^ 
 

 
 THE ENGLISH DEMOCRACY 
 
 ITS PROMISES AND PERILS
 
 THE ENGLISH DEMOCRACY 
 
 L / 
 
 ITS PROMISES AND PERILS 
 
 zr. r.f. 
 
 BY 
 
 ARNOLD WHITE 
 
 // 
 
 AUTHOR OF PROBLEMS OF A GREAT CITY, ETC. 
 
 LONDON 
 
 SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO. 
 
 PATERNOSTER SQUARE 
 
 1894
 
 PREFACE 
 
 POLITICAL power in the United Kingdom belongs 
 to that portion of the population which contributes 
 less than one-fourth of the total Imperial and local 
 revenues, while the remainder contribute over three- 
 fourths of the revenue, supply eleven-twelfths of the 
 men who govern the Empire, and draw ninety-nine 
 per cent, of the prizes of public life. Virtually a Re- 
 public with an hereditary President, Great Britain 
 lacks a written Constitution embodying the funda- 
 mental principles of liberty, life, and ownership. The 
 only existing safe-guard against despotism other than 
 the racial common sense of the English people is a 
 fragment of feudalism that has floated down from the 
 Middle Ages to the edge of the Twentieth Century 
 in the shape of an hereditary House, invested with legal 
 power to oppose the will of an omnipotent, but never 
 unanimous, proletariat. 
 
 English democracy, having made goods and machinery 
 for foreign nations during fifty years, acceded to power 
 in time to discover that former customers have become 
 its strongest rivals ; that in the lifetime of one man the 
 mouths to be fed in Great Britain have increased from 
 under eleven to nearly thirty-five millions ; that the Free 
 Trade arranged in the interests of Capital that is poly- 
 glot, mobile, and cosmopolitan, is not necessarily to the
 
 vi PREFACE. 
 
 advantage of labourers chained to the spot by language, 
 family, and circumstance. Politically omnipotent, the 
 poorer classes in this country are directly responsible 
 abroad for two hundred and ninety million inhabitants 
 of a distant Empire : a burden never borne by Im- 
 perial Rome in her prime, or by Russia to-day ; while 
 at home democracy is horror-stricken by the spectre 
 of want sitting permanently at the doorstep of in- 
 numerable homes. 
 
 While the avenues of subsistence are closing in every 
 direction ; with the soil of the Colonial Empire, won 
 by British blood and treasure, shut to the British pro- 
 letariat ; our rulers are intent on achieving constitutional 
 change in the shape of an incongruous system of lunar 
 legislatures, that shall revolve without collision round the 
 central planet of an Imperial Parliament. Although 
 these changes are neither sought by the masses, nor 
 calculated to feed the hungry or clothe the naked, the 
 renewal of civil war is brought by them within the 
 range of practical politics. Already on the edge of 
 a precipice, statesmen continue to discuss without a 
 smile new methods of voting, representation, and 
 rating, as though there were virtue in such simples. 
 All things are in the crucible. Opinions and prin- 
 ciples, held by our fathers as settled forever, have 
 lost all weight in losing the sanction of morality 
 or religion. The decay of faith has raised physical 
 comfort to the godhead, and while destroying the 
 motive for resignation in trouble, has replaced belief in 
 religion and duty, by an abiding sense of injustice against 
 those who enjoy the good things of this life, and have 
 leisure and imagination to cultivate the impression that 
 beyond the grave their special destiny is to inherit 
 eternal joy.
 
 PREFACE. vii 
 
 The Church of England, torn with intestine strife, like 
 other owners of property, is the object of ungovern- 
 able greed, and the secular spirit of an ideal acknow- 
 ledging neither God nor master, is ceasing to hold in 
 reverence a priesthood it no longer dreads. Neither 
 reward nor punishment beyond the grave retains its 
 ancient power to deter men from evil, and to impel 
 them towards good citizenship. 
 
 A new social morality has accompanied the intro- 
 duction of a new political economy. The socialism of 
 Christ, which consisted in sharing with others, is re- 
 placed by attempts to legalise spoliation ; and moral 
 sanction is claimed for these efforts by spiritual leaders 
 who, having lost control over the masses in the domain 
 of theology, seek to recover influence over them in the 
 dust and passion of party politics. 
 
 Such are some of the conflicting currents through 
 which English democracy is passing. Racial common 
 sense ; the lives and examples of men who still prefer 
 character to notoriety ; the increasing influence of good 
 women ; the infusion of Jewish mind and thrift ; and 
 the gradual recovery of reasoned conviction that the 
 main lessons of our English Bible are true, and cannot 
 be ignored with impunity by men or nations, are among 
 the more hopeful elements in the prospect now opening 
 before us.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 I. LOOKING BACK - 1 
 
 II. LOOKING ROUND 9 
 
 III. LOOKING FORWARD 22 
 
 IV. EXPERIMENTS - - 36 
 V. THE LEADERS OF DEMOS 63 
 
 VI. THE CROWN 93 
 
 VII. THE HOUSE OF LORDS - 103 
 
 VIII. THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 113 
 
 IX. THE PAROCHIALISATION OF INDIA 128 
 
 X. JEWISH INFLUENCE ON DEMOCRACY - {50 
 
 XI. THE OUTLOOK FOR WOMEN - 171 
 
 XII. THE MANUFACTURE OF THE UNEMPLOYABLE- 197* 
 
 XIII. THE RELIGION OF THE IRRELIGIOUS - - 223.
 
 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 LOOKING BACK. 
 
 THE inhumanity of man to man, and the selfish- 
 ness of the governing classes, are no new in- 
 cidents in the history of our country. When 
 the King governed, Englishmen were subjected 
 to a series of oppressive and grinding exactions, 
 from which relief was obtained only by first 
 reducing and then destroying the kingly power. 
 Nor was the transfer of authority from the Crown 
 to the men of family who controlled the destinies 
 of this country for the period between the Revolu- 
 tion and the first Reform Bill, marked by any 
 increase in the altruism previously displayed by 
 the ruling caste. The present generation has 
 half forgotten the history of the Corn Laws, and
 
 2 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 the struggle for their abolition is but an echo of 
 the past. During the lapse of the half century 
 when the middle classes were dominant, and the 
 sway of machinery was firmly established on a 
 profitable basis, under the influence of a school 
 of economics more or less empiric in its teach- 
 ing, selfishness was no less visible in the polity 
 and under the administration of the Manchester 
 School, than during the autocracy of the Tudors, 
 or when political jobs were openly perpetrated by 
 Walpole or the Grenvilles. 
 
 Now that Demos has deposed his former 
 masters, and, seated on the Throne, holds in his 
 hands the power of unlimited experiment in social 
 reform, there is no reason to believe that he will 
 prove to be less self-centred than his forerunners. 
 Democracy may become egotistic, venal, mercenary, 
 and ungenerous, and still attain a higher pedestal 
 of virtue than the dead lines of kings and states- 
 men who have vanished from our ken. No 
 looseness of morals, want of principle, or hardness 
 of heart displayed by our rulers in the future, can 
 exceed, even if they equal, the depravity and 
 folly of our rulers in the past. If Demos be 
 more cruel than those he has displaced, he has 
 justifications they cannot plead. The statesmen 
 of the eighteenth century plundered and op- 
 pressed from ambition and cupidity ; not from
 
 LOOKING BACK. 3 
 
 the sting of want. If Democracy seeks to 
 spoil the Classes of their luxuries in order to 
 supply the Masses with essentials, it can at least 
 offer the excuse that ransom is exacted for 
 those who have no escape from want but 
 by the exercise of political power only recently 
 acquired. 
 
 Since the Black Death of the fourteenth 
 century, England has suffered no great calamity. 
 It is unlikely that these islands will ever again 
 become a mere pest house, or that in the face of 
 sanitary science half the population will disappear 
 in the course of an epidemic. If, however, the 
 progress of knowledge has extended our dominion 
 over certain natural forces, it is equally true that 
 there have sprung into existence mysterious and 
 hitherto unknown elements, the governing laws 
 of which are at present unintelligible. We do 
 not know enough to say with certainty whether 
 the steam engine will prove a benefactor or not. 
 Its advantages are obvious. Wealth by its 
 means has obviously multiplied. But steam has 
 done nothing towards the moralisation of wealth, 
 and the problem of distribution seems to be more 
 intractable and less capable of solution than 
 ever. 
 
 As long as foreigners were content to buy 
 what England alone could manufacture, the fal-
 
 4 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 lacies and baseless assumptions of Cobden and 
 Bright were masked under a fugitive prosperity. 
 But the time has arrived when not only the 
 white races are our rivals, where formerly they 
 were our customers, but Asiatics and even 
 Africans successfully contest the field against us. 
 In Japan there are upwards of sixty cotton 
 mills, which are highly profitable to their 
 owners. In Lancashire, profits from cotton mills 
 are reduced to such a point that the creation 
 of artificial scarcity by the stoppage in 1893 
 of 18,000,000 spindles, was scarcely resisted 
 by the employers. Seeing that the Japanese, 
 Chinese, and Hindoos are fast acquiring the in- 
 dustrial skill formerly possessed by Lancashire 
 alone, it does not require the gift of prophecy to 
 perceive that, failing new markets or fresh inven- 
 tion, the continuous decay, and even the final ex- 
 tinction of the Lancashire cotton trade is but a 
 matter of time. 1 That the process of extinction 
 
 1 Mr. S. Smith, M.P., in an address to his Constituents at 
 Buckby on Jan. i5th, 1894, spoke as follows : A great portion 
 of the machinery was wearing out. The employers were too 
 poor to replace it with new machinery. It was gradually going 
 down, and the best new machinery was going abroad to start 
 industries competing with our own. He was told that only 
 one-eighth of the machinery made in Lancashire was em- 
 ployed in Lancashire ; the other seven-eighths went abroad to 
 support industries competing with our own. His belief was 
 that if they put to auction to-morrow all the cotton mills in
 
 LOOKING BACK. 5 
 
 may be retarded by the lessened cost of trans- 
 port afforded by the opening of the Manchester 
 Canal and the competition in rates begun by 
 the railway companies, is highly probable. Im- 
 proved machinery, greater economies, and suc- 
 cessful lock-outs, may equally contribute to the 
 prolongation of the struggle for existence. But 
 manifest destiny cannot be dodged. The inex- 
 haustible supply of voteless Hindoos, with wages 
 of four annas for a twelve hours day and no holi- 
 days, must in the long run ruin the Lancashire 
 capitalist and his operatives, with the dead 
 weight of their Living Wage, New Unionism, 
 the Eight Hours Day, and the appreciation 
 of gold continually increasing the burden of 
 fixed charges. 
 
 The tragedy that even now is rehearsing in 
 the textile trade is likely before long to be played 
 before even larger audiences. It is now too late 
 to smash machinery. The folly and wickedness 
 of those who destroyed the Spinning Jennies, the 
 engines, and the printing machines at the time of 
 their introduction, have been denounced with so 
 unanimous a voice that it would be futile to sug- 
 
 Lancashire, they would find that a very considerable portion 
 of them were bankrupt. The consequence of this state of 
 things was that in place of new capital coming into the trade 
 it went to India, China, Japan, or South America.
 
 6 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 gest that the ignorant peasants or delirious 
 mechanics who obeyed the first instincts of their 
 nature, were animated by a true sense of self- 
 preservation, however careless they may have 
 been of the future of the human race. The 
 object of machinery is the saving of " hands." 
 The Manchester Canal was excavated by five 
 thousand men. Not less than one hundred thou- 
 sand would have been required as the equivalent 
 of the " steam navvies " and excavators which 
 performed the main part of the work that has 
 been so successfully and rapidly completed. It is 
 largely owing to machinery that food and clothing 
 are so cheap ; but never was there a time when 
 many of those who famish for want of food and 
 who shiver in rags were so numerous or so inno- 
 cent of the causes that have thrust destitution 
 upon them. The glutted market is the comple- 
 ment of the empty stomach. Palliatives of 
 Charity, Mansion House Committees, Parish 
 Aid, State Aid, are still talked of as if there were 
 hope in them. It cannot be very long before 
 experiments will be tried that will dispel the 
 illusion that any legislation or any outlay can 
 change unfitness into fitness, or produce from the 
 thistles of humanity the figs of industrial success. 
 Disillusion might possibly result from small and 
 tentative experiments, and it is therefore a matter
 
 LOOKING BACK. 7 
 
 for surprise that thoughtful men such as those who 
 control the Charity Organisation Society, should 
 use their influence to deter enthusiasts from 
 attempting, on a moderate scale, relief works that 
 will infallibly, and before long, be made a part of 
 national policy, unless in the meantime wisdom is 
 taught to our masters by less costly means. 
 
 The enigmas of life introduced by the steam 
 engine, have not been diminished by the start 
 given to education. It seems to be an invari- 
 able law that the manual work necessary in 
 agriculture is never contentedly performed by 
 educated people. In Ceylon, where sixty 
 generations of cultivators have followed three 
 
 o 
 
 hundred generations of buffaloes in the same 
 rice fields, vernacular education has snapped 
 the chain that bound the Sinhalese for centuries 
 to one ancestral calling. In India, the same 
 phenomenon is observed. In the United States 
 and in England, the more intelligent, the better 
 educated the farmers' sons or the labourers may 
 be, the more certain is it that they will forsake 
 the old trade, and find in the great towns or 
 across the sea, more congenial occupation than 
 ploughing or ditching. Education and the 
 labour of agriculture are as antipathetic as a 
 horse to an elephant. 
 
 Machinery, education, and the decay of faith,
 
 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 all contribute to the development of selfishness 
 in the dominant caste. Study of English history 
 reveals the fact that, with insignificant exceptions, 
 the ruling caste has consistently maintained the 
 attitude dictated by self-interest. It is equally 
 true that the new epoch we have entered is 
 complicated by the existence of mysterious but 
 unsolved problems undreamed of when the cen- 
 tury was young, the solution of which is necessary 
 unless men are to relapse into barbarism ; that 
 unless invention, fresh markets, or a new organ- 
 isation of Society, relieve the social pressure, 
 physical distress is waiting round the corner of the 
 century for millions of voters and their families 
 who are innocent of the causes of their misery ; 
 that education, while it has made the masses 
 articulate, has indisposed them to partake in the 
 manual labour, monotony, and loneliness of agri- 
 culture, and has not made them unselfish ; and 
 that we are probably on the eve of great experi- 
 ments for bettering the lot of the destitute at the 
 cost of the realised wealth of the kingdom. 
 What those experiments may be, their results, 
 and the personal, racial, sexual and religious 
 influences that will accelerate or retard the pro- 
 gress of democratic evolution, will be partly traced 
 in the following pages.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 LOOKING ROUND. 
 
 So numerous and popular are the anomalies that 
 flourish on English soil, Saxon suspicion is apt 
 
 % 
 
 to be aroused by mere symmetry. Codified law 
 and paper constitutions are constantly disparaged 
 by capable men who have no interest in the 
 maintenance of anomalies. During the discussion 
 on Mr. Gladstone's second Home Rule Bill, it 
 was not unusual to hear the famous tenth clause 
 (admitting the right of Irish Members to control 
 the details of English and Scottish affairs, while 
 denying to English and Scottish Members recip- 
 rocal power in Ireland) defended on the ground 
 that it was an anomaly. The argument was as 
 follows : Anomalies abound and work well in the 
 British Constitution. The tenth clause is an 
 anomaly. Therefore the tenth clause will work 
 well, and should be adopted. 
 
 We are the only civilised people in Europe
 
 io ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 without a written Constitution. Russia and 
 Turkey are governed despotically, but they are 
 not civilised. During the period of revolution 
 and change that passed over Europe during the 
 last century, the British Constitution was the 
 admiration and envy of Continental observers. 
 John Louis de Lolme said of our Constitution in 
 1784, that it was "a model of perfection." He 
 was struck with admiration at the fine mechanism 
 whereby revolution itself was on the side of law, 
 and temperate reform replaced the wild impatience 
 that convulsed the Continental nations, and diffused 
 terror and calamity over Europe. For a thousand 
 years our Constitution has been a growth. New 
 desires and new interests on the part of the 
 British people have gradually modified existing 
 institutions. At no time have the primary prin- 
 ciples upon which personal liberty and security to 
 property depend been recorded in a verbal form. 
 As the Duke of Argyll has said : " Their lives, 
 their liberty, and their property depended on a 
 code of accepted doctrines, which were nowhere 
 recorded or expressed ; which were in fact like 
 the air they breathed they were hardly conscious 
 of it until it had been disturbed." The absence 
 of a written Constitution, embodying the funda- 
 mental principles of liberty, life, and ownership, 
 which for so long has been the bulwark of the
 
 LOOKING ROUND. 11 
 
 race, is now our gravest danger. There is nothing 
 to prevent a powerful demagogue in Parliament 
 from passing, in a time of popular frenzy, a Bill 
 declaring the abolition of the Crown, the establish- 
 ment of a Single Chamber, the election of Judges. 
 There is nothing in the British Constitution that 
 would secure an appeal to the real conscience and 
 judgment of the flower of the nation. Between 
 the English people and anarchy there is nothing 
 substantial but the proportion of power held by 
 the owners of property, in excess of the power 
 held by the destitute and disaffected. 
 
 The form of government under which we live 
 is of little importance compared with the spirit in 
 which the administration of the laws is carried 
 out. The ferment in our social condition, of 
 which every observer is conscious, is largely the 
 result of the fact that the real government of the 
 country is no longer in the hands of those who 
 nominally hold the reins of power. The Crown 
 is obliterated as a Constitutional force. Such 
 power as it still possesses is mainly personal to the 
 present occupant of the Throne. The hereditary 
 system of legislation in the Upper House is so 
 far incongruous with democracy, that its very 
 existence depends on its decisions concurring- 
 with the opinions of a majority of the people. 
 The first mistake made by the Lords as to the
 
 1 2 ENGLISH DEMOCRA C Y. 
 
 real feeling of the nation will be the signal for its 
 death warrant. 
 
 As regards the House of Commons, the de- 
 gradation of the majority of the Members from 
 the position of representatives to that of dele- 
 gates, has weakened its authority, impaired its 
 fame, and brought inextricable confusion into the 
 Parliamentary system. The majority of the 
 House of Commons, consisting of men of pro- 
 perty, are no longer united in interests with their 
 constituents, who are mostly wage-earners. The 
 people accordingly retain in their own hands 
 power that may be confided to representatives, 
 but can never be trusted to delegates. The 
 Roman people never allowed their tribunes to 
 conclude anything definitely ; they, on the con- 
 trary, reserved to themselves the right of ratifying 
 any resolutions the tribunes might make. This 
 was the very circumstance that rendered the 
 institution of tribunes wholly ineffectual. When- 
 ever a democracy wants to interfere with the 
 resolutions of its representatives, and to maintain 
 an appearance of sovereignty, they are obliged to 
 act under the direction of others, and thus the 
 wished for sovereignty is chimerical, and the 
 responsible representatives who are known, are 
 abased by the exaltation of irresponsible caucus 
 leaders who are not known. Who is there to-day
 
 LOOKING ROUND. . 13 
 
 who dares to say to his constituents : " Tacete 
 quseso Quirites ! Plus enim ego quam vos quid 
 reipublicse expediat intelligo ? " 
 
 There are, of course, other reasons for the 
 degeneracy of the House of Commons. Of the 
 fact of its decline in public opinion, the vulgar 
 brawl of July, 1893, from which no political 
 party, except the Labour Members, escaped 
 without reproach, is sufficient evidence. The 
 spectators in the gallery for the first time ex- 
 pressed, by their hisses, the opinion of their 
 fellow-countrymen as to the blight that has come 
 over the House of Commons. 
 
 Performing its duties under the fierce light of 
 the Press, it is obvious that deliberation must in- 
 evitably be replaced by oratorical display. What 
 is not sincere has no life in it. So much of the 
 House of Commons work is insincere, and is 
 done for effect with an eye on the gallery, 
 that deterioration in debate is a matter of 
 course. What the House of Commons has lost, 
 the Press, the Caucus and the Trade Unions 
 have gained. The Press, the Caucus, and the 
 Trade Unions are unknown to the Constitution ; 
 but between them they wield the power that has 
 been lost by the three Estates of the Realm. 
 Fettered by no such considerations as must 
 always check the impulses of truly Representa-
 
 I 4 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 live Assemblies, the rapid growth of party feeling 
 is a natural consequence. Debate is now carried 
 on in the newspapers. Few persons read the 
 discussions in Parliament, nor are they, as a rule, 
 reported in the newspapers read by the masses, 
 except in some honourable instances. Parlia- 
 mentary and extra-Parliamentary speeches are 
 pictorially reported. Opponents are skilfully 
 ridiculed, misrepresented, and defamed. The 
 mistakes of friends are glossed over and ignored. 
 The ablest efforts of opponents are minimised or 
 perverted. There is not a single daily news- 
 paper from which the inhabitants of another 
 planet could obtain an accurate notion of what 
 really takes place in English political life. Of 
 the weekly papers, the Spectator alone attempts 
 to give an impartial review of the political events 
 of the week, and even the Spectator is impreg- 
 nated with British aversion to the Celts, who 
 now take the larger and more prominent part 
 in political life, as might be naturally expected 
 from the delegates of the inferior race. 
 
 The Church of England, as by law established, 
 is rent from the centre to circumference with 
 internal feud. One section is bent on maintain- 
 ing the principles and doctrines established at the 
 Reformation, and on preserving the purity of 
 Protestant worship ; in resisting innovations in
 
 LOOKING ROUND. 15 
 
 vestments, ornaments, gestures, or practices 
 borrowed from Rome ; and especially in prevent- 
 ing the idolatrous adoration of the Sacrament of 
 the Lord's Supper ; to resist all attempts to re- 
 store the use of the Confessional, and every 
 exercise of that priestly authority which was put 
 down at the Reformation. 
 
 Another party in the Church, remarkable for 
 their earnest and blameless lives, are equally 
 strenuous in repudiating the Reformation, dis- 
 claiming Protestantism, using vestments, restor- 
 ing the Confessional, the Mass and priestly 
 authority, and who are generally desirous of 
 reinstating the Roman doctrine while repudiat- 
 ing the authority of Rome. 
 
 A third section secretly deny the Divinity of 
 our Lord, laugh at the Athanasian Creed, sign 
 the thirty-nine articles with large mental reserva- 
 tions ; accept the conclusions of the Higher 
 Criticism ; and attach more importance to the 
 precepts than to the theology of religion. Rites, 
 sacraments, and symbols are to them the para- 
 phernalia of superstition. Grace is an obsolete 
 term principally in vogue in the early Victorian 
 era ; and conversion, justification by faith, and 
 vicarious atonement are not taught by the leaders 
 of the Broad Church party. The Evangelicals 
 and the Broad Church are sensible of the
 
 1 6 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 advance of the Ritualists, and have shown that 
 tolerance is the only possible solution of the 
 Ritual question. 
 
 The position of the Archbishop of Canterbury 
 was never more difficult to hold. The " Lincoln 
 Judgment " of the Primate was a singular exhibi- 
 tion of address and skill, that could not fail to 
 remind beholders of the dexterity of one of the 
 greater gods of Olympus, who managed to keep 
 his balance on the top of Mount Parnassus while 
 playing the lyre. 
 
 Interesting to the persons concerned as are the 
 internal conflicts in the Church of England, they 
 excite but a languid feeling in the minds of the 
 mass of the English people. The armies of the 
 homeless and unfed, who are tending to become 
 the arbiters of our destinies, have less concern in 
 the colour of a cope or the cut of an alb, than 
 in the certainty of a meal. A pound of steak 
 has more vital interest to thousands of English- 
 men than the Kingdom of Heaven. The in- 
 testine troubles of the Church of England are 
 immaterial to wage-earners who are hungrily 
 watching for the loaves and fishes at present 
 allotted by the State Church to those who 
 are labouring in the vineyard for the Syrian 
 Artisan. The majority of the clergy work hard 
 and live hard. But the seat in the Lords, the
 
 LOOKING ROUND. 17 
 
 episcopal palaces, the incomes of four and five 
 figures, the flowers, music, and society, the re- 
 putation and the comfort in this world that are 
 the appanage of the Bishops, are the chief 
 elements that drag down the Church. Poor folk 
 are unjust enough to think that eternal bliss in 
 another world is sufficient reward for those who 
 teach it. Plenty in this w r orld added to the sober 
 certainty of eternal joy in the next, is too great 
 a strain on the religion of the irreligious. 
 
 The concordat established between the Ritualist 
 party in the Church, and the Broad and Evan- 
 gelical sections, occasionally show signs of break- 
 ing down. A recent case at Portsea is a good 
 example of the fact that the differences seething 
 inside the 'Church of England are equal to any 
 differences raging outside. 
 
 The Bishop of Winchester, having had his 
 attention called to a handbill, in which it was 
 announced that the Rev. H. L. Young, vicar of 
 St. John's, Portsea, would give an address at a 
 " United Communion service," at the Presby- 
 terian Church, Portsmouth, sent a letter to the 
 rev. gentleman, in which the writer remarked, 
 "It is my duty to explain to you that the giving 
 of this address will involve an infraction of the 
 Church Law, and I am sure that, on reflection, 
 you will feel it right to withdraw from your 
 
 B
 
 i8 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 engagement." Mr. Young, however, attended 
 the service, and sent the following reply to the 
 Bishop : " It is not my intention to commit an 
 illegal act by any proceeding of mine, but it is 
 sad to find that your Lordship can so promptly 
 interfere with my Christian liberty, and that you 
 have not merely allowed the Mass for the dead 
 to be set up in this town, but you have also 
 publicly patronised the promoters of this deadly 
 delusion, which, in common with myself, you 
 have sworn ' to be blasphemous fable and danger- 
 ous deceit.' With all due respect, I cannot 
 understand the equity of such proceedings." 
 
 M. Jaure*s, one of the leaders of the Socialist 
 party in the French Chamber, has stated with 
 great force the reasons why the democracy of 
 France attach such overwhelming importance to 
 physical comfort. M. JaureY remarks apply no 
 less to England than to France. " You have 
 taken the Crucifix from the dying beds of the 
 hospital patients ; you have destroyed our beliefs 
 in religion, killed our faith, mutilated our ideals, 
 upset the Throne, and driven us back on the 
 comforts of material life in this world. These are 
 all we have left, and material comforts we intend 
 to have, whoever suffers and whoever pays." 
 Democracies still retain the old terminology 
 about tyranny and freedom. But the tyranny
 
 LOOKING ROUND. 19 
 
 from above is dead and gone. Tyranny from be- 
 low is a danger that does not seem to occur to 
 the leaders of the working classes. Tyranny of 
 an ecclesiastical type is not dreaded, since the 
 Anglican priesthood in great 'towns are mostly 
 poor men who lead self-sacrificing lives. Non- 
 conformist ministers are too dependent on 
 the breath of popular applause to menace the 
 comforts of the people. The new Savonarola 
 is not likely to be a Baptist or Wesleyan. It 
 is therefore probable that such hostility as now 
 exists against the Established Church is directed 
 rather towards her ownership of property, than 
 upsetting a form of worship repugnant to the 
 people. There is of course always present in the 
 minds of political dissenters the social stigma still 
 attaching to dissent. The resentment roused by 
 the sense of social inferiority is the vital force in 
 the attack on the Church made by dissenters, and 
 there is no ground for thinking that it will cease 
 to exist, should disestablishment be carried out. 
 
 Money and comfort mean so much more, and 
 are understood by the multitudes so much better 
 than they were thirty years ago, the property of 
 the Church is not likely to escape the attack now 
 being made on all forms of property and its owners. 
 The only restraint upon the masses in giving effect 
 to their desires to seize, for their own purposes,
 
 20 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 the property of others, is provided by the sanction 
 of religion and morality that are inseparable from 
 serious effort to do the will of God. When the 
 decay of faith sets in, morality has no dogmatic 
 foundation, and not seldom breaks down. The 
 Churches of the Reformation recognised the Scrip- 
 tures as the only source of knowledge as to the 
 Christian faith. The orthodoxy of the seventeenth 
 century was largely displaced in the eighteenth 
 by the development of philosophical and histori- 
 cal science, and in the nineteenth by new views as 
 to inspiration and miracle, revelation and the 
 trinitarian conception of the godhead. To-day, 
 standing on the edge of the twentieth century, 
 the vermiculation of sect and opinion has reached 
 a point when most men despairingly inquire with 
 Pilate, "What is truth?" So long as sacred 
 significance is attached to everything contained 
 in Biblical literature, faith lasts. The surrender 
 of an outlying fort is but too often followed by the 
 evacuation of the whole position. Heaven and 
 hell, God and Christ, are so often and so com- 
 pletely explained away, that the masses are as 
 indifferent to, as they are ignorant of, dogma. 
 Nothing remains to induce them to hold their 
 hands from spoiling the Church, especially if in 
 the name of raising those who are down, they can 
 abase those who are not. Look where we will,
 
 LOOKING ROUND. 21 
 
 there is a troubled sea of strife in every direction. 
 The old things are passing away, but there is 
 nothing to show that the confidence of the new 
 teachers is founded on exact knowledge. Evolution 
 attains its end by the elimination or decimation of 
 whole races with much pain to the eliminated 
 and decimated. Irregularity and wreck are as 
 universal as order and law, and in the ruin of 
 those foundations of principle upon which the best 
 individuals, families, and nations have hitherto 
 based their progress, it is possible that, as in the 
 case of the French Revolution, we may be ap- 
 proaching a period of passion, crime, and suffer- 
 ing, with the military despotism that is the 
 invariable sequence.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 LOOKING FORWARD. 
 
 OF all the proposals of the Newcastle Pro- 
 gramme, the most important in the sense of the 
 most far-reaching, is that dealing with the pay- 
 ment of Members of Parliament. Such a 
 measure is in itself a drastic Reform Bill. It 
 transfers the balance of power from one class to 
 another. Whatever may be said by moralists 
 and theologians about the snares that lurk in the 
 love of money, there can be no doubt that both 
 temptation and fall are more common among 
 those in needy, than those in easy, circumstances. 
 No indictment against the poor as a class need 
 be brought in order to forecast the certainty of 
 human nature running true to itself if Mem- 
 bers of Parliament cease to be chosen mainly 
 from among well-to-do citizens. Many honest 
 men will no doubt always remain to illuminate a 
 corrupt Senate. But there is no reason to believe 
 
 22
 
 LOOKING FORWARD. 23 
 
 that the texture of British morality would be tougher 
 than French or American morality, if British 
 political functions were generally exercised by the 
 same class of persons as those who enter public life 
 in France or the United States. Hitherto the 
 British equivalents to Panama, however much they 
 may have recently injured political Nonconformity, 
 have remained aloof from the main body of the 
 House of Commons. Some purists may regard 
 as corruption Mr. Rhodes' payment of ^ 10,000 
 to Mr. Parnell, and his deft allotment of Char- 
 tered Company's shares to Members of Parlia- 
 ment, and to party organisers. The absence of 
 concealment, however, decreases, if it does not 
 completely remove the taint. Mr. Rhodes has 
 entered a field over the hedge of which smaller 
 men may not peep. He will be followed, no 
 doubt, by others, who, no less astute, will be 
 governed by less lofty ideas. In the private 
 committee work of a paid House of Commons, 
 we may reasonably look for corruption, and cer- 
 tainly for imputations of undue influence, which 
 will undermine the traditional reputation of the 
 Select Committees on Private Bills. At everv 
 
 
 
 afternoon sitting of the House, the chaplain prays 
 to Almighty God that, " having Thy fear always 
 before our eyes, and laying aside all private 
 interests, prejudices, and partial affections, the
 
 24 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 results of all our counsels may be to the glory of 
 Thy blessed Name .... the public wealth, 
 peace, and tranquillity of the realm, and the 
 uniting and knitting together of the hearts of all 
 persons and estates within the same in true 
 Christian love and charity, one towards another." 
 This prayer has not been vouchsafed a favourable 
 answer from on high for many years, so far as 
 regards " the hearts of all persons," and it is 
 questionable if in a House of Parliamentary hire- 
 lings, " private interests, prejudices, and partial 
 affections " will be entirely excluded from the 
 sort of temptation that will be offered on Select 
 Committees by venal promoters of Private Bills, 
 to the destitute judges who will then determine 
 the expenditure of millions sterling. 
 
 Keen as is the interest taken by the public in 
 Parliamentary institutions, Private Bill legislation 
 does not attract the attention due to its import- 
 ance. Here the duties of Parliament are partly 
 legislative and partly judicial. Public interests 
 are promoted and private rights secured by 
 Members of Parliament whose capacity and im- 
 partiality have been, as a rule, beyond question. 
 The vast industrial undertakings of the country 
 canals, docks, harbours, railways, waterworks, 
 gas, electric light, telephones, and any further 
 inventions of commercial importance will in the
 
 LOOKING FORWARD. 25 
 
 future be confided to Members of Parliament, 
 many of whom will be in straitened circum- 
 stances, some of them in debt, and therefore in 
 imminent peril of losing their financial chastity. 
 
 The late Mr. Edward Stanhope, foreseeing the 
 consequences of the payment of Members, declared 
 that when stipends were paid to the representatives 
 of the people, he himself would cease to be a candi- 
 date for election. Mr. Stanhope expressed for his 
 order the distaste and repugnance that would pre- 
 vent them entering public life when statesmanship, 
 wisdom, and patriotism, coupled with independ- 
 ence of thought and action, were replaced by 
 servile devotion to the moods of a caucus, and 
 by necessary degradation in the office of Member 
 of Parliament. Fewer men of Mr. Stanhope's 
 type will consent to stand for Parliament, and 
 still fewer will succeed in effecting an entrance. 
 
 The extent to which the House of Commons 
 is already under the influence of the Trade 
 Unions, legislating and administrating in their 
 interests, renders it probable that future historians 
 will have to record an increase in the power and 
 independence of the Unions, and a decay of the 
 traditions and loss of standing of the House it- 
 self. Payment of Members will enable the 
 Trade Unions to start a candidate for Parlia- 
 mentary honours in every industrial Constituency
 
 26 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 in the kingdom, a course incompatible with the 
 existence of Party Government as it exists. The 
 death of the Liberal party, as John Bright under- 
 stood it, is already an accomplished fact, although 
 the Earl of Rosebery is Prime Minister of England. 
 The Liberal party for nearly two hundred years 
 has fought with strenuous persistence against prin- 
 ciples which, under the Gladstonian metamor- 
 phoses, the country is asked to accept in the 
 name of Liberalism. Surrender to the Trade 
 Unions in the case of the Contracting Out clause 
 of the Employers Liability Bill may be wrong 
 or right from a Party point of view. But this 
 much is certain. The surrender in question is 
 merely a foretaste of many future transactions 
 of the same kind ; and whatever may be the 
 subsequent effect on the nation, the extinction 
 of individual liberty involved in the surrender 
 is hostile to the main principle of historic 
 Liberalism. 
 
 The vast population brought into existence by 
 the leading of Cobden and Bright, and the blind 
 production of wealth by steam ; led by the New 
 Unionists, who, powerful in Parliament, having 
 superseded official Liberalism, daring all things, 
 and wanting bureaucratic experience, will, never- 
 theless, have a policy and a plan. What plan will 
 be divulged ? What policy adopted ?
 
 LOOKING FORWARD. 27 
 
 The race inhabiting these islands is still so far 
 from being under the domination of the fertile 
 and imaginative Celt, no bloody revolution or 
 outbreak of mob law is to be anticipated. Love 
 of comfort, the decay of faith, and impatience of 
 restraint are likely to lead the New Unionists or 
 leaders of the destitute classes to concentrate 
 their first efforts on the abolition of the Second 
 Chamber. In the absence of successful foreign 
 war, the struggle may be prolonged for many 
 years, and the intestine strife that must always 
 tear the new brotherhood of man while founded 
 on the conception of mere material comfort, may 
 be relied on to prolong the period of trial. 
 Liberals of the school of J. S. Mill as a Party 
 have disappeared. Conservatism is a misnomer 
 for the leading idea of the Party that gave 
 Free Education and Parish Councils to the 
 country. The Parties of the future, under 
 whatever name they may be known, will 
 be essentially the Haves and the Not-Haves. 
 The Haves will attempt to postpone the great 
 catastrophe by expansion of Empire, throwing as 
 few children as possible to the famished wolves 
 in pursuit. The Not-Haves, with leadership out- 
 side Parliament largely leavened by cosmopoli- 
 tan aliens, will abhor the Imperial idea, and 
 will look for ransom to the amassed wealth of the
 
 28 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 propertied classes. Attention will tend to con- 
 centrate itself more on the rights, and less on the 
 duties of citizenship. The doctrine of noblesse 
 oblige will recede into the background, as the 
 doctrine of self-help is relegated by Collectivists 
 to the region of exploded ideas. Charities will 
 dwindle amid constant warring of classes. The 
 grace of generous consideration of others' needs 
 will vanish before the angry assertion of im- 
 moderate claims. One political party will struggle 
 to repel the assault which their opponent party con- 
 tinually attempts to drive home. To realise the 
 demands that will then be made, the constitution 
 of society, with its base resting upon the doctrine 
 of private ownership, will have to be changed. 
 The relationships of private service must be 
 abolished. Trades, markets, currency, credit, 
 interest, and rent will be modified or replaced 
 by the introduction of a system of public pay- 
 ment for work performed, and the gradual sub- 
 stitution of State control for private enterprise. 
 The moral idea underlying all these fine things 
 is a brotherly reciprocity which has hitherto never 
 been realised by Collectivists or any other com- 
 munity of men in daily life since the days of the 
 Early Christians. Are we likely to find this 
 moral idea in the New Unionism ? 
 
 The earlier forms already taken by the ideas
 
 LOOKING FORWARD. 29 
 
 that are undermining previous conceptions 
 of society are some guide as to their later 
 developments. Already we have in our midst an 
 army of the Unemployed, many of whom are the 
 victims of the substitution of the impersonal State 
 for the responsible parent. The existing Poor 
 Law, which contented the country for precisely 
 the same period of time as that during which 
 power rested with the middle classes, is now de- 
 nounced as obsolete, and has already received a 
 serious blow in the abolition of ex-officio Guardi- 
 ans. The existing Poor Law insures worthy and 
 worthless alike against unavoidable misfortune, 
 or the natural consequences of deliberate neglect. 
 Gratuitous education, whatever may be the re- 
 sults in other ways, has not only assisted in the 
 decay of parental responsibility, but has led to a 
 demand which cannot long be resisted, for the 
 gratuitous sustenance of recklessly begotten and 
 gratuitously educated children. 
 
 The demand for enlarging the area of State 
 control will receive powerful support by the 
 classes interested in clamour for State employ- 
 ment. Such enterprises as the municipalisation 
 of the tramways, and the acquisition of the rail- 
 ways by the State, will lead to an increase in the 
 numbers, the importance, and the influence of the 
 Civil Service. Members of Parliament paid at
 
 30 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 the rate of three or four hundred pounds a year 
 will not unnaturally regard with jealousy and 
 dislike servants of the State whose salaries are in 
 excess of that amount. To serve the State as a 
 legislator involves the possession of capacity and 
 intellect at least equal to the qualifications re- 
 quired by the persons administering the service 
 of the State, and no valid reason will be forth- 
 coming why the remuneration of the servants 
 should be greater than that of the masters. We 
 may look forward, therefore, to a diminution in 
 the rates of salary now given to the higher 
 servants of the State, and to a consequent de- 
 gradation of tone, and lowering of the standard of 
 the Civil Service. With so little to expect, it is 
 improbable that the ablest men will then look for a 
 career in State employment. On the other hand, 
 the assured pay and the attraction of escape from 
 manual labour, will fill the public service with an 
 inexhaustible supply of the same material as those 
 who perform the mechanical work in our public 
 offices. We have full experience of the process 
 in India, the United States, Italy, and France. 
 In 1840, official salaries amounted to 
 ,5,759,000. In 1894 they have grown to 
 nearly ^18,000,000. The political influence of 
 the electors employed in the public service has 
 increased in like proportion, and is likely to con-
 
 LOOKING FORWARD. 31 
 
 tinue its growth. Members of Parliament for 
 the Dockyard constituencies are painfully aware 
 how precarious is their tenure of those seats. 
 Their constituents are governed by other con- 
 siderations than the welfare of the State, the 
 principles of liberty, or even the , interests of 
 political parties. Using their political power as a 
 fulcrum to exert pressure upon the Government 
 of the day, constant change in the individuals 
 returned is naturally followed by successive 
 capitulation and surrender from rival candi- 
 dates for Parliamentary honours. The creation 
 of a numerous and powerful bureaucracy, enjoy- 
 ing and exercising the same political privileges as 
 their employers, is incompatible with freedom. 
 Mill pointed out to the last generation the danger 
 of such a tyranny. " If the roads, the railways, 
 the banks, the insurance offices, the great joint- 
 stock companies, the universities, and the 
 public charities, were all of them branches of the 
 Government ; if, in addition, the municipal cor- 
 porations and local boards, with all that now 
 devolves on them, became departments of the 
 central administration ; if the employes of all these 
 different enterprises were appointed and paid by 
 the Government, and looked to the Government 
 for every rise in life ; not all the freedom of the 
 Press and popular constitution of the Legislature
 
 32 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 would make this or any other country free other- 
 wise than in name." 1 
 
 Every function superadded to those already 
 exercised by the Government increases its in- 
 fluence and converts a larger and larger number 
 of the electorate into henchmen and hangers-on 
 of the Government, or of those who wish to dis- 
 place the Government with the object of succeed- 
 ing to their positions. Among the educated 
 natives of India, to be admitted to the ranks of 
 the bureaucracy is practically their sole career 
 and only aim and ambition. Even " failed B. A." 
 is a title to fame and to State employ- 
 ment. The conversion of England from a 
 nation of self-reliant, resolute individuals, into 
 a democracy consisting largely of Anglo-Saxon 
 Babus, paupers, and unemployed, seems to be 
 within a measurable distance. Russia is governed 
 by a bureaucracy, and the Tsar himself is im- 
 potent to reform it. He can send individuals to 
 the Mines, but he cannot exile the system. A 
 nation that has yielded to the parasitic clasp of a 
 bureaucracy, has parted with liberty to reform. 
 On every decree of change they have a tacit veto, 
 if their leaders suggest that the proposal is con- 
 trary to their interests. The only means of 
 reform that is left is revolution, and in growing 
 1 Mill on Liberty, p. 65.
 
 LOOKING FORWARD. 33 
 
 numbers, waxing power, and deteriorated per- 
 sonnel of the public servants, we have all the raw 
 material of civil war. And even revolution is 
 powerless to effect a change, since no one can 
 replace the bureaucracy, as there is no class 
 capable of doing their work. Where everything 
 is done through the bureaucracy, nothing can be 
 done to which, as Mill says, "the bureaucracy is 
 averse." 
 
 The influence of the Labour Department of the 
 Board of Trade, with its political and partisan 
 correspondents and its scarcely disguised partici- 
 pation in the current fallacies fashionable with 
 the New Unionists, is an example of a danger 
 that is likely to increase. The more people are 
 accustomed to manage their own affairs, the more 
 they are prepared to resist the encroachments of 
 tyranny. When, however, Government replaces 
 individual effort, the desire to share in the general 
 tyranny grows apace. We have seen of late the 
 desire to extinguish the rights of minorities ad- 
 vance in direct proportion to the expansion of 
 governmental activities ; and, indeed, the relation 
 between the New Tyranny and the growth of 
 State interference is close and intimate. The 
 outlook of England, in respect to an Oriental ap- 
 petite for bureaucratic employment, is sombre 
 
 indeed. It was observed by Locke that the love 
 
 c
 
 34 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 of dictation, and a forwardness to impress upon 
 others the prescription of our own opinions, is a 
 constant concomitant of a judgment biased by 
 self-imposition. " Who can reasonably expect 
 arguments and conviction from him in dealing 
 with others whose understanding is not accus- 
 tomed to them in his dealing with himself ? "* 
 
 The members of the New Unionism, who will 
 form the personnel of the New Bureaucracy, have 
 already displayed in their conduct of strikes, as 
 we shall see later on, all the domineering qualities 
 of irremovable tchinovniks, impregnable to facts, 
 reason, argument, or humanity. 
 
 That an underpaid Civil Service, swollen in 
 numbers and inflated in political importance, re- 
 cruited from the classes educated by the State, 
 will retain its general purity, is an assumption no 
 prudent observer can make. Some of the persons 
 employed in the Dockyards, the Supply Services 
 in time of war, the Customs and Post Offices De- 
 partments, are not even now so completely free 
 from suspicion and taint as is desirable. There 
 is a convention that everyone shall agree in 
 lauding to the skies the financial purity of the 
 servants of the Crown. Those highly placed, and 
 entering the Service through the avenue of the 
 
 1 Locke on the Human Understanding, book iv., chap, xix., 
 sect 2.
 
 LOOKING FORWARD. 35 
 
 Universities or the Civil Service Commissions, 
 are, no doubt, of spotless reputation. But the 
 Chiefs of Departments know better than to assert 
 that, in those ranks not filled by English gentle- 
 men, there is complete security against corruption. 
 The one revelation and breach of faith that has 
 occurred for years in the Foreign OfHce was the 
 act of a person who fell before a temptation to 
 which he should never have been exposed. 
 
 Our foreign policy will be seriously affected by 
 the democratisation of the Foreign Office and the 
 Diplomatic Service. So long as our Continental 
 friends and rivals utilise the labours of men of 
 distinction and family, the omission to do so 
 by Great Britain will inevitably be followed by 
 diminished influence in the Councils of Europe. 
 The United States of America for a hundred 
 years have suffered under petty rebuffs and 
 humiliations in their dealings with foreign powers, 
 because they refused until 1893 to give to their 
 chief agents the rank and pay of Ambassadors, to 
 see that their envoys were properly equipped 
 with linguistic and other attainments, and to 
 recognise the fact that plain citizens who speak 
 no French, and have but recently abstained from 
 eating peas with a knife, are somewhat heavily 
 weighted in European diplomacy.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 EXPERIMENTS. 
 
 THERE seems to be a general disposition among 
 the propertied classes to look askance at the 
 efforts of the New Unionists to raise and main- 
 tain the rate of wages. If it be possible to es- 
 tablish the " Living Wage " without creating 
 more misery than exists already, it need hardly 
 be said that the success of such a movement is 
 to be welcomed. It is comparatively easy for 
 the working-class electors of any democratic 
 nation to succeed in diminishing the hours of 
 labour in State employ, and in obtaining the 
 same wages for less work. But when the 
 Labour leaders and their word-serfs, the editors 
 of the Socialist Press, attempt by legislation to 
 carry the boon of the eight hours' day from 
 Government to private employment, a collision 
 at once ensues with the iron-clad law of demand 
 
 and supply. Supply and demand affect Govern- 
 
 36
 
 EXPERIMENTS. 37 
 
 ments less than the love of office, and Ministers sur- 
 render public interests to the enfranchised labourers 
 with a generosity they fail to exhibit in dealing 
 with their own affairs. If a higher rate of wage be 
 demanded than that which is fixed by the amount of 
 circulating capital available for distribution among 
 the entire working population, it can only be ob- 
 tained by keeping a portion of the workers perman- 
 ently unemployed. The American Congress as 
 early as 1868 passed an Act providing "that 
 eight hours shall constitute a day's work for all 
 labourers, workmen, and mechanics now em- 
 ployed, or who may hereafter be employed, 
 by or on behalf of the Government of the 
 United States." The example of the United 
 States Government has been comparatively in- 
 operative in respect to the action of private 
 employers across the Atlantic. The carpenters 
 of New York, it is true, have succeeded in ob- 
 taining a limitation of working hours, but most of 
 the labour organisations fear that the adoption of 
 the shorter day will stimulate emigration, unless 
 it should at the same time be adopted in 
 Europe. 1 There is no reason to believe that the 
 example of the British Government will prove 
 more contagious to British employers than the. 
 
 1 Foreign Reports Royal Commission on Labour (c. 6795), 
 p. 42.
 
 38 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 example of the United States Government, which, 
 during the last twenty-six years, has modified 
 but slightly the working hours of American in- 
 dustries. High wages, artificially maintained, 
 involve the artificial curtailment of the supply of 
 labour to the demand, and the maintenance of the 
 surplus labour while unemployed. It may be 
 noted that mosf of the employers in England who 
 have adopted the eight hours' day are Members 
 of Parliament, or candidates for that honour. 
 
 The experiment of restricting the hours of 
 labour and obtaining the same wages for less 
 work will obviously be followed by a demand for 
 considerable changes in the existing Poor Law. 
 Workmen not in the employ of the State, and 
 who are not included among the fortunate con- 
 tingent protected by the Unions ; who are willing 
 and competent to work, and untainted by disability 
 either moral or physical, will naturally refuse to 
 break stones or lose their citizenship under the 
 " modified Workhouse Test order." Such men 
 rightly and indignantly repudiate the need for a 
 "test"; they scorn as insult lessons in providence 
 from the tax-paying classes ; and they naturally 
 decline to break up their homes if they can help 
 it. Under existing industrial conditions, a nation 
 where the population is growing and the trade 
 diminishing ; where the traders and distributors
 
 EXPERIMENTS. 39 
 
 are more numerous than the aristocrats and food 
 producers, and where the latter are in process 
 of extermination, an unemployed workman not 
 included in the class protected by his Union is 
 forced to choose between one of three alterna- 
 tives starvation, the workhouse, or revolt. He 
 loves his wife and bairns, he hates the work- 
 house ; he therefore revolts. 
 
 The revolt of the excluded British workmen of 
 the near future will probably take the form of 
 insurrection against economic principles hitherto 
 accepted as sound, rather than against constituted 
 authority. We shall probably see in the next 
 decade a wide development in the range of social 
 experiments, which will receive the support of the 
 employed workmen and the Trade Unions, on 
 the same grounds that Irish Nationalist Members 
 of Parliament press on the Imperial authority the 
 claims of the evicted tenants. The only limits to 
 these social experiments will be the check offered 
 by other and hostile social forces operating within 
 the ambit of the State. 
 
 Among the earliest experiments that may be 
 looked for will be fresh attempts to establish, per- 
 haps under other names, the National Workshops 
 that were tried and miserably failed in Paris in 
 February, 1848. Nothing can persuade the unem- 
 ployed classes that the Paris failure was due to the
 
 40 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 inherent impossibility of any Government finding 
 public employment without dislocating private 
 industry. It would probably be a saving of 
 money and life in the long run, if an object 
 lesson were once more given of the inexorable 
 consequences of the provision of work by the 
 State for the purposes of relief. The price of an 
 ironclad, and the loss of ten thousand lives, would 
 possibly settle the question for another generation. 
 Truth, like Indur, in Addison's tale, requires a 
 new incarnation every thirty years. 
 
 Experiments that will probably be made in the 
 future will not be tried under conditions favour- 
 able for the diffusion of truth. 
 
 The trading and money-lending classes have 
 made it impossible for British farming operations to 
 pay, even where conducted with all the advantages 
 of ample capital, adequate skill, and hereditary 
 training. It is interesting, however, to note that 
 amiable rather than competent citizens, who have 
 the ear of Demos, with a faith that should remove 
 mountains, propose to effect a success with un- 
 skilled, needy, and debilitated town populations 
 that which landowners, farmers, and labourers 
 are unable to achieve, and this in the face of free 
 trade ! In Home Settlements, a large portion 
 of the urban community of theorists perceive a 
 panacea for the evils which affect our underfed
 
 EXPERIMENTS. 41 
 
 masses. That it is possible to set the unemployed 
 urban population upon the abandoned corn lands 
 of Great Britain is obvious. But that needy and 
 inexperienced townsmen with blistered hands can 
 succeed where agriculturists born and bred have 
 failed on all but the very best land, and near large 
 cities, is contrary to human reason. Already 
 those experiments are in process of demonstra- 
 tion, and are pronounced successes or denounced 
 as failures according to the theological and econ- 
 omical standpoint of the critic. From the point 
 of view of profit, none of these experiments have 
 yet been proved to be established successes in 
 this or any other country. 
 
 A Mansion House Committee on the Unem- 
 ployed, appointed in 1892, spent ,1,315 in help- 
 ing 86 out of 365 workless Londoners, of whom, 
 when helped according to the Honorary Secre- 
 tary, Mr. H. V. Toynbee not more than 40 
 could be found who were permanently benefited 
 by the action of the Committee. The cost of 
 helping the 40 was ^32 153. each. Of the 
 ,1,315 spent, ,732 was laid out in test work, 
 that is to say, with the object of seeing whether 
 the men to be helped were worthy of help. It 
 follows, therefore, that ,8 is. 2d. was spent on 
 each of the 86 men, with the result of finding 
 that 40 of them were alone capable of being
 
 4 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 permanently helped. The scheme was in ex- 
 cellent hands, and was carefully carried out. It 
 attracted much public attention, and on the ac- 
 cession to office of a new Lord Mayor, it obtained 
 his support ; and a fresh appeal to the public on 
 its behalf was made, under the shelter of a report 
 obsequious to Demos, prepared by the Labour 
 Department of the Board of Trade. The curious 
 part of the whole scheme was, that the desire of 
 the public to- "do something" was gratified, not 
 by helping an appreciable number of the helpless, 
 but by wasting money like water. But such ex- 
 periments as these are not to be deprecated. 
 They will certainly be multiplied and repeated. 
 The epileptics who have been formed into farm 
 colonies in Germany, the Fredericksoord settle- 
 ment in Holland, are already being copied by 
 British philanthropists. The Rev. H. V. Mills 
 has obtained a certain amount of pecuniary sup- 
 port to his proposals, which are based upon the 
 idea that the produce of half an acre of average 
 British soil is sufficient to maintain one person. 
 The most competent opinions lean to six acres, 
 being the minimum required. ''Back to the land" 
 is a cry that is associated more closely with a de- 
 sire to expropriate than to till the soil. Hungry 
 men, with children crying to them for bread, will 
 not be very particular as to the means by which
 
 EXPERIMENTS. 43 
 
 food and raiment are obtained, especially when the 
 relief they seek has its origin in the instinct of self- 
 preservation, and is supported by a quasi-religious 
 Press and a political Pulpit, both ignorant and 
 cocksure. 
 
 The constant increase in the number of the 
 worthy unemployed, and the diminution in the 
 comforts and luxuries of their lives, may be held 
 for sufficient grounds for believing that the doc- 
 trine of Protection will shortly be once more 
 introduced experimentally in this country. The 
 bitter remembrance and traditions of the suffer- 
 ings of the people in the first part of the century 
 will ensure that the food and raw material of 
 the nation will not be tampered with at the out- 
 set. Protection will probably begin by the re- 
 striction of the incurable paupers who now have 
 free entry into the country from other lands. 
 Much to the credit of the Jews of Great Britain, 
 upon whom the crushing burden of Jewish pau- 
 perism entirely rests, the principal resistance to 
 the stoppage of this class of immigration has 
 hitherto arisen from their community. The 
 number of Jews in London is probably not more 
 than 70,000. In 1893, the Jewish Board of 
 Guardians relieved 21,076 applications for relief, 
 exclusive of fixed allowances and emigration 
 cases. In 1890 they relieved 10,619 cases. From 
 these figures it seems that Jewish poverty in
 
 44 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 London has doubled in three years. (Thirty- 
 fifth Annual Report of Board of Guardians for 
 the Relief of the Jewish Poor, p. 33.) 
 
 M. Leroy-Beaulieu has taunted the Jews with 
 the fact that they have been outside the system 
 of feudalism and chivalry, in which the modern 
 conception of honour was chiefly formed. It 
 would be difficult to discover a more chivalrous 
 act in history than the manner in which the 
 English Jews have resisted, almost ferociously, 
 the persistent efforts made to arrest the immigra- 
 tion of their unemployed co-religionists from 
 Russia and Poland. But the figures I have 
 quoted are irresistible. It is now understood that 
 when the British democracy place themselves in 
 line with the American Republic and the Anglo- 
 Saxon colonies, by debarring destitute and 
 ignorant aliens from free ingress to these shores, 
 no active protest will be lodged by the Jewish 
 community. Such opposition to the restriction 
 of destitute alien immigration will not proceed 
 from the main body of generous and enlightened 
 English Jews. For they must plainly perceive 
 that the recrudescence of anti-Semitism in Great 
 Britain is a certainty, if the lower classes once 
 form the habit of associating the presence of 
 foreigners with the want of food. The principal 
 resistance to the policy of restriction will not
 
 EXPERIMENTS. 45 
 
 come from the synagogues. It will come from 
 those who have made broad the phylacteries of 
 Free Trade for two generations. 
 
 Whether foreigners come to England, and 
 engage in manufactures here, or whether they 
 remain abroad, and make their commodities in 
 their own country, exporting them into England, 
 is immaterial. If once a beginning be made by 
 excluding paupers, diseased, aged, incapables, 
 anarchists, and criminals, because they are alien, 
 the less skilled labourer of England will not be 
 long before he continues the process by excluding 
 the able-bodied unskilled labourers of other lands. 
 The next step is to exclude by taxation the com- 
 modities and manufactured luxuries made by the 
 aliens. It is unlikely that this step will be taken 
 forthwith, but there seems every likelihood that 
 Great Britain will revert to protection so far as 
 concerns foreign manufactured luxuries, that are 
 neither food nor half-manufactured material. We 
 cannot fail to observe that every democracy 
 in the world, is protectionist, with the excep- 
 tion of ourselves. It is remembered that the 
 forecasts of Cobden as to the international action 
 on Free Trade have not been justified by the 
 event. Men still live who repeatedly heard from 
 the lips of both Cobden and Bright the prediction 
 that ten years would not pass over their heads
 
 46 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 before the civilised nations of the earth would 
 agree in accepting the principle of Free Trade, 
 and would apply it in their dealings with each 
 other. The Trade Unions unanimously apply the 
 principle of protection with desolating severity 
 to their rivals in their own local and immediate 
 interests. If the movement for restricting the 
 immigration of destitute aliens has not yet received 
 the vigorous and active support of the principal 
 Trade Unions, it is because none but the weak 
 Unions are touched by it. The incidence of 
 misery in our country exists mainly among the 
 population who are too poor to join, or too feeble 
 to form, a Union. The competition of immigrant 
 foreigners cuts deeply into trades requiring con- 
 tinuous application of simple methods for pro- 
 longed periods of time, rather than the exhibition 
 of skill, or the display of strength. Accordingly, 
 we find that the industries .affected by the com- 
 petition of immigrant aliens are invariably infested 
 with the disease of the sweating system, i.e., long 
 hours, low pay, and subservience to the capitalist ; 
 characteristics which are never found in the 
 presence of a strong Trade Union. When a 
 Union is strong, it may tyrannise ; when it is 
 weak or non-existent, labourers in that trade are 
 usually tyrannised over by small capitalists. It 
 will be clear from these statements, all of which
 
 EXPERIMENTS. 47 
 
 are borne out by the voluminous evidence given 
 before the Sweating Committee of the House of 
 Lords and the Royal Commission on Labour, that 
 the interests represented by the strong Trade 
 Unions are not touched by the immigration of 
 destitute aliens. A remarkable instance of the 
 relation between strong Unions and the absence 
 of alien labour competition, as contrasted with the 
 presence of severe competition of foreigners when 
 a Union is weak, is presented by the two branches 
 of the Boot and Shoe Rivetters. The National 
 Union, with its headquarters at Leicester, returns 
 a membership of 43,000, has no foreigners in its 
 ranks, and none with whom competition is carried 
 on. In the lower branch of the trade foreigners 
 abound. The weak Union, with its seat in London, 
 has but 5000 members, while there are probably 
 more foreigners, longer hours, lower pay, and worse 
 conditions of sanitation and the general conditions 
 of life in that department of the boot and shoe 
 trade than in any large industry in the United 
 Kingdom. 
 
 When the strong Unions join the weak ones, 
 and demand the cessation of the supply of 
 indigent aliens, we may depend that the day is 
 not far off when the entry of manufactured goods 
 will excite the same hostility as the foreigners 
 who now make them here.
 
 48 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 Inevitable disappointment awaits the first 
 attempts to revert to a protective policy. The 
 consumers of food in the United Kingdom are so 
 much more numerous than the producers that no 
 immediate probability exists of raising the price 
 of meal or corn for the benefit of the agricultural 
 interests. Short of another Black Death, which, 
 to be effective, should exterminate half the popu- 
 lation of the United Kingdom, there does not 
 seem to be any likelihood of the cultivators of 
 land emerging from the lamentable position in 
 which they find themselves placed in order to 
 benefit traders, factors, and middlemen. For the 
 interests of these classes, the food cultivators 
 have been maimed and well-nigh destroyed. Of 
 the .435,691,279 of imports, ^"157,000,000 are 
 the value of the articles of food and drink, 
 duty free, including living animals intended 
 for food. Of the remainder, ^30,400,000 are 
 already taxed, such as alcoholic drinks, tobacco, 
 and taxed food, or the necessaries of the breakfast 
 table. The metals, chemicals, dye stuffs, oils, 
 raw materials for textile manufactures, and other 
 raw material for other manufactures, account 
 for the whole of the balance except a paltry 
 65,000,000 worth of manufactured articles, and 
 about ^15,000,000 miscellaneous, including the 
 parcel post.
 
 EXPERIMENTS. 49 
 
 It appears from these figures that, omit- 
 ting food and raw materials, there remain 
 but ,65,000,000 worth of manufactures, and 
 ; 1 5,000,000 miscellaneous. To these two items 
 in our list of imports we may expect to see the 
 attention of Demos turned. The imposition of 
 a tax on hundreds of imported manufactured 
 articles will involve an increase in the staff of 
 the Customs Department, thus still more strongly 
 welding the chains of bureaucracy round the neck 
 of the community. 
 
 There is agreement among economists that 
 the general position of free traders is sound, 
 under the assumption usually made. It is as- 
 sumed, for example, that labour and capital can, 
 without great difficulty, be turned from an in- 
 dustry in which foreigners excel to one in which 
 the English excel the foreigners, and that if any 
 home product be destroyed by foreign competi- 
 tion, some other commodity can be made by the 
 labour and capital displaced. For fifty years, it 
 cannot be denied that the absorption of displaced 
 capital and labour has not been attended by 
 serious complications or delay. When Free Trade 
 was adopted in England, it was adopted at the 
 instance of the governing class for themselves 
 and the labouring class. Employers determined 
 the sort of free trade that was to be set up, and
 
 50 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 in their decision the unenfranchised democracy had 
 not a word to say. Capital is mobile, polyglot, 
 and cosmopolitan. An English working-man, 
 hampered with wife and children, speaking no 
 language but his own, and without means of sub- 
 sistence while he is searching for other employ- 
 ment, is practically tied to his native land. Thus 
 under the stress of foreign competition in the 
 textile trades, a Lancashire manufacturer may 
 transfer his machinery and capital from Man- 
 chester to Bombay or Nagasaki, but the opera- 
 tives thrown out of employment may sell matches 
 in the street, or sink into the ranks of unskilled 
 labour, without infringing any of the laws of Free 
 Trade. In the lithographic trade, hundreds of 
 skilled workers are tramping the streets, living 
 from hand to mouth, and are ruined body and 
 soul because the capital that formerly employed 
 them is now transferred to the Continent in 
 strict compliance with the laws of Free Trade. 
 
 The migration of an industry from one part of 
 England to another is not necessarily an un- 
 healthy symptom of trade. From the workman's 
 point of view, the migration of an industry from 
 England to Asia cannot but be regarded as a 
 deadly evil, as it diminishes the employment 
 available for him in that particular trade, and he 
 is fitted for no other. It is true that a decaying
 
 EXPERIMENTS. 51 
 
 industry such as the ribbon trade may occasionally 
 be succeeded on the spot by a thriving manufac- 
 turing business such as the cycle making enter- 
 prise which revived the fortunes of the town of 
 Coventry. Instances such as this are rare. It 
 is more common for capital to take wing to a 
 foreign country and to leave labour chained to 
 the rock, without one shilling to chink against 
 another. 
 
 Adam Smith, who is now rarely mentioned in 
 advanced political circles with approval, always 
 insisted on the importance to a country of using 
 its own capital, if possible, within its own bound- 
 aries. The successors of Adam Smith, restricting 
 their view to the profits on capital, and ignoring 
 the equal interests of labouring men, have com- 
 pletely omitted the element of nationality from 
 their chain of reasoning. They forget that 
 " somewhere else," however profitable to the 
 higgler of the market, is sentence of degradation 
 or death to the labourers employed. If all 
 nations would be cosmopolitan as Cobden pro- 
 mised, all would be well. But they will do 
 nothing of the sort, and the tornado of tariffs 
 that rages round the world leaves England 
 shorn of power to make a bargain with a single 
 foreign state. 
 
 We may be satisfied that it will not be long
 
 52 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 before the governing Trade Unions and the 
 Legislature appreciate the fact that maximum 
 cheapness to the consumer and maximum pro- 
 fit to the capitalists, by no means exhaust the 
 elements desirable in a national trade policy. 
 Demos will see to it that England makes the 
 best use of its resources in the interests of 
 English working men. Protection to one in- 
 dustry involves protection to all. A favoured 
 industry where profits and wages are high will 
 excite the clamour for equal favour from all other 
 industries. The interference of Government once 
 begun spreads with rapidity, a fact which has 
 been illustrated in every protectionist country. 
 The principal difficulty lies not so much in the 
 selection of industries to favour, but in persuad- 
 ing those who are unprotected to dispense with 
 State assistance. 
 
 Some of the old objections to protection have 
 now lost weight with the democracy. Increase 
 in the functions of Government is regarded as 
 an advantage. No jealousy is felt of the growing 
 power of officials. No fear is entertained by the 
 new school of the restraint of personal liberty, 
 which was the bugbear of the philosophical radi- 
 cals previous to 1885. On the other hand, the 
 interests of labour undoubtedly demand the in- 
 stitution of some forms of specialised protection.
 
 EXPERIMENTS. 53 
 
 The medicine is not one that can be applied in 
 small doses, and political prejudices will probably 
 act in England as they have acted in other 
 civilised countries, to the exclusion of pure econo- 
 mics, and we shall see before many years are 
 over a defiance of all the arguments that enabled 
 capitalists and employers to establish Free Trade 
 in their own interests, so far, at all events, as 
 regards the imports of manufactured goods from 
 foreign countries. Poor men will have much to 
 say for this policy. 
 
 In cold weather it is good to warm the hands 
 within two or three feet of a bright fire, but it 
 does not follow that greater comfort would be 
 gained by approaching to within two or three 
 inches of the glowing embers. It is to be feared 
 that we shall before long approach too close to 
 the fierce blaze of protection, and years afterwards 
 will retire a singed and experienced people. 
 
 When Free Trade was established in these 
 islands, the food producers were hopelessly out- 
 numbered by the non-producers of food. The 
 consequence was a cosmopolitan impulse to 
 thought and feeling, which dimmed the light of 
 the national pride that shone clearly at the begin- 
 ning of the century. Cobden always held that 
 peace and Free Trade were inter-dependent. 
 The rivalries and hatred of nations were fatal to
 
 54 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 it. The rise and development of the mercantile 
 class, with their cosmopolitan tendencies, was 
 accompanied by great prominence being given to 
 the doctrine of buying cheap and selling dear. 
 Men with souls and loves and ambitions, just like 
 their masters, were termed " hands." The per- 
 sonal equation was ignored in the classification of 
 humanity with commodities. If the middle class 
 resented the supercilious assumption of the men 
 of family, who governed them until 1832, how 
 much more justly may Demos resent being classed 
 with iron ore and cotton goods. The mercantile 
 classes, like their predecessors, have been steeped 
 in selfishness. When they could not make profits 
 under Free Trade pure and simple, they have 
 sought to extinguish competition by establishing 
 monopolies. Monopoly is detestable, not because 
 it is protection, but because human nature objects 
 to all protection in which it does not share. The 
 tendency to equalise profits is arrested by the 
 creation of monopolies, whether of land, privilege, 
 or situation. The farm in Marylebone, bought 
 by the founder of the Portman family for two 
 thousand pounds, conferred upon his descendants 
 a monopoly differing in degree only from that of 
 the railway kings of our southern lines. The 
 people who suffer, or who think they suffer, from 
 monopolies in land, transport, communications,
 
 EXPERIMENTS. 55 
 
 public lighting, or water supply, since they now 
 possess the power to attempt a remedy and find a 
 balance, will certainly endeavour to do so. When 
 labour was regarded as a ware on equal footing 
 with other commodities the workers were re- 
 garded as fortunate and free, because they were 
 equally free to dispose of their one ware. But 
 Demos now clearly perceives that this is a super- 
 ficial equality. A man who can separate his 
 wares from himself is in a vastly better position 
 than a man who cannot disentangle himself from 
 the only commodity he can offer for sale. Body 
 and soul are inseparable from labour, and the 
 only method of avoiding the sale of body and 
 soul, along with the labour contracted for, is 
 the renunciation of individual liberty, and the use 
 of force to induce other labourers also to lay down 
 their individual autonomy. It was thus that our 
 Trade Unions were formed. They have not yet. 
 as Emerson says, " hitched their waggon to a 
 star." But in pursuing the policy of protecting 
 the greatest number, they are as resolute in 
 destroying the monopolies in which they have no 
 share, as to establish monopoly of their own 
 which shall hold the rest of the community in the 
 firm stricture of irresistible control. 
 
 Mr. Sydney Webb, an eminent apostle of the 
 new gospel, tells us in his interesting book on the
 
 56 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY, 
 
 " London Programme," what the metropolis is to 
 become hereafter. County Council aqueducts are 
 to supply London with water from a Welsh lake. 
 A constant supply is to be taken to the top of 
 every house " without special charge." Every 
 parish is to have its public baths and wash-houses 
 open without fee ; every Board School, its swim- 
 ming bath and teacher of swimming ; every park, 
 its bathing and skating ponds ; every station and 
 public building, its drinking fountain and basin 
 for washing the hands nothing is said about 
 collectivist soap and municipal towels. "Then," 
 says Mr. Webb, *' we shall begin to show the 
 world that we do not, after all, fall behind Imperial 
 Rome in this one item of its splendid magnificence." 
 Mr. Webb omits to mention that the water system 
 of Rome was inseparable from a system of con- 
 quest and bloodshed, to which the County Council 
 are supposed to be averse, even in the construction 
 of their Utopia. Moreover, the Roman County 
 Council would have economised in materials and 
 labour, had their engineers been acquainted with 
 the principle of the siphon. 
 
 According to Mr. Webb, we may even see the 
 County Council laying on a special service of hot 
 water, to be drawn at will from a tap in each 
 tenement. Our nights are to be like those of 
 Norwegian summers, with electric light suns.
 
 EXPERIMENTS. 57 
 
 Every common yard will be fully illuminated at 
 all hours. Tunnels under every street will con- 
 duct innumerable pipes and wires for every 
 conceivable purpose. County Council tramways 
 will doubtless be made as free as its roads and 
 bridges. Free trams may well imply free trains 
 in the metropolitan and suburban area. Public 
 lavatories and waiting rooms, with convenience 
 for writing, telegraphing, and telephoning, will be 
 adjuncts of every public building. Music, the 
 news of the day, municipal fetes and fireworks on 
 labour day, are to be provided free. A vast 
 army of London's citizens will be enrolled in 
 London's service. The Imperial bureaucracy 
 will be supplemented by a "vast army" of muni- 
 cipal servants, all electors. Decent housing, short 
 hours, regular work, and adequate wages, are all 
 to be provided for the "worker." How long it 
 will be before the " vast army " of municipal 
 tchinovniks strike for better houses, shorter hours, 
 less work, and higher wages ; or what means of 
 resisting their demands will remain with the 
 authorities, Mr. Webb does not tell us. And the 
 cost of it all? ''Probably much less than is 
 wastefully spent by London's million families." 
 But the million families, at all events, have the 
 satisfaction of wasting their money on themselves. 
 The municipal death duties, the unearned incre-
 
 58 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 ment, and the taxation of ground rents, are to 
 supply the funds for the modernised London. 
 The rush of population to such a city, and the 
 impossibility of stopping when free hot water and 
 free travel are supplied, do not seem to be con- 
 templated. Men's needs lie in the direction of 
 food, lodging, and clothes ; not in hot water. 
 This does not seem to enter the minds 
 of the doctrinaires of the County Council. If 
 large masses of the population are to be assisted 
 without their contributing to taxation, it is unlikely 
 that they will quietly accept free telephonic facili- 
 ties, or the right to ride in a collectivist tramcar, 
 without insisting on a supply of the food, clothing, 
 and lodging, without which such boons as Mr. 
 Webb adumbrates, are but empty shows. 
 
 Society may be safe against any irruption of 
 outer barbarians. But the growth of its own 
 barbarians is inevitable when men renounce thrift 
 and self-help ; look with credulous assurance to 
 the great benefits to be derived from governments, 
 laws, or regulations ; or preach, as Mr. Webb and 
 his Fabians preach, the foundation of Utopia not 
 only without individual exertion, but without 
 provision for the morality or the religion that 
 binds men over to be better than themselves. 
 
 The experiments that Demos may shortly be 
 expected to make, where they do not lead to
 
 EXPERIMENTS, 59 
 
 exasperation from failure, and the loss of life and 
 waste of money that characterised the breakdown 
 of the National Workshops in 1848, must inevit- 
 ably lead to disappointment from the results fall- 
 ing short of what was expected. The taxation of 
 ground rents, for example, after the expiration of 
 existing leases, will naturally be added to the 
 rent, provided tenants are found willing to pay 
 the increase. Free hot water and free tramcars 
 for one class, paid for by the struggling tradesmen 
 and occupiers of leasehold property, are likely to 
 stir a strong resentment against any municipal 
 authority that indulges in such pranks. The in- 
 evitable swing of the pendulum after these ex- 
 periments have been tried and have signally 
 failed, will be an insurrection against the popular 
 representation that will have caused such costly 
 waste. The oscillation of democracy between 
 socialist ideas and the strong man will then begin. 
 Until the collectivist idea is purified and spiritual- 
 ised by such teaching as that of the New Testa- 
 ment the stern and individualistic teaching that 
 treats of content, of duty, and of service, as well 
 as softer counsels as to love and sympathy 
 the collectivist idea must alternately gather force 
 from the predatory instincts of mankind, and sink 
 into oblivion by the just indignation of all those 
 who, having gained a store by their industry,
 
 60 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 have the purpose and courage to retain what they 
 have got. 
 
 The experiments that democracy will try are 
 but a transitory phase. If society be an 
 organism, which few now doubt, the era of demo- 
 cratic experiment may be expected to reveal new 
 truth undreamed of to-day. Doubtless, old errors 
 will be attempted anew ; fallacies reincarnated ; 
 and impossibilities undertaken. Science said that 
 the Atlantic could never be crossed by steam ; 
 that the Suez Canal could never be cut ; that the 
 reproduction of the human voice by means of the 
 vibration of a flat diaphragm, was against the 
 cardinal laws of acoustics. All these things have 
 been done by daring experimenters strong in 
 faith. They were in some respects the ignorant 
 revolutionaries of science. Mr. Edison is said to 
 have re-discovered for himself old phenomena 
 known to the bookworms for generations. Pascal 
 as a boy re-discovered for himself the thirty- 
 second proposition in the first book of Euclid. 
 So amid some blunders and much failure, surpris- 
 ing discoveries will probably be hit on by the new 
 school of democratic research. For we must not 
 omit to note the racial common sense of the 
 people by whom these experiments will be for the 
 most part undertaken. Their ancestors made 
 few mistakes. And if the present democracy be
 
 EXPERIMENTS. 61 
 
 degenerate, it is from listening to wild counsel 
 from men of the Celtic, Latin, and Semitic races. 
 It is a platitude to say that knowledge alone can 
 throw light upon our path. The reactionaries, 
 who would prevent all experiment, and chain the 
 present to tfye past, are as dangerous to the com- 
 munity as the revolutionaries who court catas- 
 trophe by taking passion and sentiment for 
 guides. 
 
 Evolution is always slow, and the reactionaries 
 who are too bigoted to permit the changes and 
 experiments which evolution demands, are hostile 
 to national life and character. Change is a con- 
 dition of life. Change of too sudden a character 
 is a wound. No change at all is mortification and 
 death. Change to be healthy must be incessant, 
 minute, and necessary. Mr. Cotter Morison 
 points out that one of the numerous misfortunes 
 that afflict mankind is the difficulty of inculcating 
 the truth that " Incessant and minute change is 
 one of the conditions of life." 1 The majority of 
 people are too vehement or too idle to accept 
 this dogma. To the vulgar of all classes modera- 
 tion is offensive. 
 
 There are but three courses to be taken by 
 thinking persons with reference to the impending 
 changes. They may be blindly resisted. They 
 1 " The Service of Man/' p. 171.
 
 62 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 may, with equal stupidity, be blindly stimulated ; 
 and they may be wisely guided. Whichever 
 party in the State ignores the coming change, or 
 employs its political force to stem or destroy the 
 movement, will drive it underground. Its parti- 
 sans will increase. And at last a time will come 
 when, like the Himalayan torrent dammed up by 
 a glacier across its path, it accumulates an energy 
 that carries all before it, and, in the debacle, 
 sweeps away all obstacles of ice and cornfield in 
 its rush.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE LEADERS OF DEMOS. 
 
 FIVE centuries back, the Lollards, with their 
 half-social and half-religious aims, were one of 
 the chief causes of the Peasant Revolt under 
 Wat Tyler and his namesakes. The exaspera- 
 tion of the country artisans and unskilled 
 labourers, at the Statute of Labourers, and at 
 the immigration of aliens from Flanders who 
 rapidly enriched themselves at the expense of 
 the more stolid English, was skillfully fanned by 
 the levelling doctrines of the Lollard agitation. 
 Then, as now, there was a bitter sense of wrong 
 among the population that lived by the work of 
 their hands ; but though the instinct of destruc- 
 tion was strong among them, their conduct was 
 comparatively free from violence. Then, as now, 
 the objects of popular attack were the landlords 
 and the owners of property, protection that pro- 
 tected other classes, and privilege from which the 
 people were excluded. These were the objects 
 
 of their animosity and the goal of their attack. 
 
 63
 
 64 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 The Christian Socialists of to-day, including in 
 their ranks a respectable number of the clergy of 
 the Church of England and ministers of the Free 
 Churches, with their levelling doctrines and half- 
 religious, half-social aims, are playing the part 
 fulfilled by the Lollards in 1318. Like them, the 
 sacerdotal leaders of the new democracy search 
 the Scriptures for ammunition in their campaign 
 against the wealthy and the landholding classes ; 
 and like the Lollards they are working in support 
 of demagogues, few whom they personally 
 know, and of a programme they do not fully 
 understand. Unlike the Lollards, the Christian 
 Socialists include in their ranks some of the 
 principal leaders of Demos, who have the 
 people's ear ; and instead of their operations 
 being conducted among a decimated population 
 in the low state of morality that invariably 
 follows the outbreak of pestilence, the numbers 
 of the people now are increasing by leaps and 
 bounds, and the general advance in their moral 
 ideas, and in the conduct of the main body of the 
 community (deplorable as the crimes of individuals 
 may be), is beyond reasonable dispute even by 
 hostile critics. 1 
 
 The influence of ecclesiastical Christianity on 
 
 1 The appalling increase in recidivism does not apply to the 
 main body of the community.
 
 THE LEADERS OF DEMOS. 65 
 
 politics has not been salutary. Priestly partisans, 
 whether of Demos or of Dives, have a habit of 
 ignoring inconvenient passages of Scripture that 
 tell against them and the cause they espouse. 
 The New Testament is quoted freely in support 
 of the New Unionism, of the Living Wage, of 
 the Eight Hour Day, and of the wickedness of 
 employers, landlords, and masters. Especially 
 apt at these quotations are those leaders of 
 Demos, whose religion, as Mr. George Russell 
 has well put it, is part of their politics. But the 
 teaching of the New Testament on the subject of 
 labour and service is strangely ambiguous if the 
 references drawn from the Parables and the 
 Epistles are honestly capable of bearing the in- 
 terpretation put on them by such men as the 
 Rev. Price Hughes, Mr. Mann, and Mr. Tillett. 
 If there be one fact which is indisputable about 
 the teaching of the New Testament, it is that 
 the idea of Christianity as expressed by Christ 
 and His Apostles is associated with suffering, 
 sorrow, and subordination. " Blessed are they 
 that mourn." " Blessed are they which are per- 
 secuted." " Whosoever will come after Me let 
 him deny himself." And about wage-earners : 
 ''Servants be subject to your \ masters with all 
 fear, not only to the good and gentle, but also 
 to the froward." " Submit yourselves to every
 
 66 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 ordinance of man for the Lord's sake." u Be obedi- 
 ent to your masters according to the flesh," " not 
 with eye service, but as the servants of Christ." 
 " The servant of the Lord must not strive but be 
 gentle." " Nor is the servant above his Lord." 
 
 The light thrown upon the Labour problems 
 of to-day by the above quotations, and by the 
 parable of the man who went out early in the 
 morning to hire labourers into his vineyard, is 
 instructive. From this parable we are entitled 
 to gather (i) that sevenpence halfpenny, the pre- 
 sent equivalent of the then value of the Roman 
 penny, is sufficient for the Living Wage ; (2) that 
 the twelve hour day is affirmed to be the just 
 period of labour ; (3) that neither piecework nor 
 payment by the hour, but arbitrary remuneration 
 (irrespective of the amount of work done, or the 
 number of hours employed) at the fancy of the 
 employer, is the Scriptural rate of wages; (4) 
 that so far from property being robbery, as M. 
 Proudhon has it, it is lawful for an employer to do 
 what he will with his own ; and (5) that so far from 
 combination to exact higher wages being permis- 
 sible, the New Unionism is expressly forbidden to 
 picket blacklegs by the command to "take that thine 
 is and go thy way," and by Christ's specific reply 
 to the soldiers, " Do violence to no man ; neither 
 accuse any falsely, and be content with your
 
 THE LEADERS OF DEMOS. 67 
 
 wages." Still further, Paul says, " Having food 
 and raiment, let us be content ; and he enjoins 
 the Hebrews to " be content with such things as 
 ye have." These quotations are made from their 
 economic, not from their moral, bearing on the 
 subject under discussion. 
 
 We also learn from the passages first cited that 
 Scripture expressly provides for the case of bad 
 masters, or masters who are considered bad by 
 their servants. Patient, unhesitating obedience is 
 due to them. With one uniform and explicit 
 voice, the historic Christian Church has proclaimed 
 the duty of passive obedience. To explain away 
 these positive commands without perverting the 
 plain teachingof Christ, is possible to none, not even 
 to the Lollardy of the nineteenth century, except 
 by representing Christ as the Wat Tyler of Judea. 
 
 The necessity of obtaining Scriptural sanc- 
 tion to the programme of the Socialists and 
 Labour Leaders is pressing and irresistible, but not 
 more so than the establishment of an intellectual 
 basis for economical revolution. Their efforts are, 
 accordingly, directed towards the revision and 
 displacement of current ideas on (i) Value; (2) 
 Wages ; (3) Normal Day of Labour ; (4) Machin- 
 ery ; (5) Piecework; and (6) Over-population. 1 
 
 1 The best and most impartial survey of the Marxist position 
 is contained in John Rae's "Contemporary Socialism," to whose 
 excellent work I am indebted in respect to this matter.
 
 68 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 1. The followers of Marx hold that all capital 
 is unproductive of value except in the form of 
 wages, and is, therefore, not entitled to interest. 
 They contend that although labour and capital 
 are equally indispensable to produce new com- 
 modities, it is labour alone that produces new 
 value, for value is only so much labour preserved. 
 It is merely a register of so many hours of work. 
 Value, according to Marx, is something inherent in 
 commodities before they are brought to market, 
 and is independent of the circumstances of the 
 market. All considerations of utility and the 
 state of the market are excluded. The fallacy of 
 this position will be apparent to anyone who con- 
 siders that two characteristics must enter into the 
 composition of value. First, that the commodity 
 must be wanted by someone ; second, that it has 
 cost some trouble to produce it. Nothing lacks 
 value that possesses both these characteristics ; 
 and nothing has value that lacks them. 
 
 2. Wages. Having laid down the untenable 
 position that all value is the creation of the per- 
 sonal labour of the workman, the followers of 
 Marx next proceed to declare that the value of 
 these labouring powers is determined not by 
 what they create, but by what is necessary to sus- 
 tain or renovate them. The wages system they 
 contend to be iniquitous, because it falsely pre-
 
 THE LEADERS OF DEMOS. 69 
 
 tends to pay for surplus labour that is really 
 unpaid. That is the mystery of iniquity of the 
 whole system. A labourer works twelve hours a 
 day because he cannot work longer and work 
 well and permanently; and he gets three shillings 
 a day of wages, because three shillings will buy 
 him the necessaries he requires. In six hours 
 labour he will create three shillings worth of 
 value, and he works the other six hours for 
 nothing, creating three shillings worth of surplus 
 value for the master who advances him his wages. 
 It is from these causes that we arrive at the 
 present system of things under which a labourer, 
 who creates six shillings a day is worth only 
 three shillings a day. This absurd conclusion, 
 says Marx, could never have held ground for an 
 hour had it not been hidden and disguised by the 
 practice of paying wages in money. This makes 
 it seem as if the labourer were paid for the whole 
 day when he is only paid for the part. The 
 wages system is, therefore, the lever of the 
 labourer's exploitation, because it enables the 
 capitalist to appropriate the entire surplus value 
 created by the labourer. 
 
 3. Normal Day of Labo^lr. The maximum 
 limit to a day's labour is fixed partly by the physi- 
 cal endurance of the labourer, and partly by 
 moral limits. The labourer needs time for social
 
 70 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 and intellectual pursuits. We find the length of 
 the labouring day vary from eight to eighteen 
 hours. There is no principle in the existing in- 
 dustrial economy which fixed it. It must be 
 determined after reviewing all the requirements 
 of the case. Marx fixed upon eight hours as the 
 best limit, because it affords a security for the 
 permanent physical efficiency of the labourer, and 
 gives him leisure for satisfying those intellectual, 
 social, and political wants which are becoming 
 every day more largely imperative. Some of the 
 private employers, who have conceded the eight 
 hour day, make a great point of the argument 
 that the improved welfare of the workman con- 
 duces to such an increase of production as would 
 alone justify the shorter term of work. Marx 
 himself makes no use of this reason, and his 
 followers in the present day do not employ this 
 argument when persuading or trying to persuade 
 the indifferent wage-earner to combine to secure 
 the compulsory eight hour day. 
 
 4. Effects of Machinery. Social wealth is not 
 only increased at the expense of the labourer, but 
 in many cases he is positively injured by division 
 and subdivision of labour, combination, associa- 
 tion, and science, which have cost capital nothing, 
 and which are the sources of the increase in 
 wealth. Capital sits still and seizes the whole.
 
 THE LEADERS OF DEMOS. 71 
 
 Small wages and long hours go together, because 
 the same causes that enable the employer to 
 reduce wages enable him also to lengthen the 
 labouring day. 
 
 5. Piecework is discouraged by the leaders of 
 Demos who follow the teaching of Marx, as 
 encouraging over-exertion and overtime. On 
 the piecework system, the worth of labour is 
 determined by the amount and quality of the 
 work it does. Unless the work done is up to the 
 stipulated standard, a point which the employer 
 alone decides, a specious pretext stands ready for 
 withholding the stipulated price. Labourers 
 unable to produce the average amount of work 
 under the stimulus of piecework are dismissed 
 for insufficiency. The superior workman, it is 
 admitted, can earn better pay working by the 
 piece, but the main body do not. A standard of 
 payment is fixed in the case of the superior work- 
 man, which is injurious to all the rest. In the 
 end it is found that the substitution of piecework 
 for day work merely results in the average labourer 
 working harder for the same money. There are 
 other objections to piecework. It renders super- 
 intendence superfluous, and thus promotes the 
 sweating system. It encourages the labourer to 
 strain his physical powers by working overtime ; 
 and it enables employers to engage more men
 
 72 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 than they actually want, since paying only for 
 work done they run no risk. The competition 
 of the half-employed workmen leads to reduction 
 in wages, and piecework thus leads to workmen 
 being imperfectly employed and insufficiently 
 paid. 
 
 6. Relative Over-population. The vast number 
 of labourers constantly left out of employment is 
 called by Marx relative over-population. He is 
 not a Malthusian, and of absolute over-population 
 neither he nor his followers have any fear. They 
 hold that there is plenty of work for all. If work 
 were limited to its due amount for everyone 
 according to age and sex, the existing working 
 population would be quite insufficient to carry 
 on national production to its present extent. The 
 relative over-population is an inevitable conse- 
 quence of the capitalistic management of industry, 
 which first compels one portion of the labouring 
 community to do the work of all, and then makes 
 use of the redundancy of labour so created to 
 compel the working half to take less pay. Low 
 wages spring from the excessive competition 
 among labourers, caused by this relative over- 
 population. The leaders of the democracy 
 ridicule the idea that early or improvident 
 marriages in any way contribute to the evils 
 of relative over-population, and they repudiate
 
 THE LEADERS OF DEMOS. 73 
 
 with indignation the proposal that recourse to 
 emigration, under suitable conditions, should be 
 had by those able and willing to start afresh for 
 themselves under new heavens and on a new 
 earth. The Rev. Hugh Price Hughes, one of 
 the clerical courtiers of Demos, is recently re- 
 ported by the Daily Chronicle to have spoken 
 as follows : 
 
 " Pauperism in England was not the result of over-popula- 
 tion, but of the most vicious land system in the civilized world. 
 (Cheers.) It was throwing dust in our eyes to suppose that 
 we should get rid of the difficulty by sending our fellow- 
 men over the seas. When men became more important than 
 sheep, tame birds, and deer, we should see that there was 
 ample room for the natural increase of the race. (Cheers.) 
 They protested against any social programme the goal of 
 which was Manitoba or Timbuctoo. Every method of deal- 
 ing with the social question, except the restoration of the 
 people to the land, was mere tinkering with the subject. The 
 ultimate aim of social reform was to secure to every man a 
 heritage of his own. Then the old prophecy would be ful- 
 filled ; the voice of complaining would cease in our streets ; 
 instead of pauperism, disease, and vice, we should see happy 
 childhood, dignified manhood, and peaceable old age." 
 
 Prayers and hymns preceded and followed the 
 delivery of Mr. Hughes' discourse. 
 
 If the foregoing be an accurate summary of the 
 views of the leaders of the democracy who rally 
 to New Unionism, it is not to be wondered at
 
 74 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 that the poorer classes who follow them, but 
 who do not study Marx or Lassalle, believe that 
 in some way their votes will enable them to 
 become richer without labour, and to spoil 
 the rich without bloodshed. Politicians of all 
 parties can enter Parliament by one avenue alone 
 the votes of the people many of whom are, 
 through no fault of their own, necessarily ig- 
 norant of the complex problems now await- 
 ing solution by the democracy and their 
 advisers. To foster popular delusions is, 
 accordingly, a recognised method of entry 
 into political life. Once in Parliament, some 
 show has to be made of zeal in the direc- 
 tion of confiscatory measures, and hence the 
 existence of the startling combination in aspirants 
 to political careers, of public attack on private 
 property, coupled with a passion for retention 
 and increase of such private property as they 
 themselves may own, and the attainment of a 
 peerage or a baronetcy as a reward for ostensible 
 loyalty to the piratical principles of a Revolution- 
 ary party. 1 
 
 It would be less than fair to the Labour leaders 
 of the new school not to remark on the uniform 
 
 1 The imagination fails to grasp what Mr. Pitt's views 
 might have been on some of Mr. Gladstone's recent 
 creations.
 
 THE LEADERS OF DEMOS. 75 
 
 purity and even elevation of their lives. Their 
 laborious and ascetic careers contrast favourably 
 with long lines of statesmen, from Walpole to 
 Lord Melbourne and Lord Palmerston. There 
 are some, however, who would say of the 
 New Unionists what Sydney Smith said of Mr. 
 Percival : 
 
 " You spend a great deal of ink about the character of the 
 present Prime Minister. Grant all that you write I say, I 
 fear he will pursue a line of policy destructive to the true 
 interests of his country ; and then you tell me he is faithful to 
 Mrs. Percival, and kind to the Master Percivals. These are, 
 undoubtedly, the first qualifications to be looked to in a time 
 of the most serious public danger, but somehow or other 
 .... I should prefer that he destroyed the domestic happi 
 ness of Wood or Cockell, owed for the veal of the preceding 
 year, whipped his boys, and saved his country." 
 
 Brought up to date, Peter Plymley would 
 probably declare, that so long as a politician ab- 
 stained from Gladstone, claret, and lager beer, did 
 not smoke pipe or cigarette, he might proclaim 
 with impunity recourse to the "chemical parcel 
 post," or other similar resources of civilisation, 
 the confiscation of land, mines, and railways, and 
 the general duty of prudential A, who has suc- 
 ceeded, to maintain the prolific B, who has 
 failed. 
 
 Notwithstanding the general upheaval in the
 
 76 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 notions of what constituted morality a genera- 
 tion ago, it is a happy omen for the future that 
 the democracy, as a rule, insist on high personal 
 character among its delegates. Until the work- 
 ing classes obtained the vote, few men were 
 driven from public life for the breach of the 
 seventh commandment. To-day, no man, unless 
 he be of Cabinet rank, can hope to remain in 
 Parliament who is publicly convicted of destroy- 
 ing the popular ideal of domestic felicity. It is, 
 of course, well known that the discovery, and not 
 the commission of sin, is the offence heinous in 
 the public mind, but there is no reason to doubt 
 that the tone and personal character now insisted 
 on is mainly, if not entirely, due to the lives and 
 examples of the principal leaders of Demos, and 
 that there is a better prospect of high personal 
 character being demanded than hitherto. 
 
 There is, however, a feature in connection with 
 the new demand for spotless records in public 
 men, which is less encouraging. The temptations 
 to hypocrisy and sanctimoniousness are becoming 
 almost as great as in the days of Puritan ascend- 
 ency. If hypocrisy be the tribute that vice pays 
 to virtue, the increase of pretence and false pro- 
 fession may be the mark of evolution to a higher 
 state of morality throughout society. However 
 this may be, it is certainly a symptom not to be
 
 THE LEADERS OF DEMOS. 77 
 
 ignored. The dissimulation of which I speak is 
 not necessarily religious. There is a political, as 
 well as a moral, scientific, economical, and re- 
 ligious cant. The simulation of opinions not 
 really held, and the disclaimer of sentiments 
 secretly cherished, were probably never so rife 
 among public men as at the present epoch. The 
 causes of the epidemic of insincerity, from which 
 the Labour leaders themselves are not entirely 
 free, arise mainly from the impossibility for 
 courtiers to tell the blunt, plain truth to their 
 sovereign and retain his favour. The " blazing 
 indiscretions " attributed to one eminent states- 
 man are nothing more than distasteful statements 
 of unpalatable truths. Lord Salisbury displeases 
 Demos not because he is a Peer, but because he 
 will not flatter. No man ambitious of ris- 
 ing in Parliament can afford to kick away the 
 only ladder by which he can expect to rise to the 
 top storey. The people addressed by politicians 
 are very much like the rest of mankind. Skil- 
 fully laid on, there is no limit to the amount 
 of flattery most of us are able to absorb. Tak- 
 ing into account the probability of a further 
 increase in the electorate, it is reasonable to ex- 
 pect that the political hypocrisy of men of means 
 and station will continue to increase. Never 
 coming in contact with the real conditions of life,
 
 73 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 many of them can obtain Parliamentary hon- 
 ours only by playing on the weaknesses, and tick- 
 ling the foibles of King Demos, since they are 
 unable from want of personal knowledge to touch 
 his heart, or to appeal to the higher instincts 
 of his nature. 
 
 The new leaders of the democracy display a 
 great taste for demonstrations, bands, banners, and 
 emblems. The necessity of being in evidence 
 before their supporters, present and prospective, 
 is a condition of their political existence. More- 
 over, the fever for notoriety, whether in the form 
 of renown or of obliquy, is a disease from which 
 none but the greatest are exempt. It grows by 
 what it feeds on. Mr. Pitt, it is true, was not wont 
 to acquaint the people of London with the time-table 
 of his movements. It is reserved for these days 
 for the progress of a statesman demagogue to be 
 chronicled beforehand, so that the crowds may 
 gather and throw dust in the air in honour of one 
 who has thrown dust in their eyes. The leaders 
 of Demos are obliged "to play it low down " in 
 order to succeed ; and the one art of all arts that 
 ensures success is to be talked about. Dress, 
 habits, language, are made to accommodate them- 
 selves to the passion for publicity. Much of the 
 fustian that is talked by the leaders of the people 
 is simply a necessity of their position. They do
 
 THE LEADERS OF DEMOS^ 79 
 
 not really mean it. But the people expect it, like 
 it, and ask for more. 
 
 The growth of platform oratory and the faculty 
 of public speech are likely to be still further 
 developed. Every one aspiring to lead the 
 democracy has to pass through a fiery ordeal of 
 public and outdoor speech. . A man may be as 
 poor as Lazarus, false as Iscariot, ugly as Caliban, 
 and ignorant as Gurth, but if he can speak 
 plausibly, is endowed with a good voice, and has 
 the mysterious gift of magnetising audiences with 
 melodramatic commonplace, he may rise to high 
 office in the State. He may make his reputation 
 by sheer destructiveness. And, if he only de- 
 nounce, abuse, menace, and arraign every interest 
 under heaven, and blacken them enough, he now 
 stands a good chance of having serious con- 
 structive work entrusted to him by the nation. In 
 the growing power of oratory lies a patent danger 
 to the democracy. So long as orators can fascinate 
 their audiences, they have no concern with the 
 dangers that threaten the common weal, or the 
 steps that should be taken to neutralise them. 
 But this evil, such as it is, must tend to remedy 
 itself after a certain time. The more cultivated 
 the people become, the more they will distrust 
 the mere tonguester. Already the Babel of 
 tongues is so confusing that the electors are
 
 So ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 beginning to judge more of what is done, less by 
 what is said. Injustice is inflicted even on their 
 leaders by the people ; but injustice grows apace 
 where the government of, by, and for the people 
 is necessarily confided not to the whole or to the 
 best of them, but to the most eloquent, pushing, 
 and determined competitors for the privilege of 
 expressing the wishes of Demos. Now is the 
 day for men of coarse fibre. The abolition of the 
 university seats is therefore naturally within the 
 range of practical politics. 
 
 The following are fair samples of the utterances 
 of those who have gained the ear of Demos : 
 
 The joint manifesto of the English Socialists, 
 issued on May ist, 1893, by the chief socialistic 
 societies, proclaims in clear language the common 
 ground of action. It says : 
 
 " On this point all Socialists agree. Our aim, one and all, 
 is to obtain for the whole community complete ownership and 
 control of the means of transport, the means of manufacture, 
 the mines, and the land. Thus we look to put an end for ever 
 to the wage system, to sweep away all disiinctions of class, and 
 eventually to establish national and international communism 
 on a sound basis." 
 
 "The following has been issued and circulated by our 
 comrades in the mining districts : 
 
 " Fellow-Workers, In the midst of the terrible struggle in 
 which you are engaged, we, the Anarchists, ask you to consider 
 for a moment why you are fighting, and for what purpose. 
 
 " Is it simply to retain the bare and meagre livelihood on 
 which you have hitherto existed? Then even your success
 
 THE LEADERS OF DEMOS. 8 1 
 
 would be a failure, for the struggle would only cease to again 
 break out with renewed bitterness before many months had 
 elapsed. 
 
 " To-day you are the slaves of those who neither toil nor 
 spin ; you work for others who do nothing for you but to rob 
 you of the greater part of your earnings. Do the wages you 
 have been receiving represent the wealth you have produced ? 
 On the contrary they simply suffice for your bare necessities. 
 All that you have produced above and beyond has gone to 
 make riches and luxuries for the landlord and capitalist. 
 
 "The reason is simple. The soil, the minerals, which 
 nature provides and to which all have equal right, the capital, 
 i.e., the machinery, buildings, plant, railways, manufactured 
 goods, etc., which are the product of the labour of generations 
 and thousands of workmen, are monopolised by the few who 
 have appropriated them by force and fraud, cunning, and the 
 tricks of trade, extortion, and unpaid labour. 
 
 " You, the workers, helpless, propertyless, and starving, must 
 sell your labour to get bread for yourselves and children, you 
 must work on the terms laid down by the boss, or starve. 
 And those terms are that all you produce above a bare sub- 
 sistence wage goes to the masters in the shape of rents, royalties, 
 dividends, profits, wages of managements, official salaries, etc. 
 You are thus the mere beasts of burden whom the master uses 
 and exploits. As long as he can make profit out of your labour 
 he allows you to sweat and slave in his mine (or factory, or 
 workshops) ; when you are incapable he turns you adrift to 
 starve, to suicide, to beg, or to live on the charity of friends 
 and relations. You make all wealth. You toil under danger- 
 ous and cruel conditions, and in return you barely get the 
 means to live. 
 
 " You die before your time ; your wives are worn out by 
 care and anxiety ; your children are killed by preventable dis- 
 eases ; your daughters are forced to work in sweaters' dens, 
 and sometimes to eke out a scanty living on the streets, while 
 the master grows fat on your misery ; and if you dare rebel he 
 turns you out till your starving bellies and your children crying 
 for bread compel you once more to cringe at his feet. 
 
 F
 
 82 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 " These monsters do not care for your welfare. Then why 
 care for them ? Strike, not for matter of wages, but to put an 
 end to this system of legalised robbery and murder once and 
 for ever, and if they attempt to crush you by force, show that 
 you are men and have the courage of men. 
 
 "Do not listen to those humbugs who tell you to be 
 moderate and law-abiding. You have been moderate and 
 law-abiding in the past, and you are starving. The Law, the 
 Government, is your enemy. It is simply the weapon of the 
 capitalist robber to crush you. It exists to protect his property, 
 i.e., the booty he has plundered from you ; to prevent the out- 
 raged and disinherited of the earth from taking back the wealth 
 they have produced to satisfy their natural cravings. 
 
 " It matters not which party is in power ; all are alike, 
 thieves in the pay of thieves. Politicians of all shades, 
 Conservative, Liberal, or so-called Labour, are simply humbugs 
 who would draw you from the more effective method your 
 own action. They talk on trivialities and side issues while you 
 are starving. Their only remedy is lead and steel to murder 
 you. 
 
 " No ! If you would be free you must take the matter in 
 your own hands. You must put an end to the system that 
 enslaves you. You must sweep away masters altogether, and 
 take back all the wealth you have made, and which is necessary 
 to production all land and capital, in short to be the common 
 possession of all, and used through your own free organisations 
 for the common good of all. Thereby you will put an end to 
 poverty and overwork, prostitution, and involuntary idleness, 
 and make this earth a paradise, instead of the hell it is to-day. 
 
 " To do this you must show no respect for law or property. 
 You, the miners, must take the mines and lock out the 
 masters, instead of allowing them to lock you out. This is 
 the only method of effectually ending all strikes and all wars 
 whatever. The extinction of mastership means the free co- 
 operation of labour. 
 
 "By refusing to pay rent you will do more to injure the 
 propertied classes, and therefore benefit yourselves, than by any 
 amount of purely constitutional resistance. By taking of the
 
 THE LEADERS OF DEMOS. 83 
 
 wealth around, of which you and your family have need, you 
 will show your bosses that you are in earnest, and at least 
 compel them to refrain from carrying their tyranny too far. 
 
 " Miners, be determined ! Insist on your rights. If you 
 only dare to set the example, the workers of the world will 
 follow. Everywhere they will take back the wealth of which 
 they have been plundered, and on the ruins of wage-slavery 
 and the workers' misery they will rear a new society where 
 none will command and none obey, where none will be rich 
 and none poor, but all will live in equal fellowship and all will 
 be assured of plenty and comfort, culture and freedom ; in 
 short, Anarchist Communism." 
 
 " The ranks of the unemployed are being augmented daily, 
 and the coming winter will be one of extreme suffering, likely 
 to cause the classes and the authorities no little trouble. If 
 the unemployed do their duty, the London police who were 
 sent to Yorkshire with cutlasses to terrify the colliers, will have 
 to be sent for to help to put down disturbances here and in 
 other parts where the unemployed have become restive. 
 
 " Not alone in London with regard to these unemployed 
 troubles : Spain, Germany, Vienna, as well as New York, 
 Chicago, and Melbourne, all have their hands full with hunger 
 riots and unemployed processions. In Chicago the police and 
 the people have already come into collision, with the result 
 that a few policemen were bruised and a few out-o'-works 
 clubbed and arrested. From New York the same news comes, 
 but if these manifestations cause friction now, who can say 
 what will not happen this coming winter ? Something, perhaps, 
 that will shake 'Society' to its rotten foundation." 
 
 " You cannot remedy the evils you suffer by changing your 
 representation in Parliament. It is necessary to change alto- 
 gether the institutions of to-day, to suppress capitalism, to give 
 the land to the labourer, the machine to the artisan, and liberty 
 to all." 
 
 " We do not expect to make our lot better by constitutional
 
 84 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 means. Men must gain freedom by their own action, by 
 opposing force to force. Down with capitalism and govern- 
 ment ! Spread this one definite idea among the workers the 
 overthrow of private property and of governments." 
 
 Such thoughts as these are the direct result of 
 the vast influence exercised by Marx over the 
 minds of the urban proletariat of England, rein- 
 forced by the sentimental and emotional school of 
 politicians and preachers, to whom a reconcilia- 
 tion between the teaching of Marx and that of the 
 Syrian Artisan is a political necessity, and pre- 
 sents no difficulties. The materialism of the Marx 
 school is no obstacle to the theological supporters 
 of incongruous and incompatible principles. The 
 evils of existing society are not due merely to our 
 bad social economy ; they are rooted in the core 
 of human nature itself. Revolutions have changed 
 many things ; they have curbed privilege, de- 
 stroyed abuses and expanded opportunity. But 
 no revolution ever changed human nature. The 
 action of the present leaders of Demos in pro- 
 mising Utopia as the result of their programme 
 may be perfectly sincere. But it is strange if 
 Paradise itself should last ten minutes after the 
 first detachment of humanity has entered it. 
 While lust and vanity exist, the extermination of 
 no class can materially and for long benefit the 
 survivors. The socialism current with the leaders
 
 THE LEADERS OF DEMOS. 85 
 
 of democracy is too absolute and remote from the 
 experience of history and of human nature to be 
 more than a passing phase of thought. 
 
 At the same time it is clear that the British people 
 are not to-day, and will not for some time to come, 
 be satisfied that the socialism of the New Unionism 
 is too abstract for our nation. We are not yet satur- 
 ated with Socialism up to the point of our absorp- 
 tive capacity. Municipalities have still a great and 
 practical work left undone, all of it in the direction 
 of Collectivism. Too few experiments have been 
 tried, and too few mistakes have been made, to dis- 
 credit either the men in the van of the movement 
 or the movement itself. Those experiments will be 
 tried. The failures will be glossed over. Suc- 
 cesses will whet the appetite for more State action. 
 The widest attention and interest will be excited. 
 Then some great effort will probably be made, such 
 as the nationalisation of the railways, or the acquisi- 
 tion of the soil by the State, and the assumption by 
 that body of the position of landlord to the com- 
 munity. Taking the position of the railways, as 
 being the smaller operation, and one directly con- 
 templated by the new school of economists, the 
 results would probably disappoint those who 
 inculcate an altruism unattainable by any secular 
 development of human nature. 
 
 The purchase of the railways in this country
 
 86 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 would involve a sum of about a thousand millions 
 sterling without allowing for reasonable compen- 
 sation for prospective value. 1 Supposing the 
 rates, charges, and gross receipts would be the 
 same as they are at the present time, the annual 
 loss would be nearly a million sterling. If the 
 Government reduced rates and fares for the 
 benefit of the public to the moderate extent of 
 ten per cent., they would, after making every 
 allowance for any economy of working that might 
 be affected by the concentration of management, 
 at once find themselves with a deficit of several 
 million sterling per annum, on the working of the 
 railways, to be made up from some other source 
 of revenue. 
 
 Apart from mere financial considerations, there 
 are other circumstances that would create a 
 reaction against the phase in human develop- 
 ment that assumes the form of Marxist 
 Socialism on our railway system. The amount 
 of Government patronage and interference 
 involved would affect the industries of the 
 nation and the character of the people. Govern- 
 ment would come in contact with the Trade 
 Unions, and either these bodies would control the 
 railways, or a continual struggle for mastery would 
 
 1 "The Working and Management of an English Railway," 
 pp. 232-5, by the late Sir G. Findlay.
 
 THE LEADERS OF DEMOS. 87 
 
 be carried on between the Government and the 
 Trades organisations. The Government might 
 possibly be expected to work the railways 
 for the benefit of the nation, but the Trade 
 Unions would necessarily regard the rates of 
 pay, hours, and duties of their own members, as 
 the main object of their trust. Labour could 
 no longer be dealt with as a commodity, subject 
 to the ordinary demands of supply and demand, 
 and we should alternate between universal 
 strikes of the employe's of the national railway 
 system, and gigantic losses which must destroy 
 the national credit Teetotal Labour leaders of 
 high character, skilled in strife, with contumelious 
 tongues, would have a field for their genius which 
 would present irresistible temptations. The im- 
 provement and development of the traffic would 
 no longer form the one abiding principle by which 
 the railway administration would be guided. 
 Political considerations, rewards to political sup- 
 porters, and the punishment of opponents, would 
 become objects of more immediate interest than 
 the humdrum methods prevalent under what one 
 high-strung democrat calls the " capitalistic cloud." 1 
 While certain local and imperial affairs are fitly 
 performed by society, all experience of the scale 
 of expenditure in Government departments is 
 1 Mr. Tom Mann at Bedford, January 3oth, 1894.
 
 88 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 opposed to the belief that the administration of 
 the railways could ever be carried on economically 
 and upon sound commercial principles by a de- 
 partment of the State. 
 
 In France, the experience of State-managed 
 railways is unsatisfactory. In Belgium, officials 
 belonging to the clerical party remain unnoticed 
 when the Liberal Minister is in office. In 
 Germany, the Landtag votes supplies to be ex- 
 pended on railways every year, a sum in excess 
 of the paper "profit " alleged to be earned. The 
 experience in Australia entirely confirms the ex- 
 perience gained from the older countries in 
 Europe. The Victorian State railways are now 
 committed to the charge of three commissioners, 
 who are supposed to free from all political in- 
 fluence, and to have absolute powers of control, 
 as if the railways were the fruits of private enter- 
 prise as in Great Britain. 
 
 Even the nationalisation of the railways by no 
 means exhausts the enterprise of the Labour 
 leaders. Mr. Tom Mann, for example, would 
 apply exactly the same principle to the mines and 
 the land 1 as to the railways. Curious problems 
 
 1 Speech at Bedford, Jan. 30th, 1894. Mr. George Russell, 
 M.P., under-Secretary for India, who was present, "entirely 
 agreed with everything Mr. Mann had said." Bedfordshire 
 Times and Independent, Feb. 3rd, 1894.
 
 THE LEADERS OF DEMOS. 89 
 
 would arise under a Government where half the 
 population were civil servants of the State, and 
 the other half were responsible for the welfare of 
 the Indian Empire. 
 
 There can be no doubt that the proletariat is 
 resolved to have its fair share of the banquet of 
 life, when changes of so stupendous a character 
 are taken as commonplaces, and assented to with 
 a light heart by a rising statesman of family and 
 reputation. 
 
 It is impossible to resist the conclusion that, 
 while we may fully expect many experiments, the 
 first blunder of any magnitude, affecting many 
 interests and exciting widespread attention, will 
 abate if it do not destroy the influence of .the 
 present generation of socialistic Labour leaders. 
 If, as I believe, State Socialism is a passing and 
 errant phase in human development, doomed ta 
 disappear after it has become manifest that an 
 individualistic God made individualistic man to 
 work out his own salvation in all essentials, and to 
 sink or swim in the process, the future leaders of 
 the democracy will be of another type from the col- 
 lectivist agitators of the present day. The social- 
 istic idea has undoubtedly done great service to- 
 mankind. It has drawn attention to the econo- 
 mic fallacies and selfishness of the Manchester 
 school. It has wisely insisted on the moralisatioa
 
 90 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 of economics, and that ethical considerations 
 should dominate the whole range of industry and 
 commerce. Above all, it has brought powerfully 
 the question of the poor and unemployed before 
 the nation. The poor are likely to be with us 
 long after the doctrines now, in vogue have been 
 renounced as heresies. On the other hand, 
 Socialism has ignored the moral responsibility of 
 a portion of the poorest population for their own 
 condition ; it has needlessly exaggerated the 
 extent and horror of existing evils, and it has 
 done much with Mr. Gladstone's aid to sow use- 
 less strife between man and man. It has raised 
 hopes that can never be fulfilled while human 
 nature is what it is. It has cultivated a vast 
 army of weak and emotional natures, and lays up 
 for them and their successors the pangs of dis- 
 appointment and the bitterness of disillusion. 
 Thought and practice will probably be still further 
 influenced by the propaganda of the present 
 Labour leaders, but the probability is that they will 
 completely fail to make the revolution in society 
 which they propose to accomplish. Co-operation, 
 the form of Collectivism most widely known 
 among the industrial classes, appeals directly to 
 the innate love of property, and acts with magical 
 rapidity in making the co-operator a friend and 
 not an enemy of the existing order of society,
 
 THE LEADERS OF DEMOS. 91 
 
 and is, therefore, opposed by the black-coated 
 leaders of the Socialists. 
 
 The systematic revolt and discontent with the 
 existing order of things has given rise to a set of 
 ideas which, though falling under a new nomen- 
 clature, are as old as history. "In those days 
 there was no king in Israel, but every man did 
 that which was right in his own eyes." Anarchists 
 existed in 1406 B.C., and have existed ever since. 
 Sobrero's discovery of nitro-glycerine, in 1847, 
 and Nobel's adaptation of it as an explosive agent, 
 have given to evil individuals immensely greater 
 power over society than society possesses over 
 them. An Anarchist who is reckless of his own 
 life, is impregnable to all the measures that may be 
 taken against him before the commission of his 
 crime. His motives being incalculable, cannot be 
 provided against. The courage and determination 
 evinced by the majority of Anarchists after their 
 capture is too remarkable a feature to be dis- 
 missed with levity. Incomprehensible as their 
 motives are, Anarchism, which has existed for 
 at least three thousand years, is not likely 
 to be exterminated by international legislation 
 of to-day. On the other hand, the nihilistic 
 war is likely to continue, since the expression 
 of hate by dynamite is eloquent and effective. 
 As explosions and disasters follow each other with
 
 92 ENGLISH DEMOCRA C Y. 
 
 growing frequency, society will infallibly awake to 
 the existence of the simple fact that the proletariat 
 of Europe is resolved to have its fair share of the 
 banquet of life quite regardless of the bad things 
 in store for it in this or the next world. When 
 this awakening occurs, and the misery and want 
 that attracted no attention so long as agitation was 
 constitutional, is dealt with humanely and practi- 
 cally, it is possible that the pioneers of the nitro- 
 glycerine department of social reform may be 
 regarded as we now look on Tom Paine and 
 Mazzini. But in any event the Party System 
 must be modified before the nation can set 
 to work to accomplish for the good of the poor 
 those things that they will sooner or later refuse 
 to us. The proletariat, like blind Samson, may 
 first pull down upon our heads and their own 
 the whole structure of civilisation, and in the ruin 
 find both their freedom and their death.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE CROWN. 
 
 FOR the interests of Monarchy in this country it 
 is unfortunate that for more than a generation the 
 Sovereign has practically withdrawn herself from 
 the public eye. The pageant and the pomp 
 that stimulate the imagination of masses who 
 lead a dull and monotonous existence, have been 
 almost entirely wanting. English wage-earners 
 are beginning to ask themselves what advantages 
 accrue to them from the national expenditure on 
 Monarchy in this country, and whether other 
 arrangements would not be more in accordance 
 with their interests and feelings. During the 
 lifetime of the Queen, there is a tacit agreement 
 on all sides that the question of the succession 
 shall not be raised. On the demise of the Crown, 
 however, there is no doubt that the republican 
 question will be raised in an acute form. The 
 
 settlement of the Civil List of ,385,000 per 
 
 93
 
 94 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 annum, lapses with the death of the Queen. It 
 is a question with some reformers whether the 
 yearly sum charged against the Consolidated 
 Fund has been devoted solely to the support of 
 the " honour and dignity of the Crown," within 
 the meaning of the Act i and 2 Viet., chap. 2. 
 The English people have paid to Her Majesty 
 over twenty-two million sterling since her acces- 
 sion, for the support of Her Majesty's household, 
 and the honour and dignity of the Crown. Most 
 of this money has been spent in the salaries and 
 expenses of the Royal household, retiring allow- 
 ances and pensions to officers of the household, 
 and in the distant private residences of the Queen 
 at Balmoral and Osborne. Previous to the 
 accession of Queen Victoria, the Civil List was 
 beyond the control of Parliament during the life 
 of the Sovereign. By a compact between the 
 Queen and Parliament, she surrendered the 
 hereditary revenues of the Crown for life. Should 
 the Prince of Wales succeed Her Majesty on the 
 Throne, he will at once resume the rights over 
 the hereditary Crown revenues from the date of 
 his accession to the time when Parliament elects 
 to settle the new Civil List, or otherwise deals 
 with the question of Crown revenues or the finan- 
 cial standing of the King of England. 
 
 Under the provision of various Acts of Parlia-
 
 THE CROWN. 95. 
 
 ment, of which the chief are i Anne, St. i., c. 4, 
 sec - 5 5 39 and 40 Geo. III., c. 88 ; 4 Geo. IV., 
 c. 1 8 ; i and 2 Viet., c. 95, sec. 4 ; 25 and 26 
 Viet., c. 34 ; no grants of Crown land can be, 
 made for a longer period than thirty-one years. 
 It will therefore be competent to the successor to 
 Her Majesty to hypothecate such Crown lands as 
 form part of the hereditary revenues for the 
 period named. Should the new King or Queen 
 on his .or her accession be burdened with debts 
 which Parliament could not be asked to pay, the 
 only visible means for their discharge would be 
 by charging the hereditary revenues resumed by 
 the occupant of the Throne on the demise of his or 
 her predecessor. 
 
 This contingency of indebtedness by the new 
 Sovereign, discharged by encumbrances on the 
 hereditary revenues of the Crown before Parlia- 
 ment has determined the arrangements for the 
 future Civil List, is a palpable danger to the pros- 
 pects of Monarchy in this country. Repeated 
 applications to Parliament for provision for the 
 numerous sons and daughters of the Queen have 
 familiarised the public with the costliness of 
 monarchical institutions, while the advantages 
 derived from the existence of a stately and 
 hereditary office, under which all subjects may 
 unite but to which none may aspire, are not so<
 
 96 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY, 
 
 apparent. The working classes of Great Britain 
 are profoundly jealous of public expenditure in 
 salaries. It has been said, not without some 
 show of reason, that they prefer to contemplate 
 the waste of millions in bad administration rather 
 than suffer five hundred a year to be paid as 
 a salary. Persons who are themselves constantly 
 struggling with life on narrow means, cannot 
 bear that public officials to whose support they 
 contribute should subsist in superfluous luxury. 
 Mr. John Burns has said that there is no public 
 position in England the duties of which are not 
 adequately remunerated by a payment of five 
 hundred a year. 
 
 The payment of ten thousand a year to the 
 Duke of Saxe-Coburg is an act sanctioned by a 
 Radical Ministry and arranged by Mr. Gladstone 
 himself. The irritation excited by the payment 
 of the Duke's ten thousand is out of all propor- 
 tion to the amount of the grant. No greater 
 blunder could have been perpetrated by those 
 who are sincerely desirous of assuring a peace- 
 able succession. Indeed, had Mr. Gladstone, 
 with Machiavelian subtlety, intended to maim 
 monarchical institutions in Great Britain, he 
 could have devised no more effectual means for 
 bringing the Crown into disrepute with the 
 people. The Duke of Saxe-Coburg had no
 
 THE CROWN. 97 
 
 special or overwhelming popularity. He was 
 credited with the virtue of thrift, which is not 
 shared as it should be by the majority of the 
 people of this country. He is a foreign potentate. 
 And in the last place, Parliament was hustled into 
 sanctioning Mr. Gladstone's arrangement in a 
 way which jarred with the feeling of many that 
 calm deliberation should properly obtain when 
 Royal grants are considered by the representatives 
 or delegates of the people. 
 
 By the i and 2 Viet, cap. ii., 1837, it is ex- 
 pressly provided that after the demise of the 
 Crown, the hereditary revenues surrendered by 
 the Queen are payable to her successors (clause 
 ii.). By clause xvii. it is enacted : " That this 
 Act shall continue in force for six months after 
 the death of Her most Excellent Mie (whom 
 may God preserve), unless the heir or successor 
 of Her said Majesty shall sooner signify to both 
 Houses of Parliament His or Her Royal will 
 and pleasure to resume the possession of the 
 several Hereditary Rates, Duties, Payments, and 
 Revenues hereby surrendered by Her Majesty." 
 
 The next successor to the Throne will therefore 
 be free on accession to elect between accepting a 
 sum of ,192,500 during the first six months of his 
 or her reign, or resuming possession of the several 
 
 hereditary rates, duties, payments, and revenues, 
 
 G
 
 98 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 surrendered in 1837 by Her present Majesty. In 
 estimating the relative value of the two revenues, 
 it should be remembered that the Sovereign will 
 only receive ,30,000 on account of his Privy 
 Purse, the remainder of the ^192,500 being ex- 
 pended strictly according to specific provisions of 
 the Act. On the other hand, the Queen's Civil 
 List, which was an excellent bargain for the 
 nation in 1837, is now some ^"4000 per annum 
 more than the amount realised by the nation from 
 the revenues relinquished by Her Majesty. The 
 Queen's successor, therefore, unless stopped from 
 so acting by Parliament, may forego the advan- 
 tages derived from clause xvii. of the i and 2 
 Viet., cap. ii., and, resuming the hereditary rev- 
 enues of the Crown, make such disposition of 
 the property, whether to pay debt (should such 
 exist) or otherwise, as he or she may be pleased 
 to determine. 
 
 The Ministry in power when the demise of the 
 Crown takes place, have to face a difficult situa- 
 tion. The future Sovereign may do as he or she will 
 with the hereditary revenues of the Crown, under 
 certain specified conditions. To prevent the then 
 Monarch from thus dealing with the revenues 
 reverting at that time to the Crown, an Act of 
 Parliament will be necessary. Parliament may not 
 be sitting. The passage of this Act cannot fail to
 
 THE CROWN. 99 
 
 be accompanied by much plain speaking, the ex- 
 hibition of a republican spirit, and the vigorous 
 assertion of strictly economical principles. The 
 House of Commons will then be reminded that 
 the Civil List was found inadequate to the 
 maintenance of the royal family, and it will 
 be pointed out that in the reign of Queen 
 Victoria, the Consolidated Fund had been 
 charged with the payment of ; 188,000 
 per annum, in addition to the Civil List of 
 ^385,000. The payment of ,573,000 per annum 
 for the support of a single family will inevitably 
 be held by needy representatives of an impover- 
 ished but omnipotent electorate to be equal to, if 
 not in excess of, the requirements of the case. 
 The Act settling the Civil List in 1837 expressly 
 recites that the expenditure on the Crown should 
 be kept within due limits. The new republicans 
 will declare that during the previous reign it had 
 not been kept within due limits, but that gross 
 extravagance had been perpetrated, for which the 
 nation had very little to show. The existence of 
 debt, which the annual payment of ,573,000 had 
 been insufficient to defray, will further exasperate 
 some portion of the electors, and they will regard 
 themselves as defrauded of their just rights if an 
 attempt be made to discharge such debt from the 
 Crown revenues.
 
 loo ENGLISH DEMOCRA C Y. 
 
 So strong are the Conservative instincts and 
 traditions of the people of this realm, that it is 
 unlikely that at the next demise of the Crown 
 monarchical institutions will be successfully at- 
 tacked. That the Crown will be assailed with 
 intense hostility is beyond question, and it is 
 unlikely that it will emerge untouched from the 
 struggle. There is no reasonable chance that 
 the English people will ever again submit to the 
 rule of a George the Third, or, still less, of his 
 successor. The Crown, like other institutions, is 
 always on its trial. If the Throne be occupied by 
 a monarch of patriotic sense, sound judgment, 
 industry, and inflexible resolve to maintain the 
 character and purity of the Court of Queen 
 Victoria, there is no reason why the long line of 
 the kings of England should end in the lifetime 
 of the present generation. Austerity and as- 
 ceticism are not yet qualities that evoke the 
 enthusiasm of multitudes, and there is happily no 
 reason to fear that the security of the English 
 Throne is likely to be menaced by its occupant 
 displaying those qualities in excess. The irk- 
 someness of the Sovereign's position cannot but 
 increase. Loss of power is accompanied with 
 increase of publicity. Hampered in every move- 
 ment, with curtailed revenues, and restricted privi- 
 leges, scanty leisure and jealous watching by
 
 THE CROWN. 101 
 
 millions of eyes under the fierce light that beats 
 upon a Throne, it will not be surprising if, in the 
 course of time, the difficulty of filling the Throne 
 proceed from its rightful occupant rather than 
 from those who hanker after the monotony and 
 corruption of a republic. 
 
 The Indian Empire and the Colonies are potent 
 elements in the forces that make for the security 
 of the British Throne. The tie between India 
 and England is being loosed by the levity of the 
 House of Commons, and the unbridled emotion- 
 alism of those who see unrighteousness in every 
 act of England towards her Indian Empire. So 
 long as the British Throne lasts, the inarticulate 
 millions of Hindostan can personify in its occu- 
 pant, the British raj, and can contemplate with 
 languid complacency the eccentricities of the 
 Parliament men who cross the sea to inject 
 with Western Radicalism the Indian Congress, 
 and to acclimatise the doctrine of One Man One 
 Vote in the valley of the Ganges. Were the 
 British Throne to disappear from a spasm of 
 parochialism and ignorance of all that the mon- 
 archy really means, the loss of India would pro- 
 bably become a mere question of time, since 
 personal rule is inseparable from oriental concep- 
 tions of Government. 
 
 Of equal value and importance is the British
 
 102 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 Throne to the maintenance and improvement of 
 our relations with the Colonial Empire. Were 
 England to adopt Republican institutions, the 
 signal would be given to the Colonies to cut the 
 painter and set up for themselves. The tie of 
 sentiment would be snapped, and no student of 
 history of the English-speaking peoples will be 
 disposed to undervalue the element of sentiment 
 in preserving national affinities. The unity of 
 the English-speaking people was destroyed in the 
 last century mainly by the stubborn folly of the 
 Monarch. It may be that the restoration of that 
 unity may come once more within the range of 
 possibility by the wise efforts of an English king. 
 But the British Throne must, in the first place, 
 make its peace with the Irish race. The task is 
 not impossible.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE HOUSE OF LORDS. 
 
 PARLIAMENT, with the assent of the country, has 
 for so long treated trifles with solemnity and 
 matters of importance with levity, that it is un- 
 likely that we shall see any sudden alteration in 
 the habits of our rulers. We have for so long 
 been accustomed to see hereditary government 
 thrown into the hands of men unworthy of it from 
 want of principle, or unfitted for it from want of 
 capacity, that we should all feel a void if the New 
 Year or Birthday Gazettes did not contain the 
 usual announcement of new Peerages. The 
 hereditary system exists, and is so deeply em- 
 bedded in the Constitution, that the ending of the 
 Peers until they make the serious blunder of 
 
 j 
 
 opposing the real will of the people, is impossible 
 without a revolution. The hereditary system in 
 a democracy is like one of those rudimentary 
 
 organs which serve no end at all, but are quite 
 
 10.3
 
 104 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 useless and meaningless. Some of these cases of 
 rudimentary organs are extremely curious. The 
 presence of teeth in fcetal whales, which when 
 grown up, as Mr. Darwin tells us, have not a 
 tooth in their heads, is one of these cases. " Noth- 
 ing can be plainer than that wings are formed for 
 flight ; yet in how many instances do we see 
 wings so reduced in size as to be utterly incap- 
 able of flight." 1 Nothing can be plainer than 
 that eyes are made to see. But sightless eyes are 
 found in many animals which live in the dark, as 
 in caves or underground. These eyes, says 
 Haeckel, often exist in a well-developed condition, 
 but they are covered with membrane, so that no 
 ray of light can enter, and they can never see. 
 Nothing can be plainer than that a democratic 
 legislative body is formed to make good laws by 
 wise men, but there is no more relation between 
 the hereditary principle and the production of 
 wisdom or good laws, than exists between the 
 presence of teeth in fcetal whales, and the food 
 they consume requiring no mastication ; or between 
 the rudimentary eyes of several species of moles 
 and mice, and the subterranean darkness in which 
 they pass their days. 
 
 Tom Paine thundered against "hereditary 
 nonsense " a century ago, and the anomaly has 
 1 " Origin of Species," p. 450.
 
 THE HOUSE OF LORDS. 105 
 
 not diminished since Paine wrote his discourteous 
 epistle to Dundas. Largely under Pitt's advice, 
 George III. had made 388 Peers. Mr. Gladstone, 
 for once, mimetic of Mr. Pitt, has created more 
 Peers than any one Minister since the Revolu- 
 tion. Most men in public life or at the bar, at 
 some time or other during their lives, secretly con- 
 template the possibility of becoming a Peer. They 
 do not talk about it, or even consciously hope for it. 
 But their attitude of mind towards the Peerage is 
 affected by the fact that the bulk of the House of 
 Lords consists of plain citizens of the last three or 
 four generations. The ending of the House of 
 Lords, so long as England remains a rich country, is 
 by no means so probable as many ardent spirits be- 
 lieve or desire. Were a Lancashire cotton famine to 
 recur, and similar disaster simultaneously to afflict 
 the other staples of the country, revolution might 
 well end the Upper House and much else besides. 
 But if we are to maintain a Second Chamber, it 
 must remain respectable ; it must have more and 
 not less power than the House of Lords. The 
 Upper House is powerless unless it has the people 
 at its back. The new Second Chamber, if the 
 Lords should receive their marching orders, must 
 possess real powers of revision and delay. But 
 there is only a certain definite quantity of political 
 power available under any political system.
 
 106 ENGLISH DEMO CRA C Y. 
 
 Power given to any Second Chamber that in the 
 future may replace the Lords, must therefore be 
 taken from the power now wielded by the House 
 of Commons. Nothing is more unlikely than that 
 the House of Commons will consent to its own 
 undoing, or will take any part in impairing its 
 present omnipotence. 
 
 M. Challemel-Lacour, in his speech from the 
 chair of the French State, delivered after his 
 re-election in 1894, pointed out as a gratifying 
 proof of the progress the political education of 
 the country was making, that at the last French 
 General Election little was heard about the 
 necessity of abolishing the Senate, which for- 
 merly was the cheval de bataille of a certain school 
 of politicians. He attributed this to the fact 
 that public opinion understood and discerned 
 more clearly the disadvantages and perils which 
 might accrue from the dictatorship of a single 
 Assembly, even if it were an Assembly of sages. 
 If this sense of the danger of the single Chamber 
 be thus tacitly accepted by a people both more 
 logical and more revolutionary than ourselves, 
 there is no likelihood of a Second Chamber being 
 abolished in the United Kingdom. Shrewd 
 observers may remark that it is possible for a 
 Ministry to gain a victory in the House of 
 Commons and to lose support in the country. The
 
 THE HOUSE OF LORDS. 107 
 
 proposal contained in the tenth clause of Mr. 
 Gladstone's Home Rule Bill, whereby the Irish 
 Members were to exercise power over British 
 taxation, education, and trade, while similar 
 powers over Irish affairs were denied to English 
 and Scottish representatives, was carried in the 
 House of Commons by a good majority. No 
 impartial person, not blinded by partizan feeling, 
 could hesitate in condemning such a proposal, 
 .and probably nine-tenths of the supporters of the 
 Government among the electors were sincerely 
 grateful to the House of Lords for rescuing Great 
 Britain from so humiliating a badge of inferiority 
 being fastened upon her. Nor can there be 
 reasonable doubt that the Government in conse- 
 quence lost weight in the constituencies from the 
 very circumstance that they gained a majority in 
 the House of Commons on a matter detestable to 
 patriotic Englishmen and Scots. 
 
 The victory in the House of Commons in the 
 contracting-out clause in the Employers Liability 
 Bill was equally attended with corresponding 
 defections in the electorate, and approval of the 
 action of the House of Lords. A hundred years 
 ago, Thomas Paine asked, in reference to the laws 
 regulating workmen's wages : " Why not leave 
 them free to make their own bargains, as the 
 law-makers are to let their farms and houses ?
 
 io8 ENGLISH DEMO CRA C Y. 
 
 Personal labour is all the property they have. 
 Why is that little and the little freedom they 
 enjoy to be infringed ? " l Had he lived to-day, 
 Tom Paine would have denounced Mr. John 
 Burns as a reactionary Tory, and, if free from the 
 serfdom of party, he must have recognised in the 
 action of the House of Lords on the Employers 
 Liability, the championship of that same prin- 
 ciple of freedom for which he had struggled and 
 his publisher had suffered imprisonment for four- 
 teen years. 
 
 Ten times as numerous as they were under 
 the Tudors, the Lords' power of initiative has 
 steadily waned, until the continued existence of 
 the House is dependent on the tact and good 
 sense of its leaders keeping it in sympathy with the 
 main body of deliberate national opinion. Re- 
 vision and delay are the only functions it now 
 claims, and no effective reasons have been pro- 
 duced to show that those functions would be 
 more satisfactorily performed by an elective 
 Chamber. The motion of Lord Rosebery in 
 1888 for a Committee to consider reform of the 
 House of Lords was rejected by a majority con- 
 sisting of less than a sixth of the existing Peers ; 
 and Lord Salisbury's Bill for the creation of life 
 Peers and exclusion of " black sheep " was not 
 1 " Rights of Man," ii., p. 150.
 
 THE HOUSE OF LORDS. . 109 
 
 carried to its third reading. The languid interest 
 of which these proceedings are the evidence are 
 but a mirror of the indifference of the country. 
 A Society for the Abolition of the House of 
 Lords exists, but they have aroused little interest 
 among the electors, who have accepted with 
 amused indifference the rejection of the most 
 ambitious measure of the most powerful minister 
 England has seen since the death of the younger 
 Pitt. 
 
 The abolition of the House of Lords by the 
 Rump in 1649, after the execution of the King and 
 the establishment of a republic, was in no sense 
 an act of the democracy. Those who voted the 
 House of Lords to be useless and dangerous were 
 set up and maintained by the military power, and 
 their existence from first to last depended on the 
 will of the soldiery. When the Rump forgot the 
 source of their power, they themselves were 
 promptly packed about their business. The 
 Commonwealth was by no means popular with 
 the nation. It was established by military viol- 
 ence : the power of the sword alone main- 
 tained its supremacy. Bitterly as the Puritans 
 cried out against the privilege and intolerance of 
 King and Peers, the Commonwealth men were not 
 a whit more tolerant. The English masses then 
 preferred, as they now prefer, to be governed by
 
 1 1 o ENGLISH DEMO CRA C Y. 
 
 gentlemen. No hatred so bitter exists as that of 
 rival proletarians for the proletary who has gained 
 place or position. Democracy has always de- 
 voured her children. The life of a Trade Union 
 Secretary is a life of incessant struggle for exist- 
 ence. The strongest opponents of Mr. John 
 Burns are now the men who first helped him to 
 emerge from obscurity. The repose of manner, 
 straightforwardness, coolness, and courage of 
 English gentlemen for Peers may frequently 
 claim to be gentlemen added to stately sur- 
 roundings, easy fortune, and the halo of tradition, 
 are irresistible to the majority of British trades- 
 men and interesting to everyone. 
 
 On these grounds it is unlikely that the House 
 of Lords is in immediate danger, unless, as in 
 1649, the naval and military powers support 
 a revolution, and maintain as their creature a 
 mutilated House of Commons to carry out their 
 behests. A resolution of the House of Commons 
 not supported by the Horse Guards and the 
 Admiralty would have no effect on the Upper 
 Chamber. It is probable that in the course of 
 the next few years the abolition of the hereditary 
 principle may be repeatedly carried in the 
 Commons. It was defeated by 202 to 166 in 
 1886; by 223 to 162 in 1888; by 201 to 160 in 
 1889; and by 201 to 139 in 1890. If carried,
 
 THE HOUSE OF LORDS. ill 
 
 and the Upper House be mended in accordance 
 with that principle, the first and obvious effect 
 will be reinforcement in the House of Commons of 
 elements representing law, family tradition and 
 property. In fact, the immediate effect of the 
 abolition of the hereditary principle, so far from 
 being progressive and democratic in character, 
 would be to give greater weight, because more 
 direct representation to the Conservative elements 
 of society. It is indeed difficult to understand 
 why the Conservative leaders resist the extinction 
 of hereditary right to legislate. They must be 
 aware that it can only last while times are quiet, 
 and the country prosperous and contented. If 
 the hereditary principle be left out in the storm 
 that sooner or later will arrive on these shores, it 
 is unlikely that it will survive. And in its fall, 
 much of the structure of our Constitution will 
 fall with it which wise counsels would maintain. 
 The hereditary principle is the one anomaly upon 
 which the philosopher and the demagogue can 
 unite in common antipathy. It is not essential to 
 the strength and utility of a Second Chamber. 
 Indeed, it is probable that the hereditary prin- 
 ciple will prove the doom rather than the sal- 
 vation of the one force in the Constitution that 
 still has the power to ensure that the real will of 
 the people is ascertained. It seems, therefore,
 
 112 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 probable that unless the privilege of hereditary 
 law-making be wisely surrendered when times 
 are quiet, it will be violently withdrawn in the 
 next serious crisis of our national life.
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 
 
 "A CAPACITY for prostituting a Man's Self in his 
 Behaviour, and descending to the present humour 
 of the vulgar, is, perhaps, as good an ingredient 
 as any other for making a considerable Figure in 
 the World." Richard Steele wrote thus regard- 
 ing candidates for Parliament in I/I2. 1 We may 
 certainly repeat at the close of the nineteenth 
 century what Steele declared to be true at the 
 beginning of the eighteenth. The older tradition 
 under which each Member of the House of 
 Commons was a representative of the whole 
 Commonwealth, and stood for England, has 
 nearly died out. As members responsible for the 
 United Kingdom, it would not beseem Irish 
 Nationalists to itinerate the planet in their research 
 after endowments for themselves and their fol- 
 lowers. The annual sacrifice of one glass of 
 
 1 Spectator, No. 394, Monday, June 2nd, 1712. 
 
 113 H
 
 1 14 ENGLISH DEMOCRA C Y. 
 
 whisky by each of the adult Home Rulers in 
 Ireland, would suffice to obviate the degrading 
 mendicancy of an integral and governing portion 
 of the present British Parliament. Although 
 appeals to the bounty of citizens of other lands 
 would be as repugnant to Representatives of 
 the people as to those they represent, there is 
 no incongruity in such importunity on the part of 
 Delegates from localities : owning mercenary 
 allegiance to the foreigners and strangers who 
 pay them, to the party chiefs who nominate 
 them, to the priests who secure their return by 
 the terrors of hell ; or, indeed, to any persons 
 or society other than the general community 
 inhabiting these islands. 
 
 From the time of the Revolution until the 
 death of John Stuart Mill, the principle that 
 there is a limit to the permissible action of 
 government has been tacitly admitted. Since 
 the House of Commons betook itself to improv- 
 ing the moral characters of men, the idea of limit- 
 ing the sphere of legislation to the protection of 
 life, liberty, and goods, seems to have vanished. 
 And it is noticeable that while this sort of legisla- 
 tion ignores the morality of those in easy circum- 
 stances, and presses almost entirely upon .the poor, 
 moral legislation is becoming more and more 
 identified with the popular party in politics.
 
 THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 115 
 
 Whichever party succeeds in convincing the 
 electorate that it wishes to make bad men good, 
 to substitute love and sympathy for inexorable 
 natural law, seems destined to hold the reins of 
 power for a long period of time. Experiments 
 in social reform that would be impossible for 
 Representatives of the Empire to sanction, are 
 eagerly demanded by the Delegates of our 
 populous constituencies : not because they them- 
 selves believe in those experiments ; but because 
 a Parliamentary career hangs upon their simu- 
 lation of faith. The scope of Government has 
 been immensely enlarged by the silent entry of 
 ecstasy into administration. The main function 
 of the House of Commons is no longer to control 
 finance, to check administration, or to govern. 
 It is to feel the pulse of a feverish democracy ; 
 to soothe it with new experiments ; to realise in- 
 congruous advantages ; to raise the unfit who fail 
 because they are unfit to the level of those who 
 succeed because they are fit. The keen-witted 
 young citizens who dream dreams are many of 
 them sedentary, bald, spectacled, and toothless. 
 Members of the reformed House of Commons, 
 for the first time in the history of that assembly, 
 are the . delegates of masses suffering from 
 physical debility, destitution, embarrassment, and 
 anxiety. The survival of the fittest may be well
 
 1 16 ENGLISH DEMOCRA C Y. 
 
 for orchids or gazelles ; but the\ multiplication of 
 the unfit in growing numbers ; the elimination of 
 means by which the unfit are sterilised ; and the 
 increasing reverence with which the lives of 
 broken specimens of mankind are regarded, com- 
 bine to form no small portion of the material 
 from which the British urban electorate is now 
 chosen. It is clear that, in the same measure 
 as the House of Commons is a mirror of the 
 electors, it will reflect their moods, execute 
 their orders, and realise their desires. If the 
 ideal be food without work, immunity from taxa- 
 tion, the political supremacy of one class, free 
 education, libraries, travel, Board School meals 
 for children, and the exploitation of the strong 
 and successful by the garrulous failures in life, 
 that idea will be faithfully followed by the dele- 
 gates of a partially invalid, hungry, and unhappy 
 democracy. Members of the House of Commons 
 must see as clearly as the rest of us that strikes 
 begun in ignorance of facts ruling industry abroad 
 destroy or exile British trade. They may ap- 
 preciate the influence of self-indulgence, reckless 
 marriage, wilful idleness or dogged and obstinate 
 oblivion to plain truths. But they dare not say 
 so, except in private. The late Lord Sherbrooke, 
 in 1 886, destroyed for ever his chance of re-elec- 
 tion for a popular constituency by declaring in
 
 THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 117 
 
 the House of Commons : " If you want venality, 
 ignorance, drunkenness, and the means of in- 
 timidation ; if you want impulsive, unreflecting, 
 violent people, where will you go to look for 
 them to the top or to the bottom ? " Demos is 
 sacrosanct. He may impute to others with im- 
 punity all the seven deadly sins. To hint that he 
 himself is not an ascetic, a sage, and a saint, is to 
 court political extinction. He gulps down flattery 
 like an Oriental, and accepts adulation with the 
 voracity of a beautiful woman not in her first 
 youth. Devotees who refuse to burn the incense 
 are thrust without the fane. 
 
 On a recent occasion, a Mansion House Com- 
 mittee was appointed to investigate the existence 
 of distress in London, caused by lack of employ- 
 ment, and to consider the best means of dealing 
 with it. The Committee consisted of competent 
 and representative men, among whom was Mr. 
 George Shipton, Secretary of the Trades Council. 
 It was suggested in the report of the Committee, 
 inter aha, that the stamina, physical and moral, 
 of the London working classes was susceptible 
 of improvement ; that the competition of foreign 
 skilled workmen would only be met by moral and 
 educational improvement in the British workman; 
 and that reckless improvidence and intemperance 
 were often found in the ranks of the unemployed.
 
 n8 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 Mr. George Shipton finding in these remarks 
 some reflection by Dives on Demos withdrew 
 his name from the report, on the ground that in 
 his opinion the paragraphs in question are alto- 
 gether erroneous and contrary to fact. Here we 
 have an interesting illustration of Mr. Herbert 
 Spencer's doctrine that social organisms during 
 the militant stage of their evolution have to 
 maintain their lives by offensive and defensive 
 activities. Demos, speaking by the mouth of his 
 prophet, Mr. George Shipton, cannot brook the 
 imputation of insobriety even when brought 
 against the unemployed, of whom from thirty to 
 forty per cent, are notoriously victims of Venus and 
 Bacchus. Where Mr. George Shipton fears to 
 tread, Members of Parliament cannot be expected 
 to rush in. The obvious result is, that since 
 Government is merely the expression of the domi- 
 nant power in the State, the House of Commons 
 neither receives nor expresses the truth about the 
 people. Ce nest que la verite qui blesse. While 
 willing to listen to the truth about the Navy, 
 Home Rule, or the South Kensington gang, the 
 last thing to which Demos will give ear, is the 
 truth about himself. 
 
 Plato and Aristotle distinguished Government 
 as true and pure when power is used for the good 
 of the people, and as false and perverted when it
 
 THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 119 
 
 is maintained for the private interest of the ruler. 
 Judged by this standard, the House of Commons 
 cannot escape condemnation. 
 
 Democracy is essentially and justly identified 
 with government in the interests of the needy. 
 The tax-paying community is to be found mainly 
 among those who have lost political power, and the 
 whole tendency of modern legislation is necessarily 
 to thrust the burden on the shoulders of those who 
 are impotent to resist. The popular allegation 
 that the poor pay the larger proportion of taxa- 
 tion cannot be sustained. According to the 
 Economist (January 20, 1894) the opposite is 
 true. The Imperial taxes collected in England 
 in 1892-3 were ^65,736,000, and the local rates 
 amounted to ,28,000,000. Rates and taxes 
 amounted therefore to ^93,736,000. First as to 
 rates. According to Mr. Fowler's report on local 
 taxation, it is calculated that out of ^27,800,000 
 of rates raised in 1890-1, ^17,500,000 consisted 
 of rates borne by houses. It is only, of course, of 
 this latter portion that the working-classes bear 
 any share, and from the revenue returns it appears 
 that about 22 per cent, of the aggregate house 
 property is made up of houses rated at ^15 a 
 year and under. Assuming that the 15 limit 
 embraces the houses occupied by the working- 
 classes, and assuming all the rates fall on the
 
 ENGLISH DEMO CRA C Y. 
 
 occupiers, the total contribution of these classes 
 may be set down at about ,4,000,000. Turning 
 then to the Imperial taxes the Economist con- 
 tinues : 
 
 " These may be divided into two classes those to which 
 the working-classes contribute in part, and those to which they 
 do not contribute at all, that division being, broadly, as 
 follows : 
 
 YEAR 1892-3. YIELD OF TAXES. 
 
 To Which the 
 Working- 
 classes 
 Contribute. 
 
 
 Cocoa, coffee, fruits, &c 592,000 
 
 Tea. 2,587,000 
 
 Tobacco 7,593,000 
 
 Spirits 13,972,000 
 
 Beer .. 8,856,000 
 
 Receipt and patent medicine 
 
 stamps 1,000,000 
 
 34,600,000 
 
 To Which the 
 Working- 
 classes 
 do not 
 Contribute. 
 
 Wine 1,083,000 
 
 Death duties 9,113,000 
 
 Land tax and house duty 2,310,000- 
 
 Income-tax 11,414,000 
 
 Stamps on deeds, securities, 
 
 &c 3,780,000 
 
 Railway duty 331,000 
 
 Licences 3,105,000 
 
 31,136,000 
 
 Total ^65,736,000. 
 
 Exception may possibly be taken to our including licences 
 among the taxes to which the working-classes do not contri- 
 bute. Our answer is, that we have done so because the 
 revenue from this source is derived either from the gratifications 
 of the better-to-do classes, or from special taxes upon certain 
 traders. And now arises the question, ' What portion of the 
 ^34,600,000 of taxation to which the whole community con- 
 tributes is paid by the poorer classes, on whose behalf Sir 
 William Harcourt has been memorialised ? ' That is a ques- 
 tion to which it is impossible to give a definite answer ; but 
 there are means of arriving at an approximate estimate. In 
 1891-2, out of 5,839,000 houses assessed to income-tax, 
 3,772,000 consisted of houses under 1$ rent. The working- 
 class houses, that is, amounted to about 65 per cent, of the 
 total, and it may be assumed that the numbers of the working- 
 class population bear pretty much the same proportion to the
 
 THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 121 
 
 entire population. Obviously, however, it will not do to 
 assume that their consumption of dutiable articles is as great 
 per head as that of people with larger means. Of spirits, for 
 instance, which of all taxed commodities yield the largest 
 revenue, the consumption of the poorer classes is proportion- 
 ately very much less than that of those with more ample 
 means. Without, however, entering into details, it seems to 
 us that if we credit these 65 per cent, of the poorest of the 
 population with 50 per cent, of our entire consumption of duti- 
 able articles, that is much more likely to be over than under 
 the mark, and on that basis the incidence of Imperial and 
 local taxation may be estimated somewhat thus : 
 
 Poorer Classes. Other Class. 
 
 
 Imperial taxation 17,300,000 .. 48,500,000 
 
 Local rates 4,000,000 . . 24,000,000 
 
 21,300,000 .. 72,500,000 
 
 "According to this, the class that constitutes two-thirds of the 
 population contributes considerably less than one-fourth of the 
 total Imperial and local revenues, while the remaining third 
 contribute over three-fourths." 
 
 The sense of responsibility is largely 
 blunted in Members of the House of Com- 
 mons by the necessity for advertisement and 
 display. Comparatively few speeches are now 
 delivered for the good of the country. Eight 
 million people read at breakfast the name if not 
 the oration of him who addressed the House 
 the previous night. Vast though invisible, the 
 magic personality of such an audience over- 
 shadows the interests of the House, and even of 
 the Bill under discussion. Democracy has on 
 the one hand created the demand for cheap 
 literature and cheap newspapers, but it also, on
 
 122 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 the other hand, depends for existence upon them. 
 The House of Commons no longer exercises 
 individual sway. Its rule over public opinion is 
 second to that of the Press. Its Members are 
 usually more influenced by the newspapers than 
 by the House itself. The Press exists primarily to 
 pay its proprietors, not to spread truth, and accord- 
 ingly appeals to the largest possible numbers of 
 subscribers. Many of these newspaper-reading 
 electors are among the unfit, albeit they are 
 politically powerful through their numbers. As 
 they cannot win success in life under a system of 
 competition, they are compelled to look elsewhere 
 for an amelioration of their lot. The only source 
 from which their comforts can be increased or 
 their hardships relieved is the pockets of those 
 who have succeeded by exertion or inheritance 
 in getting the wealth so much desired. News- 
 paper proprietors, with dividends in view, articu- 
 late this desire for relief works, the living wage, 
 the eight hour day, and the payment of Members : 
 and find their account in so doing. Members 
 of the House of Commons, tumbling over one 
 another in their fidelity to Demos and his 
 parasites, the newspaper proprietors, become 
 more democratic than Demos in the pillage not 
 only of Dives, but of poor taxpayers whose 
 success in life is wholly due to their own efforts.
 
 THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 123 
 
 This state of things is but the inevitable out- 
 come of the prevalent drift of existing convention 
 and sentiment. For good or evil the influence of 
 an irresponsible Press is here. The question is : 
 What is the outlook for Parliament ? Such vast 
 masses of the electors as now possess the franchise 
 are necessarily controlled by caucuses, moved by 
 emotion, manipulated by faddists or schemers, and 
 used as the machinery for intrigue. Real interests 
 are concealed under party watchwords, and hard 
 facts are sacrificed to party phrases. Passion 
 flouts experience, and the demagogue thrusts 
 the statesman out of his true position in the 
 esteem of the people. We are approaching the 
 parting of the ways. If the English democracy 
 is to set the example of dignity and moderation, 
 of impartial consideration for all interests, of 
 continuous purpose in foreign and domestic policy, 
 and of resistance to class legislation, it is high 
 time that some evidence were forthcoming of its 
 intentions. The example of the predecessor of 
 democracy does not furnish hopeful anticipations 
 for the future. The governing class is selfish. 
 
 One source of England's greatness and of the 
 position she occupies among the nations, is that 
 her citizens generally have always been ready 
 gratuitously to devote themselves to the public 
 service ; and one chief reason why the people
 
 124 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 have so much confidence in the House of Com- 
 mons is that the large majority of the Members 
 have not hitherto entered Parliament for the sake 
 of gain, but on the contrary, they make some 
 personal sacrifice in order to serve their country. 
 So long as public life is filled by honourable men 
 who serve their country without gain, the spirit of 
 democracy, whatever its faults, will not lose the 
 note of distinction. Austin said that the nature 
 of the constitution under which men live is of less 
 importance than the spirit in which that constitu- 
 tion is administered. Payment of members may 
 not kill patriotism, but the love of country is more 
 likely to flourish where no money passes in her 
 service. It is notorious that the payment of 
 members abroad has produced evil results ; and 
 that in no country are the personal characters of 
 politicians on so high a level as in England. The 
 payment of a salary by the State to representatives 
 of the people would endanger their independence, 
 curtail their freedom of action, and transfer the 
 real representative functions from Members of Par- 
 liament to the Chairman or Committee of the local 
 caucus, and to the Head Boss of the day. 
 
 The tone of the House of Commons is already 
 deteriorated, but the entrance of a swarm of needy 
 adventurers, many of them lawyers, would further 
 debase the standard to which the House of Com-
 
 THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 125 
 
 mons has already sunk. The corruption visible 
 and notorious in all lands where members of the 
 Legislature are paid (except in the Cape Colony, 
 where the aristocratic instincts and traditions of 
 the Dutch have raised the standard of political 
 honour) would not fail to infect our public men. 
 Men with narrow views and limited aims would 
 increase. Constant changes in the personnel of 
 the House would further restrict the number of 
 those with sufficient experience of Parliamentary 
 methods to govern wisely. Bribery by promise, 
 already a fine art, would increase. The tempta- 
 tion for paid members to keep themselves before 
 the public would become irresistible, and the evils 
 of congested legislation could only be remedied by 
 ever-increasing applications of gag and closure. 
 The ancient system of payment of members forms 
 no precedent. It was carried on under totally 
 different conditions, worked badly, and fell into 
 disuse. It has not generally been found elsewhere 
 that the payment of members resulted in the return 
 of "Labour members" ; where it has, the result 
 has been peculiar and unsatisfactory. Sir G. 
 Dibbs has stated that in New South Wales the 
 experiment of the system of payment of members 
 had proved a failure. 
 
 The early days of Mr. Gladstone's fourth 
 tenure of power produced a vigorous agitation on
 
 I z6 ENGLISH DEMOCRA C Y. 
 
 the part of his followers for the payment of 
 Members of Parliament. On March 24th, 1893, 
 Mr. W. Allen carried in the House of Commons 
 a resolution that "a reasonable allowance should 
 forthwith be granted to all Members of Parlia- 
 ment." Sir William Harcourt accepted the de- 
 finition of "forthwith" as meaning something 
 less than the equivalent of "immediately, with- 
 out delay, at once," set against the word in 
 standard dictionaries. In the new democratic 
 vocabulary, " forthwith " is precisely equivalent 
 to the Russian word seitchass, " as soon as prac- 
 ticable," or the Spanish manana. The House 
 of Commons accepted this view, and carried 
 the resolution by a majority of 276 to 229. 
 
 One great Party is now fairly committed to the 
 payment of Members of Parliament ; finally pledged 
 to the substitution of the hired delegate for the 
 free representative ; for ever done with Burke's 
 declaration to the electors of Bristol : " Certainly, 
 gentlemen, it ought to be the happiness and 
 glory of a representative to live in the strictest 
 union, the closest correspondence, and the most 
 unreserved communion with his constituents. 
 Their wishes ought to have great weight with 
 him ; their opinion, high respect ; their business, 
 unremitting attention. It is his duty to sacri- 
 fice his repose, his pleasures, his satisfactions to-
 
 THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 127 
 
 theirs ; and above all, ever and in all cases, to 
 prefer their interests to his own. But his un- 
 biassed opinion, his mature judgment, his en- 
 lightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to 
 you, to any man, or to any set of men living. 
 These he does not derive from your pleasure ; 
 no, nor from the law and the Constitution. 
 They are a trust from Providence, for the abuse 
 of which he is deeply answerable. Your repre- 
 sentative owes you not his industry only, but his 
 judgment ; and he betrays instead of serving 
 you if he sacrifices it to your opinion." 1 
 
 Let us now attempt to survey the road we 
 shall have to travel in India when the payment of 
 Members of Parliament produces its inevitable 
 results. 
 
 1 "Burke's Works," vol. iii., p. 18.
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE PAROCHIALISATION OF INDIA. 
 
 THE treatment of their inheritance of the Empire 
 of India and its frontier questions by the Labour 
 leaders and the British democracy, is notable 
 among the perplexing problems awaiting solution 
 in the near future. Hitherto, the lack of interest 
 in Indian subjects by the House of Commons has 
 been salutary for the governed, however much the 
 governing body may have lost from narrow in- 
 difference to their responsibilities for one-fifth of 
 the human race. So long as the Indian Govern- 
 ment were left untrammelled to govern India, all 
 went fairly well. India was won by the sword : 
 is held by the sword ; and, if English democracy 
 is to continue the mastery that our race has exer- 
 cised there since the battle of Plassey, democracy 
 must steadily face the sudden necessity of 
 again drawing the sword. So-called humani- 
 tarian interests in the mother country, perhaps un- 
 duly represented in the House of Commons, have 
 
 recently modified the relations between the Indian 
 
 128
 
 THE PAROCHIALISATION OF INDIA. 129 
 
 Government and the Legislature. Signs are not 
 wanting of the approach of a struggle between 
 the House of Commons and the administration 
 responsible for law and order in India. Con- 
 tinuity of policy in India is produced, as in 
 Russia, by the bureaucracy never going out of 
 office. Individuals change. Government con- 
 tinues. Uninterrupted sequence of view is 
 secured. Alternation of parties is unknown. 
 The body is subject to a process of incessant and 
 minute alteration. The soul of Government 
 dwells permanently in Simla and Calcutta ; is 
 never changed or obscured; and permeates the life 
 of every race throughout the Continent of India. 
 The vast populations have been accustomed to 
 . look upon the Government as the final authority, 
 exercising power for and on behalf of the Empress 
 of India. Since 1885, the action of the House of 
 Commons has seriously affected the position of 
 the Government of India in the eyes of the natives, 
 by giving evidence of the existence of divided 
 authority. The House of Commons is ignorant, 
 but supreme. The Government of India is in 
 possession of all the facts, has a hundred and forty 
 years' experience, and is primarily responsible for 
 holding the wolf by the ears. If the House of 
 Commons were directly to exercise sole control, 
 the Government of our great dependency might
 
 130 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 be strong, but it would certainly lack the know- 
 ledge essential to due appreciation of the compli- 
 cated questions that await ^treatment from day to 
 day. But the direct Government of India by the 
 House of Commons is preferable to the spasmodic 
 interference of ignorant and practically irrespon- 
 sible sentimentalists, with the resident and respon- 
 sible authority. Respect of the many weak for the 
 few strong is impaired by divided counsels. Syndi- 
 cated leadership indicates weakness in the strongest 
 camp. Recent interferences of the House of Com- 
 mons with the Government of India are ominous 
 for the future. The Opium Commission, appointed 
 rather with a view to political exigencies at home, 
 than from any warrantable necessity, has been the 
 most conspicuous example of ignorant or reckless 
 philanthropists jerking the reins from the driver's 
 hands. The question of the holding of examina- 
 tions at Calcutta is another case in point. In the 
 case of the moral condition of military cantonments, 
 the House of Commons ignored plain facts which, 
 however repulsive or deplorable, no statesman 
 dealing with celibate troops can omit from his 
 calculations. 1 Parliamentary interference with the 
 Indian authorities on matters of detail is unconsti- 
 tutional, and tends to sap faith in British firmness 
 
 1 I am informed by officers of great experience, that our 
 military power in India is already weakened by the great in- 
 crease of hospital cases among the rank and file.
 
 THE PAROCHIALISATWN OF INDIA. 131 
 
 and strength, without which no Government can 
 retain the contented respect of Oriental or Celt. 
 When Members of Parliament visit India, and 
 exalt the garrulous Babu to a sense of rights he 
 never possessed, which he has not earned, to 
 wrongs he has not suffered, the amiable Parlia- 
 mentarians concerned are setting in motion a 
 very complex machinery. 
 
 India is not squeezed by England as Russia 
 would squeeze her. The taxation per head does 
 not exceed sixpence per annum. The condition 
 of the people is distinctly improved since the 
 beginning of the century. There is not, or ever 
 has been, a Poor Law ; nor is there any apparent 
 need for one. Wages and prices have risen 
 during the British rule. The labourer of the 
 better class will earn four annas a day ; the hum- 
 bler, not less than two annas. Fuel is but little 
 needed. Bombay thrives at the expense of Lanca- 
 shire. The Jute Industry of Calcutta has thriven 
 at the expense of Dundee ; and British farmers 
 are ruined, and their agricultural labourers fight 
 at the Metropolitan Dock gates for coolie work, 
 while the Indian Wheat Trade flourishes in great 
 prosperity. Rent for cottages in India is almost 
 unknown, and the masses of the population live 
 as owners or occupants on their lands. The great 
 increase in the population during the last hundred
 
 132 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 years has been provided for by large extensions of 
 the cultivated area. Jungle has been replaced by 
 grain. The swamps of former years bear now 
 rich crops^of paddy. Irrigation has attained vast 
 dimensions. Drought and famine have never 
 been absent for long together, but since England 
 became responsible for India, her western skill and 
 capital have made large contributions to the per- 
 manent fertility of her dependency. The irrigation 
 area is reckoned at twenty-eight millions of acres. 
 The British Government have laid out over Rx 
 31,000,000 on irrigation alone. Famine has been 
 met by the devotion of the entire resources and 
 power of the Government to the mitigation of 
 distress and the saving of life. 
 
 The Indian bureaucracy has no equal in history, 
 no rival in the present. Russian tchinovniks im- 
 part to their subjects of Central Asia the vices of 
 Moscow, while themselves adopting the licentious- 
 ness of Samarcand. From the members of the 
 Viceroy's Cabinet to the newest and rawest Com- 
 petition Wallah, there is a tone among the Eng- 
 lish civilians which neither the empire of the 
 Caesars nor the empire of the Tsar has ever 
 known. The lofty aims, the pure lives, the un- 
 wearied toil, the even justice, the strong unsel- 
 fishness, and the ever present courage of the 
 English race, as represented by the Indian Civil
 
 THE PAROCHIALISA T1ON OF INDIA. 1 33 
 
 Service and their military colleagues in the 
 administration of the country, are scarcely 
 appreciated in England. Russians do not 
 believe in, because they do not understand, the 
 moral strength of England's position in India. 
 We owe this strength in great measure to the 
 conduct and the dutifulness of our Indian services. 
 The men who form these services are silent 
 about their responsibilities. But the sense that 
 they stand as representatives of their country is 
 seldom or never absent from the mind of each 
 one of them. In other directions in her drink 
 traffic, in her sweating system, in her unemployed, 
 in her social evil England stands before Europe 
 convicted of national hypocrisy. But her govern- 
 ment of India, more especially since the Mutiny, 
 has redeemed much that she has left undone else- 
 where. Were it not for India and her Civil Ser- 
 vice, Egypt to-day might have remained in bond 
 age. In a few years, Egypt was carried from bank- 
 ruptcy to solvency by officials lent to Egypt by 
 India. The English hold on Egypt is due to the 
 same spirit that makes India at once the pride 
 and the burden of our country. 
 
 What will be the methods of the new demo- 
 cracy in dealing with India ? New problems are 
 springing up. The finances are disorganised. 
 There is a religious rivalry among the Hindoos
 
 134 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY, 
 
 which has had no parallel since the days before 
 the Mutiny. The renaissance of religious feeling 
 among the Hindoo population, which finds ex- 
 pression in the anti-cow-killing riots, is caused by 
 the reactionary forces among them protesting 
 against the inroad of Western ideas. Mission- 
 aries, education, roads, golf, telegraphs, all 
 contribute to the decay of Hindooism. The 
 Brahmins are no longer treated with the respect 
 to which they were formerly accustomed. The 
 decay of priestly and prelatical authority in 
 western Europe finds its eastern parallel in the 
 fading influence of the Brahmin, the Guru and 
 the Moulvie. The waning influence of the 
 ecclesiastical caste, whether in India or England, 
 leads to instinctive efforts to recover its position 
 elsewhere. The democracy must deal with these 
 things. 
 
 The Indian National Congress is responsible 
 for much of the ferment that is now prevalent 
 among the educated natives. It is responsible 
 for creating the false idea that India is homo- 
 geneous. To convey that idea to the British 
 democracy is necessary to the existence of the 
 National Congress. If it be a misuse of terms 
 to speak of Ireland as one entity when reference 
 is made to the desires of one section of the 
 populace, how much more repugnant is it to
 
 THE PAROCHIAL1SA TION OF INDIA. 135 
 
 reason and to sense, when dealing with the 
 complex wishes of so many different and rival 
 races, to speak of India as "she"? And how 
 futile is the claim of any man or body of 
 Orientals, superficially acquainted with Western 
 thought, to express the dim longings of the inar- 
 ticulate millions, which are no less unintelligible to 
 then than to us ! The differences of language, 
 race and religion, are more sharply marked in 
 Hindostan than in Europe. There is no such 
 gulf between the Greek, Latin and Anglican 
 branches of the Christian Church as between the 
 Moslem, the Brahmin, the Parsee, the Buddhist 
 and the Jain. Among the Mahommedans alone, 
 the Sunais and the Shiahs, the fanatical Wahabis, 
 the orthodox and the degenerate sectarians, differ 
 from each other on religious matters fully as 
 much as Italian contadini differ from Russian 
 Moujiks. Between Lamaism and the adorers 
 of Vishnu, of Siva, of Rama, Krishna, Kali and 
 Hanuman ; between the Sikhs or disciples, and 
 the Parsees, is a great gulf fixed. Swine are 
 abominable to the Moslem ; cows sacred to the 
 Hindoo. The Caste system is a potent factor in 
 the national life, and is alone an impenetrable 
 barrier to the claim of any Babu, Parsee, or 
 English sentimentalist to speak in the name of 
 the teeming myriads of India. But Demos seems
 
 136 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 inclined to think any Home Rule M.P. a better 
 authority on Indian affairs than Lord Lawrence 
 or Sir Lepel Griffin. 
 
 In December, 1885, the same year in which 
 the British democracy obtained household suf- 
 frage in the counties, the first National Indian 
 Congress met at Bombay. The coloured Presi- 
 dent of the Second Congress is now, to the honour 
 of his constituents, Member of Parliament for 
 Central Finsbury. At the last Congress held at 
 Allahabad, it was affirmed that the great bane of 
 the Indian Administration was the want of real 
 responsibility. Resolutions were carried arging 
 the advisibility of the election of native repre- 
 sentatives on the legislative Council, cf simul- 
 taneous examinations for the public service in 
 India and England ; of the separation of execu- 
 tive and judicial functions, and of full considera- 
 tion by the Government before undertaking any 
 change in the currency standard. 
 
 Most Members of the House of Commons, 
 steeped in a democratic environment, find it diffi- 
 cult to project themselves into the conditions of 
 Indian life. With them a congress is too often a 
 fetish. A congress is a congress, vhenever it 
 meets, and whether its members be black, tawny, 
 or white. If the congress be formed of Trade 
 Unionists and meet in England, the resolutions
 
 THE PAROCI1IALISATJON OF INDIA. 137 
 
 of the Trades Congress have all the force of an 
 authoritative voice speaking for the Trade Unions 
 throughout the kingdom. In like manner, a con- 
 gress of educated natives of India, meeting at 
 Amrika or Allahabad, is assumed to speak for 
 India with as much fidelity as when Mr. Burns 
 expresses the views of the Socialists of South 
 London. Misunderstandings, confusion, false 
 hopes, and the seed of troubles to come, are the 
 natural result of so gigantic and unfounded an 
 assumption. The views of the Indian Govern- 
 ment are jeered at, denied, flouted. Official 
 statements are considered to be sufficiently 
 answered when they are branded as official. The 
 conception that Indian officials tell the truth on 
 any subject, when Mr. Bonerjee, Mr. Lalmohun 
 Ghose, Mr. Caine, and Mr. Naoroji take the 
 opposite view, scarcely exists. They are officials, 
 therefore they are liars. When traduced, custom 
 imposes on them silence. But they resent, and 
 rightly resent, the defamation to which the Indian 
 Civil Service is now constantly subjected. Lord 
 Ripon first opened the door to the loss of India 
 that must inevitably occur unless the democracy 
 wake up to an Imperial sense of their magnificent 
 inheritance : to the worth and moral excellence of 
 their gallant servants in their Eastern Empire, 
 and to the petty fanaticism of the meddlesome
 
 138 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 prigs who alone seem to have gained the ear of 
 Demos in matters relating to India. 
 
 If thefe is much to make the democracy hesitate 
 to accept whole-hearted the heavy task of rule in 
 India, there are not wanting favourable signs of 
 physical, intellectual, and moral advantages that 
 may well make them pause before yielding, as 
 they are asked to yield in Ireland, to the 
 beguiling emotions of comfort and cowardice. 
 The indirect influence of Christian missions is now 
 remarkable. How far the new ideas that are 
 changing Indian thought and opinions are due to 
 missionary enterprise, how far to the influence of 
 Western philosophy, and what proportion is attri- 
 butable to the lives and examples of the English 
 servants of the Crown in India, cannot here be 
 determined. It is, however, certain, on the testi- 
 mony of all close observers resident in India, that 
 there is a process of evolution at work, destined 
 to produce results of the highest importance. 
 These results are not those looked for by the 
 Indian National Congress. The administration 
 of India by Babus, maintained by the British 
 army, seems to be their secret ideal. The 
 tendencies at work appear to indicate a purification 
 of the best Hindoos, obliteration of caste distinc- 
 tions, a recognition of the unselfishness with which 
 England, since 1857, has refrained from exploiting
 
 THE PAROCHIALISATION OF INDIA. 139 
 
 India for her own benefit, and the exhibition 
 of a legitimate desire for more knowledge and 
 a larger outlook under English raj. Russia's 
 methods are beginning to be known. There 
 is nothing in them to create a wish to ex- 
 change British red-coats for Cossack grey, or the 
 purity of British administration for Muscovite 
 corruption and intrigue. 
 
 Even in these depressed times the value of 
 Indian trade to the British democracy is consider- 
 able, and any playing fast and loose with interests 
 so vast is financially unwise. The returns for the 
 last year available amounted to Rx9O,ooo,ooo, or 
 not far short of 2 per head of our population. 
 Were our relations with India to cease, the whole 
 of this great and growing market would vanish. 
 Free imports may possibly be too costly for India 
 to sustain with the disorganised currency the 
 depreciated rupee. 1 But the sort of protection 
 England may perchance elect to impose in India 
 will be a different affair altogether from the zariba 
 of custom houses with which Russia would sur- 
 round the Indian dependency if ever the Cross of 
 St. Andrew floats over the city of Calcutta. We 
 should lose the trade in cotton manufactures, yarn, 
 
 1 This was, of course, written before Mr. Westland's 1 894-5 
 Budget, and the deplorable omission of cotton goods from the 
 tariff, in order to catch the Lancashire vote.
 
 140 ENGLISH DEMOCRA C Y. 
 
 iron, copper, machinery, and woollens, and thus 
 increase materially the number of the British un- 
 employed. Upon the wage-earning classes would 
 the heavier burden fall. The loss of India would 
 injure English working men and women to such 
 an extent it is impossible but that the self-interest 
 of the democracy will shortly be roused to the 
 danger of allowing anti-opiumists, wild Western 
 theorists, and relentless philanthropists, to plant 
 their projects upon India, in the teeth of England's 
 duty and England's interests. 
 
 But it will be asked, why are the endeavours 
 of good men pernicious when they are bent 
 upon purifying our Indian Administration and 
 introducing the benefits of Western ideas and 
 the representative system to the people of 
 Hindostan? The answer is simple. They pre- 
 tend to deal with facts that they do not under- 
 stand, by machinery they cannot control. Half 
 a dozen hurried visits to India in the cold 
 weather in search of evidence to support a posi- 
 tion taken up a priori, are worthless as a guide 
 to the enlightened treatment of diverse races who 
 would fly at each other's throats the day after 
 we relinquished our hold upon India. It is 
 true that India is held by the sword : but behind 
 the power of the sword is the repute England 
 has gained of being willing to strike freely and
 
 THE PAROCHIALISATION OF INDIA. 141 
 
 strike hard. It is not alone that she has the 
 strong hand, but that she is ready to use it, that 
 sustains \hepax britannica, while only 70,000 white 
 soldiers control a population of 270,000,000 
 many of them the flower of the warlike races 
 of the world. The spell of England's name is 
 equal to many armies. Injure her fame whether 
 the slander proceed from Babu traitors or Glad- 
 stonian baronets is immaterial and you must 
 elect between the costly increase of your white 
 troops and prompt evacuation. 
 
 English politicians are so absorbed in such 
 matters as nominated or elected trustees of 
 parochial charities, that they have not en- 
 lightened the democracy as to the paramount 
 importance of maintaining the reputation that 
 England now has for being willing to shed the 
 blood of a million of men before her Empire is 
 lost or divided. 1 Every crotcheteer can discover 
 in India food for his fancy or fuel for his fire. 
 Men with the ideals of Mr. Wilfrid Blunt, the 
 sympathies of Sir Joseph Pease, or the versatil- 
 ity of Mr. Caine, find ready to their hands in 
 India all that they seek at a reasonable price. 
 Throughout the East evidence is a commodity. 
 
 1 The recent appointment of the Indian Secretaryship on 
 Mr. Fowler, as a reward for minute knowledge of parochial de- 
 tails, is a signal example of how to squander British reputation 
 in India.
 
 1 42 ENGLISH DEMO CRA C Y. 
 
 It can be bought or obtained by all who are 
 willing to pay the price, or effect the barter re- 
 quired by the dealers in evidence. It is thus 
 that excellent but emotional men are manipulated 
 by wily Hindoos, as other equally comfortable 
 democrats have been practised upon by rhetorical 
 Celts. The anti-opiumists had probably no 
 intention of planting in Indian soil the germs of 
 the Irish question when they embarked on their 
 crusade against the moderate use of the drug 
 by our vegetarian and fever-haunted fellow- 
 subjects. But the injury done by those peace- 
 mongering firebrands in undermining the 
 reputation of England is incalculable, and 
 should never be forgotten by the intelligent 
 democracy. 1 By weakening England in India, 
 it is the English democracy that is wounded 
 in pocket and in prestige. Unless Demos 
 promptly gives to the National Congress fair 
 warning that there is no chance of a small 
 elective Government of intellectual Bengalis being 
 established in India, and then maintained in 
 power by a mercenary British army, the sever- 
 ance of the tie between England and India is 
 but a question of time. The Indian question 
 and the Irish question have much in common. 
 
 1 The irritation among the Sikhs at the Anti-Opium Com 
 mission is both serious and bitter. We have not heard the 
 last of it.
 
 THE PAROCHIALISATION OF INDIA. 143 
 
 In each case a demand is made by the inferior 
 but more numerous race to govern the superior 
 but less numerous one. The Celtic and the 
 Bengali stocks have much in common ; in nothing 
 do they more resemble each other than in their 
 prompt and accurate recognition of all the signs 
 of a strong Government. Surrender to Celt or 
 Hindoo from motives of fear or expediency, and 
 you destroy the possibility of government. 
 
 The invasion of the House of Commons by 
 sentimentality and emotion is the gravest evil to 
 be apprehended. For the dangers ahead in 
 India are such as are incapable of solution by 
 nerveless or excited politicians. The first time 
 that a weak English Government enables her to 
 do so, Russia will seize the opportunity to push 
 forward her frontier. If the English people 
 refrain from giving the Tsar to understand that 
 retirement or a declaration of war is the alterna- 
 tive, Russia will protest, explain, and stay. In 
 due time, a further advance will be made until 
 she is within distance to corrupt the tribes now 
 counting on our help. The old fighting races 
 like the Sikhs and the Ghoorkas are deteriorat- 
 ing. The conversion of the sword into the 
 ploughshare has had its usual result. Disuse in 
 war has produced decay of faculty, and the 
 Russians would have less trouble in defeating our 
 native allies ten years hence than during the time
 
 1 44 ENGLISH DEMOCRA C Y. 
 
 of the Penjdeh incident. The Indian Congress, 
 it is true, sneers at Russia in order to justify its 
 plea for the reduction of military expenditure, and 
 thus to obtain more money for the higher educa- 
 tion of the mimetic Bengali. 
 
 If Russia be a palpable danger in the North, 
 there is an evil of no less gravity in India than in 
 England. The too rapid introduction of Western 
 ideas and the ever growing influence of education, 
 while sharpening the wits of those natives who 
 come under European influence, has done nothing 
 to impart a new moral sanction in place of the 
 old canons of conduct which have become as 
 obsolete as the mythologies they accompanied. 
 The worship of material comfort promises a crop 
 of anarchy and discontent in India as in England. 
 
 Education and an empty stomach are the raw 
 materials of discontent, and the more capable the 
 new school of educated natives become to ap- 
 preciate defects in the laws and lawgivers who 
 come to them in a foreign garb, the more unwill- 
 ing are they to admit the enormous benefits that 
 India has received at our hands. The debt of 
 India is less than the public debt of Australia- 
 Each inhabitant of India is burdened with but 
 ten shillings of public debt. In New Zealand 
 the public debt is ^"59 us. 6d. per head, or more 
 than one hundred and nineteen times as much.
 
 THE PAROCHIALISATION OF INDIA. 145 
 
 Moreover, in India there is far more to show 
 for the expenditure. Rxi 15, 862,983 in India, 
 and ,107,404,143 in England comprise the whole 
 of the debt. The railways, canals, irrigation, and 
 other works of public value, represent the major 
 portion of the debt, for the simple reason that politi- 
 cal corruption, the bane of democracies, has not 
 tainted the Indian bureaucracy. The expenditure 
 has not only been intelligent, it has been honest. 
 
 Other problems awaiting solution are the Cur- 
 rency question, and the policy of extending the 
 Permanent Settlement. In the first case, we 
 have seen an import duty placed on imported 
 goods. The cost of the purity of British inten- 
 tions will be brought home to the democracy with 
 a rush, and not only the question of Free Trade 
 will be brought to the front, but how far the 
 'thumb mark of the artisan' shall leave its 
 imprint on Indian affairs is an issue that cannot 
 long be postponed. In the growing spirit of 
 protection it is possible that we may see experi- 
 ments made in differential duties, and that both 
 India and Egypt, later on, in their relations with 
 England, shall be made to serve the interests of 
 their mistress before attending to strangers. 
 
 On the whole, and in spite of many qualifying 
 circumstances, the prospects of our holding India 
 are gloomy. We cannot teach Christianity in the
 
 146 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 schools. It is out of the question to teach any 
 other religion. Missionaries do not directly touch 
 more than one per cent., and those mainly of the 
 lower castes. The extreme labour and pain neces- 
 sary to obtain a seat in the House of Commons 
 are driving out of public life some of the men 
 of leisure who are able to give impartial study 
 to Indian affairs, while the peripatetic emotion- 
 alist Member of Parliament, being only in contact 
 with the voluble, timid, educated, rent -paying 
 minority of natives, darkens counsel. The views 
 impressed by those travellers upon the House of 
 Commons no more represent the inarticulate 
 millions of India than the views of Mr. Davitt 
 or Mr. O'Brien represent the views of Belfast. 
 But the British democracy, with a thousand other 
 interests, fancies that India can be governed on 
 progressive principles, and that the present 
 methods of administration are cumbrous, de- 
 spotic, expensive, and unjust. 
 
 Whether Demos will learn in time that the 
 Rajpoots and the Ghoorkas cannot be governed 
 by County Council ; that India is an Empire 
 needing Imperial and not parochial administration; 
 that the inheritance of the Moguls is coveted by 
 a stealthy and powerful rival, the continuity of 
 whose policy is one secret of his strength ; 
 that if this Empire is to be held, it is necessary to-
 
 THE PAROCHIALISATION OF INDIA. 147 
 
 support and not belittle the English in India : to 
 vaunt rather than to impair their influence ; and 
 to hold up the British flag as the symbol of justice 
 and strength that both underlie our rights and 
 ennoble our power are questions that must en- 
 tirely depend on the character and the knowledge 
 of the men whom Demos trusts. Looking at the 
 fact that no democracy has ever yet in history 
 sustained the burden of vast and distant Empire 
 across the sea ; looking at the temptation to politi- 
 cians to shout what is pleasant to the many, rather 
 than whisper what is true, the outlook for India is 
 not hopeful. At all events, it is not too late for 
 the people of England to form the right estimate 
 of the value of their possession, to recognise their 
 duty both to the people of India and to themselves; 
 and to dismiss from their confidence the shrill 
 men who deny that British administration of India 
 is, on the whole and in the main, the most splendid 
 monument of human effort ever created by our 
 own or any other race. The racial good sense of 
 the English and Scotch is so inbred, I believe, that 
 Demos may possibly awake, listen, and act upon 
 good advice before it is too late. But the future of 
 the British people depends upon their firmness in 
 maintaining their grip, and even extending their 
 hold on their Eastern Empire. The task is one 
 that no other nation can fulfil. Russia would loot
 
 148 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 and ravish where England has planted the seeds 
 of prosperity, and has given the example of virtue. 
 Natives of India who are growing up without 
 moral training lose faith in Hindooism, and its 
 place is not supplied. Even the best Hindoos 
 make no effort to cover the vacated ground. The 
 transition period through which the Hindoos are 
 now passing is one in which the strong hand of 
 Britain is essential to the evolution, if not to the 
 existence, of the supple Italians of the East. To 
 drop the work from fear were the most craven 
 course by which a great nation ever declined to 
 insignificance and sunk to dishonour. The stronger 
 races need us no less than the Bengali. Peace 
 would no more result from releasing the tigers 
 and wolves among the sheep and antelopes in the 
 Zoological Gardens than by withdrawing the 
 barriers erected between rival races by British 
 rule in India. 
 
 If Great Britain pursues the road along which 
 she is travelling now, blood will be shed, and the 
 system of just Empire built up by a century of 
 struggle and sacrifice will first be weakened, and 
 then upset. The House of Commons may restore 
 the old system of decennial inquiry, and restrict its 
 separate action to a standing commission entrusted 
 with the duty of overhauling all Indian affairs. In 
 that case, the Indian Government will be strength-
 
 THE PAROCHIALISATION OF INDIA. 149 
 
 ened by serious and intelligent criticism, and the 
 House of Commons kept in touch with the phases 
 of contemporary Indian administration. But for ir- 
 responsible Members of the House of Commons 
 to hamper the Indian authorities, by coquetting 
 with sedition, and investing low intrigues with the 
 dignity of constitutional agitation, is an evil that 
 must end, or rule thus undermined will become 
 impossible. The French ' deputies never dream 
 of impairing French authority in Saigon or Sene- 
 gal, by conspiring with incendiary natives against 
 French administration. If two or three travelling 
 philanthropists were tied over an ant heap, blown 
 from a gun, or hanged on a peepul tree, the cause 
 of temperance or the textile trades might suffer, 
 but it would be a bold man who would assert that 
 the welfare of one-fifth of the human race would 
 not be directly enhanced by the perpetration of 
 this crime especially if the victims were M.P.'s.
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 JEWISH INFLUENCE ON DEMOCRACY. 
 
 IT is an article of faith in the higher spheres of 
 Government administration in Russia that if the 
 anti-semitic laws of the Empire were repealed, 
 and the Jewish population were allowed free 
 access to every post in the Empire, eight years 
 would not pass before every appointment worth 
 having would be filled by a tchinovnik of 
 Hebrew birth. Russians hold that the bright 
 Jewish intellect, if allowed free play, would con- 
 taminate the Imperial service within the period of 
 a decade. In England, not only is there free 
 play for Jewish energies, but there seems to be a 
 tacit convention that atonement should be made 
 in England for contemporary disabilities in- 
 flicted elsewhere upon the Jewish race, by ex- 
 tending to them special social and educational 
 privileges, and by the use of language giving an 
 
 extravagant idea of the esteem in which they are 
 
 150
 
 JE WISH INFL UENCE ON DEMO CRA CY. 151 
 
 held. So anxious are the public men of England 
 to avoid the imputation of anti-semitism, that 
 they rarely refer to Jewish immigration, educa- 
 tion, charities, or other social or political matters, 
 without taking care to express their sense of the 
 extraordinary value to the common weal of the 
 Jewish element in the population. These pro- 
 testations are not in all cases sincere, for nothing 
 is more common, when no Jew is present, than to 
 hear anti-semitic sentiments expressed with quite 
 as much fervour in England as in Russia. 
 Considering the small number of Jews in Eng- 
 land, probably not more than 120,000, the influ- 
 ence they have obtained is a tribute to their 
 extraordinary abilities. The Press throughout 
 Europe is largely in Jewish hands, and even in 
 England is the product of Jewish brains and 
 capital to an extent quite out of proportion to 
 their numerical importance. In medicine, law, 
 surgery, politics, music, and finance, they are no 
 less remarkable than in journalism. The com- 
 mercial side of art is, to a great extent, absorbed 
 by Jews, as hereditary training has excluded 
 them from the exercise of artistic faculties that in 
 former times were temptations to that idolatry 
 from which they were commanded to hold aloof. 
 The intellectual pre-eminence of the Jews is a 
 phenomenon so remarkable as in itself to render
 
 1 52 ENGLISH DEMOCRA C Y. 
 
 the jealous anti-semitism of stupid Muscovites, 
 Teutons, and Saxons, a tribute of involuntary 
 compliment. The best of the Russians have dis- 
 covered the fatuity of persecution, because the 
 Jews are more temperate and more industrious than 
 themselves, but the governing body in Russia does 
 not consist of the best among the Russian people. 
 They regard the Jewish faith as an insult to the 
 Greek Church ; the presence of five million Jews 
 as a menace to Russian unity ; and the Jewish 
 intellect as an outrage to national pride. For 
 the poor Jews of Russia a patience that is sublime 
 is the only resource. 
 
 In England, the necessity for Jewish modesty 
 and patience has passed away. The influence of 
 the community on our national life is out of all 
 proportion to its numbers or even to its wealth. 
 Our rigid insularity is corrected by Jewish de- 
 tachment of mind, by their cosmopolitan traditions, 
 habits of accurate analysis, and their singular 
 power of appreciating facts. There can be no 
 better certificate to the social position of the Jews 
 in England than the differences that exist among 
 themselves on every subject. They agree in little 
 else than the practice of charity, the sacredness of 
 home and its interests, and loyalty to the land of 
 their adoption. On politics, religion, economics, 
 social reform, Free Trade, immigration, and every
 
 JEWISH INFLUENCE ON DEMOCRACY. 153. 
 
 other subject of public interest upon which English- 
 men are divided, the Jewish community is equally 
 free from mechanical unanimity. In England there 
 is no question or class of questions upon which Jew- 
 ish opinion is unanimous, or upon which their ideas 
 are not as various as the ideas of other English- 
 men. Nevertheless, a general impression exists 
 among Englishmen, that when the Chief Rabbi, 
 for example, expresses an opinion on the question, 
 say, of alien immigration, he is expressing the 
 solidarity of view that exists in his community. 
 Nothing can be farther from the fact. On the 
 issues inseparable from the question of immigration, 
 viz., the Free Trade principle, reprisal doctrine, 
 humanitarian and traditional policy, there is no 
 more unanimity among the Hebrew than among 
 the Gentile community. But their numbers are so 
 small, they are credited with a solidarity to which, 
 happily for themselves and for us, they can lay no 
 claim. Unanimity of view is like some forms of 
 crystallisation. It is sometimes the result of pres- 
 sure. Where there is no persecution or pressure, 
 there is no unity on the details of any subject, polit- 
 ical, social, or religious, specially among the bright- 
 est intellectual race in the world. The influence 
 of the Jews in England, in spite of their differences- 
 of opinion, is remarkable. What their influence 
 would be if they were unanimous is useless to in-
 
 *54 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 quire, since nothing but the reversal of the tradi- 
 tional policy of England is likely to induce 
 universal agreement among a quick-witted and 
 somewhat quarrelsome people. As it is, by the 
 verdict of the historians and philosophers of our 
 times they are to be reckoned among the chief pro- 
 moters of humanity and civilisation, and we may 
 safely look to them for a valuable element in check- 
 ing the mistakes and preventing the excesses in 
 which our new democracy may be tempted to fall. 
 The means by which Jewish influence is most 
 effectively exercised are by no means the obvious 
 methods of direct advocacy. The Jewish Press, 
 for instance, carries with it comparatively little 
 weight, appeals to a narrow circle, and is incom- 
 petent to speak for the community upon any sub- 
 ject of general importance. The jealous religious 
 exclusiveness of the Jews observable in Russia 
 and Germany is vanishing in England. The 
 cloak of tribal pride is cast aside under the sun of 
 toleration. The influence of the earlier Jewish 
 writers was to depreciate the character and the 
 position of women. Woman was regarded as the 
 origin of human ills. A period of purification was 
 appointed after the birth of every child, and it was 
 twice as long in the case of a female as of a male 
 infant. 1 Every Sabbath, the Jews to this day 
 1 Leviticus xii., 1-5.
 
 JE WISH INFL UENCE ON DEMOCRA CY. 155 
 
 thank God that they were not born women, and, 
 with Tertullian, woman is looked on with Oriental 
 depreciation as " the gate of hell." To this day 
 in Russia the most saintly of the Rabbis decline 
 to touch the hand of a woman. The Rabbi of 
 Kovno, a man of the noblest character, who is the 
 doyen to the Jewish priesthood of the Empire, 
 refused in my sight, on religious grounds, to 
 shake hands with a gentle English lady on being 
 introduced to her. The types of female excel- 
 lence exhibited in Jewish history are few and of 
 no high rank, and, as Mr. Lecky points out, 1 that 
 " the warmest eulogy of a woman in the Old 
 Testament is probably that which was bestowed 
 on her who, with circumstances of the most aggra- 
 vated treachery, had murdered the sleeping fugi- 
 tive who had taken refuge under her roof." 
 Whatever Oriental tinge may have coloured the 
 earlier Jewish writers in regard to the estimation 
 in which women were held, there can be no ques- 
 tion as to the dignity and care with which women 
 are now maintained by the Jews of Europe. 
 With few exceptions, no married woman or young 
 girl is allowed to take part in hard or grinding 
 toil involving physical deterioration and moral 
 danger. The practice of restricting female labour 
 to domestic offices is valuable as an example to a 
 1 " Hist. European Morals," ii., p. 357.
 
 i $6 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 nation like our own where the industrial competi- 
 tion of women with men is a source of disturbance 
 to family life, physical injury, and a menace to the 
 well-being of the next generation. Beauty and 
 intelligence are so common among the children of 
 the Jews that it is difficult to resist the conclusion 
 that the loving care with which their women are 
 surrounded at critical periods of their lives is the 
 principal cause for the superiority of their children 
 to those of Gentiles living in the same environment. 
 Valuable as the example in the treatment of 
 women by the Jews is to the stolid Christian 
 population of our great cities, there is yet another 
 matter in which the Jewish leaven is needed for 
 the whole lump. Thrift may become a vice, and 
 caution in money matters a defect, but the racial 
 thriftlessness of the English is a moral drawback 
 of the greatest importance when times are hard, 
 employment scanty, and the profits of enterprise 
 diminishing in regular progression. The exist- 
 ence of bodies of Jews in our midst, with their 
 proverbial mastery of economic truth, full of the 
 instincts of commercialism, and for the most part 
 enthusiastic champions of the indefeasible rights 
 of private ownership, is an unmixed advantage in 
 a socialistic proletariat. It would be impossible 
 to ignore the fact that both the delirium of the 
 Anarchists and the dreams of the Socialists, have
 
 JE WISH INFL UENCE ON DEMOCRA CY. 157 
 
 been sustained by Jewish leaders. Mr. Samuels 
 and Mr. Lewis Lyons have a considerable follow- 
 ing among the hungry and half-educated multi- 
 tudes in which they live. But the anarchist 
 teachings of Mr. Samuels and the socialistic 
 dreams of Mr. Lyons have no more resolute 
 opponents in England than the main body of the 
 Jewish community. Loathing and detestation 
 are terms none too strong to express the feelings 
 of the Jewish shopkeepers and manufacturers of 
 London, Liverpool, Leeds and Glasgow, at the 
 propaganda preached by the late Mr. Lipski's 
 brother-in-law, and the late M. Bourdin's friend. 
 And it must not be forgotten that if there are a 
 disproportionate number of Jews among the 
 anarchical elements in the metropolis, Russia 
 and the Continent generally have sent us for 
 many years past the worst elements from their 
 Jewish population. It is true that England has 
 received a few victims of religious and civil 
 tyranny, 1 but in following our traditions we have 
 also sheltered some of the champion scoundrels 
 in Europe. The general agreement among 
 public men to refrain from drawing attention to 
 this fact, is an instance of the supersensitive 
 timidity that the Jews have inspired among those 
 who are entitled to object to the right of asylum 
 1 Possibly 10 per cent, of recent immigrants.
 
 1 58 ENGLISH DEM OCR A C Y. 
 
 for refugees from tyranny being perverted to the 
 protection of refugees from law. The charge of 
 anti-semitism is dreaded, while the charge of 
 being anti-English is accepted as a compliment, 
 being merely equivalent to having cosmopolitan 
 sympathies. The chief sufferers from the en- 
 trance of Jewish recidivistes are the English Jews. 
 The poverty of the new comers falls on them, 
 and if crime is perpetrated the reputation of the 
 most taw-abiding race in Europe is injured. The 
 character of many of these immigrants is becom- 
 ing a serious question for the State, though it is 
 the height of injustice to associate their immor- 
 ality with their Hebrew origin. Judge Bacon in 
 the Whitechapel County Court, in giving judg- 
 ment in a recent case in which alien Jews were 
 conflicting, is reported to have said : " The evi- 
 dence I have heard is really very shocking. I 
 can understand these aliens entering into a 
 conspiracy to rob the Philistines and spoil the 
 Egyptians. But I cannot understand their com- 
 mitting deliberate perjury in this Court ; day after 
 day I encounter conspiracies to defeat justice by 
 perjury. It is always difficult to prove this to 
 let a jury know the exact words the men say 
 here ; but very soon I shall make an example of 
 someone, and then these German Jews will at 
 length learn that the law is strong enough to
 
 JEWISH INFLUENCE ON DEMOCRACY. \& 
 
 convict, and severe enough to punish those who 
 use our English Courts for the purposes of con- 
 spiracy and fraud." l 
 
 1 The Standard of the i6th January, 1894, gives an in- 
 teresting report of a case which sets forth the manner in which 
 the value of the Jewish community is impaired in the eyes of 
 the public. 
 
 A recent report from the Worship Street Police Court 
 called attention to the changed character of that portion 
 of Shoreditch, Spitalfields, and Whitechapel over which the 
 Court has jurisdiction, necessitating the appointment of an in- 
 terpreter acquainted with the Russian, Polish, and German 
 languages, as well as that spoken by foreign Jews, and known 
 as " Yiddish Hebrew." It was mentioned also that the Court 
 passage is placarded with notices and cautions in all those 
 tongues, and that much of the time of the Court is taken up 
 with the squabbles arising among the peoples of those nations 
 alien immigrants who have settled in the East of London, 
 and within the past few years, moving westward, have appro- 
 priated whole streets in Spitalfields. The keen fight to main- 
 tain a business footing, which the old traders of those streets 
 have to make, is illustrated by the following cases which, 
 among many others, were heard before Mr. Corser : William 
 Fowles, of 79 Sclater Street, Spitalfields, was summoned by 
 Abram Levy, of Mount Street, for assaulting him. The Com- 
 plainant gave his evidence in Yiddish, which was interpreted. 
 It was to the effect that he went to buy two live fowls from the 
 Defendant, who keeps a bird shop, and having offered a price 
 which was refused, the Defendant, because Complainant said 
 the hens were " swelled," struck him several blows. Mr. 
 Margetts, solicitor for the defence, said there was not an atom 
 of truth in the Complainant's story. The Defendant had 
 carried on business for 20 years as a poultry dealer, and had 
 lately found himself much opposed by the foreign Jews. The 
 Complainant was one of those who leagued with others to ob- 
 struct his business, and drive him away. By pretending to be 
 a buyer, the Complainant got a couple of fowls into his hands, 
 and then let them go among the crowd, mostly Jews. When-
 
 160 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 The Jewish Unemployed Committee formed on 
 socialistic lines issued a notice last winter which, 
 while attracting little attention, shows how the 
 
 the owner tried to catch them he was tripped up, one man 
 threatened him with an open knife, his clothes were torn, his 
 goods overturned, and eight fowls stolen. A Witness was 
 called who bore out the defence, and Mr. Corser said he be- 
 lieved it the more probable story and dismissed the summons. 
 Solomon Solomons appeared to a summons, at the instance 
 of Nathan Chapnisky, charging him with wilful damage. 
 Chapnisky's evidence was interpreted, he being a Russo-Pole. 
 The Defendant was an English-speaking Jew, who said he had 
 carried on business in Spitalfields for about forty years, and 
 his family before him. It was his practice to have a stall in 
 front of a certain shop in VVhitechapel, by permission of the 
 shopkeeper. The Complainant had lately appeared in the 
 market, and on the 23rd December set up a stall on Defen- 
 dant's stand. When told he would have to remove it, he 
 refused. He was eventually compelled to do so by the police 
 on the complaint of the shopkeeper. His evidence was that 
 Solomons, in revenge for being kept out of his position so 
 long, followed him to a place where he had set up his stall in 
 opposition, and, unscrewing the base of the lamp which hung 
 over the stall, let the burning naphtha fall on the goods (cloth 
 caps), which were burned. Then the Defendant flung them 
 on the ground. And the crowd stole them. Replying to the 
 Magistrate, Chapnisky said he lost five gross of caps and the 
 damage was 6. He declared he had got plenty of Wit- 
 nesses to say the same thing. They proved to be foreign Jews 
 like the Complainant, but the constable on duty at the market 
 was called, and said he saw no disturbance, and no complaint 
 of any caps being burned or stolen was made either to him 
 or at the police station. Mr. Corser thought the Complainant's 
 story was a tissue of lies. He dismissed the case, and ordered 
 Chapnisky to pay 75. 6d. costs. Solomons exclaimed, " For 
 once there's justice done on these foreigners." A man, named 
 Johns, a cabinetmaker, of Columbia Row, was summoned by 
 Peter Mache for money due for piece work. The point in dis- 
 pute was as to whether the work in question was properly done.
 
 JE WISH INFL UENCE ON DEMOCRA CY. 161 
 
 extension of religious toleration in England has 
 reached the confines of callous materialism, and 
 demonstrates the impunity now extended to the 
 insurrectionary minority of a once persecuted, but 
 now dominant, community. The Jewish Com- 
 mittee in question issued a notice calling on their 
 co-religionists to meet on Tower Hill and take part 
 in a march to Trafalgar Square. On their return 
 they were asked to take possession of St. Paul's 
 Cathedral. The assistance of the Canon in resi- 
 dence was to be invoked, and it was notified that 
 should he refuse it, the Jewish Unemployed 
 assembled in the Cathedral would refuse to leave. 
 Had the Jews in Petersburg made free with the 
 Kazan or St. Isaac Cathedral in this manner, they 
 
 The Complainant alleged that he had done, at the price of 33. 
 per piece, work for which 55. per piece should have been 
 charged, but the Defendant wanted, he said, to put a five 
 guinea article on the market for ^3, and did it by low wages 
 and German labour, he being a German. The Complainant 
 brought two cabinetmakers, who said they had worked from 
 20 to 30 years at the trade, to state that the work for which 
 the Defendant refused payment was fairly done at the price, 
 one adding that it was " too good for the money." The De- 
 fendant called two Germans, who said that, as cabinetmakers, 
 they considered the work spoiled, and it appeared to be ad- 
 mitted that it might have been better. The Germans said 
 they would have made it better at the price ; the Englishmen 
 said the price agreed was one-half of what was usual. Mr. 
 Corser said when the Complainant agreed to do the work it 
 was reasonable to suppose he undertook to do it properly. 
 He had not done it as well as it could have been done, and so 
 he must lose his case, and the summons was dismissed. 
 
 L
 
 1 62 ENGLISH DEMO CRA C Y. 
 
 would have been shot down without scruple, and 
 it is to the credit of the London populace that Mr. 
 Lewis Lyons' methods of drawing attention to the 
 condition of the destitute Jewish workmen are 
 generally appreciated at their true value, and are 
 recognised as being not only unsanctioned, but 
 opposed by the good sense of all responsible 
 members of the Hebrew community. 
 
 The extortion and violence inflicted on the 
 Jews of England in former days are now suc- 
 ceeded by the good-natured indifference of the 
 British proletariat, and by the deference accorded 
 to the wishes of the Community by our rulers, 
 even when Jewish requirements trespass upon the 
 principle of absolute equality before the law. In 
 the controversy that has recently taken place on 
 the question of the religious compromise of 1870 
 in the Education Act, it is interesting to mark the 
 fact that the only denominational schools under 
 the School Board for London are the Jewish 
 schools, in which the ordinary syllabus of religious 
 teaching is modified out of deference to the pro- 
 fessed belief of the children's parents. Most 
 people are under the impression that only Jewish 
 children attend these schools. That is by no 
 means the case. Christian children attend them, 
 and Christian teachers are denied the opportunity 
 of giving instruction in the Christian religion
 
 fE WISH INFL UENCE ON DEMO CRA CY. 163 
 
 under a Board which professes to teach it. Both 
 Christian and Jewish children are taught Old 
 Testament history without any connection between 
 the Old and the New Testaments. Not only, 
 therefore, is there inadequate teaching in the New 
 Testament, since one teacher cannot efficiently 
 deal at one time with fifty children of all ages and 
 all standards, but the Old Testament is taught 
 from the non-Christian, that is, the Jewish point 
 of view. It would seem well that if the School 
 Board of London extends the privilege of denom- 
 inational schools to the Jews, which are paid for 
 out of public money, denied to Roman Catholics, 
 and vehemently opposed by a large section of the 
 religious public, the right thing to do would be to 
 provide Jewish teachers for them, and to send 
 Christian children elsewhere. But no. Such is 
 the paramount influence established in England 
 by the Hebrew community, that where Christian 
 and Jewish interests conflict, the former gives way 
 to the latter, not reluctantly, grudgingly, or with a 
 sense of injustice, but gladly and cheerfully as 
 right-minded inferiors naturally yield precedence 
 to financial and intellectual superiors. 
 
 If the levies and tortures of John, the exactions 
 of Henry III., and the wicked statute De la, 
 Jeuerie were revenged in the nineteenth century 
 by misuse of the vast political and social powers
 
 1 64 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 the Jews have now obtained, historic justice 
 would not condemn them. But there is little 
 sign of any misuse of power. On the contrary, 
 Jewish influence on English public life, whether 
 political, philanthropic, social, artistic, or literary, 
 is more than irreproachable. It is beneficial, dis- 
 criminating, and munificent. In politics they are 
 represented in Parliament by members considerably 
 above the average of ability, all of whom have 
 given substantial evidence of their sense of duty 
 as English citizens of their attachment to our in- 
 stitutions, and of their mastery of the various 
 problems of public life. In philanthropy the Jews 
 are admittedly the most generous of people, and 
 conduct their charities in the way that makes 
 them the models for the civilised world. As 
 patrons of art, science, and literature, they have 
 advanced the refinement and civilisation of our 
 country. And in no small measure the literary 
 and artistic merit of their contributions to national 
 taste in beauty of form and colour, the drama or 
 the belles lettres generally, have created the posi- 
 tion England occupies in such matters before the 
 civilised world. 
 
 If Addison could write so far back as 1712 that 
 the Jews of England in his day were "like the 
 pegs and nails in a great building, which though 
 they are but little valued in themselves, are
 
 JEWISH INFLUENCE ON DEMOCRACY. 165 
 
 absolutely necessary to keep the whole frame 
 together," 1 the truth is that Englishmen of the 
 Jewish race to-day form one of the most valuable 
 constituent elements in our nation, and in the 
 course of the approaching century are destined, I 
 firmly believe, to perform still more valuable 
 services to the Anglo-Saxon people. 
 
 The manner in which further benefit will be 
 derived from the Jewish Community is through 
 the process of absorption by intermarriage, which 
 has now begun, and will probably continue at an 
 enhanced rate as Jewish exclusiveness vanishes 
 before the equal conditions in which they are now 
 placed ; and as British prejudice evaporates before 
 the light and air of greater knowledge. Jewish 
 character supplies the points in which British 
 character is most defective. The coarse, blunt 
 insularity of the English will become softened 
 and enlarged when blended with the persistent 
 but gentle subtlety and the cosmopolitan traditions 
 of the people of the Dispersion. The rate of 
 absorption is at present unknown, but there is 
 reason to think that since the members of the 
 Jewish Community, as shown by the last census, 
 indicate no material growth, the process of as- 
 similation with the English keeps pace with the 
 natural increase of birth and immigration. Nor is 
 1 Spectator, 495, Sept. 27, 1712.
 
 1 66 ENGLISH DEM OCR A C Y. 
 
 the process of absorption restricted to inter- 
 marriage. It is not unusual for Jewish traders 
 and merchants to make changes in their names, 
 which obscure, if they do not hide, their Semitic 
 origin. Hirsch becomes Harris ; Moses is con- 
 tracted to Moss ; Manasseh to Massy ; Abraham 
 to Braham ; Levi to Levison or Lawson. Oc- 
 casionally the surname and the forename are 
 reversed, e.g., Montagu Samuel becomes Samuel 
 Montagu. The practice appears to spring from 
 the same causes as originally induced the Popes 
 to change their names on their exaltation to the 
 pontificate, a custom said to have been introduced 
 by Pope Sergius, whose name till then was Swine- 
 Snout. However this may be, the Anglicisation 
 of Hebrew names removes one barrier between 
 the races : and if it do not pave the way for 
 immediate absorption, it assists the process 
 operating among the reformed Jews for the 
 adaptation of their religious and social life to 
 modern needs. In the more advanced syna- 
 gogues instrumental music and mixed choirs have 
 been introduced, while in some the approach to 
 church practices is signalised by the heads of 
 male worshippers being uncovered, the conduct 
 of the service in the vernacular, and the common 
 use of pews by both sexes of the same family. 
 Many of the reformed Jews renounce all belief in
 
 JEWISH INFLUENCE ON DEMOCRACY. 167 
 
 hell torments, Paradisian rewards, superstitions 
 whether Biblical or Rabbinical, rites, ceremonies, 
 and institutions, which do not elevate or sanctify 
 their lives; while, at the same time, their devotion 
 to good works is exceeded by nothing that the 
 annals of Christianity can show. 
 
 It is almost forgotten that nearly ninety years 
 ago Napoleon foresaw with the prophetic glance 
 of supreme genius that the settlement of the 
 Jewish question was second only in importance to 
 the establishment in Europe of French ascend- 
 ency. Then, as now, the Jewish element in the 
 population of any country both in number and 
 character varied directly with the nature of the 
 treatment accorded them. Persecuted Jews wax 
 mighty and multiply. When welcomed, en- 
 couraged, and regarded as equals by a nation, 
 their numbers are few because they tend to dis 
 card their exclusive habits and become absorbed 
 in the intellectual and social life of the country 
 enriched by their presence. Napoleon, recognis- 
 ing this fact, convoked the Sanhedrin to the 
 capital of France. He was in the zenith of his 
 fame. He had been victorious at Austerlitz. 
 He was on the eve of victory at Eylau. For two 
 years the Imperial crown had been upon his brow, 
 and he was master of Central Europe. With all 
 the preoccupations of Empire, he recognised the
 
 168 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 vital importance of determining the attitude of 
 France towards her Hebrew people, and in his 
 statesmanlike^ prescience Napoleon presented an 
 example to the world which England was some- 
 what slow to follow. The miracle of Jewish 
 regeneration has not yet been accomplished, but 
 the events of the nineteenth century seem to 
 indicate that we are on the eve of a movement 
 akin to that of which Isaiah prophesied, and the 
 first Napoleon dreamed. That England will play 
 her part in the strange evolution of the Jewish 
 race which is now in progress cannot be doubted. 
 The liberty and equality which in England have 
 been more than a jingling phrase have given to the 
 Jews their opportunity. The manner in which the 
 recent outbreak of ignorant and stupid persecu- 
 tion in Russia was arrested by the concentration 
 of public opinion against M. Pobedonostzeff at 
 the instance of the Hebrew citizens in all parts of 
 the world, but more especially in England, is too 
 well known to require comment. This display of 
 power, however, is but a small example of what 
 can be accomplished by this marvellous race 
 when unanimously set upon the accomplishment 
 of some given aim. The next time we see the 
 exercise of Jewish influence directed to the 
 achievement of a common object, it will probably 
 be one of a widely different character.
 
 JE WISH INFL UENCE ON DEMO CRA CY. 169. 
 
 England is the chief gold-using country in the 
 world. The heads of English finance are no 
 longer of the English race. The necessities of 
 cosmopolitan dealers in money compel them to 
 regard the interests of creditors as preceding the 
 interests of debtors. Hence arises the interest of 
 creditors in retaining and supporting the gold 
 standard, since the appreciation of gold is ob- 
 viously advantageous to the dealers in gold. The 
 continued and increasing pressure of the fixed 
 charges in all commercial undertakings, the grow- 
 ing weight of interest on mortgages, are presages 
 of a catastrophe that must overtake the industrial 
 and trading population, unless some compromise 
 can be effected by debtors with their gold credi- 
 tors. In the unchallenged control and mastery 
 of British finance there lurks a serious danger to 
 the Jewish community. They may wake up to 
 find the interests of the British nation completely 
 at variance with the interests of cosmopolitan 
 money-lenders. Persecution of the Jews fills 
 every page of history from the fall of the Roman 
 Empire to the Moscow evictions in the winter of 
 1891. These persecutions have been marked by 
 one invariable feature. They were the result of 
 vulgar ignorance, sprung from the common people ; 
 and in later times the governing bodies have not
 
 170 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 failed to interfere in time to prevent massacre and 
 popular brutality. 
 
 The anti-semitic movement of the future, how- 
 ever, will not arise from the jealousy of a stupid 
 proletariat of one that is quick-witted. It will 
 not be turned against the miserable masses, but 
 against the rich and powerful Hebrews who 
 really are the rulers of the civilised world, 
 by having it in pawn. All the love of luxury 
 bred of education, hunger, and the decay 
 of faith, will breed inevitable hate towards 
 those who are lapped in luxury, who live in 
 palaces, and who enjoy openly the rewards of 
 greater prescience and foresight. These mag- 
 nates, secure in the possession of immense wealth, 
 endowed with great intellectual powers, will be 
 able to procure as allies all that brains, influence, 
 legislation, and noble alliances can give. Morality 
 will be on their side. Moses and the ten com- 
 mandments will give them all the sanction re- 
 quired for the retention of their possessions. But 
 frantic debtors, starving thousands, and a des- 
 perate democracy are preparing a crucible of 
 pain for the prosperous Jewish people.
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 THE OUTLOOK FOR WOMEN. 
 
 SINCE women have begun to insist on being re- 
 garded as a class or interest, like the Unemployed 
 or the Dockers, their numerical preponderance 
 becomes a matter of concern to the male minority. 
 Although destitute of the physical force, that is 
 the final sanction of all laws, their claim for politi- 
 cal equality cannot be resisted on merely abstract 
 grounds, although there are practical considera- 
 tions which may make equality impossible. In 
 these islands there is a surplus of eight hundred 
 and fifty thousand women enough to give them 
 a permanent tenure of power if the community 
 should ever become politically and paradoxically 
 divided by a sexual cleavage. That women are able 
 to use political power if they obtain it, their leaders, 
 from Mary Wollstonecraft to Mrs. Fawcett, suffici- 
 ently attest. While, from the abstract point of view, 
 
 it is difficult to refuse their demand for complete 
 
 171
 
 1 72 ENGLISH DEMOCRA C Y. 
 
 electoral equality ; party considerations make it 
 improbable that the male democracy will concede 
 it within the next twenty years. The opening 
 of industrial employments to women, and the 
 consequent decay of chivalry, has brought to the 
 front an array of subjects in which their interests 
 conflict with the interests of men. To endow 
 women with electoral equality would confer upon 
 the female workers in combination a power which 
 their male rivals would find inconvenient to deal 
 with and impossible to suppress. The interests 
 of English women are identified with the main- 
 tenance of the home, the promotion of legislation 
 that strengthens home interests, and the defeat of 
 measures likely to impair its happiness. One of 
 the two political parties in the State would profit 
 so clearly by these results that the most astute 
 leaders and the clearest thinkers on the opposite 
 side are naturally opposed to extending the 
 Parliamentary franchise to women. Already 
 women exercjse the Municipal, School Board, 
 Board of Guardians, County and Parish Councils 
 Suffrage. There is practically no opposition to the 
 endowment of women with subordinate powers 
 of this kind. The natural law of self-preserva- 
 tion, however, prevents the Trade Unions of men 
 surrendering any of the political predominance 
 they have acquired. Disabilities of women have,
 
 THE OUTLOOK FOR WOMEN. 1 73 
 
 it is true, been one after another removed. In- 
 deed, the legal position of women, as regards 
 private rights in the present day, differs little 
 from that of men. The pressure for political 
 power does not mainly proceed from a sense of 
 present wrong ; yet politically, professionally, and 
 industrially the sexes are still not on an equality. 
 Women of thought and education naturally feel 
 the disabilities to which they are subjected. But 
 the industrial classes of women workers are sub- 
 jected to injustice and inferiority far more serious 
 than those of their sisters in the middle classes, 
 who may be desirous of engaging in the pro- 
 fessions of law or medicine. Allowing for 
 
 o 
 
 difference in social habits, the action of the in- 
 dustrial Trade Unions in respect to women may 
 be fairly deduced from the action of the legal and 
 medical Trade Unions. Sir Dyce Duckworth, 
 whose authority to speak for his profession is 
 beyond dispute, says : "I do not go with those 
 who claim that women should enter any of the 
 recognised professions. I do not regard any one 
 of them as affording fitting occupation for women, 
 however strong and able they may be." Sir 
 Dyce goes on to make an exception in the case 
 of women who become medically qualified for 
 Zenana mission work in India. He then con- 
 tinues : " My knowledge of American life has
 
 i 74 ENGLISH DEMOCRA C Y. 
 
 taught me how very undesirable and, I will add, 
 unpleasant it is to meet with professional women. 
 I do not doubt the possibility of some women's 
 engaging in professional life, but I hold that they 
 are out of their proper womanly sphere in com- 
 peting with men, and I deny that there is the 
 slightest demand or necessity for their services in 
 any one of the professions." 1 
 
 Substitute for Sir Dyce Duckworth, plain 
 Demos, and for the word " professional " the word 
 " industrial," and we have the Trade Union case 
 against women in a nutshell. To meet them as 
 rivals is unpleasant ; that they should be rivals at 
 all is detestable. Nor can the selfishness of 
 working men be denounced with justice by 
 men in easy circumstances, whether eminent 
 physiologists or not. The competition of pro- 
 fessional women with men, in law and medicine,, 
 has not reduced the latter to want by destroying 
 their livelihood. The sweating system has not 
 been introduced into the ranks of medical men by 
 the superior industry and under-cutting of fees of 
 the other sex. The shirtmakers and tailors of 
 London could tell a story of competition with 
 their own womenkind which naturally rouses the 
 instinct of self-preservation. Were the Parlia- 
 mentary vote to be given to the working woman, 
 1 An address delivered at Glasgow, Dec. i5th, 1893.
 
 THE OUTLOOK FOR WOMEN. 175 
 
 there can be little doubt that we should witness 
 the birth of new antagonisms between the women 
 and men of certain occupations, which would be 
 intense in proportion to the relative measure of 
 political power possessed by the respective 
 parties. Where the Parliamentary vote is most 
 required, therefore, it is unlikely it will be given 
 by the present democracy. The dependent 
 position of women under early laws seems likely 
 to be stereotyped by the permanent enigma of 
 the food question. 
 
 The Anglo-Saxon Colonies, allowing for certain 
 obvious differences, present to us the spectacle of 
 what England will probably become after a few 
 years of democratic institutions. New Zealand 
 has adopted Woman Suffrage, and the working 
 of the female franchise in that colony gives us an 
 interesting, but, as yet, an insufficient peep into 
 the future of our own country. Females, owners 
 of rateable property, were already qualified to 
 vote in Municipal elections. One female Mayor 
 was elected, Mrs. Yates of Onelumga. Her 
 Worship is understood to have fulfilled the duties 
 of her office with dignity and decision. As in all 
 the Colonies, the drink question is. one of grave 
 social concern in New Zealand. Women were 
 there, as elsewhere, the principal sufferers from 
 the drink traffic, and also from the social evil.
 
 i?6 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 The fierce industrial competition that rages in 
 England has no equivalent in New Zealand. 
 Accordingly, politicians of all shades of opinion 
 became the champions of the movement. The 
 chief motive power in the campaign, that was 
 afterwards conducted to a favourable issue, pro- 
 ceeded from a desire for social reforms rather 
 than political change. The Women's Temperance 
 League, the Prohibitionists, Social Reformers, 
 etc., found themselves shoulder to shoulder with 
 advanced Liberals and some of the foremost 
 politicians of the Conservative party. The pub- 
 lican and liquor interests were taken by surprise. 
 They had never seriously believed in the success 
 of the movement, and had prepared no organisa- 
 tion of their own. It is interesting to note that 
 the enrolment of women on the Parliamentary 
 Register was regarded as hostile to the liquor 
 interests a curb to the hitherto unchecked power 
 of the Trade Unions, and an antidote to the 
 socialistic proclivities of the day. 
 
 A writer in the Westminster Gazette thus 
 admirably describes the elections : 
 
 " Then came the elections, and the manner in which they 
 were conducted was such as utterly to falsify the predictions of 
 the opponents of the female franchise, as well as those who 
 had hoped that it would involve it in ridicule. Thanks to the 
 vigorous canvass, the women polled heavily. Two-fifths of the
 
 THE OUTLOOK FOR WOMEN. 177 
 
 votes recorded were those of females. There had never been 
 an election that had been carried out with less of excitement 
 or unseemly scenes. The women were in right-down earnest. 
 They marched up to the polls as a solemn duty, and they 
 voted with few exceptions as methodically as though they had 
 been accustomed to it all their lives. Comparatively few 
 shrank from elbowing their way through a throng of noisy 
 partisans, and recorded their votes at quieter booths in the 
 suburbs. But there were absolutely no instances of the slightest 
 disrespect to female voters. Nay, even the roughest of the 
 men vied with each other in little acts of courtesy and defer- 
 ence. Many women were escorted to the door by male friends, 
 but those who were unattended were not subjected to ridicule 
 or unseemly remarks. Once within the booth, they were 
 quietly directed to the proper places. Specimen forms of vot- 
 ing, with explicit instructions, had been extensively circulated 
 before the polling day, and unless a woman were wofully stupid 
 it was impossible to make a mistake. But in case of doubt, a 
 returning officer stood ready to give her the necessary direc- 
 tions on one of these specimen forms, and then to bow her to 
 the recess, and leave her to exercise her choice without dicta- 
 tion or interference. 
 
 " The result of the polling was to show that the female vote 
 had exercised a very important influence on the constitution of 
 the New House. It ought to have been stated before that, 
 prior to the election, the Women's Franchise League and the 
 temperance and social purity parties had subjected the private 
 morals and antecedents of the candidates to a rigorous investi- 
 gation, and thus a good many men who had black marks set 
 down against their names figured very low down on the poll. 
 
 "The Labour candidates and those of a utilitarian bent, 
 more especially some who had been prominent in the amelio- 
 ration of the workwomen, came to the front in the polling. 
 The newly-enfranchised voters exhibited a keen sense of grati- 
 tude. The Conservatives had hoped that the women of the 
 
 M 

 
 i?3 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 humbler classes would be indifferent and abstain from voting, 
 but the result was quite the other way. It was the women of 
 the industrial classes, the wives and daughters of working 
 men, of the small shopkeepers, who swarmed at the polls, and 
 the ladies of the upper classes who remained aloof. 
 
 "An argument often used against female suffrage by Liberals 
 who postpone principle to party advantage is that the Woman's 
 Vote will be a Tory Vote, and a vote in favour of reactionary 
 ideas in education. The prediction has proved entirely un- 
 true, so far as New Zealand goes. The addition of women to 
 the Parliamentary Register has confirmed an extremely Radical 
 Ministry in power, and one of the special planks in the Radi- 
 cal programme, thus supported by the women's vote, is Secular 
 Education. 
 
 " With regard to the future, the friends of female suffrage in 
 the colony confidently look forward to much legislation which 
 touches the home life of the people, the opening of fresh 
 avenues of employment to females, the gradual purification of 
 public life, restraint of the liquor traffic, protection of working 
 men and working women from the evils of the sweating system, 
 and generally the equalisation of opportunities for mental and 
 physical improvement and social advancement." 
 
 The writer of this account confirms from observa- 
 tion the opinion previously expressed, that if the 
 franchise be ever bestowed in England, it is the 
 women of the industrial classes, not the ladies 
 of the upper classes, who will exercise their 
 political rights. 
 
 Selfishness arising from want is necessarily 
 greater in England than in New Zealand. New 
 openings for industry are comparatively rare in 
 the old country. The facility "with which the
 
 THE OUTLOOK FOR WOMEN. 179 
 
 female suffrage has been introduced into New 
 Zealand can find no parallel in the old country. 
 On the other hand, the moral and social success 
 of the New Saxon communities will tend to in- 
 crease the possibilities of the mother country 
 following in the footsteps of her daughters in the 
 antipodes. South Australia, Victoria and New 
 South Wales, have come very near passing the 
 Women's Suffrage Bills. In colonial communities, 
 when a new institution is to be introduced there 
 is, as a rule, no obstacle to its introduction other 
 than the persuasion necessary to convince a con- 
 stitutional majority of the people that it should 
 be tried. It is otherwise in England. The 
 jungle of tradition, interest, and prejudice to be 
 cleared before innovations can be made, is often the 
 most important and arduous portion of the task. 
 For a thing to be new, is in its favour in the United 
 States and in the Anglo-Saxon Colonies; or, at all 
 events, there is no prejudice against it merely be- 
 cause it is new.. Here in England, a large section 
 of the population regard change as evil in itself. 
 However irritating and reactionary this racial 
 conservatism may have proved in} the case of 
 many salutary innovations that have been 
 strangled by the arguments of a Noodles' oration, 
 there can be no question that our complex social 
 machinery has been repeatedly rescued from de-
 
 i8o ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 struction or injury by the same sentiment that 
 has resisted improvement and prevented reform. 
 This condition, inherent in an ancient civilisation, 
 points to the process of change being gradual in 
 its operation, if it is to be lasting and effectual 
 to accomplish its ostensible purpose. The 
 woman's movement is by no means restricted to 
 the question of the suffrage, and it is in other 
 fields than those of political activity that we are 
 likely to watch the evolution and development of 
 the independence of women. 
 
 A peaceful revolution in the status of women is 
 now proceeding, which cannot fail to bring forth 
 fruit both good and evil. Hedges of customs and 
 rules have grown up around them as the results of 
 man's affection and man's selfishness. Heredi- 
 tary custom joined to natural timidity, dread of 
 criticism, and physical impotence, have hitherto 
 secured tacit acquiescence in restrictions against 
 which the brightest spirits among women are now 
 beginning to rebel. The old armoury of argument 
 hitherto used against the cry for more freedom is 
 already abandoned. We hear nothing to-day about 
 intellectual inferiority. We are never told nowa- 
 days that men should do the work of the world 
 because the male brain weighs more than the 
 female. It is mere commonplace that quality as 
 well as size is an important factor in brain power,
 
 THE OUTLOOK FO% WOMEN. 181 
 
 and Julius Caesar with a small brain accomplished 
 more than all the congenital idiots with hydro- 
 cephalus conformations, who have existed since 
 Adam and Eve. Most women do not like to put 
 forward publicly the real reasons for claiming and 
 asserting rights not hitherto accorded to them. 
 But there is no doubt that men enjoy and women 
 suffer more than their equitable shares of those 
 physiological phenomena incident to the renewal of 
 the species. Women minister to men's comfort and 
 caprice to a greater extent than men have con- 
 tributed to the pleasures and caprices of woman- 
 hood. Thoughtful and intelligent women natur- 
 ally resent this position of animal subservience 
 and inferiority to men, and are resolved to estab- 
 lish the moral equality of the sexes. 
 
 In the Georgian and early Victorian eras the 
 favourite popular conception of woman was differ- 
 ent to the ideal of to-day. To be weak and tender, 
 to faint with ease, lack appetite, shun exercise, 
 and to simper through maidenhood with witless 
 self-consciousness, were the characteristics asso- 
 ciated with the early Victorian virgin. To be 
 wrapped up with her babies, live in an atmo- 
 sphere of dill water and violet powder, and to 
 devote all the time she could spare from the 
 cradle, to pampering and flattering the selfish 
 prig who was her monogamous pasha, was the
 
 182 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 current ideal of the middle class matron. 
 Under the specious plea of home being the 
 place, and the only right place, for women, 
 tyranny has been as rife in British homes as in 
 Turkish harems. A generation of thought and 
 evolution has modified the evil. Since women of 
 the middle and upper classes have lived more 
 independent lives, their physical improvement has 
 been remarkable. If their bodily development 
 continues to progress at its present rate, the 
 heroine of the future bids fair to be taller and 
 stronger than the hero, and the question of dis- 
 parity of physical force between the sexes will be- 
 come by no means unchallengeable. With the 
 conspicuous improvement in women's looks, their 
 intellectual achievements have kept pace. Girton 
 and Newnham have produced an effect upon our 
 national life, the results of which are not yet 
 fully revealed. Secondary education for girls has 
 undergone a revolution. Miss Buss, Miss Beale, 
 and Mrs. William Grey, have done great things 
 for the twentieth century, unknown, or almost 
 unknown, to fame. In the north of England a 
 Council of Education was formed, which has had 
 no small share in the revolutionary movement 
 that has overthrown the structure of prejudices 
 prevalent as to the limitations of the female in- 
 tellect. Habits of exact thought, the cultivation
 
 THE OUTLOOK FOR WOMEN. 183 
 
 of judgment and memory, and the practical de- 
 monstration of substantial equality in intellect 
 between the sexes, have rescued women from the 
 indignity of being classified mainly as the baby 
 machines of civilisation. 
 
 If bearded democracy does not get its own sel- 
 fish way, the next century will be the age of 
 women. Women have already shown that they 
 can retain their gentleness while they acquire a 
 larger and a nobler purpose. Individuals have 
 shown that they can perform their duties in life as 
 daughters, wives, and mothers, and yet take their 
 part in the work of the world. They have lost, 
 meanwhile, nothing of their sweetness, nothing of 
 their strength. Looking back for forty years and 
 contrasting the women of 1850 with the women 
 of this decade, we perceive a stream of tendencies 
 which, if not arrested, will carry them fast and 
 far. In 1930, the differences between the women 
 of that day and our contemporaries will probably 
 be much greater than the differences between the 
 latter and their grandmothers. 
 
 First, with regard to the women of the working- 
 classes. To sew, cook, and wash for a family of 
 five or six is no light task; and, as Mrs. Fawcett 
 justly points out, " keeps " the family quite as 
 essentially as the man who turns a lathe or ploughs 
 a field, and thereby brings in a weekly sum of
 
 184 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 money to the family purse. Increases to the 
 family are not determined by any volition of hers. 
 In many cases the lot of the house-mother in the 
 industrial classes is one of hopeless toil. Often 
 she is obliged, from no fault of her own or her 
 husband's, to seek employment outside the home, 
 so as to eke out the family budget. The lives of 
 whole classes that are hopelessly entangled in pain 
 and work, cannot be noble lives. Individuals 
 among them may lead noble lives, but there can be 
 no wonder that the leisure of the average women 
 who are submerged in want and care is spent, and 
 naturally spent, outside her slum attic in gossip : 
 in the brighter scene of the public-house : or idling 
 abroad in our narrow and mischievous streets. 
 In acting thus, she is probably better, and cer- 
 tainly no worse, than the idle woman of the smart 
 set whose mischief and narrowness are more 
 prejudicial to the community than the working 
 sisters whom they consider so far beneath them. 
 The outlook for women of the labouring classes 
 (that is, for the great majority of the women of 
 the United Kingdom) is that the present move- 
 ment for the expansion and elevation of women's 
 lives shall first and foremost raise those women who 
 bear the chief burdens of society, by brightening 
 their lives and giving them equal opportunities 
 with men. To take part in a Trade Union
 
 THE OUTLOOK FOR WOMEN. 185 
 
 movement to protect and foster the work of 
 women ; to join in a co-operative scheme for the 
 distribution of pure food and household necessities, 
 or of production itself, as the healthy northern 
 system of co-operation permeates society, will 
 teach her thrift and honesty. When she has 
 made the first saving she will be touched by the 
 magician's wand that comes to them who own 
 property through self-denial. She will become 
 interested in temperance and education. In all 
 movements that affect her sex she will recognise 
 the opportunity of improving the happiness of her 
 home. When divine discontent has stirred the 
 working women of England, and moral and intel- 
 lectual improvement has permeated the whole 
 class, the time cannot be far distant when the 
 question of family responsibility will 'be raised by 
 women on their own behalf. That time is pro- 
 bably near at hand. No movement for the check 
 or limitation of families will ever be successful 
 from which the good and thoughtful women of 
 England remain aloof. The population question 
 is less a man's than a woman's question. The 
 chief burden rests with women. I cannot doubt 
 that the only direction in which there is solid 
 ground for hoping that undue increase of the 
 population may be checked, and that destitution 
 and misery arising from that cause may cease, is
 
 1 86 ENGLISH DEMOCRA C Y. 
 
 in raising the general level of education and the 
 position of women of the working-classes. The 
 change in opinion upon the subject of large 
 families is already noticeable. At the beginning 
 of this century an English working man with 
 twelve children was held by general consensus to 
 have deserved well of his country. In France, 
 the State to-day endows the parent of a tenth 
 child with a handsome present in cash. The 
 doctrine of the blessed quiver and the redundant 
 cradle was intelligible when we were recovering 
 from the effects of the great wars of the eighteenth 
 century, and about to engage in a new struggle 
 for our national life. It is a reasonable and 
 intelligible doctrine to-day in France, when she is 
 recovering from a death struggle with Germany, 
 and prepared to engage in a fresh bout with one or 
 other of her rivals. This doctrine may have been 
 true in the days of David, when the tribesmen of 
 Judea were continually losing in border squabbles 
 their most eligible males. For the United 
 Kingdom, however, at the end of this century, 
 when the redundance of population is apparent, to 
 maintain the moral stimulus to fecundity when 
 sterility of the unfit is essential, if the race is not 
 to deteriorate, seems to be a fallacy that needs 
 only to be stated to secure its exposure. 
 
 It is unfortunate for the population question
 
 THE OUTLOOK FOR WOMEN. 187 
 
 that for a generation to come it will be indelibly 
 associated in the minds of many thoughtful 
 people with the aggressive atheism of the late 
 Mr. Bradlaugh and his versatile colleague. Their 
 aims are admitted by all to be the good of their 
 fellow creatures. The action they pursued, how- 
 ever, inflicted a grievous blow upon the prospects 
 of reasonable teaching on the population question. 
 It is not likely it will emerge from the cloud in which 
 Mr. Bradlaugh and Mrs. Besant (I am firmly con- 
 vinced involuntarily) left it, until some high intelli- 
 gence, some one pure and holy spirit among women T 
 instinct with enthusiasm for her sex, rises up to 
 teach the nation that selfishness and brutality 
 still lingers under the protection of the marriage 
 state. No mere man can hope to effect much good 
 in this direction. To the good sense and righte- 
 ous self-interest of working women, to the unborn 
 enthusiasm of some high priestess of humanity, 
 and to the surviving chivalry of men, we must 
 look for a change. We shall not look in vain. 
 
 Touching the middle class women, the un- 
 married daughters of the suburbs of large towns 
 and of villadom in general, are worse off in some 
 of the essentials of happiness than match-girls or 
 tailoresses. Devoid of aims, without vocation, 
 there are no sadder sisterhoods than the daughters 
 of merchants and professional men who are too
 
 i88 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 well off to work ; too idle and too silly to excel 
 in art or music ; too selfish to minister to the wel- 
 fare of others. Marriage is their only profession. 
 Until polygamy is established in England, the sur- 
 plus of women cuts many of them off from practis- 
 ing 1 their only profession. The husbands and the 
 brothers of the middle class are busily employed. 
 But their women are idle from habit rather than 
 from incapacity. Most of the young women of 
 this type are often miserably unhappy ; starved 
 in soul ; chained to a rock of conventional re- 
 spectability which they loath as a prison. They 
 wither in peevish celibacy. And, poor things, 
 the fault is not theirs. There is hope for them 
 in the early years of the twentieth century. The 
 profession of teaching will necessarily absorb an 
 increasing number of competent women, and the 
 women of the class spoken of can become com- 
 petent with adequate training. Girls require 
 educating by women, just as boys after infancy 
 benefit from their training coming from the hands 
 of men. The spread of democracy will lead to 
 the employment of larger numbers of factory and 
 school inspectors. Women should be inspected 
 by women, and the lady inspectorate of the coun- 
 try will be largely expanded in response to the 
 growing demand for feminine control of feminine 
 interests. The exactness in detail and character-
 
 THE OUTLOOK FOR WOMEN. 18? 
 
 istic patience of monotony and pain are in them- 
 selves qualifications for the new duties that will 
 devolve on their sex in the course of the evolution 
 of industrial interests now going on in England. 
 Girls of the middle classes will naturally be trained 
 for the inspectorate when the number of candi- 
 dates required are sufficient to make the career 
 one of general interest. The same class of 
 women are likely to become more numerous on 
 Hospital Committees and the managing bodies 
 of Nursing Schools and Infirmaries. School 
 Boards, County and Parish Councils, will come' 
 to be regarded as imperfect if they do not in- 
 clude women among their numbers. Unrepre- 
 sented interests are forgotten. Women's interests 
 are likely to receive more intelligent concern from 
 local bodies where matters relating mainly to 
 women and children are settled in consultation 
 with those chiefly interested in their own and the 
 children's behalf. 
 
 As the dull and narrow interests of middle-class 
 life are enlarged and brightened by the growing 
 demand for women of sacrifice and intelligent 
 service of humanity, there is little fear that the 
 supply will run short. And as women enter more 
 and more into the larger sphere that awaits them, 
 the dangers menacing from the unchecked predomi- 
 nance of a masculine and selfish democracy will be
 
 190 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 abated even if they do not disappear. Had 
 women acquired in 1820 the same influence as 
 they have now obtained, it is unlikely that food 
 would have been kept artificially dear ; that 
 skilled operatives in the textile trades would have 
 had to bear the same privations, low wages and 
 long hours that constitute the sweating system of 
 to-day. The labour of married women is still a 
 blot upon our humanity, but young children 
 toiling in mines, climbing-boys apprenticed to 
 chimneysweeps, the existence of slavery, coarseness 
 of manners and language, pointed in 1820 as clearly 
 to the absence of women's influence from current 
 politics as to the want of household suffrage. We 
 had one Revolution when power left the Crown ; 
 a second when Land was compelled to hand over 
 to Trade the first place among British interests ; 
 a third when, in 1867 and 1884-5, Trade was dis- 
 placed by Wages as the governing authority. 
 The occasion for revolt against the tyranny of 
 class to-day will be removed if women have free 
 entry into the Councils where home interests are 
 under discussion. The best antidote to Demos is 
 not to be found in the House of Lords or in plural 
 voting. We must look for it in Mrs. Demos. She is 
 the one authority to whom he defers ; of whom 
 he is occasionally afraid ; to whom he is sincerely 
 attached. To hear him talk by the mouths of his
 
 THE OUTLOOK FOR WOMEN. 191 
 
 bondsmen in the Press, one would not gather that 
 he had a wife. In the refinement and elevation of 
 Mrs. and Miss Demos is our brightest hope. The 
 middle-class women, who are spending their lives 
 in conveying help to those born in a lot less happy 
 than their own, are in truth engaged in work as 
 patriotic as Florence Nightingale's. Beneficence to 
 be effective must generally be silent and always 
 continuous. The good women of England who 
 are busying themselves with the happiness and 
 welfare of the poorer sisters are revealing a 
 treasure too long neglected, though it lies ready to 
 our hand. It is through them that democracy 
 may be knit into a stronger whole ; through them 
 that the malignant whispers of class strife will be 
 hushed ; through them that the organism of society 
 will become sweet and wholesome. 
 
 The women who are burning for a vote are not 
 in all cases clear in their minds what they will do 
 with it when they get it. They are afflicted with 
 a passion for the vote which reminds the onlooker 
 of the dementia that twenty years ago afflicted the 
 Japanese people. To own a rabbit was there the 
 one aim of existence. Extravagant sums were 
 paid for a bunny. The rage soon died out. Be- 
 hind the rabbit craze there was nothing- but the 
 
 o 
 
 ashes of disappointment. The longing for a vote 
 is no more reasonable than the passion for a rab-
 
 192 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 bit, unless the utilisation of the vote is made the 
 first object. Most voteless women have more or 
 less control over a voter of their own. Let them 
 exercise over their voter all the influence they 
 would themselves bring direct to bear upon Par- 
 liament, had the suffrage been already granted 
 them, and the increased political influence of 
 women, which is highly desirable in the presence 
 of the new Tyranny, will promptly make its 
 appearance. 
 
 In the higher grades in the social scale we 
 encounter the best and the worst of womankind. 
 Those women who form the irridescent scum on 
 the surface of society are poisoning the air for 
 democracy. They live in a whirl of trifles, or of 
 things that not being trifles are not good for any 
 one. Incessant movement is necessary to them. 
 They hover over the stream of life like the 
 brilliant ephemera they resemble. They belong, 
 or aim at belonging, to the vulgar notorious. In 
 the smart set they find occupation without 
 happiness, movement without content, and in- 
 cessant competition for prizes that do not exist, 
 or are never to be attained. Like their coloured 
 sisters in Darkest Africa, their attire, if scanty, is 
 peculiar. On dress, food, and jewels, they spend 
 their souls. Wit and learning bore them. Seri- 
 ous affairs of life bedraggle them. They are, in
 
 THE OUTLOOK FOR WOMEN. 193 
 
 the true sense of the term, " abandoned women." 
 They have received much ; nothing do they 
 render but chiffons and the tinkle of talk. They are 
 abandoned because they have abandoned all that 
 was worth retaining, and have clung to what they 
 should have abandoned. The only hope for such 
 women is the revival of interest in the serious work 
 of the world, and in their neglect of this work they 
 are stunting and starving the lives of thousands 
 beneath them, who insensibly follow their example. 
 The women of the upper classes, who take part 
 in the work of the world, are sweeter, softer, and 
 more refined than those who lap their souls in 
 the luxury of idleness. Noblesse oblige applies as 
 much or more to women than to men. Men who 
 do nothing are loafers. Women of the upper 
 classes have a kingdom waiting for them. They 
 rail at democracy ; it awaits subjugation at their 
 hands. Remaining aloof, their wealth and privi- 
 leges excite the jealousy and hatred of. the many. 
 If every woman of the upper classes lives her life 
 with the resolve to sever some of the bonds that 
 hold the labouring women of our country in 
 thrall, the new democracy, like the lion, will pro- 
 tect his Una. 
 
 The result of the woman's movement may pro- 
 duce a nobler not a noisier woman. Her mind 
 may be cleared of prejudice; she needs to become
 
 i 94 ENGLISH DEMO CRA C Y. 
 
 more just, not more attractive or more beautiful. 
 Her qualifications become greater as her outlook 
 becomes wider. The traces written on her coun- 
 tenance of noble thoughts, good works, self- 
 sacrifice, will leave a beauty there not only of the 
 fleeting days of youth upon which she now too 
 much relies. 
 
 It would be futile to ignore the impediments in 
 her path. Men may be rough, coarse, and hard. 
 But justice and magnanimity come easier to men 
 than women. Man makes a more faithful friend : 
 woman the more constant lover. Men are vainer 
 than women, but they are less spiteful. Women's 
 love of admiration is supreme. Her passion for 
 dress and show approaches instinct in its inten- 
 sity. Her curiosity is dominant. She enjoys 
 secrets too well not to share them with those 
 she loves. She is a hot partisan. Her anti- 
 pathies bias her opinions, her affections, her 
 belief. Few women escape the influence of one 
 man in forming their views on religion and poli- 
 tics. Feminine faults of vanity, curiosity, and 
 injustice, matter little in private life. In public 
 life, these failings generally attributed to women 
 are serious drawbacks to her success. Since the 
 tendencies and temptations of women make her 
 narrower than men, she necessarily finds it hard 
 to see the matter in dispute from her opponent's
 
 THE OUTLOOK FOR WOMEN. i?5 
 
 point of view. The quality women will gain in 
 contact with the larger life now opening before 
 them is regard for justice. Her difficulties will 
 be to discard her affections and antipathies in 
 dealing with public affairs. That this is not im- 
 possible is patent from the conduct of the picked 
 specimens of their sex who have already won 
 their way in public life. But it would be insin- 
 cerity to imply that such women as Mrs. Fawcett, 
 Miss Flora Shaw, Miss Olive Schreiner, or Miss 
 Buss, are ordinary examples of women of thought 
 and education. Women are either better or worse 
 than men. They sink to lower depths or rise 
 to far loftier heights. Saint or petroleuse, the fire 
 of woman's nature glows more brightly than 
 that of her comrade man. To know good and evil, 
 woman has before now been ready to risk her 
 position. " The serpent beguiled me, and I did 
 eat." Her excuse was not accepted. In once 
 more seeking freedom and knowledge, is she 
 hearkening to the subtlety of the serpent ? And 
 will not her sorrow be greatly multiplied by es- 
 caping from the Eden man's selfishness has created 
 for her ? 
 
 The answer to these questions mainly rests 
 with the unmarried women. Family cares must 
 continue to absorb the efforts and the energy of 
 most matrons. Upon the pucelage will fall the
 
 196 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 chief burden of advance. Spinsters of forty and 
 fifty may look to brighter times ahead. The 
 early years of the twentieth century bid fair to be 
 the golden a^e of maidens in middle life. If, 
 
 o o 
 
 perchance, they bring tears into public affairs, 
 it is but heredity. Had women been treated by 
 men with respect instead of gallantry: educated 
 with vigorous and masculine purpose, they would 
 now be better fitted for their future development. 
 Drink and the social evil from which they suffer 
 the most, will never be grappled with by man-made 
 law. By the time that women are ready to enter 
 public life, man's sensualities, now pandered to in 
 every street, will become unfashionable. There is 
 no brighter outlook for democracy than the com- 
 ing woman. She will tidy up the new century.
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE MANUFACTURE OF THE UNEMPLOYABLE. 
 
 IN the course of his career, Lord Randolph 
 Churchill made no graver addition to the annals 
 of his country than by obtaining for Mr. Henry 
 Matthews the Secretaryship of the Home Depart- 
 ment. And during the tenure of power by Lord 
 Salisbury's Cabinet of 1886-92, no greater error, 
 or one more fruitful in results, was committed, 
 than by the Home Secretary on the 2 7th August, 
 1889. Epoch-making events in the life of a 
 nation are seldom marked by special or obvious 
 significance. Mr. Matthews' use of the resources 
 
 o 
 
 of British civilisation for the suppression of in- 
 timidation and the preservation of personal liberty 
 during the early days of the Civil War, known as 
 the Great Dock Strike, affected for some time to 
 come the attitude of our rulers towards the rights 
 of minorities in the presence of a hostile majority. 
 Wisdom and firmness were never more impera- 
 
 J 97
 
 1 98 ENGLISH DEM OCR A C Y. 
 
 lively needed in the Minister responsible for 
 order and liberty than on the occasion referred 
 to. Mr. Matthews combined doggedness with 
 timidity ; and, abdicating his proper functions at 
 the summons of ephemeral popular sentiment, the 
 fears and opportunism of the placeman permitted 
 him to surrender principles of liberty and justice, 
 which had hitherto been regarded as fundamental 
 to the administration of British law by both 
 political parties. 
 
 On August 27th, 1892, the late Sir Robert 
 Fowler, from his place in the House of Commons, 
 asked the Home Secretary " whether his atten- 
 tion had been called to the organised system of 
 intimidation which prevailed in connection with 
 the wharves on the Thames, and whether he 
 would direct the police to give protection to those 
 who were engaged in their legitimate business." 
 The reply of the Secretary of State was to the 
 effect that he was "not prepared to admit that 
 there is anything which can be properly described 
 as an organised system of intimidation ; " but he 
 was obliged to allow that " a considerable amount 
 of pressure was exercised," which in some cases 
 passed into acts of intimidation, but of a nature 
 very difficult for the police to interfere with. 
 Nothing was done. 
 
 Had Mr. Matthews resisted in August, 1889,
 
 THE MANUFACTURE OF THE UNEMPLOYABLE. 199 
 
 the lawless endeavour of the majority of the 
 Dock Strikers to impose on the minority the 
 law of the Trade Union they successfully substi- 
 tuted for the law of the land, millions sterling 
 would before long have been saved in wages 
 to the working classes of this country, much 
 misery averted, and the doubts that now un- 
 settle both employers and employed as to the 
 probable action of the Executive Government 
 towards exhibitions of violence in the course of 
 Trade disputes, would never have arisen. 1 The 
 precedent made by Mr. Matthews has already 
 borne fruit. Unwilling or unable to assert the 
 supremacy of the law in defence of the liberties 
 and rights of Englishmen during the Dock Strike 
 of 1889, they have since then again been trampled 
 under foot by Socialist leaders and their followers, 
 with the passionate approval of a Press too much 
 in a hurry to stop to think, and with the support 
 of clergymen who seek, by political aphrodisiacs, 
 to influence in their own favour the affections of a 
 democracy from whom faith in them and in the 
 unseen has alike departed. 
 
 The results of the Dock Strike have been to 
 
 1 A curious example of the desire of latter-day Governments 
 to associate firmness with love, is presented by the action of 
 those who condoned killing the Featherstone rioters by shoot- 
 ing them down, but subsequently compensated their families 
 with taxpayers' money.
 
 200 ENGLISH DEMOCRA C Y. 
 
 plunge the unskilled labourers of the East and 
 South of London, into a lower and more miser- 
 able position than they occupied before. The 
 universal testimony of impartial observers is, that 
 however a few of the regular men may be im- 
 proved or sustained in their positions by means 
 of Australian remittances and the deficit of the 
 Dock shareholders, the bulk of the men concerned 
 are worse off than before. A large portion of the 
 strikers were Celtic Irish. 
 
 Mr. T. P. O'Connor, M.P., speaking in Man- 
 chester on September 27, 1889, in his capacity of 
 President of the Irish National League of Great 
 Britain, said : 
 
 "Allusion has also been made to the struggle which had 
 so triumphantly closed in London on behalf of the Dock 
 labourers. In that struggle he was permitted to take a small, 
 humble, and modest part, and he was glad to say that the part 
 he took aided in some degree the final success of the strikers. 
 A good many of these Dockers were men of Irish race, a good 
 many of the labourers throughout the country were men of Irish 
 race too, and Irishmen in England, and Scotland, and Wales, if 
 for no other reason, would for their own personal interest and 
 advancement always be found in the vanguard of those who were 
 fighting for better houses, better wages, and greater comfort and 
 enlarged liberties for the working classes in this country. . . . 
 Attacked by Coercion, Ireland had its revenge by the emancipation 
 and uprising of labour in England ahd in Scotland." 
 
 Land Leagueism in Ireland, and Socialistic 
 Labour movements are part of the same move-
 
 THE MANUFACTURE OF THE UNEMPLOYABLE. 201 
 
 ment, if Mr. T. P. O'Connor is a witness to be 
 accepted. It is to this movement Mr. Matthews 
 succumbed. 
 
 Had Mr. Matthews acted in London as Mr. 
 Balfour acted in Ireland, he would have deserved 
 the thanks of the^dupes of the Labour Leaders, 
 as Mr. Balfour is already beginning to receive the 
 thanks of the peasantry in the West of Ireland as 
 the result of his fearless assertion of the principles 
 of liberty, and the maintenance of the rights of 
 the humblest individual citizen. 
 
 The conduct of the Home Secretary in the 
 Dock Strike may be held to cover the pusil- 
 lanimity of the police. Mr. Monro, who is now a 
 missionary in India, was then Chief Commissioner 
 of the Metropolitan Constabulary. He was a 
 man of quiet manner, and of known personal 
 courage, with a long record of Indian Civil 
 administration. But whether from religious 
 motives, or acting under the orders of his official 
 chief, he introduced on the critical occasion of the 
 strike, those principles of love and yearning 
 which, however appropriate to the domestic 
 hearthstone of family life, are rarely successful in 
 dealing with crowds of excited strikers of which 
 the Celtic Irish form a considerable portion. 
 Mr. Monro further deemed it his duty to govern 
 his conduct by the indications of popular will.
 
 202 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 In a letter to the Chairman of the Dock Com- 
 pany, he said : " The public very rightly are not 
 ready to extend such allowance to police action 
 under difficult circumstances. The public held 
 the police responsible for acting with promptness 
 tempered by judgment and discretion." This was 
 a new and dangerous departure for a Chief Com- 
 missioner of Police, but it was one in full accord 
 with recent conceptions of the first duty of 
 government to keep in with the biggest crowd, 
 whatever may happen to the protection of persons 
 and property. The fallacy of attributing to a 
 mere section of the people the functions and 
 rights of the public, and then basing his executive 
 action on the wishes or sentiment of that section, 
 shquld be sufficient to hand down to future 
 generations, the memory of Mr. James Monro's 
 period of control of the police of London. 
 Popular approval has not hitherto been the 
 standard of efficiency in the discharge of public 
 duties. It was reserved for the Unionist Home 
 Secretary of a Government whose existence was 
 based on the principle of maintaining law until it 
 was changed by constitutional methods, and of 
 enforcing order irrespective of electoral con- 
 sequences, to permit law to lapse, and order to 
 cease at the call of an irresponsible and unin- 
 structed section of public opinion.
 
 THE MANUFACTURE OF THE UNEMPLOYABLE. 203 
 
 Since the Dock Strike, much trade has left 
 London. The Shipping Federation has been 
 formed, and the relations between employers and 
 employed on numerous occasions have been 
 strained to the breaking point. The weaker and 
 less competent men have been thrown to the wall, 
 and instead of solving the Labour question, Mr. 
 Matthews' weakness in action has largely con- 
 tributed to the subsequent multiplication of the 
 unemployed. The Dock labourer was cruelly 
 deceived. Australian subsidies and the interven- 
 tion of Cardinal Manning and other large-hearted 
 but incompetent advisers, have produced no 
 permanent effect whatever. The numbers of the 
 unemployed are as numerous, or more numerous 
 than before. A wild sense of injustice has been 
 planted in the minds of ignorant men, and the 
 evils of administrating a great office on political 
 lines to avert unpopularity, are now ripening to a 
 harvest that even this generation may reap. The 
 use of political power for the ends of a class, is an 
 instrument for the destruction of civilisation itself. 
 Untrained emotion, even in a Prince of the 
 Church or an ex-Lord Mayor, is a danger to 
 democracy, only less than the tyranny of godless 
 anarchists. Ignorance of inflexible economic 
 laws, however cloaked and covered in sympathy 
 and " love," or indifference to the consequences
 
 204 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 of breaking them, are the raw materials for the 
 manufacture of the unemployed. 
 
 There does not exist, to my knowledge, any 
 competent diagnosis of the chronic worklessness 
 that is becoming the greatest question of this era, 
 The following analysis has been carefully thought 
 out, and is, I submit, a substantially exact state- 
 ment of the main features of the problem as it 
 exists to-day. It is the result of many years' 
 work on the subject of the unemployed, and may 
 be useful to some of those who still believe in the 
 possibility of a panacea being found to deal with 
 the unemployed as a whole. 
 
 The causes of the chronic condition of work- 
 lessness may be broadly divided into two parts : 
 
 1. Causes not fairly attributable to the action 
 or defects of the unemployed themselves. 
 
 2. Causes that are inherent to the persons 
 affected, and therefore attributable to themselves 
 and none other. 
 
 With regard to the first heading, the following 
 are the five principal reasons to which want of 
 employment are justly attributable, where society, 
 not the unemployed themselves, is to blame. 
 
 Bad, obsolete, or stupid laws inapplicable to 
 existing conditions.
 
 THE MANUFACTURE OF THE UNEMPLOYABLE. 205 
 
 Neglected facts. 
 Callousness of public opinion. 
 Ignorance and preoccupation of Parliament. 
 Confusion of humanity with commodities by 
 capitalists. 
 
 Further analysis of these causes reveals the 
 following specific forms of error into which the 
 English people have fallen : 
 
 1. Destruction of home life and decay of 
 parental responsibility induced by 
 
 (a) The existing Poor Law, a survival of the 
 middle class predominance, securing the 
 worthless unemployed against the natural 
 consequence of deliberate neglect or vice, 
 and insulting the worthy by herding 
 them with nomads and wastrels. 
 
 (<) Gratuitous education and Board School 
 meals, leaving parents to regard the pro- 
 pagation of children as the final discharge 
 of all duties towards them. 
 
 (c] The growing substitution of the im- 
 personal State for the love and sacrifice 
 of the responsible parent. 
 
 2. The stream of untrained chanty that de- 
 bauches instead of aiding the recipient, by sapping 
 his self-help ; fertilising instead of sterilising the
 
 206 ENGLISH DEMOCRA C Y. 
 
 unfit ; vitalising that which should be extermin- 
 ated; and perpetuating incapacity and mendi- 
 cancy. The public has no authoritative guide or 
 Clearing House to tell them the difference be- 
 tween Reuben May and the Charity Organisation 
 Society. They subsidise both, and thus enable 
 fraudulent agencies to flourish and create a mass 
 of pauperised recipients. 
 
 3. The competition of immigrant aliens. 
 
 4. The unchecked spread of predatory doctrine, 
 ranging from Fabianism to Anarchy, tempting all 
 who wish to forsake honest work for political 
 
 agitation. 
 
 5. The operation of the Sweating System in 
 trades requiring but little skill, arising from the 
 unchecked competition of 
 
 Bargain hunters. 
 Women with men. 
 Employers with their rivals. 
 Boys with men. 
 
 The lowest class of Russian Jews with English 
 people. 
 
 6. The adulteration of exports, and consequent 
 
 
 
 loss of market, reacting on the unemployed. 
 
 Turning to the second of the two principal 
 divisions of the causes leading to the want of
 
 THE MANUFACTURE OF THE UNEMPLOYABLE. 207 
 
 employment, viz., those due to the action or 
 defects of the unemployed themselves, we must 
 sub-divide this class of the unemployed into those 
 guilty of deliberate and avoidable fault of com- 
 mission or omission, and those whose failure is 
 excusable because due to convention, bad advice, 
 or theological sanction. 
 
 (a) The immoderate use of intoxicants, 
 
 (b) Gambling, 
 
 (c) Inveterate idleness, 
 
 are the three principal features of the first sub- 
 division ; while of the second, 
 
 (a) Reckless procreation of children. 
 
 (b) Ignorance, e.g., of the actual facts re- 
 
 lating to foreign industries, which is one 
 of the chief causes of strikes. 
 
 (c) Racial thriftlessness. 
 
 (cC) Want of flexibility of adaptation. 
 
 (<?) Degeneration from unhealthy, but not 
 criminal habits. 
 
 (/) Mental and physical degeneration arising 
 from bad cooking, deficient oxygen, ex- 
 ercise, and cold tub, and impure sanitary 
 arrangements. 
 
 Penniless old age or loss of competitive 
 value in the wage market arising from 
 heedless neglect of opportunity when in 
 full health and strength.
 
 2o3 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 If this attempt at an analysis of the causes of 
 want of employment in Great Britain, be fairly 
 exhaustive and not inaccurate, it is clear that 
 were all the accumulated wealth of the civilized 
 world at our disposal, we could cure no more 
 than a symptom or two of the disease apparent 
 to all. If indeed the foregoing statement of 
 the causes of want of employment be even 
 approximately correct, it follows that the majority 
 of the agencies now at work would continue to 
 flourish if the Fabian Society were installed in 
 Downing Street to-morrow. The root remedies 
 applicable are evidently not economic but moral, 
 and, however hard it is to those actually in want 
 to understand the grim beneficence of inexorable 
 law, the fact remains that in the religious and 
 moral elevation of the whole democracy is to be 
 discovered the only permanent remedy to our 
 present troubles. The present generation of 
 unfit is doomed. Nothing can save it. Want 
 of employment, on the vast scale it has now 
 reached, can be touched by no remedies that 
 omit from their sphere of action the population 
 question, home life, parental care, the inhumanity 
 of pitiless employers to their defenceless servants, 
 and these principles of free trade which treat the 
 hopes and needs of humanity as subject to the 
 same set of laws as govern trade in pig-iron or
 
 THE MANUFACTURE OF THE UNEMPLOYABLE. 209 
 
 unwashed wool. All these things lie in the domain 
 of morals ; not of Government. Nevertheless, 
 both clergy and statesmen are found in plenty, 
 who obtain from the toiling masses power and 
 popularity, by denouncing the plain rules of mo- 
 rality in relation to property that are associated 
 with the name of Moses : promising a future of 
 plenty that can never be realised by individuals 
 but by breaking the fundamental laws of civilisa- 
 tion known as the Ten Commandments : that 
 never have been realised by nations founding 
 their legislation or practice upon any but a moral 
 basis. We may freely admit that no man has 
 any right to pecuniary profit by the necessary 
 misery of others, without approving the doctrine 
 that it is within the right of democracy, by 
 majority of votes, not only to create but to 
 sanctify a new morality, by omitting the word 
 " not," even from the Eighth Commandment. 
 
 There are objective, economic limits, which in 
 the present stage of our moral and economical 
 development, prevent us from doing what we 
 please in the problem of the unemployed. The 
 stern teaching of natural, no less than Biblical law, 
 points to the automatic destruction of the wilfully 
 idle. The new moralists have improved on Bibli- 
 cal morality. Were Christ to return to earth as 
 He left it, a moderate drinker, He would be in-
 
 2io ENGLISH DEMO CRA C Y. 
 
 eligible to teach temperance. His first miracle 
 would be denounced as immoral by the Temper- 
 ance Section of the new Radical party, and until 
 He had pinned the blue ribbon in His toga, He 
 would be excluded from public appearances on 
 behalf of the United Kingdom Alliance. In like 
 manner, the doctrine of a wilfully idle man being 
 allowed to die, is shocking to the generous souls, 
 who (at other folk's expense) prefer the State to 
 " love " the sinner. That there will shortly be a 
 reaction against this nauseous cant, no one who 
 has faith in the historic common sense of English- 
 men, can doubt. The manhood of Great Britain 
 among the working population, knows perfectly 
 well that if the idle rich are a curse to the com- 
 munity, the idle poor are specially injurious to 
 the honest men who are out of work from no 
 fault of their own. The morality and habits of 
 Christ are good enough for them. The growing 
 independence and gallant aversion alike to the 
 poor-house and to private charity, is honourable 
 to the victims of bad laws or the feebleness of 
 Government, and it is one of the brightest features 
 of promise in English democracy. But the self- 
 reliance, of which the dislike to external aid 
 is a symptom, is in fair way to droop under 
 the hollow invention by which many politicians 
 now pretend to recognise in every poor man,
 
 THE MANUFACTURE OF THE UNEMPLOYABLE. 211 
 
 an innocent victim of class tyranny. Speaking 
 of the London unemployed, a class I have care- 
 fully studied for many years, I have good reason 
 for saying that in the winter troubles that are 
 now an annual fixture, two out of five applicants 
 for help are not only unworthy of relief, but 
 no committee of competent working men in the 
 kingdom, acquainted with the class referred to, 
 would consent to relieve them, whatever funds 
 might be available. On the other hand, the grit 
 and courage of multitudes who ask for nothing, 
 and of many more who ask only in dire need 
 not their fault, are undeniable. These people 
 are treated in the same way as the mouthing 
 ranters who make unemployment a trade, and 
 the result is a just and growing bitterness against 
 a system that enables real suffering to form 
 a counter in a political game. 
 
 The political sycophants of democracy who 
 fancy that by flattering the unfit, and fawning at 
 the feet of the worst section of the unemployable, 
 they are pleasing the working classes, make a 
 mistake. The hard conditions of life with which 
 working folk are incessantly struggling, enable 
 them to recognise the difference between the 
 pliant obsequience springing from self- interest, 
 and the genuine concern for the whole community 
 regardless of political results to oneself. The
 
 2 1 2 ENGLISH DEMOCRA C Y. 
 
 working classes of this country are insulted rather 
 than flattered by treating the loafers and charity- 
 smell-feasts as a class to be conciliated by grovel- 
 ling before them. The time has arrived when a 
 broad line needs to be drawn between the 
 worthless and the worthy, and when men who 
 value their reputation more than their careers, 
 should speak out as to the necessity of allowing 
 those who seek work to avoid, rather than to find 
 it, to sterilise themselves in death. 
 
 But with regard to the others, there is much to 
 be done. 
 
 The want of employment cannot be remedied 
 by Vestries, that are created for other purposes. 
 We might as well expect a snake to kick or a 
 donkey to sting, as to expect a Vestry to abolish 
 poverty in a given locality. It would be as 
 reasonable to desire the Secretary for War to raise 
 new regiments that are not wanted ; or for the 
 Admiralty to contract for superfluous cruisers, as 
 to enjoin the Vestries, as recent Governments have 
 done, to make work not because it is wanted, or 
 because Vestry funds are available, but because 
 the cry of the unemployed is clamorous, incon- 
 venient, and if ignored, may become a probable 
 source of political disaster. 
 
 Of the evils alone remediable by moral and 
 religious means, it is obvious that the action of
 
 THE MANUFACTURE OF THE UNEMPLOYABLE. 213 
 
 the State can only be by indirect and secondary 
 measures. No immediate cure from the resources 
 of the State applicable to the sufferings of the 
 unemployed is possible. Palliatives there are. 
 In times of exceptional distress both India and 
 Ireland have received direct and immediate help 
 outside the Poor Law. This being so, the most 
 statesmanlike attitude towards the solution of the 
 problem is continually to direct the attention of 
 Parliament and the public towards the means for 
 preventing the production of future generations of 
 unemployed. The present crop is doomed. The 
 seed of unfitness must be extirpated. 
 
 Gambling. The extent to which the moral 
 fibre of the democracy is degenerated by the 
 enormous development of the gambling spirit, is 
 not fully determined, but enough is known of the 
 facts to make it safe to assert that the betting 
 mania directly and largely increases the number 
 of the unemployed. But there is no public desire 
 whatever, to suppress betting, except among a 
 few poor and insignificant men. The coy non- 
 conformist conscience now reposes contentedly in 
 the arms of a horse-racing Peer- Premier. The 
 immunity accorded by both political parties to the 
 betting clubs of the rich, and the use of national 
 telegraphs for transmitting racing odds under the 
 direct management of Mr. Samuel Morley's son,
 
 2 1 4 ENGLISH DEMOCRA C Y. 
 
 are sufficient proof that neither the clergy nor the 
 politicians are really desirous to reduce temptation 
 so far as gambling is concerned. Post Master 
 Generals are obliged to obtain revenue, and make 
 national arrangements for facilitating the corruption 
 of clerks and shopboys by expending large sums 
 of national money on the telegraphic arrangements 
 at Epsom and Newmarket. The success of Mr. 
 Arnold Morley's endeavours is shown by the fact 
 that the Russian system of " caviaring " the 
 newspaper matter repugnant to the authorities, 
 has been compulsorily adopted by the Committees 
 of many Free Libraries. The Post Master 
 General is a considerable factor in the problem of 
 how to create the unemployed. 
 
 Alcohol. We are no more in earnest about 
 alcohol than about gambling. Ignoring the preg- 
 nant fact that since Pickwick was written, the 
 middle and upper classes have become sober 
 without legislation, a powerful Parliamentary 
 party still clings to the illusion that inscription 
 on legal parchment of certain phrases of which 
 neither Moses nor Christ could approve, embody- 
 ing the convictions of those who drink nothing, 
 will alter the habits of those who drink too much. 
 The growing democratic impatience of restraint, 
 the incessant monotony of industrial life, the 
 consistent failure of the United Kingdom Alliance
 
 THE MANUFACTURE OF THE UNEMPLOYABLE. 215 
 
 and their visionary aspirations for over a genera- 
 tion, the silencing of the moderate men, and the 
 increasing reliance of the Exchequer on alcohol 
 for empire, all point to the attainment of general 
 sobriety from other than Parliamentary sources ; 
 and, in fact, from the identical influences that have 
 already successfully operated on the well-to-do. 
 Education, and the growing weight of woman's 
 interests, with the consequent change in public 
 opinion, will change labourers as it has changed 
 lords. Governments might easily give a fillip to 
 the creation of a healthy public opinion, by pass- 
 ing a short Act preventing girls serving, or 
 children being served in licensed victuallers' 
 premises. For the present, however, we do not 
 respect our women enough, and the enticements 
 of a stipendiary Venus are known to stimulate 
 the consumption of raw, new, and dangerous 
 compounds. Temperance is one of the sub- 
 jects many people have too deeply at heart, to 
 have a head at command in dealing with it. We 
 shall go on drinking like Mr. Pickwick and his 
 drunken friends, until both brewers and Alliance 
 men will allow the great mass of the public to 
 deal with the subject with common sense. Tem- 
 perance is common sense, and temperance is a 
 point midway between abstinence and excess. 
 Idleness. It is easier for the unemployable
 
 216 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 unemployed to snatch a living from the blunders 
 of charity than to sustain themselves from the fruits 
 of their own exertions. There are whole streets 
 in the east end of London where the inhabitants 
 regard the stream of alms, ever flowing from rival 
 religious sects, and the untrained sympathies of 
 kind hearts in richer quarters of London, as their 
 rightful due. If one sect gives a tea to a thousand 
 children, its rival must follow with a supper to 
 double the number. The same guests are invited 
 to both, critically compare the respective enter- 
 tainments, and whatever emotions are aroused, 
 gratitude is not one of them. The vast sums of 
 money squandered on the destruction of self-help 
 are a fruitful source of idleness. The indis- 
 criminate relief by A who is sorry, through B 
 who has a theological dogma to sustain, of C 
 whose rags are the results of calculation or 
 neglect rather than misfortune or necessity, is a 
 fertile cause of idleness in those who are fully 
 alive to the inherent folly of labour, when the 
 same results are procurable by easier means. 
 
 Men who want bread are exploited by men 
 who want fame. The hungry are always an easy 
 prey of tonguesters who teach them that the 
 State is endowed with vast wealth, that all poli- 
 tical economy is obsolete, and that the provision 
 of food and fuel, raiment and shelter by "organ-
 
 THE MANUFACTURE OF THE UNEMPLOYABLE, zir 
 
 ised society," is a perfectly easy operation, and 
 that the only obstacle to its achievement is the 
 absence from Parliament of the particular genius 
 who happens to be at the time addressing the 
 famished audience. 
 
 To be idle is in these days as distinctly a trade 
 as bootmaking. To make others idle by organis- 
 ing inevitable defeat in a hopeless strike against 
 the eternal nature of things, is a popular, 
 honoured, and expanding business. The very 
 men upon whom will devolve the organisation of 
 labour when Social Democracy is established in 
 England, are qualifying for Utopia by practice on 
 a large scale in the organisation of idleness, with 
 the hearty approval of an ignorant and partisan 
 Press, crafty priests, and a few baronets and 
 politicians who calculate that the game of social- 
 istic bowls can be played by them alone without 
 liability to subsequent rubbers. To breed and be 
 idle, without God or master, is the ideal of this 
 school. It is incredible that the racial common 
 sense of Englishmen will continue to brook the 
 mischief that this doctrine is working on the 
 bodies and souls of the present generation. This 
 is no work on morals, but no man who cares for 
 his country can fail to observe that along with 
 appallingly long hours and low wages in certain 
 low class trades, there is in England a growing
 
 2 1 8 ENGLISH DEM OCR A C Y. 
 
 repugnance to solid work as the one healthy 
 source of comfort and ease. It is difficult to get 
 really first-rate work. Cloth is not made now as 
 it was made sixty years ago. Houses are not 
 built as in the time of George the Third. The 
 standard of individual excellence deteriorates, as 
 the scale of individual expectation is enhanced. 
 Where is the democratic leader or the popular 
 clergyman who says his large heart throbs for 
 the masses, who dares tell them the bitter truth 
 that of one hundred people out of work in the 
 winter, forty are in that condition as the direct 
 result of their own deliberate acts ; and that no 
 change in society, no abasement of the classes, or 
 reconstruction of the constitution will clothe the 
 back that is deliberately bare, or shoe the bare- 
 footed children of designedly idle parents ? 
 
 Ignorance. Many of the strikes that form part 
 of the contemporary history of our country are 
 the result of sheer ignorance. Honest and brave 
 men, as many of these strike leaders are, some of 
 them, judging from their speeches, are ignorant 
 of elementary and invulnerable principles. Still 
 more of them are ignorant of accomplished facts, 
 -especially those relating to industrial operations 
 in foreign countries. Judging by the spoken and 
 written utterances of the Old and New Unionists, 
 the principal difference between them seems to
 
 THE MANUFACTURE OF THE UNEMPLOYABLE. 219 
 
 l>e that the former have, and the latter have not, 
 studied the essential conditions of the problems 
 with which they have to deal. That the New 
 Unionists should be the more successful and the 
 more popular is only natural. Mankind likes to 
 be deceived, and democracy has always objected 
 to be told that the earth is neither flat nor sta- 
 tionary, when the majority of the people, by the 
 evidence of their senses, decide by one man one 
 vote that it is both stationary and flat. 
 
 The ignorance of Labour leaders is a practical 
 question. If facts can be conveyed to them, 
 masses of poor labourers who now prefer Mr. 
 Alderman Tillett as an economist to the late Dr. 
 Adam Smith, might be enriched with good sense. 
 How is this to be done ? Millionaire statesmen 
 enhance their reputation for brilliancy, by girding 
 .at Blue Books, and associating them in the public 
 mind with the remainder biscuit. Nevertheless, 
 in Blue Books repose the matured and impartial 
 statement of facts that would have prevented 
 many and many a strike, had the knowledge, 
 hidden away in the recesses of Foreign Office 
 publications, been palatable and accessible to the 
 men who decide the question of strikes. The 
 commercial classes, a few years back, became 
 aware of their ignorance of certain economic facts 
 existing on the Continent. Accordingly an agita-
 
 220 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 tion was set on foot, and at the present moment 
 commercial attaches devoted to the interests of 
 the mercantile classes are allocated to the principal 
 Embassies and Legations, and with a refreshing 
 stream of facts and figures irrigate the counting 
 houses of Great Britain. 
 
 That which men of family and the commercial 
 interests in this land have done for themselves, 
 might be done by the Trade Unions for their 
 constituents. If the engineering, printing, build- 
 ing, boot and shoe trades, were to move Parlia- 
 ment to add to the diplomatic staff serving abroad 
 members of their respective Trade Unions, with 
 the object of keeping in touch with the industrial 
 phenomena of the civilised world, for the informa- 
 tion of the British wage-earners, tons of miscon- 
 ception would be rolled away in a year. In 
 former days, theologians and casuists travelled ta 
 dispute and to learn. Even to-day, artists, 
 architects, and geographers, recognise the neces- 
 sity for professional and continual contact with 
 the evolution of ideas in other parts of the world. 
 The greatest interest of all, "wage labour, speaking 
 no language but its own, is largely dependent for 
 knowledge of international trade interests on 
 cosmopolitan and tainted sources of information. 
 If the artisans of Great Britain were to nominate 
 their own representatives abroad, the Trade
 
 THE MANUFACTURE OF THE UNEMPLOYABLE. 221 
 
 Unions would be illuminated with a dry light of 
 which they stand in need, and the State would 
 profit by some diminution in the causes of in- 
 dustrial dispute. Industrial attaches to the 
 European Embassies would promote peace, 
 popularise the Foreign Office, familiarise the 
 democracy with the Imperial idea, and make them 
 sensible of responsibility. The only objection I 
 can discern, is that the period of Free Trade in 
 England would be abridged, and the Manchester 
 School would therefore oppose the education of 
 the Trade Unions with all their power. 
 
 If the Trade Unions are ignorant of many facts 
 it were well that they should know, the British 
 people are in the dark about other things it is 
 essential that they should know and understand in 
 order to deal with the unemployed question. We 
 are ignorant of the real facts of the relation be- 
 tween reckless and immature marriages and the 
 prevalence of distress. We are ignorant of the 
 real character of the population produced by these 
 unions, and we require to learn the views of com- 
 petent women investigators, as to the physical and 
 moral condition of the persons affected, and hear, 
 in their opinion, if the evils complained of can be 
 modified. 
 
 An examination into the real character of im- 
 ports and exports, both of people and goods,
 
 222 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 would dispel a vast amount of misconception in 
 the public mind. It is alleged on good authority 
 that the emigrants from this country are its bone 
 and sinew ; that the immigrants from Eastern 
 Europe are generally paupers ; that the foreign 
 Jewish poor are growing at an alarming rate; 
 that the prison-made goods of Germany come in 
 under free trade ; that adulterated goods are 
 exported, and that the good name of this country 
 is injured thereby. On these things we want 
 more light. Let there be light. It is only thus 
 that the manufacture of the unemployable can be 
 stopped.
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 THE RELIGION OF THE IRRELIGIOUS. 
 
 BEFORE men worship they must eat. The wail- 
 ing of hungry children, whose want is caused by 
 circumstances beyond the control of their parents, 
 paralyses the faculty for worship in ordinary 
 fathers and mothers. There are saintly souls to 
 whom their own want is but a stimulus to faith ; 
 who are attuned to brighter worlds by the sting 
 of privation ; who find in trouble a link with 
 the unseen. With average humanity, however, 
 hunger and lust are the most violent of all the 
 appetites. The first is a perpetual call upon 
 them to preserve themselves ; the latter, to 
 propagate their kind. Men, women, and children 
 hunger - bitten, and lacking all that the body 
 needs, have neither wish nor power to engage in 
 the exercise of prayer, praise, or meditation. 
 Reverence and love towards the Supreme Being 
 
 cannot exist where a pound of beef-steak at the 
 
 223
 
 224 ENGL 1SH DEMO CRA C Y. 
 
 moment is more to a man than the Kingdom of 
 Heaven hereafter. Let those who doubt this 
 fast for forty hours, and see how far their 
 thoughts linger round the things of this world. 
 For the giving of thanks, one must receive ; for 
 the exercise of prayer, one must expect ; for 
 belief in Providence, there must be provision. 
 Prudential motives, religious principle, serious 
 conduct, and unselfish uprightness, are incom- 
 patible with the prevalence of want among masses 
 of men. It has been observed that famine and 
 pestilence are invariably followed by a state of 
 gross immorality. When famine is on the door- 
 step, morality usually accompanies love out of the 
 window. To moralise the multitudes, begin by 
 feeding them. It is only then that they can 
 reasonably be expected to live soberly with re- 
 spect to themselves, honestly with respect to 
 their neighbours, or piously with God. The 
 hungry may possibly retain their superstitions, 
 rarely their religion. As a remover of discontent, 
 and an incentive to good works, religion may 
 operate upon people sufficiently fed, clothed, and 
 housed, to detach themselves from the wants of 
 the flesh, but rarely with the hungry parents of 
 famished bairns. 
 
 The scoffing and contumely thrown by the 
 Socialist-Anarchist School upon all faith and faith-
 
 THE RELIGION OF THE IRRELIGIOUS. 225 
 
 teaching as guides to life, are but a natural con- 
 sequence of the conditions of human life with 
 which they are so well acquainted. Hungry men 
 who wish before all things to satisfy their own and 
 their children's want, prefer to take from others, 
 even by force, the food they lack, rather than 
 
 -v 
 
 starve seeking the Kingdom of God. This is 
 but common sense. The writers who articulate 
 the views of the Socialist extremists are neces- 
 sarily faithful to their creed, " Ni dieu ni maitre" 
 To believe in God would involve right thinking. 
 To own a master would imply exertion. " Ni dieu 
 ni maitre " is but another form of " wealth with- 
 out work." The obvious lesson from all this is 
 to feed the hungry before you preach to them. 
 Besides, there is historic precedent for doing so. 
 The majority of men and women who are not 
 hungry, and who are not continually under the 
 cloud of impending want, will worship ! Re- 
 ligion is the perception of the Infinite. Without 
 this idea, religion is inconceivable. The Infinite 
 surrounds the working population. As they walk 
 home from their work in the winter they see the 
 stars. They feel impulses to evil, the desire to 
 resist, and admiration for the right. They are 
 puzzled by the din of voices shouting contra- 
 dictory directions towards the other world. 
 They perceive that the terms " religion " and
 
 226 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 "superstition," "credulity" and "faith," are merely 
 of local application. Faith here is credulity in 
 Constantinople. Religion in Moscow is supersti- 
 tion here. They are charmed and repelled, 
 drawn onward and upward, thrust back into 
 unbelief, or excited into emotional ecstasy. They 
 are as sheep having a plethora of shepherds. 
 The holiest lives and the worst are found in 
 every creed. The dogmas of belief seem to have 
 little bearing upon character. Holy living 
 appears to spring from something deeper even 
 than the creeds. 
 
 From Little Bethel to the Church of Rome 
 each school of teachers claims a valid patent for 
 revelation. Demos is bewildered. He faces 
 eternity in an impenetrable cloud, without a 
 compass. He is floating on a sunless sea. 
 "The spring sunshine pours out of an empty 
 heaven on to a soulless world, and the Great 
 Companion is dead." 1 What is to be the religion 
 of the irreligious ? 
 
 Cardinal Newman was not a man who trusted 
 in reason rather than in authority. But what does 
 he say to the seeker after reasonable truth ? 
 
 " I have no intention at all of denying that truth is the real 
 object of our reason, and that if it does not attain to truth, 
 either the premise or the process is in fault : but I am not 
 
 1 E. Clifford.
 
 THE RELIGION OF THE IRRELIGIOUS. 227 
 
 speaking here of right reason, but as reason as it acts in fact 
 and concretely in fallen man. I know that even the unaided 
 reason, when correctly exercised, leads to a belief in God, in the 
 immortality of the soul, and in a future retribution" 1 
 
 With the proviso that to exercise the reason 
 rightly, fallen man must be free from immediate 
 physical want, Newman's admission is of great 
 value for the democracy of the country. 
 
 The difficulty is to know what they shall be- 
 lieve. Men of high character and of great learn- 
 ing state the case for and against belief with equal 
 ability and nearly equal strength. It is not 
 of them I would now speak. Demos is seeking 
 for a true God and for a real faith, and cares not 
 how he gets these. Faith is no more than suc- 
 cessful credulity ; credulity is equivalent to un- 
 successful faith. Superstition is the other man's 
 religion. If Ramasami immolates himself beneath 
 the wheels of the disestablished Juggernaut, it is 
 credulity. If Stephen be stoned or Latimer 
 burned for what they hold true it is faith. 
 Why? The myriads of Ramasamis who have 
 volunteered for ghastly deaths in India for ages 
 past, in witness of polytheology, suffered as 
 keenly and sacrificed as much as the persecuted 
 Christian victims of Malagasy superstition, or of 
 Alva's savage creed. 
 
 1 "Apologia," p. 243.
 
 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 There is nothing specially pathetic in the 
 martyrdom of heroes and of heroines who launch 
 straightway into eternal glory, and who only 
 exchange a sad world for unending bliss. But 
 the bootless sacrifice of life and wife, of sunshine 
 and ease, of all that is good in this strange 
 jungle wherein we are wandering, for creeds that 
 are false, for gods that are wood and stone, is 
 sadder than all the deaths of all the martyrs 
 whose blood is the* seed of the orthodox church. 
 
 Boys are told inter alia that it were better 
 to do right, because if they do wrong they will 
 go to hell. Men who are men easily make up 
 their minds that they would prefer hell to any 
 convictions gained by giving way to fear. The 
 Gaiety Bogie Man is as effective in renewing a 
 right spirit within the heart of democracy as the 
 prediction of eternal fires. The threat of pun- 
 ishment will never create a desire for the Narrow 
 Way in the heart of Demos ; not even when ac- 
 companied with incomprehensible hymns that sing 
 of joys that are not joys, and commit the singer 
 to statements he does not for a moment regard 
 as desirable if they could be realised as true. 
 The nature we have acquired at our birth, in- 
 herited from at least four million ancestors, 
 revolts at savage, spiritual coercion, or at cajolery 
 of a no less barbarous quality. If the defence of
 
 THE RELIGION OF THE IRRELIGIOUS. 229 
 
 Lucknow against the sanguinary Pandies was an 
 assertion of British courage in the face of heavy 
 odds, how much more courageous is it for the 
 lonely soul to defy the mysterious powers that 
 first thrust thousands of millions of men unasked 
 into the world, endow them with a spirit of 
 courage and independence, and then impel them 
 to right conduct by means that outrage the best 
 instincts of the nature with which they are 
 endowed ? 
 
 And if the doctrine of eternal fires and of the 
 worm that dieth not be discarded by Demos, 
 even as the priests are beginning to put it 
 aside : the fear of death itself is no adequate 
 motive, for Demos to lead an upright and manly 
 life. Fear is an animal emotion. Being both 
 animal and emotional, it is transitory ; and being 
 transitory, fear even of death affords no guide 
 of conduct and no ground of sacrifice, and certainly 
 no motive for rising above the level of those who 
 are epicurean in the philosophy of their lives. 
 
 If there be a God, He must be better than the 
 best, and nobler than the noblest. No ignoble 
 motive, therefore, such as fear of death or the 
 dread of the hereafter, can operate successfully in 
 appealing to men who are themselves already 
 equipped with loftier conceptions, and endowed 
 with hearts impregnable to threats from God
 
 230 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 Himself. If the emotional school of conven- 
 tional theology be right, Demos must submit to 
 his fate, and face the hereafter with a speech- 
 less, impotent sense of burning injustice. 
 
 If unable to accept conventional theology, Demos 
 is equally unable wholly to reject the supernatural. 
 Flippant unbelief grates on most men to-day as 
 keenly as in the old days of faith. A wit, 
 a Roman Catholic, recently at a supper party 
 listened for some time with disgust to the attacks 
 on religion made by a gentleman named Crowe. 
 After remaining silent for some time, he pre- 
 sented the company with the following im- 
 promptu : 
 
 " We've heard in accents highly spiced 
 That Crowe does not believe in Christ. 
 But what we really want to know 
 Is whether Christ believes in Crowe ? " 
 
 But although most people agree in condemning 
 blatant atheism, no hopes or promises can be of 
 value unless they be genuine, based on substantial 
 reality, and appeal to the higher region of man's 
 nature. The hope of heaven is an engine so 
 powerful in the regulation of conduct, that we 
 need not here linger to consider whether or not 
 there be a heaven. The world is full of pain. 
 Every earnest life is mutilated by disappointment 
 at the wide chasm that yawns between effort and
 
 THE RELIGION OF THE IRRELIGIOUS. 231 
 
 achievement. Almost every family has its skele- 
 ton ; every nation but Norway its social question. 
 The jungle and the prairie groan with the cries of 
 defeated candidates in the struggle for life. 
 Gazelles, it is said, have to fly for their lives 
 twice a day during their whole existence. Natural 
 phenomena of rains, drought, storms, and frosts, 
 convey to millions of animals, birds, and insects, 
 either death, or life maimed by incurable debility 
 or disease. The battle of pain and pleasure, of 
 good and evil, ends twice out of three times in the 
 victory of pain and evil. Pleasant things are so 
 generally wrong things that Calvinists and Puritans 
 naturally reject this world as a vehicle for enjoy- 
 ment, and look to the world to come to redress 
 the evils of this life, as Canning looked to South 
 America to redress the balance of the old world. 
 Women who have lost their characters, men who 
 are about to do so, being out of luck or out of work, 
 children who are in torture with the extravagant in- 
 justice of life, look to the repose of an unknown 
 heaven to appease the achings of their weary hearts, 
 and to give the peace that this world does not give 
 them. No day passes that such as those do not say 
 in their hearts with Solomon, "An untimely birth 
 is better than life, for what hath the man of all his 
 labour and of the desire of his heart for which he 
 hath laboured under the sun ? For all his days
 
 232 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 are sorrows, and his travail grief; even in the 
 night his heart resteth not." 
 
 There is an attraction in the idea of rest and 
 happiness after the chances and changes of this 
 life that is well-nigh irresistible. It quenches the 
 thirst for release from pain or age, and satisfies 
 every vague desire for capacity to enjoy that here 
 exists only in rudimentary form. What trifles are 
 the pangs of disappointment, the sense of talent 
 warped, chances maimed and illusory happiness, 
 when a little way off lies a country where all these 
 things are changed ! If pain really will give place 
 after death to buoyancy and joy, fatigue to elasti- 
 city and strength, and the weariness of separation 
 from those we love to union with them or oblivion ; 
 the pains, fatigue, and miseries of earth bear the 
 same relation to heaven as the hour and twenty min- 
 utes of a rough channel passage in the Dover boat 
 bears to the sojourn at Monte Carlo or Algiers. 
 
 The fascination of the belief of heaven is shown 
 by its popularity among religionists, and by those 
 who, having made a mess of this world, have re- 
 course to another to redress the consequences of 
 their own folly or crime. The Guiteaus of civil- 
 isation are more repugnant to healthy minds than 
 the Ravachols and Vaillants. But there is a host 
 of mute, inglorious Guiteaus -to whom the hope 
 of heaven is at once solace, compensation, and
 
 THE RELIGION OF THE IRRELIGIOUS. 233. 
 
 anodyne. Women who have failed to inspire men 
 with interest, find in the heavenly horizons a 
 pleasant solace for bruised affections. They 
 may have preferred man some particular man^ 
 but not having succeeded in obtaining him, they 
 seek from heaven that which earth will not yield. 
 Whenever we refer to human nature, we strangely 
 allude to some weak or vicious propensity in human 
 nature. But in the texture of human nature are 
 some golden threads of which God Himself may 
 be proud. One of these golden fibres is con- 
 spicuous in the lofty conception that the best men 
 have formed of God. It is better that Demos 
 should have no opinion of Him than one that is 
 unworthy of Him ; for the one is unbelief, the 
 other contumely. To heaven as God's home^ 
 men and women in trouble turn as birds in the 
 autumn turn towards the South. 
 
 As the Medes and Persians and the Egyptians 
 represented their gods like themselves, the Ethi- 
 opians represented their deities as black with 
 flat noses, while the Thracians made them blue- 
 eyed with ruddy complexions. The Jewish idea 
 of God was equally anthropomorphic. English 
 ecclesiastics who still profess to retain the orthodox 
 faith, and believe that which they teach, do not 
 escape anthropomorphism in their conception of 
 the God of this century and of the heaven He in-
 
 234 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 habits. Martin's Plains of Heaven was the popular 
 pictorial conception of celestial bliss two genera- 
 tions ago. It united the ease and grandeur 
 of palace life with the stimulus and fresh air of 
 rural existence. There is nothing sordid or re- 
 pulsive in these conceptions. On the contrary, as 
 material comfort is the political goal of Demos 
 here below, so the comfort of his disembodied soul 
 is too obviously secured by all the provisions that 
 spiritual upholstery can suggest for his ease, com- 
 fort, and relaxation. 
 
 The hope of heaven as a motive of life, and 
 as a guide of conduct, appeals only to that side of 
 character that responds to the stimulus of gain. 
 A paid Member of Parliament is not necessarily 
 corrupt, but he occupies another level to the 
 man who gives gratuitous service to his country, 
 ''all for love and nothing for reward." It is not 
 ignoble, but it is not the highest side of character, 
 and for the purpose of stiffening character with 
 backbone, the hope of heaven is not more effec- 
 tive than the fear of death. The appeal is ad- 
 dressed to self-interest, and as such is to be judged 
 by precisely the same standard as any other 
 earthly incentive. No individuals except religious 
 geniuses act as if they really believed in heaven. 
 No nation has ever abandoned fraudulent com- 
 merce, secret polygamy or polyandry, drink traffic
 
 THE RELIGION OF THE IRRELIGIOUS. 235 
 
 with the poor or with black races, its worship of 
 new peers, flattery of the bad side of Demos, or 
 its organised hypocrisy, because that nation 
 hopes for heaven. Not only is the motive futile, 
 for present advantage outbids future results in 
 a democracy, but the appeal is addressed merely 
 to the animal, the emotional side of Demos. The 
 hope of heaven, like the fear of death, is not, 
 therefore, a growing force, but a decaying element 
 in the democratic character. It survives mainly 
 among invalids. 
 
 Sneers at the contrast between profession and 
 practice, however justly applied to those who call 
 themselves Christians, need not be restricted to 
 those who are of the Nazarene faith. Hypocrisy, 
 doubt, selfishness, and cruelty, abound in the 
 inner circles of Buddhism and Islam, at least, in 
 equal measure to that in which they are discovered 
 in the Western Churches. Buddhism is a philo- 
 sophy that is instantly abandoned by its followers 
 during the serious crises of life. The implacable 
 powers of evil, who send disease, disaster, and 
 death, to the nominal Buddhist home, are appeased 
 by devil dancers brought in for the purpose ; just 
 as the peasant of the Campagna appeals to the 
 Virgin in an agony of devotion to cure his sick 
 swine, or dispel the blight from the corn fields. 
 Mahommedan pashas, who drink champagne
 
 2j6 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 under the name of sherbet, are neither better nor 
 worse than the Irish priests who evaded the 
 pledge of abstinence they and their flocks had 
 taken, by recourse to the cheaper and equally 
 intoxicating effects of ether. 
 
 Weak pursuit of pleasure, the evasion of duty, 
 and selfishness, are found wherever two or three 
 are gathered together. Neither good nor evil is 
 restricted to any nation, creed, climate, or race. 
 It is true, however, that the evils of the drink 
 traffic are indissolubly associated with the spread 
 of the Gospel. China, India, and Africa, what- 
 ever evils may have been wrought within their 
 own areas, are, at least, free from the re- 
 sponsibility of applying to Western civilisation 
 and faith for the spread of contagious diseases 
 and poison stimulants in distant lands. Nominal 
 Christianity has cheerfully girdled with a zone of 
 drink this fair earth. Had the liquor been Chateau 
 Lafitte, or even well-matured whisky, there would 
 have been comparatively little harm done. But 
 the fusel-oil and pure alcohol with which England 
 and Germany the bulwarks of Protestantism 
 have saturated the heathen, are deterrent influ- 
 ences against acceptance by the new democracy 
 of nominal Christianity. Members of Parliament 
 who have made a fortune by selling drink to black 
 races may support Sir. W. Lawson with their
 
 THE RELIGION OF THE IRRELIGIOUS. 237 
 
 votes in the House of Commons, but they have 
 done more than most men to promote the decay 
 of faith. 
 
 Nearer home, the lives of those who have 
 publicly renounced this world, and have under- 
 taken to carry their cross, are enigmatical to those 
 who wish to believe. If it were intended to tilt 
 at nominal Christianity, this would be the place. 
 Nothing is farther from my intention. It is, how- 
 ever, obvious to all that nothing deters belief so 
 effectually as the characters and deeds of those 
 who publicly profess their belief in the Incarna- 
 tion and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, and of His 
 Atonement with God for men's sins. The only 
 inference to be drawn from the habits and char- 
 acters of those who constitute the main body of 
 the Christian Churches, is that Christ is no more 
 a living reality to them in 1894 than Leonidas or 
 Aristotle. His life is contradicted by theirs, and 
 His teaching confuted by the maxims that govern 
 their conduct. 
 
 Laughter, riches, full measure of the good 
 things of this life, and notoriety, if not popularity, 
 are the definite aims of society and democracy 
 alike. To attain these things nerves are strained, 
 mind pushed to its greatest capacity, health risked 
 and impaired, and the teaching of the Nazarene 
 habitually contradicted. For all these things
 
 ?38 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 are denounced by Him with the emphatic 
 promise of woe to the rich, full, merry, and popular 
 man. Pure Ebionism, that is to say, the doctrine 
 that the poor almost alone shall be saved, was the 
 doctrine of the democratic Christ, provided the 
 poor would pay the price of implicit faith and 
 passive obedience. After the worst blot on 
 history the Crucifixion had occurred, and 
 Paul was converted in middle life, Christianity 
 changed her mind, and received rich men into her 
 bosom ; just as Buddhism, exclusively monastic in 
 its origin, received the laity when converts to 
 Gaudama began to increase. 
 
 Lord Palmerston said, "It is unwise to con- 
 demn a class condemnation should be reserved 
 for individuals." So the Church members and the 
 clergy and ministers of all denominations are 
 excellent and delightful people, but somehow 
 there is so broad a gap between the Christianity 
 of Christ and the so-called Christianity taught in 
 the Churches, and practised by the population in the 
 pews, that one of the two must be wrong. Either 
 Christ was an unpractical fanatic, who gained 
 deathless fame by imposing an impossible burden 
 on weak human nature, or He was divine, and 
 His statements were laws that are binding on all 
 His followers, and which cannot, therefore, be 
 broken with impunity. His teaching seems to
 
 THE RELIGION OF THE IRRELIGIOUS. 239- 
 
 contemplate poverty, hunger, contumely, pain, 
 tears, as being the natural lot of men and women 
 who accept His teaching ; and He seems to 
 expect that to lead the perfect life, sacrifice must 
 accompany every act of life. 
 
 Nor is it in mere externals that the neo-Chris- 
 tianity, into which the evolution of time, and the 
 fidelity of human nature to itself, have converted 
 the Christianity of Christ, differs from the hard 
 sayings of the Mount. The Great Renunciation 
 is too heavy a sacrifice for the average man to 
 undertake with the slightest prospect of success. 
 From the cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop on the 
 wall, the vegetable kingdom struggles for exist- 
 ence. The struggle is no less apparent in the 
 sacerdotal fraternity. It is no small matter for a 
 human being to be set aside, or to set himself 
 aside, to construe to the laity the dark sayings of 
 Revelation and the Incarnate Word of God ; to 
 present in his conduct and life the living example 
 of one who has taken up his cross to follow his 
 Master. The adoption of such a career has pro- 
 duced both the loftiest and the most contemptible 
 of mankind. He who deals in the great mystery 
 of life, by justifying the ways of God to man, 
 stands on a pedestal. His light or his darkness 
 are in full view. It is a sorrowful fact known to- 
 those who have mixed most freely with the
 
 240 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 priestly caste, that where their ghostly functions 
 have not softened the heart and refined the intel- 
 lect, the deterioration and even the degradation 
 is more marked in the clerical profession than 
 among the laity. The French priesthood, perse- 
 cuted by a succession of godless Administrations, 
 now garners the harvest of long centuries of 
 sacerdotal arrogance and tyranny. They are but 
 reaping what they have sown. As contact with 
 pain, disease, and suffering in hospital life, where 
 it does not refine the doctors and nurses, coarsens 
 their spiritual fibre and lowers their tone, so the 
 handling of celestial mysteries either casts a beam 
 upon the outward shape 
 
 " Till all be made immortal," 
 
 \ 
 or it deteriorates the priest or pastor, and leaves 
 
 his body and his mind in a state where animal 
 passions and self-esteem exercise complete control. 
 Looking at the grandeur and the inaccessible 
 purity of the ideal given to Western Europe by 
 the teaching on the Mount, and bearing in mind 
 the petrifaction of heart and character that in- 
 variably result from outward contact with holy 
 things where such contact does not reach the 
 soul, there is no reason for wonder at the sharp- 
 ness of contrast between the Message and the 
 messengers. When shepherds thus fall short, the
 
 THE RELIGION OF THE IRRELIGIOUS. 241 
 
 failure of the sheep to guide their steps by the 
 austere tenets of the Nazarene is no matter of 
 surprise. Mere doctrine is elevated to a position 
 of dignity and importance, and theological emi- 
 nence is not rare among those to whom port wine 
 and acerbity of manner are habitual indulgences. 
 The sects hate each other more than they hate 
 sin, woe, and want. In ecclesiastical edifices of 
 great beauty and much cost, the errors of rival 
 forms of belief are dissected and exposed with a 
 force and continuity of purpose rarely directed 
 against the strongholds of want and misery that 
 make our social question. 
 
 To this general state of affairs there are ex- 
 ceptions. The Salvation Army, with its vul- 
 garity, its emotion and its advertisements, is 
 abstinent as Islam, and unselfish as Christianity. 
 It is well for England that most High Church 
 men and some nonconformists, principally among 
 the Wesleyans, are truly concerned in the trans- 
 lation of Christ's practice of feeding the multitude 
 before He preached to them. But the main 
 body of nominal Christians are, at least, as self- 
 centred and as far from an admirable ideal of life 
 as a similar number of Asiatics, be they what 
 they may. 
 
 If the stimulus of the system of rewards and 
 punishment in a future state is inadequate among
 
 242 ENGLISH DEMO CKA C Y. 
 
 the masses to ensure a noble life and high aims, 
 the fact remains that the question of a future life 
 has engaged from time immemorial, and con- 
 tinues to engage, the most earnest attention of 
 the best and most thoughtful men. We know 
 nothing of the future life, because we can no 
 more look for direct supernatural information 
 than for supernatural nourishment or supernatural 
 clothing. That mysterious and unknown country 
 is no cruel darkness. It is simply an impene- 
 trable horizon beyond which no emigrant of ours 
 has returned to us. If our senses or our reason 
 are powerless to explain this unknown country, we 
 are not debarred from legitimate speculation or 
 from reasonable hope. If doctrinal controversy, 
 elaborate structure, and multitudinous divisions 
 of ecclesiastical Christianity, have replaced the 
 simple morality of the Master ; if the Narrow 
 Way is Haussmannised by priests into a road to 
 the House of Lords, the speechless cry of the 
 people for illumination and guidance in approach- 
 ing the trackless unknown is not lulled as the old 
 gives place to the new. The generations of 
 churchmen who have filled the world with the 
 din of theological encounters have done less to 
 dissipate the impenetrable gloom hanging over the 
 future than the savage races which preserve to 
 this day an all but universal tradition and belief
 
 THE RELIGION OF THE IRRELIGIOUS. 243 
 
 of the human race in the existence of a future 
 state. It is, in fact, little short of miraculous that 
 a divine scheme for saving men from eternal 
 damnation, taught personally by God Himself 
 incarnate in human form, and completed by His 
 own death at the hands of a colonial governor of 
 a dead empire, should not have conveyed to man- 
 kind, in an intelligible and sufficient form, irre- 
 sistible evidence of the reality of a future life. 
 The prevalence and continuity of traditional 
 belief is no evidence of its truth ; nor does the 
 universal desire for a future life necessarily de- 
 monstrate its reality. Of the inhabitants of this 
 planet, some twelve hundred millions believe in a 
 life to come. Pure materialism, even among the 
 African tribes, is rare. The existence of such 
 races as the Zulus, and their kinsmen the Mata- 
 bele, whose indifference to death is probably 
 owing (at all events in part) to disbelief in sur- 
 vival after death, simply shows that nomadic 
 races may lose in their wanderings doctrines held 
 by the people from which they sprung. The 
 Jews and the Arabs, to whom the Zulus and 
 Matabele probably owe their ancestry, have held 
 the doctrine of a future state, at all events, during 
 some period of their history. 
 
 S. Mathew says : " Many bodies of the saints 
 who slept arose and came out of the tombs after
 
 244 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 His resurrection." But Dean Milman and Canon 
 Farrar explain this by the supposition that the 
 earthquake " seemed to have filled the air with 
 ghostly visitants, who, after Christ had risen, 
 seemed to linger in the Holy City." It is logi- 
 cally certain, therefore, as the author of " Super- 
 natural Religion " has pointed out, that if one 
 impression described by Matthew as objective, is 
 really subjective, the possibility of a mistake in 
 regard to the appearance of Christ Himself is 
 equally possible. For it must be remembered 
 that the Apostle Paul wrote about the appearance 
 of Jesus to the five hundred about a quarter of a 
 century after the time when the alleged appear- 
 ance took place. Not only so, but some years 
 must have elapsed between the time when Jesus 
 is supposed to have been seen and the time when 
 Paul first heard of the circumstance. In plain 
 English, is the evidence for the resurrection of 
 Christ, or of Lazarus, sufficient to satisfy an in- 
 different and cultivated mind, or to sustain the 
 alleged miracles? As Dr. Lightfoot says : " The 
 abnegation of reason is not the evidence of faith, 
 but the confession of despair." The testimony 
 needed to-day to demonstrate a fact so stupendous 
 as the resurrection of the dead must, at least, 
 include three separate and successful investigations 
 before a committee, including a surgeon, a nurse,
 
 THE RELIGION OF THE IRRELIGIOUS. 245 
 
 a chemist, a professed conjuror, an historian, an 
 electrician, a barrister of fourteen years' standing, 
 and a Scotch merchant. If the evidence of a 
 future life depends on the documentary evidence 
 for the rise of Christ from the dead, as the whole 
 structure of dogmatic Christianity hangs on that 
 miracle, Demos is not satisfied. Having sifted 
 the evidence honestly and with labour, I reluct- 
 antly arrived at the conclusion that the objective 
 and historic testimony on which the Resurrection 
 and Ascension are established, is not sufficient to 
 determine in our Civil Courts a trivial question 
 of property or title. It may be that Christ rose 
 from the dead, but if He did, the assertion of the 
 fact from disputable sources leaves democracy 
 indeed with faith stranded and with reason un- 
 satisfied. The resurrection of Christ is more fitly 
 proved by the lives of the best of His followers, 
 the knowledge of their deeds, and the vitality of 
 His example. 
 
 The predominance of an instinct of survival in 
 the best and purest of mankind, without distinction 
 of race, creed, or colour, is evidence 1 of a totally 
 different nature. It is not necessary to assume that 
 God exhibits personal benevolence towards man- 
 kind to justify the inference that as the capacity for 
 thirst implies the existence of water, so the rooted i 
 and intense aversion to annihilation, the desire to
 
 246 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 live on, to shed the outer husk, to escape into 
 the upper air, to obtain larger and freer powers, 
 and to live emancipated from passion and ignor- 
 ance ; to become strong, and to enter into more 
 direct and personal relations with the First Cause, 
 implies the existence of a future state. For, if it 
 were not so, the equipment of man with a long- 
 ing to survive, that is only a baseless dream, 
 might be the work of a humorist, but it would 
 also be an act of a fiend. We did not make 
 ourselves. We were not consulted whether we 
 would enter this world : into what family we 
 should be born : or with what heredity we should 
 be endowed. Intuitive and general sense of sur- 
 vival either implies survival, or the existence of 
 an immoral First Cause, taking the same sort 
 of pleasure in torturing men, as a pretty child 
 in torturing flies upon the pane. Since the 
 natural laws of the universe, as far as we know 
 them, with a few trifling and questionable excep- 
 tions, indicate method, foresight, adaptation, har- 
 mony, and feeling, there is no reason to suppose 
 that the faculty with which we are endowed for 
 contemplating as desirable our survival after 
 death, is without a place in the scheme of things. 
 Indeed, the general existence of the desire, and 
 the intuitive sense of right and wrong given by 
 conscience, enable us to assume the position of
 
 THE RELIGION OF THE IRRELIGIOUS. 247 
 
 responsible beings who do not finish their careers 
 in this life. 
 
 If this be right reasoning, the presumption in 
 favour of the fact of a future life rests on a more 
 solid foundation than miraculous occurrences un- 
 supported by any such evidence as we require 
 in dealing with questions of property or title. 
 It does not amount to certainty, and, moreover, 
 the instinct for survival differs widely in different 
 individuals. But the aching for survival implies 
 survival as much as hunger implies food. There 
 is no necessary supply of food to the hungry ; but 
 food exists, and may generally be obtained by 
 those who want it. Even so there may be no 
 necessary supply of immortality to those who 
 prefer survival to extinction, but immortality may 
 be obtained by those who wish for it, and wish 
 for it enough, or the world is the work of a fiend. 
 
 The acceptance by the democracy of the idea 
 of a future life is of the first importance in urging 
 them to restrain passion, to achieve good, to 
 remedy wrong, and to create a career the retro- 
 spect of which can be surveyed without shame, if 
 not with satisfaction. 
 
 Besides this, there is the off-chance of pleasing 
 the First Cause, and of carrying out, however 
 feebly, as agent, servant, or commissioner, some
 
 248 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 part of the plan, the bulk of which is hidden from 
 our gaze. 
 
 If the desire to take a successful and confi- 
 dential part in the campaign of a great general or 
 in the service of a king has, in times past, in- 
 spired the best and noblest of men who ever 
 lived to deeds of reckless courage, to complete 
 suppression of self, and to endurance so sub- 
 lime as to compel the reverence of posterity, 
 how much more justly may men bestir them- 
 selves to take part in the campaign in that other 
 land where we all shall arrive as destitute 
 emigrants. A moderate study of astronomy 
 makes it appear unlikely that this parasite planet, 
 in a distinctly inferior solar system, carries the 
 whole intelligence, and contains the only sentient 
 beings in the length and breadth of the universe. 
 
 If, as is possible, the evolution we observe 
 dominating all beings and societies of beings 
 subject to natural law continues to act pro- 
 gressively in the future state, there is nothing 
 repugnant to reason or to instinct in the idea of 
 such an expansion of our capacities and of our 
 intelligence as to enable us to take part in the 
 administration of kingdoms not of this world. 
 We know of three dimensions, and we cannot 
 conceive of a fourth. But if our environment 
 were of two dimensions, we should no more con-
 
 THE RELIGION OF THE IRRELIGIOUS. 249 
 
 ceive of three than under our present conditions 
 we can conceive of four ; and if four, why not 
 forty or four hundred, or of an infinite number of 
 dimensions, each of which beyond the third is 
 inconceivable to the whole human race ? 
 
 If theologians and ecclesiastics have en- 
 deavoured to hold the people in pawn for sixty 
 generations by successful suppression of reason, 
 the world is no less likely to suffer from the in- 
 tolerance of the new priesthood of science, who 
 erect an altar to the goddess of reason and offer 
 there a sacrifice of that part of our nature which 
 is higher than reason. There is a cant in science 
 
 O 
 
 which is no less repulsive than the cant of 
 theology. Scientific men have so often been 
 hopelessly wrong in their predictions and in their 
 dogmas, that we may be excused from believing 
 even the most eminent among them, when they 
 tell us there is no life beyond the grave. We do 
 not know that there is an after life, but we do 
 know that if there is not, God has amused Him- 
 self with the torture of helpless creatures who 
 have trusted Him. Careful of the type that is 
 always progressing and improving, it is out of 
 harmony with all we know of the provisions made 
 for man, beast and plant, for God idly to torture 
 the whole race of man. If it were so, we should 
 be justified in virulent and confident hatred towards
 
 250 ENGLISH DEMOCRACY. 
 
 God, and those who led fair and honourable lives 
 would stand in an immeasurably higher moral level 
 than God Himself. As the disciple is not above 
 his Master, if there be a God, man is neither 
 better nor stronger than He. Wrong is not right 
 because God does it. If wrong be done by God, 
 then God is no longer God but Devil. But if 
 God can do no wrong, then there is a future life, 
 and democracy will be well employed in contem- 
 plating the retention of conscious individuality 
 and of memory after death. 
 
 If I am right in the conclusion that the 
 Christianity of history and of the priests is not 
 remotely related to the Christianity of Christ, we 
 still discover in Him the greatest example man 
 has ever had. The principles of justice, of law, 
 of brotherhood, of sacrifice, are the religion of 
 Christ ; they are the indispensable elements of 
 our social progress, and they are miracles more 
 marvellous than any of those recorded in the 
 Gospels. Amid all the distractions of modern 
 democracy, so complex in all its departments as 
 to overwhelm the souls of men who see no out- 
 look for England beyond the graves of her 
 people, there is no such light of the world as 
 His life : no such power as His teaching. The 
 priests have maimed His memory, and " those 
 who heard Him gladly " before the priests had
 
 THE RELIGION OF THE IRRELIGIOUS. 251 
 
 thrust themselves between the common people 
 and the Master, will not hear Him now. When 
 they listen to Him, democracy will have lost its 
 dangers, for His socialism is the love to share that 
 which the new tyranny would reap by force. And 
 the union of Christ and democracy, though it be 
 the only hope for England, is to-day no mere 
 dream of enthusiasts. 
 
 t v 
 
 THE END. 
 
 Printed by Cowan & Co. , Limited, Perth.
 
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