and better production, kill private competition, as Louis Blanc believed that they would. No thought was given to the establishment of new indus- tries, due to scientific management and invention ; nor to the decay and obliteration of old industries due to the same causes. The vast extension of electrical industries, for example, was not thought of in 1848. Electricity was little more than a scientific curiosity then. Moreover, a single important invention by a person unconnected with one of the co-operative workshops might easily make the fortune of a private firm, rendering the competing "national" con- cern hopelessly out of date, and incapable of surviving. The scheme contemplated a stable condition of industry, which would not be disturbed by fresh inventions. To make it succeed, Louis Blanc would have had to play the part of an industrial Knut, stationing himself at the gates of the National Workshops, and crying to the waves of invention, Thus far shalt thou go and no farther. But he would have been no more successful than the legend credits the Danish king with having been. In the history of the labour movement of the nineteenth century Louis Blanc is an important figure, coming as he did between the Utopian Socialists and the more elaborately reasoned Marxian system. Consciously or otherwise, the modern advocates of Syndicalism and Guild Socialism have worked back to his standpoint. Their ideas have an affinity with his rather than with the teachings of Marx ; for Marx believed in the State control of production and distribution, whilst Louis Blanc, like the Guild Socialists, believed in the control of industries by those engaged in them. For over twenty years after the 1848 revolution Louis Blanc was an exile in London. France was no country for him during the greater part of the period of Napoleon III. In England he married a German lady. There his best historical works were written, and he enjoyed the friend- ship of many eminent English men and women of letters 70 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY — Mill, Grote, George Eliot, Swinburne. Lord Morley speaks of him as "my excellent and most interesting friend;" "the precision of his speech matched his turn for clean-cut republican and socialist dogma." He was a man of diminutive stature, with a sonorous voice which seemed much too large for him, and a fervent temperament which probably owed much to his Corsican forebears. Palgrave Simpson, in his Pictures from Revolutionary Paris — one of the liveliest descriptions in English of the exciting events, which the author witnessed — speaks of "his little, almost dwarfish person, which agitates itself as it would swell, like that of the frog, to the giant proportions of the ox." The orator's temperament was his, and he had no little of the vice of orators — that of supposing that fine-sounding phrases which draw applause from crowds represent real things and possibilities. His sympathies were generous, his intelligence was keen, and if there was ambition in his composition it was an ambition to serve as well as to attain. The silly story told by one of his contemporaries that he flung himself into the arms of democracy because of a slight of his small person by a lady of rank is belied by his whole career and bent of character. He grew more mellow and less trustful of revolutionary methods as he grew older, and when he returned to France towards the end of the Second Empire he found that he had more sympathy with the Liberals than with the Socialists. After the debacle of 1870-1, he warned the Communists of Paris that they were driving towards dis- aster. Elected to the Chamber of Deputies, he pleaded hard for a merciful handling of those who had resisted the re-establishment of the National Government. He was not, however, a very distinguished man in French politics at the end of his life. He died in 1882, at the age of 71 ; and the tiny, sharp-featured old man was felt to have played a sufficiently important part in the life of France at a critical time to justify a public funeral in the cemetery of Pere la Chaise. The Oxford reprint of Louis Blanc's Organization du Travail, with critical introduction by J. A. R. Marriott, is indispensable to the study of the ideas discussed above. Contemporary accounts of the French 1848 Revolution are to be found in Palgrave Simpson's Pictures of Revolutionary LOUIS BLANC 71 Paris — very lively and vivid ; Lamartine's French Revolution of 1848 — egotistical but valuable; Lord Normanby's A Year of Revolution in Paris — staid and dependable as far as it goes; Nassau Senior's Journals Kept in France — a work of a highly competent observer; and Louis Blanc's own His- tory of the Revolution 18U8 — written, naturally, from a personal point of view. Hitherto it is questionable if all the mechanical inven- tions yet made have lightened the day's toil of any human being. They have enabled a greater population to live the same life of drudgery and imprisonment, and an increased number of manufacturers and others to make fortunes. They have increased the comforts of the middle classes. But they have not yet begun to effect those great changes in human destiny which it is in their nature and in their futurity to accomplish. — John Stuart Mill (1848). The breakfast-table in an ordinary English home to-day is a monument to the achievement of the Industrial Revo- lution and the solid reality of the economic internation- alism which resulted from it. There is still poverty in Western Europe, but it is preventable poverty. Before the Industrial Revolution, judged by a modern standard, there was nothing but poverty. — A. E. Zimmern. The golden age is not, as the poets say, in the past, but in the future. — Saint Simon. As if in fact our incurable trick of taking a word for a thing were not the root of half the mischief of the world. — Lord Morley. Those socialist proposals are connected with great evils, and no one who is not absolutely blind will deny their exis- tence. It is our duty to do all we can to find remedies for those evils; even if we are called socialists for doing so, we shall be reconciled to it. — Lord Salisbury (1890). I am pretty certain that no despotism of which mankind has had experience would be so searching, so all-absorbing, so tyrannical, as that which would be exhibited and felt if the schemes of those who would reconstruct society were accepted and carried out. — J. Thorold Rogers. The chief and almost the only business of the Sypho- grants is to take care that no man may live idle, but that everyone may follow his trade diligently; yet they do not 72 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY wear themselves out with perpetual toil, from morning to night, as if they were beasts of burden, which, as it is indeed a heavy slavery, so it is everywhere the common curse of life amongst all mechanics except the Utopians. — Sir Thomas More. Morality must be united with economics as a practical science. The better distribution which is sought for will then be found in the direction of (1) a modification of the idea of private property by (a) public opinion, and (b) legislation, but not so as to destroy individualism, which will itself be modified by duty and the love of man; (2) state action in the interests of the whole people; (3) asso- ciation not only of .producers but of consumers. — Arnold Toynbee. Betwixt the days in which we now live and the end of the Middle Ages Europe has gained freedom of thought, increase of knowledge, and huge talent for dealing with the material forces of nature; comparative political free- dom withal and respect for the lives of civilised men, and other gains that go with these things; nevertheless I say deliberately that if the present state of society is to endure she has bought these gains at too high a price in the loss of the pleasure in daily work which once did certainly solace the mass of men for their fears and oppressions : the death of Art was too high a price to pay for the material pros- perity of the middle classes. — William Morris. It is impossible to over-estimate the influence of pro- perty in the civilisation of mankind. It was the power that brought the Aryan and Semitic nations out of bar- barism into civilisation. The growth of the idea of property in the human mind commenced in feebleness and ended in becoming its master passion. Governments and laws are instituted with primary reference to its creation, protec- tion and enjoyment. It introduced slavery as an instru- ment in its production ; and after the experience of several thousand years it caused the abolition of slavery upon the discovery that a free man was a better property-making machine. — 'Leivis Morgan. The most valuable things are common to all mankind, and were always so. Air and light belong in common to everything that breathes and sees daylight. Even in our own society, do you not see that the pleasantest or the most splendid properties — roads, rivers, forests that were once LOUIS BLANC 73 the king's, libraries, museums — belong to everyone? No rich man possesses any more than I do this ancient oak of Fontainbleau or that picture of the Louvre. And they are more mine than the rich man's, if I know better how to enjoy them. Collective ownership, which people fear as a distant monster, surrounds us already under a thousand familiar forms. It is alarming when you announce it; whereas the advantages which it procures are already in use. — Anatole France. Louis Blanc and his proposals appeared to be over- whelmed in the disasters of the Revolution of 1848. It was not strange, then, that a French writer about 1865 felt like offering an apology for compliance with a request to fur- nish an article on socialism for an encyclopaedia of political science. Socialism, he said in effect, is something which is now dead and gone; but, after all, it has a curious his- torical interest which may justify the present article. — Richard T. Ely. PALMERSTON. I Page 74 Chapter VI. PALMERSTON AND FOREIGN POLICY. THERE are many reasons for preferring Palmerston to any other statesman, British or foreign, for the purposes of studying a life and character containing the elements for a review of ideas relating to foreign policy. He had a long career of eighty years, during which he held political office for periods totalling nearly half a century, and throughout his main interest, even when he did not hold the seals of the Foreign Office, was foreign policy. When he entered Parliament in 1807 Great Britain had only very recently lost Pitt and Fox, and he was still a great figure in politics when Gladstone and Disraeli were at the height of their powers. He was, therefore, in touch with the great men at the beginning of the century and with those who dominated the political stage right down to its close. He served as a colleague in governments with Castlereagh, Canning, Wellington, Peel, John Russell, Althorp, Melbourne and Clarendon, besides being himself twice Prime Minister. If there is any well established tradition in foreign policy, assuredly Palmerston inherited it from Castlereagh and Canning, and passed it on to his successors. So much did Palmerston make the business -of the Office his own concern that in the writing of despatches he treated his colleagues in the Cabinet, and Queen Victoria herself, as quite negligible, managing the foreign affairs of the British Empire very much as he managed his private estates ; and so much was he trusted by the nation at large, so fully did he seem to embody the British temper, that when, on account of this conduct, he was dismissed from office at the direct instance of the Queen, he was the most popular man in the country. 75 76 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY In the eyes of foreign writers, too, Palmerston has gene- rally been regarded as the typically British foreign minister. The German historian Treitschke draws a lively picture of him striding away from a late sitting of the House of Com- mons, his hat shoved back on his head, his umbrella shoul- dered like a musket, a flower or a straw in his mouth, his whole being exuding old English exuberance and cheer- ful ease. The same writer, who could rarely pen a para- graph involving a reference to Great Britain without betraying a rancid and vicious hatred, represented Palmers- ton as impersonating the hard selfishness, the bullying tone, the hypocritical professions of benevolence and religion, which, in his view, characterised British foreign policy in the middle of the nineteenth century. Beneath the sport- ing swagger, the jaunty jollity, the good-natured, easy- going appearance and air of the Minister, it was repre- sented, was a John Bull with greedy eyes fixed on his own advantage, and using the power of his state to cajole, intimidate or wheedle in the interest of British trade and British prestige. There is some truth, much falsehood, in such estimates. No apology is needed on behalf of any minister who makes it his policy to promote the interests of his country. He would need defending if he did not. Amongst much wild writing on foreign affairs which the excitement of the years of war produced, there frequently was a suggestion that the promotion of national interests was a kind of political wickedness, and that Foreign Ministers, ambassa- dors, and the whole diplomatic tribe merited the reproba- tion of all righteous — and especially of self-righteous — persons. It may be admitted readily that more boldness than candour would distinguish any man who set out to defend every act of British foreign policy during the nineteenth century. But it has at least been frank and open. The British system of Parliamentary and public criticism, and the habit of dragging facts into the light of day, has ensured that what has been done should be known, and we have good warrant for the belief that nothing of consequence has been hidden, or need be. Dr. Holland Rose, who has an incomparably extensive acquaintance with British foreign archives, tells the impressive story that he once remarked to Dr. Samuel Rawson Gardiner, another PALMERSTON 77 assiduous labourer in the documentary vineyard, that the more thoroughly British foreign policy was examined the better it came out. Gardiner replied: "Yes, it always does, it always does." Men in responsible positions have to choose courses which often seem to many among their con- temporaries, and may seem still more to posterity — which has the advantage or noting how things have worked out — to have been wrong. In some instances they have admitted it. A good instance is Lord Salisbury's candid acknowledgment that the government of which he was a foremost member, in supporting Turkey in 1878, "backed the wrong horse." But Foreign Secretaries, however able, cannot penetrate the future with infallible judgment; they have to do their best in perplexing and delicate circum- stances ; and Lord Salisbury himself was, on the admission of men in all parties, one of the best Foreign Secretaries Great Britain has ever had, if he was not quite, as Professor Cramb alleged, "the greatest statesman in English history since the eighteenth century." But while a Foreign Minister is not to be condemned but commended for keeping the interests of his own country pri- marily in view, a proper regard for the rights and interests of neighbour states is virtuous in a great nation ; and on this count British policy has little cause to shrink from the test. Castlereagh and Canning, at the beginning of the nine- teenth century, laid down principles which were reiterated in different terms but with substantially the same import by later statesmen right down to our own time. It is admit- tedly difficult to prescribe rules for dealing with a branch of politics which has to do with governments, peoples and situations beyond the control of any one Foreign Office, but there is a clear spirit of unity underlying these various definitions of principle, laid down by successive Foreign Secretaries and Prime Ministers: — Castlereagh, 1818. — "The idea of an Alliance Solidaire, by which each state shall be bound to support the state of succession, government and possession within all other states from violence and attack, upon condition of receiving for itself a similar guarantee, must be understood as morally implying the previous establishment of such a system of general government as may secure and enforce upon all kings and nations an internal system of peace and justice. Till the mode of constructing such a system shall 78 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY be devised the consequence is inadmissible, as nothing would be more immoral and more prejudicial to the character of governments generally than the idea that their force was collectively to be prostituted to the support of established power, without any consideration of the extent to which it was abused." Canning, 1823. — "England is under no obligation to interfere or to insist on interfering in the internal affairs of independent nations. The rule I take to be that our engagements have reference only to the state of territorial possession settled at the peace; to the state of affairs between nation and nation, not to the affairs of any nation within itself. Our business is to preserve the peace of the world, and therefore the independence of the several nations which compose it." Aberdeen, 1829. — "Having no separate objects to attain and having nothing to fear, it has been peculiarly Jour office to watch over the peaceful relations of states, and, by upholding the established balance, to promote the security and prosperity of each." Palmerston, 1848. — "The principle on which I have thought that the foreign affairs of this country ought to be conducted is the principle of maintaining peace and friendly understanding with all nations, as long as it was possible to do so consistently with a due regard to the interests, the honour and the dignity of this country. My endeavours have been to preserve peace. All the governments of which I have had the honour to be a member have succeeded in accomplishing that object. ... I hold that the real policy of England — apart from questions which involve her own particular interests, political or commercial — is to be the champion of justice and right; pursuing that course with moderation and prudence, not becoming the Don Quixote of the world, but giving the right of her moral sanction and support wherever she thinks that justice is, and wherever she thinks that wrong has been done." Granville, 1851.— "One of the first duties of a British Government must always be to obtain for our foreign trade that security which is essential to commercial success, but in aiming at this all considerations of a higher character were not to be roughly pushed aside for the sake of sup- porting British traders abroad in every case. With respect to the internal affairs of other countries, such as the estab- PALMERSTON 79 lishment of liberal institutions and the reduction of tariffs, in which this country has an interest, Her Majesty's repre- sentatives ought to be furnished with the views of Her Majesty's government on each subject, and the arguments best adapted to support those views ; but they should be instructed to press those views only when fitting opportuni- ties occurred, or only when their advice and assistance would be welcome, or be effectual, because the intrusion of advice suspected to be not wholly disinterested never could have as much effect as the opinion given at the request of the person who is to be influenced." Clarendon (as stated by Gladstone), 1868. — "As I under- stand Lord Clarendon's ideas, they proceed upon such grounds as these: That England should keep entirely in her own hands the means of estimating her own obligations upon the various facts as they arise; that she should not foreclose and narrow her own liberty of choice by declara- tions made to other Powers, in their own or supposed interests, of which they would claim to be at least joint interpreters ; that it is dangerous for her to assume alone an advanced, and therefore an isolated, position in regard to European controversies ; that, come what may, it is bet- ter for her to promise too little than too much ; that she should not encourage the weak by giving expectations of aid to resist the strong, but should rather seek to deter the strong, by firm but moderate language, from aggres- sions on the weak; that she should seek to develop and mature the action of a common, or public, or European opinion, as the best standing bulwark against wrong, but should beware of seeming to lay down the law of that opinion by her own authority, and thus running the risk of setting against her, and against right and justice, that general sentiment which ought to be, and generally would be, arrayed in their favour. I am persuaded that at this juncture opinions of this colour, being true and sound, are also the only opinions which this country is disposed to approve. But I do not believe that on that account it is one whit less disposed than it has been at any time to cast in its lot upon any fitting occasion with the cause it believes to be right." Salisbury, 1889. — "Our policy is well known to all the world. Our treaty obligations are matters of public pro- perty, and our policy with respect to Europe and the Medi- 80 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY terranean has been avowed again and again to be a policy of peace, of maintaining things as they are, because we believe that in the state of things as they are there is a sufficient opportunity for the progress and prosperity of all those who inhabit those countries, without trusting any- thing to the sinister and hazardous arbitrament of war. But when you pass from policy to the precise measures, diplomatic or material, which on some future occasion it may be the duty of this country to adopt, then I say if I could foresee them I would not tell you what they were, and I tell you frankly that it is impossible for any govern- ment to foresee them. They depend on conditions which we cannot foresee, and on the actions of men over whom we have no control." Lloyd George, 1919. — "There is the fundamental prin- ciple of foreign policy in this country that you never inter- fere with the internal affairs of other countries." If these statements of general principle, by men who have held the highest posts of responsibility through the span of a century, do not furnish a key to the whole course of British policy — and it is not pretended that they do — they indicate a certain steadiness of aim, a degree of con- sistency of purpose, which it would not be possible to match in the records of any other country ; and, having in view the important fact upon which Lord Salisbury commented in the passage cited, that foreign policy depends to a great extent upon conditions which cannot be foreseen, and on the actions of men over whom no one Power has control, that steady consistency is something to be viewed with satis- faction. The mistakes which have been made in the actual con- duct of British foreign policy have never been the conse- quence of adhering with strength of will to such well- established principles, but always of weakness and hesita- tion. There is no department of government in which a firm line of policy is of so much importance as in the man- agement of foreign affairs. Drift spells mischief; divided counsels in Cabinet invite aggression by a Power which may be inclined to pursue a dangerous course. That is proved in the case of the incident in British policy in the nineteenth century about which there is still a wide differ- ence of opinion — the Crimean War. That Great Britain had a good case at the moment PALMERSTON 81 when war was declared it is fairly easy to prove ; but that the situation was allowed to develop to the point when war became almost inevitable was a grave misfortune, due, not to the strength and decisiveness of a Cabinet which saw its duty clear, but to the lack of firm control. The Cabinet was divided ; Lord Aberdeen, the Prime Minister, had no grip; he acknowledged that "it is possible that by a little more energy and vigour, not on the Danube, but in Down- ing Street, it might have been prevented ;" and his Foreign Secretary, Clarendon, said, "we are drifting into war." There is no occasion, in a general review like this, to traverse the circumstances which led to the Crimean War, but it may be said with some confidence that those who believe that it could have been averted are right, but that it could only have been averted by strong handling from the beginning, not by the hesitating, stumbling policy of a group of statesmen who did not know their own minds, and who let the steering wheel be knocked out of their hands by the wash of the currents. It is easier to believe that the war would not have occurred had Palmerston been at the Foreign Office than that his strength would have precipitated a conflict. The disposition of British foreign policy towards particu- lar powers has varied very greatly ; but this variation does not indicate a departure from main principles so much as changes in the policies of those Powers affecting British interests. The pursuit of the general principles laid down in the statements printed above is quite consistent with a total shift in attitude towards other countries. Striking examples are afforded by the cases of Turkey, Russia and Austria. From the middle of the nineteenth century till the out- break of the European war in 1914, it may be taken to have been a fundamental aim of British foreign policy to obviate the break-up of the Turkish Empire. There were two over- whelmingly strong reasons for this. The first was that the collapse of Turkey would involve a struggle over Turkish territory in Europe, with a disturbance of incal- culable magnitude in the Balkans, Asia Minor, Arabia and Persia. The second was that Russia clearly aimed at the possession of Constantinople, a situation of enormous strength and importance, which, commanding the entrance to the Black Sea, would give to a great European Power 82 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY possessing it control over the mouth of the Danube and the northern shores of Asia Minor, and would menace the routes to India. Turkey was a foul bird for a civilised Power to take under its wing, and the wretched govern- ment which it applied to its provinces, rendered additionally- horrible by frequent massacres, made the responsibility hard to endure. But needs must when the devil drives ; and it was on the whole better to have Turkey on our conscience than to let her tumble to pieces and then have to cope with a world-shaking scramble for the fragments. But when in 1909 the Young Turk party, led by officers trained in Germany, effected a revolution which dethroned the Sultan Adbul Hamid, a new chapter in Turkish history was commenced. German plans for dominating Asia Minor were aided by the new regime. Wilhelm II., the personal friend of Allah, who ten years before had in his theatrical fashion stood before the tomb of Saladin in Damascus and announced that the three hundred millions of Mohammedans scattered over the globe might be assured that the German Emperor would be their friend at all times, exploited the situation to the full. Dreams of a vast belt of Germanised territory extending from Berlin to Bagdad rose like a mirage to dazzle the Teutonic imagination. The danger to British interests — indeed, to the vital arteries of British commercial and political life — assumed a far more threat- ening aspect than had at any time been the case within the half century between the Crimean War and the down- fall of Abdul Hamid. And when, the great war having commenced, Turkey threw in her lot with Germany, she necessarily compelled a recasting of the British attitude towards her. The reasons which had prompted a desire to prevent the disruption of the Turkish Empire no longer existed. The great war brought with it few compensations — none could be equal to the enormous sacrifices which it demanded — but among those few must be reckoned the ending of the protection which Great Britain so long extended to a Power whose rule had cursed south-eastern Europe for five centuries. The British distrust of Russian expansion was partly a legacy from the Crimean War. But there were good grounds for it. The persistent spread of the Russian Empire across central and northern Asia to the eastern shores of the continent brought it close to the out- PALMERSTON 83 posts of India. Russian intrigues in Persia, Afghanis- tan and Thibet were not figments of Anglo-Indian imagination. They were realities, and the Power which was responsible for the safety of India could not be indif- ferent to them. It would have been sheer folly to ignore them. A common interest in checking Russian aggression in Asia led to the concluding of the first treaty of alliance between Great Britain and Japan in 1902. But the Russian defeat in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5 materially changed the situation. Both France and Russia had mean- while become alarmed by the threatening demeanour of Germany, and, the former state having entered into an entente cordiale with Great Britain, by which outstanding difficulties in rival colonial policy were settled, used her friendly offices to bring together Russia — her ally — and Great Britain. The result was the agreement concluded in 1907 by which Russia and Great Britain cleared away causes of friction and suspicion. The ending of over half a century of obstinate misunderstanding, which on several occasions brought the two Powers to the verge of war, was a substantial gain. The British official attitude towards Austria had for many generations been extremely friendly before the out- break of the European War. But here again the chief reason ' was because it seemed that the preservation of Austria meant the maintenance of security. "I believe," Lord Salisbury once said, "that in the strength and indepen- dence of Austria lie the best hopes of European stability and peace." Similarly, thirty years before, Palmerston had said: "The political independence and liberties of Europe are bound up, in my opinion, with the maintenance and integrity of Austria as a great European Power, and there- fore anything which tends by direct or even remote contin- gency to weaken and cripple Austria, but still more to reduce her from her position as a first rate Power to that of a secondary state must be a great calamity to Europe, and one which every Englishman ought to deprecate and endeavour to prevent." Salisbury rejoiced in the alliance of Germany and Austria, because he thought it afforded a guarantee of peace. It was recognised that the motley aggregation of states gathered together within the Austro- Hungarian Empire was not naturally secure, but their fall- ing apart would have provoked conflict, which Great Britain 84 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY laboured to avoid. That friendly attitude was shattered by the action of Austria in provoking the great war, and very soon after its commencement Mr. Lloyd George foretold that the Austrian Emperor would find his "ramshackle old Empire" tumbling about his ears — a prediction quite liter- ally verified by events. The British attitude towards France, after the Napo- leonic wars, presented no points of particular interest until that country had begun to rebuilt for herself a great colonial Empire in Africa and the East Indies. There were moments of extreme tension when France, working eastward from the Congo valley to the Nile, came in touch with British interests in the region of the Upper Nile. But the French nation had no wish to renew old quarrels, whilst the British nation was thoroughly well-disposed towards France, though not inclined to sacrifice vital interests. Indeed, within the last hundred years, the relations of the two countries have generally been cordial, and at times ex- tremely so. The relations between Great Britain and Germany were good, and there seemed to be no elements of suspicion or serious cause for friction on either side till 1896, when Wilhelm II. sent to Paul Kruger, then President of the Transvaal Republic, a telegram congratulating him on the fact that he had been able to repel the Jameson Raid "with- out appealing to the help of friendly Powers." That was plainly a hint that if Kruger had appealed to "friendly Powers" assistance would have been forthcoming. As Ger- many had no interests in South Africa, the telegram was interpreted in Great Britain as a menace to her, and it revealed in a flash the disposition of the German Kaiser towards her. From that time till the outbreak of the war there were many in Great Britain who refused to regard Germany in any other light than as a dangerous, scheming foe, ever on the watch to inflict a deadly blow at British interests wherever they might be injured. The possession of great power by a nation confers great benefits upon it, but is also open to the danger of the use of the power to dominate over its neighbours. The signal downfall of Prussianised Germany, which ever since the accession of Wilhelm II. had played the unmanly part of the bully of Europe, offers a salutary lesson. Palmerston has been accused of too great an addiction to blustering PALMERSTON 85 methods. Support has been given to this view of him by Granville and Salisbury. But if Palmerston's manner was sometimes off-hand and his tongue occasionally rather reckless for a Minister engaged in the delicate business of diplomacy, it is right to remember that few English Minis- ters have ever employed the power of their country to support the aspirations of people struggling for indepen- dence or against oppression so whole-heartedly as he did. He took a leading part in securing the independence of Belgium in 1830 ; he championed the cause of the mis- governed people of Naples in the strongest terms ; and Glad- stone bore testimony to the sincerity with which he worked to "rescue the unhappy African race whose history is for the most part written only in blood and tears." In the cause of Italian unity he took a lively interest, and the personal friendship which he manifested for Mazzini and Garibaldi alarmed Queen Victoria. His frank liking for Kossuth, the Hungarian patriot, provoked a Cabinet crisis. Indeed, it has been shrewdly alleged against him that he was "conservative at home and revolutionist abroad." Per- haps he was; but it is better to have liberal leanings in some directions than in none ; and, putting aside Palmers- ton's manner, his use of the power and prestige of Great Britain in support of small nations and struggling causes was on the whole salutary and creditable. At the same time, insistence on exerting the strength of Great Britain to protect her citizens in the pursuit of legitimate occupations abroad was a cardinal feature of his policy. He was hotly attacked for his assertion of it in the once-famous Don Pacifico case in 1850, and mature opinion cannot acquit him of high-handedness in this in- stance. But his defence has a fine ring of pride in British citizenship, for which he can be forgiven much, as he was forgiven by the House of Commons before which the glow- ing passage was delivered : — "I fearlessly challenge the verdict which this House, as representing a political, a com- mercial, a constitutional country, is to give on the question now brought before it — whether the principles on which the foreign policy of Her Majesty's government has been conducted, and the sense of duty which has led us to think ourselves bound to afford protection to our fellow-subjects abroad, are proper and fitting guides for those who are charged with the government of England ; and whether, as 86 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY the Roman in days of old held himself free from indignity when he could say civis Romanics sum, so also a British subject, in whatever land he may be, shall feel confident that the watchful eye and the strong arm of England will protect him against injustice and wrong." Palmerston's dismissal from office at the instance of Queen Victoria connects with the larger question of the control of foreign policy. In that case itself he was in the wrong. He was in the habit of writing despatches con- taining instructions to British representatives abroad with- out submitting them to the Queen or to his own colleagues. The Queen's Consort, Prince Albert, took an especial interest in foreign affairs, and desired to read and criticise de- spatches before they were sent. He it was who drew up a memorandum in 1850, wherein the Foreign Secretary was sharply informed that the Queen insisted on her rights. But Palmerston offended again in the same manner, where- upon the Prime Minister, Lord John Russell, in conformity with the Queen's wish, wrote him a letter dismissing him. That he took too much upon himself in conducting foreign affairs as though they were his own personal concern there is no doubt; but there is very good reason for the belief that he resented the part that Prince Albert was ambitious to play in shaping British policy. The British constitu- tional system had developed away from the old claim that foreign policy was exclusively within the prerogative of the Crown. Palmerston was wrong in making his protest as he did, if that was his purpose, and it was wholly indefen- sible to act without consulting his colleagues ; but a Minis- ter is never out of reach of Parliamentary criticism, and could be brought to book much more effectually than the consort of a sovereign could be. The idea that foreign affairs pertained to the Royal prerogative was one upon which the Stuart kings insisted, and which was conceded by some eminent authorities at a later date. James I. forbade the House of Commons to "argue and debate publicly of matters far above their reach and capacity, tending to our high dishonour and breach of prerogative royal." After the Restoration Charles II. insisted on the same principle. He refused to comunicate to Parliament a treaty which he had signed. "But I think it very fit," said a member of the House, "to be communicated to five hundred that must give supply to maintain it." And PALMERSTON 87 that really was the essence of the matter. Obligations abroad cannot be maintained without Parliamentary sup- port at home, and Parliament, by having control of the purse, could always, if it would, insist on controlling foreign policy. After the revolution of 1688-9 William III. was allowed to have his own way in foreign affairs, and the early Hano- verian kings, having to consider their Hanoverian as well as their English interests, devoted close attention to foreign policy. Hence the elder Pitt's stinging criticism: "It is now too apparent that this great, this powerful, this formidable kingdom is considered only as a province to a despicable electorate." But by the time of Queen Victoria's accession it was well-established constitutional doctrine that the government was responsible to Parliament for foreign affairs as for every other department of state; and where the responsibility lies there must the choice of alternatives be made. A sovereign like Edward VII., who understood foreign affairs extremely well, and was a keen judge of political human nature, may render valuable service to his country in consultation with responsible ministers, but no sovereign under the British system of government can determine a line of policy, and no administration could get rid of its responsibility by doing what a sovereign recom- mended rather than what its own judgment deemed right and wise. Democracies are invariably neglectful of foreign affairs until some incident of pressing moment arises from which a crisis emerges. But if there is to be a close demo- cratic control of such matters of policy in the future, as some insist, there must evidently be fuller study of them by the people at large. For these things are the overwhelm- ingly important issues. The best governed country in the world might have its well-being wrecked by outside influ- ences. It is doubtful whether British foreign policy during the past hundred years or more would have been materially different had there been more democratic control than was the case, for there is no reason to think that the people as a whole were wiser or better than those who had charge of this department of government, or that they would have promoted the interests of the nation more assiduously. A trading nation must cultivate its foreign interests or it will 88 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY suffer losses of magnitude, bringing unemployment, poverty and ruin in their train. The standard biography of Palmerston is that by Lord Dalling and Evelyn Ashley. There is an interesting short book, Lord Palmerston, by the Marquis of Lome (after- wards Duke of Argyle), containing much original material. Egerton's British Foreign Policy in Europe is a useful book. An Introduction to the Study of International Relations, by A. J. Grant and four other writers, is an exceptionally good book, though small. G. P. Gooch and J. H. B. Master- man's A Century of British Foreign Policy is also a short book. Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy, edited by E. R. Jones, reprints twenty-four masterly deliverances, ranging from Chatham to Edward Grey and Lloyd George. The more you examine this matter, the more you will come to the conclusion which I have arrived at, that this foreign policy, this regard for "the liberties of Europe," this care at one time for "the Protestant interests," this excessive love for "the balance of power," is neither more nor less than a gigantic system of out-door relief for the aristocracy of Great Britain. — John Bright. The greatest triumph of our time would be the enthrone- ment of the idea of public right as the governing idea of European politics. — Gladstone. You are always talking to me of principles. As if your public law were anything to me; I do not know what it means. What do you suppose that all your parchments and all your treaties signify to me? — Tzar Alexander I. We exaggerate too much the importance and the effect of treaties. In this age of the world, and in view of the fearful risk which every disturbance brings upon any nation concerned in it, I do not think that we must rate too highly the effect of the bonds constituted by signatures upon a piece of paper. If nations in a great crisis act rightly, they will do so because they are in unison with each other, and not because they have bound themselves by protocols. — Lord Salisbury (1891). Treaties are the currency of international statesman- ship. — Lloyd George (1914). PALMERSTON 89 I found the Chancellor very agitated. His Excellency at once began a harangue, which lasted for about twenty minutes. He said that the step taken by His Majesty's government was terrible to a degree; just for a word — "neutrality," a word which in war had so often been dis- regarded — just for a scrap of paper, Great Britain was going to make war on a kindred nation who desired nothing better than to be friends with her. — Sir Edward Goschen (August, 1914). England will never consent that France shall abrogate the power of annulling at her pleasure, and under the pre- tence of a natural right of which she makes herself the only judge, the political system of Europe, established by solemn treaties and guaranteed by the consent of all the Powers. —William Pitt (1793). In 1879, when foreign affairs were much before the public, I suggested to a publisher a series of books dealing quite shortly and clearly with the political history and con- stitution of the chief states of Europe from 1815. I designed them for popular instruction, thinking it of great importance that people in general should know what they were talking about when they spoke of France or Russia. . . . The result of my attempt was to convince me that our ignorance of the last sixty years is colossal. — Mandell Creighton. There are some at the present moment who are raising a cry for democratic control of foreign policy. It is not power of control that the British democracy lacks in respect of foreign policy; its sovereignty is equally supreme in all departments of state. What it lacks is interest and know- ledge. — J. F. Hearnshaw. I cannot agree that nothing less than an immediate attack upon the honour and interest of this nation can authorise us to interpose in defence of weaker states and in stopping the enterprises of an ambitious neighbour. Whenever that narrow, selfish policy has prevailed in our counsels we have constantly experienced the fatal effects of it. By suffering our natural enemies to oppress the Powers less able than we are to make a resistance, we have permitted them to increase their strength; we have lost the most favourable opportunities of opposing them with success; and found ourselves at last obliged to run every hazard in making that cause our own in which we were not 90 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY wise enough to take part while the expense and danger might have been supported by others. — Chatham. The forces of the world do not threaten ; they operate. — Woodrow Wilson. Upon 1st April [1861] Seward [the Secretary of State] sent to Lincoln "Some Thoughts for the President's Con- sideration." In this paper, after deploring what he described as the lack of any policy so far, and defining, in a way that does not matter, his attitude as to the forts in the south, he proceeded thus: "I would demand explana- tions from Great Britain and Russia and send agents into Canada, Mexico and Central America, to raise a vigorous spirit of independence on this continent against European intervention, and, if satisfactory explanations are not re- ceived from Spain and France, would convene Congress and declare war against them." In other words, Seward would seek to end all domestic dissensions by suddenly creating out of nothing a dazzling foreign policy. ... In his brief reply Lincoln made no reference to Seward's amazing pro- gramme. — Lord Charnwood. MAZZINI. [Page 92 Chapter VII. MAZZINI AND NATIONALITY. FEW men in modern history who have devoted their lives to political causes have left a memory so lumi- nous and so fragrant as did Giuseppe Mazzini. There could not have been for him, living when he did and in the country which was his, a nobler aim than that which from his early years he set himself to promote. The union of the Italian people into a nation was assuredly worthy of the efforts of any idealist. It would be exaggeration to say that the man was as great as the cause, since no indi- vidual could be. Yet there is a sense in which in this instance such an assertion would almost be true. Mazzini was the very soul of the Italian national movement, the inspiring force of the triad celebrated in George Meredith's stanza — "Who blew the breath of life into her frame, Cavour, Mazzini, Garibaldi : three : Her Brain, her Soul, her Sword; and set her free From ruinous discords with one lustrous aim." And of these, the aims of the second were higher than have yet been realised. Italy can honour Cavour and Garibaldi for what they did for her; in honouring Mazzini she is reminded of things still to do. He burns on, an undimmed light. When the first Italian Parliament met, Mazzini exclaimed : "We have made Italy ; it is now necessary to make the Italians." He saw regenerated Italy becoming "at one bound the missionary of a religion of progress and fraternity far greater and vaster than that she gave to humanity in the past." How fine the man was in himself we can discern from his writings, and still more vividly from the impressions of many who came under his singularly quickening influ- 93 94 MEN AND THOUGHT .IN MODERN HISTORY. ence. To Swinburne he was "the most wonderfully and divinely unselfish man I ever knew, whose whole life was self-sacrifice." Carlyle, crabbed and sour towards so many of his contemporaries, testified of Mazzini that "he, if ever I have seen one such, is a man of genius and virtue, a man of sterling veracity, humanity, nobleness of mind; one of those rare men, numerable unfortunately but as units in this world, who are worthy to be called martyr souls, who in silence, piously in their daily life, understand and prac- tise what is meant by that." Lord Morley says that "be- sides his ceaseless industry in this vexed sphere of action, his was the moral genius that spiritualises politics, and gave a new soul to public duty in citizens and nations." Professor David Masson, who knew Mazzini well in the forties, has left a striking pen-portrait of him. He speaks of his "grace and beauty," "the marvellous face of pale olive, in shape a long oval, the features fine and bold rather than massive, the forehead full and high under thin, dark hair, the whole expression unimpassioned and sad, and the eyes large, black, and preternaturally burning ; his talk rapid and abundant, in an excellent English that never failed, though it was dashed with piquant foreign idioms and pro- nounced with a decidedly foreign accent." There was a touch of perversity and a dash of obstinacy in Mazzini, and his incurable aversion to compromise limited his possibilities in practical politics ; so that, with all the moral glow that wins respect for him, it becomes clear that by his methods alone the unity of Italy could not have been achieved. The suppleness of Cavour, the impetuous daring of Garibaldi, the concentrating energy of Victor Emmanuel were as needful as the fervent idealism of Mazzini to win a victory which, in fact, was one not of ideas alone, but of hard fighting and deep scheming also. But of the idea Mazzini was the prophet — of the idea which, when con- vinced of its rightness, he esteemed a greater thing than victorv. Italy was, when Mazzini grew to manhood — he was born in 1805 — a mere "geographical expression," in Prince Metternich's phrase. Politically there was no Italy. The Italian people were divided among eight states, namely, Lombardy (including Venezia), Parma, Tuscany, Modena, Lucca, Piedmont (including Sardinia), the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies (embracing Sicily and the whole of the lower MAZZINI 95 part of the peninsula), and the Papal States. Of these the first five were under the domination of Austria, either directly or through feeble rulers ; the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies was subject to a Bourbon king; the Papal States were governed by the Pope and Cardinals ; Piedmont was under the House of Savoy. All were despotically ruled. There was no freedom of expression anywhere, no popular representation. An odious and all-pervading police system meddled, spied and suppressed; an equally pervading and scarcely less odious priest system worked in the same direction. Yet no country possessed such a tradition of unity as Italy did. The old centre of the Roman Empire, which gave laws and culture to the civilised world, deserved a better fate than to be broken into fragments and preyed upon by petty despots and tyrants, civil and ecclesiastical. Throughout her long years of humiliation Italy never lacked sons who passionately desired the restoration of her nation- ality. Macchiavelli, in the fifteenth century, wrote his most famous book, The Prince, with the object of arousing the head of the Medici family to take the lead in redeem- ing their country from "the cruelty and insolence of the barbarians" who oppressed her. There is a deep moral gulf diving the opportunist Macchiavelli from the unpliant idealist Mazzini ; but it is bridged by their common faith in the great cause for which the Florentine would have shed blood even by the assassin's dagger, and for which the later man would have sacrificed everything except a principle. Very early in the nineteenth century secret societies began to be formed, since open movements were repressed, to promote revolution. The Carbonari movement commenced in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies in 1811. Mazzini was naturally brought into it in his native Genoa when he grew to manhood. But he soon saw that it was ineffective to achieve much solid work ; and in fact the master minds among the statesmen who ruled Italy also recognised that they had little to fear from the Carbonari. As Prince Met- ternich wrote, "from want of known leaders and of con- certed action among themselves, the secret societies are not nearly so dangerous as we might fear." Mazzini, too, dis- liked the "complex symbolism, the hierarchical mysteries," which, in imitation of Freemasonry, the Carbonari had 96 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY evolved. Above all, he was offended by the absence of poli- tical faith, of exalted purpose. He wanted more mission, less mystery. It was therefore just as well that his connection with the Carbonari got him into trouble with the authorities before he had time to become deeply entangled. He was arrested at the instance of the Governor of Genoa. "When asked by my father," related Mazzini in his autobiography, "of what I was accused, he replied that the time had ,not arrived for answering that question, but that I was a young man of talent very fond of solitary walks by night and habitually silent as to the subject of my meditations; that the government was not fond of young men of talent whose musings were unknown to it." The enforced leisure and seclusion of his prison enabled Mazzini to form plant for the organisation of the Society of Young Italy. The new society came into being in 1831. Mazzini was exiled after emerging from prison, and at Marseilles, sur- rounded by a group of young men who shared his enthu- siasm and his poverty, he threw himself into a "policy of permeation." By means of pamphlets and books, by intro- ducing allusions into plays, poems and pictures, by conver- sations in homes and fields, by every method that could be suggested, these young Italians set themselves to create a great body of national opinion in favour of a united Italy. He besought those who would aid to climb the hills, to sit at the labourer's table, to visit the workshops and homes of artisans, to recount the ancient traditions and glories of Italy, her old commercial greatness. Italy must be a nation again by the will of the Italian people. All over the country branches sprang up, fired by Maz- zini's ideas. The Austrian government speedily came to the conclusion that this movement was far more dangerous than the muffled-cloak-and-slouch-hat conspiracy-mongering of the Carbonari had ever been, for there were ideas at the back of it, and Prince Metternich was far too intelligent a man to despise the force of ideas. Secret the lodges of the Association of Young Italy had to be, for there was not a government in the country which would permit open political activity. But police agents wormed their way in, the prisons were packed with young men, and by 1834 the movement seemed to be crushed. Mazzini was driven, first to Switzerland, then to England, where he now com- MAZZINI 97 menced an exile which, save for intervals when the great cause recalled him to Italy, extended over nearly forty years. In shabby poverty, but with many friends who revered him, he wrote his best pieces in that "sunless and musicless island," which, nevertheless, he acknowledged, "affection has rendered a second home to me." Mazzini's ideal was a united, Republican Italy, and from this he did not swerve. "I do not believe," he said, "that the salvation of Italy can be achieved now or at any future time by prince, pope or king." In that predic- tion he was wrong. Events proved that a republican pro- paganda could not succeed. The army and the leadership of Victor Emmanuel of Piedmont and the statesmanship of his Prime Minister Cavour, were essential. Without them the eloquence of Mazzini and the bravery of Garibaldi would have been exerted in vain. Indeed, as the struggle progressed, Mazzini recognised that persistence in repub- lican demands endangered the greater cause. A consider- able party in Italy advocated a federation of the existing states; some would have had a federation under the king of Piedmont, some under the Pope. But a federation involved the retention of the eight states as political enti- ties, and to that Mazzini was vehemently opposed. Upon a unified government he insisted. When the tide of opinion seemed setting strongly in a federal direction, Mazzini was prepared to discontinue tem- porarily his republican propaganda and accept either a king or a papal sovereignty rather than sacrifice the principle of complete unity. It was a sharp pinch of alternatives that forced the uncompromising idealist to go to this length. But it is not the case that he threw over his republicanism. He would agree not to persist in it at a critical time when it seemed that the vital point of unity might be lost if he and his party pressed for their complete programme. "I have lived, I live, and I shall live a republican, bearing witness to my faith to the last," he wrote. Methods had to be adapted to meet the difficulties of the situation. Maz- zini could be as sly as a fox when subtlety was required to cope with a crafty foe. Devices, such as the enclosure of pamphlets by him inside bricks imported to Italy from England, were part of the process enforced by the require- ments of the case. No man was by nature more honest and frank, but the ways of the dove are ill suited to revo- 98 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY lutionary work. Mazzini never compromised, but he was no blundering fool in the devious labyrinths of politics. To sacrifice the main cause by inopportunely insisting upon a subordinate principle would have been folly, but to sacri- fice a principle even for a cause would have been a sin against his soul which he could not commit. Indeed, it must be recognised that the fact that Italy is a unified state is due more to Mazzini than to any other among the men who played a great part in the movement. As the historian of Italian unity bears testimony: — "It was Mazzini's faith that made a united Italy possible, that led men beyond the existing fact, beyond the schemes of federation that till now had been the utmost bourn of national hope, on to what seemed the Utopian and impos- sible, but which his teaching was to make the gospel of his nation. Only through unity, he believed and made them believe, could Italy be strong and democratic ; only when Rome became her capital could she hold her place among the nations of Europe and teach a nobler ideal of government." 1 What, then, was Mazzini's aim, apart from his unrealised republican aspiration? It was stated in clear terms when he founded the Society of Young Italy. "By Italy we understand continental and peninsular Italy, bounded on the north by the upper circle of the Alps, on the south by the sea, on the west by the mouth of the Varo, and on the east by Trieste and the islands proved Italian by the lan- guage of the inhabitants." The later ambitions of Italy have embraced a wider domain than here set forth by the apostle of unity. The "Italia Irredenta" demands covered the waters of the Adriatic and the western shores of the Balkan peninsula. By the Italian nation Mazzini stated that he understood "the universality of Italians, bound together by a common pact and governed by the same laws." The national idea, he said, "has been gradually elaborated during the silence of three hundred years of general slavery and later through nearly thirty years of earnest apostolate, often crowned by martyrdom of the noblest souls among us." For this cause Mazzini plotted and toiled and wrote unceasingly during the whole of his life. He began his propaganda when Italy i Bolton King, "History of Italian Unity," I., p. 129. MAZZINI 99 languished under her eight principalities; he participated in all the adventurous movements by which the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies was destroyed and its territories were made part of the Kingdom of Italy ; by which Austria was ejected from the Lombardy Plain, and finally from Venezia ; by which the temporal sovereignty of the Papacy was abolished and the Papal States were incorporated as part of the national soil. The union of Italy was a dream when Mazzini began to work for it. Few believed in the possibility of its realisa- tion. But his faith never for a moment wavered. When Garibaldi captured Rome in 1849, and the Roman Republic was proclaimed, Mazzini was the chief of the triumvirate who ruled the eternal city. "From the moment of his first entry into Rome," relates Mr. Trevelyan, "he was its lead- ing citizen and its real political chief;" 1 and when the alliance of the Papacy with Napoleon III. brought to the gates of Rome a French force too powerful to be resisted, and Garibaldi abandoned the defence, Mazzini protested to the last, and only withdrew to his refuge in London when the French were actually in occupation of Rome. Mazzini died two years after the destruction of the tem- poral power and the establishment of the capital of Italy in Rome. The Kingdom was no place of rest and honour for him, because, uncompromising in his old age as in his youth, he would not accept the monarchy as a settled insti- tution. He had sunk his republican advocacy for the time being to avoid a danger to the cause, but it was not in him to cease working for a principle; and so he could not rest content even with the immense achievement which he had done so much to realise. The practical politician may be satisfied with what he can get; the insatiable idealist can- not stifle his yearnings with compromises. In truth, he asked more of his countrymen than they were willing to realise in his lifetime. It was not reasonable for him to complain, "the country, with its contempt for all ideals, has killed the soul within me," but it was natural. The man who asks too much of his generation must steel his soul against disappointments. He could not complain, nor did he, that the Kingdom of Italy had no post for him whose self-sacrificing labours had brought it into being. It was l Trevelyan, "Garibaldi's Defence of the Roman Republic," p. 94. 100 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY even under an assumed name, that of George Brown, that he stole back to his own country from the fogs of London in the waning days of his life, hoping that the Italian sun- shine would give him respite from the spasms that tore his chest and throat. But his task was done; he died at Pisa on 10th March, 1872. Mazzini's fervent advocacy of nationality was part of his religion, but there is not in his writings any attempt to define what a nation is. The Italian question was to him a comparatively simple one. The people of the Italian peninsula speak one language — with dialectical differences, truly, but the differences in the speech of, say, a Venetian and a Sicilian were not greater than the differences in the French spoken in, say, Picardy and Provence. The Italians had a common historical tradition, broken though it had been by the domination of rulers who carved out the several states. To weld the peoples of this peninsula into a united nation was to bring them within a political and economic bond which would elevate their status among European peoples and increase their material prosperity. The fact that their governments, ecclesiastical and lay, were wretch- edly bad — corrupt, tyrannical, unprogressive — was an addi- tional reason for union. The obstacles might be serious. Inertia and lack of faith might retard effort. But the case for union was plain and overwhelmingly strong, and Italy could know no peace till the cause was won. Probably it would have surprised Mazzini, had he dis- cussed the question of nationality generally, to find how difficult it is to define the term or to say precisely what a nation is. It would have surprised him more could he have known that many modern men of his own type of mind regard the nationalist ideal as a false and mischievous one, believing that "the nationalist passion has been the greatest of obstacles to mutual understanding and sym- pathy among peoples, and the most fruitful provoking cause of war." 1 He was absorbed in the Italian question, which presented fewer complexities than are encountered elsewhere. But across the mountains to the north-west are the Swiss, a people speaking three languages, having a variety of racial types, and differing in religion. We call the Swiss a nation despite their differences. The United i See Kamsay Muir 's ' ' Nationalism and Internationalism, ' ' p. 38. MAZZINI 101 States of America is a nation, though its population is com- pounded of a multitude of peoples, transmuted by the American schools and the frequent singing of the "Star Spangled Banner" into a remarkably good imitation of homogeneity. But in truth tests of nationality by canons of race, lan- guage, religion, or historical tradition will stand in very few instances. There was more solemn truth in Defoe's brilliant satire, "The True Born Englishman," than most Englishmen care to remember. There are no "pure races," and if there were there is no reason for thinking that they would be superior; there never has been religious unity among intelligent people, unless it were enforced by the harshest of processes ; similarity of language in any country is a modern development, due principally to the printing press and improved methods of locomotion ; and the forma- tion of large "nations" out of small states has in the greater number of instances been brought about, not by the attraction of affinity among peoples, but by strenuous political action, often enforced by the sword. It required a frightful war to prevent the United States from splitting into two nations, and Great Britain did not become one nation because the peoples of England, Scotland and Wales loved each other so much that they felt they could not be happy asunder. The economic advantage of national union was a con- sideration which Mazzini did not leave out of account, and it is one whicji is more important than many later writers on nationality have recognised. He put it to the Italians of his day that life would be fuller and richer for them in material benefits if the country were united, than could be the case as long as they remained under eight separate governments. Union, nationality, was not to him an end in itself. It was a necessary means to an end, but the end was the enlargement, the ennoblement, the enrichment of human life. "Do not beguile yourselves with the hope of emancipation from unjust conditions if you do not first conquer a country for yourselves," he wrote in his most important work, The Duties of Man; "where there is no country there is no common agreement to which you can appeal. Do not be led away by the idea of improving your material conditions without first solving the national ques- tion. You cannot do it." 102 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY But a real nation, to Mazzini, was not merely a political entity providing itself with cannon, battleships, houses of Parliament, and so forth. It was an association of kindred forming an economic and political whole, because by such union the possibilities of life were increased for all. "A country is a fellowship of free and equal men bound together in a brotherly concord of labour towards a single end. You must make it and maintain it as such. A country is not an aggregation ; it is an association. A country is not a mere territory ; the particular territory is only its foundation. The country is the idea which rises on that foundation; it is the sentiment of love, the sense of fellowship, which binds together all the sons of that territory." Only by means of an educated democracy could such an ideal of nationality be realised. "Votes, education, work are the three main pillars of the nation," he said. Such an ideal of nationhood, it will be seen, looked beyond the triumph of a cause to the realisation of a cor- porate life which would regard poverty, superstition, ignor- ance, disease as being enemies of the commonweal, to be fought as a united nation would fight against a foreign foe. It is a higher conception of nationality than has yet been reached by any people. Through the elevation of the life of the nation — that is, of a combination of people who, by reason of sympathies, interests, tradition, language, or grouping affinities of any kind — he hoped for a larger con- federacy of peoples, embracing at length the whole civilised world. Mazzini, therefore, was something more than an Italian patriot. He was a citizen of the world for whom the fusion of the Italians into nationality was a step towards an immensely more comprehensive unity. Bolton King's Life of Mazzini is the best short bio- graphy in English. There is a selection of Mazzini's politi- cal and literary essays, edited by William Clarke, in the Scott Library, and a volume in the Everyman Library con- tains his Duties of Man and other political writings. These collections do not contain his autobiography, which is to be found in the collected writings of Mazzini. The history of the Italian national movement is authoritatively related in Bolton King's History of Italian Unity, two volumes, and in three volumes by Mr. G. M. Trevelyan, Garibaldi's MAZZINI 103 Defence of the Roman Republic, Garibaldi and the Thou- sand, and Garibaldi and the Making of Italy. On nationality generally Ramsay Muir's Nationalism and Internationalism is a very able study. The conception of nationality is elastic. It is hard to say what is the essence of nationality. A nationality is always in a state of flux, always changing in character. — Treitschke. The nation is not a physiological fact; it is a moral fact. What constitutes a nation is the community of senti- ments and ideals which result from a common history and education. — Noel. Nations are intensely self-conscious groups, bound to- gether not only by carefully cultivated separate traditions, customs and habits of life, but by jealously guarded econo- mic interests. — W. Alison Phillips. Palaces, baronial castles, great halls, stately mansions do not make a nation. The nation in every country dwells in the cottage. — John Bright. If nationalism has brought more misery on the world than any other political passion, it has often, by alliance with the noblest causes, lent them power which they could never otherwise have obtained. — G. M. Trevelyan. To suppose that any nation can be unalterably the enemy of another is weak and childish. It has its foundation neither in the experience of nations nor in the history of man. It is a libel on the constitution of political societies, and supposes the existence of diabolical malice in the origi- nal frame of man. — William Pitt (the younger) . The time is at hand when England will have to decide between national and cosmopolitan principles, and the issue is no mean one. — Disraeli. Science works not at all for nationality or its spirit. It works entirely for cosmopolitanism. — Lord Morh .//. This country and this people seem to have been made for each other, and it appears as if it was the design of Providence that an inheritance so proper and convenient for a band of brethren, united to each other by the strongest ties, should never be split into a number of unsocial, jealous and alien sovereignties. — Alexander Hamilton (The Fede- ralist) . 104 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY All nations have been welded together not by peaceful and equitable means but by violent and inequitable means, and I do not believe that nations could ever have been formed in any other way. To dissolve unions because they were inequitably formed, I hold, now that they have been formed, to be a mistake, a retrograde step. Were it pos- sible to go back upon the past and undo all the bad things that have been done, society would forthwith dissolve. — Herbert Spencer. Nationality merely as nationality is a small motive power in history, but nationality considered as exemplified or expressed in customs, language, affinities, even in names, expresses a number of mighty influences equivalent to all that move as main springs the internal life of nations, and affect in a great degree their external history also, their relations to other nations, their development in arts and literature as well as politics, their propensity to Or repulsion from ideas of political things and all that forms the historical interest of their national life. — Stubbs. The characters of nations frequently change, and what we call national character is usually only the policy of the governing class, forced upon it by circumstances, or the manner of living which climate, geographical position and other external causes have made necessary for the inhabi- tants of a country. — W. R. Inge. JOHN STUART MILL. [Page 106 Chapter VIII. JOHN STUART MILL AND ECONOMICS. WHETHER men of action or men of thought have the more profoundly influenced human history it would be very hard to determine. When one studies the life of a great architect of govern- ment like Charlemagne, or of an immense personal force like Napoleon, the achievements related seem so vast, their effects so deep and far-reaching, that to compare them with writers of books, quiet thinkers, studious resolvers of prob- lems, would appear to be futile. Some such image as a great storm uprooting oaks and rending masonry, in comparison with a gentle wind scarcely strong enough to rustle loose leaves, might suggest itself. But the question is not settled by a figure of speech. Very often we find men of action immediately impelled by men of thought, and frequently where the influence is not directly evident it is not difficult to trace. Charlemagne, for all his personal grossness, read much in Saint Augus- tine's book, de Civitate Dei, and believed that in founding an Empire and linking it up — even if loosely — with the Papacy he was in some degree realising the saint's concep- tion. Cromwell translated Puritanism into statecraft. Rous- seau had as much to do with the American Declaration of Independence as had Jefferson, and much more than Wash- ington. In Heine's long poem, "Deutschland," he repre- sents himself as being accompanied always — at his writing desk, in his walks abroad — by a ghost, armed with an axe. When the poet calls upon the spectre which haunts him thus to explain itself, it confesses that it is the Deed that follows from his Thought. 1 i Ich bin dein Liktor, and ich geh' Bestandig mit dem blanken Richtbeile hinter dir — ich bin Die Tat von deinem Gcdanken." 107 108 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY If John Stuart Mill had ever so far relapsed from pure rationalism as to suppose that he was accompanied by a ghost which executed his "Gedanken," it would not have been armed with such a sharp, heavy weapon as was Heine's. It would have been a very stiff but a very gentle ghost, insistent to the last extremity of courtesy, but open to conviction on all things spectral and solid. It would also have been extremely busy, for no man in the world of thought in his time was so industrious as was Mill. There are two reasons why it seems appropriate to make a review of economic thought hinge upon him. One is that his Principles of Political Economy has probably been more widely read than any other economic work in English, except Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. Later criticism, and the advance of the science at the hands of earnest students during seventy years, have destroyed much that he built. But there was a time when his authority ranked so high as to make him somewhat of an economic pontiff. The second reason is that he stands between Adam Smith and David Ricardo, who were pioneers, and the later schools, which, while rejecting many of the conclusions of their famous predecessors, have profited greatly from their work. Our aim is to form some estimate of the working of economic thought on modern history, and Mill, for this purpose, is a central influence. Adam Smith produced the first great treatise on politi- cal economy, and his Wealth of Nations, though published' in 1776, and superseded by more searching analysis in every topic with which he dealt, is still a classic which no student can afford to neglect. All later writers have been influenced by it, and, by reason of the vigorous style in which it is written, its perfect lucidity and its wealth of historical knowledge, it is likely to hold a place as a living work for many years to come. Ricardo's book on the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (1817) is as hard to read as Adam Smith's work is agreeable. But it was based upon a much wider practical knowledge of business and finance than books of the kind have usually been. Nothing could be wider of the mark than an attack upon Ricardo for being a "mere theorist," or an "abstract economist." He was trained for business by his father, a Jewish stock- broker of Dutch birth and Portuguese origin, who had settled in London. He entered his father's office when he was JOHN STUART MILL 109 only fourteen years of age, and he himself made a fortune on the Stock Exchange large enough to enable him to buy an Irish seat in the House of Commons. He had built up a reputation in the City of London before he courted fame as an author, or entered Parliament. He was, in short, a thoroughly well-versed financier and man of business, who, when he wrote about currency, banking, exchange and market prices, not only expounded the thought that was in him, but drew upon a large experience. Ricardo was a friend of James Mill, who, by virtue of his History of India, secured an appointment in the London office of the East India Company. John Stuart Mill has given an account in his Autobiography of his severe childhood under the tutelage of a stern father, who pumped the stiff est knowledge into his juvenile brain at an age when ordinary boys are allowed to mingle play with schooling. While he was only thirteen his father expounded to him the arid mysteries of economics, and set him reading Ricardo, giving daily a verbal account of what he read. "On money, as the most intricate part of the the subject," writes Mill, "he made me read in the same manner Ricardo's admirable pamphlets, written during what was called the Bullion Controversy ; to these suc- ceeded Adam Smith ; and in this reading it was one of my father's main objects to make me apply to Smith's more superficial view of political economy the superior lights of Ricardo, and detect what was fallacious in Smith's argu- ments or erroneous in any of his conclusions." Mill there- fore knew much about the operations of currency and inter- national exchange at an age when for most lads how to make a little pocket money go a long way is more impor- tant than the transactions of the Bank of England. The first important piece of work accomplished by Mill when he grew to manhood was his System of 'Logic, pub- lished in 1843, when he was thirty-seven years of age. The second was his Principles of Political Economy, pub- lished in 1848. He prepared for both works by writing articles for the reviews. Thus, he edited Bentham's book on Evidence before he was twenty, wrote papers on prob- lems of logic and philosophy, and published his Essays on Unsettled Questions of Political Economy seventeen years before his larger work appeared. Severely trained, accustomed to the society of the most 110 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY serious-minded men of his generation, such as Grote, John Sterling, and F. D. Maurice, and made acquainted with practical business through a clerkship in the India House, John Stuart Mill had the equipment of an intellectual gladiator and the pen of a ready writer. The Principles of Political Economy was written in a little more than two years, during which time Mill also produced a number of articles on current politics, which necessitated the laying aside of the work for about six months. So that he was not continuously engaged upon it for more than twenty months. As the book contains about half a million words, he must have written it at the rate of about twenty-five thousand words per month. It was, he said, "rapidly executed." As it deals with the most abstruse questions affecting Production, Distribution, Exchange, Progress and Government, and had to be written while the author was daily engaged upon his duties as First-Assistant at the India House, the book represents labour of an exception- ally arduous kind. It could only have proceeded from a mind thoroughly imbued with the knowledge and the pro- cesses of reasoning which are exhibited in its pages. The great popularity of Mill's book was due, not merely to the confidence extended to him as a thinker, but also to its remarkable clearness of style and the genuine human warmth which pervades it. To think of John Stuart Mill as a dry exponent of abstract formulae, or as a dull analyst of obscure processes, is not possible to any who know the life of the man and have examined his critical writings. The doctrines of his Political Economy may be to some extent demolished, but the book remains a piece of humane, liberal thinking, sometimes eloquently expressed, always aimed at the betterment of mankind. In the midst of a disquisition on "Credit as a Substitute for Money" we come upon a passage insisting on the economic value of personal character, and an assurance that "this benefit will be reaped far more largely whenever, through better laws and better education, the community shall have made such progress in integrity that personal character can be accepted as a sufficient guarantee not only against dis- honesty, but against dishonestly risking what belongs to another." In the chapter on "The Stationary State" we meet with this gentle admonition of the "hustling" which is often extolled as a virtue: "I confess I am not charmed JOHN STUART MILL 111 with the ideal of life held out by those who think that the normal state of human beings is that of struggling to get on ; that the trampling, crushing, elbowing and treading on each others' heels, which form the existing type of social life, are the most desirable lot of human kind, or anything but the disagreeable symptoms of one of the phases of industrial progress." Again, in a discussion on "Limits of the Province of Government," we find this sensitive plea: "To be prevented from doing what one is inclined to, or from acting according to one's own judgment of what is desirable, is not only always irksome, but always tends, pro tanto, to starve the development of some portion of the bodily or mental faculties, either sensitive or active; and unless the conscience of the individual goes freely with the legal restraint, it partakes, either in a great or in a small degree, of the degradation of slavery." Scattered up and down the Political Economy are many such passages, which give a moral and humane turn to the discussion, and serve to remind the reader of a truth which he might not learn from some other works on the same subject, that the aim of political economy is the welfare of human society. John Stuart Mill never lost sight of that object when dealing with money, rent, value, labour, wages, prices, markets, and all the other complexities of the science. The human heart-beat was always more to him than the chink of coin on the counter. The mechanism by which the business of the world gets itself done was but a mechanism, needing to be explained, and difficult to be understood by him who reads as he runs, perhaps ; but the purpose of it was to subserve life and make happiness spread wide and deep among the children of men. Car- lyle's snorts of derision at "the dismal science" seem pecu- liarly perverse artd unworthy when one observes how assiduously Mill applied theory to its ultimate purpose, and humanised abstruse things by his vital and sympathetic touch. There were in Mill, together with his tenderness of feel- ing and sense of justice, two qualities which are not suffi- ciently recognised in the best-known estimates of him. These are his love of beauty and his strong moral courage. The critic of literature who reads his excellent piece, "Thoughts on Poetry and its Varieties," and his essays on Coleridge and Alfred de Vigny, must regret that he did 112 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY not find time to write more in this vein. His finely wrought little book On Liberty has a place apart in modern English literature, and contains things which people will need to read again and again through generations. His Subjection of Women was a piece of pioneer polemic on a subject on which he felt deeply. Withal he was alert to the sweetness and charm of nature to an unusual degree. The beauty of wayside flowers and the form of great trees delighted him. The songs of birds gave him intense pleasure. To think of him as engrossed by abstract problems, beset by cold calculations, is to misunderstand him completely. His courage was part of his sincerity. He advocated many unpopular causes regardless of ordinary opinion, and indeed never troubling himself whether his reasons for so doing were approved by those whom he supported. Though a champion of working class policies, and essentially a democratic thinker, he was too honest-minded ever to court approval by flattering the mob. The well-known incident of the Westminster election is an example of his straight- forwardness. In a pamphlet on "Parliamentary Reform" he had written that the English working classes, though differing from those of other countries in being ashamed of lying, were yet generally liars. This passage an oppo- nent at the election had painted on a placard, which was handed up to Mill at a meeting composed chiefly of working men, and he was asked whether he had written and published it. "I did," answered Mill at once; and he regarded it as creditable to his audience that they applauded his candour and preferred it to the ordinary "equivocation and evasion of those who sought their suffrages." In the Principles of Political Economy, where approval of working class points of view is stated with much force in numerous passages, Mill treated them to an occasional glance from a stern eye, as in the passage : "As soon as any ideas of equality enter the mind of an uneducated English work- ing man, his head is turned by it; when he ceases to be servile he becomes insolent." It must be confessed that there is a tinge of the supercilious here, as occasionally elsewhere in his writings. Such instances help one to understand what Disraeli meant when, hearing Mill making one of his early speeches in the House of Commons, he scrutinised him through his eyeglass and murmured, "Ah, the finishing governess !" JOHN STUART MILL 11'. Mill desired to explain the doctrines of Ricardo in clearer language, and to correct the errors of Adam Smith, whose work he believed to be "in many parts obsolete and in all imperfect." But in so doing he introduced fresh errors of his own. One of his critics has attributed his failings as an economist to his sympathies: "Mill is won- derfully philosophic in temper compared with the average man, but his very enthusiasm for humanity kept him short of absolutely scientific method." The doctrine, to which he clung with something of a parent's fondness, that "demand for commodities is not demand for labour" (Bk. I., Chap. V., of the Political Economy) , later economists have assailed till it is slain like Henry VI., "punched full of deadly holes." But it was not characteristic of Mill to cling to a theory, or be reluctant to modify one, when satisfied that it had been weakened by criticism. Few writers have been so open-minded, so ready to accept correction. He threw over the wage-fund theory though he had built a large part of his discussion of wages upon it, as soon as he was con- vinced that it was unsound. Professor Shield Nicholson truly states that Mill himself "may be said to have headed the revolt against his own doctrines in his later treatment of labour questions and socialism." There was an absence of doctrinaire finality or egotis- tical assertiveness in Mill's handling of great questions. He recognised that there were other sides to issues upon which he felt strongly. No man was a more convinced Free Trader, but he vexed Richard Cobden by the admis- sion that protective duties might defensibly be imposed in a young nation "in hopes of naturalising a foreign industry in itself perfectly suitable to the circumstances of the country ;" and so we find Cobden in a letter to John Bright growling: "I got a letter the other day from Australia saying that the Protectionists there are quoting Mill to justify a young community in resorting for a time to Protec- tion." That appreciation of exceptions to general truths was characteristic of Mill. Gladstone observed the same detachment of mind in his attitude: "Of all the motives, stings and stimulants that reach men through their egoism in Parliament," he wrote, "no part could move or even touch Mill. His conduct and his language were in this respect a sermon. He had, I think, the good sense and 114 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY practical tact of politics together with the high indepen- dent thought of a recluse." To suppose that any man, however intellectually en- dowed, could, in the middle of the nineteenth century, or at any other time, write a book of half a million words containing nothing but infallibly true statements of prin- ciple affecting the economic aspects of society, would be to look for a miracle. Yet there were people who believed when Mill's book appeared, that it would soon convince the world of its universal applicability. There are large parts of it which are permanently valuable, and it is a very important work indeed in the history of political thinking. But no intelligent reader ought to expect to get from it what Mill himself would have been the last person to pro- fess to give, a collection of dogmas to be swallowed bolus- fashion. Dogmas are the weapons of intolerant people and the leaning-posts of lazy-minded people ; but it is not the function of economic or any other science to supply dogmas to the world. "We must never forget," said Mill, "that the truths of political economy are truths only in the rough." Economic science investigates the facts relative to pro- duction, distribution, exchange, and all the processes of commercial, financial and labouring life, and it states its conclusions with as near an approach to exactitude as it can get. But in this domain there are no final and absolute truths, no immutable laws. "Economic law is a generalisa- tion of average tendency in the events it covers." 1 The last word will not be spoken until the ultimate fact is known and human affairs reach a stable, sea-level state ; and that will never be. To regard political economy in that rational light is not to depreciate its value — which, indeed, cannot possibly be over-estimated. The world would be infinitely happier and richer if it paid more heed to the teachings of this most humane of the sciences. But the laboratory of the econo- mist has not the name "Sinai" on a brass plate on the door. No one knows better than he, and he rejoices in the fact, that his science is continually advancing with every change in methods of business, the disposition of labour, the variations of politics, the innovations of inven tion, and so forth. We can expect important things from 1 J. M. Robertson, "The Economics of Progress," p. 3- JOHN STUART MILL 115 political economy, and indeed we do get them ; but we must not expect the wrong things, the things which It has not to give, and which would make it not a science but a system of quackery if it professed to give them. The influence of political economy on practical politics has been exerted partly through the direct effect of thinkers on statesmen, partly through the education of public opinion. Pitt was in economic matters the pupil of Adam Smith. The story is well known of Adam Smith arriving late at a dinner at the house of Dundas, when Pitt rose from the table and said, "We will stand till you are seated, for we are all your scholars." It was under the influence of Smith and the Wealth of Nations that Pitt sought to free the trade of Ireland from the restrictions which had throttled it during the eighteenth century, and his commercial treaty with France, in 1786, was inspired from the same source. The prejudices of the age were little favourable to freedom of trade, but it seems clear that Pitt would have persisted in the course thus entered upon had not the storms of the French Revolution made such a policy impossible. Ricardo had a still more decisive influ- ence on Sir Robert Peel, which lasted, and was realised in important measures after the death of the economist (1823). "To Ricardo may be ascribed directly or indirectly the principles which were adopted by Peel as the founda- tion of his reforms in currency and banking as well as in financial policy, though the Bank Charter Act was only passed in 1844 and the Corn Laws repealed in 1846." 1 From that period British policy has been generally more informed and guided by economic thought than has the policy of any other nation. Eminent economists have sat in Parliament, and some have been members of minis- tries. Large questions of policy, it is true, .are rarely determined purely in the cool light of economic reasoning. Political passion, clashing interests, factional obscurantism play their obstreperous parts in modern democracies. But educated reason does get in its word, and not infrequently it has been a decisive word. There is a better state of information to-day among the masses of the people on economic matters than was at all customary among the governing classes half a century or more ago. The discus- i J. H. Clapham, in "Cambridge Modern History," X., p. 773. 116 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY sion of questions in a scientific spirit is continually becom- ing more general, and is in itself one of the most hopeful signs of the advancement of political competency. Political economy, in the period when Mill's influence prevailed, and even later, was regarded as a self-sufficient system. But that view has passed or is passing. The humanism of Mill, as already observed, had regard to other elements than the mechanism of business and the cash and credit side of well-being. But he did not go far enough. Political economy is but a branch of the largely compre- hensive subject of sociology, which neglects no aspect of life, from government to individual happiness, and does not forget that "the economic man" — that hypothetical biped — is a creature of emotions, impulses, aspirations and longings. The result is not to lessen the importance of political economy, but to prescribe its scope and place it in valued relationship to kindred yet different fields of study. Similarly, the historical investigation of economic problems is complementary to political economy, and no more a substitute for it than statistics can be said to be. John Stuart Mill's Autobiography is the best record of his intellectual life. Two short books upon him are that of Alexander Bain, which contains some personal recollec- tions, and that of W. L. Courtney. All of Mill's principal books are easily obtainable. Ingram's History of Political Economy discusses Mill's place among economic thinkers. So far I have discovered only one political principle, so simple that I hardly dare to mention it. It is contained entirely in the remark that a human society, and especially a modern society, is a vast and complex thing. — Taine. Among the delusions which at different periods have possessed themselves of the minds of large masses of the human race, perhaps the most curious — certainly the least creditable — is the modern soi disant science of political economy, based on the idea that an advantageous code of social action may be determined irrespectively of the influ- ence of social affection. — Ruskin. Progress is not achieved by panic-stricken rushes back- ward and forward between one folly and another, but by JOHN STUART MILL 117 sifting all movements and adding what survives to our morality. — G. Bernard Shaw. One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea. It is, as common people say, so upsetting; it makes you think that, after all, your favourite notions may be wrong, your firmest beliefs ill-founded. — WalU r Bagehot. The geologist or the physicist has the facts of the physi- cal world before him ; he can quietly observe them, he can make experiments; but the economist has to deal with facts which are far more complicated, which are obscured by human passions and interests, and, what is still more to the point, which are perpetually in motion. — Arnold Toynbee. The friends of humanity cannot but wish that in all countries the labouring classes should have a taste for com- forts and enjoyments, and that they should be stimulated by all legal means in their exertions to procure them. There cannot be a better security against a super-abundant popu- lation. — Ricardo. Respectable Professors of the Dismal Science, soft you a little. Alas! I know what you would say. For my sins, 1 have read much in those inimitable volumes of yours — really, I should think, some barrowfuls of them in my time — and, in these last forty years of theory and practice, have pretty well seized what of Divine Message you were sent with to me. Perhaps as small a message, give me leave to say, as ever there was such a noise made about before. Trust me, I have not forgotten it, shall never for- get it. Those Laws of the Shop-till are indisputable to me ; and practically useful in certain departments of the uni- verse, as the multiplication-table itself. Once I even tried to sail through the Immensities with them, and to front the big coming Eternities with them ; but I found it would not do. As the Supreme Rule of Statesmanship, or Govern- ment of Men — since this universe is not wholly a Shop — No. — Thomas Carlyle. I must repeat my conviction that the industrial economy which divides society absolutely into two portions, the payers of wages and the receivers of them, the first counted by thousands and the last by millions, is neither fit for nor capable of infinite duration. — John Stuart Mill. 118 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY It is an acknowledged truth in philosophy that a just theory will always be confirmed by experiment. Yet so much friction, and so many minute circumstances, occur in practice, which it is next to impossible for the most enlarged and penetrating mind to foresee, that on few sub- jects can any theory be pronounced just that has not stood the test of experience. But an untried theory cannot be advanced as probable, much less as just, till all the argu- ments against it have been maturely weighed, and clearly and consistently confuted. — Malthus. In chemistry there is no room for passion to step in and to confound the understanding — to lead men into error and to shut their eyes against knowledge. In legislation the circumstances are opposite and vastly different. — Ben- tham. You know as well as I do what is the great aim of all the governments of the earth: obedience and money. The object is, a,s the saying goes, to pluck the hen without making it cry out. But it is the proprietors who cry out, and the government has always preferred to attack them indirectly, because then they do not perceive the harm until after the matter has become law; and, moreover, intelli- gence is not widely enough distributed, and the principles involved are not clearly enough proved, for them to attri- bute the evils they suffer to their true cause. — Turgot. I am reminded of an adventure which befell Archbishop Whately soon after his promotion to the see of Dublin. On arrival in Ireland he saw that the people were miser- able. The cause, in his mind, was their ignorance of poli- tical economy, of which he himself had written what he regarded as an excellent manual. An Irish translation of this manual, he conceived, would be the best possible medi- cine, and he commissioned a native Scripture reader to make one. To insure correctness, he required the reader to retranslate to him what he had written line by line. He observed that the man as he read turned sometimes two pages at a time. The text went on correctly, but his quick eye perceived that something was written on the interven- ing leaves. He insisted on knowing what it was, and at last extorted an explanation: "Yor Grace, me and my comrade conceived that it was mighty dry readin', so we have just interposed now and then a bit of a pawem, to help it for- ward, your Grace." — J. A. Froude. DURHAM. [Page 120 Chapter IX. LORD DURHAM AND RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT. IT has been a not uncommon experience in British his- tory that the remedy for misgovernment has been found to be self-government. This does not mean that self-government is necessarily very good government. It may be quite otherwise. But if it be the kind of govern- ment which a people want, and which suits them, it is the right kind of government for them, and may be better than any which expert jurists, philosophers and statesmen could devise for them. For thousands of years the problem of how to govern mankind has exercised the best minds, and many most admirable pieces have been written about it, from Aristotle down to Dicey. Ingenuity and high- think- ing have been lavished upon every aspect of the subject. As long as people are permitted to consider these wise things as counsel which they may accept or reject as they please, they are very valuable ; but if enforced upon an un- willing community the best may prove repugnant. John Locke was a very wise man. He had thought more deeply about government than any man of his generation, and his writings on the subject are full of good things which it is still profitable to ponder over. But when John Locke turned his hand to constitution-making, and, as Secretary to the Proprietors of Carolina, produced an instrument of govern- ment for that colony, nobody had any wish to live under it, nor ever did. Being, as Professor McLean Andrews says, "a constitution made to order, without regard to the needs of the people for whom it was intended," it was won- derfully ingenious but completely unsuitable. People must have government if they are to live together in communities. The cave men must have had their rough 121 122 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY rules of life, and they probably smote with the thigh bone of a reindeer or some such admonishing implement any man who offended against them. The Anglo-Saxons had laws which for easier remembrance were cast in rhythmical form and sung to the harp, before they could write down what each man was expected to do. There was legislation before there were alphabets. It is indeed singular how the most unruly of people will create an orderly government for themselves if let alone. When a Portuguese navigator discovered Brazil at the end of the fifteenth century, the government of Portu- gal, having no particular use for the country for trade or settlement, turned loose in its ample territory a horde of criminals, evil-living persons and heretics condemned by the Inquisition, whom it was considered desirable to expel, and left them to shift for themselves. They might tear each other to pieces if they liked, and perhaps some of them did at first. But these people sorted themselves out and evolved a system of government for the several colonies which grew up in various parts of the country, each under an elected captain, who administered rough justice, orga- nised defence, and exercised authority in accordance with the general sentiment of the community. The system was not perfect, but it was a natural growth out of the needs of man as a social being to reduce order out of chaos ; and it worked so well that when gold was discovered in Brazil, and the Portuguese government sent out Martin Affonso de Sousa as Governor, he wisely determined to allow these curiously-generated administrations to continue. Conse- quently the captaincy system prevailed, and left its mark upon the subsequent development of Brazil. The problem of the government of colonies presented itself naturally when the discovery of America opened up vast new realms for development; and the most obvious thing for European governments to do was to govern their over-sea possessions on some such plan and in accordance with some such ideas as were familiar at home Thus Spain, whose American acquisitions were immensely larger than those of any other nation, divided them into vice-rOyalties very much as the mother country was divided into pro- vinces. The French colonies were likewise governed under a tolerably close imitation of the system which prevailed in France. French Canada before the English conquest LORD DURHAM 123 was as feudal in social structure as was European France. Colonists take to a new country not only seeds and live- stock for reproducing as far as may be the life of the home- land, but also customs and ideas. They have to adapt these, just as they have to adapt themselves, to new con- ditions ; but, however rapidly they may make changes, they will more or less closely copy the life of the old land. The very names of early colonies betray this imitative tendency — New England, Nova Scotia, New Netherland, la Nouvelle France, Nova Hispania. There were also for awhile a New Sweden in America, and a New Albion. Few Americans realise the extent to which the constitu- tion of the United States was, despite its republican prin- ciple, an imitation of the English system of government prevailing — or, rather, supposed to have been prevailing — in 1787; so that to this day the President is a George III. with a hat instead of a crown on his head, and, of course, much better material inside it. For, after all, as has been wittily said, man is an imitative animal — "he imitates his ancestors, that is custom ; he imitates his neighbours, that is fashion; he imitates himself, that is habit.' It fortunately happened that when the English colonies in America were founded, in the first half of the seventeenth century, the country was very much concerned with ideas about government; and the prevalence of these ideas favoured the creation of a new type of over-sea possessions. In England Parliament commenced under James I. a struggle for the popular control of government, which was continued with greater fierceness in the reign of Charles I., and culminated in the tragedy of Whitehall in 1642. Within the thirty-six years before that date, Virginia and the New England colonies were established. If the Stuart kings had prevailed in their struggle with Parliament, such English colonies as came into being in America would, we cannot doubt, have been as despotically governed as James and Charles desired England itself to be. But more liberal conceptions of government were held not only by the colonists, but also by those investors in colonising com- panies who found the money for Virginia and New Eng- land. It was not by the demand of the Virginian colonists, nor by the command of the Crown, that Virginia was endowed with a representative assembly. It was at the instance of the Proprietary Company in London, whose 124 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY directors included men who were fighting for the popular cause in the House of Commons, that "the Magna Carta of America" was freely granted, under which the first colonial legislature met at Jamestown on 30th June, 1619. This was the beginning of self-government in the colonies. In due time all the English colonies in America had their representative assemblies. Proprietary colonies as well as others were to some extent under popular control. Lord Baltimore, the proprietor of Maryland, tried to foist on the colonists a code of laws, but the Assembly rejected them, and compelled him to withdraw them. William Penn, in founding Pennsylvania, frankly recognised the right of the colonists to exercise a voice in framing laws under which they were to be governed. "Any government is free to the people under it," he said, "where the laws rule and the people are a party to these laws, and more than this is tyranny, oligarchy or confusion." There was, in short, self-government in the English colonies almost from the beginning. But there was not responsible government. The Crown exercised a strict veto over laws passed by colonial assem- blies, and, in fact, about eight thousand colonial acts were disallowed during the eighteenth century before the revolt of the American colonies. The executive government was in the hands of Governors and officials, over whom the Assemblies exercised no legal control, though they could often make things disagreeable for governors who offended them by not voting their salaries and by other annoyances. It is a mistake, though a common one, to suppose that the American Revolution made the government of English colonies more popular than it had been before — that it taught the English government a lesson. It did not. Canada remained loyal to the British connection, spurning the over- tures made by the revolted Americans to induce it to join the United States ; and its two provinces, Upper and Lower Canada, were, by the Constitution Act of 1791, appointed to be governed under laws to be made by a nominated Legislative Council and an elected Legislative Assembly. But the administration under this constitution was no more responsible to the elected House than was the case before the Revolution. The Governors of the provinces were Eng- lish officials, and through them the Imperial Government exerted a controlling hand. LORD DURHAM L25 Early in the nineteenth century complaints began to arise about the quality of the government in both these pro- vinces. The French population of Lower Canada were not more bitter than the English in Upper Canada about abuses which they declared to exist. Corruption and incompetence were alleged. The nominee councils were said to be cliques of wealthy and influential people who used their opportuni- ties to secure advantages for themselves and their relatives. Some thought that the growing storm of popular discontent might be countered by making the councils elective, but to this mild reform King William IV. offered strong opposi- tion. He would never permit an elective council to exist in any British colony. So the popular grievances were neglected, the storm waxed, and it burst in open rebellion in the two Canadas in 1837. It is at this point that Lord Durham comes into the story. Durham was a prominent member of the Whig (or Liberal) party in the years following the resettlement after the Napoleonic wars. He earned for himself the name of "Radical Jack" by his strong opposition to the repressive policy of the Tory governments which ruled England from the beginning of the century down to the Reform Bill era, and by his downright championship of parliamentary reform. A fervent temperament drove him into putting the party case in warmer language than was customary among his colleagues. He was inclined to "fly off the handle," and did not brook contradiction with a good grace. But essentially Durham was an aristocratic Whig, sincerely attached to the view of politics which had been bequeathed to the Whig party by its great leader, Charles James Fox. He was one of the committee of Whig statesmen who pre- pared the scheme upon which the Reform Bill was based, and he was the actual author of the committee's report to the King and the Cabinet. There can be no doubt that the Bill, which to many seemed so sweeping as to be almost revolutionary when laid before Parliament, would have been much more halting and timid but for Durham's insis- tence. His temper did not allow him to be a good parlia- mentary leader, but he was a courageous thinker, never afraid to take the step from conviction to action. Indeed, he would have embodied household suffrage, triennial par- 126 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY liaments and voting by ballot in the Reform Bill of 1832, if he could have carried his colleagues with him.. There is no evidence in Durham's papers and published utterances that he had taken any interest in colonial ques- tions before the occurrence of the Canadian crisis. He had never spoken upon them, nor been officially connected with them. Nor was he at first disposed to go to Canada when the Prime Minister, Melbourne, offered him the post of Special Commissioner, in July, 1837. A month later than that date, we find him writing: "I am not going to Canada, and have nothing to do with the settlement of that unfor- tunate question." But apparently he now began to study the question of colonial government, and to confer with men who had given much thought to it; and after about six months from the original offering of the post to him he had made up his mind that there was work to do which he could undertake with satisfaction to himself. In January, 1838, he wrote: "I will consent to undertake this most arduous and difficult task, depending on the cordial and energetic support of Her Majesty's government and on their putting the most favourable construction on my actions." Lord Melbourne, and his government regarded the Cana- dian situation as a political nuisance. They were faced with rebellion in both the provinces, and would have been quite content, for their own part, if Canada had cut loose from the British Empire. But they recognised that if that occurred it would seriously injure their position in British politics. They had not sufficient statesmanship to perceive that the satisfactory settlement of the question of colonial government was a necessity due to the growth of a strong feeling in Canada that the existing constitution was out- worn, and that it was possible by a new policy to make Canada a contented portion of the British Commonwealth. Melbourne confessed in a letter to Durham his personal indifference as to whether Canada did or did not remain British, but that his chief concern was for the maintenance of his power at home. "The final separation of these colo- nies," he said, "might possibly not be of material detri- ment to the interests of the mother country, but it is clear that it would be a serious blow to the honour of Great Britain, and certainly would be fatal to the character and existence of the administration under which it took place." LORD DURHAM 127 Certainly no settlement could be expected from a govern- ment which took such a selfish view of its responsibilities. Durham had made up his mind before he left England as to what the remedy for the Canadian discontents was to be. "I go," he said, "to restore the supremacy of the law, and next to be the humble instrument of conferring upon the British North American Provinces such a free and liberal constitution as shall place them on the same scale of independence as the rest of the possessions of Great Britain." That is, the Radical Jack of the Reform Bill days intended to recommend responsible government. And it was that recommendation, made in one of the most brilliant and important State Papers in modern British history — the Report on the Affairs of British North America of 1839 — which completely reversed the British attitude towards colonial administration and inaugurated the era of responsible government. As a colonial ruler Durham was not a success. His arbitrary disposition led him to take steps towards the suppression of the rebellion which caused severe attacks to be made upon him in Great Britain. He was in Canada only five months, during which time he used the large powers entrusted to him despotically. It does not appear that his repressive measures were considered in Canada to be too severe to meet the seriousness of the crisis, but he had enemies in England who were looking for oppor- tunities of injuring him, and the government not only failed to support their representative, but virtually repu- diated what he had done. Durham therefore threw up his commission and returned to England angry, sick and dis- appointed. It was after his return that Durham produced his cele- brated report. Insinuations which have been published to the effect that he was not the real author of it are totally unfounded. It is true that he took to Canada with him Charles Buller and Edward Gibbon Wakefield, both of whom were distinguished students of colonial affairs, and of course he took them in order that their knowledge and experience might be useful to him. Naturally, he made use of their services. But his own statement, quoted above, shows that he had made up his mind before he went to Canada as to the general nature of the reform which he intended to propose, and the report itself was a task at 128 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY which he laboured arduously in defiance of failing health. The main conclusion of the report was that responsible government should be extended to Canada, that is, that the country should be placed under an administration which should owe its existence and be responsible to a popularly elected legislature. He pledged his reputation that if the step were taken it would conduce not to the dissolution but to the consolidation of the British Empire. An end should be put to the old idea of a colony as a field for the exercise of patronage ; it should be treated as a community of British oversea people entitled to manage its own affairs ;* colonial governors should be instructed that they must carry on their duties by means of officers in whom the legislature had confidence, and that they must "look for no support at home in any contest with the legislature, except on points involving strictly Imperial interests." That is the salient recommendation of a State Paper which has been described as "the most valuable document in the Eng- lish language on the subject of colonial policy." 1 In the light of experience it seems so absurd that com- munities of intelligent British people living in colonies should have their government controlled by statesmen and officials sitting in London offices, that we find it hard to realise why Durham's ideas were not enforced at an earlier date. But among eminent statesmen of the time there were few who had sufficient imagination to foresee that respon- sible government would work out as he said it would. Whigs as well as Tories believed that disaster would follow. The Duke of Wellington assured the House of Lords that "their lordships might depend that local responsible govern- ment and the sovereignty of Great Britain were entirely incompatible." Lord John Russell, on the opposite side in politics, exclaimed: "If the Executive Council are to be named according to the will of the Assembly, what is to become of the orders given by the Imperial Government and the Governor of the Colony? It would be better to say at once, Let the two countries separate, than for us to pretend to govern the colony afterwards." Despite the great force with which Durham presented his case, and the powerful advocacy of a number of eminent writers and politicians who were convinced by him, British i Egerton, "History of British Colonial Policy," p. 304. LORD DURHAM L29 statesmen were very nervous about taking the plunge. For several years after his report was presented Canada was under representative but not responsible government, and it was not till 1847 that Lord Elgin was sent out to govern Canada, with definite instructions "to act generally on the advice of the Executive Council, and to receive as members of that body those persons who might be pointed out to him as entitled to be so by their possessing the confidence of the Assembly." Once the experiment was tried its continuance was inevitable. In the fifties responsible government was brought into force in Australia, and later in New Zealand and South Africa. Responsible government became the keystone of the arch of British colonial policy. Colonies became no longer areas for exploitation by the mother country, but free nations of politically-conscious people con- trolling their own destinies within an ever-widening scope of power. The consummation of the policy of responsibility is to be found in the highly important Report of the Secre- tary of State for India, Mr. Montagu, and the Viceroy, Lord Chelmsford, presented to the Imperial Parliament in July, 1918. There it was proposed that the system which had proved so successful in the dominions should be extended to India. "No further development is possible," said the Montagu-Chelmsford report, "unless we are going to give the people of India some responsibility for their own govern- ment. . . . Indians must be enabled, in so far as they attain responsibility, to determine for themselves what they want done." The process set in motion by Durham in 1839, therefore, worked out to a scheme of responsible government for a people who, eighty years ago, would never have been dreamt of even by Durham as capable of exercising it. Ideas grow. The conception of what responsible government itself implies has grown. We are reminded by an eminent authority that "it is a blunder to think that the full doctrine of responsible government was realised fifty years ago; it is a plant of slow and gradual growth." 1 If we turn to what Durham mean by it, and then consider what is meant by it now, we shall see that there has been development. While Durham urged that Canada should i Keith, "Imperial Unity and the Dominions" p. 103. 130 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY exercise over her own affairs "control final, unfettered and complete," he held that there were some matters which must be dealt with as matters of Imperial policy. "The constitution of the form of government, the regulation of foreign relations, and of trade with the mother country and foreign nations, and the disposal of the public lands are the only points on which the mother country requires a control." So it seemed to the most advanced colonial reformer in 1839. Defence also he assumed to be so entirely the responsibility of the mother country that he did not even mention it. It was found very soon after responsible govern- ment was inaugurated that the control of public lands must be left to the colonies themselves. When the gold- fields of Australia were discovered, they also were left to the colonial governments to manage as they pleased. It also became clear that the colonies must be permitted to follow their own desires and interests in the matter of trade, without check. When Canada desired to impose customs duties even on goods imported from Great Britain (1859), it was an innovation which greatly displeased the English manufacturing classes, who clamoured for the imposition of an Imperial veto. But it soon became apparent that it was a necessary consequence of respon- sible government that the administration which was respon- sible for raising revenue must be free to do so in its own way. Again, when the Australian colonies, alarmed at the inrush of Asiatic labour, passed laws retricting immigra- tion, the British government expressed its grave disapproval. But it was an inevitable consequence of responsible govern- ment that the colonies which were charged with respon- sibility for their own peace, order and good government should have the right to prevent the inruption of elements which were considered inimical to their well being. The growth of the Dominions in trade, wealth and popu- lation has necessarily augmented their political status, and the idea of responsible government has proved sufficiently elastic to enable their increased importance to be recog- nised quite consistently with the fulfilment of their obliga- tions to the British Commonwealth. Machinery has been devised for enabling them to negotiate trade treaties with foreign nations. Finally, after playing a large part in the European War, the Dominions were separately represented LORD DURHAM 131 at the Peace Conference, and were enabled to exercise a direct influence in shaping the future of the world. These later developments, which would have seemed impossible to Durham eighty years ago, have nevertheless arisen quite naturally out of the adaptable system of government which was inaugurated as a consequence of his report. A form of government which cannot grow must perish. Conditions will change, new needs and fresh demands will arise, the outlook of peoples will vary from generation to generation. The life of mankind in progressive communities cannot be confined in Chinese shoes. It must stride onward. The great service which Durham rendered was in sug- gesting a system of government which has proved capable of such expansion. When he went to Canada he took with him a number of pianos and other musical instruments, being a musical enthusiast. A friend of his commented on this part of his baggage to Sydney Smith, who replied, "Yes, he is taking so many instruments because he is going to make overtures to Canada." He did indeed make a melody upon which a variety of highly interesting varia- tions have since been played. The standard biography of Lord Durham is that by Stuart J. Reid, two volumes; the chapters dealing with Canada and the Durham Report are in the second volume. L. Curtis's Problem of the Commonwealth presents an argu- ment for the expansion of the present system, with a singu- larly interesting historical review. Dr. A. Berriedale Keith's elaborate works, Responsible Government in the Dominions and Imperial Unity and the Dominions, are of very great importance. The Durham Report has been twice reprinted in recent years. The best edition of it is that edited by Sir Charles Lucas. Egerton's History of British Colonial Policy presents the story from the commencement to modern times. A brief book is C. H. Curry's British Colonial Policy. A nation is a mass of dough ; it is the government that kneadeth it into form. — Lord Halifax. What is necessary to govern men? The free consent of the peoples. — Voltaire. 132 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to pro- vide for human wants. — Burke. Responsible government is simply a means of securing that the Executive can control the Legislature, the neces- sary condition of government. — L. Curtis. 0, glorious wisdom, gift of Heaven to happy mortals, who hast often refined their corrupt natures, how many evils wouldst thou have corrected in these dark times had it been vouchsafed to Valens to learn through thee that Empire is nothing else, in the opinion of the wise, than care for the well-being of others. — Ammianus Marcellinus (circa 390 A.D.). Wise and happy will that nation be which will be the first to adapt its policy to the new circumstances of the age, and to consent to see in its colonies nothing more than allied provinces and no longer subject states of the mother- land. Wise and happy will that nation be which is the first to be convinced that commercial policy consists wholly in employing lands in the way most advantageous for the owners, also the arms of the people in the most useful way, that is, as self-interest will enjoin if there is no coercion ; and that all the rest is only illusion and vanity." — Ver- gennes (1776). I know, of course, that the theory of colonies is that they exist for the benefit of home trade and the supply of the metropolis, but after all the colonists are as much Frenchmen as we are. They pay their own way, they have their own interests to defend, and the very least we can do is to give them representation. — Napoleon. Those who know the English colonies abroad know that we carry with us our pride, pills, prejudices, Harvey's sauces, cayenne peppers and other lares, making a little Britain wherever we settle down. — Thackeray. Power and influence we should exercise in Asia ; conse- quently in Eastern Europe; also in Western Europe; but what is the use of these colonial dead-weights which we do not govern? — Disraeli (1866). There are two things in the self-governing British Empire which are unique in the history of great political aggregations. The first is the reign of Law: wherever the King's writ runs, it is the symbol and messenger not of an arbitrary authority but of rights shared by every citizen, and capable of being asserted and made effective LORD DURHAM L33 by the tribunals of the land. The second is the combination of local autonomy — absolute, unfettered, complete — with loyalty to a common head, co-operation, spontaneous and unforced, for common interests and purposes, and, I may add, a common trusteeship, whether it be in India or in the Crown Colonies, or in the Protectorates, or within our own borders, of the interests and fortunes of fellow- subjects who have not yet attained, or perhaps in some cases may never attain, to the full stature of self-govern- ment. — H. H. Asquith. I regard the Imperial War Council as marking the begin- ning of a new epoch in the history of the Empire. The war has changed us. Heaven knows, it has taught us more than we yet understand. It has opened a new age for us, and we want to go into that new age together with our fellows overseas just as we have come through the darkness together, and shed our blood and treasure together. — Lloyd George. The vision of a persistent endeavour to train the people of India for the task of governing themselves was present to the minds of some advanced Englishmen four genera- tions ago; and we since have pursued it more constantly than our critics always admit, more constantly perhaps than we have always perceived ourselves. The inevitable result of education in the history and thought of Europe is the desire for self-determination ; and the demand that now meets us from the educated classes of India is no more than the right and natural outcome of the work of a hun- dred years. — Montagu-Chelmsford Report (1918). LINCOLN. [Page 134 Chapter X. LINCOLN AND DEMOCRACY. OF many men, any one of whom might have been chosen as a "personal nucleus" for a study of demo- cracy, none seems so entirely appropriate as Abra- ham Lincoln. The best-known short formula of democratic government was pronounced by him ; his career offers a striking example of the opportunities which a demo- cratic community opens to a man with no other advantages than native character, talent and ambition ; the whole bent of his mind was towards the way of looking at life which is supposed to be democratic. Yet he was fully aware of the weaknesses to which a democracy is exposed from its own nature. He wrote no philosophical treatise on the subject, and neither by educational equipment nor through the habit of systematic thinking would have been capable of doing so ; but he was the democrat in action, and all that he did to that end sprang from the deepest and simplest conviction. In the end he was the martyr of a great demo- cratic cause. We cannot better our choice, look where we may. It was in his Gettysburg address, delivered on 19th November, 1863, on the field of one of the fiercest battles of the Civil War, and while that war was still raging, that Lincoln uttered the definition of democratic government which, because of its compact neatness, has been quoted innumerable times. The circumstances were full of a grand solemnity. The great issue upon which hung the fate of the United States and the hope of freedom for mil- lions of slaves was not yet free from doubt. For three days in July the Union troops and the Federalists had fought a battle which cost the two armies seventy thousand men. Upon the curved ridge round about which so much valiant blood had been spilt, a national cemetery was made to contain their remains, and the President was brought 135 136 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY from Washington to speak some words of dedication. In ten sentences, so chaste in form, so rich in feeling, that they could hardly have been improved, Lincoln recalled the fact that the American nation was conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Then he spoke tenderly of the sacrifice of life which had been made upon the stricken field, and he concluded with these memorable words : — "It is for the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honoured dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion ; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain ; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of Freedom; and that Government of the People, by the People, for the People shall not perish from the earth." The definition contained in the closing period has been criticised as "a sequence of superlatively barren plati- tudes." 1 But, though the critic labours at considerable length to justify his disparagement, he fails to weaken Lin- coln's terse and convenient statement, which means exactly the same as a more accomplished thinker, Lord Morley, conveys in the phrase that "democracy in the discussions of the day means government working directly through public opinion." The philosopher may elaborately refine his discussion of whom "the people" are, and as to how they are to govern themselves, but Lincoln's words carry the essence of the matter. They serve their broad purpose, and some perversity is required to misunderstand them. A queer-looking fellow was this Abe Lincoln to be the sovereign of a great nation, and to guide its fortunes at the crux of its life. He was always odd in appearance, very tall and angular, with deep chanels cut into his brown features, clothes that refused to fit his body, and a body that refused to be fitted by any clothes. When he was practising law at Springfield he used to stick valuable papers relating to the business of clients in the lining of his shabby old pot hat. His capable secretaries were too business-like to let him do the same with State Papers at i W. H. Mallock, "The Limits of Pure Democracy." LINCOLN 137 Washington, after he became President ; but he was essen- tially unchanged by his elevation and might have clone it if let alone. One quite understands how his appearance would strike an English aristocrat like the Marquis of Hartington, who wrote to his father, the Duke of Devon- shire : "I never saw such a specimen of a Yankee in my life. I should think he was a very well-meaning sort of a man, but, almost everyone says, about as fit for his posi- tion now as a fire shovel." Hartington was no fool, as the high place he w^on in British politics goes to prove, but his judgment in this instance was as far astray as it could possibly be. The Times war correspondent, W. Howard Russell, recorded that an English friend who was with him at army headquarters asked why he stood up when "that tall fellow" entered the room. "Because it was the President." "The President of what?" "Of the United States." "Oh, come now, you are humbugging me. Let me have another look at him?" He had another look, and then exclaimed, "Well, I give up the United States!" Lincoln was so great a man, with so much natural dig- nity and pure moral beauty underlying his rugged skin, that anyone who from a study of his biography gets to know and love him, wonders at the obtuseness which could fail to perceive his worth. He was absolutely free from all pose and pretension ; a crystal clear nature ; upright and of clean, strong fibre. He was not unaware that superfine people smiled at his oddities. Well, they might if it amused them so to do. "I have endured a great deal of ridicule without much malice, and have received a great deal of kindness not quite free from ridicule ; I am used to it," he once said. It mattered not ; he had more serious things to think about. The elevation of Lincoln to the Presidency in 1860 was the occasion of the outbreak of the Civil War. Before his election — before his candidature, in fact — he had expressed a very decisive opinion on the slavery question, which naturally was the question above all others for the southern states. "A house divided against itself," he had said, "can- not stand. I believe this government cannot endure per- manently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect that it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other." From this opinion 138 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY Lincoln had not receded. But that did not mean that he was prepared to inaugurate an emancipation campaign affecting those states whose law permitted slavery. The Supreme Court of the United States, in its judgment in the Dred Scott case, had laid it down that "the right of property in a slave is distinctly and expressly affirmed in the constitution," and that Congress had no power to declare slave property illegal. That was the law of the United States, and nothing that the President or even Congress could do could make it otherwise. But it was possible to prevent slavery spreading beyond the confines of the states in which it was legal. It could be insisted that no new state should be admitted to the Union on a basis of the recognition of slavery within its borders. The southern states, however, held that they had the right not merely to maintain slavery, but that their people who migrated to new territory in Texas, New Mexico or California were entitled to take slaves with them and keep them as slaves. Lincoln believed slavery to be wrong, and was prepared to prevent it from spreading. But he was not prepared, before the outbreak of the war, to try to disturb the existing law. He had made that point quite clear in a public declaration. "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists; I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so." He believed that if slavery were confined to the southern states it would gradually die out. "I do not suppose that in the most peaceful way ultimately extinction would occur in less than a hundred years at least," he said. But patience, good example and inherent righteousness were expected to bring about the extinction of the evil system at some time. It was the action of the southern states in declaring their secession from the Union as soon as Lincoln was elected to the Presidency which forced the sharp issue in which the question of slavery or no slavery became one with what to Lincoln was the more vital matter — that of the preservation of the integrity of the United States. There is an important sense in which the southern states may be said to have stood for democratic principles, and the north, under Lincoln's leadership, to have fought against them ; and, as we have set up Lincoln as a typical exponent of democracy, we must consider this point. The LINCOLN 139 principle of self-government is essentially democratic. To say that many thousands who fought on the side of the south during the Civil War did so, not because they liked slavery but because they prized the principle of self-govern- ment, is only to do them bare justice. Robert Lee himself, the high-minded and chivalrous soldier who did honour to the defeated cause, regarded slavery as "a moral and poli- tical evil." But he was a Virginian citizen, and he held that he was bound to fight for the rights of his state. True enough, the majority of the people of the southern states not only believed in their cause but in slavery as an institution. Alexander Stephens, the ablest exponent of the southern cause, declared that "the corner stone of our new government rests upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man — that slavery, subordi- nation, to the superior race, is his natural and normal con- dition." The doctrine that slavery was morally justifiable was preached from innumerable pulpits, proclaimed by the legislatures of the eleven seceding states, and fervently believed by the greater part of the educated population. It would be a huge mistake to suppose that the south blushed for its cause in the great war. On the contrary, it fought quite as proudly as valiantly, believing that it had a case that it could make good before high Heaven and all just men. It has been said that, "broadly speak- ing, it is certain that the movement for secession was begun with at least as general an enthusiasm and maintained with at least as loyal a devotion as any national movement with which it can be compared." 1 But strictly the war of 1860-5 was not fought on the issue of slavery or no slavery ; slavery being quite legal, the confederated states were under no necessity to draw the sword to defend it. It was fought on the issue whether those eleven states had a right to secede from the Union and form a separate federal govern- ment of their own. With his customary directness, Lincoln made his posi- tion clear in his Inaugural Address in March, 1861, and anyone who reads the carefully chosen language of that utterance will be convinced that in resisting the claim of the southern states to secede he was not renouncing the principle of self-government, but insisting upon its neces- i Lord Charnwood, "Abraham Lincoln," p. 177. 140 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY sary implications. For it is an admirable characteristic of this self-taught but logical and straight-thinking states- man that he accepted no principle without being prepared to carry it to its consequences. "Platitude" is the last word that should ever be used in connection with any doc- trine which he laid down. He was not a rhetorical phrase- monger who pelted pieces of the dictionary at audiences in order to evoke what the newspapers call "loud and pro- longed cheering." His words meant things. It required a war to teach the southern states that not what they meant by self-government but what Lincoln meant by it is what self-government really is. They wanted the thing without its consequences. He insisted on the consequences going with the thing. The argument of the Inaugural Address makes the position clear. The states forming the Union entered, in 1787, into a national bond. The instrument of government did not, it is true, contain the words "perpetual union," but Lincoln held that "perpetuity is implied, if not expressed, in the fundamental law of all national governments." Sometimes a federal constitution states upon the face of it that it is the bond of a perpetual union. Thus, the con- stitution of the Commonwealth of Australia expresses unity "in one indissoluble Federal Commonwealth under the Crown." But, whether such a term is used or not, a federal union cannot be broken by the secession of any member or members of it, except by what Lincoln described as "insurrectionary or revolutionary" acts, which the other members have a right to resist. And why? Because, a national compact having been entered into, national obliga- tions having been incurred in common, the whole country belongs to the people who inhabit it, not to any section of them living in any particular part of it. No state or group of states can get out of such a political union with- out the consent of the whole, except by committing acts of war. For a part of the people to attempt to dismember a union which was formed in the interests of the whole of the people was not to assert rights of self-government, but simply to be guilty of sedition. Lincoln did not deny that the Union might be broken. "This country," he said, "with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government they can exercise their consti- LINCOLN 141 tutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it." But only a majority could effect an amendment, and only armed force could effect destruction. Self-government does not imply the right of a part to wrench itself from the whole. On the contrary, it requires the whole to maintain its integrity at whatever cost. From Lincoln's point of view, therefore, it was no more allowable for South Carolina to cut itself out from the Union than it would have been for Manchester to sever itself from Great Britain or Paris from France — which latter piece of dislocation, indeed, the Communists of 1871 did vainly attempt to effect. It comes to this, therefore, that in a democracy we are "members of one another ;" we are not a bundle of splin- ters, but a coherent piece of political organisation, in which the whole has its rights as well as the parts. The United States in 1860 had a right to see to it that its security was not endangered by the setting up of another nation upon its borders. If eleven states could commit severance because they did not like an abolitionist President, other states at other times could separate because they disliked other things. A nation is not like a box of nursery bricks, to be built up and knocked down accord- ing to whim or fancy. It is a solemn and solid con- trivance for the government of mankind living in com- munities. Nobody doubts now that Lincoln took the right and the essentially democratic view of the crisis, and that the south was wrong even on the democratic ground that its best champions chose. . The same frank and logical acceptance of all that demo- cracy implies, as distinguished from a mere verbal recital of shibboleths, is found in Lincoln's policy during the Civil War. He insisted that the maintenance of the Union was the business of every man capable of bearing arms, and he therefore had no hesitation in submitting to Congress a conscription law, which was enacted and enforced. He wrote an Address to the People justifying this policy — a close and incisive piece of reasoning based entirely on the justice of distributing burdens on "the principle of equality." The paper was not published until after his death, apparently because after writing it he saw that the people to whom it was addressed needed no such appeal. They accepted the obligation of fighting to save the Union 142 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY as one of the duties of citizenship. The paper was reprinted, and much read and discussed, when the United States entered the great European war in 1917, and Con- gress passed a conscription law — the Army Draft Bill — for raising a great army. The strength of Lincoln's democratic convictions was tested on many occasions, and was always proved sound in definition and in acceptance of all necessary conse- quences. The opponent who sought to trip him with the question whether, if he believed in the legal equality of black and white, he would be prepared to marry a negro woman, received the oft-quoted answer: "I protest against the counterfeit logic which says that since I do not want a negro woman for my slave, I must necessarily want her for my wife. I may want her for neither. I may simply let her alone. In some respects she is certainly not my equal. But in her natural right to eat the bread which she has earned by the sweat of her brow she is my equal and the equal of any man." He once said that he never had a feeling politically which did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence, and he was indeed all-of-a-piece in his complete assump- tion of those sentiments as a guide of his personal and political life. He treated mankind individually no dif- ferently from his treatment of them in the mass. His democracy was not only a political creed. It was an atti- tude towards life. Lincoln was under no delusion as to the failings of democracy. It was not a perfect system of government. A hundred thousand fools in the mass may not be as wise as one wise man, even as to what is best ultimately for themselves. But a hundred thousand wise men will not know where the shoe pinches one fool as well as he knows it himself ; and government is very much a matter of adjust- ing laws to conditions. Moreover, wise men are not always wise, and fools are not always foolish ; and there are many grades between the two extremes. The exercise of politi- cal power is apt to conserve the interests of a few and fo disregard those of the many, and every man has his own place and concerns in the world to protect and advance. It is quite true that democratic government may not be better government than autocratic government. Very often it has been quite otherwise. An autocratic government LINCOLN L43 may be efficient, clean, and prudent ; a democratic govern- ment may be incompetent, corrupt and extravagant. Instances could be given — glaring instances — of both kinds. There is no magic formula for ensuring that democratic government shall be even respectable. But then there is no formula, either, for ensuring that any other kind of government shall be decently good. The nearer you get to popular control, the nearer you are to securing for people the kind of government they deserve, and the speedier the means of changing a bad government for one that is less bad. Lincoln expressed a doubt as to whether "any govern- ment which is not too strong for the liberties of the people can be strong enough to maintain itself." But the history of the last sixty years has abundantly justified the capacity of democratic states to weather storms, even the fiercest. Lincoln's own country affords the proof. In the greatest trial of strength the world has ever witnessed, all the nations which approached most nearly to the democratic- ideal came through triumphant; and all the autocratic Powers were hurled to destruction. Hohenzollern, Haps- burg, Romanoff — where are they to-day? But in the very midst of the great war Great Britain enfranchised her women and extended the suffrage to every man of full age. The dangers to which democracy is exposed are no lon- ger from autocracies, aristocracies, plutocracies ; but there are dangers nevertheless. They arise from an anarchist section which is just as menacing to the liberties of man- kind as the worst tyranny ever was. The Italian syndi- calist Labriola puts the aim quite bluntly. "In politics as in everything else," he says, "the last thing that trua democracy means is the influence of all men acting as units of equal influence, as though right were always the sum of the largest assortment of like individual wills. True democracy, on the contrary, is the concentration of power in an elite, who can best judge of the interaction of social cause and effect." And again he says: "It is certainly not revolutionary tactics to entrust the sword of Brennus to any body of men who, like peasant proprietors, are inclined to the sloth of conservatism." 1 "The concentration of i Roth passages are quoted by Mallock, "Limits of Pure Democracy," ji[>. 58 and ">«). 144 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY power in an elite," the denial of political power to such men as peasant proprietors — what do these things mean but the creation of a new kind of aristocracy? The same spirit was shown by the Russian Bolsheviks in January, 1918, when they scattered the Constituent Assembly under the menace of red guards and machine guns, and by the Spartacists of Germany, who sought to prevent a representative assembly from being elected and governing the country. Against such tyrannous sections the spirit of democracy is as much in antagonism as against government by royal families, junkers, aristocracies or money-bags. They will have to be overthrown wherever they endeavour to effect their designs, as their evil exem- plars have been. Reaction from such tyranny is inevitable, and the countries wherein they rear their heads will be fortunate indeed if the reaction does not swing right back towards autocratic government. There are two reasonably brief biographies of Lincoln — John G. Nicolay's Short Life of Abraham Lincoln and Lord Charn wood's Abraham Lincoln, the latter a brilliant and fascinating piece of work. For a convenient history of the period which culminated in Lincoln's Presidency, William McDonald's From Jefferson to Lincoln may be recommended. A trenchant examination of the democratic standpoint is W. H. Mallock's The Limits of Pure Demo- cracy. F. J. C. Hearnshaw's Democracy at the Crossroads is a powerful criticism. The wisdom of a few may be the light of mankind, but the interest of a few is not the profit of mankind, nor of a commonwealth. — Sir John Harrington. The idea of a rational democracy is, not that the people themselves govern, but that they have security for good government. This security they cannot have by any other means than by retaining in their own hands the ultimate control. — John Stuart Mill. Few probably are the minds, even in these republican states, that fully comprehend the aptness of that phrase, "the government of the people, by the people, for the people," which we inherit from the lips of Abraham Lin- LINCOLN 145 coin — a formula whose verbal shape is homely wit, but whose scope includes both the totality and all minutiae of the lesson. — Walt Whitman. It is on opinion only that government is founded; and the maxim extends to the most despotic and most military governments, as well as to the most free and most popular. — David Hume. It is the deepest tragedy of modern history that every civilised nation seems compelled to choose one of two forms of government, both so bad that it is not easy to see which is the worse. On the one side is the Prussian system — efficient, economical and honest, which ends in putting the civilian under the heel of the soldier, with his brutal, blun- dering diplomacy and methods of frightfulness. ... On the other side is a squalid anarchy of democracy — wasteful, inefficient and generally corrupt, with a government which quails before every agitation and pays blackmail to every conspiracy, and in which sooner or later those who pay taxes are systematically pillaged by those who impose them, until the economical structure of the state is destroyed. — W. R. Inge. All civilisations that assume democratic forms are speedily ruined. — Gobineau. The doctrine that government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed was applicable to the conditions for which Jefferson wrote it, and to the people to whom he applied it. It is true wherever a people exists capable and willing to maintain just government, and to make free, intelligent and efficacious decision as to who shall govern. But Jefferson did not apply it to Louisiana. He wrote to Gallatin that the people of Louisiana were as incapable of self-government as children, and he governed them without their consent. Lincoln did not apply it to the south, and the great struggle of the Civil War was a solemn assertion by the American people that there are other principles of law and liberty which limit the appli- cation of the doctrine of consent. Government does not depend upon consent. The immutable laws of justice and humanity require that people shall have government, that the weak shall be protected, that cruelty and lust shall be restrained, whether there be consent or not. — Elihu Root. ■ The people, if consulted, can say what form of govern- ment they would like, but not the form that will suit them ; 146 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY they can only learn this from experience. The social and political form into which a people can enter and remain does not depend on their whim, but is determined by their character and past history. — Tain*. All government is a restraint on liberty; and under all the dominion is equally absolute. So that when men seem to contend for liberty, it is indeed but for the change of those that rule. — Sir William Temple. The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority, or, rather, of that party, not always the majority, that succeeds, by force or fraud, in carrying elec- tions. — Lord Acton. A majority held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations, and always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinion and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people. Whoever rejects it does, by necessity, fly to anarchy or to despotism. Unanimity is impossible ; the rule of a minority, as a permanent arrange- ment, is wholly inadmissible ; so that, rejecting the majority principle, anarchy or despotism, in some form, is all that is left. — Abraham Lincoln. Instead of that "divinity which doth hedge a king" we have now the divinity which doth hedge a parliament. The many-headed government appointed by multitudes of igno- rant people, which has replaced the single-headed govern- ment supposed to be appointed by heaven, claims, and is accorded, the same unrestricted powers. The sacred right of the majority, who are mostly stupid and ill-informed, to coerce the minority, often more intelligent and better informed, is supposed to extend to all commands whatever which the majority may issue; and the rectitude of this arrangement is considered self-evident. — Herbert Spencer. KARL MARX. [Page 148 Chapter XI. KARL MARX AND SOCIALISM. IF one were asked to mention the book in the whole world which has been at once the most talked about and the least read, one could hardly go wrong in naming Karl Marx's Das Kapital. Some enquiries have been made, before venturing that statement, at libraries and bookshops, to ascertain whether the work is frequently borrowed, bought and enquired for, and the result has been to remove any hesitation in awarding to it the certificate for Greatest Unread Repute. The first volume, the only one of the three to be published during the lifetime of the author, disappointed him by reason of its small sale. It was translated into English by Moore and Aveling, and revised by Friedrich Engels. The volume has been twice reprinted. The entire work has been translated by E. Untermann and published at Chicago. It has not reached a second edition, and no publisher in Great Britain ha? deemed it worth while to issue a translation of the com- plete treatise, though we may be sure that the opportunity of doing so would have been seized had there been a prob- able demand. If we make a comparison with another famous book, published eight years before Das Kapital, we shall realise what these facts mean. Darwin's Origin of Species has circulated in ,six editions of the two-volume issue, and ii as many reprints of a popular edition issued by Murray, the original publisher, apart from some thousands of copie in editions by other publishers, English and American, and translations into every literary language. It is not to be doubted that Capital has been patiently studied by many intellectual men, both Socialists and adverse critics, and that through their writings and speeches it has exerted an influence far greater than 149 150 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY would appear from the comparatively small amount of direct attention which has been devoted to it. But though those who call themselves Marxian Socialists have been numbered by tens of thousands, and Capital has been styled "the Bible of Socialism," by far the greater number have limited their knowledge of Marx's writings to the violent and rhetorical Communist Manifesto of 1848, and "the Bible" has remained for them a portentous mystery in three thick volumes, containing too much hard reading and too few easily caught phrases for their liking. If every Marxian subjected himself to the discipline of reading Marx — and the author himself, by the way, said, "I am no Marxist" — there would be fortune for publishers in Capital and much greater sobriety of language in the popular dis- cussion of Socialism. Perhaps those are two reasons why so few of them do study the book. We shall have to return to this point in another connection a little later. The man himself was on the whole the largest, solidest figure in the revolutionary movement in Europe during the nineteenth century. There is a certain mountainous ruggedness about him. When we think of Marx living in exile and poverty in London, piling up day by day the mighty heap of manuscript which formed his magnum opus. working out the mathematical formulae with which it was embellished, or confused, fighting against sickness, raging against opposition, copiously vituperative, patiently con- structive, prophesying vehemently and never deterred from fresh predictions by the failure of old ones, plodding on with his tremendous analysis of capitalistic society in defiance of all discouragements — there seems something passionately heroic in the shaggy old man who believed that he was thus reconstructing the earth. His life was a continuous battle from his youth till the Highgate Ceme- tery gave him a resting place. The essential facts about him are not many. Born at Trier in 1818, he was the son of a Jewish lawyer who had embraced Christianity. He was, according to one of his biographers, grateful to his father for "freeing him from the yoke of Judaism, which he felt was a great hindrance to the many revolutionists of his race, including his friends Heinrich Heine and Ferdinand Lassalle." He studied first at the University of Bonn, afterwards at Berlin, where he took his doctor's degree. Attracted towards journalism by KARL MARX 151 an absorbing interest in public questions, he edited the Rheinische Gazette until its fierce attacks stung the govern- ment of Frederick William IV. of Prussia to suppress it (1843). Then he went to Paris, where he met Friedrich Engels, and formed the friendship which was to endure to the end of his life. Engels, during a residence in England, had become imbued with the political and economic doctrines of the Chartists. Marx soon got himself into trouble with the French government, and fled from Paris (1847). At that time a revolutionary movement was being generated — the movement which was to destroy the monarchy of Louis Philippe early in 1848. At Brussels, where Marx found a temporary refuge, he was joined by Engels, and the two collaborated in the preparation of the Communist Mani- festo. The revolutionary troubles which convulsed Ger- many in 1848 attracted these two stormy petrels back to the Fatherland ; but the revolution, like a spent storm, blew itself out, and in 1849 the Prussian Government again drove Marx beyond the frontiers. He then settled in London, which was thenceforth his home until his death in 1883. The journalism and miscellaneous writing with which Marx occupied himself during his London residence never returned him much more than a pittance. But it was here that he began the great work of his life, which was to be a critical analysis of political economy from the Socialist point of view. In 1850 he produced his first considerable book, Zur Kritik der politischen Oekonomie (Critique of Political Economy), which was intended to form the first volume of his principal work. But closer criticism revealed to him crudities which made him dissatisfied with the book. So he wrote it entirely again, and after seventeen years produced (1867) volume I. of Das Kapital, the treatise by which he will always be remembered, however thick the dust upon it may grow. He had nearly finished the second volume, but did not see it in book form before he died. Volume III. was also largely written, though much existed only in notes, and parts of it are fragmentary. Engels put it together from the mass of material left by his friend, and saw the two concluding volumes through the press. The life of Marx during the writing of his book was by no means that of a recluse student. His work would 152 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY have been better if it had been. He was continually em- broiled in revolutionary politics, denouncing and being denounced in the wild-elephant trumpetings which are the normal speech of that stentorian world. Mr. Spargo, to whose biography, Karl Marx: His Life and Work, students are much indebted, classifies his public career into three periods. The first culminated in the Communist Manifesto in 1848. The second culminated in the organisation of the International Working Men's Association in 1864. The Inter- national was meant to be a union of Socialists and Revolu- tionists of all nations. Racial and national barriers were to be disregarded ; the working classes everywhere were to subordinate all political aims to the one great end of solving the social question on social democratic lines. Maz- zini attended the inaugural meetings in London, but Marx was determined to be the dominating personality and could endure no rivalry; for his most faithful admirers cannot acquit him of arrogance. His attitude towards Mazzini was thoroughly unfriendly; we are told that "what he lacked in anger he more than made up in contempt." Maz- zini, on the other hand, distrusted Marx as a man who "believes strongly neither in philosophical nor religious truth," and with whom "hatred outweighs love in his heart." The third period of Marx's life culminated in the break up of the International in 1873. An anarchist section, under the leadership of the Russian terrorist, Michael Bakunin, had during the preceding five years endeavoured to capture the association. The debates were tempestuous. Marx nourished a fierce hatred of Bakunin, and induced the majority to expel him and his associates at a Congress at the Hague in 1872. But the split entailed the collapse of the International, which did not hold another Congress after that of Berne in 1873. It must be said that Marx was a redoubtable hater. He had little that was good to say of any of his contem- poraries, except Abraham Lincoln, of whom we are assured he was "a most passionate and devoted admirer." The virulence of his language towards other Socialists who showed any signs of acquiring an influence which might rival his own often savoured of jealous spite. He spoke harshly of Lassalle and Liebknecht when they brought about the fusion of the two rival Socialist groups in Germany KARL MARX 153 and created the Social Democratic Party of that country. He alluded in terms of scorn and distrust to Mr. H. M. Hyndman, the most brilliant and influential of the English Socialists of the period following the decay of the Inter- national. Nevertheless in his own circle he seems to have been a gentle, affectionate and much-beloved man, explo- sive at times but with a soft side. With children he was tender and playful. The little people of his neighbourhood were always sure of a smile and a caress from the white- haired, white-bearded, unkempt old fellow whom they called Daddy Marx. He was punctilious in all the personal and financial relations of life, so that "as honest as old Marx" became a phrase among his intimates. A volcano with grassy slopes — Etna amid Sicilian meadows, smoky, sulphurous and effulgent, but presenting some amiable moods, and with goats bleating round about — so does he seem; and Etna is no extinct volcano, we may as well remember. It is unfortunate that Marx should be chiefly known to those who suppose themselves to be his followers through the Communist Manifesto, which its authors themselves declared to be "in some details antiquated" — a mild state- ment of the case concerning it. The Manifesto bears upon it the impress of the strenuous times when and for which it was written. There is interesting material in it, analysing historically the development of modern industry ; but its animated style too often rises to a shrieking note, and it makes too much of an appeal to the kind of Socialists who are, as Labriola says, "insufficiently grounded and who are sentimental or hysterical." It evokes well-deserved ridicule to find people who are quite comfortably situated quoting such phrases as "the proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains," with no sense of their utter incon- gruity. Some of its statements were only partially true when written, and have become still more falsified with the general improvement in the condition of the working classes, insufficient as those improvements admittedly are. The statement "but does wage labour create any property for the labourer? Not a bit!" is contradicted by the statistics of Trade Unions' and Friendly Societies' funds, and by the millions of instances in which artisans own their houses and other property besides. The statement was written before Trade Unionism had begun to exercise a strong 154 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY influence upon industrial conditions, widening the difference between the cost of living and the wage received by the worker. Mr. Spargo writes that the Manifesto adheres more rigidly to the "iron law of wages" — the phrase was that of Lassalle — "than would have been possible had it been written say twenty years later, when Marx's thought had matured." Undoubtedly that is true, and the same might be said of many other statements in the Manifesto. "The working men have no country; we cannot take from them what they have not got," it averred, in answer to the charge that the Communists desired to abolish separate countries and nationality. It was not unnatural that a man who has been expelled from his own country, and then driven from another where he had taken refuge, should feel like that. But the sacrifices made during the years 1914-19, and the spirit in which they were made, puts this puling assertion in a dismally apologetic light. From the violently revolutionary tone which pervaded the Communist Manifesto — its advocacy of "the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions," and its invi- tation to the ruling classes to "tremble at a communist revolution," Marx also recoiled in later life. Here, again, the Manifesto is misleading as a statement of his views, unless read strictly with regard to the exceptional times and circumstances amid which it was produced. In maturer years he rebuked those who would "substitute revolutionary phrases for revolutionary evolution." The proletariat, he then insisted, would use its political power "to wrest by degrees all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the state." Between wresting "by degrees" and "forcible overthrow" there is a world of difference, and it is good to perceive that the change was produced after his residence in Eng- land convinced him that the method of reform was prefer- able to what seemed the only possible means to one reared in autocratic Prussia. We are assured that he developed "an intense hatred and suspicion" of all attempts at insur- rection, and he refused to have any part in helping Las- salle to buy in England three thousand muskets for the purpose of an armed revolt in Germany. "The years that bring the philosophic mind," of which Wordsworth spoke, KARL MARX 155 contained enough enlightenment to warn Marx that short cuts to the millennium were gashed with deep ravines. There were also changes in Marx's fundamental econo- mic doctrines. In the first volume of Capital he laid emphasis on the idea that all value is based on labour and on labour only, and that the value of commodities is in proportion to the labour-time necessary for their produc- tion. This was not an original observation. An earlier German writer, Rodbertus, had said the same — jhad, indeed, argued that a gold or silver currency was not necessary; its place could be taken by labour certificates which would indicate that so much labour had been performed during so many hours, every such certificate being exchangeable for any goods which represented an equivalent quantity of labour-time. So that the labour-time represented in white-washing Tom Sawyer's aunt's fence might be repre- sented by a labour certificate exchangeable for a picture by a great artist painted in the same time. Both would be efforts with the brush representing equivalent quanti- ties of labour. Marx himself put the argument in the form that "the value contained in a certain commodity is equal to the labour-time required for its production." But (as pointed out forcibly by Eugen von Bohm Bawerk in the chapter entitled "The Question of the Con- tradiction," in his book Karl Marx and the Close of his System), Marx advanced an exactly contrary theory in the third volume of Capital. There we are told "that what according to the first volume must be true is not and never can be true ; that individual commodities do and must exchange with each other in a proportion different from that of the labour incorporated in them ; and this not accidentally and temporarily but of necessity and perman- ently." Yet the theory of value was the very foundation of Marx's system. If he contradicted himself as to that, as he did, can we accept him as the "scientific" evangelist of a new economic dispensation? And does not such an instance go far to justify a recent English critic's sweep- ing denunciation of "the extraordinarily involved tangle of inconsistent theories presented in Das Kapital?"* and Mr. Bernard Shaw's downright admission that "Karl Marx failed because he was not an economist but a revolutionary i Dr. A. Shadwell in the "Edinburgh Review," Oct., 1917, p. -ill. 156 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY Socialist using political economy as a weapon against his opponents." Even Edward Bernstein, a candid critic but a strong admirer of Marx, is alive to that peculiarity of his mind which led him into some of his errors. "It repeatedly hap- pens," says this writer, "that he points out the phenomena connected with a certain question, but afterwards ignores some of them, and proceeds as if they did not exist." That is assuredly what a scientific writer should not do. And there are instances, affecting the very basis of his theories, wherein he totally overlooks essential elements. Mr. W. H. Mallock, in his two books, Labour and the Popular Wel- fare and A Critical Examination of Socialism, stresses "the root error" of the Marxian theory, the omission of directive ability as a dominating factor in production. There may be wide difference of opinion as to the amount which the inventor, the organiser, the manager and the entrepreneur should be entitled to take out of the proceeds of industry. They may be too highly paid in many in- stances for their services. But to ignore them or treat them as being of no account is not to analyse the indus- trial mechanism intelligently. Think of the fresh industries which have come into being since Capital was produced ; think of the new methods which have been introduced ; think of the inventions which have been devised; think of the enormous difference which management makes in determining success or failure ; think of the old firms which have gone down and of the new firms which have soared into prosperity. It is quite a common circumstance in large undertakings for managers to be attracted from one business to another, by the offer of extremely large salaries, because they are known to be men whose ability is capable of securing decisive success.' It may be remembered that not long after the establishment of the Soviet Republic in Russia Lenin told the workmen that it would be necessary to engage such managers at large sala- ries in order to make Russian industries run successfully. Commercial concerns, which are conducted to make profits, would not, we may be quite sure, pay huge sums to men known to them by reputation, unless convinced that it was worth their while to do so. In one such instance a director of a large business, which had attracted a manager from another country by the offer of a salary of £10,000 a year, KARL MARX 157 told the writer that as a business proposition the engage- ment had been successful, since the new manager had in his first six months saved the company more than his year's salary. Yet so little did Marx think of the importance of direc- tive ability that he denounced the whole system of boards of directors as "a swindle." 1 There are bad directors, no doubt, just as there are bad engineers, bad carpenters and bad chimney sweeps, and the guinea-pig is a parasite of the company system who is not to be admired. But nobody who has any practical acquaintance with well-managed companies, and of the value of the expert knowledge which a well-chosen board brings to bear on the several depart- ments of a complicated business, will mistake such whole- sale slap-dash for genuine scientific criticism. Many of the statements which Marx makes with the utmost assurance shrivel up at once when confronted with the question — but is that so as a matter of fact? An instance is his contention that transportation of commodi- ties does not add to their value. Transport, he says, is one of the elements "which form a nominal value even if they do not add any real value to the commodities." "Such nominal values, which do not add any real value to the commodities, are the purely mercantile costs of circulation." "They are pure costs of circulation." "The labour-time required for these operations is devoted to certain neces- sary operations in the reproduction of capital, but it adds no value to it." 2 Those four statements occur in three pages of Marx's book. But in fact the transportation of goods from places where they are useless to places where they are valuable is a positive addition to their value. In various parts of the Pacific Ocean are islands which con- tain deposits of phosphates. These phosphates are of no value whatever on those islands. There they are not even soil in which anything will grow. They do not become valuable till they are transported to centres where they can be obtained by farmers and used as fertilisers for the production of wheat, when they have the effect of increas- ing the yield enormously. There is no value whatever in them without transport. Marx could have found innumer- i Vol. 111.. i>. 458. of the Chicago edition of "Capital." -"Capital," Vol. 111., pp. 339 to .'541. 158 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY able examples of the kind if he had tested his dogmatic statements with the touchstone of fact. Another example may be given. Marx asserts that "the surplus value or the profit consists precisely of the excess of the value of the commodity over its cost price; in other words, it consists of the excess of the total amount of labour embodied in the commodity over the paid labour contained in it." But is it true, as a matter of fact, that "the excess of the value of the commodity over its cost price" is profit? The disproof may be furnished from a piece of sworn evi- dence, which was subject to cross-examination. In 1907 a certain make of a well-known agricultural machine called a stripper-harvester was being sold in New South Wales for £87/2/-. The cost of manufacturing that machine was £67/2/-. The profit to the manufacturer, according to Marx's formula, ought to have been £20. But as a matter of fact his profit was only £2/18/-. The difference between that sum and the £20 was absorbed in selling costs after the machine left the factory. 1 Many other examples could be given of the way in which the statements of Marx break down when confronted with facts. They illustrate that characteristic of his work upon which Edward Bernstein has commented: "Imper- ceptibly the dialectical movement of ideas is substituted for the dialectical movement of facts, and the real move- ment of facts is only considered as far as is compatible with the former. Science is violated in the service of speculation." Indeed, in one passage Marx confessed that the facts conflicted with his theory of value; and he naively urged that for that reason the attempt to understand the phenomena must be given up! But surely in that case it was the theory which ought to be given up. If it did not fit the facts it was wrong. The passage is interesting — "It appears therefore that the theory of value is here irre- concilable with the actual movement, irreconcilable with l The example is taken from the evidence collected by a Royal Com- mission on Stripper-Harvesters and Drills, Commonwealth of Australia Parliamentary Papers, 1909, p. 214. KARL MARX 159 the real phenomena of production, and that therefore the attempt to understand the latter must be given up." 1 The two "great discoveries" which, it was claimed by Friedrich Engels, we owe to Marx, are the "materialistic- conception of history and the revelation of the secret of capitalistic production through surplus value." Marx took the theory of value which he found in Ricardo and Mill, re-interpreted it in the light of Rodbertus' theory of labour-value, and gave it a fresh construction from the Socialist point of view. What he meant by surplus value is that the capitalist buys from the workman the only thing which he has to sell, and which he must sell in order to live, namely, his craftsman's skill or his physical strength, or both ; that he pays for this commodity in wages, which always tend to sink to a mere subsistence level ; and that he sells the product of this labour for a price which leaves him in possession of the difference between the wage paid and the price realised. Out of this surplus value, or profit on the employment of labour, the capitalist makes his for- tune — if he does make a fortune, for the possibility of the capitalist losing by the transaction, as, indeed, often hap- pens, is not contemplated. It is not true that labour is the only source of value. Value is given to commodities by many other factors than the labour which went to produce them. But, apart from that, it is true that the capitalist does, if he can, sell his goods at a price which will enable him to put into his own pocket, or into the pockets of those who have lent him money for the purposes of his enterprise, a margin between cost of production and sale price. If there were no such margin he would be unable to carry on business. But it is not true, as Marx assumes throughout, that this margin, or surplus value, is wholly unearned. Partly it- pays for depreciation of plant. Partly it is a reward for skill, enterprise, initiative, expert knowledge, experience, judgment, vigilance, and all those qualities which i Mr. Untermann in his translation of "Das Kapital" (Vol, 111., p. 132) weakens the force of this passage by transposing it into the con- ditional mood, making it read, "it would Beem, then, as though the theory," etc. It is not so in the original. The German text (Vol. 111., p. 181) reads: — "Es scheint also, dass die Werttheorie hier unvereinbar ist mit der wirklichen Bewc»uii^, unvereinbar niit den thatsachlichen Erscheinuneren der Produktion, und dass daher nberhaupl darauf verzichtei werden muss die let/ten zu beereifen/' 160 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY make the capable man of business. Partly it is payment for the use of capital; and it is evident that there would be no inducement to save unless there were payment for the use of capital saved. Partly it is insurance against risk, of which there is an element in nearly all businesses, and a very large element in some. The Marxian analysis was incomplete. To point out the weaknesses in Marx's system is not to deny value to much that he wrote; and it is also true that the whole case for Socialism does not fall with his economic structure. There was Socialism before Marx ; there are Socialists who do not accept him as a depend- able authority. Mr. Mallock relates that Socialists have told him that he should discuss the principles of Socialism "as understood and accepted by intelligent disciples, and not the worn-out and discredited theories of Marx." That would be sound counsel if those theories were not still advanced as true. But as recently as January, 1919, a Labour Conference held in Melbourne formulated a state- ment of principles, which were taken almost literally from the Communist Manifesto of 1848, and embodied state- ments of doctrine which even Marx himself abandoned. The same things are repeatedly advanced in speeches and writings by those who are apparently unaware of their unsoundness. Critics like Mr. Mallock are therefore quite justified in behaving like Dryden's Timotheus when "thrice he routed all his foes and thrice he slew the slain," inas- much as others than "intelligent disciples" treat that which is defunct as the "precious life blood of a master spirit embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life." There is indisputably a core of solid worth in Marx's work, a display of wonderfully analytical ingenuity and an accumulation of detail, which is full of interest for the economic student. His advocacy of the theory of surplus value, though defective, directed investigation into new channels, and went far towards producing a truer concep- tion of the profit-making process than any economist had advanced before his time. His originality has, indeed, been denied, both by the anarchist wing and by more sober writers. A French historian accuses him of having stolen his main ideas from the English Chartists. He has also been accused of having appropriated without acknowledg- KARL MARX 161 ment the ideas of Rodbertus. There is little justice in these aspersions. The man's work is remarkably original, though no one will ever say that the presentation of it is luminous. Marx, like everybody else, drew in much of his intellectual stuff with the air he breathed. But a fair critic will not deny him originality, or honesty, or sincerity of mind. Nor should another aspect of Marx's contribution to knowledge be underrated. His insistence on the economic factor in history has had p. thoroughly salutary influence. That he exaggerated it is true. It is simply not the case that the history of every epoch can only be explained in the light of economic factors, though it is unfortunately true that these factors have been too much neglected by historians. There is an economic side to every aspect of life, and to every phase of history — to the Crusades, to the Reformation, the rise of Mohammedanism, and a thou- sand other great events in history which have been fre- quently discussed without regard to that most important consideration. Anyone, for example, who compares Gib- bon's chapter on Mahomet (the fiftieth chapter of the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire) with Professor Becker's chapter on "The Expansion of the Saracens" in the second volume of the Cambridge Mediaeval History will see at once how the view has been widened by having regard to econo- mic considerations. But these are not the only considerations, nor are they always supremely important. We must beware of obses- sions. Probably the economic side of history would have been forced to the front without the influence of Marx. Indeed, the study of economics from the historical point of view must have necessitated the study of history from the economic point of view. But still his influence in promot- ing the economic study of history was powerful. Perhaps it is more apparent in this field of research than in any other, and the results present a fruitful harvest of fresh facts and conclusions. The reference to Mahomet, too. suggests a final point. Marx was the founder of a sect which in many of its manifestations resembles the worship of the Prophet. But the Mohammedans do, it is believed, read the Koran. As mentioned above, the English translation of Marx's Book on Capital, by Aveling and Moore, is not complete. 162 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY The three-volume translation by Untermann, published at Chicago, is the only complete edition in English. Aveling's Studeyit's Marx is unfortunately only calculated to make darkness more obscure. Untermann's Marxian Econo- mics is a more easily digestible exposition. Hyndman's Economics of Socialism is also a good treatise. Selections from Capital dealing with "Value, Price and Profit" and with "Wage Labour and Capital" have been reprinted in small cheap books. Among the, best criticisms of Marx's economics may be mentioned Mallock's Critical Examina- tion of Socialism and Bohm Bawerk's Karl Marx and the Close of his System. The literature on both sides is, how- ever, vast in bulk. Gide and Rist's History of Economic Doctrines, in Book IV., chapter 3, treats the Marxian posi- tion in relation to economic thought generally. R. C. K. Ensor's Modern Socialism prints a useful collection of expo- sitions of doctrine by leading Socialists. The mode of production is in rebellion against the mode of exchange. — F. Engels. Marx's Capital was not the first book of critical com- munism but the last book of bourgeois economics. — A. Labriola. It is not probable that a work (Das Kapital) so long, so obscure, confused and tortuous in its meanings, and so unspeakably dreary in its style, has had many readers among the working classes, or indeed in any class ; but the mere fact that a highly pretentious philosophical treatise, with a great parade of learning, and continually express- ing the most arrogant contempt for the most illustrious economical and historical writers of the century, should have been written in defence of plunder and revolution has, no doubt, not been without its effect. — Lecky. The social question is a question of the stomach. — Schaeffle. Economics, in the main, though by no means wholly, guide the course of human development, and the most careful economic analysis of our present society shows us that, partly consciously and partly unconsciously, the greatest transformation of all the ages has already begun. — Hyndman (1896). KARL MARX 163 The brazen economic law which fixes wages under the conditions of to-day, under the control of supply and demand, is this: that the average wage always remains reduced to the necessary substance which national custom demands for the continuance of life and propagation. — Lassalle (1863). The old Marxian formula of an "iron law of wages," falsely deduced from Ricardo's brief handling of the sub- ject at a time when the outlook as to redundant population was least promising, has long been exploded. — J. M. Robertson. Socialism, which gives an industrial programme, is almost certain to be the complement of democracy, which only gives the power of adopting a programme. — C. H. Pearson (1894). Marx, in the true Hegelian manner, omits what his theory cannot explain — that national sentiment is stronger than economic common interest. — C. Delisle Burns. The causes of wealth are not, as is commonly said, three : Labour, Land and Capital. This analysis omits the most important cause altogether, and makes it impossible to explain, or even reason about, the phenomena of industrial progress. The causes of wealth are four: Labour, Land, Capital and Ability — the fourth being the cause of all pro- gress in production. — W. H. Mallock. If a Socialist is merely a man crying out for the millen- nium because he wants unearned happiness for himself and the world, not only will he not get it, but he will be just as dissatisfied with what he will get as with his present position. There are foolish illusions as well as wise ones ; and a man may be opposed to our existing social system because he is not good enough for it just as easily as because it is not good enough for him. — G. Bernard Shaw. Our hope for the future must depend on the growth of an educated and reasonable democracy, and on the exten- sion of the co-operative type of industry. A free, instructed people, controlling their own interests, political and econo- mic, central and local, on democratic and co-operative principles — such undoubtedly seems to be the most desir- able form of society. — Kirkup. COBDEN. [Page 164 Chapter XII. COBDEN AND FREE TRADE. THE richness of the English language in terms of abuse is probably due to the need of a copious vocabulary for describing our politicians. Moderate terms are of no use whatever to the ordinary British person in discussing his political aversions. He can only be articulate in derogatory superlatives. Lord Mel- bourne showed a true understanding of his countrymen when he confronted a hostile deputation with the invitation that they should "see each other damned first" at the outset, in order the sooner to get to business. It would be par- ticularly convenient to follow that process before discuss- ing Richard Cobden. There are political writers who can never mention his name without applying an unpleasant epithet to him. The worst they can say is a pale shadow of the vilification which he had to endure in his own life- time. He bore that without being distressed by it, and his reputation will not suffer from such syllables as can be pelted at it now. Indeed, the fact that he is so generally regarded as personifying all the faults and merits of the Manchester school, invests him with an importance which keeps his reputation alive. Cobden never held office ; he was rewarded with no title ; there was no accidental circumstance of birth, wealth or rank to make it easy for him to command attention. He was not a great orator, or an original thinker. He seriously imperilled his business interests by his absorption in public affairs. The firm which he and two other young men founded, principally with borrowed money, needed personal attention. When he was in the thick of the Free Trade agitation he found himself on the brink of disaster, and friends whom he called in consultation told him plainly what the reason was. "His business," they said, "wanted a head. If he persisted in his present course nothing on 165 166 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY earth could keep him from ruin." Yet so completely did the cause to which he was devoted hold his interest, that when one of his friends expressed surprise that he could either work or rest with such a black load upon his mind, he replied : "Oh, when I am about public affairs I never think of it; it does not touch me; I am asleep the moment my head is on the pillow." He was saved then by the timely assistance of John Bright and a group of friends who would not let him slip over the precipice, though he had never asked for any reward except to witness the triumph of his cause. This renunciation of personal interests has not been without its compensations in posthumous reputation. He stands as one of a small group of nineteenth century Eng- lishmen of eminence in their day who are now remembered solely by reason of their leadership of great causes. To think of the abolition of slavery is to recall Clarkson ; to think of Free Trade is to recall Cobden. There never was any doubt in the minds of Cobden's contemporaries, nor is there in the mind of any his- torical writer on the period, as to the paramountcy of his influence in converting England from a Protectionist to a Free Trade country. Sir Robert Peel was the minister who swept away the Corn Laws in 1846, breaking his party in the effort. But when Peel's ministry went down before that "spirit of vengeance" which Disraeli admitted to be the motive which induced the majority to expel him from office, he made a closing speech wherein he acknowledged that his own part had been subordinate. "There has been a combination of parties," he said, "and that combination of parties, together with the influence of the government, has led to the ultimate success of the measures. But, sir. there is a name which ought to be associated with the success of these measures ; it is not the name of the noble lord the member for London (Lord John Russell), neither is it my name. Sir, the name which ought to be and which will be associated with the success of these measures is the name of a man who, acting, I believe, from pure and dis- interested motives, has advocated their cause with untiring energy, and by appeals to reason, expressed by an eloquence the more to be admired because it was unaffected and unadorned — the name which ought to be and will be asso- ciated with the success of these measures is the name of COBDEN 167 Richard Cobden. Without scruple, sir, I attribute the suc- cess of these measures to him." Years later Gladstone, in a chapter of autobiography, bore testimony to the like effect. "It was Cobden," he said, "who really set the argument on its legs, and it is futile to compare any other man with him as the father of our system of Free Trade." We have the best of reasons for knowing that Cobden did not promote this cause with the object of riding into office on a wave of success, for when Palmerston offered him a post in his government, and Russell strongly pressed him to accept, it was declined. Palmerston was unable to understand why he should refuse to crown his political career with official success, and asked him why, if he objected, he ever entered public life. "I hardly know," was Cobden's answer; "it was by mere accident, and for a special purpose, and probably it would have been better for me and my family if I had kept my private station." His was a case of pure conviction and transparent sincerity in urging a complete reversal of what had always been the commercial policy of Great Britain. There are many who now advocate a fresh departure ; there are in few countries large parties which support the adoption of Cobden's prin- ciples. But a man would surely be dead to the inspiring influence of shining example who should withhold his admi- ration from a life devoted with unsparing energy and singleness of purpose to a cause believed to be vital to the public welfare. It is rarely realised in modern discussions how grimly the immense urgency of calamitous facts forced a reversal of trade policy upon Great Britain in the forties of the nineteenth century. When it is said of the wet autumn of 1845 that "it was the rain that rained away the Corn Laws," it is meant that the spoiled harvest was the culmination of a sad, hungry, and impoverished period. For seventy years after the repeal of the Corn Laws there never was a possi- bility of discussing the same issue in England without raising up a gaunt spectre from the grave. An agitation to permit the free importation of corn had been conducted from the close of the Napoleonic wars, and since 1836 anti-corn law associations had organised the opposition with ever increasing strength. But the landed influence was too well represented in Parliament for even 168 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY the Whigs to dare to abolish duties which were designed to protect the farmer against the competition of foreign- grown grain. Though the Reform Act of 1832 had abolished the worst evils of the corrupt and unrepresentative parlia- mentary system which had come down from the eighteenth century, and the manufacturing towns now had their spokes- men in the House of Commons, still, the great landlords and the whole phalanx of those who depended upon agricul- ture regarded the Corn Laws as only a little behind the established Church and the House of Lords as pillars of the national well being. Sir Robert Peel was the ablest man in the Tory party, and the greatest leader vouchsafed to it during the nine-' teenth century; but Peel knew something about the condi- tion of the people in the manufacturing districts, and it was borne in upon his mind with irresistible force that the case which Richard Cobden, John Bright and the repealers made out was a sound one. If, however, the process of his conversion had not been hastened by the failure of the harvests, it is scarcely likely that he would have forced his party to face the issue of repeal as he did. But the rotting of the potato crop in Ireland in 1845, followed by a wretched corn harvest in England and Scotland, produced famine conditions. Politicians like Russell, who had not previously favoured repeal, felt compelled to pledge their support to Cobden's cause. Peel knew that it would shiver the Tory Party if his government yielded. But the stern logic of facts drove him to propose at least a compromise — the paring down of the corn duties by a sliding scale. His ministry broke and he resigned. Russell tried to form a Whig government but failed. Peel returned to office determined to take the bold plunge. He now proposed (1846) that the duty on all corn should fall to the figure of one shilling per quarter after 1st February, 1849. This was the crucial decision respecting British com- mercial policy, for the proposal signified a total abolition of protection to industries of all kinds. The Repeal of the Corn Laws, indeed, shattered the entire fabric of Protection in England, which had been previously weakened by a series of fiscal amendments. The whole of the duties on food went; free imports of raw material for manufacturers were ensured ; the old Navigation Laws vanished from the Statute Book. England became a Free Trade country. The COBDEN 169 hand that struck the blow was that of Sir Robert Peel, but the motive force was that of Richard Cobden and the Anti-Corn-Law League. With shrewd tactical skill Cobden had concentrated the attack on the abolition of the Corn Laws, knowing that (as he told Napoleon III. years later) when the keystone of the arch was removed the whole system would fall ; and his calculation was verified. It would be an error to suppose that the movement which Cobden led to victory was entirely composed of those who were influenced either by the pure economic doctrines which he taught or by sympathy for the ill-fed poor. There was more than that in the struggle. There was a clashing of interests between the manufacturing classes who wanted cheap food, because cheap food meant low wages ; and, on the other side, the agricultural classes, who wanted to maintain a steady price for English-grown corn, and to save the market from being depressed by imported grain. Free Trade made England a country of cheap living, and consequently a country of cheap produc- tion. A sum of money would buy more of the necessaries of life there than in any other country in the world — a factor of very great importance in enabling English manu- factured goods to compete with those of other countries. A price, however, had to be paid for this advantage, in the dwindling of agriculture ; so that whereas at the begin- ning of the Free Trade era the United Kingdom grew enough wheat to feed its people eleven months of the year, fifty years later it did not grow enough wheat to feed its people for two months. True, the population had increased in the meantime, but the disparity was not due to this cause only. There was a positive decline in the production of grain. Agriculture had become an unprofitable indus- try. The decline is shown clearly in the census returns of persons engaged in producing foodstuffs. Whilst in 1851 the number so employed was 1,482,000, in 1911 the number was only 986,000, though the population in the meantime increased from thirty to forty-five millions. But in nearly all other departments of national life Great Britain prospered amazingly under Free Trade. In manufactures, textiles and hardware, production bounded ahead in increases figured in millions ; the carrying trade was conducted in shipping the tonnage of which expanded from 2,570,000 in 1840 to over 19,000,000 in 1916. It is 170 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY not necessary to heap up statistics to demonstrate a palp- able fact. The trade of the United Kingdom in the first half of 1914 reached the highest levels on record; and when the disaster of war ruptured the arteries of the world's commerce, Great Britain was able to endure not only the enormous strain of her own exertions, but to carry a sudden and very enormous load of obligation in behalf of her allies and dominions. A Free Trade writer is fully entitled to make the most of this fact, as Mr. J. M. Robertson does 1 when he points out that "since 1914 we have piled up and borne a financial burden much greater than even that of tariffed Germany (financing tariffed France, tariffed Italy, tariffed Russia, tariffed Canada, and tariffed Aus- tralia), with a population only two-thirds that of Germany. Free Trade alone has made the fact possible. And they tell us, as before, that we must abandon Free Trade." Whatever the critics of Free Trade may advance against that policy, they cannot claim that seventy years of it have weakened the country which adopted it. It was the belief and the hope of Cobden and the Free Traders of his generation that the general adoption by the nations of their policy would put an end to wars. Free Trade was "the best human means for securing universal and permanent peace." By "perfecting the intercourse and securing the dependence of countries one upon another," the principal motive for warfare would disappear. There was much in the modern history of mankind to support that belief. The desire to secure large areas of territory for the purpose of monopolising the trading possibilities offered by them has been a fruitful cause of wars ; and if access to markets were available on equal terms to all nations desiring to sell and buy, there would be no induce- ment to fight to secure such monopolies. Since the discovery of America, the policy of Spain to monopolise the whole of the new world for her trade, the struggle between England and France to obtain a monopoly in India, the Dutch attempt to monopolise the trade of the spice islands, the French effort to monopolise the back country of North America westward from the Mississippi Valley and northward from the great lakes — all these struggles to establish monopolies over vast stretches of the 1 "Economics of Progress," p. 200. COBDEN 171 earth's surface were the cause of bitter warfare during three centuries. At the back of the greatest war in history lay the huge ambition of Germany to monopolise the trade of a region stretching from the Baltic through the Balkans to Asia Minor and Bagdad, and through Africa to the sources of the Nile. There were, indeed, many wars which were due to quite other causes, but it is certain that the danger of conflict would have been lessened if the policy of "the open door" had been maintained. Under modern conditions nations must trade to live. No civilised country could nowadays carry on life without access to materials which must be obtained from other climates. Policies which make trad- ing difficult, and set up monopolies of these desirable and necessary commodities, produce irritation, and an atmo- sphere from which the thunder and lightning of war emanate. Directly opposed to Cobden's conception of Free Trade as an agency of universal peace, was the teaching of the German economist, Friedrich List, who published his National System of Political Economy in 1841. List is the economic counterpart of Bismarck and Wilhelm II., and he counts as one of the intellectual creators of the pre-war Germany. List advocated the creation of a national state entrenched behind protective duties, which should enable the people to build up industries tending to make the state strong, wealthy and, as far as possible, self-contained. Pro- tection was projected by him as the shield of an intensely concentrated and aggressive nationalism. The contrast in aim is very striking. Cobden looked primarily to the interests of his own country, which he believed that Free Trade would promote ; but he had regard also to the wider human welfare of all nations, to be induced by the harmon- ising efficacy of commerce. List looked to the interests of Germany being furthered by an iron-bound tariff system which would foster the growth of a strong internal trade together with a strong national spirit, the two combining to further national power. Of these two conceptions of commercial policy there can be no question as to which conduced the more to promote peace among the nations. But, truly, that consideration does not exhaust the ques- tion at issue. Great Britain was in a more favourable position for adopting a Free Trade policy in the first half 172 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY of the nineteenth century than was any other nation, because her industries were better organised. List argued that as no other nation could sustain competition with Great Britain, she could "do nothing wiser than to throw away those ladders of her greatness, to preach to other nations the benefit of Free Trade, and to declare in peni- tent tones that she has hitherto wandered in the paths oi error, and has now for the first time succeeded in discover- ing the truth." The gibe missed its mark and the image of the ladder was clumsy. When Great Britain discarded her protective duties she did not throw away ladders but shackles which impeded her development — that develop- ment which, since the inauguration of Free Trade, gave her a pre-eminence in commerce far greater than can have been imagined by Cobden and Bright. Still, however, it is true that Free Trade offered more obvious and larger advantages to Great Britain, when it was adopted, than to any other nation, and that if her rivals had followed her example she would have benefited from it more than they. Free Trade did not commend itself to foreign nations as Cobden believed that it would. There have always been very strong advocates of the policy in France and Ger- many, and in the United States the Democratic Party has Free Trade leanings, though "the party trumpet has given an uncertain sound." Cobden's most distinguished convert was the Emperor Napoleon III., who, discussing the reforms effected by Peel in England, confessed that he would be "charmed and flattered at the idea of performing a similar work in my country." But then he added : "It is very difficult in France to make reforms ; we make revolutions in France, not reforms." Still, he did make a very deter- mined and highly interesting effort to promote a Free Trade policy in France, and he seriously risked his popularity with the manufacturing class in 1860-1 by negotiating a Franco- British commercial treaty, the details of which were worked out by himself and Cobden. The treaty reduced to a mode- rate amount the hitherto prohibitive duties which France had imposed on British hardware, machinery, coal and various other commodities, whilst Great Britain reduced duties on wines and brandy and gave free ingress to all kinds of French manufactures. But it was imposed upon France by Napoleon III. by virtue of his prerogative, and COBDEN 173 was not popular with the French, who had never had the thorough grounding in the reasons for Free Trade which Cobden and his followers and associates had given to the English public. In the self-governing British colonies and dominions a set of interests different from those existing in any Euro- pean country occasioned commercial policies directly at variance with that of Great Britain. There have not lacked vigorous advocates of Free Trade both in Australia and Canada, and for some years prior to the completion of federation in the Commonwealth there was the instruc- tive instance of a Free Trade state, New South Wales, existing alongside a Protectionist state, Victoria, in each of which the champions of totally different fiscal systems rivalled each other in vehement assertion as to which was the more effective for the public advantage. But the prin- cipal inducement to the erection of customs barriers in these countries has been the fear that well organised, heavily capitalised and elaborately equipped industries, such as are common in European countries and America, would, by their cheaper methods of production, make it difficult, if not impossible, for the weaker industries which are neces- sarily incidental to new countries, to endure, unless pro- tected against such competition. It is true that Protection has been solemnly placarded as a gospel, and is doubtless sincerely believed to be econo- mically sound by large numbers of people, especially by such as profit from it ; but it is in fact an expedient, adopted by countries situated in wholly different circumstances from those which Great Britain faced in the days of Peel and Cobden. Australia and Canada are large granaries, and can produce illimitable quantities of food of all kinds. Great Britain in the "hungry forties" contained a half- famished population, and withheld from them the cheap food which was available across the Atlantic. Circum- stances are often stringent dictators of policy. The mass of men determine questions of trade policy, when they are called upon to pronounce an opinion, accord- ing to their own interests, or what they believe to be their interests. In all countries, including Great Britain, the issue between Free Trade and Protection has been resolved as a struggle between conflicting interests. It was to the interest of English manufacturers in the forties to have 174 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY free imports, and the franchise reform of 1832 enabled their interests to prevail as against the agricultural interests. When early in the twentieth century Chamber- lain started his tariff reform crusade he did so as the mem- ber for Birmingham, where the hardware manufacturers were feeling the pinch of American and German competi- tion, and were so convinced that a tariff plus preferential trade with the colonies would help them that they were willing to make common cause with the agriculturists against the Manchester cotton interest and the shipping interest, which benefited from Free Trade. Protection, as innumerable American and Dominion instances go to show, does benefit particular interests, though at the cost of the common, general interest. Free Trade is theoretically and in practice beneficial to the community as a whole, though particular interests may suffer from unrestricted competi- tion. Chamberlain, in one of his campaign speeches (Glasgow, 1903), used an interesting argument on this point. He said: "I see that the labour leaders, or some of them, in this country, are saying that the interest of the working classes is to maintain our present system of free imports. The moment these men go to the colonies they change. I will undertake to say that no one of them has ever been there for six months without singing a different tune. The vast majority of the working men in all the colonies are Protec- tionists, and I am not inclined to accept the easy explana- tion that they are all fools. I do not understand why an intelligent man — a man who is intelligent in this country — becomes an idiot when he goes to Australasia." 1 Chamberlain was in error in saying that "the moment these men go to the colonies they change." There are scores of artisans of English origin in Australia, for example — there are probably thousands, but a single person's acquain- tances cannot be large enough to testify with assurance on that scale— vwho are as convinced Free Traders as ever they were. But there are also many who are engaged in industries which would certainly suffer, if they did not die out, were protective duties removed, and whose views are therefore as much affected by their immediate interests as were those of Chamberlain's Birmingham friends. The J Boyd's edition of "Chamberlain's Speeches," Vol. II., p. 140. COBDEN 175 argument, moreover, cuts the other way also. If those English artisans who go to the dominions do not "become idiots," as assuredly they do not, neither are those who remain at home fools. The climate of Canada or Australia, though salubrious enough, is no more conducive to complete political wisdom than is that of north-western Europe, nor less conducive to that natural inclination of human nature, the pursuit of personal interest, as a contribution towards what is believed to be the common welfare. The student of Cobden's writings, and of his life, derives from them a profound respect for the character of the man. His single-mindedness, his unselfishness, his im- passioned assertion of principle, his faith in the triumph of right over evil and of truth over falsehood are apparent in all that he spoke and wrote. Few political leaders have been at once so astute in tactics and so little disposed to play the demagogue. Cobden always argued his case on a high level of reason ; and, though he was often blamed at the time for attacks on landlords, there were, in fact, fewer deviations into personal or class denunciation in his speeches than is usual in political controversy. He treated his audiences with respect, and, after working at his subject with industry, gave them the best of which his mind was capable. His more important speeches can be read with much satisfaction three-quarters of a century after they were delivered ; and, for a man who was never, like Bright, Pitt, Fox and Sheridan, in the first flight of orators, that is a severe test of quality. Morley's Life of Cobden is the standard biographical authority. Cobden's political writings have been collected in two volumes, and there is also a convenient collection of his political speeches. Foreign trade is the great revenue of the King, the honour of the kingdom, the noble profession of the mer- chant, the school of our arts, the supply of our wants, the employment of our poor, the improvement of our lands, the nursery of our mariners, the walls of the kingdom, the means of our treasure, the sinews of our wars, the terror of our enemies. — Thomas Mun. 176 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY When trade is at stake it is your last entrenchment; you must defend it or perish. — Pitt (1739). The greatest ameliorator of the world is selfish, huckster- ing trade. — Emerson. All favour to our trade or interest is an abuse, and cuts so much of profit from the public. To force men to deal in any prescribed manner may profit some, but the public gains not, because it is taking from one subject to give to another. — Dudley North (1691). I believe that when the verdict of posterity shall be recorded on his (Cobden's) life and conduct, it will be said of him that he was, without doubt, the greatest political character the pure middle class of this country has yet pro- duced, an ornament to the House of Commons and an honour to England. — Disraeli (1865). For why are we surrounded with the sea? Surely that our wants at home might be supplied by our navigation into other countries. By this we taste the spices of Arabia, yet never feel the scorching sun which brings them forth ; we shine in silks which our hands have never wrought ; we drink of vineyards which we never planted; the treasures of those mines are ours, in which we have never digged; we only plough the deep and reap the harvests of every country in the world. — Anonymous Pamphlet of 1701. The great majority of the democracies of the world are now frankly Protectionist, and even in Free Trade countries the multiplication of laws regulating, restricting and inter- fering with industry in all its departments is one of the most marked characteristics of our time. — Lecky. A deputation of orange growers appealed to President McKinley for an import duty on bananas. "We don't grow bananas," said President McKinley; "why do you want a tariff against them?" "We feel," replied the spokesman of the deputation, "that a man who is full of bananas hasn't any room left for oranges." — /. M. Robertson. The case for Free Trade has been overstated. It is. logically, whether practically so or not, quite conceivable that if the end be not the production but the distribution of wealth in a particular country, its circumstances may be such as to justify protection as a means to this end. The ordinary reasons in favour of Free Trade do not touch such a case. — Lord Haldane. COBDEN 177 To found a great Empire for the sole purpose of rais- ing up a people of customers may at first sight appear a project fit only for a nation of shopkeepers. It is, however, a project altogether unfit for a nation of shopkeepers, but extremely fit for a nation whose government is influenced by shopkeepers. Such statesmen, and such statesmen only, are capable of fancying that they will find some advantage in employing the blood and treasure of their fellow citizens to found and maintain such an Empire. — Adam, Smith. Whatever may be thought of the economic effects of Protection, whatever its necessity may be in developing the industries of a new land, there can be no doubt that the policy of Free Trade in England has taken out of the poli- tical arena a subject full of conflicts between different parts of the country and different occupations. However men may talk about a scientific tariff, the adjustment of the schedule in a legislative chamber involves in practice con- cessions among the various forms of industry, each of which urges its own claims to the utmost of its power. — A. Law- rence Lowell. The less well informed a man is the more prone he is to separate his own interest from that of his neighbour. The more a man is enlightened, the more he distinctly per- ceives the union of his own personal interest with the general interest. — Bentham. CHARLES DARWIN. [Page 178 Chapter XIII. DARWIN AND MODERN SCIENCE. ON a Sunday afternoon in 1877, a party of visitors to the house of Sir John Lubbock (afterwards . Lord Avebury), were taken by their host to visit his neighbour, Charles Darwin. Gladstone was one of them, and it is Lord Morley, in his biography of that statesman, who tells the story. Gladstone was then full of indignation about Turkish atrocities, upon which he had been writing a trouncing pamphlet. "Mr. Gladstone, as soon as seated," says the biographer, "took Darwin's interest in lessons of massacre for granted, and launched forth his thunderbolts with unexhausted zest. His great, wise, simple and truth- loving listener, then, I think, busy on digestive powers of the drosera in his greenhouse, was intensely delighted. When we broke up, watching Mr. Gladstone's erect, alert figure as he walked away, Darwin, shading his eyes with his hand against the evening rays, said to me in unaffected satisfaction, 'What an honour that such a great man should come to visit me !' " To one conversant with the scientific writings of Dar- win, and with his profound and far-reaching influence upon the thought of the world, but unacquainted with his Life and Letters, that manifestation of modesty might seem startling. Truly, a visit from Gladstone was an honour which any man then living might have esteemed as such ; but, then, there was no man living who should not have felt deeply honoured at being permitted to visit so great a genius as Darwin. Modesty, however, concerning his own personal merits and attainments was one of the outstand- ing attributes of his character. Extraordinarily patient in investigation, gifted with the rarest powers of imagination which enabled him to perceive the unifying principle in a multitude of facts, so penetrating in his vision that the most 179 180 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY minute phenomena and the largest sweep of geological time were focused together in his comprehensive mind, he was yet chiefly concerned that pure truth should be proclaimed, and regarded his own part in the revelation as being of minor importance. The story is well known of Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace, working independently and unaware of each other's line of enquiry, arriving concurrently at the generalisation that species have originated from the operation of the prin- ciple of natural selection. Darwin had been reflecting and observing for twenty years before his first essay on the subject was ready for publication. Wallace, with much less labour to support the proposition, had prepared an essay which was ready to be published before Darwin's. Both papers were, in fact, given to the world in the "Journal of the Linnean Society" in 1858. Wallace, who was in the Malay Archipelago when he wrote his essay — "On the Ten- dency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely from the Original Type" — sent it to Darwin to read. Without a moment's hesitation Darwin offered to try to get it published. There was no question of pique, no suggestion of holding back Wallace's work on account of his own claim. Darwin had written out a sketch of the theory as far back as 1842, and his manuscript existed, in proof of his earlier work. 1 Few men could have repressed a feeling of annoyance at being anticipated. But Darwin had none, because to him the promulgation of truth was more important than the estab- lishment of his priority. He simply noted in the quietest style conceivable, that "my originality, whatever it may amount to, will be smashed ; though my book, if ever it will have any value, will not be deteriorated, as all the labour consists in the application of the theory." Wallace, too, it should be added, was not less fine in his surrender of personal claim. "I have felt all my life, and I still feel," he said, in relating his part in these circum- stances, "the most sincere satisfaction that Darwin had been at work long before me, and that it was not left for me to attempt to write the Origin of Species. I have long since measured my own strength, and know well that it would be quite unequal to that task." No person can read i The original essay was found among Darwin's papers after his death, and was published in 1909 by his son, Francis Darwin. DARWIN 181 the narrative of this great-hearted courtesy, so free from any tinge of egotism, without feeling that these men, from the loftiness of their standpoint, were worthy to be the founders of a new order of scientific thinking. There was no piece of Darwin's work which was not the result of the same kind of prolonged reflection and obser- vation as delayed the publication of his Natural Selection hypothesis until he was sure of his ground. A single experi- ment, which he described in his work on The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms, took twenty- nine years to mature. It was suggested to him after he had written a paper on the Formation of Mould, that prob- ably the action of worms, in casting small particles of earth to the surface, had the effect of covering stones. In 1842, upon his own land at Down, Darwin strewed pieces of broken chalk over parts of a field, and carefully noted the date and purpose. In 1871, the pieces of chalk were found to have become buried seven inches below the surface, and it was further determined that acids generated in the bodies of worms have the effect of disintegrating stones and con- verting them into soil. The experiments which Darwin made with these lowly creatures of the underworld, which he collected and kept for study, were wonderfully minute, ingenious and full of fascination ; and they proved so abun- dantly the work of worms in the making of soil, that a horticulturist who reads about them should be inclined thenceforth to take of his hat to a worm whenever he sees one. "The sublime patience of the investigator" was the quality out of which sprang those brilliant generalisations of Darwin that startled and illuminated the world. To think of his theory of Natural Selection, of his conclusion that man has been evolved from lower forms of animal life, of his deduction from the existence of coral islands that the ocean bed where they are found has subsided — to think of these and all the other hypotheses which he launched and supported by a wealth of evidence, as guesses, coming to him in flashes of insight, is to misinterpret his genius. His works are crowded with freshly gleaned facts affecting animals, plants and the earth, all of which represent unre- mitting though delightful labour. We may try an experi- 182 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY ment with the Origin of Species, opening the volume at random. At page 539 this passage meets the eye — "I do not believe that botanists are aware how charged the mud of ponds is with seeds. I have tried several little experiments, but will here give only the most striking case. I took in February three tablespoonf uls of mud from three different points, beneath water, on the edge of a little pond ; this mud when dried weighed only six and three-quarter ounces. I kept it covered up in my study for six months, pulling up and counting each plant as it grew. The plants were of many kinds, and were altogether 537 in number; and yet the viscid mud was all contained in a breakfast cup." How interesting the fact — five hundred productive seeds in three spoonfuls of mud! And how carefully made is the observation ; how patiently watched, counted and classified are the plants ! On the opposite page of the book as it lies open is another instance. Darwin is discussing the diffusion of seeds and shells by means of the feet of birds; so he tries this experiment : — "I suspended the feet of a duck in an aquarium, where many ova of fresh water shells were hatching, and I found that numbers of the extremely minute and just-hatched shells crawled on the feet, and clung to them so firmly that when taken from the water they could not be jarred off, though at a somewhat advanced age they would voluntarily drop off. These just-hatched molluscs, though aquatic in their nature, survived on the duck's feet, in damp air, from twelve to twenty hours; and in this length of time a duck or heron might fly at least six or seven hundred miles, and if blown across the sea to an ocean island, or to any other distant point, would be sure to alight on a pool or rivulet." Instances no less remarkable than these can be found plentifully in Darwin's writings. Continually we find him making observations which reveal wonderful things in nature; always asking "the why" of things and producing the answer from the study of phenomena, from experiment and from comparison. And Darwin knew much more about the things which he discussed than he could relate. We frequently find him saying some such thing as "I have not space here to enter on this subject," though the matter in question was invariably exceedingly interesting. DARWIN 183 Rich as his books are in accumulated instances in proof of his propositions, we never feel for a moment that he has exhausted his supply. We are reminded of Huxley's remark that the great steps in the progress of science "have been made, are made, and will be made, by men who seek know- ledge because they crave for it." Darwin thoroughly loved the work which he did, and that is why he did so very much more work than was needful for sustaining his arguments. A passage in one of the essays of Huxley — Darwin's "gladiator general" — seems hardly justified. It is that wherein he speaks of the Origin of Species as "by no means an easy book to read." A layman's point of view is neces- sarily different from that of another man of science, to whom, perhaps, some of the facts and the method of hand- ling them may have been familiar. But the assertion may be ventured for what it is worth that this and all the other books of Darwin can be read with abundant pleasure. His style is always lucid, whilst the freshness of his facts, the ingenuity of his experiments, and the play of his mind upon them, are a source of intellectual pleasure as well as of enlightenment. It is, too, a satisfaction to a reader to be led into the great subjects which Darwin investigated by such a perfectly candid author. He modified his opinion on several points in the course of years, and he never sought to maintain a view upon which fresh light enabled him to see differently; so that it is strictly true of him that, as has been said, his "unswerving truthfulness and honesty never permitted him to hide a weak place or gloss over a difficulty, but led him on all occasions to point out the weak places in his own armour, and even sometimes to make admissions against himself which were quite unneces- sary." The Origin of Species presented to the world what Helm- holtz described as "an essentially new creative thought," and though its central idea of evolution evoked somewhat frenzied criticism at the time, it has since become as firmly fixed among scientific concepts as the Copernican system of astronomy or Newton's law of gravitation. The biologist and the geologist of to-day can no more think about the salient facts of their sciences and fit them into any logical plan, without the evolutionary hypothesis, than the naviga- tor can make a voyage without a compass. But not only in these fields of knowledge has Evolution 184 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY • completely changed the outlook. The modern student sees in the growth of human society, in the development of reli- gion, the working of evolutionary processes. "We have to deal," as Herbert Spencer put it, "with man as a product of evolution, with society as a product of evolution, and with moral phenomena as products of evolution." History is no longer merely a narrative about the past ; it is a trac- ing of the unfolding of nations, with all their laws, customs and institutions, their language and arts, from rude begin- nings to maturity. The introduction of the evolutionary mode of surveying events into the study of history and sociology is like the introduction of perspective to drawing and painting. It has given a truer sense of proportion and relation to those studies, and has intensified the meaning of the facts which they handle. The evolutionist who applies this thought to social science can never believe in a final state of human society, or in an ideal form which will resist the moulding forces of readjustment. All life is a continual adaptation to con- ditions which are not stable and never will be. Karl Marx said that "nothing ever gives me greater pleasure than to have my name linked on to Darwin's; his wonderful work makes my own absolutely impregnable." That was not the least of Marx's misconceptions. Marx's work, as we have seen, was not "impregnable" against his own changes of thought, and further winnowing has blown away from it very much that is unacceptable either to orthodox econo- mists or to Socialists of several rival varieties. But if the ideas of Marx had ever been realised anywhere, they would not have endured any more than any other form of society can remain unchanged. The pursuit of an ideal permanent satisf actoriness in social structure, is a chasing of shadows ; and, though it may be better to have an ideal as a sort of working hypothesis than to be aimless and drift with any current, it is wise to be under no delusion about the possi- bility of seeing it established. You may get the something better, but the something best will be as elusive as a sum- mer's cloud which melts and re-forms from one moment to another. Mankind will never stagnate in a condition of blissful perfection; for stagnation means decay, and decay leads to death. From one aspect, the evolutionary view of social science may seem hard doctrine. "The survival of the fittest" — the DARWIN 185 phrase was Herbert Spencer's, used for the first time in his Principles of Biology 1 — has a harsher ring than its Darwinian equivalent, "natural selection." It implies that in human society, as among plants and animals, those who are best able to accommodate themselves to surrounding aids to life and to resist surrounding dangers, will survive, whilst those who cannot do so will fade out of being; and this is as true of nations and races as of individuals. Darwin himself anticipated that the lower races of man- kind would ultimately be eliminated and give place to higher civilised races. If the doctrine be true, it is futile to enlarge upon its pitilessness, for it will not become less true by growing sentimental and mawkish about it. But let us understand: the survival of the fittest does not mean the survival of the morally best, the intellectually most highly developed, or even the physically strongest. It means the survival of those best able to adapt themselves to con- ditions which are not fixed, but changing, even though in some respects they may change so gradually that the dif- ferences may be scarcely apparent to any one generation. Since there has been close contact between Europeans and races of people on lower planes of development, the history of the operation of this law has shown some strik- ing results. Though Hawaii has been part of the territory of the United States only a little more than twenty years, the numbers of the native race have decreased by many thousands, and within a few decades they will probably have disappeared altogether; though it is not alleged that the Americans have treated the Hawaiians otherwise than humanely. The Tasmanian race vanished three-quarters of a century ago. The Maories of New Zealand are diminish- ing, despite native representation in Parliament and pro- tective legislation which is designed to give them every chance. There are hardly any of the Caribs left in the West Indian islands. The Australian aboriginals survive in the centre, west and north of the continent, but are a mere pathetic remnant where the white population is thick. The Red Indians of North America now consist of only a few survivors of a people who were once numerous, brave and i "This survival of the fittest, which I have BOUghl to express in mechanical terms, is that which Mr, Darwin has called 'natural select inn,' or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life." (Spencer, "Principles of Biology," Vol. I., p. 531.) 186 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY capable of responding honourably to fair dealing, as Penn's Quakers found in Pennsylvania. It has been confidently asserted that if the Redskins had learnt agriculture from the first European settlers, they would soon have been numerous enough to fill up western America and bar Euro- pean occupation there. But they could not adapt themselves to new conditions, and the biological law was inexorable. There is, however, another and a more hopeful side to the problem. Man is endowed with a remarkable capacity for adapting himself, if he will make the effort, to the con- ditions of his environment. Within limits prescribed by the uncontrollable forces of nature, he can shape those con- ditions. He has been doing so for thousands of years, and every step in advance has enlarged the potentialities of life, so that an ordinary civilised man to-day has within his reach means of enriching his term on earth which were not avail- able to the most favoured of former times. A man in the middle ages who lived seventy years was not able to do and see a Small fraction of what can be done and seen by a man who lives to the age of seventy now. The great expansion of the facilities of life is really equivalent to an extension of life itself, for obviously if you can do more and enjoy more in ten years than a man in former ages could in twenty, your ten years are more than equal to his twenty. "Life is not measured by the time we live," but by what can be experienced in the time. But our human progress so far has been mainly quan- titative. It needs to be made qualitative. We can do and enjoy more ; we need to do and be better. We have evolved lop-sidedly ; we want to get straight. Our wonderful mecha- nical progress requires to be followed up by a progress in moral and social things. Poverty, disease, dirt, igno- rance, superstition, ill-regulated appetites, wealth misused, indolence, and war which destroys in a few mad months the fruits of ages of culture and labour: these are the plagues which have too long frustrated the attainment by man of his full moral stature and his fit social habitation. There is not one of these evils which cannot be overcome by education, good will and constructive intelligence. A broad survey of human origins inspires an exalted belief in the future of the race. But there will be no stable state, no land "where it is always afternoon," no paradise for fools. The good world will have to be worked for, and it will be DARWIN 187 a world fit only for those who make themselves fit to live in it. It is astonishing that propositions which made such a thorough change in the thought of mankind should have suffered so little from the attacks made upon them in the sixty years since they were enunciated. Darwin himself, as has been pointed out, corrected some details. The school of which Weismann has been the chief representative has disputed the portion of the theory of heredity which Darwin adopted from Herbert Spencer, relating to the transmis- sion of acquired characteristics. Weismann's contentions are not, it is true, accepted by all biologists, but they are accepted by many who, apart from this point, are evolu- tionists. In omost essential respects, however, his writings stand solid, and the waves of criticism have beaten against them in vain. In the beginning much of this criticism was virulent and discreditable. Darwin confessed in a letter to Sir Charles Lyell that "it is painful to be hated," as he knew he was. His own gentleness and his truth-loving nature made him sensitive to attacks which were conceived in spite and falsehood. But he has been justified by time, and the homage of the most candid and well-informed part of mankind is sincerely paid to the memory of this patient, laborious and brilliant student of nature, whose thought has left no branch of knowledge unaffected. The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, edited by Fran- eis Darwin, and More Letters of Charles Darwin are the authentic biographical sources. There are also two good short biographies, by Grant Allen and G. T. Bettany. Hux- ley's volumes of essays, especially his Darwiniana, are amongst the best scientific literature in English, for the enjoyment of the ordinary reader. All of Darwin's chief writings are now obtainable in cheap editions. Ritchie's Darwinism and Politics and G. Nasmyth's Social Progress and the Darwinian Theory are two works which apply Dar- winism to political theory. This flimsy speculation. — Bishop Wilberforce (1860), A careful study of Darwin's great works and of his letters shows how shadowy and unsubstantial is the vast 188 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY pile of criticism accumulated since 1859. — E. B. Poulton (1909). Nature, which governs the whole, will soon change all things which thou seest, and out of their substance will make other things, from the substance of them, in order that the world may be ever new. — Marcus Aurelius. Mutationism, Mendelism, Weismannism, Neo-Lanarkism, Biometrics, Eugenics, and what not, are being diligently exploited. But all of these vigorous growths have their real roots in Darwinism. If we study Darwin's correspon- dence, and the successive essays in which he embodied his views at different periods, we shall find variation by muta- tion (or per saltum) the influence of environment, the question of the inheritance of acquired characters, and similar problems, were constantly present to Darwin's ever open mind, his views upon them changing from time to time as fresh facts were gathered. — /. W. Judd. Few are now found to doubt that animals separated by differences far exceeding those that distinguish what we know as species have yet descended from common ances- tors. Darwin has, as a matter of fact, disposed of the doctrine of the immutability of species. — Lord Salisbury (1894). The empire of man over things is founded on the arts and sciences, for nature is only to be commanded by obey- ing her. — Sacon. Newton's greatness does not rest on the law of gravita- tion alone, but much more on the general foundations of dynamics and natural philosophy which he has laid. So also Darwin's greatness is not limited to the formula of natural selection, but depends on the novel conception which he has introduced into the study of nature on the large scale and as a whole, viewing it as a scene of conflict and ceaseless development. From this time dates the study of nature as a whole, in contradistinction to that of natural objects and processes. — /. T. Merz. No man is modified by external conditions alone, with- out any play or reaction of inner needs and desires and growth from within ; nor is any man transformed in obedi- ence to an inner expansion without sundry lets and hin- drances from without. The two forces are in constant play upon one another. — Edward Carpenter. There is a hierarchy of facts. Some are without any DARWIN 189 positive bearing, and teach us nothing but themselves. The scientist who ascertains them learns nothing but facts, and becomes no better able to foresee new facts. Such facts, it seems, occur but once, a«nd are not destined to be repeated. There are, on the other hand, facts that give a large return, each of which teaches us a new law. And, since he is obliged to make a selection, it is to these latter facts that the scientist must devote himself. — H. Poincare. The spectacle of the evolution of life from its very begin- ning down to man suggests to us the image of a current of consciousness which flows down into matter as into a tunnel, which endeavours to advance, which makes efforts on every side, thus digging galleries most of which are stopped by the rock that is too hard, but which, in one direc- tion at least, prove possible to follow to the end, and break out into the light once more. This direction is the line of evolution resulting in man. — Bergson. What do we owe to Darwin? The first successful vin- dication of the evolution idea. It was not his own, nor was he its first champion, yet we always and rightly think of Darwin and the Doctrine of Descent together. He made it current coin of the intellectual realm. He made the nations think in terms of evolution. — J. Arthur Thomson. A true scientific judgment consists in giving a free rein to speculation on the one hand, while holding ready to the brake of verification with the other. Now it is just because Darwin did both these things, and with so admirable a judg- ment, that he gave to the world of natural history so good a lesson as to the most effective way of driving the chariot of science. — Romanes. HERBERT SPENCER. [Page 190 Chapter XIV. HERBERT SPENCER AND INDIVIDUALISM. IN 1877 Mr. Herbert Spencer gave some very interesting evidence before a Royal Commission on Copyright which was then sitting in England. He furnished full details about the sales of his books and the remu- neration which had come to him from writing them. The results were the very opposite of encouraging, and few men would have persisted in work so large in sheer bulk, and which involved so much toil, in face of the apparent disin- clination of the public to pay heed to, or cash for, his message. It required fourteen years to sell 750 copies of Spencer's Social Statics, twelve and a half years to sell 650 copies of his Principles of Sociology, and ten and a half years to sell 500 copies of his first volume of essays. After commencing to publish his system of philosophy, Spencer had at the end of fifteen years lost £1200, and was so afraid that he was ruining himself that he issued a notice to subscribers announcing that publication would cease. But a timely inheritance saved the situation. Not until he had been publishing for twenty-four years did the tide turn and his books begin to yield any profit. With some humour — in which Spencer was not lacking, despite the Himalayan altitude and solemnity of his philosophical work — he said to the Commission: "Now take one of- my books, .say, the Principles of Sociology. Instead of calling it caviare to the general, let us call it cod-liver oil to the general ; I think it probable that if you were to ask ninety-nine people out of one hundred whether they would daily take a spoonful of cod-liver oil or read a chapter of that book, they would prefer the cod-liver oil." There was no complaint of neglect on Spencer's part, not even a note of disappointment. He was aware that the subject of his speculations was not calculated to procure a great number of readers. But he had something to gay 191 192 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY — very much to say, indeed — which he believed to be true, and he said it in his own fashion, bearing the cost cheer- fully until such time as sufficient people were interested to make the sale of his stout volumes bear the expense of their production. Adverse criticism had no more effect upon him than popular indifference. If the criticism were serious and respectful he replied to it copiously ; if otherwise, how- ever much he might be annoyed for the moment, he treated it as an evidence of ordinary human stupidity. An example is afforded by the case of an article which appeared in the Edinburgh Review in 1883. The reviewer had spoken of Spencer's First Principles as "nothing but a philosophy of epithets and phrases, introduced and carried on with an unrivalled solemnity and affectation of precision of style, concealing the loosest reasoning and the haziest indefiniteness." We find Spencer saying in a letter to a friend, "I am going this week to issue advertisements of First Principles in all the leading papers, to which I shall prefix this adverse opinion of the Edinburgh by way of showing my contempt for it." The method was afterwards adopted with gleeful wit by Whistler, who issued a cata- logue of his pictures with extracts from adverse criticisms neatly printed beneath each title. But Spencer's contempt had an austerity which Whistler, with his malicious kink, could never approach. It was like the frown of Jove; it loomed with wrinkles of cosmic severity. Spencer was the most undeviating of all philosophers. When he issued the prospectus of his system in 1860, he had made up his mind about the whole vast scheme. He had, as it were, found out the universe, and was going to show it up. First Principles were to be explained in the first volume, and then were to follow like the seasons in their regularly prescribed order the volumes on Biology, Psycho- logy, Sociology and Ethics, covering the whole field of evolution. A stretch of thirty-six years lay between the writing of the first lines of First Principles and the com- pletion of the great design. He was seventy-six years of age when he dictated to his secretary the concluding words. "Rising slowly from his seat" — it is the secretary who records the occasion — "his face beaming with joy, he extended his hand across the table, and we shook hands on the auspicious event. 'I have finished the task I have lived for,' was all he said, and then resumed his seat. The elation HERBERT SPENCER 10: 1 . was only momentary, and his features quickly resumed their customary composure." One is reminded of the moment when Archibald Alison finished the tenth and last volume of his History of Europe; he called his wife out of bed at midnight — in Scotland, too, where the nights are cold — and she stood in her nightdress holding his left hand while he wrote the final words with his right. But, of course, there never was a lady in the case with Herbert Spencer. He was wedded to a System. It would not be true to say that Spencer never changed an opinion which he had once put forth. He did admit some modifications, but they were few, and, it must be con- fessed, he did not make them in any confessional spirit. In this he offers a contrast with Darwin's perfect open- mindedness. Thus, when Spencer issued a revised edition of Social Statics in America, he wrote to his representative there that he had inserted a declaimer in a "comparatively vague form." He admitted that the book "must be read with some qualifications," but could not be induced to state those qualifications plainly, though he did not object to the American representative writing a preface and explaining them therein if he pleased. This magnetic-needle-like quality of Spencer's mind, together with the number and strength of his aversions, and his irritability, made him somewhat aloof and difficult of access. He was not addicted to the give-and-take of life. These characteristics were naturally more strongly revealed in his letters than in his formal writings. It required some magnanimity on Huxley's part to end a quarrel with Spencer which the biographer of the latter (Dr. Duncan) admits might have been repaired easily "had Spencer talked the matter over with his friends instead of shutting himself up and seeing no one." When Wallace took a view of heredity — Weismann's view — which was not Spencer's, the philosopher wrote: "I am astonished at the nonsense he is writing; he seems to be incapable of under- standing the point at issue ;" though the subject was one upon which Wallace was peculiarly entitled to be heard respectfully. Several entries in the index to the Life and Letters signify briefly the stiff angularity of the man — "Books, objection to seeing;" "Ceremonial, aversion to;" "Classics, aversion from ;" Criticism, sensitiveness to ;" "Irritability;" "Reading, aversion to;" "Study, aversion 194 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY to ;" "History, futility of." And there are other examples which are not placed in the index. He read little, and attributed his dislike of the reading habit to constitutional idleness, which certainly was not a correct diagnosis from one whose writings fill a shelf. Dr. Duncan comes closer to the mark with the observation that it was "probably due to indifference to other men's opinions." Spencer said himself, "All my life long I have been a thinker and not a reader, being able to say with Hobbes that if I had read as much as other men I should have known as little." He tried to write Sociology without a knowledge of history, thinking that "until you have got a true theory of humanity you cannot interpret history, and when you have got a true theory of humanity you do not want his- tory." The formula is little better than a flippant paradox ; it fails to explain how you can ever have a true theory of humanity without knowing how humanity has grown and shaped its institutions. Spencer was an original thinker, but he was neither an observer nor a careful student of essential facts. Darwin put his finger, with his habitual sureness of touch, on the weakness of Spencer when, after reading part of the Prin- ciples of Sociology, he said: "It is wonderfully clever, and I daresay mostly true ; if he had trained himself to observe more, even at the expense, by the law of balancement, of some loss of thinking power, he would have been a won- derful man." He was a wonderful man — a man endowed with a sin- gular power of concentration and of methodising his thoughts. He embraced all time and all space in one com- prehensive synthesis. Rarely has there been a man with such a capacity for prolonged abstraction. He would dic- tate to his secretary in a situation where he could break off and play a game like quoits or rackets when his thought flagged; would think out the next piece whilst playing; then resume work, and so on till fatigued both by the game and the thinking. The process enabled him to shape his thoughts sharply and crisply, and we are assured that he made very few changes in a completed manuscript. When he grew old, he would never allow himself to be tired by the conversation even of his most intimate friends. When he had had enough of such companions as Morley and A. J. Balfour, he would "draw off in haste as fearing HERBERT SPENCER 195 cerebral agitation ;" or, still more disconcerting:, would stuff wads of cotton wool into his ears. The conversation- alist whose momentum could have resisted that hint would have been akin to Phoebus or an avalanche. Nevertheless, Spencer was genial among his intimates. We rejoice to read that he "had the blessed gift of hearty laughter," that he was fond of amusement, liked music — of his own selection — and loved children. He would bor- row the children of his friends, would play with them, and make kindly suggestions to their mothers about their cloth- ing. "The vascular system constituted by the heart and by the ramifying system of the blood vessels is a closed cavity having elastic walls," hence the mischief consequent upon uneven circulation caused by uneven clothing, and so forth in a luminous disquisition which every mother would, of course, be better for understanding. He was also intensely interested in all kinds of public questions, and his irritability was aroused to the full on many affairs of moment in their day. Tennyson's poem "Hands All Round" annoyed him excessively, and he tried his hand at a reply to it in verse; but we are relieved to learn that he "got no further than two stanzas," which he refrained from publishing. There, no doubt, he tempered justice with mercy. From first to last Spencer was an individualist in his own life and in his philosophy. From the time of his boy- hood in Derby, where he aroused the derision of other boys by insisting on wearing a cap of peculiar pattern while they wore hats, and showed a self-willed "predilection for certain subjects not included in the school curriculum of those days, and a still more decided aversion to certain other subjects then deemed important for every boy to know," down to his designing of the sarcophagus which was to contain his cremated ashes on reaching- the end to which he said, "I look forward with satisfaction," Spencer was, in all his thoughts and ways, a man not of a type, but in a class by himself. He was so much of an Individualist that some critics represented him as a Philosophical Anar- chist, a designation which, however, he abhorred. There were and are many who, while thinking that Spencer performed valuable service in classifying and systematizing the philosophy of evolution, have refused to adopt his political conclusions. To him, his system was 196 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY all-of-a-piece. He believed that he "saw life steadily and saw it whole," and that very .few others did. But a man cannot be a thorough-going Individualist without conceding to others the right to be the same, and it is open to anyone to reject a part of a scheme of thought while accepting the remainder. Spencer himself recognised that many students of his writings did so, and had no complaint to make. He saw that, while the theory of Evolution gained acceptance, the current of opinion was running strong against Indivi- dualism. "I am myself almost hopeless of any good to be done," he wrote concerning efforts to promote these views. "The drift of things is so overwhelming in the other direc- tion, and the stream will, I believe, continue to increase in volume and velocity, simply because political power is now in the hands of those whose apparent interest is to get as much as possible done by public agency, and whose desires will be inevitably pandered to by all who seek public func- tions." The principle upon which Spencer based his Individu- alism is that laid down in his chapter on "The Formula of Justice" (in The Principles of Ethics), that the liberty of each should be limited only by the like liberties of all ; con- sequently, "every man is free to do that which he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man." All tendencies of modern legislation to invade the sphere of individual action were inimical to him, because they were limitations of this principle. He condemned legislation restricting hours of labour, Acts regulating fac- tories, Acts for conserving public health, providing for the ventilation and cleansing of workshops, Public Libraries Acts (by which "a majority can tax a minority for their books"), free and compulsory education, and, indeed, all kinds of measures by which, as he held, the community did what individuals ought to do for themselves. He held that the first duty of the state was to protect its citizens against external dangers, and its second duty to enforce justice among these citizens. Having performed those two functions, the state could do nothing else without transgressing justice, that is, without interfering with the freedom of individuals to do as they will. A "mania for meddling" was, he believed, the curse of modern legisla- tion, and had, indeed, been the curse of legislation during centuries ; and he mentioned in proof that between the pass- HERBERT SPENCER 197 ing of the Statute of Merton (1256) and 1872, over 14,000 Acts had been repealed in England, some because they were obsolete or futile, but at least 3000, he felt sure, because they had proved mischievous, and had consequently hindered human happiness and increased human misery. This did not mean that Spencer was in favour of relax- ing restraints upon evil doers, and letting everybody do as he liked. The proviso to his formula was as important as its proposition. "Everywhere, along with the reproba- tion of government intrusion into various spheres where private activities should be left to themselves," he said, "I have contended that in its special sphere, the maintenance of equitable relations among citizens, governmental action should be extended and elaborated." Still, it is undeniable that he carried his dislike of inter- ference with the individual to lengths that would have permitted conduct which is hateful to every humane person. To punish parents convicted of gross cruelty to their chil- dren had a tendency "to absolve parents from their respon- sibilities and to saddle these responsibilities on the com- munity." The objection ignored the purpose of such pro- secutions, which was, surely, to make cruel parents act up to their responsibilities, and to protect those wiho were unable to protect themselves. In the case of adults, he approved of combination and co-operation, though not san- guine about the results of schemes of- co-operative produc- tion, because "only a small proportion of men are good enough for industrial relations of a high type." It is clear, therefore, that Spencer's Individualism car- ried the doctrine of the Survival of tftie Fittest into the political and moral relations of life. In so doing he was well aware of the hardness of the process ; but he held that biological laws, which apply to human as well as to plant and animal life, impose this inexorable condition, of struggle, and that it cannot by any possibility be avoided by any legislation or any social organisation which the wit of man can devise. You can legislate to cure an evil, but by so doing you create a crop of fresh evils, and do not thereby decrease, but increase, the sum of evils. As he put the point in Social Statics, "misery inevitably results from incongruity between constitution and conditions. All these evils which afflict us, and seem to the uninitiated the obvious consequence of this or that removable cause, are 198 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY unavoidable attendants on the adaptation now in progress. Humanity is being pressed against the inexorable necessi- ties of its new position — is being moulded into harmony with them, and has to bear the resulting unhappiness as best it can. The process must be undergone, and the suffer- ing must be endured. No power on earth, no cunningly- devised laws of statesmen, no world-rectifying schemes of the humane, no communist panaceas, no reforms that men ever did broach or ever will broach can diminish them one jot." Spencer allowed that, as far as the severity of this process could be mitigated by the spontaneous sympathy of men for each other, it should be mitigated; but he affirmed that pure evil resulted, and the remedies defeated their own end, when they interfered with the law of equal freedom. Above all, anything which favoured the multipli- cation and survival of those worst fitted for existence, and by consequence hindered the survival and multiplication of those best fitted for existence, inflicted positive misery and prevented positive happiness. The struggle for existence improved the character of the best elements of society, and if it killed off the worst elements, well, so much the better. It is evident that Spencer's teachings, rightly appre- hended, are the very antithesis of those of Socialism, and, indeed, of all schemes of social reconstruction which are based upon sentimental or philanthropic aspirations. Occasionally during his lifetime Socialists would seize upon some passage in his writings and seek to use it as a con- troversial weapon. Then the refutation would be prompt and conclusive. Such attempts were hazardous while Spencer was alive to meet them, and in any case they were due to a misunderstanding of a system which, within its own capacious limits, was wonderfully well-knit and logical, and which by no means whatever could in any part be reconciled with a non-individualistic conception of society. Darwin's criticism that in biology Spencer would have done better work if he had observed more, can be brought against him by the Sociologist. There are whole ranges of social fact of which he seemed to be oblivious. He despised the practical politician ; but somebody has to attend to prac- tical politics, and current problems have to be dealt with. Spencer does not help us to deal with them as much as he might have done, because his philosophy is so remote from HERBERT SPENCER 199 them. A philosopher sitting in his room with cotton wool in his ears could be deaf to the cry of children in torture ; one conversant with seons and starry nebula could ignore conditions of life which offer a blank future, not to worth- less beings, but to men and women capable of high develop- ment. The practical problems of the world cannot be waved aside by the dogmatic assertion that in the long run they will settle themselves, and that the world will be all the better for not interfering. The non possumus of the Spencerian Individualist is a counsel of despair. It is pesssimism masked with passive benevolence. Men and women are indeed creatures of the cosmos, subject to its processes in common with all species, and the sun and his planets, and the infinite realm of stars. But they are not altogether and beyond despair the helpless slaves of uncon- trollable forces; and there is no sound reason for thinking that well-considered effort to mitigate the harshness of nature, to set limits to rapacity, selfishness and power, and to afford opportunity for ability and character to find scope without being handicapped by soul-crushing poverty, will be mocked by inevitable failure. But a student of Spencer must feel too much respect for him to dismiss him on a note of disapproval. He was great enough in himself and in his work to tower above many failings. The friend who was perhaps deepest in his regard has said a fine thing of him in bearing witness to "an indefatigable intellect, an iron love of truth, a pure and scrupulous conscience, a spirit of loyal and beneficent intention, a noble passion for knowledge and systematic thought as the instrument for man's elevation." To have been worthy of these words and to have written the Syn- thetic Philosophy constitute large claims on the enduring regard of mankind. Herbert Spencer's Autobiography is a voluminous expo- sition of his own intellectual growth. His official Life and Letters, by Dr. D. Duncan, is really a supplement to that work. Among Spencer's writings, his four chapters in The Man versus the State contain the most convenient statement of his Individualism ; but for a fuller exposition of it the reader has to go to his Social Statics, Study of Sociology and Principles of Sociology. Two good short books on 200 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY Spencer are W. H. Hudson's Introduction to the Philosophy of Herbert Spencer, and Hector Macpherson's Herbert Spencer, the latter by one who was for a while his secre- tary. A searching criticism is contained in D. G. Ritchie's Principles of State Interference. The sole end for which mankind are warranted, indivi- dually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number is self protection. The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community against his will is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. — John Stuart Mill. Du Pont attributes to Gournay (1712-59) the origin of the famous maxim, Laissez-faire, laissez-passer. But a study of Turgot's Moge tie Gournay shows that the expres- sion Laissez-faire is really due to Le Gendre, a merchant who attended a deputation to Colbert about 1680 to protest against excessive state regulation of industry, and pleaded for liberty of action in the phrase, Laissez-nous faire. Bois- guillebert and D'Argenson had used it also before Gournay, who may, however, be said to have made it classical in its later form. — Henry Higgs (The Physiocrats, p. 67). The parent in dealing with his child, the employer in dealing with his workmen, the shipbuilder in the construc- tion of his ships, the shipowner in the treatment of his sailors, the house owner in the management of his house property, the land owner in his contracts with his tenants have been notified by public opinion or by actual law that the time has gone by when the cry of laissez-faire would be answered in the affirmative. The state has determined what is right and wrong, what is expedient and inexpedient, and has appointed its agents to enforce its conclusions. Individual responsibility has been lessened ; national responsibility has been heightened. — G. J. (Lord) Goschen. The species does not grow in perfection. The weak again and again get the upper hand of the strong — their large numbers and their greater cunning are the cause of it. Darwin forgot the intellect. That was English. The weak have more intellect. One must need intellect in order to acquire it. One loses it when it is no longer necessary. — Friedrich Nietzsche. HERBERT SPENCER 201 Compromise, in a large sense of the word, is the first principle of combination ; and everyone who insists on enjoying his rights to the full, and his opinions without toleration for his neighbours', and his own way in all things, will soon have all things altogether to himself, and no one to share them with him. But, most true as this confessedly is, still there is an obvious limit, on the other hand, to these compromises, however necessary they be ; and this is found in the proviso that the differences sur- rendered should be but minor, or that there should be no sacrifice of the main object of the combination in the con- cessions which are mutually made. — Cardinal Newman. Wherever the spirit of initiative possesses all alike, a truly great individual is, of course, insufferable ; any great advance must be a collective movement, and the best ener- gies of the country must be futilely expended in budging the masses. It is no accident that America has still pro- duced no great world genius. — -Munsterberg. England, the country of greatest individual freedom, has been the land most favourable to the growth of genius as well as eccentricity, and has thus produced a dispropor- tionate number of new ideas and departures. — J. T. Merz. The state lives in a glass house; we see what it tries to do, and all its failures, partial or total, are made the most of. But private enterprise is sheltered under opaque bricks and mortar. The public rarely knows what it tries to do, and only hears of failures when they are gross and patent to all the world. Who is to say how private enter- prise would come out if it tried its hand at state work? — Huxley. In action, in desire, we must submit perpetually to the tyranny of outside forces ; but in thought, in aspiration, we are free — free from our fellow men, free from the petty planet on which our bodies impotently crawl, free even, while we live, from the tyranny of death. Let us learn then that energy of faith which enables us to live constantly in the vision of the good, and let us descend, in action, into the world of fact, with that vision always before us. — Ber- trand Russell. I do not hesitate to say that the road to eminence and power from obscure condition, ought not to be made too easy, nor a thing too much of course. If rare merit be the rarest of all rare things, it ought to pass through some 202 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY sort of probation. The temple of honour ought to be seated on an eminence. If it be opened through virtue, let it be remembered, too, that virtue is never tried but by some difficulty and some struggle. — Burke. There is no greater stupidity or meanness than to take uniformity for an ideal, as if it were not a benefit and a joy to a man, being what he is, to know that there are, have been, and will be, better than he. Grant that no one is positively degraded by the great man's greatness, and it follows that everyone is exalted by it. Beauty, genius, holiness, even power and extraordinary wealth, radiate their virtue and make the world in which they exist a more joyful place to live in. — George Santayana. To me, at least, it would be enough to condemn modern society as hardly an advance on slavery or serfdom, if the permanent condition of industry were to be that which we behold — that ninety per cent, of the actual producers of wealth have no home that they can call their own beyond the end of the week ; have no bit of soil, or so much as a room that belongs to them; have nothing of value of any kind, except as much old furniture as will go in a cart; have the precarious chance of weekly wages, which barely suffice to keep them in health; are housed, for the most part, in places that no man thinks fit for his horse; are separated by so narrow a margin from destitution that a month of bad trade, sickness or unexpected loss brings them face to face with hunger or pauperism. — Frederic Harrison. BISMARCK. [Page 204 Chapter XV. BISMARCK AND BLOOD AND IRON. OTTO VON BISMARCK-SCHoNHAUSEN was called to power in Prussia in 1863, at a moment when that state stood at the cross roads. Since the "March Days" of 1848, Prussia had been per- turbed by the choice which had to be made between develop- ment on constitutional lines, and submission to military autocracy. In that year King Frederick William IV., trembling with fear before the insurrectionary mobs which paraded in Berlin, his nerves shattered by the rattle of musketry and the screams of the wounded as the troops fired upon the crowds and charged the barricades, had been constrained to promise that a National Assembly should be summoned to draw up a constitution. But, as soon as the revolution was suppressed and the King felt that he could rely upon the army, the Assembly was dissolved, and a constitution manufactured within the palace was promulgated by Fre- derick William himself. In 1857 the old King became insane, and his brother, Prince William, assumed the Regency, becoming King of Prussia four years later. During these years the forces of democracy and aristo- cracy had not ceased to struggle. The constitution was unsatisfactory to the democratic party because it did not make ministers responsible to the representatives, and also because the electoral system was carefully devised to pre- vent the direct verdict of the people from being recorded at an election. But another party was bent upon the pur- suit of a different line of policy, nothing less than the unity of Germany under Prussian leadership. An effort to achieve this result through a Parliament representative of all the German states, which met at Frankfort in 1848, had failed. The crown had been offered to Frederick William. •205 206 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY but he would not accept it as the gift of the German people ; he required the assent of the German kings and princes, and that was not forthcoming. His successor, William I., just before his accession, announced his conviction that the unity of Germany could only be brought about under Prussian hegemony; and his advisers were of opinion that, in order that Prussia might achieve her ambition in this regard, her army must be strengthened. The law of Prussia already provided for the compulsory military service of men of fighting age, but there had been many loopholes in its administration. The King and his Minister of War, Roon, considered that the obligation of service should be more strictly enforced, that the military expenditure should be increased, and that, in short, the army should be made a much stronger striking- force. The Lower Chamber, fresh from the constituencies in 1862, showed itself extremely hostile. William dissolved it, but a newly-elected Chamber rejected the army reforms with scant ceremony. Clearly, then, the strengthening of the army could not be effected by constitutional means. If the policy of the King was to be realised, the Lower Chamber must be defied. Roon advised William to send for Bismarck, then Prussian ambassador at Paris. He was known to be contemptuous of popular opinion. He would shrink from no measures that were necessary to drive a policy to completion. Bis- marck accepted office as head of the Cabinet; and his bois- terous courage tightened up the nerves of the timid King, who had prepared and actually signed a deed of abdication — just as his grandson was compelled to do fifty-six years later. Bismarck insisted on its being torn up. Then he systematically ejected from the civil service and from the army all who were known to be opposed to the scheme of army reform ; he prorogued the Chambers without waiting for them to pass the army estimates ; and he proceeded to govern %he country, to spend all the money needed for the services, and to carry out the entire plans of Roon, with- out parliamentary sanction. This policy was entirely unconstitutional, but Bismarck was prepared to take the risks. The army, under the com- mand of Moltke, was dependable, and he had no fear of a popular rising while a well-organised force was held in leash. Criticism was stifled. Press prosecutions and sup- BISMARCK 207 pressions were frequent. His explanation — not his defence, certainly not his apology — for this conduct was contained in one vivid sentence which he had flung in the face of the representatives of the Prussian people — ''The great questions of the time are not to be solved by speeches and parliamentary votes, but by blood and iron." This was not a piece of bluster but a piece of philosophy. Bismarck was a man of action, with a faculty for striking off strong phrases in moments of tense feeling. Such was his statement in 1877: "The war of 1870 was but child's play in comparison with the future war; on both sides an effort will be made to finish the adversary, to bleed him white." Such again was his saying, which he profoundly meant, "Sooner or later, the God who directs the battle will cast his iron dice." Such was his original objection to Germany acquiring colonies, that she already had "too much hay on the fork." But these and other phrases of his were not "wind on the wold," as the phrases of politi- cians are too apt to be. They came glowingly out of a masterful nature, and they meant doing things. Bismarck measured consequences, and he looked facts in the face, in a way that his successors had a fatal habit of failing to do. He knew well that his defiance of the Chambers involved the suspension of the constitution and a period of dictator- ship. He told the King so in advance. It was, he said, a question "of monarchical rule or parliamentary govern- ment, and the latter must be avoided at all costs." He related in an interesting passage of his Reflections and Reminiscences how he pursued King William when he was in a mood of depression, and braced him up to doing the thing of which he was afraid. "I can see well where air this will end," said William ; "over there, in front of the Opera House, under my windows, they will cut off your head, and mine a little afterwards." "I answered with the short remark, 'et apres, sire?' 'Apres, indeed, we shall be dead.' 'Yes;' I continued, 'then we shall be dead, but we must all die sooner or later, and can we perish more honourably? — I, like Lord Strafford, your Majesty like Charles I. Your Majesty must not think of Louis XVI. He lived and died in a condition of mental weakness, and does not present a heroic figure in history. Charles I., on the other hand, will always remain a heroic historical character, for, after 208 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY drawing his sword for his rights and losing the battle, he did not hesitate to confirm his royal intent with his blood." There likewise spoke the man of ruthless purpose, who did not shrink from consequences, but was prepared to wrestle with circumstance and force it to go with him. Throughout his political career Bismarck held the same contemptuous opinion of popular wishes and parliamentary- criticism. His successor in the German Chancellorship, Prince von Billow, truly says of him: "He held the reins of government with such an iron grip that he never ran any risk of letting the least scrap of power slip into the hands of Parliament through the influence he conceded to a majority, when he happened to find one at his disposal. Above all, he never dreamt of considering the wishes of a majority unless they tallied with his own. He made use of existing majorities, but he never let them make use of him." The army schemes were therefore carried out in their entirety, in defiance of the Lower House ; money was spent without having been voted; and critics of these arbi- trary actions were suppressed, or expelled from office, or disregarded, according to whether Bismarck thought it expedient to strike back or let them whistle down the wind. Yet, beneath all Bismarck's smashing determination, there was always a calculating prudence. He measured the dangers and provided against them. His peace was haunted by two fears : the fear of a coalition of continental Powers — against Prussia before 1871, against Germany after that date — and the fear of Social Democracy within his own country. He confessed that "the idea of coalitions gave me night- mares," and he shaped his foreign policy skilfully to avoid them. That was the reason why, having cunningly inveigled Austria into war in 1866, and the Prussian army having defeated its enemy at Koniggratz (Sadowa), he stoutly opposed an advance upon Vienna or the imposition of humiliating terms upon Austria. He desired a speedy peace and a workable arrangement with the Hapsburg Empire, ripening into an alliance after Prussia had attained her ambition by uniting Germany under her domination. After the Franco-Prussian war, Bismarck sought to make Germany secure by the League of the Three Emperors of Germany, Austria and Russia (1872) ; and when this friendly grouping went to pieces in consequence of the BISMARCK 209 diverse interests of Russia and Austria in the Balkans, Bis- marck replaced it by the Triple Alliance of Germany, Aus- tria and Italy (1882). Bismarck was frequently arrogant in tone, as he was always in temper, and he no more scrupled to attain his ends by diplomatic cheating than Dickens' Artful Dodger objected to picking pockets — as was evidenced by his flag- rant tricking of Lord Granville in reference to New Guinea in 1884. But he could always hold his natural arrogance in restraint and simulate a conciliatory and genial spirit when it was needful to allay suspicion or turn the edge of a genuine danger. Bismarck never blundered into a war or caused offence when it was expedient to maintain a friendship. The wars which he made were coolly calculated to achieve set purposes, and he once confessed that he had a fear of even victorious wars, because "we cannot see the cards held by Providence." His fear of Social Democracy within Germany was no less great than his other nightmare; but he had less suc- cess in coping with it, because it was in fact a force against which his weapons had no more effect than sword-cuts in water. His resort to methods of suppression, by imprison- ing such leaders as Bebel and Liebknecht, and by prevent- ing the publication of Socialist books and newspapers, had the effect of driving into the Socialist party many thousands of liberal Germans, who were less influenced by the econo- mic doctrines of Karl Marx than by resentment against the Chancellor's blood and iron policy. The consequence was that the Socialist party absorbed the greater part of the Radical element in German politics, and increased its repre- sentation in the Reichstag until it became the largest party there. Bismarck then essayed to sap the influence of the Socialist leaders by a programme of social legislation. Laws providing for insurance against illness, accidents, old age, and industrial incapacity were enacted. "Social oil," as he put it, was to make the wheels run easily, and the Social Democrats were to be dished. The reforms were valuable in themselves, and did much to improve conditions of life in industrial Germany, but they did not and could not achieve their principal purpose. The idea at the root of Bismarck's scorn of parliamentary government was that the state — by which he meant the sovereign and the government, wielding the executive power 210 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY of the nation — was an entity superior to the people. That is the very antithesis of the democratic idea of the state. The democratic state is a commonwealth, a free community of people united under a government of their own choosing for the protection of the welfare of each by means of the strength of all. It may be that no democratic government has yet done all that should be done to realise this ideal, not even in countries where enfranchised democracies have longest had opportunities. Such peoples must blame their own incapacity, their own inertia, perhaps also the stubborn pressure of forces which it is hard to control, for their par- tial failure. But the Bismarckian conception admitted no yielding to popular desires. The palliation of discontents was but a device for maintaining the supremacy of the self- centred state. The ruler and his ministers, with the army to enforce their will and a well-trained bureaucracy to execute it, stood over the people and directed their destiny with majestic superiority and inscrutable purpose. The great war, while it damaged and humiliated Germany, at all events performed for her this great service: that it destroyed the monstrous Leviathan which Bismarck created, and left her people free to build a state wherein they and their wishes should prevail. Many great errors in politics are perversions of truths ; and the whole blood and iron policy, which Bismarck enunciated, and which a generation of Germans bred in his school and inspired by his policy expanded into a code, is a pernicious perversion of a very necessary truth. A state, no matter of what kind — democratic, aristocratic, even Bol- shevist — cannot endure unless it maintain the strength to resist decay. It may be destroyed by enemies from with- out, or it may collapse from internal disruption, or from corruption. The law that life is the sum of the forces which resist death applies to states as well as to men. A state must, therefore, perforce maintain the organised power to enable it to persist. Otherwise it will inevitably perish. That is so obviously true that it ought not to require stat- ing; but political experience shows that it does, in fact, require reiterating very frequently. Bismarck was on sound ground when he said in 1888 that the geographical position of Germany, lying in the centre of Europe, liable to be attacked an all sides, compelled her to make great exertions to protect herself. In another of those striking phrases BISMARCK 211 with which he so often brought his thought to a focus, he said: "God has put us in a situation in which our neigh- bours will not allow us to fall into indolence or apathy ; the pike in the European fishpond prevent us from becoming carp." But by a perversion of the truth Germany twisted this necessity for defensive vigilance, born of her situation, into a glorification of war for its own sake. Whenever efforts were made to reduce- armaments and to provide for a more rational mode of settling international disputes than by resort to the sword, Germany persistently blocked the way. She would have nothing to do with the effort honestly made by the Campbell-Bannerman government in England to restrict the building of warships. The entire nation thought of the future as red. War, and the prognostics of German victory, which was to be the inevitable consequence of war, were blazoned across her sky. The hypnotic condition, we are told by physiologists, is caused by paralysis of the optic nerve induced by fixing the vision on a dazzling point. Germany was dazzled and hypnotised by a mountebank "in shining armour," who spouted mock heroics with a gusto only equalled by the haste with which he made his exit from the country when the delusion was dispelled and there was danger of the people calling for vengeance. Germany was also persuaded by an influential school of writers that war is to be regarded as in itself morally desir- able, and that it elevates the moral tone of a nation. Moltke pronounced that "war is an essential element in God's scheme of the world," and General von Bernhardi wrote that, so far from being a curse, it is "the greatest factor in the furtherance of culture and power." The two chapters headed "The Right to Make War" and "The Duty to Make War," in that author's book, Germany and the Next War, are a sustained argument, buttressed by quotations from German philosophers and statesmen, in support of the gran- deur, the glory and the necessity of war. The touchstone is not justice, nor righteousness, nor defence, but expedi- ency. "Under certain circumstances, it is the moral and political duty of the state to employ war as a political means. So long as all human progress and all natural development are based on the law of conflict, it is necessary to engage in such conflict under the most favourable circumstances." This is the logical extension of the policy of blood and 212 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY iron ; and it was the belligerent condition of mind in the German people that made them, in the years before 1914, the obstacle to every attempt to reduce armaments and provide machinery for settling disputes by arbitration. Germany set the pace, contemptuously threatening small nations with extinction and larger ones with the dire penal- ties of defeat, so that all Europe had to wear armour beneath its merchant's jacket. But blood and iron are not so wholesome a compound for making bread for those who have to eat it in sorrow as they seemed when it was con- fidently supposed that they would be food for those whom Germany insisted on making her enemies. It is, however, unfortunately true that Bismarck is not to be regarded merely as a German type. Treitschke, before he accepted a professorship at Berlin and became the academic exponent of Prussianism, cherished an aspiration for the success of a democratic movement in Germany. In those days (1861) , he observed that "it is Junkerdom which is the Achilles heel of the north, just as Ultramontanism is that of the south." The remark was applied to Germany, but it is relevant to Europe at large. Great Britain has her tribe of Junkers too, though they would hate to be known by that name, and France, where Bonapartism is dead as a dynastic principle, has never exorcised the spirit of Napoleon. Bismarck once had his admirers among Eng- lishmen. He stood for ideas which they applauded. A military defeat does not kill ideas, and experience shows that the lesson that "the strongest feet may slip in blood" is all too soon forgotten. It is not only in Germany that it will be salutary to watch for the reappearance of Jun- kerdom, with its anti-social bias and its insolent scorn of ethical standards. Making the world safe for democracy does not mean merely beating foreign enemies of demo- cratic government; it means also defeating such enemies wherever they may appear. Bismarck performed a great service for Germany in effecting her union, but an ill service for her by Prussian- ising the entire country and converting it into "an arsenal, a stock-exchange, a mad house and a monster hotel." He also performed an ill service for Europe by pursuing poli- tical methods which lowered the tone of international inter- course, made threats and bad faith the current coin of diplomacy, and elevated brute force into a principle. Down BISMARCK 213 to the time of his dismissal from office by the young Kaiser William II., in 1890, he held to the same view of states- manship. In the very interesting and circumstantial account of the dismissal which William wrote to the Aus- trian Emperor Francis Joseph, and which was found in the Archives at Vienna when the Hapsburg throne was over- turned, the old Chancellor is alleged to have insisted that industrial upheavals such as were then disturbing Germany "must be checked and cured only by blood and iron — that is to say, with cartridges and repeating rifles." His policy of "social oil" had not proved efficacious, and he would have resorted to methods which were more in accord with his real conception of the right way to govern men. He would have let the Socialists stir up riots, and then "shoot into it ail without any nonsense, and let the cannon and rifles play;" he would answer petitions "with quick-firers and cartridges ;" "it must come to shooting in the end, and there- fore the sooner the better." There was greatness in the man, and he had few com- peers as a master of practical statecraft. But it was the greatness of force and calculating cleverness, and was devoid of nobility. The lesser men who sat in his place when he was ejected, lacking his prudence while they thought they were pursuing his tradition, plunged their country at length into crime and disaster. Bismarck's official biographer, Busch, has put the best part of his material into his book, Bismarck: Some Secret Pages of His History, which has been translated into Eng- lish. S. Whitman's Personal Reminiscences of PHnce Bismarck has some very good pages. A serviceable his- tory of Prussia, including chapters on Bismarck's period, is Marriott and Grant Robertson's The Evolution of Prus- sia. W. H. Dawson's The Evolution of Modern Germany is a work of solid value. A prince should know how to assume the nature of both the fox and the lion, for the lion cannot defend himself against snares, nor the fox against wolves. A prudent lord neither should nor could observe faith, when such obser- vance might be to his injury, and when the motives that 214 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY caused him to promise it are at an end. Were all men good, this precept would not be good ; but, since men are bad, and would not keep faith with you, you are not bound to keep faith with them. — Macchiavelli. It is not necessary to lie deliberately or to practice crafty deception. A fine frankness has everywhere been the characteristic of great statesmen. Subterfuges and duplicity mark the petty spirit of diplomacy. — F. von Bern- hardt. The essence of monarchy is the idea that nothing can be done contrary to the will of the monarch. That is the minimum of monarchical power. — Treitschke. Even the word mon-archy signifies rule by one. — Hous- ton Stewart Chamberlain. Louis XIV. did not say "l'etat, c'est moi." Those words, I believe, were invented by Voltaire, but they are profoundly true. — Lord Acton. When a list of Cabinet Ministers was prepared in Prus- sia in 1848, during the -struggle between the King and the Legislature, Frederick William IV. wrote in the margin, opposite Bismarck's name, "Only to be employed when the bayonet governs unrestricted." — Bismarck's Reflections and Reminiscences." The true character of the Hohenzollern dynasty is deter- mined by that peculiar institution of Prussia, the Junker class. It is a phenomenon to which no parallel exists in Europe, a genuine aristocratic military caste. It is an order of men knit together by all the ties of family pride and interest; with an historic social influence; with a high education and a strong nature of a special sort ; rich enough to have local power both in town and country, and yet depending for existence on the throne — and with all this devoted passionately, necessarily, to war. — Frederic Harri- son. The year 1848 saw the culmination of a long process of democratic advance; during its course no less than fifteen revolutions shook the aristocratic thrones of the continent to their very foundations. . . . The rising democracies, deluded and misled by blind guides and false prophets, blundered so inevitably into chaos and contention that only men of blood and iron like Bismarck, men of craft like Cavour, men of destiny like Napoleon, could bring back order and secure rational progress. — /. F. Hearnshaw. BISMARCK 215 The main problem for the twentieth century will be how — while preserving the democratic form of government — so to rein it in and coerce its eccentricities of orbit that it shall not only be a means of morality but an efficient instru- ment of government as well. — J. B. Crozier. I never took the reproach of lack of political principle tragically ; I have even, at times, felt it to savour of praise, for I saw in it appreciation of the fact that I was guided by reasons of state. The political principles which a Minis- ter has to live up to are very different in character from the principles recognised by a party man ; they belong to the sphere of state policy, not of party politics. — Prince von Billow. "Political questions are question of power," was Bis- marck's fixed principle, and he was never wanting in fidelity to it. All Bismarck's impatience with theory, all his con- tempt for the man of thought and contemplation, and all his rough-riding over some of the most treasured traditions of political and economic thought were but different expres- sions of the same absorbing belief in the efficacy of resolute action. — W. H. Dawson. This wonderful Kultur, which people blind to its mean- ing have talked so much about, does not mean civilisation in the least. Civilisation consists of delicacy and gentle- ness of behaviour, and refinement of mind. Kultur implies state direction, to the end that man and the people shall be assimilated into it, incorporated within it, and shaped to serve its ends, that they may share in the accomplish- ment of its purpose. — Maurice Millioud. GAMBETTA. [Page 216 Chapter XVI. GAMBETTA AND REPUBLICANISM. FRANCE between 1815 and 1875 was continually en- gaged in jumping out of the frying pan into the fire and back again. After the fall of the Napo- leonic Empire, the Bourbon dynasty, dethroned at the Revolution, was restored to power, and commenced by promises of constitutional rule. Louis XVIII. (1815- 1824) observed fairly well the charter which he published at his accession, but his brother Charles X. (1824-1830), allowed himself to be impelled by the aristocratic and clerical party into a reversion to sovereignty based upon principles such as held sway before the great revolution. The Duke of Wellington, perceiving that this way lay dis- aster, declared that "there is no such thing as political experience; with the warning of James II. before him, Charles X. was setting up a government by priests, through priests, for priests." The revolution of 1830 drove the last of the legitimate line into exile, and King Louis Philippe, of the House of Orleans, was set up as a constitutional sovereign, supported principally by the middle class. Another revolution, with an ultra-democratic impulse, toppled over the throne of Louis Philippe in 1848, and established a Republic under the guidance of the Prince- President Louis Napoleon. That clever adventurer, in 1852, by a coup d'etat, converted the Republic into an Em- pire. Seeing that his Imperialism was growing unpopular, Napoleon III. (after 1860) moulted the feathers of his auto- cracy and professed that his was a Liberal Empire. Shel- ley's image of the eagle and the serpent "wreathed in flight" was realised in 1870, when the reptile "who did ever seek Upon.' his enemy's heart a mortal wound to wreak," brought him crashing to the ground. Napoleon III. crept away to die, and a Provisional Government proclaimed a '217 218 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY Republic. But a National Assembly elected in 1871 refused to ratify this decision, its majority being monarchical. The Assembly was chiefly concerned, for the time, to make peace and get the Prussians out of the country. Thiers, therefore, who was trusted because he had consistently opposed the warlike policy of Napoleon III., was chosen, not President of the Republic, but "head of the executive power," until the nation decided what the future form of government should be. In Paris, however, an insurrection against the govern- ment of France was promoted by a revolutionary party composed chiefly of inhabitants of the eastern suburbs of the capital. They brought about the election of a General Council of the Commune, which put forward a programme of defiance of the Government, advocating the establish- ment of self-governing communes throughout the country. The communists, therefore, desired the destruction of the centralised form of government which had been charac- teristic of France since the re-organisation of the country by Napoleon, and the substitution for it of federated com- munes. The General Council of the Commune of Paris shared the government of the city with a Central Com- mittee, which stood for republican principles but desired to keep open negotiations with the government of France. The Communists spoke of the National Assembly and its executive as "the Versailles Government," refusing to recog- nise its authority. The Commune maintained itself by very drastic means. Its forces massacred a party of the suppor- ters of the government who ventured to hold a demonstra- tion, and many prisoners were shot. At length, in May, 1871 — after the Commune had held sway for about two months — the national troops besieged Paris, forced an entrance, and suppressed the insurrection by means of desperate street fighting. In one week there was more bloodshed and destruction in Paris, by Frenchmen fighting against Frenchmen, than the Prussians had perpetrated during their siege and bombardment, to say nothing of the 7500 prisoners who were transported to New Caledonia for their share in the Commune. The authority of the national government was asserted by the capture of Paris, and, the Prussians having with- drawn on their terms being accepted, the National Assem- bly speedily transferred itself to the capital. The Assembly G AM B ETTA 219 retained Thiers as head of the Government, and conferred upon him the title of President of the French Republic, though as yet no constitution had been drawn up. Indeed, the majority which created the title was still monarchist, and negotiations were at this time proceeding for the restoration of the throne. This task, however, was difficult for two reasons. One was that the representative of the legitimate House, the Comte de Chambord, was as much of an absolutist as his Bourbon ancestors had been, and made no secret of the resolve that. if he became King he would rule as they had done. He even declared that he would reject the tricolour, regarding it as a symbol of revolution, and would restore the white flag. It was impossible to set up the throne on the principles which the Comte de Chambord wished to maintain. It would have provoked a fresh revolution had the attempt been made. The second difficulty was that a very large element in the nation demanded a republican form of government, and would be satisfied with nothing else. The recognised leader of the republican party was Leon Gambetta. The son of a small provincial grocer, Gambetta was educated for the law, and early in his career as an advocate made his mark by virtue of his boldness and his striking oratorical gifts. Square built, with a huge head mounted on heavy shoulders, he was capable of immense energy. Nature had endowed him with a rich, sonorous voice, with which he could thrill a court, a senate, or the largest crowd. Every gesture by which an orator can make his periods impressive was at his command. With his head thrown back and his whole powerful body quivering with emotion, as he poured forth a fluent appeal, flashing with apt meta- phors and striking phrases, the fascination of his presence and speech was extraordinarily great. He was sensitive to beautiful impressions derived from nature or from works of art. A warm-hearted cordiality, a sympathetic human feeling towards his fellows, radiated from him. His emotions were deep, his affection expansive and warm. A man with the sunshine in his heart, and, quickened by it, a courage which did not know how to falter in any extremity : such was he who cried in the bitterest hour of his country's fate, "Never has despair dared to look me in the face." In much he recalls Danton — in his oratorical genius, his emo- 220 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY tional force, his audacity; though he was better favoured as a man than the bull-necked Jacobin. Yet both were aboundingly French, and can be classified together without doing violence to the characteristics of either. From the time when Gambetta first made a definite poli- tical impression his Republicanism was declared. In 1869 the government of Napoleon III. had prosecuted a group of Republicans who had taken part in a movement for raising a monument to Jean Baudin, who had been killed during street fighting when Napoleon carried out his coup d'etat in December, 1851. The story of the trickery and crime by which the Republic had been converted into an Empire at that time was one which Napoleon III. could not bear to have retold. Gambetta was counsel for one of the accused, and he took advantage of the opportunity, not merely to defend his client — who, in fact, was convicted — but to denounce those who, "plunged in debt and crime," had engineered the coup d'etat. Gambetta's speech was a denunciation of the government and a prediction of its imminent fall. Audacious words were those with which the orator began his peroration : — "Listen, you who for seventeen years have been the absolute master of France!" The day was coming, he foretold, "when the country, having become master of itself once more, shall impose upon you the great national expiation in the name of liberty, equality and fraternity." At the elections which occurred shortly after the trial, he was returned to the Chamber, and it was as a Republican leader that he went in, determined to do his part in demolishing the Empire. The Prussians in 1870 very effectually saved the Repub- lican party the trouble of doing that. The Empire was trampled out of being under the boots of Moltke's soldiery as soon as Napoleon III. capitulated at Sedan. Gambetta was one of those who in Paris proclaimed a Republic, and he threw his great energies into organising the national defence when the defeat of the field armies seemed to have lain France prostrate before her most unmerciful foe. His exit from Paris in a balloon in order that he might marshal the people of the Provinces in a great national army was a brave attempt, but it was futile, because Paris could not hold out long enough to enable such an improvised force to effect its relief. The provisional government made terms with the Prussians. Gambetta always maintained that the GAMBETTA 221 defence should have been continued, and that France could even then have been saved ; but it is difficult to believe that his optimism was well grounded. It has been held that Gambetta was "the true creator of the Republic." That is an admirer's verdict. If it is not true of him it is not true of any man. But in truth the Republic was not the creation of any one individual, nor even of the Republican party. Thiers, who was not a Republican by conviction, pointed out that a Republican form of government was inevitable, because "those parties who want a monarchy do not want the same monarchy." There were three monarchical parties — Legitimists, Orlean- ists, and Bonapartists — but there could be only one throne. In the circumstances, as Thiers said, a Republic was "the form of government which divides us least." It is not clear that a majority of the French nation was Republican. The National Assembly elected in 1871 contained a majority of monarchists, and it seems extremely probable that if there had been one candidate for the throne who commanded the confidence of the nation, Gambetta's eloquence would have been spent in vain in the service of the cause of which he was the champion. But the disunity of the monarchical forces, and especi- ally the uncompromising Bourbonism of the Comte de Chambord, provided Gambetta with an opportunity. He flew about the country like summer lightning about the sky : fiery, fluent and tireless. He called himself the commercial traveller of democracy, but the phrase does scant justice to his extraordinary power of persuasion. Each of his many speeches has been said to have been an event. There is nothing quite like this campaign of eloquence in the his- tory of Europe. The reported speeches, read in cold type, give but a pale impression of the effect which they made at the time, for they owed their impressiveness greatly to the personal magnetism of the man, to the voice which uttered them and the gestures which made them smite like blows. In the years between the suppression of the Commune and the proclamation of the Republic as the legalised government of France, the decision hung in the balance. The monarchical majority in the Assembly, in conferring upon Thiers the title of President of the Republic, had never intended that to be a final settlement. It was a tern- 222 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY porary expedient until the throne could be filled. In 1873 it seemed likelv that the Comte de Chambord would be chosen. But his candid avowal that the white flag would supplant the tricolour wrecked the hopes of his supporters, and neither the Orleanists nor the Bonapartists could command a majority. They could unite — and they did — to. remove Thiers from the presidency and replace him by Marshal McMahon, who was also a Monarchist, but they could not agree upon a sovereign who would suit the three parties. France, therefore, between 1871 and 1875, was in the paradoxical position of having a President without a Repub- lican constitution, and a monarchical Assembly which could not select a monarch. Gambetta, the leader of the Repub- licans, skilfully used this division of opinion to further his cause, and he continually emphasised the insecurity of the situation. The Republican party was strengthened by defections from the three opposing parties of some who wished to end the deadlock ; and at length, in January, 1875, while the terms of a constitution were being debated, the Assembly, by a majority of only one vote, carried an amend- ment providing that the head of the state should be the President of the Republic. That was the decisive vote. France, through her deputies, though by the narrowest of possible majorities, had made her final decision. To this result none had contributed so powerfully as Gambetta, and it was a result which France was content to accept as a way out of an entanglement. She accepted it to gain security, settlement and quiet; and for the same reason she never gave encouragement to any of the several monarchical conspiracies which were formulated after 1875, to promote Royalist claims. The danger was very serious in 1877, when the President, McMahon, was induced by the Monarchists to dissolve the Chamber of Deputies, which had passed a resolution condemning the action of the clerical party in endeavouring to induce him to support the efforts of the Pope to re-establish the temporal power. The hope of the Monarchists now was that, backed by the full power of the Church, they might overthrow the Republic. Then the great voice of Gambetta sounded like a trum- pet in his call to the nation to resist a clerical-monarchist reaction. Then it was that he threw down the gage of GAMBETTA 223 battle in sentences which, it is not too much to say, saved the Republic in 1877 and formed the anti-clerical creed of the French Republic between that date and the breaking of the last tie between Church and State in 1906. "There remains," said Gambetta, "a party which you know well — a party which is the enemy of all independence, of all en- lightenment and of all stability ; a party which is the declared enemy of all that is wholesome, of all that is beneficent, in the organisation of modern society. That is your enemy ! You may name it in a word — it is Clericalism." The bishops and clergy of France fought hard for Monarchism in France in that bitter campaign of 1877. They gambled on a throw, and they lost irretrievably, bequeathing for the Church a legacy of intense Republican hatred and distrust. The elections gave a sweeping majority to Gam- betta's party, and at length established the Republic on a rigid basis of national sanction. Gambetta's career as a Minister in France is of less importance than his achievements as the precursor of the Republic in 1869, its fiery advocate and astute political engineer between 1870 and 1875, and its passionate defen- der in 1877. He was to France what Mazzini would fain have been to Italy. Circumstances favoured him whilst they fought against the Italian, who, lacking Gambetta's vivid- ness of personality and tempestuous energy, excelled him in philosophical depth and in purity of soul. Gambetta's work was done in 1877. His tragic end, in 1882, from a revolver bullet which struck him while he was wrenching the weapon from the hand of a woman, came at a time when he was out of political favour. But the attempt made by the monarchist-clericals to gain their ends by another plot after his death was a tribute to his power, whilst its ludicrous failure was a testimony to the stability of his work. The French Monarchy may be taken to have been finally extinguished in 1875. The last chance of its revival expired in 1872, when the Comte de Chambord repeated an announcement which he had previously made, that if he became king he would bring to the throne his principles and his flag. "Nothing will shake my resolution," he said, "nothing will weary my patience; and nobody, under any pretext, will obtain my consent to becoming the legitimate king of the Revolution." That was perfectly honourable 224 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY and frank, but it made the monarchy impossible. An institution which cannot adapt itself to changed circum- stances is doomed beyond redemption. There was no place in France after 1870 for a monarchy of the pattern of that before 1789. The decision which Gambetta forced, and the form of government which he successfully defended, were histori- cally justifiable and politically right. France had experi- mented with constitutions till she was tired of change. The Republic gave her a democratic governing machine under a President clothed with the powers of a constitu- tional sovereign, and it suited the majority of her people. But she did not jettison the monarchy without much hesita- tion and regret — a thing easy to understand in a people so historically-minded as the French are. For a constitutional monarchy offers some features of advantage which a Republic does not possess. It carries forward a tradition, vested in a family. An institution which has endured for a thousand years, and round which the entire history nf a nation centres, is a part of its life which the nation will not consent to destroy unless it stands in the way of development or thwarts the realisation of the popular will. The vitality of such an institution, the touch- stone of its right to endure, is its capacity for adaptation. If it cannot fit itself to the requirements of a changing world it will die, and should. But otherwise it is all the better, and commands all the greater respect, for having its roots deep in the soil of the nation's venerable history. The crazy superstition about royal blood being more precious than any other human blood is unworthy of an intelligent age. It has conduced to the intermarriage of members of the royal families of Europe until almost all those which are reigning and those which have been ejected have become in fact one family, consisting to some extent of undesirables. Special statutes have been enacted which hinder members of such families from marrying outside the royal group or totem. From the point of view of the public welfare, which is all that matters, the important thing is not that a prince or princess shall marry another prince or princess, but that there shall be a continuation of the monarchical institution. There is surely some dig- nity and much advantage in the maintenance of a line connecting a nation's present with its past. For a nation is GAMBETTA 225 not a casual and transitory aggregate of human beings, but a commonwealth with proud traditions, stretching back to the dawn of recorded time. To many it is a majestic cir- cumstance that the titular head of such a nation should be one of a long line, traceable through the centuries to a twi- light of tradition, and numbering captains and statesmen who have been the architects of a great destiny. The mind which is not touched by such a fact surely lacks imagina- tion. A practical political point is that constitutional mon- archy avoids the turmoil of election, involving the division of the nation into supporters and opponents of the head of the state. This may not in itself be a very great considera- tion, but partisanship in respect to the head of the state can never contribute to the public security and well being. It entails the clash of party interests and the brawling rancour of animosity affecting the choice of the one man in the state who should be above and apart from such elements. One of the great advantages of the kingship is that the office is superior to all parties, and is remote from rival interests. The sovereign is consequently able to bring to bear upon any situation a cool and dispassionate judg- ment. He has not to be thinking of the effect of what he does upon the electoral prospects of this party or that. Being detached from the strife and trusted by all, he can advise his advisers and listen to their adversaries in an atmosphere of serene and splendid impartiality. To these points it may reasonably enough be urged that monarchy precludes the attainment of the highest office in the state by any citizen in it whom his fellow citizens con- sider fit to fill it, and is therefore undemocratic in principle. That is undeniably true; but then, if the majority of the people in the State prefer that its head shall be a monax^h. that is their choice. A constitutional sovereign in a demo- cratic country is not less the choice of his people because they have not elected him. They elect not to elect him. The essential thing is that the determination of their government shall be in their own hands. The time when a king could regard his country as a personal possession, like his watch, has gone. A monarchy which endures because the people who live under it desire that it should endure is open to no shadow of reproach on democratic grounds. 226 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY The argument is strongly urged by Mr. II. A. L. Fisher in his excellent book, The Republican Tradition in Europe, that, in a widely scattered group of communities like the British Commonwealth, the personal nucleus of the sove- reign is a factor necessary to its coherency. If there were an elected President in Great Britain, he would not com- mand the allegiance of the Dominions, Crown Colonies and India. It is a little unfortunate that the argument should be weakened by representing that these countries, "having little ritual themselves, are the more fascinated by the pomp of an ancient and dignified institution which they have no means of reproducing in their several communi- ties, but which they regard as the joint and several posses- sion of the British race." Fascination by pomp is not a species of folly to which people in Canada, New Zea- land and Australia are likely to fall victims. "Let the candied tongue lick absurd pomp." Nor is it easy to under- stand why those who have little pomp of their own would be fascinated by pomp which they do not see, except in picture shows, where royal persons occasionally com- pete for interest, with only moderate success, against the comedians and acrobats of the hour. Besides, if the domi- nions wanted pomp they would have pomp, pomp being the kind of strutting, upholstered, dancing-master business that can easily be had by paying for it. Yet the argument which Mr. Fisher puts is a good one. The sovereignty is a very effectual centre of unity, a personal bond, a mag- netic force whose strength it would be wrong to underrate. There is a short biography of Gambetta by T. R. Mar- zials, but it is slight and hardly well worthy of the subject. There is no really good political and personal study of the man in English, and the gap ought not to remain unfilled. An abundance of material exists in French. The eleven volumes of Gambetta's speeches, edited by Reinach, are the fundamental source. G. Weill's History of the Republican Party in France is an excellent book, but it has not been translated into English. Hanotaux's Contemporary France gives the political background. II. A. L. Fisher's The Republican Tradition in Europe is of great value. It is an interesting fact that the ruler of a Republic which sprang from resistance to the English King and Par- GAMRETTA 227 liament should exercise more arbitrary power than any Englishman since Oliver Cromwell, and that many of his acts should be worthy of a Tudor. — James Ford Rhodes, A king that would not feel his crown too heavy for him must wear it every day; but if he thinketh it too light, he knoweth not of what metal it is made. — Baron. There are kings enough in England; I am nothing there, and should only be plagued and teazed there about that damned House of Commons. — George II. Royalty is a government in which the attention of the nation is concentrated on one person doing interesting actions. A republic is a goverment in which that attention is divided between many who are all doing uninteresting actions. — Walter Bagehot. A monarchy is the best or worst of all forms of state, according to the personality of the monarch. — Frederick the Great. Ask nine Englishmen out of ten to-day what they con- sider to be the pre-eminent value of the British monarchy, and they will reply that the Crown keeps the Empire together. This answer would not have been given in 1837, nor yet in 1850, but it would certainly be given now. — H. A. L. Fisher. A king is a thing men have made for their own selves, for quietness sake, just as in a family one man is appointed to buy the meat. — Selden. The question between Monarchy and Republicanism was settled by our forefathers a good many years ago, and I see no reason to unsettle it. — John Bright. The Royal Marriage Act, limiting the free choice of English princes and princesses by artificial restrictions, was one of the most indefensible statutes which Parliament ever passed. It put difficulties, often insuperable, in the way of such alliances as had linked the Plantagenets, the Tudors and the Stuarts to the English people, and it helped to impress a foreign stamp on two generations of the House of Hanover.— G. W. E. Russell. The essence of Monarchy is the personification of the majesty and sovereignty of the state in an individual. It differs from Theocracy because it attributes the right of rule to the monarch himself, instead of regarding him as the representative of God, who is the real ruler. It differs from Republics with a doge or president at their head, in 228 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY the fact that the latter are compelled to regard themselves as the servants or delegates either of the aristocratic minority or of the democratic majority, whereas the mon- arch is not the subject of these powers but the independent holder of the government. — Bluntschli. The process of election affords a moral certainty that the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications. Talents for low intrigue and the little arts of popularity may alone suffice to elevate a man to the first honours in a single state, but it will require other talents and a different kind of merit to establish him in the esteem and confidence of the whole Union, or of so considerable a portion of it as would be necessary to make him a success- ful candidate for the distinguished office of President of the United States. — Alexander Hamilton (1787). Europeans often ask, and Americans do not always ex- plain, how it happens that this great office — the greatest in the world, unless we except the Papacy, to which anyone can rise by his own merits — is not more frequently filled by great and striking men. — Lord Bryce (1911). GLADSTONE. [Page 230 Chapter XVII. GLADSTONE AND LIBERALISM. THE Liberal and Conservative types of mind are observable throughout history. Party names are temporary things, but the opposing attitudes of men towards political questions denoted by those names is declared in all ages and all countries. The bias towards change, the reforming energy, the willingness to meet to-morrow half way, are typical of the Liberal tem- perament. The bias towards stability, the maintaining inclination, the disposition not to trouble about to-morrow till to-morrow comes, are typical of the Conservative tem- perament. The Liberal has faith in the future, the Con- servative has faith in the past ; the former thinks the present could be improved upon, the latter doubts whether it is an improvement upon what has been. These, however, are general statements, only true in the rough ; for most people are both Liberals and Conser- vatives. The Barons who forced King John to affix his seal to Magna Carta were Liberals concerning the claims of the Crown, but Conservatives concerning the maintenance of baronial privileges. Many a hot Radical Trade Unionist is very conservative as to the introduction of new methods in his own trade. It is when decisions have to be made, votes cast, that the bias tells. The two names and the parties which bear them are, of course, English in origin, and in England they have clear lines of descent. They may go out of fashion through being out of repute or sounding stale to the public ear ; and each party may have to endure rebellious sections, trucu- lently assertive of particular points of view. But there are only two sides when things are brought to an issue. It is always either this or that. English Liberalism is the descendant and heir of eighteenth century Whiggism. The Whigs engineered the •231 232 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY revolution of 1688 which sent James II. into exile and seated the taciturn Dutchman, William III., on the throne. They were in the main the party which provided for the Hanoverian succession when it became evident that neither William nor Queen Anne would leave heirs. They stood for prescribing the powers of the Crown, and the British constitutional monarchy is largely of their creation. The Whigs, too, favoured the break-up of the political power which the Church of England wielded in the eighteenth cen- tury, and the grant of full rights of citizenship to Dissen- ters and Catholics. When George III. endeavoured to revert to a system of monarchical rule which his four pre- decessors on the throne had consented to see reduced, it was the Whigs who steadfastly resisted him. The cause of John Wilkes was espoused by the Whigs against Court influence. The eloquent and constant friends of the Ameri- can colonists in their quarrel with the King's disastrous government were Burke, Chatham and other Whig leaders. The Whigs must be judged, not by the standard of modern ideas, but by that of political aims and political possibilities in their own times; and, so regarded, it may confidently be said that if English principles of toleration and liberty, and the parliamentary machinery for giving effect to them, have conferred great benefits upon the world — as is indeed the case — then the eighteenth century Whigs deserve well of mankind's remembrance. But they were ah aristocratic party. During the long reign of George III., when all attempts to amend the corrupt and vicious elec- toral system were frustrated, by the influence of the Crown, by threats, and by the payment of bribes by the Sovereign himself, only an aristocratic party could have commanded influence. That their policy rose above class prejudices is not the least of the things standing to the credit of the Whigs. How much the Liberals of our own day have in common with the eighteenth century Whigs is apparent from a com- parison of two passages, the first from a speech of Chatham on the case of John Wilkes, the second from Lord Morley's Recollections. Chatham saw in the determination of the Tory majority in the House of Commons to exclude Wilkes from Parliament, because of his attacks on the King and his government in the North Briton, an infringement of the liberty of the subject, which it was an essential point in GLADSTONE 233 Whig policy to safeguard. Therefore he said: "I know what liberty is, and that the liberty of the press is essen- tially concerned in this question. I disapprove of all these papers, the North Briton, etc.; but that is not the question. When the privileges of the Mouses of Parliament are denied in order to deter people from giving their opinions, the liberty of the press is taken away. Whigs, who would give up these points to humour the Court and extend the power of the Crown, to the diminution of the Liberty of the sub- ject, I should never call Whigs; and I should never agree to act with anybody upon that footing." In precisely the same spirit, and in insistence upon the same regard for individual liberty, Lord Morley defines the creed of a Liberal in these terms: — "Respect for the dig- nity and worth of the individual is its root. It stands for pursuit of social good against class interest or dynastic interest. It stands for the subjection to human judgment of all claims of external authority, whether in an organised Church or in more loosely gathered societies of believers, or in books held sacred. In law-making it does not neglect the higher characteristics of human nature; it attends to them first. In executive administration, though judge, jailer and, perhaps, the hangman will be indispensable, still mercy is counted a wise supplement to terror. General Gordon spoke a noble word for Liberalist ideas when he upheld the sovereign duty of trying to creep under men's skins — only another way of putting the Golden Rule." The second passage is, truly, broader than the first, but Chatham was applying Whig principles to a particular case. There is, however, nothing in Morley's statement of the Liberal creed which Chatham would not have accepted, whilst any modern Liberal would have thought about Wilkes's case precisely what Chatham said about it. The transition from Whiggism to Liberalism occurred at about the time of the passing of the Reform Bill of 1832. The word Liberal had been in use before then to denote a section of the Whig party which was more advanced than the leaders, or than the rank and file — a section which was impatient of slow movement and desired to force the pace of reform. To them the aristocratic tradition of the Whig party was an impediment. The broadening of the fran- chise, the sweeping away of a multitude of corrupt little constituencies, the conferring of representation upon many 234 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY important towns which had hitherto been without members in Parliament, would necessarily change the political out- look. New demands, new aspirations would emerge. It is not a little significant that the first locomotive ran upon a railway only two years before the passing of the Reform Bill. Whiggism and stage coaches went out together. Liberalism and railways came in together. William Ewart Gladstone entered Parliament at the first election after the passing of the Reform Bill. He very soon became, by reason of capacities for which he was early dis- tinguished, "the rising hope of those stern unbending Tories who follow, reluctantly and mutinously, a leader whose experience and eloquence are indispensable to them, but whose cautious temper and moderate opinions they abhor." Macaulay signalised Gladstone's appearance as an author in that sentence, the leader referred to being, of course, Sir Robert Peel. But the stern unbending brigade were here- after to find their leader, not in this brilliant son of Eton and Oxford, but in a curled and oiled sprig of Israel. Glad- stone remained a faithful Peelite when the Tory party was rent in twain about the Free Trade budget in 1846. A Peelite he continued to be for twenty years, aloof from and distrusted by the Tories, yet not absorbed by the Liberals, though attracted more and more towards them. But there was no place for him in such a political twilight. "We who are called Peelites," to use his own phrase, dimin- ished in numbers ; the name lost its significance. The year 1866 is noted by Mr. Herbert Paul, the anno- tator of Gladstone's speeches, to be the first in which he definitely adopted the creed of the Liberal party; but dur- ing the ten years preceding that date he had been as much the hope of the Liberals as at the beginning of his political career he had been of the opposite party. In the preced- ing year he had quite clearly signified his adhesion to Liberal views of politics. In a speech of 1865 he said: — "I have learnt that there is wisdom in a policy of trust and folly in a policy of mistrust. I have not refused to acknow- ledge and accept the signs of the times. I have observed the effect that has been produced upon the country by what is known as liberal legislation. And if we are told, as we are now truly told, that all the feelings of the country are in the best and broadest sense conservative — that is to say, that the people value the country, and the laws and institu- GLADSTONE 235 tions of the country — honesty compels me to admit that this- happy result has been brought about by liberal legislation." This hardly amounts to a "creed" of Liberalism, nor did the speech of 1866, to which Mr. Herbert Paul alludes — the speech in moving the second reading of the Reform Bill of that year — formulate any such thing. He there spoke of the circumstances in which he had become associated with the Liberal party, coming to it "an outcast from those with whom I associated; driven from them, I admit, by no arbi- trary act, but by the slow and resistless forces of convic- tion." The Liberal party had, he said, "received me with kindness, indulgence, generosity, and I may even say with some measure of confidence." But the student of the his- tory of ideas who turns to the several biographies of Glad- stone to find out what he meant by Liberalism will not discover any definite declaration. The Descriptive Index and Bibliography of his speeches, compiled by Mr. A. T. Bassett, has no entry under "Liberalism," and the only entry under that word in Morley's Life of Gladstone refers, not to something said by Gladstone himself, but to a letter from Lord Acton. Acton intended to begin his contemplated "History of Liberty" — the magnum opus which never got itself written — with a hundred definitions, and wrote to Gladstone's daughter, "I wish I knew one fit to stand in your father's name." He cited a phrase used by Gladstone, "trust in the people tempered by prudence," as one which could not be allowed to stand alone. It is surely curious that there should have been any diffi- culty in securing a definition of Liberalism from one who was for so long a Liberal leader, and who was so copious in the expression of his opinions. Perhaps the clearest statement which Gladstone made in that direction was to- wards the end of his life, in 1890. He then said: — "The basis of my Liberalism is this : It is the lesson which I have been learning ever since I was young. I am a lover of liberty; and that liberty which I value for myself I value for every human being in proportion to his means and opportunities. That is a basis on which I find it perfectly practicable to work in conjunction with a dislike to unrea- soned change and a profound reverence for anything ancient, provided that reverence is deserved. There are those who have been so happy that they have been born with a creed that they can usefully maintain to the last, for my own 236 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY part, as I have been a learner all my life, a learner I must continue to be." That was spoken by a man who was then eighty-one years of age, and was still immersed in the business of statesman- ship. The buoyancy of spirit, the open-mindedness, of the passage, reveal a temperament which in extreme old age had not lost the vigour and resilience of youth. Gladstone was a man of fifty-six, who had been over thirty years in Parliament, before he signified his acceptance of what is called the Liberal creed, and the most remarkable charac- teristic of his mind was that it continued to grow more Liberal in disposition as the increasing years ran out. It was the readiness to face fresh problems with courage, resource and hope, the firm confidence in the people at large, the belief in liberty, nationality and humane policy, that constituted Gladstone's Liberalism, rather than any assent to formulas. The practical statesman has to grapple with questions as they arise and to settle them as best he can amid the whirl of conflicting interests and claims. Suffi- cient for the day are the problems thereof. The theorist unhampered by responsibility can sail his boat in an un- ruffled lake; the statesman has to navigate in the midst of hurricanes, often with a mutinous crew. Gladstone's greatest gift to his party was the intense moral earnestness with which he espoused its causes. Whether it was a question of franchise extension, or the denunciation of the foreign policy of his rival, Disraeli, or Irish Home Rule, or any other of the many matters which he handled in innumerable speeches, he lifted the issue of the hour into a sphere of moral illumination, and presented it to his countrymen in words aflame with conviction. He argued his case, meeting the thrust of his adversaries with extraordinary deftness ; but he argued it passionately. His great election campaigns were like crusades. Nothing like his Midlothian campaign of 1879 had been known in Eng- lish politics before, and, striking as were its results in driving the opposite party out of power, the most remark- able thing about it really was the moral appeal ringing through the orations with which Gladstone electrified the country. Throughout his long career, the flushing of politi- cal discussion with a warm glow was characteristic of him. Among his thousands of speeches, it would hardly be possible to find one which did not furnish an example; GLADSTONE 237 whilst there were several, like his great speech on the Affir- mation Bill in 1883, and that on Home Rule at Liverpool in 1886, wherein the moral appeal was urged with singular force. No man, whatever his endowment of genius, could speak and write as much as Gladstone did, and maintain a distin- guished level of quality throughout. There is not much in his eight volumes of Gleanings that a student of literature need regret not to have read, apart from his essays on Macaulay and Leopardi. Political speeches lose the greater part of their savour when the controversies to which they pertain have died away. They lose also from the disappear- ance from the scene of the personality familiar to the gene- ration which heard them. Lord Bryce has commented on what is irrecoverable to the reader of even good reports of Gladstone's speeches: "The voice is lost, and his was rich, sonorous and exquisitely modulated in its tones." To some who may have heard him only a few times, the roll of his tones can be imagined as any characteristic passage is read; but the sentences must be cold to any who never experienced the magic of his presence, as, with dramatic gesture, flashing eye and features alight with feeling, he poured out his message in fluent and abundant measure. It was alleged against Gladstone in his day that by his dexterity in the use of language he was able to conceal much more than he expressed, and that he was indeed the "sophisticated rhetorician" of Disraeli's gibe. His bio- grapher goes far towards admitting that there was sub- stance in the charge. "His adversary," .says Lord Morley> "as he strode confidently along the smooth grass, suddenly found himself treading on a serpent; he had overlooked a condition, a proviso, a word of hypothesis or contingency that sprang from its ambush and brought his triumph to naught on the spot. If Mr. Gladstone had only taken as much trouble that his hearers should understand exactly what it was that he meant, as he took afterwards to show that his meaning had been grossly misunderstood, all might have been well." His astonishing mastery of dialectic subtleties, supported by a large vocabulary, spelt confusion to his foes, and not infrequently to his friends likewise. But words were his weapons, and, if he used them to enmesh as well as to smite, it was but another aspect of 238 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY his method. And there was no doubt about the high pur- pose, the driving power, the moral courage, the pure faith, which he used for the furtherance of the Liberal policy. Gladstone was a Peelite drawn towards Liberalism by force of circumstances, and the Peelites were Conservatives shed from their party through their acceptance of Free Trade. The Conservatism of Gladstone remained a part of him, notwithstanding his distinct leaning towards the Radical wing of his party in the latter part of his political life. One half of his mind was given over to theological studies, and in that field he never moved out of the ancient ways. It was not altogether in accordance with his desire that under his leadership English Liberalism shook itself free from the old aristocratic Whig tradition. But every forward step had the effect of severing a cluster of Whig- gish Liberals, who drifted into the opposite political camp. Gladstone's Irish policy occasioned a serious cleavage, which, however, left his party much more robustly demo- cratic in tendency than it had ever been before. By the time of his death, in 1898, the Radical section of the Liberal party had taken control of its policy, just as about 1832 the Liberals took control of the old Whig party. The result was seen in the limitation of the veto power of the House of Lords by the Parliament Act of 1911, and in the adop- tion of manhood suffrage by the Representation of the People Act of 1918 — for, although the latter measure was enacted under a coalition Ministry, it was a piece of Radical policy in all essentials. A very large part of the work of Liberalism hitherto has been concerned with reforming the structure of govern- ment. The constitution had to be democratised before many advances could be made in other directions. The spread of popular education not merely justified but necessitated the broadening of the basis of representation. The "points of the Charter," which seemed to threaten revolution and total eclipse to the nervous Whig and Tory people of the early part of Victoria's reign, are now (with trifling modifica- tions) fundamentals of the British constitution. But work of this kind having been almost completed, Liberalism, if it is to endure as a vital force in politics, will have to reach out to deal with serious social and economic problems. Liberalism did good structural work in its day, but cannot GLADSTONE 239 live on its past reputation. The position of a party stand- ing between the Conservatives and the Labour-Socialists will not be an easy one to maintain, and may be impossible to maintain. There is great utility in a nation possess- ing a strong party which, while eager to advance, is cautious about the mode and measure of any given proposi- tion of reform ; but every important move forward, by threatening interests which desire the maintenance of things as they are, will entail the splitting of the party. Liberalism must always be prepared to lose adherents if it is to fulfil any valuable function. A Liberal party which does not split at least once in a generation can fairly be accused of stagnation. The study of British Liberalism helps to an appreciation of this phase of thought in its general bearings, because its history reveals achievements which are typical of what Liberalism stands for everywhere. It is not in a particular party programme, nor in any scheme of reform suited to this or that place at this or that time, that Liberalism con- sists essentially. It is not a creed, but an attitude towards life, the problems of life, social forces and humanity. The recognition of the claims of the individual man and woman to exercise a voice in government ; the liberation of the human spirit from clerical and secular tyranny ; the imposi- tion of restraints upon power; the protection of the weak and the poor from the selfish and arbitrary disposition of the strong and the rich; the guarding of the just claims of the individual whilst using the collective efforts of the whole community in the performance of functions which may thus be best discharged in common for the common good ; the preservation of peace among nations not only by a tem- perate and friendly foreign policy, but also by removing hindrances to trade, discouraging monopoly, and promoting free intercourse among peoples ; the restriction of arma- ments and the deprecation of belligerency in the discussion of international affairs — these things are typical of the Liberal temper and cast of mind. For this attitude there will always be a useful place in the body politic. Each generation has to face fresh problems, but there are only two ways of deciding them, and whether official Liberalism goes under that name or another matters little. It is the Liberal attitude and mode 240 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY of approach that is important. A creed is a piece of frozen conviction ; the vital belief is that which lives in the hearts of men, and moves them. The continental sense of the word Liberalism is not really different from its specialised mean- ing in British politics ; the difference has lain in the causes which had to be fought for. The enemy may be Ultramon- tane, or aristocratic, or absolutist, or plutocratic, but the object of the conflict will still be the same. On Gladstone the authoritative work is Morley's ample biography, one of the masterpieces of English political literature. There are several smaller lives of him ; one by G. W. E. Russell is good. L. T. Hobhouse's Liberalism, a volume of the Home University Library, treats the subject philosophically. A categorical account of the aims of Liberalism is presented in J. M. Robertson's The Meaning of Liberalism. Herbert Samuel's Liberalism: Its Principles and Proposals is a work by an eminent modern Liberal statesman. John Stuart Mill's treatise On Liberty is a classic. F. W. Hirst's book on The Manchester School pre- sents a valuable view of the economic side of English Liberalism. A Short Histoy^y of English Liberalism, by W. Lyon Blease, is a useful work. The upper class used to enjoy undivided sway, and used it for their own advantage, protecting their interests against those below them by laws which w r ere selfish and often inhuman. Almost all that has been done for the good of the people has been done since the rich lost the monopoly of power, since the rights of property were discovered to be not quite unlimited. — Lord Acton. Liberty does not consist in making others do what you consider right. The difference between a free government and a government which is not free is principally this — that a government which is not free interferes with every- thing it can, and a free government interferes with nothing except what it must. A despotic government tries to make everybody do what it wishes; a Liberal government tries, GLADSTONE 241 so far as the safety of society will permit, to allow every- body to do what he wishes. It has been the function of the Liberal party consistently to maintain the doctrine of individual liberty It is because they have done so that England is the country where people can do more what they please than in any country in the world. — Sir William Harcourt. By the admission alike of Liberals and Conservatives, the primary fact in political Liberalism, in all ages, is the existence of a great mass of "have-nots" — £he servile or landless class in the pre-industrial stage, the unenfran- chised in early democracies, the unpropertied and wage- earning class in the modern industrial world. It is the insuppressible needs of these classes for betterment, for education, for improved political and legal status that, in the main, motive all democratic movements, so-called. — J. M. Robertson. Freedom cannot be predicated, in its true meaning, either of a man or of a society, merely because they are no longer under the compulsion of restraints which have the sanction of positive law. To be really free they must be able to make the best use of faculty, opportunity, energy, life. It is in this fuller sense of the true significance of Liberty that we find the governing impulse in the later development of Liberalism, in the direction of education, temperance, better dwellings, and improved social and industrial environment ; everything, in short that tends to national, communal and personal efficiency. — H. H. Asquith. Democracy is not founded merely on the right or the private interest of the individual. This is only one side of the shield. It is founded equally on the function of the individual as a member of the community. — L. T. Hobhouse. The power which is at once spring and regulator in all efforts of reform is the conviction that there is an infinite worthiness in man which will appear at the call of worth, and that all particular reforms are the removing of some impediment. — Emerson. Whiggism, if I understand it aright, is a desire of liberty and a spirit of opposition to all exorbitant power in any part of the constitution. — Richard Steele (1719). The fundamental principle of Whiggery was resistance 242 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY to arbitrary power. The very phrase has now an archaic sound; but when it was originally coined it expressed a very real and threatening danger. — Lord John Russell. European reformers have been accustomed to see the numerical majority everywhere unjustly depressed, every- where trampled upon, or at the best overlooked, by govern- ments ; nowhere possessing power enough to extort redress of their most posit've grievances, provision for their mental culture, or even to prevent themselves from being taxed avowedly for the pecuniary profit of the ruling classes. To see these things, and to seek to put an end to them, by means (among other things) of giving more political power to the majority, constitutes Radicalism. — John Stuart Mill. The ideal of the Liberal party consists in a view of things undisturbed and undistorted by the promptings of interests or prejudice, in a complete independence of all class interests, and in relying for its success on the better feelings and higher intelligence of mankind. — Robert Lowe (Lord Sherbrooke). The passion for improving mankind in its ultimate object does not vary. But the immediate object of refor- mers and the forms of persuasion by which they seek to advance them vary much in different generations. To a hasty observer they might even seem contradictory and to justify the notion that nothing better than a desire for change, selfish or perverse, is at the bottom of all reform- ing movements. Only those who will think a little longer about it can discern the same old cause of social good against class interests, for which, under altered names, Liberals are fighting now as they were fifty years ago. — T. H. Green. The Manchester School was essentially a middle class school. The Radicals had nothing in common except their Radicalism. The Manchester men were almost all of that sober, clear-headed, independent class, often sadly wanting in gracefulness and culture, but always amply endowed with courage, enterprise and common sense, which has built up the cotton industry of Lancashire. They were not demo- cratic in any theoretical sense. They cared nothing either for aristocracy or democracy. They were accustomed to mix on terms of equality with men of all classes, and their esti- mate of a man's worth was always their own, and depended on nothing but his capacity. — W. Lyon Blease. \ DISRAELI. [Page 244 Chapter XVIII. DISRAELI AND CONSERVATISM. THE passing of the Reform Bill of 1832 made so sub- stantial an alteration in the political organisation of Great Britain that not only did the Whig party drop its name and become Liberal, but even Tories, with all their aversion to change, blossomed out as Conser- vatives. The Bill, it must be remembered^ remodelled a system which had existed unchanged for centuries. The elder Pitt had described it as corrupt in the middle of the eighteenth century, and his son had endeavoured to reform it towards the close of that century, but it had continued with its rotten boroughs, its Eatanswill political debau- chery, its bribery, and its caricature of representation until it was washed away in a current of indignation. The Tories had exhausted the resources of ingenuity and eloquence in defence of this decrepit system, but in vain. It seemed to many among them, now that it had fallen, that the name of the party which had tried to main- tain it was touched with the discredit which attached to the memory of the old regime. It was not sound politics immediately after 1832 to bear the label of Tory. So the new name, Conservative, was employed instead. John Wilson Croker, the Tory writer whom Macaulay so merci-, lessly castigated for his "ill-compiled, ill-arranged, ill- written and ill-printed" edition of Boswell's Life of John- son, saw the change coming, and suggested the adoption of the new party name in a Quarterly Review article in 1830. He there spoke of "the Tory, which might with more pro- priety be called the Conservative, party." Sir Robert Peel adopted the designation after the Reform Bill was carried. There is, however, this difference between the adoption of new names for the old Whig and Tory parties — that whereas Whiggism went out altogether and the name ceased 245 24i> MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY to have much more than historical interest attaching to it, there was after a time a revival of the Tory name. The Conservative has, as it were, an eye at the back of his head, with which he sees the past with a glamour about it; and, as the discredit of defending the pre-Reform Bill abuses became toned down by time, there were some among the Conservatives who turned to the old name with some affec- tion - ; so that in 1882 we find Matthew Arnold writing of "the Conservatives, or, as they are now beginning to be called again, the Tories." That statement and its date are interesting, for in 1881 had died Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield, who became the real leader of the Conservative party after Peel fell from grace by repealing the Corn Laws. Conservatism, then — which was Toryism "camouflaged," as we say nowa- days, under a name which seemed more respectable for a while — came in under Peel about 1832, and was the political name of the party which Disraeli led down to the eve of 1882. More recent Conservative leaders have frequently preferred the old name. Lord Randolph Churchill nearly always spoke of the Tory, very rarely of the Conservative, party. The ascent of Disraeli to the leadership of the British Conservatives was surely one of the most extraordinary occurrences in modern politics. His Jewish origin was a detriment to him, though his father had abandoned Judaism and become a member of the Church of England; for at the time when he first secured a place in Parliament (1837), the prejudice against the Hebrew people so far continued that a Jew could not take his seat unless he pro- nounced an oath "on the true faith of a Christian," and this restriction continued till 1858. When he was first designated for high office Queen Victoria wrote that she was "a little shocked," which probably meant that her con- sort, Prince Albert, with his German anti-Semitic bias, had expressed disapproval to her. Moreover, Disraeli had no aristocratic connections, no such University distinction as helped Gladstone in the beginning of his political career, no powerful friends in the forefront of politics ; and he created some amount of distrust of himself by his glossy and over- decorated dandyism, his affectations of speech and manner, his catch-penny rhetoric. There was also the handicap that DISRAELI 247 at the beginning of his political career he had posed as a Radical, and went over to the Tories, not on any point of principle, but, as was freely alleged, because their party offered better prospects. Sir William Fraser on this sub- ject testified: — "The reason for Disraeli taking the Tory side as a young man was the advice of Lord Lyndhurst. He pointed out to him that the clever young men of the day were going in for Radicalism; that the Tories sadly wanted brains; and advised him to join their party. I had this from Lord Malmsbury, and it has recently been con- firmed to me by Lord O , who knew Disraeli intimately, and who had it from himself." 1 But discerning judges of Parliamentary form perceived that there was serviceable metal beneath the gilding. A gift of oratory, a knack of epigrammatic sparkle, an imper- turbable temper, a subtle and ingratiating charm, and an undeviating ambition were to carry Disraeli to the high places of the state. He was often cheap and meretricious ; he was never profound on any subject; but he was nearly always effective for the purpose on hand and the audience to which he addressed himself. His abundant cleverness was usually sufficient to carry him through any predicament, and when that failed he fell back upon his reserve of audacity. Sometimes he over- stepped the mark in both respects, as when he plagiarised an eloquent passage from the French historian Thiers, giv- ing it out as his own in his oration on the death of the Duke of Wellington. Thiers had written the piece in a French magazine concerning Marshal St. Cyr, one of Napo- leon's officers. Disraeli simply translated it and made it fit the general who brought Napoleon to the ground, and this he did without so much as a by-your-leave. When a London journal exposed the plagiarism by printing the two passages in parallel columns under the heading "Stop Thief!" Disraeli showing no twinge of embarrassment. He explained in a letter that when he first read Thiers' article "the passage in question seized upon me ; it was engraved on my memory; association of ideas brought it back, and I summoned it from the caverns of my mind." 1 This simply 1 Sir William Fraser, "Disraeli and His Day." i See Monypenny and Buckle's "Life of Disraeli," Vol. III., p. 393; the two passages are printed in an appendix of the same work. 248 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY amounted to saying that Disraeli had such a remarkably good memory that every word of a passage read years before remained in his mind ; but that at the same time he had such a remarkably bad memory that he did not recol- lect that the eloquent language was not his own. 2 Disraeli was a remarkably good actor, but it is an error to say that he played to the gallery ; he consistently played to the stalls and boxes. One of his masterpieces was his address to a diocesan conference at Oxford on the invita- tion of Bishop Wilberforce, where, having an audience of clergymen who, almost to a man, were friendly to his party, he took occasion to profess himself an intensely loyal churchman, and to assure the reverend gentlemen that his sternest frown was reserved for the evolutionary theory. "The question is this: is man an ape or an angel? I, my lord, I am on the side of the angels." There was a general election a few months later — Disraeli had not for- gotten that there would be one — and, being on the side of the angels, his party came into power ; what was still better, on Lord Derby's retirement, Disraeli became for the first time Prime Minister (1868). The "angels" deliverance was one of Disraeli's very few excursions into the realm of theology, where his great rival Gladstone was so thoroughly at home. It made the country ring with laughter. Froude, one of his biographers, records that "fellows and tutors repeated the phrase over their port in the common-room with shaking sides; the news- papers carried the announcement the next morning over the length and breadth of the island, and the leading-article writers struggled in their comments to maintain a decent gravity." But what of that? Disraeli had made sure of the curates, vicars, rural deans, etc. ; for what better thing could they do than extend confidence and support, with all the sincerity that lay behind a Cuddesdon collar, to a states- man who was on the side of the angels? The political career of Disraeli was exceptionally bril- liant, and while he was the head of the Conservative party he commanded its allegiance, even if he was held in some suspicion by an aristocratic inner circle. The Tory - The case was not the only one of the kind. There was a glaring instance of plagiarism in Disraeli's last book, "Endymion." See the article "Beaconsfield as a Plagiarist," in the "Academy," June 29, 1907. DISRAELI 249 squires, the village and suburban middle class Conserva- tives, and all who were attracted by the showy policy and the captivating speeches of the leader, recognised in him a politician of the sort of genius that they could appreciate. His remarkably clever political novels added to his popu- larity. Coningsby and Sybil are still incomparably good pictures of English social and political life during the period, and they gain in piquancy from being partly auto- biographical. The young Sidonia in Coningsby is a looking- glass portrait of Disraeli himself, and Sidonia's sparkling reflections on men, women and institutions were the author's own. Into the mouths of his other characters, too, he could put criticisms which it was just as well to advance for the edification of people all round. The things which he made Millbank in Coningsby say about the English aristocracy were a sting to false pride in fictitious pedigrees ; and in his last novel, Endymion, he launched a cutting piece of irony against the old Tory school for whom the Conserva- tives were a little too modern, and who sniffed within their drawing rooms at the Conservative leader as "that person." Zenobia in Endymion — "mourned over the concession of the Manchester and Liverpool Railway in a moment of Liberal infatuation, but flattered herself that any exten- sion of the railway system might certainly be arrested, and on this head the majority of society, perhaps even of the country, was certainly on her side. " 'I have some good news for you/ said one of her young favourites as he attended her reception. "We have prevented this morning the light- ing of Grosvenor Square by gas by a large majority.' " 'I felt confident that disgrace would never occur.' said Zenobia, triumphant. 'And by a large majority! I wonder how Lord Pomeroy voted.' " 'Against us.' "'How can one save the country?' exclaimed Zenobia. 'I believe now the story that he has ordered Lady Pomeroy not to go to the Drawing Room in a sedan chair.' " The Conservatism of Disraeli, stated satisfactorily in no speech or novel as a formal creed, but expressed more or less vaguely in many passages scattered over his writ- ings and utterances, was based upon a natural love for the great traditions of Great Britain, and an admiration of the institutions which had grown up with the history of the country and helped to maintain its stability. He was him- self a romantic figure. His appearance was romantic; his cast of mind was romantic. He revelled in the idea of a constitution which had grown like an ancient oak set in a 250 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY stately park. In a speech of 1865 he expanded himself in profuse eulogy of government "by a most singular series of traditionary influences, which generation after genera- tion cherishes and preserves because it knows that they embalm custom and represent law." The wealth of Eng- land, the vastness of the British Empire, the broad-acred solidity of the English aristocracy, filled him with pride. He deprecated any step "that had a tendency to demo- cracy." Parliament should endeavour to maintain "the ordered state of free England in which we live." The Church of England found in him as resolute a champion as any bishop on the episcopal bench, and his black and glossy locks shook in solemn deprecation when it was pro- posed to disendow the Irish Church, and when the Welsh Church was threatened with disestablishment. Reforms were favoured only when it was apparent that small concessions might forestall greater changes. Disraeli was never a real old-school Tory. His philosophy of Con- servatism, so far as it was a philosophy and not a policy of expediency, was that, since changes cannot be prevented, they should be taken in good time, and be as little like changes as possible. He realised that the Conservative may become — and has in many historical instances been — unwit- tingly the greatest of revolutionaries, through blocking changes which, if taken in time, might have been easily and moderately made. Consequently, just as Disraeli pre- served his own glossy, romantic appearance by the use of hair-dye, so he introduced the Reform Bill of 1867 to pre- serve the constitution with the minimum of apparent altera- tion. It was the Bill which Gladstone and Bright took in hand and converted into a household suffrage measure, much more liberal in its terms and with fewer restrictions than Dis- raeli and his colleagues had intended. He has never been quite forgiven by the Conservatives for that measure. He thought he was "dishing the Whigs," but one of the most recent exponents of Conservative philosophy censoriously urges that "he hurried forward an extension of the fran- chise before public opinion required it, and to the scandal of Conservative sentiment." 1 For satisfactory statements of the Tory or Conservative state of mind one has to go to other sources than Disraeli's i Lord Hugh Cecil, "Conservatism," p. 70. DISRAELI 251 deliverances, which, indeed, save for a polished phrase here and there, a touch of irony or a gibe, are extremely dull to read after half a century's lapse from the play of his pic- turesque personality. When we set ourselves to analyse the Conservative view of politics certain interesting differences emerge. There is the Conservatism of thinkers like Edmund Burke, for whom the British constitution represented the realisation of perfection in political structure, and who regarded inroads upon well-established institutions as being like desecrations of a sacred shrine. Burke was the greatest Conservative who ever lived. Though he was passionately on the Whig side in reference to the revolt of the American colonies, and not even Pitt defended the colonists with such energy and eloquence, his main arguments were conserva- tive. To him the Americans were as a child that wished "to assimilate with its parent and to reflect with a true filial resemblance the beauteous countenance of British liberty." It was, however, the French Revolution, with its violent overthrow of an ancient order, which brought forth Burke's most glowing and exultant efforts in praise of the constitution of his own country. His language on this theme is majestic. The gorgeous rhetoric, the rich embroi- dery of imagery, the superbly poised periods, which were characteristic of his literary style at its best, were lavished on the congenial task of revealing to his countrymen, under cover of a flaming denunciation of proceedings in France, the splendour of their own system of government. His Reflections on the Revolution in France, his Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs, his Letter to a Member of the National Assembly, and his Letters on a Regicide Peace almost allure even a modern reader into a temporary feel- ing that Great Britain under George III. was governed with as near an approach to perfection as could be devised by human beings. Nay, to Burke it was something higher than human handiwork. When he wrote that "we fear God, we look up with awe to kings, with affection to Parliament, with duty to magistrates, with reverence to priests, and with respect to nobility. . . . We are resolved to keep an estab- lished Church, an established monarchy, an established aristocracy and an established democracy, each in the 252 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY degree it exists, and in no greater" — when he wrote thus he delivered unto Conservatism its Apostles' Creed, not as a mere political recapitulation, but as a revelation of Divine beneficence. Whomsoever laid the hand of altera- tion on this blessed and glorious gift committed an irre- ligious act. "The awful author of our being is the author of our place in the order of existence ; and, having disposed and marshalled us by a divine tactic, not according to our will but according to His, He has, in and by that disposi- tion, virtually subjected us to act the part which belongs to the place assigned to us." We have to brush aside the rhetoric and put pointed questions in order to test the real validity of Burke's pleas. Such a pertinent question as Sir James Stephen submits brings us out of the coloured and golden mist and into the clear daylight at once: — "Did Burke mean to say that God gave two members to old Sarum, and, if not, what precisely did he mean?" 1 But there was a noble side to Burke's Conservatism, as there is to that of many who subscribe to his creed. He was extremely sensitive to the feeling that the system of government under which he lived was not the work of any one generation, but has been fashioned by processes of adaptation during a thousand years. That this should be so touched his imagination and evoked his reverence. He hated the brand new. A few sprays of ivy growing over a mossy wall gave him pleasure, and he liked to have the same feeling towards political institutions. Any man who has not that feeling in some degree lacks the historic sense. About twenty-five years ago William Morris, an eminent Socialist and a very great artist, aroused a vigorous agita- tion about a proposal to pull down Lincoln's Inn gateway, a fine piece of early Tudor brickwork in Chancery Lane. Morris also formed the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings. Now, Chancery Lane was a somewhat narrow street, and Lincoln's Inn gateway was rather in the way. The insensitive utilitarians would have demolished it without scruple, to make room, perhaps, for more omni- buses to rattle along, and for ugly suites of offices or flaunt- ing shops, if this Socialist agitator with a copious fund of violent language and a deep feeling for beauty had not become appropriately vituperative and saved it. i Stephen. "Home Sabbaticae," Vol. ITT., p. 144. DISRAELI 253 What William Morris felt about Lincoln's Inn gateway, the west front of Peterborough Cathedral, Tewkesbury Min- ster, and many another splendid survival of the art of the past, Edmund Burke felt about the constitutional structure of his country. Just as a fine building is an expression in stone of the spirit of man, and speaks with its silent elo- quence to the present about the past during which it has min- istered to man's needs, so also it is, and in a subtler sense, with institutions; and the people who can adapt their insti- tutions to the fresh requirements of successive generations thereby preserve a continuity of historical tradition which appeals powerfully to the rooted affections of reflective people. The past is not dead. It lives in us and around us. We are born three thousand years old, and if each generation had to start from "scratch" we should not yet be out of the barbarian stage of development. Indeed, many of us are not far out of it yet # despite scooters, kinematographs, poison-gas shells, and other appurtenances of an advanced civilisation. The preservation of a sense of the past in the institutions of a country unquestionably gives deep satis- faction to many minds. Truly, the past cannot be allowed to squat on the back of the present, crushing it down by weight like an incubus; there must be adaptation to the needs and ideas of living generations. But, saving this important consideration, a nation is the richer for what it can preserve of what its forerunners have set up. The Eng- lishman of to-day is certainly as well governed as is the Frenchman of to-day ; but the Englishman of to-day, if he have a spark of imagination, is the happier for knowing that his system of government was not fashioned so recently as 1875, but is a gift to him from ages, and bears still upon it touches of the workmanship of Saxon and Danish kings, of William I., Henry II., Stephen Langton, Simon de Mont- ford, Edward I., Henry VII., Elizabeth, John Pym, Oliver Cromwell, Halifax, Walpole, the elder Pitt, Fox, Peel, Rus- sell, and Gladstone. There is perspective in the survey of the long road, and there is a sense of evolution in the pro- cesses by which the institutional garments have become fitted to the frame of the present age. Less honourable is that "panic dread of change" of which Wordsworth spoke, and which marks the Conserva- 254 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY tism of the politically timorous. There was once a Royal Duke who declared that the British constitution was doomed when the bishops in the House of Lords ceased to wear wigs. The faintest stirring of the wind of reform gives some people a bad cold. To these may be added the lazy-minded and the indifferent, who con- stitute the mass of inertia which is a great aid to Conservatism. It is not only those who are well blessed with goods who are content with things as they are, how- ever bad they may be. A field of thistles is good enough for a donkey, and that animal is in this respect no worse than millions of human kind. To some, any kind of change is bewildering. Just before the middle of the nineteenth century, when it became evident that the old methods of maintaining civil order and coping with crime in England had broken down, and Peel proposed to establish an orga- nised police system, it is recorded that "so strongly rooted was the old notion that a professional police force was con- trary to English traditions and would constitute a menace to individual liberty, that Peel's proposals encountered the bitterest opposition both in Parliament and in the country at large." Very few are the reforms, however salutary, of which a similar tale has not to be related when their his- tory is traced. There are likewise many persons whose Conservatism means no more than the preservation of a static condition of society because their own interests are bound up with it. It was to catch the support of such persons that the Tory party broadened its outlook, first under the leadership of Peel, but much more thoroughly under Disraeli. From the Revolution of 1688 down to the Reform Bill of 1832 Great Britain was wholly in the power of the aristocracy. The aristocratic Whigs were as much a conclave of leading families as were the Tories. Up to 1832 the House of Lords had been the special preserve of this territorial aristocracy. The landed interest, supported by the military and the wealthier legal interests, completely monopolised the peer- age. With the exception of a banker, no man whose wealth was made from trade was admitted to the House till after 1832. But then came the class of well-to-do merchants, manufacturers and brewers, equipped with political power DISRAELI 255 and insisting upon recognition. The Tory leaders saw, if the thing were not perceptible to "those old pheasant-lords. Those partridge-breeders of a thousand years. Who had mildewed in their thousands, doing nothing Since Egbert," that if they laid themselves out to conserve the interests of this class, and tossed them a coronet or two now and then, they would thereby strengthen Conservatism generally. Not even the foaming rhetoric of Burke could have glorified a beerage; but it was a good thing for Toryism when the new class of leaders of industry, with their shrewdness, their wealth and their energy, were attracted within the fold. True, it made Conservatism more palpably the guardian of money interests than of great principles and venerable institutions, but it must be remembered that the old Tory- ism had been the guardian of interests likewise. It was not nourished entirely on rhetoric and antiquarian venera- tion. Bolingbroke, the most brilliant exponent of Tory ideas in the first half of the eighteenth century, quite frankly acknowledged that his aims were "to fill the em- ployment of the kingdom down to the meanest with Tories," and to shift the burden of taxation from the landed to the monied interest. Lord Randolph Churchill, after the Dis- raeli period, endeavoured to give a still more popular turn to Toryism by his gospel of "Tory Democracy." It was a brilliant and audacious move, which had behind it a shrewder knowledge of human nature than was apparent to many who greeted it with derision. Lord Hugh Cecil's book on Conservatism in the Home University Library, is an excellent and fair-minded short treatise. F. E. Smith (now Lord Birkenhead) has in his Toryism collected a small volume of statements of the Tory attitude, chiefly from seventeenth and eighteenth century writers and statesmen, with a critical introduction by him- self. J. M. Kennedy's Tory Democracy is an exposition of the latest phase. The standard Life of Disraeli is Mony- penny and Buckle's voluminous biography. Froude's shorter biography is brilliant and not over friendly. Disraeli's Life of Lord George Bentinck is a study of a stubborn Tory by a more flexible Conservative. 256 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY I look with filial reverence on the constitution of my country, and never will cut it in pieces and put it into the kettle of any magician, in order to boil it, with the puddle of their compounds, into youth and vigour. On the con- trary, I will drive away such pretenders; I will nurse its venerable age, and with lenient arts extend a parent's breath.— Burke (1784). If at the present moment I had imposed upon me the duty of forming a legislature for any country, and particu- larly for a country like this, in possession of great property of various descriptions, I do not mean to assert that I would form such a legislature as we possess now, for the nature of man was incapable of reaching it at once; but my great endeavour would be to form some description of legislature which would produce the same results. — The Duke of Wel- lington (1830). The Tories, who are of the people, know and exclaim that these institutions, which are not so much the work of the genius of man, but rather the inspired offspring of Time, are the tried guarantees of individual liberty, popular government and Christian morality; that they are the only institutions which possess the virtue of stability even through all ages; that the harmonious fusion of classes and interests which they represent corresponds with and satisfies the highest aspirations either of peoples or of men ; that by them has our empire been founded and extended in the past ; and that by them alone can it prosper or be maintained in the future. Such is the Tory party and such are its principles, by which it can give to England the government she requires — democratic, aristocratic, par- liamentary, monarchical, uniting in an indissoluble embrace religious liberty and social order. — Lord Randolph Churchill (1884). The best instituted governments, like the best consti- tuted animal bodies, carry in them the seeds of their destruction ; and, though they grow and improve for a time ? they will soon tend visibly to their dissolution. Every hour they live is an hour less they have to live. All that can be done, therefore, to prolong the duration of a good government is to draw it back, on every favourable occa- sion, to the first good principles on which it was founded. When these occasions happen often, and are well improved, DISRAELI 257 such governments are prosperous and durable. When they happen seldom or are ill improved, these political bodies live in pain, or in langour, and die soon. — Bolingbroke. The world will not endure to hear that we are wiser than any which went before. In which consideration there is a cause why we should be slow and unwilling to change without very urgent necessity the ancient ordinances, rites and long approved customs of our venerable predecessors. The love of things ancient doth argue a stayedness, but levity and want of experience maketh apt unto innovations. That which wisdom did first begin, and hath been with good men long continued, challengeth allowance of them that succeed, although it plead for itself nothing. That which is new, if it promise not much, doth fear condemnation before trial ; till trial, no man doth acquit or trust it, what good soever it pretend or promise. So that in this kind there are few things known to be good, till such time as they grow to be ancient. — Richard Hooker. Reform is affirmative, conservatism negative; conser- vatism goes for comfort, reform for truth. Conservatism is more candid to behold another's worth ; reform more disposed to maintain and increase its own. Conservatism makes no poetry, breathes no prayer, has no invention ; it is all memory. Reform has no gratitude, no prudence, no husbandry. It makes a great difference to your figure and to your thought, whether your foot is advancing or reced- ing. Conservatism never puts the foot forward ; in the hour when it does that it is not establishment but reform. — Emerson. There is a rule of conduct common to individuals and to states, established by the experience of centuries as that of everyday life. This rule declares that we must not dream of reformation while agitated by passion ; wisdom directs that at such moments we should limit ourselves to main- taining. — Metternich. There is no probability of ever establishing in England a more democratic form of government than the present English constitution. . . . The disposition of property in England throws the government of the country into the hands of its natural aristocracy. I do not believe that any scheme of the suffrage, or any method of election, could divert that power into other quarters. — Disraeli (1836). 258 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY The trouble with modern Conservatism is that it is suf- fering from an absence of Conservative thinkers. Disraeli was the last; for Lord Randolph Churchill was practically driven out of the party owing to his excessive originality. — /. M. Kennedy (Tory Democracy). The Tory party has been called in modern times Con- servative. It desires, indeed, to stand in the ancient ways. But it is the vision which it has inherited, and not the unconsecrated past, which it desires to preserve for the present and bequeath to the future. ... It believes in the Crown, because the Crown is the symbol and stay of the unity of the Commonwealth; it believes in a national church because it believes in the conservation of the Com- monwealth; it believes in a national system of economy, such, and so suited to the genius of the Commonwealth, that human welfare is the first care and the first charge on the production of wealth, and while agriculture is not sacrificed to industry, neither is industry sacrificed to agri- culture. — Lord Henry Bentinck (Tory Democracy) . Temperamental sympathy, common in youth, is apt, like optimism, to run thin with advancing years. This, in fact, is the secret of the number of reversions from Libe- ralism to Conservatism among elderly men. — /. M. Robert- son. The word Tory had from the first a political application. Originally it designated a particular class of Irish free- booters, and was probably first used in Ireland to express, in a calumnious form, that class of politicians who attri- buted to the king a right of levying taxes without consent of the subject appearing by his proxy in Parliament. — De Quincey. CHAMBERLAIN. [Page 260 Chapter XIX. CHAMBERLAIN AND IMPERIALISM. THE complete change of view which appeared to be indicated by Joseph Chamberlain's defection from the English Liberal party in 1886, and his alliance with the Conservative party, signalised by joining Lord Salisbury's Cabinet, in 1895, does not seem to have been so surprising to those who were intimate with him as it was to the world at large. Lord Morley, who knew his mind well, observes that "it is an error to suppose that Chamberlain ever had anything like complete sympathy with the Manchester programme. As I was writing about Cobden towards the end of the seventies, our talk naturally fell now and again upon colonies, non-intervention, foreign policy. Without any formal declaration of dissent, I still had an instinctive feeling that the orthodox Cobdenite word was by no means sure of a place in the operations of the future leader." This passage is chiefly convincing by reason of its source, and any confirmation of it can only increase our wonder that during the years when Chamberlain was a leader and the hope of what he himself called "aggressive Radicalism," he should have concealed his Imperialistic leanings so suc- cessfully. In his Radical days he was regarded by the horrified Tories as a new Jack Cade made in Birmingham. He had then spoken of Gladstone as "the greatest man of his time," and of Salisbury as "the most immoral of poli- ticians." He had referred to England as "a peer-ridden country," and to the Conservative party as "the old stupid party," as comprehending "fossil reactionaries," and as a heterogeneous combination "who unite their discordant voices in order to form a mutual protection society for assuring to each of its members place, privilege and power." Yet after the split in the Liberal party on the Irish Home '261 262 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY Rule question, Chamberlain, with the coolness that was habitual with him, declared that not he but circumstances had changed. The circumstances of his political environment had cer- tainly changed, and if his new associations brought to the front of his mind views which he had formerly kept at the back, it seems reasonable to assume that if he had not been warped out of the Liberal party by his inability to concur in Gladstone's Irish policy, his latent Imperialism would not have become vocal. It is possible that among the many speeches delivered by a leader of opinion who spoke so frequently as Chamberlain did, there may be some passages manifesting an interest in colonial questions before 1886, but an examination of the two volumes of his collected speeches reveals only one such utterance, delivered in 1885:— i "If foreign nations are determined to pursue distant colonial enterprises we have no right to prevent them. We cannot anticipate them in every case, by proclaiming a universal protectorate in every unoccupied portion of the globe's surface which English enterprise has hitherto neglected; but our fellow subjects may rest assured that their liberties or rights, and their interests, are as dear to us as our own, and if ever they are seriously menaced the whole power of the country will be exerted for their defence, and the English democracy will stand shoulder to shoulder throughout the world to maintain the honour and integrity of the Empire." That was said in Chamberlain's Radical days, but it is generally true that until he accepted the office of Secretary of State for the Colonies in the Salisbury Government in 1895 he had been chiefly concerned with domestic and com- mercial questions. Foreign policy had scarcely interested him, and the colonies did not appear to be much in his mind. Indeed, the political world was surprised by his choice. 2 But Chamberlain was a man of exceptional vigour and alert- ness, and whatever department of state he might be called i Boyd, "Chamberlain's Speeches" (two vols., 1914), Vol. I., p. 136. 2 "Surprise" is the word used by two historians of modern England — Gretton, "Modern History of the English People," Vol. II., p. 378, and Marriott, "England Since Waterloo," p. 32(5. Mr. Boyd, the editor of ( hamberlain's Speeches, also says that he "surprised the public mind by taking the position of Secretary of State for the Colonies." CHAMBERLAIN 263 upon to administer, he would be bound to have a policy, and to work for it with enthusiasm. The Colonial Office had hitherto been regarded as rather a refuge for some politician whom the Prime Minister wanted to have in his government, but could not fit in conveniently anywhere else. That Chamberlain would not accept it in that light was certain. When he swung his own party, the Liberal Unionists, into line with the Conservatives, he could have had any office in the Salisbury Cabinet except the chief one. He deliberately chose the Colonial Office, because he had come to the conclusion that there was important work to do there. The reason why Chamberlain saw this opportunity will become clearer if we follow out two lines of enquiry — the first relating to the changed attitude of people in Great Britain towards the self-governing colonies, and of those colonies towards Great Britain; the second affecting the anxiety of British manufacturing classes as to their trade in colonial and foreign markets. There was a school of British politicians, not large, but with representatives in high places, who cared nothing for colonies, believed that they would soon insist upon their independence, and did not want to be bothered with them. It has been usual to call this the Manchester school, and to say that Cobden was its prophet. But it existed before Cobden had anything to do with politics, among statesmen who had nothing to do with the Manchester way of think- ing. As previously pointed out, Lord Melbourne, in send- ing Durham to Canada, troubled nothing about whether that country remained British or did not, but was afraid of the discredit which would attach to him and his Ministry if the breach occurred while they held office. Disraeli, assuredly no Manchester politician, once spoke of "those wretched colonies, a millstone round our necks." Lord Glenelg, a Colonial Secretary, thought that Great Britain "had colonies enough," and would if he could have pre- vented the settlement of Victoria, South Australia and New Zealand. But the effect of extending responsible govern- ment to the colonies was quite different from what was anticipated by those politicians who feared that it would conduce to speedy separation. The competence of these British communities oversea to legislate for their own 264 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY needs, to develop their enormous territories, to shape their policy so as to anticipate dangers, and at the same time to hold their place in the British concourse of peoples with dignity and self-reliance evoked the admiration of men of imagination in Great Britain. Chamberlain may not have paid much attention to colonial politics until he was far advanced in his political career; but when he did, a man so discerning and capable could not fail to be attracted by the clear-eyed, youthful vigour which he now surveyed. The second aspect of the subject touched Chamberlain as one who had been a manufacturer of hardware, and who was the foremost representative of the largest centre of hardware manufacture in the world, Birmingham. It was very important to Birmingham, and indeed to British manu- facturers generally, that they should retain their hold on colonial markets. In some trades they were faced with a most aggressive world-wide competition, which filled many of them with alarm. The self-governing colonies and dominions in nearly all cases had protective tariffs, which necessarily imposed obstacles to the importation of British manufactures. Indeed, colonial manufacturers, with busi- nesses established under the shelter of tariffs, had more to fear from British than from any other competitors, and when a colonial protectionist spoke of "the foreigner" he always meant the British manufacturer as well as the pro- ducer under another flag. Chamberlain's new-found admi- ration for colonies was perfectly genuine, but along with it went the strong hope that he might be the shaper of a new colonial policy, which would conserve colonial markets for British manufacturers and secure for them more favourable terms than were conceded to really "foreign" competitors. Hence the Imperialism of which Chamberlain emerged as the exponent in 1895 developed for itself a mercantile basis. In 1902, after a visit to South Africa, he propounded a policy of "tariff reform," which meant the thin end of the wedge of Protection, coupled with a policy of preferential trade with the colonies and dominions ; and, being unable to carry his party with him, he resigned from the govern- ment in 1903. The years which followed, until Chamberlain's death in July, 1914, were not propitious to the success of his new cause, and he must have been disappointed with the little CHAMBERLAIN 265 progress made. They were years of high trade prosperity. So far from British exports declining, they mounted up- wards. Eloquence was wasted in demonstrating the danger to trade under a system which, in fact, refused to afford any evidence of anything but buoyancy. Nor was there an inclination on the part of the Dominions to accept the limitations of scope which Chamberlain desired to mark out for them. Both Canada and Australia, it is true, granted a preference to British goods in their customs tariffs, but he had asked for more than that. Chamberlain had put the case for British manufacturers quite frankly in his important Glasgow speech in 1903 : — "We can say to our great colonies : 'We understand your views and conditions. We do not attempt to dictate to you. We do not think ourselves superior to you. We have taken the trouble to learn your objections, to appreciate and sympathise with your policy. We know that you are right in saying that you will not always be content to be what the Americans call a one-horse country, with a single indus- try and no diversity of employment. We can see that you are right not to neglect what Providence has given you in the shape of mineral or other resources. We understand and we appreciate all that, and therefore we will not pro- pose to you anything that is unreasonable or contrary to this policy, which we know is deep in your hearts. But we will say to you : After all, there are many things which you do not now make, many things for which we have a great capacity for producing — leave them to us, as you have left them hitherto. Do not increase your tariff walls against us. Pull them down when they are unnecessary to the suc- cess of this policy to which you are committed. Do that because we are kinsmen — without injury to any important interest — because it is good for the Empire as a whole, and because we have taken the first step, and have set you the example. We offer you a preference ; we rely on your patriotism, your affection, that we shall not be losers there- by.' "! There were, then, according to Chamberlain's desire, to be certain things which the Dominions did not then make which they were not to try to make — "leave them to us as l Boyd's edition of "Chamberlain's Speeches, - ' Vol. II., p. 140. 266 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY you have left them hitherto." That was a proposition which no Canadian or Australian protectionist would have enter- tained for an instant. It cut at the very roots of the pur- pose for which their tariffs were instituted, namely, to aid in establishing new industries, as well as maintaining those which were established. Commercialism of this type had only to be explained to be condemned to failure. But there are other aspects of the Imperial question than the commercial. Chamberlain, by his capable energy and warmth of sympathy, did more than any predecessor at the Colonial Office not only to give importance to it as a Depart- ment of State, but also to make people in the Dominions feel that there was at last in Downing Street a statesman with the industry and insight to understand their prob- lems. Lord Milner, fresh from South Africa, did not speak too strongly when he said: "There was a man in Downing Street in my time, and there was that in him which made every remote servant of the state work with a better heart and a keener purpose, and made the colonies, with whom Downing Street has often been a byword for bureaucratic rigidity and aloofness, begin to believe in a new Downing Street full of vigilance and sympathy." It can- be said in confirmation of that statement that without exception Aus- tralian statesmen who had to do business with Chamberlain found him remarkably keen and sympathetic. Some of them had tough passages with him — notably the delega- tion who were in charge of the Commonwealth Bill when it was before the Imperial Parliament in 1900. The altera- tions made in the judiciary clauses at Chamberlain's instance caused many misgivings. In clumsy hands the business might have been dangerously mismanaged. But nobody resented his mode of handling it, nor doubted that his motives were truly actuated by regard for Imperial welfare. Much of what goes by the name of Imperialism misses any mark at which it is worth while to aim. There is, for example, no advantage in having an Empire which is so many millions of square miles larger than any other poli- tical aggregation of earth, unless the size ensures a fuller and richer life for the people living within that Empire than they would enjoy without it. Mere multitudinousness, the worship of bigness, the having under one flag of lands CHAMBERLAIN 267 on which the sun never sets, all for the sake of painting red splashes on the map and indulging in boastful raptures, are but megalomania — rhetoric expressed in terms of terri- tory. It may minister to a form of pride, and it furnishes inspiration to a certain school of minor poets, but if there were no other advantages it would hardly command endur- ing respect. Chamberlain was too practical a statesman to be content with an Empire of perorations. He wanted to do something valuable with it. Strength, however, is an advantage, for strength entails security, and security is one of the concomitants of human happiness. Security Bentham referred to as "that inesti- mable good, the distinctive index of civilisation." No elevated standard of life can be maintained by a community which is not strong enough to protect itself from aggres- sion. On general moral and political grounds it may be said that the forces which work for effecting and maintaining the union of peoples are always good, whilst those which work for severance are bad. There are normally too many causes of jealousy, suspicion, hatred and envy among the peoples of the earth. It is so much gained for peace, frater- nity and progress when the four hundred millions within the British Empire form at all events one solid block, amongst whom there is a working basis of good will and a common desire that justice shall reign. The best possible has as yet by no means been done to use the capacity of the whole of this great union for the good of its less for- tunately endowed members. But it is an immense achieve- ment to have such an aggregate of human energies directed for the most part to the maintenance of peace and pros- perity over nearly eleven and a half million square miles of the surface of the globe. It ensures a very considerable limitation of the area of confusion and strife. The necessities of modern civilisation make it impera- tive that the white races inhabiting the temperate regions shall have access to the natural resources of tropical and sub-tropical countries. It is obvious that life as it is now lived could not be supported without abundant supplies of rubber, oil, copra, coffee, tea, cocoa, timber, and many other products which we derive from such lands. Some of these commodities were of little or no use to the primitive peoples 268 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY inhabiting the countries whence they are obtained, until the more advanced races, through their inventiveness, found a use for them. They are now used and required in unlimited quantities. The world cannot do without them. Industries which employ thousands of people and minister to the needs of millions would perish if they could not be obtained. Rubber, for example, is a necessary article for electric and motor transport work. Copra is necessary for soap-making. It is interesting to observe that many German Socialists, whose party was fiercely opposed to colonising schemes when Bismarck sanc- tioned them, afterwards, when the importance of tropical products to German industries came to be realised, became insistent that Germany must have direct access to and control over areas from which such things are obtained. While the world, then, must have these goods which were largely valueless to coloured peoples before the white races began to use them, we must consider that we owe it to those from whose lands we take such products to render services to them in return ; and this debt we can discharge only by aiding in their advancement to a higher stage of development. A civilised human being gets more out of life than an uncivilised one does; otherwise there would be no advantage in being civilised. We might as well be cave men if life did not yield us a better kind of existence than the cave man enjoyed. A candid student of the his- tory of the white and coloured races has to admit that there is much in it which is discreditable. Apart from the hor- rors of the slave trade — happily a thing of the past — more recent times have witnessed many incidents which it would be comfortable to forget but which it is salutary to remem- ber. The obligations which are due to backward races can only be discharged if the necessary traffic with their coun- tries be conducted under an Imperial system wherein an informed and vigorous public opinion will insist on right being done. As a rule, no life is so demoralising to Europeans as life in tropical countries where there is a teeming coloured population. Unrestrained power always commits abuses, and the power wielded by traders over ill-protected peoples is almost bound to lead to wrong-doing. Only by means of a well-organised Empire, adequately policed, disciplined CHAMBERLAIN 269 under law, and actuated by a quick and healthy conscience, can justice to native peoples, and a policy of protecting and advancing them, be ensured. It has been a positive mischief that Radical parties, Labour parties, Socialist parties, and the like, have hitherto revelled too much in the rhetorical denunciation of abuses, and have done all too little to help to ensure that such lapses shall not occur. It is idle and blind and foolish to refuse to recognise that European countries and countries colonised by Europeans cannot dispense with the things which are obtained from lands inhabited by backward races, and that without an Imperial organisation and an Imperial policy those commo- dities would be procured under conditions infinitely more injurious to such peoples than is at present the case. As soon as democracies recognise their dependence in this regard they will realise their equivalent obligations, and then Imperial policy will be strengthened in the direction of ensuring for the lower races of mankind the education to fit them for a more advanced civilisation. There is an ample political biography of Chamberlain by S. H. Jeyes, and a useful collection of his more impor- tant speeches edited by Boyd. On Imperialism, Ramsay Muir's Expansion of Europe is very suggestive. Severe criticisms of Imperialism are contained in works by John Hobson and J. M. Robertson. An Empire is the aggregate of many states under one common head, whether this head be a monarch or a pre- siding republic. — Burke. Imperialism is Space converted into Wealth through Labour. — E. Corradini. The choice to-day is not between an Imperialism and liberty, but between an Imperialism and an Imperialism. — Romain Rolland. The British Empire is not founded on might or force but on moral principles — on principles of freedom, equality and equity. It is these principles which we stand for to-day as an Empire. — Jan Smuts (1917). 270 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY I have in my possession a Bill drawn up in the early sixties of the last century by one of the most distinguished law-makers of England, in consultation with prominent statesmen of the time — a Bill prepared in every detail for submission to Parliament, providing for the gradual but resolute separation of the great self-governing colonies from the Motherland. The framer of that Bill told me that it fairly represented the political thought of his time. This does not look as if greed of territory and lust of world power had been the permanent policy of the Empire. — G. R. Parkin. Men who indulge in the rational ambition of Empire deserve credit if they are in any degree more careful of justice than they need be. — Thucy elides. My own experience certainly leads me to the conclusion that the British generally, though they succeed less when once the tide of education has set in, possess in a very high degree the power of acquiring the sympathy and confidence of any primitive races with which they are brought in con- tact. Nothing struck me more than the manner in which young men fresh from some British military college or university were able to identify themselves with the in- terest of the wild tribes in the Soudan, and thus to govern them by sheer weight of character and without the use of force. — Lord Cromer. Imperialism is a depraved choice of national life, im- posed by self-seeking interests which appeal to the lusts of quantitative acquisitiveness and of forceful domination surviving in a nation from early centuries of animal struggle for existence. Its adoption as a policy implies a deliberate renunciation of that cultivation of the higher inner qualities which, for a nation as for an individual, con- stitute the ascendancy of reason over brute impulse. — /. A. Hobson. The contact of the English race with native races in India, and the process by which the former is giving the material civilisation, and a tincture of the intellectual cul- ture, of Europe to a group of Asiatic peoples is only part of that contact of European races with native races and of that Europeanising of the latter by the former which is going on all over the world. France is doing a similar work in North Africa and Madagascar. Russia is doing CHAMBERLAIN 271 it in Siberia and Turkistan and on the Amur. Germany is doing it in tropical Africa. England is doing it in Egypt and Borneo and Matabele Land. The people of the United States are entering upon it in the Philippine Islands. Every one of these nations professes to be guided by philanthropic motives in its action. But it is not philanthropy that has carried any of them into these enterprises, nor is it clear that the immediate result will be to increase the sum of human happiness. — Lord Bryce (1913). The words "Empire" and "Imperialism" come to us from ancient Rome ; and the analogy between the conquer- ing and organising work of Rome and the empire-building work of the modern nation-states is a suggestive and stimu- lating analogy. The imperialism of Rome extended the modes of a single civilisation, and the reign of law, which is its essence, over all the Mediterranean lands. The im- perialism of the nations to which the torch of Rome has been handed on, has been made the reign of law, and the modes of a single civilisation the common possession of the whole world. Rome made the common work of Europe possible. The imperial expansion of the European nations has alone made possible the vision — nay, the certainty — of a future world-unity. For these reasons we may rightly and without hesitation continue to employ these terms, pro- vided that we remember always that the aim of a sound imperialism is not the extension of mere brute power, but is the enlargement and diffusion, under the shelter of power, of the essentials of Western civilisation : rational law and liberty. It is by its success or failure in attaining these ends that we shall commend or condemn the imperial work of each of the nations which have shared in this vast achievement. — Ramsay Muir. Imperialism as a political doctrine has often been repre- sented as something tawdry and superficial. In reality it has all the depth and comprehensiveness of a religious faith. Its significance is moral even more than material. It is a mistake to think of it as principally concerned with extension of territory, with "painting the map red." There is quite enough painted red already. It is not a question of a couple of hundred thousand square miles more or less. It is a question of preserving the unity of a great race, of enabling it, by maintaining that unity, to develop freely on 272 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY its own lines, and to continue to fulfil its distinctive mission in the world. — Lord Milner. From historical analogies, Imperialism is a term that automatically suggests the extension of rule by military force over unwilling peoples. Similarly, colony conveys a distinct concept of inferiority of status, and also the idea of ownership by the parent community. These misleading implications have not only somewhat alienated sympathy from what is essentially a movement towards greater cohesion among kindred peoples, but they have retarded progress towards the real goal by keeping alive vestiges of the old system. — G. L. Beer. TOLSTOY. [Page '274 Chapter XX. TOLSTOY AND PACIFISM. LEO TOLSTOY died on 20th November, 1910, closing a long life of eighty-two years while on his way from his home to a solitude in which he hoped to spend his last days in peaceful meditation. Rarely has the death of a man touched so many hearts in any single generation, or made such widely different classes of people feel that one of the exceptional among mankind had ended his course, as did that of Tolstoy. By the simple peasants of Russia, who venerated him as a seer and a friend, and the most cultivated in all lands, who hailed him as a supreme literary artist, by thousands of people who had read his imaginative works for pleasure, and thousands who pondered his social and moral writings as revelations of a rare mind, he was held in such honour as genius alone can never command, however great it may be, and as rank alone can never merit. There are men in every age who can be called great, but who are only great for their age. Tolstoy was not one of that kind. He was an international man, and a man possessing that projecting force which pene- trates far beyond present time. Of his very wonderful books, War and Peace and Anna Karenina, and the many vivid stories of lesser bulk which he produced, it is not to the purpose to speak now. They have their place apart among the fine things of the world's literature. Nor is it necessary to review generally his copious deliverances on a large variety of topics, except to note a characteristic which bears upon our particular theme. Tolstoy, like most persons of artistic temperament, ex- pressed himself through his feelings rather than through his reason. He did not think out problems; he leapt to conclusions about them. Reasoning was a roundabout road which pedestrian thinkers might follow; he preferred 275 276 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY the swifter, aviating way. In the little book of his Essays and Letters are opinions on religion, ethics, science, govern- ment, drinking, smoking, novels, vegetarianism, and many other subjects, thrown off from time to time as he felt moved to express himself on things which came under his notice. Sometimes he is vehement, sometimes ironical; he is always sincere, but he is rarely convincing. An essay by him on Shakespeare and the Drama contains some excru- ciatingly bad criticism. It is so bad, indeed, that, though we know that Tolstoy read English easily, we are driven to wonder whether he read Shakespeare, not in the original, but in an inferior translation. That might account for his wild charge that all the characters in King Lear speak, "not their own, but always one and the same Shakespearean pretentious and unnatural language." It might appear to be so in a poor translation ; but let anyone take the play and compare the speeches of, say, the Fool, Lear, and Cor- delia, and he will see at once that Tolstoy's criticism is not merely absurd, it is positively false. One of Tolstoy's biographers comments on his "feeble and erratic attempts to carry out his convictions," which "led him to an endless succession of tortuous evasions and semi-comic, semi-pathetic self-contradictions." Those con- tradictions were, indeed, part of Tolstoy's being. One-half of his nature was continually at war with the other, until in extreme old age the battle was won — and then, like the Lear of the play which he so sadly misunderstood, he fled into the wilderness. He was at once a Western man and an Oriental, a sen- sualist and a mystic, an artist and a prophet. The saint in him wanted to run away from the sinner, and the two were pent up together in the same skin, to the disgust of the Tolstoy who had to be both of them at once. Ho tells us in his strange Confessions how in early manhood he wallowed in dissipation and gambled away his substance, and would then suffer agonies of self-condemnation. He made rules for his guidance as severe as those of monastic orders, and broke them on impulse. He gasped after per- fection, and debased himself in animalism. At length he married, "to put an end to the disorders of his tempestuous youth," and was still tortured because even in marriage he found he was not the anchorite he aspired to be but could by no means make himself. His ideals mocked him with TOLSTOY 277 their non-fulfilment, and his flesh mocked him with its insis- tence. He wrote pieces pouring contempt on art, yet he w 7 as a consummate artist; he professed to scorn even his own imaginative writings, yet he went on producing them, and left several stories and plays which were published after his death. He was a terrible man to live with. The irascibility of genius suffering from an overworked brain is a familiar phenomenon in biographical literature; but this powerful genius made his own case more acute by the obsession of a yearning after sanctity which would not have satisfied him if he had attained it, and was in any case unrealisable by a man with a nature like his. Who looks to this troubled seer, then, for serene and sober guidance in the affairs of life, whether personal or political, will be likely to find disappointment. His light does not burn steadily ; it blazes like a lighthouse beam and it flickers like a damp candle. His philosophy did not fit his own life and is not adapted to fit the life of the world. Yet we feel his greatness in almost every page that he wrote. There is the authentic touch of the master upon the sen- tences which poured from him with such a copious flow. He is by turns theologian, sociologist, and critic; but he is always the artist also, didactic but passionately alive, creative and intensely human. From his humanity, and from the religious vein in him which dominated his motives, sprang the views on war and patriotism with which we are now concerned. It certainly was not a religion of the churches, which he detested no less than he detested governments. Excommunicated by the orthodox Russian church, he assailed its solemnities as "barbarous superstitions," and declared that what priests called blasphemy was no more than "the exposure of their imposture." He spoke of the Church of England' as "that great lying church," founded by that "bloated monster" Henry VIII. Roman Catholicism "with its prohibition of the gospels and its Notre Dames," Protestantism "with its holy idleness on the Sabbath Day and its bibliolatry," came alike under his stinging censure ; but he had a kindly thought for the Salvation Army. It was official and semi- official religion of all kinds that offended him. For "the Kingdom of God is within you," and great rich organisa- tions, presided over by popes, cardinals, bishops and pastors. 278 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY made a great noise and split hairs about the letter but neglected the spirit. Tolstoy made his own religion out of his own heart with the aid of the New Testament, and' it was not the religion of any sect on earth; nor would he have had it adopted by any sect. What Tolstoy found in the teachings of Christ he accepted fully, literally and with all implications; and that is why he proclaimed himself a Pacifist. He found in the Sermon on the Mount the command: "But I say unto you that ye resist not evil ;" and he insisted that Christ meant the injunction to be accepted without equivocation or evasion. It was meant to apply to personal life and the life of communities. Tolstoy enlarged on this theme in his book The Kingdom of God is Within You, and in several shorter papers, notably in his "Letter on Non-Resistance" and his pieces entitled "Thou Shalt Not Kill' 'and "Patriot- ism and Government," included in Essays and Letters. A true Christian, according to Tolstoy, could take no part in war, could make no use of weapons, and could not resist a transgression by another. He could not voluntarily contribute money to assist a govern- ment which is supported by military power. He could not willingly pay taxes to such a government, though he could not resist the payment of them. He could not take part in elections, courts of law, or the administration of govern- ment, because he would thereby be participating in the vio- lence of the government. Satan, he urged, cannot be driven out by Satan, falsehood cannot be purged by falsehood, nor can evil be conquered by evil. True non-resistance is the only real method of overcoming evil. Evil will not perish by bringing other evils into conflict with it. But was this a practicable policy ? Yes, answered Tolstoy, as practicable as any other virtue. Good deeds could not be performed in all circumstances without self-sacrifice, privations, suffering, and, in extreme cases, loss of life itself. Tolstoy accepted this extreme interpretation of the non-resistance doctrine and held it to be sound. He often discussed it with his friends, to whom he professed his readiness to abide by its most extreme consequences. The taking of life in any form was repugnant to him. When the argument was pushed to the length of asking whether he would advise refusal to kill such a beast as a wolf, he replied that he would. "As an instance of the length to TOLSTOY 279 which Tolstoy carried his theory of non-resistance, Anout- chin mentioned that he once asked him, 'May I kill a wolf that attacks me?' and Tolstoy replied, 'No, you must not; for if we may kill a wolf we may also kill a dog, and a man, and there will be no limit. Such cases are quite exceptional, and if we once admit that we may kill, and may resist evil, evil and falsehood will reign in the whole world unchecked, as we see now is the case.' " 1 It seems a pity that his interlocutor on this occasion did not descend in the scale of sentient life, and demand of Tolstoy whether he condemned the killing of flies, fleas, mosquitoes and even microbes. Adhering to his principle, he would have had to reply in the affirmative. The micro- scope shows us infinitely minute organisms which are as voracious in a drop of water as the thresher shark is in the Pacific Ocean. A few ounces of phenyle or a house- maid's scrubbing brush may work a holocaust among living creatures. A good filter is an instrument of prodigious slaughter. To drain a swamp is to take life on a gigantic scale. To eradicate malaria in a tropical district is to make deadly war on the anophales mosquito. But may not such evils be resisted? According to the Tolstoyan ethic, appa- rently not. From a man who objected in such a thorough-going manner to the taking of life, antipathy to armies, military service, and the use of force in every guise was a matter of course. Tolstoy would have condemned the Bolshevist tyranny as strongly as he condemned the Tzardom, and would have met with less tolerance from it than he did from the government of Nicholas II. He not only denounced war, but the making of arms and the drilling of men. Crowds, he said, allowed themselves to be hypnotised by ranks of men "dressed up in fools' clothes, turned into machines to the sound of drum and trumpet, all, at the shout of one man, making one and the same movement at one and the same moment." The meaning of it all was very clear and simple — it was merely a preparation for killing. The whole organisation of governments, in his view, is based on violence. There would be no need of governments if men would cease desiring to kill one another. Patriotism was not a virtue but a vice ; "patriotism as a feeling is bad i Aylmer Maude, "Life of Tolstoy: Later Years," p. 474. 280 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY and harmful, and as a doctrine is stupid, for it is clear that if each people and each state considers itself the best of people and state, they all live in a gross and harmful delu- sion." Emancipation from patriotism would therefore be beneficial to mankind. It is evident that the Pacifism of Tolstoy went far beyond that of the ordinary anti-militarists who condemn war, and even preparations for defence as conducing to war. Many thousands of men and women who are not pacifists, including professional soldiers, regard war as a barbarous expedient for settling international disputes, and heartily lend their support to other methods. But that was not enough for Tolstoy. He did not merely condemn war because it is cruel, brutalising and destructive. He condemned the use of force and the taking of life in all circumstances. He had rather have been killed by a wolf than kill one; assumably, he had rather have been killed by parasites or microbes than kill them. That to him was the logical conclusion of the "Passivism" which he preached, and he did not shrink from it. "Thou shalt not kill" was the command, and Tolstoy would not kill. In this particular Tolstoy was doubtless able to conserve his principle in practice to a greater extent than was pos- sible with some of his other doctrines. For, though the circumstances of his life gave to him a greater measure of freedom than is available for the mass of mankind, even he found that the imperative pressure of events made him unable to square practice with precept. One of the most sympathetic of his biographers tells us candidly that this was so: — "He never attained to that complete renunciation and surrender of self which he preached, and his life remained in flagrant contradiction with his teaching. Therefore the most uncompromising of moralists was doomed to a life of perpetual compromise ; the most sincere of men was doomed to a life of subtle evasion. He was opposed to railway travelling; and he thought that he had sufficiently satisfied his scruples by tramping once or twice from Moscow to Toula. He disapproved of the use of money ; nor did he ever carry any with him, but he let his servant carry a purse in his place. He disapproved of private property in land, and gave up all his property rights, including the copyright of his books ; but he made them over to his wife. TOLSTOY 281 He disapproved of doctors; yet he was prevailed upon to have a resident doctor in his house, and he called him a secretary. That Tolstoy should have contradicted himself on most vital points was inevitable when we consider the absolute and rigid nature of all his doctrines, and when we consider that it is impossible to live for one hour in this sublunary world without compromise. It is only in a monastery of Trappist monks or Carmelite nuns that the absolute rules supreme." 1 If, then, Tolstoy was unable to carry out his theories in such comparatively simple matters as using railway trains, dispensing with money, and doing without a physician, can we accept his non-resistance principle as workable in the world at large ? And should we desire to do so if we could ? Was it desirable that one of the finest imaginative literary artists of his age should be killed by a wolf — if he had been so situated as to raise the alternative — rather than that the beast should be slain? The consequence of not killing the wolf, if Tolstoy had been attacked by one shortly after his conversation with Anoutchin, would have been that he would not have written Resurrection and the posthumous stories, whereas the consequence of killing the wolf would have been that it would have been prevented from slaying this and other human beings. Which was the preferable alternative? Is it true that resistance to evil perpetuates evil? If so, why should it not be equally true that resistance to good perpetuates good? But, in fact, whatever progress the human race has made has been accomplished by encourag- ing what was believed to be good and restraining what was believed to be evil, and whenever these encouragements and restraints have been relaxed evil has increased and good has decreased. The employment of force for the suppression of wrong-doing is justified by human experience. There is no experience to show that the contrary policy would be successful, and Tolstoy does not allege that there is. He was aware that the contrary is -the case. People behaved dishonestly towards those Russians who sought to carry out his principles, because they knew that "with you Tolstoyans we can do what we like; you won't defend yourselves, and won't employ the law against us." l Sarolea, "Life of Count Tolstoy." p. 372. 282 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY It is commonly said that our civilisation rests upon force, and the fact that we require policemen, law courts and sol- diers seems to give colour to the assumption. But it is only partially true. Force is required only to deal with excep- tional occurrences at various times. It is much more true* that civilisation rests upon good will, because, fortunately, good will reigns to such an extent among enlightened people that force is not required to be exerted upon them. We should not depreciate the extent to which good will reigns, as we can by no means minimise its importance. The vast majority of people have never required the attentions of a policeman. If the fact were otherwise society would soon disintegrate, because the minority could not all be police- men, and even if they were the majority would sooner or later defeat them. There is, happily, more love of right than of wrong among civilised beings, more good will than harmful disposition, and it is really upon this beneficent basis that civilisation rests. Tolstoy's denunciation of war is no stronger than that of many other writers who nevertheless recognise that armies and navies have been as indispensable in inter- national transactions as the policeman is in civil affairs. Such arguments as those of Bernhardi, that war is a human necessity, or of those who urge that war promotes the sur- vival of the fittest, are hardly worthy of refutation. War, in fact, uses up wastefully the best energies of a nation, and has no use for its inferior elements. It destroys the young, the brave, the enterprising, and leaves the wastrels un- touched by its fires. Napoleon, the supreme master of war, declared it to be "the trade of barbarians, in which the whole art consists in being strongest at a given point." If there were soundness in the argumet of those who have attempted to justify war on the ground that its ultimate effects upon mankind are beneficial, there ought to be a great war at least in every generation, and not to have one would be a serious omission to employ an agency of welfare. But the nation which has made the most boastful parade of this philosophy has paid so severe a penalty for it that the prophets of Ammon are hardly likely to be listened to again, until a generation arises which forgets the lessons of the past. The same point, however, as meets us in dealing with the non-resistance principle generally has to be faced on TOLSTOY 283 the question of war as a social factor. War is a conflict of wills. A large group of people called a nation wills to do a certain thing, which is inimical to the interests of another group of people. The aggressor uses force to achieve his purpose ; the opponent uses force to prevent him. Admittedly, there is no question of such an appeal to physical force deciding the moral issues involved. In the middle ages criminal charges were determined by the ordeal of trial by fire or water. It was believed that Divine wisdom would preside over the process of compel- ing an accused person to plunge his hand in boiling water, or in fire, and pluck forth a stone. If he succeeded he was innocent; if he were burnt or scalded he was guilty. Knights who accused each other of things affecting their knightly honour fought, and the justice or otherwise of a charge was determined by the ordeal of battle. It would have been much more sensible, all now see, to hear evi- dence and judge the issue accordingly. The ex-German Kaiser, throughout the great war, vociferously appealed to the "God of Battles" to make his country victorious, in very much the same spirit as appeal was made when resort was had to the ordeal hundreds of years ago. Even the ex-Kaiser would hardly desire to repeat the experi- ment. The method is not only cruel and wasteful; it is absurd. But acknowledging that a process is absurd does not dispose of it. What kept Europe in the condition of an armed ca'mp before 1914 was not, as often most fatuously asserted, the efforts of armament firms, soldiers and army contractors, but the existence in the centre of the continent of a Great Power whose rulers and whose people alike had been reared upon a philosophy of force, who believed that they were invincible, and who were determined to seek an occasion for imposing their will upon the rest of the world. Other nations could no more hope to meet this menace by a gospel of non-resistance than a volcanic eruption could be quelled by reading the Beatitudes. It had to be met by superior force and overthrown. The small groups of Pacifists in the belligerent countries included a few men of genius, like Mr. Bertrand Russell and Monsieur Romain Rolland — men to whom respectful attention is due. But they offered no solution of the agonising perplexity which faced Europe. They simply told us in very beautiful Ian- 284 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY guage that they disapproved of war. They might with as little futility have told us that they disapproved of earth- quakes. If the philosophy of force had not been over- thrown in the struggle between 1914 and 1918, it would have been the immoral law by which the world would have been governed for a century to come. We now have at least a hope of better things; we should have had none in that calamitous contingency. Pacificism has much to be thankful for in the result of the war, even if those who fought in it and those who gave their lives in a righteous cause had little reason to feel thankful to the Pacifists. Tolstoy's views on non-resistance are most fully ex- plained in his book The Kingdom of God is Within You and in the papers printed in the collection of his Essays and Letters. The best commentaries on his life and work are the books of Mr. Aylmer Maude, Life of Tolstoy: First Fifty Years and Life of Tolstoy: Later Years. Dr. Charles Sarolea's Count Tolstoy: His Life and Work is a good short book. What I am opposed to is not the feeling of the Pacifists but their stupidity. My heart is with them, but my mind has a contempt for them. I want peace, but I know how to get it, and they do not. — Woodrow Wilson (1917). It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions in favour of vegetarianism while the wolf remains of a different opinion. — W. R. Inge. War has relapsed into all the savageness of old times, without the bright honour and brilliant courage that used to make one overlook its cruelty. — Lady Bessborough (1805). A mere universal disgust with war is no more likely to end war than the universal dislike for dying has ended death.— H. G. Wells. War is not merely justifiable but imperative when peace is only to be obtained by the sacrifice of conscien- tious conviction or of national welfare. — Theodore Roose- velt. Man has invented Fate that he may make it responsible for the disorders of the universe, those disorders which it was his duty to regulate. — Romain Rnlland. TOLSTOY 285 He must not be a man but a statue of brass or stone whose bowels do not melt when he beholds the bloody tragedies of this war, in Hungary, Germany, Flanders, Ireland, and at sea, the mortality of sickly and languishing camps and navies, and the mighty prey the devouring winds and waves have made upon ships and men. — William Penn (1693). The (primitive) Christians were not less adverse to the business than to the pleasures of this world. The defence of our persons and property they knew not how to recon- cile with the patient doctrine which enjoined an unlimited forgiveness of past injuries and commanded them to invite the repetition of fresh insults. . . . But while they incul- cated the maxims of passive obedience, they refused to take any active part in the civil administration or the military defence of the Empire. Some indulgence might perhaps be allowed to those persons who, before their conversion, were already engaged in such violent and sanguinary occu- pations ; but it was impossible that the Christians, without renouncing a more sacred duty, could assume the character of soldiers, of magistrates, or of princes. This indolent, or even criminal, disregard of the public welfare exposed them to the contempt and reproaches of the pagans, who very frequently asked, What must be the fate of the Em- pire, attacked on every side by the barbarians, if all man- kind should adopt the pusillanimous sentiments of the new sect? — Gibbon. Savage as have been the passions commonly causing war, and great as have been its horrors, it has, throughout the past, achieved certain immense benefits. From it has resulted the predominance and spread of the most powerful races. Beginning with primitive tribes, it has welded together small groups into larger groups, and again, at later stages, has welded these larger groups into still larger, until nations have been formed. At the same time military discipline has habituated wild men to the bearing of restraints, and has initiated that system of graduated sub- ordination under which all social life is carried on. — Herbert Spencer. In my opinion there never was a good war or a bad peace. — Benjamin Franklin (1783). As civilisation advances an equipoise is established, and military ardour is balanced by motives which none but a 286 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY cultivated people can feel. But among a people whose intel- lect is not cultivated such a balance can never exist. — Buckle. There are panegyrists of war who say that without a periodical bleeding a race decays and loses its manhood. Experience is directly opposed to this shameless assertion. It is war that wastes a nation's wealth, chokes its indus- tries, kills its flower, narrows its sympathies, condemns it to be governed by adventurers, and leaves the puny, deformed and unmanly to breed the next generation. Inter- necine war, foreign and civil, brought about the greatest set-back which the Life of Reason has ever suffered ; it exter- minated the Greek and Italian aristocracies. Instead of being descended from heroes, modern nations are descended from slaves ; and it is not their bodies only that show it. ... To call war the soil of courage and virtue is like calling debauchery the soil of love. — George Santayana. MATTHEW ARNOLD. [Page 288 Chapter XXI. MATTHEW ARNOLD AND EDUCATION. THE reason for the choice of Matthew Arnold as the man around whom we may centre a consideration of thought upon education, is not that he was an original force in this field, like Pestalozzi or Froebel, nor because any particular theory or system is associated with his name. His father, Thomas Arnold of Rugby, was in many respects a more considerable educationalist than he — a schoolmaster of distinguished attainments, who, whether as organiser, reformer of methods, or practical teacher, exerted an influence on English education which is not likely to fade as long as national ideals of culture are valued. In some respects it might be more profitable to examine the life and thought of Thomas Arnold, and endeavour to apply what is most fruitful in them to the educational problems of our time. But Thomas Arnold's experience was not so wide as that of his brilliant son, whose long career of thirty-five years as an inspector of schools, and whose several studies of continental systems of education, gave him an outlook which the head of a great public school could not have acquired. Moreover, Matthew Arnold was in himself a singularly interesting person — one of the outstanding men of letters of the Victorian age ; a poet whose finest work ranks with the best in English verse ; a critic of exquisitely discriminating taste if occasionally of wayward judgment. That he had certain well-defined views about education, and especially about aspects of it which it is here desired to emphasise, warrants the present preference for him. Some of the writers on Matthew Arnold have expended regrets on the circumstance that he who wrote so much that was rarely beautiful should have had to spend a large part of his life in the laborious drudgery of inspecting 289 290 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY elementary schools. That he found the work irksome and sometimes exhausting is true. His collected letters contain many passages commenting upon the dull routine of going from school to school, hearing nervous teachers giving lessons on the steam engine, gunpowder plot, indiarubber, the nature and properties of the apple, simple arithmetic, and endless other things, to classes of little boys and girls, induced to assume an air of interested docility by the pre- sence of the eminent inspector representing the Board of Education. We are even touched when we read that the author of "The Strayed Reveller" and "The Scholar Gipsy," after one long day, "having eaten nothing since breakfast, sent out for a bun and ate it before the astonished school." But there is really not much cause to lament in Arnold's case. It is a mistake to suppose that a poet, even a great poet, is a being who needs to be secluded from the rude world and freed from any kind of regular occupation in order that he may write poetry every day and always. He is likely to be the better for being brought in contact with life in some of its humdrum activities, and there is no particular reason why he should not sometimes get tired, just as ordinary unpoetical people often do. Arnold once wrote: "The work I like is not very compatible with any other; but we are not here to have facilities found for us for doing the work we like, but to make them." That spirit certainly was better than one of complaint because he had to earn his living like most other mortals. He was not, moreover, incessantly inspecting elementary schools ; and when he was so engaged was not greatly overworked. English public servants rarely are. At all events, he found time during his life to write so many poems, critical essays, books and miscellaneous articles that his bibliography com- prises 178 items, and the fifteen substantial volumes of his collected works testify as much to his leisured opportuni- ties as to his intellectual industry. A little volume which is not included in that collection is of especial interest for our present subject. It consists of the reports on elementary schools which Matthew Arnold, in the course of his duty, furnished to the English Educa- tion Department during his long career as an inspector, together with extracts from his reports on teachers' train- ing colleges. 1 One of his biographers claims that he was l "Reports on Elementary Schools, 1852-1882," by Matthew Arnold, new edition edited bv F. S. Marvin, 1908. MATTHEW ARNOLD 291 the greatest inspector of schools Great Britain has ever possessed. He undoubtedly wrote the most interesting reports ever furnished to a department. They are as care- fully and elegantly written as the best prose Matthew Arnold ever penned, entirely characteristic of his refined and subtle mind, full of finely expressed common sense and ripe human wisdom. If the elementary school system of Great Britain has been much improved since he was an inspector, as is indeed the case, the reforms must have been largely due to his influence ; not so much, perhaps, in regard to particular details as to the broad spirit, the clear defini- tion of educational aims, which he laid before "my lords" at Whitehall. Those reports are still of living value. Teachers and educational authorities can learn from them things good for them to know, which they will not find so admirably stated elsewhere ; and even the reader who appreciates chiefly the Arnold of "Thyrsis," "The Forsaken Mermaid," and "Essays in Criticism," may allow that, though more excellent sonnets and lyrics might have been produced if the inspector of schools had not had to write these reports, still they are in themselves literature of no inferior quality. Perhaps the literary reader may be surprised to find how practical Arnold was in his criticisms upon teaching and things taught, and how clearly he pointed out the useful purpose of the various subjects of the curriculum. Naturally, he set great store by the teaching of good litera- ture. He severely criticised the poor stuff contained in some of the old reading books which he found in use, and insisted that children should be introduced to good prose and the best of poetry. But observe how he emphasised the educational value of making the sense of words thoroughly understood by the scholars, for the very practical object of enlarging their vocabulary — "I believe that even the rhythm and diction of good poetry are capable of exercis- ing some formative effect, even though the sense may be imperfectly understood. But, of course, the good of poetry is not really got unless the sense of the words is thoroughly learnt and known. Thus we are remedying what I have noticed as the signal mental defect of our school children — their almost incredible scantiness of vocabulary." Again, observe how he attributed a practical purpose to the teaching of grammar: — "I attach great importance to 292 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY grammar as leading the scholars to reflect and reason, as a very simple sort of logic, more effective than arithmetic as a logical training because it operates with concretes, or words, instead of with abstracts, or figures." It was not merely the aesthetic value of poetry, or the structural ele- ment in grammar, that he indicated as the ultimate educa- tional value of these two elementary subjects, but their efficacy in the formation of the mind of the child, the enlargement of his capabilities of speech, and the training of his logical faculties. Only a man who was a real educator could have pointed out those things with the imaginative insight which looks beyond the lesson to the purpose of education — the unfolding and strengthening of the mental powers of the pupil. Similarly, in regard to all subjects of elementary educa- tion, Matthew Arnold's reports continually keep in the foreground the object of awakening latent powers, of open- ing the windows of the soul to let in light and air. The teacher is exhorted to give his pupils "some knowledge of the world in which they find themselves, and of what hap- pens and has happened in it; some knowledge, that is, of the great facts and laws of nature, some knowledge of geo- graphy and history, above all, of the history of their own country. He has to do as much towards opening their mind, and opening their soul and imagination, as is possible to be done with a number of children of their age, and in their state of preparation and home surroundings." Lite- rary man as he was, he was keen for the teaching of the elements of science and the laws of health ; only here again he insisted on the real educational purpose being kept steadily in view. "The fruitful use of natural science itself depends in a very great degree on having effected in the whole man, by means of letters, a rise in what the political economists call the standard of life." Matthew Arnold wrote two long reports on higher educa- tion, which he considered sufficiently important to have reprinted as books; they are contained in the twelfth volume of his collected works. The first dealt with the higher schools and universities of France, the second with those of Germany. It is extremely interesting to notice that he was not so much enamoured of the German system as many English writers were before the great war. He thought it elaborate, though productive of "a well-informed MATTHEW ARNOLD 293 people if you will, but also a somewhat pedantic and some- what sophisticated people ;" whereas he credited the French with perceiving that democracy was becoming a growing power in Europe, and with having organised democracy, in their schools and colleges, as well as politically, "with a certain indisputable grandeur and success." He attributed very much of the excellence of French prose to the method of studying languages practised in their institutions, observ- ing with interest and approval that even the study of Latin and Greek were "cultivated almost entirely with a view to giving the pupil a mastery over his own language." Here again we find recurring that feature of Arnold's educational criticism which was indicated above — his insis- tence on each subject of study having a practical purpose. He applied that test to high schools and universities as well as to elementary schools. What should a particular subject of study do for the student? It should give him information; good. But what else? It should open his mind, unfold his faculties, in some particular direction ; it should develop some capability in him — memory, imagina- tion, logical reasoning, observation, power of expression, method, understanding of himself and of the world, of his country's history, government, and so forth. In the writings described Matthew Arnold dealt with educational principle and practice. In another vein — that of good-humoured irony — he expressed some valuable opinions on the parody of education by which the upper classes of Great Britain were prepared for the duties of their exalted station. The sixth and seventh chapters of his delightful Friendship's Garland represented his intelli- gent young Prussian, Arminius von Thunder-ten Tronckh, enquiring into the qualifications of a country bench of magis- trates. Viscount Lumpington was a peer of old family and great estate, the Reverend Esau Hittall was -a sporting vicar, Mr. Bottles was a wealthy Radical manufacturer. The two former represented the land and the church. Both had been to public schools and to Oxford, where, having hunted and feasted away their time, they got their degrees at last "after three weeks of a famous coach for fast men, four nights without going to bed, and an incredible consump- tion of wet towels, strong cigars and brandy and water." Bottles went to the Peckham Acadamy, where a pedagogic impostor professed to inculcate his pupils with the latest 294 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY discoveries in science, "none of your antiquated rubbish, all practical work, lots of interesting experiments — lights of all colours — fizz! fizz! bang! bang!" The contemptuous opinion entertained by the young Prussian for the minds and the weird inefficiency of the peer, the parson and Mr. Bottles is, as depicted by Arnold, an exquisite piece of satire. People in England were talking about compulsory education when Friendship's Garland was written. Arminius, with his foreign impudence, thought the upper classes of England needed educating even more than others did. "Even at the lowest stage of public administration a man needs instruction," he insisted. "We have never found it so," he was assured. Arminius shrugged his shoulders and was silent. The entire British system of education thus came under Arnold's criticism — the elementary schools through his professional reports ; the public schools, the high schools, and the universities by comparison with corresponding insti- tutions in France and Germany ; the expensive substitutes for education in the case of the wealthy classes. In all these writings, whether seriously or satirically, he concentrated attention upon essentials and practical purposes. They were the writings of a man who knew what education ought to be and who realised the immense importance of it as a factor in the national life. Free and compulsory primary education in England originated directly from reports by him. The University Extension movement was largely due to his influence, and out of that in turn sprang the vigorous Workers' Educational Association movement, with its effort to bring about close contact between the best scholarship and thought of thp age and the democracy — that democracy which, with his clear vision, he pointed out was "preparing to take a much more active part than formerly in control- ling its destinies." It was with a nice sense of appropriateness that Arnold published his essay on Democracy as a preface to a reprint of his report on Popular Education in France. He there, in 1874, warned his countrymen that "the time has arrived when it is becoming impossible for the aristocracy of Eng- land to conduct and wield the English nation any longer." That he regretted for some reasons the passing of the old order he did not deny ; but it was inevitable. That he saw dangers in democracy he admitted ; but he believed that MATTHEW ARNOLD 295 these could be avoided by efficient popular education. "The superiority of the upper class over all others is no longer so great; the willingness of the others to recognise that superiority is no longer so ready." Education would remove the chief remaining differences. An ill-educated community under any other kind of polity than a democracy may endure, because it may obtain its competent leadership from a class above the general level. But an ill-educated democracy is a danger to itself, and, inevitably falling a victim to its. own ignorance, will fasten upon itself tyrannies as onerous as any which have oppressed mankind. An education policy should be a demo- cracy's first care. It must be a policy designed to train men and women in thinking, feeling and enjoying, as well as in working. Technical teaching is very necessary, but mechanism must not be permitted to displace humanism in our lives. Commercial efficiency is necessary also, but it may conduce to positive debasement unless balanced by moral efficiency. Education has two aspects which have to be kept steadily in view. It should confer advantages upon the individual, and upon the community of which he is a member. The education which does not enable a man or woman to get more out of life than would otherwise be possible misses its mark. The eye, the ear and the understanding alike need to be trained. Undeveloped faculties are blunted instruments. It is obvious that the artist in colour and form sees more and sees better than he who has never learnt to look for the things which are present to the vision of the artist, and that the musician hears meaning and beauty in combinations of sounds to which the uneducated ear is deaf. It is equally obvious that to the geologist and the botanist the aspects of a landscape and the vegetation with which it is clothed have a fuller significance than is possible to those to whom their import has not been revealed. These things, seen, heard and understood, make life richer. They enlarge the capacity for enjoyment. They make an addition to the sum and a deepening of the quality of being. Similarly, an understanding of the processes through which nations have been formed and their institutions developed, is necessary to a comprehension of their present condition. A knowledge of the past struggles of mankind, 296 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY of what men did in circumstances infinitely various in kind, and of why they acted so, of errors and their consequences, weaknesses and their penalties, should broaden the outlook, quicken the sympathies and increase the understanding of the learner. From all such subjects of study the individual should derive humanising benefits. A narrow view of the function of education is too often taken by some who overlook this aspect of the enrichment by its means of the individual life. Thus an artisan whom the editor of the Quarterly Review in 1918 induced to explain the ideas of his fellows, observed that "with all respect to learning, it is surely a mistake to throw open the avenues leading to it to children who have no chance of following them up." In the same spirit the Rev. Herbert Thurston, S.J., urges that "the vast majority must inevitably earn their bread by the sweat of their brow, and we believe that they will all be the happier and more contented with their lot if, with due regard to youthful infirmity and the acquisi- tion of the bare essentials of learning, they begin the pro- cess early." Apart from the condemnation of a class to a career of mechanical toil, which both these views express, there is surely the important point that large vistas of hap- piness are opened up to those who are educated to use their faculties in other fields than the earning of a livelihood. Admittedly, the drudgery of the world has got to get itself done ; but there really is no good reason why those who do it should be drudges all the time. Education can and should open up horizons lit with the sun of hope for the humblest, and a policy which does not aim at opening careers to those who have the wits and the will to advance towards these radiant distances is sadly lacking in inspiring ideals. The community also has its expectations from the educa- tion of its members. In the modern world an efficiently trained people is requisite to the maintenance of a position in the front rank of civilisation. Technical training in all branches of industry, commerce and agriculture has its champions, and they rightly insist upon its importance. We may expect from this training demands for a more direct share in the control of industry by those who educate them- selves to master its intricacies. There is nothing to be said for the retention of control by a class many of whose mem- bers are intellectually inferior to those whose services they command. If there is truth in the contention that ability MATTHEW ARNOLD 297 is a primary factor in production, as assuredly there is, then there should be abundant opportunities for ability to exercise itself and reap the rewards of its superiority. Careers should be open to talents in industry, as Napoleon opened them in war. An intelligent understanding of the processes of com- merce, of production, and of the economic forces of the world is likewise essential if ruinous strife is not to hold the field and prevent any substantial advance. It must be admitted with regret that in too many instances men allow themselves to be deluded by sophisms, clap-trap phrases, and the bellows-blown foolery of persons who talk at large without any sense of responsibility. The mecha- nism of industry is a much more delicate and complex affair than it seems to those who think that it can all be explained in a formula. An educational policy should provide for the proper analysis and capable exposition of this mechanism by competent and scientific men whom intelligent people will trust to investigate with sincerity and expound with disinterested honesty. Denunciation is an easy game, and denouncing the denouncers is an addition to folly. These things should be studied and explained carefully in a spirit of truth. When they are properly understood Boanerges with his throat of thunder will have less scope for his assaults upon the air of heaven than he appears to have at present in too many lands. Matthew Arnold's Reports on Elementary Schools, writ- ten between 1852 and 1882, have been collected in a little volume, edited by F. S. Marvin. His elaborate reports on education in France and Germany are reprinted in Vol. XII. of his collected works. Sir Johsua Fitch's book, Thomas and Matthew Arnold and their Influence on English Educa- tion, contains an excellent estimate. Two short books on Matthew Arnold are those by G. W. E. Russell and Herbert Paul, the latter in the English Men of Letters Series. I cannot approve of the requisition, in the studies of future statesmen, of so much theoretical knowledge, by which young people are often ruined before their time, both in mind and body. When they enter into practical life they 298 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY possess indeed an immense stock of philosophical and learned material ; but in the narrow circle of their calling this cannot be practically applied, and will therefore be forgotten as useless. On the other hand, what they most needed they have lost; they are deficient in the necessary mental and bodily energy, which is quite indispensable when one would enter efficiently into practical life. — Goethe. To direct the imagination to the infinitely great and the infinitely small, to vistas of time in which a thousand years are as one day ; to retrace the history of the earth and the evolution of its inhabitants — such studies cannot fail to elevate the mind, and only prejudice will disparage them. . . . The air which blows about scientific studies is like the air of a mountain-top — thin, but pure and bracing. — W. R. Inge. The exclusion of talent from careers, or, rather, the want of any provision for it, was the fatal policy of the old regime (in France), for which it paid very heavily. It was a just cause of smothered but widespread indignation and heart-burning, a grievance of first magnitude, from which many great and aspiring spirits had suffered, includ- ing even the prophet of the Revolution and the preacher of equality, Rousseau himself, who had fully felt the pangs that impoverished genius has to suffer. — William Graham. A thing not yet well understood and recognised is the economical value of the general diffusion of intelligence among the people. — John Stuart Mill. The education of the people is not only a means, but the best means, of attaining that which all allow to be a chief end of government; and, if this be so, it passes my faculties to understand how any man can gravely contend that government has nothing to do with the education of the people. — Macaulay. The state derives no inconsiderable advantage from the education of the people. The more they are instructed, the less liable they are to the delusions of enthusiasm and superstition, which, among ignorant nations, frequently occasion the most dreadful disorders. An instructed and intelligent people are always more decent and orderly than an ignorant and stupid one. — Adam Smith. Education is the first remedy for the barbarism which has been bred of the hurry of civilisation and competitive commerce. To know that men lived and worked mightily MATTHEW ARNOLD 299 before you is an incentive for you to work faithfully now, that you may leave something to those who come after you. — William Morris. The history of human progress has been mainly the his- tory of man's higher educability, the products of which he has projected on to his environment. This educability remains on the average what it was a dozen generations ago; but the thought-woven tapestries of his surroundings is refashioned and improved by each succeeding generation. — Lloyd Morgan. What is considered in education is hardly ever the boy or girl, the young man or young woman, but almost always, in some form, the maintenance of the existing order. When the individual is considered, it is almost exclusively with a view to worldly success — making money or achieving a good position. To be ordinary and to acquire the art of getting on is the ideal which is set before the youthful mind, except by a few rare teachers who have enough energy of belief to break through the system within which they are expected to work. . . . Hardly anything is done to foster the inward growth of mind and spirit; in fact, those who have had most education are very often atrophied in their mental and spiritual life, devoid of impulse, and possessing only certain mechanical aptitudes which take the place of living thought. — Bertrand Russell. Probably our higher education, properly tested, would be found to contain a far larger waste of intellectual "effi- ciency" than our factory system of economic efficiency. And this waste is primarily due to the acceptance and sur- vival of barbarian standards of culture, imperfectly adjus- ted to the modern conditions of life, and chiefly sustained by the desire to employ the mind for decorative and creative purposes. Art, literature, and science suffer immeasurable losses from this misgovernment of intellectual life. The net result is that the vast majority of the sons and daugh- ters even of our well-to-do classes grow up with an exceed- ingly faulty equipment of useful knowledge, no trained ability to use their intellects or judgments freely and effec- tively, and with no desire to attempt to do so. — /. A. Hobson. Acquirement of every kind has two values — value as knowledge and value as discipline. Besides its use for guiding conduct, the acquisition of each order of facts has 300 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY also its use as mental exercise ; and its effects as a prepara- tion for complete living have to be considered under both these heads. — Herbert Spencer. Children of the future, whose day has not yet dawned, you, when that day arrives, will hardly believe what obstruc- tions were long suffered to prevent its coming! You who, with all your faults, have neither the aridity of aristocra- cies nor the narrow-mindedness of middle classes ; you whose power of simple enthusiasm is your great gift, will not comprehend how progress towards man's best perfec- tion — the adorning and ennobling of his spirit — should have been reluctantly undertaken ; how it should have been for years and years retarded by barren commonplaces, by worn-out clap-traps. You will wonder at the labour of its friends in proving the self -proving ; you will know nothing of the doubts, the fears, the prejudices they had to dispel; nothing of the outcry they had to encounter; of the fierce protestations of life from policies which were dead and did not know it, and the shrill querulous upbraiding from publi- cists in their dotage. But you, in your turn, with difficulties of your own, will then be mounting some new step in the arduous ladder whereby man climbs towards his perfection, towards that unattainable but irresistible load-star, gazed after with earnest longing, and invoked with bitter tears; the longing of thousands of hearts, the tears of many gene- rations. — Matthew Arnold. WILLIAM MORRIS. [Page 302 Chapter XXII. WILLIAM MORRIS AND THE RELATION OF ART TO LIFE. IT is told of a Tory peer, once prominent in British politics, that, discussing some literary question with a friend in his library, he went to the shelves to look for a book; and as he searched his finger rested for a moment on his copy of The Odyssey of Homer, done into English Verse, by William Morris. "Ah !" he said, tapping the volume, "if I had known that that fellow Morris was going to become a Socialist, I wouldn't have had him bound in red morocco." Doubtless the adherence of this distinguished artist and man of letters to communistic Socialism in the eighties of the nineteenth century, and his frequently very vehement assertion of its principles in the course of the agitations into which he threw himself, were surprising and not a little shocking to many who had known him only as a poet, a designer of beautiful patterns, and a maker of fine fabrics. What relation could there be between the author of The Earthly Paradise and the stoutish man in a blue suit and a red tie who trudged along in draggle-tailed processions to make a noise in Trafalgar Square? What had the friend of Burne Jones and Dante Gabriel Rossetti to do with the editor of the Commonweal and the brazen-throated cohort who spurted out their general denunciations at street cor- ners? Truly there was a singular disparity between the artist who decorated mansions and the pamphleteer who asserted that in the modern world happiness in only pos- sible to artists and thieves ; between the creator of such a splendid epic as Sigurd the Volsung and the joint author (with H. M. Hyndman) of the pamphlet A Sinn man/ of the Principles of Socialism, and (with Belfort Bax) of the book Socialism: Its Growth and Outcome? 303 304 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY Yet perhaps the most interesting thing about the intel- lectual constitution of William Morris is that there was no inconsistency about his many activities. He was essen- tially, despite his great learning and his high accomplish- ments as an artist, much too simple a man to be inconsis- tent. His biographer states that "his principles changed very little when he became a declared Socialist," 1 and they changed even less afterwards. He did a great variety of things — designing wall papers and chintzes, weaving tapes- tries, making stained-glass windows, dying fabrics of wool and silk, making furniture, printing books, as well as writ- ing a very large quantity of poetry and prose, and trans- lating works from the Icelandic, Greek, Latin and mediaeval' French. The deft cunning of his hands was extraordi- nary; the creative energy of his imagination, as revealed not only in his verse but also in his wonderful prose romances, was unexampled. In doing these things, and in agitating for a complete reconstitution of human society, he performed tasks which were seemingly unrelated. But in truth his activities were manifestations of a completely unified character, and in doing them he was acting on the same principles, working towards the same end. He would have thought anyone a fool who believed that it was not so, and in some of his moods he would have said so in an eminently explosive manner. In the years when Morris was delighting lovers of Eng- lish poetry with a succession of volumes full of the fresh and vivid pictures which were his peculiar gift to litera- ture he was brooding over problems of industry, the crea- tion and diffusion of wealth, the production of base and vulgar materials instead of good, honest, and beautiful work. The ferment which was going on in his mind is revealed in occasional passages in his narrative verse. In the Invo- cation to Chaucer, in his Life and Death of Jason, he cried : "Would that I Had but some portion of that mastery That from the rose-hung lanes of woody Kent Through these five hundred years such songs have sent To us who, meshed within this smoky net Of unrejoicing labour, love them yet." The touch about "unrejoicing labour" in this early work adumbrates a point of view which in later years Morris i J. W. Mackail, "Life of William Morris." Vol. II., p. 164. WILLIAM MORRIS :-5or> was to emphasise insistently. Even in Sigurd the Volaung he spoke of a country something like his mature ideal, where : "Glad was the dawn's awakening, and the noontide fair and glad, There no great store had the franklin, and enough the hireling had, And a child might go Unguarded the length and breadth of the land. With a purse of gold at his girdle, and gold rings on his hand: 'Twas a country of cunning craftsmen, and many a thing they wrought That the lands of storms desired and homes of warfare Bought." Though Morris threw himself furiously into the Socialist movement, his point of view was his own, and he arrived at it by a different road than was trod by all but a few of those who styled him "comrade." He was the artist-craftsman offended by the products "made to sell" under the system of competitive commerce; he was the humanist made sick at heart by the squalor, poverty and degradation which he witnessed in the great centres of industry. It was through his craftsmanship that he thought his way into his political philosophy. Like many of the Oxford men of his day, he had his period of Radicalism; but he was not long satisfied with this attitude, which seemed to him to fail to grapple with fundamentals. There were two lines of approach which are distinctly traceable in Morris's writings on social questions, and if we understand what they were the reconciliation between his art and his Socialism becomes clear. He saw around him a great amount of misery caused by lack of work, by underpaid work, and by work which stunted the mental and moral qualities of the worker; and he saw also, amongst those who were in employment, much discontent, occasioned largely by the weariness and mono- tony of their daily labour. He was a very hard worker himself, and he knew that his work did not fill hjm with disgust and discontent but with joy. "I try to think what would happen to me if I were forbidden my ordinary daily work," he said in his essay on "Architecture in Civilisa- tion," "and I know that I should die of weariness and despair unless I could straightway take to something else which I could make my daily work." He spoke of himself in another paper as "a servant of the public" who earned his living "with abundant pleasure." Referring to his weaving work, he said, with a kind of chuckle very good to read, "to make something beautiful that will last, out of a 306 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY few threads of silken wool, seems to me a not unpleasant way of earning one's livelihood, so long as one lives and works in a pleasant place, with the workday not too long, and a book or two to be got at." Similar references to the pleasure which Morris got out of his work are frequent in his writings. He dwelt also on times before the Industrial Revolution, when workmen generally found pleasure in their labour. Political freedom they had not, but they found a satisfaction in pursuing their craft which the worker in a factory doing the same mechani- cal thing day after day can never find. Morris had an inti- mate knowledge of the history of craftsmanship, and in his many incursions into various kinds of production he made it his business to revive the best methods followed by artist workmen in the best periods. We now have machines for doing nearly everything, but a man who merely works a machine for so much a day can find no such pleasure in the output as the skilled craftsman found in the work of his hands and brain. Morris did not rail against the use of all kinds of machi- nery as John Ruskin did. He recognised that the wonderful products of modern engineering skill minimised the drud- gery that is incidental to the rough stages of all labour. "It is the allowing machines to be our masters and not our servants that so injures the beauty of life nowadays," he held. "In other words, it is the token of the terrible crime we have fallen into of using our control of the powers of Nature for the purpose of enslaving people, we careless meanwhile of how much happiness we rob their lives of." Consequently, though he did not condemn the use of machi- nery, and believed that a state of improved social order would probably lead at first to a great development of machinery for really useful purposes, he did desire to restore the popular arts, the craftsmanship, which made the labour of the workman of old a source of pleasure to him — of the kind of pleasure which the era of cheap mechanical produc- tion has largely destroyed. "Those almost miraculous machines," Morris wrote, "which if orderly forethought had dealt with them might even now be speedily extinguishing all irksome and unintelli- gent labour, leaving us free to raise the skill of hand and energy of mind in our workmen, and to produce afresh that loveliness and order which only the hand of man guided WILLIAM MORRIS 307 by his brain can produce: what have they done for us now? Those machines of which the civilised world is so proud — has it any right to be proud of the use to which they have been put by commercial war and waste?" Consequently he, a maker and designer of beautiful things, pleaded for a restoration of conditions of industry in which drudgery might be minimised by the right use of the marvellous pro- ducts of inventive genius, whilst at the same time the worker might once again find that satisfaction which a good craftsman always experiences in doing sound work which he enjoys. To his second main line of thought Morris was led by considering the hindrances to the establishment of a better state of things. Competitive commerce, in his view, floods the markets of the world with a vast output of rubbish, of useless pro- ducts, and of things ill made from bad material, which degrade those who make them, and render it exceedingly difficult for the skilled and honest craftsman to sell his genuine goods. By causing a great waste of material, waste of money, waste of time and waste of labour, they largely absorb the means by which people could, if they knew better, encourage good artist workmen to make and sell commodities of the best quality, produced under sound conditions, by self-respecting and happy people. Bad work- manship, bad material, and the making of useless things aroused Morris's anger more strongly than anything else. What a change would be made in the world, he cried, if no work were done but that which is worth doing! "I tell you," Morris said, "I feel dazed at the thought of the immensity of work which is undergone for the mak- ing of useless things. It would be an instructive day's work for any one of us who is strong enough to walk- through two or three of the principal streets of London on a week-day, and take accurate note of everything in the shop windows which is embarrassing or superfluous to the daily life of a serious man. Nay, the most of these things no one, serious or unserious, wants at all ; only a foolish habit makes even the lightest-minded of us suppose that he wants them, and to many people, even of those who buy them, they are obvious encumbrances to real thought, work and pleasure. But I beg you to think of the enormous mass of men who are occupied with this miserable trum- 308 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY pery, from the engineers who have had to make the machines for making them, down to the hapless clerks who sit day long year after year in the horrible dens wherein the wholesale exchange of them is transacted, and the shop- men who, not daring to call their souls their own, retail them amidst numberless insults which they must not resent to the idle public who doesn't want them, but buys them to be bored by them, and sick to death of them. I am talk- ing of the merely useless things; but there are other mat- ters not merely useless, but actively destructive and poison- ous, which command a good price in the market; for instance, adulterated food and drink. Vast is the number of slaves whom competitive commerce employs in turning out infamies such as these. But, quite apart from them, there is an enormous mass of labour which is .just merely wasted ; many thousands of men and women making Nothing with terrible and inhuman toil which deadens the soul and shortens mere animal life itself." A principle upon which Morris insisted throughout his writings on social subjects is that "no work which cannot be done without pleasure in the doing is worth doing." It was a craftsman's gospel, and he was thinking of occupa- tions into which it is possible for a measure of handiwork to enter. One does not find him meeting squarely the appli- cation of his principle to trades which are necessary to the life of the modern world, and which are therefore "worth doing," but are not capable of giving to those ■ engaged in them the kind of pleasure that a workman may find in weaving tapestry or in making furniture. Coal-mining is an example. But Morris was concerned with the modern world chiefly to demolish the social organisation upon which it rests. In his Utopian romance, News from Noivhere, he pic- tured with vividness and charm the kind of society which he favoured. But, though he tells his readers that the popu- lation of England as he there described it was about the same as at the end of the nineteenth century, the whole of the scenes suggest a country from which millions had somehow disappeared, leaving pleasant communities sur- rounded by gardens. The road from Hammersmith to the centre of London "ran through wide sunny meadows and garden-like tillage." All the houses were clean and pretty, and were surrounded by delightful gardens. Trafalgar WILLIAM MORRIS 309 Square was an orchard planted with apricot trees, and between it and the Houses of Paliament — used in this Utopia as a market for turnips and other vegetables, and a store- house for manure — ran an avenue of tall pear trees. It is all very fair and village-like, but England simply would not hold the population which she had at the end of the nine- teenth century if things ran as Morris represents them in his romance. To make room for such a sylvan paradise, there would have had to be much more than "decockneyising the place" and sending "the damned flunkeys packing," so that everybody could live "comfortably and happily," as the people certainly did in the picture-book, doll's house, peace- and-plenty, clean-and-tidy purlieus of News from Nowhere. Morris, in short, not merely expected "a vast revolution in the minds of all men such as had already happened in his own mind," as one writer upon him puts it. He pre- supposed a vast revolution which would somehow have cleared out about nine-tenths of the population, leaving as a remainder a community of artists wandering about in embroidered clothes, having an abundance of everything, including an abundance of leisure, and nothing much more irksome to bother about than falling in love and recovering from the disillusion thereof. The serious part of the philosophy of Morris, however, is not to be found in his romance, vivid and fascinating as that is, but in the many applications of his ideas on art to social theory which he expounded in his essays and lec- tures. He was a revolutionist, but those who would dismiss him as a mere dreamer — the "idle singer of an empty day" — are faced with the fact that he was in his own activities as practical a man as any in his generation. He was an eminently successful doer of things. What he set out to do as a craftsman he did better than anybody .else. He printed better books, wrought better designs for papers and fabrics, dyed and wove better materials, made better glass. He established standards of excellence in many branches of applied art. He put his finger upon a defect in modern industry when he spoke of the joyless monotony of the labour. which supplies the markets of the world, and he got nearer to the truth about the industrial problem than did the whole concourse of economists, makers of systems, and preachers of nostrums, when he said that "the chief duty 310 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY of the civilised world to-day is to set about making labour happy for all, to do its utmost to minimise the amount of unhappy labour." The particular contribution which William Morris made to the discussion of social questions, therefore, was that modern conditions of industry are fundamentally wrong because they have made rarer, and in many directions im- possible, that pleasure in work which comes from the par- ticipation of hand and soul in the doing of it. Art of any kind, Morris insisted, can never be produced without plea- sure, and "the divorce of the workman from pleasure in his labour" has destroyed his interest in his means of get- ting a living. The whole significance of Morris's participa- tion in the Socialist movement lies in his assertion of that doctrine. He said that he was a communist; he wrote, in conjunction with Belfort Bax, an exposition of the Marxian theory. But many other people could have done that better than he. There was not a glimmer of his own point of view in the voluminous writings of Marx, and, apart from his own personal following, there were few in the movement to which he devoted so much of his valuable energy who seemed to be touched by the arguments which were peculiarly his own. One of his Socialist associates bears witness to this statement: "Morris's views are little heeded and less under- stood even by many of his Socialist friends, who are all for the enhancement of the productivity of labour by its sub- division and the increased use of machinery." "Apart from a few young men and artists," says the same writer, "Mor- ris's art and his art theories have found their admirers chiefly among people who are old-fashioned Tories, or have no politics at all." That Morris was disappointed at the slight impression he was able to make seems hardly doubtful. He did not altogether abandon public advocacy, and he wrote Socialist pieces down to the year of his death ; but during the last ten years of his life he turned again to imaginative litera- ture, producing then the best of his exquisite prose romances, and applying his craftsmanship to the art of printing. His Kelmscott books, the fruit of this period, are famous, and competent judges are of opinion that no nobler volume has ever been produced from a press than his great folio Chaucer. . WILLIAM MORRIS 313 The disappointment with propaganda — though he may have been too stubborn a man to own it, and, despite much provocation, was too loyal-natured a man to turn on old associates — was probably two-fold. For one thing, he found many of his Socialist friends an extremely quarrel- some set of men, so much in the habit of denunciation that when not bespattering their adversaries they were rend- ing each other and turning one another out of this society or that. Secondly, it must have become evident to him that very few hoped for or cared for the kind of change that he would have liked to see produced. It was well, therefore, that in the evening of his wonderfully full and valuable life he gave himself more and more to work which he could do better than anyone else, and left the denounc- ing and agitating to those who revelled in it. It is possible to maintain that the teaching of Morris was as Utopian as that of the early Socialists, Owen, St. Simon and Fourier, and as economically unsound as that of the allegedly "scientific" school — which is indeed as little scientific as alchemy or astrology. He was a man of genius and of exceptional energy, whose art was a vital part of his life, and who believed in it so intensely that he thought that only a world of artists could be a happy world. He interpreted the past and diagnosed the present by artistic canons. But, in fact, people in the mass, in the ages when craftsmanship flourished, were no more happy than they are to-day. To assume from the fact that some beautiful things have come down to us — preserved by careful hands, or by some good luck, from the vast quantity which has perished, because they are beautiful — that therefore all things were beautiful when they were made and used, and that all men then were artist-craftsmen who worked in sheer love of their daily task, is much more than the historical evidence warrants us in doing. The thirteenth' century was not a period when all was joyous because everybody was an artist, any more than the twentieth century is a period when all is miserable because everybody is not an artist. But Morris, nevertheless, tried to hammer into the con- sciousness of his own generation a truth which its succes- sors will be the better for learning. The industrial world is sick of its own huge, soulless, vulgar mechanism. The 312 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY "wealthy lower orders," with their inane expenditure on things which they do not need, often for no better reason than that spending is a lavish habit with them, and the poorer "lower orders," who would spend equally lavishly on the same worthless things if they could, are equally depraved by the ill-organised wastefulness of modern com- merce. Thoughtful men in all classes are agreed that there is need for a readjustment of social relations. Yet there is grave danger of administering remedies that will cure nothing. It would, for example, bring no comfort to work- men to adopt a system of Socialism or Communism if they found that under it they were worse off than before, since an equal division of gains, if the dividend were of lesser value than a former wage, would merely spell loss all round. Nor would even an increased gain bring satisfaction if it did not carry increased happiness. In that case old dis- contents would simply assume new forms. The sailor on a raft who is gasping with thirst does not want more water ; he has all the ocean around him ; he wants sweet water, which will refresh and cool him. The exasperations of our time do not arise from an unequal division of wealth, and an equal division of it would not lessen them. They arise from some causes which many believe to be remedial if the will to remedy them possessed those who have autho- rity ; and from other causes which are connected with the nature of mechanical routine industry. That is to say, they are psychological as well as economic. The great war revealed a percentage of physical unfitness which astonished and alarmed those statesmen who have a regard for national welfare. If measurements and medical tests could have had regard to soul-sickness the result would have been not less disconcerting. The remedies are not doses from the pharmacopoeia of Utopia, but the ensuring of a larger leisure for those engaged in monotonous and drudg- ing occupations, and the teaching of how to use this leisure for making life more joyous and profitable, and richer in the things that bring contentment and peace. The standard biography of Morris is that of J. W. Mackail. A short book on him by Alfred Noyes is included in the English Men of Letters Series. The Art of William Morris, by Aylmer Valance, is richly illustrated with WILLIAM MORRIS 313 examples of his designs. John Drinkwater's William Morris is also an excellent appreciation. The books by Morris himself which contain his best work on social and artistic subjects are Signs of Change, Hopes and Fears for Art, and Architecture, Industry and Wealth. Art without industry is guilt, but industry without art is brutality. — Ruskin. We ought to get to understand the value of intelligent work, the work of men's hands guided by their brains, and to take that, though it be rough, rather than the unintelli- gent work of machines or slaves, though it be delicate; to refuse altogether to use machine-made work, unless where the nature of the thing compels it, or where the machine does what mere human suffering would otherwise have to do. — William Morris. Art is not an isolated thing ; it does not merely happen, as Whistler said. We know that it is a symptom of some- thing right or wrong with the whole mind of man and with the circumstances that affect that mind. We know at last that there is a connection between the art of man and his intellect and his conscience. It was because William Mor- ris saw that connection that he, from being a pure artist, became a Socialist and spoke at street corners. — A. Clutton- Brock. The nineteenth century was the age of faith in fine art. The results are before us. — G. Bernard Shaw. The law of nature is inevitable that the thing cut off from use is cut off from life. A class whose splendour and luxury are the decoration on solid services performed may be yet secure. But a class whose splendour and luxury are their own sole justification and aim in life is heading dead for the guillotine. — L. March Phillips. The work of William Morris is characterised by the deepest insight into the past. But as a true and deeply sincere artist of the nineteenth century, alive to all the actual needs of the present and still more straining towards a desirable future, his historic sense is permeated with the love of truth which forced the literary as well as the pic- torial artist to face nature. — C. Waldstein. The art of a nation is an epitome of the nation's intel- 314 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY ligence and prosperity. There is no such thing as cosmo- politanism in art? Alas, there is! and what a pitiful thing that thing is. — George Moore. The message that art has to deliver is ever the same and yet never the same. The emotions of mankind from which it is fed are constant in their recurrence; but each new voice that is rightly tuned to give them utterance finds fresh harmonies that echo, without repeating, the still unchallenged strains of the singers of an earlier day. — J. Comyns Carr. It is true that Morris, for all his greatness, never faced the fact that we cannot both eat our cake and have it ; cannot use slow methods of production and also turn out without overwork large quantities of consumable wealth. Once, while I listened to him lecturing, I made a rough calculation that the citizens of his commonwealth, in order to produce by the methods he advocated the quantity of beautiful and delicious things which they were to enjoy, would have to work about two hundred hours per week. It was only the same fact looked at from another point of view which made it impossible for any of Morris's work- men — or, indeed, for anyone at all whose income was near the present English average — to buy the products either of Morris's workshop at Merton or of his Kelmscott press. There is no more pitiful tragedy than that of the many followers of Tolsoy, who, without Tolstoy's genius or inherited wealth, were slowly worn down by sheer want in the struggle to live the peasant life which he preached. — Graham Wallas. The aristocrat, by his taste and his feeling for the acci- dentals of beauty, did manage to get on to some kind of terms with the artist. Hence the art of the eighteenth century, an art that is prone before the distinguished patron, subtly and deliciously flattering and yet always fine. In contrast to that the art of the nineteenth century is coarse, turbulent, clumsy. It marked the beginning of a revolt. The artist just managed to let himself be coaxed and cajoled by the aristocrat, but when the aristocratic was succeeded by the plutocratic patron, with less conciliatory manners and no taste, the artist rebelled ; the history of art in the nineteenth century is the history of a band of heroic Ishmaelites with no secure place in the social system, with WILLIAM MORRIS 315 nothing to support them in the unequal struggle but a dim sense of a new idea — the idea of the freedom of art from trammels and tyrannies. — Roger Fry. Art has no end in view save the emphasising and record- ing in the most effective way some strongly felt interest or affection. Where there is neither interest nor desire to record with good effect there is but sham art, or none at all. Where both these are fully present, no matter how rudely and inarticulately, there is great art. — Samuel Butler. In nothing does conservatism do so much harm as in art. Art is one of the manifestations of spiritual life in man ; therefore as when an animal lives it breathes, it gives out the constituents of breath, so also if humanity is alive it displays the activity of art, and so at each moment art must be contemporaneous — i.e., the art of our own time. One must know where to find it (not in the decadents of music, poetry and romance), but one ought not to look for it in the past but in the present. People who wish to show off as connoisseurs of art, and for this purpose praise only the classical art of the past and revile that of to-day, simply prove that they are not sensitive to art. — Tolstoy. WOODROW WILSON. {Photograph : Undtrwood and Underwood) [Page 316 Chapter XXIII. WOODROW WILSON AND THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS. OF the twenty-eight Presidents who have held office in the United States of America, very few have been men of personal distinction. The first four — Washington, John Adams, Jefferson and Madi- son — had been tried by the stern ordeal of the revolutionary war, and owed their elevation to valuable public ser- vice. But after them came a commonplace procession of inferior politicians, thrown up on the beach by the waves of party storm. "Who now knows or cares to know any- thing about the personality of James K. Polk or Franklin Pearce?" asks Lord Bryce, 1 and the same question might be asked about John Tylor, Zachary Taylor, Martin van Buren, and the whole of the remainder till we come to Lin- coln in 1861. There was, indeed, a man of quality. Grant, too, was eminent as a soldier, though he proved to be a weak and mischievous president. After him the highest office in the gift of the great republic devolved once more upon half a dozen or so of worthy but uninteresting party nominees, till in 1901 a man of character and attainments stormed the White House in the boisterous person of Theo- dore Roosevelt. Among the twenty-eight, five may be marked as statesmen of eminent capacity, fit to be com- pared with the ablest of those who, by the process of politi- cal "natural selection," are celebrated in the history of other countries. They are Washington, Madison, Lincoln, Roose- velt and Woodrow Wilson. All five were concerned with great wars, which profoundly affected the history of the United States. But, apart from policy, they were men pos- i Bryce, "American Commonwealth," Y<>1. I., p. 77. The most interest- ing thing about Franklin Pearce is that his biography was written by a greater man than himself — Nathaniel Hawthorne. 317 318 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY sessing the gift of leadership, who were capable of achiev- ing eminence in other fields of effort than the political. The man in American history with whom one is most inclined to compare Woodrow Wilson is he who, after Washington, was best fitted to be president, namely, Alex- ander Hamilton. The author of the finest papers in the Federalist was one of the creators of the United States, and the book in which those luminous pieces of thinking appear is one of the classics of political literature. Anyone who would understand the principle upon which federal government in America was founded, and the mode of its operation, has to know two books, The Federalist of Hamil- ton and Madison, and the Congressional Government of Woodrow Wilson. Together they make the American state intelligible to the intelligent foreigner and to the American citizen. When President Wilson returned to America after his participation in the first stages of the Peace Conference, he related to a Boston audience (24th February, 1919) : "I met a group of scholars when I was in Paris — some gentle- men from one of the Greek Universities, who had come to see me, and in whose presence, or, rather, in the presence of whose tradition of learning I felt very young indeed — and I told them that I had had one of the delightful revenges that sometimes come to man. All my life I have heard men speak with a sort of condescension of ideals and of idealists, and particularly of those separated, encloistered persons whom they choose to term academic, who are in the habit of uttering ideas in a free atmosphere where they clash with nobody in particular. And I said, I have had this sweet revenge." The ex-Kaiser was one of those who were scornful about "a college professor" interfering in international politics. Woodrow Wilson is too chivalrous a man to have thought of giving particular direction to his "sweet revenge" against a fallen foe. But in truth such remarks, which are always stupid, were particularly inapt in his case. During his mature life he has been much occupied with large public affairs as well as engaged upon university work. From 1890 to 1902 Woodrow Wilson was professor of Jurispru- dence and Politics at Princeton ; from 1902 to 1910 he was President of that University; from 1910 to 1912 he was WOODROW WILSON 319 governor of the State of New Jersey ; and in 1912 he became President of the United States. When, therefore, he attended the Paris Conference of 1918, he had left twenty years of academic life behind him, and had been eight years engaged in strenuous public life, including the con- duct of two campaigns for the highest elective office in the world. His period at Princeton, too, was distinguished by a courageous effort to effect reforms by making the university a place within which a spirit of equality should prevail among the students — a spirit which was hin- dered at Princeton by the growth of a number of luxurious clubs for the sons of the idle rich. In that aim the reforming president was beaten by the force of circum- stances, but his policy was watched with sympathetic interest by those, not in America only, who cherish the true ideal of comradeship in the pursuit of scholarship. When Woodrow Wilson attained the Presidency he gave to the Democratic party one of the rare tastes of victory which it has had since the Civil War. In the intervening half century there had been but one Democratic President, Grover Cleveland, and he had had to work with a Repub- lican majority in Congress. But when the Democratic party swept the polls in 1912, its leader entered upon his first term of office with a Congress in sympathy with his policy. He was known throughout the United States as the author of some of the best books upon government that have been published in that country — his Congressional Government, mentioned above, The State, Constitutional Government in the United States, and Division and Reunion. His large History of the American People was valued by students as a sustained piece of brilliant writing, good to read as literature as well as packed with well-informed reflection upon his country's development. America knew, also, that she was entrusting her destinies to an experienced man of affairs, since his period of Governor of New Jersey had been eventful. To what extent the personality of Woodrow Wilson, or divisions in the Republican party, or a reaction towards Democratic policy, wa? responsible for the election of 1912 need not now concern us. It is at any rate certain that at that time no thought of war vexed the minds of people in either party. Europe was being rolled to the brink of 320 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY Inferno; but the men in the old world and the new who, from their study of political tendencies, were convinced that a world-war was brewing, were little heeded. The world went on its heedless way, letting its prophets pro- nounce their warnings with but little consciousness that they mattered much. The statesmen who cried "pooh-pooh ! there will be no war," were at least as confident as those who pointed to the signs and insisted on their meaning. Above all, the people of the United States felt secure in their great domain, convinced that if the nations of Europe hurled themselves against each other, it need be no concern of any person from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, and from the Atlantic seaboard to the Pacific slope. Was there not floating over them "that piece of dry goods" called the Star-Spangled Banner, and was there not the Monroe Doctrine, which Moses did not include among the Commandments only because there was no room for a thing so important on the two tables of stone? When the vast storm of passion and blood burst upon the world Woodrow Wilson was half through his first term. Another presidential election was due in 1916. It is true, and very honourable to American public life that it should be true, that there were eminent public men in the United States who pointed out that there were features of the war entailing issues to which a free, democratic people could not be indifferent. They insisted that the triumph of Ger- many and Austria would entail the overthrow of prin- ciples of human liberty which the American people should exert themselves to maintain. But Germany had her stipen- diary propagandists in America, who represented that the autocratic powers were as innocent doves attacked by birds of prey. It was difficult for the ordinary American citizen to make up his mind ; and was it necessary that he should ? Were his security and his interests menaced? But no Pre- sident could fling the power of the United States into the struggle unless he had the nation with him; for, great as are the powers of the President, he is the servant of the people, and must do no more than the people will have done. In those early years of the war, the Germans were so arrogant and confident that they bellowed to the universe the certitude of their invincibility. Who dared to come WOODROW WILSON 321 between them and the objects of their wrath must be crushed. Their submarines should sink any ship afloat, no matter to what nation it belonged. The threat was speedily put into execution. Passenger ships with American citizens on board were sunk. America cried aloud that such out- rages on the subjects of a neutral power were wanton and cruel breaches of the law of nations. The provocation to immediate war was great. But the German authors of these crimes were hardly less cunning than wicked. They knew that there was to be a presidential election in 1916, and they were well enough advised about American politics to be aware that the Presi- dent would do his utmost to avoid a war. The Democratic party is not the stronger party in the United States, and Woodrow Wilson was a Democratic President. If he could keep the country out of war, it would be likely in 1916 to entrust him with a further term of office, in the hope that he would still be able to maintain a pacific policy. The out- rages perpetrated by the Germans were, indeed, hard for a nation to endure. On 1st May, 1915, a German submarine sank the American oil steamer Gulflight, and on 7th May the sinking of the Atlantic liner Lusitania caused the death of twelve hundred persons, many of whom were American citizens. The President protested vigorously, but carefully refrained from using words of menace. More American lives were lost by the sinking of the Arabic in August. It became clear that the Germans had a contemp- tuous opinion of the United States. In a packet of papers which an American journalist was conveying to Germany and Austria in his luggage, and which was seized in Great Britain, the German military attache at Washington spoke of "these idiotic Yankees," and it was boasted that secret agents of the Germanic Powers were engaged, in stirring up strikes in America. But still the President exercised remarkable patience. The strain was great. Powerful men in America said that their country had been humili- ated and wronged unendurably. Citizens who had traversed the seas in pursuit of their lawful avocations had been murdered. Was there no limit to the wrong that might be done to the United States? The presidential election occurred in November, 1916, and Woodrow Wilson was again chosen as the chief magis- 322 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY trate of the nation. If the German rulers had not been inebriated by their own arrogant self-confidence, they would have had sense enough to realise that a President fresh from the country was in a much stronger position than the same President with an election in front of him. Those who calculated on Woodrow Wilson's weakness made a fatal blunder. But, so far from realising the difference, the German government early in 1917 announced a policy of unrestrained submarining. Then things in America began to move. The President made no more solemn protests. He dis- missed the German ambassador from Washington, called Congress together, and asked for power to arm merchant- men. It was the first clear sign of a war policy. On 2nd April he delivered a message to Congress, wherein he said : "We are now about to accept the gauge of battle with this natural foe to liberty, and shall, if necessary, spend the whole force of the nation to check and nullify its preten- tions and its power. We are glad, now that we see facts with no veil of false pretence about them, to fight thus for the ultimate peace of the world, for the liberation of its peoples — the German people included — the rights of nations great and small, and the privilege of men everywhere to choose their way of life and obedience. The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon trusted foundations of political liberty." It is not the present purpose to discuss the very gallant part taken in the war itself by the troops of the United States. In the history of the great conflict that story makes an inspiring volume. But from the beginning President Wilson set before the people of the United States — and, indeed, of the world, for his message to Congress had a universal appeal — an ideal nobler even than that of righteous vindication, with which the American armies were animated. He resolved to do his utmost to ensure that when peace was made it should be built upon such a foundation, and should comprehend such a machinery, as should make it difficult, if not impossible, for wars to occur. In his first war message, that of 2nd April, 1917, he made this larger purpose clear. The object in view was, he said, "to vindicate the principles of peace and justice in the life of the world as against selfish, autocratic power, and to set WOODROW WILSON 323 up amongst the really free and self-governed peoples of the world such a concert of purpose and action as will hence- forth ensure the observance of these principles." At the moment, therefore, when the vast resources and man-power of the United States were flung into the conflict, the states- manship of the President took a wider view than the achievement of the immediate purpose. Out of the barbari- ties and horrors of war should arise an organisation for preventing the recurrence of war. The idea of forming an association of civilised states for the purpose of preventing wars is very old. As long ago as 1305 a French lawyer, Pierre Dubois, "proposed an alliance between all Christian powers for the purpose of the maintenance of peace and the establishment of a per- manent Court of Arbitration for the settlement of dif- ferences between members of the alliance." 1 Sully, the Minister of Henry IV. of France, suggested a plan for the same purpose of 1603. Wise and humane men as various in their outlook as the Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius, the English Quaker Penn, the French wit Voltaire, and the German philosopher Kant, propounded projects for settling the differences of nations by other means than the cruel arbitrament of battle. But these were treated by statesmen generally as the amiable aberrations of impracticable philo- sophers. When the world was plunged into its great agony in 1914, a number of organisations sprang into existence in Great Britain and America, like the British League of Nations Society, the American World's Court League, the League to Enforce Peace, and the Organisation Centrale pour une Paix Durable, centred at the Hague, having for their object the pressing forward of a workable scheme which would make wars in the future impossible. These societies did valuable work, as did also the nume- rous authors who wrote books and pamphlets to educate public opinion in the same direction. But it was Woodrow Wilson who made the League of Nations a vital issue, to be settled at the Peace Conference as a necessary part of the treaty which the belligerent Powers would sign. In every speech which he made after the fateful deliverance to Congress in 1917, he returned to this subject as being as much a part of the policy of the United States as winning i L. Oppenheitn, "The League of Nations and Its Problems," p. 8. 324 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY the war. There was to be no peace without making pro- vision for perpetuating peace. In the celebrated Fourteen Points which he laid before Congress in January, 1918, this was the fourteenth: — "A general association of nations must be formed under specific covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small nations alike." True to his oft-repeated pledges, the President submitted a plan to the Peace Conference at Paris in February, 1919, and it was in due course embodied in the treaty. He would not consent to negotiate on any other subject until this vital set of provisions was agreed upon, and they were in fact placed in the forefront of the document. The plan for a League of Nations thus became an essential portion of the terms of settlement to which the victorious Powers responsible for framing it, and the defeated Powers which also signed it, were alike parties. The scheme set up a body of delegates with an Executive Council and a perma- nent Secretariat. It established a permanent Court of International Justice. It bound the signatories not to resort to war without submitting their causes of difference to arbitration. It bound the members of the League to sever all relations with any state guilty of violating its obligations and pledges. These provisions, and others to give effect to them, became, and now are, conditions on which the foreign relations of states are to be conducted. The League of Nations was taken out of the region of theo- retical discussion and made a reality by President Wilson's insistence. That was the great service which he rendered to the cause of peace among mankind. But will the League stand ? Will it weather the storms of international politics? The pessimists say that it will not. There is little utility in considering the multitude of hypothetical objections which may be raised. It may not be a theoretically perfect scheme. Plans for the control of the affairs of men rarely are. Defects can be remedied by consent if it be sincerely desired that the League shall be a success. Substantially, there would seem to be only three sources of real weakness, and they would be operative against any scheme. The first is lack of good will. If the nations desire to make the League work, they can do so, and in that case the provision for the reduction of armaments is compara- WOODROW WILSON 325 tively unimportant. Nations which have a heavy load of debt to carry, and which desire to improve the standard of living of their people, will not maintain huge armies and navies, at enormous cost, if the need for them is seen to diminish. The prodigal expenditure on armaments before 1914 was caused by the imminent danger of war; and that again was made obvious by the fact that the nations of Central Europe had been nurtured on a philosophy of war. But if there is no will to war — if, on the contrary, there is good will, a desire to maintain peace — armaments will dwindle from the very reluctance of people to pay for them. If, however, there is not good will, the League of Nations will not prevent war. Its machinery will be inadequate to obviate a group of Powers from defying the rest of the world, as Germany and Austria ruthlessly defied the rest of the world in 1914. The second source of weakness lies in the difficulty of making international readjustments by consent. It has been said that the League will "stereotype the existing boundaries of states however artificial they may be." It assumes that settlements made in 1919 will be suitable for ever. It makes provision for a static world. But condi- tions will change, as they have changed in the past. There will be clashings of interests as there have been in the past. It is impossible to foresee what dissatisfactions will emerge in the future from the settlements now made. The test of the strength of the League would arise if it were called upon to adjudicate upon a claim for a readjustment of territory involving acquisition by one nation and surrender by another; or involving a decision which a nation might deem to be an infringement of its sovereign powers and rights. The third source of weakness lies in the general indif- ference of democratic countries to questions of foreign policy, except their own, and then only in time's of excite- ment and crisis. The League of Nations was brought into being at a time when the wounds of war were bleeding, and the horror of it was vividly impressed upon the public mind. But that impression will fade in time. The next genera- tion, and the generation after that, will only know about the great war from what it reads in books, as people before 1914 knew about previous wars. Most of these books will dwell upon deeds of heroism, will extol the glory of sacri- fice, will describe the great battles as splendid conflicts of 326 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY brave men moved about by brilliant generals, whose por- traits will illustrate the pages, showing rows of stars and medals on their uniforms. The description of wars and battles has always been a special form of mendacity. No- body nourished on this kind of fare will pay much regard to the sickening, debasing side of war. Nations will tend to shake down into their own limits, will pursue their own policies, and their people will not trouble very much about the affairs of other peoples. The great lesson that modern war touches the interests of the whole world will be to a large extent unlearnt. Will the League of Nations count for very much then? Will the people of Tennessee or Minnesota be willing that the United States shall assert its enormous weight and influence to prevent a war about the Balkans or Central Asia? Security, and the sense of repose which security confers, will diminish the feeling of common concern for the welfare of the world. The United States has always been a country wherein the people have felt their remote- ness from Europe and its problems. There has even been a strong disposition to neglect United States interests when attention to them might entail a clashing with outside Powers. When President Jefferson proposed to buy Louisiana from France in 1801, representatives of the New England States were vehemently opposed to the policy. They thought that the thirteen colonies were quite sufficient in themselves, and disliked an increase of territory. When the question of cutting a canal through Panama was mooted, and it was seen that in the event of that work being com- pleted the Danish islands of St. Thomas, St. Crois and St. Jean would become important, it was proposed to buy them from Denmark. They could have been purchased in 1867 for $7,500,000. But the Senate rejected the proposition ; and in 1916 the United States had to pay $25,000,000 for them — the canal having been built, and there being now a danger that if America did not buy out Denmark some other Power might. The Senate blocked the acquisition of Hawaii for years, and not until the islands became of paramount impor- tance as a station on the highway to the Philippines was annexation sanctioned. People immersed in local, particu- larist policies do not take long views of things. Party issues and the needs of the moment restrict the vision. President Wilson, by the loftiness of his motives, and WOODROW WILSON 327 the simple directness, the chaste diction with which he enunciated his policies, elevated the political character of his country as no previous President except Washington had ever done. Me taught the Americans that, though they may not have a direct interest in European politics, they are "interested in the partnership of right between America and Europe." He tried to make them feel their part in that "keen international consciousness" which alone can make the people of one nation aware of their responsibility for the world at large. The keeping alive of that conscious- ness is the task of like-minded men in later generations. If they succeed the League of Nations may be a continu- ously operative machinery for settling the world's disputes. Success without American co-operation is certainly less easy than would be the case if the great Republic rose superior to partisan bickerings and to aloofness from the affairs of the world outside its borders. But the alternative to success spells menace to civilisation at large, from the ill consequences of which America could not escape. A large number of books on various aspects of the League of Nations has been published. Amongst the best are H. N. Brailsford's A League of Nations, a general political treatise ; L. Oppenheim's The League of Nations and Its Problems, an international lawyer's treatment of the subject; 0. F. Maclagan's The Way to Victory; Heber Hart's The Bulwarks of Peace; Sir George Paish's A Per- manent League of Nations, and a series of pamphlets pub- lished by the Oxford University Press. Several books have been published on Woodrow Wilson. Probably the best is H. Wilson Harris's President Wilson: His Problems and His Policy, which is more than a piece of ephemeral eulogy. War is a symptom of deep-seated evils ; it is a disease or growth out of social and political conditions. While those conditions remain unaltered it is vain to expect any good from new institutions superimposed on those condi- tions. If the League of Nations merely meant some new wheel to the coach, I do not think the addition worth mak- ing, nor do I think the vehicle would carry us any further. — Jan Smuts. 328 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY No nation can any longer remain neutral as against any wilful disturbance of the peace of the world. The world is no longer divided into little circles of interest. The world no longer consists of neighbourhoods. The whole is linked together in a common life and interest such as humanity never saw before, and the starting of war can never again be a private and individual matter for nations. — Woodrow Wilson. Envisage the situation ; realise the changes that have been made by the war, and the still more disastrous changes which, if the ambitions of competing powers are to con- tinue unchecked, will be wrought in the years that are before us ; and then tell me if you can suggest a method not only finer in its conception from the point of view of idealism and of abstract justice, but more practicable, more serviceable, more likely to attain its purpose of securing the permanent peace of the world than the idea of a League of Nations. — H. H. Asquith. For the preservation of peace all devices, such as inter- national conferences, arbitration, mediation and good offices, are or may be useful, according to the circumstances of the case ; but back of all this we must in the last analysis rely upon the cultivation of a mental attitude which will lead men to think first of amicable processes rather than of war when differences arise. — John Bassett Moore. The international mind is nothing else than that habit of thinking of foreign relations and business, and that habit of dealing with them, which regard the several nations of the civilised world as friendly and co-operating equals in aiding the progress of civilisation, in developing commerce and industry, and in spreading enlightenment and culture throughout the world. — Nicholas Murray Butler. A day will come when your arms will fall from your hands. A day will come when war will appear as absurd, and will be as impossible, between Paris and London, between Petersburg and Berlin, between Vienna and Turin, as it would be absurd and impossible to-day between Rouen and Amiens, between Boston and Philadelphia. A day will come when you France, you Russia, you Italy, you England, you Germany, all you nations of the continent, without losing your distinct qualities and your glorious individu- ality, will sink yourselves in a superior unity, and will con- stitute a European fraternity, absolutely as Normandy, WOODROW WILSON 329 Brittany, Burgundy, Maine, Alsace, all our provinces, are sunk in France. A day will come when bullets and bombs will be replaced by votes, by the universal suffrage of the people, by the venerable arbitrament of a grand sovereign senate which will be to Europe what Parliament is to Eng- land, what the Diet is to Germany, and what the Legislative Assembly is in France. — Victor Hugo (1849). If the sovereign princes of Europe would, for the same reason that engaged men first into society, viz., love of peace and order, agree to meet by their stated deputies in a general diet, estates or parliament, and there establish rules of justice for sovereign princes to observe one to another; and thus to meet yearly, or once in two or three years at farthest, or as they shall see cause, and to be styled the Sovereign or Imperial Diet, Parliament or State of Europe, before which sovereign assembly should be brought all differences depending between one sovereign and another that cannot be made up by private embassies before the sessions begin ; and that if any of the sovereignties that constitute these imperial states shall refuse to submit their claim or pretentions to them, or to abide and perform the judgment thereof, and seek their remedy by arms, or delay the compliance beyond the time prefixed in their reso- lutions, all the other sovereignties shall compel the submis- sion and performance of the sentence, with damages to the suffering party, and charges to the sovereignties that obliged their submission. To be sure, Europe would quietly obtain the so much desired and needed peace to her harassed inhabitants ; no sovereignty in Europe having the power and therefore cannot show the will to dispute the conclu- sion ; and consequently peace would be procured and con- tinued in Europe. — William Perm (1693). A League of Europe is not Utopian. It is sound busi- ness. — G. Lowes Dickenson. The great, the supreme task of human politics and states- manship is to extend the sphere of law. Let others labour to make men cultured or virtuous or happy. These are the tasks of the teacher, the priest and the common man. The statesman's task is simpler. It is to enfold them in a juris- diction which will enable them to live the life of their soul's choice. — *A. E. Zimmern. The League of Nations, if it is to succeed, must be based upon a common will to maintain the peace, and a common 330 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY readiness to repress the ambitions of those who seek to break it. No League has yet succeeded because men have hitherto built their states and churches on their differences from other men ; and he who would found a League of Nations must base it on their common interest in peace. Instead of a balance, we need a community of power, with no immunity for any one from its obligations and its respon- sibilities. — A. F. Pollard. The project of a League of Nations is the keystone of the new social order that Labour desires to build. — Arthur Henderson. The obligation is that if any nation will not observe this limitation upon its national action ; if it breaks the agree- ment which is the basis of the League, rejects all peaceful methods of settlement and resorts to force, the other nations must one and all use their combined force against it. The economic pressure that such a League could use would in itself be very powerful, and the action of some of the smaller states composing the League could perhaps not go beyond economic pressure, but those states that have power must be ready to use all the force, economic, military or naval, that they possess. — Lord Grey of Falloden. H. G. WELLS. [Page 332 Chapter XXIV. H. G . WELLS AND FUTURISM. MRS. HUMPHREY WARD has ventured the opinion that the most popular and prolific English author of our time will be forgotten in a generation or so. Mr. H. G. Wells, she is confident, "has not a par- ticle of charm," and charm is the one preservative of works of literature. Critical writers are rather fond of proclaim- ing what posterity will read and what it will neglect. They sentence their contemporaries to eternal oblivion with the recklessness of revivalist preachers predicting damnation for sinners ; or they foretell with equal assurance that other authors, whom they like, will be the favourite reading of ages unborn. Posterity may well be left to pick and choose for itself; and it will think itself quite capable of doing so, without our aid. But if this page should, through some freak of chance, meet the eye of a reader in a time when "the Rud- yards cease from kippling and the Haggards ride no more," he may be respectfully advised to pay no heed to Mrs. Humphrey Ward, but to make haste to come at a few brilliant short stories by Mr. Wells, like "^pornis Island" and "The Kingdom of the Blind," and at his longer novel, Kipps. If in the meantime anything better of their kind has been done, there will have been nothing seriously wrong with English imaginative literature. Another reason why it will be a pity if coming genera- tions do not read Mr. Wells is that they will by their neglect be deprived of an opportunity of comparing what the worM is like with what this specialist in Futurity said it would be. It should be interesting to note how near he came to the mark and how far astray he went. For Mr. Wells prides himself on his gift of prediction and his deep con- cern for what mankind will be likely to make of this planet, which as a business affair has been hitherto so sadly mis- 333 334 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY managed. In a piece of confession he has acknowledged: "Personally, I have no use at all for life as it is, except as raw material. It bores me to look at things unless there is also the idea of doing something with them. I should find a holiday doing nothing amidst beautiful scenery not a holiday but a torture. The contemplative ecstasy of the saints would be a hell to me. In the — I forget exactly how many — books I have written, it is always about life being altered that I write, or about people developing schemes for altering life." In other words, Mr. Wells is chiefly interested in the ferment of things, and in the nature of the brew which will come from it. It was probably from a recognition of Mr. Wells's ver- satile ingenuity that the authorities in England during the great war appointed him on a committee to advise upon inventions. Whether the committee did anything valuable is not known, but some time after this Mr. Wells brought forth a new work on theology. We have to do here with the books wherein Mr. Wells has endeavoured to cast the horoscope of human society. There are four of them — Mankind in the Making, New Worlds for Old, Anticipations, and A Modern Utopia. The two first-named works are serious discussions of social and economic problems from a point of view which is Socialistic whilst expressly disavowing the Marxian analysis ; the third consists of reasoned studies wherein attempts are made to forecast "the way things will probably go in this new cen- tury." The fourth — "the last book of the kind I shall ever publish" Mr. Wells threatens — is a romance which essays to picture life in the world as it will be when everything is as it should be, or nearly so. In a more recent work the author has complained that A Modem Utopia "has not been so widely read as I could have wished." The reason for that is that it is not nearly so attractive a book as, in view of the pains evidently taken in writing it, Mr. Wells intended it to be. It is clumsily constructed, there is no vital character in it, and the life represented is not so alluring as an Utopian life might be expected to be. The narrative unfolded suggests the adven- tures of a moody young man on a holiday jaunt, in com- pany with an absurd botanist who has nothing to do with whatever story there is, and who is always in the way. There are plenty of ideas in the book, plenty of vigorous H. G. WELLS criticism of the world's affairs, but it is an unenticing Utopia that is represented — a place to which one would not care much to go without a return ticket and a time- table. When a writer sets out to construct an imaginary world of the future, he does so not only because he is displeased with the actual world which he knows, but also because he is dissatisfied with the Utopias of other writers. There is a small library of such books; Plato's Republic is the first; Sir Thomas More's Utopia is a noble example ; and among modern attempts the Neivs from Nowhere of William Mor- ris, the Traveller from Altruria of Mr. W. D. Howells, and The Crystal Age of Mr. W. H. Hudson are notable. But no Utopist is content with the efforts of his fellow-dreamers. Mr. Wells doubts "if anyone has ever been warmed to desire himself a citizen in the Republic of Plato ; I doubt if any- one could stand a month of the relentless publicity of virtue planned by More." It is significant of the same disparag- ing disposition that when William Morris struggled through that arid romance, Looking Backward, he wrote to a friend : "I suppose you have seen or read, or at least tried to read. Looking Backward. I had to on Saturday, having promised to lecture on it. Thank you, I wouldn't care to live in such a Cockney paradise as he imagines." Morris so far ab- horred the life there described that he declared that if he had to be brigaded like that he would "just lie on his back and kick." Can we not suppose a few more terraces added to Dante's Purgatorio, consisting of Utopias to which imaginers of such places are condemned so that they may expiate their mortal sins in one another's fancied elysiums? For if Looking Backward was a mere Cockney paradise to Morris, and More's Utopia is an intolerable conception to Mr. Wells, might not News from Nowhere have been a piece of faddy foolery to the American mind of Edward Bellamy, and might not Mr. Wells's dream-world simply bore others? Certainly there is a wealth of Utopias from which we may choose ; or we may reject the whole of them in the spirit of the poet who wrote of heaven : "Your chilly stars I can forego, This warm, kind world is :ill I know." It would seem that the only perfectly satisfactory Utopia is one which a man makes for himself, unless it appear better 336 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY to get along without one — which may be the wiser course. Two things may be observed about Mr. Wells's ideas which distinguish him from the fraternity of social Futur- ists. The first relates to his method ; the second to his psychological insight. In Anticipations Mr. Wells essayed to foretell the prob- able social developments of the twentieth century. Being a man of trained scientific mind as well as one gifted with imagination, he did not sit down and guess at random. He studied lines of tendency and followed them out. That was his method. He saw the minds of men — inventors, sociolo- gists, reformers, teachers — working along certain tracks, in certain directions. Just as the meterologist studies the data relating to wind pressure, barometrical and thermometrical readings, rainfall, and so forth, and deduces from them the probabilities concerning the weather at stated places within certain times, so Mr. Wells took the data available to him in a much larger and more complex field of observation, and deduced the probabilities which he called Anticipations. It was not speculating at large; it was reasoning, aided by imagination, from current facts, along paths the direction of which was inferred from, as it were, the lay of the land- scape. In some cases actuality has outstripped speculation. The great war accelerated invention. It perfected the submarine and made flying quite an ordinary everyday occurrence. Mr. Wells was nearly correct in his prediction that in the next great war — he wrote this in 1899 — "great multitudes of balloons will be the Argus eyes of the entire military organism, stalked eyes with a telephonic nerve in each stalk, and at night they will sweep the country with searchlights and come soaring before the wind with hanging fires." But he was too slow and cautious in his conception that "long before the year A.D. 2000, and very probably before 1950, a successful new plane will have soared and come home safe and sound." In an early story, "A Dream of Armageddon," he had pictured the horror of an air-raid with some pre- science. Occasionally he came wonderfully close to actuality in a piece of prophecy which must have appeared audacious to the point of improbability at the time, but which seems credible enough now. Thus, in his chapter on "Locomotion in the Twentieth Century," he pointed out that railway H. G. WELLS 337 trains are but make-shift expedients. We take railways for granted. We were "born in a railway age and expect to die in one." But are they part of the eternal scheme of things? By no means, Mr. Wells was confident when he wrote that chapter twenty years ago. The railway track for heavy traffic will probably be retained, but for all except the longest journeys "there will develop the hired or privately owned motor carriage." It is fascinating to compare this forecast with the reasoning of a scientific authority on "Transport Reconstruction," Mr. W. M. Acworth, in the Edinburgh Review for January, 1919. Mr. Acworth shows that where heavy bulk traffic has to be dealt with, the advantage of the railway is unquestionable. "But for passenger and parcel traffic, for miscellaneous merchandise, even for agricultural requirements in normal English quantities, it is possible that road transport will be found to be cheaper, and it is quite certain that it will be more convenient." Mr. Acworth works out in detail the capital cost of a motor service in comparison with a railway, and presents a convincing case. In short, what Mr. Wells was predicting twenty years ago the expert in 1919 shows to be within sight of realisation. Being a prophet is not all plain sailing, and Mr. Wells does not always convince. There is much that does not promise to come true. But, on the whole, Anticipations is not only a virile book but a piece of reasoning which speaks on every page of an imaginative intelligence of a high order. It must be understood that more brain stuff has gone to the making of this work than of such romances as Lytton's Coming Race, the fanciful stories of Jules Verne, and other futurist tales, even his own. It is to be taken as a series of deductions seriously designed to pene- trate the coming time along lines of greatest probability. The second distinguishing feature of Mr. Wells' Utopian creations is, as already said, his psychological acuteness. Other writers of Futurist romances contemplate the achievement of some sort of paradise where everything is to be so perfect and everybody so happy that no more change will be desired. Humanity is to attain its final state. There is to be a basking world. The wicked are to cease from troubling and the weary are to be non-exis- tent. Edward Bellamy wrote Looking Backward, as he tells us, "in the belief that the Golden Age lies before us 338 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY and is not far away." Morris held that "there is a time of rest in store for the world when mastery has changed into fellowship." Donnelly's The Golden Bottle pictured conditions wherein "universal opportunity and exact justice bred universal peace and prosperity." In such Utopias there is an eternal monotony of unaltering as-it-ought-to- be-ness. But Mr. Wells is much too keen a student of human nature and of sociology to make such a mistake. He does not anticipate that there will ever be a condition of society which will be permanently satisfactory to its members. "The Modern Utopia," he insists, "must be not static but kinetic, must shape not as a permanent state but as a hope- ful stage, leading to a long ascent of stages." And again he says : "The state is to be progressive ; it is no longer to be static ; and this alters the general conditions of the Utopian problem profoundly." The utmost that he pro- mises, therefore, is something better, perhaps very much better, than the present; but not a best, nor even some- thing so good that nobody will wish to improve it. "It is not to be a unanimous world ; it is to have all and more of the mental contrariety we find in the world of the real." But, if that be so, a Golden Age of the future is as much a delusion as a Golden Age of the past is a myth, and we may as well settle down to making the best of things. Mr. Wells will not pin his faith to any idea of human equality, or of perfect human nature. In an extremely interesting chapter he deals with "Failure in a Modern Utopia." "Most Utopias," he observes, "present themselves as going con- cerns, as happiness in being ; they make it an essential con- dition that a happy land can have no history, and all the citizens one is permitted to see are well-looking and • up- right and mentally and morally in tune. But we are under the dominion of a logic that obliges us to take over the actual population of the world with only such moral and mental and physical improvements as lie within their inherent possibilities, and it is our business to ask what Utopia will do with its congenital invalids, its idiots and madmen, its drunkards and men of vicious mind, its cruel and furtive souls, its stupid people, too stupid to be of use to the community, its lumpish, unteachable and unimagina- tive people? And what will it do with the man who is 'poor' all round, the rather spiritless, rather incompetent H. G. WELLS 339 low-grade man, who on earth sits in the den of the sweater, tramps the streets under the banner of the unemployed, or trembles — in another man's cast-off clothing, and with an infinity of hat-touching — on the verge of rural employ- ment? These people will have to be in the descendant phase, the species must be engaged in eliminating them ; there is no escape from that; and conversely the people of exceptional quality must be in the ascendant. The better sort of people, so far as they can be distinguished, must have the fullest freedom of public service, and the fullest opportunity of parentage. And it must be open to every man to approve himself worthy of ascendancy." He propounds a plan for using islands "lying apart from the highways of the sea," to which the Utopian state will send its exiles. It will segregate its failures — the drunkards, the incompetent, the lazy, the chronically vio- lent, the people unfit to live in a well-organised society. "Your ways are not our ways," the World-State will say. "but here is freedom and a company of kindred souls. Elect your jolly rulers ; brew if you will, and distil : here are vine cuttings and barley fields ; do as it pleases you to do. We will take care of the knives ; but for the rest — deal yourselves with God!" The question arises whether an Utopian society which developed the habit of thus banishing its undesirables would stop at drunkards and such like. There are grades of undesirableness. To a party in power, inconvenient agita- tors and rebels are undesirables. Cromwell used to ship rebels to Barbadoes, and a verb was coined out of the name of the islands to suit his process. "He dislikes shedding blood," says Carlyle, "but is very apt 'to barbadoes' an unruly man — has sent and sends us by hundreds to Barba- does, so that we have made an active verb of it, 'barbadoes you.' "* Perhaps Mr. Wells would not concede the prob- ability of such a contingency, but human nature in his Utopia is so much like human nature in the world known to us that we feel that anything might happen. Observing his occasional discriminating references to the qualities of wine and beer, we may even wonder what a "dry" Utopia might do even to so moderate a man as Mr. Wells. By his method of pursuing lines of tendency, and by his 1 Carlyle, "Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches," Vol. IV., p. 114. 340 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY recognition of constant factors, this writer has made his anticipations and his Utopian pictures less incredible than any of the other Futurists have done. He allows for the fact that "man will remain a competitive creature," and has too keen an appreciation of the value of the exceptional man, to desire to keep him subordinate to the inferior. The man of energy and ability, the leader and director, the manager and organiser, will not be discouraged in Utopia ; otherwise it will be a stupid failure. Nor has he any belief in the possibility of building up isolated communi- ties, perfect in plan, set in a world which continues to muddle along on old lines. "No less than a planet will serve the purposes of a modern Utopia." That means that the Negro and the Hottentot, the Moor and the Bedouin, the Turk and the Afghan, the Laplander and the Redskin, the Kanaka and the Dyak, the Kafir and the Pariah are to be on a level with the European and the American. There must be a world-state if there is to be any Utopia whatever. There cannot be a walled paradise for an elite of mankind. "We are acutely aware nowadays," he says, "that however subtly contrived a state may be, outside your boundary-lines the epidemic, the breeding barbarian, or the economic power will gather its strength to overcome you." The previous Utopists whose romances have been so popular never perceived that. They painted their pic- tures within the frame, and allowed for no landscape out- side it. The study of a number of Utopian romances does not give one such a discouraging idea of the prospects in store for humanity as might be expected from the hopeless dis- parity between the life which they represent and the life which is likely to be lived, or which any considerable body of people seriously want to live. The least discouraging of all is the attempt of Mr. Wells, because he is the least out of touch with realities and the most careful in his esti- mate of probabilities. Those qualities make his work in this vein less pleasant as fiction, perhaps, than it would have been if he had "let himself go," and had built his Utopia entirely of dream stuff. But there are still fundamental factors which he does not face. He holds that "the resources of the world and the energy of mankind, were they organised sanely, are amply sufficient to supply every material need of every H. G. WELLS 341 human being." It all depends upon what the standard of life of every living human being may be. If there is to be a world state, as pictured, and if the standard of living for every Chinese peasant, and every Indian ryot, and every negro in Africa is to be the same as that of, say, an average English, American or Australian middle class person, then the statement is probably not true. If all the citizens of the contemplated world-state are to live up to the same standard — "and why not?" they w r ill ask — then it is exceed- ingly doubtful whether the resources of the world can by any organisation whatever be made to "supply every mate- rial need." They can do so if the needs of hundreds of millions are kept very low indeed, and if those millions do not increase with such enormous rapidity as to be con- tinually overtaking the means of feeding them. But if every Asiatic and every African demands to breed as at present and to live on the same level as, say, a Newcastle engineer, it cannot be done. But the discontents of civilised communities do not usually arise from an insufficiency of supplies. There is social unrest in countries like Canada, Australia and the United States, among people who experience no serious difficulty in obtaining, by the exercise of reasonable industry, satis- faction for material needs. The great troubles which beset the more highly organised countries do not relate to the problems of sufficiency. They relate to the demand for further elevation of the living standard of persons who are already fairly comfortable in respect to material needs ; they relate also to the possession and enjoyment of the things which cannot in any circumstances be obtained in sufficient quantities to supply everybody. Envy, it must be remembered, is one of the constant forces in politics. "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's goods" was placed in the legal code of Moses, alongside the serious crimes, murder and theft, because it was recognised that envy is a fundamental passion of human nature fraught with serious consequences. There necessarily have to be valuable and desirable things possessed by the few, because there are not enough of them for the many. For example, every violinist would like to have a Stradivarius fiddle, but Stradivarius made only about eleven hundred stringed instruments of all kinds of which not more than five hundred and forty violins are known to exist. These must therefore neces- 342 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY sarily be the possessions of a fortunate few. Probably, every normal woman would like to have a pearl necklace; but there are not enough to go round. So it is in many other respects. The cream of life is not so plentiful as the milk. There is no remedy for this; no Utopia can supply what does not exist, and the many will continue passion- ately to want what in the nature of things only the few can obtain. Another disconcerting consideration for makers of Utopias is that there will always be grades in society, and must be. Nothing is more untrue to fact than the state- ment that democracy levels down, or up. It does not and cannot. Democracy is purely a political expedient for governing, and cannot eliminate either radical differences, or the tendency of human beings to group themselves. It has no more effect upon the voluntary groupings which are formed in democratic, as in all other, countries than upon the stars in the milky way. There is just as much of what is called snobbery in democratic communities as in others, and it takes on quite as offensive forms as any that Thac- keray satirised. It would exist in any Utopia which could be formed; and if the Utopian romancers have not allowed for it, that is only because they have shut their eyes upon obvious and persistent facts. It is a phenomenon of that law of segregation which Herbert Spencer so luminously expounds in the twenty-first chapter of Part II. of First Principles. Star dust in space and the sands of the sea- shore are alike affected by the same process of segregation as affects people. "From each mass of fallen cliff the tide carries away all those particles which are so small as to remain long suspended in the water; and, at some distance from shore, deposits them in the shape of fine sediment. Large particles, sinking with comparative rapidity, are accumulated into beds of sand near low water mark. The small pebbles collect together at the bottom of the incline up which the breakers rush ; and on the top lie the larger stones and boulders." People group themselves just as the sands and pebbles do. Attractions and repulsions operate among them. A sporting man who found himself among a group of classical scholars arguing about a point of con- struction in iEschylus would very soon say to himself that "these are not my sort of pebbles," or words to that effect ; and a philosopher suddenly dropped into a company of H. G. WELLS 3-13 jazzing suburban featherbrains would wish himself among sand-grains of like specific gravity with himself. The great popularity of Utopian romances especially among the working classes is largely due to the decline of religious faith. There has been a transference of belief in a heaven to be attained at the end of mortal life, to belief in the possibility of establishing a heaven on earth by a drastic change in the constitution of the society. A learned French historian has asked the question why England, of all European countries, has been the most exempt from violent crises and brusque changes ; and he answers it by pointing to the great influence which the Nonconformists churches, and especially the Methodists, exercised over the minds of the English working and middle classes early in the nineteenth century. 1 That influence is still strong in English-speaking countries ; but there are hundreds of thousands of people who are not touched by it in any measure, but whose nature nevertheless impels them to have faith in some kind of blissful state to be realised for the good of mankind. The heaven of popular theology, with its crude and banal beatitude, has given place, among these, to faith in the possibility of establishing some such social condition as pictured in Looking Backward, C&sar's Column, News from Nowhere, or, if they are of a more critical turn of mind, A Modern Utopia. It may be a vain hope, but it is a real one, widely prevalent. For "we are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep." In addition to the books by Mr. Wells, mentioned above, the following works bearing upon the subject may be men- tioned: — Ideal Commomvealths, edited by Henry Morley, contains the texts of Plutarch's Lycurgus, More's Utopia, Bacon's New Atlantis, Campanula's City of the Sun, and a fragment of Hall's Mundus Alter et Idem. Morris's News from Nowhere is a very delightful book, which exists in several editions. His Dream of John Ball is a fancy of the same visionary kind, though not strictly Utopian in char- acter. Neither is Butler's Erewhon, though it also is worth l Klie Halevy, "Histoirc du Peuple Anglais au XIX. Steele," Vol. I., p. 401. 344 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY mentioning as an extremely witty example of the criticism of society as through a reversing glass. Howell's A Traveller from Altruria, Hudson's The Crystal Age, Bel- lamy's Looking Backward, Donnelly's The Golden Bottle, Boisguilbert's Csesar's Column, and Hertzka's A Visit to Freeland belong to the same category. The weakness of Utopias is this, that they take the greatest difficulty of man and assume it to be overcome, and then give an elaborate account of the overcoming of the smaller ones. They first assume that no man will want more than his share, and then are very ingenious in explain- ing whether his share will be delivered by motor car or balloon. — G. K. Chesterton. Not that Utopianism is anything so bad. When it does not profess to be anything else, and is well done, there is no more useful kind of literature. The danger is of trying to pass off a Utopia for something serious. — Lester F. Ward. Men will do almost anything but govern themselves. They don't want the responsibility. In the main, they are looking for some benevolent guardian, be it a "good man in office," or a perfect constitution, or the evolution of nature. They want to be taken in charge. If they have to think for themselves, they turn either to the past or to a distant future ; but they manage to escape the real effort of the imagination, which is to weave a dream into the teeming present. — Walter Lippmann. Let us beware of Utopias. There is no social remedy because there is no one social question. There is a series of problems awaiting solution. — Gambetta. One of the things that has disturbed me in recent months is the unqualified hope that men have entertained every- where of immediate emancipation from the things that have hampered them and oppressed them. You cannot, in human experience, rush into the light. You have to go through the twilight into the broadening day, before the moon comes and the full sun is upon the landscape, and we must see to it that those who hope are not disappointed, by showing them the processes by which hope must be realised, processes of law, processes of slow disentangle- ment from the many things that have bound us to the past. H. G. WELLS 345 You cannot throw off the habits of society immediately, any more than you can throw off the habits of the indivi- dual immediately. They must be slowly got rid of, or, rather, they must be slowly altered. They must be slowly adapted. They must be slowly shaped to the new ends for which we would use them. That is the process of law, if law is intelligently conceived. — Woodrotv Wilson (1919). Before Darwin, most political speculators used to sketch a perfect polity which would result from the complete adoption of their principles — the Republics of Plato and of More, Bacon's Atlantis, Locke's plan for a government which should consciously realise the purpose of God, or Bentham's Utilitarian State securely founded upon the Table of the Springs of Action. We, however, who live after Darwin, have learnt the hard lesson that we must not expect knowledge, however full, to lead us to perfec- tions. — Graham Wallas. The idealist who paints a fancy picture of a social Utopia may not be useful practically: to some tempera- ments his Dicture will merely be an incitement to cen- sorious criticism of all existing institutions and powers, while other people may be depressed at the impracticability of realising this ideal, and be inclined to despair of the possibility of any improvement. Here the work of the statesman comes in, to shape a relative improvement that is practicable and that is therefore worth aiming at. — >W. Cunningham. The old type of Marxian revolutionary Socialist never dwelt, in imagination, upon the life of communities after the establishment of the millennium. He imagined that, like the prince and princess in a fairy story, they would live happily ever after. But that is not a condition pos- sible to human nature. Desire, activity, purpose are essen- tial to a tolerable life, and a millennium, though it may be a joy in prospect, would be intolerable if it were actually achieved. — Bertrand Russell. The great progress of our age is that the Utopians have died, or are dying, out. Among the masses they find no foothold — find one even less to-day than ever. Even the simplest workman feels that nothing can be set up artifi- cially, that what is to be must develop, and must develop with and through the whole — not separated and isolated 346 MEN AND THOUGHT IN MODERN HISTORY from it. The thing is to clear the course for development. — Bebel. There will be many Utopias. Each generation will have its" new version of Utopia, a little more certain and com- plete and real, with its problems lying closer and closer to the problems of the Thing in Being. Until at last from dream Utopias will have come to be working drawings, and the whole world will be shaping the final World State, the fair and great and fruitful World State, that will only not be a Utopia because it will be this world — H. G. Wells. Lycurgus left behind him a form of government which no man ever before had invented, nor ever after could be followed. He hath made men plainly see a whole city live together, and govern itself philosophically, according to the true rules and precepts of perfect wisdom ; which imagined that true wisdom was a thing hanging in the air, and could not visibly be seen in the world. Whereby he hath worthily excelled in glory all those which ever took upon them to write or stablish the government of a common weal. — Plutarch. A strange picture we make on our way to our Chimaeras, ceaselessly marching, grudging ourselves the time foi rest ; indefatigable, adventurous pioneers. It is true that we shall never reach the goal ; it is even more than probable that there is no such place; and if we lived for centuries and were endowed with the powers of a god, we should find ourselves not much nearer to what we wanted at the end. O toiling hands of mortals! O unwearied feet, travelling ye know not whither! Soon, soon, it seems to you, you must come forth on some conspicuous hilltop, and but a little way farther, against the setting sun, descry the spires of El Dorado. Little do you know your own blessedness; for to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive., and the true success is to labour. — Robert Louis Stevenson. The Specialty Press Pty. Ltd., 174-176 Little Collins Street, Melb. UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY AA 000 994 160 o