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CHRISTIANITY AND ECONOMIC 
 SCIENCE 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 THE GROWTH OF ENGLISH INDUSTRY AND 
 COMMERCE. Vol. I. Early and Middle Ages. 5th 
 Edition, pp. xxvi, 724. 1910. Vol. II. Modern 
 Times. 4th Edition, pp, xxxviii. 1038. 1907. 
 
 AN ESSAY ON WESTERN CIVILISATION IN ITS 
 ECONOMIC ASPECTS. Vol. I. Ancient Times, 
 pp. vii, 220. 2nd Edition, 1911. Vol.11. Medieval 
 and Modern Times, pp. xii, 300. 2nd Edition, 1910. 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF WORK, BEING FOUR LECTURES 
 ON CHRISTIAN ETHICS. Pott 8vo. pp. xiv, 
 144. 1902. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS. 
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL QUESTIONS. Crown 
 8vo. pp. xi, 232. 1910. 
 
 DUCKWORTH & CO. 
 
 THE CASE AGAINST FREE TRADE. With a Preface 
 by the Right Hon. Joseph Chamberlain, pp. xvi, 1 .37. 
 1911. 
 
 THE USE AND ABUSE OF MONEY. Crown 8vo, 
 pp. xxiv, 219. 1891. 
 
 JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W. 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND 
 ECONOMIC SCIENCE 
 
 BY 
 
 W. CUNNINGHAM, F.B.A. 
 
 FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE, AND 
 ARCHDEACON OF ELY 
 
 LONDON 
 
 JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET 
 
 1914 
 
.c 
 
 [ALL RIGHTS RESERVED]. 
 
 Sherratt and Hughes, Printers, London and Manchester. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 This volume contains the substance of a course of 
 five Lectures which I delivered last October, at the 
 London School of Economics, on the Influence of 
 Religious Conceptions upon the Historical Develop- 
 ment of Economic Doctrines and Theories. I 
 have been conscious throughout of my indebtedness 
 to the erudite and suggestive work of Dr.Troeltsch, 
 entitled Die Soziallehren der christlichen Kirchen 
 und Grupfen. For the present I have endeavoured 
 to concentrate attention on the history of Thought, 
 but I hope to supplement the discussion at another 
 time by dealing with the part played by Christianity 
 in helping to form the modern conception of Social 
 Duty. 
 
 W.C 
 Trin. Coll. Camb. 
 
 ifth March, 1914. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 I. Introduction. 
 
 Changes in external conditions, and in mental habits. 
 Religious influence as embodied in Mediaeval Institu- 
 tions. The religious, and the scientific habit of mind. 
 The recognition of this contrast as a help to interpret 
 the past, and to criticise current opinion in the 
 present i 
 
 II. Order and Progress. 
 
 The Creator as the Supreme Owner, and human claims 
 to use His gifts. Communism and exclusive use. 
 Different interpretations of the good of the Com- 
 munity. Enclosures. The encroachment of pro- 
 gressive peoples on primitive races. The appropriate 
 standpoints for studying economic phenomena, in 
 mediaeval and in modern times respectively. Recent 
 reversion to the mediaeval standpoint 9 
 
 III. Work and the Maintenance of Labour. 
 
 The monastery as a unit of industrial organisation. 
 The vitality of the monastic ideal. The Christian 
 conception of work, as a privilege and a discipline. 
 The principle of assigning maintenance to labour 
 of any kind, contrasted with that of remunerating of 
 each man according to his worth in the labour market. 
 The difficulty of reckoning the living wage. The 
 success of Christian Communism. The effectiveness 
 of spiritual forces 21 
 
viii CONTENTS 
 
 IV. The City and the Nation as Economic Units. 
 
 The monastery and the town as economic units. The 
 maintenance of commercial morality. The promotion 
 of common interests. Fairs and the commercial 
 spirit. The field of Economic Science. The decay 
 of the towns as centres of well-ordered economic life. 
 The rise of national economic organisation. The 
 body politic and the body economic. Disparagement 
 of national life 38 
 
 V. Calvinism and Capital. 
 
 A reformed Christian polity and royal power. 
 Christian Polity as reconstructed by Calvin. The 
 Old Testament and usury. City Theocracies and 
 commerce. The Scottish National Theocracy and 
 industry. The gain and loss in alliance with Capital. 
 The development of Economic Science - - 58 
 
 VI. The Limitations of Economic Science. 
 
 The means of life and modern civilisation. Mediaeval 
 Life. Dissatisfaction with Modern Civilisation. John 
 Stuart Mill and rational Atomism. The right to 
 equal opportunities. The aggregate of satisfactions. 
 The wholesome and vigorous life of mankind. 
 National life and the life of the citizen - - 76 
 
 Appendix. 
 
 The economic basis of a policy of Universal Peace 
 — Cosmopolitan or International ? - - - 101 
 
 Index - - - - 109 
 
I. INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Economic Science, as formulated by the classical 
 writers of the nineteenth century, appears to be so 
 far apart from Christianity that it is hardly worth 
 while to consider their relations to each other. But 
 after all, the human activities with which Econo- 
 mics deals, lie within the sphere of Christianity. 
 Economic Science has grown up in Christian lands 
 and could not escape the influence of its environ- 
 ment. The relations between religion and econo- 
 mics are well worth discussing even though they 
 are somewhat obscure. 
 
 The problem of tracing the influences which have 
 gone to shape current opinion on any subject must 
 always be intricate, and the results of such an 
 enquiry are not unlikely to prove inconclusive : 
 there are, moreover, special difficulties in detecting 
 the conditions which have contributed to the growth 
 of Economic Science, since the points of contact 
 with other human activities and interests are both 
 numerous and diverse. Experience of external con- 
 ditions on the one hand, and changes in mental 
 habit on the other, have played a part in the develop- 
 ment of Economic Science; and it is not easy to 
 distinguish the relative importance of the two 
 factors. A change of circumstances has often been 
 the occasion of progress in knowledge; times of 
 adversity have set men a-thinking as to the possi- 
 bilities of doing better, while the prosperitv of rivals 
 has raised the question as to the best means of 
 copying their success. There has also been progress 
 in the art of learning from experience ; unless changes 
 in the power of interpreting it, and in habits of 
 focussing it, are taken into account, any explanation 
 of the progress of science will be very defective. 
 The decline of the intense civic patriotism of the 
 
2; ■ INTRODUCTION 
 
 Middle Ages, and the free field which has been left 
 for individualism in modern times, have made an 
 extraordinary difference in the treatment of economic 
 questions. 
 
 However careful we may be, in our analysis of 
 the factors that have contributed to the formation of 
 opinion and the formulating of thought, we can never 
 feel that we have probed the matter to the bottom, 
 and reached bed-rock on which our conclusions can 
 be firmly based. We cannot fail to recognise the 
 enormous influence exercised by some one man, 
 such as John Locke or Adam Smith ; but this is 
 only to throw the difficulty back into a more obscure 
 region ; for the question as to the manner in which 
 personal opinions have been moulded can never be 
 exhaustively treated. Each of us may know, in 
 considering the development of his own mental life, 
 of influences which were very potent, though they 
 have left no outward mark ; while conditions, of 
 which we are unconscious, have also helped to form 
 the atmosphere in which we habitually live. The 
 student may be able, from the materials before him, 
 to put together a connected story to which no excep- 
 tion can be taken ; but there is no means of 
 verifying his conclusions, and of being sure that 
 the analysis is correct and that nothing of import- 
 ance has been overlooked. The evidence is neces- 
 sarily incomplete, and we can only do our best with 
 the materials before us. 
 
 Under these circumstances it might seem almost 
 hopeless to attempt to enquire into the manner in 
 which religious conceptions have affected the devel- 
 opment of economic doctrines and theories. 
 Christianity has undoubtedly been a powerful 
 influence, which has brought about the enlarging 
 of economic experience as well as the modifying of 
 habits of thought. A religious movement led to 
 the expansion of commerce at the time of the 
 
MEDIEVAL AND MODERN 3 
 
 Crusades, and religious history in modern times 
 offers a parallel to the individualism which has 
 dominated economic thought; but can we hope to 
 specify the precise importance which ought to be 
 ascribed to this factor? Religion, as a spiritual 
 element, seems to be so elusive that we can hardly 
 work it into its proper place in a chain of cause and 
 effect; it can only be observed in conjunction with 
 other elements, and we cannot separate it so as to 
 treat it by itself. We may think we can note occa- 
 sional instances of actions, or of personal habits of 
 conduct, which could not be accounted for without 
 referring them to Christian motives ; but the ques- 
 tion is not restricted to exceptional incidents, it is 
 concerned with the ordinary habits of society. We 
 wish to discriminate the elements in current thought 
 on economic subjects which are Christian in origin, 
 even if they have entirely ceased to be consciously 
 religious. 
 
 The problem may, however, be re-stated in a form 
 in which it presents less difficulty, by setting our- 
 selves to compare and contrast social phenomena at 
 two different periods. During the Middle Ages, 
 human activities and intercourse were dominated by 
 religion, while in modern times political and 
 economic life has been secularised. By comparing 
 Mediaeval Christendom with society in the present 
 day, we have a method of estimating religious influ- 
 ence on modern economic thought, and one that is 
 very suggestive and not altogether unreliable. We 
 may see, on the one hand, how the gradual with- 
 drawal of certain human activities from conscious 
 reference to religious duty has helped to define the 
 scope of Economic Science; and on the other we 
 may note the survival or reappearance of habits of 
 thought which were widely diffused throughout the 
 Middle Ages, and which are still current to some 
 extent, though they are not quite congruent with 
 
4 INTRODUCTION 
 
 our ordinary ways of thinking in modern times. 
 The contrast between the past and the present helps 
 us to detect and to gauge the influence on modern 
 economic doctrine which may be fairly ascribed to 
 Christianity. 
 
 The contrast between the mediaeval and the 
 modern, on the intellectual side, may be summed up 
 by saying that mediaeval thought was religious, 
 while modern thought is scientific. The distinction, 
 when stated in this bald and unqualified fashion, is 
 one to which many people might take exception ; 
 some are inclined to disparage the religion which 
 was current in the Middle Ages as superstitious, 
 while others might question the claims of present 
 day opinion, which is so easily carried away by 
 sciolists and charlatans, to be in any real sense 
 scientific. But even though platform oratory may 
 abound in hasty generalisations and many other 
 faults of reasoning, it professes to take a scientific 
 basis of fact and to be scientific. In the same 
 way, scholasticism may be despised as barren ; 
 the grossness and cruelty of mediaeval life may be 
 denounced as a scandal to religion, and the modes 
 of worship may be condemned as sensuous, but the 
 men of the Middle Ages were religious in their 
 habits of mind. Science starts from particular facts 
 and groups them and generalises from them, but 
 religion starts from the Universal, — the thought of 
 God ; science is content to discuss the relations of 
 particular phenomena to one another, while mediaeval 
 thought, on all matters of human conduct, was so 
 formulated as never to leave the relation of man to 
 the Will of God out of sight. All the institutions 
 of the Middle Ages, — political, social, and economic, 
 — were permeated with religious habits and exerted 
 authority under religious sanctions, because they 
 were consciously referred to the Will of God, or to 
 the authorities who were believed to represent Him 
 
INSTITUTIONS AND CHARACTER 5 
 
 on earth and by whom the Divine Will was brought 
 to bear among men ; all aspects of life were 
 discussed in terms of duty. Our whole habit of 
 mind in modern times is different ; the method of 
 procedure is scientific ; we begin with the particular 
 facts, — as to the quotations of prices in the markets, 
 the conditions of production and the prospects of 
 trade. We build up our doctrines from this basis 
 of fact, and form generalisations which hold good 
 more or less widely in space or time ; but we rarely, 
 if ever, reach a principle that can claim to hold good 
 universally, at all times and in all circumstances. 
 
 This difference in the intellectual standpoint 
 accounts for the mental attitude of men in the 
 Middle Ages in regard to many practical matters; 
 they accepted and valued institutions for forming 
 human character aright. We all recognise that the 
 surroundings in which a man is brought up, — 
 the school and university to which he goes, all the 
 conditions of the life around him and the institutions 
 of the country in which he lives, — do a great deal to 
 form his character. Institutions count for so much, 
 and they mark the deep differences between one 
 nation and another; Godwin and others have held 
 that the evil in the world was mostly due to the 
 depraving effect of bad institutions. There is much 
 to be said for the view that it is of supreme import- 
 ance to maintain and strengthen institutions; but 
 after all, the morality of those who merely conform 
 to the environment in which they live is somewhat 
 shallow. There is more depth in the character of 
 the man whose habits of conduct are the outcome 
 of his own experience and his own determination ; 
 in modern times we desire that the individual should 
 have free play to realise the best that is in him. All 
 the questions as to the relation of the individual to 
 society were set in a different light in the Middle 
 Ages from that in which we view them to-day. 
 
6 INTRODUCTION 
 
 There is another important point which arises in 
 connection with the highly religious character of 
 mediaeval thought ; the men of these ages always 
 kept before them the thought of a world to come as 
 the ultimate object of human endeavour. S. 
 Augustine rejoiced to recognise that a City of God 
 was rising on the ruins of the pagan world, and 
 Aquinas delineated the lines on which it was 
 framed ; but neither of them would have thought of 
 any earthly community as fulfilling their ideal for 
 man. They looked on the Christian Polity, with all 
 its institutions, as the divinely instituted means of 
 preparing men for the world to come ; the mundane 
 sphere was not regarded as a place for happiness, but 
 for discipline. The conception of a Utopia estab- 
 lished on earth is not mediaeval ; as Troeltsch points 
 out in his monumental work, it is humanistic, and 
 dates from the Renascence. 1 The interpretation of 
 the Kingdom of God as an earthly Utopia differen- 
 tiates modern Christian Socialists from the writers 
 on Economics in the Middle Ages; the mediaeval 
 thinkers never looked for a perfect mundane Society, 
 and many of them withdrew from the world ; while 
 Socialists speak as if the chief duty of Christianity 
 was to introduce universal happiness here and now. 
 
 It is important to keep the broad contrast between 
 the mediaeval and the modern clearly in mind; if 
 we allow it to drop out of sight we are in danger of 
 falling into anachronism and misinterpreting the 
 past. To take account of the extraordinary changes, 
 which have occurred in the conditions of life, is far 
 easier than to reckon the allowance that must be 
 made for a revolution in the conscious life of the 
 people. The picture of the extraordinary discom- 
 fort, in which people lived, strikes the imagination ; 
 and the poor must have been destitute of much that 
 
 1. Troeltsch. Die Soziattehren, 331, 421. 
 
TRADITIONAL SENTIMENTS 7 
 
 we should regard as necessary for decent life. We 
 readily recognise the marvel of the achievements of 
 the men of the Middle Ages, when we recall the 
 limitation of their power of overcoming mechanical 
 difficulties, and the lack of facilities for travelling 
 before the era of invention. But it is very difficult 
 for us to think ourselves into the thoughts and to 
 understand the motives and aspirations which influ- 
 enced the men of bygone times. The Articles in 
 which the commons of Lincolnshire and Yorkshire 
 formulated their demands in 1536/ and the griev- 
 ances which the men of Devon and Cornwall put 
 forth as the ground of their rebellion in 1549, are 
 curiously unlike any cry that would rouse an agita- 
 tion in the rural districts to-day. 2 We cannot 
 appreciate the causes which were at work in shaping 
 the course of history, if we are content to look at 
 these occurrences in the light of our own experience 
 of popular feeling in modern times. 
 
 This is not merely a matter which concerns the 
 historical student, it is of considerable importance 
 in regard to practical affairs as well. The Middle 
 Ages have passed away; but they have left their 
 mark for good or for evil on succeeding generations; 
 it is necessary that we should consider what this 
 surviving influence is worth for our day. Over 
 some minds the mediaeval exercises a strange fasci- 
 nation, and they are ready to idealise it; while 
 others think of the survivals as rubbish which might 
 have been wisely swept away with the rest of 
 bygone habits and usages. There is need of careful 
 criticism to clear our minds ; we are apt to accept 
 traditional sentiments, which are deeply rooted in 
 popular thought, as if they were axiomatic; they 
 have come down to us and we take them for granted 
 without asking on what basis they rest, or consider- 
 
 i. Rose-Troup. The Western Rebellion of 15JL9, 10. 
 2. 76., 126. 
 
8 INTRODUCTION 
 
 ing whether they are so far consistent with the other 
 principles we accept as to form a coherent whole. 
 We cannot find any definite guidance in economic 
 doctrines to-day, unless we are sure that the principles 
 on which they are founded are self-consistent. We are 
 bound to consider how far any traditional sentiment 
 or rule can justify itself, either because it makes for 
 clear thinking, or because it is of real service in 
 dealing with practical affairs. Modern calculations 
 about the mechanism of society are not in the same 
 plane as mediaeval discussions of honesty in secular 
 callings; it is right that considerations of duty 
 should control the working of the social machine and 
 direct it; but when they are introduced haphazard 
 and arbitrarily, they may only put it out of gearing. 
 
II. ORDER AND PROGRESS. 
 
 " The earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof " 
 was the fundamental principle of mediaeval econo- 
 mics as well as mediaeval politics. Civil authority 
 was thought of as given by God ; no human being 
 could have a right to demand obedience from 
 another because he chose to do so, though he might 
 have the power to enforce it. His rightful authority 
 over others was due to his official character as a 
 magistrate ordained of God to bear the sword and 
 execute the divine Will. The principles of the 
 direct responsibility of the Prince to God, and of 
 divine authority to demand obedience, continued to 
 be widely recognised in the seventeenth century; 
 and during the same period the sense of direct 
 responsibility to God, for the use we make of the 
 things He has created, was still kept clearly in view. 
 An early writer on Vegetarianism urges that by the 
 divine grant to Adam in Paradise, permission was 
 given to man to use the animal creation, and to have 
 dominion over it, but argues that this does not 
 include any right to slay and eat. He contends that 
 to use animals for food was an unwarrantable exten- 
 sion of the divine grant, and asks triumphantly 
 what the owner would say if he found that a friend, 
 to whom he had lent his horse for a ride, had felt at 
 liberty not only to ride the horse but to eat him as 
 well. The belief that God is the one supreme owner 
 underlies the mediaeval treatment of all questions as 
 to the use to be made of goods, and as to the right 
 to appropriate and claim exclusive use. The religi- 
 ous explanation of the grounds on which the human 
 claim to use natural gifts was based, was of pre- 
 dominant interest from the practical side. Con- 
 sumption was the aspect of economic life which 
 R 9 
 
io ORDER AND PROGRESS 
 
 attracted most attention ; when the means of 
 communication were bad, each town or village had 
 to depend on its own resources for the necessities of 
 life. The chief practical problem was that of 
 making the food supply last till the next harvest; 
 there were no means available for doing much to 
 increase the quantities produced ; these depended 
 almost entirely on the character of the seasons and 
 other natural conditions; human intelligence was 
 only concerned in regulating consumption wisely; 
 and this was the chief practical problem in mediaeval 
 economics. 
 
 The belief that God was the supreme owner, and 
 had created earthly things for the good of the race 
 as a whole, might have easily been interpreted as 
 giving a religious sanction to communism ; and it 
 has been so interpreted by various sects from time 
 to time ; but this was never the generally accepted 
 doctrine. Utilitarian considerations were brought 
 forward to justify the recognition of private pro- 
 perty as an institution which tended to the advantage 
 of the community as a whole. On the one hand, 
 as Aquinas pointed out, 1 goods are likely to be 
 better cared for and more wisely used if they are 
 regarded as private possessions instead of being 
 held in common ; agricultural improvers at many 
 times have argued that experience confirmed this 
 opinion as to the neglect and loss which arose in 
 connection with common wastes. He also main- 
 tained that the assignment of property in private 
 hands tends to the good order of Society, as each 
 man knows what is his and can refrain from en- 
 croaching on his neighbour : while it was also 
 alleged that there w 7 as much less excuse for quarrel- 
 ling when public opinion secured individuals in the 
 enjoyment of their possessions. On these grounds 
 the institution of private property was regarded as 
 
 1. Summa 2», 2ae, q. 66, art. 2. 
 
PRIVATE PROPERTY n 
 
 in complete accordance with the Divine govern- 
 ment of the world. Those who feared the tempta- 
 tions of wealth were able to renounce it and seek the 
 seclusion of a cloister ; but, for those who remained 
 in the world, it sufficed to ask the legal question as 
 to the title by which they held it, and as to the 
 manner in which they discharged the military and 
 other obligations which attached to it. Mediaeval 
 writers had no means of discussing or defending 
 the actual distribution of property, whether it was 
 held collectively or by individuals personally ; when 
 the question was vigorously raised in the later 
 Middle Ages, it almost inevitably took the form of 
 an attack on the authorities of Christendom for 
 lending their sanction to existing conditions. 
 
 Since the Reformation the sense of personal 
 responsibility has been quickened, 1 and we are no 
 longer satisfied to take this principle of authoritative 
 assignment and legal title as ultimate ; the question 
 is frequently raised as to the manner in w T hich 
 property is used. We are inclined to apply the 
 utilitarian principle, which Aquinas employed to 
 justify the existence of private property as an insti- 
 tution, to test the claims of particular proprietors. 
 Our view of the good of the community is not con- 
 fined exclusively to considerations of order, it also 
 demands that scope shall be left for the possibility 
 of progress. In new countries it is easy to arrange 
 that the two conceptions shall be combined ; the 
 settler has land assigned him, not absolutely, but 
 subject to the condition that he turns it to profitable 
 use. The right to exclusive possession does not 
 rest solely on authoritative assignment, but the 
 owner has to justify his claims by the use he makes 
 of his property. In old countries, however, the two 
 conceptions of the good of the community may come 
 into conflict. The demand of the progressives, — 
 
 1. B. S. Phillpotts. Kindred and Clan, 83, 129. 
 
12 ORDER AND PROGRESS 
 
 that it is right that natural resources should be 
 held by those who can make most use of them, — is 
 inconsistent with the view of those who feel that it 
 is right that the traditional order should be main- 
 tained. Neither in mediaeval nor in modern times 
 is the absolute right of particular proprietors seri- 
 ously urged ; the institution of private property does 
 not rest either on a divine fiat, or on a clear natural 
 right; it rests on utilitarian considerations, and 
 these will wear a different aspect according as the 
 main need of any community is the maintenance of 
 order, or the opening of facilities for progress. 
 
 As we look back on some of the most disturbed 
 periods of English history we see how these two 
 principles were in conflict; the progressive sense of 
 what was right had hardly been consciously formu- 
 lated ; but it exercised a decided influence on the 
 conduct of the authorities, and helps us to under- 
 stand the ground of their action. Many points 
 have been cleared up in recent years in regard to 
 the history of the enclosures in the fifteenth and 
 sixteenth centuries. Mrs. Knowles x and Mr. 
 Tawney have efiven ample evidence to show that 
 while there was a great expansion of sheep-farming 
 during this period, there was also a steady move- 
 ment for the introduction of agricultural improve- 
 ment which involved the abandonment of traditional 
 methods of land management, and the breaking up 
 of common fields and common waste so that they 
 might be used in severalty. The Crown and 
 parliament were by no means disposed to let things 
 take their own course ; it was long before the days 
 of laissez faire, and there was every readiness to 
 interfere in economic matters. As Mr. Tawney 2 
 says of these times, ''Public opinion still clings to 
 
 1. Cf. Cunningham. Growth of English Industry and Com- 
 merce, 5th ed. 1910, §§119, 150, 151, 152. 
 
 2. R. H. Tawney. Agrarian Problem in the XV 1 Century, S07. 
 
ENCLOSURES 13 
 
 the conception that there is a standard of fairness 
 in economic dealings which exists independently of 
 the impersonal movements of the markets, which 
 honest men can discover, if they please, and which 
 it is a matter of conscience for public authorities to 
 enforce." Nor do the political powers appear to 
 have yielded to the temptation to take the course 
 which was approved by the wealthy and prosperous, 
 and to have neglected the interests of humble folk. 
 Many attempts were made, both by direct legislation 
 and by the imposition of preferential duties, to 
 check the movement for forming large sheep-farms ; 
 these might be profitable to private persons but they 
 were not in the interests of the community, as the 
 land, when devoted to husbandry, provided employ- 
 ment for a larger population, and could be made to 
 raise a larger supply of food. On the other hand, 
 there were a large number of the old-fashioned 
 farmers who were using the land merely for subsist- 
 ence farming, and not endeavouring to grow corn 
 to supply the markets. Much sympathy might be 
 felt for those who were carrying on traditional 
 methods and could not, or at any rate did not, adapt 
 themselves to the practice of convertible husbandry 
 and the improved methods of tillage ; and while an 
 attempt was made to secure them in their legal 
 rights, parliament made no proposal to confer on 
 them any additional security, as they were not 
 making the most of the land in the interest of the 
 community, and were proving an obstacle to agricul- 
 tural improvement. Naturally enough public 
 opinion was sharply divided at the time; More and 
 Latimer and many others can be quoted as believing 
 that it was right that the traditional order should be 
 maintained, while others held strongly that it was 
 right that scope should be given for agricultural 
 improvement, so that the land should be applied to 
 the best purpose and made the most of in the public 
 interest. 
 
14 ORDER AND PROGRESS 
 
 The contact of progressive societies with primitive 
 peoples has given rise to similar difficulties in 
 modern times; the encroachment of one people on 
 the territory of another is no longer so indefensible 
 as it was in mediaeval times. A cloak was needed 
 then for territorial aggression, though the allegations 
 of hereditary title which sufficed, were sometimes 
 very shadowy. Dante treats the border raids of the 
 English and the Scots as inexcusable disturbances 
 roused by men who were ' impatient of their 
 bounds.' 1 There was probably little difference in 
 the use made of the land whether it was held by one 
 side or the other, and none but themselves were 
 affected; with modern means of communication, 
 however, the world as a whole is concerned in the 
 use made of any part of it. There is loss to the 
 whole if large tracts of territory are allowed to 
 remain as unreclaimed wilderness, where primitive 
 men hunt or graze their cattle, and cultivate crops 
 for their own subsistence, instead of being occupied 
 by a progressive race who are able to make the most 
 of all natural resources. Those who open up a 
 country so that its products are available for distant 
 peoples render a service to the world as a whole. 
 Whatever sympathy we may have with those who 
 only ask to be left alone, and to be allowed to carry 
 on their traditional habits of life on land they have 
 traditionally occupied, it is difficult to see on what 
 grounds they can be protected in a wasteful use of 
 the soil permanently, while others are ready to intro- 
 duce more intensive agricultural production or to 
 develop industrial occupations. According to the 
 modern sense of what is good for the world as a 
 whole, it is right that lands should be controlled and 
 used by those who can make the most of them, and 
 it is difficult to see how any barrier is to be built up 
 which will prevent such encroachment. The 
 
 1. Dante, Par. xix, 121. 
 
NATIVE RACES 15 
 
 modern view explains the principle on which men 
 habitually act in the present day and are likely to 
 act; the mediaeval view cannot be brought to bear 
 to govern action, though it mav remind us of ideals 
 we ought to cherish, and set us a-thinking of correc- 
 tions to the dominant tendency which ought to be 
 introduced. Thinking clearly is essential in the 
 first instance, if we are to do our social duties effec- 
 tively ; to formulate scientific principles as to what 
 is likely to happen in progressive societies is neces- 
 sary in order to enable us to anticipate mischief that 
 may arise, and to modify the operations that produce 
 it. Practical men are not prepared to respect the 
 claims of the traditional occupants to the exclusive 
 use of resources which they are unable to put to the 
 best purpose for the common good of mankind. 
 The best hope of a solution of this difficult problem 
 lies, not in erecting an artificial and permanent 
 obstacle against the advance of progressive societies, 
 but in maintaining temporary conditions which 
 afford to primitive peoples time and opportunity to 
 adapt themselves so as to find a place in a progres- 
 sive society. There is much to be said for the policy 
 of establishing reservations of territory in which the 
 native races may follow their own habits of life, 
 while care is taken to enable them to adapt them- 
 selves to the usages of the society which has sur- 
 rounded and is destined to absorb them. 
 
 The end in view, — the good of the community — 
 is differently conceived in stationary and in progres- 
 sive communities, and therefore there must be 
 distinct and possibly conflicting opinions as to what 
 ought to be done ; there is no absolute standard by 
 which the good of the community at all times and in 
 all places can be gauged. It is also true that the 
 methods of study, which are appropriate to the 
 phenomena of a stable society, are not the most 
 convenient instruments to employ when we come 
 
16 ORDER AND PROGRESS 
 
 to observe progressive societies. The process of 
 economic life involves the three factors of produc- 
 tion, consumption and exchange. All are necessary 
 elements in any society where money economy is a 
 prevailing characteristic, and none of them can be 
 left out of account ; but they do not each afford an 
 equally convenient vantage ground for viewing the 
 phenomena in their mutual relations. Where human 
 powers of overcoming nature are hardly developed 
 there is little to be gained by concentrating attention 
 on the conditions of production ; but it is the 
 characteristic feature of progressive societies that 
 human powers of controlling natural forces and 
 directing them by mechanical means have such 
 enormous importance both in agriculture and indus- 
 try. Publicists in progressive countries, during the 
 last three hundred years, have viewed economic 
 questions from the point of view of production 
 rather than from that of consumption ; both under 
 the Mercantile System, and under the regime of 
 laissez faire, this was the topic which received the 
 largest share of attention. There must, of course, 
 be a forecast as to the probable effects on the con- 
 suming public of any change, but it is the producer 
 who initiates the actual change itself. He endeav- 
 ours to create a further demand by supplying goods 
 on better terms ; and by the organization of business, 
 or by the introduction of machinery which enables 
 the consumers to be better served, the producer takes 
 the risks and acts. By looking at economic pheno- 
 mena from the point of view of the producer we are 
 in the best position for understanding the reasons of 
 any change and the manner in which it operated ; 
 we can get an inside view of the situation. 
 
 In recent times, however, there has been a reaction ; 
 a new school of economists has arisen, both in 
 Austria, France and England, who are inclined to 
 revert to the mediaeval standpoint, and to put con- 
 
CONSUMPTION 17 
 
 sumption in the forefront. There is much to be 
 said for the proposal to recast Economic Science on 
 these lines; consumption is the final end for which 
 all production is undertaken, and it seems wise to 
 keep this final end constantly before us. In dealing 
 with consumption too, we are fixing our attention on 
 something that concerns the whole human race and 
 every member of it. The powers of production and 
 the interests of different individuals and different 
 classes of society are quite distinct; they are separate 
 and may easily conflict ; but in human needs there 
 is something that is common to all mankind, and 
 this opens up the prospect of formulating a science 
 with laws and maxims of universal validity for all 
 times and places. There has been a further and a 
 practical reason for this reversion ; since the era of 
 mechanical invention and the introduction of giant 
 industry, it has seemed as if there were a constant 
 danger of overproduction, while on the other hand 
 there are masses of the population who habitually 
 suffer from the direst want, and live in most miser- 
 able conditions. There is a general impression in 
 the public mind that what we need in the present 
 day is to fix our minds on the distribution of wealth, 
 and not to trouble ourselves further about produc- 
 tion at all. In regard to this last point, however, it 
 is worth while to notice that there is no difference of 
 opinion as to the pressing nature of the problem and 
 the importance of dealing with it effectively ; the 
 real question is as to the best method of approaching 
 it. From the standpoint of the consumer there is 
 only one thing that matters — that goods should be 
 cheap; and suggestions for attaining this object are 
 so general that they are apt to be rather superficial. 
 We may go into the matter much more thoroughly 
 from the standpoint of the producer, since we may 
 consider in what practical ways the conditions of the 
 work of manual labourers can be improved and how 
 
18 ORDER AND PROGRESS 
 
 their remuneration can be rendered more adequate. 
 Such definite proposals as that of enforcing a mini- 
 mum rate of wages are directly connected with the 
 consideration of production, and we need to see how 
 they would work out practically in different trades. 
 All the improvements in the conditions of work, 
 such as the Factory Acts, which were embodied in 
 legislation during the nineteenth century, were 
 enforced upon the producers and had no obvious 
 connection with consumption at all. In order to 
 deal effectively with any such problem we must 
 endeavour to understand it as well as we can. Dr. 
 Whewell x laid great stress on the importance of 
 appropriate conceptions for the grouping and inter- 
 pretation of facts; this is not merely a matter of 
 convenience, but a condition for thinking clearly, 
 and systematically; and production is the most 
 appropriate conception under which the economic 
 phenomena of progressive societies can be arranged. 
 Plausible though the proposal may be to revert 
 to the mediaeval standpoint and to look at life from 
 the point of view of consumption it is merely 
 specious; its boasted universality is illusory. Con- 
 sumption concentrates attention on the present, and 
 takes little account of the future; in mediaeval 
 conditions this was natural enough, because men 
 could not look beyond the next harvest. But in 
 progressive societies all is changed ; we can take 
 account of the conditions of production for some 
 little time ahead, in industrial pursuits. The pro- 
 ducer is always endeavouring to forecast the future 
 and to adjust his operations to the conditions he 
 foresees. The economist who starts from the stand- 
 point of consumption is tempted to concentrate 
 attention on the goods which have actually been 
 produced and of neglecting to take systematic 
 account of the future at all; there is a danger of 
 
 1. Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, i, 42. 
 
vSUMPTUARY LAWS 19 
 
 shortsightedness and it is not easy to suggest a 
 corrective. 
 
 But more than this; the consideration of produc- 
 tion does much to help us to find effective sugges- 
 tions for practical improvement, while any proposal 
 for the regulation of consumption presents grave 
 difficulties and does not afford commensurate results. 
 Sumptuary laws have been a favourite expedient in 
 many eras, but they do not seem to have been very 
 successful in checking extravagance in dress or in 
 retinues. The institution of Fish Days 1 may have 
 done something to encourage the seafaring popula- 
 tion and the Acts for burying in woollen may have 
 benefited the clothiers ; but it seems to have been a 
 cumbrous method of pursuing the object in view, 
 and to have involved somewhat inquisitorial pro- 
 ceedings. The prohibition of the consumption of 
 British goods on the Continent proved an effective 
 weapon in Napoleon's hands for attacking English 
 prosperity, but it recoiled so strikingly on the 
 countries from which he drew his resources that he 
 did not benefit much by using it. There is far 
 more hope of effecting the objects we desire and of 
 avoiding incidental loss if we try to regulate the 
 conditions of production, than if we begin at the 
 other end and try to enforce rules for consumption. 
 
 Mediaeval life had many religious features which 
 the secularised society of modern times has dis- 
 carded ; religious motives and religious sanctions 
 are no longer so much in evidence; but mediaeval 
 thought on economic subjects was not on such a 
 different plane from modern science that we need 
 have any difficulty in comparing them. The prin- 
 ciples which were laid down for secular affairs were 
 believed to be consonant with the Divine Will, but 
 they had no claim to be Darts of revealed truth ; they 
 
 1. 2 and 3 Ed. VI, c. 19. 
 
20 ORDER AND PROGRESS 
 
 were based on experience and on utilitarian con- 
 siderations; much of the argument on particular 
 points was directly drawn from Aristotle and other 
 non-Christian writers; there was no pretension to 
 lay down absolute standards of right, though much 
 ingenuity was devoted to detecting the elements of 
 unfairness that might lurk in business transactions. 
 In spite of the strong contrasts, the attempt to com- 
 pare mediaeval and modern thinking on economic 
 subjects is very instructive. Modern society has so 
 far outlived the mediaeval that we cannot but look 
 with suspicion on any deliberate attempt to return 
 to it. By starting with the universal — whether it is 
 thought of as the Divine Will for Man or as the 
 common needs of the race — we fail to reach a 
 position from which we can see clearly the interplay 
 of various particular factors in economic prosperity ; 
 we are in danger of being neglectful of the future 
 of the country or of the race, and we are tempted to 
 rely on remedies for existing evil which have been 
 proved to be cumbrous and ineffective. 
 
III. WORK AND THE MAINTENANCE 
 OF LABOUR. 
 
 The monastery was a characteristic institution of 
 the Middle Ages, and it affords an excellent illustra- 
 tion of a type of economic organization which was 
 once very widely diffused and continued to flourish 
 for centuries. In the Dark Ages, when trade was 
 nearly extinct and towns hardly existed, it was 
 inevitable that each of the centres of settled life 
 throughout the country should be, so far as possible, 
 self-sufficing, and able to provide itself habitually 
 with the main requisites of life. The prosperity of 
 scattered households, and of the villages where 
 collective cultivation was carried on and the waste 
 was used in common, depended on their being able 
 to provide themselves with shelter, clothing and 
 implements, as well as with food. The division of 
 labour could not be carried far among men who 
 were not working for a market ; but there was need 
 for many different kinds of labour, and it was neces- 
 sary that they should be organised so as to cooperate 
 to the best advantage. The various arts of life were 
 all represented in well-organised households; the 
 economic problems which had to be faced were those 
 of domestic management — of housewifery and hus- 
 bandry. The monasteries outlived the time when 
 this type of economic organisation was the most 
 advanced that suited the environment, but they help 
 us to appreciate how much it could accomplish at 
 its best. 
 
 We are not left to judge of this from the opinion 
 of contemporaries, who might easily have exagger- 
 ated achievements with which they had little to 
 compare, since we can see for ourselves. The ruins 
 of monastic building which remain are sufficient to 
 
 21 
 
22 MAINTENANCE OF LABOUR 
 
 prove on what a large scale these communities were 
 organised, and to convince us of the magnificence of 
 the architectural works which the monks designed 
 and executed. These are the crowning proofs of 
 the prosperity of their economic life, and this 
 depended on their success in organising labour of 
 every kind. The story of the first settlements of the 
 monks of the West gives the earliest indications of 
 any reconstruction of civilised life after the terrible 
 devastations which followed the barbarian invasions 
 and the break up of the Roman Empire. It seemed 
 as if fertile territory was relapsing into mere jungle 
 under the rule of conquerors, who were too proud to 
 work, and who were always ready to quarrel on the 
 smallest provocation. 1 The monks were the pioneers 
 in winning back the soil of Western Europe from 
 savagery and barbarism, and they showed a wonder- 
 ful constructive power in planting centres of orderly 
 and settled life in a state of chaos. They were able 
 to preserve and to disseminate the Roman traditions 
 as to the management of land. We know that 
 Gregory the Great was keenly interested in seeing 
 that the cultivation and the cattle-breeding on the 
 large papal estates in Sicily was properly attended 
 to by his agents ; his letters show that he was deter- 
 mined to secure efficient administration; 2 and the 
 monks whom he sent out were doubtless prepared to 
 maintain themselves as colonists while they were 
 carrying on missionary work among the English. 
 It is not possible to say how much of the agricultural 
 practice and how many of the variety of fruit trees 
 and of breeds of cattle which existed in mediaeval 
 England, were introduced in the time of the Roman 
 occupation, and what was due to the monks who 
 preserved and disseminated the tradition of Roman 
 skill. 
 
 1. Montalembert. Monks of the West, ii, 314. 
 2. Cunnningham. op. cit., i, 238 n. 
 
MONAvSTIC INDUSTRIES 23 
 
 There was also a demand at monasteries for the 
 best that the Age could furnish in connection with 
 the building and furnishing of churches; workers 
 in stone and wood, silversmiths, bell founders and 
 makers of glass all found scope for the exercise of 
 their powers in providing for the carrying on of the 
 services. The legend of S. Dunstan helps to 
 remind us what a large part manual occupations 
 played in the life of the most eminent monks of his 
 time. The royal goldsmith, S. Eloy, created a 
 remarkable industrial community of five hundred 
 members in the monastery he founded at Solignac 
 in 63 1, 1 and at the close of the eleventh century the 
 monastery of Hirschau was generally recognised as 
 a great example of the successful organisation of 
 industrial activities. 2 There were many other 
 centres where building operations were going on 
 almost continually so that they became centres of a 
 tradition of skill in masonry and kindred arts. 
 
 When order came to Be so far restored over con- 
 siderable areas that intercommunication between 
 distant places was more possible, trade not unnatur- 
 ally centred at points where productive industry was 
 highly developed, and the monasteries began to 
 enjoy facilities for commerce. There seems in 
 retrospect little to choose, between the paganism of 
 the Danes and Norsemen and the nominal Christian- 
 ity of the Frankish kings ; but while the Danes 
 continued to plunder and burn, the Merovingians 
 and Carlovingians exercised a civilising influence, 
 because they encouraged the foundation of monastic 
 settlements, both by endowing them with lands and 
 by granting them trading privileges ; the new oppor- 
 tunities which were thus opened up tended to 
 change the character of monastic life. In so far as 
 it was practicable to purchase goods, it was doubt- 
 
 1. Vita S. Eligii, I, cc. xv, xvi in Migne, lxxxvii, col. 493. 
 
 2. Christmann. Geschichte des Klosters Hirschau. 58. 
 
24 MAINTENANCE OF LABOUR 
 
 less advantageous to have access to supplies in 
 larger quantities or of better quality than could be 
 produced on the spot ; but as the monastery ceased 
 to be a self-sufficing community, its prosperity no 
 longer depended solely and entirely on the local 
 organisation of labour. There was an increase in 
 the commodities available, and there was more oppor- 
 tunity for the division of labour; the monks were able 
 to leave the agricultural work to servile or semi-servile 
 dependents, while other branches of manual labour 
 were for the most part carried on by lay brothers; 
 the monks came to devote themselves more and more 
 to transcribing and to literary and artistic work, 
 and ordinary manual occupations ceased to have an 
 essential place in the daily life of the monks. In 
 the eleventh century many of the great Benedictine 
 monasteries had ceased to exhibit a self-sufficing life 
 withdrawn from the world, since they had become 
 the nuclei round which busy mercantile communities 
 had grown up ; these wealthy oligarchies were able 
 to dominate the rest of the townsmen, but had little 
 share in their responsibilities. Still, the old ideal 
 retained its vitality; the foundation of the reformed 
 Orders was an attempt to return to the primitive 
 character of economic life, and the Cistercians in 
 particular were eager to restore labour to its old 
 place as as essential feature in monastic life. 
 
 The founding of the reformed Orders was a public 
 recognition of the fact that the monasteries had lost 
 much of their first fervour; their very prosperity 
 had spoiled them. The fears that Wesley enter- 
 tained with regard to an inevitable decadence among 
 his followers in the personal religious life, had been 
 justified long before, by experience as to the collec- 
 tive religious life of many of the Benedictine houses. 
 "Religion," he said, 1 "must necessarily produce 
 both industry and frugality, and these cannot but 
 
 1. Southey's Life, ii, 522. 
 
SPIRITUAL DECADENCE 25 
 
 produce riches. But as riches increase, so will pride, 
 anger, and love of the world in all its branches. 
 How then is it possible that Methodism, that is, a 
 religion of the heart, though it flourishes now like a 
 green bay tree, should continue in this state ? For 
 the Methodists in every place grow diligent and 
 frugal, consequently they increase in goods. Hence 
 they proportionately increase in pride, in anger, in 
 the lust of the flesh, the desire of the eyes and the 
 pride of life." The very success of the monasteries 
 as centres of organised economic life, was prejudicial 
 to their religious tone and influence. 
 
 In spite of this spiritual decadence, and of the 
 grave scandals which were often associated with 
 monastic life, both in early times and in the later 
 Middle Ages, the institution was dominated by 
 definitely religious thought. The persistent vitality 
 of the monastic ideal of life, in spite of the actual 
 failure to realise it and of recurring scandals, is even 
 more remarkable than the long-continued prosperity 
 of these houses as centres of economic organisation. 
 This ideal remained as an attractive spiritual force 
 for centuries ; not only did it inspire the eleventh 
 century movement for reform, but it appealed 
 strongly both to Savonarola and to Luther, as a 
 young man, though he lived to discard it. What- 
 ever blots and blemishes may have attached to them, 
 the monasteries continued to be institutions which 
 embodied Christian ideas of economic life; they 
 present us with a picture of industry organised on a 
 religious basis. We need not puzzle ourselves by 
 trying to deduce, from the Sermon on the Mount, 
 the features of a Christian society struggling in the 
 world, since we can study the details of an indus- 
 trial society, permeated with religious sentiment and 
 designed to express Christian principles, as it is 
 pictured for us throughout long centuries of monas- 
 tic life. 
 
 The monastery was an industrial organisation and 
 
26 MAINTENANCE OF LABOUR 
 
 is specially fitted to bring out the importance 
 assigned to Work as an essential element in the 
 religious life. S. Augustine had insisted on it 
 strongly in his book de opere monachorum, and 
 exposed the sophistry of those monks who gave a 
 non-natural interpretation to S. Paul's words, " if 
 any man will not work neither shall he eat." x But 
 the Benedictine Rule, which was frequently recited 
 by the brethren, is even more explicit on the duty of 
 work; and the hours of labour, at different periods 
 of the year, are carefully specified. 2 Insistence on 
 work as a Christian duty rests on two distinct prin- 
 ciples, one of which has reference to God, and one 
 to man. 3 From the one side, work was regarded as 
 the means of giving effect to God's purpose in 
 creating and ruling the world. The Creator was 
 thought of as the Supreme Worker, who had pro- 
 vided all the material and all the conditions under 
 which men work; but man's work was needed in 
 successive generations to bring the divine purpose 
 to full fruition. In the early chapters of Genesis 
 Adam is represented as placed in the garden of 
 Eden to carry out the divine purpose by using 
 natural things for the service of man ; and in the 
 new dispensation Christ claims for Himself a part 
 in the divine working — " My Father worketh 
 hitherto and I work." There is an inspiration in 
 the thought of divine activity which contrasts 
 strikingly with the Oriental conception of the Deity 
 as living apart from the struggles of human life, 
 and uninterested in them. Human work of every 
 sort may be regarded, from a Christian standpoint, 
 as the privilege of sharing with God in His work of 
 carrying out His purpose for Man ; there is no other 
 point of view from which the dignity of work is so 
 fully recognised. 
 
 1. Migne, xl, col. 549. 2. Eegula. Migne, Ixvi, col. 703. 
 
 3. Cunningham. Gospel of Work. 
 
DUTY OF WORK 27 
 
 The duty of work has another aspect, however, 
 for it may be regarded from the side of Man as 
 affording opportunities of self-discipline. Christian- 
 ity teaches that idleness is a sin ; it is a form of self 
 indulgence which prepares the way for many temp- 
 tations to vice ; and therefore work was valued as a 
 means of keeping men occupied and well employed 
 so that they were less likely to drift into evil. 
 While the theological principle accentuates the 
 privilege of being called to work, the ascetic prin- 
 ciple insists on the duty of work as a means of 
 escaping temptations, since it checks the baser 
 elements in human nature and gives opportunities 
 of learning self-control. 
 
 The Christian ideal of a disciplined life of work 
 was embodied in monastic institutions and was 
 markedly different from the aims which have been 
 generally favoured in the ancient world or in modern 
 times. The ideal of cultured leisure, which appealed 
 to the citizens of Greek cities, was definitely dis- 
 carded by those who adopted the monastic life. 
 They deliberately ceased to claim any sort of inde- 
 pendence, and voluntarily undertook an obedience 
 which was stricter than the most exacting master 
 could demand of any slave. In all its external 
 conditions their life was closely assimilated to that 
 of slaves; the buildings in which they lived and 
 worked resembled those of the Roman Villa with its 
 ergastula ; and the dress they wore was very similar 
 to that which was provided for slaves. They 
 voluntarily accepted conditions which appeared 
 particularly despicable when tried by the standards 
 that were accepted in the ancient world. Nor does 
 the mediaeval ideal commend itself to current opinion 
 in the present day ; the modern habit is to regard 
 work as a form of drudgery which men are justified 
 in trying to escape if they can. Our generation is 
 apt to speak of work as if it were in itself an evil, to 
 
28 MAINTENANCE OF LABOUR 
 
 which men could only be expected to submit because 
 of the hope of reward ; and attempts are made to 
 find palliatives for work, or to render work more 
 acceptable. Whatever pleasure and pride a man 
 may take in his work, there are times when the 
 drudgery and routine become oppressive ; mediaeval 
 teachers regarded work as necessary and therefore 
 as something that men ought to undertake; even 
 though it was disagreeable, it was a duty that ought 
 to be done and that served as a personal self- 
 discipline. 
 
 The economic prosperity, which the monasteries 
 attained and succeeded in maintaining for centuries, 
 is all the more remarkable when we remember that 
 they did not offer the personal incentives on which 
 we rely to stimulate energy and enterprise. Each 
 individual monk was vowed to poverty; he had no 
 possessions of his own and could not look forward 
 to receiving any profit from using them wisely. 
 Technically the land of the monastery was held, as 
 we see in Domesday Book, by the saint to whom the 
 monastery was dedicated ; and the ambitions of the 
 brethren were impersonal, for the increase of the 
 magnificence and prosperity of the house which was 
 their home. The strong esprit de corps of such 
 great Abbeys as Bury and Ramsey and Ely 
 rendered them very jealous of one another, and the 
 inmates of each were not unwilling to go through a 
 good deal of privation in order to build up the 
 dignity and reputation of the house in the future, 
 and to excel the others. This corporate pride corres- 
 ponded, in celibate communities, to the ambition to 
 found a family even at considerable personal 
 sacrifice, and to the sense of a duty to hand down 
 the possessions of a family intact; in the monas- 
 teries, at all events, there was no scope for personal 
 ambition. In a similar fashion it may be said that 
 the reward for labour was impersonal; the monks 
 
MONASTIC FARE 29 
 
 received food, shelter and clothing, whatever their 
 work might be ; and no attempt was made to dis- 
 tinguish one from another according to the result of 
 his work ; there was a common table and they fared 
 alike. According to the Benedictine Rule two 
 dishes, with salad or dessert in season, were to 
 form the principal meal, and each monk was to be 
 given a loaf of bread for the day ; while meat and 
 wine were to be allowed at the discretion of the 
 abbot for those who required them, either because of 
 the arduousness of their labours, or on account of 
 physical infirmities. 1 The distinction was not made 
 according to the value of the service rendered, but 
 according to the need of the recipient; from this 
 point of view the man who undertook most drudgery 
 had a claim to indulgence, rather than the man 
 whose employment involved most taste and skill. 
 Partly because of this practice the individual artist 
 had plenty of freedom to do his best in his own way ; 
 there was no need to make a contract or force him to 
 work up to a given standard. He received the food 
 that was going, and there was scope for the crafts- 
 man to follow his own ideas, instead of working out 
 another man's design the cost of which has been 
 calculated beforehand so that the work has to be 
 executed as part of a contract. 
 
 During the early Middle Ages this principle, of 
 paying the labourer according to his physical re- 
 quirements, and not in accordance with the value of 
 the results of his work, held good, not only within 
 the monasteries but to a considerable extent in the 
 world outside. The household was the ordinary 
 unit of industrial organisation — either the great 
 households of kings and bishops, or the innumerable 
 manors which were scattered throughout the length 
 and breadth of the country. Payment was made to 
 quite a considerable extent in rations and in liveries, 
 1. Regula. Migne, Ixvi, col. 613, 641. 
 
3 o MAINTENANCE OF LABOUR 
 
 and there were no means of making fine distinctions; 
 some broad differences could be recognised, but 
 there was very little grading in the ranks of labour. 
 Even in the towns there were few changes in the 
 demand for labour; household organisation lay at 
 the basis of all domestic industry ; a standard rate 
 which was requisite for the maintenance of labour 
 could be approximately settled, and there were no 
 means of attempting to adjust it accurately to 
 personal desert. 
 
 The main economic significance of the Black 
 Death lies in the fact that it brings into prominence 
 in England a new view of the principle on which 
 the reward of labour should be reckoned. The 
 conception which underlay the demands of the 
 labourers in 1349 might be expressed in modern 
 terms by saying that labour is a commodity, and 
 that its price should be settled like that of other 
 marketable commodities according to the supply and 
 the demand. Owing to the effects of the pestilence, 
 the supply of labour was very short after the middle 
 of the fourteenth century while the demand was 
 unprecedented ; the labourers stood out for the full 
 market rate, while parliament saw no reason why 
 they should not continue to accept the rate which 
 had sufficed for their maintenance before the Plague. 
 The labourers were successful at the time, though it 
 may be doubted whether the benefits which imme- 
 diately accrued were of permanent advantage to the 
 class. The principle on which they unconsciously 
 took their stand in 1349 and 1350 has been generally 
 adopted in modern times; and nineteenth century 
 historians denounced the injustice of authorities who 
 tried to maintain a definite standard rate, and not to 
 pay in accordance with the condition of the labour 
 market. Perhaps the last serious effort to maintain 
 a standard rate which was much lower than the 
 anticipated market rate, occurred after the great fire 
 
THE LABOUR MARKET 31 
 
 of London, when there was an extraordinary activity 
 in the building trades, and parliament intervened to 
 prevent the artisans from insisting on excessive 
 rates of payment. 1 Modern industrial life is domin- 
 ated by the conception of a labour market ; and it 
 has become possible, not only to settle a rate for each 
 of the different classes of employment, but to 
 endeavour to pay to each man personally what his 
 labour is worth in the market. The demand for the 
 adjustment of individual reward to individual dilig- 
 ence and skill is extending in some directions, and 
 the agricultural labourer is showing a preference for 
 piece-work at harvest time as the method of remun- 
 eration by which he gets the most exact equivalent 
 for what lie has actually done. Indeed this view of 
 the matter is assumed in all our social arrangements. 
 The highly skilled man, and especially the man 
 with great powers of organisation, is paid at rates 
 which have no obvious relation to his requirements 
 for maintenance. Our educational system has been 
 devised and popularised with the view of fitting 
 boys for something better than a life of mechanical 
 drudgery, and enabling them to rise in the world 
 and to obtain highly paid posts. The whole system 
 of modern society rests upon the principle that a 
 man should be paid according to what he is worth 
 personally, in the labour market, and not merely in 
 direct relation to his requirements for maintenance. 
 In recent times however, there has been a reaction ; 
 the market conditions may have given the fourteenth 
 century labourers a dead lift upwards, but at the 
 present time the removal of positive checks to the 
 increase of population has brought about a state of 
 affairs when there is a keen competition for employ- 
 ment in the lower grades of labour; modern 
 conditions of contracting and subcontracting are 
 favourable to the development of sweating, and 
 
 1. 19 Charles II, c. 3, §§ 16, 17. 
 
32 MAINTENANCE OF LABOUR 
 
 there are numerous employments in which the 
 market rate does not constitute a living wage. 
 Under these circumstances there has been a reaction 
 against the modern method of settling payments, 
 and there is a widespread demand that the principle 
 of providing the necessary requirements for life 
 should be once more taken into account in determin- 
 ing rates of wages. This older principle had been 
 abandoned as impracticable, and had been much 
 overlooked in public discussions; but it has never 
 been wholly forgotten. Mr. Whitbread advocated 
 a minimum rate of wages for agricultural labourers 
 in 1795, 1 and the cotton weavers looked to it as a 
 remedy for the starvation rates they were forced to 
 accept in 18 13. The chief work of Trade Unions, 
 since they became free to develop a policy, has been 
 to struggle for the maintenance of the standard of 
 life, and the principle of a minimum wage has 
 obtained authoritative recognition in many quarters. 
 The principle of relying on market rates is no longer 
 regarded as satisfactory, and current opinion is 
 revert to a position that is in much closer relation to 
 the view which was dominant during the Middle 
 Ages. 
 
 We ought to remember, however, that the difficul- 
 ties of working out this conception in practical life 
 in the present day are much greater than they could 
 ever be in the Middle Ages, because social relation- 
 ships are so much more complex. In a typical 
 household, such as a monastery, all payments were 
 made in kind, by allowances of food and clothing ; 
 money economy had not penetrated to the manage- 
 ment of the internal affairs of the house; under 
 these circumstances no question need have arisen 
 about changes in the purchasing power of money. 
 It appears to be generally agreed that the purchas- 
 ing power of a labourer's wages has fallen about 
 
 1. Pari. Hist., xxxii, 700. 
 
DIFFERENT STANDARDS OF LIFE 33 
 
 io per cent, or more during the last decade; it is a 
 matter of great difficulty to calculate exactly what 
 the exact change has been under slightly different 
 conditions, and it seems to be almost an insuperable 
 problem to devise any means by which the standard 
 of life may be kept constant in spite of frequent 
 fluctuations in the purchasing power of wages. 
 
 There is another complication of which account 
 must be taken in modern times. In the mediaeval 
 monasteries there was practically only one standard 
 of life ; there was no grading of the various classes 
 of labour. Even if it had arisen there was no 
 temptation in a celibate community to perpetuate 
 such distinctions. In modern times, where differ- 
 ences of personal ability are reflected in differences 
 in the rate of reward, there come to be many different 
 standards. Further, the opportunity for developing 
 and indulging personal tastes and interests is much 
 greater than it was in old days; there are fewer 
 pageants and festivals that all enjoy together ; and 
 each man's standard of comfort includes personal 
 indulgences that do not appeal to all alike. Few 
 would be content to reckon food, shelter, and cloth- 
 ing as the only elements in their standard of life; 
 some would add tea and tobacco, and some would 
 wish to include a newspaper or a piano. Owing to 
 differences of taste, the standard of comfort for a 
 class is apt to be indefinite, while the problem of 
 fixing the standard of any one grade of labour, 
 relatively to other grades, is one which did not arise 
 in monastic life, and which seems insuperable. 
 There is a general impression abroad that some 
 groups of labourers have been able to secure a rate 
 of reward that seems to be unduly high when com- 
 pared with that of other men on the same social 
 level. A broad difference between the professional 
 man, the skilled artisan and the unskilled labourer 
 might be drawn ; the length of time necessary for 
 
34 MAINTENANCE OF LABOUR 
 
 training for different callings might give a basis for 
 calculating what differences there were in the 
 standard of life which it was right to recognise; but 
 the minor differences of reward would not be so 
 easily dealt with. The broad distinctions in the 
 standard of life are not arbitrary, but depend on 
 natural distinctions. The division of labour has 
 gone a long way in modern society and is apt to 
 give rise to differences of caste which could not 
 appear in celibate communities; but since the 
 division of labour renders the specialisation of 
 functions possible, it is to the advantage of the 
 community as a whole, and is not likely to be 
 discarded. The surgeon who is well trained and 
 has long experience is likely to be a better surgeon, 
 and the ploughman who is habituated to ploughing 
 is likely to be good at his business ; there would be 
 no advantage in setting anyone to pursue these two 
 avocations alternately. If the principle of division 
 of labour is once admitted for individuals, it is not 
 clear that it is right to aim at giving the same reward 
 to each ; and it is difficult to devise any scheme by 
 which the children of each shall start life with equal 
 opportunities. 
 
 Perhaps the greatest difficulty in modern society 
 is due to the large number of unemployed ; and 
 there is at least a serious risk that if a standard rate 
 were fixed, there might be a tendency to add to the 
 numbers of those who could find no employment. 
 Unless the standard rate is to be in part an allowance 
 to supplement wages, the question must arise in 
 regard to those who, either from their misfortune or 
 their fault, are quite inefficient, and are not worth 
 the standard rate. They cannot by their work 
 contribute anything of a value equivalent to the 
 payment required to give them adequate means of 
 livelihood. There will be a tendency to leave them 
 altogether without employment ; or else they must 
 
CHRLSTIAN COMMUNISM 35 
 
 be maintained in some way out of charity, and not 
 as self-dependent members of the community. 
 These considerations are alleged, not from any 
 desire to show that the principle of a living wage is 
 unsound, but because it is important that we should 
 have our eyes open to the nature of the difficulties 
 which have to be faced if it is to be adopted as the 
 basis of industrial remuneration in the complicated 
 conditions of modern society. 
 
 Monastic life was a Christian Communism, and 
 the remarkable prosperity which it maintained, for 
 something like a thousand years, is at least a proof 
 that communism, when attempted under favourable 
 conditions and on sound lines, is not necessarily 
 such a failure as the history of recent experiments 
 might lead us to suppose. The conditions of 
 economic life in the Dark Ages were favourable to 
 the experiment, nothing more elaborate than house- 
 hold management could be attempted ; and the 
 difficulties which arise in regulating the economic 
 life of a large community, such as a city or a nation, 
 did not need to be faced. In the fourteenth century, 
 when money economy was coming very generally 
 into vogue and society was entering on a progressive 
 stage, the monasteries were quite unable to keep 
 their place as models of industrial organisation or to 
 adapt themselves so as to hold their own in the new 
 conditions. 
 
 Not only the external conditions of the times but 
 the spirit of monastic life had been favourable to 
 the success of these experiments in Communism. 
 On the one hand the corporate spirit was exceed- 
 ingly strong, and impersonal ambitions for the 
 future of the house were powerful motives ; the 
 danger, attendant on any economic systems which 
 are concentrated on the consideration of immediate 
 consumption, were minimised by this desire to main- 
 tain the dignity of the house. The fact that the 
 
36 MAINTENANCE OF LABOUR 
 
 monks were vowed to prompt obedience is also an 
 important point ; the difficulties which arise in 
 modern socialistic systems, of deciding to whom the 
 distasteful work, which is necessary for the welfare 
 of the community, is to be assigned, and how any- 
 one is to be compelled to do it, were hardly likely to 
 be felt when there was one master whose authority it 
 was not possible to dispute. It is not easy to see 
 how any personal incentives can be devised in 
 modern times which would be effective for maintain- 
 ing the industrial discipline that was practicable in 
 monasteries. 
 
 The prosperity of Christian Communism in an 
 unprogressive society does not after all give much 
 encouragement to those who may be trying to 
 organise communistic societies in the progressive 
 conditions of the modern world. But it remains as 
 a standing witness to the effectiveness of spiritual 
 influences in the affairs of secular life. The prin- 
 ciples, as to the duty of work and the maintenance 
 of labour, on which these industrial organisations 
 were founded, were strictly religious in origin and 
 were in conflict with the maxims and habits which 
 had been inherited from the ancient civilisation. 
 They completely justified themselves by their 
 success; and their influence extended beyond the 
 monastic walls to permeate the ordinary practice in 
 the households of lay magnates and in the regula- 
 tions of the towns. The teaching of S. Augustine 
 and of the Benedictine Rule was a leaven which 
 worked gradually ; it eventually created a great 
 polity in which Christian principles moulded all 
 economic relations. The monks did not succeed in 
 setting forth a perfect picture of the life of a 
 Christian society, as our Lord gave a perfect model 
 for the personal Christian life; but they founded 
 institutions which were dominated by Christian 
 habits of thought and set forth Christian economics 
 
CHRISTIAN DISCIPLINE 37 
 
 in action. In one generation after another they 
 took hold of men who were far from being saints, 
 and moulded them by subjection to a Christian 
 discipline. The influence they exercised on the 
 outside world and their long continued prosperity 
 are pledges of the effectiveness of spiritual forces, 
 and may encourage us to cherish hopes of the 
 regeneration of society that may be accomplished if 
 spiritual influences are systematically and wisely 
 brought to bear on the complicated problems of our 
 own day. 
 
IV. THE CITY AND THE NATION AS 
 ECONOMIC UNITS. 
 
 Vestiges of the wealth in mediaeval cities are 
 striking evidence of their former prosperity, and 
 their history has much to tell us of the inspiring 
 force of civic patriotism. In the later Middle 
 Ages, when the monasteries were ceasing to be 
 economically at their best, there was an extra- 
 ordinary development of urban life and municipal 
 institutions ; the growth of trade, which was under- 
 mining the prosperity of the monasteries as self- 
 sufficing centres of industrial life, afforded the 
 conditions under which towns could spring up and 
 flourish. The characteristic difference between 
 these two types of economic organisation is shown 
 in the architectural arrangements; while the cloister 
 was the centre of monastic life, the activities of the 
 town were ranged round an open market place. 
 
 Wherever there is a social group, be it large or be 
 it small, in which the industrial activities and facili- 
 ties for trade are consciously regulated so that they 
 may conduce to the prosperity of the community as 
 a whole, that social group maybe called an economic 
 organism ; such social structures are distinguished 
 from one another by the area they control, and their 
 method of framing and enforcing their regulations; 
 and they can be conveniently spoken of as units of 
 economic organisation. The monastery was such 
 a unit ; however diverse the occupations might be, 
 no individual was working on his own account but 
 was consciously contributing to the maintenance of 
 the little community ; the effective desire to increase 
 its prosperity was keenly felt. The internal economy 
 of the religious house was based on natural economy, 
 and could only be definitely described in terms of 
 
 38 
 
MONEY ECONOMY 39 
 
 services or of kind ; while in the towns the habits of 
 life were entirely different. Money economy was 
 prevalent ; and the conditions of buying and selling, 
 as well as those of production, were regulated and 
 controlled with a view to the continued prosperity of 
 the town. Life in the town was more specialised; 
 it embraced many elements that were independent 
 and in danger of conflicting ; but the common good 
 of the community was kept before the citizens as a 
 conscious aim, and systematic efforts were made to 
 control the various interests so that they might work 
 together for the good of the town as a whole. The 
 recognition of common interests and the force of 
 common sentiment were powerful enough to guide 
 and control the conflicting interests so as to provide 
 the material basis for the life of the community. 
 
 Considered as an economic unit the town was 
 much more complex than the monastery. The 
 division of labour was carried farther; and the 
 specialisation of functions was perpetuated in the 
 distinction of social grades and classes, with differ- 
 ent rights and obligations as well as with different 
 employments. There had been no occasion to 
 recognise this severance of different elements in 
 monastic life ; but they could not be ignored in the 
 towns, and the problem of urban life was that of 
 inducing or compelling these separate elements to 
 co-operate. The mercantile and the manufacturing 
 interests were certainly distinct, from week to week 
 and month to month, though the prosperity of the 
 town demanded that both should be flourishing and 
 that they should play into one another's hands ; the 
 authorities of the towns were extraordinarily success- 
 ful in bringing about this co-operation of industrv 
 and commerce. The monasteries had only set them- 
 selves to regulate industrial life, but the towns had 
 a far harder task ; they succeeded so well that they 
 continued, like the monasteries, to be flourishing 
 
40 THE CITY AND THE NATION 
 
 centres for centuries; and it is hardly fanciful to 
 note a similarity in the influence which brought 
 about the decline of these two forms of economic 
 organisation. The monasteries lost their original 
 character of self-sufficing centres of industry when 
 they were drawn into the stream of regular com- 
 merce, and the characteristic institutions of the 
 mediaeval towns succumbed before the inroads of a 
 purely commercial spirit. So long as domestic 
 industry lasted, the towns continued on the scale on 
 which they had been projected in the thirteenth 
 century and were able to meet English requirements 
 for urban life. With the exception of London they 
 hardly found it necessary to cover additional area; 
 it was only in the latter part of the eighteenth 
 century, when mechanical appliances were being 
 introduced and giant industry began to develop that 
 they entered on a new era of municipal expansion. 
 
 The factors which had done so much to promote 
 the economic prosperity of the monasteries were less 
 effective in the larger and more complex life of the 
 city. The esprit-de-corps was not so strong, and 
 there was no possibility of maintaining such strict 
 discipline; the civic history of the Middle Ages is 
 full of stories of faction fights, and of struggles 
 between different groups of citizens. An impersonal 
 ambition, for the honour of their patron saint, was a 
 conscious element in monastic life; but the pros- 
 perity of the community appealed to the townsmen 
 as a matter of common interest to themselves. In 
 many cases they were bound together by the common 
 possession of land ; this was frequent in Scottish 
 towns which were much concerned for the manage- 
 ment of the ' common good.' In many continental 
 towns the strongest common interest lay in the 
 necessity for building and repairing their walls and 
 for providing military equipment ; but in English 
 inland towns there seems to have been far less sense 
 
CORRECTIVE INFLUENCE 4' 
 
 of any need for providing against external attack. 
 The English townsmen were chiefly concerned in 
 maintaining the privileges and immunities which 
 had been secured to them by charter, especially their 
 freedom from the sheriffs jurisdiction, the right of 
 raising their quota of taxation in their own way, and 
 their rights with regard to markets. These common 
 rights and interests were the very basis of the 
 common life of the towns, and civic patriotism grew 
 up in connection with them. 
 
 While religious habits and worship had a very 
 large part in the life of mediaeval towns, they existed 
 for secular purposes, and the religious element was 
 not the very essence of their existence as it was in 
 the case of the monasteries. The monastery was a 
 definitely religious institution and had been deliber- 
 ately organised in order to afford men the most 
 complete opportunities of preparing themselves for 
 the life to come ; the economic prosperity of these 
 houses was incidental. But towns had existed long 
 before Christianity came into the world ; they were 
 social groups in which human life was organised for 
 the sake of making the most of natural conditions, 
 and with no direct supernatural aims. Christianity 
 could be brought to bear to leaven town life, but it 
 did not create it. Monastic life aimed at being 
 positively religious and at embodying Christian 
 ideals; but in the towns, Christianity was rather a 
 corrective influence, which aimed at ordering secular 
 life so that it should be not unchristian. Attempts 
 were made to prevent commercial life from being 
 carried on in disregard of Christian requirements, 
 but there was no pretension that all the affairs and 
 activities of life were regulated with direct reference 
 to supernatural aims as a spiritual discipline. 
 
 In so far as the municipal regulation of trade had 
 a definitely religious character, the authorities were 
 only endeavouring to insist on what the current 
 
42 THE CITY AND THE NATION 
 
 conscience regarded as a standard of honest dealing. 
 They endeavoured to put down the kind of transac- 
 tions by which a man made money at the expense 
 of someone else, without rendering any real service 
 to the community. The familiar story of the 
 Merchant of Venice illustrates the fashion in which 
 a trader might come to be wholly in the power of a 
 neighbour, and it was felt to be desirable that no one 
 should have the power of driving such a bargain. 
 It was the duty of a Christian man to avoid placing 
 himself in such a position as to be tempted to be an 
 extortioner; and the terms on which money was lent 
 were •carefully scrutinised, so that no legal claim 
 could arise for an extortionate demand from an 
 impoverished man. If anyone chose to lend money 
 to a friend he was doing a kindness, and of course 
 he ought to be repaid what he had lent ; but if he 
 began doing the same sort of thing as a matter of 
 business he was likely to place himself in a false 
 position. If he had really been put to inconvenience 
 by allowing his friend the use of his money, or 
 through a failure to return it on the appointed day, 
 it was right he should be reimbursed, but in making 
 a definite contract to this effect there might be 
 danger of unfairness; the lender bargained for 
 freedom from risk, and certainty of gain. To enter 
 into a temporary partnership with a merchant and 
 to agree to share risks and profits was perfectly fair, 
 but to bargain for gain for certain, and to leave it 
 to the merchant to take all the risks himself, was a 
 very one-sided agreement. It might mean that the 
 unfortunate man who had lost a ship would not only 
 have to return the capital, but to pay away a share 
 in profits which had been anticipated but never 
 realised. The man who laid himself out for money 
 lending as a business was not really regarded as 
 promoting enterprise or benefiting the community ; 
 and as a matter of fact the great expansion of 
 
JUST PRICE 43 
 
 English commerce during the reigns of Elizabeth 
 and James was organised by Joint Stock Companies 
 in which risks and profits were shared by all the 
 members, and not by adopting any form of agree- 
 ment which mediaeval morality would have con- 
 demned. 
 
 A similar principle as to fair dealing entered not 
 only into monetary transactions but also into deal- 
 ings in goods. There was a firm feeling that every 
 commodity had a just price l at which it ought to 
 be exchanged, and the problem for mediaeval moral- 
 ists was that of finding how this just price could be 
 detected. In some cases it might be authoritatively 
 laid down by the ' good men of the trade/ who 
 knew what was the standard rate of wages and could 
 tell the amount of labour embodied in any of the 
 wares exposed for sale ; the whole of the regulation 
 of reasonable prices by public authorities or craft 
 guilds, was an attempt to lay down the just or 
 reasonable price which the seller ought to give and 
 the maker to receive. But when this method was 
 inapplicable, either because the w r ares had been 
 brought from a distance or for any other reason, 
 ' common estimation ' afforded the best approxima- 
 tion to the just price ; and common estimation was 
 indicated by the prices offered and accepted in the 
 open market. On the whole and so far as possible, 
 efforts were made to secure that the labourers' stan- 
 dard of life should be provided for and that the 
 prices at which wares were sold should be adapted 
 to this as a first charge. The standard of life was 
 the dominating influence in the determination of the 
 price of wares. 
 
 There was indeed much civic regulation which did 
 not depend on considerations of morality, or on the 
 distinctions between right and wrong which were 
 drawn by mediaeval casuists; the townsmen were 
 
 1. Ashley. English Economic History, I, i, 133. 
 
44 THE CITY AND THE NATION 
 
 concerned to promote the economic interests which 
 were common to the community as a whole. Their 
 general policy was dictated by the consideration for 
 the consumer. If one of them made a good bargain 
 with a man who was foreign to the town, other 
 townsmen had a right to claim a share of the pur- 
 chase, at the same favourable rate. It was a matter 
 ot primary concern that the markets should be 
 plentifully supplied, that people who could only 
 afford to buy in small quantities, should have their 
 chance as well as the large dealers, and especially 
 that those who were buying wares for their own use 
 should have a preference over any trader who wanted 
 to buy because he saw his way to sell again later on 
 at a profit. All the market regulations about fore- 
 stalled and regrators were meant to be in the 
 interests of the townsmen generally, as consumers of 
 commodities exposed for sale in the market. 
 
 But consumption was not the sole consideration ; 
 the townsmen were quite alive to the importance of 
 keeping up the reputation of the town as a place 
 where wares of good quality w r ere produced. All 
 sorts of rules, as to the conditions in which work 
 should be carried on and the supervision to which 
 craftsmen should be subjected, were laid down with 
 the view that wares should be made of good 
 materials by skilled workmen, who exercised their 
 calling under proper conditions. In mediaeval 
 towns, where domestic industry was in vogue, the 
 regulation of industry was inseparably connected 
 with home life; and the system of apprenticeship 
 was not merely regarded as providing technical 
 training in some craft, but as a school of life as a 
 townsman. The material prosperity of the towns 
 was due to their recognition of the fact that con- 
 sumption and production are interdependent, and to 
 their success in securing that trade and industry 
 should co-operate together for the common weal. 
 
CIVIC PATRIOTISM 45 
 
 This was the basis on which civic pride in prudent 
 self-government on the part of the citizens ultim- 
 ately rested. 
 
 While we recognise the wealth and power to 
 which some of the mediaeval cities attained, we are 
 apt to disparage civic patriotism as very narrow, and 
 locally self-centred ; the jealousies and rivalries of 
 neighbouring towns seem to us rather contemptible. 
 But after all there is reason to doubt whether the 
 times were ripe for any economic organisation on a 
 larger scale; the English towns were hardly conscious 
 of any aims which were common to each and all . The 
 conditions of seamanship defined to some extent the 
 directions in which the merchants of each particular 
 town would wish to prosecute their trade. Exeter 
 and Bristol looked to the South and West, while 
 Newcastle and York had connections with Flanders 
 and the Baltic. Further there was no central autho- 
 rity that was strong enough to exercise an effective 
 control over economic activities throughout the 
 length and breadth of the country ; that only became 
 possible in Tudor times, when civic institutions had 
 proved their inadequacy, and the Crown attained to 
 its greatest power. Civic patriotism was thoroughly 
 public-spirited within a narrow circle, and it was the 
 best type of citizenship that was compatible with the 
 circumstances of the times. There must have been 
 much personal self-sacrifice in the discharge of 
 common responsibilities, and in efforts to enforce 
 that which was for the common good ; the tradition 
 of keeping the interest of the community, even 
 though it was a comparatively small community, in 
 view, has been a noble heritage, as it is a constant 
 witness to the possibility of subordinating economic 
 interests to the maintenance of a well-ordered social 
 life. 
 
 The regulations laid down by civic authorities 
 were of course only applicable within the limits of 
 
46 THE CITY AND THE NATION 
 
 their jurisdiction : many economic activities were 
 uninfluenced by them altogether. The mason's 
 craft, which seems to have been highly organised in 
 the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, was apparently 
 extra-municipal, as the masons were much employed 
 on ecclesiastical and royal buildings with which the 
 town authorities had no right to interfere. Similarly, 
 the largest gatherings for commercial purposes lay 
 outside their jurisdiction. In the twelfth and thir- 
 teenth centures we hear of the establishment of many 
 fairs to which foreign merchants resorted ; there 
 were better opportunities for purchasing goods of 
 various kinds at these occasional gatherings than at 
 any of the permanent centres of regular trade. 
 Some of them were held on the sea shore or at 
 convenient points for transit, and they may have 
 contributed to the origin or at least to the growth 
 of towns such as Yarmouth and St. Ives. Others 
 were held in the neighbourhood of existing towns, 
 and the profits of Stourbridge fair went to the 
 Cambridge townsmen ; but however closely con- 
 nected they might be, the fair was regarded as an 
 exceptional incident and not as a regular part of the 
 life of the town ; the period during which it might 
 last was carefully limited, so that it should not inter- 
 fere with the ordinary conditions of life; and the 
 regulations which were laid down had reference to 
 facilities for trade and had no bearing on the interests 
 of the inhabitants of a locality or the conditions of 
 their life. At a fair the authorities were concerned 
 to maintain peace and to see that there were suitable 
 arrangements for the speedy execution of justice and 
 the recovery of debts; these were the conditions 
 which were important for the merchants who visited 
 the fairs ; and if they came in numbers and the trade 
 was active the profit from the fair would be all the 
 larger. It was, however, a purely commercial 
 institution in which the commercial spirit had free 
 
TRADE AT FAIRS 47 
 
 play. All sorts of people met together from many 
 different places ; the dealers traded in various goods, 
 and not merely in wares which they had personally 
 produced and which they could therefore guarantee ; 
 the merchants would wish to realise their goods for 
 the best price obtainable during the fair, so as not to 
 have to pack up their stock for sale elsewhere ; the 
 prices which were offered and accepted had direct 
 reference to the conditions of supply and demand ; 
 but the conditions of production, and the require- 
 ments of the producer, did not necessarily come into 
 consideration at all, and could be left entirely in the 
 background. It was the business of a merchant at 
 a fair to push his trade and try to create a demand 
 for the goods he had brought, while the rates at 
 which the craftsmen in the towns could sell his wares 
 were determined by the facilities of production, and 
 these could not be readily altered to meet an in- 
 creased demand. The fair was an exceptional 
 institution in which pecuniary considerations were 
 paramount, while every buyer and every seller was 
 free to consider his own interests and was not called 
 upon to take account of the common welfare. 
 
 In these mediaeval fairs we have institutions where 
 commercial transactions were isolated, and carried 
 on apart from the ordinary routine of life; they 
 present us with an early example of the phenomena 
 which Economic Science studies systematically. 
 Since that time the commercial spirit has obtained 
 more and more free play ; the conditions, which 
 were only tolerated as exceptional, have become 
 normal. The methods of determining price, which 
 were characteristic of fairs, gradually extended to 
 towns; and the civic institutions for maintaining 
 stable relations between trade and industry and for 
 securing the standard of industrial life broke down 
 in consequence. Certain purely commercial towns, 
 such as Antwerp, flourished because they were 
 
48 THE CITY AND THE NATION 
 
 regulated as permanent fairs, and offered unparal- 
 leled opportunities for regular trade. In the seven- 
 teenth century the machinery for regulating trade, 
 so that it might react on the personal welfare of the 
 craftsmen, had broken down everywhere in England; 
 and the commercial spirit came to dominate economic 
 activities of every kind both in town and country. 
 There are many features of this change which we 
 cannot but regret; but we may at least recognise 
 that it has opened up the way for a great advance in 
 knowledge. We have a larger field for empirical 
 study; economic activities can be examined much 
 more systematically and thoroughly than was poss- 
 ible when the special requirements and aims of each 
 locality had to be taken into account separately ; we 
 can train ourselves in clear thinking as to the causes 
 of the wealth of nations. In old days it was only 
 possible to deal with each problem blindly and by 
 rule of thumb ; but conclusions based on wide experi- 
 ence can now be reached as to the best methods to 
 adopt for promoting the welfare, material and moral, 
 of any community. Clear thinking is the first 
 condition without which wise action is impossible ; 
 and Economic Science provides the means and the 
 terminology for describing economic phenomena 
 accurately, and for measuring economic forces; it 
 gives us the means of arranging the facts of human 
 experience systematically, and of generalising as to 
 what is likely to hold good over a considerable range 
 in space and time. It is only by studying the work- 
 ing of the commercial spirit that we can learn by 
 what means and at what expense it can be corrected, 
 wherever we feel that correction is needed. 
 
 Mediaeval townsmen were fully aware that the 
 commercial spirit, if it was left unregulated, was 
 antagonistic to the best interests of the community 
 as they conceived them. Not only were they 
 anxious to keep the fairs within strict limits, but they 
 
SUSPICION OF JEWS 49 
 
 were keenly suspicious of those neighbours who 
 were absorbed in considerations of pecuniary gain, 
 and did not attempt to take the good of the 
 community habitually into account. This was the 
 fundamental reason for the antagonism to the Jews 
 in mediaeval towns; they did not belong to the 
 community in which they lived, and they could not 
 be expected to put its interests in the forefront. So 
 far as the Angevin kings were concerned, they served 
 a useful purpose, for they facilitated the collection of 
 revenue at a time when there was comparatively 
 little money in circulation ; they formed little 
 colonies within the towns and were ready to push 
 their trade in a thoroughly commercial spirit, while 
 other dealers were under restrictions imposed in 
 what was believed to be the interest of the com- 
 munity as a whole. It is not necessary to pay too 
 much attention to the allegations of contemporaries 
 that the thirteenth century Jews pushed their trade 
 by dishonest means, or to discuss the suggestion of 
 modern writers that the success of the Jews was due 
 to their greater abilities. They worked upon a 
 different standard, which has come to be generally 
 accepted in modern times, though it was not in 
 accordance with the mediaeval conception of 'honest' 
 callings, since their activities were not consciously 
 controlled and regulated by consideration for the 
 interests of the community as a whole. This was 
 quite enough to account for the hostility and 
 suspicion with which they were regarded, and there 
 is no need to enquire too closely whether they 
 actually lived down to the low standard of morality 
 that was imputed to them as aliens and outcasts. 
 
 Though the Jews were expelled by Edward I., the 
 townsmen were not able to resist the encroachments 
 of the commercial spirit. The changes consequent 
 on the Black Death had impoverished the towns 
 and disorganised the machinery for regulating 
 
50 THE CITY AND THE NATION 
 
 industrial Hfe, and it seems as if the commercial 
 spirit had captured the old institutions, not only in 
 London but in other towns as well, during the 
 fifteenth century. The cleavage between the capit- 
 alist element and the craftsmen became more 
 pronounced ; civic government fell more and more 
 into the hands of little oligarchies which did not 
 obviously subserve common interests or the good 
 of the community as a whole. The burden of 
 taxation, which had been imposed upon them in 
 more prosperous days, was too heavy for the towns 
 to bear ; capitalists were trying to push their trade 
 from the town as a centre, and industry began to 
 migrate to suburbs and villages where there were 
 fewer restrictions on the manner in which it was 
 carried on. The time had gone by when it was 
 possible to regulate industry and commerce so that 
 they should co-operate locally for the common weal 
 of the inhabitants of a town. The old method of 
 subordinating economic activities to the require- 
 ments of life was out of date, and the civic 
 community had ceased to discharge its function as 
 a well-ordered unit of economic organisation. 
 
 The attempts of Queen Mary to galvanise the 
 corporate towns into life were unsuccessful ; and 
 under Queen Elizabeth systematic efforts were made 
 to regulate the economic activities of the country 
 by a centralised machinery and with reference, not 
 merely to the special interests of particular towns, 
 but, with a view to the common interests of the realm 
 as a whole. Throughout the Middle Ages the 
 English Kings had exercised considerable super- 
 vision over commerce ; they recognised how much 
 they might profit by an increase of Customs, and 
 they were ready to encourage the settlement of 
 skilled artisans within the kingdom. Much had 
 been done to improve the facilities for internal trade 
 by providing supplies of coinage, and by attempting 
 
NATIONAL RESOURCES 51 
 
 to insist on a uniform standard of weights and 
 measures throughout the country, as well as by 
 creating an official machinery for certifying the 
 character of the cloth, which had become the most 
 important of English exports. But the centralised 
 power which came into the hands of Elizabeth and 
 her advisers enabled them to go much farther, and 
 to organise industry and commerce in every part of 
 the realm with a view of making them co-operate 
 for the promotion of national interests and the 
 development of national life. The old commercial 
 morality was maintained ; the distinctions and pro- 
 hibitions which had been intended to prevent 
 moneyed men from enriching themselves through 
 the necessities of their neighbours were enforced by 
 statutes of the realm. Most of the arrangements 
 which had been devised by London authorities for 
 maintaining the character of industry were taken 
 over bodily in the Statute of Apprentices; but the 
 prosperity of the rural districts was not left out of 
 sight, while special pains were taken to foster the 
 fishing trades and to promote the increase of the 
 mercantile marine. For the first time all the 
 resources of the nation, agricultural, industrial and 
 maritime were carefully taken into account, and 
 detailed regulations were laid down and systematic- 
 ally enforced, for bringing them to work together 
 for the prosperity of the whole realm. 
 
 The royal advisers were doubtless anxious to 
 increase the pecuniary resources of the Crown ; they 
 did not, however, regard the matter as a question 
 of the increase of wealth, so much as of the develop- 
 ment and expansion of national life. The new 
 machinery was more readily accepted, and could be 
 got more easily into working order, because the 
 nation had at last become conscious of national aims 
 which were for the common interest of all alike. 
 It was obviously of importance to Englishmen, in 
 
52 THE CITY AND THE NATION 
 
 every part of the country, that they should be 
 secured against the aggression of Spain, and be able 
 to preserve their national independence. There 
 was a very strong religious element in this repug- 
 nance to be absorbed in the Spanish system ; during 
 the reign of Queen Mary a deep impression had 
 been made by the measures which were taken to 
 bring England back into subjection to the papacy ; 
 Spain was at once an overweening political power 
 and the champion of reaction. The religious settle- 
 ment under Elizabeth was not very popular ; it went 
 too far for some and not far enough for others, but 
 it did serve as the means of rallying the English 
 people to a sense of a common danger and a deter- 
 mination to protect themselves against it. The 
 difficulty of superseding local by national patriotism 
 was smoothed away by the sense of common 
 national danger, and the willingness of the people 
 to suport the national government was quickened 
 by the fear of Spanish encroachments. 
 
 The feeling of antagonism to Spain did not merely 
 rest on the general determination to preserve 
 national independence, it appealed particularly to 
 the more enterprising elements, in all parts of the 
 country; they were ambitious that England should 
 have a share in the opportunities of expansion 
 which had been opened up by the discovery of the 
 new routes to the East and of the New World. The 
 seafaring population denied the claim of the Pope 
 to portion out these enormous territories between 
 the Spaniards and the Portuguese, and they resented 
 the attempts of the Spaniards to put his decision in 
 force. Stories of the conquest of Mexico and Peru, 
 were heard with indignation, and the treatment 
 which English traders received at the hands of 
 Spanish authorities drove it home; this experience 
 gave point to the feeling which had been roused in 
 the reign of Queen Mary and diffused a sense of 
 
NATIONAL AMBITION 53 
 
 horror at Spanish rule and at the form of Christian- 
 ity which they maintained. Drake and other 
 Elizabethan seamen felt that it would be a crime 
 against humanity to leave these great areas, 
 populated by an inoffensive race, to the tender 
 mercies of the Spaniards; these men cherished the 
 desire of planting Christian civilisation in its 
 English form on the other side of the Atlantic, not 
 only as an ambition but as a duty. This sense of 
 mission played a very important part in the national 
 life of the Elizabethan times, and the religious 
 element should not be overlooked when we are 
 enumerating the influences which shaped national 
 ambitions and ^ave solidarity to the nation as a unit 
 of conscious economic life. 
 
 The economic life of the nation has been organ- 
 ised on a far larger scale than that of the monastery 
 or the town ; it is more complex, and it is also much 
 more complete. In the monastery the pursuit of 
 agriculture and of various forms of crafts were in 
 conscious co-operation, but commerce was almost a 
 disturbing element. In the towns commerce was 
 regulated so as to co-operate with industry for the 
 good of the community; but little attention was 
 given to agriculture in many of them and there were 
 no means of regulating distant trades. In national 
 life on the other hand, economic activities of every 
 sort play a part; all must be brought to work 
 together for the common good in a national 
 economic organism. Common national interest 
 requires that foreign commerce should be promoted, 
 that the most should be made of rural resources and 
 that the prosperity of towns as centres x>f industry 
 should be fostered. Further, in modern times when 
 the government depends on taxation for the main 
 part of its revenue, the interest of the rulers is bound 
 up with the prosperity of this national economic 
 life; there was much excuse for jealousy of the 
 
54 THE CITY AND THE NATION 
 
 monasteries and their self-centred prosperity, and 
 there was frequent antagonism between the towns- 
 men and territorial potentates. But there is not the 
 same excuse for want of harmony between the 
 national life as organised for political, and the 
 national life as organised for economic purposes. 
 There is no reason apparent why the nation as a 
 unit for economic regulation should be outlived and 
 superseded, so long as there is need to exercise any 
 control over the commercial spirit and the free play 
 of private interests. In any area where a conscious 
 national life has been developed, there will be a 
 desire to employ national resources and activities 
 for the maintenance and development of national 
 life; and as one political power governs the whole 
 area, the means of exercising the necessary control 
 lie to hand, whether this is directed to pecuniary 
 objects like the collection of revenue, or to humani- 
 tarian objects, such as the preservation of health 
 and the maintenance of the standard of life. 
 
 In the sixteenth century the national life of 
 England was organised not only in its political but 
 in its economic aspects, and this example has been 
 generally followed in one area after another. 
 Alexander Hamilton consolidated the United States 
 into one organisation for economic purposes, and 
 thereby rendered it possible for three separate states 
 to become an effective political power in the world. 
 In Europe local interest and local patriotism were 
 strong enough to delay the development of a 
 national economic life ; not till after the French 
 Revolution and the rise of the German Empire, were 
 the cities and provinces, which were living indepen- 
 dent lives of their own, welded into one body 
 economic. The oversea dominions have been 
 attracted in the same direction ; they are ambitious 
 of controlling their own economic activities as a 
 necessary element in true national life, and of 
 
NATIONAL ECONOMIC POLICY 55 
 
 regulating the agriculture and commerce and indus- 
 try of their territories so that they shall co-operate 
 to promote the prosperity of the new nations. 
 Economic consolidation reacts on political power; 
 each organised nation is a foundation for building 
 international agreements by which the dangers of 
 open rupture may be diminished, 1 and for bringing 
 a civilising influence to bear on territories which are 
 occupied by primitive peoples. 
 
 It may perhaps be doubted whether a true national 
 life can be developed on its political side, unless it 
 is developed on its economic side as well ; and it is 
 at least instructive to consider the case of Ireland 
 in this connection. At the time of the Union there 
 was a very general desire throughout the country 
 that Ireland should not be treated as a part of the 
 British economic system, but should be free to pursue 
 her own economic development in her own way. 
 The enthusiasm with which this view was taken up 
 and acted upon by the Parliament in Dublin at the 
 close of the eighteenth century was the chief reason 
 why English statesmen were anxious to force on a 
 parliamentary union for economic and political 
 purposes. At present there are very few common 
 economic interests for the whole of Ireland, and the 
 representatives of separate interests and of different 
 parts of the country do not appear to hold that these 
 would increase in prosperity by being brought into 
 closer co-operation. The agricultural population 
 were eager for Home Rule in Parnell's time, but 
 even they seem to have lost much of their enthu- 
 siasm for the measure, while the industrial and 
 commercial classes are generally opposed to it. 
 The English supporters of the proposal are for the 
 most part Free traders who would be very suspicious 
 of any attempt to develop Irish national life on its 
 economic side by means of tariffs. The fact that 
 
 1. See below, p. 103. 
 
56 THE CITY AND THE NATION 
 
 there is no longer a united demand on the part of 
 the Irish to have the means of pursuing their own 
 economic development in their own way is the most 
 striking difference between them and the men of the 
 self-governing dominions overseas. 
 
 Monastic life, despite the high aims which in- 
 spired it became sadly corrupt; and the civic life 
 of the Middle Ages, though permeated by the 
 principles of Christian morality, degenerated till 
 the wholesome influence of civic patriotism was 
 completely sapped. English national life was 
 consolidated under an impulse which was mainly 
 religious, but the organisation of economic life on a 
 national basis has been defective in many ways. 
 Throughout the history of national economic regu- 
 lation there has always been some clashing of 
 interests ; and it is easy to assert that the parties in 
 power at any period were merely seeking their own 
 advantage, and eager politicians do not consider 
 how far the objects of their attack were really 
 pursuing the good of the community as they under- 
 stood it. There is plenty of room for fault finding 
 if we cultivate that habit of mind : it is easy to dwell 
 on the horrors of war, and plausible to ascribe them 
 to national vanity or national selfishness, and to 
 speak as if national patriotism were the root of every 
 kind of evil. Such disparagement of national life 
 is idle, and it becomes mischievous if it encourages 
 the supine in their unwillingness to give time and 
 trouble to the duties of citizenship. It has its basis 
 in the particularism which recognises the value of 
 individual lives, but treats the very conception of 
 national life as a mere illusion. Anti-patriotism 
 has an affinity with the habit of mind which regards 
 individual self-development as the supreme aim of 
 life, and takes an attitude towards society that is 
 indistinguishable from anarchy. Writers who have 
 a passion for sweeping generalisation contend that 
 
NATIONAL ORGANISATION 57 
 
 monastic institutions, and great municipalities, have 
 passed away in their turn, and that the time is ripe 
 for national organisation to be superseded; but 
 before we condemn national life and the national 
 organisation of economic life as worthless, we would 
 do well to see what we can hope to put in its place. 
 National organisation is the most powerful instru- 
 ment that has ever been created for controlling the 
 use of economic resources and the exercise of 
 economic activities. We dare not discard it till we 
 find some instrument ready to hand which can be 
 used as effectively and lends itself less readily to the 
 danger of misuse. The political authorities in the 
 nation have the widest power within the realm of 
 putting down any proved evil which can be adequ- 
 ately and safely dealt with by compulsion ; and they 
 have also extraordinary opportunities of bringing 
 pressure to bear on half civilised or savage peoples 
 without resort to armed intervention. While these 
 influences are so great it is not even plausible to 
 argue that national life is worn out and done with. 
 Bad workmen complain of their tools; but it is 
 incumbent on democratic citizens of any state to fit 
 themselves to use, unselfishly and wisely, the powers 
 they possess for directly promoting the welfare of 
 the community, and for indirectly benefiting other 
 communities as well. 
 
V. CALVINISM AND CAPITAL. 
 
 Latin Christianity had exercised a remarkable influ- 
 ence in leavening economic life. The monasteries 
 had furnished a great example of an industrial 
 communism founded on a religious basis and 
 inspired by religious motives. In the towns indus- 
 try and commerce had been brought to co-operate 
 for the maintenance of a well-ordered civic life, and 
 Christian principles of right and wrong in monetary 
 transactions had been successfully enforced under 
 religious sanctions. This authoritative method of 
 bringing Christian influence to bear had, however, 
 been proving less and less effective during the 
 fifteenth century, and in the sixteenth it suffered a 
 mortal injury. At the Reformation a great stretch 
 of European territory threw off the papal allegiance 
 and rejected the authority by which Christian 
 morals had been enforced at active centres of 
 economic life; the old method of exercising a 
 religious influence on civic authorities was no 
 longer available. 
 
 The full results of this change did not appear at 
 first, and there is so much evidence of gross corrup- 
 tion in the decadent Church of the fifteenth century 
 that it seems almost paradoxical to regard the 
 papacy as a moralising influence in any department 
 of life ; but when papal authority was once set aside, 
 there was no power that was strong enough to offer 
 effective opposition to the advances of the commer- 
 cial spirit, or to suggest suitable correctives. In 
 this, as in other matters, it is necessary to distin- 
 guish the aims of the reformers, from the changes 
 which occurred in consequence of their action. 
 Luther and Calvin paved the way for a thorough- 
 going individualism both in Church and State, but 
 
 58 
 
TRADITIONAL STANDARDS 59 
 
 neither of them set it consciously before him as an 
 ideal. In England, at all events, there was no 
 conscious departure from the traditional conception 
 of a Christian polity which the Prince was called 
 upon to administer in accordance with the Divine 
 Will. Henry protested that the Spirituality within 
 the realm we're learned enough to advise him as to 
 recognised Christian doctrine, while appeal was 
 made to the Bible as a negative test, to point out 
 elements of traditional practice or doctrine for which 
 it gave no support and which might therefore be 
 condemned as unnecessary or mischievous. Mon- 
 astic institutions had ceased to be beneficial econo- 
 mically ; they had no obvious scriptural justification, 
 and they were swept away. There was much, 
 however, in the Bible about the danger of greed and 
 oppression on the part of wealthy men ; and the 
 traditional doctrine of right and wrong in regard to 
 monetary dealing was maintained, in the expectation 
 that it could be enforced by the Crown. Earnest 
 attempts were made in the time of Elizabeth, James 
 I., and Charles I. to maintain traditional Christian 
 standards by means of a national ecclesiastical 
 authority supported by the power of the Crown, and 
 to insist on the duties of capitalist employers 
 towards their workmen. It is idle, though tempt- 
 ing, to speculate how the course of affairs, political 
 and social, might have been affected if these eccles- 
 iastical attempts to maintain the old standards of 
 commercial morality, in all their precision, had been 
 crowned with success and usury had been kept in 
 check. The modern system of borrowing has 
 proved an enormous power; and it is not easy to 
 assess the good and evil, respectively, which have 
 arisen in connection with it. Trading on borrowed 
 capital has enabled enterprising men to take imme- 
 diate advantage of some opening and has thus made 
 for progress; but it has tended to increase the 
 
60 CALVINISM AND CAPITAL 
 
 fluctuations of business, and there would probably 
 have been fewer facilities for speculation if trade had 
 been conducted on other lines. The new system of 
 finance supplied government with the means for 
 carrying on the great military struggles which 
 culminated at Blenheim and Waterloo; public credit 
 enabled England to champion resistance to French 
 Absolutism and Imperialism, but it has saddled 
 after-generations with a heavy burden of debt. As 
 a matter of fact the seventeenth century attempts to 
 restrain the commercial spirit and to regulate the 
 national economic life were quite unsuccessful ; the 
 ecclesiastical courts in which action could be taken 
 were highly unpopular, and the failure did much to 
 discredit the prestige and undermine the authority 
 of the Crown. 
 
 Calvin and the extreme Protestants did not 
 abandon the traditional aim of constructing and 
 maintaining a divine polity ; they had not lost sight 
 of the aspiration after a kingdom of God upon earth, 
 though they had a new view of the principles on 
 which it should be ordered. Some of them may 
 have been influenced by the Humanist dream of an 
 earthly Utopia, and looked for a Christian polity 
 which should be a realisation of a perfect community 
 on earth, and not merely discipline for preparation 
 for the world to come; or they were prepared to 
 establish in their own day the Messianic Kingdom 
 for which Israel had hoped so ardently. Puritanism 
 aimed at creating a Theocracy ; its leaders would 
 have repudiated the notion that religion is a private 
 matter to be cultivated by each individual in his own 
 way ; all parties were at one in desiring to organise 
 Christian society both in its political and its religi- 
 ous aspects. They cherished a vision, such as S. 
 Augustine had put on record, of a City of God, and 
 continued to aim at the establishment of a Divine 
 Polity upon earth. They protested most vigorously 
 
PURITAN CONSISTENCY 61 
 
 that Latin Christendom had failed hopelessly, and 
 so they set themselves to construct a Theocracy on 
 wholly different lines. Calvin and his followers 
 held that there must be an entire breach with the 
 past ; they believed that the whole scheme of 
 civilised society had gradually drifted away from the 
 Christian conception, till it had become utterly 
 corrupt, and that it must be built up anew in close 
 accordance with the instructions that came direct 
 from the Scriptures. In England there was no 
 complete breach with the past at the Reformation, 
 and Scripture was only appealed to with the view of 
 correcting defects in the traditional practice ; but by 
 the Calvinists, Scripture was treated as a positive 
 guide to the Divine Will for the constitution of 
 human society for all time. Presbyterianism and 
 Puritanism were schemes for creating a new Theo- 
 cracy by means of Scriptural instructions. 
 
 There is much misapprehension on this point and 
 it has given rise to a charge which is frequently 
 repeated against the Puritans, though it seems to 
 me to be unfounded. Surprise is sometimes ex- 
 pressed that the New Englanders, after leaving their 
 own country to escape persecution and to obtain 
 "freedom to worship God," should have been so 
 intolerent of varieties of religious opinion and 
 practice in their new home. But there was no real 
 inconsistency. The struggle of the earlier part of 
 the seventeenth century was being waged between 
 men who advocated different types of Divine Polity ; 
 all were intensely interested in endeavouring to 
 create or maintain a Christian society, but there was 
 no plea for freedom for the individual. The 
 Puritans who emigrated to America took strong- 
 exception to the professedly Christian society which 
 had been organised in England ; they desired 
 to change it, and when they found that this was 
 impracticable they separated themselves from it, 
 
62 CALVINISM AND CAPITAL 
 
 so that they might be able to organise a new 
 polity on what they believed to be really Christian 
 lines. To them it was a duty to endeavour by means 
 of a strict ecclesiastical discipline, to maintain the 
 purity of the community framed on a strictly 
 scriptural model and dominated by scriptural prin- 
 ciples. These men had objected strenuously to one 
 type of Christian polity and they were trying to 
 institute another ; but they had never claimed free- 
 dom for individuals, and they would have been 
 untrue to their conviction as to the Divine Polity if 
 they had granted freedom to individuals to upset 
 the ordered life of their new societies. 
 
 Calvinists retained the traditional aim of estab- 
 lishing a Divine Polity on earth, but they not only 
 rejected the authority of the Pope as an adminis- 
 trator as had been done in England, but the whole 
 interpretation of Christian duty which had been 
 formulated under the papal regime : they professed 
 to find a scriptural basis for every detail of life in an 
 organised Christian society, and they would have 
 none other. This proved the fundamental weakness 
 of their position ; there are many matters of great 
 importance, commercial, social and political, about 
 which the Christian Scriptures give us no direct 
 fight at all. Even in regard to ecclesiastical organ- 
 isation the New Testament does not supply us with 
 guidance that is plain and unmistakable. The 
 scheme of Church government described in the 
 Acts of the Apostles was obviously transitional, and 
 Calvin's pronouncement as to the permanent 
 elements appears to be arbitrary. The conditions 
 of early Christianity, as a persecuted sect in a 
 heathen Empire, render it impossible that the 
 Epistles should give us instruction that is appro- 
 priate to the position of a free citizen in a Christian 
 community. The duties of a ruler lay outside the 
 scope of the practical matters on which the Apostles 
 
USURY 63 
 
 were called upon to advise their flocks ; and the New- 
 Testament has nothing to say about civil or criminal 
 procedure, the organisation of defence from foreign 
 foes, or the protection of persons and property 
 within the realm. On these questions, and still 
 more on economic matters of every kind, the New 
 Testament fails to lay down any rules; and hence 
 the Calvinists fell back on the Will of God as 
 declared in the Old Testament. During the Middle 
 Ages the blanks in gospel teaching had been filled 
 up by reference to the stores of natural wisdom 
 which were collected and formulated in the writings 
 of Aristotle; natural reason was used, much as 
 S. Paul had appealed to the natural conscience, 10 
 confirm and supplement the dicta of Christian 
 morality. But the Calvinists discarded the great 
 body of acute thought which had been raised on 
 this double basis, and sought for direct guidance in 
 the code which had been laid down for the ancient 
 people of God. By so doing they insensibly and 
 unconsciously eliminated anything that was specific- 
 ally Christian from their scheme of social morality, 
 and fell back on the Old Testament and the Jewish 
 standards of commercial dealings. 
 
 The main difference between the Jewish and the 
 Christian standard of commercial dealing in 
 mediaeval towns had arisen in connection with the 
 practice of usury; the Jew felt that it was quite 
 allowable to lend money on usury to a Christian, 1 
 while Christians regarded it as grasping conduct, 
 by which a man laid himself out to evade the risks 
 of honest business and to gain at the expense of his 
 neighbour. In the sixteenth century, however, the 
 feeling of upright business men had undergone a 
 considerable change; new opportunities for invest- 
 ing in profitable ventures were opening up. To the 
 merchant, it was a great advantage to get the com- 
 
 ]. Deut., xxiii, 19, 20. 
 
64 CALVINISM AND CAPITAL 
 
 mand of capital which he could use to advantage; 
 and the neighbour, who had saved some money, 
 was glad to lend it at comparatively low interest 
 rather than keep it lying idle in his chest. Instead 
 of going into a temporary partnership for risks with 
 the prospect of a high rate of profit, the man who 
 was not himself a merchant preferred to agree to 
 accept a low rate of profit for certain, and to under- 
 take no risk at all ; while the high profits which the 
 merchant could hope to obtain, on capital borrowed 
 at a comparatively low rate, made him ready to 
 accept the accumulated risk. The practice of 
 trading on capital borrowed at a low rate was no 
 longer felt to involve any elements of unfairness; 
 and the term usury began to be interpreted in its 
 modern sense of excessive interest. Business men 
 contended that there was no breach of Christian 
 charity in lending at low rates of interest, and that 
 this practice was perfectly allowable. A further 
 difficulty in maintaining the old standard arose from 
 the fact that new methods of doing business were 
 coming into vogue, and that the practice of dividing 
 risks by insurance was developing ; l under these 
 circumstances the mediaeval distinctions were ceas- 
 ing to be easily applicable to actual transactions, 
 and there was need that the safeguards against hard 
 bargaining on the part of moneyed men should be 
 defined afresh. Calvin, when appealed to for his 
 opinion as to the lawfulness of usury, was in great 
 difficulty about his decision ; but, as he did not 
 definitely condemn it, the effect of his pronounce- 
 ment was to add the weight of his opinion in favour 
 of regarding the practice as allowable in a Christian 
 community, and as a matter for the private con- 
 science and not for ecclesiastical discipline. Calvin 
 and his followers do not, however, seem to have 
 made any very serious attempt to discuss the 
 
 1. Ashley. English Economic History, I, ii, 440. 
 
OLD TEvSTAMENT MORALITY 65 
 
 temptations of the moneyed man in such a way as 
 to give him help to decide where his own personal 
 duty lay. Richard Baxter warns landlords against 
 the evil of oppressing their tenants, but does not 
 seem to fear that moneyed men may be tempted to 
 drive hard bargains. He argues that the prohibition 
 of Usury does not hold good in the Christian 
 dispensation, 1 whatever may have been its force 
 among the Israelites. In the first half of the seven- 
 teenth century the authoritative attempt to bring 
 Christian influence to bear on moneyed men within 
 the realm, for the use of their wealth, practically 
 ceased; the ecclesiastical authorities in England 
 were still trying to enforce restrictions which the 
 ordinary conscience felt were out of date, while the 
 ecclesiastical authorities in Scotland saw no need to 
 deal with the matter at all. Calvinism allowed free 
 play to the commercial spirit. 
 
 The attitude of Calvinism to commercial life was 
 ultimately due to the deliberate acceptance of the 
 Old Testament as the rule for conduct in a Christian 
 society ; but the connection was strengthened by 
 the conditions of the community in which Calvinism 
 was first planted and the atmosphere in w<hich it 
 flourished. It was in a city-state that Calvin had 
 his personal opportunity of carrying his views as to 
 a scriptural polity into effect ; in Geneva he had 
 brought about a very remarkable religious change, 
 which was in many w r ays similar to the revolution 
 which Savonarola effected in Florence. The genius 
 of Calvin was showm by his success in creating 
 institutions which gave a permanent character to 
 the movement which had only been a passing influ- 
 ence in Florence. The civic reformation resulted in 
 the establishment of a civic theocracy ; Geneva 
 was ruled by a Council of City Fathers who were 
 themselves under the guidance of Calvin, Beza, and 
 
 1. Christian Directory, iv, 122. 
 
66 CALVINISM AND CAPITAL 
 
 other ministers. Geneva was an important com- 
 mercial city, and from this centre Calvinism spread 
 to other countries, especially to France, which was 
 Calvin's native land. This form of Christianity 
 was congenial to the leading inhabitants of com- 
 mercial cities; and theocracies were founded in 
 French cities, which became the main sources of 
 the Huguenot strength in their struggle with the 
 League, before the opportunity arose for applying 
 these principles to national institutions. Not till 
 it spread to Scotland did Calvinism attain its full 
 development, for the Calvinistic theocracy as 
 organised in Scotland rested on a national and not 
 merely on a civic basis. John Knox, and Andrew 
 Melville, were earnestly desirous of rendering Scot- 
 land thoroughly Christian as a nation, and it is in 
 Scotland that we can best see the influence of 
 Calvinism on national life. 
 
 The tide of Reformation was long delayed in 
 reaching Scotland at all ; apparently because it had 
 been pent up so long, the wave swept across the 
 country with all the more violence when it came. 
 There had been no modification of the ecclesiastical 
 system, or secularisation of the monasteries, such as 
 had occurred in England under Henry VIII.; and 
 the nobility were ready to rally to Calvinism, as it 
 marked a strenuous antagonism to the Queen 
 Regent and French influence, while it did not mean 
 the mere following an example that had been given 
 by England. Calvinism was thus a badge of 
 national independence, and in its turn it helped to 
 give cohesion to Scottish nationality. The govern- 
 ment of the Presbyterian churches was, if not 
 democratic, destitute of any monarchical claims on 
 the part of earthly ecclesiastical authorities; the 
 spiritual aristocracy, which wielded much power, 
 was yet chosen from among the people, and came 
 nearer to being a popular government than any- 
 
IDLENESS AND UNEMPLOYMENT 67 
 
 thing of which the Scots had had experience before 
 either in Church or State. The presbyteries were 
 organs of local self-government in ecclesiastical 
 matters; while they also furnished the opportunity 
 of taking a part in shaping a national ecclesiastical 
 policy. The Scots Confession of 1560 was a public 
 declaration of the principles to which the protestants 
 of Scotland adhered; and in the Covenant of 1638 
 Presbyterianism was set forth more forcibly and 
 with a more authoritative claim to be the national 
 religion "openlie professed by the King's Majestie 
 and the whole Bodv of the realm both in Burgh and 
 Land." In Scottish Presbyterianism we have the 
 most highly developed form of Calvinism ; and the 
 creation of a national Theocracy, in which religious 
 principles were forced upon the Community by civil 
 magistrates and ecclesiastical discipline. We have 
 noted that Calvin removed the ban under which 
 much of the business in commercial cities had been 
 placed, and in Scotland we see more clearly the line 
 which was taken in regard to industrial employ- 
 ments. Unemployment and idleness were the 
 characteristic evils of Scotland in the seventeenth 
 century ; to get the population to submit to the 
 discipline of work might well be regarded as the 
 first step towards introducing a godly, righteous, 
 and sober life into the community. There were no 
 half measures about the treatment of vagrants in the 
 Scots Act of 1663. L Enterprising men, who set up 
 manufactories, were empowered to impress any 
 vagrants, and employ them for their service as they 
 should see fit for eleven years without wages except 
 meat and clothing. Good subjects were recom- 
 mended to take into their service poor and indigent 
 children, who were "to do any task assigned them 
 till they had attained the age of thirty, and to be 
 
 1. Scots Acts 1665, c. 52; re-enacting 1579, c. 12; 1597, c. 39; 
 and 1617, c. 10. 
 
1 
 
 68 CALVINISM AND CAPITAL 
 
 subject to their masters' correction and chastisement 
 in all manner of punishment (life and torture 
 excepted)." The seventeenth century presbyterian 
 took a stern view of the discipline which was good 
 for children, so that they might be kept from form- 
 ing habits of idleness and from drifting into evil of 
 every kind. The best hope for the future of the 
 country seemed to lie in providing conditions which 
 were favourable for the investment of capital ; to 
 develop the resources of the country and to start 
 fresh industrial enterprises might well seem to 
 thoughtful men to be the best remedy for existing 
 social evil. The well-doing population were for 
 the most part still attached to the soil and were 
 able to draw their livelihood partly from rural 
 occupations and partly from wages ; the dangers 
 of sweating and other forms of oppression by 
 moneyed men were so remote that they were 
 not taken into account, and capital appeared in 
 a friendly guise as the greatest of social bene- 
 factors. Religious reasons could also be adduced 
 in favour of cultivating the type of conduct 
 which was favourable to capitalists. The duties 
 of secular life are more fully dealt with in the 
 Book of Proverbs than in any other part of the Old 
 Testament, and the teaching in that book on social 
 and economic matters is entirely prudential in char- 
 acter; the vices of the self-indulgent and the 
 sluggard are denounced, while diligence and thrift 
 are commended. There is an interesting picture of 
 the domestic economy of a good housewife ; and the 
 right course in business life is inculcated as a matter 
 of private concern which ensured a personal reward ; 
 there hardly seems to be any consciousness that 
 there is room for the consideration of public interests 
 or the common weal. There is nothing specifically 
 Christian in the religious point of view which was 
 thus adopted, either as regards the dignity of work 
 
PROGREvSSIVE COUNTRIES 69 
 
 ngers of greed of gain. Scottish Presby- 
 terian ism, as the most complete illustration of a 
 national theocracy on Calvinist lines, is almost 
 exactly on the same plane as Judaism, and has not 
 advanced to the Christian standpoint, in regard to 
 the regulation of society. The sense of public duty 
 was little developed, while the doctrine of predesti- 
 nation fails to arouse to the need for cultivating 
 Christian graces. 
 
 The statement of these principles is sufficient to 
 show the fundamental reasons for the alliance of 
 capitalism with Calvinism ; and the most cursory 
 survey of the character of the progressive countries 
 during the last three hundred years makes the fact 
 of this affinity exceedingly clear. The Calvinistic 
 cities were industrially the most flourishing com- 
 munities in France; and, when their inhabitants 
 were scattered, they became an important element in 
 the material prosperity of the lands where they 
 settled. Calvinism played a large part in the resist- 
 ance of the Netherlands to Spain, and the Dutch 
 were pioneers in commercial enterprise; the business 
 capacity of men reared in Presbyterian Scotland is 
 undisputed and English Puritanism found much of 
 its strength in the population of London and com- 
 mercial towns. It is not necessary to labour a point 
 which has been so fully discussed by Max Weber x 
 and Schulze-Gaevernitz 2 ; and the case of Scotland 
 where the modern Jews have hardly settled, makes 
 it clear that the progress arose in connection with 
 Old Testament morality as adopted by Christians, 
 and not, as Sombart is inclined to argue, 3 through an 
 infusion of Jews resident in Christian communities. 
 Calvinism is a form of Christianity which gave its 
 
 1. Dieprot. Ethilc und der Geist der CafitaUsmus, in Archiv. 
 fiir Soziahviss., xx, 50, and xxi, 16, 100. 
 
 2. Britischer Iwperialismvs, 46. 
 
 3. The Jews and Modern Capitalism, 185, 249. 
 
70 CALVINISM AND CAPITAL 
 
 sanction to the free exercise of the commercial spirit 
 and to the capitalist organisation of industry. 
 
 In some ways this was a decided gain. During 
 the greater part of the Middle Ages the best that 
 men could hope for was peace to carry on their 
 avocation in well-ordered society ; the Truce of 
 God and the Peace of God had been among the 
 greatest social achievements of the Church. In a 
 stationary society the main effort was to maintain 
 good order; and the commercial spirit, or anything 
 that made for change and progress, was viewed with 
 suspicion. This determined the traditional Christian 
 attitude towards enterprising business; and so long 
 as Christian authorities looked askance on the enter- 
 prising elements in the community they could 
 hardly hope to influence them. It is not wholesome 
 for society that religion should come to be associated 
 with relative failure in the ordinary affairs of life; 
 and the inability of the Roman Catholics in 
 Germany to adapt themselves to the capitalist 
 organisation of industry and commerce, appears to 
 be one reason for their decline in influence in the 
 State. 1 Calvinism played an important part in 
 keeping material progress in touch w r ith religion 
 and has helped to bridge the gulf which was 
 separating the two. The Presbyterians abandoned 
 the attempt to control economic activities as need- 
 less, and therein they were short-sighted ; but they 
 reached a standpoint from which it was possible to 
 bring religious influence to bear on men personally, 
 without setting up any barriers to the development 
 of progressive communities. Unless Christianity 
 accepts material progress heartily, she cannot hope 
 to leaven it. 
 
 But on the other hand there has also been serious 
 loss ; since the early part of the nineteenth century 
 
 1. Rost. Die wirth. und hult. Lage der deutsrhen Katholiker, 
 184. 
 
PROGRESSIVE COUNTRIES 71 
 
 there has been occasion to point out the crying evils 
 which have arisen in connection with the capitalist 
 organisation of industry, and the ruthless disregard 
 of human life which it has exhibited, from time to 
 time, when uncontrolled. Religion has had to bear 
 the blame of this inhumanity on the part of the 
 forces of progress to which it has given its sanction ; 
 and it is plausible to say that for the last two 
 hundred years religion in this country has been on 
 the side of the rich, and has done little to protect 
 the poor, who have never seemed to gain anything 
 in the course of progress, and have often incident- 
 ally lost much. The increasing jealousy of the 
 power of capitalists and the growing suspicion as to 
 the manner in which this power may be used, help 
 to account for the widely diffused indifference to 
 religion in progressive countries. 
 
 The view of economic activities, which was taken 
 by Presbyterian ecclesiastics, was favourable rather 
 than otherwise to the progress of Economic Science. 
 They saw no need to interfere with private action 
 in the interests of a Christian standard for the com- 
 munity, and they held that the prudential pursuit 
 of wealth tended to build up a self-disciplined 
 character which was favourable to the formation of 
 sober and godly habits. Adam Smith went a step 
 farther, and urged in his great work that there was 
 no need in a progressive community for the State to 
 control and direct private enterprise in the interests 
 of political expediency. He set himself to study 
 the free play of private interests, and argued that 
 there was no need to interfere with it for the benefit 
 of the body politic. The Scottish clergy were not 
 indifferent to Christian duty any more than Adam 
 Smith was indifferent to the increase of national 
 power; but they held that it was unnecessary either 
 for one object or the other to interfere with the 
 private freedom of individuals in the conduct of 
 
72 CALVINISM AND CAPITAL 
 
 their own affairs. The question was no longer 
 asked, — How should economic activities be con- 
 trolled either in the interests of the maintenance of 
 the religious character of society or for the sake of 
 political expediency ? Adam Smith was content to 
 study how private economic interests operated as a 
 matter of fact, and to show that they tended to 
 increase the wealth of the nation, and thus to work 
 for the power of the state as a whole. This object, 
 — the aggregate wealth of the community — was a 
 common aim in which the interests of private 
 individuals and of the whole community were 
 brought into harmony ; and the old contrast between 
 public weal and private interest seemed to him to 
 be an illusion. 
 
 When we remember how much learning had been 
 already directed to bring scientific opinion to bear on 
 the affairs of state in England, it is not a little strange 
 that so little should have been hitherto done to put 
 the study of national resources on a really scientific 
 basis. The great outburst of national intellectual 
 vigour at the Restoration was consciously devoted 
 to the public benefit. The preamble of the charter 
 for the Royal Society, which was drafted by Sir 
 Christopher Wren, is evidence as to the aims of the 
 men who promoted the foundation of this Society. 
 "The way to so happy a government is in no 
 manner more facilitated than by the promoting of 
 useful arts and sciences, which, upon mature inspec- 
 tion, are found to be the basis of civil communities 
 and free governments ; that so, by laying in a stock, 
 as it were, of several arts and methods of industry, 
 the whole body may be supplied by a mutual 
 commerce of each other's peculiar faculties; and 
 consequently that the various miseries and toils of 
 this frail life may by as many various experiments 
 ready at hand be remedied or alleviated ; and wealth 
 and plenty be diffused in just proportion to every- 
 
THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT 73 
 
 one's industry that is, to everyone's deserts. 
 Wherefore Our reason hath suggested to Us and Our 
 own experience in our travels in foreign kingdoms 
 and states hath abundantly confirmed, that We 
 prosecute effectually the advancement of natural 
 experimental philosophy, especially those parts of 
 it which concern the increase of commerce by the 
 addition of useful inventions tending to the "ease, 
 profit, or health of our subjects." 1 Nor were these 
 political references a mere bait to attract royal 
 attention and secure royal encouragement ; Sir 
 William Petty and other early members of the 
 Royal Society were keenly interested in the 
 empirical study of economic phenomena, and 
 regarded statistics and political arithmetic ?.s 
 essential aids to practical statesmanship. But 
 after all, the experimental method, to which the 
 Royal Society was devoted, does not lend itself 
 readily to the pursuit of social and political studies ; 
 and intellectual zeal for the public interest expended 
 itself in the study of the best means for pursuing 
 some particular object. Much attention was given, 
 after the Great Fire, to town planning, and the 
 rebuilding of a new London which should be at 
 once stately and healthy; the interest in hygiene 
 was stimulated by the visitation of the Plague, and 
 much effort was expended on the improvement of 
 the art of Navigation. It seems as if the attention 
 given to these important practical matters distracted 
 men from attempts to carry on a scientific study of 
 the causes which were favourable to the increased 
 material prosperity of the realm as a whole ; and it 
 was left for Adam Smith to formulate the enquiry in 
 general terms and to pursue it in a scientific spirit. 
 
 Adam Smith set himself to study the free play of 
 economic activities in a progressive community ; so 
 far as he had a practical interest in view, he desired 
 
 1. Wren. Parentalia. 196. 
 
74 CALVINISM AND CAPITAL 
 
 to maintain the scientific thesis that it was an illu- 
 sion to suppose that any real conflict existed between 
 private and public interests, and that it was therefore 
 unnecessary to take any trouble over attempts to 
 reconcile them. But the scientific character of the 
 study was more firmly established by the limitations 
 he placed on its scope; he drew a distinction 
 between value-in-use and value-in-exchange, and 
 concentrated attention on the latter. He simplified 
 economic problems by leaving on one side the 
 confusing elements, which are introduced by 
 varying national ambitions, or different personal 
 temperaments. The value-in-use of a fleet or an 
 army to a nation depends on the nature of the 
 attacks which it has to fear ; the value-in-use of any 
 object to any individual depends on his personal 
 tastes and his capacity for enjoyment. General 
 reasoning is hardly possible if we have to take 
 account of such special considerations at every turn ; 
 but if we concentrate attention on value-in-exchange, 
 we have to do with well marked phenomena, which 
 can be described in detail and measured and an- 
 alysed. There is opportunity for the steady advance 
 of empirical science by the framing of hypotheses 
 which are capable of being verified or which may be 
 definitely proved to be mistaken. Till Adam 
 Smith's work appeared there had been an immense 
 amount of experience on economic matters, but there 
 had been no satisfactory means of co-ordinating it 
 or of formulating the results. When once the 
 example was set of pursuing the study on scientific 
 lines, an important step was taken towards securing 
 an accurate terminology in which to describe econo- 
 mic phenomena, so that there has been less excuse 
 for confusion of thought. . It would be impossible 
 even to discuss such burning questions as the 
 unearned increment from land, or to attempt to 
 measure the fall in the purchasing power of money, 
 
ASTROLOOY AND ASTRONOMY 75 
 
 unless the lines had been laid down on which 
 economic phenomena could be studied as. relations 
 of exchange between things. 
 
 The advance which has taken place in Economic 
 Science, since it was placed on a basis on which 
 experience can be intelligently accumulated and 
 hypotheses verified, is at least illustrated by the 
 transformation which occurred in the study of the 
 heavenly bodies. For centuries observations were 
 made of the stars and planets, with the view of 
 detecting their influence on human temperaments or 
 on the course of human affairs. It was not till the 
 practical interest was discarded, and they were 
 studied with the simple object of determining their 
 relations to each other, that astronomical study 
 became both thorough and fruitful. No hypothe- 
 sis as to planetary influences on human lives is 
 verifiable, and it does not help us to understand the 
 phenomena we can actually observe. So too with 
 the commodities and conveniences of life; every 
 object which a man desires to have at his command 
 must have some value-in-use to him, but we cannot 
 get definite and verifiable knowledge of the precise 
 nature of subjective tastes and preferences. The 
 study of the relations of exchange, which exist 
 between things, is fruitful, because we may hope to 
 understand actual phenomena more clearly, and to 
 render our knowledge more accurate and more 
 certain. 
 
VI. THE LIMITATIONS OF ECONOMIC 
 SCIENCE. 
 
 The publication of the Wealth of Nations is a great 
 landmark in the history of Economic Science, and 
 enables us to note the extent of the Revolution which 
 has taken place in habits of thought on economic 
 subjects since the time when S. Thomas Aquinas 
 was the great intellectual light of Christendom. In 
 these old days life had been treated as a whole ; all 
 institutions had religious as well as political aspects 
 but in the course of centuries the two sides fell apart, 
 and life could be conveniently divided into sections. 
 Locke had discussed the True Origin, Extent, and 
 End of Civil Government, and had treated religious 
 institutions and ordinances as things to which the 
 State was indifferent. On the other hand men like 
 John Wesley, who were intensely interested in 
 promoting personal religion, did not greatly concern 
 themselves with political affairs. In the time of 
 Adam Smith, the conditions which were favourable 
 to material prosperity, either national or personal, 
 could be conveniently studied in a section apart, into 
 which neither religion nor politics had occasion to 
 enter. 
 
 There has also been a remarkable change of the 
 attitude in which men approach practical social 
 problems. In the Middle Ages they were firmly 
 convinced that life is more than meat; they had 
 ideals for human life, and they endeavoured to pro- 
 vide conditions in which these could be carried out, 
 in monasteries for leading a distinctly religious life. 
 They tried to encourage men in towns to lead an up- 
 right, honest life as craftsmen, or in other secular 
 callings. But our generation has ceased to be satisfied 
 with such limited views. Boundless opportunities 
 for self-development have opened up, and there is a 
 
 76 
 
EXTERNAL CONDITIONS 77 
 
 widely diffused desire to have the fullest possible 
 share in them. Many men seem to feel that life is 
 only worth living if it can command a multitude of 
 possessions ; and the ideal of taking a definite place 
 in the social system has ceased to attract them ; they 
 aim at rising in the world, and intend to shape and 
 re-shape their lives, from time to time, according 
 to their success in securing additional means. 
 Adam Smith concentrated attention on the comforts 
 and conveniences of life, — on external conditions ; 
 he showed how, by the division of labour and other 
 expedients, opulence might be increased. It seems 
 to be frequently assumed that if the means of life 
 are increased, or are rendered more generally avail- 
 able, life — both personal and national — will improve, 
 and that there is no need for maintaining any ideal 
 of what life itself should be. Life in a particular 
 society formerly framed a man's expectations and 
 desires for himself; but we have ceased to accept 
 the dominance of the community as fundamental, or 
 to cherish ideals either for the community or for the 
 personal life; our era is satisfied to accumulate the 
 means of life. We are in consequence constantly 
 involved in discussions as to the relation of the 
 individual to society or of society to the individual. 
 This difficulty had hardly arisen at the time when 
 Adam Smith was writing his monumental work, for 
 there was a strong sense that national life was 
 incomparably more important than private ambi- 
 tions or interests. The nation was the unit of social 
 organisation which was generally recognised ; and 
 11 he took it for granted that in every country the 
 idea of nationality was absolutely dominant." 1 
 He was clear that there was no antagonism between 
 public and private interests, and on the other hand 
 that the love of country and the desire for its pros- 
 perity ought to influence the citizen in all the affairs 
 
 1. J. S. Nicholson. Project of Empire, 21. 
 
78 LIMITATIONS OF ECONOMIC SCIENCE 
 
 of life. "The love of country seems in ordinary 
 cases to involve two principles; first, a certain 
 respect, and reverence for that form of government 
 that is actually established ; secondly, an earnest 
 desire to render the condition of our fellow-citizens 
 as safe, respectable and happy, as we can. He is 
 not a citizen, who is not disposed to respect the laws 
 and obey the civil magistrates ; and he is certainly 
 not a citizen who does not wish to promote, by every 
 means in his power, the welfare of the whole society 
 of his fellow-citizens." 1 So far as the private 
 citizen was concerned, this patriotic sentiment was 
 obviously strengthened by the public consideration 
 of his interests. The nation gave him better 
 security to carry on his avocation, whatever it might 
 be, than he could hope to find anywhere else. The 
 stability and good order in his own country made it 
 by far the best place for the investment of capital, 
 either in agriculture or industry ; if he adventured 
 in foreign commerce, the British fleet gave him 
 protection at sea, and the rights of a British citizen 
 enabled him to trade in British colonies, or in 
 markets where Great Britain had secured rights of 
 treaty. M Trade follows the flag," and the mainten- 
 ance of the wealth and power of Great Britain was 
 an essential condition for the expansion of British 
 trade. This dependence on Nationality could be 
 assumed in the eighteenth century as "axiomatic ; 
 there was no room for suspicion that under any 
 circumstances it would cease to be paramount ; men 
 always have difficulty in realising how rapidly a 
 change of circumstances may induce a change in 
 economic life. 
 
 During the latter part of the nineteenth century 
 however, the facilities for rapid communication by 
 steam have brought about strange results. The 
 British public have found that they could get profit- 
 
 1. Project, IT. 
 
COvSMOPOLITAN CAPITALISTS 79 
 
 able returns from capital invested in foreign 
 countries, and in enterprises where no direct British 
 influence was involved. Much British capital has 
 been poured into the United States, and the South 
 American republics, as well as into Turkey and 
 Russia; there are numberless Englishmen who find 
 employment in connection with enterprises outside 
 the limits of the Empire. It is no longer possible to 
 define a country for economic purposes as an area 
 throughout which there is a free flow of labour and 
 capital ; since capital, and to a lesser extent labour, 
 flow readily without much respect to political 
 boundaries. What private interests in the present 
 day require, so far as social conditions are concerned, 
 is the maintenance of such order that it is possible 
 to carry on commercial and industrial pursuits. 
 Under the influence of laissez faire the functions of 
 government have been reduced to the minimum of 
 securing freedom for the play of individual interests; 
 this is all that the capitalists wish for at home, 
 and the cosmopolitan capitalist invokes the aid of 
 government to establish in distant lands the sort of 
 order which was maintained in mediaeval fairs ; his 
 interests are detached from the life of any com- 
 munity; he has no personal part in the country 
 from which his wealth is derived, and his economic 
 activities do not contribute to the prosperity of the 
 community in which he lives. He only invokes the 
 spread of a form of civilisation, which is little more 
 than a system of police, to provide conditions that 
 are favourable to the pursuit of private interests in 
 planting or in mining. Arrangements for protect- 
 ing life and property is all that civilised society 
 means for many of us ; but this conception is so 
 meagre that it hardly provides a basis for constitut- 
 ing a social system ; the features and defects of this 
 modern civilisation will, however, be rendered more 
 distinct if we contrast it with the highly organised 
 life of Mediaeval Christendom. 
 
80 LIMITATIONS OF ECONOMIC SCIENCE 
 
 Religion gave a cohesion to mediaeval society 
 such as was unknown either in the ancient or in the 
 modern world. The profession of Christianity, 
 sealed in Baptism, conferred on every individual a 
 position in a great community. Participation in 
 the life of Christendom was deeper than differences 
 of race or class distinctions, and knit the most 
 diverse elements together. In the ancient world, 
 religious differences had been badges of severance 
 among the inhabitants of the same city ; but partici- 
 pation in Christian rites was open to the monk, who 
 had relinquished all social status, and to the slave 
 who had the meanest place in the community, as 
 well as to the high-born and wealthy. However 
 miserable his surroundings might be, no one could 
 regard himself as a mere outcast when he was 
 privileged to partake in the most sacred rites of the 
 community in which he lived. The religious 
 element, which did so much to give solidarity to 
 Christendom, was also operative in extending it. 
 Religious aims, and political or commercial ambi- 
 tions, were blended in the attempts to bring other 
 peoples within the limits of Christendom, if need 
 be, by force. One motive doubtless predominated 
 at one time and another at another ; and it may not 
 be easy to say with any certainty which was more 
 influential on any occasion ; probably the chief 
 actors in these events may not always have known, 
 and we can only guess. There does not appear to 
 have been any political object that Gregory the 
 Great set before himself, in his endeavour to bring 
 England within the sphere of Christianity ; religion 
 was the leading motive in the mission of S. Augus- 
 tine, but the means employed to render it successful 
 were very largely political. The monks were 
 enabled to effect a settlement by the favour of tribal 
 kings ; and the prestige of the Roman name seems 
 to have contributed to the actual acceptance of 
 
THE CHRISTIAN POLITY 81 
 
 Christianity in this realm. On the other hand, in 
 the great expansion of Christendom under Charles 
 the Great, it is impossible to doubt that political 
 motives were very prominent. The protection of 
 an extended frontier is a matter of great difficulty ; 
 all empires have been involved, from time to time, 
 in frontier wars and punitive expeditions at points 
 where barbarism and civilisation come in contact 
 with one another. Charles was undoubtedly anxious 
 to round off his empire and render its defences 
 secure by his expeditions against the Saxons; but 
 there is no reason to suppose that the religious 
 motive was absent. Forcible conversions might do 
 little or nothing to awaken a personal faith ; but 
 they were a means of extending a politico-religious 
 society, and of bringing new peoples under the 
 influence of its institutions. In the twelfth and 
 thirteenth centuries the same combination of influ- 
 ences co-operated to rouse Crusaders to struggle 
 against the Crescent; the preaching of S. Bernard 
 awakened an intense enthusiasm among men, women 
 and children, who had much to lose and nothing to 
 gain ; while there were others who were obviously 
 actuated by political or commercial ambitions. This 
 enthusiasm, in its double aspect, survived till the 
 discovery of the New World and the disruption of 
 Christendom. The crusading ambition, to drive 
 back the Moslem and extend the Christian Polity, 
 lived on in the Spanish Peninsula. Portuguese 
 navigators were eager to circumvent Moslem influ- 
 ence and to obtain a footing in the lands beyond, 
 and the conquest of Granada was the great triumph 
 of the early part of the reign of Ferdinand. The 
 Portuguese and the Spaniards planted religious 
 institutions where they went for purposes of mining 
 or trading, and honestly believed that in extending 
 the Christian Polity they were doing God service. 
 The intense pity felt for those who were excluded 
 
82 LIMITATIONS OF ECONOMIC SCIENCE 
 
 from it is additional evidence of the strength of the 
 mediaeval attachment to the Christian Polity. There 
 was a strong sympathy with the captives who were 
 taken outside the bounds of Christendom, and to the 
 misery of living in heathen lands where Christian 
 rites were never celebrated. 1 The Order of Trini- 
 tarians and the military Order of Mercy were 
 founded with the view of rescuing men on whom 
 this terrible fate had fallen. Personal freedom, or 
 the loss of it, was not the point on which they laid 
 stress; and they had no strong feeling against 
 bringing men from outside to live in a state of 
 slavery within the Christian Polity. Their horror 
 of one form of slavery, and the lightness with which 
 they regarded the other, are due to the importance 
 they attached to life in a Christian Polity with 
 Christian institutions. From the same point of 
 view we can better understand the readiness to be 
 personally assimilated to the Christian Polity ; and 
 the disgust which was felt against those who 
 deliberately held aloof, and scouted the authority 
 that controlled the forces which held society 
 together. Apart from the economic considerations 
 which have been discussed above, this was the chief 
 ground of the bitter feeling against the Jew. His 
 presence among them was a constant protest against 
 the authority which Christians regarded as supreme, 
 and he disparaged institutions which other men 
 valued highly. Any freedom given to him appeared 
 to be an encouragement to anarchy. It was this 
 strong feeling which rendered such an institution as 
 the Inquisition possible; if society was to be firmly 
 knit together and to prosper, it seemed essential that 
 assimilation should be as complete as possible. The 
 conception of a personal religious life, which was 
 
 1. The question as to the right and wrong of voluntary 
 residence in heathen lands was discussed by Baxter, Christian 
 Directory, iv, 133. 
 
MODERN CIVILISATION 83 
 
 led wholly apart from and in disregard of Christian 
 society, was to these men hardly thinkable. When 
 the grounds of their action become intelligible, the 
 severities inflicted by Christian men in the Middle 
 Ages remain as a monument to warn us against the 
 danger of employing authority to coerce men for 
 their own good, as we conceive it. 
 
 The expansion of Christendom was a thing which 
 evoked enthusiasm and for which men were willing 
 to sacrifice their lives; but no wholesome human 
 sentiments attach themselves to the advance of 
 modern civilisation. The less frequented parts of 
 the world are being effectively policed, and vast 
 areas are being opened up, so that scientific skill and 
 mechanical appliances may be used to bring un- 
 developed resources into the circle of the world's 
 commerce. Marvellous engineering triumphs have 
 completely altered the conditions of agriculture and 
 of industry, so that the whole world is better supplied 
 with things that man desires; but there is little 
 satisfaction to be got from enquiring how this 
 increase of wealth has re-acted on the condition of 
 human life. The ruthless destruction of some 
 native races and the degradation of others have been 
 incidental to the course of progress; nor is it clear 
 that life in the older lands has been elevated or 
 ennobled, because of the riches which have been 
 acquired by exploiting new territories. The pro- 
 gress of such modern civilisation is a thing of 
 which we have little reason to be proud ; the men 
 who have profited by it are envied rather than 
 admired ; but the economic forces which are urging 
 it on seem to have got out of hand, and we do not 
 see how to check or to guide them to advantage. 
 
 Despite its discomforts and limitations, life in the 
 Middle Ages was so far satisfying that few would 
 have thought it either possible or desirable to get 
 away from it altogether ; but there are very few in 
 
84 LIMITATIONS OF ECONOMIC vSCIENCE 
 
 our day who profess to find the conditions of modern 
 life satisfying in any sense at all. Artists and lovers 
 of Nature resent it frankly, and try to escape it; 
 while many of those who live in the thick of it 
 complain of the oppressive routine. The mechan- 
 ism oj society grinds on, and men have to labour 
 more intensely to keep up with it, till they feel as if 
 they had lost all distinctive personality, and had 
 become mere cogs on the wheel of an industrial 
 machine. In no class of society does human life 
 seem to master its conditions ; but human lives are 
 being remorselessly sacrificed while the play of 
 economic forces goes ruthlessly on. Labour unrest 
 is only the most vehement expression of the dissatis- 
 faction that is felt in all classes; and there is a 
 general hope in many quarters that the scientific 
 study of economic conditions may bear fruit in 
 suggesting a remedy. 
 
 Political Economists might have pleaded that this 
 problem lay outside the scope of their science, but 
 they have attempted to deal with it ; and in so doing 
 they have modified the character of the science and 
 gone beyond the limitations of its scope which had 
 been adopted by Adam Smith. He had had the 
 aim of national prosperity clearly in mind as a thing 
 which was undoubtedly desirable and which he 
 heartily welcomed. Material progress, which re- 
 sulted in the increased power of the country, was, 
 to his mind, obviously a good thing, and he concen- 
 trated his energies in studying the means by which 
 the material prosperity of the country might be 
 promoted. He recognised the forces which were at 
 work in a progressive society, and it never seems 
 to have occurred to him to question the beneficent 
 character of the development of industrial resources 
 which contributed so much to the maintenance of 
 national power. After the fall of Napoleon, how- 
 
JOHN STUART MILL 85 
 
 ever, it seemed that the menace which had threat- 
 ened English commerce, for more than a century, 
 was finally dispelled, and that there was no longer 
 any prospect of Britons being called on to defend 
 themselves against attack. The maintenance of 
 national power, either to protect our commerce or to 
 secure our markets, seemed to be uncalled for ; 
 while, according to the laissez faire doctrine, there 
 were very few directions within the realm in which it 
 could be usefully exerted. In the time of J. S. Mill 
 it seemed absurd to treat the maintenance of national 
 power as the supreme end to which national activi- 
 ties should be consciously directed, and thus he 
 paved the way for a revolution in the science itself. 
 Political Economy in the hands of Adam Smith had 
 been the study of the best means for promoting a 
 given end, but with Mill it came to include a discus- 
 sion of the end at which it was desirable to aim. 
 This is adumbrated in the celebrated chapter on the 
 Future of the Working Classes. When the aspira- 
 tion after national power was waived aside as a vain 
 thing, it appeared that economic forces were 
 expending themselves in the purposeless accumu- 
 lation of masses of wealth for its own sake, and 
 doubts were raised whether a progressive state of 
 society was really beneficial to mankind, and Mill 
 gave his answer to the unexpected question he had 
 raised in his chapter on the Stationary State. He 
 put forward the dictum, " It is only in the backward 
 countries of the world that increased production is 
 still an important object; in those most advanced, 
 what is economically needed is a better distribu- 
 tion." It is not easy to see how such different 
 policies in regard to material progress are to be 
 maintained by countries in free commercial inter- 
 communication. Mill possibly regarded the back- 
 ward countries as those from which additional food 
 stuffs might be most readily produced for the supply 
 
86 LIMITATIONS OF ECONOMIC SCIENCE 
 
 of the world as a whole ; and this interpretation of 
 his meaning is borne out by the additional clause in 
 which he speaks of a stricter restraint on population 
 as "one indispensable means" of a better distri- 
 bution. He does not idealise complete equality, for 
 he recognises that " levelling institutions, either of 
 a just or of an unjust kind, cannot of themselves 
 accomplish [a better distribution] ; they may lower 
 the heights of society but they cannot of themselves, 
 permanently raise the depths." He recommends 
 somewhat tentatively, a system of legislation 
 11 favouring equality of fortunes, so far as is con- 
 sistent with the just claims of the individual to the 
 fruits whether great or small of his or her own 
 industry." He looked to the diffusion of landed 
 property and the progress of co-operation, both in 
 production and distribution, as the chief means by 
 which a more general and less unequal apportion- 
 ment of property might be brought about. He was 
 not satisfied with mere materialism, for he was 
 confident that these changes would conduce to the 
 improvement of human character and especially to 
 more self-discipline. "The prospect of the future 
 depends on the extent to which [the labouring 
 classes] can be made rational beings." His social 
 philosophy thus led him to anticipate the advent of 
 a sort of Atomism, in which each individual should 
 have similar means of pursuing his own interest, as 
 he saw it, unassisted and unfettered by a paternal 
 State, but self-disciplined by his own intellect. He 
 was confident that a state of society, composed of 
 rational and self-disciplined men and women, would 
 not only maintain a high level of material prosperity 
 but also would be able to enter on a course of 
 indefinite progress in the improvement of human 
 character and faculties. But Mill felt that no 
 human society was ripe for attempting to enter on 
 this atomistic stage with advantage, until men were 
 
JOHN STUART MILL 87 
 
 sufficiently sensitive to rational intelligence to be 
 able to discipline themselves; he had no enthusiasm 
 for an altogether undisciplined life. In the United 
 States and in Scotland the national temperament has 
 been most favourable to the success of his scheme, 
 but in so far as there has been an intellectual 
 advance in England, through the increase of educa- 
 tional facilities, there does not seem to have been a 
 corresponding diffusion of the power of self- 
 discipline. The intellectual influence Mill hoped 
 for has not been secured, and there have also been 
 remarkable changes in public opinion with which 
 he would not have sympathised ; the anxiety in 
 regard to the increase of population by which Mill 
 was obsessed appears to have been dissipated, and 
 there is an increasing tendency to rely on the 
 wisdom and effectiveness of state intervention to 
 confer benefits. There has also been a change, 
 which is partly due to his influence, in the direction 
 of economic studies ; though his treatise is so 
 arranged as to bring out the importance he himself 
 assigned to production, he has since given some 
 countenance to the recent reversion to the mediaeval 
 standpoint, when the subject of consumption re- 
 ceived so much attention. 
 
 Since Mill's Principles appeared, a very strong 
 public sentiment has been roused as to the dangers 
 and evils which occur in connection with the great 
 inequalities in the distribution of wealth ; and this 
 sentiment has been quickened by contempt and 
 indignation at the capricious use of wealth by smart 
 people, who lead lives that are quite detached from 
 duties and responsibilities. We should beware lest 
 this wholesome sentiment may be misdirected, and 
 lest we should overlook the real moral evils of irres- 
 ponsibility and self-indulgence, in life itself, while 
 concentrating attention on external goods and the 
 
$8 LIMITATIONS OF ECONOMIC SCIENCE 
 
 means of life. In regard to the means of life, there 
 are serious practical differences of opinion, both as 
 to the ultimate aim we should cherish, and as to the 
 rate at which we can hope to proceed towards it. 
 Some are inspired with an enthusiasm for complete 
 equality of opportunity, while others are content to 
 aim at the reduction of inequalities in every way 
 that is practicable. Some feel that the injustice of 
 inequality has been too long maintained, and that 
 there should be no further delay in carrying out an 
 effective redistribution. Others doubt whether it is 
 expedient to provide opportunities for those who 
 have not learned to use them wisely ; the retort, that 
 they cannot learn to use opportunities until they 
 enjoy them, lies open to the rejoinder that some 
 teaching may be desirable; the boy who is left by 
 himself to acquire the art of swimming may possibly 
 be drowned. The question comes before many 
 people in a practical form, as to the provision of 
 improved dwellings for those who have a very low 
 standard of life. There seems to be a real danger 
 lest, by attempts to introduce equality, the com- 
 plicated social system which at present exists may 
 be so disorganised that the mechanism of production 
 would be put out of order, and that the effect would 
 be to diminish the aggregate of goods in the com- 
 munity, and to reduce rather than increase the share 
 of the very poor. If equality were introduced in such 
 a form as to do away with the division of labour, the 
 total produce of labour would be reduced; there 
 would necessarily be new conditions for the admini- 
 stration of capital, and these might not be advant- 
 ageous, while credit might vanish altogether. 
 
 Still, enthusiasts are prepared to brush aside all 
 the difficulties with which the subject bristles, and 
 to insist that justice has been too long delayed and 
 that a change of distribution should be pressed on, 
 so that all individuals may share alike in the oppor- 
 
IRRESPONSIBLE ENJOYMENT 89 
 
 tunities for self-development and enjoyment which 
 are available in society. But this claim of an 
 abstract right to share, is new so far as this country 
 is concerned and is not easy to justify. It is found 
 among savage peoples, but only in connection with 
 ties of blood, or subjection to the chief of a tribe. 
 In civilised society the claim to property has been 
 associated with an acknowledgement of responsi- 
 bilities. In the Middle Ages there was a sense of 
 responsibility to God, or to the authority through 
 whom the right to hold the particular property was 
 conveyed. In modern times the claim to hold 
 property has been closely associated with a respon- 
 sibility for putting it to a useful purpose. The 
 State exercises a power of controlling the conditions 
 in which wealth is productively employed, and 
 efforts are being made to insist that landed property 
 shall not be withheld from productive employment; 
 it is only in the enjoyment of their income that 
 individuals are practically left free to do as they like 
 with their own. The public imagination has been 
 fired by the opportunities for irresponsible enjoy- 
 ment which fall to the lot of the idle rich; 
 and a demand is made in the name of Justice 
 that these opportunities of irresponsible enjoyment 
 should be more widely shared. This claim to 
 equality of opportunity as a matter of right, takes 
 no account of differences in the ability to make use 
 of opportunities; the rational element on which 
 Mill laid such stress, as an essential condition, 
 appears to be forgotten. Where there is freedom 
 from external guidance, and no pains are taken to 
 cultivate self-discipline, there is at least a danger 
 that a condition of atomism may degenerate into 
 anarchy. If each individual has similar means of 
 pursuing his own interests as he understands it, 
 there is no security that he will either employ his 
 opportunities and means so as to maintain the exist- 
 
90 LIMITATIONS OF ECONOMIC SCIENCE 
 
 ing material prosperity of society or so as to 
 improve his own powers and character. The 
 proposal for a distribution of the means of produc- 
 tion, without a corresponding effort to diffuse a 
 sense of responsibility in the use of them, is not 
 likely to introduce any permanent benefit. 
 
 An attempt, however, has recently been made to 
 give a scientific proof that the distribution, which 
 is called for in the name of justice, must certainly 
 bring about an increase of human happiness, and 
 that it is the end to which economists should direct 
 their efforts. In trying to establish this point, Pro- 
 fessor Pigou has been led to go outside the limits 
 of the science as hitherto recognised. He is not 
 merely concerned in examining the means to be 
 used towards a given end, but he tries to exhibit the 
 nature of the end itself, and he is forced to traverse 
 dangerous ground. Political Economy differs from 
 many other empirical studies inasmuch as experi- 
 ment is precluded ; but Professor Pigou has to enter 
 a field where accurate observation is difficult, and 
 verification is impossible. He tells us that " Welfare 
 includes states of consciousness only , and not 
 material things or conditions." l He abandons the 
 study of things in their relations to one another, and 
 makes enquiries as to states of consciousness the 
 basis on which he rests his conclusions. But such 
 data are very uncertain ; for the observer is in special 
 danger of interpreting what he has observed in the 
 light of his own personal habits and aims, and there 
 are no means of discounting this personal equation. 
 Professor Pigou holds that " if we assume all the 
 members of a community to be of similar tempera- 
 ment, and if these members are only two in number, 
 it is easily shown that any transference from the 
 richer to the poorer of the two, since it enables more 
 intense wants to be satisfied at the expense of less 
 
 1. A.. C. Pigou. Wealth and Welfare, 3. 
 
INTENSITY OF DESIREvS 91 
 
 intense wants, must increase the aggregate sum of 
 satisfaction." 1 To measure the intensity of the 
 desires felt by two different people does not seem 
 easy; Professor Pigou's case, when put concretely, 
 scarcely amounts to a demonstration of his thesis. 
 If both the members of this small community are 
 fond of music, and one had a piano, — not a very 
 good one but still a piano, — while the other had no 
 musical instrument of any kind, it would appear that 
 the benevolent statesman might be confident of 
 increasing the aggregate sum of satisfaction in the 
 community if he took away the piano from the 
 richer man and gave each member of the community 
 a first-rate gramophone instead. He would thus 
 provide that both shall be able to satisfy the widely 
 diffused desire of hearing music, and that the richer 
 man shall forego the satisfaction of the less impera- 
 tive craving to make music personally. But is it 
 quite certain that the aggregate sum of satisfaction 
 would be increased ? The man who had had the 
 piano would hardly be satisfied with the gramo- 
 phone; and we have no means of saying how 
 intense his dissatisfaction would be. On the other 
 hand, the poorer neighbour had probably framed 
 his own desire on his neighbours' luck in possessing 
 a piano and trying to play it himself; it is not clear 
 that he would be satisfied if he only got a gramo- 
 phone when what he wanted was a piano. If it is 
 difficult to measure intensity of desire it is still more 
 difficult to measure disappointment ; there is at least 
 a danger that, in endeavouring to bring about 
 equality, the statesman would introduce serious 
 dissatisfaction on the part of the man who was 
 deprived of something to which he was accustomed, 
 without creating much satisfaction on the part of 
 the man who received much less than he hoped for. 
 The problem was tersely stated by the child who 
 
 1. Ibid., 24, 401. 
 
92 LIMITATIONS OF ECONOMIC SCIENCE 
 
 asked, "Why do I dislike the things I dislike so 
 much more than I like the things I like?" The 
 advice which Professor Pigou is prepared to offer to 
 the statesman rests on a shifting foundation — not 
 on data of observed fact, but merely on estimates as 
 to what the average man might feel under certain 
 circumstances. His hypothesis in regard to a 
 community of two people of similar temperaments 
 is unconvincing and cannot be usefully extended to 
 the world at large, with all the variety of human 
 temperaments and conditions. 
 
 Political Economists, in trying to pass beyond the 
 old limitations of the science, have lost their bear- 
 ings; their reasoning loses touch with actuality, and 
 fails to throw light on the course of affairs. 
 Elaborate calculations, illustrated by complicated 
 diagrams, may only end in a re-statement of the 
 data from which the argument started. Economic 
 Science is at its best in analysing the phenomena 
 of the past and of the present, but it cannot give a 
 sufficiently authoritative forecast of the future to 
 supply definite guidance in the perplexities of 
 practical life. Enquiries which are devoted to the 
 examination of states of consciousness in the present 
 can give us little guidance in regard to the possibili- 
 ties of the future, — either as to the conditions on 
 which increased material prosperity depends, or as 
 to the anticipated progress of improvement in 
 human capacity and character. Economists appear 
 to be nonplussed from the difficulty of finding 
 formulas which take adequate account of the means 
 of life on the one hand, and of human habits and 
 temperaments on the other, as elements in personal 
 welfare; and it is misleading to take individual 
 happiness as a unit from which the good of man- 
 kind can be built up. To insist that the national 
 wealth consists of the aggregate of the wealth of 
 individuals is plausible; but the welfare of the 
 
THE GOOD OF THE COMMUNITY 93 
 
 community is something more than the aggregate 
 sum of the satisfaction enjoyed by separate indivi- 
 duals. Man is a social being, and it is very difficult 
 to reckon up the satisfaction derived from doing a 
 generous act; Dr. Marshall has pointed out that 
 " much of the best work of the world has no price, 
 and evades altogether the economic calculus." l 
 From the point of view of consumption it is always 
 better to receive than to give; freedom for the 
 individual to pursue his own private interests does 
 not necessarily lead to the greatest welfare in the 
 community. If, on the other hand, we start by 
 trying to form a conception of the good of the com- 
 munity as a whole, the difficulty is set in a different 
 light, and we can say that the individual finds his 
 personal welfare by sharing in the life of a well- 
 ordered community. 
 
 There has been much discussion at times on the 
 question whether Political Economy is a science or 
 an art ; the two things are closely connected, and 
 the actual interests involved in the economic side of 
 life are so great that there has never been complete 
 success in rendering the treatment strictly scientific, 
 and pursuing the study from a mere love of truth 
 and desire to enlarge knowledge. Adam Smith 
 regarded the activities of the statesman as mischiev- 
 ous; but he did a good deal to indoctrinate British 
 ministers with the principles of laissez faire, and 
 thus to bring about changes of practical policy. So 
 long as attention is fixed on the means of life and 
 material prosperity, it is possible to devise some- 
 thing that serves as a general art of Political 
 Economy, which will hold good with slight modifi- 
 cations in countries where money economy prevails 
 and from which there is access to the great stream 
 of the world's commerce. The conditions which 
 prevail in such countries are so far similar, that it 
 is possible to formulate rules that hold good very 
 
 1. Principles of Economics , i, 81. 
 
94 LIMITATIONS OF ECONOMIC SCIENCE 
 
 generally for the increase of material prosperity ; 
 and in so doing it may suffice to take current com- 
 mercial morality for granted, and to leave questions 
 of duty entirely on one side. But any attempt to 
 construct an art for conducting life so as to promote 
 the welfare of mankind, involves a consideration of 
 the mutual relations of human beings, and of their 
 responsibilities towards one another. The pretence 
 of framing such an art, on a basis furnished by 
 Economic Science, reveals a very meagre concep- 
 tion of life in human society and its possibilities. 
 It is easy to suggest the condition that each 
 individual shall be free to secure the maximum of 
 satisfaction, so long as he does no wrong to his 
 neighbour; it is simple to propose that the State 
 should provide each citizen with a number of 
 particular boons, such as free meals for his children 
 and a pension in his declining years; but in this 
 scheme of life there is little that tends to awaken or 
 foster a sense of duty to the community. The State 
 is represented as existing for the benefit of indivi- 
 duals, and as a wealthy body on whose resources 
 the citizen can draw indefinitely for his private use ; 
 a man may thus be tempted to exercise his political 
 privileges with no better object than that of being 
 able to draw on the public purse more deeply. A 
 general art of life that takes the satisfaction of 
 personal desires, — an object which is common to all 
 mankind — as its foundation, can only furnish a 
 scheme of conduct which might be interpreted as an 
 excuse for reckless self-indulgence, and which would 
 be repudiated by the wisest men of every age and of 
 every country as sordid. 
 
 The best hope for retrieving the character of 
 modern civilisation — for re-asserting the dignity of 
 human life and reducing economic activities to due 
 subservience — lies in framing an ideal of the fullest 
 life that is possible for mankind, and in working 
 
IDEALS OF MANKIND 95 
 
 towards it as best we can. Science can never supply 
 the inspiration that is needed to create the vision of 
 an ideal, though it can suggest the best means for 
 trying to realise it at any place or time. Science is 
 concerned with the increase of definite knowledge 
 about actual facts ; it divides experience into sections 
 which it is convenient to study by themselves; it 
 analyses and it classifies, and any synthesis at which 
 it arrives must be one-sided and incomplete. It we 
 are to aim at promoting human welfare we must 
 beware of neglecting any element that ought to be 
 taken into account ; we must not confine ourselves 
 to the consideration of the interests and opportuni- 
 ties of individuals, but must look at the community 
 as a whole. The habit of mind which is character- 
 istic of religion is needed as a corrective to the 
 limitations of the scientific standpoint, 1 and in order 
 to enable us to keep the thought of humanity as a 
 whole in the forefront. Christianity and Comtism 
 differ greatly in their view of the personal destiny 
 of man, but they are alike in maintaining an element 
 of faith in God, or of faith in Humanity. They are 
 alike in viewing all social questions with reference 
 to the welfare of mankind, dimly perceived, but 
 eagerly hoped for. Pseudo-Science starts from 
 particular data and is prepared to derive Universal 
 Laws from a single, imaginary case; but the 
 religious mind starts from an ideal and seeks in 
 experience for confirmation of its belief, and for 
 pledges of the practicability of its hope. We need 
 not wait for scientific experts to accumulate full and 
 accurate knowledge before we begin to act. The 
 notion of human welfare is too complex for us to 
 grasp completely and formulate, since it implies 
 provision of the means of life, on the one hand, as 
 well as an indefinite progress in human faculties 
 and character on the other. Not only does it 
 
 1. See p. 4, above. 
 
96 LIMITATIONS OF ECONOMIC SCIENCE 
 
 include these various elements, but there is no part 
 of the inhabited globe which is excluded from it, 
 and it stretches out indefinitely in the future. It is 
 not a state, but rather a process ; for human welfare 
 consists in the wholesome and vigorous life of man- 
 kind, and the life of each people and country helps 
 to make up the whole. Successful advance in one 
 country sets a better standard at which other com- 
 munities may aim ; and the civil government of each 
 country has the means of bringing pressure to bear 
 for the removal of hindrances to social progress. 
 Each of the great peoples of the past made their 
 respective contributions to the heritage which the 
 modern received from the ancient world ; Greece 
 was the mother of philosophy and art ; Rome devel- 
 oped and administered a great system of law ; we 
 are less concerned with that which was common to 
 both than with that which was distinctive of each. 
 The life of the future of the race will be better and 
 fuller if it is enriched by the best that each separate 
 tribe or city or nation can contribute to the growth 
 and development of human life as a whole. 
 
 In the national consciousness of a people who feel 
 that they have in their national life some valuable 
 element, which is lacking elsewhere, we find a 
 patriotism that is not a mere instinctive sentiment, 
 but is a legitimate subject of honest pride. That 
 nation best justifies its existence which cherishes a 
 high national ideal and trains its people to live up 
 to that ideal of life. Each people contributes its 
 quota to enrich the life of the world, by what they 
 are and the life they lead. National life is purified 
 by the recognition of better ideals, and the power of 
 giving effect to the national ideal, may be fostered 
 and may grow. To be of practical influence the 
 national ideal must take account of all that a nation 
 is, in character and history and institutions and of 
 all it has in the resources it can command. 
 
PATRIOTISM AND THE SENvSE OF MISSION 97 
 
 The recognition of the fact that no polity is 
 isolated, but that the citizens of every country have 
 a collective responsibility towards all mankind is at 
 once a corrective of national vanity and a call to 
 national duty. It was the glory of the Elizabethan 
 age that Englishmen awoke to a sense of a national 
 mission to exercise an active influence for good on 
 distant peoples. The men of that age believed that 
 they were privileged to enjoy a better government 
 and a purer Christianity than that fostered under 
 Spanish influence ; and they felt that they had a 
 duty to preserve it and a mission to diffuse it in the 
 new world. The bitter constitutional struggles of 
 the seventeenth century diverted attention from the 
 wider considerations of influence abroad ; but at the 
 close of the eighteenth century, the British public 
 was aroused to a new sense of collective responsi- 
 bility for the millions of India, and began to 
 endeavour to train and guide them so that they 
 might attain their full development, and be able to 
 contribute their own quota of thought to the life of 
 the great world. During the nineteenth century 
 Britain has been confronted with an even harder 
 task, and called to rise to a greater responsibility 
 in dealing with a country of which the resources are 
 undeveloped, while the inhabitants are very diverse 
 in race and social institutions. The task of bring- 
 ing all the various interests, pastoral, agricultural, 
 and mining, to co-operate for the prosperity of 
 South Africa, might seem almost insuperable ; only 
 a man with Rhodes' enthusiasm could be inspired 
 by the vision of giving fair play to different races, 
 whether black or white ; he sought to make the most 
 of the resources and of the peoples of a continent 
 which so many generations of Europeans had been 
 ready to exploit and oppress, and thus to give South 
 Africa its due place in the world. 
 
 When a nation is conscious of the work it can do 
 
98 LIMITATIONS OF ECONOMIC SCIENCE 
 
 in the world and of a distinctive contribution it is 
 making to enrich human life, there need be no 
 hesitation or scruple about the desirability of 
 material progress which promotes national power, 
 and enables that people to bring an increased influ- 
 ence to bear on the life of Man. The pioneers who 
 founded the oversea dominions were eager to plant 
 the highest type of life they knew, so that natural 
 resources should neither be exploited, nor left to lie 
 idle, but might support a greatly increased population 
 which should have opportunities for individual self- 
 development. The end in view of such men as 
 Wakefield and the guiding spirits of the Canada 
 Company was not mere sordid gain, but the plant- 
 ing and maintaining of wholesome human life. 
 
 The personal sense of brotherhood with individual 
 men in distant countries is ineffective, and is in 
 danger of remaining a barren sentiment; racial and 
 other differences go so deep. But when we conceive 
 mankind as a family of peoples and nations, we may 
 realise that the nation is the organ by which the 
 welfare of mankind may be effectively promoted ; 
 and the citizen of a democratic country, by throwing 
 himself heartily into national life may have a share 
 in advancing the good of Man. Different men have 
 different opportunities of contributing to the main- 
 tenance of national life, some on its material side 
 and some by awakening it to higher ideals and a 
 clearer sense of responsibility. Where the people 
 of a country have much in common, national life is 
 vigorous; where they are distracted by conflicting 
 interests and opinions, national life is enfeebled. 
 Each citizen is bound to see that he exercises his 
 political privileges, whatever they are, with a view 
 for the improvement of national ideals and their 
 more complete realisation, and not merely for the 
 promotion of his private interests. Those who are 
 indifferent to the good of the community in which 
 
FAITH AND HOPE 99 
 
 they live are neglectful of their own duties, and 
 guilty of criminal carelessness, since they leave 
 public concerns to be the prey of the unscrupulous. 
 There are many temptations to selfishness in using 
 any power or privilege, and plausible excuses can 
 always be alleged for shirking responsibility, but 
 those who habitually bring a faith, either in 
 Humanity or in Christ, to bear on their daily 
 conduct as citizens; will be encouraged to hope for 
 the realisation of a distant ideal and readv to forego 
 the prospect of personal reward. 
 

 APPENDIX. 
 
 THE ECONOMIC BASIS OF UNIVERSAL 
 PEACE— COSMOPOLITAN OR INTER- 
 NATIONAL? 1 
 
 Twenty-one years ago I had the honour of occupy- 
 ing the position of Chairman of this Section at 
 Cardiff and took as the subject of my address, 
 4 'Nationalism and Cosmopolitanism in Economics." 2 
 I pointed out that during the eighteenth century 
 the "whole economic skill of the day was devoted 
 to the building up the wealth of the nation " 
 as an independent economic organism. I argued 
 that though this nationalist policy was still main- 
 tained by the United States, the general trend of 
 affairs was against it ; and that Cosmopolitan 
 economic forces are gradually breaking down 
 national exclusiveness in every part of the known 
 world. I called attention to the fluidity of capital, 
 and to the fact that in making investments "space 
 is ignored, patriotism is left out of sight, and 
 capital is invested wherever there is an apparent 
 promise of profit." I pointed out the solidarity of 
 labour as a factor in production, and urged that in 
 the world of Labour " national differences and 
 peculiarities are ceasing to be of importance." 
 In Great Britain we have so far accepted this 
 changed situation that we are consciously treating 
 this country as part of a greater whole, not as 
 "an independent national economic organism, but 
 
 1. Read at a meeting of the Economic Section of the British 
 Association, Dundee, 1912, and reprinted from the Econom.it 
 Review, Jan. 1913. 
 
 2. Report of the Meeting of the British Association at Cardiff, 
 pp. 726-728. 
 
102 MR. rTORMAN ANGELL 
 
 as one portion of a cosmopolitan organism." As 
 a broad generalization it seemed to me true that, 
 just as municipal economic life had been absorbed 
 during the later Middle Ages in national life, so 
 national economic life was likely to be absorbed in 
 cosmopolitan economic life. The political organisms 
 which have hitherto maintained a rivalry were, as 
 I thought, merely temporary, and were being super- 
 seded by the free play of wider interests and more 
 far-reaching forces. Mr. Norman Angell in his 
 interesting book l has carried the matter much 
 further, and has shown how, through the credit 
 system, the prosperity of each modern nation is 
 closely intertwined with that of every other. He 
 believes that we have already reached a stage in 
 which it is no longer to fhe economic interest of any 
 country to injure the prosperity of any other ; and 
 he maintains the paradox that, however possible it 
 may have been for a nation to become more rich and 
 powerful by war in the past, in the modern world the 
 evil caused by war must react on the prosperity of 
 the conqueror, so that it can never be for the 
 economic interest of any country to go to war. He 
 bases the hope of Universal Peace on the modifying 
 of public opinion by inducing each civilized com- 
 munity to recognize that it cannot be to its interest 
 to injure the prosperity of another, and that it has 
 nothing to gain by so doing. Considering that, for 
 many generations, economists have been demon- 
 strating that the interests of capital and labour are 
 one, and that each is hurt by any injury to the other, 
 while labour conflicts still go on, I do not feel sure 
 that the prospects of Universal Peace are very 
 favourable, if they are to rest on demonstrations as 
 to the course which best subserves the interests of 
 both of the parties concerned. 
 
 But apart from this, I believe that the progress of 
 
 1. The Great Illusion. 
 
NATIONAL ECONOMIC LIFE 103 
 
 economic cosmopolitanism may easily be exagger- 
 ated. Historians are tempted to make some 
 hasty generalization as to the probable course of 
 development, and to believe on insufficient grounds 
 that their forecast is being verified. Twenty-one 
 years ago I noted the revival of national life and 
 national sentiment in many quarters, but I re- 
 garded it as an anachronism — a healthy sentiment 
 perhaps, but as a mere sentiment that did not affect 
 economic actualities. Mr. Angell takes this view 
 even more decidedly; for him the national welfare 
 is adequately represented by the aggregate welfare 
 of the existing individuals ; each individual is to be 
 free to go his own way, undisturbed by political 
 allegiance. But this disparagement of nationality 
 as a factor in economic life now seems to me 
 premature. There are important functions which 
 can still be best discharged by having regard to 
 national welfare and treating the nation as a unit. 
 
 The active elements of economic life are more 
 fluid in the present dav than formerly, but there are 
 elements of fixity to be attended to, if the economic 
 prosperity is to be stable. Interest, and the harmony 
 of interests will carry us a long way in economic 
 life ; but there is need for coercive authority, which 
 lays down the limits within which private interest 
 can be allowed free play, and can be rightly trusted 
 to bring about the public good. There must be the 
 organization of government, with a definite area in 
 which its control is recognized, if men are to pursue 
 their avocations in peace and security ; the unseen 
 foundations of society must not be ignored, even 
 though we habitually leave them out of sight. 
 Nationalism approves itself as a form of polity in 
 which democratic, but coercive, authority can be 
 conveniently exercised, and we should not lightly 
 dismiss it as a thing of the past. The organization 
 of society on national lines, and of resources for 
 
104 POLICE CONTROL OF THE WORLD 
 
 national objects, will continue for the administration 
 of justice and police, even though militarism should 
 completely disappear. 
 
 i. Even if it were possible to rely on the force of 
 economic interests for the maintenance of peace in 
 Europe and North America, we must not forget that 
 there are large populations in the far East who are 
 living on a different plane, and who can only hope 
 to defend themselves against aggression and servi- 
 tude by re-organising their military system on 
 Western models. In other cases where the duty of 
 defending and enforcing law and order among half- 
 civilized populations has been undertaken by a 
 European power, that power must retain its military 
 character, while there is need of naval force for 
 police purposes on the seas. A country which has 
 half-civilized possessions cannot afford to be entirely 
 cosmopolitan ; even so far as economic life is con- 
 cerned, the active factors in progress are not so 
 detached in backward, as they are in advanced 
 communities. Capital in the oversea dominions is 
 relatively fixed; it is mostly employed in building 
 lines of communication, and in providing fixed plant 
 for some industry or some species of cultivation. 
 There is little conscious community of interest 
 between the coloured labour in different regions ; 
 and though the deportation of coolies has been 
 carried on with considerable success in the past, it 
 is difficult to say that there is any increasing detach- 
 ment of labour from tropical and semi-tropical 
 territories. National organization, with a naval and 
 military side, affords the most convenient means for 
 exercising police control over large areas of the 
 territory of the world. 
 
 2. There are, moreover, modes in which political 
 influence and national organization can do much to 
 promote economic prosperity : even in advanced 
 communities this is not independent of territorial 
 
INTERNAL REGULATION 105 
 
 attachment. The government of a country has a 
 power of borrowing which is of immense importance 
 for turning capital into any definite direction ; but 
 its credit rests on its power of levying taxation, or 
 on its ability to draw revenue from a given area of 
 the earth's surface. The power of political authority 
 may also be needed to check the possible tyranny of 
 association. In America there is a constant agita- 
 tion against the powers exercised by Trusts, and the 
 problem of the hour is that of bringing these bodies 
 under such control that they shall be compelled to 
 show more consideration for the common good. In 
 this country anxiety is often expressed lest the 
 Labour Associations should abuse the privileges 
 which have been conferred upon them. There is no 
 cosmopolitan authority which can at present exercise 
 any effective control over capital or labour ; for the 
 present there is need of national control within given 
 areas, and the best hopes of exerting control seems 
 to lie in the combined action of leading nations. 
 Regulation, which is to be effectively enforced, can- 
 not be really cosmopolitan, but must be international, 
 since it rests ultimately on a national basis. 
 
 3. Political authority exercised within a given 
 area may also be used not only to put down abuses 
 in economic life, but to foster progress. In un- 
 developed countries there is need of railways and 
 other public works to bring them within the range 
 of the commerce of the world, and direction is 
 needed to make the most of their resources. Public 
 spirited and far seeing direction is necessary that 
 the resources of an area may be developed so as to 
 be of lasting value, and not merely exploited for the 
 benefit of the existing generation. The inhabitants 
 of any country are justified in demanding that 
 political authority shall seek to foster the permanent 
 material welfare of the land in which we live. And 
 this principle does not merely apply to undeveloped 
 
106 INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 areas; a highly developed country, which is not 
 self-sufficing, but is dependent on outside sources 
 for a supply of food, or for the raw material which 
 is necessary for some established industry, may 
 rightly look to political authority for assistance in 
 securing a vital economic interest. When all these 
 considerations are taken into account it appears that 
 territorial considerations, and political authority 
 over a given area, are by no means out of date, but 
 are still playing an important part in economic life. 
 We are all interested in seeing that there shall be 
 a firm foundation on which the police control of the 
 world at large, together with the maintenance of 
 peace between the most highly developed countries, 
 may be securely based. The question which con- 
 fronts us is whether this can be best accomplished 
 through a cosmopolitanism which ignores and dis- 
 parages and undermines national economic life, or 
 by means of an internationalism which is built up 
 out of a group of strong and vigorous nationalities. 
 This is a matter to be argued on "the facts of 
 the world as they stand." ! The decision as to 
 the real nature of the change that is going on 
 is to be reached not by any generalization from 
 the history of the past, but by a detailed study 
 of the relevant phenomena in the present time. 
 The supreme interest in the study of British com- 
 merce to-day lies in the fact that it affords the 
 necessary materials for investigating this funda- 
 mental issue in regard to economic organization, 
 and for deciding whether the actual trend of affairs 
 at this time is in favour of cosmopolitanism on the 
 one hand, or of nationalism and internationalism on 
 the other. 
 
 Alone among the commercial nations of the world 
 Great Britain has made herself the exponent of 
 economic cosmopolitanism; hence the validity of 
 l ? The Great Illusion, 204, 
 
COMMERCIAL EXPANSION 107 
 
 this principle can be tested by examining the pro- 
 gress of Great Britain relatively to that of other 
 communities which retain the system of economic 
 nationalism. If Great Britain is not only advancing, 
 but advancing more rapidly than communities which 
 retain the nationalist organization, then we are 
 justified in saying that the cause of cosmopolitanism 
 is increasing in material resources and moral influ- 
 ence throughout the world, and that List, in 
 advocating economic nationalism, induced the 
 United States and Germany to take a retrograde 
 step. But if, on the other hand, economic national- 
 ism is holding its own and advancing, can we be 
 sure that economic cosmopolitanism has really come 
 to stay ? 
 
 There are other ways in which the inquiry may 
 be pursued ; after all, there is no complete cosmo- 
 politanism, even in the economic affairs of Great 
 Britain, and we can distinguish three divisions of 
 over-seas commerce into which it enters in different 
 degrees. Our commerce with foreign countries is 
 conducted on cosmopolitan lines; the commerce 
 with the great self-governing dominions is less 
 cosmopolitan, as ties both of sentiment and of 
 preference come in ; while the tropical dependencies 
 are still more closely affected by direct administra- 
 tion and are most nearly an expansion of British 
 territory. If those departments of trade, where 
 national influences are prevalent are decaying, and 
 those where cosmopolitanism dominates are advanc- 
 ing, then we may feel that cosmopolitanism has 
 justified itself. If, on the other hand, the branches 
 of trade which retain a national character are 
 flourishing most, then we may once more be com- 
 pelled to doubt whether cosmopolitanism has come 
 to stay. 
 
 Having thus tried to state the problem, I will only 
 say that I agree with those who think that national- 
 
io8 PATRIOTISM AND PEACE 
 
 ism and internationalism are winning all along the 
 line, and that the one country, which has consciously 
 accepted the role of being a part of a cosmopolitan 
 economic organism, and professes to discard a 
 national system altogether, is not holding her own — 
 at least is not holding her own so obviously as to 
 induce others to follow her example. Economic 
 cosmopolitanism is not such a proved success that 
 it is wise for those who are interested in advocating 
 Universal Peace to take it as the basis of their claim. 
 On its material side the argument which assumes 
 the progress of cosmopolitanism is doubtful. 
 
 But there is a moral aspect as well. The Peace 
 Propagandism of our time has been inclined to 
 disparage "the blind dogma of patriotism"; it has 
 seemed to cultivate a wide humanitarianism and to 
 aim at exorcising patriotic enthusiasm as if it were 
 an evil. If it can link itself with patriotic sentiment, 
 it will gain in force enormously. Peace propagand- 
 ism will be wise to take this line if national economic 
 organization is likely to persist, and if peace, both 
 among civilized and uncivilized peoples, can be 
 rested on the influence and relationships of the 
 higher nationalities. Such advocacy will not only 
 be more effective, but it will exercise a better moral 
 influence. It is important that the people of any 
 land should value the sense of national independ- 
 ence, it is glorious to attain a sense of national 
 mission. Success or failure in the art of war 
 depends on conditions that lead to success or failure 
 in other arts ; the benefit to character lies not in the 
 fighting itself, but in the possession of ideals for 
 which the citizen feels that it is worth while to make 
 a sacrifice. It is good for any man to be able to 
 draw inspiration from the past of his country, and 
 to cherish ideals for its future. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Adam, 9, 26. 
 
 America, see New England, 
 
 United States, etc. 
 Angell, Mr. N., 102. 
 Angevins, 49. 
 Antwerp, 47. 
 Apostles, Acts of, 62 
 Apprentices, Statute of, 51. 
 Aquinas, 5, 10, 76. 
 
 Articles of Grievances, 6. Danes, 23. 
 
 Ashley, Prof. W. J., 43 *• Dante, 14. 
 Atlantic, 53. Devon, 7. 
 
 S. Augustine (of Hippo), 5, Domesday Book, 28. 
 
 26, 36, 60. Drake > F > 53- 
 
 S.Augustine (of Canterbury), Dublin, 55 
 
 Carlovingians, 23. 
 Charles the Great, 81. 
 Charles I., 59. 
 Cistercians, 24. 
 Comtism, 95. 
 Continental System, 19. 
 Cornwall, 7. 
 Crusades, 81. 
 
 S. Dunstanj 
 Dutch, 69. 
 
 80. 
 
 Baltic, 45. 
 
 Baxter, Richard, 65, 82 n. 
 
 Benedictines, 24. See also ^ wa ' r( j j 
 
 23- 
 
 Rule. 
 S. Bernard, 81. 
 Beza, T., 65. 
 Black Death, 30, 49. 
 Blenheim, 60. 
 Bristol, 45. 
 Bury S. Edmunds, 28. 
 
 Calvin, J., 58, 60, 63, 65. 
 Cambridge, 46. 
 Canada Company, 98 
 
 East, routes to, 52. 
 Eden, 26. 
 
 49. 
 Elizabeth, Queen, 43, 50, 
 
 5i» 59- 
 
 S. Eloy, 23. 
 
 Ely, 28. 
 
 English, 14, 40, 52, 56. 
 
 Exeter, 45. 
 
 Factory Acts, 18. 
 Fish Days, 19. 
 Flanders, 45. 
 Florence, 65. 
 
 109 
 
no 
 
 INDEX 
 
 France, 66, 69. 
 Free Traders, 55. 
 French, 54, 60, 66. 
 
 Genesis, 26. 
 
 Geneva, 65, 66. 
 
 German Empire, 54, 107. 
 
 Godwin, W., 5. 
 
 Granada, 81. 
 
 Greece, 96. 
 
 S. Gregory the Great, 22, 80. 
 
 Hamilton, Alexander, 54. 
 Henry VIII, 59, 66. 
 Hirschau, 23. 
 Home Rule, 55. 
 Huguenots, 66. 
 Humanism, 6, 60. 
 
 India, 97. 
 Ireland, 55. 
 Israel, 60. 
 
 James I, 43, 59. 
 Jews, 49, 63, 69, 82. 
 Joint-Stock Companies, 43. 
 Judaism, 69. 
 
 Knowles, Dr., 12. 
 Knox, John, 66. 
 
 Latimer, H., 13. 
 Lincolnshire, 6. 
 List, F., 107. 
 Locke, John, 2, 76. 
 London, 31, 40, 50, 51, 73. 
 Luther, 25, 58. 
 
 Marshall, Dr. A., 93. 
 Mary I, Queen, 50, 52. 
 Melville, Andrew, 66. 
 Mercantile System, 16. 
 Merchant of Venice, 42. 
 Mercy, Order of, 82. 
 Merovingians, 23. 
 Methodism, 25. 
 Mexico, 52. 
 Mill, J. S., 85, S 7i 89. 
 More, Sir T., 13. 
 Moslim, 81. 
 
 Napoleon, 19, 84. 
 Netherlands, 69. 
 Newcastle, 45. 
 New England, 52, 61. 
 Nicholson, Prof. J. S., 77 n. 
 Norsemen, 23. 
 
 Old Testament, 63, 65, 68. 
 Orders, 24, 82. 
 
 Paradise, 9. 
 
 Parnell, Mr. C. S., 55. 
 
 S. Paul, 26, 63. 
 
 Peru, 52. 
 
 Petty, Sir W., 73. 
 
 Phillpotts, B. S., 11 n. 
 
 Pigou, Prof. A. C, 90 f. 
 
 Pope, 52, 62. 
 
 Portuguese, 52, 81. 
 
 Presbyterianism, 61, 66 f., 
 
 70 f. 
 Proverbs, Book of, 68. 
 Puritanism, 60, 69. 
 
INDEX 
 
 in 
 
 Queen Regent (Mary of Tawney, R. H., 12. 
 Guise), 66. See Elizabeth, S. Thomas, see Aquinas, 
 etc. 
 
 Ramsey, 28. 
 
 Trade Unions, 32. 
 Trinitarians, 82. 
 
 Reformation, 11, 58, 61, 65. Troeltsch, Dr., 6. 
 
 Truce of God, 70. 
 Turkey, 79. 
 
 Renascence, 6. 
 
 Rhodes, Cecil, 97. 
 
 Roman Empire, 22, 96. 
 
 Rose-Troup, F., 7 n. 
 
 Rost, Dr., 70 n. 
 
 Royal Society, 72. 
 
 Rule, Benedictine, 26, 29, 36- Utopia, 6 
 
 Russia, 79. 
 
 United States, 54, 79, 87, 101, 
 
 105, 107. 
 Utilitarianism, 10. 
 
 Vegetarianism, 9. 
 
 Savonarola, 25, 65. 
 
 Schulze-Gaevernitz, Dr. 69. 
 
 Scotland, 65, 6j f 87. 
 
 Scots, 14, 40, 65 f., 71. 
 
 Scots Confession, 67. 
 
 Sicily, 22. 
 
 S. Ives' Fair, 46. 
 
 Smith, Adam, 2, 71, 72, 73 U ^thread Mr. S., 32. 
 
 76 f., 84 f. Wren, Sir C, 72. 
 
 Solignac, 23. 
 
 Sombart, Dr., 69. Yarmouth, 46. 
 
 South Africa, 97. Yorkshire, 6. 
 
 Wakefield, E. G., 98. 
 Waterloo, 60. 
 Weber, Max, 69. 
 Wesley, John, 24. 
 Whewell, Dr. W., 18. 
 
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