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 MEN AND THOUGHT 
 
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 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
 
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 MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited 
 
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 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. 
 
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